note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the lovely original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) the french impressionists ( - ) by camille mauclair author of _l'art en silence_, _les mères sociales_, etc. translated from the french text of camille mauclair, by p. g. konody london: duckworth & co. new york: e. p. dutton & co. turnbull and spears, printers, edinburgh [illustration: renoir at the piano] to auguste brÉal to the artist and to the friend as a mark of grateful affection c.m. author's note it should be stated here that, with the exception of one reproduction after the neo-impressionist van rysselberghe, the other forty-nine engravings illustrating this volume i owe to the courtesy of m. durand-ruel, from the first the friend of the impressionist painters, and later the most important collector of their works, a friend who has been good enough to place at our disposal the photographs from which our illustrations have been reproduced. chosen from a considerable collection which has been formed for thirty years past, these photographs, none of which are for sale, form a veritable and unique museum of documents on impressionist art, which is made even more valuable through the dispersal of the principal masterpieces of this art among the private collections of europe and america. we render our thanks to m. durand-ruel no less in the name of the public interested in art, than in our own. contents author's note i. the precursors of impressionism--the beginning of this movement, the origin of its name ii. the theory of the impressionists--the division of tones, complementary colours, the study of atmosphere--the ideas of the impressionists on subject-pictures, on the beauty of character, on modernity, and on style iii. edouard manet: his work, his influence iv. edgar degas: his work, his influence v. claude monet: his work, his influence vi. auguste renoir: his work, his influence vii. pissarro, sisley, caillebotte, cÉzanne, berthe morisot, mary cassatt; the secondary artists of impressionism--jongkind, boudin viii. the modern illustrators connected with impressionism: raffaËlli, toulouse-lautrec, forain, chÉret, etc. ix. neo-impressionism: gauguin, denis, thÉo van rysselberghe--the theory of pointillism--seurat, signac and the theories of scientific chromatism--faults and qualities of the impressionist movement, what we owe to it, its place in the history of the french school--some words on its influence abroad list of illustrations renoir. at the piano (frontispiece) manet. rest manet. in the square manet. young man in costume of majo manet. the reader degas. the dancer at the photographer's degas. carriages at the races degas. the greek dance--pastel degas. waiting claude monet. the pines claude monet. church at vernon renoir. portrait of madame maitre manet. the dead toreador manet. olympia manet. the woman with the parrot manet. the bar at the folies bergère manet. déjeuner manet. portrait of madame m. l. manet. the hothouse degas. the beggar woman degas. the lesson in the foyer degas. the dancing lesson--pastel degas. the dancers degas. horses in the meadows claude monet. an interior after dinner claude monet. the harbour, honfleur claude monet. the church at varengeville claude monet. poplars on the epte in autumn claude monet. the bridge at argenteuil renoir. déjeuner renoir. in the box renoir. young girl promenading renoir. woman's bust renoir. young woman in empire costume renoir. on the terrace pissarro. rue de l'epicerie, rouen pissarro. boulevard montmartre pissarro. the boildieaux bridge at rouen pissarro. the avenue de l'opéra sisley. snow effect sisley. bougival, at the water's edge sisley. bridge at moret cÉzanne. dessert berthe morisot. melancholy berthe morisot. young woman seated mary cassatt. getting up baby mary cassatt. women and child jongkind. in holland jongkind. view of the hague thÉo van rysselberghe. portraits of madame van rysselberghe and her daughter note to list of illustrations the illustrations contained in this volume have been taken from different epochs of the impressionist movement. they will give but a feeble idea of the extreme abundance of its production. banished from the salons, exhibited in private galleries and sold direct to art lovers, the impressionist works have been but little seen. the series left by caillebotte to the luxembourg gallery is very badly shown and is composed of interesting works which, however, date back to the early period, and are very inferior to the beautiful productions which followed later. renoir is best represented. the private galleries in paris, where the best impressionist works are to be found, are those of mm. durand-ruel, rouart, de bellis, de camondo, and manzi, to which must be added the one sold by mm. théodore duret and faure, and the one of mme. ernest rouart, daughter of mme. morisot, the sister-in-law of manet. the public galleries of m. durand-ruel's show-rooms are the place where it is easiest to find numerous impressionist pictures. in spite of the firm opposition of the official juries, a place of honour was reserved at the exposition of for manet, and at that of a fine collection of impressionists occupied two rooms and caused a considerable stir. amongst the critics who have most faithfully assisted this group of artists, i must mention, besides the early friends previously referred to, castagnary, burty, edouard de goncourt, roger marx, geffroy, arsène alexandre, octave mirbeau, l. de fourcaud, clemenceau, mallarmé, huysmans, jules laforgue, and nearly all the critics of the symbolist reviews. a book on "impressionist art" by m. georges lecomte has been published by the firm of durand-ruel as an _edition-de-luxe_. but the bibliography of this art consists as yet almost exclusively of articles in journals and reviews and of some isolated biographical pamphlets. manet is, amongst many, the one who has excited most criticism of all kinds; the articles, caricatures and pamphlets relating to his work would form a considerable collection. it should be added that, with the exception of manet two years before his death, and renoir last year at the age of sixty-eight, no impressionist has been decorated by the french government. in england such a distinction has even less importance in itself than elsewhere. but if i insist upon it, it is only to draw attention to the fact that, through the sheer force of their talent, men like degas, monet and pissarro have achieved great fame and fortune, without gaining access to the salons, without official encouragement, decoration, subvention or purchases for the national museums. this is a very significant instance and serves well to complete the physiognomy of this group of independents. i the precursors of impressionism--the beginning of this movement and the origin of its name it will be beyond the scope of this volume to give a complete history of french impressionism, and to include all the attractive details to which it might lead, as regards the movement itself and the very curious epoch during which its evolution has taken place. the proportions of this book confine its aim to the clearest possible summing up for the british reader of the ideas, the personalities and the works of a considerable group of artists who, for various reasons, have remained but little known and who have only too frequently been gravely misjudged. these reasons are very obvious: first, the impressionists have been unable to make a show at the salons, partly because the jury refused them admission, partly because they held aloof of their own free will. they have, with very rare exceptions, exhibited at special minor galleries, where they become known to a very restricted public. ever attacked, and poor until the last few years, they enjoyed none of the benefits of publicity and sham glory. it is only quite recently that the admission of the incomplete and badly arranged caillebotte collection to the luxembourg gallery has enabled the public to form a summary idea of impressionism. to conclude the enumeration of the obstacles, it must be added that there are hardly any photographs of impressionist works in the market. as it is, photography is but a poor translation of these canvases devoted to the study of the play of light; but even this very feeble means of distribution has been withheld from them! exhibited at some galleries, gathered principally by durand-ruel, sold directly to art-lovers--foreigners mostly--these large series of works have practically remained unknown to the french public. all the public heard was the reproaches and sarcastic comments of the opponents, and they never became aware that in the midst of modern life the greatest, the richest movement was in progress, which the french school had known since the days of romanticism. impressionism has been made known to them principally by the controversies and by the fruitful consequences of this movement for the illustration and study of contemporary life. [illustration: manet rest] i do not profess to give here a detailed and complete history of impressionism, for which several volumes like the present one would be required. i shall only try to compile an _ensemble_ of concise and very precise notions and statements bearing upon this vast subject. it will be my special object to try and prove that impressionism is neither an isolated manifestation, nor a violent denial of the french traditions, but nothing more or less than a logical return to the very spirit of these traditions, contrary to the theories upheld by its detractors. it is for this reason that i have made use of the first chapter to say a few words on the precursors of this movement. no art manifestation is really isolated. however new it may seem, it is always based upon the previous epochs. the true masters do not give lessons, because art cannot be taught, but they set the example. to admire them does not mean to imitate them: it means the recognition in them of the principles of originality and the comprehension of their source, so that this eternal source may be called to life in oneself, this source which springs from a sincere and sympathetic vision of the aspects of life. the impressionists have not escaped this beautiful law. i shall speak of them impartially, without excessive enthusiasm; and it will be my special endeavour to demonstrate in each of them the cult of a predecessor, for there have been few artistic movements where the love for, and one might say the hereditary link with, the preceding masters has been more tenacious. the academy has struggled violently against impressionism, accusing it of madness, of systematic negation of the "laws of beauty," which it pretended to defend and of which it claimed to be the official priest. the academy has shown itself hostile to a degree in this quarrel. it has excluded the impressionists from the salons, from awards, from official purchases. only quite recently the acceptance of the caillebotte bequest to the luxembourg gallery gave rise to a storm of indignation among the official painters. i shall, in the course of this book, enter upon the value of these attacks. meanwhile i can only say how regrettable this obstinacy appears to me and will appear to every free spirit. it is unworthy even of an ardent conviction to condemn a whole group of artists _en bloc_ as fools, enemies of beauty, or as tricksters anxious to degrade the art of their nation, when these artists worked during forty years towards the same goal, without getting any reward for their effort, but poverty and derision. it is now about ten years since impressionism has taken root, since its followers can sell their canvases, and since they are admired and praised by a solid and ever-growing section of the public. the hour has therefore arrived, calmly to consider a movement which has imposed itself upon the history of french art from to with extreme energy, to leave dithyrambics as well as polemics, and to speak of it with a view to exactness. the academy, in continuing the propagation of an ideal of beauty fixed by canons derived from greek, latin and renaissance art, and neglecting the gothic, the primitives and the realists, looks upon itself as the guardian of the national tradition, because it exercises an hierarchic authority over the _ecole de rome_, the _salons_, and the _ecole des beaux arts_. all the same, its ideals are of very mixed origin and very little french. its principles are the same by which the academic art of nearly all the official schools of europe is governed. this mythological and allegorical art, guided by dogmas and formulas which are imposed upon all pupils regardless of their temperament, is far more international than national. to an impartial critic this statement will show in an even more curious light the excommunication jealously issued by the academic painters against french artists, who, far from revolting in an absurd spirit of _parti-pris_ against the genius of their race, are perhaps more sincerely attached to it than their persecutors. why should a group of men deliberately choose to paint mad, illogical, bad pictures, and reap a harvest of public derision, poverty and sterility? it would be uncritical to believe merely in a general mystification which makes its authors the worst sufferers. simple common sense will find in these men a conviction, a sincerity, a sustained effort, and this alone should, in the name of the sacred solidarity of those who by various means try to express their love of the beautiful, suppress the annoying accusations hurled too light-heartedly against manet and his friends. [illustration: manet in the square] i shall define later on the ideas of the impressionists on technique, composition and style in painting. meanwhile it will be necessary to indicate their principal precursors. their movement may be styled thus: a reaction against the greco-latin spirit and the scholastic organisation of painting after the second renaissance and the italo-french school of fontainebleau, by the century of louis xiv., the school of rome, and the consular and imperial taste. in this sense impressionism is a protest analogous to that of romanticism, exclaiming, to quote the old verse: "_qui nous délivrera des grecs et des romains?_"[ ] from this point of view impressionism has also great affinities with the ideas of the english pre-raphaelites, who stepped across the second and even the first renaissance back to the primitives. [footnote : who will deliver us from the greeks and the romans.] this reaction is superimposed by another: the reaction of impressionism, not only against classic subjects, but against the black painting of the degenerate romanticists. and these two reactions are counterbalanced by a return to the french ideal, to the realistic and characteristic tradition which commences with jean foucquet and clouet, and is continued by chardin, claude lorrain, poussin, watteau, la tour, fragonard, and the admirable engravers of the eighteenth century down to the final triumph of the allegorical taste of the roman revolution. here can be found a whole chain of truly national artists who have either been misjudged, like chardin, or considered as "small masters" and excluded from the first rank for the benefit of the pompous allegorists descended from the italian school. impressionism being beyond all a technical reaction, its predecessors should first be looked for from this material point of view. watteau is the most striking of all. _l'embarquement pour cythère_ is, in its technique, an impressionist canvas. it embodies the most significant of all the principles exposed by claude monet: the division of tones by juxtaposed touches of colour which, at a certain distance, produce upon the eye of the beholder the effect of the actual colouring of the things painted, with a variety, a freshness and a delicacy of analysis unobtainable by a single tone prepared and mixed upon the palette. [illustration: manet young man in costume of majo] claude lorrain, and after him carle vernet, are claimed by the impressionists as precursors from the point of view of decorative landscape arrangement, and particularly of the predominance of light in which all objects are bathed. ruysdael and poussin are, in their eyes, for the same reasons precursors, especially ruysdael, who observed so frankly the blue colouring of the horizon and the influence of blue upon the landscape. it is known that turner worshipped claude for the very same reasons. the impressionists in their turn, consider turner as one of their masters; they have the greatest admiration for this mighty genius, this sumptuous visionary. they have it equally for bonington, whose technique is inspired by the same observations as their own. they find, finally, in delacroix the frequent and very apparent application of their ideas. notably in the famous _entry of the crusaders into constantinople_, the fair woman kneeling in the foreground is painted in accordance with the principles of the division of tones: the nude back is furrowed with blue, green and yellow touches, the juxtaposition of which produces, at a certain distance, an admirable flesh-tone. and now i must speak at some length of a painter who, together with the luminous and sparkling landscapist félix ziem, was the most direct initiator of impressionist technique. monticelli is one of those singular men of genius who are not connected with any school, and whose work is an inexhaustible source of applications. he lived at marseilles, where he was born, made a short appearance at the salons, and then returned to his native town, where he died poor, ignored, paralysed and mad. in order to live he sold his small pictures at the cafés, where they fetched ten or twenty francs at the most. to-day they sell for considerable prices, although the government has not yet acquired any work by monticelli for the public galleries. the mysterious power alone of these paintings secures him a fame which is, alas! posthumous. many monticellis have been sold by dealers as diaz's; now they are more eagerly looked for than diaz, and collectors have made fortunes with these small canvases bought formerly, to use a colloquial expression which is here only too literally true, "for a piece of bread." monticelli painted landscapes, romantic scenes, "fêtes galantes" in the spirit of watteau, and still-life pictures: one could not imagine a more inspired sense of colour than shown by these works which seem to be painted with crushed jewels, with powerful harmony, and beyond all with an unheard-of delicacy in the perception of fine shades. there are tones which nobody had ever invented yet, a richness, a profusion, a subtlety which almost vie with the resources of music. the fairyland atmosphere of these works surrounds a very firm design of charming style, but, to use the words of the artist himself, "in these canvases the objects are the decoration, the touches are the scales, and the light is the tenor." monticelli has created for himself an entirely personal technique which can only be compared with that of turner; he painted with a brush so full, fat and rich, that some of the details are often truly modelled in relief, in a substance as precious as enamels, jewels, ceramics--a substance which is a delight in itself. every picture by monticelli provokes astonishment; constructed upon one colour as upon a musical theme, it rises to intensities which one would have thought impossible. his pictures are magnificent bouquets, bursts of joy and colour, where nothing is ever crude, and where everything is ruled by a supreme sense of harmony. [illustration: manet the reader] claude lorrain, watteau, turner and monticelli constitute really the descent of a landscapist like claude monet. in all matters concerning technique, they form the direct chain of impressionism. as regards design, subject, realism, the study of modern life, the conception of beauty and the portrait, the impressionist movement is based upon the old french masters, principally upon chardin, watteau, latour, largillière, fragonard, debucourt, saint-aubin, moreau, and eisen. it has resolutely held aloof from mythology, academic allegory, historical painting, and from the neo-greek elements of classicism as well as from the german and spanish elements of romanticism. this reactionary movement is therefore entirely french, and surely if it deserves reproach, the one least deserved is that levelled upon it by the official painters: disobedience to the national spirit. impressionism is an art which does not give much scope to intellectuality, an art whose followers admit scarcely anything but immediate vision, rejecting philosophy and symbols and occupying themselves only with the consideration of light, picturesqueness, keen and clever observation, and antipathy to abstraction, as the innate qualities of french art. we shall see later on, when considering separately its principal masters, that each of them has based his art upon some masters of pure french blood. impressionism has, then, hitherto been very badly judged. it is contained in two chief points: search after a new technique, and expression of modern reality. its birth has not been a spontaneous phenomenon. manet, who, by his spirit and by the chance of his friendships, grouped around him the principal members, commenced by being classed in the ranks of the realists of the second romanticism by the side of courbet; and during the whole first period of his work he only endeavoured to describe contemporary scenes, at a time when the laws of the new technique were already dawning upon claude monet. gradually the grouping of the impressionists took place. claude monet is really the first initiator: in a parallel line with his ideas and his works manet passed into the second period of his artistic life, and with him renoir, degas and pissarro. but manet had already during his first period been the topic of far-echoing polemics, caused by his realism and by the marked influence of the spaniards and of hals upon his style; his temperament, too, was that of the head of a school; and for these reasons legend has attached to his name the title of head of the impressionist school, but this legend is incorrect. to conclude, the very name "impressionism" is due to claude monet. there has been much serious arguing upon this famous word which has given rise to all sorts of definitions and conclusions. in reality this is its curious origin which is little known, even in criticism. ever since the works of manet and of his friends caused such a stir, that they were rejected _en bloc_ by the salon jury of . the emperor, inspired by a praiseworthy, liberal thought, demanded that these innovators should at least have the right to exhibit together in a special room which was called the _salon des refusés_. the public crowded there to have a good laugh. one of the pictures which caused most derision was a sunset by claude monet, entitled _impressions_. from this moment the painters who adopted more or less the same manner were called _impressionists_. the word remained in use, and manet and his friends thought it a matter of indifference whether this label was attached to them, or another. at this despised salon were to be found the names of manet, monet, whistler, bracquemont, jongkind, fantin-latour, renoir, legros, and many others who have since risen to fame. universal ridicule only fortified the friendships and resolutions of this group of men, and from that time dates the definite foundation of the impressionist school. for thirty years it continued to produce without interruption an enormous quantity of works under an accidental and inexact denomination; to obey the creative instinct, without any other dogma than the passionate observation of nature, without any other assistance than individual sympathies, in the face of the disciplinary teaching of the official school. [illustration: degas the dancer at the photographer's] ii the theory of the impressionists--the division of tones, complementary colours, the study of atmosphere--the ideas of the impressionists on subject-pictures, on the beauty of character, on modernity, and on style it should be stated from the outset that there is nothing dogmatic about this explanation of the impressionist theories, and that it is not the result of a preconceived plan. in art a system is not improvised. a theory is slowly evolved, nearly always unknown to the author, from the discoveries of his sincere instinct, and this theory can only be formulated after years by criticism facing the works. monet and manet have worked for a long time without ever thinking that theories would be built upon their paintings. yet a certain number of considerations will strike the close observer, and i will put these considerations before the reader, after reminding him that spontaneity and feeling are the essentials of all art. [illustration: degas carriages at the races] the impressionist ideas may be summed up in the following manner:-- in nature no colour exists by itself. the colouring of the objects is a pure illusion: the only creative source of colour is the sunlight which envelopes all things, and reveals them, according to the hours, with infinite modifications. the mystery of matter escapes us; we do not know the exact moment when reality separates itself from unreality. all we know is, that our vision has formed the habit of discerning in the universe two notions: form and colour; but these two notions are inseparable. only artificially can we distinguish between outline and colour: in nature the distinction does not exist. light reveals the forms, and, playing upon the different states of matter, the substance of leaves, the grain of stones, the fluidity of air in deep layers, gives them dissimilar colouring. if the light disappears, forms and colours vanish together. we only see colours; everything has a colour, and it is by the perception of the different colour surfaces striking our eyes, that we conceive the forms, _i.e._ the outlines of these colours. the idea of distance, of perspective, of volume is given us by darker or lighter colours: this idea is what is called in painting the sense of values. a value is the degree of dark or light intensity, which permits our eyes to comprehend that one object is further or nearer than another. and as painting is not and cannot be the _imitation_ of nature, but merely her artificial interpretation, since it only has at its disposal two out of three dimensions, the values are the only means that remain for expressing depth on a flat surface. colour is therefore the procreatrix of design. or, colour being simply the irradiation of light, it follows that all colour is composed of the same elements as sunlight, namely the seven tones of the spectrum. it is known, that these seven tones appear different owing to the unequal speed of the waves of light. the tones of nature appear to us therefore different, like those of the spectrum, and for the same reason. the colours vary with the intensity of light. there is no colour peculiar to any object, but only more or less rapid vibration of light upon its surface. the speed depends, as is demonstrated by optics, on the degree of the inclination of the rays which, according to their vertical or oblique direction, give different light and colour. the colours of the spectrum are thus recomposed in everything we see. it is their relative proportion which makes new tones out of the seven spectral tones. this leads immediately to some practical conclusions, the first of which is, that what has formerly been called _local colour_ is an error: a leaf is not green, a tree-trunk is not brown, and, according to the time of day, _i.e._ according to the greater or smaller inclination of the rays (scientifically called the angle of incidence), the green of the leaf and the brown of the tree are modified. what has to be studied therefore in these objects, if one wishes to recall their colour to the beholder of a picture, is the composition of the atmosphere which separates them from the eye. this atmosphere is the real subject of the picture, and whatever is represented upon it only exists through its medium. [illustration: degas the greek dance--pastel.] a second consequence of this analysis of light is, that shadow is not absence of light, but light of _a different quality_ and of different value. shadow is not a part of the landscape, where light ceases, but where it is subordinated to a light which appears to us more intense. in the shadow the rays of the spectrum vibrate with different speed. painting should therefore try to discover here, as in the light parts, the play of the atoms of solar light, instead of representing shadows with ready-made tones composed of bitumen and black. the third conclusion resulting from this: the colours in the shadow are modified by _refraction_. that means, _f.i._ in a picture representing an interior, the source of light (window) may not be indicated: the light circling round the picture will then be composed of the _reflections_ of rays whose source is invisible, and all the objects, acting as mirrors for these reflections, will consequently influence each other. their colours will affect each other, even if the surfaces be dull. a red vase placed upon a blue carpet will lead to a very subtle, but mathematically exact, interchange between this blue and this red, and this exchange of luminous waves will create between the two colours a tone of reflections composed of both. these composite reflections will form a scale of tones complementary of the two principal colours. the science of optics can work out these complementary colours with mathematical exactness. if _f.i._ a head receives the orange rays of daylight from one side and the bluish light of an interior from the other, green reflections will necessarily appear on the nose and in the middle region of the face. the painter besnard, who has specially devoted himself to this minute study of complementary colours, has given us some famous examples of it. the last consequence of these propositions is that the blending of the spectral tones is accomplished by a _parallel_ and _distinct_ projection of the colours. they are artificially reunited on the crystalline: a lens interposed between the light and the eye, and opposing the crystalline, which is a living lens, dissociates again these united rays, and shows us again the seven distinct colours of the atmosphere. it is no less artificial if a painter mixes upon his palette different colours to compose a tone; it is again artificial that paints have been invented which represent some of the combinations of the spectrum, just to save the artist the trouble of constantly mixing the seven solar tones. such mixtures are false, and they have the disadvantage of creating heavy tonalities, since the coarse mixture of powders and oils cannot accomplish the action of light which reunites the luminous waves into an intense white of unimpaired transparency. the colours mixed on the palette compose a dirty grey. what, then, is the painter to do, who is anxious to approach, as near as our poor human means will allow, that divine fairyland of nature? here we touch upon the very foundations of impressionism. the painter will have to paint with only the seven colours of the spectrum, and discard all the others: that is what claude monet has done boldly, adding to them only white and black. he will, furthermore, instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon his canvas touches of none but the seven colours _juxtaposed_, and leave the individual rays of each of these colours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlight itself upon the eye of the beholder. [illustration: degas waiting] this, then, is the theory of the _dissociation of tones_, which is the main point of impressionist technique. it has the immense advantage of suppressing all mixtures, of leaving to each colour its proper strength, and consequently its freshness and brilliancy. at the same time the difficulties are extreme. the painter's eye must be admirably subtle. light becomes the sole subject of the picture; the interest of the object upon which it plays is secondary. painting thus conceived becomes a purely optic art, a search for harmonies, a sort of natural poem, quite distinct from expression, style and design, which were the principal aims of former painting. it is almost necessary to invent another name for this special art which, clearly pictorial though it be, comes as near to music, as it gets far away from literature and psychology. it is only natural that, fascinated by this study, the impressionists have almost remained strangers to the painting of expression, and altogether hostile to historical and symbolist painting. it is therefore principally in landscape painting that they have achieved the greatness that is theirs. through the application of these principles which i have set forth very summarily, claude monet arrived at painting by means of the infinitely varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colour spots which dissociate the tones of the spectrum and draw the forms of objects through the arabesque of their vibrations. a landscape thus conceived becomes a kind of symphony, starting from one theme (the most luminous point, _f.i._), and developing all over the canvas the variations of this theme. this investigation is added to the habitual preoccupations of the landscapist study of the character peculiar to the scene, style of the trees or houses, accentuation of the decorative side--and to the habitual preoccupations of the figure painter in the portrait. the canvases of monet, renoir and pissarro have, in consequence of this research, an absolutely original aspect: their shadows are striped with blue, rose-madder and green; nothing is opaque or sooty; a light vibration strikes the eye. finally, blue and orange predominate, simply because in these studies--which are more often than not full sunlight effects--blue is the complementary colour of the orange light of the sun, and is profusely distributed in the shadows. in these canvases can be found a vast amount of exact grades of tone, which seem to have been entirely ignored by the older painters, whose principal concern was style, and who reduced a landscape to three or four broad tones, endeavouring only to explain the sentiment inspired by it. and now i shall have to pass on to the impressionists' ideas on the style itself of painting, on realism. from the outset it must not be forgotten that impressionism has been propagated by men who had all been realists; that means by a reactionary movement against classic and romantic painting. this movement, of which courbet will always remain the most famous representative, has been _anti-intellectual_. it has protested against every literary, psychologic or symbolical element in painting. it has reacted at the same time against the historical painting of delaroche and the mythological painting of the _ecole de rome_, with an extreme violence which appears to us excessive now, but which found its explanation in the intolerable tediousness or emphasis at which the official painters had arrived. courbet was a magnificent worker, with rudimentary ideas, and he endeavoured to exclude even those which he possessed. this exaggeration which diminishes our admiration for his work and prevents us from finding in it any emotion but that which results from technical mastery, was salutary for the development of the art of his successors. it caused the young painters to turn resolutely towards the aspects of contemporary life, and to draw style and emotion from their own epoch; and this intention was right. an artistic tradition is not continued by imitating the style of the past, but by extracting the immediate impression of each epoch. that is what the really great masters have done, and it is the succession of their sincere and profound observations which constitutes the style of the races. [illustration: claude monet the pines] manet and his friends drew all their strength from this idea. much finer and more learned than a man like courbet, they saw an aspect of modernity far more complex, and less limited to immediate and grossly superficial realism. nor must it be forgotten that they were contemporaries of the realistic, anti-romantic literary movement, a movement which gave them nothing but friends. flaubert and the goncourts proved that realism is not the enemy of refined form and of delicate psychology. the influence of these ideas created first of all manet and his friends: the technical evolution (of which we have traced the chief traits) came only much later to oppose itself to their conceptions. impressionism can therefore be defined as a _revolution of pictorial technique together with an attempt at expressing modernity_. the reaction against symbolism and romanticism happened to coincide with the reaction against muddy technique. the impressionists, whilst occupying themselves with cleansing the palette of the bitumen of which the academy made exaggerated use, whilst also observing nature with a greater love of light, made it their object to escape in the representation of human beings the laws of _beauty_, such as were taught by the school. and on this point one might apply to them all that one knows of the ideas of the goncourts and flaubert, and later of zola, in the domain of the novel. they were moved by the same ideas; to speak of the one group is to speak of the other. the longing for truth, the horror of emphasis and of false idealism which paralysed the novelist as well as the painter, led the impressionists to substitute for _beauty_ a novel notion, that of _character_. to search for, and to express, the true character of a being or of a site, seemed to them more significant, more moving, than to search for an exclusive beauty, based upon rules, and inspired by the greco-latin ideal. like the flemings, the germans, the spaniards, and in opposition to the italians whose influence had conquered all the european academies, the french realist-impressionists, relying upon the qualities of lightness, sincerity and expressive clearness which are the real merits of their race, detached themselves from the oppressive and narrow preoccupation with the beautiful and with all the metaphysics and abstractions following in its train. [illustration: claude monet church at vernon] this fact of the substitution of _character_ for _beauty_ is the essential feature of the movement. what is called impressionism is--let it not be forgotten--a technique which can be applied to any subject. whether the subject be a virgin, or a labourer, it can be painted with divided tones, and certain living artists, like the symbolist henri martin, who has almost the ideas of a pre-raphaelite, have proved it by employing this technique for the rendering of religious or philosophic subjects. but one can only understand the effort and the faults of the painters grouped around manet, by constantly recalling to one's mind their predeliction for _character_. before manet a distinction was made between _noble_ subjects, and others which were relegated to the domain of _genre_ in which no great artist was admitted to exist by the school, the familiarity of their subjects barring from them this rank. by the suppression of the _nobleness_ inherent to the treated subject, the painter's technical merit is one of the first things to be considered in giving him rank. the realist-impressionists painted scenes in the ball-room, on the river, in the field, the street, the foundry, modern interiors, and found in the life of the humble immense scope for studying the gestures, the costumes, the expressions of the nineteenth century. their effort had its bearing upon the way of representing persons, upon what is called, in the studio language, the "_mise en cadre_." there, too, they overthrew the principles admitted by the school. manet, and especially degas, have created in this respect a new style from which the whole art of realistic contemporary illustration is derived. this style had been hitherto totally ignored, or the artists had shrunk from applying it. it is a style which is founded upon the small painters of the eighteenth century, upon saint-aubin, debucourt, moreau, and, further back, upon pater and the dutchmen. but this time, instead of confining this style to vignettes and very small dimensions, the impressionists have boldly given it the dimensions and importance of big canvases. they have no longer based the laws of composition, and consequently of style, upon the ideas relative to the subjects, but upon values and harmonies. to take a summary example: if the school composed a picture representing the death of agamemnon, it did not fail to subordinate the whole composition to agamemnon, then to clytemnestra, then to the witnesses of the murder, graduating the moral and literary interest according to the different persons, and sacrificing to this interest the colouring and the realistic qualities of the scene. the realists composed by picking out first the strongest "value" of the picture, say a red dress, and then distributing the other values according to a harmonious progression of their tonalities. "the principal person in a picture," said manet, "is the light." with manet and his friends we find, then, that the concern for expression and for the sentiments evoked by the subject, was always subordinated to a purely pictorial and decorative preoccupation. this has frequently led the impressionists to grave errors, which they have, however, generally avoided by confining themselves to very simple subjects, for which the daily life supplied the grouping. [illustration: renoir portrait of madame maitre] one of the reforms due to their conception has been the suppression of the professional model, and the substitution for it of the natural model, seen in the exercise of his occupation. this is one of the most useful conquests for the benefit of modern painting. it marks a just return to nature and simplicity. nearly all their figures are real portraits; and in everything that concerns the labourer and the peasant, they have found the proper style and character, because they have observed these beings in the true medium of their occupations, instead of forcing them into a sham pose and painting them in disguise. the basis of all their pictures has been first of all a series of landscape and figure studies made in the open air, far from the studio, and afterwards co-ordinated. one may wish pictorial art to have higher ambitions; and one may find in the primitives an example of a curious mysticism, an expression of the abstract and of dreams. but one should not underrate the power of naïve and realistic observation, which the primitives carried into the execution of their works, subordinating it, however, to religious expression, and it must also be admitted that the realist-impressionists served at least their conception of art logically and homogeneously. the criticism which may be levelled against them is that which realism itself carries in its train, and we shall see that esthetics could never create classifications capable of defining and containing the infinite gradations of creative temperaments. in art, classifications have rarely any value, and are rather damaging. realism and idealism are abstract terms which cannot suffice to characterise beings who obey their sensibility. it is therefore necessary to invent as many words as there are remarkable men. if leonardo was a great painter, are turner and monet not painters at all? there is no connection between them; their methods of thought and expression are antithetical. perhaps it will be most simple, to admire them all, and to renounce any further definition of the painter, adopting this word to mark the man who uses the palette as his means of expression. thus preoccupation with contemporary emotions, substitution of character for classic beauty (or of emotional beauty for formal beauty), admission of the _genre_-painter into the first rank, composition based upon the reciprocal reaction of values, subordination of the subject to the interest of execution, the effort to isolate the art of painting from the ideas inherent to that of literature, and particularly the instinctive move towards the "symphonisation" of colours, and consequently towards music,--these are the principal features of the aesthetic code of the realist-impressionists, if this term may be applied to a group of men hostile towards esthetics such as they are generally taught. iii edouard manet: his work, his influence as i have said, edouard manet has not been entirely the originator of the impressionist technique. it is the work of claude monet which presents the most complete example of it, and which also came first as regards date. but it is very difficult to determine such cases of priority, and it is, after all, rather useless. a technique cannot be invented in a day. in this case it was the result of long investigations, in which manet and renoir participated, and it is necessary to unite under the collective name of impressionists a group of men, tied by friendship, who made a simultaneous effort towards originality, all in about the same spirit, though frequently in very different ways. as in the case of the pre-raphaelites, it was first of all friendship, then unjust derision, which created the solidarity of the impressionists. but the pre-raphaelites, in aiming at an idealistic and symbolic art, were better agreed upon the intellectual principles which permitted them at once to define a programme. the impressionists who were only united by their temperaments, and had made it their first aim to break away from all school programmes, tried simply to do something new, with frankness and freedom. manet was, in their midst, the personality marked out at the same time by their admiration, and by the attacks of the critics for the post of standard-bearer. a little older than his friends, he had already, quite alone, raised heated discussions by the works in his first manner. he was considered an innovator, and it was by instinctive admiration that his first friends, whistler, legros, and fantin-latour, were gradually joined by marcelin desboutin, degas, renoir, monet, pissarro, caillebotte, berthe morisot, the young painter bazille, who met his premature death in , and by the writers gautier, banville, baudelaire (who was a passionate admirer of manet's); then later by zola, the goncourts, and stéphane mallarmé. this was the first nucleus of a public which was to increase year by year. manet had the personal qualities of a chief; he was a man of spirit, an ardent worker, and an enthusiastic and generous character. [illustration: manet the dead toreador] manet commenced his first studies with couture. after having travelled a good deal at sea to obey his parents, his vocation took hold of him irresistibly. about the young man entered the studio of the severe author of the _romains de la décadence_. his stay was short. he displeased the professor by his uncompromising energy. couture said of him angrily: "he will become the daumier of ." it is known that daumier, lithographer, and painter of genius, was held in meagre esteem by the academicians. manet travelled in germany after the _coup d'etat_, copied rembrandt in munich, then went to italy, copied tintoretto in venice, and conceived there the idea of several religious pictures. then he became enthusiastic about the spaniards, especially velasquez and goya. the sincere expression of things seen took root from this moment as the principal rule of art in the brain of this young frenchman who was loyal, ardent, and hostile to all subtleties. he painted some fine works, like the _buveur d'absinthe_ and the _vieux musicien_. they show the influence of courbet, but already the blacks and the greys have an original and superb quality; they announce a virtuoso of the first order. it was in that manet first sent to the salon the portraits of his parents and the _guitarero_, which was hailed by gautier, and rewarded by the jury, though it roused surprise and irritation. but after that he was rejected, whether it was a question of the _fifre_ or of the _déjeuner sur l'herbe._ this canvas, with an admirable feminine nude, created a scandal, because an undressed woman figured in it amidst clothed figures, a matter of frequent occurrence with the masters of the renaissance. the landscape is not painted in the open air, but in the studio, and resembles a tapestry, but it shows already the most brilliant evidence of manet's talent in the study of the nude and the still-life of the foreground, which is the work of a powerful master. from the time of this canvas the artist's personality appeared in all its maturity. he painted it before he was thirty, and it has the air of an old master's work; it is based upon hals and the spaniards together. the reputation of manet became established after . furious critics were opposed by enthusiastic admirers. baudelaire upheld manet, as he had upheld delacroix and wagner, with his great clairvoyance, sympathetic to all real originality. the _olympia_ brought the discussion to a head. this courtesan lying in bed undressed, with a negress carrying a bouquet, and a black cat, made a tremendous stir. it is a powerful work of strong colour, broad design and intense sentiment, astounding in its _parti-pris_ of reducing the values to the greatest simplicity. one can feel in it the artist's preoccupation with rediscovering the rude frankness of hals and goya, and his aversion against the prettiness and false nobility of the school. this famous _olympia_ which occasioned so much fury, appears to us to-day as a transition work. it is neither a masterpiece, nor an emotional work, but a technical experiment, very significant for the epoch during which it appeared in french art, and this canvas, which is very inferior to manet's fine works, may well be considered as a date of evolution. he was doubtful about exhibiting it, but baudelaire decided him and wrote to him on this occasion these typical remarks: "you complain about attacks? but are you the first to endure them? have you more genius than chateaubriand and wagner? they were not killed by derision. and, in order not to make you too proud, i must tell you, that they are models each in his own way and in a very rich world, whilst you are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." [illustration: manet olympia] thus it must be firmly established that from this moment manet passed as an innovator, years before impressionism existed or was even thought of. this is an important point: it will help to clear up the twofold origin of the movement which followed. to his realism, to his return to composition in the modern spirit, and to the simplifying of planes and values, manet owed these attacks, though at that time his colour was still sombre and entirely influenced by hals, goya and courbet. from that time the artist became a chief. as his friends used to meet him at an obscure batignolles café, the café guerbois (still existing), public derision baptized these meetings with the name of "l'ecole des batignolles." manet then exhibited the _angels at the tomb of christ_, a souvenir of the venetians; _lola de valence_, commented upon by baudelaire in a quatrain which can be found in the _fleurs du mal_; the _episode d'un combat de taureaux_ (dissatisfied with this picture, he cut out the dead toreador in the foreground, and burnt the rest). the _acteur tragique_ (portrait of rouvière in hamlet) and the _jésus insulté_ followed, and then came the _gitanos_, _l'enfant à l'epée_, and the portrait of mme. manet. this series of works is admirable. it is here where he reveals himself as a splendid colourist, whose design is as vigorous as the technique is masterly. in these works one does not think of looking for anything but the witchery of technical strength; and the abundant wealth of his temperament is simply dazzling. manet reveals himself as the direct heir of the great spaniards, more interesting, more spontaneous, and freer than courbet. the _rouvière_ is as fine a symphony in grey and black as the noblest portraits by bronzino, and there is probably no goya more powerful than the _toréador tué_. manet's altogether classic descent appears here undeniably. there is no question yet of impressionism, and yet monet and renoir are already painting, monet has exhibited at the _salon des refusés_, but criticism sees and attacks nobody but manet. this great individuality who overwhelmed the academy with its weak allegories, was the butt of great insults and the object of great admiration. banished from the salons, he collected fifty pictures in a room in the avenue de l'alma and invited the public thither. in appeared the portrait of emile zola, in the _déjeuner_, works which are so powerful, that they enforced admiration in spite of all hostility. in the salon of was shown the portrait of eva gonzalès, the charming pastellist and pupil of manet, and the impressive _execution of maximilian at queretaro_. manet was at the apogee of his talent, when the franco-german war broke out. at the age of thirty-eight he had put forth a considerable amount of work, tried himself in all styles, severed his individuality from the slavish admiration of the old masters, and attained his own mastery. and now he wanted to expand, and, in joining monet, renoir and degas, interpret in his own way the impressionist theory. [illustration: manet the woman with the parrot] the _fight of the kearsage and the alabama_, a magnificent sea-piece, bathed in sunlight, announced this transformation in his work, as did also a study, a _garden_, painted, i believe, in , but exhibited only after the crisis of the terrible year. at that time the durand-ruel gallery bought a considerable series by the innovator, and was imitated by some select art-lovers. the _musique aux tuileries_ and the _bal de l'opéra_ had, some years before, pointed towards the evolution of this great artist in the direction of _plein-air_ painting. the _bon bock_, in which the very soul of hals is revived, and the grave _liseur_, sold immediately at vienne, were the two last pledges given by the artist to his old admirers; these two pictures had moreover a splendid success, and the _bon bock_, popularised by an engraving, was hailed by the very men who had most unjustly attacked the author of the portrait of mme. morisot, a french masterpiece. but already manet was attracted irresistibly towards the study of light, and, faithful to his programme, he prepared to face once again outbursts of anger and further sarcasms; he was resolved once again to offer battle to the salons. followed by all the impressionists he tried to make them understand the necessity of introducing the new ideas into this retrograde _milieu_. but they would not. having already received a rebuff by the attacks directed for some years against their works, they exhibited among themselves in some private galleries: they declined to force the gate of the salons, and manet remained alone. in he submitted, with his _argenteuil_, the most perfect epitome of his atmospheric researches. the jury admitted it in spite of loud protests: they were afraid of manet; they admired his power of transformation, and he revolted the prejudiced, attracting them at the same time by the charm of his force. but in the portrait of _desboutin_ and the _linge_ (an exquisite picture,--one of the best productions of open-air study) were rejected. manet then recommenced the experience of , and opened his studio to the public. a register at the door was soon covered with signatures protesting against the jury, as well as with hostile jokes, and even anonymous insults! in the defeated jury admitted the portrait of the famous singer faure in the part of hamlet, and rejected _nana_, a picture which was found scandalising, but has charming freshness and an intensely modern character. in , and they accepted _la serre_, the surprising symphony in blue and white which shows mr george moore in boating costume, the portrait of antonin proust, and the scene at the _père lathuile_ restaurant, in which manet's nervous and luminous realism has so curious a resemblance to the art of the goncourts. in the portrait of rochefort and that of the lion-killer, pertuiset, procured the artist a medal at the salon, and antonin proust, the friend of manet's childhood, who had become minister of fine arts, honoured himself in decorating him with the legion of honour. in appeared a magnificent canvas, the _bar des folies-bergère_, in which there is some sparkling still-life painting of most attractive beauty. it was accompanied by a lady's portrait, _jeanne_. but on april , , manet died, exhausted by his work and struggles, of locomotor ataxy, after having vainly undergone the amputation of a foot to avoid gangrene. [illustration: manet the bar at the folies-bergÈre] it will be seen that manet fought through all his life: few artists' lives have been nobler. his has been an example of untiring energy; he employed it as much in working, as in making a stand against prejudices. rejected, accepted, rejected again, he delivered with enormous courage and faith his attack upon a jury which represented routine. as he fought in front of his easel, he still fought before the public, without ever relaxing, without changing, alone, apart even from those whom he loved, who had been shaped by his example. this great painter, one of those who did most honour to the french soul, had the genius to create by himself an impressionism of his own which will always remain his own, after having given evidence of gifts of the first order in the tradition handed down by the masters of the real and the good. he cannot be confused either with monet, or with pissarro and renoir. his comprehension of light is a special one, his technique is not in accordance with the system of colour-spots; it observes the theory of complementary colours and of the division of tones without departing from a grand style, from a classic stateliness, from a superb sureness. manet has not been the inventor of impressionism which co-existed with his work since , but he has rendered it immense services, by taking upon himself all the outbursts of anger addressed to the innovators, by making a breach in public opinion, through which his friends have passed in behind him. probably without him all these artists would have remained unknown, or at least without influence, because they all were bold characters in art, but timid or disdainful in life. degas, monet and renoir were fine natures with a horror of polemics, who wished to hold aloof from the salons, and were resigned from the outset to be misunderstood. they were, so to say, electrified by the magnificent example of manet's fighting spirit, and manet was generous enough to take upon himself the reproaches levelled, not only against his work, but against theirs. his twenty years of open war, sustained with an abnegation worthy of all esteem, must be considered as one of the most significant phenomena of the history of the artists of all ages. this work of manet, so much discussed and produced under such tormenting conditions, owes its importance beyond all to its power and frankness. ten years of developing the first manner, tragically limited by the war of ; thirteen years of developing the second evolution, parallel with the efforts of the impressionists. the period from to is logically connected with hals and goya; from to the artist's modernity is complicated by the study of light. his personality appears there even more original, but one may well give the palm to those works of manet which are painted in his classic and low-toned manner. he had all the pictorial gifts which make the glory of the masters: full, true, broad composition, colouring of irresistible power, blacks and greys which cannot be found elsewhere since velasquez and goya, and a profound knowledge of values. he has tried his hand at everything: portraits, landscapes, seascapes, scenes of modern life, still-life and nudes have each in their turn served his ardent desire of creation. his was a much finer comprehension of contemporary life than seems to be admitted by realism: one has only to compare him with courbet, to see how far more nervous and intelligent he was, without loss to the qualities of truth and robustness. his pictures will always remain documents of the greatest importance on the society, the manners and customs of the second empire. he did not possess the gift of psychology. his _christ aux anges_ and _jésus insulté_ are obviously only pieces of painting without idealism. he was, like the great dutch virtuosos, and like certain italians, more eye than soul. yet his _maximilian_, the drawings to poe's _raven_, and certain sketches show that he might have realised some curious, psychological works, had he not been so completely absorbed by the immediate reality and by the desire for beautiful paint. a beautiful painter--this is what he was before everything else, this is his fairest fame, and it is almost inconceivable that the juries of the salons failed to understand him. they waxed indignant over his subjects which offer only a restricted interest, and they did not see the altogether classic quality of this technique without bitumen, without glazing, without tricks; of this vibrating colour; of this rich paint; of this passionate design so suitable for expressing movement and gestures true to life; of this simple composition where the whole picture is based upon two or three values with the straightforwardness one admires in rubens, jordaens and hals. [illustration: manet dÉjeuner] manet will occupy an important position in the french school. he is the most original painter of the second half of the nineteenth century, the one who has really created a great movement. his work, the fecundity of which is astonishing, is unequal. one has to remember that, besides the incessant strife which he kept up--a strife which would have killed many artists--he had to find strength for two grave crises in himself. he joined one movement, then freed himself of it, then invented another and recommenced to learn painting at a point where anybody else would have continued in his previous manner. "each time i paint," he said to mallarmé, "i throw myself into the water to learn swimming." it is not surprising that such a man should have been unequal, and that one can distinguish in his work between experiments, exaggerations due to research, and efforts made to reject the prejudices of which we feel the weight no longer. but it would be unjust to say that manet has only had the merit of opening up new roads; that has been said to belittle him, after it had first been said that these roads led into absurdity. works like the _toréador_, _rouvière_, _mme. manet_, the _déjeuner_, the _musique aux tuileries_, the _bon bock_, _argenteuil_, _le linge_, _en bateau_ and the _bar_, will always remain admirable masterpieces which will do credit to french painting, of which the spontaneous, living, clear and bold art of manet is a direct and very representative product. there remains, then, a great personality who knew how to dominate the rather coarse conceptions of realism, who influenced by his modernity all contemporary illustration, who re-established a sound and strong tradition in the face of the academy, and who not only created a new transition, but marked his place on the new road which he had opened. to him impressionism owes its existence; his tenacity enabled it to take root and to vanquish the opposition of the school; his work has enriched the world by some beautiful examples which demonstrate the union of the two principles of realism and of that technical impressionism which was to supply manet, renoir, pissarro and sisley with an object for their efforts. for the sum total of all that is evoked by his name, edouard manet certainly deserves the name of a man of genius--an incomplete genius, though, since the thought with him was not on the level of his technique, since he could never affect the emotions like a leonardo or a rembrandt, but genius all the same through the magnificent power of his gifts, the continuity of his style, and the importance of his part which infused blood into a school dying of the anaemia of conventional art. whoever beholds a work of manet's, even without knowing the conditions of his life, will feel that there is something great, the lion's claw which delacroix had recognised as far back as , and to which, it is said, even the great ingres had paid homage on the jury which examined with disgust the _guitarero_. [illustration: manet portrait of madame m.l.] to-day manet is considered almost as a classic glory; and the progress for which he had given the impulse, has been so rapid, that many are astonished that he should ever have been considered audacious. sight is transformed, strife is extinguished, and a large, select public, familiar with monet and renoir, judge manet almost as a long defunct initiator. one has to know his admirable life, one has to know well the incredible inertia of the salons where he appeared, to give him his full due. and when, after the acceptance of impressionism, the unavoidable reaction will take place, manet's qualities of solidity, truth and science will appear such, that he will survive many of those to whom he has opened the road and facilitated the success at the expense of his own. it will be seen that degas and he have, more than the others, and with less apparent _éclat_, united the gifts which produce durable works in the midst of the fluctuations of fashion and the caprices of taste and views. manet can, at the louvre or any other gallery, hold his own in the most crushing surroundings, prove his personal qualities, and worthily represent a period which he loved. an enormous amount has been written on him, from zola's bold and intelligent pamphlet in , to the recent work by m. théodore duret. few men have provoked more comments. in an admirable picture, _hommage à manet_, the delicate and perfect painter fantin-latour, a friend from the first hour, has grouped around the artist some of his admirers, monet, renoir, duranty, zola, bazille, and braquemond. the picture has to-day a place of honour at the luxembourg, where manet is insufficiently represented by _olympia_, a study of a woman, and the _balcony_. a collection is much to be desired of his lithographs, his etchings and his pastels, in which he has proved his diversified mastery, and also of his portraits of famous contemporaries, zola, rochefort, desboutin, proust, mallarmé, clemenceau, guys, faure, baudelaire, moore, and others, an admirable series by a visionary who possessed, in a period of unrest and artificiality, the quality of rude sincerity, and the love of truth of a primitive. [illustration: manet the hothouse] iv edgar degas: his work, his influence i have said how vain it is to class artistic temperaments under a title imposed upon them generally by circumstances and dates, rather than by their own free will. the study of degas will furnish additional proof for it. classed with the impressionists, this master participates in their ideas in the sphere of composition, rather than in that of colour. he belongs to them through his modernity and comprehension of character. only when we come to his quite recent landscapes ( ), can we link him to monet and renoir as colourist, and he has been more their friend than their colleague. degas is known by the select few, and almost ignored by the public. this is due to several reasons. degas has never wished to exhibit at the salons, except, i believe, once or twice at the beginning of his career. he has only shown his works at those special exhibitions arranged by the impressionists in hired apartments (rue le peletier, rue laffitte, boulevard des capucines), and at some art-dealers. the art of degas has never had occasion to shock the public by the exuberance of its colour, because he restricted himself to grey and quiet harmonies. degas is a modest character, fond of silence and solitude, with a horror of the crowd and of controversies, and almost disinclined to show his works. he is a man of intelligence and ready wit, whose sallies are dreaded; he is almost a misanthrope. his pictures have been gradually sold to foreign countries and dispersed in rich galleries without having been seen by the public. his character is, in short, absolutely opposed to that of manet, who, though he suffered from criticism, thought it his duty to bid it defiance. degas's influence has, however, been considerable, though secretly so, and the young painters have been slowly inspired by his example. [illustration: degas the beggar woman] degas is beyond all a draughtsman of the first order. his spirit is quite classical. he commenced by making admirable copies of the italian primitives, notably of fra angelico, and the whole first series of his works speaks of that influence: portraits, heads of deep, mat, amber colour, on a ground of black or grey tones, remarkable for a severity of intense style, and for the rare gift of psychological expression. to find the equal of these faces--after having stated their classic descent--one would have to turn to the beautiful things by ingres, and certainly degas is, with ingres, the most learned, the most perfect french draughtsman of the nineteenth century. an affirmation of this nature is made to surprise those who judge impressionism with preconceived ideas. it is none the less true that, if a series of degas's first portraits were collected, the comparison would force itself upon one's mind irrefutably. in face of the idealist painting of romanticism, ingres represented quite clearly the cult of painting for its own sake. his ideas were mediocre, and went scarcely beyond the poor, conventional ideal of the academy; but his genius was so great, that it made him paint, together with his tedious allegories, some incomparable portraits and nudes. he thought he was serving official classicism, which still boasts of his name, but in reality he dominated it; and, whilst he was an imitator of raphael, he was a powerful realist. the impressionists admire him as such, and agree with him in banishing from the art of painting all literary imagination, whether it be the tedious mythology of the school, or the historical anecdote of the romanticists. degas and besnard admire ingres as colossal draughtsman, and, beyond all, as man who, in spite of the limitations of his mind, preserved the clear vision of the mission of his art at a time when art was used for the expression of literary conceptions. who would have believed it? yet it is true, and manet, too, held the same view of ingres, little as our present academicians may think it! it happens that to-day impressionism is more akin to ingres than to delacroix, just as the young poets are more akin to racine than to hugo. they reject the foreign elements, and search, before anything else, for the strict national tradition. degas follows ingres and resembles him. he is also reminiscent of the primitives and of holbein. there is, in his first period, the somewhat dry and geometrical perfection, the somewhat heavy colour which only serves to strengthen the correctness of the planes. at the exposition of , there was a degas which surprised everybody. it was an _interior of a cotton factory_ in an american town. this small picture was curiously clear: it would be impossible to paint better and with a more accomplished knowledge of the laws of painting. but it was the work of a soulless, emotionless realist; it was a coloured photograph of unheard-of truth, the mathematical science of which left the beholder cold. this work, which is very old (it dates back to about ), gave no idea of what degas has grown into. it was the work of an unemotional master of technique; only just the infinitely delicate value of the greys and blacks revealed the future master of harmony. one almost might have wished to find a fault in this aggravating perfection. but degas was not to remain there, and already, about that time, certain portraits of his are elevated by an expression of ardent melancholy, by warm, ivory-like, grave colouring which attracts one's eye. before this series one feels the firm will of a very logical, serious, classic spirit who wants to know thoroughly the intimate resources of design, before risking to choose from among them the elements which respond best to his individual nature. if degas was destined to invent, later on, so personal a style of design that he could be accused of "drawing badly," this first period of his life is before us, to show the slow maturing of his boldness and how carefully he first proved to himself his knowledge, before venturing upon new things. in art the difficulty is, when one has learnt everything, to forget,--that is, to appear to forget, so as to create one's own style, and this apparent forgetting cloaks an amalgamation of science with mind. and degas is one of those patient and reticent men who spend years in arriving at this; he has much in common with hokusai, the old man "mad with painting," who at the close of his prodigious life invented arbitrary forms, after having given immortal examples of his interpretation of the real. [illustration: degas the lesson in the foyer] degas is also clearly related to corot, not only in the silvery harmonies of his suave landscapes, but also, and particularly, in his admirable faces whose inestimable power and moving sincerity we have hardly commenced to understand. degas passed slowly from classicism to modernity. he never liked outbursts of colour; he is by no means an impressionist from this point of view. as a draughtsman of genius he expresses all by the precision of the planes and values; a grey, a black and some notes of colour suffice for him. this might establish a link between him and whistler, though he is much less mysterious and diffuse. whenever degas plays with colour, it is with the same restraint of his boldness; he never goes to excess in abandoning himself to its charm. he is neither lyrical, nor voluptuous; his energy is cold; his wise spirit affirms soberly the true character of a face or an object. since a long time this spirit has moved degas to revel in the observation of contemporary life. his nature has been that of a patient psychologist, a minute analyst, and also of a bitter ironist. the man is very little known. his friends say that he has an easily ruffled delicacy, a sensibility open to poetry, but jealous of showing its emotion. they say that degas's satirical bitterness is the reverse side of a soul wounded by the spectacle of modern morality. one feels this sentiment in his work, where the sharp notation of truth is painful, where the realism is opposed by colouring of a sober distinction, where nothing, not even the portrait of a drab, could be vulgar. degas has devoted himself to the profound study of certain classes of women, in the state of mind of a philosopher and physiologist, impartially inclined towards life. his work can be divided into several great series: the race-courses, the ballet-dancers, and the women bathing count among the most important. the race-courses have inspired degas with numerous pictures. he shows in them a surprising knowledge of the horse. he is one of the most perfect painters of horses who have ever existed. he has caught the most curious and truest actions with infallible sureness of sight. his racecourse scenes are full of vitality and picturesqueness. against clear skies, and light backgrounds of lawn, indicated with quiet harmony, degas assembles original groups of horses which one can see moving, hesitating, intensely alive; and nothing could be fresher, gayer and more deliciously pictorial, than the green, red and yellow notes of the jockey's costumes strewn like flowers over these atmospheric, luminous landscapes, where colours do not clash, but are always gently shimmering, dissolved in uniform clearness. the admirable drawing of horses and men is so precise and seems so simple, that one can only slowly understand the extent of the difficulty overcome, the truth of these attitudes and the nervous delicacy of the execution. [illustration: degas the dancing lesson--pastel] the dancers go much further still in the expression of degas's temperament. they have been studied at the _foyer_ of the opera and at the rehearsal, sometimes in groups, sometimes isolated. some pictures which will always count among the masterpieces of the nineteenth century, represent the whole _corps de ballet_ performing on the stage before a dark and empty house. by the feeble light of some lamps the black coats of the stage managers mix themselves with the gauze skirts. here the draughtsman joins the great colourist: the petticoats of pink or white tulle, the graceful legs covered with flesh-coloured silk, the arms and the shoulders, and the hair crowned with flowers, offer motives of exquisite colour and of a tone of living flowers. but the psychologist does not lose his rights: not only does he amuse himself with noting the special movements of the dancers, but he also notes the anatomical defects. he shows with cruel frankness, with a strange love of modern character, the strong legs, the thin shoulders, and the provoking and vulgar heads of these frequently ugly girls of common origin. with the irony of an entomologist piercing the coloured insect he shows us the disenchanting reality in the sad shadow of the scenes, of these butterflies who dazzle us on the stage. he unveils the reverse side of a dream without, however, caricaturing; he raises even, under the imperfection of the bodies, the animal grace of the organisms; he has the severe beauty of the true. he gives to his groups of ballet-dancers the charming line of garlands and restores to them a harmony in the _ensemble_, so as to prove that he does not misjudge the charm conferred upon them by rhythm, however defective they may be individually. at other times he devotes himself to the study of their practice. in bare rooms with curtainless windows, in the cold and sad light of the boxes, he passionately draws the dancers learning their steps, reaching high bars with the tips of their toes, forcing themselves into quaint poses in order to make themselves more supple, manoeuvring to the sound of a fiddle scratched by an old teacher--and he leaves us stupefied at the knowledge, the observation, the talent profusely spent on these little pictures. furthermore there are humorous scenes: ballet-dancers chatting in the dark with _habitués_ of the opera, others looking at the house through the small opening of the curtain, others re-tying their shoe-laces, and they all are prodigious drawings of movement anatomically as correct as they are unexpected. degas's old style of drawing undergoes modification: with the help of slight deformations, accentuations of the modelling and subtle falsifications of the proportions, managed with infinite tact and knowledge, the artist brings forth in relief the important gesture, subordinating to it all the others. he attempts _drawing by movement_ as it is caught by our eyes in life, where they do not state the proportions, but first of all the gesture which strikes them. in these drawings by degas all the lines follow the impulsion of the thought. what one sees first, is the movement transmitted to the members by the will. the active part of the body is more carefully studied than the rest, which is indicated by bold foreshortenings, placed in the second plane, and apparently only serves to throw into relief the raised arm or leg. this is no longer merely _exact_, it is _true_; it is a superior degree of truth. [illustration: degas the dancers] these pictures of dancers are psychologic documents of great value. the physical and moral atmosphere of these surroundings is called forth by a master. such and such a figure or attitude tells us more about parisian life than a whole novel, and degas has been lavish of his intellect and his philosophy of bitter scepticism. but they are also marvellous pictorial studies which, in spite of the special, anecdotal subjects, rise to the level of grand painting through sheer power of draughtsmanship and charm of tone. degas has the special quality of giving the precise sensation of the third dimension. the atmosphere circulates round his figures; you walk round them; you see them in their real plane, and they present themselves in a thousand unexpected arrangements. degas is undoubtedly the one man of his age who has most contributed towards infusing new life into the representation of human figures: in this respect his pictures resemble no one else's. the same qualities will be found in his series of women bathing. these interiors, where the actions of the bathers are caught amidst the stuffs, flowered cushions, linen, sponges and tubs, are sharp visions of modernity. degas observes here, with the tenacious perfection of his talent, the slightest shiver of the flesh refreshed by cold water. his masterly drawing follows the most delicate inflexion of the muscles and suggests the nervous system under the skin. he observes with extraordinary subtlety the awkwardness of the nude being at a time when nudity is no longer accustomed to show itself, and this true nudity is in strong contrast to that of the academicians. one might say of degas that he has the disease of truth, if the necessity of truth were not health itself! these bodies are still marked with the impressions of the garments; the movements remain those of a clothed being which is only nude as an exception. the painter notices beauty, but he looks for it particularly in the profound characterisation of the types which he studies, and his pastels have the massiveness and the sombre style of bronze. he has also painted café-scenes, prostitutes and supers, with a mocking and sad energy; he has even amused himself with painting washerwomen, to translate the movements of the women of the people. and his colour with its pearly whites, subdued blues and delicate greys, always elevates everything he does, and confers upon him a distinctive style. finally, about , degas has revealed himself as a dreamy landscapist. his recent landscapes are symphonies in colours of strange harmony and hallucinations of rare tones, resembling music rather than painting. it is perhaps in these pictures that he has revealed certain dreams hitherto jealously hidden. and now i must speak of his technique. it is very singular and varied, and one of the most complicated in existence. in his first works, which are apparently as simple as corot's, he does not employ the process of colour-spots. but many of the works in his second manner are a combination of drawing, painting and pastel. he has invented a kind of engraving mixed with wash-drawing, pastel crayon crushed with brushes of special pattern. here one can find again his meticulous spirit. he has many of the qualities of the scientist; he is as much chemist as painter. it has been said of him, that he was a great artist of the decadence. this is materially inexact, since his qualities of draughtsmanship are those of a superb classicist, and his colouring of very pure taste. but the spirit of his work, his love of exact detail, his exaggerated psychological refinement, are certainly the signs of an extremely alert intellect who regards life prosaically and with a lassitude and disenchantment which are only consoled by the passion for truth. certain water-colours of his heightened by pastel, and certain landscapes, are somewhat disconcerting through the preciousness of his method; others are surprisingly spontaneous. all his work has an undercurrent of thought. in short, this realist is almost a mystic. he has observed a limited section of humanity, but what he has seen has not been seen so profoundly by anybody else. [illustration: degas horses in the meadows] degas has exercised an occult, but very serious, influence. he has lived alone, without pupils and almost without friends; the only pupils one might speak of are the caricaturist forain, who has painted many small pictures inspired by him, and the excellent american lady-artist miss mary cassatt. but all modern draughtsmen have been taught a lesson by his painting: renouard, toulouse-lautrec and steinlen have been impressed by it, and the young generation considers degas as a master. and that is also the unexpressed idea of the academicians, and especially of those who have sufficient talent to be able to appreciate all the science and power of such an art. the writer of this book happened one day to mention degas's name before a member of the institute. "what!" exclaimed he, "you know him? why didn't you speak to me about him?" and when he received the reply, that i did not consider degas to be an agreeable topic for him, the illustrious official answered vivaciously, "but do you think i am a fool, and that i do not know that degas is one of the greatest draughtsmen who have ever lived?"--"why, then, my dear sir, has he never been received at the salons, and not even been decorated at the age of sixty-five?"--"ah," replied the academician a little angrily, "that is another matter!" degas despises glory. it is believed that he has by him a number of canvases which will have to be burnt after his death in accordance with his will. he is a man who has loved his art like a mistress, with jealous passion, and has sacrificed to it all that other artists--enthusiasts even--are accustomed to reserve for their personal interest. degas, the incomparable pastellist, the faultless draughtsman, the bitter, satirical, pessimistic genius, is an isolated phenomenon in his period, a grand creator, unattached to his time. the painters and the select few among art-lovers know what considerable force there is in him. though almost latent as yet, it will reveal itself brilliantly, when an opportunity arises for bringing together the vast quantity of his work. as is the case with manet, though in a different sense, his powerful classic qualities will become most prominent in this ordeal, and this classicism has never abandoned him in his audacities. to degas is due a new method of observation in drawing. he will have been the first to study the relation between the moving lines of a living being and the immovable lines of the scene which serves as its setting; the first, also, to define drawing, not as a graphic science, but as the valuation of the third dimension, and thus to apply to painting the principles hitherto reserved for sculpture. finally, he will be counted among the great analysts. his vision, tenacious, intense, and sombre, stimulates thought: across what appears to be the most immediate and even the most vulgar reality it reaches a grand, artistic style; it states profoundly the facts of life, it condenses a little the human soul: and this will suffice to secure for degas an important place in his epoch, a little apart from impressionism. without noise, and through the sheer charm of his originality, he has contributed his share towards undermining the false doctrines of academic art before the painters, as manet has undermined them before the public. [illustration: claude monet an interior, after dinner] v claude monet: his work, his influence with claude monet we enter upon impressionism in its most significant technical expression, and touch upon the principal points referred to in the second chapter of this book. claude monet, the artistic descendant of claude lorrain, turner, and monticelli, has had the merit and the originality of opening a new road to landscape painting by deducing scientific statements from the study of the laws of light. his work is a magnificent verification of the optical discoveries made by helmholtz and chevreul. it is born spontaneously from the artist's vision, and happens to be a rigorous demonstration of principles which the painter has probably never cared to know. through the power of his faculties the artist has happened to join hands with the scientist. his work supplies not only the very basis of the impressionist movement proper, but of all that has followed it and will follow it in the study of the so-called chromatic laws. it will serve to give, so to say, a mathematic necessity to the happy finds met by the artists hitherto, and it will also serve to endow decorative art and mural painting with a process, the applications of which are manyfold and splendid. i have already summed up the ideas which follow from claude monet's painting more clearly even than from manet's. suppression of local colour, study of reflections by means of complementary colours and division of tones by the process of touches of pure, juxtaposed colours--these are the essential principles of _chromatism_ (for this word should be used instead of the very vague term "impressionism"). claude monet has applied them systematically, especially in landscape painting. there are a few portraits of his, which show that he might have made an excellent figure painter, if landscape had not absorbed him entirely. one of these portraits, a large full-length of a lady with a fur-lined jacket and a satin dress with green and black stripes, would in itself be sufficient to save from oblivion the man who has painted it. but the study of light upon the figure has been the special preoccupation of manet, renoir, and pissarro, and, after the impressionists, of the great lyricist, albert besnard, who has concentrated the impressionist qualities by placing them at the service of a very personal conception of symbolistic art. monet commenced with trying to find his way by painting figures, then landscapes and principally sea pictures and boats in harbours, with a somewhat sombre robustness and very broad and solid draughtsmanship. his first luminous studies date back to about . obedient to the same ideas as degas he had to avoid the salons and only show his pictures gradually in private galleries. for years he remained unknown. it is only giving m. durand-ruel his due, to state that he was one of the first to anticipate the impressionist school and to buy the first works of these painters, who were treated as madmen and charlatans. he has become great with them, and has made his fortune and theirs through having had confidence in them, and no fortune has been better deserved. thirty years ago nobody would have bought pictures by degas or monet, which are sold to-day for a thousand pounds. this detail is only mentioned to show the evolution of impressionism as regards public opinion. [illustration: claude monet the harbour, honfleur] so much has monet been attracted by the analysis of the laws of light that he has made light the real subject of all his pictures, and to show clearly his intention he has treated one and the same site in a series of pictures painted from nature at all hours of the day. this is the principle whose results are the great divisions of his work which might be called "investigation of the variations of sunlight." the most famous of these series are the _hay-ricks_, the _poplars_, the _cliffs of etretat_, the _golfe juan_, the _coins de rivière_, the _cathedrals_, the _water-lilies_, and finally the _thames_ series which monet is at present engaged upon. they are like great poems, and the splendour of the chosen theme, the orchestration of the shivers of brightness, the symphonic _parti-pris_ of the colours, make their realism, the minute contemplation of reality, approach idealism and lyric dreaming. monet paints these series from nature. he is said to take with him in a carriage at sunrise some twenty canvases which he changes from hour to hour, taking them up again the next day. he notes, for example, from nine to ten o'clock the most subtle effects of sunlight upon a hay-rick; at ten o'clock he passes on to another canvas and recommences the study until eleven o'clock. thus he follows step by step the modifications of the atmosphere until nightfall, and finishes simultaneously the works of the whole series. he has painted a hay-stack in a field twenty times over, and the twenty hay-stacks are all different. he exhibits them together, and one can follow, led by the magic of his brush, the history of light playing upon one and the same object. it is a dazzling display of luminous atoms, a kind of pantheistic evocation. light is certainly the essential personage who devours the outlines of the objects, and is thrown like a translucent veil between our eyes and matter. one can see the vibrations of the waves of the solar spectrum, drawn by the arabesque of the spots of the seven prismatic hues juxtaposed with infinite subtlety; and this vibration is that of heat, of atmospheric vitality. the silhouettes melt into the sky; the shadows are lights where certain tones, the blue, the purple, the green and the orange, predominate, and it is the proportional quantity of the spots that differentiates in our eyes the shadows from what we call the lights, just as it actually happens in optic science. there are some midday scenes by claude monet, where every material silhouette--tree, hay-rick, or rock--is annihilated, volatilised in the fiery vibration of the dust of sunlight, and before which the beholder gets really blinded, just as he would in actual sunlight. sometimes even there are no more shadows at all, nothing that could serve to indicate the values and to create contrasts of colours. everything is light, and the painter seems easily to overcome those terrible difficulties, lights upon lights, thanks to a gift of marvellous subtlety of sight. [illustration: claude monet the church at varengeville] generally he finds a very simple _motif_ sufficient; a hay-rick, some slender trunks rising skywards, or a cluster of shrubs. but he also proves himself as powerful draughtsman when he attacks themes of greater complexity. nobody knows as he does how to place a rock amidst tumultuous waves, how to make one understand the enormous construction of a cliff which fills the whole canvas, how to give the sensation of a cluster of pines bent by the wind, how to throw a bridge across a river, or how to express the massiveness of the soil under a summer sun. all this is constructed with breadth, truth and force under the delicious or fiery symphony of the luminous atoms. the most unexpected tones play in the foliage. on close inspection we are astonished to find it striped with orange, red, blue and yellow touches, but seen at a certain distance the freshness of the green foliage appears to be represented with infallible truth. the eye recomposes what the brush has dissociated, and one finds oneself perplexed at all the science, all the secret order which has presided over this accumulation of spots which seem projected in a furious shower. it is a veritable orchestral piece, where every colour is an instrument with a distinct part, and where the hours with their different tints represent the successive themes. monet is the equal of the greatest landscape painters as regards the comprehension of the true character of every soil he has studied, which is the supreme quality of his art. though absorbed beyond all by study of the sunlight, he has thought it useless to go to morocco or algeria. he has found brittany, holland, the _ile de france_, the _cote d'azur_ and england sufficient sources of inspiration for his symphonies, which cover from end to end the scale of perceptible colours. he has expressed, for instance, the mild and vaporous softness of the mediterranean, the luxuriant vegetation of the gardens of cannes and antibes, with a truthfulness and knowledge of the psychology of land and water which can only be properly appreciated by those who live in this enchanted region. this has not prevented him from understanding better than anybody the wildness, the grand austereness of the rocks of _belle-isle en mer_, to express it in pictures in which one really feels the wind, the spray, and the roaring of the heavy waters breaking against the impassibility of the granite rocks. his recent series of _water-lilies_ expressed all the melancholic and fresh charm of quiet basins, of sweet bits of water blocked by rushes and calyxes. he has painted underwoods in the autumn, where the most subtle shades of bronze and gold are at play, chrysanthemums, pheasants, roofs at twilight, dazzling sunflowers, gardens, tulip-fields in holland, bouquets, effects of snow and hoar frost of exquisite softness, and sailing boats passing in the sun. he has painted some views of the banks of the seine which are quite wonderful in their power of conjuring up these scenes, and over all this has roved his splendid vision of a great, amorous and radiant colourist. the _cathedrals_ are even more of a _tour de force_ of his talent. they consist of seventeen studies of rouen cathedral, the towers of which fill the whole of the picture, leaving barely a little space, a little corner of the square, at the foot of the enormous stone-shafts which mount to the very top of the picture. here he has no proper means to express the play of the reflections, no changeful waters or foliage: the grey stone, worn by time and blackened by centuries, is for seventeen times the monochrome, the thankless theme upon which the painter is about to exercise his vision. but monet finds means of making the most dazzling atmospheric harmonies sparkle upon this stone. pale and rosy at sunrise, purple at midday, glowing in the evening under the rays of the setting sun, standing out from the crimson and gold, scarcely visible in the mist, the colossal edifice impresses itself upon the eye, reconstructed with its thousand details of architectural chiselling, drawn without minuteness but with superb decision, and these pictures approach the composite, bold and rich tone of oriental carpets. [illustration: claude monet poplars on the epte in autumn] monet excels also in suggesting the _drawing of light_, if i may venture to use this expression. he makes us understand the movement of the vibrations of heat, the movement of the luminous waves; he also understands how to paint the sensation of strong wind. "before one of manet's pictures," said mme. morisot, "i always know which way to incline my umbrella." monet is also an incomparable painter of water. pond, river, or sea--he knows how to differentiate their colouring, their consistency, and their currents, and he transfixes a moment of their fleeting life. he is intuitive to an exceptional degree in the intimate composition of matter, water, earth, stone or air, and this intuition serves him in place of intellectuality in his art. he is a painter _par excellence_, a man born for painting, and this power of penetrating the secrets of matter and of light helps him to attain a kind of grand, unconsciously lyrical poetry. he transposes the immediate truth of our vision and elevates it to decorative grandeur. if manet is the realist-romanticist of impressionism, if degas is its psychologist, claude monet is its lyrical pantheist. his work is immense. he produces with astonishing rapidity, and he has yet another characteristic of the great painters: that of having put his hand to every kind of subject. his recent studies of the thames are, at the decline of his energetic maturity, as beautiful and as spontaneous as the _hay-ricks_ of seventeen years back. they are thrillingly truthful visions of fairy mists, where showers of silver and gold sparkle through rosy vapours; and at the same time monet combines in this series the dream-landscapes of turner with monticelli's accumulation of precious stones. thus interpreted by this intense faculty of synthesis, nature, simplified in detail and contemplated in its grand lines, becomes truly a living dream. since the _hay-ricks_ one can say that the work of claude monet is glorious. it has been made sacred to the admiring love of the connoisseurs on the day when monet joined rodin in an exhibition which is famous in the annals of modern art. yet no official distinction has intervened to recognise one of the greatest painters of the nineteenth century. the influence of monet has been enormous all over europe and america. the _process of colour spots_[ ] (let us adhere to this rudimentary name which has become current) has been adopted by a whole crowd of painters. i shall have to say a few words about it at the end of this book. but it is befitting to terminate this all too short study by explaining that the most lyrical of the impressionists has also been the theorist _par excellence_. his work connects easel painting with mural painting. no minister of fine arts has been found, who would surmount the systematic opposition of the official painters, and give manet a commission for grand mural compositions, for which his method is admirably suited. it has taken long years before such works were entrusted to besnard, who, with puvis de chavannes, has given paris her most beautiful modern decorations, but besnard's work is the direct outcome of claude monet's harmonies. the principle of the division of tones and of the study of complementary colours has been full of revelations, and one of the most fruitful theories. it has probably been the principle which will designate most clearly the originality of the painting of the future. to have invented it, is enough to secure permanent glory for a man. and without wishing to put again the question of the antagonism of realism and idealism, one may well say that a painter who invents a method and shows such power, is highly intellectual and gifted with a pictorial intelligence. whatever the subjects he treats, he creates an aesthetic emotion equivalent, if not similar, to those engendered by the most complex symbolism. in his ardent love of nature monet has found his greatness; he suggests the secrets by stating the evident facts. that is the law common to all the arts. [footnote : _procédé de la tache._] [illustration: claude monet the bridge at argenteuil] vi auguste renoir and his work the work of auguste renoir extends without interruption over a period of forty years. it appears to sum up the ideas and methods of impressionist art so completely that, should it alone be saved from a general destruction, it would suffice to bear witness to this entire art movement. it has unfolded itself from to our days with a happy magnificence, and it allows us to distinguish several periods, in the technique at least, since the variety of its subjects is infinite. like manet, and like all truly great and powerful painters, m. renoir has treated almost everything, nudes, portraits, subject pictures, seascapes and still-life, all with equal beauty. his first manner shows him to be a very direct descendant of boucher. his female nudes are altogether in eighteenth century taste and he uses the same technique as boucher: fat and sleek paint of soft brilliancy, laid on with the palette knife, with precise strokes round the principal values; pink and ivory tints relieved by strong blues similar to those of enamels; the light distributed everywhere and almost excluding the opposition of the shadows; and, finally, vivacious attitudes and an effort towards decorative convention. nevertheless, his _bathers_, of which he has painted a large series, are in many ways thoroughly modern and personal. renoir's nude is neither that of monet, nor of degas, whose main concern was truth, the last-named even trying to define in the undressed being such psychologic observations as are generally looked for in the features of the clothed being. nor is renoir's nude that of the academicians, that poetised nude arranged according to a pseudo-greek ideal, which has nothing in common with contemporary women. what renoir sees in the nude is less the line, than the brilliancy of the epidermis, the luminous, nacreous substance of the flesh: it is the "ideal clay"; and in this he shows the vision of a poet; he transfigures reality, but in a very different sense from that of the school. renoir's woman comes from a primitive dream-land; she is an artless, wild creature, blooming in perfumed scrub. he sets her in backgrounds of foliage or of blue, foam-fringed torrents. she is a luxuriant, firm, healthy and naïve woman with a powerful body, a small head, her eyes wide open, thoughtless, brilliant and ignorant, her lips blood-red and her nostrils dilated; she is a gentle being, like the women of tahiti, born in a tropical clime where vice is as unknown as shame, and where entire ingenuousness is a guarantee against all indecency. one cannot but be astonished at this mixture of "japanism," savagism and eighteenth century taste, which constitutes inimitably the nude of renoir. [illustration: renoir dÉjeuner] [illustration: renoir in the box] m. renoir's second manner is more directly related to the impressionist methods: it is that of his landscapes, his flowers and his portraits. here one can feel his relationship with manet and with claude monet. these pictures are hatchings of colours accumulated to render less the objects than their transparency across the atmosphere. the portraits are frankly presented and broadly executed. the artist occupies himself in the first place with getting correct values and an exact suggestion of depth. he understands the illogicality of a false perfection which is as interested in a trinket as in an eye, and he knows how to proportion the interest of the picture which should guide the beholder's look to the essential point, though every part should be correctly executed. he knows how to interpret nature in a certain sense; how to stop in time; how to suggest by leaving a part apparently unfinished; how to indicate, behind a figure, the sea or some landscape with just a few broad touches which suffice to suggest it without usurping the principal part. it is now, that renoir paints his greatest works, the _déjeûner des canotiers_, the _bal au moulin de la galette_, the _box_, the _terrace_, the _first step_, the _sleeping woman with a cat_, and his most beautiful landscapes; but his nature is too capricious to be satisfied with a single technique. there are some landscapes that are reminiscent of corot or of anton mauve; the _woman with the broken neck_ is related to manet; the portrait of _sisley_ invents pointillism fifteen years before the pointillists; _la pensée_, this masterpiece, evokes hoppner. but in everything reappears the invincible french instinct: the _jeune fille au panier_ is a greuze painted by an impressionist; the delightful _jeune fille à la promenade_ is connected with fragonard; the _box_, a perfect marvel of elegance and knowledge, condenses the whole worldliness of . the portrait of _jeanne samary_ is an evocation of the most beautiful portraits of the eighteenth century, a poem of white satin and golden hair. [illustration: renoir young girl promenading] renoir's realism bears in spite of all, the imprint of the lyric spirit and of sweetness. it has neither the nervous veracity of manet, nor the bitterness of degas, who both love their epoch and find it interesting without idealising it and who have the vision of psychologist novelists. before everything else he is a painter. what he sees in the _bal au moulin de la galette_, are not the stigmata of vice and impudence, the ridiculous and the sad sides of the doubtful types of this low resort. he sees the gaiety of sundays, the flashes of the sun, the oddity of a crowd carried away by the rhythm of the valses, the laughter, the clinking of glasses, the vibrating and hot atmosphere; and he applies to this spectacle of joyous vulgarity his gifts as a sumptuous colourist, the arabesque of the lines, the gracefulness of his bathers, and the happy eurythmy of his soul. the straw hats are changed into gold, the blue jackets are sapphires, and out of a still exact realism is born a poem of light. the _déjeûner des canotiers_ is a subject which has been painted a hundred times, either for the purpose of studying popular types, or of painting white table-cloths amidst sunny foliage. yet renoir is the only painter who has raised this small subject to the proportions and the style of a large canvas, through the pictorial charm and the masterly richness of the arrangement. the _box_, conceived in a low harmony, in a golden twilight, is a work worthy of reynolds. the pale and attentive face of the lady makes one think of the great english master's best works; the necklace, the flesh, the flounce of lace and the hands are marvels of skill and of taste, which the greatest modern virtuosos, sargent and besnard, have not surpassed, and, as far as the man in the background is concerned, his white waistcoat, his dress-coat, his gloved hand would suffice to secure the fame of a painter. the _sleeping woman_, the _first step_, the _terrace_, and the decorative _dance_ panels reveal renoir as an _intimiste_ and as an admirable painter of children. his strange colouring and his gifts of grasping nature and of ingenuity--strangers to all decadent complexity--have allowed him to rank among the best of those who have expressed childhood in its true aspect, without overloading it with over-precocious thoughts. finally, renoir is a painter of flowers of dazzling variety and exquisite splendour. they supply him with inexhaustible pretexts for suave and subtle harmonies. [illustration: renoir woman's bust] his third manner has surprised and deceived certain admirers of his. it seems to mix his two first techniques, combining the painting with the palette knife and the painting in touches of divided tones. he searches for certain accords and contrasts almost analogous to the musical dissonances. he realises incredible "false impressions." he seems to take as themes oriental carpets: he abandons realism and style and conceives symphonies. he pleases himself in assembling those tones which one is generally afraid of using: turkish pink, lemon, crushed strawberry and viridian. sometimes he amuses himself with amassing faded colours which would be disheartening with others, but out of which he can extract a harmony. sometimes he plays with the crudest colours. one feels disturbed, charmed, disconcerted, as one would before an indian shawl, a barbaric piece of pottery or a persian miniature, and one refrains from forcing into the limits of a definition this exceptional virtuoso whose passionate love of colour overcomes every difficulty. it is in this most recent part of his evolution, that renoir appears the most capricious and the most poetical of all the painters of his generation. the flowers find themselves treated in various techniques according to their own character: the gladioles and roses in pasty paint, the poor flowers of the field are defined by a cross-hatching of little touches. influenced by the purple shadow of the large flower-decked hats, the heads of young girls are painted on coarse canvas, sketched in broad strokes, with the hair in one colour only. some little study appears like wool, some other has the air of agate, or is marbled and veined according to his inexplicable whim. we have here an incessant confusion of methods, a complete emancipation of the virtuoso who listens only to his fancy. now and then the harmonies are false and the drawing incorrect, but these weaknesses do at least no harm to the values, the character and the general movement of the work, which are rather accentuated by them. [illustration: renoir young woman in empire costume] surely, it would be false to exclude ideologist painting which has produced wonders, and not less iniquitous to reproach impressionism with not having taken any interest in it! one has to avoid the kind of criticism which consists in reproaching one movement with not having had the qualities of the others whilst maintaining its own, and we have abandoned the idea of beauty divided into a certain number of clauses and programmes, towards the sum total of which the efforts of the eclectic candidates are directed. m. renoir is probably the most representative figure of a movement where he seems to have united all the qualities of his friends. to criticise him means to criticise impressionism itself. having spent half of its strength in proving to its adversaries that they were wrong, and the other half in inventing technical methods, it is not surprising to find that impressionism has been wanting in intellectual depth and has left to its successors the care of realising works of great thought. but it has brought us a sunny smile, a breath of pure air. it is so fascinating, that one cannot but love its very mistakes which make it more human and more accessible. renoir is the most lyrical, the most musical, the most subtle of the masters of this art. some of his landscapes are as beautiful as those of claude monet. his nudes are as masterly in painting as manet's, and more supple. not having attained the scientific drawing which one finds in degas's, they have a grace and a brilliancy which degas's nudes have never known. if his rare portraits of men are inferior to those of his rivals, his women's portraits have a frequently superior distinction. his great modern compositions are equal to the most beautiful works by manet and degas. his inequalities are also more striking than theirs. being a fantastic, nervous improvisator he is more exposed to radical mistakes. but he is a profoundly sincere and conscientious artist. [illustration: renoir on the terrace] the race speaks in him. it is inexplicable that he should not have met with startling success, since he is voluptuous, bright, happy and learned without heaviness. one has to attribute his relative isolation to the violence of the controversies, and particularly to the dignity of a poet gently disdainful of public opinion and paying attention solely to painting, his great and only love. manet has been a fighter whose works have created scandal. renoir has neither shown, nor hidden himself: he has painted according to his dream, spreading his works, without mixing up his name or his personality with the tumult that raged around his friends. and now, for that very reason, his work appears fresher and younger, more primitive and candid, more intoxicated with flowers, flesh and sunlight. vii the secondary painters of impressionism--camille pissarro, alfred sisley, paul cÉzanne, berthe morisot, miss mary cassatt, eva gonzalÈs, gustave caillebotte, bazille, albert lebourg, eugÈne boudin. manet, degas, monet and renoir will present themselves as a glorious quartet of masters, in the history of painting. we must now speak of some personalities who have grown up by their side and who, without being great, offer nevertheless a rich and beautiful series of works. of these personalities the most considerable is certainly that of m. camille pissarro. he painted according to some wise and somewhat timid formulas, when manet's example won him over to impressionism to which he has remained faithful. m. pissarro has been enormously productive. his work is composed of landscapes, rustic scenes, and studies of streets and markets. his first landscapes are in the manner of corot, but bathed in blond colour: vast cornfields, sunny woods, skies with big, flocking clouds, effects of soft light--these are the motifs of some charming canvases which have a solid, classic quality. later the artist adopted the method of the dissociation of tones, from which he obtained some happy effects. his harvest and market scenes are luminous and alive. the figures in these recall those of millet. they bear witness to high qualities of sincere observation, and are the work of a man profoundly enamoured of rustic life. m. pissarro excels in grouping the figures, in correctly catching their attitudes and in rendering the medley of a crowd in the sun. certain fans in particular will always remain delightful caprices of fresh colour, but it would be vain to look in this attractive, animated and clear painting for the psychologic gifts, the profound feeling for grand silhouettes, and the intuition of the worn and gloomy soul of the men of the soil, which have made millet's noble glory. at the time when, about , the neo-impressionists whom we shall study later on invented the pointillist method, m. pissarro tried it and applied it judiciously, with the patient, serious and slightly anxious talent, by which he is distinguished. recently, in a series of pictures representing views of paris (the boulevards and the avenue de l'opéra) m. pissarro has shewn rare vision and skill and has perhaps signed his most beautiful and personal paintings. the perspective, the lighting, the tones of the houses and of the crowds, the reflections of rain or sunshine are intensely true; they make one feel the atmosphere, the charm and the soul of paris. one can say of pissarro that he lacks none of the gifts of his profession. he is a learned, fruitful and upright artist. but he has lacked originality; he always recalls those whom he admires and whose ideas he applies boldly and tastefully. it is probable that his conscientious nature has contributed not little towards keeping him in the second rank. incapable, certainly, of voluntarily imitating, this excellent and diligent painter has not had the sparks of genius of his friends, but all that can be given to a man through conscientious study, striving after truth and love of art, has been acquired by m. pissarro. the rest depended on destiny only. there is no character more worthy of respect and no effort more meritorious than his, and there can be no better proof of his disinterestedness and his modesty, than the fact that, although he has thirty years of work behind him, an honoured name and white hair, m. pissarro did not hesitate to adopt, quite frankly, the technique of the young pointillist painters, his juniors, because it appeared to him better than his own. he is, if not a great painter, at least one of the most interesting rustic landscape painters of our epoch. his visions of the country are quite his own, and are a harmonious mixture of classicism and impressionism which will secure one of the most honourable places to his work. [illustration: pissarro rue de l'epicerie, rouen] [illustration: pissarro boulevarde montmartre] [illustration: pissarro the boildieaux bridge at rouen] [illustration: pissaro the avenue de l'opÉra] there has, perhaps, been more original individuality in the landscape painter alfred sisley. he possessed in the highest degree the feeling for light, and if he did not have the power, the masterly passion of claude monet, he will at least deserve to be frequently placed by his side as regards the expression of certain combinations of light. he did not have the decorative feeling which makes monet's landscapes so imposing; one does not see in his work that surprising lyrical interpretation which knows how to express the drama of the raging waves, the heavy slumber of enormous masses of rock, the intense torpor of the sun on the sea. but in all that concerns the mild aspects of the _ile de france_, the sweet and fresh landscapes, sisley is not unworthy of being compared with monet. he equals him in numerous pictures; he has a similar delicacy of perception, a similar fervour of execution. he is the painter of great, blue rivers curving towards the horizon; of blossoming orchards; of bright hills with red-roofed hamlets scattered about; he is, beyond all, the painter of french skies which he presents with admirable vivacity and facility. he has the feeling for the transparency of atmosphere, and if his technique allies him directly with impressionism, one can well feel, that he painted spontaneously and that this technique happened to be adapted to his nature, without his having attempted to appropriate it for the sake of novelty. sisley has painted a notable series of pictures in the quaint village of moret on the outskirts of the forest of fontainebleau, where he died at a ripe age, and these canvases will figure among the most charming landscapes of our epoch. sisley was a veteran of impressionism. at the exhibition of , in the two rooms reserved for the works of this school, there were to be seen a dozen of sisley's canvases. by the side of the finest renoirs, monets and manets they kept their charm and their brilliancy with a singular flavour, and this was for many critics a revelation as to the real place of this artist, whom they had hitherto considered as a pretty colourist of only relative importance. [illustration: sisley snow effect] [illustration: sisley bougival, at the water's edge] [illustration: sisley bridge at moret] paul cézanne, unknown to the public, is appreciated by a small group of art lovers. he is an artist who lives in provence, away from the world; he is supposed to have served as model for the impressionist painter claude lantier, described by zola in his celebrated novel "l'oeuvre." cézanne has painted landscapes, rustic scenes and still-life pictures. his figures are clumsy and brutal and inharmonious in colour, but his landscapes have the merit of a robust simplicity of vision. these pictures are almost primitive, and they are loved by the young impressionists because of their exclusion of all "cleverness." a charm of rude simplicity and sincerity can be found in these works in which cézanne employs only just the means which are indispensable for his end. his still-life pictures are particularly interesting owing to the spotless brilliancy of their colours, the straightforwardness of the tones, and the originality of certain shades analogous to those of old faience. cézanne is a conscientious painter without skill, intensely absorbed in rendering what he sees, and his strong and tenacious attention has sometimes succeeded in finding beauty. he reminds more of an ancient gothic craftsman, than of a modern artist, and he is full of repose as a contrast to the dazzling virtuosity of so many painters. [illustration: cÉzanne dessert] berthe morisot will remain the most fascinating figure of impressionism,--the one who has stated most precisely the femineity of this luminous and iridescent art. having married eugène manet, the brother of the great painter, she exhibited at various private galleries, where the works of the first impressionists were to be seen, and became as famous for her talent as for her beauty. when manet died, she took charge of his memory and of his work, and she helped with all her energetic intelligence to procure them their just and final estimation. mme. eugène manet has certainly been one of the most beautiful types of french women of the end of the nineteenth century. when she died prematurely at the age of fifty (in ), she left a considerable amount of work: gardens, young girls, water-colours of refined taste, of surprising energy, and of a colouring as distinguished, as it is unexpected. as great grand-daughter of fragonard, berthe morisot (since we ought to leave her the name with which her respect for manet's great name made her always sign her works) seemed to have inherited from her famous ancestor his french gracefulness, his spirited elegance, and all his other great qualities. she has also felt the influence of corot, of manet and of renoir. all her work is bathed in brightness, in azure, in sunlight; it is a woman's work, but it has a strength, a freedom of touch and an originality, which one would hardly have expected. her water-colours, particularly, belong to a superior art: some notes of colour suffice to indicate sky, sea, or a forest background, and everything shows a sure and masterly fancy, for which our time can offer no analogy. a series of berthe morisot's works looks like a veritable bouquet whose brilliancy is due less to the colour-schemes which are comparatively soft, grey and blue, than to the absolute correctness of the values. a hundred canvases, and perhaps three hundred water-colours attest this talent of the first rank. normandy coast scenes with pearly skies and turquoise horizons, sparkling nice gardens, fruit-laden orchards, girls in white dresses with big flower-decked hats, young women in ball-dress, and flowers are the favourite themes of this artist who was the friend of renoir, of degas and of mallarmé. [illustration: berthe morisot melancholy] [illustration: berthe morisot young woman seated] miss mary cassatt will deserve a place by her side. american by birth, she became french through her assiduous participation in the exhibitions of the impressionists. she is one of the very few painters whom degas has advised, with forain and m. ernest rouart. (this latter, a painter himself, a son of the painter and wealthy collector henri rouart, has married mme. manet's daughter who is also an artist.) miss cassatt has made a speciality of studying children, and she is, perhaps, the artist of this period who has understood and expressed them with the greatest originality. she is a pastellist of note, and some of her pastels are as good as manet's and degas's, so far as broad execution and brilliancy and delicacy of tones are concerned. ten years ago miss cassatt exhibited a series of ten etchings in colour, representing scenes of mothers and children at their toilet. at that time this _genre_ was almost abandoned, and miss cassatt caused astonishment by her boldness which faced the most serious difficulties. one can relish in this artist's pictures, besides the great qualities of solid draughtsmanship, correct values, and skilful interpretation of flesh and stuffs, a profound sentiment of infantile life, childish gestures, clear and unconscious looks, and the loving expression of the mothers. miss cassatt is the painter and psychologist of babies and young mothers whom she likes to depict in the freshness of an orchard, or against backgrounds of the flowered hangings of dressing-rooms, amidst bright linen, tubs, and china, in smiling intimacy. to these two remarkable women another has to be added, eva gonzalès, the favourite pupil of manet who has painted a fine portrait of her. eva gonzalès became the wife of the excellent engraver henri guérard, and died prematurely, not, however, before one was able to admire her talent as an exquisitely delicate pastellist. having first been a pupil of chaplin, she soon came to forget the tricks of technique in order to acquire under manet's guidance the qualities of clearness and the strength of the great painter of _argenteuil_; and she would certainly have taken one of the first places in modern art, had not her career been cut short by death. a small pastel at the luxembourg gallery proves her convincing qualities as a colourist. [illustration: mary cassatt getting up baby] [illustration: mary cassatt women and child] gustave caillebotte was a friend of the impressionists from the very first hour. he was rich, fond of art, and himself a painter of great merit who modestly kept hidden behind his comrades. his picture _les raboteurs de parquets_ made him formerly the butt of derision. to-day his work, at the luxembourg gallery seems hardly a fit pretext for so much controversy, but at that time much was considered as madness, that to our eyes appears quite natural. this picture is a study of oblique perspective and its curious _ensemble_ of rising lines sufficed to provoke astonishment. the work is, moreover, grey and discreet in colour and has some qualities of fine light, but is on the whole not very interesting. recently an exhibition of works by caillebotte has made it apparent that this amateur was a misjudged painter. the still-life pictures in this exhibition were specially remarkable. but the name of caillebotte was destined to reach the public only in connection with controversies and scandal. when he died, he left to the state a magnificent collection of objets-d'art and of old pictures, and also a collection of impressionist works, stipulating that these two bequests should be inseparable. he wished by this means to impose the works of his friends upon the museums, and thus avenge their unjust neglect. the state accepted the two legacies, since the louvre absolutely wanted to benefit by the ancient portion, in spite of the efforts of the academicians who revolted against the acceptance of the modern part. on this occasion one could see how far the official artists were carried by their hatred of the impressionists. a group of academicians, professors at the _ecole des beaux-arts_, threatened the minister that they would resign _en masse_. "we cannot," they wrote to the papers, "continue to teach an art of which we believe we know the laws, from the moment the state admits into the museums, where our pupils can see them, works which are the very negation of all we teach." a heated discussion followed in the press, and the minister boldly declared that impressionism, good or bad, had attracted the attention of the public, and that it was the duty of the state to receive impartially the work of all the art movements; the public would know how to judge and choose; the government's duty was not to influence them by showing them only one style of painting, but to remain in historic neutrality. thanks to this clever reply, the academicians, among whom m. gérôme was the most rabid, resigned themselves to keeping their posts. a similar incident, less publicly violent, but equally strange, occurred on the occasion of the admission to the luxembourg gallery of the portrait of m. whistler's mother, a masterpiece of which the gallery is proud to-day, and for which a group of writers and art lovers had succeeded in opening the way. it is difficult to imagine the degree of irritation and obstruction of the official painters against all the ideas of the new painting, and if it had only depended upon them, there can be no doubt that manet and his friends would have died in total obscurity, not only banished from the salons and museums, but also treated as madmen and robbed of the possibility of living by their work. the caillebotte collection was installed under conditions which the ill-will of the administrators made at least as deplorable as possible. the works were crowded into a small, badly lighted room, where it is absolutely impossible to see them from the distance required by the method of the division of tones, and the meanness of the opposition was such that, the pictures having been bequeathed without frames, the keeper was obliged to have recourse to the reserves of the louvre, because he was refused the necessary credit for purchasing them. the collection is however beautiful and interesting. it does not represent impressionism in all its brilliancy, since the works by which it is composed had been bought by caillebotte at a time, when his friends were still far from having arrived at the full blossoming of their qualities. but some very fine things can at least be found there. renoir is marvellously represented by the _moulin de la galette_, which is one of his masterpieces. degas figures with seven beautiful pastels, monet with some landscapes grand in style; sisley and pissarro appear scarcely to their advantage, and finally it is to be regretted, that manet is only represented by a study in black in his first manner, the _balcony_, which does not count among his best pictures, and the famous _olympia_ whose importance is more historical than intrinsic. the gallery has separately acquired a _young girl in ball dress_ by berthe morisot, which is a delicate marvel of grace and freshness. and in the place of honour of the gallery is to be seen fantin-latour's great picture _hommage à manet_, in which the painter, seated before his easel, is surrounded by his friends; and this canvas may well be considered the emblem of the slow triumph of impressionism, and of the amends for a great injustice. it is in this picture that the young painter bazille is represented, a friend and pupil of manet's, who was killed during the war of , and who should not be forgotten here. he has left a few canvases marked by great talent, and would no doubt have counted among the most original contemporary artists. we shall terminate this all too short enumeration with two remarkable landscapists; the one is albert lebourg who paints in suave and poetic colour schemes, with blues and greens of particular tenderness, a painter who will take his place in the history of impressionism. the other is eugène boudin. he has not adopted claude monet's technique; but i have already said that the vague and inexact term "impressionism" must be understood to comprise a group of painters showing originality in the study of light and getting away from the academic spirit. as to this, eugène boudin deserves to be placed in the first rank. his canvases will be the pride of the best arranged galleries. he is an admirable seascape painter. he has known how to render with unfailing mastery, the grey waters of the channel, the stormy skies, the heavy clouds, the effects of sunlight feebly piercing the prevailing grey. his numerous pictures painted at the port of havre are profoundly expressive. nobody has excelled him in drawing sailing-boats, in giving the exact feeling of the keels plunged into the water, in grouping the masts, in rendering the activity of a port, in indicating the value of a sail against the sky, the fluidity of calm water, the melancholy of the distance, the shiver of short waves rippled by the breeze. boudin is a learned colourist of grey tones. his impressionism consists in the exclusion of useless details, his comprehension of reflections, his feeling for values, the boldness of his composition and his faculty of directly perceiving nature and the transparency of atmosphere: he reminds sometimes of constable and of corot. boudin's production has been enormous, and nothing that he has done is indifferent. he is one of those artists who have not a brilliant career, but who will last, and whose name, faithfully retained by the elect, is sure of immortality. he may be considered an isolated artist, on the border line between classicism and impressionism, and this is unquestionably the cause of the comparative obscurity of his fame. the same might be said of the ingenuous and fine landscapist hervier, who has left such interesting canvases; and of the lyons water-colour painter ravier who, almost absolutely unknown, came very close to monticelli and showed admirable gifts. it must, however, be recognised that boudin is nearer to impressionism than to any other grouping of artists, and he must be considered as a small master of pure french lineage. finally, if a question of nationality prevents me from enlarging upon the subject of the rank of precursor which must be accorded to the great dutch landscapist jongkind, i must at least mention his name. his water-colour sketches have been veritable revelations for several impressionists. eugène boudin and berthe morisot have derived special benefit from them, and they are valuable lessons for many young painters of the present day. [illustration: jongkind in holland] [illustration: jongkind view of the hague] we do not pretend to have mentioned in this chapter all the painters directly connected with the first impressionist movement. we have confined ourselves to enumerating the most important only, and each of them would deserve a complete essay. but our object will have been achieved, if we have inspired art-lovers with just esteem for this brave phalanx of artists who have proved better than any aesthetic commentaries the vitality, the originality, and the logic of manet's theories, the great importance of the notions introduced by him into painting, and who have, on the other hand, clearly demonstrated the uselessness of official teaching. far from the traditions and methods of the school, the best of their knowledge and of their talent is due to their profound and sincere contemplation of nature and to their freedom of spirit. and for that reason they will have a permanent place in the evolution of their art. viii the modern illustrators connected with impressionism: raffaËlli, toulouse-lautrec, forain, chÉret, etc. not the least important result of impressionism has been the veritable revolution effected by it in the art of illustration. it was only natural that its principles should have led to it. the substitution of the beauty of character for the beauty of proportion was bound to move the artists to regard illustration in a new light; and as pictorial impressionism was born of the same movement of ideas which created the naturalist novel and the impressionist literature of flaubert, zola and the goncourts, and moreover as these men were united by close relations and a common defence, edouard manet's modern ideas soon took up the commentary of the books dealing with modern life and the description of actual spectacles. the impressionists themselves have not contributed towards illustration. their work has consisted in raising to the style of grand painting subjects, that seemed at the best only worthy of the proportion of vignettes, in opposition to the subjects qualified as "noble" by the school. the series of works by manet and degas may be considered as admirable illustrations to the novels by zola and the goncourts. it is a parallel research in modern psychologic truth. but this research has remained confined to pictures. it may be presumed that, had they wished to do so, manet and degas could have admirably illustrated certain contemporary novels, and renoir could have produced a masterpiece in commenting, say, upon verlaine's _fêtes galantes_. the only things that can be mentioned here are a few drawings composed by manet for edgar a. poe's _the raven_ and mallarmé's _l'après-midi d'un faune_, in addition to a few music covers without any great interest. but if the impressionists themselves have neglected actively to assist the interesting school of modern illustration, a whole legion of draughtsmen have immediately been inspired by their principles. one of their most original characteristics was the realistic representation of the scenes, the _mise en cadre_, and it afforded these draughtsmen an opportunity for revolutionising book illustration. there had already been some excellent artists who occupied themselves with vignette drawings, like tony johannot and célestin nanteuil, whose pretty and smart frontispieces are to be found in the old editions of balzac. the genius of honoré daumier and the high fancy of gavarni and of grévin had already announced a serious protest of modern sentiment against academic taste, in returning on many points to the free tradition of eisen, of the two moreaus and of debucourt. since the draughtsman constantin guys, baudelaire's friend, gave evidence, in his most animated water-colour drawings, of a curious vision of nervous elegance and of expressive skill quite in accord with the ideas of the day. impressionism, and also the revelation of the japanese colour prints, gave an incredible vigour to these intuitive glimpses. certain characteristics will date from the days of impressionism. it is due to impressionism that artists have ventured to show in illustration, for instance, figures in the foreground cut through by the margin, rising perspectives, figures in the background that seem to stand on a higher plane than the others, people seen from a second story; in a word, all that life presents to our eyes, without the annoying consideration for "style" and for arrangement, which the academic spirit obstinately insisted to apply to the illustration of modern life. degas in particular has given many examples of this novelty in composition. one of his pastels has remained typical, owing to the scandal caused by it: he represents a dance-scene at the opera, seen from the orchestra. the neck of a double bass rises in the middle of the picture and cuts into it, a large black silhouette, behind which sparkle the gauze-dresses and the lights. that can be observed any evening, and yet it would be difficult to recapitulate all the railleries and all the anger caused by so natural an audacity. modern illustration was to be the pretext of a good many more outbursts! we must now consider four artists of great importance who are remarkable painters and have greatly raised the art of illustration. this title illustrator, despised by the official painters, should be given them as the one which has secured them the best claim to fame. they have restored to this title all its merit and all its brilliancy and have introduced into illustration the most serious qualities of painting. of these four men the first in date is m.j.f. raffaëlli, who introduced himself about with some remarkable and intensely picturesque illustrations in colours in various magazines. he gave an admirable series of _parisian types_, in album form, and a series of etchings to accompany the text of m. huysmans, describing the curious river "la bièvre" which penetrates paris in a thousand curves, sometimes subterranean, sometimes above ground, and serves the tanners for washing the leather. this series is a model of modern illustration. but, apart from the book, the entire pictorial work of m. raffaëlli is a humorous and psychological illustration of the present time. he has painted with unique truth and spirit the working men's types and the small _bourgeois_, the poor, the hospital patients and the roamers of the outskirts of paris. he has succeeded in being the poet of the sickly and dirty landscapes by which the capitals are surrounded; he has rendered their anaemic charm, the confused perspectives of houses, fences, walls and little gardens, and their smoke, under the melancholy of rainy skies. with an irony free from bitterness he has noted the clumsy gestures of the labourer in his sunday garb and the grotesque silhouettes of the small townsmen, and has compiled a gallery of very real sociologic interest. m. raffaëlli has also exhibited parisian landscapes in which appear great qualities of light. he excels in rendering the mornings in the spring, with their pearly skies, their pale lights, their transparency and their slight shadows, and finally he has proved his mastery by some large portraits, fresh harmonies, generally devoted to the study of different qualities of white. if the name "impressionist" meant, as has been wrongly believed, an artist who confines himself to giving the impression of what he sees, then m. raffaëlli would be the real impressionist. he suggests more than he paints. he employs a curious technique: he often leaves a sky completely bare, throwing on to the white of the canvas a few colour notes which suffice to give the illusion. he has a decided preference for white and black, and paints very slightly in small touches. his very correct feeling for values makes him an excellent painter; but what interests him beyond all, is psychologic expression. he notes it with so hasty a pencil, that one might almost say that he writes with colour. he is also an etcher of great merit, and an original sculptor. he has invented small bas-reliefs in bronze which can be attached to the wall, like sketches or nick-nacks; and he has applied his talent even to renewing the material for painting. he is an ingenious artist and a prolific producer, a roguish, but sympathetic, observer of the life of the small people, which has not prevented him from painting very seriously when he wanted to, as is witnessed among other works by his very fine portrait of m. clemenceau speaking at a public meeting, in the presence of a vociferous audience from which rise some hundred of heads whose expressions are noted with really splendid energy and fervour. henri de toulouse-lautrec, who died recently, insane, leaves a great work behind him. he had a kind of cruel genius. descended from one of the greatest families of france, badly treated by nature who made him a kind of ailing dwarf, he seemed to take a bitter pleasure in the study of modern vice. he painted scenes at café-concerts and the rooms of wantons with intense truth. nobody has revealed better than he the lowness and suffering of the creatures "of pleasure," as they have been dubbed by the heartrending irony of life. lautrec has shown the artificiality of the painted faces; the vulgarity of the types of the prostitutes of low origin; the infamous gestures, the disorder, the slovenliness of the dwellings of these women; all the shady side of their existence. it has been said that he loved ugliness. as a matter of fact, he did not exaggerate, he raised a powerful accusation against everything he saw. but his terrible clairvoyance passed for caricature. this sad psychologist was a great painter; he pleased himself with dressing in rose-coloured costumes the coarsest and most vulgar creatures he painted, such as one can find at the cabarets and concerts, and he enjoyed the contrast of fresh tones with the faces marked by vice and poverty; lautrec's two great influences have been the japanese and degas. of the former he retained the love for decorative arabesques and the unconventional grouping; of the other the learned draughtsmanship, expressive in its broad simplification, and one might say that the pupil has often been worthy of the masters. one can only regret that lautrec should have confined his vision and his high faculties to the study of a small and very parisian world; but, seeing his works, one cannot deny the science, the spirit and the grand bearing of his art. he has also signed some fine posters, notably a _bruant_ which is a masterpiece of its kind. degas's deep influence can be found again in j.l. forain, who has made himself known by an immense series of drawings for the illustrated papers, drawings as remarkable in themselves as they are, through their legends, bitterly sarcastic in spirit. these drawings form a synthesis of the defects of the _bourgeoisie_, which is at the same time amusing and grave. they also concern, though less happily, the political world, in which the artist, a little intoxicated with his success, has thought himself able to exercise an influence by scoffing at the parliamentary régime. forain's drawing has a nervous character which does, however, not weaken its science: every stroke reveals something and has an astonishing power. in his less known painting can be traced still more clearly the style and influence of his master degas. they are generally incidents behind the scenes and at night restaurants, where caricatured types are painted with great force. but they are insistently exaggerated, they have not the restraint, the ironical and discreet plausibility, which give so much flavour, so much value to degas's studies. nevertheless, forain's pictures are very significant and are of real interest. he is decidedly the most interesting newspaper illustrator of his whole generation, the one whose ephemeral art most closely approaches grand painting, and one of those who have most contributed towards the transformation of illustration for the contemporary press. jules chéret has made for himself an important and splendid position in contemporary art. he commenced as a lithographic workman and lived for a long time in london. about chéret designed his first posters in black, white and red; these were at the time the only colours used. by and by he perfected this art and found the means of adding other tones and of drawing them on the lithographic stone. he returned to france, started a small studio, and gradually carried poster art to the admirable point at which it has arrived. at the same time chéret drew and painted and composed himself his models. about his name became famous, and it has not ceased growing since. some writers, notably the eminent critic roger marx and the novelist huysmans, hailed in chéret an original artist as well as a learned technician. he then exhibited decorative pictures, pastels and drawings, which placed him in the first rank. chéret is universally known. the type of the parisian woman created by him, and the multi-coloured harmony of his works will not be forgotten. his will be the honour of having invented the artistic poster, this feast for the eyes, this fascinating art of the street, which formerly languished in a tedious and dull display of commercial advertisements. he has been the promoter of an immense movement; he has been imitated, copied, parodied, but he will always remain inimitable. he has succeeded in realising on paper by means of lithography, the pastels and gouache drawings in which his admirable colourist's fancy mixed the most difficult shades. in chéret can be found all the principles of impressionism: opposing lights, coloured shadows, complementary reflections, all employed with masterly sureness and delightful charm. it is decorative impressionism, conceived in a superior way; and this simple poster-man, despised by the painters, has proved himself equal to most. he has transformed the street, in the open light, into a veritable salon, where his works have become famous. when this too modest artist decided to show his pictures and drawings, they were a revelation. the most remarkable pastellists of the period were astonished and admired his skill, his profound knowledge of technique, his continual _tours-de-force_ which he disguised under a shimmering gracefulness. the state had the good sense to entrust him with some large mural decorations, in which he unfolded the scale of his sparkling colours, and affirmed his spirit, his fancy and his dreamy art. chéret's harmonies remain secrets; he uses them for the representation of characters from the italian comedy, thrown with fiendish _verve_ upon a background of a sky, fiery with the bengal lights of a fairy-like carnival, and he strangely intermingles the reality of the movements with the most arbitrary fancy. chéret has also succeeded in proving his artistic descent by a beautiful series of drawings in sanguine: he descends from watteau, boucher and fragonard; he is a frenchman of pure blood; and when one has done admiring the grace and the happy animation of his imagination, one can only be surprised to see on what serious and sure a technique are based these decorations which appear improvised. chéret's art is the smile of impressionism and the best demonstration of the decorative logic of this art. these are the four artists of great merit who have created the transition between impressionist painting and illustration. it would be fit to put aside toulouse-lautrec, who was much younger, but his work is too directly connected with that of degas for one to take into account the difference of age. he produced between and works which might well have been ante-dated by fifteen years. we shall study in the next chapter his neo-impressionist comrades, and we shall now speak of some illustrators more advanced in years than he. the oldest in date is the engraver henri guérard, who died three years ago. he had married eva gonzalès and was a friend of manet's, many of whose works have been engraved by him. he was an artist of decided and original talent, who also occupied himself successfully with pyrogravure, and who was happily inspired by the japanese colour-prints. his etchings deserve a place of honour in the folios of expert collectors; they are strong and broad. as to the engraver félix buhot, he was a rather delicate colourist in black and white; his paris scenes will always be considered charming works. in spite of his spanish origin, the painter, _aquarelliste_, and draughtsman daniel vierge, should be added to the list of the men connected with impressionism. his illustrations are those of a great artist--admirable in colour, movement and observation; all the great principles of impressionism are embodied in them. but there are four more illustrators of the first rank: steinlen, louis legrand, paul renouard and auguste lepère. steinlen has been enormously productive: he is specially remarkable for his illustrations. those which he has designed for aristide bruant's volume of songs, _dans la rue_, are masterpieces of their kind. they contain treasures of bitter observation, quaintness and knowledge. the soul of the lower classes is shown in them with intense truth, bitter revolt and comprehensive philosophy. steinlen has also designed some beautiful posters, pleasing pastels, lithographs of incontestable technical merit, and beautifully eloquent political drawings. it cannot be said that he is an impressionist in the strict sense of the word; he applied his colour in flat tints, more like an engraver than a painter; but in him too can be felt the stamp of degas, and he is one of those who best demonstrate that, without impressionism, they could not have been what they are. the same may be said of louis legrand, a pupil of félicien rops, an admirably skilful etcher, a draughtsman of keen vision, and a painter of curious character, who has in many ways forestalled the artists of to-day. louis legrand also shows to what extent the example of manet and degas has revolutionised the art of illustration, in freeing the painters from obsolete laws, and guiding them towards truth and frank psychological study. legrand is full of them, without resembling them. we must not forget that, besides the technical innovation (division of tones, study of complementary colours), impressionism has brought us novelty of composition, realism of character and great liberty in the choice of subjects. from this point of view rops himself, in spite of his symbolist tendencies, could not be classed with any other group, if it were not that any kind of classification in art is useless and inaccurate. however that may be, louis legrand has signed some volumes resplendent with the most seductive qualities. paul renouard has devoted himself to newspaper illustration, but with what surprising prodigality of spirit and knowledge! the readers of the "graphic" will know. this masterly virtuoso of the pencil might give drawing-lessons to many members of the institute! the feeling for the life of crowds, psychology of types, spirited and rapid notation, astonishing ease in overcoming difficulties--these are his undeniable gifts. and again we must recognise in renouard the example of degas and manet. his exceptional fecundity only helps to give more authority to his pencil. renouard's drawings at the exhibition of were, perhaps, more beautiful than the rest of his work. there was notably a series of studies made from the first platform of the eiffel tower, an accumulation of wonders of perspectives framing scenes of such animation and caprice as to take away one's breath. finally, auguste lepère appears as the debucourt of our time. as painter, pastellist and wood-engraver he has produced since , and has won for himself the first place among french engravers. it would be difficult to recount the volumes, albums and covers on which the fancy of his burin has played; but it is particularly in wood-engraving that he stands without rival. not only has he produced masterpieces of it, but he has passionately devoted himself to raising this admirable art, the glory of the beautiful books of olden days, and to give back to it the lustre which had been eclipsed by mechanical processes. lepère has started some publications for this purpose; he has had pupils of great merit, and he must be considered the master of the whole generation of modern wood-engravers, just as chéret is the undisputed master of the poster. lepère's ruling quality is strength. he seems to have rediscovered the mediaeval limners' secrets of cutting the wood, giving the necessary richness to the ink, creating a whole scale of half-tones, and specially of adapting the design to typographic printing, and making of it, so to say, an ornament and a decorative extension for the type. lepère is a wood-engraver with whom none of his contemporaries can be compared; as regards his imagination, it is that of an altogether curious artist. he excels in composing and expressing the life, the animation, the soul of the streets and the picturesque side of the populace. herein he is much inspired by manet and, if we go back to the real tradition, by guys, debucourt, the younger moreau and by gabriel de saint-aubin. he is decidedly a realist of french lineage, who owes nothing to the academy and its formulas. it would be evidently unreasonable to attach to impressionism all that is ante-academical, and between the two extremes there is room for a crowd of interesting artists. we shall not succumb to the prejudice of the school by declaring, in our turn, that there is no salvation outside impressionism, and we have been careful to state repeatedly that, if impressionism has a certain number of principles as kernel, its applications and its influence have a radiation which it is difficult to limit. what can be absolutely demonstrated is, that this movement has had the greatest influence on modern illustration, sometimes through its colouring, sometimes simply through the great freedom of its ideas. some have found in it a direct lesson, others an example to be followed. some have met in it technical methods which pleased them, others have only taken some suggestions from it. that is the case, for instance, with legrand, with steinlen, and with renouard; and it is also the case with the lithographer odilon redon, who applies the values of manet and, in his strange pastels, the harmonies of degas and renoir, placing them at the service of dreams and hallucinations and of a symbolism which is absolutely removed from the realism of these painters. it is, finally, the case with the water-colour painter henri rivière, who is misjudged as to his merit, and who is one of the most perfect of those who have applied impressionist ideas to decorative engraving. he has realised images in colours destined to decorate inexpensively the rooms of the people and recalling the grand aspects of landscapes with a broad simplification which is derived, curiously enough, from puvis de chavannes's large decorative landscapes and from the small and precise colour prints of japan. rivière, who is a skilful and personal poetic landscapist, is not exactly an impressionist, in so far as he does not divide the tones, but rather blends them in subtle mixtures in the manner of the japanese. yet, seeing his work, one cannot help thinking of all the surprise and freedom introduced into modern art by impressionism. everybody, even the ignorant, can perceive, on looking through an illustrated paper or a modern volume, that thirty years ago this manner of placing the figures, of noting familiar gestures, and of seizing fugitive life with spirit and clearness was unknown. this mass of engravings and of sketches resembles in no way what had been seen formerly. they no longer have the solemn air of classic composition, by which the drawings had been affected. a current of bold spontaneity has passed through here. in modern english illustration, it can be stated indisputably that nothing would be such as it can now be seen, if morris, rossetti and crane had not imposed their vision, and yet many talented englishmen resemble these initiators only very remotely. it is exactly in this sense that we shall have credited impressionism with the talents who have drawn their inspiration less from its principles, than from its vigorous protest against mechanical formulas, and who have been able to find the energy, necessary for their success, in the example it set by fighting during twenty years against the ideas of routine which seemed indestructible. even with the painters who are far removed from the vision and the colouring of manet and degas, of monet and renoir, one can find a very precise tendency: that of returning to the subjects and the style of the real national tradition; and herein lies one of the most serious benefits bestowed by impressionism upon an art which had stopped at the notion of a canonical beauty, until it had almost become sterile in its timidity. ix neo-impressionism--gauguin, denis, thÉo van rysselberghe--the theory of pointillism--seurat, signac and the theories of scientific chromatism--faults and qualities of the impressionist movement, what we owe to it, its place in the history of the french school--some words on its influence abroad the beginnings of the movement designated under the name of neo-impressionism can be traced back to about . the movement is a direct offshoot of the first impressionism, originated by a group of young painters who admired it and thought of pushing further still its chromatic principles. the flourishing of impressionism coincided, as a matter of fact, with certain scientific labours concerning optics. helmholtz had just published his works on the perception of colours and sounds by means of waves. chevreul had continued on this path by establishing his beautiful theories on the analysis of the solar spectrum. m. charles henry, an original and remarkable spirit, occupied himself in his turn with these delicate problems by applying them directly to aesthetics, which helmholtz and chevreul had not thought of doing. m. charles henry had the idea of creating relations between this branch of science and the laws of painting. as a friend of several young painters he had a real influence over them, showing them that the new vision due to the instinct of monet and of manet might perhaps be scientifically verified, and might establish fixed principles in a sphere where hitherto the laws of colouring had been the effects of individual conception. at that moment the criticism which resulted from taine's theories tried to effect a _rapprochement_ of the artistic and scientific domains in criticism and in the psychologic novel. the painters, too, gave way to this longing for precision which seems to have been the great preoccupation of intellects from to about . their researches had a special bearing on the theory of complementary colours and on the means of establishing some laws concerning the reaction of tones in such manner as to draw up a kind of tabula. georges seurat and paul signac were the promoters of this research. seurat died very young, and one cannot but regret this death of an artist who would have been very interesting and capable of beautiful works. those which he has left us bear witness to a spirit very receptive to theories, and leaving nothing to chance. the silhouettes are reduced to almost rigorously geometrical principles, the tones are decomposed systematically. these canvases are more reasoned examples than works of intuition and spontaneous vision. they show seurat's curious desire to give a scientific and classic basis to impressionism. the same idea rules in all the work of paul signac, who has painted some portraits and numerous landscapes. to these two painters is due the method of _pointillism_, _i.e._ the division of tones, not only by touches, as in monet's pictures, but by very small touches of equal size, causing the spheric shape to act equally upon the retina. the accumulation of these luminous points is carried out over the entire surface of the canvas without thick daubs of paint, and with regularity, whilst with manet the paint is more or less dense. the theory of complementary colours is systematically applied. on a sketch, made from nature, the painter notes the principal relations of tones, then systematises them on his picture and connects them by different shades which should be their logical result. neo-impressionism believes in obtaining thus a greater exactness than that which results from the individual temperament of the painter who simply relies on his own perception. and it is true, in theory, that such a conception is more exact. but it reduces the picture to a kind of theorem, which excludes all that constitutes the value and charm of an art, that is to say: caprice, fancy, and the spontaneity of personal inspiration. the works of seurat, signac, and of the few men who have strictly followed the rules of pointillism are lacking in life, in surprise, and make a somewhat tiring impression upon one's eyes. the uniformity of the points does not succeed in giving an impression of cohesion, and even less a suggestion of different textures, even if the values are correct. manet seems to have attained perfection in using the method which consists in directing the touches in accordance with each of the planes, and this is evidently the most natural method. scientific chromatism constitutes an _ensemble_ of propositions, of which art will be able to make use, though indirectly, as information useful for a better understanding of the laws of light in presence of nature. what pointillism has been able to give us, is a method which would be very appreciable for decorative paintings seen from a great distance--friezes or ceilings in spacious buildings. it would in this case return to the principle of mosaic, which is the principle _par excellence_ of mural art. the pointillists have to-day almost abandoned this transitional theory which, in spite of the undeniable talent of its adepts, has only produced indifferent results as regards easel pictures. besides seurat and signac, mention should be made of maurice denis, henri-edmond cross, angrand, and théo van rysselberghe. but this last-named and maurice denis have arrived at great talent by very different merits. m. maurice denis has abandoned pointillism a few years ago, in favour of returning to a very strange conception which dates back to the primitives, and even to giotto. he simplifies his drawing archaically, suppresses all but the indispensable detail, and draws inspiration from gothic stained glass and carvings, in order to create decorative figures with clearly marked outlines which are filled with broad, flat tints. he generally treats mystic subjects, for which this special manner is suitable. one cannot love the _parti pris_ of these works, but one cannot deny m. denis a great charm of naivete, an intense feeling for decorative arrangements and colouring of a certain originality. he is almost a french pre-raphaelite, and his profound catholic faith inspires him nobly. [illustration: thÉo van rysselberghe portraits of madame van rysselberghe and her daughter] m. théo van rysselberghe continues to employ the pointillist method. but he is so strongly gifted, that one might almost say he succeeds in revealing himself as a painter of great merit in spite of this dry and charmless method. all his works are supported by broad and learned drawing and his colour is naturally brilliant. m. van rysselberghe, a prolific and varied worker, has painted nudes, large portraits, landscapes with figures, seascapes, interiors and still-life, and in all this he evinces faculties of the first order. he is a lover of light and understands how to make it vibrate over flesh and fabrics. he is an artist who has the sense of style. he has signed a certain number of portraits, whose beautiful carriage and serious psychology would suffice to make him be considered as the most significant of the neo-impressionists. it is really in him that one has to see the young and worthy heir of monet, of sisley, and of degas, and that is why we have insisted on adding here to the works of these masters the reproduction of one of his. m. van rysselberghe is also a very delicate etcher who has signed some fine works in this method, and his seascapes, whether they revel in the pale greys of the german ocean or in the warm sapphire and gold harmonies of the mediterranean, count among the finest of the time; they are windows opened upon joyous brightness. to these painters who have never taken part at the salons, and are only to be seen at the exhibitions of the _indépendants_ (except m. denis), must be added m. pierre bonnard, who has given proof to his charm and fervour in numerous small canvases of japanese taste; and m. edouard vuillard, who is a painter of intimate scenes of rare delicacy. this artist, who stands apart and produces very little, has signed some interiors of melancholic distinction and of a colouring which revels in low tones. he has the precision and skill of a master. there is in him, one might say, a reflection of chardin's soul. unfortunately his works are confined to a few collections and have not become known to the public. to the same group belong m. ranson, who has devoted himself to purely decorative art, tapestry, wall papers and embroideries; m. georges de feure, a strange, symbolist water-colour painter, who has become one of the best designers of the new art in france; m. félix vallotton, painter and lithographer, who is somewhat heavy, but gifted with serious qualities. it is true that m. de feure is dutch, m. vallotton swiss, and m. van rysselberghe belgian; but they have settled down in france, and are sufficiently closely allied to the neo-impressionist movement so that the question of nationality need not prevent us from mentioning them here. finally it is impossible not to say a few words about two pupils of gustave moreau's, who have both become noteworthy followers of impressionism of very personal individuality. m. eugène martel bids fair to be one of the best painters of interiors of his generation. he has the feeling of mystical life and paints the peasantry with astonishing psychologic power. his vigorous colouring links him to monticelli, and his drawing to degas. as to m. simon bussy who, following alphonse legros's example, is about to make an enviable position for himself in england, he is an artist of pure blood. his landscapes and his figures have the distinction and rare tone of m. whistler, besides the characteristic acuteness of degas. his harmonies are subtle, his vision novel, and he will certainly develop into an important painter. together with henri le sidaner and jacques blanche, simon bussy is decidedly the most personal of that young generation of "intimists" who seem to have retained the best principles of the impressionist masters to employ them for the expression of a psychologic ideal which is very different from realism. outside this group there are still a few isolated painters who are difficult to classify. the very young artists laprade and charles guérin have shown for the last three years, at the exhibition of the _indépendants_, some works which are the worthy result of manet's and renoir's influence. they, too, justify great expectations. the landscapists paul vogler and maxime maufra, more advanced in years, have made themselves known by some solid series of vigorously presented landscapes. to them must be added m. henry moret, m. albert andré and m. georges d'espagnet, who equally deserve the success which has commenced to be their share. but there are some older ones. it is only his due, that place should be given to a painter who committed suicide after an unhappy life, and who evinced splendid gifts. vincent van gogh, a dutchman, who, however, had always worked in france, has left to the world some violent and strange works, in which impressionism appears to have reached the limits of its audacity. their value lies in their naïve frankness and in the undauntable determination which tried to fix without trickery the sincerest feelings. amidst many faulty and clumsy works, van gogh has also left some really beautiful canvases. there is a deep affinity between him and cézanne. a very real affinity exists, too, between paul gauguin, who was a friend and to a certain extent the master of van gogh, and cézanne and renoir. paul gauguin's robust talent found its first motives in breton landscapes, in which the method of colour-spots can be found employed with delicacy and placed at the service of a rather heavy, but very interesting harmony. then the artist spent a long time in tahiti, whence he returned with a completely transformed manner. he has brought back from these regions some landscapes with figures treated in intentionally clumsy and almost wild fashion. the figures are outlined in firm strokes and painted in broad, flat tints on canvas which has the texture almost of tapestry. many of these works are made repulsive by their aspect of multi-coloured, crude and barbarous imagery. yet one cannot but acknowledge the fundamental qualities, the beautiful values, the ornamental taste, and the impression of primitive animalism. on the whole, paul gauguin has a beautiful, artistic temperament which, in its aversion to virtuosoship, has perhaps not sufficiently understood that the fear of formulas, if exaggerated, may lead to other formulas, to a false ignorance which is as dangerous as false knowledge. gauguin's symbolical intentions, like those of his pupil emile bernard, are sincere, but are badly served by minds which do not agree with their technical qualities, and both gauguin and emile bernard are most happily inspired when they are painters pure and simple. next to gauguin, among the seniors of the present generation and the successors of impressionism, should be placed the landscapist armand guillaumin who, without possessing sisley's delicate qualities, has painted some canvases worthy of notice; and we must, finally, terminate this far too summary enumeration by referring to one of the most gifted painters of the french school of the day, m. louis anquetin. his is a most varied talent whose power is unquestionable. he made his _début_ among the neo-impressionists and revealed the influence upon him of the japanese and of degas. it may be seen that these two influences predominate in the whole group. then m. anquetin became fascinated by the breadth and superb freedom of manet's works, and signed a series of portraits and sketches, some of which are not far below so great a master's. they are works which will surprise the critics, when our contemporary painting will be examined with calm impartiality. after these works, m. anquetin gave way to his impetuous nature which led him to decorative painting, and he became influenced by rubens, jordaens, and the fontainebleau school. he painted theatre curtains and mythological scenes, in which he gave free rein to his sensual imagination. in spite of some admirable qualities, it seems as though the artist had strayed from his true path in painting these brilliant, but somewhat declamatory works, and he has since returned to a more modern and more direct painting. in all his changed conditions anquetin has shown a considerable talent, pleasing in its fine vigour, impetuosity, brilliancy and sincerity. his inequality is perhaps the cause of his relative want of success; it has put the public off, but nevertheless in certain of this brave and serious painter's canvases can be seen the happy influence of manet. it seems to us only right to sum up our impartial opinion of neo-impressionism by saying that it has lacked cohesion, that pointillism in particular has led painting into an aimless path. it has been wrong to see in impressionism too exclusive a pretext for technical researches, and a happy reaction has set in, which leads us back to-day, after diverse tentative efforts (amongst others some unfortunate attempts at symbolist painting), to the fine, recent school of the "intimists" and to the novel conception which a great and glorious painter, besnard, imposes upon the salons, where the elect draw inspiration from him. we can here only indicate with a few words the considerable part played by besnard: his clever work has proved that the scientific colour principles of impressionism may be applied, not to realism, but to the highest thoughts, to ideologic painting most nobly inspired by the modern intellectual preoccupations. he is the transition between impressionism and the art of to-morrow. of pure french lineage by his portraits and his nudes, which descend directly from largillière and ingres, he might have restricted himself to being placed among the most learned impressionists. his studies of reflections and of complementary colours speak for this. but he has passed this phase and has, with his decorations, returned to the psychical domain of his strangely beautiful art. the "intimists," c. cottet, simon, blanche, ménard, bussy, lobre, le sidaner, wéry, prinet, and ernest laurent, have proved that they have profited by impressionism, but have proceeded in quite a different direction in trying to translate their real perceptions. some isolated artists, like the decorative painter henri martin, who has enormous talent, have applied the impressionist technique to the expression of grand allegories, rather in the manner of puvis de chavannes. the effort at getting away from mere cleverness and escaping a too exclusive preoccupation with technique, and at the same time acquiring serious knowledge, betrays itself in the whole position of the young french school; and this will furnish us with a perfectly natural conclusion, of which the following are the principal points:-- what we shall have to thank impressionism for, will be moral and material advantages of considerable importance. morally it has rendered an immense service to all art, because it has boldly attacked routine and proved by the whole of its work that a combination of independent producers could renew the aesthetic code of a country, without owing anything to official encouragement. it has succeeded where important but isolated creators have succumbed, because it has had the good fortune of uniting a group of gifted men, four of whom will count among the greatest french artists since the origin of national art. it has had the qualities which overcome the hardest resistance: fecundity, courage and sure originality. it has known how to find its strength by referring to the true traditions of the national genius, which have happily enlightened it and saved it from fundamental errors. it has, last, but not least, inflicted an irremediable blow on academic convention and has wrested from it the prestige of teaching which ruled tyrannically for centuries past over the young artists. it has laid a violent hand upon a tenacious and dangerous prejudice, upon a series of conventional notions which were transmitted without consideration for the evolution of modern life and intelligence. it has dared freely to protest against a degenerated ideal which vainly parodied the old masters, pretending to honour them. it has removed from the artistic soul of france a whole order of pseudo-classic elements which worked against its blossoming, and the school will never recover from this bold contradiction which has rallied to it all the youthful. the moral principle of impressionism has been absolutely logical and sane, and that is why nothing has been able to prevent its triumph. technically impressionism has brought a complete renewal of pictorial vision, substituting the beauty of character for the beauty of proportions and finding adequate expression for the ideas and feelings of its time, which constitutes the secret of all beautiful works. it has taken up again a tradition and added to it a contemporary page. it will have to be thanked for an important series of observations as regards the analysis of light, and for an absolutely original conception of drawing. some years have been wasted by painters of little worth in imitating it, and the salons, formerly encumbered with academic _pastiches_, have been encumbered with impressionist _pastiches_. it would be unfair to blame the impressionists for it. they have shown by their very career that they hated teaching and would never pretend to teach. impressionism is based upon irrefutable optic laws, but it is neither a style, nor a method, likely ever to become a formula in its turn. one may call upon this art for examples, but not for receipts. on the contrary, its best teaching has been to encourage artists to become absolutely independent and to search ardently for their own individuality. it marks the decline of the school, and will not create a new one which would soon become as fastidious as the other. it will only appear, to those who will thoroughly understand it, as a precious repertory of notes, and the young generation honours it intelligently by not imitating it with servility. not that it is without its faults! it has been said, to belittle it, that it only had the value of an interesting attempt, having only been able to indicate some excellent intentions, without creating anything perfect. this is inexact. it is absolutely evident, that manet, monet, renoir and degas have signed some masterpieces which did not lose by comparison with those in the louvre, and the same might even be said of their less illustrious friends. but it is also evident that the time spent on research as well as on agitation and enervating controversies pursued during twenty-five years, has been taken from men who could otherwise have done better still. there has been a disparity between realism and the technique of impressionism. its realistic origin has sometimes made it vulgar. it has often treated indifferent subjects in a grand style, and it has too easily beheld life from the anecdotal side. it has lacked psychologic synthesis (if we except degas). it has too willingly denied all that exists hidden under the apparent reality of the universe and has affected to separate painting from the ideologic faculties which rule over all art. hatred of academic allegory, defiance of symbolism, abstraction and romantic scenes, has led it to refuse to occupy itself with a whole order of ideas, and it has had the tendency of making the painter beyond all a workman. it was necessary at the moment of its arrival, but it is no longer necessary now, and the painters understand this themselves. finally it has too often been superficial even in obtaining effects; it has given way to the wish to surprise the eyes, of playing with tones merely for love of cleverness. it often causes one regret to see symphonies of magnificent colour wasted here in pictures of boating men; and there, in pictures of café corners; and we have arrived at a degree of complex intellectuality which is no longer satisfied with these rudimentary themes. it has indulged in useless exaggerations, faults of composition and of harmony, and all this cannot be denied. but it still remains fascinating and splendid for its gifts which will always rouse enthusiasm: freedom, impetuousness, youth, brilliancy, fervour, the joy of painting and the passion for beautiful light. it is, on the whole, the greatest pictorial movement that france has beheld since delacroix, and it brings to a finish gloriously the nineteenth century, inaugurating the present. it has accomplished the great deed of having brought us again into the presence of our true national lineage, far more so than romanticism, which was mixed with foreign elements. we have here painting of a kind which could only have been conceived in france, and we have to go right back to watteau in order to receive again the same impression. impressionism has brought us an almost unhoped-for renaissance, and this constitutes its most undeniable claim upon the gratitude of the race. it has exercised a very appreciable influence upon foreign painting. among the principal painters attracted by its ideas and research, we must mention, in germany, max liebermann and kuehl; in norway, thaulow; in denmark, kroyer; in belgium, théo van rysselberghe, emile claus, verheyden, heymans, verstraete, and baertson; in italy, boldini, segantini, and michetti; in spain, zuloaga, sorolla y bastida, dario de regoyos and rusiñol; in america, alexander, harrison, sargent; and in england, the painters of the glasgow school, lavery, guthrie and the late john lewis brown. all these men come within the active extension of the french movement, and one may say that the honour of having first recognised the truly national movement of this art must be given to those foreign countries which have enriched their collections and museums with works that were despised in the land which had witnessed their birth. at the present moment the effects of this new vision are felt all over the world, down to the very bosom of the academies; and at the salons, from which the impressionists are still excluded, can be witnessed an invasion of pictures inspired by them, which the most retrograde juries dare not reject. in whatever measure the recent painters accept impressionism, they remain preoccupied with it, and even those who love it not are forced to take it into account. the impressionist movement can therefore now be considered, apart from all controversies, without vain attacks or exaggerated praise, as an artistic manifestation which has entered the domain of history, and it can be studied with the impartial application of the methods of critical analysis which is usually employed in the study of the former art movements. we shall not pretend to have given in these pages a complete and faultless history; but we shall consider ourselves well rewarded for this work, which is intended to reach the great public, if we have roused their curiosity and sympathy with a group of artists whom we consider admirable; and if we have rectified, in the eyes of the readers of a foreign nation, the errors, the slanders, the undeserved reproaches, with which frenchmen have been pleased to overwhelm sincere creators who thought with faith and love of the pure tradition of the national genius, and who have for that reason been vilified as much as if they had in an access of anarchical folly risen against the very common sense, taste, reason and clearness, which will remain the eternal merits of their soil. this small, imperfect volume will perhaps find its best excuse in its intention of repairing an old injustice and of affirming a useful and permanent truth: that of the authenticity of the classicism of impressionism, in the face of the false classicism of the academic world which official honours have made the guardian of a french heritage, whose soul it denied and whose spirit it deceived with its narrow and cold formulas. [illustration: velasquez. head of Æsop, madrid.] a text-book of the history of painting by john c. van dyke, l.h.d. professor of the history of art in rutgers college and author of "art for art's sake," "the meaning of pictures," etc. longmans, green, and co. and fifth avenue, new york london, bombay, and calcutta copyright, , by longmans, green, and co. * * * * * preface. the object of this series of text-books is to provide concise teachable histories of art for class-room use in schools and colleges. the limited time given to the study of art in the average educational institution has not only dictated the condensed style of the volumes, but has limited their scope of matter to the general features of art history. archæological discussions on special subjects and æsthetic theories have been avoided. the main facts of history as settled by the best authorities are given. if the reader choose to enter into particulars the bibliography cited at the head of each chapter will be found helpful. illustrations have been introduced as sight-help to the text, and, to avoid repetition, abbreviations have been used wherever practicable. the enumeration of the principal extant works of an artist, school, or period, and where they may be found, which follows each chapter, may be serviceable not only as a summary of individual or school achievement, but for reference by travelling students in europe. this volume on painting, the first of the series, omits mention of such work in arabic, indian, chinese, and persian art as may come properly under the head of ornament--a subject proposed for separate treatment hereafter. in treating of individual painters it has been thought best to give a short critical estimate of the man and his rank among the painters of his time rather than the detailed facts of his life. students who wish accounts of the lives of the painters should use vasari, larousse, and the _encyclopædia britannica_ in connection with this text-book. acknowledgments are made to the respective publishers of woltmann and woermann's history of painting, and the fine series of art histories by perrot and chipiez, for permission to reproduce some few illustrations from these publications. john c. van dyke. * * * * * table of contents. list of illustrations general bibliography introduction chapter i. egyptian painting chapter ii. chaldÆo-assyrian, persian, phoenician, cypriote, and asia minor painting chapter iii. greek, etruscan, and roman painting chapter iv. italian painting--early christian and mediÆval period, - chapter v. italian painting--gothic period, - chapter vi. italian painting--early renaissance, - chapter vii. italian painting--early renaissance, - , _continued_ chapter viii. italian painting--high renaissance, - chapter ix. italian painting--high renaissance, - , _continued_ chapter x. italian painting--high renaissance, - , _continued_ chapter xi. italian painting--the decadence and modern work, - chapter xii. french painting--sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries chapter xiii. french painting--nineteenth century chapter xiv. french painting--nineteenth century, _continued_ chapter xv. spanish painting chapter xvi. flemish painting chapter xvii. dutch painting chapter xviii. german painting chapter xix. british painting chapter xx. american painting postscript index * * * * * list of illustrations. velasquez, head of Æsop, madrid _frontispiece_ hunting in the marshes, tomb of ti, saccarah portrait of queen taia offerings to the dead. wall painting vignette on papyrus enamelled brick, nimroud " " khorsabad wild ass. bas-relief lions frieze, susa painted head from edessa cypriote vase decoration attic grave painting muse of cortona odyssey landscape amphore, lower italy ritual scene, palatine wall painting portrait, fayoum, graf collection chamber in catacombs, with wall decorations catacomb fresco, s. cecilia christ as good shepherd, ravenna mosaic christ and saints, fresco, s. generosa ezekiel before the lord. ms. illumination giotto, flight into egypt, arena chap. orcagna, paradise (detail), s. m. novella lorenzetti, peace (detail), sienna fra angelico, angel, uffizi fra filippo, madonna, uffizi botticelli, coronation of madonna, uffizi ghirlandajo, visitation, louvre francesca, duke of urbino, uffizi signorelli, the curse (detail), orvieto perugino, madonna, saints, and angels, louvre school of francia, madonna, louvre mantegna, gonzaga family group, mantua b. vivarini, madonna and child, turin giovanni bellini, madonna, venice acad. carpaccio, presentation (detail), venice acad. antonello da messina, unknown man, louvre fra bartolommeo, descent from cross, pitti andrea del sarto, madonna of st. francis, uffizi michael angelo, athlete, sistine chap., rome raphael, la belle jardinière, louvre giulio romano, apollo and muses, pitti leonardo da vinci, mona lisa, louvre luini, daughter of herodias, uffizi sodoma, ecstasy of st. catherine, sienna correggio, marriage of st. catherine, louvre giorgione, ordeal of moses, uffizi titian, venus equipping cupid, borghese, rome tintoretto, mercury and graces, ducal pal., venice veronese, venice enthroned, ducal pal., venice lotto, three ages, pitti bronzino, christ in limbo, uffizi baroccio, annunciation annibale caracci, entombment of christ, louvre caravaggio, the card players, dresden poussin, et in arcadia ego, louvre claude lorrain, flight into egypt, dresden watteau, gilles, louvre boucher, pastoral, louvre david, the sabines, louvre ingres, oedipus and sphinx, louvre delacroix, massacre of scio, louvre gérôme, pollice verso corot, landscape rousseau, charcoal burner's hut, fuller collection millet, the gleaners, louvre cabanel, phædra meissonier, napoleon in sanchez-coello, daughter of philip ii., madrid murillo, st. anthony of padua, dresden ribera, st. agnes, dresden fortuny, spanish marriage madrazo, unmasked van eycks, st. bavon altar-piece, berlin memling (?), st. lawrence, nat. gal., lon. massys, head of virgin, antwerp rubens, portrait of young woman van dyck, portrait of cornelius van der geest teniers the younger, prodigal son, louvre alfred stevens, on the beach hals, portrait of a lady rembrandt, head of a woman, nat. gal., lon. ruisdael, landscape hobbema, the water wheel, amsterdam mus. israels, alone in the world mauve, sheep lochner, sts. john, catharine, matthew, london wolgemut, crucifixion, munich dürer, praying virgin, augsburg holbein, portrait, hague mus. piloty, wise and foolish virgins leibl, in church menzel, a reader hogarth, shortly after marriage, nat. gal., lon. reynolds, countess spencer and lord althorp gainsborough, blue boy constable, corn field, nat. gal., lon. turner, fighting téméraire, nat. gal., lon. burne-jones, flamma vestalis leighton, helen of troy watts, love and death west, peter denying christ, hampton court gilbert stuart, washington, boston mus. hunt, lute player eastman johnson, churning inness, landscape winslow homer, undertow whistler, the white girl sargent, "carnation lily, lily rose" chase, alice, art institute, chicago * * * * * general bibliography. (this includes the leading accessible works that treat of painting in general. for works on special periods or schools, see the bibliographical references at the head of each chapter. for bibliography of individual painters consult, under proper names, champlin and perkins's _cyclopedia_, as given below.) champlin and perkins, _cyclopedia of painters and paintings_, new york. adeline, _lexique des termes d'art_. _gazette des beaux arts_, paris. larousse, _grand dictionnaire universel_, paris. _l'art, revue hebdomadaire illustrée_, paris. bryan, _dictionary of painters_. _new edition_. brockhaus, _conversations-lexikon_. meyer, _allgemeines künstler-lexikon_, berlin. muther, _history of modern painting_. agincourt, _history of art by its monuments_. bayet, _précis d'histoire de l'art_. blanc, _histoire des peintres de toutes les Écoles_. eastlake, _materials for a history of oil painting_. lübke, _history of art, trans. by clarence cook_. reber, _history of ancient art_. reber, _history of mediæval art_. schnasse, _geschichte der bildenden künste_. girard, _la peinture antique_. viardot, _history of the painters of all schools_. williamson (ed.), _handbooks of great masters_. woltmann and woermann, _history of painting_. * * * * * history of painting. introduction. the origin of painting is unknown. the first important records of this art are met with in egypt; but before the egyptian civilization the men of the early ages probably used color in ornamentation and decoration, and they certainly scratched the outlines of men and animals upon bone and slate. traces of this rude primitive work still remain to us on the pottery, weapons, and stone implements of the cave-dwellers. but while indicating the awakening of intelligence in early man, they can be reckoned with as art only in a slight archæological way. they show inclination rather than accomplishment--a wish to ornament or to represent, with only a crude knowledge of how to go about it. the first aim of this primitive painting was undoubtedly decoration--the using of colored forms for color and form only, as shown in the pottery designs or cross-hatchings on stone knives or spear-heads. the second, and perhaps later aim, was by imitating the shapes and colors of men, animals, and the like, to convey an idea of the proportions and characters of such things. an outline of a cave-bear or a mammoth was perhaps the cave-dweller's way of telling his fellows what monsters he had slain. we may assume that it was pictorial record, primitive picture-written history. this early method of conveying an idea is, in intent, substantially the same as the later hieroglyphic writing and historical painting of the egyptians. the difference between them is merely one of development. thus there is an indication in the art of primitive man of the two great departments of painting existent to-day. . decorative painting. . expressive painting. pure decorative painting is not usually expressive of ideas other than those of rhythmical line and harmonious color. it is not our subject. this volume treats of expressive painting; but in dealing with that it should be borne in mind that expressive painting has always a more or less decorative effect accompanying it, and that must be spoken of incidentally. we shall presently see the intermingling of both kinds of painting in the art of ancient egypt--our first inquiry. chapter i. egyptian painting. books recommended: brugsch, _history of egypt under the pharaohs_; budge, _dwellers on the nile_; duncker, _history of antiquity; egypt exploration fund memoirs_; ely, _manual of archæology_; lepsius, _denkmaler aus aegypten und aethiopen_; maspero, _life in ancient egypt and assyria_; maspero, _guide du visiteur au musée de boulaq_; maspero, _egyptian archæology_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in ancient egypt_; wilkinson, _manners and customs of the ancient egyptians_. land and people: egypt, as herodotus has said, is "the gift of the nile," one of the latest of the earth's geological formations, and yet one of the earliest countries to be settled and dominated by man. it consists now, as in the ancient days, of the valley of the nile, bounded on the east by the arabian mountains and on the west by the libyan desert. well-watered and fertile, it was doubtless at first a pastoral and agricultural country; then, by its riverine traffic, a commercial country, and finally, by conquest, a land enriched with the spoils of warfare. its earliest records show a strongly established monarchy. dynasties of kings called pharaohs succeeded one another by birth or conquest. the king made the laws, judged the people, declared war, and was monarch supreme. next to him in rank came the priests, who were not only in the service of religion but in that of the state, as counsellors, secretaries, and the like. the common people, with true oriental lack of individuality, depending blindly on leaders, were little more than the servants of the upper classes. [illustration: fig. .--hunting in the marshes. tomb of ti, saccarah. (from perrot and chipiez.)] the egyptian religion existing in the earliest days was a worship of the personified elements of nature. each element had its particular controlling god, worshipped as such. later on in egyptian history the number of gods was increased, and each city had its trinity of godlike protectors symbolized by the propylæa of the temples. future life was a certainty, provided that the ka, or spirit, did not fall a prey to typhon, the god of evil, during the long wait in the tomb for the judgment-day. the belief that the spirit rested in the body until finally transported to the aaln fields (the islands of the blest, afterward adopted by the greeks) was one reason for the careful preservation of the body by mummifying processes. life itself was not more important than death. hence the imposing ceremonies of the funeral and burial, the elaborate richness of the tomb and its wall paintings. perhaps the first egyptian art arose through religious observance, and certainly the first known to us was sepulchral. art motives: the centre of the egyptian system was the monarch and his supposed relatives, the gods. they arrogated to themselves the chief thought of life, and the aim of the great bulk of the art was to glorify monarchy or deity. the massive buildings, still standing to-day in ruins, were built as the dwelling-places of kings or the sanctuaries of gods. the towers symbolized deity, the sculptures and paintings recited the functional duties of presiding spirits, or the pharaoh's looks and acts. almost everything about the public buildings in painting and sculpture was symbolic illustration, picture-written history--written with a chisel and brush, written large that all might read. there was no other safe way of preserving record. there were no books; the papyrus sheet, used extensively, was frail, and the egyptians evidently wished their buildings, carvings, and paintings to last into eternity. so they wrought in and upon stone. the same hieroglyphic character of their papyrus writings appeared cut and colored on the palace walls, and above them and beside them the pictures ran as vignettes explanatory of the text. in a less ostentatious way the tombs perpetuated history in a similar manner, reciting the domestic scenes from the life of the individual, as the temples and palaces the religious and monarchical scenes. in one form or another it was all record of egyptian life, but this was not the only motive of their painting. the temples and palaces, designed to shut out light and heat, were long squares of heavy stone, gloomy as the cave from which their plan may have originated. carving and color were used to brighten and enliven the interior. the battles, the judgment scenes, the pharaoh playing at draughts with his wives, the religious rites and ceremonies, were all given with brilliant arbitrary color, surrounded oftentimes by bordering bands of green, yellow, and blue. color showed everywhere from floor to ceiling. even the explanatory hieroglyphic texts ran in colors, lining the walls and winding around the cylinders of stone. the lotus capitals, the frieze and architrave, all glowed with bright hues, and often the roof ceiling was painted in blue and studded with golden stars. [illustration: fig. .--portrait of queen taia. (from perrot and chipiez.)] all this shows a decorative motive in egyptian painting, and how constantly this was kept in view may be seen at times in the arrangement of the different scenes, the large ones being placed in the middle of the wall and the smaller ones going at the top and bottom, to act as a frieze and dado. there were, then, two leading motives for egyptian painting; ( ) history, monarchical, religious, or domestic; and ( ) decoration. technical methods: man in the early stages of civilization comprehends objects more by line than by color or light. the figure is not studied in itself, but in its sun-shadow or silhouette. the egyptian hieroglyph represented objects by outlines or arbitrary marks and conveyed a simple meaning without circumlocution. the egyptian painting was substantially an enlargement of the hieroglyph. there was no attempt to place objects in the setting which they hold in nature. perspective and light-and-shade were disregarded. objects, of whatever nature, were shown in flat profile. in the human figure the shoulders were square, the hips slight, the legs and arms long, the feet and hands flat. the head, legs, and arms were shown in profile, while the chest and eye were twisted to show the flat front view. there are only one or two full-faced figures among the remains of egyptian painting. after the outline was drawn the enclosed space was filled in with plain color. in the absence of high light, or composed groups, prominence was given to an important figure, like that of the king, by making it much larger than the other figures. this may be seen in any of the battle-pieces of rameses ii., in which the monarch in his chariot is a giant where his followers are mere pygmies. in the absence of perspective, receding figures of men or of horses were given by multiplied outlines of legs, or heads, placed before, or after, or raised above one another. flat water was represented by zigzag lines, placed as it were upon a map, one tree symbolized a forest, and one fortification a town. these outline drawings were not realistic in any exact sense. the face was generally expressionless, the figure, evidently done from memory or pattern, did not reveal anatomical structure, but was nevertheless graceful, and in the representation of animals the sense of motion was often given with much truth. the color was usually an attempt at nature, though at times arbitrary or symbolic, as in the case of certain gods rendered with blue, yellow, or green skins. the backgrounds were always of flat color, arbitrary in hue, and decorative only. the only composition was a balance by numbers, and the processional scenes rose tier upon tier above one another in long panels. [illustration: fig. .--offerings to the dead, wall painting, eighteenth dynasty. (from perrot and chipiez.)] such work would seem almost ludicrous did we not keep in mind its reason for existence. it was, first, symbolic story-telling art, and secondly, architectural decoration. as a story-teller it was effective because of its simplicity and directness. as decoration, the repeated expressionless face and figure, the arbitrary color, the absence of perspective were not inappropriate then nor are they now. egyptian painting never was free from the decorative motive. wall painting was little more than an adjunct of architecture, and probably grew out of sculpture. the early statues were colored, and on the wall the chisel, like the flint of primitive man, cut the outline of the figure. at first only this cut was filled with color, producing what has been called the koil-anaglyphic. in the final stage the line was made by drawing with chalk or coal on prepared stucco, and the color, mixed with gum-water (a kind of distemper), was applied to the whole enclosed space. substantially the same method of painting was used upon other materials, such as wood, mummy cartonnage, papyrus; and in all its thousands of years of existence egyptian painting never advanced upon or varied to any extent this one method of work. historic periods: egyptian art may be traced back as far as the third or fourth memphitic dynasty of kings. the date is uncertain, but it is somewhere near , b.c. the seat of empire, at that time, was located at memphis in lower egypt, and it is among the remains of this memphitic period that the earliest and best painting is found. in fact, all egyptian art, literature, language, civilization, seem at their highest point of perfection in the period farthest removed from us. in that earliest age the finest portrait busts were cut, and the painting, found chiefly in the tombs and on the mummy-cases, was the attempted realistic with not a little of spirited individuality. the figure was rather short and squat, the face a little squarer than the conventional type afterward adopted, the action better, and the positions, attitudes, and gestures more truthful to local characteristics. the domestic scenes--hunting, fishing, tilling, grazing--were all shown in the one flat, planeless, shadowless method of representation, but with better drawing and color and more variety than appeared later on. still, more or less conventional types were used, even in this early time, and continued to be used all through egyptian history. [illustration: fig. .--vignette on papyrus, louvre. (from perrot and chipiez.)] the memphitic period comes down to the eleventh dynasty. in the fifteenth dynasty comes the invasion of the so-called hyksos, or shepherd kings. little is known of the hyksos, and, in painting, the next stage is the theban period, which, culminated in thebes, in upper egypt, with rameses ii., of the nineteenth dynasty. painting had then changed somewhat both in subject and character. the time was one of great temple and palace building, and, though the painting of _genre_ subjects in tombs and sepulchres continued, the general body of art became more monumental and subservient to architecture. painting was put to work on temple and palace-walls, depicting processional scenes, either religious or monarchical, and vast in extent. the figure, too, changed slightly. it became longer, slighter, with a pronounced nose, thick lips, and long eye. from constant repetition, rather than any set rule or canon, this figure grew conventional, and was reproduced as a type in a mechanical and unvarying manner for hundreds of years. it was, in fact, only a variation from the original egyptian type seen in the tombs of the earliest dynasties. there was a great quantity of art produced during the theban period, and of a graceful, decorative character, but it was rather monotonous by repetition and filled with established mannerisms. the egyptian really never was a free worker, never an artist expressing himself; but, for his day, a skilled mechanic following time-honored example. in the saitic period the seat of empire was once more in lower egypt, and art had visibly declined with the waning power of the country. all spontaneity seemed to have passed out of it, it was repetition of repetition by poor workmen, and the simplicity and purity of the technic were corrupted by foreign influences. with the alexandrian epoch egyptian art came in contact with greek methods, and grew imitative of the new art, to the detriment of its own native character. eventually it was entirely lost in the art of the greco-roman world. it was never other than conventional, produced by a method almost as unvarying as that of the hieroglyphic writing, and in this very respect characteristic and reflective of the unchanging orientals. technically it had its shortcomings, but it conveyed the proper information to its beholders and was serviceable and graceful decoration for egyptian days. extant paintings: the temples, palaces, and tombs of egypt still reveal egyptian painting in almost as perfect a state as when originally executed; the ghizeh museum has many fine examples; and there are numerous examples in the museums at turin, paris, berlin, london, new york, and boston. an interesting collection belongs to the new york historical society, and some of the latest "finds" of the egypt exploration fund are in the boston museum. chapter ii. chaldÆo-assyrian painting. books recommended: babelon, _manual of oriental antiquities_; botta, _monument de ninive_; budge, _babylonian life and history_; duncker, _history of antiquity_; layard, _nineveh and its remains_; layard, _discoveries among ruins of nineveh and babylon_; lenormant, _manual of the ancient history of the east_; loftus, _travels in chaldæa and susiana_; maspero, _life in ancient egypt and assyria_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in chaldæa and assyria_; place, _ninive et l'assyrie_; sayce, _assyria: its palaces, priests, and people_. tigris-euphrates civilization: in many respects the civilization along the tigris-euphrates was like that along the nile. both valleys were settled by primitive peoples, who grew rapidly by virtue of favorable climate and soil, and eventually developed into great nations headed by kings absolute in power. the king was the state in egypt, and in assyria the monarch was even more dominant and absolute. for the pharaohs shared architecture, painting, and sculpture with the gods; but the sargonids seem to have arrogated the most of these things to themselves alone. religion was perhaps as real in assyria as in egypt, but it was less apparent in art. certain genii, called gods or demons, appear in the bas-reliefs, but it is not yet settled whether they represent gods or merely legendary heroes or monsters of fable. there was no great demonstration of religion by form and color, as in egypt. the assyrians were semites, and religion with them was more a matter of the spirit than the senses--an image in the mind rather than an image in metal or stone. the temple was not eloquent with the actions and deeds of the gods, and even the tomb, that fruitful source of art in egypt, was in chaldæa undecorated and in assyria unknown. no one knows what the assyrians did with their dead, unless they carried them back to the fatherland of the race, the persian gulf region, as the native tribes of mesopotamia do to this day. art motives: as in egypt, there were two motives for art--illustration and decoration. religion, as we have seen, hardly obtained at all. the king attracted the greatest attention. the countless bas-reliefs, cut on soft stone slabs, were pages from the history of the monarch in peace and war, in council, in the chase, or in processional rites. beside him and around him his officers came in for a share of the background glory. occasionally the common people had representations of their lives and their pursuits, but the main subject of all the valley art was the king and his doings. sculpture and painting were largely illustrations accompanying a history written in the ever-present cuneiform characters. [illustration: fig. .--enamelled brick. nimroud. (from perrot and chipiez.)] but, while serving as history, like the picture-writings of the egyptians, this illustration was likewise decoration, and was designed with that end in view. rows upon rows of partly colored bas-reliefs were arranged like a dado along the palace-wall, and above them wall-paintings, or glazed tiles in patterns, carried out the color scheme. almost all of the color has now disappeared, but it must have been brilliant at one time, and was doubtless in harmony with the architecture. both painting and sculpture were subordinate to and dependent upon architecture. palace-building was the chief pursuit, and the other arts were called in mainly as adjuncts--ornamental records of the king who built. [illustration: fig. .--enamelled brick. khorsabad. (from perrot and chipiez.)] the type, form, color: there were only two distinct faces in assyrian art--one with and one without a beard. neither of them was a portrait except as attributes or inscriptions designated. the type was unendingly repeated. women appeared in only one or two isolated cases, and even these are doubtful. the warrior, a strong, coarse-membered, heavily muscled creation, with a heavy, expressionless, semitic face, appeared everywhere. the figure was placed in profile, with eye and bust twisted to show the front view, and the long feet projected one beyond the other, as in the nile pictures. this was the assyrian ideal of strength, dignity, and majesty, established probably in the early ages, and repeated for centuries with few characteristic variations. the figure was usually given in motion, walking, or riding, and had little of that grace seen in egyptian painting, but in its place a great deal of rude strength. in modelling, the human form was not so knowingly rendered as the animal. the long eastern clothing probably prevented the close study of the figure. this failure in anatomical exactness was balanced in part by minute details in the dress and accessories, productive of a rich ornamental effect. hard stone was not found in the mesopotamian regions. temples were built of burnt brick, bas-reliefs were made upon alabaster slabs and heightened by coloring, and painting was largely upon tiles, with mineral paints, afterward glazed by fire. these glazed brick or tiles, with figured designs, were fixed upon the walls, arches, and archivolts by bitumen mortar, and made up the first mosaics of which we have record. there was a further painting upon plaster in distemper, of which some few traces remain. it did not differ in design from the bas-reliefs or the tile mosaics. the subjects used were the assyrian type, shown somewhat slighter in painting than in sculpture, animals, birds, and other objects; but they were obviously not attempts at nature. the color was arbitrary, not natural, and there was little perspective, light-and-shade, or relief. heavy outline bands of color appeared about the object, and the prevailing hues were yellow and blue. there was perhaps less symbolism and more direct representation in assyria than in egypt. there was also more feeling for perspective and space, as shown in such objects as water and in the mountain landscapes of the late bas-reliefs; but, in the main, there was no advance upon egypt. there was a difference which was not necessarily a development. painting, as we know the art to-day, was not practised in chaldæa-assyria. it was never free from a servitude to architecture and sculpture; it was hampered by conventionalities; and the painter was more artisan than artist, having little freedom or individuality. [illustration: fig. .--wild ass. bas-relief, british museum. (from perrot and chipiez.)] historic periods: chaldæa, of unknown antiquity, with babylon its capital, is accounted the oldest nation in the tigris-euphrates valley, and, so far as is known, it was an original nation producing an original art. its sculpture (especially in the tello heads), and presumably its painting, were more realistic and individual than any other in the valley. assyria coming later, and the heir of chaldæa, was the second empire: there are two distinct periods of this second empire, the first lasting from , b.c., down to about b.c., and in art showing a great profusion of bas-reliefs. the second closed about b.c., and in art produced much glazed-tile work and a more elaborate sculpture and painting. after this the chaldæan provinces gained the ascendency again, and babylon, under nebuchadnezzar, became the first city of asia. but the new babylon did not last long. it fell before cyrus and the persians b.c. again, as in egypt, the earliest art appears the purest and the simplest, and the years of chaldæo-assyrian history known to us carry a record of change rather than of progress in art. art remains: the most valuable collections of chaldæo-assyrian art are to be found in the louvre and the british museum. the other large museums of europe have collections in this department, but all of them combined are little compared with the treasures that still lie buried in the mounds of the tigris-euphrates valley. excavations have been made at mugheir, warka, khorsabad, kouyunjik, and elsewhere, but many difficulties have thus far rendered systematic work impossible. the complete history of chaldæo-assyria and its art has yet to be written. persian painting. books recommended: as before cited, babelon, duncker, lenormant, ely; dieulafoy, _l'art antique de la perse_; flandin et coste, _voyage en perse_; justi, _geschichte des alten persiens_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in persia_. history and art motives: the medes and persians were the natural inheritors of assyrian civilization, but they did not improve their birthright. the medes soon lost their power. cyrus conquered them, and established the powerful persian monarchy upheld for two hundred years by cambyses, darius, and xerxes. substantially the same conditions surrounded the persians as the assyrians--that is, so far as art production was concerned. their conceptions of life were similar, and their use of art was for historic illustration of kingly doings and ornamental embellishment of kingly palaces. both sculpture and painting were accessories of architecture. of median art nothing remains. the persians left the record, but it was not wholly of their own invention, nor was it very extensive or brilliant. it had little originality about it, and was really only an echo of assyria. the sculptors and painters copied their assyrian predecessors, repeating at persepolis what had been better told at nineveh. [illustration: fig. .--lions' frieze, susa. (from perrot and chipiez.)] types and technic: the same subjects, types, and technical methods in bas-relief, tile, and painting on plaster were followed under darius as under shalmanezer. but the imitation was not so good as the original. the warrior, the winged monsters, the animals all lost something of their air of brutal defiance and their strength of modelling. heroes still walked in procession along the bas-reliefs and glazed tiles, but the figure was smaller, more effeminate, the hair and beard were not so long, the drapery fell in slightly indicated folds at times, and there was a profusion of ornamental detail. some of this detail and some modifications in the figure showed the influence of foreign nations other than the greek; but, in the main, persian art followed in the footsteps of assyrian art. it was the last reflection of mesopotamian splendor. for with the conquest of persia by alexander the book of expressive art in that valley was closed, and, under islam, it remains closed to this day. art remains: persian painting is something about which little is known because little remains. the louvre contains some reconstructed friezes made in mosaics of stamped brick and square tile, showing figures of lions and a number of archers. the coloring is particularly rich, and may give some idea of persian pigments. aside from the chief museums of europe the bulk of persian art is still seen half-buried in the ruins of persepolis and elsewhere. phoenician, cypriote, and asia minor painting. books recommended: as before cited, babelon, duncker, ely, girard, lenormant; cesnola, _cyprus_; cesnola, _cypriote antiquities in metropolitan museum of art_; kenrick, _phoenicia_; movers, _die phonizier_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in phoenicia and cyprus_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in sardinia, judea, syria and asia minor_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in phrygia, lydia, etc._; renan, _mission de phénicie_. the trading nations: the coast-lying nations of the eastern mediterranean were hardly original or creative nations in a large sense. they were at different times the conquered dependencies of egypt, assyria, persia, greece, and their lands were but bridges over which armies passed from east to west or from west to east. located on the mediterranean between the great civilizations of antiquity they naturally adapted themselves to circumstances, and became the middlemen, the brokers, traders, and carriers of the ancient world. their lands were not favorable to agriculture, but their sea-coasts rendered commerce easy and lucrative. they made a kingdom of the sea, and their means of livelihood were gathered from it. there is no record that the egyptians ever traversed the mediterranean, the assyrians were not sailors, the greeks had not yet arisen, and so probably phoenicia and her neighbors had matters their own way. colonies and trading stations were established at cyprus, carthage, sardinia, the greek islands, and the greek mainland, and not only eastern goods but eastern ideas were thus carried to the west. [illustration: fig. .--painted head from edessa. (from perrot and chipiez.)] politically, socially, and religiously these small middle nations were inconsequential. they simply adapted their politics or faith to the nation that for the time had them under its heel. what semi-original religion they possessed was an amalgamation of the religions of other nations, and their gods of bronze, terra-cotta, and enamel were irreverently sold in the market like any other produce. art motives and methods: building, carving, and painting were practised among the coastwise nations, but upon no such extensive scale as in either egypt or assyria. the mere fact that they were people of the sea rather than of the land precluded extensive or concentrated development. politically phoenicia was divided among five cities, and her artistic strength was distributed in a similar manner. such art as was produced showed the religious and decorative motives, and in its spiritless materialistic make-up, the commercial motive. it was at the best a hybrid, mongrel art, borrowed from many sources and distributed to many points of the compass. at one time it had a strong assyrian cast, at another an egyptian cast, and after greece arose it accepted a retroactive influence from there. it is impossible to characterize the phoenician type, and even the cypriote type, though more pronounced, varies so with the different influences that it has no very striking individuality. technically both the phoenician and cypriote were fair workmen in bronze and stone, and doubtless taught many technical methods to the early greeks, besides making known to them those deities afterward adopted under the names of aphrodite, adonis, and heracles, and familiarizing them with the art forms of egypt and assyria. [illustration: fig. .--cypriote vase decoration. (from perrot and chipiez.)] as for painting, there was undoubtedly figured decoration upon walls of stone and plaster, but there is not enough left to us from all the small nations like phoenicia, judea, cyprus, and the kingdoms of asia minor, put together, to patch up a disjointed history. the first lands to meet the spoiler, their very ruins have perished. all that there is of painting comes to us in broken potteries and color traces on statuary. the remains of sculpture and architecture are of course better preserved. none of this intermediate art holds much rank by virtue of its inherent worth. it is its influence upon the west--the ideas, subjects, and methods it imparted to the greeks--that gives it importance in art history. art remains: in painting chiefly the vases in the metropolitan museum, new york, the louvre, british and berlin museums. these give a poor and incomplete idea of the painting in asia minor, phoenicia and her colonies. the terra-cottas, figurines in bronze, and sculptures can be studied to more advantage. the best collection of cypriote antiquities is in the metropolitan museum, new york. a new collection of judaic art has been recently opened in the louvre. chapter iii. greek painting. books recommended: baumeister, _denkmäler des klassischen altertums_--article "_malerei_;" birch, _history of ancient pottery_; brunn, _geschichte der griechischen künstler_; collignon, _mythologie figurée de la grèce_; collignon, _manuel d'archaeologie grecque_; cros et henry, _l'encaustique et les autres procédés de peinture chez les anciens_; girard, _la peinture antique_; murray, _handbook of greek archæology_; overbeck, _antiken schriftquellen zur geschichte der bildenen kunste bie den griechen_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in greece_; woerman, _die landschaft in der kunst der antiken volker_; _see also books on etruscan and roman painting_. greece and the greeks: the origin of the greek race is not positively known. it is reasonably supposed that the early settlers in greece came from the region of asia minor, either across the hellespont or the sea, and populated the greek islands and the mainland. when this was done has been matter of much conjecture. the early history is lost, but art remains show that in the period before homer the greeks were an established race with habits and customs distinctly individual. egyptian and asiatic influences are apparent in their art at this early time, but there is, nevertheless, the mark of a race peculiarly apart from all the races of the older world. the development of the greek people was probably helped by favorable climate and soil, by commerce and conquest, by republican institutions and political faith, by freedom of mind and of body; but all these together are not sufficient to account for the keenness of intellect, the purity of taste, and the skill in accomplishment which showed in every branch of greek life. the cause lies deeper in the fundamental make-up of the greek mind, and its eternal aspiration toward mental, moral, and physical ideals. perfect mind, perfect body, perfect conduct in this world were sought-for ideals. the greeks aspired to completeness. the course of education and race development trained them physically as athletes and warriors, mentally as philosophers, law-makers, poets, artists, morally as heroes whose lives and actions emulated those of the gods, and were almost perfect for this world. art motives: neither the monarchy nor the priesthood commanded the services of the artist in greece, as in assyria and egypt. there was no monarch in an oriental sense, and the chosen leaders of the greeks never, until the late days, arrogated art to themselves. it was something for all the people. in religion there was a pantheon of gods established and worshipped from the earliest ages, but these gods were more like epitomes of greek ideals than spiritual beings. they were the personified virtues of the greeks, exemplars of perfect living; and in worshipping them the greek was really worshipping order, conduct, repose, dignity, perfect life. the gods and heroes, as types of moral and physical qualities, were continually represented in an allegorical or legendary manner. athene represented noble warfare, zeus was majestic dignity and power, aphrodite love, phoebus song, niké triumph, and all the lesser gods, nymphs, and fauns stood for beauties of nature or of life. the great bulk of greek architecture, sculpture, and painting was put forth to honor these gods or heroes, and by so doing the artist repeated the national ideals and honored himself. the first motive of greek art, then, was to praise hellas and the hellenic view of life. in part it was a religious motive, but with little of that spiritual significance and belief which ruled in egypt, and later on in italy. [illustration: fig. .--attic grave painting. (from baumeister.)] a second and ever-present motive in greek painting was decoration. this appears in the tomb pottery of the earliest ages, and was carried on down to the latest times. vase painting, wall painting, tablet and sculpture painting were all done with a decorative motive in view. even the easel or panel pictures had some decorative effect about them, though they were primarily intended to convey ideas other than those of form and color. subjects and methods: the gods and heroes, their lives and adventures, formed the early subjects of greek painting. certain themes taken from the "iliad" and the "odyssey" were as frequently shown as, afterward, the annunciations in italian painting. the traditional subjects, the centaurs and lapiths, the amazon war, theseus and ariadne, perseus and andromeda, were frequently depicted. humanity and actual greek life came in for its share. single figures, still-life, _genre_, caricature, all were shown, and as painting neared the alexandrian age a semi-realistic portraiture came into vogue. the materials employed by the greeks and their methods of work are somewhat difficult to ascertain, because there are few greek pictures, except those on the vases, left to us. from the confusing accounts of the ancient writers, the vases, some greek slabs in italy, and the roman paintings imitative of the greek, we may gain a general idea. the early greek work was largely devoted to pottery and tomb decoration, in which much in manner and method was borrowed from asia, phoenicia, and egypt. later on, painting appeared in flat outline on stone or terra-cotta slabs, sometimes representing processional scenes, as in egypt, and doubtless done in a hybrid fresco-work similar to the egyptian method. wall paintings were done in fresco and distemper, probably upon the walls themselves, and also upon panels afterward let into the wall. encaustic painting (color mixed with wax upon the panel and fused with a hot spatula) came in with the sikyonian school. it is possible that the oil medium and canvas were known, but not probable that either was ever used extensively. there is no doubt about the greeks being expert draughtsmen, though this does not appear until late in history. they knew the outlines well, and drew them with force and grace. that they modelled in strong relief is more questionable. light-and-shade was certainly employed in the figure, but not in any modern way. perspective in both figures and landscape was used; but the landscape was at first symbolic and rarely got beyond a decorative background for the figure. greek composition we know little about, but may infer that it was largely a series of balances, a symmetrical adjustment of objects to fill a given space with not very much freedom allowed to the artist. in atmosphere, sunlight, color, and those peculiarly sensuous charms that belong to painting, there is no reason to believe that the greeks approached the moderns. their interest was chiefly centred in the human figure. landscape, with its many beauties, was reserved for modern hands to disclose. color was used in abundance, without doubt, but it was probably limited to the leading hues, with little of that refinement or delicacy known in painting to-day. art history: for the history of greek painting we have to rely upon the words of aristotle, plutarch, pliny, quintilian, lucian, cicero, pausanias. their accounts appear to be partly substantiated by the vase paintings, and such few slabs and roman frescos as remain to us. there is no consecutive narrative. the story of painting originating from a girl seeing the wall-silhouette of her lover and filling it in with color, and the conjecture of painting having developed from embroidery work, have neither of them a foundation in fact. the earliest settlers of greece probably learned painting from the phoenicians, and employed it, after the egyptian, assyrian, and phoenician manner, on pottery, terra-cotta slabs, and rude sculpture. it developed slower than sculpture perhaps; but were there anything of importance left to judge from, we should probably find that it developed in much the same manner as sculpture. down to b.c. there was little more than outline filled in with flat monochromatic paint and with a decorative effect similar, perhaps, to that of the vase paintings. after that date come the more important names of artists mentioned by the ancient writers. it is difficult to assign these artists to certain periods or schools, owing to the insufficient knowledge we have about them. the following classifications and assignments may, therefore, in some instances, be questioned. [illustration: fig. .--muse of cortona, cortona museum.] older attic school: the first painter of rank was polygnotus (fl. - b.c.), sometimes called the founder of greek painting, because perhaps he was one of the first important painters in greece proper. he seems to have been a good outline draughtsman, producing figures in profile, with little attempt at relief, perspective, or light-and-shade. his colors were local tones, but probably more like nature and more varied than anything in egyptian painting. landscapes, buildings, and the like, were given in a symbolic manner. portraiture was a generalization, and in figure compositions the names of the principal characters were written near them for purposes of identification. the most important works of polygnotus were the wall paintings for the assembly room of the knidians at delphi. the subjects related to the trojan war and the adventures of ulysses. opposed to this flat, unrelieved style was the work of a follower, agatharchos of samos (fl. end of fifth century b.c.). he was a scene-painter, and by the necessities of his craft was led toward nature. stage effect required a study of perspective, variation of light, and a knowledge of the laws of optics. the slight outline drawing of his predecessor was probably superseded by effective masses to create illusion. this was a distinct advance toward nature. apollodorus (fl. end of fifth century b.c.) applied the principles of agatharchos to figures. according to plutarch, he was the first to discover variation in the shade of colors, and, according to pliny, the first master to paint objects as they appeared in nature. he had the title of _skiagraphos_ (shadow-painter), and possibly gave a semi-natural background with perspective. this was an improvement, but not a perfection. it is not likely that the backgrounds were other than conventional settings for the figure. even these were not at once accepted by the painters of the period, but were turned to profit in the hands of the followers. after the peloponnesian wars the art of painting seems to have flourished elsewhere than in athens, owing to the athenian loss of supremacy. other schools sprang up in various districts, and one to call for considerable mention by the ancient writers was the ionian school, which in reality had existed from the sixth century. the painters of this school advanced upon the work of apollodorus as regards realistic effect. zeuxis, whose fame was at its height during the peloponnesian wars, seems to have regarded art as a matter of illusion, if one may judge by the stories told of his work. the tale of his painting a bunch of grapes so like reality that the birds came to peck at them proves either that the painter's motive was deception, or that the narrator of the tale picked out the deceptive part of his picture for admiration. he painted many subjects, like helen, penelope, and many _genre_ pieces on panel. quintilian says he originated light-and-shade, an achievement credited by plutarch to apollodorus. it is probable that he advanced light-and-shade. in illusion he seems to have been outdone by a rival, parrhasios of ephesus. zeuxis deceived the birds with painted grapes, but parrhasios deceived zeuxis with a painted curtain. there must have been knowledge of color, modelling, and relief to have produced such an illusion, but the aim was petty and unworthy of the skill. there was evidently an advance technically, but some decline in the true spirit of art. parrhasios finally suffered defeat at the hands of timanthes of kythnos, by a contest between ajax and ulysses for the arms of achilles. timanthes's famous work was the sacrifice of iphigenia, of which there is a supposed pompeian copy. sikyonian school: this school seems to have sprung up after the peloponnesian wars, and was perhaps founded by eupompos, a contemporary of parrhasios. his pupil pamphilos brought the school to maturity. he apparently reacted from the deception motive of zeuxis and parrhasios, and taught academic methods of drawing, composing, and painting. he was also credited with bringing into use the encaustic method of painting, though it was probably known before his time. his pupil, pausias, possessed some freedom of creation in _genre_ and still-life subjects. pliny says he had great technical skill, as shown in the foreshortening of a black ox by variations of the black tones, and he obtained some fame by a figure of methè (intoxication) drinking from a glass, the face being seen through the glass. again the motives seem trifling, but again advancing technical power is shown. [illustration: fig. .--odyssey landscape, vatican. (from woltmann and woermann.)] theban-attic school: this was the fourth school of greek painting. nikomachus (fl. about b.c.), a facile painter, was at its head. his pupil, aristides, painted pathetic scenes, and was perhaps as remarkable for teaching art to the celebrated euphranor (fl. b.c.) as for his own productions. euphranor had great versatility in the arts, and in painting was renowned for his pictures of the olympian gods at athens. his successor, nikias (fl. - b.c.), was a contemporary of praxiteles, the sculptor, and was possibly influenced by him in the painting of female figures. he was a technician of ability in composition, light-and-shade, and relief, and was praised for the roundness of his figures. he also did some tinting of sculpture, and is said to have tinted some of the works of praxiteles. late painters: contemporary with and following these last-named artists were some celebrated painters who really belong to the beginning of the hellenistic period ( b.c.). at their head was apelles, the painter of philip and alexander, and the climax of greek painting. he painted many gods, heroes, and allegories, with much "gracefulness," as pliny puts it. the italian botticelli, seventeen hundred years after him, tried to reproduce his celebrated calumny, from lucian's description of it. his chief works were his aphrodite anadyomene, carried to rome by augustus, and the portrait of alexander with the thunder-bolt. he was undoubtedly a superior man technically. protogenes rivalled him, if we are to believe petronius, by the foam on a dog's mouth and the wonder in the eye of a startled pheasant. aëtion, the painter of alexander's marriage to roxana, was not able to turn the aim of painting from this deceptive illusion. after alexander, painting passed still further into the imitative and the theatrical, and when not grandiloquent was infinitely little over cobbler-shops and huckster-stalls. landscape for purposes of decorative composition, and floor painting, done in mosaic, came in during the time of the diadochi. there were no great names in the latter days, and such painters as still flourished passed on to rome, there to produce copies of the works of their predecessors. it is hard to reconcile the unworthy motive attributed to greek painting by the ancient writers with the high aim of greek sculpture. it is easier to think (and it is more probable) that the writers knew very little about art, and that they missed the spirit of greek painting in admiring its insignificant details. that painting technically was at a high point of perfection as regards the figure, even the imitative roman works indicate, and it can hardly be doubted that in spirit it was at one time equally strong. extant remains: there are few wall or panel pictures of greek times in existence. four slabs of stone in the naples museum, with red outline drawings of theseus, silenos, and some figures with masks, are probably greek work from which the color has scaled. a number of roman copies of greek frescos and mosaics are in the vatican, capitoline, and naples museums. all these pieces show an imitation of late hellenistic art--not the best period of greek development. the vases: the history of greek painting in its remains is traced with some accuracy in the decorative figures upon the vases. the first ware--dating before the seventh century b.c.--seems free from oriental influences in its designs. the vase is reddish, the decoration is in tiers, bands, or zig-zags, usually in black or brown, without the human figure. the second kind of ware dates from about the middle of the seventh century. it shows meander, wave, and other designs, and is called the "geometrical" style. later on animals, rosettes, and vegetation appear that show assyrian influence. the decoration is profuse and the rude human figure subordinate to it. the design is in black or dark-brown, on a cream-colored slip. the third kind of ware is the archaic or "strong" style. it dates from b.c. to the peloponnesian wars, and is marked by black figures upon a yellow or red ground. white and purple are also used to define flesh, hair, and white objects. the figure is stiff, the action awkward, the composition is freer than before, but still conventional. the subjects are the gods, demi-gods, and heroes in scenes from their lives and adventures. the fourth kind of ware dates down into the hellenistic age and shows red figures surrounded by a black ground. the figure, the drawing, the composition are better than at any other period and suggest a high excellence in other forms of greek painting. after alexander, vase painting seems to have shared the fate of wall and panel painting. there was a striving for effect, with ornateness and extravagance, and finally the art passed out entirely. there was an establishment founded in southern italy which imitated the greek and produced the apulian ware, but the romans gave little encouragement to vase painting, and about b.c. it disappeared. almost all the museums of the world have collections of greek vases. the british, berlin, and paris collections are perhaps as complete as any. [illustration: fig. .--amphore, lower italy.] etruscan and roman painting. books recommended: see bibliography of greek painting and also dennis, _cities and cemeteries of etruria_; graul, _die portratgemalde aus den grabstatten des faiyum_; helbig, _die wandgemalde campaniens_; helbig, _untersuchungen uber die campanische wandmalerei_; mau, _geschichte der decorativen wandmalerei in pompeii_; martha, _l'archéologie Étrusque et romaine_. etruscan painting: painting in etruria has not a great deal of interest for us just here. it was largely decorative and sepulchral in motive, and was employed in the painting of tombs, and upon vases and other objects placed in the tombs. it had a native way of expressing itself, which at first was neither greek nor oriental, and yet a reminder of both. technically it was not well done. before b.c. it was almost childish in the drawing. after that date the figures were better, though short and squat. those on the vases usually show outline drawing filled in with dull browns and yellows. finally there was a mingling of etruscan with greek elements, and an imitation of greek methods. it was at best a hybrid art, but of some importance from an archæological point of view. roman painting: roman art is an appendix to the art history of greece. it originated little in painting, and was content to perpetuate the traditions of greece in an imitative way. what was worse, it copied the degeneracy of greece by following the degenerate hellenistic paintings. in motive and method it was substantially the same work as that of the greeks under the diadochi. the subjects, again, were often taken from greek story, though there were roman historical scenes, _genre_ pieces, and many portraits. [illustration: fig. .--ritual scene, palatine wall painting. (from woltmann and woermann.)] in the beginning of the empire tablet or panel painting was rather abandoned in favor of mural decoration. that is to say, figures or groups were painted in fresco on the wall and then surrounded by geometrical, floral, or architectural designs to give the effect of a panel let into the wall. thus painting assumed a more decorative nature. vitruvius says in effect that in the early days nature was followed in these wall paintings, but later on they became ornate and overdone, showing many unsupported architectural façades and impossible decorative framings. this can be traced in the roman and pompeian frescos. there were four kinds of these wall paintings. ( .) those that covered all the walls of a room and did away with dado, frieze, and the like, such as figures with large landscape backgrounds showing villas and trees. ( .) small paintings separated or framed by pilasters. ( .) panel pictures let into the wall or painted with that effect. ( .) single figures with architectural backgrounds. the single figures were usually the best. they had grace of line and motion and all the truth to nature that decoration required. some of the backgrounds were flat tints of red or black against which the figure was placed. in the larger pieces the composition was rather rambling and disjointed, and the color harsh. in light-and-shade and relief they probably followed the greek example. [illustration: fig. .--portrait-head. (from fayoum, graf col.)] roman painters: during the first five centuries rome was between the influences of etruria and greece. the first paintings in rome of which there is record were done in the temple of ceres by the greek artists of lower italy, gorgasos and damophilos (fl. b.c.). they were doubtless somewhat like the vase paintings--profile work, without light, shade, or perspective. at the time and after alexander greek influence held sway. fabius pictor (fl. about b.c.) is one of the celebrated names in historical painting, and later on pacuvius, metrodorus, and serapion are mentioned. in the last century of the republic, sopolis, dionysius, and antiochus gabinius excelled in portraiture. ancient painting really ends for us with the destruction of pompeii ( a.d.), though after that there were interesting portraits produced, especially those found in the fayoum (egypt).[ ] [footnote : see scribner's magazine, vol. v., p. , new series.] extant remains: the frescos that are left to us to-day are largely the work of mechanical decorators rather than creative artists. they are to be seen in rome, in the baths of titus, the vatican, livia's villa, farnesina, rospigliosi, and barberini palaces, baths of caracalla, capitoline and lateran museums, in the houses of excavated pompeii, and the naples museum. besides these there are examples of roman fresco and distemper in the louvre and other european museums. examples of etruscan painting are to be seen in the vatican, cortona, the louvre, the british museum and elsewhere. chapter iv. italian painting. early christian and mediÆval period. - . books recommended: bayet, _l'art byzantin_; bennett, _christian archæology_; bosio, _la roma sotterranea_; burckhardt, _the cicerone, an art guide to painting in italy, ed. by crowe_; crowe and cavalcaselle, _new history of painting in italy_; de rossi, _la roma sotterranea cristiana_; de rossi, _bullettino di archeologia cristiana_; didron, _christian iconography_; eastlake (kügler's), _handbook of painting--the italian schools_; garrucci, _storia dell' arte cristiana_; gerspach, _la mosaïque_; lafenestre, _la peinture italienne_; lanzi, _history of painting in italy_; lecoy de la marche, _les manuscrits et la miniature_; lindsay, _sketches of the history of christian art_; martigny, _dictionnaire des antiques chrétiennes_; pératé, _l'archeologie chretienne_; reber, _history of mediæval art_; rio, _poetry of christian art_; lethaby, _medieval art_; smith and cheetham, _dictionary of christian antiquities_. rise of christianity: out of the decaying civilization of rome sprang into life that remarkable growth known as christianity. it was not welcomed by the romans. it was scoffed at, scourged, persecuted, and, at one time, nearly exterminated. but its vitality was stronger than that of its persecutor, and when rome declined, christianity utilized the things that were roman, while striving to live for ideas that were christian. [illustration: fig. .--chamber in catacombs, showing wall decoration.] there was no revolt, no sudden change. the christian idea made haste slowly, and at the start it was weighed down with many paganisms. the christians themselves in all save religious faith, were romans, and inherited roman tastes, manners, and methods. but the roman world, with all its classicism and learning, was dying. the decline socially and intellectually was with the christians as well as the romans. there was good reason for it. the times were out of joint, and almost everything was disorganized, worn out, decadent. the military life of the empire had begun to give way to the monastic and feudal life of the church. quarrels and wars between the powers kept life at fever heat. in the fifth century came the inpouring of the goths and huns, and with them the sacking and plunder of the land. misery and squalor, with intellectual blackness, succeeded. art, science, literature, and learning degenerated to mere shadows of their former selves, and a semi-barbarism reigned for five centuries. during all this dark period christian painting struggled on in a feeble way, seeking to express itself. it started roman in form, method, and even, at times, in subject; it ended christian, but not without a long period of gradual transition, during which it was influenced from many sources and underwent many changes. art motives: as in the ancient world, there were two principal motives for painting in early christian times--religion and decoration. religion was the chief motive, but christianity was a very different religion from that of the greeks and romans. the hellenistic faith was a worship of nature, a glorification of humanity, an exaltation of physical and moral perfections. it dealt with the material and the tangible, and greek art appealed directly to the sensuous and earthly nature of mankind. the hebraic faith or christianity was just the opposite of this. it decried the human, the flesh, and the worldly. it would have nothing to do with the beauty of this earth. its hopes were centred upon the life hereafter. the teaching of christ was the humility and the abasement of the human in favor of the spiritual and the divine. where hellenism appealed to the senses, hebraism appealed to the spirit. in art the fine athletic figure, or, for that matter, any figure, was an abomination. the early church fathers opposed it. it was forbidden by the mosaic decalogue and savored of idolatry. but what should take its place in art? how could the new christian ideas be expressed without form? symbolism came in, but it was insufficient. a party in the church rose up in favor of more direct representation. art should be used as an engine of the church to teach the bible to those who could not read. this argument held good, and notwithstanding the opposition of the iconoclastic party painting grew in favor. it lent itself to teaching and came under ecclesiastical domination. as it left the nature of the classic world and loosened its grasp on things tangible it became feeble and decrepit in its form. while it grew in sentiment and religious fervor it lost in bodily vigor and technical ability. [illustration: fig. .--catacomb fresco. crypt of s. cecilia. third century.] for many centuries the religious motive held strong, and art was the servant of the church. it taught the bible truths, but it also embellished and adorned the interiors of the churches. all the frescos, mosaics, and altar-pieces had a decorative motive in their coloring and setting. the church building was a house of refuge for the oppressed, and it was made attractive not only in its lines and proportions but in its ornamentation. hence the two motives of the early work--religious teaching and decoration. subjects and technical methods: there was no distinct judaic or christian type used in the very early art. the painters took their models directly from the roman frescos and marbles. it was the classic figure and the classic costume, and those who produced the painting of the early period were the degenerate painters of the classic world. the figure was rather short and squat, coarse in the joints, hands, and feet, and almost expressionless in the face. christian life at that time was passion-strung, but the faces in art do not show it, for the reason that the roman frescos were the painter's model, not the people of the christian community about him. there was nothing like a realistic presentation at this time. the type alone was given. in the drawing it was not so good as that shown in the roman and pompeian frescos. there was a mechanism about its production, a copying by unskilled hands, a negligence or an ignorance of form that showed everywhere. the coloring, again, was a conventional scheme of flat tints in reddish-browns and bluish-greens, with heavy outline bands of brown. there was little perspective or background, and the figures in panels were separated by vines, leaves, or other ornamental division lines. some relief was given to the figure by the brown outlines. light-and-shade was not well rendered, and composition was formal. the great part of this early work was done in fresco after the roman formula, and was executed on the walls of the catacombs. other forms of art showed in the gilded glasses, in manuscript illumination, and, later, in the mosaics. technically the work begins to decline from the beginning in proportion as painting was removed from the knowledge of the ancient world. about the fifth century the figure grew heavy and stiff. a new type began to show itself. the roman toga was exchanged for the long liturgical garment which hid the proportions of the body, the lines grew hard and dark, a golden nimbus appeared about the head, and the patriarchal in appearance came into art. the youthful orphic face of christ changed to a solemn visage, with large, round eyes, saint-like beard, and melancholy air. the classic qualities were fast disappearing. eastern types and elements were being introduced through byzantium. oriental ornamentation, gold embossing, rich color were doing away with form, perspective, light-and-shade, and background. [illustration: fig. .--christ as good shepherd. mosaic, ravenna, fifth century.] the color was rich and the mechanical workmanship fair for the time, but the figure had become paralytic. it shrouded itself in a sack-like brocaded gown, had no feet at times, and instead of standing on the ground hung in the air. facial expression ran to contorted features, holiness became moroseness, and sadness sulkiness. the flesh was brown, the shadows green-tinted, giving an unhealthy look to the faces. add to this the gold ground (a persian inheritance), the gilded high lights, the absence of perspective, and the composing of groups so that the figures looked piled one upon another instead of receding, and we have the style of painting that prevailed in byzantium and italy from about the ninth to the thirteenth century. nothing of a technical nature was in its favor except the rich coloring and the mechanical adroitness of the fitting. early christian painting: the earliest christian painting appeared on the walls of the catacombs in rome. these were decorated with panels and within the panels were representations of trailing vines, leaves, fruits, flowers, with birds and little genii or cupids. it was painting similar to the roman work, and had no christian significance though in a christian place. not long after, however, the desire to express something of the faith began to show itself in a symbolic way. the cups and the vases became marked with the fish, because the greek spelling of the word "icthus" gave the initials of the christian confession of faith. the paintings of the shepherd bearing a sheep symbolized christ and his flock; the anchor meant the christian hope; the phoenix immortality; the ship the church; the cock watchfulness, and so on. and at this time the decorations began to have a double meaning. the vine came to represent the "i am the vine" and the birds grew longer wings and became doves, symbolizing pure christian souls. it has been said this form of art came about through fear of persecution, that the christians hid their ideas in symbols because open representation would be followed by violence and desecration. such was hardly the case. the emperors persecuted the living, but the dead and their sepulchres were exempt from sacrilege by roman law. they probably used the symbol because they feared the roman figure and knew no other form to take its place. but symbolism did not supply the popular need; it was impossible to originate an entirely new figure; so the painters went back and borrowed the old roman form. christ appeared as a beardless youth in phrygian costume, the virgin mary was a roman matron, and the apostles looked like roman senators wearing the toga. classic story was also borrowed to illustrate bible truth. hermes carrying the sheep was the good shepherd, psyche discovering cupid was the curiosity of eve, ulysses closing his ears to the sirens was the christian resisting the tempter. the pagan orpheus charming the animals of the wood was finally adopted as a symbol, or perhaps an ideal likeness of christ. then followed more direct representation in classic form and manner, the old testament prefiguring and emphasizing the new. jonah appeared cast into the sea and cast by the whale on dry land again as a symbol of the new testament resurrection, and also as a representation of the actual occurrence. moses striking the rock symbolized life eternal, and david slaying goliath was christ victorious. [illustration: fig. .--christ and saints. fresco. s. generosa, seventh century (?).] the chronology of the catacombs painting is very much mixed, but it is quite certain there was degeneracy from the start. the cause was neglect of form, neglect of art as art, mechanical copying instead of nature study, and finally, the predominance of the religious idea over the forms of nature. with constantine christianity was recognized as the national religion. christian art came out of the catacombs and began to show itself in illuminations, mosaics, and church decorations. notwithstanding it was now free from restraint it did not improve. church traditions prevailed, sentiment bordered upon sentimentality, and the technic of painting passed from bad to worse. the decline continued during the sixth and seventh centuries, owing somewhat perhaps to the influence of byzantium and the introduction into italy of eastern types and elements. in the eighth century the iconoclastic controversy broke out again in fury with the edict of leo the isaurian. this controversy was a renewal of the old quarrel in the church about the use of pictures and images. some wished them for instruction in the word; others decried them as leading to idolatry. it was a long quarrel of over a hundred years' duration, and a deadly one for art. when it ended, the artists were ordered to follow the traditions, not to make any new creations, and not to model any figure in the round. the nature element in art was quite dead at that time, and the order resulted only in diverting the course of painting toward the unrestricted miniatures and manuscripts. the native italian art was crushed for a time by this new ecclesiastical burden. it did not entirely disappear, but it gave way to the stronger, though equally restricted art that had been encroaching upon it for a long time--the art of byzantium. byzantine painting: constantinople was rebuilt and rechristened by constantine, a christian emperor, in the year a.d. it became a stronghold of christian traditions, manners, customs, art. but it was not quite the same civilization as that of rome and the west. it was bordered on the south and east by oriental influences, and much of eastern thought, method, and glamour found its way into the christian community. the artists fought this influence, stickling a long time for the severer classicism of ancient greece. for when rome fell the traditions of the old world centred around constantinople. but classic form was ever being encroached upon by oriental richness of material and color. the struggle was a long but hopeless one. as in italy, form failed century by century. when, in the eighth century, the iconoclastic controversy cut away the little greek existing in it, the oriental ornament was about all that remained. there was no chance for painting to rise under the prevailing conditions. free artistic creation was denied the artist. an advocate of painting at the second nicene council declared that: "it is not the invention of the painter that creates the picture, but an inviolable law of the catholic church. it is not the painter but the holy fathers who have to invent and dictate. to them manifestly belongs the composition, to the painter only the execution." painting was in a strait-jacket. it had to follow precedent and copy what had gone before in old byzantine patterns. both in italy and in byzantium the creative artist had passed away in favor of the skilled artisan--the repeater of time-honored forms or colors. the workmanship was good for the time, and the coloring and ornamental borders made a rich setting, but the real life of art had gone. a long period of heavy, morose, almost formless art, eloquent of mediæval darkness and ignorance, followed. [illustration: fig. .--ezekiel before the lord. ms. illumination. paris, ninth century.] it is strange that such an art should be adopted by foreign nations, and yet it was. its bloody crucifixions and morbid madonnas were well fitted to the dark view of life held during the middle ages, and its influence was wide-spread and of long duration. it affected french and german art, it ruled at the north, and in the east it lives even to this day. that it strongly affected italy is a very apparent fact. just when it first began to show its influence there is matter of dispute. it probably gained a foothold at ravenna in the sixth century, when that province became a part of the empire of justinian. later it permeated rome, sicily, and naples at the south, and venice at the north. with the decline of the early christian art of italy this richer, and in many ways more acceptable, byzantine art came in, and, with italian modifications, usurped the field. it did not literally crush out the native italian art, but practically it superseded it, or held it in check, from the ninth to the twelfth century. after that the corrupted italian art once more came to the front. early christian and byzantine remains: the best examples of early christian painting are still to be seen in the catacombs at rome. mosaics in the early churches of rome, ravenna, naples, venice, constantinople. sculptures, ivories, and glasses in the lateran, ravenna, and vatican museums. illuminations in vatican and paris libraries. almost all the museums of europe, those of the vatican and naples particularly, have some examples of byzantine work. the older altar-pieces of the early italian churches date back to the mediæval period and show byzantine influence. the altar-pieces of the greek and russian churches show the same influence even in modern work. chapter v. italian painting. gothic period. - . books recommended: as before, burckhardt, crowe and cavalcaselle, eastlake, lafenestre, lanzi, lindsay, reber; also burton, _catalogue of pictures in the national gallery, london_ (_unabridged edition_); cartier, _vie de fra angelico_; förster, _leben und werke des fra angelico_; habich, _vade mecum pour la peinture italienne des anciens maîtres_; lacroix, _les arts au moyen-age et à la Époque de la renaissance_; mantz, _les chefs-d'oeuvre de la peinture italienne_; morelli, _italian masters in german galleries_; morelli, _italian masters, critical studies in their works_; rumohr, _italienische forschungen_; selincourt, _giotto_; stillman, _old italian masters_; vasari, _lives of the most eminent painters_; consult also general bibliography (p. xv). signs of the awakening: it would seem at first as though nothing but self-destruction could come to that struggling, praying, throat-cutting population that terrorized italy during the mediæval period. the people were ignorant, the rulers treacherous, the passions strong, and yet out of the dark ages came light. in the thirteenth century the light grew brighter, but the internal dissensions did not cease. the hohenstaufen power was broken, the imperial rule in italy was crushed. pope and emperor no longer warred each other, but the cries of "guelf" and "ghibelline" had not died out. throughout the entire romanesque and gothic periods ( - ) italy was torn by political wars, though the free cities, through their leagues of protection and their commerce, were prosperous. a commercial rivalry sprang up among the cities. trade with the east, manufactures, banking, all flourished; and even the philosophies, with law, science, and literature, began to be studied. the spirit of learning showed itself in the founding of schools and universities. dante, petrarch, and boccaccio, reflecting respectively religion, classic learning, and the inclination toward nature, lived and gave indication of the trend of thought. finally the arts, architecture, sculpture, painting, began to stir and take upon themselves new appearances. subjects and methods: in painting, though there were some portraits and allegorical scenes produced during the gothic period, the chief theme was bible story. the church was the patron, and art was only the servant, as it had been from the beginning. it was the instructor and consoler of the faithful, a means whereby the church made converts, and an adornment of wall and altar. it had not entirely escaped from symbolism. it was still the portrayal of things for what they meant, rather than for what they looked. there was no such thing then as art for art's sake. it was art for religion's sake. the demand for painting increased, and its subjects multiplied with the establishment at this time of the two powerful orders of dominican and franciscan monks. the first exacted from the painters more learned and instructive work; the second wished for the crucifixions, the martyrdoms, the dramatic deaths, wherewith to move people by emotional appeal. to offset this the ultra-religious character of painting was encroached upon somewhat by the growth of the painters' guilds, and art production largely passing into the hands of laymen. in consequence painting produced many themes, but, as yet, only after the byzantine style. the painter was more of a workman than an artist. the church had more use for his fingers than for his creative ability. it was his business to transcribe what had gone before. this he did, but not without signs here and there of uneasiness and discontent with the pattern. there was an inclination toward something truer to nature, but, as yet, no great realization of it. the study of nature came in very slowly, and painting was not positive in statement until the time of giotto and lorenzetti. [illustration: fig. .--giotto, flight into egypt. arena chap. padua.] the best paintings during the gothic period were executed upon the walls of the churches in fresco. the prepared color was laid on wet plaster, and allowed to soak in. the small altar and panel pictures were painted in distemper, the gold ground and many byzantine features being retained by most of the painters, though discarded by some few. changes in the type, etc.: the advance of italian art in the gothic age was an advance through the development of the imposed byzantine pattern. it was not a revolt or a starting out anew on a wholly original path. when people began to stir intellectually the artists found that the old byzantine model did not look like nature. they began, not by rejecting it, but by improving it, giving it slight movements here and there, turning the head, throwing out a hand, or shifting the folds of drapery. the eastern type was still seen in the long pathetic face, oblique eyes, green flesh tints, stiff robes, thin fingers, and absence of feet; but the painters now began to modify and enliven it. more realistic italian faces were introduced, architectural and landscape backgrounds encroached upon the byzantine gold grounds, even portraiture was taken up. this looks very much like realism, but we must not lay too much stress upon it. the painters were taking notes of natural appearances. it showed in features like the hands, feet, and drapery; but the anatomy of the body had not yet been studied, and there is no reason to believe their study of the face was more than casual, nor their portraits more than records from memory. no one painter began this movement. the whole artistic region of italy was at that time ready for the advance. that all the painters moved at about the same pace, and continued to move at that pace down to the fifteenth century, that they all based themselves upon byzantine teaching, and that they all had a similar style of working is proved by the great difficulty in attributing their existing pictures to certain masters, or even certain schools. there are plenty of pictures in italy to-day that might be attributed to either florence or sienna, giotto or lorenzetti, or some other master; because though each master and each school had slight peculiarities, yet they all had a common origin in the art traditions of the time. [illustration: fig. .--orcagna, paradise (detail). s. m. novella, florence.] florentine school: cimabue ( ?- ?) seems the most notable instance in early times of a byzantine-educated painter who improved upon the traditions. he has been called the father of italian painting, but italian painting had no father. cimabue was simply a man of more originality and ability than his contemporaries, and departed further from the art teachings of the time without decidedly opposing them. he retained the byzantine pattern, but loosened the lines of drapery somewhat, turned the head to one side, infused the figure with a little appearance of life. his contemporaries elsewhere in italy were doing the same thing, and none of them was any more than a link in the progressive chain. cimabue's pupil, giotto ( ?- ), was a great improver on all his predecessors because he was a man of extraordinary genius. he would have been great in any time, and yet he was not great enough to throw off wholly the byzantine traditions. he tried to do it. he studied nature in a general way, changed the type of face somewhat by making the jaw squarer, and gave it expression and nobility. to the figure he gave more motion, dramatic gesture, life. the drapery was cast in broader, simpler masses, with some regard for line, and the form and movement of the body were somewhat emphasized through it. in methods giotto was more knowing, but not essentially different from his contemporaries; his subjects were from the common stock of religious story; but his imaginative force and invention were his own. bound by the conventionalities of his time he could still create a work of nobility and power. he came too early for the highest achievement. he had genius, feeling, fancy, almost everything except accurate knowledge of the laws of nature and art. his art was the best of its time, but it still lacked, nor did that of his immediate followers go much beyond it technically. taddeo gaddi ( ?- ?) was giotto's chief pupil, a painter of much feeling, but lacking in the large elements of construction and in the dramatic force of his master. agnolo gaddi ( ?- ?), antonio veneziano ( ?- ?), giovanni da milano (fl. ), andrea da firenze (fl. ), were all followers of the giotto methods, and were so similar in their styles that their works are often confused and erroneously attributed. giottino ( ?- ?) was a supposed imitator of giotto, of whom little is known. orcagna ( ?- ?) still further advanced the giottesque type and method. he gathered up and united in himself all the art teachings of his time. in working out problems of form and in delicacy and charm of expression he went beyond his predecessors. he was a many-sided genius, knowing not only in a matter of natural appearance, but in color problems, in perspective, shadows, and light. his art was further along toward the renaissance than that of any other giottesque. he almost changed the character of painting, and yet did not live near enough to the fifteenth century to accomplish it completely. spinello aretino ( ?- ?) was the last of the great giotto followers. he carried out the teachings of the school in technical features, such as composition, drawing, and relief by color rather than by light, but he lacked the creative power of giotto. in fact, none of the giottesque can be said to have improved upon the master, taking him as a whole. toward the beginning of the fifteenth century the school rather declined. siennese school: the art teachings and traditions of the past seemed deeper rooted at sienna than at florence. nor was there so much attempt to shake them off as at florence. giotto broke the immobility of the byzantine model by showing the draped figure in action. so also did the siennese to some extent, but they cared more for the expression of the spiritual than the beauty of the natural. the florentines were robust, resolute, even a little coarse at times; the siennese were more refined and sentimental. their fancy ran to sweetness of face rather than to bodily vigor. again, their art was more ornate, richer in costume, color, and detail than florentine art; but it was also more finical and narrow in scope. [illustration: fig. .--a. lorenzetti. peace (detail). town-hall, sienna.] there was little advance upon byzantinism in the work of guido da sienna (fl. ). even duccio ( ?----?), the real founder of the siennese school, retained byzantine methods and adopted the school subjects, but he perfected details of form, such as the hands and feet, and while retaining the long byzantine face, gave it a melancholy tenderness of expression. he possessed no dramatic force, but had a refined workmanship for his time--a workmanship perhaps better, all told, than that of his florentine contemporary, cimabue. simone di martino ( ?- ?) changed the type somewhat by rounding the form. his drawing was not always correct, but in color he was good and in detail exact and minute. he probably profited somewhat by the example of giotto. the siennese who came the nearest to giotto's excellence were the brothers ambrogio (fl. ) and pietro (fl. ) lorenzetti. there is little known about them except that they worked together in a similar manner. the most of their work has perished, but what remains shows an intellectual grasp equal to any of the age. the sienna frescos by ambrogio lorenzetti are strong in facial character, and some of the figures, like that of the white-robed peace, are beautiful in their flow of line. lippo memmi (?- ), bartolo di fredi ( - ), and taddeo di bartolo ( - ), were other painters of the school. the late men rather carried detail to excess, and the school grew conventional instead of advancing. transition painters: several painters, starnina ( - ), gentile da fabriano ( ?- ?), fra angelico ( - ), have been put down in art history as the makers of the transition from gothic to renaissance painting. they hardly deserve the title. there was no transition. the development went on, and these painters, coming late in the fourteenth century and living into the fifteenth, simply showed the changing style, the advance in the study of nature and the technic of art. starnina's work gave strong evidence of the study of form, but it was no such work as masaccio's. there is always a little of the past in the present, and these painters showed traces of byzantinism in details of the face and figure, in coloring, and in gold embossing. gentile had all that nicety of finish and richness of detail and color characteristic of the siennese. being closer to the renaissance than his predecessors he was more of a nature student. he was the first man to show the effect of sunlight in landscape, the first one to put a gold sun in the sky. he never, however, outgrew gothic methods and really belongs in the fourteenth century. this is true of fra angelico. though he lived far into the early renaissance he did not change his style and manner of work in conformity with the work of others about him. he was the last inheritor of the giottesque traditions. religious sentiment was the strong feature of his art. he was behind giotto and lorenzetti in power and in imagination, and behind orcagna as a painter. he knew little of light, shade, perspective, and color, and in characterization was feeble, except in some late work. one face or type answered him for all classes of people--a sweet, fair face, full of divine tenderness. his art had enough nature in it to express his meanings, but little more. he was pre-eminently a devout painter, and really the last of the great religionists in painting. [illustration: fig. .--fra angelico. angel (detail). uffizi.] the other regions of italy had not at this time developed schools of painting of sufficient consequence to mention. principal works: florentines--cimabue, madonnas s. m. novella and acad. florence, frescos upper church of assisi (?); giotto, frescos upper and lower churches assisi, best work arena chapel padua, bardi and peruzzi chapels s. croce, injured frescos bargello florence; taddeo gaddi, frescos entrance wall baroncelli chapel s. croce, spanish chapel s. m. novella (designed by gaddi (?)); agnolo gaddi frescos in choir s. croce, s. jacopo tra fossi florence, panel pictures florence acad.; giovanni da milano, bewailing of christ florence acad., virgin enthroned prato gal., altar-piece uffizi gal., frescos s. croce florence; antonio veneziano, frescos in ceiling of spanish chapel, s. m. novella, campo santo pisa; orcagna, altar-piece last judgment and paradise strozzi chapel s. m. novella, s. zenobio duomo, saints medici chapel s. croce, descent of holy spirit badia florence, altar-piece nat. gal. lon.; spinello aretino, life of st. benedict s. miniato al monte near florence, annunciation convent degl' innocenti arezzo, frescos campo santo pisa, coronation florence acad., barbarossa frescos palazzo publico sienna; andrea da firenze, church militant, calvary, crucifixion spanish chapel, upper series of life of s. raniera campo santo pisa. siennese--guido da sienna, madonna s. domenico sienna; duccio, panels duomo and acad. sienna, madonna nat. gal. lon.; simone di martino, frescos palazzo pubblico, sienna, altar-piece and panels seminario vescovile, pisa gal., altar-piece and madonna opera del duomo orvieto; lippo memmi, frescos palazzo del podesta s. gemignano, annunciation uffizi florence; bartolo di fredi, altar-pieces acad. sienna, s. francesco montalcino; taddeo di bartolo, palazzo pubblico sienna, duomo, s. gemignano, s. francesco pisa; ambrogio lorenzetti, frescos palazzo pubblico sienna, triumph of death (with pietro lorenzetti) campo santo pisa, st. francis frescos lower church assisi, s. francesco and s. agostino sienna, annunciation sienna acad., presentation florence acad.; pietro lorenzetti, virgin s. ansano, altar-pieces duomo sienna, parish church of arezzo (worked with his brother ambrogio). transition painters: starnina, frescos duomo prato (completed by pupil); gentile da fabriano, adoration florence acad., coronation brera milan, madonna duomo orvieto; fra angelico, coronation and many small panels uffizi, many pieces life of christ florence acad., other pieces s. marco florence, last judgment duomo, orvieto. chapter vi. italian painting. early renaissance. - . books recommended: as before, burckhardt, crowe and cavalcaselle, eastlake, lafenestre, lanzi, habich, lacroix, mantz, morelli, burton, rumohr, stillman, vasari; also crowe and cavalcaselle, _history of painting in north italy_; berenson, _florentine painters of renaissance_; berenson, _venetian painters of renaissance_; berenson, _central italian painters of renaissance_; _study and criticism of italian art_; boschini, _la carta del navegar_; calvi, _memorie della vita ed opere di francesco raibolini_; cibo, _niccolo alunno e la scuola umbra_; citadella, _notizie relative a ferrara_; cruttwell, _verrocchio_; cruttwell, _pollaiuolo_; morelli, anonimo, _notizie_; mezzanotte, _commentario della vita di pietro vanucci_; mundler, _essai d'une analyse critique de la notice des tableaux italiens au louvre_; muntz, _les précurseurs de la renaissance_; muntz, _la renaissance en italie et en france_; patch, _life of masaccio_; hill, pisanello, _publications of the arundel society_; richter, _italian art in national gallery, london_; ridolfi, _le meraviglie dell' arte_; rosini, _storia della pittura italiana_; schnaase, _geschichte der bildenden kunste_; symonds, _renaissance in italy--the fine arts_; vischer, _lucas signorelli und die italienische renaissance_; waagen, _art treasures_; waagen, _andrea mantegna und luca signorelli_ (in _raumer's taschenbuch_, ( )); zanetti, _della pittura veneziana_. the italian mind: there is no way of explaining the italian fondness for form and color other than by considering the necessities of the people and the artistic character of the italian mind. art in all its phases was not only an adornment but a necessity of christian civilization. the church taught people by sculpture, mosaic, miniature, and fresco. it was an object-teaching, a grasping of ideas by forms seen in the mind, not a presenting of abstract ideas as in literature. printing was not known. there were few manuscripts, and the majority of people could not read. ideas came to them for centuries through form and color, until at last the italian mind took on a plastic and pictorial character. it saw things in symbolic figures, and when the renaissance came and art took the lead as one of its strongest expressions, painting was but the color-thought and form-language of the people. [illustration: fig. .--fra filippo. madonna. uffizi.] and these people, by reason of their peculiar education, were an exacting people, knowing what was good and demanding it from the artists. every italian was, in a way, an art critic, because every church in italy was an art school. the artists may have led the people, but the people spurred on the artists, and so the italian mind went on developing and unfolding until at last it produced the great art of the renaissance. the awakening: the italian civilization of the fourteenth century was made up of many impulses and inclinations, none of them very strongly defined. there was a feeling about in the dark, a groping toward the light, but the leaders stumbled often on the road. there was good reason for it. the knowledge of the ancient world lay buried under the ruins of rome. the italians had to learn it all over again, almost without a precedent, almost without a preceptor. with the fifteenth century the horizon began to brighten. the early renaissance was begun. it was not a revolt, a reaction, or a starting out on a new path. it was a development of the gothic period; and the three inclinations of the gothic period--religion, the desire for classic knowledge, and the study of nature--were carried into the art of the time with greater realization. the inference must not be made that because nature and the antique came to be studied in early renaissance times that therefore religion was neglected. it was not. it still held strong, and though with the renaissance there came about a strange mingling of crime and corruption, æstheticism and immorality, yet the church was never abandoned for an hour. when enlightenment came, people began to doubt the spiritual power of the papacy. they did not cringe to it so servilely as before. religion was not violently embraced as in the middle ages, but there was no revolt. the church held the power and was still the patron of art. the painter's subjects extended over nature, the antique, the fable, allegory, history, portraiture; but the religious subject was not neglected. fully three-quarters of all the fifteenth-century painting was done for the church, at her command, and for her purposes. but art was not so wholly pietistic as in the gothic age. the study of nature and the antique materialized painting somewhat. the outside world drew the painter's eyes, and the beauty of the religious subject and its sentiment were somewhat slurred for the beauty of natural appearances. there was some loss of religious power, but religion had much to lose. in the fifteenth century it was still dominant. [illustration: fig. .--botticelli. coronation of madonna. uffizi.] knowledge of the antique and nature: the revival of antique learning came about in real earnest during this period. the scholars set themselves the task of restoring the polite learning of ancient greece, studying coins and marbles, collecting manuscripts, founding libraries and schools of philosophy. the wealthy nobles, palla strozzi, the albizzi, the medici, and the dukes of urbino, encouraged it. in the greek was taught in five cities. immediately afterward, with constantinople falling into the hands of the turks, came an influx of greek scholars into italy. then followed the invention of printing and the age of discovery on land and sea. not the antique alone but the natural were being pried into by the spirit of inquiry. botany, geology, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, anatomy, law, literature--nothing seemed to escape the keen eye of the time. knowledge was being accumulated from every source, and the arts were all reflecting it. the influence of the newly discovered classic marbles upon painting was not so great as is usually supposed. the painters studied them, but did not imitate them. occasionally in such men as botticelli and mantegna we see a following of sculpturesque example--a taking of details and even of whole figures--but the general effect of the antique marbles was to impress the painters with the idea that nature was at the bottom of it all. they turned to the earth not only to study form and feature, but to learn perspective, light, shadow, color--in short, the technical features of art. true, religion was the chief subject, but nature and the antique were used to give it setting. all the fifteenth-century painting shows nature study, force, character, sincerity; but it does not show elegance, grace, or the full complement of color. the early renaissance was the promise of great things; the high renaissance was the fulfilment. florentine school: the florentines were draughtsmen more than colorists. the chief medium was fresco on the walls of buildings, and architectural necessities often dictated the form of compositions. distemper in easel pictures was likewise used, and oil-painting, though known, was not extensively employed until the last quarter of the century. in technical knowledge and intellectual grasp florence was at this time the leader and drew to her many artists from neighboring schools. masaccio ( ?- ?) was the first great nature student of the early renaissance, though his master, masolino ( - ), had given proof positive of severe nature study in bits of modelling, in drapery, and in portrait heads. masaccio, however, seems the first to have gone into it thoroughly and to have grasped nature as a whole. his mastery of form, his plastic composition, his free, broad folds of drapery, and his knowledge of light and perspective, all placed him in the front rank of fifteenth-century painters. though an exact student he was not a literalist. he had a large artistic sense, a breadth of view, and a comprehension of nature as a mass that michael angelo and raphael did not disdain to follow. he was not a pietist, and there was no great religious feeling in his work. dignified truthful appearance was his creed, and in this he was possibly influenced by donatello the sculptor. [illustration: fig. .--ghirlandajo. the visitation. louvre.] he came early in the century and died early, but his contemporaries did not continue the advance from where he carried it. there was wavering all along the line. some from lack of genius could not equal him, others took up nature with indecision, and others clung fondly to the gold-embossed ornaments and gilded halos of the past. paolo uccello ( ?- ), andrea castagno ( - ), benozzo gozzoli ( ?- ?), baldovinetti ( - ), antonio del pollajuolo ( - ), cosimo rosselli ( - ), can hardly be looked upon as improvements upon the young leader. the first real successor of masaccio was his contemporary, and possibly his pupil, the monk fra filippo lippi ( - ). he was a master of color and light-and-shade for his time, though in composition and command of line he did not reach up to masaccio. he was among the first of the painters to take the individual faces of those about him as models for his sacred characters, and clothe them in contemporary costume. piety is not very pronounced in any of his works, though he is not without imagination and feeling, and there is in his women a charm of sweetness. his tendency was to materialize the sacred characters. with filippino ( ?- ), botticelli ( - ), and ghirlandajo ( - ) we find a degree of imagination, culture, and independence not surpassed by any of the early florentines. filippino modelled his art upon that of his father, fra filippo, and was influenced by botticelli. he was the weakest of the trio, without being by any means a weak man. on the contrary, he was an artist of fine ability, much charm and tenderness, and considerable style, but not a great deal of original force, though occasionally doing forceful things. purity in his type and graceful sentiment in pose and feature seem more characteristic of his work. botticelli, even, was not so remarkable for his strength as for his culture, and an individual way of looking at things. he was a pupil of fra filippo, a man imbued with the religious feeling of dante and savonarola, a learned student of the antique and one of the first to take subjects from it, a severe nature student, and a painter of much technical skill. religion, classicism, and nature all met in his work, but the mingling was not perfect. religious feeling and melancholy warped it. his willowy figures, delicate and refined in drawing, are more passionate than powerful, more individual than comprehensive, but they are nevertheless very attractive in their tenderness and grace. without being so original or so attractive an artist as botticelli, his contemporary, ghirlandajo, was a stronger one. his strength came more from assimilation than from invention. he combined in his work all the art learning of his time. he drew well, handled drapery simply and beautifully, was a good composer, and, for florence, a good colorist. in addition, his temperament was robust, his style dignified, even grand, and his execution wonderfully free. he was the most important of the fifteenth-century technicians, without having any peculiar distinction or originality, and in spite of being rather prosaic at times. [illustration: fig. .--francesca. duke of urbino. uffizi.] verrocchio ( - ) was more of a sculptor than a painter, but in his studio were three celebrated pupils--perugino, leonardo da vinci, and lorenzo di credi--who were half-way between the early and the high renaissance. only one of them, leonardo, can be classed among the high renaissance men. perugino belongs to the umbrian school, and lorenzo di credi ( - ), though florentine, never outgrew the fifteenth century. he was a pure painter, with much feeling, but weak at times. his drawing was good, but his painting lacked force, and he was too pallid in flesh color. there is much detail, study, and considerable grace about his work, but little of strength. piero di cosimo ( - ) was fond of mythological and classical studies, was somewhat fantastic in composition, pleasant in color, and rather distinguished in landscape backgrounds. his work strikes one as eccentric, and eccentricity was the strong characteristic of the man. umbrian and perugian schools: at the beginning of the fifteenth century the old siennese school founded by duccio and the lorenzetti was in a state of decline. it had been remarkable for intense sentiment, and just what effect this sentiment of the old siennese school had upon the painters of the neighboring umbrian school of the early fifteenth century is a matter of speculation with historians. it must have had some, though the early painters, like ottaviano nelli, do not show it. that which afterward became known as the umbrian sentiment probably first appeared in the work of niccolò da foligno ( ?- ), who was probably a pupil of benozzo gozzoli, who was, in turn, a pupil of fra angelico. that would indicate florentine influence, but there were many influences at work in this upper-valley country. sentiment had been prevalent enough all through central italian painting during the gothic age--more so at sienna than elsewhere. with the renaissance florence rather forsook sentiment for precision of forms and equilibrium of groups; but the umbrian towns being more provincial, held fast to their sentiment, their detail, and their gold ornamentation. their influence upon florence was slight, but the influence of florence upon them was considerable. the larger city drew the provincials its way to learn the new methods. the result was a group of umbro-florentine painters, combining some up-country sentiment with florentine technic. gentile da fabriano, niccolo da foligno, bonfiglio ( ?- ?), and fiorenzo di lorenzo ( ?- ) were of this mixed character. [illustration: fig. .--signorelli. the curse (detail). orvieto.] the most positive in methods among the early men was piero della francesca ( ?- ). umbrian born, but florentine trained, he became more scientific than sentimental, and excelled as a craftsman. he knew drawing, perspective, atmosphere, light-and-shade in a way that rather foreshadowed leonardo da vinci. from working in the umbrian country his influence upon his fellow-umbrians was large. it showed directly in signorelli ( ?- ), whose master he was, and whose style he probably formed. signorelli was umbrian born, like piero, but there was not much of the umbrian sentiment about him. he was a draughtsman and threw his strength in line, producing athletic, square-shouldered figures in violent action, with complicated foreshortenings quite astonishing. the most daring man of his time, he was a master in anatomy, composition, motion. there was nothing select about his type, and nothing charming about his painting. his color was hot and coarse, his lights lurid, his shadows brick red. he was, however, a master-draughtsman, and a man of large conceptions and great strength. melozzo da forli ( - ), of whom little is known, was another pupil of piero, and giovanni santi ( ?- ), the father of raphael, was probably influenced by both of these last named. the true descent of the umbrian sentiment was through foligno and bonfiglio to perugino ( - ). signorelli and perugino seem opposed to each other in their art. the first was the forerunner of michael angelo, the second was the master of raphael; and the difference between michael angelo and raphael was, in a less varied degree, the difference between signorelli and perugino. the one showed florentine line, the other umbrian sentiment and color. it is in perugino that we find the old religious feeling. fervor, tenderness, and devotion, with soft eyes, delicate features, and pathetic looks characterized his art. the figure was slight, graceful, and in pose sentimentally inclined to one side. the head was almost affectedly placed on the shoulders, and the round olive face was full of wistful tenderness. this perugino type, used in all his paintings, is well described by taine as a "body belonging to the renaissance containing a soul that belonged to the middle ages." the sentiment was more purely human, however, than in such a painter, for instance, as fra angelico. religion still held with perugino and the umbrians, but even with them it was becoming materialized by the beauty of the world about them. [illustration: fig. .--perugino. madonna, saints, and angels. louvre.] as a technician perugino was excellent. there was no dramatic fire and fury about him. the composition was simple, with graceful figures in repose. the coloring was rich, and there were many brilliant effects obtained by the use of oils. he was among the first of his school to use that medium. his friend and fellow-worker, pinturricchio ( - ), did not use oils, but was a superior man in fresco. in type and sentiment he was rather like perugino, in composition a little extravagant and huddled, in landscape backgrounds quite original and inventive. he never was a serious rival of perugino, though a more varied and interesting painter. perugino's best pupil, after raphael, was lo spagna (?- ?), who followed his master's style until the high renaissance, when he became a follower of raphael. schools of ferrara and bologna: the painters of ferrara, in the fifteenth century, seemed to have relied upon padua for their teaching. the best of the early men was cosimo tura ( - ), who showed the paduan influence of squarcione in anatomical insistences, coarse joints, infinite detail, and fantastic ornamentation. he was probably the founder of the school in which francesco cossa (fl. - ), a _naif_ and strong, if somewhat morbid painter, ercole di giulio grandi (fl. - ), and lorenzo costa ( ?- ) were the principal masters. cossa and grandi, it seems, afterward removed to bologna, and it was probably their move that induced lorenzo costa to follow them. in that way the ferrarese school became somewhat complicated with the bolognese school, and is confused in its history to this day. costa was not unlikely the real founder, or, at the least, the strongest influencer of the bolognese school. he was a painter of a rugged, manly type, afterward tempered by southern influences to softness and sentiment. this was the result of paduan methods meeting at bologna with umbrian sentiment. the perugino type and influence had found its way to bologna, and showed in the work of francia ( - ), a contemporary and fellow-worker with costa. though trained as a goldsmith, and learning painting in a different school, francia, as regards his sentiment, belongs in the same category with perugino. even his subjects, types, and treatment were, at times, more umbrian than bolognese. he was not so profound in feeling as perugino, but at times he appeared loftier in conception. his color was usually rich, his drawing a little sharp at first, as showing the goldsmith's hand, the surfaces smooth, the detail elaborate. later on, his work had a raphaelesque tinge, showing perhaps the influence of that rising master. it is probable that francia at first was influenced by costa's methods, and it is quite certain that he in turn influenced costa in the matter of refined drawing and sentiment, though costa always adhered to a certain detail and ornament coming from the north, and a landscape background that is peculiar to himself, and yet reminds one of pinturricchio's landscapes. these two men, francia and costa, were the perugino and pinturricchio of the ferrara-bolognese school, and the most important painters in that school. [illustration: fig. .--school of francia. madonna and child. louvre.] the lombard school: the designation of the lombard school is rather a vague one in the history of painting, and is used by historians to cover a number of isolated schools or men in the lombardy region. in the fifteenth century these schools counted for little either in men or in works. the principal activity was about milan, which drew painters from brescia, vincenza, and elsewhere to form what is known as the milanese school. vincenzo foppa (fl. - ), of brescia, and afterward at milan, was probably the founder of this milanese school. his painting is of rather a harsh, exacting nature, and points to the influence of padua, at which place he perhaps got his early art training. borgognone ( - ) is set down as his pupil, a painter of much sentiment and spiritual feeling. the school was afterward greatly influenced by the example of leonardo da vinci, as will be shown further on. principal works: florentines--masaccio, frescos in brancacci chapel carmine florence (the series completed by filippino); masolino, frescos church and baptistery castiglione d' olona; paolo uccello, frescos s. m. novella, equestrian portrait duomo florence, battle-pieces in louvre and nat. gal. lon.; andrea castagno, heroes and sibyls uffizi, altar-piece acad. florence, equestrian portrait duomo florence; benozzo gozzoli, francesco montefalco, magi ricardi palace florence, frescos campo santo pisa; baldovinetti, portico of the annunziata florence, altar-pieces uffizi; antonio pollajuolo, hercules uffizi, st. sebastian pitti and nat. gal. lon.; cosimo rosselli, frescos s. ambrogio florence, sistine chapel rome, madonna uffizi; fra filippo, frescos cathedral prato, altar-pieces florence acad., uffizi, pitti and berlin gals., nat. gal. lon.; filippino, frescos carmine florence, caraffa chapel minerva rome, s. m. novella and acad. florence, s. domenico bologna, easel pictures in pitti, uffizi, nat. gal. lon., berlin mus., old pinacothek munich; botticelli, frescos sistine chapel rome, spring and coronation florence acad., venus, calumny, madonnas uffizi, pitti, nat. gal. lon., louvre, etc.; ghirlandajo, frescos sistine chapel rome, s. trinità florence, s. m. novella, palazzo vecchio, altar-pieces uffizi and acad. florence, visitation louvre; verrocchio, baptism of christ acad. florence; lorenzo di credi, nativity acad. florence, madonnas louvre and nat. gal. lon., holy family borghese gal. rome; piero di cosimo, perseus and andromeda uffizi, procris nat. gal. lon., venus and mars berlin gal. umbrians--ottaviano nelli, altar-piece s. m. nuovo gubbio, st. augustine legends s. agostino gubbio; niccolò da foligno, altar-piece s. niccolò foligno; bonfigli, frescos palazzo communale, altar-pieces acad. perugia; fiorenzo di lorenzo, many pictures acad. perugia, madonna berlin gal.; piero della francesca, frescos communitá and hospital borgo san sepolcro, san francesco arezzo, chapel of the relicts rimini, portraits uffizi, pictures nat. gal. lon.; signorelli, frescos cathedral orvieto, sistine rome, palazzo petrucci sienna, altar-pieces arezzo, cortona, perugia, pictures pitti, uffizi, berlin, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; melozzo da forli, angels st. peter's rome, frescos vatican, pictures berlin and nat. gal. lon.; giovanni santi, annunciation milan, pieta urbino, madonnas berlin, nat. gal. lon., s. croce fano; perugino, frescos sistine rome, crucifixion s. m. maddalena florence, sala del cambio perugia, altar-pieces pitti, fano, cremona, many pictures in european galleries; pinturricchio, frescos s. m. del popolo, appartamento borgo vatican, bufolini chapel aracoeli rome, duomo library sienna, altar-pieces perugia and sienna acads., pitti, louvre; lo spagna, madonna lower church assisi, frescos at spoleto, turin, perugia, assisi. ferrarese and bolognese--cosimo tura, altar-pieces berlin mus., bergamo, museo correr venice, nat. gal. lon.; francesco cossa, altar-pieces s. petronio and acad. bologna, dresden gal.; grandi, st. george corsini pal. rome, several canvases constabili collection ferrara; lorenzo costa, frescos s. giacomo maggiore, altar-pieces s. petronio, s. giovanni in monte and acad. bologna, also louvre, berlin, and nat. gal. lon.; francia, altar-pieces s. giacomo maggiore, s. martino maggiore, and many altar-pieces in acad. bologna, annunciation brera milan, rose garden munich, pieta nat. gal. lon., scappi portrait uffizi, baptism dresden. lombards--foppa, altar-pieces s. maria di castello savona, borromeo col. milan, carmine brescia, panels brera milan; borgognone, altar-pieces certosa of pavia, church of melegnano, s. ambrogio, ambrosian lib., brera milan, nat. gal. lon. chapter vii. italian painting. early renaissance-- - --continued. books recommended: those on italian art before mentioned; also consult the general bibliography (page xv.) paduan school: it was at padua in the north that the influence of the classic marbles made itself strongly apparent. umbria remained true to the religious sentiment, florence engaged itself largely with nature study and technical problems, introducing here and there draperies and poses that showed knowledge of ancient sculpture, but at padua much of the classic in drapery, figures, and architecture seems to have been taken directly from the rediscovered antique or the modern bronze. the early men of the school were hardly great enough to call for mention. during the fourteenth century there was some giotto influence felt--that painter having been at padua working in the arena chapel. later on there was a slight influence from gentile da fabriano and his fellow-worker vittore pisano, of verona. but these influences seem to have died out and the real direction of the school in the early fifteenth century was given by francesco squarcione ( - ). he was an enlightened man, a student, a collector and an admirer of ancient sculpture, and though no great painter himself he taught an anatomical statuesque art, based on ancient marbles and nature, to many pupils. squarcione's work has perished, but his teaching was reflected in the work of his great pupil andrea mantegna ( - ). yet mantegna never received the full complement of his knowledge from squarcione. he was of an observing nature and probably studied paolo uccello and fra filippo, some of whose works were then in paduan edifices. he gained color knowledge from the venetian bellinis, who lived at padua at one time and who were connected with mantegna by marriage. but the sculpturesque side of his art came from squarcione, from a study of the antique, and from a deeper study of donatello, whose bronzes to this day are to be seen within and without the paduan duomo of s. antonio. [illustration: fig. .--mantegna. gonzaga family group (detail). mantua.] the sculpturesque is characteristic of mantegna's work. his people are hard, rigid at times, immovable human beings, not so much turned to stone as turned to bronze--the bronze of donatello. there is little sense of motion about them. the figure is sharp and harsh, the drapery, evidently studied from sculpture, is "liney," and the archæology is often more scientific than artistic. mantegna was not, however, entirely devoted to the sculpturesque. he was one of the severest nature students of the early renaissance, knew about nature, and carried it out in more exacting detail than was perhaps well for his art. in addition he was a master of light-and-shade, understood composition, space, color, atmosphere, and was as scientific in perspective as piero della francesca. there is stiffness in his figures but nevertheless great truth and character. the forms are noble, even grand, and for invention and imagination they were never, in his time, carried further or higher. he was little of a sentimentalist or an emotionalist, not much of a brush man or a colorist, but as a draughtsman, a creator of noble forms, a man of power, he stood second to none in the century. of squarcione's other pupils pizzolo (fl. ) was the most promising, but died early. marco zoppo ( - ) seems to have followed the paduan formula of hardness, dryness, and exacting detail. he was possibly influenced by cosimo tura, and in turn influenced somewhat the ferrara-bolognese school. mantegna, however, was the greatest of the school, and his influence was far-reaching. it affected the school of venice in matters of drawing, beside influencing the lombard and veronese schools in their beginnings. schools of verona and vicenza: artistically verona belonged with the venetian provinces, because it was largely an echo of venice except at the very start. vittore pisano ( - ), called pisanello, was the earliest painter of note, but he was not distinctly veronese in his art. he was medallist and painter both, worked with gentile da fabriano in the ducal palace at venice and elsewhere, and his art seems to have an affinity with that of his companion. liberale da verona ( - ?) was at first a miniaturist, but afterward developed a larger style based on a following of mantegna's work, with some venetian influences showing in the coloring and backgrounds. francesco bonsignori ( - ) was of the verona school, but established himself later at mantua and was under the mantegna influence. his style at first was rather severe, but he afterward developed much ability in portraiture, historical work, animals, and architectural features. francesco caroto ( - ), a pupil of liberale, really belongs to the next century--the high renaissance--but his early works show his education in veronese and paduan methods. [illustration: fig. .--b. vivarini. madonna and child. turin.] in the school of vicenza the only master of much note in this early renaissance time was bartolommeo montagna ( ?- ), a painter in both oil and fresco of much severity and at times grandeur of style. in drawing he was influenced by mantegna, in composition and coloring he showed a study of giovanni bellini and carpaccio. venetian life and art: the conditions of art production in venice during the early renaissance were quite different from those in florence or umbria. by the disposition of her people venice was not a learned or devout city. religion, though the chief subject, was not the chief spirit of venetian art. christianity was accepted by the venetians, but with no fevered enthusiasm. the church was strong enough there to defy the papacy at one time, and yet religion with the people was perhaps more of a civic function or a duty than a spiritual worship. it was sincere in its way, and the early painters painted its subjects with honesty, but the venetians were much too proud and worldly minded to take anything very seriously except their own splendor and their own power. again, the venetians were not humanists or students of the revived classic. they housed manuscripts, harbored exiled humanists, received the influx of greek scholars after the fall of constantinople, and later the celebrated aldine press was established in venice; but, for all that, classic learning was not the fancy of the venetians. they made no quarrel over the relative merits of plato and aristotle, dug up no classic marbles, had no revival of learning in a florentine sense. they were merchant princes, winning wealth by commerce and expending it lavishly in beautifying their island home. not to attain great learning, but to revel in great splendor, seems to have been their aim. life in the sovereign city of the sea was a worthy existence in itself. and her geographical and political position aided her prosperity. unlike florence she was not torn by contending princes within and foreign foes without--at least not to her harm. she had her wars, but they were generally on distant seas. popery, paganism, despotism, all the convulsions of renaissance life threatened but harmed her not. free and independent, her kingdom was the sea, and her livelihood commerce, not agriculture. the worldly spirit of the venetian people brought about a worldly and luxurious art. nothing in the disposition or education of the venetians called for the severe or the intellectual. the demand was for rich decoration that would please the senses without stimulating the intellect or firing the imagination to any great extent. line and form were not so well suited to them as color--the most sensuous of all mediums. color prevailed through venetian art from the very beginning, and was its distinctive characteristic. [illustration: fig. .--giovanni bellini. madonna of ss. george and paul. venice acad.] where this love of color came from is matter of speculation. some say out of venetian skies and waters, and, doubtless, these had something to do with the venetian color-sense; but venice in its color was also an example of the effect of commerce on art. she was a trader with the east from her infancy--not constantinople and the byzantine east alone, but back of these the old mohammedan east, which for a thousand years has cast its art in colors rather than in forms. it was eastern ornament in mosaics, stuffs, porcelains, variegated marbles, brought by ship to venice and located in s. marco, in murano, and in torcello, that first gave the color-impulse to the venetians. if florence was the heir of rome and its austere classicism, venice was the heir of constantinople and its color-charm. the two great color spots in italy at this day are venice and ravenna, commercial footholds of the byzantines in mediæval and renaissance days. it may be concluded without error that venice derived her color-sense and much of her luxurious and material view of life from the east. the early venetian painters: painting began at venice with the fabrication of mosaics and ornamental altar-pieces of rich gold stucco-work. the "greek manner"--that is, the byzantine--was practised early in the fifteenth century by jacobello del fiore and semitecolo, but it did not last long. instead of lingering for a hundred years, as at florence, it died a natural death in the first half of the fifteenth century. gentile da fabriano, who was at venice about , painting in the ducal palace with pisano as his assistant, may have brought this about. he taught there in venice, was the master of jacopo bellini, and if not the teacher then the influencer of the vivarinis of murano. there were two of the vivarinis in the early times, so far as can be made out, antonio vivarini (?- ) and bartolommeo vivarini (fl. - ), who worked with johannes alemannus, a painter of supposed german birth and training. they all signed themselves from murano (an outlying venetian island), where they were producing church altars and ornaments with some paduan influence showing in their work. they made up the muranese school, though this school was not strongly marked apart either in characteristics or subjects from the venetian school, of which it was, in fact, a part. [illustration: fig. .--carpaccio. presentation (detail). venice acad.] bartolommeo was the best of the group, and contended long time in rivalry with the bellinis at venice, but toward he fell away and died comparatively forgotten. luigi vivarini (fl. - ) was the latest of this family, and with his death the history of the muranese merges into the venetian school proper, except as it continues to appear in some pupils and followers. of these latter carlo crivelli ( ? ?) was the only one of much mark. he apparently gathered his art from many sources--ornament and color from the vivarini, a lean and withered type from the early paduans under squarcione, architecture from mantegna, and a rather repulsive sentiment from the same school. his faces were contorted and sulky, his hands and feet stringy, his drawing rather bad; but he had a transparent color, beautiful ornamentation and not a little tragic power. venetian art practically dates from the bellinis. they did not begin where the vivarini left off. the two families of painters seem to have started about the same time, worked along together from like inspirations, and in somewhat of a similar manner as regards the early men. jacopo bellini ( ?- ?) was the pupil of gentile da fabriano, and a painter of considerable rank. his son, gentile bellini ( ?- ), was likewise a painter of ability, and an extremely interesting one on account of his venetian subjects painted with much open-air effect and knowledge of light and atmosphere. the younger son, giovanni bellini ( ?- ), was the greatest of the family and the true founder of the venetian school. about the middle of the fifteenth century the bellini family lived at padua and came in contact with the classic-realistic art of mantegna. in fact, mantegna married giovanni bellini's sister, and there was a mingling of family as well as of art. there was an influence upon mantegna of venetian color, and upon the bellinis of paduan line. the latter showed in giovanni bellini's early work, which was rather hard, angular in drapery, and anatomical in the joints, hands, and feet; but as the century drew to a close this melted away into the growing splendor of venetian color. giovanni bellini lived into the sixteenth century, but never quite attained the rank of a high renaissance painter. he had religious feeling, earnestness, honesty, simplicity, character, force, knowledge; but not the full complement of brilliancy and painter's power. he went beyond all his contemporaries in technical strength and color-harmony, and was in fact the epoch-making man of early venice. some of his pictures, like the s. zaccaria madonna, will compare favorably with any work of any age, and his landscape backgrounds (see the st. peter martyr in the national gallery, london) were rather wonderful for the period in which they were produced. of bellini's contemporaries and followers there were many, and as a school there was a similarity of style, subject, and color-treatment carrying through them all, with individual peculiarities in each painter. after giovanni bellini comes carpaccio (?- ?), a younger contemporary, about whose history little is known. he worked with gentile bellini, and was undoubtedly influenced by giovanni bellini. in subject he was more romantic and chivalric than religious, though painting a number of altar-pieces. the legend was his delight, and his great success, as the st. ursula and st. george pictures in venice still indicate. he was remarkable for his knowledge of architecture, costumes, and oriental settings, put forth in a realistic way, with much invention and technical ability in the handling of landscape, perspective, light, and color. there is a truthfulness of appearance--an out-of-doors feeling--about his work that is quite captivating. in addition, the spirit of his art was earnestness, honesty, and sincerity, and even the awkward bits of drawing which occasionally appeared in his work served to add to the general naive effect of the whole. [illustration: fig. .--antonello da messina. unknown man. louvre.] cima da conegliano ( ?- ?) was probably a pupil of giovanni bellini, with some carpaccio influence about him. he was the best of the immediate followers, none of whom came up to the master. they were trammelled somewhat by being educated in distemper work, and then midway in their careers changing to the oil medium, that medium having been introduced into venice by antonello da messina in . cima's subjects were largely half-length madonnas, given with strong qualities of light-and-shade and color. he was not a great originator, though a man of ability. catena (?- ) had a wide reputation in his day, but it came more from a smooth finish and pretty accessories than from creative power. he imitated bellini's style so well that a number of his pictures pass for works by the master even to this day. later he followed giorgione and carpaccio. a man possessed of knowledge, he seemed to have no original propelling purpose behind him. that was largely the make-up of the other men of the school, basaiti ( - ?), previtali ( ?- ?), bissolo ( ), rondinelli ( ?- ?), diana (?- ?), mansueti (fl. ). antonello da messina ( ?- ), though sicilian born, is properly classed with the venetian school. he obtained a knowledge of flemish methods probably from flemish painters or pictures in italy (he never was a pupil of jan van eyck, as vasari relates, and probably never saw flanders), and introduced the use of oil as a medium in the venetian school. his early work was flemish in character, and was very accurate and minute. his late work showed the influence of the bellinis. his counter-influence upon venetian portraiture has never been quite justly estimated. that fine, exact, yet powerful work, of which the doge loredano by bellini, in the national gallery, london, is a type, was perhaps brought about by an amalgamation of flemish and venetian methods, and antonello was perhaps the means of bringing it about. he was an excellent, if precise, portrait-painter. principal works: paduans--andrea mantegna, eremitani padua, madonna of s. xeno verona, st. sebastian vienna mus., st. george venice acad., camera di sposi castello di corte mantua, madonna and allegories louvre, scipio summer autumn nat. gal. lon.; pizzoli (with mantegna), eremitani padua; marco zoppo frescos casa colonna bologna, madonna berlin gal. veronese and vicentine painters--vittore pisano, st. anthony and george nat. gal. lon., st. george s. anastasia verona; liberale da verona, miniatures duomo sienna, st. sebastian brera milan, madonna berlin mus., other works duomo and gal. verona; bonsignori, s. bernardino and gal. verona, mantua, and nat. gal. lon.; caroto, in s. tommaso, s. giorgio, s. caterina and gal. verona, dresden and frankfort gals.; montagna, madonnas brera, venice acad., bergamo, berlin, nat. gal. lon., louvre. venetians--jacobello del fiore and semitecolo, all attributions doubtful; antonio vivarini and johannes alemannus, together altar-pieces venice acad., s. zaccaria venice; antonio alone, adoration of kings berlin gal.; bartolommeo vivarini, madonna bologna gal. (with antonio), altar-pieces ss. giovanni e paolo, frari, venice; luigi vivarini, madonna berlin gal., frari and acad. venice; carlo crivelli, madonnas and altar-pieces brera, nat. gal. lon., lateran, berlin gals.; jacopo bellini, crucifixion verona gal., sketch-book brit. mus.; gentile bellini, organ doors s. marco, procession and miracle of cross acad. venice, st. mark brera; giovanni bellini, many pictures in european galleries, acad., frari, s. zaccaria ss. giovanni e paolo venice; carpaccio, presentation and ursula pictures acad., st. george and st. jerome s. giorgio da schiavone venice, st. stephen berlin gal.; cima, altar-pieces s. maria dell orte, s. giovanni in bragora, acad. venice, louvre, berlin, dresden, munich, vienna, and other galleries; catena, altar-pieces s. simeone, s. m. mater domini, ss. giovanni e paolo, acad. venice, dresden, and in nat. gal. lon. (the warrior and horse attributed to "school of bellini"); basaiti, venice acad. nat. gal. lon., vienna, and berlin gals.; previtali, altar-pieces s. spirito bergamo, brera, berlin, and dresden gals., nat. gal. lon., venice acad.; bissolo, resurrection berlin gal., s. caterina venice acad.; rondinelli, two pictures palazzo doria rome, holy family (no. ) louvre (attributed to giovanni bellini); diana, altar-pieces venice acad.; mansueti, large pictures venice acad.; antonella da messina, portraits louvre, berlin and nat. gal. lon., crucifixion antwerp mus. chapter viii. italian painting. the high renaissance-- - . books recommended: those on italian art before mentioned, and also, berenson, _lorenzo lotto_; clement, _michel ange, l. da vinci, raphael_; crowe and cavalcaselle, _titian_; same authors, _raphael_; grimm, _michael angelo_; gronau, _titian_; holroyd, _michael angelo_; meyer, _correggio_; moore, _correggio_; muntz, _leonardo da vinci_; passavant, _raphael_; pater, _studies in history of renaissance_; phillips, _titian_; reumont, _andrea del sarto_; ricci, _correggio_; richter, _leonardo di vinci_; ridolfi, _vita di paolo cagliari veronese_; springer, _rafael und michel angelo_; symonds, _michael angelo_; taine, _italy--florence and venice_. the highest development: the word "renaissance" has a broader meaning than its strict etymology would imply. it was a "new birth," but something more than the revival of greek learning and the study of nature entered into it. it was the grand consummation of italian intelligence in many departments--the arrival at maturity of the christian trained mind tempered by the philosophy of greece, and the knowledge of the actual world. fully aroused at last, the italian intellect became inquisitive, inventive, scientific, skeptical--yes, treacherous, immoral, polluted. it questioned all things, doubted where it pleased, saturated itself with crime, corruption, and sensuality, yet bowed at the shrine of the beautiful and knelt at the altar of christianity. it is an illustration of the contradictions that may exist when the intellectual, the religious, and the moral are brought together, with the intellectual in predominance. [illustration: fig. .--fra bartolommeo. descent from cross. pitti.] and that keen renaissance intellect made swift progress. it remodelled the philosophy of greece, and used its literature as a mould for its own. it developed roman law and introduced modern science. the world without and the world within were rediscovered. land and sea, starry sky and planetary system, were fixed upon the chart. man himself, the animals, the planets, organic and inorganic life, the small things of the earth gave up their secrets. inventions utilized all classes of products, commerce flourished, free cities were builded, universities arose, learning spread itself on the pages of newly invented books of print, and, perhaps, greatest of all, the arts arose on strong wings of life to the very highest altitude. for the moral side of the renaissance intellect it had its tastes and refinements, as shown in its high quality of art; but it also had its polluting and degrading features, as shown in its political and social life. religion was visibly weakening though the ecclesiastical still held strong. people were forgetting the faith of the early days, and taking up with the material things about them. they were glorifying the human and exalting the natural. the story of greece was being repeated in italy. and out of this new worship came jewels of rarity and beauty, but out of it also came faithlessness, corruption, vice. strictly speaking, the renaissance had been accomplished before the year , but so great was its impetus that, in the arts at least, it extended half-way through the sixteenth century. then it began to fail through exhaustion. motives and methods: the religious subject still held with the painters, but this subject in high-renaissance days did not carry with it the religious feeling as in gothic days. art had grown to be something else than a teacher of the bible. in the painter's hands it had come to mean beauty for its own sake--a picture beautiful for its form and color, regardless of its theme. this was the teaching of antique art, and the study of nature but increased the belief. a new love had arisen in the outer and visible world, and when the church called for altar-pieces the painters painted their new love, christened it with a religious title, and handed it forth in the name of the old. thus art began to free itself from church domination and to live as an independent beauty. the general motive, then, of painting during the high renaissance, though apparently religious from the subject, and in many cases still religious in feeling, was largely to show the beauty of form or color, in which religion, the antique, and the natural came in as modifying elements. in technical methods, though extensive work was still done in fresco, especially at florence and rome, yet the bulk of high-renaissance painting was in oils upon panel and canvas. at venice even the decorative wall paintings were upon canvas, afterward inserted in wall or ceiling. [illustration: fig. .--andrea del sarto. madonna of st. francis. uffizi.] the florentines and romans: there was a severity and austerity about the florentine art, even at its climax. it was never too sensuous and luxurious, but rather exact and intellectual. the florentines were fond of lustreless fresco, architectural composition, towering or sweeping lines, rather sharp color as compared with the venetians, and theological, classical, even literary and allegorical subjects. probably this was largely due to the classic bias of the painters and the intellectual and social influences of florence and rome. line and composition were means of expressing abstract thought better than color, though some of the florentines employed both line and color knowingly. this was the case with fra bartolommeo ( - ), a monk of san marco, who was a transition painter from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century. he was a religionist, a follower of savonarola, and a man of soul who thought to do work of a religious character and feeling; but he was also a fine painter, excelling in composition, drawing, drapery, color. the painter's element in his work, its material and earthly beauty, rather detracted from its spiritual significance. he opposed the sensuous and the nude, and yet about the only nude he ever painted--a st. sebastian for san marco--had so much of the earthly about it that people forgot the suffering saint in admiring the fine body, and the picture had to be removed from the convent. in such ways religion in art was gradually undermined, not alone by naturalism and classicism but by art itself. painting brought into life by religion no sooner reached maturity than it led people away from religion by pointing out sensuous beauties in the type rather than religious beauties in the symbol. fra bartolommeo was among the last of the pietists in art. he had no great imagination, but some feeling and a fine color-sense for florence. naturally he was influenced somewhat by the great ones about him, learning perspective from raphael, grandeur from michael angelo, and contours from leonardo da vinci. he worked in collaboration with albertinelli ( - ), a skilled artist and a fellow-pupil with bartolommeo in the workshop of cosimo rosselli. their work is so much alike that it is often difficult to distinguish the painters apart. albertinelli was not so devout as his companion, but he painted the religious subject with feeling, as his visitation in the uffizi indicates. among the followers of bartolommeo and albertinelli were fra paolino ( ), bugiardini ( - ), granacci ( - ), who showed many influences, and ridolfo ghirlandajo ( - ). [illustration: fig. .--michael angelo. athlete. sistine, rome.] andrea del sarto ( - ) was a florentine pure and simple--a painter for the church producing many madonnas and altar-pieces, and yet possessed of little religious feeling or depth. he was a painter more than a pietist, and was called by his townsmen "the faultless painter." so he was as regards the technical features of his art. he was the best brushman and colorist of the florentine school. dealing largely with the material side his craftsmanship was excellent and his pictures exuberant with life and color, but his madonnas and saints were decidedly of the earth--handsome florentine models garbed as sacred characters--well-drawn and easily painted, with little devotional feeling about them. he was influenced by other painters to some extent. masaccio, ghirlandajo, and michael angelo were his models in drawing; leonardo and bartolommeo in contours; while in warmth of color, brush-work, atmospheric and landscape effects he was quite by himself. he had a large number of pupils and followers, but most of them deserted him later on to follow michael angelo. pontormo ( - ) and franciabigio ( - ) were among the best of them. michael angelo ( - ) has been called the "prophet of the renaissance," and perhaps deserves the title, since he was more of the old testament than the new--more of the austere and imperious than the loving or the forgiving. there was no sentimental feature about his art. his conception was intellectual, highly imaginative, mysterious, at times disordered and turbulent in its strength. he came the nearest to the sublime of any painter in history through the sole attribute of power. he had no tenderness nor any winning charm. he did not win, but rather commanded. everything he saw or felt was studied for the strength that was in it. religion, old-testament history, the antique, humanity, all turned in his hands into symbolic forms of power, put forth apparently in the white heat of passion, and at times in defiance of every rule and tradition of art. personal feeling was very apparent in his work, and in this he was as far removed as possible from the greeks, and nearer to what one would call to-day a romanticist. there was little of the objective about him. he was not an imitator of facts but a creator of forms and ideas. his art was a reflection of himself--a self-sufficient man, positive, creative, standing alone, a law unto himself. technically he was more of a sculptor than a painter. he said so himself when julius commanded him to paint the sistine ceiling, and he told the truth. he was a magnificent draughtsman, and drew magnificent sculpturesque figures on the sistine vault. that was about all his achievement with the brush. in color, light, air, perspective--in all those features peculiar to the painter--he was behind his contemporaries. composition he knew a great deal about, and in drawing he had the most positive, far-reaching command of line of any painter of any time. it was in drawing that he showed his power. even this is severe and harsh at times, and then again filled with a grace that is majestic and in scope universal, as witness the creation of adam in the sistine. [illustration: fig. .--raphael. la belle jardiniÈre. louvre.] he came out of florence, a pupil of ghirlandajo, with a school feeling for line, stimulated by the frescos of masaccio and signorelli. at an early age he declared himself, and hewed a path of his own through art, sweeping along with him many of the slighter painters of his age. long-lived he saw his contemporaries die about him and humanism end in bloodshed with the coming of the jesuits; but alone, gloomy, resolute, steadfast to his belief, he held his way, the last great representative of florentine art, the first great representative of individualism in art. with him and after him came many followers who strove to imitate his "terrible style," but they did not succeed any too well. the most of these followers find classification under the mannerists of the decadence. of those who were immediate pupils of michael angelo, or carried out his designs, daniele da volterra ( - ) was one of the most satisfactory. his chief work, the descent from the cross, was considered by poussin as one of the three great pictures of the world. it is sometimes said to have been designed by michael angelo, but that is only a conjecture. it has much action and life in it, but is somewhat affected in pose and gesture, and volterra's work generally was deficient in real energy of conception and execution. marcello venusti ( - ?) painted directly from michael angelo's designs in a delicate and precise way, probably imbibed from his master, perino del vaga, and from association with venetians like sebastiano del piombo ( - ). this last-named painter was born in venice and trained under bellini and giorgione, inheriting the color and light-and-shade qualities of the venetians; but later on he went to rome and came under the influence of michael angelo and raphael. he tried, under michael angelo's inspiration it is said, to unite the florentine grandeur of line with the venetian coloring, and thus outdo raphael. it was not wholly successful, though resulting in an excellent quality of art. as a portrait-painter he was above reproach. his early works were rather free in impasto, the late ones smooth and shiny, in imitation of raphael. raphael sanzio ( - ) was more greek in method than any of the great renaissance painters. in subject he was not more classic than others of his time; he painted all subjects. in thought he was not particularly classic; he was chiefly intellectual, with a leaning toward the sensuous that was half-pagan. it was in method and expression more than elsewhere that he showed the greek spirit. he aimed at the ideal and the universal, independent, so far as possible, of the individual, and sought by a union of all elements to produce perfect harmony. the harmonist of the renaissance is his title. and this harmony extended to a blending of thought, form, and expression, heightening or modifying every element until they ran together with such rhythm that it could not be seen where one left off and another began. he was the very opposite of michael angelo. the art of the latter was an expression of individual power and was purely subjective. raphael's art was largely a unity of objective beauties, with the personal element as much in abeyance as was possible for his time. his education was a cultivation of every grace of mind and hand. he assimilated freely whatever he found to be good in the art about him. a pupil of perugino originally, he levied upon features of excellence in masaccio, fra bartolommeo, leonardo, michael angelo. from the first he got tenderness, from the second drawing, from the third color and composition, from the fourth charm, from the fifth force. like an eclectic greek he drew from all sources, and then blended and united these features in a peculiar style of his own and stamped them with his peculiar raphaelesque stamp. in subject raphael was religious and mythological, but he was imbued with neither of these so far as the initial spirit was concerned. he looked at all subjects in a calm, intellectual, artistic way. even the celebrated sistine madonna is more intellectual than pietistic, a christian minerva ruling rather than helping to save the world. the same spirit ruled him in classic and theological themes. he did not feel them keenly or execute them passionately--at least there is no indication of it in his work. the doing so would have destroyed unity, symmetry, repose. the theme was ever held in check by a regard for proportion and rhythm. to keep all artistic elements in perfect equilibrium, allowing no one to predominate, seemed the mainspring of his action, and in doing this he created that harmony which his admirers sometimes refer to as pure beauty. for his period and school he was rather remarkable technically. he excelled in everything except brush-work, which was never brought to maturity in either florence or rome. even in color he was fine for florence, though not equal to the venetians. in composition, modelling, line, even in texture painting (see his portraits) he was a man of accomplishment; while in grace, purity, serenity, loftiness he was the florentine leader easily first. [illustration: fig. .--giulio romano. apollo and muses. pitti.] the influence of raphael's example was largely felt throughout central italy, and even at the north, resulting in many imitators and followers, who tried to produce raphaelesque effects. their efforts were usually successful in precipitating charm into sweetness and sentiment into sentimentality. francesco penni ( ?- ) seems to have been content to work under raphael with some ability. giulio romano ( - ) was the strongest of the pupils, and became the founder and leader of the roman school, which had considerable influence upon the painters of the decadence. he adopted the classic subject and tried to adopt raphael's style, but he was not completely successful. raphael's refinement in giulio's hands became exaggerated coarseness. he was a good draughtsman, but rather hot as a colorist, and a composer of violent, restless, and, at times, contorted groups. he was a prolific painter, but his work tended toward the baroque style, and had a bad influence on the succeeding schools. primaticcio ( - ) was one of his followers, and had much to do with the founding of the school of fontainebleau in france. giovanni da udine ( - ), a venetian trained painter, became a follower of raphael, his only originality showing in decorative designs. perino del vaga ( - ) was of the same cast of mind. andrea sabbatini ( ?- ) carried raphael's types and methods to the south of italy, and some artists at bologna, and in umbria, like innocenza da imola ( - ?), and timoteo di viti ( - ), adopted the raphael type and method to the detriment of what native talent they may have possessed, though about timoteo there is some doubt whether he adopted raphael's type, or raphael his type. principal works: florentines--fra bartolommeo, descent from the cross salvator mundi st. mark pitti, madonnas and prophets uffizi, other pictures florence acad., louvre, vienna gal.; albertinelli, visitation uffizi, christ magdalene madonna louvre, trinity madonna florence acad., annunciation munich gal.; fra paolino, works at san spirito sienna, s. domenico and s. paolo pistoia, madonna florence acad.; bugiardini, madonna uffizi, st. catherine s. m. novella florence, nativity berlin, st. catherine bologna gal.; granacci, altar-pieces uffizi, pitti, acad. florence, berlin and munich gals.; ridolfo ghirlandajo, s. zenobio pictures uffizi, also louvre and berlin gal.; andrea del sarto, many pictures in uffizi and pitti, louvre, berlin, dresden, madrid, nat. gal. lon., frescos s. annunziata and the scalzo florence; pontormo, frescos annunziata florence, visitation and madonna louvre, portrait berlin gal., supper at emmaus florence acad., other works uffizi; franciabigio, frescos courts of the servi and scalzo florence, bathsheba dresden gal., many portraits in louvre, pitti, berlin gal.; michael angelo, frescos sistine rome, holy family uffizi; daniele da volterra, frescos hist. of cross trinità de' monti rome, innocents uffizi; venusti, frescos castel san angelo, s. spirito rome, annunciation st. john lateran rome; sebastiano del piombo, lazarus nat. gal. lon., pietà viterbo, fornarina uffizi (ascribed to raphael) fornarina and christ bearing cross berlin and dresden gals., agatha pitti, visitation louvre, portrait doria gal. rome; raphael, marriage of virgin brera, madonna and vision of knight nat. gal. lon., madonnas st. michael and st. george louvre, many madonnas and portraits in uffizi, pitti, munich, vienna, st. petersburgh, madrid gals., sistine madonna dresden, chief frescos vatican rome. romans: giulio romano, frescos sala di constantino vatican rome (with francesco penni after raphael), palazzo del tè mantua, st. stephen, s. stefano genoa, holy family dresden gal., other works in louvre, nat. gal. lon., pitti, uffizi; primaticcio, works attributed to him doubtful--scipio louvre, lady at toilet and venus musée de cluny; giovanni da udine, decorations, arabesques and grotesques in vatican loggia; perino del vaga, hist. of joshua and david vatican (with raphael), frescos trinità de' monti and castel s. angelo rome, creation of eve s. marcello rome; sabbatini, adoration naples mus., altar-pieces in naples and salerno churches; innocenza da imola, works in bologna, berlin and munich gals.; timoteo di viti, church of the pace rome (after raphael), madonnas and magdalene brera, acad. of st. luke rome, bologna gal., s. domenico urbino, gubbio cathedral. chapter ix. italian painting. the high renaissance, - .--continued. books recommended: the works on italian art before mentioned and consult also the general bibliography (p. xv.) leonardo da vinci and the milanese: the third person in the great florentine trinity of painters was leonardo da vinci ( - ), the other two being michael angelo and raphael. he greatly influenced the school of milan, and has usually been classed with the milanese, yet he was educated in florence, in the workshop of verrocchio, and was so universal in thought and methods that he hardly belongs to any school. he has been named a realist, an idealist, a magician, a wizard, a dreamer, and finally a scientist, by different writers, yet he was none of these things while being all of them--a full-rounded, universal man, learned in many departments and excelling in whatever he undertook. he had the scientific and experimental way of looking at things. that is perhaps to be regretted, since it resulted in his experimenting with everything and completing little of anything. his different tastes and pursuits pulled him different ways, and his knowledge made him sceptical of his own powers. he pondered and thought how to reach up higher, how to penetrate deeper, how to realize more comprehensively, and in the end he gave up in despair. he could not fulfil his ideal of the head of christ nor the head of mona lisa, and after years of labor he left them unfinished. the problem of human life, the spirit, the world engrossed him, and all his creations seem impregnated with the psychological, the mystical, the unattainable, the hidden. [illustration: fig. .--leonardo da vinci. mona lisa. louvre.] he was no religionist, though painting the religious subject with feeling; he was not in any sense a classicist, nor had he any care for the antique marbles, which he considered a study of nature at second-hand. he was more in love with physical life without being an enthusiast over it. his regard for contours, rhythm of line, blend of light with shade, study of atmosphere, perspective, trees, animals, humanity, show that though he examined nature scientifically, he pictured it æsthetically. in his types there is much sweetness of soul, charm of disposition, dignity of mien, even grandeur and majesty of presence. his people we would like to know better. they are full of life, intelligence, sympathy; they have fascination of manner, winsomeness of mood, grace of bearing. we see this in his best-known work--the mona lisa of the louvre. it has much allurement of personal presence, with a depth and abundance of soul altogether charming. technically, leonardo was not a handler of the brush superior in any way to his florentine contemporaries. he knew all the methods and mediums of the time, and did much to establish oil-painting among the florentines, but he was never a painter like titian, or even correggio or andrea del sarto. a splendid draughtsman, a man of invention, imagination, grace, elegance, and power, he nevertheless carried more by mental penetration and æsthetic sense than by his technical skill. he was one of the great men of the renaissance, and deservedly holds a place in the front rank. though leonardo's accomplishment seems slight because of the little that is left to us, yet he had a great following not only among the florentines but at milan, where vincenza foppa had started a school in the early renaissance time. leonardo was there for fourteen years, and his artistic personality influenced many painters to adopt his type and methods. bernardino luini ( ?- ?) was the most prominent of the disciples. he cultivated leonardo's sentiment, style, subjects, and composition in his middle period, but later on developed independence and originality. he came at a period of art when that earnestness of characterization which marked the early men was giving way to gracefulness of recitation, and that was the chief feature of his art. for that matter gracefulness and pathetic sweetness of mood, with purity of line and warmth of color characterized all the milanese painters. [illustration: fig. .--luini. daughter of herodias with head of john the baptist. uffizi.] the more prominent lights of the school were salaino (fl. - ), of whose work nothing authentic exists, boltraffio ( - ), a painter of limitations but of much refinement and purity, and marco da oggiono ( ?- ) a close follower of leonardo. solario ( ?- ?) probably became acquainted early with the flemish mode of working practised by antonello da messina, but he afterward came under leonardo's spell at milan. he was a careful, refined painter, possessed of feeling and tenderness, producing pictures with enamelled surfaces and much detail. gianpietrino (fl. - ) and cesare da sesto ( - ?) were also of the milanese school, the latter afterward falling under the raphael influence. gaudenzio ferrara ( ?- ?), an exceptionally brilliant colorist and a painter of much distinction, was under leonardo's influence at one time, and with the teachings of that master he mingled a little of raphael in the type of face. he was an uneven painter, often excessive in sentiment, but at his best one of the most charming of the northern painters. sodoma and the siennese: sienna, alive in the fourteenth century to all that was stirring in art, in the fifteenth century was in complete eclipse, no painters of consequence emanating from there or being established there. in the sixteenth century there was a revival of art because of a northern painter settling there and building up a new school. this painter was sodoma ( ?- ). he was one of the best pupils of leonardo da vinci, a master of the human figure, handling it with much grace and charm of expression, but not so successful with groups or studied compositions, wherein he was inclined to huddle and over-crowd space. he was afterward led off by the brilliant success of raphael, and adopted something of that master's style. his best work was done in fresco, though he did some easel pictures that have darkened very much through time. he was a friend of raphael, and his portrait appears beside raphael's in the latter painter's celebrated school of athens. the pupils and followers of the siennese school were not men of great strength. pacchiarotta ( - ?), girolamo della pacchia ( - ), peruzzi ( - ), a half-lombard half-umbrian painter of ability, and beccafumi ( - ) were the principal lights. the influence of the school was slight. [illustration: fig. .--sodoma. ecstasy of st. catherine. sienna.] ferrara and bolognese schools: the painters of these schools during the sixteenth century have usually been classed among the followers and imitators of raphael, but not without some injustice. the influence of raphael was great throughout central italy, and the ferrarese and bolognese felt it, but not to the extinction of their native thought and methods. moreover, there was some influence in color coming from the venetian school, but again not to the entire extinction of ferrarese individuality. dosso dossi ( ?- ), at ferrara, a pupil of lorenzo costa, was the chief painter of the time, and he showed more of giorgione in color and light-and-shade than anyone else, yet he never abandoned the yellows, greens, and reds peculiar to ferrara, and both he and garofolo were strikingly original in their background landscapes. garofolo ( - ) was a pupil of panetti and costa, who made several visits to rome and there fell in love with raphael's work, which showed in a fondness for the sweep and flow of line, in the type of face adopted, and in the calmness of his many easel pictures. he was not so dramatic a painter as dosso, and in addition he had certain mannerisms or earmarks, such as sootiness in his flesh tints and brightness in his yellows and greens, with dulness in his reds. he was always ferrarese in his landscapes and in the main characteristics of his technic. mazzolino ( ?- ?) was another of the school, probably a pupil of panetti. he was an elaborate painter, fond of architectural backgrounds and glowing colors enlivened with gold in the high lights. bagnacavallo ( - ) was a pupil of francia at bologna, but with much of dosso and ferrara about him. he, in common with imola, already mentioned, was indebted to the art of raphael. correggio at parma: in correggio ( ?- ) all the boccaccio nature of the renaissance came to the surface. it was indicated in andrea del sarto--this nature-worship--but correggio was the consummation. he was the faun of the renaissance, the painter with whom the beauty of the human as distinguished from the religious and the classic showed at its very strongest. free animal spirits, laughing madonnas, raving nymphs, excited children of the wood, and angels of the sky pass and repass through his pictures in an atmosphere of pure sensuousness. they appeal to us not religiously, not historically, not intellectually, but sensuously and artistically through their rhythmic lines, their palpitating flesh, their beauty of color, and in the light and atmosphere that surround them. he was less of a religionist than andrea del sarto. religion in art was losing ground in his day, and the liberality and worldliness of its teachers appeared clearly enough in the decorations of the convent of st. paul at parma, where correggio was allowed to paint mythological dianas and cupids in the place of saints and madonnas. true enough, he painted the religious subject very often, but with the same spirit of life and joyousness as profane subjects. [illustration: fig. --correggio. marriage of st. catherine and christ. louvre.] the classic subject seemed more appropriate to his spirit, and yet he knew and probably cared less about it than the religious subject. his dianas and ledas are only so in name. they have little of the hellenic spirit about them, and for the sterner, heroic phases of classicism--the lofty, the grand--correggio never essayed them. the things of this earth and the sweetness thereof seemed ever his aim. women and children were beautiful to him in the same way that flowers and trees and skies and sunsets were beautiful. they were revelations of grace, charm, tenderness, light, shade, color. simply to exist and be glad in the sunlight was sweetness to correggio. he would have no sibylesque mystery, no prophetic austerity, no solemnity, no great intellectuality. he was no leader of a tragic chorus. the dramatic, the forceful, the powerful, were foreign to his mood. he was a singer of lyrics and pastorals, a lover of the material beauty about him, and it is because he passed by the pietistic, the classic, the literary, and showed the beauty of physical life as an art motive that he is called the faun of the renaissance. the appellation is not inappropriate. how or why he came to take this course would be hard to determine. it was reflective of the times; but correggio, so far as history tells us, had little to do with the movements and people of his age. he was born and lived and died near parma, and is sometimes classed among the bologna-ferrara painters, but the reasons for the classification are not too strong. his education, masters, and influences are all shadowy and indefinite. he seems, from his drawing and composition, to have known something of mantegna at mantua; from his coloring something of dosso and garofolo, especially in his straw-yellows; from his early types and faces something of costa and francia, and his contours and light-and-shade indicate a knowledge of leonardo's work. but there is no positive certainty that he saw the work of any of these men. his drawing was faulty at times, but not obtrusively so; his color and brush-work rich, vivacious, spirited; his light brilliant, warm, penetrating; his contours melting, graceful; his atmosphere omnipresent, enveloping. in composition he rather pushed aside line in favor of light and color. it was his technical peculiarity that he centralized his light and surrounded it by darks as a foil. and in this very feature he was one of the first men in renaissance italy to paint a picture for the purpose of weaving a scheme of lights and darks through a tapestry of rich colors. that is art for art's sake, and that, as will be seen further on, was the picture motive of the great venetians. correggio's immediate pupils and followers, like those of raphael and andrea del sarto, did him small honor. as was usually the case in renaissance art-history they caught at the method and lost the spirit of the master. his son, pomponio allegri ( - ?), was a painter of some mark without being in the front rank. michelangelo anselmi ( - ?), though not a pupil, was an indifferent imitator of correggio. parmigianino ( - ), a mannered painter of some brilliancy, and of excellence in portraits, was perhaps the best of the immediate followers. it was not until after correggio's death, and with the painters of the decadence, that his work was seriously taken up and followed. principal works: milanese--leonardo da vinci, last supper s. m. delle grazie milan (in ruins), mona lisa, madonna with st. anne (badly damaged) louvre, adoration (unfinished) uffizi, angel at left in verrocchio's baptism florence acad.; luini, frescos monastero maggiore, fragments in brera milan, church of the pilgrims sarrona, s. m. degli angeli lugano, altar-pieces duomo como, ambrosian library milan, brera, uffizi, louvre, madrid, st. petersburgh, and other galleries; beltraffio, madonna louvre, barbara berlin gal., madonna nat. gal. lon., fresco convent of s. onofrio rome (ascribed to da vinci); marco da oggiono, archangels and other works brera, holy family madonna louvre; solario, ecce homo repose poldi-pezzoli gal. milan, holy family brera, madonna portrait louvre, portraits nat. gal. lon., assumption certosa of pavia; giampietrino, magdalene brera, madonna s. sepolcro milan, magdalene and catherine berlin gal.; cesare da sesto, madonna brera, magi naples mus.; gaudenzio ferrara, frescos church of pilgrims saronna, other pictures in brera, turin gal., s. gaudenzio novara, s. celso milan. siennese--sodoma, frescos convent of st. anne near pienza, benedictine convent of mont' oliveto maggiore, alexander and roxana villa farnesina rome, s. bernardino palazzo pubblico, s. domenico sienna, pictures uffizi, brera, munich, vienna gals.; pacchiarotto, ascension visitation sienna gal.; girolamo del pacchia, frescos ( ) s. bernardino, altar-pieces s. spirito and sienna acad., munich and nat. gal. lon.; peruzzi, fresco fontegiuste sienna, s. onofrio, s. m. della pace rome; beccafumi, st. catherine saints sienna acad., frescos s. bernardino hospital and s. martino sienna, palazzo doria rome, pitti, berlin, munich gals. ferrarese and bolognese--dosso dossi, many works ferrara modena gals., duomo s. pietro modena, brera, borghese, doria, berlin, dresden, vienna, gals.; garofolo, many works ferrara churches and gal., borghese, campigdoglio, louvre, berlin, dresden, munich, nat. gal. lon.; mazzolino, ferrara, berlin, dresden, louvre, doria, borghese, pitti, uffizi, and nat. gal. lon.; bagnacavallo, misericordia and gal. bologna, louvre, berlin, dresden gals. parmese--correggio, frescos convent of s. paolo, s. giovanni evangelista, duomo parma, altar-pieces dresden ( ), parma gals., louvre, mythological pictures antiope louvre, danae borghese, leda jupiter and io berlin, venus mercury and cupid nat. gal. lon., ganymede vienna gal.; pomponio allegri, frescos capella del popolo parma; anselmi, frescos s. giovanni evangelista, altar-pieces madonna della steccata, duomo, gal. parma, louvre; parmigianino, frescos moses steccata, s. giovanni parma, altar-pieces santa margherita, bologna gal., madonna pitti, portraits uffizi, vienna, naples mus., other works dresden, vienna, and nat. gal. lon. chapter x. italian painting. the high renaissance. - . (_continued._) books recommended: the works on italian art before mentioned and also consult general bibliography, (page xv.). the venetian school: it was at venice and with the venetian painters of the sixteenth century that a new art-motive was finally and fully adopted. this art-motive was not religion. for though the religious subject was still largely used, the religious or pietistic belief was not with the venetians any more than with correggio. it was not a classic, antique, realistic, or naturalistic motive. the venetians were interested in all phases of nature, and they were students of nature, but not students of truth for truth's sake. what they sought, primarily, was the light and shade on a nude shoulder, the delicate contours of a form, the flow and fall of silk or brocade, the richness of a robe, a scheme of color or of light, the character of a face, the majesty of a figure. they were seeking effects of line, light, color--mere sensuous and pictorial effects, in which religion and classicism played secondary parts. they believed in art for art's sake; that painting was a creation, not an illustration; that it should exist by its pictorial beauties, not by its subject or story. no matter what their subjects, they invariably painted them so as to show the beauties they prized the highest. the venetian conception was less austere, grand, intellectual, than pictorial, sensuous, concerning the beautiful as it appealed to the eye. and this was not a slight or unworthy conception. true it dealt with the fulness of material life, but regarded as it was by the venetians--a thing full-rounded, complete, harmonious, splendid--it became a great ideal of existence. [illustration: fig. .--giorgione(?). ordeal of moses. uffizi.] in technical expression color was the note of all the school, with hardly an exception. this in itself would seem to imply a lightness of spirit, for color is somehow associated in the popular mind with decorative gayety; but nothing could be further removed from the venetian school than triviality. color was taken up with the greatest seriousness, and handled in such masses and with such dignified power that while it pleased it also awed the spectator. without having quite the severity of line, some of the venetian chromatic schemes rise in sublimity almost to the sistine modellings of michael angelo. we do not feel this so much in giovanni bellini, fine in color as he was. he came too early for the full splendor, but he left many pupils who completed what he had inaugurated. the great venetians: the most positive in influence upon his contemporaries of all the great venetians was giorgione ( ?- ). he died young, and what few pictures by him are left to us have been so torn to pieces by historical criticism that at times one begins to doubt if there ever was such a painter. his different styles have been confused, and his pictures in consequence thereof attributed to followers instead of to the master. painters change their styles, but seldom their original bent of mind. with giorgione there was a lyric feeling as shown in music. the voluptuous swell of line, the melting tone of color, the sharp dash of light, the undercurrent of atmosphere, all mingled for him into radiant melody. he sought pure pictorial beauty and found it in everything of nature. he had little grasp of the purely intellectual, and the religious was something he dealt with in no strong devotional way. the fête, the concert, the fable, the legend, with a landscape setting, made a stronger appeal to him. more of a recorder than a thinker he was not the less a leader showing the way into that new arcadian grove of pleasure whose inhabitants thought not of creeds and faiths and histories and literatures, but were content to lead the life that was sweet in its glow and warmth of color, its light, its shadows, its bending trees, and arching skies. a strong full-blooded race, sober-minded, dignified, rationally happy with their lot, giorgione portrayed them with an art infinite in variety and consummate in skill. their least features under his brush seemed to glow like jewels. the sheen of armor and rich robe, a bare forearm, a nude back, or loosened hair--mere morsels of color and light--all took on a new beauty. even landscape with him became more significant. his master, bellini, had been realistic enough in the details of trees and hills, but giorgione grasped the meaning of landscape as an entirety, and rendered it with poetic breadth. technically he adopted the oil medium brought to venice by antonello da messina, introducing scumbling and glazing to obtain brilliancy and depth of color. of light-and-shade he was a master, and in atmosphere excellent. he, in common with all the venetians, is sometimes said to be lacking in drawing, but that is the result of a misunderstanding. the venetians never cared to accent line, choosing rather to model in masses of light and shadow and color. giorgione was a superior man with the brush, but not quite up to his contemporary titian. [illustration: fig. .--titian. venus equipping cupid. borghese pal., rome.] that is not surprising, for titian ( - ) was the painter easily first in the whole range of italian art. he was the first man in the history of painting to handle a brush with freedom, vigor, and gusto. and titian's brush-work was probably the least part of his genius. calm in mood, dignified, and often majestic in conception, learned beyond all others in his craft, he mingled thought, feeling, color, brush-work into one grand and glowing whole. he emphasized nothing, yet elevated everything. in pure intellectual thought he was not so strong as raphael. he never sought to make painting a vehicle for theological, literary, or classical ideas. his tale was largely of humanity under a religious or classical name, but a noble, majestic humanity. in his art dignified senators, stern doges, and solemn ecclesiastics mingle with open-eyed madonnas, winning ariadnes, and youthful bacchuses. men and women they are truly, but the very noblest of the italian race, the mountain race of the cadore country--proud, active, glowing with life; the sea race of venice--worldly wise, full of character, luxurious in power. in himself he was an epitome of all the excellences of painting. he was everything, the sum of venetian skill, the crowning genius of renaissance art. he had force, power, invention, imagination, point of view; he had the infinite knowledge of nature and the infinite mastery of art. in addition, fortune smiled upon him as upon a favorite child. trained in mind and hand he lived for ninety-nine years and worked unceasingly up to a few months of his death. his genius was great and his accomplishment equally so. he was celebrated and independent at thirty-five, though before that he showed something of the influence of giorgione. after the death of giorgione and his master, bellini, titian was the leader in venice to the end of his long life, and though having few scholars of importance his influence was spread through all north italian painting. taking him for all in all, perhaps it is not too much to say that he was the greatest painter known to history. if it were possible to describe that greatness in one word, that word would be "universality." he saw and painted that which was universal in its truth. the local and particular, the small and the accidental, were passed over for those great truths which belong to all the world of life. in this respect he was a veritable shakespeare, with all the calmness and repose of one who overlooked the world from a lofty height. [illustration: fig. .--tintoretto. mercury and graces. ducal pal., venice.] the restfulness and easy strength of titian were not characteristics of his follower tintoretto ( - ). he was violent, headlong, impulsive, more impetuous than michael angelo, and in some respects a strong reminder of him. he had not michael angelo's austerity, and there was more clash and tumult and fire about him, but he had a command of line like the florentine, and a way of hurling things, as seen in the fall of the damned, that reminds one of the last judgment of the sistine. it was his aim to combine the line of michael angelo and the color of titian; but without reaching up to either of his models he produced a powerful amalgam of his own. he was one of the very great artists of the world, and the most rapid workman in the whole renaissance period. there are to-day, after centuries of decay, fire, theft, and repainting, yards upon yards of tintoretto's canvases rotting upon the walls of the venetian churches. he produced an enormous amount of work, and, what is to be regretted, much of it was contract work or experimental sketching. this has given his art a rather bad name, but judged by his best works in the ducal palace and the academy at venice, he will not be found lacking. even in his masterpiece (the miracle of the slave) he is "il furioso," as they used to call him; but his thunderbolt style is held in check by wonderful grace, strength of modelling, superb contrasts of light with shade, and a coloring of flesh and robes not unworthy of the very greatest. he was a man who worked in the white heat of passion, with much imagination and invention. as a technician he sought difficulties rather than avoided them. there is some antagonism between form and color, but tintoretto tried to reconcile them. the result was sometimes clashing, but no one could have done better with them than he did. he was a fine draughtsman, a good colorist, and a master of light. as a brushman he was a superior man, but not equal to titian. paolo veronese ( - ), the fourth great venetian, did not follow the line direction set by tintoretto, but carried out the original color-leaning of the school. he came a little later than tintoretto, and his art was a reflection of the advancing renaissance, wherein simplicity was destined to lose itself in complexity, grandeur, and display. paolo came on the very crest of the renaissance wave, when art, risen to its greatest height, was gleaming in that transparent splendor that precedes the fall. [illustration: fig. .--p. veronese. venice enthroned. ducal pal., venice.] the great bulk of his work had a large decorative motive behind it. almost all of the late venetian work was of that character. hence it was brilliant in color, elaborate in subject, and grand in scale. splendid robes, hangings, furniture, architecture, jewels, armor, appeared everywhere, and not in flat, lustreless hues, but with that brilliancy which they possess in nature. drapery gave way to clothing, and texture-painting was introduced even in the largest canvases. scenes from scripture and legend turned into grand pageants of venetian glory, and the facial expression of the characters rather passed out in favor of telling masses of color to be seen at a distance upon wall or ceiling. it was pomp and glory carried to the highest pitch, but with all seriousness of mood and truthfulness in art. it was beyond titian in variety, richness, ornament, facility; but it was perhaps below titian in sentiment, sobriety, and depth of insight. titian, with all his sensuous beauty, did appeal to the higher intelligence, while paolo and his companions appealed more positively to the eye by luxurious color-setting and magnificence of invention. the decadence came after paolo, but not with him. his art was the most gorgeous of the venetian school, and by many is ranked the highest of all, but perhaps it is better to say it was the height. those who came after brought about the decline by striving to imitate his splendor, and thereby falling into extravagance. these are the four great venetians--the men of first rank. beside them and around them were many other painters, placed in the second rank, who in any other time or city would have held first place. palma il vecchio ( ?- ) was so excellent in many ways that it seems unjust to speak of him as a secondary painter. he was not, however, a great original mind, though in many respects a perfect painter. he was influenced by bellini at first, and then by giorgione. in subject there was nothing dramatic about him, and he carries chiefly by his portrayal of quiet, dignified, and beautiful venetians under the names of saints and holy families. the st. barbara is an example of this, and one of the most majestic figures in all painting. [illustration: fig. .--lotto. three ages. pitti.] palma's friend and fellow-worker, lorenzo lotto ( ?- ?) came from the school of the bellini, and at different times was under the influence of several venetian painters--palma, giorgione, titian--without obliterating a sensitive individuality of his own. he was a somewhat mannered but very charming painter, and in portraits can hardly be classed below titian. rocco marconi (fl. - ) was another bellini-educated painter, showing the influence of palma and even of paris bordone. in color and landscape he was excellent. pordenone ( - ) rather followed after giorgione, and unsuccessfully competed with titian. he was inclined to exaggeration in dramatic composition, but was a painter of undeniable power. cariani ( - ) was another giorgione follower. bonifazio pitati probably came from a veronese family. he showed the influence of palma, and was rather deficient in drawing, though exceedingly brilliant and rich in coloring. this latter may be said for paris bordone ( - ), a painter of titian's school, gorgeous in color, but often lacking in truth of form. his portraits are very fine. another painter family, the bassani--there were six of them, of whom jacopo bassano ( - ) and his son francesco bassano ( - ), were the most noted--formed themselves after venetian masters, and were rather remarkable for violent contrasts of light and dark, _genre_ treatment of sacred subjects, and still-life and animal painting. painting in venetian territories: venetian painting was not confined to venice, but extended through all the venetian territories in renaissance times, and those who lived away from the city were, in their art, decidedly venetian, though possessing local characteristics. at brescia savoldo ( ?- ), a rather superficial painter, fond of weird lights and sheeny draperies, and romanino ( ?- ), a follower of giorgione, good in composition but unequal and careless in execution, were the earliest of the high renaissance men. moretto ( ?- ) was the strongest and most original, a man of individuality and power, remarkable technically for his delicacy and unity of color under a veil of "silvery tone." in composition he was dignified and noble, and in brush-work simple and direct. one of the great painters of the time, he seemed to stand more apart from venetian influence than any other on venetian territory. he left one remarkable pupil, moroni (fl. - ) whose portraits are to-day the gems of several galleries, and greatly admired for their modern spirit and treatment. at verona caroto and girolamo dai libri ( - ), though living into the sixteenth century were more allied to the art of the fifteenth century. torbido ( ?- ?) was a vacillating painter, influenced by liberale da verona, giorgione, bonifazio veronese, and later, even by giulio romano. cavazzola ( - ) was more original, and a man of talent. there were numbers of other painters scattered all through the venetian provinces at this time, but they were not of the first, or even the second rank, and hence call for no mention here. principal works: giorgione, fête rustique louvre, sleeping venus dresden, altar-piece castelfranco, ordeal of moses judgment of solomon knight of malta uffizi; titian, sacred and profane love borghese, tribute money dresden, annunciation s. rocco, pesaro madonna frari venice, entombment man with glove louvre, bacchus nat. gal. lon., charles v. madrid, danæ naples, many other works in almost every european gallery; tintoretto, many works in venetian churches, salute ss. giovanni e paolo s. maria dell' orto scuola and church of s. rocco ducal palace venice acad. (best work miracle of slave); paolo veronese, many pictures in s. sebastiano ducal palace academy venice, pitti, uffizi, brera, capitoline and borghese galleries rome, turin, dresden, vienna, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; palma il vecchio, jacob and rachel three sisters dresden, barbara s. m. formosa venice, other altar-pieces venice acad., colonna palace rome, brera, naples mus., vienna, nat. gal. lon.; lotto, three ages pitti, portraits brera, nat. gal. lon., altar-pieces ss. giovanni e paolo venice and churches at bergamo, treviso, recanti, also uffizi, vienna, madrid gals.; marconi, descent venice acad., altar-pieces s. giorgio maggiore ss. giovanni e paolo venice; pordenone, s. lorenzo madonna venice acad., salome doria st. george quirinale rome, other works madrid, dresden, st. petersburg, nat. gal. lon.; bonifazio, st. john, st. joseph, etc. ambrosian library milan (attributed to giorgione), holy family colonna pal. rome, ducal pal., pitti, dresden gals.; supper at emmaus brera, other works venice acad.; paris bordone, fisherman and doge, venice acad., madonna casa tadini lovere, portraits in uffizi, pitti, louvre, munich, vienna, nat. gal. lon., brignola pal. genoa; jacopo bassano, altar-pieces in bassano churches, also ducal pal. venice, nat. gal. lon., uffizi, naples mus.; francesco bassano, large pictures ducal pal., st. catherine pitti, sabines turin, adoration and christ in temple dresden, adoration and last supper madrid; savoldo, altar-pieces brera, s. niccolò treviso, uffizi, turin gal., s. giobbe venice, nat. gal. lon.; romanino, altar-pieces s. francesco brescia, berlin gal., s. giovanni evangelista brescia, duomo cremona, padua, and nat. gal. lon.; moretto, altar-pieces brera, staedel mus., s. m. della pieta venice, vienna, berlin, louvre, pitti, nat. gal. lon.; moroni, portraits bergamo gal., uffizi, nat. gal. lon., berlin, dresden, madrid; girolamo dai libri, madonna berlin, conception s. paolo verona, virgin verona gal., s. giorgio maggiore verona, nat. gal. lon.; torbido, frescos duomo, altar-pieces s. zeno and s. eufemia verona; cavazzola, altar-pieces, verona gal. and nat. gal. lon. chapter xi. italian painting. the decadence and modern work. - . books recommended: as before, also general bibliography, (page xv.); calvi, _notizie della vita e delle opere di gio. francesco barbiera_; malvasia, _felsina pittrice_; sir joshua reynolds, _discourses_; symonds, _renaissance in italy--the catholic reaction_; willard, _modern italian art_. the decline: an art movement in history seems like a wave that rises to a height, then breaks, falls, and parts of it are caught up from beneath to help form the strength of a new advance. in italy christianity was the propelling force of the wave. in the early renaissance, the antique, and the study of nature came in as additions. at venice in the high renaissance the art-for-art's-sake motive made the crest of light and color. the highest point was reached then, and there was nothing that could follow but the breaking and the scattering of the wave. this took place in central italy after , in venice after . art had typified in form, thought, and expression everything of which the italian race was capable. it had perfected all the graces and elegancies of line and color, and adorned them with a superlative splendor. there was nothing more to do. the idea was completed, the motive power had served its purpose, and that store of race-impulse which seems necessary to the making of every great art was exhausted. for the men that came after michael angelo and tintoretto there was nothing. all that they could do was to repeat what others had said, or to recombine the old thoughts and forms. this led inevitably to imitation, over-refinement of style, and conscious study of beauty, resulting in mannerism and affectation. such qualities marked the art of those painters who came in the latter part of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth. they were unfortunate men in the time of their birth. no painter could have been great in the seventeenth century of italy. art lay prone upon its face under jesuit rule, and the late men were left upon the barren sands by the receding wave of the renaissance. [illustration: fig. .--bronzino. christ in limbo. uffizi.] art motives and subjects: as before, the chief subject of the art of the decadence was religion, with many heads and busts of the madonna, though nature and the classic still played their parts. after the reformation at the north the church in italy started the counter-reformation. one of the chief means employed by this catholic reaction was the embellishment of church worship, and painting on a large scale, on panel rather than in fresco, was demanded for decorative purposes. but the religious motive had passed out, though its subject was retained, and the pictorial motive had reached its climax at venice. the faith of the one and the taste and skill of the other were not attainable by the late men, and, while consciously striving to achieve them, they fell into exaggerated sentiment and technical weakness. it seems perfectly apparent in their works that they had nothing of their own to say, and that they were trying to say over again what michael angelo, correggio, and titian had said before them much better. there were earnest men and good painters among them, but they could produce only the empty form of art. the spirit had fled. the mannerists: immediately after the high renaissance leaders of florence and rome came the imitators and exaggerators of their styles. they produced large, crowded compositions, with a hasty facility of the brush and striking effects of light. seeking the grand they overshot the temperate. their elegance was affected, their sentiment forced, their brilliancy superficial glitter. when they thought to be ideal they lost themselves in incomprehensible allegories; when they thought to be real they grew prosaic in detail. these men are known in art history as the mannerists, and the men whose works they imitated were chiefly raphael, michael angelo, and correggio. there were many of them, and some of them have already been spoken of as the followers of michael angelo. agnolo bronzino ( ?- ) was a pupil of pontormo, and an imitator of michael angelo, painting in rather heavy colors with a thin brush. his characters were large, but never quite free from weakness, except in portraiture, where he appeared at his best. vasari ( - )--the same vasari who wrote the lives of the painters--had versatility and facility, but his superficial imitations of michael angelo were too grandiose in conception and too palpably false in modelling. salviati ( - ) was a friend of vasari, a painter of about the same cast of mind and hand as vasari, and federigo zucchero ( - ) belongs with him in producing things muscularly big but intellectually small. baroccio ( - ), though classed among the mannerists as an imitator of correggio and raphael, was really one of the strong men of the late times. there was affectation and sentimentality about his work, a prettiness of face, rosy flesh tints, and a general lightness of color, but he was a superior brushman, a good colorist, and, at times, a man of earnestness and power. [illustration: fig. .--baroccio. annunciation.] the eclectics: after the mannerists came the eclectics of bologna, led by the caracci, who, about , sought to "revive" art. they started out to correct the faults of the mannerists, and yet their own art was based more on the art of their great predecessors than on nature. they thought to make a union of renaissance excellences by combining michael angelo's line, titian's color, correggio's light-and-shade and raphael's symmetry and grace. the attempt was praiseworthy for the time, but hardly successful. they caught the lines and lights and colors of the great men, but they overlooked the fact that the excellence of the imitated lay largely in their inimitable individualities, which could not be combined. the eclectic work was done with intelligence, but their system was against them and their baroque age was against them. midway in their career the caracci themselves modified their eclecticism and placed more reliance upon nature. but their pupils paid little heed to the modification. there were five of the caracci, but three of them--ludovico ( - ), agostino ( - ), and annibale ( - )--led the school, and of these annibale was the most distinguished. they had many pupils, and their influence was widely spread over italy. in sir joshua reynolds's day they were ranked with raphael, but at the present time criticism places them where they belong--painters of the decadence with little originality or spontaneity in their art, though much technical skill. domenichino ( - ) was the strongest of the pupils. his st. jerome was rated by poussin as one of the three great paintings of the world, but it never deserved such rank. it is powerfully composed, but poor in coloring and handling. the painter had great repute in his time, and was one of the best of the seventeenth century men. guido reni ( - ) was a painter of many gifts and accomplishments, combined with many weaknesses. his works are well composed and painted, but excessive in sentiment and overdone in pathos. albani ( - ) ran to elegance and a porcelain-like prettiness. guercino ( - ) was originally of the eclectic school at bologna, but later took up with the methods of the naturalists at naples. he was a painter of far more than the average ability. sassoferrato ( - ) and carlo dolci ( - ) were so super-saturated with sentimentality that often their skill as painters is overlooked or forgotten. in spirit they were about the weakest of the century. there were other eclectic schools started throughout italy--at milan, cremona, ferrara--but they produced little worth recording. at rome certain painters like cristofano allori ( - ), an exceptionally strong man for the time, berrettini ( - ), and maratta ( - ), manufactured a facile kind of painting from what was attractive in the various schools, but it was never other than meretricious work. [illustration: fig. .--annibale caracci. entombment of christ. louvre.] the naturalists: contemporary with the eclectics sprang up the neapolitan school of the naturalists, led by caravaggio ( - ) and his pupils. these schools opposed each other, and yet influenced each other. especially was this true with the later men, who took what was best in both schools. the naturalists were, perhaps, more firmly based upon nature than the bolognese eclectics. their aim was to take nature as they found it, and yet, in conformity with the extravagance of the age, they depicted extravagant nature. caravaggio thought to represent sacred scenes more truthfully by taking his models from the harsh street life about him and giving types of saints and apostles from neapolitan brawlers and bandits. it was a brutal, coarse representation, rather fierce in mood and impetuous in action, yet not without a good deal of tragic power. his subjects were rather dismal or morose, but there was knowledge in the drawing of them, some good color and brush-work and a peculiar darkness of shadow masses (originally gained from giorgione), that stood as an ear-mark of his whole school. from the continuous use of black shadows the school got the name of the "darklings," by which they are still known. giordano ( - ), a painter of prodigious facility and invention, salvator rosa ( - ), best known as one of the early painters of landscape, and ribera, a spanish painter, were the principal pupils. the late venetians: the decadence at venice, like the renaissance, came later than at florence, but after the death of tintoretto mannerisms and the imitation of the great men did away with originality. there was still much color left, and fine ceiling decorations were done, but the nobility and calm splendor of titian's days had passed. palma il giovine ( - ) with a hasty brush produced imitations of tintoretto with some grace and force, and in remarkable quantity. he and tintoretto were the most rapid and productive painters of the century; but palma's was not good in spirit, though quite dashing in technic. padovanino ( - ) was more of a titian follower, but, like all the other painters of the time, he was proficient with the brush and lacking in the stronger mental elements. the last great italian painter was tiepolo ( - ), and he was really great beyond his age. with an art founded on paolo veronese, he produced decorative ceilings and panels of high quality, with wonderful invention, a limpid brush, and a light flaky color peculiarly appropriate to the walls of churches and palaces. he was, especially in easel pictures, a brilliant, vivacious brushman, full of dash and spirit, tempered by a large knowledge of what was true and pictorial. some of his best pictures are still in venice, and modern painters are unstinted in their praise of them. he left a son, domenico tiepolo ( - ), who followed his methods. in the late days of venetian painting, canaletto ( - ) and guardi ( - ) achieved reputation by painting venetian canals and architecture with much color effect. [illustration: fig. .--caravaggio. the card players. dresden.] nineteenth-century painting in italy: there is little in the art of italy during the present century that shows a positive national spirit. it has been leaning on the rest of europe for many years, and the best that the living painters show is largely an echo of dusseldorf, munich, or paris. the revived classicism of david in france affected nineteenth-century painting in italy somewhat. then it was swayed by cornelius and overbeck from germany. morelli ( -[ ]) shows this latter influence, though one of the most important of the living men.[ ] in the 's mariano fortuny, a spaniard at rome, led the younger element in the glittering and the sparkling, and this style mingled with much that is more strikingly parisian than italian, may be found in the works of painters like michetti, de nittis ( - ), favretto, tito, nono, simonetti, and others. [footnote : died, .] [footnote : see _scribner's magazine_, neapolitan art, dec., , feb., .] of recent days the impressionistic view of light and color has had its influence; but the italian work at its best is below that of france. segantini[ ] was one of the most promising of the younger men in subjects that have an archaic air about them. boldini, though italian born and originally following fortuny's example, is really more parisian than anything else. he is an artist of much power and technical strength in _genre_ subjects and portraits. the newer men are fragiocomo, fattori, mancini, marchetti. [footnote : died, .] principal works: mannerists--agnolo bronzino, christ in limbo and many portraits in uffizi and nat. gal. lon.; vasari, many pictures in galleries at arezzo, bologna, berlin, munich, louvre, madrid; salviati, charity christ uffizi, patience pitti, st. thomas louvre, love and psyche berlin; federigo zucchero, duomo florence, ducal palace venice, allegories uffizi, calumny hampton court; baroccio, pardon of st. francis urbino, annunciation loreto, several pictures in uffizi, nat. gal. lon., louvre, dresden gal. eclectics--ludovico caracci, cathedral frescos bologna, thirteen pictures bologna gal.; agostino caracci, frescos (with annibale) farnese pal. rome, altar-pieces bologna gal.; annibale carracci, frescos (with agostino) farnese pal. rome, other pictures bologna gal., uffizi, naples mus., dresden, berlin, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; domenichino, st. jerome vatican, s. pietro in vincoli, diana borghese, bologna, pitti, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; guido reni, frescos aurora rospigliosi pal. rome, many pictures bologna, borghese gal., pitti, uffizi, brera, naples, louvre, and other galleries of europe; albani, guercino, sassoferrato, and carlo dolci, works in almost every european gallery, especially bologna; cristofano allori, judith pitti, also pictures in uffizi; berrettini and maratta, many examples in italian galleries, also louvre. naturalists--caravaggio, entombment vatican, many other works in pitti, uffizi, naples, louvre, dresden, st. petersburg; giordano, judgment of paris berlin, many pictures in dresden and italian galleries; salvator rosa, best marine in pitti, other works uffizi, brera, naples, madrid galleries and colonna, corsini, doria, chigi palaces rome. late venetians--palma il giovine, ducal palace venice, cassel, dresden, munich, madrid, naples, vienna galleries; padovanino, marriage in cana kneeling angel and other works venice acad., carmina venice, also galleries of louvre, uffizi, borghese, dresden, london; tiepolo, large fresco villa pisani stra, palazzo labia scuola carmina, venice, villa valmarana, and at wurtzburg, easel pictures venice acad., louvre, berlin, madrid; canaletto and guardi, many pictures in european galleries. modern italians[ ]--morelli, madonna royal chap. castiglione, assumption royal chap. naples; michetti, the vow nat. gal. rome; de nittis, place du carrousel luxembourg paris; boldini, gossips met. mus. new york. [footnote : only works in public places are given. those in private hands change too often for record here. for detailed list of works see champlin and perkins, _cyclopedia of painters and paintings._] chapter xii. french painting. sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth-century painting. books recommended: amorini, _vita del celebre pittore francesco primaticcio_; berger, _histoire de l'École française de peinture au xvii^{me} siècle_; bland, _les peintres des fêtes galantes, watteau, boucher, et al._; curmer, _l'oeuvre de jean fouquet_; delaborde, _Études sur les beaux arts en france et en italie_; didot, _Études sur jean cousin_; dimier, _french painting in xvi century_; dumont, _antoine watteau_; dussieux, _nouvelles recherches sur la vie de e. lesueur_; genevay, _le style louis xiv., charles le brun_; goncourt, _l'art du xviii^{me} siècle_; guibel, _Éloge de nicolas poussin_; guiffrey, _la famille de jean cousin_; laborde, _la renaissance des arts à la cour de france_; lagrange, _j. vernet et la peinture au xviii^{me} siècle_; lecoy de la marche, _le roi rené_; mantz, _françois boucher_; michiels, _Études sur l'art flamand dans l'est et le midi de la france_; muntz, _la renaissance en italie et en france_; palustre, _la renaissance en france_; pattison, _renaissance of art in france_; pattison, _claude lorrain_; poillon, _nicolas poussin_; stranahan, _history of french painting_. early french art: painting in france did not, as in italy, spring directly from christianity, though it dealt with the religious subject. from the beginning a decorative motive--the strong feature of french art--appears as the chief motive of painting. this showed itself largely in church ornament, garments, tapestries, miniatures, and illuminations. mural paintings were produced during the fifth century, probably in imitation of italian or roman example. under charlemagne, in the eighth century, byzantine influences were at work. in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries much stained-glass work appeared, and also many missal paintings and furniture decorations. [illustration: fig. .--poussin. et in arcadia ego. louvre.] in the fifteenth century rené of anjou ( - ), king and painter, gave an impetus to art which he perhaps originally received from italy. his work showed some italian influence mingled with a great deal of flemish precision, and corresponded for france to the early renaissance work of italy, though by no means so advanced. contemporary with rené was jean fouquet ( ?- ?) an illuminator and portrait-painter, one of the earliest in french history. he was an artist of some original characteristics and produced an art detailed and exact in its realism. jean péreal (?- ?) and jean bourdichon ( ?- ?) with fouquet's pupils and sons, formed a school at tours which afterward came to show some italian influence. the native workmen at paris--they sprang up from illuminators to painters in all probability--showed more of the flemish influence. neither of the schools of the fifteenth century reflected much life or thought, but what there was of it was native to the soil, though their methods were influenced from without. sixteenth-century painting: during this century francis i., at fontainebleau, seems to have encouraged two schools of painting, one the native french and the other an imported italian, which afterward took to itself the name of the "school of fontainebleau." of the native artists the clouets were the most conspicuous. they were of flemish origin, and followed flemish methods both in technic and mediums. there were four of them, of whom jean ( ?- ?) and françois ( ?- ?) were the most noteworthy. they painted many portraits, and françois' work, bearing some resemblance to that of holbein, it has been doubtfully said that he was a pupil of that painter. all of their work was remarkable for detail and closely followed facts. the italian importation came about largely through the travels of francis i. in italy. he invited to fontainebleau leonardo da vinci, andrea del sarto, il rosso, primaticcio, and niccolò dell' abbate. these painters rather superseded and greatly influenced the french painters. the result was an italianized school of french art which ruled in france for many years. primaticcio was probably the greatest of the influencers, remaining as he did for thirty years in france. the native painters, jean cousin ( ?- ) and toussaint du breuil ( - ) followed his style, and in the next century the painters were even more servile imitators of italy--imitating not the best models either, but the mannerists, the eclectics, and the roman painters of the decadence. [illustration: fig. .--claude lorrain. flight into egypt. dresden.] seventeenth-century painting: this was a century of great development and production in france, the time of the founding of the french academy of painting and sculpture, and the formation of many picture collections. in the first part of the century the flemish and native tendencies existed, but they were overawed, outnumbered by the italian. not even rubens's painting for marie de' medici, in the palace of the luxembourg, could stem the tide of italy. the french painters flocked to rome to study the art of their great predecessors and were led astray by the flashy elegance of the late italians. among the earliest of this century was fréminet ( - ). he was first taught by his father and jean cousin, but afterward spent fifteen years in italy studying parmigianino and michael angelo. his work had something of the mannerist style about it and was overwrought and exaggerated. in shadows he seemed to have borrowed from caravaggio. vouet ( - ) was a student in italy of veronese's painting and afterward of guido reni and caravaggio. he was a mediocre artist, but had a great vogue in france and left many celebrated pupils. by all odds the best painter of this time was nicolas poussin ( - ). he lived almost all of his life in italy, and might be put down as an italian of the decadence. he was well versed in classical archæology, and had much of the classic taste and feeling prevalent at that time in the roman school of giulio romano. his work showed great intelligence and had an elevated grandiloquent style about it that was impressive. it reflected nothing french, and had little more root in present human sympathy than any of the other painting of the time, but it was better done. the drawing was correct if severe, the composition agreeable if formal, the coloring variegated if violent. many of his pictures have now changed for the worse in coloring owing to the dissipation of surface pigments. he was the founder of the classic and academic in french art, and in influence was the most important man of the century. he was especially strong in the heroic landscape, and in this branch helped form the style of his brother-in-law, gaspard (dughet) poussin ( - ). the landscape painter of the period, however, was claude lorrain ( - ). he differed from poussin in making his pictures depend more strictly upon landscape than upon figures. with both painters, the trees, mountains, valleys, buildings, figures, were of the grand classic variety. hills and plains, sylvan groves, flowing streams, peopled harbors, ionic and corinthian temples, roman aqueducts, mythological groups, were the materials used, and the object of their use was to show the ideal dwelling-place of man--the former garden of the gods. panoramic and slightly theatrical at times, claude's work was not without its poetic side, shrewd knowledge, and skilful execution. he was a leader in landscape, the man who first painted real golden sunlight and shed its light upon earth. there is a soft summer's-day drowsiness, a golden haze of atmosphere, a feeling of composure and restfulness about his pictures that are attractive. like poussin he depended much upon long sweeping lines in composition, and upon effects of linear perspective. [illustration: fig. --watteau. gilles. louvre.] court painting: when louis xiv. came to the throne painting took on a decided character, but it was hardly national or race character. the popular idea, if the people had an idea, did not obtain. there was no motive springing from the french except an inclination to follow italy; and in italy all the great art-motives were dead. in method the french painters followed the late italians, and imitated an imitation; in matter they bowed to the dictates of the court and reflected the king's mock-heroic spirit. echoing the fashion of the day, painting became pompous, theatrical, grandiloquent--a mass of vapid vanity utterly lacking in sincerity and truth. lebrun ( - ), painter in ordinary to the king, directed substantially all the painting of the reign. he aimed at pleasing royalty with flattering allusions to cæsarism and extravagant personifications of the king as a classic conqueror. his art had neither truth, nor genius, nor great skill, and so sought to startle by subject or size. enormous canvases of alexander's triumphs, in allusion to those of the great louis, were turned out to order, and versailles to this day is tapestried with battle-pieces in which louis is always victor. considering the amount of work done, lebrun showed great fecundity and industry, but none of it has much more than a mechanical ingenuity about it. it was rather original in composition, but poor in drawing, lighting, and coloring; and its example upon the painters of the time was pernicious. his contemporary, le sueur ( - ), was a more sympathetic and sincere painter, if not a much better technician. both were pupils of vouet, but le sueur's art was religious in subject, while lebrun's was military and monarchical. le sueur had a feeling for his theme, but was a weak painter, inclined to the sentimental, thin in coloring, and not at all certain in his drawing. french allusions to him as "the french raphael" show more national complacency than correctness. sebastian bourdon ( - ) was another painter of history, but a little out of the lebrun circle. he was not, however, free from the influence of italy, where he spent three years studying color more than drawing. this shows in his works, most of which are lacking in form. contemporary with these men was a group of portrait-painters who gained celebrity perhaps as much by their subjects as by their own powers. they were facile flatterers given over to the pomps of the reign and mirroring all its absurdities of fashion. their work has a graceful, smooth appearance, and, for its time, it was undoubtedly excellent portraiture. even to this day it has qualities of drawing and coloring to commend it, and at times one meets with exceptionally good work. the leaders among these portrait-painters were philip de champaigne ( - ), the best of his time; pierre mignard ( ?- ), a pupil of vouet, who studied in rome and afterward returned to france to become the successful rival of lebrun; largillière ( - ) and rigaud ( - ). eighteenth-century painting: the painting of louis xiv.'s time was continued into the eighteenth century for some fifteen years or more with little change. with the advent of louis xv. art took upon itself another character, and one that reflected perfectly the moral, social, and political france of the eighteenth century. the first louis clamored for glory, the second louis revelled in gayety, frivolity, and sensuality. this was the difference between both monarchs and both arts. the gay and the coquettish in painting had already been introduced by the regent, himself a dilettante in art, and when louis xv. came to the throne it passed from the gay to the insipid, the flippant, even the erotic. shepherds and shepherdesses dressed in court silks and satins with cottony sheep beside them posed in stage-set arcadias, pretty gods and goddesses reclined indolently upon gossamer clouds, and court gallants lounged under artificial trees by artificial ponds making love to pretty soubrettes from the theatre. yet, in spite of the lack of moral and intellectual elevation, in spite of frivolity and make-believe, this art was infinitely better than the pompous imitation of foreign example set up by louis xiv. it was more spontaneous, more original, more french. the influence of italy began to fail, and the painters began to mirror french life. it was largely court life, lively, vivacious, licentious, but in that very respect characteristic of the time. moreover, there was another quality about it that showed french taste at its best--the decorative quality. it can hardly be supposed that the fairy creations of the age were intended to represent actual nature. they were designed to ornament hall and boudoir, and in pure decorative delicacy of design, lightness of touch, color charm, they have never been excelled. the serious spirit was lacking, but the gayety of line and color was well given. [illustration: fig. .--boucher. pastoral. louvre.] watteau ( - ) was the one chiefly responsible for the coquette and soubrette of french art, and watteau was, practically speaking, the first french painter. his subjects were trifling bits of fashionable love-making, scenes from the opera, fêtes, balls, and the like. all his characters played at life in parks and groves that never grew, and most of his color was beautifully unreal; but for all that the work was original, decorative, and charming. moreover, watteau was a brushman, and introduced not only a new spirit and new subject into art, but a new method. the epic treatment of the italians was laid aside in favor of a genre treatment, and instead of line and flat surface watteau introduced color and cleverly laid pigment. he was a brilliant painter; not a great man in thought or imagination, but one of fancy, delicacy, and skill. unfortunately he set a bad example by his gay subjects, and those who came after him carried his gayety and lightness of spirit into exaggeration. watteau's best pupils were lancret ( - ) and pater ( - ), who painted in his style with fair results. after these men came van loo ( - ) and boucher ( - ), who turned watteau's charming fêtes, showing the costumes and manners of the regency, into flippant extravagance. not only was the moral tone and intellectual stamina of their art far below that of watteau, but their workmanship grew defective. both men possessed a remarkable facility of the hand and a keen decorative color-sense; but after a time both became stereotyped and mannered. drawing and modelling were neglected, light was wholly conventional, and landscape turned into a piece of embroidered background with a dresden china-tapestry effect about it. as decoration the general effect was often excellent, as a serious expression of life it was very weak, as an intellectual or moral force it was worse than worthless. fragonard ( - ) followed in a similar style, but was a more knowing man, clever in color, and a much freer and better brushman. a few painters in the time of louis xv. remained apparently unaffected by the court influence, and stand in conspicuous isolation. claude joseph vernet ( - ) was a landscape and marine painter of some repute in his time. he had a sense of the pictorial, but not a remarkable sense of the truthful in nature. chardin ( - ) and greuze ( - ), clung to portrayals of humble life and sought to popularize the _genre_ subject. chardin was not appreciated by the masses. his frank realism, his absolute sincerity of purpose, his play of light and its effect upon color, and his charming handling of textures were comparatively unnoticed. yet as a colorist he may be ranked second to none in french art, and in freshness of handling his work is a model for present-day painters. diderot early recognized chardin's excellence, and many artists since his day have admired his pictures; but he is not now a well-known or popular painter. the populace fancies greuze and his sentimental heads of young girls. they have a prettiness about them that is attractive, but as art they lack in force, and in workmanship they are too smooth, finical, and thin in handling. principal works: all of these french painters are best represented in the collections of the louvre. some of the other galleries, like the dresden, berlin, and national at london, have examples of their work; but the masterpieces are with the french people in the louvre and in the other municipal galleries of france. chapter xiii. french painting. the nineteenth century. books recommended: as before, stranahan, _et al._; also ballière, _henri regnault_; blanc, _les artistes de mon temps_; blanc, _histoire des peintres français au xix^{me} siècle_; blanc, _ingres et son oeuvre_; bigot, _peintres français contemporains_; breton, _la vie d'un artiste_ (_english translation_); brownell, _french art_; burty, _maîtres et petit-maîtres_; chesneau, _peinture française au xix^{me} siècle_; clément, _Études sur les beaux arts en france_; clément, _prudhon_; delaborde, _oeuvre de paul delaroche_; delécluze, _jacques louis david, son École, et son temps_; duret, _les peintres français en _; gautier, _l'art moderne_; gautier, _romanticisme_; gonse, _eugène fromentin_; hamerton, _contemporary french painting_; hamerton, _painting in france after the decline of classicism_; henley, _memorial catalogue of french and dutch loan collection_ ( ); henriet, _charles daubigny et son oeuvre_; lenormant, _les artistes contemporains_; lenormant, _ary scheffer_; merson, _ingres, sa vie et son oeuvre_; moreau, _decamps et son oeuvre_; planche, _Études sur l'École française_; robaut et chesneau, _l' oeuvre complet d'eugène delacroix_; sensier, _théodore rousseau_; sensier, _life and works of j. f. millet_; silvestre, _histoire des artistes vivants et étrangers_; strahan, _modern french art_; thoré, _l'art contemporain_; theuriet, _jules bastien-lepage_; van dyke, _modern french masters_. the revolutionary time: in considering this century's art in europe, it must be remembered that a great social and intellectual change has taken place since the days of the medici. the power so long pent up in italy during the renaissance finally broke and scattered itself upon the western nations; societies and states were torn down and rebuilded, political, social, and religious ideas shifted into new garbs; the old order passed away. [illustration: fig. .--david. the sabines. louvre.] religion as an art-motive, or even as an art-subject, ceased to obtain anywhere. the church failed as an art-patron, and the walls of cloister and cathedral furnished no new bible readings to the unlettered. painting, from being a necessity of life, passed into a luxury, and the king, the state, or the private collector became the patron. nature and actual life were about the only sources left from which original art could draw its materials. these have been freely used, but not so much in a national as in an individual manner. the tendency to-day is not to put forth a universal conception but an individual belief. individualism--the same quality that appeared so strongly in michael angelo's art--has become a keynote in modern work. it is not the only kind of art that has been shown in this century, nor is nature the only theme from which art has been derived. we must remember and consider the influence of the past upon modern men, and the attempts to restore the classic beauty of the greek, roman, and italian, which practically ruled french painting in the first part of this century. french classicism of david: this was a revival of greek form in art, founded on the belief expressed by winckelmann, that beauty lay in form, and was best shown by the ancient greeks. it was the objective view of art which saw beauty in the external and tolerated no individuality in the artist except that which was shown in technical skill. it was little more than an imitation of the greek and roman marbles as types, with insistence upon perfect form, correct drawing, and balanced composition. in theme and spirit it was pseudo-heroic, the incidents of greek and roman history forming the chief subjects, and in method it rather despised color, light-and-shade, and natural surroundings. it was elevated, lofty, ideal in aspiration, but coldly unsympathetic because lacking in contemporary interest; and, though correct enough in classic form, was lacking in the classic spirit. like all reanimated art, it was derivative as regards its forms and lacking in spontaneity. the reason for the existence of greek art died with its civilization, and those, like the french classicists, who sought to revive it, brought a copy of the past into the present, expecting the world to accept it. there was some social, and perhaps artistic, reason, however, for the revival of the classic in the french art of the late eighteenth century. it was a revolt, and at that time revolts were popular. the art of boucher and van loo had become quite unbearable. it was flippant, careless, licentious. it had no seriousness or dignity about it. moreover, it smacked of the bourbon monarchy, which people had come to hate. classicism was severe, elevated, respectable at least, and had the air of the heroic republic about it. it was a return to a sterner view of life, with the martial spirit behind it as an impetus, and it had a great vogue. for many years during the revolution, the consulate, and the empire, classicism was accepted by the sovereigns and the institute of france, and to this day it lives in a modified form in that semi-classic work known as academic art. the classic school: vien ( - ) was the first painter to protest against the art of boucher and van loo by advocating more nobility of form and a closer study of nature. he was, however, more devoted to the antique forms he had studied in rome than to nature. in subject and line his tendency was classic, with a leaning toward the italians of the decadence. he lacked the force to carry out a complete reform in painting, but his pupil david ( - ) accomplished what he had begun. it was david who established the reign of classicism, and by native power became the leader. the time was appropriate, the revolution called for pictures of romulus, brutus and achilles, and napoleon encouraged the military theme. david had studied the marbles at rome, and he used them largely for models, reproducing scenes from greek and roman life in an elevated and sculpturesque style, with much archæological knowledge and a great deal of skill. in color, relief, sentiment, individuality, his painting was lacking. he despised all that. the rhythm of line, the sweep of composed groups, the heroic subject and the heroic treatment, made up his art. it was thoroughly objective, and what contemporary interest it possessed lay largely in the martial spirit then prevalent. of course it was upheld by the institute, and it really set the pace for french painting for nearly half a century. when david was called upon to paint napoleonic pictures he painted them under protest, and yet these, with his portraits, constitute his best work. in portraiture he was uncommonly strong at times. [illustration: fig. .--ingres. oedipus and sphinx. louvre.] after the restoration david, who had been a revolutionist, and then an adherent of napoleon, was sent into exile; but the influence he had left and the school he had established were carried on by his contemporaries and pupils. of the former regnault ( - ), vincent ( - ), and prudhon ( - ) were the most conspicuous. the last one was considered as out of the classic circle, but so far as making his art depend upon drawing and composition, he was a genuine classicist. his subjects, instead of being heroic, inclined to the mythological and the allegorical. in italy he had been a student of the renaissance painters, and from them borrowed a method of shadow gradation that rendered his figures misty and phantom-like. they possessed an ease of movement sometimes called "prudhonesque grace," and in composition were well placed and effective. of david's pupils there were many. only a few of them, however, had pronounced ability, and even these carried david's methods into the theatrical. girodet ( - ) was a draughtsman of considerable power, but with poor taste in color and little repose in composition. most of his work was exaggeration and strained effect. lethière ( - ) and guérin ( - ), pupils of regnault, were painters akin to girodet, but inferior to him. gérard ( - ) was a weak david follower, who gained some celebrity by painting portraits of celebrated men and women. the two pupils of david who brought him the most credit were ingres ( - ) and gros ( - ). ingres was a cold, persevering man, whose principles had been well settled by david early in life, and were adhered to with conviction by the pupil to the last. he modified the classic subject somewhat, studied raphael and the italians, and reintroduced the single figure into art (the source, and the odalisque, for example). for color he had no fancy. "in nature all is form," he used to say. painting he thought not an independent art, but "a development of sculpture." to consider emotion, color, or light as the equal of form was monstrous, and to compare rembrandt with raphael was blasphemy. to this belief he clung to the end, faithfully reproducing the human figure, and it is not to be wondered at that eventually he became a learned draughtsman. his single figures and his portraits show him to the best advantage. he had a strong grasp of modelling and an artistic sense of the beauty and dignity of line not excelled by any artist of this century. and to him more than any other painter is due the cultured draughtsmanship which is to-day the just pride of the french school. gros was a more vacillating man, and by reason of forsaking the classic subject for napoleonic battle-pieces, he unconsciously led the way toward romanticism. he excelled as a draughtsman, but when he came to paint the field of eylau and the pest of jaffa he mingled color, light, air, movement, action, sacrificing classic composition and repose to reality. this was heresy from the davidian point of view, and david eventually convinced him of it. gros returned to the classic theme and treatment, but soon after was so reviled by the changing criticism of the time that he committed suicide in the seine. his art, however, was the beginning of romanticism. the landscape painting of this time was rather academic and unsympathetic. it was a continuation of the claude-poussin tradition, and in its insistence upon line, grandeur of space, and imposing trees and mountains, was a fit companion to the classic figure-piece. it had little basis in nature, and little in color or feeling to commend it. watelet ( - ), bertin ( - ), michallon ( - ), and aligny ( - ), were its exponents. a few painters seemed to stand apart from the contemporary influences. madame vigée-lebrun ( - ), a successful portrait-painter of nobility, and horace vernet ( - ), a popular battle-painter, many of whose works are to be seen at versailles, were of this class. romanticism: the movement in french painting which began about and took the name of romanticism was but a part of the "storm-and-stress" feeling that swept germany, england, and france at the beginning of this century, appearing first in literature and afterward in art. it had its origin in a discontent with the present, a passionate yearning for the unattainable, an intensity of sentiment, gloomy melancholy imaginings, and a desire to express the inexpressible. it was emphatically subjective, self-conscious, a mood of mind or feeling. in this respect it was diametrically opposed to the academic and the classic. in french painting it came forward in opposition to the classicism of david. people had begun to weary of greek and roman heroes and their deeds, of impersonal line-bounded statuesque art. there was a demand for something more representative, spontaneous, expressive of the intense feeling of the time. the very gist of romanticism was passion. freedom to express itself in what form it would was a condition of its existence. [illustration: fig. .--delacroix. massacre of scio. louvre.] the classic subject was abandoned by the romanticists for dramatic scenes of mediæval and modern times. the romantic hero and heroine in scenes of horror, perils by land and sea, flame and fury, love and anguish, came upon the boards. much of this was illustration of history, the novel, and poetry, especially the poetry of goethe, byron, and scott. line was slurred in favor of color, symmetrical composition gave way to wild disordered groups in headlong action, and atmospheres, skies, and lights were twisted and distorted to convey the sentiment of the story. it was thus, more by suggestion than realization, that romanticism sought to give the poetic sentiment of life. its position toward classicism was antagonistic, a rebound, a flying to the other extreme. one virtually said that beauty was in the greek form, the other that it was in the painter's emotional nature. the disagreement was violent, and out of it grew the so-called romantic quarrel of the 's. leaders of romanticism: symptoms of the coming movement were apparent long before any open revolt. gros had made innovations on the classic in his battle-pieces, but the first positive dissent from classic teachings was made in the salon of by géricault ( - ) with his raft of the medusa. it represented the starving, the dead, and the dying of the medusa's crew on a raft in mid-ocean. the subject was not classic. it was literary, romantic, dramatic, almost theatric in its seizing of the critical moment. its theme was restless, harrowing, horrible. it met with instant opposition from the old men and applause from the young men. it was the trumpet-note of the revolt, but géricault did not live long enough to become the leader of romanticism. that position fell to his contemporary and fellow-pupil, delacroix ( - ). it was in that delacroix's first salon picture (the dante and virgil) appeared. a strange, ghost-like scene from dante's _inferno_, the black atmosphere of the nether world, weird faces, weird colors, weird flames, and a modelling of the figures by patches of color almost savage as compared to the tinted drawing of classicism. delacroix's youth saved the picture from condemnation, but it was different with his massacre of scio two years later. this was decried by the classicists, and even gros called it "the massacre of art." the painter was accused of establishing the worship of the ugly, he was no draughtsman, had no selection, no severity, nothing but brutality. but delacroix was as obstinate as ingres, and declared that the whole world could not prevent him from seeing and painting things in his own way. it was thus the quarrel started, the young men siding with delacroix, the older men following david and ingres. in himself delacroix embodied all that was best and strongest in the romantic movement. his painting was intended to convey a romantic mood of mind by combinations of color, light, air, and the like. in subject it was tragic and passionate, like the poetry of hugo, byron, and scott. the figures were usually given with anguish-wrung brows, wild eyes, dishevelled hair, and impetuous, contorted action. the painter never cared for technical details, seeking always to gain the effect of the whole rather than the exactness of the part. he purposely slurred drawing at times, and was opposed to formal composition. in color he was superior, though somewhat violent at times, and in brush-work he was often labored and patchy. his strength lay in imagination displayed in color and in action. the quarrel between classicism and romanticism lasted some years, with neither side victorious. delacroix won recognition for his view of art, but did not crush the belief in form which was to come to the surface again. he fought almost alone. many painters rallied around him, but they added little strength to the new movement. devéria ( - ) and champmartin ( - ) were highly thought of at first, but they rapidly degenerated. sigalon ( - ), cogniet ( - ), robert-fleury ( -), and boulanger ( - ), were romanticists, but achieved more as teachers than as painters. delaroche ( - ) was an eclectic--in fact, founded a school of that name--thinking to take what was best from both parties. inventing nothing, he profited by all invented. he employed the romantic subject and color, but adhered to classic drawing. his composition was good, his costume careful in detail, his brush-work smooth, and his story-telling capacity excellent. all these qualities made him a popular painter, but not an original or powerful one. ary scheffer ( - ) was an illustrator of goethe and byron, frail in both sentiment and color, a painter who started as a romanticist, but afterward developed line under ingres. [illustration: fig. .--gÉrÔme. pollice verso.] the orientalists: in both literature and painting one phase of romanticism showed itself in a love for the life, the light, the color of the orient. from paris decamps ( - ) was the first painter to visit the east and paint eastern life. he was a _genre_ painter more than a figure painter, giving naturalistic street scenes in turkey and asia minor, courts, and interiors, with great feeling for air, warmth of color, and light. at about the same time marilhat ( - ) was in egypt picturing the life of that country in a similar manner; and later, fromentin ( - ), painter and writer, following delacroix, went to algiers and portrayed there arab life with fast-flying horses, the desert air, sky, light, and color. théodore frere and ziem belong further on in the century, but were no less exponents of romanticism in the east. fifteen years after the starting of romanticism the movement had materially subsided. it had never been a school in the sense of having rules and laws of art. liberty of thought and perfect freedom for individual expression were all it advocated. as a result there was no unity, for there was nothing to unite upon; and with every painter painting as he pleased, regardless of law, extravagance was inevitable. this was the case, and when the next generation came in romanticism began to be ridiculed for its excesses. a reaction started in favor of more line and academic training. this was first shown by the students of delaroche, though there were a number of movements at the time, all of them leading away from romanticism. a recoil from too much color in favor of more form was inevitable, but romanticism was not to perish entirely. its influence was to go on, and to appear in the work of later men. eclectics and transitional painters: after ingres his follower flandrin ( - ) was the most considerable draughtsman of the time. he was not classic but religious in subject, and is sometimes called "the religious painter of france." he had a delicate beauty of line and a fine feeling for form, but never was strong in color, brush-work, or sentiment. his best work appears in his very fine portraits. gleyre ( - ) was a man of classic methods, but romantic tastes, who modified the heroic into the idyllic and mythologic. he was a sentimental day-dreamer, with a touch of melancholy about the vanished past, appearing in arcadian fancies, pretty nymphs, and idealized memories of youth. in execution he was not at all romantic. his color was pale, his drawing delicate, and his lighting misty and uncertain. it was the etherealized classic method, and this method he transmitted to a little band of painters called the new-greeks, who, in point of time, belong much further along in the century, but in their art are with gleyre. their work never rose above the idyllic and the graceful, and calls for no special mention. hamon ( - ) and aubert ( -) belonged to the band, and gérôme ( -[ ]) was at one time its leader, but he afterward emerged from it to a higher place in french art, where he will find mention hereafter. [footnote : died, .] couture ( - ) stood quite by himself, a mingling of several influences. his chief picture, the romans of the decadence, is classic in subject, romantic in sentiment (and this very largely expressed by warmth of color), and rather realistic in natural appearance. he was an eclectic in a way, and yet seems to stand as the forerunner of a large body of artists who find classification hereafter under the title of the semi-classicists. principal works: all the painters mentioned in this chapter are best represented in the louvre at paris, at versailles, and in the museums of the chief french cities. some works of the late or living men may be found in the luxembourg, where pictures bought by the state are kept for ten years after the painter's death, and then are either sent to the louvre or to the other municipal galleries of france. some pictures by these men are also to be seen in the metropolitan museum, new york, the boston museum, and the chicago art institute. chapter xiv. french painting. the nineteenth century (_continued_). books recommended: the books before mentioned, consult also general bibliography, (page xv.) the landscape painters: the influence of either the classic or romantic example may be traced in almost all of the french painting of this century. the opposed teachings find representatives in new men, and under different names the modified dispute goes on--the dispute of the academic _versus_ the individual, the art of form and line _versus_ the art of sentiment and color. with the classicism of david not only the figure but the landscape setting of it, took on an ideal heroic character. trees and hills and rivers became supernaturally grand and impressive. everything was elevated by method to produce an imaginary arcadia fit for the deities of the classic world. the result was that nature and the humanity of the painter passed out in favor of school formula and academic traditions. when romanticism came in this was changed, but nature falsified in another direction. landscape was given an interest in human affairs, and made to look gay or sad, peaceful or turbulent, as the day went well or ill with the hero of the story portrayed. it was, however, truer to the actual than the classic, more studied in the parts, more united in the whole. about the year the influence of romanticism began to show in a new landscape art. that is to say, the emotional impulse springing from romanticism combined with the study of the old dutch landscapists, and the english contemporary painters, constable and bonington, set a large number of painters to the close study of nature and ultimately developed what has been vaguely called the fontainebleau-barbizon school: this whole school was primarily devoted to showing the sentiment of color and light. it took nature just as it found it in the forest of fontainebleau, on the plain of barbizon, and elsewhere, and treated it with a poetic feeling for light, shadow, atmosphere, color, that resulted in the best landscape painting yet known to us. [illustration: fig. .--corot. landscape.] corot ( - ) though classically trained under bertin, and though somewhat apart from the other men in his life, belongs with this group. he was a man whose artistic life was filled with the beauty of light and air. these he painted with great singleness of aim and great poetic charm. most of his work is in a light silvery key of color, usually slight in composition, simple in masses of light and dark, and very broadly but knowingly handled with the brush. he began painting by using the minute brush, but changed it later on for a freer style which recorded only the great omnipresent truths and suppressed the small ones. he has never had a superior in producing the permeating light of morning and evening. for this alone, if for no other excellence, he deservedly holds high rank. rousseau ( - ) was one of the foremost of the recognized leaders, and probably the most learned landscapist of this century. a man of many moods and methods he produced in variety with rare versatility. much of his work was experimental, but at his best he had a majestic conception of nature, a sense of its power and permanence, its volume and mass, that often resulted in the highest quality of pictorial poetry. in color he was rich and usually warm, in technic firm and individual, in sentiment at times quite sublime. at first he painted broadly and won friends among the artists and sneers from the public; then in his middle style he painted in detail, and had a period of popular success; in his late style he went back to the broad manner, and died amid quarrels and vexations of spirits. his long-time friend and companion, jules dupré ( - ), hardly reached up to him, though a strong painter in landscape and marine. he was a good but not great colorist, and, technically, his brush was broad enough but sometimes heavy. his late work is inferior in sentiment and labored in handling. diaz ( - ) was allied to rousseau in aim and method, though not so sure nor so powerful a painter. he had fancy and variety in creation that sometimes ran to license, and in color he was clear and brilliant. never very well trained, his drawing is often indifferent and his light distorted, but these are more than atoned for by delicacy and poetic charm. at times he painted with much power. daubigny ( - ) seemed more like corot in his charm of style and love of atmosphere and light than any of the others. he was fond of the banks of the seine and the marne at twilight, with evening atmospheres and dark trees standing in silent ranks against the warm sky. he was also fond of the gray day along the coast, and even the sea attracted him not a little. he was a painter of high abilities, and in treatment strongly individual, even distinguished, by his simplicity and directness. unity of the whole, grasp of the mass entire, was his technical aim, and this he sought to get not so much by line as by color-tones of varying value. in this respect he seemed a connecting link between corot and the present-day impressionists. michel ( - ), huet ( - ), chintreuil ( - ), and français ( -) were all allied in point of view with this group of landscape painters, and among the late men who have carried out their beliefs are cazin,[ ] yon,[ ] damoye, pointelin, harpignies and pelouse[ ] seem a little more inclined to the realistic than the poetic view, though producing work of much virility and intelligence. [footnote : died, .] [footnote : died, .] [footnote : died, .] contemporary and associated with the fontainebleau painters were a number of men who won high distinction as painters of animals: troyon ( - ) was the most prominent among them. his work shows the same sentiment of light and color as the fontainebleau landscapists, and with it there is much keen insight into animal life. as a technician he was rather hard at first, and he never was a correct draughtsman, but he had a way of giving the character of the objects he portrayed which is the very essence of truth. he did many landscapes with and without cattle. his best pupil was van marcke ( - ), who followed his methods but never possessed the feeling of his master. jacque ( -[ ]) is also of the fontainebleau-barbizon group, and is justly celebrated for his paintings and etchings of sheep. the poetry of the school is his, and technically he is fine in color at times, if often rather dark in illumination. like troyon he knows his subject well, and can show the nature of sheep with true feeling. rosa bonheur ( -[ ]) and her brother, auguste bonheur ( - ), have both dealt with animal life, but never with that fine artistic feeling which would warrant their popularity. their work is correct enough, but prosaic and commonplace in spirit. they do not belong in the same group with troyon and rousseau. [footnote : died, .] [footnote : died, .] [illustration: fig. .--rousseau, charcoal burners' hut. fuller collection.] the peasant painters: allied again in feeling and sentiment with the fontainebleau landscapists were some celebrated painters of peasant life, chief among whom stood millet ( - ), of barbizon. the pictorial inclination of millet was early grounded by a study of delacroix, the master romanticist, and his work is an expression of romanticism modified by an individual study of nature and applied to peasant life. he was peasant born, living and dying at barbizon, sympathizing with his class, and painting them with great poetic force and simplicity. his sentiment sometimes has a literary bias, as in his far-famed but indifferent angelus, but usually it is strictly pictorial and has to do with the beauty of light, air, color, motion, life, as shown in the sower or the gleaners. technically he was not strong as a draughtsman or a brushman, but he had a large feeling for form, great simplicity in line, keen perception of the relations of light and dark, and at times an excellent color-sense. he was virtually the discoverer of the peasant as an art subject, and for this, as for his original point of view and artistic feeling, he is ranked as one of the foremost artists of the century. jules breton ( -), though painting little besides the peasantry, is no millet follower, for he started painting peasant scenes at about the same time as millet. his affinities were with the new-greeks early in life, and ever since he has inclined toward the academic in style, though handling the rustic subject. he is a good technician, except in his late work; but as an original thinker, as a pictorial poet, he does not show the intensity or profundity of millet. the followers of the millet-breton tradition are many. the blue-frocked and sabot-shod peasantry have appeared in salon and gallery for twenty years and more, but with not very good results. the imitators, as usual, have caught at the subject and missed the spirit. billet and legros, contemporaries of millet, still living, and lerolle, a man of present-day note, are perhaps the most considerable of the painters of rural subjects to-day. the semi-classicists: it must not be inferred that the classic influence of david and ingres disappeared from view with the coming of the romanticists, the fontainebleau landscapists, and the barbizon painters. on the contrary, side by side with these men, and opposed to them, were the believers in line and academic formulas of the beautiful. the whole tendency of academic art in france was against delacroix, rousseau, and millet. during their lives they were regarded as heretics in art and without the pale of the academy. their art, however, combined with nature study and the realism of courbet, succeeded in modifying the severe classicism of ingres into what has been called semi-classicism. it consists in the elevated, heroic, or historical theme, academic form well drawn, some show of bright colors, smoothness of brush-work, and precision and nicety of detail. in treatment it attempts the realistic, but in spirit it is usually stilted, cold, unsympathetic. cabanel ( - ) and bouguereau ( - ) have both represented semi-classic art well. they are justly ranked as famous draughtsmen and good portrait-painters, but their work always has about it the stamp of the academy machine, a something done to order, knowing and exact, but lacking in the personal element. it is a weakness of the academic method that it virtually banishes the individuality of eye and hand in favor of school formulas. cabanel and bouguereau have painted many incidents of classic and historic story, but with never a dash of enthusiasm or a suggestion of the great qualities of painting. their drawing has been as thorough as could be asked for, but their colorings have been harsh and their brushes cold and thin. gérôme ( -[ ]) is a man of classic training and inclination, but his versatility hardly allows him to be classified anywhere. he was first a leader of the new-greeks, painting delicate mythological subjects; then a historical painter, showing deaths of cæsar and the like; then an orientalist, giving scenes from cairo and constantinople; then a _genre_ painter, depicting contemporary subjects in the many lands through which he has travelled. whatever he has done shows semi-classic drawing, ethnological and archæological knowledge, parisian technic, and exact detail. his travels have not changed his precise scientific point of view. he is a true academician at bottom, but a more versatile and cultured painter than either cabanel or bouguereau. he draws well, sometimes uses color well, and is an excellent painter of textures. a man of great learning in many departments he is no painter to be sneered at, and yet not a painter to make the pulse beat faster or to arouse the æsthetic emotions. his work is impersonal, objective fact, showing a brilliant exterior but inwardly devoid of feeling. [footnote : died, .] [illustration: fig. .--millet. the gleaners. louvre.] paul baudry ( - ), though a disciple of line, was not precisely a semi-classicist, and perhaps for that reason was superior to any of the academic painters of his time. he was a follower of the old masters in rome more than the _École des beaux arts_. his subjects, aside from many splendid portraits, were almost all classical, allegorical, or mythological. he was a fine draughtsman, and, what is more remarkable in conjunction therewith, a fine colorist. he was hardly a great originator, and had not passion, dramatic force, or much sentiment, except such as may be found in his delicate coloring and rhythm of line. nevertheless he was an artist to be admired for his purity of purpose and breadth of accomplishment. his chief work is to be seen in the opera at paris. puvis de chavannes ( -[ ]) is quite a different style of painter, and is remarkable for fine delicate tones of color which hold their place well on wall or ceiling, and for a certain grandeur of composition. in his desire to revive the monumental painting of the renaissance he has met with much praise and much blame. he is an artist of sincerity and learning, and as a wall-painter has no superior in contemporary france. [footnote : died, .] hébert ( - ), an early painter of academic tendencies, and henner ( -), fond of form and yet a brushman with an idyllic feeling for light and color in dark surroundings, are painters who may come under the semi-classic grouping. lefebvre ( -) is probably the most pronounced in academic methods among the present men, a draughtsman of ability. portrait and figure painters: under this heading may be included those painters who stand by themselves, showing no positive preference for either the classic or romantic followings. bonnat ( -) has painted all kinds of subjects--_genre_, figure, and historical pieces--but is perhaps best known as a portrait-painter. he has done forcible work. some of it indeed is astonishing in its realistic modelling--the accentuation of light and shadow often causing the figures to advance unnaturally. from this feature and from his detail he has been known for years as a "realist." his anatomical christ on the cross and mural paintings in the pantheon are examples. as a portrait-painter he is acceptable, if at times a little raw in color. another portrait-painter of celebrity is carolus-duran ( -). he is rather startling at times in his portrayal of robes and draperies, has a facility of the brush that is frequently deceptive, and in color is sometimes vivid. he has had great success as a teacher, and is, all told, a painter of high rank. delaunay ( - ) in late years painted little besides portraits, and was one of the conservatives of french art. laurens ( -) has been more of a historical painter than the others, and has dealt largely with death scenes. he is often spoken of as "the painter of the dead," a man of sound training and excellent technical power. regnault ( - ) was a figure and _genre_ painter with much feeling for oriental light and color, who unfortunately was killed in battle at twenty-seven years of age. he was an artist of promise, and has left several notable canvases. among the younger men who portray the historical subject in an elevated style mention should be made of cormon ( -), benjamin-constant ( -[ ]), and rochegrosse. as painters of portraits aman-jean and carrière[ ] have long held rank, and each succeeding salon brings new portraitists to the front. [footnote : died, .] [footnote : died, .] the realists: about the time of the appearance of millet, say , there also came to the front a man who scorned both classicism and romanticism, and maintained that the only model and subject of art should be nature. this man, courbet ( - ), really gave a third tendency to the art of this century in france, and his influence undoubtedly had much to do with modifying both the classic and romantic tendencies. courbet was a man of arrogant, dogmatic disposition, and was quite heartily detested during his life, but that he was a painter of great ability few will deny. his theory was the abolition of both sentiment and academic law, and the taking of nature just as it was, with all its beauties and all its deformities. this, too, was his practice to a certain extent. his art is material, and yet at times lofty in conception even to the sublime. and while he believed in realism he did not believe in petty detail, but rather in the great truths of nature. these he saw with a discerning eye and portrayed with a masterful brush. he believed in what he saw only, and had more the observing than the reflective or emotional disposition. as a technician he was coarse but superbly strong, handling sky, earth, air, with the ease and power of one well trained in his craft. his subjects were many--the peasantry of france, landscape, and the sea holding prominent places--and his influence, though not direct because he had no pupils of consequence, has been most potent with the late men. [illustration: fig. .--cabanel. phÆdra.] the young painter of to-day who does things in a "realistic" way is frequently met with in french art. l'hermitte ( -), julien dupré ( -), and others have handled the peasant subject with skill, after the millet-courbet initiative; and bastien-lepage ( - ) excited a good deal of admiration in his lifetime for the truth and evident sincerity of his art. bastien's point of view was realistic enough, but somewhat material. he never handled the large composition with success, but in small pieces and in portraits he was quite above criticism. his following among the young men was considerable, and the so-called impressionists have ranked him among their disciples or leaders. painters of military scenes, genre, etc.: the art of meissonier ( - ), while extremely realistic in modern detail, probably originated from a study of the seventeenth-century dutchmen like terburg and metsu. it does not portray low life, but rather the half-aristocratic--the scholar, the cavalier, the gentleman of leisure. this is done on a small scale with microscopic nicety, and really more in the historical than the _genre_ spirit. single figures and interiors were his preference, but he also painted a cycle of napoleonic battle-pictures with much force. there is little or no sentiment about his work--little more than in that of gérôme. his success lay in exact technical accomplishment. he drew well, painted well, and at times was a superior colorist. his art is more admired by the public than by the painters; but even the latter do not fail to praise his skill of hand. he was a great craftsman in the infinitely little. as a great artist his rank is still open to question. the _genre_ painting of fashionable life has been carried out by many followers of meissonier, whose names need not be mentioned since they have not improved upon their forerunner. toulmouche ( -), leloir ( - ), vibert ( -), bargue (?- ), and others, though somewhat different from meissonier, belong among those painters of _genre_ who love detail, costumes, stories, and pretty faces. among the painters of military _genre_ mention should be made of de neuville ( - ), berne-bellecour ( -), detaille ( -), and aimé-morot ( -), all of them painters of merit. quite a different style of painting--half figure-piece half _genre_--is to be found in the work of ribot ( -), a strong painter, remarkable for his apposition of high flesh lights with deep shadows, after the manner of ribera, the spanish painter. roybet ( -) is fond of rich stuffs and tapestries with velvet-clad characters in interiors, out of which he makes good color effects. bonvin ( - ) and mettling have painted the interior with small figures, copper-kettles, and other still-life that have given brilliancy to their pictures. as a still-life painter vollon ( -) has never had a superior. his fruits, flowers, armors, even his small marines and harbor pieces, are painted with one of the surest brushes of this century. he is called the "painter's painter," and is a man of great force in handling color, and in large realistic effect. dantan and friant have both produced canvases showing figures in interiors. a number of excellent _genre_ painters have been claimed by the impressionists as belonging to their brotherhood. there is little to warrant the claim, except the adoption to some extent of the modern ideas of illumination and flat painting. dagnan-bouveret ( -) is one of these men, a good draughtsman, and a finished clean painter who by his recent use of high color finds himself occasionally looked upon as an impressionist. as a matter of fact he is one of the most conservative of the moderns--a man of feeling and imagination, and a fine technician. fantin-latour ( - ) is half romantic, half allegorical in subject, and in treatment oftentimes designedly vague and shadowy, more suggestive than realistic. duez ( -) and gervex ( -) are perhaps nearer to impressionism in their works than the others, but they are not at all advance advocates of this latest phase of art. in addition there are cottet and henri martin. [illustration: fig. .--meissonier. napoleon in .] the impressionists: the name is a misnomer. every painter is an impressionist in so far as he records his impressions, and all art is impressionistic. what manet ( - ), the leader of the original movement, meant to say was that nature should not be painted as it actually is, but as it "impresses" the painter. he and his few followers tried to change the name to independents, but the original name has clung to them and been mistakenly fastened to a present band of landscape painters who are seeking effects of light and air and should be called luminists if it is necessary for them to be named at all. manet was extravagant in method and disposed toward low life for a subject, which has always militated against his popularity; but he was a very important man for his technical discoveries regarding the relations of light and shadow, the flat appearance of nature, the exact value of color tones. some of his works, like the boy with a sword and the toreador dead, are excellent pieces of painting. the higher imaginative qualities of art manet made no great effort at attaining. degas stands quite by himself, strong in effects of motion, especially with race-horses, fine in color, and a delightful brushman in such subjects as ballet-girls and scenes from the theatre. besnard is one of the best of the present men. he deals with the figure, and is usually concerned with the problem of harmonizing color under conflicting lights, such as twilight and lamplight. béraud and raffaelli are exceedingly clever in street scenes and character pieces; pissarro[ ] handles the peasantry in high color; brown ( - ), the race-horse, and renoir, the middle class of social life. caillebotte, roll, forain, and miss cassatt, an american, are also classed with the impressionists. [footnote : died, .] impressionist landscape painters: of recent years there has been a disposition to change the key of light in landscape painting, to get nearer the truth of nature in the height of light and in the height of shadows. in doing this claude monet, the present leader of the movement, has done away with the dark brown or black shadow and substituted the light-colored shadow, which is nearer the actual truth of nature. in trying to raise the pitch of light he has not been quite so successful, though accomplishing something. his method is to use pure prismatic colors on the principle that color is light in a decomposed form, and that its proper juxtaposition on canvas will recompose into pure light again. hence the use of light shadows and bright colors. the aim of these modern men is chiefly to gain the effect of light and air. they do not apparently care for subject, detail, or composition. at present their work is in the experimental stage, but from the way in which it is being accepted and followed by the painters of to-day we may be sure the movement is of considerable importance. there will probably be a reaction in favor of more form and solidity than the present men give, but the high key of light will be retained. there are so many painters following these modern methods, not only in france but all over the world, that a list of their names would be impossible. in france sisley with monet are the two important landscapists. in marines boudin and montenard should be mentioned. principal works: the modern french painters are seen to advantage in the louvre, luxembourg, pantheon, sorbonne, and the municipal galleries of france. also metropolitan museum new york, chicago art institute, boston museum, and many private collections in france and america. consult for works in public or private hands, champlin and perkins, _cyclopedia of painters and paintings_, under names of artists. chapter xv. spanish painting. books recommended: bermudez, _diccionario de las bellas artes en españa_; davillier, _mémoire de velasquez_; davillier, _fortuny_; eusebi, _los differentes escuelas de pintura_; ford, _handbook of spain_; head, _history of spanish and french schools of painting_; justi, _velasquez and his times_; lefort, _velasquez_; lefort, _francisco goya_; lefort, _murillo et son École_; lefort, _la peinture espagnole_; palomino de castro y velasco, _vidas de los pintores y estatuarios eminentes españoles_; passavant, _die christliche kunst in spanien_; plon, _les maîtres italiens au service de la maison d'autriche_; stevenson, _velasquez_; stirling, _annals of the artists of spain_; stirling, _velasquez and his works_; tubino, _el arte y los artistas contemporáneos en la peninsula_; tubino, _murillo_; viardot, _notices sur les principaux peintres de l'espagne_; yriarte, _goya, sa biographie_, etc. spanish art motives: what may have been the early art of spain we are at a loss to conjecture. the reigns of the moor, the iconoclast, and, finally, the inquisitor, have left little that dates before the fourteenth century. the miniatures and sacred relics treasured in the churches and said to be of the apostolic period, show the traces of a much later date and a foreign origin. even when we come down to the fifteenth century and meet with art produced in spain, we have a following of italy or the netherlands. in methods and technic it was derivative more than original, though almost from the beginning peculiarly spanish in spirit. [illustration: fig. .--sanchez coello. clara eugenia, daughter of philip ii. madrid.] that spirit was a dark and savage one, a something that cringed under the lash of the church, bowed before the inquisition, and played the executioner with the paint-brush. the bulk of spanish art was church art, done under ecclesiastical domination, and done in form without question or protest. the religious subject ruled. true enough, there was portraiture of nobility, and under philip and velasquez a half-monarchical art of military scenes and _genre_; but this was not the bent of spanish painting as a whole. even in late days, when velasquez was reflecting the haughty court, murillo was more widely and nationally reflecting the believing provinces and the church faith of the people. it is safe to say, in a general way, that the church was responsible for spanish art, and that religion was its chief motive. there was no revived antique, little of the nude or the pagan, little of consequence in landscape, little, until velasquez's time, of the real and the actual. an ascetic view of life, faith, and the hereafter prevailed. the pietistic, the fervent, and the devout were not so conspicuous as the morose, the ghastly, and the horrible. the saints and martyrs, the crucifixions and violent deaths, were eloquent of the torture-chamber. it was more ecclesiasticism by blood and violence than christianity by peace and love. and spain welcomed this. for of all the children of the church she was the most faithful to rule, crushing out heresy with an iron hand, gaining strength from the catholic reaction, and upholding the jesuits and the inquisition. methods of painting: spanish art worthy of mention did not appear until the fifteenth century. at that time spain was in close relations with the netherlands, and flemish painting was somewhat followed. how much the methods of the van eycks influenced spain would be hard to determine, especially as these northern methods were mixed with influences coming from italy. finally, the italian example prevailed by reason of spanish students in italy and italian painters in spain. florentine line, venetian color, and neapolitan light-and-shade ruled almost everywhere, and it was not until the time of velasquez--the period just before the eighteenth-century decline--that distinctly spanish methods, founded on nature, really came forcibly to the front. spanish schools of painting: there is difficulty in classifying these schools of painting because our present knowledge of them is limited. isolated somewhat from the rest of europe, the spanish painters have never been critically studied as the italians have been, and what is at present known about the schools must be accepted subject to critical revision hereafter. [illustration: fig. .--murillo. st. anthony of padua. berlin.] the earliest school seems to have been made up from a gathering of artists at toledo, who limned, carved, and gilded in the cathedral; but this school was not of long duration. it was merged into the castilian school, which, after the building of madrid, made its home in that capital and drew its forces from the towns of toledo, valladolid, and badajoz. the andalusian school, which rose about the middle of the sixteenth century, was made up from the local schools of seville, cordova, and granada. the valencian school, to the southeast, rose about the same time, and was finally merged into the andalusian. the aragonese school, to the east, was small and of no great consequence, though existing in a feeble way to the end of the seventeenth century. the painters of these schools are not very strongly marked apart by methods or school traditions, and perhaps the divisions would better be looked upon as more geographical than otherwise. none of the schools really began before the sixteenth century, though there are names of artists and some extant pictures before that date, and with the seventeenth century all art in spain seems to have centred about madrid. spanish painting started into life concurrently with the rise to prominence of spain as a political kingdom. what, if any, direct effect the maritime discoveries, the conquests of granada and naples, the growth of literature, and the decline of italy, may have had upon spanish painting can only be conjectured; but certainly the sudden advance of the nation politically and socially was paralleled by the advance of its art. the castilian school: this school probably had no so-called founder. it was a growth from early art traditions at toledo, and afterward became the chief school of the kingdom owing to the patronage of philip ii. and philip iv. at madrid. the first painter of importance in the school seems to have been antonio rincon ( ?- ?). he is sometimes spoken of as the father of spanish painting, and as having studied in italy with castagno and ghirlandajo, but there is little foundation for either statement. he painted chiefly at toledo, painted portraits of ferdinand and isabella, and had some skill in hard drawing. berruguete ( ?- ) studied with michael angelo, and is supposed to have helped him in the vatican. he afterward returned to spain, painted many altar-pieces, and was patronized as painter, sculptor, and architect by charles v. and philip ii. he was probably the first to introduce pure italian methods into spain, with some coldness and dryness of coloring and handling. becerra ( ?- ) was born in andalusia, but worked in castile, and was a man of italian training similar to berruguete. he was an exceptional man, perhaps, in his use of mythological themes and nude figures. there is not a great deal known about morales ( ?- ), called "the divine," except that he was allied to the castilian school, and painted devotional heads of christ with the crown of thorns, and many afflicted and weeping madonnas. there was florentine drawing in his work, great regard for finish, and something of correggio's softness in shadows pitched in a browner key. his sentiment was rather exaggerated. sanchez-coello ( ?- ) was painter and courtier to philip ii., and achieved reputation as a portrait-painter, though also doing some altar-pieces. it is doubtful whether he ever studied in italy, but in spain he was for a time with antonio moro, and probably learned from him something of rich costumes, ermines, embroideries, and jewels, for which his portraits were remarkable. navarette ( ?- ), called "el mudo" (the dumb one), certainly was in italy for something like twenty years, and was there a disciple of titian, from whom he doubtless learned much of color and the free flow of draperies. he was one of the best of the middle-period painters. theotocopuli ( ?- ), called "el greco" (the greek), was another venetian-influenced painter, with enough spanish originality about him to make most of his pictures striking in color and drawing. tristan ( - ) was his best follower. [illustration: fig. .--ribera. st. agnes. dresden.] velasquez ( - ) is the greatest name in the history of spanish painting. with him spanish art took upon itself a decidedly naturalistic and national stamp. before his time italy had been freely imitated; but though velasquez himself was in italy for quite a long time, and intimately acquainted with great italian art, he never seemed to have been led away from his own individual way of seeing and doing. he was a pupil of herrera, afterward with pacheco, and learned much from ribera and tristan, but more from a direct study of nature than from all the others. he was in a broad sense a realist--a man who recorded the material and the actual without emendation or transposition. he has never been surpassed in giving the solidity and substance of form and the placing of objects in atmosphere. and this, not in a small, finical way, but with a breadth of view and of treatment which are to-day the despair of painters. there was nothing of the ethereal, the spiritual, the pietistic, or the pathetic about him. he never for a moment left the firm basis of reality. standing upon earth he recorded the truths of the earth, but in their largest, fullest, most universal forms. technically his was a master-hand, doing all things with ease, giving exact relations of colors and lights, and placing everything so perfectly that no addition or alteration is thought of. with the brush he was light, easy, sure. the surface looks as though touched once, no more. it is the perfection of handling through its simplicity and certainty, and has not the slightest trace of affectation or mannerism. he was one of the few spanish painters who were enabled to shake off the yoke of the church. few of his canvases are religious in subject. under royal patronage he passed almost all of his life in painting portraits of the royal family, ministers of state, and great dignitaries. as a portrait-painter he is more widely known than as a figure-painter. nevertheless he did many canvases like the tapestry weavers and the surrender at breda, which attest his remarkable genius in that field; and even in landscape, in _genre_, in animal painting, he was a very superior man. in fact velasquez is one of the few great painters in european history for whom there is nothing but praise. he was the full-rounded complete painter, intensely individual and self-assertive, and yet in his art recording in a broad way the spanish type and life. he was the climax of spanish painting, and after him there was a rather swift decline, as had been the case in the italian schools. mazo ( ?- ), pupil and son-in-law of velasquez, was one of his most facile imitators, and carreño de miranda ( - ) was influenced by velasquez, and for a time his assistant. the castilian school may be said to have closed with these late men and with claudio coello ( ?- ), a painter with a style founded on titian and rubens, whose best work was of extraordinary power. spanish painting went out with spanish power, and only isolated men of small rank remained. andalusian school: this school came into existence about the middle of the sixteenth century. its chief centre was at seville, and its chief patron the church rather than the king. vargas ( - ) was probably the real founder of the school, though de castro (fl. ) and others preceded him. vargas was a man of much reputation and ability in his time, and introduced italian methods and elegance into the andalusian school after twenty odd years of residence in italy. he is said to have studied under perino del vaga, and there is some sweetness of face and grace of form about his work that point that way, though his composition suggests correggio. most of his frescos have perished; some of his canvases are still in existence. cespedes ( ?- ) is little known through extant works, but he achieved fame in many departments during his life, and is said to have been in italy under florentine influence. his coloring was rather cold, and his drawing large and flat. the best early painter of the school was roelas ( ?- ), the inspirer of murillo and the master of zurbaran. he is supposed to have studied at venice, because of his rich, glowing color. most of his works are religious and are found chiefly at seville. he was greatly patronized by the jesuits. pacheco ( - ) was more of a pedant than a painter, a man of rule, who to-day might be written down an academician. his drawing was hard, and perhaps the best reason for his being remembered is that he was one of the masters and the father-in-law of velasquez. his rival, herrera the elder ( ?- ) was a stronger man--in fact, the most original artist of his school. he struck off by himself and created a bold realism with a broad brush that anticipated velasquez--in fact, velasquez was under him for a time. the pure spanish school in andalusia, as distinct from italian imitation, may be said to have started with herrera. it was further advanced by another independent painter, zurbaran ( - ), a pupil of roelas. he was a painter of the emaciated monk in ecstasy, and many other rather dismal religious subjects expressive of tortured rapture. from using a rather dark shadow he acquired the name of the spanish caravaggio. he had a good deal of caravaggio's strength, together with a depth and breadth of color suggestive of the venetians. cano ( - ), though he never was in italy, had the name of the spanish michael angelo, probably because he was sculptor, painter, and architect. his painting was rather sharp in line and statuesque in pose, with a coloring somewhat like that of van dyck. it was eclectic rather than original work. [illustration: fig. .--fortuny. spanish marriage.] murillo ( - ) is generally placed at the head of the andalusian school, as velasquez at the head of the castilian. there is good reason for it, for though murillo was not the great painter he was sometime supposed, yet he was not the weak man his modern critics would make him out. a religious painter largely, though doing some _genre_ subjects like his beggar-boy groups, he sought for religious fervor and found, only too often, sentimentality. his madonnas are usually after the carlo dolci pattern, though never so excessive in sentiment. this was not the case with his earlier works, mostly of humble life, which were painted in rather a hard, positive manner. later on he became misty, veiled in light and effeminate in outline, though still holding grace. his color varied with his early and later styles. it was usually gay and a little thin. while basing his work on nature like velasquez, he never had the supreme poise of that master, either mentally or technically; howbeit he was an excellent painter, who perhaps justly holds second place in spanish art. school of valencia: this school rose contemporary with the andalusian school, into which it was finally merged after the importance of madrid had been established. it was largely modelled upon italian painting, as indeed were all the schools of spain at the start. juan de joanes ( ?- ) apparently was its founder, a man who painted a good portrait, but in other respects was only a fair imitator of raphael, whom he had studied at rome. a stronger man was francisco de ribalta ( ?- ), who was for a time in italy under the caracci, and learned from them free draughtsmanship and elaborate composition. he was also fond of sebastiano del piombo, and in his best works (at valencia) reflected him. ribalta gave an early training to ribera ( - ), who was the most important man of this school. in reality ribera was more italian than valencian, for he spent the greater part of his life in italy, where he was called lo spagnoletto, and was greatly influenced by caravaggio. he was a spaniard in the horrible subjects that he chose, but in coarse strength of line, heaviness of shadows, harsh handling of the brush, he was a true neapolitan darkling. a pronounced mannerist he was no less a man of strength, and even in his shadow-saturated colors a painter with the color instinct. in italy his influence in the time of the decadence was wide-spread, and in spain his italian pupil, giordano, introduced his methods for late imitation. there were no other men of much rank in the valencian school, and, as has been said, the school was eventually merged in andalusian painting. eighteenth and nineteenth-century painting in spain: almost directly after the passing of velasquez and murillo spanish art failed. the eighteenth-century, as in italy, was quite barren of any considerable art until near its close. then goya ( - ) seems to have made a partial restoration of painting. he was a man of peculiarly spanish turn of mind, fond of the brutal and the bloody, picturing inquisition scenes, bull-fights, battle pieces, and revelling in caricature, sarcasm, and ridicule. his imagination was grotesque and horrible, but as a painter his art was based on the natural, and was exceedingly strong. in brush-work he followed velasquez; in a peculiar forcing of contrasts in light and dark he was apparently quite himself, though possibly influenced by ribera's work. his best work shows in his portraits and etchings. after goya's death spanish art, such as it was, rather followed france, with the extravagant classicism of david as a model. what was produced may be seen to this day in the madrid museum. it does not call for mention here. about the beginning of the 's spanish painting made a new advance with mariano fortuny ( - ). in his early years he worked at historical painting, but later on he went to algiers and rome, finding his true vent in a bright sparkling painting of _genre_ subjects, oriental scenes, streets, interiors, single figures, and the like. he excelled in color, sunlight effects, and particularly in a vivacious facile handling of the brush. his work is brilliant, and in his late productions often spotty from excessive use of points of light in high color. he was a technician of much brilliancy and originality, his work exciting great admiration in his day, and leading the younger painters of spain into that ornate handling visible in their works at the present time. many of these latter, from association with art and artists in paris, have adopted french methods, and hardly show such a thing as spanish nationality. fortuny's brother-in-law, madrazo ( -), is an example of a spanish painter turned french in his methods--a facile and brilliant portrait-painter. zamacois ( - ) died early, but with a reputation as a successful portrayer of seventeenth-century subjects a little after the style of meissonier and not unlike gérôme. he was a good colorist and an excellent painter of textures. [illustration: fig. .--madrazo, unmasked.] the historical scene of mediæval or renaissance times, pageants and fêtes with rich costume, fine architecture and vivid effects of color, are characteristic of a number of the modern spaniards--villegas, pradilla, alvarez. as a general thing their canvases are a little flashy, likely to please at first sight but grow wearisome after a time. palmaroli has a style that resembles a mixture of fortuny and meissonier; and some other painters, like luis jiminez aranda, sorolla, zuloaga, anglada, garcia y remos, vierge, roman ribera, and domingo, have done excellent work. in landscape and venetian scenes rico leads among the spaniards with a vivacity and brightness not always seen to good advantage in his late canvases. principal works: generally speaking, spanish art cannot be seen to advantage outside of spain. both its ancient and modern masterpieces are at madrid, seville, toledo, and elsewhere. the royal gallery at madrid has the most and the best examples. castilian school--rincon, altar-piece church of robleda de chavilla; berruguete, altar-pieces saragossa, valladolid, madrid, toledo; morales, madrid and louvre; sanchez-coello, madrid and brussels mus.; navarette, escorial, madrid, st. petersburg; theotocopuli, cathedral and s. tomé toledo, madrid mus.; velasquez, best works in madrid mus., escorial, salamanca, montpensier gals., nat. gal. lon., infanta marguerita louvre, borro portrait (?) berlin, innocent x. doria rome; mazo, landscapes madrid mus.; carreño de miranda, madrid mus.; claudio coello, escorial, madrid, brussels, berlin, and munich mus. andalusian school--vargas, seville cathedral; cespedes, cordova cathedral; roelas, s. isidore cathedral, museum seville; pacheco, madrid mus.; herrera, seville cathedral and mus. and archbishop's palace, dresden mus.; zurbaran, seville cathedral and mus. madrid, dresden, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; cano, madrid, seville mus. and cathedral, berlin, dresden, munich; murillo, best pictures in madrid mus. and acad. of s. fernando madrid, seville mus. hospital and capuchin church, louvre, nat. gal. lon., dresden, munich, hermitage. valencian school--juan de joanes, madrid mus., cathedral valencia, hermitage; ribalta, madrid and valencian mus., hermitage; ribera, louvre, nat. gal. lon., dresden, naples, hermitage, and other european museums, chief works at madrid. modern men and their works--goya, madrid mus., acad. of s. fernando, valencian cathedral and mus., two portraits in louvre. the works of the contemporary painters are largely in private hands where reference to them is of little use to the average student. thirty fortunys are in the collection of william h. stewart in paris. his best work, the spanish marriage, belongs to madame de cassin, in paris. examples of villegas, madrazo, rico, domingo, and others, in the vanderbilt gallery, metropolitan mus., new york; boston, chicago, and philadelphia mus. chapter xvi. flemish painting. books recommended: busscher, _recherches sur les peintres gantois_; crowe and cavalcaselle, _early flemish painters_; cust, _van dyck_; dehaisnes, _l'art dans la flandre_; du jardin, _l'art flamand_; eisenmann, _the brothers van eyck_; fétis, _les artistes belges à l'Étranger_; fromentin, _old masters of belgium and holland_; gerrits, _rubens zyn tyd, etc._; guiffrey, _van dyck_; hasselt, _histoire de rubens_; (waagen's) kügler, _handbook of painting--german, flemish, and dutch schools_; lemonnier, _histoire des arts en belgique_; mantz, _adrien brouwer_; michel, _rubens_; michiels, _rubens en l'École d'anvers_; michiels, _histoire de la peinture flamande_; stevenson, _rubens_; van den branden, _geschiedenis der antwerpsche schilderschool_; van mander, _le livre des peintres_; waagen, _uber hubert und jan van eyck_; waagen, _peter paul rubens_; wauters, _rogier van der weyden_; wauters, _la peinture flamande_; weale, _hans memling_ (_arundel soc._); weale, _notes sur jean van eyck_. the flemish people: individually and nationally the flemings were strugglers against adverse circumstances from the beginning. a realistic race with practical ideas, a people rather warm of impulse and free in habits, they combined some german sentiment with french liveliness and gayety. the solidarity of the nation was not accomplished until after , when the dukes of burgundy began to extend their power over the low countries. then the flemish people became strong enough to defy both germany and france, and wealthy enough, through their commerce with spain, italy, and france to encourage art not only at the ducal court but in the churches, and among the citizens of the various towns. [illustration: fig. .--van eycks. st. bavon altar-piece (wing). berlin.] flemish subjects and methods: as in all the countries of europe, the early flemish painting pictured christian subjects primarily. the great bulk of it was church altar-pieces, though side by side with this was an admirable portraiture, some knowledge of landscape, and some exposition of allegorical subjects. in means and methods it was quite original. the early history is lost, but if flemish painting was beholden to the painting of any other nation, it was to the miniature painting of france. there is, however, no positive record of this. the flemings seem to have begun by themselves, and pictured the life about them in their own way. they were apparently not influenced at first by italy. there were no antique influences, no excavated marbles to copy, no byzantine traditions left to follow. at first their art was exact and minute in detail, but not well grasped in the mass. the compositions were huddled, the landscapes pure but finical, the figures inclined to slimness, awkwardness, and angularity in the lines of form or drapery, and uncertain in action. to offset this there was a positive realism in textures, perspective, color, tone, light, and atmosphere. the effect of the whole was odd and strained, but the effect of the part was to convince one that the flemish painters were excellent craftsmen in detail, skilled with the brush, and shrewd observers of nature in a purely picturesque way. to the flemish painters of the fifteenth century belongs, not the invention of oil-painting, for it was known before their time, but its acceptable application in picture-making. they applied oil with color to produce brilliancy and warmth of effect, to insure firmness and body in the work, and to carry out textural effects in stuffs, marbles, metals, and the like. so far as we know there never was much use of distemper, or fresco-work upon the walls of buildings. the oil medium came into vogue when the miniatures and illuminations of the early days had expanded into panel pictures. the size of the miniature was increased, but the minute method of finishing was not laid aside. some time afterward painting with oil upon canvas was adopted. school of bruges: painting in flanders starts abruptly with the fifteenth century. what there was before that time more than miniatures and illuminations is not known. time and the iconoclasts have left no remains of consequence. flemish art for us begins with hubert van eyck (?- ) and his younger brother jan van eyck (?- ). the elder brother is supposed to have been the better painter, because the most celebrated work of the brothers--the st. bavon altar-piece, parts of which are in ghent, brussels, and berlin--bears the inscription that hubert began it and jan finished it. hubert was no doubt an excellent painter, but his pictures are few and there is much discussion whether he or jan painted them. for historical purposes flemish art was begun, and almost completed, by jan van eyck. he had all the attributes of the early men, and was one of the most perfect of flemish painters. he painted real forms and real life, gave them a setting in true perspective and light, and put in background landscapes with a truthful if minute regard for the facts. his figures in action had some awkwardness, they were small of head, slim of body, and sometimes stumbled; but his modelling of faces, his rendering of textures in cloth, metal, stone, and the like, his delicate yet firm _facture_ were all rather remarkable for his time. none of this early flemish art has the grandeur of italian composition, but in realistic detail, in landscape, architecture, figure, and dress, in pathos, sincerity, and sentiment it is unsurpassed by any fifteenth-century art. [illustration: fig. .--memling (?). st. lawrence (detail). nat. gal., london.] little is known of the personal history of either of the van eycks. they left an influence and had many followers, but whether these were direct pupils or not is an open question. peter cristus ( ?- ) was perhaps a pupil of jan, though more likely a follower of his methods in color and general technic. roger van der weyden ( ?- ), whether a pupil of the van eycks or a rival, produced a similar style of art. his first master was an obscure robert campin. he was afterward at bruges, and from there went to brussels and founded a school of his own called the school of brabant: he was more emotional and dramatic than jan van eyck, giving much excited action and pathetic expression to his figures in scenes from the passion of christ. he had not van eyck's skill, nor his detail, nor his color. more of a draughtsman than a colorist, he was angular in figure and drapery, but had honesty, pathos, and sincerity, and was very charming in bright background landscapes. though spending some time in italy, he was never influenced by italian art. he was always flemish in type, subject, and method, a trifle repulsive at first through angularity and emotional exaggeration, but a man to be studied. by van der goes ( ?- ) there are but few good examples, the chief one being an altar-piece in the uffizi at florence. it is angular in drawing but full of character, and in beauty of detail and ornamentation is a remarkable picture. he probably followed van der weyden, as did also justus van ghent (last half of fifteenth century). contemporary with these men dierick bouts ( - ) established a school at haarlem. he was dutch by birth, but after settled in louvain, and in his art belongs to the flemish school. he was influenced by van der weyden, and shows it in his detail of hands and melancholy face, though he differed from him in dramatic action and in type. his figure was awkward, his color warm and rich, and in landscape backgrounds he greatly advanced the painting of the time. memling ( ?- ?), one of the greatest of the school, is another man about whose life little is known. he was probably associated with van der weyden in some way. his art is founded on the van eyck school, and is remarkable for sincerity, purity, and frankness of attitude. as a religious painter, he was perhaps beyond all his contemporaries in tenderness and pathos. in portraiture he was exceedingly strong in characterization, and in his figures very graceful. his flesh painting was excellent, but in textures or landscape work he was not remarkable. his best followers were van der meire ( ?- ?) and gheeraert david ( ?- ). the latter was famous for the fine, broad landscapes in the backgrounds of his pictures, said, however, by critics to have been painted by joachim patinir. he was realistically horrible in many subjects, and though a close recorder of detail he was much broader than any of his predecessors. flemish schools of the sixteenth century: in this century flemish painting became rather widely diffused. the schools of bruges and ghent gave place to the schools in the large commercial cities like antwerp and brussels, and the commercial relations between the low countries and italy finally led to the dissipation of national characteristics in art and the imitation of the italian renaissance painters. there is no sharp line of demarcation between those painters who clung to flemish methods and those who adopted italian methods. the change was gradual. [illustration: fig. .--massys. head of virgin. antwerp.] quentin massys ( ?- ) and mostert ( - ?), a dutchman by birth, but, like bouts, flemish by influence, were among the last of the gothic painters in flanders, and yet they began the introduction of italian features in their painting. massys led in architectural backgrounds, and from that the italian example spread to subjects, figures, methods, until the indigenous flemish art became a thing of the past. massys was, at antwerp, the most important painter of his day, following the old flemish methods with many improvements. his work was detailed, and yet executed with a broader, freer brush than formerly, and with more variety in color, modelling, expression of character. he increased figures to almost life-size, giving them greater importance than landscape or architecture. the type was still lean and angular, and often contorted with emotion. his money-changers and misers (many of them painted by his son) were a _genre_ of his own. with him closed the gothic school, and with him began the antwerp school, the pupils of which went to italy, and eventually became italianized. mabuse ( ?- ) was the first to go. his early work shows the influence of massys and david. he was good in composition, color, and brush-work, but lacked in originality, as did all the imitators of italy. franz floris ( ?- ) was a man of talent, much admired in his time, because he brought back reminiscences of michael angelo to antwerp. his influence was fatal upon his followers, of whom there were many, like the franckens and de vos. italy and roman methods, models, architecture, subjects, began to rule everywhere. from brussels barent van orley ( ?- ) left early for italy, and became essentially italian, though retaining some flemish color. he painted in oil, tempera, and for glass, and is supposed to have gained his brilliant colors by using a gilt ground. his early works remind one of david. cocxie ( - ), the flemish raphael, was but an indifferent imitator of the italian raphael. at liége the romanists, so called, began with lambert lombard ( - ), of whose work nothing authentic remains except drawings. at bruges peeter pourbus ( ?- ) was about the last one of the good portrait-painters of the time. another excellent portrait-painter, a pupil of scorel, was antonio moro ( ?- ?). he had much dignity, force, and elaborateness of costume, and stood quite by himself. there were other painters of the time who were born or trained in flanders, and yet became so naturalized in other countries that in their work they do not belong to flanders. neuchatel ( ?- ?), geldorp ( - ?), calvaert ( ?- ), spranger ( - ?), and others, were of this group. among all the strugglers in italian imitation only a few landscapists held out for the flemish view. paul bril ( - ) was the first of them. he went to italy, but instead of following the methods taught there, he taught italians his own view of landscape. his work was a little dry and formal, but graceful in composition, and good in light and color. the brueghels--there were three of them--also stood out for flemish landscape, introducing it nominally as a background for small figures, but in reality for the beauty of the landscape itself. [illustration: fig. .--rubens. portrait of young woman. hermitage, st. petersburgh.] seventeenth-century painting: this was the great century of flemish painting, though the painting was not entirely flemish in method or thought. the influence of italy had done away with the early simplicity, purity, and religious pathos of the van eycks. during the sixteenth century everything had run to bald imitation of renaissance methods. then came a new master-genius, rubens ( - ), who formed a new art founded in method upon italy, yet distinctly northern in character. rubens chose all subjects for his brush, but the religious altar-piece probably occupied him as much as any. to this he gave little of gothic sentiment, but everything of renaissance splendor. his art was more material than spiritual, more brilliant and startling in sensuous qualities, such as line and color, than charming by facial expression or tender feeling. something of the paolo veronese cast of mind, he conceived things largely, and painted them proportionately--large titanic types, broad schemes and masses of color, great sweeping lines of beauty. one value of this largeness was its ability to hold at a distance upon wall or altar. hence, when seen to-day, close at hand, in museums, people are apt to think rubens's art coarse and gross. there is no prettiness about his type. it is not effeminate or sentimental, but rather robust, full of life and animal spirits, full of blood, bone, and muscle--of majestic dignity, grace, and power, and glowing with splendor of color. in imagination, in conception of art purely as art, and not as a mere vehicle to convey religious or mythological ideas, in mental grasp of the pictorial world, rubens stands with titian and velasquez in the very front rank of painters. as a technician, he was unexcelled. a master of composition, modelling, and drawing, a master of light, and a color-harmonist of the rarest ability, he, in addition, possessed the most certain, adroit, and facile hand that ever handled a paint-brush. nothing could be more sure than the touch of rubens, nothing more easy and masterful. he was trained in both mind and eye, a genius by birth and by education, a painter who saw keenly, and was able to realize what he saw with certainty. well-born, ennobled by royalty, successful in both court and studio, rubens lived brilliantly and his life was a series of triumphs. he painted enormous canvases, and the number of pictures, altar-pieces, mythological decorations, landscapes, portraits scattered throughout the galleries of europe, and attributed to him, is simply amazing. he was undoubtedly helped in many of his canvases by his pupils, but the works painted by his own hand make a world of art in themselves. he was the greatest painter of the north, a full-rounded, complete genius, comparable to titian in his universality. his precursors and masters, van noort ( - ) and vaenius ( - ), gave no strong indication of the greatness of ruben's art, and his many pupils, though echoing his methods, never rose to his height in mental or artistic grasp. [illustration: fig. .--van dyck. portrait of cornelius van der geest. nat. gal. london.] van dyck ( - ) was his principal pupil. he followed rubens closely at first, though in a slighter manner technically, and with a cooler coloring. after visiting italy he took up with the warmth of titian. later, in england, he became careless and less certain. his rank is given him not for his figure-pieces. they were not always successful, lacking as they did in imagination and originality, though done with force. his best work was his portraiture, for which he became famous, painting nobility in every country of europe in which he visited. at his best he was a portrait-painter of great power, but not to be placed in the same rank with titian, rubens, rembrandt, and velasquez. his characters are gracefully posed, and appear to be aristocratic. there is a noble distinction about them, and yet even this has the feeling of being somewhat affected. the serene complacency of his lords and ladies finally became almost a mannerism with him, though never a disagreeable one. he died early, a painter of mark, but not the greatest portrait-painter of the world, as is sometimes said of him. there were a number of rubens's pupils, like diepenbeeck ( - ), who learned from their master a certain brush facility, but were not sufficiently original to make deep impressions. when rubens died the best painter left in belgium was jordaens ( - ). he was a pupil of van noort, but submitted to the rubens influence and followed in rubens's style, though more florid in coloring and grosser in types. he painted all sorts of subjects, but was seen at his best in mythological scenes with groups of drunken satyrs and bacchants, surrounded by a close-placed landscape. he was the most independent and original of the followers, of whom there was a host. crayer ( - ), janssens ( - ), zegers ( - ), rombouts ( - ), were the prominent ones. they all took an influence more or less pronounced from rubens. cornelius de vos ( - ) was a more independent man--a realistic portrait-painter of much ability. snyders ( - ), and fyt ( ?- ), devoted their brushes to the painting of still-life, game, fruits, flowers, landscape--snyders often in collaboration with rubens himself. [illustration: fig. .--teniers the younger. prodigal son. louvre.] living at the same time with these half-italianized painters, and continuing later in the century, there was another group of painters in the low countries who were emphatically of the soil, believing in themselves and their own country and picturing scenes from commonplace life in a manner quite their own. these were the "little masters," the _genre_ painters, of whom there was even a stronger representation appearing contemporaneously in holland. in belgium there were not so many nor such talented men, but some of them were very interesting in their work as in their subjects. teniers the younger ( - ) was among the first of them to picture peasant, burgher, alewife, and nobleman in all scenes and places. nothing escaped him as a subject, and yet his best work was shown in the handling of low life in taverns. there is coarse wit in his work, but it is atoned for by good color and easy handling. he was influenced by rubens, though decidedly different from him in many respects. brouwer ( ?- ) has often been catalogued with the holland school, but he really belongs with teniers, in belgium. he died early, but left a number of pictures remarkable for their fine "fat" quality and their beautiful color. he was not a man of italian imagination, but a painter of low life, with coarse humor and not too much good taste, yet a superb technician and vastly beyond many of his little dutch contemporaries at the north. teniers and brouwer led a school and had many followers. in a slightly different vein was gonzales coques ( - ), who is generally seen to advantage in pictures of interiors with family groups. in subject he was more refined than the other _genre_ painters, and was influenced to some extent by van dyck. as a colorist he held rank, and his portraiture (rarely seen) was excellent. at this time there were also many painters of landscape, marine, battles, still-life--in fact belgium was alive with painters--but none of them was sufficiently great to call for individual mention. most of them were followers of either holland or italy, and the gist of their work will be spoken of hereafter under dutch painting. eighteenth-century painting in belgium: decline had set in before the seventeenth century ended. belgium was torn by wars, her commerce flagged, her art-spirit seemed burned out. a long line of petty painters followed whose works call for silence. one man alone seemed to stand out like a star by comparison with his contemporaries, verhagen ( - ), a portrait-painter of talent. nineteenth-century painting in belgium: during this century belgium has been so closely related to france that the influence of the larger country has been quite apparent upon the art of the smaller. in david, the leader of the french classic school, sent into exile by the restoration, settled at brussels, and immediately drew around him many pupils. his influence was felt at once, and francois navez ( - ) was the chief one among his pupils to establish the revived classic art in belgium. in , with belgian independence and almost concurrently with the romantic movement in france, there began a romantic movement in belgium with wappers ( - ). his art was founded substantially on rubens; but, like the paris romanticists, he chose the dramatic subject of the times and treated it more for color than for line. he drew a number of followers to himself, but the movement was not more lasting than in france. wiertz ( - ), whose collection of works is to be seen in brussels, was a partial exposition of romanticism mixed with a what-not of eccentricity entirely his own. later on came a comparatively new man, louis gallait ( -?), who held in brussels substantially the same position that delaroche did in paris. his art was eclectic and never strong, though he had many pupils at brussels, and started there a rivalry to wappers at antwerp. leys ( - ) holds a rather unique position in belgian art by reason of his affectation. he at first followed pieter de hooghe and other early painters. then, after a study of the old german painters like cranach, he developed an archaic style, producing a gothic quaintness of line and composition, mingled with old flemish coloring. the result was something popular, but not original or far-reaching, though technically well done. his chief pupil was alma tadema ( -), alive to-day in london, and belonging to no school in particular. he is a technician of ability, mannered in composition and subject, and somewhat perfunctory in execution. his work is very popular with those who enjoy minute detail and smooth texture-painting. in the influence of the french realism of courbet began to be felt at brussels, and since then belgian art has followed closely the art movements at paris. men like alfred stevens ( -), a pupil of navez, are really more french than belgian. stevens is one of the best of the moderns, a painter of power in fashionable or high-life _genre_, and a colorist of the first rank in modern art. among the recent painters but a few can be mentioned. willems ( -), a weak painter of fashionable _genre_; verboeckhoven ( - ), a vastly over-estimated animal painter; clays ( -), an excellent marine painter; boulanger, a landscapist; wauters ( -), a history, and portrait-painter; jan van beers and robie. the new men are claus, buysse, frederic, khnopff, lempoels. [illustration: fig. .--alfred stevens. on the beach.] principal works:--hubert van eyck, adoration of the lamb (with jan van eyck) st. bavon ghent (wings at brussels and berlin supposed to be by jan, the rest by hubert); jan van eyck, as above, also arnolfini portraits nat. gal. lon., virgin and donor louvre, madonna staedel mus., man with pinks berlin, triumph of church madrid; van der weyden, a number of pictures in brussels and antwerp mus., also at staedel mus., berlin, munich, vienna; cristus, berlin, staedel mus., hermitage, madrid; justus van ghent, last supper urbino gal.; bouts, st. peter louvain, munich, berlin, brussels, vienna; memling, brussels mus. and bruges acad., and hospital antwerp, turin, uffizi, munich, vienna; van der meire, triptych st. bavon ghent; ghaeraert david, bruges, berlin, rouen, munich. massys, brussels, antwerp, berlin, st. petersburg; best works deposition in antwerp gal. and merchant and wife louvre; mostert, altar-piece notre dame bruges; mabuse, madonnas palermo, milan cathedral, prague, other works vienna, berlin, munich, antwerp; floris, antwerp, amsterdam, brussels, berlin, munich, vienna; barent van orley, altar-pieces church of the saviour antwerp, and brussels mus.; cocxie, antwerp, brussels, and madrid mus.; pourbus, bruges, brussels, vienna mus.; moro, portraits madrid, vienna, hague, brussels, cassel, louvre, st. petersburg mus.; bril, landscapes madrid, louvre, dresden, berlin mus.; the landscapes of the three breughels are to be seen in most of the museums of europe, especially at munich, dresden, and madrid. rubens, many works, in munich, in dresden, at cassel, at berlin, in london, in vienna, in madrid, in paris, at st. petersburg (as given by wauters), best works at antwerp, vienna, munich, and madrid; van noort, antwerp, brussels mus., ghent and antwerp cathedrals; van dyck, windsor castle, nat. gal. lon., in munich, in dresden, in cassel, in berlin, in vienna, in madrid, in paris, and in st. petersburg (wauters), best examples in vienna, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; and madrid, good example in met. mus. n. y.; diepenbeeck, antwerp churches and mus., berlin, vienna, munich, frankfort; jordaens, brussels, antwerp, munich, vienna, cassel, madrid, paris; crayer, brussels, munich, vienna; janssens, antwerp mus., st. bavon ghent, brussels and cologne mus.; zegers, cathedral ghent, notre dame bruges, antwerp mus.; rombouts, mus. and cathedral ghent, antwerp mus., beguin convent mechlin, hospital of st. john bruges; de vos, cathedral and mus. antwerp, munich, oldenburg, berlin mus.; snyders, munich, dresden, vienna, madrid, paris, st. petersburg; fyt, munich, dresden, cassel, berlin, vienna, madrid, paris; teniers the younger, pictures in munich, in dresden, in berlin, in nat. gal. lon., in vienna, in madrid, in louvre, in st. petersburg (wauters); brauwer, in munich, in dresden, in berlin, in paris, in st. petersburgh (wauters); coques, nat. gal. lon., amsterdam, berlin, munich mus. verhagen, antwerp, brussels, ghent, and vienna mus.; navez, ghent, antwerp, and amsterdam mus., nat. gal. berlin; wappers, amsterdam, brussels, versailles mus.; wiertz, in wiertz gal. brussels; gallait, liége, versailles, tournay, brussels, nat. gal. berlin; leys, amsterdam mus., new pinacothek, munich, brussels, nat. gal. berlin, antwerp mus. and city hall; alfred stevens, marseilles, brussels, frescos royal pal. brussels; willems, brussels mus. and foder mus. amsterdam, met. mus. n. y.; verboeckhoven, amsterdam, foder, nat. gal. berlin, new pinacothek, brussels, ghent, met. mus. n. y.; clays, ghent mus.; wauters, brussels, liége mus.; van beers, burial of charles the good amsterdam mus. chapter xvii. dutch painting. books recommended: as before fromentin, (waagen's) kügler; amand-durand, _oeuvre de rembrandt_; _archief voor nederlandsche kunst-geschiedenis_; blanc, _oeuvre de rembrandt_; bode, _franz hals und seine schule_; bode, _studien zur geschichte der hollandischen malerei_; bode, _adriaan van ostade_; brown, _rembrandt_; burger (th. thoré), _les musées de la hollande_; havard, _la peinture hollandaise_; michel, _rembrandt_; michel, _gerard terburg et sa famille_; mantz, _adrien brouwer_; rooses, _dutch painters of the nineteenth century_; rooses, _rubens_; schmidt, _das leben des malers adriaen brouwer_; van der willigen, _les artistes de harlem_; van mander, _leven der nederlandsche en hoogduitsche schilders_; vosmaer, _rembrandt, sa vie et ses oeuvres_; westrheene, _jan steen, Étude sur l'art en hollande_; van dyke, _old dutch and flemish masters_. the dutch people and their art: though holland produced a somewhat different quality of art from flanders and belgium, yet in many respects the people at the north were not very different from those at the south of the netherlands. they were perhaps less versatile, less volatile, less like the french and more like the germans. fond of homely joys and the quiet peace of town and domestic life, the dutch were matter-of-fact in all things, sturdy, honest, coarse at times, sufficient unto themselves, and caring little for what other people did. just so with their painters. they were realistic at times to grotesqueness. little troubled with fine poetic frenzies they painted their own lives in street, town-hall, tavern, and kitchen, conscious that it was good because true to themselves. at first dutch art was influenced, even confounded, with that of flanders. the van eycks led the way, and painters like bouts and others, though dutch by birth, became flemish by adoption in their art at least. when the flemish painters fell to copying italy some of the dutch followed them, but with no great enthusiasm. suddenly, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when holland had gained political independence, dutch art struck off by itself, became original, became famous. it pictured native life with verve, skill, keenness of insight, and fine pictorial view. limited it was; it never soared like italian art, never became universal or world-embracing. it was distinct, individual, national, something that spoke for holland, but little beyond it. in subject there were few historical canvases such as the italians and french produced. the nearest approach to them were the paintings of shooting companies, or groups of burghers and syndics, and these were merely elaborations and enlargements of the portrait which the dutch loved best of all. as a whole their subjects were single figures or small groups in interiors, quiet scenes, family conferences, smokers, card-players, drinkers, landscapes, still-life, architectural pieces. when they undertook the large canvas with many figures, they were often unsatisfactory. even rembrandt was so. the chief medium was oil, used upon panel or canvas. fresco was probably used in the early days, but the climate was too damp for it and it was abandoned. it was perhaps the dampness of the northern climate that led to the adaptation of the oil medium, something the van eycks are credited with inaugurating. [illustration: fig. .--hals. portrait of a lady.] the early painting: the early work has, for the great part, perished through time and the fierceness with which the iconoclastic warfare was waged. that which remains to-day is closely allied in method and style to flemish painting under the van eycks. ouwater is one of the earliest names that appears, and perhaps for that reason he has been called the founder of the school. he was remarked in his time for the excellent painting of background landscapes; but there is little authentic by him left to us from which we may form an opinion.[ ] geertjen van st. jan (about ) was evidently a pupil of his, and from him there are two wings of an altar in the vienna gallery, supposed to be genuine. bouts and mostert have been spoken of under the flemish school. bosch ( ?- ) was a man of some individuality who produced fantastic purgatories that were popular in their time and are known to-day through engravings. engelbrechsten ( - ) was dutch by birth and in his art, and yet probably got his inspiration from the van eyck school. the works attributed to him are doubtful, though two in the leyden gallery seem to be authentic. he was the master of lucas van leyden ( - ), the leading artist of the early period. lucas van leyden was a personal friend of albrecht dürer, the german painter, and in his art he was not unlike him. a man with a singularly lean type, a little awkward in composition, brilliant in color, and warm in tone, he was, despite his archaic-looking work, an artist of much ability and originality. at first he was inclined toward flemish methods, with an exaggerated realism in facial expression. in his middle period he was distinctly dutch, but in his later days he came under italian influence, and with a weakening effect upon his art. taking his work as a whole, it was the strongest of all the early dutch painters. [footnote : a raising of lazarus is in the berlin gallery.] sixteenth century: this century was a period of italian imitation, probably superinduced by the action of the flemings at antwerp. the movement was somewhat like the flemish one, but not so extensive or so productive. there was hardly a painter of rank in holland during the whole century. scorel ( - ) was the leader, and he probably got his first liking for italian art through mabuse at antwerp. he afterward went to italy, studied raphael and michael angelo, and returned to utrecht to open a school and introduce italian art into holland. a large number of pupils followed him, but their work was lacking in true originality. heemskerck ( - ) and cornelis van haarlem ( - ), with steenwyck ( ?- ), were some of the more important men of the century, but none of them was above a common average. seventeenth century: beginning with the first quarter of this century came the great art of the dutch people, founded on themselves and rooted in their native character. italian methods were abandoned, and the dutch told the story of their own lives in their own manner, with truth, vigor, and skill. there were so many painters in holland during this period that it will be necessary to divide them into groups and mention only the prominent names. portrait and figure painters: the real inaugurators of dutch portraiture were mierevelt, hals, ravesteyn, and de keyser. mierevelt ( - ) was one of the earliest, a prolific painter, fond of the aristocratic sitter, and indulging in a great deal of elegance in his accessories of dress and the like. he had a slight, smooth brush, much detail, and a profusion of color. quite the reverse of him was franz hals ( ?- ), one of the most remarkable painters of portraits with which history acquaints us. in giving the sense of life and personal physical presence, he was unexcelled by any one. what he saw he could portray with the most telling reality. in drawing and modelling he was usually good; in coloring he was excellent, though in his late work sombre; in brush-handling he was one of the great masters. strong, virile, yet easy and facile, he seemed to produce without effort. his brush was very broad in its sweep, very sure, very true. occasionally in his late painting facility ran to the ineffectual, but usually he was certainty itself. his best work was in portraiture, and the most important of this is to be seen at haarlem, where he died after a rather careless life. as a painter, pure and simple, he is almost to be ranked beside velasquez; as a poet, a thinker, a man of lofty imagination, his work gives us little enlightenment except in so far as it shows a fine feeling for masses of color and problems of light. though excellent portrait-painters, ravesteyn ( ?- ) and de keyser ( ?- ) do not provoke enthusiasm. they were quiet, conservative, dignified, painting civic guards and societies with a knowing brush and lively color, giving the truth of physiognomy, but not with that verve of the artist so conspicuous in hals, nor with that unity of the group so essential in the making of a picture. [illustration: fig. .--rembrandt. head of woman. nat. gal. london.] the next man in chronological order is rembrandt ( ?- ), the greatest painter in dutch art. he was a pupil of swanenburch and lastman, but his great knowledge of nature and his craft came largely from the direct study of the model. settled at amsterdam, he quickly rose to fame, had a large following of pupils, and his influence was felt through all dutch painting. the portrait was emphatically his strongest work. the many-figured group he was not always successful in composing or lighting. his method of work rather fitted him for the portrait and unfitted him for the large historical piece. he built up the importance of certain features by dragging down all other features. this was largely shown in his handling of illumination. strong in a few high lights on cheek, chin, or white linen, the rest of the picture was submerged in shadow, under which color was unmercifully sacrificed. this was not the best method for a large, many-figured piece, but was singularly well suited to the portrait. it produced strength by contrast. "forced" it was undoubtedly, and not always true to nature, yet nevertheless most potent in rembrandt's hands. he was an arbitrary though perfect master of light-and-shade, and unusually effective in luminous and transparent shadows. in color he was again arbitrary but forcible and harmonious. in brush-work he was at times labored, but almost always effective. mentally he was a man keen to observe, assimilate, and express his impressions in a few simple truths. his conception was localized with his own people and time (he never built up the imaginary or followed italy), and yet into types taken from the streets and shops of amsterdam he infused the very largest humanity through his inherent sympathy with man. dramatic, even tragic, he was; yet this was not so apparent in vehement action as in passionate expression. he had a powerful way of striking universal truths through the human face, the turned head, bent body, or outstretched hand. his people have character, dignity, and a pervading feeling that they are the great types of the dutch race--people of substantial physique, slow in thought and impulse, yet capable of feeling, comprehending, enjoying, suffering. his landscapes, again, were a synthesis of all landscapes, a grouping of the great truths of light, air, shadow, space. whatever he turned his hand to was treated with that breadth of view that overlooked the little and grasped the great. he painted many subjects. his earliest work dates from , and is a little hard and sharp in detail and cold in coloring. after he grew broader in handling and warmer in tone, running to golden browns, and, toward the end of his career, to rather hot tones. his life was embittered by many misfortunes, but these never seem to have affected his art except to deepen it. he painted on to the last, convinced that his own view was the true one, and producing works that rank second to none in the history of painting. rembrandt's influence upon dutch art was far-reaching, and appeared immediately in the works of his many pupils. they all followed his methods of handling light-and-shade, but no one of them ever equalled him, though they produced work of much merit. bol ( - ) was chiefly a portrait-painter, with a pervading yellow tone and some pallor of flesh-coloring--a man of ability who mistakenly followed rubens in the latter part of his life. flinck ( - ) at one time followed rembrandt so closely that his work has passed for that of the master; but latterly he, too, came under flemish influence. next to eeckhout he was probably the nearest to rembrandt in methods of all the pupils. eeckhout ( - ) was really a rembrandt imitator, but his hand was weak and his color hot. maes ( - ) was the most successful manager of light after the school formula, and succeeded very well with warmth and richness of color, especially with his reds. the other rembrandt pupils and followers were poorter (fl. - ), victoors ( ?- ?), koninck ( - ), fabritius ( - ), and backer ( ?- ). van der helst ( ?- ) stands apart from this school, and seems to have followed more the portrait style of de keyser. he was a realistic, precise painter, with much excellence of modelling in head and hands, and with fine carriage and dignity in the figure. in composition he hardly held his characters in group owing to a sacrifice of values, and in color he was often "spotty," and lacking in the unity of mass. the genre painters: this heading embraces those who may be called the "little dutchmen," because of the small scale of their pictures and their _genre_ subjects. gerard dou ( - ) is indicative of the class without fully representing it. he was a pupil of rembrandt, but his work gave little report of this. it was smaller, more delicate in detail, more petty in conception. he was a man great in little things, one who wasted strength on the minutiæ of dress, or table-cloth, or the texture of furniture without grasping the mass or color significance of the whole scene. there was infinite detail about his work, and that gave it popularity; but as art it held, and holds to-day, little higher place than the work of metsu ( - ), van mieris ( - ), netscher ( - ), or schalcken ( - ), all of whom produced the interior piece with figures elaborate in accidental effects. van ostade ( - ), though dealing with the small canvas, and portraying peasant life with perhaps unnecessary coarseness, was a much stronger painter than the men just mentioned. he was the favorite pupil of hals and the master of jan steen. with little delicacy in choice of subject he had much delicacy in color, taste in arrangement, and skill in handling. his brush was precise but not finical. [illustration: fig. .--j. van ruisdael. landscape.] by far the best painter among all the "little dutchmen" was terburg ( ?- ), a painter of interiors, small portraits, conversation pictures, and the like. though of diminutive scale his work has the largeness of view characteristic of genius, and the skilled technic of a thorough craftsman. terburg was a travelled man, visiting italy, where he studied titian, returning to holland to study rembrandt, finally at madrid studying velasquez. he was a painter of much culture, and the keynote of his art is refinement. quiet and dignified he carried taste through all branches of his art. in subject he was rather elevated, in color subdued with broken tones, in composition simple, in brush-work sure, vivacious, and yet unobtrusive. selection in his characters was followed by reserve in using them. detail was not very apparent. a few people with some accessory objects were all that he required to make a picture. perhaps his best qualities appear in a number of small portraits remarkable for their distinction and aristocratic grace. steen ( ?- ) was almost the opposite of terburg, a man of sarcastic flings and coarse humor who satirized his own time with little reserve. he developed under hals and van ostade, favoring the latter in his interiors, family scenes, and drunken debauches. he was a master of physiognomy, and depicted it with rare if rather unpleasant truth. if he had little refinement in his themes he certainly handled them as a painter with delicacy. at his best his many figured groups were exceedingly well composed, his color was of good quality (with a fondness for yellows), and his brush was as limpid and graceful as though painting angels instead of dutch boors. he was really one of the fine brushmen of holland, a man greatly admired by sir joshua reynolds, and many an artist since; but not a man of high intellectual pitch as compared with terburg, for instance. pieter de hooghe ( ?- ) was a painter of purely pictorial effects, beginning and ending a picture in a scheme of color, atmosphere, clever composition, and above all the play of light-and-shade. he was one of the early masters of full sunlight, painting it falling across a court-yard or streaming through a window with marvellous truth and poetry. his subjects were commonplace enough. an interior with a figure or two in the middle distance, and a passage-way leading into a lighted background were sufficient for him. these formed a skeleton which he clothed in a half-tone shadow, pierced with warm yellow light, enriched with rare colors, usually garnet reds and deep yellows repeated in the different planes, and surrounded with a subtle pervading atmosphere. as a brushman he was easy but not distinguished, and often his drawing was not correct; but in the placing of color masses and in composing by color and light he was a master of the first rank. little is known about his life. he probably formed himself on fabritius or rembrandt at second-hand, but little trace of the latter is apparent in his work. he seems not to have achieved much fame until late years, and then rather in england than in his own country. jan van der meer of delft ( - ), one of the most charming of all the _genre_ painters, was allied to de hooghe in his pictorial point of view and interior subjects. unfortunately there is little left to us of this master, but the few extant examples serve to show him a painter of rare qualities in light, in color, and in atmosphere. he was a remarkable man for his handling of blues, reds, and yellows; and in the tonic relations of a picture he was a master second to no one. fabritius is supposed to have influenced him. the landscape painters: the painters of the netherlands were probably the first, beginning with bril, to paint landscape for its own sake, and as a picture motive in itself. before them it had been used as a background for the figure, and was so used by many of the dutchmen themselves. it has been said that these landscape-painters were also the first ones to paint landscape realistically, but that is true only in part. they studied natural forms, as did, indeed, bellini in the venetian school; they learned something of perspective, air, tree anatomy, and the appearance of water; but no dutch painter of landscape in the seventeenth century grasped the full color of holland or painted its many varied lights. they indulged in a meagre conventional palette of grays, greens, and browns, whereas holland is full of brilliant hues. [illustration: fig. .--hobbema. the water-wheel. amsterdam mus.] van goyen ( - ) was one of the earliest of the seventeenth-century landscapists. in subject he was fond of the dutch bays, harbors, rivers, and canals with shipping, windmills, and houses. his sky line was generally given low, his water silvery, and his sky misty and luminous with bursts of white light. in color he was subdued, and in perspective quite cunning at times. salomon van ruisdael ( ?- ) was his follower, if not his pupil. he had the same sobriety of color as his master, and was a mannered and prosaic painter in details, such as leaves and tree-branches. in composition he was good, but his art had only a slight basis upon reality, though it looks to be realistic at first sight. he had a formula for doing landscape which he varied only in a slight way, and this conventionality ran through all his work. molyn ( ?- ) was a painter who showed limited truth to nature in flat and hilly landscapes, transparent skies, and warm coloring. his extant works are few in number. wynants ( ?- ?) was more of a realist in natural appearance than any of the others, a man who evidently studied directly from nature in details of vegetation, plants, trees, roads, grasses, and the like. most of the figures and animals in his landscapes were painted by other hands. he himself was a pure landscape-painter, excelling in light and aërial perspective, but not remarkable in color. van der neer ( - ) and everdingen ( ?- ) were two other contemporary painters of merit. the best landscapist following the first men of the century was jacob van ruisdael ( ?- ), the nephew of salomon van ruisdael. he is put down, with perhaps unnecessary emphasis, as the greatest landscape-painter of the dutch school. he was undoubtedly the equal of any of his time, though not so near to nature, perhaps, as hobbema. he was a man of imagination, who at first pictured the dutch country about haarlem, and afterward took up with the romantic landscape of van everdingen. this landscape bears a resemblance to the norwegian country, abounding, as it does, in mountains, heavy dark woods, and rushing torrents. there is considerable poetry in its composition, its gloomy skies, and darkened lights. it is mournful, suggestive, wild, usually unpeopled. there was much of the methodical in its putting together, and in color it was cold, and limited to a few tones. many of ruisdael's works have darkened through time. little is known about the painter's life except that he was not appreciated in his own time and died in the almshouse. hobbema ( ?- ) was probably the pupil of jacob van ruisdael, and ranks with him, if not above him, in seventeenth-century landscape painting. ruisdael hardly ever painted sunlight, whereas hobbema rather affected it in quiet wood-scenes or roadways with little pools of water and a mill. he was a freer man with the brush than ruisdael, and knew more about the natural appearance of trees, skies, and lights; but, like his master, his view of nature found no favor in his own land. most of his work is in england, where it had not a little to do with influencing such painters as constable and others at the beginning of the nineteenth century. [illustration: fig. .--israels. alone in the world.] landscape with cattle: here we meet with wouverman ( - ), a painter of horses, cavalry, battles, and riding parties placed in landscape. his landscape is bright and his horses are spirited in action. there is some mannerism apparent in his reiterated concentration of light on a white horse, and some repetition in his canvases, of which there are many; but on the whole he was an interesting, if smooth and neat painter. paul potter ( - ) hardly merited his great repute. he was a harsh, exact recorder of facts, often tin-like or woodeny in his cattle, and not in any way remarkable in his landscapes, least of all in their composition. the young bull at the hague is an ambitious piece of drawing, but is not successful in color, light, or _ensemble_. it is a brittle work all through, and not nearly so good as some smaller things in the national gallery london, and in the louvre. adrien van de velde ( ?- ) was short-lived, like potter, but managed to do a prodigious amount of work, showing cattle and figures in landscape with much technical ability and good feeling. he was particularly good in composition and the subtle gradation of neutral tints. a little of the italian influence appeared in his work, and with the men who came with him and after him the italian imitation became very pronounced. aelbert cuyp ( - ) was a many-sided painter, adopting at various times different styles, but was enough of a genius to be himself always. he is best known to us, perhaps, by his yellow sunlight effects along rivers, with cattle in the foreground, though he painted still-life, and even portraits and marines. in composing a group he was knowing, recording natural effects with power; in light and atmosphere he was one of the best of his time, and in texture and color refined, and frequently brilliant. both ( - ?), berchem ( - ), du jardin ( ?- ), followed the italian tradition of claude lorrain, producing semi-classic landscapes, never very convincing in their originality. van der heyden ( - ), should be mentioned as an excellent, if minute, painter of architecture with remarkable atmospheric effects. marine and still-life painters: there were two pre-eminent marine painters in this seventeenth century, willem van de velde ( - ) and backhuisen ( - ). the sea was not an unusual subject with the dutch landscapists. van goyen, simon de vlieger ( ?- ?), cuyp, willem van de velde the elder ( ?- ), all employed it; but it was van de velde the younger who really stood at the head of the marine painters. he knew his subject thoroughly, having been well grounded in it by his father and de vlieger, so that the painting of the dutch fleets and harbors was a part of his nature. he preferred the quiet haven to the open sea. smooth water, calm skies, silvery light, and boats lying listlessly at anchor with drooping sails, made up his usual subject. the color was almost always in a key of silver and gray, very charming in its harmony and serenity, but a little thin. both he and his father went to england and entered the service of the english king, and thereafter did english fleets rather than dutch ones. backhuisen was quite the reverse of van de velde in preferring the tempest to the calm of the sea. he also used more brilliant and varied colors, but he was not so happy in harmony as van de velde. there was often dryness in his handling, and something too much of the theatrical in his wrecks on rocky shores. the still-life painters of holland were all of them rather petty in their emphasis of details such as figures on table-covers, water-drops on flowers, and fur on rabbits. it was labored work with little of the art spirit about it, except as the composition showed good masses. a number of these painters gained celebrity in their day by their microscopic labor over fruits, flowers, and the like, but they have no great rank at the present time. jan van heem ( ? ?) was perhaps the best painter of flowers among them. van huysum ( - ) succeeded with the same subject beyond his deserts. hondecoeter ( - ) was a unique painter of poultry; weenix ( - ) and van aelst ( - ), of dead game; kalf ( ?- ), of pots, pans, dishes, and vegetables. eighteenth century: this was a period of decadence during which there was no originality worth speaking about among the dutch painters. realism in minute features was carried to the extreme, and imitation of the early men took the place of invention. everything was prettified and elaborated until there was a porcelain smoothness and a photographic exactness inconsistent with true art. adriaan van der werff ( - ), and philip van dyck ( - ) with their "ideal" inanities are typical of the century's art. there was nothing to commend it. the lowest point of affectation had been reached. nineteenth century: the dutch painters, unlike the belgians, have almost always been true to their own traditions and their own country. even in decadence the most of them feebly followed their own painters rather than those of italy and france, and in the early nineteenth century they were not affected by the french classicism of david. later on there came into vogue an art that had some affinity with that of millet and courbet in france. it was the dutch version of modern sentiment about the laboring classes, founded on the modern life of holland, yet in reality a continuation of the style or _genre_ practised by the early dutchmen. israels ( -) is a revival or a survival of rembrandtesque methods with a sentiment and feeling akin to the french millet. he deals almost exclusively with peasant life, showing fisher-folk and the like in their cottage interiors, at the table, or before the fire, with good effects of light, atmosphere, and much pathos. technically he is rather labored and heavy in handling, but usually effective with sombre color in giving the unity of a scene. artz ( - ) considered himself in measure a follower of israels, though he never studied under him. his pictures in subject are like those of israels, but without the depth of the latter. blommers ( -) is another peasant painter who follows israels at a distance, and neuhuys ( -) shows a similar style of work. bosboom ( - ) excelled in representing interiors, showing, with much pictorial effect, the light, color, shadow, and feeling of space and air in large cathedrals. [illustration: fig. .--mauve. sheep.] the brothers maris have made a distinct impression on modern dutch art, and, strange enough, each in a different way from the others. james maris ( -) studied at paris, and is remarkable for fine, vigorous views of canals, towns, and landscapes. he is broad in handling, rather bleak in coloring, and excels in fine luminous skies and voyaging clouds. matthew maris ( -), parisian trained like his brother, lives in london, where little is seen of his work. he paints for himself and his friends, and is rather melancholy and mystical in his art. he is a recorder of visions and dreams rather than the substantial things of the earth, but always with richness of color and a fine decorative feeling. willem maris ( -), sometimes called the "silvery maris," is a portrayer of cattle and landscape in warm sunlight and haze with a charm of color and tone often suggestive of corot. jongkind ( - ) stands by himself, mesdag ( -) is a fine painter of marines and sea-shores, and mauve ( - ), a cattle and sheep painter, with nice sentiment and tonality, whose renown is just now somewhat disproportionate to his artistic ability. in addition there are kever, poggenbeek, bastert, baur, breitner, witsen, haverman, weissenbruch. extant works: generally speaking the best examples of the dutch schools are still to be seen in the local museums of holland, especially the amsterdam and hague mus.; bosch, madrid, antwerp, brussels mus.; lucas van leyden, antwerp, leyden, munich mus.; scorel, amsterdam, rotterdam, haarlem mus.; heemskerck, haarlem, hague, berlin, cassel, dresden; steenwyck, amsterdam, hague, brussels; cornelis van haarlem, amsterdam, haarlem, brunswick. portrait and figure painters--mierevelt, hague, amsterdam, rotterdam, brunswick, dresden, copenhagen; hals, best works to be seen at haarlem, others at amsterdam, brussels, hague, berlin, cassel, louvre, nat. gal. lon., met. mus. new york, art institute chicago; rembrandt, amsterdam, hermitage, louvre, munich, berlin, dresden, madrid, london; bol, amsterdam, hague, dresden, louvre; flinck, amsterdam, hague, berlin; eeckhout, amsterdam, brunswick, berlin, munich; maes, nat. gal. lon., rotterdam, amsterdam, hague, brussels; poorter, amsterdam, brussels, dresden; victoors, amsterdam, copenhagen, brunswick, dresden; fabritius, rotterdam, amsterdam, berlin; van der helst, best works at amsterdam mus. genre painters--examples of dou, metsu, van mieris, netscher, schalcken, van ostade, are to be seen in almost all the galleries of europe, especially the dutch, belgian, german, and french galleries; terburg, amsterdam, louvre, dresden, berlin (fine portraits); steen, amsterdam, louvre, rotterdam, hague, berlin, cassel, dresden, vienna; de hooghe, nat. gal. lon., louvre, amsterdam, hermitage; van der meer of delft, louvre, hague, amsterdam, berlin, dresden, met. mus. new york. landscape painters--van goyen, amsterdam, fitz-william mus. cambridge, louvre, brussels, cassel, dresden, berlin; salomon van ruisdael, amsterdam, brussels, berlin, dresden, munich; van der neer, nat. gal. lon., louvre, brussels, amsterdam, berlin, dresden; everdingen, amsterdam, berlin, louvre, brunswick, dresden, munich, frankfort; jacob van ruisdael, nat. gal. lon., louvre, amsterdam, berlin, dresden; hobbema, best works in england, nat. gal. lon., amsterdam, rotterdam, dresden; wouvermans, many works, best at amsterdam, cassel, louvre; potter, amsterdam, hague, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; van de velde, amsterdam, hague, cassel, dresden, frankfort, munich, louvre; cuyp, amsterdam, nat. gal. lon., louvre, munich, dresden; examples of both, berchem, du jardin, and van der heyden, in almost all of the dutch and german galleries, besides the louvre and nat. gal. lon. marine painters--willem van de velde elder and younger, backhuisen, vlieger, together with the flower and fruit painters like huysum, hondecoeter, weenix, have all been prolific workers, and almost every european gallery, especially those at london, amsterdam, and in germany, have examples of their works; van der werff and philip van dyck are seen at their best at dresden. the best works of the modern men are in private collections, many in the united states, some examples of them in the amsterdam and hague museums. also some examples of the old dutch masters in new york hist. society library, yale school of fine arts, met. mus. new york, boston mus., and chicago institute. chapter xviii. german painting. books recommended: colvin, _a. durer, his teachers, his rivals, and his scholars_; eye, _leben und werke albrecht durers_; förster, _peter von cornelius_; förster, _geschichte der deutschen kunst_; keane, _early teutonic, italian, and french painters_; kügler, _handbook to german and netherland schools, trans. by crowe_; merlo, _die meister der altkolnischer malerschule_; moore, _albert durer_; pecht, _deutsche kunstler des neunzehnten jahrhunderts_; reber, _geschichte der neueren deutschen kunst_; riegel, _deutsche kunststudien_; rosenberg, _die berliner malerschule_; rosenberg, _sebald und barthel beham_; rumohr, _hans holbein der jungere_; sandrart, _teutsche akademie der edlen bau, bild-und malerey-kunste_; schuchardt, _lucas cranach's leben_; thausig, _albert durer, his life and works_; waagen, _kunstwerke und kunstler in deutschland_; e. aus'm weerth, _wandmalereien des mittelalters in den rheinlanden_; wessely, _adolph menzel_; woltmann, _holbein and his time_; woltmann, _geschichte der deutschen kunst im elsass_; wurtzbach, _martin schongauer_. early german painting: the teutonic lands, like almost all of the countries of europe, received their first art impulse from christianity through italy. the centre of the faith was at rome, and from there the influence in art spread west and north, and in each land it was modified by local peculiarities of type and temperament. in germany, even in the early days, though christianity was the theme of early illuminations, miniatures, and the like, and though there was a traditional form reaching back to italy and byzantium, yet under it was the teutonic type--the material, awkward, rather coarse germanic point of view. the wish to realize native surroundings was apparent from the beginning. it is probable that the earliest painting in germany took the form of illuminations. at what date it first appeared is unknown. in wall-painting a poor quality of work was executed in the churches as early as the ninth century, and probably earlier. the oldest now extant are those at oberzell, dating back to the last part of the tenth century. better examples are seen in the lower church of schwarzrheindorf, of the twelfth century, and still better in the choir and transept of the brunswick cathedral, ascribed to the early thirteenth century. [illustration: fig. .--lochner. sts. john, catherine, and matthew. nat. gal. london.] all of these works have an archaic appearance about them, but they are better in composition and drawing than the productions of italy and byzantium at that time. it is likely that all the german churches at this time were decorated, but most of the paintings have been destroyed. the usual method was to cover the walls and wooden ceilings with blue grounds, and upon these to place figures surrounded by architectural ornaments. stained glass was also used extensively. panel painting seems to have come into existence before the thirteenth century (whether developed from miniature or wall-painting is unknown), and was used for altar decorations. the panels were done in tempera with figures in light colors upon gold grounds. the spirituality of the age with a mingling of northern sentiment appeared in the figure. this figure was at times graceful, and again awkward and archaic, according to the place of production and the influence of either france or italy. the oldest panels extant are from the wiesenkirche at soest, now in the berlin museum. they do not date before the thirteenth century. fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: in the fourteenth century the influence of france began to show strongly in willowy figures, long flowing draperies, and sentimental poses. the artists along the rhine showed this more than those in the provinces to the east, where a ruder if freer art appeared. the best panel-painting of the time was done at cologne, where we meet with the name of the first painter, meister wilhelm, and where a school was established usually known as the school of cologne: this school probably got its sentimental inclination, shown in slight forms and tender expression, from france, but derived much of its technic from the netherlands. stephen lochner, or meister stephen, (fl. ) leaned toward the flemish methods, and in his celebrated picture, the madonna of the rose garden, in the cologne museum, there is an indication of this; but there is also an individuality showing the growth of german independence in painting. the figures of his dombild have little manliness or power, but considerable grace, pathos, and religious feeling. they are not abstract types but the spiritualized people of the country in native costumes, with much gold, jewelry, and armor. gold was used instead of a landscape background, and the foreground was spattered with flowers and leaves. the outlines are rather hard, and none of the aërial perspective of the flemings is given. after a time french sentiment was still further encroached upon by flemish realism, as shown in the works of the master of the lyversberg passion (fl. about - ), to be seen in the cologne museum. [illustration: fig. .--wolgemut. crucifixion. munich.] bohemian school: it was not on the lower rhine alone that german painting was practised. the bohemian school, located near prague, flourished for a short time in the fourteenth century, under charles iv., with theodorich of prague (fl. - ), wurmser, and kunz, as the chief masters. their art was quite the reverse of the cologne painters. it was heavy, clumsy, bony, awkward. if more original it was less graceful, not so pathetic, not so religious. sentiment was slurred through a harsh attempt at realism, and the religious subject met with something of a check in the romantic mediæval chivalric theme, painted quite as often on the castle wall as the scriptural theme on the church wall. after the close of the fourteenth century wall-painting began to die out in favor of panel pictures. nuremberg school: half-way between the sentiment of cologne and the realism of prague stood the early school of nuremberg, with no known painter at its head. its chief work, the imhof altar-piece, shows, however, that the nuremberg masters of the early and middle fifteenth century were between eastern and western influences. they inclined to the graceful swaying figure, following more the sculpture of the time than the cologne type. fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: german art, if begun in the fourteenth century, hardly showed any depth or breadth until the fifteenth century, and no real individual strength until the sixteenth century. it lagged behind the other countries of europe and produced the cramped archaic altar-piece. then when printing was invented the painter-engraver came into existence. he was a man who painted panels, but found his largest audience through the circulation of engravings. the two kinds of arts being produced by the one man led to much detailed line work with the brush. engraving is an influence to be borne in mind in examining the painting of this period. [illustration: fig. .--dÜrer. praying virgin. augsburg.] franconian school: nuremberg was the centre of this school, and its most famous early master was wolgemut ( - ), though plydenwurff is the first-named painter. after the latter's death wolgemut married his widow and became the head of the school. his paintings were chiefly altar-pieces, in which the figures were rather lank and narrow-shouldered, with sharp outlines, indicative perhaps of the influence of wood-engraving, in which he was much interested. there was, however, in his work an advance in characterization, nobility of expression, and quiet dignity, and it was his good fortune to be the master of one of the most thoroughly original painters of all the german schools--albrecht dürer ( - ). with dürer and holbein german art reached its apogee in the first half of the sixteenth century, yet their work was not different in spirit from that of their predecessors. painting simply developed and became forceful and expressive technically without abandoning its early character. there is in dürer a naive awkwardness of figure, some angularity of line, strain of pose, and in composition oftentimes huddling and overloading of the scene with details. there is not that largeness which seemed native to his italian contemporaries. he was hampered by that german exactness, which found its best expression in engraving, and which, though unsuited to painting, nevertheless crept into it. within these limitations dürer produced the typical art of germany in the renaissance time--an art more attractive for the charm and beauty of its parts than for its unity, or its general impression. dürer was a travelled man, visited italy and the netherlands, and, though he always remained a german in art, yet he picked up some italian methods from bellini and mantegna that are faintly apparent in some of his works. in subject he was almost exclusively religious, painting the altar-piece with infinite care upon wooden panel, canvas, or parchment. he never worked in fresco, preferring oil and tempera. in drawing he was often harsh and faulty, in draperies cramped at times, and then, again, as in the apostle panels at munich, very broad, and effective. many of his pictures show a hard, dry brush, and a few, again, are so free and mellow that they look as though done by another hand. he was usually minute in detail, especially in such features as hair, cloth, flesh. his portraits were uneven and not his best productions. he was too close a scrutinizer of the part and not enough of an observer of the whole for good portraiture. indeed, that is the criticism to be made upon all his work. he was an exquisite realist of certain features, but not always of the _ensemble_. nevertheless he holds first rank in the german art of the renaissance, not only on account of his technical ability, but also because of his imagination, sincerity, and striking originality. [illustration: fig. .--holbein the younger. portrait. hague mus.] dürer's influence was wide-spread throughout germany, especially in engraving, of which he was a master. in painting schäufelin ( ?- ?) was probably his apprentice, and in his work followed the master so closely that many of his works have been attributed to dürer. this is true in measure of hans baldung ( ?- ?). hans von kulmbach (?- ) was a painter of more than ordinary importance, brilliant in coloring, a follower of dürer, who was inclined toward italian methods, an inclination that afterward developed all through german art. following dürer's formulas came a large number of so-called "little masters" (from the size of their engraved plates), who were more engravers than painters. among the more important of those who were painters as well as engravers were altdorfer ( ?- ), a rival rather than an imitator of dürer; barthel beham ( - ), sebald beham ( - ), pencz ( ?- ), aldegrever ( - ), and bink ( ?- ?). swabian school: this school includes a number of painters who were located at different places, like colmar and ulm, and later on it included the holbeins at augsburg, who were really the consummation of the school. in the fifteenth century one of the early leaders was martin schöngauer ( ?- ), at colmar. he is supposed to have been a pupil of roger van der weyden, of the flemish school, and is better known by his engravings than his paintings, none of the latter being positively authenticated. he was thoroughly german in his type and treatment, though, perhaps, indebted to the flemings for his coloring. there was some angularity in his figures and draperies, and a tendency to get nearer nature and further away from the ecclesiastical and ascetic conception in all that he did. at ulm a local school came into existence with zeitblom (fl. - ), who was probably a pupil of schüchlin. he had neither schöngauer's force nor his fancy, but was a simple, straightforward painter of one rather strong type. his drawing was not good, except in the draperies, but he was quite remarkable for the solidity and substance of his painting, considering the age he lived in was given to hard, thin brush-work. schaffner (fl. - ) was another ulm painter, a junior to zeitblom, of whom little is known, save from a few pictures graceful and free in composition. a recently discovered man, bernard strigel ( ?- ?) seems to have been excellent in portraiture. [illustration: fig. .--piloty. wise and foolish virgins.] at augsburg there was still another school, which came into prominence in the sixteenth century with burkmair and the holbeins. it was only a part of the swabian school, a concentration of artistic force about augsburg, which, toward the close of the fifteenth century, had come into competition with nuremberg, and rather outranked it in splendor. it was at augsburg that the renaissance art in germany showed in more restful composition, less angularity, better modelling and painting, and more sense of the _ensemble_ of a picture. hans burkmair ( - ) was the founder of the school, a pupil of schöngauer, later influenced by dürer, and finally showing the influence of italian art. he was not, like dürer, a religious painter, though doing religious subjects. he was more concerned with worldly appearance, of which he had a large knowledge, as may be seen from his illustrations for engraving. as a painter he was a rather fine colorist, indulging in the fantastic of architecture but with good taste, crude in drawing but forceful, and at times giving excellent effects of motion. he was rounder, fuller, calmer in composition than dürer, but never so strong an artist. next to burkmair comes the celebrated holbein family. there were four of them all told, but only two of them, hans the elder and hans the younger, need be mentioned. holbein the elder ( ?- ), after burkmair, was the best painter of his time and school without being in himself a great artist. schöngauer was at first his guide, though he soon submitted to some flemish and cologne influence, and later on followed italian form and method in composition to some extent. he was a good draughtsman, and very clever at catching realistic points of physiognomy--a gift he left his son hans. in addition he had some feeling for architecture and ornament, and in handling was a bit hard, and oftentimes careless. the best half of his life fell in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and he never achieved the free painter's quality of his son. hans holbein the younger ( - ) holds, with dürer, the high place in german art. he was a more mature painter than dürer, coming as he did a quarter of a century later. he was the renaissance artist of germany, whereas dürer always had a little of the gothic clinging to him. the two men were widely different in their points of view and in their work. dürer was an idealist seeking after a type, a religious painter, a painter of panels with the spirit of an engraver. holbein was emphatically a realist finding material in the actual life about him, a designer of cartoons and large wall paintings in something of the italian spirit, a man who painted religious themes but with little spiritual significance. it is probable that he got his first instruction from his father and from burkmair. he was an infant prodigy, developed early, saw much foreign art, and showed a number of tendencies in his work. in composition and drawing he appeared at times to be following mantegna and the northern italians; in brush-work he resembled the flemings, especially massys; yet he was never an imitator of either italian or flemish painting. decidedly a self-sufficient and an observing man, he travelled in italy and the netherlands, and spent much of his life in england, where he met with great success at court as a portrait-painter. from seeing much he assimilated much, yet always remained german, changing his style but little as he grew older. his wall paintings have perished, but the drawings from them are preserved and show him as an artist of much invention. he is now known chiefly by his portraits, of which there are many of great excellence. his facility in grasping physiognomy and realizing character, the quiet dignity of his composition, his firm modelling, clear outline, harmonious coloring, excellent detail, and easy solid painting, all place him in the front rank of great painters. that he was not always bound down to literal facts may be seen in his many designs for wood-engravings. his portrait of hubert morett, in the dresden gallery, shows his art to advantage, and there are many portraits by him of great spirit in england, in the louvre, and elsewhere. saxon school: lucas cranach ( - ) was a franconian master, who settled in saxony and was successively court-painter to three electors and the leader of a small local school there. he, perhaps, studied under grünewald, but was so positive a character that he showed no strong school influence. his work was fantastic, odd in conception and execution, sometimes ludicrous, and always archaic-looking. his type was rather strained in proportions, not always well drawn, but graceful even when not truthful. this type was carried into all his works, and finally became a mannerism with him. in subject he was religious, mythological, romantic, pastoral, with a preference for the nude figure. in coloring he was at first golden, then brown, and finally cold and sombre. the lack of aërial perspective and shadow masses gave his work a queer look, and he was never much of a brushman. his pictures were typical of the time and country, and for that and for their strong individuality they are ranked among the most interesting paintings of the german school. perhaps his most satisfactory works are his portraits. lucas cranach the younger ( - ) was the best of the elder cranach's pupils. many of his pictures are attributed to his father. he followed the elder closely, but was a weaker man, with a smoother brush and a more rosy color. though there were many pupils the school did not go beyond the cranach family. it began with the father and died with the son. [illustration: fig. .--leibl. in church.] seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: these were unrelieved centuries of decline in german painting. after dürer, holbein, and cranach had passed there came about a senseless imitation of italy, combined with an equally senseless imitation of detail in nature that produced nothing worthy of the name of original or genuine art. it is not probable that the reformation had any more to do with this than with the decline in italy. it was a period of barrenness in both countries. the italian imitators in germany were chiefly rottenhammer ( - ), and elzheimer ( ?- ). after them came the representative of the other extreme in denner ( - ), who thought to be great in portraiture by the minute imitation of hair, freckles, and three-days'-old beard--a petty and unworthy realism which excited some curiosity but never held rank as art. mengs ( - ) sought for the sublime through eclecticism, but never reached it. his work, though academic and correct, is lacking in spirit and originality. angelica kauffman ( - ) succeeded in pleasing her inartistic age with the simply pretty, while carstens ( - ) was a conscientious if mistaken student of the great italians--a man of some severity in form and of academic inclinations. nineteenth century: in the first part of this century there started in germany a so-called "revival of art" led by overbeck ( - ), cornelius ( - ), veit ( - ), and schadow ( - ), but like many another revival of art it did not amount to much. the attempt to "revive" the past is usually a failure. the forms are caught, but the spirit is lost. the nineteenth-century attempt in germany was brought about by the study of monumental painting in italy, and the taking up of the religious spirit in a pre-raphaelite manner. something also of german romanticism was its inspiration. overbeck remained in rome, but the others, after some time in italy, returned to germany, diffused their teaching, and really formed a new epoch in german painting. a modern art began with ambitions and subjects entirely disproportionate to its skill. the monumental, the ideal, the classic, the exalted, were spread over enormous spaces, but there was no reason for such work in the contemporary german life, and nothing to warrant its appearance save that its better had appeared in italy during the renaissance. cornelius after his return became the head of the munich school and painted pictures of the heroes of the classic and the christian world upon a large scale. nothing but their size and good intention ever brought them into notice, for their form and coloring were both commonplace. schnorr ( - ) followed in the same style with the niebelungen lied, charlemagne, and barbarossa for subjects. kaulbach ( - ) was a pupil of cornelius, and had some ability but little taste, and not enough originality to produce great art. piloty ( - ) was more realistic, more of a painter and ranks as one of the best of the early munich masters. after him munich art became _genre_-like in subject, with greater attention given to truthful representation in light, color, texture. to-day there are a large number of painters in the school who are remarkable for realistic detail. dusseldorf school: after this school came into prominence under the guidance of schadow. it did not fancy monumental painting so much as the common easel picture, with the sentimental, the dramatic, or the romantic subject. it was no better in either form or color than the munich school, in fact not so good, though there were painters who emanated from it who had ability. at berlin the inclination was to follow the methods and ideas held at dusseldorf. the whole academic tendency of modern painting in germany and austria for the past fifty years has not been favorable to the best kind of pictorial art. there is a disposition on the part of artists to tell stories, to encroach upon the sentiment of literature, to paint with a dry brush in harsh unsympathetic colors, to ignore relations of light-and-shade, and to slur beauties of form. the subject seems to count for more than the truth of representation, or the individuality of view. from time to time artists of much ability have appeared, but these form an exception rather than a rule. the men to-day who are the great artists of germany are less followers of the german tradition than individuals each working in a style peculiar to himself. a few only of them call for mention. menzel ( - ) is easily first, a painter of group pictures, a good colorist, and a powerful pen-and-ink draughtsman; lenbach ( - ), a forceful portraitist; uhde ( -), a portrayer of scriptural scenes in modern costumes with much sincerity, good color, and light; leibl ( - ), an artist with something of the holbein touch and realism; thoma, a frankfort painter of decorative friezes and panels; liebermann, gotthardt kuehl, franz stuck, max klinger, greiner, trübner, bartels, keller. [illustration: fig. .--menzel. a reader.] aside from these men there are several notable painters with german affinities, like makart ( - ), an austrian, who possessed good technical qualities and indulged in a profusion of color; munkacsy ( - ), a hungarian, who is perhaps more parisian than german in technic, and böcklin ( - ), a swiss, who is quite by himself in fantastic and grotesque subjects, a weird and uncanny imagination, and a brilliant prismatic coloring. principal works: bohemian school--theoderich of prague, karlstein chap. and university library prague, vienna mus.; wurmser, same places. franconian school--wolgemut, aschaffenburg, munich, nuremberg, cassel mus.; dürer, crucifixion dresden, trinity vienna mus., other works munich, nuremberg, madrid mus.; schäufelin, basle, bamberg, cassel, munich, nuremberg, nordlingen mus., and ulm cathedral; baldung, aschaffenburg, basle, berlin, kunsthalle carlsruhe, freiburg cathedral; kulmbach, munich, nuremberg, oldenburg; altdorfer and the "little masters" are seen in the augsburg, nuremberg, berlin, munich and fürstenberg mus. swabian school--schöngauer, attributed pictures colmar mus.; zeitblom, augsburg, berlin, carlsruhe, munich, nuremberg, simaringen mus.; schaffner, munich, schliessheim, nuremberg, ulm cathedral; strigel, berlin, carlsruhe, munich, nuremberg; burkmair, augsburg, berlin, munich, maurice chap. nuremberg; holbein the elder, augsburg, nuremberg, basle, städel mus., frankfort; holbein the younger, basle, carlsruhe, darmstadt, dresden, berlin, louvre, windsor castle, vienna mus. saxon school--cranach, bamberg cathedral and gallery, munich, vienna, dresden, berlin, stuttgart, cassel; cranach the younger, stadtkirche wittenberg, leipsic, vienna, nuremberg mus. seventeenth and eighteenth-century painters: rottenhammer, louvre, berlin, munich, schliessheim, vienna, kunsthalle hamburg; elzheimer, stadel, brunswick, louvre, munich, berlin, dresden; denner, kunsthalle hamburg, berlin, brunswick, dresden, vienna, munich; mengs, madrid, vienna, dresden, munich, st. petersburg; angelica kauffman, vienna, hermitage, turin, dresden, nat. gal. lon., phila. acad. nineteenth-century painters: overbeck, frescos in s. maria degli angeli assisi, villa massimo rome, carlsruhe, new pinacothek, munich, städel mus., dusseldorf; cornelius, frescos glyptothek and ludwigkirche munich, casa zuccaro rome, royal cemetery berlin; veit, frescos villa bartholdi rome, städel, nat. gal. berlin; schadow, nat. gal. berlin, antwerp, städel, munich mus., frescos villa bartholdi rome; schnorr, dresden, cologne, carlsruhe, new pinacothek munich, städel mus.; kaulbach, wall paintings berlin mus., raczynski gal. berlin, new pinacothek munich, stuttgart, phila. acad.; piloty, best pictures in the new pinacothek and maximilianeum munich, nat. gal. berlin; menzel, nat. gal., raczynski mus. berlin, breslau mus.; lenbach, nat. gal. berlin, new pinacothek munich, kunsthalle hamburg, zürich gal.; uhde, leipsic mus.; leibl, dresden mus. the contemporary paintings have not as yet found their way, to any extent, into public museums, but may be seen in the expositions at berlin and munich from year to year. makart has one work in the metropolitan mus., n. y., as has also munkacsy; other works by them and by böcklin may be seen in the nat. gal. berlin. chapter xix. british painting. books recommended: armstrong, _sir henry raeburn_; armstrong, _gainsborough_; armstrong, _sir joshua reynolds_; burton, _catalogue of pictures in national gallery_; chesneau, _la peinture anglaise_; cook, _art in england_; cunningham, _lives of the most eminent british artists_; dobson, _life of hogarth_; gilchrist, _life of etty_; gilchrist, _life of blake_; hamerton, _life of turner_; henderson, _constable_; hunt, _the pre-raphaelite brotherhood_ (_contemporary review, vol. _); leslie, _sir joshua reynolds_; leslie, _life of constable_; martin and newbery, _glasgow school of painting_; mckay, _scottish school of painting_; monkhouse, _british contemporary artists_; redgrave, _dictionary of artists of the english school_; romney, _life of george romney_; rossetti, _fine art, chiefly contemporary_; ruskin, _pre-raphaelitism_; ruskin, _art of england_; sandby, _history of royal academy of arts_; william bell scott, _autobiography_; scott, _british landscape painters_; stephens, _catalogue of prints and drawings in the british museum_; swinburne, _william blake_; temple, _painting in the queen's reign_; van dyke, _old english masters_; wedmore, _studies in english art_; wilmot-buxton, _english painters_; wright, _life of richard wilson_. [illustration: fig. .--hogarth. shortly after marriage. nat. gal. london.] british painting: it may be premised in a general way, that the british painters have never possessed the pictorial cast of mind in the sense that the italians, the french, or the dutch have possessed it. painting, as a purely pictorial arrangement of line and color, has been somewhat foreign to their conception. whether this failure to appreciate painting as painting is the result of geographical position, isolation, race temperament, or mental disposition, would be hard to determine. it is quite certain that from time immemorable the english people have not been lacking in the appreciation of beauty; but beauty has appealed to them, not so much through the eye in painting and sculpture, as through the ear in poetry and literature. they have been thinkers, reasoners, moralists, rather than observers and artists in color. images have been brought to their minds by words rather than by forms. english poetry has existed since the days of arthur and the round table, but english painting is of comparatively modern origin, and it is not wonderful that the original leaning of the people toward literature and its sentiment should find its way into pictorial representation. as a result one may say in a very general way that english painting is more illustrative than creative. it endeavors to record things that might be more pertinently and completely told in poetry, romance, or history. the conception of large art--creative work of the rubens-titian type--has not been given to the english painters, save in exceptional cases. their success has been in portraiture and landscape, and this largely by reason of following the model. early painting: the earliest decorative art appeared in ireland. it was probably first planted there by missionaries from italy, and it reached its height in the seventh century. in the ninth and tenth centuries missal illumination of a byzantine cast, with local modifications, began to show. this lasted, in a feeble way, until the fifteenth century, when work of a flemish and french nature took its place. in the middle ages there were wall paintings and church decorations in england, as elsewhere in europe, but these have now perished, except some fragments in kempley church, gloucestershire, and chaldon church, surrey. these are supposed to date back to the twelfth century, and there are some remains of painting in westminster abbey that are said to be of thirteenth and fourteenth-century origin. from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century the english people depended largely upon foreign painters who came and lived in england. mabuse, moro, holbein, rubens, van dyck, lely, kneller--all were there at different times, in the service of royalty, and influencing such local english painters as then lived. the outcome of missal illumination and holbein's example produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a local school of miniature-painters of much interest, but painting proper did not begin to rise in england until the beginning of the eighteenth century--that century so dead in art over all the rest of europe. figure and portrait painters: aside from a few inconsequential precursors the first english artist of note was hogarth ( - ). he was an illustrator, a moralist, and a satirist as well as a painter. to point a moral upon canvas by depicting the vices of his time was his avowed aim, but in doing so he did not lose sight of pictorial beauty. charm of color, the painter's taste in arrangement, light, air, setting, were his in a remarkable degree. he was not successful in large compositions, but in small pictures like those of the rake's progress he was excellent. an early man, a rigid stickler for the representation, a keen observer of physiognomy, a satirist with a sense of the absurd, he was often warped in his art by the necessities of his subject and was sometimes hard and dry in method, but in his best work he was quite a perfect painter. he was the first of the english school, and perhaps the most original of that school. this is quite as true of his technic as of his point of view. both were of his own creation. his subjects have been talked about a great deal in the past; but his painting is not to this day valued as it should be. [illustration: fig. .--reynolds. countess spencer and lord althorp.] the next man to be mentioned, one of the most considerable of all the english school, is sir joshua reynolds ( - ). he was a pupil of hudson, but owed his art to many sources. besides the influence of van dyck he was for some years in italy, a diligent student of the great italians, especially the venetians, correggio, and the bolognese eclectics. sir joshua was inclined to be eclectic himself, and from italy he brought back a formula of art which, modified by his own individuality, answered him for the rest of his life. he was not a man of very lofty imagination or great invention. a few figure-pieces, after the titian initiative, came from his studio, but his reputation rests upon his many portraits. in portraiture he was often beyond criticism, giving the realistic representation with dignity, an elevated spirit, and a suave brush. even here he was more impressive by his broad truth of facts than by his artistic feeling. he was not a painter who could do things enthusiastically or excite enthusiasm in the spectator. there was too much of rule and precedent, too much regard for the traditions, for him to do anything strikingly original. his brush-work and composition were more learned than individual, and his color, though usually good, was oftentimes conventional in contrasts. taking him for all in all he was a very cultivated painter, a man to be respected and admired, but he had not quite the original spirit that we meet with in gainsborough. reynolds was well-grounded in venetian color, bolognese composition, parmese light-and-shade, and paid them the homage of assimilation; but if gainsborough ( - ) had such school knowledge he positively disregarded it. he disliked all conventionalities and formulas. with a natural taste for form and color, and with a large decorative sense, he went directly to nature, and took from her the materials which he fashioned into art after his own peculiar manner. his celebrated blue boy was his protest against the conventional rule of reynolds that a composition should be warm in color and light. all through his work we meet with departures from academic ways. by dint of native force and grace he made rules unto himself. some of them were not entirely successful, and in drawing he might have profited by school training; but he was of a peculiar poetic temperament, with a dash of melancholy about him, and preferred to work in his own way. in portraiture his color was rather cold; in landscape much warmer. his brush-work was as odd as himself, but usually effective, and his accessories in figure-painting were little more than decorative after-thoughts. both in portraiture and landscape he was one of the most original and most english of all the english painters--a man not yet entirely appreciated, though from the first ranked among the foremost in english art. [illustration: fig. .--gainsborough. blue boy.] romney ( - ), a pupil of steele, was often quite as masterful a portrait-painter as either reynolds or gainsborough. he was never an artist elaborate in composition, and his best works are bust-portraits with a plain background. these he did with much dash and vivacity of manner. his women, particularly, are fine in life-like pose and winsomeness of mood. he was a very cunning observer, and knew how to arrange for grace of line and charm of color. after romney came beechey ( - ), raeburn ( - ), opie ( - ), and john hoppner ( - ). then followed lawrence ( - ), a mixture of vivacious style and rather meretricious method. he was the most celebrated painter of his time, largely because he painted nobility to look more noble and grace to look more gracious. fond of fine types, garments, draperies, colors, he was always seeking the sparkling rather than the true, and forcing artificial effects for the sake of startling one rather than stating facts simply and frankly. he was facile with the brush, clever in line and color, brilliant to the last degree, but lacking in that simplicity of view and method which marks the great mind. his composition was rather fine in its decorative effect, and, though his lights were often faulty when compared with nature, they were no less telling from the stand-point of picture-making. he is much admired by artists to-day, and, as a technician, he certainly had more than average ability. he was hardly an artist like reynolds or gainsborough, but among the mediocre painters of his day he shone like a star. it is not worth while to say much about his contemporaries. etty ( - ) was one of the best of the figure men, but his greek types and classic aspirations grow wearisome on acquaintance; and sir charles eastlake ( - ), though a learned man in art and doing great service to painting as a writer, never was a painter of importance. william blake ( - ) was hardly a painter at all, though he drew and colored the strange figures of his fancy and cannot be passed over in any history of english art. he was perhaps the most imaginative artist of english birth, though that imagination was often disordered and almost incoherent. he was not a correct draughtsman, a man with no great color-sense, and a workman without technical training; and yet, in spite of all this, he drew some figures that are almost sublime in their sweep of power. his decorative sense in filling space with lines is well shown in his illustrations to the book of job. in grace of form and feeling of motion he was excellent. weird and uncanny in thought, delving into the unknown, he opened a world of mystery, peopled with a strange apocalyptic race, whose writhing, flowing bodies are the epitome of graceful grandeur. [illustration: fig. .--constable. corn field. nat. gal. london.] genre-painters: from blake to morland ( - ) is a step across space from heaven to earth. morland was a realist of english country life, horses at tavern-doors, cattle, pigs. his life was not the most correct, but his art in truthfulness of representation, simplicity of painting, richness of color and light, was often of a fine quality. as a skilful technician he stood quite alone in his time, and seemed to show more affinity with the dutch _genre_-painters than his own countrymen. his works are much prized to-day, and were so during the painter's life. sir david wilkie ( - ) was also somewhat like the dutch in subject, a _genre_-painter, fond of the village fête and depicting it with careful detail, a limpid brush, and good textural effects. in he travelled abroad, was gone some years, was impressed by velasquez, correggio, and rembrandt, and completely changed his style. he then became a portrait and historical painter. he never outlived the nervous constraint that shows in all his pictures, and his brush, though facile within limits, was never free or bold as compared with a dutchman like steen. in technical methods landseer ( - ), the painter of animals, was somewhat like him. that is to say, they both had a method of painting surfaces and rendering textures that was more "smart" than powerful. there is little solidity or depth to the brush-work of either, though both are impressive to the spectator at first sight. landseer knew the habits and the anatomy of animals very well, but he never had an appreciation of the brute in the animal, such as we see in the pictures of velasquez or the bronzes of barye. the landseer animal has too much sentiment about it. the dogs, for instance, are generally given those emotions pertinent to humanity, and which are only exceptionally true of the canine race. this very feature--the tendency to humanize the brute and make it tell a story--accounts in large measure for the popularity of landseer's art. the work is perhaps correct enough, but the aim of it is somewhat afield from pure painting. it illustrates the literary rather than the pictorial. following wilkie the most distinguished painter was mulready ( - ), whose pictures of village boys are well known through engravings. [illustration: fig. .--turner. fighting tÉmÉraire. nat. gal. london.] the landscape painters: in landscape the english have had something to say peculiarly their own. it has not always been well said, the coloring is often hot, the brush-work brittle, the attention to detail inconsistent with the large view of nature, yet such as it is it shows the english point of view and is valuable on that account. richard wilson ( - ) was the first landscapist of importance, though he was not so english in view as some others to follow. in fact, wilson was nurtured on claude lorrain and joseph vernet and instead of painting the realistic english landscape he painted the pseudo-italian landscape. he began working in portraiture under the tutorship of wright, and achieved some success in this department; but in he went to italy and devoted himself wholly to landscapes. these were of the classic type and somewhat conventional. the composition was usually a dark foreground with trees or buildings to right and left, an opening in the middle distance leading into the background, and a broad expanse of sunset sky. in the foreground he usually introduced a few figures for romantic or classic association. considerable elevation of theme and spirit marks most of his pictures. there was good workmanship about the skies and the light, and an attentive study of nature was shown throughout. his canvases did not meet with much success at the time they were painted. in more modern days wilson has been ranked as the true founder of landscape in england, and one of the most sincere of english painters. the norwich school: old crome ( - ), though influenced to some extent by wilson and the dutch painters, was an original talent, painting english scenery with much simplicity and considerable power. he was sometimes rasping with his brush, and had a small method of recording details combined with mannerisms of drawing and composition, and yet gave an out-of-doors feeling in light and air that was astonishing. his large trees have truth of mass and accuracy of drawing, and his foregrounds are painted with solidity. he was a keen student of nature, and drew about him a number of landscape painters at norwich, who formed the norwich school. crome was its leader, and the school made its influence felt upon english landscape painting. cotman ( - ) was the best painter of the group after crome, a man who depicted landscape and harbor scenes in a style that recalls girtin and turner. the most complete, full-rounded landscapist in england was john constable ( - ). his foreign bias, such as it was, came from a study of the dutch masters. there were two sources from which the english landscapists drew. those who were inclined to the ideal, men like wilson, calcott ( - ), and turner, drew from the italian of poussin and claude; those who were content to do nature in her real dress, men like gainsborough and constable, drew from the dutch of hobbema and his contemporaries. a certain sombreness of color and manner of composition show in constable that may be attributed to holland; but these were slight features as compared with the originality of the man. he was a close student of nature who painted what he saw in english country life, especially about hampstead, and painted it with a knowledge and an artistic sensitiveness never surpassed in england. the rural feeling was strong with him, and his evident pleasure in simple scenes is readily communicated to the spectator. there is no attempt at the grand or the heroic. he never cared much for mountains or water, but was fond of cultivated uplands, trees, bowling clouds, and torn skies. bursts of sunlight, storms, atmospheres, all pleased him. with detail he was little concerned. he saw landscape in large patches of form and color, and so painted it. his handling was broad and solid, and at times a little heavy. his light was often forced by sharp contrast with shadows, and often his pictures appear spotty from isolated glitters of light strewn here and there. in color he helped eliminate the brown landscape and substituted in its place the green and blue of nature. in atmosphere he was excellent. his influence upon english art was impressive, and in the exhibition at paris of his hay wain, together with some work by bonington and fielding had a decided effect upon the then rising landscape school of france. the french realized that nature lay at the bottom of constable's art, and they profited, not by imitating constable, but by studying his nature model. [illustration: fig. .--burne jones. flamma vestalis.] bonington ( - ) died young, and though of english parents his training was essentially french, and he really belonged to the french school, an associate of delacroix. his study of the venetians turned his talent toward warm coloring, in which he excelled. in landscape his broad handling was somewhat related to that of constable, and from the fact of their works appearing together in the salon of they are often spoken of as influencers of the modern french landscape painters. turner ( - ) is the best known name in english art. his celebrity is somewhat disproportionate to his real merits, though it is impossible to deny his great ability. he was a man learned in all the forms of nature and schooled in all the formulas of art; yet he was not a profound lover of nature nor a faithful recorder of what things he saw in nature, except in his early days. in the bulk of his work he shows the traditions of claude, with additions of his own. his taste was classic (he possessed all the knowledge and the belongings of the historical landscape), and he delighted in great stretches of country broken by sea-shores, rivers, high mountains, fine buildings, and illumined by blazing sunlight and gorgeous skies. his composition was at times grotesque in imagination; his light was usually bewildering in intensity and often unrelieved by shadows of sufficient depth; his tone was sometimes faulty; and in color he was not always harmonious, but inclined to be capricious, uneven, showing fondness for arbitrary schemes of color. the object of his work seems to have been to dazzle, to impress with a wilderness of lines and hues, to overawe by imposing scale and grandeur. his paintings are impressive, decoratively splendid, but they often smack of the stage, and are more frequently grandiloquent than grand. his early works, especially in water-colors, where he shows himself a follower of girtin, are much better than his later canvases in oil, many of which have changed color. the water-colors are carefully done, subdued in color, and true in light. from , or thereabouts, to was his second period, in which italian composition and much color were used. the last twenty years of his life he inclined to the _bizarre_, and turned his canvases into almost incoherent color masses. he had an artistic feeling for composition, linear perspective, and the sweep of horizon lines; skies and hills he knew and drew with power; color he comprehended only as decoration; and light he distorted for effect. yet with all his shortcomings turner was an artist to be respected and admired. he knew his craft, in fact, knew it so well that he relied too much on artificial effects, drew away from the model of nature, and finally passed into the extravagant. the water-colorists: about the beginning of this century a school of water-colorists, founded originally by cozens ( - ) and girtin ( - ), came into prominence and developed english art in a new direction. it began to show with a new force the transparency of skies, the luminosity of shadows, the delicacy and grace of clouds, the brilliancy of light and color. cozens and blake were primitives in the use of the medium, but stothard ( - ) employed it with much sentiment, charm, and _plein-air_ effect. turner was quite a master of it, and his most permanent work was done with it. later on, when he rather abandoned form to follow color, he also abandoned water-color for oils. fielding ( - ) used water-color effectively in giving large feeling for space and air, and also for fogs and mists; prout ( - ) employed it in architectural drawings of the principal cathedrals of europe; and cox ( - ), dewint ( - ), hunt ( - ), cattermole ( - ), lewis ( - ), men whose names only can be mentioned, all won recognition with this medium. water-color drawing is to-day said to be a department of art that expresses the english pictorial feeling better than any other, though this is not an undisputed statement. [illustration: fig. .--leighton. helen of troy.] perhaps the most important movement in english painting of recent times was that which took the name of pre-raphaelitism: it was started about , primarily by rossetti ( - ), holman hunt ( -), and sir john millais ( - ), associated with several sculptors and poets, seven in all. it was an emulation of the sincerity, the loving care, and the scrupulous exactness in truth that characterized the italian painters before raphael. its advocates, including mr. ruskin the critic, maintained that after raphael came that fatal facility in art which seeking grace of composition lost truth of fact, and that the proper course for modern painters was to return to the sincerity and veracity of the early masters. hence the name pre-raphaelitism, and the signatures on their early pictures, p. r. b., pre-raphaelite brother. to this attempt to gain the true regardless of the sensuous, was added a morbidity of thought mingled with mysticism, a moral and religious pose, and a studied simplicity. some of the painters of the brotherhood went even so far as following the habits of the early italians, seeking retirement from the world and carrying with them a gothic earnestness of air. there is no doubt about the sincerity that entered into this movement. it was an honest effort to gain the true, the good, and as a result, the beautiful; but it was no less a striven-after honesty and an imitated earnestness. the brotherhood did not last for long, the members drifted from each other and began to paint each after his own style, and pre-raphaelitism passed away as it had arisen, though not without leaving a powerful stamp on english art, especially in decoration. rossetti, an italian by birth though english by adoption, was the type of the brotherhood. he was more of a poet than a painter, took most of his subjects from dante, and painted as he wrote, in a mystical romantic spirit. he was always of a retiring disposition and never exhibited publicly after he was twenty-eight years of age. as a draughtsman he was awkward in line and not always true in modelling. in color he was superior to his associates and had considerable decorative feeling. the shortcoming of his art, as with that of the others of the brotherhood, was that in seeking truth of detail he lost truth of _ensemble_. this is perhaps better exemplified in the works of holman hunt. he has spent infinite pains in getting the truth of detail in his pictures, has travelled in the east and painted types, costumes, and scenery in palestine to gain the historic truths of his scriptural scenes; but all that he has produced has been little more than a survey, a report, a record of the facts. he has not made a picture. the insistence upon every detail has isolated all the facts and left them isolated in the picture. in seeking the minute truths he has overlooked the great truths of light, air, and setting. his color has always been crude, his values or relations not well preserved, and his brush-work hard and tortured. millais showed some of this disjointed effect in his early work when he was a member of the brotherhood. he did not hold to his early convictions however, and soon abandoned the pre-raphaelite methods for a more conventional style. he has painted some remarkable portraits and some excellent figure pieces, and to-day holds high rank in english art; but he is an uneven painter, often doing weak, harshly-colored work. moreover, the english tendency to tell stories with the paint-brush finds in millais a faithful upholder. at his best he is a strong painter. madox brown ( - ) never joined the brotherhood, though his leaning was toward its principles. he had considerable dramatic power, with which he illustrated historic scenes, and among contemporary artists stood well. the most decided influence of pre-raphaelitism shows in burne-jones ( -), a pupil of rossetti, and perhaps the most original painter now living[ ] of the english school. from rossetti he got mysticism, sentiment, poetry, and from association with swinburne and william morris, the poets, something of the literary in art, which he has put forth with artistic effect. he has not followed the brotherhood in its pursuit of absolute truth of fact, but has used facts for decorative effect in line and color. his ability to fill a given space gracefully, shows with fine results in his pictures, as in his stained-glass designs. he is a good draughtsman and a rather rich colorist, but in brush-work somewhat labored, stippled, and unique in dryness. he is a man of much imagination, and his conceptions, though illustrative of literature, do not suffer thereby, because his treatment does not sacrifice the artistic. he has been the butt of considerable shallow laughter from time to time, like many another man of power. albert moore ( - ), a graceful painter of a decorative ideal type, rather follows the rossetti-burne-jones example, and is an illustration of the influence of pre-raphaelitism. [footnote : died .] other figure and portrait painters: among the contemporary painters sir frederick leighton ( - ), president of the royal academy, is ranked as a fine academic draughtsman, but not a man with the color-sense or the brushman's quality in his work. watts ( - ) is perhaps an inferior technician, and in color is often sombre and dirty; but he is a man of much imagination, occasionally rises to grandeur in conception, and has painted some superb portraits, notably the one of walter crane. orchardson ( -) is more of a painter, pure and simple, than any of his contemporaries, and is a knowing if somewhat mannered colorist. erskine nicol ( -), faed[ ] ( -), calderon ( -), boughton ( - ), frederick walker ( - ), stanhope forbes, stott of oldham and in portraiture holl ( - ) and herkomer may be mentioned. [footnote : died .] [illustration: fig. .--watts. love and death.] landscape and marine painters: in the department of landscape there are many painters in england of contemporary importance. vicat cole ( - ) had considerable exaggerated reputation as a depicter of sunsets and twilights; cecil lawson ( - ) gave promise of great accomplishment, and lived long enough to do some excellent work in the style of the french rousseau, mingled with an influence from gainsborough; alfred parsons is a little hard and precise in his work, but one of the best of the living men; and w. l. wyllie is a painter of more than average merit. in marines hook ( -) belongs to the older school, and is not entirely satisfactory. the most modern and the best sea-painter in england is henry moore ( - ), a man who paints well and gives the large feeling of the ocean with fine color qualities. some other men of mark are clausen, brangwyn, ouless, steer, bell, swan, mctaggart, sir george reid. modern scotch school: there is at the present time a school of art in scotland that seems to have little or no affinity with the contemporary school of england. its painters are more akin to the dutch and the french, and in their coloring resemble, in depth and quality, the work of delacroix. much of their art is far enough removed from the actual appearance of nature, but it is strong in the sentiment of color and in decorative effect. the school is represented by such men as james guthrie, e. a. walton, james hamilton, george henry, e. a. hornel, lavery, melville, crawhall, roche, lawson, mcbride, morton, reid murray, spence, paterson. principal works: english art cannot be seen to advantage, outside of england. in the metropolitan museum, n. y., and in private collections like that of mr. william h. fuller in new york,[ ] there are some good examples of the older men--reynolds, constable, gainsborough, and their contemporaries. in the louvre there are some indifferent constables and some good boningtons. in england the best collection is in the national gallery. next to this the south kensington museum for constable sketches. elsewhere the glasgow, edinburgh, liverpool, windsor galleries, and the private collections of the late sir richard wallace, the duke of westminster, and others. turner is well represented in the national gallery, though his oils have suffered through time and the use of fugitive pigments. for the living men, their work may be seen in the yearly exhibitions at the royal academy and elsewhere. there are comparatively few english pictures in america. [footnote : dispersed, .] chapter xx. american painting. books recommended: _american art review_; amory, _life of copley_; _the art review_; benjamin, _contemporary art in america_; _century magazine_; caffin, _american painters_; clement and hutton, _artists of the nineteenth century_; cummings, _historic annals of the national academy of design_; downes, _boston painters_ (_in atlantic monthly vol. _); dunlap, _arts of design in united states_; flagg, _life and letters of washington allston_; galt, _life of west_; isham, _history of american painting_; knowlton, _w. m. hunt_; lester, _the artists of america_; mason, _life and works of gilbert stuart_; perkins, _copley_; _scribner's magazine_; sheldon, _american painters_; tuckerman, _book of the artists_; van dyke, _art for art's sake_; van rensselaer, _six portraits_; ware, _lectures on allston_; white, _a sketch of chester a. harding_. american art: it is hardly possible to predicate much about the environment as it affects art in america. the result of the climate, the temperament, and the mixture of nations in the production or non-production of painting in america cannot be accurately computed at this early stage of history. one thing only is certain, and that is, that the building of a new commonwealth out of primeval nature does not call for the production of art in the early periods of development. the first centuries in the history of america were devoted to securing the necessities of life, the energies of the time were of a practical nature, and art as an indigenous product was hardly known. after the revolution, and indeed before it, a hybrid portraiture, largely borrowed from england, began to appear, and after there was an attempt at landscape painting; but painting as an art worthy of very serious consideration, came in only with the sudden growth in wealth and taste following the war of the rebellion and the centennial exhibition of . the best of american art dates from about , though during the earlier years there were painters of note who cannot be passed over unmentioned. [illustration: fig. .--west. peter denying christ. hampton ct.] the early painters: the "limner," or the man who could draw and color a portrait, seems to have existed very early in american history. smibert ( - ), a scotch painter, who settled in boston, and watson ( ?- ), another scotchman, who settled in new jersey, were of this class--men capable of giving a likeness, but little more. they were followed by english painters of even less consequence. then came copley ( - ) and west ( - ), with whom painting in america really began. they were good men for their time, but it must be borne in mind that the times for art were not at all favorable. west was a man about whom all the infant prodigy tales have been told, but he never grew to be a great artist. he was ambitious beyond his power, indulged in theatrical composition, was hot in color, and never was at ease in handling the brush. most of his life was passed in england, where he had a vogue, was elected president of the royal academy, and became practically a british painter. copley was more of an american than west, and more of a painter. some of his portraits are exceptionally fine, and his figure pieces, like charles i. demanding the five members of house of commons are excellent in color and composition. c. w. peale ( - ), a pupil of both copley and west, was perhaps more fortunate in having celebrated characters like washington for sitters than in his art. trumbull ( - ) preserved on canvas the revolutionary history of america and, all told, did it very well. some of his compositions, portraits, and miniature heads in the yale art school at new haven are drawn and painted in a masterful manner and are as valuable for their art as for the incidents which they portray. [illustration: fig. .--gilbert stuart. washington (unfinished). boston mus.] gilbert stuart ( - ) was the best portrait-painter of all the early men, and his work holds very high rank even in the schools of to-day. he was one of the first in american art-history to show skilful accuracy of the brush, a good knowledge of color, and some artistic sense of dignity and carriage in the sitter. he was not always a good draughtsman, and he had a manner of laying on pure colors without blending them that sometimes produced sharpness in modelling; but as a general rule he painted a portrait with force and with truth. he was a pupil of alexander, a scotchman, and afterward an assistant to west. he settled in boston, and during his life painted most of the great men of his time, including washington. [illustration: fig. .--w. m. hunt. lute player.] vanderlyn ( - ) met with adversity all his life long, and perhaps never expressed himself fully. he was a pupil of stuart, studied in paris and italy, and his associations with aaron burr made him quite as famous as his pictures. washington allston ( - ) was a painter whom the bostonians have ranked high in their art-history, but he hardly deserved such position. intellectually he was a man of lofty and poetic aspirations, but as an artist he never had the painter's sense or the painter's skill. he was an aspiration rather than a consummation. he cherished notions about ideals, dealt in imaginative allegories, and failed to observe the pictorial character of the world about him. as a result of this, and poor artistic training, his art had too little basis on nature, though it was very often satisfactory as decoration. rembrandt peale ( - ), like his father, was a painter of washington portraits of mediocre quality. jarvis ( - ) and sully ( - ) were both british born, but their work belongs here in america, where most of their days were spent. sully could paint a very good portrait occasionally, though he always inclined toward the weak and the sentimental, especially in his portraits of women. leslie ( - ) and newton ( - ) were americans, but, like west and copley, they belong in their art more to england than to america. in all the early american painting the british influence may be traced, with sometimes an inclination to follow italy in large compositions. the middle period in american art dates from to about . during that time, something distinctly american began to appear in the landscape work of doughty ( - ) and thomas cole ( - ). both men were substantially self-taught, though cole received some instruction from a portrait-painter named stein. cole during his life was famous for his hudson river landscapes, and for two series of pictures called the voyage of life and the course of empire. the latter were really epic poems upon canvas, done with much blare of color and literary explanation in the title. his best work was in pure landscape, which he pictured with considerable accuracy in drawing, though it was faulty in lighting and gaudy in coloring. brilliant autumn scenes were his favorite subjects. his work had the merit of originality and, moreover, it must be remembered that cole was one of the beginners in american landscape art. durand ( - ) was an engraver until , when he began painting portraits, and afterward developed landscape with considerable power. he was usually simple in subject and realistic in treatment, with not so much insistence upon brilliant color as some of his contemporaries. kensett ( - ) was a follower in landscape of the so-called hudson river school of cole and others, though he studied seven years in europe. his color was rather warm, his air hazy, and the general effect of his landscape that of a dreamy autumn day with poetic suggestions. f. e. church ( -[a]) was a pupil of cole, and has followed him in seeking the grand and the startling in mountain scenery. with church should be mentioned a number of artists--hubbard ( - ), hill ( -,) bierstadt ( -),[ ] thomas moran ( -)--who have achieved reputation by canvases of the rocky mountains and other expansive scenes. some other painters of smaller canvases belong in point of time, and also in spirit, with the hudson river landscapists--painters, too, of considerable merit, as david johnson ( -), bristol ( -), sandford gifford ( - ), mcentee ( - ), and whittredge ( -), the last two very good portrayers of autumn scenes; a. h. wyant ( - ), one of the best and strongest of the american landscapists; bradford ( - ) and w. t. richards ( -), the marine-painters. [footnote : died, .] [illustration: fig. .--eastman johnson. churning.] portrait, history, and genre-painters: contemporary with the early landscapists were a number of figure-painters, most of them self-taught, or taught badly by foreign or native artists, and yet men who produced creditable work. chester harding ( - ) was one of the early portrait-painters of this century who achieved enough celebrity in boston to be the subject of what was called "the harding craze." elliott ( - ) was a pupil of trumbull, and a man of considerable reputation, as was also inman ( - ), a portrait and _genre_-painter with a smooth, detailed brush. page ( - ), baker ( - ), huntington ( -), the third president of the academy of design; healy ( -[ ]), a portrait-painter of more than average excellence; mount ( - ), one of the earliest of american _genre_-painters, were all men of note in this middle period. [footnote : died .] leutze ( - ) was a german by birth but an american by adoption, who painted many large historical scenes of the american revolution, such as washington crossing the delaware, besides many scenes taken from european history. he was a pupil of lessing at dusseldorf, and had something to do with introducing dusseldorf methods into america. he was a painter of ability, if at times hot in color and dry in handling. occasionally he did a fine portrait, like the seward in the union league club, new york. during this period, in addition to the influence of dusseldorf and rome upon american art, there came the influence of french art with hicks ( - ) and hunt ( - ), both of them pupils of couture at paris, and hunt also of millet at barbizon. hunt was the real introducer of millet and the barbizon-fontainebleau artists to the american people. in he established himself at boston, had a large number of pupils, and met with great success as a teacher. he was a painter of ability, but perhaps his greatest influence was as a teacher and an instructor in what was good art as distinguished from what was false and meretricious. he certainly was the first painter in america who taught catholicity of taste, truth and sincerity in art, and art in the artist rather than in the subject. contemporary with hunt lived george fuller ( - ), a unique man in american art for the sentiment he conveyed in his pictures by means of color and atmosphere. though never proficient in the grammar of art he managed by blendings of color to suggest certain sentiments regarding light and air that have been rightly esteemed poetic. [illustration: fig. .--inness. landscape.] the third period in american art began immediately after the centennial exhibition at philadelphia in . undoubtedly the display of art, both foreign and domestic, at that time, together with the national prosperity and great growth of the united states had much to do with stimulating activity in painting. many young men at the beginning of this period went to europe to study in the studios at munich, and later on at paris. before some of them had returned to the united states, bringing with them knowledge of the technical side of art, which they immediately began to give out to many pupils. gradually the influence of the young men from munich and paris spread. the art students' league, founded in , was incorporated in , and the society of american artists was established in the same year. societies and painters began to spring up all over the country, and as a result there is in the united states to-day an artist body technically as well trained and in spirit as progressive as in almost any country of europe. the late influence shown in painting has been largely a french influence, and the american artists have been accused from time to time of echoing french methods. the accusation is true in part. paris is the centre of all art-teaching to-day, and the americans, in common with the european nations, accept french methods, not because they are french, but because they are the best extant. in subjects and motives, however, the american school is as original as any school can be in this cosmopolitan age. portrait, figure, and genre painters ( - ): it must not be inferred that the painters now prominent in american art are all young men schooled since . on the contrary, some of the best of them are men past middle life who began painting long before , and have by dint of observation and prolonged study continued with the modern spirit. for example, winslow homer ( -) is one of the strongest and most original of all the american artists, a man who never had the advantage of the highest technical training, yet possesses a feeling for color, a dash and verve in execution, an originality in subject, and an individuality of conception that are unsurpassed. eastman johnson ( -) is one of the older portrait and figure-painters who stands among the younger generations without jostling, because he has in measure kept himself informed with modern thought and method. he is a good, conservative painter, possessed of taste, judgment, and technical ability. elihu vedder ( -) is more of a draughtsman than a brushman. his color-sense is not acute nor his handling free, but he has an imagination which, if somewhat more literary than pictorial, is nevertheless very effective. john la farge ( -) and albert ryder ( -) are both colorists, and la farge in artistic feeling is a man of much power. almost all of his pictures have fine decorative quality in line and color and are thoroughly pictorial. [illustration: fig. .--winslow homer. undertow.] the "young men," so-called, though some of them are now on toward middle life, are perhaps more facile in brush-work and better trained draughtsmen than those we have just mentioned. they have cultivated vivacity of style and cleverness in statement, frequently at the expense of the larger qualities of art. sargent ( -) is, perhaps, the most considerable portrait-painter now living, a man of unbounded resources technically and fine natural abilities. he is draughtsman, colorist, brushman--in fact, almost everything in art that can be cultivated. his taste is not yet mature, and he is just now given to dashing effects that are more clever than permanent; but that he is a master in portraiture has already been abundantly demonstrated. chase ( -) is also an exceptionally good portrait painter, and he handles the _genre_ subject with brilliant color and a swift, sure brush. in brush-work he is exceedingly clever, and is an excellent technician in almost every respect. not always profound in matter he generally manages to be entertaining in method. blum ( -) is well known to magazine readers through many black-and-white illustrations. he is also a painter of _genre_ subjects taken from many lands, and handles his brush with brilliancy and force. dewing ( -) is a painter with a refined sense not only in form but in color. his pictures are usually small, but exquisite in delicacy and decorative charm. thayer ( -) is fond of large canvases, a man of earnestness, sincerity, and imagination, but not a good draughtsman, not a good colorist, and a rather clumsy brushman. he has, however, something to say, and in a large sense is an artist of uncommon ability. kenyon cox ( -) is a draughtsman, with a strong command of line and taste in its arrangement. he is not a strong colorist, though in recent work he has shown a new departure in this feature that promises well. he renders the nude with power, and is fond of the allegorical subject. the number of good portrait-painters at present working in america is quite large, and mention can be made of but a few in addition to those already spoken of--lockwood, mclure hamilton, tarbell, beckwith, benson, vinton. in figure and _genre_-painting the list of really good painters could be drawn out indefinitely, and again mention must be confined to a few only, like simmons, shirlaw, smedley, brush, millet, hassam, reid, wiles, mowbray, reinhart, blashfield, metcalf, low, c. y. turner, henri. [illustration: fig. .--whistler. white girl.] most of the men whose names are given above are resident in america; but, in addition, there is a large contingent of young men, american born but resident abroad, who can hardly be claimed by the american school, and yet belong to it as much as to any school. they are cosmopolitan in their art, and reside in paris, munich, london, or elsewhere, as the spirit moves them. sargent, the portrait-painter, really belongs to this group, as does also whistler ( -[ ]), one of the most artistic of all the moderns. whistler was long resident in london, but has now removed to paris. he belongs to no school, and such art as he produces is peculiarly his own, save a leaven of influences from velasquez and the japanese. his art is the perfection of delicacy, both in color and in line. apparently very sketchy, it is in reality the maximum of effect with the minimum of display. it has the pictorial charm of mystery and suggestiveness, and the technical effect of light, air, and space. there is nothing better produced in modern painting than his present work, and in earlier years he painted portraits like that of his mother, which are justly ranked as great art. e. a. abbey ( -) is better known by his pen-and-ink work than by his paintings, howbeit he has done good work in color. he is resident in england. [footnote : died, .] [illustration: fig. .--sargent. "carnation lily, lily rose."] in paris there are many american-born painters, who really belong more with the french school than the american. bridgman is an example, and dannat, alexander harrison, hitchcock, mcewen, melchers, pearce, julius stewart, weeks ( - ), j. w. alexander, walter gay, sergeant kendall have nothing distinctly american about their art. it is semi-cosmopolitan with a leaning toward french methods. there are also some american-born painters at munich, like c. f. ulrich; shannon is in london and coleman in italy. landscape and marine painters, - : in the department of landscape america has had since something distinctly national, and has at this day. in recent years the impressionist _plein-air_ school of france has influenced many painters, and the prismatic landscape is quite as frequently seen in american exhibitions as in the paris salons; but american landscape art rather dates ahead of french impressionism. the strongest landscapist of our times, george inness ( -[ ]), is not a young man except in his artistic aspirations. his style has undergone many changes, yet still remains distinctly individual. he has always been an experimenter and an uneven painter, at times doing work of wonderful force, and then again falling into weakness. the solidity of nature, the mass and bulk of landscape, he has shown with a power second to none. he is fond of the sentiment of nature's light, air, and color, and has put it forth more in his later than in his earlier canvases. at his best, he is one of the first of the american landscapists. among his contemporaries wyant (already mentioned), swain gifford,[ ] colman, gay, shurtleff, have all done excellent work uninfluenced by foreign schools of to-day. homer martin's[ ] landscapes, from their breadth of treatment, are popularly considered rather indifferent work, but in reality they are excellent in color and poetic feeling. [footnote : died .] [footnote : died .] [footnote : died .] the "young men" again, in landscape as in the figure, are working in the modern spirit, though in substance they are based on the traditions of the older american landscape school. there has been much achievement, and there is still greater promise in such landscapists as tryon, platt, murphy, dearth, crane, dewey, coffin, horatio walker, jonas lie. among those who favor the so-called impressionistic view are weir, twachtman, and robinson,[ ] three landscape-painters of undeniable power. in marines gedney bunce has portrayed many venetian scenes of charming color-tone, and de haas[ ] has long been known as a sea-painter of some power. quartley, who died young, was brilliant in color and broadly realistic. the present marine-painters are maynard, snell, rehn, butler, chapman. [footnote : died .] [footnote : died .] [illustration: fig. .--chase. alice.] principal works: the works of the early american painters are to be seen principally in the boston museum of fine arts, the athenæum, boston mus., mass. hist. soc., harvard college, redwood library, newport, metropolitan mus., lenox and hist. soc. libraries, the city hall, century club, chamber of commerce, national acad. of design, n. y. in new haven, at yale school of fine arts, in philadelphia at penna. acad. of fine arts, in rochester powers's art gal., in washington corcoran gal. and the capitol. the works of the younger men are seen in the exhibitions held from year to year at the academy of design, the society of american artists, n. y., in philadelphia, chicago, boston, and elsewhere throughout the country. some of their works belong to permanent institutions like the metropolitan mus., the pennsylvania acad., the art institute of chicago, but there is no public collection of pictures that represents american art as a whole. mr. t. b. clarke, of new york, had perhaps as complete a collection of paintings by contemporary american artists as anyone. postscript. scattering schools and influences in art. in this brief history of painting it has been necessary to omit some countries and some painters that have not seemed to be directly connected with the progress or development of painting in the western world. the arts of china and japan, while well worthy of careful chronicling, are somewhat removed from the arts of the other nations and from our study. moreover, they are so positively decorative that they should be treated under the head of decoration, though it is not to be denied that they are also realistically expressive. portugal has had some history in the art of painting, but it is slight and so bound up with spanish and flemish influences that its men do not stand out as a distinct school. this is true in measure of russian painting. the early influences with it were byzantine through the greek church. in late years what has been produced favors the parisian or german schools. in denmark and scandinavia there has recently come to the front a remarkable school of high-light painters, based on parisian methods, that threatens to outrival paris itself. the work of such men as kröyer, zorn, petersen, liljefors, thaulow, björck, thegerström, is as startling in its realism as it is brilliant in its color. the pictures in the scandinavian section of the paris exposition of were a revelation of new strength from the north, and this has been somewhat increased by the scandinavian pictures at the world's fair in . it is impossible to predict what will be the outcome of this northern art, nor what will be the result of the recent movement here in america. all that can be said is that the tide seems to be setting westward and northward, though paris has been the centre of art for many years, and will doubtless continue to be the centre for many years to come. index. (_for additions to index see page ._) abbate, niccolò dell', . abbey, edwin a., . aelst, willem van, . aëtion, . agatharchos, . aimé-morot, nicolas, . albani, francesco, , . albertinelli, mariotto, , . alemannus, johannes (da murano), , . aldegrever, heinrich, . alexander, john, . alexander, j. w., . aligny, claude françois, . allegri, pomponio, , . allori, cristofano, , . allston, washington, . alma-tadema, laurenz, , . altdorfer, albrecht, , . alvarez, don luis, . aman-jean, e., . andrea da firenze, , . angelico, fra giovanni, , , , , . anselmi, michelangelo, , . antiochus gabinius, . antonio veneziano, , . apelles, . apollodorus, , . aranda, luis jiminez, . aretino, spinello, , . aristides, . artz, d. a. c., . aubert, ernest jean, . backer, jacob, . backhuisen, ludolf, , . bagnacavallo, bartolommeo ramenghi, , . baker, george a., . baldovinetti, alessio, , . baldung, hans, , . bargue, charles, . baroccio, federigo, , . bartolo, taddeo di, , . bartolommeo, fra (baccio della porta), , , , . basaiti, marco, , . bassano, francesco, - . bassano, jacopo, - . bastert, n., . bastien-lepage, jules, . baudry, paul, . beccafumi, domenico, , . becerra, gaspar, , . beckwith, j. carroll, . beechey, sir william, . beham, barthel, . beham, sebald, . bellini, gentile, , , . bellini, giovanni, , , , , , , - , , . bellini, jacopo, , , . boltraffio, giovanni antonio, . benjamin-constant, jean joseph, . benson, frank w., . béraud, jean, . berchem, claas pietersz, , . berne-bellecour, Étienne prosper, . berrettini, pietro (il cortona), , . berruguete, alonzo, , . bertin, jean victor, , . besnard, paul albert, . bierstadt, albert, . billet, pierre, . bink, jakob, . bissolo, pier francesco, , . björck, o., . blake, william, , . blashfield, edwin h., . blommers, b. j., . blum, robert, . böcklin, arnold, , . bol, ferdinand, , . boldini, giuseppe, , . bonfiglio, benedetto, , , . bonheur, auguste, . bonheur, rosa, . bonifazio pitati, - . bonington, richard parkes, , . bonnat, léon, . bonsignori, francesco, , . bonvin, françois, . bordone, paris, , . borgognone, ambrogio, , . bosboom, j., . bosch, hieronymus, , . both, jan, , . botticelli, sandro, , , . boucher, françois, , , . boudin, eugène, . boughton, george h., . bouguereau, w. adolphe, , . boulanger, hippolyte, . boulanger, louis, . bourdichon, jean, . bourdon, sebastien, . bouts, dierich, , , , . bradford, william, . breton, jules adolphe, . breughel, , . bridgman, frederick a., . bril, paul, , , , . bristol, john b., . bronzino (agnolo di cosimo), il, , . brouwer, adriaan, , . brown, ford madox, . brown, john lewis, , brush, george d. f., . bugiardini, giuliano di piero, , . bunce, w. gedney, . burkmair, hans, , , . burne-jones, sir edward, . butler, howard russell, . cabanel, alexandre, , . caillebotte, . calderon, philip hermogenes, . callcott, sir augustus wall, . calvaert, denis, . campin, robert, . canaletto (antonio canale), il, , . cano, alonzo, , . caracci, agostino, - , . caracci, annibale, - , , . caracci, ludovico, - , . caravaggio, michelangelo amerighi da, , , , , , . carolus-duran, charles auguste emil, . caroto, giovanni francisco, , , , . carpaccio, vittore, , , , . carrière, e., . carstens, asmus jacob, . cassatt, mary, . castagno, andrea del, , , . castro, juan sanchez de, , . catena, vincenzo di biagio, , . cattermole, george, . cavazzola, paolo (moranda), , . cazin, jean charles, . cespedes, pablo de, , . champaigne, philip de, . champmartin, callande de, . chapman, carlton t., . chardin, jean baptiste simeon, . chase, william m., . chintreuil, antoine, . church, frederick e., . cima da conegliano, giov. battista, , . cimabue, giovanni, , , . clays, paul jean, , . clouet, francois, . clouet, jean, . cocxie, michiel van, , . coello, claudio, , . coffin, william a., . cogniet, leon, . cole, vicat, . cole, thomas, . coleman, c. c., . colman, samuel, . constable, john, , , - , . copley, john singleton, , . coques, gonzales, , . cormon, fernand, . cornelis van haarlem, , . cornelius, peter von, , , , . corot, jean baptiste camille, , , . correggio (antonio allegri), il, , - , , , , , , , . cossa, francesco, , . costa, lorenzo, , , , . cotman, john sell, . cottet, . courbet, g., , , , , . cousin, jean, , . couture, thomas, , . cozens, john robert, . cox, david, . cox, kenyon, . cranach (the elder), lucas, , , , . cranach (the younger), lucas, , . crane, r. bruce, . crawhall, joseph, . crayer, kasper de, , . credi, lorenzo di, , , . cristus, peter, , . crivelli, carlo, , , . crome, john (old crome), . cuyp, aelbert, , , . dagnan-bouveret, pascal a. j., . damoye, pierre emmanuel, . damophilos, . dannat, william t., . dantan, joseph Édouard, . daubigny, charles françois, . david, gheeraert, , , . david, jacques louis, , - , , , , , , . dearth, henry j., . decamps, a. g., . degas, . de haas, m. f. h., . delacroix, ferdinand victor e., , , , , , . delaroche, hippolyte (paul), , , . delaunay, jules elie, . de neuville, alphonse maria, . de nittis. see "nittis." denner, balthasar, , . detaille, jean baptiste Édouard, . devéria, eugene, . dewey, charles melville, . dewing, thomas w., . dewint, peter, . diana, benedetto, , . diaz de la pena, narciso virgilio, . diepenbeeck, abraham van, , . dionysius, . dolci, carlo, , , . domenichino (domenico zampieri), , . domingo, j., . dossi, dosso (giovanni di lutero), , , . dou, gerard, , . doughty, thomas, . du breuil, toussaint, . duccio di buoninsegna, , , . duez, ernest ange, . du jardin, karel, , . dupré, julien, . dupré, jules, . durand, asher brown, . dürer, albrecht, , - , . eastlake, sir charles, . eeckhout, gerbrand van den, , . elliott, charles loring, . elzheimer, adam, , . engelbrechsten, cornelis, . etty, william, . euphranor, . eupompos, . everdingen, allart van, , . eyck, hubert van, , . eyck, jan van, , , - , , , , . fabius pictor, . fabriano, gentile da, , , , , , , , . fabritius, karel, , , . faed, thomas, . fantin-latour, henri, . favretto, giacomo, , . ferrara, gaudenzio, , . fielding, anthony v. d. copley, . filippino. see lippi. fiore, jacobello del, , . fiorenzo di lorenzo, , . flandrin, jean hippolyte, . flinck, govaert, , . floris, franz, , . foppa, vincenzo, , , . forain, j. l., . forbes, stanhope, . fortuny, mariano, , - . fouquet, jean, . fragonard, jean honoré, . français, françois louis, . francesca, piero della, , , . francia, francesco (raibolini), , , , . franciabigio (francesco di cristofano bigi), , . francken, . fredi, bartolo di, , . fréminet, martin, . frere, t., . friant, emile, . fromentin, e., . fuller, george, . fyt, jan, , . gaddi, agnolo, , . gaddi, taddeo, , . gainsborough, t., - , . gallait, louis, . garofolo (benvenuto tisi), il, , , . gay, edward, . gay, walter, . geldorp, gortzius, . gérard, baron françois pascal, . géricault, jean louis, a. t., . gérôme, jean léon, , , , , . gervex, henri, . ghirlandajo, domenico, , , , , . ghirlandajo, ridolfo, , . giampietrino (giovanni pedrini), , . gifford, sandford, . gifford, r. swain, . giorgione (giorgio barbarelli), il, , , - , . giordano, luca, , , . giotto di bondone, , , , , , , . giottino (tommaso di stefano), , . giovanni da milano, , . giovanni da udine, , girodet de roussy, anne louis, . girtin, thomas, . giulio (pippi), romano, , , , . gleyre, marc charles gabriel, . goes, hugo van der, , . gorgasos, . goya y lucientes, francisco, , . goyen, jan van, , , . gozzoli, benozzo, , , . granacci, francesco, , . grandi, ercole di giulio, , . greuze, jean baptiste, . gros, baron antoine jean, , , . grünewald, matthias, guardi, francesco, , . guercino (giov. fran. barbiera), il, , . guérin, pierre narcisse, . guido reni, , , . guido da sienna, , . guthrie, james, . hals, franz (the younger), , , , . hamilton, james, . hamilton, mclure, . hamon, jean louis, . harding, chester, . harpignies, henri, . hassam, childe, . harrison, t. alexander, . healy, george p. a., . hébert, antoine auguste ernest, . heem, jan van, . heemskerck, marten van, , . helst, bartholomeus van der, , . henner, jean jacques, . henry, george, . herkomer, hubert, . herrera, francisco de, , , . heyden, jan van der, , . hicks, thomas, . hill, thomas, . hitchcock, george, . hobbema, meindert, , , , . hogarth, william, , . holbein (the elder), hans, , . holbein (the younger), hans, . - , , . holl, frank, . homer, winslow, . hondecoeter, melchior d', , . hooghe, pieter de, , , . hook, james clarke, . hoppner, john, . hornell, e. a., . hubbard, richard w., . huet, paul, . hunt, holman, , . hunt, william henry, . hunt, william morris, . huntington, daniel, . huysum, jan van, - . imola, innocenza da (francucci), , , . ingres, jean auguste dominique, , - , , . inman, henry, . inness, george, . israels, jozef, , . jacque, charles, . janssens van nuyssen, abraham, , . jarvis, john wesley, . joannes, juan de, , . johnson, david, . johnson, eastman, . jongkind, . jordaens, jacob, . justus van ghent, , . kalf, willem, . kauffman, angelica, , . kaulbach, wilhelm von, , . kendall, sergeant, . kensett, john f., . kever, j. s. h., . keyser, thomas de, , . klinger, max, . kneller, sir godfrey, . koninck, philip de, , . kröyer, peter s., . kuehl, g., . kulmbach, hans von, , . kunz, , . la farge, john, . lancret, nicolas, . landseer, sir edwin henry, . largillière, nicolas, . lastman, pieter, . laurens, jean paul, . lavery, john, . lawrence, sir thomas, . lawson, cecil gordon, . lawson, john, . lebrun, charles, , . lebrun, marie elizabeth louise vigée, . lefebvre, jules joseph, . legros, alphonse, . leibl, wilhelm, , . leighton, sir frederick, . leloir, alexandre louis, . lely, sir peter, . lenbach, franz, , . leonardo da vinci, , , , , , , - , , , . lerolle, henri, . leslie, robert charles, . lessing, karl friedrich, . le sueur, eustache, . lethière, guillaume guillon, . leutze, emanuel, . lewis, john frederick, . leyden, lucas van, , . leys, baron jean auguste henri, , . l'hermitte, léon augustin, . liberale da verona, , , . libri, girolamo dai, , . liebermann, max, . liljefors, bruno, . lippi, fra filippo, , , . lippi, filippino, , . lockwood, wilton, . lombard, lambert, . lorenzetti, ambrogio, , , , , . lorenzetti, pietro, , , . lorrain, claude (gellée), , , , , , . lotto, lorenzo, , . low, will h., . luini, bernardino, , . mabuse, jan (gossart) van, , , , . mcbride, a., . mcentee, jervis, . mcewen, walter, . madrazo, raimundo de, , . maes, nicolaas, , . makart, hans, , . manet, Édouard, , , . mansueti, giovanni, , . mantegna, andrea, , , , , , , , , . maratta, carlo, , . marconi, rocco, , , . marilhat, p., . maris, james, . maris, matthew, . maris, willem, . martin, henri, . martin, homer, . martino, simone di, , . masaccio, tommaso, , , , , , . masolino, tommaso fini, , . massys, quentin, , , , . master of the lyversberg passion, . mauve, anton, . mazo, juan bautista martinez del, , . mazzolino, ludovico, , . maynard, george w., . meer of delft, jan van der, , . meire, gerard van der, , . meissonier, jean louis ernest, , . meister, stephen (lochner), . meister, wilhelm, . melchers, gari, . melozzo da forli, , . melville, arthur, . memling, hans, , . memmi, lippo, , . mengs, raphael, , . menzel, adolf, , . mesdag, hendrik willem, . messina, antonello da, , , , , . metcalf, willard l., . metrodorus, . metsu, gabriel, , , . mettling, v. louis, . michael angelo (buonarroti), , , , , , , , , - , , , , , . michallon, achille etna, . michel, georges, . michetti, francesco paolo, , . mierevelt, michiel jansz, , . mieris, franz van, , . mignard, pierre, . millais, sir john, , , . millet, francis d., . millet, jean francois, - , , , , . miranda, juan carreño de, , . molyn (the elder), pieter de, , . monet, claude, , . montagna, bartolommeo, , . montenard, frederic, . moore, albert, . moore, henry, . morales, luis de, , . moran, thomas, . morelli, domenico, , . moretto (alessandro buonvicino) il, , . morland, george, . moro, antonio, , , , . moroni, giovanni battista, , . morton, thomas, . mostert, jan, , , . mount, william s., . mowbray, h. siddons, . mulready, william, . munkacsy, mihaly, , . murillo, bartolomé estéban, , - , . murphy, j. francis, . navarette, juan fernandez, , . navez, francois, , , . neer, aart van der, , . nelli, ottaviano, , . netscher, kasper, , . neuchatel, nicolaus, . neuhuys, albert, . newton, gilbert stuart, . niccolo (alunno) da foligno, , , . nicol, erskine, . nikias, . nikomachus, . nittis, giuseppe de, , . nono, luigi, . noort, adam van, , , . oggiono, marco da, , . opie, john, . orcagna (andrea di cione), , . orchardson, william quiller, . orley, barent van, . ostade, adriaan van, , , . ouwater, aalbert van, . overbeck, johann friedrich, , , . pacchia, girolamo della, , . pacchiarotta, giacomo, , . pacheco, francisco, , , . pacuvius, . padovanino (ales. varotari), il, , . page, william, . palma (il vecchio), jacopo, , , . palma (il giovine), jacopo, , . palmaroli, vincente, . parmigianino (francesco mazzola), il, , , . pamphilos, . panetti, domenico, . paolino (fra) da pistoja, , . parrhasios, . parsons, alfred, . pater, jean baptiste joseph, . paterson, james, . patinir, joachim, . pausias, . peale, charles wilson, . peale, rembrandt, . pearce, charles sprague, . pelouse, léon germaine, . pencz, georg, . penni, giovanni francesco, , . péreal, jean, . perino del vaga, , , , . perugino, pietro (vanucci), , , , , , . peruzzi, baldassare, , . petersen, eilif, . piero di cosimo, , . piloty, carl theodor von, , . pinturricchio, bernardino, , , . piombo, sebastiano del, , , . pisano, vittore (pisanello), , , , . pissarro, camille, . pizzolo, niccolo, , . platt, charles a., . plydenwurff, wilhelm, . poggenbeek, george, . pointelin, . pollajuolo, antonio del, , . polygnotus, . pontormo, jacopo (carrucci), , , . poorter, willem de, , . pordenone, giovanni ant., , . potter, paul, , . pourbus, peeter, , . poussin, gaspard (dughet), . poussin, nicolas, , , , , . pradilla, francisco, . previtali, andrea, , . primaticcio, francesco, , , . protogenes, . prout, samuel, . prudhon, pierre paul, . puvis de chavannes, pierre, . quartley, arthur, . raeburn, sir henry, . raffaelli, jean françois, . raphael sanzio, , , , , , , , , , , , , , . ravesteyn, jan van, , . regnault, henri, . regnault, jean baptiste, , . rehn, f. k. m., . reid, robert, . reid-murray, j., . reinhart, charles s., . rembrandt van ryn, , , , - , , . rené of anjou, . renoir, . reynolds, sir joshua, , - . ribalta, francisco de, , . ribera, roman, . ribera (lo spagnoletto), josé di, , , , , , . ribot, augustin theodule, . richards, william t., . rico, martin, . rigaud, hyacinthe, . rincon, antonio, , . robert-fleury, joseph nicolas, . robie, jean, . robinson, theodore, . roche, alex., . rochegrosse, georges, . roelas, juan de las, , , . roll, alfred philippe, . romanino, girolamo bresciano, , . rombouts, theodoor, , . romney, george, . rondinelli, niccolo, , . rosa, salvator, , . rosselli, cosimo, , , . rossetti, gabriel charles dante, , , . rosso, il, . rottenhammer, johann, , . rousseau, théodore, , , . roybet, ferdinand, . rubens, peter paul, , , - , , . ruisdael, jacob van, , , . ruisdael, solomon van, , . ryder, albert, . sabbatini (andrea da salerno), , . st. jan, geertjen van, . salaino (andrea sala), il, , . salviati, francesco rossi, , . sanchez-coello, alonzo, , . santi, giovanni, , . sanzio. see "raphael." sargent, john s., , . sarto, andrea (angeli) del, , , , , . sassoferrato (giov. battista salvi), il, , . savoldo, giovanni girolamo, , . schadow, friedrich wilhelm von, , , . schaffner, martin, , . schalcken, godfried, , . schäufelin, hans leonhardt, , . scheffer, ary, . schöngauer, martin, , , , . schnorr von karolsfeld, j., , . schüchlin, hans, . scorel, jan van, , , . segantini, giovanni, . semitecolo, niccolo, , . serapion, . sesto, cesare da, , . shannon, j. j., . shirlaw, walter, . shurtleff, roswell m., . sigalon, xavier, . signorelli, luca, , , , . simmons, edward e., . simonetti, . sisley, alfred, . smedley, william t., . smibert, john, . snell, henry b., . snyders, franz, , . sodoma (giov. ant. bazzi), il, , . solario, andrea (da milano), , . sopolis, . sorolla, joaquin, . spagna, lo (giovanni di pietro), , . spence, harry, . spranger, bartholomeus, . squarcione, francesco, , , , . starnina, gherardo, , . steele, edward, . steen, jan, , , . steenwyck, hendrik van, , . stevens, alfred, , . stewart, julius l., . strigel, bernard, , . stothard, thomas, . stott of oldham, . stuart, gilbert, , . stuck, franz, . sully, thomas, , . swanenburch, jakob isaaks van, . tarbell, edmund c., . teniers (the younger), david, , . terburg, gerard, , , . thaulow, fritz, . thayer, abbott h., . thegerström, r., . theodorich of prague, , . theotocopuli, domenico, , . thoma, hans, . tiepolo, giovanni battista, , . tiepolo, giovanni domenico, , . timanthes, . tintoretto (jacopo robusti), il, - , , , . titian (tiziano vecelli), , - , , , , , , , , , . tito, ettore, . torbido, francisco (il moro), , . toulmouche, auguste, . tristan, luis, , , . troyon, constant, , . trumbull, john, , . tryon, dwight w., . tura, cosimo, , , . turner, c. y., . turner, joseph mallord william, , , . twachtman, john h., . uccello, paolo, , , . uhde, fritz von, , . ulrich, charles f., . vaenius, otho, , . van beers, jan, , . vanderlyn, john, . van dyck, sir anthony, , , , , , . van dyck, philip, , . van loo, jean baptiste, , , . van marcke, Émil, . vargas, luis de, , . vasari, giorgio, , vedder, elihu, . veit, philipp, , . velasquez, diego rodriguez de silva y, , , - , , , , , , . velde, adrien van de, , . velde (the elder), willem van de, , . velde (the younger), willem van de, , . venusti, marcello, , . verboeckhoven, eugène joseph, , . verhagen, pierre joseph, , . vernet, claude joseph, , . vernet, Émile jean horace, . veronese, paolo (caliari), - , , , . verrocchio, andrea del, , , . vibert, jehan georges, . victoors, jan, , . vien, joseph marie, . villegas, josé, , . vincent, françois andré, . vinci. see "leonardo." vinton, f. p., . viti, timoteo di, , . vivarini, antonio (da murano), , . vivarini, bartolommeo (da murano), , . vivarini, luigi or alvise, , . vlieger, simon de, , . vollon, antoine, . volterra, daniele (ricciarelli) da, , . vos, cornelis de, , . vos, marten de, . vouet, simon, , . walker, frederick, . walker, horatio, . walton, e. a., . wappers, baron gustavus, , . watelet, louis Étienne, . watson, john, . watteau, antoine, , . watts, george frederick, . wauters, Émile, . weeks, edwin l., . weenix, jan, , . weir, j. alden, , . werff, adriaan van der, , . west, benjamin, , , . weyden, roger van der, , , , . whistler, james a. mcneill, . whittredge, worthington, . wiertz, antoine joseph, , . wiles, irving r., . wilkie, sir david, . willems, florent, , . wilson, richard, , . wolgemut, michael, , . wouverman, philips, , . wright, joseph, . wurmser, nicolaus, , . wyant, alexander h., , . wyllie, w. l., wynants, jan, , . yon, edmund charles, . zamacois, eduardo, , . zegers, daniel, , . ziem, . zeitblom, bartholomäus, , . zeuxis, . zoppo, marco, , . zorn, anders, . zucchero, federigo, , . zuloaga, ignacio, . zurbaran, francisco de, , , . additions to index. anglada, . bartels, . baur, . bell, . brangwyn, . breitner, . buysse, . cariani, . claus, . clausen, . fattori, . fragiacomo, . frederic, . garcia y remos, . greiner, . haverman, . henri, robert, . keller, . khnopff, . lempoels, . lie, jonas, . mctaggart, . mancini, . marchetti, . ouless, . reid, sir george, . steer, . swan, . trübner, . vierge, . weissenbruch, . witsen, . * * * * * college histories of art edited by john c. van dyke, l.h.d. professor of the history of art in rutgers college history of painting by john c. van dyke, the editor of the series. with frontispiece and illustrations, bibliographies, and index. crown vo, $ . . history of architecture by alfred d. f. hamlin, a.m., adjunct professor of architecture, columbia college, new york. with frontispiece and illustrations and diagrams, bibliographies, glossary, index of architects, and a general index. crown vo, $ . . history of sculpture by allan marquand, ph.d., l.h.d., and arthur l. frothingham, jr., ph.d., professors of archæology and the history of art in princeton university. with frontispiece and illustrations. crown vo, $ . . * * * * * a history of architecture. by a. d. f. hamlin, a.m. adjunct professor of architecture in the school of mines, columbia college. with frontispiece and illustrations and diagrams, bibliographies, glossary, index of architects, and a general index. crown vo, pp. xx- , $ . . "the text of this book is very valuable because of the singularly intelligent view taken of each separate epoch.... the book is extremely well furnished with bibliographies, lists of monuments [which] are excellent.... if any reasonable part of the contents of this book can be got into the heads of those who study it, they will have excellent ideas about architecture and the beginnings of a sound knowledge of it."--the nation, new york. "a manual that will be invaluable to the student, while it will give to the general reader a sufficiently full outline for the purposes of the development of the various schools of architecture. what makes it of special value is the large number of ground plans of typical buildings and the sketches of bits of detail of columns, arches, windows and doorways. each chapter is prefaced by a list of books recommended, and each ends with a list of monuments. the illustrations are numerous and well executed."--san francisco chronicle. "probably presents more comprehensively and at the same time concisely, the various periods and styles of architecture, with a characterization of the most important works of each period and style, than any other published work.... the volume fills a gap in architectural literature which has long existed."--advertiser, boston. "a neatly published work, adapted to the use either of student or general reader. as a text-book it is a concise and orderly setting forth of the main principles of architecture followed by the different schools. the life history of each period is brief yet thorough.... the treatment is broad and not over-critical. the chief facts are so grouped that the student can easily grasp them. the plan-drawings are clear cut and serve their purpose admirably. the half-tone illustrations are modern in selection and treatment. the style is clear, easy and pleasing. the entire production shows a studious and orderly mind. a new and pleasing characteristic is the absence of all discussion on disputed points. in its unity, clearness and simplicity lie its charm and interest."--notre dame scholastic, notre dame, ind. "this is a very thorough and compendious history of the art of architecture from the earliest times down to the present.... the work is elaborately illustrated with a great host of examples, pictures, diagrams, etc. it is intended to be used as a school text-book, and is very conveniently arranged for this purpose, with suitable headings in bold-faced type, and a copious index. teachers and students will find it a capital thing for the purpose."--picayune, new orleans. a history of sculpture, by allan marquand, ph. d., l. h. d. and arthur l. frothingham, jr., ph. d. professors of archæology and the history of art in princeton university. with frontispiece and illustrations in half-tone in the text, bibliographies, addresses for photographs and casts, etc. crown vo, pages, $ . . * * * * * henry w. kent, _curator of the seater museum, watkins, n. y._ "like the other works in this series of yours, it is simply invaluable, filling a long-felt want. the bibliographies and lists will be keenly appreciated by all who work with a class of students." charles h. moore, _harvard university_. "the illustrations are especially good, avoiding the excessively black background which produce harsh contrasts and injure the outlines of so many half-tone prints." j. m. hoppin, _yale university_. "these names are sufficient guarantee for the excellence of the book and its fitness for the object it was designed for. i was especially interested in the chapter on _renaissance sculpture in italy_." critic, _new york_. "this history is a model of condensation.... each period is treated in full, with descriptions of its general characteristics and its individual developments under various conditions, physical, political, religious and the like.... a general history of sculpture has never before been written in english--never in any language in convenient text-book form. this publication, then, should meet with an enthusiastic reception among students and amateurs of art, not so much, however, because it is the only book of its kind, as for its intrinsic merit and attractive form." outlook, _new york_. "a concise survey of the history of sculpture is something needed everywhere.... a good feature of this book--and one which should be imitated--is the list indicating where casts and photographs may best be obtained. of course such a volume is amply indexed." notre dame scholastic, _notre dame, ind._ "the work is orderly, the style lucid and easy. the illustrations, numbering over a hundred, are sharply cut and well selected. besides a general bibliography, there is placed at the end of each period of style a special list to which the student may refer, should he wish to pursue more fully any particular school." * * * * * longmans, green & co., publishers, & fifth avenue, new york. [illustration: sir joshua reynolds] masterpieces of art sir joshua reynolds a collection of fifteen pictures and a portrait of the painter with introduction and interpretation by estelle m. hurll boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge copyright, , by houghton, mifflin & co. * * * * * preface this selection of pictures from reynolds's works is intended to show him at his best in the various classes of subjects which he painted. johnson and lord heathfield are among his finest male portraits, miss bowles and master bunbury are unsurpassed among his pictures of children, and the strawberry girl was the painter's own favorite fancy picture. penelope boothby and angels' heads are popular favorites which could not be omitted from any collection. in lady cockburn and her children, the duchess of devonshire and her child, and pickaback we have typical groups of mothers and children. mrs. siddons stands apart as one of his most unique and remarkable productions. the other pictures add as much as possible to the variety of the collection, and show something of the range of reynolds's art. estelle m. hurll. new bedford, mass. september, . * * * * * contents and list of pictures portrait of reynolds. painted by himself. (_frontispiece_) from a carbon print by braun, clement & co. introduction i. on the art of reynolds ii. on books of reference iii. historical directory of the pictures of this collection iv. outline table of the principal events in reynolds's life v. contemporaries i. penelope boothby picture from a photograph by mansell ii. master crewe as henry viii picture from an engraving by s. w. reynolds iii. lady cockburn and her children picture from a photograph by franz hanfstaengl iv. miss bowles picture from a photograph by mansell v. master bunbury picture from an engraving by s. w. reynolds vi. mrs. siddons as the tragic muse picture from a photograph by w. m. spooner & co., london. vii. angels' heads picture from a carbon print by braun, clement & co. viii. the duchess of devonshire and her child picture from a carbon print by braun, clement & co. ix. hope picture from a photograph by the london autotype co. x. lord heathfield picture from a photograph by franz hanfstaengl xi. mrs. payne-galloway and her child--"pickaback" picture from a photograph by the london autotype co. xii. cupid as love boy picture from an engraving by s. w. reynolds xiii. the hon. anne bingham picture from an engraving by bartolozzi xiv. the strawberry girl picture from a photograph by mansell xv. dr. samuel johnson picture from a carbon print by braun, clement & co. xvi. the portrait of reynolds * * * * * introduction i. on the art of reynolds the name of sir joshua reynolds holds a place of honor among the world's great portrait painters. to appreciate fully his originative power one must understand the disadvantages under which he worked. his technical training was of the meagrest kind, and all his life he was hampered by ignorance of anatomy. but on the other hand he combined all those peculiar qualities of the artist without which no amount of technical skill can produce great portrait work. he had, in the first place, that indefinable quality of taste, which means so much in portraiture. his was an unerring instinct for poise, drapery, color, and composition. each of his figures seems to assume naturally an attitude of perfect grace; the draperies fall of their own accord in beautiful lines. reynolds knew, too, the secret of imparting an air of distinction to his sitters. the meanest subject was elevated by his art to a position of dignity. his magic touch made every child charming, every woman graceful, and every man dignified. finally, he possessed in no small degree, though curiously enough entirely disclaiming the quality, the gift of presenting the essential personality of the sitter, that which a critic has called the power of "realizing an individuality." this is seen most clearly in his portraits of men, and naturally in the portraits of the men he knew best, as johnson. it is a matter of constant amazement in studying the works of reynolds to observe his "inexhaustible inventiveness in pose and attitude." for each new picture he seemed always to have ready some new compositional motive. claude phillips goes so far as to say that in the whole range of art rembrandt alone is his equal in this respect. this versatility was due in a measure to his story-telling instinct. his imagination seemed to weave some story about each sitter which the picture was intended, as it were, to illustrate. from lord heathfield, refusing to yield the keys of gibraltar, to little miss bowles, dropping on the ground in the midst of her romp, through the long range of mothers playing with their children, there seems no end to the variety of lively incident which he could invent. the pose of the sitter suggests some dramatic moment in the imaginary episode. often the attitude is full of action, as in the miss bowles, and at times there is a striking impression of motion, as in pickaback. so strong is the dramatic effect conveyed by these pictures that the figures seem actually taken unaware in the very act of performance, as by a snapshot in modern photography. this quality of "momentariness," as phillips calls it, so dangerous in the hands of a commonplace painter, lends a peculiar fascination to many of reynolds's pictures. that he also appreciated the beauty of repose we see in such portraits as penelope boothby and anne bingham. reynolds's inventiveness was so overtaxed by his enormous number of sitters that it is scarcely to be wondered at that it sometimes failed him. occasionally he resorted to such artificial devices as were common among his contemporaries. such fresh inspirations as the strawberry girl and master bunbury could come but rarely in a lifetime. the spontaneity of miss bowles is perhaps unexcelled in all his works. reynolds's compositional schemes are of an academic elegance reminiscent of raphael. he knew well how to accomplish the flow of line, the balance of masses, the symmetry of outline, which produce a harmonious effect. a variety of designs were at his command, from the well-worn but always effective pyramidal form illustrated in many single figures, to those more novel forms he invented for groups such as lady cockburn and the duchess of devonshire. reynolds was frankly a borrower from many sources. in the roman, the bolognese, the venetian, flemish, and dutch schools, he found something to appropriate and make his own. from rembrandt he took suggestions of lighting, and such sombre color harmonies as are seen in the portrait of mrs. siddons. something of bloom and splendor he caught from the florid rubens; something of the decorative effectiveness of such pictures as lady cockburn may be traced to the influence of titian and the venetians. yet to all that he borrowed, reynolds added his own individual touch. as a critic has said, he was always reynolds from first to last. much has been written of the evanescence of reynolds's colors. his passion for color experiments amounted to a mania, and cost the world many beautiful pictures. precisely what was the nature of these experiments, and what combination of pigments ruined his pictures, is of interest only to the expert. fortunately, enough pictures escaped to show us the original glory of those which have faded. among the best preserved canvases, "those in which his power and brilliancy appear least impaired, those in which the typical sir joshua still most unmistakably shines forth," are lady cockburn and her children, miss bowles, mrs. siddons, and angels' heads. the range of reynolds's art is much wider than is commonly supposed. a very imperfect appreciation of his gifts is gained by those who know only his portraits of women and children. these indeed show a peculiar insight into childhood, and a rare delicacy in the interpretation of womanhood. but reynolds is at his strongest in the portrayal of men. it is by such portraits as the johnson and heathfield that he is worthy a place among the immortals. ii. on books of reference the original biographical material on the subject of reynolds was supplied by his own contemporaries. his friend malone wrote a valuable memoir ( ), and his pupil northcote furnished the first biography of the painter, the life of reynolds in two volumes published in . a half century later ( ) was published the most comprehensive work on reynolds in two large volumes by c. r. leslie and t. taylor. at about the same time ( ) appeared a book by f. g. stephens, "english children as painted by sir joshua reynolds." all these books have been long out of print, and there are now but two books of reference generally available. "sir joshua reynolds," by claude phillips ( ), is a small volume, but it gives a fairly complete summary of the painter's works, with valuable critical comments. sir walter armstrong's large and richly illustrated work "sir joshua reynolds" ( ) treats the subject exhaustively, and contains a complete descriptive catalogue and directory of reynolds's works--portraits and subject pictures--arranged in alphabetical order. there is an immense bibliography of memoirs of the period of george iii., and such books throw an interesting light upon the lives of many of reynolds's sitters. some of the most valuable are horace walpole's "letters," fanny burney's "diary," mrs. piozzi's "memoirs," and wraxall's "memoirs." in addition to these, boswell's incomparable "life of johnson" presents a series of vivid pictures of the life of the period, and contains many anecdotes of the friendship between reynolds and the great lexicographer. reynolds's lectures and writings fill two volumes of the bohn library. of these the twelve discourses delivered before the royal academy are the most valuable, and have been reprinted in various editions. the most recent is that of , with notes and a biographical introduction by e. g. johnson. intended as means of instruction to beginners in painting, these lectures deal with general principles rather than with practical technique, and are not to be taken as expository in any measure of reynolds's own art. iii. historical directory of the pictures of this collection _portrait frontispiece._ painted in for the imperial academy in florence, and now in the uffizi gallery, florence. . _penelope boothby._ painted in july, . in the possession of mrs. thwaites. . _master crewe as henry viii._ painted in for john crewe, esq., and exhibited at the royal academy, . size: ft. in. by ft. in. in the possession of the earl of crewe. . _lady cockburn and her children._ reynolds began the picture in and upon its completion in received £ s. in payment. it was exhibited at the royal academy in , after which it was dated . passed into the possession of lady hamilton, daughter of sir james cockburn ( th baronet), and by her bequeathed to the english national gallery, where it hung, - , when it was learned that lady hamilton had no power to dispose of the picture. it was then sold at auction to mr. beit, park lane, london. size: ft. in. by ft. - / in. . _miss bowles._ painted in . now in the wallace collection, hertford house, london. size: ft. - / in. by ft. - / in. . _master bunbury._ exhibited at the royal academy, ; bequeathed by reynolds to mrs. bunbury. in the possession of sir henry bunbury. size: ft. in. by ft. . _mrs. siddons as the tragic muse._ painted in and exhibited at the royal academy in . the original work was bought by m. de calonne for guineas, and finally came into the possession of the marquis of westminster, in whose family it has since remained. it is in the gallery of grosvenor house, london. . _angels' heads._ painted for lord william gordon ( guineas) and exhibited at the royal academy, . presented by lady gordon to the national gallery, london, . size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _the duchess of devonshire and her child._ exhibited at the royal academy in . the original is at chatsworth house, and there is a copy at windsor castle, from which our reproduction is made. . _hope._ one of the figures of the window design, new college chapel, oxford. the original design was painted in oil in , and was purchased by the earl of normanton. . _lord heathfield._ begun august , , and exhibited at the royal academy in . originally painted for alderman boydell, and purchased by parliament in . now in the national gallery, london. size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _mrs. payne-gallwey and child_ (pickaback). painted . as late as it was in the possession of lord monson, and is now owned by j. pierpont morgan, esq. . _cupid as link boy._ the date is not certainly fixed, but it is known that reynolds was at work in the spring of upon some subjects of this class, several of which were engraved in the period - . in the possession of alexander henderson, esq. size: ft. in. by ft. . _hon. anne bingham._ painted in . in the possession of earl spencer. size: ft. - / in. by ft. / in. . _the strawberry girl._ painted for the earl of carysfort ( guineas) and exhibited at the royal academy, . as reynolds repeated the subject it is difficult to trace the history of the original picture. the painting now in the wallace collection, hertford house, came from the samuel rogers collection. size: ft. - / in. by ft. / in. . _samuel johnson._ painted for mr. thrale for the streatham gallery, . now in the national gallery, london. size: ft. - / in. by ft. in. iv. outline table of the principal events in reynolds's life . reynolds born at plympton, devonshire, england, july . - . apprenticeship with the painter thomas hudson, london. - . residence in devonshire. . portrait of captain hamilton first to attract attention. death of reynolds's father. - . residence in plymouth docks. - . voyage in centurion with commodore keppel; studies in italy; and return, via paris, to london. . establishment of reynolds in london as a portrait painter, with apartments in st. martin's lane, leicester fields. . removal to great newport st. whole length portrait of commodore keppel by the seashore, an epoch-making picture in reynolds's career. - . rapid advance of reynolds to the foremost place as portrait painter. . portrait of horace walpole; portrait of samuel johnson. . pocket book gives list of sitters. . two papers contributed to the idler. pocket book gives sitters. . removal to handsome house, leicester fields. first exhibition of pictures by living artists, in room of society for encouragement of arts, manufactures, and commerce. reynolds's contributions, elizabeth duchess of hamilton, lady elizabeth keppel, and two male portraits. names of sitters recorded in reynolds's pocket book. . exhibition of pictures at society of artists' rooms in spring gardens. some of reynolds's contributions: captain orme leaning on his horse, portrait of laurence sterne, and countess waldegrave. . visit to devonshire with dr. samuel johnson. exhibition in spring gardens. some of reynolds's contributions: lady elizabeth keppel as bridesmaid, countess waldegrave and child, and garrick between tragedy and comedy. . four portraits sent to spring gardens exhibition, including "nelly o'brien." . two portraits sent to spring gardens exhibition. severe illness. . founding of literary club. . lady sarah bunbury sacrificing to the graces, sent to spring gardens exhibition. . four pictures contributed to the spring gardens exhibition. election to membership in the dilettanti society. . foundation of the royal academy with reynolds as president, and honor of knighthood conferred. four pictures contributed to spring gardens exhibition, september. trip to paris, september-october. . first discourse as president delivered before the academy, january. first academy exhibition opened in pall mall, april , with several contributions from reynolds. second discourse delivered before the academy, december . . royal academy exhibition in april, with several contributions from reynolds, including the children in the wood. visit in devonshire, september-october. third discourse delivered, december . . several pictures contributed to academy exhibition. northcote apprenticed to reynolds. visit to paris, august-september. fourth discourse delivered, december . . several pictures contributed to the academy exhibition, including mrs. crewe as st. genevieve. election of reynolds as alderman of plympton, september. fifth discourse delivered, december . . twelve pictures contributed to royal academy exhibition, including the strawberry girl, the portrait of joseph banks, and ugolino. . honorary degree of d. c. l. conferred by oxford, july. . thirteen pictures contributed to royal academy exhibition, including lady cockburn and her children, three ladies adorning a term of hymen, and the baby princess sophia, duchess of gloucester. sixth discourse delivered, december . . william doughty received as pupil into reynolds's home. twelve pictures contributed to the royal academy exhibition, including mrs. sheridan as st. cecilia and a half-length portrait of dr. robinson, primate of ireland. . twelve pictures contributed to royal academy exhibition, including georgiana, duchess of devonshire, and master crewe as henry viii. termination of northcote's services. election to membership in florentine academy, and portrait painted for the uffizi gallery. seventh discourse delivered, december . . thirteen pictures contributed to royal academy exhibition, including lady caroline montagu (winter). - . two portrait groups for dilettanti society. . marlborough family portrait exhibited at royal academy. eighth discourse, december . . designs for windows of new college chapel, oxford, executed and exhibited at royal academy; also portraits of lady louisa manners and viscountess crosbie. . removal of royal academy to somerset house and exhibition of reynolds's portrait of gibbon. . ninth discourse delivered, october . tenth discourse delivered, december . . fourteen pictures exhibited at royal academy, including master bunbury, the duchess of rutland, and the design of temperance for oxford window. journey to holland and flanders, july. . fifteen pictures exhibited at royal academy. second paralytic attack, and visit to bath. eleventh discourse delivered, december . . ten pictures exhibited at royal academy. visit to antwerp and brussels. . sixteen pictures exhibited at royal academy, including portrait of mrs. siddons as tragic muse, prince of wales with horse, charles james fox. appointment as court painter. twelfth discourse delivered, december . . sixteen pictures exhibited at royal academy. visit to flanders to purchase pictures. commission from empress catherine of russia for historical picture. . thirteen pictures exhibited at royal academy, including the duke of orleans, john hunter, the duchess of devonshire and child. thirteenth discourse delivered, december . . three illustrations contributed to boydell's shakespeare gallery. thirteen pictures exhibited at royal academy, including angel heads and master philip york. . eighteen pictures sent to royal academy exhibition, including lord heathfield and the infant hercules. fourteenth discourse, with eulogy on gainesborough. . portrait of richard brinsley sheridan, and "simplicity." . loss of sight in left eye (_gutta serena_) and abandonment of painting. . resignation from presidency of royal academy and from seat as academician. "mrs. billington as st. cecilia" sent with other pictures to academy exhibition. fifteenth and farewell discourse delivered december . . death of reynolds, february . v. contemporaries noted painters: thomas hudson ( - ). richard wilson ( - ). john opie ( - ). george romney ( - ). allan ramsay ( - ). thomas gainesborough ( - ). sir william beechey ( - ). james barry ( - ). francis cotes ( - ). pupils and assistants: peter toms. giuseppe marchi. thomas beach or beech. hugh barron. berridge. parry. james northcote. score. list of original members of royal academy:[ ] william chambers. george michael moser. francis milner newton. edward penny. thomas sandby. samuel wade. william hunter. *francis hayman. george barrett. francesco bartolozzi. edward burch. *agostino carlini. *charles catton. mason chamberlin. *j. baptist cipriani. richard cosway. john gwynn. william hoare. nathaniel hone. mrs. angelica kauffmann. jeremiah meyer. mrs. mary moser. joseph nollekens. john richards. paul sandby. domenick serres. *peter toms. william tyler. *benjamin west. *richard wilson. joseph wilton. richard yeo. john zoffanii. *francesco zuccarelli. [footnote : the names starred were the artists who formed the first staff of visiting critics.] friends and acquaintances at the dilettanti society: earl of holderness. lord gowran. sir everard fawkener. the marquis of granby. lord eglinton. lord anson. stuart, the painter. sir charles bunbury. lord euston. the marquis of hartington. dick edgcumbe. captain george edgcumbe. literary club: first twelve members:[ ] reynolds. johnson. goldsmith. dr. nugent. dr. percy, afterwards bishop of dromore. sir robert chambers. sir john hawkins. burke. bennet langton. chamier. dyer. hon. topham beauclerk. [footnote : the membership was afterwards successively increased to thirty-five and forty.] i penelope boothby somewhat over a century ago, at the time when our american colonies were struggling for liberty, lived the great english portrait painter, sir joshua reynolds. in those days photography had not been invented, and portrait painting was a profession patronized by all classes of people. there were many portrait studios in london, but none were so fashionable as that of reynolds. it is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. there was scarcely a distinguished man or beautiful woman in the kingdom who did not sit to him, and many were the children whose portraits he painted. if all his works could be brought together they would form a complete historical gallery of the reign of george iii. here we should see princes, statesmen, and warriors, actors and poets, court beauties and "blue stockings," the petted children of the rich, and the picturesque waifs of the london streets. among the faces we should find those, like fox and burke, whose lives were intimately connected with the destinies of our own nation, and those, like goldsmith and johnson, whose names are familiar in our schools and homes. there is something about these portraits which makes them seem alive, something too which gives to the plainest person a certain dignity and interest. with all the variety of subjects which reynolds treated he was never happier than when painting children. he loved them dearly, delighted to play with them, and seemed to understand them as few grown people do. in his great octagonal painting room were many things to amuse his little friends, and a portrait sitting there usually meant a frolic. penelope boothby is the name of the little girl in our illustration, and the old-fashioned name is precisely suited to the quaint figure in cap and mitts. we are reminded of that penelope of the old greek poem, the odyssey, who waited so faithfully through the years for the return of her husband odysseus from the trojan war. the story runs that, believing odysseus to be dead, many suitors begged her hand, but she always replied that before marrying she must first complete the shroud she was making for her aged father-in-law. every day she busied herself with the task, but when night came she secretly undid all that she had wrought through the day, so that it might never reach completion. thus she prolonged the time of waiting until at last odysseus returned to claim his wife. whether or not the little penelope of our picture knew this story we cannot say, but it was the fashion of the times to revive the names and legends of mythology, and penelope was a name which had come to stand for all the domestic virtues. [illustration: penelope boothby] as we look at the picture for the first time the quaint costume of the little girl suggests the idea that she is dressed for a tableau. children the world over love to don the clothes of a past generation and play at men and women. miss penelope, we fancy, has been ransacking some old chest of faded finery, and has arrayed herself in the character of "martha washington," as painted by gilbert stuart. the snowy kerchief folded across her bosom and the big mob cap on her head are precisely like those in the portraits of the colonial lady. the child purses her lips together primly and folds her hands in a demure attitude in her lap, as if to play her part well, but she is far too shy to look us directly in the face, and glances aside with downcast eyes. all this illusion is dispelled when we come to study the customs of the period. it appears that children then, both in england and america, dressed precisely like their elders, and penelope's costume here is doubtless such as she wore every day. a little boston girl, anna green winslow, wrote in her diary in of wearing a cap and black mitts which we fancy were not unlike these. there are portraits, too, of other little girls of the time, wearing the same huge headdress, as we may see in the family group of the copleys in the boston art museum. penelope was the only child of sir brooke boothby, and, as we may well believe from her winsome face, the darling of the household. her home was a fine mansion buried among trees in the beautiful english country. she was, we fancy, a quiet little girl, preferring a corner with her dolls to any boisterous romp, but not without a bit of fun in her nature. she was an affectionate little creature, and very fond of her father, watching at the gate for his return home, and sitting on his knee in the evening. on sunday mornings she went to the quaint old church of ashbourne and knelt beside her mother in the service. all this and much more we learn from a book written by her father which bears the pathetic title of "sorrows." for little penelope died at the age of seven, and the stricken parent solaced himself in his loneliness by writing the memories of his darling. the portrait by reynolds was made when the child was four years old. after her death, fuseli painted a picture representing her borne to heaven by an angel. there is also a lovely marble monument to penelope, by banks, in the ashbourne church.[ ] [footnote : see mrs. rebecca harding davis's article in _st. nicholas_, november, , "about the painter of little penelope."] ii master crewe as henry viii there was once on the throne of england a king named henry viii. he was a man of extraordinary character, with qualities both good and bad. his conduct was sometimes unscrupulous and tyrannical, and he let nothing interfere with his own pleasure. nevertheless his reign brought many benefits to england, and his memory is respected by english people. in his early manhood, henry was accounted the handsomest prince of his time, but allowance must be made for the flattery of his subjects. he was a big, rather coarse-looking man, with small eyes, and a large face and double chin. for his noisy ways and rough manners he has been familiarly called "bluff king hal" and "burly king harry." he was fond of the hunt and the tournament and all kinds of manly exercise. he was also much given to show and display, and loved rich dresses. he employed as his court painter the celebrated dutch artist holbein, who made various portraits of the members of the royal family. there was one particularly fine group which was unfortunately destroyed by fire, but as a copy had previously been made we still know what the picture was like. henry viii. had been dead some two hundred years before the master crewe of our picture was born, but english kings are not allowed to be forgotten. successive generations of children were shown holbein's portraits of the bluff old ruler, and were taught something about his reign. it happened one time that the children of master crewe's acquaintance had a fancy dress party. the crewes were people of fashion who entered constantly into social affairs. naturally there was much discussion over their son's part and costume. it was a happy thought which fixed upon the character of henry viii., for the boy's round face, square shoulders, and sturdy frame were well fitted for the rôle. evidently no pains were spared to make the costume historically correct. holbein's portrait was the costumer's model, and every detail was faithfully followed. the boy is dressed in the fashion of the sixteenth century in "doublet and hose." this consists first of a richly embroidered waistcoat, the most effective part of the dress. the sleeves are made of the same material and are gathered at the wrists in a ruffle. the lower part of the doublet is a skirt falling just above the knees. [illustration: master crewe as henry viii.] over all is flung a handsome mantle; but this is drawn apart in front to display the smart waistcoat to full advantage. a broad-brimmed hat set jauntily on one side, and trimmed with a long feather, completes the costume. by way of ornament is worn a big jewelled collar and a long chain with locket. a short sword swings from the girdle, and on the left leg is the garter, which is the badge of membership in the ancient order of the garter, of which henry viii. was the tenth sovereign member. this is of dark blue ribbon edged with gold, and bearing in gold letters the motto "honi soit qui mal y pense".[ ] [footnote : evil to him who evil thinks.] it is one thing to have a perfect costume, and another to understand the rôle. master crewe not only looks his part, but he acts it as well. he has not failed to take in all the points of the portrait, and imitates the pompous attitude to perfection. he stands with feet wide apart, grasping his gloves in the right hand and supporting the other on the sash. he is a bright boy, who enters into the spirit of the game, and it tickles him hugely to play the part of a despot. but while he is henry viii. in miniature, he is henry viii. without the king's coarseness, and in the place is a child's innocent pleasure. it was no wonder that his parents, delighted with the success of the costume, wished to have a portrait made. the boy is painted as he appeared when posing for his admiring friends. in his effort to assume a lordly air his boyish glee gets the better of him, and he belies the character by a broad grin. perhaps he has caught the twinkle in his father's eye, or his mother's suppressed smile, and he can keep serious no longer. "bravo!" cries the audience, and he smiles in innocent delight at his success. his pet dogs are in the room, and one of them is rather suspicious of this strange young prince. he sniffs cautiously at his legs, for though his eyes deceive him, his sense of smell cannot be mistaken. through a window in the rear we get a glimpse of the park beyond, which adds much to the beauty of the picture. as we shall see in other pictures of this collection[ ] an interior gives a sense of imprisonment unless it contains some opening. the mass of bright color which the landscape makes in the upper right corner is balanced in the lower left corner by a cloak thrown over a chair. [footnote : see lady cockburn and her children, and the duchess of devonshire and her child.] reynolds painted so many fine portraits of boys that it is hard to say that this or that one is best, though some have preferred master crewe to all others.[ ] we shall see by-and-by in master bunbury, and the cupid, that the painter understood boy nature pretty thoroughly. this rollicking master crewe is not so serious as master bunbury, nor so sly as the cupid boy; he is in fact a typical english lad, sturdy, masterful, frank, and good-natured. [footnote : leslie and taylor say that "none of his many admirable boy pictures is so consummate."] iii lady cockburn and her children a pretty story is told of a roman matron named cornelia, who was one day entertaining a visitor, when the conversation led to the subject of jewels. "these are my jewels," said the hostess, and turned to show the stranger her beautiful children. the story comes readily to mind as one looks at this portrait of lady cockburn and her children. indeed, the picture was once engraved[ ] under the fanciful title of "cornelia and her children." like the roman matron of old, the english mother gathers her children about her as the choicest jewels of her possession. her stately beauty is of the classic sort, and the children are as charming as english children are reputed to be. [footnote : by tomkins, in .] all three are boys. the eldest is james, who kneels on his mother's lap, playfully grasping the mantle about her neck, and supported in his precarious position by her hand placed firmly on his back. he has the sweet expression which betokens a sunny nature, and his well-cut features are such as make a handsome man. he was his father's heir and namesake, succeeding him as the seventh baronet. the rogue peeping over his mother's shoulder is george. though his features are less regular than his elder brother's, he is none the less attractive, for he is a jolly little fellow. when he grew to manhood he entered the navy and became an admiral. it was on his ship, the northumberland, that napoleon was conveyed to the island of st. helena to end his days in exile. in the course of time admiral cockburn became the eighth baronet of the name. the baby lying on the mother's lap is william. in after years he entered the ministry, married a daughter of sir robert peel, and became dean of york. it was fitting that one of lady cockburn's sons should enter the church, as her father, dr. ayscough, had been dean of bristol. upon the death of his elder brother, the dean of york became the ninth baronet. the picture shows the three children in a game of hide-and-seek. george, who is evidently the leader of the fun, dodges up and down behind his mother, throwing little william into an ecstasy of delight. as the round face appears again over the shoulder, the baby reaches up his fat little hand to clutch his brother's arm, fairly doubling himself up in his pleasure, and grasping one foot in his other hand. james enjoys the play more quietly. it is quite likely that he has been hiding his face in his mother's mantle, but now he pauses to watch his little brother's amusement, his lips parted in a smile, his finger directing the baby where to look. [illustration: lady cockburn and her children] the mother turns her face towards that of her eldest son, scanning it closely. the action in the picture is so delightfully natural that we do not at first realize how difficult a problem is solved in the arrangement of the four figures. an amateur photographer places his sitters in a stiff row and directs them all to look towards a single point. the master artist conceives of some action which shall engage the attention of all, and form a natural connection between them. thus, in our picture, the interest of the game binds the figures together. the baby lifts his face to that of the mother and brother; the mother turns to the child at her right, and the latter looks down at the baby, thus completing the circle. the lines of the composition are also so disposed as to bring the figures together in a close unity. follow the outer edge of the figure of james at the left; trace across the mother's lap the line made by the border of her mantle, and continued along the baby's body. from the mother's elbow move the pencil past the baby's head and along his out-stretched arm till the line ends at the top of george's head, and from this point carry a somewhat irregular line across to the head of james. we have thus traced the parallelogram which incloses the group. the centre of the group is somewhat at the left of the centre of the canvas, and the picture would seem one-sided were it not for the details of the background at the right. here the painter has represented a parapet supporting a marble pillar, at the base of which a large macaw perches. beyond is seen a beautiful landscape. this spot of color brings the composition into perfect balance. more than this, the view thus opened relieves the crowded effect of the compact grouping. the surrounding space would not seem large enough for the four figures were it not for this added depth of space, which gives the eye a long distance to traverse. the composition is as fine in color as it is in lines and masses. it is a "splendid tawny color harmony, formed by the red of the curtain, the warm flesh tints, the rich orange yellow of the outer robe of satin bordered with white fur, and the gaudy plumage of the macaw".[ ] [footnote : claude phillips.] with so many great artistic qualities, it is no wonder that the portrait has always been admired. upon its completion in it was sent to the royal academy to be exhibited, and when it was first brought into the room, all the painters present, struck with admiration, burst into a tumult of applause and handclapping. even after this the painstaking painter probably added some finishing touches and inscribed his name and the date, , upon the ornamental border of the lady's mantle. iv miss bowles a little girl and her dog are playing together in a wooded park. the place is a fine playground, with its soft, grassy carpet, and noble old trees. it is the sort of park which adjoins country houses of wealthy old english families, where years of training have brought to perfection the trees planted by previous generations. here and there, through spaces among the branches, shafts of sunlight illumine the shady spot. the child herself seems like some woodland sprite. she is bubbling over with fun, and is scarcely still a minute. her spaniel is a gay playfellow,--a beautiful creature, with long silky hair and drooping ears. he is intelligent, too, and devoted to his mistress. she leads him a merry chase, darting in and out among the big trees which hide her from him. he bounds after her, loses her a moment, and then, as she reappears, leaps upon her with delight. in the midst of the frolic the child's attention is attracted by a group of boys who have entered the park, all unobserved, and have begun a game of cricket. on the instant she drops on her knees on the grass, seizes the dog, and, lest he should interrupt the sport, clasps her arms tight around his neck, to hold him fast. the poor spaniel is nearly choked, but patiently yields to the caprice of his young mistress while she watches the game with dancing eyes. from her gleeful expression one would fancy that the winner was her favorite. some such simple incident as this sir joshua reynolds must have had in mind when painting the portrait of miss bowles; for every picture of his seems to carry a story with it, each one thought out to fit the circumstances and character of the sitter. the lively miss bowles, as we see, is totally unlike the demure miss boothby. they are both charming children; but, while penelope would love to nestle in her mother's arms, miss bowles would dance coyly away. while penelope would sit in doors by the hour, contented with her sewing, miss bowles would be skipping about the park like a little hoyden. the picture of miss bowles is, therefore, full of action; both child and dog pause only an instant, caught, as it were, in the midst of their play. the attitude of penelope boothby, on the other hand, is one of repose, as suits the tranquil nature of the little girl. the background of each picture is likewise perfectly appropriate. miss penelope's placid figure is seen against a leafy screen which nearly closes in the picture; but miss bowles needs plenty of space for her romps, and has a whole park to herself. the painter's acquaintance with little miss bowles began very pleasantly. her parents, proud of their lovely daughter, were planning to have her portrait made, and had chosen romney for the painter. a friend of theirs--sir george beaumont--induced them to change their minds and engage reynolds. even if the portrait faded in time, as they were afraid it might, sir joshua's pictures sometimes having that fault, it would still be more beautiful than if painted by any other hand. [illustration: miss bowles] at sir george's suggestion the painter was first invited to dinner, that he might see the child. she appeared at dessert, and was placed beside the stranger at the table. it did not take long for the two to become acquainted, for the painter immediately began to amuse the little girl with stories and all sorts of tricks. calling her attention to some object on the other side of the room, he would steal her plate while she was looking away, and pretend to be greatly surprised at its disappearance. they would then try to find it, but in vain, until, when she was again off her guard, he would slip it into place, and there would be a great sensation over its discovery. was there ever a jollier man for a little girl to dine with! the next day it was proposed that miss bowles should be taken to visit her new friend, and she was of course delighted to go. when the party reached the studio, the child's face was shining with expectancy as she greeted the painter. it was this expression which reynolds has caught so perfectly on his canvas, and which makes the little girl's face seem actually smiling into ours. he was equally successful in catching a natural pose, watching her closely as she danced about the room. it was a theory of his that the unconscious movements of a child are always graceful, and we may be sure that miss bowles's position here is one of her own invention. her skirt is spread out a little at one side, balancing, as it were, the figure of the dog opposite. the lines inclosing the entire group form a pyramid. the original painting is still beautiful in color, being among the best preserved of reynolds's works. critics have pronounced it a "matchless work that would have immortalized reynolds had he never painted anything else." v master bunbury by a pleasant coincidence the year brought to reynolds's studio for portrait sittings two young people who began an acquaintance at this time which had a romantic ending. they were miss catherine horneck and henry william bunbury, who were married a few years later, and were the parents of the little boy in our picture. miss horneck was one of two pretty sisters who, upon their father's death, had become wards of sir joshua, the family being old devonshire acquaintances of his. they were now living in london with their mother, and were great pets in society. goldsmith, who knew them well, playfully named miss catherine "little comedy" from the resemblance between her face and that of the allegorical figure of comedy in one of reynolds's portraits of garrick. mr. bunbury was a gentleman of family and fortune, who had unusual artistic talent. his special forte was in humorous subjects and caricatures, and his works were sought and praised by connoisseurs. reynolds must have followed with affectionate interest the lives of these young friends whose attachment had been fostered in his studio. he always felt a fatherly regard for mrs. bunbury and a generous admiration for her husband's artistic work. their elder son, the boy of our picture, was born in , and was named charles john. the painter visiting his friends saw the child grow out of baby-hood and become a sturdy boy. he was a beautiful child, with large eyes set wide apart in his round face. his expression was delightfully frank and honest. when he was nine years old the portrait was painted which is reproduced in our illustration. the boy sits under a tree in a pleasant landscape looking intently before him at some object. though he seems to have been carefully dressed for some special occasion he has been enjoying himself in boy fashion in spite of that. his ringletted hair is blown about by the wind, and the coat is unbuttoned at the throat, as he drops down to rest, hot and panting from some vigorous exercise. his chubby hands rest on his knees, and his eyes are fixed on something directly in front of him. he does not seem to be a boy given to day-dreaming, and he is much too active to sit still a long time. it must be something very interesting which awakens his curiosity. perhaps a bumble-bee, buzzing in and out the bell-shaped blossoms of some sweet wild flower, catches his eye, and he almost holds his breath and watches it. [illustration: master bunbury] the boy's dress looks very quaint to our modern eyes. the trousers and waistcoat are made "in one piece," and the velvet coat, with its wide skirt, seems a garment made for a middle-aged man. as we have already seen, the children of this time dressed as miniature copies of their elders. but while fashions in dress have changed, the child's nature is about the same in every country and period. the eighteenth-century boy, in spite of his grown-up clothes, was fond of all sorts of out-of-door games. master bunbury could doubtless match a boy of his age to-day at marbles, tops, kites, battledore, and hop-scotch, and teach him besides many now-forgotten sports, as "bally-cally," "chucks," "sinks," and the like. the modern american schoolboy, studying the history of our own country, may be interested to know that this portrait of an english boy, who was a subject of george iii., was painted five years after the signing of the declaration of independence. one of the signers had a son who was of nearly the same age as master bunbury, a boy named william henry harrison, who afterwards became the president of our republic. if we possessed a portrait of harrison at the age of nine, it would be interesting to compare the two boyish contemporaries of the old and the new country. master bunbury, as the son of an english aristocrat, must needs have regarded our colonists as troublesome rebels, while on his part young harrison looked upon the english as tyrants. bunbury finally entered the english army and became a general officer. he was sent to the cape of good hope while the british were holding possession there in behalf of the dutch, and there he died in the fullness of his early manhood in . the portrait of master bunbury was painted a few years after that of miss bowles, and reynolds here repeated the same arrangement which had been so successful before. it differs only in that the entire figure of master bunbury is not seen, being cut off in what is called three quarters length, just below the knees. in both pictures the lines of the composition follow the same pyramidal form, and in both also the park-like surroundings extend into an indefinite distance, so that the eye may follow with pleasure the long vista. both pictures suggest the same idea of a child pausing in play to look directly out of the canvas at some distant object. yet the painter has shown a perfect understanding of the difference in the temperament of the two children, the girl, graceful, quick, mischievous, the boy, sturdy, rather serious, and with a mind eager for information. the portrait of master bunbury was evidently painted by reynolds for his own pleasure, and retained by him during his lifetime, after which it passed by bequest to the boy's mother. vi mrs. siddons as the tragic muse the name of mrs. siddons is one of the most distinguished in the history of english dramatic art. for thirty years she was unsurpassed in her impersonation of the tragic heroines of shakespeare. her first great success was in the season of , when she appeared for the second time on the london stage. she was then about twenty-seven years of age, and had devoted years of arduous study to her profession. though gifted by nature with strong dramatic instincts inherited from generations of players, her powers developed slowly. the rôles which she acted were of the more serious sort, which required maturity and experience for interpretation. her personal appearance was eminently fitted for tragic parts. she had a queenly presence, a countenance moulded in noble lines, a deep-toned measured voice, and an impressive enunciation. in private as well as in public she commanded the highest admiration. though all london was at her feet flattery could not spoil her. her children adored her, her friends found her the soul of sincerity, and all the world honored her noble womanhood. it was while she was still on the threshold of her great career that reynolds painted her portrait as the tragic muse. in the old greek mythology every art had a corresponding goddess or muse who inspired the artistic instincts in human hearts. there was, for instance, a muse of tragedy, called melpomene, a muse of the dance, terpsichore, and so on through the nine arts. the great sculptors used to make statues of these muses, trying to express in each the highest ideal of the particular art represented. it was in imitation of this old custom that reynolds conceived the idea that mrs. siddons, as the greatest of tragediennes, would appropriately impersonate the muse of tragedy.[ ] the story is related that when she came to his studio for the first sitting the painter took her by the hand and led her to the chair, saying in his courtly way: "ascend your undisputed throne; bestow on me some idea of the tragic muse." whereupon she instantly assumed the attitude in which she was painted. among michelangelo's frescoes in the sistine chapel there is a figure of the prophet isaiah, whose pose is quite similar, and may have suggested both to painter and sitter the idea of the tragic muse. in any case the attitude which mrs. siddons assumes is entirely characteristic. [footnote : russell had already celebrated mrs. siddons as the tragic muse in his history of modern europe, and romney had previously painted mrs. yates in the same character.] [illustration: mrs. siddons as the tragic muse] the expression of her face shows the stress of strong emotion--the struggle of a noble soul in a conflict of forces which must end in tragedy. her hair is brushed back from the face and ornamented with a tiara like a royal diadem. a rich rope of pearls falls across her beautiful neck and is gathered in a knot on her bodice. a mantle lies across her lap draped somewhat like that in the portrait of lady cockburn, and, like it, inscribed with the name of the painter, who gallantly said that "he could not resist the opportunity of going down to posterity on the hem of her garment".[ ] [footnote : the compliment has sometimes been referred to the portrait of lady cockburn, but the incident is related by northcote as told him by mrs. siddons herself in regard to her own portrait.] behind her chair are two allegorical figures representing crime and remorse, the two primary causes of tragedy. in the full face of the one at her left we can trace the features of sir joshua himself, distorted though they are into the expression of a criminal. the color of the original painting has a sombre magnificence which is in keeping with the seriousness of the subject. the painting of the head and bust places it among the finest works of reynolds. the portrait shows a remarkable insight on the part of the painter into the character of mrs. siddons. she had not at that time played any of her great shakespearean rôles, but reynolds seemed to anticipate her power. he followed her career with unfailing interest and always made a point of attending her first appearances and benefits, sitting among the musicians in the orchestra. when she prepared for the character of lady macbeth he helped her plan the costumes and sat rapt and breathless during her first performance. this was generally considered her grandest effort, and she used herself to say that after playing it thirty years she never read over the part without discovering in it something new. in this character she bade farewell to her profession june , . it was said by a contemporary critic that "there was not a height of grandeur to which she could not soar, nor a darkness of misery to which she could not descend; not a chord of feeling from the sternest to the most delicate which she could not cause to vibrate at her will." vii angels' heads our thoughts of angels are naturally connected with thoughts of children. jesus once spoke of the little ones as those whose angels always behold the face of the heavenly father. their innocence is the best type we have on earth of the purity of beings of a higher sphere. often when we try to describe the beauty of some little child, we use the word angelic. this explains why sir joshua reynolds when called to paint the portrait of a little girl conceived the pretty fancy of the picture of angels' heads.[ ] the child's fair face suggested that of an angel. she had golden hair and blue eyes, and a very sweet little mouth. it was a face which was so charming from every point of view that he painted it in five positions. grouping the heads in a circle, he added wings after the manner of the cherubs of the old italian masters, surrounded them with clouds, and lighted the composition with a broad ray of light streaming diagonally across the canvas. [footnote : originally called a cherub head in different views.] the child's hair falls about the face in straight dishevelled locks, and it is not easy to tell at once whether it is a boy or a girl. in reality the original was little miss frances isabella ker gordon, only child of lord william gordon and his wife frances. in each position of the five heads the expression varies, and looking from one to another, we may trace through the series the child's changing moods. let each face tell its own story, and perhaps we may learn something of the workings of the mind behind it. here at the lower left side the child suddenly sees some new object, a strange bird or flower, and fixes her eyes upon it. she has a wide awake, inquiring mind, quick to notice all that life has to offer, and she is now in an observing mood. the expression of the face just above is very thoughtful and perhaps a little puzzled. life brings many hard questions to the serious child, and this is one of the little girl's pensive moods. the two upper faces at the right show quite another expression. the lips of both are parted, and they seem to be singing. one is reminded of the rapturous faces sometimes seen among choir boys when the music lifts them out of their surroundings. all childish troubles and questions are forgotten, as the two faces, flooded with light, seem to look into the glory of heaven. and now the head is turned and the child gazes directly out of the picture with far-seeing eyes. the expression is of perfect contentment. it will be noticed that the position of the last head is precisely like that of master bunbury, and there are points of resemblance between the two faces. the mood and expression are, however, quite unlike in the two children. the boy's eyes are directed towards some actual object, but the eyes of the child here are those of a dreamer fixed upon some vision of the imagination. [illustration: angels' heads] a portrait study like the angels' heads combines in a novel way the many-sided character of the child. the mother watching a little daughter from day to day feels that she has half a dozen little girls in one. a romp, a chatterbox, a living question mark, a philosopher, a dreamer, a veritable angel, all these and many more change places rapidly in the child's mood. she is taken to the photographer's for her portrait, and the negative shows only a sober little face intently anxious to look pleasant. a more fortunate photographer may perhaps catch her expression of eager interest as some curious new toy is shown her. but that innocent smile of happiness that comes into her face when singing, or that far-away look of the dreamer which she wears in the quiet twilight, is quite beyond the photographer's skill. reynolds knew the secret of representing these rarer and more delicate expressions. he was by nature a true lover of children, and many years of experience had taught him to understand their ways. lady gordon must have felt rich indeed to have instead of one commonplace picture five of the dearest faces her little girl could show, preserved on a single canvas. it is true that something of the child's individuality is lost by the sacrifice of the figure. when we look at the other child portraits of our collection we notice how much is expressed in the attitude and gesture of which we here have no indication. yet the picture shows how truly the face is "a mirror of the soul," and as an interpretation of the child's mind it is unique among reynolds's works. the original picture is painted in very delicate colors, and is one of the best preserved of reynolds's canvases. miss frances died unmarried in , and ten years later her mother presented the picture to the english national gallery. viii the duchess of devonshire and her child georgiana, the duchess of devonshire, was one of the most celebrated beauties of her time. she was the daughter of the earl of spencer, and was married[ ] at the age of seventeen to william, duke of devonshire, "the first match in england". [footnote : march , .] the young duchess was as clever as she was beautiful. she was fond of history, music and drawing, and she wrote verses both in french and english.[ ] she was an ardent admirer of the great johnson, and in a circle of his listeners hung with breathless interest upon his conversation. her charming manners, her wit, wealth, and rank drew a host of admirers about her, and she became the leader of english society. whatever the duchess of devonshire did, or whatever the duchess of devonshire wore, at once became the fashion. she opened the fashionable balls, she was a leading spirit in the ladies' club, and she set the standard for the height of headdresses and the length of feathers! [footnote : a long poem by the duchess was "the passage over mt. gothard," celebrated in coleridge's ode to georgiana.] she was not content with merely social triumphs, but her influence reached even into politics. her most remarkable political exploit was to secure the reëlection of charles james fox to parliament ( ) from the borough of westminster. for this she has sometimes been called "fox's duchess," but she is usually known as "the beautiful duchess." sir joshua reynolds was among the fortunate number upon whom the beautiful duchess bestowed her smiles. he had first painted her portrait in her girlhood and again as a young wife but two years married ( ). he was afterwards often honored with invitations to her house and enjoyed the hospitality of her brilliant entertainments. at length (june, ) a daughter was born to the duke and duchess of devonshire, whom they christened georgiana dorothy. the parents were so happy in their baby that the mother founded a charitable school in her honor. the child was a winning little creature, round and rosy and full of spirits. when she was about two years old the duchess again called her former portrait painter's services into use, desiring a picture of herself and daughter. by this time, the girlish beauty of the duchess had faded, and her slender figure had become somewhat stout. but the new grace of motherhood was now added to her other charms. as she had been the model of fashion for all the ladies of england in matter of dress, she now became a model of motherhood for their imitation. fashionable women usually gave over the care and nourishment of their children to nurses, but the duchess of devonshire took upon herself these tender maternal duties. thus mother and child were constantly together and became boon companions. the duchess had a very lively nature, and a child could not wish a gayer playmate. [illustration: the duchess of devonshire and her child] it is in one of their merry romps together that the painter has represented them. the mother is sitting on a sofa with the child on her knee, and the two are playing the old game of ride a cock horse to banbury cross. to and fro on her imaginary steed swings the little rider, supported by the encircling arm of the mother. it is rare sport, and the child kicks her bare feet and throws up her chubby arms gleefully. we can fancy we hear the baby voice gurgling with delight, and the mother smiles at the child's pleasure. some years afterward, the poet coleridge, writing an ode to the beautiful duchess, pays a tribute to her motherhood which forms a fitting comment on our picture:-- "you were a mother! at your bosom fed the babes that loved you. you, with laughing eyes, each twilight thought, each nascent feeling read which you yourself created." it is interesting to compare the picture with that of lady cockburn and her children which we have already studied. the lighting is managed in the same way, a curtain being drawn aside at the right, that we may look beyond the parapet into the open. it is an important principle in art that in representing any inclosed space like the interior of a room, there should be some device for increasing the length of the perspective. the imagination delights in distance, and feels imprisoned where there is no opening in an inclosure. the principal lines of this composition run diagonally from corner to corner, intersecting in the centre. some of these are so clearly defined that we can easily trace them. one extends from the uplifted right hand of the duchess across the slanting line of her bodice and along the lower edge of the child's frock. the lines of her left arm run parallel with this. in the other direction the uplifted arms of the baby, as well as the edge of the curtain, indicate the lines which cross these. ix hope we have naturally come to think of reynolds as chiefly a portrait painter. it was, indeed, by his work in portraiture that his name ranks among the great masters. yet he made various interesting excursions into other fields. we may see what charming fancy pictures he sometimes painted in cupid as link boy and the strawberry girl. historical pictures he also attempted, but not so successfully. religious and allegorical subjects he tried occasionally, and it is to illustrate his work of this kind that our picture of hope is chosen. the figure is a part of a large decorative scheme for a stained window. the central compartment is devoted to the subject of the nativity, and shows a group of the virgin mother with the christ child in the manger, joseph and the angels. in imitation of correggio's famous painting of the same subject, called the _notte_, the light of the picture proceeds from the babe. two smaller compartments on either side are filled with shepherds coming to worship. below is a series of seven panels, containing the figures of faith, hope, and charity, and the four cardinal virtues--temperance, justice, fortitude, and prudence. this plan of subjects was made by reynolds early in , to meet an order from new college, oxford, for a window design to be executed for their chapel. hope was one of the first figures that he painted, and in he was ready to exhibit, at the royal academy, the nativity, with faith, hope, and charity. the three fundamental elements of christian character have been associated together ever since the fifteenth chapter of first corinthians was written. artists and poets have had a fashion of personifying them as allegorical figures. certain symbols have even been invented to correspond to each--the cross for faith, the anchor for hope, and the heart for charity. thus the imagination has been called to the aid of religion in impressing christian teaching. reynolds tried to put into this figure the various qualities which make up our thought of hope. a pretty young woman steps forth from a region of clouds and lifts her face and hands towards the light. through an opening in the sky a broad beam of sunshine falls upon her. following its direction, she seems to be looking through the opening into some glad vision beyond. like the figure of hope in swinburne's sonnet, she "looks godward, past the shades where blind men grope round the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope, and makes for joy the very darkness dear." in the lower left-hand corner we may barely make out the portion of an anchor. the meaning of the old symbol is that hope keeps the soul firm, as an anchor holds the ship. the face of which we have a glimpse is girlish and innocent; the figure is full of buoyancy. the left arm and the uplifted hands are very delicately modelled. [illustration: hope] in a painting of this kind the artist is free to follow his own bent in the matter of dress, no longer hampered, as in his portraits, by the follies of fashion. it is delightful to see here the exquisite simplicity of the gown falling in long, beautiful lines. the only adornment is a gauzy scarf, twisted about the bodice and falling on each side in spiral folds. one is reminded of the swirling scarfs in our american vedder's designs, having, as here, a purely decorative purpose in the scheme. the hair is gathered up on the head in a loose knot, from which the end escapes in a curl. we are not looking here for any strong delineation of character, as in a portrait, and the painter did not even think it worth while to show much of hope's face. the panel is to be studied as a work of decorative art, and its beauty lies in its scheme of color, the contrast of light and shade, and the graceful patterns traced by the lines. these are drawn in long flowing curves. the strongest are those which run from the upper left to the lower right corner, to emphasize the motion of the figure towards the left. the outline of the cloud billows which separate the light from the darkness are counter curves cutting across diagonally. we could appreciate the lines of the panel even better if we could see it in its relation to the entire plan. each figure is drawn with reference to its place in the great design. though there are so many component parts, they unite to form a coherent whole, the main lines flowing together in a harmonious unity. reynolds's design was executed by the glass painter jervas; but when the window was set in place it was a great disappointment. the colors are opaque, and can properly be seen only in a darkened room; with the light falling through them they are at a great disadvantage. nevertheless the window is a matter of great pride to the fortunate college which possesses it. the original designs, instead of being black and white cartoons, as another artist might have made them, are finished paintings in oil. x lord heathfield lord heathfield, the original of this portrait by reynolds, is famous in english history as the hero of the siege of gibraltar. gibraltar, as is well known, is that great rock on the coast of spain, overlooking the narrow strait which forms the passage between the atlantic ocean and the mediterranean sea. in the affairs of nations this rock occupies a position of great importance, forming, as it were, a "key to the mediterranean." the strait of gibraltar is the gateway through which all ships must pass to gain the ports of southern europe, and it is therefore a matter of moment to all the civilized world what nation holds possession there. nature has made the rock a fortress, and military inventions have been added, through the centuries, to strengthen its defences. it has been the scene of some fearful conflicts. gibraltar once belonged to spain; but, by the fortunes of war, it fell into the possession of the english early in the eighteenth century. various attempts were made to recover it, but the most determined was that of , when the combined land and sea forces of france and spain were brought to bear upon it. the struggle lasted over three years; but, in the end, the english were victorious, and they have retained the fortress to this day. the governor in command at that time was general elliott, who was afterwards rewarded for his services here by being raised to the peerage as lord heathfield. general elliott was already well known as a gallant officer. he had served in the war of austrian succession, holding a colonel's commission at dettingen, where the english defeated the french in . in the seven years' war he had raised and disciplined a splendid corps of cavalry, known as the "light horse." he was now over sixty years old, and his long military career fitted him admirably for the command at gibraltar. he showed his calibre in the beginning of the siege, in refusing the keys of the fortress, which were demanded of him. with tremendous odds against him, his conduct has not inappropriately been likened to that of the greek hero leonidas, at thermopylæ, when ordered by the persian king to lay down his arms. throughout the defence his intrepidity, resource, and generalship, proved him a man of remarkable military genius. the crisis in the siege was reached in september, , when a fleet of ten enormous floating batteries opened fire on the fortress, each one manned by a picked crew, and carrying from ten to eighteen guns. these batteries were the invention of the most skilled french engineers, and were believed to be impenetrable to shot. the cannonading began in the morning and continued all day. soon after midnight nine ships were on fire, and the hostile fleet was doomed. [illustration: lord heathfield] general elliott showed himself a generous victor, and the men saved from the enemy's ships owed their lives to him. five years later the returned hero, now become lord heathfield, sat to reynolds for his portrait, ordered by a wealthy admirer--the public-spirited alderman boydell. the picture shows the brave old soldier as he took his stand in command of gibraltar. some one has said that it tells the whole story of the siege. the general grasps firmly the key of the fortress, the chain wound twice about his hand, to emphasize the determination of the man to hold it against all odds. his sword swings at his side, ready for instant use; a cannon in the rear is pointed downward towards the hostile fleet, and the smoke of battle rolls in clouds behind him. far away on the horizon a glimmer of light shines on the distant sea. the veteran stands as immovable as a stonewall jackson. his face is set in determined lines, the lips firmly closed, the head thrown back a little, and the eyes steadily fixed on the battle. yet the face is not altogether stern; there is much that is kindly and noble in the expression. one can fancy it in another moment softening into an expression of gentleness. it was a remarkable feature of his success during these terrible months of siege, that he was able to hold the love and loyalty of his men. when the spirits of the little garrison flagged, under the combined influence of disease and impending famine, his genial presence animated them with fresh hope. his chivalry was as unfailing as his bravery. it is said that "his military skill and moral courage place him among the best soldiers and noblest men europe produced in the eighteenth century." the portrait painter makes us feel all this in his picture. the attitude is so dignified, the gesture so forcible, the countenance so expressive, that we are impressed at once with the dignity of his character. even if we knew nothing of his history we should still be sure that this is a great man. the last days of the hero of gibraltar were spent at his home, kalkofen, near aix-la-chapelle, where he died, july , , in the seventy-third year of his age. xi mrs. payne-gallwey and her child (pickaback) pickaback is one of the old, old games which no one is so foolish as to try to trace to its origin. we may well believe that there was never a time when mothers did not trot their children on their knees and carry them on their backs. the very names we give these childish games were used in england more than a century ago. the picture of mrs. payne-gallwey and her child has long been known as pickaback, and will always be so called by many who would not be at the pains to remember the lady's name. it is one of those portraits in which the painter, impatient of the stiff conventional attitudes which were in vogue in his day, drew his inspiration from a simple homely theme of daily life. what an ingenious painter reynolds was, we learn more and more as we examine one picture after another and compare them with those of his predecessors. he liked to have his pictures tell stories, and often, when he had a mother and child to paint, he represented them as playing together just as they might have done every day in their own nursery or garden.[ ] the duchess of devonshire is seen in her boudoir trotting her baby to banbury cross, and the cockburn children are surprised in a game of hide-and-seek on their mother's lap. [footnote : claude phillips refers to pickaback as "one of the most popular and representative" of this class.] mrs. payne-gallwey seems to have just caught her little girl up on her back and to be starting off to give her a ride. her body is bent slightly forward in the attitude of one walking with a burden, and we almost seem to see her move. it is as if in another moment they would pass across the canvas and out of our sight. the incident is so precisely like something which happens every day that we might think the picture was painted yesterday instead of in , were it not for the few signs which indicate its date. for one thing, the lady's hair is arranged over a high cushion in the peculiar style affected at this period in fashionable circles. the style was carried to absurd extremes, ladies vying with one another in the height of the coiffure until in some cases it actually towered a foot and a half in height. over this structure were worn nodding plumes of feathers, increasing the fantastic effect. we may imagine how these unsightly erections vexed the artistic soul of sir joshua reynolds. he was, however, enough of an autocrat to take liberties with the fashions. when obliged to paint the portrait of a lady with a "head" (for so the coiffure was called) he always managed to modify its height and make its outlines harmonize with his composition. [illustration: mrs. payne-gallwey and her child "pickaback"] a side view was of course much less objectionable than the full front, in which the face was elongated to such strange proportions. in this case the face is turned in profile, and its delicacy is enhanced rather than injured by the masses of hair which frame it. the hair, instead of being drawn tightly back from the forehead in the ordinary way, waves in graceful curves, which are quite beyond the art of any hairdresser. finally, the massive effect of the hair is broken by the narrow scarf bound about it and tied under the chin. the curve of this scarf meets the curve of the profile to form a beautiful oval. the quaintest touch in the picture is the child's big hat. the same shape is worn to-day by men, and one might fancy that the baby had borrowed her papa's hat for the frolic. it is a curious change in fashions which transfers any part of a little girl's wardrobe to that of a grown man. we may feel a little better acquainted with the mother and daughter to know their names. mrs. payne-gallwey was philadelphia, the daughter of general de lancey, lieutenant governor of new york. the child was charlotte, who afterwards married john moseley. mrs. gallwey's beauty is of a very fragile type, and her eyes have a languor hinting of invalidism. only a few years later she died, while still in her young motherhood. little charlotte has a round healthy face, but it is a little sober. indeed, both mother and child seem to be of a rather dreamy, poetic temperament. their mood is hardly merry enough for such a game, but they enjoy it in their own way with quiet contentment. it is an idealized version of the ordinary romping game of pickaback. the composition is based on lines which cut the canvas diagonally. in one direction is the line running the length of the profile and continued along the bodice. crossing this at right angles is the shorter line made by the two arms. it is the first of these which gives character to the picture and produces the impression of motion which is so striking. it is almost as if a modern photographer had taken a snap shot of a figure in the act of walking. but in no such photograph, it is safe to say, would the lines chance to flow in such perfect rhythm. xii cupid as link boy a familiar figure in classic mythology was that of the little god of love, cupid. he was the son of venus, and, like her, was concerned in the affairs of the heart. ancient art represented him as a beautiful naked boy with wings, carrying a bow and quiver of arrows, and sometimes a burning torch. the torch was to kindle the flame of love, and the arrows were to pierce the heart with the tender passion. these missiles were made at the forge of vulcan, where venus first imbued them with honey, after which cupid, the mischievous fellow, tinged them with gall. thus it was that the wounds they inflicted were at once sweet and painful.[ ] [footnote : anacreon's ode xxxiii. in moore's translation.] now cupid was always bent upon some of his naughty pranks. he was afraid of nothing, and we read of his riding on the backs of lions and sporting with the monsters of the deep. he played all sorts of tricks on the gods, stealing the arms of hercules, and even breaking the thunderbolts of jove. his bow and arrows were a source of great amusement to him. he delighted in taking aim at unsuspecting mortals, and his random shots often wrought sad havoc. one of anacreon's odes relates how the poet was awakened on a rainy midnight by the cry of a child begging shelter. the little waif proved to be cupid in disguise. after being warmed and dried by the fire, the boy artfully craved permission to try his bow, to see if the rain had injured its elasticity. the arrow flew straight at the poet's heart with a sweet pain, and away flew cupid laughing gayly at his exploit.[ ] [footnote : anacreon's ode xxviii. in moore's translation.] cupid was naturally a very popular god, yet his tricksy ways caused him to be looked upon with suspicion. every one was anxious to stand well with him. in some of the cities of ancient greece, as sparta and athens, he was worshipped with great solemnity, and every five years festivals were held in his honor. in our picture the painter has represented the little torch-bearing god disguised as a link boy. he is dressed in the clothes of a london street urchin, and behind him are the warehouses of the great city. the link bearer's occupation was abandoned so long ago that it needs a word of explanation. in the old times, before there were stationary street lights of any kind, men and boys used to run about by night, carrying torches or links, as they were called, to lighten the way for passers-by. they were like the newsboys of to-day, running up to each wayfarer to offer their services, and always glad to pick up a few pennies. they accompanied parties home from the clubs, the theatres, and all sorts of entertainments, running beside carriages, as well as foot passengers. nor was their occupation solely by night. there sometimes came suddenly in london a thick fog, shutting out the sunlight as completely as if it had been night. people caught in the streets at such times soon lost their way, and the services of the link boy were then very useful. [illustration: cupid as link boy] we may now understand what a capital chance for fun cupid would have, playing the part of a link boy. the strangers whom he guided on their way would little suspect that the link boy's torch was kindling the flame of love within them. he might lead them whither he pleased, and finally, disclosing his true identity, would draw his bow upon them and leave them to their fate. it is perhaps after some such escapade as this that we see him in the picture, link in hand, pausing to look back with a smile of suppressed amusement at some of his victims. it seems very odd to find cupid in such surroundings, and especially to see the little god hampered by the clumsy garments of mortals. they are old and ragged, the cast-off finery such as is picked up by street gamins. the child's hair is tossed about his head in unkempt locks, and altogether he looks the part to perfection. yet there are unmistakable signs of his identity in the wings spread from his shoulders. if you look closely, too, you can see through the rip in his sleeve the quiver of arrows which the sly fellow thought to hide under his coat. the face and expression could belong alone to cupid. the mouth is shaped in a genuine cupid's bow, and the pointed chin shows his astuteness. mischief lurks in the corners of the eyes and in the curve of his mouth. the cupid as link boy is one of a number of fancy pictures which sir joshua reynolds painted for his own pleasure. his portrait orders were nearly all from the wealthy and aristocratic classes, and the artist would not have been content without a greater variety of subjects than this work afforded. he had a fertile imagination for ideal or "fancy" subjects, particularly for those of a humorous nature. often when he chanced to be driving through the streets his attention would be attracted by some little waif, and he would take the child back to his studio for a model. our picture is from one of these mischievous london street boys, whose face reappears in several other works. xiii the hon. anne bingham miss anne bingham was one of the many aristocratic ladies whose portraits reynolds painted, and one of the most interesting of this class of sitters. her vivacious face looking into ours wins us at once, and we should be glad to know more of the charming original. anne bingham was the youngest daughter of sir charles bingham, who in was created baron lucan. her mother, lady lucan, was a remarkably talented woman, trying her hand with success at modelling, painting, and poetry. she was ambitious to be an intellectual leader, and like several other ladies of the time entertained after the fashion of the french salons, inviting people of wit and learning to meet in her drawing-room for discussion. her artistic work was really remarkable. encouraged by the advice and help of horace walpole, she became a skilful copyist, and it is said imitated the works of some earlier painters with a genius that fairly depreciated the originals! it was thus in exceptionally artistic and intellectual surroundings that anne grew out of girlhood. her oldest sister, lavinia, who afterwards became countess spencer, inherited the mother's artistic tastes, and was likewise a favorite with horace walpole. the two daughters were both charming in appearance, and there was a certain sisterly resemblance between them. if lavinia's eyes were a bit more sparkling, judged by the portraits, anne's mouth was smaller and more daintily modelled. as a frequent guest in their mother's drawing-room, sir joshua must have known both the young ladies. of the elder he painted several portraits; of the younger, but this one, executed in . it was a natural and appropriate idea that miss anne's portrait should be made in a style similar to one of her sister, as a companion picture. both were represented in half-length figure, wearing white kerchiefs and broad-brimmed hats. those must have been pleasant sittings which gave the veteran portrait painter miss anne for a subject.[ ] plainly there was a perfect sympathy between sitter and painter. the smile the lady turns towards the easel is as naïve as that of miss bowles herself. she watches his clever work with an artist's delight, and with the simple spirit of a child. [footnote : when her father was created an earl in , she became lady anne.] nothing could be more distasteful to such a character than the affected pose of a woman of fashion. she has dropped into a chair with a careless grace all her own, and tells the painter she is ready. he takes up his brush, and lo, the very essence of her smile is transferred to his canvas. [illustration: the hon. anne bingham] we praise the delicate rendering of the gauzy kerchief veiling her neck, but it is far less wonderful than the delicate interpretation of her expression. the fine sensitiveness of her nature, her lively fancy and sense of humor, her playfulness, her coquetry, her impulsiveness, her volatile temperament--all this we read in the shining eyes and the smiling mouth, though no one can say how they were made to tell so much. the signs of her birth and breeding are in every line, yet she is something of a bohemian too. there is a delightful sense of camaraderie in her smile. there is a certain portrait by leonardo da vinci known as the mona lisa, and famous for its baffling smile. there is a tantalizing quality about it which makes one forever wonder what the lady is thinking about and why she is smiling. nothing could be more in contrast than this smile of miss bingham. there is no mystery in it, but rather it takes us into her confidence in the most winning way. the costume interests us not only as a reminder of bygone fashions, but for its picturesqueness. the bodice is ornamented only by the big buttons by which it is laced. a narrow belt finishes it at the waist, with a small buckle in front. the hair is frizzed in puffy masses about the face, escaping in a few curls which fall over the shoulders. this was evidently the favorite coiffure in the year , as the portrait of the duchess of devonshire with her child, painted in the same year, shows precisely the same style. both ladies also wear low-cut bodices with kerchiefs arranged in the same manner. the finishing touch of miss bingham's costume is the big straw hat worn aslant on the back of the head. it has been a favorite device of great portrait painters to dress their sitters in all sorts of fanciful headwear. rembrandt's portraits show an endless variety of caps, turbans, and hats. rubens was fond of painting broad-brimmed hats shading the face, one of his celebrated pictures being a study of this kind called le chapeau de paille (the straw hat). now reynolds was to some extent an imitator of these two men, and it may be he learned something from their pictures about hats. however that may be, we see how the hat here proves very effective in bringing the head into harmonious relation with the whole composition. the brim describes a diagonal line parallel with the line made by the kerchief over the left shoulder. the kerchief on the right shoulder falls in a line parallel with the left arm. a composition based on short diagonal lines like these is as different as possible in character from one of long flowing curves like hope. each one is appropriate to its own subject. xiv the strawberry girl village life in england before the time of railroads had a picturesque charm which it has since lost except in remote districts. we learn something about it in miss mitford's sketches of "our village" and in miss edgeworth's "tales." from such books it is delightful to reconstruct in imagination some of these rural scenes; the wide meadows where the cowslips grow, the brooks running beneath the hawthorns and alders, the lanes winding between hedgerows, the green common where the cricketers play, the low cottages covered to the roof with vines, and the trim gardens gay with pinks and larkspur. these villages are connected with the outside world only by the postcart and chapman. here modest little girls like miss mitford's hannah and miss edgeworth's simple susan move about their daily tasks and run on their errands of mercy. now sir joshua reynolds was a native of devonshire, a beautiful english district which all born devons love with peculiar devotion, as we may see from charles kingsley's descriptions in "water-babies." from time to time in his busy life the painter returned to his home for a breath of country air. on one of these visits he brought back to london with him his young niece theophila palmer, whose father had just died. offy, as she was called, soon became the pet of her bachelor uncle's household, of which she long remained a member. as she flitted about the house the little country-bred girl with her fresh healthy beauty was a constant reminder to the painter of the woods and fields. perhaps one day as he was looking at her with special pleasure the picture suddenly flashed upon his fancy of offy in the character of a village maid. the idea developed into the strawberry girl, for which offy sat as model. a little girl has been sent on an errand along a lonely road leading out of the village. it may be that like little red riding hood in the nursery tale she is carrying some dainties to her grandmother. a basket of strawberries hangs on her arm, and her apron also seems to be filled with something, for it is gathered up in front like a bag, the corners dropping over the arm. twilight begins to fall as she comes to a turn of the road overshadowed by a high rock. there are all sorts of queer noises and shadows here, and she steals timidly past the eerie place, peering forward with big eyes. [illustration: the strawberry girl] yet she is a womanly child, who will not easily be turned back. she feels the importance of her errand, and is worthy of the trust. the simple low-cut gown is that of a village maid. an odd cap, something like a turban, covers her head and adds a trifle to her height and dignity. her round face and chubby neck would be the envy of the puny city child who knows not the luxury of big porringers of bread and milk. if her hands are rather too delicately moulded for those of a country child we must remember again that reynolds was painting from his own little niece. in imagination we follow the little maid about the simple round of her childish pursuits. every morning she goes demurely to school to fix her thoughts on "button holes and spelling books." perhaps it is a dame school like that in "water babies," with a "shining clean stone floor and curious old prints on the wall and a cuckoo clock in the corner," here some dozen children sit on benches "gabbling chris-cross," while a nice old woman in a red petticoat and white cap hears them from the chimney corner. our little girl has duties at home as well, and is sometimes seen, a pitcher in one hand and a mop in the other, making the house tidy. she can boil potatoes, shell the beans, feed the hens, and make herself useful in many ways. on rare occasions she has a holiday in the fields, and then what joy it is in spring and early summer to find the haunts of the wild flowers which grow in such abundance in the english country. miss mitford writes of a wonderful field where bloomed in season, "primroses, yellow, purple, and white, violets of either hue, cowslips, oxlips, arums, orchises, wild hyacinths, ground ivy, pansies, strawberries, and heart's ease, covering the sunny open slope under a weeping birch." a favorite game is making cowslip balls. the tufts of golden flowerets are first nipped off with short stems, until a quantity are gathered. then the ribbon is held ready and the clusters are nicely balanced across it until a long garland is made, when they are pressed closely together and tied into a sweet golden ball. when we remember that the little offy, who was the original strawberry girl, was transplanted from her devonshire home to the great city of london, we are interested to know something of her after life. she grew to be as dear as a daughter to her uncle. in the dreary days when he could not use his eyes she was his reader and amanuensis. the many distinguished guests who enjoyed his hospitality were charmed with her sweet manners. in the course of time she married richard lovell gwatkin, a cornish gentleman in every way worthy of her. "her happiness was as great as her uncle could wish. she lived to be ninety, to see her children's children, and, intelligent, cheerful, and affectionate to the last, vividly remembered her happy girlhood under her uncle's roof, and the brilliant society that found a centre there." xv dr. samuel johnson the eccentric figure of dr. samuel johnson was one of the familiar sights of london during the middle of the eighteenth century. he was a man of great learning, a voluminous writer, and an even more remarkable talker. he was born in , and, the son of a poor bookseller, he struggled against poverty for many years. literary work was ill paid in those days, and johnson gained his reputation but slowly. he contributed articles to the magazines, and twice he conducted short-lived periodicals of his own--the "rambler" and the "idler." he wrote, besides, a drama, "irene"; a tale, "rasselas"; a book of travel, a "journey to the hebrides"; and many biographies, including the "lives of the poets." his largest undertaking was an english dictionary, upon which he spent eight years of labor. at length his pecuniary troubles came to an end when, in , the government awarded him a pension of £ a year. by this time his great intellectual gifts had begun to be appreciated, and he was the first man of letters in england. in thackeray's phrase, he "was revered as a sort of oracle." johnson was now too old to acquire the graces of polite society, even had he wished them. his huge, uncouth figure and rolling walk, his countenance disfigured by scrofula, his blinking eyes, his convulsive movements, his slovenly dress and boorish manners made him a strange figure in the circles which entertained him. his appetite was enormous, and he ate "like a famished wolf, the veins swelling on his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks." he usually declined wine, but his capacity for tea was unlimited. many funny stories are told of the number of cups poured for him by obliging hostesses, for, oddly enough, he was a great favorite with the ladies, and knew how to turn a pretty compliment. his temper was at times very irritable and morbid, and he occasionally had violent fits of rage. yet, with all these peculiarities, he had a kind heart and was sincerely religious. his devotion to his wife and his aged mother[ ] was very touching, and the poor and infirm knew his charities. in his own lodgings he provided a home for an oddly assorted family of dependents, consisting of an old man, a blind woman, a negro boy, and a cat. all the details of his daily life and habits are minutely described in a biography written by his admiring friend, boswell, who was intimately associated with him for many years. the book he wrote after johnson's death tells us not only all about the learned doctor, but much also about his friends. [footnote : his wife died in , and his mother in at the age of ninety.] [illustration: dr. samuel johnson] reynolds was one of his warm friends, and the two understood each other well. often when they were together in company, the painter's tact and courtesy smoothed over some breach of etiquette on the part of his companion. at reynolds's suggestion, the two founded together a small club of congenial spirits, called the literary club. some other good friends of johnson's were the thrales. mr. thrale was a rich brewer, and a man of parts, and his wife was one of the brightest women of her day. johnson was a constant visitor at their house, and became at last, practically, a member of the family. the thrales's drawing-room at their streatham villa was the scene of many brilliant gatherings, where intellectual people met for conversation and discussion. johnson was the autocrat of this circle. he was often rude, even insolent, in expressing his opinion, and wounded many by his sarcasm. but his vast stores of information, his keen mind and ready wit, made his conversation an intellectual feast. it was an ambition of mr. thrale to ornament his house with a gallery of portraits of contemporary celebrities, and it was for this collection that reynolds painted the portrait of johnson, reproduced in our illustration. it was really a repetition of a portrait he had previously painted for their common friend and club-fellow, bennet langton. here we see the sage at the age of sixty odd years, precisely as he appeared among his friends at streatham. the painter has straightened the wig, which was usually worn awry, but otherwise it is the very dr. johnson of whom we read so much, with his shabby brown coat, his big shambling shoulders, and coarse features. a remarkable thing about the portrait is that reynolds succeeded so well in showing us the man himself under this rough exterior. the inferior artist paints only the outside of a face just as it looks to a stranger who knows nothing of the character of the sitter. the master paints the face as it looks to a friend who knows the soul within. now, reynolds was not only a master, but he was, in this case, painting a friend. so he put on the canvas, not merely the eccentric face of dr. johnson as a stranger might see it, but he painted in it that expression of intellectual power which the great man showed among his congenial friends. something, too, is suggested in the portrait of that sternly upright spirit which hated a lie. it is a portrait of johnson the scholar, the thinker, and the conversationalist. he seems to be engaged in some argument, and is delivering his opinion with characteristic authoritativeness. the heavy features are lighted by his thought. one may fancy that the talk turns upon patriotism, when johnson, roused to indignation by the false pretences of many would-be patriots, exclaims, "sir, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." xvi the portrait of reynolds in the city of florence, italy, there is a famous gallery of portraits unlike any other collection of pictures in the world. it consists of the portraits of artists, painted by their own hands, and includes the most celebrated painters of all nations, from the fifteenth century to the present time. here may be seen the portraits of velasquez, titian, tintoretto, rembrandt,--the world's greatest portrait painters,--and in the same splendid company hangs the portrait of reynolds, reproduced in our frontispiece. he painted it in for the special purpose of sending it to florence at the request of the imperial academy of that city, of which he had just been elected a member. as we have seen in our study of the angels' heads, a single portrait can show us only one side of the sitter's character. this portrait of reynolds, painted as a condition of membership in a society of artists, and for a gallery of artists' portraits, was intended chiefly to show the artistic side of his nature. the pose itself at once suggests the artist. the expression of the mobile face is that of a painter engaged at his easel, turning a searching glance upon the object he is painting. in short, it is a sort of official portrait, introducing the new member to his associates in the imperial academy. the artist wears the oxford cap and gown, to which he is entitled, by virtue of the honorary degree of d. c. l., conferred upon him by the university of oxford. in his hand he carries a roll of manuscript, presumably one of his lectures before the royal academy. both the roll and the costume are, as it were, insignia of his english honors. a latin inscription on the back of the portrait, written by the painter's own hand, enumerates the several distinctions which are his. reynolds might, indeed, be pardoned the pride with which he reviewed his career. from somewhat humble beginnings he had now made his way to the foremost place in his profession. he was born at a time when art was in a very low state in england, and there were no advantages for the study of painting. his only instruction was under an inferior portrait painter named hudson, with whom he served as apprentice about two years. his real art training was during three years of travel in italy. there he examined and studied the works of the greatest masters of the past, and returned to england with altogether new ideals. setting up a studio in london, he soon gained an immense popularity. when the royal academy was founded, in , he became the first president, and at the same time the honor of knighthood was conferred upon him. other artists now rose to prominence, but he still held the supremacy. the painter's popularity depended by no means on his artistic talents alone; his opinions were worth hearing on many subjects. he was fond of books and literary discussions, and his friendship was valued by such men of intellect as johnson, goldsmith, burke, and others of that charmed circle making the literary club. he had a genial, kindly nature, and his manners were exquisitely courteous. thackeray once wrote that "of all the polite men of that age, joshua reynolds was the finest gentleman." he was a member of several clubs, was fond of society, and was a welcome guest in many of the best houses in london. he himself entertained with generous hospitality, and gathered about his table some of the brightest people of his time. his intimate friend, edmund malone, described him as a man "rather under the middle size, of a florid complexion, and a lively and pleasing aspect; well made, and extremely active. his appearance at first sight impressed the spectator with the idea of a well-born and well-bred english gentleman. with an uncommon equability of temper, which, however, never degenerated into insipidity or apathy, he possessed a constant flow of spirits which rendered him at all times a most pleasing companion.... he appeared to me the happiest man i have ever known." through many years reynolds was very deaf, and was obliged to use an ear trumpet to aid him in general conversation. in later years he also wore spectacles, so that we always picture him in his advancing life with trumpet and glasses. his habit of taking great quantities of snuff was one which gave occasion to many jokes among his friends. numerous poetic tributes were written by his admirers, describing more or less rhetorically his qualities as a man and an artist. there is one bit of verse by goldsmith ( ), in a comic vein, and in the form of an epitaph, which delineates very cleverly the real character of the man:-- "here reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, he has not left a better or wiser behind; his pencil was striking, resistless and grand, his manners were gentle, complying, and bland; still born to improve us in every part, his pencil, our faces, his manners, our heart: to coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, when they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing; when they talked of their raffaelles, correggios, and stuff, he shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff!" * * * * * masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyke macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. leighton. a. lys baldry. rembrandt. josef israels. watts. w. loftus hare. titian. s. l. bensusan. raphael. paul g. konody. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate .--suzanna van collen this portrait, painted about , and one of the gems of the wallace collection, presents susanna van collen, wife of jan pellicorne, and her daughter.] rembrandt by josef israels illustrated with eight reproductions in colour london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh list of illustrations plate i. suzanna van collen frontispiece from the wallace collection page ii. a portrait of saskia in the brera, milan iii. syndics of the cloth merchants' guild in the royal museum at amsterdam iv. portrait of an old man in the pitti palace at florence v. the company of francis banning cocq in the royal museum at amsterdam vi. portrait of a young man in the pitti palace at florence vii. portrait of an old lady from the national gallery, london viii. head of a young man in the louvre introduction while the world pays respectful tribute to rembrandt the artist, it has been compelled to wait until comparatively recent years for some small measure of reliable information concerning rembrandt the man. the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have been very little concerned with personalities. a man was judged by his work which appealed, if it were good enough, to an ever-increasing circle. there were no newspapers to record his doings and, if he chanced to be an artist, it was nobody's business to set down the details of his life. sometimes a diarist chanced to pass by and to jot down a little gossip, quite unconscious of the fact that it would serve to stimulate generations yet unborn, but, for the most part, artists who did great work in a retiring fashion and were not honoured by courts and princes as rubens was, passed from the scene of their labours with all the details of their sojourn unrecorded. rembrandt was fated to suffer more than mere neglect, for he seems to have been a light-hearted, headstrong, extravagant man, with no capacity for business. he had not even the supreme quality, associated in doggerel with dutchmen, of giving too little and asking too much. consequently, when he died poor and enfeebled, in years when his collection of works of fine art had been sold at public auction for a fraction of its value, when his pictures had been seized for debt, and wife, mistress, children, and many friends had passed, little was said about him. it was only when the superlative quality of his art was recognised beyond a small circle of admirers that people began to gather up such fragments of biography as they could find. shakespeare has put into mark antony's mouth the statement that "the evil that men do lives after them," and this was very much the case with rembrandt van ryn. his first biographers seem to have no memory save for his undoubted recklessness, his extravagance, and his debts. they remembered that his pictures fetched very good prices, that his studio was besieged for some years by more sitters than it could accommodate, that he was honoured with commissions from the ruling house, and that in short, he had every chance that would have led a good business man to prosperity and an old age removed from stress and strain. these facts seem to have aroused their ire. they have assailed his memory with invective that does not stop short at false statement. they have found in the greatest of all dutch artists a ne'er-do-well who could not take advantage of his opportunities, who had the extravagance of a company promoter, an explosive temper and all the instincts that make for loose living. [illustration: plate ii.--a portrait of saskia rembrandt's portraits of his wife saskia are distributed fairly equally throughout the world's great galleries, but this one from the brera in milan is not so well known as most, and on this account it is reproduced here. it is called "portrait of a woman" in the catalogue, but the features justify the belief that the lady was the painter's wife.] alas for these poor biographers, who, had they but taken the trouble to trust to the pictures rather than to the lies that were current, would have seen that the artist's life could not have been nearly as bad as they imagined. happily, to-day, we have more than the testimony of the painted canvas, though that would suffice the most of intelligent men. further investigation has done a great deal to remove the blemishes from rembrandt's name; mm. vosmaer and michel have restored it as though it were a discoloured picture, and those who hail rembrandt master may do so without mental reservation. his faults were very human ones and his merits leave them in the shade. rembrandt was born in the pleasant city of leyden, but it is not easy to name the precise year. somewhere between and he started his troubled journey through life, and of his childhood the records are scanty. doubtless, his youthful imagination was stirred by the sights of the city, the barges moving slowly along the canals, the windmills that were never at rest, the changing chiaroscuro of the flooded, dyke-seamed land. perhaps he saw these things with the large eye of the artist, for he could not have turned to any point of the compass without finding a picture lying ready for treatment. even when he was a little boy the fascination of his surroundings may have been responsible in part for the fact that he was not an industrious scholar, that he looked upon reading and writing as rather troublesome accomplishments, worth less than the labour involved in their acquisition. and yet his father was a wealthy man, he would seem to have had no occasion to neglect his studies, and the best one can find to say about these early years is that they may have been directed badly by those in authority. in any case, it is well-nigh impossible to make rules for genius. the boy who sits unmoved at the bottom of his class, the butt of his companions, the horrible example to whom the master turns when he wishes to point a moral, may do work in the world that no one among those who attended the school since its foundation has been able to accomplish and, if rembrandt did not satisfy his masters, he was at least paving the way for accomplishment that is recognised gratefully to-day wherever art has found a home. his family soon knew that he had the makings of an artist and, in , when he could hardly have been more than sixteen, and may have been considerably less, he left leyden university for the studio of a second-rate painter called jan van swanenburch. we have no authentic record of his progress in the studio, but it must have been rapid. he must have made friends, painted pictures, and attracted attention. at the end of three years he went to lastman's studio in amsterdam, returning thence to leyden, where he took gerard dou as a pupil. a few years later, it is not easy to settle these dates on a satisfactory basis, he went to amsterdam, and established himself there, because the dutch capital was very wealthy and held many patrons of the arts, in spite of the seemingly endless war that holland was waging with spain. the picture of "st. paul in prison" would seem to have been produced about , but the painter's appearance before the public of amsterdam in the guise of an accomplished artist whose work had to be reckoned with, may be said to have dated from the completion of the famous "anatomy lesson," in or . at this time he was living on the bloemgracht. rembrandt had painted many portraits when the picture of the medical men and the cadaver created a great sensation and, if we remember that he could not have been more than twenty-seven years old, and may have been no more than twenty-five, it is not difficult to understand that amsterdam was stirred from its usual reserve, and greeted the rising star with enthusiasm. in a few weeks the entrance to the painter's studio was besieged by people wishing to sit for their portraits, by pupils who brought florins, no small sum in those days for the privilege of working for a year in the master's studio. it may be mentioned here that even in the days when the painter's popularity with the general public of holland had waned, there was never any lack of enthusiastic students from many countries, all clamouring for admission to the studio. many a man can endure adversity with courage; success is a greater trial. bad times often avail to bring out what is best in creative genius; success tends to destroy it. rembrandt did not remain unaffected by the quick response that amsterdam made to his genius. his art remained true and sincere, he declined to make the smallest concession to what silly sitters called their taste, but he did not really know what to do with the money and commissions that flowed in upon him so freely. the best use he made of changing circumstances was to become engaged to saskia van uylenborch, the cousin of his great friend hendrick van uylenborch, the art dealer of amsterdam. saskia, who was destined to live for centuries, through the genius of her husband, seems to have been born in , and to have become engaged to rembrandt when she was twenty. the engagement followed very closely upon the patronage of rembrandt by prince frederic henry, the stadtholder, who instructed the artist to paint three pictures. there seemed no longer any need to hesitate, and only domestic troubles seem to have delayed the marriage until . saskia is enshrined in many pictures. she is seen first as a young girl, then as a woman. as a bride, in the picture now at dresden, she sits upon her husband's knee, while he raises a big glass with his outstretched arm. her expression here is rather shy, as if she deprecated the situation and realised that it might be misconstrued. this picture gave offence to rembrandt's critics, who declared that it revealed the painter's taste for strong drink and riotous living--they could see nothing more in canvas than a story. several portraits of saskia remained to be painted. she would seem to have aged rapidly, for after marriage her days were not long in the land. she was only thirty when she died, and looked considerably older. [illustration: plate iii.--syndics of the cloth merchants' guild this fine work, of which so much has been written, is to be seen to-day in the royal museum at amsterdam. it is one of the finest examples of the master's portrait groups, and was painted in .] in the first years of his married life rembrandt moved to the nieuwe doelstraat. for the time he had more commissions than he knew how to execute, few troubles save those that his fiery temperament provoked, and one great sorrow, arising out of the death of his first-born. there can be no doubt at all that he spent far too much money in these years; he would attend the sales of works of art and pay extravagant sums for any that took his fancy. if he ever paused to question himself, he would be content to explain that he paid big prices in order to show how great was his respect for art and artists. he came to acquire a picture by rubens, a book of drawings by lucas van leyden, and the splendid pearls that may be seen in the later portraits of saskia. very soon his rash and reckless methods became known to the dealers, who would push the prices up with the certain knowledge that rembrandt would rush in where wiser buyers feared to tread. the making of an art collection, the purchase of rich jewels for his wife, together with good and open-handed living, soon began to play havoc with rembrandt's estate. the artist's temperament offended many of the sober dutchmen who could not understand it at all, his independence and insistence upon the finality of his own judgment were more offensive still, and after there were fewer applications for portraits. in we find rembrandt taking an action against one albert van loo, who had dared to call saskia extravagant. it was, of course, still more extravagant of rembrandt to waste his money on lawyers on account of a case he could not hope to win, but this thought does not seem to have troubled him. he did not reflect that it would set the gossips talking more cruelly than ever. still full of enthusiasm for life and art, he was equally full of affection for saskia, whose hope of raising children seemed doomed to disappointment, for in addition to losing the little rombertus, two daughters, each named cornelia, had died soon after birth. in rembrandt's mother died. her picture remains on record with that of her husband, painted ten years before, and even the biographers of the artist do not suggest that rembrandt was anything but a good son. a year later the well-beloved saskia gave birth to the one child who survived the early years, the boy titus. then her health failed, and in she died, after eight years of married life that would seem to have been happy. in this year rembrandt painted the famous "night watch," a picture representing the company of francis banning cocq, and incidentally a day scene in spite of its popular name. the work succeeded in arousing a storm of indignation, for every sitter wanted to have equal prominence in the canvas. they had subscribed equally to the cost, and rembrandt had dared to compose the picture! it may be said that after his wife's death, and the exhibition of this fine work, rembrandt's pleasant years came to an end. he was then somewhere between thirty-six and thirty-eight years old, he had made his mark, and enjoyed a very large measure of recognition, but henceforward, his career was destined to be a very troubled one, full of disappointment, pain, and care. perhaps it would have been no bad thing for him if he could have gone with saskia into the outer darkness. the world would have been poorer, but the man himself would have been spared many years that perhaps even the devoted labours of his studio could not redeem. saskia's estate, which seems to have been a considerable one, was left to rembrandt absolutely, in trust for the sole surviving child titus, but rembrandt, after his usual free and easy fashion, did not trouble about the legal side of the question. he did not even make an inventory of the property belonging to his wife, and this carelessness led to endless trouble in future years, and to the distribution of a great part of the property into the hands of gentlemen learned in the law. perhaps the painter had other matters to think about, he could no longer disguise from himself the fact that public patronage was falling off. it may be that the war with spain was beginning to make people in comfortable circumstances retrench, but it is more than likely that the artist's name was not known favourably to his fellow-citizens. his passionate temperament and his quick eye for truly artistic effects could not be tolerated by the sober, stodgy men and women who were the rank and file of amsterdam's comfortable classes. to be sure, the stadtholder continued his patronage; he ordered the famous "circumcision" and the "adoration of the shepherds." pupils continued to arrive, too, in large numbers, many of them coming from beyond holland; but the public stayed away. rembrandt was not without friends, who helped him as far as they could, and advised him as much as they dared; but he seems to have been a man who could not be assisted, because in matters of art he allowed no outside interference, and he was naturally impulsive. money ran through his hands like water through a sieve, though it is only fair to point out that he was very generous, and could not lend a deaf ear to any tale of distress. between , when saskia died, and , it is not easy to follow the progress of his life; we can only state with certainty that his difficulties increased almost as quickly as his work ripened. his connection with hendrickje stoffels would seem to have started about , and this woman with whom he lived until her death some thirteen years later, has been abused by many biographers because she was the painter's mistress. some have endeavoured to prove, without any evidence, that he married her, but this concession to mrs. grundy seems a little beside the mark. the relations between the pair were a matter for their own consideration, and it is clear that hendrickje came to the painter in the time of his greatest trouble, to serve him lovingly and faithfully until she passed away at the comparatively early age of thirty-six. she bore him two children, who seem to have died young, and, curiously enough, her position in the house was accepted by young titus rembrandt, who, when he was nearing man's estate, started, in partnership with her, to deal in pictures and works of art--a not very successful attempt to support the establishment in comfort. in the year when hendrickje joined rembrandt, he could no longer pay instalments on the house he had bought for himself in the joden breestraat. about the following year he began to sell property, hoping against hope that he would be able to tide over the bad times. three years later he started borrowing on a very extensive scale. in a fresh guardian was appointed for titus, to whom his father transferred some property, and in that year the painter was adjudged bankrupt. the year saw much of his private property sold, but his collection of pictures and engravings found comparatively few bidders, and realised no more than florins. a year later his store of pictures came under the hammer, and in , hendrickje and titus started their plucky attempt to establish a little business, in order that they might restore some small part of the family fortune. [illustration: plate iv.--portrait of an old man rembrandt painted very many portraits of men and women whose identity cannot be traced, and it is probable that the original of this striking portrait in the pitti palace at florence was unknown to many of the painter's contemporaries. this is one of rembrandt's late works, and is said to have been painted about .] for a little time the keen edge of trouble seems to have been turned. one of rembrandt's friends secured him the commission to paint the "syndics of the drapers' guild," and this is one of the last works of importance in the artist's life, because his sight was beginning to fail. to understand why this fresh trouble fell upon him, it is necessary to turn for a moment to consider the marvellous etchings he produced between and . the drawings may be disregarded in this connection, though there are about a thousand undisputed ones in existence, but the making of the etchings, of which some two hundred are allowed by all competent observers to be the work of the master, must have inflicted enormous strain upon his sight. when he was passing from middle age, overwhelmed with trouble of every description, it is not surprising that his eyes should have refused to serve him any longer. one might have thought that the immortals had finished their sport with rembrandt, but apparently their resources are quite inexhaustible. one year after the state of his eyes had brought etching to an end, the faithful hendrickje died. a portrait of her, one of the last of the master's works, may be seen in berlin. the face is a charming and sympathetic one, and moves the observer to a feeling of sympathy that makes the mere question of the church's participation in her relations with rembrandt a very small affair indeed. in the next seven years the old painter passed quietly down towards the great silence. a few ardent admirers among the young men, a few old friends whom no adversity could shake, remained to bring such comfort as they might. with failing sight and health he moved to the lauriergracht, and the capacity for work came nearly to an end. the lawyers made merry with the various suits. some had been instituted to recover money that the painter had borrowed, others to settle the vexed question of the creditors' right to saskia's estate. in titus received the balance that was left, when the decision of the courts allowed him to handle what legal ingenuity had not been able to impound. in the summer of , when he was about twenty-seven years old, titus married his cousin magdellena, and this little celebration may be supposed to have cheered the elder rembrandt a little, but his pleasure was brief, for the young bridegroom died in september of the same year, and in the following year a posthumous daughter was born. by this time the immortals had completed their task, there was nothing left for them to do; they had broken the old painter's health and his heart, they had reduced him to poverty. so they gave him half a year to digest their gifts, and then some word of pity seems to have entered into their councils, and one of the greatest painters the world has seen was set free from the intolerable burden of life. from certain documents still extant we learn that he was buried at the expense of thirteen florins. he has left to the world some five or six hundred pictures that are admitted to be genuine, together with the etchings and drawings to which reference has been made. he is to be seen in many galleries in the old world and the new, for he painted his own portrait more than a score of times. saskia, too, may be seen in several galleries and hendrickje has not been forgotten. [illustration: plate v.--the company of francis banning cocq generally known as the "night watch." this famous picture, now to be seen in the royal museum at amsterdam, is the best discussed of all the master's works. it has been pointed out that it is in reality a day scene although it is known to most people as the "night watch." the picture was painted in .] there is no doubt that many of rembrandt's troubles were self-inflicted; but his punishment was largely in excess of his sins. his pictures may be admired in nearly all great public collections; they are distributed, too, among private galleries. rembrandt's art has found a welcome in all countries. we know now that part of his temporary unpopularity in holland was due to the fact that he was far in advance of his own time, that the conventions of lesser men repelled him, and he was perhaps a little too vigorous in the expression of his opinions. now, in the years when the voice of fame cannot reach him and his worst detractors are silent, he is set on a pedestal by the side of velazquez and titian. rembrandt an appreciation of the pictures in amsterdam will the reader turn away with a shrug of the shoulder, when he sees, heading this essay, the famous name that we hear so often? i feel like one sitting among friends at a banquet, and though many of the guests have expressed and analysed the same feelings in different toasts, i will not be restrained from expressing, in my turn, my delight in the festive gathering. i touch my glass to ensure a hearing, and i speak as my heart prompts me. it is not very important or interesting, but i am speaking in praise of him in whose honour the feast is given. in this frame of mind i am contributing my little share to the pile of written matter, which has been produced from all quarters, in honour of the great painter. i many years ago i went to amsterdam as an art student, to be trained under the auspices of the then famous portrait painter kruseman. very soon i was admitted to the master's studio, and beheld with admiration the portraits of the distinguished personages he was painting at the time. the pink flesh-tints of the faces, the delicate treatment of the draperies and dresses, more often than not standing out against a background of dark red velvet, attracted me immensely. when, however, i expressed a desire to be allowed to copy some of these portraits, the master refused my request. "no," he said; "if you want to copy, go to the museum in the 'trippenhuis.'"[ ] i dared not show the bitter disappointment this refusal caused me. having come fresh from the country, the old masters were a sealed book to me. i failed to discover any beauty in the homely, old-fashioned scenes of dark landscapes over which people went into ecstasies. to my untrained eyes the exhibition in "arti"[ ] seemed infinitely more beautiful; and pieneman, gallait, calame, and koekoek especially excited my admiration. i was not really lacking in artistic instinct any more than my fellow-students, but i had not yet gained the experience and practice, which are indispensable to the true understanding of the quaint but highly artistic qualities of the old dutch masters. i maintain that however intelligent a man may be, it is impossible to appreciate old dutch art to the full, or even to enjoy it, unless one has become thoroughly familiar with it, and has tried to identify oneself with it. in order to be able to sound the real character and depth of manifestations of art, the artistic sensibility has to be trained and developed. it was long before i could summon up sufficient courage to enter this holy of holies armed with my colours and brushes. indeed i only started on this venture after a long spell of hard work, out-of-doors as well as in the studio, and after having made many studies from the nude, and many more still-life studies; then a light broke in upon my darkness. i began to understand at last that the true aim of art does not consist in the smooth and delicate plastering of the colours. i realised that my chief study was to be the exact value of light and shade, the relief of the objects, and the attitude, movements, and gestures of the figures. having learned to look upon art from this point of view, i entered the old "trippenhuis" with pleasure. little by little the beauty and truth of these admirable old masters dawned upon me. i perceived that their simple subjects grew rich and full of meaning through the manner in which they were treated. the artists were geniuses, and the world around them either ignored the fact, or did not see it until too late. knowing little of art, i chose for my first copy a small canvas, a "hermit" by gerard dou, not understanding that, though small, it might contain qualities which would prove too difficult for me to imitate. i had to work it over and over again, for i could not get any shape in the thick, sticky paint. then i tried a head by van der helst, and succeeded a little better. [illustration: plate vi.--portrait of a young man this portrait may be seen to-day in the pitti palace at florence. it is said to be one of rembrandt's portraits of himself, painted about .] at last i stopped before one of the heads in the "syndics of the cloth merchants' guild." the man in the left-hand corner, with the soft grey hair under the steeple-hat, had arrested my fancy. i felt that there was something in the portrait's beauty i could grasp and reproduce, though i saw at once that the technical treatment was entirely different from what i had attempted hitherto. however, the desire to reproduce this breadth of execution tempted me so much that i resolved to try my hand at it. i forget now what the copy looked like; i only remember that for years it hung on my studio wall. so i tried to grasp the colour scheme, and the technique of the different artists, until the beauties of the so-called "night patrol" and the "syndics" took such hold of me that nothing attracted me but what had come from the hand of the great master, the unique rembrandt. in his work i found something which all the others lacked. freedom and exuberance were his chief attractions, two qualities utterly barred and forbidden in the drawing class and in my teacher's studio. although frans hals impressed me more than any other painter with the power with which he wielded the brush, even he was put in the shade by rembrandt's unsurpassable colour effects. when i had looked at rembrandt's pictures to my heart's content, i used to go down to the ground floor in the "trippenhuis" to the print cabinet. here i found his etchings beautifully arranged. it was a pleasant room overlooking a garden, and in the centre stood a long table covered with a green cloth, on which one could put down the portfolio and look at the gems they contained at leisure. i often sat there for hours, buried in the contemplation of these two hundred and forty masterpieces. the conservator never ceased urging me to be careful when he saw me mix them up too much in my efforts to compare them. how astonished i was to find in the painter who, with mighty hand, had modelled in paint the glorious "night patrol," an accomplished engraver, not only gifted with the power and freedom of a great painter, but thoroughly versed in all the mysteries of the use of the etching needle on the hard, smooth copper. still it was not the extraordinary skill which attracted me most in these etchings. it was rather the singular inventive power shown in the different scenes, the peculiar contrast between light and shade, and the almost childlike manner in which the figures had been treated. the artist's soul not only spoke through the choice of subject, but it found an expression in every single detail, conveyed by the delicate handling of the needle. many biblical subjects are represented in the amsterdam collection; they are full of artistic imagination and sentiment in their composition in spite of their seeming incongruity. the conception is so highly original, and at the same time betrays such a depth of understanding, that other prints, however beautifully done, look academic and stilted beside them. among those etchings were excellent portraits, wonderfully lifelike heads of the painter's friends and of himself; but when one has looked at the little picture of his mother, he is compelled to shut the portfolio for a moment, because the unbidden tears rise to the eyes. it is impossible to find anything more exquisite than this engraving. motherly kindness, sweetness, and thoughtfulness are expressed in every curve, in the slightest touch of the needle. each line has a meaning; not a single touch could have been left out without injury to the whole. hokusai, the japanese artist, said that he hoped to live to be very old that he might have time to learn to draw in such a way that every stroke of his pencil would be the expression of some living thing. that is exactly what rembrandt has attained here, and, in this portrait, he realised at the age of twenty-four the ideal of the old japanese; it is one of his earliest etchings. i re-open the portfolio to have a look at the pictures of the wonderful old jewish beggars. they were types that were to be found by the score in the amsterdam of those days, and rembrandt delighted to draw them. one is almost inclined to say that they cannot be beggars, because the master's hand has endowed them with the warmth and splendour with which his artistic temperament clothed everything he looked at. when i had looked enough at the etchings, i used to go home through the town, and it seemed to me as if i were meeting the very people i had just seen in the engravings. as i went through the "hoog straat" and "st. anthony's breestraat" to the "joden breestraat," where i lived a few doors from the famous house where rembrandt dwelt and worked so long, i saw the picturesque crowd passing to and fro; i saw the vivid hebrew physiognomies, with their iron-grey beards; the red-headed women; the barrows full of fish or fruit, or all kinds of rubbish; the houses, the people, the sky. it was all rembrandt--all rembrandtesque. a great deal has been changed in those streets since the time of which i have been writing, yet, even now, whenever i pass through them i seem to see the colours, and the kind of people rembrandt shows us in his works. in the meantime i had found a third manifestation of rembrandt's talent, viz., his drawings. to a young painter, who himself was still groping in the dark for means of expressing his feelings, these drawings were exceedingly puzzling, but at the same time full of stimulus. less palpably living than his etchings, it was some time before i could properly appreciate them, but when i understood what i firmly believe still, namely, that the master did not draw with a view to exhibiting them or only for the pleasure of making graceful outlines i felt their true meaning. they were simply the embodiments of his deeper feelings; emanations from the abundance of his fertile imagination. they have been thrown on the paper with an unthinking, careless hand; the same hand that created masterpieces, prompted by the slightest impulse, the least sensation. when i looked at them superficially they seemed disfigured by all sorts of smudges and thick black lines, which cross and recross in a seemingly wild and aimless sort of way; but when looked into carefully, they all have a meaning of their own, and have been put there with a just and deep felt appreciation of light and shade. the greater compositions crowded with figures, the buildings, the landscapes--all are impregnated with the same deep artistic feeling. [illustration: plate vii.--portrait of an old lady this famous portrait of an old lady unknown is in our national gallery. it is on canvas ft. + / in. by ft. in.] one evening one of my friends gave us a short lecture on art and showed us many drawings by ancient and modern artists, most of them, however, being by contemporaries who had already become famous. among them was one drawing by rembrandt, and it was remarkable to notice the peculiar effect it produced in this collection. the scene represented on the old smudgy piece of paper was so simple in execution, so noble in composition, done with just a few strokes of the pencil, that all the other drawings looked like apprentice-work beside it. here was the master, towering above all. thus i saw rembrandt, the man who could tell me endless stories, and could conjure them up before my eyes with either brush, pencil, or etching needle. whether heaven or earth; the heroes of old; or only a corner of old amsterdam--out of everything he made the most beautiful drawings. his pictures of lions and elephants are wonderfully naïve. his nude figures of female models are remarkable, because no painter dared paint them exactly as he saw them in his studio, but rembrandt, entranced by the glow and warmth of the flesh tints, never dreamt of reproducing them otherwise than as he saw them. it was no venus, or june, or diana he wanted. he might, perhaps, even take his neighbour's washerwoman, make her get up on the model throne, and put her on the canvas in all the glory of living, throbbing flesh and blood. and the way in which he put his scrawls and strokes is so wonderful that one can never look too long at them. all his work is done with a light-heartedness, a cheerfulness, and firmness which preclude at once the idea of painful study and exertion. ii what do i think of the master now, after so many years? come with me, reader, let us look together at the strongest expression of rembrandt's art, viz., his picture "the night patrol." our way leads us now to the ryksmuseum, and we sit down in the newly built "rembrandt room," with our backs to the light, so as to obtain a full view of the picture, and we try to forget all about the struggle it cost to erect this temple of art. at first sight, we are struck by the grand movements of light and shade, which seem to flood the canvas as if with waves of coloured harmonies. then, suddenly, two men seem to step out from the group. the one is dressed in sombre-coloured clothes, whilst the other is resplendent in white. that is rembrandt all over, not afraid of putting the light in bold contrast against the dark. so as to maintain the harmony between the two he makes the dark man lift his hand as if he were pointing at something, and in doing so, he casts a softening shadow on his brilliant companion. genius finds a way where ordinary mortals are at a loss how to help themselves. clearly these men are in earnest conversation with each other, and it is quite evident that they are the leaders of the company. but when everything was put on the canvas that he intended to put there, the master stood in front of it and shook his head. to him these two leaders did not stand out sufficiently from the rest. so he took up his palette again, and again he dipped his broadest brushes deep in paint and with a few mighty strokes he transformed these two figures; a little more depth here, some more light there. he tried every means to give the scene more depth, and a fuller meaning. then he saw that it was all right and left it. the likeness of his patrons was, perhaps, not very exact and most likely some murmurs were raised at the want of minutely finished detail; but he did not heed such matters. to him the main point was to make his figures live and breathe and move; and see how he succeeded! from the plumes of their hats to the soles of their feet everything is living, tangible. how full of energy and character are their heads! their dress, the steel gorget, the boots of the man in white; everything bears witness to the wonderful power of the master. and look at the man in black, with his red bandolier, his gloves, and his stick. this does not strike one as anything out of the common, because the composition is so true, so perfectly natural and simple. i cannot remember having seen a single picture in which the peculiar style and picturesqueness of those days is so vividly expressed, as in the figures of these two men calmly walking along on the giant canvas. now let us turn to the right and have a look at the perspiring drummer. his pock-marked face, overshadowed by a frayed hat, is of the true falstaff type. the swollen nose, the thick-lipped mouth, every detail is carried out with the daring of the true artist which characterises all the master's work. look at him, drumming away as if he wanted to make it known that he himself is one of the most magnificent specimens of the work of the genius whom men call rembrandt. on looking at this man i can understand why gerard de lairesse exclaimed in his great book on painting: "in rembrandt's pictures the paint is running down the panel like mud!" but it was only his conscientious narrow-mindedness which made him say it. genius never fails to get into conflict with narrow thought. but now let us turn our attention to the left-hand corner. there we see that pithy soldier all in red. rembrandt, with his intuitive knowledge of chiaroscuro, was not afraid of painting a figure all in red. he knew that the play of light and shade on the colour would help him out. here part of the red is toned down by a beautiful soft tint, which makes the whole figure blend harmoniously with the greyish-green of the others. this man in red, too, has been treated in the same masterly manner of which i spoke above. if one looks at him attentively, it seems as if the man, who apparently might step out of the canvas at any rate, had been painted with one powerful sweep of the brush. how firm is the treatment of the hand loading the gun; how true the shadows on the red hat and jerkin. there the figure stands, alert, living, full of movement, rich in colour. in this marvellous picture we come across something striking at every turn. how life-like is the halberdier looking over his shoulder; and the man who is inspecting his gun, just behind the figure in white; observe the wonderful effect of the laughing boy in the grey hat against the dark background. even the pillar which serves as a background to the man with the helmet adds to the harmony of the whole. but here we meet with something peculiar! what is that quaint little girl doing among all those men? [illustration: plate viii.--head of a young man. (unknown) in the louvre] numbers of critics have racked their brains about the meaning of different details. but if rembrandt could have heard them, he would have answered with a laugh, "don't you see that i only wanted this child as a focus for the light, and a contrast with all the downward lines and dark colours?" the man with the banner in the background, the dog running away, all these details help each other to carry out the effect of line and colour. there is not a square inch in this canvas which does not betray a rare talent. this is a case in which the assertion, "cut me a piece out of a picture and i will tell you if it is by an artist," could successfully be applied. now, i hope my readers won't object to accompanying me a little further, and stopping with me before the "syndics." there it hangs, the great simple canvas, quite different in character from the "night patrol." everything here is dignified and stately. the whole picture is a glorious witness to the consummate knowledge the master possessed of expressing the individual soul in the human face. here they sit, those old dutch fathers, assembled in solemn conclave, debating about their trade, with the books on the table in front of them; and rembrandt has painted these heads so true to life that in the course of years they have become like old friends; yes, old friends, though they lived hundreds of years before we were dreamt of. how long have i known that man on the left, with his hand on the knob of his arm-chair, and the fine grey hair on his broad wrinkled brow showing from under the high steeple-hat? the flesh tints in the face, whether catching the full light, or partly veiled by shadows, display an endless variety of shades, and the neutral greens and reds, greys and yellows, are put against each other in such a wonderful manner that an effect has been attained which strikes us dumb with admiration. the way in which he is made to stand out from the background is in itself marvellous, but just look at the man! how full of life and understanding is the look in those eyes. it is something quite unique, something rembrandt himself has never surpassed. and then there are the other figures; the man who is leaning forward; the one sitting right in front of the book, his neighbour; even the fifth merchant on the right, with his servant behind him--one and all are full of life and light. the background is such as rembrandt only, with his understanding of lines, could have devised. the wall and the panelling shut in the composition in such a way that one cannot possibly imagine it ever having been otherwise. and even this skilful touch is made subordinate to the warm red colour of the tablecloth, which lends the picture an additional depth. i don't know whether this picture was very much discussed by rembrandt's contemporaries when it was finished. but to us, who have seen so much of the art of the great italians, germans, and spaniards, these heads are the highest achievement of the art of painting. when i was in madrid, where i was charmed by velasquez' work, our party was one day walking through the broad streets of the capital. passing a large, picturesque building, our attention was attracted by a gaudy poster informing us that an exhibition of the works of modern spanish artists was being held within. our curiosity being aroused, we entered, and found that in this country, where so many famous artists lived and worked, there are among the modern artists many studious, highly talented men, who serve their art with true love and devotion. but suddenly it seemed as if we had been carried by magic from spain back to amsterdam. we had come face to face with a copy of the "syndics," painted by a spanish artist during a stay in amsterdam. was it national prejudice, or was it conviction? i don't know; but this copy spoke to us of a spirit of greater simplicity, of a truer conception of the nature and dignity of mankind than anything we had admired in the prado. yes; this picture even kills its own dutch brothers. it makes van der helst look superficial, and franz hals unfinished and flat. so much thoroughness and depth combined with such freedom and grace of movement is not to be found anywhere else. these people have lived on the canvas for centuries, and they will outlive us all. and the man who achieved this masterpiece was at the time of its production a poor, struggling burgher living in an obscure corner of the town where his tercentenary festival was lately celebrated. iii but this is not the place for the sad reflections which are awakened in our minds on examining the records of him whose name the world now glorifies and raises to the skies. better to honour the great master who, for so many centuries, has held the world in awed admiration. there is no need to-day to drag rembrandt forth from the obscurity of the past to save him from oblivion; we were not obliged to cleanse his image from the dust of ages before showing to the world this unequalled genius to whom holland proudly points as one of her own sons. on the contrary, never was rembrandt's art valued so highly as it is now. archives and documents are searched for details about his life and works. we want to know all about his life, and are anxious to share his inmost feelings in prosperity and adversity. the houses where he lived are marked down and bought by art-lovers. at the present time rembrandt is in the zenith of his glory. gold loses its value where his pictures are concerned. fortunes are spent to secure the most insignificant of his works; people travel across continents to see them; and criticism, which for long years did little more than snarl at rembrandt, has for nearly fifty years been dumb. it is remarkable that none of the great painters have, in the course of years, been subjected to so much criticism as rembrandt. and notwithstanding all the things which have been said about the improbability of the scene, and the exaggeration of the dark background, the "night patrol" is now, as it ever was and ever will be, the "world's wonder," as our english neighbours say. during his lifetime there were people who condemned rembrandt because he refused to follow in the footsteps of the old italian painters, because he persisted in painting nature as he saw it. to us such a reproach seems strange, yet it is quite true. even during the last years of rembrandt's life a growing dissatisfaction with the existing ideas on art and literature had taken possession of the dutch mind. people developed a morbid taste for everything classical; and when i read in the prose works and poems of these days the latinised names and the constant allusions to greek gods and goddesses and mythological personages, so strangely out of place under our northern sky, i am filled with disgust. it was fortunate, indeed, that rembrandt always felt strong in his own conviction and only followed his own views. for many years after his death, even as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, a number of art critics raised objections against the dangerous theories of which his pictures were the expression. again and again they attacked his technical treatment; none of them ever grasped its deeper, fuller meaning. happily those days are far behind us. a great number of books and pamphlets have been published on rembrandt during the last fifty years, and they are almost unanimous in their praise and admiration of the great master. the more liberal feelings of the modern world have achieved some victories in the realms of art as well as elsewhere. we moderns feel that the apparent shortcomings and exaggerations are nothing but the inevitable peculiarities attendant upon genius. and we even go so far that we would not have him be without a single one of them, for fear of losing the slightest trait in the character of the great man whose every movement roused our intellectual faculties. so rembrandt has been raised in our days to the pinnacle of fame which is his by right; the festival of his tercentenary was acknowledged by the whole civilised world as the natural utterance of joy and pride of our small country in being able to count among its children the great rembrandt. i finish,--"with the pen, but not with the heart!" for if i should go on until the inclination to add more to what i have written here should fail me, my readers would have tired of me long before i had tired of my subject. i am thinking of that rare gem, the portrait of jan six--of the louvre, of cassel, of brunswick, of what not! may these pages convey to the reader the fact that i have always looked upon rembrandt as the true type of an artist, free, untrammelled by traditions, genial in all he did; in short, a figure in whom all the great qualities of the old republic of the united provinces were concentrated and reflected. footnotes: [footnote : the "trippenhuis" was used as a picture gallery before the ryksmuseum was built. it was an old patrician family mansion belonging to the trip family. several members of this family filled important posts in the government of the old republic of the united provinces, and some were burgomasters of amsterdam.] [footnote : "arti et amicitiæ" is a society of modern dutch painters. occasionally the members organise exhibitions of the work of contemporary countrymen or of foreign artists, and every year there is an exhibition of their own works. these shows are held in the society's own building in amsterdam at the corner of the "rokin" and "spui."] solutions of baryta salts, has been described as carmine-coloured and permanent. we have not found it to be so--an experience which has evidently not been confined to ourselves; and we cannot help thinking that this is one of those errors which get copied from one chemical work into another, to the special confusion of students. it is but fair, however, to add that in mr. watts' dictionary of chemistry, the latest and best work of the kind, this ferrate is said to become "brick-red after washing and drying at ° c.," and to be only "tolerably stable." . _gold reds._ many organic substances added to gold solutions throw down either the metallic gold or the red oxide, which then unites with the organic compound more or less decomposed and forms a red precipitate. sugar, gum, the decoctions of cochineal, gamboge, fustic, turmeric, sumach, catechu, and brazil wood, all afford red pulverulent colours. boiled with sugar, gold solution gives first a light and then a dark red. whatever their merits, the excessive costliness of these preparations renders them inadmissible as pigments. at one time, indeed, a gold compound known as purple of cassius was so employed, but this soon became obsolete on the introduction of madder purple. . _iodine pink._ there may be obtained from iodine and mercury a very pretty pink colour, analogous in composition to pure scarlet. it is apt to pass into the scarlet modification, and is in other respects even less to be depended on than that variety. . _kermes lake_ is an ancient pigment, perhaps the earliest of the european lakes, and so called from the arabic alkermes. it is sometimes spelt _cermes_, whence probably cermosin and crimson, and kermine and carmine. in old books it is named vermilion, in allusion to the insect, or _vermes_, from which it is prepared. this insect is the "coccus ilicis," which feeds upon the leaves of the prickly oak in the south of europe. like the "coccus cacti," it is covered with a whitish dust, and yields a tinctorial matter soluble in water and alcohol. kermes and the lac of india doubtless afforded the lakes of the venetians, and appear to have been used by the earliest painters in oil of the school of van eyck. the former, under the appellation [greek: kurno kokino], is said to be employed by the modern greeks for dyeing their caps red. some old specimens of this pigment which the author obtained were in drops of a powdery texture and crimson colour, warmer than cochineal lakes, and having less body and brilliancy. they worked well, however, and withstood the action of light better than the latter, though the sun ultimately discoloured and destroyed them. in other respects, they resembled the lakes of cochineal. as a colouring matter, kermes is only about one-twelfth part as powerful as that substance. . _lawson's red._ in it was stated that professor lawson had prepared a new dye of great richness, in the laboratory of queen's college, canada, from an insect, a species of coccus, found the previous summer for the first time on a tree of the common black spruce (_abies nigra_), in the neighbourhood of kingston. having been but recently observed, a sufficient quantity had not been obtained for a complete series of experiments as to its nature and uses; but the habits of the insect, as well as the properties of the dye, seemed to indicate that it might become of practical importance. in colour it closely resembled ordinary cochineal, but was rather more scarlet in hue. it was described as capable of being produced in temperate countries. the colouring matter had not then been thrown upon a base, nor do we know that it has since been introduced as a pigment. if it possessed greater stability than cochineal, with equal brilliancy and depth, this dye might form one of those colours of the future, to whose possible sources we would direct attention. . _manganese red._ bisulphide of arsenic combines with basic metallic sulphides forming a class of sulphur-salts, called by berzelius, hyposulpharsenites. the hyposulpharsenite of manganese is a dark red precipitate, uninjured by sulphuretted hydrogen, and so far applicable as a pigment. containing arsenic, it would of course be poisonous; and would probably be found to fade on exposure to air and light. . _murexide._ the red obtained from this substance created a great deal of interest among printers and dyers on its introduction in , or thereabouts. for purity and brilliancy of shade it was not excelled by any other colour, but not being able to stand the effects of air and light, its employment was limited. we are not aware that murexide has yet been brought forward as a pigment, and judging from its character as a dye, it would scarcely enrich the palette. dyes and pigments have much in common, and a fugitive dye cannot be expected to furnish a permanent pigment. murexide is produced by the action of ammonia on alloxan, which is itself derived from the uric acid of guano by treatment with nitric acid, and was known nearly forty years back to stain the fingers and nails red. the first murexide sent into the market was a reddish-purple powder, dissolving in water with a fine purple tint, leaving a little residue undissolved. owing to improvements in manufacture, it is now capable of being prepared almost chemically pure, and with that green metallic reflection peculiar to several coal-tar salts and the wings of certain insects. when sulphuretted hydrogen is passed through a concentrated solution of murexide, it is immediately decoloured; a fact which renders it likely that murexide pigments would be as liable to suffer from an impure atmosphere, as from exposure to light and air. when an alkaline solution of murexide is precipitated by an acid, a light shining powder results, called purpuric acid. this dissolves in alkalies, and combines with metalline bases to form various coloured compounds, termed _purpurates_. among them may be mentioned a red purpurate of lead, a purple-red and a rose-coloured purpurate of mercury, a purple-red purpurate of silver, a dark red-brown purpurate of strontia, a crystalline red purpurate of cobalt, a scarlet purpurate of platinum, a yellow purpurate of zinc, and a green purpurate of baryta. all of these, however, being more or less soluble in water, and owing their colours to murexide, would be ill adapted for pigments. . _paille de mil,_ or african cochineal, is a substance obtained from africa. whether it has received its name of cochineal from its appearance or origin is not clear, but it behaves more like galls and sumac than cochineal, though it does give a kind of red with alumina mordants. the colours it yields are deficient in brightness, and it has otherwise been reported unfavourably of. . _peganum harmala,_ the seeds of which afford a red colour, has been investigated by the french, but described as inferior to existing reds both in brilliancy and stability. . _persulphomolybdates._ the metallic compounds formed by the combination of persulphomolybdic acid with a base are pulverulent, in many cases of a red colour, and for the most part insoluble in water. with barium, the acid furnishes a yellowish-red powder, insoluble in, but made denser by water, which imparts to it a cinnabar colour. with calcium it is said to yield a scarlet, sparingly soluble in water. with chromium, uranium, lead, platinum, and copper, it gives a dark red; that from the last metal turning brown when collected on a filter. it likewise produces reds with zinc, cadmium, iron, mercury, and tin; of which the last is slightly soluble in water. molybdenum being a rare metal, and persulphomolybdate of potash, the salt used in the foregoing reactions, difficult to prepare, it is unlikely that the colours named will rank among the pigments of this generation. nevertheless, as we have observed before, such fancy products should not be altogether ignored, it being quite as well to have some knowledge of our resources, even though those resources be not at present available. all the rare metals afford coloured compounds: tantalum, niobium, pelopium, vanadium, tellurium, titanium, yttrium, lanthanum, didymium, glucinum, cerium, thorinum, zirconium, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, osmium, indium, thallium, &c.; and it is just possible that some of these may one day scrape acquaintance with the palette. . _red chalk_, the colouring matter of which is sesquioxide of iron, is used as a crayon. some specimens are excessively hard, so much so that they are difficult to crush, even in an iron mortar; while others have the consistence of the softest iron-ochres. they vary too in tint from a fawn colour to the softest brick-red, occasionally being almost as bright as a mixture of equal weights of vermilion and venetian red. the amount of iron oxide present has been found to range from four to thirty-seven per cent, according to the depth and hardness of the samples. when a specimen of red chalk tolerably rich, but not too rich, in iron oxide is finely powdered and strongly ignited, it offers a remarkable change of colour, becoming a dull sage-green. perhaps this, if it were permanent, might prove useful in foliage tints. . _red precipitate_, or mercuric oxide, may be obtained either of a brick-red or orange-yellow colour. it is destroyed by impure air, and on exposure to sunshine gradually turns black, being superficially decomposed into oxygen and metallic mercury or mercurous oxide. . _rose pink_ is a coarse kind of lake, produced by dyeing chalk or whitening with decoction of brazil wood, peachwood, sapan, bar, camwood, &c. it is a pigment much used by paper-stainers, and in the commonest distemper painting, &c., but is too perishable to merit the attention of the artist. chevreul obtained a crystalline substance from brazil wood, which he looked upon as the pure colouring matter, or as containing the pure colouring matter, and which gave red and crimson precipitates with many salts. possibly some of these might prove more durable than the roughly made rose pink. . _rouge_, the rouge végétale of the french, is a species of carmine, prepared from safflower or carthamus, which is the flower of a plant growing in the north of africa, india, and other warm climates. safflower yields two colours--a valueless yellow which dissolves in cold water, and about five per cent of red, insoluble in water but dissolved by alkalies. the red, or carthamin, furnishes a pigment of exquisite beauty, marked by richness, transparency, and free working. its extreme fugacity, however, militates against its employment by artists. as a dye, its manner of fixing upon fibre is different from that of any other colouring matter; requiring no mordant, like madder or cochineal, and needing no solution, like indigo or anotta, but fixing at once as soon as the cloth is brought into contact with it. but even for a dye the colour is fugitive, fading after a few hours' exposure to sunshine, and sometimes being quite bleached in the course of a day. it is when combined with levigated talc to form the paint of the toilette that the red becomes most serviceable. possessing a peculiar softness and velvety glow, rouge is an unrivalled--and a most harmless--aid to beauty. _chinese rouge_ and _pink saucers_ have much of the qualities of, and appear to be also prepared from, the safflower. . _rufigallic red._ when a duly proportioned mixture of gallic acid and oil of vitriol is carefully and gradually heated to °, a viscid wine-red liquid results. if this be poured into cold water, after cooling, a heavy brown-red granular precipitate is formed, soluble in parts of boiling water. it dissolves in potash-ley, and to fabrics impregnated with alum or iron mordants, imparts the same shades of colour as madder; the colours so produced withstanding soap but not chlorine. whether brilliant lakes could be obtained from the potash solution of the red, and whether those reds would be stable, it might be worth while to ascertain. . _sandal red._ we have kept this separate from other reds derived from woods, because it is said (by professor h. dussance) to be obtainable not only equal in beauty and brightness to carmine, but of greater permanence. the process of preparation is as follows:--the powdered root exhausted by alcohol gives a solution to which hydrated oxide of lead is added in excess. the combination of colouring matter and lead oxide is then collected on a filter, washed with alcohol, dried, dissolved in acetic acid, and mixed with a quantity of water. the red being insoluble therein is precipitated, while the acetate of lead remains dissolved. after being washed, the colour is dried at a low temperature. the professor affirms that the red so produced is unaffected by sulphuretted hydrogen, or by light and air; and it is stated that the colour which was used to paint the carriages of the emperor napoleon, remained as bright at the end of nine years as when it was put on. possessing such properties, it is curious that the red has never been--in this country at least--introduced as an artistic pigment, the more especially as seventeen years have elapsed since its discovery. . _silver red._ by adding monochromate of potash to an acid solution of nitrate of silver, a particularly fine ochre-red is obtained. it is, however, apt to be injured both by foul air and exposure. . _sorgho red._ some nine years back there was found to be a carmine colouring matter in most parts of the chinese sorgho, chiefly in the unpressed stem. the red, which is extracted in an impure state, is dissolved in weak potash-ley, thrown down by sulphuric acid, and washed with water. this purified product, soluble in alcohol, caustic alkalies, and dilute acids, has been employed in austria, baden, &c., for the dyeing of silks and woollens with the common tin mordants. the colours produced from it are unchanged, they say, by warm soapsuds or light. we do not know whether the red found its way to england, but it has certainly not appeared here as a pigment. . _thallium red._ the orange-yellow precipitate formed by mixing a neutral salt of protoxide of thallium with bichromate of potash, is converted by nitric acid into an orange-red. the latter compound, which is a terchromate, is almost insoluble in cold water, parts being required to dissolve it. if the colour be boiled in a large excess of moderately strong nitric acid it is dissolved, yielding magnificent cinnabar red crystals on the solution cooling. these crystals likewise seem to be the terchromate. . _tin pink._ by igniting strongly for some hours a mixture of stannic oxide, chalk, chromate of potash, and a little silica and alumina, a dingy red mass is obtained, which acquires a beautiful rose-red colour on being washed with water containing hydrochloric acid. for the same reason that the pinks of cobalt are superfluous as artistic pigments, this tin product is commercially ineligible. having, however, the advantage of being cheap, and being probably durable, it would be well adapted for the common purposes of painting, in place of the fugitive rose pink. . _ultramarine red?_ in gmelin's handbook of chemistry it is remarked that "hydrogen gas passed over ignited ultramarine, colours it light red, from formation of liver of sulphur, hydrosulphuric acid gas and water being evolved at the same time." on most carefully making the experiment with a sample of native blue (the variety referred to) we did not succeed in effecting this change: no alteration to red or even to purple took place, the only result being that the colour was entirely spoilt, having assumed a leaden slate-gray hue. at our request, the trial was kindly repeated by well-known chemists, who took every precaution to ensure success. several specimens of ultramarine were acted upon, but in no case was a red or anything like a red obtained, the products ranging from a slate-gray to a drab-grey. sufficient hydrosulphuric acid gas was evolved to blacken paper moistened with acetate of lead, a fact which proved that the blue had lost some of its sulphur. seeing that not only no red was produced, but that no tendency to red was imparted, is it possible the change described by gmelin occurred under exceptional circumstances? all conversant with chemical matters will admit that results are obtained occasionally which cannot be repeated, owing it may be to some slight difference in the materials employed, or some slight variation of the process. perhaps a link, considered of no importance at the time and overlooked, has been lost, and thus the whole chain of proceeding becomes useless. it is, therefore, within the bounds of probability that the red ultramarine of the great german chemist was furnished either by a peculiar specimen of blue, or by a modified form of the method he gives. we have noticed the subject at some length because if a red ultramarine, brilliant and durable, could be obtained, the colour might prove of value. a permanent artificial compound corresponding to french blue would certainly be an acquisition. . _uranium red._ by treating the yellow sulphite of uranium with a prolonged current of sulphuretted hydrogen, and saturating gradually with ammonia, a red finally results. this colour is insoluble in water, and it has the objection of remaining partially suspended for an almost indefinite time, colouring the liquid light red. the product is brighter and more beautiful while moist; when dried and powdered, its tone--slightly approaching vermilion--is duller. the colour may be obtained of several degrees of brilliancy, but, apart from the question of expense, it would be inadmissible in oil, the red gradually altering by contact therewith. the most persistent tint at length resembles burnt sienna. . _wongshy red._ there was imported a few years ago from batavia a new colouring principle, under the name of _wongshy_, and consisting of the seed-capsule of a species of gentian. the aqueous extract, freed from the pectin which it contains, yields with baryta- and lime-water yellow precipitates, from which acids separate the colouring matter of a vermilion hue. when thus prepared it is insoluble in water, and would so far be adapted for a pigment. the red has not, however, been employed as such, and we are unacquainted with its habitudes. * * * * * the concluding remarks appended to the chapter on yellow apply equally to red, and indeed to all other colours. it is not assumed that the list is exhausted: there are other reds, but they are, like some we have mentioned, ineligible as pigments, either by reason of their fugacity, their costliness, the difficulty of producing them on a scale, or the sources whence they are derived being commercially unavailable. while endeavouring throughout the work to render complete the collection of pigments actually in use, it is our object to give a selection only of numbered italicised colours; ample enough, however, to include those which have become obsolete or nearly so, and full enough to afford some insight into our resources. the nearer we approach perfection, the more eager we are to arrive at it: the path before us, therefore, cannot fail to be of interest. looking back, and noting those pigments commonly employed, we find that the reds like the yellows are divisible into three classes--the good, bad, and indifferent; or the permanent, the semi-stable, and the fugitive. among permanent reds, rank cadmium red, madder reds, mars red, the ochres, and vermilions. in the second or semi-stable class, must be placed cochineal lakes, indian lake, and red chrome. to the third division, or the fugitive, belong dragon's blood, pure scarlet, red lead, and the coal-tar reds. with regard to the foregoing classification, it must be borne in mind that the properties and effects of pigments are much influenced by adventitious circumstances. sometimes pigments are varied or altogether changed by the grounds on which they are employed, the vehicles in which they are used, the siccatives and colours with which they are mixed, and the varnishes by which they are covered. and as there is no exact and constant agreement in different specimens of like pigments, so there is no exact and constant result in their use. artists vary as much as the pigments they employ: some resemble the old masters in the delicacy with which they treat their colours, the cleanliness with which they surround them, and the care with which they compound them: in the hands of such artists pigments have every chance. some, however, are characterized by a careless manipulation, a dirty mode of working, an utter disregard for all rules of admixture: with such painters the best colours may be ruined. and here, indeed, it may be asked, whether these latter are not more properly termed painters than artists, chiefly belonging as they do to that slap-dash school which manufactures pictures simply to sell them. duly subordinated, the commercial side of art has a value which it were affectation to ignore; but to paint merely for the present, heedless of the future, is to sink art to the level of a trade, not the most honest. for it is the purchaser who suffers from the want of thought bestowed on the materials, the sloppy manipulation, the careless compounding; sins of omission and commission that cause him, on finding his picture becoming chaos, to join the detractors of modern pigments. in classifying colours therefore, those also should be classified who use them:--into artists, whose love for art would render it more lasting than themselves; and into painters, whose motto is _vita brevis est, ars quoque_. chapter x. on the primary, blue. the third and last of the primary or simple colours is _blue_, which bears the same relation to shade as yellow to light. hence it is the most retiring and diffusive of all colours, except purple and black; and all colours have the power of throwing it back in painting, to a greater or less extent, in proportion to the intimacy of their relations to light--first white, then yellow, orange, red, &c. blue alone possesses entirely the quality technically called 'coldness' in colouring, and it communicates this property variously to all other colours with which it happens to be compounded. most powerful in a strong light, it seems to become neutral and pale in a declining light, owing to its ruling affinity with black or shade, and its power of absorbing light. consequently, the eye of the artist is liable to be deceived when painting with blue in too low a light, or toward the close of day, to the endangering of the warmth and harmony of his picture. entering into combination with yellow in the composition of all _greens_, and with red in all _purples_, blue characterizes the tertiary _olive_, and is also the prime colour or archeus of the neutral _black_, &c., as well as of the semi-neutral _gray_, &c.: it therefore is changed in hue less than any other colour by mixture with black, as it is likewise by distance. blue is present subordinately in all tertiary and broken colours, and being nearest in the scale to black, breaks and contrasts powerfully and agreeably with white, as in pale blues, skies, &c. being less active than the other primaries in reflecting light, it is sooner lost as a local colour by assimilation with distance. there is an ancient doctrine that the azure of the sky is a compound of light and darkness, and some have argued hence that blue is not a primary colour, but a mixture of black and white; but pure or _neutral_ black and white compound in infinite shades, all of which are neutral also, or _grey_. it is true that a mixture of black and white is of a _cool_ hue, because black is not a primary colour, but a compound of the three primary colours in which blue predominates, a predominance which is rendered more sensible when black is diluted with white. as to the colour of the sky, in which light and shade are combined, that is likewise neutral, and never blue except by contrast; thus, the more the light of the sun partakes of a golden or orange hue, and the more parched and burnt the earth is, the bluer appears the sky, as in italy and all hot countries. in england, where the sun is cooler, and a perpetual verdure reigns, infusing blue latently into the landscape, the sky is warmer and nearer to neutrality, partaking of a diversity of greys, which beautifully melodize with blue as their key, and harmonize with the light and landscape. therefore the colour of the sky is always a contrast to the direct and reflected light of the scene: if this light were of a rose colour, the neutral of the sky would be converted into green, or if purple, the sky would become yellow. similarly would it be in all cases, according to the laws of chromatic equivalence and contrast, as may be often seen in the openings of coloured clouds at the rising and setting of the sun. in art, blue is apt to be discordant in juxtaposition with green, and less so with purple, both which are cool colours; consequently blue requires its contrast, _orange_, in equal proportion whether of surface or intensity, to compensate or resolve its dissonances and correct its coldness. in nature, however, blue is not discordant with either green or purple, nor are any two colours (as we have said before) ever found so. on the palette of nature each _colour_ is an example of _colouring_: no colour is too absolute or defined, no perfectly pure blue appears beside a perfectly pure green. a blue flower nestled in its green leaves does not offend the nicest eye, but the blue and green are not blue and green alone. there is, perhaps, but a single gleam of pure colour in each: the rest is composed of such varied hues and tints and shades, so broken and blended and beautifully harmonized, that no jarring discord is possible. hue melts into hue, tint into tint, shade into shade; and thus does the simplest weed teach a lesson in colouring the proudest painter may stoop to learn. we have spoken of blue, which is termed a cold colour, as retiring; and of yellow and red, which are called warm colours, as advancing. by this we must not be understood to mean that blue, as blue, expresses distance; or that yellow and red, as yellow and red, express nearness. colours are advancing or retiring in their _quality_--as depth, delicacy, &c., not in their hue. a blue object set side-by-side a yellow one will not look an inch farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always seem to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in reality. we grant that in certain objects, blue is a _sign_ of distance, but that is not because blue, as a mere colour, is retiring; but because the mist in the air is blue, and therefore any warm colour which has not strength of light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its blue. blue in itself, however, is no more, on this account, retiring, than brown is retiring, because when stones are seen through brown water, the deeper they lie, the browner they appear. neither blue nor yellow nor red possesses, as such, the smallest power of expressing either nearness or distance; they merely express themselves under the peculiar circumstances which render them at the moment, or in that place, signs of nearness or distance. thus, purple in a violet is a sign of nearness, because the closer it is looked at the more purple is seen; but purple in a mountain is a sign of distance, because a mountain close at hand is not purple, but green or grey. it may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender or pale colour will more or less denote distance, and a powerful or dark colour nearness; but even this is not always so. heathery hills will usually give a pale and tender purple near, and an intense or dark purple far away: the rose colour of sunset on snow is pale on the snow at one's feet, but deep and full on the snow in the distance; and the green of a swiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the beach, but intense as an emerald in the sunstreak, six miles from shore. and in any case, when the foreground is in strong light, with much water about it or white surface, casting intense reflections, all its colours may be perfectly delicate, pale, and faint; while the distance, when it is in shadow, may relieve the whole foreground with deepest shades of purple, blue green, or ultramarine blue. there is one law, however, about distance, which has some claims to be considered constant, namely, that dulness and heaviness of colour are more or less indicative of nearness. all distant colour is pure colour: it may not be bright, but it is clear and lovely, not opaque nor soiled; for the air and light coming between us and any earthy or imperfect colour, purify or harmonize it; hence a bad colourist is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance. it is not of course meant that bad colours are to be used in the foreground by way of making it come forward; but only that a failure in colour there will not put it out of its place. a failure in colour in the distance will at once do away with its remoteness; a dull-coloured foreground will still be a foreground, though coloured badly; but an ill-painted distance will not be merely a dull distance, it will be no distance at all. this seeming digression is not out of place, as it will enable the artist better to understand that it is in their quality, not in their hue, that colours are advancing or retiring; and that he must rely on the depth, delicacy, &c., of his pigments, and not simply on their colours, to produce effects of distance. of all colours, except black, blue contrasts white most powerfully. in all harmonious combinations of colours, whether of mixture or neighbourhood, blue is the natural, prime, or predominating power. accordingly, blue is universally agreeable to the eye in due relation to the composition, and may more frequently be repeated therein, pure or unbroken, than either of the other primaries; whence the employment of ultramarine by some masters throughout the colouring of a picture. blue pigments, like blue flowers, are more rare than those of the other primary colours. in permanent blues the palette is very deficient, the list being exhausted when the native and artificial ultramarines and the cobalts have been mentioned. that there is room for new blues, durable and distinct, cannot therefore be denied. a good addition has been made of late years in the german _coëlin_, known here as cerulian blue and coeruleum. what is chiefly wanted, however, is a colour combining the wonderful depth, richness, and transparency of prussian blue with the strict stability of ultramarine. a permanent prussian blue would be the most valued gift the palette could receive. cobalt blues comprise _cerulian blue_ or _coeruleum_, _cobalt blue_, _smalt_, _royal blue_, _dumont's blue_, _saxon blue_, _thénard's blue_, _leithner's blue_, _hungary blue_, _dutch ultramarine_, _zaffre or enamel blue_, _vienna blue_, _paris blue_, _azure_, &c., and are obtained by the action of heat on mixtures of earthy or metallic bases with cobalt. they are divisible into three classes--the stannic cerulian blue, the aluminous cobalt blues, and the siliceous smalts. of these, the first possesses the least depth; the second hold a middle position; while the third are marked by exceeding richness. although not to be ranked with ultramarine, the stannic and aluminous blues may be described as durable, or at least as durable rather than semi-stable. there are, as we have before observed, different degrees of permanence, and the blues in question are not readily affected. with regard to smalts, they are, as artist's pigments, inferior in stability to other blues of cobalt. . cerulian blue, or _coeruleum_. under the name coëlin there has of late years been imported from germany the cobalt blue with a tin base to which reference has just been made. this comparatively new pigment--which likewise contains or is mixed with gypsum, silica, and sometimes magnesia--has the distinctive property of appearing a pure blue by artificial light, tending neither to green on the one hand nor to purple on the other. this advantage, added to its permanence, has conferred a popularity upon coeruleum which its mere colour would scarcely have gained for it. a light and pleasing blue, with a greenish-grey cast by day, it possesses little depth or richness, and is far excelled in beauty by a good aluminous cobalt. a certain chalkiness, moreover, somewhat detracts from its transparency, and militates against its use in water. it is in oil, and as a night colour, that coeruleum becomes of service, as our present system of lighting picture galleries by gas affects the purity of blues generally. if those galleries were illuminated by means of the electric light, we have it on the authority of chevreul that all colours and shades would show as well as by day: the same purpose would be answered by the magnesium light. some artificial lights are the ruin of colours; in the soda flame (alcohol and salt) for instance, yellow chromate of lead appears white, while red ochre and aniline blue appear black. like other blues of cobalt, coeruleum assumes a greenish obscurity in time, but like them it resists for a lengthened period both the action of light and impure air, although chemically it is more open to the influence of the latter, owing to its tin base. in admixture it may safely be employed, as well as in fresco or enamel. for stage skies, &c., in high-art scenery, the blue is admirably adapted. now that there are so many scene-painters who are artists--and so many artists who are scene-painters--in bringing nature to the foot-lights the effect of gas on colours is of importance. . cobalt blue, to which the various appellations have been given of _thénard's blue_, _vienna blue_, _paris blue_, _azure_, _cobalt-ultramarine_, &c., is the name now exclusively confined to that preparation of cobalt which has a base of alumina. it may, therefore, be not improperly called a blue lake, the colour of which is brought up by fire, in the manner of enamel blues. the discovery of this important pigment was made in by m. thénard, who obtained it by calcining a well-combined mixture of alumina and crystals of cobalt. there may be employed with the aluminous base, either the arseniate, the borate, or the phosphate of cobalt; but the latter in preference, as it produces the purest colour. the arseniate has always a violet tinge, more visible by gas-light than by day; while, on account of the arsenic, the blue is more apt to be greened by impure air, by reason of the formation of yellow sulphide of arsenic. the purity of the colour, however, does not altogether depend on the compound of cobalt used; in a great measure--as with other pigments--it rests on the purity of the materials. to obtain a perfect blue, neither inclining to purple nor green, the cobalt and alumina should be freed from iron, and the former, as much as possible, from nickel also. with the absence of these and proper skill, a true and brilliant blue may be produced, almost rivalling the finest ultramarine. apart, too, from its increased beauty, a cobalt blue containing no iron or nickel is of greater permanence than the ordinary products, being less liable to that greenness and obscurity which time confers. though not possessing the body, transparency, and depth of ultramarine, nor its natural and modest hue, commercial cobalt blue works better in water than that pigment in general does; and is hence an acquisition to those who have not the management of the latter. resisting the action of strong light and acids, its beauty declines by time, while impure air greens and ultimately blackens it. nevertheless, these changes are not readily effected, especially in well made samples full of colour, and sometimes the green tone is mechanically imparted. what wheat is to a loaf, colour is to a pigment--it has to be ground and made up for use; in the one vehicle to be mixed with gums, in the other with oils. it often happens that colours have an antipathy to the latter, and refuse to compound kindly therewith. occasionally this repugnance manifests itself in a few days, occasionally not for months. we know of a green which flatly declines to have anything to do with oils, sinking and separating therefrom in the course of a week, and leaving the clear oil on the top. repeatedly have colours to be coaxed to behave themselves as pigments, coaxed not to 'run,' to work well, to dry well, &c.; and in the humouring of their likes and dislikes the skill and patience of the artist-colourman are sometimes severely taxed. given a colour, it might puzzle most chemists to convert it into a pigment; luckily commerce lends her aid. lasting success, it is true, does not always follow, and oils will rise to the surface now and then, giving green hues to blues, orange hues to reds, and buff hues to yellows. hence changes of colour have been imputed before now to chemical alteration, when in reality the results have been physical, caused by the subsidence of the pigments, and the floating of the vehicles employed. cobalt blue dries well in oil, does not injure or suffer injury from pigments in general, and may be used with a proper flux in enamel, as well as in fresco. it affords clear bright tints in skies and distances, but is apt to cause opacity if brought too near the foreground, and to assume a violet tinge by artificial light. with madder brown it yields a range of fine pearly neutrals; and with light red, in any proportion, gives beautiful cloud tints. in combination with aureolin and sepia, or rose madder, cobalt furnishes most agreeable and delicate tints for distant trees, when under the influence of a soft light, or hazy state of the atmosphere. in water-colour painting, cobalt is tolerably firm on paper, and consequently answers better for some purposes than french blue. in middle distances, if the cobalt possess a tendency to chalkiness, the addition of a little indigo is a good corrective, especially where the blue tone is required to be sombre and dark: it should, however, be observed that the change is but temporary, indigo being a fugitive pigment. in marine painting in water-colours, cobalt is most useful for the remotest parts of seas and headlands. when dry, it can be changed by going over it with a slight wash of vermilion or light red, whereby a prismatic character is realized. any strength of tone can be obtained by repeating the washes, and should the colour be too powerful, it may be reduced by pouncing it with a soft wet sponge; or if too cold and blue, by a thin wash of burnt sienna, merely the water stained. the blues of cobalt, on whatever base they may be prepared, are distinguished from native and artificial ultramarines by not being decolorised by acids. . smalt, invented about the year , in saxony, is a vitreous compound of cobalt and silica, in fact a blue glass. since the fifteenth century, cobalt has been used in different parts of europe to tinge glass; and so intense is the colouring power of its oxide, that pure white glass is rendered sensibly blue by the addition of one thousandth part, while one twenty-thousandth part communicates a perceptible azure tint. in common with cobalt blue, the name _azure_ has sometimes been given to it. varying exceedingly in quality and colour, the rougher kinds have been employed by the laundress, and in the making of porcelain, pottery, stained glass, encaustic tiles, &c.; as well as to cover the yellow tinge of paper. for this last purpose, however, smalt is not perfectly adapted, the colour being difficult to lay on uniformly, and the paper when written on blunting the nibs of pens. hence it has been superseded to a great extent by artificial ultramarine, the presence of which may be detected by the yellow spot which a drop of acid leaves on the paper. a coarse gritty texture is peculiar to smalt, whether it be the _powder blue_ of the washtub and _blue sand_ of the pottery, or the _dumont's_ and _royal blue_ of the artist and high-class manufacturer. but the strict stability which is a feature in smalt when used for painting on glass and enamel does not follow it to the studio: both in water and oil its beauty soon decays, as is often the case with other vitrified pigments; nor is it in other respects eligible, being, notwithstanding its richness and depth, very inferior to the cobalts preceding. it may seem a paradox that the same colour should be at once so durable and so fugitive, but we may briefly explain it by saying _when vitreous pigments are reduced to that extreme state of division which the palette requires, they lose the properties they possess in a less finely divided state_. the best smalt in lumps appears black, yields a blue powder on grinding, becomes paler on further grinding, and may be almost decolourised by continued and excessive grinding. smalt, it has been stated, is merely a blue glass; and when a piece of blue glass, or a blue crystal of sulphate of copper, is reduced to the fineness of flour, the blue is lost. in vitrified and crystallised compounds, colour depends on cohesion: sufficiently separate the particles, and the colour more or less disappears. not only, moreover, does grinding effect an optical change in vitreous pigments, but it imposes further alteration. that colour which was safe when locked up in a mass, crushed to minute atoms is no longer so: imbedded in glass or enamel it will endure for ages, but ground to impalpable powder becomes as liable to influence as though it had never been subjected to heat at all. to sum up, vitreous pigments are durable in a coarse or compact form, but are not more stable than others when reduced to extreme division. as far as regards artists' colours, therefore, vitrification does _not_ impart permanence. the grittiness to which we have referred is one of the defects of smalt, which cannot, consistently with preserving its colour be entirely freed from that drawback--an objection which pertains to vitreous pigments in general. hence it does not wash well, and in mural decoration is sometimes applied to work by strewing the dry powdered colour upon a flat ground of white or blue oil paint immediately after the latter is laid on, whilst it yet remains wet. of little body, it is a vivid and gorgeous blue; bright, deep, and transparent, bordering on the violet hue. it is chiefly employed in illumination and flower painting. the inferior kinds of smalt are occasionally adulterated with chalk. . cyanine. beckmann is fully convinced that the _cyanus_ of theophrastus and the _coeruleum_ of pliny were a blue copper earth. however that may be, in these days both names signify cobalt compounds, coeruleum being a stannate of cobalt, and cyanine a mixture of cobalt and prussian blue. unlike the former, cyanine, being composed of two old colours, can lay no claim to originality. in the fourth chapter it was observed, "it is quite possible for the artist to multiply his pigments unnecessarily. colours are sometimes brought out under new names which have no claim to be regarded as new colours, being, indeed, mere mixtures. compound pigments like these may most frequently be dispensed with, in favour of hues and tints composed extemporaneously of original colours upon the palette." whether these remarks are applicable to cyanine or not is a question for artists to decide: in our opinion, with so many semi-stable original pigments, the introduction of semi-stable compounds is to be deprecated. cyanine is a rich, deep, transparent blue, but its richness and depth, as well as to a great extent its transparency, depend upon prussian blue, which is not strictly stable. hence the peculiar properties of cyanine remain unchanged only so long as the prussian blue itself, the pigment losing its colour by degrees on exposure to air and light, and gradually assuming the tint of the paler but more permanent cobalt. a mixture, be it remembered, necessarily partakes of the qualities of its constituents, and if one of these be fugitive, the compound cannot preserve its original hue. within the last few years, a compound similar to cyanine has appeared, under the name of _leitch's blue_. . indigo, or _indian blue_, was known to the ancients under the name of _indicum_, whence its present appellation. in modern europe, it first came into extensive use in italy; but about the middle of the sixteenth century, the dutch began to import and employ it in considerable quantity. present in the woad plant, which is a native of great britain, indigo is chiefly derived from a genus of leguminous plants called _indigofera_, found in india, africa, and america. the colouring matter of these is wholly in the cellular tissue of the leaves, as a secretion or juice; not, however, in the blue state in which one is accustomed to see indigo, but as a colourless substance, which continues white only so long as the tissue of the leaf remains perfect: when this is by any means destroyed, oxygen is absorbed from the atmosphere, and the principle becomes blue. the best indigo is so light as to swim upon water, but the commercial article seldom contains more than per cent. of blue colouring matter or true indigo, the remainder consisting of either accidental or intentional impurities. in painting, indigo is not nearly so bright as prussian blue, but it is extremely powerful and transparent, and may be described as a prussian blue in mourning. of great body, it glazes and works well both in water and oil. its relative permanence as a dye has obtained it a false character of extreme durability as a pigment, a quality in which it is nevertheless very inferior even to prussian blue. by impure air it is injured, and in glazing some specimens are firmer than others, but not durable; while in tint with white lead they are all fugitive. employed in considerable body in shadow, it is more permanent, but in all respects prussian blue is superior. despite this want of stability, indigo is a favourite colour with many artists, who sacrifice by its use future permanence to present effect. it is so serviceable a pigment for so many purposes, especially in admixture, that its sin of fugacity is overlooked. hence we find indigo constantly mentioned in works on painting, their authors forgetting or not caring to remember that wholesome axiom, a fugitive colour is not rendered durable by being compounded. artistically, it is adapted for moonlights, and when mixed with a little lamp black, is well suited for night clouds, distant cliffs, &c. with a little raw umber and madder it is used for water in night effects. with the addition of a little madder it forms a good gray; and with madder and burnt sienna is useful for dark rocks, this combination, with raw sienna, being also eligible for boats. for these and other mixed tints, however, prussian blue saddened by black with a suspicion of green in it, is equally fitted, and is more permanent. indeed, it would be perhaps justifiable to introduce such a compound, under the name say, of factitious indigo. indigo in dust, or in small bits, is often adulterated with sand, pulverized slate, and other earthy substances. that indigo is best which is lightest, brightest, most copper-coloured, most fine-grained, and inodorous. . intense blue is indigo refined by solution and precipitation. by this process, indigo becomes more durable, and, being separated from impurities, is rendered much more powerful, transparent, and deep. it washes and works admirably in water; in other respects it possesses the common properties of indigo. it is apt, however, to penetrate the paper on which it is employed, if not well freed by washing from the acid and saline matter used in its preparation. this is not always easily effected, and we cannot help thinking that in the manufacture of intense blue a dry method would be preferable. indigo may, by cautious management, be volatilized, and therefore be most thoroughly purified without the aid of acids and alkalies. the best mode of subliming this substance is to mix one part of indigo with two parts of plaster of paris, make the whole into a paste with water, spread it upon an iron plate, and, when quite dry, heat it by a spirit lamp. the volatilization of the indigo is aided by the vapour of water disengaged from the gypsum, and the surface of the mass becomes covered with beautiful crystals of pure indigo, which may be readily removed by a thin spatula. at a higher temperature, charring and decomposition take place. . prussian blue, otherwise called _berlin blue_, _paris blue_, _prussiate of iron_, _ferrocyanide of iron_, &c., was accidentally discovered in by diesbach, a colour-maker at berlin. it is a compound of iron and cyanogen, of varying composition, formed by adding yellow prussiate of potash to a persalt of iron, or by oxidizing the precipitate obtained from the prussiate and a protosalt. the finest blue is furnished by sesquinitrate of iron, but the salt almost exclusively employed is the protosulphate, the freedom of which from copper is essential to the colour of the blue. as is the case with other pigments, prussian blue differs considerably in colour, in depth, and in permanence, according to the purity of the materials, the mode of manufacture, and the absence of adulterants. like smalt, it is known in the washtub as well as in the studio; and in the cheaper varieties, alumina, starch, chalk, oxide of iron, &c., are often largely present. a good unsophisticated sample in the dry state is intense blue, almost black, hard and brittle, much resembling in appearance the best indigo, and having a similar copper-red fracture. it does not effervesce with acids, as when adulterated with chalk; nor become pasty with boiling water, as when sophisticated with starch. further, it feels light in the hand, adheres to the tongue, is inodorous, tasteless, not poisonous, and is insoluble in water. forming a bulky mass while moist, prussian blue shrinks to a comparatively small compass when well washed and dried by gentle heat; and, when once dried, being difficult to reduce again to the state of extreme division which it possessed while wet, it is frequently sold and used in paste for common purposes. we have said that a good sample of prussian blue is insoluble in water, and for artistic use it should certainly be so, as otherwise it has a tendency to stain the fabric on which it is employed, a defect formerly very prevalent. all prussian blues, however, are not insoluble, and these are not only liable to the drawback named, but are less to be depended on for permanence. improper proportions, for instance, of sesquichloride of iron and potash-ferrocyanide will yield a blue which, when washed even with cold water, continually imparts to it a yellow or green colour, through the partial solution of the prussiate. all commercial prussian blue, and indeed that which is prepared by careful chemical processes, give up the ferrocyanide to boiling water, thereby colouring it greenish yellow; but a sample which parts with its prussiate to _cold_ water is quite unfitted for the palette, for which the most perfect specimen is none too stable. in spite of the learned researches of professor williamson, whose name is as closely connected with the pigment as are the names of schunck and de la rue with madder and cochineal, prussian blue is not yet entirely understood. complex and uncertain in composition, uncertain too in its habitudes, our best course perhaps will be not to attempt a complete survey, but to state briefly those facts which bear on the artist's craft. prussian blue is a colour of vast body and wonderful transparency, with a soft velvety richness, and of such intense depth as to appear black in its deepest washes. notwithstanding it lasts a long time under favourable circumstances, its tints fade by the action of strong light; becoming white, according to chevreul, in the direct rays of the sun, but regaining its blue colour in the dark; hence that subdued light which is favourable to all colours is particularly so to this blue. its colour has the singular property of fluctuating, or of coming and going, under certain conditions; and which it owes to the action and reaction by which it acquires or relinquishes oxygen alternately. it also becomes greenish sometimes by a development of the oxide of iron; and is purpled, darkened, or otherwise discoloured by damp or impure air. time has a neutralizing tendency upon its colour, which forms tints of much beauty with white lead, though they are not equal either in purity, brilliancy, or permanence to those of cobalt and ultramarine. when carefully heated, prussian blue gives off water and assumes a pale green hue; its colour, therefore, depending on the presence of water, must not be exposed to a high temperature. and as it is likewise injured or destroyed by alkalis, which decompose it into oxide of iron and a soluble prussiate, the blue should be avoided in fresco, on account of the lime; neither should it be employed with pigments of an alkaline nature, nor with hard water containing bicarbonate of lime in solution, but with clean rain or distilled water, either of which is preferable for colours generally. prussian blue dries and glazes well in oil, but its great and principal use is in painting deep blues, in which its body helps to secure its permanence, and its transparency gives force to its depth. it is also valuable in compounding deep purples with lake, and is a powerful neutralizer and component of black, to the intensity of which it adds considerably. prussian blue borders slightly on green, a quality which militates against its use in skies and distances. in spite, however, of its want of, or deficiency in, durability, the old water-colour painters so employed it, neutralized by the addition of a little crimson lake. it is serviceable in mixed tints of greens, affording with light red a sea-green neutral. dissolved in oxalic acid, the blue is available as an ink, or for tinting maps. besides the preceding, there is a _basic prussian blue_, formed by simply submitting to the air the bluish-white precipitate which falls on adding yellow prussiate of potash to green vitriol. this compound dissolves entirely by continued washing with water, yielding a beautiful deep blue solution, from which the colour may be thrown down in a solid form by the addition of any salt. probably it was this basic preparation, so cheaply and easily made, that conferred upon prussian blue the character of staining paper. in name, there is also another variety of this pigment, known as _native prussian blue_; which is really a native phosphate of iron, occurring as a blue earthy powder, or as a white powder that becomes blue by exposure. . antwerp blue, _haerlem blue_, _berlin blue_, _mineral blue_, is a lighter and somewhat brighter prussian blue, with less depth and less permanence. it is a species of lake, having a considerable proportion of aluminous base, to which its paler tint is due. as the stability of prussian blue rests in a great measure on the marvellous amount of latent colour the pigment contains, when its particles of colour are set farther apart by the intervention of the alumina, the permanence of its hue is endangered. it was remarked, with respect to vitrified pigments, that colour depends on cohesion. more or less, this holds good as regards all pigments; but not only, as was also observed, does colour rest on cohesion, in many instances durability depends likewise. it is only when a colour is stable in itself that its particles will bear separating: native ultramarine, for example, may be weakened almost to white, and will still preserve its hue. if, however, a colour be naturally fugitive, and rely chiefly on its extreme depth for what permanence it possesses, that colour cannot with impunity be paled: witness the cochineal lakes, which the deeper they are, the more durable they are found; and so it is with prussian blue. antwerp blue is distinguished from the latter by its more earthy fracture. . turnbull's blue, or _ferricyanide of iron_, is formed by adding the red prussiate of potash to a protosalt of iron. this blue is lighter and more delicate than ordinary prussian blue, and is believed to resist the action of alkalies longer. it is a question whether the common prussian blue obtained by oxidizing the precipitate yielded by green vitriol and the yellow prussiate is not in reality this variety. however that may be, there is, as far as permanence goes, little or no difference between the two kinds. ultramarines. artificial ultramarines comprise the varieties known as _french ultramarine_, _french blue_, _brilliant ultramarine_, _factitious ultramarine_, _guimet's ultramarine_, _new blue_, _permanent blue_, _gmelin's german ultramarine_, _bleu de garance_, _outremer de guimet_, &c. the unrivalled qualities of native ultramarine prepared from the lapis lazuli rendered it most desirable to obtain an artificial compound which, while possessing similar properties, could be produced in quantity, and at a less costly rate. in demolishing some furnaces employed in making soda, by means of decomposing sulphate of soda, some earth had been found impregnated with a light blue, which was proved to have so close a resemblance to ultramarine as to foster hopes of success. as a stimulus, there was offered a prize of six thousand francs or £ for the production of artificial ultramarine by the _société d'encouragement_ of paris, which was won in by m. guimet. it is fitting that the discoverer of a colour should excel in its manufacture, and to this day guimet's ultramarine is the finest made. as an instance of how the researches of different men may, almost simultaneously, lead to the same results, it is curious that very shortly after the problem was also solved by gmelin. the cause of the blue colour of ultramarine was long a matter of controversy, but was believed generally to be due to iron. when, however, the discovery of artificial ultramarine was made, this assumption was shown to be false, by the fact that a blue could be obtained with materials perfectly free from iron. the absolutely necessary constituents of ultramarine are silica, alumina, sulphur, and soda; and there is little doubt that the colouring matter consists of hyposulphite of soda and sulphide of sodium: it is certain that the blue colour is dependant on the soda, inasmuch as potash yields an analogous compound which is purely white. a number of substances, such as iron, lime, magnesia, and potash, may be present as impurities, and were, in part at least, purposely added to the earlier manufactures; but they are found to be superfluous. nevertheless, as regards iron, it is probable that a very small portion, such as is usually contained in the ingredients, greatly facilitates the production of the blue, and may even be essential in some cases. the colour of ultramarine is brought out by successive heatings. green portions, more or less in quantity, are often formed in the crucibles, especially on the first ignition. on repeated heating they pass into a blue tint. artificial ultramarines are said to be seldom entirely freed from all traces of the green modification, and are therefore less beautiful than the natural varieties, having a shade of green or grey. this defect, however, is certainly not discernible in guimet's products, which sometimes incline so much to purple as to require neutralizing with a little prussian blue. depth for depth, the artificial are darker and less azure than the natural varieties, but the superiority of the latter consists not so much in their greater purity of hue, although this is considerable, as in their far greater transparency. the finest french ultramarine is never so transparent as the native; it is brilliant, it is powerful, it is permanent, it is nearly--but only nearly--transparent. possessing in a subdued degree the characteristics and qualities of the genuine, it works, washes, and dries well; and is useful either in figures, draperies, or landscape. rivalling in depth, although not equalling in colour, the pure azure of native ultramarine, it answers to the same acid tests, but is sometimes distinguished therefrom by the effervescence which ensues on the addition of an acid. not a bubble escapes in such case from the natural blue; unless, indeed, as occasionally happens, it retain a portion of alkali, with which it may have been combined in the preparation, but from which it should have been freed. darkened as a rule by fire, factitious ultramarine becomes dingy blue, and at last white, when strongly ignited for a long time; and is, like the true variety, decolourised by ignition in an atmosphere of hydrogen gas. at a high temperature, this effect is even produced by silica, whence the unfitness of ultramarine for painting on glass or porcelain; and simply by a prolonged red heat the blue is rendered white. being unaffected by alkalis, it is eligible in mural decoration, and is particularly adapted to siliceous painting, on account of the silica and alumina which it contains, two substances with which a soluble silicate readily unites. if artificial ultramarine be mixed with a soluble silicate, for example silicate of potash, and be laid on a properly prepared ground, it will become so firmly fixed, says mr. barff, that no amount of washing nor the slow action of moisture will remove it, or affect its brilliancy. judging from the behaviour of ultramarine, therefore, if the colours employed in siliceous painting contain silica and alumina, they should adhere as firmly to the surface on which they are placed; and this is really the case. it is possible to produce a mixed solution of aluminate and silicate of potash which will remain liquid for twenty-four hours. if, while in the liquid state, colours are saturated with this solution and allowed to dry, their particles will be very intimately mixed with silica and alumina chemically combined with potash. according to the author quoted, the admixture of silica and alumina does not interfere with the brilliancy or depth of the colours, and the method may be used for all those which are not injured by potash, and are in themselves adapted to the art. with respect to permanence, the finer varieties of artificial ultramarines may, undoubtedly, be pronounced stable; but, like all other colours, these blues are apt to vary in quality, and inferior kinds are liable to lose their purity in a measure, and become grayer. moreover, they are made by different processes, and the mode adopted for the manufacture of a pigment not only tells upon the colour, but may influence to some extent its durability. from the following experiment of an ingenious artist and friend of the author, it is evident that the production of artificial ultramarine was not carried in its early days to that state of perfection at which it has now arrived. he took a picture, the sky of which had been recently painted in the ordinary manner with prussian blue and white; and having painted over the clear part of the sky uniform portions with tints formed of the best factitious ultramarine, cobalt blue, and genuine ultramarine, so as to match the ground of the sky, and to disappear to the eye thereon by blending with the ground, when viewed at a moderate distance, he set the picture aside for some months. upon examination, it appeared that the colour of these various blue pigments had taken different ways, and departed from the hue of the ground: the factitious ultramarine had _blackened_, the cobalt blue _greened_, the genuine ultramarine remained a _pure azure_, like a spot of light, while their ground, the prussian blue sky, seemed by contrast with the ultramarine of a _grey_ or _slate colour_. other things being equal, those artificial ultramarines are most durable which possess the most colour; and all are, perhaps, most permanent in water. if used in that vehicle, care should be taken to employ a gum free from acid; also, whether in water or oil, not to compound the blue with a pigment which may possibly contain acid, such as constant white. acid, as we have said, is the great test for ultramarine; whence if a sample be sophisticated with cobalt, its blue colour will not be entirely destroyed. with high-class artistic pigments, however, adulteration is the exception and not the rule. it is as a powder-blue for the washtub that ultramarine gets disguised, when it is ground up with soda-ash, chalk, gypsum, &c., and sold sometimes under its own name, but more frequently as superfine saxon smalts. . brilliant ultramarine, lately called _factitious ultramarine_, is a specially fine preparation of m. guimet, presenting the nearest approach to the natural product of any artificial ultramarine, both in transparency, purity of hue, and chemical characteristics. equalling in depth and power the ordinary french ultramarine, it possesses greater clearness, beauty, and brightness; and has, in a subdued degree, that quality of light in it, and of the tint of air, which forms so distinguishing a feature in the native blue. . french ultramarine, or _french blue_, is a rich deep colour, but less transparent and vivid than the preceding variety, which is preferable in unmixed tints. for compound hues, french blue is sufficiently well adapted, and is extremely useful. with aureolin and burnt sienna, or vandyke brown, it affords valuable autumn greens; and with lamp black, or lamp black and light red, good stormy clouds. a sombre gray for distant mountains is furnished by french blue and madder brown, with a very little gamboge; and a deep purple for sunsets, by the blue and purple madder, or indian red and rose madder. with cadmium and orient yellows, sepia, viridian, and many other colours, this ultramarine is of service. . new blue is confined to water-colour painting, and is an artificial ultramarine, holding a middle position between french blue and permanent blue, being less deep than the one and less pale than the other. it may be said to hover in tint between a rich ultramarine and cobalt. . permanent blue is a pale ultramarine, with a cobalt hue; and, in spite of its name, less permanence than belongs to the richer and deeper sorts. what antwerp blue is to prussian blue, this is to french blue--that is, as regards colour. with respect to durability, however, permanent and antwerp blues cannot be compared; the former being a weakened variety of a stable, and the latter a weakened variety of a semi-fugitive, pigment. hence permanent blue justifies its name, although that name would be more suited to the brilliant, or french, ultramarine. . genuine ultramarine, _native ultramarine_, _natural ultramarine_, _real ultramarine_, _true ultramarine_, _ultramarine_, _pure _ultramarine_, _azure_, _outremer_, _lazuline_, _lazulite blue_, and _lazurstein_. this most costly, most permanent, and most celebrated of all pigments, is obtained by isolating the blue colouring matter of the _lapis lazuli_, a stone chiefly brought from china, thibet, and the shores of lake baikal. about the antiquity of the stone, and its colour, much has been written, and many conflicting statements have been made; but there is little doubt that our lapis lazuli was the sapphire of the ancients; and that the first certain mention of ultramarine occurs in a passage of arethas, who lived in the eleventh century, and who, in his exposition of a verse in the book of revelation, says, the sapphire is that stone of which _lazurium_, as we are told, is made. it has been common to confound ultramarine with the _cyanus_ and _coeruleum_ of the ancients; but their cyanus, or armenian blue, was a kind of mineral or mountain blue, tinged with copper; and their coeruleum, although it may sometimes have been real ultramarine, was properly and in general a copper ochre. that ultramarine was known to the ancients there seems every probability, for it is certain they were acquainted with the stone; and modern travellers describe the brilliant blue painting still remaining in the ruins of temples of upper egypt as having all the appearance of ultramarine. whether it is so or not, however, could only be proved by analysis; for, be it recollected, although the colour had preserved its hue during so many centuries, it had been completely buried, and therefore most perfectly secluded from light and air. mr. layard, in his 'nineveh,' referring to some painted plaster, remarks that "the colours, particularly the blues and reds, were as brilliant and vivid when the earth was removed from them as they could originally have been; but, on exposure to the air, they faded rapidly." in all likelihood, these were of organic, or semi-organic, origin, prepared in some such manner as that mentioned by pliny, who speaks of an earth which, when boiled with plants, acquired their blue colour, and was in some measure inflammable. as a pigment, cobalt was unknown to the ancients; but to these vegetable and copper blues of theirs, a third blue may perhaps be added. experiments made upon blue tiles, found in a roman tesselated foot-pavement at montbeillard, showed that the colour was due to iron. m. gmelin has proved that a blue tint can be imparted to glass and enamel by means of iron; and it is probable that the ancients were first induced by the blue slag of their smelting-houses to study the colouring of glass with iron; that in this art they acquired a dexterity not possessed at present, and that they employed their iron-smalt as a pigment, as we do our smalt of cobalt. to sum up, there are grounds for believing that the ancients were acquainted with copper blues, vegetable blues, and iron blues; and that, consequently, the blue described by travellers as having all the appearance of ultramarine may, or may not, be that pigment. lapis lazuli, or lazulite, is usually disseminated in a rock, which contains, among other substances, a fine white lazulite. in the _musée minéralogique_ of paris are two splendid specimens of the stone, in which is seen the transition from the azure to the white. according to the quantity and quality of blue present, the lapis varies from an almost uniform tint of the deepest indigo-blue to grayish-white, dotted and streaked at intervals with pale blue. the exceeding beauty of good samples has caused the lazulite to be much sought after, both as a gem for adorning the person, and for inlaid works in ornamental decoration. in china the stone is highly esteemed, being worn by mandarins as badges of nobility conferred only by the emperor; and in the apartments of a summer palace near st. petersburg, the walls are covered with amber, interspersed with plates of this costly lapis. besides the colouring principle of the lazulite, there are always more or less mica and iron pyrites, the latter a lustrous yellow bisulphide of iron, which has often been mistaken for pellets of gold. having chosen portions of the stone most free from these impurities, it is simply requisite to reduce them to an impalpable powder to obtain a blue pigment; and probably this was the original mode of preparing it before the discovery of the modern process. this curious method, which is mechanical rather than chemical, depends for its success on the character and proportions of the materials employed, as well as on the nicety of working. when well carried out, it perfectly isolates the blue from all extraneous matter, yielding the colour at first deep and rich, then lighter and paler, and lastly of that gray tint which is known by the name of ultramarine ash. the refuse, containing little or no blue, furnishes the useful pigment, mineral gray. the immense price of ultramarine--or, as it was at first called, azurrum ultramarinum, blue beyond-the-sea--was almost a prohibition to its use in former times. it is related that charles i. presented to mrs. walpole, and possibly to vandyke also, five hundred pounds worth of ultramarine, which lay in so small a compass as only to cover his hand. even in these days, despite the introduction of artificial ultramarines, the native product continues costly, commanding in proportion to its intensity and brightness, from two to eight guineas an ounce. to say, however, that the merits of the blue at least equal its expense, is to give the genuine ultramarine no more than its due. it has, indeed, not earned its reputation upon slight pretensions, being, when of fine quality, and skilfully prepared, of the most exquisitely beautiful blue, ranging from the utmost depth of shadow to the highest brilliancy of light and colour,--transparent in all its shades, and pure in all its tints. a true medial blue, when perfect, partaking neither of purple on the one hand, nor of green on the other, it sustains no injury either by damp and impure air, or by the intensest action of light, and is so eminently durable, that it remains unchanged in the oldest paintings. drying well, working well in oil and fresco, ultramarine may be safely compounded with pigments generally, excepting only an acid sulphate of baryta or constant white. the blue has so much of the property of light in it, and of the tint of air--is so purely a sky-colour, and hence so singularly adapted to the direct and reflex light of the sky, and to become the antagonist of sunshine--that it is indispensable to the painter. moreover, it is so pure, so true, so unchangeable in its tints and glazings, as to be no less essential in imitating the marvellous colouring of nature in flesh and flowers. to this may be added that it enters so admirably into purples, blacks, greens, grays, and broken hues, that it has justly obtained the character of clearing or carrying light and air into all colours, both in mixture and glazing, as well as gained a sort of claim to universality throughout a picture. nevertheless, ultramarine is not always entitled to the whole of this commendation. frequently it is coarse in texture, in which case it is apparently more deep and valuable; yet such blue cannot be used with effect, nor ground fine without injuring its colour. again, it is apt to be separated in an impure state from the lapis lazuli, which is an exceedingly varying and compound mineral, abounding with earthy and metallic parts in different states of oxidation and composition: hence ultramarine sometimes contains iron as a red oxide, when it has a purple cast; and sometimes the same metal as a yellow oxide, when it is of a green tone; while often it retains a portion of black sulphuret of iron, which imparts a dark and dusky hue. occasionally, it is true, artists have preferred ultramarine for each of these tones; still are they imperfections which may account for various effects and defects of this pigment in painting. growing deeper by age has been attributed to ultramarine; but it is only such specimens as would acquire depth in the fire that could be subject to the change; and it has been reasonably supposed that in pictures wherein other colours have faded, it may have taken this appearance by contrast. ultramarine, prepared from calcined lapis, is not liable to so deepen; but this advantage may be purchased at some sacrifice of the vivid, warm, and pure azure colour of the blue produced from unburnt stone. we have frequently found ultramarine to be darkened, dimmed, and somewhat purpled by ignition; and the same results ensue, in many instances, when the lazulite is calcined. in burning the stone, the sulphur of the pyrites is in a great measure expelled, and during its expulsion has probably a deteriorating influence on the beauty of the colour: our belief in this being so is strengthened by the fact that certain samples of ultramarine, ignited with sulphur, were not improved thereby. similar effects are likewise caused by a careless or improper mode of treatment, for the finest lapis may yield dingy blues, containing particles of mica, metal, &c., and possessing a dull green, black, or purple hue. of course the perfection of the pigment is dependant to a large extent upon the quality of the stone itself. though unexceptionable as an oil-colour, both in solid painting and glazing, it does not work so well as some other blues in water; nor is it, unless carefully prepared, so well adapted for mixed tints, on account of a gritty quality, of which no grinding will entirely divest it, and which causes it to separate from other pigments. when extremely fine in texture, however, or when a considerable portion of gum, which renders it transparent, can be employed to give connexion or adhesion while flowing, it becomes no less valuable in water than in oil; but when its vivid azure is to be preserved, as in illuminated manuscripts and missals, little gum must be used. the fine greens, purples, and grays of the old masters, are often unquestionably compounds of ultramarine; and formerly it was the only blue known in fresco. pure ultramarine varies in shade from light to dark, and in hue from pale warm azure to the deepest cold blue. native ultramarine consists of silica, alumina, sulphur, and soda; its colouring matter seeming to be due to hyposulphite of soda and sulphide of sodium. in these respects, as well as in that of being decolourised by acids, the natural product resembles the artificial. as a precious material, the former has been subject to adulteration; and it has been dyed, damped, and oiled to enrich its appearance; attempts of fraud, however, which may be easily detected. in the preceding edition of this work the author adds--"and the genuine may be as easily distinguished from the spurious by dropping a few particles of the pigment into lemon-juice, or any other acid, which almost instantly destroys the colour of the true ultramarine totally, and without effervescence." with this statement, so far as it pretends to be a test for the two kinds, we are not inclined to agree. genuine ultramarine is always decolourised by acids; but it depends on the mode and nicety of its preparation whether it is decolourised without effervescence: that this is the case the author himself admits in his article on artificial ultramarine. moreover, the "violent effervescence" which he describes as ensuing on the latter being dropped into an acid, does not of necessity take place: in m. guimet's finest variety, the brilliant ultramarine, acid produces little or no effervescence. seeing, therefore, that both sorts are decolourised by acids, and that both may or may not effervesce therewith, the acid test must be considered fallacious. experiments made with different samples of each, showed that native ultramarines offered greater resistance to acid than the artificial, taking longer to decolourise; and that the residues of the first were in general of a purer white than those of the last. it was also found that the brilliant ultramarine, above referred to, was less readily decolourised than other french or german kinds. * * * * * . _blue carmine._ in a former edition of this work there appeared the following:--"blue carmine is a blue oxide of molybdenum, of which little is known as a substance or as a pigment. it is said to be of a beautiful blue colour, and durable in a strong light, but is subject to be changed in hue by other substances, and blackened by foul air: we may conjecture, therefore, that it is not of much value in painting." in his estimate of this colour the author was certainly right. it is formed when a solution of bichloride of molybdenum is poured into a saturated, or nearly saturated, solution of molybdate of ammonia. a blue precipitate falls, which is a molybdate of molybdic oxide, hydrated, and abundantly soluble in water. when dried, it furnishes a dark blue powder, resembling powdered indigo, having a bitter, rough, metallic taste, and reddening litmus strongly. the solubility of this hydrated oxide is alone fatal to its employment as a pigment. it may, indeed, be rendered comparatively insoluble in water by ignition; but the anhydrous oxide so obtained is nearly black, and as a colour worthless. a more eligible preparation is the molybdate of baryta, produced by mixing solutions of molybdate of potash and acetate of baryta. a white, flocculent precipitate results, which rapidly condenses to a crystalline powder, and turns blue on ignition. it is, however, a costly compound, of little merit, and not likely to come into use. it is insoluble in water. . _blue ochre_, which has been improperly called native prussian blue, is a native hydrated phosphate of iron of rare occurrence, found with iron pyrites in cornwall, and also in north america. what indian red is to the colour red, and oxford ochre to yellow, this pigment is to the colour blue, being sober and subdued rather than brilliant. it has the body of other ochres, more transparency, and is of considerable depth. both in water and oil it works well, dries readily, and does not suffer in tint with white lead, nor change when exposed to the action of strong light, damp, or impure air. as far as its powers extend, therefore, it is an eligible pigment, though not generally employed nor easily procured; it may, however, be artificially prepared. answering to similar acid tests as ultramarine, it is distinguished therefrom by assuming an olive-brown hue on exposure to a red heat. . _cobalt prussian blue._ gmelin states that yellow prussiate of potash yields with a solution of oxalate of sesquioxide of cobalt a blue resembling prussian blue--that, in fact, there can be obtained a prussian blue with a base of cobalt instead of iron. in the moist state, the similarity is sufficiently great, but when washed and dried, the product is, with us, a dingy slate colour. possibly, if such a blue could be produced, it might exceed in permanence the ferro- and ferri-cyanides of iron. of course the compound would be much more expensive. _copper blues_ are now seldom or never employed as artists' pigments. the following are the principal varieties:-- . _bice_, blue bice, iris, terre bleu, was prepared, when true, from the armenian stone, which is a calcareous kind of stone coloured with copper. it was of a light bright hue, but is completely superseded by pale ultramarine. the persian lazur appears to have been a similar pigment, being a sort of copper ore, which, when the stone was pounded and sifted, furnished a fine paint, very bright and pleasant. it could not, however, stand the effects of the atmosphere like the tartarian lazur or lapis lazuli, in the course of time becoming of a dark and dismal colour. ground smalts, blue verditer, and other pigments, have passed under the name of bice. . _blue ashes_, or _mountain blue_, are both hydrated carbonates of copper, the first being artificially prepared, and the second found native in cumberland. neither is durable, especially in oil; and, as pigments, both are precisely of the character of verditer. by treating the natural malachite green with an alkali, it may be converted into blue. . _blue verditer_, or verditer, is an oxide of copper, formed by precipitating nitrate of copper with lime. it is of a beautiful light blue colour, little affected by light, but greened and ultimately blackened by time, damp, and impure air--changes which ensue even more rapidly in oil than in water. it is mostly confined to distemper painting and paper-staining. . _egyptian blue_, called by vitruvius, coeruleum, is frequently found on the walls of the temples in egypt, as well as on the cases enclosing mummies. count chaptal, who analysed some of it discovered in in a shop at pompeii, found that it was blue ashes, not prepared in the moist manner, but by calcination. he considers it a kind of frit, of a semi-vitreous nature; and this would appear to be the case from sir h. davy obtaining a similar colour by exposing to a strong heat, for two hours, a mixture of fifteen parts of carbonate of soda, twenty of powdered flints, and three of copper. the colour is very brilliant when first made, and retains its hue well in distemper and decorative painting; but it has the common defect of copper blues of turning green in oil, when ground impalpably for artistic use. one remarkable effect of this copper smalt--for it is nothing else--is, that by lamp-light it shows somewhat greenish, but shines by day with all the brightness of azure. mérimée believes that paul veronese employed this sort of blue in many of his pictures where the skies have become green. . _saunders blue_, a corrupt name from _cendres bleues_, the original denomination probably of ultramarine ashes, is of two kinds, the natural and artificial. the first is a blue mineral found near copper mines, while the last is simply a verditer. . _schweinfurt blue_, or reboulleau's blue, is prepared by fusing together equal weights of ordinary arseniate of protoxide of copper and arseniate of potash, and adding one-fifth its weight of nitre to the fused mass. the result is, so to speak, a sort of blue scheele's green, into which latter colour it soon passes when rubbed with oil. . _cotton seed blue._ cotton seed oil is bleached by treatment with either carbonate of soda or caustic lime. in both cases, a considerable residue is left after drawing off the bleached oil. this residue is treated with sulphuric acid, and distilled at a high temperature, when there is left a compact mass of a deep greenish-blue colour. on further treatment of this mass with strong sulphuric acid, the green tint disappears, and a very intense pure blue colour is produced. the blue mass is a mixture of the coloured substance with some sulphuric acid, sulphate of soda, and fats. the two former may be removed by washing with water; the latter by treatment with naptha. alcohol now dissolves the blue colour, and water precipitates it from the solution chemically pure. this blue has not been introduced as a pigment; and of its permanence, and other attributes, we know nothing. . _gold blue._ gold purple, under the name of purple of cassius, was once very well known: a like compound of tin and gold may be made to yield a blue. resembling indigo, the colour is not remarkably brilliant, and, unless several precautions are carefully observed, is rather violet than blue. when obtained, the colour must be quickly washed by decantation, or it changes first to violet and then to purple. its costliness, lack of brightness, and tendency to redden, are against its employment on the palette. in enamelling it would doubtless preserve its colour, and in exceptional cases might be useful. . _iodine blue._ it is curious that iodine, which gives a yellow with lead, should also afford a blue with the same metal. when a solution of iodine in aqueous soda (carbonate of soda is not so good) is added to nitrate or acetate of lead-oxide, a transient violet-red precipitate falls, which decomposes spontaneously under water, yielding iodine and a beautiful blue powder. the colour, however, is exceedingly fugitive, even the carbonic acid of the air separating iodine from it and forming a lead salt. bearing in mind the scarlet iodide of mercury, iodine is capable of furnishing the three primary colours, distinguished alike by their brilliancy and fugacity. . _iridium blue._ the rare metal iridium affords a blue which is a mixture of the oxide and the sesquioxide. but being slightly soluble in water and decolourised by sulphuretted hydrogen, it would not, other considerations apart, be an acquisition. . _manganese blue._ an aqueous solution of permanganate of potash yields with baryta-water a violet mixture, which afterwards becomes colourless, and deposits a blue precipitate. this retains its colour after washing and drying, but cannot be recommended as a pigment, being liable to suffer in contact with organic substances, which deoxidize and decolourize the manganates and permanganates. . _platinum blue._ with mercurous nitrate, the platinocyanide of potassium forms a thick smalt blue, and the platinidcyanide a dark blue precipitate. the compound is a mixture of platino- or platinidcyanide of mercury and mercurous nitrate. upon the presence of the latter the colour seems to depend, for on washing with cold water containing nitric acid, the nitrate is not removed nor the blue affected; but boiling water extracts the nitrate and leaves a white residue. a blue containing mercurous nitrate must necessarily be injured by impure air, and be otherwise objectionable. . _tungsten blue_ is an oxide formed by the action of various deoxidizing agents on tungstic acid. it remains unaltered in the air at ordinary temperatures, is opaque, and of a blackish indigo-blue colour. as a pigment, there is little to recommend it. . _wood-tar blue._ the colours obtained from coal-tar have become household words, and it is not impossible that those from wood-tar may be some day equally familiar. at present wood-tar is comparatively unexplored, but the fact that picamar furnishes a blue is at least as suggestive and hopeful as that transient purple colouration by which aniline was once chiefly distinguished. as aniline is a product of coal-tar, so picamar is a product of wood-tar; and as the former gives a purple with hypochlorites, so the latter yields a blue with baryta-water. both are distinguished by coloured tests, but there is this advantage in the picamar blue--it is comparatively permanent. picamar blue is produced when a few drops of baryta-water are added to an alcoholic solution of impure picamar, or even to wood-tar oil deprived of its acid. the liquor instantly assumes a bright blue tint, which in a few minutes passes into an indigo colour. from [greek: pitta] pitch, and [greek: kallos] ornament, the blue is named _pittacal_. the mode of separating pittacal has not been clearly described. dumas states, that when precipitated in a flocculent state from its solutions, or obtained by evaporation, it closely resembles indigo, and, like it, acquires a coppery hue when rubbed. it is inodorous, tasteless, and not volatile; and is abundantly soluble in acetic acid, forming a red liquid, which, when saturated by an alkali, becomes of a bright blue. it is represented as a more delicate test of acid and alkalis than litmus. with acetate of lead, protochloride of tin, ammonio-sulphate of copper, and acetate of alumina, it yields a fine blue colour with a tint of violet, said not to be affected by air or light, and therefore recommended for dyeing. like indigo, pittacal is believed to contain nitrogen, but its ultimate composition has not been accurately determined. dumas considers it identical with a blue product obtained in from coal-tar by mm. barthe and laurent. if this be the case, its greater stability over coal-tar blues and colours generally admits of doubt. that, however, has yet to be ascertained. our object in noticing this blue has been two-fold: first, to direct attention to wood-tar as a possible source of colour; and secondly, to point to pittacal as a possible substitute for indigo, possessing greater durability. . _zinc-cobalt blue._ cobalt, as furnishing a blue colour, is usually associated with alumina, silica, or tin; and, as furnishing a green colour, with zinc. but there is obtainable a compound of zinc and cobalt which gives a blue not only free from green, but inclining rather to red. it is made by adding to a solution of ordinary phosphate of soda in excess a solution first of sulphate of zinc and then of sulphate of cobalt, and washing and igniting the precipitate. the result is a vitreous blue with a purple cast, of little body, and exceedingly difficult to grind. altogether, it is not unlike smalt, over which it has no advantages as an artistic pigment either in colour or permanence. for tinting porcelain, however, it is admirably adapted, imparting thereto a very pure dark blue of extraordinary beauty. this blue is distinguished from smalt by dissolving in acetic acid. * * * * * compared with the wide range of yellows, or even with reds, the artist finds the number of his blues limited. the perfect native and excellent artificial ultramarines, the good blues of cobalt, the fair prussian blue, and the doubtful indigo, are the four varieties he has for years been in the habit of using, and is still mainly dependent on. our division, therefore, into permanent, semi-stable, and fugitive, is easily effected. in the front rank, pre-eminent among blues as among pigments generally, stands genuine ultramarine. behind it, are the artificial ultramarines; and behind them again, cobalt and cerulian blue. to a greater or less extent, all these are durable. among the semi-stable, must be classed cyanine or leitch's blue, smalt, and prussian blue. to the fugitive, belong indigo and the somewhat more permanent intense blue, antwerp blue, and the copper blues. in this list of blues, which grace or disgrace the palette of the present day, there is one colour which, although not permanent, is almost indispensable. as yet, the chemist cannot in all cases lay down the law as to what pigments may or may not be employed. the painter who unnecessarily uses fugitive colours must have little love for his craft, and a poor opinion of the value of his work; but, even with the best intentions and the utmost self-esteem, the artist cannot always confine himself to strictly stable pigments. he has no right to use orpiment instead of cadmium yellow, or red lead instead of vermilion, or copper blue instead of cobalt: he has no business to employ indigo when prussian blue saddened by black will answer his purpose; but--what pigment can he substitute for prussian blue itself? none. in its wondrous depth, richness, and transparency, it stands alone: there is no yellow to compare with it, no red to equal it, no blue to rival it. in force and power it is a colour among colours, and transparent beyond them all. the great importance of transparent pigments is to unite with solid or opaque colours of their own hues, giving tone and atmosphere generally, together with beauty and life; to convert primary into secondary, and secondary into tertiary colours, with brilliancy; to deepen and enrich dark colours and shadows, and to impart force and tone to black itself. for such effects, no pigment can vie with prussian blue. what purples it produces, what greens it gives, what a matchless range of grays; what velvety glow it confers, how it softens the harshness of colours, and how it subdues their glare. no; until the advent of a perfect palette, the artist can scarcely part with his prussian blue; nor can the chemist, who has nothing better to offer, hold him to blame. it is for art to copy nature with the best materials she possesses: it is for science to learn the secrets of nature, and turn them to the benefit of art. chapter xi. on the secondary, orange. orange is the first of the secondary colours in relation to light, being in all the variety of its hues composed of _yellow_ and _red_. a true or perfect orange is such a compound of red and yellow as will neutralize a perfect blue in equal quantity either of surface or intensity; and the proportions of such compound are five of perfect red to three of perfect yellow. when orange inclines to red, it takes the names of _scarlet_, _poppy_, &c.: in gold colour, &c., it leans towards yellow. combined with green it forms the tertiary _citrine_, and with purple the tertiary _russet_: it also furnishes a series of warm semi-neutral colours with black, and harmonizes in contact and variety of tints with white. orange is an advancing colour in painting:--in nature it is effective at a great distance, acting powerfully on the eye, diminishing its sensibility in accordance with the strength of the light in which it is viewed. it is of the hue, and partakes of the vividness of sunshine, as it likewise does of all the powers of its components, red and yellow. pre-eminently a _warm_ colour, being the equal contrast of or antagonist to blue, to which the attribute of _coolness_ peculiarly belongs, it is discordant when standing alone with yellow or with red, unresolved by their proper contrasts or harmonizing colours, purple and green. as an archeus or ruling colour, orange is one of the most agreeable keys in toning a picture, from the richness and warmth of its effects. if it predominate therein, for the colouring to be true, the violet and purple should be more or less red, the red more or less scarlet, the yellow more or less intense and orange, and the orange itself be intense and vivid. further, the greens must lose some of their blue and consequently become yellower, the light blues be more or less light grey, and the deep indigo more or less marrone. although the secondary colours are capable of being obtained by admixture of the primaries in an infinitude of hues, tints, and shades; yet simple original pigments of whatever class--whether secondary, tertiary, or semi-neutral--are, it has been said before, often superior to those compounded, both in a chemical and artistic sense. hence a thoroughly good original orange is only of less value and importance than a thoroughly good original yellow, a green than a blue, or a purple than a red. to produce pure and permanent compound hues requires practice and knowledge, and we too often see in the works of painters combinations neither pleasing nor stable. colours are associated with each other which do not mix kindly, and compounds formed of which one or both constituents are fugitive. as a consequence, mixed tints are frequently wanting in clearness, and, where they do not disappear altogether, resolve themselves into some primary colour; orange becoming red by a fading of the yellow, green yellow by a fading of the blue, and purple blue by a fading of the red. again, with regard to compound tints, there is the danger of one colour reacting upon and injuring another, as in the case of greens obtained from chrome yellow and prussian blue, where the former ultimately destroys the latter. of course a mixture of two permanent pigments which do not react on each other will remain permanent; the green, for instance, furnished by aureolin and native ultramarine lasting as long as the ground itself. to produce, however, the effects desired, the artist does not always stop to consider the fitness and stability of his colours in compounding, even if he possess the needed acquaintance with their physical and chemical properties. at all times, therefore, but especially when such knowledge is slight, good orange, &c., pigments are of more or less value, as by their use the employment of inferior mixtures is to a great extent avoided. in mingling primary with primary, if one colour does not compound well with the other, or is fugacious, the result is failure; but a secondary is not so easily affected by admixture: a green, for example, is seldom quite ruined by the injudicious addition of blue or yellow; and even if either of the latter be fugitive, the green will remain a green if originally durable. thus the secondaries, if they are not already of the colour required, may be brightened or subdued, deepened or paled, with comparative impunity. the artist who, from long years of experience, knows exactly the properties and capabilities of the colours he employs, may in a measure dispense with secondary pigments, and obtain from the primaries mixed tints at once stable, beautiful, and pure; but even he must sometimes resort to them, as when a green like emerald or viridian is required, which no mixture of blue and yellow will afford. the primaries, by reason of their not being able to be composed of other colours, occupy the first place on the palette, and are of the first importance; but the secondaries are far too useful to be disregarded, and have a value of their own, which both veteran and tyro have cause to acknowledge. the list of original orange pigments was once so deficient, that in some old treatises on the subject of colours, they are not even mentioned. this may have arisen, not merely from their paucity, but from the unsettled signification of the term orange, as well as from improperly calling these pigments reds, yellows, &c. in these days, however, orange pigments are sufficiently numerous to merit a chapter to themselves; they indeed comprise some of the best colours on the palette. . burnt sienna, or _burnt terra di sienna_, is calcined raw sienna, of a rich transparent brown-orange or orange-russet colour, richer, deeper, and more transparent than the raw earth. it also works and dries better, has in other respects the qualities of its parent colour, and is a most permanent and serviceable pigment in painting generally. for the warm tints in rocks, mud banks, and buildings, this colour is excellent. when mixed with blue it makes a good green; furnishing a bright green with cobalt, and one much more intense with prussian blue. for the foresea, whether calm or broken by waves, it may be employed with a little madder; while compounded with a small portion of the latter and lamp black, it meets the hues of old posts, boats, and a variety of near objects, as the tints may be varied by modifying the proportions of the component colours. used with white, it yields a range of sunny tones; and with aureolin or french blue and aureolin will be found of service, the last compound giving a fine olive green. similar but fugitive greens are afforded by admixture of burnt sienna with indigo and yellow or roman ochre, or raw sienna; tints which may be saddened into olive neutrals by the addition of sepia, and rendered more durable by substituting for indigo prussian blue and black. mixed with viridian, it furnishes autumnal hues of the utmost richness, beauty, and permanence; and, alone, is valuable as a glaze over foliage and herbage. for the dark markings and divisions of stones a compound of payne's gray and burnt sienna will prove serviceable; while for red sails the sienna, either by itself, with brown madder, or with indian red, cannot be surpassed. for foregrounds, banks and roads, cattle and animals in general, burnt sienna is equally eligible, both alone and compounded. it has a slight tendency to darken by time. . cadmium orange was first introduced to the art-world at the international exhibition of , where it was universally admired for its extreme brilliancy and beauty, a brilliancy equalled by few of the colours with which it was associated, and a beauty devoid of coarseness. we remember well the power it possessed of attracting the eye from a distance; and how, on near approach, it threw nearly all other pigments into the shade. it has in truth a lustrous luminosity not often to be met with, added to a total absence of rankness or harshness. a simple original colour, containing no base but cadmium, it is of perfect permanence, being uninjured by exposure to light, air or damp, by sulphuretted hydrogen, or by admixture. having in common with cadmium sulphides a certain amount of transparency, it is invaluable for gorgeous sunsets and the like, either alone or compounded with aureolin. of great depth and power in its full touches, the pale washes are marked by that clearness and delicacy which are so essential in painting skies. as day declines, and blue melts into green, green into orange, and orange into purple, the proper use of this pigment will produce effects both glowing and transparent. transparency signifies the quality of being seen through or into; and in no better way can it be arrived at than by giving a number of thin washes of determined character, each lighter than the preceding one. with due care in preserving their forms, from the commencement to the termination, such washes of orange will furnish hues the softest and most aerial. for bits of bright drapery, a glaze over autumn leaves, and mural decoration, this colour is adapted; while in illumination it supplies a want formerly much felt. "with the exception of scarlet or bright orange," said mr. bradley, nine or ten years since, in his manual of illumination, "our colours are everything we could wish." as an original pigment, a permanent scarlet does not yet exist; but the brilliancy of cadmium orange cannot be disputed, nor its claim to be the only unexceptionable bright orange known. it even assists the formation of the other colour: remarks the author mentioned, "brilliancy is obtained by gradation. suppose a scarlet over-curling leaf, for example. the whole should be painted in pure orange, with the gentlest possible after-touch of vermilion towards the corner under the curl. when dry, a firm line--not wash--of carmine, (of madder, preferable.--_ed._), passed within the outline on the shade side only of the leaf, will give to the whole the look of a bright scarlet surface, but with an indescribable superadded charm, that no merely flat colour can possess." in the same branch of art, illumination, cadmium orange, opposed to viridian, presents a most dazzling contrast, especially if relieved by purple. . chinese orange belongs to the coal-tar colours, and ought strictly to have been classed therewith. we have preferred, however, to keep it separate, because, as chinese orange, it was introduced as a pigment, and has not been employed as a dye. in colour, it somewhat resembles burnt sienna, enriched, reddened, brightened, and made more transparent, by admixture with crimson lake. from its behaviour, it would seem to be composed of yellow and red, such a compound as magenta and aniline yellow would afford. its pale washes are uncertain, being apt to resolve themselves into red and yellow, of which the latter appears the most permanent; for, on exposure to light and air, the red more or less flies, leaving here a yellow, and there a reddish-yellow ground: in places both red and yellow disappear. like all fugitive colours, it is comparatively stable when used in body; but even then it entirely loses its depth and richness, and in a great measure its redness, becoming faded and yellowish. in thin washes or glazing it is totally inadmissible; and, being neither a red, an orange, nor a brown, is unsuited to pure effects. nevertheless, where it need not be unduly exposed; in portfolio illuminations, for instance, the richness, subdued brilliancy, and transparency of this pigment, justify its adoption. it is not affected by an impure atmosphere. aniline colours may be adapted for oil painting by dissolving them in the strongest alcohol, saturating the solution with dammar resin, filtering the tincture, and pouring the filtrate either on pure water or solution of common salt, stirring well all the time. the water or brine solution must be at least twenty times the bulk of the tincture. the colour after being collected on a filter, washed, and dried, can be ground with linseed oil, poppy oil, or oil varnishes. . chrome orange, _orange chrome_, or _orange chromate of lead_, is a sub-chromate of lead of an orange-yellow colour, produced by the action of an alkali on chrome yellow. like all the chromates of lead, it is characterized by power and brilliancy; but also by a rankness of tone, a want of permanence, and a tendency to injure organic pigments. by reason of its lead base it is subject to alteration by impure air, but is on the whole preferable to the chrome yellows, being liable in a somewhat less degree to their changes and affinities. as, however, a colour has no business to be used if a better can be procured, the recent introduction of cadmium orange renders all risk unnecessary. . mars orange, _orange de mars_, is a subdued orange of the burnt sienna class, but without the brown tinge that distinguishes the latter. marked by a special clearness and purity of tone, with much transparency, it affords bright sunny tints in its pale washes, and combines effectively with white. being an artificial iron ochre it is more chemically active than native ochres, and needs to be cautiously employed with pigments affected by iron, such as the lakes of cochineal and intense blue. . mixed orange. orange being a compound colour, the place of original orange pigments can be supplied by mixtures of yellow and red; either by glazing one over the other, by stippling, or by other modes of breaking and intermixing them, according to the nature of the work and the effect required. for reasons lately given, mixed pigments are apt to be inferior to the simple or homogeneous both in colour, working, and other properties; yet some pigments mix and combine more cordially and with better results than others; as is the case with liquid rubiate and gamboge. generally speaking, the compounding of colours is easier in oil than in water; but in both vehicles trouble will be saved by beginning with the predominating colour, and adding the other or others to it. perhaps in this, our first chapter on the secondary colours, and consequently on colours that can be compounded, a few remarks on mixed tints from a chemical point of view will not be deemed superfluous. there are two ways, we take it, of looking at a picture--from a purely chemical, and from a purely artistic, point of view. regarded in the first light, it matters little whether a painting be a work of genius or a daub, provided the pigments employed on it are good and properly compounded. the effects produced are lost sight of in a consideration of the materials, their permanence, fugacity, and conduct towards each other. painting is essentially a chemical operation: with his pigments for reagents, the artist unwittingly performs reaction after reaction, not with the immediate results indeed of the chemist in his laboratory, but often as surely. as colour is added to colour, and mixture to mixture, acid meets alkali, metal animal, mineral vegetable, inorganic organic. with so close a union of opposite and opposing elements, the wonder is not so much that pictures sometimes perish, but that they ever live. it behoves the artist, then, not only to procure the best and most permanent pigments possible, but to compound them in such a manner that his mixed tints may be durable as well as beautiful. to effect or aid in effecting this, although he may not always be able to act upon them, the following axioms should be borne in mind:-- . if they do not react on each other, a permanent pigment added to a permanent pigment yields a permanent mixture. . if they do react on each other, a permanent pigment added to a permanent pigment yields a semi-stable or fugitive mixture. . a permanent pigment added to a semi-stable pigment yields a semi-stable mixture. . a permanent pigment added to a fugitive pigment yields a fugitive mixture. consequently-- . a permanent pigment may be rendered fugitive or semi-stable by improper compounding. . a semi-stable or fugitive pigment is not rendered durable by being compounded. . as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so a mixture is only as permanent as its least durable constituent. to give illustrations-- . ultramarine added to chinese white yields a permanent mixture. . ultramarine added to an acid constant white yields a semi-stable or fugitive mixture. . ultramarine added to prussian blue yields a semi-stable mixture. . ultramarine added to indigo yields a fugitive mixture. except in the second instance, where the blue is either partially or wholly destroyed--in time, be it remembered, not at once--according to the quantity and strength of the acid in the white, the ultramarine remains unchanged. hence at first sight our third and fourth conclusions may appear wrong; inasmuch as, it may be argued, a blue mixture cannot be semi-stable or fugitive when blue is left. to this we reply, unless both constituents are fugitive, a mixture will always more or less possess colour; but, if even one constituent be semi-stable or fugitive, a mixture will slowly but surely lose _the_ colour for which it was compounded, and be _as a mixture_ semi-stable or fugitive. it need hardly be observed that the number of permanent orange, green, and purple hues which the artist can compound, depends mainly on the number of permanent yellows, reds, and blues at his disposal. in mixed orange, therefore, a selection of durable yellows and reds is of the first importance. it should, however, be remarked that mixed orange, more sober and less decided, is obtainable by the use of citrine and russet; in the former of which yellow predominates, and in the latter, red: consequently orange results when yellow is added to russet, red to citrine, or citrine to russet. permanent yellows. | permanent reds. | aureolin. | cadmium red. cadmium, deep. | liquid rubiate. cadmium, pale. | madder carmine. lemon yellow. | rose madder. mars yellow. | mars red. naples yellow, modern. | ochres. ochres. | vermilions. orient yellow. | raw sienna. | none of these pigments react on each other, and from them can be produced the most durable mixed orange that yellow and red will afford. . neutral orange, or _penley's neutral orange_, is a permanent compound pigment composed of yellow ochre and the russet-marrone known as brown madder: it is chiefly valuable in water-colour. paper, being white, is too opaque to paint upon, without some wash of colour being first passed over it; otherwise the light tones of the sky are apt to look crude and harsh. it must, therefore, be gone over with some desirable tint, that shall break, in a slight degree, the extreme brilliancy of the mere paper. for this purpose, a thin wash of the orange is to be put over the whole surface of the paper with a large flat brush, care being taken never to drive the colour too bare, _i.e._ never to empty the brush too closely, but always to replenish before more is actually required. this first wash of colour not only gives a tone to the paper, but secures the pencil sketch from being rubbed out. the reason why, in this compound, yellow ochre, as a yellow, is preferred to any of the others, is, that it is a broken yellow, that is, a yellow slightly altered by having another hue, such as red, or brown, in its composition. it is somewhat opaque too, and hence, from this quality, is especially adapted for distances. brown madder also is a subdued red, which, when in combination with the former, produces a neutral orange, partaking of the character of soft light. as a general rule, yellow ochre is to predominate in broad daylight, and brown madder in that which is more sombre and imperfect: hence the pigment can be yellowed or reddened, by the addition of one or the other. for a clear sunset, the neutral orange must be repeated, with a preponderance of ochre at the top, assisted by a little cadmium yellow near the sun; the madder being added downwards. in treating of distant mountains, a distinction is to be made between them and the clouds, the former requiring solidity, while the latter are only to be regarded as vapour and air. mountains, being opaque bodies, are acted upon by atmosphere more or less, according to their position, their distance, and the state of the weather. to express this distinction, recourse must be had to an under tint, except where the tone is decidedly blue--an uncommon case. no mixture can give this with such truth as the neutral orange. a wash, therefore, should be passed over the mountains, with nearly all yellow in the high lights, or in the gleams of sunshine, and, on the contrary, almost all brown madder for the shadows. these two degrees of tone must be run into each other while the drawing is wet. a beautiful and soft under tone will thus be given to receive the greys. . orange, or burnt roman ochre, called also _spanish ochre_, is a very bright yellow or roman ochre burnt, by which operation it acquires warmth, colour, transparency, and depth. moderately bright, it forms good flesh tints with white, dries and works well both in water and oil, and is a very good and eligible pigment. it may be used in enamel painting, and has all the properties of its original ochre in other respects. a redder hue is imparted by mixing the ochre with powdered nitre before ignition, the orange red being subsequently washed with hot water. * * * * * . _anotta_, annotto, annatto, arnotto, arnotta, terra orellana, rocou, &c., is met with in commerce under the names of cake anotta, and flag or roll anotta. the former, which comes almost exclusively from cayenne, should be of a bright yellow colour: the latter, which is imported from the brazils, is brown outside and red within. it is prepared from the pods of the _bixa orellana_, and appears generally to contain two colouring matters, a yellow and a red, which are apt to adhere to each other and produce orange. anotta dissolves with difficulty in water, but readily in alcohol and alkaline solutions, from which last it may be thrown down as a lake by means of alum. being, however, exceedingly fugitive and changeable, it is not fit for painting; but is chiefly employed in dyeing silk, and colouring varnishes and cheese. very red cheese should be looked upon with suspicion, for although the admixture of anotta is in no way detrimental to health provided the drug be pure, it is commonly adulterated with red lead and ochre. several instances are on record that gloucester and other cheeses have been found contaminated with red lead, through having been coloured with anotta containing it, and that this contamination has produced serious consequences. _bixine_ is a purified extract of anotta made in france, and used by dyers. . _antimony orange_, golden sulphur of antimony, or golden yellow, is a hydro-sulphuret of antimony of an orange colour, which is destroyed by the action of strong light. it is a bad dryer in oil, injurious to many pigments, and in no respect eligible either in water or oil. . _chromate of mercury_ has been improperly classed as a red with vermilion, for though it is of a bright ochrous red in powder, when ground it becomes a bright ochre-orange, and affords with white very pure orange tints. nevertheless it is a bad pigment, since light soon changes it to a deep russet colour, and foul air reduces it to extreme blackness. . _damonico_, or monicon, is an iron ochre, being a compound of raw sienna and roman ochre burnt, and having all their qualities. it is rather more russet in hue than the pigment known as orange or burnt roman ochre, has considerable transparency, is rich and durable in colour, and furnishes good flesh tints. as in orange ochre, powdered nitre may be employed in its preparation. notwithstanding its merits, it is obsolete or nearly so; doubtless because burnt sienna mixed with burnt roman ochre sufficiently answers the purpose. . _gamboge orange._ on adding acetate of lead to a potash solution of gamboge, a rich bright orange is precipitated, which may be washed on a filter till the washings are colourless, and preserves its hue with careful drying. the orange which we thus obtained stood well in a book, but it cannot be recommended as an artistic pigment. perhaps in dyeing, the lead and gamboge solutions might be worth a trial. . _laque minérale_ is a french pigment, a species of chromic orange, similar to the orange chromate of lead. this name is likewise given to orange oxide of iron. . _madder orange_, or orange lake. it has been said that the yellows so-called produced from madder are not remarkable for stability, differing therein from the reds, purples, russets, and browns. like them, this 'orange' is of doubtful colour and permanence, and not to be met with, brilliant and pure, on the palette of to-day. the russet known as rubens' madder has a tendency to orange. . _orange lead_, of a dull orange colour, is an orange protoxide of lead or massicot. like litharge, it may be employed in the preparation of drying oils, and, being a better drier than white lead, may be substituted for it in mixing with pigments which need a siccative, as the bituminous earths. minium sometimes leans to orange; and there is made from ceruse a peculiar red, _mineral orange_. _orange orpiment_, or realgar, has also been called red orpiment, improperly, since it is a brilliant orange, inclining to yellow. there are two kinds, a native and an artificial, of which the former is the _sandarac_ of the ancients, and is rather redder than the latter. they possess the same qualities as pigments, and as such resemble yellow orpiment, to which the old painters gave the orange hue by heat, naming it alchemy and burnt orpiment. orange orpiment contains more arsenic and less sulphur than the yellow, and is of course highly poisonous. it is often sophisticated with brickdust and yellow ochre. . _thallium orange_ is produced when bichromate of potash is added to a neutral salt of the protoxide of thallium, as an orange-yellow precipitate. the scarcity of the metal precludes their present introduction as pigments, but if the chromates of thallium were found to resist the action of light and air, and not to become green by deoxidation of the chromic acid, they might possibly prove fitted for the palette. it is a question whether their _very_ slight solubility in water would be a fatal objection; and, although they would be liable to suffer from a foul atmosphere, we are inclined to think the effects would not be so lasting as in the chromates of lead. like lead sulphide, the sulphide of thallium ranges from brown to brownish-black, or grey-black; and, like it too, is subject to oxidation and consequent conversion into colourless sulphate. it is, however, much more readily oxidized than sulphate of lead; and hence the thallium chromates would doubtless soon regain their former hue on exposure to a strong light. mr. crookes, who discovered this new metal in , believes that the deep orange shade observable in some specimens of sulphide of cadmium is due to the presence of thallium. he has frequently found it, he says, in the dark-coloured varieties, and considers the variations of colour in cadmium sulphide to be owing to traces of thallium. that thallium affects the colour is most probable, but it is not necessarily the cause of the orange hue. the tint of cadmium sulphide is a mere matter of manufacture, seeing that from the same sample of metal there can be obtained lemon-yellow, pale yellow, deep yellow, orange-yellow, and orange-red. with deference to the opinion of a chemist so distinguished, we hold that thallium rather impairs the beauty of cadmium sulphide than imparts to it an orange shade, the thallium being likewise in the form of sulphide, and therefore more or less black. on chromate of cadmium, made with bichromate of potash, thallium would naturally confer an orange hue. . _uranium orange_ is obtainable by wet and dry methods as a yellowish-red, or, when reduced to powder, an orange-yellow, uranate of baryta. it is an expensive preparation, superfluous as a pigment. . _zinc orange._ when hydrochloric acid and zinc are made to act on nitro-prusside of sodium, a corresponding zinc compound is formed of a deep orange colour, slightly soluble in water, and not permanent. * * * * * for a secondary colour, orange is well represented on the modern palette, and can point to some pigments as good and durable as any to be found among the primaries. burnt sienna, cadmium orange, mars orange, neutral orange, and orange or burnt roman ochre, are all strictly permanent. the so-called orange vermilions were, it will be remembered, classed among the reds. as semi-stable, must be ranked chrome orange; and as fugitive, chinese orange, orange orpiment, and orange lead. from the foregoing division, the predominance of eligible orange pigments over those less trustworthy is manifest. unfortunately, with many painters it is not so manifest that their secondary and compound colours should receive as much attention as the primaries, and that it is their duty, not only to the art which they practice, but to the patrons for whom they practice it, that their orange and green and purple hues, should be as durable as their yellows, reds, and blues. for such, the introduction of a new permanent pigment is of little interest, unless its colour be primary; so wedded are they to that passion for compounding which the chemist views with dismay. with dismay, because he knows that the rules of mixture are severe, and cannot with impunity be altered; that, although disguised in oil or gum, each pigment is a chemical compound, with more or less of affinity and power, more or less likely to act or be acted upon. because he knows that, except with the most experienced artists, compounding leads to confusion; and that in it the temptations to use semi-stable or fugitive colours are strong. look at those tables of mixed tints of which artist-authors are so fond, and tell us whether they always bear scrutiny--surely not. admirable, perfect as these tints may be in an artistic sense, how often is their beauty like the hectic flush of consumption, which carries with it the seeds of a certain death. will that orange where indian yellow figures ever see old age, or that green with indigo, or purple with cochineal lake? will they not rather spread over the picture the upas-tree of fugacity, and kill it as they die themselves! chapter xii. on the secondary, green. green, which occupies the middle station in the natural scale of colours and in relation to light and shade, is the second of the secondary colours. it is composed of the extreme primaries, _yellow_ and _blue_, and is most perfect in hue when constituted in the proportions of three of yellow to eight of blue of equal intensities; because such a green will exactly neutralize and contrast a perfect red in the ratio of eleven to five, either of space or power. of all compound colours, green is the most effective, distinct, and striking, causing surprise and delight when first produced by a mixture of blue and yellow, so dissimilar to its constituents does it appear to the untutored eye. compounded with orange, green converts it into the one extreme tertiary _citrine_; while mixed with purple, it becomes the other extreme tertiary _olive_: hence its relations and accordances are more general, and its contrasts more agreeable with all colours, than those of any other individual colour. accordingly it has been adopted very wisely in nature as the common garb of the vegetal creation. it is, indeed, in every respect a central or medial colour, being the contrast, compensatory in the proportion of eleven to five, of the middle primary _red_, on the one hand, and of the middle tertiary _russet_, on the other; while, unlike the other secondaries, all its hues, whether tending to blue or yellow, are of the same denomination. these attributes of green, which render it so universally effective in contrasting colours, cause it also to become the least useful in compounding them, and the most apt to defile other colours in mixture. nevertheless it forms valuable semi-neutrals of the olive class with _black_, for of such subdued tones are those greens by which the more vivid tints of nature are opposed. accordingly, the various greens of foliage are always more or less semi-neutral in hue. as green is the most general colour of vegetal nature and principal in foliage; so red, its harmonizing colour, with compounds of red, is most general and principal in flowers. purple flowers are commonly contrasted with centres or variegations of bright yellow, as blue flowers are with like relievings of orange; and there is a prevailing hue, or character, in the green colour of the foliage of almost every plant, by which it is harmonized with the colours of its flowers. the chief discord of green is blue; and when they approximate or accompany each other, they require to be resolved by the opposition of warm colours. it is in this way that the warmth of distance and the horizon reconciles the azure of the sky with the greenness of a landscape. its less powerful discord is yellow, which needs to be similarly resolved by a purple-red, or its principles. in tone, green is cool or warm, sedate or gay, either as it inclines to blue or to yellow; yet in its general effects it is cool, calm, temperate, and refreshing. having little power in reflecting light, it is a retiring colour, and readily subdued by distance: for the same reason, it excites the retina less than most colours, and is cool and grateful to the eye. as a colour individually, green is eminently beautiful and agreeable, but it is more particularly so when contrasted by its compensating colour, red, as it often is in nature, even in the green leaves and young shoots of plants and trees. "the autumn only is called the painter's season," remarks constable, "from the great richness of the colours of the dead and decaying foliage, and the peculiar tone and beauty of the skies; but the spring has, perhaps, more than an equal claim to his notice and admiration, and from causes not wholly dissimilar,--the great variety of tints and colours of the living foliage, accompanied by their flowers and blossoms. the beautiful and tender hues of the young leaves and buds are rendered more lovely by being contrasted, as they now are, with the sober russet browns of the stems from which they shoot, and which still show the drear remains of the season that is past." the number of pigments of any colour is in general proportioned to its importance; hence the variety of greens is very great, though the classes of those in common use are not very numerous. of the three secondaries, green is the colour most often met with, and, consequently, the most often compounded: for this last reason, perhaps, the palette is somewhat deficient in really good original greens--more deficient than there is any necessity for. chrome oxides. by numerous methods both wet and dry, oxides of chromium are obtainable pale and deep, bright and subdued, warm and cool, opaque and transparent: sometimes hydrated, in which case they cannot be employed in enamelling; and sometimes anhydrous, when they are admissible therein. but whatever their properties may be, chemical, physical, or artistic, they are all strictly stable. neither giving nor receiving injury by admixture, equally unaffected by foul gas and exposure to light, air, or damp, these oxides are perfectly unexceptionable in every respect. for the most part they are eligible in water and oil, drying well in the latter vehicle, and requiring in the former much gum. they have long been known as affording pure, natural, and durable tints; but, until within the last few years, have been rather fine than brilliant greens. lately, however, processes have been devised, yielding them almost as bright, rich, and transparent, as the carmine of cochineal itself. . oxide of chromium, _opaque oxide of chromium_, _green oxide of chromium_, _chrome oxide_, _true chrome green_, _native green_, _&c._, is found native in an impure state as chrome ochre, but is always artificially prepared for artistic use. obtained anhydrous by dry modes, this is the only chrome oxide available in enamelling, and is the one seen on superior porcelain. it is a cold, sober sage green, deep-toned, opaque, and, although dull, agreeable to the eye. its tints with white are peculiarly delicate and pleasing, possessing a silvery luminous quality, and giving the effect of atmosphere. being very dense and powerful, it must be employed with care to avoid heaviness, and is preferably diluted with a large quantity of white, or compounded with transparent yellow. in the hands of a master, this gray-green furnishes lustrous hues with brown pink, italian pink, and indian yellow; three beautiful but fugitive pigments, of which the two last may be replaced by aureolin. of this mr. penley observes, "as adapted for the colouring of foliage and herbage, it is impossible to say too much in its praise. it imparts the vividness and freshness of nature to every colour with which it is combined;" and he brackets oxide of chromium with aureolin as a compound hue "extremely useful." in flat tints, the oxide sometimes does not wash well in water. . transparent oxide of chromium being deficient in body, is only eligible in oil. a very pale greyish-white green in powder, it gives an agreeable yellowish green of some depth in oil, moderately bright, but not very pure or clear. we are acquainted with another transparent chrome oxide of far greater beauty, brightness, purity, and clearness than the above. of a bluish green hue, a difficulty in getting it to mix with oil renders it at present unavailable. . veronese green, or _french veronese green_, is a comparatively recent introduction, similar in colour and general properties to the following; beside which, however, it appears dull, muddy, and impure. it is often adulterated with arsenic to an enormous extent, which interferes with its transparency, mars its beauty, and renders it of course rankly poisonous. . viridian is a still later addition to the palette, and the only permanent green which can be described as gorgeous, being not unlike the richest velvet. pure and clear as the emerald, it may be called the prussian blue of greens, of such richness, depth, and transparency is it. in hue of a bluish-green, its deepest shades verge on black, while its light tints are marked by transparent clearness unsurpassed. no compound of blue and yellow will afford a green at once so beautiful and stable, so gifted with the quality of light, and therefore so suited for aerial and liquid effects. used with aureolin, it gives foliage greens sparkling with sunshine; and, fitly compounded, will be found invaluable for the glassy liquidity of seas, in painting which it becomes incumbent to employ pigments more or less transparent. "the general failing in the representation of the sea is, that instead of appearing liquid and thin, it is made to bear the semblance of opacity and solidity. in order to convey the idea of transparency, some object is often placed floating on the wave, so as to give reflection; and it is strange that we find our greatest men having recourse to this stratagem. to say it is not true in all cases, is saying too much; but this we do assert, that as a general principle it is quite false, and we prove it in this way: water has its motion, more or less, from the power of the wind; it is acted upon in the mass, and thus divided into separate waves, and these individually have their surface ruffled, which renders them incapable of receiving reflection. the exception to this will be, where the heaving of the sea is the result of some gone-by storm, when the wind is hushed, and the surface becomes bright and glassy. in this state, reflections are distinctly seen. another exception will be in the hollow portion of the waves, as they curl over, and dash upon the shore." as viridian, like the sea, is naturally "liquid and thin, bright and glassy," the extract we have quoted from mr. penley, points to this green as a pigment peculiarly adapted for marine painting; in which, it may be added, its perfect permanence and transparency will be appreciated in glazing. its fitness for foliage has been remarked; but in draperies the colour will prove equally useful, and in illumination will be found unrivalled. in the last branch of art, indeed, viridian stands alone, not only through its soft rich brilliancy, but by the glowing contrast it presents with other colours: employed as a ground, it throws up the reds, &c., opposed to it, in a marvellous manner. like the three preceding oxides of chromium, viridian neither injures nor is injured by other pigments; is unaffected by light, damp, or impure air; and is admissible in fresco. in enamelling it cannot be used; the colour, depending on the water of hydration, being destroyed by a strong heat. copper greens are commercially known as _emerald green_, _malachite green_, _scheele's green_, _schweinfurt green_, _verdigris_, _green bice_, _green verditer_, _brunswick green_, _vienna green_, _hungary green_, _green lake_, _mineral green_, _patent green_, _mountain green_, _marine green_, _saxon green_, _french green_, _african green_, _persian green_, _swedish green_, _olympian green_, _imperial green_, _mitis green_, _pickle green_, &c. the general characteristics of these greens are brightness of colour, well suited to the purposes of house-painting, but seldom adapted to the modesty of nature in fine art; considerable permanence, except when exposed to the action of damp and impure air, which ultimately blacken most of them; and good body. they have a tendency to darken by time, dry well as a rule in oil, and are all more or less poisonous, even those not containing arsenic. . emerald green, _schweinfurt green_, _vienna green_, _imperial green_, _brunswick green_, _mitis green_, &c., is a cupric aceto-arsenite, prepared on the large scale by mixing arsenious acid with acetate of copper and water. it differs from scheele's green, or cupric arsenite, in being lighter, more vivid, and more opaque. powerfully reflective of light, it is perhaps the most durable pigment of its class, not sensibly affected by damp nor by that amount of impure air to which pictures are usually subject: indeed it may be ranked as permanent both in itself and when in tint with white. it works better in water than in oil, in which latter vehicle it dries with difficulty. bearing the same relation to greens generally as pure scarlet bears to reds, its vivid hue is almost beyond the scale of other bright pigments, and immediately attracts the eye to any part of a painting in which it may be employed. too violent in colour to be of much service, it has the effect, when properly placed, of toning down at once, by force of contrast, all the other greens in a picture. if discreetly used, it is occasionally of value in the drapery of a foreground figure, where a bright green may be demanded; or in a touch on a gaily painted boat or barge. when required, no mixture will serve as a substitute. compounded with aureolin, it becomes softened and semi-transparent, yielding spring tints of extreme brilliancy and beauty. . scheele's green, or _swedish green_, resembles the preceding variety in being a compound of copper and arsenic, and therefore rankly poisonous; but differs from it in containing no acetic acid, in possessing less opacity, and in having a darker shade. it is a cupric arsenite, with the common attributes of emerald green, under which name it is sometimes sold. of similar stability, it must not be employed with the true naples yellow or antimoniate of lead, by which it is soon destroyed. upon the lavish use of this dangerous pigment in colouring toys, dresses, paper-hangings, artificial leaves, and even cheap confectionery, it is not our province to enlarge: the constant-recurring diseases and deaths, which, directly or indirectly, result from the employment of arsenical pigments, are such every-day facts that they are merely deplored and forgotten. with arsenic on our heads, our clothes, our papers, our sweets, our children's playthings, we are so accustomed to live--and die--in a world of poison, that familiarity with it has bred contempt. into the fatal popularity, therefore, of arsenical colours for decorative purposes, we shall not further enter; but it behoves us to deprecate their presence, and the presence of all poisonous pigments, in colour-boxes for the young. it is one of the pleasures of childhood to suck anything attractive that comes in its way, openly if allowed, furtively otherwise: and as in early life we have a preference for brilliancy, so vivid a pigment as scheele's green is an object of special attention. artistically, it matters little whether a pigment is noxious or not, but we hold that poison should not be put into the hands of the young; and indeed are of opinion that a box of colours is about the worst present a child can receive. . malachite green, or _mountain green_, is met with in cumberland, and is also found in the mountains of kernhausen, whence it is sometimes called _hungary green_. it is prepared from malachite, a beautiful copper ore employed by jewellers, and is a hydrated dicarbonate of copper, combined with a white earth, and often striated with veins of mountain blue, to which it bears the same relation that green verditer bears to blue verditer. the colour, which may be extracted from the stone by the process followed for native ultramarine, varies from emerald-green to grass-green, and inclines to grey. it has been held in great esteem by some, and considered strictly stable, on the assumption, probably, that a pigment obtained from a stone like ultramarine, and by the same method, could not be otherwise than permanent. that it is so, with respect to light and air, there is no denying; but the green, when separated from the ore and purified for artistic use, is merely a carbonate of copper, and therefore subject to the influence of damp and impure air, in common with other non-arsenical copper colours. as a pigment, native malachite green has the same composition, or very nearly the same, as that which can be artificially produced, and answers to the same tests. water-rubs of the two varieties which we exposed to an atmosphere of sulphuretted hydrogen became equally blackened by the gas. practically, there is little or no difference between them: both preserve their colour if kept from damp and foul air, both are injured by those agents, and both are liable to darken in time, especially when secluded from light. the artificial, however, can be obtained of a much finer colour than the natural, which it may be made to resemble by admixture with mineral gray. on the whole, they can scarcely be recommended for the palette, and are certainly inferior in durability to scheele's and schweinfurt greens. in fresco painting they have been pronounced admissible; but, apart from the question of damp, we should deem the conjunction of lime with carbonate of copper not favourable to permanence. by the action of alkalies, even the native green malachite may be converted into blue; and it becomes a question whether the dingy greenish-blue on some ancient monuments was not originally malachite green. . verdigris, or _viride Æris_, is of two kinds, common or impure, and crystallized or _distilled verdigris_, or, more properly, refined verdigris. the best is made at montpellier in france, and is a sub-acetate of copper of a bright green colour inclining to blue. the least durable of the copper greens, it soon fades as a water-colour by the action of light, &c., and becomes first white and ultimately black by damp and foul gas. in oil, verdigris is permanent with respect to light and air, but moisture and an impure atmosphere change its colour, and cause it to effloresce or rise to the surface through the oil. it dries rapidly, and is exceptionally useful with other greens or very dark colours. in varnish it stands better; but cannot be considered safe or eligible, either alone or compounded. vinegar dissolves it, forming a solution used for tinting maps, and formerly much employed for colouring pickles, &c. the painters, who lived at the time when the arts were restored in italy, used this pigment; and the bright greens seen in some old pictures are made by glazings of verdigris. it is often largely adulterated with chalk and sulphate of copper. . mixed green green, being a compound of blue and yellow, may be got by combining those colours in the several ways of working--by mixing, glazing, hatching, or otherwise blending them in the proportions of the various hues required. to obtain a _pure_ green, which consists of blue and yellow only, a blue should be chosen tinged with yellow rather than with red, and a yellow tinged with blue. if either a blue or a yellow were taken, tinged with red, this latter colour would go to produce some grey in the compound, which would tarnish the green. the fine nature-like greens, which have lasted so well in some of the pictures of the italian schools, appear to have been compounded of ultramarine, or ultramarine ashes and yellow. whatever pigments are employed on a painting in the warm yellow hues of the foreground, and blue colouring of the distance and sky, are advantageous for forming the greens in landscape, &c., because they harmonize better both in colouring and chemically, and impart homogeneity to the whole: a principle conducive to a fine tone and durability of effect, and applicable to all mixed tints. in compounding colours, it is desirable not only that they should agree chemically, but that they should have, as far as possible, the same degree of durability. in these respects, aureolin and ultramarine, gamboge and prussian blue, indian yellow and indigo, are all judicious mixtures, although not all to be recommended. permanent yellows. | permanent blues. | aureolin. | cerulian blue. cadmium yellow, pale. | cobalt blue. cadmium yellow, deep. | genuine ultramarine. lemon yellow. | brilliant ultramarine. mars yellow. | french ultramarine. naples yellow, modern. | new blue. ochres. | permanent blue. orient yellow. | raw sienna. | the foregoing yellows and blues are in no wise inimical to each other, and yield the best mixed greens, chemically considered, the palette can afford. in an artistic sense, we confess, the result is not so satisfactory: the list of blues, it must be admitted, being somewhat scant. among the latter there is no pigment with the wonderful depth, richness, and transparency of prussian blue, and none consequently which will furnish with yellow a green of similar quality. that the artist, therefore, will dispense with prussian blue, it would be too much to expect. there is, however, less necessity for it since the introduction of viridian, a green resembling that which is produced by admixture of prussian blue and yellow, and which may be varied in hue by being compounded with aureolin or ultramarine. our object in this work is to give precedence to the chemical rather than the artistic properties of pigments, to separate the strictly stable from the semi-stable, and the semi-stable from the fugitive. a colour or a mixture may be chemically bad but artistically good, and vice versâ; but the chemist looks upon no pigment or compound with favour unless it be perfectly permanent, and ignores its mere beauty when void of durability. hence, all artistic considerations are set aside in our lists of permanent pigments: if it be possible to use them alone, so much the better for the permanence of painting; if not, so much the worse will it be, according to the degree of fugacity of the colours employed. . bronze, and the three succeeding varieties, are greens resembling each other in being semi-stable, and more or less transparent. bronze is a species of prussian green, of a dull blue-black hue. in its deep washes it appears a greenish-black with a coppery cast. it is used in ornamental work, and sometimes as a background tint for flower pieces. . chrome greens, commonly so called, are compounds of chromate of lead and prussian blue, a mixture which is also known as _brunswick green_. fine bright greens, they are suited to the ordinary purposes of mechanic painting, but are quite unfit for the artist's craft, chrome yellow reacting upon and ultimately destroying prussian blue when mixed therewith. for the latter, cheap cobalts and ultramarines are preferably substituted, although they do not yield greens of like power and intensity. under the names of english green, green cinnabar, &c., 'new' green pigments have been from time to time introduced, which have turned out mixtures of prussian blue and chromate of lead; not made, however, by compounding the two, but directly by processes similar to the following:--a mixed solution of the acetates of lead and iron is added to a mixed solution of the yellow prussiate and chromate of potash, the necessary acetate of iron being obtained by precipitating a solution of acetate of lead by sulphate of iron, and filtering the supernatant liquid. or; to a solution of prussian blue in oxalic acid, first chromate of potash is added, and then acetate of lead. by the last process, superior and more permanent chrome greens may be produced, free from lead, by using chloride of barium or nitrate of bismuth in place of the acetate of lead. chromate of baryta, or chromate of bismuth is then formed, neither of which acts on the prussian blue. it should be added that where the latter pigment is present, no green will serve for painting walls containing lime, as its action alters the tint of the prussian blue. . hooker's green is a compound of prussian blue and gamboge, two pigments possessing a like degree of stability, and perfectly innocuous to each other. it is a mixture more durable and more transparent than chrome greens made with chromate of lead. there are two varieties in common use--no. , a light grass green, in which the yellow predominates; and no. , a deeper and more powerful green, with a larger amount of blue. . prussian green, like the preceding, is composed of prussian blue and gamboge; but contains a very great excess of the former, and is therefore a bluish-green of the utmost depth and transparency, verging on black in its deep washes. yellow ochre may be employed instead of gamboge, but is not so eligible. a true prussian green, which has been recommended as a pigment, can be produced as a simple original colour, with a base wholly of iron. it is got by partially decomposing the yellow oxalate of protoxide of iron with red prussiate of potash. we have made this green and given it a fair trial, but our verdict is decidedly against it. in colour it is far from being equal to a good compound of prussian blue and gamboge, and it assumes a dirty buff-yellow on exposure to light and air, the film of blue on the oxalate more or less disappearing. another prussian green, with a base of cobalt, is obtained by precipitating the nitrate of that metal with yellow prussiate of potash. according to the mode adopted, and the degree of heat, either a light or dark green results; but this also is inferior in colour, and presents no advantage as to permanence. . sap green, _verde vessie_, or _iris green_, is a vegetal pigment prepared from the juice of the berries of the buckthorn, the green leaves of the woad, the blue flowers of the iris, &c. it is usually preserved in bladders, and is thence sometimes called _bladder green_. when good, it is of a dark colour and glossy fracture, extremely transparent, and a fine natural yellowish green. this gummy juice, inspissated and formed into a cake, is occasionally employed in flower painting. it is, however, a very imperfect pigment, disposed to attract the moisture of the atmosphere, and to mildew; while, having little durability in water and less in oil, it is not eligible in the one and is totally useless in the other. similar pigments, obtained from coffee-berries, and named venetian and emerald greens, are of a colder colour, equally defective and fugitive, and now obsolete. . terre verte, or _green earth_, is a sober bluish green with a grey cast. it is a species of ochre, containing silica, oxide of iron, magnesia, potash, and water. not bright and of little power, it is a very durable pigment, being unaffected by strong light or impure air, and combining with other colours without injury. it has not much body, is semi-transparent, and dries well in oil. veins of brownish or reddish ochre are often found mixed with terre verte, to the detriment of its colour; and there are varieties of this pigment with copper for their colouring matter, which, although generally brighter, are inferior in other respects, and not true terre vertes. verona green and verdetto or holy green, are ferruginous native pigments of a warmer hue. these are met with in the mendip hills, france, italy, and the island of cyprus, and have been used as pigments from the earliest times. rubens has availed himself much of terre verte, not in his landscapes merely, but likewise in the carnation tints in his figures of a dead christ. it is evident that much of the glazing is done with this colour: it is, in fact, most useful in glazing; because, having only a thin substance, it can be rendered pale by a small portion of white; although in the end it becomes darker by a concentration of its molecules. mérimée states that in the greater part of alexander veronese's works--in his death of cleopatra, in the louvre, for instance--there are some demi-tints which are too green, and which it is certain were not so originally. terre verte, therefore, must be employed with caution; and it would be well to ascertain beforehand whether a mineral colour will in time become darker than when first laid on the picture, by putting a drop of oil on the powder in its natural state. if the tone this gives to it be more intense than that which it acquires by being ground up, it may fairly be assumed that it will attain to the same degree of strength whenever, having completely dried, its molecules shall have re-united as closely as it is possible. umber and terra di sienna are of this class. in combination with indian red and naples yellow, terre verte forms a series of mild russet greens, of much use in middle distance. * * * * * . _chrome arseniate_ is an agreeable apple-green colour, prepared from arseniate of potash and salts of chromic oxide. it is durable, but possesses no advantages over the chrome oxides, and is of course poisonous. . _cobalt green_, rinman's green, vert de zinc or zinc green. true cobalt green is made by igniting a very large quantity of carbonate of zinc with a very small quantity of carbonate of cobalt. to give a green tint to an enormous proportion of the former, an inappreciable amount of the latter will suffice. some samples which were analysed, consisted almost entirely of zinc, there being only two or three per cent. of cobalt present. this green presents an example of a pigment being chemically good and artistically bad, or at least indifferent. it is a moderately bright green, apt to vary in hue according to the mode of manufacture, permanent both alone and compounded, but so sadly deficient in body and power, as to have become almost obsolete. with other physical defects, and a colour inferior to the chrome oxides, cobalt green has never been a favourite with artists, though justly eulogised by chemists. . _copper borate_ is obtained by precipitating sulphate of copper with borax, washing the residue with cold water, and, after drying, igniting it, fusion being carefully avoided. in this manner, a pretty yellowish green is produced, which upon longer ignition assumes a dark green shade: the mass is levigated for use. the compound has the objection of being glassy, and possessing little body, but is preferable to verdigris as to permanence. . _copper chrome_ may be prepared by several methods, but the colour is in no case so fine as scheele's or schweinfurt green, nor is it as stable. . _copper stannate_, or tin-copper green, equals in colour any of the copper greens free from arsenic. the cheapest way of making it is to heat parts of tin in a hessian crucible with parts nitrate of soda, and dissolve the mass when cold in a caustic alkali. to the clear solution, diluted with water, a cold solution of sulphate of copper is added: a reddish-yellow precipitate falls, which on being washed and dried, becomes a beautiful green. on the palette it would be superfluous, but for common purposes might be found of service. . _elsner's green_ is also a combination of tin and copper. it is made by adding to a solution of sulphate of copper a decoction of fustic, previously clarified by a solution of gelatine. to this mixture are added ten or eleven per cent. of protochloride of tin, and lastly an excess of caustic potash or soda. the precipitate is then washed and dried, whereupon it takes a green colour tinged with blue, but without the brightness or durability of the preceding stannate. . _green bice_, or green verditer, is the same in substance as blue verditer, which is converted into green verditer by boiling. this pigment is one of the least eligible of copper greens. . _green ochre._ by partially decomposing yellow ochre with prussiate of potash, we have produced a fine dark blue-green, resembling prussian green, of great depth and transparency. there are, however, difficulties in the process; and the results do not warrant us in pronouncing this green superior or equal to a mixture of the ochre and prussian blue. . _green ultramarine_ is french or artificial ultramarine before the final roasting. it is a somewhat bright bluish-green, becoming a dull greenish-blue on continued exposure. chemically, it is not a bad colour; but artists generally have decided against it. . _manganese green_, or cassel green. by several methods, manganate of baryta may be obtained either as an emerald-green, a bluish-green, or a pale green. the manganates, however, are decomposed by contact with organic matter; and hence the green would be liable to suffer from the vehicles employed, as well as by being compounded with animal or vegetal pigments. . _mineral green_ is the commercial name of _green lakes_, prepared from sulphate of copper. these vary in hue and shade, have all the properties of the common non-arsenical copper-greens, and, not being subject to change of colour by oxygen and light, stand the weather well, and are excellent for the use of the house-painter, &c. having a tendency to darken and blacken by time and foul air, they are not eligible in the nicer works of fine art. another mineral green adopted in germany as a substitute for the poisonous schweinfurt green, is composed of chromate of lead, carbonate of copper, oxide of iron, and chalk. valueless for the palette, it has not the beauty of schweinfurt green, but is recommended as being free from arsenic. it is not, however, altogether harmless, and should not be used in confectionery or the like. . _molybdenum green._ a clear malachite green colour, when dried, is produced from molybdate of soda and potash-chrome-alum, or from the molybdate and alum with ammonia. being more expensive than the chrome oxides and not better, its introduction, for use by artists, would be attended with no advantage. there is likewise obtainable a copper molybdate, by adding neutral molybdate of soda in excess to sulphate of copper. the precipitate is a very pale green colour, flocculent at first, but crystalline after washing. like the chrome molybdate it would be superfluous as a pigment. . _quinine green_ is rather adapted for a dye than an artist-colour. it is furnished by acting on quinine with hypochlorite of lime, hydrochloric acid, and ammonia, successively. thus prepared, the green resembles a resin, insoluble in water, but soluble in alcohol, and turned blue by acetic acid. its alcoholic solution dyes silk green, and also woollen and cotton when mordanted with albumen. . _roman green_, brought from rome some years back by a president of the royal academy, appeared to be a mixture of prussian blue and dutch or italian pink. it was a fugitive compound, which became blue in fading. . _silicate of baryta._ one part of silica heated to whiteness with three parts of baryta, yields a pale green solid mass, permanent, but deficient in colour when ground. it might be employed in enamelling. . _titanium green_ has been proposed as a substitute for the green arsenical pigments in common use; but, apart from its expense, the colour is very inferior to scheele's green, &c. titanium green is a ferrocyanide of that metal, produced by adding yellow prussiate of potash to a solution of titanic acid in dilute hydrochloric acid, and heating the mixture to ebullition rapidly. the dark green precipitate is washed with water acidulated with hydrochloric acid, and dried with great care, since it decomposes at temperatures above °. . _uranium green_ is an oxide of a deep dull green colour, inclining to olive, and nearly black when in lumps. a durable but unattractive preparation, equalled in permanence and far surpassed in beauty by many cheaper compounds. . _vanadium green_ falls when ferrocyanide of potassium is added to vanadic acid dissolved in a strong acid. it is a beautiful green precipitate, but at present simply a curiosity, owing to the rarity of the metal vanadium. * * * * * adopting our usual custom of separating the wheat from the chaff, we point to the opaque and transparent oxides of chromium, veronese green, viridian, emerald green, scheele's green, and terre verte, as more or less worthy of being dubbed durable. as semi-stable, malachite green, bronze, hooker's green, and prussian green, must be classed. verdigris, chrome greens, and sap green, should be branded as fugitive: the chrome greens, because they are always commercially composed of chromate of lead and prussian blue, two compounds which are semi-stable in themselves, but become fugacious when compounded. a reference to the numbered italicised greens will show that there are many not known to the palette, which are nevertheless very greatly superior, as regards permanence, to some that disgrace it. why these latter are suffered to hold their position is a mystery not easily explained: it is hard to reconcile the deplored degeneracy of modern pigments with the popularity of semi-stable and fugitive colours. pictures do not stand, is the common cry; therefore, says the public, there are no good pigments now-a-days. to which we answer, newly built houses are constantly falling down; therefore there are no good bricks in these times. of a truth, one conclusion is as reasonable as the other: in either case, if rotten materials be used, the result cannot be lasting; but in neither case does it follow, because such materials are employed, that there are no better obtainable. a well-built house implies a conscientious builder, and a well-painted picture implies a conscientious artist. it is because, we fear, that there are so few conscientious artists, that there are so few permanent paintings; not, certainly, because there are no good pigments. in this last belief, however, the public is encouraged by certain painters, who seek thereby to excuse their own shortcomings, forgetting that it is a bad workman who finds fault with his tools. it has been well observed that when artists speak regrettingly of lost 'systems,' or pigments enjoyed by the mediævalists and unattainable now, it would be far better were they to make the best use of existing materials, and study their further development. there is no need for this cant cry of fugacity, which casts such a blight on modern art. durable pigments are not yet obsolete, they have only to be employed and employed properly to furnish paintings equal in permanence to those of the old masters. "titian," says haydon, "got his colours from the colour shops on the rialto, as we get ours from brown's; and if apelles or titian were living now, they would paint just as good works with our brushes and colours as with their own." chapter xiii. on the secondary, purple. purple, the third and last of the secondary colours, is composed of _red_ and _blue_, in the proportions of five of the former to eight of the latter; proportions which constitute a perfect purple, or one of such a hue as will neutralize and best contrast a perfect yellow, in the ratio of thirteen to three, either of surface or intensity. when mixed with its co-secondary colour, green, purple forms the tertiary _olive_; and, when compounded with the remaining secondary, orange, it constitutes in like manner the tertiary _russet_. of the three secondary colours it is the coolest, as well as the nearest in relation to _black_ or shade; in which respect, and in never being a warm colour, it resembles blue. in other respects also, purple partakes of the properties of blue, which is its archeus, or ruling colour; hence it is to the eye a retiring colour, that reflects light little, and loses rapidly in power in a declining light, and according to the distance at which it is viewed. by reason of its being the mean between black and blue it becomes the most retiring of all positive colours. nature employs this hue beautifully in landscape, as a sub-dominant, in harmonizing the broad shadows of a bright sunshine ere the light sinks into deep orange or red. girtin, who saw nature as she is, and painted what he saw, delighted in this effect of sunlight and shadow. as a ruling colour, whether in flesh or otherwise, purple is commonly too cold, or verges on ghastliness, a fault which is to be as much avoided as the opposite extreme of viciousness in colouring, stigmatized as foxiness. yet, next to green, purple is the most generally pleasing of the consonant colours; and has been celebrated as a regal or imperial colour, as much perhaps from its rarity in a pure state, as from its individual beauty. romulus wore it in his trabea or royal mantle, and tullus hostilius, after having subdued the tuscans, assumed the pretexta or long robe, broadly striped with purple. under the roman emperors, it became the peculiar emblem or symbol of majesty, and the wearing of it by any who were not of the imperial family, was deemed a "treasonable usurpation," punishable by death. at the decline of the empire, the tyrian purple was an important article of commerce, and got to be common in the clothing of the people. pliny says, "nepos cornelius, who died in the reign of augustus cæsar, when i was a young man, assured me that the light violet purple had been formerly in great request, and that a pound of it usually fetched denaria (about £ sterling): that soon after the tarentine or reddish purple came into fashion; and that this was followed by the tyrian dibapha, which could not be bought for less than denaria (nearly £ sterling) the pound; which was its price when p. lentulus spinter was Ædile, cicero being then consul. but afterwards, the double-dyed purple became less rare, &c." the tyrian purple alluded to was obtained from the purpuræ, a species of shell-fish adhering to rocks and large stones in the sea adjoining tyre. on account, probably, of its extreme costliness, it was frequently the custom to dye the cloth with a ground of kermes or alkanet, previous to applying the tyrian purple. this imparted to the latter a crimson hue, and explains doubtless the term, double-dyed. the greeks feigned the ancient purple to be the discovery of hercules tyrius, whose dog, eating by chance of the fish from which it was produced, returned to him with his mouth tinged with the dye. alexander the great is said to have found in the royal treasury, at the taking of susa, purple to the enormous value of talents,[a] which had lain there one hundred and ninety-two years, and still preserved its freshness and beauty. when inclining to red, purple takes the name of _crimson_, &c.; and when leaning to blue, the names of _violet_, _lilac_, _mauve_, _&c._ blue is a colour which it serves to mellow, or follows well into shade. the contrast or harmonizing colour of purple is yellow on the side of light and the primaries; while purple itself is the harmonizing contrast of the tertiary _citrine_ on the side of shade, and less perfectly so of the semi-neutral _brown_. as the extreme primaries, blue and yellow, when either compounded or opposed, afford, though not the most perfect harmony, yet the most pleasing consonance of the primary colours; so the extremes, purple and orange, yield the most pleasing of the secondary consonances. this analogy extends likewise to the extreme tertiary and semi-neutral colours, while the mean or middle colours furnish the most agreeable contrasts or harmonies. in nature pure purple is not a common colour, and on the palette purple pigments are singularly few. they lie under a peculiar disadvantage as to apparent durability and beauty of colour, owing to the neutralizing power of yellowness in the grounds upon which they are laid; as well as to the general warm colour of light, and the yellow tendency of almost all vehicles and varnishes, by which the colour of purple is subdued. . burnt carmine is the carmine of cochineal partially charred till it resembles in colour the purple of gold, for which, in miniature and water-painting, it is substituted. it is a magnificent reddish purple of extreme richness and depth, eligible in flower-painting and the shadow of draperies. as it is generally impossible, however, to alter the nature of a pigment by merely changing its colour, burnt carmine is scarcely more permanent than the carmine from which it is produced. if used, therefore, it should be in body, and not in thin washes or as a glaze. durable pigments are admissible in any form; but semi-stable pigments (gamboge excepted) should only be employed in body. . burnt lake holds the same relation to crimson lake as burnt carmine to ordinary carmine; and is hence a weaker variety of the preceding, with less richness, and likewise less permanence. . indian purple is prepared by precipitating an extract of cochineal with sulphate of copper. it is a very deep-toned but rather cold and subdued purple, neither so red nor so brilliant as burnt carmine; and is chiefly of service in draperies. it is apt to lose its purple colour in a great measure on exposure to light and air, and assume an inky blackness; a defect which becomes less apparent when the pigment is used in bulk. . mars violet, _violet de mars_, _purple ochre_, or _mineral purple_, is a dark ochre, native of the forest of dean in gloucestershire. it is of a murrey or chocolate colour, and forms cool tints of a purple hue with white. it is of a darker colour than indian red, which has also been classed among purples, but has a similar body and opacity, and generally resembles that pigment. it may be prepared artificially, and some natural red ochres burn to this colour. being difficult and sometimes impossible to procure, mars violet is often compounded; in which case it is liable to vary both in hue and stability. as, however, indian red is always taken for its basis, the mixture is never wholly fugitive, nor exhibits any very glaring contrast on exposure. . mixed purple. purple being a secondary colour, composed of _blue_ and _red_, it follows of course that any blue and red pigments, which are not chemically at variance, may be employed in producing mixed purples of any required hue, either by compounding or grinding them together ready for use, or by combining them in the various modes of operation in painting. in such compounding, the more perfect and permanent the original colours are, the more perfect and permanent will be the purple obtained. to produce a pure purple, neither the red nor the blue must contain or incline to yellow; while to compound a durable purple, both the red and the blue must be durable also. ultramarine and the reds of madder yield beautiful and excellent purples, equally stable in water or oil, in glazing or tint, whether under the influence of light or impure air. cobalt blue and madder red likewise afford good purples; and some of the finest and most delicate purples in ancient paintings appear to have been composed of ultramarine and vermilion, which furnish tints equally permanent, but less transparent than the above, and less easily compounded. facility of use, and other advantages, are obtained at too great a sacrifice by the employment of perishable mixtures, such as the lakes of cochineal with indigo. permanent reds. | permanent blues. | cadmium red. | cerulian blue. liquid rubiate. | cobalt blue. madder carmine. | genuine ultramarine. rose madder. | brilliant ultramarine. mars red. | french ultramarine. ochres. | new blue. vermilions. | permanent blue. it should be noted that all the above reds do not afford pure purples with blue; those which contain more or less yellow, as cadmium red and orange vermilion, furnish purples partaking more or less of olive, which is a compound of purple and green. to those reds may be added the russet rubens madder and the marrone madder brown, two pigments which are alike eligible for mixed purple and mixed orange. no purple, it will be remarked, equal in gorgeous richness to that produced from crimson lake and prussian blue is obtainable from the colours given; just as no mixed green is of such depth and power if that blue be wanting as a constituent. but, as our compound tints are given rather as examples of durability than beauty, all semi-stable or fugitive mixtures are of necessity ignored. . purple madder, _field's purple_, or _purple rubiate_, is the only durable organic purple the palette possesses. marked by a soft subdued richness rather than by brilliancy, it leans somewhat towards marrone, and affords the greatest depth of shadow without coldness of tint. unfortunately, in the whole range of artistic pigments there is no colour obtainable in such small quantity as madder purple; hence its scarcity and high price cause it to be confined to water-colour painting, in which the clearness and beauty of its delicate tones render it invaluable in every stage of a drawing. with raw sienna and indigo or prussian blue, subdued by black, it gives beautiful shadow tints, and will be found useful in sky and other effects compounded with cobalt, rose madder, french blue and sepia, yellow ochre and cobalt, lamp black and cobalt, light red, vandyke brown, burnt sienna, or aureolin. with great transparency, body, and depth, it is pure and permanent in its tints, neither gives nor sustains injury on admixture, dries and glazes well in oil, works well, and is altogether most perfect and eligible. for fresco it is admirably adapted, being quite uninjured by lime. there is a lighter and slightly brighter sort, containing less colouring matter and more base, which has all the properties of the above with less intensity of colour. for the sake of cheapness, the purple is sometimes compounded in oil, generally of brown madder and a blue. provided the latter be stable, transparent, and mix kindly, no greater objection can be taken to this than to the neutral orange of brown madder and yellow ochre. . violet carmine is a brilliant bluish purple of much richness, employed in draperies and the like. it is prepared by precipitating an alcoholic extract of the root of the _anchusa tinctoria_, commonly known as alkanet, a plant growing in the levant, and some other warm countries. it was used by the ancients as a dye, or as a groundwork to those stuffs which were to be dyed purplish-red: the ladies in ancient times also employed it as a paint. its colouring matter or _anchusin_ has the character of a resin, and is dark-red, softened by heat, insoluble in water, soluble in alcohol and alkalis, and freely so in ether, fats, and volatile oils, to all of which it imparts a brilliant red hue. to obtain anchusin, all the soluble matters are first abstracted from the bruised root by water: it is then digested in a solution of carbonate of potash, from which it may be readily precipitated by an acid. its alcoholic solution yields with different reagents crimson, flesh-coloured, blue, and violet precipitates, none of which, however, can be classed as durable. the variety under notice, violet carmine, resembles the other colours afforded by alkanet in not being able to withstand the action of light. on continued exposure, it loses its beauty and brightness, together with much of its colour, and, like indian purple, assumes an inky blackness. hence it is unsuited to permanently pure effects, and should only be used in body. * * * * * . _archil purple._ archil may be regarded as the english, cudbear as the scotch, and litmus as the dutch name for one and the same substance, extracted from several species of lichens by various processes. these lichens, which are principally collected on rocks adjacent to the sea, are cleaned and ground into a pulp with water, treated from time to time with ammoniacal liquor, and exposed with frequent agitation to the action of the atmosphere. peculiar principles existing in the lichens are, by the joint instrumentality of the air, water, and ammonia, so changed as to generate colouring matter, which, when perfect, is expressed. soluble in water and alcohol, this colouring principle yields by precipitation with chloride of calcium a compound known as 'solid french purple', a pigment more stable than the archil colours generally, but all too fugitive for the palette. . _bismuth purple._ a purple powder is capable of being produced from bismuth by passing chlorine gas through the hydrated oxide suspended in a saturated solution of potash. as soon as the oxide becomes brown-red, the mixture is boiled and the liquid decanted off at once, the residue being immediately washed first with alcohol and then with water. on the whole, the result is not, for an artistic pigment, worth the trouble involved in the preparation. . _burnt madder_ is obtained by carefully charring madder carmine until it becomes of the hue required. bearing the same relation to madder carmine as burnt carmine to the carmine of cochineal, burnt madder is a permanent and perfectly unexceptionable pigment. by reason, probably, of its great price, it is not mentioned in trade catalogues, and must be held as commercially unknown. . _cobalt purples_ are obtainable ranging from the richest crimson purple to the most delicate violet. we have produced them by wet and dry methods, varying in brilliancy and beauty, but characterised generally by want of body, and frequently by a smalt-like grittiness. chemically, good and stable colours, they are not received with favour on the palette, and certainly may be very well replaced by mixtures of cobalt blue and madder red. when a permanent compound is obtainable equal in colour to an original pigment, and superior in its physical attributes, no objection can fairly be taken to its artistic preference. there are other things to be considered in a pigment besides permanence, or even permanence and colour combined. the two together do not constitute a perfect pigment, that is, a material of practical utility and value. in the last chapter, allusion was made to a green which possesses both the one and the other, and yet is--at present, at least--quite unfitted for artistic use. hence, with a strong partiality for simple original pigments, we are bound to confess there are cases where mixtures are justifiably preferred. all we contend for is, that each constituent of such mixtures should be stable, and neither give nor receive injury by being compounded. . _gold purple_, purple of cassius, or cassius's purple precipitate, was discovered in by cassius of leyden. it is a compound of tin and gold, best formed by mixing aqueous perchloride of iron with aqueous protochloride of tin, till the colour of the liquid has a shade of green, and then adding this liquid, drop by drop, to a solution of perchloride of gold, which is free from nitric acid and very dilute: after twenty-four hours the purple is deposited. when recently prepared, the colour is brightened by boiling nitric acid. not brilliant, but rich and powerful, this purple varies in hue according to the mode of manufacture from deep crimson to murrey or dark purple: it also differs in degrees of transparency. working well in water, it is an excellent though costly pigment, once popular in miniatures, but at present rarely, if ever used, as purple madder is cheaper, and perfectly well supplies its place. retaining its colour at a high red heat, it is now confined to enamel and porcelain painting, and to tinging glass of a fine red. if, whilst in its hydrated state, it be washed with ammonia, a bright purple liquid results, from which a violet colour, somewhat less expensive, can be produced, by combining the gold purple with alumina, and calcining the product in the same way that is practised with cobalt. this compound may be exposed to the action of the sun's rays for a year without being sensibly affected. . _prussian purple._ a prussiate of iron is obtainable of a violet hue, affording good shadow tints and clear pale washes. it has not, however, been introduced as a pigment, as ordinary prussian blue tinged with red furnishes a similar colour. . _sandal wood purple._ sandal wood contains about per cent. of colouring matter, soluble with difficultly in water, but readily dissolved by alcohol. from the latter solution, chloride of tin throws down a purple, and sulphate of iron a deep violet precipitate; neither of which is remarkable for permanence. . _tin violet._ by heating chromate of stannic oxide to bright redness, a dark violet mass is obtained, which is better adapted to enamel painting than to the palette. it communicates in glazings a variety of tints, from rose-red to violet. * * * * * so scant is the number of good purples in common use, that there are but two which can be classed as durable, namely, purple madder and the true mars violet. foremost in the second group stands burnt carmine. as there are different degrees both of permanence and fugacity, so are there different degrees of semi-stability. burnt carmine, burnt lake, indian purple, and violet carmine, all belong to this division; but the first certainly is more permanent than the rest. rich and beautiful as it is, purple madder cannot be called brilliant; while mars violet is, of course, ochrous. unlike green and orange, therefore, purple can point to no original pigment at once vivid and durable: as regards purple, brilliancy implies a semi-stability that borders more or less closely on fugacity. until the advent of a perfect palette, however, brilliancy and semi-stability will doubtless hold their own. their present popularity may be seen by a glance at the lists of artist-colours--lists compiled, be it remembered, in obedience to the law of demand and supply. if art were really so much honoured as some of its disciples pretend, none but durable colours would be employed. in our opinion, if a picture be worth painting at all, it is worth painting with permanent pigments; but many evidently think otherwise. deploring an error neither flattering to the craft they practise nor to themselves, we would urge such to bear in mind this axiom, semi-stable pigments become fugitive when used in thin washes. even in body they do not preserve their primitive hue, but in glazing and the like, their colour altogether flies or is wholly destroyed. it is this semi-stability, recommended to the thoughtless and indifferent by the beauty which generally accompanies it, that is the bane of modern art. even our greatest painters have yielded to its fascination. who has not gazed upon one of turner's fading pictures with still more of sadness than enjoyment, that anything so grand, so beautiful, so true, should slowly but surely be passing away? a feeling akin to pity is conjured up at the sight of the helpless wreck, abandoned amid the treacherous materials employed, and sinking deeper and deeper. mournful, indeed, is that mighty ruin of mind amid matter; mournful the thought that in years to come, the monument sought for will not be found. footnotes: [a] a talent of money, _i.e._, a talent's weight of silver, was equal to nearly £ . chapter xiv. on the tertiary, citrine. citrine, or the colour of the citron, is the first of the tertiary class of colours, or ultimate compounds of the primary triad, yellow, red, and blue; in which yellow is the archeus or predominating colour, and blue the extreme subordinate. for citrine being an immediate compound of the secondaries, _orange_ and _green_, of both which yellow is a constituent, the latter colour is of double occurrence therein, while the other two primaries enter singly into its composition. the mean or middle hue comprehends eight blue, five red, and six yellow, of equal intensities. hence citrine, according to its name, which is that of a class of colours and used commonly for a dark yellow, partakes in a subdued degree of all the powers of its archeus yellow. in estimating, therefore, its properties and effects in painting, it is to be regarded as participating of all the relations of yellow. by some this colour is improperly called brown, as almost all broken colours are. the harmonizing contrast of citrine is a _deep purple_, which may be seen beautifully opposed to it in nature, when the green of summer declines. as autumn advances, citrine tends towards its orange hues, including the colours termed aurora, chamoise, and others before enumerated under the head of yellow. it is the most advancing of the tertiary colours, or nearest in relation to light; and is variously of a tender, modest, cheering character. to understand and relish the harmonious relations and expressive powers of the tertiary colours, require a cultivation of perception and a refinement of taste for which study and practice are needed. to a great extent the colourist, like the poet, is born not made; but although he must have an innate sense of the beautiful and the true, hard work alone, with his head, his eyes, and his hands, will enable him to learn and turn to account the complex beauties and relations of tertiary colours. they are at once less definite and less generally evident, but more delightful--more frequent in nature, though rarer in common art, than the like relations of the secondaries and primaries. there is very little pure colour in the world: now and then a gleam dazzles us, like a burst of sunshine through grey mists; but as a rule, nature prefers broken colours to absolute hues. most pure in spring, most full in summer, most mellow in autumn, most sober in winter, her tints and shades of colour are always more or less interlaced, from white and the primaries to the semi-neutral and black. of original citrine-coloured pigments there are only a few, unless we include several imperfect yellows which might not improperly be called citrines. the following are best entitled to this appellation:-- . brown pink, _brown stil de grain_, _citrine lake_, or _quercitron lake_ is usually prepared from the berries of avignon (ramnus infectorius), better known as french, persian, or turkey berries; but a more durable and quicker drying species is obtained from the quercitron bark. if produced from the former, it must be branded as fugitive, but if from the latter, it may be termed semi-stable. in either case it is a lake, precipitated from the alkaline decoction by means of alum, in such proportions that the alkali shall not be more than half saturated. the excess of soda or potash employed imparts a brown hue; but the lake being in general an orange broken by green, falls into the class of citrine colours, sometimes inclining to greenness, and sometimes towards the warmth of orange. it works well both in water and oil, in the latter of which it is of great depth and transparency, but its tints with white lead are very fugitive, and in thin glazing it does not stand: the berry variety dries badly. a fine rich colour, more beautiful than eligible, it is popular in landscape for foliage in foregrounds. modified by admixture with burnt sienna or gamboge, it yields a compound which, with the addition of a small quantity of indigo, gives a warm though not very durable green. in many of the flemish pictures the foliage has become blue from the yellowish lake, with which the ultramarine was mixed, having faded. it has been remarked that the alteration made by time in semi-stable pigments is not so observable when they are employed in full body. their use generally has been deprecated, but in shadows such vegetable colours as brown pink are sometimes of advantage, as they are transparent, lose part of their richness by the action of the air, and do not become black. moreover, if mixed with pigments which have a tendency to darken, they mitigate it very much. this last, indeed, is the most legitimate purpose to which semi-stable pigments whose colour fades on exposure can be put. . mars brown, or _brun de mars_, is either a natural or artificial ochre containing iron, or iron and manganese. of much richness and strict permanence, it resembles raw umber in being a brown with a citrine cast, but is generally marked by a flush of orange which is not so observable in the latter pigment. . mixed citrine. what has been before remarked of the mixed secondary colours is more particularly applicable to the tertiary, it being more difficult to select three homogeneous substances of equal powers as pigments than two, that shall unite and work together cordially. hence the mixed tertiaries are still less perfect and pure than the secondaries; and as their hues are of extensive use in painting, original pigments of these colours are proportionably estimable to the artist. nevertheless there are two evident principles of combination, of which he may avail himself in producing these colours in the various ways of working; the one being that of combining two original secondaries; and the other, of uniting the three primaries in such a manner that the archeus shall predominate. thus in the case of citrine, either orange and green may be directly compounded; or yellow, red, and blue be so mixed that the yellow shall be in excess. these colours are, however, obtained in many instances with best and most permanent effect, not by the intimate combination of pigments upon the palette, but by intermingling them, in the manner of nature, on the canvas, so as to produce the appearance at a proper distance of a uniform colour. thus composed is the _citrine_ colour of fruit and foliage, on inspecting which we distinctly trace the stipplings of orange and green, or of yellow, red, and green. the truth and beauty resulting from such stipplings in art may be seen in the luscious fruit-pieces of the late w. hunt, where the bloom on the plum, the down of the peach, &c., are given with wondrous fidelity to nature. in the _russet_ hues of autumn foliage, where purple and orange have broken or superseded the summer green, this interlacing of colour appears; and also in the _olive_ foliage of the rose-tree, formed in the individual leaf by the ramification of purple in green. besides the durable yellows, reds, and blues, the following orange and green pigments are eligible for mixed citrines. they may likewise, however, be safely and simply compounded by slight additions, to an original brown, of that primary or secondary tone which is requisite to give it the required hue. permanent orange. | permanent green. | burnt roman ochre. | oxide of chromium, opaque. burnt sienna. | oxide of chromium, transparent. cadmium orange. | veronese green. mars orange. | viridian. neutral orange. | emerald green. | scheele's green. | terre verte. . raw umber, or umber, is a natural ochre, chiefly composed of oxide of manganese, oxide of iron, silica, and alumina. it is said to have been first brought from ancient ombria, now spoleto, in italy. found in england, and in most parts of the world, that which comes from cyprus, under the name of turkish or levant umber, is the best. of a quiet brown-citrine colour, semi-opaque, it dries rapidly, and injures no other good pigment with which it may be mixed. by time it grows darker, a disadvantage which may be obviated by compounding it with colours which pale on exposure. for light shadow tones and delicate grays it is extremely useful, and yields with blue most serviceable neutral greens. to mud walls, tints for stone, wood, gray rocks, baskets, yellow sails, and stormy seas, this citrine is suited. some artists have painted on grounds primed with umber, but it has penetrated through the lighter parts of the work. mérimée states that there are several of poussin's pictures so painted; that fine series, "the seven sacraments," being clearly among the number. * * * * * . _cassia fistula_ is a native vegetal pigment, though it is more commonly employed as a medicinal drug. it is brought from the east and west indies in a sort of cane, in which it is naturally produced. as a pigment it is deep, transparent, of an imperfect citrine colour, inclining to dark green, and diffusible in water without grinding, like gamboge and sap green. once sparingly used in water as a sort of substitute for bistre, it is not now to be met with on the palette. . _citrine brown._ from boiling, hot, or cold solutions of bichromate of potash and hyposulphite of soda in excess, we have obtained an agreeable citrine-brown colour, varying in hue and tint according to the mode of preparation and proportions of materials employed. it is a hydrated oxide of chromium which, when washed and carefully dried, yields a soft floury powder. transparent, and affording clear, delicate pale washes, the oxide has not been introduced as a pigment; partly owing to certain physical objections, and partly to a tendency to greenness. this tendency is peculiar to all the brown chrome oxides of whatever hue, whether hydrated or anhydrous; and indeed distinguishes more or less nearly all the compounds of chromium. green, in fact, is the natural colour of such compounds, the colour which they are constantly struggling to attain; and hence it is that the green oxides of chromium, being clothed in their native hue, are of such strict stability. the inclination to green which the citrine under notice possesses, may be seen by washing the precipitate with boiling water. it has been supposed that hydrated brown oxide of chromium is not a distinct compound of chromium and oxygen, but a feeble union of the green oxide with chromic acid. if this be the case, the citrine cast of the brown oxide is easily explained, as well as the gradual addition to its green by the deoxidation of the chromic acid. in mixed tints for autumn foliage and the like, the tendency to green of this citrine brown would be comparatively unimportant; but whether the oxide be adapted to the palette or not, we believe the colour might be utilized. in dyeing, for instance, the solutions of bichromate of potash and hyposulphite of soda would be worth a trial, the liquids of course being kept separate, and the brown washed with cold water. various patterns could be printed with the bichromate on a ground previously treated with hyposulphite. * * * * * several other browns, and ochrous earths, partake of a citrine hue, such as cassel earth, bistre, &c. but in the confusion of names, infinity of tones and tints, and variations of individual pigments, it is impossible to arrive at an unexceptionable or universally satisfactory arrangement. we have therefore followed a middle and general course in distributing pigments under their proper heads. of the three citrines in common use, mars brown and raw umber are strictly stable; while brown pink, the purest original citrine the palette possesses, is either semi-stable or fugitive, according to the colouring substance used in its preparation. chapter xv. on the tertiary, russet. russet, the second or middle tertiary colour, is, like citrine, constituted ultimately of the three primaries, red, yellow, and blue; but with this difference--instead of yellow as in citrine, the archeus or predominating colour in russet is red, to which yellow and blue are subordinates. for _orange_ and _purple_ being the immediate constituents of russet, and red being a component part of each of those colours, it follows that red enters doubly into russet, while yellow and blue appear but once therein. the proportions of its middle hue are eight blue, ten red, and three yellow, of equal intensities. thus composed, russet takes the relations and powers of a subdued red; and many pigments and dyes of the latter denomination are strictly of the class of russet colours. in fact, nominal distinction of colours is only relative; the gradation from hue to hue, as from tint to tint, and shade to shade, being of such unlimited extent, that it is impossible to pronounce absolutely where one hue, tint, or shade ends, and another begins. the harmonizing, neutralizing, or contrasting colour of russet, is a _deep green_; or when the russet inclines to orange, a _gray_ or _subdued blue_. these are often beautifully opposed in nature, being medial accordances or in equal relation to light, shade and other colours, and among the most agreeable to sense. russet, as we have said, partakes of the relations of red, but it is a hue moderated in every respect, and qualified for greater breadth of display in the colouring of nature and art; less so, perhaps, than its fellow-tertiaries in proportion as it is individually more beautiful. the powers of beauty are ever most effective when least obtrusive; and its presence in colour should be chiefly evident to the eye that seeks it--not so much courting as being courted. of the tertiary colours, russet is the most important to the artist; and there are many pigments classed as red, purple, &c., which are of russet hues. but there are few true russets, and only one original pigment of that colour is now known on the palette, to wit-- . rubens' madder, _orange russet_, _russet rubiate_, or _field's russet_. this is a very rich crimson russet with a flush of orange; pure, transparent, and of a middle hue between orange and purple. prepared from the madder root, it is not subject to change by the action of light, time, or mixture of other pigments. although not so much employed as the marrone madder brown, it is serviceable both as a local and auxiliary colour in compounding and producing with yellow the glowing hues of autumnal foliage, &c.; and with blue, the beautiful and endless variety of grays in skies, flesh, &c. a good glazing colour, its thin washes afford fine flesh tints in water: as an oil pigment it dries indifferently, and requires to be forced by the addition of a little gold size or varnish. cappah brown and burnt umber sadden it to the rich tones adapted for general use in shadows. so saddened, this lake meets admirably the dark centres of the upper petals of certain fancy geraniums, while alone its pale washes are equally well suited to the lower leaves. . mixed russet. what has been remarked in the preceding chapter upon the production of mixed citrine colours, is likewise applicable to mixed russet. by the immediate method of producing it materially from its secondaries, good and durable colours are obtained by compounding the following orange and purple pigments-- permanent orange. | permanent purple. | burnt roman ochre. | mars violet, true. burnt sienna. | purple madder. cadmium orange. | mars orange. | neutral orange. | many other less eligible duple and triple compounds of russet are obvious upon principle, and it may be produced by adding red in due predominance to some browns; but these, like most mixtures, are inferior to original pigments. to the orange colours there may be added cadmium red and the orange vermilions, pigments which were classed among the reds, but which contain sufficient yellow to render them adapted for either compound russets or compound citrines. and as of original purple pigments there are two only which are stable, such mixtures as madder red and french blue will help to swell the list of available permanent purples. rubens' madder itself may be changed in hue by being first mixed with blue and then with orange. * * * * * . _prussiate of copper_ differs chemically from prussian blue only in having copper instead of iron for its basis. it varies in hue from russet to purple brown, is transparent and deep, but, being very liable to change in colour by the action of light and by other pigments, has never been much used, and is now obsolete. the compound has the objection of containing free prussiate of potash, not removable by continued washing--sometimes as much as five per cent. * * * * * there are several other pigments which enter imperfectly into, or verge upon, the class of russet, which, having obtained the names of other classes to which they are allied, will be found under other heads; such are some of the ochres, as indian red. burnt carmine is often of the russet hue, or convertible to it by due additions of yellow or orange; as are burnt sienna and various browns, by like additions of lake or other reds. the one pigment in this chapter known to the modern palette, rubens' madder, is permanent. chapter xvi. on the tertiary, olive. olive is the third and last of the tertiary colours, and nearest in relation to shade. like its co-tertiaries, citrine and russet, it is composed of the three primaries, blue, red, and yellow; but is formed more directly of the secondaries, _purple_ and _green_, in each of which blue is a constituent: hence blue occurs twice in the latter mode of forming olive, while red and blue enter therein singly and subordinately. blue is, therefore, in every instance the archeus or predominating colour of olive; its perfect or middle hue comprehending sixteen of blue to five of red and three of yellow. it partakes in a proportionate measure of the powers, properties, and relations of its archeus: accordingly, the antagonist or harmonizing contrast of olive is a _deep orange_. like blue, olive is a retiring colour, the most so of all the colours, being the penultimate of the scale, or nearest of all in relation to black, and last, theoretically, of the regular distinctions of colours. hence its importance in nature and painting is almost as great as that of black; it divides the office of clothing the face of creation with green and blue; with both which, as with black and grey, it enters into innumerable compounds and accordances, changing its name as either hue prevails, into green, gray, ashen, slate, &c. thus the olive hues of foliage are called green, and the purple hues of clouds are called gray, &c.; but such terms are general only, and unequal to the infinite particularity of nature. this infinity, or endless variation of hue, tint, and relation, of which the tertiaries are susceptible, gives a boundless license to the revelry of taste, in which the genius of the pencil may display the most captivating harmonies of colouring, and the most chaste and delicate expressions; too subtle to be defined, too intricate to be easily understood, and often too exquisite to be felt by the untutored eye. nature always melodizes by imperceptible gradations, while she harmonizes by distinct contrasts. at different seasons we have blossoms of all hues, variously subordinated; and when the time of flowers may be considered past, as if she had no further use for her fine colours, or were willing to display her ultimate skill and refinement, nature lavishes the contents of her palette, not disorderly, but in multiplied relations, over all vegetal creation, in those rich and beautiful accordances of broken and finishing colours with which autumn is decorated ere the year decays and sinks into olive darkness. as a rule, no colour exists in nature without gradation, which is to colours what curvature is to lines. the difference in mere beauty between a gradated and ungradated colour may be seen by laying an even tint of rose-colour on paper, and putting a rose leaf beside it. the victorious beauty of the rose, as compared with other flowers, depends wholly on the delicacy and quantity of its colour gradations, all other flowers being either less rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf; or less tender, being patched and veined instead of flushed. it is not enough, however, that colour should be gradated in painting by being made simply paler or darker at one place than another. generally, colour changes as it diminishes, and is not only darker at one spot, but also purer at one spot than elsewhere; although it does not follow that either the darkest or the lightest spot should be the purest. very often the two gradations more or less cross each other, one passing in one direction from paleness to darkness, another in another direction from purity to dulness; but there will almost always be both of them, however reconciled. hence, every piece of blue, say, laid on should be quite pure only at some given spot, from which it must be gradated into blue less pure--greyish blue, or greenish blue, or purplish blue--over all the rest of the space it occupies. in turner's largest oil pictures, there is not one spot of colour as large as a grain of wheat ungradated; and it will be found in practice that brilliancy of hue, vigour of light, and even the aspect of transparency in shade, are essentially dependent on this character alone; hardness, coldness, and opacity, resulting far more from equality of colour than from nature of colour. given some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit, a little whitening, and some coal-dust, and a luminous picture might be painted, if time were allowed to gradate the mud, and subdue the dust. but not with the red of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and amber for the gold, could such a picture be produced, if the masses of those colours were kept unbroken in purity, and unvarying in depth. olive being usually a compound colour both with the artist and mechanic, there are few olive pigments in commerce. . mixed olive may be compounded in several ways; directly, by mixing green and purple; or indirectly, by adding to blue a smaller proportion of yellow and red, or by breaking much blue with little orange. cool black pigments, combined with yellow ochre, afford eligible olives; hues which are called _green_ in landscape, and _invisible green_ in mechanic painting. it is to be noted that in producing these and other compound colours on the palette or canvass, those mixtures will most conduce to the harmony of the performance which are formed of pigments otherwise generally employed in the picture. thus, presuming aureolin to be the principal yellow used, the same yellow should be chosen for compounding orange and green, or for obtaining indirectly citrine, russet, and olive. permanent green. | permanent purple. | oxide of chromium, opaque. | mars violet, true. oxide of chromium, transparent. | purple madder. veronese green. | viridian. | emerald green. | scheele's green. | terre verte. | as in the case of russet, there may be added to the two original purples, mixtures composed of durable reds and blues. there are so many ways of producing the tertiaries, that no difficulty can be found in compounding them with stable pigments. each tertiary may be represented as follows:-- citrine = orange + green. " = (yellow + red) + (yellow + blue.) " = yellow + red + blue. russet = orange + purple. " = (yellow + red) + (red + blue.) " = red + yellow + blue. olive = green + purple. " = (yellow + blue) + (red + blue.) " = blue + yellow + red. from the above equations, and by consulting the lists given of permanent primary and secondary colours, the artist will at once see how easily and safely he may vary his mode of compounding the tertiaries. . olive green, sometimes called _dewint's green_, is an arbitrary compound, or mixed green, of a fine deep olive colour and sober richness. advisedly or not, it is used in landscape, sketching, &c.; but only in water, olive lake supplying its place in oil. like many other compound pigments, it is either permanent, semi-stable, or fugitive, according to the constituents of which it is composed. generally speaking, it is more beautiful than durable, and is often decidedly fugacious, fading on exposure. it is impossible for a writer to pronounce an absolute opinion on the stability of all mixtures sold in a separate form, inasmuch as the compounds of one firm may differ from those of another. we have before expressed our dislike to such pigments, and this uncertainty with regard to their composition serves to strengthen it. nevertheless, as there are exceptions to every rule, it must be admitted that the palette possesses compounds always to be relied upon. . olive lake is in commerce exclusively an oil colour. when true, it is a lake prepared from the green ebony, or laburnum, and is of considerable permanence, transparency, and depth, both in water and oil; in which latter vehicle it dries well. this variety, however, may be said to be obsolete; having given way to a mixture, usually semi-stable, and liable to blacken. * * * * * . _burnt verdigris_ is what its name expresses, and is an olive-coloured oxide of copper deprived of acid. it dries remarkably well in oil, is more durable than the original verdigris, and is in other respects an improved and more eligible pigment, although not to be recommended. . _olive oxide of chromium._ an olive oxide of this metal is obtainable, transparent, of strict stability, and altogether superior to any original or compound olive pigment as yet known. eligible either in water or oil, it is admirably adapted for autumn foliage, where a quiet, subdued, nature-like green is required. it has not, however, been introduced, partly because of its expense, and partly because a mixture of other pigments with the ordinary chrome oxides sufficiently answers the purpose. there are more good colours in the world than are dreamt of in the palette's philosophy, but either they are not wanted, or are too costly to sell. in a great measure, both art and science are dependent on commerce. . _olive rinman's green._ a compound analogous to cobalt green may be made, of an olive hue, with more body, and equally stable. . _olive scheele's green._ cupric arsenite, when heated, gives off arsenious acid and water, leaving a residue of arsenide of copper and copper arseniate. a series of olive colours is so afforded, which are as durable as their original pigment, and might with advantage be substituted for the doubtful compounds at present in use. . _olive schweinfurt green_ is likewise furnished by gentle calcination. it may be directly prepared by mixing boiling aqueous solutions of equal parts of crystallised verdigris and arsenious acid. an olive-green precipitate is immediately formed, which is apt, without due precaution, to pass into an emerald green. a durable copper colour. . _olive terre verte._ we have obtained a very beautiful olive from terre verte by simply changing its hue. in oil, especially, the colour so produced would be found of service for autumn foliage, or richly painted foregrounds. a simple original pigment, consisting wholly of the earth, it resembles ordinary terre verte in being unaffected by strong light or impure air, and uninjured by admixture; but differs from it in not darkening by time. semi-transparent, of sober richness and drying well in oil, it is, according to its powers, a perfectly unexceptionable colour, of strict stability. * * * * * of the two olive colours in common use, olive lake and olive green, the first is generally semi-stable, and apt to blacken; while the second is usually fugitive, and liable to fade: both are compounds. the palette, therefore, possesses no original olive pigment, good or bad. a glance at the numbered italicised olives will show that the doubtful mixtures referred to might with advantage be superseded. it is clear that the olive pigments which the palette does not know, are better than those with which it is acquainted. chapter xvii. on the semi-neutral, brown. as colour, according to the regular scale descending from white, ceases properly with the last of the tertiaries, olive, in theory the neutral black would here form a fitting conclusion. practically, however, every coloured pigment, of every class or tribe, combines with black as it exists in pigments--not simply being deepened or lowered in tone thereby, but likewise defiled in colour, or changed in class. hence there arises a new series or scale of coloured compounds, having black for their basis, which, though they differ not theoretically from the preceding order inverted, are yet in practice imperfect or impure. these broken compounds of black, or coloured blacks and greys, we have distinguished by the term, semi-neutral, and divided them into three classes: brown, marrone, and gray. what tints are with respect to white, they are with regard to black, being, so to speak, black tints or shades. the first of the series is brown, a term which, in its widest acceptation, has been used to include vulgarly every kind of dark broken colour, and is, in a more limited sense, the rather indefinite name of a very extensive class of colours of warm or tawny hues. accordingly there are browns of every denomination except blue; to wit, yellow-brown, red-brown, orange-brown, purple-brown, citrine-brown, russet-brown, &c. but there is no such thing as a blue-brown, nor, strictly, any other coloured brown in which blue predominates; such predominance of a cold colour at once carrying the compound into the class of gray, ashen, or slate. brown comprises the hues called dun, hazel, auburn, feuillemort, mort d'ore, &c.; several of which have been already mentioned as allied to the tertiary colours. the term _brown_, then, denotes rightly a warm broken colour, of which _yellow_ is a chief constituent: hence brown is in some measure to shade what yellow is to light. hence, also, proper quantities of either the three primaries, the three secondaries, or the three tertiaries, produce variously a brown mixture. browns contribute to coolness and clearness by contrast when opposed to pure colours, and rubens more especially appears to have employed them upon this principle; although the same may be said of titian, correggio, paulo veronese, and all the best colourists. being a sort of intermedia between positive colours and neutrality, browns equally contrast colour and shade. this accounts for their vast importance in painting, and the necessity of preserving them distinct from other colours, to which they give foulness in mixture; and to this is due their use in backgrounds and in relieving of coloured objects. the tendency in the compounds of colours to run into brownness and warmth is one of the common natural properties of colours which occasions them to deteriorate or defile each other in mixture. brown by consequence is synonymous with foul or dirty, as opposed to fair or clean; and hence brown, which is the nearest of the semi-neutrals in relation to light, is to be avoided in mixture with light colours. yet is it an example of the wisdom of nature's author that brown is rendered, like green, a prevailing hue, and in particular an earth colour, as a contrast which is harmonized by the blueness and coldness of the sky. this tendency will likewise explain the use of brown in harmonizing and toning, as well as the great number of natural and artificial pigments and colours so called. it was the fertility and abundance of browns that caused our great landscape-colourist wilson, when a friend went exultingly to tell him that he had discovered a new brown, to check him in his characteristic way, with--"i'm sorry for it: we have gotten too many of them already." nevertheless, fine transparent browns are obviously very valuable. if red or blue in excess be added to brown, it falls into the other semi-neutral classes, marrone or gray. the wide acceptation of the term brown has occasioned much confusion in the naming of colours, since broken colours in which red, &c. predominate, have been improperly called brown. that term, therefore, should be confined to the semi-neutral colours, compounded of, or like in hue to, either the primary _yellow_, the secondary orange, or the tertiary _citrine_, with a _black_. the general contrast or harmonizing colour of such compounds will consequently be more or less purple or blue. the number of browns is great, as may be seen by the following list. this list, however, is good, and includes a considerable proportion of permanent pigments. . asphaltum, _asphalt_, _bitumen_, _mineral pitch_, _jew's pitch_, _antwerp brown_, _liquid asphaltum_, &c., is a sort of mineral pitch or tar which, rising liquid to the surface of the lacus asphaltites or asphaltic lake (the dead sea) concretes there by the natural action of the atmosphere and sun, and, floating in masses to the shores, is gathered by the arabs. the french give it an additional name from the region of the lake, to wit, bitumen of judea; and with the english, from the same cause, it has the alias of jew's pitch. asphaltum is not so called, however, after the lake, as is asserted by a writer in the encyclopædia: it is just the reverse--pliny says, "the asphaltic lake produces nothing but bitumen (in greek, asphaltos); and hence its name." a substance resembling asphalt is found at neufchâtel in switzerland, and in other parts of europe. a specimen of the native bitumen, brought from persia, and of which the author made trial, had a powerful scent of garlic when rubbed. in the fire it softened without flowing, and burnt with a lambent flame; did not dissolve by heat in turpentine, but ground easily as a pigment in pale drying oil, affording a fine deep transparent brown colour, resembling that of commercial asphaltum; dried firmly almost as soon as the drying-oil alone, and worked admirably both in water and oil. asphaltum may be used as a permanent brown in water, for which purpose the native is superior to the artificial. the former, however, is now seldom to be met with, the varieties employed on the palette being the residua of various resinous and bituminous matters, distilled for the sake of their essential oils. these residua are all black and glossy like common pitch, which differs from them only in having been less acted upon by fire, and thence in being softer. at present asphaltum is prepared in excessive abundance as a product of the distillation of coal at the gas manufactories, and is chiefly confined to oil-painting, being first dissolved in turpentine, which fits it for glazing and shading. its fine brown colour and perfect transparency are lures to its free use with many artists, notwithstanding the certain destruction that awaits the work on which it is much employed, owing to its tendency to contract and crack by changes of temperature and the atmosphere; but for which, and a slight liability to blacken, it would be a most beautiful, durable, and eligible pigment. the solution of asphaltum in turpentine, united with drying oil by heat, or the bitumen torrefied and ground in linseed or drying-oil, acquires a firmer texture, but becomes less transparent and dries with difficulty. if common asphaltum, as usually prepared with turpentine, be used with some addition of vandyke brown, umber, or cappah brown ground in drying oil, it will gain body and solidity which will render it much less disposed to crack. nevertheless, asphaltum is to be regarded in practice rather as a dark varnish than as a solid pigment, and all the faults of a bad varnish are to be guarded against in employing it. it is common to call the solution in turpentine _asphaltum_, and the mixture with drying-oil _bitumen_: the latter is likewise known as _antwerp brown_. a preparation for the use of water-colour artists is employed under the name of _liquid asphaltum_. . bistre is extracted by watery solution from the soot of wood fires, whence it derives a strong pyroligneous scent. it is a very powerful citrine-brown, washes well, and has a clearness suited to architectural subjects. its use is confined to water-colour painting, in which it was much employed by the old masters for tinting drawings and shading sketches, before the general application of indian ink to such purposes. of a wax-like texture, it is perfectly durable, but unfitted for oil, drying therein with the greatest difficulty. a substance of this kind collects at the back of fire-places in cottages where peat is the constant fuel burnt; which, purified by solution and evaporation, yields a fine bistre, similar to the scotch. all kinds of bistre attract moisture from the atmosphere. . bone brown and _ivory brown_ are obtained by roasting bone and ivory until by partial charring they become of a brown colour throughout. though much esteemed by some artists, they are not quite eligible pigments, being bad driers in oil, the only vehicle in which they are now used. moreover, their lighter shades are not permanent either in water or oil when exposed to the action of strong light, or mixed in tint with white lead. the palest of these colours are the most opaque: the deepest are more durable, and most so when approaching black. neither bone nor ivory brown is often employed, but the former may be occasionally applied in forming clear, silvery, warm grays, in combination with zinc white. . burnt umber is what its name denotes, and has a deeper shade with a more russet hue than the raw umber. a quiet brown, it affords clear and warm shadows, but is apt to look rather turbid if used in great depth. it washes and works capitally in water, and dries quickly in oil, in which it is employed as a siccative. perfectly stable in either vehicle, it may sometimes be substituted for vandyke brown, is eligible in fresco, and invaluable in buildings. where the lakes of madder require saddening, the addition of burnt umber increases their powers, and improves their drying in oil. it contains manganese and iron, and may be produced artificially. the old italians called it _falsalo_. . caledonian brown is a permanent native pigment, the use of which is confined to oil. a magnificent orange-russet brown of considerable transparency, it is marked by great depth and richness, and will be found serviceable where a powerful brown of the burnt sienna class is required. . cappah brown, or _cappagh brown_, is likewise a colour peculiar to oil. it is a species of bog-earth or peat, mixed with manganese in various proportions, and found on the estate of lord audley at cappagh, near cork. the specimens in which the peat earth most abounds are of light weight, friable texture, and dark colour; while those which contain more of the metal are heavy and paler. as pigments, the peaty cappah brown is the most transparent and rich in colour. a prompt drier in oil, its surface rivels during drying where it lies thick. the other and metallic sort is a more opaque, a lighter and warmer brown pigment, which dries rapidly and smoothly in a body or thick layer. the first may be regarded as a superior vandyke brown, the second as a superior umber. the two extreme kinds should be distinguished as light and deep cappah browns; the former excellent for dead colouring and grounds, the latter for glazing and graining. these pigments work well in oil and varnish; they do not, however, keep their place while drying in oil by fixing the oil, like the driers of lead, but run. under the names of _euchrome_ and _mineral brown_, they have been introduced into commerce for civil and marine painting. . cassel earth, _terre de cassel_, or, corruptly, _castle earth_, is specially an oil pigment, similar to burnt umber but of a more russet hue. it is an earth containing bitumen, a substance which, with pit-coal, lignite or brown coal, jet, petroleum or rock oil, naphtha, &c., is looked upon as a product of the decomposition of organic matter, beneath the surface of the earth, in situations where the conditions of contact with water, and almost total exclusion of atmospheric air, are fulfilled. deposited at the bottom of seas, lakes, or rivers, and subsequently covered up by accumulations of clay and sand, the organic tissue undergoes a kind of fermentation by which the bodies in question are slowly produced. the true bitumens appear to have arisen from coal or lignite by the action of subterranean heat; and very closely resemble some of the products yielded by the destructive distillation of those bodies. rich as is the tone of colour of cassel earth, it is apt to lose this in some measure on exposure to light. mérimée remembers to have seen a head, the brown hair of which had been painted partly with the earth alone, and partly with a mixture of the earth and white; yet the hair where the white was employed was darker than that painted solely with the brown, the white having fixed the colour. to compensate for its thus fading, it should be mixed with pigments that are permanent, such as umber and lamp black. like all bituminous earths, it needs the strongest drying oil. by calcination, a greater degree of intensity may be imparted to the colour, and perhaps a little more solidity. in landscapes it is of much service for the most vigorous portions of foregrounds and the trunks of trees, as well as for painting cavernous rocks or deep recesses in architecture. compounded with burnt lake and a little prussian blue, it gives a black the most profound. . chalon's brown is a water-colour pigment, transparent and inclining to red; deep, full, and very rich. on exposure to light it becomes less russet, but is otherwise strictly stable. . cologne earth, incorrectly called _cullen's earth_, is a native bituminous earth, containing less bitumen than cassel earth, and therefore drying more quickly. darker than that variety, it is less transparent, and covers better. in its general qualities it resembles vandyke brown, except that in combination with white, it affords a range of cooler brown tints. useful for the shadows of buildings, it does not wash so well as sepia, and is preferred occasionally on that account. by some it has been called durable, by others branded as fugacious. according to bouvier, brown hair represented by this colour has been known to disappear in six months, all the brown vanishing, and nothing remaining but a few black lines of the sketch. as it is similar in composition to cassel earth, the safest course would be to mix it with umber, and not to employ it alone. calcined, it acquires a reddish hue. . indelible brown ink. although this cannot be classed as a pigment, yet, being very useful in water-colours, it may be proper to describe its qualities. the ink is a rich brown fluid, and, as its name imports, is indelibly fixed on the paper as soon as it is dry; thus allowing the artist to work or wash over it repeatedly, without its being disturbed. if diluted with water to its faintest tint, it still continues to retain its indelible properties undiminished. it is generally used with a reed pen, and employed chiefly in architectural details and outlines. various brown inks, principally solutions of bistre and sepia, were adopted in sketching by claude, rembrandt, and many of the old masters. in modern times, a beautiful transparent brown for water-colour artists, known as _liquid prout's brown_, has been extensively employed. this contains less fixative than the indelible ink, and is the vehicle with which nearly all samuel prout's drawings were executed. . leitch's brown is a permanent pigment peculiar to water painting. a most beautiful olive brown, soft and rich, it is admirably adapted for autumnal foliage tints and the like, either alone or compounded with burnt sienna or cadmium orange. transparent and clear in its washes, this is a most serviceable colour in landscape generally. . mixed brown can be produced in endless variety, either by adding a warm colour to black, such as yellow, orange, or citrine, or else by combining the three primaries, secondaries, or tertiaries in suitable proportions. by consulting the lists given of permanent pigments belonging to those classes, and by referring to the chapter on black, it will be seen that no difficulty exists in obtaining durable mixed browns when required. for example, there may be formed from the primaries, a compound of aureolin, rose madder, and ultramarine; or from the secondaries, a mixture of cadmium orange, viridian, and madder purple. of course, as with other mixed tints, the brown hue can be furnished not only by direct compounding of the colours on the palette, but by laying one colour over the other on the paper or canvass, or by stippling. . mummy, _mummy brown_, or _egyptian brown_, is a bituminous product mixed with animal remains, brought from the catacombs of egypt, where liquid bitumen was employed three thousand years ago in embalming. by a slow chemical change, it has combined during so many ages with substances which give it, as a rule, a more solid and lasting texture than simple asphaltum. generally resembling the latter in its other properties and uses as a pigment, mummy is often substituted for it, being less liable to crack or move on the canvass. it must be remembered, however, that mummy varies exceedingly both in its composition and qualities; and as from its very nature and origin nothing certain can be said of it, but little reliance should be placed on this brown. mummy belongs to the class of pigments which are either good or bad, according as they turn out. on the whole, we agree with the american artist, who has been more than once quoted in these pages, that nothing is to be gained by smearing one's canvass with a part, perhaps, of the wife of potiphar. with a preference for materials less frail and of a more sober character, we likewise hold with bouvier, that it is not particularly prudent to employ without necessity these crumbled remains of dead bodies, which must contain ammonia and particles of fat in a concrete state and so be more or less apt to injure the colours with which they may be united. the use of mummy is now confined to oil, in which, says mr. carmichael, a mixture of mummy and bitumen will dry and never crack. if this be the case, the compound would be preferable to either separate. . prussian brown is an iron oxide, containing more or less alumina, and prepared by calcining an aluminous prussian blue, or treating an aluminous ferrocyanide of peroxide of iron with an alkali. possessing the nature and properties of burnt sienna, it is transparent, permanent, and dries well in oil. of an orange hue, it is neither so rich nor so powerful as that pigment, and is better employed as a glaze than in body. . sepia, _liquid sepia_, _seppia_, or _animal Æthiops_, is named after the sepia or cuttle-fish, also called the ink-fish, from its affording a dark liquid, which was used as an ink and pigment by the ancients. all the species of cuttle-fish are provided with a dark-coloured fluid, sometimes quite black, which they emit to obscure the water, when it is wanted to favour their escape from danger, or, by concealing their approach, to enable them with greater facility to seize their prey. the liquid consists of a mass of extremely minute carbonaceous particles, intermixed with an animal gelatine or glue, and is capable of being so widely spread, than an ounce of it will suffice to darken several thousand ounces of water. from this liquid, brought chiefly from the adriatic, but likewise obtainable from our own coasts, is derived the pigment sepia, as well as, partially, the indian ink of the chinese. sepia is a powerful dusky brown, of a fine texture, transparent, works admirably in water, combines cordially with other pigments, and is very permanent. it is much used as a water-colour, and for making drawings in the manner of bistre and indian ink; but is not employed in oil, as it dries therein very reluctantly. extremely clear in its pale tints, and perhaps the best washing colour known, sepia must be used with caution, or otherwise heaviness will be engendered in the shades, so strong is its colouring property. mixed with indigo, or, preferably, prussian blue and black, it is eligible for distant trees, for a general shadow tint in light backgrounds, and for the shade of white linen or white draperies. with madder red it forms a fine hue, somewhat resembling brown madder, and with crimson lake and indigo gives an artistically excellent black. sometimes alone and sometimes in combination with lamp black, or madder red and prussian blue saddened by the black, it will be found useful in dark foreground boats, rocks, near buoys, sea-weed, &c. compounded with aureolin, sepia yields a series of beautiful and durable neutral greens for landscape; and mixed with prussian blue, affords low olive greens, which may be deepened into very cool dark greens by the addition of black. for hills and mountains in mid-distance, sepia combined with cobalt and brown madder is of service; or, for the dark markings and divisions of stones in brooks and running streams, the same compound without the cobalt. mixed with purple madder, it furnishes a fine tint for the stems and branches of trees; and with french blue and madder red gives a really good black. compounds of sepia and yellow ochre, gamboge, raw sienna, or cobalt and aureolin, are severally useful. a rich and strong brown is formed by the admixture of madder red, burnt sienna, and sepia; a tint which may be modified by omitting the sepia or the sienna, or reducing the proportions of either. for dutch craft, this tint and its variations are of great value. a wash of sepia over green very agreeably subdues the force of the colour. . warm sepia is the natural sepia warmed by mixture with other browns of a red hue, and is intended for drawings where it would be difficult to keep the whole work of the same tint, unless the compound were made in the cake of colour. . roman sepia is a preparation similar to the preceding, but with a yellow instead of a red cast. . vandyke brown. this pigment, hardly less celebrated than the great painter whose name it bears, is a species of peat or bog-earth of a fine, deep, semi-transparent brown colour. the pigment so much esteemed and used by vandyke is said to have been brought from cassel; an assertion which seems to be justified by a comparison of cassel earth with the browns of his pictures. gilpin in his essays on picturesque beauty, remarks that "in the tribe of browns--in oil-painting, one of the finest earths is known, at the colour shops, by the name of castle-earth, or vandyke's brown." the vandyke brown of the present day is a bituminous ochre, purified by grinding and washing over. apt to vary in hue, it is durable both in water and oil, but, like all bituminous earths, dries tardily as a rule in the latter vehicle. clear in its pale tints, deep and glowing in shadows, in water it has sometimes the bad property of working up: for this reason, where it is necessary to lay on a great body of it, the moist tube colour should be preferred to the cake. with madder red, the brown gives a fine tint, most useful as a warm shadow colour; and with prussian blue, clear, very sober neutral greens for middle distances. in banks and roads, vandyke brown is the general colour for dragging over the surface, to give roughness of texture: compounded with yellow ochre, it affords a good ground tint, and with purple madder a rich shadow colour. in sunrise and sunset clouds, a mixture of the brown with cobalt yields a cold neutral green, adapted for those clouds at the greatest distance from the sun. for foliage tints, aureolin, french blue, and vandyke brown, will be found of service; or as a glaze over such tints, the yellow and the brown. with raw sienna, brown madder, payne's gray, gamboge, and roman ochre, this brown is useful. in a water-colour winter scene, when the trees are denuded of foliage, the net work of the small branches at the tops of them may be prettily given with cobalt and vandyke brown, used rather dry, and applied with a brush having its hairs spread out either by the fingers or by drawing them through a fine-tooth comb before working. grass is likewise represented readily by this means, and so are small trees on the summit of a cliff or in like positions. the campania brown of the old italian painters was a similar earth. . verona brown, a pigment peculiar to oil painting, is a native ferruginous earth. a citrine brown of great service in tender drab greens, it forms with terre verte and the madder lakes rich autumnal tints of much beauty and permanence. . yellow madder, _cory's yellow madder_, or _cory's madder_, is classed among the browns for the same reason that italian pink was ranked among the yellows. it was stated in the eighth chapter that no true madder yellow, brilliant and pure, exists as a pigment at the present day, and certainly this preparation can lay no claim to the title. except in name, it is an orange-brown of the burnt sienna hue, and might therefore with more reason have been called orange madder. it is a good and permanent colour, rich and transparent, at present used only in oil, we believe, and chiefly as a glaze. * * * * * . _cadmium brown_. by igniting the white carbonate of cadmium, among other methods, a cinnamon-brown oxide is obtainable, of a very clear and beautiful colour if the process be well conducted. it is, however, not eligible as a pigment, owing to the rapidity with which the oxide is acted upon by the air. in water, especially, we have found this brown so eagerly absorb carbonic acid from the atmosphere as to become in a few months once more a carbonate, and as purely white as before. the same result is observable when the powder is exposed: some shown at the international exhibition of , on a glass stand, had to be removed, its label marked 'cadmium brown' being at last found attached to a sample of cadmium white. in oil, the conversion takes place less readily, that vehicle having the property of protecting, to some extent, pigments from oxidation. it is curious that even in a book a water-rub of the brown slowly but surely changes to white. . _catechu browns._ catechu is an extract of the khair tree or _acacia catechu_ of bombay, bengal, and other parts of india. with the exception of such earthy matters as are communicated to it during the preparation, or are added purposely as adulterants, catechu is entirely soluble both in water and alcohol. an aqueous solution has a reddish-brown colour, and gives the following results:--protosalts of iron thrown down olive-brown and persalts greenish-brown precipitates; salts of tin and lead yield brownish-yellow and brick-coloured deposits respectively; while acetate of copper or bichromate of potash furnishes brown residues. to our knowledge, none of these have been introduced as pigments, but a brown prepared by dr. lyon playfair some years back from the catechu bark has been described as exceedingly rich, transparent, and beautiful; and recommended for painting _if not too thinly applied_. . _chrome browns_ are produced by various methods of several hues, tints, and shades, both by wet and dry processes. we have obtained them by many methods, of different degrees of permanence. some very intense in colour have stood well, while others paler and more delicate have gradually greened, but none possessed the strict stability of the green oxides. presuming a paucity of browns, these preparations of chromium would be worth further attention; but, with the objection of being--for browns--somewhat expensive, they have the far more fatal objection of not being wanted. . _copper brown_, varying in hue, is obtainable, in the form of prussiate, &c., but cannot be recommended, however made. . _french prussian-brown._ according to bouvier, a colour similar to that of bistre, and rivalling asphaltum in transparency, is produced by partially charring a moderately dark prussian blue; neither one too intense, which gives a heavy and opaque brownish-red, nor one too aluminous and bright, which yields a feeble and yellowish tint. yielding to a rapture we cannot wholly share, he describes its qualities in the warmest terms. in his opinion, it has the combined advantages of asphaltum, mummy, and raw sienna, without their drawbacks. "i cannot," he says, "commend too highly the use of this charming bistre-tint: it is as beautiful and good in water as in oil, perfectly transparent, of a most harmonious tone, and dries better than any other colour suitable for glazing. closely resembling asphaltum in tint as well as in transparency, this brown is preferable to it in every point of view." as the colour is very quickly and easily obtained, the artist can judge for himself of its proper value. m. bouvier's process is, to place upon a clear fire a large iron spoon, into which, when red hot, some pieces of the prussian blue are put about the size of a small nut: these soon begin to crackle, and throw off scales in proportion as they grow hot. the spoon is then removed, and allowed to cool: if suffered to remain too long on the fire, the right colour will not be produced. when the product is crushed small, some of it will be found blackish, and the rest of a yellowish brown: this is quite as it should be. chemically, the result is a mixture of oxide of iron and partly undecomposed or carbonised prussiate. . _gambogiate of iron._ dr. scoffern read a paper at the meeting of the british association of science, in , describing this combination as a rich brown, like asphaltum, but richer, as well as more durable in oil. it has not been, however, employed as a pigment, or at least is not at present. . _hypocastanum_, or chestnut brown, is a brown lake prepared from the horse-chestnut. this now obsolete pigment is transparent and rich in colour, warmer than brown pink, and very durable both in water and oil; in the latter of which it dries moderately well. . _iron browns_, native or artificial, are well represented on the palette, but nothing would be easier than to increase their number. of all metals, iron is the richest source of colour, capable of affording all colours with the exception of white. none of them, however, are so numerous as the browns, a description of which would fill this chapter. suffice it to state they are obtainable of every hue, tint, and shade, and are generally permanent. they are made on a large scale and sold under various names for house-painting, &c. . _manganese brown_ is an oxide of manganese, which is quite durable both in water and oil, and dries admirably in the latter. a fine, deep, semi-opaque brown of good body, it is deficient in transparency, but might be useful for glazing or lowering the tone of white without tinging it, and as a local colour in draperies, &c. . _nickel brown._ a very pleasing yellowish brown is obtainable from nickel, bright and clear in its pale washes, and of some richness in oil. unless thoroughly washed, it has a tendency to greenness in time. . _ochre browns._ the slight affinity of sulphur for yellow ochre, with its merely temporary effect thereon, was observed in the eighth chapter, where allusion was made to the action of sulphuretted hydrogen and sulphide of ammonium on the earth. sulphur alone, and in the dry state, ignited with yellow or other native ochres converts them into browns, varying in hue, and of greater or less durability. those browns, however, which we have made by this process, although standing well in a book, have not withstood exposure to light and air. they have all become pale, whitish, or of a drab cast, evidently through the oxidation of the sulphur, or rather the sulphide of iron formed during the calcination. practically, therefore, ochres have an antipathy to sulphur, moist or dry, by itself or in combination; and are, so to speak, the disinfectants of the palette. ever waging war against sulphurous vapours, the native earths serve to protect a picture from the damaging influence of impure air, whether they be used alone, or employed in admixture with such pigments as are injured thereby. . _purple brown_ is a refuse manufacture from indian red washings. a dull, heavy, coarse colour, it belongs to the class of common pigments which are unexceptionable for decorative painting, but scarcely suited to the higher branches of art. as this work professes simply to treat of artistic pigments, that have been, are, or might be, more than a passing reference to those colours exclusively adopted by house-painters, &c., would be out of place. . _rubens' brown_, still in use in the netherlands under this appellation, is an earth of a lighter colour and more ochrous texture than the vandyke brown of english commerce: it is also of a warmer or more tawny hue than the latter pigment. beautiful and durable, it works well both in water and oil, and much resembles the brown employed by teniers. . _uranium brown._ yellow, red, orange, green, have been previously noticed as being derived from uranium, and to this list of colours may now be added brown. a warm rich hue of the utmost intensity may be produced, which possesses considerable permanence, although not equal to that of uranium yellow. . _zinc brown._ a yellow-brown, so yellow that it might fairly have been classed with the ochrous colours of that denomination, is made by combining zinc with another metal by the aid of heat. experience tells us that it is, chemically, a thoroughly good and stable pigment. safely to be used in admixture, it is a clear, bright colour, affording good greens by compounding with blue. of no great power, and semi-opaque, this yellow-brown or brown-yellow is superior to some of the pigments at present used, but is probably too much like them in hue and other properties to be of any special value. * * * * * besides the preceding, there are those browns of a citrine or russet cast which are elsewhere described, such as raw umber, madder brown, &c. moreover, there are numberless other varieties, obtainable from most of the metals, from many organic substances, and from a combination of the two. of all colours, a 'new' brown is the most easily discovered: success may not be met with in seeking a yellow, red, or blue, or an orange, green, or purple; but it is strange if in the course of one's experiments a brown does not turn up. no difficulty, therefore, would have been found in greatly extending the present list; but it was felt that no advantage could have accrued by further multiplying the notices of a colour, with which we are already furnished so abundantly by nature and art, and which is capable of being produced in such profusion by admixture. with the exception of ivory and bone browns, and perhaps cassel and cologne earths, all the browns commonly employed may be considered more or less durable. chapter xviii. on the semi-neutral, marrone. we have adopted the term marrone, or _maroon_ as it is sometimes called, for our second and middle semi-neutral, as applicable to a class of impure colours composed of black and red, black and purple, or black and russet, or of black and any other denomination in which red predominates. it is a mean between the warm, broken, semi-neutral _browns_, and the cold, semi-neutral _grays_. marrone is practically to shade, what red is to light; and its relations to other colours are those of red, &c., when we invert the scale from black to white. it is therefore a following, or shading, colour of red and its derivatives; and hence its accordances, contrasts, and expressions agree with those of red degraded; consequently red added to dark brown converts it into marrone if in sufficient quantity to prevail. in smaller proportions, red gives to lighter browns the names of bay, chestnut, sorrel, &c. owing to confused nomenclature, most of the colours and pigments of this class have been assigned to other denominations--puce, murrey, morelle, chocolate, columbine, pavonazzo, &c., being variously ranked among reds, browns, and purples. this vagueness also accounts for pigments having been ranged under heads not suited to the names they bear, and explains why brown ochre has been classed among the yellows, italian pink among the same, brown pink among the citrines, &c. as adapted to the walls of a picture gallery, marrone, more or less deep and inclined to crimson, is one of the best colours known. for the reason that each colour has its antagonist, and consequently may affect a picture well or ill, according to its tone or general hue, there can be no universally good colour for such a purpose. what suits one picture or style of painting may not suit another: with a blood-red sunset, for instance, or portrait with crimson drapery, marrone would be out of place. but as it is impossible to provide each picture with a separate background, all that can be done in large collections is to study the general effect, sacrificing the interests of the few to the good of the many. if cool-coloured landscapes predominate, with blue skies and green foliage, it will be found that the orange-yellow of the frames agreeably contrasts the former, and the crimson-marrone of walls as agreeably sets off the latter. if portraits and historic paintings prevail, which are in general of a warm advancing nature, then a modest green may prove eligible. and if engravings form the staple, the grey hue of the print is best opposed by a bright fawn colour. where several rooms are devoted to pictures, a suitable wall colour is most easily secured by classifying the paintings as far as possible according to their general hue, and placing them in different chambers: in each there will be a prevailing character in the colouring of its pictures, and each can be painted or papered accordingly. however, whether this plan is adopted or not--and it may be objected to as involving a certain monotony--care should be taken to have a wall colour of some sort or other, that is, to let it be seen. pictures crammed together kill each other: without a pin's point between them, a speck of wall space visible, much of the illusion is destroyed. "it is only," says chevreul, "the intelligent connoisseur and amateur who, on seeing a picture exhibited in a gallery, experience all the effect which the artist has wished to produce; because they alone know the best point of view, and because, while their attention is fixed on the work they are observing, they alone end by no longer seeing the surrounding pictures, or even the frame of that one they contemplate." amid a moving crowd of people, inseparable from nearly all public exhibitions, it becomes difficult for the visitor, intelligent or otherwise, thus to concentrate his attention on one work. as far, therefore, as space will allow, paintings should be kept separate: larger rooms, or fewer pictures, are what is wanted.[b] from this digression, pardonable, let us hope, because in the interests of art, we will pass on to a consideration of marrone pigments. . brown madder is an exceedingly rich marrone or russet-marrone brown, bearing the same relation to the colour marrone that raw umber bears to the colour citrine. one of the most valuable products of the madder root, it has supplied a great desideratum, and in water especially is indispensable, both as a local and auxiliary colour. of intense depth and transparency, if made with skill, it affords the richest description of shadows, either alone or compounded with blue, and the most delicate pale tints. being quite permanent, a good drier, and working most kindly, it is a pigment which cannot be too strongly recommended to the landscape painter's notice. containing a large proportion of red, it is eligible, with yellow or blue, for mixed orange or mixed purple of a subdued tone. it may be used tolower red curtains or draperies, and for the darkest touches in flesh. mixed with cobalt, it forms a fine shadow colour for distant objects; and with indigo or prussian blue and black, is serviceable for the shades of those nearer the foreground. it is similarly useful when mixed with black, and will be found advantageous in rusty iron, as anchors, chains, &c. for the deepest and richest parts of foregrounds it may be employed alone, as also for deep dark cracks and fissures, or strong markings in other near objects, as boats and figures. with french blue, or cobalt and white, a set of beautiful warm or cold grays may be obtained, in proportion as the brown or blue predominates. compounded with blues and bright yellows such as aureolin, it gives fine autumnal russet greens. a good purple for soft aerial clouds is furnished by cobalt and brown madder, or for stormy clouds by the brown, prussian blue, and black: an equally good slate colour is obtained from cobalt, sepia, and the brown. for glazing over foliage and herbage, a mixture of the madder with aureolin or gamboge is adapted; and for brooks and running streams compounds of this brown with raw sienna, cobalt and raw sienna, vandyke brown, and french blue, will each be found useful. black sails are well represented by burnt sienna, french blue, and brown madder; and red sails by light red or burnt sienna with the brown. . mixed marrone. marrone is a retiring colour easily compounded in all its hues and shades by the mixture variously of red, and black or brown; or of any other warm colours in which red and black predominate. a reference to the permanent brown, black, and red or reddish pigments will show to what extent the colour marrone may safely be produced by admixture. in compounding marrone, the brown or black may be itself compounded, before the addition of the red, reddish-purple, or russet, requisite for its conversion. * * * * * . _chica marrone_. chica, the red colouring principle alluded to in the ninth chapter, is extracted from the _bignonia chica_, by boiling its leaves in water, decanting the decoction, and allowing it to cool, when a red matter falls down, which is formed into cakes and dried. insoluble in cold water, it dissolves in alcohol and alkalies; is precipitated from alkaline solutions by acids without alteration; and is bleached by chlorine. another variety of the same substance, obtained from para in brazil, and known as crajuru, carajuru, or caracuru, behaves in a similar manner. this is said to be superior to the former sort. a chica pigment, brought from south america, and examined by the author, was of a soft powdery texture, and rich marrone colour. somewhat resembling rubens' madder in hue, it was equal in body and transparency to the carmine of cochineal, though by no means approaching it in beauty, or even in durability. simply exposed to the light of a window, without sun, the colour was soon changed and destroyed. conclusive evidence as this is that the sample submitted to mr. field was worthless, it remains to be seen whether all the colours to be derived from chica, by different modes and from different kinds, are equally valueless as pigments. . _chocolate lead_, or marrone red, is a pigment prepared by calcining oxide of lead with about a third of copper oxide, and reducing the compound to a uniform tint by levigation. it is of a chocolate hue, strong opaque body, and dries freely. like all lead and copper colours, it is blackened by impure air. . _cobalt marrone._ there is obtainable from cobalt a very rich marrone brown, which, like many other colours, is more beautiful while moist than when dried. permanent, if carefully made and most thoroughly washed, it is an expensive compound, and must rank among those colours which are interesting in the laboratory but superfluous in the studio. . _madder marrone_, or marrone lake, was a preparation of madder, of great depth, transparency, and stability. working well in water, glazing and drying in oil, and in every respect a good pigment, it was one of those colours which gradually--and often, as in this case, unfortunately--become obsolete, on account of their hues being easily given by admixture of other pigments. there was likewise a deeper kind, called purple black. a good madder marrone may be produced by adding to brown madder either rose madder, madder carmine, or rubens' madder, with a slight portion of black or blue if required. . _mars marrone._ under the heading of a new marrone pigment there appeared some months back in a chemical journal the following:--"the blood-red compound obtained by adding a soluble sulphocyanide to a salt of iron in solution can be made (apparently at least) to combine with resin thus: to a concentrated solution of sesquichloride of iron and sulphocyanide of potassium in ether, an etherial solution of common resin is added, and the whole well shaken together. there is then mixed with it a sufficiency of water to cause a precipitate, when it will be found, after the mixture has stood a few hours, that the whole or nearly the whole of the red-coloured iron compound has united with the precipitated resin, forming the marrone-coloured pigment in question. when this coloured substance is finely powdered and mixed with water, the liquid is not the least coloured; whence it is inferred that the red iron compound has chemically united itself with the resin." the foregoing account is rather to be regarded as of scientific interest than of practical utility. the blood-red solution of sulphocyanide of iron is in itself not stable: when the red solution of this salt is so exposed to the sun, that the rays pass through the glass jar containing it, it is rendered colourless, but the colour is retained or restored when the rays pass directly from the air into the fluid; so that when a properly diluted solution is placed in a cylindrical glass vessel in direct sunshine, it loses colour in the morning till about eleven in the forenoon, when the rays beginning to fall upon the surface exposed to the air, gradually restore the colour, which attains its maximum about two o'clock. moreover, the solution is immediately decolourised by sulphuretted hydrogen and other deoxidizing agents, as well as by alkalies and many acids. it is scarcely probable that the union of the red colouring matter with the resin would suffice to secure it from change; and there is little doubt that the new marrone pigment would be a chameleon colour. * * * * * failures in the process of burning carmines, and preparing the purple of gold, frequently afford good marrones. compounds more or less of that hue are likewise furnished by copper, mercury, &c. some ochres incline to marrone when calcined: indeed we have remarked in many instances that the action of fire anticipates the effects of long continued time; and that several of the primary and secondary colours may, by different degrees of burning, be converted into their analogous secondary, tertiary, or semi-neutral colours. the one marrone or brown-marrone pigment at present employed, brown madder, is permanent. footnotes: [b] this was written previous to the opening of the new rooms of the royal academy at burlington house. in these, among other improvements, the subject of wall space has been considered. chapter xix. on the semi-neutral, gray. of the tribe of semi-neutral colours, gray is third and last, being nearest in relation to black. in its common acceptation, and that in which we here use it, gray, as was observed in the third chapter, denotes a class of cool cinereous colours faint of hue; whence we have blue grays, olive grays, green grays, purple grays, and grays of all hues, in which blue predominates; but no yellow or red grays, the prevalence of such hues carrying the compounds into the classes of brown and marrone, of which gray is the natural opposite. in this sense the _semi-neutral_ gray is distinguished from the _neutral_ grey, which springs in an infinite series from the mixture of the neutral black and white. between gray and grey, however, there is no intermediate, since where colour ends in the one, neutrality commences in the other, and vice versâ. hence the natural alliance of the semi-neutral gray--definable as a cool coloured grey--with black or shade; an alliance which is strengthened by the latent predominance of blue in the synthesis of black, so that in the tints resulting from the mixture of black and white, so much of that hue is developed as to give apparent colour to the tints. this explains why the tints of black and dark pigments are colder than their originals, so much so as in some instances to answer the purposes of positive colours. it accounts in some measure for the natural blueness of the sky, yet not wholly, for this is in part dependent, by contrast, upon the warm colour of sunshine to which it is opposed; for, if by any accident the light of nature should be rendered red, the colour of the sky would not appear purple, in consequence, but green. again, if the sun shone green, the sky would not be green, but red inclined to purple; and so would it be with all colours, not according to the laws of composition, but of contrast; since, if it were otherwise, the golden rays of the sun would render a blue sky green. the grays are the natural cold correlatives, or contrasts, of the warm semi-neutral browns, as well as degradations of blue and its allies. hence blue added to brown throws it into or toward the class of grays, and hence grays are equally abundant in nature and necessary in art: in both they comprehend a widely diffused and beautiful play of retiring colours in skies, distances, carnations, and the shadowings and reflections of pure light, &c. gray is, indeed, the colour of space, and has therefore the property of diffusing breadth in a picture, while it furnishes at the same time good connecting tints, or media, for harmonizing the general colouring. consequently the grays are among the most essential hues of the art, though they must not be suffered to predominate where the subject or sentiment does not require it, lest they cast over the painting that gloom or leaden dulness reprobated by sir joshua reynolds; yet in solemn works they are wonderfully effective, and proper ruling colours. nature supplies these hues from the sky abundantly and effectively throughout landscape, and rubens has employed them as generally to correct and give value to his colouring, with fine natural perception in this branch of his art: witness his works in the national gallery, and in that of the luxembourg. according to the foregoing relations, grays favour the effects and force of warm colours, which in their turn also give value to grays. it is hence that the tender gray distances of a landscape are assisted, enlivened, and kept in place by warm and forcible colouring in the foreground, gradually connected through intermediate objects and middle distances by demi-tints declining into gray; a union which secures full value to the colours and objects, and by reconciling opposites gives repose to the eye. as a general rule, it may be inferred that half of a picture should be of a neutral hue, to ensure the harmony of the colouring; or at least that a balance of colour and neutrality is quite as essential to the best effect of a painting as a like balance of light and shade. . mineral gray, or mineral gr_e_y, as it is often improperly spelt, is obtainable from the lapis lazuli, after the blue and ash have been worked out. so derived, it is a refuse article, worthless if the stone has been skilfully exhausted of its ultramarine. as this is now generally the case, the best mineral gray is no longer a waste product, but a lower species of ash, a pale whitish blue with a grey cast. possessing the permanence of ultramarine, it may be regarded in colour as a very weak variety of that blue, diluted with a large quantity of white slightly tinged by black. a pigment peculiar to oil painting, it is admirably adapted to that gray semi-neutrality, the prevalence of which in nature has been just remarked. for misty mornings, cloudy skies, and the like, this gray will be found useful. . mixed gray is formed by compounding black and blue, black and purple, black and olive, &c.; and is likewise produced by adding blue in excess to madder brown, sepia, &c., transparent mixtures which are much employed. it should be borne in mind that the semi-neutrals, like the secondaries and tertiaries, may be so compounded as to be permanent, semi-stable, or fugitive. the due remembrance of this cannot be too strongly insisted upon, seeing that in every picture the browns and grays are of frequent occurrence. these it is that lend such charm to the whole, flowing, as it were, like a quiet under-current of colour beneath the troubled surface of more decided hues. in the work of every true artist--between whom and the mere painter there is as much difference as between the poet and the poetaster--there is sentiment as well as colour, whether the subject be an exciting battle-scene or a bit of still life. this sentiment, as strongly felt as the colour is clearly seen, is imparted in no small degree by the skilful use of semi-neutrality, the compounding of which, as time goes on, will therefore affect a picture for good or for evil. subjoined is an analysis of the three semi-neutrals, which serves partly to show in what great variety they may be obtained by admixture. brown = black + yellow } " = " + orange } + red, purple, &c. " = " + citrine} " = yellow + red + blue " = orange + green + purple " = citrine + russet + olive marrone = black + red " = " + purple-red " = " + russet " = red } " = purple-red} + dark brown or black " = russet } gray = black + blue } " = " + purple-blue} + white " = " + olive } " = blue } " = purple-blue} + light brown, or black + white " = olive } in the last division, the white has been added to remind the reader that grays are coloured greys, not coloured blacks; and are therefore faint of hue. this paleness, however, need not necessarily be produced by admixture with white: it can be gained by means of thin washes. as a pigment, gray may be to all appearance black in bulk. . neutral tint, or, more correctly, _semi_-neutral tint, is a compound shadow colour of a cool character. it is permanent, except that on exposure the gray is apt to become grey, a change which may be prevented by a slight addition of ultramarine ash. so protected, it becomes serviceable in landscape for the extreme distance, which, it may be laid down as a general principle, should be painted rather cold than otherwise. blue being the principal compound of atmosphere, it is of the utmost importance to obtain this in the first instance, particularly as, from its being only of a blue tint, not blue colour, it is so immediately altered and acted upon by subsequent washes; whereas, the blue tone once lost, it will be found very difficult to be recovered. wherever a picture is wanting in air effect, the cause will, upon examination, be seen to rest entirely upon the absence of pure grays, bordering upon a bluish tone, not tending, be it observed, to brown or purple. a bluish gray, then, of rather a cold tone, such as the neutral tint, is recommended as the prevailing hue with which to begin the extreme distances; and, as a rule, it is better to pass with this over as much of the landscape as possible, and thus lay the foundation for a general atmosphere. . payne's gray resembles the preceding in being a compound colour and liable to assume a grey cast by time, but differs from it in having more lilac in its hue, and being therefore of a warmer tone. giving by itself a clear violet shadow, it may be rendered more neutral by a small portion of burnt sienna, an admixture which, whether the gray or sienna predominates, affords useful tints. compounded with light red or vandyke brown, the gray is good for shipping and sails, or the stems and branches of trees; while with gamboge or aureolin it is suited to glossy leaves in high light, also to very cold tones in foregrounds, herbage, &c. yellow ochre, light red, and payne's gray form a mixture for banks and roads; the ochre, gray, and sepia, a most beautiful tint for stones; and brown madder and the gray, a fine shade for the black head and feet of cattle. alone, the gray is serviceable for slate; and compounded with light red, for bricks or tiles in shadow. . ultramarine ash is obtained from the stone after the richer and more intense blue has been extracted. although not equal in beauty, and inferior in strength of colour to ultramarine, it is a valuable bye-product varying in shade from light to dark, and in hue from pale azure to cold blue. with a grey cast, it affords delicate and extremely tender tints, not so positive as ultramarine, but which, as water-colours, wash much better. it furnishes grays softer, purer, and more suited to the pearly tints of flesh, skies, distances, foliage, shadows of drapery, &c. than those composed of other blues, with white and black, which the old masters were wont to employ. ultramarine, however, produces the same effects when broken with black and white, and is thus sometimes carried throughout the colouring of a picture. the ash, compounded with lamp black, gives a soft cold gray for dark louring clouds, or for twilight away from the sun's influence. alone it is adapted to very remote hills or mountains, and with orient yellow or aureolin to distant foliage. * * * * * the native phosphate of iron, which has been already described in the tenth chapter under its name of blue ochre, might have been classed among the grays, being similar in colour to the deeper hues of ultramarine ashes. powdered slate, slate clays, and several native earths, likewise rank with grays; but some of the earths we have tried are not durable, being apt to become brown by the oxidation of the iron they contain. it may be proper here to mention those other pigments, known as tints, which, being the result of the experience of accredited masters in their peculiar modes of practice, serve to facilitate the progress of their amateur pupils, while they are more or less eligible for artists. such are _harding's_ and _macpherson's tints_, composed of pigments which associate cordially, and sold ready prepared in cakes and boxes for miniature and water painting. of the four grays in use--mineral gray, ultramarine ash, neutral tint, and payne's gray--the two first are quite unchangeable, and the others sufficiently stable to be classed as permanent. chapter xx. on the neutral, grey. grey is the second and intermediate of the neutral colours, standing between _white_ and _black_. true or normal grey is only obtainable by admixture of pure white with pure black, various proportions of which afford numerous tones of pure grey. in practice it may likewise be produced by a thin wash of black over white. the neutral gr_e_y differs from the semi-neutral gr_a_y in not being coloured by any primary, secondary, tertiary, or semi-neutral; hence any blue, purple, olive, or gray added to it, at once destroys the neutrality of grey, and converts it into gray. thus easily defiled and changed in class, grey is rather a theoretical than a practical colour. to our knowledge, there has never been a true grey pigment, that is, one composed exclusively of pure white and pure black; the gr_a_ys known to the palette as mineral grey and payne's grey having been incorrectly named. practically, the nearest approach to a normal grey is furnished by black lead, which forms grey tints of greater permanence and purity than the blacks in general use, and is now employed for this purpose with approved satisfaction by experienced artists. being compounded of white and black, grey partakes in some measure of the qualities of both those colours--for colours, as a matter of convenience, they must be called; although white is often spoken of as no colour, and black as the complete extinction of all colour. with white predominant, grey is used, pure or coloured, for the general lights of a picture; just as, with black predominant, grey is employed, pure or coloured, for the shades. it helps to subdue the absolute white, and to make the absolute black conspicuous. black and white are in some respects complementary to each other, and when in contact, appear to differ more from each other than when viewed separately: both show with best effect when harmonised by a medium of grey, normal or otherwise. the primary colours, also, gain in brilliancy and purity by the proximity of grey. with dark colours, such as blue and violet, and deep tones in general, grey forms assortments of analogous harmonies; while with the luminous colours, such as red, orange, yellow, and the light tints of green, it forms harmonies of contrast. although grey never produces a bad effect in its assortments with two luminous colours, in most cases the association is dull and inferior to black and white. the only instance in which grey associates with two such colours more happily than white is that with red and orange. grey is inferior to both white and black with red and green, red and yellow, orange and yellow, orange and green, yellow and green; and is not so good as white with yellow and blue. in association with sombre colours, such as blue and violet, and with broken tones of luminous colours, grey gives rise to harmonies of analogy which have not the vigour of those with white; but if the colours do not combine well together, it has the advantage of separating them from each other. associated with two colours, one sombre, the other luminous, grey will perhaps be better than white, if white produces too strong a contrast of tone: on the other hand, grey will be preferable to black, if that has the inconvenience of increasing too much the proportion of sombre colours. grey associates more happily than black with orange and violet, green and blue, or green and violet. . mixed grey. when a ray of solar light (a sunbeam) is passed through a prism of flint glass, and the image or 'prismatic spectrum' received upon a screen of white paper, it is found to consist of numerous rays of different colours, which are conveniently divided into six groups--red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. optically, the union of red, yellow, and blue, in proper proportions, constitutes white light; whether the rays of the three separate colours are mixed, or of one with the other two in combination: the same result ensues when red is mixed with green as if it were mixed with blue and yellow, because green is composed of blue and yellow. consequently, any primary mixed with a secondary composed of the other two primaries, forms the complement of rays necessary to constitute or make up white light, and vice versâ. there is, however, a very great difference between the results arising from the mixture of the pure coloured rays of the spectrum, and those from material colours or pigments. when, by means of a convex lens, we reunite the coloured rays of the spectrum white light is reproduced; but when we mix coloured materials, blues, yellows, and reds, the compound is never white, but grey or black; even if these coloured pigments are taken in the exact proportions in which their colours exist in the spectrum. ultramarine, our purest blue, reflects red rays as well as blue rays; aureolin, our purest yellow, reflects blue as well as yellow rays; and carmine reflects yellow as well as red rays. now whenever the third primary colour is present in any mixture of coloured materials, it tends to form grey, by mixing with a sufficient quantity of the other coloured rays to neutralize it, and the presence of this grey breaks or tarnishes the pure colour. hence it is that to obtain a pure green, a blue should be taken tinged with yellow rather than with red, and a yellow tinged with blue: if there were chosen either a blue or a yellow tinged with red, this latter colour would go to form some grey in the compound, which would tarnish the green. in like manner, to produce pure orange, neither the red nor the yellow must contain blue; and similarly with pure purple, neither the blue nor red should contain yellow. as regards pigments, then, a proper mixture of yellow, red, and blue; or of yellow and purple, red and green, or blue and orange; or of orange, green, and purple, affords black if sufficiently intense, and grey if sufficiently diluted. the black may be rendered grey by spreading a thin wash over a white ground, or by the direct addition of white. it must be remembered, however, that suitable proportions of the component colours are essential. when all three of the primaries, for example, are mixed together, colour is neutralised according as they are compounded of equal strength and in right quantities: if proper proportions are observed, pure black or normal grey results; but if not, there will be produced a coloured black or a coloured grey, an excess of one or two of the primaries giving rise to brown, marrone, or gray. a reference to the lists of permanent primary and secondary pigments will show to what extent durable greys can be compounded. as these pigments differ so widely in hue and other properties, no fixed rules can be given for their admixture: to ensure neutrality, practice and a correct eye are indispensable. without perfect neutrality, difficult to attain and rarely to be met with, grey ceases to exist. in pure white, pure grey, and pure black, colour is, so to speak, conspicuous by its absence. chapter xxi. on the neutral, black. black is the last and lowest in the series or scale of colours descending--the opposite extreme from white--the maximum of colour. to be perfect, it must be neutral with respect to colours individually, and absolutely transparent, or destitute of reflective power as regards light; its use in painting being to represent shade or depths, of which black is the element in a picture and in colours, as white is of light. as there is no perfectly pure and transparent black pigment, black deteriorates all colours in deepening them, as it does warm colours by partially neutralizing them, but it combines less injuriously with cold colours. though black is the antagonist of white, yet added to it in minute portion, it in general renders white more neutral, solid, and local, with less of the character of light. impure black is brown, but black in its purity is a cold colour, and communicates a coolness to all light colours; thus it _blues_ white, _greens_ yellow, _purples_ red, and _cools_ blue. hence the artist errs with ill effect who regards black as of nearest affinity to hot and brown colours, and will do well to keep in mind--"the glow of sunshine and the _cool_ of shade." it is a fault of even some of our best colourists, as evinced by their pictures, to be too fond of black upon their palettes, and thence to infuse it needlessly into their tints and colours. with such it is a taste acquired from the study of old pictures; but in nature hardly any object above ground is black, or in daylight is rendered neutral thereby. black, therefore, should be reserved for a local colour, or employed only in the under-painting properly called grounding and dead colouring. as a local colour, black has the effect of connecting or amassing surrounding objects, and is the most retiring of all colours, a property which it communicates to other colours in mixture. it heightens the effect of warm as well as light colours, by a double contrast when opposed to them, and in like manner subdues that of cold and deep colours. in mixture or glazing, however, these effects are reversed, by reason of the predominance of cold colour in the constitution of black. having, therefore, the double office of colour and of shade, black is perhaps the most important of all colours to the artist, both as to its use and avoidance. it may be laid down as a rule that the black must be conspicuous. however small a point of black may be, it ought to catch the eye, otherwise the work is too heavy in the shadow. all the ordinary shadows should be of some _colour_--never black, nor approaching black, they should be evidently and always of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange among them; never occurring except in a black object, or in small points indicative of intense shade in the very centre of masses of shadow. shadows of absolutely negative grey, however, may be beautifully used with white, or with gold; but still though the black thus, in subdued strength, becomes spacious, it should always be conspicuous: the spectator should notice this grey neutrality with some wonder, and enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold colour and the white which it relieves. of all the great colourists, velasquez is the greatest master of the black chords: his black is more precious than other people's crimson. yet it is not simply black and white that must be made valuable, rare worth must be given to each colour employed; but the white and black ought to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the other colours should be continually passing one into the other, being all plainly companions in the same gay world; while the white, black, and neutral grey should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of them. crimson may be melted into purple, purple into blue, and blue into green, but none of them must be melted into black. all colours are comprehended in the synthesis of black, consequently the whole sedative power of colour is comprised in black. it is the same in the synthesis of white; and, with like relative consequence, white includes all the stimulating powers of colour in painting. it follows that a little white or black is equivalent to much colour, and hence their use as colours requires judgment and caution. by due attention to the synthesis of black, it may be rendered a harmonizing medium to all colours, to all which it lends brilliancy by its sedative effect on the eye, and its powers of contrast: nevertheless, we repeat, it must be introduced with caution when _hue_ is of greater importance than shade. even when employed as a shadow, without much judgment in its use, black is apt to appear as local colour rather than as privation of light; and black pigments obtained by charring have a tendency to rise and predominate over other hues, subduing the more delicate tints by their chemical bleaching power upon other colours, and their own disposition to turn brown or dusky. for these reasons deep and transparent colours, which have darkness in their constitution, are better adapted as a rule for producing the true natural and permanent effects of shade. many pictures of the early masters, and especially of the roman and florentine schools, evince the truth of our remarks; and it is to be feared the high reputation of these works has betrayed their admirers into this defective employment of black. black substances reflect a small quantity of white light, which receives the complementary of the colour contiguous to the black. by 'complementary' is meant that colour which is required with another colour to form white light; thus, green is the complementary of red, blue of orange, and yellow of violet, or vice versâ; because green and red, blue and orange, and yellow and violet, each make up the full complement of rays necessary to form white light. briefly digressing, we give the following mode of observing complementary colours:--place a sheet of white paper on a table opposite to one of two windows admitting diffused daylight[c] into a room; take a piece of coloured glass and so place it that the coloured light transmitted through it falls over the surface of the paper; then put an opaque object on the paper close to the coloured glass. the shadow of this object will not appear black or of the colour of the glass, as might be supposed, but of its complementary colour; thus if the glass is red, the colour of the shadow will be green, although the whole of the paper surrounding it appears red. similarly, if the glass is blue, the shadow will appear orange; if it is green, the shadow will appear red; and so with other colours. it is absolutely essential, however, to the success of this experiment, that the paper be also illuminated with the white light admitted from the other window. it has been said that black substances reflect a small quantity of white light, which receives the complementary of the colour contiguous to the black. if this colour is deep, it gives rise to a luminous complementary, such as orange, or yellow, and enfeebles the black; while the other complementaries, such as violet or green, strengthen and purify it. in colours associated with black, if green is juxtaposed therewith, its complementary red, added to the black, makes it seem rusty. those colours which best associate with black are orange, yellow, blue, and violet. it would be well to remember that black, being always deeper than the juxtaposed colour, entails contrast of tone, and tends to lower the tone of that colour. most of the black pigments in use are obtained by charring, and owe their colour to the carbon they contain. as the objects of vegetal and animal nature may be blackened through every degree of impurity by the action of fire, black substances more or less fitted for pigments abound. the following are the chief native and artificial black pigments, or colours available as such:-- . black lead, _plumbago_, or _graphite_, contains in spite of its name no lead, being simply a species of carbon or charcoal. in most specimens iron is present, varying in quantity from a mere trace up to five per cent, together with silica and alumina. sometimes manganese and titanic acid are likewise found. it is curious that carbon should occur in two distinct and very dissimilar forms--as diamond, and as graphite; one, white, hard, and transparent; the other, black, soft, and opaque: the artist, therefore, who uses a pigment of plumbago, paints with nothing more or less than a black diamond. the best graphite, the finest and most valuable for pencils, is yielded by the mine of borrowdale, at the west end of derwent lake, in cumberland, where it was first wrought during the reign of elizabeth. a kind of irregular vein traverses the ancient slate-beds of that district, furnishing the carbon of an iron-grey colour, metallic lustre, and soft and greasy to the touch. universally employed in the form of crayons, &c. in sketching, designing, and drawing, until of late years it was not acknowledged as a pigment: yet its powers in this respect claim a place for it. as a water-colour, levigated in gum in the usual manner, it may be effectively used with rapidity and freedom in the shading and finishing of pencil drawings, or as a substitute therein for indian ink. even in oil it may be employed occasionally, as it possesses remarkably the property of covering, forms very pure grey, dries quickly, injures no colour chemically, and endures for ever. these qualities render it the most eligible black for adding to white in minute quantity to preserve the neutrality of its tint. although plumbago has usurped the name of black lead, there is another substance more properly entitled to this appellation, and which may be used in the same way, and with like effects as a pigment. this substance is the sulphide of lead, found native in the beautiful lead ore, or galena, of derbyshire. an artificial sulphide can be prepared by dry and wet processes, which is subject to gradual oxidation on exposure to the air, and consequent conversion into grey or white. neither variety can be compared to graphite for permanence, although the native is preferable to the artificial. plumbago, or the so-called black lead, is often adulterated to an enormous extent with lamp black. . blue black, _charcoal_, _liege_, or _vine black_, is a well-burnt and levigated charcoal prepared from vine twigs, of weaker body than ivory or lamp black, and consequently better suited to the grays and general mixed tints of landscape painting, in which it is not so likely to look black and sooty as the others may do. of a cool neutral tint, it has, in common with all carbonaceous blacks, a preserving influence on white when duly mixed therewith; which it owes, chemically, to the bleaching power of carbon, and, chromatically, to the neutralizing and contrasting power of black with white. compounded slightly with blue black, and washed over with zinc white, white lead may be exposed to any ordinary impure atmosphere with comparative impunity. it would be well for art if carbon had a like power upon the colour of oils, but of this it is deficient; and although chlorine destroys their colour temporarily, they re-acquire it at no very distant period. alone, blue black is useful as a cool shade for white draperies; and compounded with cobalt, affords a good gray for louring clouds. . british ink is a compound black, preferred by some artists to indian ink, on account of its not being liable to wash streaky, as the latter does: at the same time it is not so perfectly fixed on the paper as indian ink. . indian ink, sometimes called _china_ or _chinese ink_, is chiefly brought from china in oblong cakes, of a musky scent, ready prepared for painting in water. varying considerably in body and colour, the best has a shining black fracture, is finely compact, and homogeneous when rubbed with water, in which, when largely diluted, it yields no precipitate. without the least appearance of particles, its dry surface is covered with a pellicle of a metallic appearance. when dry on the paper, it resists the action of water, yet it will give way at once to that action, when it has been used and dried on marble or ivory, a fact which proves that the alummed paper forms a strong combination with the ink; possibly a compound of the latter on an aluminous base, might even be employed in oil. different accounts are given of the mode of making this ink, the principal substance or colouring matter of which is a smoke black, having all the properties of our lamp black; the variety of its hues and texture seeming wholly to depend on the degree of burning and levigating it receives. from certain chinese documents, we learn that the ink of nan-king is the most esteemed; and among the many sorts imported into this country, we find those of the best quality are prepared with lamp black of the oil of sesame; with which are combined camphor, and the juice of a plant named _houng hoa_ to give it brightness of tone. according to an analysis by m. proust, the better kinds contain about two per cent. of camphor. by some, the pigment known as sepia has been supposed to enter into their composition. _liquid indian ink_ is a solution for architects, surveyors, &c. . ivory black is ivory charred to blackness by strong heat in closed vessels. differing chiefly through want of care or skill in preparing, when well made it is the richest and most transparent of all the blacks, a fine neutral colour perfectly durable and eligible both in water and oil. when insufficiently burnt, however, it is brown, and dries badly; or if too much burnt, it becomes cineritious, opaque, and faint in hue. with a slight tendency to brown in its pale washes, this full, silky black is serviceable where the sooty density of lamp black would be out of place. it is occasionally adulterated with bone black, a cheaper and inferior product. being nothing more nor less than animal charcoal, ivory or bone black had best not be compounded with organic pigments, in water at least. it is well known that this charcoal possesses the singular property of completely absorbing the colour of almost any vegetal or animal solution, and of rendering quite limpid and colourless the water charged with it. if a solution of indigo in concentrated sulphuric acid be diluted with water, and animal charcoal added in sufficient quantity, the solution will soon be deprived of colour. the more perfect the ivory or bone black, the more powerful is its action likely to be: either over or under calcined, animal charcoal is less energetic; in the former case, because it is less porous; in the latter, because the animal matter, not being wholly consumed, makes a kind of varnish in the charcoal which interferes with its acting. to a greater or less extent, gums, oils, and varnishes serve similarly as preventives, thereby decreasing the danger of employing these blacks in admixture; but, in the compounding of colours, nothing is gained by needless risk. to mix with organic pigments, therefore, blue or lamp blacks should be substituted for those of ivory or bone; that is, vegetal charcoal should be used instead of animal. it is a question whether even with inorganic pigments the adoption of the former in admixture would not be advisable. it was once the general opinion that the action of animal charcoal was limited to bodies of organic origin, but it has since been found that inorganic matters are likewise influenced. "through its agency," says graham, "even the iodine is separated from iodide of potassium;" whence probably pigments containing iodine would suffer by contact. the investigation of weppen appears to prove that the action of the charcoal extends to all metallic salts; with the following, no doubt remains of this being so, to wit:--the sulphates of copper, zinc, chromium, and protoxide of iron; the nitrates of lead, nickel, silver, cobalt, suboxide and oxide of mercury; the protochlorides of tin and mercury; the acetates of lead and sesquioxide of iron; and the tartrate of antimony. whether animal charcoal exercises any deleterious influence on pigments consisting of these metals, and, if so, how far and under what circumstances, can only be answered when our knowledge of the properties of pigments is greater than it now is. at present, perhaps, it is safer to choose vegetal charcoal for mixed tints, inasmuch as, although it shares the property of bleaching in a certain degree, it does not possess the same energy. . lamp black, or _lamblack_, is a smoke black, being the soot procured by the burning of resins or resinous woods. it is a pure vegetal charcoal of fine texture, not quite so intense nor so transparent as the black made from ivory, but less brown in its pale tones. it has a very strong body that covers readily every underlay of colour, works well, but dries badly in oil. on emergency, it may be prepared extemporaneously for water-painting by holding a plate over the flame of a lamp or candle, and adding gum to the colour: the nearer the plate is held to the wick of the lamp, the more abundant and warm will be the hue of the black obtained; at a greater distance it will be more effectually charred, and blacker. mixed with french blue or cobalt, lamp black gives good cloudy grays, which are useful for the shadows of heavy storm clouds. with french blue and this black alone various beautiful stormy skies may be represented; the contrast of the blue causing the black to assume, if desired, a warm tone in shadows. for like purposes, the black with ultramarine ash affords a very soft hue, and with light red and cobalt in different proportions yields silvery tones most serviceable. to the dark marking of murky and dirty clouds, a compound of lamp black and light red is particularly suited; while a mixture of the black with cobalt and purple madder is adapted for slate-coloured sunset and sunrise clouds. french blue softened with a little lamp black is fitted for mountains or hills, very remote; and the same blue and black with rose madder meet their tints if nearer. in seas the black is useful with raw sienna and other colours; while, whether in storm or calm, vessels and boats may be painted with tints of lamp black, madder brown, and burnt sienna, varying in degrees of strength according to the distances. lamp black alone, or with french blue, cobalt and purple madder, emerald green, or rose madder, is good for rocks; and for dark foreground objects when mixed with madder lake and burnt sienna. with aureolin the black furnishes a sober olive for foliage, and with rose madder a fine colour for the stems and branches of trees. compounded with light red, it is suited to the first general tones of the ground for banks and roads; and with yellow ochre or madder red, to parts of buildings and cattle. a very eminent miniature painter recommends for hair tints, lamp black, indian red, and burnt sienna. being a dense solid colour, this black must be used sparingly to avoid heaviness. hitherto confined to painting and engraving, lamp black has lately refuted the assertion that there is nothing new under the sun by making its appearance in photography. by a method which combines the fidelity of that art with the permanence of prints, there is produced a species of photographic engraving, so to speak, having lamp black or carbon for its colouring matter. indeed, in this 'autotype' process, as it is called, any other durable pigment or pigments may be used, and a photographic picture thus obtained. in copying the works of artists, especially, the mode promises to be of value, inasmuch as by its agency the same pigments may be made the colouring matter of the reproduction as are employed in the original. if this be in sepia or bistre, the copy can be autotyped in those colours; or if a red chalk drawing be required to be multiplied, the proofs may be in red chalk, the copy when produced to the same scale being scarcely distinguishable from the original. in like manner, any single colour of the artist's palette is applicable without restriction or limitation, so that not only are every line and touch rendered absolutely, but the very pigment used in the original is found in the copy. moreover, as the pigments are quite unchanged by the action of the other agents employed, the resulting colour of the print is determined once for all, just as the artist mixes those pigments on his palette for his picture. as extending the use of lamp black and permanent pigments in general, this brief digression on autotypography may be pardoned in a treatise on colours. . mixed black. black is to be considered as a synthesis of the three primary colours, the three secondaries, or the three tertiaries, or of all these together; and, consequently, also of the three semi-neutrals, and may thus be composed of due proportions of either tribe or triad. all antagonistic colours, or contrasts, likewise afford the neutral black by composition; but in all the modes of producing black by compounding colours, blue is to be regarded as its archeus or predominating colour, and yellow as subordinate to red, in the proportions, when their hues are true, of eight blue, five red, and three yellow. it is owing to this predominance of blue in the constitution of black, that it contributes by mixture to the pureness of hue in white colours, which usually incline to warmth, and that it produces the cool effect of blueness in glazing and tints, or however otherwise diluted or dilated. it accords with the principle here inculcated that in glass-founding the oxide of manganese, which gives the _red_ hue, and that of cobalt, which furnishes the _blue_, are added to brown or _yellow_ frit, to obtain a velvety black glass. similarly the dyer proceeds to dye black upon a deep blue basis of indigo, with the ruddy colour of madder and the yellow of quercitron, &c. some of the best blacks and neutrals of the painter are those formed with colours of sufficient power and transparency upon the palette. prussian blue and burnt lake afford a powerful though not very durable black; and compound blacks in which transparent pigments are employed will generally go deeper and harmonize better with other colours than any original black pigment alone. hence lakes and deep blues, added to the common blacks, greatly increase their clearness and intensity: in mixture and glazing of the fine blacks of some old pictures, ultramarine has evidently been used. in this view, black altogether compounded of blue with red and yellow, each deep and transparent, and duly subordinated according to its powers, will give the most powerful and transparent blacks; although, like most other blacks, they dry badly in oil. of course, as with all compound colours, it depends entirely on the pigments employed whether these mixed blacks are permanent or not: a compound black can very well pass through the stages of black to grey, gray, or dirty white, if each link in the chain of combination be not as strong as its fellows. * * * * * . _black chalk_ is an indurated clay, of the texture of white chalk, and chiefly used for cutting into crayons. fine specimens have been found near bantry in ireland, and in wales, but the italian has the most reputation. crayons for sketching and drawing are also artificially prepared, which are deeper in colour and free from grit. wood charcoal is likewise cut into crayons, that of soft woods, such as lime, poplar, &c., being best adapted for the purpose. . _black ochre_, earth black, or prussian black, is a native earth, combined with iron and alluvial clay. it is found in most countries, and should be washed and exposed to the atmosphere before being employed. sea-coal, and other black mineral substances, have been and may be used as substitutes for the more perfect blacks, when the latter are not procurable, which now seldom or never happens. . _bone black_, obtained by charring, is similar to that of ivory, except that it is a little warmer in tone, having a reddish or orange tinge, and is a worse drier in oil. like ivory black, it is very transparent. immense quantities of bone black are consumed with sulphuric acid in the manufacture of shoe blacking. . _coffee black_, though little known and not on sale, has been strongly recommended by bouvier as one of the best blacks that can be used. soft without being greasy, light, almost impalpable, even before being ground, it gives tints of a very bluish gray when mixed with white, a quality precious for making the blues of the sketch, and dull greens. it is said to dry better than blue or vine black, and to combine admirably with other colours. de montabert prefers calling it coffee brown, giving it as an exemplification of a bluish-brown, but probably this brown hue is owing to want of skill in its manufacture. we have not had personal experience of the colour, but there is no theoretical reason why a carbonaceous black should not be produced from coffee. the mode of proceeding is to calcine the berry in a covered vessel, and well wash the resulting charcoal with boiling water by decantation. in order to prevent the powder, which is of great lightness, from floating, it is made into paste with a few drops of alcohol before adding the water. . _frankfort black_ is said to be made of the lees of wine from which the tartar has been washed, by burning, in the manner of ivory black; although the inferior sort is merely the levigated charcoal of woods, of which the hardest, such as box and ebony, yield the best. fine frankfort black, though almost confined to copper-plate printing, is one of the best black pigments extant, being of a neutral colour, next in intensity to lamp black, and more powerful than that of ivory. strong light has the effect of deepening its colour. it is probable that this was the black used by some of the flemish painters, and that the pureness of the greys formed therewith is due to the property of charred substances of preventing discolourment. . _manganese black_, the common black oxide of that metal, is the best of all blacks for drying in oil without addition. it is also a colour of vast body and tingeing power. as a siccative, it might be advantageously employed with ivory black. . _mineral black_ is a native impure carbon of soft texture, found in devonshire. blacker than plumbago, and free from its metallic lustre, it is of a neutral colour, greyer and more opaque than ivory black, and forms pure neutral tints. being perfectly durable, and drying well in oil, it is of value in dead colouring on account of its solid body, as a preparation for black and deep colours before glazing. it would likewise be the most permanent and best possible black for frescoes. . _paper black_, a pigment unknown to the modern palette, like most of our numbered italicised colours, is of the nature of blue or vine black. very soft and of a fine bluish-gray, it is fitted for flesh, or for mixing with whites or yellows in landscapes. . _peach black_, or almond black, made by burning the stones of fruits, the shell of the cocoa-nut, &c., is a violet-black, once much used by parisian artists. bouvier believes it to be a good black, but at the same time sensibly asks, of what use is it to have a black of this cast, which can always be given by lake, without diminishing but rather increasing the intensity of the black it may be mixed with. . _prussian black._ the same prussian blue which gives a brown when burnt in the open air, yields a black when calcined in a close crucible. very intense, very soft and velvety, and very agreeable to work, this bluish-black dries much more promptly than most other blacks, and scarcely requires grinding. on account of its extreme division, however, it would probably be found more energetic as a decolourising agent in admixture with organic pigments than most carbonaceous blacks. another prussian black, containing copper, and made by a wet process, is obtained when a dilute solution of cupric sulphate and ferrous sulphate, in proper proportions, is mixed with a quantity of ferrocyanide of potassium not in excess. a very bulky deep black precipitate is formed, which is difficult to wash, and is deep black when dry. it is insoluble in water, and appears to be a compound analogous to prussian blue. as a pigment, this black is inferior to the preceding. . _purple black_ is, or rather was, a preparation of madder, of a deep purple hue approaching black. powerful and very transparent, it glazed and dried well in oil, and was a durable and eligible pigment. its tints with white lead were of a purple cast. . _spanish black_, or cork black, is a soft black, obtained by charring cork, and differs not essentially from frankfort black, except in being of a lighter and softer texture. "some of my friends," says bouvier, "call it _beggars' ultramarine_, because it produces, by combinations, tints almost as fine as ultramarine." a blue but not a velvet black, where intensity is required some other is to be preferred. for mixtures, however, it is stated to be admirable, and especially for linen, skies, distances, and the various broken tints of carnations, &c. * * * * * besides those blacks which have been mentioned, there are others furnished by several of the metals and by many organic substances employed as dyes; but as the blacks in common use are all permanent, and have been found sufficient for every purpose, it is scarce needful to swell the list. nor is it more needful, the editor considers, to swell the book; lest his aim be defeated of reflecting in a _moderate_-sized mirror the palette as it is and might be at the present day. arrived at age, as it were, in its twenty-first chapter, this treatise may fitly conclude with black, the last of the series of colours. let us hope the maxim of sir joshua reynolds, that success in some degree was never denied to earnest work may apply here. still, by way of finale, we would offer a few remarks. in no branch of the science, perhaps, is it more hazardous to commit oneself to a positive dictum than in the chemistry of colours, so liable are theory and practice to clash, and so often does the experience of one person or one time differ from that of another. he who has turned his attention to pigments, finds nearly every assertion must be qualified, for to nearly every rule there is some exception, and learns that theory alone may mislead. for example, a colour known to be fugacious may last, in certain cases, a surprisingly long time; while, on the contrary, a pigment permanent when used alone, may be rendered fugitive by improper compounding. again, what holds good of a colour produced by one process, or employed in one vehicle or by one artist, may not be true of the same colour made by a different mode, or used in another vehicle or by another artist. it is because, then, colours are of every degree of durability, from the perfectly stable to the utterly fugitive, and because each one is liable to influence by every condition of time, place, and circumstance, that the chemist's theory is opposed as often to the painter's practice as the experience of artists themselves varies. this may explain the charges of inconsistency and contradiction which have been brought against writers on pigments, faults that lie rather with the nature of the subject than with the authors. even at the risk of being tiresome, we have throughout insisted on the choice of permanent pigments, not simply for use alone but for mixed tints. to quote cennini, "i give you this advice, that you endeavour always to use ... good colours.... and if you say that a poor person cannot afford the expense, i answer, that if you work well (and give sufficient time to your works), and paint with good colours, you will acquire so much fame that from a poor person you will become a rich one; and your name will stand so high for using good colours, that if some masters receive a ducat for painting one figure, you will certainly be offered two, and your wishes will be fulfilled, according to the old proverb, 'good work, good pay.'" of a truth, if man cannot dip his brush in the rainbow and paint with the aerial colours of the skies, he can at least select the best pigments that earth and the sea afford him; preferring, where he cannot get brilliancy and permanence combined, sobriety and permanence to brilliancy and fugacity. it must be the wish of every real artist to leave behind him a lasting record of his skill, a permanent panorama of those hues of nature which in life he loved so well. to effect this, genius alone is powerless: there must be first a proper choice of materials, and next a proper use of them. the painter's pigments are the bricks wherewith the mortar of his mind must be mixed, either to erect an edifice that shall endure for ages, or one which will quickly topple over like a house of cards. now in nothing more than in painting is prevention better than cure--indeed cure may be said to be here out of the question: for good or for evil a picture once painted is painted for ever. without a strong constitution there is no hope for it; no chemistry can strengthen the sickly frame, restore the faded colour, stop the ravages of consumption: science stands helpless before dying art. and yet, she sighs to think, it might have been otherwise. if durable pigments had been employed, if her counsel had been sought, this need not have been. in the history of modern art the use and abuse of colours would furnish a sad chapter, telling of gross ignorance, and a grosser indifference. happily there is promise of a healthier state of things. when this comes, art will be less shy to consult her sister: in the interests of both there should be closer union. without waiting till the picture is finished--for then it will be too late--let her, if in doubt, frankly display the contents of her palette and ask advice. now, not knowing what pigments are chosen or how they are used, never standing by and watching the progress of the work, how can science lend her aid? she would willingly, for she herself needs help: at present her knowledge is limited, not so much of the chemistry of colours as of the properties of pigments. she seeks to mix her pound of theory with an ounce of practice, and craves a warmer welcome to the studio. for any approximation to the truth to be arrived at, facts must be noted with the conditions under which they occur, not by one sister alone nor by the other alone, but by both. in future, art and science should go hand in hand, mutually dependent on each other, mutually trustful of each other, working with and for each other, earnestly and patiently. footnotes: [c] light is either direct or diffused--direct, when the sun's rays fall upon any object; diffused, when ordinary daylight illumines objects with white light, causing them to appear of their peculiar colours. addendum. with the present rapid progress of applied chemistry, an addendum in a work of this kind is quite excusable. even while the book is being printed some fact may be announced which the author or editor would wish to insert. in our case this has happened. very recently there has been introduced in france as a pigment . tungsten white, or _tungstate of baryta_. "at the request of a landscape painter," says m. sacc in a letter to m. dumas, "i was induced to examine in succession all our insoluble white compounds, with regard to their adaptability to painting purposes. tungstate of baryta answers perfectly, covers as well as white lead, and is as unalterable as zinc white. it has been employed by this artist for three months, and was found equally successful in oil or water colours, chromolithography, and even in making white impressions on a black ground. this harmless substitute for the injurious white lead is prepared on a large scale in paris by m. e. rousseau." we have not met with a sample of that gentleman's manufacture, but judging from our own specimens, made both by wet and dry processes, and carefully tried in water and oil, it would seem that a perfect white pigment has yet to be discovered. with us, at least, tungstate of baryta is far from having the body of white lead, and indeed is inferior in opacity to good zinc white. unaffected by foul air, the tungstate appears to possess the common fault of all whites when compared with white lead--want of body, moreover it is a bad dryer. however, m. rousseau's preparation may not be open to these objections, and we therefore reserve our final opinion of tungsten white. it is intended to publish from time to time a fresh edition of field's chromatography, and we hope in the next issue to give a more detailed and favourable account of the new pigment. index. a. acacia catechu, . academy, royal, at burlington house, . acetate of lead, as a siccative, . " improper use of, . adulteration, . " of anotta, . " artificial ultramarine, . " black lead, . " cadmium yellow, . " carmine, . " chrome yellow, . " cochineal, . " genuine ultramarine, . " indigo, . " ivory black, . " madder, . " madder carmine, . " mars yellow, . " prussian blue, . " red lead, . " smalt, . " verdigris, . " vermilion, . " veronese green, . " white lead, , , . " yellow and orange orpiment, , . " zinc white, . advancing and retiring colours, - . advice, cennini's, . aerial perspective, . african cochineal, . " green, . air and light, action of, on pigments, . air effect, want of, . albumen, . alchemy, . alexander the great, . " veronese, . alkanet, . almagra, . almond black, . american artist, an, . analysis of brown, . " citrine, . " gray, . " marrone, . " olive, . " russet, . anchusa tinctoria, . ancients, colouring of the, . " colours of the, , , . aniline, . " colours, . " " cakes of, . " " in oil, . animal Æthiops, . " charcoal, - . " jelly, . anotta, . antimony, golden sulphur of, . " orange, . " red, . " white, . " yellow, . antipathies of pigments, . antwerp blue, . " brown, . apelles, , . archil, . " purple, . arethas, . armenian blue, , , . " bole, . " stone, . arsenical pigments, . arsenic green, substitutes for, , . " white, . " yellow, . art and science, , . artificial ultramarine, - . " acid pigments with, . " adulteration of, . " green in, . " gum with, . artificial ultramarine, in siliceous painting, . " origin of, . " prize for, . " test for, . artists and painters, . arts, society of, . ash, ultramarine, . ashes, blue, . asphaltic lake, the, . asphaltum and asphalt, . " liquid, . association of science, british, . assyrians, colouring and colours of, . augustus cæsar, . aureolin, , , - . " chemical news on, . " in admixture, . " mr. aaron penley on, . " the purest yellow, , . aurine, . autotype process, the, . avignon, berries of, . axiom, a wholesome, . axioms for compounding, . azuline, . azure, , , . b. barff, mr., . barium and bismuth chrome greens, . barthe and laurent, mm., . bartholomew, mr., . baryta, ferrate of, . " silicate of, . barytic white, . beauty in pigments, . beeswax, . berries, french, persian, and turkey, . berzelius, . bice, green, . bignonia chica, . bismuth purple, . bixa orellana, . bixine, . black, . " ancient, . " as a colour, , . " as a pigment, . " colours with, . " on the neutral, . black pigments:-- almond black, . beggars' ultramarine, . black chalk, . black lead, , . black ochre, . blue black, . bone black, . british ink, . charcoal black, . chinese ink, . coffee black, . copper prussian black, . cork black, . earth black, . frankfort black, . galena, . graphite, . indian ink, . ivory black, . lamp black, . liege black, . manganese black, . mineral black, . mixed black, . paper black, . peach black, . plumbago, . prussian black, , . purple black, . spanish black, . vine black, . bladder green, . blanc d'argent, . blending of pigments, . blood, dragon's, . bloodstone, . blue, . " ancient, , . " armenian, , . " as a colour, . " contrast of, , . " discordant, . " on the primary, . blue pigments:-- antwerp blue, . artificial ultramarines, - . azure, , . basic prussian blue, . berlin blue, , . bice, . bleu de garance, . blue ashes, . blue bice, . blue carmine, . blue ochre, , . blue sand, . blue verditer, . brilliant ultramarine, . cerulian blue, or coeruleum, . cobalt blue, . cobalt blues, - . cobalt prussian blue, . cobalt ultramarine, . coëlin, . copper blues, - . cotton seed blue, . cyanine, . dumont's blue, . dutch ultramarine, . enamel blue, . egyptian blue, . factitious ultramarine, . ferricyanide of iron, . ferrocyanide of iron, . french blue, . french ultramarine, . genuine ultramarine, - . gmelin's german ultramarine, . gold blue, . guimet's ultramarine, . haerlem blue, . hungary blue, . indian blue, . indicum, . indigo, . intense blue, . iodine blue, . iridium blue, . iris, . lazuline, . lazulite blue, . lazurstein, . leitch's blue, . leithner's blue, . manganese blue, . mineral blue, . mountain blue, . native prussian blue, . native ultramarine, . natural ultramarine, . new blue, . outremer, . outremer de guimet, . paris blue, , . permanent blue, . platinum blue, . powder blue, . prussian blue, . prussiate of iron, . pure ultramarine, . real ultramarine, . reboulleau's blue, . royal blue, . saunders' blue, . saxon blue, . schweinfurt blue, . smalt, - . terre bleu, . thénard's blue, . true ultramarine, . tungsten blue, . turnbull's blue, . ultramarines, - . verditer, . vienna blue, . wood-tar blue, . zaffre, . zinc-cobalt blue, . body white, . bole, armenian, . borrowdale, . bouvier, , , , , , , . box, the painter's, . bradley, mr., . british school, . broken colours, . bronze, . brown, . " analysis of, . " as a colour, . " citrine, . " contrast of, . " liquid, prout's, . " madder, . " mars, . " on the semi-neutral, . brown pigments:-- animal Æthiops, . antwerp brown, . asphaltum or asphalt, . bistre, . bitumen, . bitumen of judea, . bone brown, . burnt umber, . cadmium brown, . caledonian brown, . campania brown, . cappah brown, . cassel earth, . castle earth, . catechu browns, . chalon's brown, . chestnut brown, . chrome browns, . cologne earth, . copper brown, . cory's madder or yellow madder, . cullen's earth, . egyptian brown, . euchrome, . french prussian brown, . gambogiate of iron, . hypocastanum, . iron browns, . ivory brown, . jew's pitch, . leitch's brown, . manganese brown, . mineral brown, . mineral pitch, . mixed brown, . mummy, . mummy brown, . nickel brown, . ochre browns, . prussian brown, . purple brown, . roman sepia, . rubens' brown, . sepia, . terre de cassel, . uranium brown, . vandyke brown, . verona brown, . warm sepia, . yellow madder, . zinc brown, . brown pink, . " red, . " spanish, . " stil de grain, . browns, abundance of, , . brun de mars, . brunswick green, , . brushes, soap and alkali in, . burlington house, royal academy at, . burnt carmine, . " lake, . " madder, . " orpiment, . " roman ochre, . " sienna, . " terra di sienna, . " verdigris, . c. cadmium brown, . " orange, , , . " red, , . " white, . " yellow, , . " " adulteration of, . " " manufacture of, . " " when fugacious, . " " with white lead, . caledonian brown, . campania brown, . camphor, . cappah or cappagh brown, . carajuru, . carbolic acid, . carbon, . carmichael, mr., . carmine, , . " adulteration of, . " blue, . " burnt, . " field's, . carmine, madder, . " manufacture of, . " vermilion, . " violet, . " with indian yellow, . " " white lead, . carnac, ruins at, . carnagione, . carthamus, . cartoons at hampton court, . cassel earth, . " green, . " terre de, . " yellow, . cassius, purple of, . cassius's purple precipitate, . castle earth, . catechu browns, . celandine, . cendres bleues, . cennini, advice of, . cerulian blue or coeruleum, . ceruse, . chalk, black, . " green, . " red, . " white, . chalon's brown, . chaptal, count, , . charcoal, animal, , . " black, . " vegetal, , . charles i., . charred blacks, , , . cheese, anotta in, . chemical news, extract from, . chestnut brown, . chevreul, m., , , , . chiaroscuro, . chica d'andiguez, . " marrone, . " red, . china, mandarins of, . " white, . chinese ink, . " lake, . " orange, . " rouge, . " vermilion, . " white, . " yellow, . chinoline, . chocolate lead, . chromate of mercury, . chromates of lead, organic pigments with, , . chrome arseniate, . " browns, . " green, true, . " greens, - . " ochre, . chrome orange, . " oxide, . " oxides, - . " red, . " scarlet, . " yellows, - . " " adulteration of, . chromium, green oxide of, . " opaque oxide of, . " oxide of, . " transparent oxide of, . church, professor, . cicero, . cinnabar, . " green, . citrine, . " analysis of, . " as a colour, . " contrast of, . " on the tertiary, . citrine pigments:-- brown pink, . brown stil de grain, . brun de mars, . cassia fistula, . citrine brown, . citrine lake, . mars brown, . mixed citrine, . quercitron lake, . raw umber, . umber, . citron yellow, . classes of colours, on, - . classified pigments:-- black, . blue, . brown, . citrine, . gray, . green, . grey, . marrone, . olive, . orange, . purple, . red, . russet, . white, . yellow, . claude, . cleanliness in painting, . coal-tar colours, - , . " cakes of, . " in oil, . cobalt blue, . chalkiness in, . manufacture of, . " blues, - . " green, . " marrone, . " prussian blue, . " " green, . " purples, . " ultramarine, . coccus (abies nigra), . " cacti, . " ficus, . " ilicis, , . cochineal, . " adulteration of, . " dr. warren de la rue on, . " lake, with vermilion, . " lakes, - . coëlin, . coeruleum, , , , . coffee black, . " brown, . cohesion and colour, , . " durability, , . cologne earth, . " yellow, . colour and neutrality, . " latent, . " of extreme light objects, . " of shadow, . " on the relations and harmony of, . coloured rays, mixture of, . colouring, ancient, - . " false, . " importance of, - . " on, . " vicious, - . colours, ancient, , , . " and pigments individually, on, . " broken, . " classes of:-- " " neutral, . " " primary, . " " secondary, . " " semi-neutral, . " " tertiary, . " complementary, . " discordant, , . " entire, . " extreme, . " fugacity of ancient, . " held in check, . " hot and cold, . " imaginary, . " individual beauty of, . " light and dark, . " material, mixture of, . " mixture and compounding of, - . " not obtainable, . " not pigments, . " perspective of, . colours, retiring or advancing, - . " superfluous, . " unfitted for pigments, , . " vitrified, , . " with black, , . " " colours, . " " grey, . " " white, , . common pigments, . compounding colours, on, - , . compound pigments, . constable, . constantinople, . constant white, . " free acid in, . contrast of colour and neutrality, . " gradations and extremes, . " hues, - . " shades, . " warmth and coolness, . copper blues, - . " borate, . " brown, . " chrome, . " greens, - . " prussian black, . " prussiate of, . " reds, . " smalt, . " stannate, . " yellow, . cork black, . correggio, , . cory's madder or yellow madder, , . cotton seed blue, . cremnitz or crems white, . crimson lake, . crookes, mr., . crowding of pictures, . cudbear, . cullen's earth, . cuttle fish, . cuyp, . cyanine, . cyanus, , . d. damonico, . darkening of mineral colours, . davy, sir h., . dead sea, the, . deep cadmium, . " chrome, . " vermilion, . " deoxidation of pigments, . detractors of modern pigments, - . dewint's green, . diagram, . diesbach, m. . dilution of colour, . di palito, . direct and diffused light, . discord of colours, , . disinfectants of the palette, . distance, law about, . distilled verdigris, . distinction of colours, , . dominichino, . dragon's blood, . " with white lead, . drop gum, . drying of pigments, . " oils, lead in, . duffield, mrs., . dumas, m., , . dumont's blue, . durability of pigments, - , . dussance, professor h., . dutch pink, . " schools, . " the, , . " ultramarine, . " white, . dyeing, brown for, . " orange for, . dyes and pigments, . e. earth black, . " burnt sienna, . " cassel, or castle, . " cologne, . " cullen's, . " green, . " raw sienna, . egg-shells, white of, . egypt, catacombs of, . " temples of upper, , . egyptian blue, . " brown, . egyptians, the, colouring and colours of, - . elizabeth, queen, . eisner's green, . emerald green, . emeraldine, . enamel blue, . " colours, , . england, climate and females of, . english green, . " pink, . " red, . " vermilion, . entire colours, . equations, , , . euchrome, . exhibition, international, of , , . experiment, . exposure of pigments, . extract of gamboge, . " vermilion, . extreme colours, . f. factitious indigo, proposed, . " ultramarine, . falsalo, . fast and fugitive, pigments both, . ferrate of baryta, . ferricyanide of iron, . ferrocyanide " . field's carmine, . " lakes, - . " orange vermilion, . " purple, . " russet, . fineness of texture in pigments, . fire, action of, on pigments, . " pigments affected by, . fistula, cassia, . flake white, . flemish painters, . " schools, , . " white, . florentine lake, . " painters and painting, , , , . flower pieces, background tint for, . foul air, ochres with, . frankfort black, . french berries, . " blue, . " green, . " prussian brown, . " purple, solid, . " ultramarine, . " veronese green, . " white, . fresco, prussian blue in, , . fruit pieces of w. hunt, . fugacity of pigments, - . fugitive colours, . g. gainsborough, . galena, . galleries, picture, - . gallstone, . gamboge, . " as a glaze, . " extract of, . gamboge orange, . gambogiate of iron, . garance, bleu de, . gas, effect of, on colours, . gelbin's yellow, . general qualities of pigments, on the, . genuine ultramarine, - . " adulteration of, . " colouring matter of, . " defects in, . " manufacture of, . " price of, . " properties of, . " tests for, . giallolino, . gilpin, . giovanni bellini, . giulio romano, . glazing of colours, . gloucestershire, . gmelin, m., , , , . gmelin's german ultramarine, . gold blue, . " purple, . " reds, . " size, japanner's, . golden sulphur of antimony, . " yellow, . gradation in art, . " nature, . graham, mr., . graphite, . gray, , . " analysis of, . " and grey, , , . " as a colour, , . " as a pigment, . " contrast of, . " on the semi-neutral, . gray pigments:-- mineral gray, . mixed gray, . neutral tint, . payne's gray, . ultramarine ash, . greeks, colouring of the, , . " the, , , . green, . " as a colour, , . " contrast of, . " dewint's, . " discordant, . " olive, . " on the secondary, . green pigments:-- african green, . barium chrome green, . bismuth chrome green, . bladder green, . bronze, . brunswick green, , . chrome arseniate, . chrome greens, - . chrome oxide, . chrome oxides, - . cobalt green, . cobalt prussian green, . copper borate, . copper chrome, . copper greens, - , - , . copper stannate, . distilled verdigris, . elsner's green, . emerald green, , . english green, . french green, . french veronese green, . german mineral green, . green bice, . green cinnabar, . green earth, . green lake, . green ochre, . green oxide of chromium, . green ultramarine, . green verditer, . holy green, . hooker's green, . hungary green, . imperial green, . iris green, . malachite green, . manganese green, . marine green, . mineral green, . mitis green, . mixed green, . molybdenum green, . mountain green, . native green, . olympian green, . opaque oxide of chromium, . oxide of chromium, . patent green, . persian green, . pickle green, . prussian greens, . quinine green, . rinman's green, . roman green, . sap green, . saxon green, . sheele's green, . schweinfurt green, . silicate of baryta, . swedish green, . terre verte, . titanium green, . transparent oxide of chromium, . true chrome green, . true prussian green, . uranium green, . vanadium green, . venetian green, . verde vessie, . verdetto, . verdigris, . verona green, . veronese green, . vert de zinc, . vienna green, . viride Æris, . viridian, . zinc green, . green, pure, to obtain, . greens, ancient, . grey, - , . " and gray, , . " as a colour, . " as a pigment, . " colours with, , . " on the neutral, . grey pigments:-- black lead, . mixed grey, - . grinding of pigments, . guido, . guimet, m., , . " outremer de, . guimet's ultramarine, . gum, drop, " tragacanth, . gyges, . h. haerlem blue, . hamburgh lake, . " white, . hampton court, cartoons at, . harding's tint, . harmony of colour, - . hatching of colours, . haydon, . hercules tyrius, . holy green, . hooker's green, . houng hoa, . hues, , . hungary blue, . " green, . hunt, w., . hypocastanum, . i. illumination, cadmium orange in, . " coal-tar colours in, , . " manual of, . " viridian in, . imperial green, . indian blue, . " ink, , . " lake, . " ochre, . " purple, . " red, . " yellow, . indicum, . indigo, . " adulteration of, . " possible substitute for, . " proposed factitious, . indigofera, . indium yellow, . individually, on colours and pigments, . ink, blue, . " british, . " chinese, . " green, . " indelible brown, . " indian, . " liquid indian, . " red, . inkfish, the, . innoxious pigments, . intense blue, . " " manufacture of, . international exhibition of , , . invisible green, . iodine, . " blue, . " pink, . " scarlet, . " yellow, . iridium blue, . iris, . " green, . iron browns, . " ferricyanide of, . " ferrocyanide of, . " gambogiate of, . " pigments affected by, , , , , , , . " prussiate of, . " smalt, . " yellow, , . italian greens, , . " pink, . italics, numbered colours in, , . italy, colouring in modern, . ivory black, . " " with manganese black, . ivory brown, . j. japanner's gold size, . jaune de cologne, . " " fer, . " " mars, . " minérale, . jew's pitch, . judea, bitumen of, . k. kermes, . " lake, . " mineral, . key of colouring, . khair tree, the, . king's yellow, . knowledge of pigments, , . kremnitz or krems white, . kremser white, . l. lac, , . " lake, . lake, asphaltic, the, . " burnt, . " chinese, . " citrine, . " crimson, . " drop, . " florentine, . " green, . " hamburgh, . " indian, . " kermes, . " liquid madder, . " madder, . " marrone, . " olive, . " orange, . " purple, . " quercitron, , . " roman, . " scarlet, . " venetian, . " yellow, . lakes, cochineal, - . " field's, - . " madder, - . " rubric, - . " yellow, , . lamblack, . lamp black, . lapis lazuli, , , . laque de garance, . " minérale, . latent colour, . lawson, professor, . lawson's red, . layard, mr., , . lazuline, . lazulite blue, . lazur, persian and tartarian, . lazurium, . lazurstein, . lead, acetate or sugar of, - . " black, , . " carbonate of, . " chocolate, . " dicarbonate of, . " hydrated oxide of, . " in drying oils, . " orange, " oxychloride of, . " pigments affected by, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . " pigments, avoidance of, . " red, . " sulphate of, . " white, - . " whites, - . leitch's blue, . " brown, . leithner's blue, . lemon cadmium, . " yellow, . leonardo da vinci, . leyden, cassius of, . lichens, . liege black, . light and air, pigments affected by, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . light, direct and diffused, . " electric, the, . " magnesium, the, . " red, . likes and dislikes of pigments, . lime, pigments affected by, , , , , , . " with prussian blue, , . linear perspective, . linseed oil with white lead, . liquid asphaltum, . " indian ink, . " madder lake, . " prout's brown, . " rubiate, . lists of permanent pigments:-- " blue, , . " green, , . " orange, , . " purple, , . " red, , . " yellow, , . litharge, , . litmus, . local colour, . lombard school, . london white, . m. macpherson's tint, . madder, . " adulteration of, . " brown, . " burnt, . " carmine, . " " adulteration of, . " colouring matters of, . " cory's or cory's yellow, , . " dr. schunck on, . " lake, . " lakes, - . " " manufacture of, . " liquid lake, . " orange, , . " pink, . " purple, . " reds in oil, . " rose, . " rubens', . " yellow, , . magenta, . majolica, . malachite green, . manganese as a siccative, , , . " black, . " blue, . " brown, . " green, . " red, . manufacture of cadmium yellow, . " carmine, . " cobalt blue, . " intense blue, . " vermilion, , . marine green, . marrone, . " analysis of, . " as a colour, . " contrasts of, . " for walls of picture galleries, . " on the semi-neutral, . marrone pigments:-- brown madder, . chica marrone, . chocolate lead, . cobalt marrone, . madder marrone, . marrone lake, . marrone red, . mars marrone, . mixed marrone, . purple black, . mars brown, . " brun de, . " colours named after, , . " orange, . " red, . " rouge de, . " violet, . " violet de, . " yellow, . massicot, . mastic varnish, . mauve, . mercury, chromate of, . " marrone, . " white, . mérimée, , , , , , . metallic whites, . metals, rare, . michael angelo, . mineral black, . " blue, . " brown, . " colours, darkening of, . " gray, . " green, . " green, german, . " kermes, . " orange, . " pitch, . " purple, . " turbith, . " yellow, , , . minérale, jaune, . " laque, . miniature painter, a, . minium, , . mitis green, . mixed colours:-- " black, . " brown, . " citrine, . " gray, . " green, . " grey, . " marrone, . " olive, . " orange, . " purple, . " russet, . mixed tints, on, - , . mixture, a, . " of bitumen and mummy, . " of coloured rays, . " of material colours, . " unnecessary, . modan or morat white, . modern pigments, - . " detractors of, - . " inferior, . " superior, . molybdenum green, . monicon, . montabert, de, . montbeillard, roman pavement at, . montpellier yellow, . mountain blue, . " green, . mountains, . mummy, . " brown, . " and bitumen, mixed, . murexide, . musée minéralogique, of paris, . mutrie, miss, . " yellow, . n. naphthaline, . naples yellow, modern, . " old, . napoleon, emperor, . native bitumen, . " green, . " prussian blue, , . " ultramarine, . natural ultramarine, . nature, colour in, . " gradation in, . " palette of, . " study of, . negative colours, . nepos cornelius, . neutral colours, . " orange, penley's, . " tint, . neutrality and colour, , . neutrals, colour as applied to the, . new blue, . " pigments, - . nickel brown, . nineveh, , . nottingham white, . o. objectionable pigments, substitutes for, , , . ochre, black, " blue, . " brown, . " browns, . " burnt roman, . " chrome, . " green, . " indian, . " orange, . " oxford, . " purple, . " red, . " roman, . " scarlet, . " spanish, . " spruce, . " stone, . " transparent gold, . " yellow, . ochres and foul air, . " red, - . " yellow, - . ocre de ru, oil, coal-tar colours in, . " water-colour cakes in, . oils, , , . olive, . " analysis of, . " as a colour, . " contrast of, . " on the tertiary, . olive pigments:-- burnt verdigris, . dewint's green, . mixed olive, . olive green, . olive lake, . olive oxide of chromium, . olive rinman's green, . olive scheele's green, . olive schweinfurt green, . olive terre verte, . olive purples, . olympian green, . o'neill, mr., . opacity of pigments, . orange, , " as a colour, . " as an archeus, . " contrast of, . " discordant, . " on the secondary, . orange pigments:-- anotta, . antimony orange, . bixine, . burnt roman ochre, . burnt sienna, . burnt terra di sienna, . cadmium orange, , . chinese orange, . chromate of mercury, . chrome orange, . damonico, . gamboge orange, . golden sulphur of antimony, . golden yellow, . laque minérale, . madder orange, , . mars orange, . mineral orange, . mixed orange, . monicon, . neutral orange, . orange chrome, . orange chromate of lead, . orange de mars, . orange lake, . orange lead, . orange ochre, . orange orpiment, . penley's neutral orange, . realgar, . red orpiment, . rocou, . spanish ochre, . terra orellana, . thallium orange, . uranium orange, . zinc orange, . orange russet, . " vermilion, . " " field's, . order of colours:-- white, - , . yellow, - . red, - . blue, - . orange, - . green, - . purple, - . citrine, - . russet, - . olive, - . brown, - . marrone, - . gray, - . grey, - . black, - . organic pigments with lead chromates, . orient yellow, , . original pigments, . " importance of, - . orpiment yellow, - . outremer, . outremer de guimet, . oxford ochre, . oxidation of pigments, . oxide, chrome, . " of chromium, green, . " " opaque, . " " transparent, . oxychloride of lead, . oxygenated water, . oyster-shell, white of, . p. paille de mil, . painting, siliceous, . pale cadmium, . " chrome, . " vermilion, . " washes of a pigment, . palette, disinfectants of the, . " motto for the, . " setting the, . palette-knife, avoidance of a steel, , , , . palladium, . paper black, . " smalt and ultramarine in, . " to give a tone to, . paris blue, , . paris, musée minéralogique at, . " société d'encouragement of, . particular colour, predilection for a, , . patent green, . " yellow, . pattison's white, . paul veronese, , . payne's gray, . peach black, . pearl white, . peganum harmala, . penley, mr. aaron, - , , , . penley's neutral orange, . perfect pigment, a, . perkin, mr. w., . permanent blue, . " pigments, , , , , , . " white, . peroxidized pigments, . persian berries, . " green, . " lazur, . " red, . perspective, aerial, , . " linear, . " of colours, , . persulphomolybdates, . philocles, . phosphine, . photography, lamp black in, . " pigments generally in, . pickle green, . picric acid, . picture galleries, - . pictures and pigments, . pigment and colour, . pigments, action of fire and time on . " adulteration of, . " apt to vary, , . " beauty in, . " blending of, . " common, . " compound, . " drying of, . " fineness of texture in, . " grinding of, . " individual beauty of, . " innoxious, . " on the durability and fugacity of, . " on the general qualities of, . " opacity and transparency of, . " past and present, . " rays from, . " truth of hue in, . " vehicles with, - . " working well, . pink, brown, . " dutch, . " english, . " italian, . " madder, . " rose, . " saucers, . pitch, jew's, . " mineral, . pittacal, . platinum blue, . " yellow, . playfair, dr. lyon, . pliny, , , , , , . plumbago, . polygnotus, . pompeii, , . porcelain, blue for, . " green for, . poussin, , . powder blue, . power of pigments, individual, . powers of colours, . practice of sir j. reynolds, . precipitate, red, . prevention and cure, . price, dr. d. s., . primary colours, . principles of practice, . process, autotype, . protoxide, pigments in the state of, . proust, m., . prout, samuel, . prout's brown, liquid, . prussian black, , . " copper, . prussian blue, . " adulteration of, . " character of, , , . " cobalt, . " manufacture of, . " native, , . " want of a permanent, . " with alkalies, . prussian brown, . " " french, . " greens, , . " red, . prussiate of copper, . " iron, . pure scarlet, . " ultramarine, . purple, . " as a colour, . " as a pigment, . " black, , . " brown, . " contrast of, , . " lake, . " on the secondary, . purple pigments:-- archil purple, . bismuth purple, . burnt carmine, . burnt lake, . burnt madder, . cassius's purple precipitate, . cobalt purples, . field's purple, . gold purple, . indian purple, . mars violet, . mauve, . mineral purple, . mixed purple, . prussian purple, . purple madder, . purple ochre, . purple of cassius, . purple rubiate, . sandal wood purple, . solid french purple, . tin violet, . violet carmine, . violet de mars, . purple, pure, . " tyrian, , . purpurates, . purree, . q. qualities of pigments, on the general, . queen's yellow, . quercitron lake, , . " yellow, . quinine green, . r. ramnus infectorius, . raphael, , . rare metals, . raw sienna, . " umber, . rays from pigments, . real ultramarine, . realgar, . reboulleau's blue, . red, . " as a colour, . " contrasts of, , . " discordant, . " marrone, . " on the primary, . " orpiment, . red pigments:-- almagra, . antimony red, . armenian bole, . bloodstone, . brown red, . cadmium red, . carmine, - . carmine vermilion, . carnagione, . chica red, . chinese lake, . chinese rouge, . chinese vermilion, . coal-tar colours, . cobalt reds, . cochineal lakes, - . copper reds, . crimson lake, . deep vermilion, . dragon's blood, . english red, . english vermilion, . extract of vermilion, . ferrate of baryta, . field's carmine, . field's lakes, - . field's orange vermilion, . florentine lake, . red pigments:-- gold reds, . hamburgh lake, . indian lake, . indian ochre, . indian red, . iodine pink, . iodine scarlet, . kermes lake, . lac lake, . lawson's red, . light red, . liquid madder lake, . liquid rubiate, . madder carmine, . madder lake, . madder lakes, - . magenta, . majolica, . manganese red, . mars red, . mineral kermes, . minium, . murexide, . ochres, - . orange vermilion, . paille de mil, . pale vermilion, . peganum harmala, . persian red, . persulphomolybdates, . pink madder, . pink saucers, . prussian red, . pure scarlet, . purple lake, . red chalk, . red chrome, . red lead, . red ochre, . red precipitate, . redding, . roman lake, . rose madder, . rose pink, . rose rubiate, . rouge, . rouge de mars, . rubric lakes, - . rufigallic red, . sandal red, . saturnine red, . scarlet chrome, . scarlet lake, . scarlet ochre, . scarlet vermilion, . sil atticum, . silver red, . sinoper, . sorgho red, . spanish brown, . spanish red, . terra puzzoli, . terra sinopica, . thallium red, . tin pink, . ultramarine red, . uranium red, . venetian lake, . venetian red, . vermilion, . vermilions, - . wongshy red, . reds, ancient, . relations of colour, - . relative durability of colour, . rembrandt, , . revelation, book of, . reynolds, sir joshua, , , , , , . rinman's green, . " olive, . rocou, . roman green, . " lake, . " ochre, . " " burnt, . " painters and painting, , , , . " sepia, . " white, . romans, the, , . romulus, . rosaniline, . rose, the, . rousseau, m. e., . rowbotham, messrs., . royal academy at burlington house, . " blue, . rubens, , , , , , , . " brown, . " madder, . rubia tinctorum, . rubiate, purple, . rue, dr. warren de la, . ruskin, mr., . russet, . " analysis of, . " as a colour, . " contrast of, . " on the tertiary, . russet pigments:-- field's russet, . mixed russet, . orange russet, . prussiate of copper, . rubens' madder, . russet rubiate, . s. sacc, m., . safflower, . samuel prout, . sandal red, . " wood purple, . sandarac, . sap green, . satin white, . saturnine red, . saucers, pink, . saunders blue, . saxon blue, . " green, . " smalts, . scarlet chrome, . " iodine, . " lake, . " ochre, . " pure, . " transparent, a, reward for, . " " substitute for, . " vermilion, . scheele's green, . " olive, . schools of painting, - , . schunck, dr., . schweinfurt blue, . " green, . " " olive, . scoffern, dr., . sea, the dead, . " transparency of the, . secondary colours, . " pigments, . semi-neutral colours, . " the term, . semi-stability, on, . semi-stable pigments, , . sepia, , . " liquid, . " roman, . " warm, . shades, . shadow, colour of, , . siccatives, - . sienna, burnt, . " raw, . " terra di, . sil atticum, . silicate of baryta, . siliceous painting, ultramarine in, . silver red, . " white, . sinoper, . slate clays, . " powdered, . smalt, - . " adulteration of, . " copper, . smalt, grinding of, . " in mural decoration, . " in paper, . " iron, . soap and alkali in brushes, . société d'encouragement of paris, . society of arts, . soda flame, . solid french purple, . sorgho red, . sources of pigments, . south america, chica from, . spanish black, . " brown, . " ochre, . " red, . " schools, . " white, . spence, mr., . spruce ochre, . st. petersburg, palace at, . starch, . stil de grain, brown, . stippling, . stone, armenian, . " lapis lazuli, , . " malachite, . " ochre, . strontian yellow, . sulphate of lead, . " zinc, . sulphide of cadmium, thallium in, . sulphur and ochres, . sulphuretted hydrogen, pigments affected by, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . susa, . swedish green, . synonyms, value of, . t. talent of money, . teniers, . terra di sienna, . " " " burnt, . " orellana, . " puzzoli, . " sinopica, . terre bleu, . " verte, . " " olive, . terrene whites, , . tertiary colours, . " on, . thallium, in sulphide of cadmium, . " orange, . " red, . " yellow, . thebes, mausoleum at, . thénard, m., , . thénard's blue, . theophrastus, . theory and practice, . thwaites' yellow, . time, pigments affected by, . tin pink, . " violet, . " white, . tin-copper green, . tint, harding's, . " macpherson's, . " neutral, . tintoret, . tints, . titanium green, . titian, , , , , , , , , . transparency of pigments, . " to obtain, . transparent gold ochre, . " oxide of chromium, . " pigments, use of, . troy white, . true chrome green, . " prussian green, . " ultramarine, . truth of hue in pigments, . tullus hostilius, . tungsten blue, . " white, . turacine, . turbith mineral, . turkey berries, . turnbull's blue, . turner, , . turner's yellow, . tyrian purple, , . u. ultramarine, artificial, - . " acid pigments with, . " adulteration of, . " experiment with, . " green in, . " gum with, . " in siliceous painting, . " test for, . ultramarine ash, . " beggars', . " brilliant, . " cobalt, . " dutch, . " factitious, . " french, . ultramarine, genuine, - . " adulteration of, . " colouring matter of, . " defects in, , . " manufacture of, . " price of, . " properties of, . " tests for, . ultramarine, gmelin's german, . " green, . " guimet's, - . " native, . " natural, . " pure, . " real, . " red, . " true, . umber, . " burnt, . " grounds primed with, . " raw, . unnecessary mixture, . uranium brown, , " green, . " orange, . " red, . " yellow, . ure, dr., . v. vanadium green, . vandyke, , , , . " brown, . van eyck, . varnishes, , . vegetal charcoal, . vehicles with pigments, - . velasquez, . venetian green, . " lake, . " painters, painting, and pigments, , , , , , . " red, . " white, . verde vessie, . verdetto, . verdigris, , . " burnt, . " distilled, . verditer, blue, . " green, . vermilion, - . " adulteration of, . " carmine, . " chinese, and english, , . " deep, . " european and chinese, . " extract of, . " field's orange, . " manufacture of, . " orange, . vermilion pale, . " scarlet, . " with cochineal lake, . " with iodide of mercury, . verona brown, . " green, . veronese green, . " french, . vert de zinc, . vicious extremes in colouring, . vienna blue, . " green, . " white, . vine black, . violet, carmine, . " de mars, . " mars, . " tin, . viride Æris, . viridian, , . vision, derangement of, . vitrification and permanence, . vitrified colours, , , . vitruvius, . w. wall colour for picture galleries, . " space in " " . walpole, mrs., . warm sepia, . water-colour cakes in oil, . watts, mr., . weppen, . white, . " as a colour, . " as a pigment, . " chalk, . " colour as applied to, . whitelac varnish, . white lead, - . " adulteration of, . " colour restored in, . " hydrated oxide in, . " loss of opacity in, . " use of, . " with blue black, . " " bone brown, . " " brown pink, . " " cadmium yellow, . " " carmine, . " " dragon's blood, . " " gamboge, . " " indian lake, . " " indigo, . " " massicot, . " " orpiment, . " " prussian blue, . " " red lead, . " " yellow lakes, . white, on the neutral, . " perfect, , . white pigments:-- antimony white, . arsenic white, . barytic white, . blanc d'argent, . body white, . cadmium white, . ceruse, . china white, . chinese white, . constant white, . cremnitz or kremnitz white, . crems or krems white, . dutch white, . flake white, . flemish white, . french white, . hamburgh white, . kremser white, . london white, . mercury white, . modan or morat white, . nottingham white, . oxychloride of lead, . pattison's white, . pearl white, . permanent white, . roman white, . rouen white, . satin white, . silver white, . spanish white, . sulphate of lead, . tin white, . tungsten white, . troy white, . venetian white, . vienna white, . white lead, - . zinc white, . zinc whites, - . white, properties of, - . " use of, . whites, classified, . " in old pictures, . williamson, professor, . wilson, . winter scene, a water-colour, . wongshy red, . wood-tar blue, . working well in pigments, . y. yellow, . " as a colour, . " contrasts of, , . yellow, discordant, . " golden, . " madder, cory's, . " on the primary, . yellow pigments:-- antimony yellow, . arsenic yellow, . aureolin, - . bismuth yellow, . brown ochre, . cadmium yellows, - . cassel yellow, . chinese yellow, . chrome yellows, - . citron yellow, . cologne yellow, . copper yellow, . deep cadmium, . deep chrome, . di palito, . drop gum, . dutch pink, . english pink, . extract of gamboge, . gallstone, . gamboge, . gelbin's yellow, . giallolino, . indian yellow, . indium yellow, . iodine yellow, . iron yellow, , . italian pink, . jaune de cologne, . jaune de fer, . jaune de mars, . jaune minérale, . king's yellow, . lakes, , . lemon cadmium, . lemon yellow, . litharge, . madder yellow, , . mars yellow, . massicot, . mineral yellow, , , . montpellier yellow, . mutrie yellow, . naples yellow, . ochres, - . ocre de ru, . orient yellow, . orpiment or yellow orpiment, . oxford ochre, . pale cadmium, . pale chrome, . patent yellow, . platinum yellow, . purree, . queen's yellow, . quercitron lake, or yellow, . raw sienna, . roman ochre, . spruce ochre, . stone ochre, . strontian yellow, . terra di sienna, . thallium yellow, . thwaites' yellow, . transparent gold ochre, . turbith yellow, . turner's yellow, . uranium yellow, . yellow carmine, . yellow lake, . yellow ochre, . yellows, ancient, . " classified, . " former paucity of, . " various, . z. zaffre, . zeuxis and apelles, . zinc brown, . " cobalt blue, . " green, . " orange, , " siccatives, , . " vert de, . " white, . " " adulteration of, . " " over white lead, . " whites, - . errata. page _for_ inharmonious _read_ harmonious " _for_ there prevails _read_ there prevail " _for_ as whiteness, or light do, _read_ as whiteness or light does " _for_ purple of cassius _read_ purple of cassius " _for_ which manufactures _read_ which manufactures pictures " _for_ _laque minéral_ _read_ _laque minérale_ " _for_ rivals _read_ rivels " _for_ predominate _read_ predominates the end. london: printed by a. schulze, , poland street. +------------------------------------------------------+ |transcriber's note: | | | |the errata above and the following have been corrected| |in the text: | | | |page vi semi-neutral changed to semi-neutral | | life less changed to lifeless | | sun-rise changed to sunrise | | in the the changed to in the | | perpective changed to perspective | | marone changed to marrone | | di-carbonate changed to dicarbonate | | hydrogren changed to hydrogen | | imimical changed to inimical | | feuillemorte changed to feuillemort | | item numbering has been left consistent | | with the omission of item no. | | extemes changed to extremes | | muroxide changed to murexide | | dullness changed to dulness | | gaslight changed to gas-light | | durablity changed to durability | | and developement changed to development | | decolorized changed to decolourised | | indentical changed to identical | | re-acting changed to reacting | | exibition changed to exhibition | | childrens' changed to children's | | toneing changed to toning | | fine tooth-comb changed to fine-tooth comb | | analagous changed to analogous | | announceed changed to announced | | abies changed to abies | | | |inconsistencies in the use of analyse/analyze, | |harmonise/harmonize and neutralise/neutralize have | |been retained as in the original text, as have the | |use of aërial and aerial. | +------------------------------------------------------+ lectures on landscape delivered at oxford in lent term, . library edition the complete works of john ruskin crown of wild olive time and tide queen of the air lectures on art and landscape aratra pentelici national library association new york chicago [illustration: brantwood from a photograph] prefatory note. _these lectures on landscape were given at oxford on january , february , and february , . they were not public lectures, like professor ruskin's other courses, but addressed only to undergraduates who had joined his class. they were illustrated by pictures from his collection, of which several are here reproduced, and by others which may be seen in the oxford university galleries or in the ruskin drawing school._ _w.g.c._ contents. page lecture i. outline lecture ii. light and shade lecture iii. color list of plates page vesuvius in eruption, by j.m.w. turner near blair athol, by j.m.w. turner dumblane abbey, by j.m.w. turner madonna and child, by filippo lippi the lady with the brooch, by sir joshua reynolds Æsacus and hesperie, by j.m.w. turner mill near grande chartreuse, by j.m.w. turner l'aiguillette; valley of cluses, by j.m.w. turner lectures on landscape. i. outline. . in my inaugural lecture,[ ] i stated that while holding this professorship i should direct you, in your practical exercises, chiefly to natural history and landscape. and having in the course of the past year laid the foundational elements of art sufficiently before you, i will invite you, now, to enter on real work with me; and accordingly i propose during this and the following term to give you what practical leading i can in elementary study of landscape, and of a branch of natural history which will form a kind of center for all the rest--ichthyology. [footnote : "lectures on art, ," § .] in the outset i must shortly state to you the position which landscape painting and animal painting hold towards the higher branches of art. . landscape painting is the thoughtful and passionate representation of the physical conditions appointed for human existence. it imitates the aspects, and records the phenomena, of the visible things which are dangerous or beneficial to men; and displays the human methods of dealing with these, and of enjoying them or suffering from them, which are either exemplary or deserving of sympathetic contemplation. animal painting investigates the laws of greater and less nobility of character in organic form, as comparative anatomy examines those of greater and less development in organic structure; and the function of animal painting is to bring into notice the minor and unthought of conditions of power or beauty, as that of physiology is to ascertain the minor conditions of adaptation. . questions as to the purpose of arrangements or the use of the organs of an animal are, however, no less within the province of the painter than of the physiologist, and are indeed more likely to commend themselves to you through drawing than dissection. for as you dissect an animal you generally assume its form to be necessary and only examine how it is constructed; but in drawing the outer form itself attentively you are led necessarily to consider the mode of life for which it is disposed, and therefore to be struck by any awkwardness or apparent uselessness in its parts. after sketching one day several heads of birds it became a vital matter of interest to me to know the use of the bony process on the head of the hornbill; but on asking a great physiologist, i found that it appeared to him an absurd question, and was certainly an unanswerable one. . i have limited, you have just heard, landscape painting to the representation of phenomena relating to human life. you will scarcely be disposed to admit the propriety of such a limitation; and you will still less be likely to conceive its necessary strictness and severity, unless i convince you of it by somewhat detailed examples. here are two landscapes by turner in his greatest time--vesuvius in repose, vesuvius in eruption. one is a beautiful harmony of cool color; and the other of hot, and they are both exquisitely designed in ornamental lines. but they are not painted for those qualities. they are painted because the state of the scene in one case is full of delight to men; and in the other of pain and danger. and it is not turner's object at all to exhibit or illustrate natural phenomena, however interesting in themselves. [illustration: vesuvius in eruption. from the painting by turner.] he does not want to paint blue mist in order to teach you the nature of evaporation; nor this lava stream, to explain to you the operation of gravity on ponderous and viscous materials. he paints the blue mist, because it brings life and joy to men, and the lava stream because it is death to them. . again here are two sea-pieces by turner of the same period--photographs from them at least. one is a calm on the shore at scarborough; the other the wreck of an indiaman. these also are each painted with exquisitely artistic purpose: the first in opposition of local black to diffused sunshine; the second in the decorative grouping of white spots on a dark ground. that decorative purpose of dappling, or [greek: poikilia], is as studiously and deliciously carried out by turner with the dædalus side of him, in the inlaying of these white spots on the indiaman's deck, as if he were working a precious toy in ebony and ivory. but turner did not paint either of the sea-pieces for the sake of these decorous arrangements; neither did he paint the scarborough as a professor of physical science, to show you the level of low tide on the yorkshire coast; nor the indiaman to show you the force of impact in a liquid mass of sea-water of given momentum. he painted this to show you the daily course of quiet human work and happiness, and that, to enable you to conceive something of uttermost human misery--both ordered by the power of the great deep. . you may easily--you must, perhaps, for a little time--suspect me of exaggeration in this statement. it is so natural to suppose that the main interest of landscape is essentially in rocks and water and sky; and that figures are to be put, like the salt and mustard to a dish, only to give it a flavor. put all that out of your heads at once. the interest of a landscape consists wholly in its relation either to figures present--or to figures past--or to human powers conceived. the most splendid drawing of the chain of the alps, irrespective of their relation to humanity, is no more a true landscape than a painting of this bit of stone. for, as natural philosophers, there is no bigness or littleness to you. this stone is just as interesting to you, or ought to be--as if it was a million times as big. there is no more sublimity--_per se_--in ground sloped at an angle of forty-five, than in ground level; nor in a perpendicular fracture of a rock, than in a horizontal one. the only thing that makes the one more interesting to you in a landscape than the other, is that you could tumble over the perpendicular fracture--and couldn't tumble over the other. a cloud, looked at as a cloud only, is no more a subject for painting than so much feculence in dirty water. it is merely dirty air, or at best a chemical solution ill made. that it is worthy of being painted at all depends upon its being the means of nourishment and chastisement to men, or the dwelling place of imaginary gods. there's a bit of blue sky and cloud by turner--one of the loveliest ever painted by human hand. but, as a mere pattern of blue and white, he had better have painted a jay's wing: this was only painted by him--and is, in reality, only pleasant to you--because it signifies the coming of a gleam of sweet sunshine in windy weather; and the wind is worth thinking of only because it fills the sails of ships, and the sun because it warms the sailors. . now, it is most important that you should convince yourselves of and fully enter into this truth, because all the difficulty in choosing subject arises from mistakes about it. i daresay some of you who are fond of sketching have gone out often in the most beautiful country, and yet with the feeling that there was no good subject to be found in it. that always arises from your not having sympathy enough with its vital character, and looking for physical picturesqueness instead. on the contrary, there are crude efforts at landscape-painting, made continually upon the most splendid physical phenomena, in america, and other countries without any history. it is not of the slightest use. niagara, or the north pole and the aurora borealis, won't make a landscape; but a ditch at iffley will, if you have humanity in you--enough in you to interpret the feelings of hedgers and ditchers, and frogs. . next, here is one of the most beautiful landscapes ever painted, the best i have next to the greta and tees. the subject physically is a mere bank of grass above a stream with some wych-elms and willows. a level-topped bank; the water has cut its way down through the soft alluvion of an elevated plain to the limestone rock at the bottom. had this scene been in america, no mortal could have made a landscape of it. it is nothing but a grass bank with some not very pretty trees scattered over it, wholly without grouping. the stream at the bottom is rocky indeed, but its rocks are mean, flat, and of a dull yellow color. the sky is gray and shapeless. there's absolutely nothing to paint anywhere of essential landscape subject, as commonly understood. now see what the landscape consists in, which i have told you is one of the most beautiful ever painted by man. there's first a little bit of it left nearly wild, not quite wild; there's a cart and rider's track through it among the copse; and then, standing simply on the wild moss-troopers' ground, the scattered ruins of a great abbey, seen so dimly, that they seem to be fading out of sight, in color as in time. these two things together, the wild copse wood and the ruin, take you back into the life of the fourteenth century. the one is the border-riders' kingdom; the other that of peace which has striven against border-riding--how vainly! both these are remains of the past. but the outhouses and refectory of the abbey have been turned into a farmhouse, and that is inhabited, and in front of it the mistress is feeding her chickens. you see the country is perfectly quiet and innocent, for there is no trace of a fence anywhere; the cattle have strayed down to the riverside, it being a hot day; and some rest in the shade and two in the water. they could not have done so at their ease had the river not been humanized. only a little bit of its stony bed is left; a mill weir, thrown across, stays the water in a perfectly clear and delicious pool; to show how clear it is, turner has put the only piece of playing color in all the picture into the reflections in this. one cow is white, another white and red, evidently as clean as morning dew can wash their sides. they could not have been so in a country where there was the least coal smoke; so turner has put a wreath of perfectly white smoke through the trees; and lest that should not be enough to show you they burnt wood, he has made his foreground of a piece of copse just lopped, with the new fagots standing up against it; and this still not being enough to give you the idea of perfect cleanliness, he has covered the stones of the river-bed with white clothes laid out to dry; and that not being enough yet, for the river-bed might be clean though nothing else was, he has put a quantity more hanging over the abbey walls. . _only natural phenomena in their direct relation to humanity_--these are to be your subjects in landscape. rocks and water and air may no more be painted for their own sakes, than the armor carved without the warrior. but, secondly. i said landscape is to be a _passionate representation_ of these things. it must be done, that is to say, with strength and depth of soul. this is indeed to some extent merely the particular application of a principle that has no exception. if you are without strong passions, you cannot be a painter at all. the laying of paint by an insensitive person, whatever it endeavors to represent, is not painting, but daubing or plastering; and that, observe, irrespective of the boldness or minuteness of the work. an insensitive person will daub with a camel's hair-brush and ultramarine; and a passionate one will paint with mortar and a trowel. . but far more than common passion is necessary to paint landscape. the physical conditions there are so numerous, and the spiritual ones so occult, that you are sure to be overpowered by the materialism, unless your sentiment is strong. no man is naturally likely to think first of anatomy in painting a pretty woman; but he is very apt to do so in painting a mountain. no man of ordinary sense will take pleasure in features that have no meaning, but he may easily take it in heath, woods or waterfalls, that have no expression. so that it needs much greater strength of heart and intellect to paint landscape than figure: many commonplace persons, bred in good schools, have painted the figure pleasantly or even well; but none but the strongest--john bellini, titian, velasquez, tintoret, mantegna, sandro botticelli, carpaccio and turner--have ever painted a fragment of good landscape. in missal painting exquisite figure-drawing is frequent, and landscape backgrounds in late works are elaborate; but i only know thoroughly good landscape in one book; and i have examined--i speak deliberately--thousands. . for one thing, the passion is necessary for the mere quantity of design. in good art, whether painting or sculpture, i have again and again told you every touch is necessary and beautifully intended. now it falls within the compass of ordinary application to place rightly all the folds of drapery or gleams of light on a chain, or ornaments in a pattern; but when it comes to placing every leaf in a tree, the painter gets tired. here, for instance, is a little bit of sandro botticelli background; i have purposefully sketched it in the slightest way, that you might see how the entire value of it depends on thoughtful placing. there is no texture aimed at, no completion, scarcely any variety of light and shade; but by mere care in the placing the thing is beautiful. well, every leaf, every cloud, every touch is placed with the same care in great work; and when this is done as by john bellini in the picture of peter martyr,[ ] or as it was by titian in the great peter martyr, with every leaf in a wood he gets tired. i know no other such landscape in the world as that is, or as that was. [footnote : national gallery, no. .] . perhaps you think on such conditions you never can paint landscape at all. well, great landscape certainly not; but pleasant and useful landscape, yes; provided only the passion you bring to it be true and pure. the degree of it you cannot command; the genuineness of it you can--yes, and the depth of source also. tintoret's passion may be like the reichenbach, and yours only like a little dripping holywell, but both equally from deep springs. . but though the virtue of all painting (and similarly of sculpture and every other art) is in passion, i must not have you begin by working passionately. the discipline of youth, in all its work, is in cooling and curbing itself, as the discipline of age is in warming and urging itself; you know the bacchic chorus of old men in plato's _laws_. to the end of life, indeed, the strength of a man's finest nature is shown in due continence; but that is because the finest natures remain young to the death: and for you the first thing you have to do in art (as in life) is to be quiet and firm--quiet, above everything; and modest, with this most essential modesty, that you must like the landscape you are going to draw better than you expect to like your drawing of it, however well it may succeed. if you would not rather have the real thing than your sketch of it, you are not in a right state of mind for sketching at all. if you only think of the scene, "what a nice sketch this will make!" be assured you will never make a nice sketch of it. you may think you have produced a beautiful work; nay, perhaps the public and many fair judges will agree with you; but i tell you positively, there will be no enduring value in what you have thus done. whereas if you think of the scene, "ah, if i could only get some shadow or scrawl of this to carry away with me, how glad i should be!"--then whatever you do will be, according to your strength, good and progressive: it may be feeble, or much faultful, but it will be vital and essentially precious. . now, it is not possible for you to command this state of mind, or anything like it, in yourselves at once. nay, in all probability your eyes are so satiated by the false popular art surrounding us now on all sides, that you cannot see the delicate reality though you try; but even though you may not care for the truth, you can act as if you did, and tell it. now, therefore, observe this following quite plain direction. whenever you set yourself to draw anything, consider only how best you may give a person who has not seen the place, a true idea of it. use any means in your power to do that, and don't think of the person for whom you are drawing as a connoisseur, but as a person of ordinary sense and feeling. don't get artist-like qualities for him: but first give him the pleasant sensation of being at the place, then show him how the land lies, how the water runs, how the wind blows, and so on. always think of the public as molière of his old woman; you have done nothing really great or good if you can't please her. . now beginning wisely, so as to lose no time or labor, you will learn to paint all the conditions of quiet light and sky, before you attempt those of variable light and cloud. do not trouble yourselves with or allow yourselves to be tempted by any effects that are brilliant or tremendous; except only that from the beginning i recommend you to watch always for sunrise; to keep a little diary of the manner of it, and to have beside your window a small sketch-book, with pencil cut over night, and colors moist. the one indulgence which i would have you allow yourselves in fast coloring, for some time, is the endeavor to secure some record at the instant of the colors of morning clouds; while, if they are merely white or gray or blue, you must get an outline of them with pencil. you will soon feel by this means what are the real difficulties to be encountered in all landscape coloring, and your eyes will be educated to quantity and harmonious action of forms. but for the rest--learn to paint everything in the quietest and simplest light. first outline your whole subject completely, with delicate sharp pencil line. if you don't get more than that, let your outline be a finished and lovely diagram of the whole. . all the objects are then to be painted of their proper colors, matching them as nearly as you can, in the manner that a missal is painted, filling the outlined shapes neatly up to their junctions; reënforcing afterwards when necessary, but as little as possible; but, above all, knowing precisely what the light is, and where it is.[ ] [footnote : make a note of these points: . date, time of day, temperature, direction and force of wind. . roughly, by compass, the direction in which you are looking; and angle of the light with respect to it. . angle subtended by picture, and distance of nearest object in it.] . i have brought two old-fashioned colored engravings,[ ] which are a precise type of the style i want you to begin with. finished from corner to corner, as well as the painter easily could; everything done to good purpose, nothing for vain glory; nothing in haste or affectation, nothing in feverish or morbid excitement. the observation is accurate; the sentiment, though childish, deep and pure; and the effect of light, for common work, quite curiously harmonious and deceptive. [footnote : from a "picturesque tour from geneva to milan" ... engraved from designs by j. lory of neufchâtel. london: published by r. ackermann, at his repository of arts, .] they are, in spite of their weaknesses, absolutely the only landscapes i could show you which give you a real idea of the places, or which put your minds into the tone which, if you were happy and at ease, they would take in the air and light of italy. i dwell on the necessity of completion especially, because i have lost much time myself from my sympathy with the feverish intensity of the minds of the great engravers; and from always fastening on one or two points of my subject and neglecting the rest. . we have seen, then, that every subject is to be taken up first in its terminal lines, then in its light and shade, then in its color. first of the terminal lines of landscape, or of drawing in outline. i think the examples of shell outline in your copying series must already have made you feel the exact nature of a pure outline, the difficulty of it, and the value. but we have now to deal with limits of a more subtle kind. the outline of any simple solid form, even though it may have complex parts, represents an actual limit, accurately to be followed. the outline of a cup, of a shell, or of an animal's limb, has a determinable course, which your pen or pencil line either coincides with or does not. you can say of that line, either it is wrong or right; if right, it is in a measure suggestive, and nobly suggestive of the character of the object. but the greater number of objects in a landscape either have outlines so complex that no pencil could follow them (as trees in middle distance), or they have no actual outline at all, but a gradated and softened edge; as, for the most part, clouds, foam, and the like. and even in things which have determinate form, the outline of that form is usually quite incapable of expressing their real character. [illustration] . here is the most ordinary component of a foreground for instance, a pleasantly colored stone. any of its pure outlines are not only without beauty, but absolutely powerless to give you any notion of its character, although that character is in itself so interesting, that here turner has made a picture of little more than a heap of such stones, with blue water to oppose their color. in consequence of these difficulties and insufficiencies, most landscape-painters have been tempted to neglect outline altogether, and think only of effects of light or color on masses more or less obscurely defined. they have thus gradually lost their sense of organic form, their precision of hand, and their respect for limiting law; in a word, for all the safeguards and severe dignities of their art. and landscape-painting has, therefore, more in consequence of this one error than of any other, become weak, frivolous, and justly despised. . now, if any of you have chanced to notice at the end of my "queen of the air," my saying that in landscape turner must be your only guide, you perhaps have thought i said so because of his great power in melting colors or in massing light and shade. not so. i have always said he is the only great landscape-painter, and to be your only guide, because he is the only landscape-painter who can draw an outline. his finished works perhaps appear to you more vague than any other master's: no man loses his outlines more constantly. you will be surprised to know that his frankness in losing depends on his certainty of finding if he chooses; and that, while all other landscape-painters study from nature in shade or in color, turner always sketched with the point. "always," of course, is a wide word. in your copying series i have put a sketch by turner in color from nature; some few others of the kind exist, in the national gallery and elsewhere. but, as a rule, from his boyhood to the last day of his life, he sketched only with the fine pencil point, and always the outline, more if he had time, but at least the outline, of every scene that interested him; and in general, outline so subtle and elaborate as to be inexhaustible in examination and uncopiable for delicacy. here is a sketch of an english park scene which represents the average character of a study from nature by turner; and here the sketch from nature of dumblane abbey for the _liber studiorum_, which shows you what he took from nature, when he had time only to get what was most precious to him. . the first thing, therefore, you have to learn in landscape, is to outline; and therefore we must now know precisely what an outline is, how it ought to be represented; and this it will be right to define in quite general terms applicable to all subjects. we saw in the fifth lecture[ ] that every visible thing consisted of spaces of color, terminated either by sharp or gradated limits. whenever they are sharp, the line of separation, followed by the point of your drawing instrument, is the proper outline of your subject, whether it represents the limits of flat spaces or of solid forms. [footnote : "lectures on art, ," § .] . for instance, here is a drawing by holbein of a lady in a dark dress, with bars of black velvet round her arm. her form is seen everywhere defined against the light by a perfectly sharp linear limit which holbein can accurately draw with his pen; the patches of velvet are also distinguished from the rest of her dress by a linear limit, which he follows with his pen just as decisively. here, therefore, is your first great law. wherever you see one space of color distinguished from another by a sharp limit, you are to draw that limit firmly; and that is your outline. . also, observe that as your representing this limit by a dark line is a conventionalism, and just as much a conventionalism when the line is subtle as when it is thick, the great masters accept and declare that conventionalism with perfect frankness, and use bold and decisive outline, if any. also, observe, that though, when you are master of your art, you may modify your outline by making it dark in some parts, light in others, and even sometimes thick and sometimes slender, a scientifically accurate outline is perfectly equal throughout; and in your first practice i wish you to use always a pen with a blunt point, which will make no hair stroke under any conditions. so that using black ink and only one movement of the pen, not returning to thicken your line, you shall either have your line there, or not there; and that you may not be able to gradate or change it, in any way or degree whatsoever. . now the first question respecting it is: what place is your thick line to have with respect to the limit which it represents--outside of it, or inside, or over it? theoretically, it is to be over it; the true limit falling all the way along the center of your thick line. the contest of apelles with protogenes consisted in striking this true limit within each other's lines, more and more finely. and you may always consider your pen line as representing the first incision for sculpture, the true limit being the sharp center of the incision. but, practically, when you are outlining a light object defined against a dark one, the line must go outside of it; and when a dark object against a light one, inside of it. in this drawing of holbein's, the hand being seen against the light, the outline goes inside the contour of the fingers. . secondly. and this is of great importance. it will happen constantly that forms are entirely distinct from each other and separated by true limits, which are yet invisible, or nearly so, to the eye. i place, for instance, one of these eggs in front of the other, and probably to most of you the separation in the light is indiscernible. is it then to be outlined? in practically combining outline with accomplished light and shade there are cases of this kind in which the outline may with advantage, or even must for truth of effect, be omitted. but the facts of the solid form are of so vital importance, and the perfect command of them so necessary to the dignity and intelligibility of the work, that the greatest artists, even for their finished drawings, like to limit every solid form by a fine line, whether its contour be visible to the eye or not. . an outline thus perfectly made with absolute decision, and with a wash of one color above it, is the most masterly of all methods of light and shade study, with limited time, when the forms of the objects to be drawn are clear and unaffected by mist. but without any wash of color, such an outline is the most valuable of all means for obtaining such memoranda of any scene as may explain to another person, or record for yourself, what is most important in its features. . choose, then, a subject that interests you; and so far as failure of time or materials compels you to finish one part, or express one character, rather than another, of course dwell on the features that interest you most. but beyond this, forget, or even somewhat repress yourself, and make it your first object to give a true idea of the place to other people. you are not to endeavor to express your own feelings about it; if anything, err on the side of concealing them. what is best is not to think of yourself at all, but to state as plainly and simply as you can the whole truth of the thing. what you think unimportant in it may to another person be the most touching part of it: what you think beautiful may be in truth commonplace and of small value. quietly complete each part to the best of your power, endeavoring to maintain a steady and dutiful energy, and the tranquil pleasure of a workman. ii. light and shade. . in my last lecture i laid before you evidence that the greatness of the master whom i wished you to follow as your only guide in landscape depended primarily on his studying from nature always with the point; that is to say, in pencil or pen outline. to-day i wish to show you that his preëminence depends secondarily on his perfect rendering of form and distance by light and shade, before he admits a thought of color. i say "before" however--observe carefully--only with reference to the construction of any given picture, not with reference to the order in which he learnt his mechanical processes. from the beginning, he worked out of doors with the point, but indoors with the brush; and attains perfect skill in washing flat color long before he attains anything like skill in delineation of form. . here, for instance, is a drawing, when he was twelve or thirteen years old, of dover castle and the dover coach; in which the future love of mystery is exhibited by his studiously showing the way in which the dust rises about the wheels; and an interest in drunken sailors, which materially affected his marine studies, shown not less in the occupants of the hind seat. but what i want you to observe is that, though the trees, coach, horses, and sailors are drawn as any schoolboy would draw them, the sky is washed in so smoothly that few water-color painters of our day would lightly accept a challenge to match it. and, therefore, it is, among many other reasons, that i put the brush into your hands from the first, and try you with a wash in lampblack, before you enter my working class. but, as regards the composition of his picture, the drawing is always first with turner, the color second. . drawing: that is to say, the expression by gradation of light, either of form or space. again i thus give you a statement wholly adverse to the vulgar opinion of him. you will find that statement early in the first volume of "modern painters," and repeated now through all my works these twenty-five years, in vain. nobody will believe that the main virtue of turner is in his drawing. i say "the main virtue of turner." splendid though he be as a colorist, he is not unrivaled in color; nay, in some qualities of color he has been far surpassed by the venetians. but no one has ever touched him in exquisiteness of gradation; and no one in landscape in perfect rendering of organic form. . i showed you in this drawing, at last lecture, how truly he had matched the color of the iron-stained rocks in the bed of the ticino; and any of you who care for color at all cannot but take more or less pleasure in the black and greens and warm browns opposed throughout. but the essential value of the work is not in these. it is, first, in the expression of enormous scale of mountain and space of air, by gradations of shade in these colors, whatever they may be; and, secondly, in the perfect rounding and cleaving of the masses alike of mountain and stone. i showed you one of the stones themselves, as an example of uninteresting outline. if i were to ask you to paint it, though its color is pleasant enough, you would still find it uninteresting and coarse compared to that of a flower, or a bird. but if i can engage you in an endeavor to draw its true forms in light and shade, you will most assuredly find it not only interesting, but in some points quite beyond the most subtle skill you can give to it. . you have heard me state to you, several times, that all the masters who valued accurate form and modeling found the readiest way of obtaining the facts they required to be firm pen outline, completed by a wash of neutral tint. this method is indeed rarely used by raphael or michael angelo in the drawings they have left us, because their studies are nearly all tentative--experiments in composition, in which the imperfect or careless pen outline suggested all they required, and was capable of easy change without confusing the eye. but the masters who knew precisely before they laid touch on paper what they were going to do--and this may be, observe, either because they are less or greater than the men who change; less, in merely drawing some natural object without attempt at composition, or greater in knowing absolutely beforehand the composition they intend; it may be, even so, that what they intend, though better known, is not so good:--but at all events, in this anticipating power tintoret, holbein and turner stand, i think, alone as draughtsmen; tintoret rarely sketching at all, but painting straight at the first blow, while holbein and turner sketch indeed, but it is as with a pen of iron and a point of diamond. . you will find in your educational series[ ] many drawings illustrative of the method; but i have enlarged here the part that is executed with the pen, out of this smaller drawing, that you may see with what fearless strength holbein delineates even the most delicate folds of the veil on the head, and of the light muslin on the shoulders, giving them delicacy, not by the thinness of his line, but by its exquisite veracity. [footnote : at the ruskin drawing school, oxford.] the eye will endure with patience, or even linger with pleasure, on any line that is right, however coarse; while the faintest or finest that is wrong will be forcibly destructive. and again and again i have to recommend you to draw always as if you were engraving, and as if the line could not be changed. . the method used by turner in the _liber studiorum_ is precisely analogous to that of holbein. the lines of these etchings are to trees, rocks, or buildings, absolutely what these of holbein are; not suggestions of contingent grace, but determinations of the limits of future form. you will see the explanatory office of such lines by placing this outline over my drawing of the stone, until the lines coincide with the limits of the shadow. you will find that it intensifies and explains the forms which otherwise would have escaped notice, and that a perfectly gradated wash of neutral tint with an outline of this kind is all that is necessary for grammatical statement of forms. it is all that the great colorists need for their studies; they would think it wasted time to go farther; but, if you have no eye for color, you may go farther in another manner, with enjoyment. . now to go back to turner. the _first_ great object of the _liber studiorum_, for which i requested you in my sixth lecture[ ] to make constant use of it, is the delineation of solid form by outline and shadow. but a yet more important purpose in each of the designs in that book is the expression of such landscape powers and character as have especial relation to the pleasures and pain of human life--but especially the pain. and it is in this respect that i desired you (sect. ) to be assured, not merely of their superiority, but of their absolute difference in kind from photography, as works of disciplined design. [footnote : "lectures on art, ," § .] [illustration: near blair athol. from the painting by turner.] . i do not know whether any of you were interested enough in the little note in my catalogue on this view near blair athol, to look for the scene itself during your summer rambles. if any did, and found it, i am nearly certain their impression would be only that of an extreme wonder how turner could have made so little of so beautiful a spot. the projecting rock, when i saw it last in , and i am certain, when turner saw it, was covered with lichens having as many colors as a painted window. the stream--or rather powerful and deep highland river, the tilt--foamed and eddied magnificently through the narrowed channel; and the wild vegetation in the rock crannies was a finished arabesque of living sculpture, of which this study of mine, made on another stream, in glenfinlas, only a few miles away, will give you a fair idea. turner has absolutely stripped the rock of its beautiful lichens to bare slate, with one quartz vein running up through it; he has quieted the river into a commonplace stream; he has given, of all the rich vegetation, only one cluster of quite uninteresting leaves and a clump of birches with ragged trunks. yet, observe, i have told you of it, he has put into one scene the spirit of scotland. [illustration: dumblane abbey. from the painting by turner.] . similarly, those of you who in your long vacations have ever stayed near dumblane will be, i think, disappointed in no small degree by this study of the abbey, for which i showed you the sketch at last lecture. you probably know that the oval window in its west end is one of the prettiest pieces of rough thirteenth-century carving in the kingdom; i used it for a chief example in my lectures at edinburgh; and you know that the lancet windows, in their fine proportion and rugged masonry, would alone form a study of ruined gothic masonry of exquisite interest. yet you find turner representing the lancet window by a few bare oval lines like the hoop of a barrel; and indicating the rest of the structure by a monotonous and thin piece of outline, of which i was asked by one of yourselves last term, and quite naturally and rightly, how turner came to draw it so slightly--or, we may even say, so badly. . whenever you find turner stopping short, or apparently failing in this way, especially when he does the contrary of what any of us would have been nearly sure to do, then is the time to look for your main lesson from him. you recollect those quiet words of the strongest of all shakespeare's heroes, when any one else would have had his sword out in an instant: "keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them ... were it my cue to fight, i should have known it without a prompter."[ ] [footnote : "othello," i. .] now you must always watch keenly what turner's _cue_ is. you will see his hand go to his hilt fast enough, when it comes. dumblane abbey is a pretty piece of building enough, it is true; but the virtue of the whole scene, and meaning, is not in the masonry of it. there is much better masonry and much more wonderful ruin of it elsewhere; dumblane abbey--tower and aisles and all--would go under one of the arches of buildings such as there are in the world. look at what turner will do when his cue is masonry,--in the coliseum. what the execution of that drawing is you may judge by looking with a magnifying glass at the ivy and battlements in this, when, also, his cue is masonry. what then can he mean by not so much as indicating one pebble or joint in the walls of dumblane? [illustration] . i was sending out the other day, to a friend in america, a chosen group of the _liber studiorum_ to form a nucleus for an art collection at boston. and i warned my friend at once to guard his public against the sore disappointment their first sight of these so much celebrated works would be to them. "you will have to make them understand," i wrote to him, "that their first lesson will be in observing not what turner has done, but what he has not done. these are not finished pictures, but studies; endeavors, that is to say, to get the utmost result possible with the simplest means; they are essentially thoughtful, and have each their fixed purpose, to which everything else is sacrificed; and that purpose is always imaginative--to get at the heart of the thing, not at its outside." . now, it is true, there are beautiful lichens at blair athol, and good building at dumblane; but there are lovely lichens all over the cold regions of the world, and there is far more interesting architecture in other countries than in scotland. the essential character of scotland is that of a wild and thinly inhabited rocky country, not sublimely mountainous, but beautiful in low rock and light streamlet everywhere; with sweet copsewood and rudely growing trees. this wild land possesses a subdued and imperfect school of architecture, and has an infinitely tragic feudal, pastoral, and civic history. and in the events of that history a deep tenderness of sentiment is mingled with a cruel and barren rigidity of habitual character, accurately corresponding to the conditions of climate and earth. . now i want you especially to notice, with respect to these things, turner's introduction of the ugly square tower high up on the left. your first instinct would be to exclaim, "how unlucky that was there at all! why, at least, could not turner have kept it out of sight?" he has quite gratuitously brought it into sight; gratuitously drawn firmly the three lines of stiff drip-stone which mark its squareness and blankness. it is precisely that blank vacancy of decoration, and setting of the meager angles against wind and war, which he wants to force on your notice, that he may take you thoroughly out of italy and greece, and put you wholly into a barbarous and frost-hardened land; that once having its gloom defined he may show you all the more intensely what pastoral purity and innocence of life, and loveliness of nature, are underneath the banks and braes of doune, and by every brooklet that feeds the forth and clyde. that is the main purpose of these two studies. how it is obtained by various incidents in the drawing of stones, and trees, and figures, i will show you another time. the chief element in both is the sadness and depth of their effect of subdued though clear light in sky and stream. . the sadness of their effect, i repeat. if you remember anything of the lectures i gave you through last year, you must be gradually getting accustomed to my definition of the greek school in art, as one essentially chiaroscurist, as opposed to gothic color; realist, as opposed to gothic imagination; and despairing, as opposed to gothic hope. and you are prepared to recognize it by any one of these three conditions. only, observe, the chiaroscuro is simply the technical result of the two others: a greek painter likes light and shade, first, because they enable him to realize form solidly, while color is flat; and secondly, because light and shade are melancholy, while color is gay. so that the defect of color, and substitution of more or less gray or gloomy effects of rounded gradation, constantly express the two characters: first, academic or greek fleshliness and solidity as opposed to gothic imagination; and secondly, of greek tragic horror and gloom as opposed to gothic gladness. . in the great french room in the louvre, if you at all remember the general character of the historical pictures, you will instantly recognize, in thinking generally of them, the rounded fleshly and solid character in the drawing, the gray or greenish and brownish color, or defect of color, lurid and moonlight-like, and the gloomy choice of subjects, as the deluge, the field of eylau, the starvation on the raft, and the death of endymion; always melancholy, and usually horrible. the more recent pictures of the painter gérôme unite all these attributes in a singular degree; above all, the fleshliness and materialism which make his studies of the nude, in my judgment, altogether inadmissible into the rank of the fine arts. . now you observe that i never speak of this greek school but with a certain dread. and yet i have told you that turner belongs to it, that all the strongest men in times of developed art belong to it; but then, remember, so do all the basest. the learning of the academy is indeed a splendid accessory to original power, in velasquez, in titian, or in reynolds; but the whole world of art is full of a base learning of the academy, which, when fools possess, they become a tenfold plague of fools. and again, a stern and more or less hopeless melancholy necessarily is under-current in the minds of the greatest men of all ages,--of homer, aeschylus, pindar, or shakespeare. but an earthy, sensual, and weak despondency is the attribute of the lowest mental and bodily disease; and the imbecilities and lassitudes which follow crime, both in nations and individuals, can only find a last stimulus to their own dying sensation in the fascinated contemplation of completer death. . between these--the highest, and these--the basest, you have every variety and combination of strength and of mistake: the mass of foolish persons dividing themselves always between the two oppositely and equally erroneous faiths, that genius may dispense with law, or that law can create genius. of the two, there is more excuse for, and less danger in the first than in the second mistake. genius has sometimes done lovely things without knowledge and without discipline. but all the learning of the academies has never yet drawn so much as one fair face, or ever set two pleasant colors side by side. . now there is one great northern painter, of whom i have not spoken till now, probably to your surprise, rubens; whose power is composed of so many elements, and whose character may be illustrated so completely, and with it the various operation of the counter schools, by one of his pictures now open to your study, that i would press you to set aside one of your brightest easter afternoons for the study of that one picture in the exhibition of old masters, the so-called "juno and argus," no. . so-called, i say; for it is not a picture either of argus or of juno, but the portrait of a flemish lady "as juno" (just as rubens painted his family picture with his wife "as the virgin" and himself "as st. george"): and a good anatomical study of a human body as argus. in the days of rubens, you must remember, mythology was thought of as a mere empty form of compliment or fable, and the original meaning of it wholly forgotten. rubens never dreamed that argus is the night, or that his eyes are stars; but with the absolutely literal and brutal part of his dutch nature supposes the head of argus full of real eyes all over, and represents hebe cutting them out with a bloody knife and putting one into the hand of the goddess, like an unseemly oyster. that conception of the action, and the loathsome sprawling of the trunk of argus under the chariot, are the essential contributions of rubens' own netherland personality. then the rest of the treatment he learned from other schools, but adopted with splendid power. . first, i think, you ought to be struck by having two large peacocks painted with scarcely any color in them! they are nearly black, or black-green, peacocks. now you know that rubens is always spoken of as a great colorist, _par excellence_ a colorist; and would you not have expected that--before all things--the first thing he would have seen in a peacock would have been gold and blue? he sees nothing of the kind. a peacock, to him, is essentially a dark bird; serpent-like in the writhing of the neck, cloud-like in the toss and wave of its plumes. he has dashed out the filaments of every feather with magnificent drawing; he has not given you one bright gleam of green or purple in all the two birds. well, the reason of that is that rubens is not _par excellence_ a colorist; nay, is not even a good colorist. he is a very second-rate and coarse colorist; and therefore his color catches the lower public, and gets talked about. but he is _par excellence_ a splendid draughtsman of the greek school; and no one else, except tintoret, could have drawn with the same ease either the muscles of the dead body or the plumes of the birds. . farther, that he never became a great colorist does not mean that he could not, had he chosen. he was warped from color by his lower greek instincts, by his animal delight in coarse and violent forms and scenes--in fighting, in hunting, and in torments of martyrdom and of hell: but he had the higher gift in him, if the flesh had not subdued it. there is one part of this picture which he learned how to do at venice, the iris, with the golden hair, in the chariot behind juno. in her he has put out his full power, under the teaching of veronese and titian; and he has all the splendid northern-gothic, reynolds or gainsborough play of feature with venetian color. scarcely anything more beautiful than that head, or more masterly than the composition of it, with the inlaid pattern of juno's robe below, exists in the art of any country. _si sic omnia!_--but i know nothing else equal to it throughout the entire works of rubens. . see, then, how the picture divides itself. in the fleshly baseness, brutality and stupidity of its main conception, is the dutch part of it; that is rubens' own. in the noble drawing of the dead body and of the birds you have the phidias-greek part of it, brought down to rubens through michael angelo. in the embroidery of juno's robe you have the dædalus-greek part of it, brought down to rubens through veronese. in the head of iris you have the pure northern-gothic part of it, brought down to rubens through giorgione and titian. . now, though--even if we had given ten minutes of digression--the lessons in this picture would have been well worth it, i have not, in taking you to it, gone out of my own way. there is a special point for us to observe in those dark peacocks. if you look at the notes on the venetian pictures in the end of my "stones of venice," you will find it especially dwelt upon as singular that tintoret, in his picture of "the nativity," has a peacock without any color in it. and the reason of it is also that tintoret belongs, with the full half of his mind, as rubens does, to the greek school. but the two men reach the same point by opposite paths. tintoret begins with what venice taught him, and adopted what athens could teach: but rubens begins with athens, and adopts from venice. now if you will look back to my fifth lecture[ ] you will find it said that the colorists can always adopt as much chiaroscuro as suits them, and so become perfect; but the chiaroscurists cannot, on their part, adopt color, except partially. and accordingly, whenever tintoret chooses, he can laugh rubens to scorn in management of light and shade; but rubens only here and there--as far as i know myself, only this once--touches tintoret or giorgione in color. [footnote : "lectures on art" (the inaugural course, ), § .] . but now observe farther. the greek chiaroscuro, i have just told you, is by one body of men pursued academically, as a means of expressing form; by another, tragically, as a mystery of light and shade, corresponding to--and forming part of--the joy and sorrow of life. you may, of course, find the two purposes mingled: but pure formal chiaroscuro--marc antonio's and leonardo's--is inconsistent with color, and though it is thoroughly necessary as an exercise, it is only as a correcting and guarding one, never as a basis of art. . let me be sure, now, that you thoroughly understand the relation of formal shade to color. here is an egg; here, a green cluster of leaves; here, a bunch of black grapes. in formal chiaroscuro, all these are to be considered as white, and drawn as if they were carved in marble. in the engraving of "melancholy," what i meant by telling you it was in formal chiaroscuro was that the ball is white, the leaves are white, the dress is white; you can't tell what color any of these stand for. on the contrary, to a colorist the first question about everything is its color. is this a white thing, a green thing, or a blue thing? down must go my touch of white, green, or dark blue first of all; if afterwards i can make them look round, or like fruit and leaves, it's all very well; but if i can't, blue or green they at least shall be. . now here you have exactly the thing done by the two masters we are speaking of. here is a copy of turner's vignette of "martigny." this is wholly a design of the colored school. here is a bit of vine in the foreground with purple grapes; the grapes, so far from being drawn as round, are struck in with angular flat spots; but they are vividly purple spots, their whole vitality and use in the design is in their tyrian nature. here, on the contrary, is dürer's "flight into egypt," with grapes and palm fruit above. both are white; but both engraved so as to look thoroughly round. . all the other great chiaroscurists whom i named to you--reynolds, velasquez, and titian--approached their shadow also on the safe side--from venice: they always think of color first. but turner had to work his way out of the dark greek school up to venice; he always thinks of his shadow first; and it held him in some degree fatally to the end. those pictures which you all laughed at were not what you fancied, mad endeavors for color; they were agonizing greek efforts to get light. he could have got color easily enough if he had rested in that; which i will show you in next lecture. still, he so nearly made himself a venetian that, as opposed to the dutch academical chiaroscurists, he is to be considered a venetian altogether. and now i will show you, in a very simple subject, the exact opposition of the two schools. . here is a study of swans, from a dutch book of academical instruction in rubens' time. it is a good and valuable book in many ways, and you are going to have some copies set you from it. but as a type of academical chiaroscuro it will give you most valuable lessons on the other side--of warning. here, then, is the academical dutchman's notion of a swan. he has laboriously engraved every feather, and has rounded the bird into a ball; and has thought to himself that never swan has been so engraved before. but he has never with his dutch eyes perceived two points in a swan which are vital to it: first, that it is white; and, secondly, that it is graceful. he has above all things missed the proportion, and necessarily therefore the bend of its neck. . now take the colorist's view of the matter. to him the first main facts about the swan are that it is a white thing with black spots. turner takes one brush in his right hand, with a little white in it; another in his left hand, with a little lampblack. he takes a piece of brown paper, works for about two minutes with his white brush, passes the black to his right hand, and works half a minute with that, and, there you are! you would like to be able to draw two swans in two minutes and a half yourselves. perhaps so, and i can show you how; but it will need twenty years' work all day long. first, in the meantime, you must draw them rightly, if it takes two hours instead of two minutes; and, above all, remember that they are black and white. . but farther: you see how intensely turner felt precisely what the fleming did not feel--the bend of the neck. now this is not because turner is a colorist, as opposed to the fleming; but because he is a pure and highly trained greek, as opposed to the fleming's low greek. both, so far as they are aiming at form, are now working in the greek school of phidias; but turner is true greek, for he is thinking only of the truth about the swan; and de wit is pseudo-greek, for he is thinking not of the swan at all, but of his own dutch self. and so he has ended in making, with his essentially piggish nature, this sleeping swan's neck as nearly as possible like a leg of pork. that is the result of academical work, in the hands of a vulgar person. . and now i will ask you to look carefully at three more pictures in the london exhibition. the first, "the nativity," by sandro botticelli.[ ] it is an early work by him; but a quite perfect example of what the masters of the pure greek school did in florence. [footnote : now in the national gallery, no. .] one of the greek main characters, you know, is to be [greek: aprosôpos], faceless. if you look first at the faces in this picture you will find them ugly--often without expression, always ill or carelessly drawn. the entire purpose of the picture is a mystic symbolism by motion and chiaroscuro. by motion, first. there is a dome of burning clouds in the upper heaven. twelve angels half float, half dance, in a circle, round the lower vault of it. all their drapery is drifted so as to make you feel the whirlwind of their motion. they are seen by gleams of silvery or fiery light, relieved against an equally lighted blue of inimitable depth and loveliness. it is impossible for you ever to see a more noble work of passionate greek chiaroscuro--rejoicing in light. from this i should like you to go instantly to rembrandt's "portrait of a burgomaster" (no. in the exhibition of old masters). . that is ignobly passionate chiaroscuro, rejoicing in darkness rather than light. you cannot see a finer work by rembrandt. it has all his power of rendering character, and the portrait is celebrated through the world. but it is entirely second-rate work. the character in the face is only striking to persons who like candle-light effects better than sunshine; any head by titian has twice the character, and seen by daylight instead of gas. the rest of the picture is as false in light and shade as it is pretentious, made up chiefly of gleaming buttons in places where no light could possibly reach them; and of an embossed belt on the shoulder, which people think finely painted because it is all over lumps of color, not one of which was necessary. that embossed execution of rembrandt's is just as much ignorant work as the embossed projecting jewels of carlo crivelli; a real painter never loads (see the velasquez, no. in the same exhibition). . finally, from the rembrandt go to the little cima (no. ), "st. mark." thus you have the sandro botticelli, of the noble greek school in florence; the rembrandt, of the debased greek school in holland; and the cima, of the pure color school of venice. the cima differs from the rembrandt, by being lovely; from the botticelli, by being simple and calm. the painter does not desire the excitement of rapid movement, nor even the passion of beautiful light. but he hates darkness as he does death; and falsehood more than either. he has painted a noble human creature simply in clear daylight; not in rapture, nor yet in agony. he is dressed neither in a rainbow, nor bedraggled with blood. you are neither to be alarmed nor entertained by anything that is likely to happen to him. you are not to be improved by the piety of his expression, nor disgusted by its truculence. but there is more true mastery of light and shade, if your eye is subtle enough to see it, in the hollows and angles of the architecture and folds of the dress, than in all the etchings of rembrandt put together. the unexciting color will not at first delight you; but its charm will never fail; and from all the works of variously strained and obtrusive power with which it is surrounded, you will find that you never return to it but with a sense of relief and of peace, which can only be given you by the tender skill which is wholly without pretense, without pride, and without error. iii. color. . the distinctions between schools of art which i have so often asked you to observe are, you must be aware, founded only on the excess of certain qualities in one group of painters over another, or the difference in their tendencies; and not in the absolute possession by one group, and absence in the rest, of any given skill. but this impossibility of drawing trenchant lines of parting need never interfere with the distinctness of our conception of the opponent principles which balance each other in great minds, or paralyze each other in weak ones; and i cannot too often urge you to keep clearly separate in your thoughts the school which i have called[ ] "of crystal," because its distinctive virtue is seen unaided in the sharp separations and prismatic harmonies of painted glass, and the other, the "school of clay," because its distinctive virtue is seen in the qualities of any fine work in uncolored terra cotta, and in every drawing which represents them. [footnote : "lectures on art, ," § .] . you know i sometimes speak of these generally as the gothic and greek schools, sometimes as the colorist and chiaroscurist. all these oppositions are liable to infinite qualification and gradation, as between species of animals; and you must not be troubled, therefore, if sometimes momentary contradictions seem to arise in examining special points. nay, the modes of opposition in the greatest men are inlaid and complex; difficult to explain, though in themselves clear. thus you know in your study of sculpture we saw that the essential aim of the greek art was tranquil action; the chief aim of gothic art was passionate rest, a peace, an eternity of intense sentiment. as i go into detail, i shall continually therefore have to oppose gothic passion to greek temperance; yet gothic rigidity, [greek: stasis] of [greek: ekstasis], to greek action and [greek: eleutheria]. you see how doubly, how intimately, opposed the ideas are; yet how difficult to explain without apparent contradiction. . now, to-day, i must guard you carefully against a misapprehension of this kind. i have told you that the greeks as greeks made real and material what was before indefinite; they turned the clouds and the lightning of mount ithome into the human flesh and eagle upon the extended arm of the messenian zeus. and yet, being in all things set upon absolute veracity and realization, they perceive as they work and think forward that to see in all things truly is to see in all things dimly and through hiding of cloud and fire. so that the schools of crystal, visionary, passionate, and fantastic in purpose, are, in method, trenchantly formal and clear; and the schools of clay, absolutely realistic, temperate, and simple in purpose, are, in method, mysterious and soft; sometimes licentious, sometimes terrific, and always obscure. [illustration: madonna and child. from the painting by filippo lippi.] . look once more at this greek dancing-girl, which is from a terra cotta, and therefore intensely of the school of clay; look at her beside this madonna of filippo lippi's: greek motion against gothic absolute quietness; greek indifference--dancing careless--against gothic passion, the mother's--what word can i use except frenzy of love; greek fleshliness against hungry wasting of the self-forgetful body; greek softness of diffused shadow and ductile curve, against gothic lucidity of color and acuteness of angle; and greek simplicity and cold veracity against gothic rapture of trusted vision. . and now i may safely, i think, go into our work of to-day without confusing you, except only in this. you will find me continually speaking of four men--titian, holbein, turner, and tintoret--in almost the same terms. they unite every quality; and sometimes you will find me referring to them as colorists, sometimes as chiaroscurists. only remember this, that holbein and turner are greek chiaroscurists, nearly perfect by adopted color; titian and tintoret are essentially gothic colorists, quite perfect by adopted chiaroscuro. . i used the word "prismatic" just now of the schools of crystal, as being iridescent. by being studious of color they are studious of division; and while the chiaroscurist devotes himself to the representation of degrees of force in one thing--unseparated light, the colorists have for their function the attainment of beauty by arrangement of the divisions of light. and therefore, primarily, they must be able to divide; so that elementary exercises in color must be directed, like first exercises in music, to the clear separation of notes; and the final perfections of color are those in which, of innumerable notes or hues, every one has a distinct office, and can be fastened on by the eye, and approved, as fulfilling it. . i do not doubt that it has often been matter of wonder among any of you who had faith in my judgment, why i gave to the university, as characteristic of turner's work, the simple and at first unattractive drawings of the loire series. my first and principal reason was that they enforced beyond all resistance, on any student who might attempt to copy them, this method of laying portions of distinct hue side by side. some of the touches, indeed, when the tint has been mixed with much water, have been laid in little drops or ponds, so that the pigment might crystallize hard at the edge. and one of the chief delights which any one who really enjoys painting finds in that art as distinct from sculpture is in this exquisite inlaying or joiner's work of it, the fitting of edge to edge with a manual skill precisely correspondent to the close application of crowded notes without the least slur, in fine harp or piano playing. . in many of the finest works of color on a large scale there is even some admission of the quality given to a painted window by the dark lead bars between the pieces of glass. both tintoret and veronese, when they paint on dark grounds, continually stop short with their tints just before they touch others, leaving the dark ground showing between in a narrow bar. in the paul veronese in the national gallery, you will every here and there find pieces of outline, like this of holbein's; which you would suppose were drawn, as that is, with a brown pencil. but no! look close, and you will find they are the dark ground, _left_ between two tints brought close to each other without touching. [illustration: the lady with the brooch. from the painting by reynolds.] . it follows also from this law of construction that any master who can color can always do any pane of his window that he likes, separately from the rest. thus, you see, here is one of sir joshua's first sittings: the head is very nearly done with the first color; a piece of background is put in round it: his sitter has had a pretty silver brooch on, which reynolds, having done as much as he chose to the face for that time, paints quietly in its place below, leaving the dress between to be fitted in afterwards; and he puts a little patch of the yellow gown that is to be, at the side. and it follows also from this law of construction that there must never be any hesitation or repentance in the direction of your lines of limit. so that not only in the beautiful dexterity of the joiner's work, but in the necessity of cutting out each piece of color at once and forever (for, though you can correct an erroneous junction of black and white because the gray between has the nature of either, you cannot correct an erroneous junction of red and green which make a neutral between them, if they overlap, that is neither red nor green): thus the practice of color educates at once in neatness of hand and distinctness of will; so that, as i wrote long ago in the third volume of "modern painters," you are always safe if you hold the hand of a colorist. . i have brought you a little sketch to-day from the foreground of a venetian picture, in which there is a bit that will show you this precision of method. it is the head of a parrot with a little flower in his beak from a picture of carpaccio's, one of his series of the life of st. george. i could not get the curves of the leaves, and they are patched and spoiled; but the parrot's head, however badly done, is put down with no more touches than the venetian gave it, and it will show you exactly his method. first, a thin, warm ground had been laid over the whole canvas, which carpaccio wanted as an under-current through all the color, just as there is an under-current of gray in the loire drawings. then on this he strikes his parrot in vermilion, almost flat color; rounding a little only with a glaze of lake; but attending mainly to get the character of the bird by the pure outline of its form, as if it were cut out of a piece of ruby glass. then he comes to the beak of it. the brown ground beneath is left, for the most part; one touch of black is put for the hollow; two delicate lines of dark gray define the outer curve; and one little quivering touch of white draws the inner edge of the mandible. there are just four touches--fine as the finest penmanship--to do that beak; and yet you will find that in the peculiar paroquettish mumbling and nibbling action of it, and all the character in which this nibbling beak differs from the tearing beak of the eagle, it is impossible to go farther or be more precise. and this is only an incident, remember, in a large picture. . let me notice, in passing, the infinite absurdity of ever hanging venetian pictures above the line of sight. there are very few persons in the room who will be able to see the drawing of this bird's beak without a magnifying-glass; yet it is ten to one that in any modern gallery such a picture would be hung thirty feet from the ground. here, again, is a little bit to show carpaccio's execution. it is his signature: only a little wall-lizard, holding the paper in its mouth, perfect; yet so small that you can scarcely see its feet, and that i could not, with my finest-pointed brush, copy their stealthy action. . and now, i think, the members of my class will more readily pardon the intensely irksome work i put them to, with the compasses and the ruler. measurement and precision are, with me, before all things; just because, though myself trained wholly in the chiaroscuro schools, i know the value of color; and i want you to begin with color in the very outset, and to see everything as children would see it. for, believe me, the final philosophy of art can only ratify their opinion that the beauty of a cock robin is to be red, and of a grass-plot to be green; and the best skill of art is in instantly seizing on the manifold deliciousness of light, which you can only seize by precision of instantaneous touch. of course, i cannot do so myself; yet in these sketches of mine, made for the sake of color, there is enough to show you the nature and the value of the method. they are two pieces of study of the color of marble architecture, the tints literally "edified," and laid edge to edge as simply on the paper as the stones are on the walls. . but please note in them one thing especially. the testing rule i gave for good color in the "elements of drawing," is that you make the white precious and the black conspicuous. now you will see in these studies that the moment the white is inclosed properly, and harmonized with the other hues, it becomes somehow more precious and pearly than the white paper; and that i am not afraid to leave a whole field of untreated white paper all round it, being sure that even the little diamonds in the round window will tell as jewels, if they are gradated justly. again, there is not a touch of black in any shadow, however deep, of these two studies; so that, if i chose to put a piece of black near them, it would be conspicuous with a vengeance. but in this vignette, copied from turner, you have the two principles brought out perfectly. you have the white of foaming water, of buildings and clouds, brought out brilliantly from a white ground; and though part of the subject is in deep shadow the eye at once catches the one black point admitted in front. . well, the first reason that i gave you these loire drawings was this of their infallible decision; the second was their extreme modesty in color. they are, beyond all other works that i know existing, dependent for their effect on low, subdued tones; their favorite choice in time of day being either dawn or twilight, and even their brightest sunsets produced chiefly out of gray paper. this last, the loveliest of all, gives the warmth of a summer twilight with a tinge of color on the gray paper so slight that it may be a question with some of you whether any is there. and i must beg you to observe, and receive as a rule without any exception, that whether color be gay or sad the value of it depends never on violence, but always on subtlety. it may be that a great colorist will use his utmost force of color, as a singer his full power of voice; but, loud or low, the virtue is in both cases always in refinement, never in loudness. the west window of chartres is bedropped with crimson deeper than blood; but it is as soft as it is deep, and as quiet as the light of dawn. . i say, "whether color be gay or sad." it must, remember, be one or the other. you know i told you that the pure gothic school of color was entirety cheerful; that, as applied to landscape, it assumes that all nature is lovely, and may be clearly seen; that destruction and decay are accidents of our present state, never to be thought of seriously, and, above all things, never to be painted; but that whatever is orderly, healthy, radiant, fruitful and beautiful, is to be loved with all our hearts and painted with all our skill. . i told you also that no complete system of art for either natural history or landscape could be formed on this system; that the wrath of a wild beast, and the tossing of a mountain torrent are equally impossible to a painter of the purist school; that in higher fields of thought increasing knowledge means increasing sorrow, and every art which has complete sympathy with humanity must be chastened by the sight and oppressed by the memory of pain. but there is no reason why your system of study should be a complete one, if it be right and profitable though incomplete. if you can find it in your hearts to follow out only the gothic thoughts of landscape, i deeply wish you would, and for many reasons. . first, it has never yet received due development; for at the moment when artistic skill and knowledge of effect became sufficient to complete its purposes, the reformation destroyed the faith in which they might have been accomplished; for to the whole body of powerful draughtsmen the reformation meant the greek school and the shadow of death. so that of exquisitely developed gothic landscape you may count the examples on the fingers of your hand: van eyck's "adoration of the lamb" at bruges; another little van eyck in the louvre; the john bellini lately presented to the national gallery;[ ] another john bellini in rome: and the "st. george" of carpaccio at venice, are all that i can name myself of great works. but there exist some exquisite, though feebler, designs in missal painting; of which, in england, the landscape and flowers in the psalter of henry the sixth will serve you for a sufficient type; the landscape in the grimani missal at venice being monumentally typical and perfect. [footnote : no. . "landscape, with the death of st. peter martyr."] . now for your own practice in this, having first acquired the skill of exquisite delineation and laying of pure color, day by day you must draw some lovely natural form or flower or animal without obscurity--as in missal painting; choosing for study, in natural scenes, only what is beautiful and strong in life. . i fully anticipated, at the beginning of the pre-raphaelite movement, that they would have carried forward this method of work; but they broke themselves to pieces by pursuing dramatic sensation instead of beauty. so that to this day all the loveliest things in the world remain unpainted; and although we have occasionally spasmodic efforts and fits of enthusiasm, and green meadows and apple-blossom to spare, it yet remains a fact that not in all this england, and still less in france, have you a painter who has been able nobly to paint so much as a hedge of wild roses or a forest glade full of anemones or wood-sorrel. . one reason of this has been the idea that such work was easy, on the part of the young men who attempted it, and the total vulgarity and want of education in the great body of abler artists, rendering them insensitive to qualities of fine delineation; the universal law for them being that they can draw a pig, but not a venus. for instance, two landscape-painters of much reputation in england, and one of them in france also--david cox and john constable, represent a form of blunt and untrained faculty which in being very frank and simple, apparently powerful, and needing no thought, intelligence or trouble whatever to observe, and being wholly disorderly, slovenly and licentious, and therein meeting with instant sympathy from the disorderly public mind now resentful of every trammel and ignorant of every law--these two men, i say, represent in their intensity the qualities adverse to all accurate science or skill in landscape art; their work being the mere blundering of clever peasants, and deserving no name whatever in any school of true practice, but consummately mischievous--first, in its easy satisfaction of the painter's own self-complacencies, and then in the pretense of ability which blinds the public to all the virtue of patience and to all the difficulty of precision. there is more real relation to the great schools of art, more fellowship with bellini and titian, in the humblest painter of letters on village signboards than in men like these. do not, therefore, think that the gothic school is an easy one. you might more easily fill a house with pictures like constable's from garret to cellar, than imitate one cluster of leaves by van eyck or giotto; and among all the efforts that have been made to paint our common wild-flowers, i have only once--and that in this very year, just in time to show it to you--seen the thing done rightly. . but now observe: these flowers, beautiful as they are, are not of the gothic school. the law of that school is that everything shall be seen clearly, or at least, only in such mist or faintness as shall be delightful; and i have no doubt that the best introduction to it would be the elementary practice of painting every study on a golden ground. this at once compels you to understand that the work is to be imaginative and decorative; that it represents beautiful things in the clearest way, but not under existing conditions; and that, in fact, you are producing jeweler's work, rather than pictures. then the qualities of grace in design become paramount to every other; and you may afterwards substitute clear sky for the golden background without danger of loss or sacrifice of system: clear sky of golden light, or deep and full blue, for the full blue of titian is just as much a piece of conventional enameled background as if it were a plate of gold; that depth of blue in relation to foreground objects being wholly impossible. . there is another immense advantage in this byzantine and gothic abstraction of decisive form, when it is joined with a faithful desire of whatever truth can be expressed on narrow conditions. it makes us observe the vital points in which character consists, and educates the eye and mind in the habit of fastening and limiting themselves to essentials. in complete drawing, one is continually liable to be led aside from the main points by picturesque accidents of light and shade; in gothic drawing you must get the character, if at all, by a keenness of analysis which must be in constant exercise. . and here i must beg of you very earnestly, once for all, to clear your minds of any misapprehension of the nature of gothic art, as if it implied error and weakness, instead of severity. that a style is restrained or severe does not mean that it is also erroneous. much mischief has been done--endless misapprehension induced in this matter--by the blundering religious painters of germany, who have become examples of the opposite error from our english painters of the constable group. our uneducated men work too bluntly to be ever in the right; but the germans draw finely and resolutely wrong. here is a "riposo" of overbeck's for instance, which the painter imagined to be elevated in style because he had drawn it without light and shade, and with absolute decision: and so far, indeed, it is gothic enough; but it is separated everlastingly from gothic and from all other living work, because the painter was too vain to look at anything he had to paint, and drew every mass of his drapery in lines that were as impossible as they were stiff, and stretched out the limbs of his madonna in actions as unlikely as they are uncomfortable. in all early gothic art, indeed, you will find failure of this kind, especially distortion and rigidity, which are in many respects painfully to be compared with the splendid repose of classic art. but the distortion is not gothic; the intensity, the abstraction, the force of character are, and the beauty of color. . here is a very imperfect, but illustrative border of flowers and animals on a golden ground. the large letter contains, indeed, entirely feeble and ill-drawn figures: that is merely childish and failing work of an inferior hand; it is not characteristic of gothic, or any other school. but this peacock, being drawn with intense delight in blue, on gold, and getting character of peacock in the general sharp outline, instead of--as rubens' peacocks--in black shadow, is distinctively gothic of fine style. . i wish you therefore to begin your study of natural history and landscape by discerning the simple outlines and the pleasant colors of things; and to rest in them as long as you can. but, observe, you can only do this on one condition--that of striving also to create, in reality, the beauty which you seek in imagination. it will be wholly impossible for you to retain the tranquillity of temper and felicity of faith necessary for noble purist painting, unless you are actively engaged in promoting the felicity and peace of practical life. none of this bright gothic art was ever done but either by faith in the attainableness of felicity in heaven, or under conditions of real order and delicate loveliness on the earth. . as long as i can possibly keep you among them, there you shall stay--among the almond and apple blossom. but if you go on into the veracities of the school of clay, you will find there is something at the roots of almond and apple trees, which is--this. you must look at him in the face--fight him--conquer him with what scathe you may: you need not think to keep out of the way of him. there is turner's dragon; there is michael angelo's; there, a very little one of carpaccio's. every soul of them had to understand the creature, and very earnestly. . not that michael angelo understands his dragon as the others do. he was not enough a colorist either to catch the points of the creature's aspect, or to feel the same hatred of them; but i confess myself always amazed in looking at michael angelo's work here or elsewhere, at his total carelessness of anatomical character except only in the human body. it is very easy to round a dragon's neck, if the only idea you have of it is that it is virtually no more than a coiled sausage; and, besides, anybody can round anything if you have full scale from white high light to black shadow. . but look here at carpaccio, even in my copy. the colorist says, "first of all, as my delicious paroquet was ruby, so this nasty viper shall be black"; and then is the question, "can i round him off, even though he is black, and make him slimy, and yet springy, and close down--clotted like a pool of black blood on the earth--all the same?" look at him beside michael angelo's, and then tell me the venetians can't draw! and also, carpaccio does it with a touch, with one sweep of his brush; three minutes at the most allowed for all the beast; while michael angelo has been haggling at this dragon's neck for an hour. . then note also in turner's that clinging to the earth--the specialty of him--_il gran nemico_, "the great enemy," plutus. his claws are like the clefts of the rock; his shoulders like its pinnacles; his belly deep into its every fissure--glued down--loaded down; his bat's wings cannot lift him, they are rudimentary wings only. . before i tell you what he means himself, you must know what all this smoke about him means. nothing will be more precious to you, i think, in the practical study of art, than the conviction, which will force itself on you more and more every hour, of the way all things are bound together, little and great, in spirit and in matter. so that if you get once the right clue to any group of them, it will grasp the simplest, yet reach to the highest truths. you know i have just been telling you how this school of materialism and clay involved itself at last in cloud and fire. now, down to the least detail of method and subject, that will hold. . here is a perfect type, though not a complex one, of gothic landscape; the background gold, the trees drawn leaf by leaf, and full green in color--no effect of light. here is an equally typical greek-school landscape, by wilson--lost wholly in golden mist; the trees so slightly drawn that you don't know if they are trees or towers, and no care for color whatever; perfectly deceptive and marvelous effect of sunshine through the mist--"apollo and the python." now here is raphael, exactly between the two--trees still drawn leaf by leaf, wholly formal; but beautiful mist coming gradually into the distance. well, then, last, here is turner's; greek-school of the highest class; and you define his art, absolutely, as first the displaying intensely, and with the sternest intellect, of natural form as it is, and then the envelopment of it with cloud and fire. only, there are two sorts of cloud and fire. he knows them both. there's one, and there's another--the "dudley" and the "flint." that's what the cloud and flame of the dragon mean: now, let me show you what the dragon means himself. . i go back to another perfect landscape of the living gothic school. it is only a pencil outline, by edward burne-jones, in illustration of the story of psyche; it is the introduction of psyche, after all her troubles, into heaven. now in this of burne-jones, the landscape is clearly full of light everywhere, color or glass light: that is, the outline is prepared for modification of color only. every plant in the grass is set formally, grows perfectly, and may be realized completely. exquisite order, and universal, with eternal life and light, this is the faith and effort of the schools of crystal; and you may describe and complete their work quite literally by taking any verses of chaucer in his tender mood, and observing how he insists on the clearness and brightness first, and then on the order. thus, in chaucer's "dream": "within an yle me thought i was, where wall and yate was all of glasse, and so was closed round about that leavelesse none come in ne out, uncouth and straunge to beholde, for every yate of fine golde a thousand fanes, aie turning, entuned had, and briddes singing divers, and on each fane a paire with open mouth again here; and of a sute were all the toures subtily corven after floures, of uncouth colors during aye that never been none seene in may." . next to this drawing of psyche i place two of turner's most beautiful classical landscapes. at once you are out of the open daylight, either in sunshine admitted partially through trembling leaves, or in the last rays of its setting, scarcely any more warm on the darkness of the ilex wood. in both, the vegetation, though beautiful, is absolutely wild and uncared for, as it seems, either by human or by higher powers, which, having appointed for it the laws of its being, leave it to spring into such beauty as is consistent with disease and alternate with decay. [illustration: Æsacus and hesperie. from the painting by turner.] in the purest landscape, the _human_ subject is the immortality of the soul by the faithfulness of love: in both the turner landscapes it is the death of the body by the impatience and error of love. the one is the first glimpse of hesperia to Æsacus:[ ] "aspicit hesperien patria cebrenida ripa, injectos humeris siccantem sole capillos:" in a few moments to lose her forever. the other is a mythological subject of deeper meaning, the death of procris. [footnote : ovid, "metamorphoses," xi. .] . i just now referred to the landscape by john bellini in the national gallery as one of the six best existing of the purist school, being wholly felicitous and enjoyable. in the foreground of it indeed is the martyrdom of peter martyr; but john bellini looks upon that as an entirely cheerful and pleasing incident; it does not disturb or even surprise him, much less displease in the slightest degree. now, the next best landscape[ ] to this, in the national gallery, is a florentine one on the edge of transition to the greek feeling; and in that the distance is still beautiful, but misty, not clear; the flowers are still beautiful, but--intentionally--of the color of blood; and in the foreground lies the dead body of procris, which disturbs the poor painter greatly; and he has expressed his disturbed mind about it in the figure of a poor little brown--nearly black--faun, or perhaps the god faunus himself, who is much puzzled by the death of procris, and stoops over her, thinking it a woeful thing to find her pretty body lying there breathless, and all spotted with blood on the breast. [footnote : (of the purist school.)] . you remember i told you how the earthly power that is necessary in art was shown by the flight of dædalus to the [greek: herpeton] minos. look for yourselves at the story of procris as related to minos in the fifteenth chapter of the third book of apollodorus; and you will see why it is a faun who is put to wonder at her, she having escaped by artifice from the bestial power of minos. yet she is wholly an earth-nymph, and the son of aurora must not only leave her, but himself slay her; the myth of semele desiring to see zeus, and of apollo and coronis, and this having all the same main interest. once understand that, and you will see why turner has put her death under this deep shade of trees, the sun withdrawing his last ray; and why he has put beside her the low type of an animal's pain, a dog licking its wounded paw. . but now, i want you to understand turner's depth of sympathy farther still. in both these high mythical subjects the surrounding nature, though suffering, is still dignified and beautiful. every line in which the master traces it, even where seemingly negligent, is lovely, and set down with a meditative calmness which makes these two etchings capable of being placed beside the most tranquil work of holbein or dürer. in this "cephalus" especially, note the extreme equality and serenity of every outline. but now here is a subject of which you will wonder at first why turner drew it at all. it has no beauty whatsoever, no specialty of picturesqueness; and all its lines are cramped and poor. the crampness and the poverty are all intended. this is no longer to make us think of the death of happy souls, but of the labor of unhappy ones; at least, of the more or less limited, dullest, and--i must not say homely, but--unhomely life of the neglected agricultural poor. it is a gleaner bringing down her one sheaf of corn to an old watermill, itself mossy and rent, scarcely able to get its stones to turn. an ill-bred dog stands, joyless, by the unfenced stream; two country boys lean, joyless, against a wall that is half broken down; and all about the steps down which the girl is bringing her sheaf, the bank of earth, flowerless and rugged, testifies only of its malignity; and in the black and sternly rugged etching--no longer graceful, but hard, and broken in every touch--the master insists upon the ancient curse of the earth--"thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." . and now you will see at once with what feeling turner completes, in a more tender mood, this lovely subject of his yorkshire stream, by giving it the conditions of pastoral and agricultural life; the cattle by the pool, the milkmaid crossing the bridge with her pail on her head, the mill with the old millstones, and its gleaming weir as his chief light led across behind the wild trees. [illustration: mill near grande chartreuse. from the painting by turner.] . and not among our soft-flowing rivers only; but here among the torrents of the great chartreuse, where another man would assuredly have drawn the monastery, turner only draws their working mill. and here i am able to show you, fortunately, one of his works painted at this time of his most earnest thought; when his imagination was still freshly filled with the greek mythology, and he saw for the first time with his own eyes the clouds come down upon the actual earth. [illustration: l'aiguillette, valley of cluses. from the painting by turner.] . the scene is one which, in old times of swiss traveling, you would all have known well; a little cascade which descends to the road from geneva to chamouni, near the village of maglans, from under a subordinate ridge of the aiguille de varens, known as the aiguillette. you, none of you, probably, know the scene now; for your only object is to get to chamouni and up mont blanc and down again; but the valley of cluse, if you knew it, is worth many chamounis; and it impressed turner profoundly. the facts of the spot are here given in mere and pure simplicity; a quite unpicturesque bridge, a few trees partly stunted and blasted by the violence of the torrent in storm at their roots, a cottage with its mill-wheel--this has lately been pulled down to widen the road--and the brook shed from the rocks and finding its way to join the arve. the scene is absolutely arcadian. all the traditions of the greek hills, in their purity, were founded on such rocks and shadows as these; and turner has given you the birth of the shepherd hermes on cyllene, in its visible and solemn presence, the white cloud, hermes eriophoros forming out of heaven upon the hills; the brook, distilled from it, as the type of human life, born of the cloud and vanishing into the cloud, led down by the haunting hermes among the ravines; and then, like the reflection of the cloud itself, the white sheep, with the dog of argus guarding them, drinking from the stream. . and now, do you see why i gave you, for the beginning of your types of landscape thought, that "junction of tees and greta" in their misty ravines; and this glen of the greta above, in which turner has indeed done his best to paint the trees that live again after their autumn--the twilight that will rise again with twilight of dawn--the stream that flows always, and the resting on the cliffs of the clouds that return if they vanish; but of human life, he says, a boy climbing among the trees for his entangled kite, and these white stones in the mountain churchyard, show forth all the strength and all the end. . you think that saying of the greek school--pindar's summary of it, "[greek: ti de tis; ti d'ou tis];"[ ]--a sorrowful and degrading lesson. see at least, then, that you reach the level of such degradation. see that your lives be in nothing worse than a boy's climbing for his entangled kite. it will be well for you if you join not with those who instead of kites fly falcons; who instead of obeying the last words of the great cloud-shepherd--to feed his sheep, live the lives--how much less than vanity!--of the war-wolf and the gier-eagle. or, do you think it a dishonor to man to say to him that death is but only rest? see that when it draws near to you, you may look to it, at least for sweetness of rest; and that you recognize the lord of death coming to you as a shepherd gathering you into his fold for the night. [footnote : pyth. viii. . ( .)] distributed proofreaders europe at http://dp.rastko.net the old masters and their pictures _for the use of schools and learners in art_ by sarah tytler author of "papers for thoughtful girls" etc. _new and enlarged edition_ * * * * * london isbister and company limited & tavistock street covent garden [_the right of translation is reserved_] london: printed by j.s. virtue and co., limited, city road. preface to first edition. i wish to say, in a very few words, that this book is intended to be a simple account of the great old masters in painting of every age and country, with descriptions of their most famous works, for the use of learners and outsiders in art. the book is not, and could not well be, exhaustive in its nature. i have avoided definitions of schools, considering that these should form a later and more elaborate portion of art education, and preferring to group my 'painters' according to what i hold to be the primitive arrangements of time, country, and rank in art. preface to new edition. the restrictions with regard to space under which the little volume called "the old masters" was originally written, caused me to omit, to my regret, many names great, though not first, in art. the circulation which the book has attained induces me to do what i can to remedy the defect, and render the volume more useful by adding two chapters--the one on italian and the other on german, dutch, and flemish masters. these chapters consist almost entirely of condensed notes taken from two trustworthy sources, to which i have been already much indebted--sir c, and lady eastlake's version of kugler's "handbook of italian art," and dr. waagen's "handbook,"--remodelled from kugler--of german, dutch, and flemish art, revised by j.a. crowe. i have purposely given numerous records of those dutch painters whose art has been specially popular in england and who are in some cases better represented in our country than in their own. contents. chap. page i. early italian art--giotto, - --andrea pisano, - --orcagna, - --ghiberti, - --masaccio, - _or_ --fra angelico, - ii. early flemish art--the van eycks, - --mabuse, _about_ - --memling, _about_ - --quintin matsys, - or iii. in early schools of italian art--the bellini, - --mantegna, - --ghirlandajo, - --- il francia, - --fra bartolommeo, - --andrea del sarto, - iv. lionardo da vinci. - --michael angelo, - --raphael, - --titian, - v. german art--albrecht dÜrer, - vi. later italian art--giorgione, - --correggio, _about_ - --tintoretto, - --veronese, - vii. carracci, - --guido reni, - --domenichino, - --salvator rosa, - viii. later flemish art--rubens, - --rembrandt, _or_ - --teniers, father and son, - --wouvverman, - --cuyp, ; _still living_, --paul potter, - --cornelius de heem, ix. spanish art--velasquez, - --murillo, - x. french art--nicolas poussin, - --claude lorraine, - --charles le brun, - --watteau, - --greuze, - xi. foreign artists in england--holbein, - --van dyck, - --lely, - --canaletto, - --kneller, - xii. italian masters from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries--taddeo gaddi, , supposed to have died --fra filippo, - --benozzo gozzoli, - --luca signorelli, , supposed to have died about --botticelli, - --perugino, - --carpaccio, date and place of birth and death unknown--crivelli, filippino lipi, earlier than --antonella da messina, believed to have died at venice, --garopalo, - --luini, date of birth unknown, supposed to have died about --palma, about - --pardenone, - --lo spagna, date of birth unknown, --giulio romano, - --paris bordone, - --il parmigianino, - --baroccio, - --caravaggio, - --lo spagnoletto, - --guercino, - --albano, - --sassoferrato, - --vasari, - --sofonisba anguisciola, , about --lavinia fontana, - xiii. german, flemish, and dutch artists from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century--van der weyden, a contemporary of the van eycks, - --van leyden, - --van somer, - --snyders, - --g. honthorst, - --jan steen, - --gerard dow, - --de hooch, dates of birth and death unknown--van ostade, - --maas, - --metzu, . still alive in --terburg, - --netcher, - --bol, - --van der helst, - --ruysdael, (?)- --hobbema, - --berchem, - --both (?)- (?) du jardin, - --adrian van de velde, - --van der heyden, - --de witte, - --van der neer, (?)- --william van de velde, the younger, - --backhuysen, - --van de capella, about --hondecoeter, - --jan weenix, - --pater segers, - --van huysum, - --van der werff, - --mengs, - * * * * * the old masters and their pictures. * * * * * chapter i. early italian art--giotto, - --andrea pisano. - --orcagna, - ghiberti, - --masaccio, - or --fra angelico, - . a pencil and paper, a box of colours, and a scrap-book, form so often a child's favourite toys that one might expect that a very large portion of men and women would prove painters. but, as we grow in years and knowledge, the discrepancy between nature and our attempts to copy nature, strike us more and more, until we turn in dissatisfaction and disgust from the vain effort. there was only one old woman in an esquimaux tribe who could be called forward to draw with a stick on the sand a sufficiently graphic likeness of the erebus and the terror. it is only a few groups of men belonging to different countries, throughout the centuries, who have been able to give us paintings to which we turn in wonder and admiration, and say that these are in their degree fair exponents of nature. the old painter's half-haughty, half-humble protest was true--it is 'god almighty,' who in raising here and there men above their fellows, 'makes painters.' but let us be thankful that the old propensity to delight in a facsimile, or in an idealized version of nature, survives in the very common satisfaction and joy--whether cultivated or uncultivated--- derived from looking at pictures, thinking over their details, striving to understand the meaning of the painters, and proceeding farther to consider the lives and times which throw light on works of genius. music itself is not more universally and gladly listened and responded to, than pictures are looked at and remembered. thus i have no fear of failing to interest you, my readers, in my subject if i can only treat it sympathetically,--enter at a humble distance into the spirit of the painters and of their paintings, and place before you some of the paintings by reverent and loving word-painting such as others have achieved, and such as i may strive to attain to, that you may be in a sort early familiar with these paintings, before you see them in engravings and photographs, and on canvas and in fresco, as i trust you may be privileged to see many of them, when you may hail them not only for what they are, the glories of art, but for what they have been to you in thoughts of beauty and high desires. of the old greek paintings, of which there are left isolated specimens dug up in herculaneum and pompeii, i cannot afford to say anything, and of the more modern greek art which was spread over europe after the fall of constantinople i need on europe the birth-place of painting as of other arts, that greek painting which illustrated early christianity, was painting in its decline and decay, borrowing not only superstitious conventionalities, but barbaric attributes of gilding and blazoning to hide its infirmity and poverty. virgins of the same weak and meaningless type, between attenuated saints or angels, and doll-like child-christs in the one invariable attitude holding up two fingers of a baby hand to bless the spectator and worshippers, were for ever repeated. in a similar manner the instances of rude or meagre contemporary paintings with which the early christians adorned their places of worship and the sepulchres of their dead in the basilicas and catacombs of rome, are very curious and interesting for their antiquity and their associations, and as illustrations of faith; but they present no intrinsic beauty or worth. they are not only clumsy and childish designs ill executed, but they are rendered unintelligible to all save the initiated in such hieroglyphics, by offering an elaborate ground-work of type, antitype, and symbol, on which the artist probably spent a large part of his strength. lambs and lilies, serpents, vines, fishes, dolphins, phoenixes, cocks, anchors, and javelins played nearly as conspicuous a part in this art as did the dead believer, or his or her patron saint, who might have been supposed to form the principal figure in the picture. italian art existed in these small beginnings, in the gorgeous but quaintly formal or fantastic devices of illuminated missals, and in the stiff spasmodic efforts of here and there an artist spirit such as the old florentine cimabue's, when a great man heralded a great epoch. but first i should like to mention the means by which art then worked. painting on board and on plastered walls, the second styled painting in fresco, preceded painting on canvas. colours were mixed with water or with size, egg, or fig-juice--the latter practices termed _tempera_ (in english in distemper) before oil was used to mix colours. but painters did not confine themselves then to painting with pencil or brush, else they might have attained technical excellence sooner. it has been well said that the poems of the middle ages were written in stone; so the earlier painters painted in stone, in that mosaic work which one of them called--referring to its durability--'painting for eternity;' and in metals. many of them were the sons of jewellers or jewellers themselves; they worked in iron as well as in gold and silver, and they were sculptors and architects as well as painters; engineers also, so far as engineering in the construction of roads, bridges, and canals, was known in those days. the greek knowledge of anatomy was well-nigh lost, so that drawing was incorrect and form bad. the idea of showing degrees of distance, and the management of light and shade, were feebly developed. even the fore-shortening of figures was so difficult to the old italian painters that they could not carry it into the extremities, and men and women seem as though standing on the points of their toes. landscape-painting did not exist farther than that a rock or a bush, or a few blue lines, with fishes out of proportion prominently interposed, indicated, as on the old stage, that a desert, a forest, or a sea, was to play its part in the story of the picture. so also portrait-painting was not thought of, unless it occurred in the likeness of a great man belonging to the time and place of the painter, who was the donor of some picture to chapel or monastery, or of the painter himself, alike introduced into sacred groups and scenes; for pictures were uniformly of a religious character, until a little later, when they merged into allegorical representations, just as one remembers that miracle plays passed into moral plays before ordinary human life was reproduced. until this period, what we call dramatic expression in making a striking situation, or even in bringing the look of joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain, into a face, had hardly been attained. perhaps you will ask, what merit had the old paintings of the middle ages to compensate for so many great disadvantages and incongruities? certainly before the time i have reached, they have, with rare exceptions, little merit, save that fascination of pathos, half-comic, half-tragic, which belongs to the struggling dawn of all great endeavours, and especially of all endeavours in art. but just at this epoch, art, in one man, took a great stride, began, as i shall try to show, to exert an influence so true, deep, and high that it extends, in the noblest forms, to the present day, and much more than compensates to the thoughtful and poetic for a protracted train of technical blunders and deficiencies. giotto, known also as magister joctus, was born in near florence. i dare say many have heard one legend of him, and i mean to tell the legends of the painters, because even when they are most doubtful they give the most striking indications of the times and the light in which painters and their paintings were regarded by the world of artists, and by the world at large; but so far as i have heard this legend of giotto has not been disproven. the only objection which can be urged against it, is that it is found preserved in various countries, of very different individuals--a crowning objection also to the legend of william tell. giotto was a shepherd boy keeping his father's sheep and amusing himself by drawing with chalk on a stone the favourites of the flock, when his drawings attracted the attention of a traveller passing from the heights into the valley. this traveller was the well-born and highly-esteemed painter cimabue, who was so delighted with the little lad's rough outlines, that getting the consent of giotto's father, cimabue adopted the boy, carried him off to the city of florence, introduced him to his studio, and so far as man could supplement the work of god, made a painter of the youthful genius. i may add here a later legend of giotto. pope boniface viii, requested specimens of skill from various artists with the view to the appointment of a painter to decorate st peter's. giotto, either in impatient disdain, or to show a careless triumph of skill, with one flourish of his hand, without the aid of compass, executed a perfect circle in red chalk, and sent the circle as his contribution to the specimens required by the pope. the audacious specimen was accepted as the most conclusive, giotto was chosen as the pope's painter for the occasion, and from the incident arose the italian proverb 'round as the o of giotto.' giotto was the friend of dante, petrarch, and boccaccio, especially of dante, to whom the grandeur of some of the painter's designs has been vaguely enough attributed. the poet of the 'inferno' wrote of his friend: '......... cimabue thought to lord it over painting's field; and now the cry is giotto's, and his name eclipsed.' petrarch bequeathed in his will a madonna by giotto and mentioned it as a rare treasure of art. boccaccio wrote a merry anecdote of his comrade the painter's wit, in the course of which he referred with notable plain-speaking to giotto's 'flat currish' plainness of face. the impression handed down of giotto's character is that of an independent, high-spirited man, full of invention, full of imagination, and also, by a precious combination, full of shrewdness and common sense; a man genial, given to repartee, and at the same time not deficient in the tact which deprives repartee of its sting. while he was working to king robert of naples, the king, who was watching the painter on a very hot day, said, with a shrug, 'if i were you, giotto, i would leave off work and rest myself this fine day, 'and so would i, sire, if i were _you_,' replied the wag. i need scarcely add that giotto was a man highly esteemed and very prosperous in his day; one account reports him as the head and the father of four sons and four daughters. i have purposely written first of the fame, the reputed character, and the circumstances of giotto before i proceed to his work. this great work was, in brief, to breathe into painting the living soul which had till then--in mediæval times--been largely absent. giotto went to nature for his inspiration, and not content with the immense innovation of superseding by the actual representation of men and women in outline, tint, and attitude, the rigid traditions of his predecessors, he put men's passions in their faces--the melancholy looked sad, the gay glad. this result, to us so simple, filled giotto's lively countrymen, who had seldom seen it, with astonishment and delight. they cried out as at a marvel when he made the commonest deed even coarsely lifelike, as in the case of a sailor in a boat, who turned round with his hand before his face and spat into the sea; and when he illustrated the deed with the corresponding expression, as in the thrill of eagerness that perceptibly pervaded the whole figure of a thirsty man who stooped down to drink. but giotto was no mere realist though he was a great realist; he was also in the highest light an idealist. his sense of harmony and beauty was true and noble; he rose above the real into 'the things unseen and eternal,' of which the real is but a rough manifestation. he was the first to paint a crucifixion robbed of the horrible triumph of physical power, and of the agony which is at its bidding, and invested with the divinity of awe and love. giotto's work did not end with himself; he was the founder of the earliest worthy school of italian art, so worthy in this very glorious idealism, that, as i have already said, the men whose praise is most to be coveted, have learned to turn back to giotto and his immediate successors, and, forgetting and forgiving all their ignorance, crudeness, quaintness, to dwell never wearied, and extol without measure these oldest masters' dignity of spirit, the earnestness of their originality, the solemnity and heedfulness of their labour. it would seem as if skill and polish, with the amount of attention which they appropriate, with their elevation of manner over matter, and thence their lowered standard, are apt to rob from or blur in men these highest qualifications of genius, for it is true that judges miss even in the lionardo, michael angelo, and raphael of a later and much more accomplished generation, and, to a far greater extent, in the rubens of another and still later day, the perfect simplicity, the unalloyed fervour, the purity of tenderness in giotto, orcagna, fra angelico, and in their flemish brethren, the van eycks and mabuse. the difference between the two classes of painters in not so wide as that between the smooth and brilliant epigrammatic poets of anne's and the ruggedly rich dramatists of elizabeth's reign, neither was there the unmistakable preponderance of such a mighty genius as that of shakespeare granted to the first decade, still the distinction was the same in kind.[ ] i wish you, my readers, to note it in the very commencement, and to learn, like the thoughtful students of painting, to put aside any half-childish over-estimate of the absurdity of a blue stroke transfixing a huge flounder-like fish as a likeness of a sea, (which you have been accustomed to see translucid, in breakers and foam, in modern marine pictures,) or your quick sense of the ugliness of straight figures with long hands, wooden feet, and clinging draperies, while your eyes have been familiar with well-modelled frames and limbs and flowing lines. but we must look deeper if we would not be slaves to superficial prettiness, or even superficial correctness; we must try to go into the spirit of a painting and value it more in proportion as it teaches art's noblest lesson--the divinity of the divine, the serenity of utmost strength, the single-heartedness of passion. i have only space to tell you of three or four of the famous works of giotto. first, his allegories in the great church, in honour of st francis, at assisi, in relation to which, writing of its german architect, an author says: 'he built boldly against the mountain, piling one church upon another; the upper vast, lofty, and admitting through its broad windows the bright rays of the sun: the lower as if in the bowels of the earth--low, solemn, and almost shutting out the light of day. around the lofty edifice grew the convent, a vast building, resting upon a long line of arches clinging to the hill-sides. as the evening draws nigh, casting its deep shadows across the valley, the traveller beneath gazes upwards with feelings of wonder and delight at this graceful arcade supporting the massy convent; the ancient towers and walls of the silent town gathering around, and the purple rocks rising high above--all still glowing in the lingering sunbeams--a scene scarcely to be surpassed in any clime for its sublime beauty.' the upper church contains frescoes wonderfully fresh, by cimabue, of scriptural subjects, and frescoes of scenes from the life vowed to poverty of st francis. in the lower church, over the tomb of st francis, are the four masterpieces with which we have to do. these are the three vows of the order figuratively represented. mark the fitness and grandeur of two of the figures, the suggestion of which has been attributed to dante, the woman chastity seated beyond assault in her rocky fortress, and obedience bowing the neck to curb and yoke. the fourth fresco pictures the saint who died, 'covered by another's cloak cast over his wasted body eaten with sores,' enthroned and glorified amidst the host of heaven. i have chosen the second example of the art of giotto because you may with comparative ease see it for yourselves. it is in the national gallery, london, having belonged to the collection of the late samuel rogers. it is a fragment of an old fresco which had been part of a series illustrating the life of john the baptist in the church of the carmine, florence, a church which was destroyed by fire in . the fragment in the national gallery has two fine heads of apostles bending sorrowfully over the body of st john. though it is not necessary to do it, in strict justice, because good work rises superior to all accidents of comparison as well as accidents of circumstance, one must remember in regarding this, the stilted and frozen figures and faces, which, before giotto broke their bonds and inspired them, had professed to tell the bible's stories. the third instance i have chosen to quote is giotto's portrait of dante which was so strangely lost for many years. the portrait occurs in a painting, the first recorded performance of giotto's, in which he was said to have introduced the likeness of many of his contemporaries, on the wall of the palazzo dell' podestà or council chamber of florence. during the banishment of dante the wall was plastered or white-washed over, through the influence of his enemies, and though believed to exist, the picture was hidden down to , when, after various futile efforts to recover it, the figures were again brought to light. this portrait of dante is altogether removed from the later portraits of the indignant and weary man, of whom the italian market-women said that he had been in hell as well as in exile. giotto's dante on the walls of the council chamber is a noble young man of thirty, full of ambitious hope and early distinction. the face is slightly pointed, with broad forehead, hazel eyes, straight brows and nose, mouth and chin a little projecting. the close cloak or vest with sleeves, and cap in folds hanging down on the shoulder, the hand holding the triple fruit, in prognostication of the harvest of virtue and renown which was to be so bitter as well as so glorious, are all in keeping and have a majesty of their own. the picture is probably known by engravings to many of my readers. the last example of giotto's, is the one which of all his works is most potent and patent in its beauty, and has struck, and, in so far as we can tell, will for ages strike, with its greatness multitudes of widely different degrees of cultivation whose intellectual capacity is as far apart as their critical faculty. i mean the matchless campanile or bell-tower 'towering over the dome of brunelleschi' at florence, formed of coloured marbles--for which giotto framed the designs, and even executed with his own hands the models for the sculpture. with this lovely sight dean alford's description is more in keeping than the prosaic saying of charles v., that 'the campanile ought to be kept under glass.' dean alford's enthusiasm thus expresses itself: 'a mass of varied light written on the cloudless sky of unfathomed blue; varied but blended, as never in any other building that we had seen; the warm yellow of the lighter marbles separated but not disunited by the ever-recurring bands of dark; or glowing into red where the kisses of the sun had been hottest; or fading again into white where the shadows mostly haunted, or where the renovating hand had been waging conflict with decay.' it is known that giotto, together with his friend dante, died before this--giotto's last great work--was finally constructed by giotto's pupil, taddeo gaddi, and that therefore neither of the friends could have really looked on 'giotto's tower,' though italian ciceroni point out, and strangers love to contemplate, the very stone on which 'grim dante' sat and gazed with admiration in the calm light of evening on the enduring memorial of the painter. giotto died in the year or , his biographer adds, 'no less a good christian than an excellent painter,' and in token of his faith he painted one crucifixion in which he introduced his own figure 'kneeling in an attitude of deep devotion and contrition at the foot of the cross.' the good taste of such an act has been questioned, so has been the practice which painted the virgin mother now as a brown italian, now as a red and white fleming, and again as a flaxen-haired german or as a swarthy spaniard, and draped her and all the minor figures in the grandest drama the world ever saw--as well as the characters in older scripture histories, in the florentine, venetian, and antwerp fashions of the day. the defence of the practice is, that the bible is for universal time, that its virgin mother, its apostles and saints, were types of other mothers and of other heroes running down the stream of history; that even the one central and holy figure, if he may be represented at all, as the divine brother of all humanity, may be clad not inaptly in the garments of all. it appears to me that there is reason in this answer, and that viewed in its light the criticism which constantly demands historic fidelity is both carping and narrow. i do not mean, however, to underrate historic accuracy in itself, or to depreciate that longing for completeness in every particular, which drives our modern painters to the east to study patiently for months the aspects of nature under its oriental climate, with its peculiar people and animals, its ancient costumes and architecture. giotto was buried with suitable honours by a city which, like the rest of the nation, has magnified its painters amongst its great men, in the church of santa maria del fiore, where his master cimabue had been buried. lorenzo de' medici afterwards placed over giotto's tomb his effigy in marble. in chronicling ancient art i must here diverge a little. i have already mentioned how closely painting was in the beginning allied with working in metals as well as with sculpture and architecture. it is thus necessary to write of a magnificent work in metal, the study and admiration of generations of painters, begun in the life of giotto, and completed in two divisions, extending over a period of nearly a hundred years. we shall proceed to deal with the first division, and recur to the second a little later. the old italian cities. they were then the great merchant cities of the world, more or less republican in their constitution. they stood to the citizens, who rarely left their walls, at once as peculiar possessions and as native countries rather than as cities alone, while they excited all the patriotism, pride, and love that were elsewhere expended on a whole country--which after all was held as belonging largely to its king and nobles. the old italian merchant guilds, and wealthy merchants as individuals, vied with each other in signalizing their good citizenship by presenting--as gifts identified with their names--to their cities, those palace buildings, chapels, paintings, gates, which are the delight of the world to this day. it was a merchant guild which thought happily of giving to florence the bronze gates to the baptistery of san giovanni or st john the baptist, attached to the cathedral. after some competition the gates were intrusted to andrea pisano, one of a great group of painters, sculptors, and architects linked together and named, as so often happened in italy, for their place of birth, pisa. andrea executed a series of beautiful reliefs from the life of john the baptist, which were cast in , gilt, and placed in the centre door-way. i shall leave the rest of the gates, still more exquisitely wrought, till their proper time, only observing that the pisani group of carvers and founders are supposed to have attained their extraordinary superiority in skill and grace, even over such a painter as giotto, in consequence of one of them, nicola pisano, having given his attention to the study of some ancient greek sarcophagi preserved at pisa. passing for a while from the gates of st john of florence, we come back to painting and a painter, and with them to another monument--in itself very noble and curious in its mouldering age, of the old italians' love to their cities. andrea orcagna, otherwise known as andrea di cione, one of a brotherhood of painters, was born in florence about . his greatest works are in the campo santa of pisa. this wonderful 'holy field' is a grand legacy, so far as dilapidation, alas, will let it be, of the old painters. originally a place of burial, though no longer used as such, it is enclosed by high walls and an arcade, something like the cloisters of a cathedral or college running round, and having on the north and east sides chapels where masses for the dead were celebrated. the space in the centre was filled with earth brought from the holy land by the merchant ships of pisa. it is covered with turf, having tall cypress-trees at the corners, and a little cross in the centre. the arcade is pierced with sixty-two windows, and contains on its marble pavement hundreds of monuments--among them the greek sarcophagi studied by nicola pisano. but the great distinction of the campo santa (of which there are many photographs) are the walls opposite the windows of the arcade painted with scriptural subjects by artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, for the decoration of the walls was continued at intervals, during two hundred years. the havoc wrought by time and damp has been terrible; not only are the pictures faded and discoloured, but of the earliest only mutilated fragments, 'here an arm and there a head,' remain. giotto's illustrations of the book of job have thus perished. still orcagna's work has partially escaped, and left us indications of what it was in his and its youth, when michael angelo and raphael did not disdain to borrow from it in design and arrangement. dean alford has thus described orcagna's mournful, thoughtful 'triumph of death:' 'the picture is one of crowded action, and contains very many personages. the action may be supposed to begin in the lower corner on the right hand. there we see what appears to be a wedding-party seated in festivity under a grove of orange-trees laden with fruit. over two of them a pair entertaining them with merry strains. but close to them on the left comes swooping down on bats' wings, and armed with the inevitable scythe, the genius of death. her wild hair streams in the wind, her bosom is invulnerable, being closed in a trellised armour of steel. beneath her, on the ground, are a heap of corpses, shown by their attire to be the great and wealthy of the world. three winged figures, two fiends and one angel, are drawing souls, in the form of children, out of the mouths of three of these corpses. above, the air is full of flying spirits, angels and demons: the former beautiful and saintly, the latter hideous and bestial. some are dragging, or bearing upwards, human souls: others are on their way to fetch them from the heaps of dead: others, again, are flying about apparently without aim. further yet to the left, a company of wretched ones, lame and in rags, are invoking death with outstretched arms to come to their relief; but she sweeps by and heeds them not. 'dividing one half of the picture from the other, is a high range of rocks, terminating in a fiery mountain, into which the demons are casting the unhappy souls which they have carried off. beyond that seems to be a repetition of the same lesson respecting death in another form. a party of knights and dames are issuing on horseback from a mountain pass. in the left hand of the picture there lie in their path three corpses in coffins, with coronets on their heads. one is newly dead; on the second, decay has begun its work; the third is reduced to a grinning skeleton. the impression produced on the gay party by the sight is very various. some look on carelessly; one holds his nose in disgust; one, a lady jewelled and crowned, leans her head on her hand in solemn thought. above, on a rising ground, an aged monk (it is said, saint macarius) is holding a scroll, and pointing out to passengers the moral of the sight which meets them. the path winds up a hill crowned with a church, and by its side at various points are hermits sitting in calm security, or following peaceful occupations. one of them is milking a doe; another is reading; a third is calmly contemplating from a distance the valley of death. about them are various animals and birds. the idea evidently intended to be conveyed is that deliverance from the fear of death is to be found not in gaiety and dissipation, but in contemplation and communion with god. 'such is the wonderful fresco, and the execution is as wonderful as the conception. belonging as the painter did to a rude and early period of art, he yet had the power of endowing his figures with both majesty and tenderness of expression.' the last judgment is no less solemn and sad, with hope tempering its sadness. mrs jameson's note of it is: 'above, in the centre, christ and the virgin are throned in separate glories. he turns to the left, towards the condemned, while he uncovers the wound in his side, and raises his right arm with a menacing gesture, his countenance full of majestic wrath. the virgin, on the right of her son, is the picture of heavenly mercy, and, as if terrified at the words of eternal condemnation, she turns away. on either side are ranged the prophets of the old testament, the apostles and other saints, severe, solemn, dignified figures. angels, holding the instruments of the passion, hover over christ and the virgin; under them is a group of archangels. the archangel michael stands in the midst holding a scroll in each hand; immediately before him another archangel, supposed to represent raphael, the guardian angel of humanity, cowers down, shuddering, while two others sound the awful trumpets of doom. lower down is the earth where men are seen rising from their graves; armed angels direct them to the right and left. here is seen king solomon, who, whilst he rises, seems doubtful to which side he should turn; here a hypocritical monk, whom an angel draws back by the hair from the host of the youth in a gay and rich costume, whom another angel leads away to paradise. there is wonderful and even terrible power of expression in some of the heads; and it is said that among them are many portraits of contemporaries, but unfortunately no circumstantial traditions as to particular figures have reached us.' one of orcagna's altar-pieces, that of 'the coronation of the virgin,' containing upwards of a hundred figures, and with the colouring still rich, is in our national gallery. as an architect, orcagna designed the famous loggia de' lanzi of the grand ducal palace at florence. now i must take you back to the bronze gates of the baptistery in their triumphant completion nearly a hundred years after the first gate was executed by andrea pisano. i should have liked, but for our limits, to tell in full the legend of the election of lorenzo ghiberti, the step-son of a goldsmith, and skilled in chasing and enamelling, to design the second gate; when yet a lad of twenty-three, how he and two other young men, one of them still younger than ghiberti, were declared the most promising competitors in the trial for the work; how the last two voluntarily withdrew from the contest, magnanimously proclaiming lorenzo ghiberti their superior; how all the three lived to be famous, the one as a founder in metal, the others as an architect and a sculptor, and remained sworn brothers in art till death. lorenzo ghiberti has left us an expression of the feeling with which he set about his task, an expression so suggestive that, even had we no other indication, it is enough to stamp the true and tender nature of the man. he prepared for his achievement 'with infinite diligence and love'--the words deserve to be pondered over. he took at least twenty-two years to his work, receiving for it eleven hundred florins. he chose his subjects from the life and death of the lord, working them out in twenty panels, ten on each side of the folding doors, and below these were eight panels containing full-length figures of the four evangelists and four doctors of the latin church, with a complete border of fruit and foliage, having heads of prophets and sibyls interspersed. so entire was the satisfaction the superb gate gave, that lorenzo was not merely loaded with praise, he received a commission to design and cast a third and central gate which should surpass the others, that were thenceforth to be the side entrances. for his second gate lorenzo ghiberti repaired to the old testament for subjects, beginning with the creation and ending with the meeting of solomon and the queen of sheba, and represented them in ten compartments enclosed in a rich border of fruit and foliage, with twenty-four full-length figures of the hebrew heroes and prophets, clearly and delicately designed and finished, occupying corresponding niches. this crowning gate engaged the founder upwards of eighteen years--forty-nine years are given as the term of the work of both the gates. the single defect which is found in those marvellous gates--left to us as a testimony of what the life-long devotion of genius could produce--is that they abound floridly both in ornament and action, in place of being severely simple and restrained according to the classical standard. michael angelo called these gates 'worthy to be the gates of paradise,' and they are still one of the glories of florence. casts of the gates are to be found in the school for art at kensington, and at the crystal palace. a young village boy learned to draw and model from ghiberti's gates. he in his turn was to create in the brancacci chapel of the church of the carmine at florence a school of painters scarcely less renowned and powerful in its effects than that produced by the works in the campo santa. you will find the italian painters not unfrequently known by nicknames, quite as often by their father's trades as by their father's surnames, and still oftener by the town which was their place of birth or nurture. this tom village birth-place, was commonly called masaccio, short for tomasaccio, 'hulking tom,' as i have heard it translated, on account of his indifferent, slovenly habits. i think there is a tradition that he entered a studio in florence as a colour boy, and electrified the painter and his scholars, by _brownie_ like freaks of painting at their unfinished work, in their absence, better than any of his masters, and by the dexterity with which he perpetrated the frolic of putting the facsimile of a fly on one of the faces on the easels. his end was a tragic conclusion to such light comedy. at the age of twenty-six, he quitted florence for rome so suddenly that he left his finest frescoes unfinished. it was said that he was summoned thither by the pope. at rome, where little or nothing of masaccio's life is known, he died shortly afterwards, not without a suspicion of his having been poisoned. a curious anecdote exists of the identification of the time when he forsook florence to meet his death in rome. just as we have read, that the period of the death of massinger the dramatist has been settled by an entry in an old parish register, 'died, philip massinger a stranger,' so there has been found some quaint equivalent to a modern tax-paper which had been delivered at the dwelling of masaccio when the word 'gone' was written down. there is a further tradition--not very probable under the circumstances--that masaccio is buried, without name or stone, under the brancacci chapel. be that as it may, he very early rose to eminence, surpassing all his predecessors in drawing and colouring, and he combined with those acquirements such animation and variety of expression in his characters, that it was said of him 'he painted souls as well as bodies,' while his invention was not less bold and fresh. it is difficult to indicate masaccio's pictures because some of them have been repainted and destroyed. as to those in the brancacci chapel from the life of st peter, (with the exception of two,) considerable confusion has arisen as to which are masaccio's, and which belong to his scholar filippino lippi. the fresco which masaccio left unfinished, that of the apostles peter and paul raising a dead youth (from traditional history), was finished by lippi. in the fresco of peter baptizing the converts, generally attributed to masaccio, there is a lad who has thrown off his garments, and stands shivering with cold, whose figure, according to authority, formed an epoch in art. lionardo da vinci, michael angelo, andrea del sarto, fra bartolommeo, all studied their art in this chapel. raphael borrowed the grand figure of st paul preaching at athens in one of the cartoons, from one of masaccio's or filippo lippi's frescoes. masaccio's excellence as an artist, reached at an immature age, is very remarkable. i have come to the last and probably the best appreciated among modems of the early italian painters. fra angelico da fiesole, the gentle devout monk whom italians called '_il beato_,' the blessed, and who probably did receive the distinction of beatification, a distinction only second in the roman catholic church to that of canonization. he was born at the lovely little mountain-town of fiesole near florence, , and his worldly name, which he bore only till his twenty-first year, was guido petri de mugello. in his youth, with his gift already recognized, so that he might well have won ease and honour in the world, he entered the dominican convent of st mark, florence, for what he deemed the good and peace of his soul. he seldom afterwards left it, and that only as directed by his convent superior, or summoned by the pope. he was a man devoid of personal ambition, pure, humble, and meek. when offered the archbishopric of florence as a tribute to his sanctity, he declined it on account of his unworthiness for the office. he would not work for money, and only painted at the command of his prior. he began his painting with fasting and work, he steadfastly refused to make any alteration in the originals. it is said that he was found dead at his easel with a completed picture before him. it is not wonderful, that from such a man should come one side of the perfection of that idealism which giotto had begun. fra angelico's angels, saints, saviour, and virgin are more divinely calm, pure, sweet, endowed with a more exulting saintliness, a more immortal youth and joy, and a more utter self-abnegation and sympathetic tenderness than are to be found in the saints and the angels, the saviour and the virgin of other painters. neither is it surprising that fra angelico's defects, besides that of the bad drawing which shows more in his large than in his small pictures, are those of a want of human knowledge, power, and freedom. his wicked--even his more earthly-souled characters, are weak and faulty in action. what should the reverent and guileless dreamer know, unless indeed by inspiration of the rude conflicts, the fire and fury of human passions intensified in the malice and anguish of devils? but fra angelico's singular successes far transcend his failures. in addition to the sublime serenity and positive radiance of expression which he could impart to his heads, his notions of grouping and draping were full of grace, sometimes of splendour and magnificence. in harmony with his happy temperament and fortunes, he was fond of gay yet delicate colours 'like spring flowers,' and used a profusion of gold ornaments which do not seem out of keeping in his pictures. the most of fra angelico's pictures are in florence--the best in his own old convent of st mark, where he lovingly adorned not only chapter-hall and court, but the cells of his brother friars. a crucifix with adoring saints worshipping their crucified saviour is regarded as his masterpiece in st mark's. a famous coronation of the virgin, which fra angelico painted for a church in his native town, and which is now in the louvre, paris, is thus described by mrs jameson: 'it represents a throne under a rich gothic canopy, to which there is an ascent of nine steps; on the highest kneels the virgin, veiled, her hands crossed on her bosom. she is clothed in a red tunic, a blue robe over it, and a royal mantle with a rich border flowing down behind. the features are most delicately lovely, and the expression of the face full of humility and adoration. christ, seated on the throne, bends forward, and is in the act of placing the crown on her head; on each side are twelve angels, who are playing a heavenly concert with guitars, tambourines, trumpets, viols, and other musical instruments; lower than these, on each side, are forty holy personages of the old and new testament; and at the foot of the throne kneel several saints, male and female, among them st catherine with her wheel, st agnes with her lamb, and st cecilia crowned with flowers. beneath the principal picture there is a row of seven small ones, forming a border, and representing various incidents in the life of st dominic.' chapter ii. early flemish art--the van eycks, - --mabuse, matsys, - or . in the low countries painting had very much the same history that it had in italy, but the dates are later, and there may be a longer interval given to each stage of development. religious painting, profuse in symbolism, with masses of details elaborately worked in, meets us in the first place. this style of painting reached its culmination, in which it included (as it did not include in its representation in the italian pictures) many and varied excellencies, among them the establishment of painting in oil in the pictures of the flemish family of painters--the van eycks. before going into the little that is known of the family history of the van eycks, i should like to call attention to the numerous painter families in the middle ages. what a union, and repose, and happy sympathy of art-life it indicates, which we appear to restlessness and separate interests of modern life. the van eycks consisted of no less than four members of a family, three brothers, hubert, john, and lambert, and one sister, margaret, devoted, like her brothers, to her art. there is a suggestion that they belonged to a small village of limburg called eyck, and repaired to bruges in order to pursue their art. hubert was thirty years older than john, and it is said that he was a serious-minded man as well as an ardent painter, and belonged to the religious fraternity of our lady of ghent. he died in . john, though of so much consideration in his profession as to be believed to be 'the flemish painter' sent by duke philip the good of flanders and burgundy with a mission to portugal to solicit the hand of a princess in marriage, is reported to have died very poor in , and has the suspicion attached to him of having been a lover of pleasure and a spendthrift. of lambert, the third brother, almost nothing is known; indeed, the fact of his existence has only lately come to light. margaret lived and died unmarried, and belonged, like her brother hubert, to the religious society of our lady of ghent. she died about . the invention of painting in oil, for which the van eycks are commonly known, was not literally that of mixing colours with oil, which was occasionally done before their day. it was the combining oil with resin, so as to produce at once a good varnish, and avoid the necessity of drying pictures in the sun, a bright thought, which may stand in the same rank with the construction, by james watt, of that valve which rendered practicable the application of steam to machinery. the thought, occasioned by the cracking of a picture in tempera exposed to the sun, is due to hubert van eyck. the great picture of the van eycks, which was worked at for a number of years by both hubert and john, and, as some reckon, touched by the whole family, is the 'adoration of the lamb,' at st bavon's, ghent. i should like to give a faint idea of this extraordinary picture, which was painted for a burgomaster of ghent and his wife in order to adorn their mortuary chapel in the cathedral. it was an altar piece on separate panels, now broken up and dispersed, only a portion of it being retained in ghent. it may strike some as strange that a picture should be on panels, but those of the old pictures which were not on plastered walls were commonly on panels, many of them on the lids and sides of chests and presses which were used to hold sacred vessels and priestly raiment. when the wings of the van eycks' altar-piece of the 'adoration of the lamb' were opened on festivals, the subjects of the upper central picture were seen, consisting of the triune god, a majestic figure, and at his side in stately calm the virgin and the baptist. on the inside of the wings were angels, at the two extremities adam and eve. the lower central picture shows the lamb of the revelation, whose blood flows into a cup; over it is the dove of the holy spirit. angels, who hold the instruments of the passion, worship the lamb. four groups of many persons advance from the sides, these are the holy martyrs, men and women, priests and laymen. in the foreground is the fountain of life; in the distance are the towers of the heavenly jerusalem. on the wings other groups are coming up to adore the lamb; on the left those who have laboured for the kingdom of the lord by worldly deeds--the soldiers of christ led by st george, st sebastian, and st michael, the patron saints of the old flemish guilds, followed by emperors and kings--a goodly company. beyond the soldiers and princes, on the left, are the righteous judges, also on horseback. in front of them, on a splendidly caparisoned gray, rides a mild, benevolent old man in blue velvet trimmed with fur. this is the likeness of hubert van eyck, painted after his death by his brother john, and john himself is in the group, clothed in black, with a shrewd, sharp countenance. on the self-renunciation have served the lamb in the spirit, hermits and pilgrims, among them st christopher, st anthony, st paul the hermit, mary magdalene, and st mary of egypt. a compartment underneath, which represented hell, finished the whole--yet only the whole on one side, for the wings when closed presented another series of finely thought-out and finished pictures--the annunciation; figures of micah and zechariah; statues of the two st johns, with the likenesses of the donors who gave to the world so great a work of art, kneeling humbly side by side, the burgomaster somewhat mean-looking in such company in spite of the proof of his liberality, but his wife noble enough in feature and expression to have been the originator of this glory of early flemish painting. the upper part of the picture is painted on a gold ground, round the central figure of the lamb is vivid green grass with masses of trees and flowers--indeed there is much lovely landscape no longer indicated by a rock or a bush, but betokening close observation of nature, whether in a fruitful valley, or a rocky defile, or mountain ridges with fleecy clouds overhead. the expression of the immense number of figures is as varied and characteristic as their grouping.[ ] hubert van eyck died while this work was in progress, and it was finished by his brother john six years after hubert's death. when one thinks of the intense application and devotion which such a work costs, and recalls the bronze gates of st john that occupied lorenzo ghiberti years, and when we read, as we shall read a few chapters farther on, of large paintings which were begun and ended in so many days--even so many hours, one can better understand what is the essential difference between the works of the early and the later painters, a difference which no skill, no power even can bridge over. john van eyck, who had lived late enough to have departed from the painting of sacred pictures alone, so that he left portraits and an otter hunt among his works, is three times represented in our national gallery, in three greatly esteemed portraits, one a double portrait, believed to be the likenesses of the painter and his wife, standing hand in hand with a terrier dog at their feet. gossaert, called de mabuse from his native town of mabeuze, sometimes signing his name joannes malbodius, followed in the steps of the van eycks, particularly in his great picture of the 'adoration of the kings,' which is at castle howard, the seat of the earl of carlisle. mabuse was in england and painted the children of henry vii, in a picture, which is at hampton court. there is a picture in the palace of holyrood, edinburgh, which has been attributed to mabuse. it represents on the sides of a triptych or diptych (somewhat like a folding screen) james iii. and his queen with attendants. the fur on the queen's dress displays already that marvellous technical skill for which flemish painting is so celebrated. hans memling belonged to bruges. there is a tradition of him, which is to a certain extent disproven, that he was a poor soldier relieved by the hospital of st john, bruges, and that in gratitude he executed for the hospital the well-known reliquary of st ursula. however it might have originated, this is the most noted work of a painter, who was distinguished frequently by his minute missal-like painting (he was also an illuminator of missals), in which he would introduce fifteen hundred small figures in a picture two feet eight inches, by six feet five inches in size, and work out every detail with the utmost niceness and care. the reliquary, or 'chasse,' is a wooden coffer or shrine about four feet in length, its style and form those of a rich gothic church, its purpose to hold an arm of the saint. the whole exterior is covered with miniatures by memling, nearly the whole of them giving incidents in the legendary history of st ursula, a 'virgin princess of brittany,' or of england, who, setting out with eleven thousand companions, her lover, and an escort of knights on a pilgrimage to rome, was, with her whole company, met and murdered, by a horde of heathen huns, when they had reached cologne, on their return. my readers may be aware that the supposed bones of the virgins and st ursula form the ghastly adornment of the church founded in her honour at cologne. it is absolutely filled with bones, built into the walls, stowed under the pavement, ranged in glass cases about the choir. hans memling's is a pleasanter commemoration of st ursula. quintin matsys, the blacksmith of antwerp, was born at louvain about . though he worked first as a smith he is said by kugler to have belonged to a family of painters, which somewhat takes from the romance, though it adds to the probability of his story. another painter in antwerp having offered the hand and dowry of his daughter--beloved by quintin matsys--as a prize to the painter who should paint the best picture in a competition for her hand, the doughty smith took up the art, entered the lists, and carried off the maiden and her portion from all his more experienced rivals. the vitality of the legend is indicated by the inscription on a tablet to the memory of quintin matsys in the cathedral, antwerp. the latin inscription reads thus in english: 'twas love connubial taught the smith to paint,' quintin matsys lived and died a respected burgher of antwerp, a member of the great antwerp painters' guild of st luke. he was twice married, and had thirteen children. whatever might have been his source of inspiration, quintin matsys was an apt scholar. his 'descent from the cross,' now in the museum, antwerp, was _the_ 'descent from the cross,' and _the_ picture in the cathedral, until superseded by rubens' masterpiece on the same subject. still quintin matsys version remains, and is in some respects an unsurpassed picture. there is a traditional grouping of this divine tragedy, and quintin matsys has followed the tradition. the body of the lord is supported by two venerable old men--joseph of arimathea and nicodemus--while the holy women anoint the wounds of the saviour; the virgin swooning with grief is supported by st john. the figures are full of individuality, and their action is instinct with pathos. for this picture quintin matsys--popular painter as he was--got only three hundred florins, equivalent to twenty-five pounds (although, of course, the value of money was much greater in those days). the joiners' company, for whom he painted the 'descent from the cross,' sold the picture to the city of antwerp for five times the original amount, and it is said queen elizabeth offered the city nearly twenty times the first sum for it, in vain. quintin matsys painted frequently half-length figures of the virgin and child, an example of which is in the national gallery. he excelled in the 'figure painting' of familiar subjects, then just beginning to be established, affording a token of the direction which the future eminence of the flemish painters would take. one of his famous pictures of this kind is 'the misers,' in the queen's collection at windsor. two figures in the flemish costume of the time, are seated at a table; before them are a heap of money and a book, in which one is writing with his right hand, while he tells down the money with his left. the faces express craft and cupidity. the details of the ink-horn on the table, and the bird on its perch behind, have the flemish graphic exactness. chapter iii. in early schools of italian art--the bellini, - --mantegna, - --ghirlandajo, - --il francia, - --fra bartolommeo, - --andrea del sarto, - . i have come to the period when italian art is divided into many schools--paduan, venetian, umbrian, florentine, roman, bolognese, etc., etc. with the schools and their definitions i do not mean to meddle, except it may be to mention to which school a great painter belonged. another difficulty meets me here. i have been trying so far as i could to give the representative painters in the order of time. i can no longer follow this rule strictly, and the grouping of this chapter is made on the principle of leading my readers up by some of the predecessors who linked the older to the later italian painters, and by some of the contemporaries of these later painters, to that central four, lionardo da vinci, michael angelo, raphael, and titian, who occupy so great a place in the history of art. in the brothers bellini and their native venice, we must first deal with that excellence of colouring for which the venetian painters were signally noted, while they comparatively neglected and underrated drawing. a somewhat fanciful theory has been started, that as venice, holland, and england have been distinguished for colour in art, and as all those states are by the sea, so a sea atmosphere has something to do with a passion for colour. within more reasonable bounds, in reference to the venetians, is the consideration that no colouring is richer, mellower, more exquisitely tinted than that which belongs to the blue italian sky over the blue adriatic, with those merged shades of violet, green, and amber, and that magical soft haze which has to do with a moist climate. the two brothers gentile and gian or john bellini, the latter the more famous of the two, were the sons of an old venetian painter, with regard to whom the worthy speech is preserved, that he said it was like the tuscans for son to beat father, and he hoped, in god's name, that giovanni or gian would outstrip him, and gentile, the elder, outstrip both. the brothers worked together and were true and affectionate brothers, encouraging and appreciating each other. gentile was sent by the doge at the request of the sultan--either mahommed ii, or bajazet ii., to constantinople, where gentile bellini painted the portrait of the sultan and the sultana his mother, now in the british museum. the painter also painted the head of john the baptist in a charger as an offering--only too suitable--from him to the grand turk. the legend goes on to tell that in the course of the presentation of the gift, an incident occurred which induced gentile bellini to quit the ottoman court with all haste. the sultan had criticized the appearance of the neck in john the baptist's severed head, and when gentile ventured to defend his work, the sultan proceeded to prove the correctness of his criticism, by drawing his scimitar and cutting off at a stroke the head of a kneeling slave, and pointing to the spouting blood and the shrinking muscle, gave the horrified painter a lesson in practical anatomy. on gentile's return from the east, he was pensioned by his state, and lived on painting, till he was eighty years of age, dying in . gian bellini is said to have obtained by a piece of deceit, which is not in keeping with his manly and honourable character, the secret, naturally coveted by a venetian, of mixing colours with resin and oil. a venetian painter had brought the secret from flanders, and communicated it to a friend, who, in turn, communicated it to a third painter, and was murdered by that third painter for his pains, so greedy and criminal was the craving, not only to possess, but to be as far as possible the sole possessor of, the grand discovery. gian bellini was much less guilty, if he were really guilty. disguised as a venetian nobleman, he proposed to sit for his portrait to that antonella who first brought the secret from flanders, and while antonella worked with unsuspicious openness, gian bellini watched the process and stole the secret. gian bellini lived to the age of ninety, and had among his admirers the poet ariosto and albrecht dürer. the latter saw gian bellini in his age, and said of him, when foolish mockers had risen up to scout at the old man, and his art now become classic, 'he is very old, but he is still the best of our painters.' gian bellini had illustrious pupils, including in their number titian and giorgione. the portraits of gentile and gian, which are preserved in a painting by gian, show gentile fair-complexioned and red-haired, and gian with dark hair. gian bellini is considered to have been less gifted with imagination than some of his great brother artists; but he has proved himself a man of high moral sense, and while he stopped short at the boundary between the seen and the unseen, it is certain he must still have painted with much of 'the divine patience' and devout consecration of all his powers, and of every part of his work, which are the attributes of the earliest italian painters. when he and his brother began to paint, venetian art had already taken its distinctive character for open-air effects, rich scenic details in architecture, furniture and dress (said to be conspicuous in commercial communities), and a growing tendency to portraiture. gian went with the tide, but he guided it to noble results. his simplicity and good sense, with his purity and dignity of mind, were always present. he introduced into his pictures 'singing boys, dancing cherubs, glittering thrones, and dewy flowers,' pressing the outer world into his service and that of religious art. it is said also that his madonnas seem 'amiable beings imbued with a lofty grace;' while his saints are 'powerful and noble forms.' but he never descended to the paltry or the vulgar. he knew from the depths of his own soul how to invest a face with moral grandeur. especially in his representations of our saviour gian bellini 'displays a perception of moral power and grandeur seldom equalled in the history of art.' the example given is that of the single figure of the lord in the dresden gallery, where the son of god, without nimbus, or glory, stands forth as the 'ideal of elevated humanity.' the greater portion of gian bellini's pictures remain in the churches and galleries of venice. but the first great work at which the two brothers in their youth worked in company--the painting of the hall of council in the palace of the doge, with a series of historical and legendary pictures of the venetian wars with the emperor frederick barbarossa ( ), including the doge ziani's receiving from the pope the gold ring with which the doge espoused the adriatic, in token of perpetual dominion over the sea--was unfortunately destroyed by fire in . giovanni bellini's greatest work, now at st salvatore, is christ at emmaus, with venetian senators and a turkish dragoman introduced as spectators of the risen lord. of another great work at vicenza, painted in gian bellini's old age, when neither his skill nor his strength was abated, 'the baptism of christ,' dean alford writes thus: 'let us remain long and look earnestly, for there is indeed much to be seen. that central figure, standing with hands folded on his bosom, so gentle, so majestic, so perfect in blameless humanity, oh what labour of reverent thought; what toil of ceaseless meditation; what changes of fair purpose, oscillating into clearest vision of ideal truth, must it have cost the great painter, before he put forth that which we see now! it is as impossible to find aught but love and majesty in the divine countenance, as it is to discover a blemish on the complexion of that body, which seems to give forth light from itself, as he stands in obedience, fulfilling all righteousness. 'and even on the accessories to this figure, we see the same loving and reverent toil bestowed. the cincture, where alone the body is hidden from view, is no web of man's weaving; or, if it were, it is of hers whose heart was full of divine thoughts as she wove: so bright and clear is the tint, so exquisitely careful and delicate every fold where light may play or colour vary. and look under the sacred feet, on the ground blessed by their pressure; no dash of hurrying brush has been there: less than a long day's light, eve, did not suffice to give in individual shape and shade every minutest pebble and mote of that shore of jordan. every one of them was worth painting, for we are viewing them as in the light of his presence who made them all and knew them all. 'and now let us pass to the other figures: to that living and glowing angelic group in the left hand of the picture. three of the heavenly host are present, variously affected by that which they behold. the first, next the spectator, in the corner of the picture, is standing in silent adoration, tender and gentle in expression, the hands together, but only the points of the fingers touching, his very reverence being chastened by angelic modesty; the second turns on that which he sees a look of earnest inquiry, but kneels as he looks; and indeed that which he sees is one of the things which angels desire to look into. the third, a majestic herald-like figure, stands, as one speaking, looking to the spectator, with his right hand on his garment, and his left out as in demonstration, unmistakeably saying to us who look on, "behold what love is here!" then, hardly noticing what might well be much noticed, the grand dark figure of the baptist on the right, let us observe how beautifully and accurately all the features of the landscape are given.' of the same work another critic records: 'the attendant angels in this work (signed by the artist) are of special interest, instinct with an indefinable purity and depth of reverential tenderness elsewhere hardly rivalled. but the picture, like that in s. giovanni crisostomo, with which it is nearly contemporary, is almost more interesting from the astonishing truth and beauty of its landscape portions. _these_ form here a feature more important, perhaps, than in any work of that period; the stratification and form of the rocks in the foreground, the palms and other trees relieved against the lucid distance, and the mountain-ranges of tender blue beyond, are as much beyond praise for their beauty and their truth, as they have been beyond imitation from the solidity and transparent strength of their execution! the minute finish is nature's, and the colouring more gem-like than gems.' no praise can exceed that bestowed on gian bellini's colouring for its intensity and transparency. 'many of his draperies are like crystal of the clearest and deepest colour,' declares an authority; and another states' his best works have a clear jewel brightness, an internal gem-like fire such as warms a summer twilight. the shadows are intense and yet transparent, like the adriatic waves when they lie out of the sun under the palace bridges.' portrait-painting, just beginning, was established in venice, its later stronghold, by gian bellini. his truthful portrait of the doge loredano, one of the earliest of that series of doges' portraits which once hung in state in the ducal palace, is now in our national gallery. of gentile bellini, whose work was softer, but less vigorous than his brother's, the best painting extant is that at milan of st mark preaching at alexandria, in which the painter showed how he had profited by his residence at constantinople in the introduction of much rich turkish costume, and of an animal unknown to europe at the time--a camelopard. andrea mantegna was born near padua. he was the son of a farmer. his early history, according to tradition, is very similar to that of giotto. just as cimabue adopted giotto, squarcione, a painter who had travelled in italy and greece, and made a great collection of antiques, from which he taught in a famous school of painters, adopted andrea mantegna at the early age of ten years. it was long believed that mantegna, in the end, forfeited the favour of his master by marrying nicolosa bellini, the sister of gentile and gian bellini, whose father was the great rival of squarcione; and farther, that mantegna's style of painting had been considered bellini. modern researches, which have substituted another surname for that of bellini as the surname of andrea mantegna's wife, contradict this story. andrea mantegna, a man of much energy and fancy, entered young into the service of the gonzaga lords of mantua, receiving from them a salary of thirty pounds a year and a piece of land, on which the painter built a house, and painted it within and without--the latter one of the first examples of artistic waste, followed later by tintoret and veronese, regardless of the fact that painting could not survive in the open air of northern italy. andrea mantegna had his home at mantua, except when he was called to rome to paint for the pope, innocent viii. an anecdote is told by mrs jameson of this commission. it seems the pope's payments were irregular; and one day when he visited his painter at work, and his holiness asked the meaning of a certain allegorical female figure in the design, andrea answered, with somewhat audacious point, that he was trying to represent _patience_. the pope, understanding the allusion, paid the painter in his own coin, by remarking in reply, 'if you would place patience in fitting company, you would paint discretion at her side.' andrea took the hint, said no more, and when his work was finished not only received his money, but was munificently rewarded. andrea mantegna had two sons and a daughter. one of his sons painted with his father, and, after andrea mantegna's death, completed some of his pictures. andrea mantegna's early study of antique sculpture moulded his whole life's work. he took great delight in modelling, in perspective, of which he made himself a master, and in chiaroscuro, or light and shade. had his powers of invention and grace not kept pace with his skill, he would have been a stiff and formal worker; as it was, he carried the austerity of sculpture into painting, and his greatest work, the 'triumph of julius cæsar,' would have been better suited for the chiselled frieze of a temple than it is for the painted frieze of the hall of a palace. yet he was a great leader and teacher in art, and the true proportions of his drawing are grand, if his colouring is harsh. i am happy to say that mantegna's 'triumph of julius cæsar' is in england at hampton court, having been bought from the duke of mantua by charles i. these cartoons, nine in number, are sketches in water-colour or distemper on paper fixed on cloth. they are faded and dilapidated, as they well may be, considering the slightness of the materials and their age, about four hundred years. at the same time, they are, after the cartoons of raphael (which formed part of the same art collection of charles i.), perhaps the most valuable and interesting relic of art in england. the series of the 'triumph' contain the different parts, originally separated by pillars, of a long and splendid procession. there are trumpeters and standard bearers, the statues of the gods borne aloft, battering-rams and heaps of glittering armour, trophies of conquest in huge vases filled with coin, garlanded oxen, and elephants. the second last of the series, presents the ranks of captives forming part of the show, rebellious men, submissive women, and unconscious children--a moving picture. in the last of the series comes the great conqueror in his chariot, a youth in the crowd following him, carrying his banner, on which is inscribed cæsar's notable despatch, 'veni, vidi, vici;' 'i came, i saw, i conquered.' another of mantegna's best pictures is in distemper--in which, and on fresco, mantegna chiefly painted,--and is in the louvre, paris. it is the madonna of victory, so called from its being painted to commemorate the deliverance of italy from the french army under charles viii., a name which has acquired a sardonic meaning from the ultimate destination of the picture. this picture--which represents the virgin and child on a throne, in an arbour of fruit and flowers, between the archangels, michael and st maurice, in complete armour, with the patron saints of mantua and the infant st john in the front, and the marquis ludovico of mantua and his wife, isabella d'este, kneeling to return thanks--was painted by mantegna at the age of seventy years; and, as if the art of the man had mellowed with time, it is the softest and tenderest of his pictures in execution. a beautiful madonna of mantegna's, still later in time, is in the national gallery. when mantegna was sixty years old he took up the art of engraving, and prosecuted it with zeal and success, being one of the earliest painters who engraved his own pictures, and this accomplishment spread them abroad a hundredfold. domenico ghirlandajo was properly domenico bicordi, but inherited from his father, a goldsmith in florence,[ ] the by-name of ghirlandajo or garland-maker--a distinctive appellation said to have been acquired by the elder man from his skill in making silver garlands for the heads of florentine women and children. domenico ghirlandajo worked at his father's craft till he was twenty-four years of age, when, having in the mean time evinced great cleverness in taking the likenesses of the frequenters of ghirlandajo the elder's shop, the future painter abandoned the goldsmith's trade for art pure and simple. he soon vindicated the wisdom of the step which he had taken by giving proofs of something of the strength of masaccio, united with a reflection of the feeling of fra angelico. ghirlandajo was summoned soon to rome to paint in the sistine chapel, afterwards to be so glorious; but his greatest works were done in the prime of his manhood, in his native city, florence, where he was chosen as the teacher of michael angelo, who was apprenticed to ghirlandajo for three years. while still in the flower of his age and crowned with golden opinions, being, it is said with effusion, 'the delight of his city,' ghirlandajo died after a short illness, in ghirlandajo's time florence had reached her meridian, and her citizens outvied each other in the magnificence of their gifts to their fair mother city. ghirlandajo was fitted to be their painter; himself a generous-spirited artist, in the exuberance of life and power, he wished that his fellow-citizens would give him all the walls of the city to cover with frescoes. he was content with the specified sum for his painting, desiring more the approbation of his employers than additional crowns. his genius lying largely in the direction of portrait painting, he introduced frequently the portraits of contemporaries, causing them to figure as spectators of his sacred scenes. one of these contemporaries thus presented, was amerigo vespucci, who was to give his name to a continent. another was a florentine beauty, a woman of rank, ginevra de benci. ghirlandajo was lavish in his employment of rich florentine costumes and architecture. he even made the legends of the saints and the histories of the bible appear as if they had happened under the shadow of brunelleschi's duomo and giotto's campanile, and within sound of the flow of the arno. in the peculiar colouring used in fresco painting ghirlandajo excelled. he painted a chapel for a florentine citizen, francesco sasetti, in the church of the trinità, florence, with scenes from the life of st francis. of these, the death of st francis, surrounded by the sorrowing monks of his order, with the figures of francesco sasetti and his wife, madonna nera, on one side of the picture, is considered the best. as a curious illustration of the modernizing practice of ghirlandajo, he has painted an old priest at the foot of the bier, chanting the litanies for the dying, with spectacles on his nose, the earliest known representation of these useful instruments. ghirlandajo painted during four years the choir of the church of santa maria novella, florence, for one of the great florentine benefactors, giovanni tornabuone, and there are to be seen some of ghirlandajo's finest frescoes from the history of john the baptist and the virgin. a madonna and child with angels in the national gallery is attributed to ghirlandajo. francesco francia, or il francia, was born at bologna, and was the son of a carpenter, whose surname was raibaloni, but francesco assumed the name of his master, a goldsmith, and worked himself at a goldsmith's trade till he was forty years of age. indeed he may be said never to have relinquished his connection with the trade, and certainly he was no more ashamed of it than of his calling as a painter, for he signed himself indiscriminately 'goldsmith' and 'painter,' and sometimes whimsically put 'goldsmith' to his paintings and 'painter' to his jewellery. he was a famous designer of dies for coins and medals, and it is quite probable, as a countryman of his own has sought to prove, that he was the celebrated type-cutter, known as 'francesco da bologna.' but it is with francesco '_pictor_' that we have to do. though he only began to prosecute the painter's art in middle age, he rose with remarkable rapidity to eminence, was the great painter of lombardy in his day, rivalling squarcione, mantegna's teacher in his school, which numbered two hundred scholars, and becoming the founder of the early bolognese school of painters. francia is said to have been very handsome in person, with a kindly disposition and an agreeable manner. he was on terms of cordial friendship with raphael, then in his youth, and thirty years il francia's junior. il francia addressed an enthusiastic sonnet to raphael, and there is extant a letter of raphael's to il francia, excusing himself for not sending his friend raphael's portrait, and making an exchange of sketches, that of his 'nativity' for the drawing of il francia's 'judith;' while it was to il francia's care that raphael committed his picture of st cecilia, when it was first sent to bologna. these relations between the men and their characters throw discredit on the tradition that il francia died from jealous grief caused by the sight of raphael's 'st cecilia.' as il francia was seventy years of age at the time of his death, one may well attribute it to physical causes. il francia had at least one son, and another kinsman, painters, whose paintings were so good as to be occasionally confounded with those of il francia. il francia is thought to have united, in his works, a certain calm sedateness and frank sincerity to the dreamy imaginativeness of some of his contemporaries. his finest works are considered to be the frescoes from the life of st cecilia in the church of st cecilia at bologna. of a madonna and child, by francia, at bologna, i shall write down another of dean alford's descriptions,--many of which i have given for this, among other reasons, that these descriptions are not technical or professional, but the expression of the ardent admiration and grateful comprehension of a sympathetic spectator. 'he,' speaking of the divine child, 'is lying in simple nakedness on a rich red carpet, and is supported by a white pillar, over which the carpet passes. of these accessories every thread is most delicately and carefully painted; no slovenly washes of meretricious colour where he is to be served, before whom all things are open; no perfunctory sparing of toil in serving him who has given us all that is best. on his right hand kneels the virgin mother in adoration, her very face a magnificat--praise, lowliness, confidence; next to her, joseph, telling by his looks the wonderful story, deeply but simply. two beautiful angels kneel, one on either side--hereafter, perhaps, to kneel in like manner in the tomb. their faces seemed to me notable for that which i have no doubt the painter intended to express,--the pure abstraction of reverent adoration, unmingled with human sympathies. the face and figure of the divine infant are full of majesty, as he holds his hands in blessing towards the spectator, who symbolizes the world which he has come to save. close to him on the ground, on his right branch in trustful repose; on his left springs a plant of the meadow-trefoil. thus lightly and reverently has the master touched the mystery of the blessed trinity: the goldfinch symbolizing by its colours, the trefoil by the form of its leaf.' in our own national gallery is a picture by il francia of the enthroned virgin and child and her mother, st anne, who is presenting a peach to the infant christ; at the foot of the throne is the little st john; to the right and left are st paul with the sword, st sebastian bound to a pillar and pierced with arrows, and st lawrence with the emblematical grid-iron, etc. etc. opposite this picture hangs, what once formed part of it, a solemn, sorrowful pietà, as the italians call a picture representing the dead redeemer mourned over by the virgin and by the other holy women. these pictures were bought by our government from the duke of lucca for three thousand five hundred pounds. fra bartolommeo. we come to a second gentle monk, not unlike fra angelico in his nature, but far less happy than fra angelico, in having been born in stormy times. fra bartolommeo, called also baccio della porta, or bartholomew of the gate, from the situation of his lodgings when a young man, but scarcely known in italy by any other name than that of il frate, or the friar, was born near florence, and trained from his boyhood to be a painter. in his youth, however, a terrible public event convulsed florence, and revolutionized baccio della porta's life. he had been employed to paint in that notable dominican convent of st mark, where savonarola, its devoted friar, was denouncing the sins of the times, including the profligate luxury of the nobles and the degradation of the representatives of the church. carried away by the fervour and sincerity of the speaker, baccio joined the enthusiasts who cast into a burning pile the instruments of pride, vanity, and godless intellect denounced by the preacher. baccio's sacrifice to the flaming heap of splendid furniture and dress, and worldly books, was all his designs from profane subjects and studies of the undraped figure. a little later savonarola was excommunicated by the pope and perished as a martyr; and baccio, timid from his natural temper, distracted by doubt, and altogether horror-stricken, took a monk's vows, and entered the same convent of st mark, where for four years he never touched a pencil. at the request of his superior fra bartolommeo painted again, and when raphael visited florence, and came with all his conquering sweetness and graciousness to greet the monk in his cell, something of il frate's old love for his art, and delight in its exercise, returned. he even visited rome, but there his health failed him, and the great works of lionardo, michael angelo, and raphael, when he compared his own with theirs, seemed to crush and overwhelm him. but he painted better for his visit to rome, even as he had painted better for his intimacy with raphael. nay, it is said raphael himself painted better on account of his brotherly regard for, and confidence in, fra bartolommeo. fra bartolommeo died aged forty-eight years. among his best pupils was a nun of st catherine's, known as suor plautilla. to il frate, as a painter, is attributed great softness and harmony, and even majesty, though, like fra angelico, he was often deficient in strength. he was great in the management of draperies, for the better study of which he is said to have invented the lay figure. he indulged in the introduction into his pictures of rich architecture. he was fond of painting boy-angels--in which he excelled--playing frequently on musical instruments, or holding a canopy over the virgin. very few of his works are out of italy; the most are in florence, especially in the pitti palace. his two greatest works are the madonna della misericordia, or the madonna of mercy, at lucca, where the virgin stands with outstretched arms pleading for the suppliants, whom she shelters under the canopy, and who look to her as she looks to her son,--and the grand single figure of st mark, with his gospel in his hand, in the pitti palace, florence. sir david wilkie said of the madonna of mercy, 'that it contained the merits of raphael, of titian, of rembrandt, and of rubens.' andrea vanucchi, commonly called andrea del sarto, from the occupation of his father, who was a tailor (in italian, _sarto_), was born at florence in . he was first a goldsmith, but soon turned painter, winning early the commendatory title of 'andrea senza errori,' or 'andrea the faultless.' his life is a miserable and tragic history. in the early flush of his genius and industry, with its just crown of fame and success, he conceived a passion for a beautiful but worthless woman, whom, in spite of the opposition of his friends, he married. she rendered his home degraded and wretched, and his friends and scholars fell off from him. in disgust he quitted florence, and entered the service of francis i, of france; but his wife, for whom his regard was a desperate infatuation, imperiously summoned him back to florence, to which he returned, bringing with him a large sum of money, entrusted to him by the king for the purchase of works of art. instigated by his wife, andrea del sarto used this money for his, or rather her, purposes, and dared not return to france. even in his native florence he was loaded with reproach and shame. he died of the plague at the age of fifty-five years, according to tradition, plundered and abandoned in his extremity by the base woman for whom he had sacrificed principle and honour. we may read the grievous story of andrea del sarto, written by one of the greatest of england's modern poets. as may be imagined, andrea del sarto's excellence lay in the charm of his execution. his works were deficient in earnestness and high feeling, and some will have it, that, evilly haunted as he was, he perpetually painted in his madonnas the beautiful but base-souled face of the woman who ruined him. andrea del sarto's best works are in florence, particularly in the cloisters of the convent of the annunziata. in the court of the same convent is his famous riposo (or rest of the holy family on their way to egypt), which is known as the 'madonna of the sack,' from the circumstance of joseph in the picture leaning against a sack. this picture has held a high place in art for hundreds of years. chapter iv. lionardo da vinci, - --michael angelo, - --raphael, - --titian, - . we have arrived at the triumph of art, not, indeed, in unconsciousness and devotion, but in fulness and completeness, as shown in the works of four of the greatest painters and men whom the world ever saw. of the first, lionardo da vinci, born at vinci in the neighbourhood of florence, , it may be said that the many-sidedness which characterized italians--above all italians of his day--reached its height in him. not only was he a painter, a sculptor, an architect, and engineer, but also one of the boldest speculators of the generation which gave birth to columbus, and was not less original and ingenious than he was universally accomplished--an admirable crichton among painters. there is a theory that this many-sidedness is a proof of the greatest men, indicating a man who might have been great in any way, who, had his destiny not found and left him a painter, would have been equally great as a philosopher, a man of science, a poet, or a statesman. it may be so; but the life of lionardo tends also to illustrate the disadvantage of too wide a grasp and diffusion of genius. beginning much and finishing little, not because he was idle or fickle, but because his schemes were so colossal and his aims so high, he spent his time in preparation for the attainment of perfect excellence, which eluded him. lionardo was the pioneer, the teacher of others, rather than the complete fulfiller of his own dreams; and the life of the proud, passionate man was, to him self mortification. this result might, in a sense, have been avoided; but lionardo, great as he was, proved also one of those unfortunate men whose noblest efforts are met and marred by calamities which could have hardly been foreseen or prevented. lionardo da vinci was the son of a notary, and early showed a taste for painting as well as for arithmetic and mathematics. he was apprenticed to a painter, but he also sedulously studied physics. he is said, indeed, to have made marvellous guesses at truth, in chemistry, botany, astronomy, and particularly, as helping him in his art, anatomy. he was, according to other accounts, a man of noble person, like ghirlandajo. and one can scarcely doubt this who looks at lionardo's portrait painted by himself, or at any engraving from it, and remarks the grand presence of the man in his cap and furred cloak; his piercing wistful eyes; stately outline of nose; and sensitive mouth, unshaded by his magnificent flowing beard. he was endowed with surprising bodily strength, and was skilled in the knightly exercises of riding, fencing, and dancing. he was a lover of social pleasure, and inclined to indulge in expensive habits. while a lad he amused himself by inventing machines for swimming, diving, and flying, as well as a compass, a hygrometer, etc. etc. in a combination from the attributes of the toads, lizards, bats, etc. etc., with which his studies in natural history had made him familiar, he painted a nondescript monster, which he showed suddenly to his father, whom it filled with horror. but the horror did not prevent the old lawyer selling the wild phantasmagoria for a large sum of money. as something beyond amusement, lionardo planned a canal to unite florence with pisa (while he executed other canals in the course of his life), and suggested the daring but not impossible idea of raising _en masse_, by means of levers, the old church of san giovanni, florence, till it should stand several feet above its original level, and so get rid of the half-sunken appearance which destroyed the effect of the fine old building. he visited the most frequented places, carrying always with him his sketch-book, in which to note down his observations; he followed criminals to execution in order to witness the pangs of despair; he invited peasants to his house and told them laughable stories, that he might pick up from their faces the essence of comic expression.[ ] a mania for truth--alike in great and little things--possessed him. lionardo entered young into the service of the gonzaga family of milan, being, according to one statement, chosen for the office which he was to fill, as the first singer in _improvisatore_ of his time (among his other inventions he devised a peculiar kind of lyre). he showed no want of confidence in asserting his claims to be elected, for after declaring the various works he would undertake, he added with regard to painting--'i can do what can be done, as well as any man, be he who he may.' he received from the duke a salary of five hundred crowns a year. he was fourteen years at the court of milan, where, among other works, he painted his 'cenacolo,' or 'last supper,' one of the grandest pictures ever produced. he painted it, contrary to the usual practice, in oils upon the plastered walls of the refectory of the dominican convent, milan. the situation was damp, and the material used proved so unsuitable for work on plaster, that, even before it was exposed to the reverses which in the course of a french occupation of milan converted the refectory into a stable, the colours had altogether faded, and the very substance of the picture was crumbling into ruin. the equestrian statue of the old duke of milan by lionardo excited so much delight in its first freshness, that it was carried in triumph through the city, and during the progress it was accidentally broken. lionardo began another, but funds failed for its completion, and afterwards the french used the original clay model as a target for their bowmen. lionardo returned to florence, and found his great rival, michael angelo, already in the field. both of the men, conscious of mighty gifts, were intolerant of rivalry. to lionardo especially, as being much the elder man, the originator and promoter of many of the new views in art which his opponent had adopted, the competition was very distasteful, and to michael angelo he used the bitter sarcasm which has been handed down to us, 'i was famous before you were born.' nevertheless lionardo consented to compete with michael angelo for the painting in fresco of one side of the council-hall, by the order of the gonfaloniere for the year. lionardo chose for his subject a victory of the florentines over the milanese, while michael angelo took a scene from the pisan campaigns. not only was the work never done (some say partly because lionardo _would_ delay in order to make experiments in oils) on account of political troubles, but the very cartoons of the two masters, which all the artists of the day flocked to see, have been broken up, dispersed, and lost; and of one only, that of michael angelo, a small copy remains, while but a fragment from lionardo's was preserved in a copy made by rubens. lionardo went to rome in the pontificate of leo x., but there his quarrel with michael angelo broke out more violently than ever. the pope too, who loved better a gentler, more accommodating spirit, seemed to slight lionardo, and the great painter not only quitted rome in disgust, but withdrew his services altogether from ungrateful italy. at pavia lionardo was presented to francis i, of france, who, zealous in patronizing art, engaged the painter to follow francis's fortunes at a salary of seven hundred crowns a year. lionardo spent the remainder of his life in france. his health had long been declining before he died, aged sixty-seven years, at cloux, near amboise. he had risen high in the favour of francis. from this circumstance, and the generous, chivalrous nature of the king, there doubtless arose the tradition that francis visited lionardo on his death-bed; and that, while in the act of gently assisting him to raise himself, the painter died in the king's arms. court chronicles do their best to demolish this story, by proving francis to have been at st germain on the day when lionardo died at cloux. lionardo was never married, and he left what worldly goods he possessed to a favourite scholar. besides his greater works, he filled many ms. volumes, some with singularly accurate studies and sketches, maps, plans for machines, scores for music (three volumes of these are in the royal library at windsor), and some with writing, which is written--probably to serve as a sort of cipher--from right to left, instead of from left to right. one of his writings is a valuable 'treatise' on painting; other writings are on scientific and philosophic subjects, and in these lionardo is believed to have anticipated some of the discoveries which were reached by lines of close reasoning centuries later. lionardo's genius as a painter was expressed by his uniting, in the very highest degree, truth and imagination. he was the shrewdest observer of ordinary life, and he could also realize the higher mysteries and profounder feelings of human nature. he drew exceedingly well. of transparent lights and shadows, or chiaroscuro, he was the greatest master; but he was not a good colourist. his works are very rare, and many which are attributed to him are the pictures of his scholars, for he founded one of the great schools of milan or lombardy. there is a tradition that he was, as holbein was once believed to be, ambidextrous, or capable of using his left hand as well as his right, and that he painted with two brushes--one in each hand. thus more than fully armed, lionardo da vinci looms out on us like a titan through the mists of centuries, and he preaches to us the simple homily, that not even a titan can command worldly success; that such men must look to ends as the reward of their travail, and before undertaking it they must count the cost, and be prepared to renounce the luxurious tastes which clung to lionardo, and which were not for him or for such men as he was. lionardo's great painting was his 'last supper,' of which, happily, good copies exist, as well as the wreck of the picture itself. the original is now, after it is too late, carefully guarded and protected in its old place in the dominican convent of the madonna della grazia, milan. the assembled company sit at a long table, christ being seated in the middle, the disciples forming two separate groups on each side of the saviour. the gradations of age are preserved, from the tender youth of john to the grey hairs of simon; and all the varied emotions of mind, from the deepest sorrow and anxiety to the eager desire of revenge, are here portrayed. the well-known words of christ, 'one of you shall betray me,' have caused the liveliest emotion. the two groups to the left of christ are full of impassioned excitement, the figures in the first turning to the saviour, those in the second speaking to each other,--horror, astonishment, suspicion, doubt, alternating in the various expressions. on the other hand, stillness, low whispers, indirect observations, are the prevailing expressions in the groups on the right. in the middle of the first group sits the betrayer; a cunning, sharp profile, he looks up hastily to christ, as if speaking the words, 'master, is it i?' while, true to the scriptural account, his left hand and christ's right hand approach, as if unconsciously, the dish that stands before them.[ ] a sketch of the head of christ for the original picture, which has been preserved on a torn and soiled piece of paper at brera, expresses the most elevated seriousness, together with divine gentleness pain on account of the faithless disciple, a full presentiment of his own death, and resignation to the will of the father. it gives a faint idea of what the master may have accomplished in the finished picture. during his stay at florence lionardo painted a portrait of that ginevra benci already mentioned as painted by ghirlandajo; and a still more famous portrait by lionardo was that of mona lisa, the wife of his friend giocondo. this picture is also known as 'la jaconde.' i wish to call attention to it because it is the first of four surpassingly beautiful portraits of women which four great painters gave in succession to the world. the others, to be spoken of afterwards, are raphael's 'fornarina,' titian's 'bella donna,' and rubens' 'straw hat.' about the original of 'la jaconde' there never has been a mystery such as there has been about the others. at this portrait the unsatisfied painter worked at intervals for four years, and when he left it he pronounced it still unfinished. 'la jaconde' is now in the louvre in nearly ruined condition, yet a judge says of it that even now 'there is something in this wonderful head of the ripest southern beauty, with its airy background of a rocky landscape, which exercises a peculiar fascination over the mind.' there is a painting of the madonna and child christ said to be by lionardo, and probably, at least, by one of his school, and which belongs, i think, to the duke of buccleuch, and was exhibited lately among the works of the old masters. the group has at once something touching and exalted in its treatment. the divine child in the mother's arms is strangely attracted by the sight of a cross, and turns towards it with ineffable longing, while the virgin mother, with a pang of foreboding, clasping the child in her arms, seeks to draw him back. the fragment of the cartoon in which lionardo competed with michael angelo, may be held to survive in the fine painting by rubens called 'the battle of the standard.' of a famous madonna and st anne, by lionardo, the original cartoon in black chalk is preserved under glass in our royal academy.[ ] michael angelo buonarroti, born at castel caprese near tuscany, , is the next of these universal geniuses, a term which we are accustomed to hold in contempt, because we have only seen it exemplified in parody. after lionardo, indeed, michael angelo, though he was also painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, poet, musician, might almost be regarded as restricted in his pursuits, yet still so manifold was he, that men have loved to make a play upon his name and call him 'michael the angel,' and to speak of him as of a king among men. michael angelo was of noble descent, and though his ancient house had fallen into comparative poverty, his father was mayor or podesta of chiusi, and governor of the castle of chiusi and caprese. michael angelo was destined for the profession of the law, but so early vindicated his taste for art, that at the age of thirteen years he was apprenticed to ghirlandajo. lorenzo the magnificent was then ruling florence, and he had made a collection of antique models in his palace and gardens, and constituted it an academy for young artists. in this academy michael angelo developed a strong bias for sculpture, and won the direct patronage of the medici. to this period of his life belong two characteristic anecdotes. in a struggle with a fellow-student, michael angelo received a blow from a mallet in his face, which, breaking bone and cartilage, lent to his nose the rugged bend, 'the bar of michael angelo.' an ill-advised member of the medician house, while entertaining a party of guests during a snowstorm, sent out the indignant artist to make a snow man within sight of the palace windows. these anecdotes bear indirectly on the ruling qualities of michael angelo--qualities so integral that they are wrought into his marble and painted on his canvas--proud independence and energy. before going farther i wish to guard against a common misapprehension of michael angelo--that he was a haughty, arrogant man, absolutely narrow in his half-idolatrous, half-human worship of art. michael angelo was severe in place of being sweet; he was impatient of contradiction; he was careless and scornful of ceremony; and in his very wrath at flattery and hypocrisy, he was liable to sin against his own honesty and sincerity. but he was a man with a lofty sense of duty and a profound reverence for god. he was, unlike lionardo, consistently simple, frugal, and temperate, throughout his long life. if he held up a high standard to others, and enforced it on them with hardness, he held up a higher standard to himself, and enforced it on himself more hardly still. he was a thoroughly unworldly man, and actions which had their root in unworldliness have been ascribed unjustly to a kind of lucifer pride. greed, and the meanness of greed, were unknown to him. he worked for the last ten years of his life (under no less than five different popes) at his designs for st peter's, steadfastly refusing pay for the work, saying that he did it for the honour of god and his own honour. he made many enemies and suffered from their enmity, but i cannot learn that, except in one instance, he was guilty of dealing an unworthy blow at his opponents. he was generous to his scholars, and without jealousy of them, suffering them to use his designs for their own purposes. he said, 'i have no friends, i need none, i wish for none;' but that was in feeling himself 'alone before heaven;' and of the friends whom he did possess, he loved them all the more devotedly and faithfully, because they were few in number. one need only be told of his love for his old servant urbino, whom he presented with two thousand crowns to render him independent of service; and when the servant was seized with his last illness michael angelo nursed him tenderly, sleeping in his clothes on a couch that he might be ready to attend his patient. when his cares were ended, michael angelo wrote to a correspondent--'my urbino is dead--to my infinite grief and sorrow. living, he served me truly; and in his death he taught me how to die. of michael angelo's more equal friendship with vittoria colonna i hope my readers will read at leisure for themselves. no nobler, truer friendship ever existed. it began when the high-born and beautiful, gifted, and devout marchesa de pescara--most loyal of wives and widows, was forty-eight, and michael angelo sixty-four years of age. after a few years of privileged intercourse and correspondence, which were the happiest years in michael angelo's life, it ended for this world when he stood mourning by her lifeless clay. 'i was born a rough model, and it was for thee to reform and re-make me,' the great painter had written humbly of himself to his liege lady.[ ] italy, in michael angelo's time, as germany in albert dürer's, was all quickened and astir with the new wave of religious thought which brought about the reformation. ochino and peter martyr, treading in the footsteps of savonarola, had preached to eager listeners, but 'in italy men did not adopt lutheranism, though they approached it;' and in all the crowd of great italian artists of the day, michael angelo shows deepest traces of the conflict--of its trouble, its seriousness, its nobleness. he only, among his brethren, acted out his belief that the things of the world sank into insignificance before those thoughts of god and immortality which were alone fully worthy of the soul. and it was, as to a religious work for which he was fitted, that he at last gave himself up to the raising of st peter's. we shall have next in order the life of a man who had all the winning qualities which michael angelo wanted, but we shall hardly, through the whole range of history, find a nobler man than michael angelo. after his first visit to rome, , michael angelo executed his colossal statue of david. in he entered into the competition with lionardo for the painting of one end of the council-hall, in florence, which has been already mentioned. for this object he drew as his cartoon, 'pisan soldiers surprised while bathing by a sudden trumpet call to arms.' the grand cartoon, of which only a small copy exists, was said to have been torn to pieces as an act of revenge by a fellow-sculptor, whom michael angelo had offended. michael angelo was invited to rome by julius ii. in to aid in erecting the unapproachable monument which the pope projected raising for himself. then commenced a series of contentions and struggles between the imperious and petulant pope and the haughty, uncompromising painter, in which the latter certainly had the best of it. at one time in the course of the quarrel, michael angelo departed from rome without permission or apology, and stoutly refused to return, though followed hotly by no less than five different couriers, armed with threats and promises, and urged to make the reparation by his own gonfaloniere. at last a meeting and a reconciliation between michael angelo and the pope were effected at bologna. michael angelo designed for pope julius ii, not only the statue of pope julius at bologna, which was finally converted into a cannon, and turned against the very man whose effigy it had originally presented, but also for that tomb which was never completed, the famous figure of moses seated, grasping his beard with one hand. while employed at the tomb, michael angelo, then in his fortieth year, was desired by the pope to undertake the decoration of the ceiling of the sistine chapel. here, again, the hand of an enemy is said to have been at work. michael angelo, with the first place as a sculptor, was inexperienced in fresco painting; while raphael, who was taking the place of lionardo as michael angelo's most formidable rival (yet whom it is said michael angelo pointed out as the fittest painter of the ceiling), and who was then engaged in painting the vatican chambers, had already achieved the utmost renown. it was anticipated by secret hostility, so records tradition, that michael angelo would fail signally in the unaccustomed work, and that his merit as an artist would pale altogether before that of raphael's. i need hardly write how entirely malice was balked in the verdict to which posterity has set its seal. michael angelo brought artists from florence to help him in his great undertaking, for over the chapel, whose walls had already been painted by older artists--among them ghirlandajo, was an enormous vault of feet in length by in breadth, which michael angelo was required to cover with designs representing the fall and redemption of man. but the painter was unable to bear what seemed to him the bungling attempts of his assistants; so dismissing them all and destroying their work, he shut himself up, and working in solitude and secrecy, set himself to evolve from his own inner consciousness the gigantic scenes of a tremendous drama. in months (or, as kugler holds, in three years, including the time spent on the designs) he finished gloriously the work, the magnitude of which one must see to comprehend. on all saints' day, , the ceiling was uncovered, and michael angelo was hailed, little though he cared for such clamorous hailing, as a painter indeed. for this piece of work michael angelo received crowns. pope julius died, and was succeeded by leo x. of the medician house, but, in spite of early associations as well as of mother country, michael angelo was no more acceptable to the pope--a brilliantly polished, easy-tempered man of the world, who filled the chair of st peter's, than lionardo had been. leo x, greatly preferred raphael, to whom all manner of pleasantness as well as of courteous deference was natural, to the two others. at the same time, leo employed michael angelo, though it was more as an architect than as a painter, and rather at florence than at rome. at florence michael angelo executed for pope clement vii., another medici, the mortuary chapel of san lorenzo, with its six great statues, those of the cousins lorenzo de medici and giuliano de medici, the first called by the florentines 'il pensièro,' or 'pensive thought,' with the four colossal recumbent figures named respectively the night, the morning, the dawn, and the twilight. in michael angelo was employed by his fellow citizens to fortify his native city against the return of his old patrons the medici, and the city held out for nine months. pope paul iii., an old man when elected to the popedom, but bent on signalizing his pontificate with as splendid works of art as those which had rendered the reigns of his predecessors illustrious, summoned another man, grown elderly, michael angelo, upwards of sixty years, reluctant to accept the commission, to finish the decoration of the sistine chapel; and michael angelo painted on the wall, at the upper end, his painting, 'the last judgment.' the picture is forty-seven feet high by forty-three wide, and it occupied the painter eight years. it was during its progress that michael angelo entered on his friendship with vittoria colonna. for the chapel called the paolina or pauline chapel michael angelo also painted less-known frescoes, but from that time he devoted his life to st peter's. he had said that he would take the old pantheon and 'suspend it in air,' and he did what he said, though he did not live to see the great cathedral completed. his sovereign, the grand duke of florence, endeavoured in vain with magnificent offers to lure the painter back to his native city. michael angelo protested that to leave rome then would be 'a sin and a shame, and the ruin of the greatest religious monument in christian europe.' michael angelo, like lionardo, did not marry; he died at rome in , in his eighty-ninth year. his nephew and principal heir,[ ] by the orders of the grand duke of florence, and it is believed according to michael angelo's own wish, removed the painter's body to florence, where it was buried with all honours in the church of santa croce there. the traits which recall michael angelo personally to us, are the prominent arch of the nose, the shaggy brows, the tangled beard, the gaunt grandeur of a figure like that of one of his prophets. while michael angelo lived, one pope rose on his approach, and seated the painter on his right hand, and another pope declined to sit down in his painter's presence; but the reason given for the last condescension, is that the pope feared that the painter would follow his example. and if the grand duke cosmo uncovered before michael angelo, and stood hat in hand while speaking to him, we may have the explanation in another assertion, that 'sovereigns asked michael angelo to put on his cap, because the painter would do it unasked.' the solitary instance in which michael angelo is represented as taking an unfair advantage of an antagonist, is in connection with the painter's rivalry in his art with raphael. michael angelo undervalued the genius of raphael, and was disgusted by what the older man considered the immoderate admiration bestowed on the younger. a favourite pupil of michael angelo's was sebastian del piombo, who being a venetian by birth was an excellent colourist. for one of his pictures--the very 'raising of lazarus' now in the national gallery, which the pope had ordered at the same time that he had ordered raphael's 'transfiguration'--it is rumoured that michael angelo gave the designs and even drew the figures, leaving sebastian the credit, and trusting that without michael angelo's name appearing in the work, by the help of his drawing in addition to sebastian's superb colouring, raphael would be eclipsed, and that by a painter comparatively obscure. the unwarrantable inference that the whole work was that of one painter, constituted a stratagem altogether unworthy of michael angelo, and if it had any existence, its getting wind disappointed and foiled its authors. when the story was repeated to raphael, his sole protest is said to have been to the effect that he was glad that michael angelo esteemed him so highly as to enter the lists with him. we can judge of michael angelo's attainments as a poet, even without having recourse to the original italian, by wordsworth's translations of some of the italian master's sonnets, and by mr john edward taylor's translations of selections from michael angelo's poems. michael angelo was greater as an architect and a sculptor than as a painter, because his power and delight lay in the mastery of form, and in the assertion, through that mastery, of the idealism of genius. it is not necessary to speak here of the mighty harmonies and the ineffable dignity of simplicity, somewhat marred by the departure from michael angelo's designs, in st peter's. it has been the fashion to praise them to the skies, and it has been a later fashion to decry them, in awarding a preference to the solemn shades and the dim rich dreaminess of gothic architecture. both fashions come to this, after all, that beauty, like these great men of genius of old, is many-sided. in michael angelo's works of sculpture a weird charm attaches to his monuments in honour of the medici in the chapel of san lorenzo, florence. perhaps something of this weirdness has to do with the tragic history of the men, and with a certain mystery which has always shrouded the sculptor's meaning in these monuments. mrs jameson quotes an account of michael angelo at work. an eye-witness has left us a very graphic description of the energy with which, even in old age, michael angelo handled his chisel:--"i can say that i have seen michael angelo at the age of sixty, and, with a body announcing weakness, make more chips of marble fly about in a quarter of an hour than would three of the strongest young sculptors in an hour,--a thing almost incredible to him who has not beheld it. he went to work with such impetuosity and fury of manner, that i feared almost every moment to see the block split into pieces. it would seem as if, inflamed by the idea of greatness which inspired him, this great man attacked with a vigenére." in painting michael angelo regarded colouring as of secondary importance. he is not known to have executed one painting in oil, and he treated oil and easel-painting generally as work only fit for women or idle men. while he approached the sublime in his painting, it was by no means faultless. even in form his efforts were apt to tend to heaviness and exaggeration, and the fascination which robust muscular delineation had for him, betrayed him into materialism. fuseli's criticism of michael angelo's work, that michael angelo's women were female men, and his children diminutive giants, is judged correct. incomparably the greatest painting of michael angelo's is his ceiling of the sistine chapel. it includes upwards of figures, the greater part colossal, as they were to be looked at, in the distance, from below. 'the ceiling of the sistine chapel contains the most perfect works done by michael angelo in his long and active life. here his great spirit appears in noblest dignity, in its highest purity; here the attention is not disturbed by that arbitrary display to which his great power not unfrequently seduced him in other works. the ceiling forms a flattened arch in its section; the central portion, which is a plain surface, contains a series of large and small pictures, representing the most important events recorded in the book of genesis--the creation and fall of man, with its immediate consequences. in the large triangular compartments at the springing of the vault are sitting figures of the prophets and sibyls, as the foretellers of the coming saviour. in the soffits of the recesses between these compartments, and in the arches underneath, immediately above the windows, are the ancestors of the virgin, the series leading the mind directly to the saviour. the external of these numerous representations is formed by an architectural frame-work of peculiar composition, which encloses the single subjects, tends to make the principal masses conspicuous, and gives to the whole an appearance of that solidity and support so necessary, but so seldom attended to in soffit decorations, which may be considered as if suspended. a great number of figures are also connected with the frame-work; those in unimportant situations are executed in the colour of stone or bronze; in the more important, in natural colours. these serve to support the architectural forms, to fill up and to connect the whole. they may be best described as the living and embodied _genii_ of architecture. it required the unlimited power of an architect, sculptor, and painter, to conceive a structural whole of so much grandeur, to design the decorative figures with the significant repose required by the sculpturesque character, and yet to preserve their subordination to the principal subjects, and to keep the latter in the proportions and relations best adapted to the space to be filled.'--_kugler_. the pictures from the old testament, beginning from the altar, are:-- . the separation of light and darkness. . the creation of the sun and moon. . the creation of trees and plants. . the creation of adam. . the creation of eve. . the fall and the expulsion from paradise. . the sacrifice of noah. . the deluge. . the intoxication of noah. 'the scenes from genesis are the most sublime representations of these subjects;--the creating spirit is unveiled before us. the peculiar type which the painter has here given of the form of the almighty father has been frequently imitated by his followers, and even by raphael, but has been surpassed by none. michael angelo has represented him in majestic flight, sweeping through the air, surrounded by _genii_, partly supporting, partly borne along with him, covered by his floating drapery; they are the distinct syllables, the separate virtues of his creating word. in the first (large) compartment we see him with extended hands, assigning to the sun and moon their respective paths. in the second, he awakens the first man to life. adam lies stretched on the verge of the earth in the act of raising himself; the creator touches him with the point of his finger, and appears thus to endow him with feeling and life. this picture displays a wonderful depth of thought in the composition, and the utmost elevation and majesty in the general treatment and execution. the third subject is not less important, representing the fall of man, and his expulsion from paradise. the tree of knowledge stands in the midst; the serpent (the upper part of the body being that of a woman) is twined around the stem; she bends down towards the guilty pair, who are in the act of plucking the forbidden fruit. the figures are nobly graceful, particularly that of eve. close to the serpent hovers the angel with the sword, ready to drive the fallen beings out of paradise. in this double action, this union of two separate moments, there is something peculiarly poetic and significant: it is guilt and punishment in one picture. the sudden and lightning-like appearance of the avenging angel behind the demon of darkness has a most impressive effect.'--_kugler_. the lower portion of the ceiling is divided into triangles, occupied by the prophets and sibyls in solemn contemplation, accompanied by angels and genii. beginning from the left of the entrance their order is-- . joel. . sibylla erythræa. . ezekiel. . sibylla persica. . jonah. . sibylla libyca. . daniel. . sibylla cumæa. . isaiah. . sibylla delphica. 'the prophets and sibyls in the triangular compartments of the curved portion of the ceiling are the largest figures in the whole work; these, too, are among the most wonderful forms that modern art has called into life. they are all represented seated, employed with books or rolled manuscripts; genii stand near or behind them. these mighty beings sit before us pensive, meditative, inquiring, or looking upwards with inspired countenances. their forms and movements, indicated by the grand lines and masses of the drapery, are majestic and dignified. we see in them beings, who, while they feel and bear the sorrows of a corrupt and sinful world, have power to look for consolation into the secrets of the future. yet the greatest variety prevails in the attitudes and expression: each figure is full of individuality. zacharias is an aged man, busied in calm and circumspect investigation; jeremiah is bowed down, absorbed in thought, the thought of deep and bitter grief; ezekiel turns with hasty movements to the genius next to him, who points upwards with joyful expectation, etc. the sibyls are equally characteristic: the persian, a lofty, majestic woman, very aged; the erythræan, full of power, like the warrior goddess of wisdom; the delphic, like cassandra, youthfully soft and graceful, but with strength to bear the awful seriousness of revelation.'--_kugler_. 'the belief of the roman catholic church in the testimony of the sibyl is shown by the well-known hymn, said to have been composed by pope innocent iii, at the close of the thirteenth century, beginning with the verse-- "dies iræ, dies illa, solvet sæclum in favilla teste david cum sibylla." it may be inferred that this hymn, admitted into the liturgy of the roman church, gave sanction to the adoption of the sibyls into christian art. they are seen from this time accompanying the prophets and apostles, in the cyclical decorations of the church.... but the highest honour that art has rendered to the sibyls has been by the hand of michael angelo, on the ceiling of the sistine chapel. here in the conception of a mysterious order of women, placed above and without all considerations of the graceful or the individual, the great master was peculiarly in his element. they exactly fitted his standard, of art, not always sympathetic, nor comprehensible to the average human mind, of which the grand in form and the abstract in expression were the first and last conditions. in this respect, the sibyls on the sistine chapel ceiling are more michael angelesque than their companions the prophets. for these, while types of the highest monumental treatment, are yet men, while the sibyls belong to a distinct class of beings, who convey the impression of the very obscurity in which their history is wrapt--creatures who have lived far from the abodes of men, who are alike devoid of the expression of feminine sweetness, human sympathy, or sacramental beauty; who are neither christians nor jewesses, witches nor graces, yet living, grand, beautiful, and true, according to laws revealed to the great florentine genius only. thus their figures may be said to be unique, as the offspring of a peculiar sympathy between the master's mind and his subject. to this sympathy may be ascribed the prominence and size given them, both prophets and sibyls, as compared to their usual relation to the subjects they environ. they sit here on twelve throne-like niches, more like presiding deities, each wrapt in self-contemplation, than as tributary witnesses to the truth and omnipotence of him they are intended to announce. thus they form a gigantic frame-work round the subjects of the creation, of which the birth of eve, as the type of the nativity, is the intentional centre. for some reason, the twelve figures are not prophets and sibyls alternately--there being only five sibyls to seven prophets,--so that the prophets come together at one angle. books and scrolls are given indiscriminately to them. 'the sibylla persica, supposed to be the oldest of the sisterhood, holds the book close to her eyes, as if from dimness of sight, which fact, contradicted as it is by a frame of obviously herculean strength, gives a mysterious intentness to the action. 'the sibylla libyca, of equally powerful proportions, but less closely draped, is grandly wringing herself to lift a massive volume from a height above her head on to her knees. 'the sibylla cumana, also aged, and with her head covered, is reading with her volume at a distance from her eyes. 'the sibylla delphica, with waving hair escaping from her turban, is a beautiful young being, the most human of all, gazing into vacancy or futurity. she holds a scroll. 'the sibylla erythræa, grand, bare-headed creature, sits reading intently with crossed legs, about to turn over her book. 'the prophets are equally grand in structure, and though, as we have said, not more than men, yet they are the only men that could well bear the juxtaposition with their stupendous female colleagues. ezekiel, between erythræa and persica, has a scroll in his hand that hangs by his side, just cast down, as he turns eagerly to listen to some voice. 'jeremiah, a magnificent figure, with elbow on knee and head on hand, wrapt in meditation appropriate to one called to utter lamentation and woe. he has neither book nor scroll. 'jonah is also without either. his position is strained and ungraceful, looking upwards, and apparently remonstrating with the almighty upon the destruction of the gourd, a few leaves of which are seen above him. his hands are placed together with a strange and trivial action, supposed to denote the counting on his fingers the number of days he was in the fish's belly. a formless marine monster is seen at his side. 'daniel has a book on his lap, with one hand on it. he is young, and a piece of lion's skin seems to allude to his history.'[ ] in the recesses between the prophets and sibyls are a series of lovely family groups, representing the genealogy of the virgin, and expressive of calm expectation of the future. the four corners of the ceiling contain groups illustrative of the power of the lord displayed in the especial deliverances of his chosen people. near the altar are: right, the deliverance of the israelites by the brazen serpent. left, the execution of haman. near the entrance are: right, judith and holofernes. left, david and goliath.[ ] michael angelo was thirty-nine years of age when he painted the ceiling of the sistine. when he began to paint the 'day of judgment' he was above sixty years of age, and his great rival, raphael, had already been dead thirteen years. the picture of the 'day of judgment,' with much that renders it marvellous and awful, has a certain coarseness of conception and execution. the moment chosen is that in which the lord says, 'depart from me, ye cursed,' and the idea and even attributes of the principal figure are taken from orcagna's old painting in the campo santo. but with all michael angelo's advantages, he has by no means improved on the original idea. he has robbed the figure of the lord of its transcendant majesty; he has not been able to impart to the ranks of the blessed the look of blessedness which 'il beato' himself might have conveyed. the chief excellence of the picture is in the ranks of the condemned, who writhe and rebel against their agonies. no wonder that the picture is sombre and dreadful. of the allegorical figures of 'night' and 'morning' in the chapel of san lorenzo, there are casts at the crystal palace. a comparison and a contrast have been instituted between michael angelo and milton, and raphael and shakespeare. there may be something in them, but, as in the case of broken metaphors, they will not bear being pushed to a logical conclusion or picked to pieces. the very transparent comparison which matches michael angelo with his own countryman, dante, is after all more felicitous and truer. michael angelo with lionardo are the great chiefs of the florentine school. raphael sanzio, or santi of urbino, the head of the roman school, was one of those very exceptional men who seem born to happiness, to inspire love and only love, to pass through the world making friends and disarming enemies, who are fully armed to confer pleasure while almost incapable of either inflicting or receiving pain. to this day his exceptional fortune stands raphael's memory in good stead, since for one man or woman who yearns after the austere righteousness and priceless tenderness of michael angelo, there are ten who yield with all their hearts to the gay, sweet gentleness and generosity of raphael. no doubt it was also in his favour as a painter, that though a man of highly cultivated tastes, 'in close intimacy and correspondence with most of the celebrated men of his time, and interested in all that was going forward,' he did not, especially in his youth, spend his strength on a variety of studies, but devoted himself to painting. while he thus vindicated his share of the breadth of genius of his country and time, by giving to the world the loveliest madonnas and child-christs, the most dramatic of battle-pieces, the finest of portraits, his noble and graceful fertility of invention and matchless skill of execution were confined to and concentrated on painting. he did not diverge long or far into the sister arts of architecture and sculpture, though his classic researches in the excavations of rome were keen and zealous; a heap of ruins having given to the world in the group of the that a writer of his day could record that 'raphael had sought and found in rome another rome.' raphael was born in the town of urbino, and was the son of a painter of the umbrian school, who very early destined the boy to his future career, and promoted his destination by all the efforts in giovanni santi's power, including the intention of sending away and apprenticing the little lad to the best master of his time, perugino, so called from the town where he resided, perugia. raphael's mother died when he was only eight years of age, and his father died when he was no more than eleven years, before the plans for his education were put into action. but no stroke of outward calamity, or loss--however severe, could annul raphael's birthright of universal favour. his step-mother, the uncles who were his guardians, his clever, perverse, unscrupulous master, all joined in a common love of raphael and determination to promote his interests. raphael at the age of twelve years went to perugia to work under perugino, and remained with his master till he was nearly twenty years of age. in that interval he painted industriously, making constant progress, always in the somewhat hard, but finished, style of perugino, while already showing a predilection for what was to prove raphael's favourite subject, the madonna and child. at this period he painted his famous _lo sposalizio_ or the 'espousals,' the marriage of the virgin mary with joseph, now at milan. in he visited florence, remaining only for a short time, but making the acquaintance of fra bartolommeo and ghirlandajo, seeing the cartoons of lionardo and michael angelo, and from that time displaying a marked improvement in drawing. indeed nothing is more conspicuous in raphael's genius in contra-distinction to michael angelo's, than the receptive character of raphael's mind, his power of catching up an impression from without, and the candour and humility with which he availed himself unhesitatingly of the assistance lent him by others. returning soon to florence, raphael remained there till , when he was twenty-five years, drawing closer the valuable friendships he had already formed, and advancing with rapid strides in his art, until his renown was spread all over italy, and with reason, since already, while still young, he had painted his 'madonna of the goldfinch,' in the florentine gallery, and his 'la belle jardinière,' or madonna in a garden among flowers, now in the louvre. in his twenty-fifth year raphael was summoned to rome to paint for pope julius ii. my readers will remember that michael angelo in the abrupt severity of his prime of manhood, was soon to paint the ceiling of the sistine chapel for the same despotic and art-loving pope, who had brought raphael hardly more than a stripling to paint the '_camere_' or '_stanze_' chambers of the vatican. the first of the halls which raphael painted (though not the first in order) is called the camera della segnatura (in english, signature), and represents theology, poetry, philosophy, with the sciences, arts, and jurisprudence. the second is the 'stanza d'eliodoro,' or the room of heliodorus, and contains the grandest painting of all, in the expulsion of heliodorus from the temple of jerusalem (taken from maccabees), the miracle of bolsena, attila, king of the huns, terrified by the apparition of st peter and st paul, and st peter delivered from prison. the third stanza painted by raphael is the 'stanza dell' incendio' (the conflagration), so called from the extinguishing of the fire in the borgo by a supposed miracle, being the most conspicuous scene in representations of events taken from the lives of popes leo iii, and iv.; and the fourth chamber, which was left unfinished by raphael, and completed by his scholars, is the 'sala di constantino,' and contains incidents from the life of the emperor constantine, including the splendid battle-piece between constantine and maxentius. at these chambers, or at the designs for them, during the popedoms of julius ii., who died in the course of the painting of the camere, and leo x., for a period of twelve years, till raphael's death in , after which the 'sala di constantino' was completed by his scholars. raphael has also left in the vatican a series of small pictures from the old testament, known as raphael's bible. this series decorates the thirteen cupolas of the 'loggie,' or open galleries, running round three sides of an open court. another work undertaken by raphael should have still more interest for us. leo x., resolving to substitute woven for painted tapestry round the lower walls of the interior of the sistine chapel, commanded raphael to furnish drawings to the flemish weavers, and thence arose eleven cartoons, seven of which have been preserved, have become the property of england, and are the glory of the kensington museum. the subjects of the cartoons in the seven which have been saved, are 'the death of ananias,' 'elymas the sorcerer struck with blindness,' 'the healing of the lame man at the beautiful gate of the temple,' 'the miraculous draught of fishes,' 'paul and barnabas at lystra,' 'st paul preaching at athens,' and 'the charge to st peter.' the four cartoons which are lost, were 'the stoning of st stephen,' 'the conversion of st paul,' 'paul in prison,' and 'the coronation of the virgin.' in those cartoons figures above life-size were drawn with chalk upon strong paper, and coloured in distemper, and raphael received for his work four hundred and thirty gold ducats (about _£ _), while the flemish weavers received for their work in wools, silk, and gold, fifty thousand gold ducats. the designs were cut up in strips for the weavers' use, and while some strips were destroyed, the rest lay in a warehouse at arras, till rubens became aware of their existence, and advised charles i, to buy the set, to be employed in the tapestry manufactory established by james i. at mortlake. brought to this country in the slips which the weavers had copied, the fate of the cartoons was still precarious. cromwell bought them in charles i.'s art collection, and louis xiv, sought, but failed, to re-buy them. they fell into farther neglect, and were well-nigh forgotten, when sir godfrey kneller recalled them to notice, and induced william iii, to have the slips pasted together, and stretched upon linen, and put in a room set apart for them at hampton court, whence they were transferred, within the last ten years, for the greater advantage of artists and the public, to kensington museum. the woven tapestries for which the cartoons were designed had quite as chequered a career. in the two sacks of rome by french soldiers, the tapestries were seized, carried off, and two of them burnt for the bullion in the thread. at last they were restored to the vatican, where they hang in their faded magnificence, a monument of leo x, and of raphael. an additional set of ten tapestry cartoons were supplied to the vatican by raphael's scholars. raphael painted for the chigi family in their palace, which is now the villa farnesina, scenes from the history of cupid and psyche, and the triumph of galatea, subjects which show how the passion for classical mythology that distinguishes the next generation, was beginning to work. to these last years belong his 'madonna di san sisto,' so named from its having been painted for the convent of st sixtus at piacenza, and his last picture, the 'transfiguration,' with which he was still engaged when death met him unexpectedly. raphael, as the italians say, lived more like a '_principe_' (prince) than a '_pittore_' (painter). he had a house in rome, and a villa in the neighbourhood, and on his death left a considerable fortune to his heirs. there has not been wanting a rumour that his life of a principe was a dissipated and prodigal life; but this ugly rumour, even if it had more evidence to support it, is abundantly disproven by the nature of raphael's work, and by the enormous amount of that work, granting him the utmost assistance from his crowd of scholars. he had innumerable commissions, and retained an immense school from all parts of italy, the members of which adored their master. raphael had the additional advantage of having many of his pictures well engraved by a contemporary engraver named raimondi. like giotto, raphael was the friend of the most distinguished italians of his day, including count castiglione, and the poet ariosto. he was notably the warm friend of his fellow-painters both at home and abroad, with the exception of michael angelo. a drawing of his own, which raphael sent, in his kindly interchange of such sketches, to albert dürer, is, i think, preserved at nüremberg. the sovereign princes of italy, above all leo x., were not contented with being munificent patrons to raphael, they treated him with the most marked consideration. the cardinal bibbiena proposed the painter's marriage with his niece, ensuring her a dowry of three thousand gold crowns, but maria di bibbiena died young, ere the marriage could be accomplished; and raphael, who was said to be little disposed to the match, did not long survive her. he caught cold, as some report, from his engrossing personal superintendence of the roman excavations; and, as others declare, from his courtly assiduity in keeping an appointment with the pope, was attacked by fever, and died on his birth-day, april th, , having completed his thirty-seventh year. all rome and italy mourned for him. when his body lay in state, to be looked at and wept over by multitudes, his great unfinished picture of the 'transfiguration' was hung above the bed. he was buried in a spot chosen by himself in his lifetime, and, as it happened, not far from the resting-place of his promised bride. doubts having been raised as to raphael's grave, search was made, and his body was exhumed in , and re-buried with great pomp. raphael's life and that of rubens form the ideal painter's life--bountiful, splendid, unclouded, and terminating ere it sees eclipse or decay--to all in whom the artistic temperament is united to a genial, sensuous, pleasure-loving nature. raphael was not above the middle height, and slightly made. he was sallow in colour, with brown eyes, and a full yet delicate mouth; but his beautiful face, like that of our english shakespeare, is familiar to most of us. with regard to raphael's face, the amount of womanliness in it is a striking characteristic. one hears sometimes that no man's character is complete without its share of womanliness: surely raphael had a double share, for womanliness is the most distinctive quality in his face, along with that vague shade of pensiveness which we find not infrequently, but strangely enough, in those faces which have been associated with the happiest spirits and the brightest fortunes. raphael and his scholars painted and drew about nine hundred pictures and sketches, including a hundred and twenty madonnas, eight of which are in private collections in england. of raphael's greatness, kugler writes that 'it is not so much in kind as in degree. no master left behind _so many_ really excellent works as he, whose days were so early numbered; in none has there been observed so little that is unpleasant.' all authorities agree in ascribing much of raphael's power to his purely unselfish nature and aim. his excellence seems to lie in the nearly perfect expression of material beauty and harmony, together with grandeur of design and noble working out of thought. we shall see that this devotion to material beauty has been made something of a reproach to raphael, as it certainly degenerated into a snare in the hands of his followers, while unquestionably the universal appreciation of raphael's work, distinguished from the partial appreciation bestowed on the great works of others, proceeds from this evident material beauty which is open to all. then, again, raphael, far more than andrea del sarto, deserved to be called 'faultless;' and this general absence of defects and equality of excellence is a great element of raphael's wide popularity; for, as one can observe for one's self, in regarding a work of art, there is always a large proportion of the spectators who will seize on an error, dwell on it, and be incapable of shaking off its influence, and rising into the higher rank of critics, who discover and ponder over beauties. i would have it considered also, that this equality of excellence does not necessarily proceed always from a higher aim, but may arise rather from an unconsciously lower aim. the single reproach brought against raphael as a painter is that--according to some witnesses only, for most deny the implication--raphael so delighted in material beauty that he became enslaved by it, till it diminished his spiritual insight. it is an incontestable truth that in raphael, as in all the great italian painters of his century, there was a falling away from the simple earnestness, the exceeding reverence, the endless patience, the self-abstraction, and self-devotion of the earliest italian and flemish painters. therefore there has been within the last fifty or sixty years that movement in modern art, which is called pre-raphaelitism, and which is, in fact, a revolt against subjection to raphael, and his supposed undue exaltation of material beauty, and subjection of truth to beauty--so called. but we must not fall into the grave mistake of imagining that there was any want of vigour and variety in raphael's grace and tenderness, or that he could not in his greatest works rise into a grandeur in keeping with his subject. tire as we may of hearing raphael called the king of painters, as the greeks tired of hearing aristides called 'the just,' this fact remains: no painter has left behind him such a mass of surpassingly good work; in no other work is there the same charm of greatest beauty and harmony. it is hard for me to give you an idea in so short a space of raphael's work. i must content myself with quoting descriptions of two of his stanze, those of the heliodorus and the segnatura. 'heliodorus driven out of the temple ( maccabees iii.). in the background onias the priest is represented praying for divine interposition;--in the foreground heliodorus, pursued by two avenging angels, is endeavouring to bear away the treasures of the temple. amid the group on the left is seen julius ii., in his chair of state, attended by his secretaries. one of the bearers in front is marc-antonio raimondi, the engraver of raphael's designs. the man with the inscription, "jo petro de folicariis cremonen," was secretary of briefs to pope julius. here you may fancy you hear the thundering approach of the heavenly warrior, and the neighing of his steed; while in the different groups who are plundering the treasures of the temple, and in those who gaze intently on the sudden consternation of heliodorus, without being able to divine its cause, we see the expression of terror, amazement, joy, humility, and every passion to which human nature is exposed.'[ ] 'the stanza della segnatura is so called from a judicial assembly once held here. the frescoes in this chamber are illustrative of the virtues of theology, philosophy, poetry, and jurisprudence, who are represented on the ceiling by raphael, in the midst of arabesques by _sodoma_. the square pictures by raphael refer:--the fall of man to theology; the study of the globe to philosophy; the flaying of marsyas to poetry; and the judgment of solomon to jurisprudence. '_entrance wall_.--"the school of athens." raphael consulted ariosto as to the arrangement of its figures. in the centre, on the steps of a portico, are seen plato and aristotle, plato pointing to heaven and aristotle to earth. on the left is socrates conversing with his pupils, amongst whom is a young warrior, probably alcibiades. lying upon the steps in front is diogenes. to his left, pythagoras is writing on his knee, and near him, with ink and pen, is empedocles. the white mantle is francesco maria della rovere, nephew of julius ii. on the right is archimedes drawing a geometrical problem upon the floor. the young man near him with uplifted hands is federigo ii., duke of mantua. behind these are zoroaster, ptolemy, one with a terrestrial, the other with a celestial globe, addressing two figures, which represent raphael and his master perugino. the drawing in brown upon the socle beneath this fresco, is by _pierino del vaga_, and represents the death of archimedes. '_right wall_.--"parnassus." apollo surrounded by the muses; on his right, homer, virgil, and dante. below on the right, sappho, supposed to be addressing corinna, petrarch, propertius, and anacreon; on the left pindar and horace, sannazzaro, boccaccio, and others. beneath this, in grisaille, are,--alexander placing the poems of homer in the tomb of achilles, and augustus preventing the burning of virgil's Æneid. '_left wall_.--above the window are prudence, fortitude, and temperance. on the left, justinian delivers the pandects to tribonian. on the right, gregory ix. (with the features of julius ii.) delivers the decretals to a jurist;--cardinal de' medici, afterwards leo x., cardinal farnese, afterwards paul iii., and cardinal del monte, are represented near the pope. in the socle beneath is solon addressing the people of athens. '_wall of egress_.--"the disputa." so called from an impression that it represents a dispute upon the sacrament. in the upper part of the composition the heavenly host are present; christ between the virgin and st john the baptist; on the left, st peter, adam, st john, david, st stephen, and another; and on the right, st paul, abraham, st james, moses, st lawrence, and st george. below is an altar surrounded by the latin fathers, gregory, jerome, ambrose, and augustine. near st augustine stand st thomas aquinas, st anacletus, with the palm of a martyr, and cardinal buenaventura reading. those in front are innocent iii., and in the background, dante, near whom a monk in a black hood is pointed out as savonarola. the dominican on the extreme left is supposed to be fra angelico. the other figures are uncertain.' ... 'raphael commenced his work in the vatican by painting the ceiling and the four walls in the room called _della segnatura_, on the surface of which he had to represent four great compositions, which embraced the principal divisions of the encyclopedia of that period; namely, theology, philosophy, poetry, and jurisprudence. 'it will be conceived, that to an artist imbued with the traditions of the umbrian school, the first of these subjects was an unparalleled piece of good fortune: and raphael, long familiar with the allegorical treatment of religious compositions, turned it here to the most admirable account; and, not content with the suggestions of his own genius, he availed himself of all the instruction he could derive from the intelligence of others. from these combined inspirations resulted, to the eternal glory of the catholic faith and of christian art, a composition without a rival in the history of painting, and, we may also add, without a name; for to call it lyric or epic is not enough, unless, indeed, we mean, by using these expressions, to compare it with the allegorical epic of dante, alone worthy to be ranked with this marvellous production of the pencil of raphael. 'let no one consider this praise as idle and groundless, for it is raphael himself who forces the comparison upon us, by placing the figure of dante among the favourite sons of the muses; and, what is still more striking, by draping the allegorical figure of theology in the very colours in which dante has represented beatrice; namely, the white veil, the red tunic, and the green mantle, while on her head he has placed the olive crown. 'of the four allegorical figures which occupy the compartments of the ceiling, and which were all painted immediately after raphael's arrival in rome, theology and poetry are incontestably the most remarkable. the latter would be easily distinguished by the calm inspiration of her glance, even were she without her wings, her starry crown, and her azure robe, all having allusion to the elevated region towards which it is her privilege to soar. the figure of theology is quite as admirably suited to the subject she personifies; she points to the upper part of the grand composition, which takes its name from her, and in which the artist has provided inexhaustible food for the sagacity and enthusiasm of the spectator. 'this work consists of two grand divisions,--heaven and earth--which are united to one another by that mystical bond, the sacrament of the eucharist. the personages whom the church has most honoured for learning and holiness, are ranged in picturesque and animated groups on either side of the altar, on which the consecrated wafer is exposed. st augustine dictates his thoughts to one of his disciples; st gregory, in his pontifical robes, seems absorbed in contemplation of celestial glory; st ambrose, in a slightly different attitude, appears to be chanting the te deum; while st jerome, seated, rests his hands on a large book, which he holds on his knees. pietro lombardo, duns scotus, st thomas aquinas, pope anacletus, st buenaventura, and innocent iii., are no less happily characterized; while, behind all these illustrious men, whom the church and succeeding generations have agreed to honour, raphael has ventured to introduce dante with his laurel crown, and, with still greater boldness, the monk savonarola, publicly burnt ten years before as a heretic. 'in the glory, which forms the upper part of the picture, the three persons of the trinity are represented, surrounded by patriarchs, apostles, and saints: it may, in fact, be considered in some sort as a _resumé_ of all the favourite compositions produced during the last hundred years by the umbrian school. a great number of the types, and particularly those of christ and the virgin, are to be found in the earlier works of raphael himself. the umbrian artists, from having so long exclusively employed themselves on mystical subjects, had certainly attained to a marvellous perfection in the representation of celestial beatitude, and of those ineffable things of which it has been said that the heart of man cannot conceive them, far less, therefore, the pencil of man portray; and raphael, surpassing them in all, and even in this instance, while surpassing himself, appears to have fixed the limits, beyond which christian art, properly so called, has never since been able to advance.'[ ] of raphael's madonnas, i should like to speak of three. the madonna di san sisto: 'it represents the virgin standing in a majestic attitude; the infant saviour _enthroned_ in her arms; and around her head a glory of innumerable cherubs melting into light. kneeling before her we see on one side st sixtus, on the other st barbara, and beneath her feet two heavenly cherubs gaze up in adoration. in execution, as in design, this is probably the most perfect picture in the world. it is painted throughout by raphael's own hand; and as no sketch or study of any part of it was ever known to exist, and as the execution must have been, from the thinness and delicacy of the colours, wonderfully rapid, it is supposed that he painted it at once on the canvas--a _creation_ rather than a picture. in the beginning of the last century the elector of saxony, augustus iii., purchased this picture from the monks of the convent for the sum of sixty thousand florins (about £ ), and it now forms the chief boast and ornament of the dresden gallery'[ ] the madonna del cardellino (our lady of the goldfinch): 'the virgin is sitting on a rock, in a flowery meadow. behind are the usual light and feathery trees, growing on the bank of a stream, which passes off to the left in a rocky bend, and is crossed by a bridge of a single arch. to the right, the opposite bank slopes upward in a gentle glade, across which is a village, backed by two distant mountain-peaks. 'in front of the sitting matronly figure of the virgin are the holy children, our lord and the baptist, one on either side of her right knee. she has been reading, and the approach of st john has caused her to look off her book (which is open in her left hand) at the new comer, which she does with a look of holy love and gentleness, at the same time caressingly drawing him to her with her right hand, which touches his little body under the right arm. in both hands, which rest across the virgin's knee, he holds a captive goldfinch, which he has brought, with childish glee, as an offering to the holy child. the infant jesus, standing between his mother's knees, with one foot placed on her foot, and her hand, with the open book, close above his shoulder, regards the baptist with an upward look of gentle solemnity, at the same time that he holds his bent hand over the head of the bird. 'so much for mere description. the inner feeling of the picture, the motive which has prompted it, has surely hardly ever been surpassed. the blessed virgin, in casting her arm round the infant st john, looks down on him with a holy complacency for the testimony which he is to bear to her son. notice the human boyish glee with which the baptist presents the captured goldfinch, and, on the other hand, the divine look, even of majesty and creative love, with which the infant jesus, laying his hand on the head of the bird, half reproves st john, as it were saying, "love them and hurt them not." notice, too, the unfrightened calm of the bird itself, passive under the hand of its loving creator. all these are features of the very highest power of human art. 'again, in accompaniments, all is as it should be. the virgin, modestly and beautifully draped; st john, girt about the loins, not only in accord with his well-known prophetic costume, but also as partaking of sinful humanity, and therefore needing such cincture: the child redeemer, with a slight cincture, just to suggest motherly care, but not over the part usually concealed, as indeed it never ought to be, seeing that in him was no sin, and that it is this spotless purity which is ever the leading idea in representations of him as an infant. notice, too, his foot, beautifully resting on that of his mother; the unity between them being thus wonderfully though slightly kept up. her eye has just been dwelling on the book of the prophecies open in her hand; and thus the spectator's thought is ruled in accordance with the high mission of the holy one of god, and thrown forward into the grand and blessed future. it is a holy and wonderful picture; i had not seen any in italy which had struck or refreshed me more.'[ ] and allow me to write two or three words with regard to the 'madonna della sedia,' or our lady of the chair, an engraving of which used to charm me when a child. the virgin, very young and simple-looking in her loveliness, is seated on a low chair, clasping the divine child, who is leaning in weariness on her breast. in the original picture, st john with his cross is standing--a boy at the virgin's knee, but he is absent from the old engraving. the meek adoring tenderness in the face of the mother, the holy ingenuousness in that of the child, are expressions to be long studied. of raphael's cartoons, which, so many of us can see for ourselves, i cannot trust myself to do more than to repeat what strikes me as a singularly apt phrase of hazlitt's, given by mrs jameson, that the cartoons are instances in which 'the corruptible has put on incorruption.' that from the very slightness of the materials employed, and the very injuries which the cartoons have sustained, we have the greatest triumph of art, where 'the sense of power supersedes the appearance of effort,' and where the result is the more majestic for being in ruins. 'all other pictures look like oil and varnish, we are stopped and attracted by the colouring, the penciling, the finishing, the instrumentality of art; but the on the canvas.... there is nothing between us and the subject; we look through a frame and see scripture histories, and amidst the wreck of colour and the mouldering of material beauty, nothing is left but a universe of thought, or the broad imminent shadows of calm contemplation and majestic pains.' and that raphael did not neglect the minutest details in these sketches, will be seen by the accompanying note: 'the foreground of raphael's two cartoons, "the miraculous draught of fishes," and "the charge to peter," are covered with plants of the common sea cole-wort, of which the sinuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have exhausted the patience of any other artist; but have appeared worthy of prolonged and thoughtful labour to the great mind of raphael.'--_ruskin_. whole clusters of anecdotes gather round the cartoons, which, as they have to do with the work and not the worker, i leave untouched, with regret. but i must forewarn my readers by mentioning some of the refuted criticisms which have been applied to the cartoons. reading the criticisms and their answers ought to render us modest and wary in 'picking holes' in great pictures, as forward and flippant critics, old and young, are tempted to pick them. with regard to the 'miraculous draught of fishes,' a great outcry was once set up that raphael had made the boat too little to hold the figures he has placed in it. but raphael made the boat little advisedly; if he had not done so, the picture would have been 'all boat,' a contingency scarcely to be desired; on the other hand, if raphael had diminished the figures to suit the size of the boat, these figures would not have suited those of the other cartoons, and the cartoon would have lost greatly in dignity and effect. in the cartoon of the 'death of ananias,' carping objectors were ready to suggest that raphael had committed an error in time by introducing sapphira in the background counting her ill-gotten gains, at the moment when her no less guilty husband has fallen down in the agonies of death. it was hours afterwards that sapphira entered into the presence of the apostles. but we must know that time and space do not exist for painters, who have to tell their story at one stroke, as it were. in the treating of the 'lame man at the beautiful gate of the temple,' some authorities have found fault with raphael for breaking the composition into parts by the introduction of pillars, and, farther, that the shafts are not straight. yet by this treatment raphael has concentrated the principal action in a sort of frame, and thus has been enabled to give more freedom of action to the remaining figures in the other divisions of the picture. 'it is evident, moreover, that had the shafts been perfectly straight, according to the severest law of good taste in architecture, the effect would have been extremely disagreeable to the eye; by their winding form they harmonize with the manifold forms of the moving figures around, and they illustrate, by their elaborate elegance, the scripture phrase, "the gate which is called beautiful."'--_mrs jameson_. of raphael's portraits i must mention that wonderful portrait of leo x., often reckoned the best portrait in the world for truth of likeness and excellence of painting, and those of the so-called 'fornarina,' or 'baker'. two fornarinas are at rome and one at florence. there is a story that the original of the first two pictures was a girl of the people to whom raphael was attached; and there is this to be said for the tradition, that there is an acknowledged coarseness in the very beauty of the half-draped fornarina of the barberini palace. the 'fornarina' of florence is the portrait of a noble woman, holding the fur-trimming of her mantle with her right hand, and it is said that the picture can hardly represent the same individual as that twice represented in rome. according to one guess the last 'fornarina' is vittoria colonna, the marchesa de pescara, painted by seba piombo, instead of by raphael; and according to another, the roman 'fornarina' is no fornarina beloved by raphael, but beatrice pio, a celebrated improvisatrice of the time. an 'innovation of modern times is to spell raphael's name in england as the modern italians spelt it, _raffaelle_, a word of four syllables, and yet to pronounce this italian word as if it were english, as _raphael_. vasari wrote raffaello; he himself wrote raphael on his pictures, and has signed the only autograph letter we have of his, raphaello.'[ ] titian, or tiziano vecelli, the greatest painter of the venetian school, reckoned worthy to be named with lionardo, michael angelo and raphael, was born of good family at capo del cadore in the venetian state, in . there is a tradition that while other painters made their first essays in art with chalk or charcoal, the boy titian, who lived to be a glorious colourist, made his earliest trials in painting with the juice of flowers. titian studied in venice under the bellini, and had giorgione, who was born in the same year, for his fellow-scholar, at first his friend, later his rival. when a young man titian spent some time in ferrara; there he painted his 'bacchus and ariadne,' and a portrait of lucrezia borgia. in , when titian was thirty-five years of age, he was commissioned by the venetians to continue the works in the great council-hall, which the advanced age of gian bellini kept him from finishing. along with this commission titian was appointed in to the office of la sanseria, which gave him the duty and privilege of painting the portraits of the doges as long as he held the office; coupled with the office was a salary of one hundred and twenty crowns a year. titian lived to paint five doges; two others, his age, equal to that of gian bellini, prevented him from painting. in , titian painted his greatest sacred picture, the 'assumption of the virgin.' in the same year he painted the poet ariosto, who mentions the painter with high honour in his verse. in , titian, a man of fifty-three years, was at bologna, where there was a meeting between charles v, and pope clement vii., when he was presented to both princes. charles v, and philip ii, became afterwards great patrons and admirers of titian, and it is of charles v. and titian that a legend, to which i have already referred, is told. the emperor, visiting the painter while he was at work, stooped down and picked up a pencil, which titian had let fall, to the confusion and distress of the painter, when charles paid the princely compliment, 'titian is worthy of being served by cæsar.' titian painted many portraits of charles v., and of the members of his house. as maximilian had created albrecht dürer a noble of the empire, charles v, created titian a count palatine, and a knight of the order of st iago, with a pension, which was continued by philip ii., of four hundred crowns a year. it is doubtful whether titian ever visited the spain of his patrons, but madrid possesses forty-three of his pictures, among them some of his finest works. titian went to rome in his later years, but declined to abandon for rome the painter's native venice, which had lavished her favours on her son. he lived in great splendour, paying annual summer visits to his birth-place of cadore, and occasionally dwelling again for a time at ferrara, urbino, bologna. in two instances he joined the emperor at augsburgh. when henry iii, of france landed at venice, he was entertained _en grand seigneur_ by titian, then a very old man; and when the king asked the price of some pictures which pleased him, titian at once presented them as a gift to his royal guest. titian married, as has been recently ascertained, and had three children,--two sons, the elder a worthless and scandalous priest; the second a good son and accomplished painter; and a daughter, the beautiful lavinia, so often painted by her father, and whose name will live with his. titian survived his wife thirty-six years; and his daughter, who had married, and was the mother of several children, six years. his second son and fellow-painter died of the same plague which struck down titian, in , at the ripe age of eighty-nine years. titian is said to have been a man of irritable and passionate temper. the hatred between him and the painter, pordenone, was so bitter, that the latter thought his life in danger, and painted with his shield and poniard lying ready to his hand. titian grasped with imperious tenacity his supremacy as a painter, sedulously kept the secrets of his skill, and was most unmagnanimously jealous of the attainments of his scholars. no defect of temper, however, kept titian from having two inseparable convivial companions--one of them the architect, sansovino, and the other the profligate wit, aretino, who was pleased to style himself the 'friend of titian and the scourge of princes.' though titian is said, in the panic of the great plague, to have died not only neglected, but plundered before his eyes, still venice prized him so highly, that she made in his favour the single exception of a public funeral, during the appalling devastation wrought by the pestilence. from an engraving of a portrait of titian by himself, which is before me, i can give the best idea of his person. he looks like one of the merchant princes, whom he painted so often and so well, in richly furred gown, massive chain, and small cap, far off his broad forehead: a stately figure, with a face--in its aquiline nose and keen eyes, full of sagacity and fire, which no years could tame. towards the close of titian's life, there was none who even approached the old venetian painter in the art which he practised freely to the last. painting in italy was everywhere losing its pre-eminence. it had become, even when it was not so nominally, thoroughly secularized;--and with reason, for the painters by their art-creed and by their lives were fitter to represent gods and goddesses, in whom no man believed, than to give earnest expression to a living faith. even titian, great as he was, proved a better painter of heathen mythology than of sacred subjects. but within certain limits and in certain directions, titian stands unequalled. he has a high place for composition and for drawing, and his colouring was, beyond comparison, grand and true. he was great as a landscape painter, and he was the best portrait painter whom the world ever saw. in his painting is seen, not, indeed, the life of the spirit, but the life of the senses 'in its fullest power,' and in titian there was such large mastery of this life, that in his freedom there was no violence, but the calmness of supreme strength, the serenity of perfect satisfaction. his painting was a reflection of the old greek idea of the life of humanity as a joyous existence, so long as the sun of youth, maturity, health, and good fortune shone, without even that strain of foreboding pain, and desperate closing with fate, which troubled the bliss of ancient poet or sculptor. a large proportion of titian's principal pictures are at venice and madrid. among titian's finest sacred pictures, are his 'assumption of the virgin,' now in the academy, venice, where 'the madonna, a powerful figure, is borne rapidly upwards, as if divinely impelled; .., fascinating groups of infant angels surround her, beneath stand the apostles, looking up with solemn gestures;' and his 'entombment of christ,' a picture which is also in venice. titian's madonnas were not so numerous as his venuses, many of which are judged excellent examples of the master. his 'bacchus and ariadne,' in the national gallery, is described by mrs jameson, 'as presenting, on a small scale, an epitome of all the beauties which characterize titian, in the rich, picturesque, animated composition, in the ardour of bacchus, who flings himself from his car to pursue ariadne; the dancing bacchanals, the frantic grace of the bacchante, and the little joyous satyr in front, trailing the head of the sacrifice.' titian's landscapes are the noble backgrounds to many of his pictures. these landscapes were not only free, but full. 'the great masters of italy, almost without exception, and titian, perhaps, more than any other (for he had the highest knowledge of landscape), are in the constant habit of rendering every detail of their foregrounds with the most laborious botanical fidelity; witness the bacchus and ariadne, in which the foreground is occupied by the common blue iris, the aquilegia, and the wild rose; _every stamen_ of which latter is given, while the blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have been studied with the most exquisite accuracy.'--_ruskin_. in portraits, titian conveyed to the sitters and transferred to his canvas, not only a life-likeness, but a positively noble dignity in that likeness. what in van dyck and sir joshua reynolds was the bestowing of high breeding and dainty refinement, became under titian's brush dignity, pure and simple, very quiet, and wonderfully real. there is this peculiarity in connection with the number of portraits which titian executed, that many of them have descended to us without further titles than those of 'a venetian senator,' 'a lady,' etc., etc., yet of the individual life of the originals no one can doubt. with regard to titian's portraits of women, i have already referred to those of his beautiful daughter, lavinia. in one portrait, in the berlin museum, she is holding a plate of fruit; in another, in england, the plate of fruit is changed into a casket of jewels; in a third, at madrid, lavinia is herodias, and bears a charger with the head of john the baptist. a 'violante'--as some say, the daughter of titian's scholar, palma, though dates disprove this--sat frequently to titian, and is said to have been loved by him. i have written, in connection with lionardo's 'jaconde' and raphael's 'fornarina,' of titian's 'bella donna.' he has various 'bellas,' but, as far as i know, this is _the_ 'bella donna,'--'a splendid, serious beauty, in a red and blue silk dress,' in the sciarra gallery, rome. i have read that critics were at one time puzzled by the singular yellow, almost straw colour, appearing profusely in the hair of the women of the venetian painters of this time, and that it was only by consulting contemporary records that it was learnt that the venetian women indulged in the weak and false vanity of dyeing their black hair a pale yellow--a process, in the course of which the women drew the hair through the crown of a broad-brimmed hat, and spreading it over the brim, submitted patiently to bleaching the hair in a southern sun. among titian's portraits of men, those of the 'emperor charles v.' and the 'duke of alva' are among the most famous. titian painted, and painted wonderfully, to the very last. he was eighty-one when he painted the 'martyrdom of st lawrence,' one of his largest and grandest compositions, and in the last year of his life he painted--leaving it not quite completed,--a 'pietà;' showing that his hand owned the weight of years,[ ] but the conception of the subject is still animated and striking, the colours still glowing; while, titian-like, the light still flows around the mighty group in every gradation of tone. chapter v. german art--albrecht dÜrer, - . albrecht dürer carries us to a different country and a different race. and he who has been called the father of german painting is thoroughly german, not only in his saxon honesty, sedateness, and strength, but in the curious mixture of simplicity, subtlety, homeliness, and fantasticalness, which are still found side by side in german genius. albrecht dürer was born at that fittest birth-place for the great german painter, quaint old nuremberg, in . he was the son of a goldsmith, and one of a family of eighteen children; a home school in which he may have learnt early the noble, manly lessons of self-denial and endurance, which he practised long and well. he was trained to his father's trade until the lad's bent became so unmistakable that he was wisely transferred to the studio of a painter to serve his apprenticeship to art. when the nuremberg apprenticeship was completed, albrecht followed the german custom, very valuable to him, of serving another and a 'wandering apprenticeship,' which carried him betimes through germany, the netherlands, and italy, painting and studying as he went. he painted his own portrait about this time, showing himself a comely, pleasant, and pleased young fellow, in a curious holiday suit of plaited low-bodied shirt, jerkin, and mantle across the shoulder, with a profusion of long fair curls, of which he was said to have been vain, arranged elaborately on each side, the blue eyes looking with frank confidence out of the blonde face. he painted himself a little later with the brave kindly face grown mature, and the wisdom of the spirit shining in the eyes, and weighing on the brows. on his return from his travels, albrecht dürer's father arranged his son's marriage with the daughter of a musician in nuremberg. the inducement to the marriage seems to have been, on the father's part, the dowry, and on the son's the beauty of the bride. how unhappy the union proved, without any fault of albrecht's, has been the theme of so many stories, that i am half inclined to think that some of us must be more familiar with albrecht dürer's wedded life than with any other part of his history. it seems to me, that there is considerable exaggeration in these stories, for granted that agnes dürer was a shrew and a miser, was albrecht dürer the man to be entirely, or greatly, at such a woman's mercy? taking matters at their worst, dishonour and disgrace did not come near the great painter. he was esteemed, as he deserved to be; he had a true friend in his comrade pirkheimer; he had his art; he had the peace of a good conscience; he had the highest of all consolations in his faith in heaven. certainly it is not from albrecht himself that the tale of his domestic wretchedness has come. he was as manfully patient and silent as one might have expected in a man upright, firm, and self-reliant as he was tender. i do not think it is good for men, and especially for women, to indulge in egotistical sentimentality, and to believe that such a woman as agnes dürer could utterly thwart and wreck the life of a man like albrecht. it is not true to life, in the first place; and it is dishonouring to the man, in the second; for although, doubtless, there are men who are driven to destruction or heart-broken by even the follies of women, these men have not the stout hearts, the loyal spirits, the manly mould of albrecht dürer. but making every allowance for the high colours with which a tale that has grown stale is apt to be daubed, i am forced to admit the inference that a mean, sordid, contentious woman probably did as much as was in her power to harass and fret one of the best men in germany, or in the world. luckily for himself, albrecht was a severe student, had much engrossing work which carried him abroad, and travelled once at least far away from the harassing and galling home discipline. for anything further, i believe that albrecht loved his greedy, scolding wife, whose fair face he painted frequently in his pictures, and whom he left at last well and carefully provided for, as he bore with her to the end. in albrecht dürer re-visited italy alone, making a stay of eight months in venice, where he formed his friendship with the old gian bellini, and where albrecht had the misfortune to show the proofs and plans of his engravings to the italian engraver, raimondi, who engraved raphael's paintings, and who proved himself base enough to steal and make use of albrecht dürer's designs to the german's serious loss and inconvenience. a little later albrecht dürer, accompanied by his wife, visited the netherlands. the emperor maximilian treated the painter with great favour, and a legend survives of their relations:--dürer was painting so large a subject that he required steps to reach it. the emperor, who was present, required a nobleman of his suite to steady the steps for the painter, an employment which the nobleman declined as unworthy of his rank, when the emperor himself stepped forward and supplied the necessary aid, remarking, 'sir, understand that i can make albrecht a noble like and above you' (maximilian had just raised albrecht dürer to the rank of noble of the empire), 'but neither i nor any one else can make an artist like him.' we may compare this story with a similar and later story of holbein and henry viii., and with another earlier story, having a slight variation, of titian and charles v. the universality of the story shakes one's belief in its individual application, but at least the legend, with different names, remains as an indication of popular homage to genius. while executing a large amount of work for the great towns and sovereign princes of germany, some of whom were said to consult the painter on their military operations, relying on his knowledge of mathematics, and his being able to apply it to military engineering and fortification, albrecht dürer was constantly improving and advancing in his art, laying down his prejudices, and acquiring fresh ideas, as well as fresh information, according to the slow but sure process of the true german mind, till his last work was incomparably his best. germany was then in the terrible throes of the reformation, and albrecht dürer, who has left us the portraits of several of the great reformers, is believed to have been no uninterested spectator of the struggle, and to have held, like his fellow-painter, lucas cranach--though in albrecht dürer's case the change was never openly professed--the doctrines of the reformation. there is a portrait of albrecht dürer, painted by himself, in his later years. (by the way, albrecht was not averse to painting his own portrait as well as that of his friend pirkheimer, and of making the fullest claim to his work by introducing into his religious and historical pictures his own figure holding a flag or tablet, inscribed with his name in the quiet self-assertion of a man who was neither ashamed of himself, nor of anything he did.) in that last portrait, albrecht is a thoughtful, care-worn man, with his fair locks shorn. some will attribute the change to agnes dürer, but i imagine it proceeds simply from the noble scars of work and time; and that when albrecht dürer died in his fifty-seventh year, if it were in sourness and bitterness of spirit, as some of his biographers have stated, that sourness and bitterness were quite as much owing to the grievous troubles of his time and country, which so large-minded a man was sure to lay to heart, as to any domestic trouble. albrecht dürer was greatly beloved by his own city of nuremberg, where his memory continues to be cherished. his quaint house still stands, and his tomb bears the motto 'emigravit,' 'for the great painter never dies.' albrecht dürer's name ranks with the names of the first painters of any time or country, though his work as a painter was, as in the case of william hogarth, subservient to his work as an engraver. with the knowledge of a later generation to that of the earliest italian and flemish painters, albrecht dürer had much of their singleness of purpose, assiduity of application, and profound feeling. he had to labour against a tendency to uncouthness in stiff lines and angular figures; to petty elaboration of details; and to that grotesqueness which, while it suited in some respects his allegorical engravings, marred his historical paintings, so that he was known to regret the wasted fantastic crowding and confusion of his earlier work. from the italians and flemings he learnt simplicity, and a more correct sense of material beauty. the purity, truth, and depth of the man's spirit, from which ideal beauty proceeds, no man could add to. among albrecht dürer's greatest paintings are his 'adoration of the trinity' at vienna, his 'adam and eve' at florence, and that last picture of 'the apostles,' presented by albrecht dürer to his native city, 'in remembrance of his career as an artist, and at the same time as conveying to his fellow-citizens an earnest and lasting exhortation suited to that stormy period.' the prominence given to the bible in the picture, points to it as the last appeal in the great spiritual struggle. with regard to this noble masterly picture, kugler has written, 'well might the artist now close his eyes. he had in this picture attained the summit of art; here he stands side by side with the greatest masters known in history.' but i prefer to say something of albrecht dürer's engravings, which are more characteristic of him and far more widely known than his paintings; and to speak first of those two wonderful and beautiful allegories, 'knight, death, and the devil,' and 'melancolia.' in the first, which is an embodiment of weird german romance as well as of high christian faith, the solitary knight, with his furrowed face and battered armour, rides steadfastly on through the dark glen, unmoved by his grisly companions, skeleton death on the lame horse, and the foul fiend in person. contrast this sketch and its thoughtful touching meaning with the hollow ghastliness of holbein's 'dance of death.' in 'melancolia' a grand winged woman sits absorbed in sorrowful thought, while surrounded by all the appliances of philosophy, science, art, mechanics, all the discoveries made before and in albrecht dürer's day, in the book, the chart, the lever, the crystal, the crucible, the plane, the hammer. the intention of this picture has been disputed, but the best explanation of it is that which regards the woman as pondering on the humanly unsolved and insoluble mystery of the sin and sorrow of life. in three large series of woodcuts, known as the greater and the lesser passion of the lord, and the life of the virgin, and taken partly from sacred history and partly from tradition, albrecht dürer exceeded himself in true beauty, simple majesty, and pathos. photographs have spread widely these fine woodcuts, and there is, at least, one which i think my readers may have seen, 'the bearing of the cross,' in which the blessed saviour sinks under his burden. in the series of the life of the virgin there is a 'repose in egypt,' which has a naïve homeliness in its grace and serenity. the woodcut represents a courtyard with a dwelling built in the ruins of an ancient palace. the virgin sits spinning with a distaff and spindle beside the holy child's cradle, by which beautiful angels worship. joseph is busy at his carpenter's work, and a number of little angels, in merry sport, assist him with his labours.[ ] i shall mention only one more work of albrecht dürer's, that which is known as the emperor maximilian's prayer book. this is pen-and-ink sketches for the borders of a book (as the old missals were illuminated), which are now preserved in the royal library, munich. in these little drawings the fancy of the great artist held high revel, by no means confining itself to serious subjects, such as apostles, monks, or even men in armour, but indulging in the most whimsical vagaries, with regard to little german old women, imps, piping squirrels, with cocks and hens hurrying to listen to the melody. chapter vi. later italian art--giorgione, - --correggio. about - --tintoretto, - --veronese, - . giorgio barbarelli, known as 'giorgione,--in italian, 'big,' or, as i have heard it better translated, 'strapping george'--was born at castelfranco, in treviso, about , the same year in which titian was born. nothing is known of his youth before he came to venice and studied in the school of gian bellini along with titian. the two men were friends in those days, but soon quarrelled, and giorgione's early death completed their separation. titian was impatient and arrogant; giorgione seems to have been one of those proud, shy, sensitive men--possibly morbidly sensitive, with whom it is always difficult to deal; but it is recorded of him, as it is not recorded of his great compeer, that giorgione was frank and friendly as an artist, however moody and fitful he might be as a man. giorgione soon became known. according to one account, he painted the façade of the house which he dwelt in, for an advertisement of his abilities as a painter, a device which was entirely successful in procuring him commissions; but unfortunately for posterity, these were frequently to paint other façades, sometimes in company with titian; grand work, which has inevitably perished, if not by fire, by time and by the sea-damp of venice, for to venice giorgione belonged, and there is no sign that he ever left it. he had no school, and his love of music and society--the last taste found not seldom, an apparent anomaly, in silent, brooding natures--might tend to withdraw him from his art. he has left a trace of his love for music in his pictures of 'concerts' and of 'pastorals,' in which musical performances are made prominent. in giorgione, with his romantic, idealizing temperament, genre[ ] pictures took this form, while he is known to have painted from ovid and from the italian tales of his time. he was employed frequently to paint scenes on panels, for the richly ornamented venetian furniture. giorgione was not without a bent to realism in his very idealism, and is said to have been the first italian painter who 'imitated the real texture of stuffs and painted draperies from the actual material.' giorgione died at the early age of thirty-three years, in . one account represents him as dying of the plague, others attribute his death to a sadder cause. he is said to have had a friend and fellow-painter who betrayed their friendship, and carried off the girl whom giorgione loved. stung to the quick by the double falsehood, the tradition goes on to state that giorgione fell into despair with life and all it held, and so died. a portrait of giorgione is in the munich gallery; it is that of a very handsome beardless lad, 'with a peculiar melancholy in the dark glowing eyes.' giorgione was, like titian, grand and free in drawing and composition, and superb in colour.[ ] mrs jameson has drawn a nice distinction between the two painters as colourists. that the colours of giorgione 'appear as if lighted from within, and those of titian from without;' that 'the epithet glowing applies best to giorgione, that of golden to titian.' giorgione's historic pictures are rare, his sacred pictures rarer still; among the last is a 'finding of moses,' now in milan, thus described by mrs jameson: 'in the centre sits the princess under a tree; she looks with surprise and tenderness on the child, which is brought to her by one of her attendants; the squire, or seneschal, of the princess, with knights and ladies, stand around; on one side two lovers are seated on the grass; on the other are musicians and singers, pages with dogs. all the figures are in the venetian costume; the colouring is splendid, and the grace and harmony of the whole composition is even the more enchanting from the naïveté of the conception. this picture, like many others of the same age and style, reminds us of those poems and tales of the middle ages, in which david and jonathan figure as _preux chevaliers_, and sir alexander of macedon and sir paris of troy fight tournaments in honour of ladies' eyes and the "blessed virgin." they must be tried by their own aim and standard, not by the severity of antiquarian criticism.' in portraits giorgione has only been exceeded by titian. in the national gallery there is an unimportant 'st peter the martyr,' and a finer 'maestro di capella giving a music lesson,' which kugler assigns to giorgione, though it has been given elsewhere to titian. the 'refined voluptuousness and impassioned sombreness' of giorgione's painting have instituted a comparison between him and lord byron as a poet. correggio's real name was antonio allegri, and he has his popular name from his birth-place of correggio, now called reggio; although at one time there existed an impression that correggio meant 'correct,' from the painter's exceedingly clever feats of fore-shortening. his father is believed to have been a well-to-do tradesman, and the lad is said to have had an uncle a painter, who probably influenced his nephew. but correggio had a greater master, though but for a very short time, in andrea mantegna, who died when correggio was still a young boy. mantegna's son kept on his father's school, and from him correggio might have received more regular instruction. he early attained excellence, and in the teeth of the legends which lingered in parma for a full century, his genius received prompt notice and patronage. he married young, and from records which have come to light, he received a considerable portion with his wife. the year after his marriage, when he was no more than six-and-twenty, correggio was appointed to paint in fresco the cupola of the church of san giovanni at parma, and chose for his subject the 'ascension of christ;' for this work and that of the 'coronation of the virgin,' painted over the high altar, correggio got five hundred gold crowns, equivalent to £ . he was invited to mantua, where he painted from the mythology for the duke of mantua. indeed, so far and wide had the preference for mythological subjects penetrated, that one of correggio's earliest works was 'diana returning from the chase;' painted for the decoration of the parlour of the abbess of the convent of san paulo, parma. correggio was a second time called upon to paint a great religious work in parma--this time in the cathedral, for which he selected 'the assumption of the virgin.' a few of the cartoons for these frescoes were discovered thirty or forty years ago, rolled up and lying forgotten in a garret in parma; they, are now in the british museum. in , correggio, then residing in his native town, was one of the witnesses to the marriage of his sovereign, the lord of correggio. in the following year the painter had engaged to paint an altar-piece for an employer, who paid correggio in advance twenty-five gold crowns, but the latter dying very soon afterwards, in the forty-first year of his age, , his father, who was still alive, was in circumstances to repay the advance on the picture, which had not been painted. correggio is said to have been modest and retiring in disposition, and this, together with the fact that, like giorgione, he did not have a school, has been suggested as the source of the traditions which prevailed so long in italy. these traditions described the painter as a man born in indigent circumstances, living obscurely in spite of his genius (there is a picture of correggio's in england, which was said to have been given in payment for his entertainment at an inn), and leading to the end a life of such ill-requited labour, that having been paid for his last picture in copper money, and being under the necessity of carrying it home in order to relieve the destitution of his family, he broke down under the burden, and overcome by heat and weariness, drank a rash draught of water, which caused fever and death. the story, disproven as it is, is often alluded to still, and remains as a foil to those flattering and courtly anecdotes which i have been repeating of royal and imperial homage paid to dürer, titian, and holbein. i fancy the last-mentioned stories may have grown from small beginnings, and circulated purely in the artist world; but that the former is an utterance of the engrained persuasion of the great world without, that art as a means of livelihood is essentially non-remunerative in the sense of money-getting. modest as correggio may have been, he was not without pride in his art. after looking for the first time on the st cecilia of raphael, correggio is reported to have exclaimed with exultation, 'and i too am a painter.' he left behind him on his death a son and a daughter, the former living to be a painter of no great name. in the picture of correggio in the attitude of painting, painted by himself, we see him a handsome spare man with something of a romantic cavalier air, engaged in his chosen art. correggio's pictures go to prove that under his seemingly quiet exterior he was a man of the liveliest sensibilities and the keenest perceptions, his pictures, unlike titian's in their repose, are full of motion and excitement. correggio is spoken of as a painter who delighted 'in the buoyance of childish glee, the bliss of earthly, the fervour of heavenly love,' whose radiant sphere of art sorrow rarely clouded; but when sorrow did enter, it borrowed from the painter's own quivering heart the very sharpness of anguish. the same authority tells us of correggio, that he has painted 'the very heart-throbs of humanity.' but it seems as if such a nature, with its self-conscious veil of forced stillness, must have had a tendency to vehemence and excess; and so we hear that correggio's fore-shortening was sometimes violent, and the energy of his actors spasmodic; thus the cruelly smart contemporary criticism was pronounced on his frescoes of the 'assumption of the virgin,' in which legs and arms in wild play are chiefly conspicuous from below, that correggio had prepared for the parmese 'a fricassée of frogs.' in addition, the great modern critic, mr ruskin, has boldly accused correggio 'both of weakness and meretriciousness,' and there is this to be said of a nature so highly strung as correggio's was strung, that it was not a healthily balanced nature. but if the painter were really inferior in his sense of form and expression to his great predecessors, he was so great in one department, that in it he was held worthy, not only to found the school of parma, but to be classed with the first four painters of italy. that chiarascuro, or treatment of light and shade, in which lionardo and andrea mantegna were no mean proficients, was brought to such perfection by correggio, that, as mrs jameson has sought to illustrate technical expressions, 'you seem to look through. correggio's shadows, and to see beyond them the genuine texture of the flesh.' in undulating grace of motion, in melting softness of outline, fixed on a canvas, he surpassed all rivals, including raphael; and this widely attractive quality ('luscious refinement,' mr ruskin terms it) in connection with correggio's ardent, if undisciplined sensibility, has rendered him one of the most valued of painters; his best paintings being highly prized and costly as the easel pictures attributed to raphael. sir w. stirling maxwell writes that an old duke of modena was suspected of having caused correggio's 'notte' to be stolen from a church at reggio, and that the princes of este were wont to carry 'the magdalene reading' with them on their journeys, while the king of poland kept it under lock and key in a frame of jewelled silver. among correggio's masterpieces, besides his frescoes, there is at parma his picture called 'day,' from the broad flood of daylight in the picture (and doubtless in contrast to his famous 'notte' or 'night,' in the dresden gallery). here is a virgin and child, with st jerome presenting to them his translation of the scriptures, and the magdalene bending to kiss in adoration the feet of the infant saviour. in the dresden gallery in addition to the 'notte' are five pictures, one of the marriage of st catherine as the church--the bride, espoused with a ring to the infant saviour, a favourite subject of italian painters, and a specially favourite subject with correggio; and another, the magdalene reading, half shrouded with her flowing hair, so well known by engravings. i must say a few more words of the 'notte,'--it is a nativity illuminated entirely by the unearthly glory shining from the child christ. virgin and child are bathed and half lost in the fair radiance, which falls softly on a shepherd and maiden, leaving the rest of the figures, the stalled beasts, and the surroundings of the stable, in dim shadow. in our national gallery there are fine specimens of correggio. there is an 'ecce homo': christ crowned with thorns, holding out his bound hands, with a roman soldier softening into pity, pilate hardening in indifference, and the virgin fainting with sorrow. there are also 'the virgin with the basket,' so named from the little basket in front of the picture; and 'a holy family;' and there is a highly-esteemed picture from a mythological subject, 'mercury teaching cupid to read in the presence of venus.' we must return to the venice of titian, and see how his successors, with much more of the true painter in them than the fast degenerating scholars of other italian schools, were mere men, if great men, matched with titian. tintoretto is only tintoretto or tintoret because his father was a dyer, and 'il tintoretto' is in italian, 'the little dyer.' tintoretto's real name was one more in keeping with his pretensions, jacopo robusti. he was born in venice, in , and early fore-shadowed his future career by drawing all kinds of objects on the walls of his father's dye-house, an exercise which did not offend or dismay the elder robusti, but, on the contrary, induced him to put the boy into the school of titian, where tintoretto only remained a short time. titian did not choose to impart what could be imparted of his art to his scholars, and, in all probability, tintoretto was no deferential and submissive scholar. there is a tradition that titian expelled this scholar from his academy, saying of the dyer's son, that 'he would never be anything but a dauber.' tintoret was not to be daunted. he lived to be a bold-tempered, dashing man, and he must have been defiant, even in his boyhood, as he was swaggering in his youth, when he set up an academy of his own, and inscribed above the door, 'the drawing of michael angelo and the colouring of titian.' he had studied and taught himself from casts and theories since he left the school of titian, and then, with worldly wisdom equal to his daring, he commenced his artistic career by accepting every commission, good or bad, and taking what pay he could get for his work; but, unfortunately for him and for the world, he executed his work, as might have been expected, in the same headlong, indiscriminate spirit, acquiring the name of 'il furioso' from the rapidity and recklessness of his manner of painting. often he did not even give himself the trouble of making any sketch or design of his pictures beforehand, but composed as he painted. self-confident to presumption, he took for his inspirations the merest impulses, and considerably marred the effect of his unquestionably grand genius by gross haste and carelessness. he was a successful man in his day, as so energetic and unscrupulous a man was likely enough to be, and his fellow-citizens, who saw principally on the surface,[ ] were charmed beyond measure by his tremendous capacity for invention, his dramatic vigour, his gorgeous, rampant richness and glare; or, by contrast, his dead dulness of ornament and colouring; and were not too greatly offended by his occasional untruthfulness in drawing and colouring, and the inequality of his careless, slovenly, powerful achievements. yet even tintoret's fascinated contemporaries said of him that he 'used three pencils: one gold, one silver, one lead.' naturally tintoretto painted an immense number of pictures, to only three of which, however, he appended his name. these were, 'the crucifixion,' and 'the miracle of the slave,' two of fifty-seven pictures which he painted for the school of st roch alone, in venice; the other was the 'marriage at cana,' in the church of santa maria della saluto, venice. there is an authentic story told of tintoretto in his age, which is in touching contrast to what is otherwise known of the man. dominico, who was a painter, tintoret had a daughter, marietta, very dear to him, who was also a painter--indeed, so gifted a portrait painter, as to have been repeatedly invited to foreign courts to practise her art, invitations which she declined, because she would not be parted from her father. to tintoret's great grief, this daughter died as she was thirty years of age, and her father was in his seventy-eighth year. when her end was unmistakably near, the old man took brush and canvas and struggled desperately to preserve a last impression of the beloved child's face, over which death was casting its shadow. tintoretto died four years later, in . his portrait is that of a man who holds his head high and resolutely; he has, strange to say, a somewhat commonplace face, with its massive nose, full eye, short curly beard and hail. the forehead is not very broad, but the head is 'long,' as scotch people say, and they count long-headedness not only an indication of self-esteem, but of practical shrewdness. tintoret's power was native, and had received little training; it is a proof of the strength of that power that he could not quench it. his faults, as a painter, i have already had to chronicle in the sketch of the man. he was greatest on large canvases, where his recklessness was lost in his strength; and in portraits, where his quickness in seizing striking traits more than equalled that rapidity of conclusion in realizing, and still more notably in classifying, character, which, to say the least, is liable to error. even before tintoretto lived sacred subjects and art had entirely changed places. in the days of fra angelico and the van eycks, art was the means by which painters brought before men sacred subjects, to whose design painters looked with more or less of conviction and feeling. by the time that tintoret painted, sacred subjects were the means by which painters showed their art; means, the design of which was largely lost sight of, and which might be freely tortured and twisted, falsified, well-nigh burlesqued, if, by so doing, painters could better display their originality, skill, and mastery of technicalities. sacred subjects had become more and more human in the lower sense, and less and less divine. a man who had so little reverence as tintoret showed for his own higher self, his fellow-men, and his art, would scarcely seem well qualified to take up sacred subjects. but criticism is entirely and hopelessly divided on the question, for while some authorities hold that he made of the awful scene of the crucifixion a merely historical and decidedly theatrical procession, other authorities maintain that he preserved in that 'great composition' 'repose and dignity, solemnity and reverence.' here is m. charles blanc, the french art critic's opinion of tintoret's largest work, seventy-four feet in length and thirty feet in height: the glory of paradise, in the great hall or throne-room of the doge's palace:-- 'if the shadows had not become so black, such a picture would have had something of sublimity; but that sky, without transparency, the lights of which, even, are of a burnt and baked colour, has rather the air of a lit-up erebus than of a paradise. four hundred figures are in motion in this vast enclosure, some naked, others draped, but draped uniformly in a staring red or a hard blue, which form as many spots, in some sort symmetrical. the manner is quick; a little loose, but confident. the models are neither taken from nature nor from the ideal, they are drawn from practice, and are in general only turns of the head, without beauty and without delicacy. the angels are agitated like demons; and the whole--coarse enough in execution as in thought, is imposing nevertheless by mass, movement, and number. it is the striking image of a multitude in the air, a rout in the heavens, or rather in purgatory.' here, again, is mr ruskin's unequalled estimate of tintoret's works: 'i should exhaust the patience of the reader if ion the various stupendous developments of the imagination of tintoret in the scuola di san rocco alone. i would fain join awhile in that solemn pause of the journey into egypt, where the silver boughs of the shadowy trees lace with their tremulous lines the alternate folds of fair cloud, flushed by faint crimson light, and lie across the streams of blue between those rosy islands like the white wakes of wandering ships; or watch beside the sleep of the disciples among those mossy leaves that lie so heavily on the dead of the night beneath the descent of the angel of the agony, and toss fearfully above the motion of the torches as the troop of the betrayer emerges out of the hollows of the olives; or wait through the hour of accusing beside the judgment-seat of pilate, where all is unseen, unfelt, except the one figure that stands with its head bowed down, pale like the pillar of moonlight, half bathed in the glory of the godhead, half wrapt in the whiteness of the shroud. of these and all other thoughts of indescribable power that are now fading from the walls of those neglected chambers, i may perhaps endeavour at a future time to preserve some image and shadow more faithfully than by words; but i shall at present terminate our series of illustrations by reference to a work of less touching, but more tremendous appeal; the last judgment in the church of santa maria dell' orto.' 'by tintoret only has this unimaginable event been grappled with in its verity; not typically, nor symbolically, but as they may see it who shall not sleep, but be changed. only one traditional circumstance he has received with dante and michael angelo, the boat of the condemned; but the impetuosity of his mind bursts out even in the adoption of this image; he has not stopped at the scowling ferryman of the one, nor at the sweeping blow and demon-dragging of the other; but, seized hylas-like by the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish lethe, nor the fiery lake, that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract; the river of the wrath of god, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruin of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling like water-wheels. bat-like, out of the holes, and caverns, and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to the siloam pool; shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the clangour of the trumpets of the armies of god; blinded yet more, as they awake, by the white light of the new heaven, until the great vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment-seat; the firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human souls, that drifts, and floats, and falls in the interminable, inevitable light; the bright clouds are darkened with them as with thick snow; currents of atom life in the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, and higher and higher still, till the eye and thought can follow no farther, borne up, wingless, by their inward faith, and by the angel powers invisible, now hurled in countless drifts of horror before the breath of their condemnation.' there is only one little work, of small consequence, by tintoretto in the national gallery, but there are nearly a dozen in the royal galleries, as charles i. was an admirer and buyer of 'tintorettos.' two tintorettos which belonged to king charles i, are at hampton court; the one is 'esther fainting before ahasuerus,' and the other the 'nine muses.' with another 'esther' i have been familiar from childhood by an old engraving. in the congenial to tintoret, and he has certainly revelled in the sumptuousness of the mighty eastern tyrant, in royal mantle and ermine tippet, seated on his throne, and stretching his jewelled sceptre to esther, who is in the rich costume of a venetian lady of the period, and sinking into the arms of her watchful maids, with a fair baby face, and little helpless hands, having dainty frills round the wrists, which scarcely answer to our notion of the attributes of the magnanimous, if meek, jewish heroine. paul cágliari of verona is far better known as paul veronese. he was born in verona in , and was the son of a sculptor. he was taught by his father to draw and model, but abandoned sculpture for the sister art of painting, which was more akin to his tastes, and which he followed in the studio of an uncle who was a fair painter. quitting verona, paul veronese repaired to venice, studying the works of titian and tintoret, and settling in their city, finding no want of patronage even in a field so fully appropriated before he came to take his place there. his first great work was the painting of the church of st sebastian, with scenes from the history of esther. whether he chose the subject or whether it was assigned to him, it belonged even more to him than to tintoret, for veronese was the most magnificent of the magnificent venetian painters. from that date he was kept in constant employment by the wealthy and luxurious venetians. he visited rome in the suite of the venetian ambassador in , when he was in his thirty-fourth year, and he was invited to spain to assist in the decoration of the escurial by philip ii., but refused the invitation. veronese is said to have been a man of kindly spirit, generous and devout. in painting for churches and convents, he would consent to receive the smallest remuneration, sometimes not more than the price of his colours and canvas. for his fine picture now in the louvre, the 'marriage of cana,' he is believed not to have had more than forty pounds in our money. he died when he was but fifty-eight years of age, in . he had married and left sons who were painters, and worked with their father. he had a brother, benedotto, who was also a painter, and who is thought to have painted many of the architectural backgrounds to veronese's pictures. veronese's portrait, which he has left us, gives the idea of a more earnest and impressionable man than tintoret. a man in middle age, bald-headed, with a furrowed brow, cheeks a little hollowed, head slightly thrown back, and a somewhat anxious as well as intent expression of face; what of the dress is seen, being a plain doublet with turned-over collar, and a cloak arranged in a fold across the breast, and hanging over the right shoulder like a shepherd's 'maud' or plaid. looking at the engraving, and hearing of paul veronese's amiability and piety, one has little difficulty in thinking of the magnificent painter, as a single-hearted, simple-minded man, neither vain nor boastful, nor masterful save by the gift of genius. i have called paul veronese a magnificent painter, and magnificence is the great attribute of his style; but before going farther into his merits and defects, i should like to quote to you a passage from mr ruskin, the most eloquent and dogmatic of art critics, prefacing the passage with the statement that the true lesson which it teaches is particularly needful for women, who, if they love art at all, are apt to regard it chiefly for its sentiment, and to undervalue such proper painter's work, such breadth and affluence and glory of handling, as are to be met with on the canvases of painters like veronese and rubens. 'but i perceive a tendency among some of the more thoughtful critics of the day to forget the business of a painter is _to paint_, and so altogether to despise those men, veronese and rubens for instance, who were painters, _par excellence_, and in whom the expressional qualities are subordinate. now it is well, when we have strong moral or poetical feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as the best part of the work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of small account the painter's language in which that feeling is conveyed; for if that language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed be a just moralist or a great poet, but he is not a _painter_, and it was wrong of him to paint.' it was said of paul veronese, that while he had not 'the brilliance and depth of titian' or the 'prodigious facility' of tintoret, yet, in some respects, veronese surpassed both. but he was certainly deficient in a sense of suitability and probability. he, of all painters, carried to an outrageous extent the practice, which i have defended in some degree, of painting sacred and historical subjects as if they had happened in his own day and city. he violated taste and even reason in painting every scene, lofty or humble, sacred or profane, alike, with the pomp of splendour and richness of ornament which were the fashion of the time; but he had a vivid perception of character, and a certain greatness of mind which redeemed his plethora of gorgeousness from monotony or vulgarity. veronese is reported to have been far more correct and careful in drawing than was tintoret, while veronese's prodigality of colour was a mellowed version of tintoret's glare or deadness. one of veronese's best pictures is the 'marriage of cana,' painted originally for the refectory of the convent of san giorgio, venice, and now in the louvre. 'it is not less than thirty feet long and twenty feet high, and contains about one hundred and thirty figures, life size. the marriage feast of the galilean citizen is represented with a pomp worthy of "ormuz or of ind." a sumptuous hall of the richest architecture; lofty columns, long lines of marble balustrades rising against the sky; a crowd of guests splendidly attired, some wearing orders of knighthood, are seated at tables covered with gorgeous vases of gold and silver, attended by slaves, jesters, pages, and musicians. in the midst of all this dazzling pomp, this display of festive enjoyment, these moving figures, these lavish colours in glowing approximation, we begin after a while to distinguish the principal personages, our saviour, the virgin mary, the twelve apostles, mingled with venetian senators and ladies, clothed in the rich costume of the sixteenth century; monks, friars, poets, artists, all portraits of personages existing in his own time; while in a group of musicians he has introduced himself and tintoretto playing the violoncello, while titian plays the bass. the bride in this picture is said to be the portrait of eleanor of austria, the sister of charles v, and second wife of francis i.'[ ] though veronese is not greatly esteemed as a portrait painter, it so happens that the highly-prized picture of his in our national gallery, called 'the family of darius before alexander,' is understood to be family portraits of the pisani family in the characters of alexander, the persian queen, etc., etc. another of veronese's pictures in the national gallery is 'the consecration of st nicholas, bishop of myra.' chapter vii. carracci, - --guido reni, - --domenichino, - --salvator rosa, - . in the falling away of the schools of italy, and especially of the followers of michael angelo and raphael, into mannerism and exaggeration, fitly expressed in delineation of heathen gods and goddesses, there arose a cluster of painters in the north of italy who had considerable influence on art. the carracci included a group of painters, the founders of the later bolognese school. lodovico, the elder of the three, was born at bologna, . he was educated as a painter, and was so slow in his education, that he received from his fellow-scholars the nickname of 'il bue' (the ox). but his perseverance surmounted every obstacle. he visited the different italian towns, and studied the works of art which contained, arriving at the conclusion that he might acquire and combine the excellences of each. this combination, which could only be a splendid patch-work without unity, was the great aim of his life, and was the origin of the term _eclectic_ applied to his school. its whole tendency was to technical excellence, and in this tendency, however it might achieve its end, painting showed a marked decline. as an example of the motives and objects supplied by the school, i must borrow some lines from a sonnet of the period written by agostino carracci: 'let him, who a good painter would be, acquire the drawing of rome, venetian action, and venetian shadow, and the dignified colouring of lombardy, the terrible manner of michael angelo, titian's truth and nature, the sovereign purity of correggio's style, and the true symmetry of raphael; * * * * * and a little of parmegiano'a grace, but without so much study and toil, let him only apply himself to imitate the works which our niccolino has left us here.' lodovico opened a school of painting at bologna, in which he was for a time largely assisted by his cousins. he died . agostino carracci, cousin of lodovico, was born at bologna in . his father was a tailor, and agostino himself began life as a jeweller. he became a painter and an engraver in turn, devoting himself chiefly to engraving. towards the beginning of the seventeenth century he was with his more famous brother, annibale, at rome, where he assisted in painting the farnese gallery, designing and executing the two frescoes of galatea and aurora with such success, according to his contemporaries, that it was popularly said that 'the engraver had surpassed the painter in the farnese.' jealousy arose between the brothers in consequence, and they separated, not before annibale had perpetrated upon agostino a small, but malicious, practical joke, which has been handed down to us. agostino was fond of the society of people of rank, and annibale, aware of his brother's weakness, took the opportunity, when agostino was surrounded by some of his aristocratic friends, to present him with a caricature of the two brothers' father and mother, engaged in their tailoring work. agostino died at parma when he was a little over forty, and was buried in the cathedral there, in . annibale, agostino's younger brother, was born in . it was intended by his parents that he should follow their trade and be a tailor, but he was persuaded by his cousin lodovico to become a painter. after visiting parma, venice, and bologna, he worked with his cousin and teacher for ten years. annibale was invited to rome by the cardinal odoardo farnese, to decorate the great hall of his palace in the piazza farnese, with scenes from the heathen mythology, for which work he received a monthly salary of ten scudi, about two guineas, with maintenance for himself and two servants, and a farther gift of five hundred scudi. it was a parsimonious payment, and the parsimony is said to have preyed on the mind and affected the health of annibale, and a visit to naples, where he, in common with not a few artists, suffered from the jealous persecutions of the neapolitan painters, completed the breaking up of his constitution. he painted, with the assistance of albani, the frescoes in the chapel of san diego in san giacomo degli spagnole, and pressed upon his assistant more than half of his pay. annibale's health had already given way, and after a long illness he died, when forty-nine years of age, at rome, , and was buried near raphael in the pantheon. the merit of the carracci lay in their power of execution, and in a certain 'bold naturalism, or rather animalism,' which they added to their able imitations, for their pictures are not so much their own, as 'after titian,' 'after correggio,' etc. in this intent regard to style, and this perfecting of means to an end, thought and in a manner neglected. yet to the carracci, and their school, is owing a certain studied air of solemnity and sadness in 'ecce homos,' and 'pietás,' which, in proportion to its art, has a powerful effect on many beholders, who prefer conventionality to freedom; or rather, who fail to distinguish conventionality in its traces. annibale was the most original while the least learned of the carracci; yet, even of annibale, it could be said that he lacked enthusiasm in his subjects. his best productions are his mythological subjects in the farnese palace. a celebrated picture of his, that of the 'three marys' (a dead christ, the madonna, and the two other marys), is at castle howard, and has been exhibited at manchester, and i think also at leeds. at manchester it attracted the greatest attention and admiration. i believe this was not only because annibale carracci in the 'three marys' does attain to a most piteous mournfulness of sentiment, but because such work as that of the carracci finds readiest acceptance from a general public, which delights in striking, superficial effects. the same reason, in conjunction with the decline of italian art, may account for the great number of the carracci school and followers. annibale carracci was one of the first who practised landscape painting and genre pictures, such as 'the greedy eater,' as separate branches of art. two of annibale's landscapes are in the national gallery. guido reni, commonly called 'guido,' was born at bologna, . his father was a musician, and guido was intended for the same calling, but finally became a painter and student in the school of the carracci. he followed annibale carracci to rome, and dwelt there for twenty years. he obtained great repute and favour, but taking offence at some supposed injustice, he left rome, and settled at last in bologna, where he established a large school. though he made great sums of money, which might have enabled him to live in the splendour which he coveted, on account of his addiction to gambling and his grossly extravagant habits, he was constantly in debt, and driven to tax his genius to the utmost, and to sell its fruits for what they would bring, irrespective of what he owed to himself, his art, and to the giver of all good gifts. he died at bologna, and was buried with much pomp in the church of san dominico, . of guido we hear that he had three styles: the first, after the vigorous manner of michael angelo; the second, in the prevailing ornamental taste of the rome of his day and the carracci. this is considered guido's best style, and is distinguished by its subtle management of light and shade. his third, which is called his 'silvery style,' from its greys, degenerated into insipidity, with little wonder, seeing that at this stage he sold his time at so much per hour to picture-dealers, who stood over him, watch in hand, to see that he fulfilled his bargain, and carried away the saints he manufactured wet from the easel. such manufactory took him only three hours, sometimes less. his charges had risen from five guineas for a head, and twenty guineas for a whole figure, to twenty times that amount. he painted few portraits, but many 'fancy' heads of saints. nearly three hundred pictures by guido are believed to be in existence. guido's individual distinction was his refined sense of beauty, but it was over-ruled by 'cold calculation,' and developed into a mere abstract conception of 'empty grace' without heart or soul. his finest work is the large painting of 'phoebus and aurora' in a pavilion of the rospigliosi palace at rome. in our national gallery there are nine specimens of guido's works, including one of his best 'ecce homos,' which belonged to the collection of samuel rogers. domenico zampieri, commonly called domenichino, was another bolognese painter, and another eminent scholar of the carracci. he was born in , and, after studying under a flemish painter, passed into the school of the carracci. while yet a very young man, domenichino was invited to rome, where he soon earned a high reputation, competing successfully with his former fellow-scholar, guido. domenichino's 'flagellation of st andrew,' and 'communion of st jerome,' in payment of which he only received about five guineas; his 'martyrdom of st sebastian,' and his 'four evangelists,' which are among his masterpieces, were all painted in rome, and remain in rome. domenichino is said to have excited the extreme hostility of rival painters, and to have suffered especially from the malice of the neapolitans, when he was invited to work among them. after a cruel struggle domenichino died in naples, not without a horrible suspicion of having being poisoned, at the age of sixty, in . one of his enemies--a roman on this occasion--destroyed what was left of domenichino's work in naples. the painter's fate was a miserable one, and by a coincidence between his fortune and his taste in subjects, he has identified his name with terrible representations of martyrdoms. kugler writes that martyrdom as a subject for painting, which had been sparingly used by raphael and his scholars, had come into fashion in domenichino's time, for 'painters and poets sought for passionate emotion, and these subjects (martyrdoms) supplied them with plentiful food.' sensationalism is the florid hectic of art's decay, whether in painting or in literature. domenichino is accredited with more taste than fancy. he made free use of the compositions of even contemporary artists, while he individualized these compositions. his good and bad qualities are those of his school, already quoted, and perhaps it is in keeping with these qualities that the excellence of domenichino's works lies in subordinate parts and subordinate characters. there are examples of domenichino in the national gallery. i shall close my long list of the great italian painters of the past with one who was quite apart from and opposed to the carracci school, and whose triumphs and failures were essentially his own. salvator rosa, born in near naples, was the son of an architect. in opposition to his father salvator rosa became a painter. having succeeded in selling his sketches to a celebrated buyer, the bold young neapolitan started for rome at the age of twenty years; and rome, 'the jerusalem of painters,' became thenceforth salvator rosa's head-quarters, though the character of the man was such as to force him to change his quarters not once or twice only in his life, and thus he stayed some time, in turn, at naples, viterbo, volterra, and florence. at volterra the aggressive nature of the painter broke forth in a series of written satires on a medley of subjects--music, poetry (both of which salvator himself cultivated), painting, war, babylon, and envy. these incongruous satires excited the violent indignation of the individuals against whom salvator's wit was aimed, and their efforts at revenge, together with his own turbulent spirit, drove him from place to place. salvator rosa was at naples , and took part in the riots, so famous in song and story, which made masaniello, the young fisherman, for a time captain-general and master of naples, when it was, according to law, a spanish dependency governed by a viceroy. salvator was in the compagnia della morte commanded by falcone, a battle painter, during the troubles, a wild enough post to please the wild painter, even had he not been in addition a personal adherent of the ruling spirit masaniello, whom salvator rosa painted more than once. after so eventful a life, the painter died peaceably enough in his fifty-ninth year, of dropsy, at rome, and left a considerable fortune to his only son. salvator rosa was the incarnation of the arrogant, fickle, fierce neapolitan spirit, and he carried it out sufficiently in an undisciplined, stormy life, without the addition of the popular legend that he had at one time joined a troop of banditti, and indulged in their excesses. the legend seems to have a familiarity with mountain passes, and his love of peopling them appropriately with banditti in action. salvator rosa was a dashing battle painter, a mediocre historical painter, and an excellent portrait painter as well as landscape painter. but it is chiefly by the savage grandeur of his mountain or forest landscapes, with their fitting _dramatis personæ_, that he has won his renown. mr ruskin, while he allows salvator's gift of imagination, denounces him for the reckless carelessness and untruthfulness to nature of his painting. many of salvator rosa's pictures are in the pitti palace in florence, and many are in england. chapter viii. rubens, - --rembrandt, or - --teniers, father and son, - --wouverman, - --cuyp, ; still living, --paul potter, - --cornelius de heem, . a long interval elapsed between the van eycks and quintin matsys, and rubens; but if flemish art was slow of growth and was only developed after long pauses, it made up for its slowness and delays by the burst of triumph into which flemish and dutch art broke forth in rubens and his school, in rembrandt and cuyp and ruysdael. peter paul rubens was born at siegen in westphalia, on the day of st peter and st paul, . but though rubens was born out of antwerp, he was a citizen of antwerp by descent as well as by so many later associations. his father, john rubens, a lawyer, an imprudent, thriftless man in character and habits, had been compelled to leave antwerp in consequence of religious disturbances which broke out there about the time that the northern provinces, more at one and more decided in their union than the southern provinces, established their independence. rubens spent his early boyhood at cologne, but on the death of his father when he was ten years of age, his mother, a good and 'discreet' woman, to whom the painter owed much, and confessed his debt, returned with her family to antwerp. his mother had destined him for his father's profession, but did not oppose her son's preference for art. after studying under two different artists, and becoming a master in the guild of st luke, rubens went to italy in , when he was a young man of three-and-twenty years of age. he was eight years absent, entering the service of the ducal sovereign of mantua, being sent by him on a diplomatic mission to madrid to philip iii, of spain, visiting on his own account rome, where he found the carracci and guido[ ] at the height of their fame, venice and genoa, 'leaving portraits where he went.' with genoa, its architecture, and its situation, rubens was specially charmed, but he quitted it in haste, being summoned home to attend the death-bed of his mother, from whom he had parted eight years before; and arriving too late to see her in life. a man of strong feelings in sorrow as in joy, he withdrew into retirement, and resided for his season of mourning in a religious house. loving italy with a painter's enthusiasm, so that to the latest day of his life he generally wrote in italian, and loved to sign his name 'pietro paolo rubens,' he had intended to return and settle in mantua, but having been named court painter to the governess of the netherlands, clara eugenia, and her husband albert, rubens had sufficient patriotism and sufficient worldly foresight to induce him to relinquish his idea, and establish himself in his native antwerp. he was already a man of eminence in his profession, and a man of mark out of it. go where he would he made friends, and he so recommended himself to his royal patrons by his natural suavity, tact, and sagacity, that he was not only in the utmost favour with them as a right courtly painter, but was employed by them, once and again, on delicate, difficult, private embassies. but it was not only to his patrons that rubens was endeared, he was emphatically what men call 'a good fellow,' alike to superiors, equals, and inferiors; a frank, honest, bountiful, and generous man. his love of courts and their splendour was the chivalrous homage which a man of his cast of mind paid to the dignity and picturesqueness of high estate. he married a year after his mother's death, when he was in his thirty-third year. his first wife, isabella brant, was a connection of his own (and so was his second wife). he built and painted, in fresco, a fine house in antwerp, and laid out a pleasant garden, which contained a rotunda, filled with his collection of pictures by the italian masters, antique gems, etc. etc., already gathered abroad. he set himself to keep house in a liberal fashion, to dispense benefits, and to entertain friends--above all, to paint with might and main in company with his great school, the members of which, like those of raphael's school where raphael was concerned, were, for the most part, rubens' devoted comrades. counting his work not only as the great object, but the great zest of his life, never did painter receive such sweeping and accumulating commissions, and never, even by tintoret, were commissions executed with such undaunted, unhesitating expedition. withal rubens frequently left his studio and went abroad, either to act as an unofficial ambassador, or to paint at the special request of some foreign sovereign. thus he was residing in paris in , planning for marie de medici the series of remarkable pictures which commemorated her marriage with henry iv. (when i was a little girl, i went occasionally to a country house, the show place of the neighbourhood, where there were copies of this series of rubens' pictures. i can remember yet looking at them with utter bewilderment, caused by the dubious taste that impelled rubens to indulge in the oddest mixture of royal personages, high church dignitaries, patron saints, and gods and goddesses.) in rubens was in spain on a mission from his sovereign to her kinsman, philip iv.; in the following year he was in england, on a service of a similar description to charles i., from whom, even as rubens had already received it from king philip, the painter had the honour of knighthood. in the mean time rubens' first wife died, after a union of seventeen years, in ; and four years later, in , the painter, when he was a man of fifty years, re-married another connection of his own, helena fourment, a girl only in her sixteenth year. both of his wives were handsome, fair, full-formed flemish beauties. elizabeth (in spanish, isabella) brant's beauty was of a finer order than that of her successor, expressing larger capacity of affection and intellect. but on helena fourment rubens doted, while to both women he seems to have been affectionately attached. he has painted them so often, that the face of no painter's wife is so familiar to the art world, and even to the greater world without, as are the faces of these two women, and above all, that of helena fourment. he had seven children, who frequently figure in their mothers' portraits. he has left notable portraits of his two sons by his first wife, of his eldest daughter, clara eugenia, when eight years of age, and of his daughter elizabeth, a buxom baby, dressed in velvet and point lace, playing with toys. after a life of unbroken success and the highest honours, the last distinction conferred on rubens was, that he was chosen to arrange the gala, and to be the right-hand man who should conduct the cardinal infant, the successor of clara eugenia, on his first entrance into antwerp. but the hand of premature disease and death, which not even he could resist, was already on the great painter; his constitution had been undermined by repeated attacks of gout, and he died at the age of sixty years, in . he was the possessor of great wealth at the time of his death, and only a part of his collection, which was then sold, brought so large a sum in those days, as twenty thousand pounds. rubens' second wife, helena fourment, to whom he had been married ten years, survived him, a widow at twenty-six years of age rubens' portrait is even better known than those of his wives, for, as i have said of raphael in his popularity, rubens in his life is the beau-ideal of a painter to the many. the portrait is worthy of the man, with something gallant in the manliness, and with thought tempering what might have been too much of bravado and too much of débonnaireté in the traits. his features are handsome in their flemish fulness, and match well with hazel eyes, chestnut hair, and a ruddy complexion; his long moustache is turned up, and he wears the pointed beard which we see so often in the portraits by rubens' scholar, van dyck. the great flapping hat, worn alike by men and women, slightly cocked to one side, is the perfection of picturesque head gear. equally picturesque, and not in the slightest degree effeminate on a man like rubens, is the falling collar of pointed mechlin, just seen above the cloak draped in large folds. in his own day rubens was without a rival as a painter. in a much later day sir joshua reynolds pronounced rubens 'perhaps the greatest master in the mechanical part of the art, _the best workman with his tools_ that ever exercised a pencil.' his consummate excellence lay in his execution and colouring. it is brought as a reproach against his painting, that his noblest characters, even his sacred characters, were but big, brawny, red and white flemings. his imagination only reached a certain height, and yet, if it were a very earthly flemish imagination, it could be grandly, as it was always vigorously, earthly and flemish. at the same time he could be deficient where proportion, and even where all the laws of art, are concerned. it is right that i should, with regret and shame, say this of rubens, whose geniality bordered on joviality, and whose age was a grosser age than our own, that he debased his genius by some foul and revolting pictures. of the general distinction between rubens and some of his predecessors i should like to quote mr ruskin's passage in his defence: 'a man long trained to love the monk's vision of fra angelico, turns in proud and ineffable disgust from the first work of rubens, which he encounters on his return across the alps. but is he right in his indignation? he has forgotten that, while angelico prayed and wept in his _olive shade_, there was different work doing in the dank fields of flanders:--wild seas to be banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful breeding of the stout horses and cattle; close setting of brick-walls against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands, and gross stoutening of bodies in all this; gross jovialities of harvest homes, and christmas feasts, which were to be the reward of it; rough affections, and sluggish imaginations; fleshy, substantial, iron-shod humanities, but humanities still,--humanities which god had his eye upon, and which won perhaps, here and there, as much favour in his sight as the wasted aspects of the whispering monks of florence (heaven forbid that it should not be so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen and reapers still). and are we to suppose there is no nobility in rubens' masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with his large human rendering of it, gentleman though he was by birth, and feeling, and education, and place, and, when he chose, lordly in conception also? he had his faults--perhaps great and lamentable faults,--though more those of his time and his country than his own; he has neither cloister-breeding nor boudoir-breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in missals or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in him that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court, knight's camp, or peasants cottage.' rubens' works are very many, nearly four thousand pictures and sketches being attributed to him and his scholars. many are still at antwerp, many at madrid, but most are at munich, where, in one great saloon and cabinet, there are ninety-five pictures by rubens. in england, at blenheim, there are fifteen pictures by rubens, as the great duchess of marlborough would give any price for his works. i can only indicate a very few examples in the different branches of art which he made his own. first, of his 'descent from the cross:' it is a single large group, distinguished by luminous colouring and correct drawing, and with regard to which the mass of white sheet against which the body of christ is in relief in the picture, has been regarded as a bold artistic venture. an enthusiastic admirer has called it 'a most wonderful monument of the daring genius of the painter. the grandest picture in the world for composition, drawing, and colouring.' its defects are held to be 'the bustle of the incidents and the dreadfully true delineation of merely physical agony--too terrible, real, picturesque, but not sublime--- an earthly tragedy, not a divine mystery.' 'remit the anguish of that lighted stare; close those wan lips! let that thorn-wounded brow stream not with blood.' there is a tradition that an accident happened to the picture while rubens was painting it, and that van dyck remedied the accident by re-painting the cheek and chin of the virgin and the arm of the magdalene. with regard to another picture of rubens at antwerp, 'the assumption of the virgin,' it is said that he painted it in sixteen days, for sixteen hundred florins, his usual terms being a hundred florins a-day. 'the virgin and serpent' (from the th chapter of revelation) in the munich gallery is very splendid. the virgin with the new-born saviour in her arms is mounting on the wings of an eagle, surrounded by a flood of light. the serpent, encircling the moon on which she stands, is writhing beneath her feet. god the father is extending his protecting sceptre over her from above. the archangel, clothed in armour, is in fearful combat with the seven-headed dragon, which is endeavouring to devour the child. although struck by lightning, the dragon is striving to twist his tail round the legs of the angel, and seizes the cloak of the virgin with one of his hands. other infernal monsters are writhing with impotent rage, and falling with the dragon into the abyss.' 'nothing was more characteristic of rubens than his choice of subjects from the mythology of the greeks and the works of the ancient poets; and in nothing did he display more freedom, originality, and poetry.' among his most famous mythological pictures is the 'battle of the amazons,' now at munich. 'the women are driven back by the greeks over the river thermodon; two horses are in savage combat on the bridge; one amazon is torn from her horse; a second is dragged along by a sable steed, and falling headlong into the river, where others are swimming and struggling. no other battle-piece, save that of the amazons, can compare with raphael's "battle of constantine."' another great picture is the 'carrying off of proserpine.' 'pluto in his car is driven by fiery brown steeds, and is bearing away the goddess, resisting and struggling. the picture absolutely glows with genial fire. the forms in it are more slender than is general with rubens. among the companions of proserpine the figure of diana is conspicuous for grace and beauty. the victorious god of love hovers before the chariot, and the blue ocean, warmly tinted with the sunbeams, forms a splendid back-ground.'[ ] rubens was famous for the loveliness and grace of his paintings of children. perhaps the most beautiful is that of 'the infant jesus and john playing with a lamb.' rubens was a great animal painter. one of his celebrated animal pictures is 'daniel in the lions' den,' now at hamilton palace, in which each lion is a king of beasts checked in his fiercest have been painted by rubens in a fit of pique at a false report which had been circulated that he could not paint animals, and that those in his pictures were supplied by the animal-painter, his friend and scholar, schneyders. rubens' landscapes are not the least renowned of his pictures. he gave to his own rich but prosaic flanders, all the breadth and breeziness and matchless aerial effects of a master of painting, and a true lover of nature under every aspect, who can indeed distinguish, under the most ordinary aspect, those hidden treasures which all but a lover and a man of genius would pass by. his 'prairie of laacken,' 'with the sun of flanders piercing the dense yellow clouds with the force of fire,' is of great repute. among his famous portraits i shall mention that called 'the four philosophers' (justus lepsius, hugo grotius, rubens, and his brother), with peaked beards and moustaches, in turned-over collars, ruffs and fur-trimmed robes, having books and pens, a dog, and a classic bust as accessories. the open pillared door is wreathed with a spray from without, and there is a landscape in the background. this portrait is full of power, freedom, and splendid painting. another portrait contains that sweetest of rubens' not often sweet faces, called 'the lady in the straw hat.' rubens himself did not name the picture otherwise in his catalogue. tradition says the original was mdlle lundens, the beauty of the seventeen provinces, and that she died young and unmarried. connoisseurs value the picture because of the triumph of skill by which rubens has painted brilliantly a face so much in the shade; to those who are not connoisseurs i imagine the picture must speak for itself, in its graceful, tender beauty. forming part of the collection of the late sir robert peel (i think he gave three thousand pounds for 'the lady in the straw hat'), which has been bought for the country, this beautiful portrait is now in the national gallery. and now i must speak of the picture of the arundel family. but first, a word about thomas, earl of arundel. it is impossible to write an english work on art and omit a brief account of one of england's greatest art benefactors. thomas, earl of arundel, representing in his day the great house of howard, had a love of art which approached to a mania; and without being so outrageously vain as sir kenelm digby, there is no doubt that the earl counted on his art collection as a source of personal distinction. james i., himself an art collector, so far humoured the earl in his taste as to present him with lord somerset's forfeited collection, valued at a thousand pounds. but charles i, and the earl became rival collectors, and little love was lost between them. the earl of arundel impairing even his great revenues in the pursuit, employed agents and ambassadors--notably petty and evelyn--all over europe, to obtain for him drawings, pictures, ancient marbles, gems, etc., etc. when the civil wars broke out, lord arundel conveyed his priceless collection for safety to antwerp and padua. eventually it was divided among his sons and scattered far and wide. the only portion of it which fell to the nation, in the course of another generation, was the greek marbles, known as the arundel marbles, which were finally presented to the university of oxford. but in rubens' day all this grand collection was intact, and displayed in galleries at arundel house, which the mob thought fit to nickname 'tart hall;' and through these galleries rubens was conducted by the earl. lord arundel desired to have an arundel family portrait painted for him by rubens. the earl was rather given to having arundel family portraits, for there are no less than three in which he figures. one by van somer, in which the hero is pointing somewhat comically with his truncheon to the statues of his collection in the background, and the last one projected by van dyck, but executed by an inferior artist, in which various family pieces of armour, swords, and shields, worn at flodden, or belonging to the poet earl of surrey, are introduced in the hands of the sons of the family. but it is with rubens' 'arundel family,' which, we must remember, ranks second in english family pictures, that we have to do. thomas, earl of arundel, and the lady alathea,[ ] are under a portico with twisted columns, like those in raphael's cartoons; a rich curtain, and a landscape with a large mansion are seen beyond. the countess is seated in a chair of state, with one hand on the head of a white greyhound; she wears a black satin gown, laced ruff, gold bracelets, and pearl necklace. her hair is light, and decked with pearls and plumes. the earl stands behind with a hand on her chair. his head is uncovered, the short hair inclining to grey; the whiskers and beard pointed. his vest is olive-coloured, and he has a brown mantle lined with crimson over the shoulders beneath his ruff. there is a little boy--earl thomas's grandson, philip howard, afterwards cardinal howard, in crimson velvet, trimmed with gold lace, and a dwarf on the other side of the dog, with one hand on its back. among other masterpieces of rubens, including the 'straw hat,' which are in the national gallery, there are the 'rape of the sabines,' and the landscape 'autumn,' which has a view of his country château, de stein, near mechlin. in dulwich gallery there is an interesting portrait by rubens of an elderly lady in a great spanish ruff, which is believed to be the portrait of his mother. rembrandt van rhyn is said to have been born near leyden about or , for there is a doubt as to the exact date. his father was a miller or maltster, and there is a theory that rembrandt acquired some of his effects of light and shade from the impressions made upon him during his life in the mill. he was a pupil at the latin school of leyden, and a scholar in studios both at leyden and amsterdam. in , when rembrandt was a mere lad, he seems to have settled in amsterdam, and married there in , when he was six or eight and twenty years of age, a young dutchwoman possessed of a considerable fortune, which, in case of her death and of rembrandt's re-marriage, was to pass to her children, a provision that in the end wrought rembrandt's ruin. the troubles of his country in the painter's time rendered his prices comparatively small and precarious, and rembrandt, like rubens, without rubens' wealth, was eager in making an art collection and surrounding himself with those very forms of beauty in the great italian masters' works, in the appreciation of which the dutch master--judged by his own works--might have been reckoned deficient. rembrandt's wife died after eight years of marriage, and left him with one surviving son, titus, and rembrandt, having re-married, was called upon to give up the lad's inheritance. this call, together with the expenditure of the sums which rembrandt had lavished on his collection, was too heavy upon funds never very ample, and the painter, after struggling with his difficulties, became a bankrupt in . his son took possession of rembrandt's house, and from the sale of the painter's art collection and other resources eventually recovered his mother's fortune, but rembrandt himself never rose above the misery, degradation, and poverty of this period. he lived thirteen years longer, but it was in obscurity--out of which the only records which reach us, are stories of miserly habits acquired too late to serve their purpose, a desperate resort to low company dating from his first wife's death, and his gradual downfall. rubens and rembrandt have been sometimes contrasted as the painters of light and of darkness; the contrast extended to their lives. it will read like a humorous anti-climax after so sad a history, when i add that no other painter painted his own likeness so often as rembrandt painted his. in the engraving before me the face is heavy and stolid-seeming enough to be that of a typical dutchman. the eye-brows are slightly knit over the broad nose; the full lips are scantily shaded by a moustache; there is no hair on the well-fleshed cheeks and double chin. rembrandt wears a flat cap and ear-rings. he has two rows of a chain across his doublet, and one hand thrust beneath the cloak hanging across his breast. rembrandt's great merits were his strong truthfulness, and his almost equally powerful sense of a peculiar kind of picturesqueness. it seems as if the german weirdness perceptible in albrecht dürer had in rembrandt taken a homelier, but a more comprehensible and effective dutch form. kugler argues, that the long winter, with its short dark days, of northern europe produces in its inhabitants instinctive delight in hearth-warmth and light, and that the pleasure in looking at rembrandt's pictures is traceable to this influence. it is in scenes by fire-light, camp-light, torch-light, that he triumphs, and his somewhat grim but very real romance owes its origin to the endless suggestions of the deep black shadows which belong to these artificial lights. there is this objection to be urged to the theory, that rembrandt was also a good painter of his own flat dutch landscape, painting it, however, rather under the sombre dimness of clouds and tempests than in the brightness of sunshine. but whatever its source, there is a charm so widely felt in that wonderfully perfect surrounding of uncertainty, suspicion, and alarm, with which rembrandt has encompassed so many of his otherwise prosaic, coarse, and sometimes vulgar dutch men and women, that we have coined a new word to express the charm, and speak of groups and incidents being _rembrandtesque_, as we speak of their being picturesque. rembrandt did not always leave the vague thrill of doubt, terror, or even horror, which he sought to produce, to imagination working in the mysterious depths of his shadows. a very famous picture of his is 'dr deeman (an anatomist) demonstrating from a dead subject.' in another picture a man stealing from the gloom is in the act of stabbing in the back the unconscious man in the foreground.[ ] rembrandt's originality is as undoubted as his ability, and he was as great in etching as in painting. his defect as a painter was the frequent absence of any evidence in his work of a sense of refinement, grace, or even beauty; this can be said of him who spent means not his own on gathering together images of beauty and grace produced by the pencils and brushes of others. many of rembrandt's pictures are in the galleries of amsterdam and the hague, and we have many in london. the national gallery has several examples, including two of rembrandt's portraits. passing over van dyck, whom i reserve, as i have reserved holbein, to class among the foreign painters resident in or closely connected with england, i come to the teniers--father and son. david the elder was born at antwerp in , and david the younger also at antwerp, in . david the younger is decidedly the more eminent painter, though the works of the father are often mistaken for those of the son. the two teniers' class of subjects was the same, being ordinarily 'fairs, markets, peasants' merry-makings, beer-houses, guard rooms.' david the younger had great popularity, was court painter to the archduke of austria, and earned such an independence, that he bought for himself a château at the village of perck, not very far from the château de stein of rubens, with whom david teniers was on terms of friendly intimacy. there teniers, like his great associate, lived in the utmost state and bounty, entertaining the noblest of the land. david teniers married twice, his first wife being the daughter of one of a family of flemish painters, who were known, according to their respective proclivities in art, by the names of peasant breughel, velvet breughel, and hell breughel. teniers had many children. the elder teniers died at antwerp in ; the younger died at brussels, and was buried at perck, in . the distinction of the teniers was the extreme fidelity and cleverness with which they copied (but did not explain) the life they knew--the homeliest, humblest aspect of life. they brought out with marvellous accuracy all its traits, except, indeed, the underlying strain of poetry, which, while it redeems plainness, sordidness, and even coarseness, is as true to life as is its veriest prose. with those who ask a literal copy of life, whether high or low, and ask no more, the teniers and their school must always be in the highest favour; and to those who are wearied and sceptical of blunders and failures in seeking that underlying strain of life, the mere rugged genuineness of the teniers' work recommends itself, and is not without its own pathos; while to very many superficial observers the simple homeliness of the life which the teniers chose to represent, prevents the observers from missing what should be present in every life. men and women are only conscious of the defect when the painters wander, now and then, into higher spheres and into sacred subjects, and there is the unavoidable recoil from gross blindness. i have taken the teniers as the representatives of a numerous school of flemish and dutch artists, whose works abound in this country. david teniers the younger appears at his best, several times, in dulwich gallery and the national gallery. philip wouverman was born at haarlem in . he was the son of a painter, able, but unrecognized in his own day. philip wouverman found few patrons, disposed of his pictures by hard bargains to dealers, was tempted by his want of success to abjure his art, and even went so far, according to tradition, as to burn his studies and sketches, in order to prevent his son pursuing the career which had been to him a career of bitter disappointment. he died at haarlem, , when he was no more than forty-eight years of age. yet some nine hundred paintings bear (many of them falsely) wouverman's name. with all the truth and excellent execution of his contemporaries and countrymen', philip wouverman, who had, as he thought, missed his mark, had something which those successful men lacked--he had not only a feeling for grace, but a touch of sentiment. his scenes are commonly 'road-side inns, hunts, fights;' but along with an inclination to adopt a higher class of actors--knights and ladies, instead of peasants--there is a more refined treatment and a dash of tenderness and melancholy--the last possibly born of his own disastrous fortunes. in his love of horses and dogs, as adjuncts to his groups, he had as great a fondness for a special white horse, as paul potter had for black and white cattle. albert cuyp was born at dort in . he was a brewer by trade, and only painted as an amateur. in spite of this, he was a great landscape painter, and has given delight to thousands by his power of expressing his own love of nature. little is known of cuyp's life, and the date of his death is uncertain, farther than it was later than . in affected enthusiasm, cuyp has been called the dutch claude, but in reality, cuyp surpassed, claude in some respects. the distinction, which mr ruskin draws between them, is that, while claude, in the sense of beauty, is the superior to cuyp, in the sense of truth claude is the inferior. besides cuyp's landscapes, he painted portraits, and what is called 'still life' (dead game, fruit or flower pieces, etc.), but cuyp's triumph was found in his skies, with their 'clearness and coolness,' and in 'expressions of yellow sunlight.' mr ruskin admits, while he is proceeding to censure cuyp, parts might be chosen out of the good pictures of cuyp which have never been equalled in art.' on another occasion, mr ruskin has this passage full of dry humour in reference to cuyp: 'again, look at the large cuyp in dulwich gallery, which mr hazlitt considers "finest in the world," and of which he very complimentarily says, "the tender green of the valleys, the gleaming lake, the purple light of the hills" have an effect ought to have apologized before now for not having studied sufficiently in covent garden to be provided with terms of correct and classical criticism. one of my friends begged me to observe, the other day, that claude was "pulpy;" another added the yet more gratifying information that he was "juicy;" and it is now happily discovered that cuyp is "downy." now i dare say that the sky of this first-rate cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine: all that i have to say about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a sky. we may see for ourselves cuyp's lovely landscapes both in the national gallery and at dulwich. paul potter was born at enkhuysen, in north holland, in , and was the son of a painter. paul potter settled, while still very young, at the hague as an animal painter, and died in his thirtieth year, in . his career, which was thus brief, had promised to be very successful, and he had established his fame, while no more than twenty-two years of age, by painting for prince maurice of nassau that which continues his most renowned, though probably not his best picture, his 'young bull,' for some time in the louvre, now restored to the painter's native country, and placed in the museum at the hague. this picture is considered nearly faultless as a vigorous, if somewhat coarse, representation of animal life in the main figure; but paul potter's later pictures, especially his smaller pictures of pastures with cattle feeding, having fine colouring and fine treatment of light, are now regarded as equally good in their essential excellences, and of wider scope. paul potter etched as well as painted. there is no example of paul potter in the national gallery. jan david de heem[ ] and his son cornelius, the father born in , the son in , and maria von oesterwyck, the elder man's pupil, were eminent flemish and dutch flower and fruit painters. the gorgeous bloom and mellow ripeness in some of the flower and fruit pieces of flemish and dutch painters, like those i have mentioned, are beyond description. i would have you look at them for yourselves, where they are well represented, in the dulwich gallery; i would have you notice also how, as travellers declare of the splendour of tropical flowers, that they are deficient in the tender sweetness and grace of our more sober-tinted and less lavishly-blossoming english flowers; so these flemish and dutch full blown flower pieces have not a trace of the sentiment which modern flower painters cannot help seeking, with good result or bad result, to introduce into every tuft of primroses or of violets, if not into every cluster of grapes and bunch of cherries. from a fact which i have already mentioned, that so many flemish and dutch pictures, which we may often come across, are in england, i am sorry that my space will not suffer me to give a few special words to other famous painters of these schools or school, for they merge into one, to snyders, jan steen, gerard dow, ruysdael, hobbema, van de velde, etc., etc. chapter ix. spanish art--velasquez, - --murillo, - . spanish art, from its dawn to the time of velasquez, had been of a 'severely devotional character,' austere and formal; and although one man did not work a revolution by his independent example, he did something to humanize and widen art. in the rich city of seville in , diego rodriguez, de silva y velasquez,--and not, as he is incorrectly called, diego velasquez de silva, was born, and, according to an andalusian fashion, took his mother's name of velasquez, while his father was of the portuguese house de silva. velasquez was gently born, though his father was in no higher position than that of a lawyer in seville. the painter was well educated, though, according to his english biographer (sir w. stirling maxwell), 'he was still more diligent in drawing on his grammars and copybooks than in turning them to their legitimate use.' the lad's evident bent induced his father to painter. he studied in two different spanish studios, and married the daughter of his second master, whom the talents, assiduity, and good qualities of velasquez had already strongly attached to the young painter. from the first, velasquez struck out what was then a new line in spanish art. he gave himself up to the materialistic studies, to which the flemish and dutch painters were prone, painting diligently 'still life' in every form, taking his living subjects from the streets and way-sides, and keeping a peasant lad as an apprentice, 'who served him for a study in different actions and postures (sometimes crying, sometimes laughing), till velasquez had grappled with every variety of expression.' the result of those studies was velasquez's famous picture of the 'aguador,' or water-carrier of seville, which was carried off by joseph buonaparte in his flight from spain, taken in his carriage at vittoria, and finally presented by ferdinand vii, of spain, as a grateful offering to the duke of wellington, in whose gallery at apsley house the picture remains. 'it is a composition of three figures,' sir w. stirling maxwell writes; 'a sunburnt way-worn seller of water, dressed in a tattered brown jerkin, with his huge earthen jars, and two lads, one of whom receives a sparkling glass of the pure element, whilst his companion quenches his thirst from a pipkin. the execution of the heads and all the details is perfect; and the ragged trader dispensing a few maravidi's worth of his simple stock, maintains, during the transaction, a grave dignity of deportment, highly spanish and characteristic, and worthy of an emperor pledging a great vassal in tokay.' just such a group may still be seen, or was to be seen till very lately, in the quaint streets of seville. i have read an anecdote of velasquez and this picture, which is quite probable, though i cannot vouch for its accuracy. it is said that, while painting the water-carrier day after day, when he had been engaged with his work for several hours, velasquez found himself vexed by perceiving, as it were, the effect of a shadow cast by some of the drapery. small flaw as it might have been, it appeared to him to interfere with and spoil the picture. again and again, in endeavouring to do away with this 'shadow,' velasquez undid portions of his work, and had to repeat them next day, but always, towards the end of his task, the invidious shadow stole upon his vision. at last a friend, who was present and full of admiration for the picture, heard velasquez exclaim, 'that shadow again!' and saw him seize a brush and prepare to dash it across the canvas. the friend remonstrated, besought, and by main force held back the painter, and at last induced him to leave the picture untouched till next day, when velasquez discovered, to his great relief, that the shadow had been in his own wearied young eyes, and not in his admirable representation of the 'water-carrier.' velasquez was in madrid in , when he was in his twenty-fifth year, and having been introduced by the prime minister, olivares, to the king of spain, philip iv., a king who was only known to smile once or twice in his lifetime, whose government was careless and blundering, but who had the reputation of being a man of some intelligence and very considerable taste,--velasquez was received into the king's service with a monthly salary of twenty ducats, and employed to paint the royal portrait. from the time that he became court painter, velasquez was largely occupied in painting portraits of members of the royal family, with special repetitions of the likeness of his most catholic majesty. with velasquez's first portrait of philip in armour, mounted on an andalusian charger, the king was so pleased, that he permitted the picture to be publicly exhibited, amidst the plaudits of the spectators, in front of the church of san felipe el real in madrid. nor was the exhibition a barren honour to the painter, for the king not only 'talked of collecting and in future velasquez should have the monopoly of the royal countenance,' he paid three hundred ducats for the picture. about this time our own charles i., then prince of wales, went in his incognito of charles smith to madrid on his romantic adventure of seeking to woo and win, personally, the infanta of spain, and velasquez is said to have gained charles's notice, and to have at least begun a portrait of him. if it were ever completed it has been lost, a misfortune which has caused spurious pictures, purporting to be the real work, to be offered to the public. sir w. stirling maxwell holds, with great show of truth, that this visit of charles to madrid, when its altars were 'glowing' with the pictures of titian, confirmed the unhappy king's taste for art. in rubens came to madrid as an envoy from the governess of the netherlands, and the two painters, who had many points in common, and who had already corresponded, became fast friends. by the advice of rubens, velasquez was induced to put into execution his cherished desire of visiting italy, the king granting his favourite painter leave of absence, the continuance of his salary, and a special sum for his expenses. velasquez went to venice first, and afterwards to rome, where he was offered, and declined, a suite of apartments in the vatican, asking only free access to the papal galleries. there he copied many portions of michael angelo's 'last judgment'--not a hundred years old, and 'yet undimmed by the morning and evening incense of centuries,' and portions of the frescoes of raphael. at rome velasquez found there before him, domenichino, guido reni, alternating 'between the excitements of the gaming table and the sweet creations of his smooth flowing pencil;' 'nicolas poussin, an adventurer fresh from his norman village; and claude gelée, a pastry-cook's runaway apprentice from lorraine.'[ ] velasquez remained a year in rome. besides his studies he painted three original pictures, one of them, 'joseph's coat,' well known among the painter's comparatively rare religious works, and now in the escurial. in this picture his biographer acknowledges, that 'choosing rather to display his unrivalled skill in delineating vulgar forms than to risk his reputation in the pursuit of a more refined and idealized style,' velasquez's 'hebrew patriarchs are swineherds of estramadura or shepherds of the sierra morena.' from rome velasquez proceeded to naples, where he was enabled by his prudence and forbearance to face without injury the disgraceful 'reign of terror' which the neapolitan artists had established in the south of italy. the neapolitan artists more than any other italian artists are believed to have influenced velasquez's style. in velasquez painted his principal religious work, 'the crucifixion,' for the nunnery of san placido in madrid, a painting in which his power has triumphed successfully over his halting imagination. with regard to the many court groups which velasquez was constantly taking, i may quote sir w. stirling maxwell's amusing paragraph about a curious variety of human beings in the court gallery. 'the alcazar of madrid abounded with dwarfs in the days of philip iv., who was very fond of having them about him, and collected curious specimens of the race, like other rarities. the queen of spain's gallery is, in consequence, rich in portraits of these little monsters, executed by velasquez. they are, for the most part, very ugly, displaying, sometimes in an extreme degree, the deformities peculiar to their stunted growth. maria barbola, immortalized by a place in one of velasquez's most celebrated pictures, was a little dame about three feet and a half in height, with the head and shoulders of a large woman, and a countenance much underjawed, and almost ferocious in expression. her companion, nicolasito pertusano, although better proportioned than the lady, and of a more amicable aspect, was very inferior in elegance as a royal plaything to his contemporary, the valiant sir geoffrey hudson; or his successor in the next reign, the pretty luisillo of queen louisa of orleans. velasquez painted many portraits of these little creatures, generally seated on the ground; and there is a large picture in the louvre representing two of them leading by a cord a great spotted hound, to which they bear the same proportion that men of the usual size bear to a horse.' in velasquez again visited italy, sent by the king this time to collect works of art for the royal galleries and the academy about to be founded. velasquez went by genoa, milan, venice (buying there chiefly the works of tintoret), and parma, to rome and naples, returning to rome. at rome velasquez painted his splendidly characteristic portrait of the pope innocent x., 'a man of coarse features and surly expression, and perhaps the ugliest of all the successors of st peter.' back at madrid, philip continued to load velasquez and his family with favours, appointing the painter quarter-master-general of the king's household with a salary of three thousand ducats a year, and the right of carrying at his girdle a key which opened every lock in the palace. philip is said to have raised velasquez to knighthood in a manner as gracious as the manner of charles v, when he lifted up titian's pencil. in painting one of his most renowned pictures, to which i shall refer again, 'the maids of honour,' velasquez included himself at work on a large picture of the royal family. the painter represented himself with the key of his office at his girdle, and on his breast the red cross of the order of santiago. philip, who came every day to see the progress of this picture, remarked in reference to the figure of the artist, that 'one thing was yet wanting, and taking up the brush painted the knightly insignia with his own royal fingers, thus conferring the accolade with a weapon not recognized in chivalry.' as it is believed, velasquez's court office, with all its prestige and influence, helped in causing his death. king philip went in june, , to the isle of pheasants in the river bidassa, where, on ground which was neither spanish nor french, the spanish and french courts were to meet and celebrate with the greatest magnificence the marriage of the grand monarque and the infanta maria teresa. one of velasquez's official duties was to prepare lodgings for the king on his journeys, and in this instance the lodging included not only the decoration of the castle of fuenterrabia, but the erection of a sumptuous pavilion in which the interviews of the assembled kings and queens and their revelries were to be held. velasquez did his part of the preparations, and doubtless shared in the royal festivities, but returned to madrid so worn out by his undertaking, and by constant attendance on his master, that he was seized with tertian fever, of which he died a few days later, while but in his sixty-first year, to the great grief of his countrymen, and above all of his king. velasquez's wife, doña juana, died eight days after her husband, and was buried in his grave. the couple left one surviving child, a daughter, married to a painter. in one picture, now at vienna, velasquez gives a glimpse of his family life at a time when it would seem that he had four sons and two daughters, so that the fortunate painter's home had not been free from one shadow--that of death, which must have robbed him of five of his children. in this pleasant picture, 'his wife dressed in a brown tunic over a red petticoat, sits in the foreground of a large room, with a pretty little girl leaning on her knees, and the rest of her children grouped around her; behind are the men in deep shadow, one of them, perhaps, being mazo, the lover or the husband of the eldest daughter, and a nurse with a child; and in an alcove velasquez himself appears, standing before his easel, at work on a portrait of philip iv. this is one of the most important works of the master out of the peninsula; the faces of the family sparkle on the sober background like gems. as a piece of easy actual life, the composition has never been surpassed, and perhaps it excels even "the meninas," inasmuch as the hoops and dwarfs of the palace have not intruded upon the domestic privacy of the painter's home, in the northern gallery.'[ ] velasquez seems to have been a man of honour and amiability. he filled a difficult office at the most jealous court in europe with credit. he was true to his friends, and helpful to his brother artists. his biographer writes of velasquez as handsome in person, and describes his costume when he appeared for the last time with his king in the galas at pheasants' isle:--'over a dress richly laced with silver he wore the usual castilian ruff, and a short cloak embroidered with the red cross of santiago; the badge of the order, sparkling with brilliants, was suspended from his neck by a gold chain; and the scabbard and hilt of his sword were of silver, exquisitely chased, and of italian workmanship.' in the likeness of velasquez, which is the frontispiece of sir w. stirling maxwell's 'life,' the painter appears as a man of swarthy complexion, with a long compressed upper lip, unconcealed by his long, elaborately trimmed moustache; his hair, or wig, is arranged in two large frizzed bunches on each side of a face which is inclined to be lantern-jawed. he wears a dark doublet with a 'standing white collar.' velasquez's excellence as a painter was to be found, like that of rembrandt, in his truth to nature; but the field of truth presented to the stately spaniard, while it had its own ample share of humour, was a widely different field from that which offered itself to the dutch burgher. together with absolute truth, velasquez had the ease and facility in expressing truth which are only acquired by a great master. like rubens, velasquez made essays in many branches of painting. in sacred art, if we except his 'crucifixion,' he did not attain a high place. with regard to his landscapes, sir david wilkie bore witness:--'titian seems his model, but he has also the breadth and picturesque effect for which claude and salvator rosa are remarkable;' and sir david added of those landscapes, 'they have the very same sun we see, and the air we breathe, the very soul and spirit of nature.' velasquez's _genre_ pictures, to which i shall refer by and by, are excellent, but the fate was kind which confined him largely to portrait painting. it was brought as a reproach against velasquez in his lifetime, that he could paint a head and nothing else, to which he replied with mingled spirit, sense, and good nature, that his detractors flattered him, 'for he knew nobody of whom it could be said that he painted a head thoroughly well.' sir w. stirling maxwell asserts of velasquez's portrait painting, that no artist 'ever followed nature with more catholic fidelity; his cavaliers are as natural as his boors; he neither refined the vulgar, nor vulgarized the refined,' and goes on to quote this among other criticism:--'his portraits baffle description and praise; he drew the minds of men; they live, breathe, and are ready to walk out of the frames.' sir william winds up with the enthusiastic declaration, 'such pictures as these are real history; we know the persons of philip iv, and olivares, as familiarly as if we had paced the avenues of the pardo with digby and howell, and perhaps we think more favourably of their characters.' i shall borrow still further from sir w. stirling maxwell's graphic and entertaining book, descriptions of two of velasquez's _genre_ pictures, 'the maids of honour,' and the more celebrated 'spinners,' both at madrid. 'the scene (of the first) is a long room in a quarter of the old palace which was called the prince's quarter, and the subject, velasquez at work on a large picture of the royal family. to the extreme right of the composition is seen the back of the easel and the canvas on which he is engaged; and beyond it spalette, pausing to converse, and to observe the effect of his performance. in the centre stands the little infanta maria margarita, taking a cup of water from a salver which doña maria augustina sarmiento, maid of honour to the queen, presents kneeling. to the left, doña isabel de velasco, another meniña, seems to be dropping a courtesy; and the dwarfs, maria barbolo and nicolas pertusano, stand in the foreground, the little man putting his foot on the quarters of a great tawny hound, which despises the aggression, and continues in a state of solemn repose. some paces behind these figures, doña marcela de ulloa, a lady of honour in nun-like weeds, and a _guardadimas,_ are seen in conversation; at the far end of the room an open door gives a view of a staircase, up which don josef nieto, queen's apasentador, is retiring; and near this door there hangs on the wall a mirror, which, reflecting the countenance of the king and queen, shows that they form part of the principal group, although placed beyond the bounds of the picture. the room is hung with paintings which palomino assures us are works of rubens; and it is lighted by three windows in the left wall, and by the open door at the end, an arrangement of which an artist will at once comprehend the difficulties. the perfection of art which conceals art, was never better attained than in this picture. velasquez seems to have anticipated the discovery of daguerre, and taking a real room, and real chance grouped people, to have fixed them, as it were by magic, for all time on his canvas. the little fair-haired infanta is a pleasing study of childhood; with the hanging-lip and full cheek of the austrian family, she has a fresh complexion and lovely blue eyes, and gives a promise of beauty which as empress she never fulfilled. her young attendants, girls of thirteen or fourteen, contrast agreeably with the ill-favoured dwarf beside them; they are very pretty, especially doña isabel de velasco, who died a reigning beauty, and their hands are painted with peculiar delicacy. their dresses are highly absurd, their figures being concealed by long stiff corsets and prodigious hoops; for these were the days when the mode was-- "supporters, pooters, fardingales, above the loynes to weare;" and the _guardainfante_, the oval hoop peculiar to spain, was in full blow; and the robes of a dowager might have curtained the tun of heidelberg, and the powers of velasquez were baffled by the perverse fancy of "fribble, the woman's tailor." the gentle and majestic hound, stretching himself and winking drowsily, is admirably painted, and seems a descendant of the royal breed immortalized by titian in portraits of the emperor charles and his son.' 'the spinners:' 'the scene is a large weaving-room, in which an old woman and young one sit, the first at her spinning-wheel, and the second winding yarn, with three girls beside them, one of whom plays with a cat. in the background, standing within an alcove filled with the light from an unseen window, are two other women displaying a large piece of tapestry to a lady customer, whose graceful figure recalls that which has given its name to terburg's picture of "the satin gown." of the composition, the painter mengs observed, "it seemed as if the hand had no part in it, and it had been the work of pure thought."' velasquez, who must have seen many a bull fight, has left the world a fine example of field sports in 'the boar hunt,' in our national gallery, a picture which was bought for two thousand two hundred pounds from lord cowley. when ambassador at the court of spain, it was given to him by ferdinand vii. in a circular pen in the pardo, 'philip iv. and a party of cavaliers display their skill in slaying boars, to a few ladies, who sit secure in heavy old-fashioned blue coaches,' while motley groups of courtiers and peasants, huntsmen and hounds, postilions and their mules fill the foreground. sir edwin landseer remarked of this picture that he had never before seen 'so much large art on so small a scale.' bartolomé estévan murillo was born at seville in , and was therefore nearly twenty years younger than his great countryman velasquez. murillo seems to have been of obscure origin, and to have begun his life in humble circumstances. there are traditions of his being self-taught, of his studying ragged boys, himself little more than a boy, in the gypsy quarter of triana in seville; of his painting in the marketplace, where he probably found the originals of the heads of saints and madonnas (by which he made a little money in selling them for south america) in the peasants who came to seville with their fruit and vegetables. in , murillo, then twenty-four years of age, visited madrid, and was kindly received, and aided in his art by his senior and fellow artist, the court painter, velasquez. it had been murillo's intention to proceed to england to study under van dyck, but the death of the latter put a stop to the project. murillo was prevented from making the painter's pilgrimage to italy by want of means, but the loss of culture was so far supplied by the instructions given to him by velasquez. in , when murillo was twenty-seven years of age, he returned to seville, and settled there, becoming as successful as he deserved; and being acknowledged as the head of the school of seville, where he established the academy of art, and was its first president. murillo married, in , a lady of some fortune, and was accustomed to entertain at his house the most exclusive society of seville. in , murillo was at cadiz painting a picture of the marriage of st catherine in the church of the capuchins there, when, in consequence of the accidental fall of the scaffolding, he received so severe an injury, that he was forced to leave his work incomplete, and to return to seville, where he died within a few weeks, aged sixty-four years. he had two sons, and an only daughter, who was a nun, having taken the veil eight years before her father's death. murillo appears to have been in character a gentle, enthusiastic man, not without a touch of fun and frolic. he would remain for hours in the sacristy of the cathedral of seville before 'the solemn awful picture of the 'deposition from the cross,' by pedro de campana. when murillo was asked by the sacristan why he stood thus gazing there, the painter answered, 'i am waiting till these holy men have finished their work.' by his own desire, murillo was buried before this picture. before another 'too truthful picture of las dos cadaveres' in the small church of the hospital of the caridad, murillo used to hold his nose. one of murillo's pictures has the odd name of 'la virgen sarvilleta,' or the virgin of the napkin. murillo was working at the convento de la merced, which is almost filled with his works, when the cook of the convent begged a memorial of him, offering as the canvas a napkin, on which murillo at once painted a 'brilliant glowing madonna,' with a child, 'which seems quite to bound forward out of the picture.'[ ] murillo's portrait by himself represents him in a dark doublet having wide sleeves and a square collar closed in front. his thumb is in his pallet, and the other hand, with fingers taper and delicate as those of a hand by van dyck, holds one of his brushes. the smooth face, with regular features, is pale and thoughtful, and with the womanliness of the aspect increased from the dark hair, which is divided slightly to one side, being allowed to fall down in long wavy curls on the shoulders. in spite of the naturalistic studies of his early youth, and even of the naturalistic treatment which he gave to his first religious work, murillo was possessed of greater and higher imagination than velasquez could claim, and the longer murillo lived and worked the more refined and exalted his ideas became. unlike velasquez, murillo was a great religious painter, and during the last years of his life he painted sacred subjects almost exclusively. but, like velasquez, murillo was eminently a spanish painter--his virgins are dark-eyed, olive-complexioned maidens, and even his holy child is a spanish babe. without the elevation and the training of the best italian painters, murillo has left abundant proofs of great original genius. the painter's works are widely circulated, but the chief are still in seville. six are in the church of the caridad, and these six include his famous 'moses striking the rock,' and his 'miracle of the loaves and fishes;' seven 'murillos' are in the convento de la merced, among them murillo's own favourite picture, which he called 'mi cicadro' of 'st thomas of villaneuva.' 'st thomas was the favourite preacher of charles v., and was created archbishop of valencia, where he seemed to spend the whole of his revenues in charity, yet never contracted any debt, so that his people used to believe that angels must minister to his temporal wants. he is represented at his cathedral door, distributing alms, robed in black, with a white mitre. a poor cripple kneels at his feet, and other mendicants are grouped around.' in the cathedral, seville, is murillo's 'angel de la guarda,' 'in which a glorious seraph, with spreading wings, leads a little trustful child by the hand, and directs him to look beyond earth into the heavenly light;' and his 'st antonio.' 'the saint is represented kneeling in a cell, of which all the poor details are faithfully given, while the long arcade of the cloister can be seen through the half-open door. above, in a transparent light, which grows from himself, the child jesus appears, and descends, floating through wreaths of angels, drawn down by the power of prayer.'[ ] another of murillo's renowned pictures is that of the patron saints of seville, 'santa rufina and santa justina,' who were stoned to death for refusing to bow down to the image of venus. with regard to murillo's pictures of flower-girls and beggar-boys, i think my readers are sure to have seen an engraving of one of the former, '_the_ flower-girl,' as it is called, with a face as fresh and radiant as her flowers. in the national gallery there is a large holy family of murillo's, and in dulwich gallery there is a laughing boy, an irresistible specimen of brown-cheeked, white-teethed drollery. chapter x. art--nicolas poussin, - --claude[ ] lorraine, - --charles le brun, - --watteau, - --greuze, - . nicolas poussin was born at andely in normandy in . of his parentage little seems to have been ascertained, but it is believed that he was well educated, and his classical learning in after life was reckoned great. he was regularly trained to be a painter under a master in his native town, and afterwards in paris. dissatisfied with the patronage which he received in paris, poussin went to rome when he was about thirty years of age. in rome he is said to have lived on familiar terms with a sculptor whose devotion to antique art influenced his taste, and lent it the strong classical bent which it retained. poussin studied regularly in the school of domenichino. after some delay in attracting public notice, 'the death of germanicus,' and 'the capture of jerusalem,' which poussin painted for cardinal barberini, won general approval. in , when nicolas poussin was in his thirty-fifth year, he married the sister of his pupil, gaspar dughet, who took poussin's name, and is known as a painter, inferior to his master, by the name of gaspar poussin. nicolas poussin returned to paris when he was a middle-aged man, was presented to the king, louis xiii., by cardinal richelieu, and offered apartments in the tuileries, with the title of painter in ordinary, and a salary of a hundred and twenty pounds a year. poussin agreed to settle in paris, but on his going back to rome to fetch his wife, and on the king of france's dying, the attractions of the eternal city proved too great for the painter, and in place of removing his home to his native country, he lived for the rest of his years in rome, and died there in , when he was seventy-one years of age. except what can be judged of him from his work, i do not know that much has been gathered of the private character and life of nicolas poussin, notwithstanding that there was a biography written of him fifty years ago by lady calcott, and that his letters have been published in paris. in the absence of conclusive testimony one may conclude with some probability that he was 'quiet,' like his best paintings; a man who minded his own business, and did not trouble the world by astonishing actions, good or bad.[ ] in painting his own picture, from which an engraving has been taken, poussin's classical preferences seem to have passed into the likeness, for in the dress of the seventeenth century, the cloak (not unlike a toga), the massive hand with the heavy signet-ring resting on what looks like a closed portfolio, the painter has something of the severe air and haughty expression of an old roman; still more, perhaps, of the french-romans, if i may call them so, of whom revolutionary times nearly two centuries later, afforded so many examples. this is a handsome, dignified face, with austerity in its pride. the slightly curled hair is thrown back with a certain consciousness from the knit brow, and from the shoulders. there is only the faintest shadow of a moustache over the cleanly cut, firmly closed mouth. poussin painted largely, and his pictures have been often engraved. with harmonious composition, good drawing and colouring, his pictures alike profited and suffered from the classical atmosphere in which they had their being. they gained in that correctness which in its highest form becomes noble truthfulness, but they lost in freedom. the figures in the pictures had frequently the statuesqueness which in sculpture suits the material, but in painting is stiffness. nicolas poussin had an exceptional reputation for a historical painter in his day. as a landscape painter, mr ruskin, while waging war with nicolas poussin's brother-in-law and assumed namesake, gaspar, notably excepts nicolas from his severest strictures, and treats his efforts in landscape painting with marked respect. at the same time, however, the critic censures the painter for a want of thorough acquaintance with nature, and the laws of nature, ignorance not uncommon in any day, and nearly universal in nicolas poussin's day. 'the great master of elevated ideal landscape,' mr ruskin calls nicolas poussin, and illustrates his excellence in one respect, after contrasting it with the slovenliness of sir joshua reynolds, by describing the vine in poussin's 'nursing of jupiter,' in the dulwich gallery, thus:-- 'every vine-leaf, drawn with consummate skill and untiring diligence, produces not only a true group of the most perfect grace and beauty, but one which in its pure and simple truth belongs to every age of nature, and adapts itself to the history of all time.' 'one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced, the work of a really great mind,' mr ruskin distinguishes the 'phocian' of nicolas poussin in the national gallery, before proceeding to point out its faults. again, mr ruskin, writing of the street in the centre of another landscape by nicolas poussin, indicates it with emphasis:--'the street in the centre of the really great landscape of poussin (great in feeling, at least) marked in the dulwich gallery,' the criticism with which mr ruskin follows up this praise is so perfect a bit of word-painting, that i cannot refrain from writing it down here. 'the houses are dead square masses, with a light side and a dark side, and black touches for windows. there is no suggestion of anything in any of the spaces, the light wall is dead grey, the dark wall dead grey, and the windows dead black. how differently would nature have treated us. she would have let us see the indian corn hanging on the walls, and the image of the virgin of the tiled eaves, and the deep ribbed tiles with the doves upon them, and the carved roman capital built into the wall, and the white and blue stripes of the mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and the flapping corners of the neat blinds. all would have been there; not as such, not like the corn, nor blinds, nor tiles, not to be comprehended nor understood, but a confusion of yellow and black spots and strokes, carried far too fine for the eye to follow; microscopic in its minuteness, and filling every atom and space with mystery, out of which would have arranged itself the general impression of truth and life.' once more, mr ruskin freely admits that 'all the landscape of nicolas poussin is imagination.' mr ruskin's first definition of ideal landscape is in this manner. every different tree and leaf, every bud, has a perfect form, which, were it not for disease or accident, it would have attained; just as every individual human face has an ideal form, which but for sin and suffering it would present: and the ideal landscape-painter has realized the perfect form, and offers it to the world, and that in a sense quite distinct from the fallacy of improving nature. but i wish to take my readers further into imaginative landscape, and to show it to them, if possible, under additional lights. i despair of succeeding if i cannot do it by one or two simple examples. in passing through a gallery we may stop before a picture to be struck, almost startled, by the exact copy which it presents of some scene in nature; how like the clouds in the sky, the leaves on the trees, the very plumage of the birds! but pass on to another picture which may or may not have the same exact likeness, and we are possessed with quite another feeling; instead of being merely surprised by the cleverness of the imitation, we feel a thrill of delight at a reproduction of nature. in this picture there are not only the clouds we remember, but we can almost feel the shadows which they cast, and the air which stirs them. these tree-leaves are not only green, or yellow, or russet, they are tender, or crisp living leaves. one half expects to see the birds' throats swell, and hear the sweetness or the shrillness of their songs. the first picture, with all its correctness, brightness, richness, or delicacy it may be, remains bare, hard, and barren, compared to the second. i cannot explain to my readers the cause of the difference, i can only show it to them as they may see it for themselves, and say that i suppose it proceeds from this--that the second painter has seen farther into the heart of nature than the first, and has been able by subtler touches to make us see with his eyes. but imaginative landscape is much more than this vivid feeling and expression of nature; there is not a cloud, or leaf, or bird too many or out of keeping with the place and the hour. the clouds are the very clouds of sunset, or sunrise, or high noon--clouds differing widely from each other, as you have no doubt observed. the trees are the beeches, or chestnuts, or pines, which would grow on the conformation of rocks, in the sheltered nook, or on the breezy upland; the birds are the linnets or the larks, the thrushes or the lapwings, which frequent these special trees, and may be seen and heard at this particular hour. again, landscape often tells a story, and tells it inimitably. my readers have heard of the ballad of the 'two corbies,' which the writer of the ballad has made to meet and tell gruesomely where and on what carrion their feast has been. suppose the writer of the ballad had been a painter, he might have painted the story as intelligibly by the lone hill-side, the bleaching bones of the faithful hound and gallant grey, the two loathly blue-black birds satiated with their prey. there is a significant old scotch song with a ballad ring, by lady nairne, two verses of which form each a complete picture not only of different seasons, but of different phases of feeling--happiness and misery. 'bonnie ran the burnie down, wandering and winding; sweetly sang the birds aboon, care never minding. 'but now the burn comes down apace, roaring and reaming, and for the wee birdies' sang wild howlets screaming.' imagine these two verses painted, and the painter, from a lack of comprehension, introducing the 'wild howlets screaming' _beside the burnie_, 'wandering and winding,' and the 'wee birdies' foolishly and inconsequently singing with their feeble song drowned in the rush of the burn (no longer a burnie), 'roaring and reaming,' when the 'spate' is spreading desolation on every side. don't you see how the picture would be spoilt, and the story of complete contrast left untold? i have taken advisedly an extreme and, therefore an unlikely case of halting imagination. but in imaginative landscape every 'white flower with its purple stain,' every crushed butterfly, is made to play its part in the whole, and at the same time due proportion is never lost sight of, and the less is always kept subordinate to the greater. i have already had occasion to mention examples of nicolas poussin in the national gallery and in dulwich gallery. claude gelée, better known as claude lorraine, was a native of lorraine, and was born at chateau de chamagne in the vosges, in . his parents were in humble life, and apprenticed claude to a baker and pastry-cook. according to some biographers the cooks of lorraine were in such request that they occasionally repaired to rome with their apprentices in their train to serve the successor of st peter, and claude was thus carried, in the way of trade, to the city which might well have been the goal of his ambition. according to other writers of art histories, claude abandoned the kneading-trough and the oven; and it was as a runaway apprentice that by some occult means he reached rome. and when he had arrived he entered into the service of a landscape painter of good repute, to whom he was colour-boy as well as cook. the last is the account, so far, which claude gave of himself to a friend, and it is hardly likely either that he misrepresented his history, or that his friend invented such details, though lately french authorities have questioned the authenticity of the narrative. claude remained for nearly the entire remainder of a long life in rome. he only once re-visited france, while he was yet a young man, under thirty years of age, in or . he is supposed to have painted his earliest pictures and executed his etchings about this time, and to have painted his best pictures fifteen years later, when he was in the maturity of his life and powers. he was counted successful during his life time, as a landscape painter, but did not amass a larger fortune than about two thousand pounds.[ ] he was a slow and careful painter (working a fortnight at a picture with little apparent progress); his painstaking work, and his custom of keeping a book, in which he verified his pictures, are about the most that i can tell you of the habits of one of the foreign painters, who has been most fully represented in england, and was long in the highest favour with english lovers of art. claude lorraine died at rome in the eighty-third year of his age, in . claude lorraine's name has become a very vexed name with art critics. there was a time when he had an unsurpassed reputation as a landscape painter. the possession of a claude was enough to confer art glory on a country-house, and possibly for this reason england, in public and private collections, has more 'claudes' than are held by any other country. but claude's admirers, among whom sir george beaumont, the great art critic of his generation, took the lead, have had their day, and, if they have not by any means passed away, are on the wane. the wrathful indignation of the english landscape painter, turner, at the praise which was so glibly lavished on claude--an indignation that caused turner to bequeath two of his own landscape paintings to the trustees of the national gallery, on the caustic condition that they should always be placed between the two celebrated 'claudes,' known as 'the marriage of isaac and rebecca' and 'the embarkation of the queen of sheba'--helped to shake the english art world's faith in its former idol. mr ruskin's adoption and proclamation of turner's opinion shook the old faith still further. this reversal of a verdict with regard to claude is peculiar; it is by no means uncommon for the decision of contemporaries to be set aside, and we shall hear of an instance presently, in the case of the painter le brun. in fact, it is often ominous with regard to a man's future fame, when he is 'cried up to the skies' in his own day. the probability may be that his easy success has been won by something superficial and fleeting. but claude's great popularity has been in another generation, and with another nation. english taste may have been in fault; or another explanation seems preferable--that claude's sense of beauty was great, with all its faults of expression, and he gave such glimpses of a beautiful world as the gazers on his pictures were capable of receiving, which to them proved irresistible. while claude adopted an original style as a landscape painter, so far as his contemporaries were concerned, he was to such a degree self taught, and only partially taught, that it is said he never learnt to paint figures--those in his pictures were painted by other painters, and that claude even painted animals badly. mr ruskin has been hard on claude, whether justly or unjustly, i cannot pretend to say. the critic denies the painter not only a sense of truth in art, but all imagination as a landscape painter 'of men of name,' mr ruskin writes, 'perhaps claude is the best instance of a want of imagination, nearly total, borne out by painful but untaught study of nature, and much feeling for abstract beauty of form, with none whatever for harmony of expression.' mr ruskin condemns in the strongest terms 'the mourning and murky olive browns and verdigris greens, in which claude, with the industry and intelligence of a sèvres china painter, drags the laborious bramble leaves over his childish foreground.' but mr ruskin himself acknowledges, with a reservation, claude's charm in foliage, and pronounces more conditionally his power, when it was at its best, in skies--a region in which the greater, as well as the less, poussin was declared to fail signally; 'a perfectly genuine and untouched sky of claude,' mr ruskin writes, 'is indeed most perfect, and beyond praise, in all qualities of air; though even with him i often feel rather that there is a great deal of pleasant air between me and the firmament, than that the firmament itself is only air.' when all has been said that can be said, let us look at a mellow or a sunny claude on any wall where it may hang, and judge for ourselves of the satisfaction it is calculated to give. claude was fond of painting scenes on the tiber and in the roman campagna, but while he tried to reproduce the hills and woodlands of italy, he did not seek to paint the mountain landscapes of the apennines. besides claude's numerous works in england and scattered through other countries, some of his finest paintings are in the doria and sciarra palaces in rome. he rarely put his name to his works; when he did so he signed it frequently 'claudio,' sometimes 'claudius.' i have spoken of his book of sketches, in which he had been wont to note on the back of the sketch the date of the completed picture, and to whom sold. this book he called the 'libro di verita,' or, book of truth, and its apparent use was to check the sale of spurious paintings in claude's name, even during his lifetime. the 'book of truth' is in possession of the duke of devonshire, and has been employed in recent years with reference to the end for which it seemed designed, so woe to that country-house which has long pride that 'claude' does not happen to have a place in the 'book of truth,' though i do not know that it is at all certain that claude took the precaution of inscribing _every_ painting which he painted after a certain date in the 'book of truth.' claude lorraine is well represented in the national gallery. engravings of his pictures are common. charles le brun was born in paris, in . he was trained to be a painter, and went young to rome, studying there for six years under the guidance of nicolas poussin. le brun returned to paris, and, through the patronage of the chancellor segnier, was introduced to the court, and got the most favourable opportunities of practising his profession with worldly success. he speedily acquired a great name, and was appointed painter to the king, louis xiv. le brun had enough influence with his royal master, and with the great minister colbert, to succeed in establishing, while the painter was yet a young man, the royal academy of art, of which he was the first member, and virtually the head, holding, in his own person, the directorship of the gobelin tapestry works, which was to be the privilege of a member of the academy. le brun continued in the utmost favour with the king, who, not content with employing the painter largely at fontainebleau and in versailles, invested him with the order of st michael, bestowed on him letters of nobility, and visited him frequently at his work, occasions when there were not wanting adroit courtiers to liken the grand monarque to the emperor charles v., and le brun to titian. le brun seems to have been a man of energy, confidence, and industry, neither mentally before nor after his time, and by no means too retiring, meditative, or original, to fail to profit by his outward good fortune. he wrote, as well as painted, artistic treatises, which were received as oracular utterances, and entirely deferred to in the schools of his day. he died at paris in , when he was in his seventieth year. le brun's real merits as a painter were limited to respectable abilities and acquirements, together with florid quickness and ease, and such an eye to what was splendid and scenic as suited admirably a decorator of palaces in an age which prized sumptuousness, and an exaggeration of dramatic effect, over every other quality. nicolas poussin's quiet refinement of style became in le brun what is called academic (conventionally learned), pompous, and grandiose, and men decidedly preferred the degeneration. but later critics, who have not the natural partiality of the french to the old master, return to their first loves, and condemn le brun's swelling violence, both in the tints and poses of his figures. among his most famous works, which have been magnificently engraved, are his 'battles of alexander.' antoine watteau was born at valenciennes in . a very different painter from le brun, he was yet as characteristic of french art in the reign of louis xiv. i think my readers must be familiar with his name, and i dare say they associate it, as i do, not only with the fans which were painted largely after his designs, but with mock pastorals and sèvres china. i don't know if his birth-place at valenciennes, with its chief product of dainty lace, had anything to do with it, but the other items of poor watteau's history are considerably removed from the very artificial grace which one connects with his name. he was the son of a carpenter, and struggled up, by the hard instrumentality of third-rate masters and of picture-dealers, to the rank which he attained among artists, taking his stand from the first, however, as the painter of well-bred, well-apparelled people--the frequenters of _bals masqués,_ and _fêtes champêtres,_ who were only playing at shepherds and shepherdesses. watteau was elected an academician in , when he was thirty-three years of age, and he afterwards came to england, but did not remain there. he died of consumption at nogent-sur-marne in , when he was thirty-six years of age.[ ] watteau's gifts were his grace and brilliance on a small scale. he did not draw well; as to design, his composition may be said to be suited to such a work as the collection of 'fashionable figures,' which he engraved and left behind him. yet, if we were to see at this moment some of his exquisite groups of ladies in sacques and watteau hats, and cavaliers in flowing wigs and lace, cravats, i have no doubt that the most of us would admire them much, for they are exceedingly pretty, and exceeding prettiness is attractive, particularly to women. but i would have my readers to remember that this art is a finical and soulless art, after all. i would fain have them take this as their maxim, 'that the art is greatest which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.' jean baptiste greuze was born at tournus in burgundy in . he studied painting from his youth in the studios of artists at lyons, paris, and rome, and his studies resulted in his being a celebrated genre painter. he only painted one historical picture, but, with the touchy vanity which seemed natural to the man, he ranked his genre pictures as high art; and when he was placed in the ordinary list of genre painters on his election as a member of the french academy of painting, greuze resented the imputation, and withdrew from the academy. he died in , aged seventy-nine years. greuze was a showy, clever, but neither earnest nor truthful painter of domestic subjects and family pictures. his pictures of women and heads of girls, the expression in some of which has been severely condemned, are among his best known works, and by these he is represented in the national gallery.[ ] chapter xi. holbein, - --van dyck, - --lely, - --canaletto, - --kneller, - . hans holbein, sometimes entitled hans the younger, was born at augsburg about or . he was the son of a painter, and belonged to a family of painters, one or more of whom had preceded hans holbein in leaving augsburg, and taking up his residence at basle. there holbein was under the patronage of, and on terms of friendly intercourse with, the great scholar erasmus. one bad result proceeded from this friendly familiarity, that of establishing or originating the charge that holbein, as a young man, at least, was coarse and dissipated in his habits. the evidence is sufficiently curious. there is still in existence the copy of a latin book, called the 'praise of folly,' written by erasmus, which holbein, not being a scholar, could not have read for himself, but which, according to tradition, erasmus himself, or some other friend, read to him, while holbein was so delighted with the satire that he covered the margin of the book with illustrative sketches. (the sketches remain, and are unmistakably holbein's.) opposite a passage, recording the want of common sense and energy in many learned men, holbein had drawn the figure of a student, and written below, '_erasmus_.' the book coming again into the hands of erasmus, he was offended with the liberty taken by the painter., and sought to retaliate in kind by writing below the sketch of a rude boor drinking, '_holbein_.' in spite of the rough jesting, the friendship between scholar and painter was not interrupted. in these early days holbein sometimes practised painting on glass, after the example of some of his kinsmen. at basle, holbein painted what is considered his finest work, the 'meier madonna,' now at darmstadt, with a copy in the dresden gallery, and there he executed the designs for his series of woodcuts of the 'dance of death.' at basle holbein married, while still a young man. the presumption that the painter's marriage, like that of his countryman, albert dürer, was unhappy, has rested on the foundation that he left his wife and her children behind when he repaired to england, and that although he re-visited basle, and saw his wife and family, they did not return with him to england. a fancied confirmation to the unhappiness of the marriage is found in the expression of the wife in a portrait which holbein painted of her and his children when he was at basle. 'cross-looking and red-eyed,' one critic calls the unlucky woman; another describes her as 'a plain, coarse-looking, middle-aged woman,' with an expression 'certainly mysterious and unpleasant.' holbein's latest biographer[ ] has proved that the forsaken wife, elssbeth schmid, was a widow with one son when holbein married her, and has conjectured that she was probably not only older than holbein, but in circumstances which rendered her independent of her husband. so far the critic has done something to clear hans holbein from the miserable accusation often brought against him, that he abandoned his wife and children to starve at basle, while he sunned himself in such court favour as could be found in england. but, indeed, while hans holbein may have been honest and humane enough to have been above such base suspicions, there is no trace of him which survives that goes to disprove the probability that he was a self-willed, not over-scrupulous man, if he was also a vigorous and thorough worker. holbein came to england about or , when he must have been thirty-one or thirty-two years of age, and repaired to chelsea to the house of sir thomas more, to whom the painter brought a letter of introduction, and still better credentials in the present, from erasmus to more, of the portrait of erasmus, painted by hans holbein. there are so many portraits and copies of portraits of erasmus, not only by holbein, but by other painters--for erasmus was painted by albert dürer and quintin matsys,--that this special portrait, like the true holbein family portrait of the more family, remains very much a subject of speculation. most of us must be well acquainted with the delightful account which erasmus gave of sir thomas more's country-house at chelsea, and the life of its occupants. it has been cited hundreds of times as an example of what an english family has been, and what it may be in dutiful discipline, simple industry, and high cultivation, when sir thomas's young daughters repeated psalms in latin to beguile the time in the drudging process of churning the butter. during holbein's residence in or visits to the mores' house at chelsea, he sketched or painted the original of the more family picture. holbein was introduced to henry viii, by sir thomas more, and was immediately taken into favour by the king, and received into his service, with a lodging in the palace, a general salary of thirty pounds a year, and separate payment for his paintings. according to horace walpole, holbein's palace lodging was probably 'the little study called the new library' of square glazed bricks of different colours, designed by the painter at whitehall. (this gateway, with the porch at wilton, were the painter's chief architectural achievements.) by another statement, holbein's house was on london bridge, where it was destroyed in the great fire. i have already alluded to the anecdote of the value which henry viii, put on holbein. it was to this effect: that when an aggrieved courtier complained to the king that the painter had taken precedence of him--a nobleman, the king replied, 'i have many noblemen, but i have only one hans holbein.' in fact, holbein received nothing save kindness from henry viii.; and for that matter, there seemed to be something in common between bluff king hal and the equally bluff german hans. but on one occasion hans holbein was said to have run the risk of forfeiting his imperious master's favour by the too favourable miniature which the painter was accused of painting of anne of cleves. at henry's court holbein painted many a member of the royal family, noble and knight, and english gentleman and lady. his fortune had made him a portrait painter, but he was fully equal to other branches of art, as shown by his 'meier madonna,' and still more by the designs which have been preserved of his famous allegory of 'the triumphs of riches and poverty,' painted for the hall of the easterling steelyard, the quarters of the merchants of allemagne, then traders in london. in addition to painting portraits holbein designed dagger hilts, clasps, cups, as some say after a study of the goldsmith's work of cellini. for a long time it was believed that hans holbein died after mary tudor succeeded to the english throne; indeed, some said that his death had been occasioned or hastened by that change in the affairs of men, which compelled him to quit his lodgings in the palace to make room for 'the new painter,' sir antony more, who came in the suite of mary's well-beloved husband, philip of spain. there was even a theory, creditable to hans holbein, drawn from this conclusion, that he might have adopted the protestant views of his late gracious master, and have stood by them stoutly, and so far forfeited all recognition from the bitter catholic mary. but, unfortunately for the tradition and theory, and for the later pictures attributed to hans holbein, his will has been discovered, and that quite recently, proving, from the date of its administration, his death of the plague (so far only the tradition had been right), when yet only in his forty-eighth year, as early as , four years before the death of henry viii. in spite of court patronage holbein did not die a rich man, and there is an impression that he was recklessly improvident in his habits. holbein had re-visited basle several times, and the council had settled on him a pension of fifty florins a year, provided he would return and reside in basle within two years, while his wife was to receive a pension of forty florins a year during holbein's two years' absence. holbein did not comply with the terms of the settlement. about the time of his death his son philip, then a lad of eighteen, was a goldsmith in paris. of hans holbein's portraits i have two to draw from; one, painted in his youth at basle, shows the painter in an open doublet, and curious stomacher-like shirt, and having on his head a great flapping hat. his face is broad and smooth-skinned, with little hair seen, and the features, the eyes especially, rather small for such an expanse of cheek and chin. the other picture of holbein to which i have referred belongs certainly to a considerably later period of his life, and represents him with short but bushy hair, and short bushy beard and moustache, a man having a broad stout person with a mixture of dauntlessness and _bonhommie_ in his massive face. mr ruskin says of holbein, as a painter, that he was complete in intellect; what he saw he saw with his whole soul, and what he painted he painted with his whole might. in deep and reverential feeling holbein was far behind his countryman albert dürer, but holbein was far more fully furnished than dürer (unless indeed as albrecht dürer showed himself in that last picture of 'the apostles') in the means of his art; he was a better draughtsman in the maturity of his powers, and a far better colourist. for hans holbein was not more famous for the living truthfulness of his likenesses ('a man very excellent in making physiognomies'), than for the 'inimitable bloom' that he imparted to his pictures, which 'he touched, till not a touch became discernible.' yet beneath this bloom, along with his truthfulness, there was a dryness and hardness in holbein's treatment of his subjects, and he is far below titian, rubens, and even rembrandt as a portrait painter. holbein was in the habit of painting his larger portraits on a peculiar green, and his miniatures on a blue background. he drew his portrait sketches with black and red chalk on a paper tinted flesh-colour. it is said, that with the exception, of philip wouwermann, no painter has been so unfortunate in having the works of other painters attributed to him as hans holbein has been, and 'that three out of every four pictures ascribed to him are misnamed.'[ ] the 'meier, or meyer madonna,' is otherwise called 'the meier family adoring the infant christ in the arms of the virgin.' the subject is understood to prove that it must have been painted in holbein's youth, before protestantism was triumphant at basle. the figures are the burgomaster meier and his wife, whom holbein painted twice; their son, with a little boy _nude_ beside him; another woman, elderly, conjectured to be a grandmother of the family, and beside her the young daughter of the house. in the centre on a turkey carpet stands the madonna, holding in her arms an infant stretching out its left hand to the group of worshippers. in course of time, and in its transfer from hand to hand, a doubt has arisen with regard to the subject of this picture. some critics have regarded it as a votive picture dedicated in a private chapel to commemorate the recovery from sickness or the death of a child. this conjecture seems to rest mainly on the fact, that the child in the dresden copy (it is said to be otherwise in the darmstadt picture) is of an aspect so sickly, as to have given rise to the impression that it represented an ailing, or even a dead child, and no glorious child christ. critics have gone still farther, and imagined that the child is a figure of the soul of a dead child (souls were sometimes painted by the old painters as new-born children), or of the soul of the elder and somewhat muffled-up woman who might have been recently dead. mr ruskin regards the picture as an offering for the recovery of a sick child, and thus illustrates it: 'the received tradition respecting the holbein madonna is beautiful, and i believe the interpretation to be true. a father and a mother have prayed to her for the life of their sick child. she appears to them, her own child christ in her arms; she puts down her child beside them, takes their child into her arms instead; it lies down upon her bosom, and stretches its hand to its father and mother, saying farewell.' yet another much more prosaic and less attractive interpretation of the picture has been suggested by holbein's biographer, that the two children may represent the same child. the child standing by his brother may be the boy restored to health, the feeble child in the arms of the virgin may indicate the same child in its sickness, while the extended arm may point to the seat of the disease in an arm broken or injured. after all, the child may simply be a child christ, marred in execution. i have given this dispute at length, because i think it is interesting, and, so far as i know, unique in reference to such a picture. by an odd enough mistake this very picture was once said to be the famous more family picture. the idea of the 'dance of death' did not originate with holbein, neither is he supposed to have done more than touch, if he did touch, the paintings called the 'dance of death,' on the wall of the dominican burial-ground, basle, painted long before holbein's day, by the order of the council after the plague visited basle, and considered to have for its meaning simply a warning of the universality of death. but holbein certainly availed himself of the older painting, to draw from it the grim satire of his woodcuts. of these there are thirty-seven designs, the first, 'the creation;' the second, 'adam and eve in paradise;' the third, 'the expulsion from paradise;' the fourth, 'adam tilling the earth;' the fifth, 'the bones of all people;' till the dance really begins in the sixth. death, a skeleton, as seen through the rest of the designs, sometimes playing on a guitar or lute, sometimes carrying a drum, bagpipes, a dulcimer, or a fiddle, now appearing with mitre on head and crozier in hand to summon the abbot; then marching before the parson with bell, book, and candle; again crowned with ivy, when he seizes the duke, claims his partners, beginning with the pope, going down impartially through emperor of francis i., nobleman, advocate, physician, ploughman, countess, old woman, little child, etc., etc., and leading each unwilling or willing victim in turn to the terrible dance. one woman meets her doom by death in the character of a robber in a wood. another, the duchess, sits up in bed fully dressed, roused from her sleep by two skeletons, one of them playing a fiddle. granting the grotesqueness, freedom, variety, and wonderful precision of these woodcuts, i beg my readers to contrast their spirit with that of albrecht dürer's 'the knight, death, and the devil,' or orcagna's 'triumph of death.' in holbein's designs there is no noble consoling faith; there is but a fierce defiance and wild mockery of inevitable fate, such as goes beyond the levity with which the venetians in the time of the plague retired to their country-houses and danced, sung, and told tales, till the pestilence was upon them. it has a closer resemblance to the piteous madness with which the condemned prisoners during the french reign of terror rehearsed the falling of the guillotine, or the terrible pageant with which the same french, as represented by their parisian brethren, professed to hail the arrival of the cholera. of the 'more family' there are so many duplicates or versions, that, as in the case of erasmus's picture, it is hard to say which is the original picture, or whether holbein did more than sketch the original, or merely sketch the various heads to be afterwards put together by an inferior artist. a singular distribution of the light in the best authenticated picture has been supposed to favour this conjecture. but under any supposition, this, the second of the three noted english family pictures, is of the greatest interest. i shall record a minute and curious description given of this 'more family,' which is still in the possession of a descendant of the mores and ropers. 'the room which is here represented seemed to be a large dining-room. at the upper end of it stands a chamber-organ on a cupboard, with a curtain drawn before it. on each end of the cupboard, which is covered with a carpet of tapestry, stands a flower-pot of flowers, and on the cupboard are laid a lute, a base-viol, a pint pot or ewer covered in part with a cloth folded several times, and _boetius de consolatione philosophiæ_, with two other books upon it. by this cupboard stands a daughter of sir thomas more's, putting on her right-hand glove, and having under her arm a book bound in red turkey leather and gilt, with this inscription round the outside of the cover--_epistolica senecæ_. over her head is written in latin, _elizabeth dancy_, daughter of sir thomas more, aged . 'behind her stands a woman holding a book open with both her hands, over whose head is written _spouse of john clements_.[ ] 'next to mrs dancy is sir john more in his robes as one of the justices of the king's bench, and by him sir thomas in his chancellor's robes, and collar of ss, with a rose pendant before. they are both sitting on a sort of tressel or armed bench, one of the arms and legs and one of the tassels of the cushion appear on the left side of sir thomas. at the feet of sir john lies a cur-dog, and at sir thomas's a bologna shock. over sir john's head is written, _john more, father, aged_ . over sir thomas's, _thomas more, aged_ . between them, behind, stands the wife of john more, sir thomas's son, over whose head is written _anne cresacre, wife of john more, aged_ . behind sir thomas, on his left hand stands his only son, john more, pictured with a very foolish aspect, and looking earnestly in a book which he holds open with both his hands. over his head is written, _john, son of thomas more, aged_ .' (the only and witless son of the family, on whom sir thomas made the comment to his wife:--'you long wished for a boy, and you have got one--for all his life.') 'a little to the left of sir thomas are sitting on low stools his two daughters, cecilia and margaret. next him is cecilia, who has a boot in her lap, clasped. by her side sits her sister margaret, who has likewise a book on her lap, but wide open, in which is written, _l. an. senecæ--oedipus--fata si liceat mihi fingere arbitrio meo, temperem zephyro levi_. on cecilia's petticoat is written, _cecilia heron, daughter of thomas more, aged_ , and on margaret's, _margaret roper_, _daughter of thomas more, aged_ .' (the best beloved, most amiable, and most learned of sir thomas's daughters, who visited him in the tower and encouraged him to remain true to his convictions, while her step-mother urged him to abjure his faith. margaret roper intercepted her father on his return to the tower after his trial, and penetrating the circle of the guards, hung on his neck and bade him farewell. there is a tradition that she caused her father's head to be stolen from the spike of the bridge on which it was exposed, and, getting it preserved, kept it in a casket. she and her husband, william roper, wrote together the biography of her father, sir thomas more.) 'just by mrs roper sits sir thomas's lady in an elbow-chair (?), holding a book open in her hands. about her neck she has a gold chain, with a cross hanging to it before. on her left hand is a monkey chained, and holding part of it with one paw and part of it with the other. over her head is written '_spouse of thomas more, aged_ .' (dame alice more, the second wife of sir thomas more, a foolish and mean-spirited woman.) 'behind her is a large arched window, in which is placed a flower-pot (a vase) of flowers, and a couple of oranges. behind the two ladies stands sir thomas's fool, who, it seems, was bereft of his judgment by distraction. he has his cap on, and in it are stuck a red and white rose, and on the brim of it is a shield with a red cross on it, and a sort of seal pendant. about his neck he wears a black string with a cross hanging before him, and his left thumb is stuck in a broad leathern girdle clasp'd about him. over his head is written _henry pattison, servant_ of thomas more. at the entrance of the room where sir thomas and his family are, stands a man in the portal who has in his left hand a roll of papers or parchments with two seals appendant, as if he was some way belonging to sir thomas as lord chancellor. over his head is written _joannes heresius, thomae mori famulus_. in another room at some distance is seen through the door-case a man standing at a large sleeved gown of a sea-green colour, and under it a garment of a blossom-colour, holding a book open in his hands written or printed in the black letter, and reading very earnestly in it. about the middle of the room, over against sir thomas, hangs a clock with strings and leaden weights without any case.'[ ] it is notable that not one of sir thomas's sons-in-law is in this picture, neither is there a grandchild, though one or more is known to have been born at the date. the miniature of anne of cleves, if it ever existed, is lost; it is probable that what was really referred to was the portrait of anne by holbein in the louvre, where she appears 'as a kindly and comely woman in spite of her broad nose and swarthy complexion, but by no means such a painted venus as might have deceived king hal.'[ ] a well-known portrait by holbein is that of a 'cornish gentleman,' with reddish hair and beard. i saw this portrait not long ago, as it was exhibited among the works of the old masters, and so much did it look as though the figure would step from the frame, that it was hard to believe that more than three hundred years had passed since the original walked the earth.[ ] doubtless the last of holbein's portrait pieces, which it is reported he left uncompleted when he died, is that of the 'barber surgeons,' painted on the occasion of the united company receiving their charter from the king, and including the king's portrait. this picture still hangs in the old company's hall. i have only to say a few more words of those sketches which survive the destruction of the picture--holbein's allegory of the 'triumph of riches,' and the 'triumph of poverty,' and of his portrait sketches. in the 'triumph of riches,' plutus, an old man bent double, drives in a car, drawn by four white horses; before him, fortune, blind, scatters money. the car is followed by croesus, midas, and other noted misers and spendthrifts--for cleopatra, the only woman present, is included in the group. in the 'triumph of poverty,' poverty is an old woman in squalor and rags, who is seated in a shattered vehicle, drawn by asses and oxen, and guided by hope and diligence. the designs are large and bold. in the first, a resemblance to henry viii, is found in croesus. if the resemblance were intentional on holbein's part, it showed the same want of tact and feeling which the painter early betrayed in his caricature of erasmus. but the best of holbein's drawings are his portrait sketches with chalks, on flesh-tinted paper. these sketches have a history of their own, subsequent to their execution by holbein. after being in the possession of the art-loving earl of arundel, and carried to france, they were lost sight of altogether for the space of a century, until they were discovered by queen caroline, wife of george ii., in a bureau at kensington. you will hear a little later that the finest collection of miniatures in england went through the same process of disappearance and recovery.[ ] these original sketches, in addition to their great artistic merit, form a wonderful collection of speaking likenesses, belonging to the court of henry viii.,--likenesses which had been happily identified in time by sir john cheke (in the reign of elizabeth), since the names of the originals have been inscribed on the back of each drawing, as it is believed, by sir john cheke's hand. the collection is now in the queen's library, windsor, with photographs at kensington museum. there are one or two of holbein's reputed portraits at hampton court. i must pass over some painters as not being sufficiently represented for my purpose. among these is sir antony more, philip ii, of spain's friend. it is recorded that philip having rested his hand on the shoulder of more while at work, the bold painter turned round, and daubed the royal hand with vermilion. this gave rise to the courtier-saying that philip 'made slaves of his friends, and friends of his painters.' another is zucchero, one of the painters who was requested by queen elizabeth to paint her picture without shade, the result being 'a woman with a roman nose, a huge ruff and farthingale, and a bushel of pearls.' there are also van somer,--janssens, who painted lady bowyer, named for her exquisite beauty, 'the star of the east,' and susanna lister, the most beautiful woman at court, when presented in marriage to sir geoffrey thornhurst by james i, in person,[ ]--and daniel myttens, all foreigners, flemish or dutch, whom we must thus briefly dismiss. and now we come to van dyck. antony van dyck was born at antwerp, in . his father was a merchant; his mother was famous for painting flowers in small, and for needlework in silk. the fashion of painting 'in small' had prevailed for some time. horace walpole mentions that the mother of lucas de heere, a flemish painter, born in , could paint with such 'diminutive neatness' that she had executed 'a landscape with a windmill, miller, a cart and horse, and passengers,' which half a grain of corn could cover. at ten years of age, van dyck began to study as a painter, and he soon became a pupil, and afterwards a favourite pupil, of rubens. in , when van dyck was but a lad of seventeen years, he was admitted as a master into the painters' guild of st luke. two years later, he was still working with rubens, who, seeing his lameness of invention, counselled him to abide by portrait painting, and to visit italy. a year later, in , when van dyck was twenty years of age, he came to london, already becoming a resort of flemish painters, and lodging with a countryman of his own, worked for a short time in the service of james i. on van dyck's return to flanders, and on the death of his father, he was able to take rubens' advice, and in , when van dyck was still only twenty-two years of age, he set out for venice, the rome of the flemish painters. before quitting antwerp, van dyck, in proof of the friendship which existed between the painters, presented rubens with several of the former's pictures, among them his famous portrait of 'rubens' wife.' as a pendant to this generosity, when van dyck came back to antwerp, and complained to rubens that he--van dyck--could not live on the profits of his painting, rubens went next day and bought every picture of van dyck's which was for sale. van dyck spent five years in italy, visiting venice, florence, rome, and palermo, but residing principally at genoa. in italy, he began to indulge in his love of splendid extravagance, and in the fastidious fickleness which belonged to the evil side of his character. at rome he was called 'the cavalier painter,' yet his first complaint on his return to antwerp was, that he could not live on the profits of his painting! he avoided the society of his homelier countrymen. at palermo, van dyck knew, and according to some accounts, painted the portrait of sophonisba anguisciola, who claimed to be the most eminent portrait painter among women. she was then about ninety years of age, and blind, but she still delighted in having in her house a kind of academy of painting, to which all the painters visiting palermo resorted. van dyck asserted that he owed more to her conversation than to the teaching of all the schools. a book of his sketches, which was recovered, showed many drawings 'after sophonisba anguisciola.' she is said to have been born at cremona, was invited at the age of twenty-six by philip ii, to spain, and was presented by him with a spanish don for a husband, and a pension of a thousand crowns a-year from the customs of palermo. the plague drove van dyck from italy back to flanders, where he painted for a time, and presented his picture of the 'crucifixion' to the dominicans as a memorial gift in honour of his father, but in flanders rubens' fame overshadowed that of every other painter, and van dyck, recalling an invitation which he had received from the countess of arundel while still in italy, came a second time to england, in , when he was about thirty years of age, and lodged again with a fellow-countryman and painter named gildorp. but his sensitive vanity was wounded by his not at once receiving an introduction to the king, or the countenance which the painter considered his due, and the restlessness, which was a prominent feature in his character, being re-awakened, he withdrew once more from england, and returned to the low countries in . at last, a year later, in , van dyck's pride was propitiated by receiving a formal invitation from charles i., through sir kenelm digby, to visit england, and this time the painter had no cause to complain of an unworthy reception. he was lodged by the king among his artists at blackfriars, having no intercourse with the city, save by water. he had the king, with his wife and children, to sit to him, and was granted a pension of two hundred a-year, with the distinction of being named painter to his majesty. a year later van dyck was knighted. royal and noble commissions flowed upon him, and the king, who had a hereditary love of art, visited the painter continually, and spent some of the happiest and most innocent hours of his brief and clouded life in van dyck's company. thus began van dyck's success in england. to give you an example of how often, and in how many different manners, van dyck painted the king and royal family, i shall quote from a list of his pictures-- 'king charles in coronation robes.' 'king charles in armour' (twice). 'king charles in white satin, with his hat on, just descended from his horse; in the distance, view of the isle of wight.' 'king charles in armour, on a white horse; monsieur de st antoine, his equerry, holding the king's helmet.' 'the king and queen sitting; prince charles, very young, standing at the king's side; the duke of york, an infant, on the queen's knee.' 'the king and queen holding a crown of laurel between them.' 'the queen in white.' 'prince charles in armour' (two or three times). 'king, queen, prince charles, and princess mary.' 'queen with her five children.' 'queen with dwarfs,[ ] sir geoffrey hudson having a monkey on his shoulder.' van dyck had several great patrons, after the king. for the earl of arundel, in addition to portraits of the earl and countess, the painter designed a second arundel family picture, which was painted by fruitiers. for george, duke of buckingham, van dyck painted one of his finest double portraits of the duke's two sons, when children. for the northumberland family van dyck painted, besides portraits of henry and algernon, earls of northumberland, another famous picture, that of the two beautiful sisters, lady dorothy percy, afterwards countess of leicester, and her sister, lady lucy percy, afterwards countess of carlisle, whose charms figure frequently in the memoirs of her time. william and philip, earls of pembroke, were also among his patrons, and for the second he painted his great family picture, 'the wilton family.' sir kenelm digby, too, whose wife venitia was more frequently painted than any woman of her day, and was not more distinguished for her beauty than for her lack of nobler qualities. van dyck alone painted her several times, the last after her sudden death, for her vain and eccentric, if gallant, husband, who in the end was no friend to van dyck. but these high names by no means exhaust the list of patrons of a painter who, among various contradictory qualities, was indefatigably industrious. his work is widely distributed among the scotch as well as the english descendants of the nobility whom he painted, so that the possession of at least one ancestral 'van dyck' accompanies very many patents of nobility, and is equivalent to a warrant of gentle birth. the earl of clarendon, in the next reign, had a great partiality for van dyck's pictures, and was said to be courted by gifts of them until his apartments at cornbury were furnished with full-length 'van dycks.' a third of his collection went to kitty hyde, duchess of queensberry, one of the earl's three co-heiresses. through the rich family many of these 'van dycks' passed to taymouth castle, where by a coincidence they were lodged in the company of numerous works of george jamieson of aberdeen, who is said to have been for a short time a fellow-pupil of van dyck's under rubens, who has been called 'the scotch van dyck,' and who is certainly the first native painter who deserves honourable mention. since the death of the last marquis of breadalbane these travelled 'van dycks' have gone back to the english representative of the rich family. van dyck had forty pounds for a half, and sixty pounds for a whole-length picture;--for a large piece of the king, queen, and their children, he had a hundred pounds. for the wilton family picture he had five hundred and twenty-five pounds. but van dyck soon impaired his fortune. he was not content with having a country-house at eltham in kent, where he spent a portion of each summer; he would emulate in his expenditure the most spendthrift noble of that reign. 'he always went magnific so good a table in his apartment that few princes were more visited and better served.' his marriage was not calculated to teach him moderation. in his thirty-ninth year the king gave him the hand of marie ruthven, who was nearly related to the unhappy earl of gowrie. she was his niece, her father having been the scarcely less unhappy younger brother patrick, a physician, who, apprehended when a young man on the charge of being concerned in the treason of his elder brothers, spent his manhood in the tower. he was kept a prisoner there from to , nearly forty years, and was only released in his age and infirmity when his mind was giving way. patrick ruthven's infant daughter had been adopted, either through charity or perversity, by anne of denmark, and brought up first at the court of anne, and afterwards at that of henrietta maria. the assertion that marie ruthven was a very beautiful woman has been contradicted. it was said that 'she was bestowed in marriage on sir antony van dyck as much to humble further the already humbled and still detested family of ruthven, as to honour the painter; but this does not seem consistent with king charles's known favour for van dyck. yet such a view might have been entertained by marie ruthven herself, who, according to tradition, held herself degraded by the marriage, and never forgave the degradation. she was not a loving wife to a man who could hardly have been a very loving or loyal husband. and certainly the marriage did not unite the painter closer to the king. with his professional industry, van dyck combined an equally unquenchable love of pleasure, which, with his luxurious and sedentary habits, induced paroxysms of gout, from which rubens also suffered severely. this must have ultimately disqualified him for good work, and when his debts accumulated in greater proportion even than his receipts, in place of having recourse, like rubens, to his painting-room, van dyck tried a shorter road to get rich, by following the idle example of sir kenelm digby in his pursuit of alchemy and the philosopher's stone. in the year of his marriage, van dyck re-visited flanders, in company with his wife, and then repaired to france, it is understood with the intention of settling there. he was instigated to the step by his wife, and his own ambition of rivalling rubens' triumphs at the luxembourg; but the preference which the french gave to the works of their countryman, nicolas poussin, roused his latent jealousy, and so mortified him as to induce him to renounce his intention. he determined to return to england, and was, to his credit, confirmed in his resolution by the threatening civil war which was to shake his royal master's throne to the foundation, rather than deterred from it. again in england, van dyck employed sir kenelm digby to make an offer on the painter's part that for eight hundred pounds he would paint the history, and a procession of the knights of the garter on the walls of the knights' banqueting-room at whitehall--that palace which was to have surpassed the louvre, the tuileries, and the escurial, and from one of the windows of which charles stepped out on his scaffold. but the proposal was rejected, and immediately afterwards the civil war broke out, and was speedily followed by the death of van dyck, about a year after his marriage, when he was a little over forty years old, at blackfriars, in . he was buried in old st paul's, near the tomb of john of gaunt. his daughter, justiniana, was born a short time--some say only eight days--before her father died, and was baptized on the day of his death. van dyck left effects and sums due to him to the amount of twenty thousand pounds; but the greater part of the debts were found beyond recovery at the close of the civil war. his daughter grew up, and married a mr stepney, 'who rode in king charles's life guards.' his widow re-married; her second husband was a welsh knight. van dyck's contradictory elements. he was actuated by opposite motives which are hard to analyze, and which in their instability have within themselves, whatever their outward advantages, the doom of failure in the highest excellence. he was a proud man, dissatisfied both with himself and his calling, resenting, with less reason than hans holbein showed, that he should be condemned to portrait painting, yet by no means undervaluing or slurring over his work. he 'would detain the persons who sat to him to dinner for an opportunity of studying their countenances and re-touching their pictures,' 'would have a sitter, sitting to him seven entire days, mornings and evenings, and would not once let the man see the picture till it pleased the painter.' van dyck appears to have been a man with the possibilities in him of greater things than he attained, possibilities which were baffled by his weakness and self-indulgence, leaving him with such a sense of this as spoiled his greatest successes. i have the varying indications of two pictures of van dyck from which to get an impression of his personal appearance. the first picture is that of a youthful face, soft, smiling, with dark eyes, finely-formed nose, a slightly open mouth, having a full-cleft under lip, the hair profuse and slightly curled, but short, and no beard or moustache. the dress is an open doublet, without a collar, a lace cravat, and one arm half bare. the second is the picture of van dyck in the louvre, which is judged the best likeness of the painter. in this his person is slender, his complexion fair, his eyes grey, his hair chestnut brown, his beard and whiskers red. he wears a vest of green velvet, with a plain collar. in his art, van dyck, with something of the glow of rubens, and with a delicacy peculiarly his own, was decidedly inferior to his great master, both in power and in fertility of genius. in the superficial refinement which was so essential a part of van dyck, he had the capacity of conferring on his sitters a reflection of his own outward stateliness and grace. when he painted at his best his portraits were solid, true, and masterly, but he has been reproached with sacrificing truth to the refining process which he practised. even in the case of charles i., whose portraits are our most familiar examples of van dyck, and who thus lives in the imagination of most people as the very personification of a noble and handsome cavalier, there have not been wanting critics who have maintained that charles,--the son of a plain uncouth father, and of a mother rather floridly buxom than delicately handsome, and who was in his childhood a sickly rickety child,--was by no means so well endowed in the matter of manly beauty as we have supposed. these students of old gossip and close investigation, have alleged that charles was long and lanky, after he had ceased to be baby charles; that his nose was too large, and, alas! apt to redden; that his eyes were vacillating; and his mouth, the loosely hung mouth of a man who begins by being irresolute, and ends by being obstinate.[ ] again, in the hands of a sitter, which van dyck was supposed to paint with special care and elegance, it has been argued that he copied always the same hand, probably his own, in ignorance, or in defiance of the fact that hands have nearly as much and as varying character as a painter can discover in faces. though van dyck painted many beautiful women, he did not excel in rendering them beautiful on canvas, so that succeeding generations, in gazing on van dyck's versions of venitia, lady digby, and dorothy sydney--waller's sacharissa,--have wondered how sir kenelm, waller, and their contemporaries, could find these ladies so beautiful. van dyck certainly owed something of the charm of his pictures to the dress of the period, with regard to which he received this credit that 'van dyck was the first painter who e'er put ladies' dress into a careless romance.' but in reality never was costume better suited for a painter like van dyck. the hair in the men was allowed to flow to the shoulders or gathered in a love knot, while the whiskers and beard formed a point. in the women the hair was crisped in curls round the face. the ruff in men and women had yielded to the broad, rich, falling collar, with deep scallops of point lace. vest and cloak were of the richest velvet or satin, or else, on the breaking out of the civil war, men appeared in armour. the man's hat was broad and flapping, usually turned up at one side, and having an ostrich feather in the band; his long wide boots were of spanish leather, and he wore gauntlet gloves, and rich ruffles at his wrists. the women wore hoods and mantles, short bodices, ample trains, and wide sleeves terminating in loose ruffles at the elbow, which left half of the arm bare. pearl necklaces and bracelets, round feather fans, and 'knots of flowers,' were the almost universal ornaments of women. another ornament of both men and women, which belonged to the day, and was very common in the quarters i have been referring to, was a miniature enclosed in a small case of ivory or ebony, carved like a rose, and worn on the left side in token of betrothal.[ ] van dyck, along with the appreciation of black draperies which he held in common with rubens, was specially fond of painting white or blue satin. he is said to have used a brown preparation of pounded peach-stones for glazing the hair in his pictures. in the end, with all the aids that critics may have given him, and all the faults they may find in him, van dyck was a great, and in the main an earnest portrait painter. perhaps 'charles in white satin, just descended from his horse,' is the best of the single portraits which were held to be van dyck's forte. i must try to give my readers some idea of van dyck's 'wilton family.' it has been so praised, that some have said 'it might have been covered with gold as a price to obtain it;' on the other hand, it has not escaped censure. one critic asserts that there is no common action uniting the figures, and that the faces are so different in complexion--one yellow-faced boy appearing either jaundiced or burnt by a tropical sun, that the family might have lived in different climates. this is the story of the picture. 'earl philip of pembroke having caused his family to meet, informs them with great emotion of the necessity of his eldest son charles, lord herbert, going into the army of the grand duke of tuscany, there to acquire military honour and experience, notwithstanding his having just married mary, daughter of george, duke of buckingham. lord herbert is receiving the news with ardour, the young bride is turning aside her fair face to hide her tears. (charles lord herbert was married christmas, , went to florence, and died there of small pox, january, .) 'in the pembroke picture (or "wilton family") there are ten figures. the earl and countess are seated on a dais, under a coat of arms. he wears a great lace collar, an order on his breast, a key at his girdle, and has great shoes with roses. she has flowing curls, hanging sleeves, arms crossed, necklace on the bare neck. (the countess of pembroke was the earl's second wife, anne clifford, daughter of george, earl of cumberland, the brave lady who defied cromwell, and was fond of signing her name with the long string of titles derived from her two husbands, "anne dorset, pembroke, montgomery.") robert dormer, earl of carnarvon, is introduced with his wife, lady anne sophia herbert, daughter of earl philip; they are on the countess's left hand. the daughter-in-law, about to be parted from her husband, stands on the lowest step of the dais; she is elegantly dressed, with hanging sleeves knotted with bows from shoulder to elbow. two young men, the bridegroom and his brother, are at their father's right hand; they wear great falling collars and cloaks. there are three half-grown boys in tunics without collars, and great roses in their shoes, with a dare three daughters of the family who died in infancy.' van dyck's finest sacred pictures were his early 'crucifixion,' and a pieta, at antwerp. in these he gave a promise of nobler and deeper pathos than he afterwards fulfilled. his pictures are to be found freely, as i have written, in old english mansions, such as arundel and alnwick castles, knowsley, knole, petworth, etc. a head said to be by van dyck is in the national gallery. van dyck had few pupils: one, an englishman named dobson, earned an honourable reputation as a painter. from sir antony more's time down to that of leíly and kneller, the rage for portraits was continually increasing, and took largely the form of miniatures, which were painted chiefly by foreigners; notably by hilliard and two olivers or oliviers, a father and son of french extraction, and by a swiss named petitot. a collection of miniatures by the oliviers, including no less than six of venitia, lady digby, had a similar fate to that of holbein's drawings. the miniatures had been packed in a wainscot box and conveyed to the country-house in wales of mr watkin williams, who was a descendant of the digby family. in course of time the box with its contents, doubtless forgotten, had been transferred to a garret, where it had lain undiscovered for, it has been supposed, fully a hundred years. it was two hundred years after the date of the painting of the miniatures, that on some turning over of the lumber in the garret, the exquisite miniatures, fresh as on the day when they were painted, were accidentally brought to light.[ ] sir peter lely was born in westphalia in . his real name was vander facs, and his father was a 'captain of foot,' who, having chanced to be born in rooms over a perfumer's shop which bore the sign of a lily, took fantastically enough the name of du lys, or lely, which he transmitted to his son. sir peter lely, after studying in a studio at haarlem, came to england when he was twenty-three years of age, in , and set himself to copy the pictures of van dyck, who died in the year of lely's arrival in england, and whom he succeeded as court painter. lely was knighted by charles ii., married an english woman, and had a son and a daughter, who died young. he made a large fortune, dying at last of apoplexy, with which he was seized as he was painting the duchess of somerset, when he was sixty-two years of age, in . with regard to lely's character, we may safely judge from his works that he was such a man as samuel pepys, 'of easy virtue,' a man holding a low enough standard by which to measure himself and others. mr palgrave quotes from mr leslie the following characteristic anecdote of lely, which seems to prove that he was aware of, and coolly accepted, the decline of art in his generation and person. a nobleman said to lely, 'how is it that you have so great a reputation, when you know, as well as i do, that you are no painter?' 'true, but i am the best you have,' was the answer. lely's punishment followed him into his art, for beginning by copying van dyck, it is said of lely that he degenerated in his work till it bore the very 'stamp of the depravity of the age.' lely's sitters were mostly women. among them was one who deserved a fitter painter, mistress anne killigrew, dryden's-- 'youngest virgin daughter of the skies.' in lely's portrait of her, she is a neat, slightly prim, delicate beauty, with very fine features, and such sleepy eyes, as were probably the gift of lely, since he has bestowed them generally on the women whom he painted. mistress anne killigrew's hair is in curls, piled up in front, but hanging down loosely behind. her bodice is gathered together by a brooch, and she has another brooch on one shoulder. she wears a light pearl necklace, and 'drops' shaped like shamrocks in her ears. lely painted both charles i, and cromwell, who desired his painters to omit 'no pimple or wart,' but to paint his face as they saw it. among less notable personages lely painted monk, duke of albemarle, and his rough duchess, once a camp follower, according to popular rumour, and named familiarly by the contemptuous wits of the day 'nan clarges.' it is with not more honourable originals than poor 'nan clarges' that lely's name as a painter is chiefly associated. we know what an evil time the years after the restoration proved in england, and it was to immortalize, as far as he could, the vain, light women of the generation that lely lent what skill he possessed. there their pictures hang in what has been called 'the beauty room' at hampton court, and no good man or woman can look at them without holding such beauty detestable. at hampton court also there are several of the eleven portraits of admirals whom lely painted for james ii, when duke of york. antonio canal, called canaletto, incorrectly canaletti, was born at venice in . he was the son of a scene painter at the theatre. in his youth he worked under his father; a little later he went to rome, and studied for some time there. then he came to england, where he remained only for two years. i have hesitated about placing his name among those of the foreign painters resident in england, but so many of his works are in this country that he seems to belong to it in an additional sense. he is said to have 'made many pictures and much money.' he died at venice when he was seventy years of age, in . as a painter he was famous for his correctness of perspective and precision of outline (in which it is alleged he aided himself by the use of the camera), qualities specially valuable in the architectural subjects of which he was fond, drawing them principally from his native venice. but his very excellence was mechanical, and he showed so little originality or, for that matter, fidelity of genius, that he painted his landscapes in invariable sunshine. * * * * * the great wood-carver grinling gibbons deserves mention among the artists of this date. he was a native of rotterdam, where he was born in . he came to london with other carvers the year after the great fire of london, and was introduced by evelyn to charles ii., who took him into his employment. 'gibbons was appointed master carver in wood to george i., with a salary of eighteen-pence a day.' he died at his house in bow street in the sixty-third year of his age, in . it is said that no man before gibbons 'gave to wood the lightness of flowers.' for the great houses of burghley, petworth, and chatsworth, gibbons carved exquisite work, in festoons for screens, and chimney-pieces, and panels for pictures, of fruit, flowers, shells, and birds. * * * * * sir godfrey kneller was born at lübeck in , and was the son of an architect. he is said to have studied under rembrandt; but if this be true, it must have been in kneller's early youth. it is more certain that he travelled in italy and returned to settle in hamburg, but changing his plans, he came to england, when he was about thirty years of age, in . london became his home. there he painted portraits with great success; his prices being fifteen guineas for a head, twenty if with one hand, thirty for a half, and sixty for a whole-length portrait. charles ii, sat at the same time to kneller and to lely. not titian himself painted more crowned heads than it fell to the lot of kneller to paint--not less than six reigning kings and queens of england, and, in addition, louis xiv. of france, charles vi, of spain, and the czar peter of russia. william iii, created kneller a knight, and george i, raised the painter's rank to that of a baronet. sir godfrey was notorious for his conceit, irritability, and eccentricity, and for the wit which sparkled more in his conversation than in any originality of observation displayed in his painting. walpole attributes to kneller the opposite qualities of great negligence and great love of money. the negligence or slovenliness, whether in the man or the artist, did not interfere with an immense capacity for work, such as it was, but if horace walpole be right, that kneller employed many flemish painters under him to undertake the wigs, draperies, etc. etc., the amount of work in portrait painting which sir godfrey kneller accomplished is so far explained. he attained the end of being a very rich man, and married an english woman, but left no family to succeed to his wealth and his country-seat of whitton, when he died at his house in london in his seventy-eighth year, in . as a painter sir godfrey kneller showed considerable talent in drawing, and a certain cumbrous dignity of design, but he had much more industry of a certain kind than artistic feeling or taste. when he and lely painted charles ii, together, kneller's application and rapidity of execution were so far before those of lely, who was technically the better painter of the two, that kneller's picture was finished when lely's was dead-coloured only. kneller was highly praised by dryden, addison, prior, and steele. apropos of these writers, among the most famous works of kneller are the forty-three portraits, painted originally for tonson, the bookseller, of the members of the kit cat club, the social and literary club of the day, which got its name from the chance of its holding its meetings in a house the owner of which bore the unique name of christopher cat. another series of portraits by kneller are what ought to be, in their designation, the hampton court beauties. these are still, like the other 'beauties,' at hampton. the second series was proposed by william's queen mary, and included herself, sarah jennings, duchess of marlborough, and mary bentinck. to sarah jennings men did award the palm of beauty, but poor queen mary, who had a modest, simple, comely, english face as a princess, had lost her fresh youthful charm by the time she became queen of england, and was still further disfigured by the swelling of the face to which she was liable. her proposal to substitute the worthier women of her court for the unworthy beauties of her uncle king charles' court was not relished, and helped to render mary unpopular--among the women, at least, of her nobility. neither was sir godfrey kneller qualified to enhance the attractions of mary's maids of honour and ladies in waiting, who, to complete their disadvantages, lived at a period when it had become the fashion for women to crown their persons by an erection on their natural heads of artificial 'edifices of three heads.' to kneller, as i have already written, we owe the preservation of raphael's cartoons. chapter xii.[ ] italian masters from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries--taddeo gaddi, , supposed to have died --fra filippo, - --benozzo gozzoli, - --luca signorelli, , supposed to have died about --botticelli, - --perugino, - --carpaccio, date and place of birth and death unknown--crivelli--filippino lipi, earlier than --antonella da messina, believed to have died at venice, --garopalo, - --luini, date of birth unknown, supposed to have died about --palma, about - --pardenone, - --lo spagna, date of birth unknown, --giulio romano, - --paris bordone, - --il parmigianino, - --baroccio, - --caravaggio, - --lo spagnoletto, - --guercino, - --albano, - --sassoferrato, - --vasari, - --sofonisba anguisciola, , about --lavinia fontana, - . taddeo gaddi, the most important of giotto's scholars, was born in , and was held at the baptismal font by giotto himself. gaddi rather went back on earlier traditions and faults. his excellence lay in his purity and simplicity of feeling. his finest pictures are from the life of the virgin, in s. croce, florence. he was, like his master, a great architect as well as painter. he furnished the plans for the ponte vecchio and campanile, florence, after giotto's death. he was possessed of great activity and industry. he is supposed to have died in , and rests in the scene of his labours, since he was buried in the cloisters of s. croce. fra filippo, - , a carmelite friar. the romantic, scandalous life, including his slavery in barbary, attributed to him by vasari, the great biographer of the early italian painters, has received no corroboration from modern researches. it is rather refuted. he always signed his pictures 'frater filippus,' and his death is entered in the register of the carmine convent as that of 'frater filippus.' in all probability he was from first to last a monk, and not a disreputable one. he describes himself as the poorest friar in florence, with six marriageable nieces dependent on him, and he is said to have been involved in debt. his colouring was 'golden and broad,' in anticipation of that of titian; his draperies were fine. he was wanting in the ideal, but full of human feeling, which was apt to get rude and boisterous; his angels were 'like great high-spirited boys.' withal, his style of composition was stately. among the best examples of his work are scenes from the life of st john the baptist in frescoes in the choir of the duomo at prato. his panel pictures are rather numerous. there are two lunette[ ] pictures by fra filippo in the national gallery. benozzo gozzoli, - , a scholar of fra angelico, but resembling him only in light and cheerful colouring. he is said to have been the first italian painter smitten with the beauty of the natural world. he was the first to create rich landscape backgrounds, and he enlivened his landscapes with animals. he displayed a fine fancy for architectural effects, introducing into his pictures open porticoes, arcades, balconies, and galleries. he liked to have subsidiary groups and circles of spectators about his principal figures. in these groups he introduced portraits of his contemporaries, true to nature and full of expression and delicate feeling. his best work is in the campo santo, pisa, scenes from the history of the old testament, ranging from noah to the queen of sheba. the pisans were so pleased with his work as to present him, in , with a sarcophagus intended to contain his remains when they should be deposited in the campo santo. he survived the gift eighteen years, dying in . his easel pictures are rare, and do not offer good representations of the master. there is one in the national gallery--a virgin and child, with saints and angels. luca d'egidio di ventura, called also luca 'da cortona,' from his birth-place, and luca signorelli, , supposed to have died about . his is a great name in the tuscan school. he played an important part in the painting of the sistine chapel, though he is only represented by one wall picture, the history of moses. at his best he anticipated michael angelo in power and grandeur, but he was given to exaggeration. his fame rests principally on his frescoes at orvieto, where, by a strange chance, he was appointed, after an interval of time, to continue and complete the work begun by fra angelico, the master most opposed to signorelli in style. luca added the great dramatic scenes which include the history of antichrist, executed with a grandeur which 'only lionardo among the painters sharing a realistic tendency could have surpassed.' these scenes, which contain the resurrection, hell, and paradise, bear a strong resemblance to the work of michael angelo. in his fine drawing of the human figure signorelli may be known by 'the squareness of his forms in joints and extremities.' a conspicuous detail in his pictures is frequently a bright-coloured roman scarf. his work is rarely seen north of the alps. sandro filipepi, called botticelli, - . he was an apprentice to a goldsmith, and then became a scholar of filippo lipi's. botticelli was vehement and impetuous, full of passion and poetry, seeking to express movement. he was the most dramatic painter of his school. occasionally he rises to a grandeur that allies him to signorelli and michael angelo. his circular pictures of the madonna and child, with angels, are numerous. like fra filippo, botticelli's angels are noble youths, some of them belonging to the great families of the time. they are prone to be ecstatic with joy or frantic with grief. there is a grand coronation of the virgin, by botticelli at hamilton palace, and a beautiful nativity by the old master belongs to mr fuller maitland. his madonna and child are grand and tragic figures always. botticelli's noble frescoes in the sistine chapel are apt to be overlooked because of michael angelo's 'sublime work' on the ceiling. there has been a revival of botticelli's renown within late years, partly due to the new interest in the earlier italian painters which mr browning has done something to stimulate. i quote some thoughtful remarks on botticelli by w.c. lefroy in _macmillan's magazine_: 'mr ruskin, we know, divides italian art into the art of faith, beginning with giotto, and lasting rather more than years, and the art of unbelief, or at least of cold and inoperative faith, beginning in the middle of raphael's life. but whatever division we adopt, we must remember that the revival of paganism, as a matter of fact, affected men in different ways. right across the schools this new spirit draws its line, but the line is not a hard and sharp one. some men lie wholly on one side of it, with giotto, angelico, and orcagna; some wholly upon the other, with titian and correggio, but there are some on whom it seems to fall as a rainbow falls upon a hill-side. such, for instance, is botticelli. now he tries to paint as men painted in the old days of unpolluted faith, and then again he breaks away and paints like a very heathen. 'the interest which this artist has excited in the present generation has been exaggerated into something like a fashion, and recent criticism has delighted to find or imagine in him the idiosyncrasies of recent thought. to us it may be he does in truth say more than he or his contemporaries dreamed of, but while true criticism will sternly refuse to help us to see in his pictures that which is purely subjective, it will, i think, recognise the fact that a day like ours is capable of reading in the subtle suggestions of ancient art thoughts which have only now come to be frankly defined or exquisitely analysed. to us, moreover, botticelli presents not only the poem of the apparition of the young and beautiful manhood of humanism before the brooding and entranced, yet half expectant, maidenhood of mediævalism, but also the poem of the painter's own peculiar relation to that crisis. for us there is the poetry of the thing itself, and also the poetry of botticelli's attempt to express it. the work of botticelli does not supply a universal utterance for mankind like shakespeare's plays, but when we stand before the screen on which his "nativity" is hung, or contemplate in the adjoining room his two perplexed conceptions of "aphrodite," we are face to face with a genuine outcome of that memorable meeting, mediævalism, humanism, and savonarola, which no generation can afford to ignore, and our own especially delights to contemplate. there has been much dispute about the date of botticelli's "nativity," and some defenders of savonarola have hoped to read in the strange character of its inscription, so that this beautiful picture, standing forth as the work of one for many years under the influence of "the frate," may refute the common calumny that that influence was unfriendly to art. our catalogue, indeed, unhesitatingly asserts of botticelli, that "he became a follower of savonarola and no doubt suffered from it;" but though there seems to be really little doubt that the "nativity" was painted in , the inscription, with its mystic allusion to the apocalypse, and the whole character of the picture, afford unmistakable evidence of the influence of savonarola.' pietro perugino, , died of the plague at frontignano in . perugino is another painter who has been indebted to the last renaissance. his fame, in this country rested chiefly on the circumstance that he was raphael's master, whom the generous prince of painters delighted to honour, till the tide of fashion in art rose suddenly and floated old pietro once more to the front. at his best he had luminous colour, grace, softness, and enthusiastic earnestness, especially in his young heads. his defects were monotony, and formality, together with comparative ignorance of the principles of his art. his conception of his calling in its true dignity was not high. his attempts at expressing ardour degenerated into mannerism, and he acquired habits and tricks of arrangement and style, among which figured his favourite upturned heads, that in the end were ill drawn, and, like every other affectation, became wearisome. in the process of falling off as an artist, when mere manual dexterity took the place of earnest devotion and honest pains, perugino had a large studio where many pupils executed his commissions, and where, working for gain instead of excellence in art, he had the satisfaction, doubtless, of amassing a large fortune. among his finest works is the picture of an enthroned madonna and child in the gallery of the uffizi. another fine madonna with saints is at cremona. his frescoes in the sala del campio at perugia are among his best works. the subjects of these frescoes are partly scriptural; partly mythological. in the execution there is excellence alike in drawing, colouring, and the disposal of drapery. a _chef d'oeuvre_ by the master is the madonna of the certosa at pavia, now in, the national gallery. yet it is said to have been painted at the very period when michael angelo ridiculed perugino's work as 'absurd and antiquated.' vittore carpaccio, date and place of birth unknown, though he is said to have been a native of istria. he was a historical painter of the early venetian school and a follower of the bellini. his romantic _genre_ pictures show the daily life of the venice of his time, and are furnished with landscape and architectural backgrounds. his masterly and rich work is mostly in venice. he introduces animals freely and well in his designs. carlo crivelli was another master of the fifteenth century who deserves notice. he had strong individuality, yet was influenced by the paduan and venetian schools. he displayed an old-fashioned preference for painting in tempera. sometimes his drawing approaches that of mantegna, while he has a gorgeousness of colouring all his own. his pictures occasionally show dignity of composition in combination with grace and daintiness; but he could be guilty of exaggerated vehemence of expression. he frequently introduced fruit, flowers, and birds in his work. he is fully represented in the national gallery, his works there ranging from 'small tender pictures of the dead christ with angels, to a sumptuous altar-piece in numerous compartments.' filippino lipi was an adopted son and probably a relation of fra filippo's, though a scholar's use of his master's name was not uncommon. the date of his birth is earlier than . filippino was also a pupil of botticelli's, while there was a higher sense of beauty and grace in the pupil than in the teacher. among his last works is the vision of st bernard, an easel picture in the badia at florence. the apparition of the madonna in this picture is said to be 'full of charm.' in his larger works he is one of the greatest historical painters of his country. roman antiquities had the same keen interest for him which they held for the greatest of his contemporaries, and he made free use of them in the architecture of his pictures. he has fine work in the carmelite church, florence, and in s. maria sopra minerva, rome. much of some of his pictures is painted over. the national gallery has a picture of filippino's 'of grand execution,' though almost colourless--the madonna and child, with st jerome and st francis. antonella da messina was the neapolitan painter who brought the practice of painting in oils from the netherlands into italy, though it is now believed, from stubborn discrepancies in dates, that the story of his great friendship with jan van eyck, as given by vasari, is apochryphal. very likely hans memling, called also 'john of bruges,' was the real friend and leader of antonella. his best work consisted of portraits. he is believed to have died at venice in . benvenuto tisio, surnamed from the place of his birth garofalo, was born in , and died in . he passed from the early school of ferrara to that of raphael. his conception was apt to be fantastic, while his colouring was vivid to abruptness, and he was deficient in charm of expression. he fell into the fault of monotonous ideality. at the same time his heads are beautiful, and his drapery is classic. his finest work is an 'entombment' in the borghese palace, rome. there is an altar-piece by garofalo, a madonna and child with angels, in the national gallery. bernardo luini, who stands foremost among the scholars of lionardo da vinci, was born by the lago maggiore, the date unknown, came to milan in , was elderly in , and is supposed to have died not long after . his work is chiefly found in milan. his great merit has been only lately acknowledged. he is not 'very powerful or original,' but for 'purity, grace, and spiritual expression,' he ranks very high. he unites the earnestness of the older masters with the prevailing feeling for beauty of the great masters of italian art. his pictures were long mistaken for those of his master, lionardo, though it is said that when the difference between them is once pointed out, it is easily recognised; indeed, the resemblance is confined to a smiling beatific expression in the countenances, which abounds more in luini's pictures. his heads of women, children, and angels present every degree of serenity, sweet cheerfulness and happiness, up to ecstatic rapture. 'christ disputing with the doctors,' in the national gallery, formerly called a lionardo, is now known to be a luini. he painted much, whether in tempera, fresco, or oil. his favourite subjects in oil were the madonna and child, with st john and the lamb, and the marriage of st catherine. probable he appears to greatest advantage in frescoes. he is said to have reached his highest perfection in the figure of st john in a crucifixion in the monasterio maggiore, milan. jacopo palma, called il palma vecchio, was born about near bergamo, and died in . he is believed to have studied under giovanni bellini, while he is also the chief follower of giorgione. his characteristics are ample forms and gorgeous breadth of drapery. his female saints, with their large rounded figures, have a soft yet commanding expression. he had an enchanting feeling for landscape, which seems to have been the birthright of the venetian painters. to palma is owing what are called 'santa conversazione,' where there are numerous groups round the virgin and child, as if they are holding a court in a retired and beautiful country nook. palma rivalled giorgione and titian as a painter of women's portraits. among these is that of his daughter violante, believed to have been loved by titian. 'palma's three daughters,' in the dresden gallery, is a masterpiece of 'fair, full-blown beauty.' the hair of the women is of the curiously bleached yellow tint affected then by the venetian ladies. palma painted many pictures, leaving at his death forty-our unfinished. giovanni antonio da pardenone, born , died . he had many names, 'pardenone' from his birth-place, 'corticellis' from that of his father, and he is believed to have assumed the name 'regillo' after he received knighthood from the king of hungary. he was venetian in his artistic qualities. many of his works are in his native pardetowns near. all have suffered and some are now hidden by whitewash. his chief strength lay in fresco. his scenes from the passion in the cathedral, cremona, are greatly damaged and wretchedly restored, but they still reveal the painter as a great master. they have 'fine drawing, action, excellent colouring, grand management of light and shade, with freedom of hand and dignity of conception.' in the prophets and sibyls around the cupola of the madonna di campagna, piacenza, pardenone's power is fully proven. his immense works in fresco account for the rarity of his oil pictures and their comparative inferiority. there is only one picture, and that a portrait, indisputably assigned to pardenone in england, in the baring collection. giovanni di pietro, known as lo spagna (the spaniard), was a contemporary of raphael's, a fellow-pupil of his under perugino. there is no record of the time and place of lo spagna's birth. he died in . he was a careful, conscientious follower of perugino and raphael, doing finished and delicate work; an 'assumption' in a church at trevi is a fine example of his qualities. his best picture was painted in , and is at assisi. it represents the madonna enthroned with three saints on each side. in his later works he betrayed feebleness. pictures by lo spagna are often attributed to raphael. giulio pippi, surnamed romano, born in , died in , was a very different painter, while he was the most celebrated of raphael's scholars. he had a vigorous, daring spirit, with a free hand and a bold fancy. so long as he painted under raphael, giulio followed his master closely, especially in his study of the antique, but he lacked the purity and grace of his teacher, on whose death, the pupil leaving rome, pursued his own coarser, more vehement impulses. the frescoes in the villa modama, rome, are good examples of his style, so is the altar-piece of the martyrdom of st stephen in s. stefano, genoa. giulio romano was the architect who designed the rebuilding of half mantua. his best easel picture in england is the 'education of jupiter by nymphs and corybantes,' in the national gallery. in raphael's lifetime his principal scholar was accustomed to work on the master's pictures, and on his death giulio, together with another pupil, gianfrancesco penni, were left executors of raphael's will and heirs of his designs. paris bordone was born at treviso in and died in . he was educated in the venetian school, and remained remarkable for delicate rosy colour in his flesh tints and for purple, crimson, and shot hues in his draperies, which were usually small and in crumpled folds. his _chef d'oeuvre_ is in the venetian academy. it is a fisherman presenting a ring to the doge, and is a large and fine picture with many figures. he dealt frequently in mythological or poetic subjects. there is an example of the first in the national gallery. he was great in single female subjects and women's portraits. there is a portrait by bordone of a lovely woman of nineteen belonging to the brignole family, in the national gallery. he had often fine landscape and grand architecture in his pictures. il parmigianino, born , died , was a follower of correggio's. in parmigianino's case the danger of the master's peculiarities became apparent by the lapse into affectation and frivolity. 'his madonnas are empty and condescending, his female saints like ladies in waiting.' still there were certain indestructible beauties of the master which yet clung to the scholar. he had clear warm colouring, decision, and good conception of human life. he was highly successful in portraits. there is a splendid portrait by parmigianino, said to be columbus, in naples. among his celebrated pictures is 'the madonna with the long neck,' in the pitti palace. an altar-piece in the national gallery, which represents a madonna in the clouds with st john the baptist appearing to st jerome, is a good example of parmigianino. it is said that he was engrossed with this picture during the siege of rome in . the soldiers entered the studio intent on pillage, but surprising the master at his work, respected his enthusiasm and protected him. federigo baroccio, of urbino, born in , died in , was also a follower of correggio's, and made a stand against the decline of art in his day. he was tender and idyllic, though apt in his turn to be affected and sentimental. when painting in the vatican, rome, his rivals sought to take his life by poison. the attempt caused baroccio to return to urbino, where he established himself and executed his commissions. amirighi da caravaggio was born at caravaggio in , and died at porto ercole in . he was chief of the naturalistic school, the members of which painted common nature and violent passions in bitter opposition to the eclectics, especially the caracci. the feud was sometimes carried on appositely enough on the side of the naturalistic painters by poison and dagger. caravaggio was distinguished by his wild temper and stormy life, in keeping with his pictures. he resided principally in rome, but dwelt also in naples. he is vulgar but striking, even pathetic in some of his pictures. the 'beheading of john the baptist,' in the cathedral, malta, is one of his masterpieces. his holy families now and then resemble gipsy _ménages_. guiseppe ribiera, a spaniard, and so called lo spagnoletto, was born and died . he followed caravaggio, while he retained reminiscences of the spanish school and of the venetian masters. some of his best pictures, such as 'the pieta with the marys and the disciples,' and his 'last supper,' are in naples. he had a wild fancy with a preference for horrible subjects--executions, tortures--in this respect resembling domenichino. lo spagnoletto is said to be particularly unpleasant in his mythological scenes. many of his pictures have blackened with time. his 'mary of egypt standing by her open grave' is a remarkable picture in the dresden gallery. giovanni francesco barbiera, surnamed guercino da cinto, approached the school of the caracci. in his art he resembled guido reni, with the same sweetness, greater liveliness, and fine chiaroscuro. 'dido's last moments' and 'st peter raising tabitha' in rome and in the pitti palace are fine examples of guercino's work. his later pictures, like guido's, are fascinating in softness, delicate colouring and tender sentiment, degenerating, however, into mannerism and insipidity, while his colouring becomes at last pale and washy. albano, born , died . he had elegance and cheerfulness which hardly rose to grace. he painted mostly scenes from ancient mythology, such as 'venus and her companions.' religious subjects were comparatively rare with him; one, however, often repeated was the 'infant christ sleeping on the cross.' giovanni battista salvi, surnamed from his birth-place sassoferrato, was born in and died in . he followed the scholars of the caracci, but with some independence, returning to older and greater masters. his art was distinguished by a peculiar but slightly affected gentleness of conception, pleasing and sweet--with the sweetness verging on weakness. he finished with minute care. he gave constant representations of the madonna and child and holy families in a domestic character. in one of his pictures in naples the madonna is engaged in sewing. his most celebrated, 'madonna del rosario,' is in s. sabina, rome. the madonna bending in ecstatic worship over an infant christ lying on a cushion is in the dresden gallery. giorgio vasari was born at arezzo in and died at florence in . he was an architect, or jeweller, and a historical painter of heavy crowded pictures. his lives of the early italian painters and sculptors up to his own time, the sixteenth century, though full of traditional gossip, are invaluable as graphic chronicles of much interesting information which would otherwise have been lost. sofonisba anguisciola, born , died about , was a pupil of bernardino campi about the close of the sixteenth century at cremona. she is justly praised by vasari. though her works are rare there are a few in england and scotland. three of her pictures which are mentioned with high commendation by dr. waagen are, 'a nun in the white robes of her order, nobly conceived and delicately coloured,' in lord yarborough's collection; in mr harcourt's collection, 'her own portrait, still very youthful, delicate, charming, and clear;' and in the collection of the late sir w. stirling maxwell, 'another portrait of herself at an easel painting the virgin and child on wood, delicately conceived, clear in colour, and very careful.' lavinia fontana, born in , died , was a daughter of prospero fontana, who belonged to the fast degenerating bolognese artists at the close of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century. she was a better artist than her fellow painters, worked cleverly and boldly, and showed truth to nature. she has left excellent portraits. in the late sir w. stirling maxwell's collection there is a picture by her, 'two girls in a boat with a youth rowing,' on wood, 'of very graceful motive and careful treatment.' chapter xiii.[ ] german, flemish, and dutch artists from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century--van der weyden, a contemporary of the van eycks, - --van leyden, - --van somer, - --snyders, - --g. honthorst, - --jan steen, - --gerard dow, - --de hooch, dates of birth and death unknown--van ostade, - --maas, - --metzu, , still alive in --terburg, - --netcher, - --bol, - --van der helst, - --ruysdael, (?)- --hobbema, - --berchem, - --both, (?)- (?)--du jardin, - --adrian van de velde, - --van der heyden, - --de witte, - --van der neer, (?)- --william van de velde the younger, - --backhuysen, - --van de capella, about --hondecoeter, - --jan weenix, - --pater segers, - --van huysum, - --van der werff, - --mengs, - . roger van der weyden was a contemporary of the van eycks, born at tournai. his early pictures in brussels are lost. he visited italy in , and was treated with distinction at ferrara. his flemish realistic cast of mind and artistic power remained utterly unaffected by the grand italian pictures with which he came in contact; so did his profound earnestness, which must have been great indeed, since its effects are felt through all impediments down to the present day. his expressive realism chose subjects in which the sentiments of grief and pity could be most fitly shown. he sternly rejected any suggestion to idealise the human form, and paint heads, hands, or feet different from those in ordinary life. 'it is the simplicity with which he gives expression by large and melancholy eyes, thought by projections of the forehead, grief by contracted muscles, and suffering by attenuation of the flesh which touches us.' the deadly earnestness of the man impresses the spectator at this distant date. 'there is no smile in any of his faces, but there is many a face wrung with agony, and there is many a tear.' he objected to shadow in every form, and filled his pictures with an invariable atmosphere and light--those which belong to dawn before sunrise. among his finer works are a triptych[ ] belonging to the duke of westminster, a 'last judgment' in the hospital at bearne, and a large 'descent from the cross' in madrid. in the triptych in the centre is christ with black hair, which is unusual, in his left hand the globe. on his right is the virgin mary, on his left st john the evangelist; on the right wing is st john the baptist, on his left the magdalene. lucas van leyden was born in and died in . he painted both scriptural subjects and everyday scenes, being a man of varied powers. he worked admirably for his time, and added to his art that of an engraver. he followed the van eycks, but lowered their treatment of sacred subjects. in incidents taken from common life he showed himself full of observation, and possessed of some humour. his pictures are rare. a 'last judgment,' in the town house, leyden, is a striking but unpleasant example of lucas van leyden's work. paul van somer was born at antwerp in , and died in . he worked for many years in england, where his best works--portraits--remain. he was truthful, a good colourist, and finished carefully. his portraits of lord bacon at panshanger and of the earl and countess of arundel at arundel castle are well known. frans snyders was born in , and died, at antwerp in . after rubens, snyders was the greatest flemish animal painter. he painted along with rubens often, snyders supplying the animals and rubens the figures. frans snyders paid a visit to italy and rome, from which he seems to have profited, judging by his skill in arrangement. this skill he displayed also in his kitchen-pieces (magnificent shows of fruit, vegetables, game, fish, etc.), which, like his animal pictures, are numerous. in one of these kitchen-pieces in the dresden gallery, rubens and his second wife are said to figure as the cooks. princes and nobles bade for snyders' pictures. there is a famous 'boar hunt' in the louvre, in munich 'lionesses pursuing a roebuck,' in vienna 'boar attacked by nine dogs.' snyders' animal pictures are full of energetic action and fierce passion. to these qualities is frequently added hideous realism in detail. there are many snyders in english galleries. gerard honthorst was born at utrecht in , and died in . he was a follower of caravaggio. he visited italy and found favour in rome, where he got from his night-pieces correggio's name, 'della notte.' honthorst was summoned to england by charles i., for whom he painted several pictures. he entered the service of prince frederick henry of orange, and painted also for the king of denmark. he left an extraordinary number of works, sacred, mythological, historical, and latterly many portraits. he drew well and painted powerfully, but was coarsely realistic in his treatment. at hampton court there are two of his best portraits, those of the unfortunate queen of bohemia and the duke of buckingham and his family. gerard honthorst's younger brother, william, was a portrait painter not unlike the elder brother in style. jan steen was born at leyden in , and died in . he was great as a _genre_ painter. he is said to have been, after rembrandt, the most humorous of dutch painters, full of animal spirits and fun. at his best, composition, colouring, and execution were all in excellent keeping. at his worst, he was vulgar and repulsive in his heads, and careless and faulty in his work. he was very rarely either kindly or reverent in his subjects, though, in spite of what is known to have been his riotous life, he is comparatively free from the grossness which is often the shame of flemish and dutch art. jan steen succeeded his father as a brewer and tavern-keeper at delft. he renounced the brewery, in which he did not succeed, and joined the painters' guild, haarlem; but his position as a tavern-keeper is reflected in his pictures, of which eating and drinking, card-playing, etc., are frequently the _motifs_. his family relations were not conducive to higher principles and tastes. he is said to have been so lost to common feeling as to have painted his first wife when she was in a state of intoxication.[ ] his second wife may have been a worthier woman, but she was drawn from the lowest class, and had been accustomed to sell sheeps' heads and trotters in the butchers' market. without doubt jan steen had extraordinary genius coexisting with his coarse, careless nature and jovial habits, and he must have worked with great facility, since, in spite of his idleness and comparatively early death, he left as many as two hundred pictures, rendered him extremely popular. besides his favourite subjects, such as 'the family jollification,' 'the feast of the bean king,' 'game of skittles,' he has pictures in a slightly higher atmosphere, such as 'a pastor visiting a young girl,' 'the parrot,' 'schoolmaster with unmanageable boys,' 'the pursuit of alchemy.' among the latter a good example is 'the music master' in the national gallery. gerard dow was born in and died in . he was a _genre_ painter of great merit. he belonged to leyden, and was a pupil of rembrandt. he began with portraiture, often painting his own face, and went on to scenes from low and middle-class life, but rarely attempted to represent high society. compared to jan steen, however, he is refined. he had a curious fondness for painting hermits. the lighting of his pictures is frequently by lantern or candle. they are mostly small, and without animated action, but are full of picturesqueness. he was a good colourist, 'with a rare truth to nature and a marvellous distinctness of eye and precision of hand.' minute as his execution was, his touch was 'free and soft.' his best pictures are 'like nature's self seen through the camera obscura.' an instance often given of his exquisite finish is that of a broom in the corner of one of his pictures. some contemporary had remarked how careful and elaborate was the labour bestowed on it, when the painter answered that he was still to give it several hours' work. he must have been exceedingly industrious as well as painstaking, since he left two hundred pictures as his contribution to dutch art. among his finer pictures are 'an old woman reading the bible to her husband,' in the louvre; 'the poulterer's shop,' in the national gallery. his _chef d'oeuvre_, 'the woman sick of the dropsy,' is in the louvre. his candlelight is the finest rendered by any master. there is a good example of it in 'the evening school,' in the amsterdam gallery. peter de hooch--spelt often, de hooge--was the _genre_ painter of full, clear sunlight. the dates of his birth and death can only be guessed by those of his pictures, which extend from to . his groups are generally playing cards, smoking, drinking, or engaged in domestic occupations--almost always in the open air. no other _genre_ painter can compare with him in reproducing the effects of sunlight. his prevailing colour is red, varied and repeated with great delicacy. english lovers of art brought de hooch into favour, and many of his pictures are in england. there are fine examples--'the court of a dutch house' and 'a courtyard'--in the national gallery. adrian van ostade was born at haarlem in and died in his native town in . he has been called 'the rembrandt of _genre_ painters,' and, like rembrandt, he was without the sense of human beauty and grace, for even his children are ugly; yet it is the purer, happier side of national life which he constantly represents, and he had great feeling for nature, with picturesqueness and harmony of design and colouring, as well as mastery of the technique of his art. he suffered many hardships in his youth, and grew up a quiet, industrious, family man. he left a very large number of pictures, nearly four hundred, many of them good, and not a few in england. 'the alchemist'[ ] is in the national gallery. maas, born in , died in , is a much-prized _genre_ painter, whose pictures are rare. he was a pupil of rembrandt. he is said to have treated 'very simple subjects with naïve homeliness and kindly humour.' his pictures are 'well lit, with deep warm harmony, and a vigorous touch.' 'the idle servant-maid,' in the national gallery, is a masterpiece. metzu, like terburg, is _par excellence_ one of the two painters of dutch high life. metzu was born in , and is known to have been alive in . he painted both on a large and a small scale, and occasionally departed from his peculiar province to represent market-scenes, etc. he is the most refined and picturesque of _genre_ painters on a small scale. among his _chefs d'oeuvre_ are a 'lady holding a glass of wine and receiving an officer,' in the louvre; and a 'girl writing, a gentleman leaning on her chair and another girl opposite playing the lute,' in the hague gallery. the fine 'duet,' and the 'music lesson' are both in the national gallery. gerard terburg was born at zwol, in , and died in . he visited germany and italy in his youth. his small groups and single figures, taken from the wealthier classes, with their luxurious surroundings, are 'given with exquisite delicacy and refinement.' included in his masterpieces are a 'girl in white satin (a texture which he rendered marvellously) washing her hands in a basin held before her by a maid-servant,' in the dresden gallery; an 'officer in confidential talk with a young girl, and a trumpeter who has brought him a letter,' in the hague gallery; a 'young lady in white satin sitting playing the lute,' in the chateau of wilhelmshöe, at cassell. there are twenty-three terburgs in england and scotland. caspar netcher, born in , died in . he formed himself upon metzu and terburg. he is the great dutch painter of childhood. his finest works are in the dresden gallery. in the national gallery is his 'children blowing bubbles.' ferdinand bol was born at dordrecht in , and died at amsterdam in . he was a student of rembrandt's, and distinguished himself in sacred and historical pictures, and especially in portraits. he followed his master in his youth, fell off in his art in middle life, but became again excellent in his later years. among his fine pictures are 'david's charge to solomon,' in the dublin national gallery; and 'joseph presenting his father jacob to pharaoh,' in the dresden gallery. his last portraits are considered very fine. they are taken in the fullest light, and have a surprising amount of animation. such a portrait, called 'the astronomer,' is in the national gallery.[ ] jacob ruysdael was born in (?) at haarlem. in he was in amsterdam, and acted as witness to the marriage of hobbema, whose lack of worldly prosperity ruysdael shared. he himself was unmarried, and maintained his father in his old age. in the prime of life jacob ruysdael in turn fell into extreme poverty, and died an inmate of the haarlem almshouse in --a sad record of holland's greatest landscape painter, for 'beyond dispute' ruysdael is the first of the famous dutch landscape painters. 'in no other is there the feeling for the poetry of northern nature united with perfect execution, admirable drawing, great knowledge of chiaroscuro, powerful colouring, and a mastery of the brush which ranged from the minutest touch to broad, free execution.' his prevailing tone of colour is a full, decided green, though age has given many of his pictures a brown tone. a considerable number of his pictures are in a greyish, clear, cool tone (good examples of the last are to be seen in the dresden gallery). he generally painted the flat dutch country in tranquil repose. he dealt usually in heavy clouded skies which told of showers past and coming, and dark sheets of water overshadowed by trees, lending a melancholy sentiment to the picture. he was fond of wide expanses of land and water, fond also of introducing the spires of his native haarlem, touching the horizon line. he has left a few sea-pieces, always with cloudy heavens and heaving or raging seas;[ ] where he has given sketches of sea, and shore, the ærial perspective is rendered in tender gradations 'full of pathos.' he has other pictures representing hilly, even mountainous, landscapes. in these foaming waterfalls form a prominent feature. ruysdael was weak in his drawing of men and animals, in which he was occasionally assisted by fellow-artists, such as berchem and van de velde. among his finest pictures are 'a view of the country round haarlem,' in the museum of the hague; 'a flat country, with a road leading to a village and fields with wheat sheaves,' in the dresden gallery; 'a hilly bare country through which a river runs; the horseman and beggar on a bridge, by wouvermans,' in the louvre. his most remarkable waterfall is in the hague museum. in the dresden gallery there is 'a jewish cemetery,' 'full of melancholy.' three of ruysdael's fine waterfalls are in the national gallery. of two very grand storms which he painted one is in the louvre, the other in the collection of the marquis of lansdowne at bowood. there are many of ruysdael's pictures in england. in the great landscape painter, as in the other renowned dutch artists of the seventeenth century, the influence of rembrandt is marked. meindert hobbema was born in , married in , and died in poverty at amsterdam in . his works, which were neglected in his lifetime, now fetch much more than their weight in gold. sums as large as four thousand pounds have been paid more than once for a hobbema, yet his name was not found in any dictionary of art or artists for more than a century after his death. the english were the first to acknowledge hobbema's merit, and nine-tenths of his works are in england, where he is the most popular dutch landscape painter. but he is said by judges to have less invention and less poetic sensibility than his contemporary and friend ruysdael. hobbema's subjects are usually villages surrounded by trees like those in guelderland, water-mills, a slightly broken country, with groups of trees, wheatfields, meadows, and small pools, more rarely portions of towns, and still more seldom old castles and stately mansions.[ ] he has all the lifelike truthfulness of the dutch artists. in tone he is as warm and golden as ruysdael is cool in his greens. in the national gallery there are excellent specimens of hobbema, such as 'the avenue middelharnis' and 'a landscape in showery weather.' nicolas berchem, often spelt berghem, was born at haarlem in , and died at amsterdam in . he was an excellent dutch landscape painter. he had evidently visited italy, and displayed great fondness for italian subjects. his pictures show 'varied composition, good drawing, fine ærial effects, freedom, playfulness, and spirit.' as a colourist he was unequal, being often warm and harmonious, but at other times heavy and cold. it is clear that he was no student of life, from the monotony of his shepherds and shepherdesses and the sameness of his animals. he was naturally industrious, and was spurred on, as a still greater artist is said to have been, by the greed of his wife. he painted upwards of four hundred pictures, besides doing figures and animals for other painters. the great northern european galleries are rich in his works. one of his best pictures, 'a shepherdess driving her cattle through a ford in a rocky landscape,' where the cool tone of the landscape is contrasted with the golden tone of the cattle, is in the louvre. another fine picture, 'crossing the ford,' is in the national gallery. jan both, born in (?), died in (?), was another dutch landscape painter still more spellbound by italy,[ ] which he visited, and where he fell under the influence of claude lorraine. both devoted himself thenceforth to italian landscape to a greater degree than was practised by any other dutch painter. he was excellent in drawing and skilful in rendering the golden glories of italian sunsets. he painted freely and with solidity. the figures of men and animals in his pictures were often introduced by his brother andreas. jan both excelled both in large and small pictures, but he was most uninterestingly uniform in design. he had generally a foreground of lofty trees, and for a background a range of mountains rising step by step, with a wide plain at their feet. sometimes he introduced a waterfall or a lake. he rarely painted particular points in a landscape. his life was not a long one, so that his pictures do not number more than a hundred and fifty. occasionally his warm tone of colouring degenerates to a foxy red. one of both's best pictures--a landscape in which the fresh light of morning is apparent--is in the national gallery. karil du jardin, born in , died in , is a third great dutch landscape painter, whose fancy italy laid hold of, so that he settled in the country, dying at venice. he was, it is said, a pupil of berchem's, from whom he may have first drawn his italian proclivities. he has more truth and feeling for animated nature than berchem. indeed, in this respect du jardin followed paul potter. according to contemporary accounts, du jardin, who had his share of the national humour, wasted his time in the pursuit of pleasure, and did not leave more pictures behind him than both left. du jardin's best works are in the louvre, but there are also many of his pictures in england. among his masterpieces, 'cattle of all kinds in a meadow surrounded by rocks, and watered by a cascade; a horseman giving alms to a peasant boy;' and his celebrated 'charlatan,' full of observation and humour, are in the louvre. a fine picture, 'figures of animals under the shade of a tree,' is in the national gallery. adrian van de velde, born in , died in , the younger brother of a great marine painter, ranks almost as high as paul potter in cattle painting. if 'inferior in modelling and solidity' to his rival, adrian van de velde is superior in variety, taste, and feeling. like the great english animal painter, landseer, van de velde was a distinguished artist when a mere boy of fourteen. like his compatriot, paul potter, van de velde died young, at the age of thirty-two. he generally disposed of his cattle among broken ground with trees and pools of water. sometimes he has a herdsman or a shepherdess, sometimes there is a hunting party passing. his scenery is reckoned masterly. it is mostly taken from the coast of scheveningen. he often painted in men, horses, and dogs for other painters. he must have been very industrious, with great facility in his work, since, in spite of his premature death, he had painted nearly two hundred pictures. 'a brown cow grazing and a grey cow resting,' which is in the berlin museum, was done at the age of sixteen, yet it is full of observation, delicacy, and execution. 'cattle grazing before a peasant's cottage,' which is in the dresden gallery, is considered very fine. a fine 'winter landscape,' and a 'farm cottage,' are in the national gallery. some of adrian van de velde's best work, as well as his brother's, is in england. jan van der heyden, 'the gerard dow of architectural painters,' was born in and died in . he combined an unspeakable minuteness of detail with the closest observation of nature. his subjects, which he selected with great taste, were chiefly well-known buildings, palaces, churches, and canal banks in holland and belgium. he painted in a warm transparent tone, with close application of the laws of perspective. the figures in his pictures, in excellent keeping, were often introduced by adrian van de velde. van der heyden's productiveness as a painter was lessened by the circumstance that his mechanical talent led him to make an invention by which the construction of the fire-engines of his day was greatly improved. in consequence he was placed by the magistrates of amsterdam at the head of their fire-engine establishment, which had thus many claims on his time. a beautiful 'street in cologne' is in the national gallery. emanuel de witte, born in , died in , was great in architectural interiors, especially in churches of italian architecture. he stood to this branch of dutch art in the same relation that ruysdael did to landscape and william van de velde to seascape. aart van der neer was born in (?), died in . he is famous for his canal banks by moonlight, and fine disposal of broad masses of shadow. after his moonlights come his sunsets, conflagrations, and winter scenes. he rarely painted full daylight. he sometimes painted on the same van der neer in the national gallery. many of his works are in england. william van de velde the younger, the elder brother of adrian van de velde, the cattle painter, was born at amsterdam in , and died at greenwich in . his early life was spent in holland. he followed his father, william van de velde, a painter also, to england, where, under the patronage of charles ii, and james ii., william the younger painted the naval victories of the english over the dutch, just as in holland he had already painted the naval victories of the dutch over the english. he was a greater and more consistent artist than he was a patriot. without question he is the first marine painter of the dutch school. he was untiring in his study of nature, so that his perfect knowledge of perspective and the incomparable mastery of technical qualities which he inherited from his school, enabled him to render sea and sky under every aspect. his vessels 'were drawn with a knowledge which extended to every rope.' he has been an exceedingly popular painter both with the dutch and the english. of upwards of three hundred pictures left by him many are in holland and still more in england, where in his lifetime he was largely employed by the english nobility and gentry. william van de velde has a great picture in the amsterdam museum, where the english flag-ship, the _princess royal_, is represented as striking her colours to the dutch fleet in . in the companion picture, also by van de velde, 'four english men-of-war brought in as prizes,' the painter introduces himself in the small boat from which he witnessed the fight. william van de velde's triumphs in calm seas are seen especially in his pictures at the hague and in munich. some of van de velde's best works are in the national gallery. backhuysen born in , died at amsterdam in , was another admirable marine painter. he did not study painting till he had followed a trade up to the age of eighteen years; he then gave himself with ardour to art, making many studies of skies, coasts, and vessels. he was inferior to william van de velde in his colouring, which was heavy, with a cold effect. but he had in full a dutch painter's truthfulness, while his 'stormy waves and rent clouds' are given with poetic feeling. he was an industrious and successful man, painting nearly two hundred pictures, and receiving many commissions from the king of prussia, grand duke of tuscany, etc. one of his finest works, 'a view of the river from the landing-place called the mosselsteiger,' is in amsterdam museum. in the louvre is 'a view of the mouth of the texel, with ten men-of-war sailing before a fresh wind.' 'dutch shipping' is in the national gallery. van de capella is another capital marine painter, though little is known of him. he was a native of amsterdam about . his favourite subject is a quiet sea in sunny weather. his work bears some resemblance to that of cuyp. his best pictures are in england. 'a calm at low water' is in the national gallery. melchior de hondecoeter, born in , died in , chose the feathered tribe for his subjects. he has been called 'the raphael of bird painters.' he painted especially poultry, peacocks, turkeys, and pigeons, which he usually represented alive, and treated with great truthfulness and picturesque feeling. among his best pictures are 'the floating feather,' a feather given with singular lightness drifting in a pool, with different birds on the water and the shore--a pelican prominent--in amsterdam museum, and 'a hen defending her chickens against the attacks of a pea-hen, with a peacock, a pigeon, a cassowary, and a crane,' also in amsterdam. jan weenix, born in , died in . he was a painter of 'still life,' and was especially famous for his dead hares, 'which in form and colour, down to the rendering of every hair, are marvels of execution.' he painted sometimes, though rarely, a living dog in his pieces. a fine weenix sometimes painted flower pieces.[ ] pater segers, so called because he was a father in a jesuit convent, which he entered at twenty-four years of age. he was born in , and died in the jesuit convent, antwerp, . he was a famous flower painter, but did not paint flowers by themselves; he painted them in conjunction with the historical and sacred subjects of other painters. he added many a wreath to the virgin and child. he worked in this fashion with rubens, but painted more frequently along with painters of a lower rank in art. pater segers' flowers are finely drawn and tastefully arranged. the red of his roses has remained unchanged by years, while the roses of other painters have become violet or faded altogether. he had endless royal commissions. there are six of his pictures of much merit in the dresden gallery. besides the elder and younger de heem and maria von oesterwyck mentioned at page , jan van huysum, - , was great in flower painting, choosing flowers rather than fruit for his brush. if de heem has been called the titian, van huysum has been defined as the correggio, of flowers and fruit. he reversed the ordinary course of artists by beginning in a broad style, and progressing into an execution of the finest details. in masterly drawing and truthfulness he was not inferior to de heem, though hardly reckoned his equal in other respects. even in van huysum's lifetime there was an eager demand for his pictures, of which he left more than a hundred. there is an excellent fruit and flower piece by him in dulwich gallery, and a masterpiece, 'a vase with flowers,' is in the national gallery. andrian van der werff was born in , and died in . he is honourably distinguished for his pursuit of the ideal, in which he stood alone among the dutch artists of his day. he showed much sense of beauty and elegance of form with great finish, but he had more than counterbalancing faults. his grouping was artificial, his heads monotonous, his colouring 'cold and heavy,' with 'a frosty feeling' in his pictures. his flesh tints resembled ivory, yet his elegance was so highly prized that he had many royal and noble patrons, for whom he executed sculptural and mythological pieces. many of his pictures are in the munich gallery. anton raphael mengs was born in bohemia , and died in rome . his father was a distinguished miniature painter, and gave his son a careful education, training him to copy the masterpieces of michael angelo and raphael from his twelfth year. unfortunately he remained a copyist and an eclectic. he drew well, learnt chiaroscuro from studying correggio, and colouring from analysing titian. he was acquainted with the best technical processes in oil and fresco. all that teaching could do for a man was done, and to a great extent in vain. for though he worked with great conscientiousness, fancy and feeling were either originally lacking, or they were overlaid and stifled by his excess of culture and severe education. the most successful of his works are portraits, in which masterly treatment makes up to some extent for the absence of originality and subtle sympathy. but in his day, and with some reason, raphael mengs was greatly prized, since he figured among a host of ignorant, careless, and conceited painters. at the age of seventeen he was appointed court painter to king augustus of saxony. he was summoned to spain by charles iii., who gave him a high salary. among his good works is an 'assumption' on the high altar of the catholic church, dresden. an allegorical subject in fresco on the ceiling of the camera de papini in the vatican has 'beauty of form, delicate observation, and masterly modelling.' mengs wrote well on art, though in his writing also his eclecticism comes out. note to page . 'i have been told that i have not done justice to lionardo in this short sketch. i give in an abridged form the accurate appreciative analysis of the man and his work in sir c, and lady eastlake.'--kugler. it is stated that the versatility of lionardo was against him. he attempted too much for one man and one life. an additional impediment was produced by his temperament, 'dreamy, perfidious, procrastinating,' withal desirous of shining in society. his ideal of the lord's head is the highest that art has realised. the apostles' heads are among the truest and noblest. the countenances of his madonnas are full of ineffable sweetness and pathos. 'at the same time he analysed the monstrous and misshapen, and has left us caricatures in which he seems to have gloated over hideousness half human, half brute. he altered and retouched without ceasing, always deferring the conclusion of the task which he executed with untiring labour and ceaseless dissatisfaction.' the wonder is not that he should have left so little, but that he left enough to prove the transcendent nature of his art. 'there is nothing stranger in history than the fact that his great fame rests on one single picture--long reduced to a shadow--on half-a-dozen pictures for which his hand is alternately claimed and denied, and on unfinished fragments which he himself condemned.' lionardo was too universal to be of any school. index. page albino angelico, fra anguisciola backhuysen baroccio bartolommeo, fra bellini, the berchem bol bordone both botticelli canaletto capella, van de caravaggio carpaccio carracci, the cellini claude loraine correggio crivelli cuyp domenichino dow du jardin dürer eycks, the van filippo, fra fontana francia, il gaddi garofalo ghiberti ghirlandajo gibbons, grinling giorgione giotto gozzoli greuze guercino guido heem, de helst, van der heyden, van der hobbema holbein hondecoeter honthorst hooch huysum, van kneller le brun lely leyden, van lionardo da vinci lipi luini maas mabuse mantegna masaccio matsys memling mengs messina, da metzu , michael angelo murillo netcher orcagna ostade, van palma pardenone parmigianino perugino pisano potter poussin raphael rembrandt romano rubens ruysdael salvator rosa sarto, del sassa errato segers signorelli snyders somer, van spagna spagnoletto steen teniers, father and son terburg , tintoretto titian van dyck vasari velasquez velde, van de velde, van de, the younger veronese watteau wouvermans footnotes: [ ] it is in their unconsciousness and earnestness that a parallel is drawn between the first italian painters and the elizabethean poets. in other respects the comparison may be reversed, for the early italian painters, from their restriction to religious painting, with even that treated according to tradition, were as destitute of the breadth of scope and fancy attained by their successors, as the elizabethean poets were distinguished by the exuberant freedom which failed in the more formal scholars of anne's reign. [ ] kugler's handbook of art. [ ] while writing of goldsmiths that became painters, i may say a word of a goldsmith who, without quitting his trade, was an unrivalled artist in his line. i mean benvenuto cellini, -- , a man of violent passions and little principle, who led a wild troubled life, of which he has left an account as shameless as his character, in an autobiography. cellini was the most distinguished worker in gold and silver of his day, and his richly chased dishes, goblets, and salt cellars, are still in great repute. [ ] kugler's _handbook of painting_. [ ] kugler's _handbook of painting_. [ ] see note, page . [ ] mrs roscoe's _life of vittoria colonna_ [ ] michael angelo's will was very simple. 'i bequeath my soul to god, my body to the earth, and my possessions to my nearest relations.' [ ] lady eastlake, _history of our lord_. [ ] hare, _walks in rome_. [ ] lanzi, in hare's _walks in rome_. [ ] rio. _poetry of christian art_, in hare's _walks in rome._ [ ] mrs jameson. [ ] dean alford. [ ] _imperial biographical dictionary_. [ ] titian's age is variously given; some authorities make it ninety-nine years, placing the date of his death in or . [ ] kugler. [ ] the term originated in the french expression, '_du genre bas_.' [ ] he had a peculiar fondness for blue and bronze hues. [ ] it is due to tintoret to say, that there are modern critics, who look below the surface, and are at this date deeply enamoured of his pictures. tintoret's name now stands very high in art. [ ] mrs jameson. [ ] guido said of rubens: 'does this painter mix blood with his colours?' [ ] _life of rubens_. [ ] if i mistake not, this is the same countess of arundel who, in her widowhood, resided in italy in order to be near her young sons then at padua. having provoked the suspicion of the doge and council of venice, she was arrested by them on a charge of treason, and brought before the tribunal, where she successfully pled her own cause, and obtained her release, the only woman who ever braved triumphantly the terrible 'ten.' [ ] here is the description of a very different rembrandt which appears in this year's exhibition of the works by old masters: 'there is no portrait here which equals rembrandt's picture, from windsor, "a lady opening a casement;" a not particularly appropriate name, because the picture represents no such action. the lady is simply looking from an open window, her left hand raised and resting at the side of the opening. we believe there is nothing left to tell who this lady was, with the grave, sad eyes, and lips that seem to quiver with a trouble hardly yet assuaged collar, almost a tippet, for it falls below her shoulders, together with lace cuffs. a triple band of large pearls goes about her neck, and she has similar ornaments round each wrist. she wears a mourning robe and black jewellery.... this picture, which resembles in most of its qualities a pair, of somewhat larger size, which were here last year, and also came from the royal collection, is signed and dated "rembrandt, f. ." it is, therefore, a late work of his. what wonderful harmony is here, of light, of colour, of tone. how nearly perfect is the keeping of the whole picture; as a whole, and also in respect of part to part. could anything be truer than the breadth of the chiaroscuro? notice how beautifully, and with what subtle gradations, the light reflected from her white collar strikes on her slightly faded cheek; how tenderly it seems to play among the soft tangles of the hair that time has thinned.'--_athenæum_. [ ] he had been called the titian of flower and fruit painters. he preferred fruit for his subject. his works are not common in england. his masterpiece, 'the chalice of the sacrament,' crowned with a stately wreath, and sheaves of corn and bunches of grapes among the flowers, is at vienna. [ ] sir w. stirling maxwell. [ ] sir w. stirling maxwell. [ ] hare, _wanderings in spain_. [ ] hare's _wanderings in spain_. [ ] the spelling is an english corruption of the french claude. [ ] poussin had a villa near ponte molle, and the road by which he used to go to it is still called in rome 'poussin's walk.' [ ] claude's summer villa is still pointed out near rome. [ ] _imperial biographical dictionary_. [ ] madame le brun, whose maiden name was vigée, born , died , was an excellent portrait painter. [ ] wornum. [ ] wornum. [ ] supposed to be a niece of sir thomas more's. [ ] rev. j. lewis, . [ ] wornum. [ ] a still more famous picture by holbein is that called 'the two ambassadors,' and believed to represent sir thomas wyatt and his secretary. [ ] walpole. [ ] walpole. [ ] dwarfs figured at charles's court, as at the court of philip iv. of spain. [ ] the notion that van dyck sacrificed truth to grace is absolutely contradicted by certain critics, who bring forward as a proof of their contradiction what they consider the 'over-true' picture of the queen henrietta maria, shown at the last exhibition of the works of old masters. the picture seems hardly to warrant the strong opinion of the critics. [ ] walpole. [ ] walpole. [ ] lady eastlake and dr. waagen's works on italian, flemish, and dutch art, modelled on kugler. [ ] a lunette is a small picture, generally semicircular, surmounting the main picture in an altar-piece. [ ] the dutch still more than the italian artists belonged largely to families of artists bearing the same surnames. [ ] a picture with one door of two panels is called a diptych, with two doors of three panels a triptych, with many doors and panels a polyptych. [ ] fairholt's 'homes and haunts of foreign artists.' [ ] alchemists, like hermits, still existed in the seventeenth century. [ ] bartholomew van der helst, - , was another great dutch portrait painter. his portrait pieces with many figures are famous. an 'archery festival,' commemorating the peace of westphalia, includes twenty-four figures full of individuality and finely drawn and coloured. one of his best works is 'in the workhouse,' at amsterdam. two women and two men are conversing together in the foreground. there is a man with a book, and a preacher delivering a sermon in the background. [ ] it may be that ruysdael's straggling life was reflected in his lowering skies and stormy seas. [ ] other eminent painters, such as van de velde, wouvermans, and berchem often supplied cattle and figures to hobbema's landscapes. [ ] was the apparently greater success of these partly denaturalised dutch landscape painters, as contrasted with the adversity of ruysdael and hobbema, due to the classic mania? 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[illustration: william hogarth.] the works of william hogarth; in a series of engravings: with descriptions, and a comment on their moral tendency, by the rev. john trusler. to which are added, anecdotes of the author and his works, by j. hogarth and j. nichols. london: published by jones and co. temple of the muses, (late lackington's,) finsbury square. . c. baynes, printer, duke street, lincoln's inn fields. the life of hogarth. william hogarth is said to have been the descendant of a family originally from kirby thore, in westmorland. his grandfather was a plain yeoman, who possessed a small tenement in the vale of bampton, a village about fifteen miles north of kendal, in that county; and had three sons. the eldest assisted his father in farming, and succeeded to his little freehold. the second settled in troutbeck, a village eight miles north west of kendal, and was remarkable for his talent at provincial poetry. richard hogarth, the third son, who was educated at st. bees, and had kept a school in the same county, appears to have been a man of some learning. he came early to london, where he resumed his original occupation of a schoolmaster, in ship-court in the old bailey, and was occasionally employed as a corrector of the press. mr. richard hogarth married in london; and our artist, and his sisters, mary and anne, are believed to have been the only product of the marriage. william hogarth was born november , and baptised nov. , , in the parish of st. bartholomew the great, in london; to which parish, it is said, in the biographia britannica, he was afterwards a benefactor. the school of hogarth's father, in , was in the parish of st. martin, ludgate. in the register of that parish, therefore, the date of his death, it was natural to suppose, might be found; but the register has been searched to no purpose. hogarth seems to have received no other education than that of a mechanic, and his outset in life was unpropitious. young hogarth was bound apprentice to a silversmith (whose name was gamble) of some eminence; by whom he was confined to that branch of the trade, which consists in engraving arms and cyphers upon the plate. while thus employed, he gradually acquired some knowledge of drawing; and, before his apprenticeship expired, he exhibited talent for caricature. "he felt the impulse of genius, and that it directed him to painting, though little apprised at that time of the mode nature had intended he should pursue." the following circumstance gave the first indication of the talents with which hogarth afterwards proved himself to be so liberally endowed. during his apprenticeship, he set out one sunday, with two or three companions, on an excursion to highgate. the weather being hot, they went into a public-house; where they had not long been, before a quarrel arose between some persons in the same room; from words they soon got to blows, and the quart pots being the only missiles at hand, were sent flying about the room in glorious confusion. this was a scene too laughable for hogarth to resist. he drew out his pencil, and produced on the spot one of the most ludicrous pieces that ever was seen; which exhibited likenesses not only of the combatants engaged in the affray, but also of the persons gathered round them, placed in grotesque attitudes, and heightened with character and points of humour. on the expiration of his apprenticeship, he entered into the academy in st. martin's lane, and studied drawing from the life: but in this his proficiency was inconsiderable; nor would he ever have surpassed _mediocrity_ as a painter, if he had not penetrated through external form to character and manners. "it was character, passions, the soul, that his genius was given him to copy." the engraving of arms and shop-bills seems to have been his first employment by which to obtain a decent livelihood. he was, however, soon engaged in decorating books, and furnished sets of plates for several publications of the time. an edition of _hudibras_ afforded him the first subject suited to his genius: yet he felt so much the shackles of other men's ideas, that he was less successful in this task than might have been expected. in the mean time, he had acquired the use of the brush, as well as of the pen and graver; and, possessing a singular facility in seizing a likeness, he acquired considerable employment as a portrait-painter. shortly after his marriage, he informs us that he commenced painter of small conversation pieces, from twelve to fifteen inches in height; the novelty of which caused them to succeed for a few years. one of the earliest productions of this kind, which distinguished him as a painter, is supposed to have been a representation of wanstead assembly; the figures in it were drawn from the life, and without burlesque. the faces were said to bear great likenesses to the persons so drawn, and to be rather better coloured than some of his more finished performances. grace, however, was no attribute of his pencil; and he was more disposed to aggravate, than to soften the harsh touches of nature. a curious anecdote is recorded of our artist during the early part of his practice as a portrait painter. a nobleman, who was uncommonly ugly and deformed, sat for his picture, which was executed in his happiest manner, and with singularly rigid fidelity. the peer, disgusted at this counterpart of his dear self, was not disposed very readily to pay for a reflector that would only insult him with his deformities. after some time had elapsed, and numerous unsuccessful applications had been made for payment, the painter resorted to an expedient, which he knew must alarm the nobleman's pride. he sent him the following card:--"mr. hogarth's dutiful respects to lord----; finding that he does not mean to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of mr. hogarth's pressing necessities for the money. if, therefore, his lordship does not send for it in three days, it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail and some other appendages, to _mr. hare, the famous wild beast man_; mr. h. having given that gentleman a conditional promise on his lordship's refusal." this intimation had its desired effect; the picture was paid for, and committed to the flames. hogarth's talents, however, for original comic design, gradually unfolded themselves, and various public occasions produced displays of his ludicrous powers. in the year , he clandestinely married the only daughter of sir james thornhill, the painter, who was not easily reconciled to her union with an obscure artist, as hogarth then comparatively was. shortly after, he commenced his first great series of moral paintings, "the harlot's progress:" some of these were, at lady thornhill's suggestion, designedly placed by mrs. hogarth in her father's way, in order to reconcile him to her marriage. being informed by whom they were executed, sir james observed, "the man who can produce such representations as these, can also maintain a wife without a portion." he soon after, however, relented, and became generous to the young couple, with whom he lived in great harmony until his death, which took place in . in his genius became conspicuously known. the third scene of "the harlot's progress" introduced him to the notice of the great: at a board of treasury, (which was held a day or two after the appearance of that print), a copy of it was shown by one of the lords, as containing, among other excellences, a striking likeness of sir john gonson, a celebrated magistrate of that day, well known for his rigour towards women of the town. from the treasury each lord repaired to the print-shop for a copy of it, and hogarth rose completely into fame. upwards of twelve hundred subscribers entered their names for the plates, which were copied and imitated on fan mounts, and in a variety of other forms; and a pantomime taken from them was represented at the theatre. this performance, together with several subsequent ones of a similar kind, have placed hogarth in the rare class of original geniuses and inventors. he may be said to have created an entirely new species of painting, which may be termed the _moral comic_; and may be considered rather as a writer of comedy with a pencil, than as a painter. if catching the manners and follies of an age, _living as they rise_--if general satire on vices,--and ridicule familiarised by strokes of nature, and heightened by wit,--and the whole animated by proper and just expressions of the passions,--be comedy, hogarth composed comedies as much as moliere. soon after his marriage, hogarth resided at south lambeth; and being intimate with mr. tyers, the then spirited proprietor of vauxhall gardens, he contributed much to the improvement of those gardens; and first suggested the hint of embellishing them with paintings, some of which were the productions of his own comic pencil. among the paintings were "the four parts of the day," either by hogarth, or after his designs. two years after the publication of his "harlot's progress," appeared the "rake's progress," which, lord orford remarks, (though perhaps superior,) "had not so much success, for want of notoriety: nor is the print of the arrest equal in merit to the others." the curtain, however, was now drawn aside, and his genius stood displayed in its full lustre. the rake's progress was followed by several works in series, viz. "marriage a-la-mode, industry and idleness, the stages of cruelty, and election prints." to these may be added, a great number of single comic pieces, all of which present a rich source of amusement:--such as, "the march to finchley, modern midnight conversation, the sleeping congregation, the gates of calais, gin lane, beer street, strolling players in a barn, the lecture, laughing audience, enraged musician," &c. &c. which, being introduced and described in the subsequent part of this work, it would far exceed the limits, necessarily assigned to these brief memoirs, _here_ minutely to characterise. all the works of this original genius are, in fact, lectures of morality. they are satires of particular vices and follies, expressed with such strength of character, and such an accumulation of minute and appropriate circumstances, that they have all the truth of nature heightened by the attractions of wit and fancy. nothing is without a meaning, but all either conspires to the great end, or forms an addition to the lively drama of human manners. his single pieces, however, are rather to be considered as studies, not perhaps for the professional artist, but for the searcher into life and manners, and for the votaries of true humour and ridicule. no _furniture_ of the kind can vie with hogarth's prints, as a fund of inexhaustible amusement, yet conveying at the same time lessons of morality. not contented, however, with the just reputation which he had acquired in his proper department, hogarth attempted to shine in the highest branch of the art,--serious history-painting. "from a contempt," says lord orford, "of the ignorant virtuosi of the age, and from indignation at the impudent tricks of picture dealers, whom he saw continually recommending and vending vile copies to bubble collectors, and from having never studied, or indeed having seen, few good pictures of the great italian masters, he persuaded himself that the praises bestowed on those glorious works were nothing but the effects of prejudice. he talked this language till he believed it; and having heard it often asserted (as is true) that time gives a mellowness to colours, and improves them, he not only denied the proposition, but maintained that pictures only grew black and worse by age, not distinguishing between the degrees in which the proposition might be true or false. he went farther: he determined to rival the ancients, and unfortunately chose one of the finest pictures in england as the object of his competition. this was the celebrated sigismonda of sir luke schaub, now in the possession of the duke of newcastle, said to be painted by correggio, probably by furino."--"it is impossible to see the picture," (continues his lordship,) "or read dryden's inimitable tale, and not feel that the same soul animated both. after many essays, hogarth at last produced _his_ sigismonda,--but no more like sigismonda than i to hercules." notwithstanding hogarth professed to decry literature, he felt an inclination to communicate to the public his ideas on a topic connected with his art. his "analysis of beauty" made its appearance in one volume quarto, in the year . its leading principle is, that beauty fundamentally consists in that union of uniformity which is found in the curve or waving line; and that round swelling figures are most pleasing to the eye. this principle he illustrates by many ingenious remarks and examples, and also by some plates characteristic of his genius. in the year , his brother-in-law, mr. thornhill, resigned his office of king's serjeant-painter in favour of hogarth, who received his appointment on the th of june, and entered on his functions on the th of july, both in the same year. this place was re-granted to him by a warrant of george the third, which bears date the th october, , with a salary of ten pounds per annum, payable quarterly. this connexion with the court probably induced hogarth to deviate from the strict line of party neutrality which he had hitherto observed, and to engage against mr. wilkes and his friends, in a print published in september, , entitled _the times_. this publication provoked some severe strictures from wilkes's pen, in a north briton (no. .) hogarth replied by a caricature of the writer: a rejoinder was put in by churchill, in an angry epistle to hogarth (not the brightest of his works); and in which the severest strokes fell on a defect the painter had not caused, and could not amend--his age; which, however, was neither remarkable nor decrepit; much less had it impaired his talents: for, only six months before, he had produced one of his most capital works. in revenge for this epistle, hogarth caricatured churchill, under the form of a canonical bear, with a club and a pot of porter. during this period of warfare (so virulent and disgraceful to all the parties), hogarth's health visibly declined. in , he complained of an internal pain, the continuance of which produced a general decay of the system, that proved incurable; and, on the th of october, , (having been previously conveyed in a very weak and languid state from chiswick to leicester fields,) he died suddenly, of an aneurism in his chest, in the sixty-seventh or sixty-eighth year of his age. his remains were interred at chiswick, beneath a plain but neat mausoleum, with the following elegant inscription by his friend garrick:-- "farewell, great painter of mankind, who reach'd the noblest point of art; whose pictured morals charm the mind, and through the eye correct the heart. if genius fire thee, reader, stay; if nature touch thee, drop a tear: if neither move thee, turn away, for hogarth's honour'd dust lies here." list of engravings. vol. i. rake's progress. page plate heir taking possession " surrounded by artists " tavern scene " arrested for debt " marries an old maid " gaming house " prison scene " mad house the distressed poet the bench the laughing audience gate of calais the politician taste in high life harlot's progress. plate " " " " " the lecture the chorus columbus breaking the egg modern midnight conversation consultation of physicians portrait of daniel lock, esq. the enraged musician masquerades and operas times of the day. morning noon evening night sigismonda portrait of martin fowkes, esq. the cockpit captain thomas coram country inn yard industry and idleness. plate " " " " " " " " " " " southwark fair. garrick as richard iii. france and england. plate france " england hogarth's works. the rake's progress. of all the follies in human life, there is none greater than that of extravagance, or profuseness; it being constant labour, without the least ease or relaxation. it bears, indeed, the colour of that which is commendable, and would fain be thought to take its rise from laudable motives, searching indefatigably after true felicity; now as there can be no true felicity without content, it is this which every man is in constant pursuit of; the learned, for instance, in his industrious quest after knowledge; the merchant, in his dangerous voyages; the ambitious, in his passionate pursuit of honour; the conqueror, in his earnest desire of victory; the politician, in his deep-laid designs; the wanton, in his pleasing charms of beauty; the covetous, in his unwearied heaping-up of treasure; and the prodigal, in his general and extravagant indulgence.--thus far it may be well;--but, so mistaken are we in our road, as to run on in the very opposite tract, which leads directly to our ruin. whatever else we indulge ourselves in, is attended with some small degree of relish, and has some trifling satisfaction in the enjoyment, but, in this, the farther we go, the more we are lost; and when arrived at the mark proposed, we are as far from the object we pursue, as when we first set out. here then, are we inexcusable, in not attending to the secret dictates of reason, and in stopping our ears at the timely admonitions of friendship. headstrong and ungovernable, we pursue our course without intermission; thoughtless and unwary, we see not the dangers that lie immediately before us; but hurry on, even without sight of our object, till we bury ourselves in that gulf of woe, where perishes at once, health, wealth and virtue, and whose dreadful labyrinths admit of no return. struck with the foresight of that misery, attendant on a life of debauchery, which is, in fact, the offspring of prodigality, our author has, in the scenes before us, attempted the reformation of the worldling, by stopping him as it were in his career, and opening to his view the many sad calamities awaiting the prosecution of his proposed scheme of life; he has, in hopes of reforming the prodigal, and at the same time deterring the rising generation, whom providence may have blessed with earthly wealth, from entering into so iniquitous a course, exhibited the life of a young man, hurried on through a succession of profligate pursuits, for the few years nature was able to support itself; and this from the instant he might be said to enter into the world, till the time of his leaving it. but, as the vice of avarice is equal to that of prodigality, and the ruin of children is often owing to the indiscretion of their parents, he has opened the piece with a scene, which, at the same time that it exposes the folly of the youth, shews us the imprudence of the father, who is supposed to have hurt the principles of his son, in depriving him of the necessary use of some portion of that gold, he had with penurious covetousness been hoarding up, for the sole purpose of lodging in his coffers. plate i. the young heir taking possession. oh, vanity of age untoward! ever spleeny, ever froward! why these bolts and massy chains, squint suspicions, jealous pains? why, thy toilsome journey o'er, lay'st thou up an useless store? _hope_, along with _time_ is flown; nor canst thou reap the field thou'st sown. hast thou a son? in time be wise; he views thy toil with other eyes. needs must thy kind paternal care, lock'd in thy chests, be buried there? whence, then, shall flow that friendly ease, that social converse, heartfelt peace, familiar duty without dread, instruction from example bred, which youthful minds with freedom mend, and with the _father_ mix the _friend_? uncircumscribed by prudent rules, or precepts of expensive schools; abused at home, abroad despised, unbred, unletter'd, unadvised; the headstrong course of life begun, what comfort from thy darling son? hoadley. the history opens, representing a scene crowded with all the monuments of avarice, and laying before us a most beautiful contrast, such as is too general in the world, to pass unobserved; nothing being more common than for a son to prodigally squander away that substance his father had, with anxious solicitude, his whole life been amassing.--here, we see the young heir, at the age of nineteen or twenty, raw from the university, just arrived at home, upon the death of his father. eager to know the possessions he is master of, the old wardrobes, where things have been rotting time out of mind, are instantly wrenched open; the strong chests are unlocked; the parchments, those securities of treble interest, on which this avaricious monster lent his money, tumbled out; and the bags of gold, which had long been hoarded, with griping care, now exposed to the pilfering hands of those about him. to explain every little mark of usury and covetousness, such as the mortgages, bonds, indentures, &c. the piece of candle stuck on a save-all, on the mantle-piece; the rotten furniture of the room, and the miserable contents of the dusty wardrobe, would be unnecessary: we shall only notice the more striking articles. from the vast quantity of papers, falls an old written journal, where, among other memorandums, we find the following, viz. "may the th, . put off my bad shilling." hence, we learn, the store this penurious miser set on this trifle: that so penurious is the disposition of the miser, that notwithstanding he may be possessed of many large bags of gold, the fear of losing a single shilling is a continual trouble to him. in one part of the room, a man is hanging it with black cloth, on which are placed escutcheons, by way of dreary ornament; these escutcheons contain the arms of the covetous, _viz._ three vices, hard screwed, with the motto, "beware!" on the floor, lie a pair of old shoes, which this sordid wretch is supposed to have long preserved for the weight of iron in the nails, and has been soling with leather cut from the covers of an old family bible; an excellent piece of satire, intimating, that such men would sacrifice even their god to the lust of money. from these and some other objects too striking to pass unnoticed, such as the gold falling from the breaking cornice; the jack and spit, those utensils of original hospitality, locked up, through fear of being used; the clean and empty chimney, in which a fire is just now going to be made for the first time; and the emaciated figure of the cat, strongly mark the natural temper of the late miserly inhabitant, who could starve in the midst of plenty.--but see the mighty change! view the hero of our piece, left to himself, upon the death of his father, possessed of a goodly inheritance. mark how his mind is affected!--determined to partake of the mighty happiness he falsely imagines others of his age and fortune enjoy; see him running headlong into extravagance, withholding not his heart from any joy; but implicitly pursuing the dictates of his will. to commence this delusive swing of pleasure, his first application is to the tailor, whom we see here taking his measure, in order to trick out his pretty person. in the interim, enters a poor girl (with her mother), whom our hero has seduced, under professions of love and promises of marriage; in hopes of meeting with that kind welcome she had the greatest reason to expect; but he, corrupted with the wealth of which he is now the master, forgets every engagement he once made, finds himself too rich to keep his word; and, as if gold would atone for a breach of honour, is offering money to her mother, as an equivalent for the non-fulfilling of his promise. not the sight of the ring, given as a pledge of his fidelity; not a view of the many affectionate letters he at one time wrote to her, of which her mother's lap is full; not the tears, nor even the pregnant condition of the wretched girl, could awaken in him one spark of tenderness; but, hard hearted and unfeeling, like the generality of wicked men, he suffers her to weep away her woes in silent sorrow, and curse with bitterness her deceitful betrayer. one thing more we shall take notice of, which is, that this unexpected visit, attended with abuse from the mother, so engages the attention of our youth, as to give the old pettifogger behind him an opportunity of robbing him. hence we see that one ill consequence is generally attended with another; and that misfortunes, according to the old proverb, seldom come alone. mr. ireland remarks of this plate--"he here presents to us the picture of a young man, thoughtless, extravagant, and licentious; and, in colours equally impressive, paints the destructive consequences of his conduct. the first print most forcibly contrasts two opposite passions; the unthinking negligence of _youth_, and the sordid avaricious rapacity of age. it brings into one point of view what mr. pope so exquisitely describes in his epistle to lord bathurst-- 'who sees pale _mammon_ pine amidst his store, sees but a backward steward for the poor; this year a reservoir, to keep and spare; the next a fountain, spouting through his heir.' the introduction to this history is well delineated, and the principal figure marked with that easy, unmeaning vacancy of face, which speaks him formed by nature for a dupe. ignorant of the value of money, and negligent in his nature, he leaves his bag of untold gold in the reach of an old and greedy pettifogging attorney, who is making an inventory of bonds, mortgages, indentures, &c. this man, with the rapacity so natural to those who disgrace the profession, seizes the first opportunity of plundering his employer. hogarth had, a few years before, been engaged in a law suit, which gave him some experience of the practice of those pests of society." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . the young hero takes possession of the miser's effects.] plate ii. surrounded by artists and professors. _prosperity_ (with harlot's smiles, most pleasing when she most beguiles), how soon, great foe, can all thy train of false, gay, frantic, loud, and vain, enter the unprovided mind, and memory in fetters bind? load faith and love with golden chain, and sprinkle _lethe_ o'er the brain! _pleasure_, on her silver throne, smiling comes, nor comes alone; _venus_ comes with her along, and smooth _lyæus_, ever young; and in their train, to fill the press, come _apish dance_ and _swoln excess_, mechanic _honour_, vicious _taste_, and _fashion_ in her changing vest. hoadley. we are next to consider our hero as launched into the world, and having equipped himself with all the necessaries to constitute him a man of taste, he plunges at once into all the fashionable excesses, and enters with spirit into the character he assumes. the avarice of the penurious father then, in this print, is contrasted by the giddy profusion of his prodigal son. we view him now at his levee, attended by masters of various professions, supposed to be here offering their interested services. the foremost figure is readily known to be a dancing-master; behind him are two men, who at the time when these prints were first published, were noted for teaching the arts of defence by different weapons, and who are here drawn from the life; one of whom is a frenchman, teacher of the small-sword, making a thrust with his foil; the other an englishman, master of the quarter-staff; the vivacity of the first, and the cold contempt visible in the face of the second, beautifully describe the natural disposition of the two nations. on the left of the latter stands an improver of gardens, drawn also from the life, offering a plan for that purpose. a taste for gardening, carried to excess, must be acknowledged to have been the ruin of numbers, it being a passion that is seldom, if ever, satisfied, and attended with the greatest expense. in the chair sits a professor of music, at the harpsichord, running over the keys, waiting to give his pupil a lesson; behind whose chair hangs a list of the presents, one farinelli, an italian singer, received the next day after his first performance at the opera house; amongst which, there is notice taken of one, which he received from the hero of our piece, thus: "a gold snuff-box, chased, with the story of orpheus charming the brutes, by j. rakewell, esq." by these mementos of extravagance and pride, (for gifts of this kind proceed oftener from ostentation than generosity,) and by the engraved frontispiece to a poem, dedicated to our fashionable spendthrift, lying on the floor, which represents the ladies of britain sacrificing their hearts to the idol farinelli, crying out, with the greatest earnestness, "one g--d, one farinelli," we are given to understand the prevailing dissipation and luxury of the times. near the principal figure in this plate is that of him, with one hand on his breast, the other on his sword, whom we may easily discover to be a bravo; he is represented as having brought a letter of recommendation, as one disposed to undertake all sorts of service. this character is rather italian than english; but is here introduced to fill up the list of persons at that time too often engaged in the service of the votaries of extravagance and fashion. our author would have it imagined in the interval between the first scene and this, that the young man whose history he is painting, had now given himself up to every fashionable extravagance; and among others, he had imbibed a taste for cock-fighting and horse-racing; two amusements, which, at that time, the man of fashion could not dispense with. this is evident, from his rider bringing in a silver punch-bowl, which one of his horses is supposed to have won, and his saloon being ridiculously ornamented with the portraits of celebrated cocks. the figures in the back part of this plate represent tailors, peruke-makers, milliners, and such other persons as generally fill the antichamber of a man of quality, except one, who is supposed to be a poet, and has written some panegyric on the person whose levee he attends, and who waits for that approbation he already vainly anticipates. upon the whole, the general tenor of this scene is to teach us, that the man of fashion is too often exposed to the rapacity of his fellow creatures, and is commonly a dupe to the more knowing part of the world. "how exactly," says mr. ireland, "does bramston describe the character in his _man of taste_:-- 'without italian, and without an ear, to bononcini's music i adhere.---- to boon companions i my time would give, with players, pimps, and parasites i'd live; i would with jockeys from newmarket dine, and to rough riders give my choicest wine. my evenings all i would with sharpers spend, and make the thief-taker my bosom friend; in figg, the prize-fighter, by day delight, and sup with colley cibber every night.' "of the expression in this print, we cannot speak more highly than it deserves. every character is marked with its proper and discriminative stamp. it has been said by a very judicious critic (the rev. mr. gilpin) from whom it is not easy to differ without being wrong, that the hero of this history, in the first plate of the series, is _unmeaning_, and in the second _ungraceful_. the fact is admitted; but, for so delineating him, the author is entitled to our praise, rather than our censure. rakewell's whole conduct proves he was a fool, and at that time he had not learned how to perform an artificial character; he therefore looks as he is, unmeaning, and uninformed. but in the second plate he is _ungraceful_.--granted. the ill-educated son of so avaricious a father could not have been introduced into very good company; and though, by the different teachers who surround him, it evidently appears that he wishes to _assume_ the character of a gentleman, his internal feelings tell him he has not attained it. under that consciousness, he is properly and naturally represented as ungraceful, and embarrassed in his new situation." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . surrounded by artists & professors.] plate iii. the tavern scene. "o vanity of youthful blood, so by misuse to poison good! woman, framed for social love, fairest gift of powers above, source of every household blessing; all charms in innocence possessing: but, turn'd to vice, all plagues above; foe to thy being, foe to love! guest divine, to outward viewing; ablest minister of ruin? and thou, no less of gift divine, sweet poison of misused wine! with freedom led to every part, and secret chamber of the heart, dost thou thy friendly host betray, and shew thy riotous gang the way to enter in, with covert treason, o'erthrow the drowsy guard of reason, to ransack the abandon'd place, and revel there with wild excess?" mr. ireland having, in his description of this plate, incorporated whatever is of value in dr. trusler's text, with much judicious observation and criticism of his own, the editor has taken the former _verbatim_. "this plate exhibits our licentious prodigal engaged in one of his midnight festivities: forgetful of the past, and negligent of the future, he riots in the present. having poured his libation to bacchus, he concludes the evening orgies in a sacrifice at the cyprian shrine; and, surrounded by the votaries of venus, joins in the unhallowed mysteries of the place. the companions of his revelry are marked with that easy, unblushing effrontery, which belongs to the servants of all work in the isle of paphos;--for the maids of honour they are not sufficiently elevated. "he may be supposed, in the phrase of the day, to have beat the rounds, overset a constable, and conquered a watchman, whose staff and lantern he has brought into the room, as trophies of his prowess. in this situation he is robbed of his watch by the girl whose hand is in his bosom; and, with that adroitness peculiar to an old practitioner, she conveys her acquisition to an accomplice, who stands behind the chair. "two of the ladies are quarrelling; and one of them _delicately_ spouts wine in the face of her opponent, who is preparing to revenge the affront with a knife, which, in a posture of threatening defiance, she grasps in her hand. a third, enraged at being neglected, holds a lighted candle to a map of the globe, determined to _set the world on fire, though she perish in the conflagration_! a fourth is undressing. the fellow bringing in a pewter dish, as part of the apparatus of this elegant and attic entertainment, a blind harper, a trumpeter, and a ragged ballad-singer, roaring out an obscene song, complete this motley group. "this design may be a very exact representation of what were then the nocturnal amusements of a brothel;--so different are the manners of former and present times, that i much question whether a similar exhibition is now to be seen in any tavern of the metropolis. that we are less licentious than our predecessors, i dare not affirm; but we are certainly more delicate in the pursuit of our pleasures. "the room is furnished with a set of roman emperors,--they are not placed in their proper order; for in the mad revelry of the evening, this family of frenzy have decollated all of them, except nero; and his manners had too great a similarity to their own, to admit of his suffering so degrading an insult; their reverence for _virtue_ induced them to spare his head. in the frame of a _cæsar_ they have placed a portrait of _pontac_, an eminent cook, whose great talents being turned to heightening sensual, rather than mental enjoyments, he has a much better chance of a votive offering from this company, than would either vespasian or trajan. "the shattered mirror, broken wine-glasses, fractured chair and cane; the mangled fowl, with a fork stuck in its breast, thrown into a corner, and indeed every accompaniment, shews, that this has been a night of riot without enjoyment, mischief without wit, and waste without gratification. "with respect to the drawing of the figures in this curious female coterie, hogarth evidently intended several of them for beauties; and of vulgar, uneducated, prostituted beauty, he had a good idea. the hero of our tale displays all that careless jollity, which copious draughts of maddening wine are calculated to inspire; he laughs the world away, and bids it pass. the poor dupe, without his periwig, in the back-ground, forms a good contrast of character: he is maudlin drunk, and sadly sick. to keep up the spirit of unity throughout the society, and not leave the poor african girl entirely neglected, she is making signs to her friend the porter, who perceives, and slightly returns, her love-inspiring glance. this print is rather crowded,--the subject demanded it should be so; some of the figures, thrown into shade, might have helped the general effect, but would have injured the characteristic expression." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . tavern scene.] plate iv. arrested for debt. "o, vanity of youthful blood, so by misuse to poison good! reason awakes, and views unbarr'd the sacred gates he wish'd to guard; approaching, see the harpy _law_, and _poverty_, with icy paw, ready to seize the poor remains that vice has left of all his gains. cold _penitence_, lame _after-thought_, with fear, despair, and horror fraught, call back his guilty pleasures dead, whom he hath wrong'd, and whom betray'd." the career of dissipation is here stopped. dressed in the first style of the ton, and getting out of a sedan-chair, with the hope of shining in the circle, and perhaps forwarding a former application for a place or a pension, he is arrested! to intimate that being plundered is the certain consequence of such an event, and to shew how closely one misfortune treads upon the heels of another, a boy is at the same moment stealing his cane. the unfortunate girl whom he basely deserted, is now a milliner, and naturally enough attends in the crowd, to mark the fashions of the day. seeing his distress, with all the eager tenderness of unabated love, she flies to his relief. possessed of a small sum of money, the hard earnings of unremitted industry, she generously offers her purse for the liberation of her worthless favourite. this releases the captive beau, and displays a strong instance of female affection; which, being once planted in the bosom, is rarely eradicated by the coldest neglect, or harshest cruelty. the high-born, haughty welshman, with an enormous leek, and a countenance keen and lofty as his native mountains, establishes the chronology, and fixes the day to be the first of march; which being sacred to the titular saint of wales, was observed at court. mr. nichols remarks of this plate:--"in the early impressions, a shoe-black steals the rake's cane. in the modern ones, a large group of sweeps, and black-shoe boys, are introduced gambling on the pavement; near them a stone inscribed _black's_, a contrast to _white's_ gaming-house, against which a flash of lightning is pointed. the curtain in the window of the sedan-chair is thrown back. this plate is likewise found in an intermediate state; the sky being made unnaturally obscure, with an attempt to introduce a shower of rain, and lightning very aukwardly represented. it is supposed to be a first proof after the insertion of the group of blackguard gamesters; the window of the chair being only marked for an alteration that was afterwards made in it. hogarth appears to have so far spoiled the sky, that he was obliged to obliterate it, and cause it to be engraved over again by another hand." mr. gilpin observes:--"very disagreeable accidents often befal gentlemen of pleasure. an event of this kind is recorded in the fourth print, which is now before us. our hero going, in full dress, to pay his compliments at court on st. david's day, was accosted in the rude manner which is here represented.--the composition is good. the form of the group, made up of the figures in action, the chair, and the lamplighter, is pleasing. only, here we have an opportunity of remarking, that a group is disgusting when the extremities of it are heavy. a group in some respects should resemble a tree. the heavier part of the foliage (the cup, as the landscape-painter calls it) is always near the middle; the outside branches, which are relieved by the sky, are light and airy. an inattention to this rule has given a heaviness to the group before us. the two bailiffs, the woman, and the chairman, are all huddled together in that part of the group which should have been the lightest; while the middle part, where the hand holds the door, wants strength and consistence. it may be added too, that the four heads, in the form of a diamond, make an unpleasing shape. all regular figures should be studiously avoided.--the light had been well distributed, if the bailiff holding the arrest, and the chairman, had been a little lighter, and the woman darker. the glare of the white apron is disagreeable.--we have, in this print, some beautiful instances of expression. the surprise and terror of the poor gentleman is apparent in every limb, as far as is consistent with the fear of discomposing his dress. the insolence of power in one of the bailiffs, and the unfeeling heart, which can jest with misery, in the other, are strongly marked. the self-importance, too, of the honest cambrian is not ill portrayed; who is chiefly introduced to settle the chronology of the story.--in pose of grace, we have nothing striking. hogarth might have introduced a degree of it in the female figure: at least he might have contrived to vary the heavy and unpleasing form of her drapery.--the perspective is good, and makes an agreeable shape." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . arrested for debt as going to court.] plate v. marries an old maid. "new to the school of hard _mishap_, driven from the ease of fortune's lap. what schemes will nature not embrace t' avoid less shame of drear distress? _gold_ can the charms of youth bestow, and mask deformity with shew: gold can avert the sting of shame, in winter's arms create a flame: can couple youth with hoary age, and make antipathies engage." to be thus degraded by the rude enforcement of the law, and relieved from an exigence by one whom he had injured, would have wounded, humbled, i had almost said reclaimed, any man who had either feeling or elevation of mind; but, to mark the progression of vice, we here see this depraved, lost character, hypocritically violating every natural feeling of the soul, to recruit his exhausted finances, and marrying an old and withered sybil, at the sight of whom nature must recoil. the ceremony passes in the old church, mary-le-bone, which was then considered at such a distance from london, as to become the usual resort of those who wished to be privately married; that such was the view of this prostituted young man, may be fairly inferred from a glance at the object of his choice. her charms are heightened by the affectation of an amorous leer, which she directs to her youthful husband, in grateful return for a similar compliment which she supposes paid to herself. this gives her face much meaning, but meaning of such a sort, that an observer being ask, "_how dreadful must be this creature's hatred?_" would naturally reply, "_how hateful must be her love!_" in his demeanor we discover an attempt to appear at the altar with becoming decorum: but internal perturbation darts through assumed tranquillity, for though he is _plighting his troth_ to the old woman, his eyes are fixed on the young girl who kneels behind her. the parson and clerk seem made for each other; a sleepy, stupid solemnity marks every muscle of the divine, and the nasal droning of the _lay brother_ is most happily expressed. accompanied by her child and mother, the unfortunate victim of his seduction is here again introduced, endeavouring to enter the church, and forbid the banns. the opposition made by an old pew-opener, with her bunch of keys, gave the artist a good opportunity for indulging his taste in the burlesque, and he has not neglected it. a dog (trump, hogarth's favorite), paying his addresses to a one-eyed quadruped of his own species, is a happy parody of the unnatural union going on in the church. the commandments are broken: a crack runs near the tenth, which says, _thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife;_ a prohibition in the present case hardly necessary. the creed is destroyed by the damps of the church; and so little attention has been paid to the poor's box, that it is covered with a _cobweb_! these three high-wrought strokes of satirical humour were perhaps never equalled by any exertion of the pencil; excelled they cannot be. on one of the pew doors is the following curious specimen of church-yard poetry, and mortuary orthography. these : pewes : vnscrud : and tane : in : svnder in : stone : thers : grauen : what : is : vnder to : wit : a valt : for : burial : there : is which : edward : forset : made : for : him : and : his. this is a correct copy of the inscription. part of these lines, in raised letters, now form a pannel in the wainscot at the end of the right-hand gallery, as the church is entered from the street. the mural monument of the taylor's, composed of lead, gilt over, is still preserved: it is seen in hogarth's print, just under the window. a glory over the bride's head is whimsical. the bay and holly, which decorate the pews, give a date to the period, and determine this preposterous union of january with june, to have taken place about the time of christmas; "when winter linger'd in her icy veins." addison would have classed her among the evergreens of the sex. it has been observed, that "the church is too small, and the wooden post, which seems to have no use, divides the picture very disagreeably." this cannot be denied: but it appears to be meant as an accurate representation of the place, and the artist delineated what he saw. the grouping is good, and the principal figure has the air of a gentleman. the light is well distributed, and the scene most characteristically represented. the commandments being represented as broken, might probably give the hint to a lady's reply, on being told that thieves had the preceding night broken into the church, and stolen the communion-plate, and the ten commandments. "i suppose," added the informant, "that they may melt and sell the plate; but can you divine for what possible purpose they could steal the commandments?"--"to _break_ them, to be sure," replied she;--"to _break_ them." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . marries an old maid.] plate vi. scene in a gaming house. "_gold_, thou bright son of phoebus, source of universal intercourse; of weeping virtue soft redress: and blessing those who live to bless: yet oft behold this sacred trust, the tool of avaricious lust; no longer bond of human kind, but bane of every virtuous mind. what chaos such misuse attends, friendship stoops to prey on friends; health, that gives relish to delight, is wasted with the wasting night; doubt and mistrust is thrown on _heaven_, and all its power to chance is given. sad purchase of repentant tears, } of needless quarrels, endless fears, } of hopes of moments, pangs of years! } sad purchase of a tortured mind, to an imprison'd body join'd." though now, from the infatuated folly of his antiquated wife, in possession of a fortune, he is still the slave of that baneful vice, which, while it enslaves the mind, poisons the enjoyments, and sweeps away the possessions of its deluded votaries. destructive as the earthquake which convulses nature, it overwhelms the pride of the forest, and engulfs the labours of the architect. newmarket and the cockpit were the scenes of his early amusements; to crown the whole, he is now exhibited at a gaming-table, where all is lost! his countenance distorted with agony, and his soul agitated almost to madness, he imprecates vengeance upon his own head. "in heartfelt bitter anguish he appears, and from the blood-shot ball gush purpled tears! he beats his brow, with rage and horror fraught; his brow half bursts with agony of thought!" that he should be deprived of all he possessed in such a society as surround him, is not to be wondered at. one of the most conspicuous characters appears, by the pistol in his pocket, to be a highwayman: from the profound stupor of his countenance, we are certain he also is a losing gamester; and so absorbed in reflection, that neither the boy who brings him a glass of water, nor the watchman's cry of "fire!" can arouse him from his reverie. another of the party is marked for one of those well-dressed continental adventurers, who, being unable to live in their own country, annually pour into this, and with no other requisites than a quick eye, an adroit hand, and an undaunted forehead, are admitted into what is absurdly enough called _good_ company. at the table a person in mourning grasps his hat, and hides his face, in the agony of repentance, not having, as we infer from his weepers, received that legacy of which he is now plundered more than "a little month." on the opposite side is another, on whom fortune has severely frowned, biting his nails in the anguish of his soul. the fifth completes the climax; he is frantic; and with a drawn sword endeavours to destroy a _pauvre miserable_ whom he supposes to have cheated him, but is prevented by the interposition of one of those staggering votaries of bacchus who are to be found in every company where there is good wine; and gaming, like the rod of moses, so far swallows up every other passion, that the actors, engrossed by greater objects, willingly leave their wine to the audience. in the back-ground are two collusive associates, eagerly dividing the profits of the evening. a nobleman in the corner is giving his note to an usurer. the lean and hungry appearance of this cent. per cent. worshipper of the golden calf, is well contrasted by the sleek, contented vacancy of so well-employed a legislator of this great empire. seated at the table, a portly gentleman, of whom we see very little, is coolly sweeping off his winnings. so engrossed is every one present by his own situation, that the flames which surround them are disregarded, and the vehement cries of a watchman entering the room, are necessary to rouse their attention to what is generally deemed the first law of nature, self-preservation. mr. gilpin observes:--"the fortune, which our adventurer has just received, enables him to make one push more at the gaming-table. he is exhibited, in the sixth print, venting curses on his folly for having lost his last stake.--this is, upon the whole, perhaps, the best print of the set. the horrid scene it describes, was never more inimitably drawn. the composition is artful, and natural. if the shape of the whole be not quite pleasing, the figures are so well grouped, and with so much ease and variety, that you cannot take offence. "the expression, in almost every figure, is admirable; and the whole is a strong representation of the human mind in a storm. three stages of that species of madness which attends gaming, are here described. on the first shock, all is inward dismay. the ruined gamester is represented leaning against a wall, with his arms across, lost in an agony of horror. perhaps never passion was described with so much force. in a short time this horrible gloom bursts into a storm of fury: he tears in pieces what comes next him; and, kneeling down, invokes curses upon himself. he next attacks others; every one in his turn whom he imagines to have been instrumental in his ruin.--the eager joy of the winning gamesters, the attention of the usurer, the vehemence of the watchman, and the profound reverie of the highwayman, are all admirably marked. there is great coolness, too, expressed in the little we see of the fat gentleman at the end of the table." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . gaming house scene.] plate vii. prison scene. "happy the man whose constant thought, (though in the school of hardship taught,) can send remembrance back to fetch treasures from life's earliest stretch; who, self-approving, can review scenes of past virtues, which shine through the gloom of age, and cast a ray to gild the evening of his day! not so the guilty wretch confined: no pleasures meet his conscious mind; no blessings brought from early youth, but broken faith, and wrested truth; talents idle and unused, and every trust of heaven abused. in seas of sad reflection lost, from horrors still to horrors toss'd, _reason_ the vessel leaves to steer, and gives the helm to mad _despair_." by a very natural transition mr. hogarth has passed his hero from a gaming house into a prison--the inevitable consequence of extravagance. he is here represented in a most distressing situation, without a coat to his back, without money, without a friend to help him. beggared by a course of ill-luck, the common attendant on the gamester, having first made away with every valuable he was master of, and having now no other resource left to retrieve his wretched circumstances, he at last, vainly promising himself success, commences author, and attempts, though inadequate to the task, to write a play, which is lying on the table, just returned with an answer from the manager of the theatre, to whom he had offered it, that his piece would by no means do. struck speechless with this disastrous occurrence, all his hopes vanish, and his most sanguine expectations are changed into dejection of spirit. to heighten his distress, he is approached by his wife, and bitterly upbraided for his perfidy in concealing from her his former connexions (with that unhappy girl who is here present with her child, the innocent offspring of her amours, fainting at the sight of his misfortunes, being unable to relieve him farther), and plunging her into those difficulties she never shall be able to surmount. to add to his misery, we see the under-turnkey pressing him for his prison fees, or garnish-money, and the boy refusing to leave the beer he ordered, without being first paid for it. among those assisting the fainting mother, one of whom we observe clapping her hand, another applying the drops, is a man crusted over, as it were, with the rust of a gaol, supposed to have started from his dream, having been disturbed by the noise at a time when he was settling some affairs of state; to have left his great plan unfinished, and to have hurried to the assistance of distress. we are told, by the papers falling from his lap, one of which contains a scheme for paying the national debt, that his confinement is owing to that itch of politics some persons are troubled with, who will neglect their own affairs, in order to busy themselves in that which noways concerns them, and which they in no respect understand, though their immediate ruin shall follow it: nay, so infatuated do we find him, so taken up with his beloved object, as not to bestow a few minutes on the decency of his person. in the back of the room is one who owes his ruin to an indefatigable search after the philosopher's stone. strange and unaccountable!--hence we are taught by these characters, as well as by the pair of human wings on the tester of the bed, that scheming is the sure and certain road to beggary: and that more owe their misfortunes to wild and romantic notions, than to any accident they meet with in life. in this upset of his life, and aggravation of distress, we are to suppose our prodigal almost driven to desperation. now, for the first time, he feels the severe effects of pinching cold and griping hunger. at this melancholy season, reflection finds a passage to his heart, and he now revolves in his mind the folly and sinfulness of his past life;--considers within himself how idly he has wasted the substance he is at present in the utmost need of;--looks back with shame on the iniquity of his actions, and forward with horror on the rueful scene of misery that awaits him; until his brain, torn with excruciating thought, loses at once its power of thinking, and falls a sacrifice to merciless despair. mr. ireland remarks, on the plate before us:--"our improvident spendthrift is now lodged in that dreary receptacle of human misery,--a prison. his countenance exhibits a picture of despair; the forlorn state of his mind is displayed in every limb, and his exhausted finances, by the turnkey's demand of prison fees, not being answered, and the boy refusing to leave a tankard of porter, unless he is paid for it. "we see by the enraged countenance of his wife, that she is violently reproaching him for having deceived and ruined her. to crown this catalogue of human tortures, the poor girl whom he deserted, is come with her child--perhaps to comfort him,--to alleviate his sorrows, to soothe his sufferings:--but the agonising view is too much for her agitated frame; shocked at the prospect of that misery which she cannot remove, every object swims before her eyes,--a film covers the sight,--the blood forsakes her cheeks--her lips assume a pallid hue,--and she sinks to the floor of the prison in temporary death. what a heart-rending prospect for him by whom this is occasioned! "the wretched, squalid inmate, who is assisting the fainting female, bears every mark of being naturalised to the place; out of his pocket hangs a scroll, on which is inscribed, 'a scheme to pay the national debt, by j. l. now a prisoner in the fleet.' so attentive was this poor gentleman to the debts of the nation, that he totally forgot his own. the cries of the child, and the good-natured attentions of the women, heighten the interest, and realise the scene. over the group are a large pair of wings, with which some emulator of _dedalus_ intended to escape from his confinement; but finding them inadequate to the execution of his project, has placed them upon the tester of his bed. they would not exalt him to the regions of air, but they o'ercanopy him on earth. a chemist in the back-ground, happy in his views, watching the moment of projection, is not to be disturbed from his dream by any thing less than the fall of the roof, or the bursting of his retort;--and if his dream affords him felicity, why should he be awakened? the bed and gridiron, those poor remnants of our miserable spendthrift's wretched property, are brought here as necessary in his degraded situation; on one he must try to repose his wearied frame, on the other, he is to dress his scanty meal." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . prison scene.] plate viii. scene in a madhouse. "_madness!_ thou chaos of the brain, } what art, that pleasure giv'st and pain? } tyranny of fancy's reign! mechanic _fancy!_ that can build vast labyrinths and mazes wild, with rude, disjointed, shapeless measure, fill'd with _horror_, fill'd with _pleasure_! shapes of _horror_, that would even cast doubt of mercy upon heaven; shapes of _pleasure_, that but seen, would split the shaking sides of _spleen_. "o vanity of age! here see the stamp of heaven effaced by thee! the headstrong course of youth thus run, what comfort from this darling son? his rattling chains with terror hear, behold death grappling with despair! see him by thee to ruin sold, and curse _thyself_, and curse thy _gold_!" see our hero then, in the scene before us, raving in all the dismal horrors of hopeless insanity, in the hospital of bethlehem, the senate of mankind, where each man may find a representative; there we behold him trampling on the first great law of nature, tearing himself to pieces with his own hands, and chained by the leg to prevent any further mischief he might either do to himself or others. but in this scene, dreary and horrid as are its accompaniments, he is attended by the faithful and kind-hearted female whom he so basely betrayed. in the first plate we see him refuse her his promised hand. in the fourth, she releases him from the harpy fangs of a bailiff; she is present at his marriage; and in the hope of relieving his distress, she follows him to a prison. our artist, in this scene of horror, has taken an opportunity of pointing out to us the various causes of mental blindness; for such, surely, it may be called, when the intuitive faculties are either destroyed or impaired. in one of the inner rooms of this gallery is a despairing wretch, imploring heaven for mercy, whose brain is crazed with lip-labouring superstition, the most dreadful enemy of human kind; which, attended with ignorance, error, penance and indulgence, too often deprives its unhappy votaries of their senses. the next in view is one man drawing lines upon a wall, in order, if possible, to find out the longitude; and another, before him, looking through a paper, by way of a telescope. by these expressive figures we are given to understand that such is the misfortune of man, that while, perhaps, the aspiring soul is pursuing some lofty and elevated conception, soaring to an uncommon pitch, and teeming with some grand discovery, the ferment often proves too strong for the feeble brain to support, and lays the whole magazine of notions and images in wild confusion. this melancholy group is completed by the crazy tailor, who is staring at the mad astronomer with a sort of wild astonishment, wondering, through excess of ignorance, what discoveries the heavens can possibly afford; proud of his profession, he has fixed a variety of patterns in his hat, by way of ornament; has covered his poor head with shreds, and makes his measure the constant object of his attention. behind this man stands another, playing on the violin, with his book upon his head, intimating that too great a love for music has been the cause of his distraction. on the stairs sits another, crazed by love, (evident from the picture of his beloved object round his neck, and the words "charming betty careless" upon the bannisters, which he is supposed to scratch upon every wall and every wainscot,) and wrapt up so close in melancholy pensiveness, as not even to observe the dog that is flying at him. behind him, and in the inner room, are two persons maddened with ambition. these men, though under the influence of the same passion, are actuated by different notions; one is for the papal dignity, the other for regal; one imagines himself the pope, and saying mass; the other fancies himself a king, is encircled with the emblem of royalty, and is casting contempt on his imaginary subjects by an act of the greatest disdain. to brighten this distressful scene, and draw a smile from him whose rigid reasoning might condemn the bringing into public view this blemish of humanity, are two women introduced, walking in the gallery, as curious spectators of this melancholy sight; one of whom is supposed, in a whisper, to bid the other observe the naked man, which she takes an opportunity of doing by a leer through the sticks of her fan. thus, imagining the hero of our piece to expire raving mad, the story is finished, and little else remains but to close it with a proper application. reflect then, ye parents, on this tragic tale; consider with yourselves, that the ruin of a child is too often owing to the imprudence of a father. had the young man, whose story we have related, been taught the proper use of money, had his parent given him some insight into life, and graven, as it were, upon his heart, the precepts of religion, with an abhorrence of vice, our youth would, in all probability, have taken a contrary course, lived a credit to his friends, and an honour to his country. [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . scene in bedlam.] the distressed poet. this plate describes, in the strongest colours, the distress of an author without friends to patronise him. seated upon the side of his bed, without a shirt, but wrapped in an old night-gown, he is now spinning a poem upon "riches:" of their _use_ he probably knoweth little; and of their _abuse_,--if judgment can be formed from externals,--_certes_, he knoweth less. enchanted, impressed, inspired with his subject, he is disturbed by a nymph of the _lactarium_. her shrill-sounding voice awakes one of the _little loves_, whose _chorus_ disturbs his meditations. a link of the golden chain is broken!--a thought is lost!--to recover it, his hand becomes a substitute for the barber's comb:--enraged at the noise, he tortures his head for the fleeting idea; but, ah! no thought is there! proudly conscious that the lines already written are sterling, he possesses by anticipation the mines of peru, a view of which hangs over his head. upon the table we see "byshe's art of poetry;" for, like the pack-horse, who cannot travel without his _bells_, he cannot climb the hill of parnassus without his _jingling-book_. on the floor lies the "grub-street journal," to which valuable repository of genius and taste he is probably a contributor. to show that he is a master of the profound, and will envelope his subject in a cloud, his pipe and tobacco-box, those friends to cogitation deep, are close to him. his wife, mending that part of his dress, in the pockets of which the affluent keep their gold, is worthy of a better fate. her figure is peculiarly interesting. her face, softened by adversity, and marked with domestic care, is at this moment agitated by the appearance of a boisterous woman, insolently demanding payment of the milk-tally. in the excuse she returns, there is a mixture of concern, complacency, and mortification. as an addition to the distresses of this poor family, a dog is stealing the remnant of mutton incautiously left upon a chair. the sloping roof, and projecting chimney, prove the throne of this inspired bard to be high above the crowd;--it is a garret. the chimney is ornamented with a _dare for larks_, and a book; a loaf, the tea-equipage, and a saucepan, decorate the shelf. before the fire hangs half a shirt, and a pair of ruffled sleeves. his sword lies on the floor; for though our professor of poetry waged no war, except with words, a sword was, in the year , a necessary appendage to every thing which called itself "gentleman." at the feet of his domestic seamstress, the full-dress coat is become the resting-place of a cat and two kittens: in the same situation is one stocking, the other is half immersed in the washing-pan. the broom, bellows, and mop, are scattered round the room. the open door shows us that their cupboard is unfurnished, and tenanted by a hungry and solitary mouse. in the corner hangs a long cloak, well calculated to conceal the threadbare wardrobe of its fair owner. mr. hogarth's strict attention to propriety of scenery, is evinced by the cracked plaistering of the walls, broken window, and uneven floor, in the miserable habitation of this poor weaver of madrigals. when this was first published, the following quotation from pope's "dunciad" was inscribed under the print: "studious he sate, _with all his books_ around, sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound: plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there; then wrote and flounder'd on, in mere despair." _all his books_, amounting to _only four_, was, i suppose, the artist's reason for erasing the lines. [illustration: the distressed poet.] the bench. character, caricatura, and outre. it having been universally acknowledged that mr. hogarth was one of the most ingenious painters of his age, and a man possessed of a vast store of humour, which he has sufficiently shown and displayed in his numerous productions; the general approbation his works receive, is not to be wondered at. but, as owing to the false notions of the public, not thoroughly acquainted with the true art of painting, he has been often called a _caricaturer_; when, in reality, _caricatura_ was no part of his profession, he being a true copier of nature; to set this matter right, and give the world a just definition of the words, _character_, _caricatura_, and _outré_, in which humorous painting principally consists, and to show their difference of meaning, he, in the year , published this print; but, as it did not quite answer his purpose, giving an illustration of the word _character_ only, he added, in the year , the group of heads above, which he never lived to finish, though he worked upon it the day before his death. the lines between inverted commas are our author's own words, and are engraved at the bottom of the plate. "there are hardly any two things more essentially different than _character_ and _caricatura_; nevertheless, they are usually confounded, and mistaken for each other; on which account this explanation is attempted. "it has ever been allowed, that when a _character_ is strongly marked in the living face, it may be considered as an index of the mind, to express which, with any degree of justness, in painting, requires the utmost efforts of a great master. now that, which has of late years got the name of _caricatura_, is, or ought to be, totally divested of every stroke that hath a tendency to good drawing; it may be said to be a species of lines that are produced, rather by the hand of chance, than of skill; for the early scrawlings of a child, which do but barely hint the idea of a human face, will always be found to be like some person or other, and will often form such a comical resemblance, as, in all probability, the most eminent _caricaturers_ of these times will not be able to equal, with design; because their ideas of objects are so much more perfect than children's, that they will, unavoidably, introduce some kind of drawing; for all the humorous effects of the fashionable manner of _caricaturing_, chiefly depend on the surprise we are under, at finding ourselves caught with any sort of similitude in objects absolutely remote in their kind. let it be observed, the more remote in their nature, the greater is the excellence of these pieces. as a proof of this, i remember a famous _caricatura_ of a certain italian singer, that struck at first sight, which consisted only of a straight perpendicular stroke, with a dot over. as to the french word _outré_, it is different from the rest, and signifies nothing more than the exaggerated outlines of a figure, all the parts of which may be, in other respects, a perfect and true picture of nature. a giant or a dwarf may be called a common man, _outré_. so any part, as a nose, or a leg, made bigger, or less than it ought to be, is that part _outré_, which is all that is to be understood by this word, injudiciously used to the prejudice of _character_."--analysis of beauty, chap. vi. to prevent these distinctions being looked upon as dry and unentertaining, our author has, in this group of faces, ridiculed the want of capacity among some of our judges, or dispensers of the law, whose shallow discernment, natural disposition, or wilful inattention, is here perfectly described in their faces. one is amusing himself in the course of trial, with other business; another, in all the pride of self-importance, is examining a former deposition, wholly inattentive to that before him; the next is busied in thoughts quite foreign to the subject; and the senses of the last are locked fast in sleep. the four sages on the bench, are intended for lord chief justice sir john willes, the principal figure; on his right hand, sir edward clive; and on his left, mr. justice bathurst, and the hon. william noel. [illustration: the bench.] the laughing audience. "let him laugh now, who never laugh'd before; and he who always laugh'd, laugh now the more." "from the first print that hogarth engraved, to the last that he published, i do not think," says mr. ireland, "there is one, in which character is more displayed than in this very spirited little etching. it is much superior to the more delicate engravings from his designs by other artists, and i prefer it to those that were still higher finished by his own burin. "the prim coxcomb with an enormous bag, whose favours, like those of hercules between virtue and vice, are contended for by two rival orange girls, gives an admirable idea of the dress of the day; when, if we may judge from this print, our grave forefathers, defying nature, and despising convenience, had a much higher rank in the temple of folly than was then attained by their ladies. it must be acknowledged that, since that period, the softer sex have asserted their natural rights; and, snatching the wreath of fashion from the brow of presuming man, have tortured it into such forms that, were it possible, which _certes_ it is not, to disguise a beauteous face----but to the high behest of fashion all must bow. "governed by this idol, our beau has a cuff that, for a modern fop, would furnish fronts for a waistcoat, and a family fire-screen might be made of his enormous bag. his bare and shrivelled neck has a close resemblance to that of a half-starved greyhound; and his face, figure, and air, form a fine contrast to the easy and degagée assurance of the grisette whom he addresses. "the opposite figure, nearly as grotesque, though not quite so formal as its companion, presses its left hand upon its breast, in the style of protestation; and, eagerly contemplating the superabundant charms of a beauty of rubens's school, presents her with a pinch of comfort. every muscle, every line of his countenance, is acted upon by affectation and grimace, and his queue bears some resemblance to an ear-trumpet. "the total inattention of these three polite persons to the business of the stage, which at this moment almost convulses the children of nature who are seated in the pit, is highly descriptive of that refined apathy which characterises our people of fashion, and raises them above those mean passions that agitate the groundlings. "one gentleman, indeed, is as affectedly unaffected as a man of the first world. by his saturnine cast of face, and contracted brow, he is evidently a profound critic, and much too wise to laugh. he must indisputably be a very great critic; for, like _voltaire's poccocurante_, nothing can please him; and, while those around open every avenue of their minds to mirth, and are willing to be delighted, though they do not well know why, he analyses the drama by the laws of aristotle, and finding those laws are violated, determines that the author ought to be hissed, instead of being applauded. this it is to be so excellent a judge; this it is which gives a critic that exalted gratification which can never be attained by the illiterate,--the supreme power of pointing out faults, where others discern nothing but beauties, and preserving a rigid inflexibility of muscle, while the sides of the vulgar herd are shaking with laughter. these merry mortals, thinking with plato that it is no proof of a good stomach to nauseate every aliment presented them, do not inquire too nicely into causes, but, giving full scope to their risibility, display a set of features more highly ludicrous than i ever saw in any other print. it is to be regretted that the artist has not given us some clue by which we might have known what was the play which so much delighted his audience: i should conjecture that it was either one of shakespear's comedies, or a modern tragedy. sentimental comedy was not the fashion of that day. "the three sedate musicians in the orchestra, totally engrossed by minims and crotchets, are an admirable contrast to the company in the pit." [illustration: the laughing audience.] gate of calais. o, the roast beef of old england! "'twas at the gate of calais, hogarth tells, where sad despair and famine always dwells; a meagre frenchman, madame grandsire's cook, as home he steer'd, his carcase that way took, bending beneath the weight of famed sirloin, on whom he often wish'd in vain to dine; good father dominick by chance came by, with rosy gills, round paunch, and greedy eye; and, when he first beheld the greasy load, his benediction on it he bestow'd; and while the solid fat his fingers press'd, he lick'd his chops, and thus the knight address'd: 'o rare roast beef, lov'd by all mankind, was i but doom'd to have thee, well dress'd, and garnish'd to my mind, and swimming in thy gravy; not all thy country's force combined, should from my fury save thee! 'renown'd sirloin! oft times decreed the theme of english ballad, e'en kings on thee have deign'd to feed, unknown to frenchman's palate; then how much must thy taste exceed soup-meagre, frogs, and salad!'" the thought on which this whimsical and highly-characteristic print is founded, originated in calais, to which place mr. hogarth, accompanied by some of his friends, made an excursion, in the year . extreme partiality for his native country was the leading trait of his character; he seems to have begun his three hours' voyage with a firm determination to be displeased at every thing he saw out of old england. for a meagre, powdered figure, hung with tatters, _a-la-mode de paris_, to affect the airs of a coxcomb, and the importance of a sovereign, is ridiculous enough; but if it makes a man happy, why should he be laughed at? it must blunt the edge of ridicule, to see natural hilarity defy depression; and a whole nation laugh, sing, and dance, under burthens that would nearly break the firm-knit sinews of a briton. such was the picture of france at that period, but it was a picture which our english satirist could not contemplate with common patience. the swarms of grotesque figures who paraded the streets excited his indignation, and drew forth a torrent of coarse abusive ridicule, not much to the honour of his liberality. he compared them to callot's beggars--lazarus on the painted cloth--the prodigal son--or any other object descriptive of extreme contempt. against giving way to these effusions of national spleen in the open street, he was frequently cautioned, but advice had no effect; he treated admonition with scorn, and considered his monitor unworthy the name of englishman. these satirical ebullitions were at length checked. ignorant of the customs of france, and considering the gate of calais merely as a piece of ancient architecture, he began to make a sketch. this was soon observed; he was seized as a spy, who intended to draw a plan of the fortification, and escorted by a file of musqueteers to m. la commandant. his sketch-book was examined, leaf by leaf, and found to contain drawings that had not the most distant relation to tactics. notwithstanding this favourable circumstance, the governor, with great politeness, assured him, that had not a treaty between the nations been actually signed, he should have been under the disagreeable necessity of hanging him upon the ramparts: as it was, he must be permitted the privilege of providing him a few military attendants, who should do themselves the honour of waiting upon him, while he resided in the dominions of "the grande monarque." two sentinels were then ordered to escort him to his hotel, from whence they conducted him to the vessel; nor did they quit their prisoner, until he was a league from shore; when, seizing him by the shoulders, and spinning him round upon the deck, they said he was now at liberty to pursue his voyage without further molestation. so mortifying an adventure he did not like to hear recited, but has in this print recorded the circumstance which led to it. in one corner he has given a portrait of himself, making the drawing; and to shew the moment of arrest, the hand of a serjeant is upon his shoulder. the french sentinel is so situated, as to give some idea of a figure hanging in chains: his ragged shirt is trimmed with a pair of paper ruffles. the old woman, and a fish which she is pointing at, have a striking resemblance. the abundance of parsnips, and other vegetables, indicate what are the leading articles in a lenten feast. mr. pine, the painter, sat for the friar, and from thence acquired the title of father pine. this distinction did not flatter him, and he frequently requested that the countenance might be altered, but the artist peremptorily refused. [illustration: gate of calais. "o the roast beef of old england."] the politician. "a politician should (as i have read) be furnish'd in the first place with a head." one of our old writers gives it as his opinion, that "there are onlie two subjects which are worthie the studie of a wise man," i.e. religion and politics. for the first, it does not come under inquiry in this print,--but certain it is, that too sedulously studying the second, has frequently involved its votaries in many most tedious and unprofitable disputes, and been the source of much evil to many well-meaning and honest men. under this class comes the quidnunc here pourtrayed; it is said to be intended for a mr. tibson, laceman, in the strand, who paid more attention to the affairs of europe, than to those of his own shop. he is represented in a style somewhat similar to that in which schalcken painted william the third,--holding a candle in his right hand, and eagerly inspecting the gazetteer of the day. deeply interested in the intelligence it contains, concerning the flames that rage on the continent, he is totally insensible of domestic danger, and regardless of a flame, which, ascending to his hat,-- "threatens destruction to his three-tail'd wig." from the tie-wig, stockings, high-quartered shoes, and sword, i should suppose it was painted about the year , when street robberies were so frequent in the metropolis, that it was customary for men in trade to wear swords, not to preserve their religion and liberty from foreign invasion, but to defend their own pockets from "domestic collectors." the original sketch hogarth presented to his friend forrest; it was etched by sherwin, and published in . [illustration: the politician.] taste in high life, in the year . the picture from which this print was copied, hogarth painted by the order of miss edwards, a woman of large fortune, who having been laughed at for some singularities in her manners, requested the artist to recriminate on her opponents, and paid him sixty guineas for his production. it is professedly intended to ridicule the reigning fashions of high life, in the year : to do this, the painter has brought into one group, an old beau and an old lady of the chesterfield school, a fashionable young lady, a little black boy, and a full-dressed monkey. the old lady, with a most affected air, poises, between her finger and thumb, a small tea-cup, with the beauties of which she appears to be highly enamoured. the gentleman, gazing with vacant wonder at that and the companion saucer which he holds in his hand, joins in admiration of its astonishing beauties! "each varied colour of the brightest hue, the green, the red, the yellow, and the blue, in every part their dazzled eyes behold, here streak'd with silver--there enrich'd with gold." this gentleman is said to be intended for lord portmore, in the habit he first appeared at court, on his return from france. the cane dangling from his wrist, large muff, long queue, black stock, feathered chapeau, and shoes, give him the air of "an old and finish'd fop, all cork at heel, and feather all at top." the old lady's habit, formed of stiff brocade, gives her the appearance of a squat pyramid, with a grotesque head at the top of it. the young one is fondling a little black boy, who on his part is playing with a petite pagoda. this miniature othello has been said to be intended for the late ignatius sancho, whose talents and virtues were an honour to his colour. at the time the picture was painted, he would have been rather older than the figure, but as he was then honoured by the partiality and protection of a noble family, the painter might possibly mean to delineate what his figure had been a few years before. the little monkey, with a magnifying glass, bag-wig, solitaire, laced hat, and ruffles, is eagerly inspecting a bill of fare, with the following articles _pour diner_; cocks' combs, ducks' tongues, rabbits' ears, fricasee of snails, _grande d'oeufs buerre_. in the centre of the room is a capacious china jar; in one corner a tremendous pyramid, composed of packs of cards, and on the floor close to them, a bill, inscribed "lady basto, d^{r} to john pip, for cards,--£ ." the room is ornamented with several pictures; the principal represents the medicean venus, on a pedestal, in stays and high-heeled shoes, and holding before her a hoop petticoat, somewhat larger than a fig-leaf; a cupid paring down a fat lady to a thin proportion, and another cupid blowing up a fire to burn a hoop petticoat, muff, bag, queue wig, &c. on the dexter side is another picture, representing monsieur desnoyer, operatically habited, dancing in a grand ballet, and surrounded by butterflies, insects evidently of the same genus with this deity of dance. on the sinister, is a drawing of exotics, consisting of queue and bag-wigs, muffs, solitaires, petticoats, french heeled shoes, and other fantastic fripperies. beneath this is a lady in a pyramidical habit walking the park; and as the companion picture, we have a blind man walking the streets. the fire-screen is adorned with a drawing of a lady in a sedan-chair-- "to conceive how she looks, you must call to your mind the lady you've seen in a lobster confined, or a pagod in some little corner enshrined." as hogarth made this design from the ideas of miss edwards, it has been said that he had no great partiality for his own performance, and that, as he never would consent to its being engraved, the drawing from which the first print was copied, was made by the connivance of one of her servants. be that as it may, his ridicule on the absurdities of fashion,--on the folly of collecting old china,--cookery,--card playing, &c. is pointed, and highly wrought. at the sale of miss edwards's effects at kensington, the original picture was purchased by the father of mr. birch, surgeon, of essex-street, strand. [illustration: taste in high life.] the harlot's progress. plate i. "the snares are set, the plot is laid, ruin awaits thee,--hapless maid! seduction sly assails thine ear, and _gloating, foul desire_ is near; baneful and blighting are their smiles, destruction waits upon their wiles; alas! thy guardian angel sleeps, vice clasps her hands, and virtue weeps." the general aim of historical painters, says mr. ireland, has been to emblazon some signal exploit of an exalted and distinguished character. to go through a series of actions, and conduct their hero from the cradle to the grave, to give a history upon canvass, and tell a story with the pencil, few of them attempted. mr. hogarth saw, with the intuitive eye of genius, that one path to the temple of fame was yet untrodden: he took nature for his guide, and gained the summit. he was the painter of nature; for he gave, not merely the ground-plan of the countenance, but marked the features with every impulse of the mind. he may be denominated the biographical dramatist of domestic life. leaving those heroic monarchs who have blazed through their day, with the destructive brilliancy of a comet, to their adulatory historians, he, like lillo, has taken his scenes from humble life, and rendered them a source of entertainment, instruction, and morality. this series of prints gives the history of a prostitute. the story commences with her arrival in london, where, initiated in the school of profligacy, she experiences the miseries consequent to her situation, and dies in the morning of life. her variety of wretchedness, forms such a picture of the way in which vice rewards her votaries, as ought to warn the young and inexperienced from entering this path of infamy. the first scene of this domestic tragedy is laid at the bell inn, in wood-street, and the heroine may possibly be daughter to the poor old clergyman who is reading the direction of a letter close to the york waggon, from which vehicle she has just alighted. in attire--neat, plain, unadorned; in demeanor--artless, modest, diffident: in the bloom of youth, and more distinguished by native innocence than elegant symmetry; her conscious blush, and downcast eyes, attract the attention of a female fiend, who panders to the vices of the opulent and libidinous. coming out of the door of the inn, we discover two men, one of whom is eagerly gloating on the devoted victim. this is a portrait, and said to be a strong resemblance of colonel francis chartres. the old procuress, immediately after the girl's alighting from the waggon, addresses her with the familiarity of a friend, rather than the reserve of one who is to be her mistress. had her father been versed in even the first rudiments of physiognomy, he would have prevented her engaging with one of so decided an aspect: for this also is the portrait of a woman infamous in her day: but he, good, easy man, unsuspicious as fielding's parson adams, is wholly engrossed in the contemplation of a superscription to a letter, addressed to the bishop of the diocese. so important an object prevents his attending to his daughter, or regarding the devastation occasioned by his gaunt and hungry rozinante having snatched at the straw that packs up some earthenware, and produced "the wreck of flower-pots, and the crash of pans!" from the inn she is taken to the house of the procuress, divested of her home-spun garb, dressed in the gayest style of the day; and the tender native hue of her complexion incrusted with paint, and disguised by patches. she is then introduced to colonel chartres, and by artful flattery and liberal promises, becomes intoxicated with the dreams of imaginary greatness. a short time convinces her of how light a breath these promises were composed. deserted by her keeper, and terrified by threats of an immediate arrest for the pompous paraphernalia of prostitution, after being a short time protected by one of the tribe of levi, she is reduced to the hard necessity of wandering the streets, for that precarious subsistence which flows from the drunken rake, or profligate debauchee. here her situation is truly pitiable! chilled by nipping frost and midnight dew, the repentant tear trickling on her heaving bosom, she endeavours to drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison. this, added to the contagious company of women of her own description, vitiates her mind, eradicates the native seeds of virtue, destroys that elegant and fascinating simplicity, which gives additional charms to beauty, and leaves, in its place, art, affectation, and impudence. neither the painter of a sublime picture, nor the writer of an heroic poem, should introduce any trivial circumstances that are likely to draw the attention from the principal figures. such compositions should form one great whole: minute detail will inevitably weaken their effect. but in little stories, which record the domestic incidents of familiar life, these accessary accompaniments, though trifling in themselves, acquire a consequence from their situation; they add to the interest, and realise the scene. in this, as in almost all that were delineated by mr. hogarth, we see a close regard paid to things as they then were; by which means his prints become a sort of historical record of the manners of the age. [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . ensnared by a procuress.] the harlot's progress. plate ii. "ah! why so vain, though blooming in thy spring, thou shining, frail, adorn'd, but wretched thing old age will come; disease may come before, and twenty prove as fatal as threescore!" entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich jew, attended by a black boy,[ ] and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. her mind being now as depraved, as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. an example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant. the hebrew is represented at breakfast with his mistress; but, having come earlier than was expected, the favourite has not departed. to secure his retreat is an exercise for the invention of both mistress and maid. this is accomplished by the lady finding a pretence for quarrelling with the jew, kicking down the tea-table, and scalding his legs, which, added to the noise of the china, so far engrosses his attention, that the paramour, assisted by the servant, escapes discovery. the subjects of two pictures, with which the room is decorated, are david dancing before the ark, and jonah seated under a gourd. they are placed there, not merely as circumstances which belong to jewish story, but as a piece of covert ridicule on the old masters, who generally painted from the ideas of others, and repeated the same tale _ad infinitum_. on the toilet-table we discover a mask, which well enough intimates where she had passed part of the preceding night, and that masquerades, then a very fashionable amusement, were much frequented by women of this description; a sufficient reason for their being avoided by those of an opposite character. under the protection of this disciple of moses she could not remain long. riches were his only attraction, and though profusely lavished on this unworthy object, her attachment was not to be obtained, nor could her constancy be secured; repeated acts of infidelity are punished by dismission; and her next situation shows, that like most of the sisterhood, she had lived without apprehension of the sunshine of life being darkened by the passing cloud, and made no provision for the hour of adversity. in this print the characters are marked with a master's hand. the insolent air of the harlot, the astonishment of the jew, eagerly grasping at the falling table, the start of the black boy, the cautious trip of the ungartered and barefooted retreating gallant, and the sudden spring of the scalded monkey, are admirably expressed. to represent an object in its descent, has been said to be impossible; the attempt has seldom succeeded; but, in this print, the tea equipage really appears falling to the floor; and, in rembrandt's abraham's offering, in the houghton collection, now at petersburg, the knife dropping from the hand of the patriarch, appears in a falling state. quin compared garrick in othello to the black boy with the tea-kettle, a circumstance that by no means encouraged our roscius to continue acting the part. indeed, when his face was obscured, his chief power of expression was lost; and then, and not till then, was he reduced to a level with several other performers. it has been remarked, however, that garrick said of himself, that when he appeared in othello, quin, he supposed, would say, "here's pompey! where's the tea-kettle?" footnote: [ ] the attendant black boy gave the foundation of an ill-natured remark by quin, when garrick once attempted the part of othello. "he pretend to play othello!" said the surly satirist; "he pretend to play othello! he wants nothing but the tea-kettle and lamp, to qualify him for hogarth's pompey!" [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . quarrels with her jew protector.] the harlot's progress. plate iii. "reproach, scorn, infamy, and hate, on all thy future steps shall wait; thy furor be loath'd by every eye, and every foot thy presence fly." we here see this child of misfortune fallen from her high estate! her magnificent apartment is quitted for a dreary lodging in the purlieus of drury-lane; she is at breakfast, and every object exhibits marks of the most wretched penury: her silver tea-kettle is changed for a tin pot, and her highly decorated toilet gives place to an old leaf table, strewed with the relics of the last night's revel, and ornamented with a broken looking-glass. around the room are scattered tobacco-pipes, gin measures, and pewter pots; emblems of the habits of life into which she is initiated, and the company which she now keeps: this is farther intimated by the wig-box of james dalton, a notorious street-robber, who was afterwards executed. in her hand she displays a watch, which might be either presented to her, or stolen from her last night's gallant. by the nostrums which ornament the broken window, we see that poverty is not her only evil. the dreary and comfortless appearance of every object in this wretched receptacle, the bit of butter on a piece of paper, the candle in a bottle, the basin upon a chair, the punch-bowl and comb upon the table, and the tobacco-pipes, &c. strewed upon the unswept floor, give an admirable picture of the style in which this pride of drury-lane ate her matin meal. the pictures which ornament the room are, abraham offering up isaac, and a portrait of the virgin mary; dr. sacheverell and macheath the highwayman, are companion prints. there is some whimsicality in placing the two ladies under a canopy, formed by the unnailed valance of the bed, and characteristically crowned by the wig-box of a highwayman. when theodore, the unfortunate king of corsica, was so reduced as to lodge in a garret in dean-street, soho, a number of gentlemen made a collection for his relief. the chairman of their committee informed him, by letter, that on the following day, at twelve o'clock, two of the society would wait upon his majesty with the money. to give his attic apartment an appearance of royalty, the poor monarch placed an arm-chair on his half-testered bed, and seating himself under the scanty canopy, gave what he thought might serve as the representation of a throne. when his two visitors entered the room, he graciously held out his right hand, that they might have the honour of--kissing it! a magistrate, cautiously entering the room, with his attendant constables, commits her to a house of correction, where our legislators wisely suppose, that being confined to the improving conversation of her associates in vice, must have a powerful tendency towards the reformation of her manners. sir john gonson, a justice of peace, very active in the suppression of brothels, is the person represented. in _a view of the town in _, by t. gilbert, fellow of peterhouse, cambridge, are the following lines: "though laws severe to punish crimes were made, what honest man is of these laws afraid? all felons against judges will exclaim, as harlots tremble at a gonson's name." pope has noticed him in his imitation of dr. donne, and loveling, in a very elegant latin ode. thus, between the poets and the painter, the name of this harlot-hunting justice, is transmitted to posterity. he died on the th of january, . [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . apprehended by a magistrate.] the harlot's progress. plate iv. with pallid cheek and haggard eye, and loud laments, and heartfelt sigh, unpitied, hopeless of relief, she drinks the bitter cup of grief. in vain the sigh, in vain the tear, compassion never enters here; but justice clanks her iron chain, and calls forth shame, remorse, and pain. the situation, in which the last plate exhibited our wretched female, was sufficiently degrading, but in this, her misery is greatly aggravated. we now see her suffering the chastisement due to her follies; reduced to the wretched alternative of beating hemp, or receiving the correction of a savage task-master. exposed to the derision of all around, even her own servant, who is well acquainted with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to show any return of gratitude for recent obligations, though even her shoes, which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside to have been a present from her mistress. the civil discipline of the stern keeper has all the severity of the old school. with the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour to the whipping-post, to a kind of picketing suspension by the wrists, or having a heavy log fastened to their leg. with the last of these punishments he at this moment threatens the heroine of our story, nor is it likely that his obduracy can be softened except by a well applied fee. how dreadful, how mortifying the situation! these accumulated evils might perhaps produce a momentary remorse, but a return to the path of virtue is not so easy as a departure from it. to show that neither the dread, nor endurance, of the severest punishment, will deter from the perpetration of crimes, a one-eyed female, close to the keeper, is picking a pocket. the torn card may probably be dropped by the well-dressed gamester, who has exchanged the dice-box for the mallet, and whose laced hat is hung up as a companion trophy to the hoop-petticoat. one of the girls appears scarcely in her teens. to the disgrace of our police, these unfortunate little wanderers are still suffered to take their nocturnal rambles in the most public streets of the metropolis. what heart, so void of sensibility, as not to heave a pitying sigh at their deplorable situation? vice is not confined to colour, for a black woman is ludicrously exhibited, as suffering the penalty of those frailties, which are imagined peculiar to the fair. the figure chalked as dangling upon the wall, with a pipe in his mouth, is intended as a caricatured portrait of sir john gonson, and probably the production of some would-be artist, whom the magistrate had committed to bridewell, as a proper academy for the pursuit of his studies. the inscription upon the pillory, "better to work than stand thus;" and that on the whipping-post near the laced gambler, "the reward of idleness," are judiciously introduced. in this print the composition is good: the figures in the back-ground, though properly subordinate, are sufficiently marked; the lassitude of the principal character, well contrasted by the austerity of the rigid overseer. there is a fine climax of female debasement, from the gaudy heroine of our drama, to her maid, and from thence to the still object, who is represented as destroying one of the plagues of egypt. such well dressed females, as our heroine, are rarely met with in our present houses of correction; but her splendid appearance is sufficiently warranted by the following paragraph in the grub-street journal of september th, . "one mary moffat, a woman of great note in the hundreds of drury, who, about a fortnight ago, was committed to hard labour in tothill-fields bridewell, by nine justices, brought his majesty's writ of _habeas corpus_, and was carried before the right honourable the lord chief justice raymond, expecting to have been either bailed or discharged; but her commitment appearing to be legal, his lordship thought fit to remand her back again to her former place of confinement, where she is now beating hemp in a gown very richly laced with silver." [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . scene in bridewell.] the harlot's progress. plate v. with keen remorse, deep sighs, and trembling fears repentant groans, and unavailing tears, this child of misery resigns her breath, and sinks, despondent, in the arms of death. released from bridewell, we now see this victim to her own indiscretion breathe her last sad sigh, and expire in all the extremity of penury and wretchedness. the two quacks, whose injudicious treatment, has probably accelerated her death, are vociferously supporting the infallibility of their respective medicines, and each charging the other with having poisoned her. the meagre figure is a portrait of dr. misaubin, a foreigner, at that time in considerable practice. these disputes, it has been affirmed, sometimes happen at a consultation of regular physicians, and a patient has been so unpolite as to die before they could determine on the name of his disorder. "about the symptoms how they disagree, but how unanimous about the fee!" while the maid servant is entreating them to cease quarrelling, and assist her dying mistress, the nurse plunders her trunk of the few poor remains of former grandeur. her little boy, turning a scanty remnant of meat hung to roast by a string; the linen hanging to dry; the coals deposited in a corner; the candles, bellows, and gridiron hung upon nails; the furniture of the room; and indeed every accompaniment; exhibit a dreary display of poverty and wretchedness. over the candles hangs a cake of jew's bread, once perhaps the property of her levitical lover, and now used as a fly-trap. the initials of her name, m. h. are smoked upon the ceiling as a kind of _memento mori_ to the next inhabitant. on the floor lies a paper inscribed "anodyne necklace," at that time deemed a sort of charm against the disorders incident to children; and near the fire, a tobacco-pipe, and paper of pills. a picture of general, and at this awful moment, indecent confusion, is admirably represented. the noise of two enraged quacks disputing in bad english; the harsh, vulgar scream of the maid servant; the table falling, and the pot boiling over, must produce a combination of sounds dreadful and dissonant to the ear. in this pitiable situation, without a friend to close her dying eyes, or soften her sufferings by a tributary tear; forlorn, destitute, and deserted, the heroine of this eventful history expires! her premature death, brought on by a licentious life, seven years of which had been devoted to debauchery and dissipation, and attended by consequent infamy, misery, and disease. the whole story affords a valuable lesson to the young and inexperienced, and proves this great, this important truth, that a deviation from virtue is a departure from happiness. the emaciated appearance of the dying figure, the boy's thoughtless inattention, and the rapacious, unfeeling eagerness of the old nurse, are naturally and forcibly delineated. the figures are well grouped; the curtain gives depth, and forms a good back-ground to the doctor's head; the light is judiciously distributed, and each accompaniment highly appropriate. [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . expires while the doctors are disputing.] the harlot's progress. plate vi. "no friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear, pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier: by harlots' hands thy dying eyes were clos'd; by harlots' hands thy decent limbs compos'd; by harlots' hands thy humble grave adorn'd; by harlots honour'd, and by harlots mourn'd." the adventures of our heroine are now concluded. she is no longer an actor in her own tragedy; and there are those who have considered this print as a farce at the end of it: but surely such was not the author's intention. the ingenious writer of tristram shandy begins the life of his hero before he is born; the picturesque biographer of mary hackabout has found an opportunity to convey admonition, and enforce his moral, after her death. a wish usually prevails, even among those who are most humbled by their own indiscretion, that some respect should be paid to their remains; that their eyes should be closed by the tender hand of a surviving friend, and the tear of sympathy and regret shed upon the sod which covers their grave; that those who loved them living, should attend their last sad obsequies; and a sacred character read over them the awful service which our religion ordains, with the solemnity it demands. the memory of this votary of prostitution meets with no such marks of social attention, or pious respect. the preparations for her funeral are as licentious as the progress of her life, and the contagion of her example seems to reach all who surround her coffin. one of them is engaged in the double trade of seduction and thievery; a second is contemplating her own face in a mirror. the female who is gazing at the corpse, displays some marks of concern, and feels a momentary compunction at viewing the melancholy scene before her: but if any other part of the company are in a degree affected, it is a mere maudlin sorrow, kept up by glasses of strong liquor. the depraved priest does not seem likely to feel for the dead that hope expressed in our liturgy. the appearance and employment of almost every one present at this mockery of woe, is such as must raise disgust in the breast of any female who has the least tincture of delicacy, and excite a wish that such an exhibition may not be displayed at her own funeral. in this plate there are some local customs which mark the manners of the times when it was engraved, but are now generally disused, except in some of the provinces very distant from the capital; sprigs of rosemary were then given to each of the mourners: to appear at a funeral without one, was as great an indecorum as to be without a white handkerchief. this custom might probably originate at a time when the plague depopulated the metropolis, and rosemary was deemed an antidote against contagion. it must be acknowledged that there are also in this print some things which, though they gave the artist an opportunity of displaying his humour, are violations of propriety and customs: such is her child, but a few removes from infancy, being habited as chief mourner, to attend his parent to the grave; rings presented, and an escutcheon hung up, in a garret, at the funeral of a needy prostitute. the whole may be intended as a burlesque upon ostentatious and expensive funerals, which were then more customary than they are now. mr. pope has well ridiculed the same folly; "when hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend the wretch who, living, sav'd a candle's end." the figures have much characteristic discrimination; the woman looking into the coffin has more beauty than we generally see in the works of this artist. the undertaker's gloating stare, his companion's leer, the internal satisfaction of the parson and his next neighbour, are contrasted by the irish howl of the woman at the opposite side, and evince mr. hogarth's thorough knowledge of the operation of the passions upon the features. the composition forms a good shape, has a proper depth, and the light is well managed. sir james thornhill's opinion of this series may be inferred from the following circumstance. mr. hogarth had without consent married his daughter: sir james, considering him as an obscure artist, was much displeased with the connexion. to give him a better opinion of his son-in-law, a common friend, one morning, privately conveyed the six pictures of the harlot's progress into his drawing-room. the veteran painter eagerly inquired who was the artist; and being told, cried out, "very well! very well indeed! the man who can paint such pictures as these, can maintain a wife without a portion." this was the remark of the moment; but he afterwards considered the union of his daughter with a man of such abilities an honour to his family, was reconciled, and generous. when the publication was advertised, such was the expectation of the town, that above twelve hundred names were entered in the subscription book. when the prints appeared, they were beheld with astonishment. a subject so novel in the idea, so marked with genius in the execution, excited the most eager attention of the public. at a time when england was coldly inattentive to every thing which related to the arts, so desirous were all ranks of people of seeing how this little domestic story was delineated, that there were eight piratical imitations, besides two copies in a smaller size than the original, published, by permission of the author, for thomas bakewell. the whole series were copied on fan-mounts, representing the six plates, three on one side, and three on the other. it was transferred from the copper to the stage, in the form of a pantomime, by theophilus cibber; and again represented in a ballad opera, entitled, the jew decoyed; or, the harlot's progress. [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . the funeral.] the lecture. datur vacuum. "no wonder that science, and learning profound, in oxford and cambridge so greatly abound, when so many take thither a little each day, and we see very few who bring any away." i was once told by a fellow of a college, says mr. ireland, that he disliked hogarth, because he had in this print ridiculed one of the universities. i endeavoured to defend the artist, by suggesting that this was not intended as a picture of what oxford is now, but of what it was in days long past: that it was that kind of general satire with which no one should be offended, &c. &c. his reply was too memorable to be forgotten. "sir, the theatre, the bench, the college of physicians, and the foot guards, are fair objects of satire; but those venerable characters who have devoted their whole lives to feeding the lamp of learning with hallowed oil, are too sacred to be the sport of an uneducated painter. their unremitting industry embraced the whole circle of the sciences, and in their logical disputations they displayed an acuteness that their followers must contemplate with astonishment. the present state of oxford it is not necessary for me to analyze, as you contend that the satire is not directed against that." in answer to this observation, which was uttered with becoming gravity, a gentleman present remarked, as follows. "for some of the ancient customs of this seminary of learning, i have much respect, but as to their dry treatises on logic, immaterial dissertations on materiality, and abstruse investigations of useless subjects, they are mere literary legerdemain. their disputations being usually built on an undefinable chimera, are solved by a paradox. instead of exercising their power of reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not convinced, are almost invariably confounded. this custom, it must be granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general spirit of reform is rapidly diffusing itself; and though i have heard cold-blooded declaimers assert, that these shades of science are become the retreats of ignorance, and the haunts of dissipation, i consider them as the great schools of urbanity, and favourite seats of the _belles lettres_. by the _belles lettres_, i mean history, biography, and poetry; that all these are universally cultivated, i can exemplify by the manner in which a highly accomplished young man, who is considered as a model by his fellow-collegians, divides his hours. "at breakfast i found him studying the marvellous and eventful history of baron munchausen; a work whose periods are equally free from the long-winded obscurity of tacitus, and the asthmatic terseness of sallust. while his hair was dressing, he enlarged his imagination and improved his morals by studying doctor what's his name's abridgement of chesterfield's principles of politeness. to furnish himself with biographical information, and add to his stock of useful anecdote, he studied the lives of the highwaymen; in which he found many opportunities of exercising his genius and judgment in drawing parallels between the virtues and exploits of these modern worthies, and those dignified, and almost deified ancient heroes whose deeds are recorded in plutarch and nepos. "with poetical studies, he is furnished by the english operas, which, added to the prologues, epilogues, and odes of the day, afford him higher entertainment than he could find in homer or virgil: he has not stored his memory with many epigrams, but of puns has a plentiful stock, and in _conundra_ is a wholesale dealer. at the same college i know a most striking contrast, whose reading"--but as his opponent would hear no more, my advocate dropped the subject; and i will follow his example. it seems probable, that when the artist engraved this print, he had only a general reference to an university lecture; the words _datur vacuum_ were an after-thought. some prints are without the inscription, and in some of the early impressions it is written with a pen. the scene is laid at oxford, and the person reading, universally admitted to be a mr. fisher, of jesus college, _registrat_ of the university, with whose consent this portrait was taken, and who lived until the th of march, . that he should wish to have such a face handed down to posterity, in such company, is rather extraordinary, for all the band, except one man, have been steeped in the stream of stupidity. this gentleman has the profile of penetration; a projecting forehead, a roman nose, thin lips, and a long pointed chin. his eye is bent on vacancy: it is evidently directed to the moon-faced idiot that crowns the pyramid, at whose round head, contrasted by a cornered cap, he with difficulty suppresses a laugh. three fellows on the right hand of this fat, contented "first-born transmitter of a foolish face," have most degraded characters, and are much fitter for the stable than the college. if they ever read, it must be in bracken's farriery, or the country gentleman's recreation. two square-capped students a little beneath the top, one of whom is holding converse with an adjoining profile, and the other lifting up his eyebrows, and staring without sight, have the same misfortune that attended our first james--their tongues are rather too large. a figure in the left-hand corner has shut his eyes to think; and having, in his attempt to separate a syllogism, placed the forefinger of his right hand upon his forehead, has fallen asleep. the professor, a little above the book, endeavours by a projection of his under lip to assume importance; such characters are not uncommon: they are more solicitous to look wise, than to be so. of mr. fisher it is not necessary to say much: he sat for his portrait, for the express purpose of having it inserted in the lecture!--we want no other testimony of his talents. [illustration: the lecture.] the chorus. rehearsal of the oratorio of judith. "o _cara, cara!_ silence all that train, joy to great _chaos!_ let division reign." the oratorio of judith, mr. ireland observes, was written by esquire william huggins, honoured by the music of william de fesch, aided by new painted scenery and _magnifique_ decoration, and in the year brought upon the stage. as de fesch[ ] was a german and a genius, we may fairly presume it was well set; and there was at that time, as at this, a sort of musical mania, that paid much greater attention to sounds than to sense; notwithstanding all these points in her favour, when the jewish heroine had made her theatrical _début_, and so effectually smote holofernes, ----"as to sever his head from his great trunk for ever and for ever." the audience compelled her to make her exit. to set aside this partial and unjust decree, mr. huggins appealed to the public, and printed his oratorio. though it was adorned with a frontispiece designed by hogarth, and engraved by vandergucht, the world could not be compelled to read, and the unhappy writer had no other resource than the consolatory reflection, that his work was superlatively excellent, but unluckily printed in a tasteless age; a comfortable and solacing self-consciousness, which hath, i verily believe, prevented many a great genius from becoming his own executioner. to paint a sound is impossible; but as far as art can go towards it, hogarth has gone in this print. the tenor, treble, and bass of these ear-piercing choristers are so decisively discriminated, that we all but hear them. the principal figure, whose head, hands, and feet are in equal agitation, has very properly tied on his spectacles; it would have been prudent to have tied on his periwig also, for by the energy of his action he has shaken it from his head, and, absorbed in an eager attention to true time, is totally unconscious of his loss. a gentleman--pardon me, i meant a singer--in a bag wig, immediately beneath his uplifted hand, i suspect to be of foreign growth. it has the engaging air of an importation from italy. the little figure in the sinister corner, is, it seems, intended for a mr. tothall, a woollen-draper, who lived in tavistock-court, and was hogarth's intimate friend. the name of the performer on his right hand, ----"whose growling bass would drown the clarion of the braying ass," i cannot learn, nor do i think that this group were meant for particular portraits, but a general representation of the violent distortions into which these crotchet-mongers draw their features on such solemn occasions. even the head of the bass-viol has air and character: by the band under the chin, it gives some idea of a professor, or what is, i think, called a mus. d. the words now singing, "the world shall bow to the assyrian throne," are extracted from mr. huggins' oratorio; the etching is in a most masterly style, and was originally given as a subscription ticket to the modern midnight conversation. i have seen a small political print on sir robert walpole's administration, entitled, "excise, a new ballad opera," of which this was unquestionably the basis. beneath it is the following learned and poetical motto: "_experto crede roberto._" "mind how each hireling songster tunes his throat, and the vile knight beats time to every note: so nero sung while rome was all in flames, but time shall brand with infamy their names." footnote: [ ] he was a respectable performer on the violin, some years chapel-master at antwerp, and several seasons leader of the band at marybone gardens. he published a collection of musical compositions, to which was annexed a portrait of himself, characterised by three lines from milton: "thou honour'dst verse, and verse must lend her wing to honour thee, the priest of phoebus' quire, that tun'st her happiest lines in hymn or song." he died in , aged seventy years, and gives one additional name to a catalogue i have somewhere seen of very old professors of music, who, saith my author, "generally live unto a greater age than persons in any other way of life, from their souls being so attuned unto harmony, that they enjoy a perpetual peace of mind." it has been observed, and i believe justly, that thinking is a great enemy to longevity, and that, consequently, they who think least will be likely to live longest. the quantity of thought necessary to make an adept in this divine science, must be determined by those who have studied it.--it would seem by this remark, that mr. ireland was not aware that to acquire proficiency in the divine science to which he so pleasantly alludes, requires great application and study. [illustration: the chorus.] columbus breaking the egg. by the success of columbus's first voyage, doubt had been changed into admiration; from the honours with which he was rewarded, admiration degenerated into envy. to deny that his discovery carried in its train consequences infinitely more important than had resulted from any made since the creation, was impossible. his enemies had recourse to another expedient, and boldly asserted that there was neither wisdom in the plan, nor hazard in the enterprise. when he was once at a spanish supper, the company took this ground, and being by his narrative furnished with the reflections which had induced him to undertake his voyage, and the course that he had pursued in its completion, sagaciously observed, that "it was impossible for any man, a degree above an idiot, to have failed of success. the whole process was so obvious, it must have been seen by a man who was half blind! nothing could be so easy!" "it is not difficult now i have pointed out the way," was the answer of columbus: "but easy as it will appear, when you are possessed of my method, i do not believe that, without such instruction, any person present could place one of these eggs upright on the table." the cloth, knives, and forks were thrown aside, and two of the party, placing their eggs as required, kept them steady with their fingers. one of them swore there could be no other way. "we will try," said the navigator; and giving an egg, which he held in his hand, a smart stroke upon the table, it remained upright. the emotions which this excited in the company are expressed in their countenances. in the be-ruffed booby at his left hand it raises astonishment; he is a dear me! man, of the same family with sterne's simple traveller, and came from amiens only yesterday. the fellow behind him, beating his head, curses his own stupidity; and the whiskered ruffian, with his fore-finger on the egg, is in his heart cursing columbus. as to the two veterans on the other side, they have lived too long to be agitated with trifles: he who wears a cap, exclaims, "is this all!" and the other, with a bald head, "by st. jago, i did not think of that!" in the face of columbus there is not that violent and excessive triumph which is exhibited by little characters on little occasions; he is too elevated to be overbearing; and, pointing to the conical solution of his problematical conundrum, displays a calm superiority, and silent internal contempt. two eels, twisted round the eggs upon the dish, are introduced as specimens of the line of beauty; which is again displayed on the table-cloth, and hinted at on the knife-blade. in all these curves there is peculiar propriety; for the etching was given as a receipt-ticket to the analysis, where this favourite undulating line forms the basis of his system. in the print of columbus, there is evident reference to the criticisms on what hogarth called his own discovery; and in truth the connoisseurs' remarks on the painter were dictated by a similar spirit to those of the critics on the navigator: they first asserted there was no such line, and when he had proved that there was, gave the honour of discovery to lomazzo, michael angelo, &c. &c. [illustration: columbus breaking the egg.] a midnight modern conversation. "think not to find one meant resemblance there; we lash the vices, but the persons spare. prints should be priz'd, as authors should be read, who sharply smile prevailing folly dead. so rabelais laugh'd, and so cervantes thought; so nature dictated what art has taught." notwithstanding this inscription, which was engraved on the plate some time after its publication, it is very certain that most of these figures were intended for individual portraits; but mr. hogarth, not wishing to be considered as a personal satirist, and fearful of making enemies among his contemporaries, would never acknowledge who were the characters. some of them the world might perhaps mistake; for though the author was faithful in delineating whatever he intended to portray, complete intoxication so far caricatures the countenance, that, according to the old, though trite proverb, "the man is not himself." his portrait, though given with the utmost fidelity, will scarcely be known by his most intimate friends, unless they have previously seen him in this degrading disguise. hence, it becomes difficult to identify men whom the painter did not choose to point out at the time; and a century having elapsed, it becomes impossible, for all who composed the group, with the artist by whom it was delineated, shake hands with dust, and call the worm their kinsman. mrs. piozzi was of opinion that the divine with a cork-screw, occasionally used as a tobacco-stopper, hanging upon his little finger, was the portrait of parson ford, dr. johnson's uncle; though, upon the authority of sir john hawkins, of anecdotish memory, it has been generally supposed to be intended for orator henley. as both these worthies were distinguished by that rubicundity of face with which it is marked, the reader may decree the honour of a sitting to which he pleases. the roaring bacchanalian who stands next him, waving his glass in the air, has pulled off his wig, and, in the zeal of his friendship, crowns the divine's head. he is evidently drinking destruction to fanatics, and success to mother church, or a mitre to the jolly parson whom he addresses. the lawyer, who sits near him, is a portrait of one kettleby, a vociferous bar-orator, who, though an utter barrister, chose to distinguish himself by wearing an enormous full-bottom wig, in which he is here represented. he was farther remarkable for a diabolical squint, and a satanic smile. a poor maudlin miserable, who is addressing him, when sober, must be a fool; but, in this state, it would puzzle lavater to assign him a proper class. he seems endeavouring to demonstrate to the lawyer, that, in a poi--poi--point of law, he has been most cruelly cheated, and lost a cau--cau--cause, that he ought to have got,--and all this was owing to his attorney being an infernal villain. this may very probably be true; for the poor man's tears show that, like the person relieved by the good samaritan, he has been among thieves. the barrister grins horribly at his misfortunes, and tells him he is properly punished for not employing a gentleman. next to him sits a gentleman in a black periwig. he politely turns his back to the company, that he may have the pleasure of smoking a sociable pipe. the justice, "in fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,"--the justice, having hung up his hat, wig, and cloak, puts on his nightcap, and, with a goblet of superior capacity before him, sits in solemn cogitation. his left elbow, supported by the table, and his right by a chair, with a pipe in one hand, and a stopper in the other, he puffs out the bland vapour with the dignity of an alderman, and fancies himself as great as jupiter, seated upon the summit of mount olympus, enveloped by the thick cloud which his own breath has created. with folded arms and open mouth, another leans back in his chair. his wig is dropped from his head, and he is asleep; but though speechless, he is sonorous; for you clearly perceive that, where nasal sounds are the music, he is qualified to be leader of the band. the fallen hero, who with his chair and goblet has tumbled to the floor, by the cockade in his hat, we suppose to be an officer. his forehead is marked, perhaps with honourable scars. to wash his wounds, and cool his head, the staggering apothecary bathes it with brandy. a gentleman in the corner, who, from having the craftsman and london evening in his pocket, we determine to be a politician, very unluckily mistakes his ruffle for the bowl of his pipe, and sets fire to it. the person in a bag-wig and solitaire, with his hand upon his head, would not now pass for a fine gentleman, but in the year was a complete beau. unaccustomed to such joyous company, he appears to have drank rather more than agrees with him. the company consists of eleven, and on the chimney-piece, floor, and table, are three and twenty empty flasks. these, added to a bottle which the apothecary holds in his hand, prove that this select society have not lost a moment. the overflowing bowl, full goblets, and charged glasses, prove that they think, "'tis too early to part," though the dial points to four in the morning. the different degrees of drunkenness are well discriminated, and its effects admirably described. the poor simpleton, who is weeping out his woes to honest lawyer kettleby, it makes mawkish; the beau it makes sick; and the politician it stupifies. one is excited to roaring, and another lulled to sleep. it half closes the eyes of justice, renders the footing of physic unsure, and lays prostrate the glory of his country, and the pride of war. [illustration: a midnight modern conversation.] consultation of physicians--the undertakers' arms. this plate is designed, with much humour, according to the rules of heraldry, and is called the undertakers' arms, to show us the connexion between death and the quack doctor, as are also those cross-bones on the outside of the escutcheon. when an undertaker is in want of business, he cannot better apply than to some of those gentlemen of the faculty, who are, for the most part, so charitably disposed, as to supply the necessities of these sable death-hunters, and keep them from starving in a healthy time. by the tenour of this piece, mr. hogarth would intimate the general ignorance of such of the medical tribe, and teach us that they possess little more knowledge than their voluminous wigs and golden-headed canes. they are represented in deep consultation upon the contents of an urinal. our artist's own illustration of this coat of arms, as he calls it, is as follows: "the company of undertakers beareth, sable, an urinal, proper between twelve quack heads of the second, and twelve cane heads, or, consultant. on a chief, _nebulæ_, ermine, one complete doctor, issuant, checkie, sustaining in his right hand a baton of the second. on the dexter and sinister sides, two demi-doctors, issuant of the second, and two cane heads, issuant of the third; the first having one eye, couchant, towards the dexter side of the escutcheon; the second faced, per pale, proper, and gules guardant. with this motto, _et plurima mortis imago_. the general image of death." it has been said of the ancients, that they began by attempting to make physic a science, and failed; of the moderns, that they began by attempting to make it a trade, and succeeded. this company are moderns to a man, and, if we may judge of their capacities by their countenances, are indeed a most sapient society. their practice is very extensive, and they go about, taking guineas, far as the weekly bills can reach around, from kent-street end, to fam'd st. giles's pound. many of them are unquestionably portraits, but as these grave and sage descendants of galen are long since gone to that place where they before sent their patients, we are unable to ascertain any of them, except the three who are, for distinction, placed in the chief, or most honourable part of the escutcheon. those who, from their exalted situation, we may naturally conclude the most distinguished and sagacious leeches of their day, have marks too obtrusive to be mistaken. he towards the dexter side of the escutcheon, is determined by an eye in the head of his cane to be the all-accomplished chevalier taylor, in whose marvellous and surprising history, written by his own hand, and published in , is recorded such events relative to himself and others, as have excited more astonishment than that incomparable romance, don belianis of greece, the arabian nights, or sir john mandeville's travels. the centre figure, arrayed in a harlequin jacket, with a bone, or what the painter denominates a baton, in the right hand, is generally considered designed for mrs. mapp, a masculine woman, daughter to one wallin, a bone-setter at hindon, in wiltshire. this female thalestris, incompatible as it may seem with her sex, adopted her father's profession, travelled about the country, calling herself crazy sally; and, like another hercules, did wonders by strength of arm. on the sinister side is dr. ward, generally called spot ward, from his left cheek being marked with a claret colour. this gentleman was of a respectable family, and though not highly educated, had talents very superior to either of his coadjutors. for the chief, this must suffice; as for the twelve quack heads, and twelve cane heads, or, consultant, united with the cross bones at the corners, they have a most mortuary appearance, and do indeed convey a general image of death. in the time of lucian, a philosopher was distinguished by three things,--his avarice, his impudence, and his beard. in the time of hogarth, medicine was a mystery, and there were three things which distinguished the physician,--his gravity, his cane-head, and his periwig. with these leading requisites, this venerable party are most amply gifted. to specify every character is not necessary; but the upper figure on the dexter side, with a wig like a weeping willow, should not be overlooked. his lemon-like aspect must curdle the blood of all his patients. in the countenances of his brethren there is no want of acids; but, however sour, each individual was in his day, ----------------a doctor of renown, to none but such as rust in health unknown; and, save or slay, this privilege they claim, or death, or life, the bright reward's the same. [illustration: consultation of physicians.] daniel lock, esq. f.a.s. daniel lock was an architect of some eminence. he retired from business with an ample fortune, lived in surrey-street, and was buried in the chapel of trinity college, cambridge. this portrait was originally engraved by j. m'ardell from a painting by hogarth, and is classed among the productions of our artist that are of uncertain date. [illustration: daniel lock, esq. f.a.s.] the enraged musician. "with thundering noise the azure vault they tear, and rend, with savage roar, the echoing air: the sounds terrific he with horror hears; his fiddle throws aside,--and stops his ears." we have seen displayed the distress of a poet; in this the artist has exhibited the rage of a musician. our poor bard bore his misfortunes with patience, and, rich in his muse, did not much repine at his poverty. not so this master of harmony, of heavenly harmony! to the evils of poverty he is now a stranger; his _adagios_ and _cantabiles_ have procured him the protection of nobles; and, contrary to the poor shirtless mendicant of the muses that we left in a garret, he is arrayed in a coat decorated with frogs, a bag-wig, solitaire, and ruffled shirt. waiting in the chamber of a man of fashion, whom he instructs in the divine science of music, having first tuned his instrument, he opens his crotchet-book, shoulders his violin, flourishes his fiddle-stick, and, softly sweet, in lydian measure, soon he soothes his soul to pleasure. rapt in elysium at the divine symphony, he is awakened from his beatific vision, by noises that distract him. ----------an universal hubbub wild, of stunning sounds, and voices all confus'd, assails his ears with loudest vehemence. confounded with the din, and enraged by the interruption, our modern terpander starts from his seat, and opens the window. this operates as air to a kindling fire; and such a combination of noises burst upon the auricular nerve, that he is compelled to stop his ears,--but to stop the torrent is impossible! a louder yet, and yet a louder strain, break his bands of thought asunder! and rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder; at the horrible sound he has rais'd up his head, as awak'd from the dead, and amazed he stares all around. in this situation he is delineated; and those who for a moment contemplate the figures before him, cannot wonder at his rage. a crew of hell-hounds never ceasing bark, with wide cerberean mouth, full loud, and ring a hideous peal. of the _dramatis personæ_ who perform the vocal parts, the first is a fellow, in a tone that would rend hell's concave, bawling, "dust, ho! dust, ho! dust!" next to him, an amphibious animal, who nightly pillows his head on the sedgy bosom of old thames, in a voice that emulates the rush of many waters, or the roaring of a cataract, is bellowing "flounda,a,a,ars!" a daughter of may-day, who dispenses what in london is called milk, and is consequently a milk-maid, in a note pitched at the very top of her voice, is crying, "be-louw!" while a ballad-singer dolefully drawls out the ladie's fall, an infant in her arms joins its treble pipe in chorus with the screaming parrot, which is on a lamp-iron over her head. on the roof of an opposite house are two cats, performing what an amateur of music might perhaps call a bravura duet; near them appears a sweep, shrill twittering on the chimney-top. a little french drummer, singing to his rub-a-dub, and the agreeable yell of a dog, complete the vocal performers. of the instrumental, a fellow blowing a horn, with a violence that would have almost shaken down the walls of jericho, claims the first notice; next to him, the dustman rattles his bell with ceaseless clangour, until the air reverberates the sound. the intervals are filled up by a paviour, who, to every stroke of his rammer, adds a loud, distinct, and echoing, haugh! the pedestrian cutler is grinding a butcher's cleaver with such earnestness and force, that it elicits sparks of fire. this, added to the agonizing howls of his unfortunate dog, must afford a perfect specimen of the ancient chromatic. the poor animal, between a man and a monkey, piping harsh discords upon a hautboy, the girl whirling her _crepitaculum_, or rattle, and the boy beating his drum, conclude the catalogue of this harmonious band. this delineation originated in a story which was told to hogarth by the late mr. john festin, who is the hero of the print. he was eminent for his skill in playing upon the german flute and hautboy, and much employed as a teacher of music. to each of his scholars he devoted one hour each day. "at nine o'clock in the morning," said he, "i once waited upon my lord spencer, but his lordship being out of town, from him i went to mr. v----n. it was so early that he was not arisen. i went into his chamber, and, opening a shutter, sat down in the window-seat. before the rails was a fellow playing upon the hautboy. a man with a barrow full of onions offered the piper an onion if he would play him a tune. that ended, he offered a second onion for a second tune; the same for a third, and was going on: but this was too much; i could not bear it; it angered my very soul--'zounds!' said i, 'stop here! this fellow is ridiculing my profession; he is playing on the hautboy for onions!'" the whole of this bravura scene is admirably represented. a person quaintly enough observed, that it deafens one to look at it. [illustration: the enraged musician.] masquerades and operas. burlington gate. this print appeared in . of the three small figures in the centre the middle one is lord burlington, a man of considerable taste in painting and architecture, but who ranked mr. kent, an indifferent artist, above his merit. on one side of the peer is mr. campbell, the architect; on the other, his lordship's postilion. on a show-cloth in this plate is also supposed to be the portrait of king george ii. who gave _l._ towards the masquerade; together with that of the earl of peterborough, who offers cuzzoni, the italian singer, _l._ and she spurns at him. mr. heidegger, the regulator of the masquerade, is also exhibited, looking out of a window, with the letter h under him. the substance of the foregoing remarks is taken from a collection lately belonging to captain baillie, where it is said that they were furnished by an eminent connoisseur. a board is likewise displayed, with the words, "long room. fawks's dexterity of hand." it appears from the following advertisement that this was a man of great consequence in his profession: "whereas the town hath been lately alarmed, that the famous fawks was robbed and murdered, returning from performing at the duchess of buckingham's house at chelsea; which report being raised and printed by a person to gain money to himself, and prejudice the above-mentioned mr. fawks, whose unparalleled performance has gained him so much applause from the greatest of quality, and most curious observers: we think, both in justice to the injured gentleman, and for the satisfaction of his admirers, that we cannot please our readers better than to acquaint them he is alive, and will not only perform his usual surprising dexterity of hand, posture-master, and musical clock: but, for the greater diversion of the quality and gentry, has agreed with the famous powell of the bath for the season, who has the largest, richest, and most natural figures, and finest machines in england, and whose former performances in covent garden were so engaging to the town, as to gain the approbation of the best judges, to show his puppet-plays along with him, beginning in the christmas holidays next, at the old tennis-court, in james's-street, near the haymarket; where any incredulous persons may be satisfied he is not left this world, if they please to believe their hands, though they can't believe their eyes."--"may ," indeed, " , died mr. fawks, famous for his dexterity of hand, by which he had honestly acquired a fortune of , _l._ being no more than he really deserved for his great ingenuity, by which he had surpassed all that ever pretended to that art." this satirical performance of hogarth, however, was thought to be invented and drawn at the instigation of sir james thornhill, out of revenge, because lord burlington had preferred mr. kent before him to paint for the king at his palace at kensington. dr. faustus was a pantomime performed to crowded houses throughout two seasons, to the utter neglect of plays, for which reason they are cried about in a wheel-barrow. [illustration: masquerades and operas, burlington gate.] morning. keen blows the blast, and eager is the air; with flakes of feather'd snow the ground is spread; to step, with mincing pace, to early prayer, our clay-cold vestal leaves her downy bed. and here the reeling sons of riot see, after a night of senseless revelry. poor, trembling, old, her suit the beggar plies; but frozen chastity the little boon denies. this withered representative of miss bridget alworthy, with a shivering foot-boy carrying her prayer-book, never fails in her attendance at morning service. she is a symbol of the season.-- -------------chaste as the icicle that's curdled by the frost from purest snow, and hangs on dian's temple she looks with scowling eye, and all the conscious pride of severe and stubborn virginity, on the poor girls who are suffering the embraces of two drunken beaux that are just staggered out of tom king's coffee-house. one of them, from the basket on her arm, i conjecture to be an orange girl: she shows no displeasure at the boisterous salute of her hibernian lover. that the hero in a laced hat is from the banks of the shannon, is apparent in his countenance. the female whose face is partly concealed, and whose neck has a more easy turn than we always see in the works of this artist, is not formed of the most inflexible materials. an old woman, seated upon a basket; the girl, warming her hands by a few withered sticks that are blazing on the ground, and a wretched mendicant,[ ] wrapped in a tattered and parti-coloured blanket, entreating charity from the rosy-fingered vestal who is going to church, complete the group. behind them, at the door of tom king's coffee-house, are a party engaged in a fray, likely to create business for both surgeon and magistrate: we discover swords and cudgels in the combatants' hands. on the opposite side of the print are two little schoolboys. that they have shining morning faces we cannot positively assert, but each has a satchel at his back, and according with the description given by the poet of nature, is creeping, like snail, unwillingly to school. the lantern appended to the woman who has a basket on her head, proves that these dispensers of the riches of pomona rise before the sun, and do part of their business by an artificial light. near her, that immediate descendant of paracelsus, dr. rock, is expatiating to an admiring audience, on the never-failing virtues of his wonder-working medicines. one hand holds a bottle of his miraculous panacea, and the other supports a board, on which is the king's arms, to indicate that his practice is sanctioned by royal letters patent. two porringers and a spoon, placed on the bottom of an inverted basket, intimate that the woman seated near them, is a vender of rice-milk, which was at that time brought into the market every morning. a fatigued porter leans on a rail; and a blind beggar is going towards the church: but whether he will become one of the congregation, or take his stand at the door, in the hope that religion may have warmed the hearts of its votaries to "pity the sorrows of a poor blind man," is uncertain. snow on the ground, and icicles hanging from the penthouse, exhibit a very chilling prospect; but, to dissipate the cold, there is happily a shop where spirituous liquors are sold _pro bono publico_, at a very little distance. a large pewter measure is placed upon a post before the door, and three of a smaller size hang over the window of the house. the character of the principal figure is admirably delineated. she is marked with that prim and awkward formality which generally accompanies her order, and is an exact type of a hard winter; for every part of her dress, except the flying lappets and apron, ruffled by the wind, is as rigidly precise as if it were frozen. it has been said that this incomparable figure was designed as the representative of either a particular friend, or a relation. individual satire may be very gratifying to the public, but is frequently fatal to the satirist. churchill, by the lines, ----------------fam'd vine-street, where heaven, the kindest wish of man to grant, gave me an old house, and an older aunt, lost a considerable legacy; and it is related that hogarth, by the introduction of this withered votary of diana into this print, induced her to alter a will which had been made considerably in his favour: she was at first well enough satisfied with her resemblance, but some designing people taught her to be angry. extreme cold is very well expressed in the slip-shod footboy, and the girl who is warming her hands. the group of which she is a part, is well formed, but not sufficiently balanced on the opposite side. the church dial, a few minutes before seven; marks of little shoes and pattens in the snow, and various productions of the season in the market, are an additional proof of that minute accuracy with which this artist inspected and represented objects, which painters in general have neglected. govent garden is the scene, but in the print every building is reversed. this was a common error with hogarth; not from his being ignorant of the use of the mirror, but from his considering it as a matter of little consequence. footnote: [ ] "what signifies," says some one to dr. johnson, "giving halfpence to common beggars? they only lay them out in gin or tobacco." "and why," replied the doctor, "should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence? it is surely very savage to shut out from them every possible avenue to those pleasures reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. life is a pill which none of us can swallow without gilding, yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still more bare, and are not ashamed to show even visible marks of displeasure, if even the bitter taste is taken from their mouths." [illustration: morning.] noon. hail, gallia's daughters! easy, brisk, and free; good humour'd, _débonnaire_, and _dégagée_: though still fantastic, frivolous, and vain, let not their airs and graces give us pain: or fair, or brown, at toilet, prayer, or play, their motto speaks their manners--toujours gai. but for that powder'd compound of grimace, that capering he-she thing of fringe and lace; with sword and cane, with bag and solitaire, vain of the full-dress'd dwarf, his hopeful heir, how does our spleen and indignation rise, when such a tinsell'd coxcomb meets our eyes, among the figures who are coming out of church, an affected, flighty frenchwoman, with her fluttering fop of a husband, and a boy, habited _à -la-mode de paris_, claim our first attention. in dress, air, and manner, they have a national character. the whole congregation, whether male or female, old or young, carry the air of their country in countenance, dress, and deportment. like the three principal figures, they are all marked with some affected peculiarity. affectation, in a woman, is supportable upon no other ground than that general indulgence we pay to the omnipotence of beauty, which in a degree sanctifies whatever it adopts. in a boy, when we consider that the poor fellow is attempting to copy what he has been taught to believe praiseworthy, we laugh at it; the largest portion of ridicule falls upon his tutors; but in a man, it is contemptible! the old fellow, in a black periwig, has a most vinegar-like aspect, and looks with great contempt at the frippery gentlewoman immediately before him. the woman, with a demure countenance, seems very piously considering how she can contrive to pick the embroidered beau's pocket. two old sybils joining their withered lips in a chaste salute, is nauseous enough, but, being a national custom, must be forgiven. the divine seems to have resided in this kingdom long enough to acquire a roast-beef countenance. a little boy, whose woollen nightcap is pressed over a most venerable flowing periwig, and the decrepit old man, leaning upon a crutch-stick, who is walking before him, "i once considered," says mr. ireland, "as two vile caricatures, out of nature, and unworthy the artist. since i have seen the peasantry of flanders, and the plebeian youth of france, i have in some degree changed my opinion, but still think them rather _outré_." under a sign of the baptist's head is written, good eating; and on each side of the inscription is a mutton chop. in opposition to this head without a body, unaccountably displayed as a sign at an eating-house, there is a body without a head, hanging out as the sign of a distiller's. this, by common consent, has been quaintly denominated the good woman. at a window above, one of the softer sex proves her indisputable right to the title by her temperate conduct to her husband, with whom having had a little disagreement, she throws their sunday's dinner into the street. a girl, bringing a pie from the bakehouse, is stopped in her career by the rude embraces of a blackamoor, who eagerly rubs his sable visage against her blooming cheek. good eating is carried on to the lower part of the picture. a boy, placing a baked pudding upon a post, with rather too violent an action, the dish breaks, the fragments fall to the ground, and while he is loudly lamenting his misfortune, and with tears anticipating his punishment, the smoking remnants are eagerly snatched up by a poor girl. not educated according to the system of jean jacques rousseau, she feels no qualms of conscience about the original proprietor, and, destitute of that fastidious delicacy which destroys the relish of many a fine lady, eagerly swallows the hot and delicious morsels, with all the concomitants. the scene is laid at the door of a french chapel in hog-lane; a part of the town at that time almost wholly peopled by french refugees, or their descendants. by the dial of st. giles's church, in the distance, we see that it is only half past eleven. at this early hour, in those good times, there was as much good eating as there is now at six o'clock in the evening. from twenty pewter measures, which are hung up before the houses of different distillers, it seems that good drinking was considered as equally worthy of their serious attention. the dead cat, and choked kennels, mark the little attention shown to the streets by the scavengers of st. giles's. at that time noxious effluvia was not peculiar to this parish. the neighbourhood of fleet-ditch, and many other parts of the city, were equally polluted. even at this refined period, there would be some use in a more strict attention to the medical police of a city so crowded with inhabitants. we ridicule the people of paris and edinburgh for neglecting so essential and salutary a branch of delicacy, while the kennels of a street in the vicinity of st. paul's church are floated with the blood of slaughtered animals every market-day. moses would have managed these things better: but in those days there was no physician in israel! [illustration: noon.] evening. one sultry sunday, when no cooling breeze was borne on zephyr's wing, to fan the trees; one sultry sunday, when the torrid ray o'er nature beam'd intolerable day; when raging sirius warn'd us not to roam, and galen's sons prescrib'd cool draughts at home; one sultry sunday, near those fields of fame where weavers dwell, and spital is their name, a sober wight, of reputation high for tints that emulate the tyrian dye, wishing to take his afternoon's repose, in easy chair had just began to doze, when, in a voice that sleep's soft slumbers broke, his oily helpmate thus her wishes spoke: "why, spouse, for shame! my stars, what's this about? you's ever sleeping; come, we'll all go out; at that there garden, pr'ythee, do not stare! we'll take a mouthful of the country air; in the yew bower an hour or two we'll kill; there you may smoke, and drink what punch you will. sophy and billy each shall walk with me, and you must carry little emily. veny is sick, and pants, and loathes her food; the grass will do the pretty creature good. hot rolls are ready as the clock strikes five-- and now 'tis after four, as i'm alive!" the mandate issued, see the tour begun, and all the flock set out for islington. now the broad sun, refulgent lamp of day, to rest with thetis, slopes his western way; o'er every tree embrowning dust is spread, and tipt with gold is hampstead's lofty head. the passive husband, in his nature mild, to wife consigns his hat, and takes the child; but she a day like this hath never felt, "oh! that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew." such monstrous heat! dear me! she never knew. adown her innocent and beauteous face, the big, round, pearly drops each other chase; thence trickling to those hills, erst white as snow, that now like Ã�tna's mighty mountains glow, they hang like dewdrops on the full blown rose, and to the ambient air their sweets disclose. fever'd with pleasure, thus she drags along; nor dares her antler'd husband say 'tis wrong. the blooming offspring of this blissful pair, in all their parents' attic pleasures share. sophy the soft, the mother's earliest joy, demands her froward brother's tinsell'd toy; but he, enrag'd, denies the glittering prize, and rends the air with loud and piteous cries. thus far we see the party on their way-- what dire disasters mark'd the close of day, 'twere tedious, tiresome, endless to obtrude; imagination must the scene conclude. it is not easy to imagine fatigue better delineated than in the appearance of this amiable pair. in a few of the earliest impressions, mr. hogarth printed the hands of the man in blue, to show that he was a dyer, and the face and neck of the woman in red, to intimate her extreme heat. the lady's aspect lets us at once into her character; we are certain that she was born to command. as to her husband, god made him, and he must pass for a man: what his wife has made him, is indicated by the cow's horns; which are so placed as to become his own. the hopes of the family, with a cockade in his hat, and riding upon papa's cane, seems much dissatisfied with female sway. a face with more of the shrew in embryo than that of the girl, it is scarcely possible to conceive. upon such a character the most casual observer pronounces with the decision of a lavater. nothing can be better imagined than the group in the alehouse. they have taken a refreshing walk into the country, and, being determined to have a cooling pipe, seat themselves in a chair-lumbered closet, with a low ceiling; where every man, pulling off his wig, and throwing a pocket-handkerchief over his head, inhales the fumes of hot punch, the smoke of half a dozen pipes, and the dust from the road. if this is not rural felicity, what is? the old gentleman in a black bag-wig, and the two women near him, sensibly enough, take their seats in the open air. from a woman milking a cow, we conjecture the hour to be about five in the afternoon: and, from the same circumstance, i am inclined to think this agreeable party is going to their pastoral bower, rather than returning from it. the cow and dog appear as much inconvenienced by heat as any of the party: the former is whisking off the flies; and the latter creeps unwillingly along, and casts a longing look at the crystal river, in which he sees his own shadow. a remarkably hot summer is intimated by the luxuriant state of a vine, creeping over an alehouse window. on the side of the new river, where the scene is laid, lies one of the wooden pipes employed in the water-works. opposite sadler's wells there still remains the sign of sir hugh middleton's head, which is here represented; but how changed the scene from what is here represented! [illustration: evening.] night. now burst the blazing bonfires on the sight, through the wide air their corruscations play; the windows beam with artificial light, and all the region emulates the day. the moping mason, from yon tavern led, in mystic words doth to the moon complain that unsound port distracts his aching head, and o'er the waiter waves his clouded cane. mr. walpole very truly observes, that this print is inferior to the three others; there is, however, broad humour in some of the figures. the wounded free-mason, who, in zeal of brotherly love, has drank his bumpers to the craft till he is unable to find his way home, is under the guidance of a waiter. this has been generally considered as intended for sir thomas de veil, and, from an authenticated portrait which i have seen, i am, says mr. ireland, inclined to think it is, notwithstanding sir john hawkins asserts, that "he could discover no resemblance." when the knight saw him in his magisterial capacity, he was probably sober and sedate; here he is represented a little disguised. the british xantippe showering her favours from the window upon his head, may have its source in that respect which the inmates of such houses as the rummer tavern had for a justice of peace. on the resignation of mr. horace walpole, in february, , de veil was appointed inspector-general of the imports and exports, and was so severe against the retailers of spirituous liquors, that one allen headed a gang of rioters for the purpose of pulling down his house, and bringing to a summary punishment two informers who were there concealed. allen was tried for this offence, and acquitted, upon the jury's verdict declaring him lunatic. the waiter who supports his worship, seems, from the patch upon his forehead, to have been in a recent affray; but what use he can have for a lantern, it is not easy to divine, unless he is conducting his charge to some place where there is neither moonlight nor illumination. the salisbury flying coach oversetting and broken, by passing through the bonfire, is said to be an intended burlesque upon a right honourable peer, who was accustomed to drive his own carriage over hedges, ditches, and rivers; and has been sometimes known to drive three or four of his maid servants into a deep water, and there leave them in the coach to shift for themselves. the butcher, and little fellow, who are assisting the terrified passengers, are possibly free and accepted masons. one of them seems to have a mop in his hand;--the pail is out of sight. to crown the joys of the populace, a man with a pipe in his mouth is filling a capacious hogshead with british burgundy. the joint operation of shaving and bleeding, performed by a drunken 'prentice on a greasy oilman, does not seen a very natural exhibition on a rejoicing night. the poor wretches under the barber's bench display a prospect of penury and wretchedness, which it is to be hoped is not so common now, as it was then. in the distance is a cart laden with furniture, which some unfortunate tenant is removing out of the reach of his landlord's execution. there is humour in the barber's sign and inscription; "shaving, bleeding, and teeth drawn with a touch. ecce signum!" by the oaken boughs on the sign, and the oak leaves in the free-masons' hats, it seems that this rejoicing night is the twenty-ninth of may, the anniversary of our second charles's restoration; that happy day when, according to our old ballad, "the king enjoyed his own again." this might be one reason for the artist choosing a scene contiguous to the beautiful equestrian statue of charles the first. in the distance we see a house on fire; an accident very likely to happen on such a night as this. on this spot once stood the cross erected by edward the first, as a memorial of affection for his beloved queen eleanor, whose remains were here rested on their way to the place of sepulture. it was formed from a design by cavalini, and destroyed by the religious fury of the reformers. in its place, in the year , was erected the animated equestrian statue which now remains. it was cast in brass, in the year , by le soeur; i think by order of that munificent encourager of the arts, thomas howard, earl of arundel. the parliament ordered it to be sold, and broken to pieces; but john river, the brazier who purchased it, having more taste than his employers, seeing, with the prophetic eye of good sense, that the powers which were would not remain rulers very long, dug a hole in his garden in holborn, and buried it unmutilated. to prove his obedience to their order, he produced to his masters several pieces of brass, which he told them were parts of the statue. m. de archenholtz adds further, that the brazier, with the true spirit of trade, cast a great number of handles for knives and forks, and offered them for sale, as composed of the brass which had formed the statue. they were eagerly sought for, and purchased,--by the loyalists from affection to their murdered monarch,--by the other party, as trophies of triumph. the original pictures of morning and noon were sold to the duke of ancaster for fifty-seven guineas; evening and night to sir william heathcote, for sixty-four guineas. [illustration: night.] sigismonda ----------------let the picture rust, perhaps time's price-enhancing dust,-- as statues moulder into earth, when i'm no more, may mark its worth; and future connoisseurs may rise, honest as ours, and full as wise, to puff the piece, and painter too, and make me then what guido's now. hogarth's epistle. a competition with either guido, or furino, would to any modern painter be an enterprise of danger: to hogarth it was more peculiarly so, from the public justly conceiving that the representation of elevated distress was not his _forte_, and his being surrounded by an host of foes, who either dreaded satire, or envied genius. the connoisseurs, considering the challenge as too insolent to be forgiven, before his picture appeared, determined to decry it. the painters rejoiced in his attempting what was likely to end in disgrace; and to satisfy those who had formed their ideas of sigismonda upon the inspired page of dryden, was no easy task. the bard has consecrated the character, and his heroine glitters with a brightness that cannot be transferred to the canvass. mr. walpole's description, though equally radiant, is too various, for the utmost powers of the pencil. hogarth's sigismonda, as this gentleman poetically expresses it, "has none of the sober grief, no dignity of suppressed anguish, no involuntary tear, no settled meditation on the fate she meant to meet, no amorous warmth turned holy by despair; in short, all is wanting that should have been there, all is there that such a story would have banished from a mind capable of conceiving such complicated woe; woe so sternly felt, and yet so tenderly." this glowing picture presents to the mind a being whose contending passions may be felt, but were not delineated even by corregio. had his tints been aided by the grace and greatness of raphael, they must have failed. the author of the mysterious mother sought for sublimity, where the artist strictly copied nature, which was invariably his archetype, but which the painter, who soars into fancy's fairy regions, must in a degree desert. considered with this reference, though the picture has faults, mr. walpole's satire is surely too severe. it is built upon a comparison with works painted in a language of which hogarth knew not the idiom,--trying him before a tribunal, whose authority he did not acknowledge, and from the picture having been in many respects altered after the critic saw it, some of the remarks become unfair. to the frequency of these alterations we may attribute many of the errors: the man who has not confidence in his own knowledge of the leading principles on which his work ought to be built, will not render it perfect by following the advice of his friends. though messrs. wilkes and churchill dragged his heroine to the altar of politics, and mangled her with a barbarity that can hardly be paralleled, except in the history of her husband,--the artist retained his partiality; which seems to have increased in exact proportion to their abuse. the picture being thus contemplated through the medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder that all its imperfections were exaggerated. the painted harlot of babylon had not more opprobrious epithets from the first race of reformers than the painted sigismonda of hogarth from the last race of patriots. when a favourite child is chastised by his preceptor, a partial mother redoubles her caresses. hogarth, estimating this picture by the labour he had bestowed upon it, was certain that the public were prejudiced, and requested, if his wife survived him, she would not sell it for less than five hundred pounds. mrs. hogarth acted in conformity to his wishes, but after her death the painting was purchased by messrs. boydell, and exhibited in the shakspeare gallery. the colouring, though not brilliant, is harmonious and natural: the attitude, drawing, etc. may be generally conceived by the print. i am much inclined to think, that if some of those who have been most severe in their censures, had consulted their own feelings, instead of depending upon connoisseurs, poor sigismonda would have been in higher estimation. it has been said that the first sketch was made from mrs. hogarth, at the time she was weeping over the corse of her mother. hogarth once intended to have appealed from the critics' fiat to the world's opinion, and employed mr. basire to make an engraving, which was begun, but set aside for some other work, and never completed. [illustration: sigismonda, with the heart of her husband.] martin folkes, esq. martin folkes was a mathematician and antiquary of much celebrity in the philosophical annals of this country. he was at the early age of twenty-four admitted a member of the royal society, where he was greatly distinguished. two years afterwards he was chosen one of the council, and was named by sir isaac newton himself as vice president: he was afterwards elected president, and held this high office till a short time before his death, when he resigned it on account of ill-health. in the philosophical transactions are numerous memoirs of this learned man: his knowledge in coins, ancient and modern, was very extensive: and the last work he produced was concerning the english silver coin from the conquest to his own time. he was president of the society of antiquaries at the time of his death, which happened on the th of june, , at the age of sixty-four. a few days before his death he was struck with a fit of the palsy, and never spoke after this attack. [illustration: portrait of martin folkes, esq.] the cockpit. the scene is probably laid at newmarket, and in this motley group of peers,--pick-pockets,--butchers,--jockies,--rat-catchers,--gentlemen, --gamblers of every denomination, lord albemarle bertie, being the principal figure, is entitled to precedence. in the march to finchley, we see him an attendant at a boxing match; and here he is president of a most respectable society assembled at a cockpit. what rendered his lordship's passion for amusements of this nature very singular, was his being totally blind. in this place he is beset by seven steady friends, five of whom at the same instant offer to bet with him on the event of the battle. one of them, a lineal descendant of filch, taking advantage of his blindness and negligence, endeavours to convey a bank note, deposited in our dignified gambler's hat, to his own pocket. of this ungentlemanlike attempt his lordship is apprised by a ragged post-boy, and an honest butcher: but he is so much engaged in the pronunciation of those important words, done! done! done! done! and the arrangement of his bets, that he cannot attend to their hints; and it seems more than probable that the stock will be transferred, and the note negociated in a few seconds. a very curious group surround the old nobleman, who is adorned with a riband, a star, and a pair of spectacles. the whole weight of an overgrown carpenter being laid upon his shoulder, forces our illustrious personage upon a man beneath; who being thus driven downward, falls upon a fourth, and the fourth, by the accumulated pressure of this ponderous trio, composed of the upper and lower house, loses his balance, and tumbling against the edge of the partition, his head is broke, and his wig, shook from the seat of reason, falls into the cockpit. a man adjoining enters into the spirit of the battle,--his whole soul is engaged. from his distorted countenance, and clasped hands, we see that he feels every stroke given to his favourite bird in his heart's core,--ay, in his heart of hearts! a person at the old peer's left hand is likely to be a loser. ill-humour, vexation, and disappointment are painted in his countenance. the chimney-sweeper above, is the very quintessence of affectation. he has all the airs and graces of a boarding-school miss. the sanctified quaker adjoining, and the fellow beneath, who, by the way, is a very similar figure to captain stab, in the rake's progress, are finely contrasted. a french marquis on the other side, astonished at this being called amusement, is exclaiming sauvages! sauvages! sauvages!--engrossed by the scene, and opening his snuff-box rather carelessly, its contents fall into the eyes of a man below, who, sneezing and swearing alternately, imprecates bitter curses on this devil's dust, that extorts from his inflamed eyes, "a sea of melting pearls, which some call tears." adjoining is an old cripple, with a trumpet at his ear, and in this trumpet a person in a bag-wig roars in a manner that cannot much gratify the auricular nerves of his companions; but as for the object to whom the voice is directed, he seems totally insensible to sounds, and if judgment can be formed from appearances, might very composedly stand close to the clock of st. paul's cathedral, when it was striking twelve. the figure with a cock peeping out of a bag, is said to be intended for jackson, a jockey; the gravity of this experienced veteran, and the cool sedateness of a man registering the wagers, are well opposed by the grinning woman behind, and the heated impetuosity of a fellow, stripped to his shirt, throwing his coin upon the cockpit, and offering to back ginger against pye for a guinea. on the lower side, where there is only one tier of figures, a sort of an apothecary, and a jockey, are stretching out their arms, and striking together the handles of their whips, in token of a bet. an hiccuping votary of bacchus, displaying a half-emptied purse, is not likely to possess it long, for an adroit professor of legerdemain has taken aim with a hooked stick, and by one slight jerk, will convey it to his own pocket. the profession of a gentleman in a round wig is determined by a gibbet chalked upon his coat. an enraged barber, who lifts up his stick in the corner, has probably been refused payment of a wager, by the man at whom he is striking. a cloud-capt philosopher at the top of the print, coolly smoking his pipe, unmoved by this crash of matter, and wreck of property, must not be overlooked: neither should his dog be neglected; for the dog, gravely resting his fore paws upon the partition, and contemplating the company, seems more interested in the event of the battle than his master. like the tremendous gog, and terrific magog, of guildhall, stand the two cock-feeders; a foot of each of these consequential purveyors is seen at the two extremities of the pit. as to the birds, whose attractive powers have drawn this admiring throng together, they deserved earlier notice: each hero burns to conquer or to die, what mighty hearts in little bosoms lie! having disposed of the substances, let us now attend to the shadow on the cockpit, and this it seems is the reflection of a man drawn up to the ceiling in a basket, and there suspended, as a punishment for having betted more money than he can pay. though suspended, he is not reclaimed; though exposed, not abashed; for in this degrading situation he offers to stake his watch against money, in another wager on his favourite champion. the decorations of this curious theatre are, a portrait of nan rawlins, and the king's arms. in the margin at the bottom of the print is an oval, with a fighting cock, inscribed royal sport. of the characteristic distinctions in this heterogeneous assembly, it is not easy to speak with sufficient praise. the chimney-sweeper's absurd affectation sets the similar airs of the frenchman in a most ridiculous point of view. the old fellow with a trumpet at his ear, has a degree of deafness that i never before saw delineated; he might have lived in the same apartment with xantippe, or slept comfortably in alexander the copper-smith's first floor. as to the nobleman in the centre, in the language of the turf, he is a mere pigeon; and the peer, with a star and garter, in the language of cambridge, we must class as--a mere quiz. the man sneezing,--you absolutely hear; and the fellow stealing a bank note,--has all the outward and visible marks of a perfect and accomplished pick-pocket; mercury himself could not do that business in a more masterly style. tyers tells us that "pope, while living with his father at chiswick, before he went to binfield, took great delight in cock-fighting, and laid out all his school-boy money, and little perhaps it was, in buying fighting cocks." lord orrery observes, "if we may judge of mr. pope from his works, his chief aim was to be esteemed a man of virtue." when actions can be clearly ascertained, it is not necessary to seek the mind's construction in the writings: and we must regret being compelled to believe that some of mr. pope's actions, at the same time that they prove him to be querulous and petulant, lead us to suspect that he was also envious, malignant, and cruel. how far this will tend to confirm the assertion, that when a boy, he was an amateur of this royal sport, i do, says mr. ireland, not pretend to decide: but were a child, in whom i had any interest, cursed with such a propensity, my first object would be to correct it: if that were impracticable, and he retained a fondness for the cockpit, and the still more detestable amusement of shrove tuesday, i should hardly dare to flatter myself that he could become a merciful man.--the subject has carried me farther than i intended: i will, however, take the freedom of proposing one query to the consideration of the clergy,--might it not have a tendency to check that barbarous spirit, which has more frequently its source in an early acquired habit, arising from the prevalence of example, than in natural depravity, if every divine in great britain were to preach at least one sermon every twelve months, on our universal insensibility to the sufferings of the brute creation? wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods, draw near them then in being merciful; sweet mercy is nobility's true badge. [illustration: the cock pit.] captain thomas coram. captain coram was born in the year , bred to the sea, and passed the first part of his life as master of a vessel trading to the colonies. while he resided in the vicinity of rotherhithe, his avocations obliging him to go early into the city and return late, he frequently saw deserted infants exposed to the inclemencies of the seasons, and through the indigence or cruelty of their parents left to casual relief, or untimely death. this naturally excited his compassion, and led him to project the establishment of an hospital for the reception of exposed and deserted young children; in which humane design he laboured more than seventeen years, and at last, by his unwearied application, obtained the royal charter, bearing date the th of october, , for its incorporation. he was highly instrumental in promoting another good design, viz. the procuring a bounty upon naval stores imported from the colonies to georgia and nova scotia. but the charitable plan which he lived to make some progress in, though not to complete, was a scheme for uniting the indians in north america more closely with the british government, by an establishment for the education of indian girls. indeed he spent a great part of his life in serving the public, and with so total a disregard to his private interest, that in his old age he was himself supported by a pension of somewhat more than a hundred pounds a year, raised for him at the solicitation of sir sampson gideon and dr. brocklesby, by the voluntary subscriptions of public-spirited persons, at the head of whom was the prince of wales. on application being made to this venerable and good old man, to know whether a subscription being opened for his benefit would not offend him, he gave this noble answer: "i have not wasted the little wealth of which i was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expenses, and am not ashamed to confess, that in this my old age i am poor." this singularly humane, persevering, and memorable man died at his lodgings near leicester-square, march , , and was interred, pursuant to his own desire, in the vault under the chapel of the foundling hospital, where an historic epitaph records his virtues, as hogarth's portrait has preserved his honest countenance. "the portrait which i painted with most pleasure," says hogarth, "and in which i particularly wished to excel, was that of captain coram for the foundling hospital; and if i am so wretched an artist as my enemies assert, it is somewhat strange that this, which was one of the first i painted the size of life, should stand the test of twenty years' competition, and be generally thought the best portrait in the place, notwithstanding the first painters in the kingdom exerted all their talents to vie with it. "for the portrait of mr. garrick in richard iii. i was paid two hundred pounds, (which was more than any english artist ever received for a single portrait,) and that too by the sanction of several painters who had been previously consulted about the price, which was not given without mature consideration. "notwithstanding all this, the current remark was, that portraits were not my province; and i was tempted to abandon the only lucrative branch of my art, for the practice brought the whole nest of phyzmongers on my back, where they buzzed like so many hornets. all these people have their friends, whom they incessantly teach to call my women harlots, my essay on beauty borrowed, and my composition and engraving contemptible. "this so much disgusted me, that i sometimes declared i would never paint another portrait, and frequently refused when applied to; for i found by mortifying experience, that whoever would succeed in this branch, must adopt the mode recommended in one of gay's fables, and make divinities of all who sit to him. whether or not this childish affectation will ever be done away is a doubtful question; none of those who have attempted to reform it have yet succeeded; nor, unless portrait painters in general become more honest, and their customers less vain, is there much reason to expect they ever will." though thus in a state of warfare with his brother artists, he was occasionally gratified by the praise of men whose judgment was universally acknowledged, and whose sanction became a higher honour, from its being neither lightly nor indiscriminately given. [illustration: captain thomas coram.] the country inn yard; or, the stage coach. the poet's adage, all the world's a stage, has stood the test of each revolving age; another simile perhaps will bear, 'tis a stage coach, where all must pay the fare; where each his entrance and his exit makes, and o'er life's rugged road his journey takes. some unprotected must their tour perform, and bide the pelting of the pitiless storm; while others, free from elemental jars, by fortune favour'd and propitious stars, secure from storms, enjoy their little hour, despise the whirlwind, and defy the shower. such is our life--in sunshine or in shade, from evil shelter'd, or by woe assay'd: whether we sit, like niobe, all tears, or calmly sink into the vale of years; with houseless, naked edgar sleep on straw, or keep, like cæsar, subject worlds in awe-- to the same port our devious journeys tend, where airy hopes and sickening sorrows end; sunk every eye, and languid every breast, each wearied pilgrim sighs and sinks to rest. e. among the writers of english novels, henry fielding holds the first rank; he was the novelist of nature, and has described some scenes which bear a strong resemblance to that which is here delineated. the artist, like the author, has taken truth for his guide, and given such characters as are familiar to all our minds. the scene is a country inn yard, at the time passengers are getting into a stage-coach, and an election procession passing in the back-ground. nothing can be better described; we become of the party. the vulgar roar of our landlady is no less apparent than the grave, insinuating, imposing countenance of mine host. boniface solemnly protests that a bill he is presenting to an old gentleman in a laced hat is extremely moderate. this does not satisfy the paymaster, whose countenance shows that he considers it as a palpable fraud, though the act against bribery, which he carries in his pocket, designates him to be of a profession not very liable to suffer imposition. they are in general less sinned against than sinning. an ancient lady, getting into the coach, is from her breadth a very inconvenient companion in such a vehicle; but to atone for her rotundity, an old maid of a spare appearance, and in a most grotesque habit, is advancing towards the steps. a portly gentleman, with a sword and cane in one hand, is deaf to the entreaties of a poor little deformed postilion, who solicits his customary fee. the old woman smoking her short pipe in the basket, pays very little attention to what is passing around her: cheered by the fumes of her tube, she lets the vanities of the world go their own way. two passengers on the roof of the coach afford a good specimen of french and english manners. ben block, of the centurion, surveys the subject of la grande monarque with ineffable contempt. in the window are a very curious pair; one of them blowing a french-horn, and the other endeavouring, but without effect, to smoke away a little sickness, which he feels from the fumes of his last night's punch. beneath them is a traveller taking a tender farewell of the chambermaid, who is not to be moved by the clangour of the great bar bell, or the more thundering sound of her mistress's voice. the back-ground is crowded with a procession of active citizens; they have chaired a figure with a horn-book, a bib, and a rattle, intended to represent child, lord castlemain, afterwards lord tylney, who, in a violent contest for the county of essex, opposed sir robert abdy and mr. bramston. the horn-book, bib, and rattle are evidently displayed as punningly allusive to his name.[ ] some pains have been taken to discover in what part of essex this scene is laid; but from the many alterations made by rebuilding, removal, &c. it has not been positively ascertained, though it is probably chelmsford. [illustration: country inn yard.] footnote: [ ] at this election a man was placed on a bulk, with a figure representing a child in his arms: as he whipped it he exclaimed, "what, you little child, must you be a member?" this election being disputed, it appeared from the register-book of the parish where lord castlemain was born, that he was but twenty years of age when he offered himself a candidate. industry and idleness. as our future welfare depends, in a great measure, on our own conduct in the outset of life, and as we derive our best expectations of success from our own attention and exertion, it may, with propriety, be asserted, that the good or ill-fortune of mankind is chiefly attributable to their own early diligence or sloth; either of which becomes, through habit in the early part of life, both familiar and natural. this mr. hogarth has made appear in the following history of the two apprentices, by representing a series of such scenes as naturally result from a course of industry or idleness, and which he has illustrated with such texts of scripture as teach us their analogy with holy writ. now, as example is far more convincing and persuasive than precept, these prints are, undoubtedly, an excellent lesson to such young men as are brought up to business, by laying before them the inevitable destruction that awaits the slothful, and the reward that generally attends the diligent, both appropriately exemplified in the conduct of these two fellow-'prentices; where the one, by taking good courses, and pursuing those purposes for which he was put apprentice, becomes a valuable man, and an ornament to his country; the other, by giving way to idleness, naturally falls into poverty, and ends fatally, as shown in the last of these instructive prints. in the chamber of the city of london, where apprentices are bound and enrolled, the twelve prints of this series are introduced, and, with great propriety, ornament the room. plate i. the fellow-'prentices at their looms. "the drunkard shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags." proverbs, chap. xxiii. verse . "the hand of the diligent maketh rich."--proverbs, chap. x. verse . the first print presents us with a noble and striking contrast in two apprentices at the looms of their master, a silk-weaver of spitalfields: in the one we observe a serene and open countenance, the distinguishing mark of innocence; and in the other a sullen, down-cast look, the index of a corrupt mind and vicious heart. the industrious youth is diligently employed at his work, and his thoughts taken up with the business he is upon. his book, called the "'prentice's guide," supposed to be given him for instruction, lies open beside him, as if perused with care and attention. the employment of the day seems his constant study; and the interest of his master his continual regard. we are given to understand, also, by the ballads of the london 'prentice, whittingham the mayor, &c. that hang behind him, that he lays out his pence on things that may improve his mind, and enlighten his understanding. on the contrary, his fellow-'prentice, with worn-out coat and uncombed hair, overpowered with beer, indicated by the half-gallon pot before him, is fallen asleep; and from the shuttle becoming the plaything of the wanton kitten, we learn how he slumbers on, inattentive alike to his own and his master's interest. the ballad of moll flanders, on the wall behind him, shows that the bent of his mind is towards that which is bad; and his book of instructions lying torn and defaced upon the ground, manifests how regardless he is of any thing tending to his future welfare. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the fellow 'prentices at their looms.] plate ii. the industrious 'prentice performing the duty of a christian. "o how i love thy law; it is my meditation all the day."--psalm cxix. verse . this plate displays our industrious young man attending divine service in the same pew with his master's daughter, where he shows every mark of decent and devout attention. mr. hogarth's strong bias to burlesque was not to be checked by time or place. it is not easy to imagine any thing more whimsically grotesque than the female falstaff. a fellow near her, emulating the deep-toned organ, and the man beneath, who, though asleep, joins his sonorous tones in melodious chorus with the admirers of those two pre-eminent poets, hopkins and sternhold. the pew-opener is a very prominent and principal figure; two old women adjoining miss west's seat are so much in shadow, that we are apt to overlook them: they are, however, all three making the dome ring with their exertions. ah! had it been king david's fate to hear them sing---- the preacher, reader, and clerk, with many of the small figures in the gallery and beneath, are truly ludicrous, and we regret their being on so reduced a scale, that they are scarce perceptible to the naked eye. it was necessary that the artist should exhibit a crowded congregation; but it must be acknowledged he has neglected the rules of perspective. the print wants depth. in the countenance of miss west and her lover there is a resemblance. their faces have not much expression; but this is atoned for by a natural and pleasing simplicity. character was not necessary. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice performing the duty of a christian.] industry and idleness. plate iii. the idle 'prentice at play in the church-yard during divine service. "judgments are prepared for scorners, and stripes for the back of fools." proverbs, chap. xix. verse . as a contrast to the preceding plate, of the industrious young man performing the duties of a christian, is this, representing the idle 'prentice at play in the church-yard during divine service. as an observance of religion is allowed to be the foundation of virtue, so a neglect of religious duties has ever been acknowledged the forerunner of every wickedness; the confession of malefactors at the place of execution being a melancholy confirmation of this truth. here we see him, while others are intent on the holy service, transgressing the laws both of god and man, gambling on a tomb-stone with the off-scouring of the people, the meanest of the human species, shoe-blacks, chimney-sweepers, &c. for none but such would deign to be his companions. their amusement seems to be the favourite old english game of hustle-cap, and our idle and unprincipled youth is endeavouring to cheat, by concealing some of the half-pence under the broad brim of his hat. this is perceived by the shoe-black, and warmly resented by the fellow with the black patch over his eye, who loudly insists on the hat's being fairly removed. the eager anxiety which marks these mean gamblers, is equal to that of two peers playing for an estate. the latter could not have more solicitude for the turn of a die which was to determine who was the proprietor of ten thousand acres, than is displayed in the countenance of young idle. indeed, so callous is his heart, so wilfully blind is he to every thing tending to his future welfare, that the tombs, those standing monuments of mortality, cannot move him: even the new-dug grave, the sculls and bones, those lively and awakening monitors, cannot rouse him from his sinful lethargy, open his eyes, or pierce his heart with the least reflection; so hardened is he with vice, and so intent on the pursuit of his evil course. the hand of the boy, employed upon his head, and that of the shoe-black, in his bosom, are expressive of filth and vermin; and show that our hero is within a step of being overspread with the beggarly contagion. his obstinate continuance in his course, until awakened by the blows of the watchful beadle, point out to us, that "stripes are prepared for the backs of fools;" that disgrace and infamy are the natural attendants of the slothful and the scorner; and that there are but little hopes of his alteration, until he is overtaken in his iniquity, by the avenging hand of omnipotence, and feels with horror and amazement, the unexpected and inevitable approach of death. thus do the obstinate and incorrigible shut their ears against the alarming calls of providence, and sin away even the possibility of salvation. the figures in this print are admirably grouped, and the countenances of the gamblers and beadle strikingly characteristic. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the idle 'prentice at play in the church yard.] industry and idleness. plate iv. the industrious 'prentice a favourite and intrusted by his master. "well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, i will make thee ruler over many things." matthew, chap. xxv. verse . the industrious apprentice, by a discreet and steady conduct, attracts the notice of his master, and becomes a favourite: accordingly, we behold him here (exquisitely continued from the first and second prints) in the counting-house (with a distant view of the looms, and of the quilsters, winding quills for the shuttles, from whence he was removed) entrusted with the books, receiving and giving orders, (the general reward of honesty, care, and diligence,) as appears from the delivery of some stuffs by a city porter, from blackwell-hall. by the keys in one hand and the bag in the other, we are shown that he has behaved himself with so much prudence and discretion, and given such proofs of fidelity, as to become the keeper of untold gold: the greatest mark of confidence he could be favoured with. the integrity of his heart is visible in his face. the modesty and tranquillity of his countenance tell us, that though the great trust reposed in him is an addition to his happiness, yet, that he discharges his duty with such becoming diffidence and care, as not to betray any of that pride which attends so great a promotion. the familiar position of his master, leaning on his shoulder, is a further proof of his esteem, declaring that he dwells, as it were, in his bosom, and possesses the utmost share of his affection; circumstances that must sweeten even a state of servitude, and make a pleasant and lasting impression on the mind. the head-piece to the london almanack, representing industry taking time by the fore-lock, is not the least of the beauties in this plate, as it intimates the danger of delay, and advises us to make the best use of time, whilst we have it in our power; nor will the position of the gloves, on the flap of the escritoire, be unobserved by a curious examiner, being expressive of that union that subsists between an indulgent master and an industrious apprentice. the strong-beer nose and pimpled face of the porter, though they have no connexion with the moral of the piece, are a fine caricatura, and show that our author let slip no opportunity of ridiculing the vices and follies of the age, and particularly here, in laying before us the strange infatuation of this class of people, who, because a good deal of labour requires some extraordinary refreshment, will even drink to the deprivation of their reason, and the destruction of their health. the surly mastiff, keeping close to his master, and quarrelling with the house-cat for admittance, though introduced to fill up the piece, represents the faithfulness of these animals in general, and is no mean emblem of the honesty and fidelity of the porter. in this print, neither the cat, dog, nor the porter are well drawn, nor is much regard paid to perspective; but the general design is carried on by such easy and natural gradations, and the consequent success of an attentive conduct displayed in colours so plain and perspicuous, that these little errors in execution will readily be overlooked. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice a favourite, and entrusted by his master.] industry and idleness. plate v. the idle 'prentice turned away and sent to sea. "a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother." proverbs, chap. x. verse . corrupted by sloth and contaminated by evil company, the idle apprentice, having tired the patience of his master, is sent to sea, in the hope that the being removed from the vices of the town, and the influence of his wicked companions, joined with the hardships and perils of a seafaring life, might effect that reformation of which his friends despaired while he continued on shore. see him then in the ship's boat, accompanied by his afflicted mother, making towards the vessel in which he is to embark. the disposition of the different figures in the boat, and the expression of their countenances, tell us plainly, that his evil pursuits and incorrigible wickedness are the subjects of their discourse. the waterman significantly directs his attention to a figure on a gibbet, as emblematical of his future fate, should he not turn from the evil of his ways; and the boy shows him a cat-o'-nine-tails, expressive of the discipline that awaits him on board of ship; these admonitions, however, he notices only by the application of his fingers to his forehead, in the form of horns, jestingly telling them to look at cuckold's point, which they have just passed; he then throws his indentures into the water with an air of contempt, that proves how little he is affected by his present condition, and how little he regards the persuasions and tears of a fond mother, whose heart seems ready to burst with grief at the fate of her darling son, and perhaps her only stay; for her dress seems to intimate that she is a widow. well then might solomon say, that "a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother;" for we here behold her who had often rejoiced in the prospect of her child being a prop to her in the decline of life, lamenting his depravity, and anticipating with horror the termination of his evil course. one would naturally imagine, from the common course of things, that this scene would have awakened his reflection, and been the means of softening the ruggedness of his disposition,--that some tender ideas would have crossed his mind and melted the obduracy of his heart; but he continues hardened and callous to every admonition. the group of figures composing this print has been copied by the ingenious lavater; with whose appropriate remarks we conclude our present description. "observe," says this great analyst of the human countenance, "in the annexed group, that unnatural wretch, with the infernal visage, insulting his supplicating mother; the predominant character on the three other villain-faces, though all disfigured by effrontery, is cunning and ironical malignity. every face is a seal with this truth engraved on it: 'nothing makes a man so ugly as vice; nothing renders the countenance so hideous as villainy.'" [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the idle 'prentice turned away and sent to sea.] industry and idleness. plate vi. the industrious 'prentice out of his time, and married to his master's daughter. "the virtuous woman is a crown to her husband." proverbs, chap. xiii. verse . the reward of industry is success. our prudent and attentive youth is now become partner with his master, and married to his daughter. the sign, by which this circumstance is intimated, was at first inscribed goodchild and west. some of mr. hogarth's city friends informing him that it was usual for the senior partner's name to precede, it was altered. to show that plenty reigns in this mansion, a servant distributes the remains of the table to a poor woman, and the bridegroom pays one of the drummers, who, according to ancient custom, attend with their thundering gratulations the day after a wedding. a performer on the bass viol, and a herd of butchers armed with marrow-bones and cleavers, form an english concert. (madame pompadour, in her remarks on the english taste for music, says, they are invariably fond of every thing that is full in the mouth.) a cripple with the ballad of jesse, or the happy pair, represents a man known by the name of philip in the tub, who had visited ireland and the united provinces; and, in the memory of some persons now living, was a general attendant at weddings. from those votaries of hymen who were honoured with his epithalamiums, he received a small reward. to show that messrs. west and goodchild's habitation is near the monument, the base of that stately column appears in the back-ground. the inscription which until lately graced this structure, used to remind every reader of pope's lines, where london's column, pointing to the skies, like a tall bully, rears its head, and lies, &c. the duke of buckingham's epigram on this magnificent pillar is not so generally known: here stand i, the lord knows why; but if i fall-- have at ye all! a footman and butcher, at the opposite corner, compared with the other figures, are gigantic; they might serve for the gog and magog of guildhall. it has been said that the thoughts in this print are trite, and the actions mean, which must be in part acknowledged, but they are natural, and appropriate to the rank and situation of the parties, and to the fashions of the time at which it was published. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice out of his time & married to his master's daughter.] industry and idleness. plate vii. the idle 'prentice returned from sea, and in a garret with a common prostitute. "the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase him." leviticus, chap. xxvi. verse . the idle apprentice, as appears by this print, is advancing with rapid strides towards his fate. we are to suppose him returned from sea after a long voyage; and to have met with such correction abroad for his obstinacy, during his absence from england, that though it was found insufficient to alter his disposition, yet it determined him to pursue some other way of life; and what he entered on is here but too evident (from the pistols by the bed-side, and the trinkets his companion is examining, in order to strip him of) to be that of the highway. he is represented in a garret, with a common prostitute, the partaker of his infamy, awaking, after a night spent in robbery and plunder, from one of those broken slumbers which are ever the consequences of a life of dishonesty and debauchery. though the designs of providence are visible in every thing, yet they are never more conspicuous than in this,--that whatever these unhappy wretches possess by wicked and illegal means, they seldom comfortably enjoy. in this scene we have one of the finest pictures imaginable of the horrors of a guilty conscience. though the door is fastened in the strongest manner with a lock and two bolts, and with the addition of some planks from the flooring, so as to make his retreat as secure as possible; though he has attempted to drive away thought by the powerful effects of spirituous liquors, plain from the glass and bottle upon the floor, still he is not able to brave out his guilt, or steel his breast against reflection. behold him roused by the accidental circumstance of a cat's coming down the chimney, and the falling of a few bricks, which he believes to be the noise of his pursuers! observe his starting up in bed, and all the tortures of his mind imprinted in his face! he first stiffens into stone, then all his nerves and muscles relax, a cold sweat seizes him, his hair stands on end, his teeth chatter, and dismay and horror stalk before his eyes. how different is the countenance of his wretched bed-fellow! in whom unconcern and indifference to every thing but the plunder are plainly apparent. she is looking at an ear-ring, which, with two watches, an etwee, and a couple of rings, are spread upon the bed, as part of last night's plunder. the phials on the mantel-piece show that sickness and disease are ever attendant on prostitution; and the beggarly appearance of the room, its wretched furniture, the hole by way of window, (by the light of which she is examining her valuable acquisition, and against which she had hung her old hoop-petticoat in order to keep out the cold,) and the rat's running across the floor, are just and sufficient indications that misery and want are the constant companions of a guilty life. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the idle 'prentice returned from sea, and in the a garret with a prostitute.] industry and idleness. plate viii. the industrious 'prentice grown rich, and sheriff of london. 'with all thy gettings get understanding. exalt her and she shall promote thee; she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her.' proverbs, chap. iv. verse , . from industry become opulent, from integrity and punctuality respectable, our young merchant is now sheriff of london, and dining with the different companies in guildhall. a group on the left side are admirably characteristic; their whole souls seem absorbed in the pleasures of the table. a divine, true to his cloth, swallows his soup with the highest _goût_. not less gratified is the gentleman palating a glass of wine. the man in a black wig is a positive representative of famine; and the portly and oily citizen, with a napkin tucked in his button-hole, has evidently burnt his mouth by extreme eagerness. the backs of those in the distance, behung with bags, major perukes, pinners, &c. are most laughably ludicrous. every person present is so attentive to business, that one may fairly conclude they live to eat, rather than eat to live. but though this must be admitted to be the case with this party, the following instance of city temperance proves that there are some exceptions. when the lord mayor, sheriffs, aldermen, chamberlain, &c. of the city of london were once seated round the table at a public and splendid dinner at guildhall, mr. chamberlain wilkes lisped out, "mr. alderman b----, shall i help you to a plate of turtle, or a slice of the haunch,--i am within reach of both, sir?" "neither one nor t'other, i thank you, sir," replied the alderman, "i think i shall dine on the beans and bacon which are at this end of the table." "mr. alderman a----," continued the chamberlain, "which would you choose, sir?" "sir, i will not trouble you for either, for i believe i shall follow the example of my brother b----, and dine on beans and bacon," was the reply. on this second refusal the old chamberlain rose from his seat, and, with every mark of astonishment in his countenance, curled up the corners of his mouth, cast his eyes round the table, and in a voice as loud and articulate as he was able, called "silence!" which being obtained, he thus addressed the pretorian magistrate, who sat in the chair: "my lord mayor, the wicked have accused us of intemperance, and branded us with the imputation of gluttony; that they may be put to open shame, and their profane tongues be from this day utterly silenced, i humbly move, that your lordship command the proper officer to record in our annals, that two aldermen of the city of london prefer beans and bacon to either turtle soup or venison." notwithstanding all this, there are men, who, looking on the dark side, and perhaps rendered splenetic, and soured by not being invited to these sumptuous entertainments, have affected to fear, that their frequent repetition would have a tendency to produce a famine, or at least to check the increase, if not extirpate the species, of those birds, beasts, and fish, with which the tables of the rich are now so plentifully supplied. but these half reasoners do not take into their calculation the number of gentlemen so laudably associated for encouraging cattle being fed so fat that there is no lean left; or that more ancient association, sanctioned and supported by severe acts of parliament, for the preservation of the game. from the exertions of these and similar societies, we may reasonably hope there is no occasion to dread any such calamity taking place; though the guildhall tables often groaning under such hecatombs as are recorded in the following account, may make a man of weak nerves and strong digestion, shake his head, and shudder a little. "on the th october, , when george ii. and queen caroline honoured the city with their presence at guildhall, there were tables, covered with dishes. the whole expense of this entertainment to the city was _l._ _s._" to return to the print;--a self-sufficient and consequential beadle, reading the direction of a letter to francis goodchild, esq. sheriff of london, has all the insolence of office. the important and overbearing air of this dignified personage is well contrasted by the humble simplicity of the straight-haired messenger behind the bar. the gallery is well furnished with musicians busily employed in their vocation. music hath charms to sooth the savage breast, and therefore proper at a sheriff's feast. besides a portrait of william the third, and a judge, the hall is ornamented with a full length of that illustrious hero sir william walworth, in commemoration of whose valour the weapon with which he slew wat tyler was introduced into the city arms. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice grown rich, and sheriff of london.] industry and idleness. plate ix. the idle 'prentice betrayed by a prostitute, and taken in a night cellar with his accomplice. "the adulteress will hunt for precious life." proverbs, chap. vi. verse . from the picture of the reward of diligence, we return to take a further view of the progress of sloth and infamy; by following the idle 'prentice a step nearer to the approach of his unhappy end. we see him in the third plate herding with the worst of the human species, the very dregs of the people; one of his companions, at that time, being a one-eyed wretch, who seemed hackneyed in the ways of vice. to break this vile connexion he was sent to sea; but, no sooner did he return, than his wicked disposition took its natural course, and every day he lived served only to habituate him to acts of greater criminality. he presently discovered his old acquaintance, who, no doubt, rejoiced to find him so ripe for mischief: with this worthless, abandoned fellow, he enters into engagements of the worst kind, even those of robbery and murder. thus blindly will men sometimes run headlong to their own destruction. about the time when these plates were first published, which was in the year , there was a noted house in chick lane, smithfield, that went by the name of the blood-bowl house, so called from the numerous scenes of blood that were almost daily carried on there; it being a receptacle for prostitutes and thieves; where every species of delinquency was practised; and where, indeed, there seldom passed a month without the commission of some act of murder. to this subterraneous abode of iniquity (it being a cellar) was our hero soon introduced; where he is now represented in company with his accomplice, and others of the same stamp, having just committed a most horrid act of barbarity, (that of killing a passer-by, and conveying him into a place under ground, contrived for this purpose,) dividing among them the ill-gotten booty, which consists of two watches, a snuff-box, and some other trinkets. in the midst of this wickedness, he is betrayed by his strumpet (a proof of the treachery of such wretches) into the hands of the high constable and his attendants, who had, with better success than heretofore, traced him to this wretched haunt. the back-ground of this print serves rather as a representation of night-cellars in general, those infamous receptacles for the dissolute and abandoned of both sexes, than a further illustration of our artist's chief design; however, as it was mr. hogarth's intention, in the history before us, to encourage virtue and expose vice, by placing the one in an amiable light, and exhibiting the other in its most heightened scenes of wickedness and impiety, in hopes of deterring the half-depraved youth of this metropolis, from even the possibility of the commission of such actions, by frightening them from these abodes of wretchedness; as this was manifestly his intention, it cannot be deemed a deviation from the subject. by the skirmish behind, the woman without a nose, the scattered cards upon the floor, &c. we are shown that drunkenness and riot, disease, prostitution, and ruin are the dreadful attendants of sloth, and the general fore-runners of crimes of the deepest die; and by the halter suspended from the ceiling, over the head of the sleeper, we are to learn two things--the indifference of mankind, even in a state of danger, and the insecurity of guilt in every situation. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the idle 'prentice betrayed by a prostitute.] industry and idleness. plate x. the industrious 'prentice alderman of london; the idle one brought before him, and impeached by his accomplice. "thou shalt do no unrighteousness in judgment." leviticus, chap. xix. verse . "the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands." psalms, chap. ix. verse . imagine now this depraved and atrocious youth hand-cuffed, and dragged from his wicked haunt, through the streets to a place of security, amidst the scorn and contempt of a jeering populace; and thence brought before the sitting magistrate, (who, to heighten the scene and support the contrast, is supposed to be his fellow-'prentice, now chosen an alderman,) in order to be dealt with according to law. see him then at last having run his course of iniquity, fallen into the hands of justice, being betrayed by his accomplice; a further proof of the perfidy of man, when even partners in vice are unfaithful to each other. this is the only print among the set, excepting the first, where the two principal characters are introduced; in which mr. hogarth has shown his great abilities, as well in description, as in a particular attention to the uniformity and connexion of the whole. he is now at the bar, with all the marks of guilt imprinted on his face. how, if his fear will permit him to reflect, must he think on the happiness and exaltation of his fellow-'prentice on the one hand, and of his own misery and degradation on the other! at one instant, he condemns the persuasions of his wicked companions; at another, his own idleness and obstinacy: however, deeply smitten with his crime, he sues the magistrate, upon his knees, for mercy, and pleads in his cause the former acquaintance that subsisted between them, when they both dwelt beneath the same roof, and served the same common master: but here was no room for lenity, murder was his crime, and death must be his punishment; the proofs are incontestable, and his mittimus is ordered, which the clerk is drawing out. let us next turn our thoughts upon the alderman, in whose breast a struggle between mercy and justice is beautifully displayed. who can behold the magistrate, here, without praising the man? how fine is the painter's thoughts of reclining the head on one hand, while the other is extended to express the pity and shame he feels that human nature should be so depraved! it is not the golden chain or scarlet robe that constitutes the character, but the feelings of the heart. to show us that application for favour, by the ignorant, is often idly made to the servants of justice, who take upon themselves on that account a certain state and consequence, not inferior to magistracy, the mother of our delinquent is represented in the greatest distress, as making interest with the corpulent self-swoln constable, who with an unfeeling concern seems to say, "make yourself easy, for he must be hanged;" and to convince us that bribery will even find its way into courts of judicature, here is a woman feeing the swearing clerk, who has stuck his pen behind his ear that his hands might be both at liberty; and how much more his attention is engaged to the money he is taking, than to the administration of the oath, may be known from the ignorant, treacherous witness being suffered to lay his left hand upon the book; strongly expressive of the sacrifice, even of sacred things, to the inordinate thirst of gain. from newgate (the prison to which he was committed; where, during his continuance he lay chained in a dismal cell, deprived of the cheerfulness of light, fed upon bread and water, and left without a bed to rest on) the prisoner was removed to the bar of judgment, and condemned to die by the laws of his country. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice alderman of london. the idle one impeached before him by his accomplice.] industry and idleness. plate xi. the idle 'prentice executed at tyburn. "when fear cometh as desolation, and their destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress cometh upon them, then shall they call upon god, but he will not answer." proverbs, chapter i. verse , . thus, after a life of sloth, wretchedness, and vice, does our delinquent terminate his career. behold him, on the dreadful morn of execution, drawn in a cart (attended by the sheriff's officers on horseback, with his coffin behind him) through the public streets to tyburn, there to receive the just reward of his crimes,--a shameful ignominious death. the ghastly appearance of his face, and the horror painted on his countenance, plainly show the dreadful situation of his mind; which we must imagine to be agitated with shame, remorse, confusion, and terror. the careless position of the ordinary at the coach window is intended to show how inattentive those appointed to that office are of their duty, leaving it to others, which is excellently expressed by the itinerant preacher in the cart, instructing from a book of wesley's. mr. hogarth has in this print, digressing from the history and moral of the piece, taken an opportunity of giving us a humorous representation of an execution, or a tyburn fair: such days being made holidays, produce scenes of the greatest riot, disorder, and uproar; being generally attended by hardened wretches, who go there, not so much to reflect upon their own vices, as to commit those crimes which must in time inevitably bring them to the same shameful end. in confirmation of this, see how earnestly one boy watches the motions of the man selling his cakes, while he is picking his pocket; and another waiting to receive the booty! we have here interspersed before us a deal of low humour, but such as is common on occasions like this. in one place we observe an old bawd turning up her eyes and drinking a glass of gin, the very picture of hypocrisy; and a man indecently helping up a girl into the same cart; in another, a soldier sunk up to his knees in a bog, and two boys laughing at him, are well imagined. here we see one almost squeezed to death among the horses; there, another trampled on by the mob. in one part is a girl tearing the face of a boy for oversetting her barrow; in another, a woman beating a fellow for throwing down her child. here we see a man flinging a dog among the crowd by the tail; there a woman crying the dying speech of thomas idle, printed the day before his execution; and many other things too minute to be pointed out: two, however, we must not omit taking notice of, one of which is the letting off a pigeon, bred at the gaol, fly from the gallery, which hastes directly home; an old custom, to give an early notice to the keeper and others, of the turning off or death of the criminal; and that of the executioner smoking his pipe at the top of the gallows, whose position of indifference betrays an unconcern that nothing can reconcile with the shocking spectacle, but that of use having rendered his wretched office familiar to him; whilst it declares a truth, which every character in this plate seems to confirm, that a sad and distressful object loses its power of affecting by being frequently seen. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the idle 'prentice executed at tyburn.] industry and idleness. plate xii. the industrious 'prentice lord mayor of london. "length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour." proverbs, chap. iii. ver. . having seen the ignominious end of the idle apprentice, nothing remains but to represent the completion of the other's happiness; who is now exalted to the highest honour, that of lord mayor of london; the greatest reward that ancient and noble city can bestow on diligence and integrity. our artist has here, as in the last plate, given a loose to his humour, in representing more of the low part of the lord mayor's show than the magnificent; yet the honour done the city, by the presence of the prince and princess of wales, is not forgotten. the variety of comic characters in this print serves to show what generally passes on such public processions as these, when the people collect to gratify their childish curiosity, and indulge their wanton disposition, or natural love of riot. the front of this plate exhibits the oversetting of a board, on which some girls had stood, and represents them sprawling upon the ground; on the left, at the back of the scaffold, is a fellow saluting a fair nymph, and another enjoying the joke: near him is a blind man straggled in among the crowd, and joining in the general halloo: before him is a militia-man, so completely intoxicated as not to know what he is doing; a figure of infinite humour. though mr. hogarth has here marked out two or three particular things, yet his chief intention was to ridicule the city militia, which was at this period composed of undisciplined men, of all ages, sizes, and height; some fat, some lean, some tall, some short, some crooked, some lame, and in general so unused to muskets, that they knew not how to carry them. one, we observe, is firing his piece and turning his head another way, at whom the man above is laughing, and at which the child is frightened. the boy on the right, crying, "a full and true account of the ghost of thomas idle," which is supposed to have appeared to the mayor, preserves the connexion of the whole work. the most obtrusive figure in his lordship's coach is mr. swordbearer, in a cap like a reversed saucepan, which this great officer wears on these grand occasions. the company of journeymen butchers, with their marrow-bones and cleavers, appear to be the most active, and are by far the most noisy of any who grace this solemnity. numberless spectators, upon every house and at every window, dart their desiring eyes on the procession; so great indeed was the interest taken by the good citizens of london in these civic processions that, formerly, it was usual in a london lease to insert a clause, giving a right to the landlord and his friends to stand in the balcony, during the time of "the shows or pastimes, upon the day commonly called the lord mayor's day." thus have we seen, by a series of events, the prosperity of the one and the downfall of the other; the riches and honour that crown the head of industry, and the ignominy and destruction that await the slothful. after this it would be unnecessary to say which is the most eligible path to tread. lay the roads but open to the view, and the traveller will take the right of course; give but the boy this history to peruse, and his future welfare is almost certain. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice lord mayor of london.] southwark fair. the subject of the plate under consideration is that of the borough fair; a fair held some time since in the borough of southwark, though now suppressed. this fair was attended, generally, by the inhabitants of town and country, and, therefore, was one that afforded great variety; especially as, before its suppression, it was devoted to every thing loose and irregular. a view of the scene, of which the following print is a faithful representation, will affirm this truth. the principal view upon the left represents the fall of a scaffold, on which was assembled a strolling company, pointed out, by the paper lantern hanging in front, to be that belonging to cibber and bullock, ready dressed to exhibit "the fall of bajazet." here we see merry-andrews, monkeys, queens and emperors, sinking in one general confusion; and, that the crash may appear the greater, the stand beneath is humorously supposed to consist of earthenware and china. notwithstanding this fatal overthrow, few below are seen to notice it; witness the boys and woman gambling at the box and dice, the upright monkey, and the little bag-piper dancing his wooden figures. above this scaffold hangs a painting, the subject of which is the stage mutiny; whose figures are as follow:--on one side is pistol, (strutting and crying out, "pistol's alive,") falstaff, justice shallow, and many other characters of shakspeare. on the other, the manager bearing in his hand a paper, on which is written, "it cost _l._" a scene-painter, who has laid his brushes aside, and taken up a cudgel; and a woman holding an ensign, bearing the words, "we'll starve 'em out." in the corner is a man, quiet and snug, hugging a bag of money, laughing at the folly of the rest; and behind, a monkey, perched upon a sign iron, supposed to be that of the rose tavern in drury-lane, squeaking out, "i am a gentleman." these paintings are in general designed to show what is exhibited within; but this alludes to a dispute that arose at the time when this print was published, which was in the year , between the players and the patentee of drury-lane theatre, when young cibber, the son of the laureate, was at the head of the faction. above, on one side, is an equilibrist swinging on a slack rope; and on the other, a man flying from the tower to the ground, by means of a groove fastened to his breast, slipping over a line strained from one place to the other. at the back of this plate is lee and harper's great booth, where, by the picture of the wooden horse, we are told, is represented "the siege of troy." the next paintings consist of the fall of adam and eve, and a scene in punch's opera. beneath is a mountebank, exalted on a stage, eating fire to attract the public attention; while his merry-andrew behind is distributing his medicines. further back is a shift and hat, carried upon poles, designed as prizes for the best runner or wrestler. in front is a group of strollers parading the fair, in order to collect an audience for their next exhibition; in which is a female drummer, at that time well known, and remarked for her beauty, which we observe has caught the eye of two countrymen, the one old, the other young. behind these men is a buskined hero, beset by a marshalsea court officer and his follower. to the right is a savoyard exhibiting her farthing show; and behind, a player at back sword riding a blind horse round the fair triumphantly, in all the boast of self-important heroism, affecting terror in his countenance, glorying in his scars, and challenging the world to open combat: a folly for which the english were remarkable. to this man a fellow is directing the attention of a country gentleman, while he robs him of his handkerchief. next him is an artful villain decoying a couple of unthinking country girls to their ruin. further back is a man kissing a wench in the crowd; and above, a juggler performing some dexterity of hand. indeed it would be tedious to enter into an enumeration of the various matter of this plate; it is sufficient to remark that it presents us with an endless collection of spirited and laughable characters, in which is strikingly portrayed the character of the times. [illustration: southwark fair.] garrick in the character of richard iii. give me another horse,--bind up my wounds,-- have mercy, jesu!--soft; i did but dream.-- o coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!-- the lights burn blue!--is it not dead midnight? cold, fearful drops hang on my trembling flesh.-- such is the exclamation of richard, and such is the disposition of his mind at the moment of this delineation. the lamp, diffusing a dim religious light through the tent, the crucifix placed at his head, the crown, and unsheathed sword at his hand, and the armour lying on the ground, are judicious and appropriate accompaniments. those who are acquainted with this prince's history, need not be told that he was naturally bold, courageous, and enterprising; that when business called him to the field, he shook off every degree of indulgence, and applied his mind to the management of his affairs. this may account for his being stripped no otherwise than of his armour, having retired to his tent in order to repose himself upon his bed, and lessen the fatigues of the preceding day. see him then hastily rising, at dead of night, in the utmost horror from his own thoughts, being terrified in his sleep by the dreadful phantoms of an affrighted imagination, seizing on his sword, by way of defence against the foe his disordered fancy presents to him. so great is his agitation, that every nerve and muscle is in action, and even the ring is forced from his finger. when the heart is affected, how great is its influence on the human frame!--it communicates its sensibility to the extreme parts of the body, from the centre to the circumference; as distant water is put in motion by circles, spreading from the place of its disturbance. the paper on the floor containing these words, jockey of norfolk, be not so bold, for dicken thy master is bought and is sold, brought him by the duke of norfolk, saying he found it in his tent, and lying here unattended to, as a mark of contempt, plainly informs us that however a man may attempt to steel himself against the arrows of conscience, still they will find a way to his breast, and shake the sinner even in his greatest security. and indeed we cannot wonder, when we reflect on the many murders he was guilty of, deserving the severest punishment; for providence has wisely ordained that sin should be its own tormentor, otherwise, in many cases, the offender would, in this life, escape unpunished, and the design of heaven be frustrated. but richard, though he reached a throne, and by that means was exempt from the sufferings of the subject, yet could not divest himself of his nature, but was forced to give way to the workings of the heart, and bear the tortures of a distracted mind. the expression in his face is a master-piece of execution, and was a great compliment paid by mr. hogarth to his friend garrick; yet not unmerited, as all that have seen him in the part must acknowledge the greatness of the actor. the figures in the distance, two of whom, like sacrifices by their fires of watch, with patience sit, and inly ruminate the morning's danger, are properly introduced, and highly descriptive. the tents of richmond are so near that the fix'd sentinels almost receive the secret whispers of each other's watch. considered as a whole, the composition is simple, striking, and original, and the figures well drawn. the whole moral tenour of the piece informs us that conscience is armed with a thousand stings, from which royalty itself is not secure; that of all tormentors, reflection is the worst; that crowns and sceptres are baubles, compared with self-approbation; and that nought is productive of solid happiness, but inward peace and serenity of mind. [illustration: garrick. in the character of richard the third.] the invasion; or, france and england. in the two following designs, mr. hogarth has displayed that partiality for his own country and contempt for france, which formed a strong trait in his character. he neither forgot nor forgave the insults he suffered at calais, though he did not recollect that this treatment originated in his own ill humour, which threw a sombre shade over every object that presented itself. having early imbibed the vulgar prejudice that one englishman was a match for four frenchmen, he thought it would be doing his country a service to prove the position. how far it is either useful or politic to depreciate the power, or degrade the character of that people with whom we are to contend, is a question which does not come within the plan of this work. in some cases it may create confidence, but in others lead to the indulgence of that negligent security by which armies have been slaughtered, provinces depopulated, and kingdoms changed their rulers. plate i. france. with lantern jaws and croaking gut, see how the half-star'd frenchmen strut, and call us english dogs: but soon we'll teach these bragging foes that beef and beer give heavier blows than soup and roasted frogs. the priests, inflam'd with righteous hopes, prepare their axes, wheels, and ropes, to bend the stiff-neck'd sinner; but should they sink in coming over, old nick may fish 'twixt france and dover, and catch a glorious dinner. the scenes of all mr. hogarth's prints, except the gate of calais, and that now under consideration, are laid in england. in this, having quitted his own country, he seems to think himself out of the reach of the critics, and, in delineating a frenchman, at liberty to depart from nature, and sport in the fairy regions of caricature. were these gallic soldiers naked, each of them would appear like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife: so forlorn! that to any thick sight he would be invisible. to see this miserable woe-begone refuse of the army, who look like a group detached from the main body and put on the sick list, embarking to conquer a neighbouring kingdom, is ridiculous enough, and at the time of publication must have had great effect. the artist seemed sensible that it was necessary to account for the unsubstantial appearance of these shadows of men, and has hinted at their want of solid food, in the bare bones of beef hung up in the window, the inscription on the alehouse sign, "_soup maigre au sabot royal_," and the spider-like officer roasting four frogs which he has impaled upon his sword. such light and airy diet is whimsically opposed by the motto on the standard, which two of the most valorous of this ghastly troop are hailing with grim delight and loud exultation. it is, indeed, an attractive motto, and well calculated to inspire this famishing company with courage:--"_vengeance, avec la bonne bière, et bon boeuf d'angleterre._" however meagre the military, the church militant is in no danger of starving. the portly friar is neither emaciated by fasting nor weakened by penance. anticipating the glory of extirpating heresy, he is feeling the sharp edge of an axe, to be employed in the decollation of the enemies to the true faith. a sledge is laden with whips, wheels, ropes, chains, gibbets, and other inquisitorial engines of torture, which are admirably calculated for the propagation of a religion that was established in meekness and mercy, and inculcates universal charity and forbearance. on the same sledge is an image of st. anthony, accompanied by his pig, and the plan of a monastery to be built at black friars. in the back-ground are a troop of soldiers so averse to this english expedition, that their serjeant is obliged to goad them forward with his halberd. to intimate that agriculture suffers by the invasion having engaged the masculine inhabitants, two women, ploughing a sterile promontory in the distance, complete this catalogue of wretchedness, misery, and famine. [illustration: france.] the invasion. plate ii. england. see john the soldier, jack the tar, with sword and pistol arm'd for war, should mounseer dare come here; the hungry slaves have smelt our food, they long to taste our flesh and blood, old england's beef and beer. britons to arms! and let 'em come, be you but britons still, strike home, and, lion-like, attack 'em, no power can stand the deadly stroke that's given from hands and hearts of oak, with liberty to back 'em. from the unpropitious regions of france our scene changes to the fertile fields of england. england! bound in with the triumphant sea, whose rocky shores beat back the envious siege of wat'ry neptune. instead of the forlorn and famished party who were represented in the last plate, we here see a company of well-fed and high-spirited britons, marked with all the hardihood of ancient times, and eager to defend their country. in the first group a young peasant, who aspires to a niche in the temple of fame, preferring the service of mars to that of ceres, and the dignified appellation of soldier to the plebeian name of farmer, offers to enlist. standing with his back against the halberd to ascertain his height, and, finding he is rather under the mark, he endeavours to reach it by rising on tiptoe. this artifice, to which he is impelled by towering ambition, the serjeant seems disposed to connive at--and the serjeant is a hero, and a great man in his way; "your hero always must be tall, you know." to evince that the polite arts were then in a flourishing state, and cultivated by more than the immediate professors, a gentleman artist, who to common eyes must pass for a grenadier, is making a caricature of _le grand monarque_, with a label from his mouth worthy the speaker and worthy observation, "you take a my fine ships; you be de pirate; you be de teef: me send my grand armies, and hang you all." the action is suited to the word, for with his left hand this most christian potentate grasps his sword, and in his right poises a gibbet. the figure and motto united produce a roar of approbation from the soldier and sailor, who are criticising the work. it is so natural that the helen and briseis of the camp contemplate the performance with apparent delight, and, while one of them with her apron measures the breadth of this herculean painter's shoulders, the other, to show that the performance has some point, places her forefinger against the prongs of a fork. the little fifer, playing that animated and inspiring tune, "god save the king," is an old acquaintance: we recollect him in the march to finchley. in the back-ground is a serjeant, teaching a company of young recruits their manual exercise. this military meeting is held at the sign of the gallant duke of cumberland, who is mounted upon a prancing charger, as if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds, to turn and wield a fiery pegasus, and witch the world with noble horsemanship. underneath is inscribed "roast and boiled every day," which, with the beef and beverage upon the table, forms a fine contrast to the _soup maigre_, bare bones, and roasted frogs, in the last print. the bottle painted on the wall, foaming with liquor, which, impatient of imprisonment, has burst its cerements, must be an irresistible invitation to a thirsty traveller. the soldier's sword laid upon the round of beef, and the sailor's pistol on the vessel containing the ale, intimate that these great bulwarks of our island are as tenacious of their beef and beer, as of their religion and liberty. these two plates were published in ; but in the london chronicle for october , , is the following advertisement: "this day are republished, two prints designed and etched by william hogarth, one representing the preparations on the french coast for an intended invasion; the other, a view of the preparations making in england to oppose the wicked designs of our enemies; proper to be stuck up in public places, both in town and country, at this juncture." the verses which were inserted under each print, and subjoined to this account, are, it must be acknowledged, coarse enough. they were, however, written by david garrick. [illustration: england.] transcriber's note. the following words were inconsistently hyphenated in the original text: down-cast / downcast footboy / foot-boy fore-finger / forefinger half-pence / halfpence the orthography of the original text has been preserved. in particular the following words are as they appear in the original: antichamber aukwardly corruscations corse govent martin fowkes negociated pannel plaistering pourtrayed sculls stupifies tenour vender the following words were inconsistently accented in the original text: a-la-mode / à -la-mode degagée / dégagée six centuries of painting [illustration; vittore pisano (called pisanello) st anthony and st george _national gallery, london_] six centuries of painting by randall davies [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack long acre, w.c., and edinburgh contents tuscan schools-- page i. giovanni cimabue ii. giotto di bondone iii. the earlier quattrocentists iv. the later quattrocentists v. leonardo da vinci vi. michelangelo buonarroti vii. raffaello di santi venetian schools-- i. the vivarini and bellini ii. tiziano vecellio iii. paolo veronese and il tintoretto spanish school flemish school-- i. hubert and jan van eyck ii. peter paul rubens iii. the pupils of rubens dutch school-- i. frans hals ii. rembrandt van ryn iii. painters of _genre_ iv. painters of animals v. painters of landscape german schools french school-- i. the seventeenth century ii. the eighteenth century the english school-- i. the early portrait painters ii. william hogarth iii. sir joshua reynolds and thomas gainsborough iv. the close of the eighteenth century the nineteenth century-- i. the spirit of revolt ii. eugÈne delacroix iii. ruskin against the philistines iv. manet and whistler against the world v. the royal academy index list of illustrations vittore pisano (called pisanello)--st anthony and st george _frontispiece_ national gallery, london plate facing page i. filippo lippi--the annunciation national gallery, london ii. sandro botticelli(?)--the virgin and child national gallery, london iii. sandro botticelli--portrait of a young man national gallery, london iv. sandro botticelli--the nativity national gallery, london v. leonardo da vinci--the virgin of the rocks national gallery, london vi. pietro perugino--central portion of altar-piece national gallery, london vii. raphael--the ansidei madonna national gallery, london viii. raphael--la belle jardinière louvre, paris ix. raphael--portrait of baldassare castiglione louvre, paris x. correggio--mercury, cupid, and venus national gallery, london xi. andrea mantegna--the madonna della vittoria louvre, paris xii. giovanni bellini--the doge loredano national gallery, london xiii. giorgione--venetian pastoral louvre, paris xiv. titian--portrait said to be of ariosto national gallery, london xv. titian--the holy family national gallery, london xvi. titian--the entombment louvre, paris xvii. tintoretto--st george and the dragon national gallery, london xviii. velazquez--the infante philip prosper imperial gallery, vienna xix. velazquez--the rokeby venus national gallery, london xx. murillo--a boy drinking national gallery, london xxi. jan van eyck--jan arnolfini and his wife national gallery, london xxii. jan van eyck--portrait of the painter's wife town gallery, bruges xxiii. jan mabuse--portrait of jean carondelet louvre, paris xxiv. sir peter paul rubens--portrait of hélène fourment, the artist's second wife, and two of her children louvre, paris xxv. frans hals--portrait of a lady louvre, paris xxvi. rembrandt--portrait of hendrickje stoffels louvre, paris xxvii. rembrandt--portrait of an old lady national gallery, london xxviii. terborch--the concert louvre, paris xxix. gabriel metsu--the music lesson national gallery, london xxx. pieter de hooch--interior of a dutch house national gallery, london xxxi. jan vermeer--the lace maker louvre, paris xxxii. "the master of st bartholomew"--two saints national gallery, london xxxiii. hans holbein--portrait of christina, duchess of milan national gallery, london xxxiv. antoine watteau--l'indifférent louvre, paris xxxv. jean-baptiste greuze--the broken pitcher louvre, paris xxxvi. jean honorÉ fragonard--l'Étude louvre, paris xxxvii. hans holbein--anne of cleves louvre, paris xxxviii. william hogarth--the shrimp girl national gallery, london xxxix. sir joshua reynolds--lady cockburn and her children national gallery, london xl. sir joshua reynolds--the age of innocence national gallery, london xli. thomas gainsborough--the market cart national gallery, london xlii. george romney--the parson's daughter national gallery, london xliii. george romney--mrs robinson--"perdita" hertford house, london xliv. jacques louis david--portrait of mme. récamier louvre, paris xlv. eugÈne delacroix--dante and virgil louvre, paris xlvi. john constable--the hay wain national gallery, london xlvii. j. m. w. turner--crossing the brook national gallery of british art, london xlviii. Édouard manet--olympia louvre, paris xlix. j. m. whistler--lillie in our alley in the possession of john j. cowan, esq. _introductory_ so far as it concerns pictures painted upon panel or canvas in tempera or oils, the history of painting begins with cimabue, who worked in florence during the latter half of the thirteenth century. that the art was practised in much earlier times may readily be admitted, and the life-like portraits in the vestibule at the national gallery taken from greek tombs of the second or third century are sufficient proofs of it; but for the origin of painting as we are now generally accustomed to understand the term we need go no further back than to cimabue and his contemporaries, from whose time the art has uninterruptedly developed throughout europe until the present day. oddly enough it is to the christian church, whose early fathers put their heaviest ban upon all forms of art, that this development is almost wholly due. the reaction against paganism began to die out when the christian religion was more firmly established, and representations of christ and the saints executed in mosaic became more and more to be regarded as a necessary, or at any rate a regular embellishment of the numerous churches which were built. for these mosaics panel paintings began in time to be substituted; but it was long before any of the human feeling of art was to be found in them. the influence of s. francis of assisi was needed to prepare the way, and it was only towards the close of the thirteenth century that the breath of life began to be infused into these conventional representations, and painting became a living art. as it had begun in italy, under the auspices of the church, so it chiefly developed in that country; at first in florence and siena, later in rome, whither its greatest masters were summoned by the pope, and in venice, where, farther from the ecclesiastical influence, it flourished more exuberantly, and so became more capable of being transplanted to other countries. in germany, however, and the low countries it had appeared early enough to be considered almost as an independent growth, though not till considerably later were the northern schools capable of sustaining the reputation given them by the van eycks and roger van der weyden. but for the effects of the renaissance in italy in the fifteenth century it is questionable whether painting would ever have spread as it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth to spain and france. but by the close of the fifteenth century such enormous progress had been made by the italian painters towards the realisation of human action and emotion in pictures, that from being merely an accessory of religious establishments, painting had become as much a part of the recognised means of intellectual enjoyment of everyday life as music, sculpture, or even the refinements of food and clothing. portraiture, in particular, had gradually advanced to a foremost place in painting. originally it was used exclusively for memorials of the dead--as we have seen in the case of the paintings from the greek tombs--and on coins and medals. but gradually the practice arose, as painters became more skilful in representing the appearance of the model, of introducing the features and figures of actual personages into religious pictures, in the character of "donors," and as these increased in importance, the sacred personages were gradually relegated to the background, and ultimately dispensed with altogether. at the beginning of the sixteenth century we find hans holbein (as an example) recommended by erasmus to sir thomas more as a portrait painter who wished to try his fortunes in england; and during the rest of his life painting practically nothing but portraits. by the end of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, painting had become almost as much a business as an art, not only in italy but in most other countries in europe, and was established in each country more or less independently. so that making every allowance for the various foreign influences that affected each different country, it is convenient to trace the development of painting in each country separately, and we arrange our chapters accordingly under the titles of tuscan and venetian (the two main divisions of italian painting), spanish, flemish, dutch, german, french, and british schools. in each country, as might be expected--and especially in italy--there are subdivisions; but, broadly speaking, the lover of pictures will be quite well enough equipped for the enjoyment of them if he is able to recognise their country, and roughly their period, without troubling about the particular district or personal influence of their origin. for while it is undoubtedly true that the more one knows about the history of painting in general the greater will be the appreciation of the various excellences which tend to perfection, it is absolutely ridiculous to suppose that only the learned in such matters are capable of deriving enjoyment from a beautiful picture, or of expressing an opinion upon it. in the first place, the picture is intended for the public, and the public have therefore the best right to say whether it pleases them or not--and why. and it may be noted as a positive fact that whenever the public, in any country, have a free choice in matters of art, that choice generally turns out to be right, and is ultimately endorsed by the best critics. most of the vulgar art to be found in advertisements and the illustrated papers is put there by ignorant and vulgar providers, who imagine that the whole public are as ignorant and vulgar as themselves; whereas whenever a better standard of taste is given an opportunity, it never fails to find a welcome. until sir henry wood inaugurated the present régime, the promenade concerts at covent garden were popularly supposed to represent the national taste in music. until the temple classics and every man's library were published it was commonly supposed that the people at large cared for nothing but bow bells, the penny novelette, or such unclassical if alluring provender. in the domain of painting, the royal academy has such a firm and ancient hold on the popular imagination of the english that its influence is difficult to dispel; but there are many signs that its baneful ascendency is at length on the decline; and it is well known that the national gallery is attracting more and more visitors and burlington house less and less as the years go on. in the following attempt at a general survey of the history of painting--imperfect or ill-proportioned as it may appear to this or that specialist or lover of any particular school--i have thought it best to assume a fair amount of ignorance of the subject on the part of the reader, though without, i hope, taking any advantage of it, even if it exists; and i have therefore drawn freely upon several old histories and handbooks for both facts and opinions concerning the old masters and their works. in some cases, i think, a dead lion is decidedly better than a live dog. r. d. chelsea, . _tuscan schools_ i giovanni cimabue by the will of god, in the year , we are told by vasari, giovanni cimabue, of the noble family of that name, was born in the city of florence, to give the first light to the art of painting. vasari's "lives of the painters" was first published in florence in , and with all its defects and all its inaccuracies, which have afforded so much food for contention among modern critics, it is still the principal source of our knowledge of the earlier history of painting as it was revived in italy in the thirteenth century. making proper allowance for vasari's desire to glorify his own city, and to make a dignified commencement to his work by attributing to cimabue more than was possibly his due, we need not be deterred by the very latest dicta of the learned from accepting the outlines of his life of cimabue as an embodiment of the tradition of the time in which he lived--two centuries and a quarter after cimabue--and, until contradicted by positive evidence, as worthy of general credence. in the popular mind cimabue still remains "the father of modern painting," and though his renown may have attracted more pictures and more legends to his name than properly belong to him, it is certain that dante, his contemporary, wrote of him thus:-- credette cimabue nella pintura tener lo campo, ed ora ha giotto il grido si che la fama di colui s'oscura. this is at least as important as anything written by a contemporary of william shakespeare; and even if we are required to believe that some of his most important works are by another hand, his influence on the history of art is beyond question. let us then follow vasari a little further, and we shall find, at any rate, what is typical of the development of genius. "this youth," vasari continues, "being considered by his father and others to give proof of an acute judgment and a clear understanding, was sent to santa maria novella to study letters under a relation who was then master in grammar to the novices of that convent. but cimabue, instead of devoting himself to letters, consumed the whole day in drawing men, horses, houses, and other various fancies on his books and different papers--an occupation to which he felt himself impelled by nature." this is exactly what is recorded of reynolds, it may be noted, and very much the same as in the case of gainsborough, benjamin west--and many a modern painter. "this natural inclination was favoured by fortune, for the governors of the city had invited certain greek (probably byzantine) painters to florence, for the purpose of restoring the art of painting, which had not merely degenerated but was altogether lost. these artists, among other works, began to paint the chapel of the gondi in santa maria novella, and cimabue, often escaping from the school, and having already made a commencement of the art he was so fond of, would stand watching these masters at their work. his father, and the artists themselves, therefore concluded that he must be well endowed for painting, and thought that much might be expected from him if he devoted himself to it. giovanni was accordingly, much to his delight, placed with these masters, whom he soon greatly surpassed both in design and colouring. for they, caring little for the progress of art, executed their works not in the excellent manner of the ancient greeks, but in the rude modern style of their own day. wherefore, though cimabue imitated them, he very much improved the art, relieving it greatly from their uncouth manner and doing honour to his country by the name that he acquired and by the works which he performed. of this we have evidence in florence from the pictures which he painted there--as for example the front of the altar of saint cecilia and a picture of the virgin, in santa croce, which was and still is (_i.e._ in ) attached to one of the pilasters on the right of the choir." unfortunately the very first example cited pulls us up short alongside the official catalogue of the uffizi gallery (where the picture was placed in ), in which it is catalogued (no. ) as "unknown ... vasari erroneously attributes it to cimabue." tiresome as it may seem to be thus distracted, at the very outset, by the question of authenticity, it is nevertheless desirable to start with a clear understanding that in surveying in a general way the history and development of painting, it will be quite hopeless to wait for the final word on the supposed authorship of every picture mentioned. in this instance, as it happens, there is no reason to question the modern catalogue, though that is by no means the same thing as denying that cimabue painted the picture which existed in the church of s. cecilia in vasari's time. is it more likely, it may be asked, that vasari, who is accused of unduly glorifying cimabue, would attribute to him a work not worthy of his fame, or that during the three centuries since vasari wrote a substitution was effected? the other picture, the _madonna and child enthroned_, which found its way into our national gallery in , is still officially catalogued as the work of cimabue, and it is to be hoped that this precious relic, together with the madonnas in the louvre, the florence academy, and in the lower church at assisi, may be long spared to us by the authority of the critics as "genuine productions" of the beloved master. on the general question, however, let me reassure the reader by stating that so far as possible i have avoided the mention of any pictures, in the following pages, about which there is any grave doubt, save in a few cases where tradition is so firmly established that it seems heartless to disturb it until final judgment is entered--of which the following examples of cimabue's reputed work may be taken as types. the latest criticism seeks to deprive him of every single existing picture he is believed to have painted; those mentioned by vasari which have perished may be considered equally unauthentic, but, as before mentioned, his account of them gives us as well as anything else the story of the beginnings of the art. having afterwards undertaken, vasari continues, to paint a large picture in the abbey of the santa trinità in florence for the monks of vallombrosa, he made great efforts to justify the high opinion already formed of him and showed greater powers of invention, especially in the attitude of the virgin, whom he depicted with the child in her arms and numerous angels around her, on a gold ground. this is the picture now in the accademia in florence. the frescoes next described are no longer in existence:-- "cimabue next painted in fresco at the hospital of the porcellana at the corner of the via nuova which leads into the borgo ogni santi. on the front of this building, which has the principal door in the centre, he painted the virgin receiving the annunciation from the angel, on one side, and christ with cleophas and luke on the other, all the figures the size of life. in this work he departed more decidedly from the dry and formal manner of his instructors, giving more life and movement to the draperies, vestments and other accessories, and rendering all more flexible and natural than was common to the manner of those greeks whose work were full of hard lines and sharp angles as well in mosaic as in painting. and this rude unskilful manner the greeks had acquired not so much from study or settled purpose as from having servilely followed certain fixed rules and habits transmitted through a long series of years by one painter to another, while none ever thought of the amelioration of his design, the embellishment of his colouring, or the improvement of his invention." after describing cimabue's activities at pisa and assisi with equal circumstance, vasari passes to the famous _rucellai madonna_, now supposed to be by the hand of duccio of siena. however doubtful the story may appear in the light of modern criticism, historical or artistic, it certainly forms part of the history of painting--for its spirit if not for its accuracy--and as such it can never be too often quoted:-- "he afterwards painted the picture of the virgin for the church of santa maria novella, where it is suspended on high between the chapel of the rucellai family and that of the bardi. this picture is of larger size than any figure that had been painted down to those times, and the angels surrounding it make it evident that although cimabue still retained the greek manner, he was nevertheless gradually approaching the mode of outline and general method of modern times. thus it happened that this work was an object of so much admiration to the people of that day--they having never seen anything better--that it was carried in solemn procession, with the sound of trumpets and other festal demonstration, from the house of cimabue to the church, he himself being highly rewarded and honoured for it. it is further reported, and may be read in certain records of old painters, that while cimabue was painting this picture in a garden near the gate of s. pietro, king charles the elder of anjou passed through florence, and the authorities of the city, among other marks of respect, conducted him to see the picture of cimabue. when this work was thus shown to the king, it had not before been seen by anyone; wherefore all the men and women of florence hastened in great crowds to admire it, making all possible demonstration of delight." now whether or not vasari was right in crediting cimabue with these honours in florence instead of duccio in siena, makes little difference in the story of the origin and early development of the art of painting. one may doubt the accuracy of the mosaic account of the creation, the authorship of the fourth gospel or the shakespearean poems, or the list of names of the normans who are recorded to have fought with william the conqueror. but what if one may? the creation, the poems and plays of shakespeare and the battle of hastings are all of them historic facts, and neither science, nor literature, nor history is a penny the worse for the loose though perfectly understandable conditions under which these facts have been handed down to us. when we come down to times nearer to our own the accuracy of data is more easily ascertainable, though the confusion arising out of them often obscures their real significance; but in looking for origins we are content to ignore the details, provided we can find enough general information on which to form an idea of them. to these first chapters of vasari, then, we need not hesitate to resort for the main sources of the earlier history of painting. even so far as we have gone we have learnt several important facts as to the nature of the foundations on which the glorious structure was to be raised. first of all, it is apparent that the practice of painting, though strictly forbidden by the earliest fathers of the church, was used by the faithful in the eastern churches for purposes of decoration, and was introduced into italy--we may safely say tuscany--for the same purpose. second, that being transplanted into this new soil, it put forth such wonderful blossoms that it came to be cultivated with much more regard; and from being merely a necessary or conventional ornament of certain portions of the church, was soon accounted its greatest glory. third, that it was accorded popular acclamation. fourth, that its most attractive feature in the eyes of beholders was its life-like representation of the human form and other natural objects. prosaic as these considerations may appear, they are nevertheless the fundamental principles that underlie the whole of the subsequent development of painting; and unless every picture in the world were destroyed, and the art of painting wholly lost for at least a thousand years, there could not be another picture produced which would not refer back through continuous tradition to one or every one of them. first, the basis of religion. second, the development peculiar to the soil. third, the imitation of nature. fourth, the approbation of the public--there we have the four cardinal points in the chart of painting. it would be easy enough to contend that painting had nothing whatever to do with religion--if only by reference to the godless efforts of some of the modernists; but such a contention could only be based on the imperfect recognition of what religion actually means. in italy in the thirteenth century, as in spain in the seventeenth, it meant the church of rome. in germany of the sixteenth, as in england in the eighteenth, it meant something totally different. to put it a little differently, all painting that is worth so calling has been done to the glory of god; and after making due allowance for human frailties of every variety, it is hard to say that among all the hundreds of great and good painters there has ever been one who was not a good man. as for the influence of environment, or nationality, this is so universally recognised that the term "school" more often means locality than tuition. we talk generally of the french, english, or dutch schools, and more particularly of the paduan, venetian, or florentine. it is only when we hesitate to call our national treasure a botticelli or a bellini that we add the words "school of" to the name of the master who is fondly supposed to have inspired its author. the difference between a wood block of the early eighteenth century executed in england and japan respectively may be cited as an extreme instance of the effect of locality on idea, when the method is identical. with reference to the imitation of nature, at the mere mention of which modernists become so furious, it is worth recalling that the earliest story about painting relates to zeuxis, who is said to have painted a bunch of grapes with such skill that the birds ignored the fruit and pecked at the picture. in later times we hear of rembrandt being the butt of his pupils, who, knowing his love of money, used to paint coins on the floor; and there are plenty of stories of people painting flies and other objects so naturally as to deceive the unwary spectator. vasari is continually praising his compatriots for painting "like the life." lastly, the approbation, or if possible the acclamation, of the public has seldom if ever been unconsidered by the artist. where it has, it has only been the greatest genius that has been able to exist without it. a man who has anything to say must have somebody to say it to; and though a painter may seem to be wasting the best part of his life in trying to make the people understand what he has to say in his language instead of talking to them in their own common tongue, it is rarely that he fails in the end, even if, alas for him, the understanding comes too late to be of any benefit to himself. cimabue's last work is said to be a figure, which was left unfinished, of s. john, in mosaic, for the duomo at pisa. this was in , which is supposed to be the date of his death, though vasari puts it two years earlier, at the time he was engaged with the architect arnolfo lapi in superintending the building of the duomo in florence, where he is buried. ii giotto di bondone while according all due honour, and probably more, to cimabue as the originator of modern painting, it is to his pupil, giotto, that we are accustomed to look for the first developments of its possibilities. had cimabue's successors been as conservative as his instructors, we might still be not very much better off than if he had never lived. for much as there is to admire in cimabue's painting, it is only the first flush of the dawn which it heralded, and though containing the germ of the future development of the art, is yet without any of the glory which in the fulness of time was to result from it. to giotto, vasari considers, "is due the gratitude which the masters in painting owe to nature, seeing that he alone succeeded in resuscitating art and restoring her to a path that may be called the true one; and that the art of design, of which his contemporaries had little if any knowledge, was by his means effectually recalled to life." this seems to detract in some degree from his eulogies of cimabue; but it is to the last sentence that our attention should be directed, which implies that in profiting by the master's example he succeeded in extending the possibilities of the new art beyond its first limits. cimabue, we may believe, drew his virgins and saints from living models, whereas his predecessors had merely repeated formulas laid down for them by long tradition. giotto went further, and extended his scope to the world at large. for the plain gold background he substituted the landscape, thus breaking down, as it were, a great wall, and seeing beyond it. nor was this innovation merely a technical one--it was the man's nature that effected it and made his art a living thing. giotto, who was born in , was the son of a simple husbandman, who lived at vespignano, about fourteen miles from florence. cimabue chanced upon the boy when he was only about ten years old, tending his father's sheep, and was astonished to find that he was occupied in making a drawing of one of them upon a smooth piece of rock with a sharp stone. he was so pleased with this that he asked to be allowed to take him back to florence, and the boy proved so apt a pupil that before very long he was regularly employed in painting. his influence was not confined to florence, or even to tuscany, but the whole of italy was indebted to him for a new impulse in art, and he is said to have followed pope clement v. to avignon and executed many pictures there. giotto was not only a painter, but his name is also famous in the history of architecture: the wonderful campanile adjoining the duomo in florence was designed by him, and the foundations laid and the building erected under his instructions. on sculpture too he exercised a considerable influence, as may be seen in the panels and statues which adorn the lower part of the tower, suggested if not actually designed by giotto, and carved by andrea pisano. chief of the earlier works of giotto are his frescoes in the under church at assisi, and in these may be seen the remarkable fertility of invention with which he endowed his successors. instead of the conventional madonna and child, and groups of saints and angels, we have here whole legends represented in a series of pictures of almost dramatic character. in the four triangular compartments of the groined vaulting are the three vows of the franciscan order, namely, poverty, chastity, and obedience, and in the fourth the glorification of the saint. in the first, the vow of poverty, it is significant to find that he has taken his subject from dante. poverty appears as a woman whom christ gives in marriage to s. francis: she stands among thorns; in the foreground are two youths mocking her, and on either side a group of angels as witnesses of the holy union. on the left is a youth, attended by an angel, giving his cloak to a poor man; on the right are the rich and great, who are invited by an angel to approach, but turn scornfully away. the other designs appear to be giotto's own invention. chastity, as a young woman, sits in a fortress surrounded by walls, and angels pay her devotion. on one side are laymen and churchmen led forward by s. francis, and on the other penance, habited as a hermit, driving away earthly love and impurity. s. francis in glory is more conventional, as might be expected from the nature of the subject. in the ancient basilica of s. peter in rome giotto made the celebrated mosaic of the _navicella_, which is now in the vestibule of s. peter's. it represents a ship, in which are the disciples, on a stormy sea. according to the early christian symbolisation the ship denoted the church. in the foreground on the right the saviour, walking on the waves, rescues peter. opposite sits a fisherman in tranquil expectation, typifying the confident hope of the simple believer. this mosaic has frequently been moved, and has undergone so much restoration that only the composition can be attributed to giotto. of the paintings of scriptural history attributed to giotto very few remain, and the greater part of those have in recent times been pronounced to be the work of his followers. foremost, however, among the undoubted examples are paintings in the chapel of the madonna dell'arena at padua, which was erected in . in thirty-eight pictures, extending in three rows along the wall, is contained the life of the virgin. the ground of the vaulting is blue studded with gold stars, among which appear the heads of christ and the prophets, while above the arch of the choir is the saviour in a glory of angels. combined with these sacred scenes and personages are introduced fitting allusions to the moral state of man, the lower part of the side walls containing, in medallions painted in monochrome, allegorical figures of the virtues and vices--the former feminine and ideal, the latter masculine and individual--while the entrance wall is covered with the wonderful _last judgment_. here, as in his allegorical pieces, giotto appears as a great innovator, a number of situations suggested by the scriptures being now either represented for the first time or seen in a totally new form. well-known subjects are enriched with numerous subordinate figures, making the picture more truthful and more intelligible; as in the flight into egypt, where the holy family is accompanied by a servant, and three other figures are introduced to complete the composition. in the raising of lazarus, too, the disciples behind the saviour on the one side and the astonished multitude on the other form two choruses, an arrangement which is followed, but with considerable modification, in ouwater's unique picture of the same subject now in the kaiser friedrich museum at berlin. this approach to dramatic reality sometimes assumes a character which, as kugler puts it, oversteps the strict limits of the higher ecclesiastical style. it is worth noting, however, that the early netherlandish school--as we shall see in a later chapter--developed this characteristic to a far greater extent, continuing the tradition handed down, quite independently of giotto, through illuminated manuscripts, and with less of that expression of the highest religious or moral feeling which is so evident in giotto. the few existing altar-pieces of giotto are less important than his frescoes, inasmuch as they do not admit of the exhibition of his higher and most original gifts. two signed examples are a _coronation of the virgin_ in santa croce at florence, and a _madonna_, with saints and angels on the side panels, originally in s. maria degli angeli at bologna, and now in the brera at milan. the latter, however, is not now recognised as his. the earliest authentic example is the so-called stefaneschi altar-piece, painted in for the same patron who commissioned the _navicella_. giotto's highest merit consists especially in the number of new subjects which he introduced, in the life-like and spiritual expression with which he heightened all familiar occurrences and scenes, and in the choice of the moment of representation. in all these no earlier christian painter can be compared with him. another and scarcely less important quality he possessed is in the power of conveying truth of character. the faces introduced into some of his compositions bear an inward guarantee of their lively resemblance to some living model, and this characteristic seems to have been eagerly seized upon by his immediate followers for emulation, as is noticeable in two of the principal works--in the bargello at florence, and in the church of the incoronata at naples--formerly attributed to him but now relegated to his pupils. the portrait of dante in a fresco on the wall of the bargello shows a deep and penetrating mind, and in the _sacraments_ at naples we find heads copied from life with obvious fidelity and such a natural conception of particular scenes as brings them to the mind of the spectator with extraordinary distinctness. of giotto's numerous followers in the fourteenth century it is impossible in the present work to give any particular account, but of his influence at large on the practice as on the treatment and conception of painting at this stage of its development, one or two examples may be cited as typical of the progress he urged, such as the frescoes in the campo santo at pisa. this wonderful cloister, which measures four hundred feet in length and over a hundred in width--traditionally the dimensions of noah's ark--was founded by the archbishop ubaldo, before , on his return from palestine bringing fifty-three ships laden with earth from the holy land. on this soil it was erected, and surrounded by high walls in . the whole of these walls were afterwards adorned with paintings, in two tiers. so far as concerns the history of painting, the question of the authorship of these frescoes--which are by several distinct hands--is altogether subordinate to that of the subjects depicted and the manner in which they are treated, and we shall learn more from a general survey of them than by following out the fortunes of particular painters. the earliest are those on the east side, near the chapel, but more important are those on the north, of about the middle of the fourteenth century, which show a decided advance, both in feeling and execution, beyond giotto. the first is _the triumph of death_, in which the supernatural is tempered with representations of what is mortal to an extent that already shows that painting was not to be confined to religious uses alone. all the pleasures and sorrows of life are here represented, on the earth; it is only in the sky that we see the demons and angels. on one side is a festive company of ladies and cavaliers, with hawks and dogs, seated under orange trees, with rich carpets at their feet, all splendidly dressed. a troubadour and a singing girl amuse them with songs, _amorini_ flutter around them and wave their torches. on the other side is another group, also a hunting party, on splendidly caparisoned horses, and accompanied by a train of attendants. on the mountains in the background are several hermits, who in contrast to the votaries of pleasure have attained in a life of contemplation and abstinence the highest term of human existence. many of the figures are traditionally supposed to be portraits. the centre foreground is devoted to the less fortunate on earth, the beggars and cripples, and also corpses of the mighty; and with these we may turn to the allegorical treatment of the subject. to the first group descends the angel of death, swinging a scythe, and to her the unfortunate are stretching out their arms in supplication for an end to their sorrows. the second group, it will be seen, are tracing a path which leads to three open coffins in which lie the bodies of three princes in different stages of decay, while a monk on crutches--intended for s. macarius--is pointing to them. the air is filled with angels and demons, some of whom receive the souls of the dead. a second picture is _the last judgment_, and a third _hell_, the resemblance between which and the great altar-piece in the strozzi chapel in santa maria novella at florence, painted by andrea orcagna in , was formerly considered proof of the same authorship. they are now attributed to an unknown disciple of pietro lorenzetti, who was painting in siena between and , and is assumed to have been a pupil of duccio. the fourth picture, apparently by another hand--possibly that of lorenzetti himself--is _the life of the hermits_ in the wilderness of thebais, composed of a number of single groups in which the calm life of contemplation is represented in the most varied manner. in front flows the nile, and a number of hermits are seen on its banks still subjected to earthly occupations; they catch fish, hew wood, carry burdens to the city, etc. higher up, in the mountains, they are more estranged from the world, but the tempter follows them in various disguises, sometimes frightful, sometimes seducing. as a whole this composition is constructed in the ancient manner--as in byzantine art--several series rising one above the other, each of equal size, and without any pretension to perspective: the single groups, at the same time, are executed with much grace and feeling. next to this are six pictures of the history of s. ranieri, and as many of the lives of s. efeso and s. potito. the latter are known to have been painted in by spinello of arezzo, or spinello aretino as he is called, of whose work we have some fragments in the national gallery--alas too few! two of these fragments are from his large fresco _the fall of the rebellious angels_, painted for the church of s. maria degli angeli at arezzo, which after being whitewashed over were rescued on the conversion of the church to secular uses. vasari relates that when spinello had finished this work the devil appeared to him in the night as horrible and deformed as in the picture, and asked him where he had seen him in so frightful a form, and why he had treated him so ignominiously. spinello awoke from his dream with horror, fell into a state of abstraction, and soon afterwards died. on the third part of the south wall is represented the history of job, in a series of paintings which were formerly attributed to giotto himself, though it is now recognised that they cannot be of an earlier date than about . the _temptation of job_ is by taddeo gaddi, and the others, painted in , are probably by francesco da volterra--not to be confused with the sixteenth century painter daniele da volterra. the paintings on the west wall are of inferior workmanship, while those on the north were the crowning achievement of benozzo gozzoli a century later. iii the earlier quattrocentists coming to the second period in the development of the new art--roughly, that is to say, from to --vasari observes that even where there is no great facility displayed, yet the works evince great care and thought; the manner is more free and graceful, the colouring more varied and pleasing; more figures are employed in the compositions, and the drawing is more correct inasmuch as it is closer to nature. it was masaccio, he says, who during this period superseded the manner of giotto in regard to the painting of flesh, draperies, buildings, etc., and also restored the practice of foreshortening and brought to light that modern manner which has been followed by all artists. more natural attitudes, and more effectual expression of feeling in the gestures and movements of the body resulted, as art seeking to approach the truth of nature by more correct drawing and to exhibit so close a resemblance to the face of the living person that each figure might at once be recognised. _thus these masters constantly endeavoured to reproduce what they beheld in nature and no more; their works became consequently more carefully considered and better understood._ this gave them courage to lay down rules for perspective and to carry the foreshortenings precisely to the point which gives an exact imitation of the relief apparent in nature and the real form. minute attention to the effects of light and shade and to various technical difficulties ensued, and efforts were made towards a better order of composition. landscapes also were attempted; tracts of country, trees, shrubs, flowers, clouds, the air, and other natural objects were depicted with some resemblance to the realities represented; insomuch that the art might be said not only to have become ennobled, but to have attained to that flower of youth from which the fruit afterwards to follow might reasonably be looked for. foremost among the painters of this period was fra angelico, or to give him his proper title, frate giovanni da fiesole, who was born in not far from florence, and died in . when he was twenty years old he joined the order of the preaching friars, and all his painting is devoted to religious subjects. he was a man of the utmost simplicity, and most holy in every act of his life. he disregarded all worldly advantages. kindly to all, and temperate in all his habits, he used to say that he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet, and should live without cares and anxious thoughts; adding that he who would do the work of christ should perpetually remain with christ. he was most humble and modest, and in his painting he gave evidence of piety and devotion as well as of ability, and the saints that he painted have more of the air of sanctity than have those of any other master. it was the custom of fra angelico to abstain from retouching or improving any painting once finished. he altered nothing, but left all as it was done the first time, believing, as he said, that such was the will of god. it is also affirmed that he would never take his brushes in hand until he had first offered a prayer, and he is said never to have painted a crucifix without tears streaming from his eyes, and in the countenance and attitude of his figures it is easy to perceive proof of his sincerity, his goodness, and the depth of his devotion to the religion of christ. this is well seen in the picture of the _coronation of the virgin_, which is now in the louvre (no. ). "superior to all his other works," vasari says of this masterpiece, "and one in which he surpassed himself, is a picture in the church of san domenico at fiesole; in this work he proves the high quality of his powers as well as the profound intelligence he possessed of the art he practised. the subject is the coronation of the virgin by jesus christ; the principal figures are surrounded by a choir of angels, among whom are a vast number of saints and holy personages, male and female. these figures are so numerous, so well executed in attitudes, so various, and with expressions of the head so richly diversified, that one feels infinite pleasure and delight in regarding them. nay, one is convinced that those blessed spirits can look no otherwise in heaven itself, or, to speak under correction, could not if they had forms appear otherwise; for all the saints male and female assembled here have not only life and expression most delicately and truly rendered, but the colouring also of the whole work would seem to have been given by the hand of a saint or of an angel like themselves. it is not without sufficient reason therefore that this excellent ecclesiastic is always called frate giovanni angelico. the stories from the life of our lady and of san domenico which adorn the predella, moreover, are in the same divine manner; and i for myself can affirm with truth that i never see this work but it appears something new, nor can i ever satisfy myself with the sight of it or have enough of beholding it." no less beautiful are the five compartments of the predella to the altar-piece still in san domenico at fiesole--which were purchased for the national gallery in at the then alarming price of £ --with no less than two hundred and sixty little figures of saintly personages, "so beautiful," as vasari says, "that they appear to be truly beings of paradise." fra filippo lippi, born in florence about , and dying there in , was the exact antithesis of fra angelico, both in his private life and in the method of his painting. he was just as earthly in both respects as fra angelico was heavenly. as a child he was put with the carmelites, and as he showed an inclination for drawing rather than for study, he was allowed every facility for studying the newly painted chapel of the branacci, and followed the manner of masaccio so closely that it was said that the spirit of that master had entered into his body. it is only fair to masaccio to add that this means his artistic spirit, for filippo's moral character was by no means exemplary. the story of one of his best-known works, _the nativity_, which is now in the louvre (no. ), is thus related by vasari:--"having received a commission from the nuns of santa margherita, at prato, to paint a picture for the high altar of their church, he chanced one day to see the daughter of francesco buti, a citizen of florence, who had been sent to the convent as a novice. filippo, after a glance at lucrezia--for that was her name--was so taken with her beauty that he prevailed upon the nuns to allow him to paint her as the virgin. this resulted in his falling so violently in love with her that he induced her to run away with him. resisting every effort of her father and of the nuns to make her leave filippo, she remained with him, and bore him a son who lived to be almost as famous a painter as his father. he was called filippino lippi." the picture of s. john and six saints in the national gallery (no. ) also recalls the story of his wildness, inasmuch as it came from the palazzo medici, where filippo worked for the great cosimo di medici. it was well known that filippo paid no attention to his work when he was engaged in the pursuit of his pleasures, and so cosimo shut him up in the palace so that he might not waste his time in running about while working for him. but filippo after a couple of days' confinement made a rope out of his bed clothes, and let himself down from the window, and for several days gave himself up to his own amusements. when cosimo found that he had disappeared, he had search made for him, and at last filippo returned; after which cosimo was afraid to shut him up again in view of the risk he had run in descending from the window. vasari considers that filippo excelled in his smaller pictures--"in these he surpassed himself, imparting to them a grace and beauty than which nothing finer could be imagined. examples of this may be seen in the predellas of all the works painted by him. he was indeed an [illustration: plate i.--filippo lippi the annunciation _national gallery, london_] artist of such power that in his own time he was surpassed by none; therefore it is that he has not only been always praised by michelangelo, but in many particulars has been imitated by him." as a contributor to the progress of the art of painting he is credited by vasari with two innovations, which may be seen in his paintings in the church of san domenico at prato, namely ( ) the figures being larger than life, and thereby forming an example to later artists for giving true grandeur to large figures; and ( ) certain figures clothed in vestments but little used at that time, whereby the minds of other artists were awakened and began to depart from that sameness which should rather be called obsolete monotony than antique simplicity. it is noticeable that despite his bad character--which is said to have been the cause of his death by poison--all his work was in religious subjects. he was painting the chapel in the church of our lady at spoleto when, in , he died. paolo uccello, as he was called, was born at florence in , and died there in . his real name was paolo di dono, but he was so fond of painting animals and birds--especially the latter--that he officially signed himself as paolo uccello. he devoted so much of his time, however, to the study of perspective, that both his life and his work suffered thereby. his wife used to relate that he would stand the whole night through beside his writing table, and when she entreated him to come to bed, would only say, "oh, what a delightful thing is this perspective!" donatello, the sculptor, is said to have told him that in his ceaseless study of perspective he was leaving the substance for the shadow; but donatello was not a painter. before his time the painters had not studied the question of perspective scientifically. giotto had made no attempt at it, and masaccio only came nearer to realising it by chance. brunelleschi, the architect, laid down its first principles, but it was uccello who first put these principles into practice in painting, and thereby paved the way for his successors to walk firmly upon. how he struggled with the difficulties of this vitally important subject may be seen in the large battle-piece at the national gallery, and however crude and absurd this fine composition may seem at first sight to those who are only accustomed to looking at modern pictures, it must be remembered that uccello is here struggling, as it were, with a savage monster which to succeeding painters has, through his efforts, been a submissive slave. this picture is one of four panels executed for the bartolini family. one of the others is in the louvre, and a third in the uffizi. another--or indeed almost the only other--work of uccello which is now to be seen is the colossal painting in monochrome (_terra-verde_) on the wall of the cathedral at florence. strangely enough, this equestrian portrait commemorates an englishman, sir john hawkwood, whose name is italianized in the inscription into giovanni acuto. he was born at sible hedingham in essex, the son of a tanner, and adventuring under edward iii. into france, found his way to florence, where he served the state so well that they interred him, on his death in , at the public expense, and subsequently commissioned uccello to execute his monument. with all his devotion to science, the artist has committed the strange mistake of making the horse stand on two legs on the same side, the other two being lifted. to masaccio, born in or about , and dying in , we owe a great step in art towards realism. it was he, says vasari, who first attained the clear perception that _painting is only the close imitation, by drawing and colouring simply, of all the forms presented by nature showing them as they are produced by her, and that whoever shall most perfectly effect this may be said to have most nearly approached the summit of excellence_. the conviction of this truth, he adds, was the cause of masaccio's attaining so much knowledge by means of perpetual study that he may be accounted among the first by whom art was in a measure delivered from rudeness and hardness; it was he who led the way to the realisation of beautiful attitudes and movements which were never exhibited by any painter before his day, while he also imparted a life and force to his figures, with a certain roundness and relief which render them truly characteristic and natural. possessing great correctness of judgment, masaccio perceived that all figures not sufficiently foreshortened to appear standing firmly on the plane whereon they are placed, but reared up on the points of their feet, must needs be deprived of all grace and excellence in the most important essentials. it is true that uccello, in his studies of perspective, had helped to lessen this difficulty, but masaccio managed his foreshortenings with much greater skill (though doubtless with less science) and succeeded better than any artist before him. moreover, he imparted extreme softness and harmony to his paintings, and was careful to have the carnations of the heads and other nude parts in accordance with the colours of the draperies, which he represented with few and simple folds as they are seen in real life. masaccio's principal remaining works are his frescoes in the famous branacci chapel at the carmine convent in florence. the work of decorating the chapel was begun by masolino, but finished by masaccio and filippo lippi. vasari states it as a fact that all the most celebrated sculptors and painters had become excellent and illustrious by studying masaccio's work in this chapel, and there is good reason to believe that michelangelo and raphael profited by their studies there, without mentioning all the names enumerated by vasari. seeing how important the influence of masaccio was destined to become, i have ventured to italicise vasari's opinions on the causes which operated in creating the florentine style and in raising the art of painting to heights undreamt of by its earliest pioneers. iv the later quattrocentists three names stand out conspicuously from the ranks of florentine painters in the latter half of the fifteenth century. but progress being one of the essential characteristics of the art at this period, as in all others, it is not surprising that the order of their fame coincides (inversely) pretty nearly with that of their date. first, antonio pollaiuolo; second, sandro botticelli; and lastly, leonardo da vinci. it is important to note that pollaiuolo was first apprenticed to a goldsmith, and attained such proficiency in that craft that he was employed by lorenzo ghiberti in the carving of the gates of the baptistry, and subsequently set up a workshop for himself. in competition with finiguerra he "executed various stories," says vasari, "wherein he fully equalled his competitor in careful execution, while he surpassed him in beauty of design. the guild of merchants, being convinced [illustration: plate ii.--sandro botticelli (?) the virgin and child _national gallery, london_] of his ability, resolved to employ him to execute certain stories in silver for the altar of san giovanni, and he performed them so excellently that they were acknowledged to be the best of all those previously executed by various masters.... in other churches also in florence and rome, and other parts of italy, his miraculous enamels are to be seen." now whether or not antonio, like others, continued to exercise this craft, the account given by vasari, as follows, of his learning to paint is extremely significant as showing how painting was regarded in relation to the kindred arts so widely practised in florence:--"eventually, considering that this craft did not secure a long life to the work of its masters, antonio, desiring for his labours a more enduring memory, resolved to devote himself to it no longer; and his brother piero being a painter, he joined himself to him for the purpose of learning the modes of proceeding in painting. he then found this to be an art so different from that of the goldsmith that he wished he had never addressed himself to it. but being impelled by shame rather than any advantage to be obtained, he acquired a knowledge of the processes used in painting in the course of a few months, and became an excellent master." as early as he had painted the three large canvases of _hercules_ for lorenzo de'medici, now no longer existing, but probably reflected in the two small panels of the same subject in the uffizi. these alone are enough to mark him as one of the greatest artists of his time. the magnificent _david_, at berlin, soon followed, and the little _daphne and apollo_ in our national gallery. these were all accomplished unaided, but a little later he worked in concert with his brother piero, to whom we are told to attribute parts of the painting of the large _s. sebastian_ in the national gallery, painted in for antonio pucci, from whose descendant it was purchased. "for the chapel of the pucci in the church of san sebastian," says vasari, "antonio painted the altar-piece--a remarkable and wonderfully executed work with numerous horses, many nude figures, and singularly beautiful foreshortenings. also the portrait of s. sebastian taken from life, that is to say, from gino di ludovico capponi. this picture has been more extolled than any by antonio. he has evidently copied nature to the utmost of his power, as we see more especially in one of the archers, who, bending towards the ground, and resting his bow against his breast, is employing all his force to prepare it for action; the veins are swelling, the muscles strained, and the man holds his breath as he applies all his strength to the effort. all the other figures in the diversity of their attitudes clearly prove the artist's ability and the labour he has bestowed on the work." it is in his superb rendering of the figure, especially in the nude, that antonio pollaiuolo marks a decisive step in the progress of painting, and is entitled to be regarded as "the first modern artist to master expression of the human form, its spirit, and its action." but for him we should miss much of the strength and vigour that distinguishes the real from the false botticelli. "in the same time with the illustrious lorenzo de medici, the elder," vasari writes, "which was truly an age of gold for men of talent, there flourished a certain alessandro, called after our custom sandro, and further named di botticello, for a reason which we shall presently see. his father, mariano filipepi, a florentine citizen, brought him up with care; but although the boy readily acquired whatever he had a mind to learn, [illustration: plate iii.--sandro botticelli portrait of a young man _national gallery, london_] yet he was always discontented, nor would he take any pleasure in reading, writing, or accounts; so that his father turned him over in despair to a friend of his called botticello, who was a goldsmith. "there was at that time a close connection and almost constant intercourse between the goldsmiths and the painters, wherefore sandro, who had remarkable talent and was strongly disposed to the arts of design, became enamoured of painting and resolved to devote himself entirely to that vocation. he acknowledged his purpose forthwith to his father, who accordingly took him to fra filippo. devoting himself entirely to the vocation he had chosen, sandro so closely followed the directions and imitated the manner of his master, that filippo conceived a great love for him, and instructed him so effectually that sandro rapidly attained a degree in art that none could have predicted for him." the influence of the giottesque tradition which was thus handed on to the youthful botticelli by filippo lippi is traceable in the beautiful little _adoration of the magi_--the oblong, not the _tondo_--in the national gallery (no. ). this was formerly attributed to filippino lippi, but is now universally recognised as one of sandro's very earliest productions, when still under the immediate influence of filippo, and prior to the _fortitude_, painted before , which is now in the uffizi, and is the first picture mentioned by vasari, thus--"while still a youth he painted the figure of fortitude among those pictures of the virtues which antonio and pietro pollaiuolo were executing in the mercatanzia or tribunal of commerce in florence. in santo spirito (vasari continues, naming a picture which is probably _the virgin enthroned_, now at berlin (no. )), he painted a picture for the bardi family; this work he executed with great diligence, and finished it very successfully, depicting the olive and palm trees with extraordinary care." the influence of pollaiuolo is more evident in his two next productions, the two small panels of _holofernes_ and the _portrait of a man with a medal_, in the uffizi, and again in the _s. sebastian_ now at berlin, which was painted in . about the second _adoration of the magi_ in the national gallery was painted, and a year or two later the famous and more splendid picture of the same subject which is in the uffizi. with this he established his reputation, showing himself unmistakably as an artist of profound feeling and noble character besides being a skilful painter. it was commissioned for the church of santa maria novella. "in the face of the oldest of the kings," says vasari, "there is the most lively expression of tenderness as he kisses the foot of the saviour, and of satisfaction at the attainment of the purpose for which he had undertaken his long journey. this figure is the portrait of cosimo de'medici, the most faithful and animated likeness of all now known of him. the second of the kings is the portrait of giuliano de' medici, father of pope clement vii., and he is presenting his gift with an expression of the most devout sincerity. the third, who is likewise kneeling, seems to be offering thanksgiving as well as adoration; this is the likeness of giovanni, the son of cosimo. "the beauty which sandro has imparted to these heads cannot be adequately described; all the figures are in different attitudes, some seen full face, others in profile, some almost entirely turned away, others bent down; and to all the artist has given an appropriate expression, whether old or young, showing numerous peculiarities, which prove the mastery he possessed over his art. he has even distinguished the followers of each king, so that one can see which belong to one and which to another. it is indeed a most wonderful work; the composition, the colouring, and the design are so beautiful that every artist to-day is amazed at it, and at the time it acquired so great a fame for sandro that pope sixtus iv. appointed him superintendent of the painting of the chapel he had built in rome." the visit to rome was in , and meantime botticelli had produced the wayward _primavera_, and the more stern and harsh _s. augustine_ in the church of ognissanti. of his frescoes in the pope's chapel nearly all have survived, including _moses slaying the egyptian_, _the temptation_, and _the destruction of korah's company_, besides such of the heads of the popes as were not painted by domenico ghirlandaio and his other assistants in the work. returning to florence in , he was for twenty years without a rival in the city--after the departure of leonardo to milan--and he appears to have been subjected to no new influences, but steadily to have developed the immense forces within him. before may be dated the two examples in the national gallery, the _portrait of a youth_ and the fascinating _mars and venus_, which was probably intended as a decoration for some large piece of furniture. the beautiful and extraordinarily life-like frescoes in the louvre (the only recognised works of the master in that gallery) from the villa lemmi, representing giovanna tornabuoni with venus and the graces, and lorenzo tornabuoni with the liberal arts, are assigned to . of this period are also the more familiar _birth of venus_; _the tondo of the pomegranate_ and the _annunciation_ in the uffizi, and the san marco altar-piece, the _coronation of the virgin_ in the florence academy. to the influence of savonarola, however great or little that may have been, is attributed the seriousness of his latest work. professor muther characterises botticelli as "the jeremiah of the renaissance," but whether or not this is a rhetorical overstatement, the "tendency to impassioned and feverish action, so evident in the famous _calumny of apelles_, reflects, no doubt, the agitation of his spiritual stress."[ ] this is the latest of sandro's works which are in public galleries, and there is every probability that the last years of his life were not very productive. "this master is said to have had an extraordinary love for those whom he knew to be zealous students in art," vasari tells us, "and is affirmed to have gained considerable sums of money, but being a bad manager and very careless, all came to nothing. finally, having become old, unfit for work, and helpless, he was obliged to go on crutches, being unable to stand upright, and so died, after long illness and decrepitude, in his seventy-eighth year. he was buried at florence, in the church of ognissanti in the year ." the large and beautiful _assumption of the virgin_, with the circles of saints and angels, in the national gallery, which has only of late years been taken out of the catalogue of botticelli's works, is now said to have been executed by his early pupil francesco botticini (_c._ - ) in or thereabouts. "in the church of san pietro," vasari writes of botticelli, "he executed a picture for matteo palmieri, with a very large number of figures. the subject is the assumption of our lady, and the zones or circles of heaven are [illustration: plate iv.--sandro botticelli the nativity _national gallery, london_] there painted in their order. the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, doctors, virgins, and the hierarchies; all of which was executed by sandro according to the design furnished to him by matteo, who was a very learned and able man. the whole work was conducted and finished with the most wonderful skill and care; at the foot were the portraits of matteo and his wife kneeling. but although this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to have put envy to shame, yet there were certain malevolent and censorious persons who, not being able to fix any other blame upon it, declared that matteo and sandro had fallen into grievous heresy." it is apparent that the picture has suffered intentional injury, and it is known that in consequence of this supposed heresy the altar which it adorned was interdicted and the picture covered up. in view of all the circumstances it is certain that it was designed by botticelli, and very possibly executed under his immediate supervision and with some assistance from him. if we do not see the real botticelli in it, we see his influence and his power far more clearly than in the numerous _tondi_ of madonna and child that have been assigned to him in less critical ages than our own. for the real botticelli was something very real indeed, and though it was easy enough to imitate his mannerisms, neither the style nor the spirit of his work were ever within reach of his closest followers. v leonardo da vinci twelve years younger than botticelli was leonardo da vinci ( - ), whose career as a painter commenced in the workshop of andrea verrocchio, goldsmith, painter, and sculptor. that so extraordinary a genius should have fixed upon painting for his means of expression rather than any of his other natural gifts is the most telling evidence of the pre-eminence earned for that art by the efforts of those whose works we have been considering. for once we may go all the way with vasari, and accept his estimate of him as even moderate in comparison with those of modern writers. "the richest gifts," he writes, "are sometimes showered, as by celestial influence, on human creatures, and we see beauty, grace, and talent so united in a single person that whatever the man thus favoured may turn to, his every action is so divine as to leave all other men far behind him, and to prove that he has been specially endowed by the hand of god himself, and has not obtained his pre-eminence by human teaching. this was seen and acknowledged by all men in the case of leonardo da vinci, in whom, to say nothing of the beauty of his person, which was such that it could never be sufficiently extolled, there was a grace beyond expression which was manifested without thought or effort in every act and deed, and who besides had so rare a gift of talent and ability that to whatever subject he turned, however difficult, he presently made himself absolute master of it. extraordinary strength was in him joined with remarkable facility, a mind of regal boldness and magnanimous daring. his gifts were such that his fame extended far and wide, and he was held in the highest estimation not in his own time only, but also and even to a greater extent after his death; and this will continue to be in all succeeding ages. truly wonderful indeed and divinely gifted was leonardo." to his activities in directions other than painting, i need not allude except to say that they account in a great measure for the scarcity of the pictures he has left us, and to emphasise the significance of his having painted at all. to a man of such supreme genius the circumstances in which he found himself, rather than any particular technical facility, determined the course of his career, and in another age and another country he might have been a pheidias or a newton, a shakespeare or a beethoven. but if the pictures he has left us are few in number--according to the present estimate not more than a dozen--they are altogether greater than anything else in the realm of painting, and with their marvellous beauty and subtlety have probably had a wider influence, both on painters and on lovers of painting, than those of any other master. they seem to be endowed with a spirit of something beyond painting itself, and in the presence of _the last supper_ or the _mona lisa_ the babble of conflicting opinions on questions of style, technique, and what not is silenced. similarly, in writing of leonardo's pictures, every one of which is a masterpiece, it seems superfluous to say even a word about what the whole world already knows so well. all that can be usefully added is a little of the tradition, where it is sufficiently authenticated, relating to the circumstances under which they came into existence, and such of the circumstances of his life as concern their production. when still quite a youth leonardo was apprenticed to andrea verrocchio, and the story goes that it was the marvellous painting of the angel, by the pupil, in the master's _baptism_ in the academy at florence, that induced verrocchio to abandon painting and devote himself entirely to sculpture. this angel has been attributed to the hand of leonardo from the earliest times, but can hardly be taken, at any rate in its present condition, as a decided proof of the genius that was to be displayed in manhood. more certain are the _s. jerome_ in the vatican, and the _adoration of the kings_ in the uffizi, though neither is carried beyond the earlier stages of "under-painting." a few finished portraits are now assigned with tolerable certainty to his earlier years; but for his famous masterpieces we must jump to the year , when he left florence and went to milan, where for the next sixteen years he was intermittently engaged in the execution of the great equestrian statue, which was destroyed by the french mercenaries before it was actually completed. it appears that he was recommended by lorenzo de'medici to lodovico il moro, duke of milan, probably for the very purpose of executing this statue. however that may be, it is now certain that in he was commissioned by the franciscan monks to paint a picture of the virgin and child for their church of the conception, and that between and leonardo and his assistant, ambrogio di predis, petitioned the duke for an arbitration as to price. this was the famous _virgin of the rocks_, now in the louvre, and the similar, and though not precisely identical, composition in our national gallery is generally supposed to be a replica, painted by ambrogio under the supervision of, and possibly with some assistance from, leonardo himself. between and leonardo was engaged on the painting of _the last supper_. in the forster library at the victoria and albert museum is a notebook which contains his first memoranda for the wonderful design of this masterpiece. at windsor are studies for the heads of s. matthew, s. philip, and [illustration: plate v.--leonardo da vinci the virgin of the rocks _national gallery, london_] judas, and for the right arm of s. peter. that of the head of the christ in the brera at milan has been so much "restored" that it can hardly be regarded as leonardo's work. vasari's account of the delays in the completion of the painting is better known, and probably less trustworthy, than one or two notices of about the same date, quoted by mr h. p. horne, in translating and commenting on vasari. in june , when the work had been in progress over two years, duke lodovico wrote to his secretary "to urge leonardo, the florentine, to finish the work of the refectory which he has begun, ... and that articles subscribed by his hand shall be executed which shall oblige him to finish the work within the time that shall be agreed upon." matteo bandello, in the prologue to one of his _novelle_, describes how he saw him actually at work--"leonardo, as i have more than once seen and observed him, used often to go early in the morning and mount the scaffolding (for _the last supper_ is somewhat raised above the ground), and from morning till dusk never lay the brush out of his hand, but, oblivious of both eating and drinking, paint without ceasing. after that, he would remain two, three, or four days without touching it: yet he always stayed there, sometimes for one or two hours, and only contemplated, considered, and criticised, as he examined with himself the figures he had made." vasari's story of the prior's head serving for that of judas is related with less colour, but probably more truth, in the discourses of g. b. giraldi, who says that when leonardo had finished the painting with the exception of the head of judas, the friars complained to the duke that he had left it in this state for more than a year. leonardo replied that for more than a year he had gone every morning and evening into the borghetto, where all the worst sort of people lived, yet he could never find a head sufficiently evil to serve for the likeness of judas: but he added, "if perchance i shall not find one, i will put there the head of this father prior who is now so troublesome to me, which will become him mightily." in leonardo was back again in florence, and his next important work was the designing, though probably not the actual painting, of the beautiful picture in the louvre, _the virgin and child with s. anne_, the commission for which had been given to filippino lippi, but resigned by him on leonardo's return. in isabella d'este wrote to know whether leonardo was still in florence, and what he was doing, as she wished him to paint a picture for her in the palace at mantua, and in the reply of the vicar-general of the carmelites we have a valuable account of the artist and his work. "as far as i can gather," he writes, "the life of leonardo is extremely variable and undetermined. since his arrival here he has only made a sketch in a cartoon. it represents a christ as a little child of about a year old, reaching forward out of his mother's arms towards a lamb. the mother, half rising from the lap of s. anne, catches at the child as though to take it away from the lamb, the animal of sacrifice signifying the passion. s. anne, also rising a little from her seat, seems to wish to restrain her daughter from separating the child from the lamb; which perhaps is intended to signify the church, that would not wish that the passion of christ should be hindered. these figures are as large as life, but they are all contained in a small cartoon, since all of them sit or are bent; the figure of the virgin is somewhat in front of the other, turned towards the left. this sketch is not yet finished. he has not executed any other work, except that his two assistants paint portraits and he, at times, lends a hand to one or another of them. he gives profound study to geometry, and grows most impatient of painting." the history of this cartoon--as indeed of the louvre picture--is somewhat obscure, but it is certain that the beautiful cartoon of the same subject in the possession of the royal academy is not the one above described. lastly, there is the famous--or, may we say, now more famous than ever--portrait of _mona lisa_. "whoever wishes to know how far art can imitate nature," vasari writes, "may do so in this head, wherein every detail that could be depicted by the brush has been faithfully reproduced. the eyes have the lustrous brightness and watery sheen that is seen in life, and around them are all those rosy and pearly tints which, like the eyelashes too, can only be rendered by means of the deepest subtlety; the eyebrows also are painted with the closest exactitude, where fuller and where more thinly set, in a manner that could not be more natural. the nose, with its beautiful and delicately roseate nostrils, seems to be alive. the mouth, wonderful in its outline, shows the lips perfectly uniting the rose tints of their colour with that of the face, and the carnation of the cheek appears rather to be flesh and blood than only painted. looking at the pit of the throat one can hardly believe that one cannot see the beating of the pulse, and in truth it may be said that the whole work is painted in a manner well calculated to make the boldest master tremble. "mona lisa was exceedingly beautiful, and while leonardo was painting her portrait he kept someone constantly near her to sing or play, to jest or otherwise amuse her, so that she might continue cheerful, and keep away the melancholy that painters are apt to give to their portraits. in this picture there is a smile so pleasing that the sight of it is a thing that appears more divine than human, and it has ever been considered a marvel that it is not actually alive." it is worth observing that while these rapturous expressions of wonder at the life-like qualities of the portrait may seem somewhat tame and childish in comparison with the appreciation accorded to leonardo's work in these times--notably that of walter pater in this case--they are in reality at the root of all criticism. if vasari, as i have already pointed out, pitches upon this quality of life-likeness and direct imitation of nature for his particular admiration, it is only because the first and foremost object of the earlier painters was in fact to represent the life; and though in the rarefied atmosphere of modern talk about art these naïve criticisms may seem out of date, it is significant that between vasari and ourselves there is little, if any, difference of opinion as to which masters were the great ones, and which were not. "truly divine" is a phrase in which he sums up the impressions created in his mind by the less material qualities of some of the greatest, but before even the greatest could create such an impression they must have learnt the rudiments of the art in the school of nature. vi michelangelo buonarroti in the opening years of the sixteenth century the art of painting had attained such a pitch of excellence that unless carried onward by a supreme genius it could hardly hope to escape from the common lot of all things in nature, and begin to decline. after botticelli and leonardo, the works of andrea del sarto, "the perfect painter" as he has been called, fall rather flat; and no less a prodigy than michelangelo was capable of excelling his marvellous predecessors, or than raphael of rivalling them. vasari prefaces his life to andrea del sarto ( - ) with something more definite than his usual rhetorical flourishes. "at length we have come," he says, "after having written the lives of many artists distinguished for colour, for design, or for invention, to that of the truly excellent andrea del sarto, in whom art and nature combined to show all that may be done in painting when design, colouring, and invention unite in one and the same person. had he possessed a somewhat bolder and more elevated mind, had he been distinguished for higher qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in the art he practised, he would beyond all doubt have been without an equal. but there was in his nature a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence and want of strength, which prevented those evidences of ardour and animation which are proper to the highest characters from ever appearing in him which, could they have been added to his natural advantages, would have made him truly a divine painter, so that his works are wanting in that grandeur, richness, and force which are so conspicuous in those of many other masters. "his figures are well drawn, and entirely free from errors, and perfect in all their proportions, and for the most part are simple and chaste. his airs of heads are natural and graceful in women and children, while both in youth and old men they are full of life and animation. his draperies are marvellously beautiful. his nudes are admirably executed, simple in drawing, exquisite in colouring--nay, they are truly divine." and yet? well, let us turn to michelangelo. "while the best and most industrious artists," says vasari, "were labouring by the light of giotto and his followers to give the world examples of such power as the benignity of their stars and the varied character of their fantasies enabled them to command, and while desirous of imitating the perfection of nature by the excellence of art, they were struggling to attain that high comprehension which many call intelligence, and were universally toiling, but for the most part in vain, the ruler of heaven was pleased to turn the eyes of his clemency towards earth, and perceiving the fruitlessness of so many labours, the ardent studies pursued without any result, and the presumptuous self-sufficiency of men which is farther from truth than is darkness from light, he resolved, by way of delivering us from such great errors, to send to the world a spirit endowed with universality of power in each art, and in every profession, one capable of showing by himself alone what is the perfection of art in the sketch, the outline, the shadows, or the lights; one who could give relief to painting and with an upright judgment could operate as perfectly in sculpture; nay, who was so highly accomplished in architecture also, that he was able to render our habitations secure and commodious, healthy and cheerful, well-proportioned, and enriched with the varied ornaments of art." a more prosaic passage follows presently, occasioned by the innuendoes of condivi as to vasari's intimacy with michelangelo and his knowledge of the facts of his life at first hand. vasari meets this accusation by quoting the following document relating to the apprenticeship of michelangelo to domenico ghirlandaio when fourteen years old. " . i acknowledge and record this first day of april that i, lodovico di buonarroti, have engaged michelangelo my son to domenico and david di tommaso di currado for the three years next to come, under the following conditions: that the said michelangelo shall remain with the above named all the said time, to the end that they may teach him to paint and to exercise their vocation, and that the above named shall have full command over him paying him in the course of these three years twenty-four florins as wages...." besides this teaching in his earliest youth, it is considered probable that in , when he visited bologna, he came under influences which resulted in the execution at about that time of the unfinished _entombment_ and the _holy family_, which are two of our greatest treasures in the national gallery. as he took to sculpture, however, before he was out of ghirlandaio's hands, there are few traces of any activity in painting until , when he was engaged on the designs for the great battle-piece for the council hall at florence. the one easel picture of which vasari makes any mention, the _tondo_ in the uffizi, is the only one besides those already noted which is known to exist. "the florentine citizen, angelo doni," vasari says, "desired to have some work from his hand as he was his friend; wherefore michelangelo began a circular painting of our lady for him. she is kneeling, and presents the divine child to joseph. here the artist has finely expressed the delight with which the mother regards the beauty of her son, as is clearly manifest in the turn of her head and fixedness of her gaze; equally evident is her wish that this contentment shall be shared by that pious old man who receives the babe with infinite tenderness and reverence. nor was this enough for michelangelo, since the better to display his art he has grouped several undraped figures in the background, some upright, some half recumbent, and others seated. the whole work is executed with so much care and finish that of all his pictures, which indeed are but few, this is considered the best." after relating the story of the artist's quarrel with his friend over the price of this masterpiece (for which he at first only asked sixty ducats), vasari goes on to describe the now lost cartoons for the great fresco in the council hall at florence, in substance as follows:-- "when leonardo was painting in the great hall of the council, piero soderini, who was then gonfaloniere, moved by the extraordinary ability which he perceived in michelangelo [he calls him in a letter a young man who stands above all his calling in italy; nay, in all the world], caused him to be entrusted with a portion of the work, and our artist began a very large cartoon representing the battle of pisa. it represented a vast number of nude figures bathing in the arno, as men do on hot days, when suddenly the enemy is heard to be attacking the camp. the soldiers spring forth in haste to arm themselves. one is an elderly man, who to shelter himself from the heat has wreathed a garland of ivy round his head, and, seated on the ground, is labouring to draw on his hose, hindered by his limbs being wet. hearing the sound of the drums and the cries of the soldiers he struggles violently to get on one of his stockings; the action of the muscles and distortion of the mouth evince the zeal of his efforts. drummers and others hasten to the camp with their clothes in their arms, all in the most singular attitudes; some standing, others kneeling or stooping; some falling, others springing high into the air and exhibiting the most difficult foreshortenings.... the artists were amazed as they realised that the master had in this cartoon laid open to them the very highest resources of art; nay, there are some who still declare that they have never seen anything to equal it, either from his hand or any other, and they do not believe that genius will ever more attain to such perfection. nor is this an exaggeration, for all who have designed from it and copied it--as it was the habit for both natives and strangers to do--have become excellent in art, amongst whom were raphael, andrea del sarto, franciabigio, pontormo, and piero del vaga." in michelangelo began to prepare the cartoons for the ceiling of the sistine chapel. space forbids me to attempt any description of these, but the story of their completion as related by vasari can hardly be omitted. "when half of them were nearly finished," he says, "pope julius, who had gone more than once to see the work--mounting the ladders with the artist's help--insisted on having them opened to public view without waiting till the last touches were given, and the chapel was no sooner open than all rome hastened thither, the pope being first, even before the dust caused by removing the scaffold had subsided. then it was that raphael, who was very prompt in imitation, changed his manner, and to give proof of his ability immediately executed the frescoes with the prophets and sibyls in the church of the pace. bramante (the architect) also laboured to convince the pope that he would do well to entrust the second half to raphael.... but julius, who justly valued the ability of michelangelo, commanded that he should continue the work, judging from what he saw of the first half that he would be able to improve the second. michelangelo accordingly finished the whole in twenty months, without help. it is true that he often complained that he was prevented from giving it the finish he would have liked owing to the pope's impatience, and his constant inquiries as to when it would be finished, and on one occasion he answered, "it will be finished when i shall have done all that i believe necessary to satisfy art." "and we command," replied julius, "that you satisfy our wish to have it done quickly," adding finally that if it were not at once completed he would have michelangelo thrown headlong from the scaffolding. hearing this, the artist, without taking time to add what was wanting, took down the remainder of the scaffolding, to the great satisfaction of the whole city, on all saints' day, when the pope went into his chapel to sing mass." michelangelo had much wished to retouch some portions of the work _a secco_, as had been done by the older masters who had painted the walls; and to add a little ultramarine to some of the draperies, and gild other parts, so as to give a richer and more striking effect. the pope, too, would now have liked these additions to be made, but as michelangelo thought it would take too long to re-erect the scaffolding, the pictures remained as they were. the pope would sometimes say to him, "let the chapel be enriched with gold and bright colours; it looks poor." to which michelangelo would reply, "holy father, the men of those days did not adorn themselves with gold; those who are painted here less than any; for they were none too rich. besides, they were holy men, and must have despised riches and ornaments." vii raffaello di santi the character and the influence of raphael are well expressed in the following sentences with which vasari concludes his biography:--"o happy and blessed spirit! every one speaks with interest of thee; celebrates thy deeds; admires thee in thy works! well might painting die when this noble artist ceased to live; for when his eyes were closed she remained in darkness. for us who survive him it remains to imitate the excellent method which he has left for our guidance; and as his great qualities deserve, and our duty bids us, to cherish his memory in our hearts, and keep it alive in our discourse by speaking of him with the high respect which is his due. for through him we have the art in all its extent carried to a perfection which could hardly have been looked for; and in this universality let no human being ever hope to surpass him. and, beside this benefit which he conferred on art as her true friend, he neglected not to show us how every man should conduct himself in all the relations of life. among his rare gifts there is one which especially excites my wonder; i mean, that heaven should have granted him to infuse a spirit among those who lived around him so contrary to that which is prevalent among professional men. the painters--i do not allude to the humble-minded only, but to those of an ambitious turn, and many of this sort there are--the painters who worked in company with raphael lived in perfect harmony, as if all bad feelings were extinguished in his presence, and every base, unworthy thought had passed from their minds. this was because the artists were at once subdued by his obliging manners and by his surpassing merit, but more than all by the spell of his natural character, which was so full of affectionate kindness, that not only men, but even the very brutes, respected him. he always had a great number of artists employed for him, helping them and teaching them with the kindness of a father to his children, rather than as a master directing his scholars. for which reason it was observed he never went to court without being accompanied from his very door by perhaps fifty painters who took pleasure in thus attending him to do him honour. in short, he lived more as a sovereign than as a painter. and thus, o art of painting! thou too, then, could account thyself most happy, since an artist was thine, who, by his skill and by his moral excellence exalted thee to the highest heaven!" raphael was the son of giovanni sanzio, or di santi, of urbino. he received his first education as an artist from his father, whom, however, he lost in his eleventh year. as early as probably, he entered the school of pietro perugino, at perugia, where he remained till about his twentieth year. the "umbrian school," in which raphael received his first education, and in which he is accordingly placed, is distinguished from the florentine, of which it may be said to have been an offshoot, by several well-defined characteristics. chief of these are, first, the more sentimental expression of religious feeling, and second, the greater attention paid to distance as compared with the principal figures; both of which are explainable on the ground of local circumstances. they reflect the difference between the bustling intellectual activity of florence and the dreamy existence but broader horizon of the dwellers in the upper valley of the tiber. in the beautiful _nativity_ of piero della francesca (no. in the national gallery) we see something akin to the florentine pictures, and yet something more besides. piero shared with paolo uccello the eager desire to discover the secrets of perspective; but in addition he seems to have been influenced by the study of nature herself, in the open air, as uccello never was. his pupil, luca signorelli ( - ), was more formal and less naturalistic, as may be seen by a comparison between the _circumcision_ (no. in the national gallery) and piero's _baptism of christ_ on the opposite wall. pietro perugino ( - )--his real name was vannucci--was influenced both by signorelli and by verrocchio. in the studio of the latter he had probably worked with leonardo and lorenzo di credi, so that in estimating the influences which went to form the art of raphael we need not insist too strongly on the distinction between "umbrian" and "florentine." raphael's first independent works (about ) are entirely in perugino's style. they bear the general stamp of the umbrian school, but in its highest beauty. his youthful efforts are essentially youthful, and seem to contain the earnest of a high development. two are in the berlin museum. in the one (no. ) called the _madonna solly_, the madonna reads in a book; the child on her lap holds a goldfinch. the other (no. ), with heads of s. francis and s. jerome, is better. similar to it, but much more finished and developed, is a small round picture, the _madonna casa connestabile_, now at st. petersburg. a more important picture of this time is the _coronation of the virgin_, painted for the church of s. francesco at perugia in , but now in the vatican. in the upper part, christ and the madonna are throned on clouds and surrounded by angels with musical instruments; underneath, the disciples stand around the empty tomb. in this lower part of the picture there is a very evident attempt to give the figures more life, motion, and enthusiastic expression than was before attempted in the school. after this, raphael appears to have quitted the school of perugino, and to have commenced an independent career: he executed at this time some pictures in the neighbouring town of città di castello. with all the features of the umbrian school, they already show the freer impulse of his own mind,--a decided effort to individualize. the most excellent of these, and the most interesting example of this first period of raphael's development, is the _marriage of the virgin_ (lo sposalizio), inscribed with his name and the date , now in the brera at milan. with much of the stiffness and constraint of the old school, the figures are noble and dignified; the countenances, of the sweetest style of beauty, are expressive of a tender, enthusiastic melancholy, which lends a peculiar charm to this subject. in raphael painted the two little pictures in the louvre, _s. george_ and _s. michael_ (nos. - ) for the duke of urbino. _the knight dreaming_, a small picture, now in the national gallery (no. ), is supposed to have been painted a year earlier. in the autumn of raphael went to florence. tuscan art had now attained its highest perfection, and the most celebrated artists were there contending for the palm. from this period begins his emancipation [illustration: plate vi.--pietro perugino central portion of altar-piece _national gallery, london_] from the confined manner of perugino's school; the youth ripens into manhood and acquires the free mastery of form. to this time belong the celebrated _madonna del granduca_, now in the pitti gallery, and another formerly belonging to the duke of terra nuova, and now at berlin (no. a). in the next year we find him employed on several large works in perugia; these show for the first time the influence of florentine art in the purity, fullness, and intelligent treatment of form; at the same time many of the motives of the peruginesque school are still apparent. the famous _cowper madonna_, recently sold to an american for £ , , also belongs to the year , when the blending of the two influences resulted in a picture which has been extolled by the sanest of critics as "the loveliest of raphael's virgins." an altar-piece, executed for the church of the serviti at perugia, inscribed with the date , is the famous _madonna dei ansidei_, purchased for the national gallery from the duke of marlborough. besides the dreamy religious feeling of the school of perugia, we perceive here the aim at a greater freedom, founded on deeper study. raphael was soon back in florence, where he remained until . the early paintings of this period betray, as might be expected, many reminiscences of the peruginesque school, both in conception and execution; the later ones follow in all essential respects the general style of the florentines. one of the earliest is the _virgin in the meadow_, in the belvedere gallery at vienna. two others show a close affinity with this composition; one is the _madonna del cardellino_, in the tribune of the uffizi, in which s. john presents a goldfinch to the infant christ. the other is the so-called _belle jardinière_, inscribed , in the louvre. it is interesting to observe raphael's progress in the smaller pictures which he painted in florence--half-figures of the madonna and child. here again the earliest are characterised by the tenderest feeling, while a freer and more cheerful enjoyment of life is apparent in the later ones. the _madonna della casa tempi_, at munich, is the first of this series. in the picture from the colonna palace at rome, now in the berlin museum (no. ), the same childlike sportiveness, the same maternal tenderness, are developed with more harmonious refinement. a larger picture, belonging to the middle time of his florentine period, is in the munich gallery--the _madonna canignani_, which presents a peculiar study of artificial grouping, in a pyramidal shape. among the best pictures of the latter part of this florentine period are the _s. catherine_, now in the national gallery, formerly in the aldobrandini gallery at rome, and two large altar-pieces. one of these is the _madonna del baldacchino_, in the pitti gallery. the other, _the entombment_, painted for the church of s. francesco at perugia, is now in the borghese gallery at rome. this is the first of raphael's compositions in which an historical subject is dramatically developed; but in this respect the task exceeded his powers. the composition lacks repose and unity of effect; the movements are exaggerated and mannered; but the figure of the saviour is extremely beautiful, and may be placed among the greatest of the master's creations. about the middle of the year , when only in his twenty-fifth year, raphael was invited by pope [illustration: plate vii.--raphael the ansidei madonna _national gallery, london_] [illustration: plate viii.--raphael la belle jardiniÈre _louvre, paris_] julius ii. to decorate the state apartments in the vatican. with these works commences the third period of his development, and in these he reached his highest perfection. the subjects, more important than any in which he had hitherto been occupied, gave full scope to his powers; and the proximity of michelangelo, who at this time began the painting of the sistine chapel, excited his emulation. at this period, just before the reformation, the papal power had reached its proudest elevation. to glorify this power--to represent rome as the centre of spiritual culture--were the objects of the paintings in the vatican. they cover the ceilings and walls of three chambers and a large saloon, which now bear the name of the "stanze of raphael." the execution of these paintings principally occupied raphael to the time of his death, and were only completed by his scholars. in and raphael also executed designs for the ten tapestries intended to adorn the sistine chapel, representing events from the lives of the apostles. seven of these magnificent cartoons are now in the south kensington museum. beside these important commissions executed for the papal court, during twelve years, many claims were made on him by private persons. two frescoes executed for roman churches may be mentioned. one, in s. maria della pace, represents four sibyls surrounded by angels, which it is interesting to compare with the sibyls of michelangelo. in each we find the peculiar excellence of the two great masters; michelangelo's figures are grand, sublime, profound, while the fresco of the pace exhibits raphael's serene and ingenious grace. in a second fresco, the prophet isaiah and two angels, in the church of s. agostino at rome, the comparison is less favourable to raphael, the effort to rival the powerful style of michelangelo being rather too obvious. like all other artists, raphael is at his best when, undisturbed by outside influences, he follows the free original impulse of his own mind. his peculiar element was grace and beauty of form, in so far as these are the expression of high moral purity. the following works of his third period are especially deserving of mention. the _aldobrandini madonna_, now in the national gallery--in which the madonna is sitting on a bench, and bends down to the little s. john, her left arm round him. the _madonna of the duke of alba_, in the hermitage at st. petersburg. _la vierge au voile_, in the louvre; the madonna is seated in a kneeling position, lifting the veil from the sleeping child in order to show him to the little s. john. the _madonna della seggiola_, in the pitti at florence (painted about ), a circular picture. the _madonna della tenda_ at munich; a composition similar to the last, except that the child is represented in more lively action, and looking upwards. a series of similar, but in some instances more copious compositions, belong to a still later period; they are in a great measure the work of his scholars, painted after his drawings, and only partly worked upon by raphael himself. indeed many pictures of this class should perhaps be considered altogether as the productions of his school, at a time when that school was under his direct superintendence, and when it was enabled to imitate his finer characteristics in a remarkable degree. in this class are the _madonna dell'impannata_, in the pitti, which takes its name from the oiled-paper window in the background. the large picture of a _holy family_ in the louvre, painted in , for francis i., is peculiarly excellent. the whole has a character of cheerfulness and joy: an easy and delicate play of graceful lines, which unite in an intelligible and harmonious whole. giulio romano assisted in the execution. with regard to the large altar-pieces of his later period in which several saints are assembled round the madonna, it is to be observed that raphael has contrived to place them in reciprocal relation to each other, and to establish a connection between them; while the earlier masters either ranged them next to one another in simple symmetrical repose, or disposed them with a view to picturesque effect. of these the _madonna di foligno_, in the vatican, is the earliest. in the upper part of the picture is the madonna with the child, enthroned on the clouds in a glory, surrounded by angels. underneath, on one side, kneels the donor, behind him stands s. jerome. on the other side is s. francis, kneeling, while he points with one hand out of the picture to the people, for whom he entreats the protection of the mother of grace; behind him is s. john the baptist, who points to the madonna, while he looks at the spectator as if inviting him to worship her. the second, the _madonna del pesce_ has much more repose and grandeur as whole, and unites the sublime and abstract character of sacred beings with the individuality of nature in the happiest manner. it is now in madrid, but was originally painted for s. domenico at naples, about . it represents the madonna and child on a throne; on one side is s. jerome; on the other the guardian angel with the young tobias who carries a fish (whence the name of the picture). the artist has imparted a wonderfully poetic character to the subject. s. jerome, kneeling on the steps of the throne, has been reading from a book to the virgin and child, and appears to have been interrupted by the entrance of tobias and the angel. the infant christ turns towards them, but at the same time lays his hand on the open book, as if to mark the place. the virgin turns towards the angel, who introduces tobias; while the latter dropping on his knees, looks up meekly to the divine infant. s. jerome looks over the book to the new-comers, as if ready to proceed with his occupation after the interruption. but the most important is the famous _madonna di san sisto_, at dresden. here the madonna appears as the queen of the heavenly host, in a brilliant glory of countless angel-heads, standing on the clouds, with the eternal son in her arms; s. sixtus and s. barbara kneel at the sides. both of them seem to connect the picture with the real spectators. this is a rare example of a picture of raphael's later time, executed entirely by his own hand. two large altar pictures still claim our attention; they also belong to raphael's later period. one is the _christ bearing the cross_, in madrid, known by the name of _lo spasimo di sicilia_, from the convent of santa maria dello spasimo at palermo, for which it was painted. here, as in the tapestries, we again find a finely conceived development of the event, and an excellent composition. the other is the _transfiguration_, now in the vatican, formerly in s. pietro at montorio. [illustration: plate ix.--raphael portrait of baldassare castiglione _louvre, paris_] this was the last work of the master (left unfinished at his death); the one which was suspended over his coffin, a trophy of his fame, for public homage. "i cannot believe myself in rome," wrote count castiglione, on the death of the master, "now that my poor raphael is no longer here." men regarded his works with religious veneration as if god had revealed himself through raphael as in former days through the prophets. his remains were publicly laid out on a splendid catafalque, while his last work, the _transfiguration_, was suspended over his head. he was buried in the pantheon, under an altar adorned by a statue of the holy virgin, a consecration offering from raphael himself. doubts having been raised as to the precise spot, a search was made in the pantheon in , and raphael's bones were found; the situation agreeing exactly with vasari's description of the place of interment. on the th of october, in the same year, the relics were reinterred in the same spot with great solemnities. * * * * * the schools of lombardy and the emilia, which derive their characteristics from florentine rather than from venetian influences, may here be briefly mentioned before turning to the consideration of the venetian school. in , it will be remembered, leonardo went to milan, where he remained till the end of the century; and the extent of his influence may be judged from many of the productions of bernadino luini ( - ) and giovanni antonio bazzi, known as sodoma ( - ). of ambrogio di predis we have already heard in connection with the painting of our version of leonardo's _virgin of the rocks_. giovanni antonio boltraffio ( - ) was a pupil of vincenzo foppa, but he soon abandoned the manner of the old lombard school, and came under the influence of the great florentine, of whom he became a most enthusiastic disciple. more independent--indeed, he is officially characterised as "an isolated phenomenon in italian art"--was antonio allegri, commonly called correggio, from the place of his birth. in he settled at parma, where he remained till , so that he is usually catalogued as of the school of parma, which for an isolated phenomenon serves as well as any other. of late years his popularity has been somewhat diminished by the increasing demands of private collectors for works which are purchasable, and most of correggio's are in public galleries. at dresden are some of the most famous, notably the _nativity_, called "la notte," from its wonderful scheme of illumination, and two or three large altar-pieces. the _venus mercury and cupid_ in our national gallery, though sadly injured, is still one of his masterpieces. it was purchased by charles i. with the famous collection of the duke of mantua. our _ecce homo_ is entitled to rank with it, as is also the little _madonna of the basket_. [illustration: plate x.--correggio mercury, cupid, and venus _national gallery, london_] _venetian schools_ i the vivarini and bellini in venice the byzantine style appears to have offered a more stubborn resistance to the innovators than in tuscany, or, in fact, in any other part of italy. few, if any, of the allegorical subjects with which giotto and his scholars decorated whole buildings are to be found here, and the altar pictures retain longer than anywhere else the gilt canopied compartments and divisions, and the tranquil positions of single figures. it was not until a century after the death of cimabue and duccio that the real development of the venetian school was manifested, so that when things did begin to move the conditions were not the same, and the results accordingly were something substantially different. the influence of the byzantine style still hangs heavily over the work of nicolo semitecolo, who was working in venice in the middle of the fourteenth century, as may be seen in the great altar-piece ascribed to him in the academy--the coronation of the virgin with fourteen scenes from the life of christ. in this work there is little of the general advancement visible in other parts of italy. it corresponds most nearly with the work of duccio of siena, though without attaining his excellence; while the gold hatchings and olive brown tones are still byzantine. an altar-piece, by michele giambono, also in the academy, painted during the first half of the fifteenth century, shows a more decided advance, and even anticipates some of the later excellences of the venetian school. the drapery is in the long and easy lines which we see in the tuscan pictures of the period, and what is especially significant, in view of the subsequent development of venetian painting, the colouring is rich, deep, and transparent, and the flesh tints unusually soft and warm. this is signed by giambono, and is one of his most important works, as well as the most complete, as it exists in its original state as an _ancona_ or altar-piece divided into compartments by canopies of joiners' work. it is unusual in form, inasmuch as the central panel, though slightly larger than the pair on either side, contains but a single figure. this figure was generally supposed to be the saviour, but it has recently been pointed out that it is s. james the great, the others being ss. john the evangelist, philip benizi, michael, and louis of toulouse. some of giambono's finest work was in mosaic, and the walls and roof of the cappella de'mascoli in s. mark's may be regarded as the highest achievement in mosaic of the early venetian school. while this species of decoration had given place to fresco painting elsewhere, it was here, in , brought to a pitch of perfection by giambono which entitles this work to a prominent place in the history of painting. but the two chief pioneers of the early fifteenth century were giovanni, or johannes alamanus, and antonio da murano. the former appears from his surname to have been of german origin, the latter belonged to the family of vivarini, and they used to work together on the same pictures. two excellent examples of this combination are in the academy at venice. the one, dated , is a coronation of the virgin, with many figures, including several boys, and numerous saints seated. in the heads of the saints we may trace the hand of alamanus, in the germanic type of countenance which recalls the style of stephen of cologne. a repetition of this, if it is not actually the original, is in s. pantalone at venice. the other picture, dated , of enormous dimensions, represents the virgin enthroned, beneath a canopy sustained by angels, with the four fathers of the church at her side. the colouring is fully as flowing and splendid as that of giambono. we do not recognise here, as kugler rightly observes, the influence of the school of giotto, but rather the types of the germanic style gradually assuming a new character, possibly owing to the social condition of venice itself. there was something perhaps in the nature of a rich commercial aristocracy of the middle ages calculated to encourage that species of art which offered the greatest splendour and elegance to the eye; and this also, if possible, in a portable form; thus preferring the domestic altar or the dedication picture to wall decorations in churches. the contemporary flemish paintings, under similar conditions, exhibit analogous results. with regard to colour, the depth and transparency observable in the works of the old venetian school had long been a distinguishing feature in the byzantine paintings on wood, and may therefore be traceable to this source without assuming an influence on the part of padua, or from the north through giovanni alamanus. the two side panels of an altar-piece, representing severally ss. peter and jerome, and ss. francis and mark, now in the national gallery (nos. and ), are ascribed to antonio vivarini alone, though the centre panel, the virgin and child, now in the poldi pezzoli collection at milan is said to be the joint work of alamanus and antonio. however that may be, there is no longer any dispute about the fascinating adoration of the kings in the kaiser friedrich museum at berlin, formerly supposed to be the work of gentile da fabriano, but now catalogued as that of antonio. in the name of alamanus disappears altogether, and that of bartolommeo vivarini, antonio's younger brother, replaces it in an inscription upon the great altar-piece commissioned by pope nicholas v. in commemoration of cardinal albergati, now in the pinacoteca of bologna. the change is noticeable as introducing the paduan influence of squarcione, under whom bartolommeo had studied, instead of the northern influence of alamanus, into antonio's workshop, and while this work of , as might be supposed, bears a general resemblance to that of , the change of partnership is at least perceptible, and had a determining influence on the development of the venetian style. a slightly earlier work of bartolommeo alone is a madonna and child belonging to sir hugh lane, signed and dated . an altar-piece in the venice academy is dated , a madonna and four saints, in the frari, , and s. barbara, in the academy, . bartolommeo is supposed to have died in . alvise, or luigi, vivarini was the son of antonio, and though he worked under him and his uncle bartolommeo, as well as under giovanni bellini, the paduan influence is apparent in his work. he was born in , and his first dated work is an altar-piece at montefiorentino, in . in the academy at venice is a madonna dated , and at naples a madonna with ss. francis and bernard, . another madonna at vienna is dated , and the large altar-piece in the basilica at the kaiser friedrich museum in berlin is assigned to about the same time. this is the first of his works in which the influence of bellini rather than that of his family is traceable, while of the "redentore" madonna at venice, of about five years later, mr bernhard bernson says that, "as a composition no work of the kind by giovanni bellini even rivals it." in he had advanced so far as to be spoken of as anticipating giorgione and titian, in the effect of light and in the roundness and softness of the figures of the _resurrection_, at bragora. his last work, the altar-piece at the frari, was completed after his death in by his pupil basaiti. bartolommeo montagna, jacopo da valenza and lorenzo lotto were the chief of his other pupils. in connection with the vivarini must be mentioned carlo crivelli, who studied with bartolommeo under antonio and squarcione. but there was something fierce and uncongenial about crivelli which takes him out of the main body of venetian painters, and seems to have given him more pride in being made a knight than in his pictorial achievements, remarkable as they were. in his ornamentation of every detail with gold and jewels he recalls the style of antonio vivarini, but while the master used it as accessory merely, crivelli positively revelled in it. an inventory of the precious stones, ornaments, fruits and flowers, and other detached items in the great "demidoff altar-piece" in the national gallery would fill several pages. of the eight examples in this gallery the earliest is probably the _dead christ_, presumably painted in . the demidoff altar-piece is dated . the _annunciation_ (no. ), which may be considered his masterpiece, was ten years later. in crivelli was knighted by prince ferdinand of capua, and from that date onward he was careful to add to his signature the title _miles_--as appears in our _madonna and child enthroned_, with ss. jerome and sebastian--called the madonna della rondine:---- carolus crivellus venetus miles pinxit. this was painted for the odoni chapel in s. francesco at matelica, the coat of arms of the family being painted on the step. our _annunciation_ was executed for the convent of the santissima annunziata at ascoli, and is dated . three coats of arms on the front of the step at the bottom of the picture are those of the bishop of ascoli, pope innocent vii., the reigning pontiff, and the city of ascoli. between these are the words _libertas ecclesiastica_, in allusion to the charter of self-government given in by the pope to the citizens of ascoli. the patron saint of the city, s. emidius, is represented as a youth kneeling beside the archangel, holding in his hands a model of it. the virgin is seen through the open door of a house, and in an open loggia above are peacocks and other birds. amid all the rich detail, the significance of the group of figures at the top of a flight of steps must not be missed, amongst which a child and a poet are the only two who are represented as noticing the mystic event. another painter of the earlier half of the fourteenth century may be mentioned here, though as he was more famous as a medallist his influence on the main course of painting is not observable. vittore pisano, called pisanello, was born in verona before , and died in . of the few pictures attributed to him we are fortunate in having two such beautiful examples as the _ss. anthony and george_ and _the vision of s. eustace_ in the national gallery. both exhibit his two most noticeable characteristics, namely, the minute care and exquisite feeling that made him the most famous of medallists, and his wonderful drawing of animals. the latter, it is worth remarking, was attributed by a former owner to albert dürer. the other is signed "pisanus"; in the frame are inserted casts of two of his medals, representing leonello d'este, his patron, and a profile of himself. another very considerable factor in the development of venetian painting was the influence of gentile da fabriano (_c._ - ), who settled in venice in the latter part of his life, and there formed the closest intimacy with antonio vivarini. the remarkable _adoration of the kings_ in the berlin museum was until lately given to gentile, though it is now catalogued as the work of antonio. of gentile's education little is known, and of the numerous works which he executed at fabriano, in rome and in venice very few have survived. from those that exist, however, we can form an estimate of his talents and of the difference between his earlier and later styles. to the first belong a fresco of the madonna in the cathedral at orvieto, and the beautiful picture of the madonna and saints which is now in the kaiser friedrich museum at berlin. also the fine _adoration of the kings_, inscribed with his name and the date , formerly in the sacristy of s. trinità at florence, and now in the accademia. this, his masterpiece, is one of the finest conceptions of the subject as well as one of the most excellent productions of the schools descended from giotto. of his later period the _coronation of the virgin_ (called the _quadro della romita_) in the brera gallery at milan is one of the finest. in many respects his work is like that of fra angelico, and was aptly characterised by michelangelo when he said that "gentile's pictures were like his name." apart from the influence of the paduan school, which will next be noticed, the venetian owed most to gentile da fabriano, if only as the master of jacopo bellini, whose son, giovanni bellini, may be regarded as the real head of the venetian school as developed by his pupils giorgione and titian at the opening of the sixteenth century. whether or not giotto left any actual pupils in padua after completing the frescoes in the chapel of the arena there, it must be admitted that the older school of painting in padua, which centred round the church containing the body of s. anthony, was an offshoot of the florentine, and that as giotto was the great leader in florence he must be considered the same here; though his followers differ so much from each other in style that beyond their indebtedness to their founder they have no distinctive feature in common. but with the opening of the fifteenth century one particular tendency was developed under the fostering influence of francesco squarcione, born in , which affected in a very sensible degree the style of the great painters of the next generation in venice. this, in a word, was the cult of the antique. among the florentines, as we have seen, the study of form was chiefly pursued on the principle of direct reference to nature, the especial object in view being an imitation in two dimensions of the actual appearances and circumstances of life existing in three. in the paduan school it now came to be very differently developed, namely, by the study of the masterpieces of antique sculpture, in which the common forms of nature were already raised to a high ideal of beauty. this school has consequently the merit, as kugler points out, of applying the rich results of an earlier, long-forgotten excellence in art to modern practice. of a real comprehension of the idealising principle of classic art there does not appear any trace; what the paduans borrowed from the antique was limited primarily to mere outward beauty. accordingly in the earliest examples we find the drapery treated according to the antique costume, and the general arrangement more resembling bas-relief than rounded groups. the accessories display in like manner a special attention to antique models, particularly in the architecture, and the frequent introduction of festoons of fruit; while the exaggerated sharpness in the marking of the forms due to the combined influence of the study of the antique and the naturalising tendency of the time, sometimes borders on excess. the immediate cause of this almost sudden outbreak of the cult of the antique--whatever natural forces were behind it--was the visit of squarcione to greece, and southern italy, to collect specimens of the remains of ancient art. on his return to padua his collection soon attracted a great number of pupils anxious to avail themselves of the advantages it offered; and by these pupils, who poured in from all parts of italy, the manner of the school was afterwards spread throughout a great portion of the country. squarcione himself is better known as a teacher than as an artist, the few of his remaining works being of no great importance. there is no example in the national gallery, but of the work of his great pupil, mantegna, we have as much, at any rate, as will serve to commemorate the master. andrea mantegna was born at vicenza in , and when no more than ten years old was inscribed in the guild of padua as pupil and adopted son of squarcione. as early as he had painted an altar-piece for santa sophia, now lost, and in the fresco in san antonio. in he was engaged with nicolo pizzolo (donatello's assistant), and others, on the six frescoes in the eremitani church at padua. the whole of the left side of the chapel of ss. james and christopher--the life of s. james--and the martyrdom of s. christopher are his, and in these, his earliest remaining works, we already see the result of pedantic antiquarianism combined with his extraordinary individuality. in he went to mantua, where he remained for the greater part of his life, visiting florence in and rome in . among his earlier works are the small _adoration of the kings_ in the uffizi at florence, the _death of the virgin_ and the _s. george_ in the venice academy. from to he was intermittently engaged on the nine great cartoons of _the triumph of cæsar_, which are now at hampton court, having been acquired by charles i. with many other gems from the duke of mantua's collection. on the completion of these he painted the celebrated _madonna della vittoria_, now in the louvre--a large altar-piece representing a madonna surrounded by saints, with francesco gonzaga, duke of mantua, and his wife, kneeling at her feet. it is a dedication picture for a victory obtained over charles viii. of france in . it is no less remarkable for its superb execution than for a softer treatment of the flesh than is usual in mantegna's work. two other pictures in the louvre are, however, distinguished by similar qualities--the _parnassus_, painted in , and the _triumph of virtue_. [illustration: plate xi.--andrea mantegna the madonna della vittoria _louvre, paris_] in our own collection we have _the agony in the garden_, painted in --to which i shall refer presently--two monochrome paintings (nos. and ), the beautiful _virgin and child enthroned_, with ss. mary magdalen and john the baptist, which is comparable with the more famous louvre _madonna_, and, lastly, the _triumph of scipio_, in monochrome, painted for francesco cornaro, a venetian nobleman, completed in , only a few months before the painter's death. in this we see that mantegna's antiquarianism was not simply a youthful phase, but lasted till the very end of his career. the subject is the reception of the phrygian mother of the gods among the recognised divinities of the roman state, as is indicated on the plinth by the inscription. in the centre is claudia quinta about to kneel before the bust of the goddess. behind is scipio, and in the background are monuments to his family. the composition includes twenty-two figures. it is significant that the subject and its treatment are so entirely classic as only to be appreciated by references to latin literature. another significance attaches to the _agony in the garden_ above mentioned, which is one of the very earliest, as the _scipio_ is the very latest, of mantegna's pictures, being painted before he left padua to go to mantua. in this we find that the original suggestion for the design appears to have been taken from a drawing in the sketch-book of his father-in-law, jacopo bellini, which is now in the british museum; and the same design appears to have served giovanni bellini in the composition of the picture in our gallery (no. ). this takes us back to venice, and accounts for the paduan influence traceable in the works of the bellini family and their pupils. jacopo bellini, whose considerable talents have been somewhat obscured by the fame of his two sons, gentile and giovanni, was originally a pupil of gentile da fabriano, after whom he named his eldest son. he was working in padua in the middle of the fifteenth century, in rivalry with squarcione, and in his daughter nicolosia married andrea mantegna. thus it happened that both of his sons came under the influence of mantegna, and evidently, too, of the sculptor donatello, when working at padua between and . very few authentic pictures by jacopo are known to us. _a crucifixion_ (much repainted) was in the sacristy of the episcopal palace at verona; and another, which recalls the treatment of his master, gentile da fabriano, at lovere, near bergamo. in the sketch-book above mentioned, the contents of which consist of sacred subjects, and studies from the antique, both in architecture and in costume, we see the peculiar tendency of the paduan school expressed in the most complete and comprehensive manner. these drawings constitute the most remarkable link of connection between mantegna and the sons of jacopo bellini, all three of whom must have studied from them. the book was inherited by gentile on his mother's death, and bequeathed by him to his brother on condition that he should finish the picture of _s. mark_, on which gentile was engaged at the time of his death. giovanni bellini was born in or and lived to . albert dürer, writing from venice in , says that "he is very old, but is still the best in painting." the greater number of bellini's pictures are to be found in the galleries and churches in venice, all of those which are dated being the work of his old age. of his earlier pictures we are fortunate in having two fine examples in the national gallery, _christ's agony in the garden_ (no. ) and _the blood of the redeemer_ (no. ). in both of these the influence of his famous brother-in-law andrea mantegna, is traceable,--the former being till lately attributed to him. both giovanni and gentile worked in padua, where mantegna was established, in or thereabouts, and where another influence, that of the sculptor donatello, must have had its effect on the young brothers. similar in character, and even more beautiful in some respects, is the _redeemer_, a single half figure in a landscape, recently acquired for the louvre--the first authentic example of the master in that collection. in , giovanni had returned to venice, and it was some years before the severe paduan influence melted before "the sensuous feeling of the true venetian temperament." in , however, the arrival of antonello da messina in venice, bringing with him the practice of painting in oil, effected a revolution, in which giovanni, if not one of the foremost, was certainly one of the most successful in adopting the new method. his later works, so far from showing any diminution of power, may be said to anticipate the venetian style of the sixteenth century in the clearest manner. one of the chief, dated , is the large altar-piece in the sacristy of s. maria di frari, a _madonna enthroned_ with two angels and four saints. the two little angels are of the utmost beauty; the one is playing on a lute, and listens with head inclined to hear whether the instrument is in tune; the other is blowing a pipe. the whole is perfectly finished and of a splendid effect of colour. to the year belongs a _madonna enthroned with six saints_, now in the academy at venice. the famous head of the doge loredano in the national gallery must have been painted in or after . in , he completed the large picture of _s. mark preaching at alexandria_, now in the brera gallery at milan, begun by his brother gentile. within three years of his death, namely in , he could produce such a masterwork as the altar-piece in s. giovanni crisostomo. his last work, the landscape in which was finished by titian, is dated . this is the famous _bacchanal_ now in the collection of the duke of northumberland. the influence of bellini on the venetian school was paramount, and his noble example helped more than anything else to develop the excellences observable in the works of cimada conegliano, vincenzo catena, lorenzo lotto, palma vecchio and basaiti, to say nothing of his great pupils titian and giorgione. it is impossible to conjecture what course the genius of this younger generation would have taken without his guidance, but when we consider that in bellini was seventy years old, and had stored within his mind the experience of his early association with his brother-in-law andrea mantegna in padua, the introduction of the use of oil paints by antonello da messina in , since which date he had sedulously developed the new practice; when we also take into account the dignity and gravity of his own works, and the indication they afford of the man himself, it is not difficult to judge how much his pupils and successors owed to him. the works of gentile bellini, the elder brother of giovanni, are of less importance, but of considerable interest, especially in view of his journey to constantinople in at the request of the sultan, whose portrait he painted there in the following year. a replica [illustration: plate xii.--giovanni bellini the doge loredano _national gallery, london_] of this portrait has been bequeathed to the national gallery by sir henry layard, and it is to be hoped that the difficulties raised by the italian government as to its removal from venice will shortly be overcome. the picture of _s. mark preaching at alexandria_ already mentioned as having been finished by giovanni, is remarkable for the oriental costumes of all the figures in it. gentile's pictures are often ascribed to his brother; in two examples at the national gallery (nos. and ) there is actually a false signature on a cartellino. in the latter instance messrs ludwig and molmenti are still of opinion that the picture is the work of giovanni. vincenzo catena (_c._ - ) is not known to have been a pupil of bellini, but he began by so modelling his style upon him that one of his works in the national gallery was until quite lately officially ascribed to him, namely the _s. jerome in his study_. another, a later work, _a warrior adoring the infant christ_ was similarly ascribed to giorgione. this is a proof that catena was very susceptible to various influences, and was "an artist of extraordinary suppleness of mind, never too old to learn or to appreciate new ideals and new sentiments." in a manner more his own is the _madonna with four saints_ in the berlin gallery (no. ). the _s. jerome_ and the _warrior_ are among the most popular pictures in the national gallery--partly perhaps on account of their supposed illustrious parentage, but by no means entirely. a painter who could so absorb the characteristics of two such masters must needs be a master himself. cima da conegliano, so called from his birthplace in friuli--the rocky height of which serves as a background in some of his pictures--settled in venice in , when he was about thirty years old. the influence of bellini may be seen in the temperamental as well as the technical qualities of his work, which is distinguished by sound drawing and proportion, fine and brilliant colour, as well as by sympathetic types of countenance. one of his best and earliest pictures is the _s. john the baptist_ with four other saints, in santa maria del orto in venice. another is the _madonna with s. jerome and s. louis_, now in the vienna gallery. a smaller but peculiarly attractive piece is the _s. anianus of alexandria_ healing a shoemaker's wounded hand, at berlin, distinguished for its beautiful clear colours and the life-like character of the heads. andrea previtali, born in bergamo in , came to venice to study under bellini, whom he succeeded in imitating with remarkable success. _the mystic marriage of s. catherine_ (no. ) in the national gallery was formerly attributed to bellini. if he had not the originality to carry the art any farther, his pictures are nevertheless a decided and very agreeable proof of the advance that was being made in it at the beginning of the sixteenth century, before the full splendour of giorgione and titian had unfolded. marco basaiti, though probably not a pupil of bellini, nevertheless acquired many of his characteristics. the picture in the national gallery known as _the madonna of the meadow_ was until lately assigned to bellini, and another of his, in the giovanelli palace at venice, which is identical in technique, tone, and general effect with this one, is still so ascribed. whether or not he learnt from bellini, he was certainly an assistant to alvise vivarini, on whose death he completed the large altar-piece in the church of s. maria de friari at venice, representing _s. ambrose surrounded by saints_. his _christ on the mount of olives_ and _the calling of zebedee_, both dated , are now in the academy at venice, and together with the _portrait of a man_, dated , in the bergamo gallery, and _the assumption_ in s. pietro martire at murano, may be considered his best performances. more remote from bellini, yet not so far as to be entirely free from his influence in some of their more important compositions, was the school formed by lazzaro di bastiani or sebastiani, of which the chief ornament was vittore carpaccio, and among the lesser ones giovanni mansueti and benedetto diana. the history of this independent group of painters has only of late years been elucidated; kugler, after a page devoted to carpaccio, dismissed them with the remark that mansueti and bastiani were both pupils of carpaccio, and that benedetto diana was "less distinguished." our national collection was without any example until , when mansueti's _symbolic representation of the crucifixion_ was purchased. in the national art-collections fund secured bastiani's _virgin and child_, and in sir claude phillips presented diana's _christ blessing_. alas! that we are still without anything from the hand of vittore carpaccio. seven portraits by moroni do not fill a gap like this. the name of lazzaro de bastiani first occurs in venice as a witness to his brother's will in , and as early as he was painting an altar-piece for the church of san samuele. ten years later, the brothers of the scuolo di san marco ordered a picture of the _story of david_ from him, promising him the same payment as they gave to jacobo bellini, who had been working for them with his two sons gentile and giovanni. in , another proof of his rank and repute as a painter is afforded by a letter from a gentleman in constantinople, asking for a picture by him, but that giovanni bellini should paint it in the event of bastiani being already dead. he was thus, it would seem, preferred to bellini, though it will be remembered that five years later, when the sultan expressed the wish that a distinguished portrait-painter should be sent him from venice, it was gentile bellini who was nominated. all the same, gentile was a portrait-painter, and bastiani was not; and it is fairly evident that the latter was at least in the front rank. one of his best-known pictures the _vergine dai begli occhi_ in the ducal palace at venice used to be attributed to giovanni bellini; but though he appears to have drawn inspiration for his larger and more important compositions from jacobo bellini, his style was chiefly developed through that of giambono. his most important work is now in the academy at vienna--an altar-piece painted for the church of corpus domini, venice, _s. veneranda enthroned_. in the imperial gallery at vienna are a _last communion_ and _funeral of s. girolamo_. in the academy at venice are _s. anthony of padua_, seated between the branches of a walnut-tree, with cardinal bonaventura and brother leo on either side, a large picture of a _miracle of the holy cross_, and a remarkable rendering of _the madonna kneeling_, the child being laid under an elaborate canopy. an _entombment_ in the church of s. antonino at venice is reminiscent of giovanni bellini at his best. in , the name of vittore carpaccio occurs with that of bastiani in connection with the frescoes of giorgione upon the façade of the fondaco de tedeschi, about which there was a dispute. to carpaccio we are indebted for the most vivid realization of the contemporary life of venice; for although his subjects were nominally taken from sacred history or legend, they are treated in a thoroughly secular fashion, giving the clearest idea of the buildings, people, and costume of the venice of his time, with the greatest variety and richest development. his object is not only to represent single events, but a complete scene, and while we observe this characteristic in one or two pictures by the bellini, carpaccio not only shows it much oftener, but carries it to a much fuller development--possibly influenced by the netherlandish masters. many of his works are in the academy at venice; eight large pictures, painted between and , represent the history of s. ursula and the eleven thousand virgins. such a wealth of charming material might have embarrassed a less capable painter, but "the monotonous incident which forms the groundwork of many of them," as kugler coldly puts it, "is throughout varied and elevated by a free style of grouping and by happy moral allusions." another series is that of the _miracles of the holy cross_, among which may be especially noticed the cure of a man possessed by a devil; the scene is laid in the loggia of a venetian palace, and is watched from below by a varied group of figures on the canal and its banks. larger and broader treatment may be seen in the _presentation in the temple_, painted in , which is also in the academy, and in the altar-piece of _s. vitale_, dated . this last brings carpaccio into closer comparison with the later venetian painters, being in the nature of a _santa conversazione_, where the holy personages are grouped in some definite relation to each other, and not independent figures. palma vecchio ( - ), so called to distinguish him from giacomo palma the younger--palma giovane,--was so much influenced by giorgione and titian that his indebtedness to bellini appears to have been comparatively slight. the beautiful _portrait of a poet_ in the national gallery has been attributed both to giorgione and to titian. the number of pictures which are now permitted by the experts to be called giorgione's is so small, that we may learn more about him as an influence on the work of other painters--especially titian--than from the meagre materials available for his own biography. the only unquestioned examples of his work are three pictures at the uffizi, _the trial of moses_, _the judgment of solomon_, and _the knight of malta_; the _venus_ at dresden; _the three philosophers_ at vienna; and the famous _concert champêtre_ in the louvre. but until the critics deprive him even of these, we are able to agree that "his capital achievement was the invention of the modern spirit of lyrical passion and romance in pictorial art, and his magical charm has never been equalled." ii tiziano vecellio titian occupies almost, if not quite, as important a place in the history of painting as does shakespeare in that of literature. his fame, his popularity, the wide range as well as the immense quantity of his works, entitle him to be ranked with our poet, if only for the [illustration: plate xiii.--giorgione venetian pastoral _louvre, paris_] enormous influence they have both exercised on posterity: and without carrying the parallel farther than the limits imposed by the difference of their circumstances and their method of expression, it may fairly be said that titian, in painting, stands for us to-day much as shakespeare stands for in letters. "titian," says m. caro delvaille,[ ] "is the father of modern painting. as the blood of the patriarchs of old infused the veins of a whole race, so the genius of the most productive of painters was destined to infuse those of artists through all the ages even to the present day. he bequeathed, in his enormous _oeuvre_, a heritage in which generations of painters have participated." not only was he the father of modern painting, but he was himself the first modern painter, just as shakespeare was, to all present intents and purposes, the first modern writer. among a thousand readers of shakespeare, there is possibly not more than one who has ever read a line of chaucer, or who has ever heard of any of his other predecessors. so it is with titian. to the connoisseur, titian is one of the latest painters; to the public he is the earliest. "in certain of his portraits," we read in the national gallery catalogue, "he ranks with the supreme masters; in certain other aspects he is seen as the greatest academician, as perhaps he was the first." as it happens, too, titian stands in much the same relation to giorgione as shakespeare did to marlowe. giorgione was really the great innovator, and giorgione died young, leaving titian to carry on the work. it has always been supposed that titian and giorgione, like marlowe and shakespeare, were born within the same year; but in this respect the parallel is no longer admissible, as mr herbert cook has shown to the verge of actual proof that the story of titian being born in , and having lived to be ninety-nine years old, is unworthy of acceptance. if this were merely a question of biography, it would not be worth dwelling upon; but as it seriously affects the whole study of early venetian painting, it is necessary to point out that the probability, according to a critical study of all the evidence available, is that titian was not born till or , and was thus really the pupil rather than the contemporary of giorgione, and therefore more slightly influenced by giovanni bellini than has been generally supposed. without going into all the evidence adduced by mr cook (_reviews and appreciations,_ heinemann, ) it is nevertheless pretty evident that in the account given by his friend and contemporary, lodovico dolce, published in , we have the most authentic story of titian's early years, and from this it is quite clear that titian was considerably younger than giorgione. "being born at cadore," he writes, "of honourable parents, he was sent, when a child of nine years old, by his father to venice, to the house of his father's brother, in order that he might be put under some proper master to study painting; his father having perceived in him even at that tender age strong marks of genius towards the art.... his uncle directly carried the child to the house of sebastanio, father of the _gentilissimo_ valerio and of francesco zuccati (distinguished masters of the art of mosaic, ...) to learn the principles of the art. from them he was removed to gentile bellini, brother of giovanni, but much inferior to him, who at that time was at work with his brother in the grand council chamber. but titian, impelled by nature to greater excellence and perfection in his art, could not endure following the dry and laboured manner of gentile, but designed with boldness and expedition. whereupon gentile told him he would make no progress in painting because he diverged so much from the old style. thereupon titian left the stupid gentile and found means to attach himself to giovanni bellini; but not perfectly pleased with his manner, he chose giorgio da castel franco. titian, then, drawing and painting with giorgione, as he was called, became in a short time so accomplished in art that when giorgione was painting (in - ) the façade of the fondaco de'tedeschi, or exchange of the german merchants, which looks towards the grand canal, titian was allotted the other side which faces the market place, being at the time scarcely twenty years old. here he represented a judith of wonderful design and colour, so remarkable indeed, that when the work came to be uncovered it was commonly thought to be the work of giorgione, and all the latter's friends congratulated him (giorgione) as being by far the best thing he had produced. whereupon giorgione, in great displeasure, replied that the work was from the hand of his pupil, who showed already how he could surpass his master and (what is more) giorgione shut himself up for some days at home, as if in despair, seeing that a young (_i.e._ younger) man knew more than he did." again, in speaking of the famous altar-piece--the _assumption_, now in the academy at venice--painted by titian in , dolce mentions him twice as "giovinetto." "not long afterwards he was commissioned to paint a large picture for the high altar of the church of the frate minori, where titian, quite a young man, painted in oil the virgin ascending to heaven.... this was the first public work which he painted in oil, and he did it in a very short time, and while still a young man." vasari's account of titian's early years is substantially the same, but unfortunately opens with the statement that he was "born in the year ." this might easily have been a slip of the pen or a printer's mistake for or , and subsequent passages in the life bear out this supposition. but partly because titian was a venetian and not a florentine, and partly, no doubt, because he was still alive, and had been producing picture after picture for over sixty years at the time vasari published his second edition in , the whole account is so confused and inaccurate that its credit has been severely shaken by modern critics, with the result that it is hardly nowadays considered authentic in any respect. the following extracts, however, there seems no reason to question:---- "about the year , giorgione not being satisfied [with the old-fashioned methods of bellini and others] began to give his works an unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner." and a little later "having seen the manner of giorgione, titian early resolved to abandon that of gian bellino, although well grounded therein. he now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a short time so closely imitated giorgione that his pictures were sometimes taken for those of this master, as will be related below. increasing in age, judgment and facility of hand, our young artist executed numerous works in fresco.... at the time when he began to adopt the manner of giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the portrait of a gentleman of the barberigo family, who was his friend, and this was considered very beautiful, the colouring being true and natural, the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted, as might also the stitches in a satin doublet painted in the same work; in a word, it was so well and carefully done that it would have been taken for a work of giorgione if titian had not written his name on the dark ground." with this we may leave the question of titian's birth date, and consider the exceptional interest attaching to the question of this barberigo portrait. according to mr. cook, and also, under reserve, to several other eminent authorities, it is no other than the so-called _ariosto_, which was purchased for the national gallery in . the chief difficulties in deciding the question are, first, whether it is possible that a youth of eighteen could have painted such a masterpiece, second, that the signature _titianus_ is supposed not to have been used by the artist before about , and lastly, that the head, at any rate, is decidedly more in the manner of giorgione than that of titian. this last, of course, did not trouble vasari, and his testimony is therefore all the more valuable; but all difficulties vanish if we accept mr. cook's theory that the portrait was begun by giorgione in , was left incomplete at his sudden death in , and finished by titian in . that is to say, the head and general design is that of giorgione, the marvellous finish of the sleeve and other parts that of titian. of works left unfinished at a master's death and completed by a pupil there are numerous instances; the famous _bacchanal_ at alnwick is one which takes us a step further in titian's career. this was begun by giovanni bellini, and titian was invited by the duke of ferrara, in , to finish it. the landscape is entirely his. to complete the decoration of the apartment in which the picture was hung, he was called upon to paint two others of the same size, one the _triumph of bacchus_, or as it is usually called _bacchus and ariadne_ (now in the national gallery) and the other a similar subject, the _bacchanal_, now in the prado (no. , formerly ). ridolfi, in his life of titian characterises our picture as one to whose unparalleled merits he is inadequate to do justice; "there is," he says, "such a graceful expression in the figure of ariadne, such beauty in the children--so strongly marked both in the looks and attitudes is the joyous character of the licentious votaries of bacchus--the roundness and correct drawing of the man entwined with snakes, the magnificence of the sky and landscape, the sporting play of the leaves and branches of the most vivid tints, and the detailed herbage on the ground tending to enliven the scene, and the rich tone of colour throughout, form altogether such a whole that hardly any other work of titian can stand in competition with it." in the composition of the second picture, _the bacchanal_ at madrid, a number of the votaries of bacchus are assembled on the bank of a rivulet, flowing with red wine from a hill in the distance; some of them are distributing the liquor to their associates, while a nymph and two men are dancing. the nymph is supposed to be a portrait of violante, titan's mistress, as he has painted, in allusion to her name, a violet on her breast and his own name round her arm. her light drapery is raised by the breeze, and discovers the beautiful form and _morbidezza_ of her limbs. in the foreground ariadne lies asleep, her head resting on a rich vase in place of a pillow.[ ] [illustration: plate xiv.--titian portrait said to be of ariosto _national gallery, london_] cumberland says that raphael mengs, who lived long at madrid at the time when this picture was in the reception room of the new palace, was of opinion that titian's superior taste was nowhere more strikingly displayed, and remarks that he himself could never pass by it without surprise and admiration, more particularly excited by the beauty of the sleeping ariadne in the foreground. respecting the merits of both pictures the testimony of agostino carracci should not be omitted; when he viewed them in the possession of the duke of ferrara he declared that he considered them the first in the world, and that no one could say he was acquainted with the most marvellous works of art without having seen them. commenting upon another picture of titian's early period, sir joshua reynolds delivers himself of the following criticisms on titian as compared with raphael, "it is to titian that we must turn," he says, "to find excellence in regard to colour, and light and shade in the highest degree. he was both the first and the greatest master of this art; by a few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of whatever object he attempted, and produced by this alone a truer representation of nature than his master, giovanni bellini, or any of his predecessors, who finished every hair. his greatest object was to express the general colour, to preserve the masses of light and shade, and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable from natural objects.... "raphael and titian seemed to have looked at nature for different purposes; they both had the power of extending their view to the whole, but one looked only at the general effect as produced by form, the other as produced by colour. we cannot refuse titian the merit of attending to the general form of the object, as well as colour; but his deficiency lay--a deficiency at least when he is compared with raphael--in not possessing the power, like him, of correcting the form of his model by any general idea of beauty in his own mind. of this his _st. sebastian with other saints_ (in the vatican) is a particular instance. this figure appears to be a most exact representation both of the form and colour of the model which he then happened to have before him, and has all the force of nature, and the colouring of flesh itself; but unluckily the model was of a bad form, especially the legs. titian has with much care preserved these defects, as he has imitated the beauty and brilliancy of the colouring...." of the sebastian, vasari says very much the same as reynolds. "he is nude," he writes, "and has been exactly copied from the life without the slightest admixture of art, no efforts for the sake of beauty have been sought in any part--trunk or limbs; all is as nature left it, so that it might seem to be a sort of cast from the life. it is nevertheless considered very fine, and the figure of our lady with the infant in her arms, whom all the other figures are looking at, is also accounted most beautiful." two more of the pictures of titian's earliest period are in the national gallery--the _christ appearing to mary magdalen_ (no. ), and the _holy family_ (no. ). the former is ascribed to about the year , partly on the ground that the group of buildings in the landscape is identical, line for line, with that in the dresden _venus_ painted by giorgione but completed by titian after his death. the same landscape also occurs in the beautiful little _cupid_ in the vienna [illustration: plate xv.--titian the holy family _national gallery, london_] academy, and, as mr herbert cook suggests, possibly represents some cherished spot in titian's memory connected with his mountain home at pieve di cadore. the _holy family_, above mentioned, is a most charming example of the _sacra conversazione_ as developed by titian from the somewhat formal and austere conception of bellini and his contemporaries into something eminently characteristic of the secular side of his genius. the very titles of two of his most beautiful and most famous pictures of this sort proclaim the hold they have taken on the popular mind. the one is the _madonna of the cherries_, in the vienna gallery. the other is the _madonna with the rabbit_, in the louvre. in our picture the distinguishing feature is the kneeling shepherd, with his little water-cask slung on his belt, who puts us at once in touch with the whole scene by the simple appeal to our common human experience. raphael could move our religious feelings to revere the godhead in the child, but could seldom, like titian, stir our human emotions and bring home to us that christ was born on earth for our sakes. if this particular characteristic of titian were confined to the pastoral setting of these holy conversations, it might be taken as merely accidental, and without further significance than should be accorded to a youthful fancy. but in the wonderful _entombment_, now in the louvre, in which he displays "the full splendour of his early maturity," the human element is such an important factor in the presentment of the divine tragedy that even a painter, m. caro-delvaille, must postpone his description of the picture to sentences like these:--"sur un ciel tourmenté," he writes, in phrases which it is impossible to render adequately in english, "se profile le groupe tragique. aucun geste superflu; le drame est intérieur. la douleur plane dans l'air alourdi du crépuscule, comme une aile fatale--jésus est mort! le grand cadavre livide, que les apôtres angoissés soutiennent, n'a rien dans sa robustesse inerte de la dépouille émaciée des christs mystiques. le fils de dieu semble un patriarche douloureusement frappé par le décret d'en haut. "une âpreté primitive, où les larmes se cachent comme une faiblesse, communique a l'oeuvre un pathétique si poignant que le mystère de la mort s'étend jusqu'à nous. "la vierge et la madeleine sont là. elle, la mère, doute de la réalité, tant elle souffre! son regard fixe sur le corps chéri, elle ne peut croire que tout est consommé. la pécheresse pitoyable la prend dans ses bras pour essayer de l'arracher à l'horreur de cette vision. "drame humain et divin! ne sont-ce point des fils qui ramènent le cadavre de leur père à la poussière? tous ceux qui passèrent par ces épreuves se souviennent de ce deuil qui semble se prolonger dans la nature entière." titian's first period may be said to end in , by which time he had completed the famous _peter martyr_, which was destroyed by fire in . in , too, titian's wife died. this event of itself need not be supposed to have greatly influenced his career, as there is no evidence of her having appealed to his artistic nature as did his daughter lavinia. as it happened, however, a more certain influence was nearly coincident with this event--the arrival in venice of the notorious aretine, who, chiefly as it appears, with an eye to business, entered into the most intimate relations with titian. the accession of the sculptor [illustration: plate xvi.--titian the entombment _louvre, paris_] sansovino to the comradeship earned for the group the name of the triumvirate. so far from titian being corrupted by the society of aretine, there is direct evidence in one of the poet's letters to him that he was not. "you must come to our feast to-night," he writes, "but i may as well warn you that you had better leave early, as i know how particular you are about certain things." nor is there anything in the artist's works of this next period--which we may roughly date from to , that betrays a more serious devotion to the sensual side of life than can be accounted for by the demands of the high and mighty patrons that aretine was soon to find for him. as an artist he looked upon woman as a beautiful creature, as a man he most probably never troubled about her, or was troubled by her. there is no proof that any of his pictures are rightly called "titian's mistress," and we may conclude that he was as good a husband and a father as was rubens, who revelled in painting woman, or velasquez, who seems to have frankly disliked it. like rowlandson, whom the general public only know as a caricaturist, but who when he once got away from london was the most pure minded and poetical artist, so titian, when once dissociated from the demands of corrupt patrons, like philip ii., never reveals himself as having fallen under the influence of aretine--if indeed at all. the _danaë_ and the _venus and a musician_ at the prado are the only examples it is possible to cite--unless it be the _venus_, to which popular opinion would hardly deny its place of honour in the tribune at the uffizi. at the same time the difference in circumstances, the fuller, richer life that he must have led in these years of patronage and prosperity, accounts for a certain "shallowness and complacency" which distinguishes his work during this period as sharply from that which preceded as from that which followed it; and fine as is his accomplishment during these years, especially in portraiture, it includes fewer of those masterpieces which appeal to the heart as much as to the eye. to belongs the large and beautiful picture of the _presentation of the virgin mary in the temple_, painted for the scuola della carità in venice, which is now occupied by the academy, where it still hangs, as is said, in its original place. it is twenty-two feet in length, and contains several portraits, among which are those of his daughter lavinia (the virgin, as is supposed), andrea franchescini, grand chancellor of venice, in a scarlet robe; next him, in black, lazzaro crasso, a lawyer, and certain monks of the convent following them. we now find titian employed by the duke of urbino on some of the principal works of this period. among these were the uffizi _venus_, said to be a portrait of the duchess herself. the _girl in a fur mantle_ at vienna, portraits of the duke and of the duchess ( ), and the so-called _la bella_ at the uffizi. the so-called _duke of norfolk_ at the pitti, supposed to represent the young duke guidobaldo of urbino. also the _isabella d'este_ at vienna, and somewhat earlier, the _cardinal ippolito_ in hungarian dress, at the pitti; and the _daughter of robert strozzi_, at berlin. the large _ecce homo_ in the vienna gallery, dated , measuring ft. in. by ft. in. was for some years in london, and with better fortune might still be in this country if not in our national collection. it was one of the nineteen pictures by titian in the wonderful collection of rubens, which the duke of buckingham persuaded him to sell to him for a fabulous price. the collection was shipped to england in , when the pictures were taken to york house in the strand, and the statues and gems to chelsea. in a portion of the collection was sold at brussels, and the _ecce homo_ was purchased there by the archduke leopold for his gallery at prague, which now forms part of that at vienna. the earl of arundel offered the duke of buckingham £ for it--an unheard of price, especially when we remember the greater value of money at that time. with another masterpiece--fortunately still preserved in the prado, though not entirely uninjured by fire--we may close the second period. this is the magnificent equestrian portrait of _the emperor charles v._ which was painted at augsburg in . a few years later the emperor abdicated in favour of his egregious son, philip ii., of whom titian painted three portraits in succession. the second of these, now in the prado, has an especial interest for us, inasmuch as it was painted for the benefit or the enticement of queen mary before her marriage to philip. as might be expected, it is a highly flattering likeness,--in white and gold, in half armour. to quote m. caro-delvaille, this king of _auto da fés_ and sunken galleys is here nothing more than a gallant cavalier--neurasthenic but elegant. for england was also painted the _venus and adonis_, in ; but unfortunately the original is now in madrid, and only a copy in our national gallery. however, the remains of philip are there too, and not in westminster abbey! a copy of another famous picture painted by titian for the emperor charles v. was also in the collection of the duke of buckingham, who probably brought it with him when he returned from his madcap expedition with prince charles to madrid. it is described in his catalogue as "one great piece of the emperor charles, a copy called titian's glory, being the principal in spain, now in the escurial." this was the great _paradise_, or apotheosis of charles v. which charles took with him into spain at the time of his abdication and placed in the monastery of st. juste, in estramadura, to which he retired. after his death it was removed by philip ii. to madrid. of the two versions of _the crowning with thorns_, the earlier one at the louvre, painted in , is more familiar to, and probably more popular with, the general public than the much later one at munich painted in . but for the real merits of the two we need not hesitate to accept m. caro-delvaille's judgment, since if he had any bias it would be in favour of his own country's treasure. the former he characterises as an incoherent composition, in which useless gesticulation diminishes the dramatic effect, while striving to force it; and adds that all the false romanticism of painting comes from this sort of theatrical pathos. of the other he writes "it was the picture at the louvre which shocked me with its violent declamation and its forced blows that never hit anything. but here at munich a mystery so profound broods over the drama that the melodramatic element disappears. the scene becomes tragic, lamentable, hopelessly sad. the great artist with a brush that trembles in his aged hands paints but the sentiment of it, to exhale from his work like a plaintive sigh. the veil of death descends and spreads over life.... titian might seem to have painted it as an offering to rembrandt when he, too, should feel the approach of death." another of his latest pictures, the _adam and eve in paradise_, is in the prado (no. , formerly ). this was copied, or one might almost say travestied, by rubens when he was at madrid in , and his work was hung in the same room with it. as the colouring is of a lower tone than is usual with titian, and the attitudes of the figures extremely simple and natural, the contrast is all the more marked, and was well expressed by cumberland, who said that "when we contemplate titian's picture of adam and eve we are convinced they never wore clothes; turn to the copy, and the same persons seem to have laid theirs aside." a more generous comparison between these two painters is made by reynolds in a note on du fresnoy's poem on painting respecting the qualities of regularity and uniformity. "an instance occurs to me where those two qualities are separately exhibited by two great painters, rubens and titian: the picture of rubens is in the church of s. augustine at antwerp, the subject (if that may be called a subject where no story is represented) is the virgin and infant christ placed high in the picture on a pedestal with many saints about them and as many below them, with others on the steps to serve as a link to unite the upper and lower part of the picture. the composition of this picture is perfect in its kind; the artist has shown the greatest skill in composing and contrasting more than twenty figures without confusion and without crowding; the whole appearing as much animated and in motion as it is possible where nothing is to be done. "the picture of titian which we would oppose to this is in the church of the s. frari at venice (the "pesaro madonna," where the two donors kneel below the virgin enthroned). one peculiar character of this piece is grandeur and simplicity, which proceed in a great measure from the regularity of the composition, two of the principal figures being represented kneeling directly opposite to each other, and nearly in the same attitude. this is what few painters would have had the courage to venture; rubens would certainly have rejected so unpicturesque a mode of composition had it occurred to him. both these pictures are excellent in their kind, and may be said to characterize their respective authors. there is a bustle and animation in the work of rubens, a quiet solemn majesty in that of titian. the excellence of rubens is the picturesque effect he produces; the superior merit of titian is in the appearance of being above seeking after any such "artificial excellence." the most important artist besides titian who was a pupil of giorgione was sebastiano del piombo, as he was called--his father's name was luciani. but as two other notable influences determined his career, he is not to be taken as typical of the venetian school in general or that of giorgione in particular. born in venice about the year , he first studied under giovanni bellini, as appears from the signature as well as from the style of a _pietà_ by him in the layard collection, which we may hope soon to see in the national gallery. of his giorgionesque period there is only one important picture known to us, the beautiful altar-piece in s. giovanni crisostomo in venice, which is not far removed from the richness of titian's earlier work. the picture represents the mild and dignified s. chrysostom seated, reading aloud at a desk in an open hall; s. john the baptist leaning on his cross is looking attentively at him; behind him are two male and on the left two female saints listening devoutly, and in the foreground the virgin looking majestically out of the picture at the spectator--a splendid type of the full and grand venetian ideal of female beauty of that time. the true expression of a _santa conversazione_ could not be more worthily given than in the relation in which the listeners stand to the reader, and in glow of colour this work is not inferior to the best of giorgione's or titian's. as early as , however, he not only left venice, but also his venetian manner. he was invited to rome by the rich banker and patron of the arts, agostino chigi, where he met raphael, and with astonishing versatility succeeded as well in emulating the excellences of that master as he had those of bellini and giorgione. the half-length _daughter of herodias_ bequeathed to the national gallery by george salting is dated , and in he painted the famous _fornarina_ in the uffizi, which until the middle of the last century was supposed to be a _chef d'oeuvre_ of raphael. to this period also belongs the _s. john in the desert_, at the louvre. within the next seven years a still mightier influence found him, that of michelangelo, and how far he was capable of responding to it may be judged by our great _raising of lazarus_, painted at rome in - for giulio de'medici, afterwards pope clement vii., to be placed with raphael's _transfiguration_ in the cathedral of narbonne. both pictures were publicly exhibited in rome, and by some people sebastiano's was preferred to raphael's. according to waagen the whole composition was designed by michelangelo, with whom sebastiano had entered into the closest intimacy; and kugler states that the group of lazarus and those around him was actually drawn by the master. however that may be, we can hardly fail to see how entirely the venetian influence is obscured by that of the great florentine, and to recognise the extraordinary genius of a painter who could do something more than imitate from such masters as bellini, giorgione, raphael and michelangelo. the last traces of the vivarini influence are to be seen in the earlier works of lorenzo lotto( - ), who was a pupil of alvise, though his pictures after , when he had left venice, treviso and reccanti, where he had been employed, show the effect of his changed surroundings. to this date is assigned the _portrait of a young man_, at hampton court. at rome in he was painting with raphael in the vatican, and in his next dated work, the _entombment_, at jesi, the echoes of raphael's disputation and the _school of athens_ are clear. the dresden _madonna and child with s. john_ was probably painted at bergamo in , and the _madonna and saints_, lately bequeathed to the national gallery, is dated . at madrid is a picture by him of _a bride and bridegroom_ dated , to which year probably belongs the _family group_ in the national gallery. these are early instances of the comparatively rare inclusion of more than a single figure in a pure portrait. in our example the father and mother and two children are composed into a delightful picture, in which for once we may see the actual people of the time in something like their natural surroundings, instead of being posed, however effectively, to assist in the representation of some historic or legendary scene. in lotto was back again in venice, and was probably influenced by palma vecchio when he painted the superb portrait of the sculptor _odoni_, which is at hampton court. a little later the influence of titian is more visible. two other portraits are in our national gallery, those of the protonotary juliano and of agostino and niccolo della torre. bonifazio di pitati ( - ), sometimes called bonifazio veronese or veneziano, was born at verona, but studied in venice under palma vecchio. the influence of his native city distinguishes his work in some degree from the pure venetian, as it did that of the more famous paolo in later years; but the atmosphere created by giorgione was so strong as to cause bonifazio's masterpiece (if we except the _dives and lazarus_ at the academy in venice) to be attributed until quite lately to giorgione. it is thus described by kugler:--"a picture in the brera in milan, very deserving of notice, is perhaps one of giorgione's most beautiful works; it is historic in subject, but romantic in conception. the subject is the finding of moses; all the figures are in the rich costume of giorgione's time. in the centre the princess sits under a tree, and looks with surprise at the child who is brought to her by a servant. the seneschal of the princess, with knights and ladies, stand around. on one side are seated two lovers on the grass, on the other side musicians and singers, pages with dogs, a dwarf with an ape, etc. it is a picture in which the highest earthly splendour and enjoyment are brought together, and the incident from scripture only gives it a more pleasing interest. the costume, however inappropriate to the story, disturbs the effect as little as in other venetian pictures of the same period, since it refers more to a poetic than to a mere historic truth, and the period itself was rich in poetry; its costume too assists the display of a romantic splendour. this picture, with all its glow of colour, is softer than the earlier works of the master, and reminds us of titian...." the beautiful _santa conversazione_ in the national gallery, again, which was formerly in the casa terzi at bergamo, was there attributed to palma vecchio. here the virgin in a rose-coloured mantle is the centre of the composition, with the child on her knee, whose foot the little s. john is bending to kiss. on the right is s. catherine and on the left s. james the less and s. jerome. in the landscape are seen a shepherd lying beside his flock, while other shepherds are fleeing from a lion who has seized their dog. a copy of this composition is in the academy at venice. oddly enough it was a pupil of bonifazio who employed the grand venetian manner in the humbler and more commonplace walks of life, and neglecting alike the _sacra conversazione_ and the pompous scenes of festivity, developed into the first italian painter of _genre_. this was jacopo da ponte, called from his birthplace bassano, who was working in venice under bonifazio as early as . he afterwards returned to bassano, and selecting those scenes in which he could most extensively introduce cottages, peasants, and animals, he connected them with events from sacred history or mythology. a peculiar feature by which his pictures may be known is the invariable and apparently intentional hiding of the feet of his figures, for which purpose sheep and cattle and household utensils are introduced. he confines himself to a bold, straightforward imitation of familiar objects, united, however, with pleasing composition, colour, and chiaroscuro. his colours, indeed, sparkle like gems, particularly the greens, in which he displays a brilliancy quite peculiar to himself. his lights are boldly infringed on the objects, and are seldom introduced except on prominent parts of the figures. in accordance with this treatment his handling is spirited and peculiar, somewhat in the manner of rembrandt; and what on close inspection appears dark and confused, forms at a distance the very strength and magic of his colouring. the picture of the _good samaritan_ in the national gallery is a good example, and was formerly in the collection of reynolds, who it is said always kept it in his studio. the _portrait of a man_ (no. ) is excelled by that of an _old man_ at berlin. iii paolo veronese and il tintoretto it cannot be said that the venetian artists of the second half of the sixteenth century equalled in their collective excellence the great masters of the first, but in single instances they are frequently entitled to rank beside them. at the head of these is jacopo robusti ( - ), called il tintoretto (the dyer), in allusion to his father's trade. he was one of the most vigorous painters in all the history of art; one who sought rather than avoided the greatest difficulties, and who possessed a true feeling for animation and grandeur. if his works do not always charm, it should be imputed to the foreign and non-venetian element which he adopted, but never completely mastered; and also to the times in which he lived, when venetian art had fallen somewhat into the mistaken way of colossal and rapid productiveness. his off-hand style, as kugler calls it, is always full of grand and significant detail, and with a few patches of colour he sometimes achieves the liveliest forms and expressions. but he fails in that artistic arrangement of the whole and in that nobility of motives in the parts which are necessary exponents of a really high ideal. his compositions are achieved less by finely studied degrees of participation in the principal action than by great masses of light and shade. attitudes and movements are taken immediately from common life, not chosen from the best models. with titian the highest ideal of earthly happiness in existence is expressed by beauty; with tintoretto in mere animal strength, sometimes of an almost rude character. for a short time he was a pupil of titian, but for some unknown reason he soon left him, and struck out for himself. in the studio which he occupied in his youth he had inscribed, as a definition of the style he professed, "the drawing of michelangelo, the colouring of titian." he copied the works of the latter, and also designed from casts of florentine and antique sculpture, particularly by lamplight--as did romney a couple of centuries later--to exercise himself in a more forcible style of relief. he also made models for his works, which he lighted artificially, or hung up in his room, in order to master perspective. by these means he united great strength of shadow with the venetian colouring, which gives a peculiar character to his pictures, and is very successful when limited to the direct imitation of nature. but apart from the impossibility of combining two such totally different excellences as the colouring of titian and the drawing of michelangelo, it appears that tintoretto's acquaintance with the works of the latter only developed his tendency to a naturalistic style. that which with michelangelo was the symbol of a higher power in nature was adopted by tintoretto in its literal form. most of his defects, it is probable, arose from his indefatigable vigour, which earned for him the nickname of _il furioso_. sebastian del piombo said that tintoretto could paint as much in two days as would occupy him two years. other sayings were that he had three brushes, one of gold, one of silver, and a third of brass, and that if he was sometimes equal to titian he was often inferior to tintoretto! in this last category kugler puts two of his earliest works, the enormous _last judgment_, and _the golden calf_, in the church of s. maria dell'orto, while on his much later _last supper_ he is still more severe. "nothing more utterly derogatory," he writes, "both to the dignity of art and to the nature of the subject can be imagined. s. john is seen with folded arms, fast asleep, while others of the apostles with the most burlesque gestures are asking, 'lord, is it i?' another apostle is uncovering a dish which stands on the floor without remarking that a cat has stolen in and is eating from it. a second is reaching towards a flask; a beggar sits by, eating. attendants fill up the picture. to judge from an overthrown chair the scene appears to have been a revel of the lowest description. it is strange that a painter should venture on such a representation of this subject scarcely a hundred years after the creation of leonardo da vinci's _last supper_." it was in , when but thirty years old, that tintoretto first became famous, with the large _miracle of s. mark_, now in the venice academy. this is perhaps his finest as well as his most celebrated work; but the greatest monument to his industry and general ability is the scuola di'san rocco, where he began to work in under a contract to produce three pictures a year for an annuity of a hundred ducats. in all there are sixty-two of his pictures in this building, the greater part of them very large, the figures throughout being of the size of life. _the crucifixion_, painted in , is the most extensive of them, and on the whole the most perfect. in , four years before his death, he completed the enormous _paradise_ in the sala del gran consiglio, measuring seventy-four feet in length and thirty in height. in the national gallery we have three characteristic examples, fortunately on a smaller scale, namely, the _s. george_ on a white horse, which, with its greyish flesh tones and the blue of the princess's mantle, is cooler in tone than the generality of his pictures; _christ washing the disciples' feet_, and the very beautiful and radiant _origin of the milky way_, purchased from lord darnley in . at hampton court a still finer example, _the nine muses_, is so discoloured by age and hung in such a difficult light that it is impossible to enjoy its full beauty. paolo caliari, better known as veronese, was born ten years later than tintoretto, and died six years before him ( - ). he studied in his native city of verona till he was twenty, and after working for some time at mantua he came to venice in , where he was quickly recognised by titian and by sansovino, the sculptor and director of public buildings, and was commissioned in that year to paint a _coronation of the virgin_ and other works in the church of s. sebastian. the _martyrdom of s. giustino_, now in the uffizi, and the _madonna and child_ in the louvre are also among his earlier works. as early as he was at work on the enormous _feast at cana_, now in the louvre, and a similar work at dresden is of the same date. in he went to rome, where he studied the works of raphael and michelangelo. on his return to venice in [illustration: plate xvii.--tintoretto st george and the dragon _national gallery, london_] --after visiting verona, where he painted in his parish church, and also married--he was employed to decorate the ducal palace, but much of his best work there was destroyed by fire. two of his most important works completed before are in the academy at venice, _the battle of lepanto_ and the _feast in the house of levi_. in this last he incurred strictures from the inquisition more severe than those of kugler upon tintoretto's _last supper_, and possibly with as much reason, it being objected that the introduction of german soldiery, buffoons, and a parrot was "irreligious." his _family of darius_, now in the national gallery, was one of his latest works. veronese, even more than titian, whom in colouring he sought to emulate, and tintoretto, whom in this respect he certainly excelled, expresses the spirit of the venetians of his time--a powerful and noble race of human beings, as kugler calls them, elate with the consciousness of existence, and in full enjoyment of all that renders earth attractive. by the splendour of his colour, assisted by rich draperies and other materials, by a very clear and transparent treatment of the shadows, he infused a magic into his great canvases which surpasses almost all the other masters of the venetian school. never had the pomp of colour, on a large scale, been so exalted and glorified as in his works. this, his peculiar quality, is most decidedly and grandly developed in scenes of worldly splendour; he loved to paint festive subjects for the refectories of rich convents, suggested of course from particular passages in the scriptures, but treated with the greatest freedom, especially as regards the costume, which is always of his own time. instead, therefore, of any religious sentiment, we are presented with a display of the most cheerful human scenes and the richest worldly splendour. that which distinguishes him from tintoretto, and which in his later period, after the death of titian and michelangelo, earned for him the rank of the first living master, was that beautiful vitality, that poetic feeling, which as far as it was possible he infused into a declining period of art. at the same time it becomes more and more evident, as our attention is turned to the deeper and nobler spirit of the earlier masters in venice, that the beauty of his figures is more addressed to the senses than to the soul, and that his naturalistic tendencies are often allowed to run wild. the most celebrated, and as it happens the most historically interesting, of his great pictures is the _feast at cana_, in the louvre, measuring thirty feet wide and twenty feet high. this was formerly in the refectory of s. giorgio maggiore in venice. the scene is a brilliant atrium, surrounded by majestic pillars. the tables at which the guests are seated form three sides of a parallelogram. the guests are supposed to be almost entirely contemporary portraits, so that the figures of christ and his mother, of themselves insignificant enough, lose even more in the general interest of the subject. servants occupy the foreground, while on the raised balustrades and the balconies of distant houses are innumerable onlookers. the most remarkable feature of the whole composition is a group of musicians in the centre of the foreground, which are portraits of the artist himself and tintoretto, playing on violon-cellos, and titian, in a red robe, with the contra-bass. _christ in the house of simon_, the magdalen washing his feet, is another scarcely less gigantic picture in the louvre; but it is much simpler in arrangement, and is distinguished by the fineness of the heads, especially that of the christ. an interesting piece of technical criticism on the _feast at cana_ occurs in reynolds's eighth discourse:-- "another instance occurs to me," he says, "where equal liberty may be taken in regard to the management of light. though the general practice is to make a large mass about the middle of the picture surrounded by shadow, the reverse may be practised, and the spirit of rule may still be preserved.... in the great composition of paul veronese, the _marriage at cana_, the figures are for the most part in half shadow; the great light is in the sky; and indeed the general effect of this picture, which is so striking, is no more than what we often see in landscapes, in small pictures of fairs and country feasts; but those principles of light and shadow, being transferred to a large scale, to a space containing near a hundred figures as large as life, and conducted to all appearance with as much facility and with an attention as steadily fixed upon the _whole together_ as if it were a small picture immediately under the eye, the work justly excites our admiration; the difficulty being increased as the extent is enlarged." * * * * * with the death of the great venetians, titian, tintoretto, and paul veronese, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the history of italian painting of the first rank comes to an end. in florence, the imitation of michelangelo was the chief object striven after, and, as might be expected, the attempt was not eminently successful. the greater number of the italian painters of the early seventeenth century who attained any fame are known by the name of eclectics, from their having endeavoured, instead of imitating any one of their great predecessors, to select and unite the best qualities of each, without, however, excluding the direct study of nature. the fallacy of this aim, when carried to an extreme, is, of course, that the greatness of the earlier masters consisted really in their individual and peculiar qualities, and to endeavour to unite characteristics essentially different involves a contradiction. the most important of the eclectic schools was that of the carracci, at bologna, which was founded by lodovico carracci (_c_. - ), a scholar of prospero fontana and passignano at florence. in his youth he was nicknamed "the ox," partly from his slowness, but possibly also for his study of long-forgotten methods, by which he arrived at the decision that reform was necessary to counteract the independence of the mannerists. he therefore obtained the assistance of his two nephews, agostino and annibale carracci, sons of a tailor, and in concert with them opened an academy at bologna in . this he furnished with casts, drawings, and engravings, and provided living models and gave instruction in perspective, anatomy, etc. in spite of opposition this academy became more and more popular, and before long all the other schools of art in bologna were closed. the principles of their teaching was succinctly expressed in a sonnet written by agostino, in substance as follows:--"let him who wishes to be a good painter acquire the design of rome, venetian action and chiaroscuro, the dignified colouring of lombardy (that is to say, of leonardo da vinci), the terrible manner of michelangelo, titian's truth and nature, the sovereign purity of correggio, and the perfect symmetry of raphael. the decorum and well-grounded study of tibaldi, the invention of the learned primaticcio, and a _little_ of the grace of parmigiano." this "patchwork ideal," as kugler calls it, was, however, but a transition step in the history of the carracci and their art. in the prime of their activity they threw off a great deal of their eclecticism, and attained an independence of their own. the merit of lodovico is chiefly that of a reformer and a teacher, and the pictures by agostino are few and of no great account. but in annibale we find much more than imitation of the characteristics of great masters. in his earlier works there are rather obvious traces of correggio and paul veronese, but under the influence of the works of raphael and michelangelo and of the antique, as he understood it, he developed a style of his own. though in recent years he is a little out of fashion with the public, there is no question about his having a place among the greater artists. to show how opinion can change, i venture to quote a passage from a letter written to me on the subject of carracci's _the three maries_, lately presented to the national gallery by the countess of carlisle:--"i saw the gallery at castle howard in . _the three maries_ was then still regarded as one of _the_ great pictures of the world; and they told the story of how lord carlisle and lord ellesmere and lord----, who shared the paris purchases [after the peace of ] between them, had to cast lots for this, because it was thought to be worth more than all the rest of the spoil." the most important, or at any rate one of the most popular, of the pupils of carracci was domenico zampieri, commonly called domenichino ( - ). if we are less enthusiastic about him at the present, it may still be remembered that constable particularly admired him, but it is significant that the four examples in the national gallery are numbered , , and --there is no more recent acquisition. he had great facility, and his compositions--not always original--are treated with great charm if with no real depth. his most famous picture, the _communion of s. jerome_, now in the vatican, is closely imitated from agostino carracci's. guido reni ( - ), even more popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than domenichino, was as skilful in some respects, but hardly as admirable. the _ecce homo_, bequeathed by samuel rogers to the national gallery, is an excellent example of his ability to charm the sentimentalist, and if ever there should be a popular revival of taste in the direction of the now neglected school of the carracci, he will possibly resume all the honour formerly paid to him. the same can hardly be predicted for the far inferior carlo maratti, guercino, and carlo dolce. space forbids me more than the bare mention in these pages of the brilliant revival of painting in venice during the earlier part of the eighteenth century by antonio canale ( - ), giovanni battista tiepolo ( - ), pietro longhi ( - ), and francesco guardi ( - ). charming as their excellent accomplishments were, they must give place to more important claims awaiting our attention in other countries. _spanish school_ one of the sensations of the exhibition of spanish old masters at the grafton gallery in the autumn of was an altar panel, dated , which was acquired by mr roger fry in paris, and catalogued as of the "early catalan school." in view of the fact that this picture is "certainly to be regarded as one of the very oldest of primitive pictures painted on wood in any country ... a decade earlier than the picture by margaritone in the national gallery," it seems somewhat dogmatic to assert that while retaining a strongly byzantine character "the style is distinctly that of catalonia." what was the style of catalonia? so far as the history of the art is concerned, the chapter on spain is, with one exception, a very short and a singularly uninteresting one, whether mr fry's panel was painted in catalonia or whether it was not; and in spite of every effort to find in this uncongenial country that expansion of painting that might reasonably have been expected to flow from italy and moisten its barren soil for the production of so wonderful a genius as velasquez, there is positively nothing earlier than velasquez, and not very much after him, that has more than what we may call a documentary interest. while in italy or the netherlands the names of scores of painters earlier than the seventeenth century are endeared to us by the recollection of the works they have left us, the enumeration of those of the few spaniards of whom we have any knowledge awakens no such thrill, and if we have ever heard of them, their works mean little more to us than their names. only when we come within touch of velasquez does our interest awaken--as in the case of ribera and zurbaran--and that is less because of them than because of velasquez. el greco was not a spaniard by birth, but a cretan; and if he were ranged with the italians, to whom he more properly belongs, he would scarcely be more famous than some bolognese masters whose names are now--or perhaps we ought to say, at the present moment--almost forgotten. the announcement that one of his portraits has been sold to an american for £ , is of commercial rather than of artistic interest. if one had to sum up the career and the art of velasquez in a sentence, it might be done by calling him a court painter who never flattered. after recording his life from the time when he left his master pacheco to enter the service of philip iv. to the day that he died in it, we shall find that only a bare percentage of his work was not commissioned by the king; and in all his pictures which were not simply portraits there is little if anything to be found which is not as literal and truthful a presentment of the model in front of him as the life-like representations of philip and those about his court, of which the supreme quality is that of living resemblance, or to put it in more general terms, vivid realism. gifted as he must have been with an extraordinary vision and a still rarer, if not unique, ability to put down on canvas what he saw, he confined himself entirely within the limits of actuality, and thereby attained to heights which his great contemporaries rubens and rembrandt in their noblest flights of imagination never reached. velasquez was baptised on the th of june , in the church of s. peter at seville. he was the son of well-to-do parents; his father, a native of seville, was named juan rodriguez de silva, his mother geronima velasquez. at thirteen years old he had displayed so strong an inclination towards painting that he was put to study under francisco de herrera, then the most considerable painter in spain (his son, also francisco, was the painter of the _christ disputing with the doctors_, in the national gallery), but owing to herrera's violent temper velasquez was shortly transferred to the studio of francisco pacheco, whose daughter he eventually married. pacheco who was, besides being an accomplished artist, a man of literary tastes, and much sought after in seville by the more intellectual class of society, was exceedingly proud of his pupil, and said of him that he was induced to bestow the hand of his daughter upon him "by the rectitude of his conduct, the purity of his morals, and his great talents, and from the high expectation he entertained of his natural abilities and transcendent genius," adding that the honour of having been his instructor was far greater than that of being his father-in-law, and that he felt it no demerit to be surpassed by so brilliant a pupil. in pacheco published a book on painting, in which we are told that the first attempts of velasquez were studies in still life, or simple compositions of actual figures, called _bodegones_ in spanish, of which we have a fair example at the national gallery in the _christ at the house of martha_. sir frederick cook, at richmond, has another, an _old woman frying eggs_, and the duke of wellington two more, of which _the water carrier of seville_ is probably the summit of the young painter's achievement before he left seville, in , and entered the service of philip iv. as court painter. his first portrait of the king was the magnificent whole length in the prado gallery, now numbered , standing in front of a table with a letter in his right hand. no. is the head of the same portrait, possibly done as a study for it. philip was so pleased with this that he ordered all existing portraits of himself to be removed from the palace, and appointed velasquez exclusively as his painter. another of his earliest successes at court was the whole length portrait of the king's brother, don carlos, holding a glove in his right hand; and the picture now in the museum at rouen of _a geographer_ is probably of this date. in , when velasquez was still quite young, and had fallen under no influence save that of pacheco and the school of seville, he was charged by the king to entertain rubens, who came to the spanish court on a diplomatic mission, and show him all the treasures in the palace. if any one could influence velasquez, we might suppose it would have been rubens, who was not only a great painter, but a man of the most captivating manners and disposition, ever ready to help younger artists. but not only did he have no perceptible effect on the style of velasquez, but in the picture of _the topers_, which must have been painted while rubens was at madrid, or very shortly after he left, we can almost see a determination not to be influenced by him; for the subject was a favourite one of rubens's, and yet there is nothing in this most realistic presentment of [illustration: plate xviii.--velazquez the infante philip prosper _imperial gallery, vienna_] actual figures under the title of bacchus and his votaries which has anything at all in common with the florid and imaginative compositions of the flemish painter. velasquez had begun as a realist, and a realist he was to continue till the end of his days. shortly after painting this picture he left his native country for the first time, and visited venice and rome. at venice he made copies of tintoretto's _last supper_ and _crucifixion_; but little if any of tintoretto's influence is to be seen in the two pictures he painted in rome--_the forge of vulcan_ and _joseph's coat_, both of which are still as realistic as ever in treatment, though showing great advances in technical skill. soon after his return to spain in , he probably painted the magnificent whole length _philip iv._ in the national gallery, which compares so well, on examination with the more popular and showy _admiral pulido pareja_ purchased some years ago from longford castle. senor beruete, who has studied the work of velasquez more closely and more intelligently than any one else, considers that whereas there is not a single touch upon the former that is not from the brush of velasquez, the latter cannot be properly attributed to him at all--any more than can another popular favourite, the _alexandro del borro_ in the berlin gallery, now given to bernard strozzi. to this period may be also assigned the _christ at the column_ in the national gallery, a picture which though not at first sight attractive, is nevertheless as fine in technique, and in sentiment, as any other picture in the spanish room, and deserves far more attention than is usually given to it. its simple realism and its pathetic sweetness are qualities which are wanting in many a more showy or sensational composition, and the more it is studied the nearer we find we are getting to the real excellences that distinguish velasquez from any painter who has ever lived. the _crucifixion_ at the prado is perhaps more wonderful, but the familiar subject helps the imagination of the spectator to admire it, whereas the unfamiliar setting of our picture is apt at first sight to repel. the most important composition undertaken by velasquez in this middle period of his career--that is to say between his two visits to italy in and --is the famous _surrender of breda_, or, as it is sometimes called, _the lances_. soon after his arrival in madrid he had once painted an historical subject, _the expulsion of the moors_, in competition with his rivals who had asserted that he could paint nothing but heads. in this competition the prize was awarded to him, but as the picture has perished we are unable to judge of its merits for ourselves. but apart from this, and such unimportant groups of figures as we have mentioned, he had been occupied wholly in painting single portraits, and it is a marvellous proof of his genius that he should produce such a masterpiece of composition as _the lances_ with so little practice in this branch of his art. here, at least, we might have expected to trace the influence of rubens, but there is actually no sign of it; and if he sought any inspiration at all from other painters, it was from what he recalled of tintoretto's work which he had seen and studied in venice. in the king's eldest boy, _baltazar carlos_, who was born in , velasquez found a model for two or three of his most charming pictures. one is at castle howard; a second the equestrian portrait, on a galloping pony, at the prado; and a third the full length hunting portrait, also at the prado, in which we see the little prince standing under a tree, gun in hand, with an enormous dog lying beside him. another is at vienna, representing him as of about eleven years old, full length, with his hand resting on the back of a chair. all of these owe some of their charm to the youth and attractive personality of the subject; but if we want to see the power of velasquez without any outside element to help us to appreciate it, there is the portrait of the sculptor _martinez montanes_ at the prado. "the head is wonderful in its colour and its modelling," writes senor beruete; "and what a lesson in technique! the eyes, lightly touched with colour, are set deep in their sockets, and surmounted by a strongly marked forehead. the high lights are of a rich _impasto_, manipulated with extraordinary skill; the greyer tones of the flesh, so true and so delicate, are painted in a way that brings out with marvellous truth, both the soft parts of the cheeks and the harder structure of the face, under which one can follow the bones of the nose and forehead.... everything in the picture is spontaneous, and one can see that it is a pledge of friendship given by one artist to another; there is nothing here of that artificial arrangement that spoils commissioned portraits even when they are the work of a painter as independent as velasquez was. one feels here the assurance of an artist who knows that his work will be understood by his friend in the spirit in which it was executed." m. lefort, the french critic, is even more enthusiastic. "ah! these redoubtable neighbours," he exclaims, seeing it surrounded by the works of other painters at the prado. "this canvas makes them look like mere imitations--dead conventional likenesses. van dyck is dull, rubens oily, tintoret yellow; it is velasquez alone who can give us the illusion of life in all its fulness!" in velasquez paid his second visit to rome, where he painted the famous portrait of his holiness, _pope innocent x._ which is now in the doria palace. this is exceptional in treatment, inasmuch as it is the only portrait by velasquez in which the subject is seated--excepting of course equestrian portraits--and instead of the usual quiet tones of grey and brown which he was so fond of employing, the picture of the pope is a radiant harmony of rose red and white. in its realism it is even more surprising than most of the other portraits, considering how ugly the face had to be made to resemble nature, although the sitter was of a still higher rank than velasquez's royal master. returning to madrid in , velasquez never again left spain, and the remaining twenty years of his life may be considered the third period of his artistic development, inasmuch as no special influence was exerted upon him outside the ordinary and somewhat tedious course of his employment at the court. to this period are assigned twenty-six pictures--senor beruete only admits the authenticity of eighty-three in all, it may be mentioned--twelve of which are royal portraits, seven those of buffoons and dwarfs, three mythological and two sacred subjects, and the two famous pieces of real life, _las meninas_ and _las hilanderas_. of the royal portraits those of the _infanta margarita_ are among the most fascinating, no less from their technical excellence than on account of the youthful charm of the little princess. the one at vienna represents her as about three years old, dressed in red, standing by a little table. of this, senor beruete says that it is "one of the most beautiful inspirations of velasquez, and perhaps one that reveals better than any other his power as a colourist; it is a flower, perfumed with every infantine grace." another standing portrait, though only a half length, when she was not many years older, is that in the salon carré at the louvre, which is more familiar to us being nearer home and more often reproduced. m. de wyczewa praises it thus:--"the perfect _chefs-d'oeuvre_ collected in this glorious salon pale in the presence of this child portrait; not one of them can bear comparison with this simple yet powerful painting, which seems to aim only at external resemblance and without other effort to attain a mysterious beauty of form and colour." at frankfort again is a charming picture of the little princess, whole length, at the age of six or seven--a replica of which is at vienna. she is dressed in greyish white with trimmings of black, and her hoop skirt is so enormous that her arms have to be stretched out straight to allow her hands to reach the edge of her coat. of the three mythological subjects two are in the prado, namely the _mars_ and the _mercury and argus_, while the third and most beautiful is the _venus at the mirror_ recently purchased for our national collection. these were all of them painted for the decoration of the royal palaces, and we may therefore suppose that the artist was not entirely at liberty either in the choice of his subject or in his method of treating it. certainly he does not seem to have been fond of painting the nude, unless with men, and it is noticeable that he has posed his model in this case with more modesty and reserve than is to be observed in the pictures of rubens and titian. the holy church was sternly averse to this class of painting, in which, accordingly, none of the spanish school indulged; but at the same time the royal galleries did not exclude the most exuberant fancies of rubens, titian, tintoretto, and others, and velasquez was in all probability commissioned by philip to paint this venus--and another which has perished--along with the mars and mercury without regard to the ecclesiastical authorities. but it is hardly surprising if velasquez availed himself less fully of the privilege than a flemish or italian painter would no doubt have done, and has given us so chaste and beautiful a realisation of the goddess. having regard to the scepticism with which this masterpiece was received in england at the time of its purchase for the nation it is worth quoting senor beruete's remarks upon it in that connection. "the authenticity of this work," he writes "has found numerous doubters in spain, less on account of its subject--being the only nude female figure in the whole _oeuvre_ of velasquez--than because so few people ever suspected its existence; but after it was exhibited at manchester in and in london in , it was recognised that its attribution to velasquez was well founded. at the sight of the canvas all doubt vanishes. there, indeed, is the style, the inimitable technique of velasquez." this, from the connoisseur who has devoted years of study to the work of the master, and who rejects such well established examples as the dulwich _philip iv._ and the _admiral pulido pareja_, is surely more conclusive than the academic pedantry of ignorance masquerading as authority. * * * * * bartolomÉ estÉban murillo ( - ) has always been accounted the most popular of the spanish painters, and it is only in recent times that his popularity has faded into comparative insignificance on the fuller recognition and understanding of the genius of velasquez. the intensely anglican feeling in this country during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries [illustration: plate xix.--velazquez the rokeby venus _national gallery, london_] seems to have found peculiar relief in the sentimental aspirations of the followers of raphael in the rendering of religious subjects from the romish point of view. at the present time we are readier to estimate murillo's justly high place in the annals of painting by such a picture as his own portrait, lent by lord spencer to the recent exhibition, than to allow it on the strength of our recollection of the madonnas and holy families, immaculate conceptions and assumptions, of which there exist so many copies in the dining rooms of country rectories. the _boy drinking_, which is here reproduced, if it is the least "important" of the four examples in the national gallery, is certainly not the least excellent. from the miserable state into which spain had fallen by the end of the seventeenth century, it could hardly be expected that anything further in the nature of art would result, and it was not until towards the end of the eighteenth that another genius arose, in the person of francisco goya ( - ). of this extraordinary phenomenon in the firmament of art it is impossible to say more than a very few words in this place. like a meteor, he is rather to be pointed at than talked about, when there are so many stars and planets whose regular courses have to be observed and recorded. he was like a sharp knife drawn across the face of spain, gashing it here and there, but for the most part just touching it lightly enough to sting and to leave a mark. as a court painter he was an unqualified success, his salary under charles iv. rising in ten years from , to , reals; but his official productions are not the less devoid of interest on that account, and are sometimes the more satirical from the necessity for concealment. in his more outspoken works, such as the _disasters of war_, and the series of prints called _los caprichos_ and _tauromachia_, he is too brutal not to affect the ordinary observer's judgment upon his artistic qualities. velasquez himself could scarcely stop short enough, when painting dwarfs and idiots and cripples, to let us admire his genius unhampered by shivers of repulsion. goya, being exactly the opposite of velasquez in temperament, had no scruples about expressing the utmost of his subject; and even in decorating a church was reproved for "falling short of the standard of chastity" required. but between the extremes of brutality and conventionalism there is such a wide expanse of pure joy of painting that nothing can diminish the reputation of goya, however much it is likely to be enhanced. to the modern spanish painter he is probably as fixed a beacon as velasquez. [illustration: plate xx.--murillo a boy drinking _national gallery, london_] _flemish school_ i hubert and jan van eyck in , on the death of louis de maele, his son-in-law philip the hardy, duke of burgundy, assumed the government of flanders. in the same year philip founded the carthusian convent at dijon and employed a flemish painter named melchin broederlam to embellish two great shrines within it. to the strong-handed policy of philip and his successors during the ensuing century may be attributed the rise of netherlandish art which, though existing before their time, required their vigorous repression of intestine feuds to give it an opportunity of developing. under louis and his predecessors flanders and its cities had risen to great commercial importance, but its rulers had neither the strength nor the prestige to keep the turbulent spirit of their subjects in due bounds. the school of painting which now arose so rapidly to perfection under the dukes of burgundy thus owed a portion of its progress to the wealth and independence of the commercial classes. the taste, power, and cultivation of a court gave it an additional spur; and the clergy throwing in their weight, added their support in aid of art. two wings of one of the dijon shrines are still preserved in the museum there, and in these messrs crowe and cavalcaselle observe the characteristics of much that was to follow:--"although melchior's style was founded on the study of the painters of the rhine, his composition was similar to the later productions of the flemish school. a tendency to realism already marks this early fleming, and is the distinctive feature of a manner in which the painter strives to imitate nature in its most material forms. idealism and noble forms are lacking, but broederlam is a fair imitator of the truth. distinctive combination and choice of colours in draperies, and vigorous tone, characterise him as they do the early works at bruges and other cities of the netherlands which may be judged by his standard." and again, "the painter evidently struggled between the desire to give a material imitation, and the inspirations of graceful teachers like those of cologne.... penetrated with similar ideas the early flemings might under similar circumstances have risen to a sweet and dignified conception of nature; and if we fail to discover that they attained this aim we must attribute the failure to causes peculiar to flanders. amongst these we may class the social status of the flemish painters, whose positions in the household of princes subjected them perhaps to caprices unfavourable to the development of high aspirations, or the contemplation and free communion with self which are the soul of art." it is interesting to compare these observations, so far as they refer to the realism which characterises netherlandish painting, with those of dr waagen, who it will be seen explains it on the broader grounds of national temperament. "early netherlandish painting," he contends, "in its freedom from all foreign influence, exhibits the contrast between the natural feeling of the greek and the german races respectively in the department of art--these two races being the chief representatives of the cultivation of the ancient and the modern world. in this circumstance consists the high significance of this school when considered in reference to the general history of art. while it is characteristic of the greek feeling--from which was derived the italian--to idealise,--and to idealise, be it observed, not only the conceptions of the ideal world but even such material objects as portraits,--by the simplification of forms and the prominence given to the more important parts of a work of art, the early netherlanders, on the other hand, conferred a portrait-like character upon the most ideal personifications of the virgin, the apostles, prophets, and martyrs, and in actual portraiture aimed at rendering even the most accidental peculiarities of nature, like warts and wrinkles, with excruciating fidelity. "while the greeks expressed the various features of outward nature--such as rivers, fountains, hills, trees, etc.--under abstract human forms, the netherlanders endeavoured to express them as they had seen them in nature, and with a truth which extended to the smallest details. "in opposition to the ideal, and what may be called the personifying tendency of the greeks, the netherlanders developed a purely realistic and landscape school. "in this respect the other teutonic nations are found to approach them most nearly, the germans first, and then the english." but whatever may have been the causes which produced the distinguishing features of netherlandish painting, we have still to enquire the origin from which the practice of painting in northern europe proceeded. for in taking melchior broederlam as a starting-point we are only going as far back--with the exception of certain rude wall paintings--as the earliest examples take us; and having seen how in italy the whole history of the art is traceable to cimabue, duccio, and giotto, through the byzantines, at least a century before broederlam comes under our notice, we might naturally conclude that it was from italy that it spread to cologne, and from cologne to the netherlands. so far as is known, however, this was not the case, and we must look elsewhere than to italy for the influences which formed this school. nevertheless it was a collateral branch of the same stock--byzantine art--and the family resemblance comes out none the less strongly from the two branches having developed under different circumstances. in italy, as we have seen, the byzantine seed, sown in such fertile soil, attained suddenly a great luxuriance. in the north, transplanted by charlemagne to aix-la-chapelle in the ninth century, it grew slowly and more timidly, but none the less surely, under the cover of monasticism, in the manuscripts illuminated with miniatures; and thus when it did burst forth into fuller blossom, the boldness of the italian masters, who worked at large in fresco, was wanting, and a detailed and almost meticulous realism was its chief characteristic. another point worth noticing is that though primarily introduced for religious purposes, as in italy, namely the decoration of the cathedral erected by charlemagne at aix-la-chapelle, the paintings in his palace showed forth events in his own life, such as his campaigns in spain, seiges of towns and feats of arms by frankish warriors. at upper ingelheim, likewise, his chapel was adorned with scenes from the old and new testaments, while the banqueting hall exhibited on one wall the deeds of great pagan rulers, such as cyrus, hannibal, and alexander, and on the other those of constantine and theodosius, the seizure of acquitaine by pepin, and charlemagne's own conquest over the saxons and finally himself enthroned as conqueror. although no trace remains of these paintings, contemporary manuscripts executed by his order are still in existence in the libraries of paris, trèves, and elsewhere from which we can form some idea of the style in which they were rendered and of the source from which they were derived. of these we need only mention the vulgate decorated by john of bruges, painter to king charles v. of france, in , which contains a portrait of the king in profile with a figure kneeling before him, and a few small historical subjects. from these it is evident that the art of painting, at any rate in little, had made considerable progress in the netherlands at that date, and the express designation of _pictor_ applied to john of bruges, while the ordinary miniaturist was called _illuminator_, shows the probability of his having painted pictures on a larger scale. the high development of realistic feeling as it first appears to us in the pictures of hubert and jan van eyck is thus partly accounted for, especially when we also consider the wholesale destruction of larger works of art that took place in the disturbed condition of the netherlands in the sixteenth century. the main points, however, to be borne in mind is that whereas cimabue and duccio started painting on walls under the influence of byzantine teachers, hubert van eyck, a century later, began painting on wooden panels under that of illuminators and painters in books. to these, nevertheless, there must be added another scarcely less important, namely, that the early italians were ignorant of the use of what we now call oil paints, and worked entirely in tempera--that is to say, there was no admixture of oil or varnish with their pigments. to hubert van eyck is attributed the invention of the modern practice, as vasari relates with more colour than historic truth in his life of antonello da messina, who is supposed to have carried it into italy. be that as it may, the works of the van eycks and their successors are all in oils, and there is no doubt that the employment of this medium from the first considerably influenced the style, colour, and execution of all the works of this school. hubert van eyck who according to the common acceptation was born in the year at maaseyck, a small town not far from maestricht, must have been settled before the year in bruges, when we hear of him as a member of the brotherhood of the virgin with rays. there can be little doubt that hubert van eyck was acquainted with the work of this john of bruges, and that it had a considerable influence on him. but while on the one hand he carried the realistic tendencies of such works to an extraordinary pitch of excellence, it is evident that in many essential respects he was actuated by a more ideal feeling and imparted to the realism of his contemporaries, by means of his far richer powers of representation, greater distinctness, truth to nature, and variety of expression. throughout his works is seen an elevated and highly energetic conception of the stern import of his labours in the service of the church. the prevailing arrangement of his subjects is symmetrical, holding fast to the earliest rules of ecclesiastical art. his heads appear to aim at an ideal beauty and dignity only combined with actual truth to nature. his draperies exhibit the purest taste and softness of folds, the realistic principle being apparent in that greater attention to detail which a delicate indication of the material of the drapery necessitates. nude figures are studied from nature with the utmost fidelity; undraped portions of figures are also given with much truth, especially the hands. but what is the principal distinguishing characteristic of his art is the hitherto unprecedented power, depth, transparency and harmony of his colouring. whatever want of exact truth there may be in the story as related by vasari's story of the discovery of oil painting, there is no doubt that hubert van eyck succeeded in preparing so transparent a varnish that he could apply it without disadvantage to all colours. the chief work by hubert van eyck is the large altar-piece painted for the cathedral of s. bavon at ghent;--parts of this have been removed and are now in the berlin gallery, and supplemented with excellent copies of the rest, the whole of the wonderful composition may there be well studied; a large photograph of the whole altar piece may also be seen in the library at the victoria and albert museum, which shows how the work was originally designed. it was painted for jodocus vyts, burgomaster of ghent, and his wife elizabeth, for their mortuary chapel in the cathedral. the subject of the three central panels of the upper portion is the deity seated between _the virgin and s. john the baptist_. underneath these, of the same width, is the famous _adoration of the lamb_. these together formed the back of the altar-piece, and were covered by wings which opened out on hinges on either side. the three large figures of the upper part are designed with all the dignity and statuesque repose belonging to an earlier style, and they are painted on a ground of gold and tapestry, as was constantly the practice in earlier times: but united with the traditional type we already find a successful representation of life and nature in all their truth. they stand as it were on the frontier of two different styles, and from the excellence of both form a wonderful and most impressive whole. the heavenly father sits directly fronting the spectator, in all the solemnity of ancient dignity, his right hand raised to give the benediction to the lamb and to all the multitude of figures below; in his left hand is a crystal sceptre; on his head the triple crown, the emblem of the trinity. the features are such as are ascribed to christ by the traditions of the church, but noble and well proportioned; the expression is forcible, though passionless. the tunic and the mantle of this figure are of a deep red, the latter being fastened over the breast by a clasp, and falling down in ample folds over the feet. behind, as high as the head, is a hanging of green tapestry which is ornamented with a golden pelican--a symbol of the redeemer. behind the head the ground is gold, and on it in a semicircle are three inscriptions describing the trinity as almighty, all-good, and all-bountiful. the figures of s. john and of the virgin display equal majesty; both are reading holy books, as they turn towards the centre figure. the countenance of s. john expresses ascetic seriousness, but in that of the virgin we find a serene grace and a purity of form which approach very nearly to the happier effects of italian art. the arrangement of the lower central picture, the worship of the lamb, is strictly symmetrical, as the mystic nature of the allegorical subject might seem to [illustration: plate xxi.--jan van eyck jan arnolfini and his wife _national gallery, london_] have demanded; but there is such beauty in the landscape, in the pure atmosphere, in the bright green of the grass, in the masses of trees and flowers--even in single figures which stand out from the four principal groups--that we no longer perceive either hardness or severity in this symmetry. the landscape of this composition and that part of it containing the patriarchs and prophets are generally supposed to have been completed by jan van eyck (_c._ - ), whose name till within a comparatively recent period had almost obscured that of hubert. for although there is little doubt that the elder brother was the first to develop the new method of painting, yet the fame of it did not extend beyond belgium and across the alps until after the death of hubert, when the celebrity it so speedily acquired throughout europe was transferred to jan van eyck. within fifteen years after his death, , jan was commemorated in italy as the greatest painter of the century, while the name of hubert was not even mentioned. it was jan van eyck to whom antonello da messina is said by vasari to have resorted in bruges in order to learn the new style of painting; he alone also is mentioned in vasari's first edition of , hubert not until the second edition in , and then only incidentally. fortunately there are in existence various authentic pictures by jan van eyck in which his original powers are more easily recognised than in the part he took in the execution of the great altar-piece at ghent, in which he doubtless accommodated himself with proper fraternal piety both to the composition and to the style of his elder brother--who was also his master. in these we can see that he possessed neither the enthusiasm for the rich imagery and symbolism of the ecclesiastical art of the middle ages, nor that feeling for beauty in human forms or in drapery which belonged to his elder brother. his feeling, on the other hand, led him to the closest and truest conception of individual nature. where he had to paint portraits only--a task which was most congenial to the tendency of his mind--he attained a life-like truth of form and colouring in every part, extending even to the minutest details, such as no other artist of his time could rival, and which art in general has seldom produced. in his actual brush work he shows greater facility than was ever attained by hubert, by which he was enabled to render the material of every substance with marvellous fidelity. what little we know of the personal history of jan van eyck is of exceptional interest, inasmuch as we find him employed on diplomatic errands to foreign countries, like his great successor rubens; and as it happens he landed in england, though not intentionally, in the course of one of these voyages, being driven into shoreham and falmouth by adverse weather. it was in that he was taken into the service of philip iii., duke of burgundy, as painter and "varlet de chambre," shortly after which he went to lille. in the following year he was sent on a pilgrimage as the duke's proxy, and again on two secret missions. in he went with the duke's embassy to the king of portugal which was to sue for the hand of isabella, the portuguese princess. it was on this occasion that he was driven on to our shores. arriving at lisbon he painted two portraits of isabella, one of which was sent home by sea and the other overland. after a happy and successful career he died in at bruges, where he had married and settled down on his return from portugal. the most beautiful example of jan van eyck's work in england is the portrait of jean arnolfini and jeanne de chenany his wife, now in the national gallery (no. ). this is dated with the charming inscription, "johannes de eyck fuit hic "--that is to say, instead of simply signing the picture, he writes, "jan van eyck was here, ." no other picture shows so high a development of the master's extraordinary power and charm. besides every other quality peculiar to him, we observe here a perfection of tone and of chiaroscuro which no other specimen of this whole period affords. it is recorded that princess mary, sister of charles v. and governess of the netherlands, purchased this picture from a barber to whom it belonged at the price of a post worth a hundred gulden a year. among its subsequent possessors were don diego de guevara, majordomo of joan, queen of castile, by whom it was presented to margaret of austria. in it was acquired by mary of hungary, and later it returned to spain. in it was in the palace at madrid, and soon after it was taken by one of the french generals, in whose quarters major-general hay found it after the battle of waterloo. two other portraits in the national gallery bear the signature of jan van eyck. no. , an elderly man, head and shoulders, on the frame of which is the painter's motto, "als ich can," and his signature, "johannes de eyck me fecit anno , octobris." the other, no. , is a younger man, half length, standing inside an open window, on the sill of which is inscribed "[greek: timotheos]," and "léal souvenir," and below the date and signature, "actum anno domini , die octobris a iohanne de eyck." among the netherlandish scholars and followers of the van eycks of whom any record has been preserved some appear to have been gifted with considerable powers, though none attained the excellence of their great precursors. although a number of works representing this school still exist in the various countries of europe, yet compared with the actual abundance of them at one time they constitute but a scanty remnant. though not actually a pupil of jan van eyck, roger van der weyden acquired after him the greatest celebrity. as early as he filled the honourable post of official painter to the city of brussels. the chief work executed by him in this capacity was an altar-piece for the chamber of justice in hôtel de ville. according to the custom of the time, it set forth in the most realistic fashion examples of stern observance of the law for the admonition of those placed in authority. the principal picture showed how herkenbald, a judge in the eleventh century, executed his own nephew (convicted of a grave crime, but who would otherwise have escaped the penalty of the law) with his own hands; and how the sacramental wafer which, on the plea of murder, was denied to him by the priest, reached the lips of the upright judge by means of a miracle. the wings contained an example of the justice of the emperor trajan. these pictures are unfortunately no longer in existence, having probably been burned when brussels was besieged in . in the museum of the hospital at beaune is one of the most important of his works still in existence, _the last judgment_, though in this it is generally supposed he was assisted by dirk bouts and hans memling. it contains several portraits, notably those of the pope, eugenius iv., who stands behind the apostles in the right wing, and next to him philip the good. the crowned female in the opposite wing is probably philip's [illustration: plate xxii.--jan van eyck portrait of the painter's wife _town gallery, bruges_] second wife, isabella of portugal, whose portrait jan van eyck went to lisbon to paint before her marriage. on the outer sides are excellently painted portraits of the founder of the hospital, nicolas rolin, and his wife. this work has been classed with the van eycks' _adoration of the lamb_, and the _adoration of the shepherds_ by hugo van der goes, as crystallizing the finest expression of early northern painting. in he visited italy, where he painted the beautiful little altar-piece which is now in the städel institute at frankfort, for piero and giovanni de'medici. another very fine example of his work is the triptych, now in the berlin museum, executed for pierre bladelin. in the centre is the nativity, with a portrait of bladelin kneeling, and angels. on the one side is the annunciation of the redeemer to the ruler of the west--the emperor augustus--by the agency of the tiburtine sibyl; on the other to those of the east--the three kings--who are keeping watch on a mountain, where the child appears to them in a star. one of the largest as well as of the finest of the master's works is a triptych in the munich gallery--the _adoration of the kings_, with the _annunciation_ and the _presentation in the temple_ in the wings. the figure of the virgin in the _presentation_ is particularly pleasing for its simple and unaffected realism. _s. luke painting the virgin_, also in the munich gallery, is ascribed to roger. no painter of this school, the van eycks even not excepted, exercised so great and widely extended an influence as roger van der weyden. not only were hans memling--the greatest master of the next generation in belgium--and his own son, also named roger, his pupils, but innumerable works other than pictures were produced, such as miniatures, block-books, and engravings, in which his form of art is recognisable. it was under his auspices that the realistic tendency of the van eycks pervaded all germany; for it was only after the death of jan van eyck, in , that the widespread fame of roger van der weyden induced germans to visit his studio at brussels. martin schongauer, one of the greatest german masters of the sixteenth century, is known to have been his pupil, and it is certain that there must have been many others. it is in hans memling (_c._ - ), whom vasari states to have been the pupil of roger, that the early netherlandish school attains the highest delicacy of artistic development. his poetical and profoundly human qualities had a special attraction for the "pre-raphaelite brotherhood" inaugurated by rossetti and holman hunt in the middle of the nineteenth century. this unusual tenderness of feeling is probably also the origin of the legend that memling was taken into the hospital of s. john at bruges--where he painted most of his masterpieces--as a sick soldier after the battle of nancy. in feeling for beauty and grace he was more gifted than any painter except hubert van eyck, and this quality, conspicuous amid the somewhat ugly realism of most of his contemporaries, has ensured him perhaps a little more popularity than is rightly his share. compared with the works of his master, roger van der weyden, his figures are certainly of better proportions and less meagreness of form; his hands and feet truer to nature; the heads of his women are sweeter, and those of his men less severe. his outlines are softer, and in the modelling of his flesh parts more delicacy of half tones is observable. his colours are still more luminous and transparent. on the other hand he is inferior to van der weyden in the carrying out of detail, such as the materials of his draperies or the rendering of the full brilliancy of gold. in memling was a master painter at bruges, and painted the portrait of the medallist, nicolas spinelli, which is now in the royal museum at antwerp, and a small altar-piece now at chatsworth. his most famous works, those in the hospital at bruges, belong to a somewhat later date, the _shrine of s. ursula_ not being completed till . the _adoration of the kings_ and the altar-piece were some ten years earlier. the famous shrine of s. ursula is about four feet in length, and the whole of the outside is adorned with painting. on each side of the cover are three medallions, a large one in the centre and two smaller at the sides. the latter contain angels playing on musical instruments; in the centre on one side is a coronation of the virgin, on the other the glorification of s. ursula and her companions, with two figures of bishops. on the gable-ends are the virgin and child with two sisters of the hospital kneeling before them, and s. ursula with the arrow, the instrument of her martyrdom, and virgins seeking protection under her mantle. on the longer sides of the reliquary itself, in six rather larger compartments, is painted the history of s. ursula. of about the same period, possibly a little earlier, is the _marriage of s. catherine_, which is also in s. john's hospital at bruges. the central figure is that of the virgin, seated under a porch, with tapestry hanging down behind it; two angels hold a crown over her head: beside her is s. catherine kneeling, whose head is one of the finest ever painted by memling. behind her is an angel playing on the organ, and further back s. john the baptist. on the other side kneels s. barbara, reading: behind her another angel holds a book to the virgin, and still further back is s. john the evangelist, a figure of great beauty, and of a singularly mild and thoughtful character. through the arcades of the porch we look out, on either side of the throne, on a rich landscape, in which are represented scenes from the lives of the two s. johns. the panel on the right contains the beheading of the baptist, on the left the evangelist in the isle of patmos, where the vision of the apocalypse appears to him--the almighty on a throne in a glory of dazzling light, encompassed with a rainbow. the whole forms a work strikingly poetical and most impressive in character; it is highly finished, both in drawing and composition. ian gossaert (_c._ - ), called jan van mabuse from his native town of maubeuge, was the son of a bookbinder who worked for the abbey of sainte-aldegonde. it is possible therefore that he might have formed an early acquaintance with illuminated manuscripts before studying the art of painting in the studio of a master. memling, gerard, david, and quentin massys have been suggested as his instructors, but it is not known for certain that he was actually a pupil of any of them. in he went to italy, where he appears to have been greatly influenced both by the work of the renaissance painters and by the antique. the _adoration of the kings_, which was lately purchased from castle howard for the national gallery for £ , , was painted before he went to italy. towards the end of the fifteenth century, in consequence of the transfer of commerce from bruges to antwerp, this latter city first became and long continued the centre of art, and especially of netherlandish painting. here it is that we find quentin massys, the greatest belgian painter of this later time. he was born [illustration: plate xxiii.--jan mabuse portrait of jean carondelet _louvre, paris_] probably in . his father is said to have been a blacksmith and clockmaker, and there is a tradition that quentin only forsook the hammer for the brush at instigation of a tender passion for a beautiful lady. be that as it may, he is an important figure in the history of belgian art. he distinguishes, broadly speaking, the close of the last period and the beginning of the next. a number of pictures representing sacred subjects exhibit, with little feeling for real beauty of form, such delicacy of features, beauty and earnestness of feeling, tenderness and clearness of colouring and skill in finish, as worthily recall the religious painting of the middle ages, though at the very end of them. in his draperies, especially, we observe a charm which is peculiar to massys. at the same time, in the subordinate figures introduced into sacred subjects, such as the executioners, etc., he seems to take pleasure in coarse and tasteless caricatures. in subjects taken from common life, such as money changers, loving couples, or ugly old women, he uses his brush with evident zest, and with great success. the pictures of his later period are also distinguished from those of other painters by the large size of the figures, which for the first time in his country are of three-quarters or even actual life size. among his most original and attractive pictures are the half-length figures of christ and the virgin. these must have been very popular in his own time, for he has left several repetitions of them. two heads of this class are at antwerp, and two others of equal beauty are in the national gallery in one frame (no. ). the most celebrated of his subject pictures is that known by the name of _the misers_, or _the money changers_, at windsor castle--of which there are numerous copies, and this is not supposed to be the original. _the money changer and his wife_ at the louvre is undoubtedly his. lucas van leyden, as he was called (his real name being luc jacobez), was born in , and died in . he was a pupil of a little known artist, cornelis engelbrechstein, who was a follower if not a pupil of memling. lucas was an artist of multifarious powers and very early development. he painted admirably--though his authenticated works are very scarce--drew, and engraved. he pursued the path of realism in the treatment of sacred subjects, but with less beauty or elevation of mind. his heads are generally of a very ugly character. at the same time his form of expression found sympathy in the feeling of the period, and by the skill with which it was expressed, especially in his engravings, attracted a number of followers. in scenes from common life he is full of truth and delicate observation of nature, though showing now and then a somewhat coarse sense of humour. one of his most important works is a large composition of _the last judgment_, which is at leyden. very early in the sixteenth century--beginning in fact, as we have seen, with jan mabuse in --the netherlandish and german artists made it the fashion to repair to italy, attracted by the reputation of the great masters; so that from this time onwards their work ceases to exhibit the purely northern characteristics of their predecessors. for it appears that precisely those qualities most opposed to their own native feeling for art made the deepest impression on their minds; more especially such general qualities as grandeur, beauty, simplicity of forms, drawing of the nude, unrestrained freedom, boldness, and grace of movement--in short, all that is comprised in art under the term "ideal." but the attempt to appropriate all these qualities could lead to no successful result. being based on no inherent want on the part of their own original feeling for art, it became only the outward imitation of something foreign to themselves, and they never therefore succeeded in mastering the complete understanding of form, or in adopting the true feeling for beauty of line or grace of movement; and in aiming at them they only degenerated into artificiality, exaggeration in drawing, and violence in attitude. the pictures of this class, even of religious subjects, have accordingly but little to attract the eye, and when they selected scenes from ancient mythology, and allegories decked out with an ostentation of learning, the result is positively disagreeable. the most satisfactory productions of this period will be found in the department of portrait painting, which, by its nature, threw the artist upon the exercise of his own original feeling for art. as in every other respect this epoch is far more important as a link in the chain of history than from any pleasure arising from its own works, it will be sufficient to mention only the more important painters and a few of their principal pictures. the first painter who deserted his native style of art was, as before mentioned, jan mabuse. after the large _adoration of the kings_ in the national gallery the most important picture of his pre-italian period is the _christ in the garden of gethsemane_ at berlin. nearly all his works subsequent to , by which time he had settled in brussels, are characterised by all the faults above mentioned. their redeeming quality is their masterly treatment. among those of religious subjects the smallest are as a rule the best. the _ecce homo_ at antwerp, so frequently copied by contemporary painters, is a specimen of masterly modelling and vigorous colour. he is less successful with his life-size _adam and eve_, of which there are repetitions at brussels, hatfield, hampton court and berlin. but his most unpleasing efforts are the mythological subjects such as the _danaë_ at munich, and the _neptune and amphitrite_ at berlin. on the other hand, his portraits are attractive both from being more original, and less influenced by his acquired mannerisms of style four of these are in the national gallery, and the _girl weighing gold pieces_, in the berlin gallery, is also worthy of mention. bernard van orley, born at brussels in , is characterised in the catalogue of the national gallery as "taking his place after massys and mabuse on the downward slope of netherlandish painting." he has been immortalised by the fine portrait head of him by albert dürer which is now in the dresden gallery. he was court painter to margaret of austria, governess of the low countries, and retained the same post under her successor, mary of hungary. he is said to have visited rome in , and there made the acquaintance of raphael, whose influence is certainly apparent, though hardly his inspiration, in the _holy family_ in the louvre. a more netherlandish work, both in feeling and in treatment, is the _pietà_ in the gallery at brussels. ian scorel, born in , was a pupil of mabuse, and appears to have been the first to introduce the italian style into his native country--holland. when on a pilgrimage to palestine he happened to pass through rome at the time his countryman was raised to the papal dignity as adrian vi., and after painting his portrait he was appointed overseer of the art treasures of the vatican. returning to utrecht, where he died, he painted the picture of the _virgin and child_, with donors, which is now in the town hall. a fine portrait by scorel of cornelius aerntz van der dussen is in the berlin gallery. the decided and strongly realistic style in which quentin massys had painted scenes from common life, as for instance the misere or money changers, became the model for various painters in their treatment of similar subjects. first among these was his son, jan massys, born about , who followed closely but rather clumsily in his father's footsteps, and need only be mentioned for carrying on the tradition. more interesting were the breughels, namely, pieter breughel the elder, born about , called peasant breughel, and his two sons pieter and jan. old breughel is best studied at vienna, where there are good examples of his various subjects, notably a _crucifixion_ and _the tower of babel_--both dated --and secular scenes like _a peasant wedding_ and a _fight between carnival and lent_, which are full of clever and droll invention. his elder son, pieter, was called hell breughel, from his choice of subject. he is far inferior to his father or to his younger brother jan, called velvet breughel, born in . though more especially a landscape painter, jan also takes an important place in the development of subject pictures, which, though seldom rising above a somewhat coarse reality, are of a lively character, and worthy forerunners of the more accomplished productions of teniers, ostade, and brouwer. it is in portrait painting, however, that the netherlandish school chiefly distinguished itself during its decline in the seventeenth century, and had all its sons remained in the country to enhance its glory, it is probable that the effect on the general practice of painting would have been more than beneficial. but portrait painters have not always been content to sit at home and wait for sitters to come to them, especially when the state of society in which they happen to find themselves makes waiting rather a long and tedious process. from the reformation onwards, for over two centuries, there was a steady demand for portrait painters in england, and after the foundation of a really english school of painting by reynolds in the middle of the eighteenth century, the stream of foreign, especially netherlandish, talent never entirely ceased to flow. but confining ourselves for the present to the sixteenth century, we find that all the considerable netherlandish portrait painters were employed for the most part outside their own country. typical of these is joos van cleef, of antwerp, who died in . according to vasari he visited spain and painted portraits for the court of france. at all events it is certain that he worked for a time in england, where the great success of sir antonio mor is said to have disordered his brain. the few pictures that can be assigned to him with any certainty thoroughly justify the high reputation he enjoyed in his time--the two male portraits for example at berlin and munich, the portraits of himself and his wife at windsor, and his own at althorp. his style may be classed as between that of holbein and antonio mor. his well-drawn forms are decided without being hard, and his warm and transparent colouring recalls the great masters of the venetian school. ii peter paul rubens dr waagen thus summarises the history of painting in the netherlands during the interval of about a century and a half that elapsed between the death of jan van eyck in and the birth of peter paul rubens in . "the great school of the brothers van eyck," he writes, "which united with a profound and genuine enthusiasm for religious subjects a pure and healthy feeling for nature, and a talent for portraying her minutest details with truth and fidelity, had continued till the end of the fifteenth century, and in some instances even later, to produce the most admirable works, combining the utmost technical perfection in touch and finish with most vivid and beautiful colouring. to this original school, however, had succeeded a perverted rage for imitating the italian masters, which had been introduced into the netherlands by a few painters of talent, particularly by jean mabuse and bernard van orley. to display their science by throwing their figures into forced and difficult positions and strongly marking the muscles, by which they thought to emulate the grandeur of michel angelo, and to exhibit their learning by the choice of mythological and allegorical subjects, became the aim of succeeding painters, and before these false and artificial views of art, the spirit of religious enthusiasm and the pure, naïve perception of the truth and beauty of nature gradually disappeared. "in proportion as the flemish painters lost the proper conception of form, and the feeling for delicacy and beauty of outline, it followed of course that they became more and more removed from nature in their desire to rival each other in the forced attitudes of their figures, and in the exhibition of nudity, until at last such disgusting caricatures were produced as we find in the works of martin heemskirk or franz floris, artists who were even deficient in good colouring, the old inheritance of the school. "some few painters, however, whose feeling for truth and nature repelled them instinctively from a path so far removed from both, took to portraying scenes of real life with considerable humour and vivacity; or they delineated nature in her commonest aspects with great minuteness of detail; and thus _tableaux de genre_ and landscape originated. although a few isolated efforts to introduce a better state of things were visible towards the end of the sixteenth century, it was reserved for a mind of no common power to bring about a complete revolution." that rubens was possessed of a "mind of no common power" will be readily admitted. he was an extraordinary person, in whom were combined such a variety of excellent qualities that there seems to have been no room left in him for any of the inferior ones which are usually necessary, as one must almost admit, for an alloy that will harden the finer metal for the practical purposes of success. with all his feeling for religion, he was seldom prudish; his amazing vitality never led him into excess or intemperance. his intense patriotism was all for peace; classical learning never made him dry or bumptious, nor the favour of kings servile. as fine a gentleman as buckingham, he had no enemies. something more than temperament and natural ability, however, was necessary to make rubens exactly what he turned out to be, and that was environment. had he remained in flanders all his life we should have been deprived of much that is most characteristic in his art. he was too big, that is to say, for the flower pot. he needed to be bedded out, so that his exuberant natural genius might have the proper opportunities for expanding under suitable conditions. it was in venice and mantua, in florence and rome that he found himself, and took his measure from the giants. rubens was born in at cologne, where his father, a jurist of considerable attainments, had taken refuge from the disturbances at antwerp in . he was christened peter paul in honour of the saints on whose festival his birthday fell-- th june. at the age of sixteen he was placed as a page in the household of the widowed countess of lalaing, but as he showed a remarkable love for drawing he was apprenticed first to tobias verhaegt, a landscape painter, and then to adam van oort. the latter was so unsuitable a master, however, that rubens was soon committed to the care of otto vennius, at that time court painter to the infanta isabella and the archduke albert, her husband; he prospered so well that in vennius advised him to go to italy to finish his education as a painter. rubens was now in his twenty-third year, and besides being proficient in painting he was so well grounded in the classics and in general education and manners that he was recommended by the archduke to vincenzio, duke of gonzaga, whose palace at mantua was famous for containing an immense collection of art treasures, a great part of which within the next quarter of a century were purchased by king charles, the duke of buckingham, and the earl of arundel. the influence exerted on the young painter by surroundings like these is exemplified in a note by waagen:-- "rubens during his residence at mantua was so pleased with the _triumph of julius cæsar_ by mantegna (the large cartoons now at hampton court palace), that he made a free copy of one of them. his love for the fantastic and pompous led him to choose that with the elephants carrying the candelabra; but his ardent imagination, ever directed to the dramatic, could not be contented with this. instead of a harmless sheep, which, in mantegna, is walking by the side of the foremost elephant, rubens has introduced a lion and a lioness, which growl angrily at the elephant. the latter is looking furiously round, and is on the point of striking the lion a blow with his trunk." that rubens should have been so specially attracted by mantegna may seem a little surprising, until we remember that both were lovers and students of classical antiquities--a fact that is often forgotten in recalling only the principal achievements of either. but it is important to know what sort of foundations underlie the most splendid erections if we wish to understand how they came into existence and what their place is in the history of the arts. a glance through lemprière's _dictionary_ may furnish a modern academician with a subject for a popular picture,--but that is stucco rather than foundation. the roots of tall trees go deep. rubens when he was in rome studied the antiquities of the place with the utmost diligence and zeal, as is evidenced by a book published by his brother philip in . it was in the autumn of this year that he received the news, when at genoa, of his mother's illness, which induced him to return to antwerp forthwith. on his arrival he found she had died before the messenger had reached genoa. after four months of mourning he was ready to return to flanders; his sojourn of eight years in italy had so far influenced him that he might have remained there indefinitely had it not been for the archduke and the infanta pressing him to remain at brussels and attach himself to their court. another circumstance may possibly have weighed with him; for within a year we find him married to elizabeth brant, the daughter of a magistrate of antwerp, and it was not at brussels, but at antwerp, that he took up his quarters. here he proceeded to build a wonderful house--said to have cost him , florins--after designs of his own in the italian style, which he filled with the treasures he had collected in italy. rubens's first pictures were nearly all of them religious subjects. before he went to italy he had painted an _adoration of the kings_, a _holy trinity_, and the _dead christ in the arms of god the father_, which was engraved by bolswert. when vincenzio sent him to rome to copy pictures there for him, he found time to execute a commission which he received from the archduke albert to paint three pictures for the church of santa croce di gerusalamme, namely, the _crowning with thorns_, the _crucifixion_, and the _finding of the cross_. a year later--after returning from a journey to madrid--he painted the altar-piece for the church of santa maria in vallicella, in which the influence of paul veronese is conspicuous. at genoa, he painted the circumcision and s. ignatius for the church of the jesuits. one of the first pictures which he painted on his return to antwerp was an altar-piece for the private chapel of the archduke albert, of the holy family. this picture was so much admired that the members of the fraternity of s. ildefonso, at the head of which was the archduke albert, commissioned him to paint an altar-piece for the chapel of the order of s. james near brussels. this picture, which is now at vienna, represents the virgin enthroned, surrounded by four female saints, putting the cloak of the order on the shoulders of s. ildefonso. on the wings are the portraits of the archduke and isabella, with their patron saints. thus we find that, like the earliest painters in his own country as well as in italy, the beginning of rubens's art was under the influence of the church. further, we find that the most celebrated work of his earlier period, the _descent from the cross_, in the cathedral at antwerp, was undertaken in circumstances which abundantly show how thoroughly he was imbued with the principles of the religion he professed. the story is that when preparing the foundations of his new house he had unwittingly trespassed upon a piece of ground belonging to the company of arquebusiers at antwerp. a lawsuit was threatened, and rubens, with all the vivacity of his nature, prepared measures of resistance. but when his friend rockox, a lawyer, had proved him that he was in the wrong, he immediately drew back, and offered to paint a picture by way of compensation. the offer was accepted, and the arquebusiers asked for a representation of their patron, s. christopher, to be placed in his chapel in the cathedral. in the magnificent spirit which always distinguished the man, he presented to his adversaries not merely the figure of the great saint, but an elaborate and significant illustration of his name (christ-bearer). thus, in the centre, the disciples are lifting the saviour from the cross; in the wings the visitation--s. simeon with christ in his arms, s. christopher with christ on his shoulders, and an old hermit bearing a light. among the earlier examples of secular pictures one of the most famous is the portrait of himself and his bride, which is now in the munich gallery. this was painted in , when rubens was over thirty years old. in rubens went to madrid on a diplomatic errand, but still as a painter, as we shall see when discussing his relations with velasquez. towards the end of the year he was sent on another diplomatic mission, this time to england. the choice of an ambassador could not have fallen on anyone better calculated to suit the personal character of charles i., who was a passionate lover of art and easily captivated by men of cultivated intellect and refined manners. rubens therefore, in whom the most admirable and attractive qualities were united to the rarest genius as an artist, soon succeeded in winning the attention and regard of the king. at paris, too, rubens had made friends with buckingham, who had purchased his whole collection of statues, paintings, and other works of art for about ten thousand pounds. it was during his stay in london that he painted the picture now in the national gallery, called _peace and war_ (no. ). this was intended as an allegory representing the blessings of peace and the horrors of war, which he presented to the king as a tangible recommendation of the pacific measures which he had come to propose. after the dispersion of the royal collection during the commonwealth this picture was acquired by the doria family at genoa, where it was called, oddly enough, _rubens's family_. as a matter of fact the children are those of balthazar gerbier. he also painted the _s. george and the dragon_, which is now at windsor castle, and made the sketches for the nine pictures on the ceiling of the banqueting hall--now the united service institution museum--in whitehall. it was on this occasion, too, that he received the honour of knighthood from charles i., who is said to have presented him with his own sword. in the following year, , rubens married his second wife, helena fourment, who was only sixteen years old--he was now fifty-two or fifty-three. she belonged to one of the richest and most respectable families in antwerp, and was by no means unworthy of the compliment of being painted in the character of the virgin receiving instruction from s. anne, in the picture which is still at antwerp. in his painting was again interrupted by a diplomatic mission, this time to holland; and his remaining years were subject to more distressing interruptions, from the gout, to which he finally succumbed in . when we come to consider the english school of painting we shall see how much of its revival in the middle of the eighteenth century was due to the personality as well as to the genius of sir joshua reynolds. in the netherlands, likewise, it was not merely a great painter that was required to raise the art to life, but a great personality as well; and to the influence of rubens may be attributed much if not all of the extraordinary fertility of the flemish and dutch schools of the seventeenth century. making every allowance for the difference in the times in which the van eycks and rubens were working, there is no doubt that the former lived in too rarefied an atmosphere ever to influence their fellows, and with the exception of hans memling they left no [illustration: plate xxiv.--rubens portrait of hÉlÈne fourment, the artist's second wife, and two children _louvre, paris_] one worthy to carry on their tradition. rubens showed his contemporaries that art was a mistress who could be served in many ways that were yet unthought of, and that she did not by any means disdain the tribute of other than religious votaries. beginning, as we have pointed out, with sacred subjects, rubens soon turned to the study of the classics, and found in them not so much the classical severity that mantegna had sought for as the pagan spirit of fulness and freedom. "i am convinced that to reach the highest perfection as a painter," he himself writes "it is necessary, not only to be acquainted with the ancient statues, but we must be inwardly imbued with the thorough comprehension of them. an insight into the laws which pertain to them is necessary before they can be turned to any real account in painting. this will prevent the artist from transferring to the canvas that which in sculpture is dependent on the material employed--marble, for instance. many inexperienced and indeed experienced painters do not distinguish the material from the form which it expresses--the stone from the figure which is carved in it; that which the artist forces from the dead marble, from the universal laws of art which are independent of it. "one leading rule may be laid down, that inasmuch as the best statues of antiquity are of great value for the painter, the inferior ones are not only worthless but mischievous: for while beginners fancy they can perform wonders if they can borrow from these statues, and transfer something hard, heavy, with sharp outlines and an exaggerated anatomy to their canvas, this can only be done by outraging the truth of nature, since instead of representing flesh with colours, they do but give colour to marble. "in studying even the best of the antique statues, the painter must consider and avoid many things which are not connected with the art of the sculptor, but solely with the material in which he worked. i may mention particularly the difference in the shading. in nature, owing to the transparency of the flesh, the skin, and the cartilages, the shading of many parts is moderated, which in sculpture appear hard and abrupt, for the shadows become doubled, as it were, owing to the natural and unavoidable thickness of the stone. to this must be added that certain less important parts which lie on the surface of the human body, as the veins, folds of the skin, etc., which change their appearance with every movement, and which owing to the pliancy of the skin become easily extended or contracted, are not expressed at all in the works of sculptors in general--though it is true that sculptors of high talent have marked them in some degree. the painter, however, must never omit to introduce them--with proper discretion. "in the manner in which lights fall, too, statues are totally different from nature; for the natural brilliancy of marble, and its own light, throws out the surface far more strongly than in nature, and even dazzles the eye." i have quoted rather more of this passage (from mrs jameson's translation) than i at first intended, because it discloses one of the most important secrets of the successful painting of figures, by other artists besides rubens himself--george romney for example. the advantages of a "classical education" at our english public schools and universities are questioned, and there can be no doubt that for the bulk of the pupils they are questionable. but rubens shows that the case is exactly the same for painters studying classical art as for scholars acquainting themselves with classical literature. a superficial study of the antique, just because it is antique, is of no use at all, but rather a hindrance. but if the study is properly undertaken, there is no surer foundation, in art or literature, on which to build. it makes no difference what is built; the foundation is there, beneath the surface, and whatever is placed upon it will stand for all time. the remarkable freedom and originality of rubens's treatment of classical subjects is thus accounted for. under the surface is his familiarity with the antique, but instead of carrying this above ground, he builds on it a palace in accordance with the times and circumstances in which he lived. the principles of classical art underlie the modern structure. among his numerous works of classical mythology the picture at munich of _castor and pollux_ carrying off the daughters of leucippus is worthy of being first mentioned. the dioscuri mounted on spirited steeds, one of which is wildly rearing, are in the act of capturing the two damsels. the calm expression of strength in the male, and the violent but fruitless resistance of the female figures, form a striking contrast. although the former are merely represented as two coarse and powerful men, and the women have only common and rather redundant forms and flemish faces, yet the picture produces as a whole such a striking effect, owing to the admirable manner in which the subject is conceived, the power of imagination which it displays, and the exquisite colouring and tone, that it would never occur to any unprejudiced spectator to regret the absence of antique forms and character. two other pictures of this class are singled out for description by waagen as masterpieces. one is the _rape of proserpine_, at blenheim,--pluto in his car, drawn by fiery brown steeds, is carrying off the goddess, who is struggling in his arms. the other is the _battle of the amazons_, in the munich gallery, which was painted by rubens for van der geest. with great judgment he has chosen the moment when the amazons are driven back by the greeks over the river thermodon: the battle takes place upon a bridge, and thus the horror of the scene is carried to the highest pitch. both in flanders and in italy rubens had been brought into close contact with all the magnificence and splendour which belonged to those gorgeous times, and he delighted in representing the pomp of worldly state and everything connected with it. of all sacred subjects none afforded such a rich field for display as the _adoration of the kings_; he has painted this subject no less than twelve times, and his fancy appears quite inexhaustible in the invention of the rich offerings of the eastern sages. among the subjects of a secular character the history of marie de'medici, the triumph of the emperor charles v., and the sultan at the head of his army, gave him abundant opportunities of portraying oriental and european pageantry, with rich arms and regalia, and all the pomp and circumstance of war. profusion--pouring forth of abundance, that was one of rubens's most salient characteristics. exuberance, plenty, fatness. as a painter of animals, again, rubens opened out a new field for the energy of his fellow-countrymen, which was tilled so industriously by frans snyders and jan fyt, and in a lesser degree by the dutchmen jan weenix, father and son, and hondecoeter. that the naïve instincts, agility, and vivacity of animals must have had a great attraction for rubens is easily understood. those which are remarkable for their courage, strength, intelligence, swiftness--as lions, tigers, wild boars, wolves, horses, dogs--particularly interested him. he paid special attention to animals, seized every opportunity of studying them from nature, and attained the most wonderful skill and facility in painting them. it is related that he had a remarkably fine and powerful lion brought to his house in order to study him in every variety of attitude, and that on one occasion observing him yawn, he was so pleased with the action that he wished to paint it. he therefore desired the keeper to tickle the animal under the chin to make him repeatedly open his jaws: at length the lion became savage at this treatment, and cast such furious glances at his keeper, that rubens attended to his warning and had the beast removed. the keeper is said to have been torn to pieces by the lion shortly afterwards: apparently the animal had never forgotten the affront put upon him. by such means--though it is to be hoped not always with such lamentable results--rubens succeeded in seizing and portraying the peculiar character and instinct of animals--their quick movements and manifestations of strength--with such perfect truth and energy that not one among the modern painters has approached him in this respect--certainly not landseer, as mrs jameson would ask us to believe. the celebrated _wolf hunt_, in the collection of lord ashburton, was one of the earliest, painted in for the spanish general legranes only three years after rubens's return from italy. in this picture, his bold creative fancy and dramatic turn of mind are remarkably conspicuous--even at this early stage in his career. catherine brant, his first wife, on a brown horse, with a falcon in her hand, is near her husband; a second huntsman on horseback, three on foot, another old wolf and three young ones, with several dogs, complete the composition, which is most carefully painted in a clear and powerful tone throughout. of scenes of peasant life, one of his earliest, and yet the most famous, is the _kermesse_, which is now in the louvre. a boisterous, merry party of about seventy persons are assembled in front of a country ale-house; several are wildly dancing in a circle, others are drinking and shouting; others, again, are making love. _the garden of love_, equally famous, was one of rubens's latest pictures. of this there are several versions in existence, of which those at dresden and madrid may be considered as originals. several loving couples in familiar conversation are lingering before the entrance of a grotto, the front of which is ornamented with a rustic portico. amongst them we recognise the portraits of rubens and his second wife, his pupil van dyck, and simon de vos. as rubens united to such great and various knowledge the disposition to communicate it to others in the most friendly and candid manner, it was natural that young painters of talent who were admitted into his atelier should soon attain a high degree of skill and cultivation. at "the house in the wood," not far from the hague, there is a salon decorated entirely by the pupils of rubens. the principal picture, which is one of the largest oil paintings in the world, is by jacob jordaens, and represents the triumph of prince frederick henry--the object of the whole scheme being the glorification of the house of orange, in . most of the other pictures are of theodore van thulden, who in these works has emulated his illustrious master in the force and brilliance of his colouring. but it is not in any particular salon or palace that we must look for the effects of rubens' influence; it was far wider than to be able to be contained within four walls. in portraiture he gave us van dyck; in historical subjects, jacob jordaens; in animal painting and still life, frans snyders, jan fyt, and the brothers weenix. in pictures of everyday life he gave us adrian brouwer and david teniers; in landscape, everdingen, ruisdael and waterloo. "thus was the art of painting in the netherlands remodelled in every department," says waagen in the concluding sentence of his memoir, "by the energies of a single great and gifted mind. thus was rubens the originator of its second great epoch, to which we are indebted for such numerous and masterly performances in every branch of the art." iii the pupils of rubens david teniers the elder, who was born at antwerp in , received the first rudiments of his art from rubens, who soon perceived in him the happy advances towards excelling in his profession that raised him to the head of his school. the prejudice in favour of his son, david teniers the younger, is so great that the father is generally esteemed but a middling painter; and his pictures not worth the inquiry of a collector. his hand is so little distinguished, however, that the paintings of the father are often taken for those of the son. the father was certainly the inventor of the manner, which the son, who was his pupil, only improved with what little was wanting to perfection. rubens was astonished at his early success, and though he followed the manner of adrian brouwer, looked on him as his most deserving pupil by the brightness of genius that he showed. he soon saved enough money to undertake the journey to italy, and when at rome he established himself with adam elsheimer, who was then in great vogue. in elsheimer's manner he soon became a perfect master, without neglecting at the same time the study of other and greater masters, endeavouring to penetrate into the deepest mysteries of their practice. an abode of ten years in italy, and the influence of elsheimer combined with that of rubens, formed him into what he became. when he returned to his own country he employed himself entirely in painting small pictures filled with figures of people drinking and merry-making, and numbers of peasants and country women. he displayed so much taste in these that the demand for them was universal. even rubens thought them an ornament to his collection. teniers drew his own character in his pictures, and in the subjects he usually expressed everything tends to joy and pleasure. always employed in copying after nature whatsoever presented itself, he taught his two sons, david and abraham, to follow his example, and accustomed them to paint nothing but from that infallible model, by which means they both became excellent painters. these were his only disciples, and he died at antwerp in . the only distinction between his works and those of his son, david teniers the younger, is that in the latter you discover a finer touch, a fresher brush, a greater choice of attitudes, and a better disposition of the figures. the father, too, retained something of the tone of italy in his colouring, which was stronger than his son's; but his pictures have less harmony and union--though to tell the truth, when the father took pains to finish his picture, he very nearly resembled his son. the latter, david teniers the younger, was born in . he was nicknamed the ape of painting, from his powers of imitation. the archduke leopold william made him a gentleman of his bedchamber, and he made copies of all his pictures. he came to england to buy several italian pictures for count fuensaldegna, who on his return heaped favours upon him. don john of austria and the king of spain set so great a value upon his pictures that they built a gallery set apart to preserve them--there are no less than fifty-two in the prado gallery to-day. his principal talent was landscape adorned with small figures. he painted men drinking and smoking, alchemists, corps de garde, temptations of s. anthony, and country fairs and merry-makings. his small pictures are superior to his large ones. his execution displays the greatest ease; the leafing of his trees is light, his skies are admirable: his small figures have an exquisite expression and a most lively touch, and the characters are marked out with the greatest truth. from the thinness of the colours his works seem to have been finished at once; they are generally clear in all their parts, and teniers had the art, without dark shades, to relieve his lights by other lights, so well managed as to produce the effect he wanted, an art which few besides himself have attained. he died at antwerp in . frans snyders was born at antwerp in the year , ten years later, that is to say, than rubens. he received his first instruction in the art of painting from henry van balen. his genius at first displayed itself only in painting fruit. he afterwards attempted animals, in which kind of study he succeeded so well that he surpassed all that had ever excelled before him. he stayed for some time in italy, and the works he met with there by castiglione proved a spur to his genius to attempt outdoing him in painting animals. when he returned to flanders he fixed his ordinary abode at brussels, where he was made painter to the archduke and duchess, and became attached to the house of spain. twenty-two of his pictures are in the prado gallery. when snyders required large figures in his compositions both rubens and jordaens took pleasure in assisting him, and rubens in turn borrowed the assistance of snyders to paint the ground of his pictures; thus they mutually assisted each other in their labours, while snyders' manly and vigorous manner was quite able to hold its own even when joined with that of the great master. anthony van dyck was born at antwerp in , less than three months before velasquez at seville. both became so famous in their capacity of court painters that the rest of their achievement is popularly regarded as little more than a bye-product. in the case of van dyck there is the more excuse for the english public, inasmuch as, like holbein before him, he was exclusively employed while in this country in the production of portraits; and as "his works are so frequent in england," as horace walpole observes in the opening sentence of his memoir in the "anecdotes of painting," "that the generality of our people can scarce avoid thinking him their countryman," it is easy enough to forget that he only spent the last nine years of his life here. again, the insatiable craze of the english and american public for portraits has helped to obscure the extent of van dyck's capabilities in other directions, and while the national gallery contains not a single subject-piece from his hand, more and more thousands are continually spent in the acquisition of more and more portraits. the bewitching _cupid and psyche_ in queen mary's closet at hampton court, painted a year before his death, is scarcely known to exist! at the same time it would be useless to deny that van dyck's principal claim to his place among the greatest masters rests chiefly upon portraiture. the point i wish to make is that portrait painting never yet made a great master, but that none but a great master ever became a great portrait painter; and so long as we are only permitted to see the particular achievement of the artist in our public galleries, so long is it likely that we shall continue to be flooded with mediocre likenesses of fashionable people by painters whose highest or whose only achievement they constitute. anyone can write a "short story" for the cheaper sort of modern journal; only writers like hardy, stevenson, or kipling can give us a masterpiece in little. it was said that rubens advised van dyck to devote himself to portraiture out of jealousy: but that is hardly in accordance with what we know of his generous nature. if the advice was given at all we may be sure that it was given in a friendly spirit. but there was something in the temperament of van dyck which peculiarly fitted him for the court, apart from any question as to his excellence in any particular branch of his art, and it is evident that the personality of rubens, and his connection with the rich and mighty of the earth, influenced him almost as much as did his art. how much he owed to rubens, and how much rubens owed to him in painting is a matter that is arguable. he had been several years with van balen before he entered the studio of rubens, when eighteen years old, not as a pupil but as an assistant. here he not only had the practical task of painting rubens's compositions for him, in company with numerous others, but had also the advantage of studying the works of titian and other of the great italian masters in rubens's famous collection. if the hand of van dyck is traceable in some of the pictures of rubens at this period, so the spirit of rubens is very obvious in those of van dyck. the chief thing to be remembered is that in these early days he was not painting portraits. his earliest works, in which the influence of titian is perceptible as well as that of rubens, are the _christ bearing the cross_, in s. paul's at antwerp, painted in ; the _s. sebastian_ at munich, and the _christ mocked_, at berlin. the familiar portrait of _cornelius van der geest_ in the national gallery, is one of his very earliest, probably before . again, on his first visit to genoa, in , on the advice of rubens, his ambition was not to paint portraits, as on his second visit some years later, but to rival rubens in the composition of great historical pieces. it was not until , when he left behind him in genoa the superb series of balbi, brignole-sala, cattaneo, and lomellini portraits, and returned to antwerp to undertake those such as the _le roys_ at hertford house, or the _beatrice de cusance_ at windsor, that he had really become a portrait painter. even then, he was still determined not to yield to rubens at antwerp, and painted, amongst other subjects, the _rinaldo and armida_ for charles i. it was only at the solicitation of george geldorp, a schemer as well as a painter, that he consented at length, in , to come to england; and it was only the welcome afforded to him by charles that induced him to settle here. two considerations of personal vanity may be suggested as actuating charles to be specially indulgent to van dyck--an indulgence of which the results posterity should not omit to credit to the sad account of the martyr--first, that his father had failed to retain the painter in his service, and second, that velasquez, who had made a sketch of him on his mad visit to madrid in , was then immortalising philip. velasquez being out of the question, why not van dyck! an excellent idea! especially when instead of dwarfs, buffoons, and idiots, the english court contained some exceedingly fine material besides the royal family for the artist to exercise his talent upon. after this, flanders knew van dyck no more, save for a year or two's sojourn from - when he painted one or two magnificent portraits, and then returned to england, where he died in . with the death of rubens the year before, flemish painting had suffered another eclipse; and though snyders lived till , and jordaens and the younger teniers continued till late in the century, no fresh seedlings appeared, and the soil again became barren. rubens and van dyck were both too big for the little garden--their growth overspread europe. _dutch school_ i frans hals meantime we must turn our attention to holland, where frans hals, who was born only three years later than rubens, namely in , was the forerunner of rembrandt, van der helst, bol, lely, and a host more of greater or less painters, who made their country as famous in the seventeenth century for art as their fathers had made it in the sixteenth for arms. without going into the complications of the political history of the netherlands at this period, it is important nevertheless to remember that while the flemish provinces remained catholic under spain, the northern states, after heroic struggles, formed themselves into a republic; so that while it is difficult to draw a hard and fast line between what was dutch and what was flemish in estimating the influence of one particular painter upon another, there is no question at all as to vital difference between the conditions which led to the production of the pictures of the two schools. the flemish pictures were for the church and for the court, the dutch for the house, the guildhall, or the bourgeoisie. the former were aristocratic, the latter democratic. rubens and van dyck were aristocrats, hals and rembrandt democrats. rubens painted altar-pieces, for the great churches or cathedrals or for the chapels of his patrons. rembrandt painted bible stories for whoever would purchase them. van dyck painted the portraits of kings and nobles. hals painted the rough soldiers and sailors, singly, or in the great groups into which they formed themselves as guilds. for the first time in the history of painting, neither church nor court were its patrons. in any age or under any circumstances frans hals would have seemed a remarkable painter, but to measure his extraordinary genius to its full height we must try to realise what those times and those circumstances were. in florence and venice, as we have seen, there were great schools of painting, and in florence especially, the whole city existed in an atmosphere of art. there was no escape from it. in haarlem, where hals spent his youth (he was born in antwerp), there was no such state of affairs. there were no chapels to be decorated, no courtiers to be flattered. the country was seething with the effects of war, and the whole population were ready for it again at a moment's notice. there were plenty of heroes--every man was one--but not of the romantic sort. they were all bluff, hardy fellows, who wanted to get on with their business. who would have thought that they wanted to have their portraits painted? and who, accordingly, could have induced them to do so except a bluff, roystering genius like hals, who slashed them down on canvas before they had time to stop him? once it got wind that hals was such a good fellow, and that he dashed off a portrait to the life in as little time as it took to pass the time of day with him, he had plenty of business, and from painting single portraits he was commissioned to glorify the guilds by depicting their banquets, which he did with almost as much speed and considerably more fidelity than the limelight man at a city dinner in these times. his first great group--_the archers of s. george_, at haarlem--has all the appearance of being painted instantaneously as the banqueters stood around the table before dispersing. when we think of the cultured rubens, brought up in the atmosphere of courts, and studying for years among the finest paintings and painters in italy, and compare him with this low, ignorant fellow, who had never been outside the netherlands, do we not find his genius still more amazing? nowadays we see a portrait by hals surrounded with the finest works of the greatest painters in all times and in all lands, and see how well it stands the comparison. but our admiration must be increased a hundredfold, when we know that he was without any of the training or tradition of a great artist, and that it must have been by sheer character and genius alone that he forced his art upon his commercial, though heroic public. one thing especially it is interesting to notice about the dutch portraits of the early republican period, namely, that they are obviously inspired by the pleasure of having a living, speaking likeness rather than by pride and ostentation. bluff and swaggering as some of hals's portraits of men appear to be--notably _the laughing cavalier_, at hertford house--that is only because the subjects were bluff and swaggering fellows--swaggering, that is to say, in the consciousness of their ability and their readiness to defend their country and their homes again, if need be, against the tyrant. but these swaggerers are the exception, and the prevailing impression conveyed is that of honest, if determined, bluffness. they are not posing, these jolly dutchmen, they are sitting or standing, for hals to paint them just as they would sit or stand to be measured for a suit of clothes. look at the heads of the man and the woman in the national gallery. could anything be more natural and unassuming? look at the _laughing cavalier_, and ask if it is not the man himself, as hals saw and knew him, not a faked up hero? hals caught him in his best clothes, that is all. he did not put them on to be painted in--he was out on a jaunt. look at hals's women, how pleased they are to be painted, just as they are. poor hals, he was a good, honest fellow, though sadly given to drink and low company. but for sheer genius he has never had an equal. the vast number of his paintings--many of which now only exist in copies--shows that with every predilection to ease and comfort, he could not help painting--it simply welled out of him. it was a natural gift which seems to have needed no labour and no study. it is certain that this fecundity was a very potent factor in the development of the dutch school of painting. had hals confined his talent to painting the portraits of the highest in the land, which would never have been seen by the public at large, it is improbable that such a business-like community would have produced many painters. but hals must have popularised painting much more than we generally suppose. an example occurs to me in the picture of _the rommelpot player_, of which no less than thirteen versions are enumerated by de groot, none of which can claim to be the original. one is at wilton, another in sir frederick cook's gallery at richmond, and a third at arthingworth hall in northamptonshire. [illustration: plate xxv.--frans hals portrait of a lady _louvre, paris_] the subject is an old beggar man playing in front of the door of a cottage on a ridiculous instrument consisting of an earthen pot covered over like a jampot with a lid of parchment, on which he makes a rude noise with a stick, to the intense delight of a group of children. a picture like this, then, it is evident, instead of hanging in solitary confinement in the house of a great person, was so widely popular that it was copied on all sides, and must have been seen by thousands of people. next to hals, in point of time, was hendrik gerritz pot, who was born, probably at haarlem, in . it is to him rather than to ostade, who was a quarter of a century later, that we must trace the origin of smaller _genre_ pictures of the dutch school which in later years became its principal product. pot's works are neither very important nor very numerous, but as a portrait painter he is represented in the louvre by a portrait of charles i., which was probably painted when he was in england in or thereabouts; while at hampton court is a beautiful little piece by him which is catalogued under the title of _a startling introduction_. this belonged to charles i., for his cypher is branded on the back of the panel on which it is painted, and it was sold by the commonwealth as "a souldier making a strange posture to a dutch lady by bott." the painter's monogram h.p. appears on the large chimney piece before which the "soldier" is standing. gerard honthorst, born at utrecht in , can hardly be said to belong to the dutch school at all. when he was only twenty he went to rome, where his devotion to painting effects of candle-light earned him the sobriquet of "gherardo della notte." in he was elected dean of the guild of st. luke at utrecht, but he was in no sense a national painter, and neither took nor gave anything in the way of national influence. he was in england for a few months in , to which chance we are indebted for the picture of the duke of buckingham and his family which is in the national portrait gallery, and another group of the cavendish family which is at chatsworth. pictures of the nobility, or of celebrities like harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, were more in his line than those of his republican patriots, and consequently he plays no part in the development of the school we are now considering. bartholomew van der helst, born in amsterdam, , died there . he is by far the most renowned of the dutch portrait-painters of this period. although nothing is known as regards the master under whom he studied, it is probable that if hals was not actually his teacher, his works were the models whence van der helst formed himself. we see this in the portrait of vice-admiral kortenaar at amsterdam, where the conception of forms, and the unscumbled character of the strokes of the brush, recall hals. the same may be observed in two larger pictures with archers in the town hall at haarlem, where the inartistic arrangement and monotony of the otherwise warm flesh tones point to the earlier time of the painter. by about the year his character was more fully developed. his arrangement of portrait-pieces with numerous figures became very artistic and easy, his tone excellent, and his drawing masterly. this standard of excellence he retained till about . the following are principal pictures of this period:--a scene from the archery guild of amsterdam in , including thirty figures. the celebrated picture inscribed , an archery festival commemorating the peace of westphalia, and consisting of a party of twenty-four persons, at amsterdam. the chief charm of this work consists in the strong and truthful individuality of every part, both in form and colour; in the capital drawing, which is especially conspicuous in the hands; in the powerful and clear colouring; and finally, in a kind of execution which observes a happy medium between decision and softness. in he executed the picture of the archery guild known by the name "het doelenstück" at amsterdam gallery. this work represents three of the overseers of the guild, with golden prize vases, and a fourth supposed to be the painter himself. it is almost surpassed by a replica on a smaller scale executed in the following year, which is now in the louvre. at all events, this picture is in better preservation, and offers one of the most typical examples of portrait-painting that the dutch school produced. ii rembrandt van ryn but the greatest of all the dutch painters, in some ways the greatest painter that has ever lived, was rembrandt van ryn ( - ). beside him all the rest seem merely commonplace, and their works the product of this or that demand, according to their different times and circumstances, executed with more or less skill. for rembrandt there seems no place among them all--he must stand somewhere alone; and there is no standard by which to judge his perfections and imperfections except the man himself. perhaps the greatest difference between rembrandt and any other painter is that he never seems to have tried to please the public, but only painted to please himself. it is for this reason, no doubt, that he was never popular with the public, and is never likely to be; but just as beethoven is only understandable by the really musical soul, so rembrandt's appeal is to those who have the feeling for something in painting beyond the mere representation of familiar or heroic scenes and persons on canvas. for the public it is enough that one of his landscapes should be sold for £ , , and they all flock to see it; but put a fine rembrandt portrait in a shop-window without a name to it, and there would be little fear of the pavement being blocked. this failure of rembrandt to please the public of his own day brings out the truth that the practice of painting had up to then subsisted only so long as it supplied a popular demand; and when we come to consider what that demand was, we find that it is for nothing else but a pleasing representation of natural objects, which may or may not embody some sentimental or historical association, but must first and foremost be a fair representation of more or less familiar things. the oldest story about pictures is that of zeuxis and the bunch of grapes, which relates that he painted the fruit so like nature that the birds came and pecked at the painting--some versions, i believe, adding that the fruit itself was there but they preferred the painting. similar stories with innumerable variations are told of later artists. rembrandt himself is said to have been deceived by his pupils who, knowing he was careful about collecting money in small quantities, however extravagant he might be in spending it, painted coins on the floor of the studio, and enjoyed the joke of seeing him stoop to pick them up. we have heard, too, of flies painted with surprising skill in conspicuous places to deceive the unwary. but apart from these little pleasantries, one has only to remember how the earlier writers on painting have expressed themselves to see how much importance, consciously or unconsciously, was attached to life-like resemblance to the object painted. vasari is constantly using phrases in which he extols the painter for having made a figure look like the life, as though that were the real thing to be aimed at. we remember ben jonson's lines under shakespeare's portrait---- "wherein the graver had a strife with nature to outdo the life." and though ben jonson was not a critic, and if he had been there was little enough art in his time in england for him to criticize, still he expresses the general feeling of the public for any work of art. with the dutch people this was most certainly the case, and the popularity of the painters of scenes of everyday life is a proof of it. that hals, brouwer, or ostade were great painters was not half so important to them, if indeed they thought of it all, as that they were capable of turning out pictures which reflected their everyday life like a mirror. so long as rembrandt painted portraits like those of the pellicornes and their offspring--the two pictures at hertford house--or a plain straightforward group like dr tulp's _anatomy lesson_ (though in this he was already getting away from convention), he was tolerated. and it was not so much his freedom in living and his extravagant notions of the pleasures of life that brought about his downfall, as his failure to realize that when he took the money subscribed for the group of captain banning cocq's company, the subscribers expected something else for their money than a picture (_the night watch_) which might be a masterpiece according to the painter's notions, but was certainly not a portrait group of the subscribers. here, then, for the first time in the history of painting, we find an artist definitely at issue with the public. i do not say that this was the first time that an artist had failed to please the public, but it is the first occasion on which it was decided that if a painter was to undertake commissions, he must consider the wishes of the patron, or starve. it was something new for a painter of rembrandt's repute to be told that not he, but the persons who commissioned the work, were to be the judges of whether or not it was satisfactory. the consequences were important. for rembrandt, instead of taking the matter as a man of business, devoted the rest of his life to being an artist, and leaving the business of painting to men like backer, helst, and others, betook himself seriously to developing his art irrespective of what the public might or might not think of it. as a result, we have in the later work of rembrandt something that the world--i mean the artistic part of it--would be very sorry to do without. now the meaning of this is, not that rembrandt was ill-advised in deserting his patrons, or in suffering them to desert him, but that for the first time in the history of painting an artist had the personality--i will not say the conscious determination--to realize that his art was something quite apart from the affairs of this world, and that what he could express on canvas was _not_ merely a representation of natural objects designed to please his contemporaries, but something more than human, something that would appeal to humanity for all time. that many before him had felt that of their art, to a lesser or greater degree, is unquestionable--but none of them had ever realised it. dürer, certainly, may be cited as an exception, especially when contrasted with his phlegmatic and business-like compatriot holbein. but then dürer, a century before, and in totally different circumstances, was never assured of regular patronage as was rembrandt. rembrandt was the son of a miller named harmann geritz, who called himself van ryn, from the hamlet on the arm of the rhine which runs through leyden. his mother was the daughter of a baker. he was entered as a student at the university of leyden, his parents being comfortably off; but he showed so little taste for the study of the law, for which they intended him, that he was allowed to follow his own bent of painting, in the studio of a now forgotten painter, jacob van swanenburg. here he studied for about three years, after which he went to amsterdam and was for a short time with another painter named lastman, who was a clever but superficial imitator of the italian school then flourishing in rome. returning to leyden, rembrandt set up his easel and remained there painting till , when he went to amsterdam. his works during this first period are not very well known in this country, but at windsor and at edinburgh are portraits of his mother, which must belong to it. the next decade was the happiest and most prosperous in rembrandt's career. at amsterdam he soon found favour with wealthy patrons, and his happiness and success were completed by his marrying saskia van ulenburgh, the sister of a wealthy connoisseur and art dealer, with whom rembrandt had formed an intimate friendship. to this period belong the numerous portraits of himself and saskia, alone or together, most of which are characterized by a barbaric splendour of costume, utterly different from the profusion of rubens, but far more intense. living among the wealthiest jews in amsterdam, he seems to have been strongly attracted by their orientalism, and while rubens gloried in natural abundance of every sort, and painted the bounty of nature in the full sunlight, rembrandt chose out the treasures of art, and painted costume and jewels gleaming out of the darkness. the portraits of himself in a cap at hertford house (no. ), and of the old lady in the national gallery (no. ), both painted in , are notable examples of this period, though they have none of the orientalism to be seen in the various portraits of saskia, or in _the turk_ at munich. the two double portraits at hertford house of jean pellicorne and his wife with their son and daughter respectively, were among the commissions which he received after he set up at amsterdam, and are therefore less interesting as self-revelations. prosperity is not always the best condition under which to produce the highest work, and the temperament of rembrandt was so peculiar that there is little wonder that the prim dutchmen were not entirely captivated by his exuberant sensuality, or that we ourselves reserve our admiration principally for the more sombre and mysterious products of his later years after misfortune began to fall upon him. [illustration: plate xxvi.--rembrandt portrait of hendrickje stoffels _louvre, paris_] in the beloved saskia died, leaving an only child, titus, whose features are familiar to us in the portrait at hertford house. as though this were not affliction enough, rembrandt had the mortification of offending his patrons over the commission to paint captain banning cocq's company. from this time onward, as the world and rembrandt drifted farther and farther apart, his work becomes more and more wonderful. dr muther, in his _history of painting_, observes that perhaps it is only possible to understand rembrandt by interpreting his pictures not as paintings but as psychological documents. "a picture by rembrandt in the dresden gallery," he says, "represents _samson putting riddles to the philistines_; and rembrandt's entire activity, a riddle to the philistines of his time, has remained puzzling to the present day.... as no other man bore his name, so the artist, too, is something unique, mocks every historical analysis, and remains what he was, a puzzling, intangible, hamlet nature--rembrandt." the author's theory of the psychological document is hardly a solution of the admitted puzzle, though it is interesting to follow him in tracing it out in rembrandt's religious pictures, from the _samson_ already mentioned to his last dated work, in , the darmstadt _crucifixion_. what distinguishes rembrandt from all painters up to, and considerably later than his time, and in particular from those of his own school, is the mental, as compared with the physical activity that his pictures represent. perhaps this is only another way of stating dr muther's theory of the psychological documents, but it enables us to test that theory by comparing his work with that of others. in technical skill beruete claims a far higher place for velasquez, going so far as to say that the _lesson in anatomy_ is not a lesson in painting. but the difference between the two is not as great as that in technique, though infinitely wider in the mental process which led to the production of a picture. a reproduction of the _portrait of an old pole_, at s. petersburg, is in front of me, as it happens, as i am writing; and i see in this no inferiority in firmness and precision, in truth and vigour, to any portrait by velasquez. in their technical ability to present the life-like portrait of a real man, we can place rembrandt, velasquez, hals, and van dyck on pretty much of a level; if we had _van der geest_, _montanes_, the _old pole_ and the _laughing cavalier_ all in a row, we should find there was not much to choose between them for downright realization. but while in the work of velasquez we see the working of a fine and sensitive appreciation of his friend's personality, and the most exquisite realization of what was before him, in that of rembrandt we seem to see less of the pole and more of rembrandt himself. it is as though he were singing softly to himself while he was painting, thinking his own thoughts: while velasquez was simply concerned with the appearance and the thoughts of his model. that rembrandt's pictures are self-revelations, or psychological documents, is certainly true; and a proof of it is in the extraordinary number of portraits of himself. the famous dresden picture of himself with saskia on his knee can only be regarded in that light, and that brings into the category all the numerous pictures of saskia and of hendrike stoffels, who formed so great a part of his life. if to these we add, with dr muther, his biblical subjects, we find that there is not so very much left, and when we turn to the life's work of rubens, titian, velasquez, or in fact any of the great painters, the difference is at once apparent. so that in the pictures of rembrandt we may expect to find less of what we look for in those of others in the way of display, but infinitely more of the qualities which, to whatever extent they exist in other artists, are bound to be sacrificed to display. when we are asked to a feast, we find the room brilliantly lit, and our host the centre of an assemblage for whom he has felt it his duty to make a display consistent with his means and his station. if we were to peep into his house one night we might find him in a room illumined only with his reading-lamp, absorbed in his favourite study; but instead of only exchanging a few conventional phrases with him, and passing on to mingle with his guests and to enjoy his hospitality, we might sit and talk with him into the small hours. that is the difference between the success of hals with his _feast of s. george_, and the failure of rembrandt with _the night watch_. hals was at the feast, and of it. rembrandt was wrapped up in himself, and didn't enter into the spirit of the company--he was carried away by his own. that is why his pictures are so dark--not of deliberate technical purpose, like those of the _tenebrosi_, but because to him a subject was felt within him rather than seen as a picture on so many square feet of canvas. when we call up in our own minds the recollection of some event of more than usually deep significance in our past, we only see the deathbed, the two combatants, the face of the beloved, or whatever it may be; the accessories are nothing, unless our imagination is stronger than the sentiment evoked, and sets to work to supply them. it is this characteristic which so sharply distinguishes the work of rembrandt from that of his closest imitators. there is a large picture in the national gallery, _christ blessing the children_, catalogued as "school of rembrandt," in which we see as near an approach to his manner as to justify the attribution, but that is all. i do not know why it has never been suggested that this is the work of nicolas maes, who was actually his pupil, and who was one of the few dutch artists to paint life-sized groups, as he is known to have done in his earlier days when still under the influence of rembrandt. _the card players_, close beside it, has marked affinities in style, and especially in the very natural characterization of the faces, which is also apparent in that of the child in the other picture, and another on the extreme left of the picture. that it cannot be rembrandt's is quite evident; the grouping and the lighting of it proclaim the picture seen on the canvas, and not felt within the artist's own consciousness. the realistic tendency which, as has already been pointed out, was so characteristic of the whole art of the netherlands, showed the most remarkable and original results in the work of an idealist like rembrandt. sandrart, one of the earliest writers on painting, says that rembrandt "usually painted things of a simple and not thoughtful character, but which were pleasing to the eyes, and picturesque"--_schilderachtig_, as the netherlanders called it. this combination of realism and picturesqueness, assisted by his marvellous technical power, put him far above and apart from all his compeers. in the absence of any pictures by his masters van swanenburg and pinas, it is difficult to ascertain what, if anything, he learnt from them. from peter lastman we may be sure he learnt nothing in the way of technique. kugler--who in these paragraphs is my principal authority--suggests that it is highly probable that in this respect he formed himself from the pictures of frans hals, with which he must have been early acquainted in the neighbouring town of haarlem. at all events unexampled freedom, spirit, and breadth of his manner is comparable with that of no other earlier dutch master. but all these admirable qualities would offer no sufficient compensation for the ugly and often vulgar character of his heads and figures, and for the total subversion of all the traditional rules of art in costume and accessory, and would fail to account for the great admiration which his works enjoy, if he had not been possessed, besides, of an intensely artistic individuality. in his earliest pictures his touch is already masterly and free, but still careful, while the colour of the flesh is warm and clear and the light full. _dr tulp's anatomy_, painted in , is the most famous of this period. in _the night watch_, at amsterdam, dated , the light is already restricted, falling only on isolated objects; the local tone of the flesh is more golden; the touch more spirited and distinct. later, that is to say from about onwards, the golden flesh tones become still more intense, passing sometimes into a brown of less transparency, and accompanied frequently with grey and blackish shadows and sometimes with rather cool lights. the chief picture of this epoch, dated , is _the syndics_, also at amsterdam, a group of six men. this, in the depth of the still transparent golden tone, in the animation of the heads, and in body and breadth of handling, is a true masterpiece. with respect to his treatment of biblical subjects, two older writers, kolloff and guhl, accord him an honour which, as we shall see, kugler gives to dürer a century earlier, namely that of being the painter of the true spirit of the reformed church. though it is certain, kugler admits, that no other school of painting in rembrandt's time--neither that of rubens, nor that of the carracci, nor the french nor spanish schools--rendered the spiritual import of biblical subjects with the purity and depth exhibited by the great dutch master. here the kindly element of deep sentiment combines most happily with his feeling for composition, as in the _descent from the cross_, at munich, in _the holy family_, in the louvre, and above all in _the woman taken in adultery_, in the national gallery. in this last, a touching truthfulness and depth of feeling, with every other grand quality peculiar to rembrandt, are seen in their highest perfection. of hardly less excellence, also, is our _descent from the cross_. endowed with so many admirable qualities, it follows that rembrandt was a portrait painter of the highest order, while his peculiar style of lighting, his colouring and treatment, distinguish his portraits from those by all other masters. even the works of his most successful pupils, who followed his style in this respect, are far behind him in energy of conception and execution. the number of his admirable portraits is so large that it is difficult to know which to mention as most characteristic. no other artist ever painted his own portrait so frequently, and some of these may first be mentioned. that in the louvre, dated , represents him in youthful years, fresh and full of hope. it is spiritedly painted in the bright tone of his earlier period. another in the same gallery, of the year , painted with extraordinary breadth and certainty of hand of that later period, shows a man weighed down with the cares of life, with grey hair and deeply furrowed forehead. [illustration: plate xxvii.--rembrandt portrait of an old lady _national gallery, london_] the one at hertford house, already mentioned, and two in the national gallery, fall between these extremes. of other portraits we have already mentioned the two pellicorne groups in the wallace collection; and another of this earliest period, the very popular _old woman_, in the national gallery, dated . this is of greater interest as showing, if anything does, whether it is fair to attribute any of his training to the influence of hals. at any rate this picture is a highly important proof that at the early age of twenty-six, the painter was already in the full possession of that energy and animation of conception, and of that decision of the "broad and marrowy touch" which are so characteristic of him. of his later period--probably about --a fine example is _the jewish rabbi_, and of his latest the _old man_, both in the national gallery. iii painters of genre the painters of _genre_, by the number, quality, and diversity of whose pictures the dutch school is specially distinguished, may be roughly divided into three classes; namely, those who studied the upper, the middle, and the lower classes respectively. but as holland was a republic, and the great stream of its art welled up from the earth and was not showered upon it from above, it will be found convenient to reverse the social order in considering them, and begin with the immediate successors of frans hals, whose influence was without doubt a very considerable factor in the development of adrian brouwer and adrian and isaac ostade. adrian brouwer, now generally classed under the flemish school, was born at oudenarde in . but he went early to haarlem, and it was not until about that he settled at antwerp, where he died in . he was a pupil of frans hals, and acquired from him not only his spirited and free touch, but also a similar mode of life. his pictures, which for the most part represent the lower orders eating and drinking, often in furious strife, are extraordinary true and life-like in character, and display a singularly delicate and harmonious colouring, which inclines to the cool scale, an admirable individuality, and a _sfumato_ of surface in which he is unrivalled; so that we can well understand the high esteem in which rubens held them. owing to his mode of life, and to its early close, the number of his works is not large, and they are now seldom met with. no gallery is so rich in them as munich, which possesses nine, six of which are masterpieces. _a party of peasants at a game of cards_, affords an example of the brightness and clearness of those cool tones in which he evidently became the model of teniers. _spanish soldiers throwing dice_, is equally harmonious, in a subdued brownish tone. _a surgeon removing the plaster from the arm of a peasant_ is not only most masterly and animated in expression, but is a type of his bright, clear, and golden tone, and is singularly free and light in touch. _card-players fighting_, is in every respect one of his best pictures. the momentary action in each figure, all of them being individualized with singular accuracy even as regards the kind of complexion, is incomparable, the tenderness of the harmony astonishing, and the execution of extraordinary delicacy. the only example in the national gallery is the _three boors drinking_, bequeathed by george salting in ; and at hertford house the _boor asleep_, though of this we may without hesitation accept the description in the catalogue, "our painting is of the highest quality, and in the audacity of its realism rises almost to grandeur." adrian van ostade, said to have been born at lubeck, was baptized in at haarlem, where he studied under frans hals, and he formed a very good taste in colouring. nature guided his brush in everything he undertook; he devoted himself almost entirely to painting peasants and drunkards, whose gestures and most trifling actions were the subject of his most serious meditation. the subjects of his little pictures are not more elevated than those of brouwer, and considerably less than those of teniers--they are nearly always alehouses or kitchens. he is perhaps one of the dutch masters who best understood chiaroscuro. his figures are very lively, and he sometimes put them into the pictures of the best painters among his countrymen. nothing can excel his pictures of stables, in which the light is spread so judiciously that all one could wish is a lighter touch in his drawing, and a little more height in his figures. many of his brother isaak's pictures are improperly attributed to him, which, though painted in the same manner, are never of the real excellence of adrian's. the _interior with peasants_ at hertford house, and _the alchymist_ at the national gallery are a characteristic pair of his pictures, which were sold in the collection of m. de jully in for £ , the former being purchased by the third marquess of hertford and the latter passing into the peel collection. _buying fish_, at hertford house, dated --when the artist was nearly sixty years old, is remarkable for its breadth of effect and brilliancy of colour. jan steen, born at leyden about the year , died . he first received instruction under nicolas knupler; and afterwards it is said worked with jan van goyen, whose daughter he married. an extraordinary genius for painting was unfortunately co-existent in jan steen with jovial habits of no moderate kind. the position of tavern-keeper in which he was placed by his family, gave both the opportunity of indulging his propensities and also that of depicting the pleasures of eating and drinking, of song, card-playing and love-making directly from nature. he must have worked with amazing facility, for in spite of the time consumed in this mode of life, to which his comparatively early death may be attributed, the number of his pictures is very great. his favourite subjects were groups like the _family jollification_; the _feast of the bean king_; and that form of diversion illustrating the proverb, "_so wie die alten sungen, so pfeifen auch die jungen_"; fairs, weddings, etc.; he also treated other scenes, such as the doctor's visit, the schoolmaster with a generally very unmanageable set of boys--of which is a charming example at dublin. the ludicrous ways of children seem especially to have attracted him; accordingly, he depicts with great zest the old dutch custom on st. nicholas's day, september rd, of rewarding the good, and punishing the naughty child; or shows a mischievous little urchin teasing the cat, or stealing money from the pockets of their, alas!--drunken progenitors. jan steen is the most genial painter of the whole dutch school. his humour has made him so popular with the english, that at least two-thirds of his pictures are in their possession. a peculiar cluster of masters, belonging to the dutch [illustration: plate xxviii.--terborch the concert _louvre, paris_] school, was formed by gerard dou. however careful in execution were such painters as terburg, metsu, and netscher, yet gerard dou and his scholars and imitators surpassed them in the development of that technical finish with which they rendered the smallest detail with meticulous exactitude. gerard dou was born at leyden on the th april , died there . he entered rembrandt's school at fifteen years of age, and in three years had attained the position of an independent artist. he devoted himself at first to portraiture, and, like his master, made his own face frequently his subject. afterwards he treated scenes from the life chiefly of the middle classes. he took particular pleasure in the representation of hermits; he also painted scriptural events and occasionally still life. his lighting is frequently that of lanterns and candles. most of his pictures contain only from one to three figures, and do not exceed about ft. high and ft. in. wide, being often smaller. his pictures seldom attain even an animated moral import, and may be said to be limited usually to a certain kindliness of sentiment. on the other hand, he possessed a trace of his master's feeling for the picturesque, and for chiaroscuro. notwithstanding the incalculable minuteness of his execution, the touch of his brush is free and soft, and his best pictures look like nature seen through the camera-obscura. his works were so highly estimated in his own time, that the president van spiring, at the hague, offered him florins a year for the right of pre-emption of his pictures. considering the time which such finish required, and the early age at which he died, the number of his pictures--smith enumerates about --is remarkable. in the louvre are the following:--an old woman seated at a window, reading the bible to her husband; this is one of the best among the many representations by dou of a similar kind, being of warm sunny effect, and marvellous finish. also the _woman with the dropsy_, which is accounted his _chef-d'oeuvre_. among the scholars of gerard dou, frans van mieris, born at leyden , died , takes the first place. in chiaroscuro, and in delicacy of execution he is not inferior to his master. although his pictures are generally very small, yet with their extraordinary minuteness of execution it is surprising that, in a life extended only to forty-six years, he should have produced so many. the munich gallery has most, then dresden, vienna, florence, and st. petersburg. the date, , on a picture in the vienna gallery, _the doctor_, shows the painter to have attained the summit of his art at twenty-one years of age. another dated , in the same gallery, executed for the archduke leopold, is one of his best. the scene is a shop with a young woman showing a gentleman, who has taken her by the chin, various handkerchiefs and stuffs. in the munich gallery is _a soldier_, dated , of admirable transparency and softness. also _a lady_ in a yellow satin dress fainting in the presence of the doctor. in the hague gallery is _a boy blowing soap-bubbles_, dated . this is a charming little picture of great depth of the brownish tone. also _the painter and his wife_, whose little shock dog he is teasing; very naïve and lively in the heads, and most delicately treated in a subdued but clear tone. in the dresden gallery are mieris again and his wife before her portrait. this is one of his most successful pictures for chiaroscuro, tone, and spirited handling. nicolas maes, already mentioned, born at [illustration: plate xxix.--gabriel metsu the music lesson _national gallery, london_] dordrecht , died , was actually a pupil of rembrandt. his much prized and rare _genre_ pictures treat very simple subjects, and consist seldom of more than two or three figures, generally of women. the naïvete and homeliness of his feeling, with the addition sometimes of a trait of kindly humour; the admirable lighting, and a touch resembling rembrandt in impasto and vigour, render his pictures very attractive. in the national gallery, besides _the card players_, are _the cradle_, _the dutch ménage_, dated ; and _the idle servant_: all these are admirable, and the last-named a _chef-d'oeuvre_. peter de hoogh ( - ) decidedly belongs to the numerous artistic posterity of rembrandt, possibly through karel fabritius, and stands nearer to vermeer and to maes, than to any other painter. his biography can only be gathered from the occasional dates on his pictures, extending from to . although he impresses the eye by the same effects as maes, yet he is also very different from him. he has not his humour, and seldom his kindliness, and his figures, which are either playing cards, smoking or drinking, or engaged in the transaction of some household duty,--with faces that say but little--have generally only the interest of a peaceful or jovial existence. if maes takes the lead in warm lighting, peter de hoogh may be considered _par excellence_ the painter of full and clear sunlight. if, again, maes shows us his figures almost exclusively in interiors, peter de hoogh places them most frequently in the open air--in courtyards. in the representation of the poetry of light, and in that marvellous brilliancy and clearness with which he calls it forth in various distances till the background is reached, which is generally illumined by a fresh beam, no other master can compare with him. his prevailing local colour is red, repeated with greater delicacy in various planes of distance. this colour fixes the rest of the scale. his touch is of great delicacy; his impasto admirable. gerard terburg, born at zwol , died , learned painting under his father, and when still young visited germany and italy, painting numerous portraits on a small scale, and occasionally the size of life. but his place in the history of art is owing principally to a number of pictures, seldom representing more than three, and often only one figure, taken from the wealthier classes, in which great elegance of costume, and of all accompanying circumstances, is rendered with the finest keeping, and with a highly delicate but by no means over-smooth execution. he may be considered as the originator of this class of pictures, in which, after his example, several other dutch painters distinguished themselves. with him the chief mass of light is generally formed by the white satin dress of a lady, which gives the tone for the prevailing cool harmony of the picture. among his pictures we occasionally find some which, taken successively, represent several different moments of one scene. thus in the dresden gallery, there are two good pictures: the one of an officer writing a letter, while a trumpter waits for it; the other of a girl in white satin washing her hands in a basin held before her by a maid-servant; while at munich, is another fine work, in which the trumpeter is offering the young lady the letter, who owing to the presence of the maid, who evidently disapproves, is uncertain whether to take the missive. finally, in the amsterdam gallery, the celebrated picture known by the title of _conseil paternel_, furnishes [illustration: plate xxx.--pieter de hooch interior of a dutch house _national gallery, london_] the closing scene. the maid has betrayed the affair to the father, and he is delivering a lecture to the young lady, in whom by turning her back on the spectator, the painter has happily expressed the feeling of shame; good repetitions are in the berlin museum, and in the bridgewater gallery. but terburg's perfection as regards the clearness and harmony of his silvery tone is shown in a picture at cassel, representing a young lady in white satin sitting playing the lute at a table. jan vermeer of delft ( - ) was certainly a pupil of fabritius, and thus "grandson" of rembrandt. to class him with painters of _genre_ seems almost a profanation of the exquisite sense of beauty with which, almost alone among the dutch painters, he seems to have been endowed. it is like classing walter pater with art critics. but as vermeer had to express himself in some form, it is perhaps fortunate that the school had developed this kind of poetic portraiture, under terburg, metsu and others, to a point where a genius like vermeer could use it as the vehicle of his fascinating self-revelations. in landscape we have the _view of delft_, at the hague, which has shown the nineteenth century painters more than they could ever see in their more famous predecessors; but it is in the simple compositions like _the letter reader_ at amsterdam, _the proposal_, at dresden, or the _lady at the virginals_, in the national gallery, that he displays his greatest power and charm. iv painters of animals as a link between the painters of _genre_ and the landscapists, we may here mention some of the numerous artists who either made landscape the background for groups of figures and animals, or peopled their landscapes with groups--it matters not which way we put it. among these we shall find several of the most famous, or at any rate the most popular artists of the dutch school. philips wouverman ( - ), whose reputation during the last century was greater than that of almost any of the dutch painters except rembrandt and dou, is said to have studied under hals, but it is more certain that the master from whom he learnt most, if not all, was jan wynants at haarlem, whose whole manner in landscape he quickly succeeded in acquiring, and surpassed him in his facility with horsemen and other figures. wouverman's works have all the excellences that may be expected from high finishing, correctness, agreeable composition and colouring. it does not appear that he was ever in italy, or even quitted the city of haarlem, though it would seem probable that his more elaborate compositions owed something to other influences than those of hals or wynants. in his earlier pictures there are no horses, but later in his career he generally subordinated his landscapes to the groups or subjects for which he is most famous. in the national gallery, among eleven examples, are a _halt of officers_, _interior of a stable_, _a battle_, _the bohemians_, and _shoeing a horse_, all of which contain numerous figures, mounted and unmounted--and there is nearly always a white horse. with all his success, he died a poor man, and it is related that in his last hours he burned a box filled with his studies and drawings, saying, "i have been so ill repaid for all my labours, that i would not have [illustration: plate xxxi.--jan vermeer the lace maker _louvre, paris_] those designs engage my son to embrace so miserable a profession as mine." this son followed his advice, and became a chartreux friar. peter and jan wouverman were his brothers. the former painted hawking scenes, and his horses, though well designed, were not equal to those of philips. the latter is represented in the national gallery by a landscape in which the spirit of wynant's, rather than that of philips's, is discernible. at hertford house, out of seven examples, two are of more than usual excellence, and well represent his earlier and later manners. _the afternoon landscape with a white horse_ (no. in room xiii), which smith (in his catalogue raisonné), characterizes as possessing unusual freedom of pencilling, and powerful effect, dates from the transition from the early to the middle period, and is a very effective picture, as well as being very characteristic. the _horse fair_ (no. , in room xvi), is not only much larger than the other--it measures x inches--but is a really important picture. lord hertford paid £ for it in . it was engraved by moyrean, for his series of a hundred prints after wouverman, under the title of _le grand marché aux chevaux_. it is thus described by smith:--"this very capital picture exhibits an open country divided in the middle distance by a river whose course is lost among the distant mountains. the principal scene of activity is represented along the front and second grounds, on which may be numbered about twenty-four horses, exhibiting that noble animal in every variety of action, and nearly fifty persons. on the right of the picture is a coach, drawn by four fine grey horses, and in front of this object are a grey and a bay horse, on the latter of which are mounted a man and a boy. in advance of them is a group of four horses and several persons, among whom may be noticed a cavalier and a lady observing the paces of a horse which a jockey and his master are showing off. a gentleman on a black horse seems also to be watching the action of the animal. near this person is a mare lying down, and a foal standing by it which a boy is approaching. on the opposite side of the picture is a gentleman on a cream-coloured horse, near two spirited greys, one of which is kicking, and a woman, a man and a boy are escaping from its heels. from thence the eye looks over an open space occupied by men and horses, receding in succession to the bank of the river, along which are houses and tents concealed in part by trees. this picture is painted throughout with great care and delicacy in what is termed the last manner of the master, remarkable for the prevalent grey or silvery hues of colouring." albert cuyp, born at dortrecht , died there about . of the life of this great painter little more is known with any certainty than that he was the scholar of his father, jacob gerritsz cuyp. cattle form a prominent feature in many of his works, though never so highly finished as in those of paul potter or adrian van de velde; indeed, in many of cuyp's pictures, they are quite subordinate. his favourite subjects, a landscape with a river, with cattle lying or standing on its banks, and landscapes with horsemen in the foreground, were suggested to him no doubt by the country about dortrecht and the river maas: but he also painted winter landscapes, and especially views of rivers where the broad extent of water is animated by vessels. sometimes, too, with great perfection, fowls as large as life, hens, ducks, etc., and still life. he also painted portraits, though less successfully. however great the skill displayed in the composition of his works, their principal charm lies in the beauty and truthfulness of their peculiar lighting. no other painter, with the exception of claude, has so well understood the cool freshness of morning, the bright but misty light of a hot noon, or the warm glow of a clear sunset. the effect of his pictures is further enhanced by the skill with which he avails himself of the aid of contrasts; as for example, dark, rich colours of the reposing cattle as seen against the bright sky. in his own country no picture of his, till the year , ever sold for more than thirty florins. indeed, kugler was informed by a dutch friend, that in past times, when a picture found no bidder, the auctioneer would offer to throw in "a little cuyp" in order to induce a sale. the merit of having first given him his due rank belongs to the english, who as early as , gave at the sale of linden van slingelandt's collection at dortrecht high prices for cuyp's works; about nine-tenths of his pictures are consequently to be found in england. one of his finest works is the landscape, in bright, warm, morning light, with two cows reposing in the foreground, and a woman conversing with a horseman, in the national gallery (no. ). the whole picture breathes a cheerful and rural tranquillity. in his mature time, these admirable qualities are seen in higher development. in the louvre (no. ), is another fine example--a scene with six cows, a shepherd blowing the horn, and two children listening to him. this is admirably arranged, of greater truthfulness as regards the form and colouring of the cattle than usual, and with the warm lighting of the sky executed with equal decision and softness. this picture is one of the master's chief productions, being also about ft. high by ft. wide. another with three horsemen, and a servant carrying partridges, and in the centre a meadow with cattle, is also in the louvre. this is less attractive in subject, but ranks equally high as a work of art. in buckingham palace are two pictures, one with three cows reposing, and one standing by a clear stream, near them a herdsman and a woman; other cows are in water near the ruins of a castle. in this picture, we see cuyp in every respect at his culminating point of excellence. not less fine, and of singular force of colour, is the landscape, with a broad river running through it, and a horseman under a tree in conversation with a countryman. paul potter, born at enckhuysen , died at amsterdam . although the scholar of his father, pieter potter, who was but a mediocre painter, he made such astonishing progress as to rank at the age of as a finished artist. he removed very early to the hague, where his talents met with universal recognition, including that of prince maurice of orange, and where he married. in the year , however, he removed to amsterdam at the instance of one of his chief patrons, the burgomaster tulp. of the masters who have striven pre-eminently after truth he is, beyond all question, one of the greatest that ever lived. in order to succeed in this aim, he acquired a correctness of drawing, a kind of modelling which imparts an almost plastic effect to his animals, an extraordinary execution of detail in the most solid impasto, and a truth of colouring which harmonises astonishingly with the time of day. in his landscapes, which generally consist of a few willows in the foreground, and of a wide view over meadows, the most delicate graduation of aërial perspective is seen. with few exceptions, his animals are small, and his pictures proportionately moderate in size. by the year he had attained his full perfection. of this date is the celebrated group called _the young bull_, in the hague gallery. all the figures in this are as large as life, and so extraordinarily true to nature as not only to appear real at a certain distance, but even to keep up the illusion when seen near. a picture dated , now in buckingham palace, of two cows and a young bull in a pasture, combines with his customary fidelity to nature a more than common power of effect, and breadth and freedom of treatment. to the same year belongs also the _farmyard_, formerly in the cassel gallery, now in that of s. petersburg, which, according to smith, fully deserves its celebrity both for the clearness and warmth of the sunset effect, as well as for its masterly execution. to belongs the picture of _orpheus_, charming the animal world by the strains of his lyre, in the amsterdam museum. here we see that the master had also studied wild animals. he is most successful in the bear. in the same gallery is another _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the same year--a hilly landscape with a shepherdess singing to her child, a shepherd playing on the bagpipe, and oxen, sheep, and goats around. the names of weenix and hondecoeter are so inseparably associated in the popular mind as painters of birds, whose respective works are not readily distinguishable moreover by the casual observer, that a short excursion into their family histories is advisable, for the purpose of showing how it was that this particular branch of the art was so successfully practised by the two. moreover, as there were three hondecoeters and two weenixes who were painters, it is necessary to say something about each of them. melchior hondecoeter, the best known, was of an ancient and noble family. he was instructed till the age of seventeen by his father gysbert, who was a tolerable painter. giles hondecoeter, his grandfather, painted live birds admirably, but chiefly cocks and hens in the taste of savery and vincaboom. melchior was born in , and studied for a time with his father; but meantime his aunt josina had married jan baptist weenix, and a son was born to them, jan weenix, who inherited from old giles hondecoeter, his grandfather, his talent for painting poultry, and from his father, jan baptist weenix, he acquired the benefit of several influences which were not shared by his cousin melchior. jan baptist weenix, who was nicknamed "rattle," was born at amsterdam about . his father was an architect, who bred his son up to that profession, but he was afterwards put to study painting under abraham bloemart. soon after his marriage with josina he was seized with the desire to visit italy, and he set off alone to rome, promising to return in four months. in rome, however, he was so well received that he stayed there four years, and italianized himself to an extent that may be seen in a picture in the wallace collection, a _coast scene with classic ruins_, which he signs _gio. batta. weenix_. though he returned to holland and settled near utrecht, his manner was sensibly modified by his sojourn in rome. jan weenix, who was born at amsterdam in , though he succeeded in so far assimilating his father's style that his earlier works are often confused with those of "giovanni battista," did not acquire the energy or the dramatic force displayed by melchior hondecoeter in representing live birds and animals, though he sometimes surpassed him in the finish and the harmony of his decorative arrangements of dead game and still life. accordingly the one usually painted dead and the latter live birds. in other respects there is not much to distinguish their works. nicholas berchem was the only other pupil of jan baptist weenix of whom we know anything. berchem had other masters, beginning with his father, who was a painter of fish and tables covered with plates, china dishes, and such like. having given his son the first rudiments of his art he found himself unequal to the task of cultivating the excellent disposition he observed in him, and therefore placed him with van goyen, nicholas moyaert, peter grebber, jan wils, and lastly with jan baptist weenix, all of whom had the honour of assisting to form so excellent a painter. indefatigable at his easel, berchem acquired a manner both easy and expeditious; to see him work, painting appeared a mere diversion to him. his wife was the daughter of his instructor, jan wils, and was so avaricious that she allowed him no rest. busy as he was by nature, she used to sit under his studio, and when she neither heard him sing nor stir, she struck upon the ceiling to rouse him. she got from him all the money he earned by his labour, so that he was obliged to borrow from his scholars when he wanted money to buy prints that were offered him, which was the only pleasure he had. _the musical shepherdess_ at hertford house is a good example of his style, and the description of it in smith's catalogue shows in what estimation the artist was held in early victorian days:--"this beautiful pastoral scene represents a bold rocky coast under the appearance of the close of day. the rustics have ended their labours and are recreating with music and dancing. a group composed of two peasants and a like number of women occupies the foreground; one of the latter, attired in a blue mantle, is gaily striking a tambourine, and dancing to the music; her companion in a yellow dress sits near her; the shepherds also are seated, and one of them appears to have just ceased playing a pipe which he holds. the goats are browsing near them. painted in the artist's most fascinating style." that berchem had been to italy is pretty certain, and though no authentic account of his visit is recorded, there is a story that when jacob ruisdael went to rome as a young man, nicholas berchem was the first acquaintance he met, and that their friendship was of long standing. their frequent walks round about rome gave them the opportunity of working together from nature, and one day a cardinal seeing them at work, inquired what they were doing. his eminence was agreeably impressed with their drawings, and invited them to visit him in rome. the painters returned to their work, where they met with a second _rencontre_ of a very different nature; a gang of thieves robbed and stripped them of their clothes. they returned in their shirts to the city, and called on the cardinal, who took pity upon them, ordered them clothes, and afterwards employed them in several considerable works in his palace. berchem at one time took up his abode in the castle of bentheim, and as both he and ruisdael have left several pictures of this castle it may be inferred that they worked there together, as at rome. apart from personal friendship there is nothing to connect berchem with ruisdael, the popularity of the former being derived from qualities of a totally different nature from those which raise ruisdael far above any of his contemporaries as a landscape painter. jan van huysum was born at amsterdam in . his father, justus van huysum, who dealt in pictures, was himself a middling painter in most kinds of painting. he taught his son to paint screens, figures and vases on wood, landscape, and sometimes flowers; but the son being arrived at a reasoning age perceived that to work in every branch of his art was the way to excel in none, therefore he confined himself to flowers, fruit, and landscape, and quitting his father's school set up for himself. no one before van huysum attained so perfect a manner of representing the beauty of flowers and the down and bloom of fruit; for he painted with greater freedom than velvet breughel and mignon, with more tenderness and nature than mario di fiori, andrea belvedere, michel de campidoglio or daniel seghers; with more mellowness than de heem, and with more vigour of colouring than baptist monoyer. his pictures of flowers and fruit pleasing an english gentleman, he introduced them into his own country, where they came into vogue and yielded a high price. to express the motions of the smallest insects with justice he used to contemplate them through the microscope with great attention. at the times of the year when the flowers were in bloom, and the fruit in perfection, he used to design them in his own garden, and the sieur gulet and voorhelm sent him the most beautiful productions in those kinds they could pick up. his reputation rose to such a height that all the curious in painting sought his works with great eagerness, which encouraged him to raise his prices so high that his pictures at last grew out of the reach of any but princes and men of the greatest fortune. he was the first flower painter that ever thought of laying them on light grounds, which requires much greater art than to paint them on dark ones. van huysum died at amsterdam in . he never had any pupil but a young woman named haverman, and his brother michael. two other brothers have distinguished themselves in painting, one named justus, who painted battles, and died at twenty-two years old, the other named james, who ended his days in england in . he copied the pictures of his brother john so well as to deceive the connoisseurs: he had usually £ for each copy. for the originals, it may be noted, from a thousand to fourteen hundred florins was paid. v painters of landscape coming now to the landscape painters we find that jan van goyen, born at leyden in , was destined to exert a really powerful influence, inasmuch as he was the founder, as is generally acknowledged, of the dutch school of homely native landscape. beginning with figure subjects, he discovered in their landscape backgrounds his real _métier_, and seems only to have realized his great gifts when he looked further into nature than was possible when painting a foreground picture. he appears to have been by nature or by inclination long-sighted, and he is never so happy as when painting distance, either along the banks of a river or looking out to sea. this extended gaze taught him something of atmosphere that few painters beside himself ever acquired, and helped him to the mastery of tone which appears to have influenced so many of his followers, as for example van de velde in the painting of sea-pieces. jan wynants, born at haarlem about , and still living in , was the first master who applied all the developed qualities of the dutch school to the treatment of landscape painting. in general his prevailing tone is clear and bright, more especially in the green of his trees and plants, which in many cases, merges into blue. one of his characteristics is a fallen tree trunk in the foreground, as may be seen in three out of the six examples in the national gallery. the carefulness of his execution explains how it was that in so long a life he only produced a moderate number of pictures. smith's catalogue contains about . these differ much according to their different periods. in his first manner peasants' cottages or ruins play an important part, and the view is more or less shut in by trees of a heavy dark green, the execution solid and careful. in his middle time he generally paints open views of a rather uneven country, diversified by wood and water. that wynants retained his full skill even in advanced life is proved by a picture dated , in the munich gallery, representing a road leading to a fenced wood and a sandhill, near which in the foreground are some cows (by lingelbach) being driven along. in his last manner a heavy uniformly brown tone is often observable. it is his genuine feeling for nature that makes wynant's pictures so popular in england, where we meet with a considerable number of his best works. jacob ruisdael (born at haarlem , died there ) is supposed to have developed under the influence of a school there that was opposing van goyen's tone treatment by local colour. though not always the most charming, ruisdael is certainly the greatest and the most profound of the dutch landscape painters. his wide expanses of sky, earth or sea, with their tender gradations of aërial perspective, diversified here and there by alternations of sunshine and shadow, attract us as much by the pathos as by the picturesqueness of their character. his scenes of mountainous districts with foaming waterfalls; or bare piles of rock and sombre lakes are imbued with a feeling of melancholy. ruisdael's work may be well studied in the six examples at hertford house, and the fourteen in the national gallery. among his finer works in continental collections the following are some of those selected by kugler for description. at the hague is one of his wide expanses--a view of the country around haarlem, the town itself looking small on the horizon, under a lofty expanse of cloudy sky in the foreground a bleaching-ground and some houses reminding us, by the manner in which they are introduced, of hobbema. the prevailing tone is cool, the sky singularly beautiful, and the execution wonderfully delicate. a flat country with a road leading to a village, and fields with wheatsheaves, is in the dresden gallery. this is temperate in colouring and beautifully lighted. equally fine is an extensive view over a hilly but bare country, through which a river runs; in the louvre. the horseman and beggar on a bridge are by wouvermans: here the grey-greenish harmony of the tone is in fine accordance with the poetic grandeur of the subject. a hill covered with oak woods, with a peasant hastening to a hut to escape the gathering shower, is in the munich gallery. the golden warmth of the trees and ground, and the contrast between the deep clear chiaroscuro and soft rain-clouds, and the bright gleam of sunshine, render this picture one of the finest by this master. the peculiar charm which is seen in holland by the combination of lofty trees and calm water is fully represented in the following works:--_the chase_; in the dresden gallery. here in the still water in the foreground--through which a stag-hunt (by adrian van de velde) is passing--clouds, warm with morning sunlight, appear reflected. in this picture, remarkable as it is for size, being ft. - / in. high, by ft. in. wide, the sense even of the fresh morning is not without a tinge of gentle melancholy. a noble wood of oaks, beeches and elms, about the size of the last-mentioned picture, is in the louvre. in the centre, through an opening in the woods, are seen distant hills. the cattle and figures upon a flooded road are by berchem. in power, warmth, and treatment, this is also nearly allied to the preceding work. of his waterfalls, the most remarkable are--a picture at the hague, which is particularly striking for its warm lighting, and careful execution. another with bentheim castle, so often repeated by ruisdael, is at amsterdam. in the same collection is a landscape, with rocks, woods, and a larger waterfall. this has a grandly poetic character which, with the broad and solid handling, plainly shows the influence of everdingen. the same remark may be applied to the waterfall, no. , in the munich gallery. here the dark, rainy sky, enhances the sublime impression made by the foaming torrent that rushes down the rocky masses. another work worthy to rank with the fore-going is _the jewish cemetry_, in the dresden gallery: a pallid sunbeam lights up some of the tombstones, between which a torrent impetuously flows. the _landscape with waterfall_ at hertford house is a good example; the _landscape with a farm_ in the same collection is another, though in this the figures and cattle are by adrian van der velde. ostade and wouverman are also said to have helped him with his figures, and it is possible that one or other of them ought to have some of the credit for the beautiful _view on the shore at scheveningen_ in the national gallery (no. ). the _landscape with ruins_ (no. ) is perhaps the finest of the others there. willem van de velde, the younger, born at amsterdam , died at greenwich . his first master was his father, willem van de velde the elder, but his principal instructor was simon de vlieger. the earlier part of his professional life was spent in holland, where, besides numerous pictures of the various aspects of marine scenery, he painted several well-known sea-fights in which the dutch had obtained the victory over the english. he afterwards followed his father to england, where he was greatly patronized by charles ii. and james ii. for whom, in turn, he painted the naval victories of the english over the dutch. he was also much employed by amateurs of art among the english nobility and gentry. there is no question that willem van de velde the younger is the greatest marine painter of the whole dutch school. his perfect knowledge of lineal and aërial perspective, and the incomparable technique which he inherited from his school, enabled him to represent the sea and the sky with the utmost truth of form, atmosphere and colour, and to enliven the scene with the purest feeling for the picturesque, with the most natural incidents of sea-faring life. two of his pictures at amsterdam are particularly remarkable; representing the english flagship _the prince royal_ striking her colours in the fight with the dutch fleet of ; and its companion, four english men-of-war brought in as prizes at the same fight. here the painter has represented himself in a small boat, from which he actually witnessed the battle. this accounts for the extraordinary truth with which every particular of the scene is rendered in such small pictures, which, combined with their delicate greyish tone, and the mastery of the execution, render them two of his finest works. a view of the city of amsterdam, dated , taken from the river, is an especially good specimen of his large pictures. it is about ft. high by ft. wide. the vessels in the river are arranged with great feeling for the picturesque, and the treatment of details is admirable. his greatest successes, however, are in the representation of calm seas, as may be seen in a small picture at munich. in the centre of the middle distance is a frigate, and in the foreground smaller vessels. the fine silvery tone in which the whole is kept finds a sufficient counter-balance of colour in the yellowish sun-lit clouds, and in the brownish vessels and their sails. nothing can be more exquisite than the tender reflections of these in the water. of almost similar beauty is a picture of about the same size, with four vessels, in the cassel gallery, which is signed and dated . as a contrast to this class of works, may be mentioned _the gathering tempest_, in the munich gallery. this is brilliantly lighted, and of great delicacy of tone in the distance, though the foreground has somewhat darkened. meindert hobbema ( - ) was a friend as well as a pupil of jacob ruisdael. the fact that such distinguished painters as adrian van de velde, wouvermans, berchem, and lingelbach, executed the figures and animals in his pictures proves the esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries; nevertheless it is evident that the public was slow in conceding to him the rank which he deserved, for his name is not found for more than a century after his death in any even of the most elaborate dictionaries of art, while the catalogues of the most important picture sales in holland make no mention of him at all up to the year ; when a picture by him, although much extolled, was sold for only florins, and even in one of his masterpieces only fetched florins. the english were the first to discover his merits. the peculiar characteristics of this master, who next to ruisdael, is confessedly at the head of landscape painters of the dutch school, will be best appreciated by comparing him with his rival. in two most important qualities--fertility of inventive genius, and poetry of feeling--he is decidedly inferior: the range of his subjects being far narrower. his most frequent scenes are villages surrounded by trees, such as are frequently met with in the districts of guelderland, with winding pathways leading from house to house. a water-mill occasionally forms a prominent feature. often, too, he represents a slightly uneven country, diversified by groups or rows of trees, wheat-fields, meadows, and small pools. occasionally he gives us a view of part of a town, with its gates, canals with sluices, and quays with houses; more rarely, the ruins of an old castle, with an extensive view of a flat country, or some stately residence. in the composition of all these pictures, however, we do not find that elevated and picturesque taste which characterises ruisdael; on the contrary they have a thoroughly portrait-like appearance, decidedly prosaic, but always surprizingly truthful. the greater number of hobbema's pictures are as much characterized by a warm and golden tone as those of ruisdael by the reverse; his greens being yellowish in the lights and brownish in the shadows--both of singular transparency. in pictures of this kind the influence of rembrandt is perhaps perceptible, and they are superior in brilliancy to any work by ruisdael. while these works chiefly present us with the season of harvest and sunset-light, there are others in a cool, silvery, morning lighting, and with the bright green of spring, that surpass ruisdael's in clearness. his woods also, owing to the various lights that fall on them, are of greater transparency. as almost all the galleries on the continent were formed at a period when the works of hobbema were little prized (ticcozzi's _dictionary_, in , does not include his name), they either possess no specimens, or some of an inferior class, so that no adequate idea can be formed of him. the most characteristic example to be met with on the continent is a landscape in the berlin museum, no. , an oak wood, with scattered lights, a calm piece of water in the foreground, and a sun-lit village in the distance. of the eight pictures in the national gallery from his hand, most are good, and one world-famous--_the avenue, middelharnis_, which may be called his masterpiece. this was painted in , when he had reached the age of fifty. his diploma picture, painted in , is at hertford house, together with four other interesting examples, all of which repay careful study. german schools the origins of the german schools of painting are obscure, but it is fairly certain that cologne was the first place in which the art was soonest established to any considerable extent. here, as in the netherlands, we cannot find any traces of immediate italian influences. the first painter who can be identified with any certainty is wilhelm von herle, called meister wilhelm, whose activity is not traceable earlier than about . most of the pictures formerly attributed to him have, however, been assigned to his pupil hermann wynrich von wesel, who on the death of his master in married his widow and continued his practice, until his death somewhere about . his most important works were six panels of the high altar of the cathedral, the so-called _madonna of the pea blossoms_ and two _crucifixions_ at cologne, and the _s. veronica_ at munich, dated . more important was stephen lochner, who died at cologne in . his influence was widespread and his school apparently numerous, until, in , roger van der weyden, returning from italy, stopped at cologne and painted his large triptych, which eclipsed lochner. from this time onwards the school of cologne is represented by painters whose names are not known, and who are accordingly distinguished by the subjects of their works; such as _the master of the glorification of the virgin_, _the master of s. bartholomew_, etc., until we come to bartel bruyn (_c._ - ), a portrait painter who is represented at berlin, and by a picture of dr fuchsius bequeathed to the national gallery by george salting. in other parts of germany, particularly in nuremberg, ulm, augsburg, and basle, various names of painters of the latter half of the fourteenth century have survived, but their works are of little interest except to the connoisseur as showing the influence under which the two great artists of the sixteenth century, albert dürer and hans holbein, and one or two lesser lights like lucas cranach, albert altdorfer, and adam elsheimer, were formed. in germany the taste for the fantastic in art peculiar to the middle ages, though it engendered clever and spirited works such as those of quentin massys and lucas van leyden, was still unfavourable to the cultivation of pure beauty, scenes from the apocalypse, dances of death, etc., being among the favourite subjects for art. on the other hand, the pictorial treatment of antique literature, a world so suggestive of beautiful forms, was so little comprehended by the german mind that they only sought to express it through the medium of those fantastic ideas with very childish and even tasteless results. we must also remember that that average education of the various classes of society which the fine arts require for their protection stood on a very low footing in germany. in italy the favour with which works of art was regarded was far more widely extended. this again gave rise to a more elevated personal position on the part of the artist, which in italy was not only one of more consideration, but of incomparably greater independence. in this latter respect germany was so [illustration: plate xxxii. "the master of st bartholomew" two saints _national gallery, london_] deficient that the genius of albert dürer and holbein was miserably cramped and hindered in development by the poverty and littleness of surrounding circumstances. it is known that of all the german princes no one but the elector frederick the wise ever gave albert dürer a commission for pictures, while a writing addressed by the great painter to the magistracy of nuremberg tells us that his native city never gave him employment even to the value of florins. at the same time his pictures were so meanly paid, that for the means of subsistence, as he says himself, he was compelled to devote himself to engraving. how far more such a man as dürer would have been appreciated in italy or in the netherlands is further evidenced in the above-mentioned writing, where he states that he was offered ducats a year in venice and philips-gulden in antwerp, if he would settle in either of those cities. and holbein fared still worse: there is no evidence whatever that any german prince ever troubled himself at all about the great painter while at basle, and his art was so little cared for that necessity compelled him to go to england, where a genius fitted for the highest undertakings of historical painting was limited to the sphere of portraiture. the crowning impediments finally, which hindered the progress of german art, and perverted it from its true aim, were the reformation, which narrowed the sphere of ecclesiastical works, and the pernicious imitation of the great italian masters which ensued. lucas cranach, born in , received his first instructions in art from his father, his later teaching probably from matthew grunewald. in some instances he attained to the expression of dignity, earnestness and feeling, but generally his characteristics are a naïve and childlike cheerfulness and a gentle and almost timid grace. the impression produced by his style of representation reminds one of the "volksbücher" and "volkslieder." many of his church pictures have a very peculiar significance: in these he stands forth properly speaking as the painter of the reformation. intimate both with luther and melanchthon, he seizes on the central aim of their doctrine, viz., the insufficiency of good works and the sole efficacy of faith. his mythological subjects appeal directly to the eye like real portraits; and sometimes also by means of a certain grace and naïveté of motive. we may cite as an instance the diana seated on a stag in a small picture at berlin, no. . _the fountain of youth_, also at berlin, no. , is a picture of peculiar character; a large basin surrounded by steps and with a richly adorned fountain forms the centre. on one side, where the country is stony and barren, a multitude of old women are dragged forward on horses, waggons or carriages, and with much trouble are got into the water. on the other side of the fountain they appear as young maidens splashing about and amusing themselves with all kinds of playful mischief; close by is a large pavilion into which a herald courteously invites them to enter and where they are arrayed in costly apparel. a feast is prepared in a smiling meadow, which seems to be followed by a dance; the gay crowd loses itself in a neighbouring grove. the men unfortunately have not become young, and retain their grey beards. the picture is of the year , the seventy-fourth of cranach's age. albert altdorfer was born at altdorf, near landshuth, in bavaria, and settled at ratisbon, where he died . he invested the fantastic tendency of the time with a poetic feeling--especially in landscape--and he developed it so as to attain a perfection in this sort of romantic painting that no other artist had reached. in his later period he was strongly influenced by italian art. altdorfer's principal work is in the munich gallery, and is thus described by schlegel:-- "it represents the victory of alexander the great over darius; the costume is that of the artist's own day, as it would be treated in the chivalrous poems of the middle ages--man and horse are sheathed in plate and mail, with surcoats of gold or embroidery; the chamfrons upon the heads of the horses, the glittering lances and stirrups, and the variety of the weapons, form altogether a scene of indescribable splendour and richness.... it is, in truth, a little world on a few square feet of canvas; the hosts of combatants who advance on all sides against each other are innumerable, and the view into the background appears interminable. in the distance is the ocean, with high rocks and a rugged island between them; ships of war appear in the offing and a whole fleet of vessels--on the left the moon is setting--on the right the sun rising--both shining through the opening clouds--a clear and striking image of the events represented. the armies are arranged in rank and column without the strange attitudes, contrasts, and distortions generally exhibited in so-called battle-pieces. how indeed would this have been possible with such a vast multitude of figures? the whole is in the plain and severe, or it may be the stiff manner of the old style. at the same time the character and execution of these little figures is most masterly and profound. and what variety, what expression there is, not merely in the character of the single warriors and knights, but in the hosts themselves! here crowds of black archers rush down troop after troop from the mountain with the rage of a foaming torrent; on the other side high upon the rocks in the far distance a scattered crowd of flying men are turning round in a defile. the point of the greatest interest stands out brilliantly from the centre of the whole--alexander and darius both in armour of burnished gold; alexander on bucephalus with his lance in rest advances before his men and presses on the flying darius, whose charioteer has already fallen on his white horses, and who looks back upon his conqueror with all the despair of a vanquished monarch." albert dÜrer ( - ), by his overpowering genius, may be called the sole representative of german art of his period. he was gifted with a power of conception which traced nature through all her finest shades, and with a lively sense, as well for the solemn and the sublime, as for simple grace and tenderness; above all, he had an earnest and truthful feeling in art united with a capacity for the most earnest study. these qualities were sufficient to place him by the side of the greatest artists whom the world has ever seen. one of the earliest portraits by albert dürer known to us is that of his father, albert dürer, the goldsmith, dated , in our national gallery. in the year , another version of this picture, which was engraved by hollar, was in the collection of the earl of arundel, and is now in that of the duke of northumberland, at syon house. of about the same time--that is to say, before --are the portraits of oswald krell, at munich, of frederick the wise, at berlin, and of himself, at the prado. several of albert dürer's pictures of the year are known to us. the first and most important is his own portrait in the munich gallery, which represents him full face with his hand laid on the fur trimming of his robe. his finest picture of the year is an _adoration of the kings_, originally painted for frederick the wise, elector of saxony, subsequently presented by the elector christian ii. to the emperor rudolph ii., and finally, on the occasion of an exchange of pictures, transferred from vienna to florence, where it now hangs in the tribune of the uffizi. the heads are of thoroughly realistic treatment; the virgin a portrait from some model of no attractive character; the second king a portrait of the painter himself. the landscape background exactly resembles that in the well-known engraving of s. eustace, the period of which is thus pretty nearly defined. it is carefully painted in a fine body of colour. in dürer made a second journey into upper italy, and remained a considerable time at venice. of his occupations in this city the letters written to his friend wilibald pirckheimer which have come down to us give many interesting particulars. he there executed for the german company a picture known as _the feast of rose garlands_, which brought him great fame, and by its brilliant colouring silenced the assertion of his envious adversaries "that he was a good engraver, but knew not how to deal with colours." in the centre of a landscape is the virgin seated with the child and crowned by two angels; on her right is a pope with priests kneeling; on her left the emperor maximilian i. with knights; various members of the german company are also kneeling; all are being crowned with garlands of roses by the virgin, the child, s. dominick--who stands behind the virgin--and by angels. the painter and his friend pirckheimer are seen standing in the background on the right; the painter holds a tablet with the inscription, "albertus dürer germanus, mdvi." this picture, which is one of his largest and finest, was purchased from the church at a high price by the emperor rudolph ii. for his gallery at prague, where it remained until sold in by the emperor joseph ii. it then became the property of the præmonstratensian monastery of stratow at prague, where it still exists, though in very injured condition and greatly over-painted. in the imperial gallery at vienna may be seen an old copy which conveys a better idea of the picture than the original. with these productions begins the zenith of this master's fame, in which a great number of works follow one another within a short period. of these we first notice a picture of , in the imperial gallery at vienna, painted for duke frederick of saxony, and which afterwards adorned the gallery of the emperor rudolph ii. it represents _the martyrdom of the ten thousand saints_. in the centre of the picture stand the master and his friend pirckheimer as spectators, both in black dresses. dürer has a mantle thrown over his shoulder in the italian fashion, and stands in a firm attitude. he folds his hands and holds a small flag, on which is inscribed, "iste faciebat anno domini albertus dürer alemanus." there are a multitude of single groups exhibiting every species of martyrdom, but there is a want of general connection of the whole. the scenes in the background, where the christians are led naked up the rocks, and are precipitated down from the top, are particularly excellent. the whole is very minute and miniature-like; the colouring is beautifully brilliant, and it is painted (the accessories particularly) with extraordinary care. to belongs also one of his most celebrated pictures, _the adoration of the trinity_, which is also at vienna, painted for the chapel of the landauer brüderhaus in nuremberg. above in the centre of the picture are seen the first person, who holds the saviour in his arms, while the holy spirit is seen above; some angels spread out the priestly mantle of the almighty, whilst others hover near with the instruments of christ's passion. on the left hand a little lower down is a choir of females with the virgin at their head; on the right are the male saints with st john the baptist. below all these kneel a host of the blessed of all ranks and nations extending over the whole of this part of the picture. underneath the whole is a beautiful landscape, and in a corner of the picture the artist himself richly clothed in a fur mantle, with a tablet next him with the words, "albertus dürer noricus faciebat anno a virginis partu, ." it may be assumed beyond doubt that he held in particular esteem those pictures into which he introduced his own portrait. in the vienna gallery is also a picture of the year , the virgin holding the naked child in her arms. she has a veil over her head and blue drapery. her face is of the form usual with albert dürer, but of a soft and maidenly character; the child is beautiful--the countenance particularly so. it is painted with exceeding delicacy of finish. two altar-pieces of his earliest period must be mentioned. one is in the dresden gallery, consisting of three pictures painted in tempera on canvas, representing the virgin, s. anthony, and s. sebastian respectively. although this is probably one of his very earliest works, it is remarkable for the novelty of its treatment and its independence of tradition. the other, a little later, is in the munich gallery (nos. - ), painted at the request of the paumgartner family, for s. catherine's church at nuremberg, was brought to munich in by maximilian i. the subject of the middle picture is the nativity; the child is in the centre, surrounded by little angels, whilst the virgin and joseph kneel at the side. the wings contain portraits of the two donors under the form of s. george and s. eustace represented as knights in steel armour, each with his standard, and the former holding the slain dragon. the year was distinguished by the two pictures of the four apostles: john and peter, mark and paul; the figures are the size of life. these, which are the master's grandest work, and the last of importance executed by him, are now in the munich gallery. we know with certainty that they were presented by albert dürer himself to the council of his native city in remembrance of his career as an artist, and at the same time as conveying to his fellow-citizens an earnest and lasting exhortation suited to that stormy period. in the year , however, the pictures were allowed to pass into the hands of the elector maximilian i. of bavaria. the inscriptions selected by the painter himself might have given offence to a catholic prince, and were therefore cut off and joined to the copies by john fischer, which were intended to indemnify the city of nuremberg for the loss of the originals. these copies are still in the collection of the landauer brüderhaus at nuremberg. these pictures are the fruit of the deepest thought which then stirred the mind of albert dürer, and are executed with overpowering force. finished as they are, they form the first complete work of art produced by protestantism. as the inscription taken from the gospels and epistles of the apostles contains pressing warnings not to swerve from the word of god, nor to believe in the doctrines of false prophets, so the figures themselves represent the steadfast and faithful guardians of that holy scripture which they bear in their hands. there is also an old tradition, handed down from the master's own times, that these figures represent the four temperaments. this is confirmed by the pictures themselves; and though at first sight it may appear to rest on a mere accidental combination, it serves to carry out more completely the artist's thought, and gives to the figures greater individuality. it shows how every quality of the human mind may be called into the service of the divine word. thus in the first picture, we see the whole force of the mind absorbed in contemplation, and we are taught that true watchfulness in behalf of the scripture must begin by devotion to its study. s. john stands in front, the open book in his hand; his high forehead and his whole countenance bear the impress of earnest and deep thought. this is the melancholic temperament, which does not shrink from the most profound inquiry. behind him s. peter bends over the book, and gazes earnestly at its contents--a hoary head, full of meditative repose. this figure represents the phlegmatic temperament, which reviews its own thoughts in tranquil reflection. the second picture shows the outward operation of the conviction thus attained and its relation to daily life. s. mark in the background is the man of sanguine temperament; he looks boldly round, and appears to speak to his hearers with animation, earnestly urging them to share those advantages which he has himself derived from the holy scriptures. s. paul, on the contrary, in the foreground, holds the book and sword in his hands; he looks angrily and severely over his shoulder, ready to defend the word, and to annihilate the blasphemer with the sword of god's power. he is the representative of the choleric temperament. we know of no important work of a later date than that just described. his portrait in a woodcut of the year represents him earnest and serious in demeanour, as would naturally follow from his advancing age and the pressure of eventful times. his head is no longer adorned with those richly flowing locks, on which in his earlier days he had set so high a value, as we learn from his pictures and from jests still recorded of him. with the departure of hans holbein to england in and the death of albert dürer in the same year, that excellence to which they had raised german art passed away, and centuries saw no sign of its revival. of hans holbein, born at augsburg in , we shall have more to say in a later chapter, when considering the origins of english portraiture. but as in the case of van dyck, and in fact of every great portrait painter, his excellence in this particular branch of his art was but one result of his being a born artist and first exercising his talents in a much wider field. in holbein the realistic tendency of the german school attained its highest development, and he may, next to dürer, be pronounced the greatest master in it. while dürer's art exhibits a close affinity with the religious ideas of the middle ages, holbein appears to have been imbued with more modern and more material sentiments, and accordingly we find him excelling dürer in closeness and delicacy of observation in the delineation of nature. a proof of this is afforded by the evidence of erasmus, who said that as regards the portraits painted of him by both these artists, that by holbein was the most like. in feeling for beauty of form, also in grace of movement, in colouring, and in the actual art of painting--in which his father had thoroughly instructed him--holbein is to be placed above dürer. that he did not rival the great italians of his time in "historical" painting can only be ascribed to the circumstances of his life in germany, where such subjects were not in fashion. of his pictures executed before he left his native country the greater number are at basle and augsburg, and are therefore less familiar to the general public than his later works. a notable exception is the famous _meyer madonna_, the original of which is at darmstadt, but a version now relegated, somewhat harshly, to the "copyist" is in the dresden gallery, and certainly exhibits as much of the spirit of the master as will serve for an example of his powers. it represents the virgin as queen of heaven, standing in a niche, with the child in her arms, and with the family of the burgomaster jacob meyer of basle kneeling on either side of her. with the utmost life and truth to nature, which brings these kneeling figures actually into our presence, says kugler, there is combined in a most exquisite degree an expression of great earnestness, as if the mind were fixed on some lofty object. this is shown not merely by the introduction of divine beings into the circle of human sympathies, but particularly in the relation so skilfully indicated between the holy virgin and her worshippers, and in her manifest desire to communicate to those who are around her the sacred peace and tranquillity expressed in her own countenance and attitude, and implied in the infantine grace of the saviour. in the direct union of the divine with the human, and in their reciprocal harmony, there is involved a devout and earnest purity of feeling such as only the older masters were capable of representing. another of his most beautiful pictures painted in germany is the portrait of erasmus, dated . this was sent by erasmus to sir thomas more, at chelsea, with a letter recommending holbein to his care, and as it is still in this country--in the collection of the earl of radnor at longford castle--it is not perhaps too much to hope that it may one of these days find its way into the national gallery--perhaps when the alterations to the front entrance are completed. this picture has for a very long time been regarded as one of holbein's very finest portraits. mr w. barclay squire, in the sumptuous catalogue of the radnor collection compiled by him, quotes the opinion of sir william musgrave, written in , "i am not sure whether it is not the finest i have seen"; and that of dr waagen, "alone worth a pilgrimage to longford. seldom has a painter so fully succeeded in bringing to view the whole character of so original a mind as in this instance. in the mouth and small eyes may be seen the unspeakable studies of a long life ... the face also expresses the sagacity and knowledge of a life gained by long experience ... the masterly and careful execution extends to every portion ... yet the face surpasses everything else in delicacy of modelling." cruel, indeed, was england to have transplanted the one artist who might have saved germany from the artistic destitution from which she has suffered ever since! [illustration: plate xxxiii.--hans holbein portrait of christina, duchess of milan _national gallery, london_] _french school_ i the seventeenth century when we consider the peculiar beauty of the architecture and ecclesiastical sculpture in france during the middle ages and the period of the renaissance, and of the enamels, ivories, and other small works of art, it is wrong to regret that painting was not also practised by the french as assiduously as it was in italy. for there can be no doubt that in being confined to one channel the artistic impulses of a people cut deeper than if dissipated in various directions. we may suppose, indeed, that if those of the french had found their outlet in painting alone, we should have pictures of wonderful beauty, of a beauty moreover of a markedly different kind from that of the italian or spanish or netherlandish pictures. but on the other hand we should have perhaps lost the amazing fascination of chartres, and the delights of limoges enamel and ivories. as it happens, the earliest mention to be made of painting in france is the arrival of leonardo da vinci at amboise in , whither he had come from milan in the train of the young king françois i. unfortunately he was by this time sixty-four years old, and in less than three years he died. at about the same time there was a court painter in the employment of françois--under the official designation of _varlet de chambre_--named jehan clouet, who is supposed to have been of flemish extraction. nothing very definite is known about him or his work, but he had a son franÇois clouet, who seems to have been born at about the time of leonardo's arrival, and who succeeded to his father's office. at the funeral of françois i. in he was ordered to make an _effige du dict feu roy_, and he continued to be the official court painter to henri ii. (whose posthumous portrait he was also ordered to paint), françois ii., and charles ix. he died in . every portrait of this period is attributed to him, just as was the case with holbein in england. neither of the two examples at the national gallery can be safely ascribed to him. the little head of the emperor charles v., king of spain, at hereford house, is identical in style and in dimensions with that of francis i., king of france, in the museum at lyons, which is attributed to jean clouet. both may have been painted when charles v. passed through paris in , but whether by jean or one of his disciples cannot be said with certainty. not until the very end of the sixteenth century were born claude gellée and nicholas poussin, the only two frenchmen who were painters of considerable importance before the close of the seventeenth. nor did either of these two contribute anything to the glory of their country by practice or by precept within its confines, both of them passing most of their lives and painting their best works in italy and under italian influence. nicholas poussin was born at villiers near les andelys on the banks of the seine, in , where he studied for some time under quentin varin till he was eighteen. after this he was in paris, but in he went to rome where he lived with du quesnoy. his first success was obtained by the execution of two historical pieces which were commissioned by cardinal barberini on his return from an embassy to france. these were _the death of germanicus_ and _the capture of jerusalem_. his next works were _the martyrdom of s. erasmus_, _the plague at ashdod_, of which a replica is in the national gallery, and _the seven sacraments_ now at belvoir castle. by these he acquired such fame that on his return to paris in , louis xiii. appointed him royal painter, and in order to keep him at home provided him with apartments in the tuileries and a salary of £ a year. within two years, however, poussin was back in rome, and after twenty-three years' unbroken success died there in in his seventy-second year. poussin was a most conscientious painter, devoting himself seriously in his earlier years to the study both of the antique and of practical anatomy. besides being the intimate friend of du quesnoy, he was a devout pupil of domenichino, for whom he had the greatest reverence. it is not surprising therefore to find in his earlier works, such as the _plague at ashdod_, a certain academic dulness and lack of spontaneity. he was not the forerunner of a new epoch, but one of the last upholders of the old. he was trying to arrest decay, to infuse a healthier spirit into a declining art, so that he errs on the side of correctness. the influence of titian, however, was too strong for him to remain long within the narrowest limits, as may be seen in the _bacchanalian dance_, no. in the national gallery, which was probably one of a series painted for cardinal richelieu during the short time that poussin was in paris in . in this and in no. , the _bacchanalian festival_ as well as in _the shepherds in arcadia_, in the louvre, we get a surprisingly strong reminiscence of titian, more especially in the brown tones of the flesh and the deep blue of the sky. as the result of conscientious study of the human body the figures in these pictures are full of life--for correctness of drawing is the first requisite of lively painting without which all the others are useless. the fact that over two hundred prints have been engraved after his pictures is a proof of his popularity at one time or another, and though at the present time his reputation is not as widely recognised as in former years, it is certainly as high among those whose judgment is independent of passing fashions. as evidence of the soundness of his principles, the following is perhaps worth quoting:-- "there are nine things in painting," poussin wrote in a letter to m. de chambrai, the author of a treatise on painting, "which can never be taught and which are essential to that art. to begin with, the subject of it should be noble, and receive no quality from the person who treats it; and to give opportunity to the painter to show his talents and his industry it must be chosen as capable of receiving the most excellent form. a painter should begin with disposition (or as we should say, composition), the ornament should follow, their agreement of the parts, beauty, grace, spirit, costume, regard to nature and probability; and above all, judgment. this last must be in the painter himself and cannot be taught. it is the golden bough of virgil that no one can either find or pluck unless his lucky star conducts him to it." gaspar poussin, whose name was really gaspard dughet, was brother-in-law of nicholas, and acquired his name from being his pupil. he was nineteen years his junior, and survived him by ten years. he was born in rome of french parents, and died there in , and though he travelled a good deal in italy he never appears to have visited france. his italian landscapes are very beautiful, and we are fortunate in the possession of one which is considered his best, no. in the national gallery, _landscape with figures_, _abraham and isaac_. scarcely less fine is the _calling of abraham_, no. , especially in the middle and far distance. the sacred figures, it may as well be said, are of little concern in the compositions, though useful for purposes of identifying the pictures. claude gellÉe, nowadays usually spoken of as claude, was born at chamagne in lorraine in . accordingly he has been styled claude lorraine, le lorraine, de lorrain, lorrain, or claudio lorrenese with wonderful persistency through the ages, though there was no mystery about his surname and it would have served just as well. he was brought up in his father's profession of pastrycook, and in that capacity he went to rome seeking for employment. as it happened he found it in the house of a landscape painter, agostino tassi, who had been a pupil of paul bril, and he not only cooked for him but mixed his colours as well, and soon became his pupil. later he was studying under a german painter, gottfried wals, at naples. a more important influence on him, however, was that of joachim sandrart, one of the best of the later german painters, whom he met in rome. claude's earliest pictures of any importance were two which were painted for pope urban vii. in , when he was just upon forty years old. these are the _village dance_ and the _seaport_, now in the louvre. the _seaport at sunset_ and _narcissus and echo_ in the national gallery (nos. and ) are dated --the former on the canvas and the latter on the sketch for it in the _liber veritatis_, where it is stated that it was painted for an english patron. the _liber veritatis_, it should be observed, is the title given to a portfolio of over two hundred drawings in pen and bistre, or indian ink, which is now in the possession of the duke of devonshire. most of these were made from pictures which had been painted, not as sketches or designs preparatory to painting them, and in some instances there are notes on the back of them giving the date, purchaser, and other particulars relating to them. so great was the vogue for claude's landscapes in england during the eighteenth century that as early as or a good many of his drawings, which had been collected by jonathan richardson, dr. mead and others, were engraved by arthur pond and john knapton; and in a series of about two hundred of the duke of devonshire's drawings was published by alderman boydell, which had been etched and mezzotinted by richard earlom, under the title of _liber veritatis_. this was the model on which turner founded the publication of his own sketches under the title of _liber studiorum_. thus, if claude exerted little influence on the art of his own country, it can hardly be said that he exerted none elsewhere, for turner was by no means the first englishman to fall under his spell. richard wilson, the first english landscape painter, was undoubtedly influenced by him, both from an acquaintance with his drawings in english collections and from the study of his works when in rome. in this connection we may consider the two landscapes, numbered and in the national gallery catalogue, as our most important examples by this master, for turner bequeathed to the nation his two most important pictures _the sun rising through a vapour_ and _dido building carthage_, on condition that they should be hung between these two by claude. the court of chancery could annul the condition, but they could not nullify the effect of claude's influence on turner or alter the judgment of posterity with regard to the relations of the two painters to each other and to art in general, and the director has wisely observed the wishes of turner in still hanging the four pictures together, the court of chancery notwithstanding. both of claude's are inscribed, besides being signed and dated, as follows: no. . mariage d'isaac avec rebeca, claudio gil. inv. romae . no. . la reine de saba va trover salomon. clavde gil. inv. faict pour son altesse le duc de buillon à roma . both pictures are familiar in various engravings of them, and though the present fashion leads many people in other directions, there can be no doubt that the appreciation of claude in this country is never likely to die out, and is only waiting for a turn of the wheel to revive with increased vigour. meantime, however, france was not entirely destitute of painters, and though without claude, poussin or dughet, who preferred to exercise their art in rome, she anticipated england by over a century in that most important step, the foundation of an academy of painting. not many of the names of its original members ever became famous--as may be said in our own country--but among them was sebastien bourdon ( - ), whose work was so much admired by sir joshua reynolds. bourdon, also, wandered away from france; within four years after the foundation of the academy, namely, in , he went to stockholm, and was appointed principal painter to queen christina. on her abdication, however, in , he returned to paris, and enjoyed a great success in painting landscapes, and historical subjects. _the return of the ark from captivity_, no. in the national gallery catalogue, was presented by that distinguished patron of the arts, sir george beaumont, to whom it was bequeathed by sir joshua reynolds, as being one of his most treasured possessions. "i cannot quit this subject," he writes in the fourteenth discourse, alluding to poetry in landscape, "without mentioning two examples, which occur to me at present, in which the poetical style of landscape may be seen happily executed; the one is _jacob's dream_, by salvator rosa, and the other, _the return of the ark from captivity_, by sebastian bourdon. with whatever dignity those histories are presented to us in the language of scripture, this style of painting possesses the same power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur and sublimity, and is able to communicate them to subjects which appear by no means adapted to receive them. a ladder against the sky has no very promising appearance of possessing a capacity to excite any heroic ideas, and the ark in the hands of a second-rate master would have little more effect than a common waggon on the highway; yet those subjects are so poetically treated throughout, the parts have such a correspondence with each other, and the whole and every part of the scene is so visionary, that it is impossible to look at them without feeling in some measure the enthusiasm which seems to have inspired the painters." eustache le sueur, born in the same year as sebastien bourdon ( ), was another of the original members of the academy, and was employed by the king at the louvre. his most famous work was the decorations of the cloister at the monastery of la chartreuse (now in the louvre) of which horace walpole speaks so ecstatically in the preface to the last volume of the _anecdotes of painting_. "the last scene of s. bruno expiring" (he writes) "in which are expressed all the stages of devotion from the youngest mind impressed with fear to the composed resignation of the prior, is perhaps inferior to no single picture of the greatest master. if raphael died young, so did le sueur; the former had seen the antique, the latter only prints from raphael; yet in the chartreuse, what airs of heads! what harmony of colouring! what aërial perspective! how grecian the simplicity of architecture and drapery! how diversified a single quadrangle though the life of a hermit be the only subject, and devotion the only pathetic!" philippe de champaigne was another of the original members. he was born at brussels in , and did not come to paris till , where he was soon afterwards employed in the decoration of the luxembourg palace. but he was chiefly a portrait painter, his principal works being the fine full-length of cardinal richelieu, and another of his daughter as a nun of port royal, both of which are in the louvre. there are four in the wallace collection, but perhaps the most familiar to the english public is the canvas at the national gallery (no. ), painted for the roman sculptor mocchi, to make a bust from, with a full face and two profiles of richelieu. as a portrait this is exceedingly interesting, the more so from having an inscription over one of the heads, "de ces deux profiles cecy est le meilleur." the full length of the cardinal presented by mr. charles butler in (no. ), is a good example, which cannot however but suffer by juxtaposition with more accomplished works. but it was not until the close of the seventeenth century that portrait painting in france became anything like a fine art, and even then it did not get beyond being formal and magnificent. the two principal exponents were hyacinthe rigaud and nicolas largilliÈre, both of whose works have a sort of grandeur but little subtlety or charm. rigaud was born in , at perpignan in the extreme south of france, and studied at montpelier in his youth, then at lyons on his way to paris--much as a scottish artist might have studied first at glasgow, then at birmingham on his way to london. on the advice of lebrun he devoted himself specially to portrait painting, which he did with such success that in he was elected a member of the academy. he painted louis xiv. more often than largillière or any other painter, and in his later years (he lived till ) louis xv. his great-grandson. he is said to have shared with kneller the distinction, such as it may be, of having painted at least five monarchs. rigaud is best known in these days by the fine prints after his portraits by the french engravers. of his brushwork we are only able to judge by the two doubtful versions at the national gallery and the wallace collection respectively, of the fine portrait at versailles of _cardinal fleury_. the group of _lulli and the musicians of the french court_, which was purchased for the national gallery in is not by him, and it is difficult to understand why the public money should have been wasted on it, or at least on the inscription attributing it to him. nicolas de largillière was three years older than rigaud and survived him by another three. he was born in paris in and died six months before completing his ninetieth year. early in life he went as a pupil to antwerp, under antoine goubeau, and he is said to have worked in england as an assistant to sir peter lely during the later years of that master. on his return to france he was received into the royal academy--in . in the wallace collection is an interesting example of his work, the large group of the french royal family, in which four living generations are portrayed and the bronze effigies of two more. henri iv. and louis xiii., the grandfather and father of the reigning monarch, louis xiv., the dauphin his son, the duc de bourgogne his grandson, and the duc d'anjou, his great-grandson--afterwards louis xv., are all included in this formal group, which is a useful lesson in history as well as in painting. ii the eighteenth century antoine watteau was born at valenciennes in , and died near there about thirty-seven years later of consumption. valenciennes really belonged to flanders, and had only lately been annexed to france, so that watteau owed something of his art to flemish rather than to french sources. at the same time it cannot be said that his development would have been the same if he had gone to brussels or antwerp instead of to paris to study, for though the works of rubens and van dyck were from his earliest years his chief attraction, the influence of the french artist claude gillot, as well as that of audran, the keeper of the luxembourg palace, without doubt exerted a very decided help in determining the future course of his work. when living with audran, watteau had every opportunity for studying the works of the older masters, especially those of rubens, whose decorations, executed for marie de medici, had not at that time been removed to the louvre. besides copying from these older pictures, watteau was employed by audran in the execution of designs for wall decorations, etc. watteau's two earliest pictures still in existence are supposed to be the _départ de troupe_ and the _halte d'armée_, which were the first of a series of military pictures on a small scale. to an early period also belong the _accordée de village_, at the soane museum in lincoln's inn fields, the _mariée de village_ at potsdam, and the _wedding festivities_ in the dublin national gallery. in other influences began to work upon him. in this year he came into contact with crozat, the famous collector, in whose house he became familiar with a fresh batch of the flemish and italian masterpieces. it was at this time that he was approved by the royal academy, though he took five years over his diploma picture, "_embarquement pour l'Île de cythère_," which is now in the louvre. meantime the influence of rubens and the italian masters--especially the venetians, had greatly widened and deepened his art, and these influences, acting on his peculiarly sensitive temperament and poetical spirit, had a magical effect, transforming the actual scenes of paris and versailles, which he painted into enchanted places in [illustration: plate xxxiv.--antoine watteau l'indiffÉrent _louvre, paris_] fairyland, as he transformed the formal actual painting of the period of louis xiv. into the romantic school of the eighteenth century in france. the setting of the famous pictures in the wallace collection, catalogued as _the music-party_ or _les charnes de la vie_ (no. ), is a view of the champs elysées taken from the gallery of the tuileries. who would have thought it? and what does it matter, except to show how entirely watteau revolutionized the pompous and prosaic methods of his time by investing the actual with poetry and romance. two other pictures at hertford house, nos. and , were painted in the champs elysées, and the figures are, for the most part, the same in both, all three of these pictures are fine examples of the artist's power of broad and spirited treatment, combined with extreme delicacy and refinement of conception. three other pictures at hertford house are equally delightful examples of another class of subject, namely groups of figures dressed in the parts of actors in italian comedy. from a note in the catalogue we learn that a company of italian comedians were in paris in the sixteenth century, but were banished by louis quatorze in for a supposed affront to madame de maintenon. in , however, they were recalled by the regent, the duc d'orléans, and became once more the delight of paris. several of the figures in the italian comedy had already passed into french popular drama, and in watteau's time there seems to have been a fluctuating company, according as one actor or actress or another developed a part, and to pantalone, arlecchino, dottore and columbina were now added pierrot--or gilles--mezetin, a sort of double of pierrot, scaramouche and scapin. the vague web of courtship, dalliance, intrigue and jealousy called up by these characters attracted watteau to employ them in his compositions, and to make them also the medium of the more sincere sentiments of conjugal love and friendship,--as in _the music lesson_, _gilles and his family_ and _harlequin and columbine_, at hertford house. all of these three were engraved in watteau's life-time or shortly after his death, and the verses sub-joined to the engravings are a charming rendering of the sentiment underlying the pictures. in _the music lesson_ we see the half length figures of a lady, seated, reading a music book, and of a man playing a lute opposite to her. another man looks at the book over the lady's shoulder, and two little children's faces appear at her knee. the verses are as follows:-- pour nous prouver que cette belle trouve l'hymen un noeud fort doux le peintre nous la peint fidelle À suivre le ton d'un Époux. les enfants qui sont autour d'elle sont les fruits de son tendre amour dont ce beau joueur de prunelle pouvait bien goûter quelque jour. in _gilles and his family_ we have a three-quarter length full-face portrait of le sieur de sirois, a friend of watteau, with these verses under the engraving:-- sous un habit de mezzetin ce gros brun au riant visage sur la guitarre avec sa main fait un aimable badinage. par les doux accords de sa voix enfants d'une bouche vermeille du beau sexe tant à la fois il charme les yeux et l'oreille. in the little _lady at her toilet_ (no. ) we see the influence of paul veronese, though it is probable that this was not painted until he visited london in the later part of his short life. for there is a similar piece called _la toilette du matin_ which was engraved by a french artist who had settled in england, philip mercier, and on whose work the influence of watteau is very noticeable. _le rendez-vous de chasse_ (no. ), which is of the same size, and in character similar to _les amusements champêtres_ (no. ), is the last by watteau of which we have any certain knowledge. it was painted in , the year before his death, when his health prevented him from making any sustained effort. it is said to have been a commission from his friends m. and mme. de julienne, in whose shooting-box at saint maur, between the woods of vincennes and the river, he went to repose from time to time. nicholas lancret was only by six years watteau's junior, so that he can hardly be considered as a pupil or even a disciple, but only as an imitator of watteau. he was the pupil of claude gillot, and afterwards his assistant, and it was not unnatural that a close friendship should have been formed between lancret and watteau, or that it should have been dissolved by the deliberate imitation by the former of the latter's style--seeing how successful the imitation was. two of the pictures by lancret at hertford house, nos. , _conversation galante_ and , _fête in a wood_, are fair examples of how close, at one period of his career, the imitation became. the latter is the _bal dans un bois_ which was exhibited at the place dauphiné, and was complained of by watteau on account of its close resemblance to his own work. another in the wallace collection belongs to the same early period of watteau's influence. the _italian comedians by a fountain_ (no. ), being attributed to watteau in the sale, in , at which it was bought for lord hertford. his lordship was particularly anxious to secure this picture, "between _you_ and _i_," he writes, with the quaint regardlessness of grammar peculiar to the victorian nobility, "(and to no other person but you should i make this _confidence_), i must have the lancret called watteau in the standish collection. so i depend upon you for _getting it for me_. i need not beg you not to mention a word about this to _anybody_, either _before_ or _after_ the sale." and again, "i _depend_ upon your getting the lancret (watteau in the catalogue) for me. i have no doubt it will sell for a good sum, most likely more than it is worth, but we _must_ have it ... i leave it to you, but i must have it, unless by some unheard of chance it was to go beyond guineas." he was fortunate indeed in getting it for £ . _mademoiselle camargo dancing_ (no. ), and _la belle grecque_ (no. ), in the wallace collection, are good examples of the comedian motive treated with more actuality, yet with no less grace. the four little allegorical pieces in the national gallery, _the four ages of man_, are more lively if less romantic, being composed more for the characters illustrating the subject than for poetical setting. jean baptise joseph pater was actually a pupil of watteau. he was ten years his junior, but was equally unhappy on account of his health, and died at forty. like lancret, he incurred watteau's displeasure for a similar reason, though in his case it was rather the fear of what he would do than what he did that was the cause of watteau's displeasure. at the same time, the names of both lancret and pater are inseparable from that of watteau in the history of painting, and, both in their choice of subject and their treatment of it, they are hardly distinguishable to the casual observer. watteau, it need hardly be said, was far above the other two, but it was fortunate indeed that his romantic genius had two such gifted imitators as lancret and pater--or to put it the other way, that they had such a master to imitate, without whom neither their work nor their influence would have been nearly as great as it was. franÇois boucher, though doubtless influenced by watteau, more especially at the outset of his brilliant career, was nevertheless independent of him in carrying forward the art painting in his country, choosing rather to revert to the patronage of the court like his predecessors le brun, rigaud, and largillière than to devote himself to the expression of his own ideas and feelings. being a pupil of françois le moine, whose principal work was the decoration of versailles, it is not unnatural that boucher should have succumbed to the influence of royalty, especially when exerted in his favour by as charming and as powerful an agent as madame de pompadour. another early influence which shaped his artistic tendencies as well as his fortunes was that of carle van loo, in whose honour his countrymen coined the verb _vanlotiser_--to frivol agreeably--- on account of the popularity which he achieved as a painter of elegant trifles. there is a picture by carle van loo in the wallace collection entitled _the grand turk giving a concert to his mistress_ (no. ), painted in , which is a fair example of his proficiency in this direction, and there are one or two portraits scattered about the country which he painted when over here for a few months towards the end of his life. he died in paris on the th july , and boucher was immediately appointed his successor as principal painter to louis xv. madame de pompadour was more than a patron to him, she was a matron! she made an intimate friend and adviser of him, and it is to her that he owed most of his advancement at court, which continued after her death. the full-length portrait of her at hertford house (no. ) was commissioned by her in , and remained in her possession till her death in . it was purchased by lord hertford in for , francs. in the jones collection at the south kensington museum is another portrait of her, and a third in the national gallery at edinburgh, not to mention those in private collections. the two magnificent cartoons on the staircase at hertford house, called the _rising and setting of the sun_, she begged from the king. these were ordered in as designs to be executed in tapestry at the manufacture royale des gobelins, by cozette and audran, according to the catalogue of the salon in when they were exhibited. they are characterised by the brothers de goncourt as _le plus grand effort du peintre, les deux grandes machines de son oeuvre_; and the writer of the catalogue of madame de pompadour's pictures when they were sold in testifies thus to the artist's own opinion of them: "j'ai entendu plusieurs fois dire par l'auteur qu'ils étaient du nombre de ceux dont il était le plus satisfait." they were then sold for livres, and lord hertford paid , francs for them in . even without these _chefs d'oeuvre_ the wallace collection is richer than any other gallery in the works of boucher, with twenty-four examples (in all), of which few if any are of inferior quality. but it must be confessed that the abundance of boucher's work does not enhance its artistic value, and we have to think of him, in comparison with watteau and his school, rather as a great decorator than a great painter. with all his skill and charm, that is to say, there is not one of his canvases that we could place beside a picture by watteau on anything like equal terms. superficially it may be equally or possibly more attractive, but inwardly there is no comparison. let us hear what sir joshua reynolds has to say of him:-- "our neighbours, the french, are much in this practice of extempore invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished pictures! the late director of their academy, boucher, was eminent in this way. when i visited him some years since in france, i found him at work on a very large picture without drawings or models of any kind. on my remarking this particular circumstance, he said, when he was young, studying his art, he found it necessary to use models, but he had left them off for many years.... however, in justice, i cannot quit this painter without adding that in the former part of his life, when he was in the habit of having recourse to nature, he was not without a considerable degree of merit--enough to make half the painters of his country his imitators: he had often grace and beauty, and good skill in composition, but i think all under the influence of a bad taste; his imitators are, indeed, abominable." twenty-one years elapsed between the birth of boucher and the next painter of anything like his ability, namely, jean baptiste greuze. he was a native of tournous, near macon, and lived to see the century out, dying in , at the age of seventy-eight. his popularity is nowadays due chiefly to his heads of young girls, which he painted in his later life with admirable skill, but with a sentimentality that almost repels. the famous example in the national gallery is more free from the sickly sweetness that spoils most of them, and reminds us that he could paint more serious works, and paint them exceedingly well. he first came into notice by pictures like _la lecture du bible_, _la malédiction paternelle_, or _le fils puni_, which are now to be seen--though generally passed by--at the louvre, and his style was imitated in later years in england by wheatley and others of that school with more or less success. it was a great blow to him, and one which seriously affected his career when the academy censured his diploma picture, _the emperor severus reproaching caracalla_. but for this we might have had more than these sentimental young ladies from a hand that was undoubtedly worthy of better things. however, as lord hertford admired them sufficiently to include no less than twenty-one of them in his collection, we ought not to be severe in criticising them, and we may quote the description of _the souvenir_ (no. ) given by john smith, in his catalogue raisonné in , as showing the esteem in which it was held. "_the souvenir._ an interesting female, about fifteen years of age, pressing fondly to her bosom a little red and white spaniel dog; the pet animal appears to remind her of some favourite object, for whose safety and return she is breathing an earnest wish; her fair oval countenance and melting eyes are directed upwards, and her ruby lips are slightly open; her light hair falls negligently on her shoulder, and is tastefully braided [illustration: plate xxxv.--jean-baptiste greuze the broken pitcher _louvre, paris_] with a crimson riband and pearls. she is attired in a morning dress, consisting of a loose gown and a brownish scarf, the latter of which hangs across her arm. upon a tree behind her is inscribed the name of the painter. this beautiful production of art abounds in every attractive charm which gives interest to the master's works." very different, and far superior to greuze, was jean honorÉ fragonard, born at grasse, in the alpes maritimes, in . in england his name was almost unknown until within quite recent years, and the national gallery has only one picture by him, which was bequeathed by george salting in . fortunately he is well represented in the wallace collection, three at least of the nine examples being in his most brilliant manner. fragonard's father was a glover. in the family moved to paris, and the boy was put into a notary's office. the usual signs of disinclination for office work and a passion for art having duly appeared, he was sent to boucher, who advised him to go and study under chardin. this he did for a short time, but finding it dull--for chardin was not as great a teacher as he was a painter--he went back to boucher as an assistant. in he won the prix de rome, although he had never attended the academy schools, and in started for italy. reynolds had just returned from rome at the date of fragonard's capture of the opportunity of going there, and we know from the _discourses_ how he spent his time there and what direction his studies took. fragonard pursued an exactly opposite course, being advised thereto by boucher, who said to him, "if you take michelangelo and raphael seriously, you are lost." feeling that the advice was suitable to himself, if not sound on general principles, fragonard devoted himself to the lighter and more sparkling works of tiepolo and others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. he also made a tour in south italy and sicily with hubert robert, the landscape painter, and the abbé saint non, the latter of whom published a number of etchings he made after fragonard's drawings, under the title of _voyages de naples et de sicile_. on returning to paris in his first success was the large composition of _callirhoé and coresus_, which was exhibited at the salon in , and is now in the louvre. but he soon abandoned the grand style, chiefly, it is probable, owing to the patronage of the idle or industrious rich who showered commissions upon him, for smaller and more sociable pictures with which to adorn and enliven their houses. the beautiful, but exceedingly improper picture at hertford house, called _the swing_--or in french, _les hazards heureux de l'escarpolette_, appears to have been commissioned by the baron de st. julien, within the next year or two, for in the memoirs of cotté a conversation is recorded which shows that the baron had asked another painter, doyen, to paint it. "who would have believed," says the indignant doyen, "that within a few days of my picture of ste. geneviéve being exhibited at the salon, a nobleman would have sent for me to order a picture on a subject like this." he then goes on to relate how the baron explained to him exactly what he required. we cannot entirely acquit fragonard of all blame in accepting such a commission, but he was a young man, just starting as a professional artist, with the example of boucher before him, and it would hardly have seemed wise to begin his career by offending a noble patron. the whole incident throws a glaring light on the conditions under which the art of france flourished in the louis quinze period, when boucher was everybody and chardin nobody. for the real fragonard we may turn to _le chiffre d'amour_, or the "lady carving an initial," as the prosaic diction of the wallace collection has it (no. ). in this the equal delicacy of the sentiment and of the painting combine to effect a little masterpiece of louis quinze art. it is simple and natural, and entirely free from the besetting sins of so slight a picture triviality, affectation, empty prettiness, or simply silliness. in its way it is perfect, and for that perfection is for ever reserved the popularity which we find temporarily accorded to pictures like frith's _dolly varden_ or millais' _bubbles_. another of the hertford house examples, the portrait of a boy as pierrot, is equally entitled to be popular for all time, and like reynolds's _strawberry girl_, might well be called "one of the half-dozen original things" which no artist ever exceeded in his life's work. a comparison between the two pictures, which were probably painted within a few years of each other, will serve to show the difference between the english and french schools at this period. on the one hand--to put it very shortly indeed--we see fragonard influenced by tiepolo, france, and louis xv.; on the other, sir joshua, influenced by michelangelo and raphael, england, and george iii. the mention of jean baptiste simeon chardin among this brilliant and frivolous galaxy seems almost out of place. "he is not so much an eighteenth-century french artist," lady dilke says of him, "as a french artist of pure race and type. though he treated subjects of the humblest and most unpretentious class, he brought to their rendering not only deep feeling and a penetration which divined the innermost truths of the simplest forms of life, but a perfection of workmanship by which everything he handled was clothed with beauty." that the wallace collection includes no work from his hand is perhaps regrettable, but truly chardin was someone apart from all the magnificence that dazzles us there. his was the treasure of the humble. the effects of the revolution upon french painting were as surprising as they were great. that the gay and frivolous art of boucher and fragonard should have suddenly ceased might have been considered inevitable; but whereas in holland, when the spanish yoke had been thrown off, and a republic proclaimed, a vigorous democratic school arose under frans hals; and in england during the commonwealth the artistic influence which was beginning to be spread by charles i. and buckingham utterly ceased; in france an artistic dictator arose, as we may well call him, in the person of jacques louis david, who not only made painting a part of the revolutionary propaganda, but succeeded under the emperor napoleon also in maintaining his position as painter to the government, and thereby imposing on his country a style of art which had a great influence on the whole course of french painting for many years to come. but the most remarkable thing was that it was to the classics that this revolutioniser went for inspiration. the explanation is to be found in the fact that he was bitterly aggrieved by the attitude of the academy to him as a young man, and in the accident of his famous picture of brutus synchronising with the events of . he was at once hailed as a deliverer, and made, as it were, painter to the revolution. [illustration: plate xxxvi.--fragonard l'Étude _louvre, paris_] but what was even more important in the influence he exerted at this time was his actual appointment as president of the convention, which gave him the power to revenge himself upon the academy, which he did by extinguishing it in , and to remove any inconvenient rivals by indicting them as aristocrats. of the older painters, fragonard and greuze were the only important ones left, and as they could not under the altered circumstances be considered as rivals to the classical david, they both saw the century out. fragonard simply ceased painting for want of patrons, and david was good enough to procure him a post in the museum des arts, or he would have starved. unfortunately he attempted to adapt himself to the new style, and was promptly ejected from his post--ostensibly on his previous connection with royalty--and was wise enough to fly to his native town in the south. during the first quarter of the nineteenth century the dictatorship of david was supreme. how it was finally overthrown we shall see in another chapter. _the english school_ i the early portrait painters in the preface to the _anecdotes of painting_ written in , horace walpole observes that this country had not a single volume to show on the works of its painters. "in truth," he continues, "it has very rarely given birth to a genius in that profession. flanders and holland have sent us the greatest men that we can boast. this very circumstance may with reason prejudice the reader against a work, the chief business of which must be to celebrate the art of a country which has produced so few good artists. this objection is so striking, that instead of calling it _the lives of english painters_, i have simply given it the title of _anecdotes of painting in england_." as walpole's work was merely a compilation from the voluminous notes of george vertue, a painstaking antiquary who had collected every scrap of information he could acquire in the early years of the eighteenth century, his conclusions can hardly be questioned, and the foundation of the english school of painting is therefore generally assumed to have been effected by reynolds. but as wren's cathedral replaced an older one which was destroyed by the fire of london, and as that was reared on the foundation of a roman temple, so we find that the art of painting in england was certainly practised in earlier times, and but for certain circumstances much more of it would have survived than is now to be found. in other countries, as we have seen, the church was in earlier times the greatest if not the only patron of the arts, and there is plenty of evidence to show that in england, too, from the reign of henry iii. onwards till the reformation, our churches were decorated with frescoes. this evidence is of two kinds; first, entries in royal and other accounts, directing payment for specified work; and secondly, the remains of fresco painting in our cathedrals and churches. the former is of little interest except to the antiquary. the latter has suffered so much from neglect or actual destruction as to be considered unworthy of the attention of either the artist in search of inspiration or the critic in pursuit of anything to criticise; but when every inconsiderable production in the little world of english art has had its bulky quarto written upon it, it is curious that no one has yet discovered what a splendid harvest awaits the investigation of these old frescoes all over the country. as it is, we have only to note that as religion was so important an influence on painting in other countries so was it in england, only unfortunately as a destroying and not a cherishing influence. granting the probability that there were few, if any, of our english frescoes which would be comparable in artistic interest with those in italy, where the art was so sedulously cultivated, it must nevertheless be remembered that only a fragment remains here and there out of all the work which must have been produced, and that after the reformation even those works which did survive were treated with positive as well as negative obloquy, so that where they have been preserved at all it is only by having been whitewashed over or otherwise hidden and damaged. even worse than the reformation in , was the puritan outburst a century later, which not only destroyed works of art, but extinguished all hope of their being created. is it to be wondered at, then, that the foundation of the english school of painting should have been postponed for a century more? at the same time it is interesting to note that the little painting which did creep into england in the sixteenth century, was of the very kind that formed the chief feature of the english school when it was finally established, namely portraiture. here again we see the influence of religion; for to the reformed church, at least as interpreted by the english temperament, the second commandment was and is still second only in number, not in importance. to protestant or puritan the idea of a picture in a church was anathema. as late as , when benjamin west offered to decorate st. paul's cathedral with a painting of moses receiving the tables of the law on mount sinai, the bishop exclaimed, "i have heard of the proposition, and as i am head of the cathedral of the metropolis, i will not suffer the doors to be opened to introduce popery." the painting of a portrait, however, was a very different matter, and from the earliest times appears to have appealed with peculiar strength to the vanity of britons. loudly as they protested against the iniquity of bowing down to and worshipping the likeness of anything in heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth, they were never averse to giving others an opportunity of bowing down to and worshipping the likenesses of themselves; and while religion fostered the arts in other countries, self-importance kept them alive in this. the portrait of richard ii. in westminster abbey, if not actually an instance of this, certainly happens to seem like one. with the exception of jan de mabuse, who is said to have been in england for a short time during the reign of henry vii., the first painter of any importance in this country was hans holbein. hearing that money was to be made by painting portraits at the english court, he forsook his native town, his religious art, and his wife, and came to stay with sir thomas more at chelsea, with an introduction from erasmus. arriving in , he started business by making a sketch in pen and ink of more's entire family, with which marvellous work, still preserved in the museum at basle, the history of modern english painting may fairly be said to have begun; for though it was long before a native of england was forthcoming who was of sufficient force to carry on the tradition, the seed was sown, and in due course the plant appeared, and after many vicissitudes, at last flourished. the immediate effect may be noted by mentioning here the names of guillim streetes, who was possibly english born, and john bettes who certainly was. to the former is attributed the large whole-length portrait at hampton court of thomas howard, earl of surrey, in a suit of bright red. another portrait of howard belongs to the duke of norfolk, having been presented to his ancestor by sir robert walpole. both were exhibited at the tudor exhibition in . streetes was painter to king edward vi., and according to stype he was paid fifty marks, in , "for recompense of three great tables whereof two were the pictures of his highness sent to sir thomas hoby and sir john mason (ambassadors abroad), the third a picture of the late earl of surrey attainted, and by the councils' commandment fetched from the said guillim's house." horace walpole was under the impression that this was the duke of norfolk's picture, but the hampton court catalogue claims the other one as the work of streetes. in the national gallery is a bust portrait of edmund butts, physician to henry viii., which is inscribed _faict par johan bettes anglois_, and with the date . in this the influence of holbein is certainly discernible, though not all pervading. there were two brothers, thomas and john bettes who are mentioned by meres with several other english painters in _palladis tamia_, published in --"as greece had moreover their painters, so in england we have also these, william and francis segar, brethren, thomas and john bettes, lockie, lyne, peake, peter cole, arnolde, marcus (mark garrard)," etc. walpole, quoting this, adds, "i quote this passage to prove to those who learn one or two names by rote that every old picture you see is not by holbein." at the same time it must be admitted that until some considerable fund of information concerning these early days of painting is brought to light, there is very little to be said about any one except holbein till almost the end of the sixteenth century. that holbein was "a wonderful artist," as more wrote to erasmus, is not to be denied. but in placing him among the very greatest, we must not forget that his range was somewhat limited. we might nowadays call him a specialist, for in england he painted nothing but portraits, and very few of his pictures contained anything besides the single figure, or head, of the subject. the famous exception is the large picture called _the ambassadors_, which was purchased at an enormous price from the longford castle collection, and is now in the national gallery. important and interesting as this is as showing us how holbein could fill a large canvas, there is no doubt that he is far happier in simple portraiture, and that the £ , expended on _christina duchess of milan_ was, relatively, a better investment for the nation. in the famous half-lengths like the _george gisze_ at berlin (which was painted in london) and the _man with the hawk_, where the portrait is surrounded by accessories, holbein is perhaps at his very best; but it is as a painter of heads, simply, that he influenced the english school, and set an example which, alas! has never been attainable since. for one thing, which is apart altogether from talent or genius, holbein's method was never followed in later times, namely, the practice of making carefully finished drawings in crayon before painting a portrait in oils. he was a wonderful draughtsman, and in the series of over eighty drawings at windsor we have even more life-like images of the persons represented than their finished portraits. i am not aware that any portrait drawings exists of holbein's contemporaries or successors in england earlier than one or two by van dyck. there are a good many belonging to the seventeenth century, but with one or two exceptions they are little more than sketches. and though sketches have only survived by accident, as it were, not being intended for anything more than the artist's own purposes, finished drawings would have been kept, like holbein's, with much greater care. in a word, then, holbein's first and chief business was in rendering the likeness of the sitter. being a [illustration: plate xxxvii.--hans holbein anne of cleves _louvre, paris_] born genius, he accomplished far more than this; but it is important in tracing the development of the english school of painting to remember that its origin was not in the idealization of religious sentiment, but in the realization of the human features. from the time of the first great genius to that of the next, exactly a century later, there is hardly a portrait in existence that is valued for anything but its historic or personal interest. between holbein and van dyck is a great gap, in which the only names of englishmen are those of the miniaturists, hilliard and oliver, who were veritably of the seed of holbein, but only in little. van dyck struck deeper into the english soil, and loosened it sufficiently for the growth of larger stuff, if still somewhat coarse, like the work of william dobson and robert walker. to van dyck succeeded peter lely, who boldly and worthily assumed the mantle of van dyck, and kept english portraiture alive throughout the dismal period of the commonwealth. after the restoration he was still in power, and under him flourished one or two painters of english birth, like greenhill and riley, who in turn gave way to others under kneller without ceding the monopoly to foreigners. from these came jervas, richardson, and, most important, hudson, who was reynolds's master, and so we arrive at the beginning of what is now generally known as the english school. another source, however, must here be mentioned as joining the main stream, and contributing a solid body of water to it, chiefly below the surface, namely the art of william hogarth. being essentially english, and without any artistic forefathers, it is not surprising that he left less perceptible impressions on his immediate successors than the more accomplished and educated reynolds; but the solid force of his character, as exemplified in his career and his works, is hardly a less important factor in the development of the english school, while from his outspoken opinions on the state of the arts in his time he is one of the most valuable sources of its history. ii william hogarth william hogarth occupies a curious position in the history of english painting. there was nothing ever quite like him in any country--except greuze in france; for though a comparison between two such opposites, seems at first sight absurd, it must be remembered that french and english painting in the middle of the eighteenth century were no less far apart. both greuze and hogarth, in their own fashion, tried to preach moral lessons in paint, the one in the over-refined atmosphere of french surroundings, the other in the coarse language of england in his time. hogarth's chief characteristic was his blunt, honest, bull-dog englishness, which at the particular moment of his appearance on the artistic stage was a quality which was eminently serviceable to english painting. though of humble parents, his honest and forceful character won for him the daughter of sir james thornhill in marriage (by elopement) and his sturdy talent in painting secured for him his father-in-law's forgiveness and encouragement. thornhill came of a good, old wiltshire family, and had been knighted by george i. for his sterling merits as much as for his skill in painting and decorating the royal palaces and the houses of noblemen. his place among english artists is not a very high one, but he deserves the credit of having stood out against the monopoly that was being established by foreigners in this country in every department of artistic work, and in this sense he is a still earlier forerunner of the great english painters, than his more forcible son-in-law. if hogarth had been content to follow the beaten track of portraiture as his main pursuit, and let the country's morals take care of themselves, he would in all probability have attained much greater heights as a painter. but his nature would not allow him to do this. his character was too strong and his originality too uncontrollable. there is enough evidence among the works which have survived him, especially in those which were never finished, to show that his accomplishments in oil painting were of a very high order indeed. i need only refer to the famous head in the national gallery known as _the shrimp girl_ to explain what i mean. in this surprisingly vivacious and charming sketch we see something that is not inferior to hals, in its broad truth and its quick seizure of the essentials of what had to be rendered. in another unfinished piece, which is now in the south london art gallery at camberwell, we see the same powerful qualities differently exhibited, for it is not a single head this time, but a sketch of a ballroom where everybody is dancing, except one gentleman who is even more vivid than the rest, in the act of mopping his head at the open window. there is nothing grotesque in this picture, but it is all perfectly life-like and wonderfully sketched in. in his finished pictures hogarth does not appear to such great advantage--i mean as a painter; but it must be remembered that in his day there was little example for him to follow in the higher departments of his art. nor had he ever been out of england to see fine pictures on the continent. not only this, but as his work was intended especially to appeal to ordinary people, it is hardly to be expected that he would express himself in terms other than might most quickly appeal to them. his most famous works, indeed, were executed as well as designed for the engraver, namely _the harlot's progress_, _the rake's progress_, _marriage à la mode_, and _the election_, each of which consisted of a series of several minutely finished pictures. in portraiture he showed finer qualities, it is true; but even in these he was thinking more of getting the most out of his model, according to his forcible character, than of any technical refinements for which he might be handed down to posterity as a great painter. it was easy enough for reynolds to sneer at hogarth for his vulgarity, when he was trying to impress upon his pupils the importance of painting in the grand style. "as for the various departments of painting," he says in his third discourse, "which do not presume to make such high pretensions, they are many. none of them are without their merit, though none enter into competition with this universal presiding idea of the art. the painters who have applied themselves more particularly to low and vulgar characters, and who express with precision the various shades of passion as they are exhibited by vulgar minds (such as we see in the works of hogarth), deserve great praise; but as their genius has been employed on low and confined subjects, the praise which we must give must be as limited as its object." and yet it was in following an example set by hogarth in portrait painting that reynolds gained his [illustration: plate xxxviii.--william hogarth the shrimp girl _national gallery, london_] first success in that art. i mean the full-length portrait of captain keppel, painted in . this originality and boldness in disregarding the tame but universal convention in posing the sitter was peculiarly hogarth's own. with him it amounted almost to perverseness. he would not let anybody "sit" to him, if he could help it. when he did, as in the portraits of quinn, the actor, and hoadly, bishop of winchester, in the national gallery, the result is not the happiest; for, with all their force, these portraits lack the grace that a conventional pose requires to render it acceptable in the terms of its convention. if a man must put on the accepted evening dress of his time, he must see that it conforms in the spirit as well as in the letter of the fashion, or he will only look like a dressed-up greengrocer. hogarth was too sturdy and too wilful to put on court clothes. if he had to, he struggled with them. hogarth's father was a man of literary tastes, and a scholar. he had written a supplement to littleton's latin dictionary, but was unable to get it published. "i saw the difficulties," writes the artist, "under which my father laboured; the many inconveniences he endured from his dependence, living chiefly on his pen, and the cruel treatment he met with from booksellers and printers. i had before my eyes the precarious situation of men of classical education; it was therefore conformable to my wishes that i was taken from school and served a long apprenticeship to a silver-plate engraver." this is printed in allan cunningham's _life of hogarth_, together with many more extracts from autobiographical memoranda, from which we may learn at first hand a great deal of information bearing on the state of painting at this period, and the circumstances under which it received such a stimulus from hogarth, before the sun had fully risen (in the person of reynolds) to illumine the whole period of british art. "as i had naturally a good eye and fondness for drawing," hogarth continues, "_shows_ of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when young, and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. an early access to a neighbouring painter drew my attention from play, and i was at every possible opportunity engaged in making drawings.... my exercises at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them than for the exercise itself. in the former i soon found that blockheads with better memories would soon surpass me, but for the latter i was particularly distinguished. "the painting of st. paul's and greenwich hospital, which were at that time going on, ran in my head, and i determined that silver-plate engraving should be followed no longer than necessity obliged me to it. engraving on copper was, at twenty years of age, my utmost ambition. to attain that it was necessary that i should learn to draw objects something like nature, instead of the monsters of heraldry, and the common methods of study were much too tedious for one who loved his pleasure and came so late to it.... this led me to consider whether a shorter road than that usually travelled was not to be found.... i had learned by practice to copy with tolerable correctness in the ordinary way, but it occurred to me that there were many disadvantages attending this method of study, as having faulty originals, etc.; and even when the prints or pictures to be imitated were by the best masters, it was little more than pouring water out of one vessel into another. many reasons led me to wish that i could find a shorter path--fix forms and characters in my mind--and, instead of copying the lines, try to read the language, and if possible find the grammar of the art, by bringing into one focus the various observations i had made, and then trying by my power on the canvas how far my plan enabled me to combine and apply them to practice.... "i had one material advantage over my competitors, viz., the early habit i acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying on the spot, whatever i intended to imitate.... instead of burdening the memory with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged pictures, i have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest way of obtaining knowledge in my art...." "i entertained some thoughts," he writes again, "of succeeding in what the puffers in books call the great style of history painting, so that, without having had a stroke of this grand business before, i quitted small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own temerity commenced history painter, and on a great staircase at st. bartholomew's hospital painted two scripture stories, _the pool of bethesda_ and _the good samaritan_, with figures seven feet high. these i presented to the charity, and thought that they might serve as a specimen to show that, were there an inclination in england for encouraging historical pictures, such a first essay might prove the painting them more easily attainable than is generally imagined. but as religion, the great promoter of this style in other countries, rejected it in england, and i was unwilling to sink into a portrait-manufacturer--and still ambitious of being singular, i soon dropped all expectations of advantage from that source, and returned to the pursuit of my former dealings with the public at large." few seemed disposed to recognise, in any of hogarth's works, a higher aim than that of raising a laugh. somerville, the poet, dedicated his _rural games_ to hogarth in these words--"permit me, sir, to make choice of you for my patron, being the greatest master in the burlesque way. your province is the town--leave me a small outride in the country, and i shall be content." fielding had a different opinion of his merits: "he who would call the ingenious hogarth a burlesque painter would in my opinion do him very little honour, for sure it is much easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of man on canvas. it hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures seem to breathe, but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause that they appear to think." in answer to criticism of his _analysis of beauty_, hogarth writes: "among other crimes of which i am accused, it is asserted that i have abused the 'great masters'; this is far from being just. so far from attempting to lower the ancients, i have always thought, and it is universally admitted, that they knew some fundamental principles in nature which enabled them to produce works that have been the admiration of succeeding ages; but i have not allowed this merit to those leaden-headed imitators, who, having no consciousness of either symmetry or propriety, have attempted to mend nature, and in their truly ideal figures, gave similar proportions to a mercury and a hercules." another and a better spirit influenced him in the following passage--he is proposing to seek the principles of beauty in nature instead of looking for them in mere learning. his words are plain, direct, and convincing. "nature is simple, plain, and true in all her works, and those who strictly adhere to her laws, and closely attend to her appearances in their infinite varieties are guarded against any prejudicial bias from truth; while those who have seen many things that they cannot well understand, and read many books which they do not fully comprehend, notwithstanding all their parade of knowledge, are apt to wander about it and about it; perplexing themselves and their readers with the various opinions of other men. as to those painters who have written treatises on painting, they were in general too much taken up with giving rules for the operative part of the art, to enter into physical disquisitions on the nature of the objects." after this it would be unfair to withhold the praise of benjamin west (who succeeded reynolds as president of the royal academy)--a painter, prudent in speech, and frugal in commendation. "i remember, when i was a lad," says smith, in his account of nollekens, "asking the late venerable president west what he thought of hogarth's _analysis of beauty_, and his answer was, 'it is a work of the highest value to everyone studying the art. hogarth was a strutting consequential little man, and made himself many enemies by that book; but now that most of them are dead, it is examined by disinterested readers, unbiassed by personal animosities, and will be more and more read, studied and understood.'" in his memoranda respecting the establishment of an academy of art in england, hogarth writes well and wisely. voltaire asserts that after the establishment of the french academy not one work of genius appeared, for all the painters became mannerists and imitators. hogarth agrees with him, declaring that "the institution will serve to raise and pension a few bustling and busy men, whose whole employment will be to tell a few simple students when a leg is too long, or an arm too short. more will flock to the study of art than genius sends; the hope of profit, or the thirst of distinction, will induce parents to push their offspring into the lecture-room, and many will appear and but few be worthy. the paintings of italy form a sort of ornamental fringe to their gaudy religion, and rome is the general storeshop of europe. the arts owe much to popery, and popery owes much of its universality to the arts. the french have attained to a sort of foppish magnificence in art; in holland, selfishness is the ruling passion, and in england vanity is united with selfishness. portrait-painting, therefore, has succeeded, and ever will succeed better in england than in any other country, and the demand will continue as new faces come into the market. "portrait painting is one of the ministers of vanity, and vanity is a munificent patroness; historical painting seeks to revive the memory of the dead, and the dead are very indifferent paymasters. paintings are plentiful enough in england to keep us from the study of nature; but students who confine their studies to the works of the dead, need never hope to live themselves; they will learn little more than the names of the painters: true painting can only be learnt in one school, and that is kept by nature." hogarth disliked a formal school, says cunningham, because he was the pupil of nature, and foresaw that students would flock to it from the feeling of trade rather than the impulse of genius, and that it become a manufactory for conventional forms and hereditary graces. opulent collectors were filling their galleries with the religious paintings of the romish church, and vindicating their purchases by representing these works as the only patterns of all that is noble in art and worthy of imitation. hogarth perceived that all this was not according to the natural spirit of the nation; he well knew that our island had not yet poured out its own original mind in art, as it had done in poetry; and he felt assured that such a time would come, if native genius were not overlaid systematically by mock patrons and false instructors. "as a painter," says walpole, "hogarth has slender merit." "what is the merit of a painter?" cunningham concludes. "if it be to represent life--to give us an image of man--to exhibit the workings of his heart--to record the good and evil of his nature--to set in motion before us the very beings with whom earth is peopled--to shake us with mirth--to sadden us with woeful reflection--to please us with natural grouping, vivid action, and vigorous colouring--hogarth has done all this--and if he that has done so be not a painter, who will show us one?" iii sir joshua reynolds and thomas gainsborough whether or not sir joshua reynolds is entitled to be ranked among the very greatest painters, there can be no question that he has a place among the most famous, not only on account of his actual painting, but also because of the influence exerted by his whole-hearted devotion to his art, and his strong character in forming, out of such unpromising elements, a really vigorous school of painting in this country. the example he set in the strenuous exercise of his profession, the precepts he laid down for the guidance of students, and the dignity with which he invested the whole practice of painting which, until he came, had degenerated into a mere business, were of incalculable benefit to his own and succeeding ages, and edmund burke was paying him no empty compliment but only stating the bare truth when he said that sir joshua reynolds was the first englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. joshua reynolds was born at plympton in devonshire on the th july ; the son of the rev. samuel reynolds and his wife theophila potter. he was on every side connected with the church, for both his father and his grandfather were in holy orders, his mother was the daughter of a clergyman, and his maternal grandmother also. his father's elder brother, too, was a clergyman, a fellow of eton college and canon of st. peter's, exeter. so that here, as in italy, we start with a basis of religion. the young artist's first essays were made in copying several little things done by his elder sisters, and he afterwards took great delight in copying such prints as he met with in his father's books, particularly those in plutarch's _lives_, and in jacob cats's _book of emblems_, which his great-grandmother by his father's side, a dutch woman, had brought from holland. when he was only eight years old he read with great avidity a book called _the jesuits perspective_, an architectural, not a religious work, and made himself so completely master of it that he never afterwards had occasion to study any other treatise on the subject. in fact, a drawing which he then made of plympton school so filled his father with wonder that he said to him, "now this exemplifies what the author of the _perspective_ says in his preface--that by observing the rules laid down in his book a man may do wonders, for this is wonderful!" from these attempts he proceeded to draw likenesses of his friends and relations with tolerable success. but what most strongly confirmed him in his love of the art was richardson's _treatise on painting_, the perusal of which so delighted and inflamed his mind, that raphael appeared to him superior to the most illustrious names of ancient or modern times--a notion which he loved to indulge all the rest of his life. before he was eighteen years old his father placed him as a pupil with thomas hudson, who was then the most distinguished portrait-painter in england; but having some disagreement with his master, the young man returned to devonshire, where he practised portrait painting with more or less success until in he accompanied admiral keppel to the mediterranean, and remained for two or three years studying the old masters in italy. as this period of reynold's career had so determining an influence not only on himself but on the whole course of the history of painting in england--inasmuch as it formed the greater part of the groundwork of his discourses when president of the royal academy, it is worth having an account of it at first hand from the painter himself. "it has frequently happened," he says, "as i was informed by the keeper of the vatican, that many of those whom he had conducted through the various apartments of that edifice when about to be dismissed, have asked for the works of raphael, and would not believe that they had already passed through the room where they are preserved, so little impression had those performances made on them. one of the first painters now in france once told me that this circumstance happened to himself, though he now looks on raphael with that veneration which he deserves from all painters and lovers of the art. i remember very well my own disappointment when i first visited the the vatican: but on confessing my feelings to a brother student, of whose ingenuousness i had a high opinion, he acknowledged that the works of raphael had the same effect on him, or rather that they did not produce the effect which he expected. this was a great relief to my mind, and on inquiry further of other students i found that those persons only who from natural imbecility appeared to be incapable of ever relishing those divine performances, made pretensions to instantaneous raptures on first beholding them. "in justice to myself, however, i must add that though disappointed and mortified at not finding myself enraptured with the works of this great master, i did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of raphael, and those admirable paintings in particular, owed their reputation to the ignorance and prejudice of mankind; on the contrary, my not relishing them as i was conscious i ought to have done was one of the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me. i found myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which i was unacquainted: i felt my ignorance, and stood abashed. all the indigested notions of painting which i had brought with me from england where the art was in the lowest state it had ever been in (it could not indeed be lower) were to be totally done away and eradicated from my mind. it was necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that i should become _as a little child_. "notwithstanding my disappointment, i proceeded to copy some of those excellent works. i viewed them again and again; i even affected to feel their merit and to admire them more than i really did. in a short time a new taste and new perceptions began to dawn upon me, and i was convinced that i had originally formed a false opinion of the perfection of art, and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he holds in the estimation of the world." "when i was at venice," he writes in a note on du fresnoy's _art of painting_ about the chiaroscuro of titian, paul veronese and tintoretto, "the method i took to avail myself of their principles was this. when i observed an extraordinary effect of light and shade in any picture, i took a leaf of my pocket-book and darkened every part of it in the same gradation of light and shade as the picture, leaving the white paper untouched to represent the light, and this without any attention to the subject or to the drawing of the figures. after a few experiments i found the paper blotted nearly alike; their general practice appeared to be to allow not above a quarter of the picture for the light, including in this portion both the principal and secondary lights; another quarter to be as dark as possible, and the remaining half kept in mezzotint or half shadow. "rubens appears to have admitted rather more light than a quarter, and rembrandt much less, scarce an eighth; by this conduct rembrandt's light is extremely brilliant, but it costs too much, the rest of the picture is sacrificed to this one object." the results of these studies in rome and venice were at once observable on his return to england in the beautiful portrait of _giuseppe marchi_, one of the treasures belonging to the royal academy. it was altogether too much for the ignorant british artists, and it excited lively comment. what chiefly attracted the public notice, however, was the whole-length portrait which he painted of his friend and patron admiral keppel. on the appearance of this reynolds was not only universally acknowledged to be at the head of his profession, but to be the greatest painter that england had seen since van dyck. the whole interval, as malone observes, between the time of charles i. and the conclusion of the reign of george ii. seemed to be annihilated, and the only question was whether the new painter or van dyck were the more excellent. reynolds very soon saw how much animation might be obtained by deviating from the insipid manner of his immediate predecessors, and instead of confining himself to mere likeness he dived, as it were, into the minds and habits and manners of those who sat to him, and accordingly the majority of his portraits are so appropriate and characteristic that the many illustrious persons whom he has delineated are almost as well known to us as if we had seen and conversed with them. very soon after his return from italy his acquaintance with dr johnson commenced, and their intimacy continued uninterrupted to the time of johnson's death. how much he profited thereby, especially in the practice of art, he has recorded in a paper which was intended to form a part of one of his discourses. "i remember," he writes, "mr burke speaking of the _essays_ of sir francis bacon, said he thought them the best of his works. dr johnson was of opinion 'that their excellence and their value consisted in being the observations of a strong mind operating upon life; and in consequence you find there what you seldom find in other books,' it is this kind of excellence which gives a value to the performances of artists also.... the observations which he made on poetry, on life, and on everything about us, i applied to our art; with what success others must judge. perhaps an artist in his studies should pursue the same conduct, and instead of patching up a particular work on the narrow plan of imitation, rather endeavour to acquire the art and power of thinking." in another passage from his memoranda, quoted by malone, sir joshua lets us into some more of the secrets of his pre-eminence in his art, both of painter and preceptor: for we are to remember that the british school of painting owes more to the influence of reynolds than perhaps any other school to the example of one man:-- "i considered myself as playing a great game," he writes, "and instead of beginning to save money, i laid it out faster than i got it in, purchasing the best examples of art that could be procured; for i even borrowed money for this purpose. the possessing portraits by titian, van dyck, rembrandt, etc., i considered as the best kind of wealth. by studying carefully the works of great masters, this advantage is obtained--we find that certain niceties of expression are capable of being executed, which otherwise we might suppose beyond the reach of art. this gives us a confidence in ourselves, and we are thus incited to endeavour at not only the same happiness of execution but also at other congenial excellencies. study indeed consists in learning to see nature, and may be called the art of using other men's minds. by this kind of contemplation and exercise we are taught to think in their way, and sometimes to attain their excellence. thus, for instance, if i had never seen any of the works of correggio, i should never perhaps have remarked in nature the expression which i find in one of his pieces; or if i had remarked it i might have thought it too difficult, or perhaps impossible to be executed. "my success and continual improvement in my art (if i may be allowed that expression), may be ascribed in a good measure to a principle which i will boldly recommend to imitation; i mean the principle of honesty; which in this as in all other instances is according to the vulgar proverb certainly the best policy: i always endeavoured to do my best. "my principal labour was employed on the whole together, and i was never weary of changing and trying different modes and different effects. i had always some scheme in my mind, and a perpetual desire to advance. by constantly endeavouring to do my best, i acquired a power of doing that with spontaneous facility that which at first was the effort of my whole mind." "i had not an opportunity of being early initiated in the principles of colouring"; he continues, "no man indeed could teach me. if i have never been settled with respect to colouring, let it at the same time be remembered that my unsteadiness in this respect proceeded from an inordinate desire to possess every kind of excellence that i ever saw in the works of others, without considering that there are in colouring, as in style, excellencies which are incompatible with each other.... i tried every effect of colour, and by leaving out every colour in its turn, showed every colour that i could do without it. as i alternately left out every [illustration: plate xxxix.--sir joshua reynolds lady cockburn and her children _national gallery, london_] colour, i tried every new colour; and often, as is well known, failed.... my fickleness in the mode of colouring arose from an eager desire to attain the highest excellence." in the year reynolds began to write, and three of his essays were printed in the _idler_, which was conducted by dr. johnson. northcote records that at the same time he committed to paper a variety of remarks which afterwards served him as hints for his discourses. one or two of these will give us as good an idea as we are likely to get from elsewhere of what are the first requisites of a successful painter. "it is absolutely necessary that a painter, as the first requisite, should endeavour as much as possible to form to himself an idea of perfection not only of beauty, but of what is perfection in a picture. this conception he should always have fixed in his view, and unless he has this view we shall never see any approaches towards perfection in his works; for it will not come by chance. "if a man has nothing of that which is called genius, that is, if he is not carried away, if i may so say, by the animation, the fire of enthusiasm, all the rules in the world will never make him a painter. "he who possesses genius is enabled to see a real value in those things which others disregard and overlook. he perceives a difference in cases where inferior capacities see none; as the fine ear for music can distinguish an evident variation in sounds which to another ear more dull seem to be the same. this example will also apply to the eye in respect to colouring." in the beginning of the year , reynolds moved into the house on the west side of leicester square which he occupied for the rest of his life. it is now tenanted by messrs. puttick & simpson, the auctioneers. northcote has usefully recorded the following details his studio. his painting-room was of an octagonal form, about twenty feet long and about sixteen in breath. the window which gave the light to this room was square, and not much larger than one half the size of a common window in a private house, whilst the lower part of this window was nine feet four inches from the floor. the chair for his sitters was raised eighteen inches from the floor, and turned round on castors. his palettes were those which are held by a handle, not those held on the thumb. the sticks of his pencils (brushes) were long, measuring about nineteen inches. he painted in that part of the room nearest the window, and never sat down when he worked. as the actual methods of a great artist are possibly of more value in a history of painting than the subjects, or even the prices, of his pictures, i venture to quote the following extracts from various parts of sir joshua's own memoranda:-- never give the least touch with your pencil (_i.e._ brush) till you have present in your mind a perfect idea of your future work. paint at the greatest possible distance from your sitter, and place the picture ... near to the sitter, or sometimes under him, so as to see both together. in beautiful faces keep the whole circumference about the eye in a mezzotinto, as seen in the works of guido and the best of carlo maratti. endeavour to look at the subject or sitter from which you are painting, as if it was a picture. this will in some degree render it more easy to be copied. in painting consider the object before you, whatever it may be, as more made out by light and shadow than by lines. a student should begin his career by a careful finishing and making out the parts; as practice will give him freedom and facility of hand: a bold and unfinished manner is commonly the habit of old age. on painting a head-- let those parts which turn or retire from the eye be of broken or mixed colours, as being less distinguished and nearer the borders. let all your shadows be of one colour: glaze them till they are so. use red colours in the shadows of the most delicate complexions, but with discretion. contrive to have a screen with red or yellow colour on it, to reflect the light on the shaded part of the sitter's face. avoid the chalk, the brick dust, and the charcoal, and think on a pearl and a ripe peach. avoid long continued lines in the eyes, and too many sharp ones. take care to give your figure a sweep or sway. outlines in waves, soft, and almost imperceptible against the background. never make the contour too coarse. avoid also those outlines and lines which are equal, which make parallels, triangles, etc. the parts which are nearest to the eye appear most enlightened, deeper shadowed, and better seen. keep broad lights and shadows, and also principal lights and shadows. where there is the deepest shadow it is accompanied by the brightest light. let nothing start out or be too strong for its place. squareness has grandeur; it gives firmness to the forms; a serpentine line in comparison appears feeble and tottering. * * * * * one is apt to forget in these enlightened days how greatly the art of painting benefited by the establishment of public exhibitions. farington's observations on this point, occasioned by the inauguration of the exhibitions at the society of arts from , until the foundation of the royal academy in , are both instructive and amusing. "the history of our exhibitions," he says "affords the strongest evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. at their commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the _many_ was confined to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts of intellect; whereas at this time ( ) the whole train of subjects most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. the loaf and cheese that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary bird, and the dead mackerel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers though combined with the highest qualities of beauty, grandeur and taste. "to our public exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in consequence of their introduction this change must be chiefly attributed. the present generation appears to be composed of a new and, at least with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings. generally speaking, their thoughts, their feelings and language, differ entirely from what they were sixty years ago. the state of the public mind, incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority proved incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be acquired by long and frequent observation, and that without proper opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue insensible of the true value of the fine arts." in view of these very pertinent observations it is worth inquiring a little as to the origin of exhibitions in england, and the stimulus given by them to british art before the institution of the royal academy. from the introduction to book written by edward edwards, in continuation of walpole's "anecdotes of painters," and published in , i extract the following account of them, as far as possible using his own quaint phraseology. although the study of the human form had long been cultivated and encouraged in italy and france by national schools or academies, yet in england until the eighteenth century such seminaries were unknown; and it is therefore difficult to trace the origin or ascertain the precise period when those nurseries of art were first attempted in this country, especially as every establishment of that kind was, at first, of a private and temporary nature, depending chiefly upon the protection of some artist of rank and reputation in his day. the first attempt towards the establishment of an academy is mentioned by walpole as having been formed by several artists under sir godfrey kneller in . afterwards we find, by other accounts in the same author, which are corroborated by authentic information, that sir james thornhill formed an academy in his own house, in the piazza, covent garden. but this was not of long duration, for it commenced in and died in ; which reduced the artists again to seek some new seminary; for the public of that day were so little acquainted with the use of such schools, that they were even suspected of being held for immoral purposes. after the death of thornhill a few of the artists (chiefly foreigners), finding themselves without the necessary example of the living model, formed a small society and established their regular meetings of study in a convenient apartment in greyhound court, arundel street. the principal conductor of this school was michael moser, who when the royal academy was established was appointed keeper. here they were visited by artists such as hogarth, wills, and ellis, who were so well pleased with the propriety of their conduct, and so thoroughly convinced of the utility of the institution, that a general union took place, and the members thereby becoming numerous, they required and sought for a more convenient situation and accommodation for their school. by the year they were settled in peter's court, st martin's lane, where the study of the human figure was carried on till , when they removed to pall mall. but a permanent and conspicuous establishment was still wanting, and on this account the principal artists had several meetings with a view to forming a public academy. this they did not succeed in doing; but they were so far from being discouraged that they continued their meetings and their studies, and the next effort they made towards acquiring the attention of the public was connected with the foundling hospital. this institution was incorporated in , and a few years later the present building was erected; but as the income of the charity could not, with propriety, be expended upon decorations, many of the principal artists of that day voluntarily exerted their talents for the purpose of ornamenting several apartments of the hospital which otherwise must have remained without decoration. the pictures thus produced, and generously given, were permitted to be seen by any visitor upon proper application. the spectacle was so new that it made a considerable impression upon the public, and the favourable reception these works experienced impressed the artists with an idea of forming a public exhibition, which scheme was carried into full effect with the help of the society for the encouragement of arts, manufactures and commerce, who lent their great room for the purpose. the success of this, the first, public display of art was more than equal to the general expectation. yet there were some circumstances, consequent to the arrangement of the pictures, with which the artists were very justly dissatisfied; they were occasioned by the following improprieties. the society in the same year had offered premiums for the best painting of history and landscape, and it was one of the conditions that the pictures produced by the candidates should remain in their great room for a certain time; consequently they were blended with the rest, and formed part of the exhibition. as soon as it was known which performances had obtained the premiums, it was naturally supposed, by such persons who were deficient in judgment, that those pictures were the best in the room, and consequently deserved the chief attention. this partial, though unmerited, selection gave displeasure to the artists in general. nor were they pleased with the mode of admitting the spectators, for every member of the society had the discretionary privilege of introducing as many persons as he chose, by means of gratuitous tickets; and consequently the company was far from being select, or suited to the wishes of the exhibition. these circumstances, together with the interference of the society in the concern of the exhibition, determined the principal artists to withdraw themselves, which they did in the next year. encouraged by the success of their first attempt, they engaged the great room in spring garden, and their first exhibition at that place opened on the th may . here they found it necessary to change their mode of admission, which they did by making the catalogue the ticket of admission; consequently one catalogue would admit a whole family in succession, for a shilling, which was its price; but this mode of admittance was still productive of crowd and disorder, and it was therefore altered the next year. this exhibition, which was the second in this country, contained several works of the best english artists, among which many of the pictures were equal to any masters then living in europe; and so strikingly conspicuous were their merits, and so forcible was the effect of this display of art, that it drew from the pen of roubilliac, the sculptor, the following lines, which were stuck up in the exhibition room, and were also printed in the _st james's chronicle_:-- prétendu connoiseur qui sur l'antique glose, idolatrant le hom, sans connoitre la chose, vrai peste des beaux arts, sans gout sans equité, quitez ce ton pedant, ce mépris affecté, pour tout ce que le tems n'a pas encore gaté. ne peus tu pas, en admirant les maitres de la grece, ceux d l'italie rendre justice également a ceux qu'a nourris ta patrie? vois ce salon, et tu perdras cette prévention injuste, et bien étonné conviendras qu'il ne faut pas qu'un mecenas pour revoir le siècle d'auguste. "in the following season," says edwards, "they ventured to fix the price of _admission_ at one shilling each person, but had the precaution to affix a conciliatory preface to their catalogue, which was given gratis," as it is becoming more and more usual of late years to preface a catalogue with a signed article, or, as in a recent instance, a facsimile letter, it is interesting to know that this "conciliatory preface" was written by dr johnson. as a document its value in the history of the british school of painting demands its reproduction here in full:-- "the public may justly require to be informed of the nature and extent of every design for which the favour of the public is openly solicited. the artists who were themselves the first promoters of an exhibition in this nation, and who have now contributed to the following catalogue, think it therefore necessary to explain their purpose, and justify their conduct. an exhibition of the works of art being a spectacle new in this kingdom, has raised various opinions and conjectures among those who are unacquainted with the practice in foreign nations. those who set their performances to general view, have been too often considered as the rivals of each other; as men actuated, if not by avarice, at least by vanity, and contending for superiority of fame, though not for a pecuniary prize. it cannot be denied or doubted, that all who offer themselves to criticism are desirous of praise; this desire is not only innocent but virtuous, while it is undebased by artifice, and unpolluted by envy; and of envy or artifice those men can never be accused, who already enjoying all the honours and profits of their profession are content to stand candidates for public notice, with genius yet unexperienced, and diligence yet unrewarded; who without any hope of increasing their own reputation or interest, expose their names and their works, only that they may furnish an opportunity of appearance to the young, the diffident, and the neglected. the purpose of this exhibition is not to enrich the artist, but to advance the art; the eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with contempt; whoever hopes to deserve public favour, is here invited to display his merit. of the price put upon this exhibition some account may be demanded. whoever sets his work to be shewn, naturally desires a multitude of spectators; but his desire defeats its own end, when spectators assemble in such numbers as to obstruct one another. "though we are far from wishing to diminish the pleasures, or to depreciate the sentiments of any class of the community, we know, however, what every one knows, that all cannot be judges or purchasers of works of art. yet we have already found by experience, that all are desirous to see an exhibition. when the terms of admission were low, our room was throng'd with such multitudes, as made access dangerous, and frightened away those, whose approbation was most desired. "yet because it is seldom believed that money is got but for the love of money, we shall tell the use which we intend to make of our expected profits. many artists of great abilities are unable to sell their works for their due price; to remove this inconvenience, an annual sale will be appointed, to which every man may send his works, and send them, if he will, without his name. these works will be reviewed by the committee that conduct the exhibition; a price will be secretly set on every piece, and registered by the secretary; if the piece exposed for sale is sold for more, the whole price shall be the artist's; but if the purchasers value it at less than [illustration: plate xl.--sir joshua reynolds the age of innocence _national gallery, london_] the committee, the artist shall be paid the deficiency from the profits of the exhibition." * * * * * this mode of admission was found to answer all the wished-for purposes, and the visitors, who were highly respectable, were also perfectly gratified with the display of art, which, for the first time, they beheld with ease and pleasure to themselves. the exhibition, thus established, continued at spring garden room, under the direction and management of the principal artists by whom it was first promoted, and they were soon also joined by many of those who had continued to exhibit in the strand (_i.e._ at the society of arts, etc.), which party being mostly composed of young men, and others who chose to become candidates for the premiums given by the society, thought it prudent to remain under their protection. but the society finding that those who continued with them began to diminish in their numbers, and that the exhibition interfered with their own concerns, no longer indulged them with the use of their room, and the exhibitions at that place terminated in . these artists, who were mostly the younger part of the profession at that time, thereupon engaged a large room in maiden lane, where they exhibited in and . but this situation not being favourable, they engaged with mr christie, in building his room near pall mall, and the agreement was that they should have it for their use during one month every year, in the spring. here they contrived to support a feeble exhibition for eight years, when their engagements interfering with mr christie's auctions, he purchased their share of the premises, and they made their last removal to a room in s. alban's street, where they exhibited the next season, but never after attempted to attract public notice. it may be observed that while this society continued there were annually three exhibitions of the works of english artists, namely, the royal academy, the chartered society, and that last mentioned, the members of which styled themselves the free society of artists. their exhibition was considerably inferior to those of their rivals. by the chartered society, edwards means the artists who formed the exhibition at the spring garden room, who in obtained a charter from the king. owing partly to internal disagreements, but more no doubt to the foundation of the royal academy in , this society gradually diminished in importance, until edwards could write of their exhibition in that "the articles they had then collected were very insignificant, most of which could not be considered as works of art; such as pieces of needlework, subjects in human hair, cut paper, and such similar productions as deserve not the recommendation of a public exhibition," * * * * * to the first exhibition of the royal academy, which was opened on the nd of january , reynolds sent three pictures:-- _the duchess of manchester and her son, as diana disarming cupid._ _lady blake, as juno receiving the cestus of venus._ _miss morris as hope nursing love._ that all of them were, so to speak, "fancy portraits" is not entirely without significance. portraiture, the painters bread and butter, was apparently deemed hardly suitable for the occasion, and among a list of the pictures which attracted most attention northcote only includes the portraits of the _king and queen_ by nathaniel dance, _lady molyneux_ by gainsborough, and the _duke of gloucester_ by cotes. the rest are as follows:--_the departure of regulus from rome_, and _venus lamenting the death of adonis_, by benjamin west; _hector and andromache_, and _venus directing aeneas and achates_, by angelica kauffmann; _a piping boy_, and _a candlelight piece_, by nathaniel hone; _an altar-piece_ of the annunciation by cipriani; _hebe_, and _a boy playing cricket_, by cotes; a landscape by barrett, and _shakespeare's black-smith_, by penny. in all, reynolds exhibited two hundred and fifty-two pictures during the thirty-two years of his life in which exhibitions existed, namely from to ; of which two hundred and twenty-eight went to the royal academy. of these, or most of them, ample records and criticisms may be found in the copious literature which has grown up around his name. for our present purpose a glance at his influence, his methods, and his circumstances has seemed to me to be more in point, and as a succinct estimate of the man and his work from one of his most illustrious contemporaries, the following passage may be added by way of conclusion:-- "sir joshua reynolds," wrote edmund burke six years after the painter's death, "was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his time. he was the first englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. in taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. in portraiture he went beyond them, for he communicated to that description of the art, in which english artists are the most engaged, a fancy and a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed, them in a superior manner, did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. his portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history and the amenity of landscape. in painting portraits he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. his paintings illustrate his lessons, and his lessons seem to be derived from his paintings. he possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. to be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher." * * * * * thomas gainsborough ( - ), whose name we can seldom help thinking of whenever we hear that of reynolds, was in many ways the very antithesis of his more illustrious rival. in his private life he most certainly was, and so far as his practical influence on his contemporaries is concerned, he is altogether overshadowed by the first president of the royal academy. with respect to their works there is a diversity of opinion, and it is largely a matter of personal feeling whether we prefer those of the one or of the other. both were great artists, and on the common ground of portraiture they contended so equally, and in some cases with such similarity of method, that it is impossible to say impartially which was the greater. how is it possible to decide except on the ground of individual taste, as to whether we would rather lose gainsborough or reynolds as a portrait painter, without considering for a moment that the former was a great landscape painter as well? and, putting aside wilson, whose landscape was essentially italian, whether executed in italy or not, the first landscape painter in england was gainsborough. we are so accustomed to bracket him with reynolds as a great portrait painter, so thrilled over the sale of a gainsborough portrait for many thousands of pounds, that we are apt to forget him altogether as a landscape painter. and yet two or three of his best works in the national gallery are landscapes, and two of them at least famous ones--_the market cart_ and _the watering place_. how many more beautiful landscapes by him there must be in existence it is impossible to say, but there can be no doubt that there are not a few which are only waiting their turn for a fashionable market, but are now reposing unappreciated in private hands. in the metropolitan museum at new york is a splendid example, the like of which i have never seen in this country, but which is so much closer in feeling to his numerous drawings and sketches in chalk or pencil that it is impossible to believe that no similar examples exist. if we could only bring them to light! the fact is that the state of society in the middle of the eighteenth century was, with all its brilliance and intellect, the cause of hampering the natural development of the three great painters of that period. reynolds came back from his stay in italy an ardent disciple of the grand style, burning to follow the example of raphael and michelangelo. romney, too, was all for italian art, but looked further back, and worshipped the classics. gainsborough was a born landscape painter, and his whole time was devoted, when he was not executing commissions for portraits, to making sketches and studies of woods and valleys and trees. but so bent on having their likenesses handed about were the brilliant personages of their time, that reynolds, gainsborough and romney were compelled in spite of themselves to turn their attention to portraiture, to the exclusion of every other branch of their art, and as portrait painters they have made themselves and their country famous. in the numerous sketches and studies that gainsborough has left us, we can see how much we have lost in gaining his wonderful portraits. he loved landscape, from his earliest youth to his dying day. loved it for itself. for among all the drawings of his which i have ever seen, i do not remember one which can be identified as any particular place. in the eighteenth century there was a perfect mania among the smaller fry for making topographical drawings, in pencil or water-colour, views of some town or mountain or castle. but with gainsborough the place was nothing--it was the spirit of it that charmed him. a cottage in a wood, a glade, a country road, a valley, was to him a beautiful scene, whatever it was called or wherever it happened to be, and out of it accordingly he made a beautiful picture, or at least a drawing. that his pictures of landscape are so extraordinarily few while his drawings are so numerous, may be accounted for in a great measure by the exigences of portrait painting, but not entirely; and the probability is that there are many more which are now forgotten. for an estimate of thomas gainsborough both in regard to his place in the story of the english school and to the abilities and methods by which he attained it, it is needless to look elsewhere than to that of sir joshua reynolds, contained in the discourse delivered shortly after gainsborough's death:-- "when such a man as gainsborough rises to great fame without the assistance of an academical education, without travelling to italy, or any of those preparatory studies which have been so often recommended, he is produced [illustration: plate xli.--thomas gainsborough the market cart _national gallery, london_] as an instance how little such studies are necessary, since so great excellence may be acquired without them. this is an inference not warranted by the success of any individual, and i trust that it will not be thought that i wish to make this use of it. "it must be remembered that the style and department of art which gainsborough chose, and in which he so much excelled, did not require that he should go out of his own country for the objects of his study; they were everywhere about him; he found them in the streets, and in the fields; and from the models thus accidentally found he selected with great judgment such as suited his purpose. as his studies were directed to the living world principally, he did not pay a general attention to the works of the various masters, though they are, in my opinion, always of great use even when the character of our subject requires us to depart from some of their principles. it cannot be denied that excellence in the department of the art which he professed may exist without them, that in such subjects and in the manner that belongs to them the want of them is supplied, and more than supplied, by natural sagacity and a minute observation of particular nature. if gainsborough did not look at nature with a poet's eye, it must be acknowledged that he saw her with the eye of a painter; and gave a faithful, if not a poetical, representation of what he had before him. "though he did not much attend to the works of the great historical painters of former ages, yet he was well aware that the language of the art--the art of imitation--must be learned somewhere; and as he knew he could not learn it in an equal degree from his contemporaries, he very judiciously applied himself to the flemish school, who are undoubtedly the greatest masters of one necessary branch of art, and he did not need to go out of his country for examples of that school; from _that_ he learned the harmony of colouring, the management and disposition of light and shadow, and every means of it which the masters practised to ornament and give splendour to their works. and to satisfy himself, as well as others, how well he knew the mechanism and artifice which they employed to bring out that tone of colour which we so much admire in their works, he occasionally made copies from rubens, teniers and van dyck, which it would be no disgrace to the most accurate connoisseur to mistake at the first sight for the works of those masters. what he thus learned he applied to the originals of nature, which he saw with his own eyes, and imitated not in the manner of those masters but in his own. "whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures, it is difficult to determine; whether his portraits were most admirable for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like representation of nature, such as we see in the works of rubens, ruisdael, or others of those schools. in his fancy pictures, when he had fixed on his object of imitation, whether it was the mean and vulgar form of the woodcutter, or a child of an interesting character, as he did not attempt to raise the one, so neither did he lose any of the natural grace and elegance of the other; such a grace and such an elegance as are more frequently found in cottages than in courts. this excellence was his own, the result of his particular observation and taste; for this he was certainly not indebted to the flemish school, nor indeed to any school; for his grace was not academic, or antique, but selected by himself from the great school of nature.... "upon the whole we may justly say that whatever he attempted he carried to a high degree of excellence. it is to the credit of his good sense and judgment that he never did attempt that style of historical painting for which his previous studies had made no preparation. "the peculiarity of his manner or style," reynolds continues a little later, "or we may call it the language in which he expressed his ideas, has been considered by many as his greatest defect.... a novelty and peculiarity of manner, as it is often a cause of our approbation, so likewise it is often a ground of censure, as being contrary to the practice of other painters, in whose manner we have been initiated, and in whose favour we have perhaps been prepossessed from our infancy: for fond as we are of novelty, we are upon the whole creatures of habit. however, it is certain that all those odd scratches and marks which on a close examination are so observable in gainsborough's pictures, and which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident than design; this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a kind of magic, at a certain distance assumes form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places; so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of diligence under the appearance of chance and hasty negligence. "that gainsborough himself considered this peculiarity in his manner, and the power it possesses of exciting surprise, as a beauty in his works, i think may be inferred from the eager desire which we know he always expressed, that his pictures at the exhibition should be seen near as well as at a distance. "the slightness which we see in his best works cannot always be imputed to negligence. however they may appear to superficial observers, painters know very well that a steady attention to the general effect takes up more time and is much more laborious to the mind than any mode of high finishing or smoothness without such attention. his handling, the manner of leaving the colours, or, in other words, the methods he used for producing the effect, had very much the appearance of the work of an artist who had never learnt from others the usual and regular practice belonging to the art; but still, like a man of strong intuitive perception of what was required, he found a way of his own to accomplish his purpose." to reynolds's opinion of this technique as applied to portraits, we may listen with even more attention. "it must be allowed," he continues, "that this hatching manner of gainsborough did very much contribute to the lightness of effect which is so eminent a beauty in his pictures; as, on the contrary, much smoothness and uniting the colours is apt to produce heaviness. every artist must have remarked how often that lightness of hand which was in his dead-colour (or first painting) escaped in the finishing when he had determined the parts with more precision; and another loss which he often experiences, which is of greater consequence: while he is employed in the detail, the effect of the whole together is either forgotten or neglected. the likeness of a portrait, as i have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the general effect of the countenance than in the most minute finishing of the features or any of the particular parts. now, gainsborough's portraits were often little more in regard to finishing or determining the form of the features, than what generally attends a first painting; but as he was always attentive to the general effect, or whole together, i have often imagined that this unfinished manner contributed even to that striking resemblance for which his portraits are so remarkable." iv the close of the eighteenth century not until the year of gainsborough's death, , was there born another landscape painter. this was john crome, and he too came from the east of england, nearest to holland, being born in norfolk, the neighbouring county to gainsborough's native suffolk. within ten years more, two still greater landscapists were born, also in the east, constable in essex, still closer to sudbury, and turner in london. john crome--old crome, as he is usually called to distinguish him from his less distinguished son, john bernay crome--was born at norwich, and had to support himself most of his life by teaching drawing, not to professional pupils unfortunately; but incidentally he founded "the norwich school" of landscape painters, who loyally carried forward the traditions he had inculcated. but having to spend his time as a drawing-master, he was not free like the old dutch painters to put out pictures when and as often as he would, and his work in oils is therefore comparatively scarce. the three examples at the national gallery are typical of his varied powers, _the slate quarries_, _household heath_, and _porringland oak_ are all of them masterpieces. john sell cotman, born in , was, after crome, the most considerable of the norwich school. he, too, was compelled to earn a livelihood by being a drawing-master, for there was not as yet a sufficient market, nor for some time later, for landscape pictures, to support existence, however humble. cotman devoted much of his energies to water-colours, and he is better known in this branch of the art than in painting; that is the only excuse for the national gallery in having purchased as his the very inferior picture called _a galliot in a gale_. the other example, _wherries on the yare_, is more worthy of him, though it by no means exhibits all his wonderful power and fascination. in george morland ( - ) we have something more and something less than a landscape painter. landscape to him was not what it was to wilson, gainsborough or crome,--the only end in view; nor was it merely a background for his subjects. but, as it generally happened, it was both. to morland, the landscape and the figures were one and the same thing. out of the fulness of his heart he painted pictures of _boys robbing an orchard_, _horses in a stable_, or a _farmer on horseback_ staying to talk to a group of gypsies beside a wood, and whether or not the picture might be classed as a landscape depended entirely on the nature of the scene itself. whatever he saw or chose to see he painted with equal skill and with equal charm; and as his choice of vision lay in the simple everyday life that surrounded him, his variety is not the least of his attractions. the fact that his mother was a frenchwoman (his father was henry morland, the painter of the delightful pair of half-lengths, _the laundry maids_) suggests to my mind the wild surmise that she may have been the daughter of chardin. for in the technique as well as in the temperament of morland,--making allowance for difference of circumstances,--there is something remarkably akin to those of the great frenchman. both eschewed the temptation to become fashionable, both painted the humble realities of middle-class life with a zest that could not possibly have been affected, and both painted them with much the same extraordinary charm. at his best, morland is not much inferior to chardin, and but for his unfortunate wildness and his susceptibility to the temptations of strong drink, he might easily have excelled the other. the feeling exhibited in two such different subjects as lord glenconner's _boys robbing an orchard_, and _the interior of a stable_, in the national gallery, certainly equals that of chardin's most famous pieces, i mean the feeling for the particular scene he is depicting. the nearest, in fact the only, approach that morland made to portrait painting was in such pieces as _the fortune teller_ in the national gallery, which brings to mind the "conversation pieces," introduced by hogarth and highmore into english painting, but which were never widely attempted. in the portfolio monograph "english society in the eighteenth century" i tried to collect as many examples as i could of this form of art, but found it difficult to fill even a small volume, so entirely was the single figure portrait the vogue. a few notable instances are worth mentioning, if only as exceptions to the general rule. gainsborough's _ladies walking in the mall_, belonging to sir audley neeld; reynolds's large group of _the marlborough family_ at blenheim, and a very early group of _the elliott family_, consisting of eleven figures, belonging to lord st germans; john singleton copley's _children of francis sitwell, esq._, at renishaw; and lastly zoffany's _family party_, at panshanger. for life-like representation of the english people we look to hogarth and morland, and yet nothing could be more different than the motives which inspired the two, and the way they went to work upon their subject. hogarth was above all things theatrical, morland natural. hogarth first conceived his idea, then laid his scene, and lastly peopled it with actual characters as they appeared--individually--before him. morland simply looked about him and painted what he happened to see at the precise moment when what he saw coincided with his natural inclination, or we may even say inspiration, to paint it. it was much the same difference as between the work of zola and that of thomas hardy. the one had a moral to preach, the other a story to tell. * * * * * when the most we hear of george romney nowadays is the price that has been paid for one of his portraits at christie's, it is refreshing as well as informative to turn to the criticism of one of his greatest though not in these times so highly priced contemporaries, i mean john flaxman. "when romney first began to paint," he writes, "he had seen no gallery of pictures nor the fine productions of ancient sculpture; but then women and children were his statues, and all objects under the canopy of heaven formed his school of painting. the rainbow, the purple distance, or the silver lake, taught him colouring; the various actions and passions of the human figure, with the forms of clouds, woods, and mountains or valleys, afforded him studies of composition. indeed, his genius bore a strong resemblance to the scenes he was born in; like them, it partook of the grand and beautiful; and like them also, the bright sunshine and enchanting prospects of his fancy were occasionally overspread with mist and gloom. on his arrival in italy he was witness to new scenes of art and sources of study of which he could only have supposed previously that something [illustration: plate xlii.--george romney the parson's daughter _national gallery, london_] of the kind might exist; for he there contemplated the purity and perfection of ancient sculpture, the sublimity of michelangelo's sistine chapel, and the simplicity of cimabue and giotto's schools. he perceived those qualities distinctly, and judiciously used them in viewing and imitating nature; and thus his quick perception and unwearied application enabled him, by a two years' residence abroad, to acquire as great a proficiency in art as is usually attained by foreign studies of a much longer duration. "after his return, the novelty and sentiment of his original subjects were universally admired. most of these were of the delicate class, and each had its peculiar character. titania with her indian votaries was arch and sprightly; milton dictating to his daughters, solemn and interesting. several pictures of wood nymphs and bacchantes charmed by their rural beauty, innocence, and simplicity. the most pathetic, perhaps, of all his works was never finished--ophelia with the flowers she had gathered in her hand, sitting on the branch of a tree, which was breaking under her, whilst the moody distraction in her lovely countenance accounts for the insensibility to danger. few painters have left so many examples in their works of the tender and delicate affections; and several of his pictures breathe a kindred spirit with the _sigismonda_ of correggio. his cartoons, some of which have unfortunately perished, were examples of the sublime and terrible, at that time perfectly new in english art. as romney was gifted with peculiar powers for historical and ideal painting, so his heart and soul were engaged in the pursuit of it whenever he could extricate himself from the importunate business of portrait painting. it was his delight by day and study by night, and for this his food and rest were often neglected. his compositions, like those of the ancient pictures and basso-relievos, told their story by a single group of figures in the front, whilst the background is made the simplest possible, rejecting all unnecessary episode and trivial ornament, either of secondary groups or architectural subdivision. in his compositions the beholder was forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first glance: the gradations and varieties of which he traced through several characters, all conceived in an elevated spirit of dignity and beauty, with a lively expression of nature in all the parts. his heads were various--the male were decided and grand, the female lovely. his figures resembled the antique--the limbs were elegant and finely formed. his drapery was well understood, either forming the figure into a mass with one or two deep folds only, or by its adhesion and transparency discovering the form of the figure, the lines of which were finely varied with the union or expansion of spiral or cascade folds, composing with or contrasting the outline and chiaroscuro. few artists since the fifteenth century have been able to do so much in so many different branches; for besides his beautiful compositions and pictures, which have added to the knowledge and celebrity of the english school, he modelled like a sculptor, carved ornaments in wood with great delicacy, and could make an architectural design in a fine taste, as well as construct every part of the building." after the death of reynolds and the retirement of romney, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, the field of portraiture was left vacant--in london at least--for john hoppner, whose name is now generally included with those of lawrence and raeburn among the first six portrait painters of the british [illustration: plate xliii.--george romney mrs robinson--"perdita" _hertford house, london_] school. his fame in recent years has certainly exceeded his merits, but it is due to him to say that he was a conscientious artist, and a firm upholder of the tradition of reynolds, so far as in him lay. the old king had always disliked reynolds, and hoppner was not well enough advised to hold his tongue on the subject of the master: worse than this, he openly accepted the patronage of the prince of wales, and by so doing opened the door for the admission of lawrence as royal painter much sooner than was at all necessary. the story of their rivalry is thus--in substance--sketched by allan cunningham, their contemporary:--the light of the prince of wales's countenance was of itself sufficient to guide the courtly and beautiful to hoppner's easel. suffice it to say that before he was forty years of age (he was born in ), he had been enabled to exhibit no less than fifteen ladies of quality--for so are they named in the catalogues--a score of ladies of lower degree, and noblemen unnumbered. but by this time another star had arisen, destined to outshine that of hoppner; though some at that period, willing to flatter the older practitioner, called it a meteor that would but flash and disappear--we allude to lawrence. urged upon the academy by the king and queen, and handed up to public notice by royal favour, this new aspirant rose rapidly in the estimation of the public; and by the most delicate flattery, both with tongue and pencil, became a formidable rival to the painter whom it was the prince's pleasure to befriend. the factions of reynolds and romney seemed revived in those of hoppner and lawrence. if hoppner resided in charles street, at the gates of carlton house, and wrote himself "portrait painter to the prince of wales," lawrence likewise had his residence in the court end of the town, and proudly styled himself--and that when only twenty-three years old--"portrait painter in ordinary to his majesty." in other respects, too, were honours equally balanced between them; they were both made royal academicians, but in this, youth had the start of age--lawrence obtained that distinction first. nature, too, had been kind--some have said prodigal--to both; they were men of fine address, and polished by early intercourse with the world and by their trade of portrait painting could practise all the delicate courtesies of drawing-room and boudoir; but in that most fascinating of all flattery, the art of persuading, with brushes and fine colours, very ordinary mortals that beauty and fine expression were their portions, lawrence was soon without a rival. the preference of the king and queen for lawrence was for a time balanced by the affection of the prince of wales for hoppner; the prince was supposed to have the best taste, and as he kept a court of his own filled with the young nobility, and all the wits of that great faction known by the name of whig, hoppner had the youth and beauty of the land for a time; and it cannot be denied that he was a rival in every way worthy of contending with any portrait-painter of his day. the bare list of his exhibited portraits will show how and by whom he was supported. it is well said by williams, in his _life of lawrence_, that "the more sober and homely ideas of the king were not likely to be a passport for any portrait-painter to the variety of ladies, and hence mr. hoppner for a long time almost monopolised the female beauty and young fashion of the country." this rivalry continued for a time in the spirit of moderation--but only for a time. lawrence, the gentler and the smoother of the two, kept silence longest; the warm nature of hoppner broke out at last. "the ladies of lawrence," he said, "show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespass on moral as well as professional decorum." for his own he claimed, by implication, purity of look as well as purity of style. this sarcastic remark found wings in a moment, and flew through all the coteries and through both courts; it did most harm to him who uttered it; all men laughed, and then began to wonder how lawrence, limner to perhaps the purest court in europe, came to bestow indecorous looks on the meek and sedate ladies of quality of st. james's and windsor, while hoppner, limner to the court of a gallant young prince, who loved mirth and wine, the sound of the lute and the music of ladies' feet in the dance, should to some of its gayest and giddiest ornaments give the simplicity of manner and purity of style which pertained to the quaker like sobriety of the other. nor is it the least curious part of the story that the ladies, from the moment of the sarcasm of hoppner, instead of crowding to the easel of him who dealt in the loveliness of virtue, showed a growing preference for the rival who "trespassed on moral as well as on professional decorum." after this, lawrence had plenty of the fairest sitters. _the nineteenth century_ i the spirit of revolt in the preceding chapters we have traced the development of painting for five centuries--from the beginning of the fourteenth, that is to say, to the end of the eighteenth--in italy, in the netherlands, in germany, in spain, and lastly in france and england. in the nineteenth the story is confined to the last two alone, as with one or two minute exceptions the art of painting had by this time entirely ceased to be worth consideration in any of the others. only in france and england, where it had been most recently established, was it to continue; and besides continuing, reach out with the most astonishing vigour to snatch at and grasp fruits that no one before would have dreamt of being within its reach. between france and england--if by the latter we may be taken to mean great britain, and include within its artists those who have acclimatised themselves within her shores--the honours of the achievement are pretty equally divided, though it will have to be left to individual choice to decide exactly on which side the balance of credit is due. a mere list of the greatest names is not sufficient to apportion the praise, though as a preliminary step it may be of value in clearing the issue. let us take a dozen on either side, and see how they look. _england._ lawrence. constable. turner. de wint. nasmyth. stevens. whistler. cotman. cox. watts. rossetti. hunt. _france._ david. géricault. ingres. delacroix. corot. millet. daubigny. courbet. daumier. decamps. manet. degas. among these turner stands out conspicuously from the rest, and he would be included by anyone in a list of twenty, or perhaps a dozen, of the greatest painters in the world. but oddly enough his influence on the art in general has been comparatively small, if we are to judge by its effects on other painters up to the present, while that of constable has been considerably greater. manet, again, and delacroix, have accomplished far more for the history of painting than any other two in our lists--and yet their names are scarcely known outside the circle of those who know anything at all about painting. for the english public at large an entirely different list would probably prove the superiority of their own race to their complete satisfaction--in spite of meissonier, doré, and bouguereau on the other side. but that is only because the british public, owing to the monopoly [illustration: plate xliv.--jacques louis david portrait of mme. rÉcamier _louvre, paris_] enjoyed by the royal academy, have never had a chance of judging for themselves what they approve of and what they do not, and their taste has been vitiated for generations by the exhibition of what this self-constituted authority, no doubt unconsciously, conceives to be best for them--and which, as might be expected, is usually found to coincide pretty nearly with the sort of thing they are capable of producing themselves. hogarth's predictions at the time the academy was instituted have in a great measure come perfectly true, and the only benefit that it has been to the english school of painting is that it has kept it going. how far this may be called a benefit is at least arguable, but in the main it is probable that if so many bad pictures had not been painted, there would not have been so many good ones. on the other hand, the removal of a man like sir lawrence alma-tadema from his native sphere of influence is quite enough to account for the unlooked-for flowering of blossoms like the brothers maris, bosboom, israels, and mauve in the dutch garden, and if that is so, one need not grudge him his interment amongst nelson, wellington, and other heroes of our own. in a word, the history of painting in the nineteenth century is revolt. what it is going to be in the twentieth i am fortunately not called upon to say; but if i may throw out an opinion based upon what is already happening, i should say that no word has yet been coined which will adequately express it. in the last century the issues were simple, and can be easily expressed. on the one side was the complacent body of practitioners following to the best of their ability the practice of painting as handed down to them in a variety of different forms, just as the byzantine craftsmen earned their living when they were so rudely disturbed by cimabue and his school. on the other was a small but ever-increasing number of individuals who, like cimabue, began to think things out for themselves, but, unlike him, did not succeed in effecting a popular triumph without--if at all--first raising both the painters and the public to a pitch of fury. it is indeed curious to read vasari and modern historians side by side, and to wonder if, after all, vasari knew or told everything, in his desire to glorify the art, or whether giotto and other innovators were not in fact burnt at the stake. probably not. gallileo, as we know, and savonarola suffered for their crimes. but they were working against the church, and the artists were working for it. in the nineteenth century, painting had altogether broken away from the church, and so it had to fight its own battles out in the street, or in the law courts. that is what has given it such a swagger and strength. it no longer looks to its protector, it will hit you in the face before you know where you are. the feeble kind, only, looks to academies for support, and thereby becomes feebler still. in the present chapter, accordingly, we shall hear no more of the madonnas, the holy families, and all the sacred and profane subjects on which the old masters exercised their genius. five centuries of painting had established the art in a position of independence; and in a sixth--that is to say, the nineteenth--it began to assert itself, and to prove that its education was not in itself an end, but only a means to various ends. instead of following out the fortunes of each painter, therefore, and attempting to set in any sort of order the reputations of artists before sufficient time has elapsed for them to cool, i propose to confine myself in the remaining pages to the broad issues raised during this period between the painters, the critics, and the public. ii eugÈne delacroix the man who began all this street fighting was a frenchman--eugène delacroix. while still a youth he was bullied, and the bully was such a redoubtable giant that it took somebody with the grit and genius of delacroix to tackle him, but tackle him he did. the story of the fight, which is a long and glorious one, is so admirably told in madame bussy's life of delacroix, that i have obtained permission to give the essence of it in her own words. in the salon of was exhibited delacroix's picture of _dante and virgil_, which is now in the louvre, and evoked the first of those clamours of abuse which were barely stilled before the artist's death. for nearly thirty years all french painters, with the exception of gros and prudhon; had shown themselves unquestioning disciples of the school founded by jacques louis david, whose masterful character and potent personality had reduced all art to a system; and delacroix himself spoke of him with sympathy and admiration. the chief dogma of david's school was that the nearest approach to the _beau ideal_ permitted to the human race had been attained by the greeks, and that all art must conform as closely as possible to theirs. unfortunately, the chief specimens of greek art known at that time were those belonging to a decadent period--neither the elgin marbles nor the venus of milo were accessible before --so that the works from which they drew their inspiration were without character in themselves, or merely the feeble and attenuated copies of ancient rome. in the pictures of this school, accordingly, we find only the monotonous perfection of rounded and well-modelled limbs, classical features and straight noses. colour, to the sincere davidian, was a vain and frivolous accessory, serving only to distract attention from the real purpose of the work, which was to aim at moral elevation as well as at ideal beauty. everything in the picture was to be equally dwelt upon; there was no sacrifice, no mystery. "these pictures," says delacroix, "have no epidermis ...they lack the atmosphere, the lights, the reflections which blend into an harmonious whole, objects the most dissimilar in colour." by the untimely death of géricault, whose _raft of the medusa_ had already caused a flutter in , delacroix was left at the head of the revolt against this pseudo-classicism; and amid the storm that greeted the _dante and virgil_ it is interesting to find thiers writing of him in the following strain:--"it seems to me that no picture [in the salon] reveals the future of a great painter better than m. delacroix's, in which we see an outbreak of talent, a burst of rising superiority which revives the hopes that had been slightly discouraged by the too moderate merits of all the rest.... i think i am not mistaken; m. delacroix has genius; let him go on with confidence, and devote himself to immense labour, the indispensable condition of talent." delécluze, by the by, the critic-in-chief of the davidian school, had characterised the picture as _une véritable tartouillade_. in the salon included two pictures which may be regarded as important documents in the history of painting. one of these was constable's _hay wain_--now [illustration: plate xlv.--eugÈne delacroix dante and virgil _louvre, paris_] in our national gallery--which had been purchased by a frenchman; the other was delacroix's _massacre of scio_, the first to receive the enlightenment afforded by the englishman's methods, which spread so widely over the french school. it was said that delacroix entirely repainted his picture on seeing constable's; but his pupil, lassalle bordes, is probably nearer the truth in saying that the master being dissatisfied with its general tone, which was too chalky, transformed it by means of violent glazings. the critics were no less noisy over this picture than the last. "a painter has been revealed to us," said one, "but he is a man who runs along the housetops." "yes," answered baudelaire, "but for that one must have a sure foot, and an eye guided by an inward light." when the salon opened again in , after an interval of three years, the public were astonished to find how large a number of painters had abandoned davidism and openly joined the ranks of the enemy. delacroix himself exhibited the _marino faliero_ (now at hertford house) and eleven others. the gauntlet was flung down, and war began in deadly earnest between the opposing parties. it was at this time that the terms romanticism and romantic came into common use. delacroix always resented being labelled as a romantic, and would only acknowledge that the term might be justly applied to him when used in its widest signification. "if by my romanticism," he wrote, "is meant the free expression of my personal impressions, my aversion from the stereotypes invariably produced in the schools, and my repugnance to academic receipts, then i must admit i am romantic." here we have the plain truth about the painting of the nineteenth century--and after! the critics were unanimous in their violent condemnation of delacroix's works: "the compositions of a sick man in delirium," "the fanaticism of ugliness," "barbarous execution," "an intoxicated broom"--such are some of the terms of abuse showered upon him. the gentlest among them commiserate the talent which here and there can be seen "struggling with the systematic _bizarrerie_ and the disordered technique of the artist, just as gleams of reason and sometimes flashes of genius may be seen pitiably shining through the speech of a madman." the final touch to delacroix's disgrace was given by the directeur des beaux arts sending for him and recommending him to study drawing from casts, warning him at the same time that unless he could change his style he must expect neither commissions nor recognition from the state! the year has given its name to that brilliant generation of poets, novelists, painters and philosophers which, as théophile gautier says with just pride, "will make its mark on the future and be spoken of as one of the climacteric epochs of the human mind." the revolution of july inspired delacroix with one of his most interesting pictures. _le juillet_ is the only one of his works in which he depicts modern life, and was a striking refutation to those who complained that modern costume is too ugly or prosaic to be treated in painting. "every old master," baudelaire usefully pointed out, "has been modern in his day. the greater number of fine portraits of former times are dressed in the costume of their period. they are perfectly harmonious because the costumes, the hair, and even the attitude and expression (each period has its own), form a whole of complete vitality." _le juillet_ gives us the very breath and spirit of modern street fighting. though the public [illustration: plate xlvi.--john constable the hay wain _national gallery, london_] remained hostile and the jury bestowed none of its prizes, as before, the government acknowledged the artist's talent and politics by making him a chevalier of the legion of honour. further, from to he was intermittently employed in decorating the chamber of deputies, the senate, and other public buildings. in he showed at the great exhibition a series of thirty-five of his most important pictures, the effect of which was immense. for the first and only time in his life he enjoyed a triumph, none the less great because his life-long rival ingres also took the opportunity of exhibiting a selection of his works in the same building. but in spite of this success, and in spite of his being elected an academician in , the critics remained incorrigible. his pictures in the salon of once more called forth one of those storms of abuse that delacroix had the gift of arousing. weary and disheartened--"all my life long i have been livré aux bêtes," was his bitter exclamation--he vowed to exhibit no more, and kept his word. iii ruskin against the philistines in england, meantime, great things were being accomplished amid peaceful surroundings. in portraiture lawrence soon became supreme, and what excellence he possessed was accentuated on his death in by the appointment of sir martin archer shee as his successor in the presidency of the royal academy. that was the end of portraiture in england until a new school arose. but it was in landscape that our country occupied the field in the first half of the nineteenth century, and tilled it with the astonishing results that are usually the effect of doing much and saying little. the work accomplished by turner, constable, and cotman, in the first half of the century, to say nothing of crome and one or two of the older men who were still alive, has never been equalled in any country, and yet less was heard about the execution of it than would keep a modern journalist in bread and cheese for a week. turner, who wouldn't sell his pictures, and constable, who couldn't, between them filled up the measure of english art without any other aid than that of the materials with which they recorded their gorgeous communion with nature. when ruskin stepped in with the "modern painters," originally designed as a vindication of turner against certain later-day critics, turner's comment was, "he knows a great deal more about my pictures than i do. he puts things into my head and points out meanings in them that i never intended." that was in , when turner was well on in his third manner--within eight years of his death. but let us go back to the beginning. until he developed his latest manner, turner was about the most popular artist that ever lived. his pictures were not above the comprehension of the public, educated or otherwise, and no effort was either needed or demanded to understand them. in the diary of a provincial amateur, thomas greene, are recorded an impression of turner's work as early as :--"visited the royal exhibition. particularly struck with a sea-view by turner ...the whole composition bold in design and masterly in execution. i am entirely unacquainted with the artist, but if he proceeds as he has begun, he cannot fail to become the first in his department." and again in :--"was again struck and delighted with turner's landscapes.... turner's views are not mere ordinary transcripts of nature,--he always throws some peculiar and striking _character_ into the scene he represents." brought up as a topographical draughtsman, he made no departure till quite late in life from the conventional method of depicting scenery; but being a supremely gifted artist, he was capable of utilising this method as no other before or since has ever succeeded in doing. the accepted method was good enough for him, and he laid his paint upon the canvas as anybody else had done before him, and as many of our present-day painters would do well to do after him--if only they had the genius in them to "make the instrument speak." the impressions created on our mind by turner's earlier pictures are not conveyed by dots, cubes, streaks, or any device save that of pigment laid upon the canvas in such a manner as seemed to the artist to reproduce what he saw in nature. that he did this with surprising and altogether exceptional skill is the proof of his genius. unflagging energy and devotion to his art enabled him to realise, not all, but a wonderful number of the beauties he saw in the world, with an experience that few beside him have ever taken the trouble to acquire. when barely thirty years old--in --he was already considered as the first of living landscape painters, and was thus noticed by edward dayes (the teacher of girtin):--"turner may be considered as a striking instance of how much may be gained by industry, if accompanied with perseverance, even without the assistance of a master. the way he acquired his professional powers was by borrowing when he could a drawing or picture to copy; or by making a sketch of any one in the exhibition early in the morning and finishing it up at home. by such practice, and a patient perseverance, he has overcome all the difficulties of the art." turner himself used to say that his best academy was "the fields and dr monro's parlour"--where girtin and other young artists met and sketched and copied the drawings in the doctor's collection. burnet, in his notice of "turner and his works," suggests that john robert cozens had paved the way for both girtin and turner in striking out a broad effect of light and shade. "the early pictures of turner," he observes, "possess the breadth, but are destitute of the brilliant power of light and colour afterwards pervading his works, and ultimately carried to the greatest extreme in his last pictures. breadth of light seems to have been latterly his chief aim, supported by the contrast of hot and cold colour; two of his unfinished pictures exemplified the principle; they were divided into large masses of blue where the water or sky was to come and the other portions laid out in broad orange yellow, falling into delicate brown where the trees and landscapes were to be placed. this preparation, while it secured the greatest breadth, would have shone through the other colours when finished, giving the luminous quality observable in his pictures. in many instances his works sent for exhibition to the british institution had little more than this brilliant foundation, which was worked into detail and completed in the varnishing days, turner being the first in the morning and the last to leave; his certainty in the command over his colour, and the dexterity in his handling, seemed to convert in a few hours 'an unsubstantial pageant' into a finished landscape. these _ad captandum_ effects, however, are not what his fame will depend on for perpetuity; his finest pictures are the production of great study in their composition, careful and repeated painting in the detail, and [illustration: plate xlvii.--j. m. w. turner crossing the brook _national gallery of british art, london_] a natural arrangement of the colour and breadth of the chiaroscuro." whether or not we agree with all of burnet's opinions, we shall be more likely to learn the truth about turner from prosaic contemporaries of his earlier years than from all the rhapsodies of later days. how significant, when stripped of its amusing circumstances, is the simple fact related thus by leslie:--"in , when constable exhibited his _opening of waterloo bridge_, it was placed in one of the small rooms next to a sea-piece by turner--a grey picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive colour in any part of it. constable's picture seemed as if painted with liquid gold and silver, and turner came several times while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and flags of the city barges. turner stood behind him looking from the _waterloo bridge_ to his own picture, and at last brought his palette from the great room where he was touching another picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. the intensity of this red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of his picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of constable to look weak. i came into the room just after turner had left it. "he has been here," said constable, "and fired a gun." on the opposite wall was a picture by jones of shadrach meshach and abednego in the furnace. "a coal," said cooper, "has bounced across the room from jones's picture and set fire to turner's sea." turner did not come in again for a day and a half, and then in the last moment allowed for painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and shaped it into a buoy." it was in , after an unbroken popular triumph lasting over thirty years, that the critics openly rounded on him. the occasion seized by _blackwood's magazine_ was the exhibition of his first venetian picture exhibited in that year--it is now in the metropolitan museum in new york. "what is venice in this picture?" wrote blackwood's critic. "a flimsy, whitewashed, meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off ghost-like into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the picture). the greater part of the picture is white, disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats with their red worsted masts are as gewgaw as a child's toy which he may have cracked to see what it is made of. as to venice, nothing can be more unlike its character." ruskin was then only sixteen years old, but eight years later appeared in print the first volume of "modern painters," "by an undergraduate of oxford," as the result of his growing indignation at this and subsequent attacks on turner. without following ruskin into the dubious regions whither the pursuit of his romantic fancies ultimately led him, we may in fairness quote the opening sentence of his second chapter, "of truth of colour," which will help us, moreover, in understanding the conditions under which painting was being conducted at this period. "there is nothing so high in art," he says, "but that a scurrile jest can reach at, and often the greater the work the easier it is to turn it into ridicule. to appreciate the science of turner's colour would require the study of a life; but to laugh at it requires little more than the knowledge that the yolk of egg is yellow and spinage green; a fund of critical information on which the remarks of most of our leading periodicals have been of late years exclusively based. we shall, however, in spite of the sulphur and treacle criticisms of our scotch connoisseurs, and the eggs and spinage of our english ones, endeavour to test the works of this great colourist by a knowledge of nature somewhat more extensive than is to be gained by an acquaintance, however formed, with the apothecary's shop or the dinner table." so much for the critics. for the artist, if ruskin said more than turner himself could understand, he has summed up his achievement in a few passages which may possibly outlast the works themselves. "there has been marked and constant progress in his mind; he has not, like some few artists, been without childhood; his course of study has been as evidently as it has been swiftly progressive; and in different stages of the struggle, sometimes one order of truth, sometimes another, has been aimed at or omitted. but from the beginning to the present height of his career he has never sacrificed a greater truth to a less. as he advanced, the previous knowledge or attainment was absorbed in what succeeded, or abandoned only if incompatible, and never abandoned without a gain: and his present works present the sum and perfection of his accumulated knowledge, delivered with the impatience and passion of one who feels too much, and has too little time to say it in, to pause for expression or ponder over his syllables." and again of his latest works--"there is in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy; the instinctive and burning language, which would express less if it uttered more; which is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with its abundant meaning. he feels now, with long-trained vividness and keenness of sense, too bitterly, the impotence of the hand and the vainness of the colour to catch one shadow or one image of the glory which god has revealed to him. he has dwelt and communed with nature all the days of his life: he knows her now too well, he cannot falter over the material littlenesses of her outward form: he must give her soul, or he has done nothing, and he cannot do this with the flax, the earth, and the oil. 'i cannot gather the beams out of the east, or i would make _them_ tell you what i have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us remember together. i cannot gather the gloom out of the night sky, or i would make that teach you what i have seen; but read this, interpret this, and let us feel together. and if you have not that within you which i can summon to my aid, if you have not the sun in your spirit, and the passion in your heart, which my words may awaken, though they be indistinct and swift, leave me; for i will give you no patient mockery, no laborious insult of that glorious nature, whose i am and whom i serve. let other servants imitate the voice and the gesture of their master, while they forget his message. hear that message from me; but remember that the teaching of divine truth must still be a mystery.'" within a very few years ruskin was performing a more useful service for the english school of painting than that of gilding the fine gold of its greatest genius. whether or not he was aware of the fact, young holman hunt had borrowed a copy of "modern painters," which, he says, entirely changed his opinions as to the views held by society at large concerning art, and in there were exhibited hunt's _rienzi_, rossetti's _girlhood of mary virgin_, and millais' _lorenzo and isabella_, each inscribed with the mystic letters "p.r.b.," meaning "pre-raphaelite brotherhood." it is interesting to note that this alliance was formed when the three young artists were looking over a book of engravings of the frescoes in the campo santo at pisa. in the following year hunt exhibited the _british family_, millais, _the carpenter's shop_, and rossetti the _ecce ancilla domini_, and in were hunt's _two gentlemen of verona_ and three by millais. the fury of the critics had now reached a point at which some notice had to be taken of it--as of a man in an apopleptic fit. that of the times in particular:--"these young artists have unfortunately become notorious by addicting themselves to an antiquated style, false perspective, and crude colour of remote antiquity. we want not to see what fuseli termed drapery "snapped instead of folded," faces bloated into apoplexy, or extenuated into skeletons; colour borrowed from the jars in a druggist's shop, and expression forced into caricature. that morbid infatuation which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere eccentricity deserves no quarter at the hands of the public." it was in disapproval of the tone of this outburst that the author of "modern painters" addressed his famous and useful letter to the _times_, vindicating the artists, and following it up with another in which he wishes them all "heartily good speed, believing in sincerity that if they temper the courage and energy which they have shown in the adoption of their systems with patience and discretion in framing it, and if they do not suffer themselves to be driven by harsh and careless criticism into rejection of the ordinary means of obtaining influence over the minds of others, they may, as they gain experience, lay in our england the foundation of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for three hundred years." if any one of this strenuous young band had been a painter of the first rank, this prediction might have been abundantly verified. but it must be owned that none of them was. holman hunt came nearest to being, and millais probably thought he was, when he had abandoned his early principles and shaped for the presidency of the academy. rossetti had more genius in him than the others, but it came out in poetry as well as in painting, and perhaps in more lasting form. as it was, the effects of the revolution were widespread and entirely beneficial; but those effects must not be looked for in the works of any one particular artist, but rather in the general aspect of english art in the succeeding half century, and perhaps to-day. it broke up the soil. the flowers that came up were neither rare nor great, but they were many, varied, and pleasing, and in every respect an improvement on the evergreens and hardy annuals with which the english garden had become more and more encumbered from want of intelligent cultivation. more than this, the freedom engendered of revolt had now encouraged the young artist to feel that he was no longer bound to paint in any particular fashion. people's eyes were opened to possibilities as well as to actualities; and though they were prone to close again under the soporific influence of what was regular and conventional, they were capable of opening again, perhaps with a start, but without the necessity for a surgical operation. in , for example, george frederick watts had offered to adorn, free of charge, the booking-hall of euston station, and had been refused--watts, by the by, was quite independent of the pre-raphaelites--whereas in the benchers of lincoln's inn accepted his _school of legislature_, and in he was elected an academician. two somewhat remarkable effects of the movement are attributed to it by mr edmund gosse (in a note on the work of alfred hunt, written in ), which are probably typical of many more. the liverpool academy, founded in , had an annual grant of £ from the corporation. in it gave a prize to millais' _blind girl_ in preference to the most popular picture of the year (abraham solomon's _waiting for the verdict_), and so great was the public indignation that pressure was brought to bear on the corporation, the grant was withdrawn, and the academy ruined. in the other instance we may not go the whole way with mr gosse, when in speaking of the pre-raphaelite principle he says that "the school of turnerian landscape was fatally affected by them," or that all the landscape painters, except alfred hunt, "accepted the veto which the pre-raphaelites had tacitly laid upon composition or a striving after an artificial harmony of forms in landscape." but to a certain extent their influence undoubtedly was prejudicial in that respect. in suggesting another reason for the cessation of turner s influence he is quite as near the mark, namely, the action of the royal academy in admitting no landscape painters to membership. at turner's death in there were only three, among whom was creswick. "this popular artist," says mr gosse, "was the upas tree under whose shadow the academical patronage of landscape died in england. from his election as an associate in to that of vicat cole in , no landscape painter entered the doors of the royal academy." of this august body we shall have something to say later on. iv manet and whistler against the world let us now cross the channel again, and see what is going on there, in . evidently there is something on, or there would not be so much excitement. as we approach the capital we are aware of one name being prominent in the general uproar--that of Édouard manet. manet's revolt against tradition began before he became an artist, as was in fact necessary, or he would never have been allowed to become one. the traditions of the bourgoisie were sacred, and their power and importance since the revolution of not to be lightly set aside. but young manet was so determined that he was at last allowed by his bourgeois parents to have his way, and was sent to study under that very rough diamond couture. now again his "revolting" qualities showed themselves, this time in the life class. théodore duret, his friend and biographer, puts it so amusingly that a quotation, untranslated, is imperative:--"cette repulsion qui se développe chez manet pour l'art de la tradition," he says, "se manifeste surtout par le mépris qu'il témoigne aux modèles posant dans l'atelier et à l'étude du nu telle qu'elle était alors conduite. le culte de l'antique comme on le comprenait dans la première moitié du xixe siècle parmi les peintres avait amené la recherche de modèles speciaux. on leur demandait des formes pleines. les hommes en particulier devaient avoir une poitrine large et bombée, un torse puissant, des membres musclés. les individus doués des qualités requises qui posaient alors dans les ateliers, s'etaient habitués à prendre des attitudes prétendues expressive et heroïques, mais toujours tendues et conventionelles, d'où l'imprévu était banni. manet, porté vers le naturel et épris de recherches, s'irritait de ces poses d'un type fixe et toujours les mêmes. aussi faisait-il tres mauvais ménage avec les modèles. il cherchait à en obtenir des poses contraires à leurs habitudes, auxquelles ils se refusaient. les modèles connus qui avaient vu les morceaux faits d'après leurs torses conduire certains élèves à l'école de rome, alors la suprême récompense, et qui dans leur orgueil s'attribuaient presqu'une part du succès, se revoltaient de voir un tout jeune homme ne leur témoigner aucun respect. il paraît que fatigué de l'eternelle étude du nu, manet aurait essayé de draper et même d'habiller les modèles, ce qui aurait causé parmi eux une véritable indignation." it was in that the storm of popular fury burst over manet's head, on the exhibition of his first important picture, painted three years before, generally known as _le déjeuner sur l'herbe_. this wonderful canvas was something so new and so surprising that it was rejected by the jury of the salon. but in company with less conspicuous though equally unacceptable pieces by such men as bracquemond, cazin, fantin-latour, harpignies, jongkind, j. p. laurens, le gros, pissarro, vollon, and whistler, it was accorded an exhibition, alongside the official salon, which was called _le salon des refusés_. being the largest and most conspicuous work shown, it attracted no less attention than if it had been officially hung, and probably much more. "ainsi ce déjeuner sur l'herbe," says m. duret, "venait-il faire comme une énorme tache. il donnait la sensation de quelquechose outré. il heurtait la vision. il produisait, sur les yeux du public de ce temps, l'effet de la pleine lumière sur les yeux du hibou." there was more than one reason for this remarkable picture surprising and shocking the sensibilities of the public. it represents a couple of men in everyday bourgeois costume, one sitting and the other reclining on the grass under trees, while next to one of them is seated a young woman, her head turned to the spectator, in no costume at all. a profusion of _articles de déjeuner_ is beside her, and it is evident that they are only waiting to arrange the meal till a second young woman, who is seen bathing in the near background, is ready to join them. the subject and composition are reminiscent of giorgione's beautiful and famous _fête champêtre_, in the louvre, and manet quite frankly and in quite good faith pleaded giorgione as his precedent when assailed on grounds of good taste. but unfortunately he had not put his male figures in "fancy dress," and the public could hardly be expected to realise that giorgione had not, either. as for the painting, it was a revelation. he had broken every canon of tradition--and yet it was a marvellous success! another outburst greeted the appearance of the wonderful _olympia_ in , this time in the official catalogue. this is now enshrined in the louvre. it was painted in , but fortunately, perhaps, manet had not the courage to exhibit it then--for who can tell to what length the fury of the philistines might not have been goaded by two such shocks? as it was, this second violation of the sacred traditions of the nude, which had been exclusively reserved for allegorical subjects, was considered an outrage; and the innocent, natural model, of by no means voluptuous appearance, was regarded as a disgraceful intrusion into the chaste category of nymphs and goddesses. as a painter, however, manet had shown himself unmistakably as the great figure of [illustration: plate xlviii.--Édouard manet olympia _louvre, paris_] the age, and if we have to go to paris or to new york to catch a glimpse of any of his work, it is partly because we are too backward in seizing opportunities so eagerly snapped up by others. the next great storm in the artistic world followed in the wake of one of manet's companions in adversity at the _salon des refusés_--james m'neill whistler, who left paris and settled with his mother in chelsea in the late 'sixties. that he should have existed for fifteen whole years without breaking forth into strife is so extraordinary that we are almost tempted to attribute it to the influence of his mother, who used to bring him to the old church on sundays, as the present writer dimly remembers. in this case it was not the public, but the critic, john ruskin, who so deftly dropped the fat into the fire. having, as we saw, taken up the cudgels for poor turner against the public in , and for the pre-raphaelite brotherhood in , he now, in , ranged himself on the other side, and accused whistler of impertinence in "flinging a pot of paint in the face of the public." the action for libel which whistler commenced in the following year resulted in strict fact in a verdict of one farthing damages for the libelled one; but in reality the results were much farther reaching. the artist had vindicated not only himself, but his art, from the attacks of the ignorant and bumptious. "poor art!" whistler wrote, "what a sad state the slut is in, an these gentlemen shall help her. the artist alone, by the way, is to no purpose and remains unconsulted; his work is explained and rectified without him, by the one who was never in it--but upon whom god, always good though sometimes careless, has thrown away the knowledge refused to the author, poor devil!" this recalls turner's comment on ruskin's eulogies--which whistler had probably never heard of--and making every allowance for whistler's fiery, combative nature, and sharp pen, there is much truth, and truth that needed telling, in his contention. "art," he continues, "that for ages has hewn its own history in marble, and written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by? for guidance from the hand that holds neither brush nor chisel? out upon the shallow conceit!" of the hopeless banality of the critics during this period there are plenty of examples to be found without looking very far. several of the most amusing have been embodied in a little volume of "whistler stories," lately compiled by mr don c. seitz of new york. here we find _the standard's_ little joke about whistler paying his costs in the action--apart from those allowed on taxation, that is to say--"but he has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it 'knock off' three or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'--or perhaps he might try his hand at a set of quadrilles in peacock blue?--and a week's labour will set all square." then there is this priceless revelation of his art when questioning his class in paris. "do you know what i mean when i say tone, value, light, shade, quality, movement, construction, etc.?" _chorus_, "oh, yes, mr whistler!" "i'm glad, for it's more than i do myself." more serious was the verdict of sir george scharf, keeper of the national gallery, when (in ) there was a proposal to purchase the portrait of carlyle. "well," he said, icily, on looking at the picture, "and has painting come to this!" high place, it would seem, did not always conduce to an appreciation of high art. here is the opinion of sir charles eastlake, f.r.i.b.a., also keeper of the [illustration: plate xlix.--j. m. whistler lillie in our alley _in the possession of john j. cowan, esq._] national gallery, published in , on one of rembrandt's pictures in the louvre:-- "_the bath_, a very ugly and offensive picture, in which the principal object is the ill-proportioned figure of a naked woman, distinguished by flesh tones whose colour suggests the need of a bath rather than the fact that it has been taken. the position of the old servant wiping the woman's feet is not very intelligible, and the drawing of the bather's legs is distinctly defective. the light and shade of the picture, though obviously untrue to natural effect, are managed with the painter's usual dexterity." v the royal academy the last revolt of the nineteenth century was effected in a peaceable and business-like, but none the less successful manner, by the establishment, in , of the new english art club as a means of defence against the mighty _vis inertiæ_ of the royal academy. as an example of the disadvantage under which any artist laboured who did not bow down to the great idol, i venture to quote a few sentences from the report of the select committee of the house of lords appointed to inquire into the administration of the chantrey trust, in :---- "with five exceptions, all the works in the collection have been bought from summer exhibitions of the royal academy." "it is admitted by those most friendly to the present system that the chantrey collection regarded as a national gallery of modern british art is incomplete, and in a large degree unrepresentative. the works of many of the most brilliant and capable artists who worked in the last quarter of the nineteenth century are missing from the gallery, and the endeavour to account for these omissions has formed one main branch of the inquiry." "it has been stated that while containing some fine works of art, it is lacking in variety and interest, and while failing to give expression to much of the finest artistic feeling of its period, it includes not a few works of minor importance. full consideration of the evidence has led the committee to regard this view as approximately correct." up to , when the collection was handed over to the nation, little short of £ , had been spent upon it. and with five exceptions, amounting to less than £ , the whole of that money had been expended on such works alone as were permitted by the academy to be exhibited on their walls. of the £ , it may be noted, £ was well laid out on watts's _psyche_; but with regard to the very first purchase made, in , for £ ,--hilton's _christ mocked_, which had been painted as an altar-piece for s. peter's, eaton square, in , the following question and answer are full of bitter significance for the poor artist of the time:---- lord ribblesdale.--was mr hilton's picture offered by the vicar and churchwardens? the secretary to the royal academy.--yes, it was offered by them--one of the churchwardens was the late lord maghermorne--he was then sir james m'garrell hogg--he was a great friend of sir francis grant who was the president, and he offered it to him for the chantrey collection. when repeatedly pressed by the committee for the reasons why so few purchases were made outside the academy exhibitions, the president, sir edward poynter, repeatedly pleaded the impossibility of a council of ten, all of whom must see pictures before they are bought, travelling about in search of them. in view of this apparent--but obviously unreal--difficulty, the following questions were then put by the earl of lytton:---- . without actually changing the terms of the will, has the question of employing an agent for the purpose of finding out what pictures were available and giving advice upon them ever been suggested?--no. . that would come within the term of the will, would it not, the final voting being, as it is now, in the hands of the academy; it would be open to the council to appoint an agent, as was suggested just now, of going to scotland, and going about the country making suggestions as to pictures which in his opinion might be bought?--the question has never arisen. . but that could be done, could it not?--i suppose that could be done under the terms of the will, but i do not suppose that the academy would ever do it. as a comment on this let us turn to the "autobiography of w. p. frith r. a." (chapter xl.):--"a portion of the year ... was spent in the service of the winter exhibition of old masters. my duties took me into strange places.... one of my first visits was paid to a huge mansion in the north.... i visited thirty-eight different collections of old masters and named for selection over three hundred pictures.... the pictures of reynolds are so much desired for the winter exhibition that neither trouble nor expense are spared in searching for them; so hearing of one described to me as of unusual splendour, i made a journey into wales with the solitary reynolds for its object." here, where it is not a question of a trust for the benefit of the public and for the encouragement of artists, there appears to have been no trouble or expense spared. but the real reason for the academic selection leapt naïvely from the mouth of the president a little later, in reply to question .--"the best artists come into the academy ultimately. i do not say that there have been no exceptions, but as a general rule all the best artists ultimately become academicians. it is natural, if we want the best pictures that we should go to the best artists." on this point the answer to a question put by lord lytton to one of the forty, sir william richmond, k.c.b., is of value, as showing that the grievances of "the outsiders" were not imaginary:-- . i just want to ask you one more question. when you said that in your opinion the walls of the academy have had priority of claim in the past, have you any particular reason for that statement?--yes. i may mention this to show that i am consistent. before i was an associate of the royal academy, i fought hard for what are called, in rather undignified language, the outsiders, and i was anxious that men should be elected associates of the royal academy not necessarily because they exhibit on the royal academy walls, but because they are competent painters. that was my fight upon which i stood; and i refused to send a picture to the royal academy on the understanding that if i did i should probably be elected associate that year, and also that my picture would be bought by the chantrey fund. my answer to that was, "if my picture is good enough to be purchased for the chantrey bequest my picture can be purchased from the walls of the grosvenor gallery as well as from the walls of the royal academy. that seems to me to be justice." the "new english," then, had some justification for their establishment; and although they did not make very much headway before the close of the nineteenth century, they find themselves at the opening of the twentieth in a position to determine to a very considerable extent what the future of english painting is to be, just as the academy succeeded in determining it before they came into existence. for the academy everything that was vital in english art in the last half century had no existence--was simply ignored. for the new english, it was the seed that flowered, under their gentle influence, into the many varieties of blossoms with which our garden is already filled. to the academy there was no such thing as change or development--their ears were deaf to any innovation, their eyes were blind to any fresh beauty. to others, every new movement foretold its significance, and the century closed with the recognition of the fact that art must live and develop if it is to be anything but a comfortable means of subsistence for a self-constituted authority of forty and their friends. let me be allowed to conclude this chapter, and my imperfect efforts to indicate the energies of six centuries of art in so small a space, with a passage from a lecture delivered in by mr selwyn image, now slade professor at oxford, which embodies the spirit in the air at that time, and foreshadows what was to come. "i do not feel that we have come here to sing a requiem for art this afternoon," he said. "as a giant it will renew its strength and rejoice to run its course. i am not a prophet, i cannot tell you just what that course is going to be. nor is it possible to estimate what is around us with the same security, with the same value, that we estimate what has passed--you must be at a certain distance to take things in. but in contemporary art we can notice some characteristics, which are quite at one with what we call the modern spirit; and extremely suggestive--for they seem to indicate movement, and therefore life, in this imaginative sphere, just as there is movement and life in the sphere of science or of social interests. for instance, in modern representative work ... i think anyone comparing it as a whole with the work of the old masters, will be struck as against their distinctness, containedness, simplicity and serenity; with its complexity, restlessness, and vagueness, and emotion, and suggestiveness in place of delineation, and impressionism in place of literal transcription--and this alike in execution and motive. i do not mean to say that these qualities are better than the qualities that preceded them, or worse--but only that they are different, only that they are of the modern spirit--only that they indicate movement and life; and so far that is hopeful--is it not?" the end _index_ academy of painting, the french, ---- the royal, , , - alamanus, giovanni or johannes, , allegri, antonio, or correggio, alma-tadema, sir lawrence, altdorfer, albert, , - angelico, fra, animal painters, , - aretino, spinello, arnolde, backer, balen, henry van, , barret, basaiti, marco, , bassano, jacopo da, - bastiani, lazzaro di, - baudelaire, , bazzi, giovanni antonio (sodoma), bellini, gentile, , - , , ---- giovanni, , , , - , , , , , ---- jacopo, , , , belvedere, andrea, berchem, nicholas, - , , beruete, senor, quoted, , , , , bettes, john, , ---- thomas, bol, boltraffio, giovanni antonio, bonifazio veronese or veneziano, - bordes, lassalle, bosboom, botticelli, sandro, , - , botticini, francesco, boucher, françois, - , , , , bouguereau, bourdon, sebastien, - bouts, dirk, bracquemond, bril, paul, broederlam, melchior, , , brouwer, adrian, , , , - brueghel, jan, or velvet brueghel, , ----- pieter (or peasant), ---- ---- his son, brun, le, - bruyn, bartel, buonarroti. _see_ michelangelo burnet, on turner, byzantine art, , caliari, paolo, - campidoglio, michel de, canale, antonio, caro-delvaille, quoted, , , , carpaccio, vittore, , - carracci, the, , ---- agostino, , , ---- annibale, , ---- lodovico, , catalonia, school of, catena, vincenzo, , cazin, champaigne, philippe de, - chantrey trust, the, chardin, , , , chartered society, the, cimabue, giovanni, - , , , , , claude (or claude lorraine, or gellée), , - cleef, joos van, clouet, françois, ---- jehan or jean, cole, peter, ---- vicat, conegliano, cima da, , - constable, , , , , cook, herbert, quoted, , , copley, john singleton, corot, correggio, cotes, cotman, john sell, - , , courbet, couture, cox, cozens, john robert, cranach, lucas, , - credi, lorenzo di, creswick, crivelli, carlo, , crome, john, or old crome, , ---- john bernay, his son, crowe and cavalcaselle, quoted, cunningham, allan, "life of hogarth," , , , cuyp, albert, - ---- jacob gerritz, dance, nathaniel, daubigny, daumier, david, jacques louis, , , , dayes, edward, quoted, on turner, decamps, degas, delacroix, eugène, , - diana, benedetto, dilke, lady, quoted, dobson, william, dolce, carlo, ---- ludovico, on titian, , domenichino, - , donatello, , doré, dou, gerard, , , doyen, duccio of siena, , , , , dürer, albert, , , , , , , - , duret, théodore, quoted, on manet, - dyck, anthony van, , , - , , , , , ---- ---- in england, - dutch school, - eclectics, the, edwards, edward, quoted, on art exhibitions, elsheimer, adam, , emilia, schools of, english school, early portrait painters of, - ---- in eighteenth century, - ---- spirit of revolt in nineteenth century, _et seq._ everdingen, , exhibitions of painting, eyck, hubert van, , , , , , ---- jan van, , , - , , , fabriano, gentile da, , fabritius, karel, fantin-latour, fiori, mario di, flaxman, john, on romney, - flemish school, - floris, franz, foppa, vincenzo, fragonard, jean honoré, , , francesco, piero della, franciabigio, free society of artists, french academy of painting, french school in seventeenth century, - ---- in eighteenth century, - ---- in nineteenth century, frith, w. p., quoted, fyt, jan, , gaddi, taddeo, gainsborough, thomas, , - , garrard, mark, gellée, claude, or claude, , - genre painters of dutch school, - géricault, , german schools, - ghirlandaio, domenico, , giambono, michele, , gillot, claude, , giorgione, , , , , , , giotto di bondone, - , , , , girtin, , gossaert, jan, or mabuse, , , , , gosse, edmund, quoted, , goubeau, antoine, goya, francisco, - goyen, jan van, , , - , grebber, peter, greco, el, greene, thomas, quoted, on turner, greenhill, gros, le, , greuze, jean baptiste, - , , gruenewald, matthew, guardi, francesco, guercino, hals, frans, - , , , , , , , , harpignies, heem, de, heemskirk, martin, helst, bartholomew van der, , - , herle, wilhelm van, or meister wilhelm, herrera, francisco de, highmore, hilliard, hobbema, meindert, - hogarth, william, , - , , , , holbein, hans, , , , - ---- in england, hondecoeter, giles, , ---- gysbert, ---- melchior, , , hone, nathaniel, honthorst, gerard, - hoogh, peter de, , hudson, thomas, , hunt, alfred, ---- holman, , , , , huysum, james van, ---- jan van, - ---- justus van, ---- michael van, image, mr selwyn, quoted, ingres, israels, jervas, john of bruges, , jongkind, jordaens, jacob, , , , kauffmann, angelica, kneller, sir godfrey, , , knupler, nicolas, kugler, quoted, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , lancret, nicholas, - , landscape, painters of, - largillière, nicholas, , , lastman, peter, laurens, j. p., lawrence, , - , , le brun, , le gros, , le moine, françois, le sueur, eustache, - lefort, quoted, on velasquez, lely, sir peter, , , leyden, lucas van, , lingelbach, , lippi, fra filippo, , , ---- filippino, lochner, stephen, lockie, lombardy, schools of, longhi, pietro, loo, carle van, lorenzetti, pietro, lorraine, claude, , - lotto, lorenzo, , , - luini, bernardino, lyne, mabuse, jan van, , , , , maes, nicolas, , - manet, Édouard, , - mansueti, giovanni, mantegna, andrea, - , , , , maratti, carlo, maris, the brothers, masaccio, , , - masolino, massys, jan, ---- quentin, - , , mauve, meissonier, memling, hans, , - , mengs, raphael, messina, antonello da, , , , metsu, michelangelo, , - , , , mieris, frans van, millais, , , , millet, moine, françois le, monoyer, baptiste, montagna, bartolommeo, mor, sir antonio, morland, george, - ---- henry, his father, moroni, moser, michael, moyaert, nicholas, murano, antonio da, murillo, bartolomé estéban, - muther, dr, quoted, , , nasmyth, new english art club, , norwich school, oil painting, introduction of, oliver, oort, adam van, orcagna, andrea, orley, bernard van, , ostade, adrian van, , , , ---- isaac van, , ouwater, pacheco, - padua, school of, palma, giovane, ---- vecchio, , , parma, school of, pater, jean baptiste joseph, - peake, penny, perugian or umbrian school, , , perugino, pietro, , pinas, piombo, sebastiano del, - pisanello, vittore, , pissarro, pollaiuolo, antonio, - , pontormo, pot, hendrik gerritz, potter, paul, ---- pieter, poussin, gaspard (gaspard dughet), - , ---- nicholas, - poynter, sir edward, predis, ambrogio di, , pre-raphaelite brotherhood, , , , previtali, andrea, prudhon, quattrocentists, the earlier, - ---- the later, _et seq._ raeburn, raphael, , , - ---- sir joshua reynolds on, , rembrandt van ryn, , , - , reni, guido, reynolds, sir joshua, - , - , ---- quoted, on boucher, ---- ---- on bourdon, , ---- ---- on gainsborough, - ---- ---- on hogarth, ---- ---- on rubens and titian, - ---- ---- on titian and raphael, ---- ---- on veronese, ---- revival of english school due to, ---- _refs._ to, , , , , , , , ribera, richardson, ridolfi, quoted, rigaud, hyacinthe, , riley, robert, hubert, robusti, jacopo. _see_ tintoretto romano, giulio, romney, george, , , , - , rossetti, , , , rowlandson, royal academy, the, - ---- foundation of, , rubens, peter paul, - ---- and van dyck, - ---- and velasquez, , ---- pupils of, - ---- _refs._ to, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , rucellai madonna, the, ruisdael, jacob, , , - , , ruskin against the philistines, - ---- on whistler, sandrart, joachim, ---- quoted, sansovino, , sarto, andrea del, , scharf, sir george, schlegel, on altdorfer, schongauer, martin, scorel, jan, sebastiani, lazzaro di. _see_ bastiani segar, francis, ---- william, seghers, daniel, semitecolo, nicolo, shee, sir martin archer, signorelli, luca, smith, john, catalogue raisonné, quoted, , , , snyders, frans, , , - , sodoma, spanish school, - spinello of arezzo, or aretino, squarcione, francesco, , , - , steen, jan, - stevens, streetes, guillim, , strozzi, bernard, sueur, eustache le, - swanenburg, jacob van, , tassi, agostino, teniers, abraham, ---- david, the elder, , ---- ---- the younger, , , , , terburg, gerard, - thornhill, sir james, , thulden, theodore van, tiepolo, giovanni battista, tintoretto, il, - , , , , , , titian, - , , , , , , , turner, , , - , , ---- claude's influence on, , tuscan schools, - uccello, paolo, - , umbrian or perugian school, , , vaga, piero del, van balen, henry, , van cleef, joos, van de velde, adrian, , , ---- willem, the elder, ---- ---- the younger, - van der helst, bartholomew, , - , van der weyden, roger, - , van dyck, anthony, , , - , , , , , ---- ---- in england, , van eyck, hubert, , , , , , ---- jan, , , , , , , van goyen, jan, , , - , van huysum, james, ---- jan, - ---- justus, ---- michael, van leyden, lucas, , van loo, carle, van mabuse, jan, , , , , van mieris, frans, van oort, adam, van orley, bernard, , van ostade, adrian, , , , ---- isaac, , van swanenburg, jacob, , van thulden, theodore, vasari, quoted, on andrea del sarto, ---- on botticelli, , , ---- on cimabue, , , , , , ---- on fra angelico, ---- on fra filippo lippi, , , ---- on giotto, ---- on introduction of oil painting, , , ---- on leonardo da vinci, , , , ---- on masaccio, , ---- on michelangelo, , , , ---- on pollaiuolo, , , ---- on the quattrocentists, ---- on raphael, ---- on spinello of aretino, , ---- on titian, , ---- _refs._ to, , vecellio, tiziano. _see_ titian velasquez, , , - , , , , venetian schools, - verhaegt, tobias, vermeer of delft, jan, , veronese, paolo, - , verrocchio, andrea, , , vertue, george, vinci, leonardo da, , - , , , vivarini family, the, , ---- antonio, , , ---- bartolommeo, ---- luigi, or alvise, vlieger, simon de, vollon, volterra, daniele da, ---- francesco da, vos, simon de, waagen, dr, quoted, , - , , , , , walker, robert, walpole, quoted, , , wals, gottfried, watteau, antoine, - , , watts, george frederick, , weenix, jan baptist, , , , ---- ---- his son, , wesel, hermann wynrich von, west, benjamin, , , weyden, roger van der, - , whistler, james m'neill, , , wilhelm, meister, wills, wils, jan, wilson, richard, , , wint, peter de, wouvermans, philip, - , , , wyczewa, m. de, quoted, wynants, jan, , - zampieri, domenico, or domenichino, - zoffany, zurbaran, footnotes: [ ] national gallery catalogue. [ ] "titien," par henry caro-delvaille. librairie félix alcan. [ ] an old copy of this picture is in the edinburgh gallery. illustration: _hans holbein the younger_ _coloured chalks. basel museum_ little books on art general editor: cyril davenport holbein by beatrice fortescue with forty-six illustrations methuen & co. essex street w.c. london _first published in _ contents chapter i holbein's period, parentage, and early work historical epoch and antecedents--special conditions and character of early christian art--ideals and influence of the monk--holbein's relation to mediæval schools--his father, uncle, and augsburg home--probable dates for his birth and his father's death--troubles and dispersion of the augsburg household--from augsburg to basel--his brother ambrose--erasmus and the _praise of folly_; some erroneous impressions of both--erasmus and holbein no protestants at heart--holbein and the bible--illustrated vernacular bibles in circulation before luther and holbein were born--holbein's earliest basel oil-paintings--direct and indirect education--historical, geographical, and scientific revolutions of his day--beginning of his connection with the burgomaster of basel--jacob meyer zum hasen--holbein's woodcuts--his studies from nature--sudden visit to lucerne--italian influence on his art--work for the burgomaster of lucerne chapter ii holbein basiliensis ( - ) _holbein basiliensis_--enters the painters' guild--bonifacius amerbach and his portrait--the last supper and its judas--the so-called "fountain of life" at lisbon--genius for design and symbolism in architecture--versatility, humour, fighting scenes--holbein becomes a citizen and marries--basel in --froben's circle--tremendous events and issues of the time--holbein's religious works--the nativity and adoration at freiburg--hans oberriedt--the basel passion in eight panels--passion drawings--christ in the tomb--christ and mary magdalen at the door of the sepulchre--rathaus wall-paintings--birth of holbein's eldest child--the solothurn madonna: its discovery and rescue--holbein's wife and her portraits--suggested solutions of some biographical enigmas--title pages--portraits of erasmus--journey to france, probably to lyons and avignon--publishers and pictures of the so-called "dance of death"--dorothea offenburg as venus and laïs corinthiaca--triumph of the protestant party--holbein decides to leave basel for a time--the meyer-madonna of darmstadt and dresden, and its portraits chapter iii chances and changes ( - ) first visit to england--sir thomas more: his home and portraits--the windsor drawings--bishop fisher--archbishop warham--bishop stokesley--sir henry guildford and his portrait--nicholas kratzer--sir bryan tuke--holbein's return to basel--portrait-group of his wife and two eldest children; two versions--holbein's children, and families claiming descent from him--iconoclastic fury--ruined arts--death of meyer zum hasen--another meyer commissions the last paintings for basel--return to england--description of the steelyard--portraits of its members--george gysze--basel council summons holbein home--"the ambassadors" at the national gallery; accepted identification--coronation of queen anne boleyn--lost paintings for the guildhall of the steelyard; the triumphs of riches and poverty--the great morett portrait; identifications--holbein's industry and fertility--designs for metal-work and other drawings--solomon and the queen of sheba chapter iv painter royal ( - ) queen jane seymour--death of erasmus, and title-page portrait--the whitehall painting of henry viii.--munich drawing of henry viii.--birth of an heir and the "jane seymour cup"--death of the queen--christina, duchess of milan--secret service for the king--flying visit to basel and arrangements for a permanent return--apprentices his son philip at paris--portrait of the prince of wales and the king's return gift--anne of cleves--thomas howard, duke of norfolk--catherine howard--lapse of holbein's basel citizenship--irregularities--provision for wife and children--residence in london--execution of queen catherine howard--marriage of catherine parr--dr. chamber--unfinished work for the barber-surgeons' hall--death of holbein--his will--place of burial--holbein's genius: its true character and greatness catalogue of principal existing works references index list of illustrations . holbein _frontispiece_ self portrait. from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . "prosy" and "hans" holbein drawn by their father, hans holbein the elder. silver-point. (berlin cabinet.) . schoolmaster's signboard oils. (basel museum.) . jacob meyer (zum hasen) oils. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . dorothea meyer (née kannegiesser) oils. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . bonifacius amerbach oils. (basel museum.) . fight of landsknechte washed drawing. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . the nativity oils. (university chapel, freiburg cathedral.) from a photograph by g. röbke, freiburg. . the passion i. gethsemane. ii. the kiss of judas. iii. before pontius pilate. iv. the scourging. v. the mocking. vi. the way to calvary. vii. "it is finished." viii. the entombment. eight-panelled altar-piece. (basel museum.) . christ in the grave oils. (basel museum.) . the risen christ oils. (hampton court gallery.) . the solothurn, or zetter'sche, madonna oils. (solothurn museum.) from a photograph by braun, clement, and cie., paris. . unnamed portrait-study; not catalogued as holbein's silver-point and indian ink. (louvre collection. believed by the writer to be holbein's drawing of his wife before her first marriage, and the model for the solothurn madonna.) from a photograph by braun, clement, and cie., paris. . erasmus oils. (the louvre.) from a photograph by a. giraudon, paris. . the ploughman; the priest "images of death." woodcut series. . dorothea offenburg as the goddess of love oils. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . dorothea offenburg as laÏs corinthiaca oils. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . the meyer-madonna oils. (grand ducal collection, darmstadt.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . the meyer-madonna (later version. held by many to be a copy.) oils. (dresden gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . sir thomas more chalks. (windsor castle.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . john fisher, bishop of rochester chalks. (windsor castle.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . sir henry guildford oils. (windsor castle.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . nicholas kratzer oils. (the louvre.) . sir bryan tuke oils. (munich gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . elsbeth, holbein's wife, with their two eldest children oils. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . "behold to obey is better than sacrifice." samuel denouncing saul washed drawing. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . jÖrg (or george) gyze oils. (berlin museum.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . "the ambassadors" oils. (national gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . the morett portrait oils. (dresden gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . queen jane seymour oils. (vienna gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . king henry viii. and his father fragment of cartoon used for the whitehall wall-painting. (duke of devonshire's collection.) . king henry viii. (life study; probably for the whitehall painting.) chalks. (munich collection.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . design for the "jane seymour cup" (bodleian library.) . christina of denmark, duchess of milan oils. (national gallery.) lent by the duke of norfolk. . anne of cleves oils. (the louvre.) from a photograph by a. giraudon, paris. . thomas howard, third duke of norfolk oils. (windsor castle.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . catherine howard chalk drawing. (windsor castle.) . dr. chamber oils. (vienna gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. holbein[ ] chapter i holbein's period, parentage, and early work historical epoch and antecedents--special conditions and character of early christian art--ideals and influence of the monk--holbein's relation to mediæval schools--his father, uncle, and augsburg home--probable dates for his birth and his father's death--troubles and dispersion of the augsburg household--from augsburg to basel--his brother ambrose--erasmus and the _praise of folly_; some erroneous impressions of both--erasmus and holbein no protestants at heart--holbein and the bible--illustrated vernacular bibles in circulation before luther and holbein were born--holbein's earliest basel oil paintings--direct and indirect education--historical, geographical, and scientific revolutions of his day--beginning of his connection with the burgomaster of basel--jacob meyer zum hasen--holbein's woodcuts--his studies from nature--sudden visit to lucerne--italian influence on his art--work for the burgomaster of lucerne. the eighty-three years stretching from to --between the probable year of the elder hans holbein's birth and that in which the younger, the great holbein, died--constitute one of those periods which rightly deserve the much-abused name of an epoch. the christian era of itself had known many: the yellow-danger of the fifth century making one hideous smear across europe; the _hic jacet_ with which this same century entombed an empire three continents could not content; the new impulse which charlemagne and alfred had given to progress in the ninth century; the triumphant establishment of papal supremacy, that napoleonic idea of gregory vii.--_sanctus satanas_, of the eleventh, and grand architect in a vaster roman empire which still "humanly contends for glory"; and lastly, at the very threshold of the holbeins, the invention of movable printing types about , and the fall of constantinople in , which combined to drive the prodigies and potencies of greek genius through the world. each of these had done its own special work for the advancement of man--as for that matter all things must, whether by help or helplessness. not less than elijah did the wretched priests of baal serve those slow, sure, eternal purposes, which include an ahab and all the futile fury of his little life as the sun includes its "spots." but although the stream of history is one, and its every succeeding curve only an expansion of the first, there has probably been no century of our era when this stream has been so suddenly enlarged, or bent so sharply toward fresh constellations as in that of the holbeins,--when religion and art, as well as science, saw a new world upon its astonished horizon. so that we properly call it a transition period, and its representative men "transitional." yet we shall never get near to these real men, to their real world, unless we can forget all about the pose of this or the other zeitgeist--that tale _told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing._ for we must keep constantly in mind that what we call the middle ages or--worse yet--the dark ages, made up the yesterday of the holbeins and was the flesh and blood transmitted to them as their own flesh and blood with all its living bonds toward the old and all its living impulses toward the new. a now famous new zealander is, we know, to sketch our own "mediævalism" with contemptuous pity for its darkness. but until his day comes, our farthing-dips seem to make a gaudy illumination. and, meantime, we are alive; we walk about; we, too, can swell the chorus which the initiated chant in every century with the same fond confidence: "we alone enjoy the holy light." the new is ever becoming old; the old ever changing into new. and if we ask why each waxes or wanes just when it does and as it does, there is, in the last analysis, no better answer than aurora's explanation for chancing on the poets-- _because the time was ripe._ and the holbein century is one of stupendous transitions because the time was ripe; and not simply because printing was invented, or greek scholars were driven from constantinople to scatter abroad in europe, or ferdinand and isabella wanted a direct route to cathay, or friar martin nailed ninety-five theses to the door of wittenberg's church, and built himself thereby an everlasting name as luther. and because the time was ripe for a new art, even more than because this or that great painter entrained it, it also had its transition period, and holbein is set down in manuals as a transitional painter. teutonic, too; because all christian art is either byzantine or italian or teutonic in its type. when it first crept from the catacombs under the protection of the constantinople court it could but be byzantine; that strange composite obtained by stripping the greek "beast" of every pagan beauty and then decking it out with crude oriental ornament. but who that prizes the peculiar product of that fanaticism would have had its cradle without this sleepless terror, lest for the whole world of classic heathendom it should lose the dear-bought soul of purely christian ideals? or who, remembering that in thus relentlessly sacrificing its entire heritage of pagan accumulation it put back the clock of art to the stone age, and had to begin all over again in the helpless bewilderment of untaught childish effort,--could find twice ten centuries too long for the astounding feat it achieved? ten centuries, after all, make but a marvellous short course betwixt the archaic compositions of the third century and the compositions of giotto or wilhelm meister. a great deal of nonsense is talked about the "tyrannies" which the monastic age inflicted on art. of course, monasticism fostered fanaticism. it does not need the luminous genius that said it, to teach us that "whatever is necessary to what we make our sole object is sure, in some way or in some time or other, to become our master." and with the monk, the true monk in his day of usefulness, every knowledge and every art was good or bad according as it served monastic ideals. but it is absurd to say that the monk--_qua_ monk--"put the intellect in chains." the whole body of his oppression was not so paralysing as the iron little finger of malherbe and his school of "classic" despots. to charge upon the monk the limitations of his crude thought and cruder methods is about as intelligent as it would be to fall foul of shakespeare because boys played his women's parts. the springs of helicon were the monk's also, as witness tuotilo and bernard of clairvaux; but it was by the waters of jordan that his miracles were wrought. as johnson somewhere says of watts, "every kind of knowledge was by the piety of his mind converted into theology." and for the rest,--by the labour of his hands, by his fasting from the things of the flesh, by his lofty faith--however erring or forgotten or betrayed, in individual cases,--by every impressive lesson of a hard life lived unto others and a hard death died unto himself, century after century it was the monk who taught and helped the barbarian of every land to turn the desolate freedom of the wild ass into a smiling homestead and the savage africa of his own heart into at least a better place. the marvel is that he could at the same time find room or energy to make his monastery also a laboratory, a library, and a studio. and yet he did. to say that he abhorred greek ideals is to say that the shepherd abhors the wolf. his life was one long fight with the insidious poison of the greek. he did not,--at any rate in his best days--believe at all in art for art's sake; and had far too intimate an acquaintance with the "natural man" to do him even justice. what he wanted was to do away with him. yet with all its repellent features, it is to this unflinching exclusiveness of the monkish ideal that we owe one of the most exquisite blossoms on the stock of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,--their innocent and appealing art; an art as original and as worthy of reverence, within its own peculiar province, as the masterpieces of greece or italy. you must turn from the beauty of antinous to the beauty of, say, the saint veronica, among the works of the cologne school at munich, before you can estimate the gulf of many things besides time which for ever divides the world of the one from the world of the other. and then you must essay to embody the visions of patmos with a child's colour-box and brushes, before you can compare the achievements--the amazing achievements--of the monkish ideal with the achievements of classic paganism. with the school of wilhelm meister this tremendous revolution had accomplished itself; and solely through the indomitable will of the monk. the ideal of greece had been to show how gods walk the earth. this christian ideal was to show how devout men and women walk with god. their ineffable heavenly faces look out from their golden world-- _inviolate, unwearied, divinest, sweetest, best,_ upon this far-off, far other world, where nothing is inviolate, and divinest things must come at last to tears and ashes. but the monk had had his day as well as his way. the so-called gothic architecture had expressed its uttermost of aspiration and tenuity; and painting had fulfilled its utmost accommodation to the ever more slender wall-spaces and forms which this architecture necessitated. and once again, in the fifteenth century, the time was ripe for a new transition. art was now to reveal the realities of this world, and to concern itself with man among them. and just as the law of reaction flung the mind into religious revolt from the outworn dogmas and overgrown pretensions of the monkish ideal, so did it drive the healthy reaction of art into its own extravagances of protest. and we shall see how even a genius like holbein's was unable to entirely free itself from this reactionary defect. for with all his astonishing powers, imaginative and technical, he never wholly overcame that defect of making his figures too short and too thick-set for grace, which amounted to a deformity in the full-length figures of his early work, and was due to his fierce revolt from the unnaturally elongated forms of an earlier period. yet we should make a grave mistake if we were to regard holbein as cut off by this reaction from all affinities with the monkish ideals of the cologne school. on the contrary. we shall see, especially in his religious pictures, how many of those ideals had fed the very springs of his imagination and sunk deep into his art; only expressing themselves in his own symbolism and in forms unlike theirs. * * * * * in the augsburg gallery there is a painting by holbein's father, the "basilica of st. paul," in which there is a group introduced after the fashion of the period, which has a special biographical interest. this group, in the baptism of st. paul, is believed by many authorities to be a portrait-group of the painter himself,--hans holbein the elder, and his two young sons, ambrose (or amprosy, as it was often written) and johannes, or "hanns." the portrait of the father is certainly like holbein's own drawing of him in the duke d'aumale's collection, which sandrart engraved in his account of the younger holbein; while the heads of the two boys are very like those which we shall find later in a drawing in the berlin gallery. from the pronounced way in which his father's hand rests on little hans' head, while the left points him out,--and even his elder brother "prosy" shows by his attitude the special notice to be taken of hans,--it is clear that if this is a portrait-group either it was painted when the boys were actually older, or the younger had already given some astonishing proof of that precocity which his early works display; for in this group the younger boy cannot be more than eight or nine years old. hans holbein the elder, who stands here with his long brown hair and beard falling over his fur gown, was a citizen of augsburg, living for a while in the same street with the honoured augsburg painter, hans burgkmair, and occasionally working with him on large commissions. that he was a native of augsburg, and the son--as is generally believed--of "michel holbain" (augsburg commonly spelt _holbein_ with an _a_), leather-dresser--i myself cannot feel so sure as others do. there is no documentary evidence to prove that the michael holbein of augsburg ever had a son, and there is both documentary and circumstantial evidence to prove that the descendants of hans holbein the elder claimed a different origin. that a man was a "citizen," or burgher, of any town, of course proves nothing. it was a period when painters especially learned their trades and practised it in many centres. and this, when guilds were all-powerful and no one could either join one without taking citizenship with it, or pursue its calling in any given place without association with the guild of that place, often involved a series of citizenships. the elder holbein was himself a burgher of ulm at one time, if not of other cities in which he worked. but that augsburg was his fixed home for the greater part of his life is certain; and the rate-books show that after the leather-dresser had disappeared from their register of residents in the retail business quarter of the city, in the neighbourhood of the lech canals, hans holbein the elder was, in , a householder in this very place. for some years the name of "sigmund, his brother," is bracketed with his; but about sigmund holbein established himself in berne, where he accumulated a very respectable competence, which, at his death in , he bequeathed to his "dear nephew, hans holbein, the painter," at that time a citizen of basel. sigmund also was a painter, but no unquestioned work of his is known. there is nothing to show who was the wife of sigmund holbein's elder brother, hans. but by this elder hans had either a child or children mentioned with him (_sein kind_, applying equally to one or more). in all probability this is the earliest discoverable record of hans holbein the younger, and his elder brother ambrose. in all probability, too, hans was then about two years old, and "prosy" a year or two older. at one time it was vaguely thought that the elder hans had three sons; and prosy, or "brosie," as it was sometimes written, got converted into a "bruno" holbein. but no vestige of an actual bruno is to be found. and as ambrose holbein's trail, whether in rate-books or art-records, utterly vanishes after , it will be seen that for the most part of the younger holbein's life he had no brother. hence it is easy to understand how his uncle sigmund's will speaks only of "my dear nephew." hans the elder lived far on in his younger son's life. his works attest that he had talents and ideals of no mean order. but i do not propose to enter here upon the vexed question as to how far the "renaissance" characteristics of the later works attributed to his hand are his own or his son's. learned and exhaustive arguments have by turns consigned the best of these works to the father, to the son, and back again to the father. in at least one instance of high authority the same writer has, at different periods, held a brief for both sides and for opposite opinions! in this connection, as on the battlefield of some of the son's greatest paintings, the single-minded student of holbein may not unprofitably draw three conclusions from the copious literature on the subject:--first, that a working hypothesis is not of necessity the right one; secondly, that in the matter of his pronouncements the critical expert also may occasionally be regarded as _un animal qui s'habille, déshabille et babille toujours;_ and thirdly, that in default of incontestable documentary proofs the modest "so far as i have been able to discover" of holbein's first biographer, van mander, is a capital anchor to windward, and is at any rate preferable to driving forth upon the howling waters of classification, like constance upon the sea of greece, "alle sterelesse, god wot." but my chief reason for not pursuing the protean phantom of holbein's augsburg period is that,--apart from my own disagreement with many accepted views about the works it includes, and the utter lack of data or determining any position irrefutably,--it is comparatively unimportant to the purpose of this little book. for wherever the younger painter was born,--whether at augsburg or ulm or elsewhere,--and whatever i believe to be his rightful claim to such paintings as the st. elizabeth and st. barbara of the st. sebastian altar-piece at munich, fame, like van mander, has rightly written him down holbein _basiliensis_. it is true that his father's brushes were his alphabet. it may be true, though i doubt it, that his father's teaching was his only technical school. but if he was, as to the last he gloried in being, the child of the old period, he was much more truly the immediate pupil of the van eycks than of his father's irresolute ideals; while basel was his university. and whatever may have been his debt to those childish years when the little iulus followed his father with trembling steps, his debt to basel was immensely greater. the door-sill of johann froben's printing-house was the threshold of his earthly immortality. when he turned his back on the low-vaulted years of augsburg, it was because for him also the time was ripe. the old period had cast his genius; the new was to expand it to new powers and purposes. _still, as the spiral grew, he left the past year's dwelling for the new; stole with soft step its shining archway through, built up its idle door, stretch'd in his last-found home and knew the old no more._ * * * * * it may easily have been the elder hans' continuous troubles, whether due to his fault or his misfortune it is idle now to inquire, which made his sons leave augsburg. certain it is that he but escaped from the clutches of one suit for debt after another in order to tumble into some fresh disaster of the sort, until his own brother sigmund appears among his exasperated creditors. after hans holbein the elder vanishes from the records. probably, therefore, it was at about this date that he paid,--heaven and himself only knowing how willingly,--the one debt which every man pays at the last. at all events his sons did leave augsburg about ; or, at any rate, hans did, since there is a naïve little virgin and child in the basel museum, dated , which must have been painted in the neighbourhood of constance in this year,--probably for the village church where it was discovered. as everything points to the conclusion that holbein was born in , he would have been some seventeen years old at this time, and "prosy" eighteen or nineteen. substantially, therefore, they must have looked pretty much as in the drawing which their father had made of them three years before; that precious drawing in silver-point which is now in the berlin collection (plate ). over the elder, still with the curly locks of the group in the "st. paul basilica," is written _prosy_; over the younger, _hanns_. the age of the latter, fourteen, may still be deciphered above his portrait, but that of ambrose has quite vanished. between the two is the family name, written in augsburg fashion, holbain. at the top of the sheet stands the year of the drawing, almost illegible, but believed to be . illustration: plate "prosy" and "hanns" _holbain_ [_drawn by their father, hans holbein the elder_] _silver-point. berlin cabinet_ of the elder brother all that is certainly known may be said here once for all. in he entered the painters' guild at basel, where he is called "ambrosius holbein, citizen of augsburg." he made a number of designs for wood-engraving, title-pages, and ornaments, for the printers of basel--all of fair merit. he may also have worked in the studio of hans herbster, a basel painter of considerable note. herbster's portrait in oils, long held to be a fine work of the younger brother,--now that it has passed from the earl of northbrook's collection to that of the basel museum, is attributed to ambrose holbein. but little else is known of him; and after , as has been said, the absence of any record of him among the living suggests that he died in that year. in the late summer of came that momentous trifle which has for ever linked the name of young hans holbein with that of erasmus. whether, as some say, the scholar gave him the order, or, as seems more likely, some friend of both had the copy, now in the basel museum, on the margins of which the lad drew his spirited pen-and-ink sketches,--it is on record that they were made before the end of december, and that erasmus himself was delighted with their wit and vigour. and, in truth, they are exceedingly clever, both in the art with which a few strokes suggest a picture, and in that by which the picture emphasises every telling point in the satire. but a great deal too much has been built upon both the satire and the sketches; a great deal, also, falsely built upon them. they have been made to do duty, in default of all genuine proofs, as supports to the theory by which protestant writers have claimed both erasmus and holbein as followers of luther in their hearts, without sufficient courage or zeal to declare themselves such. i confess that, though myself no less ardent as a protestant than as an admirer of holbein, i cannot, for the life of me, see any justification for either the claim or its implied charge of timorousness. erasmus's _praise of folly_--like so many a paradox started as a joke,--had no notion of being serious at all until it was seriously attacked. some four years before its illustrations riveted the name of a stripling artist to that of the world-renowned scholar, erasmus had fallen ill while a guest in the sunny bucklersbury home where three tiny daughters and a baby son were the darlings of sir thomas more and his wife. to beguile the tedium of convalescence the invalid had scribbled off a jeu d'esprit, with its punning play on more's name, _encomium moriæ_, in which every theme for laughter, in a far from squeamish day, was collected under that title. read aloud to more and his friends, it was declared much too good to be limited to private circulation; and accordingly, with some revision and expansion, it was printed. that it scourged with its mockery those things in both church and state which erasmus and more and many another fervent churchman hated,--such as the crying evils which called aloud for reformation in the highest places, and above all, that it lashed the detested friars whom the best churchmen most loathed,--these things were foregone conclusions in such a composition. but a laugh, even a satirical laugh, at the expense of excrescences or follies in one's camp, is a very far cry from going over to its foes. as a huge joke erasmus wrote the _praise of folly_; as such more and all his circle lauded it; as such froben reprinted it; and as such young holbein pointed all its laughing gibes. and it was part and parcel of the joke that he launched his own sly arrow at the author himself. erasmus could but laugh at the adroitness with which the young man from augsburg had drawn a reverend scholar writing away at his desk, among the votaries of folly, and written _erasmus_ over his head. but it was hardly to be expected that he should altogether relish the witty implication, or the presumption of the unknown painter who had ventured to make it. nor did he. turning over a page he also contrived to turn the laugh yet once again, this time against the too-presuming artist. finding, perhaps, the coarsest of the sketches, one in keeping with the "fat and splendid pig from the drove of epicurus," he in his turn wrote the name of _holbein_ above the wanton boor at his carousals. it was a reprisal not more delicate than the spirit with which subjects too sacred to have been named in the same breath with folly,--the very words of our lord himself,--had been dragged into such company. but though it, too, was a joke, this little slap of wounded amour propre has found writers to draw from it an entire theory that holbein led a life of debauchery! yet even this feat of deduction is surpassed by that which argues that because erasmus and holbein lashed bad prelates and vicious monks with satire, therefore they detested the whole hierarchy of rome and loathed all monks, good or bad. "erasmus laid the egg which luther hatched" is the oft-repeated cry; forgetting or ignoring the plain fact that erasmus eyed the lutheran egg with no little mistrust in its shell and with unequivocal disgust in its full-feathered development. "what connection have i with luther," he writes some three years after holbein illustrated stultitia's worshippers, "or what recompense have i to expect from him that i should join with him to oppose the church of rome, which i take to be the true part of the church catholic, or to oppose the roman pontiff who is the head of the catholic church? i am not so impious as to dissent from the church nor so ungrateful as to dissent from leo, from whom i have received uncommon favour and indulgence." as to holbein's "protestant sympathies"--using the name for the whole lutheran movement in which protestantism had its rise,--the assertions are even less grounded in fact, if that be possible. if he had it not already in his heart, through erasmus and amerbach and froben and more and every other great influence to which he yielded himself at all, he early acquired a deep and devout sense of the need of reform _within_ the church. like all these lifelong friends, he wanted to see the church of rome return to her purer days and cast off the corruptions of a profligate idleness. like them he couched his lance against the unworthy priest, the gluttonous or licentious monk, the wolves in sheep's clothing that were destroying the fold from within. like them, as they re-echoed colet--the saintly dean of st. paul's,--he passionately favoured the translation of the scriptures into the vernacular and placing them in the hands, or at any rate bringing them to the familiar knowledge, of peasant as well as prelate. but surely one must know very little of the teachings of the stoutest churchmen of holbein's day and acquaintance not to know also that they encouraged if they did not plant these opinions in his mind. "dürer's woodcuts and engravings, especially his various scenes from the passion," writes even woltmann, the biographer to whom every student of holbein owes so grateful a debt, "had prepared the soil among the people for luther's translation of the bible. holbein's pictures from the old testament followed in their wake, and helped forward the work." yet it seems difficult to suppose that woltmann could have been ignorant of the facts of the case. so far were holbein's, or any other artist's, bible illustrations or bible pictures from arguing a "lutheran" monopoly in the vernacular bible, that in germany alone there were fifteen translated and illustrated editions of the bible before luther's appeared; and of these fifteen some half-dozen were published before luther was born. quentell, at cologne, for instance, published a famous translation with exceedingly good woodcuts in ,--three years before luther's birth. while some nine years before quentell's german translation, the abbot niccolo malermi published his _biblia vulgare_ in the italian vernacular, which went through twenty editions in less than a century: one of which,--brought out at venice in by the giunta brothers,--was illustrated by woodcuts of the greatest beauty. so widespread was the demand for this "malermi bible" that another edition, with new illustrations of almost equal merit, was produced at venice in , by the printer known as _anima mia_. all of these were vernacular bibles; all illustrated; all widely known throughout italy and germany before holbein was born or luther was in his tenth year. and certainly it has not yet been suggested by the most rabid protestantism that either these or any of the many other illustrated vernacular bibles printed long before luther's great translation,--a translation with a special claim to immortality because it may be said to have set the standard for modern german,--were anything but roman catholic bibles. they were translated and illustrated in behalf of no doctrine which protestantism does not hold in common with the church of rome. to lose hold of these things, to lose sight of the true attitude of holbein in his bible woodcuts and his "images of death," or of either erasmus or holbein in their satires on the flagrant abuses within their church, and their unwavering devotion to that church,--is to deliberately throw away the clue to the most vital qualities in the work of either, and to the whole course and character of holbein himself, no less than to that of his lifelong friend and benefactor. * * * * * in the young painter who had come to basel to better his fortunes painted a table for hans bär's wedding. the bridegroom marched away, carrying the basel colours, to the bloody field of marignano (or melegnano) in this same year, and never came back to sit with his smiling bride around holbein's most amusing conceits--where "saint nobody" was depicted among all the catastrophes of which he is the scapegoat, and a few ordinary trifles--a letter, a pair of spectacles, etc.--were marvellously represented, as if dropped by chance above the painted decorations, so that people were always attempting to pick them up. but hans bär's sister had been the first wife of a certain brave comrade--meyer "of the hare," who did come back and played an important part in young holbein's career. long lost among forgotten rubbish, hans bär's table has been unearthed, and is now preserved in the town library at zurich. but although holbein had got his foot on the ladder of fame in this year's beginning of his connection with froben, he was as yet very thankful to accept any commission, however humble. and as a human document there is a touch of peculiar, almost pathetic interest about the schoolmaster's signboard preserved by bonifacius amerbach, and now with his collection in the basel museum (plate ). it is a simple thing, with no pretension to a place among "works of art"--this bit of flotsam from , when it was painted. originally the two views, the infant class and the adult class, were on opposite sides of the sign; but they have been carefully split apart so as to be seen side by side. in the one is the quaint but usual dame's school of the period; in the other the public is informed how the adults of basel may retrieve the lack of such early opportunities. the inscription above each sets forth how whosoever wishes to do so can be taught to read and write correctly, and be furnished with all the essentials of a decent education at a very moderate cost; "children on the usual terms." and there is a delightful clause to say that "if anyone is too dull-witted to learn at all, no payment will be accepted, be it burger or apprentice, wife or maid." somehow, looking at the young fellow at the right of the table, in the adult class, sitting facing the anxious schoolmaster, with his own brow all furrowed by the effort to follow him and his mouth doggedly set to succeed,--while the late, low sun of a summer afternoon streams in through the leaded window,--one muses on the chance that so may the young painter from augsburg, now but nineteen, himself have sat upon this very bench and leaned across this very table, in a like determination to widen out his small store of book-learning. he could have had little opportunity to do so in the ever-shifting, bailiff-haunted home of his boyhood. and somewhere he certainly learned to write quite as well as even the average gentleman of his day; witness the notes on his drawings. illustration: plate schoolmaster's signboard _oils. basel museum_ somewhere, too, and no later than these first basel years, he acquired the power to read and appreciate even the niceties of latin, though he probably could not have done more than make these out to his own satisfaction. all his work of illustration is too original, too spontaneous, too full of flashes of subtle personal sympathy with the text, to have emanated from an interpreter, or been dictated by another mind than his own. and this very signboard may have paid for lessons which he could not otherwise afford. for if there is any force in circumstantial evidence it is certain that holbein not only wrote, but read and pondered and thought for himself in these years when he doubtless had many more hours of leisure than he desired, from a financial standpoint. and the greatest pages of his autobiography, written with his brush, will be only so many childish rebuses if we forget what astounding pages of history and argument were turned before him. in augsburg he had seen the emperor maximilian riding in state more than once, and heard much talk about that emperor's interests and schemes and fears; and of thrones and battlefields engaged with or against these. augsburg was in closest ties of commerce with venice; and the tides of many a tremendous issue of civilisation rolled to and fro through the gates of the free swabian city. child and lad, his was a precocious intelligence; and it had been fed upon meat for strong men. he had heard of alexander vi.'s colossal infamies, and those of cæsar borgia as well; and of the kingdoms ranging to this or that standard after the death of pope and prince. he was nine years old then. old enough, too, to drink in the wonderful hero-tales of one christopher columbus of genoa, whose fame was running through the whispering gallery of europe, while he himself lay dying at valladolid--ill, heartbroken, poor, disgraced,--yet proudly confident that he had demonstrated, past all denial, the truth of his own conviction, and touched the shores of cathay, sailing westward from spain. da gama, vespucci, balboa, magellan,--theirs were indeed names and deeds to set the heart of youth leaping, between its cradle and its twenty-fifth year. holbein was twelve when augsburg heard that england had a young king, whom it crowned as henry viii. he was setting out from his home, such as it was, to fight his own boyish battle of life, when the news spread of flodden's field. none of these things would let such an one as he was rest content to apprehend them as a yokel. from either the honest dominie of the signboard or some other, we may be sure he sought the means to read and digest them for himself. and if he learnt some smattering of the geography of the earth and the heavens after the crude notions of an older day, he could have done no other, at that time, in the most enlightened universities. ptolemy's _geographia_ was still the text-book, and the so-called "ptolemaic theory" still the astronomical creed of scholars. copernicus was, indeed, a man of forty when holbein was painting this signboard in . but copernicus was still interluding the active duties of frauenburg's highly successful governor, tax-collector, judge, and vicar-general,--to say nothing of his brilliant essays on finance,--with those studies in his watch-tower which were to revolutionise the astronomical conceptions of twenty centuries and wheel the earth around the sun instead of the sun around the earth. but his system was not actually published until its author was on his death-bed, in the year of holbein's own death. so that these stupendous new ideas were only the unpublished rumours and discussions of circles like that of froben and erasmus, when holbein first entered it. but it is no insignificant sidelight on the history of this circle and this period to recall that the subversive theories of copernicus,--far as even he was from anticipating how a kepler and a newton should one day shatter the "crystalline spheres," and relegate to the dustheap of antiquity the "epicycles," to which he still clung,--had their only generous hearing from influential churchmen of rome. luther recoiled from them as the blasphemies of "an arrogant fool"; and even melanchthon urged that they should be "suppressed by the secular arm." nor let it be forgotten that these matters were never a far cry from those basel printing-presses where the greatest master-printers were themselves thorough and eager scholars; "men of letters," in the noblest sense of the word. and the discussion of all these high concerns of history and letters was as much a part of the daily life surging around their printing-presses as the roar of the rhine was in the air of basel. illustration: plate jacob meyer (zum hasen) _oils. basel museum_ illustration: plate dorothea meyer (_née_ kannegiesser) _oils. basel museum_ as has been said, the sister of that hans bär for whom holbein painted the "st. nobody" table had been the first wife, magdalena bär--a widow with one daughter, when she married him--of jacob meyer,[ ] "of the hare" (_zum hasen_). magdalena died in , and about meyer zum hasen married dorothea kannegiesser. and now in , a memorable year to holbein on account of this influential patron, the young stranger was commissioned to paint the portraits of meyer (plate ) and his second wife, dorothea (plate ). these oil paintings, and the drawings for them, are now in the basel museum. and no one can examine them, remembering that the painter was but nineteen, without echoing the exclamation of a brilliant french writer: "holbein ira beaucoup plus loin dans son art, mais déjà il est superbe." these warm translucent browns are instinct with life and beauty. against the rich renaissance architecture and the blue of the sky-vista the massive head of meyer and the blonde one of his young wife,--the latter so expressive of half-proud, half-shy consciousness,--stand out in wonderful vigour. from the scarlet cap on his thickly curling brown hair to the piece of money between his thumb and finger, the burgomaster's picture is a virile and masterly portrait. and just as forcefully is the charm of his pretty wife,--with all her bravery of scarlet frock, gold embroidery, head-dress and chains,--her own individual charm. they are both as much themselves in this fine architectural setting as in their own good house "of the hare" which adjoined the rising glories of the new renaissance "council hall" (_rathaus_) in which meyer was to preside so often. in he had just been elected mayor for the first time; but after this he had many consecutive re-elections in the alternate years which permitted this. for no burgomaster could hold office for two years in actual succession. previous to being mayor he had been an eminent personage as master of the guilds. and both before and after his mayoralty he was a distinguished soldier,--rising from ensign to captain in the basel contingent which served at different times among the auxiliaries of france and of the pope. but what made this election of a civic epoch was that meyer zum hasen (there were many unrelated meyers in basel, and two among holbein's patrons, who must be carefully distinguished according to the name of the house each occupied) was the first burgomaster ever elected in this city from below the knightly rank. while the piece of money in his hand, far from fulfilling the absurd purpose sometimes suggested,--that of showing his claim to wealth!--marks another civic event of this year. for it was on the th of january, , that the emperor maximilian had just issued the charter which gave to basel the right to mint her own gold coins. in the painting the pose of meyer's right hand has been altered, and the position which holbein originally gave it can still be made out. the monogram and date are on the background. in accordance with his invariable rule for portraits in oils, holbein first made a careful drawing of each head on the same scale as the finished picture, carrying it out with great freedom but at the same time with astonishing care and finish. so that his studies for portraits are themselves works of art, sometimes invested with even more spirit than the oil painting, which was never made direct from the living model,--at any rate, until ready for the finishing touches. drawn with a point which could give a line as bold or as almost impalpable as he wished, and modelled to the very texture of the surfaces, the carnations are so sufficiently indicated or rendered with red chalk as to serve every purpose. sometimes notes are also added. thus in the upper corner of the drawing for meyer's head the artist has noted "eyebrows lighter than the hair" in his microscopic yet firm writing. with these fine portraits, painted as if united by the same architectural background, holbein began a friendship of many years. after some four centuries it is not possible to produce written records of such ties except in occasional corroborative details. but neither is it possible to mistake the painted records of repeated commissions. while as the lifelong leader of the catholic party in basel, it was natural that meyer zum hasen should have much in common with a painter who all his life held firmly to his friendships with the most conspicuous champions of that party. johann froben was another of these; and from until froben's death eleven years later holbein had more and more to do for this printer. occasionally, too, he drew for other basel printers; but not often. the eighty-two sketches on the margins of that priceless copy of the _praise of folly_, which basel preserves in her museum, had been suited to their company. admirable, though unequal, as are their merits, they _are_ sketches, whose chief beauty is their happy spontaneity. such things are among the trifles of art, and are not to be put into the scales at all with the finished perfection of his serious designs for wood engraving. these were drawn on the block; and even these cannot properly represent the drawing itself except when cut by some such master hand as his own. since in preparing the design for printing the background is cut away, leaving the composition itself in lines of relief,--it follows that everything, so far as the reproduction is concerned, must depend upon the cleanness and delicacy of the actual cutting. a clouded eye, a fumbling touch, and the most ethereal idea becomes its travesty--the purest line debased. hence the necessity for taking the knife into consideration in judging such work. this is not the place for any fraction of that hot debate which kugler ironically styles "the great question of the sixteenth century"; the debate as to whether holbein himself did or did not cut any of his own blocks. assuredly he could do so. the exquisite adjustment of every line to its final purpose, the masterly understanding of the proper limitations and field of every effect, all prove that he had an unerring knowledge of the craft no less than of the art of illustration. but in his day that craft, like every other, had its own guild; and it would not have been likely to tolerate any intrusion on its rights. we know, too, that those woodcuts which most attest holbein's genius were engraved by that mysterious "hans lützelburger, form-cutter, called franck" (_hans lützelburger, formschnider, genannt franck_), who still remains, after all the researches of enthusiastic admirers, a hand and a name, and beyond this--nothing. but it is when holbein's designs are engraved with lützelburger's astonishingly beautiful cutting that we can appreciate how wonderful was the design itself. to compare these fairy pictures with the painter's large cartoons is to get some conception of the arc his powers described. it seems incredible that the same hand could hang an equal majesty on the wall of a tiny shell and on that of a king's palace, and with equal justness of eye. yet it is done. he will ride a donkey or an elephant with the like mastery; but you will never find holbein saddling the donkey with a howdah. it is not always possible to subscribe to ruskin's flowing judgments; but i gratefully borrow the one with which he sums up thus, in a lecture on wood-engraving: holbein does not give many gradations of light, the speaker says, "but not because holbein cannot give chiaroscuro if he chooses. he is twenty times a stronger master of it than rembrandt; but therefore he knows exactly when and how to use it, and that wood-engraving is not the proper means for it. the quantity of it which is needful for his story he will give, and that with an unrivalled subtlety." and the student of holbein's art can but feel that ruskin has here touched upon a characteristic of the painter's peculiar power in every phase of it;--the power to be cæsar within himself; to say to his hand, "thus far," to say to his fancy, "no farther." those who have come to know holbein something more than superficially, or as a mere maker of portraits, will smile at the dictum of some very recent "authority" which pronounces him wanting in imagination; or at the hasty conclusion that what he _would_ not, that he could not. he has given us, for instance, no animal paintings or landscapes pure and simple, or, at least, none such have come down to us. and yet what gems of landscape he has touched into his backgrounds here and there! and what drawings of animal life he made! there are two, for instance, in the basel museum which could not be surpassed; studies in silver-point and water-colours of lambs and a bat outstretched. no reproduction could give the exquisite texture of the bat's wings, the wandering red veins, the almost diaphanous membrane, the furry body,--a miracle of patience and softness. it is all purest nature. like topsy one can but "'spec' it growed" rather than was created. and they are not only beautiful in themselves but full of living meanings. many an hour the young painter enjoyed while he made such studies as his lambs on the pleasant slopes about basel; the mountains scalloping the horizon, and all the sweet fresh winds vocal with tinkling bells or the chant of the deep-throated rhine. many of "the long, long thoughts" of youth,--those thoughts that ring like happy bells or sweep like rushing rivers, kept him company as he laid these delicate strokes and washes that seem to exhale the very breath of morning across four hundred years. in the next year after painting the portraits of meyer and his wife there is a sudden break in the painter's story which has always puzzled his biographers. after such a brilliant start in basel it is perplexing to find the young man, instead of proceeding to join the painters' guild and take the necessary citizenship, suddenly turn his back on all these encouragements and leave the town for a long absence and remote journeys. as will be seen when we come to consider the story of holbein's married life, however, i have a theory that the influence which sent him south in such an unexpected fashion was apart from professional affairs. whether this is a good shot or no, certain it is that he did now go far south,--as distances were in those days; and that, paying his way as he went by his brush, he went first to lucerne, where the evidence goes to show that he apparently thought of settling instead of at basel,--and then on beyond it. and it seems highly probable that at this time he pushed on over the alps and made his way into italy,--already the mecca of every artist. here he could not now, in , have hoped to see either bramante or leonardo da vinci in person. the former had died at rome two years before; but, without getting even as far as pavia, milan could show some splendid monuments to his sojourn within her walls; characteristic examples of that architecture of the closing fifteenth century which holbein loved as bramante himself. leonardo was now in france; but in the refectory of the santa maria monastery was his immortal, though, alas! not imperishable, masterpiece--"the last supper." time had not yet taught leonardo, much less holbein, the fleeting nature of mural oil-painting; the only so-called "fresco" painting which the latter ever attempted, so far as is known. but the great supper was still glowing in all the splendour of its original painting, and would impress itself indelibly on an eye such as holbein's. in more than one cathedral, too, as he wandered in such a holiday, he would have noted how mantegna had made its architecture the background for his own individual genius. at any rate each of these, somehow and somewhere, set its own seal upon the reverent heart of holbein at about this time. whether through their original works or copies of them,--already familiar to augsburg as well as lucerne,--the lad sat humbly at the feet of both leonardo and mantegna. by the first, beside many a loftier lesson, he was confirmed and strengthened in his native respect for accurate studies of the living world around him. from the second he learned a still deeper scorn of "pretty" art. yet though he sat at their feet, it was as no servile disciple. he would fain be taught by them; fain follow them in all humility and frankness. but it was in order to expand his own powers, not to surrender them; to speak his own thoughts the better, not theirs, nor another's. and, in any event, on such a journey lucerne must come first. and that he thought of making some long stay here when he returned is shown by his having joined in this year , the guild of st. luke, the painters' guild of lucerne, then but newly organised. "master hans holbein has given one gulden," reads the old entry. two other items of this visit give us glimpses of its flesh-and-blood realities, perhaps of its unrest. the first, that he also joined a local company of archers, the militia of his day, seems to bring his living footfall very close. a resonant, manly, wholesome footfall it is, too! this broad-shouldered young fellow is as ready to draw a good stout bow among mountain-marksmen as a lamb among its daffodils. the second item makes it still clearer that he had other elements as well as the pastoral in his blood. on the th of december he got himself fined for his share in a street-scrimmage, where he would seem to have decidedly preferred the livelier to the "better part" of valour. and then he would appear to have shaken the dust, or more likely the snows, of lucerne off his feet for the road to italy, if not for italy itself. whatever his objective, he got, at any rate, well on toward the pass of the st. gothard. the scanty clues of such works as have remained on record prove that he reached altdorf. but there the actual trail is altogether lost. if he spent the entire interval brush in hand, or if--as i believe--he treated himself to a bit of a holiday beyond the alps, can be but a guess in the dark. by this time the new year of , then falling in march, could not have been far off, before or behind him. and in holbein executed the commission which must have been the envy of every local artist. jacob von hertenstein, burgomaster of lucerne, had now got his fine new house ready for decoration; and it was to holbein that he gave the splendid commission to decorate it to his fancy,--the interior as well as the façade. and a renowned triumph the painter made of it; a triumph such as, perhaps, no other artist north of italy could then have equalled. it is idle now to dwell upon the religious subjects of one room, the genre paintings in another, the battle scenes of a third, and so on through those five famous rooms which were still in existence and fair preservation so late as , but are now for ever lost; to say nothing of the painted renaissance architecture and the historic legends which looked like solid realities when the façade was studied. but "mizraim is become merchandise"; and all that is now left of what should have been a treasured and priceless heirloom is but a monument to the shame of that citizen, a banker, who could condemn such a thing to destruction as indifferently as if it had been a cowshed, and to the shame of the municipality which, at any cost, did not prevent it. some hasty sketches--due to individual enterprise and a sense of the dignity of holbein's fame--an original drawing for one of the façade-paintings, and a few fragments of the interior paintings, which still show themselves, by chance, in the banker's _stable wall_--these are all that remain to speak of what must have been the enthusiastic labour of the greater part of holbein's twenty-first year! chapter ii holbein basiliensis - _holbein basiliensis_--enters the painters' guild--bonifacius amerbach and his portrait--the last supper and its judas--the so-called "fountain of life" at lisbon--genius for design and symbolism in architecture--versatility, humour, fighting scenes--holbein becomes a citizen and marries--basel in --froben's circle--tremendous events and issues of the time--holbein's religious works--the nativity and adoration at freiburg--hans oberriedt--the basel passion in eight panels--passion drawings--christ in the tomb--christ and mary magdalen at the door of the sepulchre--rathaus wall-paintings--birth of holbein's eldest child--the solothurn madonna: its discovery and rescue--holbein's wife and her portraits--suggested solutions of some biographical enigmas--title pages--portraits of erasmus--journey to france, probably to lyons and avignon--publishers and pictures of the so-called "dance of death"--dorothea offenburg as venus and laïs corinthiaca--triumph of the protestant party--holbein decides to leave basel for a time--the meyer-madonna of darmstadt and dresden, and its portraits. and now it is , and with it the true hour of holbein's destiny is striking. take away the coming seven years and you will still have what holbein is too often thought to be only--a great portrait-painter. no greater ever etched the soul of a man on his mask. his previous and his after achievements would still amply justify the honour of centuries. but add these seven years, from to , and dull indeed must be the intelligence that cannot recognise the great master, without qualification and in the light of any thoughtful comparison with the very greatest. his basel career may be said to begin here; his earlier work furnishing the prologue. on the th september, , when he was about two-and-twenty, he joined the basel guild of painters; that same "guild of heaven" (_zunft zum himmel_) which his brother ambrose had joined two years earlier and from which he seems to have passed to the veritable guild of heaven at about this latter date. and hardly is the ink dry upon the record of his membership than holbein painted one of the most beautiful of his portraits--that of bonifacius amerbach (plate ). he stands beside a tree on which is hung an inscription. behind him is holbein's favourite early background,--the blue of the sky, here broken by the warm brown and green of the branch, and the faint glimpse of far-away mountains. under his soft cap, with a cross for badge, his intensely gleaming blue eyes look out beneath grave brows. the lips are softly yet firmly set; the mouth framed by the sunny beard which repeats the red-brown of his hair. the black scholar's gown, with its trimming of black fur, discloses his rich damask doublet and white collar. illustration: plate bonifacius amerbach _oils. basel museum_ well may the inscription assert--above the signature, the name of the sitter and the date th october, -- _"though but a painted face i am not far removed from life; but rather, by truthful lines, the noble image of my possessor. as he accomplishes eight times three years, so faithfully in me also is nature's work proclaimed by the work of art."_ for here in truth is a work of nature which is no less a work of art. this is the amerbach who began and inspired his son basilius (so named after bonifacius's brother) to complete the holbein collection, which the basel museum bought long afterwards. and such was the love of both that they included, perhaps deliberately, much that has small probability of claim to be holbein's work. they would reject nothing attributed to him; thinking a bushel of chaff well worth housing if it might yield one genuine grain. and in view of these expressive facts, it is hardly necessary to argue in behalf of the tradition that more than a conventional friendship bound the two young men together,--printer's son and painter's son, musician-scholar and scholar-painter, churchman and churchman; the one twenty-four, the other twenty-two. bonifacius was the youngest of johann amerbach's three gifted sons. as all the world knows, johann had been also a scholar as well as a printer, and great in both capacities. the most eminent scholars of his day gravitated as naturally to this noble personality as they afterwards did to that of his protégé and successor, johann froben. he had educated his sons, too, to worthily continue his life-work and maintain his devout principles. bonifacius was the darling of more than one heart not given to softness. he had been more the friend than the pupil of ulrich zasius at the university of freiburg, before he went to avignon to complete his legal studies under alciat. five years after this portrait was painted he became professor of law in the basel university. "i am ready to die," writes erasmus of him, "when i shall have seen any young man purer or kinder or more sincere than this one." very possibly it was for bonifacius himself that holbein painted his own portrait about this time (plate , frontispiece). it is a worthy mate, at all events. in the amerbach catalogue it was simply called "holbein's counterfeit, in dry colour" (_ein conterfehung holbein's mit trocken farben_); the frame, too, was catalogued, though the painting was kept in a cabinet separately when the basel museum acquired it with the collection. the vigour and finish of this portrait on vellum, done in crayons or body-colour, make it a gem of the first water. the drawing was done in black chalk, and the tints have been rubbed in with coloured crayons or given with the point where lines of colour were required. the work has the delicacy of a water-colour and the strength of oils. the broad, soft, red hat, though so fine a bit of colour, is clearly worn as part of a simple everyday habit. there is no suggestion of studying for effect, or even caring at all about it. he wears his hat pulled soberly down over his brown hair exactly as when he wore it thus about the business of the day. the plastic modelling of the puckered brow and the mobile mouth is beautifully indicated. the bluish tone left by the razor is just hinted. in his drab coat with its black velvet bands, with his shirt, on which the high lights have been applied, slightly open at the throat, holbein himself seems to stand before one as in life. among the "early works" of the amerbach catalogue there is one which shows strong traces of leonardo's and even more of mantegna's influence on him at this time. it is a last supper, painted in oils on wood. but it was so mutilated in the iconoclastic fury of , and has been so cobbled, re-broken, re-set, and "restored" generally, that it can no longer be called holbein's work without many reservations. there is also another last supper, one of a coarsely painted set on canvas, which is attributed to him on much more doubtful grounds, to judge by the composition and colouring. myself i should be inclined to see the inferior hand of ambrose, hans the elder, or perhaps even sigmund holbein in these, if they are genuine holbein works at all. but there are still to be seen the traces of his own hand and mind in the last supper in oils on wood. st. john's head must originally have been very beautiful; very manly, too,--dark with sudden anguish and recoil. there is a separate head of st. john, in oils, in the same collection, which shows how fixed was this noble originality of type in holbein's conception of "the beloved apostle." but it is in judas that the patient student will find, perhaps, most of holbein's peculiar cast of thought, when once the initial repulsion is overcome. by a very natural arrangement he is brought into the immediate foreground and sits there, already isolated, already damned, in such a torment of body and soul as haunts the spectator who has had the courage to reconsider the dictum of authorities who call him "a jew of frightful vulgarity." frightful he may be; but it is a strange judgment which can find him vulgar. unfortunately, the painting is no longer in a condition to justify reproduction; but such as study this yellow-robed, emaciated, shivering, fever-consumed judas will, i venture to assert, find food for thought in it even under all the injuries the work has undergone. it is a demon-driven soul if ever there was one. he is in the very act of springing to his feet and rushing away anywhere, anywhere out of this presence;--no more concerned about his money-bag than about the food he loathes. thirty pieces of silver! if the priests have lied, if this is in very truth the messiah his heart still half believes him, will thirty pieces of silver buy his soul from the avenger? is there time still to escape? what if he break the promise given when he was over-persuaded in the market-place the other day? but did not the high priest himself declare that this is beelzebub in person,--this fair, false, dear,--oh! still too dear illusion? up! let him be gone out of this!--from the sound of that voice, from the sight of that face, get the thing over and done, done--done one way or another! if god's work, as the priests swear, well and good. he will have earned the pity of god himself. if the devil's, as his heart whispers, well, too! let him take his price and buy himself a rope long enough to house his soul in any hell, rather than sit on in this one! it is all painted, or was once; all written on that sunken cheek, that matted hair and clammy brow; in that cavernous socket, that eye of lurid despair; on the whole anatomy of a lost soul. the hand that did it was very young, very immature; but it had the youth and the immaturity of a master. there is another and a very different work, an oil painting, in the royal collection at lisbon, signed ioannes holbein fecit , which, if by the younger hans, would almost put the question as to whether the painter knew the landscapes of italy, beyond doubt; so southern is the type of its background. the work, however, has been rejected by woltmann, on the strength of an old photograph not quite perfect. he held the signature to be spurious, and attributed the picture to the school of gerard david. and he gave to the work the name by which it is now generally styled in english works: "the fountain of life" (_der brunnen des lebens_[ ]). he did so from the inscription within the rim of the well immediately in the foreground; but a literal translation of this inscription, pvtevs aqvarvm vivencivm, is, i think, to be preferred: _the well of living waters_. the majority of those competent to form a judgment in such matters are inclined to attribute the work to hans holbein the elder, who did not die until some years later, and who made use of a very similar form of signature. and for myself i find it hard to see how anyone familiar with hans the younger could accept it as his work at any period of his career; least of all at the date given in the signature. so that equally whether woltmann is right in believing the signature itself spurious, or those are right who hold it to be the genuine signature of hans the elder,--a more detailed description of the composition does not fall within the scope of this little volume. but the whole matter is most clearly set forth, and a very beautiful reproduction in colours given of the painting itself, in herr seeman's article upon it, which will be found in the appended list of references. * * * * * considerably before , as has been said, holbein had begun to develop his special genius for design, and to apply it to glass or window-paintings, as well as to metal and wood-engravings. the beautiful drawings, whether washed, or etched with the point, in chalks or indian ink, of which examples may be seen in almost every great collection, private as well as public, that year after year were created by that fertile brain and ever more masterly hand, constitute an art in themselves. and since so many (perhaps the greater number as well as the greater in subject) of his paintings have perished, it is chiefly in his drawings that the progression of his powers can be followed, or the plane and scope of his imagination recognised at all. there is seldom a date on them; but they will be found to date themselves pretty accurately by certain features. in his earliest, for instance, that defect of which mention has been made,--the short thick figures due to the energy of his rebound from gothic attenuation is a grave fault. there is a virgin and child among his washed drawings for glass-paintings in the basel museum, for example, which, when you cut it off at the knees, is one of the most charming pictures of mother and child to be found in any painter's treatment of this subject. and behind them is a gem of landscape. yet the whole, as it stands, is utterly marred by the virgin's dwarfed limbs. but although holbein never entirely overcame this fault, he did very greatly do so, as the years passed. his architectural settings, too, tended to greater simplicity in his later years. yet this is not a safe guide. some early designs have simple forms; some comparatively late ones, a very ornate architecture. for the truth is that these architectural backgrounds and settings remained, so long as his fancy had any free field for disporting itself, an integral part of his conception. but only as inseparable from the symbolism, the under-tow, of his imagination. to my thinking, at any rate, they make a gravid mistake who look for "realism" in these things. his stately pillars and arches, his fluid forms of ornament, are not his idea of the actual surroundings of the characters he portrays, any more than they are your idea, or mine, of those surroundings. is it to be supposed that he thought the dwellings of our lord were palaces? or that he could not paint a stable? those who maintain that holbein was a realist in the modern sense of the word must reconcile as best they can the theory with the facts. but when we see the stage set with every stately circumstance,--the babe amid the fading splendours of earthly palaces, our lord mocked by matter as well as man,--i dare to think that we shall do well to cease from insisting on an adobe wall, and to study those "incongruous" circumstances to which the will and not the poverty of holbein consents. we shall, at least, no longer be dull to "the tears of things" as he saw them. but it would be no less a mistake to think of holbein as one without a sense of laughter as well. his drawings of open-mouthed peasants gossiping in a summer's nooning, or dancing in some uncouth frolic,--and still more his romping children, dancing children, and the chase of the fox running off with the goose,--all of these are full of boyish fun. would that they could be given here without usurping the place of more important works! but that is impossible. and so, too, with the costume-figures of basel, among which is the charming back view of a citizen's wife, with all the women bent far backward in the odd carriage that was then "the latest fashion" among them. he was particularly happy, also, in his drawings of the _landsknechte_, those famous mercenaries of "blut und eisen"; always ready to drink a good glass, and a-many; to love a good lass after the same liberal fashion; to troll a good song or fight a good fight; and all with equal zest. he had not mixed with these masterful gentry for nothing; nor they with him to wholly die. there are a number of drawings where they are engaged in combat, too, which show that holbein's heart leapt to the music of sword and spear as blithely as does scott's or dumas's--as blithely as did the hearts of the _reisläufer_ themselves. look at the mad rush, the hand-to-hand grapple, in a drawing of the basel collection, for instance (plate ). the blood-lust, the heroism, the savagery, the thrust, the oath, the dust-choked prayer, the forgotten breathing clay under the bloodstained foot; the very clash and din of the fray;--all is told with the brush. and yet not one unnecessary detail squandered. it is as if one watched it from some palpitating refuge, just near enough to see the forefront figures distinctly and to make out the interlocked hubbub and fury where the ranks have been broken through. it would be a great day for art could we but chance upon some lost painting for which such a study had served its completed purpose. * * * * * on the rd of july, , holbein fulfilled what was then the requirement of almost every guild, and purchased his citizenship; a citizenship to reflect unfading honour on basel, and of which she has ever been justly proud. and somewhere about the same time he married elsbeth schmidt, a tanner's widow, who had one child, franz. illustration: plate fight of landsknechte _washed drawing. basel museum_ for the past four or five years basel had been steadily becoming more and more democratic. and at a period when its _élite_ were scholars and printers and civic officials of every origin,--when the illegitimate son of a rotterdam doctor was the true prince, and beatus rhenanus, the grandson of a butcher, was his worthy second in the reverence of basel,--the widow and son of a reputable tanner and a rising young artist, who had already the suffrages of the most influential citizens, would find no doors closed to them on the score of social disabilities. the friendship of such men as erasmus, froben, bonifacius amerbach, and the mayor,--all conspicuous stars in the church party,--would have ennobled a man of less genius than holbein in the eyes of his fellow-citizens; and rightly. but as to the exact locality in which holbein set up his first married roof-tree--that bethel of sacred or saddest dreams--no documentary evidence has yet come to light. circumstantial evidence, however, amounts to a strong probability in favour of the _rheinhalde_ of great-basel. if there was an emblem peculiarly abhorrent to the basilisk (the device of basel) it was the crescent-and-star. but nothing could better serve to recall the rough outline of basel in holbein's day than this very emblem. as the rhine suddenly swerves from its first wild rush westward and races away, northerly, to the german ocean, it shapes the hollow of the crescent in which little-basel (_klein-basel_) nestled as the star; and, appropriately enough, since it was here that the catholic's star of faith rallied when overcome across the river, where curved the crescent of great-basel (_gross-basel_). and the relative proportions of the two would be fairly enough represented by the symbols respectively used. great-basel's northern face was protected by the rhine, while the stout city wall secured its convex curve. of this wall the eastern horn was st. alban's gate; its north-west was st. john's gate (_st. johann thor_); beside which stood the decaying commandery of the knights of malta, which had contributed a large sum toward the expanded wall, in order to be included within it. and just as these spots still mark the horns of the old crescent, the _spalen thor_ shows where it had its greatest depth, midway between the other two. a straight line running due north-east from this spalen-thor would cross the big square of the fish-market (_fischmarktplatz_) pretty nearly as the uncovered stream of the birsig, or "little birs," did before the quaint little bridge, which then united the two halves of the fischmarkt, was absorbed in the paving over of stream and square before holbein's day. this same straight line would of itself draw the "old bridge" (_alte brücke_) with approximate exactness, the even then ancient bridge which centred the star of klein-basel to its crescent. and in the historical museum, where the barefooted friars worshipped then, we may still see the grotesque piece of clockwork, the wooden "stammering king" (_lällenkönig_), that for centuries used hourly to roll great eyes and stick out its tongue a foot long across the river from the gross-basel end of the bridge. it is often said that this monster was set up as a public token of the hatred which the triumphant protestantism of the south bank felt for the stubborn catholicism of klein-basel. but the thing was a famous ancient joke before party feeling turned it into a gibe. bonifacius amerbach's home, the "emperor's seat" (_kaiserstuhl_, now , rheingasse), was in klein-basel. johann amerbach had bought it, near to his beloved friends, the carthusians. in the good old man had slept for six years in the cloisters of the monastery; where to-day the children of the orphan asylum play above his grave. but all the conditions of holbein's daily life would lead him to prefer basel proper, and to choose the quarter in which he bought a home eight years later. this was then the western quarter of gross-basel, along the river-face of which ran the high southern and western bank of the rhine, the _rheinhalde_, now _st. johann vorstadt_. about where the present _blumenrain_ ends stood the arch, or _schwibbogen_. further on still stood the "gate of the cross" (_kreuzthor_), by the house of the brothers of st. anthony, the ancient _klösterli_ of basel. before the commandery of st. john got themselves included within the city wall the kreuzthor was its western gate. the whole district of _ze crüze_, so called because its boundaries were crosses before towers replaced them, has however become absorbed in the st. johann vorstadt, while the kreuzthor has disappeared altogether. the quarter was a favourite one with members of the fishers' guild and with decent folk of small mean s. as early as the fishers' company had extended itself so greatly as to become a notable institution of the vorstadt, including many members from klein-basel also; while its military record was a proud one. but it was in this year, while holbein was making his visit to lucerne and beyond, that this guild took the more truly descriptive name which it bears to this day, that of the "vorstadt association" (_vorstadtgesellschaft_). and to this association, which in after years gave him a famous banquet, holbein, we know, belonged later on, if not now. every day would take him to the fischmarkt,--the great square humming with activity, crowded with inns, public-houses, shops, booths, dwelling-houses,--the trade mart of every nationality. the cornmarkt near by, now the _marktplatz_, with its almost finished rathaus, was the centre of official civic life. when the great bell clanged on the rathaus, and its flag was flung out, not only every professional soldier, but every guild and every male above fourteen, knew his appointed place at the wall, and took it. but every day, and all day, the fischmarkt flung out its peaceful standards, or rallied men to this side or to that with the tocsin of its presses,--the old amerbach printing-house "of the settle" (_zum sessel_), which was johann froben's home and printing-house in . morning after morning, and year upon year, holbein turned his back upon st. johannthor, and walked eastward along the rheinhalde;--the river racing toward him on his left hand, the university rising in front of him beyond the bridge, and the delicate cathedral towers beyond the university. for the basel minster was still the cathedral of the great see of basel. passing the wall of the dominican cemetery, on which was painted the ancient dance of death with which his own after-creations were so often to be confused, holbein must many a time have studied the famous old copy. for though the dominican painting was then nearly a century old, it was a copy of a still older original in the klein-basel nunnery of _klingenthal_, a community under dominican direction. but he would pass another spot--one day to be of far more living importance to him. in it was a corn warehouse, known by the name of _ze crüz_, which belonged to adam petri, the printer, who had inherited it from his uncle, the famous printer johann petri, by whose ingenious improvements the art of printing was so greatly facilitated. two years later, in , froben bought this granary, ze crüz, and converted it into the book-magazine which was known all over europe as "froben's book-house." and in this latter year adam petri, greatly to luther's disgust, pirated luther's translation of the new testament, which had appeared three months before. holbein drew a superb title-page, ante-dated , for this "enterprise" of petri--the new testament "now right faithfully rendered into german,"--with the symbols of the evangelists at the four corners, the arms of basel at the top, the device of the printer at the foot, and the noble figures of st. paul and st. peter on either side; figures which will bear comparison with dürer's "four temperaments" of a later date. later still he designed another striking title-page for thomas wolff's translation; and his beautiful title-pages and ornaments for froben, with whom his connection was not a temporary matter such as these others, would need a volume to themselves. holbein's only rival, if he could be called such, in work of this sort was the talented goldsmith, urs graf, who, as an exceedingly loose fish, lived most appropriately in the fischmarkt in his own house near the old birsig bridge, when he was not in the lock-up for one or another of his constant brawls and scandals. but to compare the best work of both is to recognise a difference in kind as well as degree: the essential difference between even negligent genius and the most elaborate talent. high talent urs graf had unquestionably; though stamped,--i think,--with the lawless caprices of his own character. holbein's every design has not only what urs graf lacked--that ordered imagination which is style--but over and above all, the subtle expression of power. many a time, too, just where he would turn away from the rhine for the business centre of gross-basel, the artist would make some little pause at the old "flower" inn (_zur blume_), which gave its name to the blumenplatz, and is still commemorated in the greatly extended blumenrain of to-day. all the world now knows the famous hotel of "the three kings"; and where it reaches nearest to the old bridge stood the "blume" of holbein's time, even then the oldest of the basel inns. this blume, not to be confused with later inns of the same name, shared with its no less famous contemporary,--"the stork," in the fischmarkt,--the special patronage of the chief printers. basilius amerbach, for instance, the brother of holbein's friend bonifacius, lived at the blume; and often the painter must have turned in for a friendly glass with him and a chat about bonifacius, away at his law studies in avignon. as for the stork, its very rooms were named in remembrance of the envoys and merchant traders who flocked to it on all great occasions. there was a "cologne room," for instance, and a "venetian room," among many others. the men of venice, indeed, had a particular affection for it. here holbein met with all nationalities, and learned much of the great centres of other countries. here came all the basel magnates and printers. and here, a few years later on, came that bizarre personage who was for a very brief time basel's "town physician," the paracelsus theophrastus bombastus to whom we owe our word _bombastic_. holbein was on a visit to england during the latter's short tenure of office, when the combined scholarship and poverty of oporinus made him the hack of paracelsus and the victim of many a petty tyranny. at that time oporinus,--the son of that hans herbster, painter, whose portrait is now attributed to ambrose holbein,--was glad to place his remarkable knowledge of greek at froben's service. he was not yet a printer, as later when holbein drew a clever device for him. and neither he nor the painter could know that one day the daughter of bonifacius amerbach should marry him out of sheer pity for his unhappy old age,--somewhat as he himself, when but a lad of twenty, married an aged xantippe from gratitude. but in , when holbein was just married, oporinus was still a student and bonifacius unmarried. erasmus, too, did not permanently take up his home with froben until the following year, and was now at louvain. yet what a true university was that little house _zum sessel_ (now , todtengässlein, the little lane where the old post-office stood) to an intelligence such as holbein's! and what a circle was that of froben's staff! from froben himself, above whom erasmus alone could tower in scholarship, down through every member to the youngest, and from such men as gerard lystrius on the one hand and the literally "beatus" rhenanus on the other, what things were not to be learned! and what discussions those were that drew each man to give of his best in the common talk! venice sent news of the "unspeakable" turk, whom she had such good cause to watch and dread. for fifty years his name had ceased to blanch the cheek of other nations; but now it was said, and said truly, that the dying selim, "the grim," had forged a thunderbolt which suleyman ii. would not be slow to hurl. no man could know the worst or dared predict the end, as to that yellow terror of holbein's time. and closer still, to keen eyes, were the threats of the coming peasant terror. wurtemberg had battened down the flames, it is true; but the deck of europe was hot under foot with the passions that were soon to make the turks' atrocities seem gentle in comparison. the death of maximilian and the election of charles v. were a year old now. but none knew better than the basel printers how much the league of swabia and the swiss confederation had weighed in the close contest of claims between those three strangely youthful competitors for the emperor's crown;--charles, but nineteen; francis i., one-and-twenty; and henry viii., not twenty-five. basel also knew that charles had only bought his triumph by swearing to summon the diet of worms. all the more, therefore, was she intensely alive to the possible issues of the arabian-nights-entertainment which had but just concluded on the dreary calais flats when holbein became one of basel's citizens. erasmus had come back full of it. marco polo's best wonders made but a dingy show beside the "field of the cloth of gold," where in this june the two defeated candidates for imperial honours had kissed each other midway between the ruined moat of guisnes and the rased battlements of arde. then, on top of this, came the rumours of the english king's undertaking to answer luther's most formidable attack on rome. it was in , the year after his great disputation with eck at leipzig, that luther published his cataclysmic addresses: "to the christian nobles of germany" and "on the babylonian captivity,"--the latter of which itself contains the whole protestant reformation in embryo. "would to god," exclaimed erasmus of it, "that he had followed my counsel and abstained from odious and seditious proceedings!" bishop tunstall, then in worms, had also written of it:--"i pray god keep that book out of england!" but before the year was out "that book" had reached england, and henry viii. had sworn to annihilate its arguments and to triumphantly defend the dogmas of rome. the eagerly-awaited "defence" did not get printed, and would remain in pope leo's hands for a year yet. but basel knew, through more and erasmus,--whose canny smile probably discounted its critical quality,--pretty much its line of defence. nor was froben's circle one whit more surprised than its royal author when its immediate reward was that formal style and title--_defender of the faith_,--to which a few years more were to lend so different a significance. by this latter date ulrich von hutten had fled to basel, only to find that his violent "heresies" had completely estranged erasmus, and closed froben's door, as well as all other roman catholic doors, against him for ever. he lodged, therefore, at the blume until the basel council requested him to leave the town, a little before his death, in . but in hutten was still at sickingen's fortress, digging with fierce ardour the impassable gulf between him and the band of friends and churchmen among whom holbein ever ranged himself. * * * * * among the five lost works which patin says holbein painted, there was a "nativity" and an "adoration of the kings." it is impossible now to say what resemblances, if any, existed between these and the same subjects, executed not much later, which are now in the university chapel, freiburg minster. these latter are the only known works of holbein that still hang in a sacred edifice. they were evidently designed to fold in upon a central altar-piece with an arched top, thus making, when open, the usual triptych; but the central painting has vanished. this large work was a gift to the carthusian monastery in klein-basel; and the arms of the donor, hans oberriedt, are displayed below the nativity, as well as the portraits of himself and his six sons. below the corresponding right wing, the adoration, are the arms of his wife and her portrait, with her four daughters. in both wings what i can only describe as the atmosphere of infancy,--and a touching atmosphere it is too--is strengthened by keeping all the figures small and heightening this suggestion by contrast with a grandiose architecture. in both, too, the sacred scenes reveal themselves like visions unseen by the oberriedt family, who face outward toward the altar and are supposed to be lighted by the actual lights of the church. the whole work must once have been a glorious creation, with its rich colours, its beautiful architectural forms, and its mingling of purest imagination with realism. what would one not give to see the lost work these wings covered? illustration: plate the nativity _oils. university chapel, freiburg cathedral_ in the left wing, the nativity (plate ), holbein has remarkably anticipated the lighting of correggio's famous masterpiece, not finished until years after this must have been painted, by the conditions of oberriedt's history and basel's as well. the light that is to light the world lights up the scene with an exquisite enchanting softness,--yet so brilliantly that the very lights of heaven seem dimmed in comparison. the moon, in holbein's deliberate audacity, seems but a disc as she bows her face, too, in worship. shining by some compulsion of purest nature, the divine radiance glows on the ecstatic mother; and away above and beyond her--"how far that little candle shines," and shines, and shines again amid the shadows! it illumines the beautiful face of the virgin, touches the reverent awe of st. joseph, plays over marble arch and pillar, discovers the wondering shepherd peering from behind the pillar on the left, and irradiates the angel in the distance, hastening to carry the "glad tidings." the happy cherubs behind the child rejoice in it; and as they spring forward one notices how holbein has boldly discarded the conventional, and attached their pinions as if these were a natural development of the arm instead of a separate member. the same union of unfettered fancy symbolism and realism displays itself throughout the right wing,--where the virgin is enthroned in front of crumbling palaces. the sun's rays form a great star, of such dazzling light that one of the attendants shades his eyes to look upward, and an old man with a noble head, wearing an ermine cape, presents his offering as the chief of the three kings; while a moorish sovereign, dressed in white, makes a splendid figure as he waits to kneel with his gift, and his greyhound stands beside him. the colouring of both paintings must have had an extraordinary beauty when the painter laid down his brush. to carp at such conceptions because their architecture is as imaginative and as deeply symbolical as the action, is to demand that holbein shall be someone else. these pictures, beyond the portraits below them, are the farthest possible from aiming at what we demand of realism, though their own realism is astonishing. holbein all too seldom sounds them, but when he does choose to stir only a joyous elation in the heart he rings a peal of silver bells. here all is glad thanksgiving. the divine has come into a sick and sorry world; and, behold, all is changed! nothing sordid, nothing shabby, consists with the _meaning_ of this miracle. therefore it is not here. all is transformed; all is a new jerusalem--splendour, peace, ineffable and mysterious beauty. with the dominance of the anti-catholic party, which unseated meyer zum hasen in , his friend oberriedt also fell into trouble. and soon after erasmus and bonifacius amerbach,--disgusted with the iconoclast fanaticism of and ,--took refuge in catholic freiburg-in-the-breisgau, oberriedt also left basel for that city. he took these wings with him to save them from the destruction which probably overtook the central work. the latter was, perhaps, too large to conceal or get away. during the thirty years' war they were again removed, and safeguarded at schaffhausen. and so great was their fame that they were twice expressly commanded to be brought before a sovereign; once to munich, to be seen by maximilian of bavaria; and again to ratisbon for the emperor ferdinand iii. in they were looted by the french, and were only restored to freiburg in . illustration: plate the passion _eight-panelled altar-piece oils. basel museum_ i _gethsemane_ ii _the kiss of judas_ iii _before pontius pilate_ iv _the scourging_ v _the mocking_ vi _the way to calvary_ vii _"it is finished"_ viii _the entombment_ another great religious picture, once no less renowned than oberriedt's altar-paintings, has suffered a worse fate. this is the eight-panelled altar-piece of the passion, now in the basel museum (plate ). so far back as is known it was preserved, probably after being hidden from the fury that attacked all church pictures, in the rathaus. maximilian i., of bavaria, the zealous collector of dürer's works, offered almost any price for this altar-piece by dürer's great contemporary. but basel, unlike nüremberg, was not to be bribed; and the world-famous painting remained to draw art-lovers from every country in europe. nor did the most competent judges fail to envy basel her jewel, and to eulogise its perfections. painters such as sandrart, looking at it after it had survived a hundred and fifty years of vicissitude, could exclaim: "it is a work in which the utmost that our art is capable of may be found; yielding the palm to none, whether of germany or italy, and justly wearing the laurel-wreath among the works of former times." alas! this laurel, too, has been filched from holbein's fame. in the altar-piece was consigned to the collection where it now is; and it was then decided to gild the gold and paint the lily. the work was subjected to one of those crude "restorations" which respect nothing save the frame. and no monarch will ever again compete for its possession. red is over red and blue over blue, doubtless; but in place of holbein's rich harmony a jangle of gaudy conflicting colours now sets one's teeth on edge. so that only in a photograph can one even enjoy the composition--all that is left of the master. but here it can be seen with what art the painter has so combined eight separate and distinct pictures, each a gem, into one, by such a distribution and balance that the whole is as integral as a pearl. the scene on the mount of olives, which a great critic once pronounced worthy to compare with correggio's work, is only to be surpassed by the entombment. and in every scene--what freedom, action, verve! from the first to the last all passes with the swift step of calamity, yet all with noble dignity. the basel museum possesses also a set of ten washed drawings in indian ink,--scenes of the passion designed for glass-painting,--which must be conned and conned again before one can "know" holbein at all in his deepest moods. they are a great testament, though they seem unbearably harsh at a superficial glance. but put aside your own ideas and humbly study the ideas of holbein,--sure that they must be well worth the reverence of yours or mine,--and little by little you will be made free of that underworld where holbein's true self has its home; you will pierce its gloom and find its clue and understand its tongue. it is a small matter whether you and i find ourselves in sympathy with that world, or can never be acclimatised. the great matter, the only matter, is to understand it; to see in its skeletons something more than lively bones, in its graves something besides horror. without mastering the logical sequence of these ten drawings,--where scene by scene the divine recedes before our eyes, and the son of man assumes more and more the whole burden of sin and death,--it is inevitable that the life-size painting of christ in the grave, also in the basel museum (plate ), should seem just a ghastly and "unpardonable" piece of realism. realism of the most ghastly truthfulness, as to a corpse in the grave, it certainly is. but although it may be questioned whether such a picture should ever be painted, no one who looks through the form to the thought that shapes it would pronounce even this awful utterance "unpardonable." there have been those who could see in this dead christ,--lying rigid in a green sarcophagus that throws over the waxen flesh the ghastly threat of that decay which would follow if no miracle intervened,--there have been those, i say, who could see in it only superb technique. and others see only the negation of all idealism, if not of all faith. illustration: plate christ in the grave _oils. basel museum_ yet put this painting,--the acme of technical beauty as well as of ruthless realism,--at the close of the ten passion drawings, and i venture to believe that the one coherent conception that runs through them all will legitimately find its conclusion here. here he lies that surrendered himself to the punishment of sin and the penalty of death--for all men and all time. his pale lips are set with the superhuman agony of the cry with which he paid the uttermost farthing of that bond. man has died for man, martyrs for faith; here god has died unto himself, for us. there has been no playing at death. all the pitiless terrors of the grave are here, with him who for love of us has chosen to know mortality "like at all points" with mortal men. what he bore for us, shall we shrink from so much as realising? the great eyes are fixed in a look whose penetrating, almost liquid sweetness not even the rigor of the final anguish could obliterate. divine devotion,--devotion more than mortal,--still lingers in those sockets. the heart may well dilate before this sight; the soul fall on its knees. by each of those bloodstained steps, by the sting of this death, we have been paid for. here, here only,--as holbein saw it,--is the leverage the heathen philosopher vainly sighed for to move the world; god's leverage, infinite love. this is anything but a theological tangent. a great artist has bequeathed us his beliefs,--drawn and painted in many works, with every patient, virile, expressive power at his command. there has been enough and to spare of shrieks or scoffs. a little humility and a little study is in place, too. for the rest, let us not forget that this large painting was made for some altar; and that many a weeping penitent, many a devout heart, has been pierced with its message. on the edge of the stone coffin, which is tinted a warm green within, and lit by some opening at the foot, is the inscription in gold letters: "jesus nazarenus rex judÆorum." the stigmata are painted with unsparing truth. the work is dated . there is in the hampton court gallery a little painting which has only comparatively recently been recognised as holbein's, but which forms the beautiful and fitting close of this set of religious pictures. as is the case with so many of his works, the critics are not unanimous upon it. but the authorities who have no doubts as to its being a genuine holbein of this period are so weighty that i need not argue the point in support of my own convictions. in the hampton court catalogue it is styled "mary magdalen at our lord's sepulchre," but i prefer to call it the risen christ (plate ). it must once have been supremely beautiful; for even now its ideal loveliness shines through all the evil fortunes which have once again defaced the handiwork of holbein. the type of christ, and indeed the work throughout, bears a marked resemblance to the eight-panelled basel altar-piece. the painter has chosen the moment recorded in the twentieth chapter of st. john. in that early dawn, "when it was yet dark," mary has brought spikenard in a marble cup, if not to anoint the sacred dead at least to pour it on the threshold of the sealed tomb, with tears and prayers. she has fled to tell st. john and st. peter of the sacrilege of the open tomb,--has followed them back, still mechanically clasping her useless spikenard,--has seen them go in where her trembling knees refused to follow, and then go homeward, as we can see them in the distance, arguing the almost incredible fact. poor mary has had no heart for discussion. she has stayed weeping by the empty grave until two pitying angels have appeared to recall her from despair, and she has "turned herself back,"--too frightened to stay for comfort. and then she has seen near her a face, a form, she was too dazed to recognise until the unforgettable voice has thrilled through her, and she has flung herself forward with the old, instinctive cry, "master!" to touch, to clasp that hand, so dear, so familiar, so all-protecting, and find it a reality. it is this tremendous moment that holbein has seized. and with what exquisite feeling for every detail of the scene, every great emotion! had the painting been preserved, as it deserved to be, surely it too could claim a part of that laurel wreath which sandrart averred could not be torn from the basel altar-piece by any rival, whether italian or german. illustration: plate the risen christ _oils. hampton court gallery_ the misty landscape, with the crosses of golgotha and the eastern hills catching the first brightness of the new day dawning over mortality; the broken clouds of night, scattered like the conquered horrors of the grave, and the illuminated tomb where hope and faith henceforth ask us why we weep; the hurrying agitation of st. peter and the trusting serenity of st. john, expressed in every gesture; the dusky trees; mary's quivering doubt and rapture, touched with some new awe; and the simple majesty with which our lord stays that unconscious innocent presumption, _touch me not_. what forbidding tenderness in that face lighted by the grave he has passed through! what a subtle yet eloquent suggestion of the eternal difference, henceforth, between love and love is in these mortal lineaments that have evermore resumed their divinity! no face, no type, no art, can ever realise christ; yet when this little painting was first added to the great roll of holbein _basiliensis_, it must have gone as near to realising its subject as the colours of earth can go. but every man, happily for himself, has a material as well as an immaterial world with which he must be concerned. to transpose bagehot's profound little saying,--each man dines in a room apart, but we all go down to dinner together. and though holbein knew the pinch of narrow means, he had no lack of good cheer as well as austere food in his art. on march th, , the great council held its first meeting in the new rathaus; and meyer zum hasen, who presided over it as burgomaster, entrusted to his protégé the enviable task of decorating the council chamber. fifty-six years after holbein's work was completed these wall-paintings were described as "representations of the noblest subjects--done by the german apelles." by this title the painter was everywhere recognised throughout the greater part of his lifetime. in all, there would seem to have been six large pictures or set pieces; but two were not done until years later. one wall being too broken up by windows to be suitable, there remained three,--of which "the back wall" adjoining meyer's house was not touched at this time. ostensibly the reason was want of funds; but as a matter of fact the protestant party (to anticipate this name), which grew strong enough to unseat meyer before the year was out, was at this time indifferent to art when not positively inimical to it. whether treating a façade or an interior it was holbein's custom to make a flat wall-space assume the most solid-looking forms of renaissance architecture. iselin once said of a façade of holbein's, that there was a dog painted on it so naturally that the dogs in the street would run up and bark at it. and so astounding was the realism with which he threw out balconies, and added windows, cornices, and statues, and the richest carvings, pillars, arches, and vistas of every sort, that no eye could credit them with illusion. horses neighed in the courtyards, flowers bloomed in the gardens, dogs leaped beside master or mistress, and children played in the spacious balconies, or moved to and fro between the splendid marble pillars and the distant wall. to study the copies that remain of such works is to be astounded by their feats of perspective. inside would be kindred illusions. large pictures would seem to be actually taking place without, and beheld through beautifully carved archways or windows; while the apparent walls would have niches filled with superb marble statues and the ceiling be supported by pillars, behind which people walked and talked or leaned out to watch the chief scenes. and so it was with the council chamber. but nothing now remains of these works except fragments and a few drawings for the principal features. so far as can be judged, each wall had two large scenes; the four pictures of this period being chosen from the heroic legends of the _gesta romanorum_; the two painted later, from the old testament. but while these large works were going forward holbein was busy with many others; private commissions for froben, occasionally for other printers, and for altar-pieces or portraits. all through his life his industry and accomplishment left him small time for leisure or the dissipations of leisure. nor is there any year of his life when his work does not attest a clear eye and a firm hand. these things are their own certificate of conduct; at any rate, of "worldly" conduct. * * * * * in occurred two important events in his life. his first child, the son he called philip, was born; and he painted an altar-piece which is in some respects the most beautiful of his extant works. the latter--now in the solothurn museum, and therefore called the "solothurn madonna" (plate )--has had one of the most extraordinary histories to be found in the records of art. illustration: plate the solothurn, or zetter'sche, madonna _oils. solothurn museum_ the background of this picture,--a massive arch of grey sandstone supported by iron stanchions,--was evidently designed to suit the surrounding architecture of some grey-walled ancient structure. on a daïs covered with a green carpet, patterned in white and red and emblazoned with the arms of the donor and his wife, sits the lovely madonna with the child held freely yet firmly in two of the most exquisite hands which even holbein ever painted. her dress is a rich rose-red; her symbolical mantle of universal motherhood, or "grace," is a most beautiful ultramarine, loaded in the shadows and like a sapphire in its lights. the flowing gold of her hair shimmers under its filmy veil, and the jewels in her gold crown flash below the great white pearls that tip its points. where the sky-background approaches mother and child, its azure tone is lost in a pure effulgence of light; as if the very ether were suffused with the sense of the divine. the child is drawn and painted superbly. the carnations are exquisite; the gravity of infancy is not exaggerated, yet fittingly enforces the gesture of benediction. the left hand is turned outward in a movement so peculiar to happy, vigorous babyhood that it is a marvel of observation and nature. the little foot is admirably foreshortened, and the wrinkled sole a bit of inimitable painting. but perhaps most wonderful of all is the art with which, amid so many splendid details, the child is the centre of interest as well as of the picture. how it is so, is holbein's own secret. to right and left of the virgin stand two fine types of spiritual and temporal authority. behind and at her right, almost hidden by the amplitude of her mantle, kneels a poor wretch who is introduced here by some necessity of the commission itself, but is skilfully prevented from obtruding his needs on the serene beauty of the scene. dropping gold into his alms-bowl with a hand effectively contrasted with his brown thumb, stands "the sinner's saint"--the good bishop of tours; while some other condition of the work has embroidered st. martin's red mitre with the figure of st. nicholas. there is one other striking circumstance about st. martin; and that is that, although he is in the virgin's presence, he wears the violet chasuble of an intercessor. the chasuble is lined with red, and it and the rich vestments, on which scenes of the passion are displayed, are the patient verisimilitude of ancient vestments. in st. martin's gloved left hand is his crozier and the right glove, which he has drawn off to bestow his alms. opposite to him stands the patron-saint of solothurn,--st. ursus, a hero of the theban legend,--dressed from head to foot in a suit of magnificently painted armour. his left hand grasps his sword-hilt; his right supports the great red flag with its white cross. nor is that flag of the year the least interesting detail of this work. with the crimson reflections of the flag streaking the cold gleams of his glittering armour, his stern dark face and the white plumes tossing to his shoulder, st. ursus is a figure that may well leave historical accuracy to pedants. below his foot are the initials h.h., and the date, ; as if cut into the stone. this work was commissioned by hans gerster, for many years town archivist of basel, in which capacity he had to convey important state papers to other councils with which that of basel had negotiations. from this it came about that from the year when basel entered the swiss confederation, in , gerster was almost as much at home in the "city of ambassadors" as in his own, and the dean or _probst_ of the solothurn cathedral--the "cathedral of st. ursus and st. victor"--became not only his spiritual director, but one of his most intimate friends. many circumstances which cannot be given here make it pretty evident that in gerster, probably under the advice of the probst, the coadjutor nicholas von diesbach, made this picture an _expiatory_ offering for some secret sin of grave proportions. there are hints that point to treachery to the basel troops, in the imperial interests, sympathy with which finally cost him, as well as his friend meyer zum hasen, his official position. gerster himself was not a native of basel, although his wife, barbara guldenknopf, was. be this as it may, it is apparently in direct connection with this confessed sin that "the sinner's saint," st. martin of tours, is chosen as intercessor for gerster, wearing the prescribed chasuble for this office. and it seems likely that the addition to his mitre of the figure of st. nicholas was gerster's wish, in order to specially associate the name-saint of his friend--nicholas von diesbach--with this intercession. it is assumed by those who have patiently unearthed these details of circumstantial evidence, that the beggar is introduced to mark the identity of the boundlessly charitable bishop of tours. but i venture to suggest still another reason: this is, that in the uplifted, pleading face of the mendicant, whose expression of appeal and humility is a striking bit of realism in these ideal surroundings, we may have the actual portrait of the donor, hans gerster himself. that this should be so would be in strict accord with the methods of the period. there is a striking parallel which will occur to all who are familiar with the st. elizabeth in the st. sebastian altar-piece at munich. here the undoubted portrait of hans holbein the elder is seen as the beggar in the background. it is, as has been said, a marvellous story by which this glorious painting,--in which the introduction of the patron-saint of solothurn proves that it was created for one of her own altars,--was completely lost to her, and to the very histories of art, and then returned to the city for which it was originally destined; all by a chain of seemingly unrelated accidents. but only the skeleton of that story can be given here.[ ] in all probability this madonna was executed for the altar of the ancient lady chapel of the solothurn cathedral. a hundred and twenty-six years after it was painted, this chapel was pulled down, to be replaced by a totally different style of architecture; and as the picture was then smoke-stained and "old-fashioned" it would in all likelihood drop into some lumber-room. at all events, it must have become the property of the cathedral choirmaster,--one hartmann,--after another five-and-thirty years. for at this time he built, and soon after endowed, the little village church of allerheiligen, on the outskirts of the industrial town of grenchen, which lies at the southern foot of the jura. _facilis descensus!_ another turn of the centuries' wheel and the gift of this chapel's founder was once again thought unworthy of the altar to which it had been presented. when herr zetter of solothurn first saw it in the queer little allerheiligen chapel, it hung high up on the choir wall; blackened, worm-eaten, without a frame, suspended by a string passed through two holes which had been bored through the painted panel itself. yet his acute eye was greatly interested by it. and when, during an official visit in , he heard that the chapel was undergoing a drastic renovation, he was concerned for the fate of the discoloured old painting. at first it could not be discovered at all. finally he found it, face downward, spotted all over with whitewash, under the rough boards that served for the workmen's platform. a few hours later and it, too, would have been irrevocably gone; carted away with the "old rubbish"! he examined it, made out the signature, knew that this might mean either any one of a number of painters who used it, or a clumsy copy or forgery, yet had the courage of his conviction that it was holbein's genuine work. he bought it of the responsible authority, who was glad to be rid of four despised paintings, for the cost of all the new decorations. he had expert opinion, which utterly discouraged his belief; but stuck to it, took the risks of having it three long years (so rotten was its whole condition) under repairs which might at any moment collapse with it, yet leave their tremendous expenses behind to be settled just the same; and finally found himself the possessor of a perfectly restored chef-d'oeuvre of holbein's brush, which, from the first, herr zetter devoted to the museum (now a fine new one) of solothurn. to-day this work, which some forty years ago no one dreamed had ever existed, smiles in all the beauty of its first painting; a monument to the insight and generous enthusiasm of the gentleman whose name is rightly connected with its own in its official title--"the zetter-madonna of solothurn." and it smiles with holbein's own undebased handiwork throughout. _pace_ woltmann's blunder,--its network of fine cracks, even over the virgin's face, attests that it has suffered no over-painting. the work has been mounted on a solid back, the greatest fissures and the holes filled up to match their surroundings, the stains and defacements of neglect cleared away, and the triumph is complete. it might well be the "swan song" of a veteran artist at such work. whatever the mistakes of eigener's career, the restoration of the solothurn madonna was a flawless achievement for himself and his associates. this work, too, is the most precious of all that have come down to us of holbein's imaginative compositions, from the fact that his first-born, philip, who was born about , was the model for the child, and that a portrait of elsbeth, his wife, served as a study for the virgin. this portrait is an unnamed and unsigned drawing in silver-point and indian ink, heightened with touches of red chalk, now in the louvre collection. (plate .) illustration: plate unnamed portrait-study: not catalogued as holbein's _silver-point and indian-ink. louvre collection_ _believed by the writer to be holbein's drawing of his wife before her first marriage, and the model for the solothurn madonna_ that this is a portrait of holbein's wife any careful comparison with her portrait at basel must establish. feature for feature, allowing for the changes of sufficient years, the two faces are one and the same. the very line of the shoulder, setting of the head, and even the outline of the fashion in which the low dress is cut, is alike in both. and equally unmistakable is the relation between this louvre drawing and the madonna of solothurn. yet i am unable to accept woltmann's theory that the drawing was made in "for" the virgin. he assumes that the lettering which borders the bodice in this drawing--als. in. ern. als. in....--and the braids in which the hair is worn are simply some "fancy" dress. but surely if ever hair bore the stamp of unstudied, even ugly custom, it does so here. then, too, woltmann himself, as are all who adopt this explanation, is unable to reconcile the oldest age which can be assigned to this sitter with the youngest that can be assumed for the basel painting of upon a hypothesis of only seven years' interval. temperament and trouble can do much in seven years; but not so much as this. i say _temperament_ advisedly; because all the evidence of holbein's life substantiates the assertion of van mander, who had it from holbein's own circle of contemporaries,--that the painter's life was made wretched by her violent temper. we shall find him far from blameless in later years; but though it may not excuse him, his unhappy home must largely explain his alienation. yet that it can explain such an alteration as that between the louvre drawing and the basel portrait i do not believe. nor could i persuade myself either that any married woman of the sixteenth century wore her hair in that most exclusive and invariable of teuton symbols--"maiden" plaits;--or that any husband ever thought it necessary to advertise upon a picture of his wife that he held her "in all honour." myself, i must believe, then, that this portrait was made years before ; probably in the young painter's first months in basel, in ; and thus some fourteen years before the basel group of was painted. it may well have been that some serious misunderstanding between them was at the bottom of that otherwise inexplicable departure in , and the two years' absence in lucerne and still more southern cities. of course this is mere guesswork; so is every hypothesis until it is proved. but all the simple commonplaces of first love, estrangement, separation, and a renewed betrothal after elsbeth's early widowhood with one child, could easily have run a natural course between and their marriage, somewhere about . as for the inscription,--it is a detail that woltmann thinks represents a repetition of the one phrase, and that i imagine to have suggested what for some reason holbein did not wish to proclaim:--"in all honour. [in all love.]" but nothing can shake my conviction that in it we hear the faint far-off echoes from some belfry in holbein's own city of Îs. the realities of that chime are buried,--whether well or ill,--four hundred years deep in the seas that roll over that submerged world of his youth and passion. but living emotion, we may be sure, went to the writing and the treasuring of this pledge to elsbeth or himself; a pledge redeemed when she became his wife. thus for the altar-piece of there would be this portrait of elsbeth in her girlhood ready to his hand. but even so, see how he has idealised it, made a new creature of it, all compact of exquisite ideals! he has eliminated the subtle sensuousness which has its own allure in the drawing. every trait is refined, purified, vivified, raised to another plane of character. genius has put the inferior elements into its retort, and transmuted them to some heavenly metal far enough from holbein's home-life. throughout all these years, as has been said, he was busy for the printers also. in he drew the noble title-page for petri's edition of luther's new testament, with the figures of st. peter and st. paul at either side, of which mention has been made. and in thomas wolff's edition of there is a series of his designs. his alphabets, borders, illustrations of all sorts, continued to enrich the basel press from this date, and were often borrowed by printers in other cities. in there came to basel that masterly wood-cutter who has been already referred to,--hans lützelburger. and from this time on, therefore, holbein's designs may be seen in their true beauty. he had painted, besides portraits of froben and others, at least three portraits of erasmus by . for in june of this year the latter writes to his friend pirkheimer, at nürnberg, to say that he has sent two of these portraits by the "most accomplished painter" to england; while the artist himself, he adds, has conveyed still a third to france. the smaller of the two sent to england, two-thirds the size of life, is probably the one now in the louvre (plate ). it is a masterpiece of penetration and technique. erasmus is here seen in the most unaffected simplicity of dress and pose; in profile against a dark-green tapestry patterned with light green, and red and white flowers. the usual scholar's cap covers his grey hair. the blue-grey eyes are glancing down at his writing. studies for the marvellously painted hands are among the louvre drawings. the very self of the man--the lean, strong, _thinking_ countenance,--the elusive smile, shrewd, ironical, yet kindly, stealing out on his lips,--is alive here by some necromancy of art. illustration: plate erasmus _oils. the louvre_ the portrait now in the basel museum, in oils on paper, afterwards fastened to the panel, is in all likelihood that third portrait which erasmus told pirkheimer the painter himself had taken to france. so that holbein must have painted it for, and carried it to, bonifacius amerbach, who was then, in , finishing a renewed course of study at avignon. probably it was during this visit to france, too, that he made the spirited sketches of monuments at bourges. in that case it would seem that he struck across by way of dijon to the cathedral city, in connection with some matter not now to be discovered, and from there took the great highway to avignon by way of lyons; carrying with him the gift of his sketches from the monuments of duke jehan of berri and his wife. these were treasured in amerbach's collection. whatever the reason that sent him abroad on this journey,--whether unhappiness at home or the troubled state of public affairs during the peasants' war of and ,--or whether he simply had business in france which delayed him there for a year or two--at all events, all records fail as to his wanderings or work in this long interval. and many circumstances go to show that it was at this time that he entered upon the immortal work which was published at lyons, by the trechsel brothers, many years later;--those "images of death" which have borrowed the old name in popular parlance, and are generally called holbein's "dance" of death. just why the trechsels did not issue the publication until it is impossible to say. as one of the largest catholic publishing-houses of france, they would be governed by circumstances entirely outside of holbein's history or control. but more than one circumstance presses the conclusion that the designs were made between and . and there is a certain amount of evidence for the belief that they may have been first struck off in germany, possibly by some one of the multifarious connections of the trechsels, as early as . but this is a large subject, not to be dealt with as an aside. all the world knows these wonderful designs; their beauty of line, power of expression, and sparkling fancy. among them all there are only two where death is a figure of violence; and but one,--the knight, transfixed by one fell, malignant stroke from behind--where death exhibits positive ferocity. in both of these,--the count, beaten down by his own great coat-of-arms, is the other,--it is easy to read a reflection of the actualities of the peasants' war then raging. for the rest, the grim skeleton wears no unkind smile; though that he _is_ death makes it look a ghastly-enough pleasantry. but toward the poor and the aged he is better than merry; he is kind. his fleshless hand is raised in benediction over the aged woman; and the bent patriarch leans on his arm, listening to death's attendant playing the sweet old melodies of long-ago as he stands on the verge of the great silence. but where a selection must be made, there are two drawings with their own special claim to consideration. these are the ploughman and the priest (plates and ). the former has been cited by ruskin as an example of a perfect design for wood-engraving; but even higher than its art, to my thinking, is its feeling. to the labourer of this sort,--poor, patient, toilworn,--holbein's heart is very gentle. and so is death--who muffles up his harsh features and speeds the heavy plough with a step like that of hope. and at the end of the long, last uphill furrow, see how the setting sun shines on "god's acre!" illustration: plate the ploughman _"images of death" woodcut series_ the priest _"images of death" woodcut series_ the second selection, the priest, is its own proof, if any were needed, of how sharply holbein distinguished cloth from cloth. in it, nearly a decade after he had pointed erasmus's satire on the unworthy prelate or the unclean friar, may plainly be read that reverence for the true priest which holbein shared with all his best friends. in the quaint, quiet street this solemn procession is too familiar a sight to draw any spectator from the hearth where the fire of the living is blazing so cheerily. the good father, very lovingly drawn, casts his kind glance around as he passes on his office with the veiled pyx carried reverently. before him goes death, his server, hastening the last mercy with eager steps. under his arm is the tiny glass that has measured the whole of a mortality; the sands have lost their moving charm, and all their dazzle makes but a little shadow now. in his hand is the bell that sounds take heed, take heed, to the careless; and pardon, peace, to dying ears that strain to hear it. but largest of all his symbols is the lamp in his right hand; his own lamp, the lamp that dissipates earth's last shadows--the light of death. holbein must have had his own solemn memories of the last office as he drew this picture of the good parish priest. for it was just about this time that the viaticum must have been administered to his father. in the then burgomaster of basel wrote to the monastery at issenheim, where hans holbein the elder had left his painting implements behind him years before, in which he recalls to the fathers how vainly and how often "our citizen," hans the younger, had applied to get these costly materials restored to their owner during his life; or to himself as his father's heir afterwards. this application was no more successful than holbein's own, apparently; and the painter was told to seek his father's gold and pigments among the peasants who had pillaged the monastery. by holbein was back in basel; but two works of this year would go to show that he was little less separated from his wife in basel than when away. the first of these, about one-third life-size, is a portrait of a woman with a child beside her who grasps an arrow to suggest the goddess of love attended by a wingless cupid (plate ). the little red-haired child does not do much to realise the ideal; but the woman, though not an ideal venus, might nevertheless well pose as a man's goddess. a "fair" woman in more senses than her colouring. her dark-red velvet dress slashed with white; wide sleeves of dusky gold-coloured silk; her close-fitting black head-dress embroidered with gold; the soft seduction of her look; the welcoming gesture of that pretty palm flung outward as if to embrace; these are all in keeping. illustration: plate dorothea offenburg as the goddess of love _oils. basel museum_ this was a lady whose past career might have warned a lover that whatever she might prove as a goddess, she could play but a fallen angel's part. the annals of basel knew her only too well. this was dorothea, the daughter of a knight of good old lineage,--hans von offenburg. but the knight died while she was quite young, and her mother, better famed for looks than conduct, married the girl to a debauched young aristocrat,--joachim von sultz. his own record is hardly less shameless than dorothea's soon became,--though the latter is chiefly in archives of the "unspeakable" sort. at the time when this picture was painted she must have been about two-and-twenty. unhappy holbein, indeed! the temper of xantippe herself, if she be but the decent mother of one's children, might work less havoc with a life than this embroidered cestus. but "the german apelles" was no greek voluptuary, ambitious in heathen vices, such as that other apelles whose painting of venus was said to be his masterpiece. and when holbein inscribed his second portrait of dorothea with the words laÏs corinthiaca, the midsummer madness must have been already a matter of scorn and wonder to himself. his whole life and the works of his life are the negation of the groves of corinth. the paint was not long dry on the goddess of love--at any rate, her dress was not worn out--before he had seen her in her true colours; "the daughter of the horse-leech, crying give, give." and so he painted her in (plate ); to scourge himself, surely, since she was too notoriously infamous to be affected by it. as if in stern scorn of every beauty, every allure, he set himself to record them in detail: something in the spirit with which macaulay set himself, "by the blessing of god," to do "full justice" to the poems of montgomery. laïs is far more beautiful, and far more beautifully painted, than venus. no emotion has hurried the painter's hand or confused his eye this time. in vain she wears such sadness in her eyes, such pensive dignity of attitude, such a wistful smile on her lips. he knows them, now, for false lights on the wrecker's coast. no faltering; no turning back. he can even fit a new head-dress on the lovely hair, and add the puffed sleeves below the short ones. he is a painter now; not a lover. and lest there should be one doubt as to his purpose, he flings a heap of gold where "cupid's" little hand would now seem desecrated, and inscribes beneath it the name that fits her beauty and his contempt. the plague was raging in basel all through that spring and summer, but i doubt if holbein shuddered at its contact as at the loveliness he painted. the brand he placed upon it is proof of that--laïs corinthiaca, the infamous mistress of the greek apelles. illustration: plate dorothea offenburg as laÏs corinthiaca _oils. basel museum_ but in men sat among the ashes of far goodlier palaces and larger interests than personal ones. the party in power was not friendlier to art than to the church of rome. in january the painters' guild had presented a petition to the council,--humbly praying that its members, "who had wives and children depending on their work," might be allowed to pursue it in basel! and so hard was holbein himself hit by the fanatical excitement of the time that the council's account-books show the paltry wage he was glad to earn for painting a few shields on some official building "in the borough of waldenburg." small wonder that an artist such as holbein should feel his heart grow sick within him, and should turn his thoughts with increasing determination to some fresh field. even without the bitterness that now must have edged the tongue of a wronged wife, or the bitterer taste of dead sea fruit in his own mouth,--he must have been driven to try his luck elsewhere. and of all the invitations urged upon him, the chances which erasmus's introductions could give him in england would probably offer the greatest promise. but before he set out with these letters, in the late summer of , he executed yet one more great commission for his old friend, jacob meyer zum hasen, now leader of the catholic party in opposition. this was the work known now to all the civilised world as "the meyer madonna." for centuries the beautiful picture which bears this name in the dresden gallery has been cited by every expert authority and critic as this work. but since the mysterious appearance of the darmstadt painting, which suddenly turned up in a paris art collector's possession, from no one knows where in , the tide of belief has slowly receded from the dresden painting. until now there are only a few judges who do not hold--especially since the public comparison of the two works at dresden in --that the dresden picture is "a copy by an inferior hand." unquestionably the painting now in the schloss at darmstadt is the earlier version. and unquestionably, too, the changes introduced in the dresden copy,--the elevated architecture, slenderer figures, and less happy child,--are so great as to lend weight to the arguments of those who still claim that no copyist would ever have made them. but, as has been said, the contention that the dresden work is a replica by holbein of the older darmstadt altar-piece, is now maintained by only a very small minority of judges. the painting of the darmstadt work is admitted by all to be more uniformly admirable, more completely carried out; the details more finished (except in the case of the virgin), and the colours richer and more harmonious. yet both works should be studied to appreciate fully their claims and differences (plates and ). illustration: plate the meyer-madonna _oils. grand ducal collection, darmstadt_ illustration: plate the meyer-madonna [_later version. held by many to be a copy_] _oils. dresden gallery_ in the darmstadt work the virgin's dress is wholly different in tone from her robe at dresden; otherwise the colouring aims to be the same in each. here, in the original altar-piece, it is a greenish-blue. the lower sleeves are golden, a line of white at the wrist, and a filmier one within the bodice. her girdle is a rich red; her mantle a greenish-grey. over this latter her fair hair streams like softest sunshine. above her noble, pity-full face sits her crown of fine gold and pearls. the woman kneeling nearest to the madonna is commonly believed to be meyer's first wife, who had died in , the mother of one child--a daughter--by a previous husband. between this stepdaughter and meyer there was considerable litigation over her property. the younger woman, whose chin-cloth is dropped in the painting though worn like the others in the drawing for her portrait, is meyer's second wife, dorothea kannegiesser, whom he married about , and with whom he was painted by holbein in . the sombre garments of both women are echoed by the black of meyer's hair and coat, the latter lined with light-brown fur. meyer's face, in its manly intensity of devotional feeling, is a wonderful piece of psychology in the darmstadt picture. in the drawing for the young girl, anna meyer, who kneels beside her mother with a red rosary in her hands, she has her golden-brown hair hanging loose down her back, as befits a girl of thirteen. but in the painting it is coiled in glossy braids beneath some ceremonial head-dress; this is richly embroidered with pearls, with red silk tassel and a wreath of red and white flowers above it. this head-dress is painted with much more beautiful precision in the older work, and the expression of the girl's face is much more deeply devout; her hands, too, are decidedly superior to those of the dresden work. this is true also of the carpet, patterned in red and green, with touches of white and black, on a ground of deep yellow. the dresden carpet is conspicuously inferior in finish and colour to that of darmstadt, so much so that waagen and others, who believe the former a replica, think a pupil or assistant may have been responsible for this and other details, which for some reason holbein himself was unable to finish. the elder boy, with the tumbled brown hair, dressed in a light-brown coat trimmed with red-brown velvet, and hose of cinnabar-red, with decorations of gold clasps and tags on fine blue cords, has a yellowish-green portemonnaie, with tassels of dull blue hanging from his girdle. all the carnations are superb, and in the darmstadt picture the infant christ wears a sweet and happy smile. in that of dresden he looks sad and ill; a fact which has given rise to the theory ruskin adopted--that the virgin had put down the divine child and taken up meyer's ailing one. but the absence of wonder on the faces of meyer's family, and, indeed, the familiar affection of the elder boy, would of itself negative this theory. i have my own ideas as to this point, but it would serve no useful purpose to go into them in this place. of these two sons of meyer there is no other record. anna alone survived her mother, who married again after meyer's death. anna's daughter married burgomaster remigius fäsch, or fesch, whose grandson--remigius fäsch, counsellor-at-law--was the well-known art collector whose collection and manuscript are also in the basel museum, where there is an oil-copy of the dresden meyer-madonna. even the cool eye of walpole was warmed by this great work of , as he saw it in the dresden painting then hanging in the palazzo delfino at venice. "for the colouring," he exclaims, "it is beautiful beyond description; and the carnations have that enamelled bloom so peculiar to holbein, who touched his works till not a touch remained discernible." twenty years earlier edward wright had written of meyer's youngest boy--"the little naked boy could hardly have been outdone, if i may dare to say such a word, by raphael himself." and in our own day that fine and measured critic, mrs. jameson, has spoken for generation upon generation who have thought the same thought before the meyer-madonna of dresden, when she says of it: "in purity, dignity, humility and intellectual grace this exquisite madonna has never been surpassed; not even by raphael. the face, once seen, haunts the memory." when wright and walpole saw this dresden work at venice, it was supposed to be "the family of sir thomas more"--_meier_ having slipped into "more" in the course of centuries, which had retained only the vivid impression of holbein's association with the latter, and knew that the painter had drawn him in the midst of his family. that living association was now, late in the summer of this year, about to begin. chapter iii chances and changes - first visit to england--sir thomas more; his home and portraits--the windsor drawings--bishop fisher--archbishop warham--bishop stokesley--sir henry guildford and his portrait--nicholas kratzer--sir bryan tuke--holbein's return to basel--portrait-group of his wife and two eldest children; two versions--holbein's children, and families claiming descent from him--iconoclastic fury--ruined arts--death of meyer zum hasen--another meyer commissions the last paintings for basel--return to england--description of the steelyard--portraits of its members--george gysze--basel council summons holbein home--"the ambassadors" at the national gallery; accepted identification--coronation of queen anne boleyn--lost paintings for the guildhall of the steelyard; the triumphs of riches and poverty--the great morett portrait; identifications--holbein's industry and fertility--designs for metal-work and other drawings--solomon and the queen of sheba. two years earlier erasmus had evidently thought that london was the true stage for such a genius as holbein's, and more had written that he would gladly do all he could to further the painter's success if he should decide to visit england. more himself called holbein "a marvellous artist" for his portrait of erasmus, and could not but be delighted with the beautiful little woodcut which opened froben's edition of his own _utopia_. this illustration represents more and his only son seated with Ægidius, or peter gillis, in the latter's own garden at antwerp, listening to the tale of _utopia_ from the ancient comrade of amerigo vespucci. and very likely holbein himself sat in this garden, in the late summer of , when he was passing through antwerp to england. he had a letter of introduction from erasmus to Ægidius, as also to the host who was expecting him in england--sir thomas more. van mander says that long before this the earl of arundel, when pausing at basel, had been so much pleased with holbein's works in that city that he had urged the painter to forsake it for london. but it would pretty surely have been the promise of more's influence which actually induced him to try his fortune so far afield. and by the autumn of he was one of that happy company which the genial soul of more drew around him in his new home in "chelsea village," where beaufort row now has its north end. here the master's love of every art, and aptitude in affairs, filled his hospitable mansion with wit and music and joyous strenuousness. here he was the idol of his family, as well as the king's friend. henry himself must surely have shuddered could he have pictured that face, over which thought and humour were ever chasing one another like sun and shadow on the lawn, black above london bridge and flung at last from it into the thames only a few years hence. now it turned to his own all life and loyalty, as he laid his arm around more's shoulders while they wandered between the garden beds of chelsea. early in , probably, holbein had finished the fine portrait of his host, which is now in mr. huth's collection. the study for this oil painting is among the windsor drawings (plate ), as also one for the large family picture now lost, if indeed it was ever completed by holbein; a matter of some doubt, notwithstanding van mander's account of it in the possession of the art-collector van loo. an outline sketch of it, or for it, he certainly made. and that precious pen-and-ink outline,--with the name of each written above or below the figure in more's hand, and notes as to alterations to be made in the final composition in holbein's hand,--is now in the basel museum; having come into amerbach's possession as the heir of erasmus. illustration: plate sir thomas more _chalks. windsor castle_ in mr. huth's oil portrait more is wearing a dark-green coat trimmed with fur, and showing the purple sleeves of his doublet beneath. his eyes are grey-blue. he never wore a beard, made the fashion by henry viii. at the same time that the head was "polled,"--a singularly ugly combination,--until he was in the tower and grew that beard which he smilingly swept away from the path of the executioner's axe. "it," he said with astonishing self-possession, could be "accused of no treason." in , however, no shadow of tragedy seemed possible unless the suspicion of it slept in more's own heart when he said to his son-in-law, in answer to some flattering congratulation on the king's favour, "son roper, if my head could win him a castle in france, my head should fall." but for these superb drawings in the royal collection at windsor, we should know nothing at all of many a portrait holbein painted--all among the immediate friends of more and erasmus on this first visit to england; nor, for that matter, of many a portrait painted in later years. and how little these can be trusted to tell the whole tale of achievement is shown by the fact that they include no studies for a number of oil paintings that are still in existence. illustration: plate john fisher, bishop of rochester _chalks. windsor castle_ of the drawings which represent a lost painting, there is a noble one of bishop fisher, whose execution preceded more's by only a few weeks. a literally venerable head it was (plate ), to be the shuttlecock of papal defiance and royal determination not to be defied with impunity. for assuredly if the life of the bishop of rochester hung in the balance, as it did, in may, , it was paul iii.'s mad effrontery in making him a cardinal while he was actually in the tower under his sovereign's displeasure which heated the king's anger to white-hot brutality. "let the pope send him a hat," he thundered, "but i will so provide that he shall wear it on his shoulders, for head he shall have none to set it on!" and on the th of that june he made good the savage oath. yet the painter, after all, has been more potent than the king. for here lives fisher. bishop or cardinal this is the man, as more loved him. a striking and richly painted oil portrait of erasmus's "mæcenas," archbishop warham, is in the louvre; of which there are a number of copies, as well as a replica, at lambeth palace. the latter was exhibited at manchester in . the study for these portraits is among the windsor drawings. the painting in the louvre has more vividness in the carnations, and the impasto is thicker than at lambeth; otherwise the two are identical. but for myself i find a more seizing quality in the chalk drawing than in either. there is something in its sunken fading eyes that speaks of the majesty of office as well as its burdens. holbein painted a prelate of a very different sort in the oil portrait of john stokesley, bishop of london, which is preserved at windsor castle. and yet he dared to paint the truth--now as always. the painting is a masterpiece of modelling and soft transparency of light and shade. but the truculent, lowering countenance leaves small doubt that the sitter was a gentleman pre-eminently "gey ill to live wi'." there is another oil painting at windsor which has not escaped the injuries of time, but is none the less a splendid survival of . this is the portrait of sir henry guildford, master of the horse to henry viii., and holder of many another office of trust (plate ). it has sometimes been thought that the yellow tone of the complexion was due to over-painting, but the chalk drawing shows that it was a personal peculiarity. sir henry, a warm friend to both more and erasmus, was forty-nine when he sat for this portrait. under his black fur-trimmed surcoat he wears a doublet of gold brocade. in his hand is the wand of office as chamberlain, and he is decorated with the collar and badge of the garter. he was always a great favourite with the king from the time when the latter came to the throne and young guildford, then twenty, was one of the gayest, bravest, most loyal spirits about it. always as ready for a real battle as a mimic one; as clever at writing plays for the king's amusement as at acting in them; as good in a revel as at a piece of diplomacy; it is not much wonder that his knighthood in should but have been the prelude to a long series of promotions. illustration: plate sir henry guildford _oils. windsor castle_ the affection of master and man, too, was singularly sincere for a court. sir henry loyally supported the king's demand for a divorce, but he was by no means ready to support a second marriage without the papal preliminary. hence he was not a persona grata to anne boleyn. nor would he stoop to curry favour at the expense of an honest conviction. when anne warned him that he was likely to lose his office as soon as she became queen, he promptly replied that he would spare her all concern about that, and went straight to the king to resign the office of controller. the latter showed the depth of his affection by urging sir henry, twice, to reconsider his determination. but he wisely preferred to quit his apartments under the king's roof,--without, however, breaking the bond of mutual attachment. five years after this picture was painted he died; in may, . holbein also painted lady guildford's portrait; an oil painting in mr. frewer's collection. and sir henry selected him as one of the chief artists commissioned to decorate the interior of the banqueting hall specially erected for the celebration of the french alliance in . by all of which it would seem that in securing a new patron the painter had once more made a friend. erasmus had asked Ægidius to assist holbein's success in any way he could. and it was probably owing to a letter from the antwerp scholar that a friendship of many years sprang up between the painter and nicholas kratzer of munich, then astronomer-royal at the court of henry viii. it began with what was once a fine portrait. but the oil painting, now in the louvre (plate ), has suffered such severe injuries as to be but a poor ghost of what it was originally. only the composition, and the fidelity with which all his friend's scientific instruments are drawn attest holbein. he never adds a detail for merely pictorial purposes; and never shuffles one that concerns the personality of a sitter. no biographer with his pen sets every straw to show the winds of character and circumstance more deliberately than does this historian with his brush. something of kratzer's shrewd wit,--for he was a "character"--can still be read in his half-destroyed picture. years later we shall see the intimate friend of both him and his painter writing of the astronomer as a man "brim-full" of humour and fancy. and once, we may be sure, it sparkled in the eyes of kratzer's portrait as brilliantly as in his own. illustration: plate nicholas kratzer _oils. the louvre_ in the munich gallery there is another portrait in oils which has undergone, if possible, still more atrocious treatment than kratzer's; yet, like it, still keeps enough of its original charm to rivet attention in any company. this latter is one of the most striking of the half-dozen portraits of sir bryan tuke, which all claim, with more or less of probability, to be paintings by holbein. and certainly in the years when sir bryan was treasurer of the king's household it would be natural that the painter, whose salary he regularly disbursed, should gladly oblige him to his utmost. but the munich portrait also shows a far deeper bond of interests than one of money. the undercurrent of their natures ran in a groove of more than common sympathy; and to an analyst, such as holbein was, the reflections behind these inscrutable eyes were full of unusual attraction. myself, i feel convinced, for more than one reason, that it is a work of some years later. but as a consensus of authorities places it during this visit, the picture is noticed here. it gains rather than loses by reproduction;--since the painting now shows a strange disagreeable colour most unlike the carnations of holbein. but the composition is unmistakable (plate ). between the sitter and the green-curtained background stands perhaps the ghastliest of all holbein's skeletons,--one hand on his scythe, the other grimly pointing at the nearly-spent sands of the hour-glass. below the latter is a tablet on which, in latin, are the words of job: "my short life, does it not come to an end soon?" and the signature without the date. sir bryan wears a fur-trimmed doublet with gold buttons; the gold-patterned sleeves revealed by the black silk gown, also trimmed with fur. on a massive gold chain he wears a cross of great richness, enamelled with the pierced hands and feet. fine lawn is at throat and wrists; and in one hand he holds his gloves. illustration: plate sir bryan tuke _oils. munich gallery_ * * * * * before the researches of eduard his, it used to be sometimes said that holbein had virtually deserted his family when he left basel in . we know now, however, that whatever were the moral wrongs which he suffered or committed, he never forsook the duty of providing for his wife and children in no ungenerous proportion to his means. the records show that the fruit of his two years' industry was used to acquire a comfortable home which remained the property of his wife. and the inventory of its contents at elsbeth's death, some six years after holbein's death, proves that this home was to the full as well furnished and comfortable as was usual with people of similar condition. in the summer of the painter bade farewell for ever to sir thomas more's gracious chelsea home. he took with him the pen-and-ink sketch for a large picture of more in the midst of his family, which has been already referred to. this was for erasmus, who had temporarily abandoned basel,--now so utterly unlike the basel of former years,--and had sought the more sympathetic atmosphere of freiburg. bonifacius amerbach, from the same causes, was here with erasmus for some time. so that something like the old froben days must have seemed still about them as the three friends sat together and talked of all that had come and gone. but by the latter part of august holbein was back in that now sadly-altered basel whence his best friends were reft by trouble or death. and on the th of august, , he bought the house next to froben's _buchhaus_, the deed attesting that he did so in person, in company with elsbeth. the price, guldens or florins, was by no means the small one it now seems, nor could the painter pay the whole sum at once. he paid down one-third, and secured the rest by a mortgage. the site of this house is now occupied by st. johann vorstadt. three years later, march th, , holbein bought out a disagreeable neighbour; and thus added to his two-storied house overlooking the rhine the little one-storied cottage which cost him only seventy guldens. the factory at no. now partially covers this latter site. fifty years ago both of the original houses were still standing; quaint, crumbling, affecting monuments of days when holbein's voice and holbein's step rang through their rooms, when frau elsbeth swept and garnished them; and when four children added their links to the chain of a marriage which holbein was now manfully trying to make the best of. it must have been in the year after the purchase of the larger house that he painted the group of his wife and the two children she had then borne him. this life-size group, done in oils on paper, is now in the basel museum (plate ). the stoical sincerity with which they are represented, and the hard outline produced by cutting out the work to mount it on its wood panel, makes a somewhat repellent impression at the first glance. and this is in no way dispersed by studying elsbeth's traits. but the painting itself is a tour-de-force. by sheer quality holbein has invested these portraits,--a middle-aged, coarse-figured, unamiable-looking woman, a very commonplace infant, and a bright-faced boy,--with the prestige inseparable from an achievement of a high order. illustration: plate elsbeth, holbein's wife, with their two eldest children _oils. basel museum_ clearly elsbeth holbein was not one to give up the costume of her youth simply because she would have been well advised to do so; and the cut and fashion of her dress remains almost identical with the drawing in the louvre. her lustreless light-brown hair is covered with a gauzy veil and a reddish-brown cap. her brown stuff upper garment, trimmed with thin fur, shows a dark-green dress beneath it. the baby wears a gown of undyed woollen material, and the boy a jacket of dark bluish green. out of such unpromising materials has the painter made a picture that would challenge attention among any. if we knew nothing as to the identity of this woman, sitting oblivious of the children at her knee, wrapped in her own dark thoughts, we should certainly want to know something of her story and of the story of the little fellow whose eyes are breathlessly intent upon some purer, sweeter vision. there is at cologne, in a private collection, a deeply interesting duplicate of this work; also on paper afterwards mounted on wood, but not cut out. unfortunately this latter has suffered such irremediable injuries that it is quite impossible now to pronounce upon its claim to be either the earlier example or a replica; but good judges have believed it to be by holbein. its chief interest, however, from a biographical point of view, may be said to lie in the sixteenth-century writing pasted on at the top. literally translated, this runs-- "love towards god consists in charity. who hath this love can feel no hate."[ ] it is difficult to see on what grounds woltmann, who was inclined to accept the picture as genuine, should hold the inscription to have been added by someone desirous of increasing the value of the work by representing it to be an allegorical picture of charity. there was never a time when the allegory, if accepted, could have carried the same value as the portraits. and surely the second line is utterly inconsistent with the theory. original or not, it has a very startling likeness to a plea which holbein himself must have urged more than once, to soften a bitterness his own errors could not have tended to cure. when the basel painting was cut out to be mounted, the last numeral was lost; so that it now stands dated -. but all the other facts put it beyond question that the picture could not have been done before . the baby of was now the boy of seven, and his successor would seem to have been born during the first months of its father's visit to england, and to be now some eighteen months old. it may be as well to say here, once for all, as much as need be said of holbein's family. as already stated, his wife survived him by six years, dying at basel in . by her first marriage she had one son, franz schmidt--who seems to have been a worthy and successful man of trade. she was the mother of four children by her marriage with holbein;--philip, born ; katharina, ; jacob, about ; and künegoldt, about . some years before the painter's death he took philip holbein to paris, and there apprenticed him to the eminent goldsmith, jerome david, with whom he remained until a couple of years after holbein's death. later, he somehow drifted to lisbon, where he followed his trade until he settled in the old home of his grandfather and great-grandfather, augsburg. in his son, philip holbein, junior, then "imperial court jeweller" at augsburg, petitioned the emperor matthias for letters patent to "confirm" his right to certain noble arms. the claims put forward in this document are utterly at variance with the received belief in holbein's humble augsburg origin. yet the most expert investigators who have carefully studied this subject agree in thinking that this grandson based the genealogical tree on mythical foundations, and therefore planted it remote from augsburg itself. but be this as it may--and it seems hard to reconcile such discrepancies within a century of the time when both hans holbein the elder and his son were well-known citizens of augsburg,--the application was successful. mechel says that this philip, who claims descent from the renowned "painter of basel," lived in vienna during his later years; and that a descendant of his again got their patent "confirmed" in , with the right to carry the surname of _holbeinsberg_; also that this latter descendant was made a knight of the empire in , as the noble _von holbeinsberg_. so much for the eldest branch, that of philip holbein. the younger boy, jacob, was a goldsmith in london after holbein's death. the evidence seems to show that he was never here previous to that event,--which of itself may have first occasioned his coming, though hardly at the time, as jacob was not more than thirteen at his father's death. a document in existence proves that he also died in london, about , and apparently unmarried; at which time his elder brother, philip, was still in lisbon. katharina, the elder daughter, the baby of the basel painting, seems to have left no descendants. she married a butcher of basel and died in . and in the same year, very likely from one of the frequent epidemics so fatal to basel, died künegoldt, elsbeth's youngest child. the merian family of frankfurt-am-main claims an hereditary right to the artistic gifts of its famous copper-engraver, mathew merian, as descendants of holbein through this daughter künegoldt, who, when she died, was the wife of andreas syff, a miller, of basel. according to the greatest authority on this subject, eduard his, to whose exhaustive researches we owe almost all that is known of holbein's family, the merian claims have not, so far, been proved by actual archives; but he is of opinion that there is considerable circumstantial evidence to support their claim to be lineal descendants of holbein through the female line. but in , when the family group was painted, neither jacob nor künegoldt were yet born; and the painter was much more concerned with the anxieties of a living father than with the shadowy cares of an ancestor. and dark enough was the outlook in basel, where the lutheran agitation had, as erasmus said, "frozen the arts." before holbein came back from england many churches had abjured all pictures. the tide of religious antagonism had, as we know, driven both erasmus and bonifacius amerbach for a time to a catholic stronghold; and had driven their old friend meyer to do literal battle on behalf of the church. altar paintings were out of the question. and holbein could but devote himself to designs for the printers and for goldsmiths. many beautiful compositions for both crafts remain to testify of his matured powers and constant industry. the exquisite designs for dagger-sheaths, in particular, are rightly counted among the treasures of art. but in the summer of came a commission for the painter's last great work in basel. this was the long-delayed order for the decoration of that vacant wall in the council hall, which adjoined the house _zum hasen_. oddly enough, this commission also came officially through a burgomaster, jacob meyer. but the meyer of , meyer "of-the-stag" (_zum hirten_), had neither blood nor sentiments in common with the meyer under whom holbein had done his first work in the rathaus. each headed a party at deadly issue. for the past year meyer-of-the-hare had vainly tried to turn back the clock or to stay the iconoclastic fury of the hour. religious fanaticism had wrecked him as well as every beautiful piece of art on which it could lay its hands. and now at last it mattered nothing any more so far as he was concerned. the dreadful harvests that had brought virtual famine, the earthquake shocks which had unsettled many a mental as well as material foundation, the flooding devastations of the birsig, the rage of canton against canton, the civil war ready to begin, pope or luther come by his own,--it was all one at last to meyer zum hasen, who died just as his protégé of earlier years was commissioned to paint the blank wall. but something of his spirit, something of what he himself had been preaching to basel in warning and threat for years, seems to have passed on into the pictures holbein set before the council. the paintings, alas! are no more. but a fragment or two and the drawings for them show how truly grand the two works were which holbein had probably already intended should be his swan-song as holbein _basiliensis_. he chose for his subjects rehoboam's answer to the suffering israelites: "my little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins; my father hath chastised you with whips, but i will chastise you with scorpions"; and samuel prophesying to saul how dearly he shall learn that "rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as an iniquity and idolatry." both subjects are treated in the great manner. rehoboam, leaning forward from his throned seat with flashing eyes, and his little finger seeming actually to quiver in the air, is wonderfully conceived. but the meeting of samuel and saul (plate ) most splendidly demonstrates how far holbein towered above mere portraiture when he had the opportunity. to picture this drawing in all the beauty of colour is to realise what we have lost, and what his just fame has lost, with the utter destruction of such works. illustration: plate _behold to obey is better than sacrifice_ samuel denouncing saul _washed drawing. basel museum_ not the greatest of the italians could have improved upon the distribution and balance of this composition. the blazing background, the sense of a densely crowded host beyond what the eye can grasp, of captives and captors--all the stupendous crackle and roar and shout and sudden strained silence of saul's immediate followers--is amply matched by those two typical protagonists, just then repeating the old drama with varying fortunes on the world's new stage. the secular arm has been short in the service of god, as interpreted by his vicar; it has thought, in saul's person, to win the cause, yet spare its enemies. vain is it for him to run with humility, to tell what he has won and what overcome and done. he has not destroyed all--root and branch. for reasons of personal policy, he has given quarter. and the priest, for god, will have none of his well-meaning excuses, of his good intentions, his policy, his burnt offerings of half-way measures;--"behold to obey is better than sacrifice," begins his fierce anathema, "and to hearken than the fat of rams." doubtless the protestant party read its own meanings into these texts, when once the pictures were painted and paid for with seventy-two good guldens. but two very significant facts form their own commentary. one is that the only employment he received from the council afterward was to redecorate the old lällenkönig monstrosity on the bridge!--and the other, that as soon as holbein got his pay for this disgraceful commission, a pay he was now much too hard pressed to refuse, he quietly slipped away from basel without taking the council into his confidence. judging from his after conduct to his family, he probably left the seventy-two guldens to support his wife and children--now four little ones--until such time as he could send them more from england; and took his way once more, in the late autumn of , with knapsack and paint-brushes for the journey, to a city that might give him few walls to cover, but would certainly not set him to painting the town clock. * * * * * things had changed in london also, and gravely, holbein found, since he had quitted sir thomas more's home at chelsea with the sketch for erasmus, in the summer of . he had barely settled himself, in the city this time, before the struggle between henry viii. and the english clergy ended in that convocation when the latter made its formal "submission." and in the same month that this took place, sir henry guildford died. then the three great acts of parliament, which swept away the crying abuses of "benefit of clergy," resurrected the "dead" lands (so called because perpetually _aliened in mortmain_) by restoring them to the national circulation of the sovereign-will, and turned the rich stream of annates or "first-fruits" of the bishoprics from the pope's coffers to the king's,--were passed in this year. this legislation was followed by the solemn protest and then the death of archbishop warham. so that now of that great and close quartet of friends,--colet, warham, more, and erasmus,--there were two on either shore of the last crossing. and more could already see the dark river ahead. his eye marked the consequences of the acts as keenly as his aged friend warham had discerned them on his death-bed; and shortly after the "submission," more resigned his great office as chancellor. these seem matters too high to twist the threads of a poor painter's life. but in reality holbein's career was shaped, from many a year back, by such events as rarely touch the humble individual directly. all his friends and all his patrons in this country were carried far out of reach by ; and he must sink or swim, as they in darker waters, according to his own powers. that under such unexpected ill-fortune he did not immediately sink was due to two things--the greatness of his powers, and the circumstance that a trading-company of continentals, chiefly german, was seated in london with immense wealth and immense influence at its disposal, and that they were men who knew how to appreciate holbein at his worth. the roots of the steelyard (_stahlhof_), or "stilyard," as it is often called in early dramatists, go far back to the legendary centuries of english history. from before the time of alfred the great, traders from germany had clustered together on the bank of the thames, close to where cannon street station now stands. amalgamation with the hanseatic league, and the necessities and gratitude of more than one king of england--but especially of edward iv.--had made of the steelyard a company such as only the east india company of later centuries may be compared to. with the world's new geography and new commercial conditions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its methods and its monopoly of the seas were gradually superseded by the great seamen of the elizabethan era. but in holbein's time, though already some of the hanseatic ships were too overgrown to pass london bridge and cast anchor at their own docks just above it, there was scarce a cloud upon the colossal prosperity of the steelyard. its walled and turreted enclosure, able to withstand the fiercest assaults of wat tyler's men, stretched from the river northward to thames street, and from allhallows street on the east to dowgate street on the west; and it might well have been described as a german city and port situated in the heart of the city of london. its massive front in thames street, where were its three portcullised and fortified gateways with german inscriptions above and the imperial double-eagle high over all, was one of the sights of london. and the steelyard tavern was a famous resort. when holbein knew it well the greatest prelates and nobles and all the court crowd,--which stretched its gardens and great houses from the stream of the fleet, just west of the city wall, to westminster abbey,--used to flock to this thames street corner of the steelyard to drink rhenish wine and eat smoked reindeer-tongue and caviar. within the gates stood the big guildhall, which answered both for its councils and its noted banquets. the high carved mantelpieces and wainscotting served admirably to display the glittering plate and strange souvenirs of every known land and sea. on the walls which holbein's works were so to enrich hung portraits of eminent members of the guild. the hall was flanked by the huge stone kitchen and by a strong-tower for the safeguarding of special valuables. in the open space between the hall and the west wall of the enclosure was the garden, where trees and flowers and a greenery of vines had been planted in exact imitation of the gardens of the fatherland. and here sat holbein among the associates, many a time, over their good cheer,--as in the old basel gardens of the blume or the stork in other years, and heard only the german tongue or the songs of home around him. away down to the docks ran the lanes of warehouses; shops and booths where every german trader or craftsman in london had his place; and where the merchandise of the world--the greater part of it destined for lübeck as a centre of european distribution--might be sampled. here were choicest specimens of the then costly spices of cathay, or the famous falcons of norway and livonia, for which english sportsmen were willing to pay fabulous prices. as in other guilds, the government of this cosmopolitan beehive was that of a despotic democracy. all the inmates of the precincts were subjected to a rule little short of monastic in its strict discipline. the penalties for any infringement, for drunkenness or dicing or even for an abusive epithet, were very severe. the civic duties of the corporation, too, were sharply defined. in case of war every member had his appointed post in the defence of london. every "master" had to keep the prescribed accoutrements and arms ready for immediate use, and the repairs and maintenance of the bishop's gate were at the sole cost of the steelyard. no chapel was erected within its enclosure, the guild preferring to be incorporated with the adjoining parish of allhallows. whether or not there is any truth at the bottom of the ancient tradition that this church had been originally founded by germans, the guild maintained its own altar in it in holbein's time, where masses were said on its own special days and festivals. so far are the facts from the common supposition that the doctrines of luther would find natural favour in such a community, that the latter only gradually came into the "church of england" by the same slow processes which transformed the whole parish around it. and when more, who was anything but _utopian_ himself in the practice of tolerating "heresy" during his chancellorship, headed a domiciliary visit in search of lutheran writings, he could find nothing but orthodox german prayer-books and the scriptures, whose use among laymen he always strenuously advocated; while every member of the community was able to make honest and hearty oath at st. paul's cross that no heretic or heretical doctrine would be tolerated amongst them. here, then, in this staunch citadel of his own faith, holbein naturally found a new circle of friends among whom it must have been strangely easy to fancy himself back in the fischmarkt of his young years, with froben and erasmus and amerbach and meyer zum hasen. the curtain rings up on his work for the steelyard,--work which covered many years and more fine paintings than could even be enumerated here--with a superlative exhibition of all his powers. the oil portrait of georg gyze, or george gisze, as it is often written, now in the berlin gallery (plate ), inscribed , has called forth the enthusiastic eulogies of every competent judge. by a piece of rare good fortune it is in perfect preservation. the black of the surcoat alone has lost a little of its first lustre; all the rest is as though it had left the easel but the other day. illustration: plate jÖrg (or george) gyze _oils. berlin museum_ the young merchant is seated among his daily surroundings in the steelyard. he is in the act of leisurely opening a letter addressed, "to the hand of the honourable jörg gyze, my brother, in london, england" (_dem ersamen herrn jörg gyzen zu lunden in engelant meinem broder to henden_). the merchant's motto, "no pleasure without care," is chalked up in latin on the background, with his signature beneath it. written on a paper stuck higher up is a latin verse in praise of the portrait; also the date, and the sitter's age--thirty-four. on the racks and shelves are documents, books, keys, a watch and seals, and a pair of scales. a gold ball is hanging from above with a lovely chasing in blue enamel; a miracle of painting in itself, to say nothing of the exquisite venetian glass, filled with water and carnation-pinks. this flower has its own meaning, and is introduced in more than one of holbein's portraits. on the rich oriental table-cloth are writing materials also, with account-books, seal and scissors. gyze himself is a fair-haired man, wearing a brilliant red silk doublet beneath his black cloak. and the amazing thing is that amidst this bewildering array of pictures--for every article is such in itself, owing to the perfection of its painting--gyze is not lost or overridden for a moment. it is unmistakably _his_ picture; and he dominates the accessories as much as he did in reality. the man, the whole man, is there; and the things are there around him; that is all. but that the eye recognises this is the demonstration of the painter's own mastership. it is as much holbein's peculiar secret as are the cool shadows, the luminous glow, the astounding elaboration, all made to express the dignity of one, and but one, theme. as has been said, the steelyard portraits are too many to even catalogue here, covering many years. but gyze's may be taken as their high-water mark. for that matter it could not, in its own way, be surpassed by any portrait. holbein himself greatly surpassed it in the matter of subtle and noble simplicity, in his two greatest extant pieces of portraiture--the morett of dresden and the duchess of milan, now in our national gallery. but in technical powers, and the power of subordinating their very virtuosity to the requirement of a true picture, this was a superlative expression of his matured method. in the midst of all his fresh london successes came a summons from basel, which must have made the painter smile a little grimly. it had slowly dawned on the council that holbein--whose renown they well knew was a feather in basel's cap--was proposing to make a prolonged absence. the result was a decision which the burgomaster officially conveyed to him. jacob meyer zum hirten wrote to say that holbein was desired to return immediately to resume the duties of a citizen-artist, and that the council, anxious to assist him in the support of his family, had resolved to allow him an annuity of thirty guldens yearly "until something better" could be afforded. whether he replied in evasive terms, or whether he let the lällenkönig speak for him, is not on record. by the time holbein received this letter, written late in the autumn of , he was plunged into a year of almost incredible activity. the whole of it would hardly seem too long for one such painting as the life-size double portrait--his largest extant portrait-painting--that now belongs to the national gallery: "the ambassadors" (plate ). at the extremities of a heavy table, something like a rude dinner-waggon, are two full-length figures which show a curious reflection of his early defect in their want of sufficient height. at the spectator's left stands a richly-costumed individual, whose stalwart proportions, ruddy complexion, and boldly ardent eye denote the perfection of vigorous health, and are in striking contrast to the physique, colouring, and expression of his companion. the former wears a black velvet doublet, which reveals an under-garment of gleaming rose-red satin. over all is a black velvet mantle lined and trimmed with white fur. on his black cap is a silver brooch which displays a skull. he wears a gold badge exhibiting a mailed figure spearing a dragon suspended by a heavy gold chain. the hilt of his sword is seen at his left hand, and his right grasps a gold-sheathed dagger. on this latter is the inscription: Æt. svÆ. ; and from it depends a massive green-and-gold silk tassel, incomparably painted. illustration: plate "the ambassadors" _oils. national gallery_ as has been noted, the complexion of the man at our right is singularly pallid; the eyes mournfully listless; the skin of his knuckles drawn into the wrinkles of wasting tissues. he wears a scholar's cap and gown; the latter of some chocolate-brown pile, richly patterned, and lined with brown fur. he holds his gloves in his right hand and leans this arm on a closed book, on the edges of which is the lettering: Ætatis svÆ . an oriental cover is spread on the table, and upon it are a number of the scientific instruments common to astrology and to the uses of astronomers like kratzer, in whose portrait at the louvre they are also to be seen. on the lower shelf are mathematical and musical instruments and books. the two latter are opened to display their text conspicuously. near the man at our left, and kept open by a t-square, is the arithmetic which peter apian, astronomer and globe-maker, published in . it is opened at a page in division, with its german text plainly legible and identical with the actual page, as seen in the british museum's copy of this edition. the book nearest the man at our right, lying beneath the lute, has been also identified as luther's psalm-book with music,--in which the german text is by himself and the music by johann walther--first published in . mr. barclay squire has shown that the two hymns could not, however, have faced each other in reality, as they do in the painting, without the intervening leaves having been purposely suppressed to gain this end. these hymns are "come holy ghost" (_kom heiliger geyst herregott_) and "mortal, wouldst thou live blessedly?" (_mensch wiltu leben seliglich_). in each case the entire verse is given. the background is a green-diapered damask curtain most significantly drawn aside to show a silver crucifix high up in the left-hand corner, above the man with the dagger and sword. on the beautiful mosaic pavement is an ugly object that looks like some dried fish. but experiments have shown that the french sale-catalogues in which this work first appears in the eighteenth century--first, that is, so far as we can trace it by any records now known--were right in calling this a "skull in perspective"; _i.e._ a skull painted as seen distorted in a convex mirror. some hint of its true character can be gathered, though not much, by looking at this object from the lower left-hand corner of the painting, when the exaggerated length will be seen to be reduced to something more nearly approaching the height of the usual "death's head." according to the views which are now officially accepted by the national gallery, the persons of this picture are two french catholics. the one at our left is jean de dinteville, seigneur of polisy, bailly of troyes and knight of the french order of st. michael, of which he wears the badge without the splendid collar--as was permitted, by a special statute, to persons in the field, on a journey, or in a privacy that would not require the full dress of a state occasion. jean de dinteville was french ambassador at the court of henry viii. in ; born in , he was then twenty-nine. he died in . the man in the scholar's cap and gown is george de selve, privately associated with de dinteville's mission for a few weeks in the spring of . he was born in , nominated bishop of lavaur in , and confirmed in that office in , in which year he was french ambassador at the court of charles v. he was twenty-five in , and died in . for myself, holding convictions concerning these portraits utterly at variance with any published opinions--and that in more than one vital respect--i am compelled to limit my account to the bare record of its appearance and catalogued description, until prepared to submit other facts and conclusions to a verdict. two portraits in the hague gallery, each with a falcon hooded on the wrist, show to how much purpose holbein had studied these birds in the steelyard. the one of robert cheseman, done in this year, is especially fine, with a strange, elusive suggestion of something kindred in the nature of man and bird. in , also, the steelyard placed its contribution to the celebration of anne boleyn's coronation in the painter's hands. and the result was, as stow tells us, "a costly and marvellous cunning pageant by the merchants of the stilyard, wherein was the mount parnassus, with the fountaine of helicon, which was of white marble; and four streams without pipe did rise an ell high and mette together in a little cup above the fountaine; which fountaine ran abundantly with rhenish wine till night. on the mountaine sat apollo, and at his feet sat calliope; and on every side of the mountaine sate four muses, playing on severell sweet instruments." but of more importance to his living fame were the two large oil paintings--the triumph of riches and the triumph of poverty--which he executed for the hall of the steelyard. in their day they were renowned far and wide; but they also have slipped into some abyss of oblivion, perhaps to be yet recovered as miraculously as was the solothurn madonna. when the guild was compelled to abandon the steelyard, in queen elizabeth's reign, the hall stood so long unguarded and uncared for that when it regained possession, under james i., everything was in a sad state of neglect. and when the association finally dissolved not long after, the hanseatic league agreed to present these paintings to henry prince of wales, known, like charles i., to be a lover of art. if they passed to the possession of the latter, he must have exchanged them with, or presented them to, the earl of arundel. for in sandrart saw them in the collection of the latter, like his father an enthusiastic admirer of holbein's work. after this, one or two vague notices suggest that they somehow drifted to flanders, and thence to paris. but there every trace of them is lost. federigo zucchero thought they yielded to no work of the kind, even among italian masters; and copied them from pure admiration. holbein's drawing for the triumph of riches is in the louvre collection. that he ever painted anne boleyn, unless in miniature, seems doubtful. the portrait among the windsor drawings which has been labelled with her name agrees with no description of her in any single respect. but in he painted one whose destiny was closely linked to hers--thomas cromwell, then master of the jewel house. and it was probably about this time that he painted what is in some respects the greatest of all his portraits--one of the galaxy of supreme works of all portraiture--the oil painting of morett, or morette, so long regarded as a triumph of leonardo da vinci's art. the world knows it well in the dresden gallery (plate ). the figure is life-size. the pose, even the costume in its feasible essentials, strikingly repeats the whitehall portrait of henry viii., as copies show this to have been completed in the wall painting. the background is a green curtain. illustration: plate the morett portrait _oils. dresden gallery_ the sitter wears neither velvet nor cloth-of-gold, nor order of any sort; but his costume is rich black satin, the sleeves puffed with white, the broad fur collar of sable. in his cap is a cameo brooch. his buttons are gold; and a gold locket hangs from a plain, heavy chain of the same metal. his right hand carries his gloves, his left rests on the gold sheath of the dagger that hangs from his waist. his auburn hair and beard is streaked with grey. no words, no reproduction, can hope to express the qualities of such a painting. neither can show the mastery or the spell by which the green background, the hair, the cool transparent flesh-tones, the fur, the satin, the gold, are all woven into a witchery as virile as it is penetrating. this is another work which has undergone more than one transformation in the course of its records. as late as it was correctly ascribed to holbein in the modena collection. but the first syllable of the sitter's name has been its only constant. in time morett slipped into moretta, and then--like _meier_ in the madonna picture--into morus. so far it seems to have clung to some english tradition. but when morus got changed to moro it was but natural for an italian to think of ludovico sforza, "il moro." long before this holbein had become olbeno; and thereafter a puzzle. when the portrait was labelled sforza, however, who could its obviously great painter be but leonardo? _et voilà!_ thus the work passed to the gallery and catalogue of the royal collection at dresden. and thus it long remained, as if to attest the true level of holbein's genius. but when the gallery also acquired the drawing of the arundel collection, labelled "mr. morett" in hollar's engraving from it, the painting was held to be unquestionably identified by it as hubert morett, goldsmith to henry viii. nor is there anything incongruous in this belief. such a master goldsmith was no tradesman, in our sense of the word. he was often much more like one of our merchant princes. the merchants of the steelyard were frequently the royal bankers, and many times were employed on high and delicate diplomatic missions to other courts. neither is there anything in the sitter's dress to forbid it to a man of this stamp, even after the sumptuary laws of henry viii. were passed; while there is much, very much, to suggest an english origin. on the other hand, m. larpent has now shown that the arundel drawing was down in a catalogue of - as: "one holbein, sieur de moret, one of the french hostage in england"; and also that a "chas. sieur de morette" is recorded among the four french hostages sent to england in . it would thus appear that the painting is a portrait of charles de solier, seigneur de morette; an eminent soldier and diplomatist of france; born in , ambassador to england more than once, and finally, in . besides all the portraits of holbein's english period, many of them scattered throughout the collections of all europe, and many others now lost, it must not be forgotten that he was at the same time pouring forth miniature paintings, designs for engraving, designs for the goldsmith, and conceptions of every sort--from a carved chimney-piece to a woman's jewelled trinket; and all designed with the same exquisite precision and felicity. in the british museum as on the continent these drawings are an education in themselves. and besides the portrait studies in the windsor collection there is a sketch for a large painting which, if ever executed, is lost: "the queen of sheba visiting king solomon." chapter iv painter royal - queen jane seymour--death of erasmus, and title-page portrait--the whitehall painting of henry viii.--munich drawing of henry viii.--birth of an heir and the "jane seymour cup"--death of the queen--christina, duchess of milan--secret service for the king--flying visit to basel and arrangements for a permanent return--apprentices his son philip at paris--portrait of the prince of wales and the king's return gift--anne of cleves--thomas howard, duke of norfolk--catherine howard--lapse of holbein's basel citizenship--irregularities--provision for wife and children--residence in london--execution of queen catherine howard--marriage of catherine parr--dr. chamber--unfinished work for the barber-surgeons' hall--death of holbein--his will--place of burial--holbein's genius; its true character and greatness. these were years of pleasant friendships, too, as well as work and cares. nicholas bourbon, scholar and poet, after his sojourn in london, writes back in : "greet in my name as heartily as you can all with whom you know me to be connected by intercourse and friendship." and after mentioning high dignitaries who had followed the king's example of showing special courtesies to bourbon, he adds: "mr. cornelius heyss, my host, the king's goldsmith; mr. nicolaus kratzer, the king's astronomer, a man who is brimful of wit, jest, and humorous fancies; and mr. hans, the royal painter, the apelles of our time. i wish them from my heart all joy and happiness." this little pen-picture of holbein's intimate circle is a beautiful break in the mists of centuries--and shows us what manner of men they were among whom he had made for himself an honoured place. we could ill spare it from the few and meagre records of his life. it is also the very earliest documentary evidence of his being in the king's immediate service. it was in this very year, , that he received his commission to paint anne boleyn's successor, jane seymour, then on the throne the block had left vacant. the vienna gallery possesses this painting, of which another version is at woburn abbey, and the chalk drawing at windsor (plate ). illustration: plate queen jane seymour _oils. vienna gallery_ the queen was noted for her milk-white fairness, and holbein has borrowed the pearly shadows of the lily in rendering it. the figure is a little under life-size. her head-dress and robes of silver brocade and royal velvet are studded with splendid rubies and pearls to match the jewels on her neck and breast. the hands are as full of character as of art. the queen's portrait may properly be said to belong to the great wall painting which holbein finished in for the royal palace at whitehall. but before that date the painter's inner life had suffered one more great wrench. at midnight of july th, , erasmus died in the home that had been his own, except for the freiburg interval, ever since john froben's death in ; a death that had probably had much to do with holbein's first departure from basel. that event had uprooted the scholar from the old house _zum sessel_, in the fischmarkt, and transplanted him to the home of froben's son, hieronymus. the latter house, then known as _zum luft_, is now no. , bäumleingasse. and it was here that erasmus passed away, his mind keeping to the last its humour and its interests in all around him. but no one, remembering how fisher and more had died in the preceding year, can doubt but that the good old man was very willing to be gone, away from changed faces and changed ways--though bonifacius amerbach and young froben were as sons to him. basel, for all her differences with him, buried erasmus with great honours. but no tablet could so commemorate him as the noble monument which holbein built to him in the title-page he designed for hieronymus froben's edition of erasmus's _works_, published in . it is a woodcut of extraordinary beauty. the full-length figure of the scholar stands in cap and gown, with one hand resting lightly on the bust of the god terminus (the god of immovable boundary lines, significantly conjoined to erasmus's chosen motto: _concedo nulli_) and the other calling attention to this significant emblem of fixed convictions. not even the louvre oil painting expresses the whole erasmus quite so completely or so nobly as this little drawing of the man whom holbein had loved and revered for twenty years; and to whom he owed, in the first place, the splendid opportunities of his career in england. and as he drew it, what ghosts of his own past must have clustered around the lean little figure! what echoes and visions! the rhine, the gardens, the clang of the press, the fischmarkt, the friendly smiles at froben's and meyer's firesides; his marriage; the stars and dews and perfume of all his dreams in the years--those matchless years of a man's young manhood--when he had walked with angels as well as peasants, had seen the way of the cross, the christ in the grave, and the risen lord even more clearly than the faces of flesh and blood. _eheu fugaces!_ "god help thee, elia, how art thou sophisticated." * * * * * ah, well! those years, and the darker, sadder years that had led far from them, were now like his oldest friends--dead and buried. the holbein of was painting the king of england on the wall of his privy chamber. there was a place for honest pride as well as for honest regret in his thoughts. this painting perished with the palace in the fire of . charles ii., however, had a small copy of it made by leemput. and a portion of holbein's original cartoon (plate ) in chalk and indian ink, is in the possession of the duke of devonshire--the face much washed out by cleaning, and the outline pricked for transferring to the wall. the figures are life-size, but walpole has already noticed how the massive proportions and solidly-planted pose of the king heighten the illusion of a colossus. behind him stands the admirably contrasted figure of henry vii. the whole composition consisted of four portraits; queen jane seymour opposite her husband, and the king's mother opposite to, and on a level with, henry vii., who stands on the elevation of the background. illustration: plate king henry viii and his father (_fragment of cartoon used for the whitehall wall-painting_) _duke of devonshire's collection_ the pose and costume of henry viii. in the cartoon were, as leemput's copy shows, faithfully carried out in the painting; but in the latter the face was afterwards turned to the full front view familiar to us in the many copies of the king's portrait which so long passed as works of holbein, on the strength of reproducing his own painting. there is no evidence that he ever again painted henry viii. or that he executed any replica of this portrait. the old copy at windsor castle serves, however, to recall its details of costume; such as his brown doublet stiff with gold brocade and scintillating with the gleams of splendid jewels, his coat of royal red embroidered with gold thread and lined with ermine to match the wide collar; his plumed and jewelled cap; as also the huge gems on collar, pendant, rings, and the gold-hilted dagger in its blue velvet sheath. but holbein's own portrait of henry viii.--as shown by the original chalk study from life now in the munich gallery (plate )--may in all sobriety of speech be called a stupendous work. looking at this marvellous drawing and picturing to one's self those cheeks informed with pulsing blood, those lips with breath, those eyes with blue gleams,--it is easy to understand that van mander was using no hyperbole when he said that the painting on the wall of the privy chamber made the stoutest knees to tremble. it was literally, as he said, "a terrible painting," of which none of the stupidly-heavy copies that have for the most part travestied holbein's work give any true conception. many a man could paint cloth-of-gold and gems; but only once and again in the centuries comes a man who can thus paint, not alone the mane and stride of the lion, but the fires that light his glance, the roar rushing to his lips. to look long into these eyes that holbein had the genius to read and the firmness to draw, is to feel one's self in the grip of an insatiable, implacable, yet leonine soul; a being who, to borrow the matchless description of burke's political career, is "parted asunder in his works like some vast continent severed by a convulsion of nature; each portion peopled by its own giant race of opinions, differing altogether in features and language, and committed in eternal hostility with one another." and so long as the great drama of tudor england enthrals the minds of men, hard by shakespeare's supreme name must be read the name of the painter in whose pages the actors in that drama have been compelled themselves to declare themselves. illustration: plate king henry viii (_life-study; probably for the whitehall painting_) _chalks. munich collection_ to crown the king's pride, and to the no less intense delight of the whole nation which saw in this event the rainbow of every promise, at hampton court, on the th of october, , queen jane seymour gave birth to the son who was to reign so briefly as edward vi. and it was doubtless in connection with this happy circumstance that the king commissioned holbein's design for a truly royal piece of goldsmith's work. this drawing, generally known as "the jane seymour cup," is at oxford, in the bodleian library (plate ). no sketch of the artist's powers would be even barely complete without a realising sense of their versatility. and in this design holbein has more than equalled the highest achievement of his great contemporary, benvenuto cellini, at this time in the service of the french court. the initials of the king and queen, h. and j., and the exceedingly judicious motto of the latter--"bound to obey and to serve"--are recurring devices. but it is in the originality and unflawed beauty of the whole--the springing grace of outline, the taste and cunning with which flowers of gold naturally bloom into gems and pearls, the combination of freest, richest fancy with every restraint of a pure taste--that the perfection of this little masterpiece consists. illustration: plate design for "the jane seymour cup" _bodleian library_ in the midst of all the public rejoicings, the te deums, feasts, and bonfires, came the thunderclap of the young mother's death. some negligence had permitted her to take cold, and on the twelfth day after his coveted heir was born, henry viii. was once again a widower. the court went into deepest mourning until the rd of february. but thomas cromwell was very shortly authorised to take secret steps to ascertain what princess might most suitably fill the late queen's vacant place and strengthen the assurance of an unbroken succession. choice fell at first on a roman catholic--christina, the sixteen-year-old widow of francis sforza duke of milan, who had died in the autumn of . the upshot of private inquiries was that holbein was sent over to brussels in march, , to bring back a portrait of this daughter of christian of denmark and niece of charles v. and although the painter had but three hours in which to do it, he did make what hutton described as her "very perffight" image; besides which, said the envoy, the portrait previously despatched, though painted in all her state finery, "was but slobbered." from this "perffight" painting, which could not have been more than one of his portrait studies, he afterwards completed that full-length oil painting which is worthy to rank with his great morett portrait. by the kindness of the duke of norfolk, who has lent it, this beautiful work is now in the national gallery (plate ). but unhappily for its best appreciation, to my thinking at least, it hangs at one side and in too close proximity to the bold colouring of "the ambassadors"; so that its own subtle, yet reticent superiority is well-nigh shouted down by its lusty neighbour. it is a picture to be seen by itself; as it must stand by itself in the usual inane gallery of women's portraits. hutton tells us that the painter who "slobbered" christina's portrait had painted her in full dress. but holbein's eye was quick to recognise the values of her everyday dress--the widow's costume of italy--in enhancing the distinction of her face and the stately slenderness of her figure. and so he drew her as she stood, with a hint of bending forward, her gloves being restlessly fingered in a shy yet proud embarrassment, in the first moments when he saw her. illustration: plate christina of denmark, duchess of milan _oils. national gallery_ [_lent by the duke of norfolk_] the portrait is nearly life-size. over a plain black satin dress she wears a gown of the same material, lined with yellow sable. her hair is entirely concealed by a black hood. at her throat and wrists are plain cambric frills. the ranging scale of tawny tones--in the floor, the gloves, the fur, the golden glint in her brown eyes--and the one ruby, on her hand, are the only colours, except those of her fresh young lips and skin and the black and white of her costume. "she is not so white as the late queen," wrote hutton, "but she hath a singular good countenance, and when she chanceth to smile there appeareth two pits in her cheeks and one in her chin, the which becometh her excellently well." it is easy to believe that they did, but her dimples did not chance for henry viii. whether she really sent him, along with her picture, the witty refusal credited to her--that she had but one head; had she two, one should be at his majesty's service--or whether it was the emperor's doing entirely that his niece married the duke of lorraine instead of the man whose first wife had been charles v.'s aunt, there is, at all events, a soft lurking devil in the demure little face which seems to whisper that the answer was one which she could have made an' she would. van mander heard from holbein's circle a story which modern pedantry is inclined to flout. this is, that when an irate nobleman wanted the painter punished for an affront, the king hotly exclaimed:--"understand, my lord, that i can make seven earls out of as many hinds, any day; but out of seven earls i could not make one such painter as this holbein." an eminently ben-trovato story, at all events. and certain it is that the painter stood sufficiently high in the royal favour to be despatched on some special private mission for the king in the summer of , of which the secret was so well kept that nothing beyond the record of payment for it has ever transpired. from this date holbein's name is regularly down in the royal accounts. the amounts drawn total, it has been computed, about £ in present value, and would make an agreeable annual addition to his other earnings. so that it is little wonder he was not tempted by the small sum offered by the basel council in . but in the council greatly increased the old offer, and was so anxious to have him among her citizens that the painter seized the opportunity of his secret mission to upper burgundy, whatever it was, to pay a flying visit to basel in the interests of his family. * * * * * his old companions of the guild of st. johann vorstadt made this visit--when holbein was back among them, as was noted, "in silk and velvet"--the occasion of a grand banquet in his honour. but the real motive for his visit was to arrange upon what terms he could meet the council's wishes. the terms were far from ungenerous, as is shown by the contract which followed him back to london. in this the council bound itself, in consideration of the great honour of retaining in their city a painter "famous beyond all other painters on account of the riches of his art," and in further consideration of his promise to make no absence from basel more prolonged than should be really necessary to carry his foreign commissions to their destination and receive his pay for them--to give him an annuity of fifty guldens, equally whether holbein should be ill or well, but only during his own life. in addition to this, they granted him permission to make short visits to specified art-centres, of which milan was one, "once, twice, or thrice, every year." and recognising the impossibility of his freeing himself from his english engagements in less than two years, they also granted him this interval before he need resume his residence at basel; and engaged to pay forty guldens yearly to his wife, on his behalf, for each of these two years. there is every probability that holbein himself took a goodly sum to basel to invest for his family's permanent benefit in one way and another. for it could only have been as a part of this gleaning for them that he drew--as the account books show that he did just at this juncture--a whole year's salary in advance from the royal exchequer; seeing that the same books prove that he was liberally paid for all his own expenses on the king's service, in addition to his regular salary. part of the sum he collected to take with him was doubtless used to apprentice his son philip, now sixteen, to the goldsmith's trade. and that the father chose paris for this purpose, where he left philip on his return journey, might well be due either to his own estimation of jerome david, to whom philip was indentured, or to the fact that benvenuto cellini's presence at paris afforded some advantage; or that his own promised return to basel would make it preferable to have the lad on the same side of the channel as all his family. and that holbein fully intended to make the necessary and obvious sacrifice involved in exchanging london for basel is also proved by a contemporary account. "his intention was," says his fellow-townsman, "had god lengthened his life, to paint many of his pictures again at his own expense, as well as the hall in the rathaus. the paintings on the _haus zum tanz_ he pronounced 'pretty good.'" but it was not to be. his new year's offering to the king on the opening of was a portrait, probably the oil painting in the hague gallery, of the infant prince of wales. it was a spirited picture of the royal baby with his gold rattle in his chubby little fist, such as might have delighted a father less doting than henry viii., whose return gift is recorded: "to hans holbyne, paynter, a gilte cruse with a cover, weighing x oz. quarter." the cruse was made by a friend of the painter; that cornelius hayes, goldsmith, whom bourbon's letter mentioned in connection with him in . all these months the negotiations for the hand of the duchess of milan had fluctuated with the varying fortunes of the king's relations with her uncle, charles v. but at last they had altogether collapsed with what seemed to henry viii. the threatening attitude assumed by the emperor and the pope. hereupon followed that historical chapter, so full of fatal consequences to cromwell, and no less big with shame for the king's own story: the pitiful chapter of anne of cleves. her brother, the duke of cleves, was at this time a troublesome foe to the emperor; while the fact that she was a protestant was a "roland" for the imperial and papal "oliver." so holbein was again posted off to bring back a counterfeit of anne, and to carry to her a miniature of the king. and by the st september he had acquitted himself of the new mission. there is not an iota of historical or other evidence for that "flanders mare" anecdote, which seems to have had a gratuitous as well as spontaneous origin in bishop burnet's seventeenth-century brain, to the effect that the king was the victim of a flattering portrait by holbein, and cruelly undeceived by the actual looks of his bride. in the first place his agents wrote to him frankly that the princess was of no great beauty, though not uncomely, and "never from the ellebowe of the ladye duchesse her mother," who was said to be most unwilling to part with her (as a mother might well be, for the husband in question). the king was also told that she was quite unskilled in languages or music, and held, with her mother, that it was "for a rebuke and an occasion of lightenesse that great ladyes shuld be lernyd or have enye knowledge of musike." and in the next place even a superficial knowledge of holbein would disprove any tradition of "flattery" from his unflinching, almost brutally truthful brush. it was hardly likely that the painter who would not stoop to flatter bishop stokesley, or henry viii. himself, would be swerved from his good faith by anne of cleves. illustration: plate anne of cleves _oils. the louvre_ on the contrary, the painting, in oils on vellum and mounted on a panel, now in the louvre (plate ), is the very embodiment of contemporary accounts of this princess. her fair-skinned, commonplace, yet "not uncomely" face looks out placidly at you from the quaint flemish head-dress of fine gauze and jewelled cloth-of-gold. her inert hands (holbein's hands belong to his truth-telling revelations), jewelled even on the thumb, are listlessly clasped upon each other; her crimson-velvet dress is heavily banded with gold and pearl embroidery. no venus certainly, and perhaps somewhat heavily handicapped by the maternal "elbowe." but still perfectly in keeping with her descriptions and making no denial to the french ambassador's statement that she was "the gentlest and kindest" of queens; or to an english eye-witness who writes that at her coronation the people all applauded her for being "so fayre a ladye, of so goodly a stature and so womanly a countenance, and in especial of so good qualities." the fact is that the king's very cruelty to this poor girl--torn from her mother's side and her protestant home in dürren to be the pawn of an unscrupulous diplomacy--was based on grounds, at least, less infamous than that of a slave-buyer. after both cromwell and holbein had been well rewarded for their services, the former lost his head and the queen her crown on considerations that took no more account of her looks than her feelings. the catholic glass had risen; the king himself was not ashamed to avow it; and the protestant alliance was therefore an incubus. after some two months of a queen's and wife's estate, poor anne of cleves was bid to pack her belongings and take up a separate establishment as an unmarried woman. no wonder she fainted when first informed of such an infamy. but there was no law in england save the _fiat_ of henry viii. the marriage was pronounced "null and void," and anne retired into private life, on the rigid condition that she would make no attempt to ever quit england, with an allowance of £ , a year, and the formal title of the king's "sister." there was no help for her. never again for her would there be the austere joys of dürren--her mother's side, her own timid dreams of other companionship, and never the price at which she had lost them. at the head of the triumphant anti-protestant, anti-cromwell party stood thomas howard, third duke of norfolk, whose portrait, in the royal collection at windsor, holbein painted about this time (plate ). the lean face and the figure clothed in red stand out strikingly from the plain green background, although the painting has suffered not a little injury. the robe is lined and trimmed with ermine, and over it is the collar and badge of the order of the garter. in his right hand he holds the gold baton of his office as earl marshal, and in his left the white staff of the lord chamberlain. illustration: plate thomas howard, third duke of norfolk _oils. windsor castle_ according to roper, norfolk, then earl of surrey, was a great friend of sir thomas more. but it would be hard to imagine a greater contrast than the records of the two men. the latter a pattern of personal purity and lofty ideals; the former as venal as the king's parliaments, and as unscrupulous in pursuit of his passions as the king himself. norfolk's star of influence had already waxed and waned with the evil destinies of one niece, before it arose anew with the fortunes of another only to plunge sharply after them into the gulf of ruin. for the present he and gardiner, restored to favour with him, were all-powerful. their calculations seemed to prosper, too, beyond their most ambitious dreams, when, instead of ruling through a rival to anne who should be the king's mistress, they were to rule through a legal successor. for the king was nothing if not technically correct; and from the moment when the fatal royal glance flamed on catherine howard when gardiner was entertaining him, nothing would do but she should become his wife. and thus once more the wild wheel of fortune was to make norfolk uncle to a queen of england. anne was divorced on the th of july, , and on the th of the same month, on the very day when thomas cromwell was beheaded, the king married anne boleyn's cousin, catherine howard. on the th of august she was proclaimed queen, and on the th of that month she was publicly prayed for as such in all the churches of the realm. well might she be! dry your outraged tears, anne of cleves, and give thanks to god that you are well out of it! there is a miniature in the windsor collection now believed to be holbein's portrait of catherine howard. until recently it was held to be the portrait of catherine parr. but there is a larger portrait of the former among the windsor drawings, a study evidently made for an oil painting (plate ). by this it seems that she had auburn hair, hazel eyes, a fair complexion, and a piquant smile. there is a painting which accords with this drawing in the duke of buccleuch's collection, but it is said to be by a french artist. illustration: plate catherine howard _chalk drawing. windsor castle_ in the autumn of this year, , the two years of absence expired which had been granted to holbein by his contract with the basel council. but he had now formed ties which were too powerful to yield to basel's. those plans of painting again the walls by which coming generations would judge him, the resolve to try again if he and elsbeth might not manage to live in peace under one roof where the children, who were strangers to him, should come to know and be known by him in something more than name, were all relinquished. they must certainly have been relinquished on some definite mutual understanding, and at a "compensation" agreed upon between him and elsbeth and his step-son, franz schmidt; because it must have been holbein himself who enabled franz, acting on his mother's behalf, to take over as he did the entire legacy--a snug little competency in itself--to which holbein fell heir in this autumn by the bequest of his uncle, sigmund holbein, citizen of berne. philip having been launched by his father in the goldsmith's craft, there only remained the second son and two daughters at home. thus so far as mere money went, holbein might now think himself discharged from the support of his family, and free to divert his future earnings from them. and, as has been said, the will and inventory proved at elsbeth's death, six years after her husband's, that he had made no bad provision for them in the matter of material comforts, however remiss his conduct in its moral aspects. the royal accounts break off in , but the subsidy roll for the city of london has a very precious item for holbein's biography in the october of this year. this announces that "hanns holbene" is among the "straungers" then residing in "the parisshe of saint andrew undershafte," and that he is assessed as such. not only the windsor chalk drawings, but the paintings at vienna, berlin, and other continental galleries, show the pressure, as well as the high level of quality, at which he was now working. these portraits are among almost his very best, while the one shortly to be mentioned is quite among them. by the summer of the tragedy of catherine howard was over. that royal progress, like more than one of its forerunners, had become the royal shame. this time it was a shame so black and so wide that within two years, after madness and death had purged the complicity of many, there still remained so many more involved in the sins and follies of norfolk's niece that the ordinary prisons were unable to contain all that were arraigned; a shame so bitter that when the proofs of it were first laid before henry viii. the privy council quaked to see him shed tears. it was, they said with awe, "a strange thing in his courage!" the guilty woman had her own tears to shed in expiation; but in the dawn of february th, , she walked to the block as full of wilful, cheerful audacity, and as careful of her toilet, as she had ever gone to meet her royal lover. and so the auburn head of the king's fifth wife rolled from the axe that had severed her guilty cousin's. on july th, , the "next" year as it then began, the king married catherine parr. she had been twice widowed and was about to marry sir thomas seymour when the king interfered, and she became his wife instead; though one can well credit the story that she tremblingly told him, "it were better to be his mistress." she was a good woman, a generous stepmother, and a good wife. but there is plenty of probability for the assertion that her own death had been debated with the king when her wit delayed it, and his death set her free to marry at last the man from whom the king had snatched her. it was formerly believed, as has been said, that holbein had painted her miniature--the one at windsor, now declared to be the portrait of catherine howard. about this time he must have painted the great portrait of which mention has been made. this is the oil portrait of dr. chamber, the king's physician, now in the vienna gallery (plate ). the sitter was, as the inscription shows, eighty-eight years old; and the strong, stern face is full of that "inward" look which comes to the faces of men whose meat and drink has been a lifetime of heavy responsibilities. he had been associated with the charter of the college of physicians in , and was also instrumental in that of the guild of "barbers and surgeons," in . and it was probably through him and dr. butts, another physician to the king whom holbein had painted and who was likewise a master of the new guild, that he undertook to paint a large work for their hall--henry viii. granting their charter to the master-surgeons kneeling before him. illustration: plate dr. chamber _oils. vienna gallery_ this work holbein did not live to finish; and it is to-day exceedingly doubtful as to how much of the smoke-blackened painting is by him. the very drawing has a woodenness foreign to his compositions, and much of the painting is by an evidently inferior hand. but good judges hold some of the heads to be undoubtedly his work. however this may be, with the autumn of holbein's life came to a sudden close. van mander, wrong as to the date by eleven years which have fathered a host of spurious _holbeins_ on the histories of art, is apparently right as to the cause of death--"the plague." by the great discovery of hans holbein's will, found by mr. black in among the archives of st. paul's cathedral, it is proved that the painter made his will on october th, and must have died between this and november th, , when administration was granted to one of his executors (the other would seem to have perished, meanwhile, from the same epidemic). this surviving executor was an old friend of the artist, whose portrait, in the windsor gallery, he had painted eleven years before--hans of antwerp, a master-goldsmith of the steelyard. the will bears about it evident signs of having been made in great haste and mental disturbance. but it accomplished all that holbein probably had at heart; that is, the ensuring that whatsoever moneys could be collected from his accounts, or by the sale of "all my goodes and also my horse," should first be applied to clear a couple of specified debts, and the rest be managed for the sole benefit of "my two chylder which be at nurse." from the very fact that nothing as to the identity or whereabouts of these babies is mentioned, it is clear that holbein relied on the verbal instructions which he had given to his trusted friends and to their complete understanding of all the circumstances as well as of his wishes. he was only concerned, apparently, that such small means as could thus be saved for them should not be permitted to pass to his legal heirs. no other heirs are mentioned; no other legacy is made. from the will alone one who did not know otherwise would suppose that he had no other family or relatives in existence. the plague left no man in its neighbourhood much leisure for explanations. stowe records that the one of that autumn was such "a great death" that the law courts had to be transferred to st. albans. but two things seem to speak in this curt document. first, that by the transference of his uncle sigmund's little fortune to franz schmidt (as trustee for elsbeth and the children of her marriage with holbein), which the archives prove took place three years earlier, and by his other arrangements for his family at basel and for philip at paris, holbein held himself free of any further responsibility for their support, and, indeed, determined that they should not obtain possession of the residue in london. secondly, that if the mother of his two illegitimate children had lived with him in london as his wife, she must have just died--perhaps in childbed, perhaps of the plague. she is not in any way referred to. and there is something in the very signs of confusion and distress throughout the wording of the will which seems to exhale a far-away anguish--sudden parting, sad apprehensions, keenest anxiety for "my two chylder which be at nurse." there comes before the eye a picture of the five grave men--holbein, his two executors, the one a goldsmith, the other an armourer, and his two witnesses, a "merchaunte" and a "paynter"--hurrying along the plague-infected streets to get this document legalised as some protection for two motherless babies, in the event of their father's death. no man knew whose turn would come within the hour. and by november th holbein's had come, and one executor's also, apparently. the latin record of administration on this date is that it has been consigned to john anwarpe (johann or hans of antwerp), and accepted by him in accordance with "the last will of john, alias hans holbein, recently deceased in the parish of saint andrew undershaft." it would seem probable, then, that the painter was buried in this church rather than in the closely adjoining church of saint catharine-cree to which tradition assigned his body. but the horrors of such an epidemic as that in which the painter was swept suddenly away make it easy to understand how even such a man as he had now become could die unnoticed and be buried in an unrecorded grave. when the earl of arundel, a few years later, sought to learn where he might set up a monument to one he so greatly admired, there was only this vague and uncorroborated rumour that the painter was buried in saint catharine-cree. and so no monument was built to mark the spot where holbein's "measure of sliding sand" had been spilled at last. but, as they ran, those sands had measured more than "_a great portrait-painter_." they had measured greatness; greatness which is not to be delimited by the wanton outrages of man or the accidents of time. both have had their share in the judgments of generations that have lost all his greatest and nearly all his imaginative creations. and what the spoiler has spared, the self-styled restorer has too often ruined. self-love, on the other hand, and family pride have been engaged to preserve those portraits by which it is now the fashion to mulct him of his far larger dues. of his mysticism, of the symbolism in which his "journal intime" is written in his own firm cipher, this little book is not the place to speak; though for those who have once come to know the true holbein these have a spell, a stern, inexhaustible enchantment all their own. but study the few fortunate survivals of his imaginative works, study even more the wrecks and skeletons of his loftier conceptions, and ask yourself if it could be by only a quick eye and a clever hand (and he had both, assuredly) that holbein caught up the dying ember of the van eycks' torch and fanned it by his originality, his fancy, his winged realism, until its light lit up the dim ways of man with a clairvoyance far beyond theirs. this eye, this mind, flung its gleaming penetration into every covert of the soul and deep, deep, deep into the most shrouded, the most shuddering secrets of mortality. was it by virtue of a mere portrait-painter's powers that the son of the augsburg bohemian came to lay his finger upon the very core and composition of perhaps the haughtiest, the subtlest, the most dread despot since the cæsars? henry viii. and fisher; the laïs corinthiaca, the duchess of milan, his brooding wife; dancing children, and dancing death; christ on the cross, christ in the grave, christ arisen; lambs in the fields, woods and hills, gaping peasants, wild battle;--put them side by side, the poor ghosts of them left to us, and compute the range of art--"the majestic range" that framed them all. let us be just. let us forget for a moment the chirp of the family housekeeper over her gods. let us gather up the broken fragments that are more than the meal, and humbly own the miracle that created them. it is idle to argue with the intelligence that can see "a want of imagination" in holbein. but we can find proof and to spare that it is not so; that his so-called "limitations"--apart from method, which is a matter of epoch--are due to a creed we may or may not agree with, but surely must respect. the creed that beauty is the framework, the ornament, rather than the substance of things; the pleasure, not the purpose of "this mortal"; and that the sweetest flower that blows is but an exquisite moment of transfigured clay. he smells the mould above the rose; yet how he draws the rose! the brazen arrogance of pomp, the pearl on a woman's neck, the shimmer of a breaking bubble, the wrinkles in a baby's foot, the beauty of life, the pathos of life, the irony and the lust of life,--he has painted them all, as he saw them all, in the phantasmagoric procession of being betwixt garret and throne. he has painted each, too, with that genius for seizing the essential quality which _is_ the thing, that never forsook him from augsburg to saint andrew's undershaft; that singular, vivid, original genius which can well afford to let his grave be forgotten, whose works build for him, as hans holbein-- _one of the few, the immortal names that were not born to die._ footnotes. : the name used thus, without further identification, is to be taken throughout these pages to mean hans holbein the _younger_. : variously written meyer, meier, mejer, meiger, or megger. bär is also written _ber_, or _berin_. : i am deeply indebted to the personal kindness and trouble of sir martin gosselin, k.c.m.g., british minister at the court of portugal, for greatly facilitating my own study of this interesting picture. : i am indebted to the personal kindness of the discoverer's son, herr direktor zetter-collin of the solothurn museum, for these details. but the whole story, as well as herr zetter-collin's contributions to the history of the work, should be read in his own absorbingly interesting monograph:--"_die zetter'sche madonna von solothurn. (...) ihre geschichte, etc._" . : _"die liebe zu gott heist charite. wer liebe hat der tragt kein hass."_ a catalogue of the principal existing works of hans holbein the younger arranged, so far as can be known, in chronological sequence ** signifies--_superlative qualities._ * signifies--_of some particular importance._ ? signifies--_authorities differ._ held by some (and by the writer) to have been, in its original condition, the work of holbein's own hand. i. earliest individual works (before going to basel) ? st. elizabeth of hungary and st. barbara. oils. (wings of the st. sebastian altar-piece.) munich gallery. virgin and child. oils. basel museum. (earliest signed work known. dated .) ii. first basel period ( , , - ) illustrations to erasmus's _praise of folly_. eighty-two pen-and-ink sketches on the margins. original copy, basel museum. portrait of an unknown young man. oils. grand-ducal museum, darmstadt. jacob meyer _zum hasen_ and his second wife, dorothea kannegiesser. [plates and .] oils. basel museum. bonifacius amerbach. [plate .] oils. basel museum. portrait of himself. [frontispiece.] coloured chalks. basel museum. * studies from nature. (a bat outspread and a lamb.) drawings in water-colour and silver-point. basel museum. designs for armorial windows. (more especially those with _landsknechte_ and one with three peasants gossiping.) washed drawings. basel museum and print cabinet, berlin. _landsknechte_ in a hand-to-hand fight. [plate .] washed drawing. basel museum. others in various collections. design for the wings of an organ-case. washed drawings. basel museum. head of st. john the evangelist. oils. basel museum. the last supper. (on wood; ruined fragment.) oils. basel museum. the nativity [plate .] and the adoration. oils. freiburg cathedral. (wings of a lost altar-piece.) holy family. washed drawing. basel museum. (also other drawings of the virgin and child.) the passion. eight-panelled altar-piece. [plate .] oils. basel museum. (utterly ruined by over-painting.) * the passion. a series of ten designs for glass-painting. washed drawings. basel museum. (a set of seven reversed impressions in the british museum.) the man of sorrows and the mater dolorosa. oils, in tones of brown. basel museum. christ borne to the ground by the weight of the cross. a washed drawing and a * woodcut (unique impression). basel museum. * christ in the grave. [plate .] oils. basel museum. ? the risen christ and mary magdalen at the sepulchre. [plate .] oils. hampton court gallery. (very much injured.) st. george. oils. kunsthalle, karlsruhe. st. ursula. oils. kunsthalle, karlsruhe. ? portrait of a young girl. [plate .] drawing in chalk and silver-point. jabach collection. the louvre. ** the solothurn madonna. [plate .] oils. solothurn museum. ("die zetter'sche madonna von solothurn," of which the remarkable history is given in the text; together with the evident relationship of plate and the hypothesis of the present writer in that connection.) ** portrait of erasmus. [plate .] oils. the louvre. a citizen's wife, and others, in the dress of the time. washed drawings. basel museum. the table of cebes. border for title-page. woodcut. royal print cabinet, berlin. st. peter and st. paul; on the title-page of adam petri's reprint of luther's translation of the new testament. alphabet of "the dance of death." woodcuts. proof-impressions in the basel museum, the british museum, and the dresden royal collection. bible pictures: illustrating old testament. woodcuts. ** "images of death." [two shown at plates and .] proof-impressions, some sets incomplete, in the basel museum, british museum and the national print collections of paris, vienna, berlin, dresden, karlsruhe, and the bodleian library. (this is the immortal series of woodcuts, often called "the dance of death," done for the trechsel brothers of lyons, but not published there until many years later.) dorothea offenburg as the goddess of love. [plate .] oils. basel museum. the above as laïs corinthiaca. oils. basel museum. ** the meyer madonna. [plates and .] oils. grand-ducal collection, darmstadt (superbly restored); and ?dresden gallery. (notwithstanding the many and eminent authorities who hold this to be a copy, there still remain a sufficiency of no less eminent authorities to warrant the present writer in her unshaken opinion that, at any rate in its first estate and in the main, this dresden version--revered for more than one century as such by the highest authorities--was the creation of holbein's own hand.) iii. first london period ( - ) portrait of sir thomas more. oils. mr. huth's collection. chalk drawing at windsor. [plate .] (also a drawing of sir john more, father of the above.) ** john fisher, bishop of rochester. [plate .] chalk drawing. windsor castle. (another in the british museum.) archbishop warham. oils. the louvre, and lambeth palace. ? john stokesley, bishop of london. oils. windsor castle. sir henry guildford. [plate .] oils. windsor castle. lady guildford. oils. mr. frewen's collection. sir thomas godsalve and his son john. oils. dresden gallery. chalk drawing of sir john godsalve. windsor castle. nicholas kratzer, astronomer royal to king henry viii. [plate .] oils. the louvre. sir henry wyat. oils. the louvre. sir bryan tuke, treasurer of the household to king henry viii. oils. munich gallery. [plate .] also at grosvenor house. (as stated in the text, the writer holds that the portraits of sir bryan tuke should properly be classed with those of a later period. but they are given here in accordance with opinions which obtain at present.) iv. last basel period ( - ) ** portrait group of holbein's wife, elsbeth, and his two eldest children. [plate .] oils, on paper. basel museum. (outline hard from having been cut out and mounted.) king rehoboam replying to his people, and ** samuel denouncing saul. [plate .] two washed drawings. basel museum. (these are the designs for "the back wall" of the basel council chamber.) "portrait of an english lady" (unknown). chalk drawing. basel museum. ** portrait of an unknown young man in a broad-brimmed hat. chalk drawing. basel museum. (this is one of the most beautiful of holbein's portrait studies. there is a soft, yet virile, witchery about it which haunts the memory.) round portrait of erasmus. (bust, / view.) oils. basel museum. designs for dagger-sheaths and other goldsmith's work. washed drawings. basel museum, british museum, etc. (more especially the "dance of death"; a chef-d'oeuvre.) a ship making sail. washed drawing. städel institut. frankfurt. v. last period; london ( - ) ** portrait of jörg gyze. [plate .] oils. berlin gallery. portrait of an unknown man. oils. schönborn gallery, vienna. johann or hans of antwerp. oils. windsor castle. (holbein's friend and executor.) derich tybis of duisburg. oils. imperial gallery, vienna. derich born. oils. munich gallery, and windsor castle. derich berck. oils. petworth. unknown man. oils. prado gallery, madrid. the triumph of riches. drawing. the louvre. (copies of this and the pendant design, the triumph of poverty, in the british museum and in the collection of lady eastlake.) the queen of sheba before solomon. washed drawing, heightened with gold and colours. windsor castle. robert cheseman, with falcon. oils. hague gallery. * "the ambassadors." [plate .] oils. national gallery. (a double portrait, life size. formerly supposed to be sir thomas wyatt and a scholar; now officially held to be jean de dinteville, bailli de troyes, and george de selve, bishop of lavaur. as stated in the text, the present writer differs from any identification of either figure yet published, but is not prepared to put forward her own views for the present.) nicholas bourbon de vandoeuvre, scholar and poet. chalk drawing. windsor castle. (an intimate friend of holbein, kratzer, and their circle. recently identified as the man in the scholar's gown, in "the ambassadors," and so given by mr. lionel cust, in the _dictionary of national biography_, in his article upon holbein.) **the morett portrait. [plate .] oils. dresden gallery. (long believed to be a triumph of leonardo da vinci's art, and the portrait of ludovico sforza, "il moro." at one time held to be henry brandon, duke of suffolk. afterwards "established" and catalogued as hubert morett, goldsmith to king henry viii. following m. larpent's suggestion, however, it is now supposed to be the portrait of charles solier, sieur de morette. but as to this the last word may yet remain to be said. the drawing which the majority of authorities hold to be the study for this painting now hangs near it.) thomas cromwell. oils. tittenhanger. ** miniature portrait of henry brandon, son of the duke of suffolk. windsor castle. title-page used in coverdale's bible. woodcut. q. jane seymour. [plate .] oils. imperial gallery, vienna. ** portrait of erasmus, full length, in scholar's robes, with his hand on the head of the god terminus. woodcut. frontispiece to hieronymus froben's edition of erasmus's works, published in . (commonly known as "erasmus in a surround," or niche.) fragment of the cartoon [plate ] used for the four royal portraits in the wall-painting at whitehall. the fragment shows only the figures of king henry viii. and his father. hardwick hall. (remigius van leemput's copy of the wall-painting shows that the position of the king's head was changed, in the completed work, to the full-face view so familiar in the oil-painting at windsor castle. the latter is one of the many copies of holbein's original portrait of henry viii. which long passed muster as genuine _holbeins_.) ** portrait study of the face of king henry viii. [plate .] chalk drawing. royal print cabinet, munich. (probably the life-study for the whitehall painting. if nothing else remained, this mask alone would incontestably rank holbein among the masters of all time. to the writer's thinking, at any rate, it stands among the very few works of art which it would be difficult to match, and impossible to surpass in its own colossal qualities.) ** design for "the jane seymour cup." [plate .] bodleian library. ** christina of denmark, duchess of milan. [plate .] oils. national gallery; lent from arundel castle. edward vi., when infant prince of wales. oils. hanover gallery, and lord yarborough's collection. anne of cleves. [plate .] oils on vellum. the louvre. thomas howard, third duke of norfolk. [plate .] oils. windsor castle, and arundel castle. catherine howard. [plate .] chalk drawing. windsor castle. (the miniature at windsor castle, formerly said to be holbein's portrait of catherine parr, is now said to be catherine howard. if so, it is somewhat difficult to reconcile it with the drawing, which latter seems much more in keeping with the descriptions of her traits.) title-page used in cranmer's bible. woodcut. (this is the title-page from which cromwell's arms are erased in the second edition.) sir nicholas carew. oils. dalkeith palace. chalk drawing. basel museum. simon george of cornwall. oils. städel institut, frankfurt. miniature portrait of charles brandon, son of the duke of suffolk. windsor castle. lady; unknown. oils. imperial gallery, vienna. also a fine portrait of an unknown man. oils. same gallery. sir richard southwell. oils. uffizi gallery, florence. chalk drawing. windsor castle. john reskymeer. oils. hampton court gallery. nicholas poyntz. oils. de la rosière collection, paris. chalk drawing. windsor castle. sir john russell. oils. woburn abbey. chalk drawing. windsor castle. three portraits; men unknown. oils. berlin gallery. designs for jewelry, ornamental panels, clocks, chimney-piece, etc., etc. washed drawings. british museum, basel museum, etc. many fine portraits of which no versions in oils are known. chalk drawings. windsor castle. among these one of edward vi. as boy prince of wales, the duchess of suffolk, sir thomas wyatt, etc., etc. dr. john chamber, or chambers. oils. imperial gallery, vienna. also many other oil-portraits, more or less genuine, in various collections. references the literature of holbein's life, much more of his works, is far too extensive to admit of a bibliography in a volume of this sort. but the following list will be found to contain (or themselves refer the reader to) all that is of essential importance to even the most complete study of this master. carel van mander, _het schilder-boeck_, etc., . the above translated into french, and admirably edited by m. henri hyman. tom., . alfred woltmann, _holbein und seine zeit. zweite umgearbeitete auflage_, . bde. there is an english translation of the first edition of , by f. e. bunnètt; but unfortunately its views on many vital points are reversed by woltmann himself in his latest edition. r. n. wornum, _some account of the life and works of hans holbein_, . corrected in many respects by the author in a monograph on "the meier madonna," . paul mantz, _hans holbein_. paris, . h. knackfuss, _holbein_. leipzig, . english translation of the above by mr. campbell dodgson. eduard his, _die basler archive über hans holbein den jungern_. in zahn's _jahrbücher für kunstwissenschaft_, . francis douce, _the dance of death_, . j. r. smith, _holbein's dance of death_, . (especially fine reproductions.) h. n. humphreys, _holbein's dance of death_, . g. th. fechner, _Über die deutungsfrage der holbein'schen madonna._ _die älteste historische quelle über die holbein'sche madonna_. both in _archiv für die zeichnenden künste_, , i., . these give all the known facts of the history of the meyer madonnas of darmstadt and dresden. s. larpent, _sur le portrait de morett_. christiania, . mary f. s. hervey, _holbein's "ambassadors,"_ . this volume also embodies, and gives the references to, the original identifications of professor sidney colvin, and the suggested identifications of mr. c. l. eastlake; as well as to the contribution concerning the hymn-book by mr. barclay squire. w. f. dickes, _holbein's "ambassadors" unriddled_, . f. a. zetter-collin, _die zetter'sche madonna von solothurn. ihre geschichte aus originalquellen_, etc. in _festschrift des kunst-vereins der stadt solothurn_, . artur seeman, _der brunnen des lebens, von h. holbein_. in _zeitschrift für bildende kunst_. mai, . with a superb illustration in colour. index "adoration," painting, "ambassadors, the," painting, - , amerbach, basilius, bonifacius, , - , , johann, , anne, of cleves, queen, - antwerp, johann or hans of, arundel, henry fitzalan, earl of, thomas howard, earl of, william fitzalan, earl of, augsburg, , , bär, hans, , magdalena, first wife of meyer zum hasen, barber-surgeons, guild of, basel, description of, - decoration of the rathhaus by holbein, - , , , decoration of the lällenkönig by holbein, offers of an annuity to holbein, , , , , basel, banquet to holbein, beatus rhenanus, berne, bible, translations before the reformation, , boleyn, anne, queen, , bourbon, nicholas, , , bourges, burgkmair, hans, butts, sir william, cellini, benvenuto, - chamber, john, cheseman, robert, "christ in the grave," painting, - christ in holbein's art, - christina, duchess of milan, , - colet, john, dean of st. paul's, , cromwell, thomas, earl of essex, "dance of death," - darmstadt, "meyer-madonna" at, - david, gerard, david, jerome, diesbach, nicholas von, , dinteville, jean de, dresden, "meyer-madonna" at, - dürer, albrecht, edward vi., king, , elizabeth of york, queen, erasmus, desiderius, - , , , portraits of, , , eyck, h. and j. van, , fäsch, remigius, fisher, john, bishop of rochester, "fountain of life," painting, , froben, hieronymus, froben, johann, , , , , , , gardiner, stephen, bishop of winchester, gerster, hans, , glass-painting, designs for, , "goddess of love," painting, gold-work, designs for, graf, urs, , guildford, sir henry, - lady, gyze, georg, - hayes, cornelius, henry vii., king, portrait, henry viii., king, portrait, - , new year present to holbein, henry, prince of wales, hertenstein, jacob von, holbein, ambrose, , , , bruno, elsbeth, , - , , , , - , - hans, the elder, , , , , , the younger, birth ( ), at basel ( - ), at lucerne ( - ), , a citizen of basel ( - ), - marriage, wife and children, - , , - , , , first visit to england ( - ), - last years in basel ( - ), - purchase of basel house ( ), , final return to london ( ), mention of, by nicholas bourbon, official income, will and death, - place of interment, illegitimate children, as a designer and engraver, - greatness of, - religious ideals and sympathies, - , - jacob, - katharina, - künegoldt, wife of andreas syff, - michael, philip, son of hans the younger, , , , , philip, grandson of hans the younger, sigmund, , howard, catherine, queen, thomas, duke of norfolk, hutten, ulrich von, hyss, cornelius, "jane seymour cup," kratzer, nicholas, , , laïs corinthiaca, painting, , landsknechte, drawings, , "last supper," paintings, - leemput, remi von, leonardo da vinci, , lisbon, painting, the "fountain of life" at, , lucerne, , lützelburger, hans, , lystrius, gerard, mantegna, andrea, , , "mary magdalen at the sepulchre," painting, - merian, family of, at frankfurt, meyer, anna, , dorothea, née kannegiesser, - , jacob zum hasen, - , , , jacob zum hirten, , magdalena, née bär, "meyer-madonna" (darmstadt and dresden), - milan, monasticism and art, - more, sir thomas, , - , morett, hubert, or morette, charles de solier, portrait, , , "nativity," paintings, - oberriedt, hans, , oporinus, joannes, , paracelsus, parr, catherine, , passion, eight-panelled altar-piece, - drawings, , plague (in ), saint andrew undershaft, london, , , saint catharine cree, london, schmidt, franz, , schoolmaster's sign-board, paintings, , selve, georges de, bishop of lavaur, seymour, jane, queen, , , , , "sheba, queen of, visiting solomon," drawing, solier, charles de, seigneur de morette, solothurn madonna, painting and its history, - steelyard, the, london, - stokesley, john, bishop of london, sultz, dorothea von, née offenburg, - title-pages, woodcuts, , , , "triumph of riches and of poverty," drawings, tuke, sir bryan, , ulm, utopia, woodcut title-page, "virgin and child," drawings, paintings by holbein, - , - warham, william, archbishop of canterbury, , , wilhelm meister, school of, windsor, portrait, drawings at, zetter, "madonna" at solothurn, - little books on art _demy mo. s. d. net._ =subjects= miniatures. alice corkran bookplates. edward almack greek art. h. b. walters roman art. h. b. walters the arts of japan. mrs. c. m. salwey jewellery. c. davenport christ in art. mrs. h. jenner our lady in art. mrs. h. jenner christian symbolism. h. jenner illuminated mss. j. w. bradley enamels. mrs. nelson dawson furniture. egan mew =artists= romney. george paston dÜrer. l. jessie allen reynolds. j. sime watts. miss r. e. d. sketchley hoppner. h. p. k. skipton turner. frances tyrrell-gill hogarth. egan mew burne-jones. fortunée de lisle leighton. alice corkran rembrandt. mrs. e. a. sharp velasquez. wilfrid wilberforce and a. r. gilbert vandyck. m. g. smallwood david cox. arthur tomson holbein. beatrice fortescue corot. ethel birnstingl and mrs. a. pollard millet. netta peacock claude. e. dillon greuze and boucher. eliza f. pollard raphael. a. r. dryhurst plymouth william brendon and son printers transcriber's note contemporary spellings have generally been retained even when inconsistent. a small number of obvious typographical errors have been corrected and some names regularised; missing punctuation has been silently added. advertising material has been moved to the end. the following additional changes have been made: to away with him to _do_ away with him and in pope leo's hands for a and _would remain_ in pope leo's year yet for a year yet die zetter'schen madonna die _zetter'sche_ madonna vow solothurn _von_ solothurn that i imagine it to have that i imagine to have mecænas mæcenas at basel ( - ) at basel ( -_ _) transcriber's note: a few typographical errors have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text. chapter headings were originally constructed as side-notes. they were placed here at the head of their respective paragraphs, and moved to paragraph's start where given at paragraph's middle. see html version for the original headers placement. library edition the complete works of john ruskin poetry of architecture seven lamps modern painters volume i national library association new york chicago the complete works of john ruskin volume ii modern painters volume i modern painters. by a graduate of oxford. vol. i. part i--ii. to the landscape artists of england this work is respectfully dedicated by their sincere admirer, _the author_ preface to the first edition. the work now laid before the public originated in indignation at the shallow and false criticism of the periodicals of the day on the works of the great living artist to whom it principally refers. it was intended to be a short pamphlet, reprobating the matter and style of those critiques, and pointing out their perilous tendency, as guides of public feeling. but, as point after point presented itself for demonstration, i found myself compelled to amplify what was at first a letter to the editor of a review, into something very like a treatise on art, to which i was obliged to give the more consistency and completeness, because it advocated opinions which, to the ordinary connoisseur, will sound heretical. i now scarcely know whether i should announce it is an essay on landscape painting, and apologize for its frequent reference to the works of a particular master; or, announcing it as a critique on particular works, apologize for its lengthy discussion of general principles. but of whatever character the work may be considered, the motives which led me to undertake it must not be mistaken. no zeal for the reputation of any individual, no personal feeling of any kind, has the slightest weight or influence with me. the reputation of the great artist to whose works i have chiefly referred, is established on too legitimate grounds among all whose admiration is honorable, to be in any way affected by the ignorant sarcasms of pretension and affectation. but when _public_ taste seems plunging deeper and deeper into degradation day by day, and when the press universally exerts such power as it possesses to direct the feeling of the nation more completely to all that is theatrical, affected, and false in art; while it vents its ribald buffooneries on the most exalted truth, and the highest ideal of landscape, that this or any other age has ever witnessed, it becomes the imperative duty of all who have any perception or knowledge of what is really great in art, and any desire for its advancement in england, to come fearlessly forward, regardless of such individual interests as are likely to be injured by the knowledge of what is good and right, to declare and demonstrate, wherever they exist, the essence and the authority of the beautiful and the true. whatever may seem invidious or partial in the execution of my task is dependent not so much on the tenor of the work, as on its incompleteness. i have not entered into systematic criticism of all the painters of the present day; but i have illustrated each particular excellence and truth of art by the works in which it exists in the highest degree, resting satisfied that if it be once rightly felt and enjoyed in these, it will be discovered and appreciated wherever it exists in others. and although i have never suppressed any conviction of the superiority of one artist over another, which i believed to be grounded on truth, and necessary to the understanding of truth, i have been cautious never to undermine positive rank, while i disputed relative rank. my uniform desire and aim have been, not that the present favorite should be admired less, but that the neglected master should be admired more. and i know that an increased perception and sense of truth and beauty, though it may interfere with our estimate of the comparative rank of painters, will invariably tend to increase our admiration of all who are really great; and he who now places stanfield and callcott above turner, will admire stanfield and callcott more than he does now, when he has learned to place turner far above them both. in three instances only have i spoken in direct depreciation of the works of living artists, and these are all cases in which the reputation is so firm and extended, as to suffer little injury from the opinion of an individual, and where the blame has been warranted and deserved by the desecration of the highest powers. of the old masters i have spoken with far greater freedom; but let it be remembered that only a portion of the work is now presented to the public, and it must not be supposed, because in that particular portion, and with reference to particular excellencies, i have spoken in constant depreciation, that i have no feeling of other excellencies of which cognizance can only be taken in future parts of the work. let me not be understood to mean more than i have said, nor be made responsible for conclusions when i have only stated facts. i have said that the old masters did not give the truth of nature; if the reader chooses, thence, to infer that they were not masters at all, it is his conclusion, not mine. whatever i have asserted throughout the work, i have endeavored to ground altogether on demonstrations which must stand or fall by their own strength, and which ought to involve no more reference to authority or character than a demonstration in euclid. yet it is proper for the public to know, that the writer is no mere theorist, but has been devoted from his youth to the laborious study of practical art. whatever has been generally affirmed of the old schools of landscape-painting is founded on familiar acquaintance with every important work of art, from antwerp to naples. but it would be useless, where close and immediate comparison with works in our own academy is desirable, to refer to the details of pictures at rome or munich; and it would be impossible to speak at once with just feeling, as regarded the possessor, and just freedom, as regarded the public, of pictures in private galleries. whatever particular references have been made for illustration, have been therefore confined, as far as was in my power, to works in the national and dulwich galleries. finally, i have to apologize for the imperfection of a work which i could have wished not to have executed, but with years of reflection and revisal. it is owing to my sense of the necessity of such revisal, that only a portion of the work is now presented to the public; but that portion is both complete in itself, and is more peculiarly directed against the crying evil which called for instant remedy. whether i ever completely fulfil my intention, will partly depend upon the spirit in which the present volume is received. if it be attributed to an invidious spirit, or a desire for the advancement of individual interests, i could hope to effect little good by farther effort. if, on the contrary, its real feeling and intention be understood, i shall shrink from no labor in the execution of a task which may tend, however feebly, to the advancement of the cause of real art in england, and to the honor of those great living masters whom we now neglect or malign, to pour our flattery into the ear of death, and exalt, with vain acclamation, the names of those who neither demand our praise, nor regard our gratitude. the author. preface to the second edition. it is allowed by the most able writers on naval and military tactics, that although the attack by successive divisions absolutely requires in the attacking party such an inherent superiority in quality of force, and such consciousness of that superiority, as may enable his front columns, or his leading ships, to support themselves for a considerable period against overwhelming numbers; it yet insures, if maintained with constancy, the most total ruin of the opposing force. convinced of the truth, and therefore assured of the ultimate prevalence and victory of the principles which i have advocated, and equally confident that the strength of the cause must give weight to the strokes of even the weakest of its defenders, i permitted myself to yield to a somewhat hasty and hot-headed desire of being, at whatever risk, in the thick of the fire, and began the contest with a part, and that the weakest and least considerable part, of the forces at my disposal. and i now find the volume thus boldly laid before the public in a position much resembling that of the royal sovereign at trafalgar, receiving, unsupported, the broadsides of half the enemy's fleet, while unforeseen circumstances have hitherto prevented, and must yet for a time prevent, my heavier ships of the line from taking any part in the action. i watched the first moments of the struggle with some anxiety for the solitary vessel,--an anxiety which i have now ceased to feel,--for the flag of truth waves brightly through the smoke of the battle, and my antagonists, wholly intent on the destruction of the leading ship, have lost their position, and exposed themselves in defenceless disorder to the attack of the following columns. if, however, i have had no reason to regret my hasty advance, as far as regards the ultimate issue of the struggle, i have yet found it to occasion much misconception of the character, and some diminution of the influence, of the present essay. for though the work has been received as only in sanguine moments i had ventured to hope, though i have had the pleasure of knowing that in many instances its principles have carried with them a strength of conviction amounting to a demonstration of their truth, and that, even where it has had no other influence, it has excited interest, suggested inquiry, and prompted to a just and frank comparison of art with nature; yet this effect would have been greater still, had not the work been supposed, as it seems to have been by many readers, a completed treatise, containing a systematized statement of the whole of my views on the subject of modern art. considered as such, it surprises me that the book should have received the slightest attention. for what respect could be due to a writer who pretended to criticise and classify the works of the great painters of landscape, without developing, or even alluding to, one single principle of the beautiful or sublime? so far from being a completed essay, it is little more than the introduction to the mass of evidence and illustration which i have yet to bring forward; it treats of nothing but the initiatory steps of art, states nothing but the elementary rules of criticism, touches only on merits attainable by accuracy of eye and fidelity of hand, and leaves for future consideration every one of the eclectic qualities of pictures, all of good that is prompted by feeling, and of great that is guided by judgment; and its function and scope should the less have been mistaken, because i have not only most carefully arranged the subject in its commencement, but have given frequent references throughout to the essays by which it is intended to be succeeded, in which i shall endeavor to point out the signification and the value of those phenomena of external nature which i have been hitherto compelled to describe without reference either to their inherent beauty, or to the lessons which may be derived from them. yet, to prevent such misconception in future, i may perhaps be excused for occupying the reader's time with a fuller statement of the feelings with which the work was undertaken, of its general plan, and of the conclusions and positions which i hope to be able finally to deduce and maintain. nothing, perhaps, bears on the face of it more appearance of folly, ignorance, and impertinence, than any attempt to diminish the honor of those to whom the assent of many generations has assigned a throne; for the truly great of later times have, almost without exception, fostered in others the veneration of departed power which they felt themselves, satisfied in all humility to take their seat at the feet of those whose honor is brightened by the hoariness of time, and to wait for the period when the lustre of many departed days may accumulate on their own heads, in the radiance which culminates as it recedes. the envious and incompetent have usually been the leaders of attack, content if, like the foulness of the earth, they may attract to themselves notice by their noisomeness, or, like its insects, exalt themselves by virulence into visibility. while, however, the envy of the vicious, and the insolence of the ignorant, are occasionally shown in their nakedness by _futile_ efforts to degrade the dead, it is worthy of consideration whether they may not more frequently escape detection in _successful_ efforts to degrade the living,--whether the very same malice may not be gratified, the very same incompetence demonstrated in the unjust lowering of present greatness, and the unjust exaltation of a perished power, as, if exerted and manifested in a less safe direction, would have classed the critic with nero and caligula, with zoilus and perrault. be it remembered, that the spirit of detraction is detected only when unsuccessful, and receives least punishment where it effects the greatest injury; and it cannot but be felt that there is as much danger that the rising of new stars should be concealed by the mists which are unseen, as that those throned in heaven should be darkened by the clouds which are visible. there is, i fear, so much malice in the hearts of most men, that they are chiefly jealous of that praise which can give the greatest pleasure, and are then most liberal of eulogium when it can no longer be enjoyed. they grudge not the whiteness of the sepulchre, because by no honor they can bestow upon it can the senseless corpse be rendered an object of envy; but they are niggardly of the reputation which contributes to happiness, or advances to fortune. they are glad to obtain credit for generosity and humility by exalting those who are beyond the reach of praise, and thus to escape the more painful necessity of doing homage to a living rival. they are rejoiced to set up a standard of imaginary excellence, which may enable them, by insisting on the inferiority of a contemporary work to the things that have been, to withdraw the attention from its superiority to the things that are. the same undercurrent of jealousy operates in our reception of animadversion. men have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts than in that which is innocuous, and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes, than of that which falls impotently on the grave. and thus well says the good and deep-minded richard hooker: "to the best and wisest, while they live, the world is continually a froward opposite; and a curious observer of their defects and imperfections, their virtues afterwards it as much admireth. and for this cause, many times that which deserveth admiration would hardly be able to find favor, if they which propose it were not content to profess themselves therein scholars and followers of the ancient. for the world will not endure to hear that we are wiser than any have been which went before."--book v. ch. vii. . he therefore who would maintain the cause of contemporary excellence against that of elder time, must have almost every class of men arrayed against him. the generous, because they would not find matter of accusation against established dignities; the envious, because they like not the sound of a living man's praise; the wise, because they prefer the opinion of centuries to that of days; and the foolish, because they are incapable of forming an opinion of their own. obloquy so universal is not lightly to be risked, and the few who make an effort to stem the torrent, as it is made commonly in favor of their own works, deserve the contempt which is their only reward. nor is this to be regretted, in its influence on the progress and preservation of things technical and communicable. respect for the ancients is the salvation of art, though it sometimes blinds us to its _ends_. it increases the power of the painter, though it diminishes his liberty; and if it be sometimes an incumbrance to the essays of invention, it is oftener a protection from the consequences of audacity. the whole system and discipline of art, the collected results of the experience of ages, might, but for the fixed authority of antiquity, be swept away by the rage of fashion, or lost in the glare of novelty; and the knowledge which it had taken centuries to accumulate, the principles which mighty minds had arrived at only in dying, might be overthrown by the frenzy of a faction, and abandoned in the insolence of an hour. neither, in its general application, is the persuasion of the superiority of former works less just than useful. the greater number of them are, and must be, immeasurably nobler than any of the results of present effort, because that which is best of the productions of four thousand years must necessarily be in its accumulation, beyond all rivalry from the works of any given generation; but it should always be remembered that it is improbable that many, and impossible that all, of such works, though the greatest yet produced, should approach abstract perfection; that there is certainly something left for us to carry farther, or complete; that any given generation has just the same chance of producing some individual mind of first-rate calibre, as any of its predecessors; and that if such a mind _should_ arise, the chances are, that with the assistance of experience and example, it would, in its particular and chosen path, do greater things than had been before done. we must therefore be cautious not to lose sight of the real use of what has been left us by antiquity, nor to take that for a model of perfection which is, in many cases, only a guide to it. the picture which is looked to for an interpretation of nature is invaluable, but the picture which is taken as a substitute for nature, had better be burned; and the young artist, while he should shrink with horror from the iconoclast who would tear from him every landmark and light which has been bequeathed him by the ancients, and leave him in a liberated childhood, may be equally certain of being betrayed by those who would give him the power and the knowledge of past time, and then fetter his strength from all advance, and bend his eyes backward on a beaten path--who would thrust canvas between him and the sky, and tradition between him and god. and such conventional teaching is the more to be dreaded, because all that is highest in art, all that is creative and imaginative, is formed and created by every great master for himself, and cannot be repeated or imitated by others. we judge of the excellence of a rising writer, not so much by the resemblance of his works to what has been done before, as by their difference from it; and while we advise him, in his first trials of strength, to set certain models before him with respect to inferior points,--one for versification, another for arrangement, another for treatment,--we yet admit not his greatness until he has broken away from all his models, and struck forth versification, arrangement, and treatment of his own. three points, therefore, i would especially insist upon as necessary to be kept in mind in all criticism of modern art. first, that there are few, very few of even the best productions of antiquity, which are not visibly and palpably imperfect in some kind or way, and conceivably improvable by farther study; that every nation, perhaps every generation, has in all probability some peculiar gift, some particular character of mind, enabling it to do something different from, or something in some sort better than what has been before done; and that therefore, unless art be a trick, or a manufacture, of which the secrets are lost, the greatest minds of existing nations, if exerted with the same industry, passion, and honest aim as those of past time, have a chance in their particular walk of doing something as great, or, taking the advantage of former example into account, even greater and better. it is difficult to conceive by what laws of logic some of the reviewers of the following essay have construed its first sentence into a denial of this principle,--a denial such as their own conventional and shallow criticism of modern works invariably implies. i have said that "nothing has been for centuries consecrated by public admiration without possessing in a _high_ degree _some_ species of sterling excellence." does it thence follow that it possesses in the _highest_ degree _every_ species of sterling excellence? "yet thus," says the sapient reviewer, "he admits the fact against which he mainly argues,--namely, the superiority of these time-honored productions." as if the possession of an abstract excellence of some kind necessarily implied the possession of an incomparable excellence of every kind! there are few works of man so perfect as to admit of no conception of their being excelled,[a]--there are thousands which have been for centuries, and will be for centuries more, consecrated by public admiration, which are yet imperfect in many respects, and have been excelled, and may be excelled again. do my opponents mean to assert that nothing good can ever be bettered, and that what is best of past time is necessarily best of all time? perugino, i suppose, possessed some species of sterling excellence, but perugino was excelled by raffaelle; and so claude possesses some species of sterling excellence, but it follows not that he may not be excelled by turner. the second point on which i would insist is that if a mind _were_ to arise of such power as to be capable of equalling or excelling some of the greatest works of past ages, the productions of such a mind would, in all probability, be totally different in manner and matter from all former productions; for the more powerful the intellect, the less will its works resemble those of other men, whether predecessors or contemporaries. instead of reasoning, therefore, as we commonly do, in matters of art, that because such and such a work does not resemble that which has hitherto been a canon, therefore it _must_ be inferior and wrong in principle; let us rather admit that there is in its very dissimilarity an increased chance of its being itself a new, and perhaps, a higher canon. if any production of modern art can be shown to have the authority of nature on its side, and to be based on eternal truths, it is all so much more in its favor, so much farther proof of its power, that it is totally different from all that have been before seen.[b] the third point on which i would insist, is that if such a mind were to arise, it would necessarily divide the world of criticism into two factions; the one, necessarily the largest and loudest, composed of men incapable of judging except by precedent, ignorant of general truth, and acquainted only with such particular truths as may have been illustrated or pointed out to them by former works, which class would of course be violent in vituperation, and increase in animosity as the master departed farther from their particular and preconceived canons of right,--thus wounding their vanity by impugning their judgment; the other, necessarily narrow of number, composed of men of general knowledge and unbiassed habits of thought, who would recognize in the work of the daring innovator a record and illustration of facts before unseized, who would justly and candidly estimate the value of the truths so rendered, and would increase in fervor of admiration as the master strode farther and deeper, and more daringly into dominions before unsearched or unknown; yet diminishing in multitude as they increased in enthusiasm: for by how much their leader became more impatient in his step--more impetuous in his success--more exalted in his research, by so much must the number capable of following him become narrower, until at last, supposing him never to pause in his advance, he might be left in the very culminating moment of his consummate achievement, with but a faithful few by his side, his former disciples fallen away, his former enemies doubled in numbers and virulence, and the evidence of his supremacy only to be wrought out by the devotion of men's lives to the earnest study of the new truths he had discovered and recorded. such a mind has arisen in our days. it has gone on from strength to strength, laying open fields of conquest peculiar to itself. it has occasioned such schism in the schools of criticism as was beforehand to be expected, and it is now at the zenith of its power, and, _consequently_, in the last phase of declining popularity. this i know, and can prove. no man, says southey, was ever yet convinced of any momentous truth without feeling in himself the power, as well as the desire of communicating it. in asserting and demonstrating the supremacy of this great master, i shall both do immediate service to the cause of right art, and shall be able to illustrate many principles of landscape painting which are of general application, and have hitherto been unacknowledged. for anything like immediate effect on the public mind, i do not hope. "we mistake men's diseases," says richard baxter, "when we think there needeth nothing to cure them of their errors but the evidence of truth. alas! there are many distempers of mind to be removed before they receive that evidence." nevertheless, when it is fully laid before them, my duty will be done. conviction will follow in due time. i do not consider myself as in any way addressing, or having to do with, the ordinary critics of the press. their writings are not the guide, but the expression, of public opinion. a writer for a newspaper naturally and necessarily endeavors to meet, as nearly as he can, the feelings of the majority of his readers; his bread depends on his doing so. precluded by the nature of his occupations from gaining any knowledge of art, he is sure that he can gain credit for it by expressing the opinions of his readers. he mocks the picture which the public pass, and bespatters with praise the canvas which a crowd concealed from him. writers like the present critic of blackwood's magazine[c] deserve more respect--the respect due to honest, hopeless, helpless imbecility. there is something exalted in the innocence of their feeblemindedness: one cannot suspect them of partiality, for it implies feeling; nor of prejudice, for it implies some previous acquaintance with their subject. i do not know that even in this age of charlatanry, i could point to a more barefaced instance of imposture on the simplicity of the public, than the insertion of these pieces of criticism in a respectable periodical. we are not insulted with opinions on music from persons ignorant of its notes; nor with treatises on philology by persons unacquainted with the alphabet; but here is page after page of criticism, which one may read from end to end, looking for something which the writer knows, and finding nothing. not his own language, for he has to look in his dictionary, by his own confession, for a word[d] occurring in one of the most important chapters of his bible; not the commonest traditions of the schools, for he does not know why poussin was called "learned;"[e] not the most simple canons of art, for he prefers lee to gainsborough;[f] not the most ordinary facts of nature, for we find him puzzled by the epithet "silver," as applied to the orange blossom,--evidently never having seen anything silvery about an orange in his life, except a spoon. nay, he leaves us not to conjecture his calibre from internal evidence; he candidly tells us (oct. ) that he has been studying trees only for the last week, and bases his critical remarks chiefly on his practical experience of birch. more disinterested than our friend sancho, he would disenchant the public from the magic of turner by virtue of his own flagellation; xanthias-like, he would rob his master of immortality by his own powers of endurance. what is christopher north about? does he receive his critiques from eaton or harrow--based on the experience of a week's birds'-nesting and its consequences? how low must art and its interests sink, when the public mind is inadequate to the detection of this effrontery of incapacity! in all kindness to maga, we warn her, that, though the nature of this work precludes us from devoting space to the exposure, there may come a time when the public shall be themselves able to distinguish ribaldry from reasoning, and may require some better and higher qualifications in their critics of art, than the experience of a school-boy, and the capacities of a buffoon. it is not, however, merely to vindicate the reputation of those whom writers like these defame, which would but be to anticipate by a few years the natural and inevitable reaction of the public mind, that i am devoting years of labor to the development of the principles on which the great productions of recent art are based. i have a higher end in view--one which may, i think, justify me, not only in the sacrifice of my own time, but in calling on my readers to follow me through an investigation far more laborious than could be adequately rewarded by mere insight into the merits of a particular master, or the spirit of a particular age. it is a question which, in spite of the claims of painting to be called the sister of poetry, appears to me to admit of considerable doubt, whether art has ever, except in its earliest and rudest stages, possessed anything like efficient moral influence on mankind. better the state of rome when "magnorum artificum frangebat pocula miles, ut phaleris gauderet equus," than when her walls flashed with the marble and the gold, "nec cessabat luxuria id agere, ut quam plurimum incendiis perdat." better the state of religion in italy, before giotto had broken on one barbarism of the byzantine schools, than when the painter of the last judgment, and the sculptor of the perseus, sat revelling side by side. it appears to me that a rude symbol is oftener more efficient than a refined one in touching the heart, and that as pictures rise in rank as works of art, they are regarded with less devotion and more curiosity. but, however this may be, and whatever influence we may be disposed to admit in the great works of sacred art, no doubt can, i think, be reasonably entertained as to the utter inutility of all that has been hitherto accomplished by the painters of landscape. no moral end has been answered, no permanent good effected, by any of their works. they may have amused the intellect, or exercised the ingenuity, but they never have spoken to the heart. landscape art has never taught us one deep or holy lesson; it has not recorded that which is fleeting, nor penetrated that which was hidden, nor interpreted that which was obscure; it has never made us feel the wonder, nor the power, nor the glory, of the universe; it has not prompted to devotion, nor touched with awe; its power to move and exalt the heart has been fatally abused, and perished in the abusing. that which ought to have been a witness to the omnipotence of god, has become an exhibition of the dexterity of man, and that which should have lifted our thoughts to the throne of the deity, has encumbered them with the inventions of his creatures. if we stand for a little time before any of the more celebrated works of landscape, listening to the comments of the passers-by, we shall hear numberless expressions relating to the skill of the artist, but very few relating to the perfection of nature. hundreds will be voluble in admiration, for one who will be silent in delight. multitudes will laud the composition, and depart with the praise of claude on their lips,--not one will feel as if it were _no_ composition, and depart with the praise of god in his heart. these are the signs of a debased, mistaken, and false school of painting. the skill of the artist, and the perfection of his art, are never proved until both are forgotten. the artist has done nothing till he has concealed himself,--the art is imperfect which is visible,--the feelings are but feebly touched, if they permit us to reason on the methods of their excitement. in the reading of a great poem, in the hearing of a noble oration, it is the subject of the writer, and not his skill,--his passion, not his power, on which our minds are fixed. we see as he sees, but we see not him. we become part of him, feel with him, judge, behold with him; but we think _of_ him as little as of ourselves. do we think of Ã�schylus while we wait on the silence of cassandra,[g] or of shakspeare, while we listen to the wailing of lear? not so. the power of the masters is shown by their self-annihilation. it is commensurate with the degree in which they themselves appear not in their work. the harp of the minstrel is untruly touched, if his own glory is all that it records. every great writer may be at once known by his guiding the mind far from himself, to the beauty which is not of his creation, and the knowledge which is past his finding out. and must it ever be otherwise with painting, for otherwise it has ever been. her subjects have been regarded as mere themes on which the artist's power is to be displayed; and that power, be it of imitation, composition, idealization, or of whatever other kind, is the chief object of the spectator's observation. it is man and his fancies, man and his trickeries, man and his inventions,--poor, paltry, weak, self-sighted man,--which the connoisseur forever seeks and worships. among potsherds and dunghills, among drunken boors and withered beldames, through every scene of debauchery and degradation, we follow the erring artist, not to receive one wholesome lesson, not to be touched with pity, nor moved with indignation, but to watch the dexterity of the pencil, and gloat over the glittering of the hue. i speak not only of the works of the flemish school--i wage no war with their admirers; they may be left in peace to count the spiculæ of haystacks and the hairs of donkeys--it is also of works of real mind that i speak,--works in which there are evidences of genius and workings of power,--works which have been held up as containing all of the beautiful that art can reach or man conceive. and i assert with sorrow, that all hitherto done in landscape, by those commonly conceived its masters, has never prompted one holy thought in the minds of nations. it has begun and ended in exhibiting the dexterities of individuals, and conventionalities of systems. filling the world with the honor of claude and salvator, it has never once tended to the honor of god. does the reader start in reading these last words, as if they were those of wild enthusiasm,--as if i were lowering the dignity of religion by supposing that its cause could be advanced by such means? his surprise proves my position. it _does_ sound like wild, like absurd enthusiasm, to expect any definite moral agency in the painters of landscape; but ought it so to sound? are the gorgeousness of the visible hue, the glory of the realized form, instruments in the artist's hand so ineffective, that they can answer no nobler purpose than the amusement of curiosity, or the engagement of idleness? must it not be owing to gross neglect or misapplication of the means at his command, that while words and tones (means of representing nature surely less powerful than lines and colors) can kindle and purify the very inmost souls of men, the painter can only hope to entertain by his efforts at expression, and must remain forever brooding over his incommunicable thoughts? the cause of the evil lies, i believe, deep-seated in the system of ancient landscape art; it consists, in a word, in the painter's taking upon him to modify god's works at his pleasure, casting the shadow of himself on all he sees, constituting himself arbiter where it is honor to be a disciple, and exhibiting his ingenuity by the attainment of combinations whose highest praise is that they are impossible. we shall not pass through a single gallery of old art, without hearing this topic of praise confidently advanced. the sense of artificialness, the absence of all appearance of reality, the clumsiness of combination by which the meddling of man is made evident, and the feebleness of his hand branded on the inorganization of his monstrous creature, is advanced as a proof of inventive power, as an evidence of abstracted conception;--nay, the violation of specific form, the utter abandonment of all organic and individual character of object, (numberless examples of which from the works of the old masters are given in the following pages,) is constantly held up by the unthinking critic as the foundation of the grand or historical style, and the first step to the attainment of a pure ideal. now, there is but one grand style, in the treatment of all subjects whatsoever, and that style is based on the _perfect_ knowledge, and consists in the simple, unencumbered rendering, of the specific characters of the given object, be it man, beast, or flower. every change, caricature, or abandonment of such specific character, is as destructive of grandeur as it is of truth, of beauty as of propriety. every alteration of the features of nature has its origin either in powerless indolence or blind audacity, in the folly which forgets, or the insolence which desecrates, works which it is the pride of angels to know, and their privilege to love. we sometimes hear such infringement of universal laws justified on the plea, that the frequent introduction of mythological abstractions into ancient landscape requires an imaginary character of form in the material objects with which they are associated. something of this kind is hinted in reynolds's th discourse; but nothing can be more false than such reasoning. if there be any truth or beauty in the original conception of the spiritual being so introduced, there must be a true and real connection between that abstract idea[h] and the features of nature as she was and is. the woods and waters which were peopled by the greek with typical life were not different from those which now wave and murmur by the ruins of his shrines. with their visible and actual forms was his imagination filled, and the beauty of its incarnate creatures can only be understood among the pure realities which originally modelled their conception. if divinity be stamped upon the features, or apparent in the form of the spiritual creature, the mind will not be shocked by its appearing to ride upon the whirlwind, and trample on the storm; but if mortality, no violation of the characters of the earth will forge one single link to bind it to the heaven. is there then no such thing as elevated ideal character of landscape? undoubtedly; and sir joshua, with the great master of this character, nicolo poussin, present to his thoughts, ought to have arrived at more true conclusions respecting its essence than, as we shall presently see, are deducible from his works. the true ideal of landscape is precisely the same as that of the human form; it is the expression of the specific--not the individual, but the specific--characters of every object, in their perfection; there is an ideal form of every herb, flower, and tree: it is that form to which every individual of the species has a tendency to arrive, freed from the influence of accident or disease. every landscape painter should know the specific characters of every object he has to represent, rock, flower, or cloud; and in his highest ideal works, all their distinctions will be perfectly expressed, broadly or delicately, slightly or completely, according to the nature of the subject, and the degree of attention which is to be drawn to the particular object by the part it plays in the composition. where the sublime is aimed at, such distinctions will be indicated with severe simplicity, as the muscular markings in a colossal statue; where beauty is the object, they must be expressed with the utmost refinement of which the hand is capable. this may sound like a contradiction of principles advanced by the highest authorities; but it is only a contradiction of a particular and most mistaken application of them. much evil has been done to art by the remarks of historical painters on landscape. accustomed themselves to treat their backgrounds slightly and boldly, and feeling (though, as i shall presently show, only in consequence of their own deficient powers) that any approach to completeness of detail therein, injures their picture by interfering with its principal subject, they naturally lose sight of the peculiar and intrinsic beauties of things which to them are injurious, unless subordinate. hence the frequent advice given by reynolds and others, to neglect _specific_ form in landscape, and treat its materials in large masses, aiming only at general truths,--the flexibility of foliage, but not its kind; the rigidity of rock, but not its mineral character. in the passage more especially bearing on this subject (in the eleventh lecture of sir j. reynolds), we are told that "the landscape painter works not for the virtuoso or the naturalist, but for the general observer of life and nature." this is true, in precisely the same sense that the sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature. yet the sculptor is not, for this reason, permitted to be wanting either in knowledge or expression of anatomical detail; and the more refined that expression can be rendered, the more perfect is his work. that which, to the anatomist, is the end,--is, to the sculptor, the means. the former desires details, for their own sake; the latter, that by means of them, he may kindle his work with life, and stamp it with beauty. and so in landscape;--botanical or geological details are not to be given as matter of curiosity or subject of search, but as the ultimate elements of every species of expression and order of loveliness. in his observations on the foreground of the st. pietro martire, sir joshua advances, as matter of praise, that the plants are discriminated "just as much as was necessary for variety, and no more." had this foreground been occupied by a group of animals, we should have been surprised to be told that the lion, the serpent, and the dove, or whatever other creatures might have been introduced, were distinguished from each other just as much as was necessary for variety, and no more. yet is it to be supposed that the distinctions of the vegetable world are less complete, less essential, or less divine in origin, than those of the animal? if the distinctive forms of animal life are meant for our reverent observance, is it likely that those of vegetable life are made merely to be swept away? the latter are indeed less obvious and less obtrusive; for which very reason there is less excuse for omitting them, because there is less danger of their disturbing the attention or engaging the fancy. but sir joshua is as inaccurate in fact, as false in principle. he himself furnishes a most singular instance of the very error of which he accuses vaseni,--the seeing what he expects; or, rather, in the present case, not seeing what he does not expect. the great masters of italy, almost without exception, and titian perhaps more than any, (for he had the highest knowledge of landscape,) are in the constant habit of rendering every detail of their foregrounds with the most laborious botanical fidelity: witness the "bacchus and ariadne," in which the foreground is occupied by the common blue iris, the aquilegia, and the wild rose; _every stamen_ of which latter is given, while the blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have been studied with the most exquisite accuracy. the foregrounds of raffaelle's two cartoons,--"the miraculous draught of fishes" and "the charge to peter,"--are covered with plants of the common sea colewort, (_crambe maritima_,) of which the sinuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have exhausted the patience of any other artist; but have appeared worthy of prolonged and thoughtful labor to the great mind of raffaelle. it appears then, not only from natural principles, but from the highest of all authority, that thorough knowledge of the lowest details is necessary and full expression of them right, even in the highest class of historical painting; that it will not take away from, nor interfere with, the interest of the figures; but, rightly managed, must add to and elucidate it; and, if further proof be wanting, i would desire the reader to compare the background of sir joshua's "holy family," in the national gallery, with that of nicolo poussin's "nursing of jupiter," in the dulwich gallery. the first, owing to the utter neglect of all botanical detail, has lost every atom of ideal character, and reminds us of nothing but an english fashionable flower garden;--the formal pedestal adding considerably to the effect. poussin's, in which every vine leaf is drawn with consummate skill and untiring diligence, produces not only a tree group of the most perfect grace and beauty, but one which, in its pure and simple truth, belongs to every age of nature, and adapts itself to the history of all time. if, then, such entire rendering of specific character be necessary to the historical painter, in cases where these lower details are entirely subordinate to his human subject, how much more must it be necessary in landscape, where they themselves constitute the subject, and where the undivided attention is to be drawn to them. there is a singular sense in which the child may peculiarly be said to be father of the man. in many arts and attainments, the first and last stages of progress--the infancy and the consummation--have many features in common; while the intermediate stages are wholly unlike either, and are farthest from the right. thus it is in the progress of a painter's handling. we see the perfect child,--the absolute beginner, using of necessity a broken, imperfect, inadequate line, which, as he advances, becomes gradually firm, severe, and decided. yet before he becomes a perfect artist, this severity and decision will again be exchanged for a light and careless stroke, which in many points will far more resemble that of his childhood than of his middle age--differing from it only by the consummate effect wrought out by the apparently inadequate means. so it is in many matters of opinion. our first and last coincide, though on different grounds; it is the middle stage which is farthest from the truth. childhood often holds a truth with its feeble fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain,--which it is the pride of utmost age to recover. perhaps this is in no instance more remarkable than in the opinion we form upon the subject of detail in works of art. infants in judgment, we look for specific character, and complete finish--we delight in the faithful plumage of the well-known bird--in the finely drawn leafage of the discriminated flower. as we advance in judgment, we scorn such detail altogether; we look for impetuosity of execution, and breadth of effect. but, perfected in judgment, we return in a great measure to our early feelings, and thank raffaelle for the shells upon his sacred beach, and for the delicate stamens of the herbage beside his inspired st. catherine.[i] of those who take interest in art, nay, even of artists themselves, there are an hundred in the middle stage of judgment, for one who is in the last; and this not because they are destitute of the power to discover, or the sensibility to enjoy the truth, but because the truth bears so much semblance of error--the last stage of the journey to the first,--that every feeling which guides to it is checked in its origin. the rapid and powerful artist necessarily looks with such contempt on those who seek minutiæ of detail _rather_ than grandeur of impression, that it is almost impossible for him to conceive of the great last step in art, by which both become compatible. he has so often to dash the delicacy out of the pupil's work, and to blot the details from his encumbered canvas; so frequently to lament the loss of breadth and unity, and so seldom to reprehend the imperfection of minutiæ, that he necessarily looks upon complete _parts_ as the very sign of error, weakness, and ignorance. thus, frequently to the latest period of his life, he separates, like sir joshua, as chief enemies, the details and the whole, which an artist cannot be great unless he reconciles; and because details alone, and unreferred to a final purpose, are the sign of a tyro's work, he loses sight of the remoter truth, that details perfect in unity, and, contributing to a final purpose, are the sign of the production of a consummate master. it is not, therefore, detail sought for its own sake,--not the calculable bricks of the dutch house-painters, nor the numbered hairs and mapped wrinkles of denner, which constitute great art,--they are the lowest and most contemptible art; but it is detail referred to a great end,--sought for the sake of the inestimable beauty which exists in the slightest and least of god's works, and treated in a manly, broad, and impressive manner. there may be as much greatness of mind, as much nobility of manner in a master's treatment of the smallest features, as in his management of the most vast; and this greatness of manner chiefly consists in seizing the specific character of the object, together with all the great qualities of beauty which it has in common with higher orders of existence,[j] while he utterly rejects the meaner beauties which are accidentally peculiar to the object, and yet not specifically characteristic of it. i cannot give a better instance than the painting of the flowers in titian's picture above mentioned. while every stamen of the rose is given, because this was necessary to mark the flower, and while the curves and large characters of the leaves are rendered with exquisite fidelity, there is no vestige of particular texture, of moss, bloom, moisture, or any other accident--no dew-drops, nor flies, nor trickeries of any kind; nothing beyond the simple forms and hues of the flowers,--even those hues themselves being simplified and broadly rendered. the varieties of aquilegia have, in reality, a grayish and uncertain tone of color; and, i believe, never attain the intense purity of blue with which titian has gifted his flower. but the master does not aim at the particular color of individual blossoms; he seizes the type of all, and gives it with the utmost purity and simplicity of which color is capable. these laws being observed, it will not only be in the power, it will be the duty,--the imperative duty,--of the landscape painter, to descend to the lowest details with undiminished attention. every herb and flower of the field has its specific, distinct, and perfect beauty; it has its peculiar habitation, expression, and function. the highest art is that which seizes this specific character, which develops and illustrates it, which assigns to it its proper position in the landscape, and which, by means of it, enhances and enforces the great impression which the picture is intended to convey. nor is it of herbs and flowers alone that such scientific representation is required. every class of rock, every kind of earth, every form of cloud, must be studied with equal industry, and rendered with equal precision. and thus we find ourselves unavoidably led to a conclusion directly opposed to that constantly enunciated dogma of the parrot-critic, that the features of nature must be "generalized,"--a dogma whose inherent and broad absurdity would long ago have been detected, if it had not contained in its convenient falsehood an apology for indolence, and a disguise for incapacity. generalized! as if it were possible to generalize things generically different. of such common cant of criticism i extract a characteristic passage from one of the reviews of this work, that in this year's athenæum for february th: "he (the author) would have geological landscape painters, dendrologic, meteorologic, and doubtless entomologic, ichthyologic, every kind of physiologic painter united in the same person; yet, alas, for true poetic art among all these learned thebans! no; landscape painting must not be reduced to mere portraiture of inanimate substances, denner-like portraiture of the earth's face. * * * * * ancient landscapists took a broader, deeper, higher view of their art; they neglected particular traits, and gave only general features. thus they attained mass and force, harmonious union and simple effect, the elements of grandeur and beauty." to all such criticism as this (and i notice it only because it expresses the feelings into which many sensible and thoughtful minds have been fashioned by infection) the answer is simple and straightforward. it is just as impossible to generalize granite and slate, as it is to generalize a man and a cow. an animal must be either one animal or another animal; it cannot be a general animal, or it is no animal; and so a rock must be either one rock or another rock; it cannot be a general rock, or it is no rock. if there were a creature in the foreground of a picture, of which he could not decide whether it were a pony or a pig, the athenæum critic would perhaps affirm it to be a generalization of pony and pig, and consequently a high example of "harmonious union and simple effect." but _i_ should call it simple bad drawing. and so when there are things in the foreground of salvator of which i cannot pronounce whether they be granite or slate, or tufa, i affirm that there is in them neither harmonious union nor simple effect, but simple monstrosity. there is no grandeur, no beauty of any sort or kind; nothing but destruction, disorganization, and ruin, to be obtained by the violation of natural distinctions. the elements of brutes can only mix in corruption, the elements of inorganic nature only in annihilation. we may, if we choose, put together centaur monsters; but they must still be half man, half horse; they cannot be both man and horse, nor either man or horse. and so, if landscape painters choose, they may give us rocks which shall be half granite and half slate; but they cannot give us rocks which shall be either granite or slate, nor which shall be both granite and slate. every attempt to produce that which shall be _any_ rock, ends in the production of that which is _no_ rock. it is true that the distinctions of rocks and plants and clouds are less conspicuous, and less constantly subjects of observation than those of the animal creation; but the difficulty of observing them proves not the merit of overlooking them. it only accounts for the singular fact, that the world has never yet seen anything like a perfect school of landscape. for just as the highest historical painting is based on perfect knowledge of the workings of the human form, and human mind, so must the highest landscape painting be based on perfect cognizance of the form, functions, and system of every organic or definitely structured existence which it has to represent. this proposition is self-evident to every thinking mind; and every principle which appears to contradict it is either misstated or misunderstood. for instance, the athenæum critic calls the right statement of generic difference "_denner_-like portraiture." if he can find anything like denner in what i have advanced as the utmost perfection of landscape art--the recent works of turner--he is welcome to his discovery and his theory. no; denner-like portraiture would be the endeavor to paint the separate crystals of quartz and felspar in the granite, and the separate flakes of mica in the mica slate,--an attempt just as far removed from what i assert to be great art, (the bold rendering of the generic characters of form in both rocks,) as modern sculpture of lace and button-holes is from the elgin marbles. martin has attempted this denner-like portraiture of sea-foam with the assistance of an acre of canvas--with what success, i believe the critics of his last year's canute had, for once, sense enough to decide. again, it does not follow that because such accurate knowledge is _necessary_ to the painter that it should constitute the painter, nor that such knowledge is valuable in itself, and without reference to high ends. every kind of knowledge may be sought from ignoble motives, and for ignoble ends; and in those who so possess it, it is ignoble knowledge; while the very same knowledge is in another mind an attainment of the highest dignity, and conveying the greatest blessing. this is the difference between the mere botanist's knowledge of plants, and the great poet's or painter's knowledge of them. the one notes their distinctions for the sake of swelling his herbarium, the other, that he may render them vehicles of expression and emotion. the one counts the stamens, and affixes a name, and is content; the other observes every character of the plant's color and form; considering each of its attributes as an element of expression, he seizes on its lines of grace or energy, rigidity or repose; notes the feebleness or the vigor, the serenity or tremulousness of its hues; observes its local habits, its love or fear of peculiar places, its nourishment or destruction by particular influences; he associates it in his mind with all the features of the situations it inhabits, and the ministering agencies necessary to its support. thenceforward the flower is to him a living creature, with histories written on its leaves, and passions breathing in its motion. its occurrence in his picture is no mere point of color, no meaningless spark of light. it is a voice rising from the earth,--a new chord of the mind's music,--a necessary note in the harmony of his picture, contributing alike to its tenderness and its dignity, nor less to its loveliness than its truth. the particularization of flowers by shakspeare and shelley affords us the most frequent examples of the exalted use of these inferior details. it is true that the painter has not the same power of expressing the thoughts with which his symbols are connected; he is dependent in some degree on the knowledge and feeling of the spectator; but, by the destruction of such details, his foreground is not rendered more intelligible to the ignorant, although it ceases to have interest for the informed. it is no excuse for illegible writing that there are persons who could not have read it had it been plain. i repeat then, generalization, as the word is commonly understood, is the act of a vulgar, incapable, and unthinking mind. to see in all mountains nothing but similar heaps of earth; in all rocks, nothing but similar concretions of solid matter; in all trees, nothing but similar accumulations of leaves, is no sign of high feeling or extended thought. the more we know, and the more we feel, the more we separate; we separate to obtain a more perfect unity. stones, in the thoughts of the peasant, lie as they do on his field, one is like another, and there is no connection between any of them. the geologist distinguishes, and in distinguishing connects them. each becomes different from its fellow, but in differing from, assumes a relation to its fellow; they are no more each the repetition of the other,--they are parts of a system, and each implies and is connected with the existence of the rest. that generalization then is right, true, and noble, which is based on the knowledge of the distinctions and observance of the relations of individual kinds. that generalization is wrong, false, and contemptible, which is based on ignorance of the one, and disturbance of the other. it is indeed no generalization, but confusion and chaos; it is the generalization of a defeated army into indistinguishable impotence--the generalization of the elements of a dead carcass into dust. let us, then, without farther notice of the dogmata of the schools of art, follow forth those conclusions to which we are led by observance of the laws of nature. i have just said that every class of rock, earth and cloud, must be known by the painter, with geologic and meteorologic accuracy.[k] nor is this merely for the sake of obtaining the character of these minor features themselves, but more especially for the sake of reaching that simple, earnest, and consistent character which is visible in the _whole_ effect of every natural landscape. every geological formation has features entirely peculiar to itself; definite lines of fracture, giving rise to fixed resultant forms of rock and earth; peculiar vegetable products, among which still farther distinctions are wrought out by variations of climate and elevation. from such modifying circumstances arise the infinite varieties of the orders of landscape, of which each one shows perfect harmony among its several features, and possesses an ideal beauty of its own; a beauty not distinguished merely by such peculiarities as are wrought on the human form by change of climate, but by generic differences the most marked and essential; so that its classes cannot be generalized or amalgamated by any expedients whatsoever. the level marshes and rich meadows of the tertiary, the rounded swells and short pastures of the chalk, the square-built cliffs and cloven dells of the lower limestone, the soaring peaks and ridgy precipices of the primaries, having nothing in common among them--nothing which is not distinctive and incommunicable. their very atmospheres are different--their clouds are different--their humors of storm and sunshine are different--their flowers, animals and forests are different. by each order of landscape--and its orders, i repeat, are infinite in number, corresponding not only to the several species of rock, but to the particular circumstances of the rocks' deposition or after treatment, and to the incalculable varieties of climate, aspect, and human interference:--by each order of landscape, i say, peculiar lessons are intended to be taught, and distinct pleasures to be conveyed; and it is as utterly futile to talk of generalizing their impressions into an ideal landscape, as to talk of amalgamating all nourishment into one ideal food, gathering all music into one ideal movement, or confounding all thought into one ideal idea. there is, however, such a thing as composition of different orders of landscape, though there can be no generalization of them. nature herself perpetually brings together elements of various expression. her barren rocks stoop through wooded promontories to the plain; and the wreaths of the vine show through their green shadows the wan light of unperishing snow. the painter, therefore, has the choice of either working out the isolated character of some one distinct class of scene, or of bringing together a multitude of different elements, which may adorn each other by contrast. i believe that the simple and uncombined landscape, if wrought out with due attention to the ideal beauty of the features it includes, will always be the most powerful in its appeal to the heart. contrast increases the splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power. on this subject i shall have much to say hereafter; at present i merely wish to suggest the possibility, that the single-minded painter, who is working out on broad and simple principles, a piece of unbroken, harmonious landscape character, may be reaching an end in art quite as high as the more ambitious student who is always "within five minutes' walk of everywhere," making the ends of the earth contribute to his pictorial guazzetto;[l] and the certainty, that unless the composition of the latter be regulated by severe judgment, and its members connected by natural links, it must become more contemptible in its motley, than an honest study of roadside weeds. let me, at the risk of tediously repeating what is universally known, refer to the common principles of historical composition, in order that i may show their application to that of landscape. the merest tyro in art knows that every figure which is unnecessary to his picture, is an encumbrance to it, and that every figure which does not sympathize with the action, interrupts it. he that gathereth not with me, scattereth,--is, or ought to be, the ruling principle of his plan: and the power and grandeur of his result will be exactly proportioned to the unity of feeling manifested in its several parts, and to the propriety and simplicity of the relations in which they stand to each other. all this is equally applicable to the materials of inanimate nature. impressiveness is destroyed by a multitude of contradictory facts, and the accumulation, which is not harmonious, is discordant. he who endeavors to unite simplicity with magnificence, to guide from solitude to festivity, and to contrast melancholy with mirth, must end by the production of confused inanity. there is a peculiar spirit; possessed by every kind of scene; and although a point of contrast may sometimes enhance and exhibit this particular feeling more intensely, it must be only a point, not an equalized opposition. every introduction of new and different feeling weakens the force of what has already been impressed, and the mingling of all emotions must conclude in apathy, as the mingling of all colors in white. let us test by these simple rules one of the "ideal" landscape compositions of claude, that known to the italians as "il mulino." the foreground is a piece of very lovely and perfect forest scenery, with a dance of peasants by a brookside; quite enough subject to form, in the hands of a master, an impressive and complete picture. on the other side of the brook, however, we have a piece of pastoral life, a man with some bulls and goats tumbling headforemost into the water, owing to some sudden paralytic affection of all their legs. even this group is one too many; the shepherd had no business to drive his flock so near the dancers, and the dancers will certainly frighten the cattle. but when we look farther into the picture, our feelings receive a sudden and violent shock, by the unexpected appearance, amidst things pastoral and musical, of the military: a number of roman soldiers riding in on hobby-horses, with a leader on foot, apparently encouraging them to make an immediate and decisive charge on the musicians. beyond the soldiers is a circular temple, in exceedingly bad repair, and close beside it, built against its very walls, a neat water-mill in full work. by the mill flows a large river, with a weir all across it. the weir has not been made for the mill, (for that receives its water from the hills by a trough carried over the temple,) but it is particularly ugly and monotonous in its line of fall, and the water below forms a dead-looking pond, on which some people are fishing in punts. the banks of this river resemble in contour the later geological formations around london, constituted chiefly of broken pots and oyster-shells. at an inconvenient distance from the water-side stands a city, composed of twenty-five round towers and a pyramid. beyond the city is a handsome bridge; beyond the bridge, part of the campagna, with fragments of aqueducts; beyond the campagna, the chain of the alps; on the left, the cascades of tivoli. this is, i believe, a fair example of what is commonly called an "ideal landscape," _i.e._, a group of the artist's studies from nature, individually spoiled, selected with such opposition of character as may insure their neutralizing each other's effect, and united with sufficient unnaturalness and violence of association to insure their producing a general sensation of the impossible. let us analyze the separate subjects a little in this ideal work of claude's. perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the solitary extent of the campagna of rome under evening light. let the reader imagine himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and motion of the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and wasted plain. the earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he never so lightly, for its substance is white, hollow, and carious, like the dusty wreck of the bones of men.[m] the long knotted grass waves and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift themselves to the sunlight. hillocks of mouldering earth heave around him, as if the dead beneath were struggling in their sleep; scattered blocks of black stone, four-square, remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon another, lie upon them to keep them down. a dull purple, poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests like dying fire on defiled altars. the blue ridge of the alban mount lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories, of the apennines. from the plain to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral mourners, passing from a nation's grave. let us, with claude, make a few "ideal" alterations in this landscape. first, we will reduce the multitudinous precipices of the apennines to four sugar-loaves. secondly, we will remove the alban mount, and put a large dust-heap in its stead. next, we will knock down the greater part of the aqueducts, and leave only an arch or two, that their infinity of length may no longer be painful from its monotony. for the purple mist and declining sun, we will substitute a bright blue sky, with round white clouds. finally, we will get rid of the unpleasant ruins in the foreground; we will plant some handsome trees therein, we will send for some fiddlers, and get up a dance, and a picnic party. it will be found, throughout the picture, that the same species of improvement is made on the materials which claude had ready to his hand. the descending slopes of the city of rome, towards the pyramid of caius cestius, supply not only lines of the most exquisite variety and beauty, but matter for contemplation and reflection in every fragment of their buildings. this passage has been idealized by claude into a set of similar round towers, respecting which no idea can be formed but that they are uninhabitable, and to which no interest can be attached, beyond the difficulty of conjecturing what they could have been built for. the ruins of the temple are rendered unimpressive by the juxtaposition of the water-mill, and inexplicable by the introduction of the roman soldiers. the glide of the muddy streams of the melancholy tiber and anio through the campagna, is impressive in itself, but altogether ceases to be so, when we disturb their stillness of motion by a weir, adorn their neglected flow with a handsome bridge, and cover their solitary surface with punts, nets, and fishermen. it cannot, i think, be expected, that landscapes like this should have any effect on the human heart, except to harden or to degrade it; to lead it from the love of what is simple, earnest and pure, to what is as sophisticated and corrupt in arrangement, as erring and imperfect in detail. so long as such works are held up for imitation, landscape painting must be a manufacture, its productions must be toys, and its patrons must be children. my purpose then, in the present work, is to demonstrate the utter falseness both of the facts and principles; the imperfection of material, and error of arrangement, on which works such as these are based; and to insist on the necessity, as well as the dignity, of an earnest, faithful, loving, study of nature as she is, rejecting with abhorrence all that man has done to alter and modify her. and the praise which, in this first portion of the work, is given to many english artists, would be justifiable on this ground only, that although frequently with little power and desultory effort, they have yet, in an honest and good heart, received the word of god from clouds, and leaves, and waves, and kept it,[n] and endeavored in humility to render to the world that purity of impression which can alone render the result of art an instrument of good, or its labor deserving of gratitude. if, however, i shall have frequent occasion to insist on the necessity of this heartfelt love of, and unqualified submission to, the teaching of nature, it will be no less incumbent upon me to reprobate the careless rendering of casual impression, and the mechanical copyism of unimportant subject, which are too frequently visible in our modern school.[o] their lightness and desultoriness of intention, their meaningless multiplication of unstudied composition, and their want of definiteness and loftiness of aim, bring discredit on their whole system of study, and encourage in the critic the unhappy prejudice that the field and the hill-side are less fit places of study than the gallery and the garret. not every casual idea caught from the flight of a shower or the fall of a sunbeam, not every glowing fragment of harvest light, nor every flickering dream of copsewood coolness, is to be given to the world as it came, unconsidered, incomplete, and forgotten by the artist as soon as it has left his easel. that only should be considered a picture, in which the spirit, (not the materials, observe,) but the animating emotion of many such studies is concentrated, and exhibited by the aid of long-studied, painfully-chosen forms; idealized in the right sense of the word, not by audacious liberty of that faculty of degrading god's works which man calls his "imagination," but by perfect assertion of entire knowledge of every part and character and function of the object, and in which the details are completed to the last line compatible with the dignity and simplicity of the whole, wrought out with that noblest industry which concentrates profusion into point, and transforms accumulation into structure; neither must this labor be bestowed on every subject which appears to afford a capability of good, but on chosen subjects in which nature has prepared to the artist's hand the purest sources of the impression he would convey. these may be humble in their order, but they must be perfect of their kind. there is a perfection of the hedgerow and cottage, as well as of the forest and the palace, and more ideality in a great artist's selection and treatment of roadside weeds and brook-worn pebbles, than in all the struggling caricature of the meaner mind which heaps its foreground with colossal columns, and heaves impossible mountains into the encumbered sky. finally, these chosen subjects must not be in any way repetitions of one another, but each founded on a new idea, and developing a totally distinct train of thought; so that the work of the artist's life should form a consistent series of essays, rising through the scale of creation from the humblest scenery to the most exalted; each picture being a necessary link in the chain, based on what preceded, introducing to what is to follow, and all, in their lovely system, exhibiting and drawing closer the bonds of nature to the human heart. since, then, i shall have to reprobate the absence of study in the moderns nearly as much as its false direction in the ancients, my task will naturally divide itself into three portions. in the first, i shall endeavor to investigate and arrange the facts of nature with scientific accuracy; showing as i proceed, by what total neglect of the very first base and groundwork of their art the idealities of some among the old masters are produced. this foundation once securely laid, i shall proceed, in the second portion of the work, to analyze and demonstrate the nature of the emotions of the beautiful and sublime; to examine the particular characters of every kind of scenery, and to bring to light, as far as may be in my power, that faultless, ceaseless, inconceivable, inexhaustible loveliness, which god has stamped upon all things, if man will only receive them as he gives them. finally, i shall endeavor to trace the operation of all this on the hearts and minds of men; to exhibit the moral function and end of art, to prove the share which it ought to have in the thoughts, and influence on the lives of all of us; to attach to the artist the responsibility of a preacher, and to kindle in the general mind that regard which such an office must demand. it must be evident that the first portion of this task, which is all that i have yet been enabled to offer to the reader, cannot but be the least interesting and the most laborious, especially because it is necessary that it should be executed without reference to any principles of beauty or influences of emotion. it is the hard, straightforward classification of material things, not the study of thought or passion; and therefore let me not be accused of the feelings which i choose to repress. the consideration of the high qualities of art must not be interrupted by the work of the hammer and the eudiometer. again, i would request that the frequent passages of reference to the great masters of the italian school may not be looked upon as mere modes of conventional expression. i think there is enough in the following pages to prove that i am not likely to be carried away by the celebrity of a name; and therefore that the devoted love which i profess for the works of the great historical and sacred painters is sincere and well-grounded. and indeed every principle of art which i may advocate, i shall be able to illustrate by reference to the works of men universally allowed to be the masters of masters; and the public, so long as my teaching leads them to higher understanding and love of the works of buonaroti, leonardo, raffaelle, titian, and cagliari, may surely concede to me without fear, the right of striking such blows as i may deem necessary to the establishment of my principles, at gasper poussin, or vandevelde. indeed, i believe there is nearly as much occasion, at the present day, for advocacy of michael angelo against the pettiness of the moderns, as there is for support of turner against the conventionalities of the ancients. for, though the names of the fathers of sacred art are on all our lips, our faith in them is much like that of the great world in its religion--nominal, but dead. in vain our lecturers sound the name of raffaelle in the ears of their pupils, while their own works are visibly at variance with every principle deducible from his. in vain is the young student compelled to produce a certain number of school copies of michael angelo, when his bread must depend on the number of gewgaws he can crowd into his canvas. and i could with as much zeal exert myself against the modern system of english historical art, as i have in favor of our school of landscape, but that it is an ungrateful and painful task to attack the works of living painters, struggling with adverse circumstances of every kind, and especially with the false taste of a nation which regards matters of art either with the ticklishness of an infant, or the stolidity of a megatherium. i have been accused, in the execution of this first portion of my work, of irreverent and scurrile expression towards the works which i have depreciated. possibly i may have been in some degree infected by reading those criticisms of our periodicals, which consist of nothing else; but i believe in general that my words will be found to have sufficient truth in them to excuse their familiarity; and that no other weapons could have been used to pierce the superstitious prejudice with which the works of certain painters are shielded from the attacks of reason. my answer is that given long ago to a similar complaint, uttered under the same circumstances by the foiled sophist:--"[greek: (hos d'estin ho anthrôpos; hôs apaideutos tis, os ouiô phaula onomata onomazein tolma en semnô pragmati.) toioutos tis, ô hippia, ouden allo phrontizôn ê to alêthes]." it is with more surprise that i have heard myself accused of thoughtless severity with respect to the works of contemporary painters, for i fully believe that whenever i attack them, i give myself far more pain than i can possibly inflict; and, in many instances, i have withheld reprobation which i considered necessary to the full understanding of my work, in the fear of grieving or injuring men of whose feelings and circumstances i was ignorant. indeed, the apparently false and exaggerated bias of the whole book in favor of modern art, is in great degree dependent on my withholding the animadversions which would have given it balance, and keeping silence where i cannot praise. but i had rather be a year or two longer in effecting my purposes, than reach them by trampling on men's hearts and hearths; and i have permitted myself to express unfavorable opinions only where the popularity and favor of the artist are so great as to render the opinion of an individual a matter of indifference to him. and now--but one word more. for many a year we have heard nothing with respect to the works of turner but accusations of their want of _truth_. to every observation on their power, sublimity, or beauty, there has been but one reply: they are not like nature. i therefore took my opponents on their own ground, and demonstrated, by thorough investigation of actual facts, that turner _is_ like nature, and paints more of nature than any man who ever lived. i expected this proposition (the foundation of all my future efforts) would have been disputed with desperate struggles, and that i should have had to fight my way to my position inch by inch. not at all. my opponents yield me the field at once. one (the writer for the athenæum) has no other resource than the assertion, that "he disapproves the natural style in painting. if people want to see _nature_, let them go and look at herself. why should they see her at second-hand on a piece of canvas?" the other, (blackwood,) still more utterly discomfited, is reduced to a still more remarkable line of defence. "it is not," he says, "what things in all respects really are, but how they are convertible by the mind into what they are _not_, that we have to consider." (october, , p. .) i leave therefore the reader to choose whether, with blackwood and his fellows, he will proceed to consider how things are convertible by the mind into what they are _not_, or whether, with me, he will undergo the harder, but perhaps on the whole more useful, labor of ascertaining--what they are. footnotes [a] one or two fragments of greek sculpture, the works of michael angelo, considered with reference to their general conception and power, and the madonna di st. sisto, are all that i should myself put into such a category, not that even these are without defect, but their defects are such as mortality could never hope to rectify. [b] this principle is dangerous, but not the less true, and necessary to be kept in mind. there is scarcely any truth which does not admit of being wrested to purposes of evil, and we must not deny the desirableness of originality, because men may err in seeking for it, or because a pretence to it may be made, by presumption, a cloak for its incompetence. nevertheless, originality is never to be sought for its own sake--otherwise it will be mere aberration--it should arise naturally out of hard, independent study of nature; and it should be remembered that in many things technical, it is impossible to alter without being inferior, for therein, as says spencer, "truth is one, and right is ever one;" but wrongs are various and multitudinous. "vice," says byron, in marino faliero, "must have variety; but virtue stands like the sun, and all which rolls around drinks life from her aspect." [c] it is with regret that, in a work of this nature, i take notice of criticisms, which, after all, are merely intended to amuse the careless reader, and be forgotten as soon as read; but i do so in compliance with wishes expressed to me since the publication of this work, by persons who have the interests of art deeply at heart, and who, i find, attach more importance to the matter than i should have been disposed to do. i have, therefore, marked two or three passages which _may_ enable the public to judge for themselves of the quality of these critiques; and this i think a matter of justice to those who might otherwise have been led astray by them--more than this i cannot consent to do. i should have but a hound's office if i had to tear the tabard from every rouge sanglier of the arts--with bell and bauble to back him. [d] chrysoprase, (vide no. for october, , p. .) [e] every school-boy knows that this epithet was given to poussin in allusion to the profound classical knowledge of the painter. the reviewer, however, (september, ,) informs us that the expression refers to his skill in "composition." [f] critique on royal academy, . "he" (mr. lee) "often reminds us of gainsborough's best manner; but he is _superior_ to him always in subject, composition, and variety."--shade of gainsborough!--deep-thoughted, solemn gainsborough,--forgive us for re-writing this sentence; we do so to gibbet its perpetrator forever,--and leave him swinging in the winds of the fool's paradise. it is with great pain that i ever speak with severity of the works of living masters, especially when, like mr. lee's, they are well-intentioned, simple, free from affectation or imitation, and evidently painted with constant reference to nature. but i believe that these qualities will always secure him that admiration which he deserves--that there will be many unsophisticated and honest minds always ready to follow his guidance, and answer his efforts with delight; and therefore, that i need not fear to point out in him the want of those technical qualities which are more especially the object of an artist's admiration. gainsborough's power of color (it is mentioned by sir joshua as his peculiar gift) is capable of taking rank beside that of rubens; he is the purest colorist--sir joshua himself not excepted--of the whole english school; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists not now in europe. evidence enough will be seen in the following pages of my devoted admiration of turner; but i hesitate not to say, that in management and quality of single and particular tint, in the purely technical part of painting, turner is a child of gainsborough. now, mr. lee never aims at color; he does not make it his object in the slightest degree--the spring green of vegetation is all that he desires; and it would be about as rational to compare his works with studied pieces of coloring, as the modulation of the calabrian pipe to the harmony of a full orchestra. gainsborough's hand is as light as the sweep of a cloud--as swift as the flash of a sunbeam; lee's execution is feeble and spotty. gainsborough's masses are as broad as the first division in heaven of light from darkness; lee's (perhaps necessarily, considering the effects of flickering sunlight at which he aims) are as fragmentary as his leaves, and as numerous. gainsborough's forms are grand, simple, and ideal; lee's are small, confused, and unselected. gainsborough never loses sight of his picture as a whole; lee is but too apt to be shackled by its parts. in a word, gainsborough is an immortal painter; and lee, though on the right road, is yet in the early stages of his art; and the man who could imagine any resemblance or point of comparison between them, is not only a novice in art, but has not capacity ever to be anything more. he may be pardoned for not comprehending turner, for long preparation and discipline are necessary before the abstract and profound philosophy of that artist can be met; but gainsborough's excellence is based on principles of art long acknowledged, and facts of nature universally apparent; and i insist more particularly on the reviewer's want of feeling for his works, because it proves a truth of which the public ought especially to be assured that those who lavish abuse on the great men of modern times, are equally incapable of perceiving the real excellence of established canons, are ignorant of the commonest and most acknowledged principia of the art, blind to the most palpable and comprehensible of its beauties, incapable of distinguishing, if left to themselves, a master's work from the vilest school copy, and founding their applause of those great works which they praise, either in pure hypocrisy, or in admiration of their defects. [g] there is a fine touch in the frogs in aristophanes, alluding probably to this part of the agamemnon. "[greek: ego d' hechairon tê siôpê kai me tout' heterpeu ouk hêttou ê nun hoi lalountes]." the same remark might be well applied to the seemingly vacant or incomprehensible portions of turner's canvas. in their mysterious, and intense fire, there is much correspondence between the mind of Ã�schylus and that of our great painter. they share at least one thing in common--unpopularity. [greek: 'ho dêmos aneboa krisin poiein, xa. o tôn panourgôn; ai. nê di, ouranion g' hoson. xa. met' aischylou ho ouk êsan heteroi symmachoi; ai. oligon to chrêston estin]. [h] i do not know any passage in ancient literature in which this connection is more exquisitely illustrated than in the lines, burlesque though they be, descriptive of the approach of the chorus in the clouds of aristophanes,--a writer, by the way, who, i believe, knew and felt more of the noble landscape character of his country than any whose works have come down to us except homer. the individuality and distinctness of conception--the visible cloud character which every word of this particular passage brings out into more dewy and bright existence, are to me as refreshing as the real breathing of mountain winds. the line "[greek: dia tôn koilôn kai tôn daseôn, plagiai]," could have been written by none but an ardent lover of hill scenery--one who had watched, hour after hour, the peculiar oblique, sidelong action of descending clouds, as they form along the hollows and ravines of the hills. there are no lumpish solidities--no pillowy protuberances here. all is melting, drifting, evanescent,--full of air, and light, and dew. [i] let not this principle be confused with fuseli's, "love for what is called deception in painting marks either the infancy or decrepitude of a nation's taste." realization to the mind necessitates not deception of the eye. [j] i shall show, in a future portion of the work, that there are principles of universal beauty common to all the creatures of god; and that it is by the greater or less share of these that one form becomes nobler or meaner than another. [k] is not this--it may be asked--demanding more from him than life can accomplish? not one whit. nothing more than knowledge of external characteristics is absolutely required; and even if, which were more desirable, thorough scientific knowledge had to be attained, the time which our artists spend in multiplying crude sketches, or finishing their unintelligent embryos of the study, would render them masters of every science that modern investigations have organized, and familiar with every form that nature manifests. martin, if the time which he must have spent on the abortive bubbles of his canute had been passed in working on the seashore, might have learned enough to enable him to produce, with a few strokes, a picture which would have smote like the sound of the sea, upon men's hearts forever. [l] "a green field is a sight which makes us pardon the absence of that more sublime construction which mixes up vines, olive, precipices, glaciers, volcanoes, oranges, and ices." _don juan._ [m] the vegetable soil of the campagna is chiefly formed by decomposed lavas, and under it lies a bed of white pumice, exactly resembling remnants of bones. [n] the feelings of constable with respect to his art might be almost a model for the young student, were it not that they err a little on the other side, and are perhaps in need of chastening and guiding from the works of his fellow-men. we should use pictures not as authorities, but as comments on nature, just as we use divines, not as authorities, but as comments on the bible. constable, in his dread of saint-worship, excommunicates himself from all benefit of the church, and deprives himself of much instruction from the scripture to which he holds, because he will not accept aid in the reading of it from the learning of other men. sir george beaumont, on the contrary, furnishes, in the anecdotes given of him in constable's life, a melancholy instance of the degradation into which the human mind may fall, when it suffers human works to interfere between it and its master. the recommending the color of an old cremona fiddle for the prevailing tone of everything, and the vapid inquiry of the conventionalist, "where do you put your brown tree?" show a prostration of intellect so laughable and lamentable, that they are at once, on all, and to all, students of the gallery, a satire and a warning. art so followed is the most servile indolence in which life can be wasted. there are then two dangerous extremes to be shunned,--forgetfulness of the scripture, and scorn of the divine--slavery on the one hand, free-thinking on the other. the mean is nearly as difficult to determine or keep in art as in religion, but the great danger is on the side of superstition. he who walks humbly with nature will seldom be in danger of losing sight of art. he will commonly find in all that is truly great of man's works, something of their original, for which he will regard them with gratitude, and sometimes follow them with respect; while he who takes art for his authority may entirely lose sight of all that it interprets, and sink at once into the sin of an idolater, and the degradation of a slave. [o] i should have insisted more on this fault (for it is a fatal one) in the following essay, but the cause of it rests rather with the public than with the artist, and in the necessities of the public as much as in their will. such pictures as artists themselves would wish to paint, could not be executed under very high prices; and it must always be easier, in the present state of society, to find ten purchasers of ten-guinea sketches, than one purchaser for a hundred-guinea picture. still, i have been often both surprised and grieved to see that any effort on the part of our artists to rise above manufacture--any struggle to something like completed conception--was left by the public to be its own reward. in the water-color exhibition of last year there was a noble work of david cox's, ideal in the right sense--a forest hollow with a few sheep crushing down through its deep fern, and a solemn opening of evening sky above its dark masses of distance. it was worth all his little bits on the walls put together. yet the public picked up all the little bits--blots and splashes, ducks, chickweed, ears of corn--all that was clever and petite; and the real picture--the full development of the artist's mind--was left on his hands. how can i, or any one else, with a conscience, advise him after this to aim at anything more than may be struck out by the cleverness of a quarter of an hour. cattermole, i believe, is earthed and shackled in the same manner. he began his career with finished and studied pictures, which, i believe, never paid him--he now prostitutes his fine talent to the superficialness of public taste, and blots his way to emolument and oblivion. there is commonly, however, fault on both sides; in the artist for exhibiting his dexterity by mountebank tricks of the brush, until chaste finish, requiring ten times the knowledge and labor, appears insipid to the diseased taste which he has himself formed in his patrons, as the roaring and ranting of a common actor will oftentimes render apparently vapid the finished touches of perfect nature; and in the public, for taking less real pains to become acquainted with, and discriminate, the various powers of a great artist, than they would to estimate the excellence of a cook or develop the dexterity of a dancer. preface to the third edition. it is with much regret, and partly against my own judgment, that i republish the following chapters in their present form. the particular circumstances (stated in the first preface) under which they were originally written, have rendered them so unfit for the position they now hold as introductory to a serious examination of the general functions of art, that i should have wished first to complete the succeeding portions of the essay, and then to write another introduction of more fitting character. but as it may be long before i am able to do this, and as i believe what i have already written may still be of some limited and partial service, i have suffered it to reappear, trusting to the kindness of the reader to look to its intention rather than its temper, and forgive its inconsideration in its earnestness. thinking it of too little substance to bear mending, wherever i have found a passage which i thought required modification or explanation, i have cut it out; what i have left, however imperfect, cannot i think be dangerously misunderstood: something i have added, not under the idea of rendering the work in any wise systematic or complete, but to supply gross omissions, answer inevitable objections, and give some substance to passages of mere declamation. whatever inadequacy or error there may be, throughout, in materials or modes of demonstration, i have no doubt of the truth and necessity of the main result; and though the reader may, perhaps, find me frequently hereafter showing other and better grounds for what is here affirmed, yet the point and bearing of the book, its determined depreciation of claude, salvator, gaspar, and canaletto, and its equally determined support of turner as the greatest of all landscape painters, and of turner's recent works as his finest, are good and right; and if the prevalence throughout of attack and eulogium be found irksome or offensive, let it be remembered that my object thus far has not been either the establishment or the teaching of any principles of art, but the vindication, most necessary to the prosperity of our present schools, of the uncomprehended rank of their greatest artist, and the diminution, equally necessary as i think to the prosperity of our schools, of the unadvised admiration of the landscape of the seventeenth century. for i believe it to be almost impossible to state in terms sufficiently serious and severe the depth and extent of the evil which has resulted (and that not in art alone, but in all other matters with which the contemplative faculties are concerned) from the works of those elder men. on the continent all landscape art has been utterly annihilated by them, and with it all sense of the power of nature. we in england have only done better because our artists have had strength of mind enough to form a school withdrawn from their influence. these points are somewhat farther developed in the general sketch of ancient and modern landscape, which i have added to the first section of the second part. some important additions have also been made to the chapters on the painting of sea. throughout the rest of the text, though something is withdrawn, little is changed; and the reader may rest assured that if i were now to bestow on this feeble essay the careful revision which it much needs, but little deserves, it would not be to alter its tendencies, or modify its conclusions, but to prevent indignation from appearing virulence on the one side, and enthusiasm partisanship on the other. preface to new edition ( ). i have been lately so often asked by friends on whose judgment i can rely, to permit the publication of another edition of "modern painters" in its original form, that i have at last yielded, though with some violence to my own feelings; for many parts of the first and second volumes are written in a narrow enthusiasm, and the substance of their metaphysical and religious speculation is only justifiable on the ground of its absolute honesty. of the third, fourth, and fifth volumes i indeed mean eventually to rearrange what i think of permanent interest, for the complete edition of my works, but with fewer and less elaborate illustrations: nor have i any serious grounds for refusing to allow the book once more to appear in the irregular form which it took as it was written, since of the art-teaching and landscape description it contains i have little to retrench, and nothing to retract. this final edition must, however, be limited to a thousand copies, for some of the more delicate plates are already worn, that of the mill stream in the fifth volume, and of the loire side very injuriously; while that of the shores of wharfe had to be retouched by an engraver after the removal of the mezzotint for reprinting. but mr. armytage's, mr. cousen's, and mr. cuff's magnificent plates are still in good state, and my own etchings, though injured, are still good enough to answer their purpose. synopsis of contents. part i. of general principles. section i. of the nature of the ideas conveyable by art. chapter i.--introductory. page § . public opinion no criterion of excellence, except after long periods of time. § . and therefore obstinate when once formed. § . the author's reasons for opposing it in particular instances. § . but only on points capable of demonstration. § . the author's partiality to modern works excusable. chapter ii.--definition of greatness in art. § . distinction between the painter's intellectual power and technical knowledge. § . painting, as such, is nothing more than language. § . "painter," a term corresponding to "versifier." § . example in a painting of e. landseer's. § . difficulty of fixing an exact limit between language and thought. § . distinction between decorative and expressive language. § . instance in the dutch and early italian schools. § . yet there are certain ideas belonging to language itself. § . the definition. chapter iii.--of ideas of power. § . what classes of ideas are conveyable by art. § . ideas of power vary much in relative dignity. § . but are received from whatever has been the subject of power. the meaning of the word "excellence." § . what is necessary to the distinguishing of excellence. § . the pleasure attendant on conquering difficulties is right. chapter iv.--of ideas of imitation. § . false use of the term "imitation" by many writers on art. § . real meaning of the term. § . what is requisite to the sense of imitation. § . the pleasure resulting from imitation the most contemptible that can be derived from art. § . imitation is only of contemptible subjects. § . imitation is contemptible because it is easy. § . recapitulation. chapter v.--of ideas of truth. § . meaning of the word "truth" as applied to art. § . first difference between truth and imitation. § . second difference. § . third difference. § . no accurate truths necessary to imitation. § . ideas of truth are inconsistent with ideas of imitation. chapter vi.--of ideas of beauty. § . definition of the term "beautiful." § . definition of the term "taste." § . distinction between taste and judgment. § . how far beauty may become intellectual. § . the high rank and function of ideas of beauty. § . meaning of the term "ideal beauty." chapter vii.--of ideas of relation. § . general meaning of the term. § . what ideas are to be comprehended under it. § . the exceeding nobility of these ideas. § . why no subdivision of so extensive a class is necessary. section ii. of power. chapter i.--general principles respecting ideas of power. § . no necessity for detailed study of ideas of imitation. § . nor for separate study of ideas of power. § . except under one particular form. § . there are two modes of receiving ideas of power, commonly inconsistent. § . first reason of the inconsistency. § . second reason for the inconsistency. § . the sensation of power ought not to be sought in imperfect art. § . instances in pictures of modern artists. § . connection between ideas of power and modes of execution. chapter ii.--of ideas of power, as they are dependent upon execution. § . meaning of the term "execution." § . the first quality of execution is truth. § . the second, simplicity. § . the third, mystery. § . the fourth, inadequacy; and the fifth, decision. § . the sixth, velocity. § . strangeness an illegitimate source of pleasure in execution. § . yet even the legitimate sources of pleasure in execution are inconsistent with each other. § . and fondness for ideas of power leads to the adoption of the lowest. § . therefore perilous. § . recapitulation. chapter iii.--of the sublime. § . sublimity is the effect upon the mind of anything above it. § . burke's theory of the nature of the sublime incorrect, and why. § . danger is sublime, but not the fear of it. § . the highest beauty is sublime. § . and generally whatever elevates the mind. § . the former division of the subject is therefore sufficient. part ii. of truth. section i. general principles respecting ideas of truth. chapter i.--of ideas of truth in their connection with those of beauty and relation. § . the two great ends of landscape painting are the representation of facts and thoughts. § . they induce a different choice of material subjects. § . the first mode of selection apt to produce sameness and repetition. § . the second necessitating variety. § . yet the first is delightful to all. § . the second only to a few. § . the first necessary to the second. § . the exceeding importance of truth. § . coldness or want of beauty no sign of truth. § . how truth may be considered a just criterion of all art. chapter ii.--that the truth of nature is not to be discerned by the uneducated senses. § . the common self-deception of men with respect to their power of discerning truth. § . men usually see little of what is before their eyes. § . but more or less in proportion to their natural sensibility to what is beautiful. § . connected with a perfect state of moral feeling. § . and of the intellectual powers. § . how sight depends upon previous knowledge. § . the difficulty increased by the variety of truths in nature. § . we recognize objects by their least important attributes. compare part i. sect. i. chap. . chapter iii.--of the relative importance of truths:--first, that particular truths are more important than general ones. § . necessity of determining the relative importance of truths. § . misapplication of the aphorism: "general truths are more important than particular ones." § . falseness of this maxim, taken without explanation. § . generality important in the subject, particularity in the predicate. § . the importance of truths of species is not owing to their generality. § . all truths valuable as they are characteristic. § . otherwise truths of species are valuable, because beautiful. § . and many truths, valuable if separate, may be objectionable in connection with others. § . recapitulation. chapter iv.--of the relative importance of truths:--secondly, that rare truths are more important than frequent ones. § . no accidental violation of nature's principles should be represented. § . but the cases in which those principles have been strikingly exemplified. § . which are comparatively rare. § . all repetition is blamable. § . the duty of the painter is the same as that of a preacher. chapter v.--of the relative importance of truths:--thirdly, that truths of color are the least important of all truths. § . difference between primary and secondary qualities in bodies. § . the first are fully characteristic, the second imperfectly so. § . color is a secondary quality, therefore less important than form. § . color no distinction between objects of the same species. § . and different in association from what it is alone. § . it is not certain whether any two people see the same colors in things. § . form, considered as an element of landscape, includes light and shade. § . importance of light and shade in expressing the character of bodies, and unimportance of color. § . recapitulation. chapter vi.--recapitulation. § . the importance of historical truths. § . form, as explained by light and shade, the first of all truths. tone, light, and color, are secondary. § . and deceptive chiaroscuro the lowest of all. chapter vii.--general application of the foregoing principles. § . the different selection of facts consequent on the several aims at imitation or at truth. § . the old masters, as a body, aim only at imitation. § . what truths they gave. § . the principles of selection adopted by modern artists. § . general feeling of claude, salvator, and g. poussin, contrasted with the freedom and vastness of nature. § . inadequacy of the landscape of titian and tintoret. § . causes of its want of influence on subsequent schools. § . the value of inferior works of art, how to be estimated. § . religious landscape of italy. the admirableness of its completion. § . finish, and the want of it, how right--and how wrong. § . the open skies of the religious schools, how valuable. mountain drawing of masaccio. landscape of the bellinis and giorgione. § . landscape of titian and tintoret. § . schools of florence, milan, and bologna. § . claude, salvator, and the poussins. § . german and flemish landscape. § . the lower dutch schools. § . english school, wilson and gainsborough. § . constable, callcott. § . peculiar tendency of recent landscape. § . g. robson, d. cox. false use of the term "style." § . copley fielding. phenomena of distant color. § . beauty of mountain foreground. § . de wint. § . influence of engraving. j. d. harding. § . samuel prout. early painting of architecture, how deficient. § . effects of age upon buildings, how far desirable. § . effects of light, how necessary to the understanding of detail. § . architectural painting of gentile bellini and vittor carpaccio. § . and of the venetians generally. § . fresco painting of the venetian exteriors. canaletto. § . expression of the effects of age on architecture by s. prout. § . his excellent composition and color. § . modern architectural painting generally. g. cattermole. § . the evil in an archæological point of view of misapplied invention, in architectural subject. § . works of david roberts: their fidelity and grace. § . clarkson stanfield. § . j. m. w. turner. force of national feeling in all great painters. § . influence of this feeling on the choice of landscape subject. § . its peculiar manifestation in turner. § . the domestic subjects of the liber studiorum. § . turner's painting of french and swiss landscape. the latter deficient. § . his rendering of italian character still less successful. his large compositions how failing § . his views of italy destroyed by brilliancy and redundant quantity. § . changes introduced by him in the received system of art. § . difficulties of his later manner. resultant deficiencies. § . reflection of his very recent works. § . difficulty of demonstration in such subjects. section ii. of general truths. chapter i.--of truth of tone. § . meanings of the word "tone:"--first, the right relation of objects in shadow to the principal light. § . secondly, the quality of color by which it is felt to owe part of its brightness to the hue of light upon it. § . difference between tone in its first sense and aerial perspective. § . the pictures of the old masters perfect in relation of middle tints to light. § . and consequently totally false in relation of middle tints to darkness. § . general falsehood of such a system. § . the principle of turner in this respect. § . comparison of n. poussin's "phocion." § . with turner's "mercury and argus." § . and with the "datur hora quieti." § . the second sense of the word "tone." § . remarkable difference in this respect between the paintings and drawings of turner. § . not owing to want of power over the material § . the two distinct qualities of light to be considered § . falsehoods by which titian attains the appearance of quality in light. § . turner will not use such means. § . but gains in essential truth by the sacrifice. § . the second quality of light. § . the perfection of cuyp in this respect interfered with by numerous solecisms. § . turner is not so perfect in parts--far more so in the whole. § . the power in turner of uniting a number of tones. § . recapitulation. chapter ii.--of truth of color. § . observations on the color of g. poussin's la riccia. § . as compared with the actual scene. § . turner himself is inferior in brilliancy to nature. § . impossible colors of salvator, titian. § . poussin, and claude. § . turner's translation of colors. § . notice of effects in which no brilliancy of art can even approach that of reality. § . reasons for the usual incredulity of the observer with respect to their representation § . color of the napoleon. § . necessary discrepancy between the attainable brilliancy of color and light. § . this discrepancy less in turner than in other colorists. § . its great extent in a landscape attributed to rubens. § . turner scarcely ever uses pure or vivid color. § . the basis of gray, under all his vivid hues. § . the variety and fulness even of his most simple tones. § . following the infinite and unapproachable variety of nature. § . his dislike of purple, and fondness for the opposition of yellow and black. the principles of nature in this respect. § . his early works are false in color. § . his drawings invariably perfect. § . the subjection of his system of color to that of chiaroscuro. chapter iii.--of truth of chiaroscuro. § . we are not at present to examine particular effects of light. § . and therefore the distinctness of shadows is the chief means of expressing vividness of light. § . total absence of such distinctness in the works of the italian school. § . and partial absence in the dutch. § . the perfection of turner's works in this respect. § . the effect of his shadows upon the light. § . the distinction holds good between almost all the works of the ancient and modern schools. § . second great principle of chiaroscuro. both high light and deep shadow are used in equal quantity, and only in points. § . neglect or contradiction of this principle by writers on art. § . and consequent misguiding of the student. § . the great value of a simple chiaroscuro. § . the sharp separation of nature's lights from her middle tint. § . the truth of turner. chapter iv.--of truth of space:--first, as dependent on the focus of the eye. § . space is more clearly indicated by the drawing of objects than by their hue. § . it is impossible to see objects at unequal distances distinctly at one moment. § . especially such as are both comparatively near. § . in painting, therefore, either the foreground or distance must be partially sacrificed. § . which not being done by the old masters, they could not express space. § . but modern artists have succeeded in fully carrying out this principle. § . especially of turner. § . justification of the want of drawing in turner's figures. chapter v.--of truth of space:--secondly, as its appearance is dependent on the power of the eye. § . the peculiar indistinctness dependent on the retirement of objects from the eye. § . causes confusion, but not annihilation of details. § . instances in various objects. § . two great resultant truths; that nature is never distinct, and never vacant. § . complete violation of both these principles by the old masters. they are either distinct or vacant. § . instances from nicholas poussin. § . from claude. § . and g. poussin. § . the imperative necessity, in landscape painting, of fulness and finish. § . breadth is not vacancy. § . the fulness and mystery of turner's distances. § . farther illustrations in architectural drawing. § . in near objects as well as distances. § . vacancy and falsehood of canaletto. § . still greater fulness and finish in landscape foregrounds. § . space and size are destroyed alike by distinctness and by vacancy. § . swift execution best secures perfection of details. § . finish is far more necessary in landscape than in historical subjects. § . recapitulation of the section. section iii. of truth of skies. chapter i.--of the open sky. § . the peculiar adaptation of the sky to the pleasing and teaching of man. § . the carelessness with which its lessons are received. § . the most essential of these lessons are the gentlest. § . many of our ideas of sky altogether conventional. § . nature, and essential qualities of the open blue. § . its connection with clouds. § . its exceeding depth. § . these qualities are especially given by modern masters. § . and by claude. § . total absence of them in poussin. physical errors in his general treatment of open sky. § . errors of cuyp in graduation of color. § . the exceeding value of the skies of the early italian and dutch schools. their qualities are unattainable in modern times. § . phenomena of visible sunbeams. their nature and cause. § . they are only illuminated mist, and cannot appear when the sky is free from vapor, nor when it is without clouds. § . erroneous tendency in the representation of such phenomena by the old masters. § . the ray which appears in the dazzled eye should not be represented. § . the practice of turner. his keen perception of the more delicate phenomena of rays. § . the total absence of any evidence of such perception in the works of the old masters. § . truth of the skies of modern drawings. § . recapitulation. the best skies of the ancients are, in _quality_, inimitable, but in rendering of various truth, childish. chapter ii.--of truth of clouds:--first, of the region of the cirrus. § . difficulty of ascertaining wherein the truth of clouds consists. § . variation of their character at different elevations. the three regions to which they may conveniently be considered as belonging. § . extent of the upper region. § . the symmetrical arrangement of its clouds. § . their exceeding delicacy. § . their number. § . causes of their peculiarly delicate coloring. § . their variety of form. § . total absence of even the slightest effort at their representation, in ancient landscape. § . the intense and constant study of them by turner. § . his vignette, sunrise on the sea. § . his use of the cirrus in expressing mist. § . his consistency in every minor feature. § . the color of the upper clouds. § . recapitulation. chapter iii.--of truth of clouds:--secondly, of the central cloud region. § . extent and typical character of the central cloud region. § . its characteristic clouds, requiring no attention nor thought for their representation, are therefore favorite subjects with the old masters. § . the clouds of salvator and poussin. § . their essential characters. § . their angular forms and general decision of outline. § . the composition of their minor curves. § . their characters, as given by s. rosa. § . monotony and falsehood of the clouds of the italian school generally. § . vast size of congregated masses of cloud. § . demonstrable by comparison with mountain ranges. § . and consequent divisions and varieties of feature. § . not lightly to be omitted. § . imperfect conceptions of this size and extent in ancient landscape. § . total want of transparency and evanescence in the clouds of ancient landscape. § . farther proof of their deficiency in space. § . instance of perfect truth in the sky of turner's babylon. § . and in his pools of solomon. § . truths of outline and character in his como. § . association of the cirrostratus with the cumulus. § . the deep-based knowledge of the alps in turner's lake of geneva. § . farther principles of cloud form exemplified in his amalfi. § . reasons for insisting on the _infinity_ of turner's works. infinity is almost an unerring test of _all_ truth. § . instances of the total want of it in the works of salvator. § . and of the universal presence of it in those of turner. the conclusions which may be arrived at from it. § . the multiplication of objects, or increase of their size, will not give the impression of infinity, but is the resource of novices. § . farther instances of infinity in the gray skies of turner. § . the excellence of the cloud-drawing of stanfield. § . the average standing of the english school. chapter iv.--of truth of clouds:--thirdly, of the region of the rain-cloud. § . the apparent difference in character between the lower and central clouds is dependent chiefly on proximity. § . their marked differences in color. § . and in definiteness of form. § . they are subject to precisely the same great laws. § . value, to the painter, of the rain-cloud. § . the old masters have not left a single instance of the painting of the rain-cloud, and very few efforts at it. gaspar poussin's storms. § . the great power of the moderns in this respect. § . works of copley fielding. § . his peculiar truth. § . his weakness, and its probable cause. § . impossibility of reasoning on the rain-clouds of turner from engravings. § . his rendering of fielding's particular moment in the jumieges. § . illustration of the nature of clouds in the opposed forms of smoke and steam. § . moment of retiring rain in the llanthony. § . and of commencing, chosen with peculiar meaning for loch coriskin. § . the drawing of transparent vapor in the land's end. § . the individual character of its parts. § . deep-studied form of swift rain-cloud in the coventry. § . compared with forms given by salvator. § . entire expression of tempest by minute touches and circumstances in the coventry. § . especially by contrast with a passage of extreme repose. § . the truth of this particular passage. perfectly pure blue sky only seen after rain, and how seen. § . absence of this effect in the works of the old masters. § . success of our water-color artists in its rendering. use of it by turner. § . expression of near rain-cloud in the gosport, and other works. § . contrasted with gaspar poussin's rain-cloud in the dido and Ã�neas. § . turner's power of rendering mist. § . his effects of mist so perfect, that if not at once understood, they can no more be explained or reasoned on than nature herself. § . various instances. § . turner's more violent effects of tempest are never rendered by engravers. § . general system of landscape engraving. § . the storm in the stonehenge. § . general character of such effects as given by turner. his expression of falling rain. § . recapitulation of the section. § . sketch of a few of the skies of nature, taken as a whole, compared with the works of turner and of the old masters. morning on the plains. § . noon with gathering storms. § . sunset in tempest. serene midnight. § . and sunrise on the alps. chapter v.--effects of light rendered by modern art. § . reasons for merely, at present, naming, without examining the particular effects of light rendered by turner. § . hopes of the author for assistance in the future investigation of them. section iv. of truth of earth. chapter i.--of general structure. § . first laws of the organization of the earth, and their importance in art. § . the slight attention ordinarily paid to them. their careful study by modern artists. § . general structure of the earth. the hills are its action, the plains its rest. § . mountains come out from underneath the plains, and are their support. § . structure of the plains themselves. their perfect level, when deposited by quiet water. § . illustrated by turner's marengo. § . general divisions of formation resulting from this arrangement. plan of investigation. chapter ii.--of the central mountains. § . similar character of the central peaks in all parts of the world. § . their arrangements in pyramids or wedges, divided by vertical fissures. § . causing groups of rock resembling an artichoke or rose. § . the faithful statement of these facts by turner in his alps at daybreak. § . vignette of the andes and others. § . necessary distance, and consequent aerial effect on all such mountains. § . total want of any rendering of their phenomena in ancient art. § . character of the representations of alps in the distances of claude. § . their total want of magnitude and aerial distance. § . and violation of specific form. § . even in his best works. § . farther illustration of the distant character of mountain chains. § . their excessive appearance of transparency. § . illustrated from the works of turner and stanfield. the borromean islands of the latter. § . turner's arona. § . extreme distance of large objects always characterized by very sharp outline. § . want of this decision in claude. § . the perpetual rendering of it by turner. § . effects of snow, how imperfectly studied. § . general principles of its forms on the alps. § . average paintings of switzerland. its real spirit has scarcely yet been caught. chapter iii.--of the inferior mountains. § . the inferior mountains are distinguished from the central, by being divided into beds. § . farther division of these beds by joints. § . and by lines of lamination. § . variety and seeming uncertainty under which these laws are manifested. § . the perfect expression of them in turner's loch coriskin. § . glencoe and other works. § . especially the mount lebanon. § . compared with the work of salvator. § . and of poussin. § . effects of external influence on mountain form. § . the gentle convexity caused by aqueous erosion. § . and the effect of the action of torrents. § . the exceeding simplicity of contour caused by these influences. § . and multiplicity of feature. § . both utterly neglected in ancient art. § . the fidelity of treatment in turner's daphne and leucippus. § . and in the avalanche and inundation. § . the rarity among secondary hills of steep slopes or high precipices. § . and consequent expression of horizontal distance in their ascent. § . full statement of all these facts in various works of turner.--caudebec, etc. § . the use of considering geological truths. § . expression of retiring surface by turner contrasted with the work of claude. § . the same moderation of slope in the contours of his higher hills. § . the peculiar difficulty of investigating the more essential truths of hill outline. § . works of other modern artists.--clarkson stanfield. § . importance of particular and individual truth in hill drawing. § . works of copley fielding. his high feeling. § . works of j. d. harding and others. chapter iv.--of the foreground. § . what rocks were the chief components of ancient landscape foreground. § . salvator's limestones. the real characters of the rock. its fractures, and obtuseness of angles. § . salvator's acute angles caused by the meeting of concave curves. § . peculiar distinctness of light and shade in the rocks of nature. § . peculiar confusion of both in the rocks of salvator. § . and total want of any expression of hardness or brittleness. § . instances in particular pictures. § . compared with the works of stanfield. § . their absolute opposition in every particular. § . the rocks of j. d. harding. § . characters of loose earth and soil. § . its exceeding grace and fulness of feature. § . the ground of teniers. § . importance of these minor parts and points. § . the observance of them is the real distinction between the master and the novice. § . ground of cuyp. § . and of claude. § . the entire weakness and childishness of the latter. § . compared with the work of turner. § . general features of turner's foreground. § . geological structure of his rocks in the fall of the tees. § . their convex surfaces and fractured edges. § . and perfect unity. § . various parts whose history is told us by the details of the drawing. § . beautiful instance of an exception to general rules in the llanthony. § . turner's drawing of detached blocks of weathered stone. § . and of complicated foreground. § . and of loose soil. § . the unison of all in the ideal foregrounds of the academy pictures. § . and the great lesson to be received from all. section v. of truth of water. chapter i.--of water, as painted by the ancients. § . sketch of the functions and infinite agency of water. § . the ease with which a common representation of it may be given. the impossibility of a faithful one. § . difficulty of properly dividing the subject. § . inaccuracy of study of water-effect among all painters. § . difficulty of treating this part of the subject. § . general laws which regulate the phenomena of water. first, the imperfection of its reflective surface. § . the inherent hue of water modifies dark reflections, and does not affect right ones. § . water takes no shadow. § . modification of dark reflections by shadow. § . examples on the waters of the rhone. § . effect of ripple on distant water. § . elongation of reflections by moving water. § . effect of rippled water on horizontal and inclined images. § . to what extent reflection is visible from above. § . deflection of images on agitated water. § . necessity of watchfulness as well as of science. licenses, how taken by great men. § . various licenses or errors in water painting of claude, cuyp, vandevelde. § . and canaletto. § . why unpardonable. § . the dutch painters of sea. § . ruysdael, claude, and salvator. § . nicolo poussin. § . venetians and florentines. conclusion. chapter ii.--of water, as painted by the moderns. § . general power of the moderns in painting quiet water. the lakes of fielding. § . the calm rivers of de wint, j. holland, &c. § . the character of bright and violent falling water. § . as given by nesfield. § . the admirable water-drawing of j. d. harding. § . his color; and painting of sea. § . the sea of copley fielding. its exceeding grace and rapidity. § . its high aim at character. § . but deficiency in the requisite quality of grays. § . variety of the grays of nature. § . works of stanfield. his perfect knowledge and power. § . but want of feeling. general sum of truth presented by modern art. chapter iii.--of water, as painted by turner. § . the difficulty of giving surface to smooth water. § . is dependent on the structure of the eye, and the focus by which the reflected rays are perceived. § . morbid clearness occasioned in painting of water by distinctness of reflections. § . how avoided by turner. § . all reflections on distant water are distinct. § . the error of vandevelde. § . difference in arrangement of parts between the reflected object and its image. § . illustrated from the works of turner. § . the boldness and judgment shown in the observance of it. § . the _texture_ of surface in turner's painting of calm water. § . its united qualities. § . relation of various circumstances of past agitation, &c., by the most trifling incidents, as in the cowes. § . in scenes on the loire and seine. § . expression of contrary waves caused by recoil from shore. § . various other instances. § . turner's painting of distant expanses of water.--calm, interrupted by ripple. § . and rippled, crossed by sunshine. § . his drawing of distant rivers. § . and of surface associated with mist. § . his drawing of falling water, with peculiar expression of weight. § . the abandonment and plunge of great cataracts. how given by him. § . difference in the action of water, when continuous and when interrupted. the interrupted stream fills the hollows of its bed. § . but the continuous stream takes the shape of its bed. § . its exquisite curved lines. § . turner's careful choice of the historical truth. § . his exquisite drawing of the continuous torrent in the llanthony abbey. § . and of the interrupted torrent in the mercury and argus. § . various cases. § . sea painting. impossibility of truly representing foam. § . character of shore-breakers, also inexpressible. § . their effect how injured when seen from the shore. § . turner's expression of heavy rolling sea. § . with peculiar expression of weight. § . peculiar action of recoiling waves. § . and of the stroke of a breaker on the shore. § . general character of sea on a rocky coast given by turner in the land's end. § . open seas of turner's earlier time. § . effect of sea after prolonged storm. § . turner's noblest work, the painting of the deep open sea in the slave ship. § . its united excellences and perfection as a whole. section vi. of truth of vegetation.--conclusion. chapter i.--of truth of vegetation. § . frequent occurrence of foliage in the works of the old masters. § . laws common to all forest trees. their branches do not taper, but only divide. § . appearance of tapering caused by frequent buds. § . and care of nature to conceal the parallelism. § . the degree of tapering which may be represented as continuous. § . the trees of gaspar poussin. § . and of the italian school generally, defy this law. § . the truth, as it is given by j. d. harding. § . boughs, in consequence of this law, _must_ diminish where they divide. those of the old masters often do not. § . boughs must multiply as they diminish. those of the old masters do not. § . bough-drawing of salvator. § . all these errors especially shown in claude's sketches, and concentrated in a work of g. poussin's. § . impossibility of the angles of boughs being taken out of them by wind. § . bough-drawing of titian. § . bough-drawing of turner. § . leafage. its variety and symmetry. § . perfect regularity of poussin. § . exceeding intricacy of nature's foliage. § . how contradicted by the tree-patterns of g. poussin. § . how followed by creswick. § . perfect unity in nature's foliage. § . total want of it in both and hobbima. § . how rendered by turner. § . the near leafage of claude. his middle distances are good. § . universal termination of trees in symmetrical curves. § . altogether unobserved by the old masters. always given by turner. § . foliage painting on the continent. § . foliage of j. d. harding. its deficiencies. § . his brilliancy of execution too manifest. § . his bough-drawing, and choice of form. § . local color, how far expressible in black and white, and with what advantage. § . opposition between great manner and great knowledge. § . foliage of cox, fielding, and cattermole. § . hunt and creswick. green, how to be rendered expressive of light, and offensive if otherwise. § . conclusion. works of j. linnel and s. palmer. chapter ii.--general remarks respecting the truth of turner. § . no necessity of entering into discussion of architectural truth. § . extreme difficulty of illustrating or explaining the highest truth. § . the _positive_ rank of turner is in no degree shown in the foregoing pages, but only his relative rank. § . the exceeding refinement of his truth. § . there is nothing in his works which can be enjoyed without knowledge. § . and nothing which knowledge will not enable us to enjoy. § . his former rank and progress. § . standing of his present works. their mystery is the consequence of their fulness. chapter iii.--conclusion.--modern art and modern criticism. § . the entire prominence hitherto given to the works of one artist caused only by our not being able to take cognizance of _character_. § . the feelings of different artists are incapable of full comparison. § . but the fidelity and truth of each are capable of real comparison. § . especially because they are equally manifested in the treatment of all subjects. § . no man draws one thing well, if he can draw nothing else. § . general conclusions to be derived from our past investigation. § . truth, a standard of all excellence. § . modern criticism. changefulness of public taste. § . yet associated with a certain degree of judgment. § . duty of the press. § . qualifications necessary for discharging it. § . general incapability of modern critics. § . and inconsistency with themselves. § . how the press may really advance the cause of art. § . morbid fondness at the present day for unfinished works. § . by which the public defraud themselves. § . and in pandering to which, artists ruin themselves. § . necessity of finishing works of art perfectly. § . _sketches_ not sufficiently encouraged. § . brilliancy of execution or efforts at invention not to be tolerated in young artists. § . the duty and after privileges of all students. § . necessity among our greater artists of more singleness of aim. § . what should be their general aim. § . duty of the press with respect to the works of turner. list of plates to volume i. _page._ casa contarini fasan, venice from a drawing by ruskin. the dogana, and santa maria della salute, venice from a painting by turner. okehampton castle from a painting by turner. port ruysdael from a painting by turner. modern painters. part i of general principles. section i. of the nature of the ideas conveyable by art. chapter i. introductory. § . public opinion no criterion of excellence, except after long periods of time. if it be true, and it can scarcely be disputed, that nothing has been for centuries consecrated by public admiration, without possessing in a high degree some kind of sterling excellence, it is not because the average intellect and feeling of the majority of the public are competent in any way to distinguish what is really excellent, but because all erroneous opinion is inconsistent, and all ungrounded opinion transitory; so that while the fancies and feelings which deny deserved honor and award what is undue have neither root nor strength sufficient to maintain consistent testimony for a length of time, the opinions formed on right grounds by those few who are in reality competent judges, being necessarily stable, communicate themselves gradually from mind to mind, descending lower as they extend wider, until they leaven the whole lump, and rule by absolute authority, even where the grounds and reasons for them cannot be understood. on this gradual victory of what is consistent over what is vacillating, depends the reputation of all that is highest in art and literature. for it is an insult to what is really great in either, to suppose that it in any way addresses itself to mean or uncultivated faculties. it is a matter of the simplest demonstration, that no man can be really appreciated but by his equal or superior. his inferior may over-estimate him in enthusiasm; or, as is more commonly the case, degrade him, in ignorance; but he cannot form a grounded and just estimate. without proving this, however--which it would take more space to do than i can spare--it is sufficiently evident that there is no process of amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individually, can become right merely by their multitude.[ ] if i stand by a picture in the academy, and hear twenty persons in succession admiring some paltry piece of mechanism or imitation in the lining of a cloak, or the satin of a slipper, it is absurd to tell me that they reprobate collectively what they admire individually: or, if they pass with apathy by a piece of the most noble conception or most perfect truth, because it has in it no tricks of the brush nor grimace of expression, it is absurd to tell me that they collectively respect what they separately scorn, or that the feelings and knowledge of such judges, by any length of time or comparison of ideas, could come to any right conclusion with respect to what is really high in art. the question is not decided by them, but for them;--decided at first by few: by fewer in proportion as the merits of the work are of a higher order. from these few the decision is communicated to the number next below them in rank of mind, and by these again to a wider and lower circle; each rank being so far cognizant of the superiority of that above it, as to receive its decision with respect; until, in process of time, the right and consistent opinion is communicated to all, and held by all as a matter of faith, the more positively in proportion as the grounds of it are less perceived.[ ] § . and therefore obstinate when once formed. § . the author's reasons for opposing it in particular instances. § . but only on points capable of demonstration. but when this process has taken place, and the work has become sanctified by time in the minds of men, it is impossible that any new work of equal merit can be impartially compared with it, except by minds not only educated and generally capable of appreciating merit, but strong enough to shake off the weight of prejudice and association, which invariably incline them to the older favorite. it is much easier, says barry, to repeat the character recorded of phidias, than to investigate the merits of agasias. and when, as peculiarly in the case of painting, much knowledge of what is technical and practical is necessary to a right judgment, so that those alone are competent to pronounce a true verdict who are themselves the persons to be judged, and who therefore can give no opinion, centuries may elapse before fair comparison can be made between two artists of different ages; while the patriarchal excellence exercises during the interval a tyrannical--perhaps, even a blighting, influence over the minds, both of the public and of those to whom, properly understood, it should serve for a guide and example. in no city of europe where art is a subject of attention, are its prospects so hopeless, or its pursuits so resultless, as in rome; because there, among all students, the authority of their predecessors in art is supreme and without appeal, and the mindless copyist studies raffaelle, but not what raffaelle studied. it thus becomes the duty of every one capable of demonstrating any definite points of superiority in modern art, and who is in a position in which his doing so will not be ungraceful, to encounter without hesitation whatever opprobrium may fall upon him from the necessary prejudice even of the most candid minds, and from the far more virulent opposition of those who have no hope of maintaining their own reputation for discernment but in the support of that kind of consecrated merit which may be applauded without an inconvenient necessity for reasons. it is my purpose, therefore, believing that there are certain points of superiority in modern artists, and especially in one or two of their number, which have not yet been fully understood, except by those who are scarcely in a position admitting the declaration of their conviction, to institute a close comparison between the great works of ancient and modern landscape art, to raise, as far as possible, the deceptive veil of imaginary light through which we are accustomed to gaze upon the patriarchal work, and to show the real relations, whether favorable or otherwise, subsisting between it and our own. i am fully aware that this is not to be done lightly or rashly; that it is the part of every one proposing to undertake such a task strictly to examine, with prolonged doubt and severe trial, every opinion in any way contrary to the sacred verdict of time, and to advance nothing which does not, at least in his own conviction, rest on surer ground than mere feeling or taste. i have accordingly advanced nothing in the following pages but with accompanying demonstration, which may indeed be true or false--complete or conditional, but which can only be met on its own grounds, and can in no way be borne down or affected by mere authority of great names. yet even thus i should scarcely have ventured to speak so decidedly as i have, but for my full conviction that we ought not to class the historical painters of the fifteenth, and landscape painters of the seventeenth, centuries, together, under the general title of "old masters," as if they possessed anything like corresponding rank in their respective walks of art. i feel assured that the principles on which they worked are totally opposed, and that the landscape painters have been honored only because they exhibited in mechanical and technical qualities some semblance of the manner of the nobler historical painters, whose principles of conception and composition they entirely reversed. the course of study which has led me reverently to the feet of michael angelo and da vinci, has alienated me gradually from claude and gaspar--i cannot at the same time do homage to power and pettiness--to the truth of consummate science, and the mannerism of undisciplined imagination. and let it be understood that whenever hereafter i speak depreciatingly of the old masters as a body, i refer to none of the historical painters, for whom i entertain a veneration, which though i hope reasonable in its grounds, is almost superstitious in degree. neither, unless he be particularly mentioned, do i intend to include nicholas poussin, whose landscapes have a separate and elevated character, which renders it necessary to consider them apart from all others. speaking generally of the older masters, i refer only to claude, gaspar poussin, salvator rosa, cuyp, berghem, both, ruysdael, hobbima, teniers, (in his landscapes,) p. potter, canaletti, and the various van somethings, and back somethings, more especially and malignantly those who have libelled the sea. it will of course be necessary for me in the commencement of the work to state briefly those principles on which i conceive all right judgment of art must be founded. these introductory chapters i should wish to be read carefully, because all criticism must be useless when the terms or grounds of it are in any degree ambiguous; and the ordinary language of connoisseurs and critics, granting that they understand it themselves, is usually mere jargon to others, from their custom of using technical terms, by which everything is meant, and nothing is expressed. § . the author's partiality to modern works excusable. and if, in the application of these principles, in spite of my endeavor to render it impartial, the feeling and fondness which i have for some works of modern art escape me sometimes where it should not, let it be pardoned as little more than a fair counterbalance to that peculiar veneration with which the work of the older master, associated as it has ever been in our ears with the expression of whatever is great or perfect, must be usually regarded by the reader. i do not say that this veneration is wrong, nor that we should be less attentive to the repeated words of time: but let us not forget, that if honor be for the dead, gratitude can only be for the living. he who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent _there_ are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart, which can only be discharged to the dust. but the lesson which men receive as individuals, they do not learn as nations. again and again they have seen their noblest descend into the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the tombstone when they had not crowned the brow, and to pay the honor to the ashes, which they had denied to the spirit. let it not displease them that they are bidden, amidst the tumult and the dazzle of their busy life, to listen for the few voices, and watch for the few lamps, which god has toned and lighted to charm and to guide them, that they may not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor their light by their decay. footnotes [ ] the opinion of a majority is right only when it is more probable with each individual that he should be right than that he should be wrong, as in the case of a jury. where it is more probable, with respect to each individual, that he should be wrong than right, the opinion of the minority is the true one. thus it is in art. [ ] there are, however, a thousand modifying circumstances which render this process sometimes unnecessary,--sometimes rapid and certain--sometimes impossible. it is unnecessary in rhetoric and the drama, because the multitude is the only proper judge of those arts whose end is to move the multitude (though more is necessary to a fine play than is essentially dramatic, and it is only of the dramatic part that the multitude are cognizant). it is unnecessary, when, united with the higher qualities of a work, there are appeals to universal passion, to all the faculties and feelings which are general in man as an animal. the popularity is then as sudden as it is well grounded,--it is hearty and honest in every mind, but it is based in every mind on a different species of excellence. such will often be the case with the noblest works of literature. take don quixote for example. the lowest mind would find in it perpetual and brutal amusement in the misfortunes of the knight, and perpetual pleasure in sympathy with the squire. a mind of average feeling would perceive the satirical meaning and force of the book, would appreciate its wit, its elegance, and its truth. but only elevated and peculiar minds discover, in addition to all this, the full moral beauty of the love and truth which are the constant associates of all that is even most weak and erring in the character of its hero, and pass over the rude adventure and scurrile jest in haste--perhaps in pain, to penetrate beneath the rusty corselet, and catch from the wandering glance the evidence and expression of fortitude, self-devotion, and universal love. so, again, with the works of scott and byron; popularity was as instant as it was deserved, because there is in them an appeal to those passions which are universal in all men, as well as an expression of such thoughts as can be received only by the few. but they are admired by the majority of their advocates for the weakest parts of their works, as a popular preacher by the majority of his congregation for the worst part of his sermon. the process is rapid and certain, when, though there may be little to catch the multitude at once, there is much which they can enjoy when their attention is authoritatively directed to it. so rests the reputation of shakspeare. no ordinary mind can comprehend wherein his undisputed superiority consists, but there is yet quite as much to amuse, thrill, or excite,--quite as much of what is, in the strict sense of the word, dramatic, in his works as in any one else's. they were received, therefore, when first written, with average approval, as works of common merit: but when the high decision was made, and the circle spread, the public took up the hue and cry conscientiously enough. let them have daggers, ghosts, clowns, and kings, and with such real and definite sources of enjoyment, they will take the additional trouble to learn half a dozen quotations, without understanding them, and admit the superiority of shakspeare without further demur. nothing, perhaps, can more completely demonstrate the total ignorance of the public of all that is great or valuable in shakspeare than their universal admiration of maclise's hamlet. the process is impossible when there is in the work nothing to attract and something to disgust the vulgar mind. neither their intrinsic excellence, nor the authority of those who can judge of it, will ever make the poems of wordsworth or george herbert popular, in the sense in which scott and byron are popular, because it is to the vulgar a labor instead of a pleasure to read them; and there are parts in them which to such judges cannot but be vapid or ridiculous. most works of the highest art,--those of raffaelle, m. angelo, or da vinci,--stand as shakspeare does,--that which is commonplace and feeble in their excellence being taken for its essence by the uneducated, imagination assisting the impression, (for we readily fancy that we feel, when feeling is a matter of pride or conscience,) and affectation and pretension increasing the noise of the rapture, if not its degree. giotto, orgagna, angelico, perugino, stand, like george herbert, only with the few. wilkie becomes popular, like scott, because he touches passions which all feel, and expresses truths which all can recognize. chapter ii. definition of greatness in art. § . distinction between the painter's intellectual power and technical knowledge. in the th lecture of sir joshua reynolds, incidental notice is taken of the distinction between those excellences in the painter which belong to him _as such_, and those which belong to him in common with all men of intellect, the general and exalted powers of which art is the evidence and expression, not the subject. but the distinction is not there dwelt upon as it should be, for it is owing to the slight attention ordinarily paid to it, that criticism is open to every form of coxcombry, and liable to every phase of error. it is a distinction on which depend all sound judgment of the rank of the artist, and all just appreciation of the dignity of art. § . painting, as such, is nothing more than language. painting, or art generally, as such, with all its technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing. he who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed. he has done just as much towards being that which we ought to respect as a great painter, as a man who has learned how to express himself grammatically and melodiously has towards being a great poet. the language is, indeed, more difficult of acquirement in the one case than in the other, and possesses more power of delighting the sense, while it speaks to the intellect, but it is, nevertheless, nothing more than language, and all those excellences which are peculiar to the painter as such, are merely what rhythm, melody, precision and force are in the words of the orator and the poet, necessary to their greatness, but not the tests of their greatness. it is not by the mode of representing and saying, but by what is represented and said, that the respective greatness either of the painter or the writer is to be finally determined. § . "painter," a term corresponding to "versifier." speaking with strict propriety, therefore, we should call a man a great painter only as he excelled in precision and force in the language of lines, and a great versifier, as he excelled in precision or force in the language of words. a great poet would then be a term strictly, and in precisely the same sense applicable to both, if warranted by the character of the images or thoughts which each in their respective languages convey. § . example in a painting of e. landseer's. take, for instance, one of the most perfect poems or pictures (i use the words as synonymous) which modern times have seen:--the "old shepherd's chief-mourner." here the exquisite execution of the glossy and crisp hair of the dog, the bright sharp touching of the green bough beside it, the clear painting of the wood of the coffin and the folds of the blanket, are language--language clear and expressive in the highest degree. but the close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood, the convulsive clinging of the paws, which has dragged the blanket off the trestle, the total powerlessness of the head laid, close and motionless, upon its folds, the fixed and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness, the rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no motion nor change in the trance of agony since the last blow was struck on the coffin-lid, the quietness and gloom of the chamber, the spectacles marking the place where the bible was last closed, indicating how lonely has been the life--how unwatched the departure of him who is now laid solitary in his sleep;--these are all thoughts--thoughts by which the picture is separated at once from hundreds of equal merit, as far as mere painting goes, by which it ranks as a work of high art, and stamps its author, not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin, or the fold of a drapery, but as the man of mind. § . difficulty of fixing an exact limit between language and thought. it is not, however, always easy, either in painting or literature, to determine where the influence of language stops, and where that of thought begins. many thoughts are so dependent upon the language in which they are clothed, that they would lose half their beauty if otherwise expressed. but the highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled, are in exact proportion to its independency of language or expression. a composition is indeed usually most perfect, when to such intrinsic dignity is added all that expression can do to attract and adorn; but in every case of supreme excellence this all becomes as nothing. we are more gratified by the simplest lines or words which can suggest the idea in its own naked beauty, than by the robe or the gem which conceal while they decorate; we are better pleased to feel by their absence how little they would bestow, than by their presence how much they can destroy. § . distinction between decorative and expressive language. there is therefore a distinction to be made between what is ornamental in language and what is expressive. that part of it which is necessary to the embodying and conveying the thought is worthy of respect and attention as necessary to excellence, though not the test of it. but that part of it which is decorative has little more to do with the intrinsic excellence of the picture than the frame or the varnishing of it. and this caution in distinguishing between the ornamental and the expressive is peculiarly necessary in painting; for in the language of words it is nearly impossible for that which is not expressive to be beautiful, except by mere rhythm or melody, any sacrifice to which is immediately stigmatized as error. but the beauty of mere language in painting is not only very attractive and entertaining to the spectator, but requires for its attainment no small exertion of mind and devotion of time by the artist. hence, in art, men have frequently fancied that they were becoming rhetoricians and poets when they were only learning to speak melodiously, and the judge has over and over again advanced to the honor of authors those who were never more than ornamental writing-masters. § . instance in the dutch and early italian schools. most pictures of the dutch school, for instance, and excepting always those of rubens, vandyke, and rembrandt, are ostentatious exhibitions of the artist's power of speech, the clear and vigorous elocution of useless and senseless words: while the early efforts of cimabue and giotto are the burning messages of prophecy, delivered by the stammering lips of infants. it is not by ranking the former as more than mechanics, or the latter as less than artists, that the taste of the multitude, always awake to the lowest pleasures which art can bestow, and blunt to the highest, is to be formed or elevated. it must be the part of the judicious critic carefully to distinguish what is language, and what is thought, and to rank and praise pictures chiefly for the latter, considering the former as a totally inferior excellence, and one which cannot be compared with nor weighed against thought in any way nor in any degree whatsoever. the picture which has the nobler and more numerous ideas, however awkwardly expressed, is a greater and a better picture than that which has the less noble and less numerous ideas, however beautifully expressed. no weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought. three penstrokes of raffaelle are a greater and a better picture than the most finished work that ever carlo dolci polished into inanity. a finished work of a great artist is only better than its sketch, if the sources of pleasure belonging to color and realization--valuable in themselves,--are so employed as to increase the impressiveness of the thought. but if one atom of thought has vanished, all color, all finish, all execution, all ornament, are too dearly bought. nothing but thought can pay for thought, and the instant that the increasing refinement or finish of the picture begins to be paid for by the loss of the faintest shadow of an idea, that instant all refinement or finish is an excrescence, and a deformity. § . yet there are certain ideas belonging to language itself. § . the definition. yet although in all our speculations on art, language is thus to be distinguished from, and held subordinate to, that which it conveys, we must still remember that there are certain ideas inherent in language itself, and that strictly speaking, every pleasure connected with art has in it some reference to the intellect. the mere sensual pleasure of the eye, received from the most brilliant piece of coloring, is as nothing to that which it receives from a crystal prism, except as it depends on our perception of a certain meaning and intended arrangement of color, which has been the subject of intellect. nay, the term idea, according to locke's definition of it, will extend even to the sensual impressions themselves as far as they are "things which the mind occupies itself about in thinking," that is, not as they are felt by the eye only, but as they are received by the mind through the eye. so that, if i say that the greatest picture is that which conveys to the mind of the spectator the greatest number of the greatest ideas, i have a definition which will include as subjects of comparison every pleasure which art is capable of conveying. if i were to say, on the contrary, that the best picture was that which most closely imitated nature, i should assume that art could only please by imitating nature, and i should cast out of the pale of criticism those parts of works of art which are not imitative, that is to say, intrinsic beauties of color and form, and those works of art wholly, which, like the arabesques of raffaelle in the loggias, are not imitative at all. now i want a definition of art wide enough to include all its varieties of aim: i do not say therefore that the art is greatest which gives most pleasure, because perhaps there is some art whose end is to teach, and not to please. i do not say that the art is greatest which teaches us most, because perhaps there is some art whose end is to please, and not to teach. i do not say that the art is greatest which imitates best, because perhaps there is some art whose end is to create, and not to imitate. but i say that the art is greatest, which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas, and i call an idea great in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind, and as it more fully occupies, and in occupying, exercises and exalts, the faculty by which it is received. if this then be the definition of great art, that of a great artist naturally follows. he is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas. chapter iii. of ideas of power. the definition of art which i have just given, requires me to determine what kinds of ideas can be received from works of art, and which of these are the greatest, before proceeding to any practical application of the test. § . what classes of ideas are conveyable by art. i think that all the sources of pleasure, or any other good, to be derived from works of art, may be referred to five distinct heads. i. ideas of power.--the perception or conception of the mental or bodily powers by which the work has been produced. ii. ideas of imitation.--the perception that the thing produced resembles something else. iii. ideas of truth.--the perception of faithfulness in a statement of facts by the thing produced. iv. ideas of beauty.--the perception of beauty, either in the thing produced, or in what it suggests or resembles. v. ideas of relation.--the perception of intellectual relations, in the thing produced, or in what it suggests or resembles. i shall briefly distinguish the nature and effects of each of these classes of ideas. § . ideas of power vary much in relative dignity. i. ideas of power.--these are the simple perception of the mental or bodily powers exerted in the production of any work of art. according to the dignity and degree of the power perceived is the dignity of the idea; but the whole class of ideas is received by the intellect, and they excite the best of the moral feelings, veneration, and the desire of exertion. as a species, therefore, they are one of the noblest connected with art; but the differences in degree of dignity among themselves are infinite, being correspondent with every order of power,--from that of the fingers to that of the most exalted intellect. thus, when we see an indian's paddle carved from the handle to the blade, we have a conception of prolonged manual labor, and are gratified in proportion to the supposed expenditure of time and exertion. these are, indeed, powers of a low order, yet the pleasure arising from the conception of them enters very largely indeed into our admiration of all elaborate ornament, architectural decoration, etc. the delight with which we look on the fretted front of rouen cathedral depends in no small degree on the simple perception of time employed and labor expended in its production. but it is a right, that is, an ennobling pleasure, even in this its lowest phase; and even the pleasure felt by those persons who praise a drawing for its "finish," or its "work," which is one precisely of the same kind, would be right, if it did not imply a want of perception of the higher powers which render work unnecessary. if to the evidence of labor be added that of strength or dexterity, the sensation of power is yet increased; if to strength and dexterity be added that of ingenuity and judgment, it is multiplied tenfold, and so on, through all the subjects of action of body or mind, we receive the more exalted pleasure from the more exalted power. § . but are received from whatever has been the subject of power. the meaning of the word "excellence." so far the nature and effects of ideas of power cannot but be admitted by all. but the circumstance which i wish especially to insist upon, with respect to them, is one which may not, perhaps, be so readily allowed, namely, that they are independent of the nature or worthiness of the object from which they are received, and that whatever has been the subject of a great power, whether there be intrinsic and apparent worthiness in itself or not, bears with it the evidence of having been so, and is capable of giving the ideas of power, and the consequent pleasures, in their full degree. for observe, that a thing is not properly said to have been the result of a great power, on which only some part of that power has been expended. a nut may be cracked by a steam-engine, but it has not, in being so, been the subject of the power of the engine. and thus it is falsely said of great men, that they waste their lofty powers on unworthy objects: the object may be dangerous or useless, but, as far as the phrase has reference to difficulty of performance, it cannot be unworthy of the power which it brings into exertion, because nothing can become a subject of action to a greater power which can be accomplished by a less, any more than bodily strength can be exerted where there is nothing to resist it. so then, men may let their great powers lie dormant, while they employ their mean and petty powers on mean and petty objects; but it is physically impossible to employ a great power, except on a great object. consequently, wherever power of any kind or degree has been exerted, the marks and evidence of it are stamped upon its results: it is impossible that it should be lost or wasted, or without record, even in the "estimation of a hair:" and therefore, whatever has been the subject of a great power bears about with it the image of that which created it, and is what is commonly called "excellent." and this is the true meaning of the word excellent, as distinguished from the terms, "beautiful," "useful," "good," etc.; and we shall always, in future, use the word excellent, as signifying that the thing to which it is applied required a great power for its production.[ ] § . what is necessary to the distinguishing of excellence. the faculty of perceiving what powers are required for the production of a thing, is the faculty of perceiving excellence. it is this faculty in which men, even of the most cultivated taste, must always be wanting, unless they have added practice to reflection; because none can estimate the power manifested in victory, unless they have personally measured the strength to be overcome. though, therefore, it is possible, by the cultivation of sensibility and judgment, to become capable of distinguishing what is beautiful, it is totally impossible, without practice and knowledge, to distinguish or feel what is excellent. the beauty or the truth of titian's flesh-tint may be appreciated by all; but it is only to the artist, whose multiplied hours of toil have not reached the slightest resemblance of one of its tones, that its _excellence_ is manifest. § . the pleasure attendant on conquering difficulties is right. wherever, then, difficulty has been overcome, there is excellence: and therefore, in order to prove excellent, we have only to prove the difficulty of its production: whether it be useful or beautiful is another question; its excellence depends on its difficulty alone. for is it a false or diseased taste which looks for the overcoming of difficulties, and has pleasure in it, even without any view to resultant good. it has been made part of our moral nature that we should have a pleasure in encountering and conquering opposition, for the sake of the struggle and the victory, not for the sake of any after result; and not only our own victory, but the perception of that of another, is in all cases the source of pure and ennobling pleasure. and if we often hear it said, and truly said, that an artist has erred by seeking rather to show his skill in overcoming technical difficulties, than to reach a great end, be it observed that he is only blamed because he has sought to conquer an inferior difficulty rather than a great one; for it is much easier to overcome technical difficulties than to reach a great end. whenever the visible victory over difficulties is found painful or in false taste, it is owing to the preference of an inferior to a great difficulty, or to the false estimate of what is difficult and what is not. it is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and cease exertion in the proper place, than to expend both indiscriminately. we shall find, in the course of our investigation, that beauty and difficulty go together; and that they are only mean and paltry difficulties which it is wrong or contemptible to wrestle with. be it remembered then--power is never wasted. whatever power has been employed, produces excellence in proportion to its own dignity and exertion; and the faculty of perceiving this exertion, and appreciating this dignity, is the faculty of perceiving excellence. footnotes [ ] of course the word "excellent" is primarily a mere synonym with "surpassing," and when applied to persons, has the general meaning given by johnson--"the state of abounding in any good quality." but when applied to things it has always reference to the power by which they are produced. we talk of excellent music or poetry, because it is difficult to compose or write such, but never of excellent flowers, because all flowers being the result of the same power, must be equally excellent. we distinguish them only as beautiful or useful, and therefore, as there is no other one word to signify that quality of a thing produced by which it pleases us merely as the result of power, and as the term "excellent" is more frequently used in this sense than in any other, i choose to limit it at once to this sense, and i wish it, when i use it in future, to be so understood. chapter iv. of ideas of imitation. § . false use of the term "imitation" by many writers of art. fuseli, in his lectures, and many other persons of equally just and accurate habits of thought, (among others, s. t. coleridge,) make a distinction between imitation and copying, representing the first as the legitimate function of art--the latter as its corruption; but as such a distinction is by no means warranted, or explained by the common meaning of the words themselves, it is not easy to comprehend exactly in what sense they are used by those writers. and though, reasoning from the context, i can understand what ideas those words stand for in their minds, i cannot allow the terms to be properly used as symbols of those ideas, which (especially in the case of the word imitation) are exceedingly complex, and totally different from what most people would understand by the term. and by men of less accurate thought, the word is used still more vaguely or falsely. for instance, burke (treatise on the sublime, part i. sect. ) says, "when the object represented in poetry or painting is such as we could have no desire of seeing in the reality, then we may be sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the power of _imitation_." in which case the real pleasure may be in what we have been just speaking of, the dexterity of the artist's hand; or it may be in a beautiful or singular arrangement of colors, or a thoughtful chiaroscuro, or in the pure beauty of certain forms which art forces on our notice, though we should not have observed them in the reality; and i conceive that none of these sources of pleasure are in any way expressed or intimated by the term "imitation." but there is one source of pleasure in works of art totally different from all these, which i conceive to be properly and accurately expressed by the word "imitation:" one which, though constantly confused in reasoning, because it is always associated in fact, with other means of pleasure, is totally separated from them in its nature, and is the real basis of whatever complicated or various meaning may be afterwards attached to the word in the minds of men. § . real meaning of the term. § . what is requisite to the sense of imitation. i wish to point out this distinct source of pleasure clearly at once, and only to use the word "imitation" in reference to it. whenever anything looks like what it is not, the resemblance being so great as _nearly_ to deceive, we feel a kind of pleasurable surprise, an agreeable excitement of mind, exactly the same in its nature as that which we receive from juggling. whenever we perceive this in something produced by art, that is to say, whenever the work is seen to resemble something which we know it is not, we receive what i call an idea of imitation. _why_ such ideas are pleasing, it would be out of our present purpose to inquire; we only know that there is no man who does not feel pleasure in his animal nature from gentle surprise, and that such surprise can be excited in no more distinct manner than by the evidence that a thing is not what it appears to be.[ ] now two things are requisite to our complete and more pleasurable perception of this: first, that the resemblance be so perfect as to amount to a deception; secondly, that there be some means of proving at the same moment that it _is_ a deception. the most perfect ideas and pleasures of imitation are, therefore, when one sense is contradicted by another, both bearing as positive evidence on the subject as each is capable of alone; as when the eye says a thing is round, and the finger says it is flat; they are, therefore, never felt in so high a degree as in painting, where appearance of projection, roughness, hair, velvet, etc., are given with a smooth surface, or in wax-work, where the first evidence of the senses is perpetually contradicted by their experience; but the moment we come to marble, our definition checks us, for a marble figure does not look like what it is not: it looks like marble, and like the form of a man, but then it _is_ marble, and it _is_ the form of a man. it does not look like a man, which it is not, but like the form of a man, which it is. form is form, _bona fide_ and actual, whether in marble or in flesh--not an imitation or resemblance of form, but real form. the chalk outline of the bough of a tree on paper, is not an imitation; it looks like chalk and paper--not like wood, and that which it suggests to the mind is not properly said to be _like_ the form of a bough, it _is_ the form of a bough. now, then, we see the limits of an idea of imitation; it extends only to the sensation of trickery and deception occasioned by a thing's intentionally seeming different from what it is; and the degree of the pleasure depends on the degree of difference and the perfection of the resemblance, not on the nature of the thing resembled. the simple pleasure in the imitation would be precisely of the same degree, (if the accuracy could be equal,) whether the subject of it were the hero or his horse. there are other collateral sources of pleasure, which are necessarily associated with this, but that part of the pleasure which depends on the imitation is the same in both. § . the pleasure resulting from imitation the most contemptible that can be derived from art. ideas of imitation, then, act by producing the simple pleasure of surprise, and that not of surprise in its higher sense and function, but of the mean and paltry surprise which is felt in jugglery. these ideas and pleasures are the most contemptible which can be received from art; first, because it is necessary to their enjoyment that the mind should reject the impression and address of the thing represented, and fix itself only upon the reflection that it is not what it seems to be. all high or noble emotion or thought are thus rendered physically impossible, while the mind exults in what is very like a strictly sensual pleasure. we may consider tears as a result of agony or of art, whichever we please, but not of both at the same moment. if we are surprised by them as an attainment of the one, it is impossible we can be moved by them as a sign of the other. § . imitation is only of contemptible subjects. ideas of imitation are contemptible in the second place, because not only do they preclude the spectator from enjoying inherent beauty in the subject, but they can only be received from mean and paltry subjects, because it is impossible to imitate anything really great. we can "paint a cat or a fiddle, so that they look as if we could take them up;" but we cannot imitate the ocean, or the alps. we can imitate fruit, but not a tree; flowers, but not a pasture; cut-glass, but not the rainbow. all pictures in which deceptive powers of imitation are displayed are therefore either of contemptible subjects, or have the imitation shown in contemptible parts of them, bits of dress, jewels, furniture, etc. § . imitation is contemptible because it is easy. thirdly, these ideas are contemptible, because no ideas of power are associated with them; to the ignorant, imitation, indeed, seems difficult, and its success praiseworthy, but even they can by no possibility see more in the artist than they do in a juggler, who arrives at a strange end by means with which they are unacquainted. to the instructed, the juggler is by far the more respectable artist of the two, for they know sleight of hand to be an art of immensely more difficult acquirement, and to imply more ingenuity in the artist than a power of deceptive imitation in painting, which requires nothing more for its attainment than a true eye, a steady hand, and moderate industry--qualities which in no degree separate the imitative artist from a watch-maker, pin-maker, or any other neat-handed artificer. these remarks do not apply to the art of the diorama, or the stage, where the pleasure is not dependent on the imitation, but is the same which we should receive from nature herself, only far inferior in degree. it is a noble pleasure; but we shall see in the course of our investigation, both that it is inferior to that which we receive when there is no deception at all, and why it is so. § . recapitulation. whenever then in future, i speak of ideas of imitation, i wish to be understood to mean the immediate and present perception that something produced by art is not what it seems to be. i prefer saying "that it is not what it seems to be," to saying "that it seems to be what it is not," because we perceive at once what it seems to be, and the idea of imitation, and the consequent pleasure, result from the subsequent perception of its being something else--flat, for instance, when we thought it was round. footnotes [ ] [greek: syllogismos ettig, hoti touto ekeino].--arist. rhet. , , . chapter v. of ideas of truth. the word truth, as applied to art, signifies the faithful statement, either to the mind or senses, of any fact of nature. § . meaning of the word "truth" as applied to art. we receive an idea of truth, then, when we perceive the faithfulness of such a statement. the difference between ideas of truth and of imitation lies chiefly in the following points. § . first difference between truth and imitation. first,--imitation can only be of something material, but truth has reference to statements both of the qualities of material things, and of emotions, impressions, and thoughts. there is a moral as well as material truth,--a truth of impression as well as of form,--of thought as well as of matter; and the truth of impression and thought is a thousand times the more important of the two. hence, truth is a term of universal application, but imitation is limited to that narrow field of art which takes cognizance only of material things. § . second difference. secondly,--truth may be stated by any signs or symbols which have a definite signification in the minds of those to whom they are addressed, although such signs be themselves no image nor likeness of anything. whatever can excite in the mind the conception of certain facts, can give ideas of truth, though it be in no degree the imitation or resemblance of those facts. if there be--we do not say there is--but if there be in painting anything which operates, as words do, not by resembling anything, but by being taken as a symbol and substitute for it, and thus inducing the effect of it, then this channel of communication can convey uncorrupted truth, though it do not in any degree resemble the facts whose conception it induces. but ideas of imitation, of course, require the likeness of the object. they speak to the perceptive faculties only: truth to the conceptive. § . third difference. thirdly,--and in consequence of what is above stated, an idea of truth exists in the statement of _one_ attribute of anything, but an idea of imitation requires the resemblance of as many attributes as we are usually cognizant of in its real presence. a pencil outline of the bough of a tree on white paper is a statement of a certain number of facts of form. it does not yet amount to the imitation of anything. the idea of that form is not given in nature by lines at all, still less by black lines with a white space between them. but those lines convey to the mind a distinct impression of a certain number of facts, which it recognizes as agreeable with its previous impressions of the bough of a tree; and it receives, therefore, an idea of truth. if, instead of two lines, we give a dark form with the brush, we convey information of a certain relation of shade between the bough and sky, recognizable for another idea of truth; but we have still no imitation, for the white paper is not the least like air, nor the black shadow like wood. it is not until after a certain number of ideas of truth have been collected together, that we arrive at an idea of imitation. § . no accurate truths necessary to imitation. hence it might at first sight appear, that an idea of imitation, inasmuch as several ideas of truth were united in it, was nobler than a simple idea of truth. and if it were necessary that the ideas of truth should be perfect, or should be subjects of contemplation _as such_, it would be so. but, observe, we require to produce the effect of imitation only so many and such ideas of truth as the _senses_ are usually cognizant of. now the senses are not usually, nor unless they be especially devoted to the service, cognizant, with accuracy, of any truths but those of space and projection. it requires long study and attention before they give certain evidence of even the simplest truths of form. for instance, the quay on which the figure is sitting, with his hand at his eyes, in claude's seaport, no. , in the national gallery, is egregiously out of perspective. the eye of this artist, with all his study, had thus not acquired the power of taking cognizance of the apparent form even of a simple parallelopiped. how much less of the complicated forms of boughs, leaves, or limbs? although, therefore, something resembling the real form is necessary to deception, this something is not to be called a _truth_ of form; for, strictly speaking, there are no degrees of truth, there are only degrees of approach to it; and an approach to it, whose feebleness and imperfection would instantly offend and give pain to a mind really capable of distinguishing truth, is yet quite sufficient for all the purposes of deceptive imagination. it is the same with regard to color. if we were to paint a tree sky-blue, or a dog rose-pink, the discernment of the public would be keen enough to discover the falsehood; but, so that there be just so much approach to truth of color as may come up to the common idea of it in men's minds, that is to say, if the trees be all bright green, and flesh unbroken buff, and ground unbroken brown, though all the real and refined truths of color be wholly omitted, or rather defied and contradicted, there is yet quite enough for all purposes of imitation. the only facts then, which we are usually and certainly cognizant of, are those of distance and projection, and if these be tolerably given, with something like truth of form and color to assist them, the idea of imitation is complete. i would undertake to paint an arm, with every muscle out of its place, and every bone of false form and dislocated articulation, and yet to observe certain coarse and broad resemblances of true outline, which, with careful shading, would induce deception, and draw down the praise and delight of the discerning public. the other day at bruges, while i was endeavoring to set down in my note-book something of the ineffable expression of the madonna in the cathedral, a french amateur came up to me, to inquire if i had seen the modern french pictures in a neighboring church. i had not, but felt little inclined to leave my marble for all the canvas that ever suffered from french brushes. my apathy was attacked with gradually increasing energy of praise. rubens never executed--titian never colored anything like them. i thought this highly probable, and still sat quiet. the voice continued at my ear. "parbleu, monsieur, michel ange n'a rien produit de plus beau!" "de plus _beau_?" repeated i, wishing to know what particular excellences of michael angelo were to be intimated by this expression. "monsieur, on ne pent plus--c'est un tableau admirable--inconcevable: monsieur," said the frenchman, lifting up his hands to heaven, as he concentrated in one conclusive and overwhelming proposition the qualities which were to outshine rubens and overpower buonaroti--"monsieur, il sort!" this gentleman could only perceive two truths--flesh color and projection. these constituted his notion of the perfection of painting; because they unite all that is necessary for deception. he was not therefore cognizant of many ideas of truth, though perfectly cognizant of ideas of imitation. § . ideas of truth are inconsistent with ideas of imitation. we shall see, in the course of our investigation of ideas of truth, that ideas of imitation not only do not imply their presence, but even are inconsistent with it; and that pictures which imitate so as to deceive, are never true. but this is not the place for the proof of this; at present we have only to insist on the last and greatest distinction between ideas of truth and of imitation--that the mind, in receiving one of the former, dwells upon its own conception of the fact, or form, or feeling stated, and is occupied only with the qualities and character of that fact or form, considering it as real and existing, being all the while totally regardless of the signs or symbols by which the notion of it has been conveyed. these signs have no pretence, nor hypocrisy, nor legerdemain about them;--there is nothing to be found out, or sifted, or surprised in them;--they bear their message simply and clearly, and it is that message which the mind takes from them and dwells upon, regardless of the language in which it is delivered. but the mind, in receiving an idea of imitation, is wholly occupied in finding out that what has been suggested to it is not what it appears to be: it does not dwell on the suggestion, but on the perception that it is a false suggestion: it derives its pleasure, not from the contemplation of a truth, but from the discovery of a falsehood. so that the moment ideas of truth are grouped together, so as to give rise to an idea of imitation, they change their very nature--lose their essence as ideas of truth--and are corrupted and degraded, so as to share in the treachery of what they have produced. hence, finally, ideas of truth are the foundation, and ideas of imitation the destruction, of all art. we shall be better able to appreciate their relative dignity after the investigation which we propose of the functions of the former; but we may as well now express the conclusion to which we shall then be led--that no picture can be good which deceives by its imitation, for the very reason that nothing can be beautiful which is not true. chapter vi. of ideas of beauty. § . definition of the term "beautiful." any material object which can give us pleasure in the simple contemplation of its outward qualities without any direct and definite exertion of the intellect, i call in some way, or in some degree, beautiful. why we receive pleasure from some forms and colors, and not from others, is no more to be asked or answered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood. the utmost subtilty of investigation will only lead us to ultimate instincts and principles of human nature, for which no farther reason can be given than the simple will of the deity that we should be so created. we may, indeed, perceive, as far as we are acquainted with his nature, that we have been so constructed as, when in a healthy and cultivated state of mind, to derive pleasure from whatever things are illustrative of that nature; but we do not receive pleasure from them _because_ they are illustrative of it, nor from any perception that they are illustrative of it, but instinctively and necessarily, as we derive sensual pleasure from the scent of a rose. on these primary principles of our nature, education and accident operate to an unlimited extent; they may be cultivated or checked, directed or diverted, gifted by right guidance with the most acute and faultless sense, or subjected by neglect to every phase of error and disease. he who has followed up these natural laws of aversion and desire, rendering them more and more authoritative by constant obedience, so as to derive pleasure always from that which god originally intended should give him pleasure, and who derives the greatest possible sum of pleasure from any given object, is a man of taste. § . definition of the term "taste." this, then, is the real meaning of this disputed word. perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection. he who receives little pleasure from these sources, wants taste; he who receives pleasure from any other sources, has false or bad taste. § . distinction between taste and judgment. and it is thus that the term "taste" is to be distinguished from that of "judgment," with which it is constantly confounded. judgment is a general term, expressing definite action of the intellect, and applicable to every kind of subject which can be submitted to it. there may be judgment of congruity, judgment of truth, judgment of justice, and judgment of difficulty and excellence. but all these exertions of the intellect are totally distinct from taste, properly so called, which is the instinctive and instant preferring of one material object to another without any obvious reason, except that it is proper to human nature in its perfection so to do. § . how far beauty may become intellectual. observe, however, i do not mean by excluding direct exertion of the intellect from ideas of beauty, to assert that beauty has no effect upon nor connection with the intellect. all our moral feelings are so in-woven with our intellectual powers, that we cannot affect the one without in some degree addressing the other; and in all high ideas of beauty, it is more than probable that much of the pleasure depends on delicate and untraceable perceptions of fitness, propriety, and relation, which are purely intellectual, and through which we arrive at our noblest ideas of what is commonly and rightly called "intellectual beauty." but there is yet no immediate _exertion_ of the intellect; that is to say, if a person receiving even the noblest ideas of simple beauty be asked _why_ he likes the object exciting them, he will not be able to give any distinct reason, nor to trace in his mind any formed thought, to which he can appeal as a source of pleasure. he will say that the thing gratifies, fills, hallows, exalts his mind, but he will not be able to say why, or how. if he can, and if he can show that he perceives in the object any expression of distinct thought, he has received more than an idea of beauty--it is an idea of relation. § . the high rank and function of ideas of beauty. ideas of beauty are among the noblest which can be presented to the human mind, invariably exalting and purifying it according to their degree; and it would appear that we are intended by the deity to be constantly under their influence, because there is not one single object in nature which is not capable of conveying them, and which, to the rightly perceiving mind, does not present an incalculably greater number of beautiful than of deformed parts; there being in fact scarcely anything, in pure, undiseased nature, like positive deformity, but only degrees of beauty, or such slight and rare points of permitted contrast as may render all around them more valuable by their opposition, spots of blackness in creation, to make its colors felt. § . meaning of the term "ideal beauty." but although everything in nature is more or less beautiful, every species of object has its own kind and degree of beauty; some being in their own nature more beautiful than others, and few, if any, individuals possessing the utmost degree of beauty of which the species is capable. this utmost degree of specific beauty, necessarily coexistent with the utmost perfection of the object in other respects, is the ideal of the object. ideas of beauty, then, be it remembered, are the subjects of moral, but not of intellectual perception. by the investigation of them we shall be led to the knowledge of the ideal subjects of art. chapter vii. of ideas of relation. § . general meaning of the term. i use this term rather as one of convenience than as adequately expressive of the vast class of ideas which i wish to be comprehended under it, namely, all those conveyable by art, which are the subjects of distinct intellectual perception and action, and which are therefore worthy of the name of thoughts. but as every thought, or definite exertion of intellect, implies two subjects, and some connection or relation inferred between them, the term "ideas of relation" is not incorrect, though it is inexpressive. § . what ideas are to be comprehended under it. under this head must be arranged everything productive of expression, sentiment, and character, whether in figures or landscapes, (for there may be as much definite expression and marked carrying out of particular thoughts in the treatment of inanimate as of animate nature,) everything relating to the conception of the subject and to the congruity and relation of its parts; not as they enhance each other's beauty by known and constant laws of composition, but as they give each other expression and meaning, by particular application, requiring distinct thought to discover or to enjoy: the choice, for instance, of a particular lurid or appalling light, to illustrate an incident in itself terrible, or of a particular tone of pure color to prepare the mind for the expression of refined and delicate feeling; and, in a still higher sense, the invention of such incidents and thoughts as can be expressed in words as well as on canvas, and are totally independent of any means of art but such as may serve for the bare suggestion of them. the principal object in the foreground of turner's "building of carthage" is a group of children sailing toy boats. the exquisite choice of this incident, as expressive of the ruling passion, which was to be the source of future greatness, in preference to the tumult of busy stone-masons or arming soldiers, is quite as appreciable when it is told as when it is seen,--it has nothing to do with the technicalities of painting; a scratch of the pen would have conveyed the idea and spoken to the intellect as much as the elaborate realizations of color. such a thought as this is something far above all art; it is epic poetry of the highest order. claude, in subjects of the same kind, commonly introduces people carrying red trunks with iron locks about, and dwells, with infantine delight, on the lustre of the leather and the ornaments of the iron. the intellect can have no occupation here; we must look to the imitation or to nothing. consequently, turner rises above claude in the very first instant of the conception of his picture, and acquires an intellectual superiority which no powers of the draughtsman or the artist (supposing that such existed in his antagonist) could ever wrest from him. § . the exceeding nobility of these ideas. such are the function and force of ideas of relation. they are what i have asserted in the second chapter of this section to be the noblest subjects of art. dependent upon it only for expression, they cause all the rest of its complicated sources of pleasure to take, in comparison with them, the place of mere language or decoration; nay, even the noblest ideas of beauty sink at once beside these into subordination and subjection. it would add little to the influence of landseer's picture above instanced, chap. ii., § , that the form of the dog should be conceived with every perfection of curve and color which its nature was capable of, and that the ideal lines should be carried out with the science of a praxiteles; nay, the instant that the beauty so obtained interfered with the impression of agony and desolation, and drew the mind away from the feeling of the animal to its outward form, that instant would the picture become monstrous and degraded. the utmost glory of the human body is a mean subject of contemplation, compared to the emotion, exertion and character of that which animates it; the lustre of the limbs of the aphrodite is faint beside that of the brow of the madonna; and the divine form of the greek god, except as it is the incarnation and expression of divine mind, is degraded beside the passion and the prophecy of the vaults of the sistine. § . why no subdivision of so extensive a class is necessary. ideas of relation are of course, with respect to art generally, the most extensive as the most important source of pleasure; and if we proposed entering upon the criticism of historical works, it would be absurd to attempt to do so without further subdivision and arrangement. but the old landscape painters got over so much canvas without either exercise of, or appeal to, the intellect, that we shall be little troubled with the subject as far as they are concerned; and whatever subdivision we may adopt, as it will therefore have particular reference to the works of modern artists, will be better understood when we have obtained some knowledge of them in less important points. by the term "ideas of relation," then, i mean in future to express all those sources of pleasure, which involve and require, at the instant of their perception, active exertion of the intellectual powers. section ii. of power. chapter i. general principles respecting ideas of power. § . no necessity for detailed study of ideas of imitation. we have seen in the last section, what classes of ideas may be conveyed by art, and we have been able so far to appreciate their relative worth as to see, that from the list, as it is to be applied to the purposes of legitimate criticism, we may at once throw out the ideas of imitation; first, because, as we have shown, they are unworthy the pursuit of the artist; and secondly, because they are nothing more than the result of a particular association of ideas of truth. in examining the truth of art, therefore, we shall be compelled to take notice of those particular truths, whose association gives rise to the ideas of imitation. we shall then see more clearly the meanness of those truths, and we shall find ourselves able to use them as tests of vice in art, saying of a picture,--"it deceives, therefore it must be bad." § . nor for separate study of ideas of power. ideas of power, in the same way, cannot be completely viewed as a separate class; not because they are mean or unimportant, but because they are almost always associated with, or dependent upon, some of the higher ideas of truth, beauty, or relation, rendered with decision or velocity. that power which delights us in the chalk sketch of a great painter is not one of the fingers, not like that of the writing-master, mere dexterity of hand. it is the accuracy and certainty of the knowledge, rendered evident by its rapid and fearless expression, which is the real source of pleasure; and so upon each difficulty of art, whether it be to know, or to relate, or to invent, the sensation of power is attendant, when we see that difficulty totally and swiftly vanquished. hence, as we determine what is otherwise desirable in art, we shall gradually develop the sources of the ideas of power; and if there be anything difficult which is not otherwise desirable, it must be afterwards considered separately. § . except under one particular form. but it will be necessary at present to notice a particular form of the ideas of power, which is partially independent of knowledge of truth, or difficulty, and which is apt to corrupt the judgment of the critic, and debase the work of the artist. it is evident that the conception of power which we receive from a calculation of unseen difficulty, and an estimate of unseen strength, can never be so impressive as that which we receive from the present sensation or sight of the one resisting, and the other overwhelming. in the one case the power is imagined, and in the other felt. § . there are two modes of receiving ideas of power, commonly inconsistent. there are thus two modes in which we receive the conception of power; one, the most just, when by a perfect knowledge of the difficulty to be overcome, and the means employed, we form a right estimate of the faculties exerted; the other, when without possessing such intimate and accurate knowledge, we are impressed by a sensation of power in visible action. if these two modes of receiving the impression agree in the result, and if the sensation be equal to the estimate, we receive the utmost possible idea of power. but this is the case perhaps with the works of only one man out of the whole circle of the fathers of art, of him to whom we have just referred, michael angelo. in others, the estimate and the sensation are constantly unequal, and often contradictory. § . first reason of the inconsistency. the first reason of this inconsistency is, that in order to receive a _sensation_ of power, we must see it in operation. its victory, therefore, must not be achieved, but achieving, and therefore imperfect. thus we receive a greater sensation of power from the half-hewn limbs of the twilight to the day of the cappella de' medici, than even from the divine inebriety of the bacchus in the gallery--greater from the life dashed out along the friezes of the parthenon, than from the polished limbs of the apollo,--greater from the ink sketch of the head of raffaelle's st. catherine, than from the perfection of its realization. § . second reason for the inconsistency. another reason of the inconsistency is, that the sensation of power is in proportion to the apparent inadequacy of the means to the end; so that the impression is much greater from a partial success attained with slight effort, than from perfect success attained with greater proportional effort. now, in all art, every touch or effort does individually less in proportion as the work approaches perfection. the first five chalk touches bring a head into existence out of nothing. no five touches in the whole course of the work will ever do so much as these, and the difference made by each touch is more and more imperceptible as the work approaches completion. consequently, the ratio between the means employed and the effect produced is constantly decreasing, and therefore the least sensation of power is received from the most perfect work. § . the sensation of power ought not to be sought in imperfect art. it is thus evident that there are sensations of power about imperfect art, so that it be right art as far as it goes, which must always be wanting in its perfection; and that there are sources of pleasure in the hasty sketch and rough hewn block, which are partially wanting in the tinted canvas and the polished marble. but it is nevertheless wrong to prefer the sensation of power to the intellectual perception of it. there is in reality greater power in the completion than in the commencement; and though it be not so manifest to the senses, it ought to have higher influence on the mind; and therefore in praising pictures for the ideas of power they convey, we must not look to the keenest sensation, but to the highest estimate, accompanied with as much of the sensation as is compatible with it; and thus we shall consider those pictures as conveying the highest ideas of power which attain the most _perfect_ end with the slightest possible means; not, observe, those in which, though much has been done with little, all has not been done, but from the picture, in which _all_ has been done, and yet not a touch thrown away. the quantity of work in the sketch is necessarily less in proportion to the effect obtained than in the picture; but yet the picture involves the greater power, if out of all the additional labor bestowed on it, not a touch has been lost. § . instances in pictures of modern artists. for instance, there are few drawings of the present day that involve greater sensations of power than those of frederick tayler. every dash tells, and the quantity of effect obtained is enormous, in proportion to the apparent means. but the effect obtained is not complete. brilliant, beautiful, and right, as a sketch, the work is still far from perfection, as a drawing. on the contrary, there are few drawings of the present day that bear evidence of more labor bestowed, or more complicated means employed, than those of john lewis. the result does not, at first, so much convey an impression of inherent power as of prolonged exertion; but the result is complete. water-color drawing can be carried no farther; nothing has been left unfinished or untold. and on examination of the means employed, it is found and felt that not one touch out of the thousands employed has been thrown away;--that not one dot nor dash could be spared without loss of effect;--and that the exertion has been as swift as it has been prolonged--as bold as it has been persevering. the power involved in such a picture is of the highest order, and the enduring pleasure following on the estimate of it pure. § . connection between ideas of power and modes of execution. but there is still farther ground for caution in pursuing the sensation of power, connected with the particular characters and modes of execution. this we shall be better able to understand by briefly reviewing the various excellences which may belong to execution, and give pleasure in it; though the full determination of what is desirable in it, and the critical examination of the execution of different artists, must be deferred, as will be immediately seen, until we are more fully acquainted with the principles of truth. chapter ii. of ideas of power, as they are dependent upon execution. § . meaning of the term "execution." by the term "execution," i understand the right mechanical use of the means of art to produce a given end. § . the first quality of execution is truth. all qualities of execution, properly so called, are influenced by, and in a great degree dependent on, a far higher power than that of mere execution,--knowledge of truth. for exactly in proportion as an artist is certain of his end, will he be swift and simple in his means; and, as he is accurate and deep in his knowledge, will he be refined and precise in his touch. the first merit of manipulation, then, is that delicate and ceaseless expression of refined truth which is carried out to the last touch, and shadow of a touch, and which makes every hairsbreadth of importance, and every gradation full of meaning. it is not, properly speaking, execution; but it is the only source of difference between the execution of a commonplace and of a perfect artist. the lowest draughtsman, if he have spent the same time in handling the brush, may be equal to the highest in the other qualities of execution (in swiftness, simplicity, and decision;) but not in truth. it is in the perfection and precision of the instantaneous line that the claim to immortality is laid. and if this truth of truths be present, all the other qualities of execution may well be spared; and to those artists who wish to excuse their ignorance and inaccuracy by a species of execution which is a perpetual proclamation, "qu'ils n'ont demeuré qu'un quart d'heure a le faire," we may reply with the truthful alceste, "monsieur, le temps ne fait rien a l'affaire." § . the second, simplicity. the second quality of execution is simplicity. the more unpretending, quiet, and retiring the means, the more impressive their effect. any ostentation, brilliancy, or pretension of touch,--any exhibition of power or quickness, merely as such, above all, any attempt to render lines attractive at the expense of their meaning, is vice. § . the third mystery. the third is mystery. nature is always mysterious and secret in the use of her means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable. that execution which is the most incomprehensible, and which therefore defies imitation, (other qualities being supposed alike,) is the best. § . the fourth, inadequacy; and the fifth, decision. the fourth is inadequacy. the less sufficient the means appear to the end, the greater (as has been already noticed) will be the sensation of power. the fifth is decision: the appearance, that is, that whatever is done, has been done fearlessly and at once; because this gives us the impression that both the fact to be represented, and the means necessary to its representation, were perfectly known. § . the sixth, velocity. the sixth is velocity. not only is velocity, or the appearance of it, agreeable as decision is, because it gives ideas of power and knowledge; but of two touches, as nearly as possible the same in other respects, the quickest will invariably be the best. truth being supposed equally present in the shape and direction of both, there will be more evenness, grace and variety, in the quick one than in the slow one. it will be more agreeable to the eye as a touch or line, and will possess more of the qualities of the lines of nature--gradation, uncertainty, and unity. § . strangeness an illegitimate source of pleasure in execution. these six qualities are the only perfectly legitimate sources of pleasure in execution; but i might have added a seventh--strangeness, which in many cases is productive of a pleasure not altogether mean or degrading, though scarcely right. supposing the other higher qualities first secured, it adds in no small degree to our impression of the artist's knowledge, if the means used be such as we should never have thought of, or should have thought adapted to a contrary effect. let us, for instance, compare the execution of the bull's head in the left hand lowest corner of the adoration of the magi, in the museum at antwerp, with that in berghem's landscape, no. in the dulwich gallery. rubens first scratches horizontally over his canvas a thin grayish brown, transparent and even, very much the color of light wainscot; the horizontal strokes of the bristles being left so evident, that the whole might be taken for an imitation of wood, were it not for its transparency. on this ground the eye, nostril, and outline of the cheek are given with two or three rude, brown touches, (about three or four minutes' work in all,) though the head is colossal. the background is then laid in with thick, solid, warm white, actually projecting all round the head, leaving it in dark intaglio. finally, five thin and scratchy strokes of very cold bluish white are struck for the high light on the forehead and nose, and the head is complete. seen within a yard of the canvas, it looks actually transparent--a flimsy, meaningless, distant shadow; while the background looks solid, projecting and near. from the right distance, (ten or twelve yards off, whence alone the whole of the picture can be seen,) it is a complete, rich, substantial, and living realization of the projecting head of the animal; while the background falls far behind. now there is no slight nor mean pleasure in perceiving such a result attained by means so strange. by berghem, on the other hand, a dark background is first laid in with exquisite delicacy and transparency, and on this the cow's head is actually modelled in luminous white, the separate locks of hair projecting from the canvas. no surprise, nor much pleasure of any kind, would be attendant on this execution, even were the result equally successful; and what little pleasure we had in it, vanishes, when on retiring from the picture, we find the head shining like a distant lantern, instead of substantial or near. yet strangeness is not to be considered as a legitimate source of pleasure. that means which is most conducive to the end, should always be the most pleasurable; and that which is most conducive to the end, can be strange only to the ignorance of the spectator. this kind of pleasure is illegitimate, therefore, because it implies and requires, in those who feel it, ignorance of art. § . yet even the legitimate sources of pleasure in execution are inconsistent with each other. § . and fondness for ideas of power leads to the adoption of the lowest. § . therefore perilous. the legitimate sources of pleasure in execution are therefore truth, simplicity, mystery, inadequacy, decision, and velocity. but of these, be it observed, some are so far inconsistent with others, that they cannot be united in high degrees. mystery with inadequacy, for instance; since to see that the means are inadequate, we must see what they are. now the first three are the great qualities of execution, and the last three are the attractive ones, because on them are chiefly attendant the ideas of power. by the first three the attention is withdrawn from the means and fixed on the result: by the last three, withdrawn from the result and fixed on the means. to see that execution is swift or that it is decided, we must look away from its creation to observe it in the act of creating; we must think more of the pallet than of the picture, but simplicity and mystery compel the mind to leave the means and fix itself on the conception. hence the danger of too great fondness for those sensations of power which are associated with the three last qualities of execution; for although it is most desirable that these should be present as far as they are consistent with the others, and though their visible absence is always painful and wrong, yet the moment the higher qualities are sacrificed to them in the least degree, we have a brilliant vice. berghem and salvator rosa are good instances of vicious execution dependent on too great fondness for sensations of power, vicious because intrusive and attractive in itself, instead of being subordinate to its results and forgotten in them. there is perhaps no greater stumbling-block in the artist's way, than the tendency to sacrifice truth and simplicity to decision and velocity,[ ] captivating qualities, easy of attainment, and sure to attract attention and praise, while the delicate degree of truth which is at first sacrificed to them is so totally unappreciable by the majority of spectators, so difficult of attainment to the artist, that it is no wonder that efforts so arduous and unrewarded should be abandoned. but if the temptation be once yielded to, its consequences are fatal; there is no pause in the fall. i could name a celebrated modern artist--once a man of the highest power and promise, who is a glaring instance of the peril of such a course. misled by the undue popularity of his swift execution, he has sacrificed to it, first precision, and then truth, and her associate, beauty. what was first neglect of nature, has become contradiction of her; what was once imperfection, is now falsehood; and all that was meritorious in his manner, is becoming the worst, because the most attractive of vices; decision without a foundation, and swiftness without an end. § . recapitulation. such are the principal modes in which the ideas of power may become a dangerous attraction to the artist--a false test to the critic. but in all cases where they lead us astray it will be found that the error is caused by our preferring victory over a small _apparent_ difficulty to victory over a great, but concealed one; and so that we keep this distinction constantly in view, (whether with reference to execution or to any other quality of art,) between the sensation and the intellectual estimate of power, we shall always find the ideas of power a just and high source of pleasure in every kind and grade of art. footnotes [ ] i have here noticed only noble vices, the sacrifices of one excellence to another legitimate but inferior one. there are, on the other hand, qualities of execution which are often sought for and praised, though scarcely by the class of persons for whom i am writing, in which everything is sacrificed to illegitimate and contemptible sources of pleasure, and these are vice throughout, and have no redeeming quality nor excusing aim. such is that which is often thought so desirable in the drawing-master, under the title of boldness, meaning that no touch is ever to be made less than the tenth of an inch broad; such, on the other hand, the softness and smoothness which are the great attraction of carlo dolci, and such the exhibition of particular powers and tricks of the hand and fingers, in total forgetfulness of any end whatsoever to be attained thereby, which is especially characteristic of modern engraving. compare sect. ii. chap. ii. § . note. chapter iii. of the sublime. it may perhaps be wondered that in the division we have made of our subject, we have taken no notice of the sublime in art, and that in our explanation of that division we have not once used the word. § . sublimity is the effect upon the mind of anything above it. the fact is, that sublimity is not a specific term,--not a term descriptive of the effect of a particular class of ideas. anything which elevates the mind is sublime, and elevation of mind is produced by the contemplation of greatness of any kind; but chiefly, of course, by the greatness of the noblest things. sublimity is, therefore, only another word for the effect of greatness upon the feelings. greatness of matter, space, power, virtue, or beauty, are thus all sublime; and there is perhaps no desirable quality of a work of art, which in its perfection is not, in some way or degree, sublime. § . burke's theory of the nature of the sublime incorrect, and why. § . danger is sublime, but not the fear of it. § . the highest beauty is sublime. § . and generally whatever elevates the mind. i am fully prepared to allow of much ingenuity in burke's theory of the sublime, as connected with self-preservation. there are few things so great as death; and there is perhaps nothing which banishes all littleness of thought and feeling in an equal degree with its contemplation. everything, therefore, which in any way points to it, and, therefore, most dangers and powers over which we have little control, are in some degree sublime. but it is not the fear, observe, but the contemplation of death; not the instinctive shudder and struggle of self-preservation, but the deliberate measurement of the doom, which are really great or sublime in feeling. it is not while we shrink, but while we defy, that we receive or convey the highest conceptions of the fate. there is no sublimity in the agony of terror. whether do we trace it most in the cry to the mountains, "fall on us," and to the hills, "cover us," or in the calmness of the prophecy--"and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh i shall see god?" a little reflection will easily convince any one, that so far from the feelings of self-preservation being necessary to the sublime, their greatest action is totally destructive of it; and that there are few feelings less capable of its perception than those of a coward. but the simple conception or idea of greatness of suffering or extent of destruction is sublime, whether there be any connection of that idea with ourselves or not. if we were placed beyond the reach of all peril or pain, the perception of these agencies in their influence on others would not be less sublime, not because peril or pain are sublime in their own nature, but because their contemplation, exciting compassion or fortitude, elevates the mind, and renders meanness of thought impossible. beauty is not so often felt to be sublime; because, in many kinds of purely material beauty there is some truth in burke's assertion, that "littleness" is one of its elements. but he who has not felt that there may be beauty without littleness, and that such beauty is a source of the sublime, is yet ignorant of the meaning of the ideal in art. i do not mean, in tracing the source of the sublime to greatness, to hamper myself with any fine-spun theory. i take the widest possible ground of investigation, that sublimity is found wherever anything elevates the mind; that is, wherever it contemplates anything above itself, and perceives it to be so. this is the simple philological signification of the word derived from _sublimis_; and will serve us much more easily, and be a far clearer and more evident ground of argument, than any mere metaphysical or more limited definition, while the proof of its justness will be naturally developed by its application to the different branches of art. § . the former division of the subject is therefore sufficient. as, therefore, the sublime is not distinct from what is beautiful, nor from other sources of pleasure in art, but is only a particular mode and manifestation of them, my subject will divide itself into the investigation of ideas of truth, beauty, and relation; and to each of these classes of ideas i destine a separate part of the work. the investigation of ideas of truth will enable us to determine the relative rank of artists as followers and historians of nature. that of ideas of beauty will lead us to compare them in their attainment, first of what is agreeable in technical matters, then in color and composition, finally and chiefly, in the purity of their conceptions of the ideal. and that of ideas of relation will lead us to compare them as originators of just thought. part ii. of truth. section i. general principles respecting ideas of truth. chapter i. of ideas of truth in their connection with those of beauty and relation. § . the two great ends of landscape painting are the representation of facts and thoughts. it cannot but be evident from the above division of the ideas conveyable by art, that the landscape painter must always have two great and distinct ends; the first, to induce in the spectator's mind the faithful conception of any natural objects whatsoever; the second, to guide the spectator's mind to those objects most worthy of its contemplation, and to inform him of the thoughts and feelings with which these were regarded by the artist himself. in attaining the first end, the painter only places the spectator where he stands himself; he sets him before the landscape and leaves him. the spectator is alone. he may follow out his own thoughts as he would in the natural solitude, or he may remain untouched, unreflecting and regardless, as his disposition may incline him. but he has nothing of thought given to him, no new ideas, no unknown feelings, forced on his attention or his heart. the artist is his conveyance, not his companion,--his horse, not his friend. but in attaining the second end, the artist not only _places_ the spectator, but _talks_ to him; makes him a sharer in his own strong feelings and quick thoughts; hurries him away in his own enthusiasm; guides him to all that is beautiful; snatches him from all that is base, and leaves him more than delighted,--ennobled and instructed, under the sense of having not only beheld a new scene, but of having held communion with a new mind, and having been endowed for a time with the keen perception and the impetuous emotion of a nobler and more penetrating intelligence. § . they induce a different choice of material subjects. each of these different aims of art will necessitate a different system of choice of objects to be represented. the first does not indeed imply choice at all, but it is usually united with the selection of such objects as may be naturally and constantly pleasing to all men, at all times; and this selection, when perfect and careful, leads to the attainment of the pure ideal. but the artist aiming at the second end, selects his objects for their meaning and character, rather than for their beauty; and uses them rather to throw light upon the particular thought he wishes to convey, than as in themselves objects of unconnected admiration. § . the first mode of selection apt to produce sameness and repetition. now, although the first mode of selection, when guided by deep reflection, may rise to the production of works possessing a noble and ceaseless influence on the human mind, it is likely to degenerate into, or rather, in nine cases out of ten, it never goes beyond, a mere appeal to such parts of our animal nature as are constant and common--shared by all, and perpetual in all; such, for instance, as the pleasure of the eye in the opposition of a cold and warm color, or of a massy form with a delicate one. it also tends to induce constant repetition of the same ideas, and reference to the same principles; it gives rise to those _rules_ of art which properly excited reynolds's indignation when applied to its higher efforts; it is the source of, and the apology for, that host of technicalities and absurdities which in all ages have been the curse of art and the crown of the connoisseur. § . the second necessitating variety. but art, in its second and highest aim, is not an appeal to constant animal feelings, but an expression and awakening of individual thought: it is therefore as various and as extended in its efforts as the compass and grasp of the directing mind; and we feel, in each of its results, that we are looking, not at a specimen of a tradesman's wares, of which he is ready to make us a dozen to match, but at one coruscation of a perpetually active mind, like which there has not been, and will not be another. § . yet the first is delightful to all. § . the second only to a few. hence, although there can be no doubt which of these branches of art is the highest, it is equally evident that the first will be the most generally felt and appreciated. for the simple statement of the truths of nature must in itself be pleasing to every order of mind; because every truth of nature is more or less beautiful; and if there be just and right selection of the more important of these truths--based, as above explained, on feelings and desires common to all mankind--the facts so selected must, in some degree, be delightful to all, and their value appreciable by all: more or less, indeed, as their senses and instinct have been rendered more or less acute and accurate by use and study; but in some degree by all, and in the same way by all. but the highest art, being based on sensations of peculiar minds, sensations occurring to _them_ only at particular times, and to a plurality of mankind perhaps never, and being expressive of thoughts which could only rise out of a mass of the most extended knowledge, and of dispositions modified in a thousand ways by peculiarity of intellect--can only be met and understood by persons having some sort of sympathy with the high and solitary minds which produced it--sympathy only to be felt by minds in some degree high and solitary themselves. he alone can appreciate the art, who could comprehend the conversation of the painter, and share in his emotion, in moments of his most fiery passion and most original thought. and whereas the true meaning and end of his art must thus be sealed to thousands, or misunderstood by them; so also, as he is sometimes obliged, in working out his own peculiar end, to set at defiance those constant laws which have arisen out of our lower and changeless desires, that whose purpose is unseen, is frequently in its means and parts displeasing. § . the first necessary to the second. § . the exceeding importance of truth. but this want of extended influence in high art, be it especially observed, proceeds from no want of truth in the art itself, but from a want of sympathy in the spectator with those feelings in the artist which prompt him to the utterance of one truth rather than of another. for (and this is what i wish at present especially to insist upon) although it is possible to reach what i have stated to be the first end of art, the representation of facts, without reaching the second, the representation of thoughts, yet it is altogether impossible to reach the second without having previously reached the first. i do not say that a man cannot think, having false basis and material for thought; but that a false thought is worse than the want of thought, and therefore is not art. and this is the reason why, though i consider the second as the real and only important end of all art, i call the representation of facts the first end; because it is necessary to the other, and must be attained before it. it is the foundation of all art; like real foundations it may be little thought of when a brilliant fabric is raised on it; but it must be there: and as few buildings are beautiful unless every line and column of their mass have reference to their foundation, and are suggestive of its existence and strength, so nothing can be beautiful in art which does not in all its parts suggest and guide to the foundation, even where no undecorated portion of it is visible; while the noblest edifices of art are built of such pure and fine crystal that the foundation may all be seen through them; and then many, while they do not see what is built upon that first story, yet much admire the solidity of its brickwork; thinking they understand all that is to be understood of the matter; while others stand beside them, looking not at the low story, but up into the heaven at that building of crystal in which the builder's spirit is dwelling. and thus, though we want the thoughts and feelings of the artist as well as the truth, yet they must be thoughts arising out of the knowledge of truth, and feelings raising out of the contemplation of truth. we do not want his mind to be as badly blown glass, that distorts what we see through it; but like a glass of sweet and strange color, that gives new tones to what we see through it; and a glass of rare strength and clearness too, to let us see more than we could ourselves, and bring nature up to us and near to us. nothing can atone for the want of truth, not the most brilliant imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feeling, (supposing that feeling _could_ be pure and false at the same time;) not the most exalted conception, nor the most comprehensive grasp of intellect, can make amends for the want of truth, and that for two reasons; first, because falsehood is in itself revolting and degrading; and secondly, because nature is so immeasurably superior to all that the human mind can conceive, that every departure from her is a fall beneath her, so that there can be no such thing as an ornamental falsehood. all falsehood must be a blot as well as a sin, an injury as well as a deception. § . coldness or want of beauty no sign of truth. we shall, in consequence, find that no artist can be graceful, imaginative, or original, unless he be truthful; and that the pursuit of beauty, instead of leading us away from truth, increases the desire for it and the necessity of it tenfold; so that those artists who are really great in imaginative power, will be found to have based their boldness of conception on a mass of knowledge far exceeding that possessed by those who pride themselves on its accumulation without regarding its use. coldness and want of passion in a picture, are not signs of the accuracy, but of the paucity of its statements; true vigor and brilliancy are not signs of audacity, but of knowledge. § . how truth may be considered a just criterion of all art. hence it follows that it is in the power of all, with care and time, to form something like a just judgment of the relative merits of artists; for although with respect to the feeling and passion of pictures, it is often as impossible to criticise as to appreciate, except to such as are in some degree equal in powers of mind, and in some respects the same in modes of mind, with those whose works they judge; yet, with respect to the representation of facts, it is possible for all, by attention, to form a right judgment of the respective powers and attainments of every artist. truth is a bar of comparison at which they may all be examined, and according to the rank they take in this examination, will almost invariably be that which, if capable of appreciating them in every respect, we should be just in assigning them; so strict is the connection, so constant the relation between the sum of knowledge and the extent of thought, between accuracy of perception and vividness of idea. i shall endeavor, therefore, in the present portion of the work, to enter with care and impartiality into the investigation of the claims of the schools of ancient and modern landscape to faithfulness in representing nature. i shall pay no regard whatsoever to what may be thought beautiful, or sublime, or imaginative. i shall look only for truth; bare, clear, downright statement of facts; showing in each particular, as far as i am able, what the truth of nature is, and then seeking for the plain expression of it, and for that alone. and i shall thus endeavor, totally regardless of fervor of imagination or brilliancy of effect, or any other of their more captivating qualities, to examine and to judge the works of the great living painter, who is, i believe, imagined by the majority of the public to paint more falsehood and less fact than any other known master. we shall see with what reason. chapter ii. that the truth of nature is not to be discerned by the uneducated senses. § . the common self-deception of men with respect to their power of discerning truth. it may be here inquired by the reader, with much appearance of reason, why i think it necessary to devote a separate portion of the work to the showing of what is truthful in art. "cannot we," say the public, "see what nature is with our own eyes, and find out for ourselves what is like her?" it will be as well to determine this question before we go farther, because if this were possible, there would be little need of criticism or teaching with respect to art. now i have just said that it is possible for all men, by care and attention, to form a just judgment of the fidelity of artists to nature. to do this, no peculiar powers of mind are required, no sympathy with particular feelings, nothing which every man of ordinary intellect does not in some degree possess,--powers, namely, of observation and intelligence, which by cultivation may be brought to a high degree of perfection and acuteness. but until this cultivation has been bestowed, and until the instrument thereby perfected has been employed in a consistent series of careful observation, it is as absurd as it is audacious to pretend to form any judgment whatsoever respecting the truth of art: and my first business, before going a step farther, must be to combat the nearly universal error of belief among the thoughtless and unreflecting, that they know either what nature is, or what is like her, that they can discover truth by instinct, and that their minds are such pure venice glass as to be shocked by all treachery. i have to prove to them that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their philosophy, and that the truth of nature is a part of the truth of god; to him who does not search it out, darkness, as it is to him who does, infinity. § . men usually see little of what is before their eyes. the first great mistake that people make in the matter, is the supposition that they must _see_ a thing if it be before their eyes. they forget the great truth told them by locke, book ii. chap. , § :--"this is certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body, if they reach not the mind, whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception. fire may burn our bodies, with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat or idea of pain be produced in the mind, wherein consists actual perception. how often may a man observe in himself, that while his mind is intently employed in the contemplation of some subjects and curiously surveying some ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impressions of sounding bodies, made upon the organ of hearing, with the same attention that uses to be for the producing the ideas of sound! a sufficient impulse there may be on the organ, but it not reaching the observation of the mind, there follows no perception, and though the motion that uses to produce the idea of sound be made in the ear, yet no sound is heard." and what is here said, which all must feel by their own experience to be true, is more remarkably and necessarily the case with sight than with any other of the senses, for this reason, that the ear is not accustomed to exercise constantly its functions of hearing; it is accustomed to stillness, and the occurrence of a sound of any kind whatsoever is apt to awake attention, and be followed with perception, in proportion to the degree of sound; but the eye, during our waking hours, exercises constantly its function of seeing; it is its constant habit; we always, as far as the _bodily_ organ is concerned, see something, and we always see in the same degree, so that the occurrence of sight, as such, to the eye, is only the continuance of its necessary state of action, and awakes no attention whatsoever, except by the particular nature and quality of the sight. and thus, unless the minds of men are particularly directed to the impressions of sight, objects pass perpetually before the eyes without conveying any impression to the brain at all; and so pass actually unseen, not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen. and numbers of men being pre-occupied with business or care of some description, totally unconnected with the impressions of sight, such is actually the case with them, they receiving from nature only the inevitable sensations of blueness, redness, darkness, light, etc., and except at particular and rare moments, no more whatsoever. § . but more or less in proportion to their natural sensibility to what is beautiful. § . connected with a perfect state of moral feeling. the degree of ignorance of external nature in which men may thus remain, depends, therefore, partly on the number and character of the subjects with which their minds may be otherwise occupied, and partly on a natural want of sensibility to the power of beauty of form, and the other attributes of external objects. i do not think that there is ever such absolute incapacity in the eye for distinguishing and receiving pleasure from certain forms and colors, as there is in persons who are technically said to have no ear, for distinguishing notes, but there is naturally every degree of bluntness and acuteness, both for perceiving the truth of form, and for receiving pleasure from it when perceived. and although i believe even the lowest degree of these faculties can be expanded almost unlimitedly by cultivation, the pleasure received rewards not the labor necessary, and the pursuit is abandoned. so that while in those whose sensations are naturally acute and vivid, the call of external nature is so strong that it must be obeyed, and is ever heard louder as the approach to her is nearer,--in those whose sensations are naturally blunt, the call is overpowered at once by other thoughts, and their faculties of perception, weak originally, die of disuse. with this kind of bodily sensibility to color and form is intimately connected that higher sensibility which we revere as one of the chief attributes of all noble minds, and as the chief spring of real poetry. i believe this kind of sensibility may be entirely resolved into the acuteness of bodily sense of which i have been speaking, associated with love, love i mean in its infinite and holy functions, as it embraces divine and human and brutal intelligences, and hallows the physical perception of external objects by association, gratitude, veneration, and other pure feelings of our moral nature. and although the discovery of truth is in itself altogether intellectual, and dependent merely on our powers of physical perception and abstract intellect, wholly independent of our moral nature, yet these instruments (perception and judgment) are so sharpened and brightened, and so far more swiftly and effectively used, when they have the energy and passion of our moral nature to bring them into action--perception is so quickened by love, and judgment so tempered by veneration, that, practically, a man of deadened moral sensation is always dull in his perception of truth, and thousands of the highest and most divine truths of nature are wholly concealed from him, however constant and indefatigable may be his intellectual search. thus, then, the farther we look, the more we are limited in the number of those to whom we should choose to appeal as judges of truth, and the more we perceive how great a number of mankind may be partially incapacitated from either discovering or feeling it. § . and of the intellectual powers. § . how sight depends upon previous knowledge. next to sensibility, which is necessary for the perception of facts, come reflection and memory, which are necessary for the retention of them, and recognition of their resemblances. for a man may receive impression after impression, and that vividly and with delight, and yet, if he take no care to reason upon those impressions and trace them to their sources, he may remain totally ignorant of the facts that produced them; nay, may attribute them to facts with which they have no connection, or may coin causes for them that have no existence at all. and the more sensibility and imagination a man possesses, the more likely will he be to fall into error; for then he will see whatever he expects, and admire and judge with his heart, and not with his eyes. how many people are misled, by what has been said and sung of the serenity of italian skies, to suppose they must be more _blue_ than the skies of the north, and think that they see them so; whereas, the sky of italy is far more dull and gray in color than the skies of the north, and is distinguished only by its intense repose of light. and this is confirmed by benvenuto cellini, who, i remember, on his first entering france, is especially struck with the clearness of the sky, as contrasted with the _mist_ of italy. and what is more strange still, when people see in a painting what they suppose to have been the source of their impressions, they will affirm it to be truthful, though they feel no such impression resulting from it. thus, though day after day they may have been impressed by the tone and warmth of an italian sky, yet not having traced the feeling to its source, and supposing themselves impressed by its _blueness_, they will affirm a blue sky in a painting to be truthful, and reject the most faithful rendering of all the real attributes of italy as cold or dull. and this influence of the imagination over the senses, is peculiarly observable in the perpetual disposition of mankind to suppose that they _see_ what they _know_, and _vice versa_ in their not seeing what they do not know. thus, if a child be asked to draw the corner of a house, he will lay down something in the form of the letter t. he has no conception that the two lines of the roof, which he knows to be level, produce on his eye the impression of a slope. it requires repeated and close attention before he detects this fact, or can be made to feel that the lines on his paper are false. and the chinese, children in all things, suppose a good perspective drawing to be as false as we feel their plate patterns to be, or wonder at the strange buildings which come to a point at the end. and all the early works, whether of nations or of men, show, by their want of _shade_, how little the eye, without knowledge, is to be depended upon to discover truth. the eye of a red indian, keen enough to find the trace of his enemy or his prey, even in the unnatural turn of a trodden leaf, is yet so blunt to the impressions of shade, that mr. catlin mentions his once having been in great danger from having painted a portrait with the face in half-light, which the untutored observers imagined and affirmed to be the painting of half a face. barry, in his sixth lecture, takes notice of the same want of actual _sight_ in the early painters of italy. "the imitations," he says, "of early art are like those of children--nothing is seen in the spectacle before us, unless it be previously known and sought for; and numberless observable differences between the age of ignorance and that of knowledge, show how much the contraction or extension of our sphere of vision depends upon other considerations than the mere returns of our natural optics." and the deception which takes place so broadly in cases like these, has infinitely greater influence over our judgment of the more intricate and less tangible truths of nature. we are constantly supposing that we see what experience only has shown us, or can show us, to have existence, constantly missing the sight of what we do not know beforehand to be visible: and painters, to the last hour of their lives, are apt to fall in some degree into the error of painting what exists, rather than what they can see. i shall prove the extent of this error more completely hereafter. § . the difficulty increased by the variety of truths in nature. be it also observed, that all these difficulties would lie in the way, even if the truths of nature were always the same, constantly repeated and brought before us. but the truths of nature are one eternal change--one infinite variety. there is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush;--there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. and out of this mass of various, yet agreeing beauty, it is by long attention only that the conception of the constant character--the ideal form--hinted at by all, yet assumed by none, is fixed upon the imagination for its standard of truth. it is not singular, therefore, nor in any way disgraceful, that the majority of spectators are totally incapable of appreciating the truth of nature, when fully set before them; but it is both singular and disgraceful that it is so difficult to convince them of their own incapability. ask the connoisseur, who has scampered over all europe, the shape of the leaf of an elm, and the chances are ninety to one that he cannot tell you; and yet he will be voluble of criticism on every painted landscape from dresden to madrid, and pretend to tell you whether they are like nature or not. ask an enthusiastic chatterer in the sistine chapel how many ribs he has, and you get no answer; but it is odds that you do not get out of the door without his informing you that he considers such and such a figure badly drawn! § . we recognize objects by their least important attributes. compare part i., sect. i., chap. . a few such interrogations as these might indeed convict, if not convince the mass of spectators of incapability, were it not for the universal reply, that they can recognize what they cannot describe, and feel what is truthful, though they do not know what is truth. and this is, to a certain degree, true: a man may recognize the portrait of his friend, though he cannot, if you ask him apart, tell you the shape of his nose or the height of his forehead; and every one could tell nature herself from an imitation; why not then, it will be asked, what is like her from what is not? for this simple reason, that we constantly recognize things by their least important attributes, and by help of very few of those, and if these attributes exist not in the imitation, though there may be thousands of others far higher and more valuable, yet if those be wanting, or imperfectly rendered, by which we are accustomed to recognize the object, we deny the likeness; while if these be given, though all the great and valuable and important attributes may be wanting, we affirm the likeness. recognition is no proof of real and intrinsic resemblance. we recognize our books by their bindings, though the true and essential characteristics lie inside. a man is known to his dog by the smell--to his tailor by the coat--to his friend by the smile: each of these know him, but how little, or how much, depends on the dignity of the intelligence. that which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man, is known only to god. one portrait of a man may possess exact accuracy of feature, and no atom of expression; it may be, to use the ordinary terms of admiration bestowed on such portraits by those whom they please, "as like as it can stare." everybody, down to his cat, would know this. another portrait may have neglected or misrepresented the features, but may have given the flash of the eye, and the peculiar radiance of the lip, seen on him only in his hours of highest mental excitement. none but his friends would know this. another may have given none of his ordinary expressions, but one which he wore in the most excited instant of his life, when all his secret passions and all his highest powers were brought into play at once. none but those who had then seen him might recognize _this_ as like. but which would be the most truthful portrait of the _man_? the first gives the accidents of body--the sport of climate, and food, and time--which corruption inhabits, and the worm waits for. the second gives the stamp of the soul upon the flesh; but it is the soul seen in the emotions which it shares with many--which may not be characteristic of its essence--the results of habit, and education, and accident--a gloze, whether purposely worn or unconsciously assumed, perhaps totally contrary to all that is rooted and real in the mind that it conceals. the third has caught the trace of all that was most hidden and most mighty, when all hypocrisy, and all habit, and all petty and passing emotion--the ice, and the bank, and the foam of the immortal river--were shivered, and broken, and swallowed up in the awakening of its inward strength; when the call and claim of some divine motive had brought into visible being those latent forces and feelings which the spirit's own volition could not summon, nor its consciousness comprehend; which god only knew, and god only could awaken, the depth and the mystery of its peculiar and separating attributes. and so it is with external nature: she has a body and a soul like man; but her soul is the deity. it is possible to represent the body without the spirit; and this shall be like to those whose senses are only cognizant of body. it is possible to represent the spirit in its ordinary and inferior manifestations; and this shall be like to those who have not watched for its moments of power. it is possible to represent the spirit in its secret and high operations; and this shall be like only to those to whose watching they have been revealed. all these are truth; but according to the dignity of the truths he can represent or feel, is the power of the painter,--the justice of the judge. chapter iii. of the relative importance of truths:--first, that particular truths are more important than general ones. § . necessity of determining the relative importance of truths. i have in the last chapter affirmed that we usually recognize objects by their least essential characteristics. this very naturally excites the inquiry what i consider their important characteristics, and why i call one truth more important than another. and this question must be immediately determined, because it is evident, that in judging of the truth of painters, we shall have to consider not only the accuracy with which individual truths are given, but the relative importance of the truths themselves; for as it constantly happens that the powers of art are unable to render _all_ truths, that artist must be considered the most truthful who has preserved the most important at the expense of the most trifling. § . misapplication of the aphorism: "general truths are more important than particular ones." § . falseness of this maxim taken without explanation. § . generality important in the subject, particularity in the predicate. now if we are to begin our investigation in aristotle's way, and look at the [greek: phainomena] of the subject, we shall immediately stumble over a maxim which is in everybody's mouth, and which, as it is understood in practice, is true and useful, as it is usually applied in argument, false and misleading. "general truths are more important than particular ones." often, when in conversation, i have been praising turner for his perpetual variety, and for giving so particular and separate a character to each of his compositions, that the mind of the painter can only be estimated by seeing all that he has ever done, and that nothing can be prophesied of a picture coming into existence on his easel, but that it will be totally different in idea from all that he has ever done before; and when i have opposed this inexhaustible knowledge or imagination, whichever it may be, to the perpetual repetition of some half-dozen conceptions by claude and poussin, i have been met by the formidable objection, enunciated with much dignity and self-satisfaction on the part of my antagonist--"that is not painting general truths, that is painting particular truths." now there must be something wrong in that application of a principle which would make the variety and abundance which we look for as the greatest sign of intellect in the writer, the greatest sign of error in the painter; and we shall accordingly see, by an application of it to other matters, that, taken without limitation, the whole proposition is utterly false. for instance, mrs. jameson somewhere mentions the exclamation of a lady of her acquaintance, more desirous to fill a pause in conversation than abundant in sources of observation: "what an excellent book the bible is!" this was a very general truth indeed, a truth predicable of the bible in common with many other books, but it certainly is neither striking nor important. had the lady exclaimed--"how evidently is the bible a divine revelation!" she would have expressed a particular truth, one predicable of the bible only; but certainly far more interesting and important. had she, on the contrary, informed us that the bible was a book, she would have been still more general, and still less entertaining. if i ask any one who somebody else is, and receive for answer that he is a man, i get little satisfaction for my pains; but if i am told that he is sir isaac newton, i immediately thank my neighbor for his information. the fact is, and the above instances may serve at once to prove it if it be not self-evident, that generality gives importance to the _subject_, and limitation or particularity to the _predicate_. if i say that such and such a man in china is an opium-eater, i say nothing very interesting, because my subject (such a man) is particular. if i say that all men in china are opium-eaters, i say something interesting, because my subject (all men) is general. if i say that all men in china eat, i say nothing interesting, because my predicate (eat) is general. if i say that all men in china eat opium, i say something interesting, because my predicate (eat opium) is particular. now almost everything which (with reference to a given subject) a painter has to ask himself whether he shall represent or not, is a predicate. hence in art, particular truths are usually more important than general ones. how is it then that anything so plain as this should be contradicted by one of the most universally received aphorisms respecting art? a little reflection will show us under what limitations this maxim may be true in practice. § . the importance of truths of species is not owing to their generality. § . all truths valuable as they are characteristic. it is self-evident that when we are painting or describing anything, those truths must be the most important which are most characteristic of what is to be told or represented. now that which is first and most broadly characteristic of a thing, is that which distinguishes its genus, or which makes it what it is. for instance, that which makes drapery _be_ drapery, is not its being made of silk or worsted or flax, for things are made of all these which are not drapery, but the ideas peculiar to drapery; the properties which, when inherent in a thing, make it drapery, are extension, non-elastic flexibility, unity and comparative thinness. everything which has these properties, a waterfall, for instance, if united and extended, or a net of weeds over a wall, is drapery, as much as silk or woollen stuff is. so that these ideas separate drapery in our minds from everything else; they are peculiarly characteristic of it, and therefore are the most important group of ideas connected with it; and so with everything else, that which makes the thing what it is, is the most important idea, or group of ideas connected with the thing. but as this idea must necessarily be common to all individuals of the species it belongs to, it is a general idea with respect to that species; while other ideas, which are not characteristic of the species, and are therefore in reality general, (as black or white are terms applicable to more things than drapery,) are yet particular with respect to that species, being predicable only of certain individuals of it. hence it is carelessly and falsely said, that general ideas are more important than particular ones; carelessly and falsely, i say, because the so-called general idea is important, not because it is common to all the individuals of that species, but because it separates that species from everything else. it is the distinctiveness, not the universality of the truth, which renders it important. and the so-called particular idea is unimportant, not because it is not predicable of the whole species, but because it _is_ predicable of things out of that species. it is not its individuality, but its generality which renders it unimportant. so, then, truths are important just in proportion as they are characteristic, and are valuable, primarily, as they separate the species from all other created things secondarily, as they separate the individuals of that species from one another: thus "silken" or "woollen" are unimportant ideas with respect to drapery, because they neither separate the species from other things, nor even the individuals of that species from one another, since, though not common to the whole of it, they are common to indefinite numbers of it; but the particular folds into which any piece of drapery may happen to fall, being different in many particulars from those into which any other piece of drapery will fall, are expressive not only of the characters of the species, flexibility, (non-elasticity, etc.,) but of individuality and definite character in the case immediately observed, and are consequently most important and necessary ideas. so in a man, to be short-legged or long-nosed or anything else of accidental quality, does not distinguish him from other short-legged or long-nosed animals; but the important truths respecting a man are, first, the marked development of that distinctive organization which separates him as man from other animals, and secondly, that group of qualities which distinguish the individual from all other men, which make him paul or judas, newton or shakspeare. § . otherwise truths of species are valuable because beautiful. such are the real sources of importance in truths as far as they are considered with reference merely to their being general, or particular; but there are other sources of importance which give farther weight to the ordinary opinion of the greater value of those which are general, and which render this opinion right in practice; i mean the intrinsic beauty of the truths themselves, a quality which it is not here the place to investigate, but which must just be noticed, as invariably adding value to truths of species rather than to those of individuality. the qualities and properties which characterize man or any other animal as a species, are the perfection of his or its form of mind, almost all individual differences arising from imperfections; hence a truth of species is the more valuable to art, because it must always be a beauty, while a truth of individuals is commonly, in some sort or way, a defect. § . and many truths, valuable if separate, may be objectionable in connection with others. again, a truth which may be of great interest, when an object is viewed by itself, may be objectionable when it is viewed in relation to other objects. thus if we were painting a piece of drapery as our whole subject, it would be proper to give in it every source of entertainment, which particular truths could supply, to give it varied color and delicate texture; but if we paint this same piece of drapery, as part of the dress of a madonna, all these ideas of richness or texture become thoroughly contemptible, and unfit to occupy the mind at the same moment with the idea of the virgin. the conception of drapery is then to be suggested by the simplest and slightest means possible, and all notions of texture and detail are to be rejected with utter reprobation; but this, observe, is not because they are particular or general or anything else, with respect to the drapery itself, but because they draw the attention to the dress instead of the saint, and disturb and degrade the imagination and the feelings; hence we ought to give the conception of the drapery in the most unobtrusive way possible, by rendering those essential qualities distinctly, which are necessary to the very existence of drapery, and not one more. with these last two sources of the importance of truths, we have nothing to do at present, as they are dependent upon ideas of beauty and relation: i merely allude to them now, to show that all that is alleged by sir j. reynolds and other scientific writers respecting the kind of truths proper to be represented by the painter or sculptor is perfectly just and right; while yet the principle on which they base their selection (that general truths are more important than particular ones) is altogether false. canova's perseus in the vatican is entirely spoiled by an unlucky _tassel_ in the folds of the mantle (which the next admirer of canova who passes would do well to knock off;) but it is spoiled not because this is a particular truth, but because it is a contemptible, unnecessary, and ugly truth. the button which fastens the vest of the sistine daniel is as much a particular truth as this, but it is a necessary one, and the idea of it is given by the simplest possible means; hence it is right and beautiful. § . recapitulation. finally, then, it is to be remembered that all truths as far as their being particular or general affects their value at all, are valuable in proportion as they are particular, and valueless in proportion as they are general; or to express the proposition in simpler terms, every truth is valuable in proportion as it is characteristic of the thing of which it is affirmed. chapter iv. of the relative importance of truths:--secondly, that rare truths are more important than frequent ones. § . no accidental violation of nature's principles should be represented. it will be necessary next for us to determine how far frequency or rarity can affect the importance of truths, and whether the artist is to be considered the most truthful who paints what is common or what is unusual in nature. now the whole determination of this question depends upon whether the unusual fact be a violation of nature's general principles, or the application of some of those principles in a peculiar and striking way. nature sometimes, though very rarely, violates her own principles; it is her principle to make everything beautiful, but now and then, for an instant, she permits what, compared with the rest of her works, might be called ugly; it is true that even these rare blemishes are permitted, as i have above said, for a good purpose, (part i. sec. i. chap. ,) they are valuable in nature, and used as she uses them, are equally valuable (as instantaneous discords) in art; but the artist who should seek after these exclusively, and paint nothing else, though he might be able to point to something in nature as the original of every one of his uglinesses, would yet be, in the strict sense of the word, false,--false to nature, and disobedient to her laws. for instance, it is the practice of nature to give character to the outlines of her clouds, by perpetual angles and right lines. perhaps once in a month, by diligent watching, we might be able to see a cloud altogether rounded and made up of curves; but the artist who paints nothing but curved clouds must yet be considered thoroughly and inexcusably false. § . but the cases in which those principles have been strikingly exemplified. § . which are comparatively rare. § . all repetition is blamable. § . the duty of the painter is the same as that of a preacher. but the case is widely different, when instead of a principle violated, we have one extraordinarily carried out or manifested under unusual circumstances. though nature is constantly beautiful, she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly, for then they would satiate us and pall upon our senses. it is necessary to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. her finest touches are things which must be watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty are the most evanescent. she is constantly doing something beautiful for us, but it is something which she has not done before and will not do again; some exhibition of her general powers in particular circumstances which, if we do not catch at the instant it is passing, will not be repeated for us. now they are these evanescent passages of perfected beauty, these perpetually varied examples of utmost power, which the artist ought to seek for and arrest. no supposition can be more absurd than that effects or truths frequently exhibited are more characteristic of nature than those which are equally necessary by her laws, though rarer in occurrence. both the frequent and the rare are parts of the same great system; to give either exclusively is imperfect truth, and to repeat the same effect or thought in two pictures is wasted life. what should we think of a poet who should keep all his life repeating the same thought in different words? and why should we be more lenient to the parrot-painter who has learned one lesson from the page of nature, and keeps stammering it out with eternal repetition without turning the leaf? is it less tautology to describe a thing over and over again with lines, than it is with words? the teaching of nature is as varied and infinite as it is constant; and the duty of the painter is to watch for every one of her lessons, and to give (for human life will admit of nothing more) those in which she has manifested each of her principles in the most peculiar and striking way. the deeper his research and the rarer the phenomena he has noted, the more valuable will his works be; to repeat himself, even in a single instance, is treachery to nature, for a thousand human lives would not be enough to give one instance of the perfect manifestation of each of her powers; and as for combining or classifying them, as well might a preacher expect in one sermon to express and explain every divine truth which can be gathered out of god's revelation, as a painter expect in one composition to express and illustrate every lesson which can be received from god's creation. both are commentators on infinity, and the duty of both is to take for each discourse one essential truth, seeking particularly and insisting especially on those which are less palpable to ordinary observation, and more likely to escape an indolent research; and to impress that, and that alone, upon those whom they address, with every illustration that can be furnished by their knowledge, and every adornment attainable by their power. and the real truthfulness of the painter is in proportion to the number and variety of the facts he has so illustrated; those facts being always, as above observed, the realization, not the violation of a general principle. the quantity of truth is in proportion to the number of such facts, and its value and instructiveness in proportion to their rarity. all really great pictures, therefore, exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way. chapter v. of the relative importance of truths:--thirdly, that truths of color are the least important of all truths. § . difference between primary and secondary qualities in bodies. in the two last chapters, we have pointed out general tests of the importance of all truths, which will be sufficient at once to distinguish certain classes of properties in bodies, as more necessary to be told than others, because more characteristic, either of the particular thing to be represented, or of the principles of nature. according to locke, book ii. chap. , there are three sorts of qualities in bodies: first, the "bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of their solid parts: those that are in them, whether we perceive them or not." these he calls primary qualities. secondly, "the power that is in any body to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses," (sensible qualities.) and thirdly, "the power that is in any body to make such a change in another body as that it shall operate on our senses differently from what it did before: these last being usually called _powers_." § . the first are fully characteristic, the second imperfectly so. hence he proceeds to prove that those which he calls primary qualities are indeed part of the essence of the body, and characteristic of it; but that the two other kinds of qualities which together he calls secondary, are neither of them more than _powers_ of producing on other objects, or in us, certain effects and sensations. now a power of influence is always equally characteristic of two objects--the active and passive; for it is as much necessary that there should be a power in the object suffering to receive the impression, as in the object acting to give the impression. (compare locke, book ii. chap. , sect. .) for supposing two people, as is frequently the case, perceive different scents in the same flower, it is evident that the power in the flower to give this or that depends on the nature of their nerves, as well as on that of its own particles; and that we are as correct in saying it is a power in us to perceive, as in the object to impress. every power, therefore, being characteristic of the nature of two bodies, is imperfectly and incompletely characteristic of either separately; but the primary qualities, being characteristic only of the body in which they are inherent, are the most important truths connected with it. for the question, what the thing _is_, must precede, and be of more importance than the question, what can it do. § . color is a secondary quality, therefore less important than form. now by locke's definition above given, only bulk, figure, situation, and motion or rest of solid parts, are primary qualities. hence all truths of color sink at once into the second rank. he, therefore, who has neglected a truth of form for a truth of color, has neglected a greater truth for a less one. § . color no distinction between objects of the same species. and that color is indeed a most unimportant characteristic of objects, will be farther evident on the slightest consideration. the color of plants is constantly changing with the season, and of everything with the quality of light falling on it; but the nature and essence of the thing are independent of these changes. an oak is an oak, whether green with spring or red with winter; a dahlia is a dahlia, whether it be yellow or crimson; and if some monster-hunting botanist should ever frighten the flower blue, still it will be a dahlia; but let one curve of the petals--one groove of the stamens be wanting, and the flower ceases to be the same. let the roughness of the bark and the angles of the boughs be smoothed or diminished, and the oak ceases to be an oak; but let it retain its inward structure and outward form, and though its leaves grew white, or pink, or blue, or tri-color, it would be a white oak, or a pink oak, or a republican oak, but an oak still. again, color is hardly ever even a _possible_ distinction between two objects of the same species. two trees, of the same kind, at the same season, and of the same age, are of absolutely the same color; but they are not of the same form, nor anything like it. there can be no difference in the color of two pieces of rock broken from the same place; but it is impossible they should be of the same form. so that form is not only the chief characteristic of species, but the only characteristic of individuals of a species. § . and different in association from what it is alone. again, a color, in association with other colors, is different from the same color seen by itself. it has a distinct and peculiar power upon the retina dependent on its association. consequently, the color of any object is not more dependent upon the nature of the object itself, and the eye beholding it, than on the color of the objects near it; in this respect also, therefore, it is no characteristic. § . it is not certain whether any two people see the same color in things. and so great is the uncertainty with respect to those qualities or powers which depend as much on the nature of the object suffering as of the object acting, that it is totally impossible to prove that one man sees in the same thing the same color that another does though he may use the same name for it. one man may see yellow where another sees blue, but as the effect is constant, they agree in the term to be used for it, and both call it blue, or both yellow, having yet totally different ideas attached to the term. and yet neither can be said to see falsely, because the color is not in the thing, but in the thing and them together. but if they see forms differently, one must see falsely, because the form is positive in the object. my friend may see boars blue for anything i know, but it is impossible he should see them with paws instead of hoofs, unless his eyes or brain are diseased. (compare locke, book ii. chap. xxxii. § .) but i do not speak of this uncertainty as capable of having any effect on art, because, though perhaps landseer sees dogs of the color which i should call blue, yet the color he puts on the canvas, being in the same way blue to him, will still be brown or dog-color to me; and so we may argue on points of color just as if all men saw alike, as indeed in all probability they do; but i merely mention this uncertainty to show farther the vagueness and unimportance of color as a characteristic of bodies. § . form considered as an element of landscape, includes light and shade. § . importance of light and shade in expressing the character of bodies and unimportance of color. before going farther, however, i must explain the sense in which i have used the word "form," because painters have a most inaccurate and careless habit of confining the term to the _outline_ of bodies, whereas it necessarily implies light and shade. it is true that the outline and the chiaroscuro must be separate subjects of investigation with the student; but no form whatsoever can be known to the eye in the slightest degree without its chiaroscuro; and, therefore, in speaking of form generally as an element of landscape, i mean that perfect and harmonious unity of outline with light and shade, by which all the parts and projections and proportions of a body are fully explained to the eye, being nevertheless perfectly independent of sight or power in other objects, the presence of light upon a body being a positive existence, whether we are aware of it or not, and in no degree dependent upon our senses. this being understood, the most convincing proof of the unimportance of color lies in the accurate observation of the way in which any material object impresses itself on the mind. if we look at nature carefully, we shall find that her colors are in a state of perpetual confusion and indistinctness, while her forms, as told by light and shade, are invariably clear, distinct, and speaking. the stones and gravel of the bank catch green reflections from the boughs above; the bushes receive grays and yellows from the ground; every hairbreadth of polished surface gives a little bit of the blue of the sky or the gold of the sun, like a star upon the local color; this local color, changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and modified by the hue of the light, or quenched in the gray of the shadow; and the confusion and blending of tint is altogether so great, that were we left to find out what objects were by their colors only, we would scarcely in places distinguish the boughs of a tree from the air beyond them, or the ground beneath them. i know that people unpractised in art will not believe this at first; but if they have accurate powers of observation, they may soon ascertain it for themselves; they will find that, while they can scarcely ever determine the _exact_ hue of anything, except when it occurs in large masses, as in a green field or the blue sky, the form, as told by light and shade, is always decided and evident, and the source of the chief character of every object. light and shade indeed so completely conquer the distinctions of local color, that the difference in hue between the illumined parts of a white and black object is not so great as the difference (in sunshine) between the illumined and dark side of either separately. § . recapitulation. we shall see hereafter, in considering ideas of beauty, that color, even as a source of pleasure, is feeble compared to form; but this we cannot insist upon at present; we have only to do with simple truth, and the observations we have made are sufficient to prove that the artist who sacrifices or forgets a truth of form in the pursuit of a truth of color, sacrifices what is definite to what is uncertain, and what is essential to what is accidental. chapter vi. recapitulation. § . the importance of historical truths. it ought farther to be observed respecting truths in general, that those are always most valuable which are most historical, that is, which tell us most about the past and future states of the object to which they belong. in a tree, for instance, it is more important to give the appearance of energy and elasticity in the limbs which is indicative of growth and life, than any particular character of leaf, or texture of bough. it is more important that we should feel that the uppermost sprays are creeping higher and higher into the sky, and be impressed with the current of life and motion which is animating every fibre, than that we should know the exact pitch of relief with which those fibres are thrown out against the sky. for the first truths tell us tales about the tree, about what it has been, and will be, while the last are characteristic of it only in its present state, and are in no way talkative about themselves. talkative facts are always more interesting and more important than silent ones. so again the lines in a crag which mark its stratification, and how it has been washed and rounded by water, or twisted and drawn out in fire, are more important, because they tell more than the stains of the lichens which change year by year, and the accidental fissures of frost or decomposition; not but that both of these are historical, but historical in a less distinct manner, and for shorter periods. § . form, as explained by light and shade, the first of all truths. tone, light and color are secondary. hence in general the truths of specific form are the first and most important of all; and next to them, those truths of chiaroscuro which are necessary to make us understand every quality and part of forms, and the relative distances of objects among each other, and in consequence their relative bulks. altogether lower than these, as truths, though often most important as beauties, stand all effects of chiaroscuro which are productive merely of imitations of light and tone, and all effects of color. to make us understand the _space_ of the sky, is an end worthy of the artist's highest powers; to hit its particular blue or gold is an end to be thought of when we have accomplished the first, and not till then. § . and deceptive chiaroscuro the lowest of all. finally, far below all these come those particular accuraciesor tricks of chiaroscuro which cause objects to look projecting from the canvas, not worthy of the name of truths, because they require for their attainment the sacrifice of all others; for not having at our disposal the same intensity of light by which nature illustrates her objects, we are obliged, if we would have perfect deception in one, to destroy its relation to the rest. (compare sect. ii. chap. v.) and thus he who throws one object out of his picture, never lets the spectator into it. michael angelo bids you follow his phantoms into the abyss of heaven, but a modern french painter drops his hero out of the picture frame. this solidity or projection then, is the very lowest truth that art can give; it is the painting of mere matter, giving that as food for the eye which is properly only the subject of touch; it can neither instruct nor exalt, nor please except as jugglery; it addresses no sense of beauty nor of power; and wherever it characterizes the general aim of a picture, it is the sign and the evidence of the vilest and lowest mechanism which art can be insulted by giving name to. chapter vii. general application of the foregoing principles. § . the different selection of facts consequent on the several aims at imitation or at truth. we have seen, in the preceding chapters, some proof of what was before asserted, that the truths necessary for deceptive imitation are not only few, but of the very lowest order. we thus find painters ranging themselves into two great classes; one aiming at the development of the exquisite truths of specific form, refined color, and ethereal space, and content with the clear and impressive suggestion of any of these, by whatsoever means obtained; and the other casting all these aside, to attain those particular truths of tone and chiaroscuro, which may trick the spectator into a belief of reality. the first class, if they have to paint a tree, are intent upon giving the exquisite designs of intersecting undulation in its boughs, the grace of its leafage, the intricacy of its organization, and all those qualities which make it lovely or affecting of its kind. the second endeavor only to make you believe that you are looking at wood. they are totally regardless of truths or beauties of form; a stump is as good as a trunk for all their purposes, so that they can only deceive the eye into the supposition that it _is_ a stump and not canvas. § . the old masters, as a body, aim only at imitation. § . what truths they gave. to which of these classes the great body of the old landscape painters belonged, may be partly gathered from the kind of praise which is bestowed upon them by those who admire them most, which either refers to technical matters, dexterity of touch, clever oppositions of color, etc., or is bestowed on the power of the painter to _deceive_. m. de marmontel, going into a connoisseur's gallery, pretends to mistake a fine berghem for a window. this, he says, was affirmed by its possessor to be the greatest praise the picture had ever received. such is indeed the notion of art which is at the bottom of the veneration usually felt for the old landscape painters; it is of course the palpable, first idea of ignorance; it is the only notion which people unacquainted with art can by any possibility have of its ends; the only test by which people unacquainted with nature can pretend to form anything like judgment of art. it is strange that, with the great historical painters of italy before them, who had broken so boldly and indignantly from the trammels of this notion, and shaken the very dust of it from their feet, the succeeding landscape painters should have wasted their lives in jugglery: but so it is, and so it will be felt, the more we look into their works, that the deception of the senses was the great and first end of all their art. to attain this they paid deep and serious attention to effects of light and tone, and to the exact degree of relief which material objects take against light and atmosphere; and sacrificing every other truth to these, not necessarily, but because they required no others for deception, they succeeded in rendering these particular facts with a fidelity and force which, in the pictures that have come down to us uninjured, are as yet unequalled, and never can be surpassed. they painted their foregrounds with laborious industry, covering them with details so as to render them deceptive to the ordinary eye, regardless of beauty or truth in the details themselves; they painted their trees with careful attention to their pitch of shade against the sky, utterly regardless of all that is beautiful or essential in the anatomy of their foliage and boughs: they painted their distances with exquisite use of transparent color and aerial tone, totally neglectful of all facts and forms which nature uses such color and tone to relieve and adorn. they had neither love of nature, nor feeling of her beauty; they looked for her coldest and most commonplace effects, because they were easiest to imitate; and for her most vulgar forms, because they were most easily to be recognized by the untaught eyes of those whom alone they could hope to please; they did it, like the pharisee of old, to be seen of men, and they had their reward. they do deceive and delight the unpractised eye; they will to all ages, as long as their colors endure, be the standards of excellence with all, who, ignorant of nature, claim to be thought learned in art. and they will to all ages be, to those who have thorough love and knowledge of the creation which they libel, instructive proofs of the limited number and low character of the truths which are necessary, and the accumulated multitude of pure, broad, bold falsehoods which are admissible in pictures meant only to deceive. there is of course more or less accuracy of knowledge and execution combined with this aim at effect, according to the industry and precision of eye possessed by the master, and more or less of beauty in the forms selected, according to his natural taste; but both the beauty and truth are sacrificed unhesitatingly where they interfere with the great effort at deception. claude had, if it had been cultivated, a fine feeling for beauty of form, and is seldom ungraceful in his foliage; but his picture, when examined with reference to essential truth, is one mass of error from beginning to end. cuyp, on the other hand, could paint close truth of everything, except ground and water, with decision and success, but he has no sense of beauty. gaspar poussin, more ignorant of truth than claude, and almost as dead to beauty as cuyp, has yet a perception of the feeling and moral truth of nature which often redeems the picture; but yet in all of them, everything that they can do is done for deception, and nothing for the sake or love of what they are painting. § . the principles of selection adopted by modern artists. modern landscape painters have looked at nature with totally different eyes, seeking not for what is easiest to imitate, but for what is most important to tell. rejecting at once all idea of _bona fide_ imitation, they think only of conveying the impression of nature into the mind of the spectator. and there is, in consequence, a greater sum of valuable, essential, and impressive truth in the works of two or three of our leading modern landscape painters, than in those of all the old masters put together, and of truth too, nearly unmixed with definite or avoidable falsehood; while the unimportant and feeble truths of the old masters are choked with a mass of perpetual defiance of the most authoritative laws of nature. § . general feeling of claude, salvator, and g. poussin, contrasted with the freedom and vastness of nature. i do not expect this assertion to be believed at present; it must rest for demonstration on the examination we are about to enter upon; yet, even without reference to any intricate or deep-laid truths, it appears strange to me, that any one familiar with nature, and fond of her, should not grow weary and sick at heart among the melancholy and monotonous transcripts of her which alone can be received from the old school of art. a man accustomed to the broad, wild seashore, with its bright breakers, and free winds, and sounding rocks, and eternal sensation of tameless power, can scarcely but be angered when claude bids him stand still on some paltry, chipped and chiselled quay with porters and wheelbarrows running against him, to watch a weak, rippling bound and barriered water, that has not strength enough in one of its waves to upset the flower-pots on the wall, or even to fling one jet of spray over the confining stone. a man accustomed to the strength and glory of god's mountains, with their soaring and radiant pinnacles, and surging sweeps of measureless distance, kingdoms in their valleys, and climates upon their crests, can scarcely but be angered when salvator bids him stand still under some contemptible fragment of splintery crag, which an alpine snow-wreath would smother in its first swell, with a stunted bush or two growing out of it, and a volume of manufactory smoke for a sky. a man accustomed to the grace and infinity of nature's foliage, with every vista a cathedral, and every bough a revelation, can scarcely but be angered when poussin mocks him with a black round mass of impenetrable paint, diverging into feathers instead of leaves, and supported on a stick instead of a trunk. the fact is, there is one thing wanting in all the doing of these men, and that is the very virtue by which the work of human mind chiefly rises above that of the daguerreotype or calotype, or any other mechanical means that ever have been or may be invented, love: there is no evidence of their ever having gone to nature with any thirst, or received from her such emotion as could make them, even for an instant, lose sight of themselves; there is in them neither earnestness nor humility; there is no simple or honest record of any single truth; none of the plain words nor straight efforts that men speak and make when they once feel. § . inadequacy of the landscape of titian and tintoret. nor is it only by the professed landscape painters that the great verities of the material world are betrayed: grand as are the motives of landscape in the works of the earlier and mightier men, there is yet in them nothing approaching to a general view nor complete rendering of natural phenomena; not that they are to be blamed for this; for they took out of nature that which was fit for their purpose, and their mission was to do no more; but we must be cautious to distinguish that imaginative abstraction of landscape which alone we find in them, from the entire statement of truth which has been attempted by the moderns. i have said in the chapter on symmetry in the second volume, that all landscape grandeur vanishes before that of titian and tintoret; and this is true of whatever these two giants touched;--but they touched little. a few level flakes of chestnut foliage; a blue abstraction of hill forms from cadore or the euganeans; a grand mass or two of glowing ground and mighty herbage, and a few burning fields of quiet cloud were all they needed; there is evidence of tintoret's having felt more than this, but it occurs only in secondary fragments of rock, cloud, or pine, hardly noticed among the accumulated interest of his human subject. from the window of titian's house at venice, the chain of the tyrolese alps is seen lifted in spectral power above the tufted plain of treviso; every dawn that reddens the towers of murano lights also a line of pyramidal fires along that colossal ridge; but there is, so far as i know, no evidence in any of the master's works of his ever having beheld, much less felt, the majesty of their burning. the dark firmament and saddened twilight of tintoret are sufficient for their end; but the sun never plunges behind san giorgio in aliga without such retinue of radiant cloud, such rest of zoned light on the green lagoon, as never received image from his hand. more than this, of that which they loved and rendered much is rendered conventionally; by noble conventionalities indeed, but such nevertheless as would be inexcusable if the landscape became the principal subject instead of an accompaniment. i will instance only the san pietro martire, which, if not the most perfect, is at least the most popular of titian's landscapes; in which, to obtain light on the flesh of the near figures the sky is made as dark as deep sea, the mountains are laid in with violent and impossible blue, except one of them on the left, which, to connect the distant light with the foreground, is thrown into light relief, unexplained by its materials, unlikely in its position, and in its degree impossible under any circumstances. § . causes of its want of influence on subsequent schools. i do not instance these as faults in the picture: there are no works of very powerful color which are free from conventionality concentrated or diffused, daring or disguised; but as the conventionality of this whole picture is mainly thrown into the landscape, it is necessary, while we acknowledge the virtue of this distance as a part of the great composition, to be on our guard against the license it assumes and the attractiveness of its overcharged color. fragments of far purer truth occur in the works of tintoret; and in the drawing of foliage, whether rapid or elaborate, of masses or details, the venetian painters, taken as a body, may be considered almost faultless models. but the whole field of what they have done is so narrow, and therein is so much of what is only relatively right, and in itself false or imperfect, that the young and inexperienced painter could run no greater risk than the too early taking them for teachers; and to the general spectator their landscape is valuable rather as a means of peculiar and solemn emotion than as ministering to, or inspiring the universal love of nature. hence while men of serious mind, especially those whose pursuits have brought them into continued relations with the peopled rather than the lonely world, will always look to the venetian painters as having touched those simple chords of landscape harmony which are most in unison with earnest and melancholy feeling; those whose philosophy is more cheerful and more extended, as having been trained and colored among simple and solitary nature, will seek for a wider and more systematic circle of teaching: they may grant that the barred horizontal gloom of the titian sky, and the massy leaves of the titian forest are among the most sublime of the conceivable forms of material things; but they know that the virtue of these very forms is to be learned only by right comparison of them with the cheerfulness, fulness and comparative inquietness of other hours and scenes; that they are not intended for the continual food, but the occasional soothing of the human heart; that there is a lesson of not less value in its place, though of less concluding and sealing authority, in every one of the more humble phases of material things: and that there are some lessons of equal or greater authority which these masters neither taught nor received. and until the school of modern landscape arose art had never noted the links of this mighty chain; it mattered not that a fragment lay here and there, no heavenly lightning could descend by it; the landscape of the venetians was without effect on any contemporary in subsequent schools; it still remains on the continent as useless as if it had never existed; and at this moment german and italian landscapes, of which no words are scornful enough to befit the utter degradation, hang in the venetian academy in the next room to the desert of titian and the paradise of tintoret.[ ] § . the value of inferior works of art how to be estimated. that then which i would have the reader inquire respecting every work of art of undetermined merit submitted to his judgment, is not whether it be a work of especial grandeur, importance, or power; but whether it have _any_ virtue or substance as a link in this chain of truth, whether it have recorded or interpreted anything before unknown, whether it have added one single stone to our heaven-pointing pyramid, cut away one dark bough, or levelled one rugged hillock in our path. this, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done, for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to his race. god appoints to every one of his creatures a separate mission, and if they discharge it honorably, if they quit themselves like men and faithfully follow that light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of service constant and holy. degrees infinite of lustre there must always be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race forever-- "fool not," says george herbert, "for all may have, if they dare choose, a glorious life or grave." if, on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness achieved, if there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, if it be an envious or powerless imitation of other men's labors, if it be a display of mere manual dexterity or curious manufacture, or if in any other mode it show itself as having its origin in vanity,--cast it out. it matters not what powers of mind may have been concerned or corrupted in it, all have lost their savor, it is worse than worthless;--perilous--cast it out. works of art are indeed always of mixed kind, their honesty being more or less corrupted by the various weaknesses of the painter, by his vanity, his idleness, or his cowardice; (the fear of doing right has far more influence on art than is commonly thought,) that only is altogether to be rejected which is altogether vain, idle, and cowardly. of the rest the rank is to be estimated rather by the purity of their metal than the coined value of it. § . religious landscape of italy. the admirableness of its completion. keeping these principles in view, let us endeavor to obtain something like a general view of the assistance which has been rendered to our study of nature by the various occurrences of landscape in elder art, and by the more exclusively directed labors of modern schools. to the ideal landscape of the early religious painters of italy i have alluded in the concluding chapter of the second volume. it is absolutely right and beautiful in its peculiar application; but its grasp of nature is narrow and its treatment in most respects too severe and conventional to form a profitable example when the landscape is to be alone the subject of thought. the great virtue of it is its entire, exquisite, and humble realization of those objects it selects; in this respect differing from such german imitations of it as i have met with, that there is no effort of any fanciful or ornamental modifications, but loving fidelity to the thing studied. the foreground plants are usually neither exaggerated nor stiffened; they do not form arches or frames or borders; their grace is unconfined, their simplicity undestroyed. cima da conegliano, in his picture in the church of the madonna dell' orto at venice, has given us the oak, the fig, the beautiful "erba della madonna" on the wall, precisely such a bunch of it as may be seen growing at this day on the marble steps of that very church; ivy and other creepers, and a strawberry plant in the foreground, with a blossom and a berry just set, and one half ripe and one ripe, all patiently and innocently painted from the real thing, and therefore most divine. fra angelico's use of the oxalis acetosella is as faithful in representation as touching in feeling.[ ] the ferns that grow on the walls of fiesole may be seen in their simple verity on the architecture of ghirlandajo. the rose, the myrtle, and the lily, the olive and orange, pomegranate and vine, have received their fairest portraiture where they bear a sacred character; even the common plantains and mallows of the waysides are touched with deep reverence by raffaelle; and indeed for the perfect treatment of details of this kind, treatment as delicate and affectionate as it is elevated and manly, it is to the works of these schools alone that we can refer. and on this their peculiar excellence i should the more earnestly insist, because it is of a kind altogether neglected by the english school, and with most unfortunate result, many of our best painters missing their deserved rank solely from the want of it, as gainsborough; and all being more or less checked in their progress or vulgarized in their aim. § . finish, and the want of it, how right and how wrong. it is a misfortune for all honest critics, that hardly any quality of art is independently to be praised, and without reference to the motive from which it resulted, and the place in which it appears; so that no principle can be simply enforced but it shall seem to countenance a vice; while the work of qualification and explanation both weakens the force of what is said, and is not perhaps always likely to be with patience received: so also those who desire to misunderstand or to oppose have it always in their power to become obtuse listeners or specious opponents. thus i hardly dare insist upon the virtue of completion, lest i should be supposed a defender of wouvermans or gerard dow; neither can i adequately praise the power of tintoret, without fearing to be thought adverse to holbein or perugino. the fact is, that both finish and impetuosity, specific minuteness, or large abstraction, may be the signs of passion, or of its reverse; may result from affection or indifference, intellect or dulness. some men finish from intense love of the beautiful in the smallest parts of what they do; others in pure incapability of comprehending anything but parts; others to show their dexterity with the brush, and prove expenditure of time. some are impetuous and bold in their handling, from having great thoughts to express which are independent of detail; others because they have bad taste or have been badly taught; others from vanity, and others from indolence. (compare vol. ii. chap. ix. § .) now both the finish and incompletion are right where they are the signs of passion or of thought, and both are wrong, and i think the finish the more contemptible of the two, when they cease to be so. the modern italians will paint every leaf of a laurel or rose-bush without the slightest feeling of their beauty or character; and without showing one spark of intellect or affection from beginning to end. anything is better than this; and yet the very highest schools _do_ the same thing, or nearly so, but with totally different motives and perceptions, and the result is divine. on the whole, i conceive that the extremes of good and evil lie with the finishers, and that whatever glorious power we may admit in men like tintoret, whatever attractiveness of method to rubens, rembrandt, or, though in far less degree, our own reynolds, still the thoroughly great men are those who have done everything thoroughly, and who, in a word, have never despised anything, however small, of god's making. and this is the chief fault of our english landscapists, that they have not the intense all-observing penetration of well-balanced mind; they have not, except in one or two instances, anything of that feeling which wordsworth shows in the following lines:-- "so fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive;-- would that the little flowers were born to live conscious of half the pleasure which they give. that to this mountain daisy's self were known _the beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown on the smooth surface of this naked stone._" that is a little bit of good, downright, foreground painting--no mistake about it; daisy, and shadow, and stone texture and all. our painters must come to this before they have done their duty; and yet, on the other hand, let them beware of finishing, for the sake of finish, all over their picture. the ground is not to be all over daisies, nor is every daisy to have its star-shaped shadow; there is as much finish in the right concealment of things as in the right exhibition of them; and while i demand this amount of specific character where nature shows it, i demand equal fidelity to her where she conceals it. to paint mist rightly, space rightly, and light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing else rightly, but the rule is simple for all that; if the artist is painting something that he knows and loves, as he knows it because he loves it, whether it be the fair strawberry of cima, or the clear sky of francia, or the blazing incomprehensible mist of turner, he is all right; but the moment he does anything as he thinks it ought to be, because he does not care about it, he is all wrong. he has only to ask himself whether he cares for anything except himself; so far as he does he will make a good picture; so far as he thinks of himself a vile one. this is the root of the viciousness of the whole french school. industry they have, learning they have, power they have, feeling they have, yet not so much feeling as ever to force them to forget themselves even for a moment; the ruling motive is invariably vanity, and the picture therefore an abortion. § . the open skies of the religious schools, how valuable. mountain drawing of masaccio. landscape of the bellinis and giorgione. returning to the pictures of the religious schools, we find that their open skies are also of the highest value. their preciousness is such that no subsequent schools can by comparison be said to have painted sky at all, but only clouds, or mist, or blue canopies. the golden sky of marco basaiti in the academy of venice altogether overpowers and renders valueless that of titian beside it. those of francia in the gallery of bologna are even more wonderful, because cooler in tone and behind figures in full light. the touches of white light in the horizon of angelico's last judgment are felt and wrought with equal truth. the dignified and simple forms of cloud in repose are often by these painters sublimely expressed, but of changeful cloud form they show no examples. the architecture, mountains, and water of these distances are commonly conventional; motives are to be found in them of the highest beauty, and especially remarkable for quantity and meaning of incident; but they can only be studied or accepted in the particular feeling that produced them. it may generally be observed that whatever has been the result of strong emotion is ill seen unless through the medium of such emotion, and will lead to conclusions utterly false and perilous, if it be made a subject of cold-hearted observance, or an object of systematic imitation. one piece of genuine mountain drawing, however, occurs in the landscape of masaccio's tribute money. it is impossible to say what strange results might have taken place in this particular field of art, or how suddenly a great school of landscape might have arisen, had the life of this great painter been prolonged. of this particular fresco i shall have much to say hereafter. the two brothers bellini gave a marked and vigorous impulse to the landscape of venice, of gentile's architecture i shall speak presently. giovanni's, though in style less interesting and in place less prominent, occurring chiefly as a kind of frame to his pictures, connecting them with the architecture of the churches for which they were intended, is in refinement of realization, i suppose, quite unrivalled, especially in passages requiring pure gradation, as the hollows of vaultings. that of veronese would look ghostly beside it; that of titian lightless. his landscape is occasionally quaint and strange like giorgione's, and as fine in color, as that behind the madonna in the brera gallery at milan; but a more truthful fragment occurs in the picture in san francesco della vigna at venice; and in the picture of st. jerome in the church of san grisostomo, the landscape is as perfect and beautiful as any background may legitimately be, and finer, as far as it goes, than anything of titian's. it is remarkable for the absolute truth of its sky, whose blue, clear as crystal, and though deep in tone bright as the open air, is gradated to the horizon with a cautiousness and finish almost inconceivable; and to obtain light at the horizon without contradicting the system of chiaroscuro adopted in the figures which are lighted from the right hand, it is barred across with some glowing white cirri which, in their turn, are opposed by a single dark horizontal line of lower cloud; and to throw the whole farther back, there is a wreath of rain cloud of warmer color floating above the mountains, lighted on its under edge, whose faithfulness to nature, both in hue and in its light and shattering form, is altogether exemplary; the wandering of the light among the hills is equally studied, and the whole is crowned by the grand realization of the leaves of the fig-tree alluded to (vol. ii. part iii. chap. ,) as well as of the herbage upon the rocks. considering that with all this care and completeness in the background, there is nothing that is not of meaning and necessity in reference to the figures, and that in the figures themselves the dignity and heavenliness of the highest religious painters are combined with a force and purity of color, greater i think than titian's, it is a work which may be set before the young artist as in every respect a nearly faultless guide. giorgione's landscape is inventive and solemn, but owing to the rarity even of his nominal works i dare not speak of it in general terms. it is certainly conventional, and is rather, i imagine, to be studied for its color and its motives than its details. § . landscape of titian and tintoret. of titian and tintoret i have spoken already. the latter is every way the greater master, never indulging in the exaggerated color of titian, and attaining far more perfect light; his grasp of nature is more extensive, and his view of her more imaginative, (incidental notices of his landscape will be found in the chapter on imagination penetrative, of the second volume,) but he is usually too impatient to carry his thoughts as far out, or to realize with as much substantiality as titian. in the st. jerome of the latter in the gallery of the brera, there is a superb example of the modes in which the objects of landscape may be either suggested or elaborated according to their place and claim. the larger features of the ground, foliage, and drapery, as well as the lion in the lower angle, are executed with a slightness which admits not of close examination, and which, if not in shade, would be offensive to the generality of observers. but on the rock above the lion, where it turns towards the light, and where the eye is intended to dwell, there is a wreath of ivy of which every leaf is separately drawn with the greatest accuracy and care, and beside it a lizard, studied with equal earnestness, yet always with that right grandeur of manner to which i have alluded in the preface. tintoret seldom reaches or attempts the elaboration in substance and color of these objects, but he is even more truth-telling and certain in his rendering of all the great characters of specific form, and as the painter of space he stands altogether alone among dead masters; being the first who introduced the slightness and confusion of touch which are expressive of the effects of luminous objects seen through large spaces of air, and the principles of aerial color which have been since carried out in other fields by turner. i conceive him to be the most powerful painter whom the world has seen, and that he was prevented from being also the most perfect, partly by untoward circumstances in his position and education, partly by the very fulness and impetuosity of his own mind, partly by the want of religious feeling and its accompanying perception of beauty; for his noble treatment of religious subject, of which i have given several examples in the third part, appears to be the result only of that grasp which a great and well-toned intellect necessarily takes of any subject submitted to it, and is wanting in the signs of the more withdrawn and sacred sympathies. but whatever advances were made by tintoret in modes of artistical treatment, he cannot be considered as having enlarged the sphere of landscape conception. he took no cognizance even of the materials and motives, so singularly rich in color, which were forever around him in his own venice. all portions of venetian scenery introduced by him are treated conventionally and carelessly; the architectural characters lost altogether, the sea distinguished from the sky only by a darker green, while of the sky itself only those forms were employed by him which had been repeated again and again for centuries, though in less tangibility and completion. of mountain scenery he has left, i believe, no example so far carried as that of john bellini above instanced. § . schools of florence, milan, and bologna. the florentine and ambrian schools supply us with no examples of landscape, except that introduced by their earliest masters, gradually overwhelmed under renaissance architecture. leonardo's landscape has been of unfortunate effect on art, so far as it has had effect at all. in realization of detail he verges on the ornamental, in his rock outlines he has all the deficiencies and little of the feeling of the earlier men. behind the "sacrifice for the friends" of giotto at pisa, there is a sweet piece of rock incident, a little fountain breaking out at the mountain foot, and trickling away, its course marked by branches of reeds, the latter formal enough certainly, and always in triplets, but still with a sense of nature pervading the whole which is utterly wanting to the rocks of leonardo in the holy family in the louvre. the latter are grotesque without being ideal, and extraordinary without being impressive. the sketch in the uffizii of florence has some fine foliage, and there is of course a certain virtue in all the work of a man like leonardo which i would not depreciate, but our admiration of it in this particular field must be qualified, and our following cautious. no advances were made in landscape, so far as i know, after the time of tintoret; the power of art ebbed gradually away from the derivative schools; various degrees of cleverness or feeling being manifested in more or less brilliant conventionalism. i once supposed there was some life in the landscape of domenichino, but in this i must have been wrong. the man who painted the madonna del rosario and martyrdom of st. agnes in the gallery of bologna, is palpably incapable of doing anything good, great, or right in any field, way, or kind, whatsoever.[ ] § . claude, salvator, and the poussins. though, however, at this period the general grasp of the schools was perpetually contracting, a gift was given to the world by claude, for which we are perhaps hardly enough grateful, owing to the very frequency of our after enjoyment of it. he set the sun in heaven, and was, i suppose, the first who attempted anything like the realization of actual sunshine in misty air. he gives the first example of the study of nature for her own sake, and allowing for the unfortunate circumstances of his education, and for his evident inferiority of intellect, more could hardly have been expected from him. his false taste, forced composition, and ignorant rendering of detail have perhaps been of more detriment to art than the gift he gave was of advantage. the character of his own mind is singular; i know of no other instance of a man's working from nature continually with the desire of being true, and never attaining the power of drawing so much as a bough of a tree rightly. salvator, a man originally endowed with far higher power of mind than claude, was altogether unfaithful to his mission, and has left us, i believe, no gift. everything that he did is evidently for the sake of exhibiting his own dexterity; there is no love of any kind for anything; his choice of landscape features is dictated by no delight in the sublime, but by mere animal restlessness or ferocity, guided by an imaginative power of which he could not altogether deprive himself. he has done nothing which others have not done better, or which it would not have been better not to have done; in nature, he mistakes distortion for energy, and savageness for sublimity; in man, mendicity for sanctity, and conspiracy for heroism. the landscape of nicolo poussin shows much power, and is usually composed and elaborated on right principles, (compare preface to second edition,) but i am aware of nothing that it has attained of new or peculiar excellence; it is a graceful mixture of qualities to be found in other masters in higher degrees. in finish it is inferior to leonardo's, in invention to giorgione's, in truth to titian's, in grace to raffaelle's. the landscapes of gaspar have serious feeling and often valuable and solemn color; virtueless otherwise, they are full of the most degraded mannerism, and i believe the admiration of them to have been productive of extensive evil among recent schools. § . german and flemish landscape. the development of landscape north of the alps, presents us with the same general phases under modifications dependent partly on less intensity of feeling, partly on diminished availableness of landscape material. that of the religious painters is treated with the same affectionate completion; but exuberance of fancy sometimes diminishes the influence of the imagination, and the absence of the italian force of passion admits of more patient and somewhat less intellectual elaboration. a morbid habit of mind is evident in many, seeming to lose sight of the balance and relations of things, so as to become intense in trifles, gloomily minute, as in albert durer; and this mingled with a feverish operation of the fancy, which appears to result from certain habitual conditions of bodily health rather than of mental culture, (and of which the sickness without the power is eminently characteristic of the modern germans;) but with all this there are virtues of the very highest order in those schools, and i regret that my knowledge is insufficient to admit of my giving any detailed account of them. in the landscape of rembrandt and rubens, we have the northern parallel to the power of the venetians. among the etchings and drawings of rembrandt, landscape thoughts may be found not unworthy of titian, and studies from nature of sublime fidelity; but his system of chiaroscuro was inconsistent with the gladness, and his peculiar modes of feeling with the grace, of nature; nor from my present knowledge can i name any work on canvas in which he has carried out the dignity of his etched conceptions, or exhibited any perceptiveness of new truths. not so rubens, who perhaps furnishes us with the first instances of complete unconventional unaffected landscape. his treatment is healthy, manly, and rational, not very affectionate, yet often condescending to minute and multitudinous detail; always as far as it goes pure, forcible, and refreshing, consummate in composition, and marvellous in color. in the pitti palace, the best of its two rubens landscapes has been placed near a characteristic and highly-finished titian, the marriage of st. catherine. but for the grandeur of line and solemn feeling in the flock of sheep, and the figures of the latter work, i doubt if all its glow and depth of tone could support its overcharged green and blue against the open breezy sunshine of the fleming. i do not mean to rank the art of rubens with that of titian, but it is always to be remembered that titian hardly ever paints sunshine, but a certain opalescent twilight which has as much of human emotion as of imitative truth in it,-- "the clouds that gather round the setting sun do take a sober coloring from an eye that hath kept watch o'er man's mortality:" and that art of this kind must always be liable to some appearance of failure when compared with a less pathetic statement of facts. it is to be noted, however, that the licenses taken by rubens in particular instances are as bold as his general statements are sincere. in the landscape just instanced the horizon is an oblique line; in the sunset of our own gallery many of the shadows fall at right angles to the light; and in a picture in the dulwich gallery a rainbow is seen by the spectator at the side of the sun. these bold and frank licenses are not to be considered as detracting from the rank of the painter; they are usually characteristic of those minds whose grasp of nature is so certain and extensive as to enable them fearlessly to sacrifice a truth of actuality to a truth of feeling. yet the young artist must keep in mind that the painter's greatness consists not in his taking, but in his atoning for them. § . the lower dutch schools. among the professed landscapists of the dutch school, we find much dexterous imitation of certain kinds of nature, remarkable usually for its persevering rejection of whatever is great, valuable, or affecting in the object studied. where, however, they show real desire to paint what they saw as far as they saw it, there is of course much in them that is instructive, as in cuyp and in the etchings of waterloo, which have even very sweet and genuine feeling; and so in some of their architectural painters. but the object of the great body of them is merely to display manual dexterities of one kind or another, and their effect on the public mind is so totally for evil, that though i do not deny the advantage an artist of real judgment may derive from the study of some of them, i conceive the best patronage that any monarch could possibly bestow upon the arts, would be to collect the whole body of them into a grand gallery and burn it to the ground. § . english school, wilson and gainsborough. passing to the english school, we find a connecting link between them and the italians formed by richard wilson. had this artist studied under favorable circumstances, there is evidence of his having possessed power enough to produce an original picture; but, corrupted by study of the poussins, and gathering his materials chiefly in their field, the district about rome--a district especially unfavorable, as exhibiting no pure or healthy nature, but a diseased and overgrown flora among half-developed volcanic rocks, loose calcareous concretions, and mouldering wrecks of buildings--and whose spirit, i conceive, to be especially opposed to the natural tone of the english mind, his originality was altogether overpowered, and, though he paints in a manly way and occasionally reaches exquisite tones of color, as in the small and very precious picture belonging to mr. rogers, and sometimes manifests some freshness of feeling, as in the villa of mæcenas of our national gallery, yet his pictures are in general mere diluted adaptations from poussin and salvator, without the dignity of the one or the fire of the other. not so gainsborough, a great name his whether of the english or any other school. the greatest colorist since rubens, and the last, i think, of legitimate colorists; that is to say, of those who were fully acquainted with the power of their material; pure in his english feeling, profound in his seriousness, graceful in his gayety, there are nevertheless certain deductions to be made from his worthiness which yet i dread to make, because my knowledge of his landscape works is not extensive enough to justify me in speaking of them decisively; but this is to be noted of all that i know, that they are rather motives of feeling and color than earnest studies; that their execution is in some degree mannered, and always hasty; that they are altogether wanting in the affectionate detail of which i have already spoken; and that their color is in some measure dependent on a bituminous brown and conventional green which have more of science than of truth in them. these faults may be sufficiently noted in the magnificent picture presented by him to the royal academy, and tested by a comparison of it with the turner (llanberis,) in the same room. nothing can be more attractively luminous or aerial than the distance of the gainsborough, nothing more bold or inventive than the forms of its crags and the diffusion of the broad distant light upon them, where a vulgar artist would have thrown them into dark contrast. but it will be found that the light of the distance is brought out by a violent exaggeration of the gloom in the valley; that the forms of the green trees which bear the chief light are careless and ineffective; that the markings of the crags are equally hasty; and that no object in the foreground has realization enough to enable the eye to rest upon it. the turner, a much feebler picture in its first impression, and altogether inferior in the quality and value of its individual hues, will yet be found to the end more forcible, because unexaggerated; its gloom is moderate and aerial, its light deep in tone, its color entirely unconventional, and the forms of its rocks studied with the most devoted care. with gainsborough terminates the series of painters connected with the elder schools. by whom, among those yet living or lately lost, the impulse was first given to modern landscape, i attempt not to decide. such questions are rather invidious than interesting; the particular tone or direction of any school seems to me always to have resulted rather from certain phases of national character, limited to particular periods, than from individual teaching; and, especially among moderns, what has been good in each master has been commonly original. § . constable, calcott. i have already alluded to the simplicity and earnestness of the mind of constable; to its vigorous rupture with school laws, and to its unfortunate error on the opposite side. unteachableness seems to have been a main feature of his character, and there is corresponding want of veneration in the way he approaches nature herself. his early education and associations were also against him; they induced in him a morbid preference of subjects of a low order. i have never seen any work of his in which there were any signs of his being able to draw, and hence even the most necessary details are painted by him inefficiently. his works are also eminently wanting both in rest and refinement, and fuseli's jesting compliment is too true; for the showery weather in which the artist delights, misses alike the majesty of storm and the loveliness of calm weather: it is great-coat weather, and nothing more. there is strange want of depth in the mind which has no pleasure in sunbeams but when piercing painfully through clouds, nor in foliage but when shaken by the wind, nor in light itself but when flickering, glistening, restless, and feeble. yet, with all these deductions, his works are to be deeply respected as thoroughly original, thoroughly honest, free from affectation, manly in manner, frequently successful in cool color, and especially realizing certain motives of english scenery with perhaps as much affection as such scenery, unless when regarded through media of feeling derived from higher sources, is calculated to inspire. on the works of calcott, high as his reputation stands, i should look with far less respect; i see not any preference or affection in the artist; there is no tendency in him with which we can sympathize, nor does there appear any sign of aspiration, effort, or enjoyment in any one of his works. he appears to have completed them methodically, to have been content with them when completed, to have thought them good, legitimate, regular pictures; perhaps in some respects better than nature. he painted everything tolerably, and nothing excellently; he has given us no gift, struck for us no light, and though he has produced one or two valuable works, of which the finest i know is the marine in the possession of sir j. swinburne, they will, i believe, in future have no place among those considered representative of the english school. § . peculiar tendency of recent landscape. throughout the range of elder art it will be remembered we have found no instance of the faithful painting of mountain scenery, except in a faded background of masaccio's: nothing more than rocky eminences, undulating hills, or fantastic crags, and even these treated altogether under typical forms. the more specific study of mountains seems to have coincided with the most dexterous practice of water-color; but it admits of doubt whether the choice of subject has been directed by the vehicle, or whether, as i rather think, the tendency of national feeling has been followed in the use of the most appropriate means. something is to be attributed to the increased demand for slighter works of art, and much to the sense of the quality of objects now called picturesque, which appears to be exclusively of modern origin. from what feeling the character of middle-age architecture and costume arose, or with what kind of affection their forms were regarded by the inventors, i am utterly unable to guess; but of this i think we may be assured, that the natural instinct and child-like wisdom of those days were altogether different from the modern feeling, which appears to have taken its origin in the absence of such objects, and to be based rather on the strangeness of their occurrence than on any real affection for them; and which is certainly so shallow and ineffective as to be instantly and always sacrificed by the majority to fashion, comfort, or economy. yet i trust that there is a healthy though feeble love of nature mingled with it, nature pure, separate, felicitous, which is also peculiar to the moderns; and as signs of this feeling, or ministers to it, i look with veneration upon many works which, in a technical point of view, are of minor importance. § . g. robson, d. cox. false use of the term "style." i have been myself indebted for much teaching and more delight to those of the late g. robson. weaknesses there are in them manifold, much bad drawing, much forced color, much over finish, little of what artists call composition; but there is thorough affection for the thing drawn; they are serious and quiet in the highest degree, certain qualities of atmosphere and texture in them have never been excelled, and certain facts of mountain scenery never but by them expressed, as, for instance, the stillness and depth of the mountain tarns, with the reversed imagery of their darkness signed across by the soft lines of faintly touching winds; the solemn flush of the brown fern and glowing heath under evening light; the purple mass of mountains far removed, seen against clear still twilight. with equal gratitude i look to the drawings of david cox, which, in spite of their loose and seemingly careless execution, are not less serious in their meaning, nor less important in their truth. i must, however, in reviewing those modern works in which certain modes of execution are particularly manifested, insist especially on this general principle, applicable to all times of art; that what is usually called the style or manner of an artist is, in all good art, nothing but the best means of getting at the particular truth which the artist wanted; it is not a mode peculiar to himself of getting at the same truths as other men, but the _only_ mode of getting the particular facts he desires, and which mode, if others had desired to express those facts, they also must have adopted. all habits of execution persisted in under no such necessity, but because the artist has invented them, or desires to show his dexterity in them, are utterly base; for every good painter finds so much difficulty in reaching the end he sees and desires, that he has no time nor power left for playing tricks on the road to it; he catches at the easiest and best means he can get; it is possible that such means may be singular, and then it will be said that his _style_ is strange; but it is not a style at all, it is the saying of a particular thing in the only way in which it possibly can be said. thus the reed pen outline and peculiar touch of prout, which are frequently considered as mere manner, are in fact the only means of expressing the crumbling character of stone which the artist loves and desires. that character never has been expressed except by him, nor will it ever be expressed except by his means. and it is of the greatest importance to distinguish this kind of necessary and virtuous manner from the conventional manners very frequent in derivative schools, and always utterly to be contemned, wherein an artist, desiring nothing and feeling nothing, executes everything in his own particular mode, and teaches emulous scholars how to do with difficulty what might have been done with ease. it is true that there are sometimes instances in which great masters have employed different means of getting at the same end, but in these cases their choice has been always of those which to them appeared the shortest and most complete; their practice has never been prescribed by affectation or continued from habit, except so far as must be expected from such weakness as is common to all men; from hands that necessarily do most readily what they are most accustomed to do, and minds always liable to prescribe to the hands that which they can do most readily. the recollection of this will keep us from being offended with the loose and blotted handling of david cox. there is no other means by which his object could be attained. the looseness, coolness, and moisture of his herbage; the rustling crumpled freshness of his broad-leaved weeds; the play of pleasant light across his deep heathered moor or plashing sand; the melting of fragments of white mist into the dropping blue above; all this has not been fully recorded except by him, and what there is of accidental in his mode of reaching it, answers gracefully to the accidental part of nature herself. yet he is capable of more than this, and if he suffers himself uniformly to paint beneath his capability, that which began in feeling must necessarily end in manner. he paints too many small pictures, and perhaps has of late permitted his peculiar execution to be more manifest than is necessary. of this, he is himself the best judge. for almost all faults of this kind the public are answerable, not the painter. i have alluded to one of his grander works--such as i should wish always to see him paint--in the preface; another, i think still finer, a red sunset on distant hills, almost unequalled for truth and power of color, was painted by him several years ago, and remains, i believe, in his own possession. § . copley fielding. phenomena of distant color. the deserved popularity of copley fielding has rendered it less necessary for me to allude frequently to his works in the following pages than it would otherwise have been, more especially as my own sympathies and enjoyments are so entirely directed in the channel which his art has taken, that i am afraid of trusting them too far. yet i may, perhaps, be permitted to speak of myself so far as i suppose my own feelings to be representative of those of a class; and i suppose that there are many who, like myself, at some period of their life have derived more intense and healthy pleasure from the works of this painter than of any other whatsoever; healthy, because always based on his faithful and simple rendering of nature, and that of very lovely and impressive nature, altogether freed from coarseness, violence, or vulgarity. various references to that which he has attained will be found subsequently: what i am now about to say respecting what he has _not_ attained, is not in depreciation of what he has accomplished, but in regret at his suffering powers of a high order to remain in any measure dormant. he indulges himself too much in the use of crude color. pure cobalt, violent rose, and purple, are of frequent occurrence in his distances; pure siennas and other browns in his foregrounds, and that not as expressive of lighted but of local color. the reader will find in the following chapters that i am no advocate for subdued coloring; but crude color is not bright color, and there was never a noble or brilliant work of color yet produced, whose real form did not depend on the subduing of its tints rather than the elevation of them. it is perhaps one of the most difficult lessons to learn in art, that the warm colors of distance, even the most glowing, are subdued by the air so as in no wise to resemble the same color seen on a foreground object; so that the rose of sunset on clouds or mountains has a gray in it which distinguishes it from the rose color of the leaf of a flower; and the mingling of this gray of distance, without in the slightest degree taking away the expression of the intense and perfect purity of the color in and by itself, is perhaps the last attainment of the great landscape colorist. in the same way the blue of distance, however intense, is not the blue of a bright blue flower, and it is not distinguished from it by different texture merely, but by a certain intermixture and under current of warm color, which is altogether wanting in many of the blues of fielding's distances; and so of every bright distant color; while in foreground where colors may be, and ought to be, pure, yet that any of them are expressive of light is only to be felt where there is the accurate fitting of them to their relative shadows which we find in the works of giorgione, titian, tintoret, veronese, turner, and all other great colorists in proportion as they are so. of this fitting of light to shadow fielding is altogether regardless, so that his foregrounds are constantly assuming the aspect of overcharged local color instead of sunshine, and his figures and cattle look transparent. § . beauty of mountain foreground. again, the finishing of fielding's foregrounds, as regards their drawing, is minute without accuracy, multitudinous without thought, and confused without mystery. where execution is seen to be in measure accidental, as in cox, it may be received as representative of what is accidental in nature; but there is no part of fielding's foreground that is accidental; it is evidently worked and reworked, dotted, rubbed, and finished with great labor, and where the virtue, playfulness, and freedom of accident are thus removed, one of two virtues must be substituted for them. either we must have the deeply studied and imaginative foreground, of which every part is necessary to every other, and whose every spark of light is essential to the well-being of the whole, of which the foregrounds of turner in the liber studiorum are the most eminent examples i know, or else we must have in some measure the botanical faithfulness and realization of the early masters. neither of these virtues is to be found in fielding's. its features, though grouped with feeling, are yet scattered and inessential. any one of them might be altered in many ways without doing harm; there is no proportioned, necessary, unalterable relation among them; no evidence of invention or of careful thought, while on the other hand there is no botanical or geological accuracy, nor any point on which the eye may rest with thorough contentment in its realization. it seems strange that to an artist of so quick feeling the details of a mountain foreground should not prove irresistibly attractive, and entice him to greater accuracy of study. there is not a fragment of its living rock, nor a tuft of its heathery herbage, that has not adorable manifestations of god's working thereupon. the harmonies of color among the native lichens are better than titian's; the interwoven bells of campanula and heather are better than all the arabesques of the vatican; they need no improvement, arrangement, nor alteration, nothing but love, and every combination of them is different from every other, so that a painter need never repeat himself if he will only be true; yet all these sources of power have been of late entirely neglected by fielding; there is evidence through all his foregrounds of their being mere home inventions, and like all home inventions they exhibit perpetual resemblances and repetitions; the painter is evidently embarrassed without his rutted road in the middle, and his boggy pool at the side, which pool he has of late painted in hard lines of violent blue: there is not a stone, even of the nearest and most important, which has its real lichens upon it, or a studied form or anything more to occupy the mind than certain variations of dark and light browns. the same faults must be found with his present painting of foliage, neither the stems nor leafage being ever studied from nature; and this is the more to be regretted, because in the earlier works of the artist there was much admirable drawing, and even yet his power is occasionally developed in his larger works, as in a bolton abbey on canvas, which was,--i cannot say, exhibited,--but was in the rooms of the royal academy in .[ ] i should have made the preceding remarks with more hesitation and diffidence, but that, from a comparison of works of this kind with the slighter ornaments of the water-color rooms, it seems evident that the painter is not unaware of the deficiencies of these latter, and concedes something of what he would himself desire to what he has found to be the feeling of a majority of his admirers. this is a dangerous modesty, and especially so in these days when the judgment of the many is palpably as artificial as their feeling is cold. § . de wint. there is much that is instructive and deserving of high praise in the sketches of de wint. yet it is to be remembered that even the pursuit of truth, however determined, will have results limited and imperfect when its chief motive is the pride of being true; and i fear that these works, sublime as many of them have unquestionably been, testify more accuracy of eye and experience of color than exercise of thought. their truth of effect is often purchased at too great an expense by the loss of all beauty of form, and of the higher refinements of color; deficiencies, however, on which i shall not insist, since the value of the sketches, as far as they go, is great; they have done good service and set good example, and whatever their failings may be, there is evidence in them that the painter has always done what he believed to be right. § . influence of engraving. j. d. harding. the influence of the masters of whom we have hitherto spoken is confined to those who have access to their actual works, since the particular qualities in which they excel, are in no wise to be rendered by the engraver. those of whom we have next to speak are known to the public in a great measure by the help of the engraver; and while their influence is thus very far extended, their modes of working are perhaps, in some degree modified by the habitual reference to the future translation into light and shade; reference which is indeed beneficial in the care it induces respecting the arrangement of the chiaroscuro and the explanation of the forms, but which is harmful, so far as it involves a dependence rather on quantity of picturesque material than on substantial color or simple treatment, and as it admits of indolent diminution of size and slightness of execution. we should not be just to the present works of j. d. harding unless we took this influence into account. some years back none of our artists realized more laboriously, nor obtained more substantial color and texture; a large drawing in the possession of b. g. windus, esq., of tottenham, is of great value as an example of his manner at the period; a manner not only careful, but earnest, and free from any kind of affectation. partly from the habit of making slight and small drawings for engravers, and partly also, i imagine, from an overstrained seeking after appearances of dexterity in execution, his drawings have of late years become both less solid and less complete; not, however, without attaining certain brilliant qualities in exchange which are very valuable in the treatment of some of the looser portions of subject. of the extended knowledge and various powers of this painter, frequent instances are noted in the following pages. neither, perhaps, are rightly estimated among artists, owing to a certain coldness of sentiment in his choice of subject, and a continual preference of the picturesque to the impressive; proved perhaps in nothing so distinctly as in the little interest usually attached to his skies, which, if aerial and expressive of space and movement, content him, though destitute of story, power, or character: an exception must be made in favor of the very grand sunrise on the swiss alps, exhibited in , wherein the artist's real power was in some measure displayed, though i am convinced he is still capable of doing far greater things. so in his foliage he is apt to sacrifice the dignity of his trees to their wildness, and lose the forest in the copse, neither is he at all accurate enough in his expression of species or realization of near portions. these are deficiencies, be it observed, of sentiment, not of perception, as there are few who equal him in rapidity of seizure of material truth. § . samuel prout. early painting of architecture, how deficient. very extensive influence in modern art must be attributed to the works of samuel prout; and as there are some circumstances belonging to his treatment of architectural subject which it does not come within the sphere of the following chapters to examine, i shall endeavor to note the more important of them here. let us glance back for a moment to the architectural drawing of earlier times. before the time of the bellinis at venice, and of ghirlandajo at florence, i believe there are no examples of anything beyond conventional representation of architecture, often rich, quaint, and full of interest, as memmi's abstract of the duomo at florence at s^ta. maria novella; but not to be classed with any genuine efforts at representation. it is much to be regretted that the power and custom of introducing well-drawn architecture should have taken place only when architectural taste had been itself corrupted, and that the architecture introduced by bellini, ghirlandajo, francia, and the other patient and powerful workmen of the fifteenth century, is exclusively of the renaissance styles; while their drawing of it furnishes little that is of much interest to the architectural draughtsman as such, being always governed by a reference to its subordinate position, so that all forceful shadow and play of color are (most justly) surrendered for quiet and uniform hues of gray and chiaroscuro of extreme simplicity. whatever they chose to do they did with consummate grandeur, (note especially the chiaroscuro of the square window of ghirlandajo's which so much delighted vasari in s^ta. maria novella; and the daring management of a piece of the perspective in the salutation, opposite where he has painted a flight of stairs descending in front, though the picture is twelve feet above the eye); and yet this grandeur, in all these men, results rather from the general power obtained in their drawing of the figure than from any definite knowledge respecting the things introduced in these accessory parts; so that while in some points it is impossible for any painter to equal these accessories, unless he were in all respects as great as ghirlandajo or bellini, in others it is possible for him, with far inferior powers, to attain a representation both more accurate and more interesting. in order to arrive at the knowledge of these, we must briefly take note of a few of the modes in which architecture itself is agreeable to the mind, especially of the influence upon the character of the building which is to be attributed to the signs of age. § . effects of age upon buildings, how far desirable. it is evident, first, that if the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be in signs of antiquity. all that in this world enlarges the sphere of affection or imagination is to be reverenced, and all those circumstances enlarge it which strengthen our memory or quicken our conception of the dead; hence it is no light sin to destroy anything that is old, more especially because, even with the aid of all obtainable records of the past, we, the living, occupy a space of too large importance and interest in our own eyes; we look upon the world too much as our own, too much as if we had possessed it and should possess it forever, and forget that it is a mere hostelry, of which we occupy the apartments for a time, which others better than we have sojourned in before, who are now where we should desire to be with them. fortunately for mankind, as some counterbalance to that wretched love of novelty which originates in selfishness, shallowness, and conceit, and which especially characterizes all vulgar minds, there is set in the deeper places of the heart such affection for the signs of age that the eye is delighted even by injuries which are the work of time; not but that there is also real and absolute beauty in the forms and colors so obtained, for which the original lines of the architecture, unless they have been very grand indeed, are well exchanged, so that there is hardly any building so ugly but that it may be made an agreeable object by such appearances. it would not be easy, for instance, to find a less pleasing piece of architecture than the portion of the front of queen's college, oxford, which has just been restored; yet i believe that few persons could have looked with total indifference on the mouldering and peeled surface of the oolite limestone previous to its restoration. if, however, the character of the building consist in minute detail or multitudinous lines, the evil or good effect of age upon it must depend in great measure on the kind of art, the material, and the climate. the parthenon, for instance, would be injured by any markings which interfered with the contours of its sculptures; and any lines of extreme purity, or colors of original harmony and perfection are liable to injury, and are ill exchanged for mouldering edges or brown weatherstains. but as all architecture is, or ought to be, meant to be durable, and to derive part of its glory from its antiquity, all art that is liable to mortal injury from effects of time is therein out of place, and this is another reason for the principle i have asserted in the second part, page . i do not at this instant recollect a single instance of any very fine building which is not improved up to a certain period by all its signs of age, after which period, like all other human works, it necessarily declines, its decline being in almost all ages and countries accelerated by neglect and abuse in its time of beauty, and alteration or restoration in its time of age. thus i conceive that all buildings dependent on color, whether of mosaic or painting, have their effect improved by the richness of the subsequent tones of age; for there are few arrangements of color so perfect but that they are capable of improvement by some softening and blending of this kind: with mosaic, the improvement may be considered as proceeding almost so long as the design can be distinctly seen; with painting, so long as the colors do not change or chip off. again, upon all forms of sculptural ornament, the effect of time is such, that if the design be poor, it will enrich it; if overcharged, simplify it; if harsh and violent, soften it; if smooth and obscure, exhibit it; whatever faults it may have are rapidly disguised, whatever virtue it has still shines and steals out in the mellow light; and this to such an extent, that the artist is always liable to be tempted to the drawing of details in old buildings as of extreme beauty, which look cold and hard in their architectural lines; and i have never yet seen any restoration or cleaned portion of a building whose effect was not inferior to the weathered parts, even to those of which the design had in some parts almost disappeared. on the front of the church of san michele at lucca, the mosaics have fallen out of half the columns, and lie in weedy ruin beneath; in many, the frost has torn large masses of the entire coating away, leaving a scarred unsightly surface. two of the shafts of the upper star window are eaten entirely away by the sea wind, the rest have lost their proportions, the edges of the arches are hacked into deep hollows, and cast indented shadows on the weed-grown wall. the process has gone too far, and yet i doubt not but that this building is seen to greater advantage now than when first built, always with exception of one circumstance, that the french shattered the lower wheel window, and set up in front of it an escutcheon with "libertas" upon it, which abomination of desolation, the lucchese have not yet had human-heartedness enough to pull down. putting therefore the application of architecture as an accessory out of the question, and supposing our object to be the exhibition of the most impressive qualities of the building itself, it is evidently the duty of the draughtsman to represent it under those conditions, and with that amount of age-mark upon it which may best exalt and harmonize the sources of its beauty: this is no pursuit of mere picturesqueness, it is true following out of the ideal character of the building; nay, far greater dilapidation than this may in portions be exhibited, for there are beauties of other kinds, not otherwise attainable, brought out by advanced dilapidation; but when the artist suffers the mere love of ruinousness to interfere with his perception of the _art_ of the building, and substitutes rude fractures and blotting stains for all its fine chiselling and determined color, he has lost the end of his own art. § . effects of light, how necessary to the understanding of detail. so far of aging; next of effects of light and color. it is, i believe, hardly enough observed among architects that the same decorations are of totally different effect according to their position and the time of day. a moulding which is of value on a building facing south, where it takes deep shadows from steep sun, may be utterly ineffective if placed west or east; and a moulding which is chaste and intelligible in shade on a north side, may be grotesque, vulgar, or confused when it takes black shadows on the south. farther, there is a time of day in which every architectural decoration is seen to best advantage, and certain times in which its peculiar force and character are best explained; of these niceties the architect takes little cognizance, as he must in some sort calculate on the effect of ornament at all times; but to the artist they are of infinite importance, and especially for this reason, that there is always much detail on buildings which cannot be drawn as such, which is too far off, or too minute, and which must consequently be set down in short-hand of some kind or another; and, as it were, an abstract, more or less philosophical, made of its general heads. of the style of this abstract, of the lightness, confusion, and mystery necessary in it, i have spoken elsewhere; at present i insist only on the arrangement and matter of it. all good ornament and all good architecture are capable of being put into short-hand; that is, each has a perfect system of parts, principal and subordinate, of which, even when the complemental details vanish in distance, the system and anatomy yet remain visible so long as anything is visible; so that the divisions of a beautiful spire shall be known as beautiful even till their last line vanishes in blue mist, and the effect of a well-designed moulding shall be visibly disciplined, harmonious, and inventive, as long as it is seen to be a moulding at all. now the power of the artist of marking this character depends not on his complete knowledge of the design, but on his experimental knowledge of its salient and bearing parts, and of the effects of light and shadow, by which their saliency is best told. he must therefore be prepared, according to his subject, to use light, steep or level, intense or feeble, and out of the resulting chiaroscuro select those peculiar and hinging points on which the rest are based, and by which all else that is essential may be explained. the thoughtful command of all these circumstances constitutes the real architectural draughtsman; the habits of executing everything either under one kind of effect or in one manner, or of using unintelligible and meaningless abstracts of beautiful designs, are those which must commonly take the place of it and are the most extensively esteemed.[ ] § . architectural painting of gentile bellini and vittor carpaccio; let us now proceed with our review of those artists who have devoted themselves more peculiarly to architectural subject. foremost among them stand gentile bellini and vittor carpaccio, to whom we are indebted for the only existing faithful statements of the architecture of old venice, and who are the only authorities to whom we can trust in conjecturing the former beauty of those few desecrated fragments, the last of which are now being rapidly swept away by the idiocy of modern venetians. nothing can be more careful, nothing more delicately finished, or more dignified in feeling than the works of both these men; and as architectural evidence they are the best we could have had, all the gilded parts being gilt in the picture, so that there can be no mistake or confusion of them with yellow color or light, and all the frescoes or mosaics given with the most absolute precision and fidelity. at the same time they are by no means examples of perfect architectural drawing; there is little light and shade in them of any kind, and none whatever of the thoughtful observance of temporary effect of which we have just been speaking; so that, in rendering the character of the relieved parts, their solidity, depth, or gloom, the representation fails altogether, and it is moreover lifeless from its very completion, both the signs of age and the effects of use and habitation being utterly rejected; rightly so, indeed, in these instances, (all the architecture of these painters being in background to religious subject,) but wrongly so, if we look to the architecture alone. neither is there anything like aerial perspective attempted; the employment of actual gold in the decoration of all the distances, and the entire realization of their details, as far as is possible on the scale compelled by perspective, being alone sufficient to prevent this, except in the hands of painters far more practised in effect than either gentile or carpaccio. but with all these discrepancies, gentile bellini's church of st. mark's is the best church of st. mark's that has ever been painted, so far as i know; and i believe the reconciliation of true aerial perspective and chiaroscuro with the splendor and dignity obtained by the real gilding and elaborate detail, is a problem yet to be accomplished. with the help of the daguerreotype, and the lessons of color given by the later venetians, we ought now to be able to accomplish it, more especially as the right use of gold has been shown us by the greatest master of effect whom venice herself produced, tintoret, who has employed it with infinite grace on the steps ascended by the young madonna, in his large picture in the church of the madonna dell' orto. perugino uses it also with singular grace, often employing it for golden light on distant trees, and continually on the high light of hair, and that without losing relative distances. § . and of the venetians generally. the great group of venetian painters who brought landscape art, for that time, to its culminating point, have left, as we have already seen, little that is instructive in architectural painting. the causes of this i cannot comprehend, for neither titian nor tintoret appears to despise anything that affords them either variety of form or of color, the latter especially condescending to very trivial details,--as in the magnificent carpet painting of the doge mocenigo; so that it might have been expected that in the rich colors of st. mark's, and the magnificent and fantastic masses of the byzantine palaces, they would have found where-upon to dwell with delighted elaboration. this is, however, never the case, and although frequently compelled to introduce portions of venetian locality in their backgrounds, such portions are always treated in a most hasty and faithless manner, missing frequently all character of the building, and never advanced to realization. in titian's picture of faith, the view of venice below is laid in so rapidly and slightly, the houses all leaning this way and that, and of no color, the sea a dead gray green, and the ship-sails mere dashes of the brush, that the most obscure of turner's venices would look substantial beside it; while in the very picture of tintoret in which he has dwelt so elaborately on the carpet, he has substituted a piece of ordinary renaissance composition for st. mark's, and in the background has chosen the sansovino side of the piazzetta, treating even that so carelessly as to lose all the proportion and beauty of its design, and so flimsily that the line of the distant sea which has been first laid in, is seen through all the columns. evidences of magnificent power of course exist in whatever he touches, but his full power is never turned in this direction. more space is allowed to his architecture by paul veronese, but it is still entirely suggestive, and would be utterly false except as a frame or background for figures. the same may be said with respect to raffaelle and the roman school. § . fresco painting of the venetian exteriors. canaletto. if, however, these men laid architecture little under contribution to their own art, they made their own art a glorious gift to architecture, and the walls of venice, which before, i believe, had received color only in arabesque patterns, were lighted with human life by giorgione, titian, tintoret, and veronese. of the works of tintoret and titian, nothing now, i believe, remains; two figures of giorgione's are still traceable on the fondaco de' tedeschi, one of which, singularly uninjured, is seen from far above and below the rialto, flaming like the reflection of a sunset. two figures of veronese were also traceable till lately, the head and arms of one still remain, and some glorious olive-branches which were beside the other; the figure having been entirely effaced by an inscription in large black letters on a whitewash tablet which we owe to the somewhat inopportunely expressed enthusiasm of the inhabitants of the district in favor of their new pastor.[ ] judging, however, from the rate at which destruction is at present advancing, and seeing that, in about seven or eight years more, venice will have utterly lost every external claim to interest, except that which attaches to the group of buildings immediately around st. mark's place, and to the larger churches, it may be conjectured that the greater part of her present degradation has taken place, at any rate, within the last forty years. let the reader with such scraps of evidence as may still be gleaned from under the stucco and paint of the italian committees of taste, and from among the drawing-room innovations of english and german residents restore venice in his imagination to some resemblance of what she must have been before her fall. let him, looking from lido or fusina, replace in the forest of towers those of the hundred and sixty-six churches which the french threw down; let him sheet her walls with purple and scarlet, overlay her minarets with gold,[ ] cleanse from their pollution those choked canals which are now the drains of hovels, where they were once vestibules of palaces, and fill them with gilded barges and bannered ships; finally, let him withdraw from this scene, already so brilliant, such sadness and stain as had been set upon it by the declining energies of more than half a century, and he will see venice as it was seen by canaletto; whose miserable, virtueless, heartless mechanism, accepted as the representation of such various glory, is, both in its existence and acceptance, among the most striking signs of the lost sensation and deadened intellect of the nation at that time; a numbness and darkness more without hope than that of the grave itself, holding and wearing yet the sceptre and the crown like the corpses of the etruscan kings, ready to sink into ashes at the first unbarring of the door of the sepulchre. [illustration: casa contarini fasan, venice. from a drawing by ruskin.] the mannerism of canaletto is the most degraded that i know in the whole range of art. professing the most servile and mindless imitation, it imitates nothing but the blackness of the shadows; it gives no one single architectural ornament, however near, so much form as might enable us even to guess at its actual one; and this i say not rashly, for i shall prove it by placing portions of detail accurately copied from canaletto side by side with engravings from the daguerreotype; it gives the buildings neither their architectural beauty nor their ancestral dignity, for there is no texture of stone nor character of age in canaletto's touch; which is invariably a violent, black, sharp, ruled penmanlike line, as far removed from the grace of nature as from her faintness and transparency; and for his truth of color, let the single fact of his having omitted _all record, whatsoever, of the frescoes_ whose wrecks are still to be found at least on one half of the unrestored palaces, and, with still less excusableness, all record of the magnificent colored marbles of many whose greens and purples are still undimmed upon the casa dario, casa bianca capello, and multitudes besides, speak for him in this respect. let it be observed that i find no fault with canaletto, for his want of poetry, of feeling, of artistical thoughtfulness in treatment, or of the various other virtues which he does not so much as profess. he professes nothing but colored daguerreotypeism. let us have it: most precious and to be revered it would be: let us have fresco where fresco was, and that copied faithfully; let us have carving where carving is, and that architecturally true. i have seen daguerreotypes in which every figure and rosette, and crack and stain, and fissure are given on a scale of an inch to canaletto's three feet. what excuse is there to be offered for his omitting, on that scale, as i shall hereafter show, all statement of such ornament whatever? among the flemish schools, exquisite imitations of architecture are found constantly, and that not with canaletto's vulgar, black exaggeration of shadow, but in the most pure and silvery and luminous grays. i have little pleasure in such pictures; but i blame not those who have more; they are what they profess to be, and they are wonderful and instructive, and often graceful, and even affecting, but canaletto possesses no virtue except that of dexterous imitation of commonplace light and shade, and perhaps, with the exception of salvator, no artist has ever fettered his unfortunate admirers more securely from all healthy or vigorous perception of truth, or been of more general detriment to all subsequent schools. § . expression of the effects of age on architecture by s. prout. neither, however, by the flemings, nor by any other of the elder schools, was the effect of age or of human life upon architecture ever adequately expressed. what ruins they drew looked as if broken down on purpose, what weeds they put on seemed put on for ornament. their domestic buildings had never any domesticity, the people looked out of their windows evidently to be drawn, or came into the street only to stand there forever. a peculiar studiousness infected all accident; bricks fell out methodically, windows opened and shut by rule; stones were chipped at regular intervals; everything that happened seemed to have been expected before; and above all, the street had been washed and the houses dusted expressly to be painted in their best. we owe to prout, i believe, the first perception, and certainly the only existing expression of precisely the characters which were wanting to old art, of that feeling which results from the influence among the noble lines of architecture, of the rent and the rust, the fissure, the lichen, and the weed, and from the writing upon the pages of ancient walls of the confused hieroglyphics of human history. i suppose, from the deserved popularity of the artist, that the strange pleasure which i find myself in the deciphering of these is common to many; the feeling has been rashly and thoughtlessly contemned as mere love of the picturesque; there is, as i have above shown, a deeper moral in it, and we owe much, i am not prepared to say how much, to the artist by whom pre-eminently it has been excited. for, numerous as have been his imitators, extended as his influence, and simple as his means and manner, there has yet appeared nothing at all to equal him; there is _no_ stone drawing, _no_ vitality of architecture like prout's. i say not this rashly, i have mackenzie in my eye and many other capital imitators; and i have carefully reviewed the architectural work of the academicians, often most accurate and elaborate. i repeat, there is nothing but the work of prout which is true, living, or right in its general impression, and nothing, therefore, so inexhaustibly agreeable. faults he has, manifold, easily detected, and much declaimed against by second-rate artists; but his excellence no one has ever touched, and his lithographic work, (sketches in flanders and germany,) which was, i believe, the first of the kind, still remains the most valuable of all, numerous and elaborate as its various successors have been. the second series (in italy and switzerland) was of less value, the drawings seemed more laborious, and had less of the life of the original sketches, being also for the most part of subjects less adapted for the development of the artist's peculiar powers; but both are fine, and the brussels, louvain, cologne, and nuremberg, subjects of the one, together with the tours, amboise, geneva, and sion of the other, exhibit substantial qualities of stone and wood drawing, together with an ideal appreciation of the present active vital being of the cities, such as nothing else has ever approached. their value is much increased by the circumstance of their being drawn by the artist's own hand upon the stone, and by the consequent manly recklessness of subordinate parts, (in works of this kind, be it remembered, much _is_ subordinate,) which is of all characters of execution the most refreshing. note the scrawled middle tint of the wall behind the gothic well at ratisbonne, and compare this manly piece of work with the wretched smoothness of recent lithography. let it not be thought that there is any inconsistency between what i say here and what i have said respecting finish. this piece of dead wall is as much finished in relation to its _function_ as a wall of ghirlandajo's or leonardo's in relation to theirs, and the refreshing quality is the same in both, and manifest in _all_ great masters, without exception, that of the utter regardlessness of the means so that their end be reached. the same kind of scrawling occurs often in the shade of raffaelle. § . his excellent composition and color. it is not only, however, by his peculiar stone touch nor perception of human character that he is distinguished. he is the most dexterous of all our artists in a certain kind of composition. no one can place figures like him, except turner. it is one thing to know where a piece of blue or white is wanted, and another to make the wearer of the blue apron or white cap come there, and not look as if it were against her will. prout's streets are the only streets that are accidentally crowded, his markets are the only markets where one feels inclined to get out of the way. with others we feel the figures so right where they are, that we have no expectation of their going anywhere else, and approve of the position of the man with the wheelbarrow, without the slightest fear of his running against our legs. one other merit he has, far less generally acknowledged than it should be: he is among our most sunny and substantial colorists. much conventional color occurs in his inferior pictures (for he is very unequal) and some in all; but portions are always to be found of quality so luminous and pure that i have found these works the only ones capable of bearing juxtaposition with turner and hunt, who invariably destroy everything else that comes within range of them. his most beautiful tones occur in those drawings in which there is prevalent and powerful warm gray, his most failing ones in those of sandy red. on his deficiencies i shall not insist, because i am not prepared to say how far it is possible for him to avoid them. we have never seen the reconciliation of the peculiar characters he has obtained with the accurate following out of architectural detail. with his present modes of execution, farther fidelity is impossible, nor has any other mode of execution yet obtained the same results; and though much is unaccomplished by him in certain subjects, and something of over-mannerism may be traced in his treatment of others, as especially in his mode of expressing the decorative parts of greek or roman architecture, yet in his own peculiar gothic territory, where the spirit of the subject itself is somewhat rude and grotesque, his abstract of decoration has more of the spirit of the reality than far more laborious imitation. the spirit of the flemish hotel de ville and decorated street architecture has never been even in the slightest degree felt or conveyed except by him, and by him, to my mind, faultlessly and absolutely; and though his interpretation of architecture that contains more refined art in its details is far less satisfactory, still it is impossible, while walking on his favorite angle of the piazzetta at venice, either to think of any other artist than prout or _not_ to think of _him_. § . modern architectural painting generally. g. cattermole. many other dexterous and agreeable architectural artists we have of various degrees of merit, but of all of whom, it may be generally said, that they draw hats, faces, cloaks, and caps much better than prout, but figures not so well; that they draw walls and windows but not cities, mouldings and buttresses but not cathedrals. joseph nash's work on the architecture of the middle ages is, however, valuable, and i suppose that haghe's works may be depended on for fidelity. but it appears very strange that a workman capable of producing the clever drawings he has, from time to time, sent to the new society of painters in water colors, should publish lithographs so conventional, forced, and lifeless. it is not without hesitation, that i mention a name respecting which the reader may already have been surprised at my silence, that of g. cattermole. there are signs in his works of very peculiar gifts, and perhaps also of powerful genius; their deficiencies i should willingly attribute to the advice of ill-judging friends, and to the applause of a public satisfied with shallow efforts, if brilliant; yet i cannot but think it one necessary characteristic of all true genius to be misled by no such false fires. the antiquarian feeling of cattermole is pure, earnest, and natural; and i think his imagination originally vigorous, certainly his fancy, his grasp of momentary passion considerable, his sense of action in the human body vivid and ready. but no original talent, however brilliant, can sustain its energy when the demands upon it are constant, and all legitimate support and food withdrawn. i do not recollect in any, even of the most important of cattermole's works, so much as a fold of drapery studied out from nature. violent conventionalism of light and shade, sketchy forms continually less and less developed, the walls and the faces drawn with the same stucco color, alike opaque, and all the shades on flesh, dress, or stone, laid in with the same arbitrary brown, forever tell the same tale of a mind wasting its strength and substance in the production of emptiness, and seeking, by more and more blindly hazarded handling, to conceal the weakness which the attempt at finish would betray. this tendency of late, has been painfully visible in his architecture. some drawings made several years ago for an annual illustrative of scott's works were for the most part pure and finely felt--(though irrelevant to our present subject, a fall of the clyde should be noticed, admirable for breadth and grace of foliage, and for the bold sweeping of the water, and another subject of which i regret that i can only judge by the engraving; glendearg at twilight--the monk eustace chased by christie of the clint hill--which i think must have been one of the sweetest pieces of simple border hill feeling ever painted)--and about that time his architecture, though always conventionally brown in the shadows, was generally well drawn, and always powerfully conceived. since then, he has been tending gradually through exaggeration to caricature, and vainly endeavoring to attain by inordinate bulk of decorated parts, that dignity which is only to be reached by purity of proportion and majesty of line. § . the evil in an archæological point of view of misapplied invention in architectural subject. it has pained me deeply, to see an artist of so great original power indulging in childish fantasticism and exaggeration, and substituting for the serious and subdued work of legitimate imagination, monstre machicolations and colossal cusps and crockets. while there is so much beautiful architecture daily in process of destruction around us, i cannot but think it treason to _imagine_ anything; at least, if we must have composition, let the design of the artist be such as the architect would applaud. but it is surely very grievous, that while our idle artists are helping their vain inventions by the fall of sponges on soiled paper, glorious buildings with the whole intellect and history of centuries concentrated in them, are suffered to fall into unrecorded ruin. a day does not now pass in italy without the destruction of some mighty monument; the streets of all her cities echo to the hammer, half of her fair buildings lie in separate stones about the places of their foundation; would not time be better spent in telling us the truth about these perishing remnants of majestic thought, than in perpetuating the ill-digested fancies of idle hours? it is, i repeat, treason to the cause of art for any man to invent, unless he invents something better than has been invented before, or something differing in kind. there is room enough for invention in the pictorial treatment of what exists. there is no more honorable exhibition of imaginative power, than in the selection of such place, choice of such treatment, introduction of such incident, as may produce a noble picture without deviation from one line of the actual truth; and such i believe to be, indeed, in the end the most advantageous, as well as the most modest direction of the invention, for i recollect no single instance of architectural composition by any men except such as leonardo or veronese, who could design their architecture thoroughly before they painted it, which has not a look of inanity and absurdity. the best landscapes and the best architectural studies have been views; and i would have the artist take shame to himself in the exact degree in which he finds himself obliged in the production of his picture to lose any, even of the smallest parts or most trivial hues which bear a part in the great impression made by the reality. the difference between the drawing of the architect and artist[ ] ought never to be, as it now commonly is, the difference between lifeless formality and witless license; it ought to be between giving the mere lines and measures of a building, and giving those lines and measures with the impression and soul of it besides. all artists should be ashamed of themselves when they find they have not the power of being true; the right wit of drawing is like the right wit of conversation, not hyperbole, not violence, not frivolity, only well expressed, laconic truth. § . works of david roberts: their fidelity and grace. among the members of the academy, we have at present only one professedly architectural draughtsman of note, david roberts, whose reputation is probably farther extended on the continent than that of any other of our artists, except landseer. i am not certain, however, that i have any reason to congratulate either of my countrymen upon this their european estimation; for i think it exceedingly probable that in both instances it is exclusively based on their defects; and in the case of mr. roberts, in particular, there has of late appeared more ground for it than is altogether desirable in a smoothness and over-finish of texture which bears dangerous fellowship with the work of our gallic neighbors. the fidelity of intention and honesty of system of roberts have, however, always been meritorious; his drawing of architecture is dependent on no unintelligible lines, or blots, or substituted types: the main lines of the real design are always there, and its hollowness and undercuttings given with exquisite feeling; his sense of solidity of form is very peculiar, leading him to dwell with great delight on the roundings of edges and angles; his execution is dexterous and delicate, singularly so in oil, and his sense of chiaroscuro refined. but he has never done himself justice, and suffers his pictures to fall below the rank they should assume, by the presence of several marring characters, which i shall name, because it is perfectly in his power to avoid them. in looking over the valuable series of drawing of the holy land, which we owe to mr. roberts, we cannot but be amazed to find how frequently it has happened that there was something very white immediately in the foreground, and something very black exactly behind it. the same thing happens perpetually with mr. roberts's pictures; a white column is always coming out of a blue mist, or a white stone out of a green pool, or a white monument out of a brown recess, and the artifice is not always concealed with dexterity. this is unworthy of so skilful a composer, and it has destroyed the impressiveness as well as the color of some of his finest works. it shows a poverty of conception, which appears to me to arise from a deficient habit of study. it will be remembered that of the sketches for this work, several times exhibited in london, every one was executed in the same manner, and with about the same degree of completion: being all of them accurate records of the main architectural lines, the shapes of the shadows, and the remnants of artificial color, obtained, by means of the same grays, throughout, and of the same yellow (a singularly false and cold though convenient color) touched upon the lights. as far as they went, nothing could be more valuable than these sketches, and the public, glancing rapidly at their general and graceful effects, could hardly form anything like an estimate of the endurance and determination which must have been necessary in such a climate to obtain records so patient, entire, and clear, of details so multitudinous as (especially) the hieroglyphics of the egyptian temples; an endurance which perhaps only artists can estimate, and for which we owe a debt of gratitude to mr. roberts most difficult to discharge. but if these sketches were all that the artist brought home, whatever value is to be attached to them as statements of fact, they are altogether insufficient for the producing of pictures. i saw among them no single instance of a downright study; of a study in which the real hues and shades of sky and earth had been honestly realized or attempted; nor were there, on the other hand, any of those invaluable-blotted-five-minutes works which record the unity of some single and magnificent impressions. hence the pictures which have been painted from these sketches have been as much alike in their want of impressiveness as the sketches themselves, and have never borne the living aspect of the egyptian light; it has always been impossible to say whether the red in them (not a pleasant one) was meant for hot sunshine or for red sandstone--their power has been farther destroyed by the necessity the artist seems to feel himself under of eking out their effect by points of bright foreground color, and thus we have been encumbered with caftans, pipes, scymetars, and black hair, when all that we wanted was a lizard, or an ibis. it is perhaps owing to this want of earnestness in study rather than to deficiency of perception, that the coloring of this artist is commonly untrue. some time ago when he was painting spanish subjects, his habit was to bring out his whites in relief from transparent bituminous browns, which though not exactly right in color, were at any rate warm and agreeable; but of late his color has become cold, waxy, and opaque, and in his deep shades he sometimes permits himself the use of a violent black which is altogether unjustifiable. a picture of roslin chapel exhibited in , showed this defect in the recess to which the stairs descend, in an extravagant degree; and another exhibited in the british institution, instead of showing the exquisite crumbling and lichenous texture of the roslin stone, was polished to as vapid smoothness as every french historical picture. the general feebleness of the effect is increased by the insertion of the figures as violent pieces of local color unaffected by the light and unblended with the hues around them, and bearing evidence of having been painted from models or draperies in the dead light of a room instead of sunshine. on these deficiencies i should not have remarked, but that by honest and determined painting from and of nature, it is perfectly in the power of the artist to supply them; and it is bitterly to be regretted that the accuracy and elegance of his work should not be aided by that genuineness of hue and effect which can only be given by the uncompromising effort to paint not a fine picture but an impressive and known _verity_. the two artists whose works it remains for us to review, are men who have presented us with examples of the treatment of every kind of subject, and among the rest with portions of architecture which the best of our exclusively architectural draughtsmen could not excel. § . clarkson stanfield. the frequent references made to the works of clarkson stanfield throughout the subsequent pages render it less necessary for me to speak of him here at any length. he is the leader of the english realists, and perhaps among the more remarkable of his characteristics is the look of common-sense and rationality which his compositions will always bear when opposed to any kind of affectation. he appears to think of no other artist. what he has learned, has been from his own acquaintance with and affection for the steep hills and the deep sea; and his modes of treatment are alike removed from sketchiness or incompletion, and from exaggeration or effort. the somewhat over-prosaic tone of his subjects is rather a condescension to what he supposes to be public feeling, than a sign of want of feeling in himself; for in some of his sketches from nature or from fancy, i have seen powers and perceptions manifested of a far higher order than any that are traceable in his academy works, powers which i think him much to be blamed for checking. the portion of his pictures usually most defective in this respect is the sky, which is apt to be cold and uninventive, always well drawn, but with a kind of hesitation in the clouds whether it is to be fair or foul weather; they having neither the joyfulness of rest, nor the majesty of storm. their color is apt also to verge on a morbid purple, as was eminently the case in the large picture of the wreck on the coast of holland exhibited in , a work in which both his powers and faults were prominently manifested, the picture being full of good painting, but wanting in its entire appeal. there was no feeling of wreck about it; and, but for the damage about her bowsprit, it would have been impossible for a landsman to say whether the hull was meant for a wreck or a guardship. nevertheless, it is always to be recollected, that in subjects of this kind it is probable that much escapes us in consequence of our want of knowledge, and that to the eye of the seaman much may be of interest and value which to us appears cold. at all events, this healthy and rational regard of things is incomparably preferable to the dramatic absurdities which weaker artists commit in matters marine; and from copper-colored sunsets on green waves sixty feet high, with cauliflower breakers, and ninepin rocks; from drowning on planks, and starving on rafts, and lying naked on beaches, it is really refreshing to turn to a surge of stanfield's true salt, serviceable, unsentimental sea. it would be well, however, if he would sometimes take a higher flight. the castle of ischia gave him a grand subject, and a little more invention in the sky, a little less muddiness in the rocks, and a little more savageness in the sea, would have made it an impressive picture; it just misses the sublime, yet is a fine work, and better engraved than usual by the art union. one fault we cannot but venture to find, even in our own extreme ignorance, with mr. stanfield's boats; they never look weather-beaten. there is something peculiarly precious in the rusty, dusty, tar-trickled, fishy, phosphorescent brown of an old boat, and when this has just dipped under a wave and rises to the sunshine it is enough to drive giorgione to despair. i have never seen any effort at this by stanfield; his boats always look new painted and clean; witness especially the one before the ship in the wreck picture above noticed; and there is some such absence of a right sense of color in other portions of his subject; even his fishermen have always clean jackets and unsoiled caps, and his very rocks are lichenless. and, by the way, this ought to be noted respecting modern painters in general, that they have not a proper sense of the value of dirt; cottage children never appear but in fresh got-up caps and aprons, and white-handed beggars excite compassion in unexceptionable rags. in reality, almost all the colors of things associated with human life derive something of their expression and value from the tones of impurity, and so enhance the value of the entirely pure tints of nature herself. of stanfield's rock and mountain drawing enough will be said hereafter. his foliage is inferior; his architecture admirably drawn, but commonly wanting in color. his picture of the doge's palace at venice was quite clay-cold and untrue. of late he has shown a marvellous predilection for the realization, even to actually relieved texture, of old worm-eaten wood; we trust he will not allow such fancies to carry him too far. § . j. m. w. turner. force of national feeling in all great painters. the name i have last to mention is that of j. m. w. turner. i do not intend to speak of this artist at present in general terms, because my constant practice throughout this work is to say, when i speak of an artist at all, the very truth of what i believe and feel respecting him; and the truth of what i believe and feel respecting turner would appear in this place, unsupported by any proof, mere rhapsody. i shall therefore here confine myself to a rapid glance at the relations of his past and present works, and to some notice of what he has failed of accomplishing: the greater part of the subsequent chapters will be exclusively devoted to the examination of the new fields over which he has extended the range of landscape art. it is a fact more universally acknowledged than enforced or acted upon, that all great painters, of whatever school, have been great only in their rendering of what they had seen and felt from early childhood; and that the greatest among them have been the most frank in acknowledging this their inability to treat anything successfully but that with which they had been familiar. the madonna of raffaelle was born on the urbino mountains, ghirlandajo's is a florentine, bellini's a venetian; there is not the slightest effort on the part of any one of these great men to paint her as a jewess. it is not the place here to insist farther on a point so simple and so universally demonstrable. expression, character, types of countenance, costume, color, and accessories are with all great painters whatsoever those of their native land, and that frankly and entirely, without the slightest attempt at modification; and i assert fearlessly that it is impossible that it should ever be otherwise, and that no man ever painted or ever will paint well anything but what he has early and long seen, early and long felt, and early and long loved. how far it is possible for the mind of one nation or generation to be healthily modified and taught by the work of another, i presume not to determine; but it depends upon whether the energy of the mind which receives the instruction be sufficient, while it takes out of what it feeds upon that which is universal and common to all nature, to resist all warping from national or temporary peculiarities. nino pisano got nothing but good, the modern french nothing but evil, from the study of the antique; but nino pisano had a god and a character. all artists who have attempted to assume, or in their weakness have been affected by, the national peculiarities of other times and countries, have instantly, whatever their original power, fallen to third-rate rank, or fallen altogether, and have invariably lost their birthright and blessing, lost their power over the human heart, lost all capability of teaching or benefiting others. compare the hybrid classification of wilson with the rich english purity of gainsborough; compare the recent exhibition of middle-age cartoons for the houses of parliament with the works of hogarth; compare the sickly modern german imitations of the great italians with albert durer and holbein; compare the vile classicality of canova and the modern italians with mino da fiesole, luca della robbia, and andrea del verrocchio. the manner of nicolo poussin is said to be greek--it may be so; this only i know, that it is heartless and profitless. the severity of the rule, however, extends not in full force to the nationality, but only to the visibility of things; for it is very possible for an artist of powerful mind to throw himself well into the feeling of foreign nations of his own time. thus john lewis has been eminently successful in his seizing of spanish character. yet it may be doubted if the seizure be such as spaniards themselves would acknowledge; it is probably of the habits of the people more than their hearts; continued efforts of this kind, especially if their subjects be varied, assuredly end in failure; lewis, who seemed so eminently penetrative in spain, sent nothing from italy but complexions and costumes, and i expect no good from his stay in egypt. english artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in italy, but for this there are collateral causes which it is not here the place to examine. be this as it may, and whatever success may be attained in pictures of slight and unpretending aim, of genre, as they are called, in the rendering of foreign character, of this i am certain, that whatever is to be truly great and affecting must have on it the strong stamp of the native land; not a law this, but a necessity, from the intense hold on their country of the affections of all truly great men; all classicality, all middle-age patent reviving, is utterly vain and absurd; if we are now to do anything great, good, awful, religious, it must be got out of our own little island, and out of this year , railroads and all: if a british painter, i say this in earnest seriousness, cannot make historical characters out of the british house of peers, he cannot paint history; and if he cannot make a madonna of a british girl of the nineteenth century, he cannot paint one at all. § . influence of this feeling on the choice of landscape subject. the rule, of course, holds in landscape; yet so far less authoritatively, that the material nature of all countries and times is in many points actually, and in all, in principle, the same; so that feelings educated in cumberland, may find their food in switzerland, and impressions first received among the rocks of cornwall, be recalled upon the precipices of genoa. add to this actual sameness, the power of every great mind to possess itself of the spirit of things once presented to it, and it is evident, that little limitation can be set to the landscape painter as to the choice of his field; and that the law of nationality will hold with him only so far as a certain joyfulness and completion will be by preference found in those parts of his subject which remind him of his own land. but if he attempt to impress on his landscapes any other spirit than that he has felt, and to make them landscapes of other times, it is all over with him, at least, in the degree in which such reflected moonshine takes place of the genuine light of the present day. the reader will at once perceive how much trouble this simple principle will save both the painter and the critic; it at once sets aside the whole school of common composition, and exonerates us from the labor of minutely examining any landscape which has nymphs or philosophers in it. it is hardly necessary for us to illustrate this principle by any reference to the works of early landscape painters, as i suppose it is universally acknowledged with respect to them; titian being the most remarkable instance of the influence of the native air on a strong mind, and claude, of that of the classical poison on a weak one; but it is very necessary to keep it in mind in reviewing the works of our great modern landscape painter. § . its peculiar manifestation in turner. i do not know in what district of england turner first or longest studied, but the scenery whose influence i can trace most definitely throughout his works, varied as they are, is that of yorkshire. of all his drawings, i think, those of the yorkshire series have the most heart in them, the most affectionate, simple, unwearied, serious finishing of truth. there is in them little seeking after effect, but a strong love of place, little exhibition of the artist's own powers or peculiarities, but intense appreciation of the smallest local minutiæ. these drawings have unfortunately changed hands frequently, and have been abused and ill treated by picture dealers and cleaners; the greater number of them, are now mere wrecks. i name them not as instances, but as proofs of the artist's study in this district; for the affection to which they owe their excellence, must have been grounded long years before. it is to be traced, not only in these drawings of the places themselves, but in the peculiar love of the painter for rounded forms of hills; not but that he is right in this on general principles, for i doubt not, that, with his peculiar feeling for beauty of line, his hills would have been rounded still, even if he had studied first among the peaks of cadore; but rounded to the same extent and with the same delight in their roundness, they would not have been. it is, i believe, to those broad wooded steeps and swells of the yorkshire downs that we in part owe the singular massiveness that prevails in turner's mountain drawing, and gives it one of its chief elements of grandeur. let the reader open the liber studiorum, and compare the painter's enjoyment of the lines in the ben arthur, with his comparative uncomfortableness among those of the aiguilles about the mer de glace. great as he is, those peaks would have been touched very differently by a savoyard as great as he. i am in the habit of looking to the yorkshire drawings, as indicating one of the culminating points in turner's career. in these he attained the highest degree of what he had up to that time attempted, namely, finish and quantity of form united with expression of atmosphere, and light without color. his early drawings are singularly instructive in this definiteness and simplicity of aim. no complicated or brilliant color is ever thought of in them; they are little more than exquisite studies in light and shade, very green blues being used for the shadows, and golden browns for the lights. the difficulty and treachery of color being thus avoided, the artist was able to bend his whole mind upon the drawing, and thus to attain such decision, delicacy, and completeness as have never in any wise been equalled, and as might serve him for a secure foundation in all after experiments. of the quantity and precision of his details, the drawings made for hakewill's italy, are singular examples. the most perfect gem in execution is a little bit on the rhine, with reeds in the foreground, in the possession of b. g. windus, esq., of tottenham; but the yorkshire drawings seem to be on the whole the most noble representatives of his art at this period. about the time of their production, the artist seems to have felt that he had done either all that could be done, or all that was necessary, in that manner, and began to reach after something beyond it. the element of color begins to mingle with his work, and in the first efforts to reconcile his intense feeling for it with his careful form, several anomalies begin to be visible, and some unfortunate or uninteresting works necessarily belong to the period. the england drawings, which are very characteristic of it, are exceedingly unequal,--some, as the oakhampton, kilgarren, alnwick, and llanthony, being among his finest works; others, as the windsor from eton, the eton college, and the bedford, showing coarseness and conventionality. § . the domestic subjects of the liber studiorum. i do not know at what time the painter first went abroad, but among the earliest of the series of the liber studiorum (dates , ,) occur the magnificent mont st. gothard, and little devil's bridge. now it is remarkable that after his acquaintance with this scenery, so congenial in almost all respects with the energy of his mind, and supplying him with materials of which in these two subjects, and in the chartreuse, and several others afterwards, he showed both his entire appreciation and command, the proportion of english to foreign subjects should in the rest of the work be more than two to one; and that those english subjects should be--many of them--of a kind peculiarly simple, and of every-day occurrence, such as the pembury mill, the farm yard composition with the white horse, that with the cocks and pigs, hedging and ditching, watercress gatherers (scene at twickenham,) and the beautiful and solemn rustic subject called a watermill; and that the architectural subjects instead of being taken, as might have been expected of an artist so fond of treating effects of extended space, from some of the enormous continental masses are almost exclusively british; rivaulx, holy island, dumblain, dunstanborough, chepstow, st. catherine's, greenwich hospital, an english parish church, a saxon ruin, and an exquisite reminiscence of the english lowland castle in the pastoral, with the brook, wooden bridge, and wild duck, to all of which we have nothing foreign to oppose but three slight, ill-considered, and unsatisfactory subjects, from basle, lauffenbourg, and another swiss village; and, further, not only is the preponderance of subject british, but of affection also; for it is strange with what fulness and completion the home subjects are treated in comparison with the greater part of the foreign ones. compare the figures and sheep in the hedging and ditching, and the east gate winchelsea, together with the near leafage, with the puzzled foreground and inappropriate figures of the lake of thun; or the cattle and road of the st. catherine's hill, with the foreground of the bonneville; or the exquisite figure with the sheaf of corn, in the watermill, with the vintages of the grenoble subject. in his foliage the same predilections are remarkable. reminiscences of english willows by the brooks, and english forest glades mingle even with the heroic foliage of the �sacus and hesperie, and the cephalus; into the pine, whether of switzerland or the glorious stone, he cannot enter, or enters at his peril, like ariel. those of the valley of chamounix are fine masses, better pines than other people's, but not a bit like pines for all that; he feels his weakness, and tears them off the distant mountains with the mercilessness of an avalanche. the stone pines of the two italian compositions are fine in their arrangement, but they are very pitiful pines; the glory of the alpine rose he never touches; he munches chestnuts with no relish; never has learned to like olives; and, by the vine, we find him in the foreground of the grenoble alps laid utterly and incontrovertibly on his back. i adduce these evidences of turner's nationality (and innumerable others might be given if need were) not as proofs of weakness but of power; not so much as testifying want of perception in foreign lands, as strong hold on his own will; for i am sure that no artist who has not this hold upon his own will ever get good out of any other. keeping this principle in mind, it is instructive to observe the depth and solemnity which turner's feeling received from the scenery of the continent, the keen appreciation up to a certain point of all that is locally characteristic, and the ready seizure for future use of all valuable material. § . turner's painting of french and swiss landscape. the latter deficient. of all foreign countries he has most entirely entered into the spirit of france; partly because here he found more fellowship of scene with his own england, partly because an amount of thought which will miss of italy or switzerland, will fathom france; partly because there is in the french foliage and forms of ground, much that is especially congenial with his own peculiar choice of form. to what cause it is owing i cannot tell, nor is it generally allowed or felt; but of the fact i am certain, that for grace of stem and perfection of form in their transparent foliage, the french trees are altogether unmatched; and their modes of grouping and massing are so perfectly and constantly beautiful that i think of all countries for educating an artist to the perception of grace, france bears the bell; and that not romantic nor mountainous france, not the vosges, nor auvergne, nor provence, but lowland france, picardy and normandy, the valleys of the loire and seine, and even the district, so thoughtlessly and mindlessly abused by english travellers, as uninteresting, traversed between calais and dijon; of which there is not a single valley but is full of the most lovely pictures, nor a mile from which the artist may not receive instruction; the district immediately about sens being perhaps the most valuable from the grandeur of its lines of poplars and the unimaginable finish and beauty of the tree forms in the two great avenues without the walls. of this kind of beauty turner was the first to take cognizance, and he still remains the only, but in himself the sufficient painter of french landscape. one of the most beautiful examples is the drawing of trees engraved for the keepsake, now in the possession of b. g. windus, esq.; the drawings made to illustrate the scenery of the rivers of france supply instances of the most varied character. the artist appears, until very lately, rather to have taken from switzerland thoughts and general conceptions of size and of grand form and effect to be used in his after compositions, than to have attempted the seizing of its actual character. this was beforehand to be expected from the utter physical impossibility of rendering certain effects of swiss scenery, and the monotony and unmanageableness of others. the valley of chamounix in the collection of walter fawkes, esq., i have never seen; it has a high reputation; the hannibal passing the alps in its present state exhibits nothing but a heavy shower and a crowd of people getting wet; another picture in the artist's gallery of a land-fall is most masterly and interesting, but more daring than agreeable. the snowstorm, avalanche, and inundation, is one of his mightiest works, but the amount of mountain drawing in it is less than of cloud and effect; the subjects in the liber studiorum are on the whole the most intensely felt, and next to them the vignettes to rogers's poems and italy. of some recent drawings of swiss subject i shall speak presently. § . his rendering of italian character still less successful. his large compositions how failing. the effect of italy upon his mind is very puzzling. on the one hand, it gave him the solemnity and power which are manifested in the historical compositions of the liber studiorum, more especially the rizpah, the cephalus, the scene from the fairy queen, and the �sacus and hesperie: on the other, he seems never to have entered thoroughly into the spirit of italy, and the materials he obtained there were afterwards but awkwardly introduced in his large compositions. of these there are very few at all worthy of him; none but the liber studiorum subjects are thoroughly great, and these are great because there is in them the seriousness without the materials of other countries and times. there is nothing particularly indicative of palestine in the barley harvest of the rizpah, nor in those round and awful trees; only the solemnity of the south in the lifting of the near burning moon. the rocks of the jason may be seen in any quarry of warwickshire sandstone. jason himself has not a bit of greek about him--he is a simple warrior of no period in particular, nay, i think there is something of the nineteenth century about his legs. when local character of this classical kind is attempted, the painter is visibly cramped: awkward resemblances to claude testify the want of his usual forceful originality: in the tenth plague of egypt, he makes us think of belzoni rather than of moses; the fifth is a total failure, the pyramids look like brick-kilns, and the fire running along the ground bears brotherly resemblance to the burning of manure. the realization of the tenth plague now in his gallery is finer than the study, but still uninteresting; and of the large compositions which have much of italy in them, the greater part are overwhelmed with quantity and deficient in emotion. the crossing the brook is one of the best of these hybrid pictures; incomparable in its tree drawing, it yet leaves us doubtful where we are to look and what we are to feel; it is northern in its color, southern in its foliage, italy in its details, and england in its sensations, without the grandeur of the one, or the healthiness of the other. the two carthages are mere rationalizations of claude, one of them excessively bad in color, the other a grand thought, and yet one of the kind which does no one any good, because everything in it is reciprocally sacrificed; the foliage is sacrificed to the architecture, the architecture to the water, the water is neither sea, nor river, nor lake, nor brook, nor canal, and savors of regent's park; the foreground is uncomfortable ground,--let on building leases. so the caligula's bridge, temple of jupiter, departure of regulus, ancient italy, cicero's villa, and such others, come they from whose hand they may, i class under the general head of "nonsense pictures." there never can be any wholesome feeling developed in these preposterous accumulations, and where the artist's feeling fails, his art follows; so that the worst possible examples of turner's color are found in pictures of this class; in one or two instances he has broken through the conventional rules, and then is always fine, as in the hero and leander; but in general the picture rises in value as it approaches to a view, as the fountain of fallacy, a piece of rich northern italy, with some fairy waterworks; this picture was unrivalled in color once, but is now a mere wreck. so the rape of proserpine, though it is singular that in his academy pictures even his simplicity fails of reaching ideality; in this picture of proserpine the nature is not the grand nature of all time, it is indubitably modern,[ ] and we are perfectly electrified at anybody's being carried away in the corner except by people with spiky hats and carabines. this is traceable to several causes; partly to the want of any grand specific form, partly to the too evident middle-age character of the ruins crowning the hills, and to a multiplicity of minor causes which we cannot at present enter into. § . his views of italy destroyed by brilliancy and redundant quantity. neither in his actual views of italy has turner ever caught her true spirit, except in the little vignettes to rogers's poems. the villa of galileo, the nameless composition with stone pines, the several villa moonlights, and the convent compositions in the voyage of columbus, are altogether exquisite; but this is owing chiefly to their simplicity and perhaps in some measure to their smallness of size. none of his large pictures at all equal them; the bay of baiæ is encumbered with material, it contains ten times as much as is necessary to a good picture, and yet is so crude in color as to look unfinished. the palestrina is fall of raw white, and has a look of hampton court about its long avenue; the modern italy is purely english in its near foliage; it is composed from tivoli material enriched and arranged most dexterously, but it has the look of a rich arrangement, and not the virtue of the real thing. the early tivoli, a large drawing taken from below the falls, was as little true, and still less fortunate, the trees there being altogether affected and artificial. the florence engraved in the keepsake is a glorious drawing, as far as regards the passage with the bridge and sunlight on the arno, the cascine foliage, and distant plain, and the towers of the fortress on the left; but the details of the duomo and the city are entirely missed, and with them the majesty of the whole scene. the vines and melons of the foreground are disorderly, and its cypresses conventional; in fact, i recollect no instance of turner's drawing a cypress except in general terms. the chief reason of these failures i imagine to be the effort of the artist to put joyousness and brilliancy of effect upon scenes eminently pensive, to substitute radiance for serenity of light, and to force the freedom and breadth of line which he learned to love on english downs and highland moors, out of a country dotted by campaniles and square convents, bristled with cypresses, partitioned by walls, and gone up and down by steps. in one of the cities of italy he had no such difficulties to encounter. at venice he found freedom of space, brilliancy of light, variety of color, massy simplicity of general form; and to venice we owe many of the motives in which his highest powers of color have been displayed after that change in his system of which we must now take note. § . changes introduced by him in the received system of art. among the earlier paintings of turner, the culminating period, marked by the yorkshire series in his drawings, is distinguished by great solemnity and simplicity of subject, prevalent gloom in light and shade, and brown in the hue, the drawing manly but careful, the minutiæ sometimes exquisitely delicate. all the finest works of this period are, i believe, without exception, views, or quiet single thoughts. the calder bridge, belonging to e. bicknell, esq., is a most pure and beautiful example. the ivy bridge i imagine to be later, but its rock foreground is altogether unrivalled and remarkable for its delicacy of detail; a butterfly is seen settled on one of the large brown stones in the midst of the torrent. two paintings of bonneville, in savoy, one in the possession of abel allnutt, esq., the other, and, i think, the finest, in a collection at birmingham, show more variety of color than is usual with him at the period, and are in every respect magnificent examples. pictures of this class are of peculiar value, for the larger compositions of the same period are all poor in color, and most of them much damaged, but the smaller works have been far finer originally, and their color seems secure. there is nothing in the range of landscape art equal to them in their way, but the full character and capacity of the painter is not in them. grand as they are in their sobriety, they still leave much to be desired; there is great heaviness in their shadows, the material is never thoroughly vanquished, (though this partly for a very noble reason, that the painter is always thinking of and referring to nature, and indulges in no artistical conventionalities,) and sometimes the handling appears feeble. in warmth, lightness, and transparency they have no chance against gainsborough; in clear skies and air tone they are alike unfortunate when they provoke comparison with claude; and in force and solemnity they can in no wise stand with the landscape of the venetians. the painter evidently felt that he had farther powers, and pressed forward into the field where alone they could be brought into play. it was impossible for him, with all his keen and long-disciplined perceptions, not to feel that the real color of nature had never been attempted by any school; and that though conventional representations had been given by the venetians of sunlight and twilight, by invariably rendering the whites golden and the blues green, yet of the actual, joyous, pure, roseate hues of the external world no record had ever been given. he saw also that the finish and specific grandeur of nature had been given, but her fulness, space, and mystery never; and he saw that the great landscape painters had always sunk the lower middle tints of nature in extreme shade, bringing the entire melody of color as many degrees down as their possible light was inferior to nature's; and that in so doing a gloomy principle had influenced them even in their choice of subject. for the conventional color he substituted a pure straightforward rendering of fact, as far as was in his power; and that not of such fact as had been before even suggested, but of all that is _most_ brilliant, beautiful, and inimitable; he went to the cataract for its iris, to the conflagration for its flames, asked of the sea its intensest azure, of the sky its clearest gold. for the limited space and defined forms of elder landscape, he substituted the quantity and the mystery of the vastest scenes of earth; and for the subdued chiaroscuro he substituted first a balanced diminution of oppositions throughout the scale, and afterwards, in one or two instances, attempted the reverse of the old principle, taking the lowest portion of the scale truly, and merging the upper part in high light. § . difficulties of his later manner. resultant deficiencies. innovations so daring and so various could not be introduced without corresponding peril: the difficulties that lay in his way were more than any human intellect could altogether surmount. in his time there has been no one system of color generally approved; every artist has his own method and his own vehicle; how to do what gainsborough did, we know not; much less what titian; to invent a new system of color can hardly be expected of those who cannot recover the old. to obtain perfectly satisfactory results in color under the new conditions introduced by turner, would at least have required the exertion of all his energies in that sole direction. but color has always been only his second object. the effects of space and form, in which he delights, often require the employment of means and method totally at variance with those necessary for the obtaining of pure color. it is physically impossible, for instance, rightly to draw certain forms of the upper clouds with the brush; nothing will do it but the pallet knife with loaded white after the blue ground is prepared. now it is impossible that a cloud so drawn, however glazed afterwards, should have the virtue of a thin warm tint of titian's, showing the canvas throughout. so it happens continually. add to these difficulties, those of the peculiar subjects attempted, and to these again, all that belong to the altered system of chiaroscuro, and it is evident that we must not be surprised at finding many deficiencies or faults in such works, especially in the earlier of them, nor even suffer ourselves to be withdrawn by the pursuit of what seems censurable from our devotion to what is mighty. notwithstanding, in some chosen examples of pictures of this kind, i will name three: juliet and her nurse; the old temeraire, and the slave ship: i do not admit that there are at the time of their first appearing on the walls of the royal academy, any demonstrably avoidable faults. i do not deny that there may be, nay, that it is likely there are; but there is no living artist in europe whose judgment might safely be taken on the subject, or who could without arrogance affirm of any part of such a picture, that it was _wrong_; i am perfectly willing to allow, that the lemon yellow is not properly representative of the yellow of the sky, that the loading of the color is in many places disagreeable, that many of the details are drawn with a kind of imperfection different from what they would have in nature, and that many of the parts fail of imitation, especially to an uneducated eye. but no living authority is of weight enough to prove that the virtues of the picture could have been obtained at a less sacrifice, or that they are not worth the sacrifice; and though it is perfectly possible that such may be the case, and that what turner has done may hereafter in some respects be done better, i believe myself that these works are at the time of their first appearing as perfect as those of phidias or leonardo; that is to say, incapable in their way, of any improvement conceivable by human mind. also, it is only by comparison with such that we are authorized to affirm definite faults in any of his others, for we should have been bound to speak, at least for the present, with the same modesty respecting even his worst pictures of this class, had not his more noble efforts given us canons of criticism. but, as was beforehand to be expected from the difficulties he grappled with, turner is exceedingly unequal; he appears always as a champion in the thick of fight, sometimes with his foot on his enemies' necks, sometimes staggered or struck to his knee; once or twice altogether down. he has failed most frequently, as before noticed, in elaborate compositions, from redundant quantity; sometimes, like most other men, from over-care, as very signally in a large and most labored drawing of bamborough; sometimes, unaccountably, his eye for color seeming to fail him for a time, as in a large painting of rome from the forum, and in the cicero's villa, building of carthage, and the picture of this year in the british institution; and sometimes i am sorry to say, criminally, from taking licenses which he must know to be illegitimate, or indulging in conventionalities which he does not require. [illustration: the dogana, and santa maria della salute, venice. from a painting by turner.] § . reflection of his very recent works. on such instances i shall not insist, for the finding fault with turner is not, i think, either decorous in myself or like to be beneficial to the reader.[ ] the greater number of failures took place in the transition period, when the artist was feeling for the new qualities, and endeavoring to reconcile them with more careful elaboration of form than was properly consistent with them. gradually his hand became more free, his perception and grasp of the new truths more certain, and his choice of subject more adapted to the exhibition of them. but his powers did not attain their highest results till towards the year , about which period they did so suddenly, and with a vigor and concentration which rendered his pictures at that time almost incomparable with those which had preceded them. the drawings of nemi, and oberwesel, in the possession of b. g. windus, esq., were among the first evidences of this sudden advance; only the foliage in both of these is inferior; and it is remarkable that in this phase of his art, turner has drawn little foliage, and that little badly--the great characteristic of it being its power, beauty, and majesty of color, and its abandonment of all littleness and division of thought to a single impression. in the year , he made some drawings from recent sketches in switzerland; these, with some produced in the following years, all of swiss subject, i consider to be, on the whole, the most characteristic and perfect works he has ever produced. the academy pictures were far inferior to them; but among these examples of the same power were not wanting, more especially in the smaller pictures of venice. the sun of venice, going to sea; the san benedetto, looking towards fusina; and a view of murano, with the cemetery, were all faultless: another of venice, seen from near fusina, with sunlight and moonlight mixed ( ) was, i think, when i first saw it, (and it still remains little injured,) the most perfectly _beautiful_ piece of color of all that i have seen produced by human hands, by any means, or at any period. of the exhibition of , i have only seen a small venice, (still i believe in the artist's possession,) and the two whaling subjects. the venice is a second-rate work, and the two others altogether unworthy of him. in conclusion of our present sketch of the course of landscape art, it may be generally stated that turner is the only painter, so far as i know, who has ever drawn the sky, (not the clear sky, which we before saw belonged exclusively to the religious schools, but the various forms and phenomena of the cloudy heavens,) all previous artists having only represented it typically or partially; but he absolutely and universally: he is the only painter who has ever drawn a mountain, or a stone; no other man ever having learned their organization, or possessed himself of their spirit, except in part and obscurely, (the one or two stones noted of tintoret's, (vol. ii., part iii. ch. ,) are perhaps hardly enough on which to found an exception in his favor.) he is the only painter who ever drew the stem of a tree, titian having come the nearest before him, and excelling him in the muscular development of the larger trunks, (though sometimes losing the woody strength in a serpent-like flaccidity,) but missing the grace and character of the ramifications. he is the only painter who has ever represented the surface of calm, or the force of agitated water; who has represented the effects of space on distant objects, or who has rendered the abstract beauty of natural color. these assertions i make deliberately, after careful weighing and consideration, in no spirit of dispute, or momentary zeal; but from strong and convinced feeling, and with the consciousness of being able to prove them. § . difficulty of demonstration in such subjects. this proof is only partially and incidentally attempted in the present portion of this work, which was originally written, as before explained, for a temporary purpose, and which, therefore, i should have gladly cancelled, but that, relating as it does only to simple matters of fact and not to those of feeling, it may still, perhaps, be of service to some readers who would be unwilling to enter into the more speculative fields with which the succeeding sections are concerned. i leave, therefore, nearly as it was originally written, the following examination of the relative truthfulness of elder and of recent art; always requesting the reader to remember, as some excuse for the inadequate execution, even of what i have here attempted, how difficult it is to express or explain, by language only, those delicate qualities of the object of sense, on the seizing of which all refined truth of representation depends. try, for instance, to explain in language the exact qualities of the lines on which depend the whole truth and beauty of expression about the half-opened lips of raffaelle's st. catherine. there is, indeed, nothing in landscape so ineffable as this; but there is no part nor portion of god's works in which the delicacy appreciable by a cultivated eye, and necessary to be rendered in art, is not beyond all expression and explanation; i cannot tell it you, if you do not see it. and thus i have been entirely unable, in the following pages, to demonstrate clearly anything of really deep and perfect truth; nothing but what is coarse and commonplace, in matters to be judged of by the senses, is within the reach of argument. how much or how little i have done must be judged of by the reader: how much it is impossible to do i have more fully shown in the concluding section. i shall first take into consideration those general truths, common to all the objects of nature, which are productive of what is usually called "effect," that is to say, truths of tone, general color, space, and light. i shall then investigate the truths of specific form and color, in the four great component parts of landscape--sky, earth, water, and vegetation. footnotes [ ] not the large paradise, but the fall of adam, a small picture chiefly in brown and gray, near titian's assumption. its companion, the death of abel, is remarkable as containing a group of trees which turner, i believe accidentally, has repeated nearly mass for mass in the "marly." both are among the most noble works of this or any other master, whether for preciousness of color or energy of thought. [ ] the triple leaf of this plant, and white flower, stained purple, probably gave it strange typical interest among the christian painters. angelico, in using its leaves mixed with daisies in the foreground of his crucifixion had, i imagine, a view also to its chemical property. [ ] this is no rash method of judgment, sweeping and hasty as it may appear. from the weaknesses of an artist, or failures, however numerous, we have no right to conjecture his total inability; a time may come when he may rise into sudden strength, or an instance occur when his efforts shall be successful. but there are some pictures which rank not under the head of failures, but of perpetrations or commissions; some things which a man cannot do nor say without sealing forever his character and capacity. the angel holding the cross with his finger in his eye, the roaring red-faced children about the crown of thorns, the blasphemous (i speak deliberately and determinedly) head of christ upon the handkerchief, and the mode in which the martyrdom of the saint is exhibited (i do not choose to use the expressions which alone could characterize it) are perfect, sufficient, incontrovertible proofs that whatever appears good in any of the doings of such a painter must be deceptive, and that we may be assured that our taste is corrupted and false whenever we feel disposed to admire him. i am prepared to support this position, however uncharitable it may seem; a man may be tempted into a gross sin by passion, and forgiven; and yet there are some kinds of sins into which only men of a certain kind can be tempted, and which cannot be forgiven. it should be added, however, that the artistical qualities of these pictures are in every way worthy of the conceptions they realize; i do not recollect any instances of color or execution so coarse and feelingless. [ ] it appears not to be sufficiently understood by those artists who complain acrimoniously of their positions on the academy walls, that the academicians have in their own rooms a right to the line and the best places near it; in their taking this position there is no abuse nor injustice; but the academicians should remember that with their rights they have their duties, and their duty is to determine among the works of artists not belonging to their body those which are most likely to advance public knowledge and judgment, and to give these the best places next their own; neither would it detract from their dignity if they occasionally ceded a square even of their own territory, as they did gracefully and rightly, and, i am sorry to add, disinterestedly, to the picture of paul de la roche in . now the academicians know perfectly well that the mass of portrait which encumbers their walls at half height is worse than useless, seriously harmful to the public taste, and it was highly criminal (i use the word advisedly) that the valuable and interesting work of fielding, of which i have above spoken, should have been placed where it was, above three rows of eye-glasses and waistcoats. a very beautiful work of harding's was treated either in the same or the following exhibition with still greater injustice. fielding's was merely put out of sight; harding's where its faults were conspicuous and its virtues lost. it was an alpine scene, of which the foreground, rocks, and torrents were painted with unrivalled fidelity and precision; the foliage was dexterous, the aerial gradations of the mountains tender and multitudinous, their forms carefully studied and very grand. the blemish of the picture was a buff-colored tower with a red roof; singularly meagre in detail, and conventionally relieved from a mass of gloom. the picture was placed where nothing but this tower could be seen. [ ] i have not given any examples in this place, because it is difficult to explain such circumstances of effect without diagrams: i purpose entering into fuller discussion of the subject with the aid of illustration. [ ] the inscription is to the following effect,--a pleasant thing to see upon the walls, were it but more innocently placed:-- campo. di. s. maurizio ______ d i o conservi a noi. lungamente lo zelantis. e. reverendis d. luigi. piccini. nostro n o v e l l o p i e v a n o. ______ g l i e s u l t a n t. parrocchiani [ ] the quantity of gold with which the decorations of venice were once covered could not now be traced or credited without reference to the authority of gentile bellini. the greater part of the marble mouldings have been touched with it in lines and points, the minarets of st. mark's, and all the florid carving of the arches entirely sheeted. the casa d'oro retained it on its lions until the recent commencement of its restoration. [ ] indeed there should be no such difference at all. every architect ought to be an artist; every very great artist is necessarily an architect. [ ] this passage seems at variance with what has been said of the necessity of painting present times and objects. it is not so. a great painter makes out of that which he finds before him something which is independent of _all_ time. he can only do this out of the materials ready to his hand, but that which he builds has the dignity of dateless age. a little painter is annihilated by an anachronism, and is conventionally antique, and involuntarily modern. [ ] one point, however, it is incumbent upon me to notice, being no question of art but of material. the reader will have observed that i strictly limited the perfection of turner's works to the time of their first appearing on the walls of the royal academy. it bitterly grieves me to have to do this, but the fact is indeed so. no _picture_ of turner's is seen in perfection a month after it is painted. the walhalla cracked before it had been eight days in the academy rooms; the vermilions frequently lose lustre long before the exhibition is over; and when all the colors begin to get hard a year or two after the picture is painted, a painful deadness and opacity comes over them, the whites especially becoming lifeless, and many of the warmer passages settling into a hard valueless brown, even if the paint remains perfectly firm, which is far from being always the case. i believe that in some measure these results are unavoidable, the colors being so peculiarly blended and mingled in turner's present manner as almost to necessitate their irregular drying; but that they are not necessary to the extent in which they sometimes take place, is proved by the comparative safety of some even of the more brilliant works. thus the old temeraire is nearly safe in color, and quite firm; while the juliet and her nurse is now the ghost of what it was; the slaver shows no cracks, though it is chilled in some of the darker passages, while the walhalla and several of the recent venices cracked in the royal academy. it is true that the damage makes no further progress after the first year or two, and that even in its altered state the picture is always valuable and records its intention; but it is bitterly to be regretted that so great a painter should not leave a single work by which in succeeding ages he might be estimated. the fact of his using means so imperfect, together with that of his utter neglect of the pictures in his own gallery, are a phenomenon in human mind which appears to me utterly inexplicable; and both are without excuse. if the effects he desires cannot be to their full extent produced except by these treacherous means, one picture only should be painted each year as an exhibition of immediate power, and the rest should be carried out, whatever the expense of labor and time in safe materials, even at the risk of some deterioration of immediate effect. that which is greatest in him is entirely independent of means; much of what he now accomplishes illegitimately might without doubt be attained in securer modes--what cannot should without hesitation be abandoned. fortunately the drawings appear subject to no such deterioration. many of them are now almost destroyed, but this has been i think always through ill treatment, or has been the case only with very early works. i have myself known no instance of a drawing properly protected, and not rashly exposed to light suffering the slightest change. the great foes of turner, as of all other great colorists especially, are the picture cleaner and the mounter. section ii. of general truths. chapter i. of truth of tone. § . meaning of the word "tone:" first, the right relation of objects in shadow to the principal light. as i have already allowed, that in effects of tone, the old masters have never yet been equalled; and as this is the first, and nearly the last, concession i shall have to make to them, i wish it at once to be thoroughly understood how far it extends. § . secondly, the quality of color by which it is felt to owe part of its brightness to the hue of light upon it. i understand two things by the word "tone:"--first, the exact relief and relation of objects against and to each other in substance and darkness, as they are nearer or more distant, and the perfect relation of the shades of all of them to the chief light of the picture, whether that be sky, water, or anything else. secondly, the exact relation of the colors to the shadows to the colors of the lights, so that they may be at once felt to be merely different degrees of the same light; and the accurate relation among the illuminated parts themselves, with respect to the degree in which they are influenced by the color of the light itself, whether warm or cold; so that the whole of the picture (or, where several tones are united, those parts of it which are under each,) may be felt to be in one climate, under one kind of light, and in one kind of atmosphere; this being chiefly dependent on that peculiar and inexplicable quality of each color laid on, which makes the eye feel both what is the actual color of the object represented, and that it is raised to its apparent pitch by illumination. a very bright brown, for instance, out of sunshine, may be precisely of the same shade of color as a very dead or cold brown in sunshine, but it will be totally different in _quality_; and that quality by which the illuminated dead color would be felt in nature different from the unilluminated bright one, is what artists are perpetually aiming at, and connoisseurs talking nonsense about, under the name of "tone." the want of tone in pictures is caused by objects looking bright in their own positive hue, and not by illumination, and by the consequent want of sensation of the raising of their hues by light. § . difference between tone in its first sense and aerial perspective. the first of these meanings of the word "tone" is liable to be confounded with what is commonly called "aerial perspective." but aerial perspective is the expression of space, by any means whatsoever, sharpness of edge, vividness of color, etc., assisted by greater pitch of shadow, and requires only that objects should be detached from each other, by degrees of intensity in _proportion_ to their distance, without requiring that the difference between the farthest and nearest should be in positive quantity the same that nature has put. but what i have called "tone" requires that there should be the same sum of difference, as well as the same division of differences. § . the pictures of the old masters perfect in relation of middle tints to light. now the finely toned pictures of the old masters are, in this respect, some of the notes of nature played two or three octaves below her key; the dark objects in the middle distance having precisely the same relation to the light of the sky which they have in nature, but the light being necessarily infinitely lowered, and the mass of the shadow deepened in the same degree. i have often been struck, when looking at a camera-obscuro on a dark day, with the exact resemblance the image bore to one of the finest pictures of the old masters; all the foliage coming dark against the sky, and nothing being seen in its mass but here and there the isolated light of a silvery stem or an unusually illumined cluster of leafage. § . and consequently totally false in relation of middle tints to darkness. now if this could be done consistently, and all the notes of nature given in this way an octave or two down, it would be right and necessary so to do: but be it observed, not only does nature surpass us in power of obtaining light as much as the sun surpasses white paper, but she also infinitely surpasses us in her power of shade. her deepest shades are void spaces from which no light whatever is reflected to the eye; ours are black surfaces from which, paint as black as we may, a great deal of light is still reflected, and which, placed against one of nature's deep bits of gloom, would tell as distinct light. here we are then, with white paper for our highest light, and visible illumined surface for our deepest shadow, set to run the gauntlet against nature, with the sun for her light, and vacuity for her gloom. it is evident that _she_ can well afford to throw her material objects dark against the brilliant aerial tone of her sky, and yet give in those objects themselves a thousand intermediate distances and tones before she comes to black, or to anything like it--all the illumined surfaces of her objects being as distinctly and vividly brighter than her nearest and darkest shadows, as the sky is brighter than those illumined surfaces. but if we, against our poor, dull obscurity of yellow paint, instead of sky, insist on having the same relation of shade in material objects, we go down to the bottom of our scale at once; and what in the world are we to do then? where are all our intermediate distances to come from?--how are we to express the aerial relations among the parts themselves, for instance, of foliage, whose most distant boughs are already almost black?--how are we to come up from this to the foreground, and when we have done so, how are we to express the distinction between its solid parts, already as dark as we can make them, and its vacant hollows, which nature has marked sharp and clear and black, among its lighted surfaces? it cannot but be evident at a glance, that if to any one of the steps from one distance to another, we give the same quantity of difference in pitch of shade which nature does, we must pay for this expenditure of our means by totally missing half a dozen distances, not a whit less important or marked, and so sacrifice a multitude of truths, to obtain one. and this, accordingly was the means by which the old masters obtained their (truth?) of tone. they chose those steps of distance which are the most conspicuous and noticeable--that for instance from sky to foliage, or from clouds to hills--and they gave these their precise pitch of difference in shade with exquisite accuracy of imitation. their means were then exhausted, and they were obliged to leave their trees flat masses of mere filled-up outline, and to omit the truths of space in every individual part of their picture by the thousand. but this they did not care for; it saved them trouble; they reached their grand end, imitative effect; they thrust home just at the places where the common and careless eye looks for imitation, and they attained the broadest and most faithful appearance of truth of tone which art can exhibit. § . general falsehood of such a system. but they are prodigals, and foolish prodigals, in art; they lavish their whole means to get one truth, and leave themselves powerless when they should seize a thousand. and is it indeed worthy of being called a truth, when we have a vast history given us to relate, to the fulness of which neither our limits nor our language are adequate, instead of giving all its parts abridged in the order of their importance, to omit or deny the greater part of them, that we may dwell with verbal fidelity on two or three? nay, the very truth to which the rest are sacrificed is rendered falsehood by their absence, the relation of the tree to the sky is marked as an impossibility by the want of relation of its parts to each other. § . the principle of turner in this respect. turner starts from the beginning with a totally different principle. he boldly takes pure white (and justly, for it is the sign of the most intense sunbeams) for his highest light, and lampblack for his deepest shade; and between these he makes every degree of shade indicative of separate degree of distance,[ ] giving each step of approach, not the exact difference in pitch which it would have in nature, but a difference bearing the same proportion to that which his sum of possible shade bears to the sum of nature's shade; so that an object half way between his horizon and his foreground, will be exactly in half tint of force, and every minute division of intermediate space will have just its proportionate share of the lesser sum, and no more. hence where the old masters expressed one distance, he expresses a hundred; and where they said furlongs, he says leagues. which of these modes of procedure be most agreeable with truth, i think i may safely leave the reader to decide for himself. he will see in this very first instance, one proof of what we above asserted, that the deceptive imitation of nature is inconsistent with real truth; for the very means by which the old masters attained the apparent accuracy of tone which is so satisfying to the eye, compelled them to give up all idea of real relations of retirement, and to represent a few successive and marked stages of distance, like the scenes of a theatre, instead of the imperceptible, multitudinous, symmetrical retirement of nature, who is not more careful to separate her nearest bush from her farthest one, than to separate the nearest bough of that bush from the one next to it. § . comparison of n. poussin's "phocion," take for instance, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced--the work of a really great and intellectual mind, the quiet nicholas poussin, in our own national gallery, with the traveller washing his feet. the first idea we receive from this picture is, that it is evening, and all the light coming from the horizon. not so. it is full moon, the light coming steep from the left, as is shown by the shadow of the stick on the right-hand pedestal,--(for if the sun were not very high, that shadow could not lose itself half way down, and if it were not lateral, the shadow would slope, instead of being vertical.) now, ask yourself, and answer candidly, if those black masses of foliage, in which scarcely any form is seen but the outline, be a true representation of trees under noonday sunlight, sloping from the left, bringing out, as it necessarily would do, their masses into golden green, and marking every leaf and bough with sharp shadow and sparkling light. the only truth in the picture is the exact pitch of relief against the sky of both trees and hills, and to this the organization of the hills, the intricacy of the foliage, and everything indicative either of the nature of the light, or the character of the objects, are unhesitatingly sacrificed. so much falsehood does it cost to obtain two apparent truths of tone. or take, as a still more glaring instance, no. in the dulwich gallery, where the trunks of the trees, even of those farthest off, on the left, are as black as paint can make them, and there is not, and cannot be, the slightest increase of force, or any marking whatsoever of distance by color, or any other means, between them and the foreground. § . with turner's "mercury and argus." compare with these, turner's treatment of his materials in the mercury and argus. he has here his light actually coming from the distance, the sun being nearly in the centre of the picture, and a violent relief of objects against it would be far more justifiable than in poussin's case. but this dark relief is used in its full force only with the nearest _leaves_ of the nearest group of foliage overhanging the foreground from the left; and between these and the more distant members of the same group, though only three or four yards separate, distinct aerial perspective and intervening mist and light are shown; while the large tree in the centre, though very dark, as being very near, compared with all the distance, is much diminished in intensity of shade from this nearest group of leaves, and is faint compared with all the foreground. it is true that this tree has not, in consequence, the actual pitch of shade against the sky which it would have in nature; but it has precisely as much as it possibly can have, to leave it the same proportionate relation to the objects near at hand. and it cannot but be evident to the thoughtful reader, that whatever trickery or deception may be the result of a contrary mode of treatment, this is the only scientific or essentially truthful system, and that what it loses in tone it gains in aerial perspective. § . and with the "datur hora quieti." compare again the last vignette in rogers's poems, the "datur hora quieti," where everything, even the darkest parts of the trees, is kept pale and full of graduation; even the bridge where it crosses the descending stream of sunshine, rather lost in the light than relieved against it, until we come up to the foreground, and then the vigorous local black of the plough throws the whole picture into distance and sunshine. i do not know anything in art which can for a moment be set beside this drawing for united intensity of light and repose. observe, i am not at present speaking of the beauty or desirableness of the system of the old masters; it may be sublime, and affecting, and ideal, and intellectual, and a great deal more; but all i am concerned with at present is, that it is not _true_; while turner's is the closest and most studied approach to truth of which the materials of art admit. § . the second sense of the word "tone." § . remarkable difference in this respect between the paintings and drawings of turner. § . not owing to want of power over the material. it was not, therefore, with reference to this division of the subject that i admitted inferiority in our great modern master to claude or poussin, but with reference to the second and more usual meaning of the word "tone"--the exact relation and fitness of shadow and light, and of the hues of all objects under them; and more especially that precious quality of each color laid on, which makes it appear a quiet color illuminated, not a bright color in shade. but i allow this inferiority only with respect to the paintings of turner, not to his drawings. i could select from among the works named in chap. vi. of this section, pieces of tone absolutely faultless and perfect, from the coolest grays of wintry dawn to the intense fire of summer noon. and the difference between the prevailing character of these and that of nearly all the paintings, (for the early oil pictures of turner are far less perfect in tone than the most recent,) it is difficult to account for, but on the supposition that there is something in the material which modern artists in general are incapable of mastering, and which compels turner himself to think less of tone in oil color, than of other and more important qualities. the total failures of callcott, whose struggles after tone ended so invariably in shivering winter or brown paint, the misfortune of landseer with his evening sky in , the frigidity of stanfield, and the earthiness and opacity which all the magnificent power and admirable science of etty are unable entirely to conquer, are too fatal and convincing proofs of the want of knowledge of means, rather than of the absence of aim, in modern artists as a body. yet, with respect to turner, however much the want of tone in his early paintings (the fall of carthage, for instance, and others painted at a time when he was producing the most exquisite hues of light in water-color) might seem to favor such a supposition, there are passages in his recent works (such, for instance, as the sunlight along the sea, in the slaver) which directly contradict it, and which prove to us that where he now errs in tone, (as in the cicero's villa,) it is less owing to want of power to reach it, than to the pursuit of some different and nobler end. i shall therefore glance at the particular modes in which turner manages his tone in his present academy pictures; the early ones must be given up at once. place a genuine untouched claude beside the crossing the brook, and the difference in value and tenderness of tone will be felt in an instant, and felt the more painfully because all the cool and transparent qualities of claude would have been here desirable, and in their place, and appear to have been aimed at. the foreground of the building of carthage, and the greater part of the architecture of the fall, are equally heavy and evidently paint, if we compare them with genuine passages of claude's sunshine. there is a very grand and simple piece of tone in the possession of j. allnutt, esq., a sunset behind willows, but even this is wanting in refinement of shadow, and is crude in its extreme distance. not so with the recent academy pictures; many of their passages are absolutely faultless; all are refined and marvellous, and with the exception of the cicero's villa, we shall find few pictures painted within the last ten years which do not either present us with perfect tone, or with some higher beauty, to which it is necessarily sacrificed. if we glance at the requirements of nature, and her superiority of means to ours, we shall see why and how it is sacrificed. § . the two distinct qualities of light to be considered. light, with reference to the tone it induces on objects, is either to be considered as neutral and white, bringing out local colors with fidelity; or colored, and consequently modifying these local tints, with its own. but the power of pure white light to exhibit local color is strangely variable. the morning light of about nine or ten is usually very pure; but the difference of its effect on different days, independently of mere brilliancy, is as inconceivable as inexplicable. every one knows how capriciously the colors of a fine opal vary from day to day, and how rare the lights are which bring them fully out. now the expression of the strange, penetrating, deep, neutral light, which, while it _alters_ no color, brings every color up to the highest possible pitch and key of pure, harmonious intensity, is the chief attribute of finely-toned pictures by the great _colorists_ as opposed to pictures of equally high tone, by masters who, careless of color, are content, like cuyp, to lose local tints in the golden blaze of absorbing light. § . falsehoods by which titian attains the appearance of quality in light. falsehood, in this neutral tone, if it may be so called, is a matter far more of feeling than of proof, for any color is _possible_ under such lights; it is meagreness and feebleness only which are to be avoided; and these are rather matters of sensation than of reasoning. but it is yet easy enough to prove by what exaggerated and false means the pictures most celebrated for this quality are endowed with their richness and solemnity of color. in the bacchus and ariadne of titian, it is difficult to imagine anything more magnificently impossible than the blue of the distant landscape;--impossible, not from its vividness, but because it is not faint and aerial enough to account for its purity of color; it is too dark and blue at the same time; and there is indeed so total a want of atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of form, it would be impossible to tell the mountains (intended to be ten miles off) from the robe of ariadne close to the spectator. yet make this blue faint, aerial, and distant--make it in the slightest degree to resemble the truth of nature's color--and all the tone of the picture, all its intensity and splendor, will vanish on the instant. so again, in the exquisite and inimitable little bit of color, the europa in the dulwich gallery; the blue of the dark promontory on the left is thoroughly absurd and impossible, and the warm tones of the clouds equally so, unless it were sunset; but the blue especially, because it is nearer than several points of land which are equally in shadow, and yet are rendered in warm gray. but the whole value and tone of the picture would be destroyed if this blue were altered. § . turner will not use such means. § . but gains in essential truth by the sacrifice. § . the second quality of light. now, as much of this kind of richness of tone is always given by turner as is compatible with truth of aerial effect; but he will not sacrifice the higher truths of his landscape to mere pitch of color as titian does. he infinitely prefers having the power of giving extension of space, and fulness of form, to that of giving deep melodies of tone; he feels too much the incapacity of art, with its feeble means of light, to give the abundance of nature's gradations; and therefore it is, that taking pure white for his highest expression of light, that even pure yellow may give him one more step in the scale of shade, he becomes necessarily inferior in richness of effect to the old masters of tone, (who always used a golden highest light,) but gains by the sacrifice a thousand more essential truths. for, though we all know how much more like light, in the abstract, a finely-toned warm hue will be to the feelings than white, yet it is utterly impossible to mark the same number of gradations between such a sobered high light and the deepest shadow, which we can between this and white; and as these gradations are absolutely necessary to give the facts of form and distance, which, as we have above shown, are more important than any truths of tone,[ ] turner sacrifices the richness of his picture to its completeness--the manner of the statement to its matter. and not only is he right in doing this for the sake of space, but he is right also in the abstract question of color; for as we observed above (sect. ,) it is only the white light--the perfect unmodified group of rays--which will bring out local color perfectly; and if the picture, therefore, is to be complete in its system of color, that is, if it is to have each of the three primitives in their purity, it _must_ have white for its highest light, otherwise the purity of one of them at least will be impossible. and this leads us to notice the second and more frequent quality of light, (which is assumed if we make our highest representation of it yellow,) the positive hue, namely, which it may itself possess, of course modifying whatever local tints it exhibits, and thereby rendering certain colors necessary, and certain colors impossible. under the direct yellow light of a descending sun, for instance, pure white and pure blue are both impossible; because the purest whites and blues that nature could produce would be turned in some degree into gold or green by it; and when the sun is within half a degree of the horizon, if the sky be clear, a rose light supersedes the golden one, still more overwhelming in its effect on local color. i have seen the pale fresh green of spring vegetation in the gardens of venice, on the lido side, turned pure russet, or between that and crimson, by a vivid sunset of this kind, every particle of green color being absolutely annihilated. and so under all colored lights, (and there are few, from dawn to twilight, which are not slightly tinted by some accident of atmosphere,) there is a change of local color, which, when in a picture it is so exactly proportioned that we feel at once both what the local colors are in themselves, and what is the color and strength of the light upon them, gives us truth of tone. § . the perfection of cuyp in this respect interfered with by numerous solecisms. for expression of effects of yellow sunlight, parts might be chosen out of the good pictures of cuyp, which have never been equalled in art. but i much doubt if there be a single _bright_ cuyp in the world, which, taken as a whole, does not present many glaring solecisms in tone. i have not seen many fine pictures of his, which were not utterly spoiled by the vermilion dress of some principal figure, a vermilion totally unaffected and unwarmed by the golden hue of the rest of the picture; and, what is worse, with little distinction, between its own illumined and shaded parts, so that it appears altogether out of sunshine, the color of a bright vermilion in dead, cold daylight. it is possible that the original color may have gone down in all cases, or that these parts may have been villanously repainted: but i am the rather disposed to believe them genuine, because even throughout the best of his pictures there are evident recurrences of the same kind of solecism in other colors--greens for instance--as in the steep bank on the right of the largest picture in the dulwich gallery; and browns, as in the lying cow in the same picture, which is in most visible and painful contrast with the one standing beside it, the flank of the standing one being bathed in breathing sunshine, and the reposing one laid in with as dead, opaque, and lifeless brown as ever came raw from a novice's pallet. and again, in that marked , while the figures on the right are walking in the most precious light, and those just beyond them in the distance leave a furlong or two of pure visible sunbeams between us and them, the cows in the centre are entirely deprived, poor things, of both light and air. and these failing parts, though they often escape the eye when we are near the picture and able to dwell upon what is beautiful in it, yet so injure its whole effect that i question if there be many cuyps in which vivid colors occur, which will not lose their effect, and become cold and flat at a distance of ten or twelve paces, retaining their influence only when the eye is close enough to rest on the right parts without including the whole. take, for instance, the large one in our national gallery, seen from the opposite door, where the black cow appears a great deal nearer than the dogs, and the golden tones of the distance look like a sepia drawing rather than like sunshine, owing chiefly to the utter want of aerial grays indicated through them. § . turner is not so perfect in parts--far more so in the whole. now, there is no instance in the works of turner of anything so faithful and imitative of sunshine as the best parts of cuyp; but at the same time, there is not a single vestige of the same kind of solecism. it is true, that in his fondness for color, turner is in the habit of allowing excessively cold fragments in big warmest pictures; but these are never, observe, warm colors with no light upon them, useless as contrasts while they are discords in the tone; but they are bits of the very coolest tints, partially removed from the general influence, and exquisitely valuable as color, though, with all deference be it spoken, i think them sometimes slightly destructive of what would otherwise be perfect tone. for instance, the two blue and white stripes on the drifting flag of the slave ship, are, i think, the least degree too purely cool. i think both the blue and white would be impossible under such a light; and in the same way the white parts of the dress of the napoleon interfered by their coolness with the perfectly managed warmth of all the rest of the picture. but both these lights are reflexes, and it is nearly impossible to say what tones may be assumed even by the warmest light reflected from a cool surface; so that we cannot actually convict these parts of falsehood, and though we should have liked the _tone_ of the picture better had they been slightly warmer, we cannot but like the _color_ of the picture better with them as they are; while cuyp's failing portions are not only evidently and demonstrably false, being in direct light, but are as disagreeable in color as false in tone, and injurious to everything near them. and the best proof of the grammatical accuracy of the tones of turner is in the perfect and unchanging influence of all his pictures at any distance. we approach only to follow the sunshine into every cranny of the leafage, and retire only to feel it diffused over the scene, the whole picture glowing like a sun or star at whatever distance we stand, and lighting the air between us and it; while many even of the best pictures of claude must be looked close into to be felt, and lose light every foot that we retire. the smallest of the three seaports in the national gallery is valuable and right in tone when we are close to it; but ten yards off, it is all brick-dust, offensively and evidently false in its whole hue. § . the power in turner of uniting a number of tones. the comparison of turner with cuyp and claude may sound strange in most ears; but this is chiefly because we are not in the habit of analyzing and dwelling upon those difficult and daring passages of the modern master which do not at first appeal to our ordinary notions of truth, owing to his habit of uniting two, three, or even more separate tones in the same composition. in this also he strictly follows nature, for wherever climate changes, tone changes, and the climate changes with every feet of elevation, so that the upper clouds are always different in tone from the lower ones, these from the rest of the landscape, and in all probability, some part of the horizon from the rest. and when nature allows this in a high degree, as in her most gorgeous effects she always will, she does not herself impress at once with intensity of tone, as in the deep and quiet yellows of a july evening, but rather with the magnificence and variety of associated color, in which, if we give time and attention to it, we shall gradually find the solemnity and the depth of twenty tones instead of one. now in turner's power of associating cold with warm light, no one has ever approached, or even ventured into the same field with him. the old masters, content with one simple tone, sacrificed to its unity all the exquisite gradations and varied touches of relief and change by which nature unites her hours with each other. they gave the warmth of the sinking sun, overwhelming all things in its gold; but they did not give those gray passages about the horizon where, seen through its dying light, the cool and the gloom of night gather themselves for their victory. whether it was in them impotence or judgment, it is not for me to decide. i have only to point to the daring of turner in this respect, as something to which art affords no matter of comparison, as that in which the mere attempt is, in itself, superiority. take the evening effect with the temeraire. that picture will not, at the first glance, deceive as a piece of actual sunlight; but this is because there is in it more than sunlight, because under the blazing veil of vaulted fire which lights the vessel on her last path, there is a blue, deep, desolate hollow of darkness, out of which you can hear the voice of the night wind, and the dull boom of the disturbed sea; because the cold, deadly shadows of the twilight are gathering through every sunbeam, and moment by moment as you look, you will fancy some new film and faintness of the night has risen over the vastness of the departing form. § . recapitulation. and if, in effects of this kind, time be taken to dwell upon the individual tones, and to study the laws of their reconcilement, there will be found in the recent academy pictures of this great artist a mass of various truth to which nothing can be brought for comparison, which stands not only unrivalled, but uncontended with, and which, when in carrying out it may be inferior to some of the picked passages of the old masters, is so through deliberate choice rather to suggest a multitude of truths than to imitate one, and through a strife with difficulties of effect of which art can afford no parallel example. nay, in the next chapter, respecting color, we shall see farther reason for doubting the truth of claude, cuyp, and poussin, in tone,--reason so palpable that if these were all that were to be contended with, i should scarcely have allowed any inferiority in turner whatsoever;[ ] but i allow it, not so much with reference to the deceptive imitations of sunlight, wrought out with desperate exaggerations of shade, of the professed landscape painters, as with reference to the glory of rubens, the glow of titian, the silver tenderness of cagliari, and perhaps more than all to the precious and pure passages of intense feeling and heavenly light, holy and undefiled, and glorious with the changeless passion of eternity, which sanctify with their shadeless peace the deep and noble conceptions of the early school of italy,--of fra bartolomeo, perugino, and the early mind of raffaelle. footnotes [ ] of course i am not speaking here of treatment of chiaroscuro, but of that quantity of depth of shade by which, _coeteris paribus_, a near object will exceed a distant one. for the truth of the systems of turner and the old masters, as regards chiaroscuro, vide chapter iii. of this section, § . [ ] more important, observe, _as matters of truth or fact_. it may often chance that, as a matter of feeling, the tone is the more important of the two; but with this we have here no concern. [ ] we must not leave the subject of tone without alluding to the works of the late george barrett, which afford glorious and exalted passages of light; and john varley, who, though less truthful in his aim, was frequently deep in his feeling. some of the sketches of de wint are also admirable in this respect. as for our oil pictures, the less that is said about them the better. callcott has the truest aim; but not having any eye for color, it is impossible for him to succeed in tone. chapter ii. of truth of color. § . observations on the color of g. poussin's la riccia. there is, in the first room of the national gallery, a landscape attributed to gaspar poussin, called sometimes aricia, sometimes le or la riccia, according to the fancy of catalogue printers. whether it can be supposed to resemble the ancient aricia, now la riccia, close to albano, i will not take upon me to determine, seeing that most of the towns of these old masters are quite as like one place as another; but, at any rate, it is a town on a hill, wooded with two-and-thirty bushes, of very uniform size, and possessing about the same number of leaves each. these bushes are all painted in with one dull opaque brown, becoming very slightly greenish towards the lights, and discover in one place a bit of rock, which of course would in nature have been cool and gray beside the lustrous hues of foliage, and which, therefore, being moreover completely in shade, is consistently and scientifically painted of a very clear, pretty, and positive brick-red, the only thing like color in the picture. the foreground is a piece of road, which in order to make allowance for its greater nearness, for its being completely in light, and, it may be presumed, for the quantity of vegetation usually present on carriage-roads, is given in a very cool green gray, and the truth of the picture is completed by a number of dots in the sky on the right, with a stalk to them, of a sober and similar brown. § . as compared with the actual scene. not long ago, i was slowly descending this very bit of carriage-road, the first turn after you leave albano, not a little impeded by the worthy successors of the ancient prototypes of veiento.[ ] it had been wild weather when i left rome, and all across the campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the claudian aqueduct lighting up the infinity of its arches like the bridge of chaos. but as i climbed the long slope of the alban mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of albano and graceful darkness of its ilex grove rose against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep, palpitating azure, half ether and half dew. the noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of la riccia, and its masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. i cannot call it color, it was conflagration. purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of god's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. far up into the recesses of the valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around them, breaking over the gray walls of rock into a thousand separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them fall. every glade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke and closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of dark rock--dark though flushed with scarlet lichen,--casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and fitful sound, and over all--the multitudinous bars of amber and rose, the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the campagna melted into the blaze of the sea. § . turner himself is inferior in brilliancy to nature. tell me who is likest this, poussin or turner? not in his most daring and dazzling efforts could turner himself come near it; but you could not at the time have thought or remembered the work of any other man as having the remotest hue or resemblance of what you saw. nor am i speaking of what is uncommon or unnatural; there is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. for all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; the green of a growing leaf, the scarlet of a fresh flower, no art nor expedient can reach; but in addition to this, nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy, while the painter, deprived of this splendid aid, works still with what is actually a gray shadow compared to the force of nature's color. take a blade of grass and a scarlet flower, and place them so as to receive sunlight beside the brightest canvas that ever left turner's easel, and the picture will be extinguished. so far from out-facing nature, he does not, as far as mere vividness of color goes, one-half reach her;--but does he use this brilliancy of color on objects to which it does not properly belong? let us compare his works in this respect with a few instances from the old masters. § . impossible colors of salvator, titian; there is, on the left hand side of salvator's mercury and the woodman in our national gallery, something, without doubt intended for a rocky mountain, in the middle distance, near enough for all its fissures and crags to be distinctly visible, or, rather, for a great many awkward scratches of the brush over it to be visible, which, though not particularly representative either of one thing or another, are without doubt intended to be symbolical of rocks. now no mountain in full light, and near enough for its details of crag to be seen, is without great variety of delicate color. salvator has painted it throughout without one instant of variation; but this, i suppose, is simplicity and generalization;--let it pass: but what is the color? _pure sky blue_, without one grain of gray, or any modifying hue whatsoever;--the same brush which had just given the bluest parts of the sky, has been more loaded at the same part of the pallet, and the whole mountain thrown in with unmitigated ultramarine. now mountains only can become pure blue when there is so much air between us and them that they become mere flat, dark shades, every detail being totally lost: they become blue when they become air, and not till then. consequently this part of salvator's painting, being of hills perfectly clear and near, with all their details visible, is, as far as color is concerned, broad, bold falsehood--the direct assertion of direct impossibility. in the whole range of turner's works, recent or of old date, you will not find an instance of anything near enough to have details visible, painted in sky blue. wherever turner gives blue, there he gives atmosphere; it is air, not object. blue he gives to his sea; so does nature;--blue he gives, sapphire-deep, to his extreme distance; so does nature;--blue he gives to the misty shadows and hollows of his hills; so does nature: but blue he gives _not_, where detail and illumined surface are visible; as he comes into light and character, so he breaks into warmth and varied hue; nor is there in one of his works, and i speak of the academy pictures especially, one touch of cold color which is not to be accounted for, and proved right and full of meaning. i do not say that salvator's distance is not artist-like; both in that, and in the yet more glaringly false distances of titian above alluded to, and in hundreds of others of equal boldness of exaggeration, i can take delight, and perhaps should be sorry to see them other than they are; but it is somewhat singular to hear people talking of turner's exquisite care and watchfulness in color as false, while they receive such cases of preposterous and audacious fiction with the most generous and simple credulity. § . poussin, and claude. again, in the upper sky of the picture of nicolas poussin, before noticed, the clouds are of a very fine clear olive-green, about the same tint as the brightest parts of the trees beneath them. they cannot have altered, (or else the trees must have been painted in gray,) for the hue is harmonious and well united with the rest of the picture, and the blue and white in the centre of the sky are still fresh and pure. now a green sky in open and illumined distance is very frequent, and very beautiful; but rich olive-green clouds, as far as i am acquainted with nature, are a piece of color in which she is not apt to indulge. you will be puzzled to show me such a thing in the recent works of turner.[ ] again, take any important group of trees, i do not care whose--claude's, salvator's, or poussin's--with lateral light (that in the marriage of isaac and rebecca, or gaspar's sacrifice of isaac, for instance:) can it be seriously supposed that those murky browns and melancholy greens are representative of the tints of leaves under full noonday sun? i know that you cannot help looking upon all these pictures as pieces of dark relief against a light wholly proceeding from the distances; but they are nothing of the kind--they are noon and morning effects with full lateral light. be so kind as to match the color of a leaf in the sun (the darkest you like) as nearly as you can, and bring your matched color and set it beside one of these groups of trees, and take a blade of common grass, and set it beside any part of the fullest light of their foregrounds, and then talk about the truth of color of the old masters! and let not arguments respecting the sublimity or fidelity of _impression_ be brought forward here. i have nothing whatever to do with this at present. i am not talking about what is sublime, but about what is true. people attack turner on this ground;--they never speak of beauty or sublimity with respect to him, but of nature and truth, and let them support their own favorite masters on the same grounds. perhaps i may have the very deepest veneration for the _feeling_ of the old masters, but i must not let it influence me now--my business is to match colors, not to talk sentiment. neither let it be said that i am going too much into details, and that general truths may be obtained by local falsehood. truth is only to be measured by close comparison of actual facts; we may talk forever about it in generals, and prove nothing. we cannot tell what effect falsehood may produce on this or that person, but we can very well tell what is false and what is not, and if it produce on our senses the effect of truth, that only demonstrates their imperfection and inaccuracy, and need of cultivation. turner's color is glaring to one person's sensations, and beautiful to another's. this proves nothing. poussin's color is right to one, soot to another. this proves nothing. there is no means of arriving at any conclusion but close comparison of both with the known and demonstrable hues of nature, and this comparison will invariably turn claude or poussin into blackness, and even turner into gray. whatever depth of gloom may seem to invest the objects of a real landscape, yet a window with that landscape seen through it, will invariably appear a broad space of light as compared with the shade of the room walls; and this single circumstance may prove to us both the intensity and the diffusion of daylight in open air, and the necessity, if a picture is to be truthful in effect of color, that it should tell as a broad space of graduated illumination--not, as do those of the old masters, as a patch-work of black shades. their works are nature in mourning weeds,--[greek: oud hen hêliô katharô tethrammenoi, all hypo symmigei skia]. § . turner's translation of colors. it is true that there are, here and there, in the academy pictures, passages in which turner has translated the unattainable intensity of one tone of color, into the attainable pitch of a higher one: the golden green for instance, of intense sunshine on verdure, into pure yellow, because he knows it to be impossible, with any mixture of blue whatsoever, to give faithfully its relative intensity of light, and turner always will have his light and shade right, whatever it costs him in color. but he does this in rare cases, and even then over very small spaces; and i should be obliged to his critics if they would go out to some warm, mossy green bank in full summer sunshine, and try to reach its tone; and when they find, as find they will, indian yellow and chrome look dark beside it, let them tell me candidly which is nearest truth, the gold of turner, or the mourning and murky olive browns and verdigris greens in which claude, with the industry and intelligence of a sevres china painter, drags the laborious bramble leaves over his childish foreground. § . notice of effects in which no brilliancy of art can even approach that of reality. § . reasons for the usual incredulity of the observer with respect to their representation. § . color of the napoleon. but it is singular enough that the chief attacks on turner for overcharged brilliancy, are made, not when there could by any possibility be any chance of his outstepping nature, but when he has taken subjects which no colors of earth could ever vie with or reach, such, for instance, as his sunsets among the high clouds. when i come to speak of skies, i shall point out what divisions, proportioned to their elevation, exist in the character of clouds. it is the highest region,--that exclusively characterized by white, filmy, multitudinous, and quiet clouds, arranged in bars, or streaks, or flakes, of which i speak at present, a region which no landscape painters have ever made one effort to represent, except rubens and turner--the latter taking it for his most favorite and frequent study. now we have been speaking hitherto of what is constant and necessary in nature, of the ordinary effects of daylight on ordinary colors, and we repeat again, that no gorgeousness of the pallet can reach even these. but it is a widely different thing when nature herself takes a coloring fit, and does something extraordinary, something really to exhibit her power. she has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability of color are in these sunsets among the high clouds. i speak especially of the moment before the sun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-color, and when this light falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapor, which would in common daylight be pure snow white, and which give therefore fair field to the tone of light. there is then no limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity of the hues assumed. the whole sky from the zenith to the horizon becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless, crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind,--things which can only be conceived while they are visible,--the intense hollow blue of the upper sky melting through it all,--showing here deep, and pure, and lightless, there, modulated by the filmy, formless body of the transparent vapor, till it is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold. now there is no connection, no one link of association or resemblance, between those skies and the work of any mortal hand but turner's. he alone has followed nature in these her highest efforts; he follows her faithfully, but far behind; follows at such a distance below her intensity that the napoleon of last year's exhibition, and the temeraire of the year before, would look colorless and cold if the eye came upon them after one of nature's sunsets among the high clouds. but there are a thousand reasons why this should not be believed. the concurrence of circumstances necessary to produce the sunsets of which i speak does not take place above five or six times in the summer, and then only for a space of from five to ten minutes, just as the sun reaches the horizon. considering how seldom people think of looking for sunset at all, and how seldom, if they do, they are in a position from which it can be fully seen, the chances that their attention should be awake, and their position favorable, during these few flying instants of the year, is almost as nothing. what can the citizen, who can see only the red light on the canvas of the wagon at the end of the street, and the crimson color of the bricks of his neighbor's chimney, know of the flood of fire which deluges the sky from the horizon to the zenith? what can even the quiet inhabitant of the english lowlands, whose scene for the manifestation of the fire of heaven is limited to the tops of hayricks, and the rooks' nests in the old elm-trees, know of the mighty passages of splendor which are tossed from alp to alp over the azure of a thousand miles of champaign? even granting the constant vigor of observation, and supposing the possession of such impossible knowledge, it needs but a moment's reflection to prove how incapable the memory is of retaining for any time the distinct image of the sources even of its most vivid impressions. what recollection have we of the sunsets which delighted us last year? we may know that they were magnificent, or glowing, but no distinct image of color or form is retained--nothing of whose _degree_ (for the great difficulty with the memory is to retain, not facts, but _degrees_ of fact) we could be so certain as to say of anything now presented to us, that it is like it. if we did say so, we should be wrong; for we may be quite certain that the energy of an impression fades from the memory, and becomes more and more indistinct every day; and thus we compare a faded and indistinct image with the decision and certainty of one present to the senses. how constantly do we affirm that the thunder-storm of last week was the most terrible one we ever saw in our lives, because we compare it, not with the thunder-storm of last year, but with the faded and feeble recollection of it. and so, when we enter an exhibition, as we have no definite standard of truth before us, our feelings are toned down and subdued to the quietness of color which is all that human power can ordinarily attain to; and when we turn to a piece of higher and closer truth, approaching the pitch of the color of nature, but to which we are not guided, as we should be in nature, by corresponding gradations of light everywhere around us, but which is isolated and cut off suddenly by a frame and a wall, and surrounded by darkness and coldness, what can we expect but that it should surprise and shock the feelings? suppose, where the napoleon hung in the academy last year, there could have been left, instead, an opening in the wall, and through that opening, in the midst of the obscurity of the dim room and the smoke-laden atmosphere, there could suddenly have been poured the full glory of a tropical sunset, reverberated from the sea: how would you have shrunk, blinded, from its scarlet and intolerable lightnings! what picture in the room would not have been blackness after it? and why then do you blame turner because he dazzles you? does not the falsehood rest with those who do _not_? there was not one hue in this whole picture which was not far below what nature would have used in the same circumstances, nor was there one inharmonious or at variance with the rest;--the stormy blood-red of the horizon, the scarlet of the breaking sunlight, the rich crimson browns of the wet and illumined sea-weed; the pure gold and purple of the upper sky, and, shed through it all, the deep passage of solemn blue, where the cold moonlight fell on one pensive spot of the limitless shore--all were given with harmony as perfect as their color was intense; and if, instead of passing, as i doubt not you did, in the hurry of your unreflecting prejudice, you had paused but so much as one quarter of an hour before the picture, you would have found the sense of air and space blended with every line, and breathing in every cloud, and every color instinct and radiant with visible, glowing, absorbing light. § . necessary discrepancy between the attainable brilliancy of color and light. it is to be observed, however, in general, that wherever in brilliant effects of this kind, we approach to anything like a true statement of nature's color, there must yet be a distinct difference in the impression we convey, because we cannot approach her _light_. all such hues are usually given by her with an accompanying intensity of sunbeams which dazzles and overpowers the eye, so that it cannot rest on the actual colors, nor understand what they are; and hence in art, in rendering all effects of this kind, there must be a want of the ideas of _imitation_, which are the great source of enjoyment to the ordinary observer; because we can only give one series of truths, those of color, and are unable to give the accompanying truths of light, so that the more true we are in color, the greater, ordinarily, will be the discrepancy felt between the intensity of hue and the feebleness of light. but the painter who really loves nature will not, on this account, give you a faded and feeble image, which indeed may appear to you to be right, because your feelings can detect no discrepancy in its parts, but which he knows to derive its apparent truth from a systematized falsehood. no; he will make you understand and feel that art _cannot_ imitate nature--that where it appears to do so, it must malign her, and mock her. he will give you, or state to you, such truths as are in his power, completely and perfectly; and those which he cannot give, he will leave to your imagination. if you are acquainted with nature, you will know all he has given to be true, and you will supply from your memory and from your heart that light which he cannot give. if you are unacquainted with nature, seek elsewhere for whatever may happen to satisfy your feelings; but do not ask for the truth which you would not acknowledge and could not enjoy. § . this discrepancy less in turner than in other colorists. § . its great extent in a landscape attributed to rubens. nevertheless the aim and struggle of the artist must always be to do away with this discrepancy as far as the powers of art admit, not by lowering his color, but by increasing his light. and it is indeed by this that the works of turner are peculiarly distinguished from those of all other colorists, by the dazzling intensity, namely, of the light which he sheds through every hue, and which, far more than their brilliant color, is the real source of their overpowering effect upon the eye, an effect so _reasonably_ made the subject of perpetual animadversion, as if the sun which they represent were quite a quiet, and subdued, and gentle, and manageable luminary, and never dazzled anybody, under any circumstances whatsoever. i am fond of standing by a bright turner in the academy, to listen to the unintentional compliments of the crowd--"what a glaring thing!" "i declare i can't look at it!" "don't it hurt your eyes?"--expressed as if they were in the constant habit of looking the sun full in the face, with the most perfect comfort and entire facility of vision. it is curious after hearing people malign some of turner's noble passages of light, to pass to some really ungrammatical and false picture of the old masters, in which we have color given _without_ light. take, for instance, the landscape attributed to rubens, no. , in the dulwich gallery. i never have spoken, and i never will speak of rubens but with the most reverential feeling; and whatever imperfections in his art may have resulted from his unfortunate want of seriousness and incapability of true passion, his calibre of mind was originally such that i believe the world may see another titian and another raffaelle, before it sees another rubens. but i have before alluded to the violent license he occasionally assumes; and there is an instance of it in this picture apposite to the immediate question. the sudden streak and circle of yellow and crimson in the middle of the sky of that picture, being the occurrence of a fragment of a sunset color in pure daylight, and in perfect isolation, while at the same time it is rather darker, when translated into light and shade, than brighter than the rest of the sky, is a case of such bold absurdity, come from whose pencil it may, that if every error which turner has fallen into in the whole course of his life were concentrated into one, that one would not equal it; and as our connoisseurs gaze upon this with never-ending approbation, we must not be surprised that the accurate perceptions which thus take delight in pure fiction, should consistently be disgusted by turner's fidelity and truth. § . turner scarcely ever uses pure or vivid color. hitherto, however, we have been speaking of vividness of pure color, and showing that it is used by turner only where nature uses it, and in no less degree. but we have hitherto, therefore, been speaking of a most limited and uncharacteristic portion of his works; for turner, like all great colorists, is distinguished not more for his power of dazzling and overwhelming the eye with intensity of effect, than for his power of doing so by the use of subdued and gentle means. there is no man living more cautious and sparing in the use of pure color than turner. to say that he never perpetrates anything like the blue excrescences of foreground, or hills _shot_ like a housekeeper's best silk gown, with blue and red, which certain of our celebrated artists consider the essence of the sublime, would be but a poor compliment. i might as well praise the portraits of titian because they have not the grimace and paint of a clown in a pantomime; but i do say, and say with confidence, that there is scarcely a landscape artist of the present day, however sober and lightless their effects may look, who does not employ more pure and raw color than turner; and that the ordinary tinsel and trash, or rather vicious and perilous stuff, according to the power of the mind producing it, with which the walls of our academy are half covered, disgracing, in weak hands, or in more powerful, degrading and corrupting our whole school of art, is based on a system of color beside which turner's is as vesta to cotytto--the chastity of fire to the foulness of earth. every picture of this great colorist has, in one or two parts of it, (key-notes of the whole,) points where the system of each individual color is concentrated by a single stroke, as pure as it can come from the pallet; but throughout the great space and extent of even the most brilliant of his works, there will not be found a raw color; that is to say, there is no warmth which has not gray in it, and no blue which has not warmth in it; and the tints in which he most excels and distances all other men, the most cherished and inimitable portions of his color, are, as with all perfect colorists they must be, his grays. it is instructive in this respect, to compare the sky of the mercury and argus with the various illustrations of the serenity, space, and sublimity naturally inherent in blue and pink, of which every year's exhibition brings forward enough and to spare. in the mercury and argus, the pale and vaporous blue of the heated sky is broken with gray and pearly white, the gold color of the light warming it more or less as it approaches or retires from the sun; but throughout, there is not a grain of pure blue; all is subdued and warmed at the same time by the mingling gray and gold, up to the very zenith, where, breaking through the flaky mist, the transparent and deep azure of the sky is expressed with a single crumbling touch; the key-note of the whole is given, and every part of it passes at once far into glowing and aerial space. the reader can scarcely fail to remember at once sundry works in contradistinction to this, with great names attached to them, in which the sky is a sheer piece of plumber's and glazier's work, and should be valued per yard, with heavy extra charge for ultramarine. § . the basis of gray, under all his vivid hues. throughout the works of turner, the same truthful principle of delicate and subdued color is carried out with a care and labor of which it is difficult to form a conception. he gives a dash of pure white for his highest light; but all the other whites of his picture are pearled down with gray or gold. he gives a fold of pure crimson to the drapery of his nearest figure; but all his other crimsons will be deepened with black, or warmed with yellow. in one deep reflection of his distant sea, we catch a trace of the purest blue; but all the rest is palpitating with a varied and delicate gradation of harmonized tint, which indeed looks vivid blue as a mass, but is only so by opposition. it is the most difficult, the most rare thing, to find in his works a definite space, however small, of unconnected color; that is, either of a blue which has nothing to connect it with the warmth, or of a warm color which has nothing to connect it with the grays of the whole; and the result is, that there is a general system and undercurrent of gray pervading the whole of his color, out of which his highest lights, and those local touches of pure color, which are, as i said before, the key-notes of the picture, flash with the peculiar brilliancy and intensity in which he stands alone. § . the variety and fulness even of his most simple tones. § . following the infinite and unapproachable variety of nature. intimately associated with this toning down and connection of the colors actually used, is his inimitable power of varying and blending them, so as never to give a quarter of an inch of canvas without a change in it, a melody as well as a harmony of one kind or another. observe, i am not at present speaking of this as artistical or desirable in itself, not as a characteristic of the great colorist, but as the aim of the simple follower of nature. for it is strange to see how marvellously nature varies the most general and simple of her tones. a mass of mountain seen against the light, may, at first, appear all of one blue; and so it is, blue as a whole, by comparison with other parts of the landscape. but look how that blue is made up. there are black shadows in it under the crags, there are green shadows along the turf, there are gray half-lights upon the rocks, there are faint touches of stealthy warmth and cautious light along their edges; every bush, every stone, every tuft of moss has its voice in the matter, and joins with individual character in the universal will. who is there who can do this as turner will? the old masters would have settled the matter at once with a transparent, agreeable, but monotonous gray. many among the moderns would probably be equally monotonous with absurd and false colors. turner only would give the uncertainty--the palpitating, perpetual change--the subjection of all to a great influence, without one part or portion being lost or merged in it--the unity of action with infinity of agent. and i wish to insist on this the more particularly, because it is one of the eternal principles of nature, that she will not have one line nor color, nor one portion nor atom of space without a change in it. there is not one of her shadows, tints, or lines that is not in a state of perpetual variation: i do not mean in time, but in space. there is not a leaf in the world which has the _same color_ visible over its whole surface; it has a white high light somewhere; and in proportion as it curves to or from that focus, the color is brighter or grayer. pick up a common flint from the roadside, and count, if you can, its changes and hues of color. every bit of bare ground under your feet has in it a thousand such--the gray pebbles, the warm ochre, the green of incipient vegetation, the grays and blacks of its reflexes and shadows, might keep a painter at work for a month, if he were obliged to follow them touch for touch: how much more, when the same infinity of change is carried out with vastness of object and space. the extreme of distance may appear at first monotonous; but the least examination will show it to be full of every kind of change--that its outlines are perpetually melting and appearing again--sharp here, vague there--now lost altogether, now just hinted and still confused among each other--and so forever in a state and necessity of change. hence, wherever in a painting we have unvaried color extended even over a small space, there is falsehood. nothing can be natural which is monotonous; nothing true which only tells one story. the brown foreground and rocks of claude's sinon before priam are as false as color can be: first, because there never was such a brown under sunlight, for even the sand and cinders (volcanic tufa) about naples, granting that he had studied from these ugliest of all formations, are, where they are fresh fractured, golden and lustrous in full light compared to these ideals of crag, and become, like all other rocks, quiet and gray when weathered; and secondly, because no rock that ever nature stained is without its countless breaking tints of varied vegetation. and even stanfield, master as he is of rock form, is apt in the same way to give us here and there a little bit of mud, instead of stone. § . his dislike of purple and fondness for the opposition of yellow and black. the principles of nature in this respect. what i am next about to say with respect to turner's color, i should wish to be received with caution, as it admits of dispute. i think that the first approach to viciousness of color in any master is commonly indicated chiefly by a prevalence of purple, and an absence of yellow. i think nature mixes yellow with almost every one of her hues, never, or very rarely, using red without it, but frequently using yellow with scarcely any red; and i believe it will be in consequence found that her favorite opposition, that which generally characterizes and gives tone to her color, is yellow and black, passing, as it retires, into white and blue. it is beyond dispute that the great fundamental opposition of rubens is yellow and black; and that on this, concentrated in one part of the picture, and modified in various grays throughout, chiefly depend the tones of all his finest works. and in titian, though there is a far greater tendency to the purple than in rubens, i believe no red is ever mixed with the pure blue, or glazed over it, which has not in it a modifying quantity of yellow. at all events, i am nearly certain that whatever rich and pure purples are introduced locally, by the great colorists, nothing is so destructive of all fine color as the slightest tendency to purple in general tone; and i am equally certain that turner is distinguished from all the vicious colorists of the present day, by the foundation of all his tones being black, yellow, and the intermediate grays, while the tendency of our common glare-seekers is invariably to pure, cold, impossible purples. so fond indeed is turner of black and yellow, that he has given us more than one composition, both drawings and paintings, based on these two colors alone, of which the magnificent quilleboeuf, which i consider one of the most perfect pieces of simple color existing, is a most striking example; and i think that where, as in some of the late venices, there has been something like a marked appearance of purple tones, even though exquisitely corrected by vivid orange and warm green in the foreground, the general color has not been so perfect or truthful: my own feelings would always guide me rather to the warm grays of such pictures as the snow storm, or the glowing scarlet and gold of the napoleon and slave ship. but i do not insist at present on this part of the subject, as being perhaps more proper for future examination, when we are considering the ideal of color. § . his early works are false in color. the above remarks have been made entirely with reference to the recent academy pictures, which have been chiefly attacked for their color. i by no means intend them to apply to the early works of turner, those which the enlightened newspaper critics are perpetually talking about as characteristic of a time when turner was "really great." he is, and was, really great, from the time when he first could hold a brush, but he never was so great as he is now. the crossing the brook, glorious as it is as a composition, and perfect in all that is most desirable and most ennobling in art, is scarcely to be looked upon as a piece of color; it is an agreeable, cool, gray rendering of space and form, but it is not color; if it be regarded as such, it is thoroughly false and vapid, and very far inferior to the tones of the same kind given by claude. the reddish brown in the foreground of the fall of carthage, with all diffidence be it spoken, is, as far as my feelings are competent to judge, crude, sunless, and in every way wrong; and both this picture and the building of carthage, though this latter is far the finer of the two, are quite unworthy of turner as a colorist. § . his drawings invariably perfect. not so with the drawings; these, countless as they are, from the earliest to the latest, though presenting an unbroken chain of increasing difficulty overcome, and truth illustrated, are all, according to their aim, equally faultless as to color. whatever we have hitherto said, applies to them in its fullest extent; though each, being generally the realization of some effect actually seen, and realized but once, requires almost a separate essay. as a class, they are far quieter and chaster than the academy pictures, and, were they better known, might enable our connoisseurs to form a somewhat more accurate judgment of the intense study of nature on which all turner's color is based. § . the subjection of his system of color to that of chiaroscuro. one point only remains to be noted respecting his system of color generally--its entire subordination to light and shade, a subordination which there is no need to prove here, as every engraving from his works--and few are unengraved--is sufficient demonstration of it. i have before shown the inferiority and unimportance in nature of color, as a truth, compared with light and shade. that inferiority is maintained and asserted by all really great works of color; but most by turner's as their color is most intense. whatever brilliancy he may choose to assume, is subjected to an inviolable law of chiaroscuro, from which there is no appeal. no richness nor depth of tint is considered of value enough to atone for the loss of one particle of arranged light. no brilliancy of hue is permitted to interfere with the depth of a determined shadow. and hence it is, that while engravings from works far less splendid in color are often vapid and cold, because the little color employed has not been rightly based on light and shade, an engraving from turner is always beautiful and forcible in proportion as the color of the original has been intense, and never in a single instance has failed to express the picture as a perfect composition.[ ] powerful and captivating and faithful as his color is, it is the least important of all his excellences, because it is the least important feature of nature. he paints in color, but he thinks in light and shade; and were it necessary, rather than lose one line of his forms, or one ray of his sunshine, would, i apprehend, be content to paint in black and white to the end of his life. it is by mistaking the shadow for the substance, and aiming at the brilliancy and the fire, without perceiving of what deep-studied shade and inimitable form it is at once the result and the illustration, that the host of his imitators sink into deserved disgrace. with him, as with all the greatest painters, and in turner's more than all, the hue is a beautiful auxiliary in working out the great impression to be conveyed, but is not the source nor the essence of that impression; it is little more than a visible melody, given to raise and assist the mind in the reception of nobler ideas--as sacred passages of sweet sound, to prepare the feelings for the reading of the mysteries of god. footnotes [ ] "cæcus adulator-- dignus aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes, blandaque devexæ iactaret basia rhedæ." [ ] there is perhaps nothing more characteristic of a great colorist than his power of using greens in strange places without their being felt as such, or at least than a constant preference of green gray to purple gray. and this hue of poussin's clouds would have been perfectly agreeable and allowable, had there been gold or crimson enough in the rest of the picture to have thrown it into gray. it is only because the lower clouds are pure white and blue, and because the trees are of the same color as the clouds, that the cloud color becomes false. there is a fine instance of a sky, green in itself, but turned gray by the opposition of warm color, in turner's devonport with the dockyards. [ ] this is saying too much; for it not unfrequently happens that the light and shade of the original is lost in the engraving, the effect of which is afterwards partially recovered, with the aid of the artist himself, by introductions of new features. sometimes, when a drawing depends chiefly on color, the engraver gets unavoidably embarrassed, and must be assisted by some change or exaggeration of the effect; but the more frequent case is, that the engraver's difficulties result merely from his inattention to, or wilful deviations from his original; and that the artist is obliged to assist him by such expedients as the error itself suggests. not unfrequently in reviewing a plate, as very constantly in reviewing a picture after some time has elapsed since its completion, even the painter is liable to make unnecessary or hurtful changes. in the plate of the old temeraire, lately published in finden's gallery, i do not know whether it was turner or the engraver who broke up the water into sparkling ripple, but it was a grievous mistake, and has destroyed the whole dignity and value of the conception. the flash of lightning in the winchelsea of the england series does not exist in the original; it is put in to withdraw the attention of the spectator from the sky which the engraver destroyed. there is an unfortunate persuasion among modern engravers that color can be expressed by particular characters of line; and in the endeavor to distinguish by different lines, different colors of equal depth, they frequently lose the whole system of light and shade. it will hardly be credited that the piece of foreground on the left of turner's modern italy, represented in the art-union engraving as nearly coal black, is in the original of a pale warm gray, hardly darker than the sky. all attempt to record color in engraving, is heraldry out of its place: the engraver has no power beyond that of expressing transparency or opacity by greater or less openness of line, (for the same depth of tint is producible by lines with very different intervals.) texture of surface is only in a measure in the power of the steel, and ought not to be laboriously sought after; nature's surfaces are distinguished more by form than texture; a stone is often smoother than a leaf; but if texture is to be given, let the engraver at least be sure that he knows what the texture of the object actually is, and how to represent it. the leaves in the foreground of the engraved mercury and argus have all of them three or four black lines across them. what sort of leaf texture is supposed to be represented by these? the stones in the foreground of turner's llanthony received from the artist the powdery texture of sandstone; the engraver covered them with contorted lines and turned them into old timber. a still more fatal cause of failure is the practice of making out or finishing what the artist left incomplete. in the england plate of dudley, there are two offensive blank windows in the large building with the chimney on the left. these _are_ engraver's improvements; in the original they are barely traceable, their lines being excessively faint and tremulous as with the movement of heated air between them and the spectator: their vulgarity is thus taken away, and the whole building left in one grand unbroken mass. it is almost impossible to break engravers of this unfortunate habit. i have even heard of their taking journeys of some distance in order to obtain knowledge of the details which the artist intentionally omitted; and the evil will necessarily continue until they receive something like legitimate artistical education. in one or two instances, however, especially in small plates, they have shown great feeling; the plates of miller (especially those of the turner illustrations to scott) are in most instances perfect and beautiful interpretations of the originals; so those of goodall in rogers's works, and cousens's in the rivers of france; those of the yorkshire series are also very valuable, though singularly inferior to the drawings. but none even of these men appear capable of producing a large plate. they have no knowledge of the means of rendering their lines vital or valuable; cross-hatching stands for everything; and inexcusably, for though we cannot expect every engraver to etch like rembrandt or albert durer, or every wood-cutter to draw like titian, at least something of the system and power of the grand works of those men might be preserved, and some mind and meaning stolen into the reticulation of the restless modern lines. chapter iii. of truth of chiaroscuro. § . we are not at present to examine particular effects of light. it is not my intention to enter, in the present portion of the work, upon any examination of turner's particular effects of light. we must know something about what is beautiful before we speak of these. at present i wish only to insist upon two great principles of chiaroscuro, which are observed throughout the works of the great modern master, and set at defiance by the ancients--great general laws, which may, or may not, be sources of beauty, but whose observance is indisputably necessary to truth. go out some bright sunny day in winter, and look for a tree with a broad trunk, having rather delicate boughs hanging down on the sunny side, near the trunk. stand four or five yards from it, with your back to the sun. you will find that the boughs between you and the trunk of the tree are very indistinct, that you confound them in places with the trunk itself, and cannot possibly trace one of them from its insertion to its extremity. but the shadows which they cast upon the trunk, you will find clear, dark, and distinct, perfectly traceable through their whole course, except when they are interrupted by the crossing boughs. and if you retire backwards, you will come to a point where you cannot see the intervening boughs at all, or only a fragment of them here and there, but can still see their shadows perfectly plain. now, this may serve to show you the immense prominence and importance of shadows where there is anything like bright light. they are, in fact, commonly far more conspicuous than the thing which casts them, for being as large as the casting object, and altogether made up of a blackness deeper than the darkest part of the casting object, (while that object is also broken up with positive and reflected lights,) their large, broad, unbroken spaces, tell strongly on the eye, especially as all form is rendered partially, often totally invisible within them, and as they are suddenly terminated by the sharpest lines which nature ever shows. for no outline of objects whatsoever is so sharp as the edge of a close shadow. put your finger over a piece of white paper in the sun, and observe the difference between the softness of the outline of the finger itself and the decision of the edge of the shadow. and note also the excessive gloom of the latter. a piece of black cloth, laid in the light, will not attain one-fourth of the blackness of the paper under the shadow. § . and therefore the distinctness of shadows is the chief means of expressing vividness of light. § . total absence of such distinctness in the works of the italian school. § . and partial absence in the dutch. hence shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights. all forms are understood and explained chiefly by their agency: the roughness of the bark of a tree, for instance, is not seen in the light, nor in the shade: it is only seen between the two, where the shadows of the ridges explain it. and hence, if we have to express vivid light, our very first aim must be to get the shadows sharp and visible; and this is not to be done by blackness, (though indeed chalk on white paper is the only thing which comes up to the intensity of real shadows,) but by keeping them perfectly flat, keen, and even. a very pale shadow, if it be quite flat--if it conceal the details of the objects it crosses--if it be gray and cold compared to their color, and very sharp edged, will be far more conspicuous, and make everything out of it look a great deal more like sunlight, than a shadow ten times its depth, shaded off at the edge, and confounded with the color of the objects on which it falls. now the old masters of the italian school, in almost all of their works, directly reverse this principle: they blacken their shadows till the picture becomes quite appalling, and everything in it invisible; but they make a point of losing their edges, and carrying them off by gradation; in consequence utterly destroying every appearance of sunlight. all their shadows are the faint, secondary darknesses of mere _daylight_; the sun has nothing whatever to do with them. the shadow between the pages of the book which you hold in your hand is distinct and visible enough, (though you are, i suppose, reading it by the ordinary daylight of your room,) out of the sun; and this weak and secondary shadow is all that we ever find in the italian masters, as indicative of sunshine. even cuyp and berghem, though they know thoroughly well what they are about in their foregrounds, forget the principle in their distances; and though in claude's seaports, where he has plain architecture to deal with, he gives us something like real shadows along the stones, the moment we come to ground and foliage with lateral light, away go the shadows and the sun together. in the marriage of isaac and rebecca, in our own gallery, the trunks of the trees between the water-wheel and the white figure in the middle distance, are dark and visible; but their shadows are scarcely discernible on the ground, and are quite vague and lost in the building. in nature, every bit of the shadow would have been darker than the darkest part of the trunks, and both on the ground and building would have been defined and conspicuous; while the trunks themselves would have been faint, confused, and indistinguishable, in their illumined parts, from the grass or distance. so in poussin's phocion, the shadow of the stick on the stone in the right-hand corner, is shaded off and lost, while you see the stick plain all the way. in nature's sunlight it would have been the direct reverse--you would have seen the shadow black and sharp all the way down, but you would have had to look for the stick, which in all probability would in several places have been confused with the stone behind it. and so throughout the works of claude, poussin, and salvator, we shall find, especially in their conventional foliage, and unarticulated barbarisms of rock, that their whole sum and substance of chiaroscuro is merely the gradation and variation which nature gives in the _body_ of her shadows, and that all which they do to express sunshine, she does to vary shade. they take only one step, while she always takes two; marking, in the first place, with violent decision, the great transition from sun to shade, and then varying the shade itself with a thousand gentle gradations and double shadows, in themselves equivalent, and more than equivalent, to all that the old masters did for their entire chiaroscuro. § . the perfection of turner's works in this respect. now if there be one principle, or secret more than another, on which turner depends for attaining brilliancy of light, it is his clear and exquisite drawing of the _shadows_. whatever is obscure, misty, or undefined in his objects or his atmosphere, he takes care that the shadows be sharp and clear--and then he knows that the light will take care of itself, and he makes them clear, not by blackness, but by excessive evenness, unity, and sharpness of edge. he will keep them clear and distinct, and make them felt as shadows, though they are so faint, that, but for their decisive forms, we should not have observed them for darkness at all. he will throw them one after another like transparent veils, along the earth and upon the air, till the whole picture palpitates with them, and yet the darkest of them will be a faint gray, imbued and penetrated with light. the pavement on the left of the hero and leander, is about the most thorough piece of this kind of sorcery that i remember in art; but of the general principle, not one of his works is without constant evidence. take the vignette of the garden opposite the title-page of rogers's poems, and note the drawing of the nearest balustrade on the right. the balusters themselves are faint and misty, and the light through them feeble; but the shadows of them are sharp and dark, and the intervening light as intense as it can be left. and see how much more distinct the shadow of the running figure is on the pavement, than the checkers of the pavement itself. observe the shadows on the trunk of the tree at page , how they conquer all the details of the trunk itself, and become darker and more conspicuous than any part of the boughs or limbs, and so in the vignette to campbell's beechtree's petition. take the beautiful concentration of all that is most characteristic of italy as she is, at page of rogers's italy, where we have the long shadows of the trunks made by far the most conspicuous thing in the whole foreground, and hear how wordsworth, the keenest-eyed of all modern poets for what is deep and essential in nature, illustrates turner here, as we shall find him doing in all other points. "at the root of that tall pine, the shadow of whose bare and slender stem, while here i sit at eve, oft stretches tow'rds me, like a long straight path, traced faintly in the greensward." excursion, book vi § . the effect of his shadows upon the light. so again in the rhymer's glen, (illustrations to scott,) note the intertwining of the shadows across the path, and the checkering of the trunks by them; and again on the bridge in the armstrong's tower; and yet more in the long avenue of brienne, where we have a length of two or three miles expressed by the playing shadows alone, and the whole picture filled with sunshine by the long lines of darkness cast by the figures on the snow. the hampton court in the england series, is another very striking instance. in fact, the general system of execution observable in all turner's drawings, is to work his grounds richly and fully, sometimes stippling, and giving infinity of delicate, mysterious, and ceaseless detail; and on the ground so prepared to cast his shadows with one dash of the brush, leaving an excessively sharp edge of watery color. such at least is commonly the case in such coarse and broad instances as those i have above given. words are not accurate enough, nor delicate enough to express or trace the constant, all-pervading influence of the finer and vaguer shadows throughout his works, that thrilling influence which gives to the light they leave, its passion and its power. there is not a stone, not a leaf, not a cloud, over which light is not felt to be actually passing and palpitating before our eyes. there is the motion, the actual wave and radiation of the darted beam--not the dull universal daylight, which falls on the landscape without life, or direction, or speculation, equal on all things and dead on all things; but the breathing, animated, exulting light, which feels, and receives, and rejoices, and acts--which chooses one thing and rejects another--which seeks, and finds, and loses again--leaping from rock to rock, from leaf to leaf, from wave to wave,--glowing, or flashing, or scintillating, according to what it strikes, or in its holier moods, absorbing and enfolding all things in the deep fulness of its repose, and then again losing itself in bewilderment, and doubt, and dimness; or perishing and passing away, entangled in drifting mist, or melted into melancholy air, but still,--kindling, or declining, sparkling or still, it is the living light, which breathes in its deepest, most entranced rest, which sleeps, but never dies. § . the distinction holds good between almost all the works of the ancient and modern schools. i need scarcely insist farther on the marked distinction between the works of the old masters and those of the great modern landscape-painters in this respect. it is one which the reader can perfectly well work out for himself, by the slightest systematic attention,--one which he will find existing, not merely between this work and that, but throughout the whole body of their productions, and down to every leaf and line. and a little careful watching of nature, especially in her foliage and foregrounds, and comparison of her with claude, gaspar poussin, and salvator, will soon show him that those artists worked entirely on conventional principles, not representing what they saw, but what they thought would make a handsome picture; and even when they went to nature, which i believe to have been a very much rarer practice with them than their biographers would have us suppose, they copied her like children, drawing what they knew to be there, but not what they saw there.[ ] i believe you may search the foregrounds of claude, from one end of europe to another, and you will not find the shadow of one leaf cast upon another. you will find leaf after leaf painted more or less boldly or brightly out of the black ground, and you will find dark leaves defined in perfect form upon the light; but you will not find the form of a single leaf disguised or interrupted by the shadow of another. and poussin and salvator are still farther from anything like genuine truth. there is nothing in their pictures which might not be manufactured in their painting-room, with a branch or two of brambles and a bunch or two of weeds before them, to give them the form of the leaves. and it is refreshing to turn from their ignorant and impotent repetitions of childish conception, to the clear, close, genuine studies of modern artists; for it is not turner only, (though here, as in all other points, the first,) who is remarkable for fine and expressive decision of chiaroscuro. some passages by j. d. harding are thoroughly admirable in this respect, though this master is getting a little too much into a habit of general keen execution, which prevents the parts which ought to be especially decisive from being felt as such, and which makes his pictures, especially the large ones, look a little thin. but some of his later passages of rock foreground have, taken in the abstract, been beyond all praise, owing to the exquisite forms and firm expressiveness of their shadows. and the chiaroscuro of stanfield is equally deserving of the most attentive study. § . second great principle of chiaroscuro. both high light and deep shadow are used in equal quantity and only in points. the second point to which i wish at present to direct attention has reference to the _arrangement_ of light and shade. it is the constant habit of nature to use both her highest lights and deepest shadows in exceedingly small quantity; always in points, never in masses. she will give a large mass of tender light in sky or water, impressive by its quantity, and a large mass of tender shadow relieved against it, in foliage, or hill, or building; but the light is always subdued if it be extensive--the shadow always feeble if it be broad. she will then fill up all the rest of her picture with middle tints and pale grays of some sort or another, and on this quiet and harmonious whole, she will touch her high lights in spots--the foam of an isolated wave--the sail of a solitary vessel--the flash of the sun from a wet roof--the gleam of a single whitewashed cottage--or some such sources of local brilliancy, she will use so vividly and delicately as to throw everything else into definite shade by comparison. and then taking up the gloom, she will use the black hollows of some overhanging bank, or the black dress of some shaded figure, or the depth of some sunless chink of wall or window, so sharply as to throw everything else into definite light by comparison; thus reducing the whole mass of her picture to a delicate middle tint, approaching, of course, here to light, and there to gloom; but yet sharply separated from the utmost degrees either of the one or the other. § . neglect or contradiction of this principle by writers on art. § . and consequent misguiding of the student. now it is a curious thing that none of our writers on art seem to have noticed the great principle of nature in this respect. they all talk of deep shadow as a thing that may be given in quantity,--one fourth of the picture, or, in certain effects, much more. barry, for instance, says that the practice of the great painters, who "best understood the effects of chiaroscuro," was, for the most part, to make the mass of middle tint larger than the light, and the mass of dark larger than the masses of light and middle tint together, _i.e._, occupying more than one-half of the picture. now i do not know what we are to suppose is meant by "understanding chiaroscuro." if it means being able to manufacture agreeable patterns in the shape of pyramids, and crosses, and zigzags, into which arms and legs are to be persuaded, and passion and motion arranged, for the promotion and encouragement of the cant of criticism, such a principle may be productive of the most advantageous results. but if it means, being acquainted with the deep, perpetual, systematic, unintrusive simplicity and unwearied variety of nature's chiaroscuro--if it means the perception that blackness and sublimity are not synonymous, and that space and light may possibly be coadjutors--then no man, who ever advocated or dreamed of such a principle, is anything more than a novice, blunderer and trickster in chiaroscuro. and my firm belief is, that though color is inveighed against by all artists, as the great circe of art--the great transformer of mind into sensuality--no fondness for it, no study of it, is half so great a peril and stumbling-block to the young student, as the admiration he hears bestowed on such artificial, false, and juggling chiaroscuro, and the instruction he receives, based on such principles as that given us by fuseli--that "mere natural light and shade, however separately or individually true, is not always legitimate chiaroscuro in art." it may not always be _agreeable_ to a sophisticated, unfeeling, and perverted mind; but the student had better throw up his art at once, than proceed on the conviction that any other can ever be _legitimate_. i believe i shall be perfectly well able to prove, in following parts of the work, that "mere natural light and shade" is the only fit and faithful attendant of the highest art; and that all tricks--all visible, intended arrangement--all extended shadows and narrow lights--everything in fact, in the least degree artificial, or tending to make the mind dwell upon light and shade as such, is an injury, instead of an aid, to conceptions of high ideal dignity. i believe i shall be able also to show, that nature manages her chiaroscuro a great deal more neatly and cleverly than people fancy;--that "mere natural light and shade" is a very much finer thing than most artists can put together, and that none think they can improve upon it but those who never understood it. § . the great value of a simple chiaroscuro. but however this may be, it is beyond dispute that every permission given to the student to amuse himself with painting one figure all black, and the next all white, and throwing them out with a background of nothing--every permission given to him to spoil his pocketbook with sixths of sunshine and sevenths of shade, and other such fractional sublimities, is so much more difficulty laid in the way of his ever becoming a master; and that none are in the right road to real excellence, but those who are struggling to render the simplicity, purity, and inexhaustible variety of nature's own chiaroscuro in open, cloudless daylight, giving the expanse of harmonious light--the speaking, decisive shadow--and the exquisite grace, tenderness, and grandeur of aerial opposition of local color and equally illuminated lines. no chiaroscuro is so difficult as this; and none so noble, chaste, or impressive. on this part of the subject, however, i must not enlarge at present. i wish now only to speak of those great principles of chiaroscuro, which nature observes, even when she is most working for effect--when she is playing with thunder-clouds and sunbeams, and throwing one thing out and obscuring another, with the most marked artistical feeling and intention;--even then, she never forgets her great rule, to give precisely the same quantity of deepest shade which she does of highest light, and no more; points of the one answering to points of the other, and both vividly conspicuous and separated from all the rest of the landscape. § . the sharp separation of nature's lights from her middle tint. and it is most singular that this separation, which is the great source of brilliancy in nature, should not only be unobserved, but absolutely forbidden by our great writers on art, who are always talking about connecting the light with the shade by _imperceptible gradations_. now so surely as this is done, all sunshine is lost, for imperceptible gradation from light to dark is the characteristic of objects seen out of sunshine, in what is, in landscape, shadow. nature's principle of getting light is the direct reverse. she will cover her whole landscape with middle tint, in which she will have as many gradations as you please, and a great many more than you can paint; but on this middle tint she touches her extreme lights, and extreme darks, isolated and sharp, so that the eye goes to them directly, and feels them to be key-notes of the whole composition. and although the dark touches are less attractive than the light ones, it is not because they are less distinct, but because they exhibit nothing; while the bright touches are in parts where everything is seen, and where in consequence the eye goes to rest. but yet the high lights do not exhibit anything in themselves, they are too bright and dazzle the eye; and having no shadows in them, cannot exhibit form, for form can only be seen by shadow of some kind or another. hence the highest lights and deepest darks agree in this, that nothing is seen in either of them; that both are in exceedingly small quantity, and both are marked and distinct from the middle tones of the landscape--the one by their brilliancy, the other by their sharp edges, even though many of the more energetic middle tints may approach their intensity very closely. § . the truth of turner. i need scarcely do more than tell you to glance at any one of the works of turner, and you will perceive in a moment the exquisite observation of all these principles; the sharpness, decision, conspicuousness, and excessively small quantity, both of extreme light and extreme shade, all the mass of the picture being graduated and delicate middle tint. take up the rivers of france, for instance, and turn over a few of the plates in succession. . chateau gaillard (vignette.)--black figures and boats, points of shade; sun-touches on castle, and wake of boat, of light. see how the eye rests on both, and observe how sharp and separate all the lights are, falling in spots, edged by shadow, but not melting off into it. . orleans.--the crowded figures supply both points of shade and light. observe the delicate middle tint of both in the whole mass of buildings, and compare this with the blackness of canaletto's shadows, against which neither figures nor anything else can ever tell, as points of shade. . blois.--white figures in boats, buttresses of bridge, dome of church on the right, for light; woman on horseback, heads of boats, for shadow. note especially the isolation of the light on the church dome. . chateau de blois.--torches and white figures for light, roof of chapel and monks' dresses for shade. . beaugency.--sails and spire opposed to buoy and boats. an exquisite instance of brilliant, sparkling, isolated touches of morning light. . amboise.--white sail and clouds; cypresses under castle. . chateau of amboise.--the boat in the centre, with its reflections, needs no comment. note the glancing lights under the bridge. this is a very glorious and perfect instance. . st. julien, tours.--especially remarkable for its preservation of deep points of gloom, because the whole picture is one of extended shade. i need scarcely go on. the above instances are taken as they happen to come, without selection. the reader can proceed for himself. i may, however, name a few cases of chiaroscuro more especially deserving of his study. scene between quilleboeuf and villequier,--honfleur,--light towers of the héve,--on the seine between mantes and vernon,--the lantern at st. cloud,--confluence of seine and marne,--troyes,--the first and last vignette, and those at pages , , , , , , of rogers's poems; the first and second in campbell, st. maurice in the italy, where note the black stork; brienne, skiddaw, mayburgh, melrose, jedburgh, in the illustrations to scott, and the vignettes to milton, not because these are one whit superior to others of his works, but because the laws of which we have been speaking are more strikingly developed in them, and because they have been well engraved. it is impossible to reason from the larger plates, in which half the chiaroscuro is totally destroyed by the haggling, blackening, and "making out" of the engravers. footnotes [ ] compare sect. ii. chap. ii. § . chapter iv. of truth of space:--first as dependent on the focus of the eye.[ ] § . space is more clearly indicated by the drawing of objects than by their hue. in the first chapter of this section i noticed the distinction between real aerial perspective, and that overcharged contrast of light and shade by which the old masters obtained their deceptive effect; and i showed that, though inferior to them in the precise quality or tone of aerial color, our great modern master is altogether more truthful in the expression of the proportionate relation of all his distances to one another. i am now about to examine those modes of expressing space, both in nature and art by far the most important, which are dependent, not on the relative hues of objects, but on the _drawing_ of them: by far the most important, i say, because the most constant and certain; for nature herself is not always aerial. local effects are frequent which interrupt and violate the laws of aerial tone, and induce strange deception in our ideas of distance. i have often seen the summit of a snowy mountain look nearer than its base, owing to the perfect clearness of the upper air. but the _drawing_ of objects, that is to say, the degree in which their details and parts are distinct or confused, is an unfailing and certain criterion of their distance; and if this be rightly rendered in a painting, we shall have genuine truth of space, in spite of many errors in aerial tone; while, if this be neglected, all space will be destroyed, whatever dexterity of tint may be employed to conceal the defective drawing. § . it is impossible to see objects at unequal distances distinctly at one moment. first, then, it is to be noticed, that the eye, like any other lens, must have its focus altered, in order to convey a distinct image of objects at different distances; so that it is totally impossible to see distinctly, at the same moment, two objects, one of which is much farther off than another. of this, any one may convince himself in an instant. look at the bars of your window-frame, so as to get a clear image of their lines and form, and you cannot, while your eye is fixed on them, perceive anything but the most indistinct and shadowy images of whatever objects may be visible beyond. but fix your eyes on those objects, so as to see them clearly, and though they are just beyond and apparently beside the window-frame, that frame will only be felt or seen as a vague, flitting, obscure interruption to whatever is perceived beyond it. a little attention directed to this fact will convince every one of its universality, and prove beyond dispute that objects at unequal distances cannot be seen together, not from the intervention of air or mist, but from the impossibility of the rays proceeding from both, converging to the same focus, so that the whole impression, either of one or the other, must necessarily be confused, indistinct, and inadequate. § . especially such as are both comparatively near. but, be it observed (and i have only to request that whatever i say may be tested by immediate experiment,) the difference of focus necessary is greatest within the first five hundred yards, and therefore, though it is totally impossible to see an object ten yards from the eye, and one a quarter of a mile beyond it, at the same moment, it is perfectly possible to see one a quarter of a mile off, and one five miles beyond it, at the same moment. the consequence of this is, practically, that in a real landscape, we can see the whole of what would be called the middle distance and distance together, with facility and clearness; but while we do so we can see nothing in the foreground beyond a vague and indistinct arrangement of lines and colors; and that if, on the contrary, we look at any foreground object, so as to receive a distinct impression of it, the distance and middle distance become all disorder and mystery. § . in painting, therefore, either the foreground or distance must be partially sacrificed. and therefore, if in a painting our foreground is anything, our distance must be nothing, and _vice versa_; for if we represent our near and distant objects as giving both at once that distinct image to the eye, which we receive in nature from each, when we look at them separately;[ ] and if we distinguish them from each other only by the air-tone; and indistinctness dependent on positive distance, we violate one of the most essential principles of nature; we represent that as seen at once which can only be seen by two separate acts of seeing, and tell a falsehood as gross as if we had represented four sides of a cubic object visible together. § . which not being done by the old masters, they could not express space. § . but modern artists have succeeded in fully carrying out this principle. § . especially of turner. now, to this fact and principle, no landscape painter of the old school, as far as i remember, ever paid the slightest attention. finishing their foregrounds clearly and sharply, and with vigorous impression on the eye, giving even the leaves of their bushes and grass with perfect edge and shape, they proceeded into the distance with equal attention to what they could see of its details--they gave all that the eye can perceive in a distance, when it is fully and entirely devoted to it, and therefore, though masters of aerial tone, though employing every expedient that art could supply to conceal the intersection of lines, though caricaturing the force and shadow of near objects to throw them close upon the eye, they _never_ succeeded in truly representing space. turner introduced a new era in landscape art, by showing that the foreground might be sunk for the distance, and that it was possible to express immediate proximity to the spectator, without giving anything like completeness to the forms of the near objects. this is not done by slurred or soft lines, observe, (always the sign of vice in art,) but by a decisive imperfection, a firm, but partial assertion of form, which the eye feels indeed to be close home to it, and yet cannot rest upon, or cling to, nor entirely understand, and from which it is driven away of necessity, to those parts of distance on which it is intended to repose. and this principle, originated by turner, though fully carried out by him only, has yet been acted on with judgment and success by several less powerful artists of the english school. some six years ago, the brown moorland foregrounds of copley fielding were very instructive in this respect. not a line in them was made out, not a single object clearly distinguishable. wet broad sweeps of the brush, sparkling, careless, and accidental as nature herself, always truthful as far as they went, implying knowledge, though not expressing it, suggested everything, while they represented nothing. but far off into the mountain distance came the sharp edge and the delicate form; the whole intention and execution of the picture being guided and exerted where the great impression of space and size was to be given. the spectator was compelled to go forward into the waste of hills--there, where the sun broke wide upon the moor, he must walk and wander--he could not stumble and hesitate over the near rocks, nor stop to botanize on the first inches of his path.[ ] and the impression of these pictures was always great and enduring, as it was simple and truthful. i do not know anything in art which has expressed more completely the force and feeling of nature in these particular scenes. and it is a farther illustration[ ] of the principle we are insisting upon, that where, as in some of his later works, he has bestowed more labor on the foreground, the picture has lost both in space and sublimity. and among artists in general, who are either not aware of the principle, or fear to act upon it, (for it requires no small courage, as well as skill, to treat a foreground with that indistinctness and mystery which they have been accustomed to consider as characteristic of distance,) the foreground is not only felt, as every landscape painter will confess, to be the most embarrassing and unmanageable part of the picture, but, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, will go near to destroy the effect of the rest of the composition. thus callcott's trent is severely injured by the harsh group of foreground figures; and stanfield very rarely gets through an academy picture without destroying much of its space, by too much determination of near form; while harding constantly sacrifices his distance, and compels the spectator to dwell on the foreground altogether, though indeed, with such foregrounds as he gives us, we are most happy so to do. but it is in turner only that we see a bold and decisive choice of the distance and middle distance, as his great object of attention; and by him only that the foreground is united and adapted to it, not by any want of drawing, or coarseness, or carelessness of execution, but by the most precise and beautiful indication or suggestion of just so much of even the minutest forms as the eye can see when its focus is not adapted to them. and herein is another reason for the vigor and wholeness of the effect of turner's works at any distance; while those of almost all other artists are sure to lose space as soon as we lose sight of the details. § . justification of the want of drawing in turner's figures. and now we see the reason for the singular, and to the ignorant in art, the offensive execution of turner's figures. i do not mean to assert that there is any reason whatsoever, for _bad_ drawing, (though in landscape it matters exceedingly little;) but that there is both reason and necessity for that _want_ of drawing which gives even the nearest figures round balls with four pink spots in them instead of faces, and four dashes of the brush instead of hands and feet; for it is totally impossible that if the eye be adapted to receive the rays proceeding from the utmost distance, and some partial impression from all the distances, it should be capable of perceiving more of the forms and features of near figures than turner gives. and how absolutely necessary to the faithful representation of space this indecision really is, might be proved with the utmost ease by any one who had veneration enough for the artist to sacrifice one of his pictures to his fame; who would take some one of his works in which the figures were most incomplete, and have them painted in by any of our delicate and first-rate figure-painters, absolutely preserving every color and shade of turner's group, so as not to lose one atom of the composition, but giving eyes for the pink spots, and feet for the white ones. let the picture be so exhibited in the academy, and even novices in art would feel at a glance that its truth of space was gone, that every one of its beauties and harmonies had undergone decomposition, that it was now a grammatical solecism, a painting of impossibilities, a thing to torture the eye, and offend the mind. footnotes [ ] i have left this chapter in its original place, because i am more than ever convinced of the truth of the position advanced in the th paragraph; nor can i at present assign any other cause, than that here given, for what is there asserted; and yet i cannot but think that i have allowed far too much influence to a change so slight as that which we insensibly make in the focus of the eye; and that the real justification of turner's practice, with respect to some of his foregrounds, is to be elsewhere sought. i leave the subject, therefore, to the reader's consideration. [ ] this incapacity of the eye must not be confounded with its incapability to comprehend a large portion of _lateral_ space at once. we indeed can see, at any one moment, little more than one point, the objects beside it being confused and indistinct; but we need pay no attention to this in art, because we can see just as little of the picture as we can of the landscape without turning the eye, and hence any slurring or confusing of one part of it, laterally, more than another, is not founded on any truth of nature, but is an expedient of the artist--and often an excellent and desirable one--to make the eye rest where he wishes it. but as the touch expressive of a distant object is as near upon the canvas as that expressive of a near one, both are seen distinctly and with the same focus of the eye, and hence an immediate contradiction of nature results, unless one or other be given with an artificial and increased indistinctness, expressive of the appearance peculiar to the unadapted focus. on the other hand, it must be noted that the greater part of the effect above described is consequent not on variation of focus, but on the different angle at which near objects are seen by each of the two eyes, when both are directed towards the distance. [ ] there is no inconsistency, observe, between this passage and what was before asserted respecting the necessity of botanical fidelity--where the foreground is the object of attention. compare part ii. sect. i. chap. vii. § :--"to paint mist rightly, space rightly, and light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint _nothing else_ rightly." [ ] hardly. it would have been so only had the recently finished foregrounds been as accurate in detail as they are abundant: they are painful, i believe, not from their finish, but their falseness. chapter v. of truth of space:--secondly, as its appearance is dependent on the power of the eye. § . the peculiar indistinctness dependent on the retirement of objects from the eye. in the last chapter, we have seen how indistinctness of individual distances becomes necessary in order to express the adaptation of the eye to one or other of them; we have now to examine that kind of indistinctness which is dependent on real retirement of the object even when the focus of the eye is fully concentrated upon it. the first kind of indecision is that which belongs to all objects which the eye is not adapted to, whether near or far off: the second is that consequent upon the want of power in the eye to receive a clear image of objects at a great distance from it, however attentively it may regard them. draw on a piece of white paper, a square and a circle, each about a twelfth or eighth of an inch in diameter, and blacken them so that their forms may be very distinct; place your paper against the wall at the end of the room, and retire from it a greater or less distance according as you have drawn the figures larger or smaller. you will come to a point where, though you can see both the spots with perfect plainness, you cannot tell which is the square and which the circle. § . causes confusion, but not annihilation of details. now this takes place of course with every object in a landscape, in proportion to its distance and size. the definite forms of the leaves of a tree, however sharply and separately they may appear to come against the sky, are quite indistinguishable at fifty yards off, and the form of everything becomes confused before we finally lose sight of it. now if the character of an object, say the front of a house, be explained by a variety of forms in it, as the shadows in the tops of the windows, the lines of the architraves, the seams of the masonry, etc.; these lesser details, as the object falls into distance, become confused and undecided, each of them losing their definite forms, but all being perfectly visible as something, a white or a dark spot or stroke, not lost sight of, observe, but yet so seen that we cannot tell what they are. as the distance increases, the confusion becomes greater, until at last the whole front of the house becomes merely a flat, pale space, in which, however, there is still observable a kind of richness and checkering, caused by the details in it, which, though totally merged and lost in the mass, have still an influence on the texture of that mass; until at last the whole house itself becomes a mere light or dark spot which we can plainly see, but cannot tell what it is, nor distinguish it from a stone or any other object. § . instances in various objects. now what i particularly wish to insist upon, is the state of vision in which all the details of an object are seen, and yet seen in such confusion and disorder that we cannot in the least tell what they are, or what they mean. it is not mist between us and the object, still less is it shade, still less is it want of character; it is a confusion, a mystery, an interfering of undecided lines with each other, not a diminution of their number; window and door, architrave and frieze, all are there: it is no cold and vacant mass, it is full and rich and abundant, and yet you cannot see a single form so as to know what it is. observe your friend's face as he is coming up to you; first it is nothing more than a white spot; now it is a face, but you cannot see the two eyes, nor the mouth, even as spots; you see a confusion of lines, a something which you know from experience to be indicative of a face, and yet you cannot tell how it is so. now he is nearer, and you can see the spots for the eyes and mouth, but they are not blank spots neither; there is detail in them; you cannot see the lips, nor the teeth, nor the brows, and yet you see more than mere spots; it is a mouth and an eye, and there is light and sparkle and expression in them, but nothing distinct. now he is nearer still, and you can see that he is like your friend, but you cannot tell whether he is or not; there is a vagueness and indecision of line still. now you are sure, but even yet there are a thousand things in his face which have their effect in inducing the recognition, but which you cannot see so as to know what they are. § . two great resultant truths; that nature is never distinct, and never vacant. changes like these, and states of vision corresponding to them, take place with each and all of the objects of nature, and two great principles of truth are deducible from their observation. first, place an object as close to the eye as you like, there is always something in it which you _cannot_ see, except in the hinted and mysterious manner above described. you can see the texture of a piece of dress, but you cannot see the individual threads which compose it, though they are all felt, and have each of them influence on the eye. secondly, place an object as far from the eye as you like, and until it becomes itself a mere spot, there is always something in it which you _can_ see, though only in the hinted manner above described. its shadows and lines and local colors are not lost sight of as it retires; they get mixed and indistinguishable, but they are still there, and there is a difference always perceivable between an object possessing such details and a flat or vacant space. the grass blades of a meadow a mile off, are so far discernible that there will be a marked difference between its appearance and that of a piece of wood painted green. and thus nature is never distinct and never vacant, she is always mysterious, but always abundant; you always see something, but you never see all. and thus arise that exquisite finish and fulness which god has appointed to be the perpetual source of fresh pleasure to the cultivated and observant eye,--a finish which no distance can render invisible, and no nearness comprehensible; which in every stone, every bough, every cloud, and every wave is multiplied around us, forever presented, and forever exhaustless. and hence in art, every space or touch in which we can see everything, or in which we can see nothing, is false. nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing. § . complete violation of both these principles by the old masters. they are either distinct or vacant. now, i would not wish for any more illustrative or marked examples of the total contradiction of these two great principles, than the landscape works of the old masters, taken as a body:--the dutch masters furnishing the cases of seeing everything, and the italians of seeing nothing. the rule with both is indeed the same, differently applied. "you shall see the bricks in the wall, and be able to count them, or you shall see nothing but a dead flat;" but the dutch give you the bricks, and the italians the flat. nature's rule being the precise reverse--"you shall never be able to count the bricks, but you shall never see a dead space." § . instances from nicholas poussin. take, for instance, the street in the centre of the really great landscape of poussin (great in feeling at least) marked in the dulwich gallery. the houses are dead square masses with a light side and a dark side, and black touches for windows. there is no suggestion of anything in any of the spaces, the light wall is dead gray, the dark wall dead gray, and the windows dead black. how differently would nature have treated us. she would have let us see the indian corn hanging on the walls, and the image of the virgin at the angles, and the sharp, broken, broad shadows of the tiled eaves, and the deep ribbed tiles with the doves upon them, and the carved roman capital built into the wall, and the white and blue stripes of the mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and the flapping corners of the mat blinds. all would have been there; not as such, not like the corn, nor blinds, nor tiles, not to be comprehended nor understood, but a confusion of yellow and black spots and strokes, carried far too fine for the eye to follow, microscopic in its minuteness, and filling every atom and part of space with mystery, out of which would have arranged itself the general impression of truth and life. § . from claude. again, take the distant city on the right bank of the river in claude's marriage of isaac and rebecca, in the national gallery. i have seen many cities in my life, and drawn not a few; and i have seen many fortifications, fancy ones included, which frequently supply us with very new ideas indeed, especially in matters of proportion; but i do not remember ever having met with either a city or a fortress _entirely_ composed of round towers of various heights and sizes, all facsimiles of each other, and absolutely agreeing in the number of battlements. i have, indeed, some faint recollection of having delineated such an one in the first page of a spelling-book when i was four years old; but, somehow or other, the dignity and perfection of the ideal were not appreciated, and the volume was not considered to be increased in value by the frontispiece. without, however, venturing to doubt the entire sublimity of the same ideal as it occurs in claude, let us consider how nature, if she had been fortunate enough to originate so perfect a conception, would have managed it in its details. claude has permitted us to see every battlement, and the first impulse we feel upon looking at the picture is to count how many there are. nature would have given us a peculiar confused roughness of the upper lines, a multitude of intersections and spots, which we should have known from experience was indicative of battlements, but which we might as well have thought of creating as of counting. claude has given you the walls below in one dead void of uniform gray. there is nothing to be seen, nor felt, nor guessed at in it; it is gray paint or gray shade, whichever you may choose to call it, but it is nothing more. nature would have let you see, nay, would have compelled you to see, thousands of spots and lines, not one to be absolutely understood or accounted for, but yet all characteristic and different from each other; breaking lights on shattered stones, vague shadows from waving vegetation, irregular stains of time and weather, mouldering hollows, sparkling casements--all would have been there--none, indeed, seen as such, none comprehensible or like themselves, but all visible; little shadows, and sparkles, and scratches, making that whole space of color a transparent, palpitating, various infinity. § . and g. poussin. or take one of poussin's extreme distances, such as that in the sacrifice of isaac. it is luminous, retiring, delicate and perfect in tone, and is quite complete enough to deceive and delight the careless eye to which all distances are alike; nay, it is perfect and masterly, and absolutely right if we consider it as a sketch,--as a first plan of a distance, afterwards to be carried out in detail. but we must remember that all these alternate spaces of gray and gold are not the landscape itself, but the treatment of it--not its substance, but its light and shade. they are just what nature would cast over it, and write upon it with every cloud, but which she would cast in play, and without carefulness, as matters of the very smallest possible importance. all her work and her attention would be given to bring out from underneath this, and through this, the forms and the material character which this can only be valuable to illustrate, not to conceal. every one of those broad spaces she would linger over in protracted delight, teaching you fresh lessons in every hairsbreadth of it, and pouring her fulness of invention into it, until the mind lost itself in following her,--now fringing the dark edge of the shadow with a tufted line of level forest--now losing it for an instant in a breath of mist--then breaking it with the white gleaming angle of a narrow brook--then dwelling upon it again in a gentle, mounded, melting undulation, over the other side of which she would carry you down into a dusty space of soft, crowded light, with the hedges, and the paths, and the sprinkled cottages and scattered trees mixed up and mingled together in one beautiful, delicate, impenetrable mystery--sparkling and melting, and passing away into the sky, without one line of distinctness, or one instant of vacancy. § . the imperative necessity, in landscape painting, of fulness and finish. now it is, indeed, impossible for the painter to follow all this--he cannot come up to the same degree and order of infinity--but he can give us a lesser kind of infinity. he has not one-thousandth part of the space to occupy which nature has; but he can, at least, leave no part of that space vacant and unprofitable. if nature carries out her minutiæ over miles, he has no excuse for generalizing in inches. and if he will only give us all he can, if he will give us a fulness as complete and as mysterious as nature's, we will pardon him for its being the fulness of a cup instead of an ocean. but we will not pardon him, if, because he has not the mile to occupy, he will not occupy the inch, and because he has fewer means at his command, will leave half of those in his power unexerted. still less will we pardon him for mistaking the sport of nature for her labor, and for following her only in her hour of rest, without observing how she has worked for it. after spending centuries in raising the forest, and guiding the river, and modelling the mountain, she exults over her work in buoyancy of spirit, with playful sunbeam and flying cloud; but the painter must go through the same labor, or he must not have the same recreation. let him chisel his rock faithfully, and tuft his forest delicately, and then we will allow him his freaks of light and shade, and thank him for them; but we will not be put off with the play before the lesson--with the adjunct instead of the essence--with the illustration instead of the fact. § . breadth is not vacancy. i am somewhat anticipating my subject here, because i can scarcely help answering the objections which i know must arise in the minds of most readers, especially of those who are _partially_ artistical, respecting "generalization," "breadth," "effect," etc. it were to be wished that our writers on art would not dwell so frequently on the necessity of breadth, without explaining what it means; and that we had more constant reference made to the principle which i can only remember having seen once clearly explained and insisted on,--that breadth is not vacancy. generalization is unity, not destruction of parts; and composition is not annihilation, but arrangement of materials. the breadth which unites the truths of nature with her harmonies, is meritorious and beautiful; but the breadth which annihilates those truths by the million, is not painting nature, but painting over her. and so the masses which result from right concords and relations of details, are sublime and impressive; but the masses which result from the eclipse of details are contemptible and painful.[ ] and we shall show, in following parts of the work, that distances like those of poussin are mere meaningless tricks of clever execution, which, when once discovered, the artist may repeat over and over again, with mechanical contentment and perfect satisfaction, both to himself and to his superficial admirers, with no more exertion of intellect nor awakening of feeling than any tradesman has in multiplying some ornamental pattern of furniture. be this as it may, however, (for we cannot enter upon the discussion of the question here,) the falsity and imperfection of such distances admit of no dispute. beautiful and ideal they may be; true they are not: and in the same way we might go through every part and portion of the works of the old masters, showing throughout, either that you have every leaf and blade of grass staring defiance to the mystery of nature, or that you have dead spaces of absolute vacuity, equally determined in their denial of her fulness. and even if we ever find (as here and there, in their better pictures, we do) changeful passages of agreeable playing color, or mellow and transparent modulations of mysterious atmosphere, even here the touches, though satisfactory to the eye, are suggestive of nothing,--they are characterless,--they have none of the peculiar expressiveness and meaning by which nature maintains the variety and interest even of what she most conceals. she always tells a story, however hintedly and vaguely; each of her touches is different from all the others; and we feel with every one, that though we cannot tell what it is, it cannot be _anything_; while even the most dexterous distances of the old masters pretend to secrecy without having anything to conceal, and are ambiguous, not from the concentration of meaning, but from the want of it. § . the fulness and mystery of turner's distances. and now, take up one of turner's distances, it matters not which, or of what kind,--drawing or painting, small or great, done thirty years ago, or for last year's academy, as you like; say that of the mercury and argus, and look if every fact which i have just been pointing out in nature be not carried out in it. abundant, beyond the power of the eye to embrace or follow, vast and various, beyond the power of the mind to comprehend, there is yet not one atom in its whole extent and mass which does not suggest more than it represents; nor does it suggest vaguely, but in such a manner as to prove that the conception of each individual inch of that distance is absolutely clear and complete in the master's mind, a separate picture fully worked out: but yet, clearly and fully as the idea is formed, just so much of it is given, and no more, as nature would have allowed us to feel or see; just so much as would enable a spectator of experience and knowledge to understand almost every minute fragment of separate detail, but appears, to the unpractised and careless eye, just what a distance of nature's own would appear, an unintelligible mass. not one line out of the millions there is without meaning, yet there is not one which is not affected and disguised by the dazzle and indecision of distance. no form is made out, and yet no form is unknown. § . farther illustrations in architectural drawing. perhaps the truth of this system of drawing is better to be understood by observing the distant character of rich architecture, than of any other object. go to the top of highgate hill on a clear summer morning at five o'clock, and look at westminster abbey. you will receive an impression of a building enriched with multitudinous vertical lines. try to distinguish one of those lines all the way down from the one next to it: you cannot. try to count them: you cannot. try to make out the beginning or end of any one of them: you cannot. look at it generally, and it is all symmetry and arrangement. look at in its parts, and it is all inextricable confusion. am not i, at this moment, describing a piece of turner's drawing, with the same words by which i describe nature? and what would one of the old masters have done with such a building as this in his distance? either he would only have given the shadows of the buttresses, and the light and dark sides of the two towers, and two dots for the windows; or if more ignorant and more ambitious, he had attempted to render some of the detail, it would have been done by distinct lines,--would have been broad caricature of the delicate building, felt at once to be false, ridiculous, and offensive. his most successful effort would only have given us, through his carefully toned atmosphere, the effect of a colossal parish church, without one line of carving on its economic sides. turner, and turner only, would follow and render on the canvas that mystery of decided line,--that distinct, sharp, visible, but unintelligible and inextricable richness, which, examined part by part, is to the eye nothing but confusion and defeat, which, taken as a whole, is all unity, symmetry, and truth.[ ] § . in near objects as well as distances. § . vacancy and falsehood of canaletto. nor is this mode of representation true only with respect to distances. every object, however near the eye, has something about it which you cannot see, and which brings the mystery of distance even into every part and portion of what we suppose ourselves to see most distinctly. stand in the piazza di st. marco at venice, as close to the church as you can, without losing sight of the top of it. look at the capitals of the columns on the second story. you see that they are exquisitely rich, carved all over. tell me their patterns: you cannot. tell me the direction of a single line in them: you cannot. yet you see a multitude of lines, and you have so much feeling of a certain tendency and arrangement in those lines, that you are quite sure the capitals are beautiful, and that they are all different from each other. but i defy you to make out one single line in any one of them. now go to canaletto's painting of this church, in the palazzo manfrini, taken from the very spot on which you stood. how much has he represented of all this? a black dot under each capital for the shadow, and a yellow one above it for the light. there is not a vestige nor indication of carving or decoration of any sort or kind. very different from this, but erring on the other side, is the ordinary drawing of the architect, who gives the principal lines of the design with delicate clearness and precision, but with no uncertainty or mystery about them; which mystery being removed, all space and size are destroyed with it, and we have a drawing of a model, not of a building. but in the capital lying on the foreground in turner's daphne hunting with leucippus, we have the perfect truth. not one jag of the acanthus leaves is absolutely visible, the lines are all disorder, but you feel in an instant that all are there. and so it will invariably be found through every portion of detail in his late and most perfect works. § . still greater fulness and finish in landscape foregrounds. but if there be this mystery and inexhaustible finish merely in the more delicate instances of architectural decoration, how much more in the ceaseless and incomparable decoration of nature. the detail of a single weedy bank laughs the carving of ages to scorn. every leaf and stalk has a design and tracery upon it,--every knot of grass an intricacy of shade which the labor of years could never imitate, and which, if such labor could follow it out even to the last fibres of the leaflets, would yet be falsely represented, for, as in all other cases brought forward, it is not clearly seen, but confusedly and mysteriously. that which is nearness for the bank, is distance for its details; and however near it may be, the greater part of those details are still a beautiful incomprehensibility.[ ] § . space and size are destroyed alike by distinctness and by vacancy. hence, throughout the picture, the expression of space and size is dependent upon obscurity, united with, or rather resultant from, exceeding fulness. we destroy both space and size, either by the vacancy, which affords us no measure of space, or by the distinctness, which gives us a false one. the distance of poussin, having no indication of trees, nor of meadows, nor of character of any kind, may be fifty miles off, or may be five; we cannot tell--we have no measure, and in consequence, no vivid impression. but a middle distance of hobbima's involves a contradiction in terms; it states a distance by perspective, which it contradicts by distinctness of detail. § . swift execution best secures perfection of details. § . finish is far more necessary in landscape than in historical subjects. a single dusty roll of turner's brush is more truly expressive of the infinity of foliage, than the niggling of hobbima could have rendered his canvas, if he had worked on it till doomsday. what sir j. reynolds says of the misplaced labor of his roman acquaintance on separate leaves of foliage, and the certainty he expresses that a man who attended to general character would in five minutes produce a more faithful representation of a tree, than the unfortunate mechanist in as many years, is thus perfectly true and well founded; but this is not because details are undesirable, but because they are best given by swift execution, and because, individually, they cannot be given at all. but it should be observed (though we shall be better able to insist upon this point in future) that much of harm and error has arisen from the supposition and assertions of swift and brilliant historical painters, that the same principles of execution are entirely applicable to landscape, which are right for the figure. the artist who falls into extreme detail in drawing the human form, is apt to become disgusting rather than pleasing. it is more agreeable that the general outline and soft hues of flesh should alone be given, than its hairs, and veins, and lines of intersection. and even the most rapid and generalizing expression of the human body, if directed by perfect knowledge, and rigidly faithful in drawing, will commonly omit very little of what is agreeable or impressive. but the exclusively generalizing landscape painter omits the whole of what is valuable in his subject,--omits thoughts, designs, and beauties by the million, everything, indeed, which can furnish him with variety or expression. a distance in lincolnshire, or in lombardy, might both be generalized into such blue and yellow stripes as we see in poussin; but whatever there is of beauty or character in either, depends altogether on our understanding the details, and feeling the difference between the morasses and ditches of the one, and the rolling sea of mulberry trees of the other. and so in every part of the subject. i have no hesitation in asserting that it is _impossible_ to go too fine, or think too much about details in landscape, so that they be rightly arranged and rightly massed; but that it is equally impossible to render anything like the fulness or the space of nature, except by that mystery and obscurity of execution which she herself uses, and in which turner only has followed her. § . recapitulation of the section. we have now rapidly glanced at such general truths of nature as can be investigated without much knowledge of what is beautiful. questions of arrangement, massing, and generalization, i prefer leaving untouched, until we know something about details, and something about what is beautiful. all that is desirable, even in these mere technical and artificial points, is based upon truths and habits of nature; but we cannot understand those truths until we are acquainted with the specific forms and minor details which they affect, or out of which they arise. i shall, therefore, proceed to examine the invaluable and essential truths of specific character and form--briefly and imperfectly, indeed, as needs must be, but yet at length sufficient to enable the reader to pursue, if he will, the subject for himself. footnotes [ ] of course much depends upon the kind of detail so lost. an artist may generalize the trunk of a tree, where he only loses lines of bark, and do us a kindness; but he must not generalize the details of a champaign, in which there is a history of creation. the full discussion of the subject belongs to a future part of our investigation. [ ] vide, for illustration, fontainebleau, in the illustrations to scott; vignette at opening of human life, in rogers's poems; venice, in the italy; chateau de blois; the rouen, and pont neuf, paris, in the rivers of france. the distances of all the academy pictures of venice, especially the shylock, are most instructive. [ ] it is to be remembered, however, that these truths present themselves in all probability under very different phases to individuals of different powers of vision. many artists who appear to generalize rudely or rashly are perhaps faithfully endeavoring to render the appearance which nature bears to sight of limited range. others may be led by their singular keenness of sight into inexpedient detail. works which are painted for effect at a certain distance must be always seen at disadvantage by those whose sight is of different range from the painter's. another circumstance to which i ought above to have alluded is the scale of the picture; for there are different degrees of generalization, and different necessities of symbolism, belonging to every scale: the stipple of the miniature painter would be offensive on features of the life size, and the leaves with tintoret may articulate on a canvas of sixty feet by twenty-five, must be generalized by turner on one of four by three. another circumstance of some importance is the assumed distance of the foreground; many landscape painters seem to think their nearest foreground is always equally near, whereas its distance from the spectator varies not a little, being always at least its own calculable breadth from side to side as estimated by figures or any other object of known size at the nearest part of it. with claude almost always; with turner often, as in the daphne and leucippus, this breadth is forty or fifty yards; and as the nearest foreground object _must_ then be at least that distance removed, and _may_ be much more, it is evident that no completion of close detail is in such cases allowable, (see here another proof of claude's erroneous practice;) with titian and tintoret, on the contrary, the foreground is rarely more than five or six yards broad, and its objects therefore being only five or six yards distant are entirely detailed. none of these circumstances, however, in any wise affect the great principle, the confusion of detail taking place sooner or later in all cases. i ought to have noted, however, that many of the pictures of turner in which the confused drawing has been least understood, have been luminous _twilights_; and that the uncertainty of twilight is therefore added to that of general distance. in the evenings of the south it not unfrequently happens that objects touched with the reflected light of the western sky, continue even for the space of half an hour after sunset, glowing, ruddy, and intense in color, and almost as bright as if they were still beneath actual sunshine, even till the moon begins to cast a shadow: but in spite of this brilliancy of color all the details become ghostly and ill-defined. this is a favorite moment of turner's, and he invariably characterizes it, not by gloom, but by uncertainty of detail. i have never seen the effect of clear twilight thoroughly rendered by art; that effect in which all details are lost, while intense clearness and light are still felt in the atmosphere, in which nothing is distinctly seen, and yet it is not darkness, far less mist, that is the cause of concealment. turner's efforts at rendering this effect (as the wilderness of engedi, assos, chateau de blois, caerlaverock, and others innumerable,) have always some slight appearance of mistiness, owing to the indistinctness of details; but it remains to be shown that any closer approximation to the effect is possible. section iii. of truth of skies. chapter i. of the open sky. § . the peculiar adaptation of the sky to the pleasing and teaching of man. § . the carelessness with which its lessons are received. § . the most essential of these lessons are the gentlest. § . many of our ideas of sky altogether conventional. it is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. it is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. there are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered, if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great ugly black rain cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening mist for dew. and instead of this, there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. and every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. the noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them, he injures them by his presence, he ceases to feel them if he be always with them; but the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not "too bright, nor good, for human nature's daily food;" it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct, as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is essential. and yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of the supreme, that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. if in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? one says it has been wet, and another it has been windy, and another it has been warm. who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? all has passed, unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. god is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice. they are but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be addressed through lampblack and lightning. it is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, and the perpetual,--that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood,--things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally, which are never wanting, and never repeated, which are to be found always yet each found but once; it is through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given. these are what the artist of highest aim must study; it is these, by the combination of which his ideal is to be created; these, of which so little notice is ordinarily taken by common observers, that i fully believe, little as people in general are concerned with art, more of their ideas of sky are derived from pictures than from reality, and that if we could examine the conception formed in the minds of most educated persons when we talk of clouds, it would frequently be found composed of fragments of blue and white reminiscences of the old masters. i shall enter upon the examination of what is true in sky at greater length, because it is the only part of a picture of which all, if they will, may be competent judges. what i may have to assert respecting the rocks of salvator, or the boughs of claude, i can scarcely prove, except to those whom i can immure for a month or two in the fastnesses of the apennines, or guide in their summer walks again and again through the ravines of sorrento. but what i say of the sky can be brought to an immediate test by all, and i write the more decisively, in the hope that it may be so. § . nature and essential qualities of the open blue. § . its connection with clouds. § . its exceeding depth. § . these qualities are especially given by modern masters. § . and by claude. § . total absence of them in poussin. physical errors in his general treatment of open sky. § . errors of cuyp in graduation of color. let us begin then with the simple open blue of the sky. this is of course the color of the pure atmospheric air, not the aqueous vapor, but the pure azote and oxygen, and it is the total color of the whole mass of that air between us and the void of space. it is modified by the varying quantity of aqueous vapor suspended in it, whose color, in its most imperfect, and therefore most visible, state of solution, is pure white, (as in steam,) which receives, like any other white, the warm hues of the rays of the sun, and, according to its quantity and imperfect solution, makes the sky paler, and at the same time more or less gray, by mixing warm tones with its blue. this gray aqueous vapor, when very decided, becomes mist, and when local, cloud. hence the sky is to be considered as a transparent blue liquid, in which, at various elevations, clouds are suspended, those clouds being themselves only particular visible spaces of a substance with which the whole mass of this liquid is more or less impregnated. now, we all know this perfectly well, and yet we so far forget it in practice, that we little notice the constant connection kept up by nature between her blue and her clouds, and we are not offended by the constant habit of the old masters, of considering the blue sky as totally distinct in its nature, and far separated from the vapors which float in it. with them, cloud is cloud, and blue is blue, and no kind of connection between them is ever hinted at. the sky is thought of as a clear, high material dome, the clouds as separate bodies, suspended beneath it, and in consequence, however delicate and exquisitely removed in tone their skies may be, you always look _at_ them, not _through_ them. now, if there be one characteristic of the sky more valuable or necessary to be rendered than another, it is that which wordsworth has given in the second book of the excursion:-- "the chasm of sky above my head is heaven's profoundest azure. no domain for fickle, short-lived clouds, to occupy, or to pass through;--but rather an _abyss_ in which the everlasting stars abide, and whose soft gloom, and boundless depth, might tempt the curious eye to look for them by day." and, in his american notes, i remember dickens notices the same truth, describing himself as lying drowsily on the barge deck, looking not at, but _through_ the sky. and if you look intensely at the pure blue of a serene sky, you will see that there is a variety and fulness in its very repose. it is not flat dead color, but a deep, quivering, transparent body of penetrable air, in which you trace or imagine short, falling spots of deceiving light, and dim shades, faint, veiled vestiges of dark vapor; and it is this trembling transparency which our great modern master has especially aimed at and given. his blue is never laid on in smooth coats, but in breaking, mingling, melting hues, a quarter of an inch of which, cut off from all the rest of the picture, is still _spacious_, still infinite and immeasurable in depth. it is a painting of the air, something into which you can see, through the parts which are near you into those which are far off; something which has no surface, and through which we can plunge far and farther, and without stay or end, into the profundity of space;--whereas, with all the old landscape painters, except claude, you may indeed go a long way before you come to the sky, but you will strike hard against it at last. a perfectly genuine and untouched sky of claude is indeed most perfect, and beyond praise, in all qualities of air; though even with him, i often feel rather that there is a great deal of pleasant air between me and the firmament, than that the firmament itself is only air. i do not mean, however, to say a word against such skies as that of the enchanted castle, or that marked in the national gallery, or one or two which i remember at rome; but how little and by how few these fine passages of claude are appreciated, is sufficiently proved by the sufferance of such villainous and unpalliated copies as we meet with all over europe, like the marriage of isaac, in our own gallery, to remain under his name. in fact, i do not remember above ten pictures of claude's, in which the skies, whether repainted or altogether copies, or perhaps from claude's hand, but carelessly laid in, like that marked , dulwich gallery, were not fully as feelingless and false as those of other masters; while, with the poussins, there are no favorable exceptions. their skies are systematically wrong; take, for instance, the sky of the sacrifice of isaac. it is here high noon, as is shown by the shadow of the figures; and what sort of color is the sky at the top of the picture? is it pale and gray with heat, full of sunshine, and unfathomable in depth? on the contrary, it is of a pitch of darkness which, except on the mont blanc or chimborazo, is as purely impossible as color can be. he might as well have painted it coal black; and it is laid on with a dead coat of flat paint, having no one quality or resemblance of sky about it. it cannot have altered, because the land horizon is as delicate and tender in tone as possible, and is evidently unchanged; and to complete the absurdity of the whole thing, this color holds its own, without graduation or alteration, to within three or four degrees of the horizon, where it suddenly becomes bold and unmixed yellow. now the horizon at noon may be yellow when the whole sky is covered with dark clouds, and only _one_ open streak of light left in the distance from which the whole light proceeds; but with a clear, open sky, and opposite the sun, at noon, such a yellow horizon as this is physically impossible. even supposing that the upper part of the sky were pale and warm, and that the transition from the one hue to the other were effected imperceptibly and gradually, as is invariably the case in reality, instead of taking place within a space of two or three degrees;--even then, this gold yellow would be altogether absurd; but as it is, we have in this sky (and it is a fine picture--one of the best of gaspar's that i know,) a notable example of the truth of the old masters--two impossible colors impossibly united! find such a color in turner's noonday zenith as the blue at the top, or such a color at a noonday horizon as the yellow at the bottom, or such a connection of any colors whatsoever as that in the centre, and then you may talk about his being false to nature if you will. nor is this a solitary instance; it is gaspar poussin's favorite and characteristic effect. i remember twenty such, most of them worse than this, in the downright surface and opacity of blue. again, look at the large cuyp in the dulwich gallery, which mr. hazlitt considers the "finest in the world," and of which he very complimentarily says, "the tender green of the valleys, the gleaming lake, the purple light of the hills, have an effect like the _down_ on an unripe nectarine!" i ought to have apologized before now, for not having studied sufficiently in covent garden to be provided with terms of correct and classical criticism. one of my friends begged me to observe, the other day, that claude was "pulpy;" another added the yet more gratifying information that he was "juicy;" and it is now happily discovered that cuyp is "downy." now i dare say that the sky of this first-rate cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine: all that i have to say about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a sky. the blue remains unchanged and ungraduated over three-fourths of it, down to the horizon; while the sun, in the left-hand corner, is surrounded with a halo, first of yellow, and then of crude pink, both being separated from each other, and the last from the blue, as sharply as the belts of a rainbow, and both together not ascending ten degrees in the sky. now it is difficult to conceive how any man calling himself a painter could impose such a thing on the public, and still more how the public can receive it, as a representation of that sunset purple which invariably extends its influence to the zenith, so that there is no pure blue anywhere, but a purple increasing in purity gradually down to its point of greatest intensity, (about forty-five degrees from the horizon,) and then melting imperceptibly into the gold, the three colors extending their influence over the whole sky; so that throughout the whole sweep of the heaven, there is no one spot where the color is not in an equal state of transition--passing from gold into orange, from that into rose, from that into purple, from that into blue, with absolute equality of change, so that in no place can it be said, "here it changes," and in no place, "here it is unchanging." this is invariably the case. there is no such thing--there never was, and never will be such a thing, while god's heaven remains as it is made--as a serene, sunset sky, with its purple and rose in _belts_ about the sun. § . the exceeding value of the skies of the early italian and dutch schools. their qualities are unattainable in modern times. such bold, broad examples of ignorance as these would soon set aside all the claims of the professed landscape painters to truth, with whatever delicacy of color or manipulation they may be disguised. but there are some skies, of the dutch school, in which clearness and coolness have been aimed at, instead of depth; and some introduced merely as backgrounds to the historical subjects of the older italians, which there is no matching in modern times; one would think angels had painted them, for all is now clay and oil in comparison. it seems as if we had totally lost the art, for surely otherwise, however little our painters might aim at it or feel it, they would touch the chord sometimes by accident; but they never do, and the mechanical incapacity is still more strongly evidenced by the muddy struggles of the unhappy germans, who have the feeling, partially strained, artificial, and diseased, indeed, but still genuine enough to bring out the tone, if they had the mechanical means and technical knowledge. but, however they were obtained, the clear tones of this kind of the older italians are glorious and enviable in the highest degree; and we shall show, when we come to speak of the beautiful, that they are one of the most just grounds of the fame of the old masters. § . phenomena of visible sunbeams. their nature and cause. but there is a series of phenomena connected with the open blue of the sky, which we must take especial notice of, as it is of constant occurrence in the works of turner and claude, the effects, namely, of visible sunbeams. it will be necessary for us thoroughly to understand the circumstances under which such effects take place. aqueous vapor or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes visible exactly as dust does in the air of a room. in the shadows you not only cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but you can see other objects through the dust without obscurity, the air being thus actually rendered more transparent by a deprivation of light. where a sunbeam enters, every particle of dust becomes visible, and a palpable interruption to the sight, so that a transverse sunbeam is a real obstacle to the vision, you cannot see things clearly through it. in the same way, wherever vapor is illuminated by transverse rays, there it becomes visible as a whiteness more or less affecting the purity of the blue, and destroying it exactly in proportion to the degree of illumination. but where vapor is in shade, it has very little effect on the sky, perhaps making it a little deeper and grayer than it otherwise would be, but not itself, unless very dense, distinguishable or felt as mist. § . they are only illuminated mist, and cannot appear when the sky is free from vapor, nor when it is without clouds. the appearance of mist or whiteness in the blue of the sky, is thus a circumstance which more or less accompanies sunshine, and which, supposing the quantity of vapor constant, is greatest in the brightest sunlight. when there are no clouds in the sky, the whiteness, as it affects the whole sky equally, is not particularly noticeable. but when there are clouds between us and the sun, the sun being low, those clouds cast shadows along and through the mass of suspended vapor. within the space of these shadows, the vapor, as above stated, becomes transparent and invisible, and the sky appears of a pure blue. but where the sunbeams strike, the vapor becomes visible in the form of the beams, occasioning those radiating shafts of light which are one of the most valuable and constant accompaniments of a low sun. the denser the mist, the more distinct and sharp-edged will these rays be; when the air is very clear, they are mere vague, flushing, gradated passages of light; when it is very thick, they are keen-edged and decisive in a high degree. we see then, first, that a quantity of mist dispersed through the whole space of the sky, is necessary to this phenomenon; and secondly, that what we usually think of as beams of greater brightness than the rest of the sky, are in reality only a part of that sky in its natural state of illumination, cut off and rendered brilliant by the shadows from the clouds,--that these shadows are in reality the source of the appearance of beams,--that, therefore, no part of the sky can present such an appearance, except when there are broken clouds between it and the sun; and lastly, that the shadows cast from such clouds are not necessarily gray or dark, but very nearly of the natural pure blue of a sky destitute of vapor. § . erroneous tendency in the representation of such phenomena by the old masters. § . the ray which appears in the dazzled eye should not be represented. § . the practice of turner. his keen perception of the more delicate phenomena of rays. § . the total absence of any evidence of such perception in the works of the old masters. now, as it has been proved that the appearance of beams can only take place in a part of the sky which has clouds between it and the sun, it is evident that no appearance of beams can ever begin from the orb itself, except when there is a cloud or solid body of some kind between us and it; but that such appearances will almost invariably begin on the dark side of some of the clouds around it, the orb itself remaining the centre of a broad blaze of united light. wordsworth has given us in two lines, the only circumstances under which rays can ever appear to have origin in the orb itself:-- "but rays of light, now _suddenly_ diverging from the orb, _retired behind the mountain tops, or veiled by the dense air_, shot upwards." excursion, book ix. and turner has given us the effect magnificently in the dartmouth of the river scenery. it is frequent among the old masters, and constant in claude; though the latter, from drawing his beams too fine, represents the effect upon the dazzled eye rather than the light which actually exists, and approximates very closely to the ideal which we see in the sign of the rising sun; nay, i am nearly sure that i remember cases in which he has given us the diverging beam, without any cloud or hill interfering with the orb. it may, perhaps, be somewhat difficult to say how far it is allowable to represent that kind of ray which is seen by the dazzled eye. it is very certain that we never look towards a bright sun without seeing glancing rays issue from it; but it is equally certain that those rays are no more real existences than the red and blue circles which we see after having been so dazzled, and that if we are to represent the rays we ought also to cover our sky with pink and blue circles. i should on the whole consider it utterly false in principle to represent the visionary beam, and that we ought only to show that which has actual existence. such we find to be the constant practice of turner. even where, owing to interposed clouds, he has beams appearing to issue from the orb itself, they are broad bursts of light, not spiky rays; and his more usual practice is to keep all near the sun in one simple blaze of intense light, and from the first clouds to throw beams to the zenith, though he often does not permit any appearance of rays until close to the zenith itself. open at the th page of the illustrated edition of rogers's poems. you have there a sky blazing with sunbeams; but they all begin a long way from the sun, and they are accounted for by a mass of dense clouds surrounding the orb itself. turn to the th page. behind the old oak, where the sun is supposed to be, you have only a blaze of undistinguished light; but up on the left, over the edge of the cloud, on its dark side, the sunbeam. turn to page ,--blazing rays again, but all beginning where the clouds do, not one can you trace to the sun; and observe how carefully the long shadow on the mountain is accounted for by the dim dark promontory projecting out near the sun. i need not multiply examples; you will find various modifications and uses of these effects throughout his works. but you will not find a single trace of them in the old masters. they give you the rays issuing from behind black clouds, and because they are a coarse and common effect which could not possibly escape their observation, and because they are easily imitated. they give you the spiky shafts issuing from the orb itself, because these are partially symbolical of light, and assist a tardy imagination, as two or three rays scratched round the sun with a pen would, though they would be rays of darkness instead of light.[ ] but of the most beautiful phenomenon of all, the appearance of the delicate ray far in the sky, threading its way among the thin, transparent clouds, while all around the sun is unshadowed fire, there is no record nor example whatsoever in their works. it was too delicate and spiritual for them; probably their blunt and feelingless eyes never perceived it in nature, and their untaught imaginations were not likely to originate it in the study. § . truth of the skies of modern drawings. little is to be said of the skies of our other landscape artists. in paintings, they are commonly toneless, crude, and wanting in depth and transparency; but in drawings, some very perfect and delicate examples have been produced by various members of the old water color society, and one or two others; but with respect to the qualities of which we are at present speaking, it is not right to compare drawings with paintings, as the wash or spunging, or other artifices peculiar to water color, are capable of producing an appearance of quality which it needs much higher art to produce in oils. § . recapitulation. the best skies of the ancients are, in quality, inimitable, but in rendering of various truth, childish. taken generally, the open skies of the moderns are inferior in quality to picked and untouched skies of the greatest of the ancients, but far superior to the average class of pictures which we have every day fathered upon their reputation. nine or ten skies of claude might be named which are not to be contended with, in their way, and as many of cuyp. teniers has given some very wonderful passages, and the clearness of the early italian and dutch schools is beyond all imitation. but the common blue daubing which we hear every day in our best galleries attributed to claude and cuyp, and the genuine skies of salvator, and of both the poussins, are not to be compared for an instant with the best works of modern times, even in quality and transparency; while in all matters requiring delicate observation or accurate science,--in all which was not attainable by technicalities of art, and which depended upon the artist's knowledge and understanding of nature, all the works of the ancients are alike the productions of mere children, sometimes manifesting great sensibility, but proving at the same time, feebly developed intelligence and ill-regulated observation. footnotes [ ] i have left this passage as it stood originally, because it is right as far as it goes; yet it speaks with too little respect of symbolism, which is often of the highest use in religious art, and in some measure is allowable in all art. in the works of almost all the greatest masters there are portions which are explanatory rather than representative, and typical rather than imitative; nor could these be parted with but at infinite loss. note, with respect to the present question, the daring black sunbeams of titian, in his woodcut of st. francis receiving the stigmata, and compare here part iii. sect. ii. chap. iv. § ; chap. v. § . and though i believe that i am right in considering all such symbolism as out of place in pure landscape, and in attributing that of claude to ignorance or inability, and not to feeling, yet i praise turner not so much for his absolute refusal to represent the spiky ray about the sun, as for his perceiving and rendering that which claude never perceived, the multitudinous presence of radiating light in the upper sky and on all its countless ranks of subtile cloud. chapter ii. of truth of clouds:--first, of the region of the cirrus. § . difficulty of ascertaining wherein the truth of clouds consists. our next subject of investigation must be the specific character of clouds, a species of truth which is especially neglected by artists; first, because as it is within the limits of possibility that a cloud may assume almost any form, it is difficult to point out and not always easy to feel, where in error consists; and secondly, because it is totally impossible to study the forms of clouds from nature with care and accuracy, as a change in the subject takes place between every touch of the following pencil, and parts of an outline sketched at different instants cannot harmonize, nature never having intended them to come together. still if artists were more in the habit of sketching clouds rapidly, and as accurately as possible in the outline, from nature, instead of daubing down what they call "effects" with the brush, they would soon find there is more beauty about their forms than can be arrived at by any random felicity of invention, however brilliant, and more essential character than can be violated without incurring the charge of falsehood,--falsehood as direct and definite, though not as traceable as error in the less varied features of organic form. § . variation of their character at different elevations. the three regions to which they may conveniently be considered as belonging. the first and most important character of clouds, is dependent on the different altitudes at which they are formed. the atmosphere may be conveniently considered as divided into three spaces, each inhabited by clouds of specific character altogether different, though, in reality there is no distinct limit fixed between them by nature, clouds being formed at _every_ altitude, and partaking according to their altitude, more or less of the characters of the upper or lower regions. the scenery of the sky is thus formed of an infinitely graduated series of systematic forms of cloud, each of which has its own region in which alone it is formed, and each of which has specific characters which can only be properly determined by comparing them as they are found clearly distinguished by intervals of considerable space. i shall therefore consider the sky as divided into three regions--the upper region, or region of the cirrus; the central region, or region of the stratus; the lower region, or the region of the rain-cloud. § . extent of the upper region. § . the symmetrical arrangement of its clouds. the clouds which i wish to consider as included in the upper region, never touch even the highest mountains of europe, and may therefore be looked upon as never formed below an of at least , feet; they are the motionless multitudinous lines of delicate vapor with which the blue of the open sky is commonly streaked or speckled after several days of fine weather. i must be pardoned for giving a detailed description of their specific characters as they are of constant occurrence in the works of modern artists, and i shall have occasion to speak frequently of them in future parts of the work. their chief characters are--first, symmetry: they are nearly always arranged in some definite and evident order, commonly in long ranks reaching sometimes from the zenith to the horizon, each rank composed of an infinite number of transverse bars of about the same length, each bar thickest in the middle, and terminating in a traceless vaporous point at each side; the ranks are in the direction of the wind, and the bars of course at right angles to it; these latter are commonly slightly bent in the middle. frequently two systems of this kind, indicative of two currents of wind, at different altitudes intersect one another, forming a network. another frequent arrangement is in groups of excessively fine, silky, parallel fibres, commonly radiating, or having a tendency to radiate, from one of their extremities, and terminating in a plumy sweep at the other:--these are vulgarly known as "mares' tails." the plumy and expanded extremity of these is often bent upwards, sometimes back and up again, giving an appearance of great flexibility and unity at the same time, as if the clouds were tough, and would hold together however bent. the narrow extremity is invariably turned to the wind, and the fibres are parallel with its direction. the upper clouds always fall into some modification of one or other of these arrangements. they thus differ from all other clouds, in having a plan and system; whereas other clouds, though there are certain laws which they cannot break, have yet perfect freedom from anything like a relative and general system of government. the upper clouds are to the lower, what soldiers on parade are to a mixed multitude; no men walk on their heads or their hands, and so there are certain laws which no clouds violate; but there is nothing except in the upper clouds resembling symmetrical discipline. § . their exceeding delicacy. secondly, sharpness of edge: the edges of the bars of the upper clouds which are turned to the wind, are often the sharpest which the sky shows; no outline whatever of any other kind of cloud, however marked and energetic, ever approaches the delicate decision of these edges. the outline of a black thunder-cloud is striking, from the great energy of the color or shade of the general mass; but as a line, it is soft and indistinct, compared with the edge of the cirrus, in a clear sky with a brisk breeze. on the other hand, the edge of the bar turned away from the wind is always soft, often imperceptible, melting into the blue interstice between it and its next neighbor. commonly the sharper one edge is, the softer is the other, and the clouds look flat, and as if they slipped over each other like the scales of a fish. when both edges are soft, as is always the case when the sky is clear and windless, the cloud looks solid, round, and fleecy. § . their number. thirdly, multitude: the delicacy of these vapors is sometimes carried into such an infinity of division, that no other sensation of number that the earth or heaven can give is so impressive. number is always most felt when it is symmetrical, (vide burke on "sublime," part ii. sect. ,) and, therefore, no sea-waves nor fresh leaves make their number so evident or so impressive as these vapors. nor is nature content with an infinity of bars or lines alone--each bar is in its turn severed into a number of small undulatory masses, more or less connected according to the violence of the wind. when this division is merely effected by undulation, the cloud exactly resembles sea-sand ribbed by the tide; but when the division amounts to real separation we have the mottled or mackerel skies. commonly, the greater the division of its bars, the broader and more shapeless is the rank or field, so that in the mottled sky it is lost altogether, and we have large irregular fields of equal size, masses like flocks of sheep; such clouds are three or four thousand feet below the legitimate cirrus. i have seen them cast a shadow on the mont blanc at sunset, so that they must descend nearly to within fifteen thousand feet of the earth. § . causes of their peculiarly delicate coloring. fourthly, purity of color: the nearest of these clouds--those over the observer's head, being at least three miles above him, and nearly all entering the ordinary sphere of vision, farther from him still,--their dark sides are much grayer and cooler than those of other clouds, owing to their distance. they are composed of the purest aqueous vapor, free from all foulness of earthy gases, and of this in the lightest and most ethereal state in which it can be, to be visible. farther, they receive the light of the sun in a state of far greater intensity than lower objects, the beams being transmitted to them through atmospheric air far less dense, and wholly unaffected by mist, smoke, or any other impurity. hence their colors are more pure and vivid, and their white less sullied than those of any other clouds. § . their variety of form. lastly, variety: variety is never so conspicuous, as when it is united with symmetry. the perpetual change of form in other clouds, is monotonous in its very dissimilarity, nor is difference striking where no connection is implied; but if through a range of barred clouds, crossing half the heaven, all governed by the same forces and falling into one general form, there be yet a marked and evident dissimilarity between each member of the great mass--one more finely drawn, the next more delicately moulded, the next more gracefully bent--each broken into differently modelled and variously numbered groups, the variety is doubly striking, because contrasted with the perfect symmetry of which it forms a part. hence, the importance of the truth, that nature never lets one of the members of even her most disciplined groups of cloud be like another; but though each is adapted for the same function, and in its great features resembles all the others, not one, out of the millions with which the sky is checkered, is without a separate beauty and character, appearing to have had distinct thought occupied in its conception, and distinct forces in its production; and in addition to this perpetual invention, visible in each member of each system, we find systems of separate cloud intersecting one another, the sweeping lines mingled and interwoven with the rigid bars, these in their turn melting into banks of sand-like ripple and flakes of drifted and irregular foam; under all, perhaps the massy outline of some lower cloud moves heavily across the motionless buoyancy of the upper lines, and indicates at once their elevation and their repose. § . total absence of even the slightest effort at their representation, in ancient landscape. such are the great attributes of the upper cloud region; whether they are beautiful, valuable, or impressive, it is not our present business to decide, nor to endeavor to discover the reason of the somewhat remarkable fact, that the whole field of ancient landscape art affords, as far as we remember, but one instance of any effort whatever to represent the character of this cloud region. that one instance is the landscape of rubens in our own gallery, in which the mottled or fleecy sky is given with perfect truth and exquisite beauty. to this should perhaps be added, some of the backgrounds of the historical painters, where horizontal lines were required, and a few level bars of white or warm color cross the serenity of the blue. these, as far as they go, are often very perfect, and the elevation and repose of their effect might, we should have thought, have pointed out to the landscape painters that there was something (i do not say much, but certainly something) to be made out of the high clouds. not one of them, however, took the hint. to whom, among them all, can we look for the slightest realization of the fine and faithful descriptive passage of the "excursion," already alluded to:-- "but rays of light, now suddenly diverging from the orb, retired behind the mountain tops, or veiled by the dense air, shot upwards to the crown of the blue firmament--aloft--and wide: and multitudes of little floating clouds, ere we, who saw, of change were conscious, pierced through their ethereal texture, had become vivid as fire,--clouds separately poised, innumerable multitude of forms scattered through half the circle of the sky; and giving back, and shedding each on each, with prodigal communion, the bright hues which from the unapparent fount of glory they had imbibed, and ceased not to receive. that which the heavens displayed the liquid deep repeated, but with unity sublime." § . the intense and constant study of them by turner. there is but one master whose works we can think of while we read this; one alone has taken notice of the neglected upper sky; it is his peculiar and favorite field; he has watched its every modification, and given its every phase and feature; at all hours, in all seasons, he has followed its passions and its changes, and has brought down and laid open to the world another apocalypse of heaven. there is scarcely a painting of turner's, in which serenity of sky and intensity of light are aimed at together, in which these clouds are not used, though there are not two cases in which they are used altogether alike. sometimes they are crowded together in masses of mingling light, as in the shylock; every part and atom sympathizing in that continuous expression of slow movement which shelley has so beautifully touched:-- "underneath the young gray dawn a multitude of dense, white fleecy clouds, were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains, _shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind_." at other times they are blended with the sky itself, felt only here and there by a ray of light calling them into existence out of its misty shade, as in the mercury and argus; sometimes, where great repose is to be given, they appear in a few detached, equal, rounded flakes, which seem to hang motionless, each like the shadow of the other, in the deep blue of the zenith, as in the acro-corinth; sometimes they are scattered in fiery flying fragments, each burning with separate energy, as in the temeraire; sometimes woven together with fine threads of intermediate darkness, melting into the blue as in the napoleon. but in all cases the exquisite manipulation of the master gives to each atom of the multitude its own character and expression. though they be countless as leaves, each has its portion of light, its shadow, its reflex, its peculiar and separating form. § . his vignette, sunrise on the sea. take for instance the illustrated edition of rogers's poems,[ ] and open it at the th page, and observe how every attribute which i have pointed out in the upper sky, is there rendered with the faithfulness of a mirror; the long lines of parallel bars, the delicate curvature from the wind, which the inclination of the sail shows you to be from the west; the excessive sharpness of every edge which is turned to the wind, the faintness of every opposite one, the breaking up of each bar into rounded masses, and finally, the inconceivable variety with which individual form has been given to every member of the multitude, and not only individual form, but roundness and substance even where there is scarcely a hairbreadth of cloud to express it in. observe, above everything, the varying indication of space and depth in the whole, so that you may look through and through from one cloud to another, feeling not merely how they retire to the horizon, but how they melt back into the recesses of the sky; every interval being filled with absolute air, and all its spaces so melting and fluctuating, and fraught with change as with repose, that as you look, you will fancy that the rays shoot higher and higher into the vault of light, and that the pale streak of horizontal vapor is melting away from the cloud that it crosses. now watch for the next barred sunrise, and take this vignette to the window, and test it by nature's own clouds, among which you will find forms and passages, i do not say merely _like_, but apparently the actual originals of parts of this very drawing. and with whom will you do this, except with turner? will you do it with claude, and set that blank square yard of blue, with its round, white, flat fixtures of similar cloud, beside the purple infinity of nature, with her countless multitude of shadowy lines, and flaky waves, and folded veils of variable mist? will you do it with poussin, and set those massy steps of unyielding solidity, with the chariot-and-four driving up them, by the side of the delicate forms which terminate in threads too fine for the eye to follow them, and of texture so thin woven that the earliest stars shine through them? will you do it with salvator, and set that volume of violent and restless manufactory smoke beside those calm and quiet bars, which pause in the heaven as if they would never leave it more? § . his use of the cirrus in expressing mist. now we have just seen how turner uses the sharp-edged cirri when he aims at giving great transparency of air. but it was shown in the preceding chapter that sunbeams, or the appearance of them, are always sharper in their edge in proportion as the air is more misty, as they are most defined in a room where there is most dust flying about in it. consequently, in the vignette we have been just noticing, where transparency is to be given, though there is a blaze of light, its beams are never edged; a tendency to rays is visible, but you cannot in any part find a single marked edge of a rising sunbeam, the sky is merely more flushed in one place than another. now let us see what turner does when he wants mist. turn to the alps at daybreak, page , in the same book. here we have the cirri used again, but now they have no sharp edges, they are all fleecy and mingling with each other, though every one of them has the most exquisite indication of individual form, and they melt back, not till they are lost in exceeding light, as in the other plate, but into a mysterious, fluctuating, shadowy sky, of which, though the light penetrates through it all, you perceive every part to be charged with vapor. notice particularly the half-indicated forms even where it is most serene, behind the snowy mountains. and now, how are the sunbeams drawn? no longer indecisive, flushing, palpitating, every one is sharp and clear, and terminated by definite shadow; note especially the marked lines on the upper cloud; finally, observe the difference in the mode of indicating the figures, which are here misty and indistinguishable, telling only as shadows, though they are near and large, while those in the former vignette came clear upon the eye, though they were so far off as to appear mere points. § . his consistency in every minor feature. now is this perpetual consistency in all points, this concentration of every fact which can possibly bear upon what we are to be told, this watchfulness of the entire meaning and system of nature, which fills every part and space of the picture with coincidences of witness, which come out upon us, as they would from the reality, more fully and deeply in proportion to the knowledge we possess and the attention we give, admirable or not? i could go on writing page after page on every sky of turner's, and pointing out fresh truths in every one. in the havre, for instance, of the rivers of france we have a new fact pointed out to us with respect to these cirri, namely, their being so faint and transparent as not to be distinguishable from the blue of the sky, (a frequent case,) except in the course of a sunbeam, which, however, does not illumine their edges, they being not solid enough to reflect light, but penetrates their whole substance, and renders them flat, luminous forms in its path, instantly and totally lost at its edge. and thus a separate essay would be required by every picture, to make fully understood the new phenomena which it treated and illustrated. but after once showing what are the prevailing characteristics of these clouds, we can only leave it to the reader to trace them wherever they occur. there are some fine and characteristic passages of this kind of cloud given by stanfield, though he dares not use them in multitude, and is wanting in those refined qualities of form which it is totally impossible to explain in words, but which, perhaps, by simple outlines, on a large scale, selected from the cloud forms of various artists, i may in following portions of the work illustrate with the pencil. § . the color of the upper clouds. of the colors of these clouds i have spoken before, (sec. i. chap. ii.;) but though i then alluded to their purity and vividness, i scarcely took proper notice of their variety; there is indeed in nature variety in all things, and it would be absurd to insist on it in each case, yet the colors of these clouds are so marvellous in their changefulness, that they require particular notice. if you watch for the next sunset, when there are a considerable number of these cirri in the sky, you will see, especially at the zenith, that the sky does not remain of the same color for two inches together; one cloud has a dark side of cold blue, and a fringe of milky white; another, above it, has a dark side of purple and an edge of red; another, nearer the sun, has an under-side of orange and an edge of gold; these you will find mingled with, and passing into the blue of the sky, which in places you will not be able to distinguish from the cool gray of the darker clouds, and which will be itself full of gradation, now pure and deep, now faint and feeble; and all this is done, not in large pieces, nor on a large scale, but over and over again in every square yard, so that there is no single part nor portion of the whole sky which has not in itself variety of color enough for a separate picture, and yet no single part which is like another, or which has not some peculiar source of beauty, and some peculiar arrangement of color of its own. now, instead of this, you get in the old masters--cuyp, or claude, or whoever they may be--a field of blue, delicately, beautifully, and uniformly shaded down to the yellow sun, with a certain number of similar clouds, each with a dark side of the same gray, and an edge of the same yellow. i do not say that nature never does anything like this, but i say that her _principle_ is to do a great deal more, and that what she does more than this,--what i have above described, and what you may see in nine sunsets out of ten,--has been observed, attempted, and rendered by turner only, and by him with a fidelity and force which presents us with more essential truth, and more clear expression and illustration of natural laws, in every wreath of vapor, than composed the whole stock of heavenly information, which lasted cuyp and claude their lives. § . recapitulation. we close then our present consideration of the upper clouds, to return to them when we know what is beautiful; we have at present only to remember that of these clouds, and the truths connected with them, none before turner had taken any notice whatsoever; that had they therefore been even feebly and imperfectly represented by him, they would yet have given him a claim to be considered more extended and universal in his statement of truths than any of his predecessors; how much more when we find that deep fidelity in his studied and perfect skies which opens new sources of delight to every advancement of our knowledge, and to every added moment of our contemplation. footnotes [ ] i use this work frequently for illustration, because it is the only one i know in which the engraver has worked with delicacy enough to give the real forms and touches of turner. i can reason from these plates, (in questions of form only,) nearly as well as i could from the drawings. chapter iii. of truth of clouds:--secondly, of the central cloud region. § . extent and typical character of the central cloud region. we have next to investigate the character of the central cloud region, which i consider as including all clouds which are the usual characteristic of ordinary serene weather, and which touch and envelop the mountains of switzerland, but never affect those of our own island; they may therefore be considered as occupying a space of air ten thousand feet in height, extending from five to fifteen thousand feet above the sea. § . its characteristic clouds, requiring no attention nor thought for their representation, are therefore favorite subjects with the old masters. these clouds, according to their elevation, appear with great variety of form, often partaking of the streaked or mottled character of the higher region, and as often, when the precursors of storm, manifesting forms closely connected with the lowest rain clouds; but the species especially characteristic of the central region is a white, ragged, irregular, and scattered vapor, which has little form and less color, and of which a good example may be seen in the largest landscape of cuyp, in the dulwich gallery. when this vapor collects into masses, it is partially rounded, clumsy, and ponderous, as if it would tumble out of the sky, shaded with a dull gray, and totally devoid of any appearance of energy or motion. even in nature, these clouds are comparatively uninteresting, scarcely worth raising our heads to look at; and on canvas, valuable only as a means of introducing light, and breaking the monotony of blue; yet they are, perhaps, beyond all others the favorite clouds of the dutch masters. whether they had any motive for the adoption of such materials, beyond the extreme facility with which acres of canvas might thus be covered without any troublesome exertion of thought; or any temptation to such selections beyond the impossibility of error where nature shows no form, and the impossibility of deficiency where she shows no beauty, it is not here the place to determine. such skies are happily beyond the reach of criticism, for he who tells you nothing cannot tell you a falsehood. a little flake-white, glazed with a light brush over the carefully toned blue, permitted to fall into whatever forms chance might determine, with the single precaution that their edges should be tolerably irregular, supplied, in hundreds of instances, a sky quite good enough for all ordinary purposes--quite good enough for cattle to graze, or boors to play at nine-pins under--and equally devoid of all that could gratify, inform, or offend. § . the clouds of salvator and poussin. but although this kind of cloud is, as i have said, typical of the central region, it is not one which nature is fond of. she scarcely ever lets an hour pass without some manifestation of finer forms, sometimes approaching the upper cirri, sometimes the lower cumulus. and then in the lower outlines, we have the nearest approximation which nature ever presents to the clouds of claude, salvator, and poussin, to the characters of which i must request especial attention, as it is here only that we shall have a fair opportunity of comparing their skies with those of the modern school. i shall, as before, glance rapidly at the great laws of specific form, and so put it in the power of the reader to judge for himself of the truth of representation. § . their essential characters. § . their angular forms and general decision of outline. clouds, it is to be remembered, are not so much local vapor, as vapor rendered locally visible by a fall of temperature. thus a cloud, whose parts are in constant motion, will hover on a snowy mountain, pursuing constantly the same track upon its flanks, and yet remaining of the same size, the same form, and in the same place, for half a day together. no matter how violent or how capricious the wind may be, the instant it approaches the spot where the chilly influence of the snow extends, the moisture it carries becomes visible, and then and there the cloud forms on the instant, apparently maintaining its form against the wind, though the careful and keen eye can see all its parts in the most rapid motion across the mountain. the outlines of such a cloud are of course not determined by the irregular impulses of the wind, but by the fixed lines of radiant heat which regulate the temperature of the atmosphere of the mountain. it is terminated, therefore, not by changing curves, but by steady right lines of more or less decision, often exactly correspondent with the outline of the mountain on which it is formed, and falling therefore into grotesque peaks and precipices. i have seen the marked and angular outline of the grandes jorasses, at chamounix, mimicked in its every jag by a line of clouds above it. another resultant phenomenon is the formation of cloud in the calm air to leeward of a steep summit; cloud whose edges are in rapid motion, where they are affected by the current of the wind above, and stream from the peak like the smoke of a volcano, yet always vanish at a certain distance from it as steam issuing from a chimney. when wet weather of some duration is approaching, a small white spot of cloud will sometimes appear low on the hill flanks; it will not move, but will increase gradually for some little time, then diminish, still without moving; disappear altogether, reappear ten minutes afterwards, exactly in the same spot; increase to a greater extent than before, again disappear, again return, and at last permanently; other similar spots of cloud forming simultaneously, with various fluctuations, each in its own spot, and at the same level on the hill-side, until all expand, join together, and form an unbroken veil of threatening gray, which darkens gradually into storm. what in such cases takes place palpably and remarkably, is more or less a law of formation in all clouds whatsoever; they being bounded rather by lines expressive of changes of temperature in the atmosphere, than by the impulses of the currents of wind in which those changes take place. even when in rapid and visible motion across the sky, the variations which take place in their outlines are not so much alterations of position and arrangement of parts, as they are the alternate formation and disappearance of parts. there is, therefore, usually a parallelism and consistency in their great outlines, which give system to the smaller curves of which they are composed; and if these great lines be taken, rejecting the minutiæ of variation, the resultant form will almost always be angular, and full of character and decision. in the flock-like fields of equal masses, each individual mass has the effect, not of an ellipse or circle, but of a rhomboid; the sky is crossed and checkered, not honeycombed; in the lower cumuli, even though the most rounded of all clouds, the groups are not like balloons or bubbles, but like towers or mountains. and the result of this arrangement in masses more or less angular, varied with, and chiefly constructed of, curves of the utmost freedom and beauty, is that appearance of exhaustless and fantastic energy which gives every cloud a marked character of its own, suggesting resemblances to the specific outlines of organic objects. i do not say that such accidental resemblances are a character to be imitated; but merely that they bear witness to the originality and vigor of separate conception in cloud forms, which give to the scenery of the sky a force and variety no less delightful than that of the changes of mountain outline in a hill district of great elevation; and that there is added to this a spirit-like feeling, a capricious, mocking imagery of passion and life, totally different from any effects of inanimate form that the earth can show. § . the composition of their minor curves. the minor contours, out of which the larger outlines are composed, are indeed beautifully curvilinear; but they are never monotonous in their curves. first comes a concave line, then a convex one, then an angular jag, breaking off into spray, then a downright straight line, then a curve again, then a deep gap, and a place where all is lost and melted away, and so on; displaying in every inch of the form renewed and ceaseless invention, setting off grace with rigidity, and relieving flexibility with force, in a manner scarcely less admirable, and far more changeful than even in the muscular forms of the human frame. nay, such is the exquisite composition of all this, that you may take any single fragment of any cloud in the sky, and you will find it put together as if there had been a year's thought over the plan of it, arranged with the most studied inequality--with the most delicate symmetry--with the most elaborate contrast, a picture in itself. you may try every other piece of cloud in the heaven, and you will find them every one as perfect, and yet not one in the least like another. § . their characters, as given by s. rosa. now it may perhaps, for anything we know, or have yet proved, be highly expedient and proper, in art, that this variety, individuality, and angular character should be changed into a mass of convex curves, each precisely like its neighbor in all respects, and unbroken from beginning to end;--it may be highly original, masterly, bold, whatever you choose to call it; but it is _false_. i do not take upon me to assert that the clouds which in ancient germany were more especially and peculiarly devoted to the business of catching princesses off desert islands, and carrying them to enchanted castles, might not have possessed something of the pillowy organization which we may suppose best adapted for functions of such delicacy and dispatch. but i do mean to say that the clouds which god sends upon his earth as the ministers of dew, and rain, and shade, and with which he adorns his heaven, setting them in its vault for the thrones of his spirits, have not in one instant or atom of their existence, one feature in common with such conceptions and creations. and there are, beyond dispute, more direct and unmitigated falsehoods told, and more laws of nature set at open defiance in _one_ of the "rolling" skies of salvator, such as that marked in the dulwich gallery, than were ever attributed, even by the ignorant and unfeeling, to all the wildest flights of turner put together. § . monotony and falsehood of the clouds of the italian school generally. and it is not as if the error were only occasional. it is systematic and constant in all the italian masters of the seventeenth century, and in most of the dutch. they looked at clouds as at everything else which did not particularly help them in their great end of deception, with utter carelessness and bluntness of feeling,--saw that there were a great many rounded passages in them,--found it much easier to sweep circles than to design beauties, and sat down in their studies, contented with perpetual repetitions of the same spherical conceptions, having about the same relation to the clouds of nature, that a child's carving of a turnip has to the head of the apollo. look at the round things about the sun in the bricky claude, the smallest of the three seaports in the national gallery. they are a great deal more like half-crowns than clouds. take the ropy, tough-looking wreath in the sacrifice of isaac, and find one part of it, if you can, which is not the repetition of every other part of it, all together being as round and vapid as the brush could draw them; or take the two cauliflower-like protuberances in no. of the dulwich gallery, and admire the studied similarity between them; you cannot tell which is which; or take the so-called nicholas poussin, no. , dulwich gallery, in which, from the brown trees to the right-hand side of the picture, there is not one line which is not physically impossible. § . vast size of congregated masses of cloud. § . demonstrable by comparison with mountain ranges. but it is not the outline only which is thus systematically false. the drawing of the solid form is worse still, for it is to be remembered that although clouds of course arrange themselves more or less into broad masses, with a light side and dark side, both their light and shade are invariably composed of a series of divided masses, each of which has in its outline as much variety and character as the great outline of the cloud; presenting, therefore, a thousand times repeated, all that i have described as characteristic of the general form. nor are these multitudinous divisions a truth of slight importance in the character of sky, for they are dependent on, and illustrative of, a quality which is usually in a great degree overlooked,--the enormous retiring spaces of solid clouds. between the illumined edge of a heaped cloud, and that part of its body which turns into shadow, there will generally be a clear distance of several miles, more or less of course, according to the general size of the cloud, but in such large masses as in poussin and others of the old masters, occupy the fourth or fifth of the visible sky; the clear illumined breadth of vapor, from the edge to the shadow, involves at least a distance of five or six miles. we are little apt, in watching the changes of a mountainous range of cloud, to reflect that the masses of vapor which compose it, are huger and higher than any mountain range of the earth; and the distances between mass and mass are not yards of air traversed in an instant by the flying form, but valleys of changing atmosphere leagues over; that the slow motion of ascending curves, which we can scarcely trace, is a boiling energy of exulting vapor rushing into the heaven a thousand feet in a minute; and that the toppling angle whose sharp edge almost escapes notice in the multitudinous forms around it, is a nodding precipice of storms, feet from base to summit. it is not until we have actually compared the forms of the sky with the hill ranges of the earth, and seen the soaring alp overtopped and buried in one surge of the sky, that we begin to conceive or appreciate the colossal scale of the phenomena of the latter. but of this there can be no doubt in the mind of any one accustomed to trace the forms of clouds among hill ranges--as it is there a demonstrable and evident fact, that the space of vapor visibly extended over an ordinarily cloudy sky, is not less, from the point nearest to the observer to the horizon, than twenty leagues; that the size of every mass of separate form, if it be at all largely divided, is to be expressed in terms of _miles_; and that every boiling heap of illuminated mist in the nearer sky, is an enormous mountain, fifteen or twenty thousand feet in height, six or seven miles over an illuminated surface, furrowed by a thousand colossal ravines, torn by local tempests into peaks and promontories, and changing its features with the majestic velocity of the volcano. § . and consequent divisions and varieties of feature. to those who have once convinced themselves of these proportions of the heaven, it will be immediately evident, that though we might, without much violation of truth, omit the minor divisions of a cloud four yards over, it is the veriest audacity of falsehood to omit those of masses where for yards we have to read miles; first, because it is physically impossible that such a space should be without many and vast divisions; secondly, because divisions at such distances must be sharply and forcibly marked by aerial perspective, so that not only they must be there, but they must be visible and evident to the eye; and thirdly, because these multitudinous divisions are absolutely necessary, in order to express this space and distance, which cannot but be fully and imperfectly felt, even with every aid and evidence that art can give of it. § . not lightly to be omitted. now if an artist taking for his subject a chain of vast mountains, several leagues long, were to unite all their varieties of ravine, crag, chasm, and precipice, into one solid, unbroken mass, with one light side and one dark side, looking like a white ball or parallelopiped two yards broad, the words "breadth," "boldness," or, "generalization," would scarcely be received as a sufficient apology for a proceeding so glaringly false, and so painfully degrading. but when, instead of the really large and simple forms of mountains, united, as they commonly are, by some great principle of common organization, and so closely resembling each other as often to correspond in line, and join in effect; when instead of this, we have to do with spaces of cloud twice as vast, broken up into a multiplicity of forms necessary to, and characteristic of, their very nature--those forms subject to a thousand local changes, having no association with each other, and rendered visible in a thousand places by their own transparency or cavities, where the mountain forms would be lost in shade,--that this far greater space, and this far more complicated arrangement, should be all summed up into one round mass, with one swell of white, and one flat side of unbroken gray, is considered an evidence of the sublimest powers in the artist of generalization and breadth. now it may be broad, it may be grand, it may be beautiful, artistical, and in every way desirable. i don't say it is not--i merely say it is a concentration of every kind of falsehood: it is depriving heaven of its space, clouds of their buoyancy, winds of their motion, and distance of its blue. § . imperfect conceptions of this size and extent in ancient landscape. this is done, more or less, by all the old masters, without an exception.[ ] their idea of clouds was altogether similar; more or less perfectly carried out, according to their power of hand and accuracy of eye, but universally the same in conception. it was the idea of a comparatively small, round, puffed-up white body, irregularly associated with other round and puffed-up white bodies, each with a white light side, and a gray dark side, and a soft reflected light, floating a great way below a blue dome. such is the idea of a cloud formed by most people; it is the first, general, uncultivated notion of what we see every day. people think of the clouds as about as large as they look--forty yards over, perhaps; they see generally that they are solid bodies subject to the same laws as other solid bodies, roundish, whitish, and apparently suspended a great way under a high blue concavity. so that these ideas be tolerably given with smooth paint, they are content, and call it nature. how different it is from anything that nature ever did, or ever will do, i have endeavored to show; but i cannot, and do not, expect the contrast to be fully felt, unless the reader will actually go out on days when, either before or after rain, the clouds arrange themselves into vigorous masses, and after arriving at something like a conception of their distance and size, from the mode in which they retire over the horizon, will for himself trace and watch their varieties of form and outline, as mass rises over mass in their illuminated bodies. let him climb from step to step over their craggy and broken slopes, let him plunge into the long vistas of immeasurable perspective, that guide back to the blue sky; and when he finds his imagination lost in their immensity, and his senses confused with their multitude, let him go to claude, to salvator, or to poussin, and ask them for a like space, or like infinity. § . total want of transparency and evanescence in the clouds of ancient landscape. but perhaps the most grievous fault of all, in the clouds of these painters, is the utter want of transparency. not in her most ponderous and lightless masses will nature ever leave us without some evidence of transmitted sunshine; and she perpetually gives us passages in which the vapor becomes visible only by the sunshine which it arrests and holds within itself, not caught on its surface, but entangled in its mass--floating fleeces, precious with the gold of heaven; and this translucency is especially indicated on the dark sides even of her heaviest wreaths, which possess opalescent and delicate hues of partial illumination, far more dependent upon the beams which pass through them than on those which are reflected upon them. nothing, on the contrary, can be more painfully and ponderously opaque than the clouds of the old masters universally. however far removed in aerial distance, and however brilliant in light, they never appear filmy or evanescent, and their light is always on them, not in them. and this effect is much increased by the positive and persevering determination on the part of their outlines not to be broken in upon, nor interfered with in the slightest degree, by any presumptuous blue, or impertinent winds. there is no inequality, no variation, no losing or disguising of line, no melting into nothingness, nor shattering into spray; edge succeeds edge with imperturbable equanimity, and nothing short of the most decided interference on the part of tree-tops, or the edge of the picture, prevents us from being able to follow them all the way round, like the coast of an island. § . farther proof of their deficiency in space. § . instance of perfect truth in the sky of turner's babylon. and be it remembered that all these faults and deficiencies are to be found in their drawing merely of the separate masses of the solid cumulus, the easiest drawn of all clouds. but nature scarcely ever confines herself to such masses; they form but the thousandth part of her variety of effect. she builds up a pyramid of their boiling volumes, bars this across like a mountain with the gray cirrus, envelops it in black, ragged, drifting vapor, covers the open part of the sky with mottled horizontal fields, breaks through these with sudden and long sunbeams, tears up their edges with local winds, scatters over the gaps of blue the infinity of multitude of the high cirri, and melts even the unoccupied azure into palpitating shades. and all this is done over and over again in every quarter of a mile. where poussin or claude have three similar masses, nature has fifty pictures, made up each of millions of minor thoughts--fifty aisles penetrating through angelic chapels to the shechinah of the blue--fifty hollow ways among bewildered hills--each with their own nodding rocks, and cloven precipices, and radiant summits, and robing vapors, but all unlike each other, except in beauty, all bearing witness to the unwearied, exhaustless operation of the infinite mind. now, in cases like these especially, as we observed before of general nature, though it is altogether hopeless to follow out in the space of any one picture this incalculable and inconceivable glory, yet the painter can at least see that the space he has at his command, narrow and confined as it is, is made complete use of, and that no part of it shall be without entertainment and food for thought. if he could subdivide it by millionths of inches, he could not reach the multitudinous majesty of nature; but it is at least incumbent upon him to make the most of what he has, and not, by exaggerating the proportions, banishing the variety and repeating the forms of his clouds, to set at defiance the eternal principles of the heavens--fitfulness and infinity. and now let us, keeping in memory what we have seen of poussin and salvator, take up one of turner's skies, and see whether _he_ is as narrow in his conception, or as niggardly in his space. it does not matter which we take, his sublime babylon[ ] is a fair example for our present purpose. ten miles away, down the euphrates, where it gleams last along the plain, he gives us a drift of dark elongated vapor, melting beneath into a dim haze which embraces the hills on the horizon. it is exhausted with its own motion, and broken up by the wind in its own body into numberless groups of billowy and tossing fragments, which, beaten by the weight of storm down to the earth, are just lifting themselves again on wearied wings, and perishing in the effort. above these, and far beyond them, the eye goes back to a broad sea of white, illuminated mist, or rather cloud melted into rain, and absorbed again before that rain has fallen, but penetrated throughout, whether it be vapor or whether it be dew, with soft sunshine, turning it as white as snow. gradually as it rises, the rainy fusion ceases, you cannot tell where the film of blue on the left begins--but it is deepening, deepening still,--and the cloud, with its edge first invisible, then all but imaginary, then just felt when the eye is _not_ fixed on it, and lost when it is, at last rises, keen from excessive distance, but soft and mantling in its body, as a swan's bosom fretted by faint wind, heaving fitfully against the delicate deep blue, with white waves, whose forms are traced by the pale lines of opalescent shadow, shade only because the light is within it, and not upon it, and which break with their own swiftness into a driven line of level spray, winnowed into threads by the wind, and flung before the following vapor like those swift shafts of arrowy water which a great cataract shoots into the air beside it, trying to find the earth. beyond these, again, rises a colossal mountain of gray cumulus, through whose shadowed sides the sunbeams penetrate in dim, sloping, rain-like shafts; and over which they fall in a broad burst of streaming light, sinking to the earth, and showing through their own visible radiance the three successive ranges of hills which connect its desolate plain with space. above, the edgy summit of the cumulus, broken into fragments, recedes into the sky, which is peopled in its serenity with quiet multitudes of the white, soft, silent cirrus; and under these again, drift near the zenith, disturbed and impatient shadows of a darker spirit, seeking rest and finding none. § . and in his pools of solomon. now this is nature! it is the exhaustless living energy with which the universe is filled; and what will you set beside it of the works of other men? show me a single picture, in the whole compass of ancient art, in which i can pass from cloud to cloud, from region to region, from first to second and third heaven, as i can here, and you may talk of turner's want of truth. turn to the pools of solomon, and walk through the passages of mist as they melt on the one hand into those stormy fragments of fiery cloud, or, on the other, into the cold solitary shadows that compass the sweeping hill, and when you find an inch without air and transparency, and a hairbreadth without changefulness and thought; and when you can count the torn waves of tossing radiance that gush from the sun, as you can count the fixed, white, insipidities of claude; or when you can measure the modulation and the depth of that hollow mist, as you can the flourishes of the brush upon the canvas of salvator, talk of turner's want of truth! but let us take up simpler and less elaborate works, for there is too much in these to admit of being analyzed. § . truths of outline and character in his como. in the vignette of the lake of como, in rogers's italy, the space is so small that the details have been partially lost by the engraver; but enough remain to illustrate the great principles of cloud from which we have endeavored to explain. observe first the general angular outline of the volumes on the left of the sun. if you mark the points where the direction of their outline changes, and connect those points by right lines, the cloud will touch, but will not cut, those lines throughout. yet its contour is as graceful as it is full of character--toppling, ready to change--fragile as enormous--evanescent as colossal. observe how, where it crosses the line of the sun, it becomes luminous, illustrating what has been observed of the visibility of mist in sunlight. observe, above all, the multiplicity of its solid form, the depth of its shadows in perpetual transition: it is not round and swelled, half light and half dark, but full of breaking irregular shadow and transparency--variable as the wind, and melting imperceptibly above into the haziness of the sunlighted atmosphere, contrasted in all its vast forms with the delicacy and the multitude of the brightly touched cirri. nothing can surpass the truth of this; the cloud is as gigantic in its simplicity as the alp which it opposes; but how various, how transparent, how infinite in its organization! § . association of the cirrostratus with the cumulus. i would draw especial attention, both here and in all other works of turner, to the beautiful use of the low horizontal bars or fields of cloud, (cirrostratus,) which associate themselves so frequently--more especially before storms--with the true cumulus, floating on its flanks, or capping it, as if it were a mountain, and seldom mingling with its substance, unless in the very formation of rain. they supply us with one of those beautiful instances of natural composition, by which the artist is superseded and excelled--for, by the occurrence of these horizontal flakes, the rolling form of the cumulus is both opposed in its principal lines, and gifted with an apparent solidity and vastness, which no other expedient could have exhibited, and which far exceed in awfulness the impression of the noblest mountains of the earth. i have seen in the evening light of italy, the alps themselves out-towered by ranges of these mighty clouds, alternately white in the starlight, and inhabited by fire. § . the deep-based knowledge of the alps in turner's lake of geneva. turn back to the first vignette in the italy. the angular outlines and variety of modulation in the clouds above the sail, and the delicate atmosphere of morning into which they are dissolved about the breathing hills, require no comment; but one part of this vignette demands especial notice; it is the repetition of the outline of the snowy mountain by the light cloud above it. the cause of this i have already explained (vide page ,) and its occurrence here is especially valuable as bearing witness to the thorough and scientific knowledge thrown by turner into his slightest works. the thing cannot be seen once in six months; it would not have been noticed, much less introduced by an ordinary artist, and to the public it is a dead letter, or an offence. ninety-nine persons in a hundred would not have observed this pale wreath of parallel cloud above the hill, and the hundredth in all probability says it is unnatural. it requires the most intimate and accurate knowledge of the alps before such a piece of refined truth can be understood. § . further principles of cloud form exemplified in his amalfi. at the th page we have another and a new case, in which clouds in perfect repose, unaffected by wind, or any influence but that of their own elastic force, boil, rise, and melt in the heaven with more approach to globular form than under any other circumstances is possible. i name this vignette, not only because it is most remarkable for the buoyancy and elasticity of inward energy, indicated through the most ponderous forms, and affords us a beautiful instance of the junction of the cirrostratus with the cumulus, of which we have just been speaking (§ ,) but because it is a characteristic example of turner's use of one of the facts of nature not hitherto noticed, that the edge of a partially transparent body is often darker than its central surface, because at the edge the light penetrates and passes through, which from the centre is reflected to the eye. the sharp, cutting edge of a wave, if not broken into foam, frequently appears for an instant almost black; and the outlines of these massy clouds, where their projecting forms rise in relief against the light of their bodies, are almost always marked clearly and firmly by very dark edges. hence we have frequently, if not constantly, multitudinous forms indicated only by outline, giving character and solidity to the great masses of light, without taking away from their breadth. and turner avails himself of these boldly and constantly,--outlining forms with the brush of which no other indication is given. all the grace and solidity of the white cloud on the right-hand side of the vignette before us, depends upon such outlines. § . reasons for insisting on the _infinity_ of turner's works. infinity is almost an unerring test of _all_ truth. as i before observed of mere execution, that one of the best tests of its excellence was the expression of _infinity_; so it may be noticed with respect to the painting of details generally, that more difference lies between one artist and another, in the attainment of this quality, than in any other of the efforts of art; and that if we wish, without reference to beauty of composition, or any other interfering circumstances, to form a judgment of the truth of painting, perhaps the very first thing we should look for, whether in one thing or another--foliage, or clouds, or waves--should be the expression of _infinity_ always and everywhere, in all parts and divisions of parts. for we may be quite sure that what is not infinite, cannot be true; it does not, indeed, follow that what is infinite, always is true, but it cannot be altogether false, for this simple reason; that it is impossible for mortal mind to compose an infinity of any kind for itself, or to form an idea of perpetual variation, and to avoid all repetition, merely by its own combining resources. the moment that we trust to ourselves, we repeat ourselves, and therefore the moment we see in a work of any kind whatsoever, the expression of infinity, we may be certain that the workman has gone to nature for it; while, on the other hand, the moment we see repetition, or want of infinity, we may be certain that the workman has _not_ gone to nature for it. § . instances of the total want of it in the works of salvator. § . and of the universal presence of it in those of turner. the conclusions which may be arrived at from it. § . the multiplication of objects, or increase of their size, will not give the impression of infinity, but is the resource of novices. for instance, in the picture of salvator before noticed, no. in the dulwich gallery, as we see at once that the two masses of cloud absolutely repeat each other in every one of their forms, and that each is composed of about twelve white sweeps of the brush, all forming the same curve, and all of the same length; and as we can count these, and measure their common diameter, and by stating the same to anybody else, convey to him a full and perfect idea and knowledge of that sky in all its parts and proportions,--as we can do this, we may be absolutely certain, without reference to the real sky, or to any other part of nature, without even knowing what the white things were intended for, we may be certain that they cannot possibly resemble _anything_; that whatever they were meant for, they can be nothing but a violent contradiction of all nature's principles and forms. when, on the other hand, we take up such a sky as that of turner's rouen, seen from st. catherine's hill, in the rivers of france, and find, in the first place, that he has given us a distance over the hills in the horizon, into which, when we are tired of penetrating, we must turn and come back again, there being not the remotest chance of getting to the end of it; and when we see that from this measureless distance up to the zenith, the whole sky is one ocean of alternate waves of cloud and light, so blended together that the eye cannot rest on any one without being guided to the next, and so to a hundred more, till it is lost over and over again in every wreath--that if it divides the sky into quarters of inches, and tries to count or comprehend the component parts of any single one of those divisions, it is still as utterly defied and defeated by the part as by the whole--that there is not one line out of the millions there which repeats another, not one which is unconnected with another, not one which does not in itself convey histories of distance and space, and suggest new and changeful form; then we may be all but certain, though these forms are too mysterious and too delicate for us to analyze--though all is so crowded and so connected that it is impossible to test any single part by particular laws--yet without any such tests, we may be sure that this infinity can only be based on truth--that it _must_ be nature, because man could not have originated it, and that every form must be faithful, because none is like another. and therefore it is that i insist so constantly on this great quality of landscape painting, as it appears in turner; because it is not merely a constant and most important truth in itself, but it almost amounts to a demonstration of every other truth. and it will be found a far rarer attainment in the works of other men than is commonly supposed, and the sign, wherever it is really found, of the very highest art. for we are apt to forget that the greatest _number_ is no nearer infinity than the least, if it be definite number; and the vastest bulk is no nearer infinity than the most minute, if it be definite bulk; so that a man may multiply his objects forever and ever, and be no nearer infinity than he had reached with one, if he do not vary them and confuse them; and a man may reach infinity in every touch and line, and part, and unit, if in these he be truthfully various and obscure. and we shall find, the more we examine the works of the old masters, that always, and in all parts, they are totally wanting in every feeling of infinity, and therefore in _all_ truth: and even in the works of the moderns, though the aim is far more just, we shall frequently perceive an erroneous choice of means, and a substitution of mere number or bulk for real infinity. § . farther instances of infinity in the gray skies of turner. and therefore, in concluding our notice of the central cloud region, i should wish to dwell particularly on those skies of turner's, in which we have the whole space of the heaven covered with the delicate dim flakes of gathering vapor, which are the intermediate link between the central region and that of the rain-cloud, and which assemble and grow out of the air; shutting up the heaven with a gray interwoven veil, before the approach of storm, faint, but universal, letting the light of the upper sky pass pallidly through their body, but never rending a passage for the ray. we have the first approach and gathering of this kind of sky most gloriously given in the vignette at page of rogers's italy, which is one of the most perfect pieces of feeling (if i may transgress my usual rules for an instant) extant in art, owing to the extreme grandeur and stern simplicity of the strange and ominous forms of level cloud behind the building. in that at page , there are passages of the same kind, of exceeding perfection. the sky through which the dawn is breaking in the voyage of columbus, and that with the moonlight under the rialto, in rogers's poems, the skies of the bethlehem, and the pyramids in finden's bible series, and among the academy pictures, that of the hero and leander, and flight into egypt, are characteristic and noble examples, as far as any individual works can be characteristic of the universality of this mighty mind. i ought not to forget the magnificent solemnity and fulness of the wreaths of gathering darkness in the folkestone. § . the excellence of the cloud-drawing of stanfield. § . the average standing of the english school. we must not pass from the consideration of the central cloud region without noticing the general high quality of the cloud-drawing of stanfield. he is limited in his range, and is apt in extensive compositions to repeat himself, neither is he ever very refined; but his cloud-form is firmly and fearlessly chiselled, with perfect knowledge, though usually with some want of feeling. as far as it goes, it is very grand and very tasteful, beautifully developed in the space of its solid parts and full of action. next to turner, he is incomparably the noblest master of cloud-form of all our artists; in fact, he is the only one among them who really can _draw_ a cloud. for it is a very different thing to rub out an irregular white space neatly with the handkerchief, or to leave a bright little bit of paper in the middle of a wash, and to give the real anatomy of cloud-form with perfect articulation of chiaroscuro. we have multitudes of painters who can throw a light bit of straggling vapor across their sky, or leave in it delicate and tender passages of breaking light; but this is a very different thing from taking up each of those bits or passages, and giving it structure, and parts, and solidity. the eye is satisfied with exceedingly little, as an indication of cloud, and a few clever sweeps of the brush on wet paper may give all that it requires; but this is not _drawing_ clouds, nor will it ever appeal fully and deeply to the mind, except when it occurs only as a part of a higher system. and there is not one of our modern artists, except stanfield, who can do much more than this. as soon as they attempt to lay detail upon their clouds, they appear to get bewildered, forget that they are dealing with forms regulated by precisely the same simple laws of light and shade as more substantial matter, overcharge their color, confuse their shadows and dark sides, and end in mere ragged confusion. i believe the evil arises from their never attempting to render clouds except with the brush; other objects, at some period of study, they take up with the chalk or lead, and so learn something of their form; but they appear to consider clouds as altogether dependent on cobalt and camel's hair, and so never understand anything of their real anatomy. but whatever the cause, i cannot point to any central clouds of the moderns, except those of turner and stanfield, as really showing much knowledge of, or feeling for, nature, though _all_ are superior to the conventional and narrow conceptions of the ancients. we are all right as far as we go, our work may be incomplete, but it is not false; and it is far better, far less injurious to the mind, that we should be little attracted to the sky, and taught to be satisfied with a light suggestion of truthful form, than that we should be drawn to it by violently pronounced outline and intense color, to find in its finished falsehood everything to displease or to mislead--to hurt our feelings, if we have foundation for them, and corrupt them, if we have none. footnotes [ ] here i include even the great ones--even titian and veronese,--excepting only tintoret and the religious schools. [ ] engraved in findel's bible illustrations. chapter iv. of truth of clouds: thirdly, of the region of the rain-cloud. § . the apparent difference in character between the lower and central clouds is dependent chiefly on proximity. the clouds which i wish to consider as characteristic of the lower, or rainy region, differ not so much in their real nature from those of the central and uppermost regions, as in appearance, owing to their greater nearness. for the central clouds, and perhaps even the high cirri, deposit moisture, if not distinctly rain, as is sufficiently proved by the existence of snow on the highest peaks of the himaleh; and when, on any such mountains, we are brought into close contact with the central clouds,[ ] we find them little differing from the ordinary rain-cloud of the plains, except by being slightly less dense and dark. but the apparent differences, dependent on proximity, are most marked and important. § . their marked difference in color. in the first place, the clouds of the central region have, as has been before observed, pure and aerial grays for their dark sides, owing to their necessary distance from the observer; and as this distance permits a multitude of local phenomena capable of influencing color, such as accidental sunbeams, refractions, transparencies, or local mists and showers, to be collected into a space comparatively small, the colors of these clouds are always changeful and palpitating; and whatever degree of gray or of gloom may be mixed with them is invariably pure and aerial. but the nearness of the rain-cloud rendering it impossible for a number of phenomena to be at once visible, makes its hue of gray monotonous, and (by losing the blue of distance) warm and brown compared to that of the upper clouds. this is especially remarkable on any part of it which may happen to be illumined, which is of a brown, bricky, ochreous tone, never bright, always coming in dark outline on the lights of the central clouds. but it is seldom that this takes place, and when it does, never over large spaces, little being usually seen of the rain-cloud but its under and dark side. this, when the cloud above is dense, becomes of an inky and cold gray, and sulphureous and lurid if there be thunder in the air. § . and in definiteness of form. § . they are subject to precisely the same great laws. with these striking differences in color, it presents no fewer nor less important in form, chiefly from losing almost all definiteness of character and outline. it is sometimes nothing more than a thin mist, whose outline cannot be traced, rendering the landscape locally indistinct or dark; if its outline be visible, it is ragged and torn; rather a spray of cloud, taken off its edge and sifted by the wind, than an edge of the cloud itself. in fact, it rather partakes of the nature, and assumes the appearance, of real water in the state of spray, than of elastic vapor. this appearance is enhanced by the usual presence of formed rain, carried along with it in a columnar form, ordinarily, of course, reaching the ground like a veil, but very often suspended with the cloud, and hanging from it like a jagged fringe, or over it in light, rain being always lighter than the cloud it falls from. these columns, or fringes, of rain are often waved and bent by the wind, or twisted, sometimes even swept upwards from the cloud. the velocity of these vapors, though not necessarily in reality greater than that of the central clouds, appears greater, owing to their proximity, and, of course, also to the usual presence of a more violent wind. they are also apparently much more in the power of the wind, having less elastic force in themselves; but they are precisely subject to the same great laws of form which regulate the upper clouds. they are not solid bodies borne about with the wind, but they carry the wind with them, and cause it. every one knows, who has ever been out in a storm, that the time when it rains heaviest is precisely the time when he cannot hold up his umbrella; that the wind is carried with the cloud, and lulls when it has passed. every one who has ever seen rain in a hill country, knows that a rain-cloud, like any other, may have all its parts in rapid motion, and yet, as a whole, remain in one spot. i remember once, when in crossing the tête noire, i had turned up the valley towards trient, i noticed a rain-cloud forming on the glacier de trient. with a west wind, it proceeded towards the col de balme, being followed by a prolonged wreath of vapor, always forming exactly at the same spot over the glacier. this long, serpent-like line of cloud went on at a great rate till it reached the valley leading down from the col de balme, under the slate rocks of the croix de fer. there it turned sharp round, and came down this valley, at right angles to its former progress, and finally directly contrary to it, till it came down within five hundred feet of the village, where it disappeared; the line behind always advancing, and always disappearing, at the same spot. this continued for half an hour, the long line describing the curve of a horseshoe; always coming into existence, and always vanishing at exactly the same places; traversing the space between with enormous swiftness. this cloud, ten miles off, would have looked like a perfectly motionless wreath, in the form of a horseshoe, hanging over the hills. § . value, to the painter, of the rain-cloud. § . the old masters have not left a single instance of the painting of the rain-cloud, and very few efforts at it. gaspar poussin's storms. to the region of the rain-cloud belong also all those phenomena of drifted smoke, heat-haze, local mists in the morning or evening; in valleys, or over water, mirage, white steaming vapor rising in evaporation from moist and open surfaces, and everything which visibly affects the condition of the atmosphere without actually assuming the form of cloud. these phenomena are as perpetual in all countries as they are beautiful, and afford by far the most effective and valuable means which the painter possesses, for modification of the forms of fixed objects. the upper clouds are distinct and comparatively opaque, they do not modify, but conceal; but through the rain-cloud, and its accessory phenomena, all that is beautiful may be made manifest, and all that is hurtful concealed; what is paltry may be made to look vast, and what is ponderous, aerial; mystery may be obtained without obscurity, and decoration without disguise. and, accordingly, nature herself uses it constantly, as one of her chief means of most perfect effect; not in one country, nor another, but everywhere--everywhere; at least, where there is anything worth calling landscape. i cannot answer for the desert of the sahara, but i know that there can be no greater mistake, than supposing that delicate and variable effects of mist and rain-cloud are peculiar to northern climates. i have never seen in any place or country effects of mist more perfect than in the campagna of rome, and among the hills of sorrento. it is therefore matter of no little marvel to me, and i conceive that it can scarcely be otherwise to any reflecting person, that throughout the whole range of ancient landscape art, there occurs no instance of the painting of a real rain-cloud, still less of any of the more delicate phenomena characteristic of the region. "storms" indeed, as the innocent public persist in calling such abuses of nature and abortions of art as the two windy gaspars in our national gallery, are common enough; massive concretions of ink and indigo, wrung and twisted very hard, apparently in a vain effort to get some moisture out of them; bearing up courageously and successfully against a wind, whose effects on the trees in the foreground can be accounted for only on the supposition that they are all of the india-rubber species. enough of this in all conscience, we have, and to spare; but for the legitimate rain-cloud, with its ragged and spray-like edge, its veilly transparency, and its columnar burden of blessing, neither it, nor anything like it, or approaching it, occurs in any painting of the old masters that i have ever seen; and i have seen enough to warrant my affirming that if it occur anywhere, it must be through accident rather than intention. nor is there stronger evidence of any perception, on the part of these much respected artists, that there were such things in the world as mists or vapors. if a cloud under their direction ever touches a mountain, it does it effectually and as if it meant to do it. there is no mystifying the matter; here is a cloud, and there is a hill; if it is to come on at all, it comes on to some purpose, and there is no hope of its ever going off again. we have, therefore, little to say of the efforts of the old masters, in any scenes which might naturally have been connected with the clouds of the lowest region, except that the faults of form specified in considering the central clouds, are, by way of being energetic or sublime, more glaringly and audaciously committed in their "storms;" and that what is a wrong form among clouds possessing form, is there given with increased generosity of fiction to clouds which have no form at all. § . the great power of the moderns in this respect. § . works of copley fielding. § . his peculiar truth. § . his weakness and its probable cause. supposing that we had nothing to show in modern art, of the region of the rain-cloud, but the dash of cox, the blot of de wint, or even the ordinary stormy skies of the body of our inferior water-color painters, we might yet laugh all efforts of the old masters to utter scorn. but one among our water-color artists, deserves especial notice--before we ascend the steps of the solitary throne--as having done in his peculiar walk, what for faithful and pure truth, truth indeed of a limited range and unstudied application, but yet most faithful and most pure, will remain unsurpassed if not unrivalled,--copley fielding. we are well aware how much of what he has done depends in a great degree upon particular tricks of execution, or on a labor somewhat too mechanical to be meritorious; that it is rather the _texture_ than the _plan_ of his sky which is to be admired, and that the greater part of what is pleasurable in it will fall rather under the head of dexterous imitation than of definite thought. but whatever detractions from his merit we may be compelled to make on these grounds, in considering art as the embodying of beauty, or the channel of mind, it is impossible, when we are speaking of truth only, to pass by his down scenes and moorland showers, of some years ago, in which he produced some of the most perfect and faultless passages of mist and rain-cloud which art has ever seen. wet, transparent, formless, full of motion, felt rather by their shadows on the hills than by their presence in the sky, becoming dark only through increased depth of space, most translucent where most sombre, and light only through increased buoyancy of motion, letting the blue through their interstices, and the sunlight through their chasms, with the irregular playfulness and traceless gradation of nature herself, his skies will remain, as long as their colors stand, among the most simple, unadulterated, and complete transcripts of a particular nature which art can point to. had he painted five instead of five hundred such, and gone on to other sources of beauty, he might, there can be little doubt, have been one of our greatest artists. but it often grieves us to see how his power is limited to a particular moment, to that easiest moment for imitation, when knowledge of form may be superseded by management of the brush, and the judgment of the colorist by the manufacture of a color; the moment when all form is melted down and drifted away in the descending veil of rain, and when the variable and fitful colors of the heaven are lost in the monotonous gray of its storm tones.[ ] we can only account for this by supposing that there is something radically wrong in his method of study; for a man of his evident depth of feeling and pure love of truth ought not to be, cannot be, except from some strange error in his mode of out-of-door practice, thus limited in his range, and liable to decline of power. we have little doubt that almost all such failures arise from the artist's neglecting the use of the chalk, and supposing that either the power of drawing forms, or the sense of their beauty, can be maintained unweakened or unblunted, without constant and laborious studies in simple light and shade, of form only. the brush is at once the artist's greatest aid and enemy; it enables him to make his power available, but at the same time, it undermines his power, and unless it be constantly rejected for the pencil, never can be rightly used. but whatever the obstacle be, we do not doubt that it is one which, once seen, may be overcome or removed; and we are in the constant hope of seeing this finely-minded artist shake off his lethargy, break the shackles of habit, seek in extended and right study the sources of real power, and become, what we have full faith in his capability of being, one of the leading artists of his time. § . impossibility of reasoning on the rain-clouds of turner from engravings. in passing to the works of our greatest modern master, it must be premised that the qualities which constitute a most essential part of the truth of the rain-cloud, are in no degree to be rendered by engraving. its indefiniteness of torn and transparent form is far beyond the power of even our best engravers: i do not say beyond their _possible_ power, if they would make themselves artists as well as workmen, but far beyond the power they actually possess; while the depth and delicacy of the grays which turner employs or produces, as well as the refinement of his execution, are, in the nature of things, utterly beyond all imitation by the opaque and lifeless darkness of the steel. what we say of his works, therefore, must be understood as referring only to the original drawings; though we may name one or two instances in which the engraver has, to a certain degree, succeeded in distantly following the intention of the master. § . his rendering of fielding's particular moment in the jumieges. § . illustration of the nature of clouds in the opposed forms of smoke and steam. jumieges, in the rivers of france, ought perhaps, after what we have said of fielding, to be our first object of attention, because it is a rendering by turner of fielding's particular moment, and the only one existing, for turner never repeats himself. one picture is allotted to one truth; the statement is perfectly and gloriously made, and he passes on to speak of a fresh portion of god's revelation.[ ] the haze of sunlit rain of this most magnificent picture, the gradual retirement of the dark wood into its depth, and the sparkling and evanescent light which sends its variable flashes on the abbey, figures, foliage, and foam, require no comment--they speak home at once. but there is added to this noble composition an incident which may serve us at once for a farther illustration of the nature and forms of cloud, and for a final proof how deeply and philosophically turner has studied them. we have on the right of the picture, the steam and the smoke of a passing steamboat. now steam is nothing but an artificial cloud in the process of dissipation; it is as much a cloud as those of the sky itself, that is, a quantity of moisture rendered visible in the air by imperfect solution. accordingly, observe how exquisitely irregular and broken are its forms, how sharp and spray-like; but with all the facts observed which were pointed out in chap. ii. of this section, the convex side to the wind, the sharp edge on that side, the other soft and lost. smoke, on the contrary, is an actual substance existing independently in the air, a solid opaque body, subject to no absorption nor dissipation but that of tenuity. observe its volumes; there is no breaking up nor disappearing here; the wind carries its elastic globes before it, but does not dissolve nor break them.[ ] equally convex and void of angles on all sides, they are the exact representatives of the clouds of the old masters, and serve at once to show the ignorance and falsehood of these latter, and the accuracy of study which has guided turner to the truth. § . moment of retiring rain in the llanthony. from this picture we should pass to the llanthony,[ ] which is the rendering of the moment immediately following that given in the jumieges. the shower is here half exhausted, half passed by, the last drops are rattling faintly through the glimmering hazel boughs, the white torrent, swelled by the sudden storm, flings up its hasty jets of springing spray to meet the returning light; and these, as if the heaven regretted what it had given, and were taking it back, pass, as they leap, into vapor, and fall not again, but vanish in the shafts of the sunlight[ ]--hurrying, fitful, wind-woven sunlight--which glides through the thick leaves, and paces along the pale rocks like rain; half conquering, half quenched by the very mists which it summons itself from the lighted pastures as it passes, and gathers out of the drooping herbage and from the streaming crags; sending them with messages of peace to the far summits of the yet unveiled mountains whose silence is still broken by the sound of the rushing rain. § . and of commencing, chosen with peculiar meaning for loch coriskin. with this noble work we should compare one of which we can better judge by the engraving--the loch coriskin, in the illustrations to scott, because it introduces us to another and a most remarkable instance of the artist's vast and varied knowledge. when rain falls on a mountain composed chiefly of barren rocks, their surfaces, being violently heated by the sun, whose most intense warmth always precedes rain, occasion sudden and violent evaporation, actually converting the first shower into steam. consequently, upon all such hills, on the commencement of rain, white volumes of vapor are instantaneously and universally formed, which rise, are absorbed by the atmosphere, and again descend in rain, to rise in fresh volumes until the surfaces of the hills are cooled. where there is grass or vegetation, this effect is diminished; where there is foliage it scarcely takes place at all. now this effect has evidently been especially chosen by turner for loch coriskin, not only because it enabled him to relieve its jagged forms with veiling vapor, but to tell the tale which no pencilling could, the story of its utter absolute barrenness of unlichened, dead, desolated rock:-- "the wildest glen, but this, can show some touch of nature's genial glow, on high benmore green mosses grow, and heath-bells bud in deep glencoe. and copse on cruchan ben; but here, above, around, below, on mountain, or in glen, nor tree, nor plant, nor shrub, nor flower, nor aught of vegetative power, the wearied eye may ken; but all its rocks at random thrown, black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone." lord of the isles, canto iii here, again, we see the absolute necessity of scientific and entire acquaintance with nature, before this great artist can be understood. that which, to the ignorant, is little more than an unnatural and meaningless confusion of steam-like vapor, is to the experienced such a full and perfect expression of the character of the spot, as no means of art could have otherwise given. § . the drawing of transparent vapor in the land's end. § . the individual character of its parts. in the long ships lighthouse, land's end, we have clouds without rain--at twilight--enveloping the cliffs of the coast, but concealing nothing, every outline being visible through their gloom; and not only the outline--for it is easy to do this--but the _surface_. the bank of rocky coast approaches the spectator inch by inch, felt clearer and clearer as it withdraws from the garment of cloud--not by edges more and more defined, but by a surface more and more unveiled. we have thus the painting, not of a mere transparent veil, but of a solid body of cloud, every inch of whose increasing distance is marked and felt. but the great wonder of the picture is the intensity of gloom which is attained in pure warm gray, without either blackness or blueness. it is a gloom, dependent rather on the enormous space and depth indicated, than on actual pitch of color, distant by real drawing, without a grain of blue, dark by real substance, without a stroke of blackness; and with all this, it is not formless, but full of indications of character, wild, irregular, shattered, and indefinite--full of the energy of storm, fiery in haste, and yet flinging back out of its motion the fitful swirls of bounding drift, of tortured vapor tossed up like men's hands, as in defiance of the tempest, the jets of resulting whirlwind, hurled back from the rocks into the face of the coming darkness; which, beyond all other characters, mark the raised passion of the elements. it is this untraceable, unconnected, yet perpetual form--this fulness of character absorbed in the universal energy--which distinguish nature and turner from all their imitators. to roll a volume of smoke before the wind, to indicate motion or violence by monotonous similarity of line and direction, is for the multitude; but to mark the independent passion, the tumultuous separate existence of every wreath of writhing vapor, yet swept away and overpowered by one omnipotence of storm, and thus to bid us "be as a presence or a motion--one among the many there----while the mists flying, and rainy vapors, call out shapes and phantoms from the crags and solid earth, as fast as a musician scatters sounds out of an instrument,"-- this belongs only to nature and to him. § . deep studied form of swift rain-cloud in the coventry. § . compared with forms given by salvator. the drawing of coventry may be particularized as a farther example of this fine suggestion of irregularity and fitfulness, through very constant parallelism of direction, both in rain and clouds. the great mass of cloud, which traverses the whole picture, is characterized throughout by severe right lines, nearly parallel with each other, into which every one of its wreaths has a tendency to range itself; but no one of these right lines is actually and entirely parallel to any other, though all have a certain tendency, more or less defined in each, which impresses the mind with the most distinct _idea_ of parallelism. neither are any of the lines actually straight and unbroken; on the contrary, they are all made up of the most exquisite and varied curves, and it is the imagined line which joins the apices of these--a tangent to them all, which is in reality straight.[ ] they are suggested, not represented, right lines; but the whole volume of cloud is visibly and totally bounded by them; and, in consequence, its whole body is felt to be dragged out and elongated by the force of the tempest which it carries with it, and every one of its wreaths to be (as was before explained) not so much something borne _before_ or _by_ the wind, as the visible form and presence of the wind itself. we could not possibly point out a more magnificent piece of drawing as a contrast to such works of salvator as that before alluded to ( dulwich gallery). both are rolling masses of connected cloud; but in turner's, there is not one curve that repeats another, nor one curve in itself monotonous, nor without character, and yet every part and portion of the cloud is rigidly subjected to the same forward, fierce, inevitable influence of storm. in salvator's, every curve repeats its neighbor, every curve is monotonous in itself, and yet the whole cloud is curling about hither and thither, evidently without the slightest notion where it is going to, and unregulated by any general influence whatsoever. i could not bring together two finer or more instructive examples, the one of everything that is perfect, the other of everything that is childish or abominable, in the representation of the same facts. § . entire expression of tempest by minute touches and circumstances in the coventry. but there is yet more to be noticed in this noble sky of turner's. not only are the lines of the rolling cloud thus irregular in their parallelism, but those of the falling rain are equally varied in their direction, indicating the gusty changefulness of the wind, and yet kept so straight and stern in their individual descent, that we are not suffered to forget its strength. this impression is still farther enhanced by the drawing of the smoke, which blows every way at once, yet turning perpetually in each of its swirls back in the direction of the wind, but so suddenly and violently, as almost to assume the angular lines of lightning. farther, to complete the impression, be it observed that all the cattle, both upon the near and distant hill-side, have left off grazing, and are standing stock still and stiff, with their heads down and their backs to the wind; and finally, that we may be told not only what the storm is, but what it has been, the gutter at the side of the road is gushing in a complete torrent, and particular attention is directed to it by the full burst of light in the sky being brought just above it, so that all its waves are bright with the reflection. § . especially by contrast with a passage of extreme repose. but i have not quite done with this noble picture yet. impetuous clouds, twisted rain, flickering sunshine, fleeting shadow, gushing water, and oppressed cattle, all speak the same story of tumult, fitfulness, power, and velocity. only one thing is wanted, a passage of repose to contrast with it all, and it is given. high and far above the dark volumes of the swift rain-cloud, are seen on the left, through their opening, the quiet, horizontal, silent flakes of the highest cirrus, resting in the repose of the deep sky. of all else that we have noticed in this drawing, some faint idea can be formed from the engraving: but not the slightest of the delicate and soft forms of these pausing vapors, and still less of the exquisite depth and palpitating tenderness of the blue with which they are islanded. engravers, indeed, invariably lose the effect of all passages of cold color, under the mistaken idea that it is to be kept _pale_ in order to indicate distance; whereas it ought commonly to be darker than the rest of the sky. § . the truth of this particular passage. perfectly pure blue sky only seen after rain, and how seen. § . absence of this effect in the works of the old masters. to appreciate the full truth of this passage, we must understand another effect peculiar to the rain-cloud, that its openings exhibit the purest blue which the sky ever shows. for, as we saw in the first chapter of this section, that aqueous vapor always turns the sky more or less gray, it follows that we never can see the azure so intense as when the greater part of this vapor has just fallen in rain. then, and then only, pure blue sky becomes visible in the first openings, distinguished especially by the manner in which the clouds melt into it; their edges passing off in faint white threads and fringes, through which the blue shines more and more intensely, till the last trace of vapor is lost in its perfect color. it is only the upper white clouds, however, which do this, or the last fragments of rain-clouds, becoming white as they disappear, so that the blue is never _corrupted_ by the cloud, but only paled and broken with pure white, the purest white which the sky ever shows. thus we have a melting and palpitating color, never the same for two inches together, deepening and broadening here and there into intensity of perfect azure, then drifted and dying away through every tone of pure pale sky, into the snow white of the filmy cloud. over this roll the determined edges of the rain-clouds, throwing it all far back, as a retired scene, into the upper sky. of this effect the old masters, as far as i remember, have taken no cognizance whatsoever; all with them is, as we partially noticed before, either white cloud or pure blue: they have no notion of any double-dealing or middle measures. they bore a hole in the sky, and let you up into a pool of deep, stagnant blue, marked off by the clear round edges of imperturbable, impenetrable cloud on all sides--beautiful in positive color, but totally destitute of that exquisite gradation and change, that fleeting, panting, hesitating effort, with which the first glance of the natural sky is shed through the turbulence of the earth-storm. § . success of our water-color artists in its rendering. use of it by turner. they have some excuse, however, for not attempting this, in the nature of their material, as one accidental dash of the brush with water-color on a piece of wet or damp paper, will come nearer the truth and transparency of this rain-blue than the labor of a day in oils; and the purity and felicity of some of the careless, melting water-color skies of cox and tayler may well make us fastidious in all effects of this kind. it is, however, only in the drawings of turner that we have this perfect transparency and variation of blue, given in association with the perfection of considered form. in tayler and cox the forms are always partially accidental and unconsidered, often essentially bad, and always incomplete; in turner the dash of the brush is as completely under the rule of thought and feeling as its slowest line; all that it does is perfect, and could not be altered, even in a hairbreadth, without injury; in addition to this, peculiar management and execution are used in obtaining quality in the color itself, totally different from the manipulation of any other artist; and none, who have ever spent so much as one hour of their lives over his drawing, can forget those dim passages of dreamy blue, barred and severed with a thousand delicate and soft and snowy forms, which, gleaming in their patience of hope between the troubled rushing of the racked earth-cloud, melt farther and farther back into the height of heaven, until the eye is bewildered and the heart lost in the intensity of their peace. i do not say that this is beautiful--i do not say it is ideal, nor refined--i only ask you to watch for the first opening of the clouds after the next south rain, and tell me if it be not _true_? § . expression of near rain-cloud in the gosport, and other works. § . contrasted with gaspar poussin's rain-cloud in the dido and �neas. the gosport affords us an instance more exquisite even than the passage above named in the coventry, of the use of this melting and dewy blue, accompanied by two distances of rain-cloud, one towering over the horizon, seen blue with excessive distance through crystal atmosphere; the other breaking overhead in the warm, sulphurous fragments of spray, whose loose and shattering transparency, being the most essential characteristic of the near rain-cloud, is precisely that which the old masters are sure to contradict. look, for instance, at the wreaths of _cloud_? in the dido and �neas of gaspar poussin, with their unpleasant edges cut as hard and solid and opaque and smooth as thick black paint can make them, rolled up over one another like a dirty sail badly reefed; or look at the agreeable transparency and variety of the cloud-edge where it cuts the mountain in n. poussin's phocion, and compare this with the wreaths which float across the precipice in the second vignette in campbell, or which gather around the ben lomond, the white rain gleaming beneath their dark transparent shadows; or which drift up along the flanks of the wooded hills, called from the river by the morning light, in the oakhampton; or which island the crags of snowdon in the llanberis, or melt along the cumberland hills, while turner leads us across the sands of morecambe bay. this last drawing deserves especial notice; it is of an evening in spring, when the south rain has ceased at sunset, and through the lulled and golden air, the confused and fantastic mists float up along the hollows of the mountains, white and pure, the resurrection in spirit of the new-fallen rain, catching shadows from the precipices, and mocking the dark peaks with their own mountain-like but melting forms till the solid mountains seem in motion like those waves of cloud, emerging and vanishing as the weak wind passes by their summits; while the blue, level night advances along the sea, and the surging breakers leap up to catch the last light from the path of the sunset. [illustration: okehampton castle. from a painting by turner.] § . turner's power of rendering mist. § . his effects of mist so perfect, that if not at once understood, they can no more be explained or reasoned on than nature herself. i need not, however, insist upon turner's peculiar power of rendering _mist_, and all those passages of intermediate mystery, between earth and air, when the mountain is melting into the cloud, or the horizon into the twilight; because his supremacy in these points is altogether undisputed, except by persons to whom it would be impossible to prove anything which did not fall under the form of a rule of three. nothing is more natural than that the studied form and color of this great artist should be little understood, because they require for the full perception of their meaning and truth, such knowledge and such time as not one in a thousand possesses, or can bestow; but yet the truth of them for that very reason is capable of demonstration, and there is hope of our being able to make it in some degree felt and comprehended even by those to whom it is now a dead letter, or an offence. but the aerial and misty effects of landscape, being matters of which the eye should be simply cognizant, and without effort of thought, as it is of light, must, where they are exquisitely rendered, either be felt at once, or prove that degree of blindness and bluntness in the feelings of the observer which there is little hope of ever conquering. of course for persons who have never seen in their lives a cloud vanishing on a mountain-side, and whose conceptions of mist or vapor are limited to ambiguous outlines of spectral hackney-coaches and bodiless lamp-posts, discern through a brown combination of sulphur, soot, and gaslight, there is yet some hope; we cannot, indeed, tell them what the morning mist is like in mountain air, but far be it from us to tell them that they are incapable of feeling its beauty if they will seek it for themselves. but if you have ever in your life had one opportunity with your eyes and heart open, of seeing the dew rise from a hill-pasture, or the storm gather on a sea-cliff, and if you have yet no feeling for the glorious passages of mingled earth and heaven which turner calls up before you into breathing, tangible being, there is indeed no hope for your apathy--art will never touch you, nor nature inform. § . various instances. it would be utterly absurd, among the innumerable passages of this kind given throughout his works, to point to one as more characteristic or more perfect than another. the simmer lake, near askrig, for expression of mist pervaded with sunlight,--the lake lucerne, a recent and unengraved drawing, for the recession of near mountain form, not into dark, but into _luminous_ cloud, the most difficult thing to do in art,--the harlech, for expression of the same phenomena, shown over vast spaces in distant ranges of hills, the ehrenbreitstein, a recent drawing, for expression of mist, rising from the surface of water at sunset,--and, finally, the glorious oberwesel and nemi,[ ] for passages of all united, may, however, be named, as noble instances, though in naming five works i insult five hundred. § . turner's more violent effects of tempest are never rendered by engravers. § . general system of landscape engraving. § . the storm in the stonehenge. one word respecting turner's more violent storms, for we have hitherto been speaking only of the softer rain-clouds, associated with gusty tempest, but not of the thunder-cloud and the whirlwind. if there be any one point in which engravers disgrace themselves more than in another, it is in their rendering of dark and furious storm. it appears to be utterly impossible to force it into their heads, that an artist does _not_ leave his color with a sharp edge and an angular form by accident, or that they may have the pleasure of altering it and improving upon it; and equally impossible to persuade them that energy and gloom may in _some_ circumstances be arrived at without any extraordinary expenditure of ink. i am aware of no engraver of the present day whose ideas of a storm-cloud are not comprised under two heads, roundness and blackness; and, indeed, their general principles of translation (as may be distinctly gathered from their larger works) are the following: . where the drawing is gray, make the paper black. . where the drawing is white, cover the page with zigzag lines. . where the drawing has particularly tender tones, cross-hatch them. . where any outline is particularly angular, make it round. . where there are vertical reflections in water, express them with very distinct horizontal lines. . where there is a passage of particular simplicity, treat it in sections. . where there is anything intentionally concealed, make it out. yet, in spite of the necessity which all engravers impose upon themselves, of rigidly observing this code of general laws, it is difficult to conceive how such pieces of work, as the plates of stonehenge and winchelsea, can ever have been presented to the public, as in any way resembling, or possessing even the most fanciful relation to the turner drawings of the same subjects. the original of the stonehenge is perhaps the standard of storm-drawing, both for the overwhelming power and gigantic proportions and spaces of its cloud-forms, and for the tremendous qualities of lurid and sulphurous colors which are gained in them. all its forms are marked with violent angles, as if the whole muscular energy--so to speak--of the cloud, were writhing in every fold, and their fantastic and fiery volumes have a peculiar horror--an awful life--shadowed out in their strange, swift, fearful outlines, which oppress the mind more than even the threatening of their gigantic gloom. the white lightning, not as it is drawn by less observant or less capable painters, in zigzag fortifications, but in its own dreadful irregularity of streaming fire, is brought down, not merely over the dark clouds, but through the full light of an illumined opening to the blue, which yet cannot abate the brilliancy of its white line; and the track of the last flash along the ground is fearfully marked by the dog howling over the fallen shepherd, and the ewe pressing her head upon the body of her dead lamb. § . general character of such effects given by turner. his expression of falling rain. i have not space, however, to enter into examination of turner's storm-drawing; i can only warn the public against supposing that its effect is ever rendered by engravers. the great principles of turner are angular outline, vastness and energy of form, infinity of gradation, and depth without blackness. the great principles of the engravers (_vide_ pæstum, in rogers's italy, and the stonehenge, above alluded to) are rounded outline, no edges, want of character, equality of strength, and blackness without depth. § . recapitulation of the section. i have scarcely, i see, on referring to what i have written, sufficiently insisted on turner's rendering of the rainy _fringe_, whether in distances, admitting or concealing more or less of the extended plain, as in the waterloo, and richmond (with the girl and dog in the foreground,) or as in the dunstaffnage, glencoe, st. michael's mount, and slave ship, not reaching the earth, but suspended in waving and twisted lines from the darkness of the zenith. but i have no time for farther development of particular points; i must defer discussion of them until we take up each picture to be viewed as a whole; for the division of the sky which i have been obliged to make, in order to render fully understood the peculiarities of character in the separate cloud regions, prevents my speaking of any one work with justice to its concentration of various truth. be it always remembered that we pretend not, at present, to give any account or idea of the sum of the works of any painter, much less of the universality of turner's; but only to explain in what real truth, as far as it is explicable, consists, and to illustrate it by those pictures in which it most distinctly occurs, or from which it is most visibly absent. and it will only be in the full and separate discussion of individual works, when we are acquainted also with what is beautiful, that we shall be completely able to prove or disprove the presence of the truth of nature. the conclusion, then, to which we are led by our present examination of the truth of clouds, is, that the old masters attempted the representation of only one among the thousands of their systems of scenery, and were altogether false in the little they attempted; while we can find records in modern art of every form or phenomenon of the heavens, from the highest film that glorifies the ether to the wildest vapor that darkens the dust, and in all these records we find the most clear language and close thought, firm words, and true message, unstinted fulness and unfailing faith. § . sketch of a few of the skies of nature, taken as a whole, compared with the works of turner and of the old masters. morning on the plains. § . noon with gathering storms. § . sunset in tempest. serene midnight. § . and sunrise on the alps. and indeed it is difficult for us to conceive how, even without such laborious investigation as we have gone through, any person can go to nature for a single day or hour, when she is really at work in any of her nobler spheres of action, and yet retain respect for the old masters; finding, as find he will, that every scene which rises, rests, or departs before him, bears with it a thousand glories of which there is not one shadow, one image, one trace or line, in any of their works; but which will illustrate to him, at every new instant, some passage which he had not before understood in the high works of modern art. stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the night mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white and lake-like fields as they float in level bays and winding gulfs about the islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passes away; and down under their depths, the glittering city and green pasture lie like atlantis, between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten their gray shadows upon the plain. has claude given this? wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they couch in quiet masses, iridescent with the morning light,[ ] upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back and back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene heaven, like a wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below.[ ] has claude given this? wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every instant higher and higher into the sky,[ ] and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapors,[ ] which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their gray network, and take the light off the landscape with an eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds and the motion of the leaves together; and then you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, along the shoulders of the hills; you never see them form, but when you look back to a place which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey.[ ] has claude given this? and then you will hear the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those watch-towers of vapor swept away from their foundations, and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swinging from the burdened clouds in black, bending fringes,[ ] or pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. and then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm drift for an instant from on the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded yet with snow-white torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapor, now gone, now gathered again;[ ] while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with blood.[ ] has claude given this? and then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hills,[ ] brighter--brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds,[ ] step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move together, hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. ask claude, or his brethren, for that. and then wait yet for one hour until the east again becomes purple,[ ] and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven--one scarlet canopy,--is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels; and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are bowed down with fear and love of the maker and doer of this, tell me who has best delivered this his message unto men! footnotes [ ] i am unable to say to what height the real rain-cloud may extend; perhaps there are no mountains which rise altogether above storm. i have never been in a violent storm at a greater height than between and feet above the level of the sea. there the rain-cloud is exceedingly light, compared to the ponderous darkness of the lower air. [ ] i ought here, however, to have noted another effect of the rain-cloud, which, so far as i know, has been rendered only by copley fielding. it is seen chiefly in clouds gathering for rain, when the sky is entirely covered with a gray veil rippled or waved with pendent swells of soft texture, but excessively hard and liny in their edges. i am not sure that this is an agreeable or impressive form of the rain-cloud, but it is a frequent one, and it is often most faithfully given by fielding; only in some cases the edges becoming a little doubled and harsh have given a look of failure or misadventure to some even of the best studied passages; and something of the same hardness of line is occasionally visible in his drawing of clouds by whose nature it is not warranted. [ ] compare sect. i. chap. iv. § . [ ] it does not do so until the volumes lose their density by inequality of motion, and by the expansion of the warm air which conveys them. they are then, of course, broken into forms resembling those of clouds. [ ] no conception can be formed of this picture from the engraving. it is perhaps the most marvellous piece of execution and of gray color existing, except perhaps the drawing presently to be noticed, land's end. nothing else can be set beside it, even of turner's own works--much less of any other man's. [ ] i know no effect more strikingly characteristic of the departure of a storm than the _smoking_ of the mountain torrents. the exhausted air is so thirsty of moisture, that every jet of spray is seized upon by it, and converted into vapor as it springs; and this vapor rises so densely from the surface of the stream as to give it the exact appearance of boiling water. i have seen the whole course of the arve at chamonix one line of dense cloud, dissipating as soon as it had risen ten or twelve feet from the surface, but entirely concealing the water from an observer placed above it. [ ] note especially the dark uppermost outline of the mass. [ ] in the possession of b. g. windus, esq. of tottenham. [ ] i have often seen the white thin, morning cloud, edged with the seven colors of the prism. i am not aware of the cause of this phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to the sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over indefinite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. the colors are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic lustre upon them. [ ] lake lucerne. [ ] st. maurice (rogers's italy). [ ] vignette, the great st. bernard. [ ] vignette of the andes. [ ] st. michael's mount--england series. [ ] illustration to the antiquary. goldeau, a recent drawing of the highest order. [ ] vignette to campbell's last man. [ ] caerlaverock. [ ] st. denis. [ ] alps at daybreak (rogers's poems:) delphi, and various vignettes. chapter v. effects of light rendered by modern art. § . reasons for merely at present naming, without examining the particular effects of light rendered by turner. § . hopes of the author for assistance in the future investigation of them. i have before given my reasons (sect. ii. chap. iii.) for not wishing at present to enter upon the discussion of particular effects of light. not only are we incapable of rightly viewing them, or reasoning upon them, until we are acquainted with the principles of the beautiful; but, as i distinctly limited myself, in the present portion of the work, to the examination of _general_ truths, it would be out of place to take cognizance of the particular phases of light, even if it were possible to do so, before we have some more definite knowledge of the material objects which they illustrate. i shall therefore, at present, merely set down a rough catalogue of the effects of light at different hours of the day, which turner has represented: naming a picture or two, as an example of each, which we will hereafter take up one by one, and consider the physical science and the feeling together. and i do this, in the hope that, in the mean time, some admirer of the old masters will be kind enough to select from the works of any one of them, a series of examples of the same effects, and to give me a reference to the pictures, so that i may be able to compare each with each; for, as my limited knowledge of the works of claude or poussin does not supply me with the requisite variety of effect, i shall be grateful for assistance. the following list, of course, does not name the hundredth part of the effects of light given by turner; it only names those which are distinctly and markedly separate from each other, and representative each of an entire class. ten or twelve examples, often many more, might be given of each; every one of which would display the effects of the same hour and light, modified by different circumstances of weather, situation, and character of objects subjected to them, and especially by the management of the sky; but it will be generally sufficient for our purposes to examine thoroughly one good example of each. the prefixed letters express the direction of the light. f. front light (the sun in the centre, or near the top of the picture;) l. lateral light, the sun out of the picture on the right or left of the spectator; l. f. the light partly lateral, partly fronting the spectator, as when he is looking south, with the sun in the south-west; l. b. light partly lateral, partly behind the spectator, as when he is looking north, with the sun in the south-west. morning. effects. names of pictures. l. an hour before sunrise in winter. violent | lowestoffe, suffolk. storm, with rain, on the sea. light-houses | seen through it. | | f. an hour before sunrise. serene sky, with | vignette to voyage light clouds. dawn in the distance. | of columbus. | l. ten minutes before sunrise. violent | fowey harbor. storm. torchlight. | | f. sunrise. sun only half above the horizon. | vignette to human clear sky, with light cirri. | life. | f. sun just disengaged from horizon. misty, | alps at daybreak. with light cirri. | | f. sun a quarter of an hour risen. sky covered | castle upnor. with scarlet clouds. | | l.f. serene sky. sun emerging from a bank | orford, suffolk. of cloud on horizon, a quarter of an hour | risen. | | l.f. same hour. light mists in flakes on | skiddaw. hill-sides. clear air. | | l.f. light flying rain-clouds gathering in | oakhampton. valleys. same hour. | | l.b. same hour. a night storm rising off the | lake of geneva. mountains. dead calm. | | l. sun half an hour risen. cloudless sky. | beaugency. | l. same hour. light mists lying in the valleys. | kirby lonsdale. | f. same hour. bright cirri. sun dimly seen | hohenlinden. through battle smoke, with conflagration. | | l. sun an hour risen. cloudless and clear. | buckfastleigh. noon and afternoon. effects. names of pictures. l.b. midday. dead calm, with heat. cloudless. | corinth. | l. same hour. serene and bright, with | lantern at streaky clouds. | st. cloud. | l. same hour. serene, with multitudes of | shylock, and other the high cirrus. | venices. | l. bright sun, with light wind and clouds. | richmond, middlesex. | f. two o'clock. clouds gathering for rain, with | warwick. blenheim. heat. | | f. rain beginning, with light clouds and wind. | piacenza. | l. soft rain, with heat. | caldron snout fall. | l.f. great heat. thunder gathering. | malvern. | l. thunder breaking down, after intense heat, | winchelsea. with furious wind. | | l. violent rain and wind, but cool. | llamberis, coventry, | &c. | l.f. furious storm, with thunder. | stonehenge, pæstum, | &c. | l.b. thunder retiring, with rainbow. dead calm, | nottingham. with heat. | | l. about three o'clock, summer. air very | bingen. cool and clear. exhausted thunder-clouds | low on hills. | | f. descending sunbeams through soft clouds, | carew castle. after rain. | | l. afternoon, very clear, after rain. a few | saltash. clouds still on horizon. dead calm. | | f. afternoon of cloudless day, with heat. | mercury and argus. | oberwesel. nemi. evening. effects. names of pictures. l. an hour before sunset. cloudless. | trematon castle. | f. half an hour before sunset. light clouds. | lake albano. misty air. | florence. | f. within a quarter of an hour of sunset. | dater hora quieti. mists rising. light cirri. | | l.f. ten minutes before sunset. quite cloudless. | durham. | f. same hour. tumultuous spray of illumined | solomon's pools. rain-cloud. | slave ship. | f. five minutes before sunset. sky covered | temeraire. napoleon. with illumined cirri. | various vignettes. | l.b. same hour. serene sky. full moon rising. | kenilworth. | f. sun setting. detached light cirri and clear | amboise. air. | | l. same hour. cloudless. new moon. | troyes. | l.f. same hour. heavy storm clouds. moonrise. | first vignette. | pleasures of | memory. | l.b. sun just set. sky covered with clouds. new | caudebec. moon setting. | | l.b. sun five minutes set. strong twilight, | wilderness of engedi. with storm clouds. full moonrise. | assos. | l.b. same hour. serene, with light clouds. | montjan. | l.b. same hour. serene. new moon. | pyramid of caius | cestius. | l.b. sun a quarter of an hour set. cloudless. | chateau de blois. | l.f. sun half an hour set. light cirri. | clairmont. | f. same hour. dead calm at sea. new moon and | cowes. evening star. | | f. sun three quarters of an hour set. moon | folkestone. struggling through storm clouds, over | heavy sea. | night. effects. names of pictures. f. an hour after sunset. no moon. torchlight. | st. julien. tours. | f. same hour. moon rising. fire from furnaces. | dudley. | l.f. same hour, with storm clouds. moon | nantes. rising. | | l. same hour, with light of rockets and fire. | juliet and her nurse. | f. midnight. moonless, with light-houses. | calais. same hour, with fire-light. | burning of | parliament houses. | f. ditto. full moon. clear air, with delicate | towers of the hevé. clouds. light-houses. | | f. ditto, with conflagration, battle smoke, and | waterloo. storm. | | f. ditto. moonlight through mist. buildings | vignette. st. illuminated in interior. | herbert's isle. | f. ditto. full moon with halo. light | st. denis. rain-clouds. | | f. full moon. perfectly serene. sky covered | alnwick. vignette of with white cirri. | rialto, and bridge. | of sighs section iv. of truth of earth. chapter i. of general structure. § . first laws of the organization of the earth, and their importance in art. by truth of earth, we mean the faithful representation of the facts and forms of the bare ground, considered as entirely divested of vegetation, through whatever disguise, or under whatever modification the clothing of the landscape may occasion. ground is to the landscape painter what the naked human body is to the historical. the growth of vegetation, the action of water, and even of clouds upon it and around it, are so far subject and subordinate to its forms, as the folds of the dress and the fall of the hair are to the modulation of the animal anatomy. nor is this anatomy always so concealed, but in all sublime compositions, whether of nature or art, it must be seen in its naked purity. the laws of the organization of the earth are distinct and fixed as those of the animal frame, simpler and broader, but equally authoritative and inviolable. their results may be arrived at without knowledge of the interior mechanism; but for that very reason ignorance of them is the more disgraceful, and violation of them more unpardonable. they are in the landscape the foundation of all other truths--the most necessary, therefore, even if they were not in themselves attractive; but they are as beautiful as they are essential, and every abandonment of them by the artist must end in deformity as it begins in falsehood. § . the slight attention ordinarily paid to them. their careful study by modern artists. that such abandonment is constant and total in the works of the old masters, has escaped detection, only because of persons generally cognizant of art, few have spent time enough in hill countries to perceive the certainty of the laws of hill anatomy; and because few, even of those who possess such opportunities, ever think of the common earth beneath their feet, as anything possessing specific form, or governed by steadfast principles. that such abandonment should have taken place cannot be surprising, after what we have seen of their fidelity to skies. those artists who, day after day, could so falsely represent what was forever before their eyes, when it was to be one of the most important and attractive parts of their picture, can scarcely be expected to give with truth what they could see only partially and at intervals, and what was only to be in their picture a blue line in the horizon, or a bright spot under the feet of their figures. that such should be all the space allotted by the old landscape painters to the most magnificent phenomena of nature; that the only traces of those apennines, which in claude's walks along the brow of the pincian, forever bounded his horizon with their azure wall, should, in his pictures, be a cold white outline in the extreme of his tame distance; and that salvator's sojourns among their fastnesses should only have taught him to shelter his banditti with such paltry morsels of crag as an alpine stream would toss down before it like a foam-globe; though it may indeed excite our surprise, will, perhaps, when we have seen how these slight passages are executed, be rather a subject of congratulation than of regret. it might, indeed, have shortened our labor in the investigation of mountain truth, had not modern artists been so vast, comprehensive, and multitudinous in their mountain drawings, as to compel us, in order to form the slightest estimate of their knowledge, to enter into some examination of every variety of hill scenery. we shall first gain some general notion of the broad organization of large masses, and then take those masses to pieces, until we come down to the crumbling soil of the foreground. § . general structure of the earth. the hills are its action, the plains its rest. mountains are, to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. the muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with fierce and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength; the plains and the lower hills are the repose and the effortless motion of the frame, when its muscles lie dormant and concealed beneath the lines of its beauty, yet ruling those lines in their every undulation. this, then, is the first grand principle of the truth of the earth. the spirit of the hills is action; that of the lowlands, repose; and between these there is to be found every variety of motion and of rest; from the inactive plain, sleeping like the firmament, with cities for stars, to the fiery peaks, which, with heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with the clouds drifting like hair from their bright foreheads, lift up their titan hands to heaven, saying, "i live forever!" § . mountains come out from underneath the plains, and are their support. but there is this difference between the action of the earth, and that of a living creature, that while the exerted limb marks its bones and tendons through the flesh, the excited earth casts off the flesh altogether, and its bones come out from beneath. mountains are the bones of the earth, their highest peaks are invariably those parts of its anatomy which in the plains lie buried under five and twenty thousand feet of solid thickness of superincumbent soil, and which spring up in the mountain ranges in vast pyramids or wedges, flinging their garment of earth away from them on each side. the masses of the lower hills are laid over and against their sides, like the masses of lateral masonry against the skeleton arch of an unfinished bridge, except that they slope up to and lean against the central ridge: and, finally, upon the slopes of these lower hills are strewed the level beds of sprinkled gravel, sand, and clay, which form the extent of the champaign. here then is another grand principle of the truth of earth, that the mountains must come from under all, and be the support of all; and that everything else must be laid in their arms, heap above heap, the plains being the uppermost. opposed to this truth is every appearance of the hills being laid upon the plains, or built upon them. nor is this a truth only of the earth on a large scale, for every minor rock (in position) comes out from the soil about it as an island out of the sea, lifting the earth near it like waves beating on its sides. § . structure of the plains themselves. their perfect level, when deposited by quiet water. such being the structure of the framework of the earth, it is next to be remembered that all soil whatsoever, wherever it is accumulated in greater quantity than is sufficient to nourish the moss of the wallflower, has been so, either by the direct transporting agency of water, or under the guiding influence and power of water. all plains capable of cultivation are deposits from some kind of water--some from swift and tremendous currents, leaving their soil in sweeping banks and furrowed ridges--others, and this is in mountain districts almost invariably the case, by slow deposit from a quiet lake in the mountain hollow, which has been gradually filled by the soil carried into it by streams, which soil is of course finally left spread at the exact level of the surface of the former lake, as level as the quiet water itself. hence we constantly meet with plains in hill districts, which fill the hollows of the hills with as perfect and faultless a level as water, and out of which the steep rocks rise at the edge with as little previous disturbance, or indication of their forms beneath, as they do from the margin of a quiet lake. every delta--and there is one at the head of every lake in every hill-district--supplies an instance of this. the rocks at altorf plunge beneath the plain, which the lake has left, at as sharp an angle as they do into the lake itself beside the chapel of tell. the plain of the arve, at sallenche, is terminated so sharply by the hills to the south-east, that i have seen a man sleeping with his back supported against the mountain, and his legs stretched on the plain; the slope which supported his back rising feet above him, and the couch of his legs stretched for five miles before him. in distant effect these champaigns lie like deep, blue, undisturbed water, while the mighty hills around them burst out from beneath, raging and tossing like a tumultuous sea. the valleys of meyringen, interlachen, altorf, sallenche, st. jean de maurienne; the great plain of lombardy itself, as seen from milan or padua, under the alps, the euganeans, and the apennines; and the campo felice under vesuvius, are a few, out of the thousand instances, which must occur at once to the mind of every traveller. § . illustrated by turner's marengo. let the reader now open rogers's italy, at the seventeenth page, and look at the vignette which heads it of the battle of marengo. it needs no comment. it cannot but carry with it, after what has been said, the instant conviction that turner is as much of a geologist as he is of a painter. it is a summary of all we have been saying, and a summary so distinct and clear, that without any such explanation it must have forced upon the mind the impression of such facts--of the plunging of the hills underneath the plain--of the perfect level and repose of this latter laid in their arms, and of the tumultuous action of the emergent summits. § . general divisions of formation resulting from this arrangement. plan of investigation. we find, according to this its internal structure, which, i believe, with the assistance of turner, can scarcely now be misunderstood, that the earth may be considered as divided into three great classes of formation, which geology has already named for us. primary--the rocks, which, though in position lower than all others, rise to form the central peaks, or interior nuclei of all mountain ranges. secondary--the rocks which are laid in beds above these, and which form the greater proportion of all hill scenery. tertiary--the light beds of sand, gravel, and clay, which are strewed upon the surface of all, forming plains and habitable territory for man. we shall find it convenient, in examining the truth of art, to adopt, with a little modification, the geological arrangement, considering first, the formation and character of the highest or central peaks; then the general structure of the lower mountains, including in this division those composed of the various slates which a geologist would call primary; and, lastly, the minutiæ and most delicate characters of the beds of these hills, when they are so near as to become foreground objects, and the structure of the common soil which usually forms the greater space of an artist's foreground. hence our task will arrange itself into three divisions--the investigation of the central mountains, of the interior mountains, and of the foreground. chapter ii. of the central mountains. § . similar character of the central peaks in all parts of the world. it does not always follow, because a mountain is the highest of its group, that it is in reality one of the central range. the jungfrau is only surpassed in elevation, in the chain of which it is a member, by the schreckhorn and finster-aarhorn; but it is entirely a secondary mountain. but the central peaks are usually the highest, and may be considered as the chief components of all mountain scenery in the snowy regions. being composed of the same rocks in all countries, their external character is the same everywhere. its chief essential points are the following. § . their arrangements in pyramids or wedges, divided by vertical fissures. their summits are almost invariably either pyramids or wedges. domes may be formed by superincumbent snow, or appear to be formed by the continuous outline of a sharp ridge seen transversely, with its precipice to the spectator; but wherever a rock appears, the uppermost termination of that rock will be a steep edgy ridge, or a sharp point, very rarely presenting even a gentle slope on any of its sides, but usually inaccessible unless encumbered with snow. these pyramids and wedges split vertically, or nearly so, giving smooth faces of rock, either perpendicular or very steeply inclined, which appear to be laid against the central wedge or peak, like planks upright against a wall. the surfaces of these show close parallelism; their fissures are vertical, and cut them smoothly, like the edges of shaped planks. often groups of these planks, if i may so call them, rise higher than those between them and the central ridge, forming detached ridges inclining towards the central one. the planks are cut transversely, sometimes by graceful curvilinear fissures; sometimes by straight fissures, which are commonly parallel to the slope of one of the sides of the peak, while the main direction of the planks or leaves is parallel to that of its other side, or points directly to its summit. but the _universal_ law of fracture is--first, that it is clean and sharp, having a perfectly smooth surface, and a perfectly sharp edge to all the fissures; secondly, that every fissure is steeply inclined, and that a horizontal line, or one approaching to it, is an impossibility, except in some turn of a curve. § . causing groups of rock resembling an artichoke or rose. hence, however the light may fall, these peaks are seen marked with sharp and defined shadows, indicating the square edges of the planks of which they are made up, which shadows sometimes are vertical, pointing to the summit; but are oftener parallel to one of the sides of the peak, and intersected by a second series, parallel to the other side. where there has been much disintegration, the peak is often surrounded with groups of lower ridges or peaks, like the leaves of an artichoke or a rose, all evidently part and parcel of the great peak; but falling back from it, as if it were a budding flower, expanding its leaves one by one. § . the faithful statement of these facts by turner in his alps at daybreak. now, if i were giving a lecture on geology, and were searching for some means of giving the most faithful idea possible of the external appearance caused by this structure of the primary hills, i should throw my geological outlines aside, and take up turner's vignette of the alps at daybreak. after what has been said, a single glance at it will be enough. observe the exquisite decision with which the edge of the uppermost plank of the great peak is indicated by its clear dark side and sharp shadow; then the rise of the second low ridge on its side, only to descend again precisely in the same line; the two fissures of this peak, one pointing to its summit, the other rigidly parallel to the great slope which descends towards the sun; then the sharp white _aiguille_ on the right, with the great fissure from its summit, rigidly and severely square, as marked below, where another edge of rock is laid upon it. but this is not all; the black rock in the foreground is equally a member of the mass, its chief slope parallel with that of the mountain, and all its fissures and lines inclined in the same direction; and, to complete the mass of evidence more forcibly still, we have the dark mass on the left articulated with absolute right lines, as parallel as if they had been drawn with a ruler, indicating the tops of two of these huge plates or planks, pointing, with the universal tendency, to the great ridge, and intersected by fissures parallel to it. throughout the extent of mountain, not one horizontal line, nor an approach to it, is discernible. this cannot be chance--it cannot be composition--it may not be beautiful--perhaps nature is very wrong to be so parallel, and very disagreeable in being so straight;--but this _is_ nature, whether we admire it or not. § . vignette of the andes and others. in the vignette illustration to jacqueline, we have another series of peaks, whose structure is less developed, owing to their distance, but equally clear and faithful in all points, as far as it is given. but the vignette of aosta, in italy, is perhaps more striking than any that could be named for its rendering of the perfect parallelism of the lower and smaller peaks with the great lines of the mass they compose; and that of the andes, the second in campbell, for its indication of the multitudes of the vertical and plank-like beds arranged almost like the leaves of a flower. this last especially, one of the very noblest, most faithful, most scientific statements of mountain form which even turner has ever made, can leave little more to be said or doubted. § . necessary distance, and consequent aerial effect on all such mountains. now, whenever these vast peaks, rising from , to , feet above the sea, form part of anything like a landscape, that is to say, whenever the spectator beholds them from the region of vegetation, or even from any distance at which it is possible to get something like a view of their whole mass, they must be at so great a distance from him as to become aerial and faint in all their details. their summits, and all those higher masses of whose character we have been speaking, can by no possibility be nearer to him than twelve or fifteen miles; to approach them nearer he must climb--must leave the region of vegetation, and must confine his view to a part, and that a very limited one, of the mountain he is ascending. whenever, therefore, these mountains are seen over anything like vegetation, or are seen in mass, they _must_ be in the far distance. most artists would treat an horizon fifteen miles off very much as if it were mere air; and though the greater clearness of the upper air permits the high summits to be seen with extraordinary distinctness, yet they never can by any possibility have dark or deep shadows, or intense dark relief against a light. clear they may be, but faint they must be, and their great and prevailing characteristic, as distinguished from other mountains, is want of apparent solidity. they rise in the morning light rather like sharp shades, cast up into the sky, than solid earth. their lights are pure, roseate, and cloud-like--their shadows transparent, pale, and opalescent, and often indistinguishable from the air around them, so that the mountain-top is seen in the heaven only by its flakes of motionless fire. § . total want of any rendering of their phenomena in ancient art. now, let me once more ask, though i am sufficiently tired of asking, what record have we of anything like this in the works of the old masters? there is no vestige in any existing picture of the slightest effort to represent the high hill ranges; and as for such drawing of their forms as we have found in turner, we might as well look for them among the chinese. very possibly it may be all quite right,--very probably these men showed the most cultivated taste, the most unerring judgment, in filling their pictures with mole-hills and sand-heaps. very probably the withered and poisonous banks of avernus, and the sand and cinders of the campagna, are much more sublime things than the alps; but still what limited truth it is, if truth it be, when through the last fifty pages we have been pointing out fact after fact, scene after scene, in clouds and hills, (and not individual facts nor scenes, but great and important classes of them,) and still we have nothing to say when we come to the old masters; but, "they are not here." yet this is what we hear so constantly called painting "general" nature. § . character of the representations of alps in the distances of claude. § . their total want of magnitude and aerial distance. although, however, there is no vestige among the old masters of any effort to represent the attributes of the higher mountains seen in comparative proximity, we are not altogether left without evidence of their having thought of them as sources of light in the extreme distance, as for example, in that of the reputed claude in our national gallery, called the marriage of isaac and rebecca. i have not the slightest doubt of its being a most execrable copy; for there is not one touch nor line of even decent painting in the whole picture; but as connoisseurs have considered it a claude, as it has been put in our gallery for a claude, and as people admire it every day for a claude, i may at least presume it has those qualities of claude in it which are wont to excite the public admiration, though it possesses none of those which sometimes give him claim to it; and i have so reasoned, and shall continue to reason upon it, especially with respect to facts of form, which cannot have been much altered by the copyist. in the distance of that picture (as well as in that of the sinon before priam, which i have little doubt is at least partially original, and whose central group of trees is a very noble piece of painting) is something white, which i believe must be intended for a snowy mountain, because i do not see that it can well be intended for anything else. now no mountain of elevation sufficient to be so sheeted with perpetual snow, can by any possibility sink so low on the horizon as this something of claude's, unless it be at a distance of from fifty to seventy miles. at such distances, though the outline is invariably sharp and edgy to an excess, yet all the circumstances of aerial perspective, faintness of shadow, and isolation of light, which i have described as characteristic of the alps fifteen miles off, take place, of course, in a threefold degree; the mountains rise from the horizon like transparent films, only distinguishable from mist by their excessively keen edges, and their brilliant flashes of sudden light; they are as unsubstantial as the air itself, and impress their enormous size by means of this aerialness, in a far greater degree at these vast distances, than even when towering above the spectator's head. now, i ask of the candid observer, if there be the smallest vestige of an effort to attain--if there be the most miserable, the most contemptible shadow of attainment of such an effect by claude? does that white thing on the horizon look seventy miles off? is it faint, or fading, or to be looked for by the eye before it can be found out? does it look high? does it look large? does it look impressive? you cannot but feel that there is not a vestige of any kind or species of truth in that horizon; and that, however artistical it may be, as giving brilliancy to the distance, (though, as far as i have any feeling in the matter, it only gives coldness,) it is, in the very branch of art on which claude's reputation chiefly rests, aerial perspective, hurling defiance to nature in her very teeth. § . and violation of specific form. but there are worse failures yet in this unlucky distance. aerial perspective is not a matter of paramount importance, because nature infringes its laws herself and boldly too, though never in a case like this before us; but there are some laws which nature never violates--her laws of form. no mountain was ever raised to the level of perpetual snow, without an infinite multiplicity of form. its foundation is built of a hundred minor mountains, and, from these, great buttresses run in converging ridges to the central peak. there is no exception to this rule; no mountain , feet high is ever raised without such preparation and variety of outwork. consequently, in distant effect, when chains of such peaks are visible at once, the multiplicity of form is absolutely oceanic; and though it is possible in near scenes to find vast and simple masses composed of lines which run unbroken for a thousand feet, or more, it is physically impossible when these masses are thrown seventy miles back, to have simple outlines, for then these large features become mere jags, and hillocks, and are heaped and huddled together with endless confusion. to get a simple form, seventy miles away, mountain lines would be required unbroken for leagues; and this, i repeat, is physically impossible. hence these mountains of claude, having no indication of the steep vertical summits which we have shown to be the characteristic of the central ridges, having soft edges instead of decisive ones, simple forms (one line to the plain on each side) instead of varied and broken ones, and being painted with a crude raw white, having no transparency, nor filminess, nor air in it, instead of rising in the opalescent mystery which invariably characterizes the distant snows, have the forms and the colors of heaps of chalk in a lime-kiln, not of alps. they are destitute of energy, of height, of distance, of splendor, and of variety, and are the work of a man, whether claude or not, who had neither feeling for nature, nor knowledge of art. § . even in his best works. i should not, however, insist upon the faults of this picture, believing it to be a copy, if i had ever seen, even in his most genuine works, an extreme distance of claude with any of the essential characters of nature. but although in his better pictures we have always beautiful drawing of the _air_, which in the copy before us is entirely wanting, the real features of the extreme mountain distance are equally neglected or maligned in all. there is, indeed, air between us and it; but ten miles, not seventy miles, of space. let us observe a little more closely the practice of nature in such cases. § . farther illustration of the distant character of mountain chains. § . their excessive appearance of transparency. the multiplicity of form which i have shown to be necessary in the outline, is not less felt in the body of the mass. for, in all extensive hill ranges, there are five or six lateral chains separated by deep valleys, which rise between the spectator and the central ridge, showing their tops one over another, wave beyond wave, until the eye is carried back to the faintest and highest forms of the principal chain. these successive ridges, and i speak now not merely of the alps, but of mountains generally, even as low as feet above the sea, show themselves in extreme distance merely as vertical shades, with very sharp outlines, detached from one another by greater intensity, according to their nearness. it is with the utmost difficulty that the eye can discern any solidity or roundness in them; the lights and shades of solid form are both equally lost in the blue of the atmosphere, and the mountain tells only as a flat, sharp-edged film, of which multitudes intersect and overtop one another, separated by the greater faintness of the retiring masses. this is the most simple and easily imitated arrangement possible, and yet, both in nature and art, it expresses distance and size in a way otherwise quite unattainable. for thus, the whole mass of one mountain being of one shade only, the smallest possible difference in shade will serve completely to detach it from another, and thus ten or twelve distances may be made evident, when the darkest and nearest is an aerial gray as faint as the sky; and the beauty of such arrangements carried out as nature carries them, to their highest degree, is, perhaps, the most striking feature connected with hill scenery: you will never, by any chance, perceive in extreme distance, anything like solid form or projection of the hills. each is a dead, flat, perpendicular film or shade, with a sharp edge darkest at the summit, and lost as it descends, and about equally dark whether turned towards the light or from it; and of these successive films of mountain you will probably have half a dozen, one behind another, all showing with perfect clearness their every chasm and peak in the outline, and not one of them showing the slightest vestige of solidity, but on the contrary, looking so thoroughly transparent, that if it so happens, as i have seen frequently, that a conical near hill meets with its summit the separation of two distant ones, so that the right-hand slope of the nearer hill forms an apparent continuation of the right-hand slope of the left-hand farther hill, and _vice versa_, it is impossible to get rid of the impression that one or the more distant peaks is seen _through_ the other. § . illustrated from the works of turner and stanfield. the borromean islands of the latter. i may point out in illustration of these facts, the engravings of two drawings of precisely the same chain of distant hills,--stanfield's borromean islands, with the st. gothard in the distance, and turner's arona, also with the st. gothard in the distance. far be it from me to indicate the former of these plates as in any way exemplifying the power of stanfield, or affecting his reputation; it is an unlucky drawing, murdered by the engraver, and as far from being characteristic of stanfield as it is from being like nature, but it is just what i want, to illustrate the particular error of which i speak; and i prefer showing this error where it accidentally exists in the works of a really great artist, standing there alone, to point it out where it is confused with other faults and falsehoods in the works of inferior hands. the former of these plates is an example of everything which a hill distance is not, and the latter of everything which it is. in the former, we have the mountains covered with patchy lights, which being of equal intensity whether near or distant, confuse all the distances together; while the eye, perceiving that the light falls so as to give details of solid form, yet finding nothing but insipid and formless spaces displayed by it, is compelled to suppose that the whole body of the hill is equally monotonous and devoid of character; and the effect upon it is not one whit more impressive and agreeable than might be received from a group of sand-heaps, washed into uniformity by recent rain. § . turner's arona. compare with this the distance of turner in arona. it is totally impossible here to say which way the light falls on the distant hills, except by the slightly increased decision of their edges turned towards it, but the greatest attention is paid to get these edges decisive, yet full of gradation, and perfectly true in character of form. all the rest of the mountain is then indistinguishable haze, and by the bringing of these edges more and more decisively over one another, turner has given us between the right-hand side of the picture and the snow, fifteen distinct distances, yet every one of these distances in itself palpitating, changeful, and suggesting subdivision into countless multitude. something of this is traceable even in the engraving, and all the essential characters are perfectly well marked. i think even the least experienced eye can scarcely but feel the truth of this distance as compared with stanfield's. in the latter, the eye gets something of the form, and therefore wonders it sees no more; the impression on it, therefore, is of hills within distinctly visible distance, indiscernible through want of light or dim atmosphere; and the effect is, of course, smallness of space, with obscurity of light and thickness of air. in turner's the eye gets nothing of the substance, and wonders it sees so much of the outline; the impression is, therefore, of mountains too far off to be ever distinctly seen, rendered clear by brilliancy of light and purity of atmosphere; and the effect, consequently, vastness of space, with intensity of light and crystalline transparency of air. § . extreme distance of large objects always characterized by very sharp outline. these truths are invariably given in every one of turner's distances, that is to say, we have always in them two principal facts forced on our notice; transparency, or filminess of mass, and excessive sharpness of edge. and i wish particularly to insist upon this sharpness of edge, because it is not a casual or changeful habit of nature; it is the unfailing characteristic of all very great distances. it is quite a mistake to suppose that slurred or melting lines are characteristic of distant _large_ objects; they may be so, as before observed, (sec. ii. chap. iv. § ,) when the focus of the eye is not adapted to them; but, when the eye is really directed to the distance, melting lines are characteristic only of thick mist and vapor between us and the object, not of the removal of the object. if a thing has character upon its outline, as a tree for instance, or a mossy stone, the farther it is removed from us, the sharper the outline of the whole mass will become, though in doing so, the particular details which make up the character will become confused in the manner described in the same chapter. a tree fifty yards from us, taken as a mass, has a soft outline, because the leaves and interstices have some effect on the eye. but put it ten miles off against the sky, and its outline will be so sharp that you cannot tell it from a rock. there are three trees on the mont saleve, about five miles from geneva, which from the city, as they stand on the ridge of the hill, are seen defined against the sky. the keenest eye in the world could not tell them from stones. so in a mountain five or six miles off, bushes, and heather, and roughnesses of knotty ground and rock, have still some effect on the eye, and by becoming confused and mingled as before described, soften the outline. but let the mountain be thirty miles off, and its edge will be as sharp as a knife. let it, as in the case of the alps, be seventy or eighty miles off, and though it has become so faint that the morning mist is not so transparent, its outline will be beyond all imitation for excessive sharpness. thus, then, the character of extreme distance is always excessive keenness of edge. if you soften your outline, you either put mist between you and the object, and in doing so diminish, your distance, for it is impossible you should see so far through mist as through clear air; or, if you keep an impression of clear air, you bring the object close to the observer, diminish its size in proportion, and if the aerial colors, excessive blues, etc., be retained, represent an impossibility. § . want of this decision in claude. take claude's distance (in no. , dulwich gallery,)[ ] on the right of the picture. it is as pure blue as ever came from the pallet, laid on thick; you cannot see through it, there is not the slightest vestige of transparency or filminess about it, and its edge is soft and blunt. hence, if it be meant for near hills, the blue is impossible, and the want of details impossible, in the clear atmosphere indicated through the whole picture. if it be meant for extreme distance, the blunt edge is impossible, and the opacity is impossible. i do not know a single distance of the italian school to which the same observation is not entirely applicable, except, perhaps, one or two of nicholas poussin's. they always involve, under any supposition whatsoever, at least two impossibilities. § . the perpetual rendering of it by turner. i need scarcely mention in particular any more of the works of turner, because there is not one of his mountain distances in which these facts are not fully exemplified. look at the last vignette--the farewell, in rogers's italy; observe the excessive sharpness of all the edges, almost amounting to lines, in the distance, while there is scarcely one decisive edge in the foreground. look at the hills of the distance in the dunstaffnage, glencoe, and loch achray, (illustrations to scott,) in the latter of which the left-hand side of the benvenue is actually marked with a dark line. in fact, turner's usual mode of executing these passages is perfectly evident in all his drawings; it is not often that we meet with a very broad dash of wet color in his finished works, but in these distances, as we before saw of his shadows, all the effect has been evidently given by a dash of very moist pale color, probably turning the paper upside down, so that a very firm edge may be left at the top of the mountain as the color dries. and in the battle of marengo we find the principle carried so far as to give nothing more than actual outline for the representation of the extreme distance, while all the other hills in the picture are distinctly darkest at the edge. this plate, though coarsely executed, is yet one of the noblest illustrations of mountain character and magnitude existing. § . effects of snow, how imperfectly studied. such, then, are the chief characteristics of the highest peaks and extreme distances of all hills, as far as the forms of the rocks themselves, and the aerial appearances especially belonging to them, are alone concerned. there is, however, yet another point to be considered--the modification of their form caused by incumbent snow. pictures of winter scenery are nearly as common as moonlights, and are usually executed by the same order of artists, that is to say, the most incapable; it being remarkably easy to represent the moon as a white wafer on a black ground, or to scratch out white branches on a cloudy sky. nevertheless, among flemish paintings several valuable representations of winter are to be found, and some clever pieces of effect among the moderns, as hunt's, for instance, and de wint's. but all such efforts end in effect alone, nor have i ever in any single instance seen a snow _wreath_, i do not say thoroughly, but even decently, drawn. in the range of inorganic nature, i doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snow-drift, seen under warm light.[ ] its curves are of inconceivable perfection and changefulness, its surface and transparency alike exquisite, its light and shade of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish, the shadows sharp, pale, and of heavenly color, the reflected lights intense and multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted light. no mortal hand can approach the majesty or loveliness of it, yet it is possible by care and skill at least to suggest the preciousness of its forms and intimate the nature of its light and shade; but this has never been attempted; it could not be done except by artists of a rank exceedingly high, and there is something about the feeling of snow in ordinary scenery which such men do not like. but when the same qualities are exhibited on a magnificent alpine scale and in a position where they interfere with no feeling of life, i see not why they should be neglected, as they have hitherto been, unless that the difficulty of reconciling the brilliancy of snow with a picturesque light and shade, is so great that most good artists disguise or avoid the greater part of upper alpine scenery, and hint at the glacier so slightly, that they do not feel the necessity of careful study of its forms. habits of exaggeration increase the evil: i have seen a sketch from nature, by one of the most able of our landscape painters, in which a cloud had been mistaken for a snowy summit, and the hint thus taken exaggerated, as was likely, into an enormous mass of impossible height, and unintelligent form, when the mountain itself, for which the cloud had been mistaken, though subtending an angle of about eighteen or twenty degrees, instead of the fifty attributed to it, was of a form so exquisite that it might have been a profitable lesson truly studied to phidias. nothing but failure can result from such methods of sketching, nor have i ever seen a single instance of an earnest study of snowy mountains by any one. hence, wherever they are introduced, their drawing is utterly unintelligent, the forms being those of white rocks, or of rocks lightly powdered with snow, showing sufficiently that not only the painters have never studied the mountain carefully from below, but that they have never climbed into the snowy region. harding's rendering of the high alps (_vide_ the engraving of chamonix, and of the wengern alp, in the illustrations to byron) is best; but even he shows no perception of the real anatomy. stanfield paints only white rocks instead of snow. turner invariably avoids the difficulty, though he has shown himself capable of grappling with it in the ice of the liber studiorum, (mer de glace,) which is very cold and slippery and very like ice; but of the crusts and wreaths of the higher snow he has taken no cognizance. even the vignettes to rogers's poems fail in this respect. it would be vain to attempt in this place to give any detailed account of the phenomena of the upper snows; but it may be well to note those general principles which every artist ought to keep in mind when he has to paint an alp. § . general principles of its forms on the alps. snow is modified by the under forms of the hill in some sort, as dress is by the anatomy of the human frame. and as no dress can be well laid on without conceiving the body beneath, so no alp can be drawn unless its under form is conceived first, and its snow laid on afterwards. every high alp has as much snow upon it as it can hold or carry. it is not, observe, a mere coating of snow of given depth throughout, but it is snow loaded on until the rocks can hold no more. the surplus does not fall in the winter, because, fastened by continual frost, the quantity of snow which an alp can carry is greater than each single winter can bestow; it falls in the first mild days of spring in enormous avalanches. afterwards the melting continues, gradually removing from all the steep rocks the small quantity of snow which was all they could hold, and leaving them black and bare among the accumulated fields of unknown depth, which occupy the capacious valleys and less inclined superfices of the mountain. hence it follows that the deepest snow does not take nor indicate the actual forms of the rocks on which it lies, but it hangs from peak to peak in unbroken and sweeping festoons, or covers whole groups of peaks, which afford it sufficient hold, with vast and unbroken domes: these festoons and domes being guided in their curves, and modified in size, by the violence and prevalent direction of the winter winds. we have, therefore, every variety of indication of the under mountain form; first, the mere coating, which is soon to be withdrawn, and which shows as a mere sprinkling or powdering after a storm on the higher peaks; then the shallow incrustation on the steep sides glazed by the running down of its frequent meltings, frozen again in the night; then the deep snow more or less cramped or modified by sudden eminences of emergent rock, or hanging in fractured festoons and huge blue irregular cliffs on the mountain flanks, and over the edges and summits of their precipices in nodding drifts, far overhanging, like a cornice, (perilous things to approach the edge of from above;) finally, the pure accumulation of overwhelming depth, smooth, sweeping, and almost cleftless, and modified only by its lines of drifting. countless phenomena of exquisite beauty belong to each of these conditions, not to speak of the transition of the snow into ice at lower levels; but all on which i shall at present insist is that the artist should not think of his alp merely as a white mountain, but conceive it as a group of peaks loaded with an accumulation of snow, and that especially he should avail himself of the exquisite curvatures, never failing, by which the snow unites and opposes the harsh and broken lines of the rock. i shall enter into farther detail on this subject hereafter; at present it is useless to do so, as i have no examples to refer to, either in ancient or modern art. no statement of these facts has hitherto been made, nor any evidence given even of their observation, except by the most inferior painters.[ ] § . average paintings of switzerland. its real spirit has scarcely yet been caught. various works in green and white appear from time to time on the walls of the academy, _like_ the alps indeed, but so frightfully like, that we shudder and sicken at the sight of them, as we do when our best friend shows us into his dining-room, to see a portrait of himself, which "everybody thinks very like." we should be glad to see fewer of these, for switzerland is quite beyond the power of any but first-rate men, and is exceedingly bad practice for a rising artist; but, let us express a hope that alpine scenery will not continue to be neglected as it has been, by those who alone are capable of treating it. we love italy, but we have had rather a surfeit of it lately;--too many peaked caps and flat-headed pines. we should be very grateful to harding and stanfield if they would refresh us a little among the snow, and give us, what we believe them to be capable of giving us, a faithful expression of alpine ideal. we are well aware of the pain inflicted on an artist's mind by the preponderance of black, and white, and green, over more available colors; but there is nevertheless in generic alpine scenery, a fountain of feeling yet unopened--a chord of harmony yet untouched by art. it will be struck by the first man who can separate what is national, in switzerland, from what is ideal. we do not want chalets and three-legged stools, cow-bells and buttermilk. we want the pure and holy hills, treated as a link between heaven and earth. footnotes [ ] one of the most genuine claudes i know. [ ] compare part iii. sect. i. chap. , § . [ ] i hear of some study of alpine scenery among the professors at geneva; but all foreign landscape that i have ever met with has been so utterly ignorant that i hope for nothing except from our own painters. chapter iii. of the inferior mountains. § . the inferior mountains are distinguished from the central by being divided into beds. we have next to investigate the character of those intermediate masses which constitute the greater part of all hill scenery, forming the outworks of the high ranges, and being almost the sole constituents of such lower groups as those of cumberland, scotland, or south italy. all mountains whatsoever, not composed of the granite or gneiss rocks described in the preceding chapter, nor volcanic, (these latter being comparatively rare,) are composed of _beds_, not of homogeneous, heaped materials, but of accumulated layers, whether of rock or soil. it may be slate, sandstone, limestone, gravel, or clay; but whatever the substance, it is laid in layers, not in a mass. these layers are scarcely ever horizontal, and may slope to any degree, often occurring vertical, the boldness of the hill outline commonly depending in a great degree on their inclination. in consequence of this division into beds, every mountain will have two great sets of lines more or less prevailing in its contours--one indicative of the surfaces of the beds, where they come out from under each other--and the other indicative of the extremities or edges of the beds, where their continuity has been interrupted. and these two great sets of lines will commonly be at right angles with each other, or nearly so. if the surface of the bed approach a horizontal line, its termination will approach the vertical, and this is the most usual and ordinary way in which a precipice is produced. § . farther division of these beds by joints. farther, in almost all rocks there is a third division of substance, which gives to their beds a tendency to split transversely in some directions rather than others, giving rise to what geologists call "joints," and throwing the whole rock into blocks more or less rhomboidal; so that the beds are not terminated by torn or ragged edges, but by faces comparatively smooth and even, usually inclined to each other at some definite angle. the whole arrangement may be tolerably represented by the bricks of a wall, whose tiers may be considered as strata, and whose sides and extremities will represent the joints by which those strata are divided, varying, however, their direction in different rocks, and in the same rock under differing circumstances. § . and by lines of lamination. finally, in the slates, grauwackes, and some calcareous beds, in the greater number, indeed, of _mountain_ rocks, we find another most conspicuous feature of general structure--the lines of lamination, which divide the whole rock into an infinite number of delicate plates or layers, sometimes parallel to the direction or "strike" of the strata, oftener obliquely crossing it, and sometimes, apparently, altogether independent of it, maintaining a consistent and unvarying slope through a series of beds contorted and undulating in every conceivable direction. these lines of lamination extend their influence to the smallest fragment, causing it (as, for example, common roofing slate) to break smooth in one direction, and with a ragged edge in another, and marking the faces of the beds and joints with distinct and numberless lines, commonly far more conspicuous in a near view than the larger and more important divisions. § . variety and seeming uncertainty under which these laws are manifested. now, it cannot be too carefully held in mind, in examining the principles of mountain structure, that nearly all the laws of nature with respect to external form are rather universal tendencies, evidenced by a plurality of instances, than imperative necessities complied with by all. for instance, it may be said to be a universal law with respect to the boughs of all trees that they incline their extremities more to the ground in proportion as they are lower on the trunk, and that the higher their point of insertion is, the more they share in the upward tendency of the trunk itself. but yet there is not a single group of boughs in any one tree which does not show exceptions to the rule, and present boughs lower in insertion, and yet steeper in inclination, than their neighbors. nor is this defect or deformity, but the result of the constant habit of nature to carry variety into her very principles, and make the symmetry and beauty of her laws the more felt by the grace and accidentalism with which they are carried out. no one familiar with foliage could doubt for an instant of the necessity of giving evidence of this downward tendency in the boughs; but it would be nearly as great an offence against truth to make the law hold good with every individual branch, as not to exhibit its influence on the majority. now, though the laws of mountain form are more rigid and constant than those of vegetation, they are subject to the same species of exception in carrying out. though every mountain has these great tendencies in its lines, not one in a thousand of those lines is absolutely consistent with and obedient to this universal tendency. there are lines in every direction, and of almost every kind, but the sum and aggregate of those lines will invariably indicate the _universal_ force and influence to which they are all subjected; and of these lines there will, i repeat, be two principal sets or classes, pretty nearly at right angles with each other. when both are inclined, they give rise to peaks or ridges; when one is nearly horizontal and the other vertical, to table-lands and precipices. this then is the broad organization of all hills, modified afterwards by time and weather, concealed by superincumbent soil and vegetation, and ramified into minor and more delicate details in a way presently to be considered, but nevertheless universal in its great first influence, and giving to all mountains a particular cast and inclination; like the exertion of voluntary power in a definite direction, an internal spirit, manifesting itself in every crag, and breathing in every slope, flinging and forcing the mighty mass towards the heaven with an expression and an energy like that of life. § . the perfect expression of them in turner's loch coriskin. now, as in the case of the structure of the central peaks described above, so also here, if i had to give a clear idea of this organization of the lower hills, where it is seen in its greatest perfection, with a mere view to geological truth, i should not refer to any geological drawings, but i should take the loch coriskin of turner. it has luckily been admirably engraved, and for all purposes of reasoning or form, is nearly as effective in the print as in the drawing. looking at any group of the multitudinous lines which make up this mass of mountain, they appear to be running anywhere and everywhere; there are none parallel to each other, none resembling each other for a moment; yet the whole mass is felt at once to be composed with the most rigid parallelism, the surfaces of the beds towards the left, their edges or escarpments towards the right. in the centre, near the top of the ridge, the edge of a bed is beautifully defined, casting its shadow on the surface of the one beneath it; this shadow marking by three jags the chasms caused in the inferior one by three of its parallel joints. every peak in the distance is evidently subject to the same great influence, and the evidence is completed by the flatness and evenness of the steep surfaces of the beds which rise out of the lake on the extreme right, parallel with those in the centre. § . glencoe and other works. § . especially the mount lebanon. turn to glencoe, in the same series (the illustrations to scott). we have in the mass of mountain on the left, the most beautiful indication of vertical beds of a finely laminated rock, terminated by even joints towards the precipice; while the whole sweep of the landscape, as far as the most distant peaks, is evidently governed by one great and simple tendency upwards to the left, those most distant peaks themselves lying over one another in the same direction. in the daphne hunting with leucippus, the mountains on the left descend in two precipices to the plain, each of which is formed by a vast escarpment of the beds whose upper surfaces are shown between the two cliffs, sinking with an even slope from the summit of the lowest to the base of the highest, under which they evidently descend, being exposed in this manner for a length of five or six miles. the same structure is shown, though with more complicated development, on the left of the loch katrine. but perhaps the finest instance, or at least the most marked of all, will be found in the exquisite mount lebanon, with the convent of st. antonio, engraved in finden's bible. there is not one shade nor touch on the rock which is not indicative of the lines of stratification; and every fracture is marked with a straightforward simplicity which makes you feel that the artist has nothing in his heart but a keen love of the pure unmodified truth; there is no effort to disguise the repetition of forms, no apparent aim at artificial arrangement or scientific grouping; the rocks are laid one above another with unhesitating decision; every shade is understood in a moment, felt as a dark side, or a shadow, or a fissure, and you may step from one block or bed to another until you reach the mountain summit. and yet, though there seems no effort to disguise the repetition of forms, see how it _is_ disguised, just as nature would have done it, by the perpetual play and changefulness of the very lines which appear so parallel; now bending a little up, or down, or losing themselves, or running into each other, the old story over and over again,--infinity. for here is still the great distinction between turner's work and that of a common artist. hundreds could have given the parallelism of blocks, but none but himself could have done so without the actual repetition of a single line or feature. § . compared with the work of salvator; now compare with this the second mountain from the left in the picture of salvator, no. in the dulwich gallery. the whole is first laid in with a very delicate and masterly gray, right in tone, agreeable in color, quite unobjectionable for a beginning. but how is this made into rock? on the light side salvator gives us a multitude of touches, all exactly like one another, and therefore, it is to be hoped, quite patterns of perfection in rock-drawing, since they are too good to be even varied. every touch is a dash of the brush, as nearly as possible in the shape of a comma, round and bright at the top, convex on its right side, concave on its left, and melting off at the bottom into the gray. these are laid in confusion one above another, some paler, some brighter, some scarcely discernible, but all alike in shape. now, i am not aware myself of any particular object, either in earth or heaven, which these said touches do at all resemble or portray. i do not, however, assert that they may not resemble something--feathers, perhaps; but i do say, and say with perfect confidence, that they may be chinese for rocks, or sanscrit for rocks, or symbolical of rocks in some mysterious and undeveloped character; but that they are no more _like_ rocks than the brush that made them. the dark sides appear to embrace and overhang the lights; they cast no shadows, are broken by no fissures, and furnish, as food for contemplation, nothing but a series of concave curves. § . and of poussin. yet if we go on to no. , we shall find something a great deal worse. i can believe gaspar poussin capable of committing as much sin against nature as most people; but i certainly do not suspect him of having had any hand in this thing, at least after he was ten years old. nevertheless, it shows what he is supposed capable of by his admirers, and will serve for a broad illustration of all those absurdities which he himself in a less degree, and with feeling and thought to atone for them, perpetually commits. take the white bit of rock on the opposite side of the river, just above the right arm of the niobe, and tell me of what the square green daubs of the brush at its base can be conjectured to be typical. rocks with pale-brown light sides, and rich green dark sides, are a phenomenon perhaps occurring in some of the improved passages of nature among our cumberland lakes; where i remember once having seen a bed of roses, of peculiar magnificence, tastefully and artistically assisted in effect by the rocks above it being painted pink to match; but i do not think that they are a kind of thing which the clumsiness and false taste of nature can be supposed frequently to produce; even granting that these same sweeps of the brush could, by any exercise of the imagination, be conceived representative of a dark, or any other side, which is far more than i am inclined to grant; seeing that there is no east shadow, no appearance of reflected light, of substance, or of character on the edge; nothing, in short, but pure, staring green paint, scratched heavily on a white ground. nor is there a touch in the picture more expressive. all are the mere dragging of the brush here and there and everywhere, without meaning or intention; winding, twisting, zigzagging, doing anything in fact which may serve to break up the light and destroy its breadth, without bestowing in return one hint or shadow of anything like form. this picture is, indeed, an extraordinary case, but the salvator above mentioned is a characteristic and exceedingly favorable example of the usual mode of mountain drawing among the old landscape painters.[ ] their admirers may be challenged to bring forward a single instance of their expressing, or even appearing to have noted, the great laws of structure above explained. their hills are, without exception, irregular earthy heaps, without energy or direction of any kind, marked with shapeless shadows and meaningless lines; sometimes, indeed, where great sublimity has been aimed at, approximating to the pure and exalted ideal of rocks, which, in the most artistical specimens of china cups and plates, we see suspended from aerial pagodas, or balanced upon peacocks' tails, but never warranting even the wildest theorist in the conjecture that their perpetrators had ever seen a mountain in their lives. let us, however, look farther into the modifications of character by which nature conceals the regularity of her first plan; for although all mountains are organized as we have seen, their organization is always modified, and often nearly concealed, by changes wrought upon them by external influence. § . effects of external influence on mountain form. we ought, when speaking of their stratification, to have noticed another great law, which must, however, be understood with greater latitude of application than any of the others, as very far from imperative or constant in particular cases, though universal in its influence on the aggregate of all. it is that the lines by which rocks are terminated, are always steeper and more inclined to the vertical as we approach the summit of the mountain. thousands of cases are to be found in every group, of rocks and lines horizontal at the top of the mountain and vertical at the bottom; but they are still the exceptions, and the average out of a given number of lines in any rock formation whatsoever, will be found increasing in perpendicularity as they rise. consequently the great skeleton lines of rock outline are always concave; that is to say, all distant ranges of rocky mountain approximate more or less to a series of concave curves, meeting in peaks, like a range of posts with chains hanging between. i do not say that convex forms will not perpetually occur, but that the tendency of the majority will always be to assume the form of sweeping, curved valleys, with angular peaks; not of rounded convex summits, with angular valleys. this structure is admirably exemplified in the second vignette in rogers's italy, and in piacenza. § . the gentle convexity caused by aqueous erosion. but although this is the primary form of all hills, and that which will always cut against the sky in every distant range, there are two great influences whose tendency is directly the reverse, and which modify, to a great degree, both the evidences of stratification and this external form. these are aqueous erosion and disintegration. the latter only is to be taken into consideration when we have to do with minor features of crag; but the former is a force in constant action--of the very utmost importance--a force to which one-half of the great outlines of all mountains is entirely owing, and which has much influence upon every one of their details. now the tendency of aqueous action over a large elevated surface is _always_ to make that surface symmetrically and evenly convex and dome-like, sloping gradually more and more as it descends, until it reaches an inclination of about °, at which slope it will descend perfectly straight to the valley; for at that slope the soil washed from above will accumulate upon the hill-side, as it cannot lie in steeper beds. this influence, then, is exercised more or less on all mountains, with greater or less effect in proportion as the rock is harder or softer, more or less liable to decomposition, more or less recent in date of elevation, and more or less characteristic in its original forms; but it universally induces, in the lower parts of mountains, a series of the most exquisitely symmetrical convex curves, terminating, as they descend to the valley, in uniform and uninterrupted slopes; this symmetrical structure being perpetually interrupted by cliffs and projecting masses, which give evidence of the interior parallelism of the mountain anatomy, but which interrupt the convex forms more frequently by rising out of them, than by indentation. § . and the effect of the action of torrents. there remains but one fact more to be noticed. all mountains, in some degree, but especially those which are composed of soft or decomposing substance, are delicately and symmetrically furrowed by the descent of streams. the traces of their action commence at the very summits, fine threads, and multitudinous, like the uppermost branches of a delicate tree. they unite in groups as they descend, concentrating gradually into dark undulating ravines, into which the body of the mountain descends on each side, at first in a convex curve, but at the bottom with the same uniform slope on each side which it assumes in its final descent to the plain, unless the rock be very hard, when the stream will cut itself a vertical chasm at the bottom of the curves, and there will be no even slope.[ ] if, on the other hand, the rock be very soft, the slopes will increase rapidly in height and depth from day to day; washed away at the bottom and crumbling at the top, until, by their reaching the summit of the masses of rock which separate the active torrents, the whole mountain is divided into a series of penthouse-like ridges, all guiding to its summit, and becoming steeper and narrower as they ascend; these in their turn being divided by similar, but smaller ravines--caused in the same manner--into the same kind of ridges; and these again by another series, the arrangement being carried finer and farther according to the softness of the rock. the south side of saddleback, in cumberland, is a characteristic example; and the montagne du tacondy, in chamonix, a noble instance of one of these ridges or buttresses, with all its subdivisions, on a colossal scale. § . the exceeding simplicity of contour caused by these influences. § . and multiplicity of feature. now we wish to draw especial attention to the broad and bold simplicity of mass, and the excessive complication of details, which influences like these, acting on an enormous scale, must inevitably produce in all mountain groups; because each individual part and promontory, being compelled to assume the same symmetrical curves as its neighbors, and to descend at precisely the same slope to the valley, falls in with their prevailing lines, and becomes a part of a great and harmonious whole, instead of an unconnected and discordant individual. it is true that each of these members has its own touches of specific character, its own projecting crags and peculiar hollows; but by far the greater portion of its lines will be such as unite with, though they do not repeat, those of its neighbors, and carry out the evidence of one great influence and spirit to the limits of the scene. this effort is farther aided by the original unity and connection of the rocks themselves, which though it often may be violently interrupted, is never without evidence of existence; for the very interruption itself forces the eye to feel that there is something to be interrupted, a sympathy and similarity of lines and fractures, which, however full of variety and change of direction, never lose the appearance of symmetry of one kind or another. but, on the other hand, it is to be remembered that these great sympathizing masses are not one mountain, but a thousand mountains; that they are originally composed of a multitude of separate eminences, hewn and chiselled indeed into associating form, but each retaining still its marked points and features of character,--that each of these individual members has, by the very process which assimilated it to the rest, been divided and subdivided into equally multitudinous groups of minor mountains; finally, that the whole complicated system is interrupted forever and ever by daring manifestations of the inward mountain will--by the precipice which has submitted to no modulation of the torrent, and the peak which has bowed itself to no terror of the storm. hence we see that the same imperative laws which require perfect simplicity of mass, require infinite and termless complication of detail,--that there will not be an inch nor a hairbreadth of the gigantic heap which has not its touch of separate character, its own peculiar curve, stealing out for an instant and then melting into the common line; felt for a moment by the blue mist of the hollow beyond, then lost when it crosses the enlightened slope,--that all this multiplicity will be grouped into larger divisions, each felt by their increasing aerial perspective, and their instants of individual form, these into larger, and these into larger still, until all are merged in the great impression and prevailing energy of the two or three vast dynasties which divide the kingdom of the scene. § . both utterly neglected in ancient art. there is no vestige nor shadow of approach to such treatment as this in the whole compass of ancient art. whoever the master, his hills, wherever he has attempted them, have not the slightest trace of association or connection; they are separate, conflicting, confused, petty and paltry heaps of earth; there is no marking of distances or divisions in their body; they may have holes in them, but no valleys,--protuberances and excrescences, but no parts; and in consequence are invariably diminutive and contemptible in their whole appearance and impression. § . the fidelity of treatment in turner's daphne and leucippas. but look at the mass of mountain on the right in turner's daphne hunting with leucippus. it is simple, broad, and united as one surge of a swelling sea; it rises in an unbroken line along the valley, and lifts its promontories with an equal slope. but it contains in its body ten thousand hills. there is not a quarter of an inch of its surface without its suggestion of increasing distance and individual form. first, on the right, you have a range of tower-like precipices, the clinging wood climbing along their ledges and cresting their summits, white waterfalls gleaming through its leaves; not, as in claude's scientific ideals, poured in vast torrents over the top, and carefully keeping all the way down on the most projecting parts of the sides; but stealing down, traced from point to point, through shadow after shadow, by their evanescent foam and flashing light,--here a wreath, and there a ray,--through the deep chasms and hollow ravines, out of which rise the soft rounded slopes of mightier mountain, surge beyond surge, immense and numberless, of delicate and gradual curve, accumulating in the sky until their garment of forest is exchanged for the shadowy fold of slumbrous morning cloud, above which the utmost silver peak shines islanded and alone. put what mountain painting you will beside this, of any other artist, and its heights will look like mole-hills in comparison, because it will not have the unity nor the multiplicity which are in nature, and with turner, the signs of size. § . and in the avalanche and inundation. again, in the avalanche and inundation, we have for the whole subject nothing but one vast bank of united mountain, and one stretch of uninterrupted valley. though the bank is broken into promontory beyond promontory, peak above peak, each the abode of a new tempest, the arbiter of a separate desolation, divided from each other by the rushing of the snow, by the motion of the storm, by the thunder of the torrent; the mighty unison of their dark and lofty line, the brotherhood of ages, is preserved unbroken; and the broad valley at their feet, though measured league after league away by a thousand passages of sun and darkness, and marked with fate beyond fate of hamlet and of inhabitant, lies yet but as a straight and narrow channel, a filling furrow before the flood. whose work will you compare with this? salvator's gray heaps of earth, seven yards high, covered with bunchy brambles, that we may be under no mistake about the size, thrown about at random in a little plain, beside a zigzagging river, just wide enough to admit of the possibility of there being fish in it, and with banks just broad enough to allow the respectable angler or hermit to sit upon them conveniently in the foreground? is there more of nature in such paltriness, think you, than in the valley and the mountain which bend to each other like the trough of the sea; with the flank of the one swept in one surge into the height of heaven, until the pine forests lie on its immensity like the shadows of narrow clouds, and the hollow of the other laid league by league into the blue of the air, until its white villages flash in the distance only like the fall of a sunbeam? § . the rarity among secondary hills of steep slopes or high precipices. but let us examine by what management of the details themselves this wholeness and vastness of effect are given. we have just seen (§ ) that it is impossible for the slope of a mountain, not actually a precipice of rock, to exceed ° or among secondary °, and that by far the greater part of all hill-surface is composed of graceful curves of much less degree than this, reaching ° only as their ultimate and utmost inclination. it must be farther observed that the interruptions to such curves, by precipices or steps, are always small in proportion to the slopes themselves. precipices rising vertically more than feet are very rare among the secondary hills of which we are speaking. i am not aware of any cliff in england or wales where a plumb-line can swing clear for feet; and even although sometimes, with intervals, breaks, and steps, we get perhaps feet of a slope of ° or °, yet not only are these cases very rare, but even these have little influence on the great contours of a mountain or feet in elevation, being commonly balanced by intervals of ascent not exceeding ° or °. the result of which is, first, that the peaks and precipices of a mountain appear as little more than jags or steps emerging from its great curves; and, secondly, that the bases of all hills are enormously extensive as compared with their elevation, so that there must be always a horizontal distance between the observer and the summit five or six times exceeding the perpendicular one. § . and consequent expression of horizontal distance in their ascent. now it is evident, that whatever the actual angle of elevation of the mountain may be, every exhibition of this horizontal distance between us and the summit is an addition to its height, and of course to its impressiveness; while every endeavor to exhibit its slope as steep and sudden, is diminution at once of its distance and elevation. in consequence nature is constantly endeavoring to impress upon us this horizontal distance, which, even in spite of all her means of manifesting it, we are apt to forget or underestimate; and all her noblest effects depend on the full measurement and feeling of it. and it is to the abundant and marvellous expression of it by turner, that i would direct especial attention, as being that which is in itself demonstrative of the highest knowledge and power--knowledge, in the constant use of lines of subdued slope in preference to steep or violent ascents, and in the perfect subjection of all such features, when they necessarily occur, to the larger masses; and power, in the inimitable statements of retiring space by mere painting of surface details, without the aid of crossing shadows, divided forms, or any other artifice. § . full statement of all these facts in various works of turner, caudebec, etc. the caudebec, in the rivers of france, is a fine instance of almost every fact which we have been pointing out. we have in it, first, the clear expression of what takes place constantly among hills,--that the river, as it passes through the valley, will fall backwards and forwards from side to side, lying first, if i may so speak, with all its weight against the hills on the one side, and then against those on the other; so that, as here it is exquisitely told, in each of its circular sweeps the whole force of its current is brought deep and close to the bases of the hills, while the water on the side next the plain is shallow, deepening gradually. in consequence of this, the hills are cut away at their bases by the current, so that their slopes are interrupted by precipices mouldering to the water. observe first, how nobly turner has given us the perfect unity of the whole mass of hill, making us understand that every ravine in it has been cut gradually by streams. the first eminence, beyond the city, is not disjointed from, or independent of, the one succeeding, but evidently part of the same whole, originally united, separated only by the action of the stream between. the association of the second and third is still more clearly told, for we see that there has been a little longitudinal valley running along the brow of their former united mass, which, after the ravine had been cut between, formed the two jags which turner has given us at the same point in each of their curves. this great triple group has, however, been originally distinct from those beyond it; for we see that these latter are only the termination of the enormous even slope, which appears again on the extreme right, having been interrupted by the rise of the near hills. observe how the descent of the whole series is kept gentle and subdued, never suffered to become steep except where it has been cut away by the river, the sudden precipice caused by which is exquisitely marked in the last two promontories, where they are defined against the bright horizon; and, finally, observe how, in the ascent of the nearest eminence beyond the city, without one cast shadow or any division of distances, every yard of surface is felt to be retiring by the mere painting of its details,--how we are permitted to walk up it, and along its top, and are carried, before we are half way up, a league or two forward into the picture. the difficulty of doing this, however, can scarcely be appreciated except by an artist. § . the use of considering geological truths. i do not mean to assert that this great painter is acquainted with the geological laws and facts he has thus illustrated; i am not aware whether he be or not; i merely wish to demonstrate, in points admitting of demonstration, that intense observation of, and strict adherence to truth, which it is impossible to demonstrate in its less tangible and more delicate manifestations. however i may _feel_ the truth of every touch and line, i cannot _prove_ truth, except in large and general features; and i leave it to the arbitration of every man's reason, whether it be not likely that the painter who is thus so rigidly faithful in great things that every one of his pictures might be the illustration of a lecture on the physical sciences, is not likely to be faithful also in small. § . expression of retiring surface by turner contrasted with the work of claude. honfleur, and the scene between clairmont and mauves, supply us with farther instances of the same grand simplicity of treatment; and the latter is especially remarkable for its expression of the furrowing of the hills by descending water, in the complete roundness and symmetry of their curves, and in the delicate and sharp shadows which are cast in the undulating ravines. it is interesting to compare with either of these noble works such hills as those of claude, on the left of the picture marked in the dulwich gallery. there is no detail nor surface in one of them; not an inch of ground for us to stand upon; we must either sit astride upon the edge, or fall to the bottom. i could not point to a more complete instance of mountain calumniation; nor can i oppose it more completely, in every circumstance, than with the honfleur of turner, already mentioned; in which there is not one edge nor division admitted, and yet we are permitted to climb up the hill from the town, and pass far into the mist along its top, and so descend mile after mile along the ridge to seaward, until, without one break in the magnificent unity of progress, we are carried down to the utmost horizon. and contrast the brown paint of claude, which you can only guess to be meant for rock or soil because it _is_ brown, with turner's profuse, pauseless richness of feature, carried through all the enormous space--the unmeasured wealth of exquisite detail, over which the mind can dwell, and walk, and wander, and feast forever, without finding either one break in its vast simplicity, or one vacuity in its exhaustless splendor. § . the same moderation of slope in the contours of his higher hills. but these, and hundreds of others which it is sin not to dwell upon--wooded hills and undulating moors of north england--rolling surges of park and forest of the south--soft and vine-clad ranges of french coteaux, casting their oblique shadows on silver leagues of glancing rivers,--and olive-whitened promontories of alp and apennine, are only instances of turner's management of the lower and softer hills. in the bolder examples of his powers, where he is dealing with lifted masses of enormous mountain, we shall still find him as cautious in his use of violent slopes or vertical lines, and still as studied in his expression of retiring surface. we never get to the top of one of his hills without being tired with our walk; not by the steepness, observe, but by the stretch; for we are carried up towards the heaven by such delicate gradation of line, that we scarcely feel that we have left the earth before we find ourselves among the clouds. the skiddaw, in the illustrations to scott, is a noble instance of this majestic moderation. the mountain lies in the morning light, like a level vapor; its gentle lines of ascent are scarcely felt by the eye; it rises without effort or exertion, by the mightiness of its mass; every slope is full of slumber; and we know not how it has been exalted, until we find it laid as a floor for the walking of the eastern clouds. so again in the fort augustus, where the whole elevation of the hills depends on the soft lines of swelling surface which undulate back through leagues of mist carrying us unawares higher and higher above the diminished lake, until, when we are all but exhausted with the endless distance, the mountains make their last spring, and bear us, in that instant of exertion, half way to heaven. § . the peculiar difficulty of investigating the more essential truths of hill outline. i ought perhaps rather to have selected, as instances of mountain form, such elaborate works as the oberwesel or lake of uri, but i have before expressed my dislike of speaking of such magnificent pictures as these by parts. and indeed all proper consideration of the hill drawing of turner must be deferred until we are capable of testing it by the principles of beauty; for, after all, the most essential qualities of line,--those on which all right delineation of mountain character must depend, are those which are only to be explained or illustrated by appeals to our feeling of what is beautiful. there is an expression and a feeling about all the hill lines of nature, which i think i shall be able, hereafter, to explain; but it is not to be reduced to line and rule--not to be measured by angles or described by compasses--not to be chipped out by the geologist, or equated by the mathematician. it is intangible, incalculable--a thing to be felt, not understood--to be loved, not comprehended--a music of the eyes, a melody of the heart, whose truth is known only by its sweetness. § . works of other modern artists. clarkson stanfield. § . importance of particular and individual truth in hill drawing. i can scarcely, without repeating myself to tediousness, enter at present into proper consideration of the mountain drawing of other modern painters. we have, fortunately, several by whom the noble truths which we have seen so fully exemplified by turner are also deeply felt and faithfully rendered; though there is a necessity, for the perfect statement of them, of such an unison of freedom of thought with perfect mastery over the greatest mechanical difficulties, as we can scarcely hope to see attained by more than one man in our age. very nearly the same words which we used in reference to stanfield's drawings of the central clouds, might be applied to his rendering of mountain truth. he occupies exactly the same position with respect to other artists in earth as in cloud. none can be said really to _draw_ the mountain as he will, to have so perfect a mastery over its organic development; but there is, nevertheless, in all his works, some want of feeling and individuality. he has studied and mastered his subject to the bottom, but he trusts too much to that past study, and rather invents his hills from his possessed stores of knowledge, than expresses in them the fresh ideas received from nature. hence, in all that he does, we feel a little too much that the hills are his own. we cannot swear to their being the particular crags and individual promontories which break the cone of ischia, or shadow the waves of maggiore. we are nearly sure, on the contrary, that nothing but the outline is local, and that all the filling up has been done in the study. now, we have already shown (sect. i. chap. iii.) that particular truths are more important than general ones, and this is just one of the cases in which that rule especially applies. nothing is so great a sign of truth and beauty in mountain drawing as the appearance of individuality--nothing is so great a proof of real imagination and invention, as the appearance that nothing has been imagined or invented. we ought to feel of every inch of mountain, that it _must_ have existence in reality, that if we had lived near the place we should have known every crag of it, and that there must be people to whom every crevice and shadow of the picture is fraught with recollections, and colored with associations. the moment the artist can make us feel this--the moment he can make us think that _he_ has done nothing, that nature has done all--that moment he becomes ennobled, he proves himself great. as long as we remember him, we cannot respect him. we honor him most when we most forget him. he becomes great when he becomes invisible. and we may, perhaps, be permitted to express our hope that mr. stanfield will--our conviction that he must--if he would advance in his rank as an artist, attend more to local character, and give us generally less of the stanfield limestone. he ought to study with greater attention the rocks which afford finer divisions and more delicate parts (slates and gneiss;) and he ought to observe more fondly and faithfully those beautiful laws and lines of swell and curvature, by intervals of which nature sets off and relieves the energy of her peaked outlines. he is at present apt to be too rugged, and, in consequence, to lose size. of his best manner of drawing hills, i believe i can scarcely give a better example than the rocks of suli, engraved in finden's illustrations to byron. it is very grand and perfect in all parts and points. § . works of copley fielding. his hill feeling. copley fielding is peculiarly graceful and affectionate in his drawing of the inferior mountains. but as with his clouds so with his hills; as long as he keeps to silvery films of misty outline, or purple shadows mingled with the evening light, he is true and beautiful; but the moment he withdraws the mass out of its veiling mystery, he is lost. his worst drawings, therefore, are those on which he has spent most time; for he is sure to show weakness wherever he gives detail. we believe that all his errors proceed, as we observed before, from his not working with the chalk or pencil; and that if he would paint half the number of pictures in the year which he usually produces, and spend his spare time in hard dry study of forms, the half he painted would be soon worth double the present value of all. for he really has deep and genuine feeling of hill character--a far higher perception of space, elevation, incorporeal color, and all those qualities which are the poetry of mountains, than any other of our water-color painters; and it is an infinite pity that he should not give to these delicate feelings the power of realization, which might be attained by a little labor. a few thorough studies of his favorite mountains, ben-venue or ben-cruachan, in clear, strong, front chiaroscuro, allowing himself neither color nor mist, nor any means of getting over the ground but downright drawing, would, we think, open his eyes to sources of beauty of which he now takes no cognizance. he ought not, however, to repeat the same subjects so frequently, as the casting about of the mind for means of varying them blunts the feelings to truth. and he should remember that an artist, who is not making progress, is nearly certain to be retrograding; and that progress is not to be made by working in the study, or by mere labor bestowed on the repetition of unchanging conceptions. § . works of j. d. harding and others. j. d. harding would paint mountains very nobly, if he made them of more importance in his compositions, but they are usually little more than backgrounds for his foliage or buildings; and it is his present system to make his backgrounds very slight. his color is very beautiful: indeed, both his and fielding's are far more refined than stanfield's. we wish he would oftener take up some wild subject dependent for interest on its mountain forms alone, as we should anticipate the highest results from his perfect drawing; and we think that such an exercise, occasionally gone completely through, would counteract a tendency which we perceive in his present distances, to become a little thin and cutting, if not incomplete. the late g. robson was a man most thoroughly acquainted with all the characteristics of our own island hills; and some of the outlines of john varley showed very grand feeling of energy of form. footnotes [ ] i have above exhausted all terms of vituperation, and probably disgusted the reader; and yet i have not spoken with enough severity: i know not any terms of blame that are bitter enough to chastise justly the mountain drawings of salvator in the pictures of the pitti palace. [ ] some terrific cuts and chasms of this kind occur on the north side of the valais, from sion to briey. the torrent from the great aletsch glacier descends through one of them. elsewhere chasms may be found as narrow, but few so narrow and deep. chapter iv. of the foreground. we have now only to observe the close characteristics of the rocks and soils to which the large masses of which we have been speaking, owe their ultimate characters. § . what rocks were the chief components of ancient landscape foreground. we have already seen that there exists a marked distinction between those stratified rocks whose beds are amorphous and without subdivision, as many limestones and sandstones, and those which are divided by lines of lamination, as all slates. the last kind of rock is the more frequent in nature, and forms the greater part of all hill scenery; it has, however, been successfully grappled with by few, even of the moderns, except turner; while there is no single example of any aim at it or thought of it among the ancients, whose foregrounds, as far as it is possible to guess at their intention through their concentrated errors, are chosen from among the tufa and travertin of the lower apennines, (the ugliest as well as the least characteristic rocks of nature,) and whose larger features of rock scenery, if we look at them with a predetermination to find in them a resemblance of _something_, may be pronounced at least liker the mountain limestone than anything else. i shall glance, therefore, at the general characters of these materials first, in order that we may be able to appreciate the fidelity of rock-drawing on which salvator's reputation has been built. § . salvator's limestones. the real characters of the rock. its fractures and obtuseness of angles. the massive limestones separate generally into irregular blocks, tending to the form of cubes or parallelopipeds, and terminated by tolerably smooth planes. the weather, acting on the edges of these blocks, rounds them off; but the frost, which, while it cannot penetrate nor split the body of the stone, acts energetically on the angles, splits off the rounded fragments, and supplies sharp, fresh, and complicated edges. hence the angles of such blocks are usually marked by a series of steps and fractures, in which the peculiar character of the rock is most distinctly seen; the effect being increased in many limestones by the interposition of two or three thinner beds between the large strata of which the block has been a part; these thin laminæ breaking easily, and supplying a number of fissures and lines at the edge of the detached mass. thus, as a general principle, if a rock have character anywhere, it will be on the angle, and however even and smooth its great planes may be, it will usually break into variety where it turns a corner. in one of the most exquisite pieces of rock truth ever put on canvas, the foreground of the napoleon in the academy, , this principle was beautifully exemplified in the complicated fractures of the upper angle just where it turned from the light, while the planes of the rock were varied only by the modulation they owed to the waves. it follows from this structure that the edges of all rock being partially truncated, first by large fractures, and then by the rounding of the fine edges of these by the weather, perpetually present _convex_ transitions from the light to the dark side, the planes of the rock almost always swelling a little _from_ the angle. § . salvator's acute angles caused by the meeting of concave curves. now it will be found throughout the works of salvator, that his most usual practice was to give a _concave_ sweep of the brush for his first expression of the dark side, leaving the paint darkest towards the light; by which daring and original method of procedure he has succeeded in covering his foregrounds with forms which approximate to those of drapery, of ribbons, of crushed cocked hats, of locks of hair, of waves, leaves, or anything, in short, flexible or tough, but which of course are not only unlike, but directly contrary to the forms which nature has impressed on rocks.[ ] § . peculiar distinctness of light and shade in the rocks of nature. § . peculiar confusion of both in the rocks of salvator. and the circular and sweeping strokes or stains which are dashed at random over their surfaces, only fail of destroying all resemblance whatever to rock structure from their frequent want of any meaning at all, and from the impossibility of our supposing any of them to be representative of shade. now, if there be any part of landscape in which nature develops her principles of light and shade more clearly than another, it is rock; for the dark sides of fractured stone receive brilliant reflexes from the lighted surfaces, on which the shadows are marked with the most exquisite precision, especially because, owing to the parallelism of cleavage, the surfaces lie usually in directions nearly parallel. hence every crack and fissure has its shadow and reflected light separated with the most delicious distinctness, and the organization and solid form of all parts are told with a decision of language, which, to be followed with anything like fidelity, requires the most transparent color, and the most delicate and scientific drawing. so far are the works of the old landscape-painters from rendering this, that it is exceedingly rare to find a single passage in which the shadow can even be distinguished from the dark side--they scarcely seem to know the one to be darker than the other; and the strokes of the brush are not used to explain or express a form known or conceived, but are dashed and daubed about without any aim beyond the covering of the canvas. "a rock," the old masters appear to say to themselves, "is a great irregular, formless, characterless lump; but it must have shade upon it, and any gray marks will do for that shade." § . and total want of any expression of hardness or brittleness. § . instances in particular pictures. finally, while few, if any, of the rocks of nature are untraversed by delicate and slender fissures, whose black sharp lines are the only means by which the peculiar quality in which rocks most differ from the other objects of the landscape, brittleness, can be effectually suggested, we look in vain among the blots and stains with which the rocks of ancient art are loaded, for any vestige or appearance of fissure or splintering. toughness and malleability appear to be the qualities whose expression is most aimed at; sometimes sponginess, softness, flexibility, tenuity, and occasionally transparency. take, for instance, the foreground of salvator, in no. of the dulwich gallery. there is, on the right-hand side of it, an object, which i never walk through the room without contemplating for a minute or two with renewed solicitude and anxiety of mind, indulging in a series of very wild and imaginative conjectures as to its probable or possible meaning. i think there is reason to suppose that the artist intended it either for a very large stone, or for the trunk of a tree; but any decision as to its being either one or the other of these must, i conceive, be the extreme of rashness. it melts into the ground on one side, and might reasonably be conjectured to form a part of it, having no trace of woody structure or color; but on the other side it presents a series of concave curves, interrupted by cogs like those of a water-wheel, which the boldest theorist would certainly not feel himself warranted in supposing symbolical of rock. the forms which this substance, whatever it be, assumes, will be found repeated, though in a less degree, in the foreground of no. , where they are evidently meant for rock. § . compared with the works of stanfield. § . their absolute opposition in every particular. let us contrast with this system of rock-drawing, the faithful, scientific, and dexterous studies of nature which we find in the works of clarkson stanfield. he is a man especially to be opposed to the old masters, because he usually confines himself to the same rock subjects as they--the mouldering and furrowed crags of the secondary formation which arrange themselves more or less into broad and simple masses; and in the rendering of these it is impossible to go beyond him. nothing can surpass his care, his firmness, or his success, in marking the distinct and sharp light and shade by which the form is explained, never confusing it with local color, however richly his surface-texture may be given; while the wonderful play of line with which he will vary, and through which he will indicate, the regularity of stratification, is almost as instructive as that of nature herself. i cannot point to any of his works as better or more characteristic than others; but his ischia, in the present british institution, may be taken as a fair average example. the botallack mine, cornwall, engraved in the coast scenery, gives us a very finished and generic representation of rock, whose primal organization has been violently affected by external influences. we have the stratification and cleavage indicated at its base, every fissure being sharp, angular, and decisive, disguised gradually as it rises by the rounding of the surface and the successive furrows caused by the descent of streams. but the exquisite drawing of the foreground is especially worthy of notice. no huge concave sweeps of the brush, no daubing or splashing here. every inch of it is brittle and splintery, and the fissures are explained to the eye by the most perfect, speaking light and shade,--we can stumble over the edges of them. the east cliff, hastings, is another very fine example, from the exquisite irregularity with which its squareness of general structure is varied and disguised. observe how totally contrary every one of its lines is to the absurdities of salvator. stanfield's are all angular and straight, every apparent curve made up of right lines, while salvator's are all sweeping and flourishing like so much penmanship. stanfield's lines pass away into delicate splintery fissures. salvator's are broad daubs throughout. not one of stanfield's lines is like another. every one of salvator's mocks all the rest. all stanfield's curves, where his universal angular character is massed, as on the left-hand side, into large sweeping forms, are convex. salvator's are every one concave. § . the rocks of j. d. harding. the foregrounds of j. d. harding and rocks of his middle distances are also thoroughly admirable. he is not quite so various and undulating in his line as stanfield, and sometimes, in his middle distances, is wanting in solidity, owing to a little confusion of the dark side and shadow with each other, or with the local color. but his work, in near passages of fresh-broken, sharp-edged rock, is absolute perfection, excelling stanfield in the perfect freedom and facility with which his fragments are splintered and scattered; true in every line without the least apparent effort. stanfield's best works are laborious, but harding's rocks fall from under his hand as if they had just crashed down the hill-side, flying on the instant into lovely form. in color also he incomparably surpasses stanfield, who is apt to verge upon mud, or be cold in his gray. the rich, lichenous, and changeful warmth, and delicate weathered grays of harding's rock, illustrated as they are by the most fearless, firm, and unerring drawing, render his wild pieces of torrent shore the finest things, next to the work of turner, in english foreground art. j. b. pyne has very accurate knowledge of limestone rock, and expresses it clearly and forcibly; but it is much to be regretted that this clever artist appears to be losing all sense of color and is getting more and more mannered in execution, evidently never studying from nature except with the previous determination to pynize everything.[ ] § . characters of loose earth and soil. § . its exceeding grace and fulness of feature. before passing to turner, let us take one more glance at the foregrounds of the old masters, with reference, not to their management of rock, which is comparatively a rare component part of their foregrounds, but to the common soil which they were obliged to paint constantly, and whose forms and appearances are the same all over the world. a steep bank of loose earth of any kind, that has been at all exposed to the weather, contains in it, though it may not be three feet high, features capable of giving high gratification to a careful observer. it is almost a fac-simile of a mountain slope of soft and decomposing rock; it possesses nearly as much variety of character, and is governed by laws of organization no less rigid. it is furrowed in the first place by undulating lines, by the descent of the rain, little ravines, which are cut precisely at the same slope as those of the mountain, and leave ridges scarcely less graceful in their contour, and beautifully sharp in their chiselling. where a harder knot of ground or a stone occurs, the earth is washed from beneath it, and accumulates above it, and there we have a little precipice connected by a sweeping curve at its summit with the great slope, and casting a sharp dark shadow; where the soil has been soft, it will probably be washed away underneath until it gives way, and leaves a jagged, hanging, irregular line of fracture; and all these circumstances are explained to the eye in sunshine with the most delicious clearness; every touch of shadow being expressive of some particular truth of structure, and bearing witness to the symmetry into which the whole mass has been reduced. where this operation has gone on long, and vegetation has assisted in softening the outlines, we have our ground brought into graceful and irregular curves, of infinite variety, but yet always so connected with each other, and guiding to each other, that the eye never feels them as _separate_ things, nor feels inclined to count them, nor perceives a likeness in one to the other; they are not repetitions of each other, but are different parts of one system. each would be imperfect without the one next to it. § . the ground of teniers. now it is all but impossible to express distinctly the particulars wherein this fine character of curve consists, and to show in definite examples, what it is which makes one representation right, and another wrong. the ground of teniers for instance, in no. in the dulwich gallery, is an example of all that is wrong. it is a representation of the forms of shaken and disturbed soil, such as we should see here and there after an earthquake, or over the ruins of fallen buildings. it has not one contour nor character of the soil of nature, and yet i can scarcely tell you why, except that the curves repeat one another, and are monotonous in their flow, and are unbroken by the delicate angle and momentary pause with which the feeling of nature would have touched them, and are disunited; so that the eye leaps from this to that, and does not pass from one to the other without being able to stop, drawn on by the continuity of line; neither is there any undulation or furrowing of watermark, nor in one spot or atom of the whole surface, is there distinct explanation of form to the eye by means of a determined shadow. all is mere sweeping of the brush over the surface with various ground colors, without a single indication of character by means of real shade. § . importance of these minor parts and points. § . the observance of them is the real distinction between the master and the novice. let not these points be deemed unimportant; the truths of form in common ground are quite as valuable, (let me anticipate myself for a moment,) quite as beautiful, as any others which nature presents, and in lowland landscape they present us with a species of line which it is quite impossible to obtain in any other way,--the alternately flowing and broken line of mountain scenery, which, however small its scale, is always of inestimable value, contrasted with the repetitions of organic form which we are compelled to give in vegetation. a really great artist dwells on every inch of exposed soil with care and delight, and renders it one of the most essential, speaking and pleasurable parts of his composition. and be it remembered, that the man who, in the most conspicuous part of his foreground, will violate truth with every stroke of the pencil, is not likely to be more careful in other parts of it; and that in the little bits which i fix upon for animadversion, i am not pointing out solitary faults, but only the most characteristic examples of the falsehood which is everywhere, and which renders the whole foreground one mass of contradictions and absurdities. nor do i myself see wherein the great difference lies between a master and a novice, except in the rendering of the finer truths, of which i am at present speaking. to handle the brush freely, and to paint grass and weeds with accuracy enough to satisfy the eye, are accomplishments which a year or two's practice will give any man; but to trace among the grass and weeds those mysteries of invention and combination, by which nature appeals to the intellect--to render the delicate fissure, and descending curve, and undulating shadow of the mouldering soil, with gentle and fine finger, like the touch of the rain itself--to find even in all that appears most trifling or contemptible, fresh evidence of the constant working of the divine power "for glory and for beauty," and to teach it and proclaim it to the unthinking and the unregardless--this, as it is the peculiar province and faculty of the master-mind, so it is the peculiar duty which is demanded of it by the deity. § . the ground of cuyp. § . and of claude. § . the entire weakness and childishness of the latter. § . compared with the work of turner. it would take me no reasonable nor endurable time, if i were to point out one half of the various kinds and classes of falsehood which the inventive faculties of the old masters succeeded in originating, in the drawing of foregrounds. it is not this man, nor that man, nor one school nor another; all agree in entire repudiation of everything resembling facts, and in the high degree of absurdity of what they substitute for them. even cuyp, who evidently saw and studied _near_ nature, as an artist should do--not fishing for idealities, but taking what nature gave him, and thanking her for it--even he appears to have supposed that the drawing of the earth might be trusted to chance or imagination, and, in consequence, strews his banks with lumps of dough, instead of stones. perhaps, however, the "beautiful foregrounds" of claude afford the most remarkable instances of childishness and incompetence of all. that of his morning landscape, with the large group of trees and high single-arched bridge, in the national gallery, is a pretty fair example of the kind of error which he constantly falls into. i will not say anything of the agreeable composition of the three banks, rising one behind another from the water. i merely affirm that it amounts to a demonstration that all three were painted in the artist's study, without any reference to nature whatever. in fact, there is quite enough intrinsic evidence in each of them to prove this, seeing that what appears to be meant for vegetation upon them, amounts to nothing more than a green stain on their surfaces, the more evidently false because the leaves of the trees twenty yards farther off are all perfectly visible and distinct; and that the sharp lines with which each cuts against that beyond it, are not only such as crumbling earth could never show or assume, but are maintained through their whole progress ungraduated, unchanging, and unaffected by any of the circumstances of varying shade to which every one of nature's lines is inevitably subjected. in fact, the whole arrangement is the impotent struggle of a tyro to express, by successive edges, that approach of earth which he finds himself incapable of expressing by the drawing of the surface. claude wished to make you understand that the edge of his pond came nearer and nearer: he had probably often tried to do this with an unbroken bank, or a bank only varied by the delicate and harmonized anatomy of nature; and he had found that owing to his total ignorance of the laws of perspective, such efforts on his part invariably ended in his reducing his pond to the form of a round o, and making it look perpendicular. much comfort and solace of mind, in such unpleasant circumstances, may be derived from instantly dividing the obnoxious bank into a number of successive promontories, and developing their edges with completeness and intensity. every school-girl's drawing, as soon as her mind has arrived at so great a degree of enlightenment as to perceive that perpendicular water is objectionable, will supply us with edifying instances of this unfailing resource; and this foreground of claude's is only one out of the thousand cases in which he has been reduced to it. and if it be asked, how the proceeding differs from that of nature, i have only to point to nature herself, as she is drawn in the foreground of turner's mercury and argus, a case precisely similar to claude's, of earthy crumbling banks cut away by water. it will be found in this picture (and i am now describing nature's work and turner's with the same words) that the whole distance is given by retirement of solid surface; and that if ever an edge is expressed, it is only felt for an instant, and then lost again; so that the eye cannot stop at it and prepare for a long jump to another like it, but is guided over it, and round it, into the hollow beyond; and thus the whole receding mass of ground, going back for more than a quarter of a mile, is made completely _one_--no part of it is separated from the rest for an instant--it is all united, and its modulations are _members_, not _divisions_ of its mass. but those modulations are countless--heaving here, sinking there--now swelling, now mouldering, now blending, now breaking--giving, in fact, to the foreground of this universal master, precisely the same qualities which we have before seen in his hills, as claude gave to his foreground precisely the same qualities which we had before found in _his_ hills,--infinite unity in the one case, finite division in the other. § . general features of turner's foreground. let us, then, having now obtained some insight into the principles of the old masters in foreground drawing, contrast them throughout with those of our great modern master. the investigation of the excellence of turner's drawing becomes shorter and easier as we proceed, because the great distinctions between his work and that of other painters are the same, whatever the object or subject may be; and after once showing the general characters of the particular specific forms under consideration, we have only to point, in the works of turner, to the same principles of infinity and variety in carrying them out, which we have before insisted upon with reference to other subjects. § . geological structure of his rocks in the fall of the tees. § . their convex surfaces and fractured edges. § . and perfect unity. § . various parts whose history is told us by the details of the drawing. the upper fall of the tees, yorkshire, engraved in the england series, may be given as a standard example of rock-drawing to be opposed to the work of salvator. we have, in the great face of rock which divides the two streams, horizontal lines which indicate the real direction of the strata, and these same lines are given in ascending perspective all along the precipice on the right. but we see also on the central precipice fissures absolutely vertical, which inform us of one series of joints dividing these horizontal strata; and the exceeding smoothness and evenness of the precipice itself inform us that it has been caused by a great separation of substance in the direction of another more important line of joints, running in a direction across the river. accordingly, we see on the left that the whole summit of the precipice is divided again and again by this great series of joints into vertical beds, which lie against each other with their sides towards us, and are traversed downwards by the same vertical lines traceable on the face of the central cliff. now, let me direct especial attention to the way in which turner has marked over this general and grand unity of structure, the modifying effects of the weather and the torrent. observe how the whole surface of the hill above the precipice on the left[ ] is brought into one smooth, unbroken curvature of gentle convexity, until it comes to the edge of the precipice, and then, just on the angle, (compare § ,) breaks into the multiplicity of fissure which marks its geological structure. observe how every one of the separate blocks, into which it divides, is rounded and convex in its salient edges turned to the weather, and how every one of their inward angles is marked clear and sharp by the determined shadow and transparent reflex. observe how exquisitely graceful are all the curves of the convex surfaces, indicating that every one of them has been modelled by the winding and undulating of running water; and how gradually they become steeper as they descend, until they are torn down into the face of the precipice. finally, observe the exquisite variety of all the touches which express fissure or shade; every one in varying directions and with new forms, and yet throughout indicating that perfect parallelism which at once explained to us the geology of the rock, and falling into one grand mass, treated with the same simplicity of light and shade which a great portrait painter adopts in treating the features of the human face; which, though each has its own separate chiaroscuro, never disturb the wholeness and grandeur of the head, considered as one ball or mass. so here, one deep and marked piece of shadow indicates the greatest proximity of the rounded mass; and from this every shade becomes fainter and fainter, until all are lost in the obscurity and dimness of the hanging precipice and the shattering fall. again, see how the same fractures just upon the edge take place with the central cliff above the right-hand fall, and how the force of the water is told us by the confusion of débris accumulated in its channel. in fact, the great quality about turner's drawings which more especially proves their transcendent truth, is the capability they afford us of reasoning on past and future phenomena, just as if we had the actual rocks before us; for this indicates not that one truth is given, nor another, not that a pretty or interesting morsel has been selected here and there, but that the whole truth has been given, with all the relations of its parts; so that we can pick and choose our points of pleasure or of thought for ourselves, and reason upon the whole with the same certainty which we should after having climbed and hammered over the rocks bit by bit. with this drawing before him, a geologist could give a lecture upon the whole system of aqueous erosion, and speculate as safely upon the past and future states of this very spot, as if he were standing and getting wet with the spray. he would tell you, at once, that the waterfall was in a state of rapid recession; that it had once formed a wide cataract just at the spot where the figure is sitting on the heap of débris; and that when it was there, part of it came down by the channel on the left, its bed being still marked by the delicately chiselled lines of fissure. he would tell you that the foreground had also once been the top of the fall, and that the vertical fissures on the right of it were evidently then the channel of a side stream. he would tell you that the fall was then much lower than it is now, and that being lower, it had less force, and cut itself a narrower bed; and that the spot where it reached the higher precipice is marked by the expansion of the wide basin which its increased violence has excavated, and by the gradually increasing concavity of the rocks below, which we see have been hollowed into a complete vault by the elastic bound of the water. but neither he nor i could tell you with what exquisite and finished marking of every fragment and particle of soil or rock, both in its own structure and the evidence it bears of these great influences, the whole of this is confirmed and carried out. § . beautiful instance of an exception to general rules in the llanthony. with this inimitable drawing we may compare the rocks in the foreground of the llanthony. these latter are not divided by joints, but into thin horizontal and united beds, which the torrent in its times of flood has chiselled away, leaving one exposed under another, with the sweeping marks of its eddies upon their edges. and here we have an instance of an exception to a general rule, occasioned by particular and local action. we have seen that the action of water over any surface _universally_, whether falling, as in rain, or sweeping, as a torrent, induces convexity of form. but when we have rocks _in situ_, as here, exposed at their edges to the violent action of an eddy, that eddy will cut a vault or circular space for itself, (as we saw on a large scale with the high waterfall,) and we have a concave curve interrupting the general contours of the rock. and thus turner (while every edge of his masses is rounded, and, the moment we rise above the level of the water, all is convex) has interrupted the great contours of his strata with concave curves, precisely where the last waves of the torrent have swept against the exposed edges of the beds. nothing could more strikingly prove the depth of that knowledge by which every touch of this consummate artist is regulated, that universal command of subject which never acts for a moment on anything conventional or habitual, but fills every corner and space with new evidence of knowledge, and fresh manifestation of thought. § . turner's drawing of detached blocks of weathered stone. the lower fall of the tees, with the chain-bridge, might serve us for an illustration of all the properties and forms of vertical beds of rock, as the upper fall has of horizontal; but we pass rather to observe, in detached pieces of foreground, the particular modulation of parts which cannot be investigated in the grand combinations of general mass. the blocks of stone which form the foreground of the ulleswater are, i believe, the finest example in the world of the finished drawing of rocks which have been subjected to violent aqueous action. their surfaces seem to palpitate from the fine touch of the waves, and every part of them is rising or falling in soft swell or gentle depression, though the eye can scarcely trace the fine shadows on which this chiselling of the surface depends. and with all this, every block of them has individual character, dependent on the expression of the angular lines of which its contours were first formed, and which is retained and felt through all the modulation and melting of the water-worn surface. and what is done here in the most important part of the picture, to be especially attractive to the eye, is often done by turner with lavish and overwhelming power, in the accumulated débris of a wide foreground, strewed with the ruin of ages, as, for instance, in the junction of the greta and tees, where he has choked the torrent bed with a mass of shattered rock, thrown down with the profusion and carelessness of nature herself; and yet every separate block is a study, (and has evidently been drawn from nature,) chiselled and varied in its parts, as if it were to be the chief member of a separate subject; yet without ever losing, in a single instance, its subordinate position, or occasioning, throughout the whole accumulated multitude, the repetition of a single line. § . and of complicated foreground. i consider cases like these, of perfect finish and new conception, applied and exerted in the drawing of every member of a confused and almost countlessly-divided system, about the most wonderful, as well as the most characteristic passages of turner's foregrounds. it is done not less marvellously, though less distinctly, in the individual parts of all his broken ground, as in examples like these of separate blocks. the articulation of such a passage as the nearest bank, in the picture we have already spoken of at so great length, the upper fall of the tees, might serve us for a day's study, if we were to go into it part by part; but it is impossible to do this, except with the pencil; we can only repeat the same general observations, about eternal change and unbroken unity, and tell you to observe how the eye is kept throughout on solid and retiring surfaces, instead of being thrown, as by claude, on flat and equal edges. you cannot find a single edge in turner's work; you are everywhere kept upon round surfaces, and you go back on these you cannot tell how--never taking a leap, but progressing imperceptibly along the unbroken bank, till you find yourself a quarter of a mile into the picture, beside the figure at the bottom of the waterfall. § . and of loose soil. finally, the bank of earth on the right of the grand drawing of penmaen mawr, may be taken as the standard of the representation of soft soil modelled by descending rain; and may serve to show us how exquisite in character are the resultant lines, and how full of every species of attractive and even sublime quality, if we only are wise enough not to scorn the study of them. the higher the mind, it may be taken as a universal rule, the less it will scorn that which appears to be small or unimportant; and the rank of a painter may always be determined by observing how he uses, and with what respect he views the minutiæ of nature. greatness of mind is not shown by admitting small things, but by making small things great under its influence. he who can take no interest in what is small, will take false interest in what is great; he who cannot make a bank sublime, will make a mountain ridiculous. § . the unison of all in the ideal foregrounds of the academy pictures. § . and the great lesson to be received from all. it is not until we have made ourselves acquainted with these simple facts of form, as they are illustrated by the slighter works of turner, that we can become at all competent to enjoy the combination of all, in such works as the mercury and argus, or bay of baiæ, in which the mind is at first bewildered by the abundant outpouring of the master's knowledge. often as i have paused before these noble works, i never felt on returning to them as if i had ever seen them before; for their abundance is so deep and various that the mind, according to its own temper at the time of seeing, perceives some new series of truths rendered in them, just as it would on revisiting a natural scene; and detects new relations and associations of these truths which set the whole picture in a different light at every return to it. and this effect is especially caused by the management of the foreground; for the more marked objects of the picture may be taken one by one, and thus examined and known; but the foregrounds of turner are so united in all their parts that the eye cannot take them by divisions, but is guided from stone to stone, and bank to bank, discovering truths totally different in aspect, according to the direction in which it approaches them, and approaching them in a different direction, and viewing them as a part of a new system, every time that it begins its course at a new point. one lesson, however, we are invariably taught by all, however approached or viewed,--that the work of the great spirit of nature is as deep and unapproachable in the lowest as in the noblest objects,--that the divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth; and that to the rightly perceiving mind, there is the same infinity, the same majesty, the same power, the same unity, and the same perfection, manifest in the casting of the clay as in the scattering of the cloud, in the mouldering of the dust as in the kindling of the day-star. footnotes [ ] i have cut out a passage in this place which insisted on the _angular_ character of rocks,--not because it was false, but because it was incomplete, and i cannot explain it nor complete it without example. it is not the absence of curves, but the suggestion of _hardness through_ curves, and of the under tendencies of the inward structure, which form the true characteristics of rock form; and salvator, whom neither here nor elsewhere i have abused enough, is not wrong because he paints curved rocks, but because his curves are the curves of ribbons and not of rocks; and the difference between rock curvature and other curvature i cannot explain verbally, but i hope to do it hereafter by illustration; and, at present, let the reader study the rock-drawing of the mont st. gothard subject, in the liber studiorum, and compare it with any examples of salvator to which he may happen to have access. all the account of rocks here given is altogether inadequate, and i only do not alter it because i first wish to give longer study to the subject. [ ] a passage which i happened to see in an essay of mr. pyne's, in the art-union, about nature's "foisting rubbish" upon the artist, sufficiently explains the cause of this decline. if mr. pyne will go to nature, as all great men have done, and as all men who mean to be great must do, that is not merely to be _helped_, but to be _taught_ by her; and will once or twice take her gifts, without looking them in the mouth, he will most assuredly find--and i say this in no unkind or depreciatory feeling, for i should say the same of all artists who are in the habit of only sketching nature, and not studying her--that _her_ worst is better than _his_ best. i am quite sure that if mr. pyne, or any other painter who has hitherto been very careful in his choice of subject, will go into the next turnpike-road, and taking the first four trees that he comes to in the hedge, give them a day each, drawing them leaf for leaf, as far as may be, and even their smallest boughs with as much care as if they were rivers, or an important map of a newly-surveyed country, he will find, when he has brought them all home, that at least three out of the four are better than the best he ever invented. compare part iii. sect. i. chap. iii. § , , (the reference in the note ought to be to chap. xv. § .) [ ] in the light between the waterfall and the large dark mass on the extreme right. section v. of truth of water. chapter i. of water, as painted by the ancients. § . sketch of the functions and infinite agency of water. of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. if we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen; then as it exists in the form of the torrent--in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal element for glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow its eternal changefulness of feeling? it is like trying to paint a soul. § . the ease with which a common representation of it may be given. the impossibility of a faithful one. to suggest the ordinary appearance of calm water--to lay on canvas as much evidence of surface and reflection as may make us understand that water is meant--is, perhaps, the easiest task of art; and even ordinary running or falling water may be sufficiently rendered, by observing careful curves of projection with a dark ground, and breaking a little white over it, as we see done with judgment and truth by ruysdael. but to paint the actual play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of water when it begins to show itself--to give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea waves, so exquisitely modelled, though so mockingly transient--so mountainous in its form, yet so cloud-like in its motion--with its variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple and wreath has some peculiar passage of reflection upon itself alone, and the radiating and scintillating sunbeams are mixed with the dim hues of transparent depth and dark rock below;--to do this perfectly, is beyond the power of man; to do it even partially, has been granted to but one or two, even of those few who have dared to attempt it. § . difficulty of properly dividing the subject. as the general laws which govern the appearances of water have equal effect on all its forms, it would be injudicious to treat the subject in divisions; for the same forces which govern the waves and foam of the torrent, are equally influential on those of the sea; and it will be more convenient to glance generally at the system of water-painting of each school and artist, than to devote separate chapters to the examination of the lake, river, or sea-painting of all. we shall, therefore, vary our usual plan, and look first at the water-painting of the ancients; then at that of the moderns generally; lastly, at that of turner. § . inaccuracy of study of water-effect among all painters. it is necessary in the outset to state briefly one or two of the optical conditions by which the appearance of the surface of water is affected; to describe them all would require a separate essay, even if i possessed the requisite knowledge, which i do not. the accidental modifications under which general laws come into play are innumerable, and often, in their extreme complexity, inexplicable, i suppose, even by men of the most extended optical knowledge. what i shall here state are a few only of the broadest laws verifiable by the reader's immediate observation, but of which nevertheless, i have found artists frequently ignorant; owing to their habit of sketching from nature without thinking or reasoning, and especially of finishing at home. it is not often, i believe, that an artist draws the reflections in water as he sees them; over large spaces, and in weather that is not very calm, it is nearly impossible to do so; when it is possible, sometimes in haste, and sometimes in idleness, and sometimes under the idea of improving nature, they are slurred or misrepresented; it is so easy to give something like a suggestive resemblance of calm water, that, even when the landscape is finished from nature, the water is merely indicated as something that may be done at any time, and then, in the home work, come the cold leaden grays with some, and the violent blues and greens with others, and the horizontal lines with the feeble, and the bright touches and sparkles with the dexterous, and everything that is shallow and commonplace with all. now, the fact is, that there is hardly a roadside pond or pool which has not as much landscape _in_ it as above it. it is not the brown, muddy, dull thing we suppose it to be; it has a heart like ourselves, and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall trees, and the blades of the shaking-grass, and all manner of hues, of variable, pleasant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly gutter, that stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of the foul city, is not altogether base; down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see the dark, serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds. it is at your own will that you see in that despised stream, either the refuse of the street, or the image of the sky--so it is with almost all other things that we unkindly despise. now, this farseeing is just the difference between the great and the vulgar painter; the common man _knows_ the roadside pool is muddy, and draws its mud; the great painter sees beneath and behind the brown surface what will take him a day's work to follow, but he follows it, cost what it will. and if painters would only go out to the nearest common and take the nearest dirty pond among the furze, and draw that thoroughly, not considering that it is water that they are drawing, and that water must be done in a certain way; but drawing determinedly what they _see_, that is to say, all the trees, and their shaking leaves, and all the hazy passages of disturbing sunshine; and the bottom seen in the clearer little bits at the edge, and the stones of it, and all the sky, and the clouds far down in the middle, drawn as completely, and more delicately they must be, than the real clouds above, they would come home with such a notion of water-painting as might save me and every one else all trouble of writing more about the matter; but now they do nothing of the kind, but take the ugly, round, yellow surface for granted, or else improve it, and, instead of giving that refined, complex, delicate, but saddened and gloomy reflection in the polluted water, they clear it up with coarse flashes of yellow, and green, and blue, and spoil their own eyes, and hurt ours; failing, of course, still more hopelessly in touching the pure, inimitable light of waves thrown loose; and so canaletto is still thought to have painted canals, and vandevelde and backhuysen to have painted sea, and the uninterpreted streams and maligned sea hiss shame upon us from all their rocky beds and hollow shores. § . difficulty of treating this part of the subject. i approach this part of my subject with more despondency than any other, and that for several reasons; first, the water painting of all the elder landscape painters, excepting a few of the better passages of claude and ruysdael, is so execrable, so beyond all expression and explanation bad; claude's and ruysdael's best so cold and valueless, that i do not know how to address those who like such painting; i do not know what their sensations are respecting sea. i can perceive nothing in vandevelde or backhuysen of the lowest redeeming merit; no power, no presence of intellect--or evidence of perception--of any sort or kind; no resemblance--even the feeblest--of anything natural; no invention--even the most sluggish--of anything agreeable. had they given us staring green seas with hatchet edges, such as we see her majesty's ships so-and-so fixed into by the heads or sterns in the first room of the royal academy, the admiration of them would have been comprehensible; there being a natural predilection in the mind of men for green waves with curling tops, but not for clay and wool; so that though i can understand, in some sort, why people admire everything else in old art, why they admire salvator's rocks, and claude's foregrounds, and hobbima's trees, and paul potter's cattle, and jan steen's pans; and while i can perceive in all these likings a root which seems right and legitimate, and to be appealed to; yet when i find they can even _endure_ the _sight_ of a backhuysen on their room walls (i speak seriously) it makes me hopeless at once. i may be wrong, or they may be wrong, but at least i can conceive of no principle or opinion common between us, which either can address or understand in the other; and yet i am wrong in this want of conception, for i know that turner once liked vandevelde, and i can trace the evil influence of vandevelde on most of his early sea painting, but turner certainly could not have liked vandevelde without _some_ legitimate cause. another discouraging point is that i cannot catch a wave, nor daguerreotype it, and so there is no coming to pure demonstration; but the forms and hues of water must always be in some measure a matter of dispute and feeling, and the more so because there is no perfect or even tolerably perfect sea painting to refer to: the sea never has been, and i fancy never will be nor can be painted; it is only suggested by means of more or less spiritual and intelligent conventionalism; and though turner has done enough to suggest the sea mightily and gloriously, after all it is by conventionalism still, and there remains so much that is unlike nature, that it is always possible for those who do not feel his power to justify their dislike, on very sufficient and reasonable grounds; and to maintain themselves obstinately unreceptant of the good, by insisting on the deficiency which no mortal hand can supply, and which commonly is most manifest on the one hand, where most has been achieved on the other. with calm water the case is different. facts are ascertainable and demonstrable there, and by the notice of one or two of the simplest, we may obtain some notion of the little success and intelligence of the elder painters in this easier field, and so prove their probable failure in contending with greater difficulties. § . general laws which regulate the phenomena of water. first, the imperfection of its reflective surface. first: water, of course, owing to its transparency, possesses not a perfectly reflective surface, like that of speculum metal, but a surface whose reflective power is dependent on the angle at which the rays to be reflected fall. the smaller this angle, the greater are the number of rays reflected. now, according to the number of rays reflected is the force of the image of objects above, and according to the number of rays transmitted is the perceptibility of objects below the water. hence the visible transparency and reflective power of water are in inverse ratio. in looking down into it from above, we receive transmitted rays which exhibit either the bottom, or the objects floating in the water; or else if the water be deep and clear, we receive very few rays, and the water looks black. in looking along water we receive reflected rays, and therefore the image of objects above it. hence, in shallow water on a level shore the bottom is seen at our feet, clearly; it becomes more and more obscure as it retires, even though the water do not increase in depth, and at a distance of twelve or twenty yards--more or less according to our height above the water--becomes entirely invisible, lost in the lustre of the reflected surface. § . the inherent hue of water modifies dark reflections, and does not affect bright ones. second: the brighter the objects reflected, the larger the angle at which reflection is visible; it is always to be remembered that, strictly speaking, only light objects are reflected, and that the darker ones are seen only in proportion to the number of rays of light that they can send; so that a dark object comparatively loses its power to affect the surface of water, and the water in the space of a dark reflection is seen partially with the image of the object, and partially transparent. it will be found on observation that under a bank--suppose with dark trees above showing spaces of bright sky, the bright sky is reflected distinctly, and the bottom of the water is in those spaces not seen; but in the dark spaces of reflection we see the bottom of the water, and the color of that bottom and of the water itself mingles with and modifies that of the color of the trees casting the dark reflection. this is one of the most beautiful circumstances connected with water surface, for by these means a variety of color and a grace and evanescence are introduced in the reflection otherwise impossible. of course at great distances even the darkest objects cast distinct images, and the hue of the water cannot be seen, but in near water the occurrence of its own color modifying the dark reflections, while it leaves light ones unaffected, is of infinite value. take, by way of example, an extract from my own diary at venice. "may th, p.m. looking east the water is calm, and reflects the sky and vessels, with this peculiarity; the sky, which is pale blue, is in its reflection of the same kind of blue, only a little deeper; but the _vessels' hulls, which are black, are reflected in pale sea green_, _i.e._, the natural color of the water under sunlight; while the _orange masts_ of the vessels, wet with a recent shower, are reflected _without change of color_, only not quite so bright as above. one ship has a white, another a red stripe," (i ought to have said horizontal along the gunwales,) '_of these the water takes no notice_.' "what is curious, a boat passes across with white and dark figures, the water reflects the dark ones in green, and misses out all the white; this is chiefly owing to the dark images being opposed to the bright reflected sky." i have left the passage about the white and red stripe, because it will be useful to us presently; all that i wish to insist upon here is the showing of the local color (pea green) of the water in the spaces which were occupied by dark reflections, and the unaltered color of the bright ones. § . water takes no shadow. third: clear water takes no shadow, and that for two reasons; a perfect surface of speculum metal takes no shadow, (this the reader may instantly demonstrate for himself,) and a perfectly transparent body as air takes no shadow; hence water, whether transparent or reflective, takes no shadow. but shadows, or the forms of them, appear on water frequently and sharply: it is necessary carefully to explain the causes of these, as they are one of the most eminent sources of error in water painting. first: water in shade is much more reflective than water in sunlight. under sunlight the local color of the water is commonly vigorous and active, and forcibly affects, as we have seen, all the dark reflections, commonly diminishing their depth. under shade, the reflective power is in a high degree increased,[ ] and it will be found most frequently that the forms of shadows are expressed on the surface of water, not by actual shade, but by more genuine reflection of objects above. this is another most important and valuable circumstance, and we owe to it some phenomena of the highest beauty. a very muddy river, as the arno for instance at florence, is seen during sunshine of its own yellow color, rendering all reflections discolored and feeble. at twilight it recovers its reflective power to the fullest extent, and the mountains of carrara are seen reflected in it as clearly as if it were a crystalline lake. the mediterranean, whose determined blue yields to hardly any modifying color in daytime, receives at evening the image of its rocky shores. on our own seas, seeming shadows are seen constantly cast in purple and blue, upon pale green. these are no shadows, but the pure reflection of dark or blue sky above, seen in the shadowed space, refused by the local color of the sea in the sunlighted spaces, and turned more or less purple by the opposition of the vivid green. § . modification of dark reflections by shadow. we have seen, however, above, that the local color of water, while it comparatively refuses dark reflections, accepts bright ones without deadening them. hence when a shadow is thrown across a space of water of strong local color, receiving, alternately, light and dark reflections, it has no power of increasing the reflectiveness of the water in the bright spaces, still less of diminishing it; hence, on all the dark reflections it is seen more or less distinctly, on all the light ones it vanishes altogether. let us take an instance of the exquisite complexity of effect induced by these various circumstances in co-operation. suppose a space of clear water showing the bottom under a group of trees, showing sky through their branches, casting shadows on the surface of the water, which we will suppose also to possess some color of its own. close to us, we shall see the bottom, with the shadows of the trees clearly thrown upon it, and the color of the water seen in its genuineness by transmitted light. farther off, the bottom will be gradually lost sight of, but it will be seen in the dark reflections much farther than in the light ones. at last it ceases to affect even the former, and the pure surface effect takes place. the blue bright sky is reflected truly, but the dark trees are reflected imperfectly, and the color of the water is seen instead. where the shadow falls on these dark reflections a darkness is seen plainly, which is found to be composed of the pure clear reflection of the dark trees; when it crosses the reflection of the sky, the shadow of course, being thus fictitious, vanishes. farther, of course on whatever dust and other foulness may be present in water, real shadow falls clear and dark in proportion to the quantity of solid substance present. on very muddy rivers, real shadow falls in sunlight nearly as sharply as on land; on our own sea, the apparent shadow caused by increased reflection, is much increased in depth by the chalkiness and impurity of the water. farther, when surface is rippled, every ripple, up to a certain variable distance on each side of the spectator, and at a certain angle between him and the sun, varying with the size and shape of the ripples, reflects to him a small image of the sun. hence those dazzling fields of expanding light so often seen upon the sea. any object that comes between the sun and these ripples, takes from them the power of reflecting the sun, and in consequence, all their light; hence any intervening objects cast apparent shadows upon such spaces of intense force, and of the exact shape, and in the exact place of real shadows, and yet which are no more real shadows than the withdrawal of an image of a piece of white paper from a mirror is a shadow on the mirror. farther, in all shallow water, more or less in proportion to its shallowness, but in some measure, i suppose, up to depths of forty or fifty fathoms, and perhaps more, the local color of the water depends in great measure on light reflected from the bottom. this, however, is especially manifest in clear rivers like the rhone, where the absence of the light reflected from below forms an apparent shadow, often visibly detached some distance from the floating object which casts it. § . examples on the water of the rhone. the following extract from my own diary at geneva, with the subsequent one, which is a continuation of that already given in part at venice, will illustrate both this and the other points we have been stating. "geneva, _ st april, morning._ "the sunlight falls from the cypresses of rousseau's island straight towards the bridge. the shadows of the bridge and of the trees fall on the water in leaden purple, opposed to its general hue of aquamarine green. this green color is caused by the light being reflected from the bottom, though the bottom is not seen; as is evident by its becoming paler towards the middle of the river, where the water shoals, on which pale part the purple shadow of the small bridge falls most forcibly, which shadow, however, is still only apparent, being the absence of this reflected light, associated with the increased reflective power of the water, which in those spaces reflects blue sky above. a boat swings in the shoal water; its reflection is cast in a transparent pea-green, which is considerably darker than the pale aquamarine of the surface at the spot. its shadow is detached from it just about half the depth of the reflection; which, therefore, forms a bright green light between the keel of the boat and its shadow; where the shadow cuts the reflection, the reflection is darkest and something like the true color of the boat; where the shadow falls out of the reflection, it is of a leaden purple, pale. the boat is at an angle of about ° below. another boat nearer, in deeper water, shows no shadow, whatsoever, and the reflection is marked by its transparent green, while the surrounding water takes a lightish blue reflection from the sky." the above notes, after what has been said, require no comment; but one more case must be stated belonging to rough water. every large wave of the sea is in ordinary circumstances divided into, or rather covered by, innumerable smaller waves, each of which, in all probability, from some of its edges or surfaces reflects the sunbeams; and hence result a glitter, polish, and vigorous light over the whole flank of the wave, which are, of course, instantly withdrawn within the space of a cast shadow, whose form, therefore, though it does not affect the great body or ground of the water in the least, is sufficiently traceable by the withdrawal of the high lights; also every string and wreath of foam above or within the wave takes real shadow, and thus adds to the impression. i have not stated one-half of the circumstances which produce or influence effects of shadow on water; but lest i should confuse or weary the reader, i leave him to pursue the subject for himself; enough having been stated to establish this general principle, that whenever shadow is seen on clear water, and, in a measure, even on foul water, it is not, as on land, a dark shade subduing where it falls the sunny general hue to a lower tone; but it is a space of an entirely different color, subject itself, by its susceptibility of reflection, to infinite varieties of depth and hue, and liable, under certain circumstances, to disappear altogether; and that, therefore, whenever we have to paint such shadows, it is not only the hue of the water itself that we have to consider, but all the circumstances by which in the position attributed to them such shaded spaces could be affected. § . effect of ripple on distant water. fourth: if water be rippled, the side of every ripple next to us reflects a piece of the sky, and the side of every ripple farthest from us reflects a piece of the opposite shore, or of whatever objects may be beyond the ripple. but as we soon lose sight of the farther sides of the ripples on the retiring surface, the whole rippled space will then be reflective of the sky only. thus, where calm distant water receives reflections of high shores, every extent of rippled surface appears as a bright line interrupting that reflection with the color of the sky. § . elongation of reflections by moving water. fifth: when a ripple or swell is seen at such an angle as to afford a view of its farther side, it carries the reflection of objects farther down than calm water would. therefore all motion in water elongates reflections, and throws them into confused vertical lines. the real amount of this elongation is not distinctly visible, except in the case of very bright objects, and especially of lights, as of the sun, moon, or lamps by a river shore, whose reflections are hardly ever seen as circles or points, which of course they are on perfectly calm water, but as long streams of tremulous light. but it is strange that while we are constantly in the habit of seeing the reflection of the sun, which ought to be a mere circle, elongated into a stream of light extending from the horizon to the shore, the elongation of the reflection of a sail or other object to one-half of this extent is received, if represented in a picture, with incredulity by the greater number of spectators. in one of turner's venices the image of the white lateen-sails of the principal boat is about twice as long as the sails themselves. i have heard the truth of this simple effect disputed over and over again by intelligent persons, and yet on any water so exposed as the lagoons of venice, the periods are few and short when there is so little motion as that the reflection of sails a mile off shall not affect the swell within six feet of the spectator. there is, however, a strange arbitrariness about this elongation of reflection, which prevents it from being truly felt. if we see on an extent of lightly swelling water surface the image of a bank of white clouds, with masses of higher accumulation at intervals, the water will not usually reflect the whole bank in an elongated form, but it will commonly take the eminent parts, and reflect them in long straight columns of defined breadth, and miss the intermediate lower parts altogether; and even in doing this it will be capricious, for it will take one eminence, and miss another, with no apparent reason; and often when the sky is covered with white clouds, some of those clouds will cast long tower-like reflections, and others none, so arbitrarily that the spectator is often puzzled to find out which are the accepted and which the refused. in many cases of this kind it will be found rather that the eye is, from want of use and care, insensible to the reflection than that the reflection is not there; and a little thought and careful observation will show us that what we commonly suppose to be a surface of uniform color is, indeed, affected more or less by an infinite variety of hues, prolonged, like the sun image, from a great distance, and that our apprehension of its lustre, purity, and even of its surface, is in no small degree dependent on our feeling of these multitudinous hues, which the continual motion of that surface prevents us from analyzing or understanding for what they are. § . effect of rippled water on horizontal and inclined images. sixth: rippled water, of which we can see the farther side of the waves, will reflect a perpendicular line clearly, a bit of its length being given on the side of each wave, and easily joined by the eye. but if the line slope, its reflection will be excessively confused and disjointed; and if horizontal, nearly invisible. it was this circumstance which prevented the red and white stripe of the ships at venice, noticed above, from being visible. § . to what extent reflection is visible from above. seventh: every reflection is the image in reverse of just so much of the objects beside the water, as we could see if we were placed as much under the level of the water as we are actually above it. if an object be so far back from the bank, that if we were five feet under the water level we could not see it over the bank, then, standing five feet above the water, we shall not be able to see its image under the reflected bank. hence the reflection of all objects that have any slope back from the water is shortened, and at last disappears as we rise above it. lakes seen from a great height appear like plates of metal set in the landscape, reflecting the sky but none of their shores. § . deflection of images on agitated water. eighth: any given point of the object above the water is reflected, if reflected at all, at some spot in a vertical line beneath it, so long as the plane of the water is horizontal. on rippled water a slight deflection sometimes takes place, and the image of a vertical tower will slope a little away from the wind, owing to the casting of the image on the sloping sides of the ripples. on the sloping sides of large waves the deflection is in proportion to the slope. for rough practice, after the slope of the wave is determined, let the artist turn his paper until it becomes horizontal, and then paint the reflections of any object upon it as on level water, and he will be right. § . necessity of watchfulness as well as of science. licenses, how taken by great men. such are the most common and general optical laws which are to be taken into consideration in the painting of water. yet, in the application of them, as tests of good or bad water painting, we must be cautious in the extreme. an artist may know all these laws, and comply with them, and yet paint water execrably; and he may be ignorant of every one of them, and, in their turn, and in certain places, violate every one of them, and yet paint water gloriously. thousands of exquisite effects take place in nature, utterly inexplicable, and which can be believed only while they are seen; the combinations and applications of the above laws are so varied and complicated that no knowledge or labor could, if applied analytically, keep pace with them. constant and eager watchfulness, and portfolios filled with actual statements of water-effect, drawn on the spot and on the instant, are worth more to the painter than the most extended optical knowledge; without these all his knowledge will end in a pedantic falsehood. with these it does not matter how gross or how daring here and there may be his violations of this or that law; his very transgressions will be admirable. it may be said, that this is a dangerous principle to advance in these days of idleness. i cannot help it; it is true, and must be affirmed. of all contemptible criticism, the most to be contemned is that which punishes great works of art when they fight without armor, and refuses to feel or acknowledge the great spiritual refracted sun of their truth, because it has risen at a false angle, and burst upon them before its appointed time. and yet, on the other hand, let it be observed that it is not feeling, nor fancy, nor imagination, so called, that i have put before science, but watchfulness, experience, affection and trust in nature; and farther let it be observed, that there is a difference between the license taken by one man and another, which makes one license admirable, and the other punishable; and that this difference is of a kind sufficiently discernible by every earnest person, though it is not so explicable as that we can beforehand say where and when, or even to whom, the license is to be forgiven. in the paradise of tintoret, in the academy of venice, the angel is seen in the distance driving adam and eve out of the garden. not, for tintoret, the leading to the gate with consolation or counsel; his strange ardor of conception is seen here as everywhere. full speed they fly, the angel and the human creatures; the angel wrapt in an orb of light floats on, stooped forward in his fierce flight, and does not touch the ground; the chastised creatures rush before him in abandoned terror. all this might have been invented by another, though in other hands it would assuredly have been offensive; but one circumstance which completes the story could have been thought of or dared by none but tintoret. the angel casts a shadow before him towards adam and eve. now that a globe of light should cast a shadow is a license, as far as mere optical matters are concerned, of the most audacious kind. but how beautiful is the circumstance in its application here, showing that the angel, who is light to all else around him, is darkness to those whom he is commissioned to banish forever. i have before noticed the license of rubens in making his horizon an oblique line. his object is to carry the eye to a given point in the distance. the road winds to it, the clouds fly at it, the trees nod to it, a flock of sheep scamper towards it, a carter points his whip at it, his horses pull for it, the figures push for it, and the horizon slopes to it. if the horizon had been horizontal, it would have embarrassed everything and everybody. in turner's pas de calais there is a buoy poised on the ridge of a near wave. it casts its reflection vertically down the flank of the wave, which slopes steeply. i cannot tell whether this is a license or a mistake; i suspect the latter, for the same thing occurs not unfrequently in turner's seas; but i am almost certain that it would have been done wilfully in this case, even had the mistake been pointed out, for the vertical line is necessary to the picture, and the eye is so little accustomed to catch the real bearing of the reflections on the slopes of waves that it does not feel the fault. § . various licenses or errors in water painting of claude, cuyp, vandevelde. in one of the smaller rooms of the uffizii at florence, off the tribune, there are two so-called claudes; one a pretty wooded landscape, i think a copy, the other a marine with architecture, very sweet and genuine. the sun is setting at the side of the picture, it casts a long stream of light upon the water. this stream of light is oblique, and comes from the horizon, where it is under the sun, to a point near the centre of the picture. if this had been done as a license, it would be an instance of most absurd and unjustifiable license, as the fault is detected by the eye in a moment, and there is no occasion nor excuse for it. but i imagine it to be an instance rather of the harm of imperfect science. taking his impression instinctively from nature, claude usually did what is right and put his reflection vertically under the sun; probably, however, he had read in some treatise on optics that every point in this reflection was in a vertical plane between the sun and spectator; or he might have noticed walking on the shore that the reflection came straight from the sun to his feet, and intending to indicate the position of the spectator, drew in his next picture the reflection sloping to the supposed point, the error being excusable enough, and plausible enough to have been lately revived and systematized.[ ] in the picture of cuyp, no. in the dulwich gallery, the post at the end of the bank casts three or four radiating reflections. this is visibly neither license nor half science, but pure ignorance. again, in the picture attributed to paul potter, no. , dulwich gallery, i believe most people must feel, the moment they look at it, that there is something wrong with the water, that it looks odd, and hard, and like ice or lead; and though they may not be able to tell the reason of the impression--for when they go near they will find it smooth and lustrous, and prettily painted--yet they will not be able to shake off the unpleasant sense of its being like a plate of bad mirror set in a model landscape among moss, rather than like a pond. the reason is, that while this water receives clear reflections from the fence and hedge on the left, and is everywhere smooth and evidently capable of giving true images, it yet reflects none of the cows. in the vandevelde ( ) there is not a line of ripple or swell in any part of the sea; it is absolutely windless, and the near boat casts its image with great fidelity, which being unprolonged downwards informs us that the calm is perfect, (rule v.,) and being unshortened informs us that we are on a level with the water, or nearly so. (rule vii.) yet underneath the vessel on the right, the gray shade which stands for reflection breaks off immediately, descending like smoke a little way below the hull, then leaving the masts and sails entirely unrecorded. this i imagine to be not ignorance, but unjustifiable license. vandevelde evidently desired to give an impression of great extent of surface, and thought that if he gave the reflection more faithfully, as the tops of the masts would come down to the nearest part of the surface, they would destroy the evidence of distance, and appear to set the ship above the boat instead of beyond it. i doubt not in such awkward hands that such would indeed have been the case, but he is not on that account to be excused for painting his surface with gray horizontal lines, as is done by nautically-disposed children; for no destruction of distance in the ocean is so serious a loss as that of its liquidity. it is better to feel a want of extent in the sea, than an extent which we might walk upon or play at billiards upon. § . and canaletto. among all the pictures of canaletto, which i have ever seen, and they are not a few, i remember but one or two where there is any variation from one method of treatment of the water. he almost always covers the whole space of it with one monotonous ripple, composed of a coat of well-chosen, but perfectly opaque and smooth sea-green, covered with a certain number, i cannot state the exact average, but it varies from three hundred and fifty to four hundred and upwards, according to the extent of canvas to be covered, of white concave touches, which are very properly symbolical of ripple. and, as the canal retires back from the eye, he very geometrically diminishes the size of his ripples, until he arrives at an even field of apparently smooth water. by our sixth rule, this rippling water as it retires should show more and more of the reflection of the sky above it, and less and less of that of objects beyond it, until, at two or three hundred yards down the canal, the whole field of water should be one even gray or blue, the color of the sky receiving no reflections whatever of other objects. what does canaletto do? exactly in proportion as he retires, he displays _more_ and _more_ of the reflection of objects, and less and less of the sky, until, three hundred yards away, all the houses are reflected as clear and sharp as in a quiet lake. this, again, is wilful and inexcusable violation of truth, of which the reason, as in the last case, is the painter's consciousness of weakness. it is one of the most difficult things in the world to express the light reflection of the blue sky on a distant ripple, and to make the eye understand the cause of the color, and the motion of the apparently smooth water, especially where there are buildings above to be reflected, for the eye never understands the want of the reflection. but it is the easiest and most agreeable thing in the world to give the inverted image: it occupies a vast space of otherwise troublesome distance in the simplest way possible, and is understood by the eye at once. hence canaletto is glad, as any other inferior workman would be, not to say obliged, to give the reflections in the distance. but when he comes up close to the spectator, he finds the smooth surface just as troublesome near, as the ripple would have been far off. it is a very nervous thing for an ignorant artist to have a great space of vacant smooth water to deal with, close to him, too far down to take reflections from buildings, and yet which must be made to look flat and retiring and transparent. canaletto, with his sea-green, did not at all feel himself equal to anything of this kind, and had therefore no resource but in the white touches above described, which occupy the alarming space without any troublesome necessity for knowledge or invention, and supply by their gradual diminution some means of expressing retirement of surface. it is easily understood, therefore, why he should adopt this system, which is just what any awkward workman would naturally cling to, trusting to the inaccuracy of observation of the public to secure him from detection. § . why unpardonable. now in all these cases it is not the mistake or the license itself, it is not the infringement of this or that law which condemns the picture, but it is the spirit and habit of mind in which the license is taken, the cowardice or bluntness of feeling, which infects every part alike, and deprives the whole picture of vitality. canaletto, had he been a great painter, might have cast his reflections wherever he chose, and rippled the water wherever he chose, and painted his sea sloping if he chose, and neither i nor any one else should have dared to say a word against him; but he is a little and a bad painter, and so continues everywhere multiplying and magnifying mistakes, and adding apathy to error, until nothing can any more be pardoned in him. if it be but remembered that every one of the surfaces of those multitudinous ripples is in nature a mirror which catches, according to its position, either the image of the sky or of the silver beaks of the gondolas, or of their black bodies and scarlet draperies, or of the white marble, or the green sea-weed on the low stones, it cannot but be felt that those waves would have something more of color upon them than that opaque dead green. green they are by their own nature, but it is a transparent and emerald hue, mixing itself with the thousand reflected tints without overpowering the weakest of them; and thus, in every one of those individual waves, the truths of color are contradicted by canaletto by the thousand. venice is sad and silent now, to what she was in his time; the canals are choked gradually one by one, and the foul water laps more and more sluggishly against the rent foundations; but even yet, could i but place the reader at the early morning on the quay below the rialto, when the market boats, full laden, float into groups of golden color, and let him watch the dashing of the water about their glittering steely heads, and under the shadows of the vine leaves, and show him the purple of the grapes and the figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds carried away in long streams upon the waves, and among them, the crimson fish baskets, plashing and sparkling, and flaming as the morning sun falls on their wet tawny sides, and above, the painted sails of the fishing boats, orange and white, scarlet and blue, and better than all such florid color, the naked, bronzed, burning limbs of the seamen, the last of the old venetian race, who yet keep the right giorgione color on their brows and bosoms, in strange contrast with the sallow sensual degradation of the creatures that live in the cafés of the piazza, he would not be merciful to canaletto any more. § . the dutch painters of sea. yet even canaletto, in relation to the truths he had to paint, is spiritual, faithful, powerful, compared to the dutch painters of sea. it is easily understood why his green paint and concave touches should be thought expressive of the water on which the real colors are not to be discerned but by attention, which is never given; but it is not so easily understood, considering how many there are who love the sea, and look at it, that vandevelde and such others should be tolerated. as i before said, i feel utterly hopeless in addressing the admirers of these men, because i do not know what it is in their works which is supposed to be like nature. foam appears to me to curdle and cream on the wave sides and to fly, flashing from their crests, and not to be set astride upon them like a peruke; and waves appear to me to fall, and plunge, and toss, and nod, and crash over, and not to curl up like shavings; and water appears to me, when it is gray, to have the gray of stormy air mixed with its own deep, heavy, thunderous, threatening blue, and not the gray of the first coat of cheap paint on a deal door; and many other such things appear to me which, as far as i can conjecture by what is admired of marine painting, appear to no one else; yet i shall have something more to say about these men presently, with respect to the effect they have had upon turner; and something more, i hope, hereafter, with the help of illustration. § . ruysdael, claude, and salvator. there is a sea-piece of ruysdael's in the louvre[ ] which, though nothing very remarkable in any quality of art, is at least forceful, agreeable, and, as far as it goes, natural; the waves have much freedom of action, and power of color; the wind blows hard over the shore, and the whole picture may be studied with profit as a proof that the deficiency of color and everything else in backhuysen's works, is no fault of the dutch sea. there is sublimity and power in every field of nature from the pole to the line; and though the painters of one country are often better and greater, universally, than those of another, this is less because the subjects of art are wanting anywhere, than because one country or one age breeds mighty and thinking men, and another none. ruysdael's painting of falling water and brook scenery is also generally agreeable--more than agreeable it can hardly be considered. there appears no exertion of mind in any of his works; nor are they calculated to produce either harm or good by their feeble influence. they are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame. the seas of claude are the finest pieces of water-painting in ancient art. i do not say that i like them, because they appear to me selections of the particular moment when the sea is most insipid and characterless; but i think that they are exceedingly true to the forms and time selected, or at least that the fine instances of them are so, of which there are exceedingly few. on the right hand of one of the marines of salvator, in the pitti palace, there is a passage of sea reflecting the sunrise, which is thoroughly good, and very like turner; the rest of the picture, as the one opposite to it, utterly virtueless. i have not seen any other instance of salvator's painting water with any care, it is usually as conventional as the rest of his work, yet conventionalism is perhaps more tolerable in water-painting than elsewhere; and if his trees and rocks had been good, the rivers might have been generally accepted without objection. § . nicholas poussin. the merits of poussin as a sea or water painter may, i think, be sufficiently determined by the deluge in the louvre, where the breaking up of the fountains of the deep is typified by the capsizing of a wherry over a weir. in the outer porch of st. mark's at venice, among the mosaics on the roof, there is a representation of the deluge. the ground is dark blue; the rain is represented in bright white undulating parallel stripes; between these stripes is seen the massy outline of the ark, a bit between each stripe, very dark and hardly distinguishable from the sky; but it has a square window with a bright golden border, which glitters out conspicuously, and leads the eye to the rest--the sea below is almost concealed with dead bodies. on the font of the church of san frediano at lucca, there is a representation of--possibly--the israelites and egyptians in the red sea. the sea is typified by undulating bands of stone, each band composed of three plies (almost the same type is to be seen in the glass-painting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as especially at chartres). these bands would perhaps be hardly felt as very aqueous, but for the fish which are interwoven with them in a complicated manner, their heads appearing at one side of every band, and their tails at the other. both of these representatives of deluge, archaic and rude as they are, i consider better, more suggestive, more inventive, and more natural, than poussin's. indeed, this is not saying anything very depreciatory, as regards the st. mark's one, for the glittering of the golden window through the rain is wonderfully well conceived, and almost deceptive, looking as if it had just caught a gleam of sunlight on its panes, and there is something very sublime in the gleam of this light above the floating corpses. but the other instance is sufficiently grotesque and imperfect, and yet, i speak with perfect seriousness, it is, i think, very far preferable to poussin's. on the other hand, there is a just medium between the meanness and apathy of such a conception as his, and the extravagance, still more contemptible, with which the subject has been treated in modern days.[ ] i am not aware that i can refer to any instructive example of this intermediate course, for i fear the reader is by this time wearied of hearing of turner, and the plate of turner's picture of the deluge is so rare that it is of no use to refer to it. § . venetians and florentines. conclusion. it seems exceedingly strange that the great venetian painters should have left us no instance, as far as i know, of any marine effects carefully studied. as already noted, whatever passages of sea occur in their backgrounds are merely broad extents of blue or green surface, fine in color, and coming dark usually against the horizon, well enough to be understood as sea, (yet even that not always without the help of a ship,) but utterly unregarded in all questions of completion and detail. the water even in titian's landscape is almost always violently though grandly conventional, and seldom forms an important feature. among the religious schools very sweet motives occur, but nothing which for a moment can be considered as real water-painting. perugino's sea is usually very beautifully felt; his river in the fresco of s^ta. maddalena at florence is freely indicated, and looks level and clear; the reflections of the trees given with a rapid zigzag stroke of the brush. on the whole, i suppose that the best imitations of level water surface to be found in ancient art are in the clear flemish landscapes. cuyp's are usually very satisfactory, but even the best of these attain nothing more than the agreeable suggestion of calm pond or river. of any tolerable representation of water in agitation, or under any circumstances that bring out its power and character, i know no instance; and the more capable of noble treatment the subject happens to be, the more manifest invariably is the painter's want of feeling in every effort, and of knowledge in every line. footnotes [ ] i state this merely as a fact: i am unable satisfactorily to account for it on optical principles, and were it otherwise, the investigation would be of little interest to the general reader, and little value to the artist. [ ] parsey's "convergence of perpendiculars." i have not space here to enter into any lengthy exposure of this mistake, but reasoning is fortunately unnecessary, the appeal to experiment being easy. every picture is the representation, as before stated, of a vertical plate of glass, with what might be seen through it, drawn on its surface. let a vertical plate of glass be taken, and wherever it be placed, whether the sun be at its side or at its centre, the reflection will always be found in a vertical line under the sun, parallel with the side of the glass. the pane of any window looking to sea is all the apparatus necessary for this experiment, and yet it is not long since this very principle was disputed with me by a man of much taste and information, who supposed turner to be wrong in drawing the reflection straight down at the side of his picture, as in his lancaster sands, and innumerable other instances. [ ] in the last edition of this work was the following passage:--"i wish ruysdael had painted one or two rough seas. i believe if he had he might have saved the unhappy public from much grievous victimizing, both in mind and pocket, for he would have shown that vandevelde and backhuysen were not quite sea-deities." the writer has to thank the editor of murray's handbook of painting in italy for pointing out the oversight. he had passed many days in the louvre before the above passage was written, but had not been in the habit of pausing long anywhere except in the last two rooms, containing the pictures of the italian school. the conjecture, however, shows that he had not ill-estimated the power of ruysdael; nor does he consider it as in anywise unfitting him for the task he has undertaken, that for every hour passed in galleries he has passed days on the seashore. [ ] i am here, of course, speaking of the treatment of the subject as a landscape only; many mighty examples of its conception occur where the sea, and all other adjuncts, are entirely subservient to the figures, as with raffaelle and m. angelo. chapter ii. of water, as painted by the moderns. § . general power of the moderns in painting quiet water. the lakes of fielding. there are few men among modern landscape painters, who cannot paint quiet water at least suggestively, if not faithfully. those who are incapable of doing this, would scarcely be considered artists at all; and anything like the ripples of canaletto, or the black shadows of vandevelde, would be looked upon as most unpromising, even in the work of a novice. among those who most fully appreciate and render the qualities of space and surface in calm water, perhaps copley fielding stands first. his expanses of windless lake are among the most perfect passages of his works; for he can give surface as well as depth, and make his lake look not only clear, but, which is far more difficult, lustrous. he is less dependent than most of our artists upon reflections; and can give substance, transparency, and extent, where another painter would be reduced to paper; and he is exquisitely refined in his expression of distant breadth, by the delicate line of ripple interrupting the reflection, and by aerial qualities of color. nothing, indeed, can be purer or more refined than his general feeling of lake sentiment, were it not for a want of simplicity--a fondness for pretty, rather than impressive color, and a consequent want of some of the higher expression of repose. § . the calm rivers of de wint, j. holland, etc. § . the character of bright and violent falling water. § . as given by nesfield. hundreds of men might be named, whose works are highly instructive in the management of calm water. de wint is singularly powerful and certain, exquisitely bright and vigorous in color. the late john varley produced some noble passages. i have seen, some seven years ago, works by j. holland, which were, i think, as near perfection as water-color can be carried--for _bona fide_ truth, refined and finished to the highest degree. but the power of modern artists is not brought out until they have greater difficulties to struggle with. stand for half an hour beside the fall of schaffhausen, on the north side where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first bends, unbroken, in pure, polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick--so swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above darts over it like a falling star; and how the trees are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that foam burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how, through the curdling wreaths of the restless, crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white rain-cloud; while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild water; their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away; the dew gushing from their thick branches through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and sparkling in white threads along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding the lichens which chase and checker them with purple and silver. i believe, when you have stood by this for half an hour, you will have discovered that there is something more in nature than has been given by ruysdael. probably you will not be much disposed to think of any mortal work at the time; but when you look back to what you have seen, and are inclined to compare it with art, you will remember--or ought to remember--nesfield. he is a man of extraordinary feeling, both for the color and the spirituality of a great waterfall; exquisitely delicate in his management of the changeful veil of spray or mist; just in his curves and contours; and unequalled in color except by turner. none of our water-color painters can approach him in the management of the variable hues of clear water over weeded rocks; but his feeling for it often leads him a little too far, and, like copley fielding, he loses sight of simplicity and dignity for the sake of delicacy or prettiness. his waterfalls are, however, unequalled in their way; and, if he would remember, that in all such scenes there is much gloom as well as much splendor, and relieve the lustre of his attractive passages of color with more definite and prevalent grays, and give a little more substance to parts of his picture unaffected by spray, his work would be nearly perfect. his seas are also most instructive; a little confused in chiaroscuro, but refined in form and admirable in color. § . the admirable water-drawing of j. d. harding. § . his color; and painting of sea. j. d. harding is, i think, nearly unequalled in the _drawing_ of running water. i do not know what stanfield would do; i have never seen an important piece of torrent drawn by him; but i believe even he could scarcely contend with the magnificent _abandon_ of harding's brush. there is perhaps nothing which tells more in the drawing of water than decisive and swift execution; for, in a rapid touch the hand naturally falls into the very curve of projection which is the absolute truth; while in slow finish, all precision of curve and character is certain to be lost, except under the hand of an unusually powerful master. but harding has both knowledge and velocity, and the fall of his torrents is beyond praise; impatient, chafing, substantial, shattering, crystalline, and capricious; full of various form, yet all apparently instantaneous and accidental, nothing conventional, nothing dependent upon parallel lines or radiating curves; all broken up and dashed to pieces over the irregular rock, and yet all in unity of motion. the color also of his _falling_ and bright water is very perfect; but in the dark and level parts of his torrents he has taken up a bad gray, which has hurt some of his best pictures. his gray in shadows under rocks or dark reflections is admirable; but it is when the stream is in full light, and unaffected by reflections in distance, that he gets wrong. we believe that the fault is in a want of expression of darkness in the color, making it appear like a positive hue of the water, for which it is much too dead and cold. harding seldom paints sea, and it is well for stanfield that he does not, or the latter would have to look to his crown. all that we have seen from his hand is, as coast sea, quite faultless; we only wish he would paint it more frequently; always, however, with a veto upon french fishing-boats. in the exhibition of , he spoiled one of the most superb pieces of seashore and sunset which modern art has produced, with the pestilent square sail of one of these clumsy craft, which the eye could not escape from. § . the sea of copley fielding. its exceeding grace and rapidity. before passing to our great sea painter, we must again refer to the works of copley fielding. it is with his sea as with his sky, he can only paint one, and that an easy one, but it is, for all that, an impressive and a true one. no man has ever given, with the same flashing freedom, the race of a running tide under a stiff breeze, nor caught, with the same grace and precision, the curvature of the breaking wave, arrested or accelerated by the wind. the forward fling of his foam, and the impatient run of his surges, whose quick, redoubling dash we can almost hear, as they break in their haste upon their own bosoms, are nature itself, and his sea gray or green was, nine years ago, very right, as color; always a little wanting in transparency, but never cold or toneless. since that time, he seems to have lost the sense of greenness in water, and has verged more and more on the purple and black, with unhappy results. his sea was always dependent for effect on its light or dark relief against the sky, even when it possessed color; but it now has lost all local color and transparency together, and is little more than a study of chiaroscuro in an exceedingly ill-chosen gray. besides, the perpetual repetition of the same idea is singularly weakening to the mind. fielding, in all his life, can only be considered as having produced _one_ sea picture. the others are duplicates. he ought to go to some sea of perfect clearness and brilliant color, as that on the coast of cornwall, or of the gulf of genoa, and study it sternly in broad daylight, with no black clouds nor drifting rain to help him out of his difficulties. he would then both learn his strength and add to it. § . its high aim at character. § . but deficiency in the requisite quality of grays. § . variety of the grays of nature. but there is one point in all his seas deserving especial praise--a marked aim at _character_. he desires, especially in his latter works, not so much to produce an agreeable picture, a scientific piece of arrangement, or delightful melody of color, as to make us feel the utter desolation, the cold, withering, frozen hopelessness of the continuous storm and merciless sea. and this is peculiarly remarkable in his denying himself all color, just in the little bits which an artist of inferior mind would paint in sienna and cobalt. if a piece of broken wreck is allowed to rise for an instant through the boiling foam, though the blue stripe of a sailor's jacket, or a red rag of a flag would do all our hearts good, we are not allowed to have it; it would make us too comfortable, and prevent us from shivering and shrinking as we look, and the artist, with admirable intention, and most meritorious self-denial, expresses his piece of wreck with a dark, cold brown. now we think this aim and effort worthy of the highest praise, and we only wish the lesson were taken up and acted on by our other artists; but mr. fielding should remember that nothing of this kind can be done with success unless by the most studied management of the general tones of the picture; for the eye, deprived of all means of enjoying the gray hues, merely as a contrast to bright points, becomes painfully fastidious in the quality of the hues themselves, and demands for its satisfaction such melodies and richness of gray as may in some degree atone to it for the loss of points of stimulus. that gray which would be taken frankly and freely for an expression of gloom, if it came behind a yellow sail or a red cap, is examined with invidious and merciless intentness when there is nothing to relieve it, and, if not able to bear the investigation, if neither agreeable nor variable in its hue, renders the picture weak instead of impressive, and unpleasant instead of awful. and indeed the management of nature might teach him this; for though, when using violent contrasts, she frequently makes her gloom somewhat monotonous, the moment she gives up her vivid color, and depends upon her desolation, that moment she begins to steal the greens into her sea-gray, and the browns and yellows into her cloud-gray, and the expression of variously tinted light through all. nor is mr. fielding without a model in art, for the land's end, and lowestoffe, and snowstorm, (in the academy, ,) of turner, are nothing more than passages of the most hopeless, desolate, uncontrasted grays, and yet are three of the very finest pieces of color that have come from his hand. and we sincerely hope that mr. fielding will gradually feel the necessity of such studied melodies of quiet color, and will neither fall back into the old tricks of contrast, nor continue to paint with purple and ink. if he will only make a few careful studies of gray from the mixed atmosphere of spray, rain, and mist of a gale that has been three days hard at work, not of a rainy squall, but of a persevering and powerful storm, and not where the sea is turned into milk and magnesia by a chalk coast, but where it breaks pure and green on gray slate or white granite, as along the cliffs of cornwall, we think his pictures would present some of the finest examples of high intention and feeling to be found in modern art. § . works of stanfield. his perfect knowledge and power. § . but want of feeling. general sum of truth presented by modern art. the works of stanfield evidently, and at all times, proceed from the hand of a man who has both thorough knowledge of his subject, and thorough acquaintance with all the means and principles of art. we never criticise them, because we feel, the moment we look carefully at the drawing of any single wave, that the knowledge possessed by the master is much greater than our own, and therefore believe that if anything offends us in any part of the work, it is nearly certain to be our fault, and not the painter's. the local color of stanfield's sea is singularly true and powerful, and entirely independent of any tricks of chiaroscuro. he will carry a mighty wave up against the sky, and make its whole body dark and substantial against the distant light, using all the while nothing more than chaste and unexaggerated local color to gain the relief. his surface is at once lustrous, transparent, and accurate to a hairbreadth in every curve; and he is entirely independent of dark skies, deep blues, driving spray, or any other means of concealing want of form, or atoning for it. he fears no difficulty, desires no assistance, takes his sea in open daylight, under general sunshine, and paints the _element_ in its pure color and complete forms. but we wish that he were less powerful, and more interesting; or that he were a little less diogenes-like, and did not scorn all that he does not want. now that he has shown us what he can do without such aids, we wish he would show us what he can do with them. he is, as we have already said, wanting in what we have just been praising in fielding--impressiveness. we should like him to be less clever, and more affecting--less wonderful, and more terrible; and as the very first step towards such an end, to learn how to conceal. we are, however, trenching upon matters with which we have at present nothing to do; our concern is now only with truth, and one work of stanfield alone presents us with as much concentrated knowledge of sea and sky, as, diluted, would have lasted any one of the old masters his life. and let it be especially observed, how extensive and how varied is the truth of our modern masters--how it comprises a complete history of that nature of which, from the ancients, you only here and there can catch a stammering descriptive syllable--how fielding has given us every character of the quiet lake, robson[ ] of the mountain tarn, de wint of the lowland river, nesfield of the radiant cataract, harding of the roaring torrent, fielding of the desolate sea, stanfield of the blue, open, boundless ocean. arrange all this in your mind, observe the perfect truth of it in all its parts, compare it with the fragmentary falsities of the ancients, and then, come with me to turner. footnotes [ ] i ought before to have alluded to the works of the late g. robson. they are a little disagreeable in execution, but there is a feeling of the character of _deep_ calm water in them quite unequalled, and different from the works and thoughts of all other men. chapter iii. of water, as painted by turner. § . the difficulty of giving surface to smooth water. § . is dependent on the structure of the eye, and the focus by which the reflected rays are perceived. i believe it is a result of the experience of all artists, that it is the easiest thing in the world to give a certain degree of depth and transparency to water; but that it is next thing to impossible, to give a full impression of surface. if no reflection be given--a ripple being supposed--the water looks like lead: if reflection be given, it in nine cases out of ten looks _morbidly_ clear and deep, so that we always go down _into_ it, even when the artist most wishes us to glide _over_ it. now, this difficulty arises from the very same circumstance which occasions the frequent failure in effect of the best drawn foregrounds, noticed in section ii. chapter iii., the change, namely, of focus necessary in the eye in order to receive rays of light coming from different distances. go to the edge of a pond, in a perfectly calm day, at some place where there is duckweed floating on the surface,--not thick, but a leaf here and there. now, you may either see in the water the reflection of the sky, or you may see the duckweed; but you cannot, by any effort, see both together. if you look for the reflection, you will be sensible of a sudden change or effort in the eye, by which it adapts itself to the reception of the rays which have come all the way from the clouds, have struck on the water, and so been sent up again to the eye. the focus you adopt is one fit for great distance; and, accordingly, you will feel that you are looking down a great way under the water, while the leaves of the duckweed, though they lie upon the water at the very spot on which you are gazing so intently, are felt only as a vague, uncertain interruption, causing a little confusion in the image below, but entirely indistinguishable as leaves,--and even their color unknown and unperceived. unless you think of them, you will not even feel that anything interrupts your sight, so excessively slight is their effect. if, on the other hand, you make up your mind to look for the leaves of the duckweed, you will perceive an instantaneous change in the effort of the eye, by which it becomes adapted to receive near rays--those which have only come from the surface of the pond. you will then see the delicate leaves of the duckweed with perfect clearness, and in vivid green; but while you do so, you will be able to perceive nothing of the reflections in the very water on which they float--nothing but a vague flashing and melting of light and dark hues, without form or meaning, which, to investigate, or find out what they mean or are, you must quit your hold of the duckweed, and plunge down. § . morbid clearness occasioned in painting of water by distinctness of reflections. § . how avoided by turner. § . all reflections on distant water are distinct. hence it appears, that whenever we see plain reflections of comparatively distant objects, in near water, we cannot possibly see the surface, and _vice versa_; so that when in a painting we give the reflections with the same clearness with which they are visible in nature, we presuppose the effort of the eye to look under the surface, and, of course, destroy the surface, and induce an effect of clearness which, perhaps, the artist has not particularly wished to attain, but which he has found himself forced into, by his reflections, in spite of himself. and the reason of this effect of clearness appearing preternatural is, that people are not in the habit of looking at water with the distant focus adapted to the reflections, unless by particular effort. we invariably, under ordinary circumstances, use the surface focus; and, in consequence, receive nothing more than a vague and confused impression of the reflected colors and lines, however clearly, calmly, and vigorously all may be defined underneath, if we choose to look for them. we do not look for them, but glide along over the surface, catching only playing light and capricious color for evidence of reflection, except where we come to images of objects close to the surface, which the surface focus is of course adapted to receive; and these we see clearly, as of the weeds on the shore, or of sticks rising out of the water, etc. hence, the ordinary effect of water is only to be rendered by giving the reflections of the _margin_ clear and distinct (so clear they usually are in nature, that it is impossible to tell where the water begins;) but the moment we touch the reflection of distant objects, as of high trees or clouds, that instant we must become vague and uncertain in drawing, and, though vivid in color and light as the object itself, quite indistinct in form and feature. if we take such a piece of water as that in the foreground of turner's chateau of prince albert, the first impression from it is,--"what a wide _surface_!" we glide over it a quarter of a mile into the picture before we know where we are, and yet the water is as calm and crystalline as a mirror; but we are not allowed to tumble into it, and gasp for breath as we go down,--we are kept upon the surface, though that surface is flashing and radiant with every hue of cloud, and sun, and sky, and foliage. but the secret is in the drawing of these reflections.[ ] we cannot tell when we look _at_ them and _for_ them, what they mean. they have all character, and are evidently reflections of something definite and determined; but yet they are all uncertain and inexplicable; playing color and palpitating shade, which, though we recognize in an instant for images of something, and feel that the water is bright, and lovely, and calm, we cannot penetrate nor interpret: we are not allowed to go down to them, and we repose, as we should in nature, upon the lustre of the level surface. it is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art here, as in all other cases, consists. but as it was before shown in sect. ii. chap. iii. that the focus of the eye required little alteration after the first half mile of distance, it is evident that on the _distant_ surface of water, _all_ reflections will be seen plainly; for the same focus adapted to a moderate distance of surface will receive with distinctness rays coming from the sky, or from any other distance, however great. thus we always see the reflection of mont blanc on the lake of geneva, whether we take pains to look for it or not, because the water upon which it is cast is itself a mile off; but if we would see the reflection of mont blanc in the lac de chede, which is close to us, we must take some trouble about the matter, leave the green snakes swimming upon the surface, and plunge for it. hence reflections, if viewed collectively, are always clear in proportion to the distance of the water on which they are cast. and now look at turner's ulleswater, or any of his distant lake expanses, and you will find every crag and line of the hills rendered in them with absolute fidelity, while the near surface shows nothing but a vague confusion of exquisite and lustrous tint. the reflections even of the clouds will be given far off, while those of near boats and figures will be confused and mixed among each other, except just at the water-line. § . the error of vandevelde. and now we see what vandevelde _ought_ to have done with the shadow of his ship spoken of in the first chapter of this section. in such a calm, we should in nature, if we had looked for the reflection, have seen it clear from the water-line to the flag on the mainmast; but in so doing, we should have appeared to ourselves to be looking under the water, and should have lost all feeling of surface. when we looked at the surface of the sea,--as we naturally should,--we should have seen the image of the hull absolutely clear and perfect, because that image is cast on distant water; but we should have seen the image of the masts and sails gradually more confused as they descended, and the water close to us would have borne only upon its surface a maze of flashing color and indefinite hue. had vandevelde, therefore, given the perfect image of his ship, he would have represented a truth dependent on a particular effort of the eye, and destroyed his surface. but his business was to give, not a distinct reflection, but the colors of the reflection in mystery and disorder upon his near water, all perfectly vivid, but none intelligible; and had he done so, the eye would not have troubled itself to search them out; it would not have cared whence or how the colors came, but it would have felt them to be true and right, and rested satisfied upon the polished surface of the clear sea. of the perfect truth, the best examples i can give are turner's saltash and castle upnor. § . difference in arrangement of parts between the reflected object and its image. be it next observed that the reflection of all near objects is, by our fifth rule, not an exact copy of the parts of them which we see above the water, but a totally different view and arrangement of them, that which we should get if we were looking at them from beneath. hence we see the dark sides of leaves hanging over a stream, in their reflection, though we see the light sides above, and all objects and groups of objects are thus seen in the reflection under different lights, and in different positions with respect to each other from those which they assume above; some which we see on the bank being entirely lost in their reflection, and others which we cannot see on the bank brought into view. hence nature contrives never to repeat herself, and the surface of water is not a mockery, but a new view of what is above it. and this difference in what is represented, as well as the obscurity of the representation, is one of the chief sources by which the sensation of surface is kept up in the reality. the reflection is not so remarkable, it does not attract the eye in the same degree when it is entirely different from the images above, as when it mocks them and repeats them, and we feel that the space and surface have color and character of their own, and that the bank is one thing and the water another. it is by not making this change manifest, and giving underneath a mere duplicate of what is seen above, that artists are apt to destroy the essence and substance of water, and to drop us through it. § . illustrated from the works of turner. § . the boldness and judgment shown in the observance of it. now one instance will be sufficient to show the exquisite care of turner in this respect. on the left-hand side of his nottingham, the water (a smooth canal) is terminated by a bank fenced up with wood, on which, just at the edge of the water, stands a white sign-post. a quarter of a mile back, the hill on which nottingham castle stands rises steeply nearly to the top of the picture. the upper part of this hill is in bright golden light, and the lower in very deep gray shadow, against which the white board of the sign-post is seen entirely in light relief, though, being turned from the light, it is itself in delicate middle tint, illumined only on the edge. but the image of all this in the canal is very different. first, we have the reflection of the piles of the bank, sharp and clear, but under this we have not what we see above it, the dark _base_ of the hill, (for this being a quarter of a mile back, we could not see over the fence if we were looking from below,) but the golden summit of the hill, the shadow of the under part having no record nor place in the reflection. but this summit, being very distant, cannot be seen clearly by the eye while its focus is adapted to the surface of the water, and accordingly its reflection is entirely vague and confused; you cannot tell what it is meant for, it is mere playing golden light. but the sign-post, being on the bank close to us, will be reflected clearly, and accordingly its distinct image is seen in the midst of this confusion. but it now is relieved, not against the dark base, but against the illumined summit of the hill, and it appears, therefore, instead of a white space thrown out from blue shade, a dark gray space thrown out from golden light. i do not know that any more magnificent example could be given of concentrated knowledge, or of the daring statement of most difficult truth. for who but this consummate artist would have had courage, even if he had perceived the laws which required it, to undertake in a single small space of water, the painting of an entirely new picture, with all its tones and arrangements altered,--what was made above bright by opposition to blue, being underneath made cool and dark by opposition to gold;--or would have dared to contradict so boldly the ordinary expectation of the uncultivated eye, to find in the reflection a mockery for the reality? but the reward is immediate, for not only is the change most grateful to the eye, and most exquisite as composition, but the surface of the water in consequence of it is felt to be as spacious as it is clear, and the eye rests not on the inverted image of the material objects, but on the element which receives them. and we have a farther instance in this passage of the close study which is required to enjoy the works of turner, for another artist might have altered the reflection or confused it, but he would not have reasoned upon it so as to find out _what the exact alteration must be_; and if we had tried to account for the reflection, we should have found it false or inaccurate. but the master mind of turner, without effort, showers its knowledge into every touch, and we have only to trace out even his slightest passages, part by part, to find in them the universal working of the deepest thought, that consistency of every minor truth which admits of and invites the same ceaseless study as the work of nature herself. § . the _texture_ of surface in turner's painting of calm water. there is, however, yet another peculiarity in turner's painting of smooth water, which, though less deserving of admiration, as being merely a mechanical excellence, is not less wonderful than its other qualities, nor less unique--a peculiar texture, namely, given to the most delicate tints of the surface, when there is little reflection from anything except sky or atmosphere, and which, just at the points where other painters are reduced to paper, gives to the surface of turner the greatest appearance of substantial liquidity. it is impossible to say how it is produced; it looks like some modification of body color; but it certainly is not body color used as by other men, for i have seen this expedient tried over and over again without success; and it is often accompanied by crumbling touches of a dry brush, which never could have been put upon body color, and which could not have shown through underneath it. as a piece of mechanical excellence, it is one of the most remarkable things in the works of the master; and it brings the truth of his water-painting up to the last degree of perfection, often rendering those passages of it the most attractive and delightful, which from their delicacy and paleness of tint, would have been weak and papery in the hands of any other man. the best instance of it i can give, is, i think, the distance of the devonport with the dockyards. § . its united qualities. after all, however, there is more in turner's painting of water surface than any philosophy of reflection, or any peculiarity of means, can account for or accomplish; there is a might and wonder about it which will not admit of our whys and hows. take, for instance, the picture of the sun of venice going to sea, of , respecting which, however, there are one or two circumstances which may as well be noted besides its water-painting. the reader, if he has not been at venice, ought to be made aware that the venetian fishing-boats, almost without exception, carry canvas painted with bright colors, the favorite design for the centre being either a cross or a large sun with many rays, the favorite colors being red, orange, and black, blue occurring occasionally. the radiance of these sails and of the bright and grotesque vanes at the mast-heads under sunlight is beyond all painting, but it is strange that, of constant occurrence as these boats are on all the lagoons, turner alone should have availed himself of them. nothing could be more faithful than the boat which was the principal object in this picture, in the cut of the sail, the filling of it, the exact height of the boom above the deck, the quartering of it with color, finally and especially, the hanging of the fish-baskets about the bows. all these, however, are comparatively minor merits, (though not the blaze of color which the artist elicited from the right use of these circumstances,) but the peculiar power of the picture was the painting of the sea surface, where there were no reflections to assist it. a stream of splendid color fell from the boat, but that occupied the centre only; in the distance, the city and crowded boats threw down some playing lines, but these still left on each side of the boat a large space of water reflecting nothing but the morning sky. this was divided by an eddying swell, on whose continuous sides the local color of the water was seen, pure aquamarine, (a beautiful occurrence of closely-observed truth,) but still there remained a large blank space of pale water to be treated, the sky above had no distinct details and was pure faint gray, with broken white vestiges of cloud: it gave no help therefore. but there the water lay, no dead gray flat paint, but downright clear, playing, palpable surface, full of indefinite hue, and retiring as regularly and visibly back and far away, as if there had been objects all over it to tell the story by perspective. now it is the doing of this which tries the painter, and it is his having done this which made me say above that "no man had ever painted the surface of calm water but turner." the san benedetto, looking towards fusina, contained a similar passage, equally fine; in one of the canale della guidecca the specific green color of the water is seen in front, with the shadows of the boats thrown on it in purple; all, as it retires, passing into the pure reflective blue. § . relation of various circumstances of past agitation, etc., by the most trifling incidents, as in the cowes. but turner is not satisfied with this. he is never altogether content unless he can, at the same time that he takes advantage of all the placidity of repose, tell us something either about the past commotion of the water, or of some present stirring of tide or current which its stillness does not show, or give us something or other to think about and reason upon, as well as to look at. take a few instances. his cowes, isle of wight, is a summer twilight about half an hour, or more, after sunset. intensity of repose is the great aim throughout, and the unity of tone of the picture is one of the finest things that turner has ever done. but there is not only quietness, there is the very deepest solemnity in the whole of the light, as well as in the stillness of the vessels; and turner wishes to enhance this feeling by representing not only repose, but _power_ in repose, the emblem, in the sea, of the quiet ships of war. accordingly, he takes the greatest possible pains to get his surface polished, calm, and smooth, but he indicates the reflection of a buoy, floating a full quarter of a mile off, by three black strokes with wide intervals between them, the last of which touches the water within twenty yards of the spectator. now these three reflections can only indicate the farther sides of three rises of an enormous swell, and give by their intervals of separation, a space of from twelve to twenty yards for the breadth of each wave, including the sweep between them, and this swell is farther indicated by the reflection of the new moon falling, in a wide zigzag line. the exceeding majesty which this single circumstance gives to the whole picture, the sublime sensation of power and knowledge of former exertion which we instantly receive from it, if we have but acquaintance with nature enough to understand its language, render this work not only a piece of the most refined truth, (as which i have at present named it,) but to my mind, one of the highest pieces of intellectual art existing. § . in scenes on the loire and seine. again, in the scene on the loire, with the square precipice and fiery sunset, in the rivers of france, repose has been aimed at in the same way, and most thoroughly given; but the immense width of the river at this spot makes it look like a lake or sea, and it was therefore necessary that we should be made thoroughly to understand and feel that this is not the calm of still water, but the tranquillity of a majestic current. accordingly, a boat swings at anchor on the right; and the stream, dividing at its bow, flows towards us in two long, dark waves, especial attention to which is enforced by the one on the left being brought across the reflected stream of sunshine, which it separates, and which is broken in the nearer water by the general undulation and agitation caused by the boat's wake; a wake caused by the waters passing it, not by _its_ going through the water. § . expression of contrary waves caused by recoil from shore. § . various other instances. again, in the confluence of the seine and marne, we have the repose of the wide river stirred by the paddles of the steamboat, (whose plashing we can almost hear, for we are especially compelled to look at them by their being made the central note of the composition--the blackest object in it, opposed to the strongest light,) and this disturbance is not merely caused by the two lines of surge from the boat's wake, for any other painter must have given these, but turner never rests satisfied till he has told you _all_ in his power; and he has not only given the receding surges, but these have gone on to the shore, have struck upon it, and been beaten back from it in another line of weaker contrary surges, whose point of intersection with those of the wake itself is marked by the sudden subdivision and disorder of the waves of the wake on the extreme left, and whose reverted direction is exquisitely given where their lines cross the calm water, close to the spectator, and marked also by the sudden vertical spring of the spray just where they intersect the swell from the boat; and in order that we may fully be able to account for these reverted waves, we are allowed, just at the extreme right-hand limit of the picture, to see the point where the swell from the boat meets the shore. in the chaise de gargantua we have the still water lulled by the dead calm which usually precedes the most violent storms, suddenly broken upon by a tremendous burst of wind from the gathered thunder-clouds, scattering the boats, and raising the water into rage, except where it is sheltered by the hills. in the jumieges and vernon we have farther instances of local agitation, caused, in the one instance, by a steamer, in the other, by the large water-wheels under the bridge, not, observe, a mere splashing about the wheel itself, this is too far off to be noticeable, so that we should not have even known that the objects beneath the bridge were water-wheels, but for the agitation recorded a quarter of a mile down the river, where its current crosses the sunlight. and thus there will scarcely ever be found a piece of quiet water by turner, without some story in it of one kind or another; sometimes a slight, but beautiful incident--oftener, as in the cowes, something on which the whole sentiment and intention of the picture in a great degree depends; but invariably presenting some new instance of varied knowledge and observation, some fresh appeal to the highest faculties of the mind. § . turner's painting of distant expanses of water. calm, interrupted by ripple. § . and ripple, crossed by sunshine. of extended surfaces of water, as rendered by turner, the loch katrine and derwent-water, of the illustrations to scott, and the loch lomond, vignette in rogers's poems, are characteristic instances. the first of these gives us the most distant part of the lake entirely under the influence of a light breeze, and therefore entirely without reflections of the objects on its borders; but the whole near half is untouched by the wind, and on that is cast the image of the upper part of ben-venue and of the islands. the second gives us the surface, with just so much motion upon it as to prolong, but not to destroy, the reflections of the dark woods,--reflections only interrupted by the ripple of the boat's wake. and the third gives us an example of the whole surface so much affected by ripple as to bring into exercise all those laws which we have seen so grossly violated by canaletto. we see in the nearest boat that though the lines of the gunwale are much blacker and more conspicuous than that of the cutwater, yet the gunwale lines, being nearly horizontal, have no reflection whatsoever; while the line of the cutwater, being vertical, has a distinct reflection of three times its own length. but even these tremulous reflections are only visible as far as the islands; beyond them, as the lake retires into distance, we find it receives only the reflection of the gray light from the clouds, and runs in one flat white field up between the hills; and besides all this, we have another phenomenon, quite new, given to us,--the brilliant gleam of light along the centre of the lake. this is not caused by ripple, for it is cast on a surface rippled all over; but it is what we could not have without ripple,--the light of a passage of sunshine. i have already (chap. i., § ) explained the cause of this phenomenon, which never can by any possibility take place on calm water, being the multitudinous reflection of the sun from the sides of the ripples, causing an appearance of local light and shadow; and being dependent, like real light and shadow, on the passage of the clouds, though the dark parts of the water are the reflections of the clouds, not the shadows of them; and the bright parts are the reflections of the sun, and not the light of it. this little vignette, then, will entirely complete the system of turner's universal truth in quiet water. we have seen every phenomenon given by him,--the clear reflection, the prolonged reflection, the reflection broken by ripple, and finally the ripple broken by light and shade; and it is especially to be observed how careful he is, in this last case, when he uses the apparent light and shade, to account for it by showing us in the whiteness of the lake beyond, its universal subjection to ripple. § . his drawing of distant rivers. § . and of surface associated with mist. we have not spoken of turner's magnificent drawing of distant rivers, which, however, is dependent only on more complicated application of the same laws, with exquisite perspective. the sweeps of river in the dryburgh, (illustrations to scott,) and melrose, are bold and characteristic examples, as well as the rouen from st. catherine's hill, and the caudebec, in the rivers of france. the only thing which in these works requires particular attention, is the care with which the height of the observer above the river is indicated by the loss of the reflections of its banks. this is, perhaps, shown most clearly in the caudebec. if we had been on a level with the river, its whole surface would have been darkened by the reflection of the steep and high banks; but being far above it, we can see no more of the image than we could of the hill itself, if it were actually reversed under the water; and therefore we see that turner gives us only a narrow line of dark water, immediately under the precipice, the broad surface reflecting only the sky. this is also finely shown on the left-hand side of the dryburgh. but all these early works of the artist have been eclipsed by some recent drawings of switzerland. these latter are not to be described by any words, but they must be noted here not only as presenting records of lake effect on grander scale, and of more imaginative character than any other of his works, but as combining effects of the surface of mist with the surface of water. two or three of the lake of lucerne, seen from above, give the melting of the mountain promontories beneath into the clear depth, and above into the clouds; one of constance shows the vast lake at evening, seen not as water, but its surface covered with low white mist, lying league beyond league in the twilight like a fallen space of moony cloud; one of goldau shows the lake of zug appearing through the chasm of a thunder-cloud under sunset, its whole surface one blaze of fire, and the promontories of the hills thrown out against it, like spectres; another of zurich gives the playing of the green waves of the river among white streams of moonlight: two purple sunsets on the lake of zug are distinguished for the glow obtained without positive color, the rose and purple tints being in great measure brought by opposition out of browns: finally, a drawing executed in of the town of lucerne from the lake is unique for its expression of water surface reflecting the clear green hue of sky at twilight. § . his drawing of falling water, with peculiar expression of weight. § . the abandonment and plunge of great cataracts. how given by him. it will be remembered that it was said above, that turner was the only painter who had ever represented the surface of calm or the _force_ of agitated water. he obtains this expression of force in falling or running water by fearless and full rendering of its forms. he never loses himself and his subject in the splash of the fall--his presence of mind never fails as he goes down; he does not blind us with the spray, or veil the countenance of his fall with its own drapery. a little crumbling white, or lightly rubbed paper, will soon give the effect of indiscriminate foam; but nature gives more than foam--she shows beneath it, and through it, a peculiar character of exquisitely studied form bestowed on every wave and line of fall; and it is this variety of definite character which turner always aims at, rejecting, as much as possible, everything that conceals or overwhelms it. thus, in the upper fall of the tees, though the whole basin of the fall is blue and dim with the rising vapor, yet the whole attention of the spectator is directed to that which it was peculiarly difficult to render, the concentric zones and delicate curves of the falling water itself; and it is impossible to express with what exquisite accuracy these are given. they are the characteristic of a powerful stream descending without impediment or break, but from a narrow channel, so as to expand as it falls. they are the constant form which such a stream assumes as it descends; and yet i think it would be difficult to point to another instance of their being rendered in art. you will find nothing in the waterfalls even of our best painters, but springing lines of parabolic descent, and splashing, shapeless foam; and, in consequence, though they may make you understand the swiftness of the water, they never let you feel the weight of it; the stream in their hands looks _active_, not _supine_, as if it leaped, not as if it fell. now water will leap a little way, it will leap down a weir or over a stone, but it _tumbles_ over a high fall like this; and it is when we have lost the parabolic line, and arrived at the catenary,--when we have lost the _spring_ of the fall, and arrived at the _plunge_ of it, that we begin really to feel its weight and wildness. where water takes its first leap from the top, it is cool, and collected, and uninteresting, and mathematical, but it is when it finds that it has got into a scrape, and has farther to go than it thought for, that its character comes out; it is then that it begins to writhe, and twist, and sweep out zone after zone in wilder stretching as it falls, and to send down the rocket-like, lance-pointed, whizzing shafts at its sides, sounding for the bottom. and it is this prostration, this hopeless abandonment of its ponderous power to the air, which is always peculiarly expressed by turner, and especially in the case before us; while our other artists, keeping to the parabolic line, where they do not lose themselves in smoke and foam, make their cataract look muscular and wiry, and may consider themselves fortunate if they can keep it from stopping. i believe the majesty of motion which turner has given by these concentric catenary lines must be felt even by those who have never seen a high waterfall, and therefore cannot appreciate their exquisite fidelity to nature. in the chain bridge over the tees, this passiveness and swinging of the water to and fro are yet more remarkable; while we have another characteristic of a great waterfall given to us, that the wind, in this instance coming up the valley against the current, takes the spray up off the edges, and carries it back in little torn, reverted rags and threads, seen in delicate form against the darkness on the left. but we must understand a little more about the nature of running water before we can appreciate the drawing either of this, or any other of turner's torrents. § . difference in the action of water, when continuous and when interrupted. the interrupted stream fills the hollows of its bed. § . but the continuous stream takes the shape of its bed. § . its exquisite curved lines. when water, not in very great body, runs in a rocky bed much interrupted by hollows, so that it can rest every now and then in a pool as it goes along, it does not acquire a continuous velocity of motion. it pauses after every leap, and curdles about, and rests a little, and then goes on again; and if in this comparatively tranquil and rational state of mind it meets with an obstacle, as a rock or stone, it parts on each side of it with a little bubbling foam, and goes round; if it comes to a step in its bed, it leaps it lightly, and then after a little plashing at the bottom, stops again to take breath. but if its bed be on a continuous slope, not much interrupted by hollows, so that it cannot rest, or if its own mass be so increased by flood that its usual resting-places are not sufficient for it, but that it is perpetually pushed out of them by the following current, before it has had time to tranquillize itself, it of course gains velocity with every yard that it runs; the impetus got at one leap is carried to the credit of the next, until the whole stream becomes one mass of unchecked, accelerating motion. now when water in this state comes to an obstacle, it does not part at it, but clears it, like a racehorse; and when it comes to a hollow, it does not fill it up and run out leisurely at the other side, but it rushes down into it and comes up again on the other side, as a ship into the hollow of the sea. hence the whole appearance of the bed of the stream is changed, and all the lines of the water altered in their nature. the quiet stream is a succession of leaps and pools; the leaps are light and springy, and parabolic, and make a great deal of splashing when they tumble into the pool; then we have a space of quiet curdling water, and another similar leap below. but the stream when it has gained an impetus takes the shape of its bed, never stops, is equally deep and equally swift everywhere, goes down into every hollow, not with a leap, but with a swing, not foaming, nor splashing, but in the bending line of a strong sea-wave, and comes up again on the other side, over rock and ridge, with the ease of a bounding leopard; if it meet a rock three or four feet above the level of its bed, it will neither part nor foam, nor express any concern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth dome of water, without apparent exertion, coming down again as smoothly on the other side; the whole surface of the surge being drawn into parallel lines by its extreme velocity, but foamless, except in places where the form of the bed opposes itself at some direct angle to such a line of fall, and causes a breaker; so that the whole river has the appearance of a deep and raging sea, with this only difference, that the torrent-waves always break backwards, and sea-waves forwards. thus, then, in the water which has gained an impetus, we have the most exquisite arrangements of curved lines, perpetually changing from convex to concave, and _vice versa_, following every swell and hollow of the bed with their modulating grace, and all in unison of motion, presenting perhaps the most beautiful series of inorganic forms which nature can possibly produce; for the sea runs too much into similar and concave curves with sharp edges, but every motion of the torrent is united, and all its curves are modifications of beautiful line. § . turner's careful choice of the historical truth. § . his exquisite drawing of the continuous torrent in the llanthony abbey. we see, therefore, why turner seizes on these curved lines of the torrent, not only as being among the most beautiful forms of nature, but because they are an instant expression of the utmost power and velocity, and tell us how the torrent has been flowing before we see it. for the leap and splash might be seen in the sudden freakishness of a quiet stream, or the fall of a rivulet over a mill-dam; but the undulating line is the _exclusive_ attribute of the mountain-torrent,[ ] whose fall and fury have made the valleys echo for miles; and thus the moment we see one of its curves over a stone in the foreground, we know how far it has come, and how fiercely. and in the drawing we have been speaking of, the lower fall of the tees, in the foreground of the killiecrankie and rhymer's glen, and of the st. maurice, in rogers's italy, we shall find the most exquisite instances of the use of such lines; but the most perfect of all in the llanthony abbey, which may be considered as the standard of torrent-drawing. the chief light of the picture here falls upon the surface of the stream, swelled by recent rain, and its mighty waves come rolling down close to the spectator, green and clear, but pale with anger, in gigantic, unbroken, oceanic curves, bending into each other without break or foam, though jets of fiery spray are cast into the air along the rocky shore, and rise in the sunshine in dusty vapor. the whole surface is one united race of mad motion; all the waves dragged, as i have described, into lines and furrows by their swiftness, and every one of these fine forms is drawn with the most studied chiaroscuro of delicate color, grays and greens, as silvery and pure as the finest passages of paul veronese, and with a refinement of execution which the eye strains itself in looking into. the rapidity and gigantic force of this torrent, the exquisite refinement of its color, and the vividness of foam which is obtained through a general middle tint, render it about the most perfect piece of painting of running water in existence. § . and of the interrupted torrent in the mercury and argus. now this picture is, as was noticed in our former reference to it, full of expression of every kind of motion: the clouds are in wild haste; the sun is gleaming fast and fitfully through the leaves; the rain drifting away along the hill-side; and the torrent, the principal object, to complete the impression, is made the wildest thing of all and not only wild before us, and with us, but bearing with it in its every motion, from its long course, the record of its rage. observe how differently turner uses his torrent when the spirit of the picture is repose. in the mercury and argus, we have also a stream in the foreground; but, in coming down to us, we see it stopping twice in two quiet and glassy pools, upon which the drinking cattle cast an unstirred image. from the nearest of these, the water leaps in three cascades into another basin close to us; it trickles in silver threads through the leaves at its edge, and falls tinkling and splashing (though in considerable body) into the pool, stirring its quiet surface, at which a bird is stooping to drink, with concentric and curdling ripples which divide round the stone at its farthest border, and descend in sparkling foam over the lip of the basin. thus we find, in every case, the system of turner's truth entirely unbroken, each phase and phenomenon of nature being recorded exactly where it is most valuable and impressive. § . various cases. we have not, however, space to follow out the variety of his torrent-drawing. the above two examples are characteristic of the two great divisions or classes of torrents--that whose motion is continuous, and whose motion is interrupted: all drawing of running water will resolve itself into the representation of one or other of these. the descent of the distant stream in the vignette to the boy of egremond is slight, but very striking; and the junction of the greta and tees, a singular instance of the bold drawing of the complicated forms of a shallow stream among multitudinous rocks. a still finer example occurs in a recent drawing of dazio grande, on the st. gothard, the waves of the toccia, clear and blue, fretting among the granite débris which were brought down by the storm that destroyed the whole road. in the ivy bridge the subject is the rest of the torrent in a pool among fallen rocks, the forms of the stones are seen through the clear brown water, and their reflections mingle with those of the foliage. § . sea painting. impossibility of truly representing foam. more determined efforts have at all periods been made in sea painting than in torrent painting, yet less successful. as above stated, it is easy to obtain a resemblance of broken running water by tricks and dexterities, but the sea _must_ be legitimately drawn; it cannot be given as utterly disorganized and confused, its weight and mass must be expressed, and the efforts at expression of it end in failure with all but the most powerful men; even with these few a partial success must be considered worthy of the highest praise. as the right rendering of the alps depends on power of drawing snow, so the right painting of the sea must depend, at least in all coast scenery, in no small measure on the power of drawing foam. yet there are two conditions of foam of invariable occurrence on breaking waves, of which i have never seen the slightest record attempted; first the thick creamy curdling overlapping massy form which remains for a moment only after the fall of the wave, and is seen in perfection in its running up the beach; and secondly, the thin white coating into which this subsides, which opens into oval gaps and clefts, marbling the waves over their whole surface, and connecting the breakers on a flat shore by long dragging streams of white. it is evident that the difficulty of expressing either of these two conditions must be immense. the lapping and curdling form is difficult enough to catch even when the lines of its undulation alone are considered; but the lips, so to speak, which lie along these lines, are full, projecting, and marked by beautiful light and shade; each has its high light, a gradation into shadow of indescribable delicacy, a bright reflected light and a dark cast shadow; to draw all this requires labor, and care, and firmness of work, which, as i imagine, must always, however skilfully bestowed, destroy all impression of wildness, accidentalism, and evanescence, and so kill the sea. again, the openings in the thin subsided foam in their irregular modifications of circular and oval shapes dragged hither and thither, would be hard enough to draw even if they could be seen on a flat surface; instead of which, every one of the openings is seen in undulation on a tossing surface, broken up over small surges and ripples, and so thrown into perspectives of the most hopeless intricacy. now it is not easy to express the lie of a pattern with oval openings on the folds of drapery. i do not know that any one under the mark of veronese or titian could even do this as it ought to be done, yet in drapery much stiffness and error may be overlooked; not so in sea,--the slightest inaccuracy, the slightest want of flow and freedom in the line, is attached by the eye in a moment of high treason, and i believe success to be impossible. yet there is not a wave or any violently agitated sea on which both these forms do not appear, the latter especially, after some time of storm, extends over their whole surfaces; the reader sees, therefore, why i said that sea could only be painted by means of more or less dexterous conventionalisms, since two of its most enduring phenomena cannot be represented at all. § . character of shore-breakers, also inexpressible. again, as respects the form of breakers on an even shore, there is difficulty of no less formidable kind. there is in them an irreconcilable mixture of fury and formalism. their hollow surface is marked by parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill-weir, and graduated by reflected and transmitted lights of the most wonderful intricacy, its curve being at the same time necessarily of mathematical purity and precision; yet at the top of this curve, when it nods over, there is a sudden laxity and giving way, the water swings and jumps along the ridge like a shaken chain, and the motion runs from part to part as it does through a serpent's body. then the wind is at work on the extreme edge, and instead of letting it fling itself off naturally, it supports it, and, drives it back, or scrapes it off, and carries it bodily away; so that the spray at the top is in a continual transition between forms projected by their own weight, and forms blown and carried off with their weight overcome; then at last, when it has come down, who shall say what shape that may be called, which shape has none of the great crash where it touches the beach. i think it is that last crash which is the great taskmaster. nobody can do anything with it. i have seen copley fielding come very close to the jerk and nod of the lifted threatening edge, curl it very successfully, and without any look of its having been in papers, down nearly to the beach, but the final fall has no thunder in it. turner has tried hard for it once or twice, but it will not do. the moment is given in the sidon of the bible illustrations, and more elaborately in a painting of bamborough; in both these cases there is little foam at the bottom, and the fallen breaker looks like a wall, yet grand always; and in the latter picture very beautifully assisted in expression by the tossing of a piece of cable, which some figures are dragging ashore, and which the breaker flings into the air as it falls. perhaps the most successful rendering of the forms was in the hero and leander, but there the drawing was rendered easier by the powerful effect of light which disguised the foam. § . their effect, how injured when seen from the shore. it is not, however, from the shore that turner usually studies his sea. seen from the land, the curl of the breakers, even in nature, is somewhat uniform and monotonous; the size of the waves out at sea is uncomprehended, and those nearer the eye seem to succeed and resemble each other, to move slowly to the beach, and to break in the same lines and forms. afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we receive a totally different impression. every wave around us appears vast--every one different from all the rest--and the breakers present, now that we see them with their backs towards us, the grand, extended, and varied lines of long curvature, which are peculiarly expressive both of velocity and power. recklessness, before unfelt, is manifested in the mad, perpetual, changeful, undirected motion, not of wave after wave, as it appears from the shore, but of the very same water rising and falling. of waves that successively approach and break, each appears to the mind a separate individual, whose part being performed, it perishes, and is succeeded by another; and there is nothing in this to impress us with the idea of restlessness, any more than in any successive and continuous functions of life and death. but it is when we perceive that it is no succession of wave, but the same water constantly rising, and crashing, and recoiling, and rolling in again in new forms and with fresh fury, that we perceive the perturbed spirit, and feel the intensity of its unwearied rage. the sensation of power is also trebled; for not only is the vastness of apparent size much increased, but the whole action is different; it is not a passive wave rolling sleepily forward until it tumbles heavily, prostrated upon the beach, but a sweeping exertion of tremendous and living strength, which does not now appear to _fall_, but to _burst_ upon the shore; which never perishes, but recoils and recovers. § . turner's expression of heavy rolling sea. § . with peculiar expression of weight. aiming at these grand characters of the sea, turner almost always places the spectator, not on the shore, but twenty or thirty yards from it, beyond the first range of the breakers, as in the land's end, fowey, dunbar, and laugharne. the latter has been well engraved, and may be taken as a standard of the expression of fitfulness and power. the grand division of the whole space of the sea by a few dark continuous furrows of tremendous swell, (the breaking of one of which alone has strewed the rocks in front with ruin,) furnishes us with an estimate of space and strength, which at once reduces the men upon the shore to insects; and yet through this terrific simplicity there is indicated a fitfulness and fury in the tossing of the individual lines, which give to the whole sea a wild, unwearied, reckless incoherency, like that of an enraged multitude, whose masses act together in frenzy, while not one individual feels as another. especial attention is to be directed to the flatness of all the lines, for the same principle holds in sea which we have seen in mountains. all the size and sublimity of nature are given not by the height, but by the breadth of her masses: and turner, by following her in her sweeping lines, while he does not lose the elevation of its surges, adds in a tenfold degree to their power: farther, observe the peculiar expression of _weight_ which there is in turner's waves, precisely of the same kind which we saw in his waterfall. we have not a cutting, springing, elastic line--no jumping or leaping in the waves: _that_ is the characteristic of chelsea reach or hampstead ponds in a storm. but the surges roll and plunge with such prostration and hurling of their mass against the shore, that we feel the rocks are shaking under them; and, to add yet more to this impression, observe how little, comparatively, they are broken by the wind; above the floating wood, and along the shore, we have indication of a line of torn spray; but it is a mere fringe along the ridge of the surge--no interference with its gigantic body. the wind has no power over its tremendous unity of force and weight. finally, observe how, on the rocks on the left, the violence and swiftness of the rising wave are indicated by precisely the same lines which we saw were indicative of fury in the torrent. the water on these rocks is the body of the wave which has just broken, rushing up over them; and in doing so, like the torrent, it does not break, nor foam, nor part upon the rock, but accommodates itself to every one of its swells and hollows, with undulating lines, whose grace and variety might alone serve us for a day's study; and it is only where two streams of this rushing water meet in the hollow of the rock, that their force is shown by the vertical bound of the spray. [illustration: port ruysdael. from a painting by turner.] § . peculiar action of recoiling waves. § . and of the stroke of a breaker on the shore. § . general character of sea on a rocky coast given by turner in the land's end. in the distance of this grand picture, there are two waves which entirely depart from the principle observed by all the rest, and spring high into the air. they have a message for us which it is important that we should understand. their leap is not a preparation for breaking, neither is it caused by their meeting with a rock. it is caused by their encounter with the recoil of the preceding wave. when a large surge, in the act of breaking, just as it curls over, is hurled against the face either of a wall or of a vertical rock, the sound of the blow is not a crash nor a roar; it is a report as loud as, and in every respect similar to, that of a great gun, and the wave is dashed back from the rock with force scarcely diminished, but reversed in direction,--it now recedes from the shore, and at the instant that it encounters the following breaker, the result is the vertical bound of both which is here rendered by turner. such a recoiling wave will proceed out to sea through ten or twelve ranges of following breakers, before it is overpowered. the effect of the encounter is more completely and palpably given in the quilleboeuf, in the rivers of france. it is peculiarly instructive here, as informing us of the nature of the coast, and the force of the waves, far more clearly than any spray about the rocks themselves could have done. but the effect of the blow at the shore itself is given in the land's end, and vignette to lycidas. under favorable circumstances, with an advancing tide under a heavy gale, where the breakers feel the shore underneath them a moment before they touch the rock, so as to nod over when they strike, the effect is nearly incredible except to an eyewitness. i have seen the whole body of the wave rise in one white, vertical, broad fountain, eighty feet above the sea, half of it beaten so fine as to be borne away by the wind, the rest turning in the air when exhausted, and falling back with a weight and crash like that of an enormous waterfall. this is given most completely in the lycidas, and the blow of a less violent wave among broken rocks, not meeting it with an absolute wall, along the shore of the land's end. this last picture is a study of sea whose whole organization has been broken up by constant recoils from a rocky coast. the laugharne gives the surge and weight of the ocean in a gale, on a comparatively level shore; but the land's end, the entire disorder of the surges when every one of them, divided and entangled among promontories as it rolls in, and beaten back part by part from walls of rock on this side and that side, recoils like the defeated division of a great army, throwing all behind it into disorder, breaking up the succeeding waves into vertical ridges, which in their turn, yet more totally shattered upon the shore, retire in more hopeless confusion, until the whole surface of the sea becomes one dizzy whirl of rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected rage, bounding, and crashing, and coiling in an anarchy of enormous power, subdivided into myriads of waves, of which every one is not, be it remembered, a separate surge, but part and portion of a vast one, actuated by internal power, and giving in every direction the mighty undulation of impetuous line which glides over the rocks and writhes in the wind, overwhelming the one, and piercing the other with the form, fury, and swiftness of a sheet of lambent fire. and throughout the rendering of all this, there is not one false curve given, not one which is not the perfect expression of visible motion; and the forms of the infinite sea are drawn throughout with that utmost mastery of art which, through the deepest study of every line, makes every line appear the wildest child of chance, while yet each is in itself a subject and a picture different from all else around. of the color of this magnificent sea i have before spoken; it is a solemn green gray, (with its foam seen dimly through the darkness of twilight,) modulated with the fulness, changefulness, and sadness of a deep, wild melody. § . open seas of turner's earlier times. the greater number of turner's paintings of open sea belong to a somewhat earlier period than these drawings; nor, generally speaking, are they of equal value. it appears to me that the artist had at that time either less knowledge of, or less delight in, the characteristics of deep water than of coast sea, and that, in consequence, he suffered himself to be influenced by some of the qualities of the dutch sea-painters. in particular, he borrowed from them the habit of casting a dark shadow on the near waves, so as to bring out a stream of light behind; and though he did this in a more legitimate way than they, that is to say, expressing the light by touches on the foam, and indicating the shadow as cast on foamy surface, still the habit has induced much feebleness and conventionality in the pictures of the period. his drawing of the waves was also somewhat petty and divided, small forms covered with white flat spray, a condition which i doubt not the artist has seen on some of the shallow dutch seas, but which i have never met with myself, and of the rendering of which therefore i cannot speak. yet even in these, which i think among the poorest works of the painter, the expressions of breeze, motion, and light, are very marvellous; and it is instructive to compare them either with the lifeless works of the dutch themselves, or with any modern imitations of them, as for instance with the seas of callcott, where all the light is white and all the shadows gray, where no distinction is made between water and foam, or between real and reflective shadow, and which are generally without evidence of the artists having ever seen the sea. some pictures, however, belonging to this period of turner are free from the dutch infection, and show the real power of the artist. a very important one is in the possession of lord francis egerton, somewhat heavy in its forms, but remarkable for the grandeur of distance obtained at the horizon; a much smaller, but more powerful example is the port ruysdael in the possession of e. bicknell, esq., with which i know of no work at all comparable for the expression of the white, wild, cold, comfortless waves of northern sea, even though the sea is almost subordinate to the awful rolling clouds. both these pictures are very gray. the pas de calais has more color, and shows more art than either, yet is less impressive. recently, two marines of the same subdued color have appeared ( ) among his more radiant works. one, ostend, somewhat forced and affected, but the other, also called port ruysdael, is among the most perfect sea pictures he has produced, and especially remarkable as being painted without one marked opposition either of color or of shade, all quiet and simple even to an extreme, so that the picture was exceedingly unattractive at first sight. the shadow of the pier-head on the near waves is marked solely by touches indicative of reflected light, and so mysteriously that when the picture is seen near, it is quite untraceable, and comes into existence as the spectator retires. it is thus of peculiar truth and value; and instructive as a contrast to the dark shadows of his earlier time. § . effect of sea after prolonged storm. few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of a powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days and nights, and to those who have not, i believe it must be unimaginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, but from the complete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. the water from its prolonged agitation is beaten, not into mere creaming foam, but into masses of accumulated yeast,[ ] which hang in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, and where one curls over to break, form a festoon like a drapery, from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the water is under a great cataract; and their masses, being thus half water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like actual water. add to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as described above, (section iii. chapter vi. § ,) and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of finely divided water, but with boiling mist; imagine also the low rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as i have often seen them, whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to wave; and finally, conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark or natural evidence of position is left; that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you can see no farther in any direction than you could see through a cataract. suppose the effect of the first sunbeam sent from above to show this annihilation to itself, and you have the sea picture of the academy, --the snowstorm, one of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist, and light that has ever been put on canvas, even by turner. of course it was not understood; his finest works never are; but there was some apology for the public's not comprehending this, for few people have had the opportunity of seeing the sea at such a time, and when they have, cannot face it. to hold by a mast or a rock, and watch it, is a prolonged endurance of drowning which few people have courage to go through. to those who have, it is one of the noblest lessons of nature. § . turner's noblest work, the deep open sea in the slave ship. but, i think, the noblest sea that turner has ever painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the slave ship, the chief academy picture of the exhibition of . it is a sunset on the atlantic after prolonged storm; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain-clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the night. the whole surface of sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm. between these two ridges, the fire of the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense and lurid splendor which burns like gold and bathes like blood. along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided, lift themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. they do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under strength of the swell compels or permits them; leaving between them treacherous spaces of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flying. purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of the night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty[ ] ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight,--and cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous sea. § . its united excellences and perfection as a whole. i believe, if i were reduced to rest turner's immortality upon any single work, i should choose this. its daring conception--ideal in the highest sense of the word--is based on the purest truth, and wrought out with the concentrated knowledge of a life; its color is absolutely perfect, not one false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so modulated that every square inch of canvas is a perfect composition; its drawing as accurate as fearless; the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion; its tones as true as they are wonderful;[ ] and the whole picture dedicated to the most sublime of subjects and impressions--(completing thus the perfect system of all truth, which we have shown to be formed by turner's works)--the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable sea. footnotes [ ] not altogether. i believe here, as in a former case, i have attributed far too much influence to this change of focus. in turner's earlier works the principle is not found. in the rivers of the yorkshire drawings, every reflection is given clearly, even to the farthest depth, and yet the surface is not lost, and it would deprive the painter of much power if he were not sometimes so to represent them, especially when his object is repose; it being, of course, as lawful for him to choose one adaptation of the sight as another. i have, however, left the above paragraphs as first written, because they are true, although i think they make too much of an unimportant matter. the reader may attribute to them such weight as he thinks fit. he is referred to § of this chapter, and to § of the first chapter of this section. [ ] on a large scale it is so, but the same lines are to be seen for the moment whenever water becomes exceedingly rapid, and yet feels the bottom as it passes, being not thrown up or cast clear of it. in general, the drawing of water fails from being too interrupted, the forms flung hither and thither, and broken up and covered with bright touches, instead of being wrought out in their real unities of curvature. it is difficult enough to draw a curved surface, even when it is rough and has texture; but to indicate the varied and sweeping forms of a crystalline and polished substance, requires far more skill and patience than most artists possess. in some respects, it is impossible. i do not suppose any means of art are capable of rightly expressing the smooth, multitudinous rippling of a rapid rivulet of shallow water, giving its transparency lustre and fully-developed forms; and the greater number of the lines and actions of torrent-waves are equally inexpressible. the effort should, nevertheless, always be made, and whatever is sacrificed in color, freedom, or brightness, the real contours ought always in some measure to be drawn, as a careful draughtsman secures those of flesh, or any other finely-modelled surface. it is better, in many respects, the drawing should miss of being _like_ water, than that it should miss in this one respect the grandeur of water. many tricks of scratching and dashing will bring out a deceptive resemblance; the determined and laborious rendering of contour alone secures sublimity. [ ] the "yesty waves" of shakspeare have made the likeness familiar, and probably most readers take the expression as merely equivalent to "foamy;" but shakspeare knew better. sea-foam does not, under ordinary circumstances, last a moment after it is formed, but disappears, as above described, in a mere white film. but the foam of a prolonged tempest is altogether different; it is "whipped" foam,--thick, permanent, and, in a foul or discolored sea, very ugly, especially in the way it hangs about the tops of the waves, and gathers into clotted concretions before the driving wind. the sea looks truly working or fermenting. the following passage from fenimore cooper is an interesting confirmation of the rest of the above description, which may be depended upon as entirely free from exaggeration:--"for the first time i now witnessed a tempest at sea. gales, and pretty hard ones, i had often seen, but the force of the wind on this occasion as much exceeded that in ordinary gales of wind, as the force of these had exceeded that of a whole-sail breeze. the seas seemed crushed; the pressure of the swooping atmosphere, as the currents of the air went howling over the surface of the ocean, fairly preventing them from rising; or where a mound of water did appear, it was scooped up and borne off in spray, as the axe dubs inequalities from the log. when the day returned, a species of lurid, sombre light was diffused over the watery waste, though nothing was visible but the ocean and the ship. even the sea-birds seemed to have taken refuge in the caverns of the adjacent coast, none reappearing with the dawn. the air was full of spray, and it was with difficulty that the eye could penetrate as far into the humid atmosphere as half a mile,"--_miles wattingford_. half a mile is an over-estimate in coast. [ ] she is a slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. the near sea is encumbered with corpses. [ ] there is a piece of tone of the same kind, equal in one part, but not so united with the rest of the picture, in the storm scene illustrative of the antiquary,--a sunset light on polished sea. i ought to have particularly mentioned the sea in the lowestoffe, as a piece of the cutting motion of shallow water, under storm, altogether in gray, which should be especially contrasted, as a piece of color, with the grays of vandevelde. and the sea in the great yarmouth should have been noticed for its expression of water in violent agitation, seen in enormous extent from a great elevation. there is almost every form of sea in it,--rolling waves dashing on the pier--successive breakers rolling to the shore--a vast horizon of multitudinous waves--and winding canals of calm water along the sands, bringing fragments of bright sky down into their yellow waste. there is hardly one of the views of the southern coast which does not give some new condition or circumstance of sea. section vi. of truth of vegetation.--conclusion. chapter i. of truth of vegetation. § . frequent occurrence of foliage in the works of the old masters. we have now arrived at the consideration of what was, with the old masters, the subject of most serious and perpetual study. if they do not give us truth here, they cannot have the faculty of truth in them; for foliage is the chief component part of all their pictures, and is finished by them with a care and labor which, if bestowed without attaining truth, must prove either their total bluntness of perception, or total powerlessness of hand. with the italian school i can scarcely recollect a single instance in which foliage does not form the greater part of the picture; in fact, they are rather painters of tree-portrait than landscape painters; for rocks, and sky, and architecture are usually mere accessories and backgrounds to the dark masses of laborious foliage, of which the composition principally consists. yet we shall be less detained by the examination of foliage than by our former subjects; since where specific form is organized and complete, and the occurrence of the object universal, it is easy, without requiring any laborious attention in the reader, to demonstrate to him quite as much of the truth or falsehood of various representations of it, as may serve to determine the character and rank of the painter. § . laws common to all forest trees. their branches do not taper, but only divide. it will be best to begin as nature does, with the stems and branches, and then to put the leaves on. and in speaking of trees generally, be it observed, when i say _all_ trees, i mean only those ordinary forest or copse trees of europe, which are the chief subjects of the landscape painter. i do not mean to include every kind of foliage which by any accident can find its way into a picture, but the ordinary trees of europe,--oak, elm, ash, hazel, willow, birch, beech, poplar, chestnut, pine, mulberry, olive, ilex, carubbe, and such others. i do not purpose to examine the characteristics of each tree; it will be enough to observe the laws common to all. first, then, neither the stems nor the boughs of any of the above trees _taper_, except where they fork. wherever a stem sends off a branch, or a branch a lesser bough, or a lesser bough a bud, the stem or the branch is, on the instant, less in diameter by the exact quantity of the branch or the bough they have sent off, and they remain of the same diameter; or if there be any change, rather increase than diminish until they send off another branch or bough. this law is imperative and without exception; no bough, nor stem, nor twig, ever tapering or becoming narrower towards its extremity by a hairbreadth, save where it parts with some portion of its substance at a fork or bud, so that if all the twigs and sprays at the top and sides of the tree, which are, and _have been_, could be united without loss of space, they would form a round log of the diameter of the trunk from which they spring. § . appearance of tapering caused by frequent buds. but as the trunks of most trees send off twigs and sprays of light under foliage, of which every individual fibre takes precisely its own thickness of wood from the parent stem, and as many of these drop off, leaving nothing but a small excrescence to record their existence, there is frequently a slight and delicate appearance of tapering bestowed on the trunk itself; while the same operation takes place much more extensively in the branches, it being natural to almost all trees to send out from their young limbs more wood than they can support, which, as the stem increases, gets contracted at the point of insertion, so as to check the flow of the sap, and then dies and drops off, leaving all along the bough, first on one side, then on another, a series of small excrescences, sufficient to account for a degree of tapering, which is yet so very slight, that if we select a portion of a branch with no real fork or living bough to divide it or diminish it, the tapering is scarcely to be detected by the eye; and if we select a portion without such evidences of past ramification, there will be found none whatsoever. § . and care of nature to conceal the parallelism. but nature takes great care and pains to conceal this uniformity in her boughs. they are perpetually parting with little sprays here and there, which steal away their substance cautiously, and where the eye does not perceive the theft, until, a little way above, it feels the loss; and in the upper parts of the tree, the ramifications take place so constantly and delicately, that the effect upon the eye is precisely the same as if the boughs actually tapered, except here and there, where some avaricious one, greedy of substance, runs on for two or three yards without parting with anything, and becomes ungraceful in so doing. § . the degree of tapering which may be represented as continuous. hence we see that although boughs may, and must be represented as actually tapering, they must only be so when they are sending off foliage and sprays, and when they are at such a distance that the particular forks and divisions cannot be evident to the eye; and farther, even in such circumstances the tapering never can be sudden or rapid. no bough ever, with appearance of smooth tapering, loses more than one tenth of its diameter in a length of ten diameters. any greater diminution than this must be accounted for by visible ramification, and must take place by steps, at each fork. § . the trees of gaspar poussin; and therefore we see at once that the stem of gaspar poussin's tall tree, on the right of the la riccia, in the national gallery, is a painting of a carrot or a parsnip, not of the trunk of a tree. for, being so near that every individual leaf is visible, we should not have seen, in nature, one branch or stem actually tapering. we should have received an _impression_ of graceful diminution; but we should have been able, on examination, to trace it joint by joint, fork by fork, into the thousand minor supports of the leaves. gaspar poussin's stem, on the contrary, only sends off four or five minor branches altogether, and both it and they taper violently, and without showing why or wherefore--without parting with a single twig--without showing one vestige of roughness or excrescence--and leaving, therefore, their unfortunate leaves to hold on as best they may. the latter, however, are clever leaves, and support themselves as swarming bees do, hanging on by each other. § . and of the italian school generally, defy this law. but even this piece of work is a jest to the perpetration of the bough at the left-hand upper corner of the picture opposite to it,--the view near albano. this latter is a representation of an ornamental group of elephants' tusks, with feathers tied to the ends of them. not the wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the remotest resemblance to the bough of a tree. it might be the claws of a witch--the talons of an eagle--the horns of a fiend; but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which can be told respecting foliage--a piece of work so barbarous in every way, that one glance at it ought to prove the complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old landscape painters. for i will depart for once from my usual plan, of abstaining from all assertion of a thing's being beautiful or otherwise; i will say here, at once, that such drawing as this is as ugly as it is childish, and as painful as it is false; and that the man who could tolerate, much more, who could deliberately set down such a thing on his canvas, had neither eye nor feeling for one single attribute or excellence of god's works. he might have drawn the other stem in excusable ignorance, or under some false impression of being able to improve upon nature; but _this_ is conclusive and unpardonable. again, take the stem of the chief tree in claude's narcissus. it is a very faithful portrait of a large boa-constrictor, with a handsome tail; the kind of trunk which young ladies at fashionable boarding-schools represent with nosegays at the top of them, by way of forest scenery. § . the truth, as it is given by j. d. harding. let us refresh ourselves for a moment, by looking at the truth. we need not go to turner, we will go to the man who, next to him, is unquestionably the greatest master of foliage in europe--j. d. harding. take the trunk of the largest stone-pine, plate , in the park and the forest. for the first nine or ten feet from the ground it does not lose one hairbreadth of its diameter. but the shoot, broken off just under the crossing part of the distant tree, is followed by an instant diminution of the trunk, perfectly appreciable both by the eye and the compasses. again, the stem maintains undiminished thickness, up to the two shoots on the left, from the loss of which it suffers again perceptibly. on the right, immediately above, is the stump of a very large bough, whose loss reduces the trunk suddenly to about two-thirds of what it was at the root. diminished again, less considerably, by the minor branch close to this stump, it now retains its diameter up to the three branches, broken off just under the head, where it once more loses in diameter, and finally branches into the multitude of head-boughs, of which not one will be found tapering in any part, but losing themselves gradually by division among their offshoots and spray. this is nature, and beauty too. § . boughs, in consequence of this law, _must_ diminish where they divide. those of the old masters often do not. but the old masters are not satisfied with drawing carrots for boughs. nature can be violated in more ways than one, and the industry with which they seek out and adopt every conceivable mode of contradicting her is matter of no small interest. it is evident, from what we have above stated of the structure of all trees, that as no boughs diminish where they do not fork, so they cannot fork without diminishing. it is impossible that the smallest shoot can be sent out of a bough without a diminution of the diameter above it; and wherever a branch goes off it must not only be less in diameter than the bough from which it springs, but the bough beyond the fork must be less by precisely the quantity of the branch it has sent off.[ ] now observe the bough underneath the first bend of the great stem in claude's narcissus; it sends off four branches like the ribs of a leaf. the two lowest of these are both quite as thick as the parent stem, and the stem itself is much thicker after it has sent off the first one than it was before. the top boughs of the central tree, in the marriage of isaac and rebecca, ramify in the same scientific way. § . boughs must multiply as they diminish. those of the old masters do not. § . bough-drawing of salvator. but there are further conclusions to be drawn from this great principle in trees. as they only diminish where they divide, their increase of number is in precise proportion to their diminution of size, so that whenever we come to the extremities of boughs, we must have a multitude of sprays sufficient to make up, if they were united, the bulk of that from which they spring. where a bough divides into two equal ramifications, the diameter of each of the two is about two-thirds that of the single one, and the sum of their diameters, therefore, one-fourth greater than the diameter of the single one. hence, if no boughs died or were lost, the quantity of wood in the sprays would appear one-fourth greater than would be necessary to make up the thickness of the trunk. but the lost boughs remove the excess, and therefore, speaking broadly, the diameters of the outer boughs put together would generally just make up the diameter of the trunk. precision in representing this is neither desirable nor possible. all that is required is just so much observance of the general principle as may make the eye feel satisfied that there is something like the same quantity of wood in the sprays which there is in the stem. but to do this, there must be, what there always is in nature, an exceeding complexity of the outer sprays. this complexity gradually increases towards their extremities, of course exactly in proportion to the slenderness of the twigs. the slenderer they become, the more there are of them, until at last, at the extremities of the tree, they form a mass of intricacy, which in winter, when it can be seen, is scarcely distinguishable from fine herbage, and is beyond all power of definite representation; it can only be expressed by a mass of involved strokes. also, as they shoot out in every direction, some are nearer, some more distant; some distinct, some faint; and their intersections and relations of distance are marked with the most exquisite gradations of aerial perspective. now it will be found universally in the works of claude, gaspar, and salvator, that the boughs do _not_ get in the least complex or multiplied towards the extremities--that each large limb forks only into two or three smaller ones, each of which vanishes into the air without any cause or reason for such unaccountable conduct--unless that the mass of leaves transfixed upon it or tied to it, entirely dependent on its single strength, have been too much, as well they may be, for its powers of solitary endurance. this total ignorance of tree structure is shown throughout their works. the sinon before priam is an instance of it in a really fine work of claude's, but the most gross examples are in the works of salvator. it appears that this latter artist was hardly in the habit of studying from nature at all after his boyish ramble among the calabrian hills; and i do not recollect any instance of a piece of his bough-drawing which is not palpably and demonstrably a made-up phantasm of the studio, the proof derivable from this illegitimate tapering being one of the most convincing. the painter is always visibly embarrassed to reduce the thick boughs to spray, and _feeling_ (for salvator naturally had acute feeling for truth) that the bough was wrong when it tapered suddenly, he accomplishes its diminution by an impossible protraction; throwing out shoot after shoot until his branches straggle all across the picture, and at last disappear unwillingly where there is no room for them to stretch any farther. the consequence is, that whatever leaves are put upon such boughs have evidently no adequate support, their power of leverage is enough to uproot the tree; or if the boughs are left bare, they have the look of the long tentacula of some complicated marine monster, or of the waving endless threads of bunchy sea-weed, instead of the firm, upholding, braced, and bending grace of natural boughs. i grant that this is in a measure done by salvator from a love of ghastliness, and that in certain scenes it is in a sort allowable; but it is in a far greater degree done from pure ignorance of tree structure, as is sufficiently proved by the landscape of the pitti palace, peace burning the arms of war; where the spirit of the scene is intended to be quite other than ghastly, and yet the tree branches show the usual errors in an extraordinary degree; every one of their arrangements is impossible, and the trunk of the tree could not for a moment support the foliage it is loaded with. so also in the pictures of the guadagni palace. and even where the skeleton look of branches is justifiable or desirable, there is no occasion for any violation of natural laws. i have seen more spectral character in the real limbs of a blasted oak, than ever in salvator's best monstrosities; more horror is to be obtained by right combination of inventive line, than by drawing tree branches as if they were wing-bones of a pterodactyle. all departure from natural forms to give fearfulness is mere germanism; it is the work of fancy, not of imagination,[ ] and instantly degrades whatever it affects to third-rate level. there is nothing more marked in truly great men, than their power of being dreadful without being false or licentious. in tintoret's murder of abel, the head of the sacrificed firstling lies in the corner of the foreground, obscurely sketched in, and with the light gleaming upon its glazed eyes. there is nothing exaggerated about the head, but there is more horror got out of it, and more of death suggested by its treatment, than if he had turned all the trees of his picture into skeletons, and raised a host of demons to drive the club. § . all these errors especially shown in claude's sketches and concentrated in a work of g. poussin's. § . impossibility of the angles of boughs being taken out of them by wind. it is curious that in salvator's sketches or etchings there is less that is wrong than in his paintings,--there seems a fresher remembrance of nature about them. not so with claude. it is only by looking over his sketches, in the british museum, that a complete and just idea is to be formed of his capacities of error; for the feeling and arrangement of many of them are those of an advanced age, so that we can scarcely set them down for what they resemble--the work of a boy ten years old; and the drawing being seen without any aids of tone or color to set it off, shows in its naked falsehood. the windy landscape of poussin, opposite the dido and �neas, in the national gallery, presents us, in the foreground tree, with a piece of atrocity which i think, to any person who candidly considers it, may save me all farther trouble of demonstrating the errors of ancient art. i do not in the least suspect the picture: the tones of it, and much of the handling, are masterly; yet that foreground tree comprises every conceivable violation of truth which the human hand can commit, or head invent, in drawing a tree--except only, that it is not drawn root uppermost. it has no bark, no roughness nor character of stem; its boughs do not grow out of each other, but are stuck into each other; they ramify without diminishing, diminish without ramifying, are terminated by no complicated sprays, have their leaves tied to their ends, like the heads of dutch brooms; and finally, and chiefly, they are evidently not made of wood, but of some soft elastic substance, which the wind can stretch out as it pleases, for there is not a vestige of an angle in any one of them. now, the fiercest wind that ever blew upon the earth, could not take the angles out of the bough of a tree an inch thick. the whole bough bends together, retaining its elbows, and angles, and natural form, but affected throughout with curvature in each of its parts and joints. that part of it which was before perpendicular being bent aside, and that which was before sloping, being bent into still greater inclination, the angle at which the two parts meet remains the same; or if the strain be put in the opposite direction, the bough will break long before it loses its angle. you will find it difficult to bend the angles out of the youngest sapling, if they be marked; and absolutely impossible, with a strong bough. you may break it, but you will not destroy its angles. and if you watch a tree in the wildest storm, you will find that though all its boughs are bending, none lose their character but the utmost shoots and sapling spray. hence gaspar poussin, by his bad drawing, does not make his storm strong, but his tree weak; he does not make his gust violent, but his boughs of india-rubber. § . bough-drawing of titian. these laws respecting vegetation are so far more imperative than those which were stated respecting water, that the greatest artist cannot violate them without danger, because they are laws resulting from organic structure, which it is always painful to see interrupted; on the other hand, they have this in common with all laws, that they may be observed with mathematical precision, yet with no grateful result; the disciplined eye and the life in the woods are worth more than all botanical knowledge. for there is that about the growing of the tree trunk, and that grace in its upper ramification which cannot be taught, and which cannot even be seen but by eager watchfulness. there is not an exhibition passes, but there appear in it hundreds of elaborate paintings of trees, many of them executed from nature. for three hundred years back, trees have been drawn with affection by all the civilized nations of europe, and yet i repeat boldly, what i before asserted, that no men but titian and turner ever drew the stem of a tree. generally, i think, the perception of the muscular qualities of the tree trunk incomplete, except in men who have studied the human figure, and in loose expression of those characters, the painter who can draw the living muscle seldom fails; but the thoroughly peculiar lines belonging to woody fibre, can only be learned by patient forest study; and hence in all the trees of the merely historical painters, there is fault of some kind or another, commonly exaggeration of the muscular swellings, or insipidity and want of spring in curvature, or fantasticism and unnaturalness of arrangement, and especially a want of the peculiar characters of bark which express the growth and age of the tree; for bark is no mere excrescence, lifeless and external--it is a skin of especial significance in its indications of the organic form beneath; in places under the arms of the tree it wrinkles up and forms fine lines _round_ the trunk, inestimable in their indication of the direction of its surface; in others, it bursts or peels longitudinally, and the rending and bursting of it are influenced in direction and degree by the under-growth and swelling of the woody fibre, and are not a mere roughness and granulated pattern of the hide. where there are so many points to be observed, some are almost always exaggerated, and others missed, according to the predilections of the painter. rembrandt and albert durer have given some splendid examples of woody texture, but both miss the grace of the great lines. titian took a larger view and reached a higher truth, yet (as before noticed) from the habit of drawing the figure, he admits too much flaccidity and bend, and sometimes makes his tree trunks look flexible like sea-weed. there is a peculiar stiffness and spring about the curves of the wood, which separates them completely from animal curves, and which especially defies recollection or invention; it is so subtile that it escapes but too often, even in the most patient study from nature; it lies within the thickness of a pencil line. farther, the modes of ramification of the upper branches are so varied, inventive, and graceful, that the least alteration of them, even in the measure of a hairbreadth, spoils them; and though it is sometimes possible to get rid of a troublesome bough, accidentally awkward, or in some minor respects to assist the arrangement, yet so far as the real branches are copied, the hand libels their lovely curvatures even in its best attempts to follow them. § . bough-drawing of turner. these two characters, the woody stiffness hinted through muscular line, and the inventive grace of the upper boughs, have never been rendered except by turner; he does not merely draw them better than others, but he is the only man who has ever drawn them at all. of the woody character, the tree subjects of the liber studiorum afford marked examples; the cephalus and procris, scenes near the grand chartreuse and blair athol, juvenile tricks, and hedging and ditching, may be particularized; in the england series, the bolton abbey is perhaps a more characteristic and thoroughly turneresque example than any. of the arrangement of the upper boughs, the �sacus and hesperie is perhaps the most consummate example, the absolute truth and simplicity and freedom from anything like fantasticism or animal form being as marked on the one hand, as the exquisite imaginativeness of the lines on the other: among the yorkshire subjects the aske hall, kirby lonsdale churchyard, and brignall church are most characteristic: among the england subjects the warwick, dartmouth cove, durham, and chain bridge over the tees, where the piece of thicket on the right has been well rendered by the engraver, and is peculiarly expressive of the aerial relations and play of light among complex boughs. the vignette at the opening of rogers's pleasures of memory, that of chiefswood cottage in the illustrations to scott's works, and the chateau de la belle gabrielle, engraved for the keepsake, are among the most graceful examples accessible to every one; the crossing the brook will occur at once to those acquainted with the artist's gallery. the drawing of the stems in all these instances, and indeed in all the various and frequent minor occurrences of such subject throughout the painter's works is entirely unique, there is nothing of the same kind in art. § . leafage. its variety and symmetry. § . perfect regularity of poussin. let us, however, pass to the leafage of the elder landscape painters, and see if it atones for the deficiencies of the stems. one of the most remarkable characters of natural leafage is the constancy with which, while the leaves are arranged on the spray with exquisite regularity, that regularity is modified in their actual effect. for as in every group of leaves some are seen sideways, forming merely long lines, some foreshortened, some crossing each other, every one differently turned and placed from all the others, the forms of the leaves, though in themselves similar, give rise to a thousand strange and differing forms in the group; and the shadows of some, passing over the others, still farther disguise and confuse the mass, until the eye can distinguish nothing but a graceful and flexible disorder of innumerable forms, with here and there a perfect leaf on the extremity, or a symmetrical association of one or two, just enough to mark the specific character and to give unity and grace, but never enough to repeat in one group what was done in another--never enough to prevent the eye from feeling that, however regular and mathematical may be the structure of parts, what is composed out of them is as various and infinite as any other part of nature. nor does this take place in general effect only. break off an elm bough, three feet long, in full leaf, and lay it on the table before you, and try to draw it, leaf for leaf. it is ten to one if in the whole bough, (provided you do not twist it about as you work,) you find one form of a leaf exactly like another; perhaps you will not even have _one_ complete. every leaf will be oblique, or foreshortened, or curled, or crossed by another, or shaded by another, or have something or other the matter with it; and though the whole bough will look graceful and symmetrical, you will scarcely be able to tell how or why it does so, since there is not one line of it like another. now go to gaspar poussin, and take one of his sprays where they come against the sky; you may count it all round, one, two, three, four, one bunch; five, six, seven, eight, two bunches; nine, ten, eleven, twelve, three bunches; with four leaves each,--and such leaves! every one precisely the same as its neighbor, blunt and round at the end, (where every forest leaf is sharp, except that of the fig-tree,) tied together by the roots, and so fastened on to the demoniacal claws above described, one bunch to each claw. § . exceeding intricacy of nature's foliage. but if nature is so various when you have a bough on the table before you, what must she be when she retires from you, and gives you her whole mass and multitude? the leaves then at the extremities become as fine as dust, a mere confusion of points and lines between you and the sky, a confusion which you might as well hope to draw sea-sand particle by particle, as to imitate leaf for leaf. this, as it comes down into the body of the tree, gets closer, but never opaque; it is always transparent, with crumbling lights in it letting you through to the sky; then, out of this, come, heavier and heavier, the masses of illumined foliage, all dazzling and inextricable, save here and there a single leaf on the extremities; then, under these, you get deep passages of broken, irregular gloom, passing into transparent, green-lighted, misty hollows; the twisted stems glancing through them in their pale and entangled infinity, and the shafted sunbeams, rained from above, running along the lustrous leaves for an instant; then lost, then caught again on some emerald bank or knotted root, to be sent up again with a faint reflex on the white under-sides of dim groups of drooping foliage, the shadows of the upper boughs running in gray network down the glossy stems, and resting in quiet checkers upon the glittering earth; but all penetrable and transparent, and, in proportion, inextricable and incomprehensible, except where across the labyrinth and the mystery of the dazzling light and dream-like shadow, falls, close to us, some solitary spray, some wreath of two or three motionless large leaves, the type and embodying of all that in the rest we feel and imagine, but can never see. § . how contradicted by the tree-patterns of g. poussin. now, with thus much of nature in your mind, go to gaspar poussin's view near albano, in the national gallery. it is the very subject to unite all these effects,--a sloping bank shaded with intertwined forest;--and what has gaspar given us? a mass of smooth, opaque, varnished brown, without one interstice, one change of hue, or any vestige of leafy structure in its interior, or in those parts of it, i should say, which are intended to represent interior; but out of it, over it rather, at regular intervals, we have circular groups of greenish touches, always the same in size, shape, and distance from each other, containing so exactly the same number of touches each, that you cannot tell one from another. there are eight or nine and thirty of them, laid over each other like fish-scales; the shade being most carefully made darker and darker as it recedes from each until it comes to the edge of the next, against which it cuts in the same sharp circular line, and then begins to decline again, until the canvas is covered, with about as much intelligence or feeling of art as a house-painter has in marbling a wainscot, or a weaver in repeating an ornamental pattern. what is there in this, which the most determined prejudice in favor of the old masters can for a moment suppose to resemble trees? it is exactly what the most ignorant beginner, trying to make a complete drawing, would lay down,--exactly the conception of trees which we have in the works of our worst drawing-masters, where the shade is laid on with the black-lead and stump, and every human power exerted to make it look like a kitchen-grate well polished. § . how followed by creswick. oppose to this the drawing even of our somewhat inferior tree-painters. i will not insult harding by mentioning his work after it, but take creswick, for instance, and match one of his sparkling bits of green leafage with this tree-pattern of poussin's. i do not say there is not a dignity and impressiveness about the old landscape, owing to its simplicity; and i am very far from calling creswick's good tree-painting; it is false in color and deficient in mass and freedom, and has many other defects, but it is the work of a man who has sought earnestly for truth; and who, with one thought or memory of nature in his heart, could look at the two landscapes, and receive poussin's with ordinary patience? take creswick in black and white, where he is unembarrassed by his fondness for pea-green, the illustrations, for instance, to the nut-brown maid, in the book of english ballads. look at the intricacy and fulness of the dark oak foliage where it bends over the brook, see how you can go through it, and into it, and come out behind it to the quiet bit of sky. observe the gray, aerial transparency of the stunted copse on the left, and the entangling of the boughs where the light near foliage detaches itself. above all, note the forms of the masses of light. not things like scales or shells, sharp at the edge and flat in the middle, but irregular and rounded, stealing in and out accidentally from the shadow, and presenting, as the masses of all trees do, in general outline, a resemblance to the specific forms of the leaves of which they are composed. turn over the page, and look into the weaving of the foliage and sprays against the dark night-sky, how near they are, yet how untraceable; see how the moonlight creeps up underneath them, trembling and shivering on the silver boughs above; note also, the descending bit of ivy on the left, of which only two leaves are made out, and the rest is confusion, or tells only in the moonlight like faint flakes of snow. § . perfect unity in nature's foliage. but nature observes another principle in her foliage more important even than its intricacy. she always secures an exceeding harmony and repose. she is _so_ intricate that her minuteness of parts becomes to the eye, at a little distance, one united veil or cloud of leaves, to destroy the evenness of which is perhaps a greater fault than to destroy its transparency. look at creswick's oak again, in its dark parts. intricate as it is, all is blended into a cloud-like harmony of shade, which becomes fainter and fainter, as it retires, with the most delicate flatness and unity of tone. and it is by this kind of vaporescence, so to speak, by this flat, misty, unison of parts, that nature, and her faithful followers, are enabled to keep the eye in perfect repose in the midst of profusion, and to display beauty of form, wherever they choose, to the greatest possible advantage, by throwing it across some quiet, visionary passage of dimness and rest. § . total want of it in both and hobbima. it is here that hobbima and both fail. they can paint oak leafage faithfully, but do not know where to stop, and by doing too much, lose the truth of all,--lose the very truth of detail at which they aim, for all their minute work only gives two leaves to nature's twenty. they are evidently incapable of even thinking of a tree, much more of drawing it, except leaf by leaf; they have no notion nor sense of simplicity, mass, or obscurity, and when they come to distance, where it is totally impossible that leaves should be separately seen, yet, being incapable of conceiving or rendering the grand and quiet forms of truth, they are reduced to paint their bushes with dots and touches expressive of leaves three feet broad each. nevertheless there is a genuine aim in their works, and their failure is rather to be attributed to ignorance of art, than to such want of sense for nature as we find in claude or poussin; and when they come close home, we sometimes receive from them fine passages of mechanical truth. § . how rendered by turner. but let us oppose to their works the group of trees on the left in turner's marly.[ ] we have there perfect and ceaseless intricacy to oppose to poussin,--perfect and unbroken repose to oppose to hobbima; and in the unity of these the perfection of truth. this group may be taken as a fair standard of turner's tree-painting. we have in it the admirably drawn stems, instead of the claws or the serpents; full, transparent, boundless intricacy, instead of the shell pattern; and misty depth of intermingled light and leafage, instead of perpetual repetition of one mechanical touch. § . the near leafage of claude. his middle distances are good. i have already spoken (section ii. chapter iv. § ,) of the way in which mystery and intricacy are carried even into the nearest leaves of the foreground, and noticed the want of such intricacy even in the best works of the old masters. claude's are particularly deficient, for by representing every particular leaf of them, or trying to do so, he makes nature finite, and even his nearest bits of leafage are utterly false, for they have neither shadows modifying their form, (compare section ii. chapter iii. § ,) nor sparkling lights, nor confused intersections of their own forms and lines; and the perpetual repetition of the same shape of leaves and the same arrangement, relieved from a black ground, is more like an ornamental pattern for dress than the painting of a foreground. nevertheless, the foliage of claude, in his middle distances, is the finest and truest part of his pictures, and, on the whole, affords the best example of good drawing to be found in ancient art. it is always false in color, and has not boughs enough amongst it, and the stems commonly look a great deal nearer than any part of it, but it is still graceful, flexible, abundant, intricate; and, in all but color and connection with stems, very nearly right. of the perfect painting of thick, leafy foreground, turner's mercury and argus, and oakhampton, are the standards.[ ] § . universal termination of trees in symmetrical curves. § . altogether unobserved by the old masters. always given by turner. the last and most important truth to be observed respecting trees, is that their boughs always, in finely grown individuals, bear among themselves such a ratio of length as to describe with their extremities a symmetrical curve, constant for each species; and within this curve all the irregularities, segments, and divisions of the tree are included, each bough reaching the limit with its extremity, but not passing it. when a tree is perfectly grown, each bough starts from the trunk with just so much wood as, allowing for constant ramification, will enable it to reach the terminal line; or if by mistake, it start with too little, it will proceed without ramifying till within a distance where it may safely divide; if on the contrary it start with too much, it will ramify quickly and constantly; or, to express the real operation more accurately, each bough, growing on so as to keep even with its neighbors, takes so much wood from the trunk as is sufficient to enable it to do so, more or less in proportion as it ramifies fast or slowly. in badly grown trees, the boughs are apt to fall short of the curve, or at least, there are so many jags and openings that its symmetry is interrupted; and in young trees, the impatience of the upper shoots frequently breaks the line; but in perfect and mature trees, every bough does its duty completely, and the line of curve is quite filled up, and the mass within it unbroken, so that the tree assumes the shape of a dome, as in the oak, or, in tall trees, of a pear, with the stalk downmost. the old masters paid no attention whatsoever to this great principle. they swing their boughs about, anywhere and everywhere; each stops or goes on just as it likes, nor will it be possible, in any of their works, to find a single example in which any symmetrical curve is indicated by the extremities.[ ] but i need scarcely tell any one in the slightest degree acquainted with the works of turner, how rigidly and constantly he adheres to this principle of nature; taking in his highest compositions the perfect ideal form, every spray being graceful and varied in itself, but inevitably terminating at the assigned limit, and filling up the curve without break or gap; in his lower works, taking less perfect form, but invariably hinting the constant tendency in all, and thus, in spite of his abundant complexity, he arranges his trees under simpler and grander forms than any other artist, even among the moderns. § . foliage painting on the continent. it was above asserted that j. d. harding is, after turner, the greatest master of foliage in europe; i ought, however, to state that my knowledge of the modern landscape of germany is very limited, and that, even with respect to france and italy, i judge rather from the general tendency of study and character of mind visible in the annual exhibition of the louvre, and in some galleries of modern paintings at milan, venice, and florence, than from any detailed acquaintance with the works of their celebrated painters. yet i think i can hardly be mistaken. i have seen nothing to induce me to take a closer survey; no life knowledge or emotion in any quarter; nothing but the meanest and most ignorant copyism of vulgar details, coupled with a style of conception resembling that of the various lithographic ideals on the first leaves of the music of pastoral ballads. an exception ought, however, to be made in favor of french etching; some studies in black and white may be seen in the narrow passages of the louvre of very high merit, showing great skill and delicacy of execution, and most determined industry; (in fact, i think when the french artist fails, it is never through fear of labor;) nay, more than this, some of them exhibit acute perception of landscape character and great power of reaching simple impressions of gloom, wildness, sound, and motion. some of their illustrated works also exhibit these powers in a high degree; there is a spirit, fire, and sense of reality about some of the wood-cuts to the large edition of paul and virginia, and a determined rendering of separate feeling in each, such as we look for in vain in our own ornamental works.[ ] but the french appear to have no teaching such as might carry them beyond this; their entire ignorance of color renders the assumption of the brush instantly fatal, and the false, forced, and impious sentiment of the nation renders anything like grand composition altogether impossible. § . foliage of j. d. harding. its deficiencies. it is therefore only among good artists of our own school that i think any fair comparison can be instituted, and i wish to assert harding's knowledge of foliage more distinctly, because he neither does justice to himself, nor is, i think, rightly estimated by his fellow-artists. i shall not make any invidious remarks respecting individuals, but i think it necessary to state generally, that the style of foliage painting chiefly characteristic of the pictures on the line of the royal academy is of the most degraded kind;[ ] and that, except turner and mulready, we have, as far as i know, no royal academician capable of painting even the smallest portion of foliage in a dignified or correct manner; all is lost in green shadows with glittering yellow lights, white trunks with black patches on them, and leaves of no species in particular. much laborious and clever foliage drawing is to be found in the rooms of the new water-color society; but we have no one in any wise comparable to harding for thorough knowledge of the subject, for power of expression in a sketch from nature, or for natural and unaffected conception in the study. maintaining for him this high position, it is necessary that i should also state those deficiencies which appear to me to conceal his real power, and in no small degree to prevent his progress. § . his brilliancy of execution too manifest. his over-fondness for brilliant execution i have already noticed. he is fonder of seeing something tolerably like a tree produced with few touches, than something very like a tree produced with many. now, it is quite allowable that occasionally, and in portions of his picture, a great artist should indulge himself in this luxury of sketching, yet it is a perilous luxury; it blunts the feeling and weakens the hand. i have said enough in various places respecting the virtues of negligence and of finish, (compare above the chapter on ideas of power in part i. sect. ii., and part iii. sect. i. ch. x. § ,) and i need only say here, therefore, that harding's foliage is never sufficiently finished, and has at its best the look of a rapid sketch from nature touched upon at home. in , (i think,) there was a pretty drawing in the rooms of the water-color society,--the clear green water of a torrent resting among stones, with copse-like wood on each side, a bridge in the distance, a white flower (water-lily?) catching the eye in front; the tops of the trees on the left of this picture were mere broad blots of color dashed upon the sky and connected by stems. i allow the power necessary to attain any look of foliage by such means, but it is power abused: by no such means can any of the higher virtue and impressiveness of foliage be rendered. in the use of body color for near leaves, his execution is also too hasty; often the touches are mere square or round dots, which can be understood only for foliage by their arrangement. this fault was especially marked in the trees of his picture painted for the academy two years ago; they were very nearly shapeless, and could not stand even in courtesy for walnut leaves, for which judging by the make of the tree, they must have been intended. § . his bough-drawing and choice of form. his drawing of boughs is, in all points of demonstrable law, right, and very frequently easy and graceful also; yet it has two eminent faults, the first, that the flow of the bough is sacrificed to its texture, the pencil checking itself and hesitating at dots, and stripes, and knots, instead of following the grand and unbroken tendency of growth: the second, that however good the arrangement may be as far as regards merely flexibility, intricacy, and freedom, there are none of those composed groups of line which are unfailing in nature. harding's work is not grand enough to be natural. the drawings in the park and the forest, are, i believe, almost facsimiles of sketches made from nature; yet it is evident at once that in all of them nothing but the general lie and disposition of the boughs has been taken from the tree, and that no single branch or spray has been faithfully copied or patiently studied. this want of close study necessarily causes several deficiencies of feeling respecting general form. harding's choice is always of tree forms comparatively imperfect, leaning this way and that, and unequal in the lateral arrangements of foliage. such forms are often graceful, always picturesque, but rarely grand; and when systematically adopted, untrue. it requires more patient study to attain just feeling of the dignity and character of a purely formed tree with all its symmetries perfect. § . local color, how far expressible in black and white, and with what advantage. one more cause of incorrectness i may note, though it is not peculiar to the artist's tree-drawing, but attaches to his general system of sketching. in harding's valuable work on the use of the lead pencil, there is one principle advanced which i believe to be false and dangerous, that the local color of objects is not thereby to be rendered. i think the instance given is that of some baskets, whose darkness is occasioned solely by the touches indicating the wicker-work. now, i believe, that an essential difference between the sketch of a great and of a comparatively inferior master is, that the former is conceived entirely in shade and color, and its masses are blocked out with reference to both, while the inferior draughtsman checks at textures and petty characters of object. if rembrandt had had to sketch such baskets, he would have troubled himself very little about the wicker-work; but he would have looked to see where they came dark or light on the sand, and where there were any sparkling points of light on the wet osiers. these darks and lights he would have scratched in with the fastest lines he could, leaving no white paper but at the wet points of lustre; if he had had time, the wicker-work would have come afterwards.[ ] and i think, that the first thing to be taught to any pupil, is neither how to manage the pencil, nor how to attain character of outline, but rather to see where things are light and where they are dark, and to draw them as he sees them, never caring whether his lines be dexterous or slovenly. the result of such study is the immediate substitution of downright drawing for symbolism, and afterwards a judicious moderation in the use of extreme lights and darks; for where local colors are really drawn, so much of what seems violently dark is found to come light against something else, and so much of what seems high light to come dark against the sky, that the draughtsman trembles at finding himself plunged either into blackness or whiteness, and seeks, as he should, for means of obtaining force without either. it is in consequence of his evident habit of sketching more with a view to detail and character than to the great masses, that harding's chiaroscuro is frequently crude, scattered, and petty. black shadows occur under his distant trees, white high lights on his foreground rocks, the foliage and trunks are divided by violent oppositions into separate masses, and the branches lose in spots of moss and furrowings of bark their soft roundings of delicate form, and their grand relations to each other and the sky. § . opposition between great manner and great knowledge. it is owing to my respect for the artist, and my belief in his power and conscientious desire to do what is best, that i have thus extended these somewhat unkind remarks. on the other hand, it is to be remembered, that his knowledge of nature is most extended, and his dexterity of drawing most instructive, especially considering his range of subject; for whether in water, rock, or foliage, he is equally skilful in attaining whatever he desires, (though he does not always desire all that he ought;) and artists should keep in mind, that neither grandeur of manner nor truth of system can atone for the want of this knowledge and this skill. constable's manner is good and great, but being unable to draw even a log of wood, much more a trunk of a tree or a stone, he left his works destitute of substance, mere studies of effect without any expression of specific knowledge; and thus even what is great in them has been productive, i believe, of very great injury in its encouragement of the most superficial qualities of the english school. § . foliage of cox, fielding, and cattermole. the foliage of david cox has been already noticed (preface to second edition.) it is altogether exquisite in color, and in its impressions of coolness, shade, and mass; of its drawing i cannot say anything, but that i should be sorry to see it better. copley fielding's is remarkable for its intricacy and elegance; it is, however, not free from affectation, and, as has been before remarked, is always evidently composed in the study. the execution is too rough and woolly; it is wanting in simplicity, sharpness, and freshness,--above all in specific character: not, however, in his middle distances, where the rounded masses of forest and detached blasted trunks of fir are usually very admirable. cattermole has very grand conceptions of general form, but wild and without substance, and therefore incapable of long maintaining their attractiveness, especially lately, the execution having become in the last degree coarse and affected. this is bitterly to be regretted, for few of our artists would paint foliage better, if he would paint it from nature, and with reverence. § . hunt and creswick. green, how to be rendered expressive of light, and offensive if otherwise. hunt, i think, fails, and fails only, in foliage; fails, as the daguerreotype does, from over-fidelity; for foliage will _not_ be imitated, it must be reasoned out and suggested; yet hunt is the only man we have who can paint the real leaf green under sunlight, and, in this respect, his trees are delicious,--summer itself. creswick has sweet feeling, and tries for the real green too, but, from want of science in his shadows, ends in green paint instead of green light; in mere local color, instead of color raised by sunshine. one example is enough to show where the fault lies. in his picture of the weald of kent, in the british institution this year, there was a cottage in the middle distance with white walls, and a red roof. the dark sides of the white walls and of the roof were of the same color, a dark purple--wrong for both. repeated inaccuracies of this kind necessarily deprive even the most brilliant color of all appearance of sunshine, and they are much to be deprecated in creswick, as he is one of the very few artists who _do_ draw from nature and try for nature. some of his thickets and torrent-beds are most painfully studied, and yet he cannot draw a bough nor a stone. i suspect he is too much in the habit of studying only large views on the spot, and not of drawing small portions thoroughly. i trust it will be seen that these, as all other remarks that i have made throughout this volume on particular works, are not in depreciation of, or unthankfulness for, what the artist has done, but in the desire that he should do himself more justice and more honor. i have much pleasure in creswick's works, and i am glad always to see them admired by others. § . conclusion. works of j. linnell and s. palmer. i shall conclude this sketch of the foliage art of england, by mention of two artists, whom i believe to be representative of a considerable class, admirable in their reverence and patience of study, yet unappreciated by the public, because what they do is unrecommended by dexterities of handling. the forest studies of j. linnell are peculiarly elaborate, and, in many points, most skilful; they fail perhaps of interest, owing to over-fulness of detail and a want of generalization in the effect; but even a little more of the harding sharpness of touch would set off their sterling qualities, and make them felt. a less known artist, s. palmer, lately admitted a member of the old water-color society, is deserving of the very highest place among faithful followers of nature. his studies of foreign foliage especially are beyond all praise for care and fulness. i have never seen a stone pine or a cypress drawn except by him; and his feeling is as pure and grand as his fidelity is exemplary. he has not, however, yet, i think, discovered what is necessary and unnecessary in a great picture; and his works, sent to the society's rooms, have been most unfavorable examples of his power, and have been generally, as yet, in places where all that is best in them is out of sight. i look to him, nevertheless, unless he lose himself in over-reverence for certain conventionalisms of the elder schools, as one of the probable renovators and correctors of whatever is failing or erroneous in the practice of english art. footnotes [ ] it sometimes happens that a morbid direction of growth will cause an exception here and there to this rule, the bough swelling beyond its legitimate size; knots and excrescences, of course, sometimes interfere with the effect of diminution. i believe that in the laurel, when it grows large and old, singular instances may be found of thick upper boughs and over quantity of wood at the extremities. all these accidents or exceptions are felt as such by the eye. they may occasionally be used by the painter in savage or grotesque scenery, or as points of contrast, but are no excuse for his ever losing sight of the general law. [ ] compare part iii. sect. ii. chap. iv. § , . [ ] this group i have before noticed as singularly (but, i doubt not, accidentally, and in consequence of the love of the two great painters for the same grand forms) resembling that introduced by tintoret in the background of his cain and abel. [ ] the above paragraphs i have left as originally written, because they are quite true as far as they reach; but like many other portions of this essay, they take in a very small portion of the truth. i shall not add to them at present, because i can explain my meaning better in our consideration of the laws of beauty; but the reader must bear in mind that what is above stated refers, throughout, to large masses of foliage seen under broad sunshine,--and it has especial reference to turner's enormous scale of scene, and intense desire of light. in twilight, when tree-forms are seen against sky, other laws come into operation, as well as in subject of narrow limits and near foreground. it is, i think, to be regretted that turner does not in his academy pictures sometimes take more confined and gloomy subjects, like that grand one, near the chartreuse, of the liber studiorum, wherein his magnificent power of elaborating close foliage might be developed; but, for the present, let the reader, with respect to what has been here said of close foliage, note the drawing of the leaves in that plate, in the �sacus and hesperie, and the cephalus, and the elaboration of the foregrounds in the yorkshire drawings; let him compare what is said of turner's foliage painting above in part ii. sect. i. chap. vii. § , § , and of titian's previously, as well as part iii. sect. i. chap. viii., and sect. ii. chap. iv. § . i shall hereafter endeavor to arrange the subject in a more systematic manner; but what additional observations i may have to make will none of them be in any wise more favorable to gaspar, salvator, or hobbima, than the above paragraphs. [ ] perhaps in some instances, this may be the case with the trees of nicholas poussin; but even with him the boughs only touch the line of limit with their central _points_ of extremity, and are not _sectors_ of the great curve--forming a part of it with expanded extremities, as in nature. draw a few straight lines, from the centre to the circumference of a circle. the forms included between them are the forms of the individual boughs of a fine tree, with all their ramifications (only the external curve is not a circle, but more frequently two parabolas--which, i believe, it is in the oak--or an ellipse.) but each bough of the old masters is club-shaped, and broadest, not at the outside of the tree, but a little way towards its centre. [ ] on the other hand, nothing can be more exquisitely ridiculous than the french illustrations of a second or third-rate order, as those to the harmonies of lamartine. [ ] of stanfield's foliage i remember too little to enable me to form any definite judgment; it is a pity that he so much neglects this noble element of landscape. [ ] it is true that many of rembrandt's etchings are merely in line, but it may be observed that the subject is universally _conceived_ in light and shade, and that the lines are either merely guides in the arrangement, or an exquisite indication of the key-notes of shade, on which the after-system of it is to be based--portions of fragmentary finish, showing the completeness of the conception. chapter ii. general remarks respecting the truth of turner. § . no necessity of entering into discussion of architectural truth. we have now arrived at some general conception of the extent of turner's knowledge, and the truth of his practice, by the deliberate examination of the characteristics of the four great elements of landscape--sky, earth, water, and vegetation. i have not thought it necessary to devote a chapter to architecture, because enough has been said on this subject in part ii. sect. i. chap. vii.; and its general truths, which are those with which the landscape painter, as such, is chiefly concerned, require only a simple and straightforward application of those rules of which every other material object of a landscape has required a most difficult and complicated application. turner's knowledge of perspective probably adds to his power in the arrangement of every order of subject; but ignorance on this head is rather disgraceful than knowledge meritorious. it is disgraceful, for instance, that any man should commit such palpable and atrocious errors in ordinary perspective as are seen in the quay in claude's sea-piece, no. , national gallery, or in the curved portico of no. ; but still these are not points to be taken into consideration as having anything to do with artistical rank, just as, though we should say it was disgraceful if a great poet could not spell, we should not consider such a defect as in any way taking from his poetical rank. neither is there anything particularly belonging to architecture, as such, which it is any credit to an artist to observe or represent; it is only a simple and clear field for the manifestation of his knowledge of general laws. any surveyor or engineer could have drawn the steps and balustrade in the hero and leander, as well as turner has; but there is no man living but himself who could have thrown the accidental shadows upon them. i may, however, refer for general illustration of turner's power as an architectural draughtsman, to the front of rouen cathedral, engraved in the rivers of france, and to the ely in the england. i know nothing in art which can be set beside the former of these for overwhelming grandeur and simplicity of effect, and inexhaustible intricacy of parts. i have then only a few remarks farther to offer respecting the general character of all those truths which we have been hitherto endeavoring to explain and illustrate. § . extreme difficulty of illustrating or explaining the highest truth. § . the _positive_ rank of turner is in no degree shown in the foregoing pages, but only his relative rank. § . the exceeding refinement of his truth. § . there is nothing in his works which can be enjoyed without knowledge. § . and nothing which knowledge will not enable us to enjoy. the difference in the accuracy of the lines of the torso of the vatican, (the maestro of m. angelo,) from those in one of m. angelo's finest works, could perhaps scarcely be appreciated by any eye or feeling undisciplined by the most perfect and practical anatomical knowledge. it rests on points of such traceless and refined delicacy, that though we feel them in the result, we cannot follow them in the details. yet they are such and so great as to place the torso alone in art, solitary and supreme; while the finest of m. angelo's works, considered with respect to truth alone, are said to be only on a level with antiques of the second class, under the apollo and venus, that is, two classes or grades below the torso. but suppose the best sculptor in the world, possessing the most entire appreciation of the excellence of the torso, were to sit down, pen in hand, to try and tell us wherein the peculiar truth of each line consisted? could any words that he could use make us feel the hairbreadth of depth and distance on which all depends? or end in anything more than bare assertions of the inferiority of this line to that, which, if we did not perceive for ourselves, no explanation could ever illustrate to us? he might as well endeavor to explain to us by words some taste or other subject of sense, of which we had no experience. and so it is with all truths of the highest order; they are separated from those of average precision by points of extreme delicacy, which none but the cultivated eye can in the least feel, and to express which, all words are absolutely meaningless and useless. consequently, in all that i have been saying of the truth of artists, i have been able to point out only coarse, broad, and explicable matters; i have been perfectly unable to express (and indeed i have made no endeavor to express) the finely drawn and distinguished truth in which all the real excellence of art consists. all those truths which i have been able to explain and demonstrate in turner, are such as any artist of ordinary powers of observation ought to be capable of rendering. it is disgraceful to omit them; but it is no very great credit to observe them. i have indeed proved that they have been neglected, and disgracefully so, by those men who are commonly considered the fathers of art; but in showing that they have been observed by turner, i have only proved him to be _above_ other men in knowledge of truth, i have not given any conception of his own positive rank as a painter of nature. but it stands to reason, that the men, who in broad, simple, and demonstrable matters are perpetually violating truth, will not be particularly accurate or careful in carrying out delicate and refined, and undemonstrable matters; and it stands equally to reason, that the man who, as far as argument or demonstration can go, is found invariably truthful, will, in all probability, be truthful to the last line, and shadow of a line. and such is, indeed, the case with every touch of this consummate artist; the essential excellence--all that constitutes the real and exceeding value of his works--is beyond and above expression; it is a truth inherent in every line, and breathing in every hue, too delicate and exquisite to admit of any kind of proof, nor to be ascertained except by the highest of tests--the keen feeling attained by extended knowledge and long study. two lines are laid on canvas; one is right and another wrong. there is no difference between them appreciable by the compasses--none appreciable by the ordinary eye--none which can be pointed out, if it is not seen. one person feels it,--another does not; but the feeling or sight of the one can by no words be communicated to the other: it would be unjust if it could, for that feeling and sight have been the reward of years of labor. and there is, indeed, nothing in turner--not one dot nor line--whose meaning can be understood without knowledge; because he never aims at sensual impressions, but at the deep final truth, which only meditation can discover, and only experience recognize. there is nothing done or omitted by him, which does not imply such a comparison of ends, such rejection of the least worthy, (as far as they are incompatible with the rest,) such careful selection and arrangement of all that can be united, as can only be enjoyed by minds capable of going through the same process, and discovering the reasons for the choice. and, as there is nothing in his works which can be enjoyed without knowledge, so there is nothing in them which knowledge will not enable us to enjoy. there is no test of our acquaintance with nature so absolute and unfailing as the degree of admiration we feel for turner's painting. precisely as we are shallow in our knowledge, vulgar in our feeling, and contracted in our views of principles, will the works of this artist be stumbling-blocks or foolishness to us:--precisely in the degree in which we are familiar with nature, constant in our observation of her, and enlarged in our understanding of her, will they expand before our eyes into glory and beauty. in every new insight which we obtain into the works of god, in every new idea which we receive from his creation, we shall find ourselves possessed of an interpretation and a guide to something in turner's works which we had not before understood. we may range over europe, from shore to shore; and from every rock that we tread upon, every sky that passes over our heads, every local form of vegetation or of soil, we shall receive fresh illustration of his principles--fresh confirmation of his facts. we shall feel, wherever we go, that he has been there before us--whatever we see, that he has seen and seized before us: and we shall at last cease the investigation, with a well-grounded trust, that whatever we have been unable to account for, and what we still dislike in his works, has reason for it, and foundation like the rest; and that even where he has failed or erred, there is a beauty in the failure which none are able to equal, and a dignity in the error which none are worthy to reprove. § . his former rank and progress. § . standing of his present works. their mystery is the consequence of their fullness. there has been marked and constant progress in his mind; he has not, like some few artists, been without childhood; his course of study has been as evidently as it has been swiftly progressive, and in different stages of the struggle, sometimes one order of truth, sometimes another, has been aimed at or omitted. but from the beginning to the present height of his career, he has never sacrificed a greater truth to a less. as he advanced, the previous knowledge or attainment was absorbed in what succeeded, or abandoned only if incompatible, and never abandoned without a gain; and his present works present the sum and perfection of his accumulated knowledge, delivered with the impatience and passion of one who feels too much, and knows too much, and has too little time to say it in, to pause for expression, or ponder over his syllables. there is in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy; the instinctive and burning language, which would express less if it uttered more, which is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with its abundant meaning. he feels now, with long-trained vividness and keenness of sense, too bitterly the impotence of the hand, and the vainness of the color to catch one shadow or one image of the glory which god has revealed to him. he has dwelt and communed with nature all the days of his life; he knows her now too well, he cannot palter over the material littleness of her outward form; he must give her soul, or he has done nothing, and he cannot do this with the flax, and the earth, and the oil. "i cannot gather the sunbeams out of the east, or i would make _them_ tell you what i have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us remember together. i cannot gather the gloom out of the night-sky, or i would make that teach you what i have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us feel together. and if you have not that within you which i can summon to my aid, if you have not the sun in your spirit, and the passion in your heart, which my words may awaken, though they be indistinct and swift, leave me; for i will give you no patient mockery, no laborious insult of that glorious nature, whose i am and whom i serve. let other servants imitate the voice and the gesture of their master, while they forget his message. hear that message from me; but remember, that the teaching of divine truth must still be a mystery." chapter iii. conclusion.--modern art and modern criticism. we have only, in conclusion, to offer a few general remarks respecting modern art and modern criticism. § . the entire prominence hitherto given to the works of one artist caused only by our not being able to take cognizance of character. § . the feelings of different artists are incapable of full comparison. § . but the fidelity and truth of each are capable of real comparison. § . especially because they are equally manifested in the treatment of all subjects. § . no man draws one thing well, if he can draw nothing else. we wish, in the first place, to remove the appearance of invidiousness and partiality which the constant prominence given in the present portion of the work to the productions of one artist, can scarcely fail of bearing in the minds of most readers. when we pass to the examination of what is beautiful and expressive in art, we shall frequently find distinctive qualities in the minds even of inferior artists, which have led them to the pursuit and embodying of particular trains of thought, altogether different from those which direct the compositions of other men, and incapable of comparison with them. now, when this is the case, we should consider it in the highest degree both invidious and illogical, to say of such different modes of exertion of the intellect, that one is in all points greater or nobler than another. we shall probably find something in the working of all minds which has an end and a power peculiar to itself, and which is deserving of free and full admiration, without any reference whatsoever to what has, in other fields, been accomplished by other modes of thought, and directions of aim. we shall, indeed, find a wider range and grasp in one man than in another; but yet it will be our own fault if we do not discover something in the most limited range of mind which is different from, and in its way better than, anything presented to us by the more grasping intellect. we all know that the nightingale sings more nobly than the lark; but who, therefore, would wish the lark not to sing, or would deny that it had a character of its own, which bore a part among the melodies of creation no less essential than that of the more richly-gifted bird? and thus we shall find and feel that whatever difference may exist between the intellectual powers of one artist and another, yet wherever there is any true genius, there will be some peculiar lesson which even the humblest will teach us more sweetly and perfectly than those far above them in prouder attributes of mind; and we should be as mistaken as we should be unjust and invidious, if we refused to receive this their peculiar message with gratitude and veneration, merely because it was a sentence and not a volume. but the case is different when we examine their relative fidelity to given facts. that fidelity depends on no peculiar modes of thought or habits of character; it is the result of keen sensibility, combined with high powers of memory and association. these qualities, as such, are the same in all men; character or feeling may direct their choice to this or that object, but the fidelity with which they treat either the one or the other, is dependent on those simple powers of sense and intellect which are like and comparable in all, and of which we can always say that they are greater in this man, or less in that without reference to the character of the individual. those feelings which direct cox to the painting of wild, weedy banks, and cool, melting skies, and those which directed barret to the painting of glowing foliage and melancholy twilight, are both just and beautiful in their way, and are both worthy of high praise and gratitude, without necessity, nay, without _proper_ possibility of comparing one with the other. but the degree of fidelity with which the leaves of the one and the light of the other are rendered, depends upon faculties of sight, sense, and memory common to both, and perfectly comparable; and we may say fearlessly, and without injustice, that one or the other, as the case may be, is more faithful in that which they have chosen to represent. it is also to be remembered that these faculties of sense and memory are not partial in their effect; they will not induce fidelity in the rendering of one class of object, and fail of doing so in another. they act equally, and with equal results, whatever may be the matter subjected to them; the same delicate sense which perceives the utmost grace of the fibres of a tree, will be equally unerring in tracing the character of cloud; and the quick memory which seizes and retains the circumstances of a flying effect of shadow or color, will be equally effectual in fixing the impression of the instantaneous form of a moving figure or a breaking wave. there are indeed one or two broad distinctions in the nature of the senses,--a sensibility to color, for instance, being very different from a sensibility to form; so that a man may possess one without the other, and an artist may succeed in mere imitation of what is before him, of air, sunlight, etc., without possessing sensibility at all. but wherever we have, in the drawing of any one object, sufficient evidence of real intellectual power, of the sense which perceives the essential qualities of a thing, and the judgment which arranges them so as to illustrate each other, we may be quite certain that the same sense and judgment will operate equally on whatever is subjected to them, and that the artist will be equally great and masterly in his drawing of all that he attempts. hence we may be quite sure that wherever an artist appears to be truthful in one branch of art, and not in another, the apparent truth is either owing to some trickery of imitation, or is not so great as we suppose it to be. in nine cases out of ten, people who are celebrated for drawing only one thing, and _can_ only draw one thing, draw that one thing worse than anybody else. an artist may indeed confine himself to a limited range of subject, but if he be really true in his rendering of this, his power of doing more will be perpetually showing itself in accessories and minor points. there are few men, for instance, more limited in subject than hunt, and yet i do not think there is another man in the old water-color society, with so keen an eye for truth, or with power so universal. and this is the reason for the exceeding prominence which in the foregoing investigation one or two artists have always assumed over the rest, for the habits of accurate observation and delicate powers of hand which they possess, have equal effect, and maintain the same superiority in their works, to whatever class of subject they may be directed. and thus we have been compelled, however unwillingly, to pass hastily by the works of many gifted men, because, however pure their feeling, or original their conceptions, they were wanting in those faculties of the hand and mind which insure perfect fidelity to nature: it will be only hereafter, when we are at liberty to take full cognizance of the thought, however feebly it may be clothed in language, that we shall be able to do real justice to the disciples either of modern or of ancient art. § . general conclusions to be derived from our past investigation. but as far as we have gone at present, and with respect only to the _material_ truth, which is all that we have been able to investigate, the conclusion to which we must be led is as clear as it is inevitable; that modern artists, as a body, are far more just and full in their views of material things than any landscape painters whose works are extant--but that j. m. w. turner is the only man who has ever given an entire transcript of the whole system of nature, and is, in this point of view, the only perfect landscape painter whom the world has ever seen. § . truth, a standard of all excellence. nor are we disposed to recede from our assertion made in sec. i. ch. i. § , that this material truth is indeed a perfect test of the relative rank of painters, though it does not in itself constitute that rank. we shall be able to prove that truth and beauty, knowledge and imagination, invariably are associated in art; and we shall be able to show that not only in truth to nature, but in all other points, turner is the greatest landscape painter who has ever lived. but his superiority is, in matters of feeling, one of kind, not of degree. superiority of degree implies a superseding of others, superiority of kind only sustaining a more important, but not more necessary part, than others. if _truth_ were all that we required from art, all other painters might cast aside their brushes in despair, for all that they have done he has done more fully and accurately; but when we pass to the higher requirements of art, beauty and character, their contributions are all equally necessary and desirable, because different, and however inferior in position or rank, are still perfect of their kind; their inferiority is only that of the lark to the nightingale, or of the violet to the rose. § . modern criticism. changefulness of public taste. § . yet associated with a certain degree of judgment. § . duty of the press. such then is the rank and standing of our modern artists. we have, living with us, and painting for us, the greatest painter of _all_ time; a man with whose supremacy of power no intellect of past ages can be put in comparison for a moment. let us next inquire what is the rank of our critics. public taste, i believe, as far as it is the encourager and supporter of art has been the same in all ages,--a fitful and vacillating current of vague impression, perpetually liable to change, subject to epidemic desires, and agitated by infectious passion, the slave of fashion, and the fool of fancy, but yet always distinguishing with singular clearsightedness, between that which is best and that which is worst of the particular class of food which its morbid appetite may call for; never failing to distinguish that which is produced by intellect, from that which is not, though it may be intellect degraded by ministering to its misguided will. public taste may thus degrade a race of men capable of the highest efforts in art into the portrait painters of ephemeral fashions, but it will yet not fail of discovering who, among these portrait painters, is the man of most mind. it will separate the man who would have become buonaroti from the man who would have become bandinelli, though it will employ both in painting curls, and feathers, and bracelets. hence, generally speaking, there is no _comparative_ injustice done, no false elevation of the fool above the man of mind, provided only that the man of mind will condescend to supply the particular article which the public chooses to want. of course a thousand modifying circumstances interfere with the action of the general rule; but, taking one case with another, we shall very constantly find the price which the picture commands in the market a pretty fair standard of the artist's rank of intellect. the press, therefore, and all who pretend to lead the public taste, have not so much to direct the multitude whom to go to, as what to ask for. their business is not to tell us which is our best painter, but to tell us whether we are making our best painter do his best. § . qualifications necessary for discharging it. § . general incapability of modern critics. § . and inconsistency with themselves. now none are capable of doing this, but those whose principles of judgment are based both on thorough _practical_ knowledge of art, and on broad general views of what is true and right, without reference to what has been done at one time or another, or in one school or another. nothing can be more perilous to the cause of art, than the constant ringing in our painters' ears of the names of great predecessors, as their examples or masters. i had rather hear a great poet, entirely original in his feeling and aim, rebuked or maligned for not being like wordsworth or coleridge, than a great painter criticised for not putting us in mind of claude or poussin. but such references to former excellence are the only refuge and resource of persons endeavoring to be critics without being artists. they cannot tell you whether a thing is right or not; but they can tell you whether it is like something else or not. and the whole tone of modern criticism--as far as it is worthy of being called criticism--sufficiently shows it to proceed entirely from persons altogether unversed in practice, and ignorant of truth, but possessing just enough of feeling to enjoy the solemnity of ancient art, who, not distinguishing that which is really exalted and valuable in the modern school, nor having any just idea of the real ends or capabilities of landscape art, consider nothing right which is not based on the conventional principles of the ancients, and nothing true which has more of nature in it than of claude. but it is strange that while the noble and unequalled works of modern landscape painters are thus maligned and misunderstood, our historical painters--such as we have--are permitted to pander more fatally every year to the vicious english taste, which can enjoy nothing but what is theatrical, entirely unchastised, nay, encouraged and lauded by the very men who endeavor to hamper our great landscape painters with rules derived from consecrated blunders. the very critic who has just passed one of the noblest works of turner--that is to say, a masterpiece of art, to which time can show no parallel--with a ribald jest, will yet stand gaping in admiration before the next piece of dramatic glitter and grimace, suggested by the society, and adorned with the appurtenances of the greenroom, which he finds hung low upon the wall as a brilliant example of the ideal of english art. it is natural enough indeed, that the persons who are disgusted by what is pure and noble, should be delighted with what is vicious and degraded; but it is singular that those who are constantly talking of claude and poussin, should never even pretend to a thought of raffaelle. we could excuse them for not comprehending turner, if they only would apply the same cut-and-dried criticisms where they might be applied with truth, and productive of benefit; but we endure not the paltry compound of ignorance, false taste, and pretension, which assumes the dignity of classical feeling, that it may be able to abuse whatever is above the level of its understanding, but bursts into genuine rapture with all that is meretricious, if sufficiently adapted to the calibre of its comprehension. § . how the press may really advance the cause of art. to notice such criticisms, however, is giving them far more importance than they deserve. they can lead none astray but those whose opinions are absolutely valueless, and we did not begin this chapter with any intent of wasting our time on these small critics, but in the hope of pointing out to the periodical press what kind of criticism is now most required by our school of landscape art, and how it may be in their power, if they will, to regulate its impulses, without checking its energies, and really to advance both the cause of the artist, and the taste of the public. § . morbid fondness at the present day for unfinished works. § . by which the public defraud themselves. § . and in pandering to which, artists ruin themselves. § . necessity of finishing works of art perfectly. one of the most morbid symptoms of the general taste of the present day, is a too great fondness for unfinished works. brilliancy and rapidity of execution are everywhere sought as the highest good, and so that a picture be cleverly handled as far as it is carried, little regard is paid to its imperfection as a whole. hence some artists are permitted, and others compelled, to confine themselves to a manner of working altogether destructive of their powers, and to tax their energies, not to concentrate the greatest quantity of thought on the least possible space of canvas, but to produce the greatest quantity of glitter and claptrap in the shortest possible time. to the idler and the trickster in art, no system can be more advantageous; but to the man who is really desirous of doing something worth having lived for--to a man of industry, energy, or feeling, we believe it to be the cause of the most bitter discouragement. if ever, working upon a favorite subject or a beloved idea, he is induced to tax his powers to the utmost, and to spend as much time upon his picture as he feels necessary for its perfection, he will not be able to get so high a price for the result, perhaps, of a twelvemonth's thought, as he might have obtained for half-a-dozen sketches with a forenoon's work in each, and he is compelled either to fall back upon mechanism, or to starve. now the press should especially endeavor to convince the public, that by this purchase of imperfect pictures they not only prevent all progress and development of high talent, and set tricksters and mechanics on a level with men of mind, but defraud and injure themselves. for there is no doubt whatever, that, estimated merely by the quantity of pleasure it is capable of conveying, a well-finished picture is worth to its possessor half-a-dozen incomplete ones; and that a perfect drawing is, simply as a source of delight, better worth a hundred guineas than a drawing half as finished is worth thirty. on the other hand, the body of our artists should be kept in mind, that by indulging the public with rapid and unconsidered work, they are not only depriving themselves of the benefit which each picture ought to render to them, as a piece of practice and study, but they are destroying the refinement of general taste, and rendering it impossible for themselves ever to find a market for more careful works, supposing that they were inclined to execute them. nor need any single artist be afraid of setting the example, and producing labored works, at advanced prices, among the cheap, quick drawings of the day. the public will soon find the value of the complete work, and will be more ready to give a large sum for that which is inexhaustible, than a quota of it for that which they are wearied of in a month. the artist who never lets the price command the picture, will soon find the picture command the price. and it ought to be a rule with every painter never to let a picture leave his easel while it is yet capable of improvement, or of having more thought put into it. the general effect is often perfect and pleasing, and not to be improved upon, when the details and facts are altogether imperfect and unsatisfactory. it may be difficult--perhaps the most difficult task of art--to complete these details, and not to hurt the general effect; but until the artist can do this, his art is imperfect and his picture unfinished. that only is a complete picture which has both the general wholeness and effect of nature, and the inexhaustible perfection of nature's details. and it is only in the effort to unite these that a painter really improves. by aiming only at details, he becomes a mechanic; by aiming only at generals, he becomes a trickster: his fall in both cases is sure. two questions the artist has, therefore, always to ask himself,--first, "is my whole right?" secondly, "can my details be added to? is there a single space in the picture where i can crowd in another thought? is there a curve in it which i can modulate--a line which i can graduate--a vacancy i can fill? is there a single spot which the eye, by any peering or prying, can fathom or exhaust? if so, my picture is imperfect; and if, in modulating the line or filling the vacancy, i hurt the general effect, my art is imperfect." § . _sketches_ not sufficiently encouraged. but, on the other hand, though incomplete pictures ought neither to be produced nor purchased, careful and real _sketches_ ought to be valued much more highly than they are. studies in chalk, of landscape, should form a part of every exhibition, and a room should be allotted to drawings and designs of figures in the academy. we should be heartily glad to see the room which is now devoted to bad drawings of incorporeal and imaginary architecture--of things which never were, and which, thank heaven! never will be--occupied instead, by careful studies for historical pictures; not blots of chiaroscuro, but delicate outlines with the pen or crayon. § . brilliancy of execution or efforts at invention not to be tolerated in young artists. § . the duty and after privileges of all students. from young artists, in landscape, nothing ought to be tolerated but simple _bona fide imitation_ of nature. they have no business to ape the execution of masters,--to utter weak and disjointed repetitions of other men's words, and mimic the gestures of the preacher, without understanding his meaning or sharing in his emotions. we do not want their crude ideas of composition, their unformed conceptions of the beautiful, their unsystematized experiments upon the sublime. we scorn their velocity; for it is without direction: we reject their decision; for it is without grounds: we contemn their composition; for it is without materials: we reprobate their choice; for it is without comparison. their duty is neither to choose, nor compose, nor imagine, nor experimentalize; but to be humble and earnest in following the steps of nature, and tracing the finger of god. nothing is so bad a symptom, in the work of young artists, as too much dexterity of handling; for it is a sign that they are satisfied with their work, and have tried to do nothing more than they were able to do. their work should be full of failures; for these are the signs of efforts. they should keep to quiet colors--grays and browns; and, making the early works of turner their example, as his latest are to be their object of emulation, should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her instruction, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth. then, when their memories are stored, and their imaginations fed, and their hands firm, let them take up the scarlet and the gold, give the reins to their fancy, and show us what their heads are made of. we will follow them wherever they choose to lead; we will check at nothing; they are then our masters, and are fit to be so. they have placed themselves above our criticism, and we will listen to their words in all faith and humility; but not unless they themselves have before bowed, in the same submission, to a higher authority and master. § . necessity among our greater artists of more singleness of aim. among our greater artists, the chief want, at the present day, is that of _solemnity_ and definite purpose. we have too much picture-manufacturing, too much making up of lay figures with a certain quantity of foliage, and a certain quantity of sky, and a certain quantity of water,--a little bit of all that is pretty, a little sun, and a little shade,--a touch of pink, and a touch of blue,--a little sentiment, and a little sublimity, and a little humor, and a little antiquarianism,--all very neatly associated in a very charming picture, but not working together for a definite end. or if the aim be higher, as was the case with barrett and varley, we are generally put off with stale repetitions of eternal composition; a great tree, and some goats, and a bridge and a lake, and the temple at tivoli, etc. now we should like to see our artists working out, with all exertion of their concentrated powers, such marked pieces of landscape character as might bear upon them the impression of solemn, earnest, and pervading thought, definitely directed, and aided by every accessory of detail, color, and idealized form, which the disciplined feeling, accumulated knowledge, and unspared labor of the painter could supply. i have alluded, in the second preface, to the deficiency of our modern artists in these great points of earnestness and completeness; and i revert to it, in conclusion, as their paramount failing, and one fatal in many ways to the interests of art. our landscapes are all descriptive, not reflective, agreeable and conversational, but not impressive nor didactic. they have no other foundation than "that vivacious versatility, which many people take for want of heart. they err; 'tis merely what is called "mobility;" a thing of temperament, and _not of art, though seeming so from its supposed facility_. * * * * * this makes your actors, _artists_, and romancers; little that's great--but much of what is clever." only it is to be observed that--in painters--this vivacity is _not_ always versatile. it is to be wished that it were, but it is no such easy matter to be versatile in painting. shallowness of thought insures not its variety, nor rapidity of production its originality. whatever may be the case in literature, facility is in art inconsistent with invention. the artist who covers most canvas always shows, even in the sum of his works, the least expenditure of thought.[ ] i have never seen more than four works of john lewis on the walls of the water-color exhibition; i have counted forty from other hands; but have found in the end that the forty were a multiplication of one, and the four a concentration of forty. and therefore i would earnestly plead with all our artists, that they should make it a law _never_ to repeat themselves; for he who never repeats himself will not produce an inordinate number of pictures, and he who limits himself in number gives himself at least the opportunity of completion. besides, all repetition is degradation of the art; it reduces it from headwork to handwork; and indicates something like a persuasion on the part of the artist that nature is exhaustible or art perfectible; perhaps, even, by him exhausted and perfected. all copyists are contemptible, but the copyist of himself the most so, for he has the worst original. § . what should be their general aim. let then every picture be painted with earnest intention of impressing on the spectator some elevated emotion, and exhibiting to him some one particular, but exalted, beauty. let a real subject be carefully selected, in itself suggestive of, and replete with, this feeling and beauty; let an effect of light and color be taken which may harmonize with both; and a sky, not invented, but recollected, (in fact, all so-called invention is in landscape nothing more than appropriate recollection--good in proportion as it is distinct.) then let the details of the foreground be separately studied, especially those plants which appear peculiar to the place: if any one, however unimportant, occurs there, which occurs not elsewhere, it should occupy a prominent position; for the other details, the highest examples of the ideal forms[ ] or characters which he requires are to be selected by the artist from his former studies, or fresh studies made expressly for the purpose, leaving as little as possible--nothing, in fact, beyond their connection and arrangement--to mere imagination. finally, when his picture is thus perfectly realized in all its parts, let him dash as much of it out as he likes; throw, if he will, mist around it--darkness--or dazzling and confused light--whatever, in fact, impetuous feeling or vigorous imagination may dictate or desire; the forms, once so laboriously realized, will come out whenever they _do_ occur with a startling and impressive truth, which the uncertainty in which they are veiled will enhance rather than diminish; and the imagination, strengthened by discipline and fed with truth, will achieve the utmost of creation that is possible to finite mind. the artist who thus works will soon find that he cannot repeat himself if he would; that new fields of exertion, new subjects of contemplation open to him in nature day by day, and that, while others lament the weakness of their invention, _he_ has nothing to lament but the shortness of life. § . duty of the press with respect to the works of turner. and now but one word more, respecting the great artist whose works have formed the chief subject of this treatise. all the _greatest_ qualities of those works--all that is mental in them, has not yet been so much as touched upon. none but their lightest and least essential excellences have been proved, and, therefore, the enthusiasm with which i speak of them must necessarily appear overcharged and absurd. it, might, perhaps, have been more prudent to have withheld the full expression of it till i had shown the full grounds for it; but once written, such expression must remain till i have justified it. and, indeed, i think there is enough, even in the foregoing pages, to show that these works are, as far as concerns the ordinary critics of the press, above all animadversion, and above all praise; and that, by the public, they are not to be received as in any way subjects or matters of opinion, but of faith. we are not to approach them to be pleased, but to be taught; not to form a judgment, but to receive a lesson. our periodical writers, therefore, may save themselves the trouble either of blaming or praising: their duty is not to pronounce opinions upon the work of a man who has walked with nature threescore years; but to impress upon the public the respect with which they are to be received, and to make request to him, on the part of the people of england, that he would now touch no unimportant work--that he would not spend time on slight or small pictures, but give to the nation a series of grand, consistent, systematic, and completed poems. we desire that he should follow out his own thoughts and intents of heart, without reference to any human authority. but we request, in all humility, that those thoughts may be seriously and loftily given; and that the whole power of his unequalled intellect may be exerted in the production of such works as may remain forever for the teaching of the nations. in all that he says, we believe; in all that he does we trust.[ ] it is therefore that we pray him to utter nothing lightly--to do nothing regardlessly. he stands upon an eminence, from which he looks back over the universe of god, and forward over the generations of men. let every work of his hand be a history of the one, and a lesson to the other. let each exertion of his mighty mind be both hymn and prophecy,--adoration, to the deity,--revelation to mankind. footnotes [ ] of course this assertion does not refer to the differences in mode of execution, which enable one painter to work faster or slower than another, but only to the exertion of mind, commonly manifested by the artist, according as he is sparing or prodigal of production. [ ] "talk of improving nature when it _is_ nature--nonsense."--_e. v. rippingille_. i have not yet spoken of the difference--even in what we commonly call nature--between imperfect and ideal form: the study of this difficult question must, of course, be deferred until we have examined the nature of our impressions of beauty; but it may not be out of place here to hint at the want of care in many of our artists to distinguish between the real work of nature and the diseased results of man's interference with her. many of the works of our greatest artists have for their subjects nothing but hacked and hewn remnants of farm-yard vegetation, branded root and branch, from their birth, by the prong and the pruning-hook; and the feelings once accustomed to take pleasure in such abortions, can scarcely become perceptive of forms truly ideal. i have just said ( ) that young painters should go to nature trustingly,--rejecting nothing, and selecting nothing: so they should; but they must be careful that it _is_ nature to whom they go--nature in her liberty--not as servant-of-all-work in the hands of the agriculturist, nor stiffened into court-dress by the landscape gardener. it must be the pure, wild volition and energy of the creation which they follow--not subdued to the furrow, and cicatrized to the pollard--not persuaded into proprieties, nor pampered into diseases. let them work by the torrent-side, and in the forest shadows; not by purling brooks and under "tonsile shades." it is impossible to enter here into discussion of what man can or cannot do, by assisting natural operations: it is an intricate question: nor can i, without anticipating what i shall have hereafter to advance, show how or why it happens that the racehorse is _not_ the artist's ideal of a horse, nor a prize tulip his ideal of a flower; but so it is. as far as the painter is concerned, man never touches nature but to spoil;--he operates on her as a barber would on the apollo; and if he sometimes increases some particular power or excellence,--strength or agility in the animal--tallness, or fruitfulness, or solidity in the tree,--he invariably loses that _balance_ of good qualities which is the chief sign of perfect specific form; above all, he destroys the appearance of free _volition_ and _felicity_, which, as i shall show hereafter, is one of the essential characters of organic beauty. until, however, i can enter into the discussion of the nature of beauty, the only advice i can safely give the young painter, is to keep clear of clover-fields and parks, and to hold to the unpenetrated forest and the unfurrowed hill. there he will find that every influence is noble, even when destructive--that decay itself is beautiful,--and that, in the elaborate and lovely composition of all things, if at first sight it seems less studied than the works of men, the appearance of art is only prevented by the presence of power. "nature never did betray the heart that loved her: 'tis her privilege, through all the years of this our life, to lead from joy to joy; for she can so inform the mind that is within us, so impress with quietness and beauty, and so feed with lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb our cheerful faith, that all which we behold is full of blessings." wordsworth. [ ] it has been hinted, in some of the reviews of the second volume of this work, that the writer's respect for turner has diminished since the above passage was written. he would, indeed, have been deserving of little attention if, with the boldness manifested on the preceding pages, he had advanced opinions based on so shallow foundation as that the course of three years could effect modification of them. he was justified by the sudden accession of power which the great artist exhibited at the period when this volume was first published, as well as by the low standard of the criticism to which he was subjected, in claiming, with respect to his then works, a submission of judgment, greater indeed than may generally be accorded to even the highest human intellect, yet not greater than such a master might legitimately claim from such critics; and the cause of the peculiar form of advocacy into which the preceding chapters necessarily fell, has been already stated more than once. in the following sections it became necessary, as they treated a subject of intricate relations, and peculiar difficulty, to obtain a more general view of the scope and operation of art, and to avoid all conclusions in any wise referable to the study of particular painters. the reader will therefore find, not that lower rank is attributed to turner, but that he is now compared with the greatest men, and occupies his true position among the most noble of all time. postscript. the above passage was written in the year ; too late. it is true that soon after the publication of this work, the abuse of the press, which had been directed against turner with unceasing virulence during the production of his noblest works, sank into timid animadversion, or changed into unintelligent praise; but not before illness, and, in some degree, mortification, had enfeebled the hand and chilled the heart of the painter. this year ( ) he has no picture on the walls of the academy; and the _times_ of may d says, "we miss those works of inspiration!" we miss! who misses?--the populace of england rolls by to weary itself in the great bazaar of kensington, little thinking that a day will come when those veiled vestals and prancing amazons, and goodly merchandise of precious stones and gold, will all be forgotten as though they had not been, but that the light which has faded from the walls of the academy is one which a million of koh-i-noors could not rekindle, and that the year will in the far future be remembered less for what it has displayed than for what it has withdrawn. denmark hill, _june_, . end of the first volume. * * * * * corrections made to the original text. page xiii: 'attack of the following colums' corrected to 'columns'. page lxiii: (table of contents) § . monotony and falsehood... corrected to . page : 'attained with greater porportional' corrected to 'proportional'. page : 'exquisite truths of specfic' corrected to 'specific'. page : 'things as in the right exhbition' corrected to 'exhibition'. page : 'man's working from nature comtinually' changed to 'continually'. page : 'but i allow this inferiority only with respect to the paintings,' superfluous comma omitted. page : 'but the vignette of aosta, in the italy', 'the' omitted. page : 'lateral chains separated rll' corrected to 'all'. footnote : comma after esq changed to period. footnote : 'is above stated refers, thoughout' changed to 'throughout'. the humanists' library edited by lewis einstein i leonardo da vinci thoughts on art and life thoughts on art and life by leonardo da vinci translated by maurice baring boston the merrymount press copyright, , by d. b. updike a table of contents introduction ix i. thoughts on life ii. thoughts on art iii. thoughts on science iv. bibliographical note v. table of references {ix} introduction * * * the long obscurity of the dark ages lifted over italy, awakening to a national though a divided consciousness. already two distinct tendencies were apparent. the practical and rational, on the one hand, was soon to be outwardly reflected in the burgher-life of florence and the lombard cities, while at rome it had even then created the civil organization of the curia. the novella was its literary triumph. in art it expressed itself simply, directly and with vigour. opposed to this was the other great undercurrent in italian life, mystical, religious and speculative, which had run through the nation from the earliest times, and received fresh volume from mediaeval christianity, encouraging ecstatic mysticism to drive to frenzy the population of its mountain cities. umbrian painting is inspired by it, and the glowing words of jacopone da todi expressed in poetry the same religious fervour which the life of florence and perugia bore witness to in action. italy developed out of the relation and conflict of these two forces the rational with the mystical. their later union in the greater men was to {x} form the art temperament of the renaissance. the practical side gave it the firm foundation of rationalism and reality on which it rested; the mystical guided its endeavour to picture the unreal in terms of ideal beauty. the first offspring of this union was leonardo. since the decay of ancient art no painter had been able to fully express the human form, for imperfect mastery of technique still proved the barrier. leonardo was the first completely to disengage his personality from its constraint, and make line express thought as none before him could do. nor was this his only triumph, but rather the foundation on which further achievement rested. remarkable as a thinker alone, he preferred to enlist thought in the service of art, and make art the handmaid of beauty. leonardo saw the world not as it is, but as he himself was. he viewed it through the atmosphere of beauty which filled his mind, and tinged its shadows with the mystery of his nature. to all this, his birthright as a painter, a different element was added. a keen desire for knowledge, guiding his action in life, spurred him onward. conscious of this dominant impulse, he has fancifully described himself in a platonic allegory. he had passed beneath overhanging cliffs on his way to a great cavern. on bended knees, peering through its darkness, fear and desire had overwhelmed him,--fear for the menacing darkness of the cavern; and desire {xi} to ascertain if there were wonders therein. from his earliest years, the elements of greatness were present in leonardo. but the maturity of his genius came unaffected from without. he barely noticed the great forces of the age which in life he encountered. after the first promise of his boyhood in the tuscan hills, his youth at florence had been spent under verrocchio as a master, in company with those whose names were later to brighten the pages of italian art. he must then have heard savonarola's impassioned sermons, yet, unlike botticelli, remained dumb to his entreaties. he must have seen lorenzo the magnificent. but there was little opening in the medicean circle for the young painter, who had first to gain fame abroad. the splendour of milan under il moro, then the most brilliant court in europe, attracted him. he went there, proclaiming his ability, in a remarkable letter, to accomplish much, but desiring chiefly to erect a great monument to the glory of the sforza. he spent years at that court, taken up by his different ventures,--painting, sculpture, engineering, even arranging festivities--but his greater project was doomed to failure, enmeshed in the downfall of ludovico. even to this he remained impassive. "visconti dragged to prison, his son dead, ... the duke has lost his state, his possessions, his liberty, and has finished nothing he undertook," was his only comment on his patron's end, written on the {xii} margin of a manuscript. after the overthrow of the duke of milan, began his italian wanderings. at one time he contemplated entering the service of an oriental prince. instead, he entered that of caesar borgia, as military engineer, and the greatest painter of the age became inspector of a despot's strongholds. but his restless nature did not leave him long at this. returning to florence he competed with michelangelo; yet the service of even his native city could not retain him. his fame had attracted the attention of a new patron of the arts, prince of the state which had conquered his first master. in this his last venture, he forsook italy, only to die three years later at amboise, in the castle of the french king. the inner nature of leonardo remained as untouched by the men he encountered as by the events which were then stirring europe. alone, he influenced others, remaining the while a mystery to all. the most gifted of nations failed to understand the greatest of her sons. isabella d'este, the first lady of her time, seeking vainly to obtain some product of his brush, was told that his life was changeful and uncertain, that he lived for the day, intent only on his art. his own thoughts reveal him in another light. "i wish to work miracles," he wrote. and elsewhere he exclaimed, "thou, o god, sellest us all benefits, at the cost of our toil.... as a day well spent makes sleep {xiii} seem pleasant, so a life well employed makes death pleasant. a life well spent is long." leonardo's views of aesthetic are all important in his philosophy of life and art. the worker's thoughts on his craft are always of interest. they are doubly so when there is in them no trace of literary self-consciousness to blemish their expression. he recorded these thoughts at the instant of their birth, for a constant habit of observation and analysis had early developed with him into a second nature. his ideas were penned in the same fragmentary way as they presented themselves to his mind, perhaps with no intention of publishing them to the world. but his ideal of art depended intimately, none the less, on the system he had thrown out seemingly in so haphazard a manner. his method gives to his writings their only unity. it was more than a method: it was a permanent expression of his own life, which aided him to construct a philosophy of beauty characteristic of the new age. he had searched to find a scientific basis for art, and discovered it in the imitation of nature, based on rational experience. this idea was, in part, aristotelian, imbibed with the spirit of the time; though in the ordinary acceptance of the word leonardo was no scholar, least of all a humanist. his own innovation in aesthetic was in requiring a rational and critical experience as a necessary {xiv} foundation, the acquisition of which was to result from the permanent condition of the mind. he had trained his own faculties to critically observe all natural phenomena: first try by experience, and then demonstrate why such experiment is forced to operate in the way it does, was his advice. the eye, he gave as an instance, had been defined as one thing; by experience, he had found it to be another. but by imitation in art, leonardo intended no slavish reproduction of nature. when he wrote that "the painter strives and competes with nature," he was on the track of a more aristotelian idea. this he barely developed, using nature only partly in the stagirite's sense, of inner force outwardly exemplified. the idea of imitation, in fad, as it presented itself to his mind, was two-fold. it was not merely the external reproduction of the image, which was easy enough to secure. the real difficulty of the artist lay in reflecting inner character and personality. it was leonardo's firm conviction that each thought had some outward expression by which the trained observer was able to recognize it. every man, he wrote, has as many movements of the body as of varieties of ideas. thought, moreover, expressed itself outwardly in proportion to its power over the individual and his time of life. by thus employing bodily gesture to represent feeling and idea, the painter could affect the spectator whom he {xv} placed in the presence of visible emotion. he maintained that art was of slight use unless able to show what its subject had in mind. painting should aim, therefore, to reproduce the inner mental state by the attitude assumed. this was, in other words, a natural symbolism, in which the symbol was no mere convention, but the actual outward projection of the inner condition of the mind. art here offered an equation of inward purpose and outward expression, neither complete without the other. further than this, influenced by platonic thought, leonardo's conception of painting was, as an intellectual state or condition, outwardly projected. the painter who practised his art without reasoning of its nature was like a mirror unconsciously reflecting what was before it. although without a "manual act" painting could not be realized, its true problems--problems of light, of colour, pose and composition, of primitive and derivative shadow--had all to be grasped by the mind without bodily labour. beyond this, the scientific foundation in art came through making it rest upon an accurate knowledge of nature. even experience was only a step towards attaining this. "there is nothing in all nature without its reason," he wrote. "if you know the reason, you do not need the experience." in the history of art, as well, he urged that nature had been the test of its excellence. a {xvi} natural phenomenon had brought art into existence. the first picture in the world, he remarked in a happy epigram, had been "a line surrounding the shadow of a man, cast by the sun on the wall." he traced the history of painting in italy during its stagnation after the decay of ancient art, when each painter copied only his predecessor, which lasted until giotto, born among barren mountains, drew the movements of the goats he tended, and thus advanced farther than all the earlier masters. but his successors only copied him, and painting sank again until masaccio once more took nature as his guide. a quite different and combative side to leonardo's aesthetic, which forced him to state the broad principles of art, appears in his attacks on poetry and music as inferior to painting. in that age of humanistic triumph, literature had lorded it over the other arts in a manner not free from arrogance. there was still another cause for his onslaught on poetry. leonardo resented the fact that painters, who were rarely men of education, had not defended themselves against the slurs cast on their art. his counter attack may have been intended to hide his own small scholarship. it served another end as well. his conception of the universal principles of beauty was made clear by this defence. his first principle stated broadly that the most useful art was the one which could most easily be communicated. {xvii} painting was communicable to all since its appeal was made to the eye. while the painter proceeded at once to the imitation of nature, the poet's instruments were words which varied in every land. he took the platonic view of poetry as a lying imitation, removed from truth. he called the poet a collector of other men's wares, who decked himself in their plumage. where poetry presented only a shadow to the imagination, painting offered a real image to the eye; and the eye, as the window of the soul through which all earthly beauty was revealed, the sight, he exclaimed, which had discovered navigation, which had impelled men to seek the west, was the noblest of all the senses. painting spoke only by what it accomplished, poetry ended in the very words with which it sang its own praises. if, then, poets called painting dumb poetry, he could retort by dubbing poetry blind painting. in common with his successors, leonardo could not escape from this fallacy, which, in overlooking all save descriptive verse, was destined to burden aesthetic until demolished by lessing. it was the opinion of leonardo that the temporary nature of music caused its inferiority to painting. although durability was in itself no absolute test,--else the work of coppersmiths would be the highest art,--yet in any final scale, permanence could not altogether be disregarded. music perished in the very act of its creation, {xviii} while painting preserved the beautiful from the hand of time. "helen of troy, gazing in a mirror, in her old age, wondered how she had twice been ravished." mortal beauty would thus vanish, if it were not rescued by art from destroying age and death. leonardo contrasted painting with sculpture, for he had practised both, and thought himself peculiarly qualified to judge their merit. he considered the former the nobler art of the two, for sculpture involved bodily toil and fatigue, while by its very nature it lacked perspective and atmosphere, colour, and the feeling of space. painting, on the other hand, caused by an illusion, was in itself the result of deeper thought. an even broader test served to convince him of its final superiority. that art was of highest excellence, he wrote, which possessed most elements of variety and universality. painting contained and reproduced all forms of nature; it made its appeal by the harmonious balance of parts which gratified all the senses. by its very duality it fulfilled the highest purpose. the painter was able to visualize the beauty which enchanted him, to bring to reality the fancy of his dreams, and give outward expression to the ideal within. the genius of leonardo as a painter came through unfolding the mystery of life. like miranda, he had gazed with wonder at the beauty of the world. "look at the grace and sweetness {xix} of men and women in the street," he wrote. the most ordinary functions of life and nature amazed him most. he observed of the eye how in it form and colour, and the entire universe it reflected, were reduced to a single point. "wonderful law of nature, which forced all effects to participate with their cause in the mind of man. these are the true miracles!" elsewhere he wrote again: "nature is full of infinite reasons which have not yet passed into experience." he conceived it to be the painter's duty not only to comment on natural phenomena as restrained by law, but to merge his very mind into that of nature by interpreting its relation with art. resting securely on the reality of experienced truth, he felt the deeper presence of the unreal on every side. in the same way that he visualized the inner workings of the mind, his keen imagination aided him to make outward trifles serve his desire to find mysterious beauty everywhere. oftentimes, in gazing on some ancient, time-stained wall, he describes how he would trace thereon landscapes, with mountains, rivers and valleys. the whole world was full of a mystery to him, which his work reflected. the smile of consciousness, pregnant of that which is beyond, illumines the expression of mona lisa. so, too, in the strange glance of ann, of john the baptist, and of the virgin of the rocks, one realizes that their thoughts dwell in another world. {xx} leonardo had found a refuge in art from the pettiness of material environment. like his own creations, he, too, had learned the secret of the inner life. the painter, he wrote, could create a world of his own, and take refuge in this new realm. but it must not be one of shadows only. the very mystery he felt so keenly had yet to rest on a real foundation; to treat it otherwise would be to plunge into mere vapouring. although attempting to bridge the gulf which separated the real from the unreal, he refused to treat the latter supernaturally. that mystery which lesser minds found in the occult, he saw in nature all about him. he denied the existence of spirits, just as he urged the foolishness of the will-o'-the-wisps of former ages,--alchemy and the black art. in one sentence he destroyed the pretensions of palmistry. "you will see," he wrote, "great armies slaughtered in an hour's time, where in each individual the signs of the hands are different." his art took, thus, its guidance in realism, its purpose in spirituality. the search for truth and the desire for beauty were the twin ideals he strove to attain. the keenness of this pursuit saved him from the blemish of egoism which aloofness from his surroundings would otherwise have forced upon him. for his character presented the anomaly, peculiar to the renaissance, of a lofty idealism coupled in action with {xxi} irresponsibility of duty. he stood on a higher plane, his attitude toward life recognizing no claims on the part of his fellowmen. in his desire to surpass himself, fostered by this isolation of spirit and spurred on by the eager wish to attain universal knowledge, he has been compared to faust; but the likeness is only half correct. he was not blind to the limitations which encompassed him, his very genius making him realize their bounds. of the ancients he said that in attempting to define the nature of the soul, they sought the impossible. he wrote elsewhere, "it is the infinite alone that cannot be attained, for if it could it would become finite." in leonardo's personality was reflected both the strength and weakness of renaissance italy. so, to know him, it is necessary to understand the italy of that age. its brilliancy, its universality, its desire for beauty, are but one side of the medal. on its reverse, italy lacked the solid vigour of a national purpose. the discord of political disunion, reacting on art, laid bare great weakness in the want of any constructive direction, toward which the strength of the renaissance could aim. the energy was there, whether finding an outlet in statecraft or in discovery, in art or in letters. but it laboured for no common end; there was internal unity of force and method, but external divergence of purpose. the tyranny of petty despots could provide no adequate ideal toward {xxii} which to aim. no ruler, and no city save venice, could long symbolize the nation's patriotism. venetian painters alone glorified the state in their work, and thus felt the living force of a national ambition which raised them above themselves. but elsewhere there was little to inspire that devotion for a common country necessary as a background to sustain the greatest work. hence italian art, so living within certain limits, remained stunted beyond these. the conviction that art existed in order to express ideal beauty, that its main purpose was to please the eye and the senses in spite of the result attained, proved inadequate compensation for all that had been withdrawn. the art ideal tended more and more to become a conscience and a purpose in itself, an inward impulse for action and an outward goal. the artist's real greatness will depend at all times on his qualities as a representative. his true merit will arise from giving expression in ideal terms to his nation and to his age. in so far as he has been able to do this and the spirit of his country is reflected in his work, in so far as he has represented what is best therein and most enduring, he will have achieved greatness. not that this is always, or even often, a conscious expression. it is unfair reading to search for deep thought in the work of either painter or poet. neither art {xxiii} offers the best medium to convey the abstractions of the mind, since each has its own method of expression, independent of pure reason. but painter and poet, in the degree they attain greatness, express more than themselves. ariosto, intent only to amuse, reflects with playful wit and skepticism the splendid luxury and joy of living in renaissance court life. the care with which he chiselled each line proves that his real seriousness and conscience lay in his artistic purpose. without ariosto's wit, paolo veronese depicted a similar side in painting, though his venetian birthright made him celebrate the glory of the republic. poet and painter alike expressed far more than either could know. if such a test be applied to the artists of the renaissance, each in turn will respond to it,--just as the weakness of the later bolognese as a school is that, beyond a certain technical merit, they meant and represented so little. but the noblest painters,--michelangelo and raphael, titian and leonardo,--in addition to possessing the solid grasp of technical mastery, reflected some aspect of their nation's life and civilization. in michelangelo was realized the grandeur of italy struggling vainly against crushing oppression. he expressed that which was highest in it, reflecting the loftiest side of its idealism mingled with deep pessimism in his survey over life; for, wrapped in austerity, he saw mankind in heroic terms of sadness. raphael, on the {xxiv} other hand, found only beautiful sweetness everywhere. the tragedies of life failed to touch the young painter, who blotted from view all struggle and sorrow, and, in spite of the misery which had befallen his nation, could still rejoice in the sensuous beauty of the world. there was another side to the renaissance, dependent neither on beauty nor heroic grandeur, yet sharing in both through qualities of its own. titian, who painted the living man of action, the man of parts, susceptible alike to the appreciation of ideal beauty and heroic impulse, but guided withal by expediency, reflected this more practical aspect of life. in his portraiture he expressed the statecraft for which italians found opportunity beyond the alps, since in italy it was denied them; and titian found even venice too narrow for the scope of his art. but before titian, before raphael, before michelangelo, leonardo reflected the rationalism and the mystery, the subtlety and the philosophical speculation, of the age. to find in his work only the individual thought of genius would be to mistake, perhaps, its most important side; for the expression of his mind, both by its brilliancy and its limitations, is typical of the spirit of his time. the italian renaissance was reflected in him as rarely a period has been expressed in the life-work of a single man. he represented its union of practice and theory, of thought placed in the {xxv} service of action. he summed up its different aspects in his own individuality. intellectually, he represented its many-sidedness attained through penetration of thought, and a keenness of observation, profiting from experience, extended into every sphere. as an artist he possessed a vigour of imagination from which sprang his power of creating beauty. but, in spite of his practical nature, he remained a dreamer in an age which had in it more of stern reality than of golden dreams. his very limitations, his excess of individualism, his want of long-continued concentration, his lack of patriotism, his feeling of the superiority of art to nationality, are all characteristic of renaissance italy. the union in leonardo of reality to mystery has often been shared by genius in other fields. his own peculiar greatness sprang from expressing in art the apparent contradiction of attaining the world of mystery through force of reality. like hamlet, it was the union of the real with the unreal which appealed to him, of the world as he saw it and the world as he imagined it to be. it was but another expression of the eternal ideal of truth and beauty. l. e. american embassy london, { } i thoughts on life * * * [sidenote: of the works of leonardo] begun at florence in the house of piero di braccio martelli, on the d day of march, ; and this is to be a collection without order, taken from many papers which i have copied here, hoping to arrange them later, each in its place, according to the various subjects treated. and i think that before i shall have finished this work, it will be necessary for me to repeat the same thing many times over; so, o reader, blame me not, because the subjects are many, and memory cannot retain them and say: this i will not write because i have already written it; and if i did not wish to fall into this error it would be necessary, every time that i wished to copy something, in order not to repeat myself, to read over all the preceding matter, all the more so since the intervals are long between one time of writing and another. [sidenote: his thirst after knowledge] . not louder does the tempestuous sea bellow when the north wind strikes its foaming waves between scylla and charybdis; nor stromboli nor mount etna when the sulphurous flames, { } shattering and bursting open the great mountain with violence, hurl stones and earth through the air with the flame it vomits; nor when the fiery caverns of mount etna, spitting forth the element which it cannot restrain, hurl it back to the place whence it issued, driving furiously before it any obstacle in the way of its vehement fury ... so i, urged by my great desire and longing to see the blending of strange and various shapes made by creating nature, wandered for some time among the dark rocks, and came to the entrance of a great cave, in front of which i long stood in astonishment and ignorance of such a thing. i bent my back into an arch and rested my left hand on my knee, and with my right hand shaded my downcast eyes and contracted eyebrows. i bent down first on one side and then on the other to see whether i could perceive anything, but the thick darkness rendered this impossible; and after having remained there some time, two things arose within me, fear and desire,--fear of the dark and threatening cave, desire to see whether there were anything marvellous within. . i discover for man the origin of the first and perhaps of the second cause of his being. [sidenote: leonardo's studies] . recognizing as i do that i cannot make use of { } subject matter which is useful and delightful, since my predecessors have exhausted the useful and necessary themes, i shall do as the man who by reason of his poverty arrives last at the fair, and cannot do otherwise than purchase what has already been seen by others and not accepted, but rejected by them as being of little value. i shall place this despised and rejected merchandise, which remains over after many have bought, on my poor pack, and i shall go and distribute it, not in the big cities, but in the poor towns, and take such reward as my goods deserve. [sidenote: vain knowledge] . all knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part. . avoid studies the result of which will die together with him who studied. [sidenote: value of knowledge] . the intellect will always profit by the acquisition of any knowledge whatsoever, for thus what is useless will be expelled from it, and what is fruitful will remain. it is impossible either to hate or to love a thing without first acquiring knowledge of it. { } . men of worth naturally desire knowledge. . it is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world. [sidenote: on his contemners] . i know that many will say that this work is useless, and these are they of whom demetrius said recked no more of the breath which made the words proceed from their mouth, than of the wind which proceeded from their body,--men who seek solely after riches and bodily satisfaction, men entirely denuded of that wisdom which is the food and verily the wealth of the soul; because insomuch as the soul is of greater value than the body, so much greater are the riches of the soul than those of the body. and often when i see one of these take this work in his hand, i wonder whether, like a monkey, he will not smell it and ask me if it is something to eat. [sidenote: on the vulgar] . demetrius used to say that there was no difference between the words and the voice of the { } unskilled ignorant and the sounds and noises of a stomach full of superfluous wind. and it was not without reason that he said this, for he considered it to be indifferent whence the utterance of such men proceeded, whether from their mouth or their body; both being of the same substance and value. . i do not consider that men of coarse and boorish habits and of slender parts deserve so fine an instrument nor such a complicated mechanism as men of contemplation and high culture. they merely need a sack in which their food may be held and whence it may issue, since verily they cannot be considered otherwise than as vehicles for food, for they seem to me to have nothing in common with the human race save the shape and the voice; as far as the rest is concerned they are lower than the beasts. . knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man. [sidenote: knowledge the supreme good] . cornelius celsus: knowledge is the supreme good, the supreme evil is physical pain. we are composed of two separate parts, the soul and the the body; the soul is the greater of these two, the body the lesser. knowledge appertains to the { } greater part, the supreme evil belongs to the lesser and baser part. knowledge is an excellent thing for the mind, and pain is the most grievous thing for the body. just as the supreme evil is physical pain, so is wisdom the supreme good of the soul, that is to say of the wise man, and no other thing can be compared with it. [sidenote: life and wisdom] . in the days of thy youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the losses of thy old age. and if thou understandest that old age is fed with wisdom, so conduct thyself in the days of thy youth that sustenance may not be lacking to thy old age. [sidenote: praise of knowledge] . the fame of the rich man dies with him; the fame of the treasure, and not of the man who possessed it, remains. far greater is the glory of the virtue of mortals than that of their riches. how many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting. how many were those who lived in scarcity of worldly goods in order to grow rich in virtue; and as far as virtue exceeds wealth, even in the same degree the desire of the poor man proved more fruitful than that of the rich man. { } dost thou not see that wealth in itself confers no honour on him who amasses it, which shall last when he is dead, as does knowledge?--knowledge which shall always bear witness like a clarion to its creator, since knowledge is the daughter of its creator, and not the stepdaughter, like wealth. [sidenote: the world] . bountiful nature has provided that in all parts of the world you will find something to imitate. . [sidenote: the beauty of life] consider in the streets at nightfall the faces of men and women when it is bad weather, what grace and sweetness they manifest! . just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt. [sidenote: fruitless study] . just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs. . truth was the only daughter of time. { } [sidenote: in praise of truth] . so vile a thing is a lie that even if it spoke fairly of god it would take away somewhat from his divinity; and so excellent a thing is truth that if it praises the humblest things they are exalted. there is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects, though not of disorderly minds. but thou who feedest on dreams dost prefer the sophistry and subterfuges in matters of importance and uncertainty to what is certain and natural, though of lesser magnitude. . obstacles in the way of truth are finally punished. [sidenote: versus humanists] . i am well aware that not being a literary man the presumptuous will think that they have the right to blame me on the ground that i am not a man of letters. vainglorious people! know they not that i could make answer as marius did to the roman people, and say: they who make a { } display with the labours of others will not allow me mine? they will say that being unskilled in letters i cannot find true expression for the matters of which i desire to treat; they do not know that in my subjects experience is a truer guide than the words of others, for experience was the teacher of all great writers, and therefore i take her for guide, and i will cite her in all cases. . although i may not be able to quote other authors, as they do, i can quote from a greater and more worthy source, namely, experience,--the teacher of their masters. they go about swelled with pride and pomposity, dressed up and bedight, not with their own labour, but with that of others; and they will not concede me mine. and if they despise me, who am a creator, far more are they, who do not create but trumpet abroad and exploit the works of other men, to be blamed. [sidenote: authority] . he who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect. [sidenote: on commentators] . men who are creators and interpreters of nature to man, in comparison with boasters and exploiters of the works of others, must be judged { } and esteemed like the object before the mirror as compared with its image reflected in the mirror.--one being something in itself, and the other nothing. little to nature do they owe, since it is merely by chance they wear the human form, and but for it i might include them with herds of cattle. . a well lettered man is so because he is well natured, and just as the cause is more admirable than the effect, so is a good disposition, unlettered, more praiseworthy than a well lettered man who is without natural disposition. . against certain commentators who disparage the inventors of antiquity, the originators of science and grammar, and who attack the creators of antiquity; and because they through laziness and the convenience of books have not been able to create, they attack their masters with false reasoning. . it is better to imitate ancient than modern work. [sidenote: experience] . wisdom is the daughter of experience. [sidenote: experience never errs] . wrongly men complain of experience, which { } with great railing they accuse of falsehood. leave experience alone, and turn your lamentation to your ignorance, which leads you, with your vain and foolish desires, to promise yourselves those things which are not in her power to confer, and to accuse her of falsehood. wrongly men complain of innocent experience, when they accuse her not seldom of false and lying demonstrations. . experience never errs; it is only your judgements that err, ye who look to her for effects which our experiments cannot produce. because given a principle, that which ensues from it is necessarily the true consequence of that principle, unless it be impeded. should there, however, be any obstacle, the effect which should ensue from the aforesaid principle will participate in the impediment as much or as little as the impediment is operative in regard to the aforesaid principle. . experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act. . all our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions. { } [sidenote: origin of knowledge] . the sense ministers to the soul, and not the soul sense; and where the sense which ministers ceases to serve the soul, all the functions of that sense are lacking in life, as is evident in those who are born dumb and blind. [sidenote: testimony of the senses] . and if thou sayest that sight impedes the security and subtlety of mental meditation, by reason of which we penetrate into divine knowledge, and that this impediment drove a philosopher to deprive himself of his sight, i answer that the eye, as lord of the senses, performs its duty in being an impediment to the confusion and lies of that which is not science but discourse, by which with much noise and gesticulation argument is constantly conducted; and hearing should do the same, feeling, as it does, the offence more keenly, because it seeks after harmony which devolves on all the senses. and if this philosopher deprived himself of his sight to get rid of the obstacle to his discourses, consider that his discourses and his brain were a party to the act, because the whole was madness. now could he not have closed his eyes when this frenzy came upon him, and have kept them closed until the frenzy consumed itself? but the man was mad, the discourse insane, and egregious the folly of destroying his eye-sight. { } [sidenote: judgement prone to error] . there is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement. . the greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions. . avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience. [sidenote: intelligence of animals] . man discourseth greatly, and his discourse is for the greater part empty and false; the discourse of animals is small, but useful and true: slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood. . what is an element? it is not in man's power to define the quiddity of the elements, but a great many of their effects are known. . that which is divisible in fact is divisible in potentiality also; but not all quantities which are divisible in potentiality are divisible in fact. [sidenote: infinity incomprehensible] . what is that thing which is not defined and would { } not exist if it were defined? it is infinity, which if it could be defined would be limited and finite, because that which can be defined ends with the limits of its circumference, and that which cannot be defined has no limits. . o contemplators of things, do not pride yourselves for knowing those things which nature by herself and her ordination naturally conduces; but rejoice in knowing the purposes of those things which are determined by your mind. [sidenote: insoluble questions] . consider, o reader, how far we can lend credence to the ancients who strove to define the soul and life,--things which cannot be proved; while those things which can be clearly known and proved by experience remained during so many centuries ignored and misrepresented! the eye, which so clearly demonstrates its functions, has been up to my time defined in one manner by countless authorities; i by experience have discovered another definition. [sidenote: beauty of nature's inventions] . although human ingenuity may devise various inventions which, by the help of various instruments, answer to one and the same purpose, yet { } will it never discover any inventions more beautiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature, because in her inventions there is nothing lacking and nothing superfluous; and she makes use of no counterpoise when she constructs the limbs of animals in such a way as to correspond to the motion of their bodies, but she puts into them the soul of the body. this is not the proper place for this discourse, which belongs rather to the subject of the composition of animated bodies; and the rest of the definition of the soul i leave to the minds of the friars, the fathers of the people, who know all secrets by inspiration. i leave the sacred books alone, because they are the supreme truth. [sidenote: completeness in knowledge] . those who seek to abbreviate studies do injury to knowledge and to love because the love of anything is the daughter of this knowledge. the fervency of the love increases in proportion to the certainty of the knowledge, and the certainty issues from a complete knowledge of all the parts, which united compose the totality of the thing which ought to be loved. of what value, then, is he who abbreviates the details of those matters of which he professes to render a complete account, while he leaves behind the chief part of the things of which the whole is composed? it is true that impatience, the mother of { } stupidity, praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long enough to enable them to acquire a complete knowledge of one subject such as the human body! and then they seek to comprehend the mind of god, in which the universe is included, weighing it and splitting it into infinite particles, as if they had to dissect it! o human folly! dost thou not perceive that thou hast been with thyself all thy life, and thou art not yet aware of the thing which more fully than any other thing thou dost possess, namely, thy own folly? and thou desirest with the multitude of sophists to deceive thyself and others, despising the mathematical sciences in which truth dwells and the knowledge of the things which they contain; and then thou dost busy thyself with miracles, and writest that thou hast attained to the knowledge of those things which the human mind cannot comprehend, which cannot be proved by any instance in nature, and thou deemest that thou hast wrought a miracle in spoiling the work of some speculative mind; and thou perceivest not that thy error is the same as that of a man who strips a plant of the ornament of its branches covered with leaves, mingled with fragrant flowers and fruits. just as justinius did when he abridged the stories written by trogus pompeius, who had written elaborately the noble deeds of his forefathers, which were full of wonderful beauties of style; and thus { } he composed a barren work, worthy only of the impatient spirits who deem that they are wasting the time which they might usefully employ in studying the works of nature and mortal affairs. but let such men remain in company with the beasts; let dogs and other animals full of rapine be their courtiers, and let them be accompanied with these running ever at their heels! and let the harmless animals follow, which in the season of the snows come to the houses begging alms as from their master. [sidenote: nature] . nature is full of infinite causes which are beyond the pale of experience. . nature in creating first gives size to the abode of the intellect (the skull, the head), and then to the abode of the vital spirit (the chest). [sidenote: law of necessity] . necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law. . when anything is the cause of any other thing, and brings about by its movement any effect, { } the movement of the effect necessarily follows the movement of the cause. [sidenote: of lightning in the clouds] . o mighty and once living instrument of creative nature, unable to avail thyself of thy great strength thou must needs abandon a life of tranquillity and obey the law which god and time gave to nature the mother. ah! how often the frighted shoals of dolphins and great tunny fish were seen fleeing before thy inhuman wrath; whilst thou, fulminating with swift beating of wings and twisted tail, raised in the sea a sudden storm with buffeting and sinking of ships and tossing of waves, filling the naked shores with terrified and distracted fishes. [sidenote: the human eye] . since the eye is the window of the soul, the soul is always fearful of losing it, so much so that if a man is suddenly frightened by the motion or an object before him, he does not with his hands protect his heart, the source of all life; nor his head, where dwells the lord of the senses; nor the organs of hearing, smell and taste. but as soon as he feels fright it does not suffice him to close the lids of his eyes, keeping them shut with all his might, but he instantly turns in the opposite direction; and still not feeling secure he covers his eyes with one hand, stretching out the { } other to ward off the danger in the direction in which he suspects it to lie. nature again has ordained that the eye of man shall close of itself, so that remaining during his sleep without protection it shall suffer no hurt. [sidenote: universal law] . every object naturally seeks to maintain itself in itself. . the part always tends to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection; the soul desires to remain with its body, because without the organic instruments of that body it can neither act nor feel. . the lover is moved by the object he loves as the senses are by sensible things; and they unite and become one and the same. the work is the first thing which is born of this union; if the thing loved is base, the lover becomes base. when what is united is in harmony with that which receives it, delight, pleasure and satisfaction ensue. when the lover is united to the beloved he rests there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there. . a natural action is accomplished in the briefest manner. { } [sidenote: nature variable and infinite.] . to such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another. . if nature had made one rule for the quality of limbs, the faces of men would resemble each other to such a degree that it would not be possible to distinguish one from the other; but she has varied the five features of the face in such a way that, although she has made an almost universal rule with regard to their size, she has not done so with regard to their quality, so that each one can be clearly distinguished from the other. . it is an easy matter for him who knows man to arrive at universal knowledge, since all terrestrial animals are similar in regard to their structure, that is to say, in regard to the muscles and bones, and they do not vary save in height and thickness; then there are the aquatic animals, and i will not persuade the painter that any rule can be made with regard to these because they are of infinite variety--so are the insects. { } . the body of anything which is fed is continually dying and being reborn, since nourishment cannot enter save where the past nourishment is exhausted; and if it is exhausted, it no longer has life, and if you do not furnish it with nourishment equal to that which has been before, you will impair the health of the organism, and if you deprive it of this nourishment, life will be altogether destroyed. but if you supply it with so much as can be consumed in a day, then as much life will be restored as was consumed, like the light of the candle which is furnished to it by the fuel provided by the moisture of the candle, and this light with most speedy succour restores beneath what is consumed above as it dies in dusky smoke; and this death is continuous, likewise the continuity of the smoke is equal to the continuity of the fuel; and in the same moment the light dies and is born again together with the movement of its fuel. . man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others. [sidenote: light] . look on light and consider its beauty. shut your { } eyes, and look again: that which you see was not there before, and that which was, no longer is. who is he who remakes it if the producer is continually dying? . anaxagoras: everything proceeds from everything, and everything becomes everything, because that which exists in the elements is composed of those elements. [sidenote: nature] . nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals, and in some cases not the stepmother, but the pitying mother. . why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the death of the other? nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in continually creating and making lives and forms, because she knows that her earthly materials are thereby augmented, is more willing and swift to create than time is to destroy; and so she has ordained that many animals shall feed on each other. and as even thus her desire is not satisfied, she frequently sends forth certain poisonous and pestilential vapours upon the increasing multitude and congregation of animals, and especially upon men who increase to a great extent, because other animals do not feed on them; and since there is no cause, { } there would follow no effect. this earth, therefore, seeks to lose its [animal] life, desiring only continual reproduction, and as, by the logical demonstration you adduce, effects often resemble their causes, animals are the image of the life of the world. [sidenote: life's philosophy] . now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home to one's former state is like the desire of the moth for the light, and the man who, with constant yearning and joyful expectancy, awaits the new spring and the new summer, and every new month and the new year, and thinks that what he longs for is ever too late in coming, and does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. but this desire is the quintessence, the spirit, of the elements, which, finding itself captive in the soul of the human body, desires always to return to its giver. and i would have you know that this same desire is the quintessence which is inseparable from nature, and that man is the model of the world. and such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more, and life flies from him while he forever hopes to enjoy the goods which he has acquired at the price of great labour. [sidenote: the senses and the soul] . the soul seems to dwell in the intellect, and the intellect appears to dwell in that part where all { } the senses meet which is called the brain, and the brain does not pervade the whole body, as many have thought; on the contrary, it dwells entirely in one part, because if it were all in all and the same in every part, it would not have been necessary for the instruments of the senses to combine among themselves in one single spot; but rather, it would have been sufficient for the eye to fulfil the function of its sensation on the surface without transmitting, by means of the optic nerves, the likeness of its vision to the brain, so that the soul, for the reason given above, might perceive it in the surface of the eye. likewise, with regard to the sense of hearing, it would have been sufficient if the voice had sounded only in the porous cavity of the indurated bone which lies within the ear, without making any further transit from this bone to the brain, which is its destination and where it discourses with common judgement. the sense of smell, too, is likewise compelled by necessity to proceed to the intellect; the sense of touch passes through the nerves and is conveyed to the brain, and these nerves diverge with infinite ramification in the skin, which encloses the limbs of the body and the entrails. the nerves convey volition and sensation to the muscles, and these nerves and the tendons which lie between the muscles and the sinews give movement to them; the muscles and sinews obey, and this obedience takes effect by the decrease { } of their thickness, for in swelling their length is reduced, and the tendons which are interwoven among the particles of the limbs shrink, and as they extend to the tips of the fingers they transmit to the brain the cause of the sense of touch which they feel. the tendons with their muscles obey the nerves as soldiers obey their officers, and the nerves obey the brain as the officers obey their captain; thus the joint of the bones obeys the tendon, and the tendons obey the muscles, and the muscles obey the nerves, and the nerves obey the brain, and the brain is the dwelling of the soul, and the memory is its ammunition and the perception is its refundary. [sidenote: of sensation] . the brain is that which perceives what is transmitted to it by the other senses. the brain moves by means of that which is transmitted to it by the five senses. motion is transmitted to the senses by objects, and these objects, transmitting their images to the five senses, are transferred by them to the perception, and by the perception to the brain; and there they are comprehended and committed to the memory, in which, according to their intensity, they are more or less firmly retained. the thinkers of ancient times concluded that the part of man which constitutes his intellect is caused by an instrument to which the other five { } senses refer everything by means of the perception, and this instrument they have named the "common sense" or brain, and they say that this sense is situated in the centre of the head. and they have given it this name "common sense" solely because it is the common judge of the five other senses, that is to say, sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. the "common sense" is stirred by means of the perception which is placed between it and the senses. the perception is stirred by means of the images of things conveyed to it by the external instruments to the senses, and these are placed in the centre between the external things and the perception, and the senses likewise are stirred by objects. surrounding objects transmit their images to the senses, and the senses transfer them to the perception, and the perception transfers them to the "common sense" (brain), and by it they are stamped upon the memory, and are there retained in a greater or lesser degree according to the importance and intensity of the impression. the sense which is most closely connected with the perception is the most rapid in action, and this sense is the eye, the highest and chief of the others; of this sense alone we will treat, and we will leave the others in order not to unduly lengthen our matter. [sidenote: automatic movements] . nature has ordained for man the ministering { } muscles which exercise the sinews, and by means of which the limbs can be moved according to the will and desire of the brain, like to officers distributed by a ruler over many provinces and towns, who represent their ruler in these places, and obey his will. and this officer, who will in a single instance have most faithfully obeyed the orders he received from his master by word of mouth, will afterwards, in a similar way, of his own accord fulfil the wishes of his master. an example of this can be frequently seen in the fingers, which learn to perform on an instrument the things which the intellect commands, and the lesson once learnt they will perform it without the aid of the intellect. and do not the muscles which cause the legs to move perform their duty without man being conscious of it? . you will see palsied and shivering persons move, and their trembling limbs, such as their head and hands, quiver, without the permission of the soul, and the soul, though it expend all its might, cannot prevent these limbs from trembling. the same thing occurs in epilepsy or when limbs are partially truncated, as in the case of tails of lizards. [sidenote: intellect] . it happens that our intellect is that which prompts the hand to create the features of figures in { } divine aspects until it finds satisfaction; and since the intellect is one of the tones of our soul, by means of the soul it composes the form of the body where it dwells, according to its volition. and when it has to reproduce a human body, it takes pleasure in repeating the body which it originally created; whence it follows that they who fall in love are prone to become enamoured of what resembles them. [sidenote: of the senses] . there are the four powers: memory, intellect, sensuality and lust. the first two are intellectual, the others sensual. of the five senses, sight, hearing, smell are with difficulty prevented; touch and taste not at all. taste follows smell in the case of dogs and other greedy animals. . why does the eye perceive things more clearly in dreams than with the imagination when one is awake? [sidenote: time] . although time is included among continuous quantities, being indivisible and immaterial it does not altogether fall into the scope of geometry,--by which it is divided into figures and bodies of infinite variety, which are seen to be continuous inasmuch as they are visible and material,--but it agrees only with its first principles, { } i.e. with the point and the line; the point in time may be compared to an instant, and the line to the length of a certain quantity of time. just as the point is the beginning and end of a line, so is an instant the beginning and end of any given space of time; and just as a line is infinitely divisible, so can a given space of time be likewise divided, and as the divisions of the line are in proportion to each other, so likewise are the divisions of time. . in twelve whole figures the cosmography of the miniature world will be shown to you in the same manner as ptolemy in his cosmography. and so i will divide it afterwards into limbs as he divided the world into provinces; then i will explain the function of the parts in every direction, and put before your eyes a description of the whole figure and substance of man as regards his movements by means of his limbs. and thus if it please our great author i will demonstrate the nature of man and his habits in the way i describe his form. [sidenote: on the human body] . and thou, o man, who wilt gaze in this work of mine on the marvellous works of nature, if thou thinkest it would be an act of wickedness to destroy it, think how much more wicked it is to take the life of a man; and if this his structure appears to thee a miraculous work of art, remember that { } it is nothing in comparison with the soul which inhabits this structure; for verily, whatever it may be, it is divine. let it, then, dwell in his work and at his good will, and let not thy rage or malice destroy so great a thing as life, for he who does not value it does not deserve it. [sidenote: the experimental method] . by these rules thou wilt be able to distinguish falsehood from truth by means of which knowledge men aim at possible things with greater moderation; and do not veil thyself in ignorance, for the result of this would be that thou wouldst be ineffectual and fall into melancholy and despair. [sidenote: of navigation below the waters] . how by the aid of a machine many may remain for some time under water. and how and why i do not describe my method of remaining under water and of living long without food; and i do not publish nor divulge these things by reason of the evil nature of man, who would use them for assassinations at the bottom of the sea and to destroy and sink ships, together with the men on board of them; and notwithstanding i will teach other things which are not dangerous.... [sidenote: of physiognomy] . i will not dwell on false physiognomy and chiromancy { } because there is no truth in them, and this is manifest because chimeras of this kind have no scientific foundation. it is true that the lineaments of the face partly reveal the character of men, their vices and temperaments; but in the face: (a) the features which separate the cheeks from the lips, and the nostrils and cavities of the eyes, are strongly marked if they belong to cheerful and good-humoured men, and if they are slightly marked it denotes that the men to whom they belong are given to meditation, (b) those whose features stand out in great relief and depth are brutal and bad-tempered, and reason little, (c) those who have strongly marked lines between the eyebrows are bad-tempered, (d) those who have strongly marked lines on the forehead are men full of concealed or unconcealed bewailing. and we can reason thus about many features. but the hand? you will find that whole armies perished in the same hour by the sword in which no two men had similar marks in their hands, and the same argument applies to a shipwreck. [sidenote: of pain] . nature has placed in the front part of man, as he moves, all those parts which when struck cause him to feel pain; and this is felt in the joints of the legs, the forehead and the nose, and has been so devised for the preservation of man, because { } if such pain were not felt in these limbs they would be destroyed by the many blows they receive. [sidenote: why plants do not feel pain] . while nature has ordained that animals should feel pain in order that the instruments which might be liable to be maimed or marred by motion may be preserved, plants do not come into collision with the objects which are before them; whence pain is not a necessity for them, and therefore when they are broken they do not feel pain, as animals do. . lust is the cause of generation. appetite is the support of life. fear or timidity is the prolongation of life. pain is the preserver of the instrument (of the human frame). [sidenote: fear] . just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard. [sidenote: body and soul] . let him who wishes to see how the soul inhabits its body observe what use the body makes of its daily habitation; that is to say, if the soul is full of confusion and disorder the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by the soul. { } . the soul can never be corrupted with the corruption of the body, but it is like the wind which causes the sound of the organ, and which ceases to produce a good effect when a pipe is spoilt. [sidenote: memory] . every loss which we incur leaves behind it vexation in the memory, save the greatest loss of all, that is, death, which annihilates the memory, together with life. [sidenote: spirit] . our body is subject to heaven, and heaven is subject to the spirit. [sidenote: sense and reason] . the senses are earthly; reason lies outside them when in contemplation. . where most feeling exists, there amongst martyrs is the greatest martyr. . that which can be lost cannot be deemed riches. virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. hold property and external riches with fear; they often leave their possessor scorned and mocked at for having lost them. { } [sidenote: flight of time] . men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present. [sidenote: illusions] . our intellect does not judge events which happened at various intervals of time in their true proportion, because many things which happened years ago appear recent and close to the present, and often recent things appear old and seem to belong to our past childhood. the eye does likewise with regard to distant objects which in the light of the sun appear to be close to the eye, and many objects which are close appear to be remote. . let us not lack ways and means of dividing and measuring these our wretched days, which we ought to take pleasure in spending and living not vainly and not without praise, nor without leaving any memory in the minds of men, so that this our miserable existence may not be spent in vain. [sidenote: virtuous life] . the age which flies glides by in stealth and deceives others; and nothing is more swift than the years, and he who sows virtue reaps glory. { } [sidenote: sleep and death] . o sleeper, what is sleep? sleep is like unto death. why dost thou not work in such wise that after death thou mayst have the semblance of perfect life, just as during life thou hast in thy sleep the semblance of the hapless dead? . the water you touch in a river is the last of that which has gone, and the first of that which is coming: so it is with time present. . a long life is a life well spent. [sidenote: life] . as a well spent day affords happy sleep, so does a life profitably employed afford a happy death. [sidenote: time the destroyer] . o time, consumer of things! o envious age! thou dost destroy all things, and consumest all things with the hard teeth of old age, little by little in a slow death. helen, when she looked in her mirror and saw the withered wrinkles made in her face by old age, wept, and wondered why she had twice been ravished. o time, devourer of things! o envious age, by which all is consumed! { } [sidenote: on fault-finders] . there exists among the foolish a certain sect of hypocrites who continually seek to deceive themselves and others, but others more than themselves, though in reality they deceive themselves more than others. and these are they who blame the painters who study on feast-days the things which relate to the true knowledge of the forms of the works of nature, and sedulously strive to acquire knowledge of these things to the best of their ability. but such fault-finders pass over in silence the fact that this is the true manner of knowing the artificer of such great and marvellous things, and that this is the true way in which to love so great an inventor! for great love proceeds from the perfect knowledge of the thing loved; and if you do not know it you can love it but little or not at all; and if you love it for the gain which you anticipate obtaining from it and not for its supreme virtue, you are like the dog which wags its tail and shows signs of joy, leaping towards him who can give him a bone. but if you knew the virtue of a man you would love him more--if that virtue was in its place. [sidenote: prayer] . i obey thee, lord, first for the love which in reason i ought to bear thee; secondly because thou { } hast the power to shorten or prolong the lives of men. . thou, o god, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour. . and many make a trade deceiving the foolish multitude, and if no one comes to unmask their deceits, they punish it. . pharisees,--that is to say, holy friars. . nothing can be written by means of new researches. [sidenote: patience] . patience serves against insults as clothes do against the cold; since if you multiply your clothes as the cold increases, the cold cannot hurt you. similarly, let thy patience increase under great offences, and they will not be able to hurt your feelings. [sidenote: advice to a speaker] . words which do not satisfy the ear of the listener will always weary or annoy him; and you will often see signs of this in such listeners in their frequent yawns. therefore, you who speak before men whose good opinion you seek, when you { } observe such signs of vexation, shorten your speech or vary your argument; and if you do otherwise, then instead of the favour you seek you will incur hate and hostility. and if you would see what gives pleasure to a man speak to him on various themes, and when you see him intent, without yawning, or contracting his brow, or performing other actions, then be certain that the matter of which you are speaking is such as affords him pleasure. [sidenote: advice] . here is a thing which the more it is needed the more it is rejected: and this is advice, which is unwillingly heeded by those who most need it, that is to say, by the ignorant. here is a thing which the more you fear and avoid it the nearer you approach to it, and this is misery; the more you flee from it the more miserable and restless you will become. when the work comes up to the standard of the judgement, this is a bad sign for the judgement; and when the work excels the standard of the judgement, this is the worst sign, as occurs when a man marvels at having worked so well; and when the standard of the judgement exceeds that fulfilled by the work, this is a sign of perfection; and if the man is young and be thus disposed, he will without doubt grow into an excellent workman: he will only accomplish few works. but they will { } be of a quality which will compel men to contemplate their perfection with admiration. [sidenote: proverbs] . nothing should be so greatly feared as empty fame. this empty fame issues from vices. a broken vase of clay can be remodelled, but this is no longer possible when it has been baked. the vow is born when hope dies. the beautiful is not always the good. and the fine talkers labour under this error without any reason. he who wishes to grow rich in a day will be hanged in a year. the memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude. reprove your friend in secret and praise him in public. he who fears dangers will not perish by them. the evil which does me no harm is like the good which in no wise avails me. he who offends others is not himself secure. be not false about the past. folly is the shield of lies, just as unreadiness is the defence of poverty. where there is liberty, there is no rule. { } here is a thing which the more it is heeded the more it is spurned,--advice. it is ill to praise, and worse to blame, the thing which you do not understand. on mount etna the words freeze in your mouth and you make ice of them. threats are the only weapons of the threatened man. ask advice of him who governs himself well. justice needs power, intelligence and will, and is like the queen bee. not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it. he who takes the snake by the tail will be bitten by it. the pit will fall in upon him who digs it. he who does not restrain voluptuousness is in the category of the beasts. you can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself. he who thinks little errs much. it is easier to contend at the first than at the last. no counsel is more sincere than that given on ships which are in danger. let him who acts on the advice of the young expect loss. you grow in reputation like bread in the hands of a child. { } cannot beauty and utility be combined--as appears in citadels and men? he who is without fear often incurs great losses, and is often full of regret. if you governed your body according to virtue you would not live in this world. where good fortune enters, envy lays siege to her and attacks her, and when she departs sorrow and regret remain behind. when beauty exists side by side with ugliness, the one seems more powerful, owing to the presence of the other. he who walks straight rarely falls. o miserable race of man! of how many things you make yourself the slave for the sake of money! the worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes. to speak well of a bad man is the same as speaking ill of a good man. truth ordains that lying tongues shall be punished by the lie. he who does not value life does not deserve it. the beautiful works of mortals pass and do not endure. labour flies with fame almost hidden in its arm. the gold in ingots is refined in the fire. { } the shuttle says: i will continue to move until the cloth is woven. everything that is crooked is straightened. great ruin proceeds from a slight cause. fine gold is recognized when it is tested. the image will correspond to the die. the wall will fall on him who scrapes it. ivy lives long. to the traitor, death is life, because if he makes use of others he is no longer believed. when fortune comes seize her in front firmly, because behind she is bald. constancy means, not he who begins, but he who perseveres. i do not yield to obstacles. every obstacle is overcome by resolve. he who is chained to a star does not change. [sidenote: truth] . fire destroys falsehood,--that is to say, sophistry,--and rehabilitates truth, scattering the darkness. fire must be represented as the consumer of all sophistry and the revealer of truth, because it is light and scatters darkness which conceals all essences. fire destroys all sophistry,--that is to say, deceit,--and preserves truth alone, which is gold. { } truth cannot be concealed in the end, dissimulation is of no avail. dissimulation is frustrated before so great a judge. falsehood puts on a mask. there is nothing hidden under the sun. fire must represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies, and the mask is for sophistry and lies, which conceal truth. . rather privation of limbs than weariness of doing good. the power of using my limbs shall fail me before the power of being useful. rather death than weariness. i cannot be satiated with serving. i do not weary of giving help. no amount of work is sufficient to weary me. this is a carnival motto: "sine lassitudine." hands in which ducats and precious stones abound like snow never grow weary of serving, but such a service is for its utility only and not for our profit. nature has formed me thus. [sidenote: ingratitude] . this shall be placed in the hand of ingratitude: the wood nourishes the fire that consumes it. when the sun, the scatterer of darkness, shines, you put out the light which for you in particular, and for your need and convenience, expelled the darkness. [sidenote: physiological inferiority of man] . i have found that in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of { } animals the senses are less subtle and coarser; it is thus composed of less ingenious machinery and of cells less capable of receiving the power of senses. i have seen that in the lion the sense of smell is connected with the substance of the brain and descends through the nostrils which form an ample receptacle for it; and it enters into a great number of cartilaginous cells which are provided with many passages in order to receive the brain. a large part of the head of the lion is given up to the sockets of the eyes, and the optic nerves are in immediate contact with the brain; the contrary occurs in man, because the sockets of the eyes occupy a small portion of the head, and the optic nerves are subtle and long and weak, and owing to the weakness of their action we see little by day and less at night; and the animals above mentioned see better at night than in the daytime; and the proof of this is that they seek their prey at night and sleep during the daytime, as do also the nocturnal birds. [sidenote: man's ethical inferiority] . thou hast described him king of animals, but i would rather say, king of beasts, thou being the greatest--for hast thou not slain them in order that they may give thee their children to glut thy greed with which thou hast striven to make a sepulchre for all animals? and i would say still more if i might speak the whole truth. but let us { } confine ourselves to human matters, relating one supreme infamy, which is not to be found among the animals of the earth; because among these you will not find animals who eat their young, except when they are utterly foolish (and there are few indeed of such among them), and this occurs only among the beasts of prey, such as the lions, and leopards, panthers, lynxes, cats and the like, which sometimes feed on their young; but thou, besides thy children, dost devour thy father, thy mother, thy brother and thy friends; and not satisfied with this, thou goest forth to hunt on the islands of others, seizing other men and these half naked ... thou fattenest and chasest them down thy own throat. now does not nature produce enough vegetables for thee to satisfy thyself? and if thou art not content with vegetables, canst thou not by a mixture of them make infinite compounds as platina wrote, and other writers on food? [sidenote: man in the animal world] . the description of man, including that of such creatures belonging almost to the same species, such as apes, monkeys and the like, of which there are many. . the way of walking in man is similar in all cases to the universal way of walking in four-footed animals, because, just as they move their feet { } crosswise, like a trotting horse, so man moves his four limbs crosswise, that is to say, in walking he puts forward his right foot simultaneously with his left arm, and so on vice versa. . write a special treatise to describe the movements of four-footed animals, among which is man, who in his childhood also walks on four feet. [sidenote: fragment of a letter] . there is one who having promised me much less than his due, and being disappointed of his presumptuous desire, has tried to deprive me of all my friends; and finding them wise and not pliable to his will, he has threatened me that he would bring accusations against me and alienate my benefactors from me: hence i have informed your lordship of this, so that this man, who wishes to sow the usual scandals, may not find a soil fit for sowing the thoughts and deeds of his evil nature; and that when he tries to make your lordship the tool of his infamous and malicious nature he may be disappointed of his desire. [sidenote: giacomo of pupil of leonardo] . on the d of april, , i began this book; and started again on the horse. giacomo came to live with me on saint mary magdalen's day in ; { } he was ten years old. he was a thief, a liar, obstinate, and a glutton. on the second day i had two shirts made for him, a pair of socks and a jerkin, and when i placed the money aside to pay for these things, he stole it out of the purse and i could never force him to confess the fact, though i was quite certain of it-- lire. on the following day i went to sup with giacomo andrea, and this same giacomo supped for two and did mischief for four, since he broke three bottles, spilled the wine, and after this came to sup where i... item: on the th of september he stole a silver point, worth twelve soldi, from marco, who was living with me, and took it from his studio; and when marco had looked for it for some time he found it hidden in giacomo's box--lire , soldi . item: on the th of the following january, being in the house of messer galeazzo di san severino, in order to arrange the festivity of his joust, and certain henchmen having undressed to try on the costumes of rustics who were to take part in the aforesaid festivity, giacomo took the purse of one of them, which was on the bed with other clothes, and stole the money he found in it-- lire, soldi. item: maestro agostino of padua gave me while i was in the same house a turkish hide to have a pair of shoes made of it, and giacomo stole this from me within a month and sold it to a cobbler for soldi, with which money by his own confession he bought sweets of aniseed. item: { } again, on the d of april, giovanni antonio left a silver point on one of his drawings, and giacomo stole it; it was worth soldi,-- lire, soldi. the first year a cloak, lire; six shirts, lire; three doublets, lire: four pairs of socks, lire, soldi. . and in this case i know that i shall make not a few enemies, since no one will believe what i say of him; because there are but few whom his vices have disgusted, indeed they only disgusted those men whose natures are contrary to such vices; and many hate their fathers and break off friendship with those who reprove their vices, and they will have no examples brought up against them, nor tolerate any advice. and if you meet with any one who is good and virtuous drive him not away from you, do him honour, so that he may not have to flee from you and hide in hermitages, or caverns and other solitary spots, in order to escape from your treachery; and if there be such an one do him honour, because these are your gods upon earth, they deserve statues from you and images ... but remember that you are not to eat their images, as is practised still in some parts of india, where, when images have performed some miracle, the priests cut them in pieces (since they are of wood) and distribute them among the people of the country, not { } without payment, and each one grates his portion very fine and puts it upon the first food he eats; and thus they believe that they have eaten their saint by faith, who will preserve them from all perils. what is thy opinion, o man, of thy own species? art thou so wise as thou believest to be? are these things to be done by men? [sidenote: pleasure and pain] . this represents pleasure together with pain because one is never separated from the other; they are depicted back to back because they are opposed to each other; they are represented in one body because they have the same basis, because the source of pleasure is labour mingled with pain, and the pain issues from the various evil pleasures. and it is therefore represented with a reed in its right hand which is ineffectual and devoid of strength, and the wounds inflicted by it are poisonous. in tuscany such reeds are placed to support beds, to signify that this is the place of idle dreams, that here a great part of life is consumed, here much useful time is wasted, that is, the morning hours when the mind is sober and rested and the body disposed to start on fresh labours; there, again, many vain pleasures are enjoyed by the mind, which pictures to itself impossible things, and by the body, which indulges in those pleasures that are so often the cause of the { } failing of life; and for this reason the reed is used as their support. [sidenote: brain and soul] . the spirit returns to the brain whence it had departed, with a loud voice and uttering these words: o blissful and fortunate spirit, whence comest thou? i have known this man well, against my will. he is a receptacle of villainy, he is a very heap of the highest ingratitude combined with all the other vices. but why should i tire myself with vain words? nothing is to be found in him save the accumulation of all sins, and if there is to be found among them any that possess good, they will not be treated differently than i have been by other men; in short i have come to the conclusion that they are bad if they are enemies, and worse if they are friends. [sidenote: of the eye] . the eye, which reflects the beauty of the universe to those who see, is so excellent a thing that he who consents to its loss deprives himself of the spectacle of the works of nature; and it is owing to this spectacle, effected by means of the eye, which enables the soul to behold the various objects of nature, that the soul is content to remain in the prison of the body; but he who loses his eyesight leaves the soul in a dark prison, where { } all hope of once more beholding the sun, the light of the whole world, is lost.... and how many are they who feel great hatred for the darkness of night, although it is brief. oh! what would they do were they constrained to abide in this darkness during the whole of their life? certainly there is no one who would not rather lose his hearing or his sense of smell than his eyesight, and the loss of hearing includes the loss of all sciences which find expression in words; and this loss a man would incur solely so as not to be deprived of the sight of the beauty of the world which consists in the surfaces of bodies artificial as well as natural, which are reflected in the human eye. [sidenote: the eye in animal life] . animals suffer greater loss in losing their sight than their hearing for many reasons: firstly, because it is by means of their sight that they find the food which is their nourishment, and is necessary for all animals; secondly, because by means of sight the beauty of created things is apprehended, especially those which lead to love, while he who is born blind cannot apprehend such beauty by hearing, because he has never received any knowledge as to what is beauty of any kind. there remains hearing, by which i mean only the human voice and speech; they contain the names of all things whatsoever. it is possible to live happily without the knowledge of these { } words, as is seen in those who are born deaf, that is to say, the dumb, who take delight in drawing. [sidenote: ascension of monte rosa] . i say that the azure we see in the atmosphere is not its true colour, but is caused by warm moisture evaporated in minute and insensible atoms which the solar rays strike, rendering them luminous against the darkness of the infinite night of the fiery region which lies beyond and includes them. and this may be seen, as i saw it, by him who ascends mounboso (monte rosa), a peak of the alps which separates france from italy. the base of this mountain gives birth to the four large rivers which in four different directions water the whole of europe; and no mountain has its base at so great a height as this. it rises to such a height that it almost lifts itself up above the clouds; snow seldom falls on it, but only hail in summer, when the clouds are at their greatest height, and this hail is preserved there so that were it not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not occur twice in an age, a great quantity of ice would be piled up there by the hail, which in the middle of july i found to be very considerable; and i saw above me the dark air, and the sun which struck the mountain shone far lighter than in the plains below, because a lesser quantity of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the sun. { } [sidenote: prophecies] . men will communicate with each other from the most distant countries, and reply. many will abandon their own habitations and take with them their own goods, and go and inhabit other countries. men will pursue the thing which they most greatly fear; that is to say, they will be miserable in order to avoid falling into misery. men standing in separate hemispheres will converse with each other, embrace each other, and understand each other's language. . we should not desire the impossible. { } ii thoughts on art * * * [sidenote: painting declines when aloof from nature] the painter's work will be of little merit if he takes the painting of others as his standard, but if he studies from nature he will produce good fruits; as is seen in the case of the painters of the age after the romans, who continued to imitate one another and whose art consequently declined from age to age. after these came giotto the florentine, who was born in the lonely mountains, inhabited only by goats and similar animals; and he, being drawn to his art by nature, began to draw on the rocks the doings of the goats of which he was the keeper; and thus he likewise began to draw all the animals which he met with in the country: so that after long study he surpassed not only all the masters of his age, but all those of many past centuries. after him art relapsed once more, because all artists imitated the painted pictures, and thus from century to century it went on declining, until tomaso the florentine, called masaccio, proved by his perfect work that they who set up for themselves a standard other than nature, the mistress of all masters, labour in vain. { } thus i wish to say, in regard to these mathematical matters, that they who merely study the masters and not the works of nature are the grandchildren, and not the children, of nature, the mistress of good masters. i abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils. [sidenote: its origin] . the first picture was a single line, drawn round the shadow of a man cast by the sun on the wall. . vastness of the field of painting: all that is visible is included in the science of painting. [sidenote: defence of painting] . with due lamentation painting complains that it has been expelled from the liberal arts, because it is the true daughter of nature and is practised by means of the most worthy of the senses. whence wrongly, o writers, you have excluded painting from the liberal arts, since it not only includes in its range the works of nature, but also infinite things which nature never created. . because writers have had no knowledge of the science of painting, they have not been able to { } describe its gradations and parts, and since painting itself does not reveal itself nor its artistic work in words, it has remained, owing to ignorance, behind the sciences mentioned above, but it has thereby lost nothing of its divinity. and truly it is not without reason that men have failed to honour it, because it does honour to itself without the aid of the speech of others, just as do the excellent works of nature. and if the painters have not described the art of painting, and reduced it to a science, the fault must not be imputed to painting and it is no less noble on that account, since few painters profess a knowledge of letters, as their life would not be long enough for them to acquire such knowledge. therefore we ask, is the virtue of herbs, stones and plants non-existent because men have been ignorant of it? certainly not; but we will say that these herbs remained noble in themselves without the aid of human tongues or letters. [sidenote: painting] . a science is more useful in proportion as its fruits are more widely understood, and thus, on the other hand, it is less useful in proportion as it is less widely understood. the fruits of painting can be apprehended by all the populations of the universe because its results are subject to the power of sight, and it does not pass by the ear to the brain, but by the same channel by which { } sight passes. therefore it needs no interpreters of diverse tongues, as letters do, and it has instantly satisfied the human race in the same manner as the works of nature have done. and not only the human race, but other animals; as was shown in a picture representing the father of a family to whom little children still in the cradle gave caresses, as did the dog and the cat in the same house; and it was a wonderful thing to see such a sight. . the arts which admit of exact reproduction are such that the disciple is on the same level as the creator, and so it is with their fruits. these are useful to the imitator, but are not of such high excellence as those which cannot be transmitted as an inheritance like other substances. among these painting is the first. painting cannot be taught to him on whom nature has not conferred the gift of receiving such knowledge, as mathematics can be taught, of which the disciple receives as much as the master gives him; it cannot be copied, as letters can be, in which the copy equals the original; it cannot be stamped, in the same way as sculpture, in which the impression is in proportion to the source as regards the quality of the work; it does not generate countless children, as do printed books. it alone remains noble, it alone confers honour on its author and remains precious { } and unique, and does not beget children equal to itself. and it is more excellent by reason of this quality than by reason of those which are everywhere proclaimed. now do we not see the great monarchs of the east going about veiled and covered up from the fear of diminishing their glory by the manifestation and the divulgation of their presence? and do we not see that the pictures which represent the divine deity are kept covered up with inestimable veils? their unveiling is preceded by great sacred solemnities with various chants and diverse music, and when they are unveiled, the vast multitude of people who are there flocked together, immediately prostrate themselves and worship and invoke those whom such pictures represent that they may regain their lost holiness and win eternal salvation, just as if the deity were present in the flesh. this does not occur in any other art or work of man. and if you say that is owing to the nature of the subject depicted rather than to the genius of the painter, the answer is that the mind of man could satisfy itself equally well in this case, were the man to remain in bed and not make pilgrimages to places which are perilous and hard of access, as we so often see is the case. but if such pilgrimages continually exist, what is then their unnecessary cause? you will certainly admit that it is an image of this kind, and all the writings in the world could not succeed in representing the { } semblance and the power of such a deity. therefore it appears that this deity takes pleasure in the pictures and is pleased that it should be loved and revered, and takes a greater delight in being worshipped in that rather than in any other semblance of itself, and by reason of this it bestows grace and gifts of salvation according to the belief of those who meet together in such a place. [sidenote: painting excels all the works of man] . the eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the brain can most abundantly and splendidly contemplate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the next in order, which is ennobled by hearing the recital of the things seen by the eye. if you, historians and poets, or mathematicians, had not seen things with the eyes, you could not report of them in writing. if thou, o poet, dost tell a story with thy painting pen, the painter will more easily give satisfaction in telling it with his brush and in a manner less tedious and more easily understood. and if thou callest painting mute poetry, the painter can call poetry blind painting. now consider which is the greater loss, to be blind or dumb? though the poet is as free as the painter in his creations and compositions, they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings, because if poetry is able to describe forms, actions and places in words, the painter deals with the very { } semblance of forms in order to represent them. now consider which is nearer to man, the name of man or the image of man? the name of man varies in diverse countries, but death alone changes his form. if thou wast to say that painting is more lasting, i answer that the works of a coppersmith, which time preserves longer than thine or ours, are more eternal still. nevertheless there is but little invention in it, and painting on copper with colours of enamel is far more lasting. we by our art can be called the grandsons of god. if poetry deals with moral philosophy, painting deals with natural philosophy; if poetry describes the action of the contemplative mind, painting represents the effect in motion of the action of the mind; if poetry terrifies people with the pictures of hell, painting does the same by depicting the same things in action. if a poet challenges the painter to represent beauty, fierceness, or an evil, an ugly or a monstrous thing, whatever variety of forms he may produce in his way, the painter will cause greater satisfaction. are there not pictures to be seen so like reality that they deceive men and animals? [sidenote: painting creates reality] . the imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow, and the proportion is the same between poetry and painting. because poetry produces its results in the { } imagination of the reader, and painting produces them in a concrete reality outside the eye, so that the eye receives its images just as if they were the works of nature; and poetry produces its results without images, and they do not pass to the brain through the channel of the visual faculty, as in painting. . painting represents to the brain the works of nature with greater truth and accuracy than speech or writing, but letters represent words with greater truth, which painting does not do. but we say that the science which represents the works of nature is more wonderful than that which represents the works of the artificer, that is to say, the works of man, which consist of words--such as poetry and the like--which issue from the tongue of man. [sidenote: the painter goes to nature] . painting ministers to a nobler sense than poetry, depicts the forms of the works of nature with greater truth than poetry; and the works of nature are nobler than the words which are the works of man, because there is the same proportion between the works of man and those of nature as there is between man and god. therefore it is a more worthy thing to imitate the works of nature, which are the true images embodied in reality, than to imitate the actions and the words of men. { } and if thou, o poet, wishest to describe the works of nature by thine unaided art, and dost represent various places and the forms of diverse objects, the painter surpasses thee by an infinite degree of power; but if thou wishest to have recourse to the aid of other sciences, apart from poetry, they are not thy own; for instance, astrology, rhetoric, theology, philosophy, geometry, arithmetic and the like. thou art not then a poet any longer. thou transformest thyself, and art no longer that of which we are speaking. now seest thou not that if thou wishest to go to nature, thou reachest her by the means of science, deduced by others from the effects of nature? and the painter, through himself alone, without the aid of aught appertaining to the various sciences, or by any other means, achieves directly the imitation of the things of nature. by painting, lovers are attracted to the images of the beloved to converse with the depicted semblance. by painting whole populations are led with fervent vows to seek the image of the deities, and not to see the books of poets which represent the same deities in speech; by painting animals are deceived. i once saw a picture which deceived a dog by the image of its master, which the dog greeted with great joy; and likewise i have seen dogs bark at and try to bite painted dogs; and a monkey make a number of antics in front of a painted monkey. i have seen swallows fly and alight on painted { } iron-works which jut out of the windows of buildings. [sidenote: superiority of painting to philosophy] . painting includes in its range the surface, colour and shape of anything created by nature; and philosophy penetrates into the same bodies and takes note of their essential virtue, but it is not satisfied with that truth, as is the painter, who seizes hold of the primary truth of such bodies because the eye is less prone to deception. [sidenote: painting & poetry] . poetry surpasses painting in the representation of words, and in the representation of actions painting excels poetry; and painting is to poetry as actions are to words, because actions depend on the eye and words on the ear; and thus the senses are in the same proportion one to another as the objects on which they depend; and on this account i consider painting to be superior to poetry. but since those who practised painting were for long ignorant as to how to explain its theory, it lacked advocates for a considerable time; because it does not speak itself, but reveals itself and ends in action, and poetry ends in words, which in its vainglory it employs for self-praise. [sidenote: painting is mute poetry] . what poet will place before thee in words, o { } lover, the true semblance of thy idea with such truth as will the painter? who is he who will show thee rivers, woods, valleys and plains, which will recall to thee the pleasures of the past, with greater truth than the painter? and if thou sayest that painting is mute poetry in itself, unless there be some one to speak for it and tell what it represents--seest thou not, then, that thy book is on a lower plane? because even if it have a man to speak for it, nothing of the subject which is related can be seen, as it is seen when a picture is explained. and the pictures, if the action represented and the mental attributes of the figures are in the true proportion one to another, will be understood in the same way as if they spoke. . painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting. therefore these two forms of poetry, or rather these two forms of painting, have exchanged the senses through which they should reach the intellect. because if they are both of them painting, they must reach the brain by the noblest sense, namely, the eye; if they are both of them poetry, they must reach the brain by the less noble sense, that is, the hearing. therefore we will appoint the man born deaf to be judge of painting, and the man born blind to be judge of poetry; and if in the painting the movements are appropriate { } to the mental attributes of the figures which is are engaged in any kind of action, there is no doubt that the deaf man will understand the action and intentions of the figures, but the blind man will never understand what the poet shows, and what constitutes the glory of the poetry; since one of the noblest functions of its art is to describe the deeds and the subjects of stories, and adorned and delectable places with transparent waters in which the green recesses of their course can be seen as the waves disport themselves over meadows and fine pebbles, and the plants which are mingled with them, and the gliding fishes, and similar descriptions, which might just as well be made to a stone as to a man born blind, since he has never seen that which composes the beauty of the world, that is, light, darkness, colour, body, shape, place, distance, propinquity, motion and rest, which are the ten ornaments of nature. but the deaf man, lacking the less noble sense, although he has at the same time lost the gift of speech, since never having heard words spoken he never has been able to learn any language, will nevertheless perfectly understand every attribute of the human body better than a man who can speak and hear; and likewise he will know the works of painters and what is represented in them, and the action which is appropriate to such figures. { } [sidenote: painting is mute poetry] . painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting, and both imitate nature to the best of their powers, and both can demonstrate moral principles, as apelles did in his calumny. and since painting ministers to the most noble of the senses, the eye, a harmonious proportion ensues from it, that is to say, that just as from the concord of many diverse voices at the same moment there ensues a well-proportioned harmony which will please the sense of hearing to such an extent that the listeners in dizzy admiration are like men half ravished of their senses, still greater will be the effect of the beautiful proportions of a celestial face in a picture from whose proportions a harmonious concord will ensue, which delights the eye in one moment, just as music delights the ear. and if this harmonious beauty is shown to one who is the lover of the woman from whom such great beauty has been copied, he will most certainly be struck dizzy with admiration and incomparable joy superior to that afforded by all the other senses. but with regard to poetry, which in order to afford the representation of a perfect beauty is obliged to describe each separate part in detail,--a representation which in painting produces the harmony described above,--no further charm is produced than would occur in music if each voice { } were to be heard separately at various intervals of time, whence no concord would ensue; just as if we wished to show a countenance bit by bit, always covering up the parts already shown, forgetfulness would prevent the production of any harmonious concord, since the eye could not apprehend the parts with its visual faculty at the same moment. the same thing occurs in the beauty of any object created by the poet, for as its parts are related separately, at separate times the memory receives no harmony from it. [sidenote: the impression of painting] . painting reveals itself immediately to thee with the semblance given it by its creator, and affords to the chief of the senses as great a delight as any object created by nature. and the poet in this case reveals the same objects to the brain by the channel of the hearing, the inferior sense, and affords the eye no more pleasure than it derives from anything which is related. now consider what a difference there is between hearing the recital of a thing which in the course of time gives pleasure to the eye, and perceiving it with the same velocity with which we apprehend the works of nature. and in addition to the fact that a long interval of time is necessary to read the works of the poets, it often occurs that they are not understood, and it is necessary to make diverse { } comments on them, and it is exceedingly rare that the commentators are agreed as to the meaning of the poet; and often the readers peruse but a small portion of their works, owing to lack of time. but the works of the painter are immediately understood by those who behold them. . painting manifests its essence to thee in an instant of time,--its essence by the visual faculty, the very means by which the perception apprehends natural objects, and in the same duration of time,--and in this space of time the sense-satisfying harmony of the proportion of the parts composing the whole is formed. and poetry apprehends the same things, but by a sense inferior to that of the eyesight, which bears the images of the objects named to the perception with greater confusion and less speed. not in such wise acts the eye (the true intermediary between the object and the perception), for it immediately communicates the true semblance and image of what is represented before it with the greatest accuracy; whence that proportion arises called harmony, which with sweet concord delights the sense in the same way as the harmony of diverse voices delights the ear; and this harmony is less worthy than that which delights the eye, because for every part of it that is born a part dies, and it dies as fast as it is born. this { } cannot occur in the case of the eye; because if thou presentest a beautiful living mortal to the eye, composed of a harmony of fair limbs, its beauty is not so transient nor so quickly destroyed as that of music; on the contrary it has permanent duration, and allows thee to behold and consider it; and it is not reborn as in the case of music which is played many times over, nor will it weary thee: on the contrary, thou becomest enamoured with it, and the result it produces is that all the senses, together with the eye, would wish to possess it, and it seems that they would wish to compete with the eye: it appears that the mouth desires it for itself, if the mouth can be considered as a sense; the ear takes pleasure in hearing its beauty; the sense of touch would like to penetrate into all its pores; the nose also would like to receive the air it exhales. time in a few years destroys this harmony, but this does not occur in the case of beauty depicted by the painter, because time preserves it for long; and the eye, as far as its function is concerned, receives as much pleasure from the depicted as from the living beauty; touch alone is lacking to the painted beauty,--touch, which is the elder brother of sight; which after it has attained its purpose does not prevent the reason from considering the divine beauty. and in this case the picture copied from the living beauty acts for the greater part as a substitute; and the { } description of the poet cannot accomplish this.--the poet who is now set up as a rival to the painter, but does not perceive that time sets a division between the words in which he describes the various parts of the beauty, and that forgetfulness intervenes and divides the proportions which he cannot name without great prolixity; he cannot compose the harmonious concord which is formed of divine proportions. and on this account beauty cannot be described in the same space of time in which a painted beauty can be seen, and it is a sin against nature to attempt to transmit by the ear that which should be transmitted by the eye. what prompts thee, o man, to abandon thy habitations in the city, to leave thy parents and friends, and to seek rural spots in the mountains and valleys, if it be not the natural beauty of the world, which, if thou reflectest, thou dost enjoy solely by means of the sense of sight? and if the poet wishes to be called a painter in this connection also, why didst thou not take the descriptions of places made by the poet and remain at home without exposing thyself to the heat of the sun? oh! would not this have been more profitable and less fatiguing to thee, since this can be done in the cool without motion and danger of illness? but the soul could not enjoy the benefit of the eyes, the windows of its dwelling, and it could not note the character of joyous { } places; it could not see the shady valleys watered by the sportiveness of the winding rivers; it could not see the various flowers, which with their colours make a harmony for the eye, and all the other objects which the eye can apprehend. but if the painter in the cold and rigorous season of winter can evoke for thee the landscapes, variegated and otherwise, in which thou didst experience thy happiness; if near some fountain thou canst see thyself, a lover with thy beloved, in the flowery fields, under the soft shadow of the budding boughs, wilt thou not experience a greater pleasure than in hearing the same effect described by the poet? here the poet answers, admitting these arguments; but he maintains that he surpasses the painter, because he causes men to speak and reason in diverse fictions, in which he invents things which do not exist, and that he will incite men to take arms, and describe the heavens, the stars, nature, and the arts and everything. to which we reply that none of these things of which he speaks is his true profession; but if he wishes to speak and make orations, it can be shown that he is surpassed by the orator in this province; and if he speaks of astrology, that he has stolen the subject of the astrologer; and in the case of philosophy, of the philosopher; and that in reality poetry has no true position and merits no more consideration than a shopkeeper { } who collects goods made by various workmen. as soon as the poet ceases to represent by means of words the phenomena of nature, he then ceases to act as a painter, because if the poet leaves such representation and describes the flowery and persuasive speech of him to whom he wishes to give speech, he then becomes an orator, and neither a poet nor a painter; and if he speaks of the heavens he becomes an astrologer, and a philosopher and a theologian if he discourses of nature or god; but if he returns to the description of any object he would rival the painter, if with words he could satisfy the eye as the painter does. but the spirit of the science of painting deals with all works, human as well as divine, which are terminated by their surfaces, that is, the lines of the limits of bodies by means of which the sculptor is required to achieve perfection in his art. she with her fundamental rules, i.e. drawing, teaches the architect how to work so that his building may be pleasant to the eye; she teaches the makers of diverse vases, the goldsmiths, weavers, embroiderers; she has found the characters with which diverse languages find expression; she has given symbols to the mathematicians; she has taught geometry its figures, and instructed the astrologers, the makers of machines and engineers. [sidenote: poet and painter] . the poet says that his science consists of { } invention and rhythm, and this is the simple body of poetry, invention as regards the subject matter and rhythm as regards the verse, which he afterwards clothes with all the sciences. to which the painter rejoins that he is governed by the same necessities in the science of painting, that is to say, invention and measure (fancy as regards the subject matter which he must invent, and measure as regards the matters painted), so that they may be in proportion, but that he does not make use of three sciences; on the contrary it is rather the other sciences that make use of painting, as, for instance, astrology, which effects nothing without the aid of perspective, the principal link of painting,--that is, mathematical astronomy and not fallacious astrology (let those who by reason of the existence of fools make a profession of it, forgive me). the poet says he describes an object, that he represents another full of beautiful allegory; the painter says he is capable of doing the same, and in this respect he is also a poet. and if the poet says he can incite men to love, which is the most important fact among every kind of animal, the painter can do the same, all the more so because he presents the lover with the image of his beloved; and the lover often does with it what he would not do with the writer's delineation of the same charms, i.e. talk with it and kiss it; so great is the painter's influence on the minds of men that he incites them to love and { } become enamoured of a picture which does not represent any living woman. and if the poet pleases the sense by means of the ear, the painter does so by the eye, which is the superior sense. i will enlarge no further on this theme save to say that if a good painter were to represent the fury of a battle, and if the poet were to describe one, and both representations were put before the public together, you will see before which of the two most of the spectators will stop, to which of the two they will pay most attention, which of the two will be the most praised and give the greater satisfaction. without any doubt, the painting, being infinitely the most beautiful and useful, will please the most. write the name of god in some spot, and set up his image opposite, and you will see which will be the most reverenced. while painting embraces in itself all the forms of nature, you have nothing save words, which are not universal, like forms. if you have the effects of the representation, we have the representation of the effects. take a poet who describes the charms of a woman to her lover, and a painter who represents her, and you will see whither nature leads the enamoured critic. certainly the proof should rest on the verdict of experience. you have classed painting among the mechanical arts, but, truly, if painters were as apt at praising their own works in writing as you are, it would not lie under the stigma { } of so unhonoured an name. if you call it mechanical because it is by manual work and that the hand represents the conception of the imagination, you writers put down with the pen the conceptions of your mind. and if you say that it is mechanical because it is done for money, who is more guilty of this error--if error it can be called--than you? if you lecture in the schools, do you not go to whomsoever rewards you most? do you perform any work without some pay? although i do not say this to blame such opinions, because all labour expects its reward; and if a poet were to say: "i will devise with my fancy a work which shall be pregnant with meaning," the painter can do the same, as apelles did when he painted the calumny. [sidenote: king matthias & the poet] . on the birthday of king matthias, a poet brought him a work made in praise of the royal birthday for the benefit of the world, and a painter presented him with a portrait of his lady-love. the king immediately shut the book of the poet and turned to the picture, and remained gazing on it with profound admiration. then the poet, greatly slighted, said: "o king, read, read, and thou wilt hear something of far greater substance than a dumb picture!" then the king, hearing himself blamed for contemplating a mute object, said: "o poet, be silent, thou knowest not what thou { } sayest; this picture gratifies a nobler sense than thy work, which is for the blind. give me an object which i can see and touch and not only hear, and blame not my choice in having placed thy work beneath my elbow, while i hold the work of the painter with both my hands before my eyes, because my very hands have chosen to serve a worthier sense than that of hearing. "and as for my self i consider that the same proportion exists between the art of the painter and that of the poet as that which exists between the two senses on which they respectively depend. "knowest thou not that our soul is composed of harmony, and harmony can only be begotten in the moments when the proportions of objects are simultaneously visible and audible? seest thou not that in thine art there is no harmony created in a moment, and that, on the contrary, each part follows from the other in succession, and the second is not born before its predecessor dies. for this reason i consider thy creation to be considerably inferior to that of the painter, simply because no harmonious concord ensues from it. it does not satisfy the mind of the spectator or the listener, as the harmony of the perfect features which compose the divine beauty of this face which is before me; for the features united all together simultaneously afford me a pleasure which i consider to be unsurpassed by any other thing on the earth which is made by man." { } [sidenote: value of the visible universe] . there is no one so foolish who if offered the choice between everlasting blindness and deafness would not immediately elect to lose both his hearing and sense of smell rather than to be blind. since he who loves his sight is deprived of the beauty of the world and all created things, and the deaf man loves only the sound made by the percussion of the air, which is an insignificant thing in the world. thou sayest that science increases in nobility in proportion as the subjects with which it deals are more elevated, and, for this reason, a false rendering of the being of god is better than the portrayal of a less worthy object; and on this account we will say that painting, which deals alone with the works of god, is worth more than poetry, which deals solely with the lying imaginings of human devices. [sidenote: poet and painter] . thou sayest, o painter, that worship is paid to thy work, but impute not this power to thyself, but to the subject which such a picture represents. here the painter makes answer: o thou poet, who sayest that thou also art an imitator, why dost thou not represent with thy words objects of such a nature that thy writings which contain these words may be worshipped also? but nature has favoured the painter more than the poet, { } and it is fair that the works of the more greatly favoured one should be more honoured than those of the less favoured one. therefore let us praise him who with words satisfies the hearing, and him who by painting affords perfect content to the eyes; but let the praise given to the worker in words be less, inasmuch as they are accidental and created by a less worthy author than the works of nature of which the painter is the imitator. and the existence of these works is confined within the forms of their surfaces. . since we have concluded that the utmost extent of the comprehension of poetry is for the blind, and that of painting for the deaf, we will say that the value of painting exceeds that of poetry in proportion as painting gratifies a nobler sense than poetry does, and this nobility has been proved to be equal to that of three other senses, because we elect to lose our sense of hearing, smell and touch rather than our eyesight. for he who loses his sight is deprived of the beauty of the universe, and is like to one who is confined during his lifetime in a tomb, in which he enjoys life and motion. now seest thou not that the eye comprehends the beauty of the whole world? it is the head of astrology; it creates cosmography; it gives counsel and correction to all the human arts; it impels { } men to seek diverse parts of the world; it is the principle of mathematics; its science is most certain; it has measured the height and the magnitude of the stars; it has discovered the elements and their abodes; it has been able to predict the events of the future, owing to the course of the stars; it has begotten architecture and perspective and divine painting. o most excellent above all the things created by god! what praise is there which can express thy nobility? what peoples, what tongues, are they who can perfectly describe thy true working? it is the window of the human body, through which the soul gazes and feasts on the beauty of the world; by reason of it the soul is content with its human prison, and without it this human prison is its torment; and by means of it human diligence has discovered fire by which the eye wins back what the darkness has stolen from it. it has adorned nature with agriculture and pleasant gardens. but what need is there for me to indulge in long and elevated discourse? what thing is there which acts not by reason of the eye? it impels men from the east to the west; it has discovered navigation; and in this it excels nature, because the simple products of the earth are finite and the works which the eye makes over to the hands are infinite, as the painter shows in his portrayal of countless forms of animals, herbs, plants and places. { } [sidenote: music the sister of painting] . music should be given no other name than the sister of painting, inasmuch as it is subject to the hearing,--a sense inferior to the eye,--and it produces harmony by the unison of its proportioned parts, which are brought into operation at the same moment and are constrained to come to life and die in one or more harmonic times; and time is, as it were, the circumference of the parts which constitute the harmony, in the same way as the outline constitutes the circumference of limbs whence human beauty emanates. but painting excels and lords over music because it does not die as soon as it is born, as occurs with music, the less fortunate; on the contrary, it continues to exist and reveals itself to be what it is, a single surface. o marvellous science, thou givest lasting life to the perished beauty of mortals, which are thus made more enduring than the works of nature, for these undergo forever the changes of time, and time leads them to inevitable old age! and this science is to divine nature as its works are to the works of nature, and on this account it is worshipped. [sidenote: painting & music] . the most worthy thing is that which satisfies the most worthy sense; therefore painting, which satisfies the sense of sight, is more worthy than { } music, which merely satisfies the hearing. the most worthy thing is that which endures longest; therefore music, which is continually dying as soon as it is born, is less worthy than painting, which lasts eternally with the colours of enamel. the most excellent thing is that which is the most universal and contains the greatest variety of things; therefore painting must be set above all other arts, because it contains all the forms which exist and also those which are not in nature, and it should be glorified and exalted more than music, which deals with the voice only. with it images are made to the gods; around it divine worship is conducted, of which music is a subservient ornament; by means of it pictures are given to lovers of their beloved; by it the beauties are preserved which time, and nature the mother, render fitful; by it we retain the images of famous men. and if thou wert to say that by committing music to writing you render it eternal, we do the same with letters. therefore, since thou hast included music among the liberal arts, thou must either exclude it, or include the art of letters. and if thou wast to say: painting is used by base men, in the same way is music spoilt by him who knows it not. if thou sayest that sciences which are not mechanical are mental, i will answer that painting is mental. and just as music and geometry deal with the proportions of continuous quantities, and { } arithmetic deals with discontinuous quantities, painting deals with all quantities and the qualities of the proportions of shadows, lights and distances, in its perspective. [sidenote: painter and musician] . the musician says that his art can be compared with that of the painter because by the art of the painter a body of many members is composed, and the spectator apprehends its grace in as many harmonious rhythms ... as there are times in which it lives and dies; and by these rhythms ... its grace plays with the soul, which dwells in the body of the spectator. but the painter replies that the body composed of human limbs does not afford the delectable harmonious rhythms in which beauty must live and die, but renders it permanent for many years, and is of such great excellence that it preserves the life of this harmony of concordant limbs which nature with all her force could not preserve. how many pictures have preserved the semblance of divine beauty of which time or death had in a brief space destroyed the living example: and the work of the painter has become more honoured than that of nature, his master! if thou, o musician, sayest that painting is mechanical because it is wrought by the work of the hands, music is wrought by the mouth, but { } not by the tasting faculties of the mouth; just and as the hand is employed indeed in the case of painting, but not for its faculties of touch. words are less worthy than actions. but thou, writer of science, dost thou not copy with thy hand, and write what is in thy mind, as the painter does? and if thou wast to say that music is formed of proportion, by proportion have i wrought painting, as thou shalt see. [sidenote: poet painter and musician] . there is the same difference between the representation of the embodied works of the painter and those of the poet as there is between complete and dismembered bodies, because the poet in describing the beauty or the ugliness of any body reveals it to you limb by limb and at diverse times, and the painter shows the whole at the same time. the poet cannot express in words the true likeness of the limbs which compose a whole, as can the painter, who places it before you with the truth of nature. and the same thing befalls the poet as the musician, who sings by himself a song composed for four singers; and he sings the treble first, then the tenor, then the alto and then the bass, whence there results no grace of harmonious concord such as harmonious rhythms produce. and the poet is like a beautiful countenance which reveals itself to you feature by feature, that by so doing you may never be { } satisfied by its beauty, which consists of the divine proportion of the limbs united one with another, and these compose of themselves and at one time the divine harmony of this union of limbs, and often deprives the gazer of his liberty. music, again, by its harmonious rhythm, produces the sweet melodies formed by its various voices, and their harmonious division is lacking to the poet; and although poetry enters into the abode of the intellect by the channel of the hearing, as does music, the poet cannot describe the harmony of music, because it is not in his power to say various things in one and the same moment as can the harmonious concord of painting, which is composed of various members which exist simultaneously, and the beauty of these parts is apprehended at the same time, individually and collectively,--collectively with regard to the whole, individually with regard to the component parts of which the whole is formed; and for this reason the poet is, as far as the representation of bodily things is concerned, greatly inferior to the painter, and as far as invisible things are concerned he is far behind the musician. but if the poet borrows the aid of the other sciences, he can appear at the fair like the other merchants, bearers of divers goods made by many artificers; and the poet does this when he borrows the science of others, such as that of the orator, the philosopher, the astrologer, the cosmographer and { } the like; and these sciences are altogether alien to the poet. therefore he is an agent who brings together diverse persons in order to strike a bargain; and if you wish to know the true function of the poet, you will find that he is no other than an assembler of goods stolen from other sciences, with which he makes a deceptive mixture, or more honestly said, a fictitious mixture. and with regard to this fiction the poet is free to compete with the painter, since it constitutes the least part of the painting. . the painter emulates and competes with nature. [sidenote: painting a second creation] . he who blames painting blames nature, because the works of the painter represent the works of nature, and for this reason he who blames in this fashion lacks feeling. [sidenote: the painter lord of all] . if the painter wishes to see beautiful things which will enchant him he is able to beget them; if he wishes to see monstrous things which terrify, or grotesque and laughable things, or truly piteous things, he can dispose of all these; if he wishes to evoke places and deserts, shady or dark retreats in the hot season, he represents them, and likewise warm places in the cold season. if he wishes valleys, if he wishes to descry a great { } plain from the high summits of the mountains, and if he wishes after this to see the horizon of the sea, he can do so; and from the low valleys he can gaze on the high mountains, or from the high mountains he can scan the low valleys and shores; and in truth all quantities of things that exist in the universe, either real or imaginary, he has first in his mind and then in his hands; and these things are of so great excellence that they beget a harmonious concord in one glance, as do the things of nature. . we can safely say that those people are under a delusion who call that painter a good master who can only draw well a head or a figure. certainly there is no great merit if, after studying a single thing during a whole lifetime, you attain to a certain degree of perfection in it. but knowing, as we do, that painting includes and comprehends all the works produced by nature, or brought about by the fortuitous action of man, and in fact everything that the eye can see, he seems to me to be a poor master who can only do one thing well. now seest thou not how many and diverse acts are performed by men? seest thou not how many various animals there are, and likewise trees, plants and flowers; what a variety of mountainous or level places, fountains, rivers, cities, public and private buildings, { } instruments suitable for human use; how many diverse costumes and ornaments and arts? all these things should be considered of equal effect and value when used by the man who can be called a good painter. [sidenote: painting and nature] . if you despise painting, which is the only imitator of the visible works of nature, you will certainly despise a subtle invention which with philosophy and subtle speculation apprehends the qualities of forms, backgrounds, places, plants, animals, herbs and flowers, which are surrounded by light and shade. and truly this is knowledge and the legitimate offspring of nature, because painting is begotten by nature. but to be correct, we will say that it is the grandchild of nature, because all visible things are begotten by nature, and these her children have begotten painting. therefore we shall rightly say that painting is the grandchild of nature and related to god. . were a master to boast that he could remember all the forms and effects of nature, he would certainly appear to me to be graced with great ignorance, inasmuch as these effects are infinite and our memory is not sufficiently capacious to retain them. therefore, o painter, beware lest in thee the lust of gain should overcome the honour of thy art, for the acquisition of honour is a much { } greater thing than the glory of wealth. thus, for this and for other reasons which could be given, first strive in drawing to express to the eye in a manifest shape the idea and the fancy originally devised by thy imagination; then go on adding or removing until thou art satisfied; then arrange men as models, clothed or nude, according to the intention of thy work, and see that, as regards dimension and size, in accordance with perspective there is no portion of the work which is not in harmony with reason and natural effects, and this will be the way to win honour in thy art. [sidenote: painting & sculpture] . i have myself practised the art of sculpture as well as that of painting, and i have practised both arts in the same degree. i think, therefore, that i can give an impartial opinion as to which of the two is the most difficult: the most perfect requires the greater talent, and is to be preferred. in the first place sculpture requires a certain light, that is to say, a light from above, and painting carries everywhere with it its light and shade; sculpture owes its importance to light and shade. the sculptor is aided in this by the relief which is inherent in sculpture, and the painter places the light and shade, by the accidental quality of his art, in the places where nature would naturally produce it. the sculptor cannot diversify his work by the various colours of objects; painting { } is complete in every respect. the perspective of the sculptor appears to be altogether untrue; that of the painter can give the idea of a distance of a hundred miles beyond the picture. the sculptors have no aerial perspective; they can neither represent transparent bodies nor reflections, nor bodies as lustrous as mirrors, and other translucent objects, neither mists nor dark skies, nor an infinity of objects which it would be tedious to enumerate. the advantage [of sculpture] is that it is provided with a better defence against the ravages of time, although a picture painted on thick copper and covered over with white enamel, painted with enamel colours and then put in the fire again and baked, is equally resistant. such a work as far as permanence is concerned exceeds sculpture. they may say that where an error is made it is not easy to correct it. it is poor reasoning to try and prove that the irremediability of an oversight renders the work more honourable. but i say to you that it will prove more difficult to mend the mind of the master who commits such errors than to repair the work he has spoilt. we know well that an experienced and competent artist will not make mistakes of this kind; on the contrary, acting on sound rules, he will remove so little at a time that his work will be brought to a successful close. again, the sculptor, if he works in clay or wax, can remove and add, and when the work is finished it can be easily { } cast in bronze, and this is the last and most permanent operation of sculpture, inasmuch as that which is merely of marble is liable to destruction, but this is not the case with bronze. therefore the picture painted on copper, which with the methods of painting can be reduced or added to, is like bronze, which when it was in the state of a wax model could be reduced or added to. and if sculpture in bronze is durable, this copper and enamel work is more imperishable still; and while the bronze remains black and ugly, this is full of various and delectable colours of infinite variety, as we have described above. if you wish to confine the discussion to painting on panel i am content to pronounce between it and sculpture, saying, that painting is the more beautiful, the more imaginative and the more copious, and that sculpture is more durable, but has no other advantage. sculpture with little labour shows what in painting seems to be a miraculous thing to do: to make impalpable objects appear palpable, to give the semblance of relief to flat objects, and distance to objects that are near. in fact painting is full of infinite resources of which sculpture cannot dispose. . sculpture is not a science, but a mechanical art, because it causes the brow of the artist who practises it to sweat, and wearies his body; and for { } such an artist the simple proportions of the limbs, and the nature of movements and attitudes, are all that is essential, and there it ends, and shows to the eye what it is, and it does not cause the spectator to wonder at its nature, as painting does, which in a plane by its science shows vast countries and far-off horizons. . the only difference between painting and sculpture is that the sculptor accomplishes his work with the greater bodily fatigue, and the painter with the greater mental fatigue. this is proved by the fact that the sculptor in practising his art is obliged to exert his arms and to strike and shatter the marble or other stone, which remains over and above what is needed for the figure which it contains, by manual exercise, accompanied often by profuse sweating, mingled with dust and transforming itself into dirt; and his face is plastered and powdered with the dust of the marble, so that he has the appearance of a baker, and he is covered with minute chips, and it appears as if snow had fallen on him, and his dwelling is dirty and full of chips and the dust of stone. the contrary occurs in the case of the painter,--we are speaking of excellent painters and sculptors,--since the painter with great leisure sits before his work well clothed, and handles the light brush dipped in lovely colours. he wears { } what garments he pleases; his dwelling is full of beautiful pictures, and it is clean; sometimes he has music or readers of diverse and pleasant works, which, without any noise of hammers or other confused sounds, are heard with great pleasure. . there can be no comparison between the talent, art and theory of painting and that of sculpture, which leaves perspective out of account,--perspective which is produced by the quality of the material and not of the artist. and if the sculptor says that he cannot restore the superabundant substance which has once been removed from his work, i answer that he who removes too much has but little understanding and is no master. because if he has mastered the proportions he will not remove anything unnecessarily; therefore we will say that this disadvantage is inherent in the artist and not in the material. but i will not speak of such men, for they are spoilers of marble and not artists. artists do not trust to the judgement of the eye, because it is always deceptive, as is proved by him who wishes to divide a line into two equal parts by the eye, and is often deceived in the experiment; wherefore the good judges always fear--a fear which is not shared by the ignorant--to trust to their own judgement, and on this account they proceed by continually checking the { } height, thickness and breadth of each part, and by so doing accomplish no more than their duty. but painting is marvellously devised of most subtle analyses, of which sculpture is altogether devoid, since its range is of the narrowest. to the sculptor who says that his science is more lasting than that of painting, i answer that this permanence is due to the quality of the material and not to that of the sculptor, and the sculptor has no right to give himself the credit for it, but he should let it redound to nature which created the material. . painting has a wider intellectual range and is more wonderful and greater as regards its artistic resources than sculpture, because the painter is by necessity constrained to amalgamate his mind with the very mind of nature and to be the interpreter between nature and art, making with art a commentary on the causes of nature's manifestations which are the inevitable result of its laws; and showing in what way the likenesses of objects which surround the eye correspond with the true images of the pupil of the eye, and showing among objects of equal size which of them will appear more or less dark, or more or less clear; and among objects equally low which of them will appear more or less low; or among those of the same height which of them will appear more or less high; or among objects of equal size { } placed at various distances one from the other, why some will appear more clearly than others. and this art embraces and comprehends within itself all visible things, which sculpture in its poverty cannot do: that is, the colours of all objects and their gradations; it represents transparent objects, and the sculptor will show thee natural objects without the painter's devices; the painter will show thee various distances with the gradations of colour producing interposition of the air between the objects and the eye; he will show thee the mists through which the character of objects is with difficulty descried; the rains which clouded mountains and valleys bring with them; the dust which is inherent to and follows the contention between these forces; the rivers which are great or small in volume; the fishes disporting themselves on the surface or at the bottom of these waters; the polished pebbles of various colours which are collected on the washed sands at bottom of rivers surrounded by floating plants beneath the surface of the water; the stars at diverse heights above us; and in the same manner other innumerable effects to which sculpture cannot attain. . sculpture lacks the beauty of colours, the perspective of colours; it lacks perspective and it confuses the limits of objects remote from the { } eye, inasmuch as it represents the limits of objects that are near in the same way as those of distant objects; it does not represent the air which, interposed between the eye and the remote object, conceals that object but as the veils in draped figures, which reveal the naked flesh beneath them; it cannot represent the small pebbles of various colours beneath the surface of the transparent waters. [sidenote: to the painter] . and thou, painter, who desirest to achieve the highest excellence in practice, understand that unless thou build it on the solid foundations of nature, thou shalt reap but scant honour and gain by thy work; and if thy foundation is sound, thy works shall be many and good, and bring great honour to thee, and be of great profit. . when the work exceeds the ideal of the artist, the artist makes scant progress; and when the work falls short of his ideal it never ceases to improve, unless avarice be an obstacle. . he is a poor disciple who does not surpass his master. [sidenote: counsels] . he is a poor master whose work is exalted in his { } own opinion, and he is on the road to perfection in art whose work falls short of his ideal. . small rooms or dwellings help the mind to concentrate itself; large rooms are a source of distraction. . the painter should be solitary, and take note of what he sees and reason with himself, making a choice of the more excellent details of the character of any object he sees; he should be like unto the mirror, which takes the colours of the objects it reflects. and this proceeding will seem to him to be a second nature. [sidenote: the painter in his studio] . in order that the favourable disposition of the mind may not be injured by that of the body, the painter or the draughtsman should be solitary, and especially when he is occupied with those speculations and thoughts which continually rise up before the eye, and afford materials to be treasured by the memory. if thou art alone, thou wilt belong to thyself only: if thou hast but one companion, thou wilt only half belong to thyself, and ever less in proportion to the indiscretion of his conduct; and if thou hast many companions, thou wilt encounter { } the same disadvantage. and if thou shouldst say: "i will follow my own inclination, i will withdraw into seclusion in order the better to study the forms of natural objects"--i say thou wilt with difficulty be able to do this, because thou wilt not be able to refrain from constantly listening to their chatter; and, not being able to serve two masters, thou wilt play the part of a companion ill, and still worse will be the evil effect on thy studies in art. and if thou sayest: "i will withdraw myself, so that their words cannot reach and disturb me"--i, with regard to this, say thou wilt be regarded as a madman; but seest thou not that by so doing thou wilt be alone also? [sidenote: advice to the painter] . the mind of the painter must be like unto a mirror, which ever takes the colour of the object it reflects, and contains as many images as there are objects before it. therefore realize, o painter, that thou canst not succeed unless thou art the universal master of imitating by thy art every variety of nature's forms, and this thou canst not do save by perceiving them and retaining them in thy mind; wherefore when thou walkest in the country let thy mind play on various objects, observe now this thing and now that thing, making a store of various objects selected and chosen from those of lesser value. and thou shalt not do as some painters, who, when weary of plying { } their fancy, dismiss their work from their mind and take exercise in walking for relaxation, but retain fatigue in the mind, which, though they see various objects, does not apprehend them, but often when they meet friends and relations and are saluted by them, they are no more conscious of them than if they had met empty air. [sidenote: precepts] . and thou, o painter, seek to bring about that thy works may attract those who gaze upon them and arrest them with great admiration and delight; and so that they may not attract and forthwith repel them, as the air does to him who in the night season leaps naked from his bed to gaze upon the cloudy and serene sky and forthwith is driven back by the cold, and returns to the bed whence he rose. but let thy works be like the air which draws men from their beds in the hot season, and retains them to taste with delight the cool of the summer; and he who will do well by his art will not strive to be more skilful than learned, nor let greed get the better of glory. seest thou not among human beauties that it is the beautiful faces which stop the passers-by, and not the richness of their ornaments? and this i say to thee who adornest thy figures with gold and other rich ornaments: seest thou not splendid, youthful beauties, who diminish their excellence by the excess and elaboration of their { } ornaments? hast thou not seen women of the mountains dressed in rough and poor clothes richer in beauty than those who are adorned? make no use of the affected arrangements and headdresses such as those adopted by loutish maids, who, by placing one lock of hair more on one side than the other, credit themselves with having committed a great enormity, and think that the bystanders will forget their own thoughts to talk of them alone, and to blame them. for such persons have always the looking-glass and the comb, and the wind, which ruffles elaborate headdresses, is their worst enemy. in thy heads let the hair sport with the wind thou depictest around youthful countenances, and adorn them gracefully with various turns, and do not as those who plaster their faces with gum and make the faces seem as if they were of glass. this is a human folly which is always on the increase, and the mariners do not satisfy it who bring arabic gums from the east, so as to prevent the smoothness of the hair from being ruffled by the wind,--but they pursue their investigations still further in this direction. . i cannot but mention among these precepts a new means of study, which, although it may seem trivial and almost ridiculous, is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to { } various inventions. it is as follows: when you look at walls mottled with various stains or stones made of diverse substances, if you have to invent some scene, you may discover on them the likeness of various countries, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, great valleys and hills in diverse arrangement; again, you may be able to see battles and figures in action and strange effects of physiognomy and costumes, and infinite objects which you could reduce to complete and harmonious forms. and the effect produced by these mottled walls is like that of the sound of bells, in the vibrating of which you may recognize any name or word you choose to imagine. i have seen blots in the clouds and in mottled walls which have stimulated me to the invention of various objects, and although the blots themselves were altogether devoid of perfection in any one of their parts, they lacked not perfection in their movement and circumstance. . obtain knowledge first, and then proceed to practice, which is born of knowledge. [sidenote: theory and practice] . knowledge is the captain, and practice the soldiers. . the painter who draws by practice and by the { } eye, without the guide of reason, is like the mirror, which reflects all the objects which are placed before it and knows not that they exist. . many will consider they can reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are contrary to the authority of many men held in great esteem by their inexperienced judgements: overlooking the fact that my works are solely and simply the offspring of experience, which is the veritable master. . they who are enamoured of practice without knowledge are like the mariner who puts to sea in a vessel without rudder or compass, and who navigates without a course. practice should always be based on sound theory; perspective is the guide and the portal of theory, and without it nothing can be well done in the art of painting. [sidenote: course of study] . the youth should first learn perspective, and then the measurements of every object; he should then copy from some good master to accustom himself to well-drawn forms, then from nature to acquire confirmation of the theories he has learnt; then he should study for a time the works of various masters, and finally attain the { } habit of putting into practice and producing his art. . mathematics, such as appertain to painting, are necessary to the painter, also the absence of companions who are alien to his studies: his brain must be versatile and susceptible to the variety of objects which it encounters, and free from distracting cares. and if in the contemplation and definition of one subject a second subject intervenes,--as happens when the mind is filled with an object,--in such cases he must decide which of the two objects is the more difficult of definition, and pursue that one until he arrives at perfect clearness of definition, and then turn to the definition of the other. and above all things his mind should be like the surface of the mirror, which shows as many colours as there are objects it reflects; and his companions should study in the same manner, and if such cannot be found he should meditate in solitude with himself, and he will not find more profitable company. [sidenote: perspective & mathematics] . in the study of natural causes and reasons light affords the greatest pleasure to the student; among the great facts of mathematics the certainty of demonstration most signally elevates the mind of the student. perspective must therefore be { } placed at the head of all human study and discipline, in the field of which the radiant line is rendered complex by the methods of demonstration; in it resides the glory of physics as well as of mathematics, and it is adorned with flowers of both these sciences. the laws of those sciences which are capable of extensive analysis i will confine in brief conclusions, and according to the nature of the material i will interweave mathematical demonstrations, at times deducing results from causes, and at times tracing causes by results. i will add to my conclusions some which are not contained in these, but which can be deduced from them, if the lord, the supreme light, illuminates me, so that i may treat of light. [sidenote: of the method of learning] . when you will have thoroughly mastered perspective and have learnt by heart the parts and forms of objects, strive when you go about to observe. note and consider the circumstances and the actions or men, as they talk, dispute, laugh or fight together, and not only the behaviour of the men themselves, but that of the bystanders who separate them or look on at these things; and make a note of them, in this way, with slight marks in your little note-book. and you should always carry this note-book with you, and it should be of coloured paper, so that what you { } write may not be rubbed out; but (when it is used up) change the old for a new one, since these things should not be rubbed out, but preserved with great care, because such is the infinity of the forms and circumstances of objects, that the memory is incapable of retaining them; wherefore keep these sketches as your guides and masters. . these rules are only to be used in correcting the figures, since every man makes some mistakes in his first composition, and he who is not aware of them cannot correct them; but thou being conscious of thine errors wilt correct thy work and amend errors where thou findest them, and take care not to fall into them again. but if thou attemptest to apply these rules in composition thou wilt never finish anything, and confusion will enter into thy work. through these rules thou shalt acquire a free and sound judgement, since sound judgement and thorough understanding proceed from reason arising from sound rules, and sound rules are the offspring of sound experience, the common mother of all the sciences and arts. hence if thou bearest in mind the precepts of my rules thou shalt be able, merely by thy corrected judgement, to judge and recognize any lack of proportion in a work, in perspective, in figures or anything else. { } [sidenote: again of the method of learning] . i say that the first thing which should be learnt is the mechanism of the limbs, and when this knowledge has been acquired their actions should come next, according to the external circumstances of man, and thirdly the composition of subjects, which should be taken from natural actions, made fortuitously according to circumstances; and pay attention to them in the streets and public places and fields, and note them with a brief indication of outlines; that is to say, for a head make an o, and for an arm a straight or a bent line, and the same for the legs and body; and when thou returnest home work out these notes in a complete form. the adversary says that to acquire practice and to do a great deal of work, it is better that the first course of study should be employed in copying diverse compositions done on paper or on walls by various masters, and that thus rapidity of practice and a good method is acquired; to which i reply that this method will be good if it is based on works which are well composed by competent masters; and since such masters are so rare that but few of them are to be found, it is safer to go to nature, than to what to its deterioration is imitated from nature, and to fall into bad habits, since he who can go to the fountain does not go to the water-vessel. { } [sidenote: counsel to the painter] . every bough and every fruit is born above the insertion of its leaf, which serves it as a mother, giving it water from the rain and moisture from the dew which falls on it from above in the night, and often it shields them from the heat of the sun's rays. therefore, o painter, who lackest such rules, be desirous, in order to escape the blame of those who know, of copying every one of thy objects from nature, and despise not study after the manner of those who work for gain. [sidenote: on anatomy] . and you who say that it would be better to see practical anatomy than drawings of it, would be right if it were possible to see all the things which are shown in such drawings in a single drawing, in which you, with all your skill, will not see nor obtain knowledge of more than a few veins; and to obtain true and complete knowledge of these veins i have destroyed more than ten human bodies, destroying all the other limbs, and removing, down to its minutest particles, the whole of the flesh which surrounds these veins, without letting them bleed save for the insensible bleeding of the capillary veins. and as one body did not suffice for so long a time i had to proceed with several bodies by degrees until i finished by acquiring perfect knowledge, and this i { } repeated twice to see the differences. and if you have a love for such things you may be prevented by disgust, and if this does not prevent you, you may be prevented by fear of living at night in company with such corpses, which are cut up and flayed and fearful to see; and if this does not prevent, you may not have a sufficient mastery of drawing for such a demonstration, and if you have the necessary mastery of drawing, it may not be combined with the knowledge of perspective; and if it were you might lack the power of geometrical demonstration, and the calculation of forces, and of the strength of the muscles, and perhaps you will lack patience and consequently diligence. as to whether these qualities are to be found in me or not the hundred and twenty books i have composed will pronounce the verdict yes or no. neither avarice nor negligence, but time has hindered me in these. farewell. [sidenote: on study] . i have myself proved that it is useful when you are in bed in the dark to work with the imagination, summing up the external outlines of the forms previously studied or other noteworthy things apprehended by subtle speculation; and this is a laudable practice and useful in impressing objects on the memory. { } [sidenote: on judging pictures] . we are well aware that faults are more easily recognized in the works of others than in our own, and often in blaming the small faults of others thou wilt ignore great ones in thyself. and to avoid such ignorance see that in the first place thy perspective be sound, then acquire a complete knowledge of the measurements of man and other animals, and of good architecture; that is to say, as far as the forms of buildings and other objects which are on the earth are concerned, and these are infinite in number. the more of them that thou knowest, the more praiseworthy will be thy work; and in cases where thou hast no experience do not refuse to draw them from nature. [sidenote: advice to the painter] . certainly while a man is painting he should not be loth to hear every opinion: since we know well that a man, although he be not a painter, is cognizant of the forms of another man, and will be able to judge them, whether he is hump-backed or has a shoulder too high or too low, or whether he has a large mouth or nose, or other defects. and if we know that men are capable of giving a correct judgement on the works of nature, much more ought we to acknowledge their competence to judge our faults, since we know how greatly a man may be deceived in { } his own work; and if thou art not conscious of this in thyself, study it in others and thou wilt profit by their faults. therefore be desirous to bear with patience the opinions of others, and consider and reflect well whether he who blames has good ground or not to blame thee, and if thou thinkest that he has, amend thy work; and if not, act as though thou hadst not heard him, and if he should be a man thou esteemest show him by reasoning where his mistake lies. . there is a certain generation of painters who, owing to the scantiness of their studies, must needs live up to the beauty of gold and azure, and with supreme folly declare that they will not give good work for poor payment, and that they could do as well as others if they were well paid. now consider, foolish people! cannot such men reserve some good work and say, "this is costly; this is moderate, and this is cheap work," and show that they have work at every price? [sidenote: the painter and the mirror] . when thou wishest to see whether thy picture corresponds entirely with the objects thou hast drawn from nature, take a mirror and let the living reality be reflected in it, and compare the reflection with thy picture, and consider well { } whether the subject of the two images are in harmony one with another. and above all thou shouldst take the mirror for thy master,--a flat mirror, since on its surface the objects in many respects have the same appearance as in painting. for thou seest that a painting done on a flat surface reveals objects which appear to be in relief, and the mirror consisting of a flat surface produces the same effect; the painting consists of one plane surface and the mirror likewise; the picture is impalpable, in so far as that which appears to be round and prominent cannot be grasped by the hands, and it is the same with the mirror; the mirror and the painting reveal the semblance of objects surrounded by light and shade; each of them appears to be at a distance from its surface. and if thou dost recognize that the mirror by means of outlines, lights and shadows gives relief to objects, and since thou hast in thy colours lights and shadows stronger than those of the mirror, there is no doubt that if thou composest thy picture well, it will also have the appearance of nature when it is reflected in a large mirror. [sidenote: the painter's mind] . the mind of the painter should continually transmute the figure of the notable objects which come before him into so many discourses; and imprint them in his memory and classify them { } and deduce rules from them, taking the place, the circumstances, the light and the shade into consideration. [sidenote: the variety of nature] . i say that the universal proportions must be observed in the height of figures and not in their size, because in the admirable and marvellous things which appear in the works of nature there is no work of whatsoever character in which one detail is exactly similar to another; therefore, o thou imitator of nature, pay heed to the variety of features. . radically wrong is the procedure of some masters who are in the habit of repeating the same themes in the same episodes, and whose types of beauty are likewise the same, for in nature they are never repeated, so that if all the beauties of equal excellence were to come to life again they would compose a larger population than that now existing in our century, and since in the present century no one person is precisely similar to another, so would it be among the beauties mentioned above. . you must depict your figures with gestures which will show what the figure has in his mind, otherwise your art will not be praiseworthy. { } [sidenote: mind and expression] . no figure will be admirable if the gesture which expresses the passion of the soul is not visible in it. the most admirable figure is that which best expresses the passion of its mind. . the good painter has two principal things to depict: man and the purpose of his mind. the first is easy, the second is difficult, since he must do it by the gestures and movements of the limbs, and this is to be learnt from the dumb, who more than all other men excel in it. [sidenote: the dumb man guides the painter] . the figures of men have gestures which correspond to what they are doing, so that in seeing them you understand what they are thinking of and saying; and these will be learned well by him who will copy the gestures of the dumb, for they speak by the gestures of their hands, their eyes, their brows and their whole person, when they wish to express the purpose of their mind. and do not mock me because i suggest a dumb teacher for the teaching of an art of which he is himself ignorant, because he will teach you better by his gestures than all the others with their words. and despise not such advice because they are the masters of gesture, and understand at a { } distance what a man is talking of if he suits the actions of the hands to the words. [sidenote: advice to the painter] . it is a great fault in painters to repeat the same movements, the same faces and manners of stuffs in one subject, and to let the greater part of his faces resemble their creator; and this has often been a source of wonder to me, for i have known some who in all their figures seem to have depicted themselves. and in the figures the actions and ways of the painter were visible. and if they are prompt in action and in their ways the figures are likewise prompt; and if the painter is pious, the figures with their twisted necks appear pious likewise, and if the painter is lazy the figures seem like laziness personified, and if the painter is deformed so are his figures, and if he is mad it is amply visible in figures of his subjects, which are devoid of intention and appear to be heedless of their action, some looking in one direction, some in another, as though they were dreaming; and therefore every manifestation in the picture corresponds to a peculiarity in the painter. and as i have often thought over the cause of this fault, it seems to me that we must conclude that the spirit which directs and governs everybody is that which forms our intellect, or rather, it is our intellect itself. it has { } devised the whole figure of man according as it has thought fit that it should be, either with long or a short and turned-up nose, and thus it has determined its height and figure; and so powerful is the intellect that it gives motion to the arms of the painter and causes him to reproduce himself, since it appears to the spirit that this is the true method of portraying man, and he that does otherwise is in error. and should this spirit find any one who resembles its body, which it has formed, it loves it and becomes enamoured with it, and for this reason many men fall in love and marry wives which resemble themselves, and often the children which are born of the issue resemble their parents. . the painter should portray his figure according to the measurements of a natural body, which shall be of universal proper proportions; in addition to this he should measure himself and see in which part his own figure varies greatly or less from the aforesaid pattern of excellence, and when he has ascertained this he should try his utmost to avoid the defects which exist in his own person in the figures he portrays. and know that thou must contend with all thy might against this fault inasmuch as it is a defect which originated with the intellect; because the { } spirit which governs thy body is that which is thine own intellect, and it is inclined to take pleasure in works similar to that which it accomplished in forming its body. and this is the reason that there is no woman, however ugly, who does not find a lover, unless she be monstrous. so remember to ascertain the defects of thy person and to avoid reproducing them in the figures thou dost compose. . that painter who has coarse hands will portray the like in his works, and the same thing will occur in every limb unless he avoids this pitfall by long study. therefore, o painter, look well on that part of thy person which is most ugly, and by thy study make ample reparation for it, because if thou art bestial, bestial and without intellect will be thy figures, and similarly both the good and ill which thou hast in thee will be partially visible in thy compositions. . men and words are already made, and thou, painter, who knowest not how to make thy figures move, art like the orator who knows not how to employ his words. . the movements of men are as varied as the { } circumstances which pass through their minds; and men will be more or less actuated by every circumstance in itself according as they are more or less powerful and according to age; because in the same circumstance an old man or a youth will make a different movement. [sidenote: power of expression in painting] . the imagination does not perceive such excellent things as the eye, because the eye receives the images or semblances from objects, and transmits them to the perception, and from thence to the brain; and there they are comprehended. but the imagination does not issue forth from the brain, with the exception of that part of it which is transmitted to the memory, and in the brain it remains and dies, if the thing imagined is not of high quality. and in this case poetry is formed in the mind or in the imagination of the poet, who depicts the same objects as the painter, and by reason of the work of his fancy he wishes to rival the painter, but in reality he is greatly inferior to him, as we have shown above. therefore with regard to the work of fancy we will say that there is the same proportion between the art of painting and that of poetry as exists between the body and the shadow proceeding from it, and the proportion is still greater, inasmuch as the shadow of such a body at least penetrates to { } the brain through the eye, but the imaginative embodiment of such a body does not enter into the eye, but is born in the dark brain. ah! what difference there is between imagining such a light in the darkness of the brain and seeing it in concrete shape set free from all darkness. if thou, o poet, dost represent the battle and its bloodshed enveloped by the obscure and dark air, amid the smoke of the terrifying and deadly engines, together with the thick dust which darkens the air, and the flight in terror of wretches panic-stricken by horrible death; in this case the painter will surpass thee, because thy pen will be used up before thou hast scarcely begun to describe what the art of the painter represents for thee immediately. and thy tongue shall be parched with thirst and thy body worn out with weariness and hunger before thou canst show what the painter will reveal in an instant of time. and in this painting there lacks nothing save the soul of the things depicted, and every body is represented in its entirety as far as it is visible in one aspect; and it would be a long and most tedious matter for poetry to enumerate all the movements of each soldier in such a war, and the parts of their limbs and their ornaments which the finished picture places before you with great accuracy and brevity; and to such a representation nothing is wanting save the noise of the engines, and the cries of the terrifying victors, { } and the screams and lamentations of those awe-stricken; neither again can the poet convey these things to the hearing. we will say, therefore, that poetry is an art which is supremely potent for the blind, and the painting has the same result on the deaf. painting, therefore, excels poetry in proportion as the sense to which it ministers is the nobler. the only true function of the poet is to represent the words of people who talk among each other, and these alone he represents to the hearing as if they were natural, because they are natural in themselves and created by the human voice; and in all other respects he is surpassed by the painter. still more, incomparably greater is the width of range of painting than that of speech, because the painter can accomplish an infinity of things which speech will not be able to name for want of the appropriate terms. and seest thou not that if the painter wishes to depict animals and devils in hell with what richness of invention he proceeds? and i once chanced to paint a picture which represented a divine subject, and it was bought by the lover of her whom it represented, and he wished to strip it of its divine character so as to be able to kiss it without offence. but finally his conscience overcame his desire and his lust and he was compelled to remove the picture from his house. now go thou, poet, and describe a beautiful woman without giving the semblance of { } the living thing, and with it arouse such desire in men! if thou sayest: i will describe then hell and paradise and other delights and terrors,--the painter will surpass thee, because he will set before thee things which in silence will [make thee] give utterance to such delight, and so terrify thee as to cause thee to wish to take flight. painting stirs the senses more readily than poetry. and if thou sayest that by speech thou canst convulse a crowd with laughter or tears, i rejoin that it is not thou who stirrest the crowd, it is the pathos of the orator, and his mirth. a painter once painted a picture which caused everybody who saw it to yawn, and this happened every time the eye fell on the picture, which represented a person yawning. others have painted libidinous acts of such sensuality that they have incited those who gazed on them to similar acts, and poetry could not do this. and if you write the description of certain deities the description will not be held in the same veneration as the picture of the deity, because prayers and votive offerings will always be made to the picture, and many peoples from diverse countries and from across the eastern seas will flock to it. and they will invoke the picture, and not the writing, for succour. who is he who would not lose hearing, smell and touch rather than sight? because he who loses his sight is like the man who is driven from the world, because { } he sees neither it nor anything else any longer. and this life becomes the sister of death. [sidenote: landscapes] . i have been to see a variety of cloud effects, and lately over milan towards lake maggiore i saw a cloud in the form of a huge mountain full of fiery scales, because the rays of the sun, which was already reddening and close to the horizon, tinged the cloud with its own colour. and this cloud attracted to it all the lesser clouds which were around it; and the great cloud did not move from its place, but on the contrary retained on its summit the light of the sun till an hour and a half after nightfall, such was its immense size; and about two hours after nightfall a great, an incredibly tremendous wind arose. [sidenote: vegetation of a hill] . the grasses and plants will be paler in proportion as the soil which nourishes them is leaner and devoid of moisture; the earth is leaner and less rich in moisture on the rocks of which the mountains are formed. and the trees will be smaller and thinner in proportion as they are nearer to the summit of the mountain; and the soil is leaner in proportion as it is nearer to the said summit, and it is richer in proportion as it is nearer the hollow valleys. therefore, o painter, { } thou shalt represent rocks on the summits of the mountains--for they are composed of rocks--for the greater part devoid of soil, and the plants which grow there are small and lean and for the greater part withered and dry from lack of moisture, and the sandy and lean earth is seen through the faded plants; and the small plants are stunted and aged, exiguous in size, with short and thick boughs and few leaves; they cover for the greater part the rust-coloured and dry roots, and are interwoven in the strata and the fissures of the rugged rocks, and issue from trunks maimed by men or by the winds; and in many places you see the rocks surmounting the summits of the high mountains, covered with a thin and faded moss; and in some places their true colour is laid bare and made visible owing to the percussion of the lightnings of heaven, whose course is often obstructed to the damage of these rocks. and in proportion as you descend towards the base of the mountains the plants are more vigorous and their boughs and foliage are denser; and their vegetation varied according to the various species of the plants of which such woods are composed, and their boughs are of diverse arrangement and diverse amplitude of foliage, various in shape and size; and some have straight boughs like the cypress, and some have widely scattered and spreading boughs like the oak and the chestnut tree, and the like; some have very { } small leaves, others have a spare foliage like the juniper and the plane tree, and others; some plants born at the same time are divided by wide spaces, and others are united with no division of space between them. [sidenote: how to represent night] . that which is entirely devoid of light is all darkness; as the night is like this and you wish to represent a night subject, represent a great fire, so that the object which is nearest to the fire may be tinged with its colour, since the object which is nearest the fire will participate most in its nature. and as you will make the fire red, all the objects which it illumines must be red also, and those which are farther off from the fire will be dyed to a greater extent by the dark colour of night. the figures which are between you and the fire appear dark from the obscurity of the night, not from the glow of the firelight, and those which are at the side are half dark and half ruddy, and those which are visible beyond the edge of the flames will be altogether lighted up by the red glow against a black background. as to their action, make those which are near shield themselves with their hands and cloaks against the intense heat with averted faces as though about to flee; with regard to those who are farther off, represent them chiefly in the act of raising their hands to their eyes, dazzled by the intense glare. { } [sidenote: how to represent storm] . if you wish to represent well a storm, consider and weigh its effects when the wind, blowing across the surface of the sea and the earth, removes and carries with it those things which are not stable in the universal drift. and in order to represent this storm adequately, you must in the first place represent tattered and rent clouds rushing with the rushing wind, accompanied by sandy dust caught up from the seashores, and boughs and leaves torn up by the force and fury of the wind, and dispersed in the air with many other light objects. the trees and the plants bent towards the earth almost seem as though they wished to follow the rushing wind, with their boughs wrenched from their natural direction and their foliage all disordered and distorted. of the men who are to be seen, some are fallen and entangled in their clothes and almost unrecognizable on account of the dust, and those who remain standing may be behind some tree, clutching hold of it so that the wind may not tear them away; others, with their hands over their eyes on account of the dust, stoop towards the ground, with their clothes and hair streaming to the wind. the sea should be rough and tempestuous, and full of swirling eddies and foam among the high waves, and the wind hurls the spray through the tumultuous air like a thick and swathing mist. { } as regards the ships that are there, you will depict some with torn sails and tattered shreds fluttering through the air with shattered rigging; some of the masts will be split and fallen, and the ship lying down and wrecked in the raging waves; some men will be shrieking and clinging to the remnants of the vessel. you will make the clouds driven by the fury of the winds and hurled against the high summits of the mountains, and eddying and torn like waves beaten against rocks; the air shall be terrible owing to deep darkness caused by the dust and the mist and the dense clouds. [sidenote: how to describe a battle] . in the first place you must represent the smoke of the artillery mingled with the air, and the dust, and tossed up by the stampede of the horses and the combatants. and you must treat this confusion in this way: dust being an earthly thing has weight, and although owing to its fineness it is easily lifted up and mingled with the air, it nevertheless falls readily to the earth again, and it is its finest part which rises highest, therefore that part will be the least visible and will seem to be almost of the same colour as the air; the higher the smoke, which is mingled with the dusty air, rises towards a certain height, the more it will seem like a dark cloud, and at the summit the smoke will be more visible than the dust. { } the smoke will assume a bluish colour, and the dust will retain its colour: this mixture of air, smoke and dust will seem much brighter on the side whence the light proceeds than on the opposite side; the more densely the combatants are enveloped in this confusion the less distinctly will their lights and shadows be visible. you must cast a glowing light on the countenances and the figures, the atmosphere, the musketeers and those who are near them, and this light diminishes in proportion as the distance between it and its cause increases; and the figures which are between you and the light will appear dark against a bright background, and their legs will be less visible in proportion as they are nearer to the earth, because the dust there is coarsest and thickest. and if you depict horses galloping beyond the crowd, make little clouds of dust, distant one from the other in proportion to the strides made by the horses, and the cloud which is farthest away from the horse will be the least visible; it must be high, scattered and thin, and the nearer clouds will be more conspicuous, smaller and denser. the air must be full of arrows falling in every direction: some flying upwards, some falling, some on the level plane; and smoke should trail after the flight of the cannon-balls. the foremost figures should have their hair and eyebrows clotted with dust; dust must be on every flat portion they offer capable of retaining it. { } the conquerors you should make as they charge, with their hair and the other light things appertaining to them streaming to the wind, their brows contracted and the limbs thrust forward inversely, that is, if the right foot is thrust forward the left arm must be thrust forward also. and if you portray a fallen man you must show where he has slipped and been dragged through the blood-stained mud, and around in the wet earth you must show the imprint of the feet of men and the hoofs of horses that have passed there. you will also represent a horse dragging its dead master, and in the wake of the body its track, as it has been dragged along through the dust and the mud; you must make the vanquished and beaten pale, their brows knit and the skin surmounting the brow furrowed with lines of pain. on the sides of the nose there must be wrinkles forming an arch from the nostrils to the eyes and terminating at the commencement of the latter; the nostrils should be drawn up, whence the wrinkles mentioned above; the arched lips show the upper row of teeth. the teeth should be apart, as with crying and lamentation. one hand shields the frightened eyes, the palm being held towards the enemy; the other [hand] rests on the ground to sustain the raised body. you shall portray others shouting in flight with their mouths wide open; you must depict many kinds of weapons lying at the feet of the { } combatants, such as broken shields, lances, shattered swords and other similar objects; you must portray dead men, some half covered, some entirely covered, by the dust which is mingled with the spilt blood and converted into red mud, and the blood is seen by its colour flowing in a sinuous stream from the body to the dust; others in their death-agony are grinding their teeth, rolling their eyes and clenching their fists against their bodies and their distorted legs. some might be represented disarmed and thrown by the enemy, turning upon him with teeth and nails to wreak cruel and sharp revenge; a riderless horse might be represented charging with his mane streaming to the wind amidst the enemy, and inflicting great damage with his hoofs. some maimed man might be seen fallen to the earth and protecting himself with his shield, while the enemy, bending over him, tries to kill him. you might show a number of men fallen together over a dead horse. you would see some of the conquerors leaving the battle and issuing from the crowd, clearing with their hands their eyes and cheeks of the mud made by the watering of their dust-bespattered eyes. you would see the reserves standing full of hope and caution, with brows alert, shading them with their hands and gazing through the thick and confused darkness, attentive to the orders of their captain; and likewise the captain, with his staff raised, is rushing towards these { } reserves and points out to them the spot where they are needed; and you may add a river with horses charging into it and stirring up the water all round them into seething waves of mixed foam and water, which is spurted into the air and among the legs and bodies of the horses. and there must not be a level place that is not trampled with gory footsteps. [sidenote: envy] . envy offends with false infamy, that is to say, by detraction which frightens virtue. envy must be represented with the hands raised to heaven in contempt, because if she could she would use her power against god. make her face covered with a goodly mark; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and myrtle, to signify that victory and truth offend her. draw many thunderbolts proceeding from her as a symbol of her evil-speaking. make her lean and shrivelled up, because she is continual dissolution. make her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent. make her a quiver full of tongues for arrows, because she often offends with these. make her a leopard's skin, because the leopard kills the lion through envy and by deceit. place a vase in her hand full of flowers, and let it be full also of scorpions, toads and other reptiles. let her ride death, because envy, which is undying, never wearies of sovereignty. { } make her a bridle loaded with divers arms, because her weapons are all deadly. as soon as virtue is born it begets envy which attacks it; and sooner will there exist a body without a shadow than virtue unaccompanied by envy. [sidenote: fame] . fame alone rises towards heaven, because god looks with favour on virtuous things; infamy must be represented upside down, because its works are contrary to god and move towards hell. fame should be depicted covered with tongues instead of with feathers and in the form of a bird. [sidenote: the expressive picture] . a picture or a representation of human figures should be done in such a way that the spectator can easily recognize the purpose that is in their minds by their attitudes. if you have to represent a man of high character, let his gestures be such as harmonize with fair words; likewise, if you have to represent a man of low character, let his gestures be fierce, let him thrust his arms towards the listener, and let his head and chest be thrust forward in front of his feet, following the hands of the speaker. it is thus with a dumb man, who seeing two speakers, although he is deprived of hearing, nevertheless, owing to the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, understands the subject of their argument. i once saw at florence a man who had become deaf by an accident, who, if you spoke loud to him, did not understand you, but if you spoke gently, without making any noise, he understood you merely by the movement of the lips. now you can say, does not one who talks loudly move his lips like one who talks softly? in regard to this i leave experiment to decide: make a man speak gently to you and note his lips. [sidenote: the ages of man] . how the ages of man should be depicted: that is, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, decrepitude. how old men should be depicted with lazy and slow movements, their legs bent at the knees when they stand still, and their feet placed parallel and apart, their backs bent, their heads leaning forward and their arms only slightly extended. how women should be represented in modest attitudes, their legs close together, their arms folded together, their heads bent and inclined to one side. how old women should be represented with eager, vehement and angry gestures, like the furies of hades; the movement of the arms and the head should be more violent than that of the legs. little children with ready and twisted movements when sitting, and when standing up in shy and timid attitudes. { } . you will do as follows if you wish to represent a man talking to a number of people: you must consider the matter which he has to treat, and suit his action to the subject; that is to say, if the matter is persuasive, let his action be appropriate to it; if the matter is argumentative, let the speaker hold one finger of the left hand with two fingers of the right hand, closing the two smaller ones, and with his face turned towards the people and his mouth half open, let him seem to be about to speak, and if he is sitting let him appear as though about to rise, with his head forward; if you represent him standing up, let him lean slightly forward, with his body and head towards the people. you must represent the people silent and attentive, looking at the orator's face with gestures of admiration, and depict some old men with the corners of their mouths pulled down in astonishment at what they hear, their cheeks drawn in and full of lines, their eyebrows raised, and thus causing a number of wrinkles on the forehead; again, some must be sitting with the fingers of their hands clasped and resting on their knee; another, a bowed old man, with one knee crossed over the other, and on the knee let him hold his hand, and let his other elbow rest on his hand, and let the hand support his bearded chin. { } . you must represent an angry man holding some one by the ear, beating his head against the ground, with one knee on his ribs, his right arm raising his fist in the air; his hair must be dishevelled, his eyebrows low and narrow, his teeth clenched and the two corners of his mouth set, his neck swelled and [his brow] wrinkled and bent forward as he leans over his enemy. . the desperate man must hold a knife and must have torn open his garments, and with one hand he must be tearing open the wound; and you must represent him with extended feet and the legs slightly bent and his body leaning towards the earth, his hair flying and dishevelled. [sidenote: notes on the last supper] . one who was in the act of drinking leaves his glass in its place, and turns his head towards the speaker. another, twisting the fingers of his hands together, turns with stern brows to his companions. another, with his hands spread out, shows their palms, and shrugs his shoulders towards his ears; his mouth expresses amazement. another speaks in the ear of his neighbour, and he, as he listens to him, turns towards him, lending him his ear, while he holds a knife in one hand and { } a piece of bread in the other, half cut through by the knife. another, in turning with a knife in his hand, has upset a glass on the table. another lays his hands on the table and looks fixedly. another puffs out his cheeks, his mouth full. another leans forward to see the speaker, shading his eyes with his hand. another draws back behind him who is leaning forward and sees the speaker between the wall and the man who is leaning forward. { } iii thoughts on science * * * [sidenote: necessity of experience in science] there is no human experience that can be termed true science unless it can be mathematically demonstrated. and if thou sayest that the sciences which begin and end in the mind are true, this cannot be conceded, but must be denied for many reasons, and firstly because in such mental discourses experience is eliminated, and without experience there can be no certainty. [sidenote: theory and practice] . you must first propound the theory and then explain the practice. . let no man who is not a mathematician read the principles of my work. . in the course of scientific exposition the demonstration of a general rule derived from a previous conclusion is not to be censured. { } [sidenote: certainty of mathematics] . he who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion and will never be able to silence the contradictions or sophistical sciences which lead to an everlasting clamour. [sidenote: of science] . there is no certainty [in science] where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or in those [sciences] which are not in harmony with mathematics. [sidenote: from leonardo's dictionary] . syllogism: to speak doubtfully. sophism: to speak confusedly; falsehood for truth. theory: knowledge without practice. [sidenote: definition of science] . science is that discourse of the mind which derives its origin from ultimate principles beyond which nothing in nature can be found which forms a part of that science: as in the continued quantity, that is to say, the science of geometry, which, starting from the surfaces of bodies, has its origin in the line, which is the end of the superficies; and we are not satisfied by this, because we know that the line terminates in the point, and the point is that which is the least of things. therefore the point is the first principle of geometry, and nothing else can exist either { } in nature or in the human mind from which the point can issue. because if you say that the contact between a surface and the extreme point of an iron instrument is the creation of the point, it is not true; but let us say that this point of contact is a superficies which surrounds its centre, and in the centre the point dwells. and such a point is not a part of the substance of the superficies, neither it nor all the points of the universe can, even if combined,--it being granted that they could be combined,--compose any part of a superficies. and granted, as you imagined, a whole composed of a thousand points, if we divide any part of this quantity of a thousand, we can very well say that this part shall equal its whole; and this we can prove by zero, or naught, that is, the tenth figure of arithmetic, which is represented by a cipher as being nothing, and placed after unity it will signify , and if two ciphers are placed after unity it will signify , and thus the number will go on increasing by ten to infinity whenever a cipher is added, and the cipher in itself is worth nothing more than naught, and all the naughts in the universe are equal to one naught alone, in regard to their substance and value. [sidenote: true science based on the testimony of the senses] . knowledge which is the issue of experience is termed mechanical; that which is born and ends { } in the mind is termed scientific; that which issues from science and ends in manual work is termed semi-mechanical. but i consider vain and full of error that science which is not the offspring of experience, mother of all certitude, and which does not result in established experience, that is to say, whose origin, middle and end do not pass through any of the five senses. and if we doubt of everything we perceive by the senses, should we not doubt much more of what is contrary to the senses, such as the existence of god and of the soul, and similar matters constantly under dispute and contention? and it is truly the case that where reason is lacking it is supplemented by noise, which never happens in matters of certainty. on account of this we will say that where there is noise there is no true science, because truth has one end only, which, when it is made known, eternally silences controversy, and should controversy come to life again, it is lying and confused knowledge which is reborn, and not certainty. but true science is that which has penetrated into the senses through experience and silenced the tongue of the disputers, and which does not feed those who investigate it with dreams, but proceeds from the basis of primary truths and established principles successively and by true sequence to the end; as, for instance, what comes under the heading of elementary mathematics, { } that is, numeration and measurement, termed arithmetic and geometry, which treat with the highest truth of the discontinued and continued quantity. here there will be no dispute as to whether twice three make more or less than six, nor whether two angles of a triangle are less than two right angles, but eternal silence shall ignore all controversy, and the devotees of the true science will finish their studies in peace, which the lying mental sciences cannot do. and if thou sayest that true and established science of this kind is a species of mechanics, because they can only be completed by the hand, i will say the same of all the arts, such as that which passes through the hand of the sculptor, which is a kind of drawing, a part of painting; and astrology and the other sciences pass through manual operation, but they are mental in the first place, as painting, which first of all exists in the mind of the composer, and cannot attain to fulfilment without manual labour. with regard to painting, its true and scientific principles must be established: what constitutes a shaded body, what constitutes a primary shade, a derivative shade, what constitutes light: that is, darkness, light, colour, size, shape, position, distance, propinquity, motion, rest, which are comprehended by the mind only, and without manual labour. and this is the science of painting which remains in the mind of those who meditate on it, from which { } issues the work in due time, and is infinitely superior to the aforesaid contemplation or science. [sidenote: mechanics] . mechanics are the paradise of scientific mathematics, because with them we arrive at the fruits of mathematics. [sidenote: mechanics and experience] . experience is indispensable for the making of any instrument. . proportion is not only to be found in figures and measurements, but also in sound, weight, time and position, and in whatever power which exists. [sidenote: reason and experience] . the power of the projecting force increases in proportion as the object projected is smaller; the acceleration of the motion increases to infinity proportionately to this diminution. it would follow that an atom would be almost as rapid as the imagination or the eye, which in a moment attains to the height of the stars, and consequently its voyage would be infinite, because the thing which can be infinitely diminished would have an infinite velocity and would travel on an infinite course (because every continuous quantity is divisible to infinity). and this opinion is { } condemned by reason and consequently by experience. thus, you who observe rely not on authors who have merely by their imagination wished to be interpreters between nature and man, but on those alone who have applied their minds not to the hints of nature but to the results of their experience. and you must realize the deceptiveness of experiments; because those which often appear to be one and the same are often different, as is shown here. [sidenote: effects correspond to the force of their cause] . a spherical body which possesses a dense and resisting superficies will move as much in the rebound resulting from the resistance of a smooth and solid plane as it would if you threw it freely through the air, if the force applied be equal in both cases. oh, admirable justice of thine, thou first mover! thou hast not permitted that any tone should fail to produce its necessary effects, either as regards order or quantity. seeing that a force impels an object which it overcomes a distance of one hundred arms' length, and if in obeying this law it meets with resistance, thou hast ordained that the force of the shock will cause afresh a further movement, which in its various bounds recuperates the whole sum of the distance it should have travelled. and if you measure the distance { } accomplished by the aforesaid bounds you will find that they equal the length of distance through which a similar object set in motion by an equal force would travel freely through the air. . every action must be caused by motion. . motion is the cause of all life. [sidenote: of force] . what is force? force, i say, is a spiritual virtue, an invisible power, which by accidental external violence is caused by motion, and communicated and infused into bodies which are inert by nature, giving them an active life of marvellous power. . what is force? i say that force is a spiritual, incorporate and invisible power, which for a brief duration is produced in bodies that by accidental violence are displaced from their natural state of inertia. [sidenote: origin of force] . force arises from dearth or abundance; it is the child of physical motion and the grandchild of spiritual motion, and the mother and origin of gravity. gravity is confined to the elements of { } water and earth, and this force is infinite, because infinite worlds could be moved by it if instruments could be made by which the force could be generated. force, with physical motion, and gravity, with resistance, are the four accidental powers by which all mortal things live and die. force has its origin in spiritual motion, and this motion, flowing through the limbs of sentient animals, enlarges their muscles, and thus enlarged the muscles are shrunk in length and contract the tendons with which they are connected, and this is the cause of the strength in human limbs. the quality and quantity of the strength of a man can generate a further force, which will increase in proportion to the duration of the motions produced by them. [sidenote: aspects of force] . gravity, force and casual motion together with resistance are the four external powers by which all the visible actions of man live and die. [sidenote: of inertia] . a motion tends to be continuous; a body set in motion continues to move as long as the impression of the motive power lasts in it. [sidenote: can man imitate a bird's flight?] . the bird is an instrument which operates by mathematical laws, and man can reproduce all { } the movements of this instrument, but cannot attain to the intensity of its power; and can only succeed in acquiring balance. thus we will say that such an instrument constructed by man lacks only the soul of the bird, and the soul of man must counterfeit the soul of the bird. the spirit in the frame of the bird doubtless would respond to needs of that frame better than would the spirit of man, whose frame is different, more especially in the almost insensible motions of balance; and since we see the bird make provision for the many sensible varieties of movement, we can conclude by such experience that man can acquire knowledge of the more markedly sensible of these movements, and that he will be able to make ample provision against the destruction of that instrument of which he has made himself the spirit and the guide. [sidenote: of inertia] . a natural and continuous motion seeks to preserve its course along the line of its starting-point, that is to say, let us call starting-point whatever place in which it varies. . everything maintains itself by motion. and if it were possible to describe a diameter of air on the sphere of the earth, like to a well, which would extend from one superficies to the other, { } and if a weighty body were dropped into this well, the body would seek to remain stationary at the centre, but so strong would be the impetus that for many years it would prevent it from so doing. [sidenote: transmission of motion] . impetus is a virtue created by motion and communicated by the motive force to the object moved, and this object acquires motion in proportion to the energy of the impetus. [sidenote: matter is inert] . no lifeless matter moves of itself, but its motion is caused from without. . all elements displaced from their natural place seek to return to it, and more especially fire, water and earth. . all matter universally seeks to maintain itself in its natural state; hence, water in motion seeks to maintain its course according to the force by which it is propelled, and if it meets with opposition it finishes the length of the course it began in a circular and reflex motion. [sidenote: conception of energy] . impetus is the impression of motion conveyed by the motive power to the object moved. every { } impression tends to permanence or seeks to attain permanence. that every impression seeks after permanence is proved by the impression made by the sun on the eye which regards it, and in the impression of sound made by the hammer which strikes a bell. every impression seeks after permanence, as is shown in the image of impetus communicated to the object moved. . a weight seeks to fall to the centre of the earth by the most direct way. [sidenote: in praise of the sun] . if you look at the stars, warding off the rays (as may be done by looking through a small hole made by the extreme point of a fine needle placed so as almost to touch the eye), they will appear so small as to seem as though nothing could be smaller; it is owing to their great distance that they appear so small, for many of them are very many times larger than the star which is the earth with its water. now reflect what appearance this our star must have from so great a distance, and then consider how many stars might be placed--both in longitude and latitude--between those stars which are sown in the dark space. i can never refrain from blaming many of the ancients who said that the size of the sun was no greater than { } it appears; among whom was epicurus. i believe he founded his reasoning on a light placed in our atmosphere equidistant from the centre of the earth, which, to any one looking at it, never appears to diminish in size from whatever distance it is seen. . i shall reserve the reasons of its size and power for later. but i greatly marvel that socrates should have depreciated such a body, and that he should have said that it resembled an incandescent stone; and he who opposed him as regards this error acted rightly. but i wish i had words to blame those who seek to exalt the worship of men more than that of the sun, since in the universe there is no body of greater magnitude and power to be seen than the sun. and its light illumines all the celestial bodies which are distributed throughout the universe; and the vital spark descends from it, because the heat which is in living beings comes from the soul, and there is no other centre of heat and light in the universe, as will be shown later; and it is certain that those who have elected to worship men as gods--as jupiter, saturn, mars, &c.--have fallen into a profound error, since even if a man were as great as our earth, he would have the appearance of a little star, which appears like a dot in the universe; and moreover these men are mortal, and decay and corrupt in their sepulchres. { } . epicurus perhaps saw the shadows of columns on the walls in front of them equal to the diameter of the column which cast the shadow; and since the breadth of the shadows are parallel from beginning to end he considered that he might infer that the sun also was directly opposite to this parallel, and consequently no broader than the column; and he did not perceive that the diminution of the shadow was insensibly small owing to the great distance of the sun. if the sun were smaller than the earth, the stars in a great portion of our hemisphere would be without light--in contradiction to epicurus, who says the sun is only as large as it appears to be. . epicurus says the sun is the size it seems to be; hence, as it seems to be a foot in breadth, we must consider that to be its size. it follows that when the moon eclipses the sun, the sun ought not to appear the larger, as it does; hence, the moon being smaller than the sun, the moon must be less than a foot in breadth, and consequently when the earth eclipses the moon it must be less than a foot by a finger's breadth; inasmuch as if the sun is a foot in breadth, and the earth casts a conical shadow on the moon, it is inevitable that the luminous cause of the conical shadow { } must be greater than the opaque body which causes it. . measure how many times the diameter of the sun will go into its course in twenty-four hours. and thus we can see whether epicurus was correct in saying the sun was only as large as it appeared to be; for as the apparent diameter of the sun is about a foot, and as the sun would go a thousand times into its course in twenty-four hours, it would have travelled a thousand feet, that is, three hundred arms' length, which is the sixth of a mile. thus the course of the sun during twenty-four hours would have been the sixth part of a mile, and this venerable snail, the sun, would have travelled twenty-five arms' length in an hour. [sidenote: the sun's heat] . they say that the sun is not hot because it is not the colour of fire but whiter and clearer. and the answer to this is that when molten bronze is hottest it resembles the colour of the sun, and when it is less hot it has the colour of fire. . it is proved that the sun is by nature hot and not cold, as has already been stated. if rays of fire play on a concave mirror when it is cold, the rays refracted by the mirror will be hotter than { } the fire. the rays emitted from a sphere of glass filled with cold water, which are reflected from a fire, will be warmer than the fire. it follows from these two experiments that the heat of the rays reflected by the mirror or the sphere of cold water are hot by virtue, and not because the mirror or the sphere is hot; and in this case it occurs that the sun, passing through these bodies, heats them by its virtue. and owing to this they have inferred that the sun is not hot,--which by the aforesaid experiments has been proved to be exceedingly hot, by the experiment of the mirror and the sphere, which are cold in themselves, and reflect the hot rays of the fire and render them hotter, because the first cause is hot; and the same thing occurs as regards the sun, which, being hot in itself, and passing through these cold mirrors, refracts great heat. it is not the light of the sun which gives warmth, but its natural heat. [sidenote: rays of the sun] . the rays of the sun pass through the cold region of the air without any change being effected in their nature, they pass through glasses full of cold water without suffering change; through whatever transparent spot they pass, it is as though they passed through so much air. [sidenote: light of the stars] . some writers allege that the stars shine of { } themselves, saying that if venus and mercury did not shine of themselves, when their light comes between them and the sun they would darken as much of the sun as they could hide from our eye; this is false, because it is proved that a dark body placed against a luminous body is enveloped and altogether covered by the lateral rays of the remaining part of that body, and thus remains invisible; as may be proved when the sun is seen through the boughs of a leafless tree at a long distance, the boughs do not hide any portion of the sun from our eyes. the same thing occurs with the above-mentioned planets, which, though they have no light in themselves, do not, as has been said, hide any portion of the sun from our eyes. second proof. they say that the stars shine most brightly at night in proportion as they are high; and that, if they did not shine of themselves, the shadow cast by the earth between them and the sun would darken them, since they would not see nor be seen by the sun. but these have not taken into consideration that the conical shadow of the moon does not reach many of the stars, and even for those it does reach the shadow is diminished to such an extent that it covers very little of the star, and the remaining part is illumined by the sun. { } [sidenote: on the nature of the moon] . the moon having density and gravity, how does it stand? . i. no very light object is opaque. ii. nothing light can remain beneath that which is heavier. iii. whether the moon is the centre of its elements or not. and if it has no fixed position like the earth in the centre of its elements, why does it not fall to the centre of our elements? and if the moon is not in the centre of its elements and does not fall, it must then be lighter than any other element. and if the moon is lighter than the other elements, why is it opaque and not transparent? . no body which has density is lighter than the air. having proved that the part of the moon which shines consists of water which mirrors the body of the sun and reflects for us the splendour it receives from the sun, and that if there were no waves in these waters, it would appear small, but almost as bright as the sun--it must now be shown whether the moon is a heavy or a light body; if it is a heavy body--admitting that from the earth upwards with every grade of distance lightness must increase, so that water is lighter than earth, air is lighter than water, and { } fire lighter than air, and so on in succession--it would seem that if the moon had density, as it has, it must have gravity, and if it has gravity the space in which it lies could not contain it, and consequently it would fall towards the centre of the universe and be joined to the earth, or if not the moon itself, its waters would fall from the moon and strip it and fall towards the centre, leaving the moon bare and lustreless; whence, as this could not happen, as reason would tell us, it is manifest that the moon is surrounded by its elements, that is to say, water, air and fire, and thus it sustains itself by itself in that space as our earth is suspended with its elements in this part of space; heavy bodies act in their elements there just as other heavy bodies act in ours. [sidenote: on the harmony of the spheres] . a sound is produced by the movement of the air in friction against a dense body, and should it be produced by two weighty bodies it is owing to the atmosphere which surrounds them, and this friction consumes the bodies, so that it follows that the spheres in their friction, owing to there being no atmosphere between them, do not generate sound. and if this friction were a fact, during the many centuries the spheres have revolved they would be consumed by the immense velocity expended daily; and even if they produce sound, the sound could not travel, { } because the sound caused by percussion under water is scarcely noticeable, and it would be less than noticeable in the case of dense bodies. the friction of polished bodies produces no sound, and similar result would be produced in the contact or friction of the spheres; and if the spheres are not polished in their contact and friction, it follows that they are rough. again, their contact is not continuous; this being the case a vacuum is produced, which it has been proved does not exist in nature. therefore we conclude that friction would have consumed the ends of each sphere, and in proportion as a sphere has a greater velocity in the centre than at the poles, it would be consumed to a higher degree at the centre than at the poles; and then the friction would cease, and the sound would cease also, and the spheres would cease to revolve unless one sphere revolved eastward and the other northward. . worlds gravitate in the midst of their own elements. the yellow or yolk of an egg remains in the middle of the albumen without moving on either side, and is lighter or heavier or equal to this albumen; and if it is lighter it ought to rise above all the albumen and stop in contact with the shell of the egg; and if it is heavier it ought { } to sink; and if it is equal to it, it can stand at one of the ends as well as in the centre or below. [sidenote: the earth appears a star] . the object of my book is to prove that the ocean, with the other seas, by means of the sun causes our world to shine like the moon and to appear as a star to other worlds; and this i will prove. [sidenote: the earth a star] . in your discourse you must prove that the earth is a star like the moon, and thus you will bear witness to the glory of our universe! and thus you must discourse on the size of many stars. . how the earth is a star. the earth, in the midst of the sphere of water which clothes the greater part of it, taking its light from the sun and shining in the universe like the other stars, shows itself to be a star as well. [sidenote: to prove the earth a star] . first of all define the eye; then show how the twinkling of a star exists really in the eye, and why one star should twinkle more than another, and how the rays of the stars are born in the eye. say, that if the twinkling of the stars were, as it appears to be, really in the stars, that this { } twinkling appears to extend in proportion to the body of the star. the star, therefore, being larger than the earth, this motion made in an instant of time would in its velocity double the size of the star. then prove that the surface of the atmosphere, contiguous to fire and the surface of fire, where it ends, is the point in which the rays of the sun penetrate and bear the image of the celestial bodies which are large when they rise and set, and small when they are on the meridian. [sidenote: earth not the center of universe] . the earth is not the centre of the orbit of the sun, nor the centre of the universe, but in the centre of its companion elements and united with them; and if any one were to stand on the moon when the moon and the sun are beneath us, our earth, with its element of water, would appear and shine for him just as the moon appears and shines for us. . the earth, shining like the moon, has lost a great part of its ancient splendour by the decrease of the waters. . nothing is generated in a place where is no sentient vegetable and rational life; feathers grow on birds and change every year; coats grow on animals and are changed every year, with some { } exceptions, like the lion's beard and the cat's fur, and such; grass grows in the fields and leaves on the trees; and every year they are renewed in great part. thus we can say that the spirit of growth is the soul of the earth, the soil its flesh, the ordered arrangement of rocks its bones, of which mountains are formed, the tufa its tendons; its blood the veins of water which surround its heart, which is the ocean; its breathing and increase and decrease of blood in the pulses the ebb and flood of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is fire which pervades the earth, and the vital soul dwells in the fires which from various apertures of the earth issue in springs and sulphur minerals and volcanoes, as at mount etna in sicily and in many other places. . the ancients called man the world in miniature, and certainly the name is a happy one, because man being composed of earth, water, air and fire, the body of the earth resembles the body of man. as man has in him bones for the support and framework of his flesh, likewise in the world the rocks are the supports of the earth; as man has in him a pool of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in their breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean which rises and falls every six hours as if the world breathed; as from the aforesaid pool of blood veins issue which { } ramify throughout the human body, so does the ocean fill the body of the earth with innumerable veins of water. the body of the earth lacks sinews, which do not exist because sinews are made for movement, and the world being in perpetual stability no movement occurs, and there being no movement, sinews are not necessary; but in all other points they resemble each other greatly. . water is the driver of nature. [sidenote: experience the basis of science] . in explaining the action of water remember to cite experience first and then reason. . do not forget that you must put forward propositions adducing the above-mentioned facts as illustrations, not as propositions,--that would be too simple. . water in itself has no stability and cannot move of its own accord, save to descend. water of its own accord does not cease to move unless it is shut in. . the body of the earth, like the body of animals, is intersected with ramifying veins, which are all { } united and constructed for the nourishment and life of the earth and of its creatures. [sidenote: water is the blood of the world] . the water which rises in the mountains is the blood which keeps the mountain alive, and through this conduit or vein, nature, the helper of her creatures, prompt in the desire to repair the loss of the moisture expended, proffers the desired aid abundantly; just as in a stricken spot in man you will see, owing to the aid which is brought, the blood abound under the skin in a swelling, so as to succour the spot which has been stricken; likewise, in the case of the vine, when it is cut at its extremity, nature causes its moisture to rise from the lowest root to the end of the extremity which has been cut, and when this moisture has been expended nature ceases not to supply it with vital moisture to the end of its life. . water is that which is given to supply vital moisture to this arid earth; and the cause which propels it through its ramifications against the natural course of weighty matter is the same which stirs the humours in every kind of animal body. [sidenote: water on mountains] . water, the vital moisture of the earthly machine, moves by reason of its natural heat. { } [sidenote: on the water of rivers] . rivers, with their ruinous inundations, seem to me the most potent of all causes of terrestrial losses, and not fire, as some have maintained; because the violence of fire is exhausted where there is nothing forthcoming to feed it. the flowing of water, which is maintained by sloping valleys, ends and dies at the lowest depth of the valley; but fire is caused by fuel and the movement of water by incline. the fuel of fire is disunited, and its damage is disunited and isolated, and fire dies where there is no fuel. the incline of valleys is united, and damage caused by water is collective, along with the ruinous course of the river, until with its valley it winds into the sea, the universal base and sole haven of the wandering waters of rivers. but what voice or words shall i find to express the disastrous ravages, the incredible upheavals, the insatiable rapacity, caused by the headstrong rivers? what can i say? certainly i do not feel myself equal to such a demonstration, yet by experience i will try to relate the process of ruin of the rivers which destroy their banks and against which no mortal bastion can prevail. . the recesses of the bottom of the sea are perennial, the summits of mountains are transitory, whence it follows that the earth will become { } spherical and covered with waters, and will be uninhabitable. [sidenote: transformations in past and future] . the shores of the sea continually increase in soil, towards the middle of the sea; the cliffs and promontories of the sea are continually being ruined and consumed; the mediterranean seas will dry up and all that will remain will be the channel of the greatest river which enters into them; this will flow to the ocean and pour out its waters together with that of all the rivers which are its tributaries. [sidenote: on the earth's vibration] . the subterranean courses of water, like those which are made between the air and the earth, are those which continually consume and deepen the beds of their currents. the earth which is carried by rivers is discharged at the end of their course, that is to say, the earth carried from the highest part of the river's course is discharged at the lowest depth of its course. where fresh water arises in the sea, the miracle of the creation of an island is manifest, which will be discovered sooner or later in proportion as the quantity of water is greater or less. and an island of this kind is formed by the deposit of earth and stones made by the subterranean current of water in the channels through which it passes. { } [sidenote: nature's law] . nature never breaks her laws. . nature is constrained by the cause of her laws which dwells inborn in her. . without reason no effect is produced in nature; understand the reason and you will not need experience. [sidenote: cause discovered by effect] . before i proceed further i will make some experiments, because it is my intention to cite the experiment first and then to demonstrate by reasoning how such an experiment must necessarily take effect in such a manner. and this is the true rule by which investigations of natural phenomena must proceed; and although nature herself begins from the reason and ends in the result, we must pursue the contrary course and begin, as i said above, from experience and by it seek out the reason. [sidenote: repetition of experiment] . before deducing a general rule from this case repeat the experiment two or three times and see if the same results are produced. { } [sidenote: example of preceding rule] . it several bodies of equal weight and shape are dropped one after another at equal intervals of time, the distances between each successive body will be equally increased. the experiment to prove the above-mentioned theorem respecting motion must be made thus: take two balls of equal weight and shape and let them fall from a great height so that when they start falling they touch one another, and let the investigator stand on the ground and watch whether the contact is maintained during their fall. this experiment must be repeated several times, so that the trial may not be marred by any accident and the experiment vitiated and the spectator deceived. [sidenote: necessity of analysis] . we know definitely that sight is infinitely swift and in an instant of time perceives countless shapes, nevertheless it only sees one object at a time. let us take an example. you, o reader, will see the whole of this written page at a glance, and you will instantly realize that it is full of various letters, but you will not realize at that moment what these letters are nor what they signify; wherefore you will have to proceed word by word and line by line to take cognizance of these letters. again, if you wish to reach the summit of a building you must mount step by step, { } otherwise it will be impossible for you to reach the summit. and therefore i say to you whom nature has drawn to this art, if you wish to attain to a thorough knowledge of the forms of objects, you will begin by studying the details, and not proceed to the second until you have committed the first to memory and mastered it in practice, and if you do otherwise you will be wasting your time and protracting your studies. and remember first of all to acquire diligence, which signifies speed. [sidenote: vision] . of the nature of the eye. here are the forms, here the colours, here the form of every part of the universe are concentrated in a point, and that point is so great a marvel! o marvellous and stupendous necessity! thou dost compel by thy law, and by the most direct path, every effect to proceed from its cause. these things are verily miracles! i wrote in my anatomy how in so small a space the visual faculty can be reproduced and formed again in its whole expanse. . in many cases one and the same thing is attracted by two violent forces,--necessity and power. the water falls in rain and by necessity the earth absorbs the humidity; the sun causes it to evaporate, not of necessity, but by power. { } [sidenote: unconscious reasoning] . the pupil of the eye in the air expands and contracts according to every degree of motion made by the sun. and with every dilation or contraction the same object will appear of a different size, although frequently the relative scale of surrounding circumstances does not allow us to perceive these variations in any single object we look at. [sidenote: the eye] . the pupil of the eye dilates and contracts in proportion to the variety of bright and dark objects which are reflected in it. in this case nature has afforded compensation to the visual faculty by contracting the pupil of the eye when it is offended by excess of light and by causing it to dilate when offended by excess of darkness, like the opening of the purse. and nature here behaves like the man who has too much light in his house and closes half the window, or more or less of it according to need; and when night comes he opens the window altogether so as to see better inside his house, and nature here adopts a continued process of compensation, by continually regulating and readjusting the expansion and contracting of the pupil, in proportion to the aforesaid obscurity and light which are continually reflected in it. { } [sidenote: water surrounding the globe spherical] . when you collect facts relating to the science of the motion of water, remember to place under every proposition the uses to which it may be applied, in order that this knowledge may not be fruitless. . this is a difficult question to answer, but i will nevertheless state my opinion. water, which is clothed with air, desires naturally to cleave to its sphere because in this position it is without gravity. this gravity is twofold,--the gravity of the whole which tends to the centre of the elements, and the gravity which tends to the centre of the waters of the spherical orb; if this were not so the water would form a half sphere only, which is the sphere described from the centre upwards. but i see no means in the human mind of acquiring knowledge with regard to this. we must say, as we say of the magnet which attracts iron, that such a virtue is an occult property of which there is an infinite quantity in nature. . in the motion of earth against earth the repercussion of the portion struck is slight. water struck by water, eddies in circles around the spot where the shock has taken place. the reverberation of the voice continues for a { } great distance through the air; for a greater distance through fire. the mind travels for a still greater distance through the universe; but since it is finite it does not penetrate into infinity. . if the water which rises on the summits of the mountains comes from the sea, whence it is propelled by its weight to a greater height than that of the mountains, why has this portion of the element of water the power to elevate itself to such an altitude and to penetrate the earth by so great an expenditure of labour and time, when the residue of the element of water, whose only obstacle is the air which does not impede it, is not able to raise itself to a similar altitude? and thou who didst devise this theory, go and study nature, so that thou mayst cease to acquire such opinions of which thou hast made so great a collection, together with the capital and interest which thou dost possess. [sidenote: on the law of gravity] . the sphere of the earth has gravity which increases in proportion to the lightness of the element which contains it. fire is light in its sphere and its lightness increases in proportion to the weight of the element which contains it. { } no primary element has gravity or lightness in its own sphere. . the motion made by bodies which possess gravity to the common centre is not produced by the tendency of the body to find this centre, nor is it caused by attraction made by the centre, as by a magnet, drawing the weight towards it. . why does not the weight remain in its place? it does not remain because it has no resistance. and whither will it tend? it will tend to the centre of the earth. and why not along other lines? because the weight which meets with no resistance will descend by the shortest way to the lowest depth, and the lowest depth is the centre of the earth. and how does a weight find the centre of the earth with such directness? because it does not proceed at random, wandering by diverse courses. [sidenote: phenomena governed by mechanical laws] . instrumental science, that is to say, mechanics, is the most noble and most useful of sciences, inasmuch as by means of it all living bodies which have movement act; and this movement has { } its origin in the centre of gravity which is placed in the middle, dividing unequal weights, and it has dearth and wealth of muscles and lever also and counter-lever. . since these things are far more ancient than letters, it is no wonder if in our day no records exist to tell how these seas filled so many countries. but if some record had existed, conflagrations, floods, wars, changes of tongues and laws have consumed all that is ancient; sufficient for us is the testimony of objects born in the salt waters and found again in the high mountains far off from the seas of those times. [sidenote: heat the vital principle] . heat causes moisture to move, and cold arrests it; as is seen in a cold country which arrests the motion of the clouds in the air. where there is life there is heat, where there is vital heat there is movement of moisture. [sidenote: against those desiring to correct nature] . the act of cutting out the nostrils of a horse is a piece of ludicrous folly. and the foolish indulge in this practice as though they considered nature had failed to supply necessary wants, and man had therefore to supplement her work. nature made two apertures in the nose, which each in { } itself is half as large as the lung pipe whence breath proceeds, and if these apertures did not exist the mouth would abundantly suffice for breathing purposes. and if you said to me, why has nature thus provided animals with nostrils if respiration through the mouth is sufficient?--i would answer that nostrils are made to be used when the mouth is employed in masticating its food. [sidenote: of trees] . if a tree has been stripped of its bark in some spot, nature makes provision for this and gives a greater supply of nourishing sap to the stripped portion than to any other, so that in place of what has been taken away the bark grows thicker than in any other spot. and so impetuous is the motion of the sap that when it reaches the spot which is to be healed, it rises higher like a bounding ball, in bubbles, not unlike boiling water. [sidenote: the leaves of plants] . nature has so placed the leaves of the latest shoots of many trees that the sixth leaf is always above the first, and thus in continued succession unless the rule is obstructed. and this she has done for two useful purposes in the plant: firstly, since the branches and the fruit of the following year spring from the bud or eye which is above and in contact with the juncture of the leaves, { } the water which feeds the shoot may be able to run down and nourish the bud, through the drop being caught in the hollow whence the leaf springs. and the second advantage is that as these buds shoot in the following year, one will not be covered by the other, since the five shoots spring on five different sides. [sidenote: from known to unknown] . in order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind. [sidenote: on the flight of birds] . the reason of this is that small birds being without down cannot support the intense cold of the high altitudes in which the vultures and eagles or and other great birds, well supplied with down and clothed with many kinds of feathers, [fly]. again, the small birds, having delicate and thin wings, support themselves in the low air, which is denser, and they could not bear up in the rarer air, which affords slighter resistance. [sidenote: on the structure of wings] . the shafts formed in the shoulders of the wings of birds have been so devised by ingenious nature { } as to occasion a convenient pliancy in the direct impetus which often occurs in the swift flight of birds, since she found it more practical to bend a small part of the wing in the direct flight than the whole of it. [sidenote: on a fossil fish] . o time! swift devourer of all created things! how many kings, how many nations, thou hast overthrown, how great changes of kingdoms and diverse vicissitudes have succeeded one another, since the marvellous body of this fish, which perished in the caverns and intricate recesses [of the mountain]. now undone by time, thou liest patient in this confined spot; with thy fleshless and bare bones thou hast built the framework and the support of the mountain that is above thee. [sidenote: we live by others' death] . unconscious life remains in what is dead, which when reunited to the stomach of living men, reacquires sentient and conscious life. [sidenote: against doctors] . men are chosen to be physicians in order to minister to diseases of which they are ignorant. . every man wishes to amass money in order to give it to the physicians who are the destroyers of life; they ought therefore to be rich. { } . take pains to preserve thy health; and thou wilt all the more easily do this if thou avoidest physicians, because their drugs are a kind of alchemy, and there are as many books on this subject as there are on medicine. . oh! meditators on perpetual motion, how many vain projects of similar character you have devised! go and join the seekers of gold. [sidenote: against the seekers of perpetual motion] . the water which flows in a river moves either because it is summoned or driven, or because it moves of its own accord. if it is summoned,--and i mean sought after,--who is the seeker? if it is driven, who is the driver? if it moves of its own accord, it gives evidence of reasoning; and reasoning in bodies which continually change their shape is impossible, because in such bodies there is no consciousness. [sidenote: against occult sciences] . i wish to work miracles. i may have less than other and less energetic men; and those who wish to grow rich in a day live a long time in great poverty, as happens, and will always happen, to alchemists, who seek to make gold and silver, and to the engineers who wish from still { } water to obtain life and perpetual motion, and to the supreme fool,--the necromancer and the magician. [sidenote: of astrology] . there is no part of astronomy which does not depend on the visual lines and on perspective, the daughter of painting; because the painter is he who by the necessity of his art has begotten perspective, and it is impossible to do without lines which include all the various figures of the bodies begotten by nature and without which the art of geometry is blind. and while the geometrist reduces every surface surrounded by lines to a square, and each body to the figure of the cube, and mathematics do the same with their cube roots and square roots, these two sciences deal only with the continuous and discontinuous quantity, but they do not deal with the quality which constitutes the beauty of the works of nature and the ornament of the world. . here the adversary will say that he does not want so much knowledge, and the mere skill of depicting nature will suffice him. to which i make reply that there is no greater error than to trust to our judgement without other reasoning, as experience, the enemy of alchemists, necromancers and other foolish intellects, has in all times proved. { } [sidenote: against alchemists] . the lying interpreters of nature affirm that quicksilver is the common seed of all metals. they do not bear in mind that nature raises substances according to the diversity of things which she wishes to produce in the world. [sidenote: against necromancy] . the belief in necromancy is reputed to be the most foolish of all human opinions. it is the sister of alchemy which gives birth to simple and natural things; but it is all the more reprehensible than alchemy, inasmuch as it brings forth nothing but what is like itself, that is, lies. this is not the case with alchemy, which is confined to the simple products of nature, and whose function cannot be performed by nature herself, because in it there are no organic instruments with which it can work, such as the hands are to man and which have enabled him to make glass, &c. but necromancy, the flag and flying banner, blown hither and thither by the winds, is the guide of the silly multitude, which constantly bears witness with gaping wonder to the countless effects of this art; and whole books are written which declare that incantations and spirits are efficacious and speak without tongues and without vocal organs, without which it is impossible to speak, and carry the heaviest weights, raising tempests and rain and { } transforming men into cats, wolves and other beasts, although they who affirm such things are the first to be transformed into beasts. and certainly if such necromancy existed, as is believed by lower intellects, there is nothing on the earth which would be so effectual both as regards the service and detriment of man; because if it is true that this art has the power to disturb the calm serenity of the atmosphere, changing it into night and producing sparks and winds, with fearful thunder and lightnings that fly through the darkness, and overthrowing high buildings with violent winds and uprooting forests and striking armies and shattering and overwhelming them, and producing, in addition to this, devastating storms which rob the peasants of the fruits of their toil, what kind of warfare is there so deadly to the enemy? who in naval warfare can be compared with him who commands the winds and generates storms which ruin and sink any fleet whatsoever? certainly he who could dispose of such violent forces would be the lord of nations, and no human skill could resist his deadly power. the hidden treasures and gems concealed in the body of the earth would be manifest unto him. he would let himself be borne through the air from the east to the west, and through all the opposed regions of the universe. but why should i proceed further? what thing is there which could not be effected by such an art? nothing, save { } the discovery of immortality. and if it is true, why has it not remained among men who so greatly desired it, and led them to disregard any deity? and i know that there are many who to satisfy a whim would destroy god and the universe. and if necromancy has not remained with man in spite of its being so necessary to him it can never have existed, nor will it ever exist according to the definition of the spirit which is invisible in the body, for in the elements there are no incorporate things, for where there is no body there is a vacuum, and a vacuum cannot exist in the elements because it would be immediately filled by them. [sidenote: deceptiveness of the senses] . the eye in its given distances and by its given means deceives itself in the performance of its functions less than any other sense, because it sees in straight lines which form a cone, the base of which is the object it perceives, and transmits it to the eye, as i intend to prove. but the ear greatly deceives itself as to the position and distance of the objects it apprehends, because the sonorous waves do not reach it in straight lines, like those of the eye, but by tortuous and reflex lines, and often the most remote seem to be nearest, owing to the peregrinations of such waves, although the voice of the echo is transmitted to the sense by straight lines only. the smell is less certain of the spot whence the odour arises, but { } taste and touch alone come into direct contact with the object which they apprehend. [sidenote: on the conception of nothingness] . the smallest natural point is larger than all mathematical points, and the proof of this is that the natural point has continuity, and everything which has continuity is infinitely divisible; but the mathematical point is indivisible because it is not a quantity. every continuous quantity is mentally infinitely divisible. among the magnitude of things which are among us, the chief of all is nothingness; and its function extends to matter that does not exist, and its essence is in time in the past or in the future, and it has nothing of the present. this nothingness has its part equal to the whole and the whole to the part, and the divisible to the indivisible, and produces the same result by addition or subtraction, or if it be divided or multiplied,--as is proved by arithmeticians by their tenth character, which represents nothing. and its power does not extend to the things of nature. that which is called nothingness is found only in time and in words: in time it is found in the past and future, and not in the present; and thus in words among things which are said to be nonexistent or impossible. in time nothingness dwells in the past and the future, and not at all in the present, and in nature it resides among the things { } which are impossible. whence from that which has been said, it has no being, because where there is nothingness there would be a vacuum. [sidenote: on spirits] . with regard to this matter, we have said on the previous page that the definition of a spirit is a power united with a body, because it cannot move of its own accord nor acquire any kind of motion. and if you say that it moves itself, this cannot be within the elements, because if the spirit is an incorporate quantity this quantity is a vacuum and the vacuum does not exist in nature, and if it did exist it would be immediately filled by the rushing in of the element in which the vacuum was formed. so according to the definition of weight which runs: "gravity is an accidental power created by one element attracted to or suspended in another," it follows that no element, weighing nothing in its own element, can have weight in the element which is above it and lighter than it; for instance, no one part of water has no more gravity or lightness than any other part, but if you were to draw it up into the air, it would acquire weight, and this weight cannot sustain itself by itself; and it must therefore inevitably fall, and thus wherever there is a vacuum in water it will fall in. the same thing would happen with a spirit among the elements where it would continuously generate a vacuum { } in whatever element it might find itself, for which reason it is inevitable that it would move in a constant flight to the sky until it had quitted these elements. [sidenote: has the spirit a body?] . we have proved that a spirit cannot exist in the elements without a body, nor move of itself by voluntary motion unless it be to rise upwards. but now we will say that if such a spirit took a body made of air it would inevitably melt into air, because if it remained united it would be separated and fall and form a vacuum, as we have described above. therefore if it desired to remain in the air it is necessary that it should blend with a quantity of air, and if it were united with the air, two difficulties arise: that is, that it will rarefy that portion of air with which it is mingled, and this rarefied air will fly upwards and will not remain in the air which is heavier than itself; and besides this the ethereal spiritual essence is disunited, and its nature is changed, for which reason that nature loses some of its first virtue. there is in addition to these a third difficulty, and this is that a body of this kind, made of air and assumed by the spirits, is exposed to the penetrating winds which continually sunder and scatter the united portions of the air, eddying and whirling amidst the rest of the atmosphere; therefore the spirit who would pervade { } this air would be dismembered or rent and broken up with the rending of the air of which it formed part. . it is impossible that the spirit, incorporated with a certain quantity of air, should move this air; and this is proved by the passage where it is said that "the spirit rarefies that portion of the air with which it is mingled." this air therefore will rise high above the other air, and the air will be set in motion by its own lightness and not by the volition of the spirit, and if this air encounters a wind, the air will be moved by the wind and not by the spirit which is incorporated in it. [sidenote: can the spirit speak?] . in order to show whether the spirit can speak or not it is first necessary to define the voice and the manner of its origin. the following will be our definition: the voice is the movement of air in friction against a dense body, or a dense body in friction against the air (which is the same idea), and by this friction of the dense and the rare what is rare is condensed, and resistance is caused; and again, when the rare in swift motion and the rare in slow motion come into contact, they condense one another and produce sound, and a great noise is made. the sound or murmur made by the rare moving through the rare { } with slow motion is like the great flame whence sounds issue in the air; the exceedingly great noise made by the rare, when the air which is rare and swift mingles with that which is rare and in [slow] motion, is like the flame of fire issuing from a great gun and striking against the air; likewise the flame when it issues from a cloud strikes the air as it begets the thunderbolt. therefore we will say that the spirit cannot produce a voice unless the air be set in motion, but since there is no air within, it cannot discharge what it does not possess; and if it wishes to move that air in which it is incorporated, it is necessary that the spirit should multiply itself; but that which has no quantity cannot be multiplied. in the fourth place it is said, that no rare body can move if it has not a stable spot whence it may take its motion, and more especially is this the case when an element must move in its own element, which does not move of itself, excepting by uniform evaporation at the centre of the thing evaporated; as occurs in the case of the sponge squeezed in the hand under water, whence the water escapes in every direction with equal motion through the spaces between the fingers of the hand which squeezes it. as to whether the spirit has an articulate voice and can be heard, and as to what are hearing and sight--the wave of the voice travels through the air as the images of objects travel to the eye. { } . o mathematicians, clear up this error! the spirit cannot have a voice, for where there is a voice there is a body, and where there is a body there is occupation of space, which prevents the eye seeing what is behind that space; therefore a body fills all the surrounding air, that is to say, with its own image. . there can be no voice where there is no motion or percussion of the air, there can be no percussion of the air where there is no instrument, there can be no such thing as an immaterial instrument; and this being so, a spirit can have neither voice, nor shape, nor force; and if it assumes a shape it can neither penetrate nor enter where the issues are closed. if any one were to say that a spirit may take bodies of various shapes by means of concentrated and compressed air, and by means of this instrument speak and move with force--i reply to this argument that where there are no nerves or bones, no force can be expended in any movement made by these imaginary spirits. { } bibliographical note and table of references bibliographical note * * * only of late years have the manuscripts of leonardo da vinci seen the light and the many difficulties been overcome which long proved an obstacle to their publication. the labour of editing, deciphering and translating his many scattered and fragmentary codices was beyond the efforts of any single man. the gratitude of the cultivated world is therefore due to those who, like j. p. richter, c. kavaisson-mollien, luca beltrami, piumati, sabachnikoff, and, last but not least, the scholars of the academia del lincei, have so faithfully devoted themselves to this task, which alone has made possible the present little work. it was unavoidable that the form in which these manuscripts have been published should practically restrict their possession to the great libraries. but an excellent volume of selections from the writings of leonardo, which are found in so haphazard a manner scattered through his codices and intermingled with his drawings and diagrams, has been published in italy (leonardo da vinci: frammenti letterari e storici, florence, ). by kind permission of its editor, dr. solmi, this has served as a basis for the text of the present translation. the references, however, have { } been verified with the complete editions of leonardo's works, while a different arrangement has been made of the text. l. e. [sidenote: table of references] table of references [a] les manuscrits de léonard de vinci. le manuscrit a de la bibliothèque de l'institut. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. i. paris, . [ash i] les manuscrits de léonard de vinci. les manuscrits h de la bibliothèque de l'institut; (ash i) et (ash ii) de la bibliotheque nationale. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. vi. paris, . [ash ii] idem. [b] les manuscrits de léonard de vinci. les manuscrits b et d de la bibliothèque de l'institut. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. ii. paris, . [c] les manuscrits de leonard de vinci. les manuscrits c, e et k de la bibliothèque de l'institut. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. iii. paris, . [c a] il codice atlantico di léonardo da vinci nella biblioteca ambrosiana di milano. rome; milan, . (still in course of publication.) [d] see b. [e] see c. [f] les manuscrits de léonard de vinci. les manuscrits f et i de la bibliothèque de l'institut. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. iv. paris, . { } [g] les manuscrits de léonard de vinci. les manuscrits g, l et m de la bibliothèque de l'institut. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. v. paris, . [h] see ash i. [i] see f. [l] see g. [lu] léonardo da vinci: das buch vom malerei. herausgegeben v. h. ludwig. vols. berlin, . [m] see g. [r] the literary works of leonardo da vinci. compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by j. p. richter. vols. london, . [s] leonardo da vinci: frammenti letterari e filosofici. trasceiti dal dr. edmondo solmi. florence, . [t] il codice di léonardo da vinci nella biblioteca del principe trivulzio. edit. l. beltrami. milan, . [v u] leonardo da vinci. il codice del volo degli uccelli ed altre materie. edit. sabachnikoff e piumati. paris, . [sidenote: on life] thoughts on life page. no. reference. page. no. reference. r ca r r lu r r { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. s r c a r lu c a v lu c a r s s b v r f v s c a r t v s c a r s l lu g r s c a v l s l r s r r ll i r m v s v u r r s c a v c a r s c a r s c a r ash ii r c a r c a r c a r t r f v g v s s r s c a r s c a r h v c a r s t v f v { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. s c a v r c a r r c a v r s r t r c a r t r c a v t r r c a r lu lu t v r s r r s r t s l t v c a r c v r g r lu s s h passim h r ll s h r h v s s l c a r r s r h v r l s s t v s t v s ash i v c v c a r r { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. s r r s lu s lu [sidenote: on art] thoughts on art c a v lu s lu lu lu lu lu lu s lu lu lu lu ash ii v s lu ash ii r lu ash ii r lu ash ii r v lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu s lu s lu lu r lu lu lu ash ii v lu lu { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. r lu r s lu s ash ii v s lu s i v lu c a v lu c a v a r g v k v ash ii v s c a v lu , s r s lu s ash i v s ash i r g r v ash i v r s l ash ii r ash ii v ash ii r s ash ii r s ash ii r s ash ii v s lu s s s [sidenote: on science] thoughts on science lu r r r { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. r f r g v f r t r f v lu g r lu f v e v s r s k r s i r, v s a r s s r l t v s t v s h r s e r s i r s r s f r s s c a r s l h r b r h r s s c v f v a r r s r c v h r r r s r s f v { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. g v s k e r s c a v s e v c a v s e v s s s m r s r s c a v r t r k v i r d r lu f v s c a v s h v r f v s f v ash iii v s s c a v r v u v r r c a v s s c a r b v c a r of this volume translated by maurice baring and edited by lewis einstein with types & decorations by herbert p. horne ccciii copies were printed optimum vix satis by d. b. updike at the merrymount press boston massachusetts in the month of september mcm vi transcriber's notes: a few typographical errors have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text. chapter headings were originally constructed as side-notes. they were placed here at the head of their respective paragraphs, and moved to paragraph's start where given at paragraph's middle. see html version for the original headers placement. [illustration: landscape from a painting by j. m. w. turner] library edition the complete works of john ruskin modern painters volume ii--of truth and theoretic faculties _volume iii_--of many things national library association new york chicago modern painters. volume ii., containing part iii., sections i. and ii. of the imaginative and theoretic faculties. synopsis of contents. part iii. of ideas of beauty. section i. of the theoretic faculty. chapter i.--of the rank and relations of the theoretic faculty. page § . with what care the subject is to be approached. § . and of what importance considered. § . the doubtful force of the term "utility". § . its proper sense. § . how falsely applied in these times. § . the evil consequences of such interpretation. how connected with national power. § . how to be averted. § . division of the pursuits of men into subservient and objective. § . their relative dignities. § . how reversed through erring notions of the contemplative and imaginative faculties. § . object of the present section. chapter ii.--of the theoretic faculty as concerned with pleasures of sense. § . explanation of the term "theoretic". § . of the differences of rank in pleasures of sense. § . use of the terms temperate and intemperate. § . right use of the term "intemperate". § . grounds of inferiority in the pleasures which are subjects of intemperance. § . evidence of higher rank in pleasures of sight and hearing. § . how the lower pleasures may be elevated in rank. § . ideas of beauty how essentially moral. § . how degraded by heartless reception. § . how exalted by affection. chapter iii.--of accuracy and inaccuracy in impressions of sense. § . by what test is the health of the perceptive faculty to be determined? § . and in what sense may the terms right and wrong be attached to its conclusions? § . what power we have over impressions of sense. § . depends on acuteness of attention. § . ultimate conclusions universal. § . what duty is attached to this power over impressions of sense. § . how rewarded. § . especially with respect to ideas of beauty. § . errors induced by the power of habit. § . the necessity of submission in early stages of judgment. § . the large scope of matured judgment. § . how distinguishable from false taste. § . the danger of a spirit of choice. § . and criminality. § . how certain conclusions respecting beauty are by reason demonstrable. § . with what liabilities to error. § . the term "beauty" how limitable in the outset. divided into typical and vital. chapter iv.--of false opinions held concerning beauty. § . of the false opinion that truth is beauty, and vice versa. § . of the false opinion that beauty is usefulness. compare chap. xii. § . § . of the false opinion that beauty results from custom. compare chap. vi. § . § . the twofold operation of custom. it deadens sensation, but confirms affection. § . but never either creates or destroys the essence of beauty. § . instances. § . of the false opinion that beauty depends on the association of ideas. § . association. is, st, rational. it is of no efficiency as a cause of beauty. § . association accidental. the extent of its influence. § . the dignity of its function. § . how it is connected with impressions of beauty. § . and what caution it renders necessary in the examination of them. chapter v.--of typical beauty:--first, of infinity, or the type of divine incomprehensibility. § . impossibility of adequately treating the subject. § . with what simplicity of feeling to be approached. § . the child instinct respecting space. § . continued in after life. § . whereto this instinct is traceable. § . infinity how necessary in art. § . conditions of its necessity. § . and connected analogies. § . how the dignity of treatment is proportioned to the expression of infinity. § . examples among the southern schools. § . among the venetians. § . among the painters of landscape. § . other modes in which the power of infinity is felt. § . the beauty of curvature. § . how constant in external nature. § . the beauty of gradation. § . how found in nature. § . how necessary in art. § . infinity not rightly implied by vastness. chapter vi.--of unity, or the type of the divine comprehensiveness. § . the general conception of divine unity. § . the glory of all things is their unity. § . the several kinds of unity. subjectional. original. of sequence, and of membership. § unity of membership. how secured. § . variety. why required. § . change, and its influence on beauty. § . the love of change. how morbid and evil. § . the conducing of variety towards unity of subjection. § . and towards unity of sequence. § . the nature of proportion. st, of apparent proportion. § . the value of apparent proportion in curvature. § . how by nature obtained. § . apparent proportion in melodies of line. § . error of burke in this matter. § . constructive proportion. its influence in plants. § . and animals. § . summary. chapter vii.--of repose, or the type of divine permanence. § . universal feeling respecting the necessity of repose in art. its sources. § . repose how expressed in matter. § . the necessity to repose of an implied energy. § . mental repose, how noble. § . its universal value as a test of art. § . instances in the laocoon and theseus. § . and in altar tombs. chapter viii.--of symmetry, or the type of divine justice. § . symmetry, what and how found in organic nature. § . how necessary in art. § . to what its agreeableness is referable. various instances. § . especially in religious art. chapter ix.--of purity, or the type of divine energy. § . the influence of light as a sacred symbol. § . the idea of purity connected with it. § . originally derived from conditions of matter. § . associated ideas adding to the power of the impression. influence of clearness. § . perfect beauty of surface, in what consisting. § . purity only metaphorically a type of sinlessness. § . energy, how expressed by purity of matter. § . and of color. § . spirituality, how so expressed. chapter x.--of moderation, or the type of government by law. § . meaning of the terms chasteness and refinement. § . how referable to temporary fashions. § . how to the perception of completion. § . finish, by great masters esteemed essential. § . moderation, its nature and value. § . it is the girdle of beauty. § . how found in natural curves and colors. § . how difficult of attainment, yet essential to all good. chapter xi.--general inferences respecting typical beauty. § . the subject incompletely treated, yet admitting of general conclusions. § . typical beauty not created for man's sake. § . but degrees of it for his sake admitted. § . what encouragement hence to be received. chapter xii.--of vital beauty:--first, as relative. § . transition from typical to vital beauty. § . the perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with vital beauty, is charity. § . only with respect to plants, less affection than sympathy. § . which is proportioned to the appearance of energy in the plants. § . this sympathy is unselfish, and does not regard utility. § . especially with respect to animals. § . and it is destroyed by evidences of mechanism. § . the second perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with life is justice of moral judgment. § . how impeded. § . the influence of moral signs in expression. § . as also in plants. § . recapitulation. chapter xiii.--of vital beauty:--secondly, as generic. § . the beauty of fulfilment of appointed function in every animal. § . the two senses of the word "ideal." either it refers to action of the imagination. § . or to perfection of type. § . this last sense how inaccurate, yet to be retained. § . of ideal form. first, in the lower animals. § . in what consistent. § . ideal form in vegetables. § . the difference of position between plants and animals. § . admits of variety in the ideal of the former. § . ideal form in vegetables destroyed by cultivation. § . instance in the soldanella and ranunculus. § . the beauty of repose and felicity, how consistent with such ideal. § . the ideality of art. § . how connected with the imaginative faculties. § . ideality, how belonging to ages and conditions. chapter xiv.--of vital beauty:--thirdly, in man. § . condition of the human creature entirely different from that of the lower animals. § . what room here for idealization. § . how the conception of the bodily ideal is reached. § . modifications of the bodily ideal owing to influence of mind. first, of intellect. § . secondly, of the moral feelings. § . what beauty is bestowed by them. § . how the soul culture interferes harmfully with the bodily ideal. § . the inconsistency among the effects of the mental virtues on the form. § . is a sign of god's kind purpose towards the race. § . consequent separation and difference of ideals. § . the _effects_ of the adamite curse are to be distinguished from signs of its immediate activity. § . which latter only are to be banished from ideal form. § . ideal form is only to be obtained by portraiture. § . instances among the greater of the ideal masters. § . evil results of opposite practice in modern times. § . the right use of the model. § . ideal form to be reached only by love. § . practical principles deducible. § . expressions chiefly destructive of ideal character. st, pride. § . portraiture ancient and modern. § . secondly, sensuality. § . how connected with impurity of color. § . and prevented by its splendor. § . or by severity of drawing. § . degrees of descent in this respect: rubens, correggio, and guido. § . and modern art. § . thirdly, ferocity and fear. the latter how to be distinguished from awe. § . holy fear, how distinct from human terror. § . ferocity is joined always with fear. its unpardonableness. § . such expressions how sought by painters powerless and impious. § . of passion generally. § . it is never to be for itself exhibited--at least on the face. § . recapitulation. chapter xv.--general conclusions respecting the theoretic faculty. § . there are no sources of the emotion of beauty more than those found in things visible. § . what imperfection exists in visible things. how in a sort by imagination removable. § . which however affects not our present conclusions. § . the four sources from which the pleasure of beauty is derived are all divine. § . what objections may be made to this conclusion. § . typical beauty may be æsthetically pursued. instances. § . how interrupted by false feeling. § . greatness and truth are sometimes by the deity sustained and spoken in and through evil men. § . the second objection arising from the coldness of christian men to external beauty. § . reasons for this coldness in the anxieties of the world. these anxieties overwrought and criminal. § . evil consequences of such coldness. § . theoria the service of heaven. section ii. of the imaginative faculty. chapter i.--of the three forms of imagination. § . a partial examination only of the imagination is to be attempted. § . the works of the metaphysicians how nugatory with respect to this faculty. § . the definition of d. stewart, how inadequate. § . this instance nugatory. § . various instances. § . the three operations of the imagination. penetrative, associative, contemplative. chapter ii.--of imagination associative. § . of simple conception. § . how connected with verbal knowledge. § . how used in composition. § . characteristics of composition. § . what powers are implied by it. the first of the three functions of fancy. § . imagination not yet manifested. § . imagination is the correlative conception of imperfect component parts. § . material analogy with imagination. § . the grasp and dignity of imagination. § . its limits. § . how manifested in treatment of uncertain relations. its deficiency illustrated. § . laws of art, the safeguard of the unimaginative. § . are by the imaginative painter despised. tests of imagination. § . the monotony of unimaginative treatment. § . imagination never repeats itself. § . relation of the imaginative faculty to the theoretic. § . modification of its manifestation. § . instances of absence of imagination.--claude, gaspar poussin. § . its presence.--salvator, nicolo poussin, titian, tintoret. § . and turner. § . the due function of associative imagination with respect to nature. § . the sign of imaginative work is its appearance of absolute truth. chapter iii.--of imagination penetrative. § . imagination penetrative is concerned not with the combining but apprehending of things. § . milton's and dante's description of flame. § . the imagination seizes always by the innermost point. § . it acts intuitively and without reasoning. § . signs of it in language. § . absence of imagination, how shown. § . distinction between imagination and fancy. § . fancy how involved with imagination. § . fancy is never serious. § . want of seriousness the bar to high art at the present time. § . imagination is quiet; fancy, restless. § . the detailing operation of fancy. § . and suggestive, of the imagination. § . this suggestiveness how opposed to vacancy. § . imagination addresses itself to imagination. instances from the works of tintoret. § . the entombment. § . the annunciation. § . the baptism of christ. its treatment by various painters. § . by tintoret. § . the crucifixion. § . the massacre of innocents. § . various works in the scuola di san rocco. § . the last judgment. how treated by various painters. § . by tintoret. § . the imaginative verity, how distinguished from realism. § . the imagination how manifested in sculpture. § . bandinelli, canova, mino da fiesole. § . michael angelo. § . recapitulation. the perfect function of the imagination is the intuitive perception of ultimate truth. § . imagination how vulgarly understood. § . how its cultivation is dependent on the moral feelings. § . on independence of mind. § . and on habitual reference to nature. chapter iv.--of imagination contemplative. § . imagination contemplative is not part of the essence, but only a habit or mode of the faculty. § . the ambiguity of conception. § . is not in itself capable of adding to the charm of fair things. § . but gives to the imagination its regardant power over them. § . the third office of fancy distinguished from imagination contemplative. § . various instances. § . morbid or nervous fancy. § . the action of contemplative imagination is not to be expressed by art. § . except under narrow limits.-- st. abstract rendering of form without color. § . of color without form. § . or of both without texture. § . abstraction or typical representation of animal form. § . either when it is symbolically used. § . or in architectural decoration. § . exception in delicate and superimposed ornament. § . abstraction necessary from imperfection of materials. § . abstractions of things capable of varied accident are not imaginative. § . yet sometimes valuable. § . exaggeration. its laws and limits. first, in scale of representation. § . secondly, of things capable of variety of scale. § . thirdly, necessary in expression of characteristic features on diminished scale. § . recapitulation. chapter v.--of the superhuman ideal. § . the subject is not to be here treated in detail. § . the conceivable modes of manifestation of spiritual beings are four. § . and these are in or through creature forms familiar to us. § . supernatural character may be impressed on these either by phenomena inconsistent with their common nature (compare chap. iv. § ). § . or by inherent dignity. § . st. of the expression of inspiration. § . no representation of that which is more than creature is possible. § . supernatural character expressed by modification of accessories. § . landscape of the religious painters. its character is eminently symmetrical. § . landscape of benozzo gozzoli. § . landscape of perugino and raffaelle. § . such landscape is not to be imitated. § . color, and decoration. their use in representations of the supernatural. § . decoration so used must be generic. § . and color pure. § . ideal form of the body itself, of what variety susceptible. § . anatomical development how far admissible. § . symmetry. how valuable. § . the influence of greek art, how dangerous. § . its scope, how limited. § . conclusion. addenda. list of plates to volume ii. _page._ court of the ducal palace, venice from a drawing by ruskin. tomb of the ilaria di caretto, lucca from a photograph. the adoration of the magi from a painting by ruskin, after tintoret. study of stone pine, at sestri from a drawing by ruskin. part iii. of ideas of beauty. section i. of the theoretic faculty. chapter i. of the rank and relations of the theoretic faculty. § . with what care the subject is to be approached. although the hasty execution and controversial tone of the former portions of this essay have been subjects of frequent regret to the writer, yet the one was in some measure excusable in a work referred to a temporary end, and the other unavoidable, in one directed against particular opinions. nor are either of any necessary detriment to its availableness as a foundation for more careful and extended survey, in so far as its province was confined to the assertion of obvious and visible facts, the verification of which could in no degree be dependent either on the care with which they might be classed, or the temper in which they were regarded. not so with respect to the investigation now before us, which, being not of things outward, and sensibly demonstrable, but of the value and meaning of mental impressions, must be entered upon with a modesty and cautiousness proportioned to the difficulty of determining the likeness, or community of such impressions, as they are received by different men, and with seriousness proportioned to the importance of rightly regarding those faculties over which we have moral power, and therefore in relation to which we assuredly incur a moral responsibility. there is not the thing left to the choice of man to do or not to do, but there is some sort of degree of duty involved in his determination; and by how much the more, therefore, our subject becomes embarrassed by the cross influences of variously admitted passion, administered discipline, or encouraged affection, upon the minds of men, by so much the more it becomes matter of weight and import to observe by what laws we should be guided, and of what responsibilities regardful, in all that we admit, administer, or encourage. § . and of what importance considered. nor indeed have i ever, even in the preceding sections, spoken with levity, though sometimes perhaps with rashness. i have never treated the subject as other than demanding heedful and serious examination, and taking high place among those which justify as they reward our utmost ardor and earnestness of pursuit. that it justifies them must be my present task to prove; that it demands them has never been doubted. art, properly so called, is no recreation; it cannot be learned at spare moments, nor pursued when we have nothing better to do. it is no handiwork for drawing-room tables; no relief of the ennui of boudoirs; it must be understood and undertaken seriously or not at all. to advance it men's lives must be given, and to receive it their hearts. "le peintre rubens s'amuse à être ambassadeur," said one with whom, but for his own words, we might have thought that effort had been absorbed in power, and the labor of his art in its felicity.--"e faticoso lo studio della pittura, et sempre si fa il mare maggiore," said he, who of all men was least likely to have left us discouraging report of anything that majesty of intellect could grasp, or continuity of labor overcome.[ ] but that this labor, the necessity of which in all ages has been most frankly admitted by the greatest men, is justifiable in a moral point of view, that it is not the pouring out of men's lives upon the ground, that it has functions of usefulness addressed to the weightiest of human interests, and that the objects of it have calls upon us which it is inconsistent alike with our human dignity and our heavenward duty to disobey--has never been boldly asserted nor fairly admitted; least of all is it likely to be so in these days of dispatch and display, where vanity, on the one side, supplies the place of that love of art which is the only effective patronage, and on the other, of the incorruptible and earnest pride which no applause, no reprobation, can blind to its shortcomings nor beguile of its hope. and yet it is in the expectation of obtaining at least a partial acknowledgment of this, as a truth influential both of aim and conduct, that i enter upon the second division of my subject. the time i have already devoted to the task i should have considered altogether inordinate, and that which i fear may be yet required for its completion would have been cause to me of utter discouragement, but that the object i propose to myself is of no partial nor accidental importance. it is not now to distinguish between disputed degrees of ability in individuals, or agreeableness in canvases, it is not now to expose the ignorance or defend the principles of party or person. it is to summon the moral energies of the nation to a forgotten duty, to display the use, force, and function of a great body of neglected sympathies and desires, and to elevate to its healthy and beneficial operation that art which, being altogether addressed to them, rises or falls with their variableness of vigor,--now leading them with tyrtæan fire, now singing them to sleep with baby murmurings. § . the doubtful force of the term "utility." only as i fear that with many of us the recommendation of our own favorite pursuits is rooted more in conceit of ourselves, than affection towards others, so that sometimes in our very pointing of the way, we had rather that the intricacy of it should be admired than unfolded, whence a natural distrust of such recommendation may well have place in the minds of those who have not yet perceived any value in the thing praised, and because also, men in the present century understand the word useful in a strange way, or at least (for the word has been often so accepted from the beginning of time) since in these days, they act its more limited meaning farther out, and give to it more practical weight and authority, it will be well in the outset that i define exactly what kind of utility i mean to attribute to art, and especially to that branch of it which is concerned with those impressions of external beauty whose nature it is our present object to discover. § . its proper sense. that is to everything created, pre-eminently useful, which enables it rightly and fully to perform the functions appointed to it by its creator. therefore, that we may determine what is chiefly useful to man, it is necessary first to determine the use of man himself. man's use and function (and let him who will not grant me this follow me no farther, for this i purpose always to assume) is to be the witness of the glory of god, and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience and resultant happiness. whatever enables us to fulfil this function, is in the pure and first sense of the word useful to us. pre-eminently therefore whatever sets the glory of god more brightly before us. but things that only help us to exist, are in a secondary and mean sense, useful, or rather, if they be looked for alone, they are useless and worse, for it would be better that we should not exist, than that we should guiltily disappoint the purposes of existence. § . how falsely applied in these times. and yet people speak in this working age, when they speak from their hearts, as if houses, and lands, and food, and raiment were alone useful, and as if sight, thought, and admiration,[ ] were all profitless, so that men insolently call themselves utilitarians, who would turn, if they had their way, themselves and their race into vegetables; men who think, as far as such can be said to think, that the meat is more than the life, and the raiment than the body, who look to the earth as a stable, and to its fruit as fodder; vinedressers and husbandmen, who love the corn they grind, and the grapes they crush, better than the gardens of the angels upon the slopes of eden; hewers of wood and drawers of water, who think that the wood they hew and the water they draw, are better than the pine-forests that cover the mountains like the shadow of god, and than the great rivers that move like his eternity. and so comes upon us that woe of the preacher, that though god "hath made everything beautiful in his time, also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that god maketh from the beginning to the end." § . the evil consequences of such interpretation. how connected with national power. this nebuchadnezzar curse, that sends us to grass like oxen, seems to follow but too closely on the excess or continuance of national power and peace. in the perplexities of nations, in their struggles for existence, in their infancy, their impotence, or even their disorganization, they have higher hopes and nobler passions. out of the suffering comes the serious mind; out of the salvation, the grateful heart; out of the endurance, the fortitude; out of the deliverance, the faith; but now when they have learned to live under providence of laws, and with decency and justice of regard for each other; and when they have done away with violent and external sources of suffering, worse evils seem arising out of their rest, evils that vex less and mortify more, that suck the blood though they do not shed it, and ossify the heart though they do not torture it. and deep though the causes of thankfulness must be to every people at peace with others and at unity in itself, there are causes of fear also, a fear greater than of sword and sedition; that dependence on god may be forgotten because the bread is given and the water is sure, that gratitude to him may cease because his constancy of protection has taken the semblance of a natural law, that heavenly hope may grow faint amidst the full fruition of the world, that selfishness may take place of undemanded devotion, compassion be lost in vain-glory, and love in dissimulation,[ ] that enervation may succeed to strength, apathy to patience, and the noise of jesting words and foulness of dark thoughts, to the earnest purity of the girded loins and the burning lamp. about the river of human life there is a wintry wind, though a heavenly sunshine; the iris colors its agitation, the frost fixes upon its repose. let us beware that our rest become not the rest of stones, which so long as they are torrent-tossed, and thunder-stricken, maintain their majesty, but when the stream is silent, and the storm passed, suffer the grass to cover them and the lichen to feed on them, and are ploughed down into dust. § . how to be averted. and though i believe that we have salt enough of ardent and holy mind amongst us to keep us in some measure from this moral decay, yet the signs of it must be watched with anxiety, in all matter however trivial, in all directions however distant. and at this time, when the iron roads are tearing up the surface of europe, as grapeshot do the sea, when their great sagene is drawing and twitching the ancient frame and strength of england together, contracting all its various life, its rocky arms and rural heart, into a narrow, finite, calculating metropolis of manufactures, when there is not a monument throughout the cities of europe, that speaks of old years and mighty people, but it is being swept away to build cafés and gaming-houses;[ ] when the honor of god is thought to consist in the poverty of his temple, and the column is shortened, and the pinnacle shattered, the color denied to the casement, and the marble to the altar, while exchequers are exhausted in luxury of boudoirs, and pride of reception-rooms; when we ravage without a pause all the loveliness of creation which god in giving pronounced good, and destroy without a thought all those labors which men have given their lives, and their sons' sons' lives to complete, and have left for a legacy to all their kind, a legacy of more than their hearts' blood, for it is of their souls' travail, there is need, bitter need, to bring back, if we may, into men's minds, that to live is nothing, unless to live be to know him by whom we live, and that he is not to be known by marring his fair works, and blotting out the evidence of his influences upon his creatures, not amid the hurry of crowds and crash of innovation, but in solitary places, and out of the glowing intelligences which he gave to men of old. he did not teach them how to build for glory and for beauty, he did not give them the fearless, faithful, inherited energies that worked on and down from death to death, generation after generation, that we, foul and sensual as we are, might give the carved work of their poured-out spirit to the axe and the hammer; he has not cloven the earth with rivers, that their white wild waves might turn wheels and push paddles, nor turned it up under as it were fire, that it might heat wells and cure diseases; he brings not up his quails by the east wind, only to let them fall in flesh about the camp of men: he has not heaped the rocks of the mountain only for the quarry, nor clothed the grass of the field only for the oven. § . division of the pursuits of men into subservient and objective. all science and all art may be divided into that which is subservient to life, and which is the object of it. as subservient to life, or practical, their results are, in the common sense of the word, useful. as the object of life or theoretic, they are, in the common sense, useless; and yet the step between practical and theoretic science is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apothecary and the chemist; and the step between practical and theoretic art is that between the bricklayer and the architect, between the plumber and the artist, and this is a step allowed on all hands to be from less to greater; so that the so-called useless part of each profession does by the authoritative and right instinct of mankind assume the superior and more noble place, even though books be sometimes written, and that by writers of no ordinary mind, which assume that a chemist is rewarded for the years of toil which have traced the greater part of the combinations of matter to their ultimate atoms, by discovering a cheap way of refining sugar, and date the eminence of the philosopher, whose life has been spent in the investigation of the laws of light, from the time of his inventing an improvement in spectacles. but the common consent of men proves and accepts the proposition, that whatever part of any pursuit ministers to the bodily comforts, and admits of material uses, is ignoble, and whatsoever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble; and that geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron; astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven than in teaching navigation; botany better in displaying structure than in expressing juices; surgery better in investigating organization than in setting limbs; only it is ordained that, for our encouragement, every step we make in the more exalted range of science adds something also to its practical applicabilities; that all the great phenomena of nature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us partly, as it reveals to farther vision the being and the glory of him in whom they rejoice and we live, dispense yet such kind influences and so much of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all inferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single desire as the imperfection of their nature may admit;[ ] that the strong torrents which, in their own gladness fill the hills with hollow thunder and the vales with winding light, have yet their bounden charge of field to feed and barge to bear; that the fierce flames to which the alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for us the metal vein and quickening spring; and that for our incitement, i say not our reward, for knowledge is its own reward, herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, and stars their times. § . their relative dignities. § . how reversed through erring notions of the contemplative and imaginative faculties. it would appear, therefore, that those pursuits which are altogether theoretic, whose results are desirable or admirable in themselves and for their own sake, and in which no farther end to which their productions or discoveries are referred, can interrupt the contemplation of things as they are, by the endeavor to discover of what selfish uses they are capable (and of this order are painting and sculpture), ought to take rank above all pursuits which have any taint in them of subserviency to life, in so far as all such tendency is the sign of less eternal and less holy function.[ ] and such rank these two sublime arts would indeed assume in the minds of nations, and become objects of corresponding efforts, but for two fatal and widespread errors respecting the great faculties of mind concerned in them. the first of these, or the theoretic faculty, is concerned with the moral perception and appreciation of ideas of beauty. and the error respecting it is the considering and calling it æsthetic, degrading it to a mere operation of sense, or perhaps worse, of custom, so that the arts which appeal to it sink into a mere amusement, ministers to morbid sensibilities, ticklers and fanners of the soul's sleep. the second great faculty is the imaginative, which the mind exercises in a certain mode of regarding or combining the ideas it has received from external nature, and the operations of which become in their turn objects of the theoretic faculty to other minds. [illustration: court of the ducal palace, venice. from a drawing by ruskin.] and the error respecting this faculty is, that its function is one of falsehood, that its operation is to exhibit things as they are _not_, and that in so doing it mends the works of god. § . object of the present section. now, as these are the two faculties to which i shall have occasion constantly to refer during that examination of the ideas of beauty and relation on which we are now entering, because it is only as received and treated by these, that those ideas become exalted and profitable, it becomes necessary for me, in the outset, to explain their power and define their sphere, and to vindicate, in the system of our nature, their true place for the intellectual lens and moral retina by which and on which our informing thoughts are concentrated and represented. footnotes [ ] tintoret. (ridolfi. vita.) [ ] we live by admiration, hope, and love. (excursion, book iv.) [ ] rom. xii. . [ ] the extent of ravage among works of art, or of historical interest, continually committing throughout the continent may, perhaps, be in some measure estimated from the following facts, to which the experience of every traveller may add indefinitely: at beauvois--the magnificent old houses supported on columns of workmanship (so far as i recollect) unique in the north of france, at the corner of the market-place, have recently been destroyed for the enlarging of some ironmongery and grocery warehouses. the arch across the street leading to the cathedral has been destroyed also, for what purpose, i know not. at rouen--the last of the characteristic houses on the quay is now disappearing. when i was last there, i witnessed the destruction of the noble gothic portal of the church of st. nicholas, whose position interfered with the courtyard of an hotel; the greater part of the ancient churches are used as smithies, or warehouses for goods. so also at tours (st. julien). one of the most interesting and superb pieces of middle-age domestic architecture in europe, opposite the west front of the cathedral, is occupied as a café, and its lower story concealed by painted wainscotings; representing, if i recollect right, twopenny rolls surrounded by circles of admiring cherubs. at geneva--the wooden projections or loggias which were once the characteristic feature of the city, have been entirely removed within the last ten years. at pisa--the old baptistery is at this present time in process of being "restored," that is, dashed to pieces, and common stone painted black and varnished, substituted for its black marble. in the campo santo, the invaluable frescoes, which might be protected by merely glazing the arcades, are left exposed to wind and weather. while i was there last year i saw a monument put up against the lower part of the wall, to some private person; the bricklayers knocked out a large space of the lower brickwork, with what beneficial effect to the loose and blistered stucco on which the frescoes are painted above, i leave the reader to imagine; inserted the tablet, and then plastered over the marks of the insertion, destroying a portion of the border of one of the paintings. the greater part of giotto's "satan before god," has been destroyed by the recent insertion of one of the beams of the roof. the tomb of antonio puccinello, which was the last actually put up against the frescoes, and which destroyed the terminal subject of the giotto series, bears date . it has been proposed (or at least it is so reported) that the church of la spina should be destroyed in order to widen the quay. at florence--one of its most important and characteristic streets, that in which stands the church of or san michele, has been within the last five years entirely destroyed and rebuilt in the french style; consisting now almost exclusively of shops of bijouterie and parfumerie. owing to this direction of public funds, the fronts of the duomo, santa croce, st. lorenzo, and half the others in florence remain in their original bricks. the old refectory of santa croce, containing an invaluable cenacolo, if not by giotto, at least one of the finest works of his school, is used as a carpet manufactory. in order to see the fresco, i had to get on the top of a loom. the _cenacolo_ (of raffaelle?) recently discovered, i saw when the refectory it adorns was used as a coach-house. the fresco, which gave raffaelle the idea of the christ of the transfiguration, is in an old wood shed at san miniato, concealed behind a heap of faggots. in june, last year, i saw gentile da fabriano's picture of the adoration of the magi, belonging to the academy of florence, put face upmost in a shower of rain in an open cart; on my suggesting the possibility of the rain hurting it, an old piece of matting was thrown over its face, and it was wheeled away "per essere pulita." what fate this signified, is best to be discovered from the large perugino in the academy; whose divine distant landscape is now almost concealed by the mass of french ultramarine, painted over it apparently with a common house brush, by the picture cleaner. not to detain the reader by going through the cities of italy, i will only further mention, that at padua, the rain beats through the west window of the arena chapel, and runs down _over_ the frescoes. that at venice, in september last, i saw three buckets set in the scuola di san rocco to catch the rain which came _through_ the _canvases_ of tintoret on the roof; and that while the old works of art are left thus unprotected, the palaces are being restored in the following modes. the english residents knock out bow windows to see up and down the canal. the italians paint all the _marble_ white or cream color, stucco the fronts, and paint them in blue and white stripes to imitate alabaster. (this has been done with danieli's hotel, with the north angle of the church of st. mark, there replacing the real alabasters which have been torn down, with a noble old house in st. mark's place, and with several in the narrow canals.) the marbles of st. mark's, and carvings, are being _scraped_ down to make them look bright--the lower arcade of the doge's palace is whitewashed--the entrance porch is being restored--the operation having already proceeded so far as the knocking off of the heads of the old statues--an iron railing painted black and yellow has been put round the court. faded tapestries, and lottery tickets (the latter for the benefit of charitable institutions) are exposed for sale in the council chambers. [ ] hooker, eccl. pol. book i. chap. ii. § . [ ] i do not assert that the accidental utility of a theoretic pursuit, as of botany for instance, in any way degrades it, though it cannot be considered as elevating it. but essential utility, a purpose to which the pursuit is in some measure referred, as in architecture, invariably degrades, because then the theoretic part of the art is comparatively lost sight of; and thus architecture takes a level below that of sculpture or painting, even when the powers of mind developed in it are of the same high order. when we pronounce the name of giotto, our venerant thoughts are at assisi and padua, before they climb the campanile of santa maria del fiore. and he who would raise the ghost of michael angelo, must haunt the sistine and st. lorenzo, not st. peter's. chapter ii. of the theoretic faculty as concerned with pleasures of sense. § . explanation of the term "theoretic." i proceed therefore first, to examine the nature of what i have called the theoretic faculty, and to justify my substitution of the term "theoretic" for æsthetic, which is the one commonly employed with reference to it. now the term "æsthesis" properly signifies mere sensual perception of the outward qualities and necessary effects of bodies, in which sense only, if we would arrive at any accurate conclusions on this difficult subject, it should always be used. but i wholly deny that the impressions of beauty are in any way sensual,--they are neither sensual nor intellectual, but moral, and for the faculty receiving them, whose difference from mere perception i shall immediately endeavor to explain, no term can be more accurate or convenient than that employed by the greeks, "theoretic," which i pray permission, therefore, always to use, and to call the operation of the faculty itself, theoria. § . of the differences of rank in pleasures of sense. let us begin at the lowest point, and observe, first, what differences of dignity may exist between different kinds of æsthetic or sensual pleasure, properly so called. now it is evident that the being common to brutes, or peculiar to man, can alone be no rational test of inferiority, or dignity in pleasures. we must not assume that man is the nobler animal, and then deduce the nobleness of his delights; but we must prove the nobleness of the delights, and thence the nobleness of the animal. the dignity of affection is no way lessened because a large measure of it may be found in lower animals, neither is the vileness of gluttony and lust abated because they are common to men. it is clear, therefore, that there is a standard of dignity in the pleasures and passions themselves, by which we also class the creatures capable of, or suffering them. § . use of the terms temperate and intemperate. the first great distinction, we observe, is that noted of aristotle, that men are called temperate and intemperate with regard to some, and not so with respect to others, and that those, with respect to which they are so called, are, by common consent, held to be the vilest. but aristotle, though exquisitely subtle in his notation of facts, does not frequently give us satisfactory account of, or reason for them. content with stating the fact of these pleasures being held the lowest, he shows not why this estimation of them is just, and confuses the reader by observing casually respecting the higher pleasures, what is indeed true, but appears at first opposed to his own position, namely, that "men may be conceived, as also in these taking pleasure, either rightly, or more or less than is right."[ ] which being so, and evident capability of excess or defect existing in pleasures of this higher order, we ought to have been told how it happens that men are not called intemperate when they indulge in excess of this kind, and what is that difference in the nature of the pleasure which diminishes the criminality of its excess. this let us attempt to ascertain. § . right use of the term "intemperate." men are held intemperate ([greek: akolastoi]) only when their desires overcome or prevent the action of their reason, and they are indeed intemperate in the exact degree in which such prevention or interference takes place, and so are actually [greek: akolastoi], in many instances, and with respect to many resolves, which lower not the world's estimation of their temperance. for so long as it can be supposed that the reason has acted imperfectly owing to its own imperfection, or to the imperfection of the premises submitted to it, (as when men give an inordinate preference to their own pursuits, because they cannot, in the nature of things, have sufficiently experienced the goodness and benefit of others,) and so long as it may be presumed that men have referred to reason in what they do, and have not suffered its orders to be disobeyed through mere impulse and desire, (though those orders may be full of error owing to the reason's own feebleness,) so long men are not held intemperate. but when it is palpably evident that the reason cannot have erred but that its voice has been deadened or disobeyed, and that the reasonable creature has been dragged dead round the walls of his own citadel by mere passion and impulse,--then, and then only, men are of all held intemperate. and this is evidently the case with respect to inordinate indulgence in pleasures of touch and taste, for these, being destructive in their continuance not only of all other pleasures, but of the very sensibilities by which they themselves are received, and as this penalty is actually known and experienced by those indulging in them, so that the reason cannot but pronounce right respecting their perilousness, there is no palliation of the wrong choice; and the man, as utterly incapable of will,[ ] is called intemperate, or [greek: akolastos]. it would be well if the reader would for himself follow out this subject, which it would be irrelevant here to pursue farther, observing how a certain degree of intemperance is suspected and attributed to men with respect to higher impulses; as, for instance, in the case of anger, or any other passion criminally indulged, and yet is not so attributed, as in the case of sensual pleasures; because in anger the reason is supposed not to have had time to operate, and to be itself affected by the presence of the passion, which seizes the man involuntarily and before he is aware; whereas, in the case of the sensual pleasures, the act is deliberate, and determined on beforehand, in direct defiance of reason. nevertheless, if no precaution be taken against immoderate anger, and the passions gain upon the man, so as to be evidently wilful and unrestrained, and admitted contrary to all reason, we begin to look upon him as, in the real sense of the word, intemperate, or [greek: akolastos], and assign to him, in consequence, his place among the beasts, as definitely as if he had yielded to the pleasurable temptations of touch or taste. § . grounds of inferiority in the pleasures which are subjects of intemperance. we see, then, that the primal ground of inferiority in these pleasures is that which _proves_ their indulgence to be contrary to reason; namely their destructiveness upon prolongation, and their incapability of co-existing continually with other delights or perfections of the system. and this incapability of continuance directs us to the second cause of their inferiority; namely, that they are given to us as subservient to life, as instruments of our preservation--compelling us to seek the things necessary to our being, and that, therefore, when this their function is fully performed, they ought to have an end; and can be only artificially, and under high penalty, prolonged. but the pleasures of sight and hearing are given as gifts. they answer not any purposes of mere existence, for the distinction of all that is useful or dangerous to us might be made, and often is made, by the eye, without its receiving the slightest pleasure of sight. we might have learned to distinguish fruits and grain from flowers, without having any superior pleasure in the aspect of the latter. and the ear might have learned to distinguish the sounds that communicate ideas, or to recognize intimations of elemental danger without perceiving either music in the voice, or majesty in the thunder. and as these pleasures have no function to perform, so there is no limit to their continuance in the accomplishment of their end, for they are an end in themselves, and so may be perpetual with all of us--being in no way destructive, but rather increasing in exquisiteness by repetition. § . evidence of higher rank in pleasures of sight and hearing. herein, then, we find very sufficient ground for the higher estimation of these delights, first, in their being eternal and inexhaustible, and secondly, in their being evidently no means or instrument of life, but an object of life. now in whatever is an object of life, in whatever may be infinitely and for itself desired, we may be sure there is something of divine, for god will not make anything an object of life to his creatures which does not point to, or partake of, himself. and so, though we were to regard the pleasures of sight merely as the highest of sensual pleasures, and though they were of rare occurrence, and, when occurring, isolated and imperfect, there would still be a supernatural character about them, owing to their permanence and self-sufficiency, where no other sensual pleasures are permanent or self-sufficient. but when, instead of being scattered, interrupted, or chance-distributed, they are gathered together, and so arranged to enhance each other as by chance they could not be, there is caused by them not only a feeling of strong affection towards the object in which they exist, but a perception of purpose and adaptation of it to our desires; a perception, therefore, of the immediate operation of the intelligence which so formed us, and so feeds us. out of which perception arise joy, admiration, and gratitude. now the mere animal consciousness of the pleasantness i call æsthesis; but the exulting, reverent, and grateful perception of it i call theoria. for this, and this only, is the full comprehension and contemplation of the beautiful as a gift of god, a gift not necessary to our being, but added to, and elevating it, and twofold, first of the desire, and secondly of the thing desired. § . how the lower pleasures may be elevated in rank. and that this joyfulness and reverence are a necessary part of theoretic pleasure is very evident when we consider that, by the presence of these feelings, even the lower and more sensual pleasures may be rendered theoretic. thus aristotle has subtly noted, that "we call not men intemperate so much with respect to the scents of roses or herb-perfumes as of ointments and of condiments," (though the reason that he gives for this be futile enough.) for the fact is, that of scents artificially prepared the extreme desire is intemperance, but of natural and god-given scents, which take their part in the harmony and pleasantness of creation, there can hardly be intemperance; not that there is any absolute difference between the two kinds, but that these are likely to be received with gratitude and joyfulness rather than those, so that we despise the seeking of essences and unguents, but not the sowing of violets along our garden banks. but all things may be elevated by affection, as the spikenard of mary, and in the song of solomon, the myrrh upon the handles of the lock, and that of isaac concerning his son. and the general law for all these pleasures is, that when sought in the abstract and ardently, they are foul things, but when received with thankfulness and with reference to god's glory, they become theoretic; and so i can find something divine in the sweetness of wild fruits, as well as in the pleasantness of the pure air, and the tenderness of its natural perfumes that come and go as they list. § . ideas of beauty how essentially moral. it will be understood why i formerly said in the chapter respecting ideas of beauty, that those ideas were the subject of moral and not of intellectual, nor altogether of sensual perception; and why i spoke of the pleasures connected with them as derived from "those material sources which are agreeable to our moral nature in its purity and perfection." for, as it is necessary to the existence of an idea of beauty, that the sensual pleasure which may be its basis, should be accompanied first with joy, then with love of the object, then with the perception of kindness in a superior intelligence, finally with thankfulness and veneration towards that intelligence itself, and as no idea can be at all considered as in any way an idea of beauty, until it be made up of these emotions, any more than we can be said to have an idea of a letter of which we perceive the perfume and the fair writing, without understanding the contents of it, or intent of it; and as these emotions are in no way resultant from, nor obtainable by, any operation of the intellect, it is evident that the sensation of beauty is not sensual on the one hand, nor is it intellectual on the other, but is dependent on a pure, right, and open state of the heart, both for its truth and for its intensity, insomuch that even the right after action of the intellect upon facts of beauty so apprehended, is dependent on the acuteness of the heart feeling about them; and thus the apostolic words come true, in this minor respect as in all others, that men are alienated from the life of god, through the ignorance that is in them, having the understanding darkened because of the hardness of their hearts, and so being past feeling, give themselves up to lasciviousness; for we do indeed see constantly that men having naturally acute perceptions of the beautiful, yet not receiving it with a pure heart, nor into their hearts at all, never comprehend it, nor receive good from it, but make it a mere minister to their desires, and accompaniment and seasoning of lower sensual pleasures, until all their emotions take the same earthly stamp, and the sense of beauty sinks into the servant of lust. § . how degraded by heartless reception. § . how exalted by affection. nor is what the world commonly understands by the cultivation of taste, anything more or better than this, at least in times of corrupt and over-pampered civilization, when men build palaces and plant groves and gather luxuries, that they and their devices may hang in the corners of the world like fine-spun cobwebs, with greedy, puffed-up, spider-like lusts in the middle. and this, which in christian times is the abuse and corruption of the sense of beauty, was in that pagan life of which st. paul speaks, little less than the essence of it, and the best they had; for i know not that of the expressions of affection towards external nature to be found among heathen writers, there are any of which the balance and leading thought cleaves not towards the sensual parts of her. her beneficence they sought, and her power they shunned, her teaching through both, they understood never. the pleasant influences of soft winds and ringing streamlets, and shady coverts; of the violet couch, and plane-tree shade,[ ] they received, perhaps, in a more noble way than we, but they found not anything except fear, upon the bare mountain, or in the ghostly glen. the hybla heather they loved more for its sweet hives than its purple hues. but the christian theoria seeks not, though it accepts, and touches with its own purity, what the epicurean sought, but finds its food and the objects of its love everywhere, in what is harsh and fearful, as well as what is kind, nay, even in all that seems coarse and commonplace; seizing that which is good, and delighting more sometimes at finding its table spread in strange places, and in the presence of its enemies, and its honey coming out of the rock, than if all were harmonized into a less wondrous pleasure; hating only what is self-sighted and insolent of men's work, despising all that is not of god, unless reminding it of god, yet able to find evidence of him still, where all seems forgetful of him, and to turn that into a witness of his working which was meant to obscure it, and so with clear and unoffended sight beholding him forever, according to the written promise,--blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see god. footnotes [ ] [greek: hôs dei, kai kath' hyperbolên kai elleipsin.] [ ] comp. hooker, eccl. pol. book i. chap. . [ ] plato, phædrus, § . chapter iii. of accuracy and inaccuracy in impressions of sense. § . by what test is the health of the perceptive faculty to be determined? hitherto we have observed only the distinctions of dignity among pleasures of sense, considered merely as such, and the way in which any of them may become theoretic in being received with right feeling. but as we go farther, and examine the distinctive nature of ideas of beauty, we shall, i believe, perceive something in them besides æsthetic pleasure, which attests a more important function belonging to them than attaches to other sensual ideas, and exhibits a more exalted character in the faculty by which they are received. and this was what i alluded to, when i said in the chapter already referred to (§ ), that "we may indeed perceive, as far as we are acquainted with the nature of god, that we have been so constructed as in a healthy state of mind to derive pleasure from whatever things are illustrative of that nature." this point it is necessary now farther to develop. our first inquiry must evidently be, how we are authorized to affirm of any man's mind, respecting impressions of sight, that it is in a healthy state or otherwise. what canon or test is there by which we may determine of these impressions that they are or are not _rightly_ esteemed beautiful? to what authority, when men are at variance with each other on this subject, shall it be deputed to judge which is right? or is there any such authority or canon at all? for it does not at first appear easy to prove that men ought to like one thing rather than another, and although this is granted generally by men's speaking of bad or good taste, it is frequently denied when we pass to particulars, by the assertion of each individual that he has a right to his opinion--a right which is sometimes claimed even in moral matters, though then palpably without foundation, but which does not appear altogether irrational in matters æsthetic, wherein little operation of voluntary choice is supposed possible. it would appear strange, for instance, to assert, respecting a particular person who preferred the scent of violets to roses, that he had no right to do so. and yet, while i have said that the sensation of beauty is intuitive and necessary, as men derive pleasure from the scent of a rose, i have assumed that there are some sources from which it is rightly derived, and others from which it is wrongly derived, in other words that men have no right to think some things beautiful, and no right to remain apathetic with regard to others. § . and in what sense may the terms right and wrong be attached to its conclusions? hence then arise two questions, according to the sense in which the word right is taken; the first, in what way an impression of sense may be deceptive, and therefore a conclusion respecting it untrue; and the second, in what way an impression of sense, or the preference of one, may be a subject of will, and therefore of moral duty or delinquency. to the first of these questions, i answer that we cannot speak of the immediate impression of sense as false, nor of its preference to others as mistaken, for no one can be deceived respecting the actual sensation he perceives or prefers. but falsity may attach to his assertion or supposition, either that what he himself perceives is from the same object perceived by others, or is always to be by himself perceived, or is always to be by himself preferred; and when we speak of a man as wrong in his impressions of sense, we either mean that he feels differently from all, or a majority, respecting a certain object, or that he prefers at present those of his impressions, which ultimately he will not prefer. to the second i answer, that over immediate impressions and immediate preferences we have no power, but over ultimate impressions, and especially ultimate preferences we have; and that, though we can neither at once choose whether we shall see an object, red, green, or blue, nor determine to like the red better than the blue, or the blue better than the red, yet we can, if we choose, make ourselves ultimately susceptible of such impressions in other degrees, and capable of pleasures in them in different measure; and because, wherever power of any kind is given, there is responsibility attached, it is the duty of men to prefer certain impressions of sense to others, because they have the power of doing so, this being precisely analogous to the law of the moral world, whereby men are supposed not only capable of governing their likes and dislikes, but the whole culpability or propriety of actions is dependent upon this capability, so that men are guilty or otherwise, not for what they do, but for what they desire, the command being not, thou shalt obey, but thou shalt love, the lord thy god, which, if men were not capable of governing and directing their affections, would be the command of an impossibility. § . what power we have over impressions of sense. i assert, therefore, that even with respect to impressions of sense, we have a power of preference, and a corresponding duty, and i shall show first the nature of the power, and afterwards the nature of the duty. let us take an instance from one of the lowest of the senses, and observe the kind of power we have over the impressions of lingual taste. on the first offering of two different things to the palate, it is not in our power to prevent or command the instinctive preference. one will be unavoidably and helplessly preferred to the other. but if the same two things be submitted to judgment frequently and attentively, it will be often found that their relations change. the palate, which at first perceived only the coarse and violent qualities of either, will, as it becomes more experienced, acquire greater subtilty and delicacy of discrimination, perceiving in both agreeable or disagreeable qualities at first unnoticed, which on continued experience will probably become more influential than the first impressions; and whatever this final verdict may be, it is felt by the person who gives it, and received by others as a more correct one than the first. § . depends on acuteness of attention. so, then, the power we have over the preference of impressions of taste is not actual nor immediate, but only a power of testing and comparing them frequently and carefully, until that which is the more permanent, the more consistently agreeable, be determined. but when the instrument of taste is thus in some degree perfected and rendered subtile, by its being practised upon a single object, its conclusions will be more rapid with respect to others, and it will be able to distinguish more quickly in other things, and even to prefer at once, those qualities which are calculated finally to give it most pleasure, though more capable with respect to those on which it is more frequently exercised; whence people are called judges with respect to this or that particular object of taste. § . ultimate conclusions universal. now that verdicts of this kind are received as authoritative by others, proves another and more important fact, namely, that not only changes of opinion take place in consequence of experience, but that those changes are from variation of opinion to unity of opinion; and that whatever may be the differences of estimate among unpractised or uncultivated tastes, there will be unity of taste among the experienced. and that therefore the operation of repeated trial and experience is to arrive at principles of preference in some sort common to all, and which are a part of our nature. i have selected the sense of taste for an instance, because it is the least favorable to the position i hold, since there is more latitude allowed, and more actual variety of verdict in the case of this sense than of any other; and yet, however susceptible of variety even the ultimate approximations of its preferences may be, the authority of judges is distinctly allowed, and we hear every day the admission, by those of unpractised palate, that they are, or may be wrong in their opinions respecting the real pleasurableness of things either to themselves, or to others. § . what duty is attached to this power over impressions of sense. the sense, however, in which they thus use the word "wrong" is merely that of falseness or inaccuracy in conclusion, not of moral delinquency. but there is, as i have stated, a duty, more or less imperative, attached to every power we possess, and therefore to this power over the lower senses as well as to all others. and this duty is evidently to bring every sense into that state of cultivation, in which it shall both form the truest conclusions respecting all that is submitted to it, and procure us the greatest amount of pleasure consistent with its due relation to other senses and functions. which three constituents of perfection in sense, true judgment, maximum sensibility, and right relation to others, are invariably co-existent and involved one by the other, for the true judgment is the result of the high sensibility, and the high sensibility of the right relation. thus, for instance, with respect to pleasures of taste, it is our duty not to devote such inordinate attention to the discrimination of them as must be inconsistent with our pursuit, and destructive of our capacity of higher and preferable pleasures, but to cultivate the sense of them in that way which is consistent with all other good, by temperance, namely, and by such attention as the mind at certain resting moments may fitly pay even to so ignoble a source of pleasure as this, by which discipline we shall bring the faculty of taste itself to its real maximum of sensibility; for it may not be doubted but that health, hunger, and such general refinement of bodily habits as shall make the body a perfect and fine instrument in all respects, are better promoters of actual sensual enjoyment of taste, than the sickened, sluggish, hard-stimulated fastidiousness of epicurism. § . how rewarded. so also it will certainly be found with all the senses, that they individually receive the greatest and purest pleasure when they are in right condition and degree of subordination to all the rest; and that by the over cultivation of any one, (for morbid sources of pleasure and correspondent temptations to irrational indulgence, confessedly are attached to all,) we shall add more to their power as instruments of punishment than of pleasure. we see then, in this example of the lowest sense, that the power we have over sensations and preferences depends mainly on the exercise of attention through certain prolonged periods, and that by this exercise, we arrive at ultimate, constant, and common sources of agreeableness, casting off those which are external, accidental, and individual. § . especially with respect to ideas of beauty. that then which is required in order to the attainment of accurate conclusions respecting the essence of the beautiful, is nothing more than earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to our impressions of it, by which those which are shallow, false, or peculiar to times and temperaments, may be distinguished from those that are eternal. and this dwelling upon, and fond contemplation of them, (the anschauung of the germans,) is perhaps as much as was meant by the greek theoria; and it is indeed a very noble exercise of the souls of men, and one by which they are peculiarly distinguished from the anima of lower creatures, which cannot, i think, be proved to have any capacity of contemplation at all, but only a restless vividness of perception and conception, the "fancy" of hooker (eccl. pol. book i. chap. vi. ). and yet this dwelling upon them comes not up to that which i wish to express by the word theoria, unless it be accompanied by full perception of their being a gift from and manifestation of god, and by all those other nobler emotions before described, since not until so felt is their essential nature comprehended. § . errors induced by the power of habit. but two very important points are to be observed respecting the direction and discipline of the attention in the early stages of judgment. the first, that, for many beneficent purposes, the nature of man has been made reconcilable by custom to many things naturally painful to it, and even improper for it, and that therefore, though by continued experience, united with thought, we may discover that which is best of several, yet if we submit ourselves to authority or fashion, and close our eyes, we may be by custom made to tolerate, and even to love and long for, that which is naturally painful and pernicious to us, whence arise incalculable embarrassments on the subject of art. § . the necessity of submission in early stages of judgment. the second, that, in order to the discovery of that which is best of two things, it is necessary that both should be equally submitted to the attention; and therefore that we should have so much faith in authority as shall make us repeatedly observe and attend to that which is said to be right, even though at present we may not feel it so. and in the right mingling of this faith with the openness of heart, which proves all things, lies the great difficulty of the cultivation of the taste, as far as the spirit of the scholar is concerned, though even when he has this spirit, he may be long retarded by having evil examples submitted to him by ignorant masters. the temper, therefore, by which right taste is formed, is first, patient. it dwells upon what is submitted to it, it does not trample upon it lest it should be pearls, even though it look like husks, it is a good ground, soft, penetrable, retentive, it does not send up thorns of unkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed, it is hungry and thirsty too, and drinks all the dew that falls on it, it is an honest and good heart, that shows no too ready springing before the sun be up, but fails not afterwards; it is distrustful of itself, so as to be ready to believe and to try all things, and yet so trustful of itself, that it will neither quit what it has tried, nor take anything without trying. and that pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and good, is so great that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks of fashion, nor diseases of vanity, it cannot be cramped in its conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies, its visions and its delights are too penetrating, too living, for any whitewashed object or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. it clasps all that it loves so hard, that it crushes it if it be hollow. § . the large scope of matured judgment. now, the conclusions of this disposition are sure to be eventually right, more and more right according to the general maturity of all the powers, but it is sure to come right at last, because its operation is in analogy to, and in harmony with, the whole spirit of the christian moral system, and that which it will ultimately love and rest in, are great sources of happiness common to all the human race, and based on the relations they hold to their creator. these common and general sources of pleasure are, i believe, a certain seal, or impress of divine work and character, upon whatever god has wrought in all the world; only, it being necessary for the perception of them, that their contraries should also be set before us, these divine qualities, though inseparable from all divine works, are yet suffered to exist in such varieties of degree, that their most limited manifestation shall, in opposition to their most abundant, act as a foil or contrary, just as we conceive of cold as contrary to heat, though the most extreme cold we can produce or conceive is not inconsistent with an unknown amount of heat in the body. § . how distinguishable from false taste. our purity of taste, therefore, is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we may be sure that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature. but if we can perceive beauty in everything of god's doing, we may argue that we have reached the true perception of its universal laws. hence, false taste may be known by its fastidiousness, by its demands of pomp, splendor, and unusual combination, by its enjoyment only of particular styles and modes of things, and by its pride also, for it is forever meddling, mending, accumulating, and self-exulting, its eye is always upon itself, and it tests all things around it by the way they fit it. but true taste is forever growing, learning, reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes from off its feet because it finds all ground holy, lamenting over itself and testing itself by the way that it fits things. and it finds whereof to feed, and whereby to grow, in all things, and therefore the complaint so often made by young artists that they have not within their reach materials, or subjects enough for their fancy, is utterly groundless, and the sign only of their own blindness and inefficiency; for there is that to be seen in every street and lane of every city, that to be felt and found in every human heart and countenance, that to be loved in every road-side weed and moss-grown wall, which in the hands of faithful men, may convey emotions of glory and sublimity continual and exalted. § . the danger of a spirit of choice. let therefore the young artist beware of the spirit of choice,[ ] it is an insolent spirit at the best and commonly a base and blind one too, checking all progress and blasting all power, encouraging weaknesses, pampering partialities, and teaching us to look to accidents of nature for the help and the joy which should come from our own hearts. he draws nothing well who thirsts not to draw _every_thing; when a good painter shrinks, it is because he is humbled, not fastidious, when he stops, it is because he is surfeited, and not because he thinks nature has given him unkindly food, or that he fears famine.[ ] i have seen a man of true taste pause for a quarter of an hour to look at the channellings that recent rain had traced in a heap of cinders. § . and criminality. and here is evident another reason of that duty which we owe respecting impressions of sight, namely, to discipline ourselves to the enjoyment of those which are eternal in their nature, not only because these are the most acute, but because they are the most easily, constantly, and unselfishly attainable. for had it been ordained by the almighty that the highest pleasures of sight should be those of most difficult attainment, and that to arrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces tower over tower, and pile artificial mountains around insinuated lakes, there would have been a direct contradiction between the unselfish duties and inherent desires of every individual. but no such contradiction exists in the system of divine providence, which, leaving it open to us, if we will, as creatures in probation, to abuse this sense like every other, and pamper it with selfish and thoughtless vanities as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, until the appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its sickened satiety, incapable of pleasure unless, caligula like, it concentrate the labor of a million of lives into the sensation of an hour, leaves it also open to us, by humble and loving ways, to make ourselves susceptible of deep delight from the meanest objects of creation, and of a delight which shall not separate us from our fellows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but which shall bind us closer to men and to god, and be with us always, harmonized with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging and eternal. § . how certain conclusions respecting beauty are by reason demonstrable. seeing then that these qualities of material objects which are calculated to give us this universal pleasure, are demonstrably constant in their address to human nature, they must belong in some measure to whatever has been esteemed beautiful throughout successive ages of the world (and they are also by their definition common to all the works of god). therefore it is evident that it must be possible to reason them out, as well as to feel them out; possible to divest every object of that which makes it accidentally or temporarily pleasant, and to strip it bare of distinctive qualities, until we arrive at those which it has in common with all other beautiful things, which we may then safely affirm to be the cause of its ultimate and true delightfulness. § . with what liabilities to error. now this process of reasoning will be that which i shall endeavor to employ in the succeeding investigations, a process perfectly safe, so long as we are quite sure that we are reasoning concerning objects which produce in us one and the same sensation, but not safe if the sensation produced be of a different nature, though it may be equally agreeable; for what produces a different sensation must be a different cause. and the difficulty of reasoning respecting beauty arises chiefly from the ambiguity of the word, which stands in different people's minds for totally different sensations, for which there can be no common cause. when, for instance, mr. alison endeavors to support his position that "no man is sensible to beauty in those objects with regard to which he has not previous ideas," by the remark that "the beauty of a theory, or of a relic of antiquity, is unintelligible to a peasant," we see at once that it is hopeless to argue with a man who, under his general term beauty, may, for anything we know, be sometimes speaking of mathematical demonstrability and sometimes of historical interest; while even if we could succeed in limiting the term to the sense of external attractiveness, there would be still room for many phases of error; for though the beauty of a snowy mountain and of a human cheek or forehead, so far as both are considered as mere matter, is the same, and traceable to certain qualities of color and line, common to both, and by reason extricable, yet the flush of the cheek and moulding of the brow, as they express modesty, affection, or intellect, possess sources of agreeableness which are not common to the snowy mountain, and the interference of whose influence we must be cautious to prevent in our examination of those which are material and universal.[ ] § . the term "beauty" how limitable in the outset. divided into typical and vital. the first thing, then, that we have to do, is accurately to discriminate and define those appearances from which we are about to reason as belonging to beauty, properly so called, and to clear the ground of all the confused ideas and erroneous theories with which the misapprehension or metaphorical use of the term has encumbered it. by the term beauty, then, properly are signified two things. first, that external quality of bodies already so often spoken of, and which, whether it occur in a stone, flower, beast, or in man, is absolutely identical, which, as i have already asserted, may be shown to be in some sort typical of the divine attributes, and which, therefore, i shall, for distinction's sake, call typical beauty; and, secondarily, the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things, more especially of the joyful and right exertion of perfect life in man. and this kind of beauty i shall call vital beauty. any application of the word beautiful to other appearances or qualities than these, is either false or metaphorical, as, for instance, to the splendor of a discovery, the fitness of a proportion, the coherence of a chain of reasoning, or the power of bestowing pleasure which objects receive from association, a power confessedly great, and interfering, as we shall presently find, in a most embarrassing way with the attractiveness of inherent beauty. but in order that the mind of the reader may not be biassed at the outset by that which he may happen to have received of current theories respecting beauty, founded on the above metaphorical uses of the word, (theories which are less to be reprobated as accounting falsely for the sensations of which they treat, than as confusing two or more pleasurable sensations together,) i shall briefly glance at the four erroneous positions most frequently held upon this subject, before proceeding to examine those typical and vital properties of things, to which i conceive that all our original conceptions of beauty may be traced. footnotes [ ] "nothing comes amiss,-- a good digestion turneth all to health."--g. herbert. [ ] yet note the difference between the choice that comes of pride, and the choice that comes of love, and compare chap. xv. § . [ ] compare spenser. (hymn to beauty.) "but ah, believe me, there is more than so, that works such wonders in the minds of men." chapter iv. of false opinions held concerning beauty. § . of the false opinion that truth is beauty, and vice versa. i purpose at present to speak only of four of the more current opinions respecting beauty, for of the errors connected with the pleasurableness of proportion, and of the expression of right feelings in the countenance, i shall have opportunity to treat in the succeeding chapters; (compare ch. vi. ch. xvi.) those erring or inconsistent positions which i would at once dismiss are, the first, that the beautiful is the true, the second, that the beautiful is the useful, the third, that it is dependent on custom, and the fourth, that it is dependent on the association of ideas. to assert that the beautiful is the true, appears, at first, like asserting that propositions are matter, and matter propositions. but giving the best and most rational interpretation we can, and supposing the holders of this strange position to mean only that things are beautiful which appear what they indeed are, and ugly which appear what they are not, we find them instantly contradicted by each and every conclusion of experience. a stone looks as truly a stone as a rose looks a rose, and yet is not so beautiful; a cloud may look more like a castle than a cloud, and be the more beautiful on that account. the mirage of the desert is fairer than its sands; the false image of the under heaven fairer than the sea. i am at a loss to know how any so untenable a position could ever have been advanced; but it may, perhaps, have arisen from some confusion of the beauty of art with the beauty of nature, and from an illogical expansion of the very certain truth, that nothing is beautiful in art, which, professing to be an imitation, or a statement, is not as such in some sort true. § . of the false opinion that beauty is usefulness. compare chap. xii. § . that the beautiful is the useful, is an assertion evidently based on that limited and false sense of the latter term which i have already deprecated. as it is the most degrading and dangerous supposition which can be advanced on the subject, so, fortunately, it is the most palpably absurd. it is to confound admiration with hunger, love with lust, and life with sensation; it is to assert that the human creature has no ideas and no feelings, except those ultimately referable to its brutal appetites. it has not a single fact nor appearance of fact to support it, and needs no combating, at least until its advocates have obtained the consent of the majority of mankind, that the most beautiful productions of nature are seeds and roots; and of art, spades and millstones. § . of the false opinion that beauty results from custom. compare chap. vi. § . somewhat more rational grounds appear for the assertion that the sense of the beautiful arises from familiarity with the object, though even this could not long be maintained by a thinking person. for all that can be alleged in defence of such a supposition is, that familiarity deprives some objects which at first appeared ugly, of much of their repulsiveness, whence it is as rational to conclude that familiarity is the cause of beauty, as it would be to argue that because it is possible to acquire a taste for olives, therefore custom is the cause of lusciousness in grapes. nevertheless, there are some phenomena resulting from the tendency of our nature to be influenced by habit of which it may be well to observe the limits. § . the twofold operation of custom. it deadens sensation, but confirms affection. § . but never either creates or destroys the essence of beauty. custom has a twofold operation: the one to deaden the frequency and force of repeated impressions, the other to endear the familiar object to the affections. commonly, where the mind is vigorous, and the power of sensation very perfect, it has rather the last operation than the first; with meaner minds, the first takes place in the higher degree, so that they are commonly characterized by a desire of excitement, and the want of the loving, fixed, theoretic power. but both take place in some degree with all men, so that as life advances, impressions of all kinds become less rapturous owing to their repetition. it is however beneficently ordained that repulsiveness shall be diminished by custom in a far greater degree than the sensation of beauty, so that the anatomist in a little time loses all sense of horror in the torn flesh, and carous bone, while the sculptor ceases not to feel to the close of his life, the deliciousness of every line of the outward frame. so then as in that with which we are made familiar, the repulsiveness is constantly diminishing, and such claims as it may be able to put forth on the affections are daily becoming stronger, while in what is submitted to us of new or strange, that which may be repulsive is felt in its full force, while no hold is as yet laid on the affections, there is a very strong preference induced in most minds for that to which they are not accustomed over that they know not, and this is strongest in those which are least open to sensations of positive beauty. but however far this operation may be carried, its utmost effect is but the deadening and approximating the sensations of beauty and ugliness. it never mixes nor crosses, nor in any way alters them; it has not the slightest connection with nor power over their nature. by tasting two wines alternately, we may deaden our perception of their flavor; nay, we may even do more than can ever be done in the case of sight, we may confound the two flavors together. but it will hardly be argued therefore that custom is the cause of either flavor. and so, though by habit we may deaden the effect of ugliness or beauty, it is not for that reason to be affirmed that habit is the cause of either sensation. we may keep a skull beside us as long as we please, we may overcome its repulsiveness, we may render ourselves capable of perceiving many qualities of beauty about its lines, we may contemplate it for years together if we will, it and nothing else, but we shall not get ourselves to think as well of it as of a child's fair face. § . instances. it would be easy to pursue the subject farther, but i believe that every thoughtful reader will be perfectly well able to supply farther illustrations, and sweep away the sandy foundations of the opposite theory, unassisted. let it, however, be observed, that in spite of all custom, an englishman instantly acknowledges, and at first sight, the superiority of the turban to the hat, or of the plaid to the coat, that whatever the dictates of immediate fashion may compel, the superior gracefulness of the greek or middle age costumes is invariably felt, and that, respecting what has been asserted of negro nations looking with disgust on the white face, no importance whatever is to be attached to the opinions of races who have never received any ideas of beauty whatsoever, (these ideas being only received by minds under some certain degree of cultivation,) and whose disgust arises naturally from what they may suppose to be a sign of weakness or ill health. it would be futile to proceed into farther detail. i pass to the last and most weighty theory, that the agreeableness in objects which we call beauty is the result of the association with them of agreeable or interesting ideas. § . of the false opinion that beauty depends on the association of ideas. frequent has been the support, and wide the acceptance of this supposition, and yet i suppose that no two consecutive sentences were ever written in defence of it, without involving either a contradiction or a confusion of terms. thus alison, "there are scenes undoubtedly more beautiful than runnymede, yet to those who recollect the great event that passed there, there is no scene perhaps which so strongly seizes on the imagination." here we are wonder-struck at the audacious obtuseness which would prove the power of imagination by its overcoming that very other power (of inherent beauty) whose existence the arguer denies. for the only logical conclusion which can possibly be drawn from the above sentence is, that imagination is _not_ the source of beauty, for although no scene seizes so strongly on the imagination, yet there are scenes "more beautiful than runnymede." and though instances of self-contradiction as laconic and complete as this are to be found in few writers except alison, yet if the arguments on the subject be fairly sifted from the mass of confused language with which they are always encumbered and placed in logical form, they will be found invariably to involve one of these two syllogisms, either, association gives pleasure, and beauty gives pleasure, therefore association is beauty. or, the power of association is stronger than the power of beauty, therefore the power of association _is_ the power of beauty. § . association. is, st, rational. it is of no efficiency as a cause of beauty. nevertheless it is necessary for us to observe the real value and authority of association in the moral system, and how ideas of actual beauty may be affected by it, otherwise we shall be liable to embarrassment throughout the whole of the succeeding argument. association is of two kinds. rational and accidental. by rational association i understand the interest which any object may bear historically as having been in some way connected with the affairs or affections of men; an interest shared in the minds of all who are aware of such connection: which to call beauty is mere and gross confusion of terms, it is no theory to be confuted, but a misuse of language to be set aside, a misuse involving the positions that in uninhabited countries the vegetation has no grace, the rock no dignity, the cloud no color, and that the snowy summits of the alps receive no loveliness from the sunset light, because they have not been polluted by the wrath, ravage, and misery of men. § . association accidental. the extent of its influence. by accidental association, i understand the accidental connection of ideas and memories with material things, owing to which those material things are regarded as agreeable or otherwise, according to the nature of the feelings or recollections they summon; the association being commonly involuntary and oftentimes so vague as that no distinct image is suggested by the object, but we feel a painfulness in it or pleasure from it, without knowing wherefore. of this operation of the mind (which is that of which i spoke as causing inextricable embarrassments on the subject of beauty) the experience is constant, so that its more energetic manifestations require no illustration. but i do not think that the minor degrees and shades of this great influence have been sufficiently appreciated. not only all vivid emotions and all circumstances of exciting interest leave their light and shadow on the senseless things and instruments among which or through whose agency they have been felt or learned, but i believe that the eye cannot rest on a material form, in a moment of depression or exultation, without communicating to that form a spirit and a life, a life which will make it afterwards in some degree loved or feared, a charm or a painfulness for which we shall be unable to account even to ourselves, which will not indeed be perceptible, except by its delicate influence on our judgment in cases of complicated beauty. let the eye but rest on a rough piece of branch of curious form during a conversation with a friend, rest, however, unconsciously, and though the conversation be forgotten, though every circumstance connected with it be as utterly lost to the memory as though it had not been, yet the eye will, through the whole life after, take a certain pleasure in such boughs which it had not before, a pleasure so slight, a trace of feeling so delicate as to leave us utterly unconscious of its peculiar power, but undestroyable by any reasoning, a part, thenceforward, of our constitution, destroyable only by the same arbitrary process of association by which it was created. reason has no effect upon it whatsoever. and there is probably no one opinion which is formed by any of us, in matters of taste, which is not in some degree influenced by unconscious association of this kind. in many who have no definite rules of judgment, preference is decided by little else, and thus, unfortunately, its operations are mistaken for, or rather substituted for, those of inherent beauty, and its real position and value in the moral system is in a great measure overlooked. § . the dignity of its function. for i believe that mere pleasure and pain have less associative power than duty performed or omitted, and that the great use of the associative faculty is not to add beauty to material things, but to add force to the conscience. but for this external and all-powerful witness, the voice of the inward guide might be lost in each particular instance, almost as soon as disobeyed; the echo of it in after time, whereby, though perhaps feeble as warning, it becomes powerful as punishment, might be silenced, and the strength of the protection pass away in the lightness of the lash. therefore it has received the power of enlisting external and unmeaning things in its aid, and transmitting to all that is indifferent, its own authority to reprove or reward, so that, as we travel the way of life, we have the choice, according to our working, of turning all the voices of nature into one song of rejoicing, and all her lifeless creatures into a glad company, whereof the meanest shall be beautiful in our eyes, by its kind message, or of withering and quenching her sympathy into a fearful, withdrawn, silence of condemnation, or into a crying out of her stones, and a shaking of her dust against us. nor is it any marvel that the theoretic faculty should be overpowered by this momentous operation, and the indifferent appeals and inherent glories of external things in the end overlooked, when the perfection of god's works is felt only as the sweetness of his promises, and their admirableness only as the threatenings of his power. § . how it is connected with impressions of beauty. but it is evident that the full exercise of this noble function of the associative faculty is inconsistent with absolute and incontrovertible conclusions on subjects of theoretic preference. for it is quite impossible for any individual to distinguish in himself the unconscious underworking of indefinite association, peculiar to him individually, from those great laws of choice under which he is comprehended with all his race. and it is well for us that it is so, the harmony of god's good work is not in us interrupted by this mingling of universal and peculiar principles; for by these such difference is secured in the feelings as shall make fellowship itself more delightful, by its inter-communicate character, and such variety of feeling also in each of us separately as shall make us capable of enjoying scenes of different kinds and orders, instead of morbidly seeking for some perfect epitome of the beautiful in one; and also that deadening by custom of theoretic impressions to which i have above alluded, is counterbalanced by the pleasantness of acquired association; and the loss of the intense feeling of the youth, which "had no need of a remoter charm, by thought supplied, or any interest, unborrowed from the eye," is replaced by the gladness of conscience, and the vigor of the reflecting and imaginative faculties, as they take their wide and aged grasp of the great relations between the earth and its dead people. § . and what caution it renders necessary in the examination of them. in proportion therefore to the value, constancy, and efficiency of this influence, we must be modest and cautious in the pronouncing of positive opinions on the subject of beauty. for every one of us has peculiar sources of enjoyment necessarily opened to him in certain scenes and things, sources which are sealed to others, and we must be wary on the one hand, of confounding these in ourselves with ultimate conclusions of taste, and so forcing them upon all as authoritative, and on the other of supposing that the enjoyments of others which we cannot share are shallow or unwarrantable, because incommunicable. i fear, for instance, that in the former portion of this work i may have attributed too much community and authority to certain affections of my own for scenery inducing emotions of wild, impetuous, and enthusiastic characters, and too little to those which i perceive in others for things peaceful, humble, meditative, and solemn. so also between youth and age there will be found differences of seeking, which are not wrong, nor of false choice in either, but of different temperament, the youth sympathizing more with the gladness, fulness, and magnificence of things, and the gray hairs with their completion, sufficiency and repose. and so, neither condemning the delights of others, nor altogether distrustful of our own, we must advance, as we live on, from what is brilliant to what is pure, and from what is promised to what is fulfilled, and from what is our strength to what is our crown, only observing in all things how that which is indeed wrong, and to be cut up from the root, is dislike, and not affection. for by the very nature of these beautiful qualities, which i have defined to be the signature of god upon his works, it is evident that in whatever we altogether dislike, we see not all; that the keenness of our vision is to be tested by the expansiveness of our love, and that as far as the influence of association has voice in the question, though it is indeed possible that the inevitable painfulness of an object, for which we can render no sufficient reason, may be owing to its recalling of a sorrow, it is more probably dependent on its accusation of a crime. chapter v. of typical beauty:--first, of infinity, or the type of divine incomprehensibility. § . impossibility of adequately treating the subject. the subject being now in some measure cleared of embarrassment, let us briefly distinguish those qualities or types on whose combination is dependent the power of mere material loveliness. i pretend neither to enumerate nor perceive them all, for it may be generally observed that whatever good there may be, desirable by man, more especially good belonging to his moral nature, there will be a corresponding agreeableness in whatever external object reminds him of such good, whether it remind him by arbitrary association or by typical resemblance, and that the infinite ways, whether by reason or experience discoverable, by which matter in some sort may remind us of moral perfections, are hardly within any reasonable limits to be explained, if even by any single mind they might all be traced. yet certain palpable and powerful modes there are, by observing which, we may come at such general conclusions on the subject as may be practically useful, and more than these i shall not attempt to obtain. § . with what simplicity of feeling to be approached. and first, i would ask of the reader to enter upon the subject with me, as far as may be, as a little child, ridding himself of all conventional and authoritative thoughts, and especially of such associations as arise from his respect for pagan art, or which are in any way traceable to classical readings. i recollect that mr. alison traces his first perceptions of beauty in external nature to this most corrupt source, thus betraying so total and singular a want of natural sensibility as may well excuse the deficiencies of his following arguments. for there was never yet the child of any promise (so far as the theoretic faculties are concerned) but awaked to the sense of beauty with the first gleam of reason; and i suppose there are few, among those who love nature otherwise than by profession and at second-hand, who look not back to their youngest and least-learned days as those of the most intense, superstitious, insatiable, and beatific perception of her splendors. and the bitter decline of this glorious feeling, though many note it not, partly owing to the cares and weight of manhood, which leave them not the time nor the liberty to look for their lost treasure, and partly to the human and divine affections which are appointed to take its place, yet has formed the subject not indeed of lamentation, but of holy thankfulness for the witness it bears to the immortal origin and end of our nature, to one whose authority is almost without appeal in all questions relating to the influence of external things upon the pure human soul. "heaven lies about us in our infancy,-- shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy. but he beholds the light, and whence it flows he sees it in his joy. the youth, who daily farther from the east must travel, still is nature's priest, and by the vision splendid is on his way attended. at length the man perceives it die away and fade into the light of common day." and if it were possible for us to recollect all the unaccountable and happy instincts of the careless time, and to reason upon them with the maturer judgment, we might arrive at more rapid and right results than either the philosophy or the sophisticated practice of art have yet attained. but we lose the perceptions before we are capable of methodizing or comparing them. § . the child instinct respecting space. § . continued in after life. one, however, of these child instincts, i believe that few forget; the emotion, namely, caused by all open ground, or lines of any spacious kind against the sky, behind which there might be conceived the sea. it is an emotion more pure than that caused by the sea itself, for i recollect distinctly running down behind the banks of a high beach to get their land line cutting against the sky, and receiving a more strange delight from this than from the sight of the ocean: i am not sure that this feeling is common to all children, (or would be common if they were all in circumstances admitting it), but i have ascertained it to be frequent among those who possess the most vivid sensibilities for nature; and i am certain that the modification of it, which belongs to our after years, is common to all, the love, namely, of a light distance appearing over a comparatively dark horizon. this i have tested too frequently to be mistaken, by offering to indifferent spectators forms of equal abstract beauty in half tint, relieved, the one against dark sky, the other against a bright distance. the preference is invariably given to the latter, and it is very certain that this preference arises not from any supposition of there being greater truth in this than the other, for the same preference is unhesitatingly accorded to the same effect in nature herself. whatever beauty there may result from effects of light on foreground objects, from the dew of the grass, the flash of the cascade, the glitter of the birch trunk, or the fair daylight hues of darker things, (and joyfulness there is in all of them), there is yet a light which the eye invariably seeks with a deeper feeling of the beautiful, the light of the declining or breaking day, and the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like watch-fires in the green sky of the horizon; a deeper feeling, i say, not perhaps more acute, but having more of spiritual hope and longing, less of animal and present life, more manifest, invariably, in those of more serious and determined mind, (i use the word serious, not as being opposed to cheerful, but to trivial and volatile;) but, i think, marked and unfailing even in those of the least thoughtful dispositions. i am willing to let it rest on the determination of every reader, whether the pleasure which he has received from these effects of calm and luminous distance be not the most singular and memorable of which he has been conscious, whether all that is dazzling in color, perfect in form, gladdening in expression, be not of evanescent and shallow appealing, when compared with the still small voice of the level twilight behind purple hills, or the scarlet arch of dawn over the dark, troublous-edged sea. § . whereto this instinct is traceable. let us try to discover that which effects of this kind possess or suggest, peculiar to themselves, and which other effects of light and color possess not. there _must_ be something in them of a peculiar character, and that, whatever it be, must be one of the primal and most earnest motives of beauty to human sensation. do they show finer characters of form than can be developed by the broader daylight? not so; for their power is almost independent of the forms they assume or display; it matters little whether the bright clouds be simple or manifold, whether the mountain line be subdued or majestic, the fairer forms of earthly things are by them subdued and disguised, the round and muscular growth of the forest trunks is sunk into skeleton lines of quiet shade, the purple clefts of the hill-side are labyrinthed in the darkness, the orbed spring and whirling wave of the torrent have given place to a white, ghastly, interrupted gleaming. have they more perfection or fulness of color? not so; for their effect is oftentimes deeper when their hues are dim, than when they are blazoned with crimson and pale gold; and assuredly, in the blue of the rainy sky, in the many tints of morning flowers, in the sunlight on summer foliage and field, there are more sources of mere sensual color-pleasure than in the single streak of wan and dying light. it is not then by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue, it is not by intensity of light, (for the sun itself at noonday is effectless upon the feelings,) that this strange distant space possesses its attractive power. but there is one thing that it has, or suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in equal degree, and that is,--infinity. it is of all visible things the least material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth prison-house, the most typical of the nature of god, the most suggestive of the glory of his dwelling-place. for the sky of night, though we may know it boundless, is dark, it is a studded vault, a roof that seems to shut us in and down, but the bright distance has no limit, we feel its infinity, as we rejoice in its purity of light. § . infinity how necessary in art. now not only is this expression of infinity in distance most precious wherever we find it, however solitary it may be, and however unassisted by other forms and kinds of beauty, but it is of that value that no such other forms will altogether recompense us for its loss; and much as i dread the enunciation of anything that may seem like a conventional rule, i have no hesitation in asserting, that no work of any art, in which this expression of infinity is possible, can be perfect, or supremely elevated without it, and that in proportion to its presence, it will exalt and render impressive even the most tame and trivial themes. and i think if there be any one grand division, by which it is at all possible to set the productions of painting, so far as their mere plan or system is concerned, on our right and left hands, it is this of light and dark background, of heaven light or of object light. for i know not any truly great painter of any time, who manifests not the most intense pleasure in the luminous space of his backgrounds, or who ever sacrifices this pleasure where the nature of his subject admits of its attainment, as on the other hand i know not that the habitual use of dark backgrounds can be shown as having ever been co-existent with pure or high feeling, and, except in the case of rembrandt, (and then under peculiar circumstances only,) with any high power of intellect. it is however necessary carefully to observe the following modifications of this broad principle. § . conditions of its necessity. the absolute necessity, for such indeed i consider it, is of no more than such a mere luminous distant point as may give to the feelings a species of escape from all the finite objects about them. there is a spectral etching of rembrandt, a presentation of christ in the temple, where the figure of a robed priest stands glaring by its gems out of the gloom, holding a crosier. behind it there is a subdued window light seen in the opening between two columns, without which the impressiveness of the whole subject would, i think, be incalculably brought down. i cannot tell whether i am at present allowing too much weight to my own fancies and predilections, but without so much escape into the outer air and open heaven as this, i can take permanent pleasure in no picture. § . and connected analogies. and i think i am supported in this feeling by the unanimous practice, if not the confessed opinion, of all artists. the painter of portrait is unhappy without his conventional white stroke under the sleeve, or beside the arm-chair; the painter of interiors feels like a caged bird, unless he can throw a window open, or set the door ajar; the landscapist dares not lose himself in forest without a gleam of light under its farthest branches, nor ventures out in rain, unless he may somewhere pierce to a better promise in the distance, or cling to some closing gap of variable blue above;--escape, hope, infinity, by whatever conventionalism sought, the desire is the same in all, the instinct constant, it is no mere point of light that is wanted in the etching of rembrandt above instanced, a gleam of armor or fold of temple curtain would have been utterly valueless, neither is it liberty, for though we cut down hedges and level hills, and give what waste and plain we choose, on the right hand and the left, it is all comfortless and undesired, so long as we cleave not a way of escape forward; and however narrow and thorny and difficult the nearer path, it matters not, so only that the clouds open for us at its close. neither will any amount of beauty in nearer form, make us content to stay with it, so long as we are shut down to that alone, nor is any form so cold or so hurtful but that we may look upon it with kindness, so only that it rise against the infinite hope of light beyond. the reader can follow out the analogies of this unassisted. § . how the dignity of treatment is proportioned to the expression of infinity. but although this narrow portal of escape be all that is absolutely necessary, i think that the dignity of the painting increases with the extent and amount of the expression. with the earlier and mightier painters of italy, the practice is commonly to leave their distance of pure and open sky, of such simplicity, that it in nowise shall interfere with or draw the attention from the interest of the figures, and of such purity, that especially towards the horizon, it shall be in the highest degree expressive of the infinite space of heaven. i do not mean to say that they did this with any occult or metaphysical motives. they did it, i think, with the child-like, unpretending simplicity of all earnest men; they did what they loved and felt; they sought what the heart naturally seeks, and gave what it most gratefully receives; and i look to them as in all points of principle (not, observe, of knowledge or empirical attainment) as the most irrefragable authorities, precisely on account of the child-like innocence, which never deemed itself authoritative, but acted upon desire, and not upon dicta, and sought for sympathy, not for admiration. § . examples among the southern schools. and so we find the same simple and sweet treatment, the open sky, the tender, unpretending, horizontal white clouds, the far winding and abundant landscape, in giotto, taddeo gaddi, laurati, angelico, benozzo, ghirlandajo, francia, perogino, and the young raffaelle, the first symptom of conventionality appearing in perugino, who, though with intense feeling of light and color he carried the glory of his luminous distance far beyond all his predecessors, began at the same time to use a somewhat morbid relief of his figures against the upper sky. thus in the assumption of the florentine academy, in that of l'annunziata; and of the gallery of bologna, in all which pictures the lower portions are incomparably the finest, owing to the light distance behind the heads. raffaelle, in his fall, betrayed the faith he had received from his father and his master, and substituted for the radiant sky of the madonna del cardellino, the chamber-wall of the madonna della sediola--and the brown wainscot of the baldacchino. yet it is curious to observe how much of the dignity even of his later pictures, depends on such portions as the green light of the lake, and sky behind the rocks, in the st. john of the tribune, and how the repainted distortion of the madonna dell' impannata, is redeemed into something like elevated character, merely by the light of the linen window from which it takes its name. § . among the venetians. that which by the florentines was done in pure simplicity of heart, was done by the venetians with intense love of the color and splendor of the sky itself, even to the frequent sacrificing of their subject to the passion of its distance. in carpaccio, john bellini, giorgione, titian, veronese, and tintoret, the preciousness of the luminous sky, so far as it might be at all consistent with their subject, is nearly constant; abandoned altogether in portraiture only, seldom even there, and never with advantage. titian and veronese, who had less exalted feeling than the others, affording a few instances of exception, the latter overpowering his silvery distances with foreground splendor, the other sometimes sacrificing them to a luscious fulness of color, as in the flagellation in the louvre, by a comparison of which with the unequalled majesty of the entombment opposite, the whole power and applicability of the general principle may at once be tested. § . among the painters of landscape. but of the value of this mode of treatment there is a farther and more convincing proof than its adoption either by the innocence of the florentine or the ardor of the venetian, namely, that when retained or imitated from them by the landscape painters of the seventeenth century, when appearing in isolation from all other good, among the weaknesses and paltrinesses of claude, the mannerisms of gaspar, and the caricatures and brutalities of salvator, it yet redeems and upholds all three, conquers all foulness by its purity, vindicates all folly by its dignity, and puts an uncomprehended power of permanent address to the human heart, upon the lips of the senseless and the profane.[ ] § . other modes in which the power of infinity is felt. § . the beauty of curvature. now, although i doubt not that the general value of this treatment will be acknowledged by all lovers of art, it is not certain that the point to prove which i have brought it forward, will be as readily conceded, namely, the inherent power of all representations of infinity over the human heart; for there are, indeed, countless associations of pure and religious kind, which combine with each other to enhance the impression, when presented in this particular form, whose power i neither deny nor am careful to distinguish, seeing that they all tend to the same divine point, and have reference to heavenly hopes; delights they are in seeing the narrow, black, miserable earth fairly compared with the bright firmament, reachings forward unto the things that are before, and joyfulness in the apparent though unreachable nearness and promise of them. but there are other modes in which infinity may be represented, which are confused by no associations of the kind, and which would, as being in mere matter, appear trivial and mean, but for their incalculable influence on the forms of all that we feel to be beautiful. the first of these is the curvature of lines and surfaces, wherein it at first appears futile to insist upon any resemblance or suggestion of infinity, since there is certainly in our ordinary contemplation of it, no sensation of the kind. but i have repeated again and again that the ideas of beauty are instinctive, and that it is only upon consideration, and even then in doubtful and disputable way, that they appear in their typical character; neither do i intend at all to insist upon the particular meaning which they appear to myself to bear, but merely on their actual and demonstrable agreeableness, so that, in the present case, while i assert positively, and have no fear of being able to prove, that a curve of any kind is more beautiful than a right line, i leave it to the reader to accept or not, as he pleases, that reason of its agreeableness, which is the only one that i can at all trace, namely, that every curve divides itself infinitely by its changes of direction. § . how constant in external nature. that all forms of acknowledged beauty are composed exclusively of curves will, i believe, be at once allowed; but that which there will be need more especially to prove, is the subtilty and constancy of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever. i believe that, except in crystals, in certain mountain forms admitted for the sake of sublimity or contrast, (as in the slope of debris,) in rays of light, in the levels of calm water and alluvial land, and in some few organic developments, there are no lines nor surfaces of nature without curvature, though as we before saw in clouds, more especially in their under lines towards the horizon, and in vast and extended plains, right lines are often suggested which are not actual. without these we could not be sensible of the value of the contrasting curves, and while, therefore, for the most part, the eye is fed in natural forms with a grace of curvature which no hand nor instrument can follow, other means are provided to give beauty to those surfaces which are admitted for contrast, as in water by its reflection of the gradations which it possesses not itself. in freshly-broken ground, which nature has not yet had time to model, in quarries and pits which are none of her cutting, in those convulsions and evidences of convulsion, of whose influence on ideal landscape i shall presently have occasion to speak, and generally in all ruin and disease, and interference of one order of being with another, (as in the cattle line of park trees,) the curves vanish, and violently opposed or broken and unmeaning lines take their place. § . the beauty of gradation. what curvature is to lines, gradation is to shades and colors. it is _there_ infinity, and divides them into an infinite number of degrees. absolutely, without gradation no natural surface can possibly be, except under circumstances of so rare conjunction as to amount to a lusus naturæ; for we have seen that few surfaces are without curvature, and every curved surface must be gradated by the nature of light, which is most intense when it impinges at the highest angle, and for the gradation of the few plane surfaces that exist, means are provided in local color, aerial perspective, reflected lights, etc., from which it is but barely conceivable that they should ever escape. hence for instances of the complete absence of gradation we must look to man's work, or to his disease and decrepitude. compare the gradated colors of the rainbow with the stripes of a target, and the gradual concentration of the youthful blood in the cheek with an abrupt patch of rouge, or with the sharply drawn veining of old age. § . how found in nature. gradation is so inseparable a quality of all natural shade and color that the eye refuses in art to understand anything as either, which appears without it, while on the other hand nearly all the gradations of nature are so subtile and between degrees of tint so slightly separated, that no human hand can in any wise equal, or do anything more than suggest the idea of them. in proportion to the space over which gradation extends, and to its invisible subtilty, is its grandeur, and in proportion to its narrow limits and violent degrees, its vulgarity. in correggio, it is morbid and vulgar in spite of its refinement of execution, because the eye is drawn to it, and it is made the most observable and characteristic part of the picture; whereas natural gradation is forever escaping observation to that degree that the greater part of artists in working from nature see it not, (except in certain of its marked developments,) but either lay down such continuous lines and colors, as are both disagreeable and impossible, or, receiving the necessity of gradation as a principle instead of a fact, use it in violently exaggerated measure, and so lose both the dignity of their own work, and by the constant dwelling of their eyes upon exaggerations, their sensibility to that of the natural forms. so that we find the majority of painters divided between the two evil extremes of insufficiency and affectation, and only a few of the greatest men capable of making gradation constant and yet extended over enormous spaces and within degrees of narrow difference, as in the body of a high light. § . how necessary in art. from the necessity of gradation results what is commonly given as a rule of art, though its authority as a rule obtains only from its being a fact of nature, that the extremes of high light and pure color, can exist only in points. the common rules respecting sixths and eighths, held concerning light and shade, are entirely absurd and conventional; according to the subject and the effect of light, the greater part of the picture will be or ought to be light or dark; but that principle which is not conventional, is that of all light, however high, there is some part that is higher than the rest, and that of all color, however pure, there is some part that is purer than the rest, and that generally of all shade, however deep, there is some part deeper than the rest, though this last fact is frequently sacrificed in art, owing to the narrowness of its means. but on the right gradation or focussing of light and color depends in great measure, the value of both. of this, i have spoken sufficiently in pointing out the singular constancy of it in the works of turner. part ii. sect. ii. chap. ii. § . and it is generally to be observed that even raw and valueless color, if rightly and subtilely gradated will in some measure stand for light, and that the most transparent and perfect hue will be in some measure unsatisfactory, if entirely unvaried. i believe the early skies of raffaelle owe their luminousness more to their untraceable and subtile gradation than to inherent quality of hue. § . infinity not rightly implied by vastness. such are the expressions of infinity which we find in creation, of which the importance is to be estimated, rather by their frequency than their distinctness. let, however, the reader bear constantly in mind that i insist not on his accepting any interpretation of mine, but only on his dwelling so long on those objects, which he perceives to be beautiful, as to determine whether the qualities to which i trace their beauty, be necessarily there or no. farther expressions of infinity there are in the mystery of nature, and in some measure in her vastness, but these are dependent on our own imperfections, and therefore, though they produce sublimity, they are unconnected with beauty. for that which we foolishly call vastness is, rightly considered, not more wonderful, not more impressive, than that which we insolently call littleness, and the infinity of god is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable, not concealed, but incomprehensible: it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea. footnotes [ ] in one of the smaller rooms of the pitti palace, over the door, is a temptation of st. anthony, by salvator, wherein such power as the artist possessed is fully manifested, with little, comparatively, that is offensive. it is a vigorous and ghastly thought, in that kind of horror which is dependent on scenic effect, perhaps unrivalled, and i shall have occasion to refer to it again in speaking of the powers of imagination. i allude to it here, because the sky of the distance affords a remarkable instance of the power of light at present under discussion. it is formed of flakes of black cloud, with rents and openings of intense and lurid green, and at least half of the impressiveness of the picture depends on these openings. close them, make the sky one mass of gloom, and the spectre will be awful no longer. it owes to the light of the distance both its size and its spirituality. the time would fail me if i were to name the tenth part of the pictures which occur to me, whose vulgarity is redeemed by this circumstance alone, and yet let not the artist trust to such morbid and conventional use of it as may be seen in the common blue and yellow effectism of the present day. of the value of moderation and simplicity in the use of this, as of all other sources of pleasurable emotion, i shall presently have occasion to speak farther. chapter vi. of unity, or the type of the divine comprehensiveness. § . the general conception of divine unity. "all things," says hooker, "(god only excepted,) besides the nature which they have in themselves, receive externally some perfection from other things." hence the appearance of separation or isolation in anything, and of self-dependence, is an appearance of imperfection: and all appearances of connection and brotherhood are pleasant and right, both as significative of perfection in the things united, and as typical of that unity which we attribute to god, and of which our true conception is rightly explained and limited by dr. brown in his xcii. lecture; that unity which consists not in his own singleness or separation, but in the necessity of his inherence in all things that be, without which no creature of any kind could hold existence for a moment. which necessity of divine essence i think it better to speak of as comprehensiveness, than as unity, because unity is often understood in the sense of oneness or singleness, instead of universality, whereas the only unity which by any means can become grateful or an object of hope to men, and whose types therefore in material things can be beautiful, is that on which turned the last words and prayer of christ before his crossing of the kidron brook. "neither pray i for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word. that they all may be one, as thou, father, art in me, and i in thee." § . the glory of all things is their unity. and so there is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature, but it is capable of an unity of some kind with other creatures, and in that unity is its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure also for the beholding of all other creatures that can behold. so the unity of spirits is partly in their sympathy, and partly in their giving and taking, and always in their love; and these are their delight and their strength, for their strength is in their co-working and army fellowship, and their delight is in the giving and receiving of alternate and perpetual currents of good, their inseparable dependency on each other's being, and their essential and perfect depending on their creator's: and so the unity of earthly creatures is their power and their peace, not like the dead and cold peace of undisturbed stones and solitary mountains, but the living peace of trust, and the living power of support, of hands that hold each other and are still: and so the unity of matter is, in its noblest form, the organization of it which builds it up into temples for the spirit, and in its lower form, the sweet and strange affinity, which gives to it the glory of its orderly elements, and the fair variety of change and assimilation that turns the dust into the crystal, and separates the waters that be above the firmament from the waters that be beneath, and in its lowest form; it is the working and walking and clinging together that gives their power to the winds, and its syllables and soundings to the air, and their weight to the waves, and their burning to the sunbeams, and their stability to the mountains, and to every creature whatsoever operation is for its glory and for others good. now of that which is thus necessary to the perfection of all things, all appearance, sign, type, or suggestion must be beautiful, in whatever matter it may appear. and so to the perfection of beauty in lines, or colors, or forms, or masses, or multitudes, the appearance of some species of unity is in the most determined sense of the word essential. § . the several kinds of unity. subjectional. original. of sequence, and of membership. but of the appearances of unity, as of unity itself, there are several kinds which it will be found hereafter convenient to consider separately. thus there is the unity of different and separate things, subjected to one and the same influence, which may be called subjectional unity, and this is the unity of the clouds, as they are driven by the parallel winds, or as they are ordered by the electric currents, and this the unity of the sea waves, and this of the bending and undulation of the forest masses, and in creatures capable of will it is the unity of will or of inspiration. and there is unity of origin, which we may call original unity, which is of things arising from one spring and source, and speaking always of this their brotherhood, and this in matter is the unity of the branches of the trees, and of the petals and starry rays of flowers, and of the beams of light, and in spiritual creatures it is their filial relation to him from whom they have their being. and there is unity of sequence, which is that of things that form links in chains, and steps in ascent, and stages in journeys, and this, in matter, is the unity of communicable forces in their continuance from one thing to another, and it is the passing upwards and downwards of beneficent effects among all things, and it is the melody of sounds, and the beauty of continuous lines, and the orderly succession of motions and times. and in spiritual creatures it is their own constant building up by true knowledge and continuous reasoning to higher perfection, and the singleness and straight-forwardness of their tendencies to more complete communion with god. and there is the unity of membership, which we may call essential unity, which is the unity of things separately imperfect into a perfect whole, and this is the great unity of which other unities are but parts and means, it is in matter the harmony of sounds and consistency of bodies, and among spiritual creatures, their love and happiness and very life in god. § . unity of membership. how secured. now of the nature of this last kind of unity, the most important whether in moral or in those material things with which we are at present concerned, there is this necessary to be observed, that it cannot exist between things similar to each other. two or more equal and like things cannot be members one of another, nor can they form one, or a whole thing. two they must remain, both in nature and in our conception, so long as they remain alike, unless they are united by a third different from both. thus the arms, which are like each other, remain two arms in our conception. they could not be united by a third arm, they must be united by something which is not an arm, and which, imperfect without them as they without it, shall form one perfect body; nor is unity even thus accomplished, without a difference and opposition of direction in the setting on of the like members. therefore among all things which are to have unity of membership one with another, there must be difference or variety; and though it is possible that many like things may be made members of one body, yet it is remarkable that this structure appears characteristic of the lower creatures, rather than the higher, as the many legs of the caterpillar, and the many arms and suckers of the radiata, and that, as we rise in order of being, the number of similar members becomes less, and their structure commonly seems based on the principle of the unity of two things by a third, as plato has it in the timæus, § ii. § . variety. why required. hence, out of the necessity of unity, arises that of variety, a necessity often more vividly, though never so deeply felt, because lying at the surfaces of things, and assisted by an influential principle of our nature, the love of change, and the power of contrast. but it is a mistake which has led to many unfortunate results, in matters respecting art, to insist on any inherent agreeableness of variety, without reference to a farther end. for it is not even true that variety as such, and in its highest degree, is beautiful. a patched garment of many colors is by no means so agreeable as one of a single and continuous hue; the splendid colors of many birds are eminently painful from their violent separation and inordinate variety, while the pure and colorless swan is, under certain circumstances, the most beautiful of all feathered creatures.[ ] a forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable in effect,[ ] a mass of one species of tree is sublime. it is therefore only harmonious and chordal variety, that variety which is necessary to secure and extend unity, (for the greater the number of objects, which by their differences become members of one another, the more extended and sublime is their unity,) which is rightly agreeable, and so i name not variety as essential to beauty, because it is only so in a secondary and casual sense.[ ] § . change, and its influence on beauty. § . the love of change. how morbid and evil. of the love of change as a principle of human nature, and the pleasantness of variety resulting from it, something has already been said, (ch. iv. § ,) only as there i was opposing the idea that our being familiar with objects was the cause of our delight in them, so here, i have to oppose the contrary position, that their strangeness is the cause of it. for neither familiarity nor strangeness have more operation on, or connection with, impressions of one sense than of another, and they have less power over the impressions of sense generally, than over the intellect in its joyful accepting of fresh knowledge, and dull contemplation of that it has long possessed. only in their operation on the senses they act contrarily at different times, as for instance the newness of a dress or of some kind of unaccustomed food may make it for a time delightful, but as the novelty passes away, so also may the delight, yielding to disgust or indifference, which in their turn, as custom begins to operate, may pass into affection and craving, and that which was first a luxury, and then a matter of indifference, becomes a necessity:[ ] whereas in subjects of the intellect, the chief delight they convey is dependent upon their being newly and vividly comprehended, and as they become subjects of contemplation they lose their value, and become tasteless and unregarded, except as instruments for the reaching of others, only that though they sink down into the shadowy, effectless, heap of things indifferent, which we pack, and crush down, and stand upon, to reach things new, they sparkle afresh at intervals as we stir them by throwing a new stone into the heap, and letting the newly admitted lights play upon them. and both in subjects of the intellect and the senses it is to be remembered, that the love of change is a weakness and imperfection of our nature, and implies in it the state of probation, and that it is to teach us that things about us here are not meant for our continual possession or satisfaction, that ever such passion of change was put in us as that "custom lies upon us with a weight, heavy as frost, and deep almost as life," and only such weak back and baby grasp given to our intellect as that "the best things we do are painful, and the exercise of them grievous, being continued without intermission, so as in those very actions whereby we are especially perfected in this life we are not able to persist." and so it will be found that they are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love variety and change, for the weakest-minded are those who both wonder most at things new, and digest worst things old, in so far that everything they have lies rusty, and loses lustre for want of use; neither do they make any stir among their possessions, nor look over them to see what may be made of them, nor keep any great store, nor are householders with storehouses of things new and old, but they catch at the new-fashioned garments, and let the moth and thief look after the rest; and the hardest-hearted men are those that least feel the endearing and binding power of custom, and hold on by no cords of affection to any shore, but drive with the waves that cast up mire and dirt. and certainly it is not to be held that the perception of beauty and desire of it, are greatest in the hardest heart and weakest brain; but the love of variety is so, and therefore variety can be no cause of the beautiful, except, as i have said, when it is necessary for the perception of unity, neither is there any better test of that which is indeed beautiful than its surviving or annihilating the love of change; and this is a test which the best judges of art have need frequently to use; and the wisest of them will use it always, for there is much in art that surprises by its brilliancy, or attracts by its singularity, that can hardly but by course of time, though assuredly it will by course of time, be winnowed away from the right and real beauty whose retentive power is forever on the increase, a bread of the soul for which the hunger is continual. § . the conducting of variety towards unity of subjection. receiving, therefore, variety only as that which accomplishes unity, or makes it perceived, its operation is found to be very precious, both in that which i have called unity of subjection, and unity of sequence, as well as in unity of membership; for although things in all respects the same may, indeed, be subjected to one influence, yet the power of the influence, and their obedience to it, is best seen by varied operation of it on their individual differences, as in clouds and waves there is a glorious unity of rolling, wrought out by the wild and wonderful differences of their absolute forms, which, if taken away, would leave in them only multitudinous and petty repetition, instead of the majestic oneness of shared passion. and so in the waves and clouds of human multitude when they are filled with one thought, as we find frequently in the works of the early italian men of earnest purpose, who despising, or happily ignorant of, the sophistications of theories, and the proprieties of composition, indicated by perfect similarity of action and gesture on the one hand, and by the infinite and truthful variation of expression on the other, the most sublime strength because the most absorbing unity, of multitudinous passion that ever human heart conceived. hence, in the cloister of st. mark's, the intense, fixed, statue-like silence of ineffable adoration upon the spirits in prison at the feet of christ, side by side, the hands lifted, and the knees bowed, and the lips trembling together;[ ] and in st. domenico of fiesole,[ ] that whirlwind rush of the angels and the redeemed souls round about him at his resurrection, so that we hear the blast of the horizontal trumpets mixed with the dying clangor of their ingathered wings. the same great feeling occurs throughout the works of the serious men, though most intensely in angelico, and it is well to compare with it the vileness and falseness of all that succeeded, when men had begun to bring to the cross foot their systems instead of their sorrow. take as the most marked and degraded instance, perhaps, to be anywhere found, bronzino's treatment of the same subject (christ visiting the spirits in prison,) in the picture now in the tuscan room of the uffizii, which, vile as it is in color, vacant in invention, void in light and shade, a heap of cumbrous nothingnesses, and sickening offensivenesses, is of all its voids most void in this, that the academy models therein huddled together at the bottom, show not so much unity or community of attention to the academy model with the flag in its hand above, as a street crowd would be to a fresh-staged charlatan. some _point_ to the god who has burst the gates of death, as if the rest were incapable of distinguishing him for themselves, and others turn their backs upon him, to show their unagitated faces to the spectator. § . and towards unity of sequence. in unity of sequence, the effect of variety is best exemplified by the melodies of music, wherein by the differences of the notes, they are connected with each other in certain pleasant relations. this connection taking place in quantities is proportion, respecting which certain general principles must be noted, as the subject is one open to many errors, and obscurely treated of by writers on art. § . the nature of proportion. st, of apparent proportion. proportion is of two distinct kinds. apparent: when it takes place between qualities for the sake of connection only, without any ultimate object or casual necessity; and constructive: when it has reference to some function to be discharged by the quantities, depending on their proportion. from the confusion of these two kinds of proportion have arisen the greater part of the erroneous conceptions of the influence of either. apparent proportion, or the sensible relation of quantities, is one of the most important means of obtaining unity between things which otherwise must have remained distinct in similarity, and as it may consist with every other kind of unity, and persist when every other means of it fails, it may be considered as lying at the root of most of our impressions of the beautiful. there is no sense of rightness, or wrongness connected with it, no sense of utility, propriety, or expediency. these ideas enter only where the proportion of quantities has reference to some function to be performed by them. it cannot be asserted that it is right or that it is wrong that a should be to b, as b to c; unless a, b, and c have some desirable operation dependent on that relation. but nevertheless it may be highly agreeable to the eye that a, b, and c, if visible things, should have visible connection of ratio, even though nothing be accomplished by such connection. on the other hand, constructive proportion, or the adaptation of quantities to functions, is agreeable not to the eye, but to the mind, which is cognizant of the function to be performed. thus the pleasantness or rightness of the proportions of a column depends not on the mere relation of diameter and height, (which is not proportion at all, for proportion is between three terms at least,) but on three other involved terms, the strength of materials, the weight to be borne, and the scale of the building. the proportions of a wooden column are wrong in a stone one, and of a small building wrong in a large one,[ ] and this owing solely to mechanical considerations, which have no more to do with ideas of beauty, than the relation between the arms of a lever, adapted to the raising of a given weight; and yet it is highly agreeable to perceive that such constructive proportion has been duly observed, as it is agreeable to see that anything is fit for its purpose or for ours, and also that it has been the result of intelligence in the workman of it, so that we sometimes feel a pleasure in apparent non-adaptation, if it be a sign of ingenuity; as in the unnatural and seemingly impossible lightness of gothic spires and roofs. now, the errors against which i would caution the reader in this matter are three. the first, is the overlooking or denial of the power of apparent proportion, of which power neither burke nor any other writer whose works i have met with, take cognizance. the second, is the attribution of _beauty_ to the appearances of constructive proportion. the third, the denial with burke of _any_ value or agreeableness in constructive proportion. § . the value of apparent proportion in curvature. now, the full proof of the influence of apparent proportion, i must reserve for illustration by diagram; one or two instances however may be given at present for the better understanding of its nature. we have already asserted that all curves are more beautiful than right lines. all curves, however, are not equally beautiful, and their differences of beauty depend on the different proportions borne to each other by those infinitely small right lines of which they may be conceived as composed. when these lines are equal and contain equal angles, there can be no connection or unity of sequence in them. the resulting curve, the circle, is therefore the least beautiful of all curves. when the lines bear to each other some certain proportion; or when, the lines remaining equal, the angles vary; or when by any means whatsoever, and in whatever complicated modes, such differences as shall imply connection are established between the infinitely small segments, the resulting curves become beautiful. the simplest of the beautiful curves are the conic, and the various spirals; but it is as rash as it is difficult to endeavor to trace any ground of superiority or inferiority among the infinite numbers of the higher curves. i believe that almost all are beautiful in their own nature, and that their comparative beauty depends on the constant quantities involved in their equations. of this point i shall speak hereafter at greater length. § . how by nature obtained. the universal forces of nature, and the individual energies of the matter submitted to them, are so appointed and balanced, that they are continually bringing out curves of this kind in all visible forms, and that circular lines become nearly impossible under any circumstances. the gradual acceleration, for instance, of velocity, in streams that descend from hill-sides, as it gradually increases their power of erosion increases in the same gradual degree the rate of curvature in the descent of the slope, until at a certain degree of steepness this descent meets, and is concealed by the right line of the detritus. the junction of this right line with the plain is again modified by the farther bounding of the larger blocks, and by the successively diminishing proportion of landslips caused by erosion at the bottom, so that the whole line of the hill is one of curvature, first, gradually increasing in rapidity to the maximum steepness of which the particular rock is capable, and then decreasing in a decreasing ratio, until it arrives at the plain level. this type of form, modified of course more or less by the original boldness of the mountain, and dependent both on its age, its constituent rock, and the circumstances of its exposure, is yet in its general formula applicable to all. so the curves of all things in motion, and of all organic forms, most rudely and simply in the shell spirals, and in their most complicated development in the muscular lines of the higher animals. this influence of apparent proportion, a proportion, be it observed, which has no reference to ultimate ends, but which is itself, seemingly, the end and object of operation in many of the forces of nature, is therefore at the root of all our delight in any beautiful form whatsoever. for no form can be beautiful which is not composed of curves whose unity is secured by relations of this kind. § . apparent proportion in melodies of line. not only however in curvature, but in all associations of lines whatsoever, it is desirable that there should be reciprocal relation, and the eye is unhappy without perception of it. it is utterly vain to endeavor to reduce this proportion to finite rules, for it is as various as musical melody, and the laws to which it is subject are of the same general kind, so that the determination of right or wrong proportion is as much a matter of feeling and experience as the appreciation of good musical composition; not but that there is a science of both, and principles which may not be infringed, but that within these limits the liberty of invention is infinite, and the degrees of excellence infinite also, whence the curious error of burke in imagining that because he could not fix upon some one given proportion of lines as better than any other, therefore proportion had no value nor influence at all, which is the same as to conclude that there is no such thing as melody in music, because there are melodies more than one. § . error of burke in this matter. the argument of burke on this subject is summed up in the following words:--"examine the head of a beautiful horse, find what proportion that bears to his body and to his limbs, and what relations these have to each other, and when you have settled these proportions, as a standard of beauty, then take a dog or cat, or any other animal, and examine how far the same proportions between their heads and their necks, between those and the body, and so on, are found to hold; i think we may safely say, that they differ in every species, yet that there are individuals found in a great many species, so differing, that have a very striking beauty. now if it be allowed that very different, and even contrary forms and dispositions, are consistent with beauty, it amounts, i believe, to a concession, that no certain measures operating from a natural principle are necessary to produce it, at least so far as the brute species is concerned." in this argument there are three very palpable fallacies: the first is the rough application of measurement to the heads, necks, and limbs, without observing the subtile differences of proportion and position of parts in the members themselves, for it would be strange if the different adjustment of the ears and brow in the dog and horse, did not require a harmonizing difference of adjustment in the head and neck. the second fallacy is that above specified, the supposition that proportion cannot be beautiful if susceptible of variation, whereas the whole meaning of the term has reference to the adjustment and functional correspondence of infinitely variable quantities. and the third error is the oversight of the very important fact, that, although "different and even contrary forms and dispositions are consistent with beauty," they are by no means consistent with equal _degrees_ of beauty, so that, while we find in all the presence of such proportion and harmony of form, as gifts them with positive agreeableness consistent with the station and dignity of each, we perceive, also, such superiority of proportion in some (as the horse, eagle, lion, and man for instance) as may best be in harmony with the nobler functions and more exalted powers of the animals. § . constructive proportion. its influence in plants. and this allowed superiority of some animal forms to others is, in itself argument against the second error above named, that of attributing the sensation of beauty to the perception of expedient or constructive proportion. for everything that god has made is equally well constructed with reference to its intended functions. but all things are not equally beautiful. the megatherium is absolutely as well proportioned, with the view of adaptation of parts to purposes, as the horse or the swan; but by no means so handsome as either. the fact is, that the perception of expediency of proportion can but rarely affect our estimates of beauty, for it implies a knowledge which we very rarely and imperfectly possess, and the want of which we tacitly acknowledge. let us consider that instance of the proportion of the stalk of a plant to its head, given by burke. in order to judge of the expediency of this proportion, we must know, first, the scale of the plant (for the smaller the scale, the longer the stem may safely be). secondly, the toughness of the materials of the stem and the mode of their mechanical structure. thirdly, the specific gravity of the head. fourthly, the position of the head which the nature of fructification requires. fifthly, the accidents and influences to which the situation for which the plant was created is exposed. until we know all this, we cannot say that proportion or disproportion exists, and because we cannot know all this, the idea of expedient proportion enters but slightly into our impression of vegetable beauty, but rather, since the existence of the plant proves that these proportions have been observed, and we know that nothing but our own ignorance prevents us from perceiving them, we take the proportion on credit, and are delighted by the variety of results which the divine intelligence has attained in the various involutions of these quantities, and perhaps most when, to outward appearance, such proportions have been violated; more by the slenderness of the campanula than the security of the pine. § . and animals. what is obscure in plants, is utterly incomprehensible in animals, owing to the greater number of means employed and functions performed. to judge of expedient proportion in them, we must know all that each member has to do, all its bones, all its muscles, and the amount of nervous energy communicable to them; and yet, forasmuch as we have more experience and instinctive sense of the strength of muscles than of wood, and more practical knowledge of the use of a head or a foot than of a flower or a stem, we are much more likely to presume upon our judgment respecting proportions here, we are very apt to assert that the plesiosaurus and camelopard have necks too long, that the turnspit has legs too short, and the elephant a body too ponderous. but the painfulness arising from the idea of this being the case is occasioned partly by our sympathy with the animal, partly by our false apprehension of incompletion in the divine work,[ ] nor in either case has it any connection with impressions of that typical beauty of which we are at present speaking; though some, perhaps, with that vital beauty which will hereafter come under discussion. § . summary. i wish therefore the reader to hold, respecting proportion generally. first, that apparent proportion, or the melodious connection of quantities, is a cause of unity, and therefore one of the sources of all beautiful form. secondly, that constructive proportion is agreeable to the mind when it is known or supposed, and that its seeming absence is painful in a like degree, but that this pleasure and pain have nothing in common with those dependent on ideas of beauty. farther illustrations of the value of unity i shall reserve for our detailed examination, as the bringing them forward here would interfere with the general idea of the subject-matter of the theoretic faculty which i wish succinctly to convey. footnotes [ ] compare chap. ix. § , note. [ ] spenser's various forest is the forest of error. [ ] it must be matter of no small wonderment to practical men to observe how grossly the nature and connection of unity and variety have been misunderstood and misstated, by those writers upon taste, who have been guided by no experience of art; most singularly perhaps by mr. alison, who, confounding unity with uniformity, and leading his readers through thirty pages of discussion respecting uniformity and variety, the intelligibility of which is not by any means increased by his supposing uniformity to be capable of existence in single things; at last substitutes for these two terms, sufficiently contradictory already, those of similarity and dissimilarity, the reconciliation of which opposites in one thing we must, i believe, leave mr. alison to accomplish. [ ] [greek: kai to tauta prattein pollakis hêdy;--to gar synêthes hêdy ên; kai to metaballein hêdy; eis physin gar gignetai metaballein.]--arist. rhet. i. ii. . [ ] fra angelico's fresco, in a cell of the upper cloister. he treated the subject frequently. another characteristic example occurs in the vita di christo of the academy, a series now unfortunately destroyed by the picture cleaners. simon memmi in santa maria novella (chapelle des espagnols) has given another very beautiful instance. in giotto the principle is universal, though his multitudes are somewhat more dramatically and powerfully varied in gesture than angelico's. in mino da fiesole's altar-piece in the church of st. ambrogiot at florence, close by cosimo rosselli's fresco, there is a beautiful example in marble. [ ] the predella of the picture behind the altar. [ ] it seems never to have been rightly understood, even by the more intelligent among our architects, that proportion is in any way connected with positive size; it seems to be held among them that a small building may be expanded to a large one merely by proportionally expanding all its parts: and that the harmony will be equally agreeable on whatever scale it be rendered. now this is true of apparent proportion, but utterly false of constructive; and, as much of the value of architectural proportion is constructive, the error is often productive of the most painful results. it may be best illustrated by observing the conditions of proportion in animals. many persons have thoughtlessly claimed admiration for the strength--supposed gigantic--of insects and smaller animals; because capable of lifting weights, leaping distances, and surmounting obstacles, of proportion apparently overwhelming. thus the formica herculanea will lift in its mouth, and brandish like a baton, sticks thicker than itself and six times its length, all the while scrambling over crags of about the proportionate height of the cliffs of dover, three or four in a minute. there is nothing extraordinary in this, nor any exertion of strength necessarily greater than human, in proportion to the size of the body. for it is evident that if the size and strength of any creature be expanded or diminished in proportion to each other, the distance through which it can leap, the time it can maintain exertion, or any other third term resultant, remains constant; that is, diminish weight of powder and of ball proportionately, and the distance carried is constant or nearly so. thus, a grasshopper, a man, and a giant feet high, supposing their muscular strength equally proportioned to their size, can or could all leap, not proportionate distance, but the same or nearly the same distance--say, four feet the grasshopper, or forty-eight times his length; six feet the man or his length exactly; ten feet the giant or the tenth of his length. hence all small animals can, _coeteris paribus_, perform feats of strength and agility, exactly so much greater than those to be executed by large ones, as the animals themselves are smaller; and to enable an elephant to leap like a grasshopper, he must be endowed with strength a million times greater in _proportion_ to his size. now the consequence of this general mechanical law is, that as we increase the scale of animals, their means of power, whether muscles of motion or bones of support, must be increased in a more than proportionate degree, or they become utterly unwieldy, and incapable of motion;--and there is a limit to this increase of strength. if the elephant had legs as long as a spider's, no combination of animal matter that could be hide-bound would have strength enough to move them: to support the megatherium, we must have a humerus a foot in diameter, though perhaps not more than two feet long, and that in a vertical position under him, while the gnat can hang on the window frame, and poise himself to sting, in the middle of crooked stilts like threads; stretched out to ten times the breadth of his body on each side. increase the size of the megatherium a little more, and no phosphate of lime will bear him; he would crush his own legs to powder. (compare sir charles bell, "bridgewater treatise on the hand," p. , and the note.) hence there is not only a limit to the size of animals, in the conditions of matter, but to their activity also, the largest being always least capable of exertion; and this would be the case to a far greater extent, but that nature beneficently alters her proportions as she increases her scale; giving, as we have seen, long legs and enormous wings to the smaller tribes, and short and thick proportion to the larger. so in vegetables--compare the stalk of an ear of oat, and the trunk of a pine, the mechanical relations being in both the same. so also in waves, of which the large never can be mere exaggerations of the small, but have different slopes and curvatures: so in mountains and all things else, necessarily, and from ordinary mechanical laws. whence in architecture, according to the scale of the building, its proportions must be altered; and i have no hesitation in calling that unmeaning exaggeration of parts in st. peter's, of flutings, volutes, friezes, etc., in the proportions of a smaller building, a vulgar blunder, and one that destroys all the majesty that the building ought to have had--and still more i should so call all imitations and adaptations of large buildings on a small scale. the true test of right proportion is that it shall itself inform us of the scale of the building, and be such that even in a drawing it shall instantly induce the conception of the actual size, or size intended. i know not what fuseli means by that aphorism of his:-- "disproportion of parts is the element of hugeness--proportion, of grandeur. all gothic styles of architecture are huge. the greek alone is grand." when a building _is_ vast, it ought to look so; and the proportion is right which exhibits its vastness. nature loses no size by her proportion; her buttressed mountains have more of gothic than of greek in them. [ ] for the just and severe reproof of which, compare sir charles bell, (on the hand,) pp. , . chapter vii. of repose, or the type of divine permanence. § . universal feeling respecting the necessity of repose in art. its sources. there is probably no necessity more imperatively felt by the artist, no test more unfailing of the greatness of artistical treatment, than that of the appearance of repose, and yet there is no quality whose semblance in mere matter is more difficult to define or illustrate. nevertheless, i believe that our instinctive love of it, as well as the cause to which i attribute that love, (although here also, as in the former cases, i contend not for the interpretation, but for the fact,) will be readily allowed by the reader. as opposed to passion, changefulness, or laborious exertion, repose is the especial and separating characteristic of the eternal mind and power; it is the "i am" of the creator opposed to the "i become" of all creatures; it is the sign alike of the supreme knowledge which is incapable of surprise, the supreme power which is incapable of labor, the supreme volition which is incapable of change; it is the stillness of the beams of the eternal chambers laid upon the variable waters of ministering creatures; and as we saw before that the infinity which was a type of the divine nature on the one hand, became yet more desirable on the other from its peculiar address to our prison hopes, and to the expectations of an unsatisfied and unaccomplished existence, so the types of this third attribute of the deity might seem to have been rendered farther attractive to mortal instinct, through the infliction upon the fallen creature of a curse necessitating a labor once unnatural and still most painful, so that the desire of rest planted in the heart is no sensual nor unworthy one, but a longing for renovation and for escape from a state whose every phase is mere preparation for another equally transitory, to one in which permanence shall have become possible through perfection. hence the great call of christ to men, that call on which st. augustine fixed essential expression of christian hope, is accompanied by the promise of rest;[ ] and the death bequest of christ to men is peace. § . repose how expressed in matter. repose, as it is expressed in material things, is either a simple appearance of permanence and quietness, as in the massy forms of a mountain or rock, accompanied by the lulling effect of all mighty sight and sound, which all feel and none define, (it would be less sacred if more explicable,) [greek: heudousin dioreôn koruphai te kai pharanges], or else it is repose proper, the rest of things in which there is vitality or capability of motion actual or imagined; and with respect to these the expression of repose is greater in proportion to the amount and sublimity of the action which is not taking place, as well as to the intensity of the negation of it. thus we speak not of repose in a stone, because the motion of a stone has nothing in it of energy nor vitality, neither its repose of stability. but having once seen a great rock come down a mountain side, we have a noble sensation of its rest, now bedded immovably among the under fern, because the power and fearfulness of its motion were great, and its stability and negation of motion are now great in proportion. hence the imagination, which delights in nothing more than the enhancing of the characters of repose, effects this usually by either attributing to things visibly energetic an ideal stability, or to things visibly stable an ideal activity or vitality. hence wordsworth, of the cloud, which in itself having too much of changefulness for his purpose, is spoken of as one "that heareth not the loud winds when they call, and moveth altogether, if it move at all." and again of children, which, that it may remove from them the child restlessness, the imagination conceives as rooted flowers "beneath an old gray oak, as violets, lie." on the other hand, the scattered rocks, which have not, as such, vitality enough for rest, are gifted with it by the living image: they "lie couched around us like a flock of sheep." § . the necessity to repose of an implied energy. thus, as we saw that unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its contrary (variety) so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite, energy, and this even in its lower manifestations, in rocks and stones and trees. by comparing the modes in which the mind is disposed to regard the boughs of a fair and vigorous tree, motionless in the summer air, with the effect produced by one of these same boughs hewn square and used for threshold or lintel, the reader will at once perceive the connection of vitality with repose, and the part they both bear in beauty. § . mental repose, how noble. but that which in lifeless things ennobles them by seeming to indicate life, ennobles higher creatures by indicating the exaltation of their earthly vitality into a divine vitality; and raising the life of sense into the life of faith--faith, whether we receive it in the sense of adherence to resolution, obedience to law, regardfulness of promise, in which from all time it has been the test as the shield of the true being and life of man, or in the still higher sense of trustfulness in the presence, kindness, and word of god; in which form it has been exhibited under the christian dispensation. for whether in one or other form, whether the faithfulness of men whose path is chosen and portion fixed, in the following and receiving of that path and portion, as in the thermopylæ camp; or the happier faithfulness of children in the good giving of their father, and of subjects in the conduct of their king, as in the "stand still and see the salvation of god" of the red sea shore, there is rest and peacefulness, the "standing still" in both, the quietness of action determined, of spirit unalarmed, of expectation unimpatient: beautiful, even when based only as of old, on the self-command and self-possession, the persistent dignity or the uncalculating love of the creature,[ ] but more beautiful yet when the rest is one of humility instead of pride, and the trust no more in the resolution we have taken, but in the hand we hold. § . its universal value as a test of art. hence i think that there is no desire more intense or more exalted than that which exists in all rightly disciplined minds for the evidences of repose in external signs, and what i cautiously said respecting infinity, i say fearlessly respecting repose, that no work of art can be great without it, and that all art is great in proportion to the appearance of it. it is the most unfailing test of beauty, whether of matter or of motion, nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not, and in strict proportion to its appearance in the work is the majesty of mind to be inferred in the artificer. without regard to other qualities, we may look to this for our evidence, and by the search for this alone we may be led to the rejection of all that is base, and the accepting of all that is good and great, for the paths of wisdom are all peace. we shall see by this light three colossal images standing up side by side, looming in their great rest of spirituality above the whole world horizon, phidias, michael angelo, and dante; and then, separated from their great religious thrones only by less fulness and earnestness of faith, homer, and shakspeare; and from these we may go down step by step among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly observant of diminished lustre in every appearance of restlessness and effort, until the last trace of true inspiration vanishes in the tottering affectations or the tortured insanities of modern times. there is no art, no pursuit, whatsoever, but its results may be classed by this test alone; everything of evil is betrayed and winnowed away by it, glitter and confusion and glare of color, inconsistency or absence of thought, forced expression, evil choice of subject, over accumulation of materials, whether in painting or literature, the shallow and unreflecting nothingness of the english schools of art, the strained and disgusting horrors of the french, the distorted feverishness of the german:--pretence, over decoration, over division of parts in architecture, and again in music, in acting, in dancing, in whatsoever art, great or mean, there are yet degrees of greatness or meanness entirely dependent on this single quality of repose. § . instances in the laocoon and theseus. particular instances are at present both needless and cannot but be inadequate; needless, because i suppose that every reader, however limited his experience of art, can supply many for himself, and inadequate, because no number of them could illustrate the full extent of the influence of the expression. i believe, however, that by comparing the disgusting convulsions of the laocoon, with the elgin theseus, we may obtain a general idea of the effect of the influence, as shown by its absence in one, and presence in the other, of two works which, as far as artistical merit is concerned, are in some measure parallel, not that i believe, even in this respect, the laocoon justifiably comparable with the theseus. i suppose that no group has exercised so pernicious an influence on art as this, a subject ill chosen, meanly conceived and unnaturally treated, recommended to imitation by subtleties of execution and accumulation of technical knowledge.[ ] § . and in altar tombs. in christian art, it would be well to compare the feeling of the finer among the altar tombs of the middle ages, with any monumental works after michael angelo, perhaps more especially with works of roubilliac or canova. in the cathedral of lucca, near the entrance door of the north transept, there is a monument of jacopo della quercia's to ilaria di caretto, the wife of paolo guinigi. i name it not as more beautiful or perfect than other examples of the same period, but as furnishing an instance of the exact and right mean between the rigidity and rudeness of the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid imitation of life, sleep, or death, of which the fashion has taken place in modern times.[ ] she is lying on a simple couch, with a hound at her feet, not on the side, but with the head laid straight and simply on the hard pillow, in which, let it be observed, there is no effort at deceptive imitation of pressure. it is understood as a pillow, but not mistaken for one. the hair is bound in a flat braid over the fair brow, the sweet and arched eyes are closed, the tenderness of the loving lips is set and quiet, there is that about them which forbids breath, something which is not death nor sleep, but the pure image of both. the hands are not lifted in prayer, neither folded, but the arms are laid at length upon the body, and the hands cross as they fall. the feet are hidden by the drapery, and the forms of the limbs concealed, but not their tenderness. if any of us, after staying for a time beside this tomb, could see through his tears, one of the vain and unkind encumbrances of the grave, which, in these hollow and heartless days, feigned sorrow builds to foolish pride, he would, i believe, receive such a lesson of love as no coldness could refuse, no fatuity forget, and no insolence disobey. footnotes [ ] matt. xi. . [ ] "the universal instinct of repose, the longing for confirmed tranquillity inward and outward, humble, yet sublime. the life where hope and memory are as one. earth quiet and unchanged; the human soul consistent in self-rule; and heaven revealed to meditation, in that quietness." wordsworth. excursion, book iii. but compare carefully (for this is put into the mouth of one diseased in thought and erring in seeking) the opening of the ninth book; and observe the difference between the mildew of inaction,--the slumber of death; and the patience of the saints--the rest of the sabbath eternal. (rev. xiv. .) compare also, chap. i. § . [ ] i would also have the reader compare with the meagre lines and contemptible tortures of the laocoon, the awfulness and quietness of m. angelo's treatment of a subject in most respects similar, (the plague of the fiery serpents,) but of which the choice was justified both by the place which the event holds in the typical system he had to arrange, and by the grandeur of the plague itself, in its multitudinous grasp, and its mystical salvation; sources of sublimity entirely wanting to the slaughter of the dardan priest. it is good to see how his gigantic intellect reaches after repose, and truthfully finds it, in the falling hand of the near figure, and in the deathful decline of that whose hands are held up even in their venom coldness to the cross; and though irrelevant to our present purpose, it is well also to note how the grandeur of this treatment results, not merely from choice, but from a greater knowledge and more faithful rendering of truth. for whatever knowledge of the human frame there may be in the laocoon, there is certainly none of the habits of serpents. the fixing of the snake's head in the side of the principal figure is as false to nature, as it is poor in composition of line. a large serpent never wants to bite, it wants to hold, it seizes therefore always where it can hold best, by the extremities, or throat, it seizes once and forever, and that before it coils, following up the seizure with the twist of its body round the victim, as invisibly swift as the twist of a whip lash round any hard object it may strike, and then it holds fast, never moving the jaws or the body, if its prey has any power of struggling left, it throws round another coil, without quitting the hold with the jaws; if laocoon had had to do with real serpents, instead of pieces of tape with heads to them, he would have been held still, and not allowed to throw his arms or legs about. it is most instructive to observe the accuracy of michael angelo in the rendering of these circumstances; the binding of the arms to the body, and the knotting of the whole mass of agony together, until we hear the crashing of the bones beneath the grisly sliding of the engine folds. note also the expression in all the figures of another circumstance, the torpor and cold numbness of the limbs induced by the serpent venom, which, though justifiably overlooked by the sculptor of the laocoon, as well as by virgil--in consideration of the rapidity of the death by crushing, adds infinitely to the power of the florentine's conception, and would have been better hinted by virgil, than that sickening distribution of venom on the garlands. in fact, virgil has missed both of truth and impressiveness every way--the "morsu depascitur" is unnatural butchery--the "perfusus veneno" gratuitous foulness--the "clamores horrendos," impossible degradation; compare carefully the remarks on this statue in sir charles bell's essay on expression, (third edition, p. ) where he has most wisely and uncontrovertibly deprived the statue of all claim to expression of energy and fortitude of mind, and shown its common and coarse intent of mere bodily exertion and agony, while he has confirmed payne knight's just condemnation of the passage in virgil. if the reader wishes to see the opposite or imaginative view of the subject, let him compare winkelmann; and schiller, letters on Æsthetic culture. [ ] whenever, in monumental work, the sculptor reaches a deceptive appearance of life or death, or of concomitant details, he has gone too far. the statue should be felt for such, not look like a dead or sleeping body; it should not convey the impression of a corpse, nor of sick and outwearied flesh, but it should be the marble _image_ of death or weariness. so the concomitants should be distinctly marble, severe and monumental in their lines, not shroud, not bedclothes, not actual armor nor brocade, not a real soft pillow, not a downright hard stuffed mattress, but the mere type and suggestion of these: a certain rudeness and incompletion of finish is very noble in all. not that they are to be unnatural, such lines as are given should be pure and true, and clear of the hardness and mannered rigidity of the strictly gothic types, but lines so few and grand as to appeal to the imagination only, and always to stop short of realization. there is a monument put up lately by a modern italian sculptor in one of the side chapels of santa croce, the face fine and the execution dexterous. but it looks as if the person had been restless all night, and the artist admitted to a faithful study of the disturbed bedclothes in the morning. chapter viii. of symmetry, or the type of divine justice. § . symmetry, what and how found in organic nature. § . how necessary in art. we shall not be long detained by the consideration of this, the fourth constituent of beauty, as its nature is universally felt and understood. in all perfectly beautiful objects, there is found the opposition of one part to another and a reciprocal balance obtained; in animals the balance being commonly between opposite sides, (note the disagreeableness occasioned by the exception in flat fish, having the eyes on one side of the head,) but in vegetables the opposition is less distinct, as in the boughs on opposite sides of trees, and the leaves and sprays on each side of the boughs, and in dead matter less perfect still, often amounting only to a certain tendency towards a balance, as in the opposite sides of valleys and alternate windings of streams. in things in which perfect symmetry is from their nature impossible or improper, a balance must be at least in some measure expressed before they can be beheld with pleasure. hence the necessity of what artists require as opposing lines or masses in composition, the propriety of which, as well as their value, depends chiefly on their inartificial and natural invention. absolute equality is not required, still less absolute similarity. a mass of subdued color may be balanced by a point of a powerful one, and a long and latent line overpowered by a short and conspicuous one. the only error against which it is necessary to guard the reader with respect to symmetry, is the confounding it with proportion, though it seems strange that the two terms could ever have been used as synonymous. symmetry is the _opposition_ of _equal_ quantities to each other. proportion the _connection_ of _unequal_ quantities with each other. the property of a tree in sending out equal boughs on opposite sides is symmetrical. its sending out shorter and smaller towards the top, proportional. in the human face its balance of opposite sides is symmetry, its division upwards, proportion. [illustration: tomb of the ilaria di caretto, lucca. from a photograph.] § . to what its agreeableness is referable. various instances. § . especially in religious art. whether the agreeableness of symmetry be in any way referable to its expression of the aristotelian [greek: isotês], that is to say of abstract justice, i leave the reader to determine; i only assert respecting it, that it is necessary to the dignity of every form, and that by the removal of it we shall render the other elements of beauty comparatively ineffectual: though, on the other hand, it is to be observed that it is rather a mode of arrangement of qualities than a quality itself; and hence symmetry has little power over the mind, unless all the other constituents of beauty be found together with it. a form may be symmetrical and ugly, as many elizabethan ornaments, and yet not so ugly as it had been if unsymmetrical, but bettered always by increasing degrees of symmetry; as in star figures, wherein there is a circular symmetry of many like members, whence their frequent use for the plan and ground of ornamental designs; so also it is observable that foliage in which the leaves are concentrically grouped, as in the chestnuts, and many shrubs--rhododendrons for instance--(whence the perfect beauty of the alpine rose)--is far nobler in its effect than any other, so that the sweet chestnut of all trees most fondly and frequently occurs in the landscape of tintoret and titian, beside which all other landscape grandeur vanishes: and even in the meanest things the rule holds, as in the kaleidoscope, wherein agreeableness is given to forms altogether accidental merely by their repetition and reciprocal opposition; which orderly balance and arrangement are essential to the perfect operation of the more earnest and solemn qualities of the beautiful, as being heavenly in their nature, and contrary to the violence and disorganization of sin, so that the seeking of them and submission to them is always marked in minds that have been subjected to high moral discipline, constant in all the great religious painters, to the degree of being an offence and a scorn to men of less tuned and tranquil feeling. equal ranks of saints are placed on each side of the picture, if there be a kneeling figure on one side, there is a corresponding one on the other, the attendant angels beneath and above are arranged in like order. the raffaelle at blenheim, the madonna di st. sisto, the st. cicilia, and all the works of perugino, francia, and john bellini present some such form, and the balance at least is preserved even in pictures of action necessitating variety of grouping, as always by giotto; and by ghirlandajo in the introduction of his chorus-like side figures, and by tintoret most eminently in his noblest work, the crucifixion, where not only the grouping but the arrangement of light is absolutely symmetrical. where there is no symmetry, the effects of passion and violence are increased, and many very sublime pictures derive their sublimity from the want of it, but they lose proportionally in the diviner quality of beauty. in landscape the same sense of symmetry is preserved, as we shall presently see, even to artificialness, by the greatest men, and it is one of the principal sources of deficient feeling in the landscapes of the present day, that the symmetry of nature is sacrificed to irregular picturesqueness. of this, however, hereafter. chapter ix. of purity, or the type of divine energy. § . the influence of light as a sacred symbol. it may at first appear strange that i have not in my enumeration of the types of divine attributes, included that which is certainly the most visible and evident of all, as well as the most distinctly expressed in scripture; god is light, and in him is no darkness at all. but i could not logically class the presence of an actual substance or motion with mere conditions and modes of being, neither could i logically separate from any of these, that which is evidently necessary to the perception of all. and it is also to be observed, that though the love of light is more instinctive in the human heart than any other of the desires connected with beauty, we can hardly separate its agreeableness in its own nature from the sense of its necessity and value for the purposes of life, neither the abstract painfulness of darkness from the sense of danger and incapacity connected with it; and note also that it is not _all_ light, but light possessing the universal qualities of beauty, diffused or infinite rather than in points, tranquil, not startling and variable, pure, not sullied or oppressed, which is indeed pleasant and perfectly typical of the divine nature. § . the idea of purity connected with it. observe, however, that there is one quality, the idea of which had been just introduced in connection with light, which might have escaped us in the consideration of mere matter, namely purity, and yet i think that the original notion of this quality is altogether material, and has only been attributed to color when such color is suggestive of the condition of matter from which we originally received the idea. for i see not in the abstract how one color should be considered purer than another, except as more or less compounded, whereas there is certainly a sense of purity or impurity in the most compound and neutral colors, as well as in the simplest, a quality difficult to define, and which the reader will probably be surprised by my calling the type of energy, with which it has certainly little traceable connection in the mind. § . originally derived from conditions of matter. § . associated ideas adding to the power of the impression. influence of clearness. § . perfect beauty of surface, in what consisting. i believe however if we carefully analyze the nature of our ideas of impurity in general, we shall find them refer especially to conditions of matter in which its various elements are placed in a relation incapable of healthy or proper operation; and most distinctly to conditions in which the negation of vital or energetic action is most evident, as in corruption and decay of all kinds, wherein particles which once, by their operation on each other, produced a living and energetic whole, are reduced to a condition of perfect passiveness, in which they are seized upon and appropriated, one by one, piecemeal, by whatever has need of them, without any power of resistance or energy of their own. and thus there is a peculiar painfulness attached to any associations of inorganic with organic matter, such as appear to involve the inactivity and feebleness of the latter, so that things which are not felt to be foul in their own nature, yet become so in association with things of greater inherent energy; as dust or earth, which in a mass excites no painful sensation, excites a most disagreeable one when strewing or staining an animal's skin, because it implies a decline and deadening of the vital and healthy power of the skin. but all reasoning about this impression is rendered difficult, by the host of associated ideas connected with it; for the ocular sense of impurity connected with corruption is infinitely enhanced by the offending of other senses and by the grief and horror of it in its own nature, as the special punishment and evidence of sin, and on the other hand, the ocular delight in purity is mingled, as i before observed, with the love of the mere element of light, as a type of wisdom and of truth; whence it seems to me that we admire the transparency of bodies, though probably it is still rather owing to our sense of more perfect order and arrangement of particles, and not to our love of light, that we look upon a piece of rock crystal as purer than a piece of marble, and on the marble as purer than a piece of chalk. and let it be observed also that the most lovely objects in nature are only partially transparent. i suppose the utmost possible sense of beauty is conveyed by a feebly translucent, smooth, but not lustrous surface of white, and pale warm red, subdued by the most pure and delicate grays, as in the finer portions of the human frame; in wreaths of snow, and in white plumage under rose light,[ ] so viola of olivia in twelfth night, and homer of atrides wounded.[ ] and i think that transparency and lustre, both beautiful in themselves, are incompatible with the highest beauty because they destroy form, on the full perception of which more of the divinely character of the object depends than upon its color. hence, in the beauty of snow and of flesh, so much translucency is allowed as is consistent with the full explanation of the forms, while we are suffered to receive more intense impressions of light and transparency from other objects which, nevertheless, owing to their necessarily unperceived form, are not perfectly nor affectingly beautiful. a fair forehead outshines its diamond diadem. the sparkle of the cascade withdraws not our eyes from the snowy summits in their evening silence. § . purity only metaphorically a type of sinlessness. it may seem strange to many readers that i have not spoken of purity in that sense in which it is most frequently used, as a type of sinlessness. i do not deny that the frequent metaphorical use of it in scripture may have and ought to have much influence on the sympathies with which we regard it, and that probably the immediate agreeableness of it to most minds arises far more from this source than from that to which i have chosen to attribute it. but, in the first place, if it be indeed in the signs of divine and not of human attributes that beauty consists, i see not how the idea of sin can be formed with respect to the deity, for it is an idea of a relation borne by us to him, and not in any way to be attached to his abstract nature. and if the idea of sin is incapable of being formed with respect to him, so also is its negative, for we cannot form an idea of negation, where we cannot form an idea of presence. if for instance one could conceive of taste or flavor in a proposition of euclid, so also might we of insipidity, but if not of the one, then not of the other. so that, in speaking of the goodness of god, it cannot be that we mean anything more than his love, mercifulness, and justice, and these attributes i have shown to be expressed by other qualities of beauty, and i cannot trace any rational connection between them and the idea of spotlessness in matter. neither can i trace any more distinct relation between this idea, and any of the virtues which make up the righteousness of man, except perhaps those of truth and openness, of which i have already spoken as more expressed by the transparency than the mere purity of matter. so that i conceive the whole use of the terms purity, spotlessness, etc., in moral subjects, to be merely metaphorical, and that it is rather that we illustrate these virtues by the desirableness of material purity, than that we desire material purity because it is illustrative of these virtues. § . energy, how expressed by purity of matter. i repeat, then, that the only idea which i think can be legitimately connected with purity of matter, is this of vital and energetic connection among its particles, and that the idea of foulness is essentially connected with dissolution and death. thus the purity of the rock, contrasted with the foulness of dust or mould, is expressed by the epithet "living," very singularly given in the rock, in almost all languages; singularly i say, because life is almost the last attribute one would ascribe to stone, but for this visible energy and connection of its particles: and so of water as opposed to stagnancy. and i do not think that, however pure a powder or dust may be, the idea of beauty is ever connected with it, for it is not the mere purity, but the _active_ condition of the substance which is desired, so that as soon as it shoots into crystals, or gathers into efflorescence, a sensation of _active_ or real purity is received which was not felt in the calcined caput mortuum. § . and of color. § . spirituality, how so expressed. and again in color. i imagine that the quality of it which we term purity is dependent on the full energizing of the rays that compose it, whereof if in compound hues any are overpowered and killed by the rest, so as to be of no value nor operation, foulness is the consequence; while so long as all act together, whether side by side, or from pigments seen one through the other, so that all the coloring matter employed comes into play in the harmony desired, and none be quenched nor killed, purity results. and so in all cases i suppose that pureness is made to us desirable, because expressive of the constant presence and energizing of the deity in matter, through which all things live and move, and have their being, and that foulness is painful as the accompaniment of disorder and decay, and always indicative of the withdrawal of divine support. and the practical analogies of life, the invariable connection of outward foulness with mental sloth and degradation, as well as with bodily lethargy and disease, together with the contrary indications of freshness and purity belonging to every healthy and active organic frame, (singularly seen in the effort of the young leaves when first their inward energy prevails over the earth, pierces its corruption, and shakes its dust away from their own white purity of life,) all these circumstances strengthen the instinct by associations countless and irresistible. and then, finally, with the idea of purity comes that of spirituality, for the essential characteristic of matter is its inertia, whence, by adding to it purity or energy, we may in some measure spiritualize even matter itself. thus in the descriptions of the apocalypse it is its purity that fits it for its place in heaven; the river of the water of life, that proceeds out of the throne of the lamb, is clear as crystal, and the pavement of the city is pure gold, like unto clear glass.[ ] footnotes [ ] the reader will observe that i am speaking at present of mere material qualities. if he would obtain perfect ideas respecting loveliness of luminous surface, let him closely observe a swan with its wings expanded in full light five minutes before sunset. the human cheek or the rose leaf are perhaps hardly so pure, and the forms of snow, though individually as beautiful, are less exquisitely combined. [ ] [greek: hôs d' ote tis t' elephanta gynê phoiniki miênê mêonis.] so spenser of shamefacedness, an exquisite piece of glowing color--and sweetly of belphoebe--(so the roses and lilies of all poets.) compare the making of the image of florimell. "the substance whereof she the body made was purest snow, in massy mould congealed, which she had gathered in a shady glade of the riphoean hills. the same she tempered with fine mercury, and mingled them with perfect vermily." with una he perhaps overdoes the white a little. she is two degrees of comparison above snow. compare his questioning in the hymn to beauty, about that mixture made of colors fair; and goodly temperament, of pure complexion. "hath white and red in it such wondrous power that it can pierce through the eyes into the heart?" where the distinction between typical and vital beauty is very gloriously carried out. [ ] i have not spoken here of any of the associations connected with warmth or coolness of color, they are partly connected with vital beauty, compare chap. xiv. § , , and partly with impressions of the sublime, the discussion of which is foreign to the present subject; purity, however, it is which gives value to both, for neither warm nor cool color, can be beautiful, if impure. neither have i spoken of any questions relating to melodies of color, a subject of separate science--whose general principle has been already stated in the seventh chapter respecting unity of sequence. those qualities only are here noted which give absolute beauty, whether to separate color or to melodies of it--for all melodies are not beautiful, but only those which are expressive of certain pleasant or solemn emotions; and the rest startling, or curious, or cheerful, or exciting, or sublime, but not beautiful, (and so in music.) and all questions relating to this grandeur, cheerfulness, or other characteristic impression of color must be considered under the head of ideas of relation. chapter x. of moderation, or the type of government by law. § . meaning of the terms chasteness and refinement. of objects which, in respect of the qualities hitherto considered, appear to have equal claims to regard, we find, nevertheless, that certain are preferred to others in consequence of an attractive power, usually expressed by the terms "chasteness, refinement, or elegance," and it appears also that things which in other respects have little in them of natural beauty, and are of forms altogether simple and adapted to simple uses, are capable of much distinction and desirableness in consequence of these qualities only. it is of importance to discover the real nature of the ideas thus expressed. § . how referable to temporary fashions. something of the peculiar meaning of the words is referable to the authority of fashion and the exclusiveness of pride, owing to which that which is the mode of a particular time is submissively esteemed, and that which by its costliness or its rarity is of difficult attainment, or in any way appears to have been chosen as the best of many things, (which is the original sense of the words elegant and exquisite,) is esteemed for the witness it bears to the dignity of the chooser. but neither of these ideas are in any way connected with eternal beauty, neither do they at all account for that agreeableness of color and form which is especially termed chasteness, and which it would seem to be a characteristic of rightly trained mind in all things to prefer, and of common minds to reject. § . how to the perception of completion. § . finish, by great masters esteemed essential. there is however another character of artificial productions, to which these terms have partial reference, which it is of some importance to note, that of finish, exactness, or refinement, which are commonly desired in the works of men, owing both to their difficulty of accomplishment and consequent expression of care and power (compare chapter on ideas of power, part i. sect, i.,) and from their greater resemblance to the working of god, whose "absolute exactness," says hooker, "all things imitate, by tending to that which is most exquisite in every particular." and there is not a greater sign of the imperfection of general taste, than its capability of contentment with forms and things which, professing completion, are yet not exact nor complete, as in the vulgar with wax and clay and china figures, and in bad sculptors with an unfinished and clay-like modelling of surface, and curves and angles of no precision or delicacy; and in general, in all common and unthinking persons with an imperfect rendering of that which might be pure and fine, as church-wardens are content to lose the sharp lines of stone carving under clogging obliterations of whitewash, and as the modern italians scrape away and polish white all the sharpness and glory of the carvings on their old churches, as most miserably and pitifully on st. mark's at venice, and the baptisteries of pistoja and pisa, and many others; so also the delight of vulgar painters in coarse and slurred painting, merely for the sake of its coarseness,[ ] as of spagnoletto, salvator, or murillo, opposed to the divine finish which the greatest and mightiest of men disdained not, but rather wrought out with painfulness and life spending; as leonardo and michael angelo, (for the latter, however many things he left unfinished, did finish, if at all, with a refinement that the eye cannot follow, but the feeling only, as in the pieta of genoa,) and perugino always, even to the gilding of single hairs among his angel tresses, and the young raffaelle, when he was heaven taught, and angelico, and pinturicchio, and john bellini, and all other such serious and loving men. only it is to be observed that this finish is not a part or constituent of beauty, but the full and ultimate rendering of it, so that it is an idea only connected with the works of men, for all the works of the deity are finished with the same, that is, infinite care and completion: and so what degrees of beauty exist among them can in no way be dependent upon this source, inasmuch as there are between them no degrees of care. and therefore, as there certainly is admitted a difference of degree in what we call chasteness, even in divine work, (compare the hollyhock or the sunflower with the vale lily,) we must seek for it some other explanation and source than this. § . moderation, its nature and value and if, bringing down our ideas of it from complicated objects to simple lines and colors, we analyze and regard them carefully, i think we shall be able to trace them to an under-current of constantly agreeable feeling, excited by the appearance in material things of a self-restrained liberty, that is to say, by the image of that acting of god with regard to all his creation, wherein, though free to operate in whatever arbitrary, sudden, violent, or inconstant ways he will, he yet, if we may reverently so speak, restrains in himself this his omnipotent liberty, and works always in consistent modes, called by us laws. and this restraint or moderation, according to the words of hooker, ("that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term a law,") is in the deity not restraint, such as it is said of creatures, but, as again says hooker, "the very being of god is a law to his working," so that every appearance of painfulness or want of power and freedom in material things is wrong and ugly; for the right restraint, the image of divine operation, is both in them, and in men, a willing and not painful stopping short of the utmost degree to which their power might reach, and the appearance of fettering or confinement is the cause of ugliness in the one, as the slightest painfulness or effort in restraint is a sign of sin in the other. § . it is the girdle of beauty. § . how found in natural curves and colors. § . how difficult of attainment, yet essential to all good. i have put this attribute of beauty last, because i consider it the girdle and safeguard of all the rest, and in this respect the most essential of all, for it is possible that a certain degree of beauty may be attained even in the absence of one of its other constituents, as sometimes in some measure without symmetry or without unity. but the least appearance of violence or extravagance, of the want of moderation and restraint, is, i think, destructive of all beauty whatsoever in everything, color, form, motion, language, or thought, giving rise to that which in color we call glaring, in form inelegant, in motion ungraceful, in language coarse, in thought undisciplined, in all unchastened; which qualities are in everything most painful, because the signs of disobedient and irregular operation. and herein we at last find the reason of that which has been so often noted respecting the subtilty and almost invisibility of natural curves and colors, and why it is that we look on those lines as least beautiful which fall into wide and far license of curvature, and as most beautiful which approach nearest (so that the curvilinear character be distinctly asserted) to the government of the right line, as in the pure and severe curves of the draperies of the religious painters; and thus in color it is not red, but rose-color which is most beautiful, neither such actual green as we find in summer foliage partly, and in our painting of it constantly; but such gray green as that into which nature modifies her distant tints, or such pale green and uncertain as we see in sunset sky, and in the clefts of the glacier and the chrysoprase, and the sea-foam; and so of all colors, not that they may not sometimes be deep and full, but that there is a solemn moderation even in their very fulness, and a holy reference beyond and out of their own nature to great harmonies by which they are governed, and in obedience to which is their glory. whereof the ignorance is shown in all evil colorists by the violence and positiveness of their hues, and by dulness and discordance consequent, for the very brilliancy and real power of all color is dependent on the chastening of it, as of a voice on its gentleness, and as of action on its calmness, and as all moral vigor on self-command. and therefore as that virtue which men last, and with most difficulty attain unto, and which many attain not at all, and yet that which is essential to the conduct and almost to the being of all other virtues, since neither imagination, nor invention, nor industry, nor sensibility, nor energy, nor any other good having, is of full avail without this of self-command, whereby works truly masculine and mighty are produced, and by the signs of which they are separated from that lower host of things brilliant, magnificent and redundant, and farther yet from that of the loose, the lawless, the exaggerated, the insolent, and the profane, i would have the necessity of it foremost among all our inculcating, and the name of it largest among all our inscribing, in so far that, over the doors of every school of art, i would have this one word, relieved out in deep letters of pure gold,--moderation. footnotes [ ] it is to be carefully noted that when rude execution is evidently not the result of imperfect feeling and desire (as in these men above named, it is) but of thought; either impatient, which there was necessity to note swiftly, or impetuous, which it was well to note in mighty manner, as pre-eminently and in both kinds the case with tintoret, and often with michael angelo, and in lower and more degraded modes with rubens, and generally in the sketches and first thoughts of great masters; there is received a very noble pleasure, connected both with ideas of power (compare again part i. sect. ii. chap. i.) and with certain actions of the imagination of which we shall speak presently. but this pleasure is not received from the beauty of the work, for nothing can be perfectly beautiful unless complete, but from its simplicity and sufficiency to its immediate purpose, where the purpose is not of beauty at all, as often in things rough-hewn, pre-eminently for instance in the stones of the foundations of the pitti and strozzi palaces, whose noble rudeness is to be opposed both to the useless polish, and the barbarous rustications of modern times, (although indeed this instance is not without exception to be received, for the majesty of these rocky buildings depends also in some measure upon the real beauty and finish of the natural curvilinear fractures, opposed to the coarseness of human chiselling,) and again, as it respects works of higher art, the pleasure of their hasty or imperfect execution is not indicative of their beauty, but of their majesty and fulness of thought and vastness of power. shade is only beautiful when it magnifies and sets forth the forms of fair things, so negligence is only noble when it is, as fuseli hath it, "the shadow of energy." which that it may be, secure the substance and the shade will follow, but let the artist beware of stealing the manner of giant intellects when he has not their intention, and of assuming large modes of treatment when he has little thoughts to treat. there is large difference between indolent impatience of labor and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference between leaving things unfinished because we have more to do, or because we are satisfied with what we have done. tintoret, who prayed hard, and hardly obtained, that he might be permitted, the charge of his colors only being borne, to paint a new built house from base to battlement, was not one to shun labor, it is the pouring in upon him of glorious thoughts in inexpressible multitude that his sweeping hand follows so fast. it is as easy to know the slightness of earnest haste from the slightness of blunt feeling, indolence, or affectation, as it is to know the dust of a race, from the dust of dissolution. chapter xi. general inferences respecting typical beauty. § . the subject incompletely treated, yet admitting of general conclusions. i have now enumerated, and in some measure explained those characteristics of mere matter by which i conceive it becomes agreeable to the theoretic faculty, under whatever form, dead, organized, or animated, it may present itself. it will be our task in the succeeding volume to examine, and illustrate by examples, the mode in which these characteristics appear in every division of creation, in stones, mountains, waves, clouds, and all organic bodies; beginning with vegetables, and then taking instances in the range of animals from the mollusc to man; examining how one animal form is nobler than another, by the more manifest presence of these attributes, and chiefly endeavoring to show how much there is of admirable and lovely, even in what is commonly despised. at present i have only to mark the conclusions at which we have as yet arrived respecting the rank of the theoretic faculty, and then to pursue the inquiry farther into the nature of vital beauty. as i before said, i pretend not to have enumerated all the sources of material beauty, nor the analogies connected with them; it is probable that others may occur to many readers, or to myself as i proceed into more particular inquiry, but i am not careful to collect all conceivable evidence on the subject. i desire only to assert and prove some certain principles, and by means of these to show, in some measure, the inherent worthiness and glory of god's works and something of the relations they bear to each other and to us, leaving the subject to be fully pursued, as it only can be, by the ardor and affection of those whom it may interest. § . typical beauty not created for man's sake. § . but degrees of it for his sake admitted. § . what encouragement hence to be received. the qualities above enumerated are not to be considered as stamped upon matter for our teaching or enjoyment only, but as the necessary consequence of the perfection of god's working, and the inevitable stamp of his image on what he creates. for it would be inconsistent with his infinite perfection to work imperfectly in any place, or in any matter; wherefore we do not find that flowers and fair trees, and kindly skies, are given only where man may see them and be fed by them, but the spirit of god works everywhere alike, where there is no eye to see, covering all lonely places with an equal glory, using the same pencil and outpouring the same splendor, in the caves of the waters where the sea-snakes swim, and in the desert where the satyrs dance, among the fir-trees of the stork, and the rocks of the conies, as among those higher creatures whom he has made capable witnesses of his working. nevertheless, i think that the admission of different degrees of this glory and image of himself upon creation, has the look of something meant especially for us; for although, in pursuance of the appointed system of government by universal laws, these same degrees exist where we cannot witness them, yet the existence of degrees at all seems at first unlikely in divine work, and i cannot see reason for it unless that palpable one of increasing in us the understanding of the sacred characters by showing us the results of their comparative absence. for i know not that if all things had been equally beautiful, we could have received the idea of beauty at all, or if we had, certainly it had become a matter of indifference to us, and of little thought, whereas through the beneficent ordaining of degrees in its manifestation, the hearts of men are stirred by its occasional occurrence in its noblest form, and all their energies are awakened in the pursuit of it, and endeavor to arrest it or recreate it for themselves. but whatever doubt there may be respecting the exact amount of modification of created things admitted reference to us, there can be none respecting the dignity of that faculty by which we receive the mysterious evidence of their divine origin. the fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or semblance of divine attributes, and from nothing but that which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be demonstrated of human nature; it not only sets a great gulf of specific separation between us and the lower animals, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious, with the being whose darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly delight in. probably to every order of intelligence more of his image becomes palpable in all around them, and the glorified spirits and the angels have perceptions as much more full and rapturous than ours, as ours than those of beasts and creeping things. and receiving it, as we must, for an universal axiom that "no natural desire can be entirely frustrate," and seeing that these desires are indeed so unfailing in us that they have escaped not the reasoners of any time, but were held divine of old, and in even heathen countries,[ ] it cannot be but that there is in these visionary pleasures, lightly as we now regard them, cause for thankfulness, ground for hope, anchor for faith, more than in all the other manifold gifts and guidances, wherewith god crowns the years, and hedges the paths of men. footnotes [ ] [greek: hê dè teleía eudaimonía theôrêtikê tís eotin henérgeia. * * tois mèn gàr theois apas ho bios makarios, tois d anthrôpois, eph hoson homoiôma ti tês toiantês henergeias hupárchei. tôn d hallôn zôôn oudèn èudaimonei. hepeidê oudamê koinônei theôrias.]--arist. eth. lib. th. the concluding book of the ethics should be carefully read. it is all most valuable. chapter xii. of vital beauty. first, as relative. § . transition from typical to vital beauty. i proceed more particularly to examine the nature of that second kind of beauty of which i spoke in the third chapter, as consisting in "the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things." i have already noticed the example of very pure and high typical beauty which is to be found in the lines and gradations of unsullied snow: if, passing to the edge of a sheet of it, upon the lower alps, early in may, we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or three little round openings pierced in it, and through these emergent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower[ ] whose small dark, purple-fringed bell hangs down and shudders over the icy cleft that it has cloven, as if partly wondering at its own recent grave, and partly dying of very fatigue after its hard won victory; we shall be, or we ought to be, moved by a totally different impression of loveliness from that which we receive among the dead ice and the idle clouds. there is now uttered to us a call for sympathy, now offered to us an image of moral purpose and achievement, which, however unconscious or senseless the creature may indeed be that so seems to call, cannot be heard without affection, nor contemplated without worship, by any of us whose heart is rightly tuned, or whose mind is clearly and surely sighted. throughout the whole of the organic creation every being in a perfect state exhibits certain appearances, or evidences, of happiness, and besides is in its nature, its desires, its modes of nourishment, habitation, and death, illustrative or expressive of certain moral dispositions or principles. now, first, in the keenness of the sympathy which we feel in the happiness, real or apparent, of all organic beings, and which, as we shall presently see, invariably prompts us, from the joy we have in it, to look upon those as most lovely which are most happy; and secondly, in the justness of the moral sense which rightly reads the lesson they are all intended to teach, and classes them in orders of worthiness and beauty according to the rank and nature of that lesson, whether it be of warning or example, of those that wallow or of those that soar, of the fiend-hunted swine by the gennesaret lake, or of the dove returning to its ark of rest; in our right accepting and reading of all this, consists, i say, the ultimately perfect condition of that noble theoretic faculty, whose place in the system of our nature i have already partly vindicated with respect to typical, but which can only fully be established with respect to vital beauty. § . the perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with vital beauty, is charity. its first perfection, therefore, relating to vital beauty, is the kindness and unselfish fulness of heart, which receives the utmost amount of pleasure from the happiness of all things. of which in high degree the heart of man is incapable, neither what intense enjoyment the angels may have in all that they see of things that move and live, and in the part they take in the shedding of god's kindness upon them, can we know or conceive: only in proportion as we draw near to god, and are made in measure like unto him, can we increase this our possession of charity, of which the entire essence is in god only. wherefore it is evident that even the ordinary exercise of this faculty implies a condition of the whole moral being in some measure right and healthy, and that to the entire exercise of it there is necessary the entire perfection of the christian character, for he who loves not god, nor his brother, cannot love the grass beneath his feet and the creatures that fill those spaces in the universe which he needs not, and which live not for his uses; nay, he has seldom grace to be grateful even to those that love him and serve him, while, on the other hand, none can love god nor his human brother without loving all things which his father loves, nor without looking upon them every one as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than he, if in the under concords they have to fill, their part is touched more truly. wherefore it is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of st. francis of assisi, who spoke never to bird nor to cicala, nor even to wolf and beast of prey, but as his brother; and so we find are moved the minds of all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from the mariner of coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in the heartleap well, "never to blend our pleasure, or our pride, with sorrow of the meanest thing that feels," and again in the white doe of rylstone, with the added teaching of that gift, which we have from things beneath us, in thanks for the love they cannot equally return; that anguish of our own, "is tempered and allayed by sympathies, aloft ascending and descending deep, even to the inferior kinds," so that i know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic faculty, not to say of the christian character and human intellect, than those accursed sports in which man makes of himself, cat, tiger, serpent, chaetodon, and alligator in one, and gathers into one continuance of cruelty for his amusement all the devices that brutes sparingly and at intervals use against each other for their necessities.[ ] § . only with respect to plants, less affection than sympathy. as we pass from those beings of whose happiness and pain we are certain to those in which it is doubtful or only seeming, as possibly in plants, (though i would fain hold, if i might, "the faith that every flower, enjoys the air it breathes," neither do i ever crush or gather one without some pain,) yet our feeling for them has in it more of sympathy than of actual love, as receiving from them in delight far more than we can give; for love, i think, chiefly grows in giving, at least its essence is the desire of doing good, or giving happiness, and we cannot feel the desire of that which we cannot conceive, so that if we conceive not of a plant as capable of pleasure, we cannot desire to give it pleasure, that is, we cannot love it in the entire sense of the term. nevertheless, the sympathy of very lofty and sensitive minds usually reaches so far as to the conception of life in the plant, and so to love, as with shelley, of the sensitive plant, and shakspeare always, as he has taught us in the sweet voices of ophelia and perdita, and wordsworth always, as of the daffodils, and the celandine. "it doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold. this neither is its courage, nor its choice, but its necessity in being old,"-- and so all other great poets (that is to say, great seers;[ ]) nor do i believe that any mind, however rude, is without some slight perception or acknowledgment of joyfulness in breathless things, as most certainly there are none but feel instinctive delight in the appearances of such enjoyment. § . which is proportioned to the appearance of energy in the plants. for it is matter of easy demonstration, that setting the characters of typical beauty aside, the pleasure afforded by every organic form is in proportion to its appearance of healthy vital energy; as in a rose-bush, setting aside all considerations of gradated flushing of color and fair folding of line, which it shares with the cloud or the snow-wreath, we find in and through all this, certain signs pleasant and acceptable as signs of life and enjoyment in the particular individual plant itself. every leaf and stalk is seen to have a function, to be constantly exercising that function, and as it seems _solely_ for the good and enjoyment of the plant. it is true that reflection will show us that the plant is not living for itself alone, that its life is one of benefaction, that it gives as well as receives, but no sense of this whatsoever mingles with our perception of physical beauty in its forms. those forms which appear to be necessary to its health, the symmetry of its leaflets, the smoothness of its stalks, the vivid green of its shoots, are looked upon by us as signs of the plant's own happiness and perfection; they are useless to us, except as they give us pleasure in our sympathizing with that of the plant, and if we see a leaf withered or shrunk or worm-eaten, we say it is ugly, and feel it to be most painful, not because it hurts _us_, but because it seems to hurt the plant, and conveys to us an idea of pain and disease and failure of life in _it_. that the amount of pleasure we receive is in exact proportion to the appearance of vigor and sensibility in the plant, is easily proved by observing the effect of those which show the evidences of it in the least degree, as, for instance, any of the cacti not in flower. their masses are heavy and simple, their growth slow, their various parts jointed on one to another, as if they were buckled or pinned together instead of growing out of each other, (note the singular imposition in many of them, the prickly pear for instance, of the fruit upon the body of the plant, so that it looks like a swelling or disease,) and often farther opposed by harsh truncation of line as in the cactus truncatophylla. all these circumstances so concur to deprive the plant of vital evidences, that we receive from it more sense of pain than of beauty; and yet even here, the sharpness of the angles, the symmetrical order and strength of the spines, the fresh and even color of the body, are looked for earnestly as signs of healthy condition, our pain is increased by their absence, and indefinitely increased if blotches, and other appearances of bruise and decay interfere with that little life which the plant seems to possess. the same singular characters belong in animals to the crustacea, as to the lobster, crab, scorpion, etc., and in great measure deprive them of the beauty which we find in higher orders, so that we are reduced to look for their beauty to single parts and joints, and not to the whole animal. § . this sympathy is unselfish, and does not regard utility. now i wish particularly to impress upon the reader that all these sensations of beauty in the plant arise from our unselfish sympathy with its happiness, and not from any view of the qualities in it which may bring good to us, nor even from our acknowledgment in it of any moral condition beyond that of mere felicity; for such an acknowledgment, belongs to the second operation of the theoretic faculty (compare § ,) and not to the sympathetic part which we are at present examining; so that we even find that in this respect, the moment we begin to look upon any creature as subordinate to some purpose out of itself, some of the sense of organic beauty is lost. thus, when we are told that the leaves of a plant are occupied in decomposing carbonic acid, and preparing oxygen for us, we begin to look upon it with some such indifference as upon a gasometer. it has become a machine; some of our sense of its happiness is gone; its emanation of inherent life is no longer pure. the bending trunk, waving to and fro in the wind above the waterfall, is beautiful because it is happy, though it is perfectly useless to us. the same trunk, hewn down and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty. it serves as a bridge,--it has become useful; it lives not for itself, and its beauty is gone, or what it retains is purely typical, dependent on its lines and colors, not on its functions. saw it into planks, and though now adapted to become permanently useful, its whole beauty is lost forever, or to be regained only in part when decay and ruin shall have withdrawn it again from use, and left it to receive from the hand of nature the velvet moss and varied lichen, which may again suggest ideas of inherent happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with hues of life. there is something, i think, peculiarly beautiful and instructive in this unselfishness of the theoretic faculty, and in its abhorrence of all utility which is based on the pain or destruction of any creature, for in such ministering to each other as is consistent with the essence and energy of both, it takes delight, as in the clothing of the rock by the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream. § . especially with respect to animals. § . and it is destroyed by evidences of mechanism. but still more distinct evidence of its being indeed the expression of happiness to which we look for our first pleasure in organic form, is to be found in the way in which we regard the bodily frame of animals: of which it is to be noted first, that there is not anything which causes so intense and tormenting a sense of ugliness as any scar, wound, monstrosity, or imperfection which seems inconsistent with the animal's ease and health; and that although in vegetables, where there is no immediate sense of pain, we are comparatively little hurt by excrescences and irregularities, but are sometimes even delighted with them, and fond of them, as children of the oak-apple, and sometimes look upon them as more interesting than the uninjured conditions, as in the gnarled and knotted trunks of trees; yet the slightest approach to anything of the kind in animal form is regarded with intense horror, merely from the sense of pain it conveys. and, in the second place, it is to be noted that whenever we dissect the animal frame, or conceive it as dissected, and substitute in our ideas the neatness of mechanical contrivance for the pleasure of the animal; the moment we reduce enjoyment to ingenuity, and volition to leverage, that instant all sense of beauty disappears. take, for instance, the action of the limb of the ostrich, which is beautiful so long as we see it in its swift uplifting along the desert sands, and trace in the tread of it her scorn of the horse and his rider, but would infinitely lose of its impressiveness, if we could see the spring ligament playing backwards and forwards in alternate jerks over the tubercle at the hock joint. take again the action of the dorsal fin of the shark tribe. so long as we observe the uniform energy of motion in the whole frame, the lash of the tail, bound of body, and instantaneous lowering of the dorsal, to avoid the resistance of the water as it turns, there is high sense of organic power and beauty. but when we dissect the dorsal, and find that its superior ray is supported in its position by a peg in a notch at its base, and that when the fin is to be lowered, the peg has to be taken out, and when it is raised put in again; although we are filled with wonder at the ingenuity of the mechanical contrivance, all our sense of beauty is gone, and not to be recovered until we again see the fin playing on the animal's body, apparently by its own will alone, with the life running along its rays. it is by a beautiful ordinance of the creator that all these mechanisms are concealed from sight, though open to investigation, and that in all which is outwardly manifested we seem to see his presence rather than his workmanship, and the mysterious breath of life, rather than the manipulation of matter. as, therefore, it appears from all evidence that it is the sense of felicity which we first desire in organic form, it is evident from reason, as demonstrable by experience, that those forms will be the most beautiful (always, observe, leaving typical beauty out of the question) which exhibit most of power, and seem capable of most quick and joyous sensation. hence we find gradations of beauty from the apparent impenetrableness of hide and slow motion of the elephant and rhinoceros, from the foul occupation of the vulture, from the earthy struggling of the worm, to the brilliancy of the butterfly, the buoyancy of the lark, the swiftness of the fawn and the horse, the fair and kingly sensibility of man. § . the second perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with life is justice of moral judgment. thus far then, the theoretic faculty is concerned with the happiness of animals, and its exercise depends on the cultivation of the affections only. let us next observe how it is concerned with the moral functions of animals, and therefore how it is dependent on the cultivation of every moral sense. there is not any organic creature, but in its history and habits it shall exemplify or illustrate to us some moral excellence or deficiency, or some point of god's providential government, which it is necessary for us to know. thus the functions and the fates of animals are distributed to them, with a variety which exhibits to us the dignity and results of almost every passion and kind of conduct, some filthy and slothful, pining and unhappy; some rapacious, restless, and cruel; some ever earnest and laborious, and, i think, unhappy in their endless labor, creatures, like the bee, that heap up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them, and others employed like angels in endless offices of love and praise. of which when, in right condition of mind, we esteem those most beautiful, whose functions are the most noble, whether as some, in mere energy, or as others, in moral honor, so that we look with hate on the foulness of the sloth, and the subtlety of the adder, and the rage of the hyena: with the honor due to their earthly wisdom we invest the earnest ant and unwearied bee; but we look with full perception of sacred function to the tribes of burning plumage and choral voice.[ ] and so what lesson we might receive for our earthly conduct from the creeping and laborious things, was taught us by that earthly king who made silver to be in jerusalem as stones (yet thereafter was less rich towards god). but from the lips of an heavenly king, who had not where to lay his head, we were taught what lesson we have to learn from those higher creatures who sow not, nor reap, nor gather into barns, for their heavenly father feedeth them. § . how impeded. § . the influence of moral signs in expression. there is much difficulty in the way of our looking with this rightly balanced judgment on the moral functions of the animal tribes, owing to the independent and often opposing characters of typical beauty, which are among them, as it seems, arbitrarily distributed, so that the most fierce and cruel are often clothed in the liveliest colors, and strengthened by the noblest forms, with this only exception, that so far as i know, there is no high beauty in any slothful animal, but even among those of prey, its characters exist in exalted measure upon those that range and pursue, and are in equal degree withdrawn from those that lie subtly and silently in the covert of the reed and fens. but that mind only is fully disciplined in its theoretic power, which can, when it chooses, throwing off the sympathies and repugnancies with which the ideas of destructiveness or of innocence accustom us to regard the animal tribes, as well as those meaner likes and dislikes which arise, i think, from the greater or less resemblance of animal powers to our own, can pursue the pleasures of typical beauty down to the scales of the alligator, the coils of the serpent, and the joints of the beetle; and again, on the other hand, regardless of the impressions of typical beauty, accept from each creature, great or small, the more important lessons taught by its position in creation as sufferer or chastiser, as lowly or having dominion, as of foul habit or lofty aspiration, and from the several perfections which all illustrate or possess, courage, perseverance, industry, or intelligence, or, higher yet, of love and patience, and fidelity and rejoicing, and never wearied praise. which moral perfections that they indeed are productive, in proportion to their expression, of instant beauty instinctively felt, is best proved by comparing those parts of animals in which they are definitely expressed, as for instance the eye, of which we shall find those ugliest which have in them no expression nor life whatever, but a corpse-like stare, or an indefinite meaningless glaring, as in some lights, those of owls and cats, and mostly of insects and of all creatures in which the eye seems rather an external, optical instrument than a bodily member through which emotion and virtue of soul may be expressed, (as pre-eminently in the chameleon,) because the seeming want of sensibility and vitality in a living creature is the most painful of all wants. and next to these in ugliness come the eyes that gain vitality indeed, but only by means of the expression of intense malignity, as in the serpent and alligator; and next to these, to whose malignity is added the virtue of subtlety and keenness, as of the lynx and hawk; and then, by diminishing the malignity and increasing the expressions of comprehensiveness and determination, we arrive at those of the lion and eagle, and at last, by destroying malignity altogether, at the fair eye of the herbivorous tribes, wherein the superioity of beauty consists always in the greater or less sweetness and gentleness primarily, as in the gazelle, camel, and ox, and in the greater or less intellect, secondarily, as in the horse and dog, and finally, in gentleness and intellect both in man. and again, taking the mouth, another source of expression, we find it ugliest where it has none, as mostly in fish, or perhaps where without gaining much in expression of any kind, it becomes a formidable destructive instrument, as again in the alligator, and then, by some increase of expression, we arrive at birds' beaks, wherein there is more obtained by the different ways of setting on the mandibles than is commonly supposed, (compare the bills of the duck and the eagle,) and thence we reach the finely developed lips of the carnivora, which nevertheless lose that beauty they have, in the actions of snarling and biting, and from these we pass to the nobler because gentler and more sensible, of the horse, camel, and fawn, and so again up to man, only there is less traceableness of the principle in the mouths of the lower animals, because they are in slight measure only capable of expression, and chiefly used as instruments, and that of low function, whereas in man the mouth is given most definitely as a means of expression, beyond and above its lower functions. compare the remarks of sir charles bell on this subject in his essay on expression, and compare the mouth of the negro head given by him (p. , third edition) with that of raffaelle's st. catherine. i shall illustrate the subject farther hereafter by giving the mouth of one of the demons of orcagna's inferno, with projecting incisors, and that of a fish and a swine, in opposition to pure graminivorous and human forms; but at present it is sufficient for my purpose to insist on the single great principle, that, wherever expression is possible, and uninterfered with by characters of typical beauty, which confuse the subject exceedingly as regards the mouth, (for the typical beauty of the carnivorous lips is on a grand scale, while it exists in very low degree in the beaks of birds,) wherever, i say, these considerations do not interfere, the beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral or intellectual virtue expressed by it; and wherever beauty exists at all, there is some kind of virtue to which it is owing, as the majesty of the lion's eye is owing not to its ferocity, but to its seriousness and seeming intellect, and of the lion's mouth to its strength and sensibility, and not its gnashing of teeth, nor wrinkling in its wrath; and farther be it noted, that of the intellectual or moral virtues, the moral are those which are attended with most beauty, so that the gentle eye of the gazelle is fairer to look upon than the more keen glance of men, if it be unkind. § . as also in plants. of the parallel effects of expression upon plants there is little to be noted, as the mere naming of the subject cannot but bring countless illustrations to the mind of every reader: only this, that, as we saw they were less susceptible of our sympathetic love, owing to the absence in them of capability of enjoyment, so they are less open to the affections based upon the expression of moral virtue, owing to their want of volition; so that even on those of them which are deadly and unkind we look not without pleasure, the more because this their evil operation cannot be by them outwardly expressed, but only by us empirically known; so that of the outward seemings and expressions of plants, there are few but are in some way good and therefore beautiful, as of humility, and modesty, and love of places and things, in the reaching out of their arms, and clasping of their tendrils; and energy of resistance, and patience of suffering, and beneficence one towards another in shade and protection, and to us also in scents and fruits (for of their healing virtues, however important to us, there is no more outward sense nor seeming than of their properties mortal or dangerous). § recapitulation. whence, in fine, looking to the whole kingdom of organic nature, we find that our full receiving of its beauty depends first on the sensibility and then on the accuracy and touchstone faithfulness of the heart in its moral judgments, so that it is necessary that we should not only love all creatures well, but esteem them in that order which is according to god's laws and not according to our own human passions and predilections, not looking for swiftness, and strength, and cunning, rather than for patience and kindness, still less delighting in their animosity and cruelty one towards another, neither, if it may be avoided, interfering with the working of nature in any way, nor, when we interfere to obtain service, judging from the morbid conditions of the animal or vegetable so induced; for we see every day the theoretic faculty entirely destroyed in those who are interested in particular animals, by their delight in the results of their own teaching, and by the vain straining of curiosity for new forms such as nature never intended, as the disgusting types for instance, which we see earnestly sought for by the fanciers of rabbits and pigeons, and constantly in horses, substituting for the true and balanced beauty of the free creature some morbid development of a single power, as of swiftness in the racer, at the expense, in certain measure, of the animal's healthy constitution and fineness of form; and so the delight of horticulturists in the spoiling of plants; so that in all cases we are to beware of such opinions as seem in any way referable to human pride, or even to the grateful or pernicious influence of things upon ourselves, and to cast the mind free, and out of ourselves, humbly, and yet always in that noble position of pause above the other visible creatures, nearer god than they, which we authoritatively hold, thence looking down upon them, and testing the clearness of our moral vision by the extent, and fulness, and constancy of our pleasure in the light of god's love as it embraces them, and the harmony of his holy laws, that forever bring mercy out of rapine, and religion out of wrath. footnotes [ ] soldanella alpina. [ ] i would have mr. landseer, before he gives us any more writhing otters, or yelping packs, reflect whether that which is best worthy of contemplation in a hound be its ferocity, or in an otter its agony, or in a human being its victory, hardly achieved even with the aid of its more sagacious brutal allies over a poor little fish-catching creature, a foot long. [ ] compare milton. "they at her coming sprung and touched by her fair tendance, gladlier grew" [ ] "type of the wise--who soar, but never roam, true to the kindred points of heaven and home." (wordsworth.--to the skylark.) chapter xiii. of vital beauty.--secondly as generic. § . the beauty of fulfilment of appointed function in every animal. hitherto we have observed the conclusions of the theoretic faculty with respect to the relations of happiness, and of more or less exalted function existing between different orders of organic being. but we must pursue the inquiry farther yet, and observe what impressions of beauty are connected with more or less perfect fulfilment of the appointed function by different individuals of the same species. we are now no longer called to pronounce upon worthiness of occupation or dignity of disposition; but both employment and capacity being known, and the animal's position and duty fixed, we have to regard it in that respect alone, comparing it with other individuals of its species, and to determine how far it worthily executes its office; whether, if scorpion, it hath poison enough, or if tiger, strength enough, or if dove, innocence enough, to sustain rightly its place in creation, and come up to the perfect idea of dove, tiger, or scorpion. in the first or sympathetic operation of the theoretic faculty, it will be remembered, we receive pleasure from the signs of mere happiness in living things. in the second theoretic operation of comparing and judging, we constituted ourselves such judges of the lower creatures as adam was made by god when they were brought to him to be named, and we allowed of beauty in them as they reached, more or less, to that standard of moral perfection by which we test ourselves. but, in the third place, we are to come down again from the judgment seat, and taking it for granted that every creature of god is in some way good, and has a duty and specific operation providentially accessory to the well-being of all, we are to look in this faith to that employment and nature of each, and to derive pleasure from their entire perfection and fitness for the duty they have to do, and in their entire fulfilment of it: and so we are to take pleasure and find beauty in the magnificent binding together of the jaws of the ichthyosaurus for catching and holding, and in the adaptation of the lion for springing, and of the locust for destroying, and of the lark for singing, and in every creature for the doing of that which god has made it to do. which faithful pleasure in the perception of the perfect operation of lower creatures i have placed last among the perfections of the theoretic faculty concerning them, because it is commonly last acquired, both owing to the humbleness and trustfulness of heart which it demands, and because it implies a knowledge of the habits and structure of every creature, such as we can but imperfectly possess. § . the two senses of the word "ideal." either it refers to action of the imagination. the perfect _idea_ of the form and condition in which all the properties of the species are fully developed, is called the ideal of the species. the question of the nature of ideal conception of species, and of the mode in which the mind arrives at it, has been the subject of so much discussion, and source of so much embarrassment, chiefly owing to that unfortunate distinction between idealism and realism which leads most people to imagine the ideal opposed to the real, and therefore _false_, that i think it necessary to request the reader's most careful attention to the following positions. any work of art which represents, not a material object, but the mental conception of a material object, is, in the primary sense of the word ideal; that is to say, it represents an idea, and not a thing. any work of art which represents or realizes a material object, is, in the primary sense of the term, unideal. ideal works of art, therefore, in this first sense, represent the result of an act of imagination, and are good or bad in proportion to the healthy condition and general power of the imagination, whose acts they represent. unideal works of art (the studious production of which is termed realism) represent actual existing things, and are good or bad in proportion to the perfection of the representation. all entirely bad works of art may be divided into those which, professing to be imaginative, bear no stamp of imagination, and are therefore false, and those which, professing to be representative of matter, miss of the representation and are therefore nugatory. it is the habit of most observers to regard art as representative of matter, and to look only for the entireness of representation; and it was to this view of art that i limited the arguments of the former sections of the present work, wherein having to oppose the conclusions of a criticism entirely based upon the realist system, i was compelled to meet that criticism on its own grounds. but the greater part of works of art, more especially those devoted to the expression of ideas of beauty, are the results of the agency of imagination, their worthiness depending, as above stated, on the healthy condition of the imagination. hence it is necessary for us, in order to arrive at conclusions respecting the worthiness of such works, to define and examine the nature of the imaginative faculty, and to determine first what are the signs or conditions of its existence at all; and secondly, what are the evidences of its healthy and efficient existence, upon which examination i shall enter in the second section of the present part. § . or to perfection of type. but there is another sense of the word ideal besides this, and it is that with which we are here concerned. it is evident that, so long as we use the word to signify that art which represents ideas and not things, we may use it as truly of the art which represents an idea of caliban, and not real caliban, as of the art which represents an idea of antinous, and not real antinous. for that is as much imagination which conceives the monster as which conceives the man. if, however, caliban and antinous be creatures of the same species, and the form of the one contain not the fully developed types or characters of the species, while the form of the other presents the greater part of them, then the latter is said to be a form more ideal than the other, as a nearer approximation to the general idea or conception of the species. § . this last sense how inaccurate, yet to be retained. now it is evident that this use of the word ideal is much less accurate than the other, from which it is derived, for it rests on the assumption that the assemblage of all the characters of a species in their perfect development cannot exist but in the imagination. for if it can actually and in reality exist, it is not right to call it ideal or imaginary; it would be better to call it characteristic or general, and to reserve the word ideal for the results of the operation of the imagination, either on the perfect or imperfect forms. nevertheless, the word ideal has been so long and universally accepted in this sense, that i think it better to continue the use of it, so only that the reader will be careful to observe the distinction in the sense, according to the subject matter under discussion. at present then, using it as expressive of the noble generic form which indicates the full perfection of the creature in all its functions, i wish to examine how far this perception exists or may exist in nature, and if not in nature, how it is by us discoverable or imaginable. § . of ideal form. first, in the lower animals. now it is better, when we wish to arrive at truth, always to take familiar instances, wherein the mind is not likely to be biassed by any elevated associations or favorite theories. let us ask therefore, first, what kind of ideal form may be attributed to a limpet or an oyster, that is to say, whether all oysters do or do not come up to the entire notion or idea of an oyster. i apprehend that, although in respect of size, age, and kind of feeding, there may be some difference between them, yet of those which are of full size and healthy condition there will be found many which fulfil the conditions of an oyster in every respect, and that so perfectly, that we could not, by combining the features of two or more together, produce a more perfect oyster than any that we see. i suppose also, that, out of a number of healthy fish, birds, or beasts of the same species, it would not be easy to select an individual as superior to _all_ the rest; neither by comparing two or more of the nobler examples together, to arrive at the conception of a form superior to that of either; but that, though the accidents of more abundant food or more fitting habitation may induce among them some varieties of size, strength, and color, yet the entire generic form would be presented by many, neither would any art be able to add to or diminish from it. § . in what consistent. it is, therefore, hardly right to use the word ideal of the generic forms of these creatures, of which we see actual examples; but if we are to use it, then be it distinctly understood that their ideality consists in the full development of all the powers and properties of the creature as such, and is inconsistent with accidental or imperfect developments, and even with great variation from average size, the ideal size being neither gigantic nor diminutive, but the utmost grandeur and entireness of proportion at a certain point above the mean size; for as more individuals always fall short of generic size than rise above it, the generic is above the average or mean size. and this perfection of the creature invariably involves the utmost possible degree of all those properties of beauty, both typical and vital, which it is appointed to possess. § . ideal form in vegetables. let us next observe the conditions of ideality in vegetables. out of a large number of primroses or violets, i apprehend that, although one or two might be larger than all the rest, the greater part would be very sufficient primroses and violets. and that we could, by no study nor combination of violets, conceive of a better violet than many in the bed. and so generally of the blossoms and separate members of all vegetables. but among the entire forms of the complex vegetables, as of oak-trees, for instance, there exists very large and constant difference, some being what we hold to be fine oaks, as in parks, and places where they are taken care of, and have their own way, and some are but poor and mean oaks, which have had no one to take care of them, but have been obliged to maintain themselves. that which we have to determine is, whether ideality be predicable of the fine oaks only, or whether the poor and mean oaks also may be considered as ideal, that is, coming up to the conditions of oak, and the general notion of oak. § . the difference of position between plants and animals. now there is this difference between the positions held in creation by animals and plants, and thence in the dispositions with which we regard them; that the animals, being for the most part locomotive, are capable both of living where they choose, and of obtaining what food they want, and of fulfilling all the conditions necessary to their health and perfection. for which reason they are answerable for such health and perfection, and we should be displeased and hurt if we did not find it in one individual as well as another. § . admits of variety in the ideal of the former. but the case is evidently different with plants. they are intended fixedly to occupy many places comparatively unfit for them, and to fill up all the spaces where greenness, and coolness, and ornament, and oxygen are wanted, and that with very little reference to their comfort or convenience. now it would be hard upon the plant if, after being tied to a particular spot, where it is indeed much wanted, and is a great blessing, but where it has enough to do to live, whence it cannot move to obtain what it wants or likes, but must stretch its unfortunate arms here and there for bare breath and light, and split its way among rocks, and grope for sustenance in unkindly soil; it would be hard upon the plant, i say, if under all these disadvantages, it were made answerable for its appearance, and found fault with because it was not a fine plant of the kind. and so we find it ordained that in order that no unkind comparisons may be drawn between one and another, there are not appointed to plants the fixed number, position, and proportion of members which are ordained in animals, (and any variation from which in these is unpardonable,) but a continually varying number and position, even among the more freely growing examples, admitting therefore all kinds of license to those which have enemies to contend with, and that without in any way detracting from their dignity and perfection. so then there is in trees no perfect form which can be fixed upon or reasoned out as ideal; but that is always an ideal oak which, however poverty-stricken, or hunger-pinched, or tempest-tortured, is yet seen to have done, under its appointed circumstances, all that could be expected of oak. the ideal, therefore, of the park oak is that to which i alluded in the conclusion of the former part of this work, full size, united terminal curve, equal and symmetrical range of branches on each side. the ideal of the mountain oak may be anything, twisting, and leaning, and shattered, and rock-encumbered, so only that amidst all its misfortunes, it maintain the dignity of oak; and, indeed, i look upon this kind of tree as more ideal than the other, in so far as by its efforts and struggles, more of its nature, enduring power, patience in waiting for, and ingenuity in obtaining what it wants, is brought out, and so more of the essence of oak exhibited, than under more fortunate conditions. § . ideal form in vegetables destroyed by cultivation. and herein, then, we at last find the cause of that fact which we have twice already noted, that the exalted or seemingly improved condition, whether of plant or animal, induced by human interference, is not the true and artistical ideal of it.[ ] it has been well shown by dr. herbert,[ ] that many plants are found alone on a certain soil or subsoil in a wild state, not because such soil is favorable to them, but because they alone are capable of existing on it, and because all dangerous rivals are by its inhospitality removed. now if we withdraw the plant from this position, which it hardly endures, and supply it with the earth, and maintain about it the temperature that it delights in; withdrawing from it at the same time all rivals which, in such conditions nature would have thrust upon it, we shall indeed obtain a magnificently developed example of the plant, colossal in size, and splendid in organization, but we shall utterly lose in it that moral ideal which is dependent on its right fulfilment of its appointed functions. it was intended and created by the deity for the covering of those lonely spots where no other plant could live; it has been thereto endowed with courage, and strength, and capacities of endurance unequalled; its character and glory are not therefore in the gluttonous and idle feeling of its own over luxuriance, at the expense of other creatures utterly destroyed and rooted out for its good alone, but in its right doing of its hard duty; and forward climbing into those spots of forlorn hope where it alone can bear witness to the kindness and presence of the spirit that cutteth out rivers among the rocks, as it covers the valleys with corn: and there, in its vanward place, and only there, where nothing is withdrawn for it, nor hurt by it, and where nothing can take part of its honor, nor usurp its throne, are its strength, and fairness, and price, and goodness in the sight of god, to be truly esteemed. § . instance in the soldanella and ranunculus. the first time that i saw the soldanella alpina, before spoken of, it was growing, of magnificent size, on a sunny alpine pasture, among bleating of sheep and lowing of cattle, associated with a profusion of geum montanum, and ranunculus pyrenæus. i noticed it only because new to me, nor perceived any peculiar beauty in its cloven flower. some days after, i found it alone, among the rack of the higher clouds, and howling of glacier winds, and, as i described it, piercing through an edge of avalanche, which in its retiring had left the new ground brown and lifeless, and as if burned by recent fire; the plant was poor and feeble, and seemingly exhausted with its efforts, but it was then that i comprehended its ideal character, and saw its noble function and order of glory among the constellations of the earth. the ranunculus glacialis might perhaps, by cultivation, be blanched from its wan and corpse-like paleness to purer white, and won to more branched and lofty development of its ragged leaves. but the ideal of the plant is to be found only in the last, loose stones of the moraine, alone there; wet with the cold, unkindly drip of the glacier water, and trembling as the loose and steep dust to which it clings yields ever and anon, and shudders and crumbles away from about its root. § . the beauty of repose and felicity, how consistent with such ideal. and if it be asked how this conception of the utmost beauty of ideal form is consistent with what we formerly argued respecting the pleasantness of the appearance of felicity in the creature, let it be observed, and forever held, that the right and true happiness of every creature, is in this very discharge of its function, and in those efforts by which its strength and inherent energy are developed: and that the repose of which we also spoke as necessary to all beauty, is, as was then stated, repose not of inanition, nor of luxury, nor of irresolution, but the repose of magnificent energy and being; in action, the calmness of trust and determination; in rest, the consciousness of duty accomplished and of victory won, and this repose and this felicity can take place as well in the midst of trial and tempest, as beside the waters of comfort; they perish only when the creature is either unfaithful to itself, or is afflicted by circumstances unnatural and malignant to its being, and for the contending with which it was neither fitted nor ordained. hence that rest which is indeed glorious is of the chamois couched breathless on his granite bed, not of the stalled ox over his fodder, and that happiness which is indeed beautiful is in the bearing of those trial tests which are appointed for the proving of every creature, whether it be good, or whether it be evil; and in the fulfilment to the uttermost of every command it has received, and the out-carrying to the uttermost of every power and gift it has gotten from its god. § . the ideality of art. therefore the task of the painter in his pursuit of ideal form is to attain accurate knowledge, so far as may be in his power, of the character, habits, and peculiar virtues and duties of every species of being; down even to the stone, for there is an ideality of stones according to their kind, an ideality of granite and slate and marble, and it is in the utmost and most exalted exhibition of such individual character, order, and use, that all ideality of art consists. the more cautious he is in assigning the right species of moss to its favorite trunk, and the right kind of weed to its necessary stone, in marking the definite and characteristic leaf, blossom, seed, fracture, color, and inward anatomy of everything, the more truly ideal his work becomes. all confusion of species, all careless rendering of character, all unnatural and arbitrary association, is vulgar and unideal in proportion to its degree. § . how connected with the imaginative faculties. it is to be noted, however, that nature sometimes in a measure herself conceals these generic differences, and that when she displays them it is commonly on a scale too small for human hand to follow. the pursuit and seizure of the generic differences in their concealment, and the display of them on a larger and more palpable scale, is one of the wholesome and healthy operations of the imagination of which we are presently to speak.[ ] generic differences being commonly exhibited by art in different manner and way from that of their natural occurrence, are in this respect more strictly and truly ideal in art than in reality. § . ideality, how belonging to ages and conditions. this only remains to be noted, that, of all creatures whose existence involves birth, progress, and dissolution, ideality is predicable all through their existence, so that they be perfect with reference to their supposed period of being. thus there is an ideal of infancy, of youth, of old age, of death, and of decay. but when the ideal form of the species is spoken of or conceived in general terms, the form is understood to be of that period when the generic attributes are perfectly developed, and previous to the commencement of their decline. at which period all the characters of vital and typical beauty are commonly most concentrated in them, though the arrangement and proportion of these characters varies at different periods, youth having more of the vigorous beauty, and age of the reposing; youth of typical outward fairness, and age of expanded and etherealized moral expression; the babe, again, in some measure atoning in gracefulness for its want of strength, so that the balanced glory of the creature continues in solemn interchange, perhaps even "filling more and more with crystal light, as pensive evening deepens into night." hitherto, however, we have confined ourselves to the examination of ideal form in the lower animals, and we have found that, to arrive at it, no combination of forms nor exertion of fancy is required, but only simple choice among those naturally presented, together with careful investigation and anatomizing of the habits of the creatures. i fear we shall arrive at a very different conclusion, in considering the ideal form of man. footnotes [ ] i speak not here of those conditions of vegetation which have especial reference to man, as of seeds and fruits, whose sweetness and farina seem in great measure given, not for the plant's sake, but for his, and to which therefore the interruption in the harmony of creation of which he was the cause is extended, and their sweetness and larger measure of good to be obtained only by his redeeming labor. his curse has fallen on the corn and the vine, and the wild barley misses of its fulness, that he may eat bread by the sweat of his brow. [ ] journal of the horticultural society. part i. [ ] compare sect. ii. chap. iv. chapter xiv. of vital beauty.--thirdly, in man. § . condition of the human creature entirely different from that of the lower animals. having thus passed gradually through all the orders and fields of creation, and traversed that goodly line of god's happy creatures who "leap not, but express a feast, where all the guests sit close, and nothing wants," without finding any deficiency which human invention might supply, nor any harm which human interference might mend, we come at last to set ourselves face to face with ourselves, expecting that in creatures made after the image of god we are to find comeliness and completion more exquisite than in the fowls of the air and the things that pass through the paths of the sea. but behold now a sudden change from all former experience. no longer among the individuals of the race is there equality or likeness, a distributed fairness and fixed type visible in each, but evil diversity, and terrible stamp of various degradation; features seamed with sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded with remorse; bodies consumed with sloth, broken down by labor, tortured by disease, dishonored in foul uses; intellects without power, hearts without hope, minds earthly and devilish; our bones full of the sin of our youth, the heaven revealing our iniquity, the earth rising up against us, the roots dried up beneath, and the branch cut off above; well for us only, if, after beholding this our natural face in a glass, we desire not straightway to forget what manner of men we be. § . what room here for idealization. herein there is at last something, and too much, for that short stopping intelligence and dull perception of ours to accomplish, whether in earnest fact, or in the seeking for the outward image of beauty:--to undo the devil's work, to restore to the body the grace and the power which inherited disease has destroyed, to return to the spirit the purity, and to the intellect the grasp that they had in paradise. now, first of all, this work, be it observed is in no respect a work of imagination. wrecked we are, and nearly all to pieces; but that little good by which we are to redeem ourselves is to be got out of the old wreck, beaten about and full of sand though it be; and not out of that desert island of pride on which the devils split first, and we after them: and so the only restoration of the body that we can reach is not to be coined out of our fancies, but to be collected out of such uninjured and bright vestiges of the old seal as we can find and set together, and so the ideal of the features, as the good and perfect soul is seen in them, is not to be reached by imagination, but by the seeing and reaching forth of the better part of the soul to that of which it must first know the sweetness and goodness in itself, before it can much desire, or rightly find, the signs of it in others. i say much desire and rightly find, because there is not any soul so sunk but that it shall in some measure feel the impression of mental beauty in the human features, and detest in others its own likeness, and in itself despise that which of itself it has made. § . how the conception of the bodily ideal is reached. now, of the ordinary process by which the realization of ideal bodily form is reached, there is explanation enough in all treatises on art, and it is so far well comprehended that i need not stay long to consider it. so far as the sight and knowledge of the human form, of the purest race, exercised from infancy constantly, but not excessively in all exercises of dignity, not in twists and straining dexterities, but in natural exercises of running, casting, or riding; practised in endurance, not of extraordinary hardship, for that hardens and degrades the body, but of natural hardship, vicissitudes of winter and summer, and cold and heat, yet in a climate where none of these are severe; surrounded also by a certain degree of right luxury, so as to soften and refine the forms of strength; so far as the sight of all this could render the mental intelligence of what is right in human form so acute as to be able to abstract and combine from the best examples so produced, that which was most perfect in each, so far the greek conceived and attained the ideal of bodily form: and on the greek modes of attaining it, as well as on what he produced, as a perfect example of it, chiefly dwell those writers whose opinions on this subject i have collected; wholly losing sight of what seems to me the most important branch of the inquiry, namely, the influence for good or evil of the mind upon the bodily shape, the wreck of the mind itself, and the modes by which we may conceive of its restoration. § . modifications of the bodily ideal owing to influence of mind. first, of intellect. now, the operation of the mind upon the body, and evidence of it thereon, may be considered under the following three general heads. first, the operation of the intellectual powers upon the features, in the fine cutting and chiselling of them, and removal from them of signs of sensuality and sloth, by which they are blunted and deadened, and substitution of energy and intensity for vacancy and insipidity, (by which wants alone the faces of many fair women are utterly spoiled and rendered valueless,) and by the keenness given to the eye and fine moulding and development to the brow, of which effects sir charles bell has well noted the desirableness and opposition to brutal types, (p. , third edition;) only this he has not sufficiently observed, that there are certain virtues of the intellect in measure inconsistent with each other, as perhaps great subtlety with great comprehensiveness, and high analytical with high imaginative power, or that at least, if consistent and compatible, their signs upon the features are not the same, so that the outward form cannot express both, without in a measure expressing neither; and so there are certain separate virtues of the outward form correspondent with the more constant employment or more prevailing capacity of the brain, as the piercing keenness, or open and reflective comprehensiveness of the eye and forehead, and that all these virtues of form are ideal, only those the most so which are the signs of the worthiest powers of intellect, though which these be, we will not at present stay to inquire. § . secondly, of the moral feelings. § . what beauty is bestowed by them the second point to be considered in the influence of mind upon body, is the mode of operation and conjunction of the moral feelings on and with the intellectual powers, and then their conjoint influence on the bodily form. now, the operation of the right moral feelings on the intellect is always for the good of the latter, for it is not possible that selfishness should reason rightly in any respect, but must be blind in its estimation of the worthiness of all things, neither anger, for that overpowers the reason or outcries it, neither sensuality, for that overgrows and chokes it, neither agitation, for that has no time to compare things together, neither enmity, for that must be unjust, neither fear, for that exaggerates all things, neither cunning and deceit, for that which is voluntarily untrue will soon be unwittingly so: but the great reasoners are self-command, and trust unagitated, and deep-looking love, and faith, which as she is above reason, so she best holds the reins of it from her high seat: so that they err grossly who think of the right development even of the intellectual type as possible, unless we look to higher sources of beauty first. nevertheless, though in their operation _upon_ them the moral feelings are thus elevatory of the mental faculties, yet in their conjunction _with_ them they seem to occupy, in their own fulness, such room as to absorb and overshadow all else, so that the simultaneous exercise of both is in a sort impossible; for which cause we occasionally find the moral part in full development and action, without corresponding expanding of the intellect (though never without healthy condition of it,) as in that of wordsworth, "in such high hour of visitation from the living god, thought was not;" only i think that if we look far enough, we shall find that it is not intelligence itself, but the immediate act and effort of a laborious, struggling, and imperfect intellectual faculty, with which high moral emotion is inconsistent; and that though we cannot, while we feel deeply, reason shrewdly, yet i doubt if, _except_ when we feel deeply, we can ever comprehend fully; so that it is only the climbing and mole-like piercing, and not the sitting upon their central throne, nor emergence into light, of the intellectual faculties which the full heart feeling allows not. hence, therefore, in the indications of the countenance, they are only the hard cut lines, and rigid settings, and wasted hollows, that speak of past effort and painfulness of mental application, which are inconsistent with expression of moral feeling, for all these are of infelicitous augury; but not the full and serene development of habitual command in the look, and solemn thought in the brow, only these, in their unison with the signs of emotion, become softened and gradually confounded with a serenity and authority of nobler origin. but of the sweetness which that higher serenity (of happiness,) and the dignity which that higher authority (of divine law, and not human reason,) can and must stamp on the features, it would be futile to speak here at length, for i suppose that both are acknowledged on all hands, and that there is not any beauty but theirs to which men pay long obedience: at all events, if not by sympathy discovered, it is not in words explicable with what divine lines and lights the exercise of godliness and charity will mould and gild the hardest and coldest countenance, neither to what darkness their departure will consign the loveliest. for there is not any virtue the exercise of which, even momentarily, will not impress a new fairness upon the features, neither on them only, but on the whole body, both the intelligence and the moral faculties have operation, for even all the movement and gestures, however slight, are different in their modes according to the mind that governs them, and on the gentleness and decision of just feeling there follows a grace of action, and through continuance of this a grace of form, which by no discipline may be taught or attained. § . how the soul culture interferes harmfully with the bodily ideal. the third point to be considered with respect to the corporeal expression of mental character is, that there is a certain period of the soul culture when it begins to interfere with some of the characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and that there is, in this indication of subduing of the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. we conceive, i think, more nobly of the weak presence of paul, than of the fair and ruddy countenance of daniel. § . the inconsistency among the effects of the mental virtues on the form. § . is a sign of god's kind purpose towards the race. § . consequent separation and difference of ideals. now, be it observed that in our consideration of these three directions of mental influence, we have several times been compelled to stop short of definite conclusions owing to the apparent inconsistency of certain excellences and beauties to which they tend, as, first, of different kinds of intellect with each other; and secondly, of the moral faculties with the intellectual, (and if we had separately examined the moral emotions, we should have found certain inconsistencies among them also,) and again of the soul culture generally with the bodily perfections. such inconsistencies we should find in the perfections of no other animal. the strength or swiftness of the dog are not inconsistent with his sagacity, nor is bodily labor in the ant or bee destructive of their acuteness of instinct. and this peculiarity of relation among the perfections of man is no result of his fall or sinfulness, but an evidence of his greater nobility, and of the goodness of god towards him. for the individuals of each race of lower animals, being not intended to hold among each other those relations of charity which are the privilege of humanity, are not adapted to each other's assistance, admiration, or support, by differences of power and function. but the love of the human race is increased by their individual differences, and the unity of the creature, as before we saw of all unity, made perfect by each having something to bestow and to receive, bound to the rest by a thousand various necessities and various gratitudes, humility in each rejoicing to admire in his fellow that which he finds not in himself, and each being in some respect the complement of his race. therefore, in investigating the signs of the ideal or perfect type of humanity, we must not presume on the singleness of that type, and yet, on the other hand, we must cautiously distinguish between differences conceivably existing in a perfect state, and differences resulting from immediate and present operation of the adamite curse. of which the former are differences that bind, and the latter that separate. for although we can suppose the ideal or perfect human heart, and the perfect human intelligence, equally adapted to receive every right sensation and pursue every order of truth, yet as it is appointed for some to be in authority and others in obedience, some in solitary functions and others in relative ones, some to receive and others to give, some to teach and some to discover; and as all these varieties of office are not only conceivable as existing in a perfect state of man, but seem almost to be implied by it, and at any rate cannot be done away with but by a total change of his constitution and dependencies, of which the imagination can take no hold; so there are habits and capacities of expression induced by these various offices, which admit of many separate ideals of equal perfection, according to the functions of the creatures, so that there is an ideal of authority, of judgment, of affection, of reason, and of faith; neither can any combination of these ideals be attained, not that the just judge is to be supposed incapable of affection, nor the king incapable of obedience, but as it is impossible that any essence short of the divine should at the same instant be equally receptive of all emotions, those emotions which, by right and order, have the most usual victory, both leave the stamp of their habitual presence on the body, and render the individual more and more susceptible of them in proportion to the frequency of their prevalent recurrence; added to which causes of distinctive character are to be taken into account the differences of age and sex, which, though seemingly of more finite influence, cannot be banished from any human conception. david, ruddy and of a fair countenance, with the brook stone of deliverance in his hand, is not more ideal than david leaning on the old age of barzillai, returning chastened to his kingly home. and they who are as the angels of god in heaven, yet cannot be conceived as so assimilated that their different experiences and affections upon earth shall then be forgotten and effectless: the child taken early to his place cannot be imagined to wear there such a body, nor to have such thoughts, as the glorified apostle who has finished his course and kept the faith on earth. and so whatever perfections and likeness of love we may attribute to either the tried or the crowned creatures, there is the difference of the stars in glory among them yet; differences of original gifts, though not of occupying till their lord come, different dispensations of trial and of trust, of sorrow and support, both in their own inward, variable hearts, and in their positions of exposure or of peace, of the gourd shadow and the smiting sun, of calling at heat of day or eleventh hour, of the house unroofed by faith, and the clouds opened by revelation: differences in warning, in mercies, in sicknesses, in signs, in time of calling to account; like only they all are by that which is not of them, but the gift of god's unchangeable mercy. "i will give unto this last even as unto thee." § . the _effects_ of the adamite curse are to be distinguished from signs of its immediate activity. § . which latter only are to be banished from ideal form. hence, then, be it observed, that what we must determinedly banish from the human form and countenance in our seeking of its ideal, is not everything which can be ultimately traced to the adamite fall for its cause, but only the immediate operation and presence of the degrading power or sin. for there is not any part of our feeling of nature, nor can there be through eternity, which shall not be in some way influenced and affected by the fall, and that not in any way of degradation, for the renewing in the divinity of christ is a nobler condition than ever that of paradise, and yet throughout eternity it must imply and refer to the disobedience, and the corrupt state of sin and death, and the suffering of christ himself, which can we conceive of any redeemed soul as for an instant forgetting, or as remembering without sorrow? neither are the alternations of joy and such sorrow as by us is inconceivable, being only as it were a softness and silence in the pulse of an infinite felicity, inconsistent with the state even of the unfallen, for the angels who rejoice over repentance cannot but feel an uncomprehended pain as they try and try again in vain, whether they may not warm hard hearts with the brooding of their kind wings. so that we have not to banish from the ideal countenance the evidences of sorrow, nor of past suffering, nor even of past and conquered sin, but only the immediate operation of any evil, or the immediate coldness and hollowness of any good emotion. and hence in that contest before noted, between the body and the soul, we may often have to indicate the body as far conquered and outworn, and with signs of hard struggle and bitter pain upon it, and yet without ever diminishing the purity of its ideal; and because it is not in the power of any human imagination to reason out or conceive the countless modifications of experience, suffering, and separated feeling, which have modelled and written their indelible images in various order upon every human countenance, so no right ideal can be reached by any combination of feature nor by any moulding and melting of individual beauties together, and still less without model or example conceived; but there is a perfect ideal to be wrought out of _every_ face around us that has on its forehead the writing and the seal of the angel ascending from the east,[ ] by the earnest study and penetration of the written history thereupon, and the banishing of the blots and stains, wherein we still see in all that is human, the visible and instant operation of unconquered sin. § . ideal form is only to be obtained by portraiture. now i see not how any of the steps of the argument by which we have arrived at this conclusion can be evaded, and yet it would be difficult to state anything more directly opposite to the usual teaching and practice of artists. it is usual to hear portraiture opposed to the pursuit of ideality, and yet we find that no face can be ideal which is not a portrait. of this general principle, however, there are certain modifications which we must presently state; let us first, however, pursue it a little farther, and deduce its practical consequences. § . instances among the greater of the ideal masters. these are, first, that the pursuit of idealism in humanity, as of idealism in lower nature, can be successful only when followed through the most constant, patient, and humble rendering of actual models, accompanied with that earnest mental as well as ocular study of each, which can interpret all that is written upon it, disentangle the hieroglyphics of its sacred history, rend the veil of the bodily temple, and rightly measure the relations of good and evil contending within it for mastery,[ ] that everything done without such study must be shallow and contemptible, that generalization or combination of individual character will end less in the mending than the losing of it, and, except in certain instances of which we shall presently take note, is valueless and vapid, even if it escape being painful from its want of truth, which in these days it often in some measure does, for we indeed find faces about us with want enough of life or wholesome character in them to justify anything. and that habit of the old and great painters of introducing portrait into all their highest works, i look to, not as error in them, but as the very source and root of their superiority in all things, for they were too great and too humble not to see in every face about them that which was above them, and which no fancies of theirs could match nor take place of, wherefore we find the custom of portraiture constant with them, both portraiture of study and for purposes of analysis, as with leonardo; and actual, professed, serviceable, hardworking portraiture of the men of their time, as with raffaelle, and titian, and tintoret; and portraiture of love, as with fra bartolomeo of savonarola, and simon memmi of petrarch, and giotto of dante, and gentile bellini of a beloved imagination of dandolo, and with raffaelle constantly; and portraiture in real downright necessity of models, even in their noblest works, as was the practice of ghirlandajo perpetually, and masaccio and raffaelle, and manifestly of the men of highest and purest ideal purpose, as again, giotto, and in his characteristic monkish heads, angelico, and john bellini, (note especially the st. christopher at the side of that mighty picture of st. jerome, at venice,) and so of all: which practice had indeed a perilous tendency for men of debased mind, who used models such as and where they ought not, as lippi and the corrupted raffaelle; and is found often at exceeding disadvantage among men who looked not at their models with intellectual or loving penetration, but took the outside of them, or perhaps took the evil and left the good, as titian in that academy study at venice which is called a st. john, and all workers whatsoever that i know of, after raffaelle's time, as guido and the caracci, and such others: but it is nevertheless the necessary and sterling basis of all ideal art, neither has any great man ever been able to do without it, nor dreamed of doing without it even to the close of his days. § . evil results of opposite practice in modern times. and therefore there is not any greater sign of the utter want of vitality and hopefulness in the schools of the present day than that unhappy prettiness and sameness under which they mask, or rather for which they barter, in their lentile thirst, all the birthright and power of nature, which prettiness, wrought out and spun fine in the study, out of empty heads, till it hardly betters the blocks on which dresses and hair are tried in barbers' windows and milliners' books, cannot but be revolting to any man who has his eyes, even in a measure, open to the divinity of the immortal seal on the common features that he meets in the highways and hedges hourly and momentarily, outreaching all efforts of conception as all power of realization, were it raffaelle's three times over, even when the glory of the wedding garment is not there. § . the right use of the model. so far, then, of the use of the model and the preciousness of it in all art, from the highest to the lowest. but the use of the model is not all. it must be used in a certain way, and on this choice of right or wrong way all our ends are at stake, for the art, which is of no power without the model, is of pernicious and evil power if the model be wrongly used. what the right use is, has been at least established, if not fully explained, in the argument by which we arrived at the general principle. the right ideal is to be reached, we have asserted, only by the banishment of the immediate signs of sin upon the countenance and body. how, therefore, are the signs of sin to be known and separated? § . ideal form to be reached only by love. no intellectual operation is here of any avail. there is not any reasoning by which the evidences of depravity are to be traced in movements of muscle or forms of feature; there is not any knowledge, nor experience, nor diligence of comparison that can be of avail. here, as throughout the operation of the theoretic faculty, the perception is altogether moral, an instinctive love and clinging to the lines of light. nothing but love can read the letters, nothing but sympathy catch the sound, there is no pure passion that can be understood or painted except by pureness of heart; the foul or blunt feeling will see itself in everything, and set down blasphemies; it will see beelzebub in the casting out of devils, it will find its god of flies in every alabaster box of precious ointment. the indignation of zeal towards god (nemesis) it will take for anger against man, faith and veneration it will miss of, as not comprehending, charity it will turn into lust, compassion into pride, every virtue it will go over against, like shimei, casting dust. but the right christian mind will in like manner find its own image wherever it exists, it will seek for what it loves, and draw it out of all dens and caves, and it will believe in its being, often when it cannot see it, and always turn away its eyes from beholding vanity; and so it will lie lovingly over all the faults and rough places of the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard, and black, and broken mountain rocks, following their forms truly, and yet catching light for them to make them fair, and that must be a steep and unkindly crag indeed which it cannot cover. § . practical principles deducible. now of this spirit there will always be little enough in the world, and it cannot be given nor taught by men, and so it is of little use to insist on it farther, only i may note some practical points respecting the ideal treatment of human form, which may be of use in these thoughtless days. there is not the face, i have said, which the painter may not make ideal if he choose, but that subtile feeling which shall find out all of good that there is in any given countenance is not, except by concern for other things than art, to be acquired. but certain broad indications of evil there are which the bluntest feeling may perceive, and which the habit of distinguishing and casting out would both ennoble the schools of art, and lead in time to greater acuteness of perception with respect to the less explicable characters of soul beauty. § . expressions chiefly destructive of ideal character. st. pride. those signs of evil which are commonly most manifest on the human features are roughly divisible into these four kinds, the signs of pride, of sensuality, of fear, and of cruelty. any one of which will destroy the ideal character of the countenance and body. § . portraiture ancient and modern. now of these, the first, pride, is perhaps the most destructive of all the four, seeing it is the undermost and original story of all sin; and it is base also from the necessary foolishness of it, because at its best, that is when grounded on a just estimation of our own elevation or superiority above certain others, it cannot but imply that our eyes look downward only, and have never been raised above our own measure, for there is not the man so lofty in his standing nor capacity but he must be humble in thinking of the cloud habitation and far sight of the angelic intelligences above him, and in perceiving what infinity there is of things he cannot know nor even reach unto, as it stands compared with that little body of things he can reach, and of which nevertheless he can altogether understand not one; not to speak of that wicked and fond attributing of such excellency as he may have to himself, and thinking of it as his own getting, which is the real essence and criminality of pride, nor of those viler forms of it, founded on false estimation of things beneath us and irrational contemning of them: but taken at its best, it is still base to that degree that there is no grandeur of feature which it cannot destroy and make despicable, so that the first step towards the ennobling of any face is the ridding it of its vanity; to which aim there cannot be anything more contrary than that principle of portraiture which prevails with us in these days, whose end seems to be the expression of vanity throughout, in face and in all circumstances of accompaniment, tending constantly to insolence of attitude, and levity and haughtiness of expression, and worked out farther in mean accompaniments of worldly splendor and possession, together with hints or proclamations of what the person has done or supposes himself to have done, which, if known, it is gratuitous in the portrait to exhibit, and if unknown, it is insolent in the portrait to proclaim; whence has arisen such a school of portraiture as must make the people of the nineteenth century the shame of their descendants, and the butt of all time. to which practices are to be opposed both the glorious severity of holbein, and the mighty and simple modesty of raffaelle, titian, giorgione, and tintoret, with whom armor does not constitute the warrior, neither silk the dame. and from what feeling the dignity of that portraiture arose is best traceable at venice, where we find their victorious doges painted neither in the toil of battle nor the triumph of return, nor set forth with thrones and curtains of state, but kneeling always crownless, and returning thanks to god for his help, or as priests, interceding for the nation in its affliction. which feeling and its results have been so well traced out by rio,[ ] that i need not speak of it farther. § . secondly, sensuality. § . how connected with impurity of color. § . and prevented by its splendor. § . or by severity of drawing. that second destroyer of ideal form, the appearance of sensual character, though not less fatal in its operation on modern art, is more difficult to trace, owing to its peculiar subtlety. for it is not possible to say by what minute differences the right conception of the human form is separated from that which is luscious and foul: for the root of all is in the love and seeking of the painter, who, if of impure and feeble mind, will cover all that he touches with clay staining, as bandinelli puts a foul scent of human flesh about his marble christ, and as many whom i will not here name, among moderns; but if of mighty mind or pure, may pass through all places of foulness, and none will stay upon him, as michael angelo, or he will baptize all things and wash them with pure water, as our own stothard. now, so far as this power is dependent on the seeking of the artist, and is only to be seen in the work of good and spiritually-minded men, it is vain to attempt to teach or illustrate it, neither is it here the place to take note of the way in which it belongs to the representation of the mental image of things, instead of things themselves, of which we are to speak in treating of the imagination; but thus much may here be noted of broad, practical principle, that the purity of flesh painting depends in very considerable measure on the intensity and warmth of its color. for if it be opaque, and clay cold, and colorless, and devoid of all the radiance and value of flesh, the lines of its true beauty, being severe and firm, will become so hard in the loss of the glow and gradation by which nature illustrates them, that the painter will be compelled to sacrifice them for a luscious fulness and roundness, in order to give the conception of flesh; which, being done, destroys ideality of form as of color, and gives all over to lasciviousness of surface; showing also that the painter sought for this, and this only, since otherwise he had not taken a subject in which he knew himself compelled to surrender all sources of dignity. whereas, right splendor of color both bears out a nobler severity of form, and is in itself purifying and cleansing, like fire, furnishing also to the painter an excuse for the choice of his subject, seeing that he may be supposed as not having painted it but in the admiration of its abstract glory of color and form, and with no unworthy seeking. but the mere power of perfect and glowing color will in some sort redeem even a debased tendency of mind itself, as eminently the case with titian, who, though of little feeling, and often treating base subjects, or elevated subjects basely, as in the disgusting magdalen of the pitti palace, and that of the barberigo at venice, yet redeems all by his glory of hue, so that he cannot paint altogether coarsely; and with giorgione, who had nobler and more serious intellect, the sense of nudity is utterly lost, and there is no need nor desire of concealment any more, but his naked figures move among the trees like fiery pillars, and lie on the grass like flakes of sunshine.[ ] with the religious painters on the other hand, such nudity as they were compelled to treat is redeemed as much by severity of form and hardness of line as by color, so that generally their draped figures are preferable, as in the francia of our own gallery. but these, with michael angelo and the venetians, except titian, form a great group, pure in sight and aim, between which and all other schools by which the nude has been treated, there is a gulf fixed, and all the rest, compared with them, seem striving how best to illustrate that of spenser. "of all god's works, which doe this worlde adorn, there is no one more faire, and excellent than is man's body both for power and forme whiles it is kept in sober government. but none than it more foul and indecent distempered through misrule and passions bace." § . degrees of descent in this respect: rubens, correggio, and guido. § . and modern art. of these last, however, with whom ideality is lost, there are some worthier than others, according to that measure of color they reach, and power they possess, whence much may be forgiven to rubens, (as to our own etty,) less, as i think, to correggio, who with less apparent and evident coarseness has more of inherent sensuality, wrought out with attractive and luscious refinement, and that alike in all subjects, as in the madonna of the incoronazione, over the high altar of san giovanni at parma, of which the head and upper portion of the figure, now preserved in the library, might serve as a model of attitude and expression to a ballet figurante:[ ] and again in the lascivious st. catherine of the giorno, and in the charioted diana, (both at parma,) not to name any of his works of aim more definitely evil. beneath which again will fall the works devoid alike of art and decency, as that susannah of guido, in our own gallery, and so we may descend to the absolute clay of the moderns, only noticing in all how much of what is evil and base in subject or tendency, is redeemed by what is pure and right in hue, so that i do not assert that the purpose and object of many of the grander painters of the nude, as titian for instance, was always elevated, but only that we, who cannot paint the lamp of fire within the earthen pitcher, must take other weapons in our left hands. and it is to be noted, also, that in climates where the body can be more openly and frequently visited by sun and weather, the nude both comes to be regarded in a way more grand and pure, as necessarily awakening no ideas of base kind, (as pre-eminently with the greeks,) and also from that exposure receives a firmness and sunny elasticity very different from the silky softness of the clothed nations of the north, where every model necessarily looks as if accidentally undressed; and hence from the very fear and doubt with which we approach the nude, it becomes expressive of evil, and for that daring frankness of the old men, which seldom missed of human grandeur, even when it failed of holy feeling, we have substituted a mean, carpeted, gauze-veiled, mincing sensuality of curls and crisping pins, out of which i believe nothing can come but moral enervation and mental paralysis. § . thirdly, ferocity and fear. the latter how to be distinguished from awe. § . holy fear, how distinct from human terror. § . ferocity is joined always with fear. its unpardonableness. respecting those two other vices of the human face, the expressions of fear and ferocity, there is less to be noted, as they only occasionally enter into the conception of character; only it is most necessary to make careful distinction between the conception of power, destructiveness, or majesty, in matter, influence, or agent, and the actual fear of any of these, for it is possible to conceive of terribleness, without being in a position obnoxious to the danger of it, and so without fear, and the feeling arising from this contemplation of dreadfulness, ourselves being in safety, as of a stormy sea from the shore, is properly termed awe, and is a most noble passion; whereas fear mortal and extreme, may be felt respecting things ignoble, as the falling from a window, and without any conception of terribleness or majesty in the thing, or the accident dreaded; and even when fear is felt respecting things sublime, as thunder, or storm of battle, yet the tendency of it is to destroy all power of contemplation of their majesty, and to freeze and shrink all the intellect into a shaking heap of clay, for absolute acute fear is of the same unworthiness and contempt from whatever source it arise, and degrades the mind and the outward bearing of the body alike, even though it be among hail of heaven and fire running along the ground. and so among the children of god, while there is always that fearful and bowed apprehension of his majesty, and that sacred dread of all offence to him, which is called the fear of god, yet of real and essential fear there is not any but clinging of confidence to him, as their rock, fortress, and deliverer, and perfect love, and casting out of fear, so that it is not possible that while the mind is rightly bent on him, there should be dread of anything either earthly or supernatural, and the more dreadful seems the height of his majesty, the less fear they feel that dwell in the shadow of it, ("of whom shall i be afraid?") so that they are as david was, devoted to his fear; whereas, on the other hand, those who, if they may help it, never conceive of god, but thrust away all thought and memory of him, and in his real terribleness and omnipresence fear him not nor know him, yet are of real, acute, piercing, and ignoble fear, haunted for evermore; fear inconceiving and desperate that calls to the rocks, and hides in the dust; and hence the peculiar baseness of the expression of terror, a baseness attributed to it in all times, and among all nations, as of a passion atheistical, brutal, and profane. so also, it is always joined with ferocity, which is of all passions the least human; for of sensual desires there is license to men, as necessity; and of vanity there is intellectual cause, so that when seen in a brute it is pleasant and a sign of good wit; and of fear there is at times necessity and excuse, as being allowed for prevention of harm; but of ferocity there is no excuse nor palliation, but it is pure essence of tiger and demon, and it casts on the human face the paleness alike of the horse of death, and the ashes of hell. § . such expressions how sought by painters powerless and impious. wherefore, of all subjects that can be admitted to sight, the expressions of fear and ferocity are the most foul and detestable, and so there is in them i know not what sympathetic attractiveness for minds cowardly and base, as the vulgar of most nations, and forasmuch as they are easily rendered by men who can render nothing else, they are often trusted in by the herd of painters incapable and profane, as in that monstrous abortion of the first room of the louvre, called the deluge, whose subject is pure, acute, mortal fear; and so generally the senseless horrors of the modern french schools, spawn of the guillotine: also there is not a greater test of grandeur or meanness of mind than the expressions it will seek for and develop in the features and forms of men in fierce strife, whether determination and devotion, and all the other attributes of that unselfishness which constitutes heroism, as in the warrior of agasias; and distress not agitated nor unworthy, though mortal, as in the dying gladiator, or brutal ferocity and butchered agony, of which the lowest and least palliated examples are those battles of salvator rosa, which none but a man, base-born and thief-bred, could have dwelt upon for an instant without sickening, of which i will only name that example in the pitti palace, wherein the chief figure in the foreground is a man with his arm cut off at the shoulder, run through the other hand into the breast with a lance.[ ] and manifold instances of the same feeling are to be found in the repainting of the various representations of the inferno, so common through italy, more especially that of orcagna's in the campo santo, wherein the few figures near the top that yet remain untouched are grand in their severe drawing and expressions of enduring despair, while those below, repainted by solazzino, depend for their expressiveness upon torrents of blood; so in the inferno of santa maria novella, and of the arena chapel, not to speak of the horrible images of the passion, by which vulgar romanism has always striven to excite the languid sympathies of its untaught flocks. of which foulness let us reason no farther, the very image and memory of them being pollution, only noticing this, that there has always been a morbid tendency in romanism towards the contemplation of bodily pain, owing to the attribution of saving power to it, which, like every other moral error, has been of fatal effect in art, leaving not altogether without the stain and blame of it, even the highest of the pure romanist painters; as fra angelico, for instance, who, in his passion subjects, always insists weakly on the bodily torture, and is unsparing of blood; and giotto, though his treatment is usually grander, as in that crucifixion over the door of the convent of st. mark's, where the blood is hardly actual, but issues from the feet in a typical and conventional form, and becomes a crimson cord which is twined strangely beneath about a skull; only that which these holy men did to enhance, even though in their means mistaken, the impression and power of the sufferings of christ, or of his saints, is always in a measure noble, and to be distinguished with all reverence from the abominations of the irreligious painters following, as of camillo procaccini, in one of his martyrdoms in the gallery of the brera, at milan, and other such, whose names may be well spared to the reader. § . of passion generally. § . it is never to be for itself exhibited--at least on the face. these, then, are the four passions whose presence in any degree on the human face is degradation. but of all passion it is to be generally observed, that it becomes ignoble either when entertained respecting unworthy objects, and therefore shallow or unjustifiable, or when of impious violence, and so destructive of human dignity. thus grief is noble or the reverse, according to the dignity and worthiness of the object lamented, and the grandeur of the mind enduring it. the sorrow of mortified vanity or avarice is simply disgusting, even that of bereaved affection may be base if selfish and unrestrained. all grief that convulses the features is ignoble, because it is commonly shallow and certainly temporary, as in children, though in the shock and shiver of a strong man's features under sudden and violent grief there may be something of sublime. the grief of guercino's hagar, in the brera gallery at milan, is partly despicable, partly disgusting, partly ridiculous; it is not the grief of the injured egyptian, driven forth into the desert with the destiny of a nation in her heart, but of a servant of all work, turned away for stealing tea and sugar. common painters forget that passion is not absolutely and in itself great or violent, but only in proportion to the weakness of the mind it has to deal with; and that in exaggerating its outward signs, they are not exalting the passion, but evaporating the hero.[ ] they think too much of passions as always the same in their nature, forgetting that the love of achilles is different from the love of paris, and of alcestis from that of laodamia. the use and value of passion is not as a subject in contemplation in itself, but as it breaks up the fountains of the great deep of the human mind, or displays its mightiness and ribbed majesty, as mountains are seen in their stability best among the coil of clouds; whence, in fine, i think it is to be held that all passion which attains overwhelming power, so that it is not as resisting, but as conquered, that the creature is contemplated, is unfit for high art, and destructive of the ideal character of the countenance: and in this respect, i cannot but hold raffaelle to have erred in his endeavor to express passion of such acuteness in the human face; as in the fragment of the massacre of the innocents in our own gallery, (wherein, repainted though it be, i suppose the purpose of the master is yet to be understood,) for if such subjects are to be represented at all, their entire expression may be given without degrading the face, as we shall presently see done with unspeakable power by tintoret,[ ] and i think that all subjects of the kind, all human misery, slaughter, famine, plague, peril, and crime, are better in the main avoided, as of unprofitable and hardening influence, unless so far as out of the suffering, hinted rather than expressed, we may raise into nobler relief the eternal enduring of fortitude and affection, of mercy and self-devotion, or when, as by the threshing-floor of ornan, and by the cave of lazarus, the angel of the lord is to be seen in the chastisement, and his love to be manifested to the despair of men. § . recapitulation thus, then, we have in some sort enumerated those evil signs which are most necessary to be shunned in the seeking of ideal beauty,[ ] though it is not the knowledge of them, but the dread and hatred of them, which will effectually aid the painter; as on the other hand it is not by mere admission of the loveliness of good and holy expression that its subtile characters are to be traced. raffaelle himself, questioned on this subject, made doubtful answer; he probably could not trace through what early teaching, or by what dies of emotion the image had been sealed upon his heart. our own bacon, who well saw the impossibility of reaching it by the combination of many separate beauties, yet explains not the nature of that "kind of felicity" to which he attributes success. i suppose those who have conceived and wrought the loveliest things, have done so by no theorizing, but in simple labor of love, and could not, if put to a bar of rationalism, defend all points of what they had done, but painted it in their own delight, and to the delight of all besides, only always with that respect of conscience and "fear of swerving from that which is right, which maketh diligent observers of circumstances the loose regard whereof is the nurse of vulgar folly, no less than solomon's attention thereunto was of natural furtherances the most effectual to make him eminent above others, for he gave good heed, and pierced everything to the very ground."[ ] with which good heed, and watching of the instants when men feel warmly and rightly, as the indians do for the diamond in their washing of sand, and that with the desire and hope of finding true good in men, and not with the ready vanity that sets itself to fiction instantly, and carries its potter's wheel about with it always, (off which there will come only clay vessels of regular shape after all,) instead of the pure mirror that can show the seraph standing by the human body--standing as signal to the heavenly land:[ ] with this heed and this charity, there are none of us that may not bring down that lamp upon his path of which spenser sang:-- "that beauty is not, as fond men misdeem an outward show of things, that only seem; but that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray that light proceeds, which kindleth lover's fire, shall never be extinguished nor decay. but when the vital spirits do expire, unto her native planet shall retire, for it is heavenly born and cannot die, being a parcel of the purest sky." footnotes [ ] rev. vii. . [ ] compare part ii. sec. i. chap. iii § . [ ] de la poësie chrétienne. forme de l'art. chap. viii. [ ] as in the noble louvre picture. [ ] the madonna turns her back to christ, and bends her head over her shoulder to receive the crown, the arms being folded with studied grace over the bosom. [ ] compare michelet, (du prêtre, de la femme, de la famille,) chap. iii. note. he uses language too violent to be quoted; but excuses salvator by reference to the savage character of the thirty years' war. that this excuse has no validity may be proved by comparing the painter's treatment of other subjects. see sec. ii. chap. iii. § , note. [ ] "the fire, that mounts the liquor, till it run o'er in seeming to augment it, wastes it." henry viii. [ ] sect. ii. chap. iii. § . [ ] let it be observed that it is always of beauty, not of human character in its lower and criminal modifications, that we have been speaking. that variety of character, therefore, which we have affirmed to be necessary, is the variety of giotto and angelico, not of hogarth. works concerned with the exhibition of general character, are to be spoken of in the consideration of ideas of relation. [ ] hooker, book v. chap. i. § . [ ] "each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, and by the holy rood, a man all light, a seraph man by every corse there stood. this seraph band, each waved his hand, it was a heavenly sight; they stood as signals to the land, each one a lovely light." ancient mariner chapter xv. general conclusions respecting the theoretic faculty. § . there are no sources of the emotion of beauty more than those found in things visible. § . what imperfection exists in visible things. how in a sort by imagination removable. § . which however affects not our present conclusions. of the sources of beauty open to us in the visible world, we have now obtained a view which, though most feeble in its grasp and scanty in its detail, is yet general in its range. of no other sources than these visible can we, by any effort in our present condition of existence, conceive. for what revelations have been made to humanity inspired, or caught up to heaven of things to the heavenly region belonging, have been either by unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter, or else by their very nature incommunicable, except in types and shadows; and ineffable by words belonging to earth, for of things different from the visible, words appropriated to the visible can convey no image. how different from earthly gold that clear pavement of the city might have seemed to the eyes of st. john, we of unreceived sight cannot know; neither of that strange jasper and sardine can we conceive the likeness which he assumed that sat on the throne above the crystal sea; neither what seeming that was of slaying that the root of david bore in the midst of the elders; neither what change it was upon the form of the fourth of them that walked in the furnace of dura, that even the wrath of idolatry knew for the likeness of the son of god. the knowing that is here permitted to us is either of things outward only, as in those it is whose eyes faith never opened, or else of that dark part that her glass shows feebly, of things supernatural, that gleaming of the divine form among the mortal crowd, which all may catch if they will climb the sycamore and wait; nor how much of god's abiding at the house may be granted to those that so seek, and how much more may be opened to them in the breaking of bread, cannot be said; but of that only we can reason which is in a measure revealed to all, of that which is by constancy and purity of affection to be found in the things and the beings around us upon earth. now among all those things whose beauty we have hitherto examined, there has been a measure of imperfection. either inferiority of kind, as the beauty of the lower animals, or resulting from degradation, as in man himself; and although in considering the beauty of human form, we arrived at some conception of restoration, yet we found that even the restoration must be in some respect imperfect, as incapable of embracing all qualities, moral and intellectual, at once, neither to be freed from all signs of former evil done or suffered. consummate beauty, therefore, is not to be found on earth, though often such intense measure of it as shall drown all capacity of receiving; neither is it to be respecting humanity legitimately conceived. but by certain operations of the imagination upon ideas of beauty received from things around us, it is possible to conceive respecting superhuman creatures (of that which is more than creature, no creature ever conceived) a beauty in some sort greater than we see. of this beauty, however, it is impossible to determine anything until we have traced the imaginative operations to which it owes its being, of which operations this much may be prematurely said, that they are not creative, that no new ideas are elicited by them, and that their whole function is only a certain dealing with, concentrating or mode of regarding the impressions received from external things, that therefore, in the beauty to which they will conduct us, there will be found no new element, but only a peculiar combination or phase of those elements that we now know, and that therefore we may at present draw all the conclusions with respect to the rank of the theoretic faculty, which the knowledge of its subject matter can warrant. § . the four sources from which the pleasure of beauty is derived are all divine. we have seen that this subject matter is referable to four general heads. it is either the record of conscience, printed in things external, or it is a symbolizing of divine attributes in matter, or it is the felicity of living things, or the perfect fulfilment of their duties and functions. in all cases it is something divine, either the approving voice of god, the glorious symbol of him, the evidence of his kind presence, or the obedience to his will by him induced and supported. all these subjects of contemplation are such as we may suppose will remain sources of pleasure to the perfected spirit throughout eternity. divine in their nature, they are addressed to the immortal part of men. § . what objections may be made to this conclusion. there remain, however, two points to be noticed before i can hope that this conclusion will be frankly accepted by the reader. if it be the moral part of us to which beauty addresses itself, how does it happen, it will be asked, that it is ever found in the works of impious men, and how is it possible for such to desire or conceive it? on the other hand, how does it happen that men in high state of moral culture are often insensible to the influence of material beauty, and insist feebly upon it as an instrument of soul culture. these two objections i shall endeavor briefly to answer, not that they can be satisfactorily treated without that detailed examination of the whole body of great works of art, on which i purpose to enter in the following volume. for the right determination of these two questions is indeed the whole end and aim of my labor, (and if it could be here accomplished, i should bestow no effort farther,) namely, the proving that no supreme power of art can be attained by impious men; and that the neglect of art, as an interpreter of divine things, has been of evil consequence to the christian world. at present, however, i would only meet such objections as must immediately arise in the reader's mind. § . typical beauty may be æsthetically pursued. instances. § . how interrupted by false feeling. and first, it will be remembered that i have, throughout the examination of typical beauty, asserted its instinctive power, the moral meaning of it being only discoverable by faithful thought. now this instinctive sense of it varies in intensity among men, being given, like the hearing ear of music, to some more than to others: and if those to whom it is given in large measure be unfortunately men of impious or unreflecting spirit, it is very possible that the perceptions of beauty should be by them cultivated on principles merely æsthetic, and so lose their hallowing power; for though the good seed in them is altogether divine, yet, there being no blessing in the springing thereof, it brings forth wild grapes in the end. and yet these wild grapes are well discernible, like the deadly gourds of gilgal. there is in all works of such men a taint and stain, and jarring discord, blacker and louder exactly in proportion to the moral deficiency, of which the best proof and measure is to be found in their treatment of the human form, (since in landscape it is nearly impossible to introduce definite expression of evil,) of which the highest beauty has been attained only once, and then by no system taught painter, but by a most holy dominican monk of fiesole; and beneath him all stoop lower and lower in proportion to their inferior sanctity, though with more or less attainment of that which is noble, according to their intellectual power and earnestness, as raffaelle in his st. cecilia, (a mere study of a passionate, dark-eyed, large formed italian model,) and even perugino, in that there is about his noblest faces a shortcoming, indefinable; an absence of the full outpouring of the sacred spirit that there is in angelico; traceable, i doubt not, to some deficiencies and avaricious flaws of his heart, whose consequences in his conduct were such as to give vasari hope that his lies might stick to him (for the contradiction of which in the main, if there be not contradiction enough in every line that the hand of perugino drew, compare rio, de la poësie chrétienne, and note also what rio has singularly missed observing, that perugino, in his portrait of himself in the florence gallery, has put a scroll into the hand, with the words "timete deum," thus surely indicating that which he considered his duty and message:) and so all other even of the sacred painters, not to speak of the lower body of men in whom, on the one hand, there is marked sensuality and impurity in all that they seek of beauty, as in correggio and guido, or, on the other, a want in measure of the sense of beauty itself, as in rubens and titian, showing itself in the adoption of coarse types of feature and form; sometimes also (of which i could find instances in modern times,) in a want of evidence of delight in what they do; so that, after they have rendered some passage of exceeding beauty, they will suffer some discordant point to interfere with it, and it will not hurt them, as if they had no pleasure in that which was best, but had done it in inspiration that was not profitable to them, as deaf men might touch an instrument with a feeling in their heart, which yet returns not outwardly upon them, and so know not when they play false: and sometimes by total want of choice, for there is a choice of love in all rightly tempered men, not that ignorant and insolent choice which rejects half nature as empty of the right, but that pure choice that fetches the right out of everything; and where this is wanting, we may see men walking up and down in dry places, finding no rest, ever and anon doing something noble, and yet not following it up, but dwelling the next instant on something impure or profitless with the same intensity and yet impatience, so that they are ever wondered at and never sympathized with, and while they dazzle all, they lead none; and then, beneath these again, we find others on whose works there are definite signs of evil mind, ill-repressed, and then inability to avoid, and at last perpetual seeking for and feeding upon horror and ugliness, and filthiness of sin, as eminently in salvator and caravaggio, and the lower dutch schools, only in these last less painfully as they lose the villanous in the brutal, and the horror of crime in its idiocy. § . greatness and truth are sometimes by the deity sustained and spoken in and through evil men. but secondly, it is to be noted that it is neither by us uncertainable what moments of pure feeling or aspiration may occur to men of minds apparently cold and lost, nor by us to be pronounced through what instruments, and in what strangely occurrent voices, god may choose to communicate good to men. it seems to me that much of what is great, and to all men beneficial, has been wrought by those who neither intended nor knew the good they did, and that many mighty harmonies have been discoursed by instruments that had been dumb or discordant, but that god knew their stops. the spirit of prophecy consisted with the avarice of balaam, and the disobedience of saul. could we spare from its page that parable, which he said, who saw the vision of the almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open, though we know that the sword of his punishment was then sharp in its sheath beneath him in the plains of moab? or shall we not lament with david over the shield cast away on the gilboa mountains, of him to whom god gave _another heart_ that day when he turned his back to go from samuel? it is not our part to look hardly, nor to look always, to the character or the deeds of men, but to accept from all of them, and to hold fast that which we can prove good, and feel to be ordained for us. we know that whatever good there is in them is itself divine, and wherever we see the virtue of ardent labor and self-surrendering to a single purpose, wherever we find constant reference made to the written scripture of natural beauty, this at least we know is great and good, this we know is not granted by the counsel of god, without purpose, nor maintained without result: their interpretation we may accept, into their labor we may enter, but they themselves must look to it, if what they do has no intent of good, nor any reference to the giver of all gifts. selfish in their industry, unchastened in their wills, ungrateful for the spirit that is upon them, they may yet be helmed by that spirit whithersoever the governor listeth; involuntary instruments they may become of others' good; unwillingly they may bless israel, doubtingly discomfit amalek, but shortcoming there will be of their glory, and sure, of their punishment. § . the second objection arising from the coldness of christian men to external beauty. i believe i shall be able, incidentally, in succeeding investigations, to prove this shortcoming, and to examine the sources of it, not absolutely indeed, (seeing that all reasoning on the characters of men must be treacherous, our knowledge on this head being as corrupt as it is scanty, while even in living with them it is impossible to trace the working, or estimate the errors of great and self-secreted minds,) but at least enough to establish the general principle upon such grounds of fact as may satisfy those who demand the practical proof (often in a measure impossible) of things which can hardly be doubted in their rational consequence. at present, it would be useless to enter on an examination for which we have no materials; and i proceed, therefore, to notice that other and opposite error of christian men in thinking that there is little use or value in the operation of the theoretic faculty, not that i at present either feel myself capable, or that this is the place for the discussion of that vast question of the operation of taste (as it is called) on the minds of men, and the national value of its teaching, but i wish shortly to reply to that objection which might be urged to the real moral dignity of the faculty, that many christian men seem to be in themselves without it, and even to discountenance it in others. it has been said by schiller, in his letters on æsthetic culture, that the sense of beauty never farthered the performance of a single duty. § . reasons for this coldness in the anxieties of the world. these anxieties overwrought and criminal. § . evil consequences of such coldness. § . theoria the service of heaven. although this gross and inconceivable falsity will hardly be accepted by any one in so many terms, seeing that there are few so utterly lost but that they receive, and know that they receive, at certain moments, strength of some kind, or rebuke from the appealings of outward things; and that it is not possible for a christian man to walk across so much as a rood of the natural earth, with mind unagitated and rightly poised, without receiving strength and hope from some stone, flower, leaf, or sound, nor without a sense of a dew falling upon him out of the sky; though, i say, this falsity is not wholly and in terms admitted, yet it seems to be partly and practically so in much of the doing and teaching even of holy men, who in the recommending of the love of god to us, refer but seldom to those things in which it is most abundantly and immediately shown; though they insist much on his giving of bread, and raiment, and health, (which he gives to all inferior creatures,) they require us not to thank him for that glory of his works which he has permitted us alone to perceive: they tell us often to meditate in the closet, but they send us not, like isaac, into the fields at even, they dwell on the duty of self-denial, but they exhibit not the duty of delight. now there are reasons for this, manifold, in the toil and warfare of an earnest mind, which, in its efforts at the raising of men from utter loss and misery, has often but little time or disposition to take heed of anything more than the bare life, and of those so occupied it is not for us to judge, but i think, that, of the weaknesses, distresses, vanities, schisms, and sins, which often even in the holiest men, diminish their usefulness, and mar their happiness, there would be fewer if, in their struggle with nature fallen, they sought for more aid from nature undestroyed. it seems to me that the real sources of bluntness in the feelings towards the splendor of the grass and glory of the flower, are less to be found in ardor of occupation, in seriousness of compassion, or heavenliness of desire, than in the turning of the eye at intervals of rest too selfishly within; the want of power to shake off the anxieties of actual and near interest, and to leave results in god's hands; the scorn of all that does not seem immediately apt for our purposes, or open to our understanding, and perhaps something of pride, which desires rather to investigate than to feel. i believe that the root of almost every schism and heresy from which the christian church has ever suffered, has been the effort of men to earn, rather than to receive, their salvation; and that the reason that preaching is so commonly ineffectual is, that it calls on men oftener to work for god, than to behold god working for them. if, for every rebuke that we utter of men's vices, we put forth a claim upon their hearts; if for every assertion of god's demands from them, we could substitute a display of his kindness to them; if side by side with every warning of death, we could exhibit proofs and promises of immortality; if, in fine, instead of assuming the being of an awful deity, which men, though they cannot and dare not deny, are always unwilling, sometimes unable, to conceive, we were to show them a near, visible, inevitable, but all beneficent deity, whose presence makes the earth itself a heaven, i think there would be fewer deaf children sitting in the market-place. at all events, whatever may be the inability in this present life to mingle the full enjoyment of the divine works with the full discharge of every practical duty, and confessedly in many cases this must be, let us not attribute the inconsistency to any indignity of the faculty of contemplation, but to the sin and the suffering of the fallen state, and the change of order from the keeping of the garden to the tilling of the ground. we cannot say how far it is right or agreeable with god's will, while men are perishing round about us, while grief, and pain, and wrath, and impiety, and death, and all the powers of the air, are working wildly and evermore, and the cry of blood going up to heaven, that any of us should take hand from the plough; but this we know, that there will come a time when the service of god shall be the beholding of him; and though in these stormy seas, where we are now driven up and down, his spirit is dimly seen on the face of the waters, and we are left to cast anchors out of the stern, and wish for the day, that day will come, when, with the evangelists on the crystal and stable sea, all the creatures of god shall be full of eyes within, and there shall be "no more curse, but his servants shall serve him, and shall see his face." section ii. of the imaginative faculty. chapter i. of the three forms of imagination. § . a partial examination only of the imagination is to be attempted. we have hitherto been exclusively occupied with those sources of pleasure which exist in the external creation, and which in any faithful copy of it must to a certain extent exist also. these sources of beauty, however, are not presented by any very great work of art in a form of pure transcript. they invariably receive the reflection of the mind under whose shadow they have passed, and are modified or colored by its image. this modification is the work of imagination. as, in the course of our succeeding investigation, we shall be called upon constantly to compare sources of beauty existing in nature with the images of them presented by the human mind, it is very necessary for us shortly to review the conditions and limits of the imaginative faculty, and to ascertain by what tests we may distinguish its sane, healthy, and profitable operation, from that which is erratic, diseased, and dangerous. it is neither desirable nor possible here to examine or illustrate in full the essence of this mighty faculty. such an examination would require a review of the whole field of literature, and would alone demand a volume. our present task is not to explain or exhibit full portraiture of this function of the mind in all its relations, but only to obtain some certain tests by which we may determine whether it be very imagination or no, and unmask all impersonations of it, and this chiefly with respect to art, for in literature the faculty takes a thousand forms, according to the matter it has to treat, and becomes like the princess of the arabian tale, sword, eagle, or fire, according to the war it wages, sometimes piercing, sometimes soaring, sometimes illumining, retaining no image of itself, except its supernatural power, so that i shall content myself with tracing that particular form of it, and unveiling those imitations of it only, which are to be found, or feared, in painting, referring to other creations of mind only for illustration. § . the works of the metaphysicians how nugatory with respect to this faculty. unfortunately, the works of metaphysicians will afford us in this most interesting inquiry no aid whatsoever. they who are constantly endeavoring to fathom and explain the essence of the faculties of mind, are sure in the end to lose sight of all that cannot be explained, (though it may be defined and felt,) and because, as i shall presently show, the essence of the imaginative faculty is utterly mysterious and inexplicable, and to be recognized in its results only, or in the negative results of its absence, the metaphysicians, as far as i am acquainted with their works, miss it altogether, and never reach higher than a definition of fancy by a false name. what i understand by fancy will presently appear, not that i contend for nomenclature, but only for distinction between two mental faculties, by whatever name they be called, one the source of all that is great in the poetic arts; the other merely decorative and entertaining, but which are often confounded together, and which have so much in common as to render strict definition of either difficult. § . the definition of d. stewart, how inadequate. dugald stewart's meagre definition may serve us for a starting point. "imagination," he says, "includes conception or simple apprehension, which enables us to form a notion of those former objects of perception or of knowledge, out of which we are to make a selection; abstraction, which separates the selected materials from the qualities and circumstances which are connected with them in nature; and judgment or taste, which selects the materials and directs their combination. to these powers we may add that particular habit of association to which i formerly gave the name of fancy, as it is this which presents to our choice all the different materials which are subservient to the efforts of imagination, and which may therefore be considered as forming the ground-work of poetical genius." (by fancy in this passage, we find on referring to the chapter treating of it, that nothing more is meant than the rapid occurrence of ideas of sense to the mind.) now, in this definition, the very point and purpose of all the inquiry is missed. we are told that judgment or taste "directs the combination." in order that anything may be directed, an end must be previously determined: what is the faculty that determines this end? and of what frame and make, how boned and fleshed, how conceived or seen, is the end itself? bare judgment, or taste, cannot approve of what has no existence; and yet by dugald stewart's definition we are left to their catering among a host of conceptions, to produce a combination which, as they work for, they must see and approve before it exists. this power of prophecy is the very essence of the whole matter, and it is just that inexplicable part which the metaphysician misses. § . this instance nugatory. as might be expected from his misunderstanding of the faculty, he has given an instance entirely nugatory.[ ] it would be difficult to find in milton a passage in which less power of imagination was shown, than the description of eden, if, as i suppose, this be the passage meant, at the beginning of the fourth book, in which i can find three expressions only in which this power is shown, the "_burnished_ with golden rind, hung amiable" of the hesperian fruit, the "_lays forth_ her purple grape" of the vine and the "_fringed_ bank with myrtle crowned," of the lake, and these are not what stewart meant, but only that accumulation of bowers, groves, lawns, and hillocks, which is not imagination at all, but composition, and that of the commonest kind. hence, if we take any passage in which there is real imagination, we shall find stewart's hypothesis not only inefficient and obscure, but utterly inapplicable. § . various instances. take one or two at random. "on the other side, incensed with indignation, satan stood unterrified, and like a comet burned that fires the length of ophiuchus huge in the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair shakes pestilence and war." (note that the word incensed is to be taken in its literal and material sense, set on fire.) what taste or judgment was it that directed this combination? or is there nothing more than taste or judgment here? "ten paces huge he back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee his massy spear upstaid, as if on earth winds under ground, or waters forcing way _sidelong had pushed a mountain from his seat half-sunk with all his pines._ "together both ere the high lawns appeared _under the opening eyelids_ of the morn, we drove a field, and both together heard what time the gray-fly winds her _sultry_ horn. "missing thee, i walk unseen on the dry smooth shaven green. to behold the wandering moon riding near her highest noon, _like one that had been led astray_, through the heavens' wide pathless way, and oft _as if her head she bowed_ stooping through a fleecy cloud." it is evident that stewart's explanation utterly fails in all these instances, for there is in them no "combination" whatsoever, but a particular mode of regarding the qualities or appearances of a single thing, illustrated and conveyed to us by the image of another; and the act of imagination, observe, is not the selection of this image, but the mode of regarding the object. but the metaphysician's definition fails yet more utterly, when we look at the imagination neither as regarding, nor combining, but as penetrating. "my gracious silence, hail: wouldst thou have laughed, had i come coffin'd home that weep'st to see me triumph. ah! my dear, such eyes the widows in corioli wear, and mothers that lack sons." how did shakspeare _know_ that virgilia could not speak? this knowledge, this intuitive and penetrative perception, is still one of the forms, the highest, of imagination, but there is no combination of images here. § . the three operations of the imagination. penetrative, associative, contemplative. we find, then, that the imagination has three totally distinct functions. it combines, and by combination creates new forms; but the secret principle of this combination has not been shown by the analysts. again, it treats or regards both the simple images and its own combinations in peculiar ways; and, thirdly, it penetrates, analyzes, and reaches truths by no other faculty discoverable. these its three functions, i shall endeavor to illustrate, but not in this order: the most logical mode of treatment would be to follow the order in which commonly the mind works; that is, penetrating first, combining next, and treating or regarding, finally; but this arrangement would be inconvenient, because the acts of penetration and of regard are so closely connected, and so like in their relations to other mental acts, that i wish to examine them consecutively, and the rather, because they have to do with higher subject matter than the mere act of combination, whose distinctive nature, that property which makes it imagination and not composition, it will i think be best to explain at setting out, as we easily may, in subjects familiar and material. i shall therefore examine the imaginative faculty in these three forms; first, as combining or associative; secondly, as analytic or penetrative; thirdly, as regardant or contemplative. footnotes [ ] he continues thus, "to illustrate these observations, let us consider the steps by which milton must have proceeded, in creating his imaginary garden of eden. when he first proposed to himself that subject of description, it is reasonable to suppose that a variety of the most striking scenes which he had seen, crowded into his mind. the association of ideas suggested them and the power of conception placed each of them before him with all its beauties and imperfections. in every natural scene, if we destine it for any particular purpose, there are defects and redundancies, which art may sometimes, but cannot always correct. but the power of imagination is unlimited. she can create and annihilate, and dispose at pleasure her woods, her rocks, and her rivers. milton, accordingly, would not copy his eden from any one scene, but would select from each the features which were most eminently beautiful. the power of abstraction enabled him to make the separation, and taste directed him in the selection." chapter ii. of imagination associative. § . of simple conception. in order to render our inquiry as easy as possible, we shall consider the dealing of the associative imagination with the simplest possible matter, that is,--with conceptions of material things. first, therefore, we must define the nature of these conceptions themselves. after beholding and examining any material object, our knowledge respecting it exists in two different forms. some facts exist in the brain in a verbal form, as known, but not conceived, as, for instance, that it was heavy or light, that it was eight inches and a quarter long, etc., of which length we cannot have accurate conception, but only such a conception as might attach to a length of seven inches or nine; and which fact we may recollect without any conception of the object at all. other facts respecting it exist in the brain in a visible form, not always visible, but voluntarily visible, as its being white, or having such and such a complicated shape, as the form of a rose-bud, for instance, which it would be difficult to express verbally, neither is it retained by the brain in a verbal form, but a visible one, that is, when we wish for knowledge of its form for immediate use, we summon up a vision or image of the thing; we do not remember it in words, as we remember the fact that it took so many days to blow, or that it was gathered at such and such a time. the knowledge of things retained in this visible form is called conception by the metaphysicians, which term i shall retain; it is inaccurately called imagination by taylor, in the passage quoted by wordsworth in the preface to his poems, not but that the term imagination is etymologically and rightly expressive of it, but we want that term for a higher faculty. § . how connected with verbal knowledge. there are many questions respecting this faculty of conception of very great interest, such as the exact amount of aid that verbal knowledge renders so visible, (as, for instance, the verbal knowledge that a flower has five, or seven, or ten petals, or that a muscle is inserted at such and such a point of the bone, aids the conception of the flower or the limb;) and again, what amount of aid the visible knowledge renders to the verbal, as for instance, whether any one, being asked a question about some animal or thing, which instantly and from verbal knowledge he cannot answer, may have such power of summoning up the image of the animal or thing as to ascertain the fact, by actual beholding, (which i do not assert, but can conceive to be possible;) and again, what is that indefinite and subtile character of the conception itself in most men, which admits not of being by themselves traced or realized, and yet is a sure test of likeness in any representation of the thing; like an intaglio, with a front light on it, whose lines cannot be seen, and yet they will fit one definite form only, and that accurately; these and many other questions it is irrelevant at present to determine,[ ] since to forward our present purpose, it will be well to suppose the conception, aided by verbal knowledge, to be absolutely perfect, and we will suppose a man to retain such clear image of a large number of the material things he has seen, as to be able to set down any of them on paper with perfect fidelity and absolute memory[ ] of their most minute features. in thus setting them down on paper, he works, i suppose, exactly as he would work from nature, only copying the remembered image in his mind, instead of the real thing. he is, therefore, still nothing more than a copyist. there is no exercise of imagination in this whatsoever. § . how used in composition. but over these images, vivid and distinct as nature herself, he has a command which over nature he has not. he can summon any that he chooses, and if, therefore, any group of them which he received from nature be not altogether to his mind, he is at liberty to remove some of the component images, add others foreign, and re-arrange the whole. let us suppose, for instance, that he has perfect knowledge of the forms of the aiguilles verte and argentière, and of the great glacier between them at the upper extremity of the valley of chamonix. the forms of the mountains please him, but the presence of the glacier suits not his purpose. he removes the glacier, sets the mountains farther apart, and introduces between them part of the valley of the rhone. this is composition, and is what dugald stewart mistook for imagination, in the kingdom of which noble faculty it has no part nor lot. § . characteristics of composition. the essential characters of composition, properly so called, are these. the mind which desires the new feature summons up before it those images which it supposes to be of the kind wanted, of these it takes the one which it supposes to be fittest, and tries it: if it will not answer, it tries another, until it has obtained such an association as pleases it. in this operation, if it be of little sensibility, it regards only the absolute beauty or value of the images brought before it; and takes that or those which it thinks fairest or most interesting, without any regard to their sympathy with those for whose company they are destined. of this kind is all vulgar composition; the "mulino" of claude, described in the preface to the first part, being a characteristic example. if the mind be of higher feeling, it will look to the sympathy or contrast of the features, to their likeness or dissimilarity; it will take, as it thinks best, features resembling or discordant, and if when it has put them together, it be not satisfied, it will repeat the process on the features themselves, cutting away one part and putting in another, so working more and more delicately down to the lowest details, until by dint of experiment, of repeated trials and shiftings, and constant reference to principles, (as that two lines must not mimic one another, that one mass must not be equal to another,) etc., it has morticed together a satisfactory result. § . what powers are implied by it. the first of the three functions of fancy. this process will be more and more rapid and effective, in proportion to the artist's powers of conception and association, these in their turn depending on his knowledge and experience. the distinctness of his powers of conception will give value, point, and truth to every fragment that he draws from memory. his powers of association, and his knowledge of nature will pour out before him in greater or less number and appositeness the images from which to choose. his experience guides him to quick discernment in the combination, when made, of the parts that are offensive and require change. the most elevated power of mind of all these, is that of association, by which images apposite or resemblant, or of whatever kind wanted, are called up quickly and in multitudes. when this power is very brilliant, it is called fancy, not that this is the only meaning of the word fancy, but it is the meaning of it in relation to that function of the imagination which we are here considering; for fancy has three functions; one subordinate to each of the three functions of the imagination. great differences of power are manifested among artists in this respect, some having hosts of distinct images always at their command, and rapidly discerning resemblance or contrast; others having few images, and obscure, at their disposal, nor readily governing those they have. where the powers of fancy are very brilliant, the picture becomes highly interesting; if her images are systematically and rightly combined, and truthfully rendered, it will become even impressive and instructive; if wittily and curiously combined, it will be captivating and entertaining. § . imagination not yet manifested. but all this time the imagination has not once shown itself. all this (except the gift of fancy) may be taught, all this is easily comprehended and analyzed; but imagination is neither to be taught, nor by any efforts to be attained, nor by any acuteness of discernment dissected or analyzed. we have seen that in composition the mind can only take cognizance of likeness or dissimilarity, or of abstract beauty among the ideas it brings together. but neither likeness nor dissimilarity secures harmony. we saw in the chapter on unity that likeness destroyed harmony or unity of membership, and that difference did not necessarily secure it, but only that particular imperfection in each of the harmonizing parts which can only be supplied by its fellow part. if, therefore, the combination made is to be harmonious, the artist must induce in each of its component parts (suppose two only, for simplicity's sake,) such imperfection as that the other shall put it right. if one of them be perfect by itself, the other will be an excrescence. both must be faulty when separate, and each corrected by the presence of the other. if he can accomplish this, the result will be beautiful; it will be a whole, an organized body with dependent members;--he is an inventor. if not, let his separate features be as beautiful, as apposite, or as resemblant as they may, they form no whole. they are two members glued together. he is only a carpenter and joiner. § . imagination is the correlative conception of imperfect component parts. now, the conceivable imperfections of any single feature are infinite. it is impossible, therefore, to fix upon a form of imperfection in the one, and try with this all the forms of imperfection of the other until one fits; but the two imperfections must be corelatively and simultaneously conceived. this is imagination, properly so called, imagination associative, the grandest mechanical power that the human intelligence possesses, and one which will appear more and more marvellous the longer we consider it. by its operation, two ideas are chosen out of an infinite mass, (for it evidently matters not whether the imperfections be conceived out of the infinite number conceivable, or selected out of a number recollected,) two ideas which are separately wrong, which together shall be right, and of whose unity, therefore, the idea must be formed at the instant they are seized, as it is only in that unity that either are good, and therefore only the _conception of that unity can prompt the preference_. now, what is that prophetic action of mind, which, out of an infinite mass of things that cannot be tried together, seizes, at the same instant two that are fit for each other, together right; yet each disagreeable alone. § . material analogy with imagination. this operation of mind, so far as i can see, is absolutely inexplicable, but there is something like it in chemistry. "the action of sulphuric acid on metallic zinc affords an instance of what was once called disposing affinity. zinc decomposes pure water at common temperatures with extreme slowness; but as soon as sulphuric acid is added, decomposition of the water takes place rapidly, though the acid merely unites with oxide of zinc. the former explanation was, that the affinity of the acid for oxide of zinc disposed the metal to unite with oxygen, and thus enabled it to decompose water; that is, the oxide of zinc was supposed to produce an effect previous to its existence. the obscurity of this explanation arises from regarding changes as consecutive, which are in reality simultaneous. there is no succession in the process, the oxide of zinc is not formed previously to its combination with the acid, but at the same instant. there is, as it were, but one chemical change, which consists in the combination at one and the same moment of zinc with oxygen, and of oxide of zinc with the acid; and this change occurs because these two affinities, acting together, overcome the attraction of oxygen and hydrogen for one another."[ ] now, if the imaginative artist will permit us, with all deference, to represent his combining intelligence under the figure of sulphuric acid; and if we suppose the fragment of zinc to be embarrassed among infinitely numerous fragments of diverse metals, and the oxygen dispersed and mingled among gases countless and indistinguishable, we shall have an excellent type in material things of the action of the imagination on the immaterial. both actions are, i think, inexplicable, for however simultaneous the chemical changes may be, yet the causing power is the affinity of the acid for what has no existence. it is neither to be explained how that affinity operates on atoms uncombined, nor how the artist's desire for an unconceived whole prompts him to the selection of necessary divisions. § . the grasp and dignity of imagination. now, this operation would be wonderful enough, if it were concerned with two ideas only. but a powerfully imaginative mind seizes and combines at the same instant, not only two, but all the important ideas of its poem or picture, and while it works with any one of them, it is at the same instant working with and modifying all in their relations to it, never losing sight of their bearings on each other; as the motion of a snake's body goes through all parts at once, and its volition acts at the same instant in coils that go contrary ways. this faculty is indeed something that looks as if man were made after the image of god. it is inconceivable, admirable, altogether divine; and yet wonderful as it may seem, it is palpably evident that no less an operation is necessary for the production of any great work, for, by the definition of unity of membership, (the essential characteristic of greatness,) not only certain couples or groups of parts, but _all_ the parts of a noble work must be separately imperfect; each must imply, and ask for all the rest, and the glory of every one of them must consist in its relation to the rest, neither while so much as one is wanting can any be right. and it is evidently impossible to conceive in each separate feature, a certain want or wrongness which can only be corrected by the other features of the picture, (not by one or two merely, but by all,) unless together with the want, we conceive also of what is wanted, that is of all the rest of the work or picture. hence fuseli:-- "second thoughts are admissible in painting and poetry only as dressers of the first conception; no great idea was ever formed in fragments." "he alone can conceive and compose who sees the whole at once before him." § . its limits. there is, however, a limit to the power of all human imagination. when the relations to be observed are absolutely necessary, and highly complicated, the mind cannot grasp them, and the result is a total deprivation of all power of imagination associative in such matter. for this reason, no human mind has ever conceived a new animal. for as it is evident that in an animal, every part implies all the rest; that is, the form of the eye involves the form of the brow and nose, these the form of the forehead and lip, these of the head and chin, and so on, so that it is physically impossible to conceive of any one of these members, unless we conceive the relation it bears to the whole animal; and as this relation is necessary, certain, and complicated, allowing of no license or inaccuracy, the intellect utterly fails under the load, and is reduced to mere composition, putting the bird's wing on men's shoulders, or half the human body to half the horse's, in doing which there is no action of imagination, but only of fancy; though in the treatment and contemplation of the compound form there may be much imagination, as we shall presently see. (chap. iii. § .) § . how manifested in treatment of uncertain relations. its deficiency illustrated. the matter, therefore, in which associative imagination can be shown is that which admits of great license and variety of arrangements, and in which a certain amount of relation only is required; as especially in the elements of landscape painting, in which best it may be illustrated. when an unimaginative painter is about to draw a tree, (and we will suppose him, for better illustration of the point in question, to have good feeling and correct knowledge of the nature of trees,) he probably lays on his paper such a general form as he knows to be characteristic of the tree to be drawn, and such as he believes will fall in agreeably with the other masses of his picture, which we will suppose partly prepared. when this form is set down, he assuredly finds it has done something he did not intend it to do. it has mimicked some prominent line, or overpowered some necessary mass. he begins pruning and changing, and after several experiments, succeeds in obtaining a form which does no material mischief to any other. to this form he proceeds to attach a trunk, and having probably a received notion or rule (for the unimaginative painter never works without a principle) that tree trunks ought to lean first one way and then the other as they go up, and ought not to stand under the middle of the tree, he sketches a serpentine form of requisite propriety; when it has gone up far enough, that is till it begins to look disagreeably long, he will begin to ramify it, and if there be another tree in the picture with two large branches, he knows that this, by all laws of composition, ought to have three or four, or some different number; one because he knows that if three or four branches start from the same point they will look formal, therefore he makes them start from points one above another, and because equal distances are improper, therefore they shall start at unequal distances. when they are fairly started, he knows they must undulate or go backwards and forwards, which accordingly he makes them do at random; and because he knows that all forms ought to be contrasted, therefore he makes one bend down while the other three go up. the three that go up he knows must not go up without interfering with each other, and so he makes two of them cross. he thinks it also proper that there should be variety of character in them, so he makes the one that bends down graceful and flexible, and of the two that cross, he splinters one and makes a stump of it. he repeats the process among the more complicated minor boughs, until coming to the smallest, he thinks farther care unnecessary, but draws them freely, and by chance. having to put on the foliage, he will make it flow properly in the direction of the tree's growth, he will make all the extremities graceful, but will be grievously plagued by finding them come all alike, and at last will be obliged to spoil a number of them altogether, in order to obtain opposition. they will not, however, be united in this their spoliation, but will remain uncomfortably separate and individually ill-tempered. he consoles himself by the reflection that it is unnatural for all of them to be equally perfect. § . laws of art, the safeguard of the unimaginative. now i suppose that through the whole of this process he has been able to refer to his definite memory or conception of nature for every one of the fragments he has successively added, that the details, color, fractures, insertions, etc., of his boughs, are all either actual recollections or based on secure knowledge of the tree, (and herein i allow far more than is commonly the case with unimaginative painters.) but as far as the process of combination is concerned, it is evident that from beginning to end his laws have been his safety, and his plague has been his liberty. he has been compelled to work at random, or under the guidance of feeling only, whenever there was anything left to his own decision. he has never been decided in anything except in what he _must_ or _must not_ do. he has walked as a drunken man on a broad road, his guides are the hedges; and between these limits, the broader the way, the worse he gets on. § . are by the imaginative painter despised. tests of imagination. the advance of the imaginative artist is precisely the reverse of this. he has no laws. he defies all restraint, and cuts down all hedges. there is nothing within the limits of natural possibility that he dares not do, or that he allows the necessity of doing. the laws of nature he knows, are to him no restraint. they are his own nature. all other laws or limits he sets at utter defiance, his journey is over an untrodden and pathless plain. but he sees his end over the waste from the first, and goes straight at it, never losing sight of it, nor throwing away a step. nothing can stop him, nothing turn him aside; falcons and lynxes are of slow and uncertain sight compared with his. he saw his tree, trunk, boughs, foliage and all, from the first moment; not only the tree but the sky behind it; not only that tree or sky, but all the other great features of his picture: by what intense power of instantaneous selection and amalgamation cannot be explained, but by this it may be proved and tested, that if we examine the tree of the unimaginative painter, we shall find that on removing any part or parts of it, the rest will indeed suffer, as being deprived of the proper development of a tree, and as involving a blank space that wants occupation; but the portions left are not made discordant or disagreeable. they are absolutely and in themselves as valuable as they can be, every stem is a perfect stem, and every twig a graceful twig, or at least as perfect and as graceful as they were before the removal of the rest. but if we try the same experiment on the imaginative painter's work, and break off the merest stem or twig of it, it all goes to pieces like a prince rupert's drop. there is not so much as a seed of it but it lies on the tree's life, like the grain upon the tongue of chaucer's sainted child. take it away, and the boughs will sing to us no longer. all is dead and cold. § . the monotony of unimaginative treatment. this then is the first sign of the presence of real imagination as opposed to composition. but here is another not less important. § . imagination never repeats itself. we have seen that as each part is selected and fitted by the unimaginative painter, he renders it, in itself, as beautiful as he is able. if it be ugly, it remains so, he is incapable of correcting it by the addition of another ugliness, and therefore he chooses all his features as fair as they may be (at least if his object be beauty.) but a small proportion only of the ideas he has at his disposal will reach his standard of absolute beauty. the others will be of no use to him, and among those which he permits himself to use, there will be so marked a family likeness, that he will be more and more cramped, as his picture advances, for want of material, and tormented by multiplying resemblances, unless disguised by some artifice of light and shade or other forced difference, and with all the differences he can imagine, his tree will yet show a sameness and sickening repetition in all its parts, and all his trees will be like one another, except so far as one leans east and another west, one is broadest at the top and another at the bottom, while through all this insipid repetition, the means by which he forces contrast, dark boughs opposed to light, rugged to smooth, etc., will be painfully evident, to the utter destruction of all dignity and repose. the imaginative work is necessarily the absolute opposite of all this. as all its parts are imperfect, and as there is an unlimited supply of imperfection, (for the ways in which things may be wrong are infinite,) the imagination is never at a loss, nor ever likely to repeat itself; nothing comes amiss to it, but whatever rude matter it receives, it instantly so arranges that it comes right; all things fall into their place and appear in that place perfect, useful, and evidently not to be spared, so that of its combinations there is endless variety, and every intractable and seemingly unavailable fragment that we give to it, is instantly turned to some brilliant use, and made the nucleus of a new group of glory; however poor or common the gift, it will be thankful for it, treasure it up, and pay in gold, and it has that life in it and fire, that wherever it passes, among the dead bones and dust of things, behold a shaking, and the bones come together, bone to his bone. § . relation of the imaginative faculty to the theoretic. and now we find what noble sympathy and unity there is between the imaginative and theoretic faculties. both agree in this, that they reject nothing, and are thankful for all; but the theoretic faculty takes out of everything that which is beautiful, while the imaginative faculty takes hold of the very imperfections which the theoretic rejects, and by means of these angles and roughnesses, it joints and bolts the separate stones into a mighty temple, wherein the theoretic faculty in its turn, does deepest homage. thus sympathetic in their desires, harmoniously diverse in their operation, each working for the other with what the other needs not, all things external to man are by one or other turned to good. § . modification of its manifestation. now we have hitherto, for the sake of clearness, opposed the total absence of imagination to the perfect presence of it, in order to make the difference between composition and imagination thoroughly understood. but if we are to give examples of either the want or the presence of the power, it is necessary to note the circumstances by which both are modified. in the first place, few artists of any standing are totally devoid of this faculty, some small measure of it most of them possess, though of all the forms of intellect, this, and its sister, penetrative imagination, are the rarest and most precious; but few painters have reached eminence without some leaven of it, whether it can be increased by practice i doubt. on the other hand, fewer still are possessed of it in very high degree, and even with the men of most gigantic power in this respect, of whom, i think, tintoret stands far the head, there are evident limits to its exercise, and portions to be found in their works that have not been included in the original grasp of them, but have been suggested and incorporated during their progress, or added in decoration; and with the great mass of painters there are frequent flaws and failures in the conception, so that, when they intend to produce a perfect work they throw their thought into different experimental forms, and decorate it and discipline it long before realizing it, so that there is a certain amount of mere composition in the most imaginative works; and a grain or two of imagination commonly in the most artificial. and again, whatever portions of a picture are taken honestly and without alteration from nature, have, so far as they go, the look of imagination, because all that nature does is imaginative, that is, perfect as a whole, and made up of imperfect features; so that the painter of the meanest imaginative power may yet do grand things, if he will keep to strict portraiture, and it would be well if all artists were to endeavor to do so, for if they have imagination, it will force its way in spite of them, and show itself in their every stroke, and if not, they will not get it by leaving nature, but only sink into nothingness. § . instances of absence of imagination.--claude, gaspar poussin. keeping these points in view, it is interesting to observe the different degrees and relations of the imagination, as accompanied with more or less feeling or desire of harmony, vigor of conception, or constancy of reference to truth. of men of name, perhaps claude is the best instance of a want of imagination, nearly total, borne out by painful but untaught study of nature, and much feeling for abstract beauty of form, with none whatever for harmony of expression. in gaspar poussin, we have the same want of imagination disguised by more masculine qualities of mind, and grander reachings after sympathy. thus in the sacrifice of isaac in our own gallery, the spirit of the composition is solemn and unbroken; it would have been a grand picture if the forms of the mass of foliage on the right, and of the clouds in the centre, had not been hopelessly unimaginative. the stormy wind of the picture of dido and eneas blows loudly through its leaves, but the total want of invention in the cloud forms bears it down beyond redemption. the foreground tree of the la riccia (compare part ii. sec. vi. chap. i., § .) is another characteristic instance of absolute nullity of imagination. [illustration: the adoration of the magi. from a painting by ruskin, after tintoret.] § . its presence.--salvator, nicolo poussin, titian, tintoret. in salvator, the imagination is vigorous, the composition dextrous and clever, as in the st. jerome of the brera gallery, the diogenes of the pitti, and the pictures of the guadagni palace. all are rendered valueless by coarseness of feeling and habitual non-reference to nature. all the landscape of nicolo poussin is imaginative, but the development of the power in tintoret and titian is so unapproachably intense that the mind unwillingly rests elsewhere. the four landscapes which occur to me as the most magnificently characteristic are, first, the flight into egypt, of the scuola di san rocco (tintoret;) secondly, the titian of the camuccini collection at rome, with the figures by john bellini; thirdly, titian's st. jerome, in the brera gallery at milan; and fourthly, the st. pietro martire, which i name last, in spite of its importance, because there is something unmeaning and unworthy of titian about the undulation of the trunks, and the upper part of it is destroyed by the intrusion of some dramatic clouds of that species which i have enough described in our former examination of the central cloud region, § . i do not mean to set these four works above the rest of the landscape of these masters; i name them only because the landscape is in them prominent and characteristic. it would be well to compare with them the other backgrounds of tintoret in the scuola, especially that of the temptation and the agony in the garden, and the landscape of the two large pictures in the church of la madonna dell' orto. § . and turner. but for immediate and close illustration, it is perhaps best to refer to a work more accessible, the cephalus and procris of turner, in liber studiorum. i know of no landscape more purely or magnificently imaginative or bearing more distinct evidence of the relative and simultaneous conception of the parts. let the reader first cover with his hand the two trunks that rise against the sky on the right, and ask himself how any termination of the central mass so _ugly_ as the straight trunk which he will then painfully see, could have been conceived or admitted without simultaneous conception of the trunks he has taken away on the right? let him again conceal the whole central mass, and leave these two only, and again ask himself whether anything so ugly as that bare trunk in the shape of a y, could have been admitted without reference to the central mass? then let him remove from this trunk its two arms, and try the effect; let him again remove the single trunk on the extreme right; then let him try the third trunk without the excrescence at the bottom of it; finally, let him conceal the fourth trunk from the right, with the slender boughs at the top; he will find in each case that he has destroyed a feature on which everything else depends, and if proof be required of the vital power of still smaller features, let him remove the sunbeam that comes through beneath the faint mass of trees on the hill in the distance.[ ] it is useless to enter into farther particulars; the reader may be left to his own close examination of this and of the other works of turner, in which he will always find the associative imagination developed in the most profuse and marvellous modes, especially in the drawing of foliage and skies, in both of which the presence or absence of the associative power may best be tested in all artists. i have, however, confined my present illustrations chiefly to foliage, because other operations of the imagination besides the associative, interfere extensively in the treatment of sky. § . the due function of associative imagination with respect to nature. there remains but one question to be determined relating to this faculty, what operation, namely, supposing it possessed in high degree, it has or ought to have in the artist's treatment of natural scenery. i have just said that nature is always imaginative, but it does not follow that her imagination is always of high subject, or that the imagination of all the parts is of a like and sympathetic kind; the boughs of every bramble bush are imaginatively arranged, so are those of every oak and cedar; but it does not follow that there is imaginative sympathy between bramble and cedar. there are few natural scenes whose harmonies are not conceivably improvable either by banishment of some discordant point, or by addition of some sympathetic one; it constantly happens that there is a profuseness too great to be comprehended, or an inequality in the pitch, meaning, and intensity of different parts. the imagination will banish all that is extraneous, it will seize out of the many threads of different feeling which nature has suffered to become entangled, one only, and where that seems thin and likely to break, it will spin it stouter, and in doing this, it never knots, but weaves in the new thread, so that all its work looks as pure and true as nature itself, and cannot be guessed from it but by its exceeding simplicity, (_known_ from it, it cannot be,) so that herein we find another test of the imaginative work, that it looks always as if it had been gathered straight from nature, whereas the unimaginative shows its joints and knots, and is visibly composition. § . the sign of imaginative work is its appearance of absolute truth. and here then we arrive at an important conclusion (though one somewhat contrary to the positions commonly held on the subject,) namely, that if anything looks unnatural, there can be no imagination in it (at least not associative.) we frequently hear works that have no truth in them, justified or elevated on the score of being imaginative. let it be understood once for all, that imagination never designs to touch anything but truth, and though it does not follow that where there is the appearance of truth, there has been imaginative operation, of this we may be assured, that where there is appearance of falsehood, the imagination has had no hand.[ ] for instance, the landscape above mentioned of titian's st. jerome may, for aught i know, be a pure transcript of a rocky slope covered with chestnuts among his native mountains. it has all the look of a sketch from nature; if it be not, the imagination developed in it is of the highest order; if it be, the imagination has only acted in the suggestion of the dark sky, of the shape of the flakes of solemn cloud, and of the gleam of russet light along the distant ground.[ ] again, it is impossible to tell whether the two nearest trunks of the Æsacus and hesperie of the liber studiorum, especially the large one on the right with the ivy, have been invented, or taken straight from nature, they have all the look of accurate portraiture. i can hardly imagine anything so perfect to have been obtained except from the real thing; but we know that the imagination must have begun to operate somewhere, we cannot tell where, since the multitudinous harmonies of the rest of the picture could hardly in any real scene have continued so inviolately sweet. the final tests, therefore, of the work of associative imagination are its intense simplicity, its perfect harmony, and its absolute truth. it may be a harmony, majestic, or humble, abrupt, or prolonged, but it is always a governed and perfect whole, evidencing in all its relations the weight, prevalence, and universal dominion of an awful, inexplicable power; a chastising, animating, and disposing mind. footnotes [ ] compare chapter iv. of this section. [ ] on the distinction rightly made by the metaphysicians between conception absolute and conception accompanied by reference to past time, (or memory,) it is of no necessity here to insist. [ ] elements of chemistry, by the late edward turner, m.d. part ii. sec. iv. [ ] this ray of light, however, has an imaginative power of another kind presently to be spoken of. compare chap. iv. § . [ ] compare chap. iii. § . [ ] it is said at venice that titian took the trees of the st. pietro martiere out of his garden opposite murano. i think this unlikely; there is something about the lower trunks that has a taint of composition: the thought of the whole, however, is thoroughly fine. the backgrounds of the frescoes at padua are also very characteristic, and the well-known woodcut of st. francis receiving the stigmata, one of the mightiest of existing landscape thoughts; and yet it is pure portraiture of pine and spanish chestnut. chapter iii. of imagination penetrative. § . imagination penetrative is concerned not with the combining but apprehending of things. thus far we have been defining that combining operation of the imagination, which appears to be in a sort mechanical, yet takes place in the same inexplicable modes, whatever be the order of conception submitted to it, though i chose to illustrate it by its dealings with mere matter before taking cognizance of any nobler subjects of imagery. we must now examine the dealing of the imagination with its separate conceptions, and endeavor to understand not only its principles of selection, but its modes of apprehension with respect to what it selects. § . milton's and dante's description of flame. when milton's satan first "rears from off the pool, his mighty stature," the image of leviathan before suggested not being yet abandoned, the effect on the fire-wave is described as of the upheaved monster on the ocean stream. "on each hand the flames, driven backwards, slope their pointing spires, and rolled in billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale." and then follows a fiercely restless piece of volcanic imagery. "as when the force of subterranean wind transports a hill torn from pelorus, or the shattered side of thundering Ætna, whose combustible and fuell'd entrails thence conceiving fire, sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, and leave a singed bottom, all involved with stench and smoke; such resting found the sole of unblest feet." yet i think all this is too far detailed, and deals too much with externals; we feel rather the form of the fire-waves than their fury, we walk upon them too securely, and the fuel, sublimation, smoke, and singeing, seem to me images only of partial combustion; they vary and extend the conception, but they lower the thermometer. look back, if you will, and add to the description the glimmering of the livid flames; the sulphurous hail and red lightning; yet altogether, however they overwhelm us with horror, fail of making us thoroughly, unendurably hot. the intense essence of flame has not been given. now hear dante:-- "feriami 'l sole in su l'omero destro che già raggiando tutto l'occidente _mutava in bianco aspetto di eilestro. ed io_ facea _con l'ombra più rovente parer la flamma_." that is a slight touch; he has not gone to Ætna nor pelorus for fuel; but we shall not soon recover from it--he has taken our breath away and leaves us gasping. no smoke nor cinders there. pure, white, hurtling, formless flame; very fire crystal, we cannot make spires nor waves of it, nor divide it, nor walk on it, there is no question about singeing soles of feet. it is lambent annihilation. § . the imagination seizes always by the innermost point. such is always the mode in which the highest imaginative faculty seizes its materials. it never stops at crusts or ashes, or outward images of any kind, it ploughs them all aside, and plunges into the very central fiery heart, nothing else will content its spirituality, whatever semblances and various outward shows and phases its subject may possess, go for nothing, it gets within all fence, cuts down to the root, and drinks the very vital sap of that it deals with: once there it is at liberty to throw up what new shoots it will, so always that the true juice and sap be in them, and to prune and twist them at its pleasure, and bring them to fairer fruit than grew on the old tree; but all this pruning and twisting is work that it likes not, and often does ill; its function and gift are the getting at the root, its nature and dignity depend on its holding things always by the heart. take its hand from off the beating of that, and it will prophesy no longer; it looks not in the eyes, it judges not by the voice, it describes not by outward features, all that it affirms, judges, or describes, it affirms from within. § . it acts intuitively and without reasoning. it may seem to the reader that i am incorrect in calling this penetrating, possession-taking faculty, imagination. be it so, the name is of little consequence; the faculty itself, called by what name we will, i insist upon as the highest intellectual power of man. there is no reasoning in it, it works not by algebra, nor by integral calculus, it is a piercing, pholas-like mind's tongue that works and tastes into the very rock heart, no matter what be the subject submitted to it, substance or spirit, all is alike, divided asunder, joint and marrow, whatever utmost truth, life, principle, it has, laid bare, and that which has no truth, life, nor principle, dissipated into its original smoke at a touch. the whispers at men's ears it lifts into visible angels. vials that have lain sealed in the deep sea a thousand years it unseals, and brings out of them genii. every great conception of poet or painter is held and treated by this faculty. every character that is so much as touched by men like Æschylus, homer, dante, or shakspeare, is by them held by the heart; and every circumstance or sentence of their being, speaking, or seeming, is seized by process from within, and is referred to that inner secret spring of which the hold is never lost for an instant; so that every sentence, as it has been thought out from the heart, opens for us a way down to the heart, leads us to the centre, and then leaves us to gather what more we may; it is the open sesame of a huge, obscure, endless cave, with inexhaustible treasure of pure gold scattered in it: the wandering about and gathering the pieces may be left to any of us, all can accomplish that; but the first opening of that invisible door in the rock is of the imagination only. § . signs of it in language. hence there is in every word set down by the imaginative mind an awful under-current of meaning, and evidence and shadow upon it of the deep places out of which it has come. it is often obscure, often half told, for he who wrote it, in his clear seeing of the things beneath, may have been impatient of detailed interpretation, but if we choose to dwell upon it and trace it, it will lead us always securely back to that metropolis of the soul's dominion from which we may follow out all the ways and tracks to its farthest coasts. i think the "quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante" of francesca di rimini, and the "he has no children" of macduff are as fine instances as can be given, but the sign and mark of it are visible on every line of the four great men above instanced. § . absence of imagination, how shown. the imaginative writer, on the other hand, as he has never pierced to the heart, so he can never touch it: if he has to paint a passion, he remembers the external signs of it, he collects expressions of it from other writers, he searches for similes, he composes, exaggerates, heaps term on term, figure on figure, till we groan beneath the cold, disjointed heap; but it is all faggot and no fire, the life breath is not in it, his passion has the form of the leviathan, but it never makes the deep boil, he fastens us all at anchor in the scaly rind of it, our sympathies remain as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. and that virtue of originality that men so strain after, is not newness, as they vainly think, (there is nothing new,) it is only genuineness; it all depends on this single glorious faculty of getting to the spring of things and working out from that; it is the coolness, and clearness, and deliciousness of the water fresh from the fountain head, opposed to the thick, hot, unrefreshing drainage from other men's meadows. § . distinction between imagination and fancy. this freshness, however, is not to be taken for an infallible sign of imagination, inasmuch as it results also from a vivid operation of fancy, whose parallel function to this division of the imaginative faculty it is here necessary to distinguish. i believe it will be found that the entirely unimaginative mind _sees_ nothing of the object it has to dwell upon or describe, and is therefore utterly unable, as it is blind itself, to set anything before the eyes of the reader.[ ] the fancy sees the outside, and is able to give a portrait of the outside, clear, brilliant, and full of detail.[ ] the imagination sees the heart and inner nature, and makes them felt, but is often obscure, mysterious, and interrupted, in its giving of outer detail. take an instance. a writer with neither imagination nor fancy, describing a fair lip, does not see it, but thinks about it, and about what is said of it, and calls it well-turned, or rosy, or delicate, or lovely, or afflicts us with some other quenching and chilling epithet. now hear fancy speak,-- "her lips were red, and one was thin, compared with that was next her chin, some bee had stung it newly."[ ] the real, red, bright being of the lip is there in a moment but it is all outside; no expression yet, no mind. let us go a step farther with warner, of fair rosamond struck by eleanor. "with that she dashed her on the lips so dyed double red; hard was the heart that gave the blow, soft were those lips that bled." the tenderness of mind begins to mingle with the outside color, the imagination is seen in its awakening. next shelley,-- "lamp of life, thy lips are burning through the veil that seems to hide them, as the radiant lines of morning through thin clouds, ere they divide them." there dawns the entire soul in that morning; yet we may stop if we choose at the image still external, at the crimson clouds. the imagination is contemplative rather than penetrative. last, hear hamlet,-- "here hung those lips that i have kissed, i know not how oft. where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?" there is the essence of lip, and the full power of the imagination. again, compare milton's flowers in lycidas with perdita's. in milton it happens, i think, generally, and in the case before us most certainly, that the imagination is mixed and broken with fancy, and so the strength of the imagery is part of iron and part of clay. "bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies (imagination) the tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, (nugatory) the white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,-- (fancy) the glowing violet, (imagination) the musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine, (fancy, vulgar) with cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, (imagination) and every flower that sad embroidery wears." (mixed) then hear perdita:-- "o, proserpina, for the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall from dis's wagon. daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of march with beauty. violets, dim, but sweeter than the lids of juno's eyes or cytherea's breath; pale primroses that die unmarried, ere they can behold bright phoebus in his strength, a malady most incident to maids." observe how the imagination in these last lines goes into the very inmost soul of every flower, after having touched them all at first with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of proserpine's; and gilded them with celestial gathering, and never stops on their spots, or their bodily shape, while milton sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy freak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of paper-staining would have been the most precious to us of all. "there is pansies, that's for thoughts." § . fancy how involved with imagination. so i believe it will be found throughout the operation of the fancy, that it has to do with the outsides of things, and is content therewith: of this there can be no doubt in such passage as that description of mab, so often given as an illustration of it, and many other instances will be found in leigh hunt's work already referred to. only some embarrassment is caused by passages in which fancy is seizing the outward signs of emotion, understanding them as such, and yet, in pursuance of her proper function, taking for her share, and for that which she chooses to dwell upon, the outside sign rather than the emotion. note in macbeth that brilliant instance. "where the norweyan banners flout the sky and fan our people cold." the outward shiver and coldness of fear is seized on, and irregularly but admirably attributed by the fancy to the drift of the banners. compare solomon's song where the imagination stays not at the outside, but dwells on the fearful emotion itself? "who is she that looketh forth as the morning; fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" § . fancy is never serious now, if this be the prevailing characteristic of the two faculties, it is evident that certain other collateral differences will result from it. fancy, as she stays at the externals, can never feel. she is one of the hardest hearted of the intellectual faculties, or rather one of the most purely and simply intellectual. she cannot be made serious,[ ] no edge-tools but she will play with; whereas the imagination is in all things the reverse. she cannot be but serious; she sees too far, too darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly, ever to smile. there is something in the heart of everything, if we can reach it, that we shall not be inclined to laugh at. the [greek: anêrithmon gelasma] of the sea is on its surface, not in the deep. § . want of seriousness the bar to high art at the present time. and thus there is reciprocal action between the intensity of moral feeling and the power of imagination; for, on the one hand, those who have keenest sympathy are those who look closest and pierce deepest, and hold securest; and, on the other, those who have so pierced and seen the melancholy deeps of things, are filled with the most intense passion and gentleness of sympathy. hence, i suppose that the powers of the imagination may always be tested by accompanying tenderness of emotion, and thus, (as byron said,) there is no tenderness like dante's, neither any intensity nor seriousness like his, such seriousness that it is incapable of perceiving that which is commonplace or ridiculous, but fuses all down into its white-hot fire; and, on the other hand, i suppose the chief bar to the action of imagination, and stop to all greatness in this present age of ours, is its mean and shallow love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any good and lofty work a flaw or failing, or undipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, and pointed at, and buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously nor as it was meant, but always, if it may be, turned the wrong way, and misunderstood; and while this is so, there is not, nor cannot be any hope of achievement of high things; men dare not open their hearts to us, if we are to broil them on a thorn-fire. § . imagination is quiet; fancy, restless. this, then, is one essential difference between imagination and fancy, and another is like it and resultant from it, that the imagination being at the heart of things, poises herself there, and is still, quiet, and brooding; comprehending all around her with her fixed look, but the fancy staying at the outside of things, cannot see them all at once, but runs hither and thither, and round and about to see more and more, bounding merrily from point to point, and glittering here and there, but necessarily always settling, if she settle at all, on a point only, never embracing the whole. and from these single points she can strike out analogies and catch resemblances, which, so far as the point she looks at is concerned, are true, but would be false, if she could see through to the other side. this, however, she cares not to do, the point of contact is enough for her, and even if there be a gap left between the two things and they do not quite touch, she will spring from one to the other like an electric spark, and be seen brightest in her leaping. § . the detailing operation of fancy. now these differences between the imagination and the fancy hold, not only in the way they lay hold of separate conceptions, but even in the points they occupy of time, for the fancy loves to run hither and thither in time, and to follow long chains of circumstances from link to link; but the imagination, if it may, gets holds of a moment or link in the middle that implies all the rest, and fastens there. hence fuseli's aphorism, "invention never suffers the action to expire, nor the spectator's fancy to consume itself in preparation, or stagnate into repose. it neither begins from the egg, nor coldly gathers the remains." in retsch's illustrations to schiller's kampf mit dem drachen, we have an instance, miserably feeble indeed, but characteristic, and suited to our present purpose, of the detailing, finishing action of the fancy. the dragon is drawn from head to tail, vulture eyes, serpent teeth, forked tongue, fiery crest, armor, claws and coils as grisly as may be; his den is drawn, and all the dead bones in it, and all the savage forest-country about it far and wide; we have him from the beginning of his career to the end, devouring, rampant, victorious over whole armies, gorged with death; we are present at all the preparations for his attack, see him receive his death-wound, and our anxieties are finally becalmed by seeing him lie peaceably dead on his back. § . and suggestive, of the imagination. all the time we have never got into the dragon heart, we have never once felt real pervading horror, nor sense of the creature's being; it is throughout nothing but an ugly composition of claw and scale. now take up turner's jason, liber studiorum, and observe how the imagination can concentrate all this, and infinitely more, into one moment. no far forest country, no secret paths, nor cloven hills, nothing but a gleam of pale horizontal sky, that broods over pleasant places far away, and sends in, through the wild overgrowth of the thicket, a ray of broken daylight into the hopeless pit. no flaunting plumes nor brandished lances, but stern purpose in the turn of the crestless helmet, visible victory in the drawing back of the prepared right arm behind the steady point. no more claws, nor teeth, nor manes, nor stinging tails. we have the dragon, like everything else, by the middle. we need see no more of him. all his horror is in that fearful, slow, grinding upheaval of the single coil. spark after spark of it, ring after ring, is sliding into the light, the slow glitter steals along him step by step, broader and broader, a lighting of funeral lamps one by one, quicker and quicker; a moment more, and he is out upon us, all crash and blaze among those broken trunks;--but he will be nothing then to what he is now. § . this suggestiveness how opposed to vacancy. now, it is necessary here very carefully to distinguish between that character of the work which depends on the imagination of the beholder, and that which results from the imagination of the artist, for a work is often called imaginative when it merely leaves room for the action of the imagination; whereas though nearly all imaginative works do this, yet it may be done also by works that have in them no imagination at all. a few shapeless scratches or accidental stains on a wall; or the forms of clouds, or any other complicated accidents, will set the imagination to work to coin something out of them, and all paintings in which there is much gloom or mystery, possess therein a certain sublimity owing to the play given to the beholder's imagination, without, necessarily, being in the slightest degree imaginative themselves. the vacancy of a truly imaginative work results not from absence of ideas, or incapability of grasping and detailing them, but from the painter having told the whole pith and power of his subject and disdaining to tell more, and the sign of this being the case is, that the imagination of the beholder is forced to act in a certain mode, and feels itself overpowered and borne away by that of the painter, and not able to defend itself, nor go which way it will, and the value of the work depends on the truth, authority, and inevitability of this suggestiveness, and on the absolute right choice of the critical moment. now observe in this work of turner's, that the whole value of it depends on the character of curve assumed by the serpent's body; for had it been a mere semicircle, or gone down in a series of smaller coils, it would have been in the first case, ridiculous, as false and unlike a serpent, and in the second, disgusting, nothing more than an exaggerated viper, but it is that _coming straight_ at the right hand which suggests the drawing forth of an enormous weight, and gives the bent part its springing look, that frightens us. again, remove the light trunk[ ] on the left, and observe how useless all the gloom of the picture would have been, if this trunk had not given it depth and _hollowness_. finally and chiefly, observe that the painter is not satisfied even with all the suggestiveness thus obtained, but to make sure of us, and force us, whether we will or no, to walk his way, and not ours, the trunks of the trees on the right are all cloven into yawning and writhing heads and bodies, and alive with dragon energy all about us, note especially the nearest with its gaping jaws and claw-like branch at the seeming shoulder; a kind of suggestion which in itself is not imaginative, but merely fanciful, (using the term fancy in that third sense not yet explained, corresponding to the third office of imagination;) but it is imaginative in its present use and application, for the painter addresses thereby that morbid and fearful condition of mind which he has endeavored to excite in the spectator, and which in reality would have seen in every trunk and bough, as it penetrated into the deeper thicket, the object of its terror. § . imagination addresses itself to imagination. instances from the works of tintoret. it is nevertheless evident, that however suggestive the work or picture may be, it cannot have effect unless we are ourselves both watchful of its very hint, and capable of understanding and carrying it out, and although i think that this power of continuing or accepting the direction of feeling given is less a peculiar gift, like that of the original seizing, than a faculty dependent on attention, and improvable by cultivation; yet, to a certain extent, the imaginative work will not, i think, be rightly esteemed except by a mind of some corresponding power; not but that there is an intense enjoyment in minds of feeble yet light conception in the help and food they get from those of stronger thought; but a certain imaginative susceptibility is at any rate necessary, and above all things, earnestness and feeling, so that assuredly a work of high conceptive dignity will be always incomprehensible and valueless except in those who go to it in earnest and give it time; and this is peculiarly the case when the imagination acts not merely on the immediate subject, nor in giving a fanciful and peculiar character to prominent objects, as we have just seen, but busies itself throughout in expressing occult and far-sought sympathies in every minor detail, of which action the most sublime instances are found in the works of tintoret, whose intensity of imagination is such that there is not the commonest subject to which he will not attach a range of suggestiveness almost limitless, nor a stone, leaf, or shadow, nor anything so small, but he will give it meaning and oracular voice. § . the entombment. in the centre of the gallery at parma, there is a canvas of tintoret's, whose sublimity of conception and grandeur of color are seen in the highest perfection, by their opposition to the morbid and vulgar sentimentalism of correggio. it is an entombment of christ, with a landscape distance, of whose technical composition and details i shall have much to say hereafter, at present i speak only of the thought it is intended to convey. an ordinary or unimaginative painter would have made prominent, among his objects of landscape, such as might naturally be supposed to have been visible from the sepulchre, and shown with the crosses of calvary, some portion of jerusalem, or of the valley of jehoshaphat. but tintoret has a far higher aim. dwelling on the peculiar force of the event before him, as the fulfilment of the final prophecy respecting the passion, "he made his grave with the wicked and with the _rich_ in his death," he desires to direct the mind of the spectator to this receiving of the body of christ, in its contrast with the houseless birth and the desert life. and, therefore, behind the ghastly tomb-grass that shakes its black and withered blades above the rocks of the sepulchre, there is seen, not the actual material distance of the spot itself, (though the crosses are shown faintly,) but that to which the thoughtful spirit would return in vision, a desert place, where the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, and against the barred twilight of the melancholy sky are seen the mouldering beams and shattered roofing of a ruined cattle-shed, the canopy of the nativity. § . the annunciation. let us take another instance. no subject has been more frequently or exquisitely treated by the religious painters than that of the annunciation, though as usual, the most perfect type of its pure ideal has been given by angelico, and by him with the most radiant consummation (so far as i know) in a small reliquary in the sacristy of st^a. maria novella. the background there, however, is altogether decorative; but in the fresco of the corridor of st. mark's, the concomitant circumstances are of exceeding loveliness. the virgin sits in an open loggia, resembling that of the florentine church of l'annunziata. before her is a meadow of rich herbage, covered with daisies. behind her is seen through the door at the end of the loggia, her chamber with its single grated window, through which a star-like beam of light falls into the silence. all is exquisite in feeling, but not inventive nor imaginative. severe would be the shock and painful the contrast, if we could pass in an instant from that pure vision to the wild thought of tintoret. for not in meek reception of the adoring messenger, but startled by the rush of his horizontal and rattling wings, the virgin sits, not in the quiet loggia, not by the green pasture of the restored soul, but houseless, under the shelter of a palace vestibule ruined and abandoned, with the noise of the axe and the hammer in her ears, and the tumult of a city round about her desolation. the spectator turns away at first, revolted, from the central object of the picture, forced painfully and coarsely forward, a mass of shattered brickwork, with the plaster mildewed away from it, and the mortar mouldering from its seams; and if he look again, either at this or at the carpenter's tools beneath it, will perhaps see in the one and the other, nothing more than such a study of scene as tintoret could but too easily obtain among the ruins of his own venice, chosen to give a coarse explanation of the calling and the condition of the husband of mary. but there is more meant than this. when he looks at the composition of the picture, he will find the whole symmetry of it depending on a narrow line of light, the edge of a carpenter's square, which connects these unused tools with an object at the top of the brickwork, a white stone, four square, the corner-stone of the old edifice, the base of its supporting column. this, i think, sufficiently explains the typical character of the whole. the ruined house is the jewish dispensation, that obscurely arising in the dawning of the sky is the christian; but the corner-stone of the old building remains, though the builder's tools lie idle beside it, and the stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the corner. § . the baptism of christ. its treatment by various painters. in this picture, however, the force of the thought hardly atones for the painfulness of the scene and the turbulence of its feeling. the power of the master is more strikingly shown in his treatment of a subject which, however important, and however deep in its meaning, supplies not to the ordinary painter material enough ever to form a picture of high interest; the baptism of christ. from the purity of giotto to the intolerable, inconceivable brutality of salvator,[ ] every order of feeling has been displayed in its treatment; but i am aware of no single case, except this of which i am about to speak, in which it has formed an impressive picture. giotto's, in the academy of florence, engraved in the series just published, (galleria delle belle arti,) is one of the most touching i know, especially in the reverent action of the attendant angels, and leonardo's angel in that of andrea del verrocchio is very beautiful, but the event is one whose character and importance are ineffable upon the features: the descending dove hardly affects us, because its constant symbolical occurrence hardens us, and makes us look on it as a mere type or letter, instead of the actual presence of the spirit; and by all the sacred painters the power that might be put into the landscape is lost, for though their use of foliage and distant sky or mountain is usually very admirable, as we shall see in the fifth chapter, yet they cannot deal with near water or rock, and the hexagonal and basaltic protuberances of their river shore are i think too painful to be endured even by the most acceptant mind, as eminently in that of angelico, in the vita di christo, which, as far as i can judge, is a total failure in action, expression, and all else; and in general it is in this subject especially, that the greatest painters show their weakness. for this reason, i suppose, and feeling the difficulty of it, tintoret has thrown into it his utmost strength, and it becomes noble in his hands by his most singularly imaginative expression, not only of the immediate fact, but of the whole train of thought of which it is suggestive; and by his considering the baptism not only as the submission of christ to the fulfilment of all righteousness, but as the opening of the earthly struggle with the prince of the powers of the air, which instantly beginning in the temptation, ended only on the cross. § . by tintoret. the river flows fiercely under the shadow of a great rock. from its opposite shore, thickets of close, gloomy foliage rise against the rolling chasm of heaven, through which breaks the brightness of the descending spirit. across these, dividing them asunder, is stretched a horizontal floor of flaky cloud, on which stand the hosts of heaven. christ kneels upon the water, and does not sink; the figure of st. john is indistinct, but close beside his raised right arm there is a spectre in the black shade; the fiend, harpy-shaped, hardly seen, glares down upon christ with eyes of fire, waiting his time. beneath this figure there comes out of the mist a dark hand, the arm unseen, extended to a net in the river, the spars of which are in the shape of a cross. behinds this the roots and under stems of the trees are cut away by the cloud, and beneath it, and through them, is seen a vision of wild, melancholy, boundless light, the sweep of the desert, and the figure of christ is seen therein alone, with his arms lifted as in supplication or ecstacy, borne of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. there are many circumstances which combine to give to this noble work a more than usually imaginative character. the symbolical use of the net, which is the cross net still used constantly in the canals of venice, and common throughout italy, is of the same character as that of the carpenter's tools in the annunciation; but the introduction of the spectral figure is of bolder reach, and yet more, that vision of the after temptation which is expressly indicated as a subject of thought rather than of sight, because it is in a part of the scene, which in _fact_ must have been occupied by the trunks of the trees whose tops are seen above; and another circumstance completes the mystic character of the whole, that the flaky clouds which support the angelic hosts take on the right, where the light first falls upon them, the shape of the head of a fish, the well-known type both of the baptismal sacrament, and of christ. § . the crucifixion. but the most exquisite instance of this imaginative power occurs in an incident in the background of the crucifixion. i will not insult this marvellous picture by an effort at a verbal account of it. i would not whitewash it with praise, and i refer to it only for the sake of two thoughts peculiarly illustrative of the intellectual faculty immediately under discussion. in the common and most catholic treatment of the subject, the mind is either painfully directed to the bodily agony, coarsely expressed by outward anatomical signs, or else it is permitted to rest on that countenance inconceivable by man at any time, but chiefly so in this its consummated humiliation. in the first case, the representation is revolting; in the second, inefficient, false, and sometimes blasphemous. none even of the greatest religious painters have ever, so far as i know, succeeded here; giotto and angelico were cramped by the traditional treatment, and the latter especially, as before observed, is but too apt to indulge in those points of vitiated feeling which attained their worst development among the byzantines: perugino fails in his christ in almost every instance (of other men than these after them we need not speak.) but tintoret here, as in all other cases, penetrating into the root and deep places of his subject, despising all outward and bodily appearances of pain, and seeking for some means of expressing, not the rack of nerve or sinew, but the fainting of the deserted son of god before his eloi cry, and yet feeling himself utterly unequal to the expression of this by the countenance, has on the one hand filled his picture with such various and impetuous muscular exertion that the body of the crucified is, by comparison, in perfect repose, and on the other has cast the countenance altogether into shade. but the agony is told by this, and by this only, that though there yet remains a chasm of light on the mountain horizon where the earthquake darkness closes upon the day, the broad and sunlike glory about the head of the redeemer has become wan, and of the color of ashes.[ ] but the great painter felt he had something more to do yet. not only that agony of the crucified, but the tumult of the people, that rage which invoked his blood upon them and their children. not only the brutality of the soldier, the apathy of the centurion, nor any other merely instrumental cause of the divine suffering, but the fury of his own people, the noise against him of those for whom he died, were to be set before the eye of the understanding, if the power of the picture was to be complete. this rage, be it remembered, was one of disappointed pride; and the disappointment dated essentially from the time, when but five days before, the king of zion came, and was received with hosannahs, riding upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. to this time, then, it was necessary to direct the thoughts, for therein are found both the cause and the character, the excitement of, and the witness against, this madness of the people. in the shadow behind the cross, a man, riding on an ass colt, looks back to the multitude, while he points with a rod to the christ crucified. the ass is feeding on the _remnants_ of _withered palm-leaves_. with this master-stroke i believe i may terminate all illustration of the peculiar power of the imagination over the feelings of the spectator, by the elevation into dignity and meaning of the smallest accessory circumstances. but i have not yet sufficiently dwelt on the fact from which this power arises, the absolute truth of statement of the central fact as it was, or must have been. without this truth, this awful first moving principle, all direction of the feelings is useless. that which we cannot excite, it is of no use to know how to govern. § . the massacre of innocents. i have before alluded, sect. i. chap. xiv., to the painfulness of raffaelle's treatment of the massacre of the innocents. fuseli affirms of it that, "in dramatic gradation he disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and of terror." if this be so, i think the philosophical spirit has prevailed over the imaginative. the imagination never errs, it sees all that is, and all the relations and bearings of it, but it would not have confused the mortal frenzy of maternal terror with various development of maternal character. fear, rage, and agony, at their utmost pitch, sweep away all character: humanity itself would be lost in maternity, the woman would become the mere personification of animal fury or fear. for this reason all the ordinary representations of this subject are, i think, false and cold: the artist has not heard the shrieks, nor mingled with the fugitives, he has sat down in his study to twist features methodically, and philosophize over insanity. not so tintoret. knowing or feeling, that the expression of the human face was in such circumstances not to be rendered, and that the effort could only end in an ugly falsehood, he denies himself all aid from the features, he feels that if he is to place himself or us in the midst of that maddened multitude, there can be no time allowed for watching expression. still less does he depend on details of murder or ghastliness of death; there is no blood, no stabbing or cutting, but there is an awful substitute for these in the chiaroscuro. the scene is the outer vestibule of a palace, the slippery marble floor is fearfully barred across by sanguine shadows, so that our eyes seem to become bloodshot and strained with strange horror and deadly vision; a lake of life before them, like the burning seen of the doomed moabite on the water that came by the way of edom; a huge flight of stairs, without parapet, descends on the left; down this rush a crowd of women mixed with the murderers; the child in the arms of one has been seized by the limbs, she hurls herself over the edge, and falls head downmost, dragging the child out of the grasp by her weight;--she will be dashed dead in a second: two others are farther in flight, they reach the edge of a deep river,--the water is beat into a hollow by the force of their plunge;--close to us is the great struggle, a heap of the mothers entangled in one mortal writhe with each other and the swords, one of the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath them, the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged at by a woman's naked hand; the youngest and fairest of the women, her child just torn away from a death grasp and clasped to her breast with the grip of a steel vice, falls backwards helplessly over the heap, right on the sword points; all knit together and hurled down in one hopeless, frenzied, furious abandonment of body and soul in the effort to save. their shrieks ring in our ears till the marble seems rending around us, but far back, at the bottom of the stairs, there is something in the shadow like a heap of clothes. it is a woman, sitting quiet,--quite quiet--still as any stone, she looks down steadfastly on her dead child, laid along on the floor before her, and her hand is pressed softly upon her brow. § . various works in the scuola di san rocco. § . the last judgment. how treated by various painters. this, to my mind, is the only imaginative; that is, the only true, real, heartfelt representation of the being and actuality of the subject in existence.[ ] i should exhaust the patience of the reader if i were to dwell at length on the various stupendous developments of the imagination of tintoret in the scuola di san rocco alone. i would fain join a while in that solemn pause of the journey into egypt, where the silver boughs of the shadowy trees lace with their tremulous lines the alternate folds of fair clouds, flushed by faint crimson light, and lie across the streams of blue between those rosy islands, like the white wakes of wandering ships; or watch beside the sleep of the disciples among those massy leaves that lie so heavily on the dead of the night beneath the descent of the angel of the agony, and toss fearfully above the motion of the torches as the troop of the betrayer emerges out of the hollows of the olives; or wait through the hour of accusing beside the judgment seat of pilate, where all is unseen, unfelt, except the one figure that stands with its head bowed down, pale like a pillar of moonlight, half bathed in the glory of the godhead, half wrapt in the whiteness of the shroud. of these and all the other thoughts of indescribable power that are now fading from the walls of those neglected chambers, i may perhaps endeavor at some future time to preserve some image and shadow more faithfully than by words; but i shall at present terminate our series of illustrations by reference to a work of less touching, but more tremendous appeal, the last judgment in the church of santa maria dell' orto. in this subject, almost all realizing or local statement had been carefully avoided by the most powerful painters, they judging it better to represent its chief circumstances as generic thoughts, and present them to the mind in a typical or abstract form. in the judgment of angelico the treatment is purely typical, a long campo santo, composed of two lines of graves, stretches away into the distance; on the left side of it rise the condemned; on the right the just. with giotto and orcagna, the conception, though less rigid, is equally typical, no effort being made at the suggestion of space, and only so much ground represented as is absolutely necessary to support the near figures and allow space for a few graves. michael angelo in no respect differs in his treatment, except that his figures are less symmetrically grouped, and a greater conception of space is given by their various perspective. no interest is attached to his background in itself. fra bartolomeo, never able to grapple with any species of sublimity except that of simple religious feeling, fails most signally in this mighty theme.[ ] his group of the dead, including not more than ten or twelve figures, occupies the foreground only, behind them a vacant plain extends to the foot of a cindery volcano, about whose mouth several little black devils like spiders are skipping and crawling. the judgment of quick and dead is thus expressed as taking place in about a rood square, and on a dozen of people at a time; the whole of the space and horizon of the sky and land being left vacant, and the presence of the judge of all the earth made more finite than the sweep of a whirlwind or a thunder-storm. § . by tintoret. by tintoret only has this unimaginable event been grappled with in its verity; not typically nor symbolically, but as they may see it who shall not sleep, but be changed. only one traditional circumstance he has received with dante and michael angelo, the boat of the condemned; but the impetuosity of his mind bursts out even in the adoption of this image, he has not stopped at the scowling ferryman of the one, nor at the sweeping blow and demon dragging of the other, but, seized hylas-like by the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish lethe, nor the fiery lake that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract, the river of the wrath of god, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruin of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like water-wheels. bat like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to siloam pool; shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the clangor of the trumpets of the armies of god, blinded yet more, as they awake, by the white light of the new heaven, until the great vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment seat: the firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human souls, that drifts, and floats, and falls in the interminable, inevitable light; the bright clouds are darkened with them as with thick snow, currents of atom life in the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, farther, and higher, and higher still, till the eye and the thought can follow no farther, borne up, wingless, by their inward faith and by the angel powers invisible, now hurled in countless drifts of horror before the breath of their condemnation. § . the imaginative verity, how distinguished from realism. now, i wish the reader particularly to observe throughout all these works of tintoret, the distinction of the imaginative verity from falsehood on the one hand, and from realism on the other. the power of every picture depends on the penetration of the imagination into the true nature of the thing represented, and on the utter scorn of the imagination for all shackles and fetters of mere external fact that stand in the way of its suggestiveness. in the baptism it cuts away the trunks of trees as if they were so much cloud or vapor, that it may exhibit to the thought the completed sequency of the scene;[ ] in the massacre, it covers the marble floor with visionary light, that it may strike terror into the spectator without condescending to butchery; it defies the bare fact, but creates in him the fearful feeling; in the crucifixion it annihilates locality, and brings the palm-leaves to calvary, so only that it may bear the mind to the mount of olives, as in the entombment it brings the manger to jerusalem, that it may take the heart to bethlehem; and all this it does in the daring consciousness of its higher and spiritual verity, and in the entire knowledge of the fact and substance of all that it touches. the imaginary boat of the demon angel expands the rush of the visible river into the descent of irresistible condemnation; but to make that rush and roar felt by the eye and heard by the ear, the rending of the pine branches above the cataract is taken directly from nature; it is an abstract of alpine storm. hence while we are always placed face to face with whatever is to be told, there is in and beyond its reality a voice supernatural; and that which is doubtful in the vision has strength, sinew, and assuredness, built up in it by fact. § . the imagination how manifested in sculpture. let us, however, still advance one step farther, and observe the imaginative power deprived of all aid from chiaroscuro, color, or any other means of concealing the frame-work of its thoughts. it was said by michael angelo that "non ha l'ottimo scultore alcun concetto, ch'un marmo solo in se non circoscriva," a sentence which, though in the immediate sense intended by the writer it may remind us a little of the indignation of boileau's pluto, "il s'ensuit de la que tout ce qui se peut dire de beau, est dans les dictionnaires,--il n'y a que les paroles qui sont transposées," yet is valuable, because it shows us that michael angelo held the imagination to be entirely expressible in rock, and therefore altogether independent, in its own nature, of those aids of color and shade by which it is recommended in tintoret, though the sphere of its operation is of course by these incalculably extended. but the presence of the imagination may be rendered in marble as deep, thrilling, and awful as in painting, so that the sculptor seek for the soul and govern the body thereby. § . bandinelli, canova, mino da fiesole. § . michael angelo. of unimaginative work, bandinelli and canova supply us with characteristic instances of every kind, the hercules and cacus of the former, and its criticism by cellini, will occur at once to every one; the disgusting statue now placed so as to conceal giotto's important tempera picture in santa croce is a better instance, but a still more impressive lesson might be received by comparing the inanity of canova's garland grace, and ball-room sentiment with the intense truth, tenderness, and power of men like mino da fiesole, whose chisel leaves many a hard edge, and despises down and dimple, but it seems to cut light and carve breath, the marble burns beneath it, and becomes transparent with very spirit. yet mino stopped at the human nature; he saw the soul, but not the ghostly presences about it; it was reserved for michael angelo to pierce deeper yet, and to see the indwelling angels. no man's soul is alone: laocoon or tobit, the serpent has it by the heart or the angel by the hand, the light or the fear of the spiritual things that move beside it may be seen on the body; and that bodily form with buonaroti, white, solid, distinct material, though it be, is invariably felt as the instrument or the habitation of some infinite, invisible power. the earth of the sistine adam that begins to burn; the woman embodied burst of adoration from his sleep; the twelve great torrents of the spirit of god that pause above us there, urned in their vessels of clay; the waiting in the shadow of futurity of those through whom the promise and presence of god went down from the eve to the mary, each still and fixed, fixed in his expectation, silent, foreseeing, faithful, seated each on his stony throne, the building stones of the word of god, building on and on, tier by tier, to the refused one, the head of the corner; not only these, not only the troops of terror torn up from the earth by the four quartered winds of the judgment, but every fragment and atom of stone that he ever touched became instantly inhabited by what makes the hair stand up and the words be few; the st. matthew, not yet disengaged from his sepulchre, bound hand and foot by his grave clothes, it is left for us to loose him; the strange spectral wreath of the florence pieta, casting its pyramidal, distorted shadow, full of pain and death, among the faint purple lights that cross and perish under the obscure dome of st^a. maria del fiore, the white lassitude of joyous limbs, panther like, yet passive, fainting with their own delight, that gleam among the pagan formalisms of the uffizii, far away, showing themselves in their lustrous lightness as the waves of an alpine torrent do by their dancing among the dead stones, though the stones be as white as they:[ ] and finally, and perhaps more than all, those four ineffable types, not of darkness nor of day--not of morning nor evening, but of the departure and the resurrection, the twilight and the dawn of the souls of men--together with the spectre sitting in the shadow of the niche above them;[ ] all these, and all else that i could name of his forming, have borne, and in themselves retain and exercise the same inexplicable power--inexplicable because proceeding from an imaginative perception almost superhuman, which goes whither we cannot follow, and is where we cannot come; throwing naked the final, deepest root of the being of man, whereby he grows out of the invisible, and holds on his god home.[ ] § . recapitulation. the perfect function of the imagination is the intuitive perception of ultimate truth. now, in all these instances, let it be observed, for it is to that end alone that i have been arguing all along, that the virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity of gaze, (not by reasoning, but by its authoritative opening and revealing power,) a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things. i repeat that it matters not whether the reader is willing call this faculty imagination or no, i do not care about the name; but i would be understood when i speak of imagination hereafter, to mean this, the true foundation of all art which exercises eternal authority over men's minds; (all other imagination than this is either secondary and contemplative, or utterly spurious;) the base of whose authority and being is its perpetual thirst of truth and purpose to be true. it has no food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever looking under masks, and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its existence is incapability of being deceived; and though it sometimes dwells upon and substantiates the fictions of fancy, yet its own operation is to trace to their farthest limit the true laws and likelihoods even of the fictitious creation. this has been well explained by fuseli, in his allusion to the centaur of zeuxis; and there is not perhaps a greater exertion of imaginative power than may be manifested in following out to their farthest limits the necessary consequences of such arbitrary combination; but let not the jests of the fancy be confounded with that after serious work of the imagination which gives them all the nervous verity and substance of which they are capable. let not the monsters of chinese earthenware be confounded with the faun, satyr, or centaur. § . imagination now vulgarly understood. how different this definition of the imagination may be from the idea of it commonly entertained among us, i can hardly say, because i have a very indistinct idea of what is usually meant by the term. i hear modern works constantly praised as being imaginative, in which i can trace no virtue of any kind; but simple, slavish, unpalliated falsehood and exaggeration; i see not what merit there can be in pure, ugly, resolute fiction; it is surely easy enough to be wrong; there are many ways of being unlike nature. i understand not what virtue that is which entitles one of these ways to be called imaginative, rather than another; and i am still farther embarrassed by hearing the portions of those works called especially imaginative in which there is the most effort at minute and mechanical statement of contemptible details, and in which the artist would have been as actual and absolute in imitation as an echo, if he had known how. against convictions which i do not understand, i cannot argue; but i may warn the artist that imagination of this strange kind, is not capable of bearing the time test; nothing of its doing ever has continued its influence over men; and if he desires to take place among the great men of older time, there is but one way for it; and one kind of imagination that will stand the immortal light: i know not how far it is by effort cultivable; but we have evidence enough before us to show in what direction that effort must be made. § . how its cultivation is dependent on the moral feelings. we have seen (§ ) that the imagination is in no small degree dependent on acuteness of moral emotion; in fact, all moral truth can only thus be apprehended--and it is observable, generally, that all true and deep emotion is imaginative, both in conception and expression; and that the mental sight becomes sharper with every full beat of the heart; and, therefore, all egotism, and selfish care, or regard, are in proportion to their constancy, destructive of imagination; whose play and power depend altogether on our being able to forget ourselves and enter like possessing spirits into the bodies of things about us. § . on independence of mind. again, as the life of imagination is in the discovering of truth, it is clear it can have no respect for sayings or opinions: knowing in itself when it has invented truly--restless and tormented except when it has this knowledge, its sense of success or failure is too acute to be affected by praise or blame. sympathy it desires--but can do without; of opinions it is regardless, not in pride, but because it has no vanity, and is conscious of a rule of action and object of aim in which it cannot be mistaken; partly, also, in pure energy of desire and longing to do and to invent more and more, which suffer it not to suck the sweetness of praise--unless a little, with the end of the rod in its hand, and without pausing in its march. it goes straight forward up the hill; no voices nor mutterings can turn it back, nor petrify it from its purpose.[ ] § . and on habitual reference to nature. finally, it is evident, that like the theoretic faculty, the imagination must be fed constantly by external nature--after the illustrations we have given, this may seem mere truism, for it is clear that to the exercise of the penetrative faculty a subject of penetration is necessary; but i note it because many painters of powerful mind have been lost to the world by their suffering the restless writhing of their imagination in its cage to take place of its healthy and exulting activity in the fields of nature. the most imaginative men always study the hardest, and are the most thirsty for new knowledge. fancy plays like a squirrel in its circular prison, and is happy; but imagination is a pilgrim on the earth--and her home is in heaven. shut her from the fields of the celestial mountains--bar her from breathing their lofty, sun-warmed air; and we may as well turn upon her the last bolt of the tower of famine, and give the keys to the keeping of the wildest surge that washes capraja and gorgona. footnotes [ ] compare arist. rhet. iii. . [ ] for the distinction between fancy and simple conception; see chap. iv. § . [ ] i take this and the next instance from leigh hunt's admirable piece of criticism, "imagination and fancy," which ought to be read with care, and to which, though somewhat loosely arranged, i may refer for all the filling up and illustration that the subject requires. with respect to what has just been said respecting want of imagination, compare his criticism of addison's cato, p. . i cannot, however, confirm his judgment, nor admit his selection of instances, among painters: he has looked to their manner only and habitual choice of subject, without feeling their power; and has given work to the coarseness, mindlessness, and eclecticism of guido and the carracci, which in its poetical demand of tenderness might have foiled pinturicchio; of dignity, leonardo; and of color, giorgione. [ ] fancy, in her third function may, however, become serious, and gradually rise into imagination in doing so. compare chap. iv. § . [ ] i am describing from a proof: in bad impressions this trunk is darkened. [ ] the picture is in the guadagni palace. it is one of the most important landscapes salvator ever painted. the figures are studied from street beggars. on the one side of the river, exactly opposite the point where the baptism of christ takes place, the painter, with a refinement of feeling peculiarly his own, has introduced some ruffians stripping off their shirts to bathe. he is fond of this incident. it occurs again in one of the marines of the pitti palace, with the additional interest of a foreshortened figure, swimming on its back, feet foremost, exactly in the stream of light to which the eye is principally directed. [ ] this circumstance, like most that lie not at the surface, has escaped fuseli, though his remarks on the general tone of the picture are very good, as well as his opposition of it to the treatment of rubens. (lecture ix.) [ ] note the shallow and uncomprehending notice of this picture by fuseli. his description of the treatment of it by other painters is however true, terse, and valuable. [ ] fresco in an out-house of the ospedale st^a. maria nuova at florence. [ ] the same thing is done yet more boldly in the large composition of the ceiling; the plague of fiery serpents; a part of the host, and another sky horizon are seen through an opening in the ground. [ ] the bacchus. there is a small statue opposite it also--unfinished, but "a spirit still." [ ] i would have insisted more on the ghostly vitality of this dreadful statue; but the passage referring to it in rogers's italy supersedes all further description. i suppose most lovers of art know it by heart. "nor then forget that chamber of the dead, where the gigantic shapes of night and day, turned into stone, rest everlastingly; yet still are breathing, and shed round at noon a twofold influence,--only to be felt-- a light, a darkness, mingling each with each; both, and yet neither. there, from age to age, two ghosts are sitting on their sepulchres. that is the duke lorenzo. mark him well. he meditates, his head upon his hand. what from beneath his helm-like bonnet scowls? is it a face, or but an eyeless skull? 'tis lost in shade; yet, like the basilisk, it fascinates, and is intolerable. his mien is noble, most majestical! then most so, when the distant choir is heard at morn or eve--nor fail thou to attend on that thrice-hallowed day, when all are there; when all, propitiating with solemn songs, visit the dead. then wilt thou feel his power!" it is strange that this should be the only written instance (as far as i recollect) of just and entire appreciation of michael angelo's spiritual power. it is perhaps owing to the very intensity of his imagination that he has been so little understood--for, as i before said, imagination can never be met by vanity, nor without earnestness. his florentine followers saw in him an anatomist and posture-master--and art was finally destroyed by the influence over admiring idiocy of the greatest mind that art ever inspired. [ ] i have not chosen to interrupt the argument respecting the essence of the imaginative faculty by any remarks on the execution of the imaginative hand; but we can hardly leave tintoret and michael angelo without some notice of the pre-eminent power of execution exhibited by both of them, in consequence of their vigor and clearness of conception; nor without again warning the lower artist from confounding this velocity of decision and impatience with the velocity of affectation or indolence. every result of real imagination we have seen to be a truth of some sort; and it is the characteristic of truth to be in some way tangible, seizable, distinguishable, and clear, as it is of falsehood to be obscure, confused, and confusing. not but that many, if not most truths have a dark side, a side by which they are connected with mysteries too high for us,--nay, i think it is commonly but a poor and miserable truth which the human mind can walk all round, but at all events they have one side by which we can lay hold of them, and feel that they are downright adamant, and that their form, though lost in cloud here and there, is unalterable and real, and not less real and rocky because infinite, and joined on, st. michael's mount-like to a far mainland. so then, whatever the real imagination lays hold of, as it is a truth, does not alter into anything else as the imaginative part works at it and feels over it and finds out more of it, but comes out more and more continually, all that is found out pointing to and indicating still more behind, and giving additional stability and reality to that which is discovered already. but if it be fancy or any other form of pseudo-imagination which is at work, then that which it gets hold of may not be a truth, but only an idea, which will keep giving way as soon as we try to take hold of it and turning into something else, so that as we go on copying it, every part will be inconsistent with all that has gone before, and at intervals it will vanish altogether, and leave blanks which must be filled up by any means at hand. and in these circumstances, the painter, unable to seize his thought, because it has not substance nor bone enough to bear grasping, is liable to catch at every line that he lays down, for help and suggestion, and to be led away by it to something else, which the first effort to realize dissipates in like manner, placing another phantom in its stead, until out of the fragments of these successive phantoms he has glued together a vague, mindless, involuntary whole, a mixture of all that was trite or common in each of the successive conceptions, for that is necessarily what is first caught a heap of things with the bloom off and the chill on, laborious, unnatural, inane, with its emptiness disguised by affectation, and its tastelessness salted by extravagance. necessarily, from these modes of conception, three vices of execution must result; and these are necessarily found in all those parts of the work where any trust has been put in conception, and only to be avoided in portions of actual portraiture (for a thoroughly unimaginative painter can make no use of a study--all his studies are guesses and experiments, all are equally wrong, and so far felt to be wrong by himself, that he will not work by any of them, but will always endeavor to improve upon them in the picture, and so lose the use of them). these three vices of execution are then--first, feebleness of handling, owing to uncertainty of intention; secondly, intentional carelessness of handling, in the hope of getting by accident something more than was meant; and lastly, violence and haste of handling, in the effort to secure as much as possible of the obscure image of which the mind feels itself losing hold. (i am throughout, it will be observed, attributing right feeling to the unimaginative painter; if he lack this, his execution may be cool and determined, as he will set down falsehood without blushing, and ugliness without suffering.) added to these various evidences of weakness, will be the various vices assumed for the sake of concealment; morbid refinements disguising feebleness--or insolence and coarseness to cover desperation. when the imagination is powerful, the resulting execution is of course the contrary of all this: its first steps will commonly be impetuous, in clearing its ground and getting at its first conception--as we know of michael angelo in his smiting his blocks into shape, (see the passage quoted by sir charles clarke in the essay on expression, from blaise de vigenere,) and as it is visible in the handling of tintoret always: as the work approaches completion, the stroke, while it remains certain and firm, because its end is always known, may frequently become slow and careful, both on account of the difficulty of following the pure lines of the conception, and because there is no fear felt of the conception's vanishing before it can be realized; but generally there is a certain degree of impetuosity visible in the works of all the men of high imagination, when they are not working from a study, showing itself in michael angelo by the number of blocks he left unfinished, and by some slight evidences in those he completed of his having worked painfully towards the close; so that, except the duke lorenzo, the bacchus of the florentine gallery, and the pieta of genoa, i know not any of his finished works in which his mind is as mightily expressed as in his marble sketches; only, it is always to be observed that impetuosity or rudeness of hand is not necessarily--and, if imaginative, is never--carelessness. in the two landscapes at the end of the scuola di san rocco, tintoret has drawn several large tree trunks with two strokes of his brush--one for the dark, and another for the light side; and the large rock at the foot of the picture of the temptation is painted with a few detached touches of gray over a flat brown ground; but the touches of the tree-trunks have been followed by the mind as they went down with the most painful intensity through their every undulation; and the few gray strokes on the stone are so considered that a better stone cone could not be painted if we took a month to it: and i suppose, generally, it would be utterly impossible to give an example of execution in which less was left to accident, or in which more care was concentrated in every stroke, than the seemingly regardless and impetuous handling of this painter. on the habit of both tintoret and michael angelo to work straight forward from the block and on the canvas, without study or model, it is needless to insist; for though this is one of the most amazing proofs of their imaginative power, it is a dangerous precedent. no mode of execution ought ever to be taught to a young artist as better than another; he ought to understand the truth of what he has to do, felicitous execution will follow as a matter of course; and if he feels himself capable of getting at the right at once, he will naturally do so without reference to precedent. he ought to hold always that his duty is to attain the highest result he can,--but that no one has any business with the means or time he has taken. if it can be done quickly, let it be so done; if not, let it be done at any rate. for knowing his way he is answerable, and therefore must not walk _doubtingly_; but no one can blame him for walking _cautiously_, if the way be a narrow one, with a slip on each side. he may pause, but he must not hesitate,--and tremble, but must not vacillate. [ ] that which we know of the lives of m. angelo and tintoret is eminently illustrative of this temper. chapter iv. of imagination contemplative. § . imagination contemplative is not part of the essence, but only a habit or mode of the faculty. we have, in the two preceding chapters, arrived at definite conclusions respecting the power and essence of the imaginative faculty. in these two acts of penetration and combination, its separating and characteristic attributes are entirely developed; it remains for us only to observe a certain habit or mode of operation in which it frequently delights, and by which it addresses itself to our perceptions more forcibly, and asserts its presence more distinctly than in those mighty but more secret workings wherein its life consists. in our examination of the combining imagination, we chose to assume the first or simple conception to be as clear in the absence as in the presence of the object of it. this, i suppose, is in point of fact never the case, nor is an approximation to such distinctness of conception always a characteristic of the imaginative mind. many persons have thorough and felicitous power of drawing from memory, yet never originate a thought, nor excite an emotion. § . the ambiguity of conception. § . is not in itself capable of adding to the charm of fair things. the form in which conception actually occurs to ordinary minds appears to derive value and preciousness from that indefiniteness which we alluded to in the second chapter, (§ ,) for there is an unfailing charm in the memory and anticipation of things beautiful, more sunny and spiritual than attaches to their presence; for with their presence it is possible to be sated, and even wearied, but with the imagination of them never; in so far that it needs some self-discipline to prevent the mind from falling into a morbid condition of dissatisfaction with all that it immediately possesses, and continual longing for things absent; and yet i think this charm is not justly to be attributed to the mere vagueness and uncertainty of the conception, except thus far, that of objects whose substantial presence was ugly or painful the sublimity and impressiveness, if there were any, is retained in the conception, while the sensual offensiveness is withdrawn; thus circumstances of horror may be safely touched in verbal description, and for a time dwelt upon by the mind, as often by homer and spenser, (by the latter frequently with too much grossness, as in the description of the combat of the red-cross knight with errour,) which could not for a moment be regarded or tolerated in their reality, or on canvas; and besides this mellowing and softening operation on those it retains, the conceptive faculty has the power of letting go many of them altogether out of its groups of ideas, and retaining only those where the meminisse juvabit will apply; and in this way the entire group of memories becomes altogether delightful; but of those parts of anything which are in themselves beautiful, i think the indistinctness no benefit, but that the brighter they are the better; and that the peculiar charm we feel in conception results from its grasp and blending of ideas rather than from their obscurity, for we do not usually recall, as we have seen, one part at a time only of a pleasant scene, one moment only of a happy day; but together with each single object we summon up a kind of crowded and involved shadowing forth of all the other glories with which it was associated, and into every moment we concentrate an epitome of the day; and it will happen frequently that even when the visible objects or actual circumstances are not in numbers remembered; yet the feeling and joy of them is obtained we know not how or whence, and so with a kind of conceptive burning glass we bend the sunshine of all the day, and the fulness of all the scene upon every point that we successively seize; and this together with more vivid action of fancy, for i think that the wilful and playful seizure of the points that suit her purpose and help her springing, whereby she is distinguished from simple conception, takes place more easily and actively with the memory of things than in presence of them. but, however this be, and i confess that there is much that i cannot satisfactorily to myself unravel with respect to the nature of simple conception; it is evident that this agreeableness, whatever it be, is not by art attainable, for all art is in some sort realization; it may be the realization of obscurity or indefiniteness, but still it must differ from the mere conception of obscurity and indefiniteness; so that whatever emotions depend absolutely on imperfectness of conception, as the horror of milton's death, cannot be rendered by art, for art can only lay hold of things which have shape, and destroys by its touch the fearfulness or pleasurableness of those which shape have none. § . but gives to the imagination its regardant power over them. but on this indistinctness of conception, itself comparatively valueless and unaffecting, is based the operation of the imaginative faculty with which we are at present concerned, and in which its glory is consummated: whereby, depriving the subject of material and bodily shape, and regarding such of its qualities only as it chooses for particular purpose, it forges these qualities together in such groups and forms as it desires, and gives to their abstract being consistency and reality, by striking them as it were with the die of an image belonging to other matter, which stroke having once received, they pass current at once in the peculiar conjunction and for the peculiar value desired. thus, in the description of satan quoted in the first chapter, "and like a comet burned," the bodily shape of the angel is destroyed, the inflaming of the formless spirit is alone regarded; and this, and his power of evil associated in one fearful and abstract conception are stamped to give them distinctness and permanence with the image of the comet, "that fires the length of ophiuchus huge." yet this could not be done, but that the image of the comet itself is in a measure indistinct, capable of awful expansion, and full of threatening and fear. again, in his fall, the imagination binds up the thunder, the resistance, the massy prostration, separates them from the external form, and binds them together by the help of that image of the mountain half sunk; which again would be unfit but for its own indistinctness, and for that glorious addition "with all his pines," whereby a vitality and spear-like hostility are communicated to its falling form, and the fall is marked as not utter subversion, but sinking only, the pines remaining in their uprightness, and unity, and threatening of darkness upon the descended precipice: and again in that yet more noble passage at the close of the fourth book, where almost every operation of the contemplative imagination is concentrated; the angelic squadron first gathered into one burning mass by the single expression "sharpening in mooned horns," then told out in their unity and multitude and stooped hostility, by the image of the wind upon the corn; satan endowed with godlike strength and endurance in that mighty line, "like teneriffe or atlas, unremoved," with infinitude of size the next instant, and with all the vagueness and terribleness of spiritual power, by the "horror plumed," and the "_what seemed_ both spear and shield." § . the third office of fancy distinguished from imagination contemplative. the third function of fancy, already spoken of as subordinate to this of the imagination, is the highest of which she is capable; like the imagination, she beholds in the things submitted to her treatment things different from the actual; but the suggestions she follows are not in their nature essential in the object contemplated; and the images resulting, instead of illustrating, may lead the mind away from it, and change the current of contemplative feeling; for as in her operation parallel to imagination penetrative, we saw her dwelling upon external features, while the nobler sister, faculty, entered within, so now, when both, from what they see and know in their immediate object, are conjuring up images illustrative or elevatory of it, the fancy necessarily summons those of mere external relationship, and therefore of unaffecting influence; while the imagination, by every ghost she raises, tells tales about the prison-house, and therefore never loses her power over the heart, nor her unity of emotion. on the other hand, the regardant or contemplative action of fancy is in this different from, and in this nobler, than that mere seizing and likeness-catching operation we saw in her before; that when contemplative, she verily believes in the truth of the vision she has summoned, loses sight of actuality, and beholds the new and spiritual image faithfully and even seriously; whereas before, she summoned no spiritual image, but merely caught the vivid actuality, or the curious resemblance of the real object; not that these two operations are separate, for the fancy passes gradually from mere vivid right of reality, and witty suggestion of likeness, to a ghostly sight of what is unreal; and through this, in proportion as she begins to feel, she rises towards and partakes of imagination itself, for imagination and fancy are continually united, and it is necessary, when they are so, carefully to distinguish the feelingless part which is fancy's, from the sentient part, which is imagination's. let us take a few instances. here is fancy, first, very beautiful, in her simple capacity of likeness-catching:-- "to-day we purpose--aye, this hour we mount to spur three leagues towards the apennine. come down, we pray thee, ere the _hot sun count his dewy rosary_ on the eglantine." seizing on the outside resemblances of bead form, and on the slipping from their threading bough one by one, the fancy is content to lose the heart of the thing, the solemnity of prayer: or perhaps i do the glorious poet wrong in saying this, for the sense of a sun worship and orison in beginning its race, may have been in his mind; and so far as it was so, the passage is imaginative and not fanciful. but that which most readers would accept from it, is the mere flash of the external image, in whose truth the fancy herself does not yet believe and therefore is not yet contemplative. here, however, is fancy believing in the images she creates:-- "it feeds the quick growth of the serpent-vine, and the dark linked ivy tangling wild and budding, blown, or odor faded blooms, which _star the winds with points of colored light_ as they rain through them; and _bright golden globes of fruit suspended in their own green heaven_." it is not, observe, a mere likeness that is caught here; but the flowers and fruit are entirely deprived by the fancy of their material existence, and contemplated by her seriously and faithfully as stars and worlds; yet it is only external likeness that she catches; she forces the resemblance, and lowers the dignity of the adopted image. next take two delicious stanzas of fancy regardant, (believing in her creations,) followed by one of heavenly imagination, from wordsworth's address to the daisy:-- "a nun demure--of lowly port; or sprightly maiden--of love's court, in thy simplicity the sport of all temptations. a queen in crown of rubies drest, a starveling in a scanty vest, are all as seems to suit thee best,-- thy appellations. i see thee glittering from afar, and then thou art a pretty star,-- not quite so fair as many are in heaven above thee. yet like a star, with glittering crest, self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest;-- may peace come never to his nest who shall reprove thee. sweet flower--for by that name at last, when all my reveries are past, i call thee, and to that cleave fast. sweet silent creature, that breath'st with me, in sun and air, do thou, as thou art wont, repair my heart with gladness, and a share of thy meek nature." § . various instances. observe how spiritual, yet how wandering and playful the fancy is in the first two stanzas, and how far she flies from the matter in hand, never stopping to brood on the character of any one of the images she summons, and yet for a moment truly seeing and believing in them all; while in the last stanza the imagination returns with its deep feeling to the heart of the flower, and "_cleaves fast_" to that. compare the operation of the imagination in coleridge, on one of the most trifling objects that could possibly have been submitted to its action. "the thin blue flame lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not: only that film which fluttered on the grate still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. methinks its motion in this hush of nature gives it dim sympathies with me, who live, making it a companionable form, whose puny flaps and freaks the idling spirit by its own moods interprets; everywhere, echo or mirror seeking of itself, and makes a toy of thought." lastly, observe the sweet operation of fancy regardant, in the following well-known passage from scott, where both her beholding and transforming powers are seen in their simplicity. "the rocky summits--split and rent, formed turret, dome, or battlement.-- or seemed fantastically set with cupola or minaret. nor were these earth-born castles bare, nor lacked they many a banner fair, for from their shivered brows displayed, far o'er th' unfathomable glade, all twinkling with the dew-drop sheen, the brier-rose fell, in streamers green,-- and creeping shrubs of thousand dyes waved in the west wind's summer sighs." let the reader refer to this passage, with its pretty tremulous conclusion above the pine tree, "where glistening streamers waved and danced," and then compare with it the following, where the imagination operates on a scene nearly similar. "gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemm'd the struggling brook; tall spires of windle strae threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, and nought but knarled roots of ancient pines, branchless and blasted, clench'd with grasping roots th' unwilling soil. . . . . . . . . . a gradual change was here, yet ghastly. for, _as fast years flow away, the smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin and white; and where irradiate dewy eyes had shone, gleam stony orbs; so from his steps bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade of the green groves, with all their odorous winds and musical motions._ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . where the pass extends its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks. and seems with its accumulated crags to overhang the world; for wide expand beneath the wan stars, and descending moon, islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, _dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom of leaden-colored even_, and _fiery hills mingling their flames with twilight_ on the verge of the remote horizon. the near scene in naked, and severe simplicity made contrast with the universe. a pine rock-rooted, stretch'd athwart the vacancy its swinging boughs, to each _inconstant blast yielding one only response at each pause_, in most familiar cadence, with the howl, the thunder, and the hiss of _homeless_ streams, mingling its solemn song." [illustration: study of stone pine, at sestri. from a drawing by ruskin.] in this last passage, the mind never departs from its solemn possession of the solitary scene, the imagination only giving weight, meaning, and strange human sympathies to all its sights and sounds. in that from scott,[ ]--the fancy, led away by the outside resemblance of floating form and hue to the banners, loses the feeling and possession of the scene, and places herself in circumstances of character completely opposite to the quietness and grandeur of the natural objects; this would have been unjustifiable, but that the resemblance occurs to the mind of the monarch, rather than to that of the poet; and it is that, which of all others, would have been the most likely to occur at the time; in this point of view it has high imaginative propriety. of the same fanciful character is that transformation of the tree trunks into dragons noticed before in turner's jason; and in the same way this becomes imaginative as it exhibits the effect of fear in disposing to morbid perception. compare with it the real and high action of the imagination on the same matter in wordsworth's yew trees (which i consider the most vigorous and solemn bit of forest landscape ever painted):-- "each particular trunk a growth of intertwisted fibres serpentine, up coiling and inveterately convolved, _nor uninformed with phantasy, and looks that threaten the profane_." it is too long to quote, but the reader should refer to it: let him note especially, if painter, that pure touch of color, "by sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged." in the same way, the blasted trunk on the left, in turner's drawing of the spot where harold fell at the battle of hastings, takes, where its boughs first separate, the shape of the head of an arrow; this, which is mere fancy in itself, is imagination as it supposes in the spectator an excited condition of feeling dependent on the history of the spot. § . morbid or nervous fancy. i have been led perhaps into too great detail in illustrating these points; but i think it is of no small importance to prove how in all cases the imagination is based upon, and appeals to, a deep heart feeling; and how faithful and earnest it is in contemplation of the subject matter, never losing sight of it, or disguising it, but depriving it of extraneous and material accidents, and regarding it in its disembodied essence. i have not, however, sufficiently noted in opposition to it, that diseased action of the fancy which depends more on nervous temperament than intellectual power; and which, as in dreaming, fever, insanity, and other morbid conditions of mind is frequently a source of daring and inventive conception; and so the visionary appearances resulting from various disturbances of the frame by passion, and from the rapid tendency of the mind to invest with shape and intelligence the active influences about it, as in the various demons, spirits, and fairies of all imaginative nations; which, however, i consider are no more to be ranked as right creations of fancy or imagination than things actually seen and heard; for the action of the nerves is i suppose the same, whether externally caused, or from within, although very grand imagination may be shown by the intellectual anticipation and realization of such impressions; as in that glorious vignette of turner's to the voyage of columbus. "slowly along the evening sky they went." note especially therein, how admirably true to the natural form, and yet how suggestive of the battlement he has rendered the level flake of evening cloud. § . the action of contemplative imagination is not to be expressed by art. i believe that it is unnecessary for me to enter into farther detail of illustration respecting these points; for fuller explanation of the operations of the contemplative faculty on things verbally expressible, the reader may be referred to wordsworth's preface to his poems; it only remains for us, here, to examine how far this imaginative or abstract conception is to be conveyed by the material art of the sculptor or the painter. now, it is evident that the bold action of either the fancy or the imagination, dependent on a bodiless and spiritual image of the object, is not to be by lines or colors represented. we cannot, in the painting of satan fallen, suggest any image of pines or crags,--neither can we assimilate the brier and the banner, nor give human sympathy to the motion of the film, nor voice to the swinging of the pines. § . except under narrow limits.-- st. abstract rendering of form without color. yet certain powers there are, within due limits, of marking the thing represented with an ideal character; and it was to these powers that i alluded in defining the meaning of the term ideal, in the thirteenth chapter of the preceding section. for it is by this operation that the productions of high art are separated from those of the realist. and, first, there is evidently capability of separating color and form, and considering either separately. form we find abstractedly considered by the sculptor, how far it would be possible to advantage a statue by the addition of color, i venture not to affirm; the question is too extensive to be here discussed. high authorities and ancient practice, are in favor of color; so the sculpture of the middle ages: the two statues of mino da fiesole in the church of st^a. caterina at pisa have been colored, the irises of the eyes painted dark, and the hair gilded, as also i think the madonna in st^a. maria della spina; the eyes have been painted in the sculptures of orcagna in or san michele, but it looks like a remnant of barbarism, (compare the pulpit of guida da como, in the church of san bartolomeo at pistoja,) and i have never seen color on any solid forms, that did not, to my mind, neutralize all other power; the porcelains of luca della robbia are painful examples, and in lower art, florentine mosaic in relief; gilding is more admissible, and tells sometimes sweetly upon figures of quaint design, as on the pulpit of st^a. maria novella, while it spoils the classical ornaments of the mouldings. but the truest grandeur of sculpture i believe to be in the white form; something of this feeling may be owing to the difficulty, or rather the immediately, of obtaining truly noble color upon it, but if we could color the elgin marbles with the flesh tint of giorgione, i had rather not have it done. § . of color without form. color, without form, is less frequently obtainable, and it may be doubted whether it be desirable: yet i think that to the full enjoyment of it, a certain abandonment of form is necessary; sometimes by reducing it to the shapeless glitter of the gem, as often tintoret and bassano; sometimes by loss of outline and blending of parts, as turner; sometimes by flatness of mass, as often giorgione and titian. how far it is possible for the painter to represent those mountains of shelley as the poet sees them, "mingling _their flames_ with twilight," i cannot say; but my impression is, that there is no true abstract mode of considering color; and that all the loss of form in the works of titian or turner, is not ideal, but the representation of the natural conditions under which bright color is seen; for form is always in a measure lost by nature herself when color is very vivid. § . or of both without texture. again, there is capability of representing the essential character, form, and color of an object, without external texture. on this point much has been said by reynolds and others, and it is, indeed, perhaps the most unfailing characteristic of great manner in painting. compare a dog of edwin landseer with a dog of paul veronese. in the first, the outward texture is wrought out with exquisite dexterity of handling, and minute attention to all the accidents of curl and gloss which can give appearance of reality, while the hue and power of the sunshine, and the truth of the shadow on all these forms is necessarily neglected, and the large relations of the animal as a mass of color to the sky or ground, or other parts of the picture, utterly lost. this is realism at the expense of ideality, it is treatment essentially unimaginative.[ ] with veronese, there is no curling nor crisping, no glossiness nor sparkle, hardly even hair, a mere type of hide, laid on with a few scene-painter's touches. but the essence of dog is there, the entire magnificent, generic animal type, muscular and living, and with broad, pure, sunny daylight upon him, and bearing his true and harmonious relation of color to all color about him. this is ideal treatment. the same treatment is found in the works of all the greatest men, they all paint the lion more than his mane, and the horse rather than his hide; and i think also they are more careful to obtain the right expression of large and universal light and color, than local tints; for the warmth of sunshine, and the force of sunlighted hue are always sublime on whatever subject they may be exhibited; and so also are light and shade, if grandly arranged, as may be well seen in an etching of rembrandt's of a spotted shell, which he has made altogether sublime by broad truth and large ideality of light and shade; and so i have seen frequent instances of very grand ideality in treatment of the most commonplace still life, by our own hunt, where the petty glosses and delicacies, and minor forms, are all merged in a broad glow of suffused color; so also in pieces of the same kind by etty, where, however, though the richness and play of color are greater, and the arrangement grander, there is less expression of light, neither is there anything in modern art that can be set beside some choice passages of hunt in this respect. § . abstraction or typical representation of animal form. again, it is possible to represent objects capable of various accidents in generic or symbolical form. § . either when it is symbolically used. how far this may be done with things having necessary form, as animals, i am not prepared to say. the lions of the egyptian room in the british museum, and the fish beside michael angelo's jonah, are instances; and there is imaginative power about both which we find not in the more perfectly realized florentine boar, nor in raffaelle's fish of the draught. and yet the propriety and nobility of these types depend on the architectural use and character of the one, and on the typical meaning of the other: we should be grieved to see the forms of the egyptian lion substituted for those of raffaelle's in its struggle with samson, nor would the whale of michael angelo be tolerated in the nets of gennesaret. so that i think it is only when the figure of the creature stands not for any representation of vitality, but merely for a letter or type of certain symbolical meaning, or else is adopted as a grand form of decoration or support in architecture, that such generalization is allowable, and in such circumstances i think it necessary, always provided it be based, as in the instances given i conceive it to be, upon thorough knowledge of the creature symbolized and wrought out by a master hand; and these conditions being observed, i believe it to be right and necessary in architecture to modify all animal forms by a severe architectural stamp, and in symbolical use of them, to adopt a typical form, to which practice the contrary, and its evil consequences are ludicrously exhibited in the st. peter of carlo dolci in the pitti palace, which owing to the prominent, glossy-plumed and crimson-combed cock, is liable to be taken for the portrait of a poulterer, only let it be observed that the treatment of the animal form here is offensive, not only from its realization, but from the pettiness and meanness of its realization; for it might, in other hands but carlo dolci's, have been a sublime cock, though a real one, but in his, it is fit for nothing but the spit. compare as an example partly of symbolical treatment, partly of magnificent realization, that supernatural lion of tintoret, in the picture of the doge loredano before the madonna, with the plumes of his mighty wings clashed together in cloudlike repose, and the strength of the sea winds shut within their folding. and note farther the difference between the typical use of the animal, as in this case, and that of the fish of jonah, (and again the fish before mentioned whose form is indicated in the clouds of the baptism), and the actual occurrence of the creature itself, with concealed meaning, as the ass colt of the crucifixion, which it was necessary to paint as such, and not as an ideal form. § . or in architectural decoration. § . exception in delicate and superimposed ornament. i cannot enter here into the question of the exact degree of severity and abstraction necessary in the forms of living things architecturally employed; my own feeling on the subject is, though i dare not lay it down as a principle, (with the parthenon pediment standing against me like the shield of ajax,) that no perfect representation of animal form is right in architectural decoration. for my own part, i had much rather see the metopes in the elgin room of the british museum, and the parthenon without them, than have them together, and i would not surrender, in an architectural point of view, one mighty line of the colossal, quiet, life-in-death statue mountains in egypt with their narrow fixed eyes and hands on their rocky limbs, nor one romanesque façade with its porphyry mosaic of indefinable monsters, nor one gothic moulding of rigid saints and grinning goblins, for ten parthenons; and, i believe, i could show some rational ground for this seeming barbarity if this were the place to do so, but at present i can only ask the reader to compare the effect of the so-called barbarous ancient mosaics on the front of st. mark's, as they have been recorded, happily, by the faithfulness of the good gentile bellini, in one of his pictures now in the venice gallery, with the veritably barbarous pictorial substitutions of the fifteenth century, (one only of the old mosaics remains, or did remain till lately, over the northern door, but it is probably by this time torn down by some of the venetian committees of taste,) and also i would have the old portions of the interior ceiling, or of the mosaics of murano and torcello, and the glorious cimabue mosaic of pisa, and the roof of the baptistery at parma, (that of the florence baptistery is a bad example, owing to its crude whites and complicated mosaic of small forms,) all of which are as barbarous as they can well be, in a certain sense, but mighty in their barbarism, with any architectural decorations whatsoever, consisting of professedly perfect animal forms, from the vile frescoes of federigo zuccaro at florence to the ceiling of the sistine, and again compare the professedly perfect sculpture of milan cathedral with the statues of the porches of chartres; only be it always observed that it is not rudeness and ignorance of art, but intellectually awful abstraction that i uphold, and also be it noted that in all ornament, which takes place in the general effect merely as so much fretted stone, in capitals and other pieces of minute detail, the forms may be, and perhaps ought to be, elaborately imitative; and in this respect again the capitals of st. mark's church, and of the doge's palace at venice may be an example to the architects of all the world, in their boundless inventiveness, unfailing elegance, and elaborate finish; there is more mind poured out in turning a single angle of that church than would serve to build a modern cathedral;[ ] and of the careful finish of the work, this may serve for example, that one of the capitals of the doge's palace is formed of eight heads of different animals, of which one is a bear's with a honeycomb in the mouth, whose carved _cells_ are _hexagonal_. § . abstraction necessary from imperfection of materials. § . abstractions of things capable of varied accident are not imaginative. § . yet sometimes valuable. so far, then, of the abstraction proper to architecture, and to symbolical uses, of which i shall have occasion to speak hereafter at length, referring to it only at present as one of the operations of imagination contemplative; other abstractions there are which are necessarily consequent on the imperfection of materials, as of the hair in sculpture, which is necessarily treated in masses that are in no sort imitative, but only stand for hair, and have the grace, flow, and feeling of it without the texture or division, and other abstractions there are in which the form of one thing is fancifully indicated in the matter of another; as in phantoms and cloud shapes, the use of which, in mighty hands, is often most impressive, as in the cloudy charioted apollo of nicolo poussin in our own gallery, which the reader may oppose to the substantial apollo, in wilson's niobe, and again the phantom vignette of turner already noticed; only such operations of the imagination are to be held of lower kind and dangerous consequence, if frequently trusted in, for those painters only have the right imaginative power who can set the supernatural form before us fleshed and boned like ourselves.[ ] other abstractions occur, frequently, of things which have much accidental variety of form, as of waves, on greek sculptures in successive volutes, and of clouds often in supporting volumes in the sacred pictures; but these i do not look upon as results of imagination at all, but mere signs and letters; and whenever a very highly imaginative mind touches them, it always realizes as far as may be. even titian is content to use at the top of his st. pietro martiri, the conventional, round, opaque cloud, which cuts his trees open like a gouge; but tintoret, in his picture of the golden calf, though compelled to represent the sinai under conventional form, in order that the receiving of the tables might be seen at the top of it, yet so soon as it is possible to give more truth, he is ready with it; he takes a grand fold of horizontal cloud straight from the flanks of the alps, and shows the forests of the mountains through its misty volume, like sea-weed through deep sea.[ ] nevertheless, when the realization is impossible, bold symbolism is of the highest value, and in religious art, as we shall presently see, even necessary, as of the rays of light in the titian woodcut of st. francis before noticed; and sometimes the attention is directed by some such strange form to the meaning of the image, which may be missed if it remains in its natural purity, (as, i suppose, few in looking at the cephalus and procris of turner, note the sympathy of those faint rays that are just drawing back and dying between the trunks of the far-off forest, with the ebbing life of the nymph; unless, indeed, they happen to recollect the same sympathy marked by shelley in the alastor;) but the imagination is not shown in any such modifications; however, in some cases they may be valuable (in the cephalus they would be utterly destructive,) and i note them merely in consequence of their peculiar use in religious art, presently to be examined. § . exaggeration. its laws and limits. first, in scale of representation. the last mode we have here to note in which the imagination regardant may be expressed in art is exaggeration, of which, as it is the vice of all bad artists, may be constantly resorted to without any warrant of imagination, it is necessary to note strictly the admissible limits. in the first place, a colossal statue is necessarily no more an exaggeration of what it represents than a miniature is a diminution, it need not be a representation of a giant, but a representation, on a large scale, of a man; only it is to be observed, that as any plane intersecting the cone of rays between us and the object, must receive an image smaller than the object; a small image is rationally and completely expressive of a larger one; but not a large of a small one. hence i think that all statues above the elgin standard, or that of michael angelo's night and morning, are, in a measure, taken by the eye for representations of giants, and i think them always disagreeable. the amount of exaggeration admitted by michael angelo is valuable because it separates the emblematic from the human form, and gives greater freedom to the grand lines of the frame; for notice of his scientific system of increase of size i may refer the reader to sir charles bell's remarks on the statues of the medici chapel; but there is one circumstance which sir charles has not noticed, and in the interpretation of which, therefore, it is likely i may be myself wrong; that the extremities are singularly small in proportion to the limbs, by which means there is an expression given of strength and activity greater than in the ordinary human type, which appears to me to be an allowance for that alteration in proportion necessitated by increase of size, of which we took note in chap. vi. of the first section, § , note; not but that michael angelo always makes the extremities comparatively small, but smallest, comparatively, in his largest works; so i think, from the size of the head, it may be conjectured respecting the theseus of the elgins. such adaptations are not necessary when the exaggerated image is spectral; for as the laws of matter in that case can have no operation, we may expand the form as far as we choose, only let careful distinction be made between the size of the thing represented, and the scale of the representation. the canvas on which fuseli has stretched his satan in the schools of the royal academy is a mere concession to inability. he might have made him look more gigantic in one of a foot square. § . secondly. of things capable of variety of scale. another kind of exaggeration is of things whose size is variable to a size or degree greater than that usual with them, as in waves and mountains; and there are hardly any limits to this exaggeration so long as the laws which nature observes in her increase be observed. thus, for instance: the form and polished surface of a breaking ripple three inches high, are not representation of either the form or the surface of the surf of a storm, nodding ten feet above the beach; neither would the cutting ripple of a breeze upon a lake if simply exaggerated, represent the forms of atlantic surges; but as nature increases her bulk, she diminishes the angles of ascent, and increases her divisions; and if we would represent surges of size greater than ever existed, which it is lawful to do, we must carry out these operations to still greater extent. thus, turner, in his picture of the slave ship, divides the whole sea into two masses of enormous swell, and conceals the horizon by a gradual slope of only two or three degrees. this is intellectual exaggeration. in the academy exhibition of , there was, in one of the smaller rooms, a black picture of a storm, in which there appeared on the near sea, just about to be overwhelmed by an enormous breaker, curling right over it, an object at first sight liable to be taken for a walnut shell, but which, on close examination, proved to be a ship with mast and sail, with christ and his twelve disciples in it. this is childish exaggeration, because it is impossible, by the laws of matter and motion, that such a breaker should ever exist. again in mountains, we have repeatedly observed the necessary building up and multitudinous division of the higher peaks, and the smallness of the slopes by which they usually rise. we may, therefore, build up the mountain as high as we please, but we must do it in nature's way, and not in impossible peaks and precipices; not but that a daring feature is admissible here and there, as the matterhorn is admitted by nature; but we must not compose a picture out of such exceptions; we may use them, but they must be as exceptions exhibited. i shall have much to say, when we come to treat of the sublime, of the various modes of treating mountain form, so that at present i shall only point to an unfortunate instance of inexcusable and effectless exaggeration in the distance of turner's vignette to milton, (the temptation on the mountain,) and desire the reader to compare it with legitimate exaggeration, in the vignette to the second part of jacqueline, in rogers's poems. § . thirdly, necessary in expression of characteristic features on diminished scale. another kind of exaggeration is necessary to retain the characteristic impressions of nature on reduced scale, it is not possible, for instance, to give the leafage of trees in its proper proportion, when the trees represented are large, without entirely losing their grace of form and curvature; of this the best proof is found in the calotype or daguerreotype, which fail in foliage, not only because the green rays are ineffective, but because, on the small scale of the image, the reduced leaves lose their organization, and look like moss attached to sticks. in order to retain, therefore, the character of flexibility and beauty of foliage, the painter is often compelled to increase the proportionate size of the leaves, and to arrange them in generic masses. of this treatment compare the grand examples throughout the liber studiorum. it is by such means only that the ideal character of objects is to be preserved; as we before observed in the th chapter of the first section. in all these cases exaggeration is only lawful as the sole means of arriving at truth of impression when strict fidelity is out of the question. other modes of exaggeration there are, on which i shall not at present farther insist, the proper place for their discussion being in treating of the sublime, and these which i have at present instanced are enough to establish the point at issue, respecting imaginative verity, inasmuch as we find that exaggeration itself, if imaginative, is referred to principles of truth, and of actual being. § . recapitulation. we have now, i think, reviewed the various modes in which imagination contemplative may be exhibited in art, and arrived at all necessary certainties respecting the essence of the faculty: which we have found in all its three functions, associative of truth, penetrative of truth, and contemplative of truth; and having no dealings nor relations with any kind of falsity. one task, however, remains to us, namely, to observe the operation of the theoretic and imaginative faculties together, in the attempt at realization to the bodily sense of beauty supernatural and divine. footnotes [ ] let it not be supposed that i mean to compare the sickly dreaming of shelley over clouds and waves with the masculine and magnificent grasp of men and things which we find in scott; it only happens that these two passages are more illustrative, by the likeness of the scenery they treat, than any others i could have opposed; and that shelley is peculiarly distinguished by the faculty of contemplative imagination. scott's healthy and truthful feeling would not allow him to represent the benighted hunter provoked by loss of game, horse, and way at once, as indulging in any more exalted flights of imagination than those naturally consequent on the contrast between the night's lodging he expected, and that which befitted him. [ ] i do not mean to withdraw the praise i have given, and shall always be willing to give such pictures as the old shepherd's chief mourner, and to all in which the character and inner life of animals are developed. but all lovers of art must regret to find mr. landseer wasting his energies on such inanities as the "shoeing," and sacrificing color, expression, and action, to an imitation of glossy hide. [ ] i have not brought forward any instances of the imaginative power in architecture, as my object is not at present to exhibit its operation in all matter, but only to define its essence; but it may be well to note, in our own new houses of parliament, how far a building approved by a committee of taste, may proceed without manifestation either of imagination or composition; it remains to be seen how far the towers may redeem it; and i allude to it at present unwillingly, and only in the desire of influencing, so far as i may, those who have the power to prevent the adoption of a design for a bridge to take place of westminster, which was exhibited in at the royal academy, professing to be in harmony with the new building, but which was fit only to carry a railroad over a canal. [ ] comp. ch. v. § . [ ] all the clouds of tintoret are sublime; the worst that i know in art are correggio's, especially in the madonna della scudella, and dome of parma. chapter v. of the superhuman ideal. § . the subject is not to be here treated in detail. in our investigation in the first section of the laws of beauty, we confined ourselves to the observation of lower nature, or of humanity. we were prevented from proceeding to deduce conclusions respecting divine ideality by our not having then established any principles respecting the imaginative faculty, by which, under the discipline of the theoretic, such ideality is conceived. i had purposed to conclude the present section by a careful examination of this subject; but as this is evidently foreign to the matter immediately under discussion, and involves questions of great intricacy respecting the development of mind among those pagan nations who are supposed to have produced high examples of spiritual ideality, i believe it will be better to delay such inquiries until we have concluded our detailed observation of the beauty of visible nature; and i shall therefore at present take notice only of one or two broad principles, which were referred to, or implied, in the chapter respecting the human ideal, and without the enunciation of which, that chapter might lead to false conclusions. § . the conceivable modes of manifestation of spiritual beings are four. there are four ways in which beings supernatural may be conceived as manifesting themselves to human sense. the first, by external types, signs, or influences; as god to moses in the flames of the bush, and to elijah in the voice of horeb. the second, by the assuming of a form not properly belonging to them; as the holy spirit of that of a dove, the second person of the trinity of that of a lamb; and so such manifestations, under angelic or other form, of the first person of the trinity, as seem to have been made to abraham, moses, and ezekiel. the third, by the manifestation of a form properly belonging to them, but not necessarily seen; as of the risen christ to his disciples when the doors were shut. and the fourth, by their operation on the human form, which they influence or inspire, as in the shining of the face of moses. § . and these are in or through creature forms familiar to us. it is evident that in all these cases, wherever there is form at all, it is the form of some creature to us known. it is no new form peculiar to spirit nor can it be. we can conceive of none. our inquiry is simply, therefore, by what modifications those creature forms to us known, as of a lamb, a bird, or a human creature, may be explained as signs or habitations of divinity, or of angelic essence, and not creatures such as they seem. § . supernatural character may be impressed on these either by phenomena inconsistent with their common nature, (compare chap. , § ). this may be done in two ways. first, by effecting some change in the appearance of the creature inconsistent with its actual nature, as by giving it colossal size, or unnatural color, or material, as of gold, or silver, or flame, instead of flesh, or by taking away its property of matter altogether, and forming it of light or shade, or in an intermediate step, of cloud, or vapor; or explaining it by terrible concomitant circumstances, as of wounds in the body, or strange lights and seemings round about it; or by joining of two bodies together as in angels' wings. of all which means of attaining supernatural character (which though, in their nature ordinary and vulgar, are yet effective and very glorious in mighty hands) we have already seen the limits in speaking of the imagination. § . or by inherent dignity. but the second means of obtaining supernatural character is that with which we are now concerned, namely, retaining the actual form in its full and material presence, and without aid from any external interpretation whatsoever, to raise that form by mere inherent dignity to such a pitch of power and impressiveness as cannot but assert and stamp it for superhuman. on the north side of the campo santo at pisa, are a series of paintings from the old testament history by benozzo gozzoli. in the earlier of these, angelic presences, mingled with human, occur frequently, illustrated by no awfulness of light, nor incorporeal tracing. clear revealed they move, in human forms, in the broad daylight and on the open earth, side by side, and hand in hand with men. but they never miss of the angel. he who can do this has reached the last pinnacle and utmost power of ideal, or any other art. he stands in no need thenceforward, of cloud, nor lightning, nor tempest, nor terror of mystery. his sublime is independent of the elements. it is of that which shall stand when they shall melt with fervent heat, and light the firmament when the sun is as sackcloth of hair. § . st. of the expression of inspiration. let us consider by what means this has been effected, so far as they are by analysis traceable; and that is not far, for here, as always, we find that the greater part of what has been rightly accomplished has been done by faith and intense feeling, and cannot, by aid of any rules or teaching, be either tried, estimated, or imitated. and first, of the expression of supernatural influence on forms actually human, as of sibyl or prophet. it is evident that not only here is it unnecessary, but we are not altogether at liberty to trust for expression to the utmost ennobling of the human form: for we cannot do more than this, when that form is to be the actual representation, and not the recipient of divine presence. hence, in order to retain the actual humanity definitely, we must leave upon it such signs of the operation of sin and the liability to death as are consistent with human ideality, and often more than these, definite signs of immediate and active evil, when the prophetic spirit is to be expressed in men such as were saul and balaam; neither may we ever, with just discrimination, touch the utmost limits of beauty in human form when inspiration is to be expressed, and not angelic or divine being; of which reserve and subjection the most instructive instances are found in the works of angelico, who invariably uses inferior types for the features of humanity, even glorified, (excepting always the madonna,) nor ever exerts his full power of beauty either in feature or expression, except in angels or in the madonna or in christ. now the expression of spiritual influence without supreme elevation of the bodily type we have seen to be a work of imagination penetrative, and we found it accomplished by michael angelo; but i think by him only. i am aware of no one else who, to my mind, has expressed the inspiration of prophet or sibyl; this, however, i affirm not, but shall leave to the determination of the reader, as the principles at present to be noted refer entirely to that elevation of the creature form necessary when it is actually representative of a spiritual being. § . no representation of that which is more than creature is possible. i have affirmed in the conclusion of the first section that "of that which is more than creature, no creature ever conceived." i think this almost self-evident, for it is clear that the illimitableness of divine attributes cannot be by matter represented, (though it may be typefied,) and i believe that all who are acquainted with the range of sacred art will admit, not only that no representation of christ has ever been even partially successful, but that the greatest painters fall therein below their accustomed level; perugino and fra angelico especially; leonardi has i think done best, but perhaps the beauty of the fragment left at milan, (for in spite of all that is said of repainting and destruction, that cenacolo is still the finest in existence) is as much dependent on the very untraceableness resulting from injury as on its original perfection. of more daring attempts at representation of divinity we need not speak; only this is to be noted respecting them, that though by the ignorant romanists many such efforts were made under the idea of actual representation, (note the way in which cellini speaks of the seal made for the pope,) by the nobler among them i suppose they were intended, and by us at any rate they may always be received, as mere symbols, the noblest that could be employed, but as much symbols still as a triangle, or the alpha and omega; nor do i think that the most scrupulous amongst christians ought to desire to exchange the power obtained by the use of this symbol in michael angelo's creation of adam and of eve for the effect which would be produced by the substitution of a triangle or any other sign in place of it. of these efforts then we need reason no farther, but may limit ourselves to considering the purest modes of giving a conception of superhuman but still creature form, as of angels; in equal rank with whom, perhaps, we may without offence place the mother of christ: at least we must so regard the type of the madonna in receiving it from romanist painters.[ ] § . supernatural character expressed by modification of accessories. and first, much is to be done by right modification of accessory circumstances, so as to express miraculous power exercised over them by the spiritual creature. there is a beautiful instance of this in john bellini's picture of st. jerome at venice. the saint sits upon a rock, his grand form defined against clear green open sky; he is reading, a noble tree springs out of a cleft in the rock, bends itself suddenly back to form a rest for the volume, then shoots up into the sky. there is something very beautiful in this obedient ministry of the lower creature; but be it observed that the sweet feeling of the whole depends upon the service being such as is consistent with its nature. it is not animated, it does not _listen_ to the saint, nor bend itself towards him as if in affection, this would have been mere fancy, illegitimate and effectless. but the simple bend of the trunk to receive the book is miraculous subjection of the true nature of the tree; it is therefore imaginative, and very touching. § . landscape of the religious painters. its character is eminently symmetrical. it is not often however that the religious painters even go this length; they content themselves usually with impressing on the landscape perfect symmetry and order, such as may seem consistent with, or induced by the spiritual nature they would represent. all signs of decay, disturbance, and imperfection, are also banished; and in doing this it is evident that some unnaturalness and singularity must result, inasmuch as there are no veritable forms of landscape but express or imply a state of progression or of imperfection all mountain forms are seen to be produced by convulsion and modelled by decay; the finer forms of cloud have stories in them about storm; all forest grouping is wrought out with varieties of strength and growth among its several members, and bears evidences of struggle with unkind influences. all such appearances are banished in the supernatural landscape; the trees grow straight, equally branched on each side, and of such slight and feathery frame as shows them never to have encountered blight or frost or tempest. the mountains stand up in fantastic pinnacles; there is on them no trace of torrent, no scathe of lightning; no fallen fragments encumber their foundations, no worn ravines divide their flanks; the seas are always waveless, the skies always calm, crossed only by fair, horizontal, lightly wreathed, white clouds. § . landscape of benozzo gozzoli. in some cases these conditions result partly from feeling, partly from ignorance of the facts of nature, or incapability of representing them, as in the first type of the treatment found in giotto and his school; in others they are observed on principle, as by benozzo gozzoli, perugino, and raffaelle. there is a beautiful instance by the former in the frescoes of the ricardi palace, where behind the adoring angel groups the landscape is governed by the most absolute symmetry; roses and pomegranates, their leaves drawn to the last rib and vein, twine themselves in fair and perfect order about delicate trellises; broad stone pines and tall cypresses overshadow them, bright birds hover here and there in the serene sky, and groups of angels, hand joined with hand, and wing with wing, glide and float through the glades of the unentangled forest. but behind the human figures, behind the pomp and turbulence of the kingly procession descending from the distant hills the spirit of the landscape is changed. severer mountains rise in the distance, ruder prominences and less flowery vary the nearer ground, and gloomy shadows remain unbroken beneath the forest branches. § . landscape of perugino and raffaelle. the landscape of perugino, for grace, purity and as much of nature as is consistent with the above-named conditions, is unrivalled; and the more interesting because in him certainly whatever limits are set to the rendering of nature proceed not from incapability. the sea is in the distance almost always, then some blue promontories and undulating dewy park ground, studded with glittering trees; in the landscape of the fresco in st^a. maria maddalena at florence there is more variety than is usual with him; a gentle river winds round the bases of rocky hills, a river like our own wye or tees in their loveliest reaches; level meadows stretch away on its opposite side; mounds set with slender-stemmed foliage occupy the nearer ground, a small village with its simple spire peeps from the forest at the bend of the valley, and it is remarkable that in architecture thus employed neither perugino nor any other of the ideal painters ever use italian forms but always transalpine, both of church and castle. the little landscape which forms the background of his own portrait in the uffizii is another highly finished and characteristic example. the landscape of raffaelle was learned from his father, and continued for some time little modified, though expressed with greater refinement. it became afterwards conventional and poor, and in some cases altogether meaningless. the haystacks and vulgar trees behind the st. cecilia at bologna form a painful contrast to the pure space of mountain country in the perugino opposite.[ ] § . such landscape is not to be imitated. in all these cases, while i would uphold the landscape thus employed and treated, as worthy of all admiration, i should be sorry to advance it for imitation. what is right in its mannerism arose from keen feeling in the painter: imitated without the same feeling, it would be painful; the only safe mode of following in such steps is to attain perfect knowledge of nature herself, and then to suffer our own feelings to guide us in the selection of what is fitting for any particular purpose. every painter ought to paint what he himself loves, not what others have loved; if his mind be pure and sweetly toned, what he loves will be lovely; if otherwise, no example can guide his selection, no precept govern his hand; and farther let it be distinctly observed, that all this mannered landscape is only right under the supposition of its being a background to some supernatural presence; behind mortal beings it would be wrong, and by itself, as landscape, ridiculous; and farther, the chief virtue of it results from the exquisite refinement of those natural details consistent with its character from the botanical drawing of the flowers and the clearness and brightness of the sky. § . color, and decoration. their use in representations of the supernatural. another mode of attaining supernatural character is by purity of color almost shadowless, no more darkness being allowed than is absolutely necessary for the explanation of the forms, and the vividness of the effect enhanced as far as may be by use of gilding, enamel, and other jewellery. i think the smaller works of angelico are perfect models in this respect; the glories about the heads being of beaten rays of gold, on which the light plays and changes as the spectator moves; (and which therefore throw the purest flesh color out in dark relief) and such color and light being obtained by the enamelling of the angel wings as of course is utterly unattainable by any other expedient of art; the colors of the draperies always pure and pale; blue, rose, or tender green, or brown, but never dark or gloomy; the faces of the most celestial fairness, brightly flushed: the height and glow of this flush are noticed by constantin as reserved by the older painters for spiritual beings, as if expressive of light seen through the body. i cannot think it necessary while i insist on the value of all these seemingly childish means when in the hands of a noble painter, to assert also their futility and even absurdity if employed by no exalted power. i think the error has commonly been on the side of scorn, and that we reject much in our foolish vanity, which if wiser and more earnest we should delight in. but two points it is very necessary to note in the use of such accessories. § . decoration so used must be generic. the first that the ornaments used by angelico, giotto, and perugino, but especially by angelico, are always of a generic and abstract character. they are not diamonds, nor brocades, nor velvets, nor gold embroideries; they are mere spots of gold or of color, simple patterns upon _textureless_ draperies; the angel wings burn with transparent crimson and purple and amber, but they are not set forth with peacock's plumes; the golden circlets gleam with changeful light, but they are not beaded with elaborate pearls nor set with studied sapphires. in the works of filippino lippi, mantegna, and many other painters following, interesting examples may be found of the opposite treatment; and as in lippi the heads are usually very sweet, and the composition severe, the degrading effect of the realized decorations and imitated dress may be seen in him simply, and without any addition of painfulness from other deficiencies of feeling. the larger of the two pictures in the tuscan room of the uffizii, but for this defect, would have been a very noble ideal work. § . and color pure. the second point to be observed is that brightness of color is altogether inadmissible without purity and harmony; and that the sacred painters must not be followed in their frankness of unshadowed color unless we can also follow them in its clearness. as far as i am acquainted with the modern schools of germany, they seem to be entirely ignorant of the value of color as an assistant of feeling, and to think that hardness, dryness, and opacity are its virtues as employed in religious art; whereas i hesitate not to affirm that in such art more than in any other, clearness, luminousness and intensity of hue are essential to right impression; and from the walls of the arena chapel in their rainbow play of brilliant harmonies, to the solemn purple tones of perugino's fresco in the albizzi palace, i know not any great work of sacred art which is not as precious in color as in all other qualities (unless indeed it be a crucifixion of fra angelico in the florence academy, which has just been glazed and pumiced and painted and varnished by the picture-cleaners until it glares from one end of the picture gallery to the other;) only the pure white light and delicate hue of the idealists, whose colors are by preference such as we have seen to be the most beautiful in the chapter on purity are carefully to be distinguished from the golden light and deep pitched hue of the school of titian whose virtue is the grandeur of earthly solemnity, not the glory of heavenly rejoicing. § . ideal form of the body itself, of what variety susceptible. but leaving these accessory circumstances and touching the treatment of the bodily form, it is evident in the first place that whatever typical beauty the human body is capable of possessing must be bestowed upon it when it is understood as spiritual. and therefore those general proportions and types which are deducible from comparison of the nobler individuals of the race, must be adopted and adhered to; admitting among them not, as in the human ideal, such varieties as result from past suffering, or contest with sin, but such only as are consistent with sinless nature or are the signs of instantly or continually operative affections; for though it is conceivable that spirit should suffer, it is inconceivable that spiritual frame should retain like the stamped inelastic human clay, the brand of sorrow past, unless fallen. "his face, deep scars of thunder had entrenched, and care sat on his faded cheek." yet so far forth the angelic ideal is diminished, nor could this be suffered in pictorial representation. § . anatomical development how far admissible. again, such muscular development as is necessary to the perfect beauty of the body, is to be rendered. but that which is necessary to strength, or which appears to have been the result of laborious exercise, is inadmissible. no herculean form is spiritual, for it is degrading the spiritual creature to suppose it operative through impulse of bone and sinew; its power is immaterial and constant, neither dependent on, nor developed by exertion. generally, it is well to conceal anatomical development as far as may be; even michael angelo's anatomy interferes with his divinity; in the hands of lower men the angel becomes a preparation. how far it is possible to subdue or generalize the naked form i venture not to affirm, but i believe that it is best to conceal it as far as may be, not with draperies light and undulating, that fall in with, and exhibit its principal lines, but with draperies severe and linear, such as were constantly employed before the time of raffaelle. i recollect no single instance of a naked angel that does not look boylike or child-like, and unspiritualized; even fra bartolomeo's might with advantage be spared from the pictures at lucca, and, in the hands of inferior men, the sky is merely encumbered with sprawling infants; those of domenichino in the madonna del rosario, and martyrdom of st. agnes, are peculiarly offensive, studies of bare-legged children howling and kicking in volumes of smoke. confusion seems to exist in the minds of subsequent painters between angels and cupids. § . symmetry. how valuable. farther, the qualities of symmetry and repose are of peculiar value in spiritual form. we find the former most earnestly sought by all the great painters in the arrangement of the hair, wherein no loosely flowing nor varied form is admitted, but all restrained in undisturbed and equal ringlets; often, as in the infant christ of fra angelico, supported on the forehead in forms of sculpturesque severity. the angel of masaccio, in the deliverance of peter, grand both in countenance and motion, loses much of his spirituality because the painter has put a little too much of his own character into the hair, and left it disordered. § . the influence of greek art, how dangerous. § . its scope, how limited. of repose, and its exalting power, i have already said enough for our present purpose, though i have not insisted on the peculiar manifestation of it in the christian ideal as opposed to the pagan. but this, as well as other questions relating to the particular development of the greek mind, is foreign to the immediate inquiry, which therefore i shall here conclude in the hope of resuming it in detail after examining the laws of beauty in the inanimate creation; always, however, holding this for certain, that of whatever kind or degree the short coming may be, it is not possible but that short coming should be visible in every pagan conception, when set beside christian; and believing, for my own part, that there is not only deficiency, but such difference in kind as must make all greek conception full of danger to the student in proportion to his admiration of it; as i think has been fatally seen in its effect on the italian schools, when its pernicious element first mingled with their solemn purity, and recently in its influence on the french historical painters: neither can i from my present knowledge fix upon an ancient statue which expresses by the countenance any one elevated character of soul, or any single enthusiastic self-abandoning affection, much less any such majesty of feeling as might mark the features for supernatural. the greek could not conceive a spirit; he could do nothing without limbs; his god is a finite god, talking, pursuing, and going journeys;[ ] if at any time he was touched with a true feeling of the unseen powers around him, it was in the field of poised battle, for there is something in the near coming of the shadow of death, something in the devoted fulfilment of mortal duty, that reveals the real god, though darkly; that pause on the field of platæa was not one of vain superstition; the two white figures that blazed along the delphic plain, when the earthquake and the fire led the charge from olympus, were more than sunbeams on the battle dust; the sacred cloud, with its lance light and triumph singing, that went down to brood over the masts of salamis, was more than morning mist among the olives; and yet what were the greek's thoughts of his god of battle? no spirit power was in the vision; it was a being of clay strength and human passion, foul, fierce, and changeful; of penetrable arms and vulnerable flesh. gather what we may of great, from pagan chisel or pagan dream, and set it beside the orderer of christian warfare, michael the archangel: not milton's "with hostile brow and visage all inflamed," not even milton's in kingly treading of the hills of paradise, not raffaelle's with the expanded wings and brandished spear, but perugino's with his triple crest of traceless plume unshaken in heaven, his hand fallen on his crossleted sword, the truth girdle binding his undinted armor; god has put his power upon him, resistless radiance is on his limbs, no lines are there of earthly strength, no trace on the divine features of earthly anger; trustful and thoughtful, fearless, but full of love, incapable except of the repose of eternal conquest, vessel and instrument of omnipotence, filled like a cloud with the victor light, the dust of principalities and powers beneath his feet, the murmur of hell against him heard by his spiritual ear like the winding of a shell on the far-off sea-shore. § . conclusion. it is vain to attempt to pursue the comparison; the two orders of art have in them nothing common, and the field of sacred history, the intent and scope of christian feeling, are too wide and exalted to admit of the juxtaposition of any other sphere or order of conception; they embrace all other fields like the dome of heaven. with what comparison shall we compare the types of the martyr saints, the st. stephen of fra bartolomeo, with his calm forehead crowned by the stony diadem, or the st. catherine of raffaelle looking up to heaven in the dawn of the eternal day, with her lips parted in the resting from her pain? or with what the madonnas of francia and pinturicchio, in whom the hues of the morning and the solemnity of the eve, the gladness in accomplished promise, and sorrow of the sword-pierced heart, are gathered into one human lamp of ineffable love? or with what the angel choirs of angelico, with the flames on their white foreheads waving brighter as they move, and the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like the glitter of many suns upon a sounding sea, listening, in the pauses of alternate song, for the prolonging of the trumpet blast, and the answering of psaltery and cymbal, throughout the endless deep and from all the star shores of heaven? footnotes [ ] i take no note of the representation of evil spirits, since throughout we have been occupied in the pursuit of beauty; but it may be observed generally that there is great difficulty to be overcome in attempts of this kind, because the elevation of the form necessary to give it spirituality destroys the appearance of evil; hence even the greatest painters have been reduced to receive aid from the fancy, and to eke out all they could conceive of malignity by help of horns, hoofs, and claws. giotto's satan in the campo santo, with the serpent gnawing the heart, is fine; so many of the fiends of orcagna, and always those of michael angelo. tintoret in the temptation, with his usual truth of invention, has represented the evil spirit under the form of a fair angel, the wings burning with crimson and silver, the face sensual and treacherous. it is instructive to compare the results of imagination associated with powerful fancy in the demons of these great painters, or even in such nightmares as that of salvator already spoken of, sect. i. chap. v. § (note,) with the simple ugliness of idiotic distortion in the meaningless terrorless monsters of bronzino in the large picture of the uffizii, where the painter, utterly uninventive, having assembled all that is abominable of hanging flesh, bony limbs, crane necks, staring eyes, and straggling hair, cannot yet by the sum and substance of all obtain as much real fearfulness as an imaginative painter could throw into the turn of a lip or the knitting of a brow. [ ] i have not thought it necessary to give farther instances at present, since i purpose hereafter to give numerous examples of this kind of ideal landscape. of true and noble landscape, as such, i am aware of no instances except where least they might have been expected, among the sea-bred venetians. ghirlandajo shows keen, though prosaic, sense of nature in that view of venice behind an adoration of magi in the uffizii, but he at last walled himself up among gilded entablatures. masaccio indeed has given one grand example in the fresco of the tribute money, but its color is now nearly lost. [ ] i know not anything in the range of art more unspiritual than the apollo belvidere; the raising of the fingers of the right hand in surprise at the truth of the arrow is altogether human, and would be vulgar in a prince, much more in a deity. the sandals destroy the divinity of the foot, and the lip is curled with mortal passion. addenda. although the plan of the present portion of this work does not admit of particular criticism, it will neither be useless nor irrelevant to refer to one or two works, lately before the public, in the exhibitions of the royal academy, which either illustrate, or present exceptions to, any of the preceding statements. i would first mention, with reference to what has been advanced respecting the functions of associative imagination, the very important work of mr. linnell, the "eve of the deluge;" a picture upheld by its admirers (and these were some of the most intelligent judges of the day) for a work of consummate imaginative power; while it was pronounced by the public journals to be "a chaos of unconcocted color." if the writers for the press had been aware of the kind of study pursued by mr. linnell through many laborious years, characterized by an observance of nature scrupulously and minutely patient, directed by the deepest sensibility, and aided by a power of drawing almost too refined for landscape subjects, and only to be understood by reference to his engravings after michael angelo, they would have felt it to be unlikely that the work of such a man should be entirely undeserving of respect. on the other hand, the grounds of its praise were unfortunately chosen; for, though possessing many merits, it had no claim whatever to be ranked among productions of creative art. it would perhaps be difficult to point to a work so exalted in feeling, and so deficient in invention. the sky had been strictly taken from nature, this was evident at a glance; and as a study of sky it was every way noble. to the purpose of the picture it hardly contributed; its sublimity was that of splendor, not of terror; and its darkness that of retreating, not of gathering, storm. the features of the landscape were devoid alike of variety and probability; the division of the scene by the central valley and winding river at once theatrical and commonplace; and the foreground, on which the light was intense, alike devoid of dignity in arrangement, and of interest in detail. the falseness or deficiency of color in the works of mr. landseer has been remarked above. the writer has much pleasure in noticing a very beautiful exception in the picture of the "random shot," certainly the most successful rendering he has ever seen of the hue of snow under warm but subdued light. the subtlety of gradation from the portions of the wreath fully illumined, to those which, feebly tinged by the horizontal rays, swelled into a dome of dim purple, dark against the green evening sky; the truth of the blue shadows, with which this dome was barred, and the depth of delicate color out of which the lights upon the footprints were raised, deserved the most earnest and serious admiration; proving, at the same time, that the errors in color, so frequently to be regretted in the works of the painter, are the result rather of inattention than of feeble perception. a curious proof of this inattention occurs in the disposition of the shadows in the background of the "old cover hack," no. . one of its points of light is on the rusty iron handle of a pump, in the shape of an s. the sun strikes the greater part of its length, illuminating the perpendicular portion of the curve; yet shadow is only cast on the wall behind by the returning portion of the lower extremity. a smile may be excited by the notice of so trivial a circumstance; but the simplicity of the error renders it the more remarkable, and the great masters of chiaroscuro are accurate in all such minor points; a vague sense of greater truth results from this correctness, even when it is not in particulars analyzed or noted by the observer. in the small but very valuable paul potter in lord westminster's collection, the body of one of the sheep under the hedge is for the most part in shadow, but the sunlight touches the extremity of the back. the sun is low, and the shadows feeble and distorted; yet that of the sunlighted fleece is cast exactly in its true place and proportion beyond that of the hedge. the spectator may not observe this; yet, unobserved, it is one of the circumstances which make him feel the picture to be full of sunshine. as an example of perfect color, and of the most refined handling ever perhaps exhibited in animal painting, the butcher's dog in the corner of mr. mulready's "butt," no. , deserved a whole room of the academy to himself. this, with the spaniel in the "choosing the wedding gown," and the two dogs in the hayfield subject (burchell and sophia), displays perhaps the most wonderful, because the most dignified, finish in the expression of anatomy and covering--of muscle and hide at once, and assuredly the most perfect unity of drawing and color, which the entire range of ancient and modern art can exhibit. albert durer is indeed the only rival who might be suggested; and, though greater far in imagination, and equal in draughtsmanship, albert durer was less true and less delicate in hue. in sculpturesque arrangement both masters show the same degree of feeling: any of these dogs of mulready might be taken out of the canvas and cut in alabaster, or, perhaps better, struck upon a coin. every lock and line of the hair has been grouped as it is on a greek die; and if this not always without some loss of ease and of action, yet this very loss is ennobling, in a period when all is generally sacrificed to the great coxcombry of art, the affectation of ease. yet mr. mulready himself is not always free from affectation of some kind; mannerism, at least, there is in his treatment of tree trunks. there is a ghastliness about his labored anatomies of them, as well as a want of specific character. why need they be always flayed? the hide of a beech tree, or of a birch or fir, is nearly as fair a thing as an animal's; glossy as a dove's neck barred with black like a zebra, or glowing in purple grey and velvet brown like furry cattle in sunset. why not paint these as mr. mulready paints other things, as they are? that simplest, that deepest of all secrets, which gives such majesty to the ragged leaves about the edges of the pond in the "gravel-pit." (no. .), and imparts a strange interest to the grey ragged urchins disappearing behind the bank, that bank so low, so familiar, so sublime! what a contrast between the deep sentiment of that commonest of all common, homeliest of all homely, subjects, and the lost sentiment of mr. stanfield's "amalfi" the chief landscape of the year, full of exalted material, and mighty crags, and massy seas, grottoes, precipices, and convents, fortress-towers and cloud-capped mountains, and all in vain, merely because that same simple secret has been despised; because nothing there is painted as it is! the picture was a most singular example of the scenic assemblage of contradictory theme which is characteristic of picturesque, as opposed to poetical, composition. the lines chosen from rogers for a titular legend were full of summer, glowing with golden light, and toned with quiet melancholy: "to him who sails under the shore, a few white villages, scattered above, below, some in the clouds, some on the margin of the dark blue sea, and glittering thro' their lemon groves, announce the region of amalfi. then, half-fallen, a lonely watch-tower on the precipice, their ancient landmark, comes--long may it last! and to the seaman, in a distant age, though now he little thinks how large his debt, serve for their monument." prepared by these lines for a dream upon deep, calm waters, under the shadow and scent of the close lemon leaves, the spectator found himself placed by the painter, wet through, in a noisy fishing boat, on a splashing sea, with just as much on his hands as he could manage to keep her gunwale from being stove in against a black rock; and with a heavy grey squall to windward. (this squall, by the by, was the very same which appeared in the picture of the magra of , and so were the snowy mountains above; only the squall at amalfi entered on the left, and at the magra on the right.) now the scenery of amalfi is impressive alike in storm or calm, and the writer has seen the mediterranean as majestic and as southern-looking in its rage as in its rest. but it is treating both the green water and woods unfairly to destroy their peace without expressing their power; and withdraw from them their sadness and their sun, without the substitution of any effect more terrific than that of a squall at the nore. the snow on the distant mountains chilled what it could not elevate, and was untrue to the scene besides; there is no snow on the monte st. angelo in summer except what is kept for the neapolitan confectioners. the great merit of the picture was its rock-painting; too good to have required the aid of the exaggeration of forms which satiated the eye throughout the composition. mr. f. r. pickersgill's "contest of beauty" (no. .), and mr. uwins's "vineyard scene in the south of france," were, after mr. mulready's works, among the most interesting pieces of color in the exhibition. the former, very rich and sweet in its harmonies, and especially happy in its contrasts of light and dark armor; nor less in the fancy of the little love who, losing his hold of the orange boughs, was falling ignominiously without having time to open his wings. the latter was a curious example of what i have described as abstraction of color. strictly true or possible it was not; a vintage is usually a dusty and dim-looking procedure; but there were poetry and feeling in mr. uwins's idealization of the sombre black of the veritable grape into a luscious ultramarine purple, glowing among the green leaves like so much painted glass. the figures were bright and graceful in the extreme and most happily grouped. little else that could be called color was to be seen upon the walls of the exhibition, with the exception of the smaller works of mr. etty. of these, the single head, "morning prayer," (no. .), and the "still life" (no. .), deserved, allowing for their peculiar aim, the highest praise. the larger subjects, more especially the st. john, were wanting in the merits peculiar to the painter; and in other respects it is alike painful and useless to allude to them. a very important and valuable work of mr. harding was placed, as usual, where its merits could be but ill seen, and where its chief fault, a feebleness of color in the principal light on the distant hills, was apparent. it was one of the very few views of the year which were transcripts, nearly without exaggeration, of the features of the localities. among the less conspicuous landscapes, mr. w. e. dighton's "hay meadow corner" deserved especial notice; it was at once vigorous, fresh, faithful, and unpretending, the management of the distance most ingenious, and the painting of the foreground, with the single exception of mr. mulready's above noticed, unquestionably the best in the room. i have before had occasion to notice a picture by this artist, "a hayfield in a shower," exhibited in the british institution in , and this year ( ) in the scottish academy, whose sky, in qualities of rainy, shattered, transparent grey, i have seldom seen equalled; nor the mist of its distance, expressive alike of previous heat and present heat of rain. i look with much interest for other works by this painter. a hurried visit to scotland in the spring of this year, while it enables the writer to acknowledge the ardor and genius manifested in very many of the works exhibited in the scottish academy, cannot be considered as furnishing him with sufficient grounds for specific criticism. he cannot, however, err in testifying his concurrence in the opinion expressed to him by several of the most distinguished members of that academy, respecting the singular merit of the works of mr. h. drummond. a cabinet picture of "banditti on the watch," appeared to him one of the most masterly, unaffected, and sterling pieces of quiet painting he has ever seen from the hand of a living artist; and the other works of mr. drummond were alike remarkable for their manly and earnest finish, and their sweetness of feeling. * * * * * corrections made to the original text. page : 'wherein the superioity' corrected to superiority. page : 'convent of st. marks' corrected to mark's page : 'had not been hoplessly' corrected to hopelessly. page : 'in the landscape of the fresco in st^a.' originally s^ta. page : 'alike devoid of dignity in arrangement' originally arrangemen footnote : 'de la poësie chrétienne', accented to be in accordance with text. library edition the complete works of john ruskin stones of venice volume iii giotto lectures on architecture harbours of england a joy forever national library association new york chicago the complete works of john ruskin volume x giotto and his works lectures on architecture the harbors of england political economy of art (a joy forever) giotto and his works in padua being an explanatory notice of the series of woodcuts executed for the arundel society after the frescos in the arena chapel advertisement. the following notice of giotto has not been drawn up with any idea of attempting a history of his life. that history could only be written after a careful search through the libraries of italy for all documents relating to the years during which he worked. i have no time for such search, or even for the examination of well-known and published materials; and have therefore merely collected, from the sources nearest at hand, such information as appeared absolutely necessary to render the series of plates now published by the arundel society intelligible and interesting to those among its members who have not devoted much time to the examination of mediæval works. i have prefixed a few remarks on the relation of the art of giotto to former and subsequent efforts; which i hope may be useful in preventing the general reader from either looking for what the painter never intended to give, or missing the points to which his endeavours were really directed. j.r. giotto and his works in padua. towards the close of the thirteenth century, enrico scrovegno, a noble paduan, purchased, in his native city, the remains of the roman amphitheatre or arena from the family of the delesmanini, to whom those remains had been granted by the emperor henry iii. of germany in . for the power of making this purchase, scrovegno was in all probability indebted to his father, reginald, who, for his avarice, is placed by dante in the seventh circle of the _inferno_, and regarded apparently as the chief of the usurers there, since he is the only one who addresses dante.[ ] the son, having possessed himself of the roman ruin, or of the site which it had occupied, built himself a fortified palace upon the ground, and a chapel dedicated to the annunciate virgin. [footnote : "noting the visages of some who lay beneath the pelting of that dolorous fire, one of them all i knew not; but perceived that pendent from his neck each bore a pouch, with colours and with emblems various marked, on which it seemed as if their eye did feed. and when amongst them looking round i came, a yellow purse i saw, with azure wrought, that wore a lion's countenance and port. then, still my sight pursuing its career, another i beheld, than blood more red, a goose display of whiter wing than curd. _and one who bore a fat and azure swine pictured on his white scrip, addressed me thus:_ what dost thou in this deep? go now and know, since yet thou livest, that my neighbour here, vitaliano, on my left shall sit. a paduan with these florentines am i. ofttimes they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming, oh! haste that noble knight, he who the pouch with the three goats will bring. this said, he writhed the mouth, and lolled the tongue out, like an ox that licks his nostrils." _canto_ xvii. this passage of cary's dante is not quite so clear as that translator's work usually is. "one of them all i knew not" is an awkward periphrasis for "i knew none of them." dante's indignant expression of the effect of avarice in withering away distinctions of character, and the prophecy of scrovegno, that his neighbor vitaliano, then living, should soon be with him, to sit on his left hand, is rendered a little obscure by the transposition of the word "here." cary has also been afraid of the excessive homeliness of dante's imagery; "whiter wing than curd" being in the original "whiter than butter." the attachment of the purse to the neck, as a badge of shame, in the _inferno_, is found before dante's time; as, for instance, in the windows of bourges cathedral (see plate iii. of mm. martin and cahier's beautiful work). and the building of the arena chapel by the son, as a kind of atonement for the avarice of the father, is very characteristic of the period, in which the use of money for the building of churches was considered just as meritorious as its unjust accumulation was criminal. i have seen, in a ms. church-service of the thirteenth century, an illumination representing church-consecration, illustrating the words, "fundata est domus domini supra verticem montium," surrounded for the purpose of contrast, by a grotesque, consisting of a picture of a miser's death-bed, a demon drawing his soul out of his mouth, while his attendants are searching in his chests for his treasures.] this chapel, built in or about the year ,[ ] appears to have been intended to replace one which had long existed on the spot; and in which, from the year , an annual festival had been held on lady-day, in which the annunciation was represented in the manner of our english mysteries (and under the same title: "una sacra rappresentazione di quel _mistero_"), with dialogue, and music both vocal and instrumental. scrovegno's purchase of the ground could not be allowed to interfere with the national custom; but he is reported by some writers to have rebuilt the chapel with greater costliness, in order, as far as possible, to efface the memory of his father's unhappy life. but federici, in his history of the cavalieri godenti, supposes that scrovegno was a member of that body, and was assisted by them in decorating the new edifice. the order of cavalieri godenti was instituted in the beginning of the thirteenth century, to defend the "existence," as selvatico states it, but more accurately the dignity, of the virgin, against the various heretics by whom it was beginning to be assailed. her knights were first called cavaliers of st. mary; but soon increased in power and riches to such a degree, that, from their general habits of life, they received the nickname of the "merry brothers." federici gives forcible reasons for his opinion that the arena chapel was employed in the ceremonies of their order; and lord lindsay observes, that the fulness with which the history of the virgin is recounted on its walls, adds to the plausibility of his supposition. [footnote : for these historical details i am chiefly indebted to the very careful treatise of selvatico, _sulla cappellina degli scrovegni nell'arena di padova_. padua, .] enrico scrovegno was, however, towards the close of his life, driven into exile, and died at venice in . but he was buried in the chapel he had built; and has one small monument in the sacristy, as the founder of the building, in which he is represented under a gothic niche, standing, with his hands clasped and his eyes raised; while behind the altar is his tomb, on which, as usual at the period, is a recumbent statue of him. the chapel itself may not unwarrantably be considered as one of the first efforts of popery in resistance of the reformation: for the reformation, though not victorious till the sixteenth, began in reality in the thirteenth century; and the remonstrances of such bishops as our own grossteste, the martyrdoms of the albigenses in the dominican crusades, and the murmurs of those "heretics" against whose aspersions of the majesty of the virgin this chivalrous order of the cavalieri godenti was instituted, were as truly the signs of the approach of a new era in religion, as the opponent work of giotto on the walls of the arena was a sign of the approach of a new era in art. the chapel having been founded, as stated above, in , giotto appears to have been summoned to decorate its interior walls about the year ,--summoned, as being at that time the acknowledged master of painting in italy. by what steps he had risen to this unquestioned eminence it is difficult to trace; for the records of his life, strictly examined, and freed from the verbiage and conjecture of artistical history, nearly reduce themselves to a list of the cities of italy where he painted, and to a few anecdotes, of little meaning in themselves, and doubly pointless in the fact of most of them being inheritances of the whole race of painters, and related successively of all in whose biographies the public have deigned to take an interest. there is even question as to the date of his birth; vasari stating him to have been born in , while baldinucci, on the internal evidence derived from vasari's own narrative, throws the date back ten years.[ ] i believe, however, that vasari is most probably accurate in his first main statement; and that his errors, always numerous, are in the subsequent and minor particulars. it is at least undoubted truth that giotto was born, and passed the years of childhood, at vespignano, about fourteen miles north of florence, on the road to bologna. few travellers can forget the peculiar landscape of that district of the apennine. as they ascend the hill which rises from florence to the lowest break in the ridge of fiesole, they pass continually beneath the walls of villas bright in perfect luxury, and beside cypress-hedges, enclosing fair terraced gardens, where the masses of oleander and magnolia, motionless as leaves in a picture, inlay alternately upon the blue sky their branching lightness of pale rose-colour, and deep green breadth of shade, studded with balls of budding silver, and showing at intervals through their framework of rich leaf and rubied flower, the far-away bends of the arno beneath its slopes of olive, and the purple peaks of the carrara mountains, tossing themselves against the western distance, where the streaks of motionless cloud burn above the pisan sea. the traveller passes the fiesolan ridge, and all is changed. the country is on a sudden lonely. here and there indeed are seen the scattered houses of a farm grouped gracefully upon the hill-sides,--here and there a fragment of tower upon a distant rock; but neither gardens, nor flowers, nor glittering palace-walls, only a grey extent of mountain-ground, tufted irregularly with ilex and olive: a scene not sublime, for its forms are subdued and low; not desolate, for its valleys are full of sown fields and tended pastures; not rich nor lovely, but sunburnt and sorrowful; becoming wilder every instant as the road winds into its recesses, ascending still, until the higher woods, now partly oak and partly pine, drooping back from the central crest of the apennine, leave a pastoral wilderness of scathed rock and arid grass, withered away here by frost, and there by strange lambent tongues of earth-fed fire.[ ] giotto passed the first ten years of his life, a shepherd-boy, among these hills; was found by cimabue near his native village, drawing one of his sheep upon a smooth stone; was yielded up by his father, "a simple person, a labourer of the earth," to the guardianship of the painter, who, by his own work, had already made the streets of florence ring with joy; attended him to florence, and became his disciple. [footnote : lord lindsay, _christian art_, vol. ii. p. .] [footnote : at pietra mala. the flames rise two or three feet above the stony ground out of which they spring, white and fierce enough to be visible in the intense rays even of the morning sun.] we may fancy the glance of the boy, when he and cimabue stood side by side on the ridge of fiesole, and for the first time he saw the flowering thickets of the val d'arno; and deep beneath, the innumerable towers of the city of the lily, the depths of his own heart yet hiding the fairest of them all. another ten years passed over him, and he was chosen from among the painters of italy to decorate the vatican. the account given us by vasari of the mode of his competition on this occasion, is one of the few anecdotes of him which seem to be authentic (especially as having given rise to an italian proverb), and it has also great point and value. i translate vasari's words literally. "this work (his paintings in the campo santo of pisa) acquired for him, both in the city and externally, so much fame, that the pope, benedict ix., sent a certain one of his courtiers into tuscany, to see what sort of a man giotto was, and what was the quality of his works, he (the pope) intending to have some paintings executed in st. peter's; which courtier, coming to see giotto, and hearing that there were other masters in florence who excelled in painting and in mosaic, spoke, in siena, to many masters; then, having received drawings from them, he came to florence; and having gone one morning into giotto's shop as he was at work, explained the pope's mind to him, and in what way he wished to avail himself of his powers, and finally requested from him a little piece of drawing to send to his holiness. giotto, who was most courteous, took a leaf (of vellum?), and upon this, with a brush dipped in red, fixing his arm to his side, to make it as the limb of a pair of compasses, and turning his hand, made a circle so perfect in measure and outline, that it was a wonder to see: which having done, he said to the courtier, with a smile, 'there is the drawing.' he, thinking himself mocked, said, 'shall i have no other drawing than this?' 'this is enough, and too much,' answered giotto; 'send it with the others: you will see if it will be understood.' the ambassador, seeing that he could not get any thing else, took his leave with small satisfaction, doubting whether he had not been made a jest of. however, when he sent to the pope the other drawings, and the names of those who had made them, he sent also that of giotto, relating the way in which he had held himself in drawing his circle, without moving his arm, and without compasses. whence the pope, and many intelligent courtiers, knew how much giotto overpassed in excellence all the other painters of his time. afterwards, the thing becoming known, the proverb arose from it: 'thou art rounder than the o of giotto;' which it is still in custom to say to men of the grosser clay; for the proverb is pretty, not only on account of the accident of its origin, but because it has a double meaning, 'round' being taken in tuscany to express not only circular form, but slowness and grossness of wit." such is the account of vasari, which, at the first reading, might be gravely called into question, seeing that the paintings at pisa, to which he ascribes the sudden extent of giotto's reputation, have been proved to be the work of francesco da volterra;[ ] and since, moreover, vasari has even mistaken the name of the pope, and written boniface ix. for boniface viii. but the story itself must, i think, be true; and, rightly understood, it is singularly interesting. i say, rightly understood; for lord lindsay supposes the circle to have been mechanically drawn by turning the sheet of vellum under the hand, as now constantly done for the sake of speed at schools. but neither do vasari's words bear this construction, nor would the drawing so made have borne the slightest testimony to giotto's power. vasari says distinctly, "and turning his hand" (or, as i should rather read it, "with a sweep of his hand") not "turning the vellum;" neither would a circle produced in so mechanical a manner have borne distinct witness to any thing except the draughtsman's mechanical ingenuity; and giotto had too much common sense, and too much courtesy, to send the pope a drawing which did not really contain the evidence he required. lord lindsay has been misled also by his own careless translation of "pennello tinto di rosso" ("a _brush_ dipped in red,") by the word "crayon." it is easy to draw the mechanical circle with a crayon, but by no means easy with a brush. i have not the slightest doubt that giotto drew the circle as a painter naturally would draw it; that is to say, that he set the vellum upright on the wall or panel before him, and then steadying his arm firmly against his side, drew the circular line with one sweeping but firm revolution of his hand, holding the brush long. such a feat as this is completely possible to a well-disciplined painter's hand, but utterly impossible to any other; and the circle so drawn, was the most convincing proof giotto could give of his decision of eye and perfectness of practice. [footnote : at least lord lindsay seems to consider the evidence collected by förster on this subject conclusive. _christian art_, vol. ii. p. .] still, even when thus understood, there is much in the anecdote very curious. here is a painter requested by the head of the church to execute certain religious paintings, and the only qualification for the task of which he deigns to demonstrate his possession is executive skill. nothing is said, and nothing appears to be thought, of expression, or invention, or devotional sentiment. nothing is required but firmness of hand. and here arises the important question: did giotto know that this was all that was looked for by his religious patrons? and is there occult satire in the example of his art which he sends them?--or does the founder of sacred painting mean to tell us that he holds his own power to consist merely in firmness of hand, secured by long practice? i cannot satisfy myself on this point: but yet it seems to me that we may safely gather two conclusions from the words of the master, "it is enough, and more than enough." the first, that giotto had indeed a profound feeling of the value of _precision_ in all art; and that we may use the full force of his authority to press the truth, of which it is so difficult to persuade the hasty workmen of modern times, that the difference between right and wrong lies within the breadth of a line; and that the most perfect power and genius are shown by the accuracy which disdains error, and the faithfulness which fears it. and the second conclusion is, that whatever giotto's imaginative powers might be, he was proud to be a good _workman_, and willing to be considered by others only as such. there might lurk, as has been suggested, some satire in the message to the pope, and some consciousness in his own mind of faculties higher than those of draughtsmanship. i cannot tell how far these hidden feelings existed; but the more i see of living artists, and learn of departed ones, the more i am convinced that the highest strength of genius is generally marked by strange unconsciousness of its own modes of operation, and often by no small scorn of the best results of its exertion. the inferior mind intently watches its own processes, and dearly values its own produce; the master-mind is intent on other things than itself, and cares little for the fruits of a toil which it is apt to undertake rather as a law of life than a means of immortality. it will sing at a feast, or retouch an old play, or paint a dark wall, for its daily bread, anxious only to be honest in its fulfilment of its pledges or its duty, and careless that future ages will rank it among the gods. i think it unnecessary to repeat here any other of the anecdotes commonly related of giotto, as, separately taken, they are quite valueless. yet much may be gathered from their general _tone_. it is remarkable that they are, almost without exception, records of good-humoured jests, involving or illustrating some point of practical good sense; and by comparing this general colour of the reputation of giotto with the actual character of his designs, there cannot remain the smallest doubt that his mind was one of the most healthy, kind, and active, that ever informed a human frame. his love of beauty was entirely free from weakness; his love of truth untinged by severity; his industry constant, without impatience; his workmanship accurate, without formalism; his temper serene, and yet playful; his imagination exhaustless, without extravagance; and his faith firm, without superstition. i do not know, in the annals of art, such another example of happy, practical, unerring, and benevolent power. i am certain that this is the estimate of his character which must be arrived at by an attentive study of his works, and of the few data which remain respecting his life; but i shall not here endeavour to give proof of its truth, because i believe the subject has been exhaustively treated by rumohr and förster, whose essays on the works and character of giotto will doubtless be translated into english, as the interest of the english public in mediæval art increases. i shall therefore here only endeavour briefly to sketch the relation which giotto held to the artists who preceded and followed him, a relation still imperfectly understood; and then, as briefly, to indicate the general course of his labours in italy, as far as may be necessary for understanding the value of the series in the arena chapel. the art of europe, between the fifth and thirteenth centuries, divides itself essentially into great branches, one springing from, the other grafted on, the old roman stock. the first is the roman art itself, prolonged in a languid and degraded condition, and becoming at last a mere formal system, centered at the feet of eastern empire, and thence generally called byzantine. the other is the barbarous and incipient art of the gothic nations, more or less coloured by roman or byzantine influence, and gradually increasing in life and power. generally speaking, the byzantine art, although manifesting itself only in perpetual repetitions, becoming every day more cold and formal, yet preserved reminiscences of design originally noble, and traditions of execution originally perfect. generally speaking, the gothic art, although becoming every day more powerful, presented the most ludicrous experiments of infantile imagination, and the most rude efforts of untaught manipulation. hence, if any superior mind arose in byzantine art, it had before it models which suggested or recorded a perfection they did not themselves possess; and the superiority of the individual mind would probably be shown in a more sincere and living treatment of the subjects ordained for repetition by the canons of the schools. in the art of the goth, the choice of subject was unlimited, and the style of design so remote from all perfection, as not always even to point out clearly the direction in which advance could be made. the strongest minds which appear in that art are therefore generally manifested by redundance of imagination, and sudden refinement of touch, whether of pencil or chisel, together with unexpected starts of effort or flashes of knowledge in accidental directions, gradually forming various national styles. of these comparatively independent branches of art, the greatest is, as far as i know, the french sculpture of the thirteenth century. no words can give any idea of the magnificent redundance of its imaginative power, or of the perpetual beauty of even its smallest incidental designs. but this very richness of sculptural invention prevented the french from cultivating their powers of painting, except in illumination (of which art they were the acknowledged masters), and in glass-painting. their exquisite gift of fretting their stone-work with inexhaustible wealth of sculpture, prevented their feeling the need of figure-design on coloured surfaces. the style of architecture prevalent in italy at the same period, presented, on the contrary, large blank surfaces, which could only be rendered interesting by covering them with mosaic or painting. the italians were not at the time capable of doing this for themselves, and mosaicists were brought from constantinople, who covered the churches of italy with a sublime monotony of byzantine traditions. but the gothic blood was burning in the italian veins; and the florentines and pisans could not rest content in the formalism of the eastern splendour. the first innovator was, i believe, giunta of pisa, the second cimabue, the third giotto; the last only being a man of power enough to effect a complete revolution in the artistic principles of his time. he, however, began, like his master cimabue, with a perfect respect for his byzantine models; and his paintings for a long time consisted only of repetitions of the byzantine subjects, softened in treatment, enriched in number of figures, and enlivened in gesture. afterwards he invented subjects of his own. the manner and degree of the changes which he at first effected could only be properly understood by actual comparison of his designs with the byzantine originals;[ ] but in default of the means of such a comparison, it may be generally stated that the innovations of giotto consisted in the introduction, a, of gayer or lighter colours; b, of broader masses; and, c, of more careful imitation of nature than existed in the works of his predecessors. [footnote : it might not, i think, be a work unworthy of the arundel society, to collect and engrave in outline the complete series of these byzantine originals of the subjects of the arena chapel, in order to facilitate this comparison. the greek mss. in the british museum would, i think, be amply sufficient; the harleian ms. numbered alone furnishing a considerable number of subjects, and especially a death of the virgin, with the st. john thrown into the peculiar and violent gesture of grief afterwards adopted by giotto in the entombment of the arena chapel.] a. _greater lightness of colour._ this was partly in compliance with a tendency which was beginning to manifest itself even before giotto's time. over the whole of northern europe, the colouring of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries had been pale: in manuscripts, principally composed of pale red, green, and yellow, blue being sparingly introduced (earlier still, in the eighth and ninth centuries, the letters had often been coloured with black and yellow only). then, in the close of the twelfth and throughout the thirteenth century, the great system of perfect colour was in use; solemn and deep; composed strictly, in all its leading masses, of the colours revealed by god from sinai as the noblest;--blue, purple, and scarlet, with gold (other hues, chiefly green, with white and black, being used in points or small masses, to relieve the main colours). in the early part of the fourteenth century the colours begin to grow paler; about the style is already completely modified; and at the close of the fourteenth century the colour is quite pale and delicate. i have not carefully examined the colouring of early byzantine work; but it seems always to have been comparatively dark, and in manuscripts is remarkably so; giotto's paler colouring, therefore, though only part of the great european system, was rendered notable by its stronger contrast with the byzantine examples. b. _greater breadth of mass._ it had been the habit of the byzantines to break up their draperies by a large number of minute folds. norman and romanesque sculpture showed much of the same character. giotto melted all these folds into broad masses of colour; so that his compositions have sometimes almost a titianesque look in this particular. this innovation was a healthy one, and led to very noble results when followed up by succeeding artists: but in many of giotto's compositions the figures become ludicrously cumbrous, from the exceeding simplicity of the terminal lines, and massiveness of unbroken form. the manner was copied in illuminated manuscripts with great disadvantage, as it was unfavourable to minute ornamentation. the french never adopted it in either branch of art, nor did any other northern school; minute and sharp folds of the robes remaining characteristic of northern (more especially of flemish and german) design down to the latest times, giving a great superiority to the french and flemish illuminated work, and causing a proportionate inferiority in their large pictorial efforts. even rubens and vandyke cannot free themselves from a certain meanness and minuteness in disposition of drapery. c. _close imitation of nature._ in this one principle lay giotto's great strength, and the entire secret of the revolution he effected. it was not by greater learning, not by the discovery of new theories of art, not by greater taste, nor by "ideal" principles of selection, that he became the head of the progressive schools of italy. it was simply by being interested in what was going on around him, by substituting the gestures of living men for conventional attitudes, and portraits of living men for conventional faces, and incidents of every-day life for conventional circumstances, that he became great, and the master of the great. giotto was to his contemporaries precisely what millais is to _his_ contemporaries,--a daring naturalist, in defiance of tradition, idealism, and formalism. the giottesque movement in the fourteenth, and pre-raphaelite movement in the nineteenth centuries, are precisely similar in bearing and meaning: both being the protests of vitality against mortality, of spirit against letter, and of truth against tradition: and both, which is the more singular, literally links in one unbroken chain of feeling; for exactly as niccola pisano and giotto were helped by the classical sculptures discovered in their time, the pre-raphaelites have been helped by the works of niccola and giotto at pisa and florence: and thus the fiery cross of truth has been delivered from spirit to spirit, over the dust of intervening generations. but what, it may be said by the reader, is the use of the works of giotto to _us_? they may indeed have been wonderful for their time, and of infinite use in that time; but since, after giotto, came leonardo and correggio, what is the use of going back to the ruder art, and republishing it in the year ? why should we fret ourselves to dig down to the root of the tree, when we may at once enjoy its fruit and foliage? i answer, first, that in all matters relating to human intellect, it is a great thing to have hold of the root: that at least we ought to see it, and taste it, and handle it; for it often happens that the root is wholesome when the leaves, however fair, are useless or poisonous. in nine cases out of ten, the first expression of an idea is the most valuable: the idea may afterward be polished and softened, and made more attractive to the general eye; but the first expression of it has a freshness and brightness, like the flash of a native crystal compared to the lustre of glass that has been melted and cut. and in the second place, we ought to measure the value of art less by its executive than by its moral power. giotto was not indeed one of the most accomplished painters, but he was one of the greatest men, who ever lived. he was the first master of his time, in architecture as well as in painting; he was the friend of dante, and the undisputed interpreter of religious truth, by means of painting, over the whole of italy. the works of such a man may not be the best to set before children in order to teach them drawing; but they assuredly should be studied with the greatest care by all who are interested in the history of the human mind. one point more remains to be noticed respecting him. as far as i am aware, he never painted profane subjects. all his important existing works are exclusively devoted to the illustration of christianity. this was not a result of his own peculiar feeling or determination; it was a necessity of the period. giotto appears to have considered himself simply as a workman, at the command of any employer, for any kind of work, however humble. "in the sixty-third novel of franco sacchetti we read that a stranger, suddenly entering giotto's study, threw down a shield, and departed, saying, 'paint me my arms on that shield.' giotto looking after him, exclaimed, 'who is he? what is he? he says, "paint me my arms," as if he was one of the bardi. what arms does he bear?'"[ ] but at the time of giotto's eminence, art was never employed on a great scale except in the service of religion; nor has it ever been otherwise employed, except in declining periods. i do not mean to draw any severe conclusion from this fact; but it is a fact nevertheless, which ought to be very distinctly stated, and very carefully considered. all _progressive_ art hitherto has been religious art; and commencements of the periods of decline are accurately marked, in illumination, by its employment on romances instead of psalters; and in painting, by its employment on mythology or profane history instead of sacred history. yet perhaps i should rather have said, on _heathen mythology_ instead of _christian mythology_; for this latter term--first used, i believe, by lord lindsay--is more applicable to the subjects of the early painters than that of "sacred _history_." of all the virtues commonly found in the higher orders of human mind, that of a stern and just respect for truth seems to be the rarest; so that while self-denial, and courage, and charity, and religious zeal, are displayed in their utmost degrees by myriads of saints and heroes, it is only once in a century that a man appears whose word may be implicitly trusted, and who, in the relation of a plain fact, will not allow his prejudices or his pleasure to tempt him to some colouring or distortion of it. hence the portions of sacred history which have been the constant subjects of fond popular contemplation have, in the lapse of ages, been encumbered with fictitious detail; and their various historians seem to have considered the exercise of their imagination innocent, and even meritorious, if they could increase either the vividness of conception or the sincerity of belief in their readers. a due consideration of that well-known weakness of the popular mind, which renders a statement credible in proportion to the multitude of local and circumstantial details which accompany it, may lead us to look with some indulgence on the errors, however fatal in their issue to the cause they were intended to advance, of those weak teachers, who thought the acceptance of their general statements of christian doctrine cheaply won by the help of some simple (and generally absurd) inventions of detail respecting the life of the virgin or the apostles. [footnote : notes to rogers' _italy_.] indeed, i can hardly imagine the bible to be ever read with true interest, unless, in our reading, we feel some longing for further knowledge of the minute incidents of the life of christ,--for some records of those things, which "if they had been written every one," the world could not have contained the books that should be written: and they who have once felt this thirst for further truth, may surely both conceive and pardon the earnest questioning of simple disciples (who knew not, as we do, how much had been indeed revealed), and measure with some justice the strength of the temptation which betrayed these teachers into adding to the word of revelation. together with this specious and subtle influence, we must allow for the instinct of imagination exerting itself in the acknowledged embellishment of beloved truths. if we reflect how much, even in this age of accurate knowledge, the visions of milton have become confused in the minds of many persons with scriptural facts, we shall rather be surprised, that in an age of legends so little should be added to the bible, than that occasionally we should be informed of important circumstances in sacred history with the collateral warning, "this moses spake not of."[ ] [footnote : these words are gravely added to some singular particulars respecting the life of adam, related in a ms. of the sixteenth century preserved in the herald's college.] more especially in the domain of painting, it is surprising to see how strictly the early workmen confined themselves to representations of the same series of scenes; how little of pictorial embellishment they usually added; and how, even in the positions and gestures of figures, they strove to give the idea rather of their having seen the _fact_, than imagined a picturesque treatment of it. often, in examining early art, we mistake conscientiousness for servility, and attribute to the absence of invention what was indeed the result of the earnestness of faith. nor, in a merely artistical point of view, is it less important to note, that the greatest advance in power was made when painters had few subjects to treat. the day has perhaps come when genius should be shown in the discovery of perpetually various interest amidst the incidents of actual life; and the absence of inventive capacity is very assuredly proved by the narrow selection of subjects which commonly appear on the walls of our exhibitions. but yet it is to be always remembered, that more originality may be shown in giving interest to a well-known subject than in discovering a new one; that the greatest poets whom the world has seen have been contented to retouch and exalt the creations of their predecessors; and that the painters of the middle ages reached their utmost power by unweariedly treading a narrow circle of sacred subjects. nothing is indeed more notable in the history of art than the exact balance of its point of excellence, in all things, midway between servitude and license. thus, in choice and treatment of subject it became paralysed among the byzantines, by being mercilessly confined to a given series of scenes, and to a given mode of representing them. giotto gave it partial liberty and incipient life; by the artists who succeeded him the range of its scenery was continually extended, and the severity of its style slowly softened to perfection. but the range was still, in some degree, limited by the necessity of its continual subordination to religious purposes; and the style, though softened, was still chaste, and though tender, self-restrained. at last came the period of license: the artist chose his subjects from the lowest scenes of human life, and let loose his passions in their portraiture. and the kingdom of art passed away. as if to direct us to the observation of this great law, there is a curious visible type of it in the progress of ornamentation in manuscripts, corresponding with the various changes in the higher branch of art. in the course of the th and early th centuries, the ornamentation, though often full of high feeling and fantasy, is sternly enclosed within limiting border-lines;--at first, severe squares, oblongs, or triangles. as the grace of the ornamentation advances, these border-lines are softened and broken into various curves, and the inner design begins here and there to overpass them. gradually this emergence becomes more constant, and the lines which thus escape throw themselves into curvatures expressive of the most exquisite concurrence of freedom with self-restraint. at length the restraint vanishes, the freedom changes consequently into license, and the page is covered with exuberant, irregular, and foolish extravagances of leafage and line. it only remains to be noticed, that the circumstances of the time at which giotto appeared were peculiarly favourable to the development of genius; owing partly to the simplicity of the methods of practice, and partly to the naïveté with which art was commonly regarded. giotto, like all the great painters of the period, was merely a travelling decorator of walls, at so much a day; having at florence a _bottega_, or workshop, for the production and sale of small tempera pictures. there were no such things as "studios" in those days. an artist's "studies" were over by the time he was eighteen; after that he was a _lavoratore_, "labourer," a man who knew his business, and produced certain works of known value for a known price; being troubled with no philosophical abstractions, shutting himself up in no wise for the reception of inspirations; receiving, indeed, a good many, as a matter of course,--just as he received the sunbeams which came in at his window, the light which he worked by;--in either case, without mouthing about it, or much concerning himself as to the nature of it. not troubled by critics either; satisfied that his work was well done, and that people would find it out to be well done; but not vain of it, nor more profoundly vexed at its being found fault with, than a good saddler would be by some one's saying his last saddle was uneasy in the seat. not, on the whole, much molested by critics, but generally understood by the men of sense, his neighbours and friends, and permitted to have his own way with the walls he had to paint, as being, on the whole, an authority about walls; receiving at the same time a good deal of daily encouragement and comfort in the simple admiration of the populace, and in the general sense of having done good, and painted what no man could look upon without being the better for it. thus he went, a serene labourer, throughout the length and breadth of italy. for the first ten years of his life, a shepherd; then a student, perhaps for five or six; then already in florence, setting himself to his life's task; and called as a master to rome when he was only twenty. there he painted the principal chapel of st. peter's, and worked in mosaic also; no handicrafts, that had colour or form for their objects, seeming unknown to him. then returning to florence, he painted dante, about the year ,[ ] the th year of dante's life, the th of his own; and designed the façade of the duomo, on the death of its former architect, arnolfo. some six years afterwards he went to padua, there painting the chapel which is the subject of our present study, and many other churches. thence south again to assisi, where he painted half the walls and vaults of the great convent that stretches itself along the slopes of the perugian hills, and various other minor works on his way there and back to florence. staying in his native city but a little while, he engaged himself in other tasks at ferrara, verona, and ravenna, and at last at avignon, where he became acquainted with petrarch--working there for some three years, from to ;[ ] and then passed rapidly through florence and orvieto on his way to naples, where "he received the kindest welcome from the good king robert. the king, ever partial to men of mind and genius, took especial delight in giotto's society, and used frequently to visit him while working in the castello dell'uovo, taking pleasure in watching his pencil and listening to his discourse; 'and giotto,' says vasari, 'who had ever his repartee and bon-mot ready, held him there, fascinated at once with the magic of his pencil and pleasantry of his tongue.' we are not told the length of his sojourn at naples, but it must have been for a considerable period, judging from the quantity of works he executed there. he had certainly returned to florence in ." there he was immediately appointed "chief master" of the works of the duomo, then in progress, "with a yearly salary of one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of citizenship." he designed the campanile, in a more perfect form than that which now exists; for his intended spire, feet in height, never was erected. he, however, modelled the bas-reliefs for the base of the building, and sculptured two of them with his own hand. it was afterwards completed, with the exception of the spire, according to his design; but he only saw its foundations laid, and its first marble story rise. he died at florence, on the th of january, , full of honour; happy, perhaps, in departing at the zenith of his strength, when his eye had not become dim, nor his natural force abated. he was buried in the cathedral, at the angle nearest his campanile; and thus the tower, which is the chief grace of his native city, may be regarded as his own sepulchral monument. [footnote : lord lindsay's evidence on this point (_christian art_, vol. ii. p. ) seems quite conclusive. it is impossible to overrate the value of the work of giotto in the bargello, both for its own intrinsic beauty, and as being executed in this year, which is not only that in which the divina commedia opens, but, as i think, the culminating period in the history of the art of the middle ages.] [footnote : _christian art_, vol. ii. p. .] i may refer the reader to the close of lord lindsay's letter on giotto,[ ] from which i have drawn most of the particulars above stated, for a very beautiful sketch of his character and his art. of the real rank of that art, in the abstract, i do not feel myself capable of judging accurately, having not seen his finest works (at assisi and naples), nor carefully studied even those at florence. but i may be permitted to point out one or two peculiar characteristics in it which have always struck me forcibly. [footnote : _christian art_, p. .] in the first place, giotto never finished highly. he was not, indeed, a loose or sketchy painter, but he was by no means a delicate one. his lines, as the story of the circle would lead us to expect, are always firm, but they are never fine. even in his smallest tempera pictures the touch is bold and somewhat heavy: in his fresco work the handling is much broader than that of contemporary painters, corresponding somewhat to the character of many of the figures, representing plain, masculine kind of people, and never reaching any thing like the ideal refinement of the conceptions even of benozzo gozzoli, far less of angelico or francia. for this reason, the character of his painting is better expressed by bold wood-engravings than in general it is likely to be by any other means. again, he was a very noble colourist; and in his peculiar feeling for breadth of hue resembled titian more than any other of the florentine school. that is to say, had he been born two centuries later, when the art of painting was fully known, i believe he would have treated his subjects much more like titian than like raphael; in fact, the frescoes of titian in the chapel beside the church of st. antonio at padua, are, in all technical qualities, and in many of their conceptions, almost exactly what i believe giotto would have done, had he lived in titian's time. as it was, he of course never attained either richness or truth of colour; but in serene brilliancy he is not easily rivalled; invariably massing his hues in large fields, limiting them firmly, and then filling them with subtle gradation. he had the venetian fondness for bars and stripes, not unfrequently casting barred colours obliquely across the draperies of an upright figure, from side to side (as very notably in the dress of one of the musicians who are playing to the dancing of herodias' daughter, in one of his frescoes at santa croce); and this predilection was mingled with the truly mediæval love of _quartering_.[ ] the figure of the madonna in the small tempera pictures in the academy at florence is always completely divided into two narrow segments by her dark-blue robe. [footnote : i use this heraldic word in an inaccurate sense, knowing no other that will express what i mean,--the division of the picture into quaint segments of alternating colour, more marked than any of the figure outlines.] and this is always to be remembered in looking at any engravings from the works of giotto; for the injury they sustain in being deprived of their colour is far greater than in the case of later designers. all works produced in the fourteenth century agree in being more or less decorative; they were intended in most instances to be subservient to architectural effect, and were executed in the manner best calculated to produce a striking impression when they were seen in a mass. the painted wall and the painted window were part and parcel of one magnificent whole; and it is as unjust to the work of giotto, or of any contemporary artist, to take out a single feature from the series, and represent it in black and white on a separate page, as it would be to take out a compartment of a noble coloured window, and engrave it in the same manner. what is at once refined and effective, if seen at the intended distance in unison with the rest of the work, becomes coarse and insipid when seen isolated and near; and the more skilfully the design is arranged, so as to give full value to the colours which are introduced in it, the more blank and cold will it become when it is deprived of them. in our modern art we have indeed lost sight of one great principle which regulated that of the middle ages, namely, that chiaroscuro and colour are incompatible in their highest degrees. wherever chiaroscuro enters, colour must lose some of its brilliancy. there is no _shade_ in a rainbow, nor in an opal, nor in a piece of mother-of-pearl, nor in a well-designed painted window; only various hues of perfect colour. the best pictures, by subduing their colour and conventionalising their chiaroscuro, reconcile both in their diminished degrees; but a perfect light and shade cannot be given without considerable loss of liveliness in colour. hence the supposed inferiority of tintoret to titian. tintoret is, in reality, the greater colourist of the two; but he could not bear to falsify his light and shadow enough to set off his colour. titian nearly strikes the exact mean between the painted glass of the th century and rembrandt; while giotto closely approaches the system of painted glass, and hence his compositions lose grievously by being translated into black and white. but even this chiaroscuro, however subdued, is not without a peculiar charm; and the accompanying engravings possess a marked superiority over all that have hitherto been made from the works of this painter, in rendering this chiaroscuro, as far as possible, together with the effect of the local colours. the true appreciation of art has been retarded for many years by the habit of trusting to outlines as a sufficient expression of the sentiment of compositions; whereas in all truly great designs, of whatever age, it is never the outline, but the disposition of the masses, whether of shade or colour, on which the real power of the work depends. for instance, in plate iii. (the angel appears to anna), the interest of the composition depends entirely upon the broad shadows which fill the spaces of the chamber, and of the external passage in which the attendant is sitting. this shade explains the whole scene in a moment: gives prominence to the curtain and coverlid of the homely bed, and the rude chest and trestles which form the poor furniture of the house; and conducts the eye easily and instantly to the three figures, which, had the scene been expressed in outline only, we should have had to trace out with some care and difficulty among the pillars of the loggia and folds of the curtains. so also the relief of the faces in light against the dark sky is of peculiar value in the compositions no. x. and no. xii. the _drawing_ of giotto is, of course, exceedingly faulty. his knowledge of the human figure is deficient; and this, the necessary drawback in all works of the period, occasions an extreme difficulty in rendering them faithfully in an engraving. for wherever there is good and legitimate drawing, the ordinary education of a modern draughtsman enables him to copy it with tolerable accuracy; but when once the true forms of nature are departed from, it is by no means easy to express _exactly_ the error, and _no more than_ the error, of his original. in most cases modern copyists try to modify or hide the weaknesses of the old art,--by which procedure they very often wholly lose its spirit, and only half redeem its defects; the results being, of course, at once false as representations, and intrinsically valueless. and just as it requires great courage and skill in an interpreter to speak out honestly all the rough and rude words of the first speaker, and to translate deliberately and resolutely, in the face of attentive men, the expressions of his weakness or impatience; so it requires at once the utmost courage and skill in a copyist to trace faithfully the failures of an imperfect master, in the front of modern criticism, and against the inborn instincts of his own hand and eye. and let him do the best he can, he will still find that the grace and life of his original are continually flying off like a vapour, while all the faults he has so diligently copied sit rigidly staring him in the face,--a terrible _caput mortuum_. it is very necessary that this should be well understood by the members of the arundel society, when they hear their engravings severely criticised. it is easy to produce an agreeable engraving by graceful infidelities; but the entire endeavour of the draughtsmen employed by this society has been to obtain accurately the character of the original: and he who never proposes to himself to rise _above_ the work he is copying, must most assuredly often fall beneath it. such fall is the inherent and inevitable penalty on all absolute copyism; and wherever the copy is made with sincerity, the fall must be endured with patience. it will never be an utter or a degrading fall; that is reserved for those who, like vulgar translators, wilfully quit the hand of their master, and have no strength of their own. lastly. it is especially to be noticed that these works of giotto, in common with all others of the period, are independent of all the inferior sources of pictorial interest. they never show the slightest attempt at imitative realisation: they are simple suggestions of ideas, claiming no regard except for the inherent value of the thoughts. there is no filling of the landscape with variety of scenery, architecture, or incident, as in the works of benozzo gozzoli or perugino; no wealth of jewellery and gold spent on the dresses of the figures, as in the delicate labours of angelico or gentile da fabriano. the background is never more than a few gloomy masses of rock, with a tree or two, and perhaps a fountain; the architecture is merely what is necessary to explain the scene; the dresses are painted sternly on the "heroic" principle of sir joshua reynolds--that drapery is to be "drapery, and nothing more,"--there is no silk, nor velvet, nor distinguishable material of any kind: the whole power of the picture is rested on the three simple essentials of painting--pure colour, noble form, noble thought. we moderns, educated in reality far more under the influence of the dutch masters than the italian, and taught to look for realisation in all things, have been in the habit of casting scorn on these early italian works, as if their simplicity were the result of ignorance merely. when we know a little more of art in general, we shall begin to suspect that a man of giotto's power of mind did not altogether suppose his clusters of formal trees, or diminutive masses of architecture, to be perfect representations of the woods of judea, or of the streets of jerusalem: we shall begin to understand that there is a symbolical art which addresses the imagination, as well as a realist art which supersedes it; and that the powers of contemplation and conception which could be satisfied or excited by these simple types of natural things, were infinitely more majestic than those which are so dependent on the completeness of what is presented to them as to be paralysed by an error in perspective, or stifled by the absence of atmosphere. nor is the healthy simplicity of the period less marked in the selection than in the treatment of subjects. it has in these days become necessary for the painter who desires popularity to accumulate on his canvas whatever is startling in aspect or emotion, and to drain, even to exhaustion, the vulgar sources of the pathetic. modern sentiment, at once feverish and feeble, remains unawakened except by the violences of gaiety or gloom; and the eye refuses to pause, except when it is tempted by the luxury of beauty, or fascinated by the excitement of terror. it ought not, therefore, to be without a respectful admiration that we find the masters of the fourteenth century dwelling on moments of the most subdued and tender feeling, and leaving the spectator to trace the under-currents of thought which link them with future events of mightier interest, and fill with a prophetic power and mystery scenes in themselves so simple as the meeting of a master with his herdsmen among the hills, or the return of a betrothed virgin to her house. [illustration] it is, however, to be remembered that this quietness in character of subject was much more possible to an early painter, owing to the connection in which his works were to be seen. a modern picture, isolated and portable, must rest all its claims to attention on its own actual subject: but the pictures of the early masters were nearly always parts of a consecutive and stable series, in which many were subdued, like the connecting passages of a prolonged poem, in order to enhance the value or meaning of others. the arrangement of the subjects in the arena chapel is in this respect peculiarly skilful; and to that arrangement we must now direct our attention. [illustration: interior of the arena chapel, padua, looking eastward.] it was before noticed that the chapel was built between and . the architecture of italy in the beginning of the fourteenth century is always pure, and often severe; but this chapel is remarkable, even among the severest forms, for the absence of decoration. its plan, seen in the marginal figure on p. , is a pure oblong, with a narrow advanced tribune, terminating in a trilateral apse. selvatico quotes from the german writer stieglitz some curious observations on the apparent derivation of its proportions, in common with those of other buildings of the time, from the number of sides of its apse. without entering into these particulars, it may be noted that the apse is just one-half the width of the body of the chapel, and that the length from the extremity of the tribune to the west end is just seven times the width of the apse. the whole of the body of the chapel was painted by giotto; the walls and roof being entirely covered either with his figure-designs, or with various subordinate decorations connecting and enclosing them. the woodcut on p. represents the arrangement of the frescoes on the sides, extremities, and roof of the chapel. the spectator is supposed to be looking from the western entrance towards the tribune, having on his right the south side, which is pierced by six tall windows, and on which the frescoes are therefore reduced in number. the north side is pierced by no windows, and on it therefore the frescoes are continuous, lighted from the south windows. the several spaces numbered to are occupied by a continuous series of subjects, representing the life of the virgin and of christ; the narrow panels below, marked _a_, _b_, _c_, &c., are filled by figures of the cardinal virtues and their opponent vices: on the lunette above the tribune is painted a christ in glory, and at the western extremity the last judgment. thus the walls of the chapel are covered with a continuous meditative poem on the mystery of the incarnation, the acts of redemption, the vices and virtues of mankind as proceeding from their scorn or acceptance of that redemption, and their final judgment. the first twelve pictures of the series are exclusively devoted to the apocryphal history of the birth and life of the virgin. this the protestant spectator will observe, perhaps, with little favour, more especially as only two compartments are given to the ministry of christ, between his baptism and entry into jerusalem. due weight is, however, to be allowed to lord lindsay's remark, that the legendary history of the virgin was of peculiar importance in this chapel, as especially dedicated to her service; and i think also that giotto desired to unite the series of compositions in one continuous action, feeling that to have enlarged on the separate miracles of christ's ministry would have interrupted the onward course of thought. as it is, the mind is led from the first humiliation of joachim to the ascension of christ in one unbroken and progressive chain of scenes; the ministry of christ being completely typified by his first and last conspicuous miracle: while the very unimportance of some of the subjects, as for instance that of the watching the rods, is useful in directing the spectator rather to pursue the course of the narrative, than to pause in satisfied meditation upon any single incident. and it can hardly be doubted that giotto had also a peculiar pleasure in dwelling on the circumstances of the shepherd life of the father of the virgin, owing to its resemblance to that of his own early years. the incidents represented in these first twelve paintings are recorded in the two apocryphal gospels known as the "protevangelion" and "gospel of st. mary."[ ] but on comparing the statements in these writings (which, by the by, are in nowise consistent with each other) with the paintings in the arena chapel, it appeared to me that giotto must occasionally have followed some more detailed traditions than are furnished by either of them; seeing that of one or two subjects the apocryphal gospels gave no distinct or sufficient explanation. fortunately, however, in the course of some other researches, i met with a manuscript in the british museum (harl. ,) containing a complete "history of the most holy family," written in northern italian of about the middle of the th century; and appearing to be one of the forms of the legend which giotto has occasionally followed in preference to the statements of the protevangelion. i have therefore, in illustration of the paintings, given, when it seemed useful, some portions of this manuscript; and these, with one or two verses of the commonly received accounts, will be found generally enough to interpret sufficiently the meaning of the painter. [footnote : it has always appeared strange to me, that ecclesiastical history should possess no more authentic records of the life of the virgin, before the period at which the narrative of st. luke commences, than these apocryphal gospels, which are as wretched in style as untrustworthy in matter; and are evidently nothing more than a collection, in rude imitation of the style of the evangelists, of such floating traditions as became current among the weak christians of the earlier ages, when their inquiries respecting the history of mary were met by the obscurity under which the divine will had veiled her humble person and character. there must always be something painful, to those who are familiar with the scriptures, in reading these feeble and foolish mockeries of the manner of the inspired writers; but it will be proper, nevertheless, to give the exact words in which the scenes represented by giotto were recorded to _him_.] the following complete list of the subjects will at once enable the reader to refer any of them to its place in the series, and on the walls of the building; and i have only now to remind him in conclusion, that within those walls the greatest painter and greatest poet of mediæval italy held happy companionship during the time when the frescoes were executed. "it is not difficult," says the writer already so often quoted, lord lindsay, "gazing on these silent but eloquent walls, to repeople them with the group once, as we know, five hundred years ago, assembled within them: giotto intent upon his work, his wife ciuta admiring his progress; and dante, with abstracted eye, alternately conversing with his friend, and watching the gambols of the children playing on the grass before the door." * * * * * series of subjects. . the rejection of joachim's offering. . joachim retires to the sheepfold. . the angel appears to anna. . the sacrifice of joachim. . the vision of joachim. . the meeting at the golden gate. . the birth of the virgin. . the presentation of the virgin. . the rods are brought to the high priest. . the watching of the rods. . the betrothal of the virgin. . the virgin returns to her house. . the angel gabriel. . the virgin annunciate. . the salutation. . the angel appearing to the shepherds. . the wise men's offering. . the presentation in the temple. . the flight into egypt. . the massacre of the innocents. . the young christ in the temple. . the baptism of christ. . the marriage in cana. . the raising of lazarus. . the entry into jerusalem. . the expulsion from the temple. . the hiring of judas. . the last supper. . the washing of the feet. . the kiss of judas. . christ before caiaphas. . the scourging of christ. . christ bearing his cross. . the crucifixion. . the entombment. . the resurrection. . the ascension. . the descent of the holy spirit. * * * * * i. the rejection of joachim's offering. "at that time, there was a man of perfect holiness, named joachim, of the tribe of juda, and of the city of jerusalem. and this joachim had in contempt the riches and honours of the world; and for greater despite to them, he kept his flocks, with his shepherds. "... and he, being so holy and just, divided the fruits which he received from his flocks into three parts: a third part--wool, and lambs, and such like--he gave to god, that is to say, to those who served god, and who ministered in the temple of god; another third part he gave to widows, orphans, and pilgrims; the remaining third he kept for himself and his family. and he persevering in this, god so multiplied and increased his goods that there was no man like him in the land of israel.... and having come to the age of twenty years, he took to wife anna, the daughter of ysaya, of his own tribe, and of the lineage of david. "this precious st. anna had always persevered in the service of god with great wisdom and sincerity; ... and having received joachim for her husband, was subject to him, and gave him honour and reverence, living in the fear of god. and joachim having lived with his wife anna for twenty years, yet having no child, and there being a great solemnity in jerusalem, all the men of the city went to offer in the temple of god, which solomon had built; and joachim entering the temple with (incense?) and other gifts to offer on the altar, and joachim having made his offering, the minister of the temple, whose name was issachar, threw joachim's offering from off the altar, and drove joachim out of the temple, saying, 'thou, joachim, art not worthy to enter into the temple, seeing that god has not added his blessing to you, as in your life you have had no seed.' thus joachim received a great insult in the sight of all the people; and he being all ashamed, returned to his house, weeping and lamenting most bitterly." (ms. harl.) the gospel of st. mary differs from this ms. in its statement of the respective cities of joachim and anna, saying that the family of the virgin's father "was of galilee and of the city of nazareth, the family of her mother was of bethlehem." it is less interesting in details; but gives a better, or at least more graceful, account of joachim's repulse, saying that issachar "despised joachim and his offerings, and asked him why he, who had no children, would presume to appear among those who had: adding, that his offerings could never be acceptable to god, since he had been judged by him unworthy to have children; the scripture having said, cursed is every one who shall not beget a male in israel." giotto seems to have followed this latter account, as the figure of the high priest is far from being either ignoble or ungentle. the temple is represented by the two most important portions of a byzantine church; namely, the ciborium which covered the altar, and the pulpit or reading desk; with the low screen in front of the altar enclosing the part of the church called the "cancellum." lord lindsay speaks of the priest within this enclosure as "confessing a young man who kneels at his feet." it seems to me, rather, that he is meant to be accepting the offering of another worshipper, so as to mark the rejection of joachim more distinctly. * * * * * ii. joachim retires to the sheepfold. "then joachim, in the following night, resolved to separate himself from companionship; to go to the desert places among the mountains, with his flocks; and to inhabit those mountains, in order not to hear such insults. and immediately joachim rose from his bed, and called about him all his servants and shepherds, and caused to be gathered together all his flocks, and goats, and horses, and oxen, and what other beasts he had, and went with them and with the shepherds into the hills; and anna his wife remained at home disconsolate, and mourning for her husband, who had departed from her in such sorrow." (ms. harl.) "but upon inquiry, he found that all the righteous had raised up seed in israel. then he called to mind the patriarch abraham,--how that god in the end of his life had given him his son isaac: upon which he was exceedingly distressed, and would not be seen by his wife; but retired into the wilderness and fixed his tent there, and fasted forty days and forty nights, saying to himself, 'i will not go down to eat or drink till the lord my god shall look down upon me; but prayer shall be my meat and drink.'" (protevangelion, chap. i.) giotto seems here also to have followed the ordinary tradition, as he has represented joachim retiring unattended,--but met by two of his shepherds, who are speaking to each other, uncertain what to do or how to receive their master. the dog hastens to meet him with joy. the figure of joachim is singularly beautiful in its pensiveness and slow motion; and the ignobleness of the herdsmen's figures is curiously marked in opposition to the dignity of their master. * * * * * iii. the angel appears to anna. "afterwards the angel appeared to anna his wife, saying, 'fear not, neither think that which you see is a spirit. for i am that angel who hath offered up your prayers and alms before god, and am now sent to tell you that a daughter will be born unto you.... arise, therefore, and go up to jerusalem; and when you shall come to that which is called the golden gate (because it is gilt with gold), as a sign of what i have told you, you shall meet your husband, for whose safety you have been so much concerned.'" (gospel of st. mary, chap. iii. - .) the accounts in the protevangelion and in the harleian ms. are much expanded: relating how anna feared her husband was dead, he having been absent from her five months; and how judith, her maid, taunted her with her childlessness; and how, going then into her garden, she saw a sparrow's nest, full of young, upon a laurel-tree, and mourning within herself, said, "i am not comparable to the very beasts of the earth, for even they are fruitful before thee, o lord.... i am not comparable to the very earth, for the earth produces its fruits to praise thee. then the angel of the lord stood by her," &c. both the protevangelion and harleian ms. agree in placing the vision in the garden; the latter adding, that she fled "into her chamber in great fear, and fell upon her bed, and lay as in a trance all that day and all that night, but did not tell the vision to her maid, because of her bitter answering." giotto has deviated from both accounts in making the vision appear to anna in her chamber, while the maid, evidently being considered an important personage, is at work in the passage. apart from all reference to the legends, there is something peculiarly beautiful in the simplicity of giotto's conception, and in the way in which he has shown the angel entering at the window, without the least endeavour to impress our imagination by darkness, or light, or clouds, or any other accessory; as though believing that angels might appear any where, and any day, and to all men, as a matter of course, if we would ask them, or were fit company for them. * * * * * iv. the sacrifice of joachim. the account of this sacrifice is only given clearly in the harleian ms.; but even this differs from giotto's series in the order of the visions, as the subject of the _next_ plate is recorded first in this ms., under the curious heading, "_disse sancto theofilo_ como l'angelo de dio aperse a joachim lo qual li anuntia la nativita della vergene maria;" while the record of this vision and sacrifice is headed, "como l'angelo de dio aparse _anchora_ a joachim." it then proceeds thus: "at this very moment of the day" (when the angel appeared to anna), "there appeared a most beautiful youth (_unno belitissimo zovene_) among the mountains there, where joachim was, and said to joachim, 'wherefore dost thou not return to thy wife?' and joachim answered, 'these twenty years god has given me no fruit of her, wherefore i was chased from the temple with infinite shame.... and, as long as i live, i will give alms of my flocks to widows and pilgrims.'... and these words being finished, the youth answered, 'i am the angel of god who appeared to thee the other time for a sign; and appeared to thy wife anna, who always abides in prayer, weeping day and night; and i have consoled her; wherefore i command thee to observe the commandments of god, and his will, which i tell you truly, that of thee shall be born a daughter, and that thou shalt offer her to the temple of god, and the holy spirit shall rest upon her, and her blessedness shall be above the blessedness of all virgins, and her holiness so great that human nature will not be able to comprehend it.'...[ ] [footnote : this passage in the old italian of the ms. may interest some readers: "e complice queste parole lo zovene respoxe, dignando, io son l'angelo de dio, lo quale si te aparse l'altra fiada, in segno, e aparse a toa mulier anna che sempre sta in oration plauzando di e note, e si lo consolada; unde io te comando che tu debie observare li comandimenti de dio, ela soua volunta che io te dico veramente, che de la toa somenza insera una fiola, e questa offrila al templo de dio, e lo spirito santo reposera in ley, ela soa beatitudine sera sovera tute le altre verzene, ela soua santita sera si grande che natura humana non la pora comprendere."] "then joachim fell upon the earth, saying, 'my lord, i pray thee to pray god for me, and to enter into this my tabernacle, and bless me, thy servant.' the angel answered, 'we are all the servants of god: and know that my eating would be invisible, and my drinking could not be seen by all the men in the world; but of all that thou wouldest give to me, do thou make sacrifice to god.' then joachim took a lamb without spot or blemish ...; and when he had made sacrifice of it, the angel of the lord disappeared and ascended into heaven; and joachim fell upon the earth in great fear, and lay from the sixth hour until the evening." this is evidently nothing more than a very vapid imitation of the scriptural narrative of the appearances of angels to abraham and manoah. but giotto has put life into it; and i am aware of no other composition in which so much interest and awe has been given to the literal "burnt sacrifice." in all other representations of such offerings which i remember, the interest is concentrated in the _slaying_ of the victim. but giotto has fastened on the _burning_ of it; showing the white skeleton left on the altar, and the fire still hurtling up round it, typical of the divine wrath, which is "as a consuming fire;" and thus rendering the sacrifice a more clear and fearful type not merely of the outward wounds and death of christ, but of his soul-suffering. "all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels."[ ] [footnote : (note by a friend):--"to me the most striking part of it is, that the skeleton is _entire_ ('a bone of him shall not be broken'), and that the head stands up still looking to the skies: is it too fanciful to see a meaning in this?"] the hand of the deity is seen in the heavens--the sign of the divine presence. * * * * * v. the angel (raphael) appears to joachim. "now joachim being in this pain, the lord god, father of mercy, who abandons not his servants, nor ever fails to console them in their distresses, if they pray for his grace and pity, had compassion on joachim, and heard his prayer, and sent the angel raphael from heaven to earth to console him, and announce to him the nativity of the virgin mary. therefore the angel raphael appeared to joachim, and comforted him with much peace, and foretold to him the birth of the virgin in that glory and gladness, saying, 'god save you, o friend of god, o joachim! the lord has sent me to declare to you an everlasting joy, and a hope that shall have no end.'... and having finished these words, the angel of the lord disappeared from him, and ascended into the heaven." (ms. harl.) the passage which i have omitted is merely one of the ordinary romanist accounts of the immaculate conception of the virgin, put into the form of prophecy. there are no sufficient details of this part of the legend either in the protevangelion or gospel of st. mary; but it is quite clear that giotto followed it, and that he has endeavoured to mark a distinction in character between the angels gabriel and raphael[ ] in the two subjects,--the form of raphael melting back into the heaven, and being distinctly recognised as angelic, while gabriel appears invested with perfect humanity. it is interesting to observe that the shepherds, who of course are not supposed to see the form of the angel (his manifestation being only granted to joachim during his sleep), are yet evidently under the influence of a certain degree of awe and expectation, as being conscious of some presence other than they can perceive, while the animals are unconscious altogether. [footnote : the ms. makes the angel raphael the only messenger. giotto clearly adopts the figure of gabriel from the protevangelion.] * * * * * vi. the meeting at the golden gate. "and joachim went down with the shepherds, and anna stood by the gate, and saw joachim coming with the shepherds. and she ran, and hanging about his neck, said, 'now i know that the lord hath greatly blessed me.'" (protevangelion, iv. , .) this is one of the most celebrated of giotto's compositions, and deservedly so, being full of the most solemn grace and tenderness. the face of st. anna, half seen, is most touching in its depth of expression; and it is very interesting to observe how giotto has enhanced its sweetness, by giving a harder and grosser character than is usual with him to the heads of the other two principal female figures (not but that this cast of feature is found frequently in the figures of somewhat earlier art), and by the rough and weather-beaten countenance of the entering shepherd. in like manner, the falling lines of the draperies owe a great part of their value to the abrupt and ugly oblongs of the horizontal masonry which adjoins them. * * * * * vii. the birth of the virgin. "and joachim said, 'now i know that the lord is propitious to me, and hath taken away all my sins.' and he went down from the temple of the lord justified, and went to his own house. "and when nine months were fulfilled to anna, she brought forth, and said to the midwife, 'what have i brought forth?' and she told her, a girl. "then anna said, 'the lord hath this day magnified my soul.' and she laid her in the bed." (protevangelion, v. - .) the composition is very characteristic of giotto in two respects: first, in its natural homeliness and simplicity (in older designs of the same subject the little madonna is represented as born with a golden crown on her head); and secondly, in the smallness of the breast and head of the sitting figure on the right,--a fault of proportion often observable in giotto's figures of children or young girls. for the first time, also, in this series, we have here two successive periods of the scene represented simultaneously, the babe being painted twice. this practice was frequent among the early painters, and must necessarily become so wherever painting undertakes the task of lengthened narrative. much absurd discussion has taken place respecting its propriety; the whole question being simply whether the human mind can or cannot pass from the contemplation of one event to that of another, without reposing itself on an intermediate gilt frame. * * * * * viii. the presentation of the virgin. "and when three years were expired, and the time of her weaning complete, they brought the virgin to the temple of the lord with offerings. "and there were about the temple, according to the fifteen psalms of degrees, fifteen stairs to ascend. "the parents of the blessed virgin and infant mary put her upon one of these stairs; but while they were putting off their clothes in which they had travelled, in the meantime, the virgin of the lord in such a manner went up all the stairs, one after another, without the help of any one to lead her or lift her, that any one would have judged from hence that she was of perfect age." (gospel of st. mary, iv. - .) there seems nothing very miraculous in a child's walking up stairs at three years old; but this incident is a favourite one among the roman-catholic painters of every period: generally, however, representing the child as older than in the legend, and dwelling rather on the solemn feeling with which she presents herself to the high-priest, than on the mere fact of her being able to walk alone. giotto has clearly regarded the incident entirely in this light; for st. anna touches the child's arm as if to support her; so that the so-called miraculous walking is not even hinted at. lord lindsay particularly notices that the virgin is "a dwarf woman instead of a child; the delineation of childhood was one of the latest triumphs of art." even in the time of those latest triumphs, however, the same fault was committed in another way; and a boy of eight or ten was commonly represented--even by raffaelle himself--as a dwarf hercules, with all the gladiatorial muscles already visible in stunted rotundity. giotto probably felt he had not power enough to give dignity to a child of three years old, and intended the womanly form to be rather typical of the virgin's advanced mind, than an actual representation of her person. * * * * * ix. the rods are brought to the high-priest. "then he (the high-priest) appointed that all the men of the house and family of david who were marriageable, and not married, should bring their several rods to the altar. and out of whatsoever person's rod, after it was brought, a flower should bud forth, and on the top of it the spirit of the lord should sit in the appearance of a dove, he should be the man to whom the virgin should be given, and be betrothed to her." (gospel of st. mary, v. , .) there has originally been very little interest in this composition; and the injuries which it has suffered have rendered it impossible for the draughtsman to distinguish the true folds of the draperies amidst the defaced and worn colours of the fresco, so that the character of the central figure is lost. the only points requiring notice are, first, the manner in which st. joseph holds his rod, depressing and half-concealing it,[ ] while the other suitors present theirs boldly; and secondly, the graceful though monotonous grouping of the heads of the crowd behind him. this mode of rendering the presence of a large multitude, showing only the crowns of the heads in complicated perspective, was long practised in mosaics and illuminations before the time of giotto, and always possesses a certain degree of sublimity in its power of suggesting perfect unity of feeling and movement among the crowd. [footnote : in the next chapter, it is said that "joseph drew back his rod when every one else presented his."] * * * * * x. the watching of the rods at the altar. "after the high-priest had received their rods, he went into the temple to pray. "and when he had finished his prayer, he took the rods and went forth and distributed them; and there was no miracle attended them. "the last rod was taken by joseph; and, behold, a dove proceeded out of the rod, and flew upon the head of joseph." (protevangelion, viii. - .) this is among the least graceful designs of the series; though the clumsiness in the contours of the leading figures is indeed a fault which often occurs in the painter's best works, but it is here unredeemed by the rest of the composition. the group of the suitors, however, represented as waiting at the outside of the temple, is very beautiful in its earnestness, more especially in the passionate expression of the figure in front. it is difficult to look long at the picture without feeling a degree of anxiety, and strong sympathy with the silent watching of the suitors; and this is a sign of no small power in the work. the head of joseph is seen far back on the extreme left; thus indicating by its position his humility, and desire to withdraw from the trial. * * * * * xi. the betrothal of the virgin. there is no distinct notice of this event in the apocryphal gospel: the traditional representation of it is nearly always more or less similar. lord lindsay's account of the composition before us is as follows: "the high-priest, standing in front of the altar, joins their hands; behind the virgin stand her bridesmaids; behind st. joseph the unsuccessful suitors, one of whom steps forward to strike him, and another breaks his rod on his knee. joseph bears his own rod, on the flower of which the holy spirit rests in the semblance of a dove." the development of this subject by perugino (for raffaelle's picture in the brera is little more than a modified copy of perugino's, now at caen,) is well known; but notwithstanding all its beauty, there is not, i think, any thing in the action of the disappointed suitors so perfectly true or touching as that of the youth breaking his rod in this composition of giotto's; nor is there among any of the figures the expression of solemn earnestness and intentness on the event which is marked among the attendants here, and in the countenances of the officiating priests. * * * * * xii. the virgin mary returns to her house. "accordingly, the usual ceremonies of betrothing being over, he (joseph) returned to his own city of bethlehem to set his house in order, and to make the needful provisions for the marriage. but the virgin of the lord, mary, with seven other virgins of the same age, who had been weaned at the same time, and who had been appointed to attend her by the priest, returned to her parents' house in galilee." (gospel of st. mary, vi. , .) of all the compositions in the arena chapel i think this the most characteristic of the noble time in which it was done. it is not so notable as exhibiting the mind of giotto, which is perhaps more fully seen in subjects representing varied emotion, as in the simplicity and repose which were peculiar to the compositions of the early fourteenth century. in order to judge of it fairly, it ought first to be compared with any classical composition--with a portion, for instance, of the elgin frieze,--which would instantly make manifest in it a strange seriousness and dignity and slowness of motion, resulting chiefly from the excessive simplicity of all its terminal lines. observe, for instance, the pure wave from the back of the virgin's head to the ground; and again, the delicate swelling line along her shoulder and left arm, opposed to the nearly unbroken fall of the drapery of the figure in front. it should then be compared with an egyptian or ninevite series of figures, which, by contrast, would bring out its perfect sweetness and grace, as well as its variety of expression: finally, it should be compared with any composition subsequent to the time of raffaelle, in order to feel its noble freedom from pictorial artifice and attitude. these three comparisons cannot be made carefully without a sense of profound reverence for the national spirit[ ] which could produce a design so majestic, and yet remain content with one so simple. [footnote : _national_, because giotto's works are properly to be looked on as the _fruit_ of their own age, and the _food_ of that which followed.] the small _loggia_ of the virgin's house is noticeable, as being different from the architecture introduced in the other pictures, and more accurately representing the italian gothic of the dwelling-house of the period. the arches of the windows have no capitals; but this omission is either to save time, or to prevent the background from becoming too conspicuous. all the real buildings designed by giotto have the capital completely developed. * * * * * xiii. the annunciation.--the angel gabriel. this figure is placed on one side of the arch at the east end of the body of the chapel; the corresponding figure of the virgin being set on the other side. it was a constant practice of the mediæval artists thus to divide this subject; which, indeed, was so often painted, that the meaning of the separated figures of the angel and mary was as well understood as when they were seen in juxtaposition. indeed, on the two sides of this arch they would hardly be considered as separated, since very frequently they were set to answer to each other from the opposite extremities of a large space of architecture.[ ] [footnote : as, for instance, on the two opposite angles of the façade of the cathedral of rheims.] the figure of the angel is notable chiefly for its serenity, as opposed to the later conceptions of the scene, in which he sails into the chamber upon the wing, like a stooping falcon. the building above is more developed than in any other of the arena paintings; but it must always remain a matter of question, why so exquisite a designer of architecture as giotto should introduce forms so harsh and meagre into his backgrounds. possibly he felt that the very faults of the architecture enhanced the grace and increased the importance of the figures; at least, the proceeding seems to me inexplicable on any other theory.[ ] [footnote : (note by a friend:) "i suppose you will not admit as an explanation, that he had not yet turned his mind to architectural composition, the campanile being some thirty years later?"] * * * * * xiv. the annunciation.--the virgin mary. vasari, in his notice of one of giotto's annunciations, praises him for having justly rendered the _fear_ of the virgin at the address of the angel. if he ever treated the subject in such a manner, he departed from all the traditions of his time; for i am aware of no painting of this scene, during the course of the thirteenth and following centuries, which does not represent the virgin as perfectly tranquil, receiving the message of the angel in solemn thought and gentle humility, but without a shadow of fear. it was reserved for the painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to change angelic majesty into reckless impetuosity, and maiden meditation into panic dread. the face of the virgin is slightly disappointing. giotto never reached a very high standard of beauty in feature; depending much on distant effect in all his works, and therefore more on general arrangement of colour and sincerity of gesture, than on refinement of drawing in the countenance. * * * * * xv. the salutation. this picture, placed beneath the figure of the virgin annunciate at the east end of the chapel, and necessarily small, (as will be seen by the plan), in consequence of the space occupied by the arch which it flanks, begins the second or lower series of frescoes; being, at the same time, the first of the great chain of more familiar subjects, in which we have the power of comparing the conceptions of giotto not only with the designs of earlier ages, but with the efforts which subsequent masters have made to exalt or vary the ideas of the principal scenes in the life of the virgin and of christ. the two paintings of the angel gabriel and the virgin annunciate hardly provoke such a comparison, being almost statue-like in the calm subjection of all dramatic interest to the symmetrical dignity and beauty of the two figures, leading, as they do, the whole system of the decoration of the chapel; but this of the salutation is treated with no such reference to the architecture, and at once challenges comparison with the works of later masters. nor is the challenge feebly maintained. i have no hesitation in saying, that, among all the renderings of this scene which now exist, i remember none which gives the pure depth and plain facts of it so perfectly as this of giotto's. of majestic women bowing themselves to beautiful and meek girls, both wearing gorgeous robes, in the midst of lovely scenery, or at the doors of palladian palaces, we have enough; but i do not know any picture which seems to me to give so truthful an idea of the action with which elizabeth and mary must actually have met,--which gives so exactly the way in which elizabeth would stretch her arms, and stoop and gaze into mary's face, and the way in which mary's hand would slip beneath elizabeth's arms, and raise her up to kiss her. i know not any elizabeth so full of intense love, and joy, and humbleness; hardly any madonna in which tenderness and dignity are so quietly blended. she not less humble, and yet accepting the reverence of elizabeth as her appointed portion, saying, in her simplicity and truth, "he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his name." the longer that this group is looked upon, the more it will be felt that giotto has done well to withdraw from it nearly all accessories of landscape and adornment, and to trust it to the power of its own deep expression. we may gaze upon the two silent figures until their silence seems to be broken, and the words of the question and reply sound in our ears, low as if from far away: "whence is this to me, that the mother of my lord should come to me?" "my soul doth magnify the lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in god my saviour." * * * * * xvi. the nativity. i am not sure whether i shall do well or kindly in telling the reader anything about this beautiful design. perhaps the less he knows about early art or early traditions, the more deeply he will feel its purity and truth; for there is scarcely an incident here, or anything in the manner of representing the incidents, which is not mentioned or justified in scripture. the bold, hilly background reminds us that bethlehem was in the hill-country of judah. but it may seem to have two purposes besides this literal one: the first, that it increases the idea of _exposure_ and loneliness in the birth of christ; the second that the masses of the great hills, with the angels floating round them in the horizontal clouds, may in some sort represent to our thoughts the power and space of that heaven and earth whose lord is being laid in the manger-cradle. there is an exquisite truth and sweetness in the way the virgin turns upon the couch, in order herself to assist in laying the child down. giotto is in this exactly faithful to the scriptural words: "_she_ wrapped the child in swaddling-clothes, and _laid_ him in a manger." joseph sits beneath in meditation; above, the angels, all exulting, and, as it were, confused with joy, flutter and circle in the air like birds,--three looking up to the father's throne with praise and thankfulness, one stooping to adore the prince of peace, one flying to tell the shepherds. there is something to me peculiarly affecting in this disorder of theirs; even angels, as it were, breaking their ranks with wonder, and not knowing how to utter their gladness and passion of praise. there is noticeable here, as in all works of this early time, a certain confidence in the way in which the angels trust to their wings, very characteristic of a period of bold and simple conception. modern science has taught us that a wing cannot be anatomically joined to a shoulder; and in proportion as painters approach more and more to the scientific, as distinguished from the contemplative state of mind, they put the wings of their angels on more timidly, and dwell with greater emphasis upon the human form, and with less upon the wings, until these last become a species of decorative appendage,--a mere _sign_ of an angel. but in giotto's time an angel was a complete creature, as much believed in as a bird; and the way in which it would or might cast itself into the air, and lean hither and thither upon its plumes, was as naturally apprehended as the manner of flight of a chough or a starling. hence dante's simple and most exquisite synonym for angel, "bird of god;" and hence also a variety and picturesqueness in the expression of the movements of the heavenly hierarchies by the earlier painters, ill replaced by the powers of foreshortening, and throwing naked limbs into fantastic positions, which appear in the cherubic groups of later times. it is needless to point out the frank association of the two events,--the nativity, and appearance of the angel to the shepherds. they are constantly thus joined; but i do not remember any other example in which they are joined so boldly. usually the shepherds are seen in the distance, or are introduced in some ornamental border, or other inferior place. the view of painting as a mode of suggesting relative or consecutive thoughts, rather than a realisation of any one scene, is seldom so fearlessly asserted, even by giotto, as here, in placing the flocks of the shepherds at the foot of the virgin's bed. this bed, it will be noticed, is on a shelf of rock. this is in compliance with the idea founded on the protevangelion and the apocryphal book known as the gospel of infancy, that our saviour was born in a cave, associated with the scriptural statement that he was laid in a manger, of which the apocryphal gospels do not speak. the vain endeavour to exalt the awe of the moment of the saviour's birth has turned, in these gospels, the outhouse of the inn into a species of subterranean chapel, full of incense and candles. "it was after sunset, when the old woman (the midwife), and joseph with her, reached the cave; and they both went into it. and behold, it was all filled with light, greater than the light of lamps and candles, and greater than the light of the sun itself." (infancy, i. .) "then a bright cloud overshadowed the cave, and the midwife said: this day my soul is magnified." (protevangelion, xiv. .) the thirteenth chapter of the protevangelion is, however, a little more skilful in this attempt at exaltation. "and leaving her and his sons in the cave, joseph went forth to seek a hebrew midwife in the village of bethlehem. but as i was going, said joseph, i looked up into the air, and i saw the clouds astonished, and the fowls of the air stopping in the midst of their flight. and i looked down towards the earth and saw a table spread, and working-people sitting around it; but their hands were on the table, and they did not move to eat. but all their faces were fixed upwards." (protevangelion, xiii. - .) it would, of course, be absurd to endeavour to institute any comparison between the various pictures of this subject, innumerable as they are; but i must at least deprecate lord lindsay's characterising this design of giotto's merely as the "byzantine composition." it contains, indeed, nothing more than the materials of the byzantine composition; but i know no byzantine nativity which at all resembles it in the grace and life of its action. and, for full a century after giotto's time, in northern europe, the nativity was represented in a far more conventional manner than this; usually only the heads of the ox and ass are seen, and they are arranging, or holding with their mouths, the drapery of the couch of the child; who is not being laid in it by the virgin, but raised upon a kind of tablet high above her in the centre of the group. all these early designs, without exception, however, agree in expressing a certain degree of languor in the figure of the virgin, and in making her recumbent on the bed. it is not till the fifteenth century that she is represented as exempt from suffering, and immediately kneeling in adoration before the child. * * * * * xvii. the wise men's offering. this is a subject which has been so great a favourite with the painters of later periods, and on which so much rich incidental invention has been lavished, that giotto's rendering of it cannot but be felt to be barren. it is, in fact, perhaps the least powerful of all the series; and its effect is further marred by what lord lindsay has partly noted, the appearance--perhaps accidental, but if so, exceedingly unskilful--of matronly corpulence in the figure of the madonna. the unfortunate failure in the representation of the legs and chests of the camels, and the awkwardness of the attempt to render the action of kneeling in the foremost king, put the whole composition into the class--not in itself an uninteresting one--of the slips or shortcomings of great masters. one incident in it only is worth observing. in other compositions of this time, and in many later ones, the kings are generally presenting their offerings themselves, and the child takes them in his hand, or smiles at them. the painters who thought this an undignified conception left the presents in the hands of the attendants of the magi. but giotto considers how presents would be received by an actual king; and as what has been offered to a monarch is delivered to the care of his attendants, giotto puts a waiting angel to receive the gifts, as not worthy to be placed in the hands of the infant. * * * * * xviii. the presentation in the temple. this design is one of those which are peculiarly characteristic of giotto as the head of the naturalisti.[ ] no painter before his time would have dared to represent the child jesus as desiring to quit the arms of simeon, or the virgin as in some sort interfering with the prophet's earnest contemplation of the child by stretching her arms to receive him. the idea is evidently a false one, quite unworthy of the higher painters of the religious school; and it is a matter of peculiar interest to see what must have been the strength of giotto's love of plain facts, which could force him to stoop so low in the conception of this most touching scene. the child does not, it will be observed, merely stretch its arm to the madonna, but is even struggling to escape, violently raising the left foot. but there is another incident in the composition, witnessing as notably to giotto's powerful grasp of all the facts of his subject as this does to his somewhat hard and plain manner of grasping them;--i mean the angel approaching simeon, as if with a message. the peculiar interest of the presentation is for the most part inadequately represented in painting, because it is impossible to imply the fact of simeon's having waited so long in the hope of beholding his lord, or to inform the spectator of the feeling in which he utters the song of hope fulfilled. giotto has, it seems to me, done all that he could to make us remember this peculiar meaning of the scene; for i think i cannot be deceived in interpreting the flying angel, with its branch of palm or lily, to be the angel of death, sent in visible fulfilment of the thankful words of simeon: "lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." the figure of anna is poor and uninteresting; that of the attendant, on the extreme left, very beautiful, both in its drapery and in the severe and elevated character of the features and head-dress. [footnote : see account of his principles above, p. , head c.] * * * * * xix. the flight into egypt. giotto again shows, in his treatment of this subject, a juster understanding of the probable facts than most other painters. it becomes the almost universal habit of later artists to regard the flight as both sudden and secret, undertaken by joseph and mary, unattended, in the dawn of the morning, or "by night," so soon as joseph had awaked from sleep. (matt. ii. .) without a continuous miracle, which it is unnecessary in this case to suppose, such a lonely journey would have been nearly impracticable. nor was instant flight necessary; for herod's order for the massacre could not be issued until he had been convinced, by the protracted absence of the wise men, that he was "mocked of them." in all probability the exact nature and extent of the danger was revealed to joseph; and he would make the necessary preparations for his journey with such speed as he could, and depart "by night" indeed, but not in the instant of awakening from his dream. the ordinary impression seems to have been received from the words of the gospel of infancy: "go into egypt _as soon as the cock crows_." and the interest of the flight is rendered more thrilling, in late compositions, by the introduction of armed pursuers. giotto has given a far more quiet, deliberate, and probable character to the whole scene, while he has fully marked the fact of divine protection and command in the figure of the guiding angel. nor is the picture less interesting in its marked expression of the night. the figures are all distinctly seen, and there is no broad distribution of the gloom; but the vigorous blackness of the dress of the attendant who holds the bridle, and the scattered glitter of the lights on the madonna's robe, are enough to produce the required effect on the mind. the figure of the virgin is singularly dignified: the broad and severe curves traced by the hem and deepest folds of her dress materially conducing to the nobleness of the group. the child is partly sustained by a band fastened round the madonna's neck. the quaint and delicate pattern on this band, together with that of the embroidered edges of the dress, is of great value in opposing and making more manifest the severe and grave outlines of the whole figure, whose impressiveness is also partly increased by the rise of the mountain just above it, like a tent. a vulgar composer would have moved this peak to the right or left, and lost its power. this mountain background is also of great use in deepening the sense of gloom and danger on the desert road. the trees represented as growing on the heights have probably been rendered indistinct by time. in early manuscripts such portions are invariably those which suffer most; the green (on which the leaves were once drawn with dark colours) mouldering away, and the lines of drawing with it. but even in what is here left there is noticeable more careful study of the distinction between the trees with thick spreading foliage, the group of two with light branches and few leaves, and the tree stripped and dead at the bottom of the ravine, than an historical painter would now think it consistent with his dignity to bestow. * * * * * xx. massacre of the innocents. of all the series, this composition is the one which exhibits most of giotto's weaknesses. all early work is apt to fail in the rendering of violent action: but giotto is, in this instance, inferior not only to his successors, but to the feeblest of the miniature-painters of the thirteenth century; while his imperfect drawing is seen at its worst in the nude figures of the children. it is, in fact, almost impossible to understand how any italian, familiar with the eager gesticulations of the lower orders of his countrywomen on the smallest points of dispute with each other, should have been incapable of giving more adequate expression of true action and passion to the group of mothers; and, if i were not afraid of being accused of special pleading, i might insist at some length on a dim faith of my own, that giotto thought the actual agony and strivings of the probable scene unfit for pictorial treatment, or for common contemplation; and that he chose rather to give motionless types and personifications of the soldiers and women, than to use his strength and realistic faculty in bringing before the vulgar eye the unseemly struggle or unspeakable pain. the formal arrangement of the heap of corpses in the centre of the group; the crowded standing of the mothers, as in a choir of sorrow; the actual presence of herod, to whom some of them appear to be appealing,--all seem to me to mark this intention; and to make the composition only a symbol or shadow of the great deed of massacre, not a realisation of its visible continuance at any moment. i will not press this conjecture; but will only add, that if it be so, i think giotto was perfectly right; and that a picture thus conceived might have been deeply impressive, had it been more successfully executed; and a calmer, more continuous, comfortless grief expressed in the countenances of the women. far better thus, than with the horrible analysis of agony, and detail of despair, with which this same scene, one which ought never to have been made the subject of painting at all, has been gloated over by artists of more degraded times. * * * * * xxi. the young christ in the temple. this composition has suffered so grievously by time, that even the portions of it which remain are seen to the greatest disadvantage. little more than various conditions of scar and stain can be now traced, where were once the draperies of the figures in the shade, and the suspended garland and arches on the right hand of the spectator; and in endeavouring not to represent more than there is authority for, the draughtsman and engraver have necessarily produced a less satisfactory plate than most others of the series. but giotto has also himself fallen considerably below his usual standard. the faces appear to be cold and hard; and the attitudes are as little graceful as expressive either of attention or surprise. the madonna's action, stretching her arms to embrace her son, is pretty; but, on the whole, the picture has no value; and this is the more remarkable, as there were fewer precedents of treatment in this case than in any of the others; and it might have been anticipated that giotto would have put himself to some pains when the field of thought was comparatively new. the subject of christ teaching in the temple rarely occurs in manuscripts; but all the others were perpetually repeated in the service-books of the period. * * * * * [illustration] xxii. the baptism of christ. this is a more interesting work than the last; but it is also gravely and strangely deficient in power of entering into the subject; and this, i think, is common with nearly all efforts that have hitherto been made at its representation. i have never seen a picture of the baptism, by any painter whatever, which was not below the average power of the painter; and in this conception of giotto's, the humility of st. john is entirely unexpressed, and the gesture of christ has hardly any meaning: it neither is in harmony with the words, "suffer it to be so now," which must have been uttered before the moment of actual baptism, nor does it in the slightest degree indicate the sense in the redeemer of now entering upon the great work of his ministry. in the earlier representations of the subject, the humility of st. john is never lost sight of; there will be seen, for instance, an effort at expressing it by the slightly stooping attitude and bent knee, even in the very rude design given in outline on the opposite page. i have thought it worth while to set before the reader in this outline one example of the sort of traditional representations which were current throughout christendom before giotto arose. this instance is taken from a large choir-book, probably of french, certainly of northern execution, towards the close of the thirteenth century;[ ] and it is a very fair average example of the manner of design in the illuminated work of the period. the introduction of the scroll, with the legend, "this is my beloved son," is both more true to the scriptural words, "lo, a voice from heaven," and more reverent, than giotto's introduction of the visible figure, as a type of the first person of the trinity. the boldness with which this type is introduced increases precisely as the religious sentiment of art decreases; in the fifteenth century it becomes utterly revolting. [footnote : the exact date, , is given in the title-page of the volume.] i have given this woodcut for another reason also: to explain more clearly the mode in which giotto deduced the strange form which he has given to the stream of the jordan. in the earlier northern works it is merely a green wave, rising to the saviour's waist, as seen in the woodcut. giotto, for the sake of getting standing-ground for his figures, gives _shores_ to this wave, retaining its swelling form in the centre,--a very painful and unsuccessful attempt at reconciling typical drawing with laws of perspective. or perhaps it is less to be regarded as an effort at progress, than as an awkward combination of the eastern and western types of the jordan. in the difference between these types there is matter of some interest. lord lindsay, who merely characterises this work of giotto's as "the byzantine composition," thus describes the usual byzantine manner of representing the baptism: "the saviour stands immersed to the middle in jordan (_flowing between two deep and rocky banks_), on one of which stands st. john, pouring the water on his head, and on the other two angels hold his robes. the holy spirit descends upon him as a dove, in a stream of light, from god the father, usually represented by a hand from heaven. two of john's disciples stand behind him as spectators. frequently _the river-god of jordan_ reclines with his oars in the corner.... in the baptistery at ravenna, the rope is supported, not by an angel, but by the river-deity _jordann_ (iordanes?), who holds in his left hand a reed as his sceptre." now in this mode of representing rivers there is something more than the mere pagan tradition lingering through the wrecks of the eastern empire. a river, in the east and south, is necessarily recognised more distinctly as a beneficent power than in the west and north. the narrowest and feeblest stream is felt to have an influence on the life of mankind; and is counted among the possessions, or honoured among the deities, of the people who dwell beside it. hence the importance given, in the byzantine compositions, to the name and specialty of the jordan stream. in the north such peculiar definiteness and importance can never be attached to the name of any single fountain. water, in its various forms of streamlet, rain, or river, is felt as an universal gift of heaven, not as an inheritance of a particular spot of earth. hence, with the gothic artists generally, the personality of the jordan is lost in the green and nameless wave; and the simple rite of the baptism is dwelt upon, without endeavouring, as giotto has done, to draw the attention to the rocky shores of bethabara and Ænon, or to the fact that "there was much water there." * * * * * xxiii. the marriage in cana. it is strange that the sweet significance of this first of the miracles should have been lost sight of by nearly all artists after giotto; and that no effort was made by them to conceive the circumstances of it in simplicity. the poverty of the family in which the marriage took place,--proved sufficiently by the fact that a carpenter's wife not only was asked as a chief guest, but even had authority over the servants,--is shown further to have been distressful, or at least embarrassed, poverty by their want of wine on such an occasion. it was not certainly to remedy an accident of careless provision, but to supply a need sorrowfully betraying the narrow circumstances of his hosts, that our lord wrought the beginning of miracles. many mystic meanings have been sought in the act, which, though there is no need to deny, there is little evidence to certify: but we may joyfully accept, as its first indisputable meaning, that of simple kindness; the wine being provided here, when needed, as the bread and fish were afterwards for the hungry multitudes. the whole value of the miracle, in its serviceable tenderness, is at once effaced when the marriage is supposed, as by veronese and other artists of later times, to have taken place at the house of a rich man. for the rest, giotto sufficiently implies, by the lifted hand of the madonna, and the action of the fingers of the bridegroom, as if they held sacramental bread, that there lay a deeper meaning under the miracle for those who could accept it. how all miracle _is_ accepted by common humanity, he has also shown in the figure of the ruler of the feast, drinking. this unregarding forgetfulness of present spiritual power is similarly marked by veronese, by placing the figure of a fool with his bauble immediately underneath that of christ, and by making a cat play with her shadow in one of the wine-vases. it is to be remembered, however, in examining all pictures of this subject, that the miracle was not made manifest to all the guests;--to none indeed, seemingly, except christ's own disciples: the ruler of the feast, and probably most of those present (except the servants who drew the water), knew or observed nothing of what was passing, and merely thought the good wine had been "kept until now." * * * * * xxiv. the raising of lazarus. in consequence of the intermediate position which giotto occupies between the byzantine and naturalist schools, two relations of treatment are to be generally noted in his work. as compared with the byzantines, he is a realist, whose power consists in the introduction of living character and various incidents, modifying the formerly received byzantine symbols. so far as he has to do this, he is a realist of the purest kind, endeavoring always to conceive events precisely as they were likely to have happened; not to idealise them into forms artfully impressive to the spectator. but in so far as he was compelled to retain, or did not wish to reject, the figurative character of the byzantine symbols, he stands opposed to succeeding realists, in the quantity of meaning which probably lies hidden in any composition, as well as in the simplicity with which he will probably treat it, in order to enforce or guide to this meaning: the figures being often letters of a hieroglyphic, which he will not multiply, lest he should lose in force of suggestion what he gained in dramatic interest. none of the compositions display more clearly this typical and reflective character than that of the raising of lazarus. later designers dwell on vulgar conditions of wonder or horror, such as they could conceive likely to attend the resuscitation of a corpse; but with giotto the physical reanimation is the type of a spiritual one, and, though shown to be miraculous, is yet in all its deeper aspects unperturbed, and calm in awfulness. it is also visibly gradual. "his face was bound about with a napkin." the nearest apostle has withdrawn the covering from the face, and looks for the command which shall restore it from wasted corruption, and sealed blindness, to living power and light. nor is it, i believe, without meaning, that the two apostles, if indeed they are intended for apostles, who stand at lazarus' side, wear a different dress from those who follow christ. i suppose them to be intended for images of the christian and jewish churches in their ministration to the dead soul: the one removing its bonds, but looking to christ for the word and power of life; the other inactive and helpless--the veil upon its face--in dread; while the principal figure fulfils the order it receives in fearless simplicity. * * * * * xxv. the entry into jerusalem. this design suffers much from loss of colour in translation. its decorative effect depends on the deep blue ground, relieving the delicate foliage and the local colours of dresses and architecture. it is also one of those which are most directly opposed to modern feeling: the sympathy of the spectator with the passion of the crowd being somewhat rudely checked by the grotesque action of two of the foremost figures. we ought, however, rather to envy the deep seriousness which could not be moved from dwelling on the real power of the scene by any ungracefulness or familiarity of circumstance. among men whose minds are rightly toned, nothing is ludicrous: it must, if an act, be either right or wrong, noble or base; if a thing seen, it must either be ugly or beautiful: and what is either wrong or deformed is not, among noble persons, in anywise subject for laughter; but, in the precise degree of its wrongness or deformity, a subject of horror. all perception of what, in the modern european mind, falls under the general head of the ludicrous, is either childish or profane; often healthy, as indicative of vigorous animal life, but always degraded in its relation to manly conditions of thought. it has a secondary use in its power of detecting vulgar imposture; but it only obtains this power by denying the highest truths. * * * * * xxvi. the expulsion from the temple. more properly, the expulsion from the outer court of the temple (court of gentiles), as giotto has indicated by placing the porch of the temple itself in the background. the design shows, as clearly as that of the massacre of the innocents, giotto's want of power, and partly of desire, to represent rapid or forceful action. the raising of the right hand, not holding any scourge, resembles the action afterwards adopted by oreagna, and finally by michael angelo in his last judgment: and my belief is, that giotto considered this act of christ's as partly typical of the final judgment, the pharisees being placed on the left hand, and the disciples on the right. from the faded remains of the fresco, the draughtsman could not determine what animals are intended by those on the left hand. but the most curious incident (so far as i know, found only in this design of the expulsion, no subsequent painter repeating it), is the sheltering of the two children, one of them carrying a dove, under the arm and cloak of two disciples. many meanings might easily be suggested in this; but i see no evidence for the adoption of any distinct one. * * * * * xxvii. the hiring of judas. the only point of material interest presented by this design is the decrepit and distorted shadow of the demon, respecting which it may be well to remind the reader that all the great italian thinkers concurred in assuming decrepitude or disease, as well as ugliness, to be a characteristic of all natures of evil. whatever the extent of the power granted to evil spirits, it was always abominable and contemptible; no element of beauty or heroism was ever allowed to remain, however obscured, in the aspect of a fallen angel. also, the demoniacal nature was shown in acts of betrayal, torture, or wanton hostility; never in valiancy or perseverance of contest. i recollect no mediæval demon who shows as much insulting, resisting, or contending power as bunyan's apollyon. they can only cheat, undermine, and mock; never overthrow. judas, as we should naturally anticipate, has not in this scene the nimbus of an apostle; yet we shall find it restored to him in the next design. we shall discover the reason of this only by a careful consideration of the meaning of that fresco. * * * * * xxviii. the last supper. i have not examined the original fresco with care enough to be able to say whether the uninteresting quietness of its design is redeemed by more than ordinary attention to expression; it is one of the least attractive subjects in the arena chapel, and always sure to be passed over in any general observation of the series: nevertheless, however unfavourably it may at first contrast with the designs of later masters, and especially with leonardo's, the reader should not fail to observe that giotto's aim, had it been successful, was the higher of the two, as giving truer rendering of the probable fact. there is no distinct evidence, in the sacred text, of the annunciation of coming treachery having produced among the disciples the violent surprise and agitation represented by leonardo. naturally, they would not at first understand what was meant. they knew nothing distinctly of the machinations of the priests; and so little of the character or purposes of judas, that even after he had received the sop which was to point him out to the others as false;--and after they had heard the injunction, "that thou doest, do quickly,"--the other disciples had still no conception of the significance, either of the saying, or the act: they thought that christ meant he was to buy something for the feast. nay, judas himself, so far from starting, as a convicted traitor, and thereby betraying himself, as in leonardo's picture, had not, when christ's first words were uttered, any immediately active intention formed. the devil had not entered into him until he received the sop. the passage in st. john's account is a curious one, and little noticed; but it marks very distinctly the paralysed state of the man's mind. he had talked with the priests, covenanted with them, and even sought opportunity to bring jesus into their hands; but while such opportunity was wanting, the act had never presented itself fully to him for adoption or rejection. he had toyed with it, dreamed over it, hesitated, and procrastinated over it, as a stupid and cowardly person would, such as traitors are apt to be. but the way of retreat was yet open; the conquest of the temper not complete. only after receiving the sop the idea _finally_ presented itself clearly, and was accepted, "to-night, while he is in the garden, i can do it; and i will." and giotto has indicated this distinctly by giving judas still the apostle's nimbus, both in this subject and in that of the washing of the feet; while it is taken away in the previous subject of the hiring, and the following one of the seizure: thus it fluctuates, expires, and reillumines itself, until his fall is consummated. this being the general state of the apostles' knowledge, the words, "one of you shall betray me," would excite no feeling in their minds correspondent to that with which we now read the prophetic sentence. what this "giving up" of their master meant became a question of bitter and self-searching thought with them,--gradually of intense sorrow and questioning. but had they understood it in the sense we now understand it, they would never have each asked, "lord, is it i?" peter believed himself incapable even of _denying_ christ; and of giving him up to death for money, every one of his true disciples _knew_ themselves incapable; the thought never occurred to them. in slowly-increasing wonder and sorrow ([greek: êrxanto lupeisthai], mark xiv. ), not knowing what was meant, they asked one by one, with pauses between, "is it i?" and another, "is it i?" and this so quietly and timidly that the one who was lying on christ's breast never stirred from his place; and peter, afraid to speak, signed to him to ask who it was. one further circumstance, showing that this was the real state of their minds, we shall find giotto take cognisance of in the next fresco. * * * * * xxix. the washing of the feet. in this design, it will be observed, there are still the twelve disciples, and the nimbus is yet given to judas (though, as it were, setting, his face not being seen). considering the deep interest and importance of every circumstance of the last supper, i cannot understand how preachers and commentators pass by the difficulty of clearly understanding the periods indicated in st. john's account of it. it seems that christ must have risen while they were still eating, must have washed their feet as they sate or reclined at the table, just as the magdalen had washed his own feet in the pharisee's house; that, this done, he returned to the table, and the disciples continuing to eat, presently gave the sop to judas. for st. john says, that he having received the sop, went _immediately_ out; yet that christ had washed his feet is certain, from the words, "ye are clean, but not all." whatever view the reader may, on deliberation, choose to accept, giotto's is clear, namely, that though not cleansed by the baptism, judas was yet capable of being cleansed. the devil had not entered into him at the time of the washing of the feet, and he retains the sign of an apostle. the composition is one of the most beautiful of the series, especially owing to the submissive grace of the two standing figures. * * * * * xxx. the kiss of judas. for the first time we have giotto's idea of the face of the traitor clearly shown. it is not, i think, traceable through any of the previous series; and it has often surprised me to observe how impossible it was in the works of almost any of the sacred painters to determine by the mere cast of feature which was meant for the false apostle. here, however, giotto's theory of physiognomy, and together with it his idea of the character of judas, are perceivable enough. it is evident that he looks upon judas mainly as a sensual dullard, and foul-brained fool; a man in no respect exalted in bad eminence of treachery above the mass of common traitors, but merely a distinct type of the eternal treachery to good, in vulgar men, which stoops beneath, and opposes in its appointed measure, the life and efforts of all noble persons, their natural enemies in this world; as the slime lies under a clear stream running through an earthy meadow. our careless and thoughtless english use of the word into which the greek "diabolos" has been shortened, blinds us in general to the meaning of "deviltry," which, in its essence, is nothing else than slander, or traitorhood;--the accusing and giving up of good. in particular it has blinded us to the meaning of christ's words, "have not i chosen you twelve, and one of you is a traitor and accuser?" and led us to think that the "one of you is a devil" indicated some greater than human wickedness in judas; whereas the practical meaning of the entire fact of judas' ministry and fall is, that out of any twelve men chosen for the forwarding of any purpose,--or, much more, out of any twelve men we meet,--one, probably, is or will be a judas. the modern german renderings of all the scenes of christ's life in which the traitor is conspicuous are very curious in their vulgar misunderstanding of the history, and their consequent endeavours to represent judas as more diabolic than selfish, treacherous, and stupid men are in all their generations. they paint him usually projected against strong effects of light, in lurid chiaroscuro;--enlarging the whites of his eyes, and making him frown, grin, and gnash his teeth on all occasions, so as to appear among the other apostles invariably in the aspect of a gorgon. how much more deeply giotto has fathomed the fact, i believe all men will admit who have sufficient purity and abhorrence of falsehood to recognise it in its daily presence, and who know how the devil's strongest work is done for him by men who are too bestial to understand what they betray. * * * * * xxxi. christ before caiaphas. little is to be observed in this design of any distinctive merit; it is only a somewhat completer version of the ordinary representation given in illuminated missals and other conventual work, suggesting, as if they had happened at the same moment, the answer, "if i have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil," and the accusation of blasphemy which causes the high-priest to rend his clothes. apparently distrustful of his power of obtaining interest of a higher kind, giotto has treated the enrichments more carefully than usual, down even to the steps of the high-priest's seat. the torch and barred shutters conspicuously indicate its being now dead of night. that the torch is darker than the chamber, if not an error in the drawing, is probably the consequence of a darkening alteration in the yellow colours used for the flame. * * * * * xxxii. the scourging of christ. it is characteristic of giotto's rational and human view of all subjects admitting such aspect, that he has insisted here chiefly on the dejection and humiliation of christ, making no attempt to suggest to the spectator any other divinity than that of patience made perfect through suffering. angelico's conception of the same subject is higher and more mystical. he takes the moment when christ is blindfolded, and exaggerates almost into monstrosity the vileness of feature and bitterness of sneer in the questioners, "prophesy unto us, who is he that smote thee;" but the bearing of the person of christ is entirely calm and unmoved; and his eyes, open, are seen through the binding veil, indicating the ceaseless omniscience. this mystical rendering is, again, rejected by the later realistic painters; but while the earlier designers, with giotto at their head, dwelt chiefly on the humiliation and the mockery, later painters dwelt on the physical pain. in titian's great picture of this subject in the louvre, one of the executioners is thrusting the thorn-crown down upon the brow with his rod, and the action of christ is that of a person suffering extreme physical agony. no representations of the scene exist, to my knowledge, in which the mockery is either sustained with indifference, or rebuked by any stern or appealing expression of feature; yet one of these two forms of endurance would appear, to a modern habit of thought, the most natural and probable. * * * * * xxxiii. christ bearing his cross. this design is one of great nobleness and solemnity in the isolation of the principal figure, and removal of all motives of interest depending on accessories, or merely temporary incidents. even the virgin and her attendant women are kept in the background; all appeal for sympathy through physical suffering is disdained. christ is not represented as borne down by the weight of the cross, nor as urged forward by the impatience of the executioners. the thing to be shown,--the unspeakable mystery,--is the simple fact, the bearing of the cross by the redeemer. it would be vain to compare the respective merits or value of a design thus treated, and of one like veronese's of this same subject, in which every essential accessory and probable incident is completely conceived. the abstract and symbolical suggestion will always appeal to one order of minds, the dramatic completeness to another. unquestionably, the last is the greater achievement of intellect, but the manner and habit of thought are perhaps loftier in giotto. veronese leads us to perceive the reality of the act, and giotto to understand its intention. * * * * * xxxiv. the crucifixion. the treatment of this subject was, in giotto's time, so rigidly fixed by tradition that it was out of his power to display any of his own special modes of thought; and, as in the bearing of the cross, so here, but yet more distinctly, the temporary circumstances are little regarded, the significance of the event being alone cared for. but even long after this time, in all the pictures of the crucifixion by the great masters, with the single exception perhaps of that by tintoret in the church of san cassano at venice, there is a tendency to treat the painting as a symmetrical image, or collective symbol of sacred mysteries, rather than as a dramatic representation. even in tintoret's great crucifixion in the school of st. roch, the group of fainting women forms a kind of pedestal for the cross. the flying angels in the composition before us are thus also treated with a restraint hardly passing the limits of decorative symbolism. the fading away of their figures into flame-like cloud may perhaps be founded on the verse, "he maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flame of fire" (though erroneously, the right reading of that verse being, "he maketh the winds his messengers, and the flaming fire his servant"); but it seems to me to give a greater sense of possible truth than the entire figures, treading the clouds with naked feet, of perugino and his successors. * * * * * xxxv. the entombment. i do not consider that in fulfilling the task of interpreter intrusted to me, with respect to this series of engravings, i may in general permit myself to unite with it the duty of a critic. but in the execution of a laborious series of engravings, some must of course be better, some worse; and it would be unjust, no less to the reader than to giotto, if i allowed this plate to pass without some admission of its inadequacy. it may possibly have been treated with a little less care than the rest, in the knowledge that the finished plate, already in the possession of the members of the arundel society, superseded any effort with inferior means; be that as it may, the tenderness of giotto's composition is, in the engraving before us, lost to an unusual degree. it may be generally observed that the passionateness of the sorrow both of the virgin and disciples, is represented by giotto and all great following designers as reaching its crisis at the entombment, not at the crucifixion. the expectation that, after experiencing every form of human suffering, christ would yet come down from the cross, or in some other visible and immediate manner achieve for himself the victory, might be conceived to have supported in a measure the minds of those among his disciples who watched by his cross. but when the agony was closed by actual death, and the full strain was put upon their faith, by their laying in the sepulchre, wrapped in his grave-clothes, him in whom they trusted, "that it had been he which should have redeemed israel," their sorrow became suddenly hopeless; a gulf of horror opened, almost at unawares, under their feet; and in the poignancy of her astonied despair, it was no marvel that the agony of the madonna in the "pietà" became subordinately associated in the mind of the early church with that of their lord himself;--a type of consummate human suffering. * * * * * xxxvi. the resurrection. quite one of the loveliest designs of the series. it was a favourite subject with giotto; meeting, in all its conditions, his love of what was most mysterious, yet most comforting and full of hope, in the doctrines of his religion. his joy in the fact of the resurrection, his sense of its function, as the key and primal truth of christianity, was far too deep to allow him to dwell on any of its minor circumstances, as later designers did, representing the moment of bursting the tomb, and the supposed terror of its guards. with giotto the leading thought is not of physical reanimation, nor of the momentarily exerted power of breaking the bars of the grave; but the consummation of christ's work in the first manifesting to human eyes, and the eyes of one who had loved him and believed in him, his power to take again the life he had laid down. this first appearance to her out of whom he had cast seven devils is indeed the very central fact of the resurrection. the keepers had not seen christ; they had seen only the angel descending, whose countenance was like lightning: for fear of him they became as dead; yet this fear, though great enough to cause them to swoon, was so far conquered at the return of morning, that they were ready to take money-payment for giving a false report of the circumstances. the magdalen, therefore, is the first witness of the resurrection; to the love, for whose sake much had been forgiven, this gift is also first given; and as the first witness of the truth, so she is the first messenger of the gospel. to the apostles it was granted to proclaim the resurrection to all nations; but the magdalen was bidden to proclaim it to the apostles. in the chapel of the bargello, giotto has rendered this scene with yet more passionate sympathy. here, however, its significance is more thoughtfully indicated through all the accessories, down even to the withered trees above the sepulchre, while those of the garden burst into leaf. this could hardly escape notice when the barren boughs were compared by the spectator with the rich foliage of the neighbouring designs, though, in the detached plate, it might easily be lost sight of. * * * * * xxxvii. the ascension. giotto continues to exert all his strength on these closing subjects. none of the byzantine or earlier italian painters ventured to introduce the entire figure of christ in this scene: they showed the feet only, concealing the body; according to the text, "a cloud received him out of their sight." this composition, graceful as it is daring, conveys the idea of ascending motion more forcibly than any that i remember by other than venetian painters. much of its power depends on the continuity of line obtained by the half-floating figures of the two warning angels. i cannot understand why this subject was so seldom treated by religious painters: for the harmony of christian creed depends as much upon it as on the resurrection itself; while the circumstances of the ascension, in their brightness, promise, miraculousness, and direct appeal to all the assembled apostles, seem more fitted to attract the joyful contemplation of all who received the faith. how morbid, and how deeply to be mourned, was the temper of the church which could not be satisfied without perpetual representation of the tortures of christ; but rarely dwelt on his triumph! how more than strange the concessions to this feebleness by its greatest teachers; such as that of titian, who, though he paints the assumption of the madonna rather than a pietà, paints the scourging and the entombment of christ, with his best power,--but never the ascension! * * * * * xxxviii. the descent of the holy spirit. this last subject of the series, the quietest and least interesting in treatment, yet illustrates sadly, and forcibly, the vital difference between ancient and modern art. the worst characters of modern work result from its constant appeal to our desire of change, and pathetic excitement; while the best features of the elder art appealed to love of contemplation. it would appear to be the object of the truest artists to give permanence to images such as we should always desire to behold, and might behold without agitation; while the inferior branches of design are concerned with the acuter passions which depend on the turn of a narrative, or the course of an emotion. where it is possible to unite these two sources of pleasure, and, as in the assumption of titian, an action of absorbing interest is united with perfect and perpetual elements of beauty, the highest point of conception would appear to have been touched: but in the degree in which the interest of action _supersedes_ beauty of form and colour, the art is lowered; and where real deformity enters, in any other degree than as a momentary shadow or opposing force, the art is illegitimate. such art can exist only by accident, when a nation has forgotten or betrayed the eternal purposes of its genius, and gives birth to painters whom it cannot teach, and to teachers whom it will not hear. the best talents of all our english painters have been spent either in endeavours to find room for the expression of feelings which no master guided to a worthy end, or to obtain the attention of a public whose mind was dead to natural beauty, by sharpness of satire, or variety of dramatic circumstance. the work to which england is now devoting herself withdraws her eyes from beauty, as her heart from rest; nor do i conceive any revival of great art to be possible among us while the nation continues in its present temper. as long as it can bear to see misery and squalor in its streets, it can neither invent nor accept human beauty in its pictures; and so long as in passion of rivalry, or thirst of gain, it crushes the roots of happiness, and forsakes the ways of peace, the great souls whom it may chance to produce will all pass away from it helpless, in error, in wrath, or in silence. amiable visionaries may retire into the delight of devotional abstraction, strong men of the world may yet hope to do service by their rebuke or their satire; but for the clear sight of love there will be no horizon, for its quiet words no answer; nor any place for the art which alone is faithfully religious, because it is lovely and true. * * * * * the series of engravings thus completed, while they present no characters on which the members of the arundel society can justifiably pride themselves, have, nevertheless, a real and effective value, if considered as a series of maps of the arena frescoes. few artists of eminence pass through padua without making studies of detached portions of the decoration of this chapel, while no artist has time to complete drawings of the whole. such fragmentary studies might now at any time be engraved with advantage, their place in the series being at once determinable by reference to the woodcuts; while qualities of expression could often be obtained in engravings of single figures, which are sure to be lost in an entire subject. the most refined character is occasionally dependent on a few happy and light touches, which, in a single head, are effective, but are too feeble to bear due part in an entire composition, while, in the endeavour to reinforce them, their vitality is lost. i believe the members of the arundel society will perceive, eventually, that no copies of works of great art are worthily representative of them but such as are made freely, and for their own purposes, by great painters: the best results obtainable by mechanical effort will only be charts or plans of pictures, not mirrors of them. such charts it is well to command in as great number as possible, and with all attainable completeness; but the society cannot be considered as having entered on its true functions until it has obtained the hearty co-operation of european artists, and by the increase of its members, the further power of representing the subtle studies of masterly painters by the aid of exquisite engraving. [illustration: _portrait of a lady._ _from the painting, possibly by verrocchio, in the poldi museum at milan._] the florentine painters of the renaissance with an index to their works by bernhard berenson author of "venetian painters of the renaissance," "lorenzo lotto," "central italian painters of the renaissance" third edition, revised and enlarged g. p. putnam's sons new york and london the knickerbocker press copyright, by g. p. putnam's sons _entered at stationers' hall, london_ * * * * * copyright, by g. p. putnam's sons (for revised edition) made in the united states of america preface to third edition years have passed since the second edition of this book. but as most of this time has been taken up with the writing of my "drawings of the florentine painters," it has, in a sense, been spent in preparing me to make this new edition. indeed, it is to that bigger work that i must refer the student who may wish to have the reasons for some of my attributions. there, for instance, he will find the intricate carli question treated quite as fully as it deserves. jacopo del sellajo is inserted here for the first time. ample accounts of this frequently entertaining tenth-rate painter may be found in articles by hans makowsky, mary logan, and herbert horne. the most important event of the last ten years, in the study of italian art, has been the rediscovery of an all but forgotten great master, pietro cavallini. the study of his fresco at s. cecilia in rome, and of the other works that readily group themselves with it, has illuminated with an unhoped-for light the problem of giotto's origin and development. i felt stimulated to a fresh consideration of the subject. the results will be noted here in the inclusion, for the first time, of cimabue, and in the lists of paintings ascribed to giotto and his immediate assistants. b. b. _boston, november, ._ preface to the second edition the lists have been thoroughly revised, and some of them considerably increased. botticini, pier francesco fiorentino, and amico di sandro have been added, partly for the intrinsic value of their work, and partly because so many of their pictures are exposed to public admiration under greater names. botticini sounds too much like botticelli not to have been confounded with him, and pier francesco has similarly been confused with piero della francesca. thus, botticini's famous "assumption," painted for matteo palmieri, and now in the national gallery, already passed in vasari's time for a botticelli, and the attribution at karlsruhe of the quaint and winning "nativity" to the sublime, unyielding piero della francesca is surely nothing more than the echo of the real author's name. most inadequate accounts, yet more than can be given here, of pier francesco, as well as of botticini, will be found in the italian edition of cavalcaselle's _storia della pittura in italia_, vol. vii. the latter painter will doubtless be dealt with fully and ably in mr. herbert p. horne's forthcoming book on botticelli, and in this connection i am happy to acknowledge my indebtedness to mr. horne for having persuaded me to study botticini. of amico di sandro i have written at length in the _gazette des beaux arts_, june and july, . fiesole, november, . contents. page the florentine painters of the renaissance index to the works of the principal florentine painters index of places the florentine painters of the renaissance i. florentine painting between giotto and michelangelo contains the names of such artists as orcagna, masaccio, fra filippo, pollaiuolo, verrocchio, leonardo, and botticelli. put beside these the greatest names in venetian art, the vivarini, the bellini, giorgione, titian, and tintoret. the difference is striking. the significance of the venetian names is exhausted with their significance as painters. not so with the florentines. forget that they were painters, they remain great sculptors; forget that they were sculptors, and still they remain architects, poets, and even men of science. they left no form of expression untried, and to none could they say, "this will perfectly convey my meaning." painting, therefore, offers but a partial and not always the most adequate manifestation of their personality, and we feel the artist as greater than his work, and the man as soaring above the artist. [page heading: manysidedness of the painters] the immense superiority of the artist even to his greatest achievement in any one art form, means that his personality was but slightly determined by the particular art in question, that he tended to mould it rather than let it shape him. it would be absurd, therefore, to treat the florentine painter as a mere link between two points in a necessary evolution. the history of the art of florence never can be, as that of venice, the study of a placid development. each man of genius brought to bear upon his art a great intellect, which, never condescending merely to please, was tirelessly striving to reincarnate what it comprehended of life in forms that would fitly convey it to others; and in this endeavour each man of genius was necessarily compelled to create forms essentially his own. but because florentine painting was pre-eminently an art formed by great personalities, it grappled with problems of the highest interest, and offered solutions that can never lose their value. what they aimed at, and what they attained, is the subject of the following essay. ii. the first of the great personalities in florentine painting was giotto. although he affords no exception to the rule that the great florentines exploited all the arts in the endeavour to express themselves, he, giotto, renowned as architect and sculptor, reputed as wit and versifier, differed from most of his tuscan successors in having peculiar aptitude for the essential in painting _as an art_. but before we can appreciate his real value, we must come to an agreement as to what in the art of figure-painting--the craft has its own altogether diverse laws--_is_ the essential; for figure-painting, we may say at once, was not only the one pre-occupation of giotto, but the dominant interest of the entire florentine school. [page heading: imagination of touch] psychology has ascertained that sight alone gives us no accurate sense of the third dimension. in our infancy, long before we are conscious of the process, the sense of touch, helped on by muscular sensations of movement, teaches us to appreciate depth, the third dimension, both in objects and in space. in the same unconscious years we learn to make of touch, of the third dimension, the test of reality. the child is still dimly aware of the intimate connection between touch and the third dimension. he cannot persuade himself of the unreality of looking-glass land until he has touched the back of the mirror. later, we entirely forget the connection, although it remains true, that every time our eyes recognise reality, we are, as a matter of fact, giving tactile values to retinal impressions. now, painting is an art which aims at giving an abiding impression of artistic reality with only two dimensions. the painter must, therefore, do consciously what we all do unconsciously,--construct his third dimension. and he can accomplish his task only as we accomplish ours, by giving tactile values to retinal impressions. his first business, therefore, is to rouse the tactile sense, for i must have the illusion of being able to touch a figure, i must have the illusion of varying muscular sensations inside my palm and fingers corresponding to the various projections of this figure, before i shall take it for granted as real, and let it affect me lastingly. it follows that the essential in the art of painting--as distinguished from the art of colouring, i beg the reader to observe--is somehow to stimulate our consciousness of tactile values, so that the picture shall have at least as much power as the object represented, to appeal to our tactile imagination. [page heading: giotto] well, it was of the power to stimulate the tactile consciousness--of the essential, as i have ventured to call it, in the art of painting--that giotto was supreme master. this is his everlasting claim to greatness, and it is this which will make him a source of highest æsthetic delight for a period at least as long as decipherable traces of his handiwork remain on mouldering panel or crumbling wall. for great though he was as a poet, enthralling as a story-teller, splendid and majestic as a composer, he was in these qualities superior in degree only, to many of the masters who painted in various parts of europe during the thousand years that intervened between the decline of antique, and the birth, in his own person, of modern painting. but none of these masters had the power to stimulate the tactile imagination, and, consequently, they never painted a figure which has artistic existence. their works have value, if at all, as highly elaborate, very intelligible symbols, capable, indeed, of communicating something, but losing all higher value the moment the message is delivered. giotto's paintings, on the contrary, have not only as much power of appealing to the tactile imagination as is possessed by the objects represented--human figures in particular--but actually more, with the necessary result that to his contemporaries they conveyed a _keener_ sense of reality, of life-likeness than the objects themselves! we whose current knowledge of anatomy is greater, who expect more articulation and suppleness in the human figure, who, in short, see much less naïvely now than giotto's contemporaries, no longer find his paintings more than life-like; but we still feel them to be intensely real in the sense that they still powerfully appeal to our tactile imagination, thereby compelling us, as do all things that stimulate our sense of touch while they present themselves to our eyes, to take their existence for granted. and it is only when we can take for granted the existence of the object painted that it can begin to give us pleasure that is genuinely artistic, as separated from the interest we feel in symbols. [page heading: analysis of enjoyment of painting] at the risk of seeming to wander off into the boundless domain of æsthetics, we must stop at this point for a moment to make sure that we are of one mind regarding the meaning of the phrase "artistic pleasure," in so far at least as it is used in connection with painting. what is the point at which ordinary pleasures pass over into the specific pleasures derived from each one of the arts? our judgment about the merits of any given work of art depends to a large extent upon our answer to this question. those who have not yet differentiated the specific pleasures of the art of painting from the pleasures they derive from the art of literature, will be likely to fall into the error of judging the picture by its dramatic presentation of a situation or its rendering of character; will, in short, demand of the painting that it shall be in the first place a good _illustration_. those others who seek in painting what is usually sought in music, the communication of a pleasurable state of emotion, will prefer pictures which suggest pleasant associations, nice people, refined amusements, agreeable landscapes. in many cases this lack of clearness is of comparatively slight importance, the given picture containing all these pleasure-giving elements in addition to the qualities peculiar to the art of painting. but in the case of the florentines, the distinction is of vital consequence, for they have been the artists in europe who have most resolutely set themselves to work upon the specific problems of the art of figure-painting, and have neglected, more than any other school, to call to their aid the secondary pleasures of association. with them the issue is clear. if we wish to appreciate their merit, we are forced to disregard the desire for pretty or agreeable types, dramatically interpreted situations, and, in fact, "suggestiveness" of any kind. worse still, we must even forego our pleasure in colour, often a genuinely artistic pleasure, for they never systematically exploited this element, and in some of their best works the colour is actually harsh and unpleasant. it was in fact upon form, and form alone, that the great florentine masters concentrated their efforts, and we are consequently forced to the belief that, in their pictures at least, form is the principal source of our æsthetic enjoyment. now in what way, we ask, can form in painting give me a sensation of pleasure which differs from the ordinary sensations i receive from form? how is it that an object whose recognition in nature may have given me no pleasure, becomes, when recognised in a picture, a source of æsthetic enjoyment, or that recognition pleasurable in nature becomes an enhanced pleasure the moment it is transferred to art? the answer, i believe, depends upon the fact that art stimulates to an unwonted activity psychical processes which are in themselves the source of most (if not all) of our pleasures, and which here, free from disturbing physical sensations, never tend to pass over into pain. for instance: i am in the habit of realising a given object with an intensity that we shall value as . if i suddenly realise this familiar object with an intensity of , i receive the immediate pleasure which accompanies a doubling of my mental activity. but the pleasure rarely stops here. those who are capable of receiving direct pleasure from a work of art, are generally led on to the further pleasures of self-consciousness. the fact that the psychical process of recognition goes forward with the unusual intensity of to , overwhelms them with the sense of having twice the capacity they had credited themselves with: their whole personality is enhanced, and, being aware that this enhancement is connected with the object in question, they for some time after take not only an increased interest in it, but continue to realise it with the new intensity. precisely this is what form does in painting: it lends a higher coefficient of reality to the object represented, with the consequent enjoyment of accelerated psychical processes, and the exhilarating sense of increased capacity in the observer. (hence, by the way, the greater pleasure we take in the object painted than in itself.) and it happens thus. we remember that to realise form we must give tactile values to retinal sensations. ordinarily we have considerable difficulty in skimming off these tactile values, and by the time they have reached our consciousness, they have lost much of their strength. obviously, the artist who gives us these values more rapidly than the object itself gives them, gives us the pleasures consequent upon a more vivid realisation of the object, and the further pleasures that come from the sense of greater psychical capacity. furthermore, the stimulation of our tactile imagination awakens our consciousness of the importance of the tactile sense in our physical and mental functioning, and thus, again, by making us feel better provided for life than we were aware of being, gives us a heightened sense of capacity. and this brings us back once more to the statement that the chief business of the figure painter, as an artist, is to stimulate the tactile imagination. the proportions of this small book forbid me to develop further a theme, the adequate treatment of which would require more than the entire space at my command. i must be satisfied with the crude and unillumined exposition given already, allowing myself this further word only, that i do not mean to imply that we get no pleasure from a picture except the tactile satisfaction. on the contrary, we get much pleasure from composition, more from colour, and perhaps more still from movement, to say nothing of all the possible associative pleasures for which every work of art is the occasion. what i do wish to say is that _unless_ it satisfies our tactile imagination, a picture will not exert the fascination of an ever-heightened reality; first we shall exhaust its ideas, and then its power of appealing to our emotions, and its "beauty" will not seem more significant at the thousandth look than at the first. my need of dwelling upon this subject at all, i must repeat, arises from the fact that although this principle is important indeed in other schools, it is all-important in the florentine school. without its due appreciation it would be impossible to do justice to florentine painting. we should lose ourselves in admiration of its "teaching," or perchance of its historical importance--as if historical importance were synonymous with artistic significance!--but we should never realise what artistic idea haunted the minds of its great men, and never understand why at a date so early it became academic. [page heading: giotto and values of touch] let us now turn back to giotto and see in what way he fulfils the first condition of painting as an art, which condition, as we agreed, is somehow to stimulate our tactile imagination. we shall understand this without difficulty if we cover with the same glance two pictures of nearly the same subject that hang side by side in the florence academy, one by "cimabue," and the other by giotto. the difference is striking, but it does not consist so much in a difference of pattern and types, as of realisation. in the "cimabue" we patiently decipher the lines and colours, and we conclude at last that they were intended to represent a woman seated, men and angels standing by or kneeling. to recognise these representations we have had to make many times the effort that the actual objects would have required, and in consequence our feeling of capacity has not only not been confirmed, but actually put in question. with what sense of relief, of rapidly rising vitality, we turn to the giotto! our eyes scarcely have had time to light on it before we realise it completely--the throne occupying a real space, the virgin satisfactorily seated upon it, the angels grouped in rows about it. our tactile imagination is put to play immediately. our palms and fingers accompany our eyes much more quickly than in presence of real objects, the sensations varying constantly with the various projections represented, as of face, torso, knees; confirming in every way our feeling of capacity for coping with things,--for life, in short. i care little that the picture endowed with the gift of evoking such feelings has faults, that the types represented do not correspond to my ideal of beauty, that the figures are too massive, and almost unarticulated; i forgive them all, because i have much better to do than to dwell upon faults. but how does giotto accomplish this miracle? with the simplest means, with almost rudimentary light and shade, and functional line, he contrives to render, out of all the possible outlines, out of all the possible variations of light and shade that a given figure may have, only those that we must isolate for special attention when we are actually realising it. this determines his types, his schemes of colour, even his compositions. he aims at types which both in face and figure are simple, large-boned, and massive,--types, that is to say, which in actual life would furnish the most powerful stimulus to the tactile imagination. obliged to get the utmost out of his rudimentary light and shade, he makes his scheme of colour of the lightest that his contrasts may be of the strongest. in his compositions, he aims at clearness of grouping, so that each important figure may have its desired tactile value. note in the "madonna" we have been looking at, how the shadows compel us to realise every concavity, and the lights every convexity, and how, with the play of the two, under the guidance of line, we realise the significant parts of each figure, whether draped or undraped. nothing here but has its architectonic reason. above all, every line is functional; that is to say, charged with purpose. its existence, its direction, is absolutely determined by the need of rendering the tactile values. follow any line here, say in the figure of the angel kneeling to the left, and see how it outlines and models, how it enables you to realise the head, the torso, the hips, the legs, the feet, and how its direction, its tension, is always determined by the action. there is not a genuine fragment of giotto in existence but has these qualities, and to such a degree that the worst treatment has not been able to spoil them. witness the resurrected frescoes in santa croce at florence! [page heading: symbolism of giotto] the rendering of tactile values once recognised as the most important specifically artistic quality of giotto's work, and as his personal contribution to the art of painting, we are all the better fitted to appreciate his more obvious though less peculiar merits--merits, i must add, which would seem far less extraordinary if it were not for the high plane of reality on which giotto keeps us. now what is back of this power of raising us to a higher plane of reality but a genius for grasping and communicating real significance? what is it to render the tactile values of an object but to communicate its material significance? a painter who, after generations of mere manufacturers of symbols, illustrations, and allegories had the power to render the material significance of the objects he painted, must, as a man, have had a profound sense of the significant. no matter, then, what his theme, giotto feels its real significance and communicates as much of it as the general limitations of his art, and of his own skill permit. when the theme is sacred story, it is scarcely necessary to point out with what processional gravity, with what hieratic dignity, with what sacramental intentness he endows it; the eloquence of the greatest critics has here found a darling subject. but let us look a moment at certain of his symbols in the arena at padua, at the "inconstancy," the "injustice," the "avarice," for instance. "what are the significant traits," he seems to have asked himself, "in the appearance and action of a person under the exclusive domination of one of these vices? let me paint the person with these traits, and i shall have a figure that perforce must call up the vice in question." so he paints "inconstancy" as a woman with a blank face, her arms held out aimlessly, her torso falling backwards, her feet on the side of a wheel. it makes one giddy to look at her. "injustice," is a powerfully built man in the vigour of his years dressed in the costume of a judge, with his left hand clenching the hilt of his sword, and his clawed right hand grasping a double hooked lance. his cruel eye is sternly on the watch, and his attitude is one of alert readiness to spring in all his giant force upon his prey. he sits enthroned on a rock, overtowering the tall waving trees, and below him his underlings are stripping and murdering a wayfarer. "avarice" is a horned hag with ears like trumpets. a snake issuing from her mouth curls back and bites her forehead. her left hand clutches her money-bag, as she moves forward stealthily, her right hand ready to shut down on whatever it can grasp. no need to label them: as long as these vices exist, for so long has giotto extracted and presented their visible significance. [page heading: giotto] still another exemplification of his sense for the significant is furnished by his treatment of action and movement. the grouping, the gestures never fail to be just such as will most rapidly convey the meaning. so with the significant line, the significant light and shade, the significant look up or down, and the significant gesture, with means technically of the simplest, and, be it remembered, with no knowledge of anatomy, giotto conveys a complete sense of motion such as we get in his paduan frescoes of the "resurrection of the blessed," of the "ascension of our lord," of the god the father in the "baptism," or the angel in "zacharias' dream." this, then, is giotto's claim to everlasting appreciation as an artist: that his thorough-going sense for the significant in the visible world enabled him so to represent things that we realise his representations more quickly and more completely than we should realise the things themselves, thus giving us that confirmation of our sense of capacity which is so great a source of pleasure. iii. [page heading: followers of giotto] for a hundred years after giotto there appeared in florence no painter equally endowed with dominion over the significant. his immediate followers so little understood the essence of his power that some thought it resided in his massive types, others in the swiftness of his line, and still others in his light colour, and it never occurred to any of them that the massive form without its material significance, its tactile values, is a shapeless sack, that the line which is not functional is mere calligraphy, and that light colour by itself can at the best spot a surface prettily. the better of them felt their inferiority, but knew no remedy, and all worked busily, copying and distorting giotto, until they and the public were heartily tired. a change at all costs became necessary, and it was very simple when it came. "why grope about for the significant, when the obvious is at hand? let me paint the obvious; the obvious always pleases," said some clever innovator. so he painted the obvious,--pretty clothes, pretty faces, and trivial action, with the results foreseen: he pleased then, and he pleases still. crowds still flock to the spanish chapel in s. maria novella to celebrate the triumph of the obvious, and non-significant. pretty faces, pretty colour, pretty clothes, and trivial action! is there a single figure in the fresco representing the "triumph of st. thomas" which incarnates the idea it symbolises, which, without its labelling instrument, would convey any meaning whatever? one pretty woman holds a globe and sword, and i am required to feel the majesty of empire; another has painted over her pretty clothes a bow and arrow, which are supposed to rouse me to a sense of the terrors of war; a third has an organ on what was intended to be her knee, and the sight of this instrument must suffice to put me into the ecstasies of heavenly music; still another pretty lady has her arm akimbo, and if you want to know what edification she can bring, you must read her scroll. below these pretty women sit a number of men looking as worthy as clothes and beards can make them; one highly dignified old gentleman gazes with all his heart and all his soul at--the point of his quill. the same lack of significance, the same obviousness characterise the fresco representing the "church militant and triumphant." what more obvious symbol for _the_ church than _a_ church? what more significant of st. dominic than the refuted paynim philosopher who (with a movement, by the way, as obvious as it is clever) tears out a leaf from his own book? and i have touched only on the value of these frescoes as allegories. not to speak of the emptiness of the one and the confusion of the other, as compositions, there is not a figure in either which has tactile values,--that is to say, artistic existence. while i do not mean to imply that painting between giotto and masaccio existed in vain--on the contrary, considerable progress was made in the direction of landscape, perspective, and facial expression,--it is true that, excepting the works of two men, no masterpieces of art were produced. these two, one coming in the middle of the period we have been dwelling upon, and the other just at its close, were andrea orcagna and fra angelico. [page heading: orcagna] of orcagna it is difficult to speak, as only a single fairly intact painting of his remains, the altar-piece in s. maria novella. here he reveals himself as a man of considerable endowment: as in giotto, we have tactile values, material significance; the figures artistically exist. but while this painting betrays no peculiar feeling for beauty of face and expression, the frescoes in the same chapel, the one in particular representing paradise, have faces full of charm and grace. i am tempted to believe that we have here a happy improvement made by the recent restorer. but what these mural paintings must always have had is real artistic existence, great dignity of slow but rhythmic movement, and splendid grouping. they still convince us of their high purpose. on the other hand, we are disappointed in orcagna's sculptured tabernacle at or sammichele, where the feeling for both material and spiritual significance is much lower. [page heading: fra angelico] we are happily far better situated toward fra angelico, enough of whose works have come down to us to reveal not only his quality as an artist, but his character as a man. perfect certainty of purpose, utter devotion to his task, a sacramental earnestness in performing it, are what the quantity and quality of his work together proclaim. it is true that giotto's profound feeling for either the materially or the spiritually significant was denied him--and there is no possible compensation for the difference; but although his sense for the real was weaker, it yet extended to fields which giotto had not touched. like all the supreme artists, giotto had no inclination to concern himself with his attitude toward the significant, with his feelings about it; the grasping and presentation of it sufficed him. in the weaker personality, the significant, vaguely perceived, is converted into emotion, is merely felt, and not realised. over this realm of feeling fra angelico was the first great master. "god's in his heaven--all's right with the world" he felt with an intensity which prevented him from perceiving evil anywhere. when he was obliged to portray it, his imagination failed him and he became a mere child; his hells are bogy-land; his martyrdoms are enacted by children solemnly playing at martyr and executioner; and he nearly spoils one of the most impressive scenes ever painted--the great "crucifixion" at san marco--with the childish violence of st. jerome's tears. but upon the picturing of blitheness, of ecstatic confidence in god's loving care, he lavished all the resources of his art. nor were they small. to a power of rendering tactile values, to a sense for the significant in composition, inferior, it is true, to giotto's, but superior to the qualifications of any intervening painter, fra angelico added the charm of great facial beauty, the interest of vivid expression, the attraction of delicate colour. what in the whole world of art more rejuvenating than angelico's "coronation" (in the uffizi)--the happiness on all the faces, the flower-like grace of line and colour, the childlike simplicity yet unqualifiable beauty of the composition? and all this in tactile values which compel us to grant the reality of the scene, although in a world where real people are standing, sitting, and kneeling we know not, and care not, on what. it is true, the significance of the event represented is scarcely touched upon, but then how well angelico communicates the feeling with which it inspired him! yet simple though he was as a person, simple and one-sided as was his message, as a product he was singularly complex. he was the typical painter of the transition from mediæval to renaissance. the sources of his feeling are in the middle ages, but he _enjoys_ his feelings in a way which is almost modern; and almost modern also are his means of expression. we are too apt to forget this transitional character of his, and, ranking him with the moderns, we count against him every awkwardness of action, and every lack of articulation in his figures. yet both in action and in articulation he made great progress upon his precursors--so great that, but for masaccio, who completely surpassed him, we should value him as an innovator. moreover, he was not only the first italian to paint a landscape that can be identified (a view of lake trasimene from cortona), but the first to communicate a sense of the pleasantness of nature. how readily we feel the freshness and spring-time gaiety of his gardens in the frescoes of the "annunciation" and the "noli me tangere" at san marco! iv. [page heading: masaccio] giotto born again, starting where death had cut short his advance, instantly making his own all that had been gained during his absence, and profiting by the new conditions, the new demands--imagine such an avatar, and you will understand masaccio. giotto we know already, but what were the new conditions, the new demands? the mediæval skies had been torn asunder and a new heaven and a new earth had appeared, which the abler spirits were already inhabiting and enjoying. here new interests and new values prevailed. the thing of sovereign price was the power to subdue and to create; of sovereign interest all that helped man to know the world he was living in and his power over it. to the artist the change offered a field of the freest activity. it is always his business to reveal to an age its ideals. but what room was there for sculpture and painting,--arts whose first purpose it is to make us realise the material significance of things--in a period like the middle ages, when the human body was denied all intrinsic significance? in such an age the figure artist can thrive, as giotto did, only in spite of it, and as an isolated phenomenon. in the renaissance, on the contrary, the figure artist had a demand made on him such as had not been made since the great greek days, to reveal to a generation believing in man's power to subdue and to possess the world, the physical types best fitted for the task. and as this demand was imperative and constant, not one, but a hundred italian artists arose, able each in his own way to meet it,--in their combined achievement, rivalling the art of the greeks. in sculpture donatello had already given body to the new ideals when masaccio began his brief career, and in the education, the awakening, of the younger artist the example of the elder must have been of incalculable force. but a type gains vastly in significance by being presented in some action along with other individuals of the same type; and here donatello was apt, rather than to draw his meed of profit, to incur loss by descending to the obvious--witness his _bas-reliefs_ at siena, florence, and padua. masaccio was untouched by this taint. types, in themselves of the manliest, he presents with a sense for the materially significant which makes us realise to the utmost their power and dignity; and the spiritual significance thus gained he uses to give the highest import to the event he is portraying; this import, in turn, gives a higher value to the types, and thus, whether we devote our attention to his types or to his action, masaccio keeps us on a high plane of reality and significance. in later painting we shall easily find greater science, greater craft, and greater perfection of detail, but greater reality, greater significance, i venture to say, never. dust-bitten and ruined though his brancacci chapel frescoes now are, i never see them without the strongest stimulation of my tactile consciousness. i feel that i could touch every figure, that it would yield a definite resistance to my touch, that i should have to expend thus much effort to displace it, that i could walk around it. in short, i scarcely could realise it more, and in real life i should scarcely realise it so well, the attention of each of us being too apt to concentrate itself upon some dynamic quality, before we have at all begun to realise the full material significance of the person before us. then what strength to his young men, and what gravity and power to his old! how quickly a race like this would possess itself of the earth, and brook no rivals but the forces of nature! whatever they do--simply because it is they--is impressive and important, and every movement, every gesture, is world-changing. compared with his figures, those in the same chapel by his precursor, masolino, are childish, and those by his follower, filippino, unconvincing and without significance, because without tactile values. even michelangelo, where he comes in rivalry, has, for both reality and significance, to take a second place. compare his "expulsion from paradise" (in the sixtine chapel) with the one here by masaccio. michelangelo's figures are more correct, but far less tangible and less powerful; and while he represents nothing but a man warding off a blow dealt from a sword, and a woman cringing with ignoble fear, masaccio's adam and eve stride away from eden heart-broken with shame and grief, hearing, perhaps, but not seeing, the angel hovering high overhead who directs their exiled footsteps. masaccio, then, like giotto a century earlier,--himself the giotto of an artistically more propitious world--was, as an artist, a great master of the significant, and, as a painter, endowed to the highest degree with a sense of tactile values, and with a skill in rendering them. in a career of but few years he gave to florentine painting the direction it pursued to the end. in many ways he reminds us of the young bellini. who knows? had he but lived as long, he might have laid the foundation for a painting not less delightful and far more profound than that of venice. as it was, his frescoes at once became, and for as long as there were real artists among them remained, the training-school of florentine painters. v. masaccio's death left florentine painting in the hands of three men older, and two somewhat younger than himself, all men of great talent, if not of genius, each of whom--the former to the extent habits already formed would permit, the latter overwhelmingly, felt his influence. the older, who, but for masaccio, would themselves have been the sole determining personalities in their art, were fra angelico, paolo uccello, and andrea del castagno; the younger, domenico veneziano and fra filippo. as these were the men who for a whole generation after masaccio's death remained at the head of their craft, forming the taste of the public, and communicating their habits and aspirations to their pupils, we at this point can scarcely do better than try to get some notion of each of them and of the general art tendencies they represented. [page heading: paolo uccello] fra angelico we know already as the painter who devoted his life to picturing the departing mediæval vision of a heaven upon earth. nothing could have been farther from the purpose of uccello and castagno. different as these two were from each other, they have this much in common, that in their works which remain to us, dating, it is true, from their years of maturity, there is no touch of mediæval sentiment, no note of transition. as artists they belonged entirely to the new era, and they stand at the beginning of the renaissance as types of two tendencies which were to prevail in florence throughout the whole of the fifteenth century, partly supplementing and partly undoing the teaching of masaccio. uccello had a sense of tactile values and a feeling for colour, but in so far as he used these gifts at all, it was to illustrate scientific problems. his real passion was perspective, and painting was to him a mere occasion for solving some problem in this science, and displaying his mastery over its difficulties. accordingly he composed pictures in which he contrived to get as many lines as possible leading the eye inward. prostrate horses, dead or dying cavaliers, broken lances, ploughed fields, noah's arks, are used by him with scarcely an attempt at disguise, to serve his scheme of mathematically converging lines. in his zeal he forgot local colour--he loved to paint his horses green or pink--forgot action, forgot composition, and, it need scarcely be added, significance. thus in his battle-pieces, instead of adequate action of any sort, we get the feeling of witnessing a show of stuffed figures whose mechanical movements have been suddenly arrested by some clog in their wires; in his fresco of the "deluge," he has so covered his space with demonstrations of his cleverness in perspective and foreshortening that, far from bringing home to us the terrors of a cataclysm, he at the utmost suggests the bursting of a mill-dam; and in the neighbouring fresco of the "sacrifice of noah," just as some capitally constructed figures are about to enable us to realise the scene, all possibility of artistic pleasure is destroyed by our seeing an object in the air which, after some difficulty, we decipher as a human being plunging downward from the clouds. instead of making this figure, which, by the way, is meant to represent god the father, plunge toward us, uccello deliberately preferred to make it dash inward, away from us, thereby displaying his great skill in both perspective and foreshortening, but at the same time writing himself down as the founder of two families of painters which have flourished ever since, the artists for dexterity's sake--mental or manual, it scarcely matters--and the naturalists. as these two clans increased rapidly in florence, and, for both good and evil, greatly affected the whole subsequent course of florentine painting, we must, before going farther, briefly define to ourselves dexterity and naturalism, and their relation to art. [page heading: art for dexterity's sake] the essential in painting, especially in figure-painting, is, we agreed, the rendering of the tactile values of the forms represented, because by this means, and this alone, can the art make us realise forms better than we do in life. the great painter, then, is, above all, an artist with a great sense of tactile values and great skill in rendering them. now this sense, though it will increase as the man is revealed to himself, is something which the great painter possesses at the start, so that he is scarcely, if at all, aware of possessing it. his conscious effort is given to the means of rendering. it is of means of rendering, therefore, that he talks to others; and, because his triumphs here are hard-earned and conscious, it is on his skill in rendering that he prides himself. the greater the painter, the less likely he is to be aware of aught else in his art than problems of rendering--but all the while he is communicating what the force of his genius makes him feel without his striving for it, almost without his being aware of it, the material and spiritual significance of forms. however--his intimates hear him talk of nothing but skill; he seems to think of nothing but skill; and naturally they, and the entire public, conclude that his skill is his genius, and that skill _is_ art. this, alas, has at all times been the too prevalent notion of what art is, divergence of opinion existing not on the principle, but on the kind of dexterity to be prized, each generation, each critic, having an individual standard, based always on the several peculiar problems and difficulties that interest them. at florence these inverted notions about art were especially prevalent because it was a school of art with a score of men of genius and a thousand mediocrities all egging each other on to exhibitions of dexterity, and in their hot rivalry it was all the great geniuses could do to be faithful to their sense of significance. even masaccio was driven to exhibit his mere skill, the much admired and by itself wonderfully realised figure of a naked man trembling with cold being not only without real significance, but positively distracting, in the representation of a baptism. a weaker man like paolo uccello almost entirely sacrificed what sense of artistic significance he may have started with, in his eagerness to display his skill and knowledge. as for the rabble, their work has now the interest of prize exhibitions at local art schools, and their number merely helped to accelerate the momentum with which florentine art rushed to its end. but out of even mere dexterity a certain benefit to art may come. men without feeling for the significant may yet perfect a thousand matters which make rendering easier and quicker for the man who comes with something to render, and when botticelli and leonardo and michelangelo appeared, they found their artistic patrimony increased in spite of the fact that since masaccio there had been no man at all approaching their genius. this increase, however, was due not at all so much to the sons of dexterity, as to the intellectually much nobler, but artistically even inferior race of whom also uccello was the ancestor--the naturalists. [page heading: naturalism in art] what is a naturalist? i venture upon the following definition:--a man with a native gift for science who has taken to art. his purpose is not to extract the material and spiritual significance of objects, thus communicating them to us more rapidly and intensely than we should perceive them ourselves, and thereby giving us a sense of heightened vitality; his purpose is research, and his communication consists of nothing but facts. from this perhaps too abstract statement let us take refuge in an example already touched upon--the figure of the almighty in uccello's "sacrifice of noah." instead of presenting this figure as coming toward us in an attitude and with an expression that will appeal to our sense of solemnity, as a man whose chief interest was artistic would have done--as giotto, in fact, did in his "baptism"--uccello seems to have been possessed with nothing but the scientific intention to find out how a man swooping down head-foremost would have looked if at a given instant of his fall he had been suddenly congealed and suspended in space. a figure like this may have a mathematical but certainly has no psychological significance. uccello, it is true, has studied every detail of this phenomenon and noted down his observations, but because his notes happen to be in form and colour, they do not therefore constitute a work of art. wherein does his achievement differ in quality from a coloured map of a country? we can easily conceive of a relief map of cadore or giverny on so large a scale, and so elaborately coloured, that it will be an exact reproduction of the physical aspects of those regions, but never for a moment should we place it beside a landscape by titian or monet, and think of it as a work of art. yet its relation to the titian or monet painting is exactly that of uccello's achievement to giotto's. what the scientist who paints--the naturalist, that is to say,--attempts to do is not to give us what art alone can give us, the life-enhancing qualities of objects, but a reproduction of them as they are. if he succeeded, he would give us the exact visual impression of the objects themselves, but art, as we have already agreed, must give us not the mere reproductions of things but a quickened sense of capacity for realising them. artistically, then, the naturalists, uccello and his numerous successors, accomplished nothing. yet their efforts to reproduce objects as they are, their studies in anatomy and perspective, made it inevitable that when another great genius did arise, he should be a leonardo or a michelangelo, and not a giotto. [page heading: andrea del castagno] uccello, as i have said, was the first representative of two strong tendencies in florentine painting--of art for dexterity's sake, and art for scientific purposes. andrea del castagno, while also unable to resist the fascination of mere science and dexterity, had too much artistic genius to succumb to either. he was endowed with great sense for the significant, although, it is true, not enough to save him completely from the pitfalls which beset all florentines, and even less from one more peculiar to himself--the tendency to communicate at any cost a feeling of power. to make us feel power as masaccio and michelangelo do at their best is indeed an achievement, but it requires the highest genius and the profoundest sense for the significant. the moment this sense is at all lacking, the artist will not succeed in conveying power, but such obvious manifestations of it as mere strength, or, worse still, the insolence not infrequently accompanying high spirits. now castagno, who succeeds well enough in one or two such single figures as his cumæan sibyl or his farinata degli uberti, which have great, if not the greatest, power, dignity, and even beauty, elsewhere condescends to mere swagger,--as in his pipo spano or niccolo di tolentino--or to mere strength, as in his "last supper," or, worse still, to actual brutality, as in his santa maria nuova "crucifixion." nevertheless, his few remaining works lead us to suspect in him the greatest artist, and the most influential personality among the painters of the first generation after masaccio. vi. [page heading: domenico veneziano] to distinguish clearly, after the lapse of nearly five centuries, between uccello and castagno, and to determine the precise share each had in the formation of the florentine school, is already a task fraught with difficulties. the scantiness of his remaining works makes it more than difficult, makes it almost impossible, to come to accurate conclusions regarding the character and influence of their somewhat younger contemporary, domenico veneziano. that he was an innovator in technique, in affairs of vehicle and medium, we know from vasari; but as such innovations, indispensable though they may become to painting as a craft, are in themselves questions of theoretic and applied chemistry, and not of art, they do not here concern us. his artistic achievements seem to have consisted in giving to the figure movement and expression, and to the face individuality. in his existing works we find no trace of sacrifice made to dexterity and naturalism, although it is clear that he must have been master of whatever science and whatever craft were prevalent in his day. otherwise he would not have been able to render a figure like the st. francis in his uffizi altar-piece, where tactile values and movement expressive of character--what we usually call individual _gait_--were perhaps for the first time combined; or to attain to such triumphs as his st. john and st. francis, at santa croce, whose entire figures express as much fervour as their eloquent faces. as to his sense for the significant in the individual, in other words, his power as a portrait-painter, we have in the pitti one or two heads to witness, perhaps, the first great achievements in this kind of the renaissance. [page heading: fra filippo lippi] no such difficulties as we have encountered in the study of uccello, castagno, and veneziano meet us as we turn to fra filippo. his works are still copious, and many of them are admirably preserved; we therefore have every facility for judging him as an artist, yet nothing is harder than to appreciate him at his due. if attractiveness, and attractiveness of the best kind, sufficed to make a great artist, then filippo would be one of the greatest, greater perhaps than any other florentine before leonardo. where shall we find faces more winsome, more appealing, than in certain of his madonnas--the one in the uffizi, for instance--more momentarily evocative of noble feeling than in his louvre altar-piece? where in florentine painting is there anything more fascinating than the playfulness of his children, more poetic than one or two of his landscapes, more charming than is at times his colour? and with all this, health, even robustness, and almost unfailing good-humour! yet by themselves all these qualities constitute only a high-class illustrator, and such by native endowment i believe fra filippo to have been. that he became more--very much more--is due rather to masaccio's potent influence than to his own genius; for he had no profound sense of either material or spiritual significance--the essential qualifications of the real artist. working under the inspiration of masaccio, he at times renders tactile values admirably, as in the uffizi madonna--but most frequently he betrays no genuine feeling for them, failing in his attempt to render them by the introduction of bunchy, billowy, calligraphic draperies. these, acquired from the late giottesque painter (probably lorenzo monaco) who had been his first master, he seems to have prized as artistic elements no less than the tactile values which he attempted to adopt later, serenely unconscious, apparently, of their incompatibility. filippo's strongest impulse was not toward the pre-eminently artistic one of re-creation, but rather toward expression, and within that field, toward the expression of the pleasant, genial, spiritually comfortable feelings of ordinary life. his real place is with the _genre_ painters; only his _genre_ was of the soul, as that of others--of benozzo gozzoli, for example--was of the body. hence a sin of his own, scarcely less pernicious than that of the naturalists, and cloying to boot--expression at any cost. vii. [page heading: naturalism in florentine art] from the brief account just given of the four dominant personalities in florentine painting from about to about , it results that the leanings of the school during this interval were not artistic and artistic alone, but that there were other tendencies as well, tendencies on the one side, toward the expression of emotion (scarcely less literary because in form and colour than if in words), and, on the other, toward the naturalistic reproduction of objects. we have also noted that while the former tendency was represented by filippo alone, the latter had paolo uccello, and all of castagno and veneziano that the genius of these two men would permit them to sacrifice to naturalism and science. to the extent, however, that they took sides and were conscious of a distinct purpose, these also sided with uccello and not with filippo. it may be agreed, therefore, that the main current of florentine painting for a generation after masaccio was naturalistic, and that consequently the impact given to the younger painters who during this period were starting, was mainly toward naturalism. later, in studying botticelli, we shall see how difficult it was for any one young at the time to escape this tide, even if by temperament farthest removed from scientific interests. meanwhile we must continue our study of the naturalists, but now of the second generation. their number and importance from to is not alone due to the fact that art education toward the beginning of this epoch was mainly naturalistic, but also to the real needs of a rapidly advancing craft, and even more to the character of the florentine mind, the dominant turn of which was to science and not to art. but as there were then no professions scientific in the stricter sense of the word, and as art of some form was the pursuit of a considerable proportion of the male inhabitants of florence, it happened inevitably that many a lad with the natural capacities of a galileo was in early boyhood apprenticed as an artist. and as he never acquired ordinary methods of scientific expression, and never had time for occupations not bread-winning, he was obliged his life long to make of his art both the subject of his strong instinctive interest in science, and the vehicle of conveying his knowledge to others. [page heading: alessio baldovinetti] this was literally the case with the oldest among the leaders of the new generation, alessio baldovinetti, in whose scanty remaining works no trace of purely artistic feeling or interest can be discerned; and it is only less true of alessio's somewhat younger, but far more gifted contemporaries, antonio pollaiuolo and andrea verrocchio. these also we should scarcely suspect of being more than men of science, if pollaiuolo once or twice, and verrocchio more frequently, did not dazzle us with works of almost supreme art, which, but for our readiness to believe in the manifold possibilities of florentine genius, we should with exceeding difficulty accept as their creation--so little do they seem to result from their conscious striving. alessio's attention being largely devoted to problems of vehicle--to the side of painting which is scarcely superior to cookery--he had time for little else, although that spare time he gave to the study of landscape, in the rendering of which he was among the innovators. andrea and antonio set themselves the much worthier task of increasing on every side the effectiveness of the figure arts, of which, sculpture no less than painting, they aimed to be masters. [page heading: pollaiuolo and verrocchio] to confine ourselves, however, as closely as we may to painting, and leaving aside for the present the question of colour, which, as i have already said, is, in florentine art, of entirely subordinate importance, there were three directions in which painting as pollaiuolo and verrocchio found it had greatly to advance before it could attain its maximum of effectiveness: landscape, movement, and the nude. giotto had attempted none of these. the nude, of course, he scarcely touched; movement he suggested admirably, but never rendered; and in landscape he was satisfied with indications hardly more than symbolical, although quite adequate to his purpose, which was to confine himself to the human figure. in all directions masaccio made immense progress, guided by his never failing sense for material significance, which, as it led him to render the tactile values of each figure separately, compelled him also to render the tactile values of groups as wholes, and of their landscape surroundings--by preference, hills so shaped as readily to stimulate the tactile imagination. for what he accomplished in the nude and in movement, we have his "expulsion" and his "man trembling with cold" to witness. but in his works neither landscape nor movement, nor the nude, are as yet distinct sources of artistic pleasure--that is to say, in themselves life-enhancing. although we can well leave the nude until we come to michelangelo, who was the first to completely realise its distinctly artistic possibilities, we cannot so well dispense with an enquiry into the sources of our æsthetic pleasure in the representation of movement and of landscape, as it was in these two directions--in movement by pollaiuolo especially, and in landscape by baldovinetti, pollaiuolo, and verrocchio--that the great advances of this generation of florentine painters were made. viii. [page heading: representation of movement] turning our attention first to movement--which, by the way, is not the same as motion, mere change of place--we find that we realise it just as we realise objects, by the stimulation of our tactile imagination, only that here touch retires to a second place before the muscular feelings of varying pressure and strain. i see (to take an example) two men wrestling, but unless my retinal impressions are immediately translated into images of strain and pressure in my muscles, of resistance to my weight, of touch all over my body, it means nothing to me in terms of vivid experience--not more, perhaps, than if i heard some one say "two men are wrestling." although a wrestling match may, in fact, contain many genuinely artistic elements, our enjoyment of it can never be quite artistic; we are prevented from completely realising it not only by our dramatic interest in the game, but also, granting the possibility of being devoid of dramatic interest, by the succession of movements being too rapid for us to realise each completely, and too fatiguing, even if realisable. now if a way could be found of conveying to us the realisation of movement without the confusion and the fatigue of the actuality, we should be getting out of the wrestlers more than they themselves can give us--the heightening of vitality which comes to us whenever we keenly realise life, such as the actuality itself would give us, _plus_ the greater effectiveness of the heightening brought about by the clearer, intenser, and less fatiguing realisation. this is precisely what the artist who succeeds in representing movement achieves: making us realise it as we never can actually, he gives us a heightened sense of capacity, and whatever is in the actuality enjoyable, he allows us to enjoy at our leisure. in words already familiar to us, he _extracts the significance of movements_, just as, in rendering tactile values, the artist extracts the corporeal significance of objects. his task is, however, far more difficult, although less indispensable:--it is not enough that he should extract the values of what at any given moment is an actuality, as is an object, but what at no moment really is--namely movement. he can accomplish his task in only one way, and that is by so rendering the one particular movement that we shall be able to realise all other movements that the same figure may make. "he is grappling with his enemy now," i say of my wrestler. "what a pleasure to be able to realise in my own muscles, on my own chest, with my own arms and legs, the life that is in him as he is making his supreme effort! what a pleasure, as i look away from the representation, to realise in the same manner, how after the contest his muscles will relax, and rest trickle like a refreshing stream through his nerves!" all this i shall be made to enjoy by the artist who, in representing any one movement, can give me the logical sequence of visible strain and pressure in the parts and muscles. it is just here that the scientific spirit of the florentine naturalists was of immense service to art. this logic of sequence is to be attained only by great, although not necessarily more than empiric, knowledge of anatomy, such perhaps as the artist pure would never be inclined to work out for himself, but just such as would be of absorbing interest to those scientists by temperament and artists by profession whom we have in pollaiuolo and, to a less extent, in verrocchio. we remember how giotto contrived to render tactile values. of all the possible outlines, of all the possible variations of light and shade that a figure may have, he selected those that we must isolate for special attention when we are actually realising it. if instead of figure, we say figure in movement, the same statement applies to the way pollaiuolo rendered movement--with this difference, however, that he had to render what in actuality we never can perfectly isolate, the line and light and shade most significant of any given action. this the artist must construct himself out of his dramatic feeling for pressure and strain and his ability to articulate the figure in all its logical sequences, for, if he would convey a sense of movement, he must give the line and the light and shade which will best render not tactile values alone, but the sequences of articulations. [page heading: "battle of the nudes"] it would be difficult to find more effective illustration of all that has just been said about movement than one or two of pollaiuolo's own works, which, in contrast to most of his achievements, where little more than effort and research are visible, are really masterpieces of life-communicating art. let us look first at his engraving known as the "battle of the nudes." what is it that makes us return to this sheet with ever renewed, ever increased pleasure? surely it is not the hideous faces of most of the figures and their scarcely less hideous bodies. nor is it the pattern as decorative design, which is of great beauty indeed, but not at all in proportion to the spell exerted upon us. least of all is it--for most of us--an interest in the technique or history of engraving. no, the pleasure we take in these savagely battling forms arises from their power to directly communicate life, to immensely heighten our sense of vitality. look at the combatant prostrate on the ground and his assailant bending over, each intent on stabbing the other. see how the prostrate man plants his foot on the thigh of his enemy, and note the tremendous energy he exerts to keep off the foe, who, turning as upon a pivot, with his grip on the other's head, exerts no less force to keep the advantage gained. the significance of all these muscular strains and pressures is so rendered that we cannot help realising them; we imagine ourselves imitating all the movements, and exerting the force required for them--and all without the least effort on our side. if all this without moving a muscle, what should we feel if we too had exerted ourselves! and thus while under the spell of this illusion--this hyperæsthesia not bought with drugs, and not paid for with cheques drawn on our vitality--we feel as if the elixir of life, not our own sluggish blood, were coursing through our veins. [page heading: "hercules strangling david"] let us look now at an even greater triumph of movement than the nudes, pollaiuolo's "hercules strangling antæus." as you realise the suction of hercules' grip on the earth, the swelling of his calves with the pressure that falls on them, the violent throwing back of his chest, the stifling force of his embrace; as you realise the supreme effort of antæus, with one hand crushing down upon the head and the other tearing at the arm of hercules, you feel as if a fountain of energy had sprung up under your feet and were playing through your veins. i cannot refrain from mentioning still another masterpiece, this time not only of movement, but of tactile values and personal beauty as well--pollaiuolo's "david" at berlin. the young warrior has sped his stone, cut off the giant's head, and now he strides over it, his graceful, slender figure still vibrating with the rapidity of his triumph, expectant, as if fearing the ease of it. what lightness, what buoyancy we feel as we realise the movement of this wonderful youth! ix. [page heading: verrocchio and landscape] in all that concerns movement, verrocchio was a learner from pollaiuolo, rather than an initiator, and he probably never attained his master's proficiency. we have unfortunately but few terms for comparison, as the only paintings which can be with certainty ascribed to verrocchio are not pictures of action. a drawing however like that of his angel, in the british museum, which attempts as much movement as the hercules by pollaiuolo, in the same collection, is of obviously inferior quality. yet in sculpture, along with works which are valuable as harbingers of leonardo rather than for any intrinsic perfection, he created two such masterpieces of movement as the "child with the dolphin" in the courtyard of the palazzo vecchio, and the colleoni monument at venice--the latter sinning, if at all, by an over-exuberance of movement, by a step and swing too suggestive of drums and trumpets. but in landscape verrocchio was a decided innovator. to understand what new elements he introduced, we must at this point carry out our determination to enquire into the source of our pleasure in landscape painting; or rather--to avoid a subject of vast extent for which this is not the place--of landscape painting as practised by the florentines. [page heading: landscape painting] before verrocchio, his precursors, first alessio baldovinetti and then pollaiuolo, had attempted to treat landscape as naturalistically as painting would permit. their ideal was to note it down with absolute correctness from a given point of view; their subject almost invariably the valdarno; their achievement, a bird's-eye view of this tuscan paradise. nor can it be denied that this gives pleasure, but the pleasure is only such as is conveyed by tactile values. instead of having the difficulty we should have in nature to distinguish clearly points near the horizon's edge, we here see them perfectly and without an effort, and in consequence feel great confirmation of capacity for life. now if landscape were, as most people vaguely believe, a pleasure coming through the eyes alone, then the pollaiuolesque treatment could be equalled by none that has followed, and surpassed only by rogier van der weyden, or by the quaint german "master of the lyversberg passion," who makes us see objects miles away with as great a precision and with as much intensity of local colour as if we were standing off from them a few feet. were landscape really this, then nothing more inartistic than gradation of tint, atmosphere, and _plein air_, all of which help to make distant objects less clear, and therefore tend in no way to heighten our sense of capacity. but as a matter of fact the pleasure we take in actual landscape is only to a limited extent an affair of the eye, and to a great extent one of unusually intense well-being. the painter's problem, therefore, is not merely to render the tactile values of the visible objects, but to convey, more rapidly and unfailingly than nature would do, _the consciousness_ of an unusually intense degree of well-being. this task--the communication by means purely visual of feelings occasioned chiefly by sensations non-visual--is of such difficulty that, until recently, successes in the rendering of what is peculiar to landscape as an art, and to landscape alone, were accidental and sporadic. only now, in our own days, may painting be said to be grappling with this problem seriously; and perhaps we are already at the dawn of an art which will have to what has hitherto been called landscape, the relation of our music to the music of the greeks or of the middle ages. [page heading: verrocchio's landscapes] verrocchio was, among florentines at least, the first to feel that a faithful reproduction of the contours is not landscape, that the painting of nature is an art distinct from the painting of the figure. he scarcely knew where the difference lay, but felt that light and atmosphere play an entirely different part in each, and that in landscape these have at least as much importance as tactile values. a vision of _plein air_, vague i must grant, seems to have hovered before him, and, feeling his powerlessness to cope with it in full effects of light such as he attempted in his earlier pictures, he deliberately chose the twilight hour, when, in tuscany, on fine days, the trees stand out almost black against a sky of light opalescent grey. to render this subduing, soothing effect of the coolness and the dew after the glare and dust of the day--the effect so matchlessly given in gray's "elegy"--seemed to be his first desire as a painter, and in presence of his "annunciation" (in the uffizi), we feel that he succeeded as only one other tuscan succeeded after him, that other being his own pupil leonardo. x. [page heading: genre artists] it is a temptation to hasten on from pollaiuolo and verrocchio to botticelli and leonardo, to men of genius as artists reappearing again after two generations, men who accomplished with scarcely an effort what their precursors had been toiling after. but from these it would be even more difficult than at present to turn back to painters of scarcely any rank among the world's great artists, and of scarcely any importance as links in a chain of evolution, but not to be passed by, partly because of certain qualities they do possess, and partly because their names would be missed in an account, even so brief as this, of florentine painting. the men i chiefly refer to, one most active toward the middle and the other toward the end of the fifteenth century, are benozzo gozzoli and domenico ghirlandaio. although they have been rarely coupled together, they have much in common. both were, as artists, little more than mediocrities with almost no genuine feeling for what makes painting a great art. the real attractiveness of both lies entirely outside the sphere of pure art, in the realms of _genre_ illustration. and here the likeness between them ends; within their common ground they differed widely. [page heading: benozzo gozzoli] benozzo was gifted with a rare facility not only of execution but of invention, with a spontaneity, a freshness, a liveliness in telling a story that wake the child in us, and the lover of the fairy tale. later in life, his more precious gifts deserted him, but who wants to resist the fascination of his early works, painted, as they seem, by a fra angelico who had forgotten heaven and become enamoured of the earth and the spring-time? in his riccardi palace frescoes, he has sunk already to portraying the florentine apprentice's dream of a holiday in the country on st. john's day; but what a _naïf_ ideal of luxury and splendour it is! with these, the glamour in which he saw the world began to fade away from him, and in his pisan frescoes we have, it is true, many a quaint bit of _genre_ (superior to teniers only because of superior associations), but never again the fairy tale. and as the better recedes, it is replaced by the worse, by the bane of all _genre_ painting, non-significant detail, and positive bad taste. have london or new york or berlin worse to show us than the jumble of buildings in his ideal of a great city, his picture of babylon? it may be said he here continues mediæval tradition, which is quite true, but this very fact indicates his real place, which, in spite of his adopting so many of the fifteenth-century improvements, is not with the artists of the renaissance, but with the story-tellers and costumed fairy-tale painters of the transition, with spinello aretino and gentile da fabriano, for instance. and yet, once in a while, he renders a head with such character, or a movement with such ease that we wonder whether he had not in him, after all, the making of a real artist. [page heading: ghirlandaio] ghirlandaio was born to far more science and cunning in painting than was current in benozzo's early years, and all that industry, all that love of his occupation, all that talent even, can do for a man, they did for him; but unfortunately he had not a spark of genius. he appreciated masaccio's tactile values, pollaiuolo's movement, verrocchio's effects of light, and succeeded in so sugaring down what he adopted from these great masters that the superior philistine of florence could say: "there now is a man who knows as much as any of the great men, but can give me something that i can really enjoy!" bright colour, pretty faces, good likenesses, and the obvious everywhere--attractive and delightful, it must be granted, but, except in certain single figures, never significant. let us glance a moment at his famous frescoes in santa maria novella. to begin with, they are so undecorative that, in spite of the tone and surface imparted to them by four centuries, they still suggest so many _tableaux vivants_ pushed into the wall side by side, and in tiers. then the compositions are as overfilled as the sheets of an illustrated newspaper--witness the "massacre of the innocents," a scene of such magnificent artistic possibilities. finally, irrelevant episodes and irrelevant groups of portraits do what they can to distract our attention from all higher significance. look at the "birth of john"; ginevra dei benci stands there, in the very foreground, staring out at you as stiff as if she had a photographer's iron behind her head. an even larger group of florentine housewives in all their finery disfigures the "birth of the virgin," which is further spoiled by a _bas relief_ to show off the painter's acquaintance with the antique, and by the figure of the serving maid who pours out water, with the rush of a whirlwind in her skirts--this to show off skill in the rendering of movement. yet elsewhere, as in his "epiphany" in the uffizi, ghirlandaio has undeniable charm, and occasionally in portraits his talent, here at its highest, rises above mediocrity, in one instance, the fresco of sassetti in santa trinità, becoming almost genius. xi. [page heading: leonardo] all that giotto and masaccio had attained in the rendering of tactile values, all that fra angelico or filippo had achieved in expression, all that pollaiuolo had accomplished in movement, or verrocchio in light and shade, leonardo, without the faintest trace of that tentativeness, that painfulness of effort which characterised his immediate precursors, equalled or surpassed. outside velasquez, and perhaps, when at their best, rembrandt and degas, we shall seek in vain for tactile values so stimulating and so convincing as those of his "mona lisa"; outside degas, we shall not find such supreme mastery over the art of movement as in the unfinished "epiphany" in the uffizi; and if leonardo has been left far behind as a painter of light, no one has succeeded in conveying by means of light and shade a more penetrating feeling of mystery and awe than he in his "virgin of the rocks." add to all this, a feeling for beauty and significance that have scarcely ever been approached. where again youth so poignantly attractive, manhood so potently virile, old age so dignified and possessed of the world's secrets! who like leonardo has depicted the mother's happiness in her child and the child's joy in being alive; who like leonardo has portrayed the timidity, the newness to experience, the delicacy and refinement of maidenhood; or the enchantress intuitions, the inexhaustible fascination of the woman in her years of mastery? look at his many sketches for madonnas, look at his profile drawing of isabella d'este, or at the _belle joconde_, and see whether elsewhere you find their equals. leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. whether it be the cross-section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values; and all without intention, for most of these magical sketches were dashed off to illustrate purely scientific matter, which alone absorbed his mind at the moment. and just as his art is life-communicating as is that of scarcely another, so the contemplation of his personality is life-enhancing as that of scarcely any other man. think that great though he was as a painter, he was no less renowned as a sculptor and architect, musician and improviser, and that all artistic occupations whatsoever were in his career but moments snatched from the pursuit of theoretical and practical knowledge. it would seem as if there were scarcely a field of modern science but he either foresaw it in vision, or clearly anticipated it, scarcely a realm of fruitful speculation of which he was not a freeman; and as if there were hardly a form of human energy which he did not manifest. and all that he demanded of life was the chance to be useful! surely, such a man brings us the gladdest of all tidings--the wonderful possibilities of the human family, of whose chances we all partake. painting, then, was to leonardo so little of a preoccupation that we must regard it as merely a mode of expression used at moments by a man of universal genius, who recurred to it only when he had no more absorbing occupation, and only when it could express what nothing else could, the highest spiritual through the highest material significance. and great though his mastery over his craft, his feeling for significance was so much greater that it caused him to linger long over his pictures, labouring to render the significance he felt but which his hand could not reproduce, so that he rarely finished them. we thus have lost in quantity, but have we lost in quality? could a mere painter, or even a mere artist, have seen and felt as leonardo? we may well doubt. we are too apt to regard a universal genius as a number of ordinary brains somehow conjoined in one skull, and not always on the most neighbourly terms. we forget that genius means mental energy, and that a leonardo, for the self-same reason that prevents his being merely a painter--the fact that it does not exhaust a hundredth part of his energy--will, when he does turn to painting, bring to bear a power of seeing, feeling, and rendering, as utterly above that of the ordinary painter as the "mona lisa" is above, let us say, andrea del sarto's "portrait of his wife." no, let us not join in the reproaches made to leonardo for having painted so little; because he had much more to do than to paint, he has left all of us heirs to one or two of the supremest works of art ever created. xii. [page heading: botticelli] never pretty, scarcely ever charming or even attractive; rarely correct in drawing, and seldom satisfactory in colour; in types, ill-favoured; in feeling acutely intense and even dolorous--what is it then that makes sandro botticelli so irresistible that nowadays we may have no alternative but to worship or abhor him? the secret is this, that in european painting there has never again been an artist so indifferent to representation and so intent upon presentation. educated in a period of triumphant naturalism, he plunged at first into mere representation with almost self-obliterating earnestness; the pupil of fra filippo, he was trained to a love of spiritual _genre_; himself gifted with strong instincts for the significant, he was able to create such a type of the thinker as in his fresco of st. augustin; yet in his best years he left everything, even spiritual significance, behind him, and abandoned himself to the presentation of those qualities alone which in a picture are _directly_ life-communicating, and life-enhancing. those of us who care for nothing in the work of art but what it represents, are either powerfully attracted or repelled by his unhackneyed types and quivering feeling; but if we are such as have an imagination of touch and of movement that it is easy to stimulate, we feel a pleasure in botticelli that few, if any, other artists can give us. long after we have exhausted both the intensest sympathies and the most violent antipathies with which the representative elements in his pictures may have inspired us, we are only on the verge of fully appreciating his real genius. this in its happiest moments is an unparalleled power of perfectly combining values of touch with values of movement. look, for instance, at botticelli's "venus rising from the sea." throughout, the tactile imagination is roused to a keen activity, by itself almost as life heightening as music. but the power of music is even surpassed where, as in the goddess' mane-like tresses of hair fluttering to the wind, not in disorderly rout but in masses yielding only after resistance, the movement is directly life-communicating. the entire picture presents us with the quintessence of all that is pleasurable to our imagination of touch and of movement. how we revel in the force and freshness of the wind, in the life of the wave! and such an appeal he always makes. his subject may be fanciful, as in the "realm of venus" (the "spring"); religious, as in the sixtine chapel frescoes or in the "coronation of the virgin"; political, as in the recently discovered "pallas taming a centaur"; or even crudely allegorical, as in the louvre frescoes,--no matter how unpropitious, how abstract the idea, the vivid appeal to our tactile sense, the life-communicating movement is always there. indeed, at times it seems that the less artistic the theme, the more artistic the fulfilment, the painter being impelled to give the utmost values of touch and movement to just those figures which are liable to be read off as mere empty symbols. thus, on the figure representing political disorder--the centaur--in the "pallas," botticelli has lavished his most intimate gifts. he constructs the torso and flanks in such a way that every line, every indentation, every boss appeals so vividly to the sense of touch that our fingers feel as if they had everywhere been in contact with his body, while his face gives to a still heightened degree this convincing sense of reality, every line functioning perfectly for the osseous structure of brow, nose, and cheeks. as to the hair--imagine shapes having the supreme life of line you may see in the contours of licking flames, and yet possessed of all the plasticity of something which caresses the hand that models it to its own desire! [page heading: lineal decoration] in fact, the mere subject, and even representation in general, was so indifferent to botticelli, that he appears almost as if haunted by the idea of communicating the _unembodied_ values of touch and movement. now there is a way of rendering even tactile values with almost no body, and that is by translating them as faithfully as may be into values of movement. for instance:--we want to render the roundness of a wrist without the slightest touch of either light or shade; we simply give the movement of the wrist's outline and the movement of the drapery as it falls over it, and the roundness is communicated to us almost entirely in terms of movement. but let us go one step further. take this line that renders the roundness of the wrist, or a more obvious example, the lines that render the movements of the tossing hair, the fluttering draperies, and the dancing waves in the "birth of venus"--take these lines alone with all their power of stimulating our imagination of movement, and what do we have? pure values of movement abstracted, unconnected with any representation whatever. this kind of line, then, being the quintessence of movement, has, like the essential elements in all the arts, a power of stimulating our imagination and of directly communicating life. well! imagine an art made up entirely of these quintessences of movement-values, and you will have something that holds the same relation to representation that music holds to speech--and this art exists, and is called lineal decoration. in this art of arts sandro botticelli may have had rivals in japan and elsewhere in the east, but in europe never. to its demands he was ready to sacrifice everything that habits acquired under filippo and pollaiuolo,--and his employers!--would permit. the representative element was for him a mere _libretto_: he was happiest when his subject lent itself to translation into what may be called a lineal symphony. and to this symphony everything was made to yield; tactile values were translated into values of movement, and, for the same reason--to prevent the drawing of the eye inward, to permit it to devote itself to the rhythm of the line--the backgrounds were either entirely suppressed or kept as simple as possible. colour also, with almost a contempt for its representative function, botticelli entirely subordinated to his lineal scheme, compelling it to draw attention to the line, rather than, as is usual, away from it. this is the explanation of the value put upon botticelli's masterpieces. in some of his later works, such as the dresden _predelle_, we have, it is true, bacchanals rather than symphonies of line, and in many of his earlier paintings, in the "_fortezza_," for instance, the harness and trappings have so disguised pegasus that we scarcely know him from a cart horse. but the painter of the "venus rising from the sea," of the "spring," or of the villa lemmi frescoes is the greatest artist of lineal design that europe has ever had. xiii. [page heading: popularisers of art] leonardo and botticelli, like michelangelo after them, found imitators but not successors. to communicate more material and spiritual significance than leonardo, would have taken an artist with deeper feeling for significance; to get more music out of design than botticelli, would have required a painter with even greater passion for the re-embodiment of the pure essences of touch and movement. there were none such in florence, and the followers of botticelli--leonardo's were all milanese, and do not here concern us--could but imitate the patterns of their master: the patterns of the face, the patterns of the composition, and the patterns of the line; dragging them down to their own level, sugaring them down to their own palate, slowing them down to their own insensitiveness for what is life-communicating. and although their productions, which were nothing but translations of great man's art into average man's art, became popular, as was inevitable, with the average man of their time, (who comprehended them better and felt more comfortable in their presence than in that of the originals which he respectfully admired but did not so thoroughly enjoy), nevertheless we need not dwell on these popularisers nor on their popularisations--not even on filippino, with his touch of consumptive delicacy, nor raffaelino del garbo, with his glints of never-to-be-fulfilled promise. [page heading: fra bartolommeo] before approaching the one man of genius left in florence after botticelli and leonardo, before speaking of michelangelo, the man in whom all that was most peculiar and much that was greatest in the striving of florentine art found its fulfilment, let us turn for a moment to a few painters who, just because they were men of manifold talent, might elsewhere almost have become masters. fra bartolommeo, andrea del sarto, pontormo, and bronzino were perhaps no less gifted as artists than palma, bonifazio veronese, lotto, and tintoretto; but their talents, instead of being permitted to flower naturally, were scorched by the passion for showing off dexterity, blighted by academic ideals, and uprooted by the whirlwind force of michelangelo. fra bartolommeo, who in temperament was delicate, refined, graceful, and as a painter had a miniaturist's feeling for the dainty, was induced to desert his lovely women, his exquisite landscape, and his gentleness of expression for figures constructed mechanically on a colossal scale, or for effects of the round at any cost. and as evil is more obvious than good, bartolommeo, the painter of that masterpiece of colour and light and shade, of graceful movement and charming feeling, the "madonna with the baptist and st. stephen" in the cathedral at lucca, bartolommeo, the dainty deviser of mr. mond's tiny "nativity," bartolommeo, the artificer of a hundred masterpieces of pen drawing, is almost unknown; and to most people fra bartolommeo is a sort of synonym for pomposity. he is known only as the author of physically colossal, spiritually insignificant prophets and apostles, or, perchance, as the painter of pitch-dark altar-pieces: this being the reward of devices to obtain mere relief. [page heading: andrea del sarto] andrea del sarto approached perhaps as closely to a giorgione or a titian as could a florentine, ill at ease in the neighbourhood of leonardo and michelangelo. as an artist he was, it is true, not endowed with the profoundest sense for the significant, yet within the sphere of common humanity who has produced anything more genial than his "portrait of a lady"--probably his wife--with a petrarch in her hands? where out of venetia can we find portraits so simple, so frank, and yet so interpretive as his "sculptor," or as his various portraits of himself--these, by the way, an autobiography as complete as any in existence, and tragic as few? almost venetian again is his "st. james" caressing children, a work of the sweetest feeling. even in colour effect, and technique, how singularly close to the best venetian painting in his "dispute about the trinity"--what blacks and whites, what greys and purplish browns! and in addition, tactile values peculiar to florence--what a back st. sebastian's! but in a work of scarcely less technical merit, the "madonna of the harpies," we already feel the man not striving to get the utmost out of himself, but panting for the grand and magnificent. even here, he remains almost a great artist, because his natural robustness comes to his rescue; but the "madonna" is too obviously statuesque, and, good saints, pray why all these draperies? the obviously statuesque and draperies were andrea's devices for keeping his head above water in the rising tide of the michelangelesque. as you glance in sequence at the annunziata frescoes, on the whole so full of vivacity, gaiety, and genuine delight in life, you see from one fresco to another the increased attention given to draperies. in the scalzo series, otherwise masterpieces of tactile values, the draperies do their utmost to smother the figures. most of these paintings are closed in with ponderous forms which have no other purpose than to serve as a frame, and as clothes-horses for draperies: witness the scene of zacharias in the temple, wherein none of the bystanders dare move for fear of disturbing their too obviously arranged folds. thus by constantly sacrificing first spiritual, and then material significance to pose and draperies, andrea loses all feeling for the essential in art. what a sad spectacle is his "assumption," wherein the apostles, the virgin herself, have nothing better to do than to show off draperies! instead of feeling, as in the presence of titian's "assunta," wrapt to heaven, you gaze at a number of tailor's men, each showing how a stuff you are thinking of trying looks on the back, or in a certain effect of light. but let us not end on this note; let us bear in mind that, despite all his faults, andrea painted the one "last supper" which can be looked at with pleasure after leonardo's. [page heading: pontormo] pontormo, who had it in him to be a decorator and portrait-painter of the highest rank, was led astray by his awe-struck admiration for michelangelo, and ended as an academic constructor of monstrous nudes. what he could do when expressing _himself_, we see in the lunette at poggio a caiano, as design, as colour, as fancy, the freshest, gayest, most appropriate mural decoration now remaining in italy; what he could do as a portrait-painter, we see in his wonderfully decorative panel of cosimo dei medici at san marco, or in his portrait of a "lady with a dog" (at frankfort), perhaps the first portrait ever painted in which the sitter's social position was insisted upon as much as the personal character. what pontormo sank to, we see in such a riot of meaningless nudes, all caricatures of michelangelo, as his "martyrdom of forty saints." [page heading: bronzino] bronzino, pontormo's close follower, had none of his master's talent as a decorator, but happily much of his power as a portrait-painter. would he had never attempted anything else! the nude without material or spiritual significance, with no beauty of design or colour, the nude simply because it was the nude, was bronzino's ideal in composition, and the result is his "christ in limbo." but as a portrait-painter, he took up the note struck by his master and continued it, leaving behind him a series of portraits which not only had their effect in determining the character of court painting all over europe, but, what is more to the point, a series of portraits most of which are works of art. as painting, it is true, they are hard, and often timid; but their air of distinction, their interpretive qualities, have not often been surpassed. in his uffizi portraits of eleanora di toledo, of prince ferdinand, of the princess maria, we seem to see the prototypes of velasquez' queens, princes, and princesses: and for a fine example of dignified rendering of character, look in the sala baroccio of the uffizi at a bust of a young woman with a missal in her hand. xiv. [page heading: michelangelo] the great florentine artists, as we have seen, were, with scarcely an exception, bent upon rendering the material significance of visible things. this, little though they may have formulated it, was the conscious aim of most of them; and in proportion as they emancipated themselves from ecclesiastical dominion, and found among their employers men capable of understanding them, their aim became more and more conscious and their striving more energetic. at last appeared the man who was the pupil of nobody, the heir of everybody, who felt profoundly and powerfully what to his precursors had been vague instinct, who saw and expressed the meaning of it all. the seed that produced him had already flowered into a giotto, and once again into a masaccio; in him, the last of his race, born in conditions artistically most propitious, all the energies remaining in his stock were concentrated, and in him florentine art had its logical culmination. [page heading: anthropomorphism in art] michelangelo had a sense for the materially significant as great as giotto's or masaccio's, but he possessed means of rendering, inherited from donatello, pollaiuolo, verrocchio and leonardo,--means that had been undreamt of by giotto or even by masaccio. add to this that he saw clearly what before him had been felt only dimly, that there was no other such instrument for conveying material significance as the human nude. this fact is as closely dependent on the general conditions of realising objects as tactile values are on the psychology of sight. we realise objects when we perfectly translate them into terms of our own states, our own feelings. so obviously true is this, that even the least poetically inclined among us, because we keenly realise the movement of a railway train, to take one example out of millions, speak of it as _going_ or _running_, instead of _rolling on its wheels_, thus being no less guilty of anthropomorphising than the most unregenerate savages. of this same fallacy we are guilty every time we think of anything whatsoever with the least warmth--we are lending this thing some human attributes. the more we endow it with human attributes, the less we merely know it, the more we realise it, the more does it approach the work of art. now there is one and only one object in the visible universe which we need not anthropomorphise to realise--and that is man himself. his movements, his actions, are the only things we realise without any myth-making effort--directly. hence, there is no visible object of such artistic possibilities as the human body; nothing with which we are so familiar; nothing, therefore, in which we so rapidly perceive changes; nothing, then, which if represented so as to be realised more quickly and vividly than in life, will produce its effect with such velocity and power, and so strongly confirm our sense of capacity for living. [page heading: value of the nude in art] values of touch and movement, we remember, are the specifically artistic qualities in figure painting (at least, as practised by the florentines), for it is through them chiefly that painting directly heightens life. now while it remains true that tactile values can, as giotto and masaccio have forever established, be admirably rendered on the draped figure, yet drapery is a hindrance, and, at the best, only a way out of a difficulty, for we _feel_ it masking the really significant, which is _the form underneath_. a mere painter, one who is satisfied to reproduce what everybody sees, and to paint for the fun of painting, will scarcely comprehend this feeling. his only significant is the obvious--in a figure, the face and the clothing, as in most of the portraits manufactured nowadays. the artist, even when compelled to paint draped figures, will force the drapery to render the nude, in other words the material significance of the human body. but how much more clearly will this significance shine out, how much more convincingly will the character manifest itself, when between its perfect rendering and the artist nothing intervenes! and this perfect rendering is to be accomplished with the nude only. if draperies are a hindrance to the conveyance of tactile values, they make the perfect rendering of movement next to impossible. to realise the play of muscle everywhere, to get the full sense of the various pressures and resistances, to receive the direct inspiration of the energy expended, we must have the nude; for here alone can we watch those tautnesses of muscle and those stretchings and relaxings and ripplings of skin which, translated into similar strains on our own persons, make us fully realise movement. here alone the translation, owing to the multitude and the clearness of the appeals made, is instantaneous, and the consequent sense of increased capacity almost as great as can be attained; while in the draped figure we miss all the appeal of visible muscle and skin, and realise movement only after a slow translation of certain functional outlines, so that the sense of capacity which we receive from the perception of movement is increased but slightly. we are now able to understand why every art whose chief preoccupation is the human figure must have the nude for its chief interest; why, also, the nude is the most absorbing problem of classic art at all times. not only is it the best vehicle for all that in art which is directly life-confirming and life-enhancing, but it is itself the most significant object in the human world. the first person since the great days of greek sculpture to comprehend fully the identity of the nude with great figure art, was michelangelo. before him, it had been studied for scientific purposes--as an aid in rendering the draped figure. he saw that it was an end in itself, and the final purpose of his art. for him the nude and art were synonymous. here lies the secret of his successes and his failures. [page heading: michelangelo] first, his successes. nowhere outside of the best greek art shall we find, as in michelangelo's works, forms whose tactile values so increase our sense of capacity, whose movements are so directly communicated and inspiring. other artists have had quite as much feeling for tactile values alone,--masaccio, for instance; others still have had at least as much sense of movement and power of rendering it,--leonardo, for example; but no other artist of modern times, having at all his control over the materially significant, has employed it as michelangelo did, on the one subject where its full value can be manifested--the nude. hence of all the achievements of modern art, his are the most invigorating. surely not often is our imagination of touch roused as by his adam in the "creation," by his eve in the "temptation," or by his many nudes in the same ceiling of the sixtine chapel,--there for no other purpose, be it noted, than their direct tonic effect! nor is it less rare to quaff such draughts of unadulterated energy as we receive from the "god creating adam," the "boy angel" standing by isaiah, or--to choose one or two instances from his drawings (in their own kind the greatest in existence)--the "gods shooting at a mark" or the "hercules and the lion." and to this feeling for the materially significant and all this power of conveying it, to all this more narrowly artistic capacity, michelangelo joined an ideal of beauty and force, a vision of a glorious but possible humanity, which, again, has never had its like in modern times. manliness, robustness, effectiveness, the fulfilment of our dream of a great soul inhabiting a beautiful body, we shall encounter nowhere else so frequently as among the figures in the sixtine chapel. michelangelo completed what masaccio had begun, the creation of the type of man best fitted to subdue and control the earth, and, who knows! perhaps more than the earth. [page heading: last works of michelangelo] but unfortunately, though born and nurtured in a world where his feeling for the nude and his ideal of humanity could be appreciated, he passed most of his life in the midst of tragic disasters, and while yet in the fulness of his vigour, in the midst of his most creative years, he found himself alone, perhaps the greatest, but alas! also the last of the giants born so plentifully during the fifteenth century. he lived on in a world he could not but despise, in a world which really could no more employ him than it could understand him. he was not allowed, therefore, to busy himself where he felt most drawn by his genius, and, much against his own strongest impulses, he was obliged to expend his energy upon such subjects as the "last judgment." his later works all show signs of the altered conditions, first in an overflow into the figures he was creating of the scorn and bitterness he was feeling, then in the lack of harmony between his genius and what he was compelled to execute. his passion was the nude, his ideal power. but what outlet for such a passion, what expression for such an ideal could there be in subjects like the "last judgment," or the "crucifixion of peter"--subjects which the christian world imperatively demanded should incarnate the fear of the humble and the self-sacrifice of the patient? now humility and patience were feelings as unknown to michelangelo as to dante before him, or, for that matter, to any other of the world's creative geniuses at any time. even had he felt them, he had no means of expressing them, for his nudes could convey a sense of power, not of weakness; of terror, not of dread; of despair, but not of submission. and terror the giant nudes of the "last judgment" do feel, but it is not terror of the judge, who, being in no wise different from the others, in spite of his omnipotent gesture, seems to be _announcing_ rather than _willing_ what the bystanders, his fellows, could not _unwill_. as the representation of the moment before the universe disappears in chaos--gods huddling together for the _götterdämmerung_--the "last judgment" is as grandly conceived as possible: but when the crash comes, none will survive it, no, not even god. michelangelo therefore failed in his conception of the subject, and could not but fail. but where else in the whole world of art shall we receive such blasts of energy as from this giant's dream, or, if you will, nightmare? for kindred reasons, the "crucifixion of peter" is a failure. art can be only life-communicating and life-enhancing. if it treats of pain and death, these must always appear as manifestations and as results only of living resolutely and energetically. what chance is there, i ask, for this, artistically the only possible treatment, in the representation of a man crucified with his head downwards? michelangelo could do nothing but make the bystanders, the executioners, all the more life-communicating, and therefore inevitably more sympathetic! no wonder he failed here! what a tragedy, by the way, that the one subject perfectly cut out for his genius, the one subject which required none but genuinely artistic treatment, his "bathers," executed forty years before these last works, has disappeared, leaving but scant traces! yet even these suffice to enable the competent student to recognise that this composition must have been the greatest masterpiece in figure art of modern times. that michelangelo had faults of his own is undeniable. as he got older, and his genius, lacking its proper outlets, tended to stagnate and thicken, he fell into exaggerations--exaggerations of power into brutality, of tactile values into feats of modelling. no doubt he was also at times as indifferent to representation as botticelli! but while there is such a thing as movement, there is no such thing as tactile values without representation. yet he seems to have dreamt of presenting nothing but tactile values: hence his many drawings with only the torso adequately treated, the rest unheeded. still another result from his passion for tactile values. i have already suggested that giotto's types were so massive because such figures most easily convey values of touch. michelangelo tended to similar exaggerations, to making shoulders, for instance, too broad and too bossy, simply because they make thus a more powerful appeal to the tactile imagination. indeed, i venture to go even farther, and suggest that his faults in all the arts, sculpture no less than painting, and architecture no less than sculpture, are due to this self-same predilection for salient projections. but the lover of the figure arts for what in them is genuinely artistic and not merely ethical, will in michelangelo, even at his worst, get such pleasures as, excepting a few, others, even at their best, rarely give him. * * * * * [page heading: constant aims of florentine art] in closing, let us note what results clearly even from this brief account of the florentine school, namely that, although no florentine merely took up and continued a predecessor's work, nevertheless all, from first to last, fought for the same cause. there is no opposition between giotto and michelangelo. the best energies of the first, of the last, and of all the intervening great florentine artists were persistently devoted to the rendering of tactile values, or of movement, or of both. now successful grappling with problems of form and of movement is at the bottom of all the higher arts; and because of this fact, florentine painting, despite its many faults, is, after greek sculpture, the most serious figure art in existence. index to the works of the principal florentine painters. note. the following lists make no claim to absolute completeness, but no genuine work by the painters mentioned, found in the better known public or private collections, has been omitted. with the exception of three or four pictures, which he knows only in the photographs, the author has seen and carefully studied every picture indicated, and is alone responsible for the attributions, although he is happy to acknowledge his indebtedness to the writings of signor cavalcaselle, of the late giovanni morelli, of signor gustavo frizzoni, and of dr. j. p. richter. for the convenience of students, lists of the sculptures, but the more important only, have been appended to the lists of pictures by those artists who have left sculptures as well as paintings. public galleries are mentioned first, then private collections, and churches last. the principal public gallery is always understood after the simple mention of a city or town. thus, paris means paris, louvre, london means london, national gallery, etc. an interrogation point after the title of a picture indicates that its attribution to the given painter is doubtful. distinctly early or late works are marked e. or l. it need scarcely be said that the attributions here given are not based on official catalogues, and are often at variance with them. mariotto albertinelli. - . pupil of cosimo rosselli and pier di cosimo; influenced by lorenzo di credi; worked in partnership with fra bartolommeo. agram (croatia). strossmayer collection. adam and eve driven from paradise. e. bergamo. lochis, . crucifixion. morelli, . st. john and the magdalen. e. cambridge. fitzwilliam museum, . madonna and infant john. . chartres. musÉe. tabernacle: madonna and saints, crucifixion, etc. e. florence. academy, . trinity. . madonna and four saints. . annunciation. . pitti, . holy family. uffizi, . last judgment (begun in by fra bartolommeo). . visitation, with _predella_. . corsini, . holy family (in part). . certosa (near florence). crucifixion. . geneva. musÉe. annunciation. . gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry, . nativity. . scenes from the creation. e. the hague. . holy family with infant john (on fra bartolommeo's cartoon). madrid. duke of alba. madonna. milan. poldi-pezzoli, . triptych. . munich. . annunciation and the two saints. new york. mr. samuel untermeyer. female saint. paris. . madonna and saints (begun by filippino, who laid in the st. jerome. albertinelli was assisted by bugiardini in the execution of the rest, especially in the child and landscape). . pisa. s. caterina. madonna and saints (on fra bartolommeo's cartoon). . rome. borghese, . madonna and infant john (on fra bartolommeo's cartoon). . . head of christ. scotland. gosford house, earl of wemyss. madonna. siena. . st. catherine. . . the magdalen. . stuttgart. , , . coronation and two _putti_ (top of fra bartolommeo's altar-piece at besançon). . venice. seminario, . madonna. volterra. duomo. annunciation. e. alunno di domenico. descriptive name for florentine painter whose real name appears to have been bartolommeo di giovanni. flourished last two decades of fifteenth century. assistant of ghirlandajo; influenced by amico di sandro. aix-en-provence. musÉe. madonna and infant john adoring child. arezzo. museo, sala ii, . tabernacle: magdalen and st. antony at foot of cross. dresden. and . _tondi_: ss. michael and raphael. florence. academy, . _pietà_ and stories of saints. . st. thomas aquinas, gabriel, and a prophet. . madonna with st. dominic and a prophet. . st. jerome. . st. francis receiving the stigmata. . entombment. uffizi, . _tondo_: madonna and infant john. . st. benedict and two monks. museo di san marco, small refectory. crucifixion with ss. peter, andrew, the magdalen, and two other saints. marchese manelli riccardi. _pietà_. innocenti, gallery, - . seven _predelle_ to ghirlandajo's altarpiece in church, in which he painted also the "massacre of the innocents." . horsmonden (kent). capel manor, mrs. austen. two _cassone_-fronts: centaurs and lapithæ. liverpool. walker art gallery, . martyrdom of st. sebastian. . bishop dining with a woman. london. mr. brinsley marlay. four _cassone_-fronts: stories of joseph and of the taking of troy. sir kenneth muir mackenzie. madonna and infant john. longleat (warminster). marquess of bath. two _cassone_-fronts: feast and flight. lovere (lago d'iseo). galleria tadini, . madonna and infant john. milan. borromeo. _pietà_ narni. municipio. two compartments of the _predelle_ to ghirlandajo's coronation of virgin: ss. francis and jerome. . new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . st. jerome. oxford. christ church library, . madonna and infant john. palermo. baron chiaramonte-bordonaro, . st. jerome. paris. a. marriage of peleus and thetis. b. triumph of venus. m. jean dollfus, . frame to a trecento madonna. m. joseph spiridon. scene from the tale of nastagio degli onesti. . rome. colonna, . reconciliation between romans and sabines. . rape of sabines. scotland. langton (near duns), hon. mrs. baillie-hamilton. _cassone_-front: story of io. vienna. dr. a. figdor. large cross with ss. jerome and francis. count lanckoronski. several martyrdoms, including the decapitation of the baptist beside a well. warwick castle. earl of warwick. two small _tondi_: st. stephen; a bishop. amico di sandro. an artistic personality between botticelli and filippino lippi. altenburg. lindenau museum, . profile portrait of caterina sforza. bergamo. morelli, . profile portrait of giuliano de' medici. berlin. . madonna. herr edward simon. bust of young man. budapest. . madonna in landscape with st. antony of padua and kneeling monk. chantilly. musÉe condÉ. _cassone_-front: story of esther. florence. pitti, . "_la bella simonetta._" . death of lucretia. uffizi, . madonna and three angels (from s. maria nuova). e. . madonna adoring child. cenacolo di foligno (via faenza), . madonna and infant john adoring child. corsini gallery, . the five virtues. horsmonden (kent). capel manor, mrs. austen. madonna and angel (version of lost original by botticelli). e. london. . adoration of magi. . madonna and infant john. victoria and albert museum, ionides bequest. portrait of esmeralda bandinelli. e. mr. robert benson. tobias and the angel. meiningen. grand ducal palace. nativity. milan. prince trivulzio. profile of lady. naples. madonna and two angels. e. museo filangieri, bis. portrait of young man. oxford. christ church library, , . two panels with sibyls in niches. paris. a. _cassone_-front: death of virginia. . portrait of young man. comte pastre: _cassone_-front: story of esther. baron schlichting. madonna (version of filippo's madonna at munich). philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. portrait of man. rome. count gregori stroganoff. two angels swinging censers. scotland. newbattle abbey (dalkeith), marquess of lothian. coronation of virgin (lunette). st. petersburg. stroganoff collection. nativity and angels in landscape. turin. . tobias and the three archangels. vienna. prince liechtenstein. bust of young man. two _cassone_ panels with story of esther. andrea (vanucci) del sarto. - . pupil of pier di cosimo; influenced by fra bartolommeo and michelangelo. berlin. . bust of his wife. . madonna and saints. . dresden. . marriage of st. catherine. e. . sacrifice of isaac. florence. academy, . two angels. . . fresco: dead christ. . four saints. . . _predelle_ to . pitti, . deposition. . . portrait of young man. . holy family. , . life of joseph. . . annunciation. . dispute over the trinity. . . portrait of young man. . assumption. . . assumption. . . the baptist. . madonna. uffizi, . "noli me tangere." e. . portrait of his wife. . fresco: portrait of himself. . "madonna dell' arpie." . . portrait of himself. . portrait of lady. . st. james. corsini gallery. apollo and daphne. e. chiostro dello scalzo. monochrome frescoes: charity, - . preaching of baptist, finished . justice, . st. john baptising, . baptist made prisoner, . faith, . dance of salome, . annunciation to zacharias, . decapitation of baptist, . feast of herod, . hope, . visitation, . birth of baptist, . ss. annunziata, entrance court. frescoes: five to l. with the story of st. filippo benizzi, - . r., adoration of magi, . birth of virgin, . chapel to l. of entrance. head of christ. inner cloister, over door. fresco: "madonna del sacco." . s. salvi. fresco: four evangelists. . fresco: last supper, begun in . poggio a cajano (royal villa near florence). fresco: cæsar receiving tribute. (finished by a. allori). london. . portrait of a sculptor. hertford house. madonna and angels. mr. robert benson. _tondo_: madonna with infant john. l. mr. leopold de rothschild. madonna and infant john. madrid. . portrait of his wife. . holy family and angel. . sacrifice of isaac. . naples. copy of raphael's leo x. paris. . charity. . . holy family. petworth house (sussex). lord leconfield, . madonna with infant john and three angels (?). e. rome. borghese, . madonna and infant john. e. st. petersburg. . madonna with ss. elizabeth and catherine. . vienna. . _pietà_. . tobias and angel with st. leonard and donor. e. . madonna and infant john (in part). windsor castle. bust of woman. fra angelico da fiesole. - . influenced by lorenzo monaco and masaccio. agram (croatia). strossmayer collection, st. francis receiving stigmata; death of st. peter martyr. altenburg. lindenau museum, . st. francis before the sultan. berlin. . madonna and saints. a. last judgment. l. . ss. dominic and francis. . glory of st. francis. (magazine.) head of saint. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. death and assumption of virgin. brant broughton (lincolnshire). rev. arthur f. sutton. a bishop. cortona. s. domenico, over entrance. fresco: madonna and saints. gesÙ. annunciation. e. two _predelle_. e. triptych: madonna with four saints, etc. düsseldorf. akademie, . head of baptist. florence. academy, . deposition (three pinnacles by lorenzo monaco). . madonna and six saints. - . fourteen scenes from life of christ. . . madonna enthroned (but not the trinity above). . story of ss. cosmas and damian (in part). . entombment. . crucifixion. . coronation of virgin. - , sixteen scenes from life of christ and virgin, except the "legge d'amore." . . martyrdom of ss. cosmas and damian. . madonna with six saints and two angels. . last judgment (not the damned nor the inferno). . madonna and eight saints and eight angels. (ruined). . _predella_: _pietà_ and saints. l. (ruined). uffizi, . triptych: madonna with saints and angels; _predella_. . . _predella_ to no. : birth of john. . _predella_ to no. : _sposalizio_. . _predella_ to no. : dormition. . coronation of virgin. . tabernacle: madonna, saints, and angels. . museo di san marco. frescoes, all painted from between about to no later than . cloister. st. peter martyr; st. dominic at foot of cross; st. dominic (ruined); _pietà_; christ as pilgrim with two dominicans; st. thomas aquinas. chapter house. large crucifixion. upper floor, walls. annunciation; st. dominic at foot of cross; madonna with eight saints. rooms, no. . "noli me tangere." . entombment. . annunciation. . crucifixion. . nativity. . transfiguration. . ecce homo. . resurrection. . coronation of virgin. . presentation in temple. . madonna and saints. - . crucifixions (some ruined). . baptism. . crucifixion. . _pietà_. . christ bearing cross. . descent to limbo. . sermon on the mount. . betrayal of judas. panels: small madonna and angels; small coronation. . agony in garden. panel: small annunciation. . institution of the eucharist. . nailing to cross. . crucifixion. . adoration of magi, and _pietà_. , . crucifixions. s. domenico di fiesole (near florence) madonna and saints (architecture and landscape by lorenzo di credi). sacristy of adjoining monastery. fresco: crucifixion. frankfort a./m. herr adolf schaeffer. madonna enthroned and four angels. london. . paradise. mrs. j. e. taylor. small panel. lyons. m. edouard aynard. madonna with ss. peter, paul, and george, with angels and kneeling donor. madrid. prado, . annunciation. duke of alba. madonna and angels. munich. - . legends of saints. . entombment. orvieto. duomo, chapel of s. brizio. ceiling frescoes: christ as judge; prophets (assisted by benozzo gozzoli). . paris. . coronation of virgin. . martyrdom of ss. cosmas and damian. . fresco: crucifixion. m. georges chalandon. meeting of francis and dominic. m. noel valois. crucifixion with cardinal (probably) john torquemada, as donor. l. parma. . madonna and four saints. perugia. sala v, - . altarpiece in many parts. pisa. sala vi, . salvator mundi. rome. corsini, sala vii, . pentecost. . last judgment. . ascension. vatican, pinacoteca. madonna; two _predelle_ with legend of st. nicholas. museo cristiano, case q. v. st. francis receiving stigmata. chapel of nicholas v. frescoes: lives of ss. stephen and lawrence. - . count gregori stroganoff. small tabernacle. st. petersburg. hermitage, . fresco: madonna with ss. dominic and thomas aquinas. turin. , . adoring angels. vienna. baron tucher. annunciation (in part). bacchiacca (francesco ubertini). about - . pupil of perugino and franciabigio; influenced by andrea del sarto and michelangelo. asolo. canonica della parrocchia. madonna with st. elizabeth. bergamo. morelli, . death of abel. berlin. . baptism. a. portrait of young woman. (magazine.) decapitation of baptist. herr eugen schweizer. leda and the swan. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. head of woman. brocklesby (lincolnshire). earl of yarborough. madonna and st. anne. budapest. . preaching of baptist. cassel. . old man seated. dijon. musée, donation jules maciet. resurrection. dresden. . legendary subject. . florence. pitti, . the magdalen. uffizi, . descent from cross. . _predelle_: life of st. ascanius. . tobias and angel. corsini gallery, . madonna, infant john, and sleeping child. . portrait of man. . conte niccolini (via dei servi). madonna with st. anne and infant john. conte serristori. madonna with st. anne and infant john. locko park (near derby). mr. drury lowe, . christ bearing cross. london. , . story of joseph. . marcus curtius. mr. charles butler. portrait of young man. mr. frederick a. white. birth plate. milan. comm. benigno crespi. adoration of magi; madonna. dr. gustavo frizzoni. adam and eve. munich. . madonna and infant john. oxford. christ church library, . "noli me tangere." . resurrection of lazarus. richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook. holy family; last supper; crucifixion. two _grisailles_: apollo and cupid; apollo and daphne. rome. borghese, . madonna. , , , , . life of joseph. miss hertz. bust of magdalen. troyes. musÉe. tobias and angel. venice. seminario, . madonna. prince giovanelli. moses striking rock. wiesbaden. nassauisches kunstverein, . madonna and infant john. alesso baldovinetti. - . pupil of domenico veneziano; influenced by paolo uccello. bergamo. morelli, . fresco: portrait of himself (fragment from s. trinita, florence). berlin. . profile of young woman. (?) florence. academy, . trinity. . . marriage of cana; baptism; transfiguration. . uffizi, . annunciation. . madonna and saints. mr. b. berenson. madonna. e. s. ambrogio. baptist with ss. catherine, stephen, ambrose, and angels, - . ss. annunziata, entrance court. fresco: nativity. - . duomo, sacristy. intarsias (after his cartoons): nativity, . circumcision. s. marco, courtyard. crucifixion with s. antonino. s. miniato, portuguese chapel. annunciation. . frescoes in cupola and spandrils: prophets. begun . s. pancrazio, ruccellai chapel. fresco: resurrected christ. . pazzi chapel (beside s. croce). window in choir (after his design): st. andrew. s. trinita, choir. frescoes: begun in : ceiling. noah; moses; abraham; david. lunettes: fragment of sacrifice of isaac; slight fragment of moses receiving the tables of the law. paris. a. madonna in landscape. e. mme. edouard andrÉ. madonna in landscape. fra bartolommeo (baccio delta porta). - . pupil of pier di cosimo; influenced by leonardo and michelangelo. ashridge park (berkhampstead). earl brownlow, madonna. l. berlin. . assumption (upper part by albertinelli). probably, . besançon. cathedral. madonna in glory, saints, and ferry carondolet as donor. cambridge (u. s. a.). fogg museum. sacrifice of abel. florence. academy, . st. vincent ferrer. . vision of st. bernard. . . heads in fresco. . fresco: madonna. . portrait of savonarola. . fresco: madonna. pitti, . deposition. . st. mark. . . christ and the four evangelists. . . madonna and saints. . . holy family. . fresco: ecce homo. uffizi, . fresco: last judgment. begun , finished by albertinelli. . isaiah. . job. . small diptych. e. . underpainting for altarpiece (from his cartoons). - . museo di san marco, savonarola's cell. fresco: madonna, . profile of savonarola. e. fresco: christ at emmaus. s. marco, d altar r. madonna and saints. . pian di mugnone (near florence). s. maddalena. frescoes: annunciation. ; "noli me tangere." . grenoble. musÉe, . madonna. london. . madonna in landscape. col. g. l. holford, dorchester house. madonna (in part). mr. ludwig mond. holy family; small nativity. earl of north brook. holy family (finished by albertinelli). lucca. "madonna della misericordia." . god adored by saints. . duomo, chapel l. of choir. madonna and saints. . naples. assumption of virgin (in great part). . panshanger (hertford). holy family. burial and ascension of s. antonino. paris. . "noli me tangere." . . annunciation. . . madonna and saints. . philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. adam and eve (unfinished). richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook, octagon room, . madonna with st. elizabeth and children. . rome. corsini gallery, . holy family. . lateran, . st. peter (finished by raphael). . st. paul. marchese visconti venosta. _tondo_: holy family. st. petersburg. madonna and three angels. . vienna. . madonna. . madonna and saints (assisted by albertinelli). . . circumcision. . benozzo gozzoli. - . pupil possibly of giuliano pesello, and of the bicci; assistant and follower of fra angelico. berlin. b. madonna, saints, and angels. miracle of s. zanobi. . béziers. musÉe, . st. rose and the magdalen. cambridge (u. s. a.). fogg museum. madonna. castelfiorentino (near empoli). cappella di s. chiara. tabernacle with frescoes (in great part). madonna della tosse (on way to castelnuovo). frescoes (in great part). . certaldo. cappella del ponte dell' agliena. tabernacle with frescoes. . cologne. . madonna and saints. . florence. academy, . pilaster with ss. bartholomew, james, and john the baptist (execution probably by giusto d'andrea). uffizi, . _predella_: _pietà_ and saints. palazzo riccardi. frescoes: procession of magi; angels. . palazzo alessandri. four _predelle_: miracle of st. zanobi; totila before st. benedict; fall of simon magus; conversion of st. paul. e. mr. herbert p. horne. large crucifixion. l. locko park (near derby). mr. drury lowe. crucifixion. e. london. . madonna, saints, and angels. . h. m. the king, buckingham palace. death of simon magus. . mr. c. n. robinson. madonna and angels. meiningen. grand ducal palace. st. ursula. milan. brera, . st. dominic restoring child to life. . montefalco. pinacoteca (s. francesco). bay to r. of entrance. various frescoes, . choir. frescoes: scenes from life of st. francis, etc. finished, . s. fortunato, over entrance. fresco: madonna, saints, and angels. . r. wall. fresco: madonna and angel, . second altar r. fresco: s. fortunato enthroned. . narni. municipio. annunciation. paris. . triumph of st. thomas aquinas. baronne d'adelsward. four saints. . perugia. sala vii, . madonna and saints. . philadelphia. mr. peter widener. raising of lazarus. pisa. sala vi. madonna, saints, and angels. madonna and st. anna. campo santo. series of frescoes from old testament; also an annunciation. - . ricovero per mendicitÀ (ancient refectory of s. domenico). frescoes: crucifixion and saints; st. dominic and two angels (in part). l. universitÀ dei cappellani (piazza del duomo). madonna, saints, and donors. . rome. lateran, . polyptych. . vatican, museo cristiano, case s, xii. small _pietà_. aracoeli, third chapel l. fresco: st. antony, donors, and angels. san gemignano. municipio. restoration of lippo memmi's fresco, and two figures to r. added, . fresco: crucifixion. s. agostino, choir. frescoes: life of st. augustine (the children's heads in the purely ornamental parts are by assistants). . second altar l. fresco; st. sebastian. . s. andrea (three miles out of town). madonna. . collegiata, choir. madonna and saints. . entrance wall. st. sebastian and other frescoes. . monte oliveto. fresco: crucifixion. . sermoneta. parish church. madonna and angels. e. terni. biblioteca. madonna with angels and five saints. . vienna. . madonna and saints. e. baron tucher. madonna and cherubim. volterra. duomo, cappella del nome di gesÙ. fresco background to a della robbia nativity: procession of magi. botticelli (alessandro di mariano filipepi). - . pupil of fra filippo; influenced early by the pollajuoli. bergamo. morelli, . story of virginia. l. berlin. . madonna and saints. . . st. sebastian. . von kaufmann collection. judith (in part). l. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. madonna with angel offering ears of wheat to child. e. death of lucretia. l. dresden. . scenes from life of s. zanobi. l. florence. academy, . coronation. (virgin and god the father by inferior hand). probably, . . _predelle_ to above. . "primavera." . madonna, saints, and angels. , , , . _predelle_ to : dead christ; death of st. ignatius; salome; vision of st. augustine. uffizi, . birth of venus. . portrait of giovanni di cosimo de' medici. e. . judith. e. . holofernes. e. . st. augustine. . calumny. l. bis. _tondo_: "magnificat." . adoration of magi. . _tondo_: madonna and angels ("madonna of the pomegranate"). . "fortezza." . . adoration of magi (only laid in by botticelli). palazzo capponi, marchese farinola. last communion of st. jerome. palazzo pitti. pallas subduing a centaur. ognissanti. fresco: st. augustine. . corbignano. (near florence, towards settignano), cappella vanella. repainted fresco: madonna. e. london. . adoration of magi (earliest extant work). . portrait of young man. . mars and venus. . _tondo_: adoration of magi. e. . nativity. . mr. j. p. heseltine. madonna and infant john (in small part). mr. ludwig mond. scenes from life of s. zanobi (two panels). l. milan. ambrosiana, . _tondo_: madonna and angels. poldi-pezzoli, . madonna. paris. . fresco: giovanna tornabuoni with venus and the graces. . . fresco: lorenzo tornabuoni introduced into the circle of the sciences. . rome. vatican, sixtine chapel. frescoes: moses and the daughters of jethro; destruction of the children of korah; christ tempted on roof of temple. - . among the single figures of popes: most of stephen and marcellinus, and heads of cornelius, lucius, and sixtus ii, and probably euaristus. - . st. petersburg. hermitage, . adoration of magi. probably . francesco botticini. - . pupil of neri di bicci; influenced by castagno; worked under and was formed by cosimo rosselli and verrocchio; influenced later by amico di sandro. bergamo. morelli, . tobias and the angel. berlin. a. crucifixion and saints, . . coronation of the virgin. e. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. madonna in landscape. chicago (u. s. a.). mr. martin ryerson. _tondo_: adoration of magi. cleveland (u. s. a.). holden collection, . madonna adoring child (?). . madonna. empoli. opera del duomo, . annunciation. towards . tabernacle for sacrament, with st. andrew and baptist; _predelle_: last supper; martyrdom of two saints. - . tabernacle for sculptured st. sebastian with two angels and donors; _predelle_: story of st. sebastian. towards . florence. academy, . st. vincent ferrer. . st. augustine. . st. monica. . tobias and the three archangels. . tobias and the angel, with youthful donor. martyrdom of st. andrew. pitti, . madonna, infant john, and angels worshipping child. uffizi, . madonna. s. appolonia. deposition with magdalen and ss. sebastian and bernard. duca di brindisi. two _cassone_-panels: story of virginia. marchese pio strozzi. madonna with ss. antony abbot and donato. s. spirito, r. transept. altarpiece with _predelle_: st. monica and nuns. . brozzi (near florence). s. andrea, r. wall. madonna and saints. . (the fresco above, with god, the father, is school work.) göttingen. university gallery, . madonna and infant john. london. . st. jerome with other saints and donors. . assumption of virgin. before . earl of ashburnham. madonna adoring child. mr. robert benson. _tondo_: madonna in landscape. madonna with four rose-crowned angels and two cherubim. mr. c. brinsley marlay. madonna adoring child. mr. charles butler. bishop enthroned, with four female saints. modena. . madonna and angels adoring child. montefortino (near amandola, abruzzi). municipio. madonna adoring child. palermo. baron chiaramonte bordonaro. ss. nicholas and roch. panzano (near greve). s. maria, third altar l. angels and saints around old picture. parcieux (near trévoux). la grange blanche, m. henri chalandon. nativity. paris. . madonna in glory, and saints. mme. edouard andrÉ. madonna and four saints; a version of fra filippo's uffizi madonna; _pietà_ with ss. nicholas, james, dominic, and louis. comtesse arconati-visconti. _tondo_: madonna adoring child. m. henri heugel. madonna adoring child. prato. madonna and four saints. richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook, museum. bust of young man. scotland. gosford house. earl of wemyss. profile of youth. stockholm. royal palace. bust of youth. turin. . coronation of virgin. wigan. haigh hall, earl crawford. madonna, enthroned with st. francis, donor, tobias, and angel. bronzino (angelo allori). (?)- . pupil of pontormo; influenced by michelangelo. bergamo. morelli, . portrait of alessandro de' medici. berlin. . portrait of youth. a. portrait of ugolino martelli. b. portrait of eleonora da toledo. simon collection, . bust of youth. herr edward simon. portrait of bearded man. besançon. musÉe, . deposition. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. portrait of a medici princess. budapest. . venus and cupid (in part). . adoration of shepherds. cassel. portrait of duke cosimo de' medici in armour, holding myrtle-branch. florence. pitti, . holy family. . portrait of duke cosimo i. . portrait of the architect luca martini. uffizi, . lucrezia panciatichi. . descent from cross. . . bartolommeo panciatichi. . eleonora da toledo and don garzia. . portrait of young woman. . don garzia. . maria de' medici. . man in armour. . dead christ. . allegory of happiness. . portrait of sculptor. . christ in limbo. . . don ferdinand. . maria de' medici. miniatures: . don garzia. . don ferdinand. . maria de' medici. . francesco de' medici. . duke cosimo i. . alessandro de' medici. magazine. annunciation. palazzo vecchio, chapel of eleonora da toledo. frescoes. . s. lorenzo, l. wall. fresco: martyrdom of st. lawrence. the hague. . portrait of lady. london. . allegory. . piero de' medici il gottoso. lucca. don ferdinand. don garzia. milan. brera, . portrait of andrea doria as neptune. new york. mrs. gould. portrait of woman and child. havemeyer collection. youth in black. paris. . "noli me tangere." . portrait of sculptor. pisa. s. stefano. nativity. . rome. borghese gallery, . st. john the baptist. colonna gallery, . venus, cupid, and satyr. corsini gallery, . portrait of stefano colonna. . prince doria. portrait of giannottino doria. turin. . portrait of giovanni delle bande nere. venice. seminario, . portrait of child. vienna. . portrait of man. l. . holy family. bugiardini. - . pupil of ghirlandajo and pier di cosimo; assistant of albertinelli; influenced by perugino, michelangelo, francesco francia, and franciabigio. agram. strossmayer gallery. madonna seated in a loggia looking down towards infant john (?). berlin. , . _cassone_-panels: story of tobias. . madonna and saints. museum of industrial art. _cassone_-front: story of st. felicitas. palace of emperor william i. _cassone_-front: story of tobias. bologna. . st. john in desert. . madonna enthroned with ss. catherine, antony of padua, and infant john. . _tondo_: madonna. bonn. university gallery, . madonna with infant john. bowood park (calne). marquess of lansdowne. copy of perugino's madonna in louvre (no. ). budapest. . "_volto santo di luca_" (?). dijon. musÉe. . madonna and infant john. figline (near florence). s. piero al terreno, high altar. madonna with ss. peter, paul, francis, and jerome. florence. pitti, . portrait of lady. uffizi, . _tondo_: madonna and infant john (?). e. . madonna. . madonna and infant john. . museo di s. marco, anticamera of refectory, . madonna adored by st. francis and the magdalen. s. croce, refectory, . st. nicholas. . the baptist. . st. paul. . st. jerome. s. maria novella, r. transept. martyrdom of st. catherine. london. . madonna, infant john, and angels (michelangelo's suggestion). earl of northbrook. baptist in desert drinking. milan. s. maria delle grazie. the baptist. modena. . madonna and infant john. mombello (near milan). prince pio di savoia. madonna. newport (u. s. a.). mr. theodore m. davis, the reef. madonna, infant john, and angel. new york. metropolitan museum. madonna and infant john (?). olantigh towers (wye, kent). mr. erle-drax, . madonna and infant john. oldenburg. , st. sebastian. paris. . bust of youth. musÉe des arts decoratifs, salle, . bust of woman with prayer-book. mme. edouard andrÉ. portrait of lady. philadelphia. mr. peter widener. . _tondo_: madonna and infant john (?). rome. borghese gallery, . marriage of st. catherine. . madonna and infant john (?). colonna gallery, . madonna. corsini gallery, . madonna (?) . . leo x. (variation of raphael's portrait in pitti). prince colonna. _tondo_: madonna and infant john. contessa spaletti. _tondo_: madonna and infant john. scotland, langton (duns). hon. mrs. baillie-hamilton. madonna and infant john. siena. palazzo saracini, . holy family in landscape. st. petersburg. _tondo_: holy family with infant john asleep. strasburg. university gallery, . presentation. stuttgart. . _tondo_: holy family. turin. . madonna and infant john. museo civico. madonna and infant john. venice. baron giorgio franchetti. venus asleep and cupid. vienna. . rape of dinah. . academy, . _tondo_: madonna with infant john (michelangelo's suggestion). raffaelle dei carli (or croli). -after . started under influence of ghirlandajo and credi, later became almost umbrian, and at one time was in close contact with garbo, whom he may have assisted. berlin. von kaufmann collection. three half-length figures of saints in small ovals. dresden. . madonna and two saints. düsseldorf. . _tondo_: madonna, with child blessing. eastnor castle (ledbury). lady henry somerset. altarpiece: madonna and saints. esher. mr. herbert f. cook, copseham. israelites crossing red sea. the golden calf. florence. uffizi, . madonna appearing to four saints. madonna, two saints, and two donors (probably painted in garbo's studio). the four evangelists (framed above triptych ascribed to spinello aretino) (?). magazine. annunciation. mr. b. berenson. christ in tomb between mary and john. duca di brindisi. combat of marine deities. mr. h. w. cannon, villa doccia (near fiesole), chapel in woods. fresco. corsini gallery. madonna with two saints and two angels. via conservatorio capponi, i. tabernacle: madonna and two angels. via delle colonne, scuola elementare. fresco: miracle of loaves and fishes. . mrs. ross, poggio gherardo. madonna in glory, and two bishops. s. ambrogio, first altar r. st. ambrogio and other saints; annunciation in lunette. s. maria maddalena dei pazzi. st. roch. st. ignatius. s. procolo. altar r. visitation with saints and angels. s. spirito, south transept. madonna and evangelist with ss. stephen, lawrence, and bernard. . madonna with evangelist, st. bartholomew, and two angels. e. madonna with two angels and ss. nicholas and bartholomew, and busts of jerome and another saint. brozzi (near florence). s. andrea, r. wall. fresco in lunette: ss. albert and sigismund. le mans. musÉe, . madonna. locko park (near derby). mr. drury lowe. deposition. the baptist. london. mr. robert benson. mass of st. gregory. . lucca. sala iv, . polyptych. milan. poldi-pezzoli, . madonna and infant john. montepulciano. municipio, . _tondo_: madonna in landscape. olantigh towers (wye). mr. erle-drax. _pietà_. oxford. christ church library. the magdalen. paris. . coronation and four saints. baron michele lazzaroni. resurrection, with kneeling donors. m. eugÈne richtemberger. _tondo_: madonna and two angels. l. pisa. museo civico, . madonna and four saints. sala vi, . god appearing to kneeling company. s. matteo, l. wall. _predelle_ to no. in museo. poggibonsi. s. lucchese, r. wall. "noli me tangere." prato. municipio, . madonna and infant john. san miniato del tedeschi. s. domenico. madonna with st. andrew and baptist(?). . siena. s. maria degli angeli, high altar. madonna in glory, and saints. . vallombrosa. pieve. s. giovanni gualberto enthroned between four saints. . venice. academy, . madonna and two saints, e. volterra. municipio, anticamera. fresco: madonna. museo. madonna, saints, and angels. e. weston birt (tetbury). captain g. l. holford. nativity. andrea del castagno. died rather young in . influenced by donatello and paolo uccello. florence. uffizi, third tuscan room. . fresco: crucifixion and saints. s. appolonia, refectory. frescoes: last supper; crucifixion; entombment; resurrection. soon after . (nine figures) boccaccio; petrarch; dante; queen thomyris; cumæan sibyl; niccolò acciajuoli; farinati degli uberti; filippo scolari ("pippo spano"); esther. l.--frieze of _putti_ with garlands. cloister. fresco: dead christ and angels. soon after . hospital ( via degli alfani), court. fresco: crucifixion. ss. annunziata, first altar l. fresco: christ and st. julian. l. (invisible.) second altar l. fresco: trinity with st. jerome and other saints. l. (invisible.) duomo, wall r. of entrance: fresco: equestrian portrait of niccolò da tolentino. . window in drum of cupola (from his design). deposition. . locko park (near derby). mr. drury lowe. david (painted on a shield). l. london. . small crucifixion. mr. j. pierpont morgan. bust of man. cimabue. about -about . the following works are all by the same hand, probably cimabue's. assisi. s. francesco, upper church, choir and transepts. frescoes. lower church, r. transept. fresco: madonna and angels with st. francis. florence. academy, . madonna, angels, and four prophets. paris. . madonna and angels. cosimo, see pier di cosimo. lorenzo di credi. - . pupil of verrocchio. berlin. . bust of young woman (?). e. . madonna. . st. mary of egypt. cambridge. fitzwilliam museum, . st. sebastian (the saint only). carlsruhe. . madonna and infant john adoring child. castiglione fiorentino. collegiata, altar r. of high altar. nativity. l. cleveland (u. s. a.). holden collection, . madonna. dresden. . madonna and infant john. e. . nativity (in part). . madonna and saints. florence. academy, . adoration of shepherds. . nativity (in great part). uffizi, . _tondo_: madonna (in part). . portrait of young man. . annunciation. e. . portrait of verrocchio. . madonna and evangelist. . "noli me tangere." . annunciation. . annunciation. . venus. e. _tondo_: madonna and angel adoring child (in part). marchese pucci. portrait of lady. s. domenico (near fiesole), first altar r. baptism. duomo, sacristy. st. michael. . or san michele, pillar. st. bartholomew. s. spirito, apse. madonna with st. jerome and an apostle. e. scandicci (near florence), comtesse de turenne. portrait of youth. forlì. . portrait of lady. e. glasgow. mr. william beattie. portrait of the artist. . göttingen. university museum, . crucifixion. hamburg. weber collection. _tondo_: ascension of youthful saint accompanied by two angels. hanover. kestner museum, . bust of youth. london. . madonna. . madonna adoring child. mr. charles butler. madonna. earl of rosebery. st. george. longleat (warminster). marquess of bath. madonna. mayence. . madonna. e. milan. conte casatti. madonna and infant john. munich. a. madonna (?) (done in verrocchio's studio). naples. nativity. l. oxford. university galleries, . madonna (?). paris. . madonna and two saints. , or later. . "noli me tangere." m. gustave dreyfus. madonna (done in verrocchio's studio). pistoia. duomo, chapel l. of high altar. madonna and saints (done in verrocchio's studio. - ). madonna del letto. virgin, st. jerome, and baptist. . rome. borghese, . madonna and infant john. scotland. (cf. glasgow.) strasburg. university gallery, . madonna. e. turin. . madonna. e. . madonna (in part). venice. querini-stampalia, sala iii, . madonna and infant john. domenico, see veneziano. filippino and filippo, see lippi. franciabigio. - . pupil of pier di cosimo and albertinelli; worked with and was influenced by andrea del sarto. barnard castle. bowes museum, . bust of young man. berlin. . portrait of man. . portrait of man writing. . a. portrait of youth in landscape. herr eugen schweizer. madonna with infant john. bologna. . madonna. brussels. . leda and her children. musÉe de la ville. profile of old man. chantilly. musÉe condÉ, . bust of man. cracow. potocki collection. madonna with infant john (?). dijon. musÉe, donation jules maciet. bust of youth. dresden. . bathsheba. . florence. pitti, . portrait of man. . . calumny. e. uffizi, . _tondo_: madonna and infant john, e. . temple of hercules. . _tondo_: holy family and infant john. . madonna with job and baptist. e. chiostro dello scalzo. monochrome frescoes: baptist leaving his parents, - . baptism, . meeting of christ and baptist, - . ss. annunziata, entrance court, r. fresco: sposalizio. . la calza. (porta romana). fresco: last supper. poggio a cajano (royal villa near florence). fresco: triumph of cæsar. . hamburg. weber collection, . bust of young man. london. . portrait of young man. mr. robert benson. portrait of young man. earl of northbrook. head of young man. mr. t. vasel. bust of young man. earl of yarborough. bust of a jeweller. . modena. . birth of baptist. e. new york. mr. rutherford stuyvesant. portrait of man. nîmes. , , . small _tondi_: trinity, ss. peter and paul. oxford. mr. t. w. jackson. legend of a saint. paris. a. portrait of andrea fausti. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. bust of christ blessing (?). pinerolo (piedmont). villa lamba doria. portrait of young man. rome. barberini gallery. portrait of young man. borghese gallery, . madonna and infant john. e. corsini gallery, . madonna holding child on parapet. portrait of man with book. turin. . annunciation. e. vienna. . holy family. . madonna and infant john in landscape. count lanckoronski. man with cap and feathers. l. christ saving man from drowning (?). prince liechtenstein. bust of young man. . madonna and infant john. wiesbaden. nassauisches kunstverein, . _cassone_ picture. windsor castle. portrait of man ("gardener of pier francesco dei medici"). raffaelino del garbo. - (?). pupil of botticelli and filippino lippi; influenced by ghirlandajo and perugino. berlin. . bust of man. . profile of young woman. . _tondo_: madonna and angels. simon collection, i. _tondo_: madonna and angels. e. dresden. . madonna and infant john. florence. academy, . resurrection. glasgow. corporation gallery. madonna with infant john. london. mr. robert benson. _tondo_: madonna and angels. col. g. l. holford, dorchester house. madonna and angel. mr. charles ricketts. madonna in landscape. sir henry samuelson. _tondo_: madonna with magdalen and st. catherine. lyons. m. edouard aynard. profile bust of baptist. munich. . _pietà_. naples. _tondo_: madonna and infant john. paris. m. henri heugel. _tondo_: madonna and two angels. e. baron edouard de rothschild. profile bust of young lady. parma. . madonna giving girdle to st. thomas. venice. lady layard. portrait of man. domenico ghirlandajo. - . pupil of baldovinetti; influenced slightly by botticelli and more strongly by verrocchio. florence. academy, . madonna and saints. . adoration of shepherds. . uffizi, . madonna and saints. . portrait of giovanni bicci de' medici. . adoration of magi. . madonna, saints, and angels. museo di san marco, small refectory. fresco: last supper. palazzo vecchio, flag room. fresco: triumph of s. zanobi. - . duomo, over n. door. mosaic: annunciation. . innocenti, high altar. adoration of magi (the episode of the "massacre of the innocents" painted by alunno di domenico). . s. maria novella, choir. frescoes: lives of the virgin and baptist, etc. (execution, save certain portrait heads, chiefly by david, mainardi, and other assistants). begun , finished . ognissanti, l. wall. fresco: st. augustine. . altar r. fresco: madonna della misericordia (in part). e. refectory. fresco: last supper. . s. trinita. chapel r. of choir. frescoes: life of st. francis. - . over arch. fresco: augustus and sibyl (in part). same date. badia di passignano (tavernelle, near florence), refectory. frescoes: last supper, etc. . london. . portrait of young man (repainted). mr. robert benson. francesco sassetti and his son. mr. ludwig mond. madonna. mr. j. pierpont morgan. profile of giovanna tornabuoni. . mr. george salting. madonna and infant john. bust of costanza de' medici. lucca. duomo, sacristy. madonna and saints, with _pietà_ in lunette. narni. municipio. coronation of virgin (in part). . new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . fresco: head of woman (cf. woman to extreme l. in "visitation" at s. maria novella, florence). paris. . visitation (in part). . old man and boy. pisa. museo civico, sala vi, . ss. sebastian and roch (in part). virgin with st. anne and saints (in part). rome. vatican, sixtine chapel. frescoes: calling of peter and andrew. . single figures of popes: anacletus, iginius, clement, and pius. . san gemignano. collegiata, chapel of s. fina. frescoes: life of the saint. about . vercelli. museo borgogna. madonna adoring infant. e. volterra. municipio. christ in glory adored by two saints and don guido bonvicini (in part). . ridolfo ghirlandajo. to . pupil of granacci, and eclectic imitator of most of his important contemporaries. bergamo. morelli, . bust of man. berlin. . nativity. budapest. . nativity. . chatsworth. duke of devonshire. bust of man (?). l. colle di val d'elsa. s. agostino, third altar r. _pietà_. . florence. academy, , . panels with three angels each. e. pitti, . portrait of a goldsmith. e. . portrait of a lady. . uffizi, , . miracles of s. zanobi. . bigallo. _predelle_. . palazzo vecchio, cappella dei priori. frescoes. . corsini gallery, . portrait of man. palazzo torrigiani. portrait of ardinghelli. la quiete. st. sebastian. glasgow. mr. william beattie. portrait of man (?). london. . procession to calvary. e. mr. george salting. portrait of girolamo beniviene. lucardo (near certaldo). high altar. madonna with ss. peter, martin, justus, and the baptist. e. milan. comm. benigno crespi. small triptych. nativity and saints. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . madonna and saints. paris. . coronation of virgin. . philadelphia. elkins park, mr. peter widener, . bust of lucrezia summaria, e. pistoia. s. pietro maggiore. madonna and saints. . prato. duomo. madonna giving girdle to st. thomas. . reigate (surrey). the priory, mr. somers somerset. portrait of girolamo beniviene. st. petersburg. . portrait of old man. wantage. lockinge house, lady wantage. youngish man looking up from letter. giotto. - . follower of pietro cavallini; influenced by giovanni pisano. assisi. s. francesco, lower church, chapel of the magdalen: frescoes: feast in the house of simon (in great part); raising of lazarus; "noli me tangere," (in part); magdalen and donor (in part)(?). (the remaining frescoes in this chapel are by assistants.) before . upper church. ii-xix of frescoes recounting the life of st. francis (with occasional aid of a). e. west wall. fresco: madonna. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner: presentation of christ in the temple. l. florence. academy, . madonna enthroned and angels. s. croce, bardi chapel. frescoes: life of st. francis, etc. (little more than the compositions are now giotto's.) not earlier than . peruzzi chapel. frescoes: lives of the baptist and st. john the evangelist (considerably repainted). l. munich. . last supper. padua. arena chapel. frescoes: lives of christ and his mother; last judgment; symbolical figures. about - . sacristy. painted crucifix. about - . rome. s. giovanni laterano, pillar r. aisle. fragment of fresco: boniface viii proclaiming the jubilee. . giotto's assistants. [an attempt to distinguish in the mass of work usually ascribed to giotto the different artistic personalities engaged as his most immediate followers and assistants.] a. assisi. s. francesco, upper church. xx-xxv and first of frescoes recounting the life of st. francis, done perhaps under giotto's directions. xxvi-xxviii of same series done more upon his own responsibility. lower church, chapel of the sacrament. frescoes: legend of st. nicholas; christ with ss. francis and nicholas and donors, etc. (?). before . madonna between ss. francis and nicholas (?). before . florence. uffizi, . altarpiece of st. cecily. e. s. margherita a montici (beyond torre del gallo). madonna. e. altarpiece with st. margaret. e. s. miniato: altarpiece with s. miniato. e. b. assisi. s. francesco, lower church, over tomb of saint. frescoes: allegories of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and triumph of st. francis. (the francis between the two angels in the "obedience" and nearly all of the "triumph" were executed by another hand, probably c.) r. transept. frescoes: bringing to life of child fallen from window; francis and a crowned skeleton; two scenes (one on either side of arch leading to the chapel of the sacrament) representing the bringing to life of a boy killed by a falling house; (above these) annunciation; (next to cimabue's madonna) crucifixion (with the aid of c). florence. s. croce, cappella medici. baroncelli polyptych: coronation of virgin, saints and angels (?). c. assisi. s. francesco, lower church, r. transept. frescoes: eight scenes from the childhood of christ. berlin. a. crucifixion. florence. bargello chapel. fresco: paradise (?). (cf. also under b for assistance rendered by c.) various. bologna. pinacoteca, . polyptych: madonna and saints. florence. s. felice. painted crucifix. munich. . crucifixion (?). paris. . st. francis receiving stigmata. rome. st. peter's, sagrestia dei canonici. stefaneschi polyptych (suggests bernardo daddi). strasburg. . crucifixion. gozzoli, see benozzo. francesco granacci. - . pupil first of credi, and then of ghirlandajo, whom he assisted; influenced by botticelli, michelangelo fra bartolommeo, and pontormo. berlin. and . ss. vincent and antonino (in ghirlandajo's studio). soon after . . madonna and four saints (kneeling figures and landscape his own cartoons, the rest ghirlandajesque design). . madonna with baptist and archangel michael, e. . the trinity. budapest. . st. john at patmos. . madonna and infant john (?) cassel. . _tondo_: madonna holding child on parapet. . crucifixion. chantilly. musÉe condÉ, . madonna (from ghirlandajo's studio) (?). città di castello. pinacoteca. coronation of virgin (in part; done in ghirlandajo's studio). darmstadt. small crucifixion. l. dublin. . holy family. florence. academy, . assumption of virgin. . madonna. - . stories of saints. l. pitti, . holy family. uffizi, , . life of joseph. portrait of lucrezia del fede. covoni altarpiece, madonna and saints. istituto dei minorenni corrigendi (via della scala.) altarpiece: madonna with ss. sebastian and julian (?). brozzi (near florence). s. andrea. l. wall. frescoes: baptism, madonna enthroned between ss. dominic and sebastian (ghirlandajo's designs). quintole (near florence). s. pietro. _pietà_. l. villamagna (near florence), church. madonna with ss. gherardo and donnino. glasgow. mr. james mann. madonna (?). e. london. victoria and albert museum. _tondo_: madonna. mr. robert benson. god the father sending holy spirit to christ kneeling, the virgin recommending donor, who has his family present, and below a saint pointing to a scroll (?). e. duke of buccleugh, . madonna and infant john. lucca. marchese mansi (s. maria forisportam). _tondo_: madonna and two angels. milan. comm. benigno crespi. entry of charles viii into florence. munich. . madonna in glory and four saints (ghirlandajo's design). soon after . - . panels with a saint in each. l. . holy family. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . _pietà_. l. oxford. christ church library. st. francis. university museum, . st. antony of padua and an angel. panshanger (near hertford). portrait of lady. paris. m. jean dollfus. madonna and saints (?). m. d'eichtal. bust of lady. m. eugÈne richtemberger. nativity. m. joseph spiridon. bust of young woman in red. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. _pietà_ in landscape (?). e. reigate (surrey). the priory, mr. somers somerset. madonna giving girdle to st. thomas. rome. borghese, . maddalena strozzi as st. catherine. corsini, . hebe. scotland. (glasgow, cf. glasgow). rossie priory (inchture, perthshire), lord kinnaird. st. lucy before her judges. l. st. petersburg. hermitage, . nativity with ss. francis and jerome. vienna. count lanckoronski. preaching of st. stephen. herr carl wittgenstein. bust of woman in green. (?). warwick castle. earl of warwick. assumption of virgin, and four saints. l. leonardo da vinci. - . pupil of verrocchio. florence. uffizi, . adoration of magi (unfinished). begun in . london. burlington house, diploma gallery. large cartoon for madonna with st. anne. milan. s. maria delle grazie, refectory. fresco: last supper. paris. . annunciation. e. . madonna with st. anne (unfinished). . "la vierge aux rochers." . "la gioconda." rome. vatican, pinacoteca. st. jerome, (unfinished). note:--an adequate conception of leonardo as an artist can be obtained only by an acquaintance with his drawings, many of the best of which are reproduced in dr. j. p. richter's "literary works of leonardo da vinci," and in b. berenson's "drawings of the florentine painters." filippino lippi - . pupil of botticelli; influenced by amico di sandro, and very slightly by piero di cosimo. berlin. a. allegory of music. l. . crucifixion with virgin and st. francis. l. . madonna. fragment of fresco: head of youth in black cap, with brown curls. bologna. s. domenico, chapel r. of high altar. marriage of st. catherine. . copenhagen. meeting of joachim and anne. l. florence. academy, . st. mary of egypt. . st. jerome. . the baptist. . deposition (finished by perugino). pitti, . allegorical subject. uffizi, . fresco: portrait of himself. e. . fresco: old man. e. . adoration of magi. . . madonna and saints. . palazzo corsini. _tondo_: madonna and angels. e. mr. herbert p. horne. christ on cross. l. palazzo torrigiani. bust of youth. s. ambrogio, niche l. monochromes: angels, and medallions in _predella_. l. badia. vision of st. bernard with piero di francesco del pugliese as donor. soon after . carmine, brancacci chapel. completion of masaccio's frescoes. . angel delivering st. peter; paul visiting peter in prison; peter and paul before the proconsul; martyrdom of peter; (in the "raising of the king's son") the group of four men on the extreme l.; the boy; and eight men and a child in a row. s. maria novella, strozzi chapel. frescoes: episodes from lives of evangelist and st. philip, etc. finished . s. spirito. madonna and saints, with tanai di nerli and his wife. villa reale di poggio a cajano (near florence), porch. fragment of fresco. genoa. palazzo bianco, sala v, . madonna and saints. . kiel. prof. martius. madonna. lewes (sussex). mr. e. p. warren. _tondo_: holy family and st. margaret. london. . madonna with ss. jerome and dominic. . angel adoring. mr. robert benson. dead christ. sir henry samuelson. moses striking the rock. adoration of golden calf. sir julius wernher. madonna. l. lucca. s. michele, first altar r. ss. helena, jerome, sebastian, and roch. e. naples. annunciation, with baptist and st. andrew. e. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . christ on cross. oxford. christ church library. centaur; on back, unfinished allegorical figures. prato. municipio, . madonna with baptist and st. stephen. . fresco in tabernacle on street corner: madonna and saints. . rome. s. maria sopra minerva, caraffa chapel. annunciation. frescoes: triumph of st. thomas aquinas; assumption of virgin. - . st. petersburg. stroganoff collection. annunciation. l. strasburg. university gallery, . head of angel (a fragment). venice. seminario, . christ and the samaritan woman. . "noli me tangere." vienna. herr eugen von miller aicholz. christ on cross. fra filippo lippi. - . pupil of lorenzo monaco and follower of masaccio; influenced by fra angelico. ashridge park (berkhampstead). earl brownlow. madonna. berlin. . madonna. . madonna adoring child. . "madonna della misericordia." b. _predella_: miraculous infancy of a saint. florence. academy, . madonna and saints. . coronation of virgin. . . virgin adoring child. . nativity. e. . _predelle_: s. frediano changing the course of the serchio; virgin receiving the announcement of her death; st. augustine in his study. . gabriel and baptist. . madonna and st. antony abbot. pitti, . madonna. . uffizi, . madonna. palazzo alessandri. st. antony abbot and a bishop. ss. lawrence, cosmas, and damian and donors. palazzo riccardi (prefecture). madonna. s. lorenzo, martelli chapel. annunciation, and _predelle_. london. . vision of st. bernard. . . annunciation. e. . seven saints. e. lyons. m. edouard aynard. _predella_: st. benedict and novice. munich. . annunciation. e. . madonna. oxford. university galleries, . meeting of joachim and anne. paris. . madonna and angels. . prato. duomo, choir. frescoes: lives of st. stephen and the baptist (assisted by fra diamante). - . r. transept. fresco: death of st. bernard (the upper part by fra diamante). ordered . richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook. _tondo_: adoration of magi. e. ss. michael and antony abbot. . rome. lateran, . triptych: coronation, saints and donors (the angels are, in execution at least, by another hand, probably fra diamante's). prince doria. annunciation. mr. ludwig mond. annunciation and donors. spoleto. duomo, apse. frescoes: life of virgin (chiefly by fra diamante). left unfinished at death. turin. accademia albertina, , . the four church fathers. lorenzo monaco. about - . follower of agnolo gaddi and the sienese. altenburg. lindenau museum, . crucifixion with ss. francis, benedict, and romuald. e. . flight into egypt. bergamo. morelli, . dead christ. berlin. . madonna with baptist and st. nicholas. e. print room. illuminations: visitation. journey of magi. von kaufmann collection. st. jerome. nativity. brant broughton (lincolnshire). rev. arthur f. sutton. miracles of st. benedict. brunswick. ss. stephen, dominic, francis, and lawrence. e. cambridge. fitzwilliam museum, . madonna and two angels. cassel. . king david. copenhagen. thorwaldsen museum, i. madonna. empoli. opera del duomo, . triptych. . fiesole. s. ansano (to be transferred to museo). christ on cross between mary, john, and francis. florence. academy, . annunciation. . life of st. onofrio. . nativity. . life of st. martin. . three pinnacles above fra angelico's deposition. bargello. codex x, miniatures. - . uffizi, . adoration of magi (annunciation and prophets in frame by cosimo rosselli). . _pietà_. . . triptych: madonna and saints. . . madonna with baptist and st. paul. . coronation and saints. . museo di san marco. , , . crucifixion with mary and john. biblioteca laurenziana. miniatures. . hospital (s. maria nuova), over door in a corridor. fresco: fragment of a _pietà_. e. mr. charles loeser. crucifixion. s. croce, refectory, . st. james enthroned. s. giovanni dei cavalieri. crucifix; mary; john. s. giuseppe. crucifix. chiostro degli oblati ( via s. egidio). frescoes: _pietà_, with symbols of passion; christ and apostles; agony in garden. s. trinita, bartolini chapel. altarpiece: annunciation and _predelle_. l. frescoes: life of virgin. l. gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry, . adoration of magi; visitation. london. , . various saints. . coronation of virgin. mr. henry wagner. legend of s. giovanni gualberto. milan. comm. benigno crespi. small shrine with madonna and saints. cav. aldo noseda. madonna. . munich. lotzbeck collection, . st. peter enthroned. e. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . crucifixion. parcieux (near trévoux). la grange blanche, m. henri chalandon. three panels with saint and prophet in each. paris. . agony in garden; three marys at tomb. . posen. raczynski collection. adoration of magi. richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook. madonna. rome. vatican, museo cristiano, case c, ii. crucifixion. case s, iii. fragment of _predella_: st. antony abbot visited by madonna. xi. benedict calling a dead friar to life, and demon tempting another friar. siena. . triptych: madonna and saints. e. turin. museo civico, . madonna with baptist and old saint (on glass). . washington (u. s. a.). mr. victor g. fischer. madonna and two angels. e. bastiano mainardi. about - . pupil and imitator of his brother-in-law, domenico ghirlandajo. altenburg. lindenau museum, . bust of woman. berlin. . madonna. . portrait of young woman. . portrait of a cardinal. . portrait of young man. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. quincy a. shaw. madonna adoring child. cologne. . madonna and five saints. dresden. _tondo_: nativity. florence. uffizi, . st. peter martyr between ss. james and peter. bargello, chapel. fresco: madonna. . palazzo torrigiani. _tondo_: madonna and two angels. s. croce, baroncelli chapel. fresco: virgin giving girdle to st. thomas. chiesa di orbetello, r. wall. fresco: madonna and two cherubim (ss. andrew and dionysus, etc., by another ghirlandajesque hand). brozzi (near florence), fattoria orsini. frescoes: nativity (cf. dresden ); saints. hamburg. weber collection, . madonna. hildesheim. . _tondo_: madonna. locko park (near derby). mr. drury-lowe. replicas of berlin portraits, nos. and . london. . bust of young woman. sir henry howorth. madonna and three angels adoring child. mr. george salting. bust of young man. longleat (warminster). marquess of bath. madonna, four saints, _putti_, and angels. lyons. m. edouard aynard. st. stephen. milan. comm. benigno crespi. two panels with men and women worshippers. munich. , . ss. lawrence and catherine of siena (soon after ). . madonna and donor. . ss. george and sebastian. münster i./w. kunstverein, . marriage of st. catherine. oxford. university museum, . ss. bartholomew and julian. palermo. baron chiaramonte bordonaro, . madonna with ss. paul and francis. . paris. . _tondo_: madonna with infant john and angels. comtesse arconati-visconti. busts of man and woman (free replicas of berlin, nos. and ). philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. madonna with ss. sebastian and appolonia. rome. vatican, museo cristiano, case o, xvi. _tondo_: nativity. count gregori stroganoff. three saints. san gemignano. municipio, and . _tondi_: madonnas. ospedale di s. fina. frescoes in vaulting. via s. giovanni. fresco: madonna and cherubim. s. agostino, r. wall. ss. nicholas of bari, lucy, and augustine. ceiling. frescoes: the four church fathers. l. wall. frescoes for tomb of fra domenico strambi. . collegiata, chapel of s. fina. frescoes in ceiling. chapel of s. giovanni. annunciation. . sacristy. madonna in glory, and saints. monte oliveto, chapel r. madonna with ss. bernard and jerome. . siena. palazzo saracini, . bust of young woman in red. vienna. harrach collection, . nativity (replica of dresden, ). prince liechtenstein. madonna and infant john. masaccio. - . pupil of masolino; influenced by brunellesco and donatello. berlin. a. adoration of magi. probably . b. martyrdom of st. peter and baptist. probably . c. a birth plate. d. four saints. probably . boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. profile of young man. brant broughton (lincolnshire). rev. arthur f. sutton. madonna enthroned on high seat with two angels below worshipping and two others seated playing on lutes. probably . florence. academy, . madonna with st. anne. e. carmine, brancacci chapel. frescoes: expulsion from paradise; tribute money; ss. peter and john healing the sick with their shadows; st. peter baptising; ss. peter and john distributing alms; raising of the king's son (except the son, a child, and eight figures of same group, as well as four figures on extreme left, all of which are by filippino lippi, while the fourth head of this group is again by masaccio). s. maria novella, wall r. of entrance. fresco: trinity with virgin and st. john and donor and his wife. montemarciano (val d'arno superiore). oratorio. fresco: madonna with michael and baptist. e. naples. crucifixion. probably . pisa. sala vi, . st. paul. probably . strasburg. university gallery, . resurrected christ (?). e. vienna. count lanckoronski. st. andrew. probably . masolino. -after . bremen. kunsthalle, . madonna. . castiglione d'olona. church. frescoes: life of virgin. baptistery. frescoes: life of baptist. palazzo castiglione. frescoes: a landscape and friezes. empoli. duomo, baptistery. fresco: _pietà_. s. stefano. fresco in an arch: madonna and angels. probably . florence. carmine, brancacci chapel. frescoes: preaching of st. peter; raising of tabitha and healing of cripple; fall of adam and eve. munich. . madonna and angels. naples. christ receiving virgin in paradise. founding of s. maria maggiore. rome. vatican, museo cristiano, case p, v. _predella_: dormition (?). case r, ii. crucifixion (in part?). s. clemente. frescoes: episodes from lives of ss. ambrose and catherine of alexandria; crucifixion (some of these frescoes are completely repainted). scotland. gosford house, earl of wemyss. annunciation. todi. s. fortunato, fourth chapel r. fresco: madonna with two angels. michelangelo buonarroti. - . pupil of ghirlandaio; influenced by the works of jacopo della quercia, donatello, and signorelli. florence. uffizi, . _tondo_: holy family. london. . deposition (unfinished). rome. vatican, sixtine chapel. frescoes: on ceiling, - . w. wall. last judgment. - . cappella paolina. frescoes: conversion of paul; martyrdom of st. peter. l. sculpture. berlin. small marble apollo. bologna. s. domenico. s. petronio; an angel (for ark of st. dominic). . bruges. notre dame. madonna. finished before august, . florence. academy. david. . life size model of reclining male figure. court. st. matthew. . bargello. bacchus. e. bust of brutus. _tondo_, relief: madonna. apollo. court. victory. boboli gardens, grotto. four unfinished figures. casa buonarroti. reliefs: centaurs and lapithæ. e. madonna. e. duomo, behind high altar. _pietà_. l. s. lorenzo, new sacristy. madonna; tombs of lorenzo dei medici, duke of urbino, and giuliano, duke of nemours. left unfinished . london. burlington house, diploma gallery. _tondo_, relief: madonna. victoria and albert museum. cupid. beit collection. young athlete (bronze). milan. prince trivulzio. small slave (bronze). paris. room of renaissance sculpture. two slaves. rome. palazzo rondanini. _pietà_ (unfinished). l. s. maria sopra minerva. christ with cross. finished . st. peter's. _pietà_. . s. pietro in vincoli. moses, rachel, and leah. st. petersburg. crouching boy. monaco see lorenzo. andrea orcagna and his brothers. andrea, (?)- . pupil of andrea pisano; follower of giotto; influenced by ambrogio lorenzetti of siena. of the brothers, nardo, who died in , was scarcely his inferior. the only painting certainly from andrea's hand is the altarpiece at s. maria novella. the frescoes in the same church are probably by nardo. budapest. . madonna and angels. florence. academy, . vision of st. bernard and saints. . trinity with evangelist and st. romuald. . uffizi, . st. bartholomew and angel (?). e. . coronation of the virgin. third tuscan room. . st. matthew triptych. begun in . mr. b. berenson. st. benedict receiving a novice. badia, cappella bonsi. descent of holy spirit. s. croce, sacristy. madonna with ss. gregory and job. . s. maria novella, l. transept. altarpiece. . frescoes: paradise; last judgment; hell. cloister. frescoes: annunciation to joachim and anne; meeting of same; birth of virgin; presentation of virgin in temple; full length figures of saints. certosa (near florence), chapel. madonna. london. - . coronation and saints, with nine smaller panels representing the trinity, angels, and gospel scenes. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . baptist. . st. peter. palermo. baron chiaramonte-bordonaro. madonna. sculpture (by andrea). berlin. von kaufmann collection. head of female saint. florence. bargello. . angel playing viol. or san michele. tabernacle. finished . francesco pesellino. - . pupil possibly of his grandfather, giuliano pesello; follower of fra angelico, masaccio and domenico veneziano, but chiefly of fra filippo lippi. altenburg. lindenau museum, . ss. jerome and francis. bergamo. morelli, . florentine arraigned before a judge. . story of griselda. berlin. small crucifixion. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. two _cassone_ panels: triumphs of petrarch. chantilly. musÉe condÉ, . madonna and saints. . adoration of magi. (?). empoli. opera del duomo, . madonna and saints. florence. academy, . _predelle_: nativity; martyrdom of ss. cosmas and damian; miracle of st. antony of padua. gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry, . annunciation. london. col. g. l. holford, dorchester house. madonna and saints. milan. poldi-pezzoli, . annunciation (early xvi century copy). . _pietà_. paris. . _predelle_: miracle of ss. cosmas and damian; st. francis receiving the stigmata. rome. prince doria. _predelle_: pope sylvester before constantine; pope sylvester subduing dragon. wantage. lockinge house, lady wantage. two _cassone_ panels: story of david. pier di cosimo. - . pupil of cosimo rosselli; influenced by verrocchio, signorelli, filippino, leonardo, and credi. berlin. . venus, cupid, and mars. . adoration of shepherds. von kaufmann collection. prometheus myth (cf. strasburg). borgo san lorenzo (mugello). chiesa del crocifisso. madonna with st. thomas and baptist. chantilly. musÉe condÉ, . "la bella simonetta." dresden. . holy family and angels. dulwich. head of young man. fiesole. s. francesco. coronation of virgin (in part). l. florence. pitti, . head of a saint. uffizi. immaculate conception. , , . story of perseus and andromeda. . rescue of andromeda. . portrait of "caterina sforza" (?). magazine. _tondo_: madonna with infant john. l. innocenti, gallery. holy family and saints. s. lorenzo, r. transept. madonna and saints adoring child. glasgow. mr. william beattie. _tondo_: madonna with the two holy children embracing. the hague. , . giuliano di sangallo and his father. harrow-on-the-hill. rev. j. stogdon. large nativity with three saints and three donors (?). e. _tondo_: madonna and angels. london. . death of procris. . portrait of man in armour. hertford house. triumph of venus (?). mr. robert benson. hylas and the nymphs. e. portrait of clarissa orsini (?). earl of plymouth. head of young man. mr. charles ricketts. combat of centaurs and lapithæ (cf. new york). mr. a. e. street. _tondo_: madonna adoring child. lyons. m. edouard aynard. _tondo_: madonna with lamb. milan. borromeo. madonna. l. prince trivulzio. madonna and angels. l. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . lady holding rabbit. newlands manor (hampshire). col. cornwallis west. visitation. new york. metropolitan museum. the hunt. return from the hunt (cf. mr. ricketts, london). oxford. christ church library, . _tondo_: _pietà_. l. paris. . the young baptist. . coronation of virgin. l. . madonna. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. bust of physician. portrait of man. . madonna (fragment). rome. borghese. . judgment of solomon. . holy family l. (?). . _tondo_: madonna and angels adoring child. corsini. magdalen. _pietà_. vatican, sixtine chapel. fresco: destruction of pharaoh. . scotland. (glasgow, cf. glasgow). cawder house (bishopbriggs, near glasgow), capt. archibald stirling. madonna and infant john. gosford house, earl of wemyss. bust of man. newbattle abbey (dalkeith), marquess of lothian. mythological scene. siena. monastero del santuccio, altar l. nativity. stockholm. royal gallery. madonna. strasburg. university gallery, a. madonna. b. prometheus myth (cf. von kaufmann collection, berlin). vienna. harrach collection, . holy family and angels. l. prince liechtenstein. madonna and infant john. l. _tondo_: landscape with water, etc. worksop (nottinghamshire). clumber park, duke of newcastle. altarpiece with _predelle_: madonna with st. peter and baptist and kneeling ecclesiastic. pier francesco fiorentino. known to have been active during the last three decades of the fifteenth century. pupil possibly of fra angelico or benozzo gozzoli; influenced by neri di bicci; eclectic imitator of alesso baldovinetti, fra filippo, and pesellino. some of the best of the following are copies of the two last and of compagno di pesellino. altenburg. lindenau museum, . madonna with infant john. bergamo. morelli, . ss. jerome and francis (version of pesellino at altenburg). berlin. a. madonna against rose-hedge (version of m. aynard's compagno di pesellino). brussels. madonna. budapest. . madonna and infant john. cambridge (u. s. a.). fogg museum. madonna. castelnuovo di val d'elsa. s. barbara, high altar. madonna and saints surrounded by frescoes. first altar r. madonna and saints. certaldo. palazzo dei priori, lower floor. fresco: _pietà_. . fresco: incredulity of thomas. upper floor. fresco: madonna. . cappella del ponte d'agliena. frescoes: tobias and angel. st. jerome. cleveland (u. s. a.). holden collection, . madonna adoring child. colle di val d'elsa. palazzo antico del comune. altarpiece: madonna and four saints, _predelle_, etc. madonna with ss. bernardino, antony abbot, magdalen, and catherine. via gozzina. tabernacle, fresco: madonna and two bishops. via s. lucia. frescoes in tabernacle: annunciation and various fragments. detroit (u. s. a.). . madonna adoring child. dijon. donation jules maciet. madonna and infant john. eastnor castle (ledbury). lady henry somerset. madonna against rose-hedge (version of m. aynard's compagno di pesellino at lyons). empoli. opera del duomo, . madonna and four saints. . madonna. englewood (new jersey, u. s. a.). mr. d. f. platt. madonna with angel and infant john. florence. uffizi, . madonna and angels (copied from compagno di pesellino formerly in hainauer collection, berlin). bargello, carrand collection, . madonna with infant john. cenacolo di s. appolonia. nativity. mr. edmund houghton. madonna adoring child. conte serristori. madonna. s. francesco delle stimate. madonna. s. giovannino dei cavalieri, sacristy. madonna. frankfort a./m. stÄdelinstitut, . madonna and angels. frome (somerset). mells park, lady horner. madonna, saints, and angels. gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry. . madonna with infant john (cf. herr brachts' compagno di pesellino, berlin). . madonna, with two angels. göttingen. university gallery, . copy of fra filippo's annunciation (in the doria gallery, rome). gubbio. pinacoteca, . madonna and infant john. hamburg. weber collection, . madonna and st. catherine against rose-hedge. harrow-on-the-hill. rev. j. stogdon. madonna and infant john (after fra filippo). hatfield. warren wood, mr. charles butler. two madonnas. le mans. musÉe, . madonna. lille. musÉe, . madonna and angel. . procris and cephalus (?). . scene in temple (?). liverpool. walker art gallery, . head of woman (possibly copy of lost portrait of lucrezia buti by fra filippo). . madonna and angels. london. . madonna, infant john, and angels. victoria and albert museum. fresco: baptist and st. dorothy. ionides bequest. madonna (version of m. aynard's compagno di pesellino at lyons). mr. charles butler. madonna. mr. william e. grey. madonna and infant john (after fra filippo). mrs. louisa herbert. madonna in landscape. lady horner. nativity. montefortino (near amandola, marches). municipio. madonna with tobias and two archangels. . narbonne. musÉe, . _tondo_: madonna and angels adoring child. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection. . madonna; st. catherine, and angels (perhaps after a lost filippo). palermo. baron chiaramonte bordonaro, . madonna and angels. parcieux (near trévoux). la grange blanche, m. henri chalandon. madonna and two angels. paris. mme. edouard andrÉ. madonna with baptist and angels. painted flower background to desideriesque gesso relief of madonna. m. lÉon bonnat. madonna and angels. m. henri heugel. madonna and infant john (after fra filippo). pavia. galleria malaspina, . madonna with ss. catherine and antony abbot. perugia. marchese meniconi bracceschi. madonna and infant john (after fra filippo). philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. madonna with two angels. madonna against rose-hedge (version of m. aynard's compagno di pesellino at lyons). elkins park, mr. peter widener. madonna against rose-hedge (version of m. aynard's compagno di pesellino at lyons). richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook. madonna. san gemignano. municipio, pinacoteca. madonna between two kneeling saints. . sala del giudice conciliatore. fresco: trinity and small scenes from sacred legends. . tower. fresco: madonna. s. agostino, first altar r. madonna and saints. . collegiata, nave. monochrome frescoes: ten disciples in medallions, and two smaller busts; decoration of _putti_ and garlands. - . over triumphal arch. fresco: dead christ. - . l. aisle, spandrils of arches. frescoes: abraham and six prophets. l. wall. fresco: adam and eve driven forth from paradise (original fresco of taddeo di bartolo restored by pier francesco). cloister. fresco: dead christ. . s. jacopo, pillar r. fresco: st. james. s. lucia, behind high altar. fresco: crucifixion. e. cappella di monte (near san gemignano). madonna with ss. antony abbot and bartholomew. . s. maria assunta a pancole (near san gemignano). madonna. pieve di ulignano (near san gemignano). madonna with ss. stephen and bartholomew. siena. - . triumphs of petrarch. . nativity. sinalunga (val di chiana). s. martino, sacristy. _tondo_: madonna and infant john. todi. pinacoteca. madonna. vienna. faniteum (Über st. veit). fresco: madonna with bishop and st. christina. . count lanckoronski. madonna against rose-hedge. volterra. municipio. fresco: crucifixion. oratorio di s. antonio. nativity. the pollajuoli. antonio. - . pupil of donatello and andrea del castagno; strongly influenced by baldovinetti. sculptor as well as painter. piero. - . pupil of baldovinetti; worked mainly on his brother's designs. (where the execution can be clearly distinguished as of either of the brothers separately, the fact is indicated). berlin. . annunciation (piero). a. david (antonio). boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. profile of lady (antonio). florence. uffizi, . portrait of galeazzo sforza. . hope. . justice. . temperance. (the execution of these three was perhaps largely the work of pupils.) . faith (piero). . cartoon for "charity" (on back of picture, the execution of which is studio work). (antonio). . . hercules and the hydra; hercules and antæus (antonio). . ss. eustace, james, and vincent (piero). . . prudence (piero). . . miniature profile of lady (piero). torre di gallo (arcetri). fresco (discovered in and since then entirely repainted): dance of nudes (antonio). s. miniato, portuguese chapel. fresco (around window): flying angels (executed probably ). (antonio). s. niccolÒ. fresco: assumption of virgin (piero). e. london. . st. sebastian (antonio). . . apollo and daphne (antonio). new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . hercules and nessus (antonio). new york. metropolitan museum, . fresco; st. christopher (piero). paris. a. madonna (piero) (?). san gemignano. collegiata, choir. coronation of virgin (piero). . staggia (near siena). s. maria assunta, r. transept. st. mary of egypt upborne by angels (design antonio, execution piero). strasburg. a. madonna enthroned (piero). turin. . tobias and the angel. sculpture, etc. assisi. s. francesco. altar-frontal embroidered probably from designs by piero. florence. bargello. bust of young warrior (terra-cotta). hercules and antæus (bronze). opera del duomo. enamels in pedestal of silver crucifix. finished . birth of baptist (relief in silver). twenty-seven scenes from life of baptist (embroideries after antonio's designs). - . london. victoria and albert museum. "discord" (relief in gesso). rome. st. peter's, chapel of sacrament. tomb of sixtus iv (bronze). finished . l. aisle. tomb of innocent viii (bronze). finished . pontormo (jacopo carucci). - . pupil of andrea del sarto; influenced by michelangelo. bergamo. morelli, . portrait of baccio bandinelli. berlin. portrait of andrea del sarto (not exhibited). herr von dirksen. portrait of a lady seated. borgo san sepolcro. municipio. st. quentin in the pillory (in part). carmignano (near florence). parish church. visitation. dzikow (poland). m. zanislas tarnowski. full face bust of oldish lady in velvet, lace, and pearls. florence. academy, . _pietà_. l. . christ at emmaus. . fresco (behind the giotto): hospital of s. matteo, e. pitti, . portrait of man in armour with dog (?). . martyrdom of forty saints. . st. antony. l. . portrait of man. . adoration of magi. uffizi, . madonna with ss. francis and jerome. . martyrdom of s. maurizio. . birth plate: birth of st. john. . portrait of man. . cosimo del medici. . cosimo i, duke of florence. . venus and cupid (designed by michelangelo). collegio militare, pope's chapel. frescoes. . museo di s. marco, room . portrait of cosimo dei medici. palazzo capponi, marchese farinola. madonna and infant john. corsini gallery, . madonna and infant john. . madonna and infant john. ss. annunziata, cloister r. fresco: visitation. . cappella di s. luca. fresco: madonna and saints. e. s. felicitÀ, chapel r. altarpiece: deposition. frescoes: annunciation; medallions of prophets. s. michele visdomini. holy family and saints. . certosa (near florence). cloister. fresco: christ before pilate. . poggio a cajano (royal villa near florence). decorative fresco around window: vertumnus, pomona, diana, and other figures. . frankfort a./m. stÄdelinstitut, a. portrait of lady with dog. genoa. palazzo bianco. portrait of youth. palazzo brignole-sale. man in red with sword. hatfield. warren wood, mr. charles butler. birth plate. london. . joseph and his kindred in egypt. e. mr. ludwig mond. a conversation. earl of plymouth. portrait of youth. lucca. sala i, . portrait of youth. milan. prince trivulzio. portrait of rinuccini lady. portrait of youth holding book. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . cosimo dei medici. l. . bust of lady. l. oldenburg. . portrait of lady. palermo. . judith. l. panshanger (hertford). portrait of youth. two panels with story of joseph. e. paris. . holy family and saints. . . portrait of engraver of precious stones. pontormo (near empoli). parish church. ss. john the evangelist and michael. e. rome. barberini gallery, . pygmalion and galatea. borghese gallery, . lucretia (?). . tobias and angel. l. . portrait of cardinal. corsini gallery, . bust of man. scotland. keir (dunblane), captain archibald stirling. portrait of bartolommeo compagni. newbattle abbey (dalkeith), marquess of lothian. portrait of youth. turin. . portrait of lady. vienna. . portrait of lady. l. . portrait of lady. l. . young man with letter (?). cosimo rosselli. - . pupil of neri di bicci; influenced by benozzo gozzoli and alesso baldovinetti. agram (croatia). strossmayer collection. madonna and two angels. amsterdam. dr. otto lanz. madonna with st. joseph and two angels adoring child. berlin. . madonna, saints, and angels. l. a. glory of st. anne. . (magazine.) . entombment. breslau. schlesisches museum. . madonna and infant john. cambridge. fitzwilliam museum, . madonna and four saints. . cologne. . madonna, saints, and innocents. e. cortona. signor colonnesi. madonna with ss. jerome and antony of padua. düsseldorf. akademie, . madonna adoring child (?). eastnor castle (ledbury). lady henry somerset. madonna with ss. sebastian and michael. empoli. opera del duomo, . holy family and infant john. fiesole. duomo, salutati chapel. frescoes: various saints. florence. academy, . ss. barbara, john, and matthew. e. . nativity. . moses and abraham. . david and noah. uffizi, . coronation of virgin. . madonna adored by two angels. . adoration of magi. e. . (from s. m. nuova). madonna in clouds. bis. madonna, saints, and angels. . via ricasoli. fresco in shrine: madonna enthroned and two angels. mr. b. berenson. madonna. corsini gallery, . _tondo_: madonna and angels adoring child. mme. finali, villa landau. preaching of st. bernardino. signor angelo orvieto. nativity. s. ambrogio, third altar l. assumption and _predella_. . chapel of sacrament. frescoes: miraculous chalice, etc. . ss. annunziata, l. cloister. fresco: st. filippo benizzi taking servite habit. . s. croce, cappella medicea, over door. lunette: god and cherubim (?) s. maria maddalena dei pazzi. coronation of virgin. . genoa. palazzo adorno. small triumphs. lille. . st. mary of egypt. liverpool. walker art gallery, . st. lawrence. london. . combat of love and chastity. mr. charles butler. st. catherine of siena instituting her order. madonna and cherubs. lucca. duomo, wall l. of entrance. fresco: story of true cross. s francesco. frescoes: presentation of virgin, etc. milan. conte casatti. nativity. münster i./w. kunstverein, . madonna with gabriel and infant john. paris. . annunciation and saints. . musÉe des arts decoratifs. legs m. peyre, . madonna and two angels. mme. edouard andrÉ. madonna and angels adoring child. m. joseph spiridon. portrait of man. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. madonna with child holding bird and pomegranate. e. reigate. the priory, mr. somers somerset. small descent from cross. rome. vatican, sixtine chapel. frescoes: christ preaching. moses destroying the tables of the law. last supper (but not the scenes visible through painted windows). all . mr. ludwig mond. madonna and angel adoring child. turin. . triumph of chastity. rosso fiorentino. - . pupil of andrea del sarto; influenced by pontormo and michelangelo. arezzo. sala ii, . christ bearing cross. borgo san sepolcro. orfanelle. deposition. città di castello. duomo. transfiguration. finished . dijon. . bust of baptist. florence. pitti, . three fates. . madonna and saints. uffizi, . angel playing guitar. madonna and four saints with two _putti_ reading, . bargello, della robbia room. fresco: justice. ss. annunziata, r. cloister. fresco: assumption. s. lorenzo. _sposalizio_. frankfort a./m. stÄdelinstitut, . madonna. paris. . _pietà_. . challenge of the pierides. siena. portrait of young man. turin. armeria reale, f. . designs for buckler with wars of jugurtha and marius. venice. academy, . profile bust of man in red cloak and hat. vienna. count lanckoronski. madonna. e. two naked _putti_. volterra. municipio. deposition. . sarto _see_ andrea. jacopo del sellajo. or - . pupil of fra filippo; influenced slightly by castagno's works; imitated most of his florentine contemporaries, especially botticelli, ghirlandajo, and amico di sandro. altenburg. lindenau museum, . adoration of magi. . madonna with tobias and john. . st. jerome. arezzo. sala ii, . madonna against rose-hedge. bergamo. carrara, . bust of christ holding head of lance. berlin. . meeting of young christ and baptist. . _pietà_. . , . death of julius cæsar. herr eugen schweizer. nativity with infant john. bonn. university gallery, . st. jerome. bordeaux. musÉe, . ecce homo. brandenburg a./h. wredowsche zeichnenschule, . adoration. breslau. schlesisches museum, . st. jerome. budapest. . esther before ahasuerus. (magazine) . st. jerome. . st. jerome. caen. musÉe, . madonna with infant john and angel. castiglione fiorentino. pinacoteca, . pool of bethesda. chantilly. musÉe condÉ, . madonna in landscape. dijon. musÉe, donation maciet. small adoration of magi, with ss. andrew and catherine (?). eastnor castle (ledbury). lady henry somerset. madonna and saints. empoli. opera del duomo, . madonna and infant john. . madonna in glory with ss. peter martyr and nicholas. englewood (new jersey, u. s. a.). mr. d. f. platt. st. jerome. fiesole. s. ansano (to be transferred to museo). four triumphs of petrarch. florence. academy, . _pietà_. pitti, . madonna and infant john adoring child. uffizi, - . story of esther. . _pietà_. bigallo. _tondo_: madonna, saints, and angels. cenacolo di s. appolonia. entombment. adoration of magi. museo di san marco, ospizio, . annunciation. mr. herbert p. horne. st. jerome. s. frediano, sacristy. christ on cross and saints. s. jacopo sopra arno, sacristy. _pietà_. s. lucia de' magnoli ("tra le rovinate"), first altar l. annunciation. la quiete. adoration of magi, with trinity and angels above. s. spirito. antependium: st. lawrence. gangalandi (between florence and signa), s. martino, r. wall. madonna, with eternal in lunette. gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry. . madonna and st. peter martyr adoring child. . head of angel. göttingen. university gallery, . meeting of young christ and john. hanover. provinzialmuseum. _pietà_ and other scenes. ince blundell hall (blundellsands, lancashire). mr. charles weld blundell. nativity. lille. musÉe, . madonna. liverpool. walker art gallery, . adventures of ulysses. london. . venus and cupids. mr. brinsley marlay. _cassone_-front: cupid and psyche. mr. charles butler. _cassone_-front: cupid and psyche. earl crawford. brutus and portia. st. mary of egypt. st. jerome. baptist. earl of ilchester. ecce homo. madonna. mr. charles ricketts. madonna and infant john. mr. george salting. _tondo_: madonna and angels adoring child. mr. vernon watney. marriage feast of nastagio degli onesti. . lyons. musÉe, . deposition. m. edouard aynard. epiphany. _pietà_. marseilles. musÉe. madonna and angels (copy of lost amico di sandro). milan. conti bagati valsecchi. _cassone_-front: story of griselda. prince trivulzio. young baptist. madonna in niche (?). munich. . st. sebastian. . adoration of magi. . annunciation. e. münster i./w. kunstverein, . tobias and the angel. nantes. musÉe des beaux arts, . madonna (?). . madonna. musÉe dobret, . crucifixion. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . madonna adoring child. . st. jerome. . madonna in clouds with cherubim (version of picture by rosselli in uffizi). . st. sebastian. . . diana and actæon. . creation of adam and eve. new york. james collection. _cassone_-front: story of actæon. mr. stanley mortimer. madonna adoring child. oxford. christ church library, . madonna adoring child. mr. t. w. jackson. madonna and infant john. palermo. baron chiaramonte bordonaro, . _tondo_: nativity. paris. . venus and cupids. a. madonna and two angels (copy of lost amico di sandro; cf. marseilles). . st. jerome. story of esther. m. lÉon bonnat. madonna and infant john. m. gustave dreyfus. madonna and infant john (?). baron michele lazzaroni. _pietà_. panel for story of esther. m. eugÈne richtemberger. nativity. peace dale (rhode island, u. s. a.). mrs. bacon, the acorns. madonna adoring child. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. battle piece. madonna and angels against hedge of pinks. story of nastagio degli onesti. madonna adoring child. david. poitiers. hÔtel de ville, . madonna. rome. count gregori stroganoff. head of virgin. san giovanni valdarno. oratorio di s. maria delle grazie. annunciation. . scotland. newbattle abbey. (dalkeith), marquess of lothian. entombment. vienna. count lanckoronski. orpheus. st. sigismund and kneeling youth. e. prince liechtenstein. _tondo_: madonna and angels. wiesbaden. nassauisches kunstverein, . adoration of magi. paolo uccello. - . influenced by donatello. florence. uffizi, . battle of s. romano. duomo, wall above entrance. fresco; four heads of prophets. wall l. of entrance. fresco: equestrian portrait of sir john hawkwood. . windows in drum of cupola (from his designs). resurrection; nativity; ascension; annunciation. . s. maria novella, cloister. frescoes: creation of adam; creation of animals; creation and temptation of eve. e. the flood; sacrifice of noah. london. . battle of s. romano. . profile of lady (?). new york. metropolitan museum, marquand collection. profiles of woman and man of portinari family. oxford. university museum, . a hunt. paris. . portraits of giotto, uccello, donatello, brunelleschi, and antonio manetti. l. . battle of s. romano. mme. edouard andrÉ. st. george and the dragon. urbino. ducal palace, . story of the jew and the host. . vienna. count lanckoronski. st. george and the dragon. domenico veneziano. about - . probably acquired his rudiments at venice; formed under the influence of donatello, masaccio, and fra angelico. berlin. . martyrdom of st. lucy. florence. uffizi, . madonna and four saints. s. croce, r. wall. fresco: the baptist and st. francis. l. london. , . frescoes: heads of monks. . fresco transferred to canvas: madonna enthroned. andrea verrocchio. - . pupil of donatello and alesso baldovinetti, influenced by pesellino. berlin. a. madonna and angel. e. florence. academy, . baptism (in great part). uffizi, . profile of lady (?). . annunciation (possibly with assistance of credi). london. . madonna and two angels (designed and superintended by verrocchio). e. milan. poldi-pezzoli, . profile of young woman (?). e. paris. baron arthur schickler. madonna (designed and superintended by verrocchio). sheffield. ruskin museum. madonna adoring child (designed by verrocchio). vienna. prince liechtenstein, . portrait of lady. sculptures. berlin. . sleeping youth (terra-cotta). a. entombment (terra-cotta). florence. bargello. david (bronze). bust of woman (marble). opera del duomo. decapitation of baptist (silver relief). . uffizi. madonna and child (terra-cotta). palazzo vecchio, courtyard. boy with dolphin (bronze). s. lorenzo, sacristy. tomb of cosimo de' medici (bronze). . inner sacristy. lavabo (marble) (in part). or san michele, outside: christ and st. thomas (bronze). finished . paris. m. gustave dreyfus. bust of lady (marble). venice. piazza ss. giovanni e paolo. equestrian monument of bartolommeo colleoni (bronze). left unfinished at death. vinci see leonardo index of places. agram (croatia). strossmayer collection: albertinelli, fra angelico, bugiardini, cosimo rosselli. aix-en-provence. musÉe: alunno di domenico. altenburg. lindenau museum: amico di sandro, fra angelico, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, pesellino, pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. amsterdam. dr. otto lanz: cosimo rosselli. arezzo. alunno di domenico, rosso, sellajo. ashridge park (berkhampstead). earl brownlow: fra bartolommeo, fra filippo. asolo. canonica della parrocchia: bacchiacca. assisi. s. francesco: cimabue, giotto and assistants, pollajuolo. barnard castle. bowes museum: franciabigio. bergamo. carrara: sellajo. lochis: albertinelli. morelli: albertinelli, amico di sandro, bacchiacca, baldovinetti, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, ridolfo ghirlandajo, lorenzo monaco, pesellino, pier francesco fiorentino, pontormo. berlin. amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, fra angelico, bacchiacca, baldovinetti, fra bartolommeo, benozzo, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, carli, credi, franciabigio, garbo, ridolfo ghirlandajo, assistant of giotto, granacci, filippino lippi, fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, masaccio, michelangelo, pesellino, pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino, the pollajuoli, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, sellajo, domenico veneziano, verrocchio. simon collection: amico di sandro, bronzino, garbo. museum of industrial art: bugiardini. palace of emperor william i: bugiardini. herr von dirksen: pontormo. von kaufmann collection: botticelli, carli, lorenzo monaco, orcagna, pier di cosimo. herr eugen schweizer: bacchiacca, franciabigio, sellajo. herr edward simon: amico di sandro. besançon. musÉe: bronzino. cathedral: fra bartolommeo. béziers. musÉe: benozzo. bologna. bugiardini, franciabigio, assistant of giotto. s. domenico: filippino lippi, michelangelo. bonn. university gallery: bugiardini, sellajo. bordeaux. musÉe: sellajo. borgo san lorenzo (mugello). chiesa del crocifisso: pier di cosimo. borgo san sepolcro. municipio: pontormo. orfanelle: rosso. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner: fra angelico, bacchiacca, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, giotto, masaccio, pesellino, antonio pollajuolo. mrs. quincy a. shaw: mainardi. bowood park (calne). marquess of lansdowne: bugiardini. brandenburg a./h. wredowsche zeichnenschule: sellajo. brant broughton (lincolnshire). rev. arthur f. sutton: fra angelico, lorenzo monaco, masaccio. bremen. kunsthalle: masolino. breslau. schlesisches museum: cosimo rosselli, sellajo. brocklesby (lincolnshire). earl of yarborough: bacchiacca. bruges. notre dame. michelangelo. brunswick. lorenzo monaco. brussels. franciabigio, pier francesco fiorentino. musÉe de la ville: franciabigio. budapest. amico di sandro, bacchiacca, bronzino, bugiardini, ridolfo ghirlandajo, granacci, orcagna, pier francesco fiorentino. caen. musÉe: sellajo. cambridge. fitzwilliam museum: albertinelli, credi, lorenzo monaco, cosimo rosselli. cambridge (u. s. a.). fogg museum: fra bartolommeo, benozzo, pier francesco fiorentino. carlsruhe. credi. carmignano (near florence). parish church. pontormo. cassel. bacchiacca, bronzino, granacci, lorenzo monaco. castel fiorentino. cappella di s. chiara: benozzo. madonna della tosse: benozzo. castelnuovo di val d'elsa. s. barbara: pier francesco fiorentino. castiglione d'olona (varesotto). palazzo castiglione: masolino. church: masolino. baptistery: masolino. castiglione fiorentino. pinacoteca: sellajo. collegiata: credi. certaldo. palazzo dei priori: pier francesco fiorentino. cappella del ponte d'agliena: benozzo, pier francesco fiorentino. chantilly. musÉe condÉ: amico di sandro, franciabigio, granacci, pesellino, pier di cosimo, sellajo. chartres. musÉe: albertinelli. chatsworth. duke of devonshire: ridolfo ghirlandajo. chicago. mr. martin ryerson: botticini. città di castello. granacci. duomo: rosso. cleveland (u. s. a.). holden collection: botticini, credi, pier francesco fiorentino. colle di val d'elsa. palazzo antico del comune: pier francesco fiorentino. via gozzino: pier francesco fiorentino. via s. lucia: pier francesco fiorentino. s. agostino: ridolfo ghirlandajo. cologne. benozzo, mainardi, cosimo rosselli. copenhagen. thorwaldsen museum: filippino lippi, lorenzo monaco. cortona. signor colonnesi: cosimo rosselli. s. domenico: fra angelico. gesÙ: fra angelico. cracow. potocki collection: franciabigio. darmstadt. granacci. detroit (u. s. a.). pier francesco fiorentino. dijon. musÉe: bacchiacca, bugiardini, franciabigio, pier francesco fiorentino, rosso, sellajo. dresden. alunno di domenico, andrea del sarto, bacchiacca, botticelli, carli, credi, franciabigio, garbo, mainardi, pier di cosimo. dublin. national gallery: granacci. dulwich (near london). pier di cosimo. düsseldorf. academy: fra angelico, carli, cosimo rosselli. dzikow (poland). m. zanislas tarnowski: pontormo. eastnor castle (ledbury). lady henry somerset: carli, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. empoli. opera del duomo: botticini, lorenzo monaco, pesellino, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. baptistery: masolino. s. stefano: masolino. englewood (new jersey, u. s. a.). mr. daniel fellows platt: pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. esher. mr. herbert f. cook: carli. fiesole. s. ansano (to be transferred to museo): lorenzo monaco, sellajo. duomo: cosimo rosselli. s. francesco: pier di cosimo. figline (val d'arno superiore). s. piero al terreno: bugiardini. florence. academy: albertinelli, alunno di domenico, andrea del sarto, fra angelico, baldovinetti, fra bartolommeo, benozzo, botticelli, botticini, cimabue, credi, franciabigio, garbo, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, giotto, granacci, filippino lippi, fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, masaccio, michelangelo, orcagna, pesellino, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, sellajo, verrocchio. bargello: assistant of giotto, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, michelangelo, orcagna, pier francesco fiorentino, antonio pollajuolo, rosso, verrocchio. pitti: albertinelli, amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, bacchiacca, fra bartolommeo, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, franciabigio, ridolfo ghirlandajo, granacci, filippino lippi, fra filippo lippi, pier di cosimo, pontormo, rosso, sellajo. uffizi: albertinelli, alunno di domenico, andrea del sarto, fra angelico, baldovinetti, fra bartolommeo, benozzo, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, carli, castagno, credi, franciabigio, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, assistant of giotto, granacci, leonardo, filippino lippi, fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, michelangelo, orcagna, pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino, the pollajuoli, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, rosso, sellajo, paolo uccello, domenico veneziano, verrocchio. biblioteca laurenziana: lorenzo monaco. bigallo: ridolfo ghirlandajo, sellajo. boboli gardens: michelangelo. casa buonarroti: michelangelo. cenacolo di s. appolonia: botticini, castagno, pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. cenacolo di foligno: amico di sandro. chiostro dello scalzo: andrea del sarto, franciabigio. collegio militare: pontormo. hospital: castagno, lorenzo monaco. innocenti, gallery: alunno di domenico, pier di cosimo. istituto dei minorenni corrigendi: granacci. san lorenzo, new sacristy: michelangelo. museo di san marco: alunno di domenico, fra angelico, fra bartolommeo, bugiardini, domenico ghirlandajo, lorenzo monaco, pontormo, sellajo. opera del duomo: antonio pollajuolo, verrocchio. palazzo riccardi: benozzo, fra filippo lippi. palazzo vecchio: bronzino, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, verrocchio. (pitti, see above). san salvi: andrea del sarto. scuole elementare (via della colonna): carli. (uffizi, see above). via conservatorio capponi, no. ii.: carli. via ricasoli: cosimo rosselli. palazzo alessandri: benozzo, fra filippo lippi. mr. b. berenson: baldovinetti, bronzino, carli, orcagna, cosimo rosselli. duca di brindisi: botticini, carli. mr. henry white cannon, villa doccia: carli. palazzo capponi, marchese farinola: botticelli, pontormo. palazzo corsini: albertinelli, amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, bacchiacca, carli, ridolfo ghirlandajo, filippino lippi, pontormo, cosimo rosselli. mme. finali, villa landau: cosimo rosselli. mr. herbert p. horne: benozzo, filippino lippi, pier di cosimo, sellajo. mr. edmund houghton: pier francesco fiorentino. contessa lardarel: botticini. mr. charles loeser: lorenzo monaco. conte niccolini: bacchiacca. conte fernando dei nobili: pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. signor angelo orvieto: cosimo rosselli. palazzo pitti: botticelli. palazzo pucci: credi. marchese manelli riccardi: alunno di domenico. mrs. ross, poggio gherardo: carli. conte serristori: bacchiacca, pier francesco fiorentino. marchese pio strozzi: botticini. palazzo torrigiani: ridolfo ghirlandajo, filippino lippi, mainardi. torre del gallo (villino): antonio pollajuolo. s. ambrogio: baldovinetti, carli, filippino lippi, cosimo rosselli. ss. annunziata: andrea del sarto, baldovinetti, castagno, franciabigio, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, rosso. badia: filippino lippi, orcagna. la calza (porta romana): franciabigio. carmine: filippino lippi, masaccio, masolino. s. croce: bugiardini, giotto and assistants, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, orcagna, cosimo rosselli, domenico veneziano. s. domenico di fiesole: fra angelico, credi. duomo: baldovinetti, castagno, credi, domenico ghirlandajo, michelangelo, paolo uccello. s. felice: assistant of giotto. s. felicita: pontormo. s. francesco delle stimmate: pier francesco fiorentino. s. frediano: sellajo. s. giovannino dei cavalieri: lorenzo monaco, pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. s. giuseppe: lorenzo monaco. innocenti (church): alunno di domenico, domenico ghirlandajo, s. jacopo sopra arno: sellajo. s. lorenzo: bronzino, fra filippo lippi, pier di cosimo, rosso, verrocchio. s. lucia de' magnoli (tra le rovinate): sellajo. s. marco: baldovinetti, fra bartolommeo. s. m. maddalena dei pazzi: carli, cosimo rosselli. s. m. novella: bugiardini, domenico ghirlandajo, filippino lippi, masaccio, orcagna, paolo uccello. s. margherita a montici: assistant of giotto. s. michele visdomini: pontormo. s. miniato: baldovinetti, assistant of giotto, antonio pollajuolo. s. niccolÒ: piero pollajuolo. chiostro degli oblati ( via s. egidio): lorenzo monaco. ognissanti: botticelli, domenico ghirlandajo. chiesa di orbetello: mainardi. or san michele: credi, orcagna, verrocchio. s. pancrazio: baldovinetti. pazzi chapel: baldovinetti. s. procolo: carli. la quiete: ridolfo ghirlandajo, sellajo. s. spirito: botticini, carli, credi, filippino lippi, sellajo. s. trinita: baldovinetti, domenico ghirlandajo, lorenzo monaco. places near florence: brozzi, fattoria orsini: mainardi. s. andrea: botticini, carli. certosa: albertinelli, orcagna, pontormo. corbignano (near settignano), cappella vanella: botticelli. gangalandi (between florence and signa), s. martino: sellajo. badia di passignano (tavernelle), refectory: domenico ghirlandajo. pian di mugnone, s. m. maddalena: fra bartolommeo. poggio a cajano (royal villa): andrea del sarto, franciabigio, filippino lippi, pontormo. quintole, s. pietro: granacci. scandicci, comtesse de turenne: credi. villamagna, s. donnino: granacci. forlì. credi. frankfort a./m. stÄdelinstitut: pier francesco fiorentino, pontormo, rosso. frome (somerset). lady horner, mells park: pier francesco fiorentino. geneva. musÉe: albertinelli. genoa. palazzo adorno: cosimo rosselli. palazzo bianco: filippino lippi, pontormo. palazzo brignole-sale: pontormo. glasgow. corporation gallery: garbo. mr. william beattie: credi, ridolfo ghirlandajo, pier di cosimo. mr. james mann: granacci. gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry: albertinelli, credi, lorenzo monaco, pesellino, pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. göttingen. university gallery: botticini, credi, pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. grenoble. musÉe: fra bartolommeo. gubbio. pier francesco fiorentino. the hague. albertinelli, bronzino, pier di cosimo. hamburg. weber collection: credi, franciabigio, mainardi, pier francesco fiorentino. hanover. kestner museum: credi. provinzialmuseum: sellajo. harrow-on-the-hill. rev. j. stogdon: pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino. hatfield. mr. charles butler, warren wood: pier francesco fiorentino, pontormo. hildesheim. mainardi. horsmonden (kent). mrs. austen, capel manor: alunno di domenico, amico di sandro. ince blundell hall (lancashire). mr. charles weld blundell: sellajo. kiel. prof. martius: filippino lippi. le mans. musÉe: carli, pier francesco fiorentino. lewes. mr. e. p. warren, lewes house: filippino lippi. lille. musÉe: pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. liverpool. walker art gallery: alunno di domenico, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. locko park (near derby). mr. charles drury-lowe: bacchiacca, benozzo, carli, castagno, mainardi. london. amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, fra angelico, bacchiacca, fra bartolommeo, benozzo, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, castagno, credi, franciabigio, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, filippino and fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, michelangelo, orcagna, pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino, antonio pollajuolo, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, sellajo, paolo uccello, domenico veneziano, verrocchio. h. m. the king, buckingham palace: benozzo. burlington house, diploma gallery: leonardo, michelangelo. hertford house: andrea del sarto, pier di cosimo. victoria and albert museum: amico di sandro, benozzo, granacci, michelangelo, pier francesco fiorentino, antonio pollajuolo. beit collection: michelangelo. mr. robert benson: amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, botticini, carli, franciabigio, garbo, domenico ghirlandajo, granacci, filippino lippi, pier di cosimo. mr. charles brinsley marlay: alunno di domenico, botticini, sellajo. duke of buccleugh: granacci. mr. charles butler: bacchiacca, botticini, credi, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. earl crawford: sellajo. mr. william e. grey: pier francesco fiorentino. mrs. louisa herbert: pier francesco fiorentino. mr. j. p. heseltine: botticelli. col. g. l. holford, dorchester house: fra bartolommeo, garbo, pesellino. lady horner: pier francesco fiorentino. sir h. howorth: mainardi. earl of ilchester, holland house: sellajo. sir kenneth muir mackenzie: alunno di domenico. mr. ludwig mond: fra bartolommeo, botticelli, domenico ghirlandajo, pontormo. mr. j. pierpont morgan: castagno, domenico ghirlandajo. earl of northbrook: fra bartolommeo, bugiardini, franciabigio. earl of plymouth: pier di cosimo, pontormo. mr. charles ricketts: garbo, pier di cosimo, sellajo. mr. c. n. robinson: benozzo. earl of rosebery: credi. mr. leopold de rothschild: andrea del sarto. mr. george salting: domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, mainardi, sellajo. sir henry samuelson: garbo, filippino lippi. mr. a. e. street: pier di cosimo. mrs. j. e. taylor: fra angelico. mr. t. vasel: franciabigio. mr. henry wagner: lorenzo monaco, pier francesco fiorentino. mr. vernon watney: sellajo. sir julius wernher: filippino lippi. mr. frederick a. white: bacchiacca. earl of yarborough: franciabigio. longleat (warminster). marquess of bath: alunno di domenico, credi, mainardi. lovere. galleria tadini: alunno di domenico. lucardo (near certaldo). parish church: ridolfo ghirlandajo. lucca. fra bartolommeo, bronzino, carli, pontormo. marchese mansi (s. m. forisportam): granacci. duomo: fra bartolommeo, domenico ghirlandajo, cosimo rosselli. s. francesco: cosimo rosselli. s. michele: filippino lippi. lyons. musÉe: sellajo. m. edouard aynard: fra angelico, garbo, fra filippo lippi, mainardi, pier di cosimo, sellajo. madrid. musÉe del prado: andrea del sarto, fra angelico. duke of alba: albertinelli, fra angelico. marseilles. musÉe: sellajo. mayence. credi. meiningen. grand ducal palace: amico di sandro, benozzo. milan. ambrosiana: botticelli. borromeo: alunno di domenico, pier di cosimo. brera: benozzo, bronzino. poldi-pezzoli: albertinelli, alunno di domenico, botticelli, carli, pesellino, sellajo, verrocchio. conti bagati valsecchi: sellajo. conte casatti: credi, cosimo rosselli. comm. benigno crespi: bacchiacca, ridolfo ghirlandajo, granacci, lorenzo monaco, mainardi. dr. gustavo frizzoni: bacchiacca. cav. aldo noseda: lorenzo monaco. prince trivulzio: amico di sandro, michelangelo, pier di cosimo, pontormo, sellajo. s. maria delle grazie: bugiardini, leonardo. modena. botticini, bugiardini, franciabigio. mombello (near milan). prince pio di savoia: bugiardini. montefalco. pinacoteca (s. francesco): benozzo. s. fortunato: benozzo. montefortino (near amandola, marches). municipio: botticini, pier francesco fiorentino. montemarciano (val d'arno superiore). masaccio. montepulciano. carli. munich. alte pinakotek: albertinelli, fra angelico, bacchiacca, credi, garbo, giotto and assistant, granacci, fra filippo lippi, mainardi, masolino, sellajo. lotzbeck collection: lorenzo monaco. münster i./w. kunstverein: mainardi, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. nantes. musÉe des beaux arts: sellajo. musÉe dobret: sellajo. naples. amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, fra bartolommeo, garbo, filippino lippi, masaccio, masolino. museo filangieri: amico di sandro. narbonne. musÉe: pier francesco fiorentino. narni. municipio: alunno di domenico, benozzo, domenico ghirlandajo. new haven (conn., u. s. a.). jarves collection: alunno di domenico, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, granacci, filippino lippi, lorenzo monaco, orcagna, pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino, antonio pollajuolo, pontormo, sellajo. newlands manor (hampshire). col. cornwallis west: pier di cosimo. newport. (u. s. a.). mr. theodore m. davis, the reef: bugiardini. new york. metropolitan museum: bugiardini, pier di cosimo, piero pollajuolo, paolo uccello. mrs. gould: bronzino. havemeyer collection: bronzino. james collection: sellajo. mr. stanley mortimer: sellajo. mr. rutherford stuyvesant: franciabigio. mr. samuel untermeyer: albertinelli. nîmes. gower collection: franciabigio. olantigh towers (wye). mr. erle-drax: bugiardini, carli. oldenburg. bugiardini, pontormo. orvieto. duomo: fra angelico. oxford. christ church library: alunno di domenico, amico di sandro, bacchiacca, carli, granacci, filippino lippi, pier di cosimo, sellajo. university galleries: bronzino, credi, granacci, fra filippo lippi, mainardi, paolo uccello. mr. t. w. jackson: franciabigio, sellajo. padua. arena chapel: giotto. palermo. baron chiaramonte bordonaro: alunno di domenico, botticini, mainardi, orcagna, pier francesco fiorentino, pontormo, sellajo. panshanger (hertford). fra bartolommeo, granacci, pontormo. panzano (between florence and siena). s. maria: botticini. parcieux (near trévoux). la grange blanche, m. henri chalandon: botticini, lorenzo monaco, pier francesco fiorentino. paris. louvre: albertinelli, alunno di domenico, amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, fra angelico, baldovinetti, fra bartolommeo, benozzo, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, carli, cimabue, credi, franciabigio, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, assistant of giotto, leonardo, fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, michelangelo, pesellino, pier di cosimo, piero pollajuolo, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, rosso, sellajo, paolo uccello. musÉe des arts decoratifs: bugiardini, cosimo rosselli. baronne d'adelsward: benozzo. mme. edouard andrÉ: baldovinetti, botticini, bugiardini, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, paolo uccello. comtesse arconati-visconti: botticini, mainardi. m. lÉon bonnat: pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. m. georges chalandon: fra angelico. m. jean dollfus: alunno di domenico, granacci. m. gustave dreyfus: credi, mainardi, sellajo, verrocchio. m. henri heugel: botticini, garbo, pier francesco fiorentino. baron michele lazzaroni: carli, sellajo. comte pastre: amico di sandro. m. emile richtemberger: carli, granacci, sellajo. baron edouard de rothschild: garbo. baron arthur schickler: verrocchio. baron schlichting: amico di sandro. m. joseph spiridon: alunno di domenico, granacci, cosimo rosselli. m. noel valois: fra angelico. parma. fra angelico, garbo. pavia. galleria malaspina: pier francesco fiorentino. peace dale (rhode island, u. s. a.). mrs. bacon, the acorns: sellajo. périgueux. musÉe: amico di sandro. perugia. fra angelico, benozzo. marchese meniconi bracceschi: pier francesco fiorentino. petworth house (sussex). lord leconfield: andrea del sarto. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson: amico di sandro, fra bartolommeo, franciabigio, granacci, mainardi, pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. mr. peter widener: benozzo, bugiardini, ridolfo ghirlandajo, pier francesco fiorentino. pinerolo (piedmont). villa lamba doria: franciabigio. pisa. museo civico: fra angelico, benozzo, carli, domenico ghirlandajo, masaccio. campo santo: benozzo. ricovero: benozzo. universitÀ dei cappellani: benozzo. s. caterina: albertinelli. duomo: andrea del sarto. s. matteo: carli. s. stefano: bronzino. pistoia. duomo: credi, verrocchio. madonna del letto: credi. s. pietro maggiore: ridolfo ghirlandajo. poggibonsi. s. lucchese: carli. poitiers. hÔtel de ville: sellajo. pontormo (near empoli). parish church: pontormo. posen. raczynski collection: lorenzo monaco. prato. botticini, carli, filippino lippi, lorenzo monaco. tabernacle in street: filippino lippi. duomo: ridolfo ghirlandajo, fra filippo lippi. reigate. the priory, mr. somers somerset: ridolfo ghirlandajo, cosimo rosselli. richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook: bacchiacca, fra bartolommeo, botticini, fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, pier francesco fiorentino. rome. barberini gallery: franciabigio, pontormo. borghese gallery: albertinelli, andrea del sarto, bacchiacca, bronzino, bugiardini, credi, franciabigio, granacci, pier di cosimo, pontormo. colonna gallery: alunno di domenico, bronzino, bugiardini. corsini gallery: fra angelico, fra bartolommeo, bronzino, bugiardini, franciabigio, granacci, pier di cosimo, pontormo. doria gallery: bronzino. lateran (presently to be united with the vatican): fra bartolommeo, benozzo, fra filippo lippi. vatican, pinacoteca: fra angelico, leonardo. museo cristiano (presently to be united with the pinacoteca): fra angelico, benozzo, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, masolino. chapel of nicholas v: fra angelico. cappella paolina: michelangelo. sixtine chapel: botticelli, domenico ghirlandajo, michelangelo, pier di cosimo, cosimo rosselli. prince colonna: bugiardini. prince doria: bronzino, fra filippo lippi, pesellino. miss hertz: bacchiacca. mr. ludwig mond: fra filippo lippi, cosimo rosselli. palazzo rondanini: michelangelo. prince rospigliosi: bronzino. contessa spaletti: bugiardini. count gregori stroganoff: amico di sandro, fra angelico, mainardi, sellajo. marchese visconti venosta: fra bartolommeo. aracoeli: benozzo. s. clemente: masolino. s. giovanni laterano: giotto. s. maria sopra minerva: filippino lippi, michelangelo. st. peter's: assistant of giotto, michelangelo, antonio pollajuolo. s. pietro in vincoli: michelangelo. san gemignano. municipio: benozzo, mainardi, pier francesco fiorentino. ospedale di s. fina: mainardi. s. giovanni: mainardi. s. agostino: benozzo, mainardi, pier francesco fiorentino. s. andrea: benozzo. cappella di monte: pier francesco fiorentino. collegiata: benozzo, domenico ghirlandajo, mainardi, pier francesco fiorentino, piero pollajuolo. s. jacopo: pier francesco fiorentino. s. lucia: pier francesco fiorentino. monte oliveto: benozzo, mainardi. pancole (near san gemignano), s. maria assunta: pier francesco fiorentino. pieve di ulignano (near san gemignano), s. bartolommeo: pier francesco fiorentino. san giovanni valdarno. oratorio di s. m. delle grazie: sellajo. san miniato al tedesco (val d'arno). s. domenico: carli. scotland. cawder house, (bishopbriggs) capt. archibald stirling: pier di cosimo. (glasgow, cf. under g.) gosford house earl of wemyss: albertinelli, botticini, masolino, pier di cosimo. kier (dunblane), capt. archibald stirling: pontormo. langton (duns), hon. mrs. baillie-hamilton: alunno di domenico, bugiardini. newbattle abbey (dalkeith), marquess of lothian: amico di sandro, pier di cosimo, pontormo, sellajo. rossie priory (inchture, perthshire), lord kinnaird: granacci. sermoneta. parish church: benozzo. sheffield. ruskin museum: verrocchio. siena. albertinelli, lorenzo monaco, pier francesco fiorentino, rosso. palazzo saracini: bugiardini, mainardi. s. maria degli angeli: carli. monastero del santuccio: pier di cosimo. sinalunga (val di chiana). s. martino: pier francesco fiorentino. spoleto. duomo: fra filippo lippi. staggia (near siena). s. maria assunta: the pollajuoli. stockholm. royal palace: botticini, pier di cosimo. st. petersburg. hermitage: andrea del sarto, fra angelico, fra bartolommeo, botticelli, bugiardini, ridolfo ghirlandajo, granacci, michelangelo. palais stroganoff: amico di sandro, filippino lippi. strasburg. university gallery: bugiardini, credi, assistant of giotto, masaccio, pier di cosimo, piero pollajuolo. stuttgart. albertinelli, bugiardini. terni. biblioteca: benozzo. todi. municipio: pier francesco fiorentino. s. fortunato: masolino. troyes. musÉe: bacchiacca. turin. amico di sandro, fra angelico, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, credi, franciabigio, pier francesco fiorentino, the pollajuoli, pontormo, cosimo roselli. accademia albertina: fra filippo lippi. armeria reale: rosso. museo civico: bugiardini, lorenzo monaco. urbino. ducal palace: paolo uccello. vallombrosa. pieve carli. venice. academy: carli, rosso. querini stampalia gallery: credi. seminario: albertinelli, bacchiacca, bronzino, carli, filippino lippi. baron giorgio franchetti: bugiardini. prince giovanelli: bacchiacca. lady layard: garbo. piazza ss. giovanni e paolo: verrocchio. vercelli. museo borgogna: domenico ghirlandajo. vienna. andrea del sarto, fra bartolommeo benozzo, bronzino, bugiardini, franciabigio, pontormo. academy: bugiardini. herr eugen von miller aicholz: filippino lippi. dr. a. figdor: alunno di domenico. harrach collection: mainardi, pier di cosimo. count lanckoronski: alunno di domenico, franciabigio, granacci, masaccio, pier francesco fiorentino, rosso, sellajo, paolo uccello. prince liechtenstein: amico di sandro, credi, franciabigio, mainardi, pier di cosimo, sellajo, verrocchio. baron tucher: fra angelico benozzo. herr carl wittgenstein: granacci. volterra. municipio: carli, domenico ghirlandajo, pier francesco fiorentino, rosso. oratorio di s. antonio: pier francesco fiorentino. duomo: albertinelli, benozzo. wantage. lockinge house, lady wantage: ridolfo ghirlandajo, pesellino. warwick castle. earl of warwick: alunno di domenico, granacci. washington. mr. victor fischer: carli, lorenzo monaco, mainardi. weston birt (tetbury). col. g. l. holford: carli. wiesbaden. nassauisches kunstverein: bacchiacca, franciabigio, sellajo. wigan. haigh hall, earl crawford: botticini. windsor castle. andrea del sarto, franciabigio. worksop (nottinghamshire). clumber park, duke of newcastle: pier di cosimo. little journeys to the homes of the great, volume (of ) little journeys to the homes of eminent painters elbert hubbard memorial edition printed and made into a book by the roycrofters, who are in east aurora, erie county, new york new york contents michelangelo rembrandt rubens meissonier titian anthony van dyck fortuny ary scheffer francois millet joshua reynolds landseer gustave dore michelangelo how can that be, lady, which all men learn by long experience? shapes that seem alive, wrought in hard mountain marble, will survive their maker, whom the years to dust return! thus to effect, cause yields. art hath her turn, and triumphs over nature. i, who strive with sculpture, know this well: her wonders live in spite of time and death, those tyrants stern. so i can give long life to both of us in either way, by color or by stone, making the semblance of thy face and mine. centuries hence when both are buried, thus thy beauty and my sadness shall be shown, and men shall say, "for her 'twas wise to pine." --_sonnets of michelangelo_ [illustration: michelangelo] "call me by my pet name," wrote elizabeth barrett browning, in one of those incomparable sonnets of which the portuguese never heard. and the task yet remains for some psychologist to tell us why, when we wish to bestow the highest honor, coupled with familiar affection, we call the individual by a given name. young men and maidens will understand my allusion; and i hope this book will not suffer the dire fate of falling into the hands of any one who has forgotten the days of his youth. in addressing the one we truly revere, we drop all prefix and titles. soldiers marching under the banner of a beloved leader ever have for him a name of their own. what honor and trust were once compressed into the diminutive, "little corporal" or kipling's "bobs"; or, to come down to something even more familiar to us, say, "old abe" and "little phil"! the earth is a vast graveyard where untold millions of men lie buried, but out of the myriads who pass into forgetfulness every decade, the race holds a few names embalmed in undying amber. lovers of art, the round world over, carry in their minds one character, so harmoniously developed on every side of his nature that we say twenty centuries have never produced his equal. we call him "leonardo"--the one ideal man. leonardo da vinci was painter, poet, sculptor, architect, mathematician, politician, musician, man of science, and courtier. his disposition was so joyous, his manner so captivating, his form and countenance so beautiful, that wherever he went all things were his. and he was so well ballasted with brains, and so acute in judgment, that flattery spoiled him not. his untiring industry and transcendent talent brought him large sums of money, and he spent them like a king. so potent was his personality that wherever he made his home there naturally grew up around him a court of learning, and his pupils and followers were counted by the score. to the last of his long life he carried with him the bright, expectant animation of youth; and to all who knew him he was "leonardo--the only leonardo." but great as was leonardo, we call the time in which he lived, the age of michelangelo. when leonardo was forty, and at the very height of his power, michel agnola buonarroti, aged twenty, liberated from the block a marble cupid that was so exquisite in its proportions that it passed for an antique, and men who looked upon it exclaimed, "phidias!" michel agnola became michelangelo, that is to say, "michel the angel," in a day. the name thrown at him by an unknown admirer stuck, and in his later years when all the world called him "angelo" he cast off the name his parents had given him and accepted the affectionate pet name that clung like the love of woman. michelangelo was born in a shabby little village but a few miles from florence. in another village near by was born leonardo. "great men never come singly," says emerson. and yet angelo and leonardo exercised no influence upon each other that we can trace. the younger man never came under the spell of the older one, but moved straight on to his destiny, showing not the slightest arc in his orbit in deference to the great luminary of his time. the handsome leonardo was social: he loved women, and music, and festivals, and gorgeous attire, and magnificent equipage. his life was full of color and sweeping, joyous, rainbow tints. michelangelo was homely in feature, and the aspect of his countenance was mutilated by a crashing blow from a rival student's mallet that flattened his nose to his face. torrigiano lives in history for this act alone, thus proving that there are more ways than one to gain immortality. angelo was proud, self-centered, independent, and he sometimes lashed the critics into a buzzing, bluebottle fury by his sarcastic speech. "he affronted polite society, conformed to no one's dictates, lived like an ascetic and worked like a packmule," says a contemporary. vasari, who among his many other accomplishments seems to have been the boswell of his time, compares leonardo and michelangelo. he says, "angelo can do everything that leonardo can, although he does it differently." further, he adds, "angelo is painter, sculptor, engineer, architect and poet." "but," adds this versatile italian samuel pepys, somewhat sorrowfully, "he is not a gentleman." it is to be regretted that signor vasari did not follow up his remarks with his definition of the term "gentleman." leonardo was more of a painter than a sculptor. his pictures are full of rollicking mirth, and the smile on the faces of his women is handed down by imitation even to this day. the joyous freedom of animal life beckons from every leonardo canvas; and the backgrounds fade off into fleecy clouds and shadowy, dreamy, opiate odor of violets. michelangelo, however, is true to his own life as leonardo was to his--for at the last the artist only reproduces himself. he never painted a laugh, for life to him was serious and full of sober purpose. we can not call his work somber--it does not depress--for it carries with it a poise and a strength that is sufficient unto itself. it is all heroic, and there is in it a subtle quality that exorcises fear and bids care begone. no man ever portrayed the human figure with the same fidelity that angelo has. the naked adam, when the finger of the almighty touched him into life, gives one a thrill of health to look upon, even after these four hundred years have struggled to obliterate the lines. his figures of women shocked the artistic sense of his time, for instead of the greek idealization of beauty he carved the swelling muscles and revealed the articulations of form as no artist before him had ever dared. his women are never young, foolish, timid girls--they are amazons; and his men are the kind that lead nations out of captivity. the soft, the pretty, the yielding, were far from him. there is never a suggestion of taint or double meaning; all is frank, open, generous, honest and fearless. his figures are nude, but never naked. he began his artistic work when fourteen years old, and he lived to be eighty-nine; and his years did not outlast his zeal and zest. he was above the medium size, an athlete in his lean and sinewy strength, and the whipcord quality of his body mirrored the silken strength of his will. in his old age the king arose when michelangelo entered the council-chamber, and would not sit until he was seated at the right hand of the throne; the pope would not allow him to kneel before him; when he walked through the streets of rome the people removed their hats as he passed; and today we who gaze upon his work in the eternal city stand uncovered. * * * * * michelangelo was the firstborn in a large family. simone buonarroti, his father, belonged to an ebbtide branch of the nobility that had lost everything but the memory of great ancestors turned to dust. this father had ambitions for his boy; ambitions in the line of the army or a snug office under the wing of the state, where he might, by following closely the beck and nod of the prince in power, become a magistrate or a keeper of customs. but no boy ever disappointed a proud father more. when great men in gilt and gold braid, with scarlet sashes across their breasts, and dangling swords that clicked and clanged on the stone pavement, strode by, rusty, dusty little michel refused to take off his cap and wish them "long life and god's favor," as his father ordered. instead, he hid behind his mother's gown and made faces. his father used to say he was about as homely as he could be without making faces, and if he didn't watch out he would get his face crooked some day and couldn't get it back. simone buonarroti had qualities very micawber-like mixed in his clay, and the way he cringed and crawled may have had something to do with setting the son on the other tack. the mother was only nineteen when michel was born, and although the moralists talk much about woman's vanity and extravagance, the theory gets no backing from this quarter. she was a plain woman in appearance, quiet and self-contained, with no nerves to speak of, a sturdy, physical endowment, and commonsense enough for two. when scarcely out of dresses the boy began to draw pictures. he drew with charcoal on the walls, or with a stick in the sand, and shaped curious things out of mud in the gutters. it was an age of creative art, and most of the work being in the churches the common people had their part in it. in fact, the common people were the artists. and when simone buonarroti found his twelve-year-old boy haunting the churches to watch the workmen, and also discovered that he was consorting with the youths who studied drawing in the atelier of ghirlandajo, he was displeased. painters, to this erstwhile nobleman, were simply men in blue blouses who worked for low wages on high scaffolds, and occasionally spattered color on the good clothes of ladies and gentlemen who were beneath. he didn't really hate painters, he simply waived them; and to his mind there was no difference between an artisan and an artist. the mother, however, took a secret pride in her boy's drawings, as mothers always do in a son's accomplishments. doubtless she knew something of the art of decoration, too, for she had brothers who worked as day laborers on high scaffolds. yet she didn't say much about it, for women then didn't have so much to say about anything as now. but i can imagine that this good woman, as she went daily to church to pray, the year before her first child was born, watched the work of the men on the scaffolds, and observed that day by day the pictures grew; and as she looked, the sun streamed through stained windows and revealed to her the miracles of form and color, and the impressions of "the annunciation," "mary's visit to elizabeth" and "the babe in the manger" filled her wondering soul with thoughts and feelings too great for speech. to his mother was michelangelo indebted for his leaning toward art. his father opposed such a plebeian bent vigorously: "bah! to love beautiful things is all right, but to wish to devote all of one's time to making them, just for others--ouch! it hurts me to think of it!" the mother was lenient and said, "but if our child can not be anything more than a painter--why, we must be content, and god willing, let us hope he will be a good one." ghirlandajo's was practically a school where, for a consideration, boys were taught the secrets of fresco. the master always had contracts of his own on hand and by using 'prentice talent made both ends meet. young michel made it his lounging-place and when he strayed from home his mother always knew where to find him. the master looked upon him as a possible pupil, and instead of ordering him away, smiled indulgently and gave him tasks of mixing colors and making simple lines. and the boy showed such zest and comprehension that in a short time he could draw freehand with a confidence that set the brightest scholar in the background. such a pupil, so alert, so willing, so anxious, is the joy of a teacher's heart. ghirlandajo must have him--he would inspire the whole school! so the master went to the father, but the father demurred, and his scruples were only overcome when ghirlandajo offered to reverse the rule, and pay the father the sum that parents usually paid the master. a cash payment down caused pater to capitulate, and the boy went to work--aged fourteen. the terms of his apprenticeship called for three years, but after he had been at work a year, the ability of the youth made such an impression on the master that he took him to lorenzo, lorenzo the magnificent, who then ruled over florence. lorenzo had him draw a few sketches, and he was admitted to the academy. this "academy" was situated in the palace of lorenzo, and in the gardens was a rich collection of antique marbles: busts, columns, and valuable fragments that had come down from the days when pericles did for athens what lorenzo was then doing for florence. the march of commerce has overrun the garden, but in the uffizi gallery are to be seen today most of the curios that lorenzo collected. by introducing the lad to lorenzo, ghirlandajo lost his best helper, but so unselfish was this excellent master that he seemed quite willing to forego his own profit that the boy might have the best possible advantages. and i never think of ghirlandajo without mentally lifting my hat. at the academy, michelangelo ceased to paint and draw, and devoted all his energies to modeling in clay. so intent was his application that in a few weeks he had mastered technicalities that took others years to comprehend. one day the father came and found the boy in a blouse at work with mallet and chisel on a block of marble. "and is it a stone-mason you want to make of my heir and firstborn?" asked the fond father. it was explained that there were stone-masons and stone-masons. a stone-mason of transcendent skill is a sculptor, just as a painter who can produce a beautiful picture is an artist. simone buonarroti acknowledged he had never looked at it just in that way, but still he would not allow his son to remain at the trade unless--unless he himself had an office under the government. lorenzo gave him the desired office, and took the young stone-mason as one of the medici family, and there the boy lived in the palace, and lorenzo acted toward him as though he were his son. the favor with which he was treated excited the envy of some of the other pupils, and thus it was that in sudden wrath torrigiano struck him that murderous blow with the mallet. torrigiano paid for his fierce temper, not only by expulsion from the academy, but by banishment from florence. michelangelo was the brightest of the hundred young men who worked and studied at the medici palace. but when this head scholar was eighteen lorenzo died. the son of lorenzo continued his father's work in a feeble way, for piero de medici was a good example of the fact that great men seldom reproduce themselves after the flesh. piero had about as much comprehension of the beautiful as the elder buonarroti. he thought that all these young men who were being educated at the academy would eventually be valuable adjuncts to the state, and as such it was a good scheme to give each a trade--besides, it kept them off the street; and then the work was amusing, a diversion to the nobility when time hung heavy. once there came a heavy snowstorm, and snow being an unusual thing in florence, piero called a lot of his friends together in the gardens, and summoning michelangelo, ordered him to make a snow image for the amusement of the guests, just as piero at other times had a dog jump through a hoop. "what shall it be?" asked michelangelo. "oh, anything you please," replied piero; "only don't keep us waiting here in the cold all day!" young angelo cast one proud look of contempt toward the group and set to work making a statue. in ten minutes he had formed a satyr that bore such a close resemblance to piero that the guests roared with laughter. "that will do," called piero; "like deity, you make things in your own image." some of the company tossed silver coin at the young man, but he let the money lie where it fell. michel at this time was applying himself to the study of anatomy, and giving his attention to literature under the tutorship of the famous poet and scholar, poliziano, who resided at the court. so filled was the young man's mind with his work that he was blind to the discontent arising in the state. to the young, governments and institutions are imperishable. piero by his selfish whims had been digging the grave of the medici. from sovereignty they were flung into exile. the palace was sacked, the beautiful gardens destroyed, and michelangelo, being regarded as one of the family, was obliged to flee for his life. he arrived in bologna penniless and friendless, and applied to a sculptor for work. "what can you do?" the old sculptor asked. for answer, michelangelo silently took a crayon and sketched a human hand on the wall. marvelous were the lines! the master put his arms around the boy and kissed his cheek. this new-found friend took him into his house, and placed him at his own table. michelangelo was led into the library and workrooms, and told that all was his to use as he liked. the two years he remained at bologna were a great benefit to the young man. the close contact with cultured minds, and the encouragement he received, spurred his spirit to increased endeavor. it was here that he began that exquisite statue of a cupid that passed for an antique, and found its way into the cabinet of the duchess of mantua. before long the discovery was made that the work was done by a young man only a little past twenty, and cardinal san giorgio sent a message inviting him to rome. * * * * * rome had long been the mecca of the boy's ambitions, and he joyously accepted the invitation. at rome he was lodged in the vatican, and surrounded by that world of the beautiful, he went seriously about his life's work. the church must have the credit for being the mother of modern art. not only did she furnish the incentive, but she supplied the means. she gave security from the eternal grind of material wants and offered men undying fame as reward for noble effort. the letter of religion was nothing to michelangelo, but the eternal spirit of truth that broods over and beyond all forms and ceremonies touched his soul. his heart was filled with the poetry of pagan times. the gods of ancient greece on high olympus for him still sang and feasted, still lived and loved. but to the art of the church he devoted his time and talents. he considered himself a priest and servant to the cause of christ. established at rome in the palace of the pope, michelangelo felt secure. he knew his power. he knew he could do work that would for generations move men to tears, and in his prophetic soul was a feeling that his name would be inseparably linked with rome. his wanderings and buffetings were things of the past--he was necessary to the church, and his position was now secure and safe. the favor of princes lasts but for a day, but the church is eternal. the church should be his bride; to her and to her alone would he give his passionate soul. thus mused michelangelo, aged twenty-two. his first work at rome was a statue of bacchus, done it seems for an exercise to give cardinal giorgio a taste of his quality, just as he had drawn the human hand on the wall for his bologna protector; for this fine and lofty pride in his power was a thing that clung to michelangelo from rosy youth to hoary age. the "bacchus," which is now in the national museum at florence, added to his reputation; and the little world of art, whose orbit was the vatican, anxiously awaited a more serious attempt, just as we crane our necks when the great violinist about to play awakens expectation by a few preliminary flourishes. his first great work at rome was the "pieta." we see it today in saint peter's at the first chapel to the right as we enter, in a long row of commonplace marbles, in all its splendid beauty and strength. it represents the mother of christ, supporting in her arms the dead body just after it was lowered from the cross. in most of michelangelo's work there is a heroic quality in the figures and a muscular strength that in a degree detracts from the spirit of sympathy that might otherwise come over us. it is admiration that seizes us, not sympathy. but this early work is the flower of michelangelo's genius, round and full and complete. the later work may be different, but it is not better. when this group was unveiled in fourteen hundred ninety-eight it was the sensation of the year. old and young, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, flocked to see it, and the impression it made was most profound. if the catholic church has figured on the influence of statuary and painting on the superstitious, as has been tauntingly said, she has reckoned well. the story of steadfast love and loyalty is masterly told in that first great work of michelangelo. the artist himself often mingled with the crowds that surrounded his speaking marble, and the people who knelt before it assured him by their reverence that his hand had wrought well. and once he heard two able doctors disputing as to who the artist was. they were lavish in their praise, and one insisted that the work was done by the great sculptor at bologna, and he named the master who had befriended michelangelo. the artist stood by and heard the argument put forth that no mere youth could conceive such a work, much less execute it. that night he stole into the church and by the wan light of a lantern carved his name deep on the girdle of the virgin, and there do we read it today. the pride of the artist, however, afterward took another turn, for he never thereafter placed his name on a piece. "my work is unlike any other--no lover of the beautiful can mistake it," he proudly said. he worked away with untiring industry and the church paid him well. but many of his pieces have been carried from rome, and as they were not signed and scores of imitations sprang up, it can not always be determined now what is his work and what not. he toiled alone, and allowed no 'prentice hand to use the chisel, and unlike the sculptors of our day, did not work from a clay model, but fell upon the block direct. "i caught sight of michelangelo at work, but could not approach for the shower of chips," writes a visitor at rome in the year fifteen hundred one. * * * * * perfect peace is what michelangelo expected to find in the palace of the pope. later he came to know that life is unrest, and its passage at best a zigzag course, that only straightens to a direct line when viewed across the years. if a man does better work than his fellows he must pay the penalty. personality is an offense. in rome there was a small army of painters and sculptors, each eager and anxious for the sole favor of the powers. they quibbled, quarreled, bribed, cajoled, and even fair women used their influence with cardinals and bishops in favor of this artist or that. michelangelo was never a favorite in society; simpering beauty peeked at him from behind feather fans and made jokes concerning his appearance. yet walter pater thought he found evidence that at this time michelangelo was beloved by a woman, and that the artist reproduced her face and form, and indirectly pictured her in poems. in feature she was as plain as he; but her mind matched his, and was of a cast too high and excellent to allow him to swerve from his high ideals. yet the love ended unhappily, and in some mysterious way gave a tinge of melancholy and a secret spring of sorrow to the whole long life of the artist. jealous competitors made their influence felt. michelangelo found his work relegated to corners and his supplies cut short. at this time an invitation came from florence for him to come and make use of a gigantic block of marble that had lain there at the city gate, blackening in the dirt, for a century. the florence that had banished him, now begged him to come back. "those who once leave florence always sigh to return," says dante. he returned, and at once began work on the "david." the result was the heroic statue that stood for three hundred years at the entrance to the palazzo vecchio, only a hundred feet from where savonarola was hanged and burned. the "david" is now in the belle d' arte, and if the custodian will allow you to climb up on a ladder you will see that the top of the head shows the rough unfinished slab, just as it was taken from the quarry. any one but a master would have finished the work. this magnificent statue took nearly two years to complete. as a study of growing youth, boldly recognizing all that is awkward and immature, it has never ceased to cause wordy warfare to reign in the camp of the critics. "the feet, hands and head are all too large," the athenians say. but linger around the "old swimmin'-hole" any summer day, and you will see tough, bony, muscular boys that might have served as a model for the "david." the heads of statues made by the greeks are small in proportion to the body. the "gladiator" wears a number six hat, and the "discobolus" one size smaller; yet the figures represent men weighing one hundred eighty pounds each. the greeks aimed to satisfy the eye, and as the man is usually seen clothed, they reduced the size of the head when they showed the nude figure. but michelangelo was true to nature, and the severest criticism ever brought against him is that he is absolutely loyal to truth. he was the first man ever to paint or model the slim, slender form of a child that has left its round baby shape behind and is shooting up like a lily-stalk. a nude, hardy boy six years old reveals ankle-bones, kneecap, sharp hips, ribs, collar-bone and shoulder-blade with startling fidelity. and why, being nature's work, it is any less lovely than a condition of soft, cushioned adipose, we must let the critics tell, but michelangelo thought it wasn't. from fourteen hundred ninety-six, when michelangelo first arrived in rome, to fifteen hundred four, he worked at nothing but sculpture. but now a change came over his restless spirit, for an invitation had come from the gonfaloniere of florence to decorate one of the rooms of the town hall, in competition with leonardo da vinci--the only leonardo. he painted that strong composition showing florentine soldiers bathing in the arno. the scene depicts the surprise of the warriors as a trumpet sounds, calling them to battle with the enemy that is near at hand. the subject was chosen because it gave opportunity for exploiting the artist's marvelous knowledge of anatomy. thirty figures are shown in various attitudes. nearly all are nude, and as they scramble up the bank, buckling on their armor as they rush forward, eager for the fight, we see the wild, splendid swell of muscle and warm, tense, pulsing flesh. as an example of michelangelo's consummate knowledge of form it was believed to be his finest work. but it did not last long; the jealous bandinelli made a strong bid for fame by destroying it. and thus do bandinelli and torrigiano go clattering down the corridors of time hand in hand. yet we know what the picture was, for various men who saw it recorded their impressions; but although many of the younger artists of italy flocked to florence to see it, and many copied it, only one copy has come down to us--the one in the collection of the earl of leicester, at holkham. so even beautiful florence could not treat her gifted son with impartiality, and when a call came from pope julius the second, who had been elected in fifteen hundred three, to return to rome, the summons was promptly obeyed. * * * * * julius was one of the most active and vigorous rulers the earth has known. he had positive ideas on many subjects and like napoleon "could do the thinking for a world." the first work he laid out for michelangelo was a tomb, three stories high, with walls eighteen feet thick at the base, surrounded with numerous bas-reliefs and thirty heroic statues. it was to be a monument on the order of those worked out by the great rameses, only incorporating the talent of greece with that of ancient and modern rome. michelangelo spent nearly a year at the carrara quarries, getting out materials and making plans for forwarding the scheme. but gradually it came over him that the question of economy, which was deeply rooted in the mind of julius, forbade the completion of such a gigantic and costly work. had julius given michelangelo "carte-blanche" orders on the treasury, and not meddled with the plans, this surpassing piece of architecture might have found form. but the fiery julius, aged seventy-four, was influenced by the architect bramante to demand from michelangelo a bill of expense and definite explanation as to details. very shortly after, michelangelo quit work and sent a note to the pope to the effect that the tomb was in the mountain of carrara, with many beautiful statues, and if he wanted them he had better look for some one to get them out. as for himself, his address was florence. the pope sent couriers after him, one after another until five had been dispatched, but neither pleading, bribes nor threats could induce him to return. as the scientist constructs the extinct animal from a thigh-bone, so we can guess the grandeur of what the tomb might have been from the single sample that has come down to us. the one piece of work that was completed for this tomb is the statue of "moses." if the reputation of michelangelo rested upon nothing else than this statue, it would be sufficient for undying fame. the "moses" probably is better known than any other piece of michelangelo's work. copies of it exist in all important galleries; there are casts of it in fifty different museums in america, and pictures of it are numberless. there it stands in the otherwise obscure church of saint pietro in vincolo today, one hand grasping the flowing beard, and the other sustaining the tables of the law--majesty, strength, wisdom beaming in every line. as mr. symonds has said, "it reveals the power of pope julius and michelangelo fused into a jove." and so the messengers and messages were in vain, and even when the pope sent an order to the gonfaloniere soderini, the actual ruler of florence, to return the artist on pain of displeasure, the matter still rested--michelangelo said he was neither culprit nor slave, and would live where he wished. at length the matter got so serious that it threatened the political peace of florence, and in the goodly company of cardinals, bishops and chief citizens, michelangelo was induced to go to bologna and make peace with the pope. his first task now was a bronze statue of julius, made, it is stated, as a partial reproduction of the "moses." descriptions of it declare it was even finer than the "moses," but alas! it only endured four years, for a mob evolved it into a cannon to shoot stones, and at the same time ousted julius from bologna. michelangelo very naturally seconded the anathematization of the bolognese by julius, not so much for the insult to the pope as for the wretched lack of taste they had shown in destroying a work of art. had they left the beautiful statue there on its pedestal, bologna would now on that account alone be a place of pilgrimage. the cannon they made is lost and forgotten--buried deep in the sand by its own weight--for mein herr krupp can make cannon; but, woe betide us! who can make a statue such as michelangelo made? michelangelo now followed the pope to rome and began a work that none other dare attempt, but which today excites the jealous admiration of every artist soul who views it--the ceiling of the sistine chapel. ghirlandajo, perugino, botticelli and luca signorelli had worked on the walls with good effect, but to lie on one's back and paint overhead so as to bring out a masterly effect when viewed from seventy feet below was something they dare not attempt. michelangelo put up his scaffolds, drew designs, and employed the best fresco artists in italy to fill in the color. but as they used their brushes he saw that the designs became enfeebled under their attempts--they did not grasp the conception--and in wrath he discharged them all. he then obliterated all they had done, and shutting out the ceiling from every one but himself, worked alone. often for days he would not leave the building, for fear some one would meddle with the work. he drew up food by a string and slept on the scaffold without changing his clothes. after a year of intense application, no one but the artist had viewed the work. the pope now demanded that he should be allowed to see it. a part of the scaffolding was struck, and the delight of the old pope was unbounded. this was in fifteen hundred nine, but the completed work was not shown to the public until all souls' day, fifteen hundred twelve. the guides at the vatican tell us this ceiling was painted in twenty-two months, but the letters of michelangelo, recently published, show that he worked on it over four years. it contains over three hundred figures, all larger than life, and some are fifteen feet long. a complete description of the work michelangelo did in this private chapel of the pope would require a book, and in fact several books have been written with this ceiling as a subject. the technical obstacles to overcome in painting scenes and figures on an overhead surface can only be appreciated by those who have tried it. we can better appreciate the difficulties when we think that, in order even to view the decorations with satisfaction, large mirrors must be used, or one must lie prone on his back. in the ability to foreshorten and give harmonious perspective--supplying the effect of motion, distance, upright movement, coming toward you or moving away--all was worked out in this historic chapel in a way that has excited the wondering admiration of artists for three hundred years. when the scaffolding was at last removed, the artist thought for a time he had done his last work. the unnatural positions he had been obliged to take had so strained the muscles of his neck that on the street he had often to look straight up at the sky to rest himself, and things on a straight line in front he could not distinguish. eyes, muscles, hands, refused to act normally. "my life is there on the ceiling of the chapel of sixtus," he said. he was then thirty-nine years old. fifty eventful years of life and work were yet before him. * * * * * when pope julius died, in fifteen hundred thirteen, leo the tenth, a son of lorenzo the magnificent, was called to take his place. we might suppose that leo would have remembered with pride the fact that it was his father who gave michelangelo his first start in life, and have treated the great artist in the way lorenzo would, were he then alive. but the retiring, abstemious habits of michelangelo did not appeal to leo. the handsome and gracious raphael was his favorite, and at the expense of michelangelo, raphael was petted, feted and advanced. hence arose that envious rivalry between these two great men, which reveals each in a light far from pleasant--just as if rome were not big enough for both. the pontificate of leo the tenth lasted just ten years. on account of the lack of encouragement michelangelo received, it seems the most fruitless season of his whole life. clement the seventh, another member of the medici family, succeeded leo. clement was too sensible of michelangelo's merit to allow him to rust out his powers in petty tasks. he conceived the idea of erecting a chapel to be attached to the church of san lorenzo, at florence, to be the final resting-place of the great members of the medici family. michelangelo planned and built the chapel and for it wrought six great pieces of art. these are the statues of lorenzo de medici, father of catherine de medici (who was such a large, black blot on the page of history); a statue of giuliano de medici (whose name lives now principally because michelangelo made this statue); and the four colossal reclining figures known as "night," "morning," "dawn" and "twilight." this chapel is now open to the public, and no visitor at florence should miss seeing it. the statue of lorenzo must ever rank as one of the world's masterpieces. the italians call it "il pensiero." the sullen strength of the attitude gives one a vague ominous impulse to get away. some one has said that it fulfils milton's conception of satan brooding over his plans for the ruin of mankind. in fifteen hundred twenty-seven, while michelangelo was working on the chapel, florence was attacked and sacked by the constable de bourbon. the medici family was again expelled, and from the leisurely decoration of a church in honor of the gentle christ, the artist was called upon to build barricades to protect his native city. his ingenuity as an engineer was as consummate as his exquisite idea of harmony, and for nine months the city was defended. through treachery the enemy was then allowed to enter and michelangelo fled. riots and wars seem as natural as thunderstorms to the latin people; but after a year the clouds rolled by, michelangelo was pardoned, and went back to his work of beautifying the chapel of san lorenzo. in fifteen hundred thirty-four, pope clement was succeeded by paul the third. paul was seventy years old, but the vigor of his mind was very much like that of the great julius. his first desire was to complete the decoration of the sistine chapel, so that the entire interior should match the magnificence of the ceiling, and to the task he summoned michelangelo. the great artist hesitated. the ceiling was his supreme work as a painter, and he knew down deep in his heart that he could not hope to surpass it, and the risk of not equaling it was too great for him to run. the matter was too delicately personal to explain--only an artist could understand. michelangelo made excuses to the pope and declared he had forgotten how to use a brush, that his eyesight was bad, and that the only thing he could do was to carve. but paul was not to be turned aside, and reluctantly michelangelo went back to the sistine, that he had left over twenty years before. then it was that he painted "the last judgment" on the wall of the upper end of the chapel. hamerton calls this the grandest picture ever executed, at the same time acknowledging its faults in taste. but it must be explained that the design was the conception of julius, endorsed by pope paul, and it surely mirrors the spiritual qualities (or lack of them) in these men better than any biography possibly could. the merciful redeemer is shown as a muscular athlete, full of anger and the spirit of revenge--proud, haughty, fierce. the condemned are ranged before him--a confused mass of naked figures, suspended in all attitudes of agony and terrible foreboding. the "saved" are ranged on one side, and do not seem to be of much better intellectual and spiritual quality than the damned; very naturally they are quite pleased to think that it is the others who are damned, and not they. the entire conception reveals that masterly ability to portray the human figure in every attitude of fear or passion. a hundred years after the picture was painted, some dignitary took it into his head that portions of the work were too "daring"; and a painter was set at work robing the figures. his fussy attempts are quite apparent. michelangelo's next work was to decorate the paolina chapel. as in his last work on the sistine, he was constantly interrupted and advised and criticized. as he worked, cardinals, bishops and young artists watched and suggested, but still the "conversion of saint paul" and the "crucifixion of saint peter," in the paolina, must ever rank as masterly art. the frescoes in the paolina chapel occupied seven years and ended the great artist's career as a painter. he was seventy-three years old. pope paul then made him chief architect of saint peter's. michelangelo knew the difficulties to be encountered--the bickerings, jealousies and criticisms that were inseparable from the work--and was only moved to accept the place on pope paul's declaration that no one else could do as well, and that it was the will of god. michelangelo looked upon the performance as a duty and accepted the task, refusing to take any recompense for his services. he continued to discharge the duties of the office under the direction of popes paul, pius the fourth and pius the fifth. in all he worked under the pontificates of seven different popes. the dome of saint peter's, soaring to the skies, is his finest monument. the self-sustaining, airy quality in this stupendous structure hushes the beholder into silence; and yet that same quality of poise, strength and sufficiency marks all of the work of this colossus, whether it be painting, architecture or sculpture. america has paid tribute to michelangelo's genius by reproducing the dome of saint peter's over the capitol at washington. michelangelo died at rome, aged eighty-nine, working and planning to the last. his sturdy frame showed health in every part, and he ceased to breathe just as a clock runs down. his remains were secretly taken to florence and buried in the church of santa croce. a fine bust marks the spot, but the visitor can not help feeling a regret that the dust of this marvelous man does not rest beneath the zenith of the dome of saint peter's at rome. * * * * * sitting calmly in this quiet corner, and with closed eyes, viewing michelangelo's life as a whole, the impression is one of heroic strength, battling with fierce passions, and becoming victor over them by working them up into art. the mold of the man was masculine, and the subdued sorrow that flavors his whole career never degenerates into sickly sentimentality or repining. the sonnets of michelangelo, recently given to the world, were written when he was nearly seventy years old. several of the sonnets are directly addressed to vittoria colonna, and no doubt she inspired the whole volume. a writer of the time has mentioned his accidentally finding michelangelo and vittoria colonna seated side by side in the dim twilight of a deserted church, "talking soft and low." deserted churches have ever been favorite trysting-places for lovers; and one is glad for this little glimpse of quiet and peace in the tossing, troubled life-journey of this tireless man. in fact, the few years of warm friendship with vittoria colonna is a charmed and temperate space, without which the struggle and unrest would be so ceaseless as to be appalling. sweet, gentle and helpful was their mutual friendship. at this period of michelangelo's life we know that the vehemence of his emotions subsided, and tranquility and peace were his for the rest of his life, such as he had never known before. the woman who stepped out of high society and won the love of this stern yet gentle old man must have been of a mental and spiritual quality to command our highest praise. the world loves vittoria colonna because she loved michelangelo, and led him away from strife and rivalry and toil. rembrandt the eyes and the mouth are the supremely significant features of the human face. in rembrandt's portraits the eye is the center wherein life, in its infinity of aspect, is most manifest. not only was his fidelity absolute, but there is a certain mysterious limpidity of gaze that reveals the soul of the sitter. a "rembrandt" does not give up its beauties to the casual observer--it takes time to know it, but once known, it is yours forever. --_emile michel_ [illustration: rembrandt] swimming uneasily in my ink-bottle is a small preachment concerning names, and the way they have been evolved, and lost, or added to. some day i will fish this effusion out and give it to a waiting world. those of us whose ancestors landed at plymouth or jamestown are very proud of our family names, and even if we trace quite easily to castle garden we do not always discard the patronymic. harmen gerritsz was a young man who lived in the city of leyden, holland, in the latter part of the sixteenth century. the letters "sz" at the end of his name stood for "szoon" and signified that he was the szoon of mynheer gerrit. now harmen gerritsz duly served an apprenticeship with a miller, and when his time expired, being of an ambitious nature, he rented a mill on the city wall, and started business for himself. shortly after he very naturally married the daughter of a baker. all of mr. harmen gerritsz's customers called him harmen, and when they wished to be exact they spoke of him as harmen van ryn--that is to say, harmen of the rhine, for his mill was near the river. "out west," even now, if you call a man mister, he will probably inquire what it is you have against him. mr. and mrs. harmen lived in the mill, and as years went by were blessed with a nice little family of six children. the fifth child is the only one that especially interests us. they named him rembrandt. rembrandt harmenszoon van ryn, he called himself when he entered at the grammar-school at leyden, aged fourteen. his father's first name being harmen, he simply took that, and discarded the gerrit entirely, according to the custom of the time. in fact, all our johnsons are the sons of john, and the names peterson, thompson and wilson, in feudal times, had their due and proper significance. then when we find names with a final ending of "s," such as robbins, larkins and perkins, we are to understand that the owner is the son of his father. and so we find rembrandt harmenszoon in his later years writing his name harmensz and then simply harmens. mynheer harmen gerritszoon's windmill ground exceeding small, and the product found a ready market. there were no servants in the miller's family--everybody worked at the business. in holland people are industrious. the leisurely ways of the dutch can, i think, safely be ascribed to their environment, and here is an argument buckle might have inserted in his great book, but did not, and so i will write it down. there are windmills in holland (i trust the fact need not longer be concealed) and these windmills are used for every possible mechanical purpose. now the wind blows only a part of the time--except in chicago--and there may be whole days when not a windmill turns in all holland. the men go out in the morning and take due note of the wind, and if there is an absolute calm many of them go back to bed. i have known the wind to die down during the day and the whole force of a windmill troop off to a picnic, as a matter of course. so the elements in holland set man the example--he will not rush himself to death when not even the wind does. then another thing: holland has many canals. farmers load their hay on canal-boats and take it to the barn, women go to market in boats, lovers sail, seemingly, right across the fields--canals everywhere. traveling by canal is not rapid transit. so the people of holland have plenty of precedent for moving at a moderate speed. there are no mountains in holland, so water never runs; it may move, but the law of gravitation there only acts to keep things quiet. the dutch never run footraces--neither do they scorch. in amsterdam i have seen a man sit still for an hour, and this with a glass of beer before him, gazing off into space, not once winking, not even thinking. you can not do that in america, where trolley-cars whiz and blizzards blow--there is no precedent for it in things animate or inanimate. in the united states everything is on the jump, art included. rembrandt harmens worked in his father's mill, but never strained his back. he was healthy, needlessly healthy, and was as smart as his brothers and sisters, but no smarter, and no better looking. he was exceedingly self-contained, and would sit and dream at his desk in the grammar-school, looking out straight in front of him--just at nothing. the master tried flogging, and the next day found a picture of himself on the blackboard, his face portrayed as anything but lovely. young rembrandt was sent home to fetch his father. the father came. "look at that!" said the irate teacher; "see what your son did; look at that!" mynheer harmen sat down and looked at the picture in his deliberate dutch way, and after about fifteen minutes said, "well, it does look like you!" then he explained to the schoolmaster that the lad was sent to school because he would not do much around the mill but draw pictures in the dust, and it was hoped that the schoolmaster could teach him something. the schoolmaster decided that it was a hopeless case, and the miller went home to report to the boy's mother. now, whenever a dutchman is confronted by a problem too big to solve, or a task too unpleasant for him to undertake, he shows his good sense by turning it over to his wife. "you are his mother, anyway," said harmen van ryn, reproachfully. the mother simply waived the taunt and asked, "do you tell me the schoolmaster says he will not do anything but draw pictures?" "not a tap will he do but make pictures--he can not multiply two by one." "well," said the mother, "if he will not do anything but draw pictures, i think we'd better let him draw pictures." * * * * * at that early age i do not think rembrandt was ambitious to be a painter. good healthy boys of fourteen are not hampered and harassed by ambition--ambition, like love, camps hot upon our trail later. ambition is the concomitant of rivalry, and sex is its chief promoter--it is a secondary sex manifestation. the boy simply had a little intuitive skill in drawing, and the exercise of the talent was a gratification. it pleased him to see the semblance of face or form unfold before him. it was a kind of play, a working off of surplus energy. had the lad's mind at that time been forcibly diverted to books or business, it is very probable that today the catalogs would be without the name of rembrandt. but mothers have ambitions, even if boys have not--they wish to see their children do things that other women's children can not do. among wild animals the mother kills, when she can, all offspring but her own. darwin refers to mother-love as, "that instinct in the mind of the female which causes her to exaggerate the importance of her offspring--often protecting them to the death." through this instinct of protection is the species preserved. in human beings mother-love is well flavored with pride, prejudice, jealousy and ambition. this is because the mother is a woman. and this is well--god made it all, and did he not look upon his work and pronounce it good? the mother of rembrandt knew that in leyden there were men who painted beautiful pictures. she had seen these pictures at the university, and in the town hall and in the churches; and she had overheard men discussing and criticizing the work. she herself was poor and uneducated, her husband was only a miller, with no recreation beyond the beer-garden and a clicking reluctantly off to church in his wooden shoes on sunday. they had no influential friends, no learned patrons--the men at the university never so much as nodded to millers. her lot was lowly, mean, obscure, and filled with drudgery and pettiness. and now some one was saying her boy rembrandt was lazy; he would neither work nor study. the taunt stung her mother-pride--"he will do nothing but make pictures!" ah! a great throb came to her heart. her face flushed, she saw it all--all in prophetic vision stood out like an etching on the blankness of the future. "he will do nothing but draw pictures? very well then, he shall draw pictures! he will draw so well that they shall adorn the churches of leyden, and the town hall, and yes! even the churches of amsterdam. holland shall be proud of my boy! he will teach other men to draw, his pictures will command fabulous prices, and his name shall be honored everywhere! yes, my boy shall draw pictures! this day will i take him to mynheer jacob van swanenburch, who was a pupil of the great rubens, and who has scholars even from antwerpen. i will take him to the master, and i will say: 'mynheer, i am only a poor woman, the daughter of an honest baker. my husband is a miller. this is my son. he will do nothing but draw pictures. here is a bag of gold--not much, but it is all good gold; there are no bad coins in this bag; i've been ten years in saving them. take this bag--it is yours--now teach my son to paint. teach him as you taught valderschoon and those others--my memory is bad, i can not remember the names--i'm only a poor woman. show my boy how to paint. and when i am dead, and you are dead, men will come to your grave and say, "it is here that he rests, here--the man who first taught rembrandt harmenszoon to use a brush!" do you hear, mynheer van swanenburch? the gold--it is yours--and this is my boy!'" * * * * * the van swanenburches were one of the most aristocratic families of leyden. jacob van swanenburch's father had been burgomaster, and he himself occupied from time to time offices of importance. he was not a great painter, although several specimens of his work still adorn the town hall of his native city. rembrandt was not very anxious to attend swanenburch's classes. he was a hesitating, awkward youth, and on this account was regarded as unsocial. for a year the boy looked on, listened, and made straight marks and curves and all that. he did not read, and the world of art was a thing unknown to him. there are two kinds of people to be found in all studios: those who talk about art, and the fellows who paint the pictures. however, rembrandt was an exception, and for a time would do neither. he would not paint, because he said he could not--anyway he would not; but no doubt he did a deal of thinking. this habit of reticence kept him in the background, and even the master had suspicions that he was too beefy to hold a clear mental conception. the error of the swanenburch atelier lay in the fact that quiet folks are not necessarily stupid. it is doubtless true, however, that stupid men by remaining quiet may often pass for men of wisdom: this is because no man can really talk as wisely as he can look. young rembrandt was handicapped by a full-moon face, and small gray eyes that gave no glint, and his hair was so tousled and unruly that he could not wear a hat. so the sons of aristocrats who cracked sly jokes at the miller's boy had their fun. rembrandt usually came in late, after the master had begun his little morning lecture. the lad was barefoot, having left his wooden shoon in the hallway "so as not to wear out the floor." he would bow awkwardly to the professor, fall over a chair or two that had been slyly pushed in his way, and taking his seat chew the butt end of a brush. "why are you always late?" asked the master one day. "oh, i was working at home and forgot the time." "and what are you working at?" "me? i'm--i'm drawing a little," and he colored vermilion to the back of his neck. "well, bring your work here so we can profit by it," exclaimed a joker, and the class guffawed. the next morning the lad brought his picture--a woman's face--a picture of a face, homely, wrinkled, weather-beaten, but with a look of love and patience and loyalty beaming out of the quiet eyes. "who did this?" demanded the teacher. rembrandt hesitated, stuttered, stammered, and then confessed that he did it himself--he could not tell a lie. he was sure the picture would be criticized and ridiculed, but he had decided to face it out. it was a picture of his mother, and he had sketched her just as she looked. he would let them laugh, and then at noon he would wait outside the door and smash the boy who laughed loudest over the head with a wooden shoe--and let it go at that. but the scholars did not laugh, for jacob van swanenburch took the boy by the hand and leading him out before the class told those young men to look upon their master. from that time forth rembrandt was regarded by the little art world of leyden as a prodigy. like william cullen bryant, who wrote "thanatopsis" when scarcely eighteen, and writing for sixty years thereafter never equaled it, or dante gabriel rossetti, who wrote "the blessed damozel" at the same age, rembrandt sprang into life full-armed. it is probably true that he could not then have produced an elaborate composition, but his faces were rembrandtesque from the very first. rembrandt is the king of light and shade. you never mistake his work. as the years passed, around him clustered a goodly company of pupils, hundreds in all, who diligently worked to catch the trick, but rembrandt stands alone. "he is the only artist who could ever paint a wrinkle," says ruskin. all his portraits have the warts on. and the thought has often come to me that only a rembrandt--the only rembrandt--could have portrayed the face of lincoln. plain, homely, awkward, eyes not mates, sunken cheeks, leathery skin, moles, uncombed hair, neckcloth askew; but over and above and beyond all a look of power--and the soul! that look of haunting sorrow and the great, gentle, compassionate soul within! and so there is a picture of rembrandt's mother which this son painted that must ever stand out as one of the world's masterpieces. let who will, declare that the portrait by richter in the gallery at cologne, of queen louise, is the handsomest portrait ever painted; yet the depth of feeling, the dignity and love in the homely old mother's face, pale not in comparison, but are things to which the proud and beautiful queen herself paid homage. rembrandt painted nearly a hundred pictures of his mother that we can trace. in most of them she holds in her hands a little bible, and thus did the son pay tribute to her devoted piety. she was a model of which he never tired. he painted her in court dress, and various other fantastic garbs, that she surely never wore. he painted her as a nun, as a queen, a court beauty, a plain peasant, a musician; and in various large pictures her face and form are introduced. and most of these pictures of his mother are plainly signed with his monogram. he also painted his sister as the madonna, and this is signed; but although he doubtless painted his father's face, yet he did not sign such pictures, so their authenticity is a hazard. this fact gives a clue to his affections which each can work out for himself. rembrandt remained with swanenburch for three years, and the master proved his faithful friend. he gave him an introduction into the aristocratic art world which otherwise might have barred its doors against so profound a genius, as aristocracy has done time and again. the best artists are not necessarily the best teachers. if a man has too much skill along a certain line he will overpower and kill the individuality in his pupil. there are teachers who smother a pupil with their own personality, and thus it often happens that the strongest men are not the most useful as instructors. the ideal teacher is not the one who bends all minds to match his own; but the one who is able to bring out and develop the good that is in the pupil--him we will crown with laurel. swanenburch was pretty nearly the ideal teacher. his good nature, the feminine quality of sympathy in his character, his freedom from all petty, quibbling prejudice, and his sublime patience all worked to burst the tough husk, and develop that shy and sensitive, yet uncouth and silent youth, bringing out the best that was in him. a wrong environment in those early years might easily have shaped rembrandt into a morose and resentful dullard: the good in his nature, thrown back upon itself, would have been turned to gall. * * * * * the little business on the city wall had prospered, and harmen van ryn moved, with his family, out of the old mill into a goodly residence across the street. he was carrying his head higher, and the fact that his son rembrandt was being invited to the homes of the professors at the university was incidentally thrown off, until the patrons at the beer-garden grew aweary and rapped their glasses on the table as a signal for silence. swanenburch had given a public exhibition of the work of his pupils, at which young rembrandt had been pushed forward as an example of what right methods in pedagogics could do. "well, why can not all your scholars draw like that, then?" asked a broad-beamed dutchman. "they certainly could, if they would follow the principles i lay down," answered the master severely. but admiration did not spoil rembrandt. his temperature was too low for ebullition--he took it all quite as a matter of course. his work was done with such ease that he was not aware it was extraordinary in quality; and when swanenburch sold several of his sketches at goodly prices and put the silver in the lad's hand, he asked who the blockheads were who had invested. swanenburch taught his pupils the miracle of spreading a thin coat of wax on a brass plate, and drawing a picture in the wax with a sharp graver; then acid was poured over it and the acid ate into the brass so as to make a plate from which you could print. etching was a delight to rembrandt. expert illustrators of books were in demand at leyden, for it was then the bookmaking center of northern europe. the elzevirs were pushing the plantins of antwerp hard for first place. so skilfully did rembrandt sketch, that one of the great printers made a proposition to his father to take the boy until he was twenty-one, and pay the father a thousand florins a year for the lad's services as an illustrator. the father accepted the proposition; and the next day brought around another harmenszoon, who he declared was just as good. but the bookmaker was stubborn and insisted on having a certain one or none. so the bargain fell through. it was getting near four years since swanenburch had taken rembrandt into his keeping, and now he went to the boy's parents and said: "i have given all i have to offer to your son. he can do all i can, and more. there is only one man who can benefit him and that is pieter lastman, of amsterdam. he must go and study with the great lastman--i myself will take him." lastman had spent four years in italy, and had come back full to overflowing with classic ideas. his family was one of the most aristocratic in amsterdam, and whatever he said concerning art was quoted as final. he was the court of last appeal. his rooms were filled with classic fragments, and on his public days visitors flocked to hear what he might have to say about the wonders of venice, florence and rome. for in those days men seldom traveled out of their own countries, and those who did had strange tales to tell the eager listeners when they returned. lastman was handsome, dashing, popular. his pictures were in demand, principally because they were lastman's. proud ladies came from afar and begged the privilege of sitting as his model. in italy, lastman had found that many painters employed 'prentice talent. the great man would sketch out the pictures, and the boys would fill in the color. lastman would go off about his business, and perhaps drop in occasionally during the day to see how the boys got on, adding a few touches here and there, and gently rebuking those who showed too much genius. lastman believed in genius, of course; but only his own genius filled his ideal. as a consequence all of lastman's pictures are alike--they are all equally bad. they represent neither the italian school nor the dutch, being hybrids: italian skies and holland backgrounds; dutchmen dressed as dagoes. lastman was putting money in his purse. he closely studied public tastes, and conformed thereto. he was popular, and there is in america today a countryman of his, of like temperament, who is making much moneys out of literature by similar methods. into lastman's keeping came the young man, rembrandt harmens. lastman received him cordially, and set him to work. but the boy proved hard to manage: he had his own ideas about how portraits should be painted. lastman tried to unlearn him. the master was patient, and endeavored hard to make the young man paint as he should--that is, as lastman did; but the result was not a success. the lastman intellect felt sure that rembrandt had no talent worth encouraging. lastman produced a great number of pictures, and his name can be found in the catalogs of the galleries of amsterdam, munich, berlin and antwerp; and his canvases are in many of the old castles and palaces of germany. in recent years they have been enjoying a vogue, simply because it was possible that rembrandt had worked on them. all the "lastmans" have been gotten out and thoroughly dusted by the connoisseurs, in a frantic search for earmarks. the perfect willingness of lastman to paint a picture on any desired subject, and have it ready saturday night, all in the colors the patron desired, with a guarantee that it would give satisfaction, filled the heart of rembrandt with loathing. at the end of six months, when he signified a wish to leave, it was a glad relief to the master. lastman had tried to correct rembrandt's vagaries as to chiaroscuro, but without success. so he wrote an ambiguous letter certifying to the pupil's "having all his future before him," gave him a present of ten florins in jingling silver, and sent him back to his folks. * * * * * rembrandt had been disillusioned by his stay in the fashionable art-world of amsterdam. some of his idols had crumbled, and there came into his spirit a goodly dash of pessimism. his father was disappointed and suggested that he get a place as illustrator at the bookmakers, before some one else stepped in and got the job. but rembrandt was not ambitious. he decided he would not give up painting, at least not yet--he would keep at it and he would paint as he pleased. he had lost faith in teachers. he moped around the town, and made the acquaintance of the painter engelbrechtsz and his talented pupil, lucas van leyden. their work impressed him greatly, and he studied out every detail on the canvases until he had absorbed the very spirit of the artist. then, when he painted, he very naturally took their designs, and treated them in his own way. indeed, the paucity in invention of those early days must ever impress the student of art. in visiting the galleries of europe, i made it my business to secure a photograph of every "madonna and babe" of note that i could find. my collection now numbers over one hundred copies, with no two alike. the madonna, of course, is the extreme example; but there are dozens of "the last supper," "abraham's sacrifice," "the final judgment," "the brazen serpent," "raising of lazarus," "the annunciation," "rebekah at the well" and so on. if one painter produced a notable picture, all the other artists in the vicinity felt it their duty to treat the same subject; in fact, their honor was at stake--they just had to, in order to satisfy the clamor of their friends, and meet the challenges of detractors. this "progressive sketching" was kept up, each man improving, or trying to improve, on the attempts of the former, until a leonardo struck twelve and painted his "last supper," or a rubens did his "descent from the cross"--then competitors grew pale, and tried their talent on a lesser theme. one of the most curious examples of the tendency to follow a bellwether is found in the various pictures called "the anatomy lesson." when venice was at its height, in the year fourteen hundred ninety-two--a date we can easily remember--an unknown individual drew a picture of a professor of anatomy; on a table in the center is a naked human corpse, while all around are ranged the great doctor's pupils. dissection had just been introduced into venice at that time, and in a treatise on the subject by andrea vesali, i find that it became quite the fad. the lecture-rooms were open to the public, and places were set apart for women visitors and the nobility, while all around the back were benches for the plain people. on the walls were skeletons, and in cases were arranged saws, scalpels, needles, sponges and various other implements connected with the cheerful art. the unknown's picture of this scene made a sensation. and straightway other painters tried their hands at it, the unclothed form of the corpse affording a fine opportunity for the "classic touch." paul veronese tried it, and so did the bellinis--titian also. then a century passed, as centuries do, and the glory of venice drifted to amsterdam--commercially and artistically. amsterdam painters used every design that the venetians had, and some of their efforts were sorry attempts. in sixteen hundred twenty, following venetian precedent, dissection became a fad in leyden and amsterdam. swanenburch engraved a picture of the leyden dissecting-room, with a brace of gallant doctors showing some fair ladies the beauties of the place. the dutch were ambitious--the young men, rembrandt included, drew pictures entitled, "the lesson in anatomy." doctors who were getting on in the world gave orders for portraits, showing themselves as about to begin work on a subject. one physician, with intent to get even with his rival, had the artist picture the rival in the background as a pupil. then the rival ordered a picture of himself, proud and beautiful, giving a lesson in anatomy, armed and equipped for business, and the cadaver was--the other doctor. at the chicago fair, in eighteen hundred ninety-three, there was shown a most striking "anatomy lesson" from the brush of a young new york artist. it pictures the professor removing the sheet from the face of the corpse, and we behold the features of a beautiful young woman. some day i intend to write a book entitled, "the evolution and possibilities of the anatomy lesson." keep your eye on the subject--we are not yet through with it. swanenburch offered to give rembrandt a room in his own house, but he preferred the old mill, and a wheat-bin was fitted up for a private studio. the fittings of the studio must have cost fully two dollars, according to all accounts; there were a three-legged stool, an easel, a wooden chest, and a straw bed in the corner. only one window admitted the light, and this was so high up that the occupant was not troubled by visitors looking in. our best discoveries are the result of accident. this single window, eight feet from the ground, allowed the rays of light to enter in a stream. on cloudy days and early in the mornings or in the evenings, rembrandt noted that when the light fell on the face of the visitor the rest of the body was wholly lost in the shadow. he placed a curtain over the window with a varying aperture cut in it, and with his mother as model made numerous experiments in the effects of light and shade. he seems to have been the very first artist who could draw a part of the form, leaving all the rest in absolute blackness, and yet give the impression to the casual onlooker that he sees the figure complete. plain people with no interest in the technique of art will look upon a "rembrandt," and go away and describe things in the picture that are not there. they will declare to you that they saw them--those obvious things which one fills in at once with his inward eye. for instance, there is a portrait of a soldier, by rembrandt, in the louvre, and above the soldier's head you see a tall cockade. you assume at once that this cockade is in the soldier's hat, but no hat is shown--not the semblance nor the outline of a hat. there is a slight line that might be the rim of a hat, or it might not. but not one person out of a thousand, looking upon the picture, but would go away and describe the hat, and be affronted if you should tell them there is no hat in the picture. given a cockade, we assume a hat. by the use of shadows rembrandt threw the faces into relief; he showed the things he wished to show and emphasized one thing by leaving all else out. the success of art depends upon what you omit from your canvas. this masterly effect of illusion made the son of the miller stand out in the leyden art-world like one of his own etchings. curiously enough, the effect of a new model made rembrandt lose his cunning; with strangers he was self-conscious and ill at ease. his mother was his most patient model; his father and sisters took their turn; and then there was another model who stood rembrandt in good stead. and that was himself. we have all seen children stand before a mirror and make faces. rembrandt very early contracted this habit, and it evidently clung to him through life. he has painted his own portrait with expressions of hate, fear, pride, mirth, indifference, hope and wrath shown on his plastic features. there is also an old man with full white beard and white hair that rembrandt has pictured again and again. this old man poses for "lot," "abraham," "moses," "a beggar," "a king," and once he even figures as "the almighty." who he was we do not know, and surely he did not realize the honor done him, or he would have written a proud word of explanation to be carved on his tomb. * * * * * in the stuttgart museum is a picture entitled, "saint paul in prison," signed by rembrandt, with the date sixteen hundred twenty-seven. "the money-changers" in the berlin gallery bears the same signature and date. rembrandt was then twenty years of age, and we see that he was doing good work. we also know that there was a certain market for his wares. when twenty-two years of age his marvelous effects of light and shade attracted people who were anxious to learn how to do it. according to report he had sixteen pupils in sixteen hundred twenty-eight, each of whom paid him the fixed sum of one hundred florins. this was not much, but it gave him an income equal to that of his father, and tended to confirm his faith in his own powers. his energy was a surprise to all who had known him, for besides teaching his classes he painted, sketched and etched. most of his etchings were of his own face--not intended as portraits, for they are often purposely disguised. it seemed to be the intent of the artist to run the whole gamut of the passions, portraying them on the human face. six different etchings done in the year sixteen hundred twenty-eight are to be seen in the british museum. his most intimate friend at this time was jan lievens. the bond that united them was a mutual contempt for lastman of amsterdam. in fact, they organized a club, the single qualification required of each candidate for admittance being a hatred for lastman. this club met weekly at a beer-hall, and each member had to relate an incident derogatory to the lastman school. at the close of each story, all solemnly drank eternal perdition to lastman and his ilk. finally, lastman was invited to join; and in reply he wrote a gracious letter of acceptance. this surely shows that lastman was pretty good quality, after all. rembrandt was making money. his pupils spread his praise, and so many new ones came that he took the old quarters of swanenburch. in sixteen hundred thirty-one, there came to him a young man who was to build a deathless name for himself--gerard dou. then to complete the circle came joris van vliet, whose reputation as an engraver must ever take a first rank. van vliet engraved many of rembrandt's pictures, and did it so faithfully and with such loving care that copies today command fabulous prices among the collectors. indeed, we owe to van vliet a debt for preserving many of rembrandt's pictures, the originals of which have disappeared. with the help of van vliet the elzevirs accomplished their wishes, and so made use of the talent of rembrandt. rembrandt lived among the poor, as a matter of artistic policy, mingling with them on an absolute equality. he considered their attitudes simpler, more natural, and their conduct less artificial, than the manners of those in higher walks. about sixteen hundred twenty-nine, there came into his hands a set of callot's engravings, and the work produced on his mind a profound impression. callot's specialty was beggardom. he pictured decrepit beggars, young beggars, handsome girl-beggars, and gallant old beggars who wore their fluttering rags with easy grace. the man who could give the phlegmatic rembrandt a list to starboard must have carried considerable ballast. straightway on making callot's acquaintance he went forth with bags of coppers and made the acquaintance of beggars. he did not have to travel far--"the greeks were at his door." the news spread, and each morning, the truthful orles has told us, "there were over four hundred beggars blocking the street that led to his study," all willing to enlist in the cause of art. for six months rembrandt painted little beside "the ragged gentry." but he gradually settled down on about ten separate and distinct types of abject picturesqueness. ten years later, when he pictured the "healing christ," he introduced the leyden beggars, and these fixed types that he carried hidden in the cells of his brain he introduced again and again in various pictures. in this respect he was like all good illustrators: he had his properties, and by new combinations made new pictures. who has not noticed that every painter carries in his kit his own distinct types--sealed, certified to, and copyrighted by popular favor as his own personal property? can you mistake kemble's "coons," denslow's dandies, remington's horses, giannini's indians, or gibson's "summer girl"? these men may not be rembrandts, but when we view the zigzag course art has taken, who dare prophesy that this man's name is writ in water and that man's carved in the granite of a mountain-side! contemporary judgments usually have been wrong. did the chief citizens of leyden in the year sixteen hundred thirty regard rembrandt's beggars as immortal? not exactly! * * * * * in sixteen hundred thirty-one, rembrandt concluded that his reputation in the art-world of holland was sufficient for him to go to amsterdam and boldly pit himself against de keyser, hals, lastman and the rest. he had put forth his "lesson in anatomy," and the critics and connoisseurs who had come from the metropolis to see it were lavish in their praise. later we find him painting the subject again with another doctor handling the tweezers and scalpel. rembrandt started for amsterdam the second time--this time as a teacher, not as a scholar. he rented an old warehouse on the canal for a studio. it was nearly as outlandish a place as his former quarters in the mill at leyden. but it gave him plenty of room, was secluded, and afforded good opportunity for experiments in light and shade. he seemed to have gotten over his nervousness in working with strange models; for new faces now begin to appear. one of these is that of a woman, and it would have been well for his art had he never met her. we see her face quite often, and in the "diana bathing" we behold her altogether. rembrandt shows small trace of the classic instinct, for classic art is founded on poetic imagination. rembrandt painted what he saw; the greeks portrayed that which they felt; and when rembrandt paints a dutch wench and calls her "diana," he unconsciously illustrates the difference between the naked and the nude. rembrandt painted this same woman, wearing no clothes to speak of, lolling on a couch; and evidently considering the subject a little risky, thought to give it dignity by a biblical title: "potiphar's wife." one good look at this picture, and the precipitate flight of joseph is fully understood. we feel like following his example. rembrandt had simply haunted the dissecting-rooms of the university at leyden a little too long. the study of these viragos scales down our rating of the master. still, i suppose every artist has to go through this period--the period when he thinks he is called upon to portray the feminine form divine--it is like the mumps and the measles. after a year of groping for he knew not what, with money gone, and not much progress made, rembrandt took a reef in his pride and settled down to paint portraits, and to do a little good honest teaching. scholars came to him, and commissions for portraits began to arrive. he renounced the freaks of costume, illumination and attitude, and painted the customer in plain, simple dutch dress. he let "diana" go, and went soberly to work to make his fortune. holland was prosperous. her ships sailed every sea, and brought rich treasures home. the prosperous can afford to be generous. philanthropy became the fad. charity was in the air, and hospitals, orphanages and homes for the aged were established. the rich merchants felt it an honor to serve on the board of managers of these institutions. in each of the guildhalls were parlors set apart for deliberative gatherings; and it became the fashion to embellish these rooms with portraits of the managers, trustees and donors. rembrandt's portraits were finding their way to the guilds. they attracted much attention, and orders came--orders for more work than the artist could do. he doubled his prices in the hope of discouraging applicants. studio gossip and society chatter seemed to pall on young rembrandt. it is said that when a 'bus-driver has a holiday he always goes and rides with the man who is taking his place; but when rembrandt had a holiday he went away from the studio, not towards it. he would walk alone, off across the meadows, and along the canals, and once we find him tramping thirty miles to visit cousins who were fishermen on the seacoast. happy fisher-folk! but rembrandt took few play-spells; he broke off entirely from his tavern companions and lived the life of an ascetic and recluse, seeing no society except the society that came to his studio. his heart was in his art, and he was intent on working while it was called the day. about this time there came to him cornelis sylvius, the eminent preacher, to sit for a picture that was to adorn the seaman's orphanage, of which sylvius was director. it took a good many sittings to bring out a rembrandt portrait. on one of his visits the clergyman was accompanied by a young woman--his ward--by name, saskia van ulenburgh. the girl was bright, animated and intelligent, and as she sat in the corner the painter sort of divided his attention between her and the clergyman. then the girl got up, walked about a bit, looking at the studio properties, and finally stood behind the young painter, watching him work. this was one of the things rembrandt could never, never endure. it paralyzed his hand, and threw all his ideas into a jumble. it was the law of his studio that no one should watch him paint--he had secrets of technique that had cost him great labor. "you do not mind my watching you work?" asked the ingenuous girl. "oh, not in the least!" "you are quite sure my presence will not make you nervous, then?" rembrandt said something to the effect that he rather liked to have some one watch him when he worked; it depended, of course, on who it was--and asked the sitter to elevate his chin a little and not look so cross. next day saskia came again to watch the transfer of the good uncle's features to canvas. the young artist was first among the portrait-painters of amsterdam, and had a long waiting-list on his calendar, but we find he managed to paint a portrait of saskia about that time. we have the picture now and we also have four or five other pictures of her that rembrandt produced that year. he painted her as a queen, as a court lady and as a flower-girl. the features may be disguised a little, but it is the same fine, bright, charming, petite young woman. before six months had passed he painted several more portraits of saskia; and in one of these she has a sprig of rosemary--the emblem of betrothal--held against her heart. and then we find an entry at the register's to the effect that they were married on june twenty-fourth, sixteen hundred thirty-four. rembrandt's was a masterly nature: strong, original and unyielding. but the young woman had no wish that was not his, and her one desire was to make her lover happy. she was not a great woman, but she was good, which is better, and she filled her husband's heart to the brim. those first few years of their married life read like a fairy-tale. he bought her jewels, laces, elegant costumes, and began to fill their charming home with many rare objects of art. all was for saskia--his life, his fortune, his work, his all. as the years go by we shall see that it would have been better had he saved his money and builded against the coming of the storm; but even though saskia protested mildly against his extravagance, the master would have his way. his was a tireless nature: he found his rest in change. he usually had some large compositions on hand and turned to this for pastime when portraits failed. then saskia was ever present, and if there was a holiday he painted her as the "jewish bride," "the gypsy queen," or in some other fantastic garb. we have seen that in those early years at leyden he painted himself, but now it was only saskia--she was his other self. all those numerous pictures of himself were drawn before he knew saskia--or after she had gone. their paradise continued nine years--and then saskia died. rembrandt was not yet forty when desolation settled down upon him. * * * * * saskia was the mother of five children; four of them had died, and the babe she left, titus by name, was only eight months old when she passed away. for six months we find that rembrandt did very little. he was stunned, and his brain and hand refused to co-operate. the first commission he undertook was the portrait of the wife of one of the rich merchants of the city. when the work was done, the picture resembled the dead saskia so much more than it did the sitter that the patron refused to accept it. the artist saw only saskia and continued to portray her. but work gave him rest, and he began a series of biblical studies--serious, sober scenes fitted to his mood. his hand had not lost its cunning, for there is a sureness and individuality shown in his work during the next few years that stamps him as the master. but his rivals raised a great clamor against his style. they declared that he trampled on all precedent and scorned the laws on which true art is built. however, he had friends, and they, to help him, went forth and secured the commission--the famous "night-watch," now in the ryks museum at amsterdam. the production of this fine picture resulted in a comedy of errors, that shaded off into a tragedy for poor rembrandt. the original commission for this picture came from thirty-seven prominent citizens, who were to share the expense equally among them. the order was for the portraits of the eminent men to appear on one canvas, the subjects to be grouped in an artistic way according to the artist's own conceit. rembrandt studied hard over the matter, as he was not content to execute a picture of a mass of men doing nothing but pose. it took a year to complete the picture. the canvas shows a band of armed men, marching forth to the defense of the city in response to a sudden night alarm. two brave men lead the throng and the others shade off into mere rembrandt shadows, and you only know there are men there by the nodding plumes, banners and spearheads that glisten in the pale light of the torches. when the picture was unveiled, the rich donors looked for themselves on the canvas, and some looked in vain. only two men were satisfied, and these were the two who marched in the vanguard. "where am i?" demanded a wealthy shipowner of rembrandt as the canvas was scanned in a vain search for his proud features. "you see the palace there in the picture, do you not?" asked the artist petulantly. "yes, i see that," was the answer. "well, you are behind that palace." the company turned on rembrandt, and forbade the hanging of any more of his pictures in the municipal buildings. rembrandt shrugged his shoulders. but as the year passed and orders dropped away, he found how unwise a thing it is to affront the public. men who owed him refused to pay, and those whom he owed demanded their money. he continued doggedly on his course. some years before he had bought a large house and borrowed money to pay for it, and had further given his note at hand to various merchants and dealers in curios. as long as he was making money no one cared for more than the interest, but now the principal was demanded. so sure had rembrandt been of his powers that he did not conceive that his income could drop from thirty thousand florins a year to scarcely a fifth of that. then his relations with hendrickje stoffels had displeased society. she was his housekeeper, servant and model--a woman without education or refinement, we are told. but she was loyal, more than loyal, to rembrandt: she lived but to serve him and sought to protect his interests in every way. when summoned before the elders of the church to answer for her conduct, she appeared, pleaded guilty and shocked the company by declaring, "i would rather go to hell with rembrandt harmens than play a harp in heaven, surrounded by such as you!" the remark was bruited throughout the city and did rembrandt no good. his rivals combined to shut his work out of all exhibitions, and several made it their business to buy up the overdue claims against him. then officers came and took possession of his house, and his splendid collections of jewels, laces, furniture, curios and pictures were sold at auction. the fine dresses that once belonged to saskia were seized: they even took her wedding-gown: and wanton women bid against the nobility for the possession of these things. rembrandt was stripped of his sketches, and these were sold in bundles--the very sweat of his brain for years. then he was turned into the streets. but hendrickje stoffels still clung to him, his only friend. rembrandt's proud heart was broken. he found companionship at the taverns; and to get a needful loaf of bread for hendrickje and his boy, made sketches and hawked them from house to house. fashions change and art is often only a whim. people wondered why they had ever bought those dark, shadowy things made by that leyden artist, what's-his-name! one man utilized the frames which contained "rembrandts" by putting other canvases right over in front of them. rembrandt's son titus tried his skill at art, but with indifferent success. he died while yet a youth. then hendrickje passed away, and rembrandt was alone--a battered derelict on the sea of life. he lost his identity under an assumed name, and sketched with chalk on tavern-walls and pavement for the amusement of the crowd. he died in sixteen hundred sixty-nine, and the expense of his burial was paid by the hands of charity. the cost of the funeral was seven dollars and fifty cents. in eighteen hundred ninety-seven, there was sold in london a small portrait by rembrandt for a sum equal to a trifle more than thirty-one thousand dollars. but even this does not represent the true value of one of his pictures--for connoisseurs regard a painting by rembrandt as priceless. there is a law in holland forbidding any one on serious penalty to remove a "rembrandt" from the country. if any one of the men who combined to work his ruin is mentioned in history, it is only to say, "he lived in the age of rembrandt." rubens i was admitted to the duke of lerma's presence, and took part in the embassy. the duke exhibited great satisfaction at the excellence and number of the pictures, which surely have acquired a certain fair appearance of antiquity (by means of my retouching), in spite even of the damage they had undergone. they are held and accepted by the king and queen as originals, without there being any doubt on their side, or assertion on ours, to make them believe them to be such. --_letter from rubens at madrid, to chieppo, secretary of the duke of mantua_ [illustration: rubens] the father of peter paul rubens was a lawyer, a man of varied attainments and marked personality. in statecraft he showed much skill, and by his ability in business management served william the silent, prince of orange, in good stead. but jan rubens had a bad habit of thinking for himself. the habit grew upon him until the whisper was passed from this one to that, that he was becoming decidedly atheistic. spain held a strong hand upon antwerp, and the policy of philip the second was to crush opposition in the bud. jan rubens had criticized spanish rule, and given it as his opinion that the latin race would not always push its domination upon the people of the north. at this time spain was so strong that she deemed herself omnipotent, and was looking with lustful eyes towards england. drake and frobisher and walter raleigh were learning their lessons in seafaring; elizabeth was queen; while up at warwickshire a barefoot boy named william shakespeare was playing in the meadows, and romping in the lanes and alleys of stratford. all this was taking place at the time when jan rubens was doing a little thinking on his own account. on reading the history of europe, flanders seems to one to have been a battle-ground from the dawn of history up to the night of june eighteenth, eighteen hundred fifteen, with a few incidental skirmishes since, for it is difficult to stop short. and it surely was meet that napoleon should have gone up there to receive his waterloo, and charge his cavalry into a sunken roadway, making a bridge across with a mingled mass of men and horses; upon which site now is a huge mound thrown up by the english, surmounted by a gigantic bronze lion cast from the captured cannon of the french. napoleon belonged to the latin race: he pushed his rule north into flanders, and there his prowess ended--there at the same place where spanish rule had been throttled and turned back upon itself. "thus far, and no farther." jan rubens was right. but he paid dearly for his prophecy. when william the silent was away on his many warfaring expeditions, the man who had charge of certain of his affairs was jan rubens. naturally this brought rubens into an acquaintanceship with the wife of the silent prince. rubens was a handsome man, ready in speech, and of the kind that makes friends easily. and if the wife of the prince of orange liked the vivacious rubens better than the silent warrior (who won his sobriquet, they do say, through density of emotion and lack of ideas), why, who can blame her! but rubens had a wife of his own, to whom he was fondly attached; and this wife was also the close and trusted friend of the woman whose husband was off to the wars. and yet when this dense and silent man came back from one of his expeditions, it was only publicly to affront and disgrace his wife, and to cast jan rubens into a dungeon. no doubt the prince was jealous of the courtly rubens--and the iagos are a numerous tribe. but othello's limit had been reached. he damned the innocent woman to the lowest pit, and visited his wrath on the man. of course i know full well that all northern europe once rang with shrill gossip over the affair, and as usual the woman was declared the guilty party. even yet, when topics for scandal in belgium run short, this old tale is revived and gone over--sides being taken. i've gone over it, too, and although i may be in the minority, just as i possibly am as to the "guilt" of eve, yet i stand firm on the side of the woman. i give the facts just as they appear, having canvassed the whole subject, possibly a little more than was good for me. republics may be ungrateful, but the favor of princes is fickle as the east wind. we make a fine hullabaloo nowadays because france or russia occasionally tries and sentences a man without giving him an opportunity of defense; but in the sixteenth century the donjon-keeps of hundreds of castles in europe were filled with prisoners whose offense consisted in being feared or disliked by some whimsical local ruler. jan rubens was sent on an official errand to dillenburg, and arriving there was seized and thrown into prison, without trial or the privilege of communicating with his friends. months of agonizing search on the part of his wife failed to find him, and the prince only broke the silence long enough to usurp a woman's privilege by telling a lie, and declaring he did not know where rubens was, "but i believe he has committed suicide through remorse." the distracted wife made her way alone from prison to prison, and finally, by bribing an official, found her husband was in an underground cell in the fortress at dillenburg. it was a year before she was allowed to communicate with or see him. but maria rubens was a true diplomat. you move a man not by going to him direct, but by finding out who it is that has a rope tied to his foot. she secured the help of the discarded wife of the prince, and these two managed to interest a worthy bishop, who brought his influence to bear on count john of nassau. this man had jurisdiction of the district in which the fortress where rubens was confined was located; and he agreed to release the prisoner on parole on condition that a deposit of six thousand thalers be left with him, and an agreement signed by the prisoner that he would give himself up when requested; and also, further, that he would acknowledge before witnesses that he was guilty of the charges made against him. the latter clause was to justify the prince of orange in his actions toward him. rubens refused to plead guilty, even for the sake of sweet liberty, on account of the smirch to the name of the princess. but on the earnest request of both his wife and the "co-respondent," he finally accepted the terms in the same manner that galileo declared the earth stood still. rubens got his liberty, was loyal to his parole, but john of nassau kept the six thousand thalers for "expenses." so much for the honor of princes; but in passing it is worthy of recall that jan rubens pleaded guilty of disloyalty to his wife, on request of said wife, in order that he might enjoy the society of said wife--and cast a cloud on the good name of another woman on said woman's request. so here is a plot for a play: a tale of self-sacrifice and loyalty on the part of two women that puts to shame much small talk we hear from small men concerning the fickleness and selfishness of woman's love. "brief as woman's love!" said hamlet--but then, hamlet was crazy. jan rubens died in cologne, march eighteenth, fifteen hundred eighty-seven, and lies buried in the church of saint peter. above the grave is a slab containing this inscription: "sacred to the memory of jan rubens, of antwerp, who went into voluntary exile and retired with his family to cologne, where he abode for nineteen years with his wife maria, who was the mother of his seven children. with this his only wife maria he lived happily for twenty-six years without any quarrel. this monument is erected by said maria pypelings rubens to her sweetest and well-deserved husband." of course, no one knew then that one of the seven--the youngest son of jan and maria--was to win deathless fame, or that might have been carved on the slab, too, even if something else had to be omitted. but maria need not have added that last clause, stating who it was that placed the tablet: as it stands we should all have known that it was she who dictated the inscription. epitaphs are proverbially untruthful; hence arose the saying, "he lies like an epitaph." the woman who can not evolve a good lie in defense of the man she loves is unworthy of the name of wife. the lie is the weapon of defense that kind providence provides for the protection of the oppressed. "women are great liars," said mahomet; "allah in his wisdom made them so." hail, maria rubens! turned to dust these three hundred years, what star do you now inhabit? or does your avatar live somewhere here in this world? at the thought of your unselfish loyalty and precious fibbing, an army of valiant, ghostly knights will arise from their graves, and rusty swords leap from their scabbards if aught but good be said against thee. "ho, ho! and wasn't your husband really guilty, and didn't you know it all the time?" i'll fling my glove full in the face of any man who dare ask you such a question. beloved and loving wife for six-and-twenty years, and mother of seven, looking the world squarely in the eye and telling a large and beautiful untruth, carving it in marble to protect your husband's name, i kiss my hand to you! * * * * * in the doorpost of a queer little stone house in cologne is carved an inscription to the effect that peter paul rubens was born there on june twenty-ninth, fifteen hundred seventy-seven. it is probably true that the parents of rubens lived there, but peter paul was born at siegen, under the shadow of a prison from which his father was paroled. after a few years the discipline relaxed, for there were new prisoners coming along, and maria and jan were given permission to move to cologne. peter paul was ten years of age when his father died. the next year the widow moved with her little brood back to antwerp, back to the city from which her husband had been exiled just twenty years before. five years previous the prince of orange, who had exiled her husband, was himself sent on a journey, via the dagger of an assassin. as the chief enemy of jan rubens was dead, it was the hope of the widow to recover their property that had been confiscated. maria rubens was a good catholic; and she succeeded in making the authorities believe that her husband had been, too, for the home that royalty had confiscated was returned to her. the mother of peter paul loved the dim twilight mysteries of the church, and accepted every dogma and edict as the literal word of god. it is easier and certainly safer to leave such matters to the specialists. she was a born diplomat. she recognized the power of the church and knew that to win one must go with the current, not against it. to have doubts, when the church is willing to bear the whole burden, she thought very foolish. had she been a man she would have been a leader among the jesuits. the folly of opposition had been shown her most vividly in her husband's career. what could he not have been had he been wise and patient and ta'en the tide at its flood! and this was the spirit that she inculcated in the minds of her children. little peter paul was a handsome lad--handsome as his father--with big, dark brown eyes and clustering curls. he was bright, intelligent, and blessed with a cheerful, obliging disposition. he came into the world a welcome child, carrying the beauty of the morning in his face, and form, and spirit. no wonder is it that the countess de lalaing desired the boy for a page as soon as she saw him. his mother embraced the opportunity to let her favorite child see court life, and so at the early age of twelve, at a plunge, he began that career in polite diplomacy that was to continue for half a century. the countess called herself his "other mother," and lavished upon him all the attention that a childless woman had to bestow. the mornings were sacred to his lessons, which were looked after by a jesuit priest; and in the afternoon, another priest came to give the ladies lessons in the languages, and at these circles young peter paul was always present as one of the class. indeed, the earliest accomplishment of peter paul was his polyglot ability. when he arrived at antwerp, a mere child, he spoke german, flemish and french. such a favorite did little peter paul become with his "other mother," and her ladies of the court, that his sure-enough mother grew a bit jealous, and feared they would make a hothouse plant of her boy, and so she took him away. the question was, for what profession should he be educated? that he should serve the church and state was already a settled fact in the mother's mind: to get on in the world you must cultivate and wisely serve those who are in power--that is, those who have power to bestow. priests were plentiful as blackberries, and politicians were on every corner, and many of the priests and officeseekers had no special talent to recommend them. they were simply timeservers. maria knew this: to get on you must have several talents, otherwise people will tire of you. in cologne, maria rubens had met returned pilgrims from rome and they had told her of that trinity of giants, michelangelo, raphael and leonardo; and how these men had been the peers of prince and pope, because they had the ability to execute marvelous works of beauty. this extraordinary talent called attention to themselves, so they were summoned out of the crowd and became the companions and friends of the greatest names of their time. and then, how better can one glorify his maker than by covering the sacred walls of temples with rich ornament! the boy entered into the project, and the mother's ambition that he should retrieve his father's fortune fired his heart. thus does the failure in life of a parent often give incentive to the genius of a son. tobias verhaecht was the man who taught rubens the elements of drawing, and inculcated in him that love of nature which was to be his lifelong heritage. the word "landscape" is flemish, and it was the dutch who carried the term and the art into england. verhaecht was among the very first of landscape-painters. he was a specialist: he could draw trees and clouds, and a winding river, but could not portray faces. and so he used to call in a worthy portrait-painter, by the name of franck, to assist him whenever he had a canvas on the easel that demanded the human form. then when franck wanted background and perspective, verhaecht would go over with a brush and a few pots of paint and help him out. at fifteen, the keen, intuitive mind of rubens had fathomed the talents of those two worthies, verhaecht and franck. his mind was essentially feminine: he absorbed ideas in the mass. soon he prided himself on being able to paint alone as good a picture as the two collaborators could together. yet he was too wise to affront them by the boast. the bent of his talent he thought was toward historical painting; and more than this, he knew that only epic art would open the churches for a painter. and so he next became a pupil under adam van noort. this man was a rugged old character, who worked out things in his own way and pushed the standard of painting full ten points to the front. his work shows a marked advance over that of his contemporaries and over the race of painters that preceded him. every great artist is the lingering representative of an age that is dead, or else he is the prophet and forerunner of a golden age to come. when i visited the church of saint jaques in antwerp, where rubens lies buried, the good old priest who acted as guide called my attention to a picture by van noort, showing peter finding the money in the mouth of the fish. "a close study of that picture will reveal to you the germ of the rubens touch," said the priest, and he was surely right: its boldness of drawing, the strong, bright colors and the dexterity in handling all say, "rubens." rubens builded on the work of van noort. twenty years after rubens had left the studio of van noort he paid tribute to his old master by saying, "had van noort visited italy and caught the spirit of the classicists, his name would stand first among flemish artists." rubens worked four years with van noort and then entered the studio of otto van veen. this man was not a better painter than van noort, but he occupied a much higher social position, and peter paul was intent on advancing his skirmish-line. he never lost ground. van veen was court painter, and on friendly terms with the archduke albert, and isabella, his wife, daughter of philip the second, king of spain. van veen took very few pupils--only those who had the ability to aid him in completing his designs. to have worked with this master was an introduction at once into the charmed circle of royalty. rubens was in no haste to branch out on his own account: he was quite content to know that he was gaining ground, making head upon the whole. he won the confidence of van veen at once by his skill, his cheerful presence, and ability to further the interests of his master and patrons. in fifteen hundred ninety-nine, when rubens was twenty-two, he was enrolled as a free master at the guild of saint luke on the nomination of van veen, who also about this time introduced the young artist to albert and isabella. but the best service that van veen did for rubens was in taking him into his home and giving him free access to the finest collection of italian art in the netherlands. these things filled the heart of rubens with a desire to visit italy, and there to dive deeply into the art spirit of that land from which all our art has sprung. to go abroad then and gain access to the art treasures of the world was not a mere matter of asking for a passport, handing out a visiting-card, and paying your way. young men who wished to go abroad to study were required to pass a stiff examination. if it was believed that they could not represent their own country with honor, their passports were withheld. and to travel without a passport was to run the risk of being arrested as an absconder. but rubens' place in society was already secure. instead of applying for his passports personally and undergoing the usual catechization, his desires were explained to van veen, and all technicalities were waived, as they always are when you strike the right man. not only were the passports forthcoming, but albert and isabella wrote a personal note to viccuzo gonzaga, the duke of mantua, commending the young painter to the duke's good offices. van veen further explained to rubens that to know the duke of mantua might mean either humiliation or crowning success. to attain the latter through the duke of mantua, it was necessary to make a good impression on annibale chieppo, the duke's minister of state. chieppo had the keeping of the ducal conscience as well as the key to the strong-box. the duke of mantua was one of those strange loaded dice that fate occasionally flings upon this checkerboard of time: one of those characters whose feverish faculties border on madness, yet who do the world great good by breaking up its balances, preventing social ankylosis, and eventually forcing upon mankind a new deal. but in the train of these vagrant stars famine and pestilence follow. the duke of mantua was brother in spirit to the man who made versailles--and making versailles undid france. versailles is a dream: no language that the most enthusiastic lovers of the beautiful may utter, can exaggerate the wonders of those acres of palaces and miles of gardens. the magnificence of the place makes the ready writer put up his pencil, and go away whipped, subdued and crestfallen to think that here are creations that no one pen can even catalog. louis the grand, we are told, had thirty-six thousand men and six thousand horses at work here at one time. no wonder madame de maintenon was oppressed by the treasures that were beyond the capacity of man to contemplate; and so off in the woods was built that lover's retreat, "the trianon." and out there today, hidden in the forest, we behold the second trianon, built by marie antoinette, and we also see those straw-thatched huts where the ladies of her court played at peasant life. louis the fourteenth builded so well that he discouraged his successor from doing anything but play keep-house, and so extensively that france was rent in twain, and so mightily that even napoleon bonaparte was staggered at the thought of maintaining versailles. "it's too much for any man to enjoy--i give it up!" said the little man, perplexed, and ordered every door locked and every window tightly shuttered. then he placed a thousand men to guard the place and went about his business. but today versailles belongs to the people of france; more, it belongs to the people of earth: all is free and you may carry away all the beauty of the place that your soul can absorb. now, who shall say that louis the fourteenth has not enriched the world? the duke of mantua was sumptuous in his tastes, liberal, chivalrous, voluptuous, extravagant. at the same time he had a cultivated mind, an eye for proportion, and an ear for harmony. he was even pious at times, and like all debauchees had periods of asceticism. he was much given to gallantry, and his pension-list of beautiful women was not small. he was a poet and wrote some very good sonnets; he was a composer who sang, from his own compositions, after the wine had gone round; he was an orator who committed to memory and made his own the speeches that his secretary wrote. he traveled much, and in great state, with a retinue of servants, armed guards, outriders and guides. wherever he went he summoned the local poet, or painter, or musician, and made a speech to him, showing that he was familiar with his work by humming a tune or quoting a stanza. then he put a chain of gold around the poor embarrassed fellow's neck, and a purse in his hands, and the people cheered. when he visited a town, cavalcades met him afar out, and as he approached, little girls in white and boys dressed in velvet ran before and strewed flowers in front of his carriage. oh, the duke of mantua was a great man! in his retinue was a troop of comedians, a court fool, two dwarfs for luck, seven cooks, three alchemists and an astrologer. like the old woman who lived in a shoe, he had so many children he didn't know what to do. one of his sons married a princess of the house of saxony, another son was a cardinal, and a daughter married into the house of lorraine. he had alliances and close relations with every reigning family of europe. the sister of his wife, marie de medici, became "king of france," as talleyrand avers, and had a mad, glad, sad, bad, jolly time of it. wherever the duke of mantua went, there too went annibale chieppo, the minister of state. this man had a calm eye, a quiet pulse, and could locate any man or woman in his numerous retinue at any hour of the day or night. he was a diplomat, a soldier, a financier. you could not reach the duke until you had got past chieppo. and the duke of mantua had much commonsense--for in spite of envy and calumny and threat he never lost faith in annibale chieppo. no success in life is possible without a capable first mate. chieppo was king of first mates. he was subtle as richelieu and as wise as wolsey. when peter paul rubens, aged twenty-three, arrived at venice, the duke of mantua and his train were there. rubens presented his credentials to chieppo, and the minister of state read them, looked upon the handsome person of the young man, proved for himself he had decided talent as a painter, put him through a civil-service examination--and took him into favor. such a young man as this, so bright, so courtly, so talented, must be secured. he would give the entire court a new thrill. "tomorrow," said the minister of state, "tomorrow you shall be received by the duke of mantua and his court!" * * * * * the ducal party remained at venice for several weeks, and when it returned to mantua, rubens went along quite as a matter of course. from letters that he wrote to his brother philip, as well as from many other sources, we know that the art collection belonging to the duke of mantua was very rich. it included works by the bellinis, correggio, leonardo da vinci, andrea del sarto, tintoretto, titian, paoli veronese, and various others whose names have faded away like their colors. rubens had long been accustomed to the ways of polite society. the magnificence of his manner, and the fine egotism he showed in his work, captivated the court. the duke was proud of his ward and paraded him before his artistic friends as the coming man, incidentally explaining that it was the duke of mantua who had made him and not he himself. it was then the custom of those who owned masterpieces to have copies made and present them to various other lovers of the beautiful. if an honored guest was looking through your gallery, and expressed great pleasure in a certain canvas, the correct thing was to say, "i'll have my best painter make a copy of it, and send it to you"--and a memorandum was made on an ivory tablet. this gracious custom seems to have come down from the time when the owners of precious books constantly employed scribes and expert illuminators in making copies for distribution. the work done in the scriptoriums of the monasteries, we know, was sent away as presents, or in exchange for other volumes. rubens set diligently to work copying in the galleries of mantua; and whether the duke was happier because he had discovered rubens than rubens was because he had found the duke, we do not know. anyway, all that the young painter had hoped and prayed for had been sent him. here was work from the very hands of the masters he had long worshiped from afar. his ambition was high and his strong animal spirits and tireless energy were a surprise to the easy-going italians. the galleries were his without let or hindrance, save that he allow the ladies of the court to come every afternoon and watch him work. this probably did not disturb him; but we find the experienced duke giving the young fleming some good advice, thus: "you must admire all these ladies in equal portion. should you show favoritism for one, the rest will turn upon you; and to marry any one of them would be fatal to your art." rubens wrote the advice home to his mother, and the good mother viseed it and sent it back. after six months of diligent work at mantua we find rubens starting for rome with letters from the duke to cardinal montalto, highly recommending him to the good graces of the cardinal, and requesting, "that you will be graciously so good as to allow our fleming to execute and make copies for us of such paintings as he may deem worthy." cardinal montalto was a nephew of pope sixtus, and the strongest man, save the pope, in rome. he had immense wealth, great learning, and rare good sense in matters of art. he was a close friend of the duke of mantua; and to come into personal relations with such a man was a piece of rare good fortune for any man. the art world of rome now belonged to rubens--all doors opened at his touch. "our fleming" knew the value of his privileges. "if i do not succeed," he writes to his mother, "it will be because i have not improved my opportunities." the word fail was not in his lexicon. his industry never relaxed. in walpole's "anecdotes of painting," an account is given of a sketchbook compiled by rubens at this time. the original was in the possession of maurice johnson, of spalding, england, in eighteen hundred forty-five, at which time it was exhibited in london and attracted much attention. i have seen a copy of the book with its hundred or more sketches of the very figures that we now see and admire in the uffizi and pitti galleries and in the vatican. eight generations of men have come and gone since rubens sketched from the old masters, but there today stand the chiseled shapes, which were then centuries old, and there today are the "titians" and the "raphaellos" just as the exuberant fleming saw them. surely this must show us how short are the days of man! "open then the door; you know how little while we have to stay!" the two figures that seemed to impress rubens most, as shown in the sketchbook, are the farnese "hercules" and michelangelo's "david." he shows the foot of the "hercules," and the hand of the "david," and gives front, back and side views with comments and criticisms. then after a few pages have been covered by other matter he goes back again to the "hercules"--the subject fascinates him. when we view "the crucifixion," in the cathedral at antwerp, we conclude that he admired the "hercules" not wisely but too well, for the muscles stand out on all the figures, even of the savior, in pure farnese style. two years after that picture was painted, he did his masterpiece, "the descent from the cross," and we behold with relief the change that had come over the spirit of his dreams. mere pride in performing a difficult feat had given place to a higher motive. there is no reason to suppose that the apostles had trained to perform the twelve labors of hercules, or that the two marys were amazons. but the burly roman forms went back to flanders, and for many years staid citizens were slipped into classic attitudes to do duty as disciples, elders, angels--all with swelling biceps, knotted muscles, and necks like the emperor vespasian. the mantuan envoy at rome had private orders from chieppo to see that the fleming was well treated. the envoy was further requested to report to the secretary how the painter spent his time, and also how he was regarded by cardinal montalto. thus we see the wily secretary set one servant watching another, and kept in close touch with all. the reports, however, all confirmed the secretary in his belief that the fleming was a genius, and, moreover, worthy of all the encouragement that was bestowed upon him. the secretary sent funds from time to time to the painter, with gentle hints that he should pay due attention to his behavior, and also to his raiment, for the apparel oft doth proclaim the man. the duke of mantua seems to have regarded rubens as his own private property, and rubens had too much sense to do anything by word or deed that might displease his patron. when he had gotten all that italy could give, or more properly all he could absorb, his intent was to follow his heart and go straight back to flanders. three years had passed since rubens had arrived in venice--years of profit to both spirit and purse. he had painted pictures that placed him in the rank of acknowledged artists, and the duke of mantua had dropped all patronizing airs. with the ducal party rubens had visited verona, florence, pisa and padua. his fame was more than local. the painter hinted to chieppo that he would like to return to antwerp, but the secretary objected--he had important work for him. * * * * * rubens was from flanders, and flanders was a spanish possession: then the fleming knew the daughter of the king of spain. no man was so well fitted to go on a delicate diplomatic mission to spain as the flemish painter. "you are my heart's jewel," said the duke of mantua to the prime minister, when the minister suggested it. the duke wished private information as to certain things spanish, and was also preparing the way to ask for sundry favors. the court at madrid was artistic in instinct; so was the mantuan court. to recognize the esthetic side of your friend's nature, when your friend is secretly not quite sure but that he is more worldly than spiritual, is a stroke of diplomacy. spain was not really artistic, but there were stirrings being felt, and velasquez and murillo were soon to appear. the duke of mantua wished to present the king of spain with certain pictures; his mind was filled with a lively sense of anticipation of future favors to be received--which feeling we are told is gratitude. the entire ceremony must be carried out appropriately--the poetic unities being fully preserved. therefore a skilful painter must be sent with the pictures, in order to see that they were safely transported, properly unpacked, and rightly hung. instructions were given to peter paul rubens, the artistic ambassador, at great length, as to how he should proceed. he was to make himself agreeable to the king, and to one greater than the king--the man behind the throne--the duke of lerma; and to several fair ladies as well. the pictures were copies of the masters--"titians," "raphaellos," "tintorettos" and "leonardos." they were copied with great fidelity, even to the signature and private marks of the original artist. in fact, so well was the work done that if the recipient inclined to accept them as originals, his mind must not be disabused. further, the envoy was not supposed to know whether they were originals or not (even though he had painted them), and if worse came to worst he must say, "well, surely they are just as good as the originals, if not better." presents were taken for a dozen or more persons. those who were not so very artistic were to have gifts of guns, swords and precious stones. the ambassador was to travel in a new carriage, drawn by six horses and followed by wagons carrying the art treasures. all this so as to make the right impression and prove to madrid that mantua was both rich and generous. and as a capsheaf to it all, the painter must choose an opportune moment and present his beautiful carriage and horses to the king, for the belief was rife that the king of spain was really more horsey than artistic. the pictures were selected with great care, and the finest horses to be found were secured, regardless of cost. several weeks were consumed in preparations, and at last the cavalcade started away, with rubens in the carriage and eleven velvet suits in his chest, as he himself has told us. it was a long, hard journey to madrid. there were encounters with rapacious landlords, and hairbreadth escapes in the imminent deadly custom-house. but in a month the chromatic diplomat arrived and entered madrid at the head of his company, wearing one of the velvet suits, and riding a milk-white charger. rubens followed orders and wrote signor chieppo at great length, giving a minute account of every incident and detail of the journey and of his reception at madrid. while at the court he kept a daily record of happenings, which was also forwarded to the secretary. these many letters have recently been given to the public. they are in italian, with a sprinkling here and there of good honest dutch. all is most sincere, grave and explicit. rubens deserved great credit for all these letters, for surely they were written with sweat and lamp-smoke. the work of the toiler is over all, but we must remember that at that time he had been studying italian only about a year. the literary style of rubens was johnsonese all his life, and he made his meaning plain only by repetitions and many rhetorical flounderings. like the average sixteen-year-old boy who sits himself down and takes his pen in hand, all his sprightliness of imagination vanished at sight of an ink-bottle. with a brush his feelings were fluid, and in a company grace dwelt upon his lips; but when asked to write it out he gripped the pen as though it were a crowbar instead of a crow's-quill. but chieppo received his reports; and we know the embassy was a success--a great success. the debonair fleming surprised the king by saying, "your majesty, it is like this"--and then with a few bold strokes drew a picture. he modestly explained that he was not much of a painter--"merely used a brush for his own amusement"--and then made a portrait for the minister of state that exaggerated all of that man's good points, and ignored all his failings. there was a cast in the minister's eye, but rubens waived it. the minister was delighted, and so was the king. he then made a portrait of the king that was as flattering as portraits should be that are painted for monarchs. among his other accomplishments the fleming was a skilful horseman; he rode with such grace and dash that the king took him on his drives, rubens riding by the side of the carriage, gaily conversing as they rode. and so with the aid of his many talents he won the confidence of the king and court and was initiated into the inner life of spanish royalty in a way that iberta, the mantuan resident, never had been. the king liked rubens, and so did the man behind the throne. mortals do not merely like each other because they like each other; such a bond is tenuous as a spider's thread. i love you because you love the things that i love. one woman won my heart by her subtle appreciation of "the dipsy chanty." men meet on a horse basis, a book basis, a religious basis, or some other mutual leaning; sometimes we find them uniting on a mutual dislike for something. for instance, i have a friend to whom i am bound by the tie of oneness because we dislike olives, and have a mutual indifference to the pretended claims of the unpronounceable pole who wrote "quo vadis." the discovery was accidentally made in a hotel dining-room: we clasped hands across the board, and since then have been as brothers. the more points at which you touch humanity the more friends you have--the greater your influence. rubens was an artist, a horseman, a musician, a politician and a gourmet. when conceptions in the kitchen were vague, he would send for the cook and explain to him how to do it. he possessed a most discriminating palate and a fine appreciation of things drinkable. these accomplishments secured him a well-defined case of gout while yet a young man. he taught the spanish court how to smoke, having himself been initiated by an englishman, who was a companion of sir walter raleigh, and showed them how to roll a cigarette while engaged in ardent conversation. and the spaniards have not yet lost the art, for once in cadiz i saw a horse running away, and the driver rolled and lighted a cigarette before trying to stop the mad flight of the frantic brute. in the royal gallery at madrid are several large paintings by rubens that were doubtless done at this time. they are religious subjects; but worked in, after the manner of a true diplomat, are various portraits of brave men and handsome women. to pose a worthy senator as saint paul, and a dashing lady of the court as the holy virgin, was most gratifying to the phrenological development of approbativeness of the said senator and lady. then, as the painter had pictured one, he must do as much for others, so there could be no accusation of favoritism. thus the months passed rapidly. the duke of lerma writes to chieppo, "we desire your gracious permission to keep the fleming another month, as very special portraits are required from his brush." the extra month extended itself to three; and when at last rubens started back for mantua it was after a full year's absence. the embassy was a most complete success. the diplomat well masked his true errand with the artist's garb: and who of all men was ever so well fitted by nature to play the part as rubens? yet he came near overdoing the part at least once. it was in this wise: he really was not sure that the honors paid him were on account of his being a painter or a courtier. but like comedians who think their forte is tragedy, so the part of courtier was more pleasing to rubens than that of painter, because it was more difficult. he painted with such ease that he set small store on the talent: it was only a makeshift for advancement. don john, duke of braganza, afterward king of portugal, was a lover of art, and desired to make the acquaintance of the painter. so he wrote to rubens at madrid, inviting him to villa vitiosa, his place of residence. rubens knew how the duke of mantua did these things--he decided to follow suit. with a numerous train, made up from the fringe of the madrid court, with hired horsemen going before, and many servants behind, the retinue started away. coming within five miles of the villa of don john, word was sent that rubens and his retinue awaited his embassy. now don john was a sure-enough duke and could muster quite a retinue of his own on occasion, yet he had small taste for tinsel parades. men who have a real good bank-balance do not have to wear fashionable clothes. don john was a plain, blunt man who liked books and pictures. he wanted to see the painter, not a courtier: and when he heard of the style in which the artist was coming, he just put a boy on a donkey and sent word out that he was not at home. and further, to show the proud painter his place, he sent along a small purse of silver to pay the artist for the trouble to which he had been. the rebuke was so delicate that it was altogether lost on rubens--he was simply enraged. * * * * * in all, rubens spent eight years in the service of the duke of mantua. he had visited the chief cities of italy, and was familiar with all the art of the golden ages that had gone before. when he left italy he had to take advantage of the fact that the duke was in france, for every time before, when he had suggested going, he was questioned thus: "why, have you not all you wish? what more can be done for you? name your desire and you shall have it." but rubens wanted home: antwerp, his mother, brothers, sister, the broad river scheldt, and the good old flemish tongue. soon after arriving in antwerp he was named as court painter by albert and isabella. thus he was the successor of his old master, van veen. he was now aged thirty-two, in possession of an income from the state, and a fame and name to be envied. he was rich in money, jewels and art treasures brought from italy, for he had the thrifty instincts of a true dutchman. and it was a gala day for all antwerp when the bells rang and the great organ in the cathedral played the wedding-march when peter paul rubens and isabella brandt were married, on the thirteenth of october, sixteen hundred nine. never was there a happier mating. that fine picture at munich of rubens and his wife tells of the sweet comradeship that was to be theirs for many years. he opened a school, and pupils flocked to him from all europe; commissions for work came and orders for altar-pieces from various churches. an order was issued by the archduke that he should not leave holland, and a copy of the order was sent to the duke of mantua, to shut off his importunities. among the pupils of rubens we find the name of jordaens (whom he had first known in italy), de crayer, anthony van dyck, franz snyder and many others who achieved distinction. rubens was a positive leader; so animated was his manner that his ambition was infectious. all his young men painted just as he did. his will was theirs. from now on, out of the thousands of pictures signed "p. p. rubens," we can not pick out a single picture and say, "rubens did this." he drew outlines and added the finishing touches; and surely would not have signed a canvas of which he did not approve. in his great studio at antwerp, at various times, fully a hundred men worked to produce the pictures we call "rubens." those glowing canvases in the "rubens gallery" of the louvre, showing the history and apotheosis of marie de medici, were painted at antwerp. the joyous, exuberant touch of rubens is over all, even though the work was done by 'prentice hands. peaceful lives make dull biographies, and in prosperity is small romance. we may search long before finding a life so full to overflowing of material good things as that of rubens. all he touched turned to gold. from the time he returned to antwerp in sixteen hundred eight to his death in sixteen hundred forty, his life-journey was one grand triumphal march. his many diplomatic missions were simply repetitions of his first spanish embassy, with the don john incident left out, for don john seems to have been the only man who was not at home to the gracious rubens. mr. ruskin has said: "rubens was a great painter, but he lacked that last undefinable something which makes heart speak to heart. you admire, but you never adore. no real sorrow ever entered his life." perhaps we get a valuable clue in that last line. great art is born of feeling, and the heart of rubens was never touched by tragedy, nor the rocky fastnesses of his tears broken in upon by grief. in many ways his was the spirit of a child: he had troubles, but not sufficient to prevent refreshing sleep, and when he awoke in the morning the trials of yesterday were gone. even when the helpful, faithful and loving isabella brandt was taken away from him by death, there soon came other joys to take the place of those that were lost. we have full fifty pictures of his second wife: she looks down at us--smiling, buxom, content--from every gallery-wall in europe. rubens was fifty-three and she was sixteen when they were married; and were it not for a twinge of gout now and then, he would have been as young as she. when rubens went to england on "an artistic commission," we see that he captured charles the first just as he captured the court of spain. he painted five portraits of the king that we can trace. the mild-mannered charles was greatly pleased with the fine portrait of himself bestriding the prancing cream-colored charger. several notable artists, sir joshua reynolds among them, have complimented the picture by taking the horse, background and pose, and placing another man in the saddle--or more properly, taking off the head of charles the first and putting on the head of any bold patron who would furnish the price. in looking through the galleries of europe, keep your eye out for equestrian portraits, and you will be surprised to see on your tab, when you have made the rounds, how many painters have borrowed that long-maned, yellow horse that still rears in the national gallery in london, smelling the battle afar off--as charles himself preferred to smell it. rubens had a good time in england, although his patience was severely tried by being kept at painting for months, awaiting an opportune time to give king charles some good advice on matters political. english ways were very different from those of the continent, but rubens soon spoke the language with fluency, even if not with precision. rubens spoke seven languages, and to speak seven languages is to speak no one well. on this point we have a little comment from high authority. said charles the first, writing to buckingham, "the fleming painter prides himself on being able to pass for an englishman, but his english is so larded with french, dutch and italian that we think he must have been employed on the tower of babel." while painting the ceiling of the banqueting-room at whitehall (where a dutchman was later to be crowned king of england), he discussed politics with the duke of buckingham and the king, from the scaffold. some years after we find buckingham visiting rubens at his home in antwerp, dickering for his fine collection of curios and paintings. the duke afterwards bought the collection and paid rubens ten thousand pounds in gold for it. every one complimented rubens on his shrewdness in getting so much money for the wares, and rubens gave a banquet to his friends in token of the great sale to the britisher. it was a lot of money, to be sure, but the englishman realized the worth of the collection better than did rubens. we have a catalog of the collection. it includes nineteen titians, thirteen paul veroneses, seventeen tintorettos, three leonardos, three raphaels and thirteen pictures by rubens himself. a single one of the titians, if sold at auction today, would bring more than the duke paid for the entire collection. james mcneil whistler has said, "there may be a doubt about rubens having been a great artist; but he surely was an industrious person." there is barely enough truth in mr. whistler's remark, taken with its dash of wit, to save it; but philip gilbert hamerton's sober estimate is of more value: "the influence of rubens for good can not be overestimated. he gave inspiration to all he met, and his example of industry, vivid imagination, good-cheer and good taste have had an incalculable influence on art. we have more canvases from his hand than from the hand of any other master. and these pictures are a quarry to which every artist of today, consciously or unconsciously, is indebted." meissonier i never hesitate about scraping out the work of days, and beginning afresh, so as to satisfy myself, and try to do better. ah! that "better" which one feels in one's soul, and without which no true artist is ever content! others may approve and admire; but that counts for nothing, compared with one's own feeling of what ought to be. --_meissonier's conversations_ [illustration: meissonier] life in this world is a collecting, and all the men and women in it are collectors. the question is, what will you collect? most men are intent on collecting dollars. their waking-hours are taken up with inventing plans, methods, schemes, whereby they may secure dollars from other men. to gather as many dollars as possible, and to give out as few, is the desideratum. but when you collect one thing you always incidentally collect others. the fisherman who casts his net for shad usually secures a few other fish, and once in a while a turtle, which enlarges the mesh to suit, and gives sweet liberty to the shad. to focus exclusively on dollars is to secure jealousy, fear, vanity, and a vaulting ambition that may claw its way through the mesh and let your dollars slip into the yeasty deep. ragged haggard and his colleague, cave-of-the-winds, collect bacteria; while the fashionable young men of the day, with a few exceptions, are collecting headaches, regrets, weak nerves, tremens, paresis--death. of course we shall all die (i will admit that), and further, we may be a long time dead (i will admit that), and moreover, we may be going through the world for the last time--as to that i do not know; but while we are here it seems the part of reason to devote our energies to collecting that which brings as much quiet joy to ourselves, and as little annoyance to others, as possible. my heart goes out to the collector. in the soul of the collector of old books, swords, pistols, brocades, prints, clocks and bookplates, there is only truth. if he gives you his friendship, it is because you love the things that he loves; he has no selfish wish to use your good name to further his own petty plans--he only asks that you shall behold, and beholding, your eye shall glow, and your heart warm within you. inasmuch as we live in the age of the specialist, one man often collects books on only one subject, dante for instance; another, nothing but volumes printed at venice; another, works concerning the stage; and still another devotes all his spare time to securing tobacco-pipes. and i am well aware that the man who for a quarter of a century industriously collects snuffboxes has a supreme contempt for the man who collects both snuffboxes and clocks. and in this does the specialist reveal that his normal propensity to collect has degenerated. that is to say, it has refined itself into an abnormality, and from the innocent desire to collect, has shifted off into a selfish wish to outrival. the man who collects many things, with easy, natural leanings toward, say, spoons, is pure in heart and free from guile; but when his soul centers on spoons exclusively, he has fallen from his high estate and is simply possessed of a lust for ownership--he wants to own more peculiar spoons than any other man on earth. such a one stirs up wrath and rivalry, and is the butt and byword of all others who collect spoons. prosperous, practical, busy people sometimes wonder why other folks build cabinets with glass fronts and strong locks and therein store postage-stamps, bits of old silks, autographs and books that are very precious only when their leaves are uncut; and so i will here endeavor to explain. at the same time i despair of making my words intelligible to any but those who are collectors, or mayhap to those others who are in the varioloid stage. then possibly you say i had better not waste good paper and ink by recording the information, since collectors know already, and those who are without the pale have neither eyes to see nor hearts to incline. but the simple fact is, the proposition that you comprehend on first hearing was yours already; for how can you recognize a thing as soon as it comes into view if you have never before seen it? you have thought my thought yourself, or else your heart would not beat fast and your lips say, "yes, yes!" when i voice it. truth is in the air, and when your head gets up into the right stratum of atmosphere you breathe it in. you may not know that you have breathed it in until i come along and write it out on this blank sheet, and then you read it and say, "yes--your hand! that is surely so; i knew it all along!" and so then if i tell you a thing you already know, i confer on you the great blessing of introducing you to yourself and of giving you the consciousness that you know. and to know you know is power. and to feel the sense of power is to feel a sense of oneness with the source of power. let's see--what was it, then, that we were talking about? oh, yes! collectors and collecting. men collect things because these things stir imagination and link them with the people who once possessed and used these things. thus, through imagination, is the dead past made again to live and throb and pulse with life. man is not the lonely creature that those folks with bad digestions sometimes try to have us believe. we are brothers not only to all who live, but to all who have gone before. and so we collect the trifles that once were valuables for other men, and by the possession of these trifles are we bounden to them. these things stimulate imagination, stir the sympathies, and help us forget the cramping bounds of time and space that so often hedge us close around. the people near us may be sordid, stupid, mean; or more likely they are weary and worn with the battle for mere food, shelter and raiment; or they are depressed by that undefined brooding fear which civilization exacts as payment for benefits forgot--so their better selves are subdued. but through fancy's flight we can pick our companions out of the company of saints and sinners who have long turned to dust. i have the bookplates of holbein and hogarth, and i have a book once owned by rembrandt, and so i do not say holbein and hogarth and rembrandt were--i say they are. and thus the collector confuses the glorious dead and the living in one fairy company; and although he may detect varying degrees of excellence, for none does he hold contempt, of none is he jealous, none does he envy. from them he asks nothing, upon him they make no demands. in the collector's cast of mind there is something very childlike and ingenuous. my little girl has a small box of bright bits of silk thread that she hoards very closely; then she possesses certain pieces of calico, nails, curtain-rings, buttons, spools and fragments of china--all of which are very dear to her heart. and why should they not be? for with them she creates a fairy world, wherein are only joy, and peace, and harmony, and light--quite an improvement on this! yes, dearie, quite. * * * * * ernest meissonier, the artist, began collecting very early. he has told us that he remembers, when five years of age, of going with his mother to market and collecting rabbits' ears and feet, which he would take home, and carefully nail up on the wall of the garret. and it may not be amiss to explain here that the rabbit's foot as an object of superstitious veneration has no real place outside of the united states of america, and this only south of mason and dixon's line. the meissonier lad's collection of rabbits' ears increased until he had nearly colors enough to run the chromatic scale. then he collected pigeons' wings in like manner, and if you have ever haunted french market-places you know how natural a thing this would be for a child. the boy's mother took quite an interest in his amusements, and helped him to spread the wings out and arrange the tails fan-shape on the walls. they had long strings of buttons and boxes of spools in partnership; and when they would go up the seine on little excursions on sunday afternoons, they would bring back rich spoils in the way of swan feathers, butterflies, "snake-feeders" and tiny shells. then once they found a bird's nest, and as the mother bird had deserted it, they carried it home. that was a red-letter day, for the garret collection had increased to such an extent that a partition was made across the corner of a room by hanging up a strip of cloth. and all the things in that corner belonged to ernest--his mother said so. ernest's mother seems to have had a fine, joyous, childlike nature, so she fully entered into the life of her boy. he wanted no other companion. in fact, this mother was little better herself than a child in years--she was only sixteen when she bore him. they lived at lyons then, but three years later moved to paris. her temperament was poetic, religious, and her spirit had in it a touch of superstition--which is the case with all really excellent women. but this sweet playtime was not for long--the mother died in eighteen hundred twenty-five, aged twenty-four years. i suppose there is no greater calamity that can befall a child than to lose his mother. still, nature is very kind, and for ernest meissonier there always remained firm, clear-cut memories of a slight, fair-haired woman, with large, open, gray eyes, who held him in her arms, sang to him, and rocked him to sleep each night as the darkness gathered. he lived over and over again those few sunshiny excursions up the river; and he knew all the reeds and flowers and birds she liked best, and the places where they had landed from the boat and lunched together were forever to him sacred spots. but the death of his mother put a stop for a time to his collecting. the sturdy housekeeper who came to take the mother's place, speedily cleared "the truck" out of the corner, and forbade the bringing of any more feathers and rabbits' feet into her house--well, i guess so! the birds' nests, long grasses, reeds, shells and pigeons' wings were tossed straightway into the fireplace, and went soaring up the chimney in smoke. the destruction of the collection didn't kill the propensity to collect, however, any more than you can change a man's opinions by burning his library. it only dampened the desire for a time. it broke out again after a few years and continued for considerably more than half a century. there was a house at poissy "full to the roof-tiles" of books, marbles, bronzes and innumerable curios, gathered from every corner of the earth; and a palace at paris filled in like manner, for which ernest meissonier had expended more than a million francs. in the palace at paris, when the owner was near his threescore years and ten, he took from a locker a morocco case, and opening it, showed his friend, dumas, a long curl of yellow hair; and then he brought out a curious old white-silk dress, and said to the silent dumas, "this curl was cut from my mother's head after her death, and this dress was her wedding-gown." a few days after this meissonier wrote these words in his journal: "it is the twentieth of february--the morning of my seventieth birthday. what a long time to look back upon! this morning, at the hour when my mother gave me birth, i wished my first thoughts to be of her. dear mother, how often have the tears risen to my eyes at the remembrance of you! it was your absence--the longing i had for you--that made you so dear to me. the love of my heart goes out to you! do you hear me, mother, calling and crying for you? how sweet it must be to have a mother, i say to myself." * * * * * "i would have every man rich," said emerson, "that he might know the worthlessness of riches." every man should have a college education, in order to show him how little the thing is really worth. the intellectual kings of the earth have seldom been college-bred. napoleon ever regretted the lack of instruction in his early years; and in the minds of such men as abraham lincoln and ernest meissonier there usually lingers the suspicion that they have dropped something out of their lives. "i'm not a college man--ask seward," said lincoln, when some one questioned him as to the population of alaska. the remark was merry jest, of course, but as in all jest there lurks a grain of truth, so did there here. at the height of meissonier's success, when a canvas from his hand commanded a larger price than the work of any other living artist, he exclaimed, "oh, if only i had been given the advantages of a college training!" if he had, it is quite probable that he never would have painted better than his teacher. discipline might have reduced his daring genius to neutral salts, and taken all that fine audacity from his brush. he was a natural artist: he saw things clearly and in detail; he had the heart to feel, and he longed for the skill to express that which he saw and felt. and when the desire is strong enough it brings the thing--and thus is prayer answered. meissonier while but a child set to work making pictures--he declared he would be an artist. and in spite of his father's attempts to shame him out of his whim, and to starve him into a more practical career, his resolution stuck. he worked in a drugstore and drew on the wrapping-paper; then with this artist a few days, and then with that. he tried illustrating, and finally a bold stand was made and a little community formed that decided on storming the salon. there is something pathetic in that brotherhood of six young men, binding themselves together, swearing they would stand together and aid each other in producing great art. the dead seriousness of the scheme has a peculiar sophomore quality. there were steinheil, trimolet, daumier, daubigny, deschaumaes and meissonier, all aged about twenty, strong, sturdy, sincere and innocently ignorant--all bound they would be artists. two of these young men were sign-painters, the others did odd jobs illustrating, and filled in the time at anything which chance offered. when one got an invitation out to dinner he would go, and furtively drop biscuit and slices of meat into his lap, and then slyly transfer them to his waistcoat-pockets, so as to take them to his less fortunate brethren. they haunted the galleries, made themselves familiar with catalogs, criticized without stint, knew all about current prices, and were able to point out the great artists of paris when they passed proudly up the street. they sketched eternally, formed small wax models, and made great preparations for masterpieces. the reason they did not produce the masterpieces was because they did not have money to buy brushes, paints and canvas. neither did they have funds to purchase food to last until the thing was done; and it is difficult to produce great art on half-rations. so they formed the brotherhood, and one midnight swore eternal fealty. they were to draw lots: the lucky member was to paint and the other five were to support him for a month. he was to be supplied his painting outfit and to be absolutely free from all responsibility as to the bread-and-butter question for a whole month. trimolet was the first lucky man. he set diligently to work, and dined each evening on a smoking mutton-chop with a bottle of wine, at a respectable restaurant. the five stood outside and watched him through the window--they dined when and where they could. his picture grew apace, and in three weeks was completed. it was entitled, "sisters of charity giving out soup to the poor." the work was of a good machine-made quality, not good enough to praise nor bad enough to condemn: it was like tomlinson of berkeley square. on account of the peculiar subject with which it dealt, it found favor with a worthy priest, who bought it and presented it to a convent. this so inflated trimolet that he suggested it would be a good plan to keep right on with the arrangement, but the five objected. steinheil was next appointed to feed the vestal fire. his picture was so-so, but would not sell. daubigny came next, and lived so high that inspiration got clogged, fatty degeneration of the cerebrum set in, and after a week he ceased to paint--doing nothing but dream. when the turn of the fourth man came, meissonier had concluded that the race must be won by one and one, and his belief in individualism was further strengthened by an order for a group of family portraits, with a goodly retainer in advance. straightway he married steinheil's sister, with whom he had been some weeks in love, and the others feeling aggrieved that an extra mouth to feed, with danger of more, had been added to the "commune," declared the compact void. trimolet still thought well of the arrangement, though, and agreed, if meissonier would support him, to secure fame and fortune for them both. meissonier declined the offer with thanks, and struck boldly out on his own account. the woman who had so recklessly agreed to share his poverty must surely have had faith in him--or are very young people who marry incapable of either faith or reason? never mind; she did not hold the impulsive young man back. she couldn't--nothing but death could have stayed such ambition. his will was unbending and his ambition never tired. he was an athlete in strength, and was fully conscious that to be a good animal is the first requisite. he swam, rowed, walked, and could tire out any of his colleagues at swordplay or skittles. but material things were scarce those first few years of married life, and once when the table had bread, but no meat nor butter, he took the entire proceeds of a picture and purchased a suit of clothing of the time of louis the grand: not to wear, of course--simply to put in the "collection." small wonder is it that, for some months after, when he would walk out alone the fond wife would caution him thus: "now ernest, do not go through that old-clothes market--you know your weakness." "i have no money, so you need not worry," he would gaily reply. of those times of pinching want he has written, "as to happiness--is it possible to be wretched at twenty, when one has health, a passion for art, free passes for the louvre, an eye to see, a heart to feel, and sunshine gratis?" but poverty did not last long. pictures such as this young man produced must attract attention anywhere. he belonged to no school, but simply worked away after his own fashion; what he was bound to do was to produce a faithful picture--sure, clear, strong, vivid. he saw things clearly and his sympathies were acute, as is shown in every canvas he produced. meissonier had the true artistic conscience--he was incapable of putting out an average, unobjectionable picture--it must have positive excellence. "there is a difference," said he, "between a successful effort and a work of love." he painted only in the loving mood. no greater blessing than the artistic conscience can come to any worker in art, be he sculptor, writer, singer or painter. hold fast to it, and it shall be your compass in time when the sun is darkened. to please the public is little, but to satisfy your other self, that self that leans over your shoulder and watches your every thought and deed, is much. no artistic success worth having is possible unless you satisfy that other self. but like the moral conscience it can be dallied with until the grieved spirit turns away, and the wretch is left to his fate. meissonier never hesitated to erase a whole picture when it did not satisfy his inward sense--customers might praise and connoisseurs offer to buy, it made no difference. "i have some one who is more difficult to please than you," he would say; "i must satisfy myself." the fine intoxication that follows good artistic work is the highest joy that mortals ever know. but once let a creative artist lower his standard and give the world the mere product of his brain, with heart left out, that man will hate himself for a year and a day. he has sold his soul for a price: joy has flown, and bitterness is his portion. meissonier never trifled with his compass. to the last he headed for the polestar. * * * * * the early domestic affairs of meissonier can best be guessed from his oft-repeated assertion that the artist should never marry. "to produce great work, art must be your mistress," he said. "you must be married to your work. a wife demands unswerving loyalty as her right, and a portion of her husband's time she considers her own. this is proper with every profession but that of art. the artist must not be restrained, nor should even a wife come between him and his art. the artist must not be judged by the same standards that are made for other men. why? simply because when you begin to tether him you cramp his imagination and paralyze his hand. the priest and artist must not marry, for it is too much to expect any woman to follow them in their flight, and they have no moral right to tie themselves to a woman and then ask her to stay behind." from this and many similar passages in the "conversations" it is clear that meissonier had no conception of the fact that a woman may possibly keep step with her mate. he simply never considered such a thing. a man's opinions concerning womankind are based upon the knowledge of the women he knows best. we can not apply hamerton's remark concerning turner to meissonier. hamerton said that throughout turner's long life he was lamentably unfortunate in that he never came under the influence of a strong and good woman. meissonier associated with good women, but he never knew one with a spread of spiritual wing sufficient to fit her to be his companion. there is a minor key of loneliness and heart hunger running through his whole career. possibly, in the wisdom of providence, this was just what he needed to urge him on to higher and nobler ends. he never knew peace, and the rest for which he sighed slipped him at the very last. "i'm tired, so tired," he sighed again and again in those later years, when he had reached the highest pinnacle. and still he worked--it was his only rest! meissonier painted very few pictures of women, and in some miraculous way skipped that stage in esthetic evolution wherein most artists affect the nude. in his whole career he never produced a single "diana," nor a "susanna at the bath." he had no artistic sympathy with "leda and the swan," and once when delaroche chided him for painting no pictures of women, he was so ungallant as to say, "my dear fellow, men are much more beautiful than women!" during the last decade of his life meissonier painted but one portrait of a woman, and to america belongs the honor. the sitter was mrs. j. w. mackay, of california. as all the world knows, mrs. mackay refused to accept the canvas. she declared the picture was no likeness, and further, she would not have it for a gift. "so you do not care for the picture?" asked the great artist. "me? well, i guess not--not that picture!" "very well, madam. i think--i think i'll keep it for myself. i'll place it on exhibition!" and the great artist looked out of the window in an absent-minded way, and hummed a tune. this put another phase on the matter. mrs. mackay winced, and paid the price, which rumor says was somewhere between ten and twenty-five thousand dollars. she took the little canvas in her carriage and drove away with it, and what became of the only portrait of a woman painted by meissonier during his later years, nobody knew but mrs. mackay, and mrs. mackay never told. meissonier once explained to a friend that his offense consisted in producing a faithful likeness of the customer. the mackay incident did not end when the lady paid the coin and accepted the goods. meissonier, by the haughtiness of his manner, his artistic independence, and most of all, by his unpardonable success, had been sowing dragons' teeth for half a century. and now armed enemies sprang up, and sided with the woman from california. they made it an international episode: less excuses have involved nations in war in days agone. but the enemies of meissonier did not belong alone to america, although here every arm was braced and every tongue wagged to vindicate the cause of our countrywoman. in paris the whole art world was divided into those who sided with meissonier and those who were against him. cafes echoed with the sounds of wordy warfare; the columns of all magazines and newspapers bulged with heated argument; newsboys cried extras on the street, and bands of students paraded the boulevards singing songs in praise of mrs. mackay and in dishonor of meissonier, "the pretender." the assertion was made again and again that meissonier had fed sham art upon the public, and by means of preposterous prices and noisy puffing had hypnotized a world. they called him the artist of the infinitely little, king of lilliput, and challenged any one to show where he had thrown heart and high emotion into his work. studies of coachmen, smokers, readers, soldiers, housemaids, chess-players, cavaliers and serenaders were not enough upon which to base an art reputation--the man must show that he had moved men to high endeavor, said the detractors. a fund was started to purchase the mackay portrait, so as to do the very thing that meissonier had threatened to do, but dare not: place the picture on exhibition. to show the picture, the enemy said, would be to prove the artist's commonplace quality, and not only this, but it would prove the man a rogue. they declared he was incapable of perceiving the good qualities in a sitter, and had consented for a price to portray a person whom he disliked; and as a result, of course, had produced a caricature; and then had blackmailed his patron into paying an outrageous sum to keep the picture from the public. the argument sounded plausible. and so the battle raged, just as it has since in reference to zola. the tide of meissonier's prosperity began to ebb: prospective buyers kept away; those who had given commissions canceled them. meissonier's friends saw that something must be done. they inaugurated a "meissonier vindication," by making an exhibition of one hundred fifty-five "meissoniers"--and the public was invited to come and be the jury. art-lovers from england went in bodies, and all paris filed through the gallery, as well as a goodly portion of provincial france. by the side of each canvas stood a gendarme to protect it from a possible fanatic whose artistic hate could not be restrained. to a great degree this exhibition brought feeling to a normal condition. meissonier was still a great artist, yet he was human and his effects were now believed to be gotten by natural methods. but there was a lull in the mad rush to secure his wares. the vanderbilts grew lukewarm; titled connoisseurs from england were not so anxious; and mrs. mackay sat back and smiled through her tears. meissonier had expended over a million francs on his house in the boulevard malesherbes in paris, and nearly as much on the country-seat at poissy. these places were kingly in their appointments and such as only the state should attempt to maintain. for a single man, by the work of his right hand, to keep them up was too much to expect. meissonier's success had been too great. as a collector he had overdone the thing. only poor men, or those of moderate incomes, should be collectors, for then the joy of sacrifice is theirs. charles lamb's covetous looking on the book when it was red, daily for months, meanwhile hoarding his pay, and at last one saturday night swooping down and carrying the volume home to bridget in triumph, is the true type. but money had come to meissonier by hundreds of thousands of francs, and often sums were forced upon him as advance payments. he lived royally and never imagined that his hand and brain could lose their cunning, or the public be fickle. the fact that a "vindication" had been necessary was galling: the great man grew irritable and his mood showed itself in his work: his colors grew hard and metallic, and there were angles in his lines where there should have been joyous curves. debts began to press. he painted less and busied his mind with reminiscence--the solace of old age. and then it was that he dictated to his wife the "conversations." the book reveals the quality of his mind with rare fidelity--and shows the power of this second wife fully to comprehend him. thus did she disprove some of the unkind philosophy given to the world by her liege. but the talk in the "conversations" is of an old man in whose heart was a tinge of bitterness. yet the thought is often lofty and the comment clear and full of flashing insight. it is the book of ecclesiastes over again, written in a minor key, with a little harmless gossip added for filling. meissonier died in paris on the twenty-first of january, eighteen hundred ninety-one, aged seventy-six years. * * * * * the canvas known as "eighteen hundred seven," which is regarded as meissonier's masterpiece, has a permanent home in the metropolitan museum of art in new york. the central figure is napoleon, at whose shrine the great artist loved to linger. the "eighteen hundred seven" occupied the artist's time and talent for fifteen years, and was purchased by a. t. stewart for sixty thousand dollars. after mr. stewart's death his art treasures were sold at auction, and this canvas was bought by judge henry hilton and presented to the city of new york. there are in all about seventy-five pictures by meissonier owned in america. several of his pieces are in the vanderbilt collection, others are owned by collectors in chicago, cleveland and saint louis. there are various glib sayings to the effect that the work of great men is not appreciated until after they are dead. this may be so and it may not. it depends upon the man and the age. meissonier enjoyed full half a century of the highest and most complete success that was ever bestowed upon an artist. the strong intellect and marked personality of the man won him friends wherever he chose to make them; and it probably would have been better for his art if a degree of public indifference had been his portion in those earlier years. his success was too great: the calm judgment of posterity can never quite endorse the plaudits paid the living man. he is one of the greatest artists the nineteenth century has produced, but that his name can rank among the great artists of all time is not at all probable. william michael rossetti has summed the matter up well by saying: "perfection is so rare in this world that when we find it we must pause and pay it the tribute of our silent admiration. it is very easy to say that meissonier should have put in this and omitted that. had he painted differently he would have been some one else. the work is faultless, and such genius as he showed must ever command the homage of those who know by experience the supreme difficulty of having the hand materialize the conceptions of the mind. and yet meissonier's conceptions outmatched his brush: he was greater than his work. he was a great artist, and better still, a great man--proud, frank, fearless and conscientious." titian titian by a few strokes of the brush knew how to make the general image and character of whatever object he attempted. his great care was to preserve the masses of light and of shade, and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable from natural objects. he was the greatest of the venetians, and deserves to rank with raphael and michelangelo. --_sir joshua reynolds_ [illustration: titian] the march of progress and the rage for improvement make small impression on venice. the cabmen have not protested against horsecars as they did in rome, tearing up the tracks, mobbing the drivers, and threatening the passengers; neither has the cable superseded horses as a motor power, and the trolley then rendered the cable obsolete. in short, there never was a horse in venice, save those bronze ones over the entrance to saint mark's, and the one napoleon rode to the top of the campanile. but there are lions in venice--stone lions--you see them at every turn. "did you ever see a live horse?" asked a ten-year-old boy of me, in saint mark's square. "yes," said i; "several times." "are they fierce?" he asked after a thoughtful pause. and then i explained that a thousand times as many men are killed by horses every year as by lions. four hundred years have made no change in the style of gondolas, or anything else in venice. the prow of the venetian gondola made today is of the same height as that prescribed by tommaso mocenigo, doge in the year fourteen hundred. the regulated height of the prow is to insure protection for the passengers when going under bridges, but its peculiar halberd shape is a thing not one of the five thousand gondoliers in venice can explain. if you ask your gondolier he will swear a pious oath, shrug his fine shoulders, and say, "mon dieu, signore! how should i know?--it has always been so." the ignorance and superstition of the picturesque gondolier, with his fluttering blue hatband and gorgeous sash, are most enchanting. his lack of knowledge is like the ignorance of childhood, when life has neither beginning nor end; when ways and means present no vexatious problems; when if food is not to be had for the simple asking, it can surely be secured by coaxing; when the day is for frolic and play, and the night for dreams and sleep. but although your gondolier may not be able to read or write, he yet has his preferences in music and art, and possesses definite ideas as to the eternal fitness of things. in italy, many of the best paintings being in churches, and all the galleries being free on certain days, the common people absorb a goodly modicum of art education without being aware of it. i have heard market-women compare the merits of tintoretto and paul veronese, and stupid indeed is the boat "hooker" in venice who would not know a "titian" on sight. but the chronology of art is all a jumble to this indolent, careless, happy people. these paintings were in the churches when their fathers and mothers were alive, they are here now, and no church has been built in venice for three hundred years. the history of venice is nothing to a gondolier. "why, signore! how should i know? venice always has been," explained enrico, when i asked him how old the city was. when i hired enrico i thought he was a youth. he wore such a dandy suit of pure white, and his hatband so exactly matched his sash, that i felt certain i was close upon some tender romance, for surely it was some dark-eyed lacemaker who had embroidered this impossible hatband and evolved the improbable sash! the exercise of rowing a gondola is of the sort that gives a splendid muscular development. men who pull oars have round shoulders, but the gondolier does not pull an oar, he pushes it, and as a result has a flat back and brawny chest. enrico had these, and as he had no nerves to speak of, the passing years had taken small toll. enrico was sixty. once he ran alongside another gondola and introduced me to the gondolier, who was his son. they were both of one age. then one day i went with enrico to his home--two whitewashed rooms away up under the roof of an old palace on the rialto--and there met his wife. mona lisa showed age more than enrico. she had crouched over a little wooden frame making one pattern of lace for thirty years, so her form was bent and her eyesight faulty. yet she proudly explained that years and years ago she was a model for a painter, and in the della salute i could see her picture, posed as magdalen. she got fourteen cents a day for her work, and had been at it so long she had no desire to quit. she took great pride in enrico's white-duck suits and explained to me that she never let him wear one suit more than two days without its being washed and starched; and she always pipeclayed his shoes and carefully inspected him each morning before sending him forth to his day's work. "men are so careless, you know," she added by way of apology. there was no furniture in the rooms worth mentioning--italians do not burden themselves with things--but on the wall i caught sight of a bright-colored unfinished sketch of the bridge of sighs. it was little more than an outline, and probably did not represent ten minutes' work, but the lines seemed so firm and sure that i at once asked who did it. "an american did it, signore, an american painter; he comes here every year; our son is his gondolier and shows him all the best places to paint, and takes him there when the light is good and keeps the people back so the artist can work--you understand? a shower came up just as his excellency, the american, began on this, and it got wet and so he gave it to my son and he gave it to me." "what is the painter's name?" i asked. enrico could not remember, but mona lisa said his name was signore hopsmithiziano, or something like that. there were several little plaster images on the walls, and through the open door that led to the adjoining room i saw a sort of an improvised shrine, with various little votive offerings grouped about an unframed canvas. the picture was a crude attempt at copying that grand figure in titian's "assumption." "and who painted that?" i asked. enrico crossed himself in silence, and mona lisa's subdued voice answered: "our other son did that. he was only nineteen. he was a mosaicist and was studying to be a painter; he was drowned at the lido." the old woman made the sign of the cross, her lips moved, and a single big tear stood on her leathery cheek. i changed the painful subject, and soon found excuse to slip away. that evening as the darkness gathered and twinkling lights began to appear like fireflies, up and down the grand canal, i sat in a little balcony of my hotel watching the scene. a serenading party, backing their boats out into the stream, had formed a small blockade, and in the group of gondolas that awaited the unraveling of the tangle i spied enrico. he had a single passenger, a lady in the inevitable black mantilla, holding in her hands the inevitable fan. a second glance at the lady--and sure enough! it was mona lisa. i ran downstairs, stepped out across the moored line of gondolas, took up a hook, and reaching over gently pulled enrico's gondola over so i could step aboard. mona lisa was crooning a plaintive love-song and her gondolier was coming in occasionally with bars of melodious bass. i felt guilty for being about to break in upon such a sentimental little scene, and was going to retreat, but enrico and mona lisa spied me and both gave a little cry of surprise and delight. "where have you been?" i asked--"you fine old lovers!" and then they explained that it was a holy day and they had been over to the church of san giorgio, and were now on their way to santa maria de' frari. "it is a very special mass, by torchlight, and is for the repose of the soul of titian, who is buried there. you may never have an opportunity to see such a sight again--come with us," and enrico held out his strong brown hand. i stepped aboard, the boats opened out to the left and to the right, and we passed with that peculiar rippling sound, across the water that reflected the lights as of a myriad stars. * * * * * titian was born one hundred years before rubens, and died just six months before rubens' birth. on the one hundred twenty-second anniversary of the birth of titian, rubens knelt at his grave, there in the church of santa maria de' frari, and vowed he would follow in the footsteps of the illustrious master. and the next day he wrote to his mother describing the incident. thousands of other sentimental and impulsive youth have stood before that little slab of black marble on which is carved the simple legend, "tiziano vecellio," and vowed as rubens did, but out of the throng not one rendered such honor to the master as did the brilliant fleming. the example of titian was a lifelong inspiration to rubens; and to all his pupils he held up titian as the painter par excellence. in the rubens studio titian was the standard by which all art was gauged. when rubens returned to flanders from italy he carried with him twenty-one pictures done by the hand of the master. titian was born at the little village of cadore, a few miles north of venice. when ten years of age his father took him down to the city and apprenticed him to a worker in mosaic, the intent of the fond parent probably being to get the youngster out of the way, more than anything else. the setting together of the little bits of colored glass, according to a pattern supplied, is a task so simple that children can do it about as well as grown folks. they do the work there today just exactly as they did four hundred years ago, when little tiziano vecellio came down from cadore and worked, getting his ears pinched when he got sleepy, or carelessly put in the red glass when he should have used the blue. an inscription on a tomb at beni hassan, dating from the reign of osortasen the first, who lived three thousand years before christ, represents theban glassblowers at work. i told enrico of this one day when we were on our way to a glass-factory. "that's nothing," said enrico; "it was the glassblowers of venice who taught them how," and not a ghost of a smile came across his fine, burnt-umber face. there is a story by pliny about certain phenician mariners landing on the shores of a small river in palestine and making a fire to cook their food, and afterward discovering that the soda and sand under their pots had fused into glass. no one now seriously considers that the first discovery of glass, and for all i know enrico may be right in his flat statement that the first glass was made at venice, "for venice always was." the art of glassmaking surely goes back to the morning of the world. the glassblower is a classic, like the sower who goes forth to sow, the potter at his wheel, and the grinding of grain with mortar and pestle. thus, too, the art of the mosaicist--who places bright bits of stone and glass in certain positions so as to form a picture--goes back to the dawn. the exquisite work in mosaic at pompeii is the first thing that impresses the visitor to that silent city. much of the work there was done long before the christian era, and must have then been practised many centuries to bring it to such perfection. young tiziano from cadore did not like the mere following of a set pattern--he introduced variations of his own, and got his nose tweaked for trying to improve on a good thing. altogether he seemed to have had a hard time of it there at messer zuccato's mosaic-shop. the painter's art, then as now, preceded the art of the mosaicist, for the picture or design to be made in mosaic is first carefully drawn on paper, and then colored, and the worker in mosaic is supposed simply to follow copy. when you visit the glass-factories of venice today, you see the painted picture tacked up on the wall before the workmen, who with deft fingers stick the bits of glass into their beds of putty. this scheme of painting a pattern is in order that cheap help can be employed; when it began we do not know, but we do know there was a time when the great artist in mosaic had his design in his head, and materialized it by rightly placing the bits of glass with his own hands, experimenting, selecting and rejecting until the thing was right. but this was before the time of titian, for when titian came down to venice there were painters employed in the shop of sebastian zuccato who made the designs for the dunderheads to follow. that is not just the word the painters used to designate the boys and women who placed the bits of glass in position, but it meant the same thing. the painters thought themselves great folks, and used to make the others wait on them and run errands, serving them as "fags." but the vecellio boy did not worship at the shrine of the painters who made the designs. he said he could make as good pictures himself, and still continued to make changes in the designs when he thought they should be made; and once in a dispute between the boy and the maker of a design, the master took sides with the boy. this inflated the lad with his own importance so, that shortly after he applied for the position of the quarrelsome designer. the fine audacity of the youngster so pleased the master that he allowed him to try his hand with the painters a few hours each day. he was getting no wages anyway, only his board, and the kind of board did not cost much, so it did not make much difference. in venice at that time there were two painters by the name of bellini--gentile and giovanni, sons of the painter jacob bellini, who had brought his boys up in the way they should go. gian, as the venetians called the younger brother, was the more noted of the two. occasionally he made designs for the mosaicists, and this sometimes brought him to the shop where young titian worked. the boy got on speaking terms with the great painter, and ran errands back and forth from his studio. when twelve years of age we find him duly installed as a helper at gian bellini's studio, with an easel and box of paints all his own. * * * * * the brightest scholar in the studio of gian bellini was a young man by the name of giorgio, but they called him giorgione, which being interpreted means george the great. he was about the age of titian, and the two became firm friends. giorgione was nearly twenty when we first hear of him. he was a handsome fellow--tall, slender, with an olive complexion and dreamy brown eyes. there was a becoming flavor of melancholy in his manner, and more than one gracious dame sought to lure him back to earth, away from his sadness, out of the dream-world in which he lived. giorgione was a musician and a poet. he sang his own pieces, playing the accompaniment on a harp. vasari says he sang his songs, playing his own accompaniment on a flute, but i think this is a mistake. into all his work giorgione infused his own soul--and do you know what the power to do that is? it is genius. to be able to make a statue is little, but to breathe into its nostrils the breath of life--ah! that is something else! the last elusive, undefinable stroke of the brush, that something uniting the spirit of the beholder with the spirit of the artist, so that you feel as he felt when he wrought--that is art. burne-jones is the avatar of giorgione. he subdues you into silence, and you wait, expecting that one of his tall, soulful dream-women will speak, if you are but worthy--holding your soul in tune. giorgione never wrought so well as burne-jones, because he lived in a different age--all art is an evolution. painting is a form of expression, just as language is a form of expression. every man who writes english is debtor to shakespeare. every man who paints and expresses something of that which his soul feels is debtor to giorgione and botticelli. but to judge of the greatness of an artist--mind this--you must compare him with his contemporaries, not with those who were before or those who came after. the old masters are valuable, not necessarily for beauty, but because they reveal the evolution of art. between burne-jones and giorgione came botticelli. now, botticelli builded on giorgione, while burne-jones builded on botticelli. aubrey beardsley, dead at the age at which keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where burne-jones placed faith and abiding trust. aubrey beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in botticelli's "spring," i need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about the face of one of the women. did aubrey beardsley infuse his own spirit into his work? yes, i think he did. mrs. jameson says, "there are no successful imitations of giorgione, neither can there be, for the spirit of the man is in every face he drew, and the people who try to draw like him always leave that out." there are various pictures in the louvre, the national gallery, and the pinacothek at munich, signed with giorgione's name, but mrs. jameson declares they are not his, "because they do not speak to your soul with that mild, beseeching look of pity," possibly we should make allowance for mrs. jameson's warm praise--other women talked like that when giorgione was alive. giorgione was one of those bright luminaries that dart across our plane of vision and then go out quickly in hopeless night, leaving only the memory of a blinding light. he died at thirty-three, which disraeli declares is the age at which the world's saviors have usually died--and he names the redeemer first in a list of twenty who passed out at the age of three-and-thirty. disraeli does not say that all those in his list were saviors, for the second name he records is that of alexander the great, the list ending with shelley. giorgione died of a broken heart. the girl he loved eloped with his friend, morta del feltri, to whom he had proudly introduced her a short time before. it is an old story--it has been played again and again to its da rimini finish. the friend introduces the friend, and the lauded virtues of this friend inflames imagination, until love strikes a spark; then soon instead of three we find one--one groping blindly, alone, dazed, stunned, bereft. the handsome giorgione pined away, refusing to be comforted. and soon his proud, melancholy soul took its flight from an environment with which he was ever at war, and from a world which he never loved. and titian was sent for to complete the pictures which he had begun. surely, disembodied spirits have no control over mortals, or the soul of giorgione would have come back and smitten the hand of titian with palsy. for a full year before he died giorgione had not spoken to titian, although he had seen him daily. giorgione had surpassed all artists in venice. he had a careless, easy, limpid style. but there was decision and surety in his swinging lines, and best of all, a depth of tenderness and pity in his faces that gave to the whole a rich, full and melting harmony. giorgione's head touched heaven, and his feet were not always on earth. titian's feet were always on earth, and his head sometimes touched heaven. titian was healthy and in love with this old, happy, cruel, sensuous world. he was willing to take his chances anywhere. he had no quarrel with his environment, for did he not stay here a hundred years (lacking half a year), and then die through accident? of course he liked it. one woman, for him, could make a paradise in which a thousand nightingales sang. and if one particular woman liked some one else better, he just consoled himself with the thought that "there is just as good fish," etc. i will not quote walt whitman and say his feet were tenoned and mortised in granite, but they were well planted on the soil--and sometimes mired in clay. titian admired giorgione; he admired him so much that he painted exactly like him--or as nearly as he could. titian was a good-looking young man, but he was not handsome like giorgione. yet titian did his best; he patronized giorgione's tailor, imitated his dreamy, far-away look, used a brush with his left hand, and painted with his thumb. his coloring was the same, and when he got a commission to fresco the ceiling of a church he did it as nearly like giorgione frescoes as he could. this kind of thing is not necessarily servile imitation--it is only admiration tipped to t' other side. it is found everywhere in aspiring youth and in every budding artist. as in the animal kingdom, genius has its prototype. in the national gallery at london you will see in the turner room a "claude lorraine" and a "turner" hung side by side, as provided for in turner's will. you would swear, were the pictures not labeled, that one hand did them both. when thirty, turner admired claude to a slavish degree; but we know there came a time when he bravely set sail on a chartless sea, and left the great claude lorraine far astern. titian loved giorgione so well that he even imitated his faults. at first this high compliment was pleasing to giorgione; then he became indifferent, and finally disgusted. the very sight of titian gave him a pain. he avoided his society. he ceased to speak to him when they met, and forbade his friends to mention the name "titian" in his presence. it was about this time that giorgione's ladylove won fame by discarding him in that foolish, fishwife fashion. he called his attendants and instructed them thus: "do not allow that painter from cadore--never mind his name--to attend my funeral--you understand?" then he turned his face to the wall and died. in his studio were various pictures partly completed, for it seems to have been his habit to get rest by turning from one piece of work to another. his executors looked at these unfinished canvases in despair. there was only one man in all venice who could complete them, and that was titian. titian was sent for. he came, completed the pictures, signed them with the dead man's name, and gave them to the world. "and," says the veracious vasari, "they were done just as well, if not better than giorgione himself could have done them, had he been alive!" it was absurd of giorgione to die of a broken heart and let titian come in, making free with everything in his studio, and complete his work. it was very absurd. time is the great avenger--let us wait. morta del feltri, the perfidious friend, grew tired of his mistress: their love was so warm it shortly burned itself to ashes--ashes of roses. morta deserted the girl, fled from venice, joined the army, and a javelin plunged through his liver at the battle of zara ended his career. the unhappy young woman, twice a widow, fought off hungry wolves by finding work in a glass-factory, making mosaics at fourteen cents a day. when she was seventy, titian, aged seventy-five, painted her picture as a beggar-woman. * * * * * the quality of sentiment that clings about the life of giorgione seems to forbid a cool, critical view of his work. byron indited a fine poem to him; and poetic criticism seems for him the proper kind. the glamour of sentiment conceals the real man from our sight. and anyway, it is hardly good manners to approach a saint closely and examine his halo to see whether it be genuine or not. halos are much more beautiful when seen through the soft, mellow light of distance. giorgione's work was mostly in fresco, so but little of it has survived. but of his canvases several surely have that tender, beseeching touch of spirit which stamps the work as great art. whether mrs. jameson is right in her assumption that all canvases bearing giorgione's name are spurious which lack that look of pity, is a question. i think that mrs. jameson is more kind than critical, although my hope is that renan is correct in his gratuitous statement, "at the last great day men will be judged by women, and the almighty will merely vise the verdict." if this be true, all who, like giorgione, have died for the love of woman will come off lightly. but the fact is, no man is great all the time. genius is an exceptional mood even in a genius, and happy is the genius who, like tennyson, builds a high wall about his house, so he is seen but seldom, and destroys most of his commonplace work. ruskin has printed more rubbish than literature--ten times over. i have his complete works, and am sorry to say that, instead of confining myself to "sesame and lilies," i have foolishly read all the dreary stuff, including statistics, letters to hobbs and nobbs, with hot arguments as to who fished the murex up, and long, scathing tirades against the old legal shark who did him out of a hundred pounds. surely, to be swindled by a lawyer is not so unusual a thing that it is worth recording! but ruskin wrote about it, had it put in print, read the proof, and printed the stuff, so no one, no matter how charitably disposed, can arise and zealously declare that this only is genuine, and that spurious. it's all genuine--rubbish, bosh and all. titian painted some dreary, commonplace pictures, and he also painted others that must ever be reckoned as among the examples of sublime art that have made the world stronger in its day and generation and proud of what has been. titian was essentially a pagan. when he painted christian subjects he introduced a goodly flavor of the old greek love of life. indeed, there is a strong doubt whether the real essence of christianity was ever known at venice, except in rare individual cases. it was the spirit of the sea-kings, and not the gentle, loving christ, that inspired her artists and men of learning. the sensuous glamour of the orient steeped the walls of san marco in their rainbow tints, and gave that careless, happy habit to all the venetian folk. in titian's time, as today, gay gallants knelt in the churches, and dark, dreamy eyes peeked out from behind mantillas, and the fan spoke a language which all lovers knew. outside was the strong smell of the sea, and never could a sash be flung open to the azure but there would come floating in on the breeze the gentle tinkle of a guitar. but titian, too, as well as giorgione, infused into his work at times the very breath of life. at the belle d' arte at venice is that grand picture, "the assumption," which for more than two hundred years was in the church of santa maria de' frari. when napoleon appointed a commission to select the paintings in venice that were considered best worth preserving and protecting, and take them to the belle d' arte, this picture was included in the list. it was then removed from its place, where it had so long hung, above the grave of the man who executed it. i have several large photographs of this picture, showing different portions of it. one of these pictures reveals simply the form of the virgin. she rises from the earth, caught up in the clouds, the drapery streaming in soft folds, and on the upturned face is a look of love and tenderness and trust, combined with womanly strength, that hushes us into tears. surely there is an upward law of gravitation as well as a gravitation that pulls things down. titian has shown us this. and as he drew over and over again in his pictures the forms and faces of the men and women he knew, so i imagine that this woman was a woman he knew and loved. she is not a far-off, tenuous creature, born of dreams: she is a woman who has lived, suffered, felt, mayhap erred, and now turns to a power, not herself, eternal in the heavens. into this picture the artist infused his own exalted spirit, for the mood we behold manifest in others is usually but the reflection of our own spirit. in some far-off eon, ere this earth-journey began, some woman looked at me that way once, just as titian has this woman look, with the same melting eyes and half-parted lips, and it made an impression on my soul that subsequent incarnations have not effaced. i bought the photograph in venice, at ongania's, and paid three dollars for it. then i framed it in simple, unplaned, unstained cedar, and it hangs over my desk now as i write. when i am tired and things go wrong, and the round blocks all seem to be getting into the square holes, and remembrances of the lawyer who cheated me out of a hundred pounds come stealing like a blight over my spirit, i look up at the face of this woman who is not only angelic but human. i behold the steady upward flight and the tender look of pity, and my soul reaches out, grasping the hem of the garment of her who we are told was the mother of god, and with her i leave the old sordid earth far beneath and go on, and on, and up, and up, and up, until my soaring spirit mingles and communes with the great infinite. anthony van dyck his pieces so with live objects strive, that both or pictures seem, or both alive. nature herself, amaz'd, does doubting stand, which is her own and which the painter's hand, and does attempt the like with less success, when her own work in twins she would express. his all-resembling pencil did outpass the magic imagery of looking-glass. nor was his life less perfect than his art. nor was his hand less erring than his heart. there was no false or fading color there, the figures sweet and well-proportioned were. --_cowley's "elegy on sir anthony van dyck"_ [illustration: anthony van dyck] the most common name in holland is van dyck. its simple inference is that the man lives on the dyke, or near it. in the good old days when villagers never wandered far from home, the appellation was sufficient, and even now, at this late day, it is not especially inconsistent. in holland you are quite safe in addressing any man you meet as van dyck. the ancient brotherhood of saint luke, of antwerp, was always an exclusive affair, but during the years between fifteen hundred ninety-seven and sixteen hundred twenty-three there were twenty-seven artists by the name of van dyck upon its membership register. out of these two dozen and three names, but one interests us. anthony van dyck was the son of a rich merchant. he was born in the year fifteen hundred ninety-nine--just twenty-two years after the birth of rubens. before anthony was ten years old the name and fame of rubens illumined all antwerp, and made it a place of pilgrimage for the faithful lovers of art of northern europe. the success of rubens fired the ambition of young van dyck. his parents fostered his desires, and after he had served an apprenticeship with the artist van balen, a place was secured for him in the rubens studio. for a full year the ambitious rubens took small notice of the van dyck lad, and possibly would not have selected him then as a favorite pupil but for an accident. rubens reduced his work to a system. while in his studio he was the incarnation of fire and energy. but at four o'clock each day he dismissed his pupils, locked the doors, and mounting his horse, rode off into the country, five miles and back. one afternoon, when the master had gone for his usual ride, several of the pupils returned to the studio, wishing to examine a certain picture, and by hook or by crook gained admittance. on an easel was a partly finished canvas, the paint fresh from the hands of the master. the boys examined the work and then began to scuffle--boys of sixteen or seventeen always scuffle when left to themselves. they scuffled so successfully that the easel was upset, and young van dyck fell backwards upon the wet canvas, so that the design was transferred to his trousers. the picture was ruined. the young men looked upon their work aghast. it meant disgrace for them all. in despair van dyck righted the easel, seized a brush, and began to replace the picture ere it could fade from his memory. his partners in crime looked on with special personal interest and encouraged him with words of lavish praise. he worked to within ten minutes of the time the master was due; and then all made their escape by the window through which they had entered. the next day, when the class assembled, the pupils were ordered to stand up in line. then they were catechized individually as to who had replaced the master's picture with one of his own. all pleaded ignorance until the master reached the blond-haired van dyck. the boy made a clean breast of it all, save that he refused to reveal the names of his accomplices. "then you painted the picture alone?" "yes," came the firm answer that betokened the offender was resolved on standing the consequences. the master relieved the strained tension by a laugh, and declared that he had only discovered the work was not his own by perceiving that it was a little better than he could do. accidents are not always unlucky--this advanced young van dyck at once to the place of first assistant to peter paul rubens. * * * * * commissions were pouring in on rubens. with him the tide was at flood. he had been down to paris and had returned in high spirits with orders to complete that extensive set of pictures for marie de medici; he also had commissions from various churches; and would-be sitters for portraits waited in his parlors, quarreling about which should have first place. van dyck, his trusted first lieutenant, lived in his house. the younger man had all the dash, energy and ambition of the older one. he caught the spirit of the master, and so great was his skill that he painted in a way that thoroughly deceived the patrons; they could not tell whether rubens or van dyck had done the work. this was very pleasing to rubens. but when van dyck began sending out pictures on his own account, properly signed, and people said they were equal to those of rubens, if not better, rubens shrugged his shoulders. there was as little jealousy in the composition of peter paul rubens as in any artistic man we can name; but to declare that he was incapable of jealousy, as a few of his o'er-zealous defenders did, is to apply the whitewash. the artistic temperament is essentially feminine, and jealousy is one of its inherent attributes. of course there are all degrees of jealousy, but the woman who can sit serenely by and behold her charms ignored for those of another, by one who yesterday sat at her feet making ballad to her eyebrow and sighing like a furnace, does not exist on the planet called earth. the artist, in any line, craves praise, and demands applause as his lawful right; and the pupil who in excellence approaches him, pays him a compliment that warms the cockles of his heart. but let a pupil once equal him and the pupil's name is anathema. i can not conceive of any man born of woman who would not detest another man who looked like him, acted like him, and did difficult things just as well. such a one robs us of our personality, and personality is all there is of us. the germ of jealousy in rubens' nature had never been developed. he dallied with no "culture-beds," and the thought that any one could ever really equal him had never entered his mind. his conscious sense of power kept his head high above the miasma of fear. but now a contract for certain portraits that were to come from the rubens studio had been drawn up by the jesuit brothers, and in the contract was inserted a clause to the effect that van dyck should work on each one of the pictures. "pray you," said rubens, "to which van dyck do you refer? there are many of the name in antwerp." the jealousy germ had begun to develop. and about this time van dyck was busying himself as understudy, by making love to rubens' wife. rubens was a score of years older than his pupil, and isabella was somewhere between the two--say ten years older than van dyck, but that is nothing! these first fierce flames that burn in the heart of youth are very apt to be for some fair dame much older than himself. no psychologist has ever yet just fathomed the problem, and i am sure it is too deep for me--i give it up. and yet the fact remains, for how about doctor samuel johnson--and did not our own robert louis fall desperately in love with a woman sixteen years his senior? aye, and married her, too, first asking her husband's consent, and furtherance also being supplied by the ex-husband giving the bride away at the altar. at least, we have been told so. were this sketch a catalog, a dozen notable instances could be given in which very young men have been struck hard by women old enough to have nursed them as babes. van dyck loved isabella rubens ardently. he grew restless, feverish, lost appetite and sighed at her with lack-luster eye across the dinner-table. rubens knew of it all, and smiled a grim, sickly smile. "i, too, love every woman who sits to me for a portrait. he'll get over it," said the master. "it all began when i allowed him to paint her picture." busy men of forty, with ambitions, are not troubled by anthony hope's interrogation. they glibly answer, "no, no, love is not all--it's only a small part of life--simply incidental!" but van dyck continued to sigh, and all of his spare time was taken up in painting pictures of the matronly isabella. he managed to work even in spite of loss of appetite; and sitters sometimes called at the studio and asked for "master van dyck," whereas before there was only one master in the whole domain. rubens grew aweary. he was too generous to think of crushing van dyck, and too wise to attempt it. to cast him out and recognize him openly as a rival would be to acknowledge his power. a man with less sense would have kicked the lovesick swain into the street. rubens was a true diplomat. he decided to get rid of van dyck and do it in a way that would cause no scandal, and at the same time be for the good of the young man. he took van dyck into his private office and counseled with him calmly, explaining to him how hopeless must be his love for isabella. he further succeeded in convincing the youth that a few years in italy would add the capsheaf to his talent. without italy he could not hope to win all; with italy all doors would open at his touch. then he led him to his stable and presented him with his best saddle-horse, and urged immediate departure for a wider field and pastures new. a few days later the handsome van dyck--with a goodly purse of gold, passports complete, and saddlebags well filled with various letters of introduction to rubens' italian friends--followed by a cart filled with his belongings, started gaily away, bound for the land where art had its birth. "with italy--with italy i can win all!" he kept repeating to himself as he turned his horse's head to the south. * * * * * the first day's ride took the artistic traveler to the little village of saventhem, five miles from brussels. here he turned aside long enough to say good-by to a fair young lady, anna van ophem by name, whom he had met a few months before at antwerp. he rode across the broad pasture, entered the long lane lined with poplars, and followed on to the spacious old stone mansion in the grove of trees. anna herself saw him coming and came out to meet him. they had not been so very well acquainted, but the warmth of a greeting all depends upon where it takes place. it was lonely for the beautiful girl there in the country: she welcomed the handsome young painter-man as though he were a long-lost brother, and proudly introduced him to her parents. instead of a mere call he was urged to put up his horse and remain overnight; and a servant was sent out to find the man who drove the cart with the painter's belongings, and make him comfortable. the painter decided that he would remain overnight and make an early start on the morrow. and it was so agreed. there was music in the evening, and pleasant converse until a late hour, for the guest must sit up and see the moon rise across the meadow--it would make such a charming subject for a picture! so they sat up to see the moon rise across the meadow. at breakfast the next morning there was a little banter on the subject of painting. could not the distinguished painter remain over one day and give his hosts a taste of his quality? "i surely will if the fair anna will sit for her portrait!" he courteously replied. the fair anna consented. the servant who drove the cart had gotten on good terms with the servants of the household, and was being initiated into the mysteries of making dutch cheese. meanwhile the master had improvised a studio and was painting the portrait of the charming anna. after working two whole days he destroyed the canvas because the picture was not keyed right, and started afresh. the picture was fairish good, but his desire now was to paint the beautiful anna as the madonna. van dyck's affections having been ruthlessly uprooted but a few days before, the tendrils very naturally clung to the first object that presented itself--and this of course was the intelligent and patient sitter, aged nineteen last june. if rubens could not paint the picture of a lady without falling in love with her, what should be expected of his best pupil, van dyck? pygmalion loved into life the cold marble which his hand had shaped, and thus did van dyck love his pictures into being. all portrait-painters are sociable--they have to be in order to get acquainted with the subject. the best portrait-painter in america talks like a windmill as he works, and tries a whole set round of little jokes, and dry asides and trite aphorisms on the sitter, meanwhile cautiously noting the effect. for of course so long as a sitter is coldly self-conscious, and fully mindful that he is "being took," his countenance is as stiff, awkward, and constrained as that of a farmer at a dinner-party. hence the task devolves upon the portrait-artist to bring out, by the magic of his presence, the nature of the subject. "in order to paint a truly correct likeness, you must know your sitter thoroughly," said van dyck. the gracious rubens prided himself on his ability in this line. he would often spend half an hour busily mending a brush or mixing paints, talking the while, but only waiting for the icy mood of the sitter to thaw. then he would arrange the raiment of his patron, sometimes redress the hair, especially of his lady patrons, and once we know he kissed the cheek of the duchess of mantua, "so as to dispel her distant look." i know a portrait-artist in albany who is said to occasionally salute his lady customers by the same token, and if they protest he simply explains to them that it was all in the interest of art--in other words, artifice for art's sake. after three days at the charming old country-seat at saventhem, van dyck called his servant and told him to take the shoes off of the saddle-horse, and turn it and the cart-horse loose in the pasture. he had decided to remain and paint a picture for the village church. and it was so done. the pictures that van dyck then painted are there now in the same old ivy-grown, moss-covered church at saventhem. the next time you are in brussels it will pay you to walk out and see them. one of the pictures is called "saint martin dividing his cloak with two beggars." the saint is modestly represented by van dyck himself, seated astride the beautiful horse that rubens gave him. the other picture is "the holy family," in which the fair anna posed for the virgin, and her parents and kinsmen are grouped around her as the magi and attendants. both pictures reveal the true van dyck touch, and are highly prized by the people of the village and the good priests of the church. each night a priest carries in a cot and sleeps in the chancel to see that these priceless works of art are protected from harm. when you go there to see them, give the cowled attendant a franc and he will unfold the tale, not just as i have written it, but substantially. he will tell you that van dyck stopped here on his way to italy and painted these pictures as a pious offering to god, and what boots it after all! more than once have the village peasants collected, armed with scythes, hoes and pitchforks, to protect these sacred pictures from vandalism on the part of lustful collectors or marauding bands of soldiers. in eighteen hundred fourteen, a detachment of french soldiers killed a dozen of the villagers, and a priest fell fighting for these treasures on the sacred threshold, stabbed to his death. then the vandals tramped over the dead bodies, entered the church, and cut from its frame van dyck's "holy family" and carried the picture off to paris. but after napoleon had gotten his waterloo (only an hour's horseback ride from saventhem), the picture was restored to the villagers on order of the convention. rubens waited expectantly, thinking to have news from his brilliant pupil in italy. he waited a month. two months passed, and still no word. after three months a citizen reported that the day before he had seen van dyck, aided by a young woman, putting up a picture in the village church at saventhem. rubens saddled his horse and rode down there. he found van dyck and his lady-love sitting hand in hand on a mossy bank, in a leafy grove, listening to the song of a titmouse. rubens did not chide the young man; he merely took him one side and told him that he had stayed long enough, and "beyond the alps lies italy." he also suggested that anthony van dyck could not afford to follow the example of his illustrious roman namesake who went down into egypt and found things there so softly luxurious that he forgot home, friends, country--all! to remain at saventhem would be death to his art--he must have before him the example of the masters. van dyck said he would think about it; and rubens took a look at his old saddle-horse rolling in the pasture or wading knee-deep in clover, and rode back home. in a few days he sent chevalier nanni down to the country-seat at saventhem, to tell van dyck that he was on his way to italy and that van dyck had better accompany him. van dyck concluded to go. he made tearful promises to his beautiful anna that he would return for her in a year. and so the servant, who had become an expert in the making of dutch cheese, caught the horses out of the pasture, and having rebroken them, the cavalcade started southward in good sooth. * * * * * it was four years before van dyck returned. he visited milan, florence, verona, mantua, venice and rome, and made himself familiar with the works of the masters. everywhere he was showered with attention, and the fact that he was the friend and protege of rubens won him admittance into the palaces of the nobles. the four years in italy widened his outlook and transformed him from a merely handsome youth into a man of dignity and poise. great was his relief when he returned to antwerp to hear that the pretty anna van ophem of saventhem had been married three years before to a worthy wine merchant of brussels, and was now the proud mother of two handsome boys. great was the welcome that van dyck received at antwerp; and in it all the gracious rubens joined. but there was one face the returned traveler missed: isabella had died the year before. the mere fact that a man has been away for several years studying his profession gives him a decided prestige when he returns. van dyck, fresh from italy, exuberant with life and energy, became at once the vogue. he opened a studio, following the same lines that rubens had, and several churches gave him orders for extensive altarpieces. antwerp prided herself on being an artistic center. buyers from england now and then appeared, and several of rubens' pictures had been taken to london to decorate the houses and halls of royalty. portrait-painting is the first form of art that appeals to a rude and uncultivated people. to reproduce the image of a living man in stone, or to show a likeness of his face in paint, is calculated to give a thrill even to a savage. there is something mysterious in the art, and the desire to catch the shadow ere the substance fades is strong in the human heart. one reason that sacred art was so well encouraged in the middle ages was because the faces portrayed were reproductions of living men and women. this lent an intense personal interest in the work, and insured its fostering care. callous indeed was the noble who would not pay good coin to have himself shown as saint paul, or his enemy as judas. in fact, "judas receiving the thirty pieces of silver" was a very common subject, and the "judas" shown was usually some politician who had given offense. in sixteen hundred twenty-eight, england had not yet developed an art-school of her own. all her art was an importation, for although some fine pictures had been produced in england, they were all the work of foreigners--men who had been brought over from the continent. henry the eighth had offered raphael a princely sum if he would come to london and work for a single year. raphael, however, could not be spared from italy to do work for "the barbarians," and so he sent his pupil, luca penni. bluff old hans holbein also abode in england and drew a goodly pension from the state. during the reign of mary and her spanish husband, philip, several pictures by titian arrived in london, via madrid. then, too, there were various copies of pictures by paul veronese, murillo and velasquez that long passed for original, because the copyist had faithfully placed the great artist's trademark in the proper place. queen elizabeth held averages good by encouraging neither art nor matrimony--whereas her father had set her the example of being a liberal patron of both. if elizabeth never discovered shakespeare, how could she be expected to know raphael? about sixteen hundred twenty, the year the "mayflower" sailed, paul vensomer, cornelis jannsen and daniel mytens went over to england from the netherlands and quickly made fortunes by painting portraits for the nobility. this was the first of that peculiar rage for having a hall filled with ancestors. the artists just named painted pictures of people long gone hence, simply from verbal descriptions, and warranted the likeness to give satisfaction. oh, the dutch are a thrifty folk! james the first had no special eye for beauty--no more than elizabeth had--but a few of his nobles were intent on providing posterity with handsome ancestors, and so the portrait-painter flourished. an important move in the cause of literature was made by king james when he placed sir walter raleigh in the tower; for raleigh's best contributions to letters were made during those thirteen years when he was alone, with the world locked out. and when his mind began to lose its flash, the king wisely put a quietus on all danger of an impaired output by cutting off the author's head. still, there was no general public interest in art until the generous charles appeared upon the scene. charles was an elegant scholar and prided himself on being able to turn a sonnet or paint a picture; and the only reason, he explained, why he did not devote all his time to literature and art was because the state must be preserved. he could hire men to paint, but where could one be found who could govern? charles had purchased several of rubens' pieces, and these had attracted much attention in london. receptions were given where crowds surged and clamored and fought, just to get a look at the marvelous painting of the wonderful fleming. such gorgeous skill in color had never before been seen in england. charles knighted rubens and did his best to make him a permanent attache of his court; but rubens had too many interests of a financial and political nature at home to allow himself to be drawn away from his beloved antwerp. but now he had a rival--the only real rival he had ever known. van dyck was making head. the rival was younger, handsomer, and had such a blandishing tongue and silken manner that the crowd began to call his name and declare he was greater than cæsar. yet rubens showed not a sign of displeasure on his fine face--he bowed and smiled and agreed with the garrulous critics when they smote the table and declared that all of van dyck's madonnas really winked. he bided his time. and it soon came, for the agent of lord arundel, that great mæcenas of the polite arts, came over to flanders to secure treasures, and of course called on rubens. and rubens talked only of van dyck--the marvelous van dyck. the agent secured several copies of van dyck's work, and went back to england, telling of all that rubens had told him, with a little additional coloring washed in by his own warm imagination. to discover a genius is next to being one yourself. lord arundel felt that all he had heard of van dyck must be true, and when he went to the king and told him of the prodigy he had found, the king's zeal was warm as that of the agent, for does not the "messianic instinct" always live? this man must be secured at any cost. they had failed to secure rubens, but the younger man had no family ties, no special property interests, neither was he pledged to his home government as was rubens. straightway the king of england dispatched a messenger urging anthony van dyck to come over to england. the promised rewards and honors were too great for the proud and ambitious painter to refuse. he started for england. * * * * * in stature van dyck was short, but of a very compact build. he carried the crown of his head high, his chin in, and his chest out. his name is another added to that list of big-little men who had personality plus, and whose presence filled a room. cæsar, napoleon, lord macaulay, aaron burr and that other little man with whom burr's name is inseparably linked, belong to the same type. these little men with such dynamic force that they can do the thinking for a race are those who have swerved the old world out of her ruts--whether for good or ill is not the question here. when you find one of these big-little men, if he does not stalk through society a conquering don juan it is because we still live in an age of miracles. women fed on van dyck's smile, and pined when he did not deign to notice them. he was royal in all his tastes--his manner was regal, and so proud was his step that when he passed forbidden lines, sentinels and servants saluted and made way, never daring to ask him for card, passport or countersign. he gloried in his power and worked it to its farthest limit. unlike rembrandt, he never painted beggars; nor did he ever stoop as titian did when he pictured his old mother as a peasant woman at market, in that gem of the belle d' arte at venice; nor did he ever reveal on his canvas wrinkled, weather-worn old sailors, as did velasquez. he pictured only royalty, and managed, in all his portraits, to put a look of leisure and culture and quiet good-breeding into the face, whether it was in the original or not. in fact, he fused into every picture that he painted a goodly modicum of his own spirit. you can always tell a van dyck portrait; there is in the face a self-sufficiency, a something that speaks of "divine right"--not of arrogance, for arrogance and assumption reveal a truth which man is trying to hide, and that is that his position is a new acquirement. van dyck's people are all to the manner born. he was thirty-three years old when he arrived in england. king charles furnished the painter a house at blackfriars, fronting the thames, to insure a good light, and gave him a summer residence in kent. all his expenses were paid by the state, and as his tastes were regal the demands on the public exchequer were not small. his title was, "principal painter in ordinary to the king and queen of england." van dyck had worked so long with rubens that he knew how to use 'prentice talent. he studied by a system and turned off a prodigious number of canvases. the expert can at once tell a picture painted by van dyck during his career in england: it lacks the care and finish that was shown in his earlier years. yet there is a subtle sweep and strength in it all that reveals the personality of the artist. twenty-two pictures he painted of king charles that we can trace. these were usually sent away as presents. and it is believed that in the seven years van dyck lived in england he painted nearly one thousand portraits. the courtly manner and chivalrous refinement of the fleming made him a prime favorite of charles. he was even more kingly than the king. in less than three months after he arrived in england charles publicly knighted him, and placed about his neck a chain of gold to which was attached a locket, set with diamonds, containing a picture of the king. a record of van dyck's affairs of the heart would fill a book. his old habit of falling in love with every lady patron grew upon him. his reputation went abroad, and his custom of thawing the social ice by talking soft nonsense to the lady on the sitter's throne, while it repelled some allured others. at last charles grew nettled and said that to paint lady digby as "the virgin" might be all right, and even to turn around and picture her as "susanna at the bath" was not necessarily out of place, but to show margaret lemon, anne carlisle and catherine wotton as "the three graces" was surely bad taste. and furthermore, when these same women were shown as "psyche," "diana" and the "madonna"--just as it happened--it was really too much! in fact, the painter must get married; and the king and queen selected for him a wife in the person of a scottish beauty, maria ruthven. had this proposition come a few years before, the proud painter would have flouted it. but things were changed. twinges of gout and sharp touches of sciatica backed up the king's argument that to reform were the part of wisdom. van dyck's manly shape was tending to embonpoint: he had evolved a double chin, the hair on his head was rather seldom, and he could no longer run upstairs three steps at a time. yes, he would get married, live the life of a staid, respectable citizen, and paint only religious subjects. society was nothing to him--he would give it up entirely. and so sir anthony van dyck was married to maria ruthven, at saint paul's cathedral, and the king gave the bride away, ceremonially and in fact. sir anthony's gout grew worse, and after some months the rheumatism took an inflammatory turn. other complications entered, which we would now call bright's disease--that peculiar complaint of which poor men stand in little danger. the king offered the royal physician a bonus of five hundred pounds if he would cure van dyck: but if he had threatened to kill the doctor if the patient died, just as did the greek friends of byron, when the poet was ill at rome, it would have made no difference. a year after his marriage, and on the day that maria ruthven gave birth to a child, anthony van dyck died, aged forty years. rubens had died but a few months before. the fair scottish wife did not care to retain her illustrious name at the expense of loneliness, and so shortly married again. whom she married matters little, since it would require a search-warrant to unearth even the man's name, so dead is he. but inasmuch as the brilliant helena fourment, second wife of rubens, whose picture was so often painted by her artist-husband, married again, why shouldn't madame van dyck follow the example? it is barely possible that charles lamb was right when he declared that no woman married to a genius ever believed her husband to be one. we know that the wife of edmund spenser became the faerie queene of another soon after his demise, and whenever spenser was praised in her presence she put on a look that plainly said, "i could a tale unfold." my own opinion is that a genius makes a very bad husband. and further, i have no faith in that specious plea, "a woman who marries a second time confers upon her first husband the highest compliment, for her action implies that she was so happy in her first love that she is more than willing to try it again." i think the reverse is more apt to be the truth, and that the woman who has been sorely disappointed in her first marriage is anxious to try the great experiment over again, in order if possible to secure that bliss which every daughter of eve feels is her rightful due. maria ruthven lived to rear a goodly brood of children, and samuel pepys records that she used to send a sort o' creepy feeling down the backs of callers by innocently introducing her children thus: "this is my eldest daughter, whose father was sir anthony van dyck, of whom you have doubtless heard; and these others are my children by my present husband, sergeant nobody." van dyck's remains are buried in saint paul's cathedral. a very fine monument, near the grave of turner, marks the spot; but his best monument is in the examples of his work that are to be found in every great art-gallery of the world. fortuny i think i knew fortuny as well as any one did. he was surcharged with energy, animation and good-cheer; and the sunshine he worked into every canvas he attempted, was only a reflection of the sparkling, gem-like radiance of his own nature. he absorbed from earth, air, sky, the waters and men, and transmuted all dross into gold. to him all things were good. --_letter from regnault_ [illustration: fortuny] now, once upon a day there was a swart, stubby boy by the name of mariano fortuny. he was ten years old, going on 'leven, and lived with his grandfather away up and up four flights of rickety stairs in an old house at the village of reus, in spain. mariano's father had died some years before--died mysteriously in a drunken fight at a fair, where he ran a punch and judy show. some said the devil had come and carried him off, just as he nightly did mr. punch. frowsy, little, shock-headed mariano didn't feel so awfully bad when his father died, because his father used to make him turn the hand-organ all day, and half the night, and take up the collections; and the fond parent used to cuff him when there were less than ten coppers in the tambourine. they traveled around from place to place, with a big yellow dog and a little blue wagon that contained the show. they hitched their wagon to a dog. at night they would sleep in some shed back of a tavern, or under a table at a market, and mariano would pillow his head on the yellow dog and curl up in a ball trying to keep warm. when the father died, a tall man, who carried a sword and wore spurs, and had two rows of brass buttons down the front of his coat, took the dog and the wagon and the punch and judy show and sold 'em all--so as to get money to pay the funeral expenses of the dead man. the tall man with the sword might have sold little mariano, too, or thrown him in with the lot for good measure, but nobody seemed to want the boy--they all had more boys than they really needed already. a fat market-woman gave the lad a cake, and another one gave him two oranges, and still another market-woman, fatter than the rest, blew her nose violently on her check apron and said it was too bad a boy like that didn't have a mother. mariano never had a mother--at least none that he knew of, and it really seemed as if it didn't make much difference, but now he began to cry, and, since the fat woman had suggested it, really wished he had a mother, after all. there was an old priest standing by in the group. mariano had not noticed him. but when the priest said, "but god is both our father and our mother, so no harm can come to us!" mariano looked up in his face and felt better. the priest's name was father gonzales; mariano knew, because this is what the market-woman called him. the fat market-woman talked with the priest, and the priest talked with the man with the dangling sword, and then father gonzales took the boy by the hand and led him away, and mariano trotted along by his side, quite content, save for a stifled wish that the big yellow dog might go too. and it is a gross error to suppose that a yellow dog is necessarily nothing but a canine whose capillary covering is highly charged with ocherish pigment. where they were going made no difference. "god is our father and our mother"--father gonzales said so--and, faith! he ought to know. and by and by they came to the tall old tenement-house, and climbed up the stairs to where mariano's old "grandfather" lived. perhaps he wasn't mariano's sure-enough grandfather, but he was just as good as if he had been. * * * * * but now it was an awfully long time ago since little mariano and father gonzales had first climbed the stairs to where grandfather fortuny lived. the old grandfather and mariano worked very hard, but they were quite content and happy. they had enough to eat, and each had a straw bed and warm blankets to cover him at night, and when the weather was very cold they made a fire of charcoal in a brazier and sat before it with spread-out hands, very thankful that god had given them such a good home and so many comforts. the grandfather made images out of white plaster, flowers sometimes, and curious emblems that people bought for votive offerings. little mariano's share in the work was to color the figures with blue and red paint, and give a lifelike tint to the fruit and bouquets that the grandfather cast from the white plaster. father gonzales was their best customer, and used often to come up and watch mariano paint an image of the virgin, just as he ordered it. mariano was very proud to receive father gonzales' approval; and when the image was complete he would sometimes get a copper extra for delivering the work to some stricken person that the priest wished especially to remember. for one of father gonzales' peculiarities was that although he bought lots of things he always gave them away. mariano used often to carry letters and packages for father gonzales. one day the good priest came up the stairs quite out of breath. he carried a letter in his hand. "here, mariano, my boy, you can run, while my poor old legs are full of rheumatism. here, take this letter down to the diligence office and tell them to send it tonight, sure. it is for the bishop at barcelona and it must be in his hands before tomorrow. run now, for the last post closes very soon." mariano took the letter, dived hatless out of the door and, sitting on the first stair, shot to the bottom like the slide to doom. grandfather fortuny and the gentle old priest leaned out over the stone window-sill and laughed to see the boy scurry down the street. then the priest went his way. grandfather fortuny waited, looking out of the window, for the boy to come back. the boy did not come. he waited. lights began to flicker in the windows across the way. a big red star came up in the west. the wind blew fresh and cool. the old man shut down the sash, and looked at the untasted supper of brown bread and goat's milk and fresh fruit. he took his hat from the peg and his cane from the corner and hobbled down the stairs. he went to the diligence office. no one there remembered seeing the boy--how can busy officials be expected to remember everything? grandfather fortuny made his way to the house of father gonzales. the priest had been called away to attend a man sick unto death--he would not be back for an hour. the old man waited--waited one hour--two. father gonzales came, and listened calmly to the troubled tale of the old man. then together they made their way over to the tall tenement and up the creaky stairway. there was the flicker of a candle to be seen under the door. they entered, and there at the table sat mariano munching silently on his midnight supper. "where have you been?" was the surprised question of both old men, speaking as one person. "me? i've been to barcelona to give the letter to the bishop--the last diligence had gone," said the boy with his mouth full of bread. "to barcelona--ten miles, and back?" "me? yes." "did you walk?" "no, i ran." father gonzales looked at grandfather fortuny, and grandfather fortuny looked at father gonzales; then they both burst out laughing. mariano placed an extra plate on the table, and the three drew up chairs. * * * * * business was looking up with grandfather fortuny and mariano. all the images they made were quickly taken. people said they liked the way the cheeks and noses of the apostles were colored; and when father gonzales brought in a sailor who had been shipwrecked, and the sailorman left ten pesetas for a plaster-of-paris ship to be placed as a votive offering in the chapel of saint dominic, their cup was full. mariano made the ship himself, and painted it, adding the yellow pennant of spain to the mainmast. this piece of work caused a quarrel between grandfather fortuny and father gonzales. the priest declared that a boy like that shouldn't waste his youth in the shabby, tumble-down village of reus--he should go to barcelona and receive instruction in art. the grandfather cried and protested that the boy was all he had to love in the wide world; he himself was growing feeble, and without the lad's help at the business nothing could be done--starvation would be the end. besides, it would take much money to send mariano to the academy--it would take all their savings, and more! do not inflate the child with foolish notions of making a fortune and winning fame! the world is cruel, men are unkind, and the strife of trying to win leads only to disappointment and vain regret at the last. did not the artist salvio commit suicide? mariano had now a trade--who in reus could make an image of the virgin and color it in green, red and yellow so it would sell on sight for two pesetas? father gonzales smiled and said something about images at two pesetas each as compared with the work of murillo and velasquez. he laughed at the old man's fears of starvation, and defied him to name a single case where any one had ever starved. and as for expenses, why, he had thought it all out: he would pay mariano's expenses himself! "should we two old men, about ready to die, stand in the way of the success of that boy?" exclaimed the priest. "why, he will be an artist yet, do you hear?--an artist!" they compromised on the grammar-school, with three lessons a week by a drawing-master. grandfather fortuny did not starve. mariano was a regular steam-engine for work. he made more images evenings, and better ones, than they had ever made before during the day. finally father gonzales' wishes prevailed and mariano was sent to the academy at barcelona. out of his own scanty income the old priest set aside a sum equal to eight dollars a month for mariano; and when the grandfather's sight grew too feeble for him to work at his trade he moved over to the rectory. for a year, father gonzales sent the eight dollars on the first of each month. and then there came to him a brusk notification from claudio lorenzale, the director of the academy, to the effect that certain sums had been provided by the city of barcelona to pay the expenses of four of the most worthy pupils at the academy, and mariano fortuny had been voted as one who should receive the benefit of the endowment. father gonzales read the notice to grandfather fortuny, and then they sent out for a fowl, and a bottle and a loaf of bread two feet long; and together the two old men made merry. the grandfather had now fully come to the belief that the lad would some day be a great artist. we do not know much concerning the details of mariano's life at barcelona, save from scraps of information he now and then gave out to his friends regnault and lorenzo valles, and which they in turn have given to us. yet we know he won the love of his teachers, and that federico madrazo picked out his work and especially recommended it. madrazo, i believe, is living now--at least he was a few years ago. he was born and bred an artist. his father, joseph, had been a pupil under david, and was an artist of more than national renown. he served the court at madrid in various diplomatic relations, and won wealth and a noble name. federico madrazo used to spend a portion of his time at the academy of barcelona as instructor and adviser to the director. i do not know his official position, if he had one, but i know he afterward became the director of the museum of art at madrid. madrazo had two sons, who are now celebrated in the art world. one of them, raimonde madrazo, is well known in paris, and, in eighteen hundred ninety-three, had several pictures on exhibition at the chicago exposition; while another son, rivera, is a noted sculptor and a painter of no small repute. and so it was that mariano fortuny at barcelona attracted the attention of federico madrazo, the artist patrician. i can not find that mariano's work at this time had any very special merit. it merely showed the patient, painstaking, conscientious workman. but the bright, strong, eager young man was the sort that every teacher must love. he knew what he was at school for, and did his best. madrazo said, "he's a manly fellow, and if he does not succeed he is now doing more--he deserves success." so mariano fortuny and the great madrazo, pupil and teacher, became firm friends. and we know that, in eighteen hundred fifty-seven, mariano was voted the "prize of rome." each year this prize was awarded to the scholar who on vote of the teachers and scholars was deemed most deserving. it meant two years of study at rome with five hundred dollars a year for expenses. and the only obligation was that the pupil should each year send home two paintings: one an original and the other a copy of some old masterpiece. the sum of two hundred fifty dollars was advanced to mariano at once. he straightway sent one-half of the amount down to his grandfather, with particulars of the good news. "what did i tell you?" said the grandfather. "it was i who first taught him to use a brush. i used to caution him about running his reds into his greens, and told him to do as i said and he would be a great artist yet." father gonzales and grandfather fortuny went out and bought two fowls, three bottles, and a loaf of bread a yard long. mariano made all preparations to start for rome. but the night before the journey was to begin, conscription officers came to his lodging and told him to consider himself under arrest--he must serve the state as a soldier. it seems that the laws of spain are such that any citizen can be called on to carry arms at any moment; and there are officials who do little but lie in wait for those who can pay, but have no time to fight. these officials are more intent on bleeding their countrymen than the enemy. mariano applied to his friend madrazo for advice as to what to do, and madrazo simply cut the gordian knot by paying out of his own purse three hundred dollars to secure the release of the young artist. and so mariano started gaily away, carrying with him the heart's love of two old men, and the admiring affection of a whole school. the grandfather died three months afterward--went babbling down into the valley, making prophecies to the last to the effect that mariano fortuny would yet win deathless fame. and father gonzales lived to see these prophecies fulfilled. * * * * * then, at twenty-two, fortuny was ordered by the city of barcelona to accompany general prim on his algerian expedition, it was a milepost on his highway of success. nominally he was secretary to the general. who it was secured his appointment he never knew; but we have reason to suppose it was federico madrazo. fortuny's two years in rome had just expired; his barcelona friends knew that the time had been well spent, and the opportunities improved, and a further transplantation they believed would result in an increased blossoming. "enter into life! enter into life!" was the call of a prophet long ago. in barbaric africa, fortuny entered into life with the same fine, free, eager, receptive spirit that he had elsewhere shown. general prim, soldier and scholar, saw that his secretary was capable of doing something more than keeping accounts, and so a substitute was hired and fortuny was sent here and there as messenger, but in reality, so that he could see as many sides of old moorish life as possible. staid old general prim loved the young man just as madrazo had. fortuny was not much of a soldier, for war did not interest him, save from its picturesque side. "war is transient, but beauty is eternal," he once said. even the fact that the spanish army was now on the soil of her ancient enemy, the moor, did not stir his patriotism. he sketched with feverish industry, fearing the war would end too soon, and he would have to go back with empty sketchbooks. the long stretches of white sands, the glaring sunshine, the paradox of riotous riches and ragged poverty, the veiled women, blinking camels, long rifles with butts inlaid with silver, swords whose hilts are set with precious stones, gray arab horses with tails sweeping the ground, and everywhere the flutter of rags--these things bore in on his artist-nature and filled his heart. he hastily painted in a few of his sketches and sent them as presents to his friends in barcelona. the very haste of the work, the meager outline and simple colors--glaring whites and limpid blues, with here and there a dash of red to indicate a scarf or sash--astonished his old teachers. here were pictures painted in an hour that outmatched any of the carefully worked out, methodical attempts of the academy! it was all life, life, life--palpitating life. the sketches were shown, the men in power interviewed, and the city of barcelona ordered fortuny to paint one large picture to be eventually placed in the parliament house to commemorate the victory of general prim. as an earnest of good faith a remittance of five hundred dollars accompanied the order. the war was short. at the battle of wad ras the enemy was routed after a pitched fight where marked dash and spirit were shown on both sides. and so this was to be the scene of fortuny's great painting. hundreds of sketches were made, including portraits of general prim and various officers. fortuny set about the work as a duty to his patrons who had so generously paved the way for all the good fortune that was his. the painting was to be a world-beater; and fortuny, young, strong, ambitious--knowing no such word as fail--went at the task. fortuny had associated with many artists at rome and he had heard of that wonderful performance of horace vernet's, the "taking of the smalah of abd-el-kader." this picture of vernet's, up to that time, was the largest picture ever held in a single frame. it is seventy-one feet long and sixteen feet high. to describe that picture of vernet's with its thousand figures, charging cavalry, flashing sabers, dust-clouds, fleeing cattle, stampeding buffalos, riderless horses, overturned tents, and fear-stricken, beautiful women would require a book. in passing, it is well to say that this picture of vernet's is the parent of all the panorama pictures that have added to the ready cash of certain enterprising citizens of chicago, and that vernet is the father of the modern "military school." if you have seen vernet's painting you can never forget it, and if there were nothing else to see at versailles but this one picture you would be repaid, and amply repaid, for going out from paris to view it. before beginning his great canvas fortuny was advised to go to versailles and see the vernet masterpiece. he went and spent three days studying it in detail. he turned away discouraged. to know too much of what other men have said is death to a writer; for an artist to be too familiar with the best in art is to have inspiration ooze out at every pore. fortuny took a week to think it over. he was not discouraged--not he--but he decided to postpone work on the masterpiece and busy himself for a while with simpler themes. he remained at paris and made his thumb-nail sketches: a moor in spotless white robe with red cap, leaning against a wall; a camel-driver at rest; a solitary horseman with long spear, a trellis with climbing vines, and a veiled beauty looking out from behind, etc. and in all these pictures is dazzling sunshine and living life. the joy of them, the ease, the grace, the beauty, are matchless. goupil and company, the art-dealers, contracted to take all the work he could turn out. and fortuny did not make the mistake of doing too much. he possessed the artistic conscience, and nothing left his studio that did not satisfy his heart and head. trips had been taken to florence, venice and the beloved morocco, and the poise and grace and limpid beauty of fortuny's pictures seemed to increase. three years had passed, and now came a letter from the authorities at barcelona asking for their great battle picture, and a remittance was sent "to meet expenses." fortuny promised, and made an effort at the work. another year went by and another letter of importunity came. barcelona did not comprehend how her gifted son was now being counted among the very ablest artists in paris--that world center of art. artists should struggle for recognition, be rebuffed, live on a crust in dingy garrets, cultivate a gaunt and haggard look, and wear suits shiny at the elbows! how could the old professors down at barcelona understand that this mere youth was pressed with commissions from rich americans, and in receipt of a princely income? fortuny returned all the money that barcelona had sent him, regarding it all as a mere loan, and promised to complete the battle picture whenever he could bring his mind to bear upon it so that the work would satisfy himself. the next year he visited spain and was received at madrid and barcelona as a prince. decorations and ceremonials greeted him at madrid; and at barcelona there were arches of triumph built over the streets, and a hundred students drew his carriage from the steamboat-landing up to the old academy where he used to draw angles and curves from a copy all day long. and it was not so many moons after this little visit to barcelona that wedding-bells were sent a-swing, and mariano fortuny was married to cecilia, daughter of federico madrazo. their honeymoon of a year was spent at the alhambra palace amid the scenes made famous by our own washington irving. and it was from granada that he sent a picture to america to be sold for the benefit of the sufferers in the chicago fire. but there were no idle days. the artist worked with diligence, dipping deep into the old moorish life, and catching the queer angles of old ruins and more queer humanity upon his palette. his noble wife proved his mate in very deed, and much of his best work is traceable to her loving criticism and inspiration. paris, granada and rome were their home, each in turn. the prices fortuny realized were even greater than meissonier commanded. some of his best pieces are owned in america, through the efforts of w. h. stewart of philadelphia. at the a. t. stewart sale, in new york, the "fortunys" brought higher prices than anything else in the collection, save, i believe, the " " of meissonier. in fact, there are more "fortunys" owned in new york than there are in either barcelona or madrid. indeed, there is a marked similarity between the style of fortuny and that of meissonier. when some busybody informed meissonier that fortuny was imitating him, meissonier replied, "to have such a genius as mariano fortuny imitate me would be the greatest happiness of my whole career." fortuny's life is mirrored in his name: his whole career was one triumphant march to fortune, fame, love and honor. he avoided society, as he was jealous of the fleeting hours, and his close friends were few; but those who knew him loved him to a point just this side of idolatry. fortuny died at rome on november twenty-second, eighteen hundred seventy-two, of brain rupture--an instant and painless death. in his short life of thirty-six years he accomplished remarkable results, but all this splendid work he regarded as merely in the line of preparation for a greater work yet to come. for some weeks before he died he had been troubled with a slight fever, contracted, he thought, from painting in a damp church; but the day of his death he took up his brush again and, as he worked, gaily talked with his wife of their plans for the future. it is very pleasant to recall, however, that before death claimed him, fortuny had completed the great picture of "the battle of wad ras." the canvas is now hanging on the wall of the parliament house at barcelona, and the picture is justly the pride of the city that showed itself such a wise and loving mother to the motherless boy, mariano fortuny. * * * * * italy and spain are sisters, and not merely first cousins, as mr. whistler once remarked. their history to a great degree is contemporaneous. they have seen dynasties arise, grow old, and die; and schools of art, once the pride of the people, sink into blank forgetfulness: for schools, like dynasties and men, live their day and go tottering to their rest. italy, as the elder sister, has set the fashion for the younger. the manners, habits and customs of the people have been the same. to a great extent all art is controlled by fad and fashion; and all the fashions in the polite arts easily drifted from italy into spain. the works of titian carried to madrid produced a swarm of imitators, some of whom, like velasquez, zurbaran, ribera and murillo, having spun their cocoons, passed through the chrysalis stage, developed wings, and soared to high heaven. but the generations of imitators who followed these have usually done little better than gape. and although spain has been a kind mother to art for four hundred years, yet the modern school of spanish art shows no "apostolic succession" from the past. it is a thing separate and alone: gorgeous, dazzling, strong, and rarely beautiful. totally unlike the art of the old masters, it takes its scenes from nature and actual living life--depending not on myth, legend or fable. it discards pure imagination, and by holding a mirror up to nature has done the world the untold blessing of introducing it to itself. the average man sees things in the mass, and therefore sees nothing; everything, to his vision, is run together in hopeless jumble: all is discord, confusion--inextricable confusion worse confounded. but the artist who is also a scientist (whether he knows it or not) discovers that in the seeming confusion, order, method and law yet reign supreme. and to prove his point he lifts from the tangle of things one simple, single scene and shows this, and this alone, in all its full and rounded completeness--beautiful as a snow-crystal on the slide of a microscope. all art consists in this: to show the harmony of a part. and having seen the harmony of a part we pass on to a point where we can guess the harmony of the whole. whether you be painter, sculptor, musician or writer, all your endeavors are toward lifting from the mass of things a scene, a form, a harmony, a truth, and, relieving it from all that distracts, catch it in immortal amber. the writer merely unearths truth: truth has always existed: he lifts it out of the mass, and holding it up where others can see it, the discerning cry, "yes, yes--we recognize it!" the musician takes the sound he needs from the winds blowing through the forest branches, constructs a harp strung with apollo's golden hair, and behold, we have a symphony! the wrongs of a race in bondage never touched the hearts of men until a woman lifted out a single, solitary black man and showed us the stripes upon the quivering back of uncle tom. one human being nailed to a cross reveals the concentrated woes of earth; and as we gaze upon the picture, into our hard hearts there comes creeping a desire to lessen the sorrows of the world by an increased love; and a gentleness and sympathy are ours such as we have never before known. fortuny is king of the modern school of spanish painters. his genius made an epoch, and worked a revolution in the art of his country--and, some have said, in the art of the time. as a nation it may be that spain is crumbling into dust, but her rotting ruins will yet fertilize many a bank of violets. certain it is that no modern art surpasses the art of spain; and for once italy must go to spain for her pattern. ary scheffer the artistic tastes of the princess, the lofty range of her understanding, her liberality, and the sterling benevolence of her mind all combined to engender a coldness and lack of sympathy between herself and the persons composing the court. in the heart of the princess dwelt a deep religious faith, such as becomes a noble, womanly heart. nevertheless, her ardent mind sought to penetrate every mystery, so she was often accused of being a doubter--when the reverse was really true. --_ary scheffer to his brother arnola_ [illustration: ary scheffer] the artistic evolution of ary scheffer was brought about mainly through the influence of three women. in the love of these women he was bathed, nourished and refreshed; their approbation gave direction to his efforts; for them he lived and worked; while a fourth woman, by her inability to comprehend the necessities of such a genius, clipped his wings, so that he fell to earth and his feet mired in the clay. the first factor in the evolution of scheffer, in point of both time and importance, was his mother. she was the flint upon which he tried his steel: his teacher, adviser, critic, friend. she was a singularly strong and capable woman, seemingly slight and fragile, but with a deal of whipcord, sinewy strength in both her physical and mental fiber. no one can study the lives of eminent artists without being impressed with the fact that the artist is essentially the child of his mother. the sympathy demanded to hold a clear, mental conception--the imagination that sees the whole, even when the first straight line is made--is the gift of mother to son. she gives him of her spirit, and he is heir to her love of color, her desire for harmony and her hunger for sympathy. these, plus his masculine strength, may allow him to accomplish that which was to her only a dream. if a mother is satisfied with her surroundings, happy in her environment, and therefore without "a noble discontent," her children will probably be quite willing to have a good time on the "unearned increment" that is their material portion. her virtue and passive excellence die with her, and she leaves a brood of mediocrities. were this miraculous scheme of adjustment lacking in the eternal plan, wealth, achievement and talent could be passed along in a direct line and the good things of earth be corraled by a single family. but nature knows no law of entail; she does, however, have her law of compensation, and this is the law which holds in order the balance of things. if a man accumulates a vast fortune, he probably also breeds spendthrifts who speedily distribute his riches; if he has great talent, the talent dies with him, for he only inspires those who are not of his blood; and if a woman is deprived of the environment for which her soul yearns, quite often her children adjust the average by working out an answer to her prayer. when twenty-eight years of age we find madame scheffer a widow, with three sons: by name, ariel, henri and arnold. madame scheffer had a little money--not much, but enough to afford her a small, living income. she might have married again, or she could have kept her little "dot" intact and added interest to principal by going and living with kinsmen who were quite willing to care for her and adopt her children. but no; she decided to leave the sleepy little dutch village where they lived in holland, and go down to paris. and so she thrust her frail bark boldly out upon the tide, hoping and expecting that somewhere and sometime the friendly islands would be reached. she would spend her last sou in educating her boys, and she knew, she said, that when that was gone, god would give them the power and inclination to care for her and provide for themselves. in short, she tumbled her whole basket of bread upon the waters, fully confident that it would come back buttered. her object in moving to paris was that her boys could acquire french, the language of learning, and also that they might be taught art. and so they moved to the great, strange world of paris--paris the gay, paris the magnificent, paris that laughs and leers and sees men and women go down to death, and still laughs on. they lived, away up and up in a tenement-house, in two little rooms. there was no servant, and the boys took hold cheerfully to do the housekeeping, for the mother wasn't so very strong. the first thing was to acquire the french language, and if you live in paris the task is easy. you just have to--that's all. madame scheffer was an artist of some little local repute in the village where they had lived, and she taught her boys the rudiments of drawing. ariel was always called ary. when he grew to manhood he adopted this pet name his mother had playfully given him. he used to call her "little mother." shortly after reaching paris, ary was placed in the studio of m. guerin. arnold showed a liking for the oriental languages, and was therefore allowed to follow the bent of his mind. henry waxed fat on the crumbs of learning that ary brought home. and so they lived and worked and studied; very happy, with only now and then twinges of fear for the future, for it would look a little black at times, do all they could to laugh away the clouds. it was a little democracy of four, with high hopes and lofty ideals. mutual tasks and mutual hardships bound them together in a love that was as strong as it was tender and sweet. two years of paris life had gone by, and the little fund that had not been augmented by a single franc in way of income had dwindled sadly. in six months it was gone. they were penniless. the mother sold her wedding-ring and the brooch her husband had given her before they were married. then the furniture went to the pawnbroker's, piece by piece. one day ary came bounding up the stairs, three steps at a time. he burst into the room and tossed into his mother's lap fifty francs. when he got his breath he explained that he had sold his first picture. ary, the elder boy, was eighteen; henri, the younger, was thirteen. "it was just like a play, you see," said ary scheffer, long years afterward. "when things get desperate enough they have to mend--they must. the pictures i painted were pretty bad, but i really believe they were equal to many that commanded large prices, and i succeeded in bringing a few buyers around to my views. genius may starve in a garret, if alone; but the genius that would let its best friends starve, too, being too modest to press its claims, is a little lacking somewhere." young scheffer worked away at any subject he thought would sell. he painted just as his teacher, guerin, told him, and guerin painted just like his idol, david, or as nearly as he could. art had gotten into a fixed groove; laws had been laid down as to what was classic and what not. conservatism was at the helm. art, literature, philosophy, science, even religion, have their periods of infancy, youth, manhood and decay. and there comes a time to every school, and every sect, when it ceases to progress. when it says, "there now, this is perfection, and he who seeks to improve on it is anathema," it is dead, and should be buried. but schools and sects and creeds die hard. creeds never can be changed: they simply become obsolete and are forgotten; they turn to dust and are blown away on the free winds of heaven. the art of the great david had passed into the hands of imitators. it had become a thing of metes and bounds and measurements and geometric theorems. its colors were made by mixing this with that according to certain fixed formulas. about this time a young playwright by the name of victor hugo was making much din, and the classics as a consequence were making mighty dole and endeavoring to hiss him down. the censor had forbidden a certain drama of hugo's to be played until it had been cut and trimmed and filed and polished, and made just like all other plays. victor hugo was the acknowledged leader of the spirit of protest; in lyric music rossini led; and delacroix raised the standard of revolt in painting. with this new school, which called itself "romanticism," madame scheffer and her sons sincerely sympathized. the term "romanticism" of itself means little, or nothing, or everything, but the thing itself is the eternal plea for the right of the individual--a cry for the privilege to live your own life and express the truth as you feel it, all in your own way. it is a revolution that has come a thousand times, and must and will come again and again. when custom gets greater than man it must be broken. the ankylosis of artistic smugness is no new thing. in heart and taste and ambition ary and the little mother were one. madame scheffer rejoiced in the revolt she saw in the air against the old and outgrown. she was a republican in all her opinions and ideals; and these feelings she shared with her boys. they discussed politics and art and religion over the teacups; and this brave and gentle woman kept intellectual pace with her sons, who in merry frolic often carried her about in their arms. only yesterday, it seemed to her, she had carried them, and felt upon her face the soft caress of baby hands. and now one of these sons stood a foot higher than she. ary scheffer was tall, slender, with a thoughtful, handsome face. the habit of close study, and the early realization of responsibilities had hastened his maturity. necessity had sharpened his business sense and given a practical side to his nature, so he deferred enough to the old world to secure from it the living that is every man's due. his pictures sold--sold for all they were worth. the prices were not large, but there was enough money so that the gaunt wolf that once scratched and sniffed at the door was no longer to be seen nor heard. they had all they needed. the little mother was the banker, and we may safely guess that nothing was wasted. pupils now came to ary scheffer--dull fellows from the schools, who wished to be coached. sitters in search of good portraits, cheap for cash, occasionally climbed the stairway. the little mother dusted about and fixed up the studio so as to make it look prosperous. one fine lady came in a carriage to sit for her portrait. she gave her wraps into the keeping of the little mother at the door, with an admonitory, "take care of these, mind you, or i'll report you to your master." the little mother bowed low and promised. that night when she told at the supper-table how the fine lady had mistaken her for a servant, henri said, "well, just charge the fine lady fifty francs extra in the bill for that." but ary would not consent to let the blunder go so cheaply. when the fine lady came for her next sitting, the little mother was called and advised with at length as to pose and color-scheme. neither was the advising sham, for ary deferred to his mother's judgment in many ways, and no important step was taken without her approval. they were more like lovers than mother and son. his treatment of her was more than affectionate--it was courteous and deferential, after the manner of men who had ancestors who were knights of the olden time. the desire to sit on a divan and be waited upon is the distinguishing feature of the heartless mistress of fortune. like the jeweled necklace and bands of gold at wrist and waist, which symbol a time when slavery was rife and these gauds had a practical meaning, so does the woman who in bringing men to her feet by beck and nod tell of animality too coarse for speech. but the woman with the great, tender and loving heart gives her all and asks no idolatrous homage. her delight is in serving, and willingly and more than willingly, for without thought she breaks the vase of precious ointment and wipes the feet of the beloved with the hairs of her head. madame scheffer sought in all ways to serve her sons, and so we find there was always a gentle rivalry between ary and his mother as to who could love most. she kept his studio in order, cleaned his brushes and prepared the canvas. in the middle of the forenoon she would enter his workroom with tea and toast or other little delicacies that he liked, and putting the tray down, would kiss the forehead of the busy worker and gently tiptoe out. when the day's work was done she intelligently criticized and encouraged; and often she would copy the picture herself and show how it could be changed for the better here or there. and all this fine, frank, loving companionship so filled ary's heart that he put far behind him all thought of a love for another with its closer tie. he lived and worked for the little mother. they were very happy, for they were succeeding. they had met the great, cruel world, the world of paris that romps and dances and laughs, and sees struggling and sad-eyed women and men go down to their death, and still laughs on; they had met the world in fair fight and they had won. the little mother had given all for ary; on his genius and ability she had staked her fortune and her life. and now, although he was not twenty-one, she saw all that she had given in perfect faith, coming back with interest ten times compounded. the art world of paris had both recognized and acknowledged the genius of her boy--with that she was content. * * * * * in the year eighteen hundred eighteen, we find general lafayette writing to lady morgan in reference to a proposed visit to the chateau de la grange. he says: "i do not think you will find it dull here. among others of our household is a talented young painter by the name of scheffer." later, lady morgan writes to friends in england from la grange, "ary scheffer, a talented artist, is a member of our company here at the chateau. he is quite young, but is already a person of note. he is making a portrait of the general, and giving lessons to the young ladies in drawing, and i, too, am availing myself of his tutorship." through his strong republican tendencies scheffer had very naturally drifted into the company of those who knew lafayette. the artist knew the history of the great man and was familiar with his american career. scheffer was interested in america, for the radicals with whom he associated were well aware that there might come a time when they would have to seek hastily some hospitable clime where to think was not a crime. and indeed, it is but natural that those with a penchant for heresy should locate a friendly shore, just as professional criminals study the extradition laws. lafayette, franklin and washington had long been to scheffer a trinity of familiar names, and when an opportunity came to be introduced to the great franco-american patriot he gladly took advantage of it. lafayette was sixty-one; scheffer was twenty-three, but there at once sprang up a warm friendship between them. not long after their first meeting scheffer was invited to come to la grange and make it his home as long as he cared to. the little mother urged the acceptance of such an invitation. to associate for a time with the aristocratic world would give the young man an insight into society and broaden his horizon. in the family of lafayette, scheffer mingled on an equality with the guests. his conversation was earnest, serious and elevated; and his manner so gracious and courtly that he won the respect of all he met. lady morgan intimates that his simplicity of manner tempted the young ladies who were members of his class in drawing to cut various innocent capers in his presence, and indulge in sly jokes which never would have been perpetrated had the tutor been more of a man of the world. it has happened more than once that men of the highest spirituality have had small respect for religion, as it is popularly manifested. the machinery of religion and religion itself are things that are often widely separated; and ary scheffer was too high-minded and noble to worship the letter and relinquish the spirit that maketh alive. he was of that type that often goes through the world scourged by a yearning for peace, and like the dove sent out from the ark finding no place to rest. all about he beheld greed, selfishness, hypocrisy and pretense. he longed for simplicity and absolute honesty, and was met by craft and diplomacy. he asked for religion, and was given a creed. and so into the hearts of such as he there comes creeping a spirit of revolt. instead of accepting this topsy-turvy old world and making the best of it, their eyes are fixed upon an ideal that heaven alone can realize. the home of lafayette was the rendezvous of the discontented. art, literature, politics and religion were all represented in the parlors of la grange. where franklin had discoursed poor richard philosophy, there now gathered each sunday night a company in which "the greatest of the americans" would have delighted. for this company, no question was too sacred for frank and free discussion. it was at the home of lafayette that scheffer met augustin thierry, and between these two there grew a friendship that only death was to divide. but there was one other person scheffer met at la grange who was to exercise a profound influence on his life: this was the duchess of orleans. the quiet manliness of the young artist impressed the future queen of france, and he was invited to neuilly to copy certain portraits. in the year eighteen hundred twenty-six, we find scheffer regularly established in the household of the duke and duchess of orleans, with commissions to paint portraits of all the members of the family, and incidentally to give lessons in drawing and mathematics to the princess marie. the princess had been a sore trial to her parents, in that she had failed to fit into the conventional ways of polite society. once she had shocked all neuilly by donning man's attire and riding horseback astride. a worthy priest who had been her tutor had found her tongue too sharp for his comfort, and had resigned his post in dismay. the princess argued religion with the bishop and discussed politics with visitors in such a radical way that her father often turned pale. for the diversions of society she had a profound contempt that did not fail to manifest itself in sharp sallies against the smug hypocrisy of the times. she had read widely, knew history, was familiar with the poets, and had dived into the classics to a degree equaled by few women in france. so keen was her wit that, when pompous dignitaries dined at neuilly, her father and mother perspired freely, not knowing what was coming next. in her character were traits that surely did not belie her louis quatorze ancestry. and yet this father and mother had a certain secret pride in the accomplishments of their daughter. parents always do. her independence sort of kept them vibrating between ecstasies of joy and chills of fear. the princess was plain in feature but finely formed, and had attracted the favorable attention of various worthy young men, but no man had ever dared to make love to her except by post or proxy. several lovers had pressed their claims, making appeal through her father; but the duke of orleans, strong as he was, never had cared to intimate to his daughter a suggestion as to whom she should wed. love to her was a high and holy sacrament, and a marriage of convenience or diplomacy was to the mind of the princess immoral and abhorrent. the father knew her views and respected them. but happiness is not a matter of intellect. and in spite of her brilliant, daring mind the princess of orleans was fretting her soul out against the bars of environment: she lacked employment; she longed to do, to act, to be. she had ambitions in the line of art, and believed she had talent that was worth cultivating. and so it was that ary scheffer, the acknowledged man of talent, was invited to neuilly. he came. he was twenty-nine years of age; the princess was twenty-five. the ennui of unused powers and corroding heart-hunger had made the princess old before her time. scheffer's fight with adversity had long before robbed him of his youth. these two eyed each other curiously. the gentle, mild-voiced artist knew his place and did not presume on terms of equality with the princess who traced a direct pedigree to louis the great. he thought to wait and allow her gradually to show her quality. she tried her caustic wit upon him, and he looked at her out of mild blue eyes and made no reply. he had no intention of competing with her on her own preserve; and he had a pride in his profession that equaled her pride of birth. he looked at her--just looked at her in silence. and this spoilt child, before whom all others quailed, turned scarlet, stammered and made apology. in good sooth, she had played tierce and thrust with every man she had met, and had come off without a scar; but here was a man of pride and poise, and yet far beneath her in a social way, and he had rebuked her haughty spirit by a simple look. a london lawyer has recently put in a defense for wife-beating, on the grounds that there are women who should be chastised for their own good. i do not go quite this far, but from the time scheffer rebuked the princess of orleans by refusing to reply to her saucy tongue there was a perfect understanding between them. the young woman listened respectfully if he spoke, and when he painted followed his work with eager eyes. at last she had met one who was not intent on truckling for place and pelf. his ideals were as high and excellent as her own--his mind more sincere. life was more to him than to her, because he was working his energies up into art, and she was only allowing her powers to rust. she followed him dumbly, devotedly. he wished to treat her as an honored pupil and with the deference that was her due, but she insisted that they should study and work as equals. instead of giving the young woman lessons to learn, they studied together. her task as pupil was to read to him two hours daily as he worked, and things she did not fully understand he explained. the princess made small progress as a painter, probably because her teacher was so much beyond her that she was discouraged at thought of equaling him; and feeling that in so many other ways they were equals, she lost heart in trying to follow him in this. at length, weary of attempts at indifferent drawing, the princess begged her tutor to suggest some occupation for her where they could start afresh and work out problems together. scheffer suggested modeling in clay, and the subject was taken up with avidity. the princess developed a regular passion for the work, and group after group was done. among other figures she attempted was an equestrian statue of joan of arc. this work was cast in bronze and now occupies an honored place at versailles. so thoroughly did the young woman enter into the spirit of sculpture that she soon surpassed scheffer in this particular line; but to him she gave all credit. her success was a delight to her parents, who saw with relief that the carping spirit of cynicism was gone from her mind, and instead had come a kindly graciousness that won all hearts. in the ability to think and act with independence there was something decidedly masculine in the spirit of the princess marie; and, as i have shown, scheffer possessed a sympathy and gentleness that was essentially feminine (which is quite a different thing from being effeminate). these two souls complemented each other, and their thoughts being fixed on similar ideals, how can we wonder that a very firm affection blossomed into being? but the secret of their love has never been written, and base would be the pen that would attempt to picture it in detail. take off thy shoes, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. the duke and duchess admired scheffer, but never quite forgot that he was in their employ, and all their attempts to treat him as an equal revealed the effort. it was as though they had said: "you are lowly bred, and work with your hands, and receive a weekly wage, but these things are nothing to us. we will not think less of you, for see, do we not invite you to our board?" the aristocracy of birth is very seldom willing to acknowledge the aristocracy of brain. and the man of brains, if lowly born, has a mild indifference, at least, for all the gilt and gaud of royalty. the prince of wales does not recognize the nobility of israel zangwill; and israel zangwill asks in bored indifference, "who--who is this man you call h. r. h.?" but love is greater than man-made titles, and when was there ever a difference in station able to separate hearts that throbbed only for each other? possibly even the stern old duke might have relented and given his blessing were it not that events of mighty importance came seething across the face of france, and duties to his country outweighed the duties to his daughter. on the thirtieth day of july, eighteen hundred thirty, ary scheffer was at the house of his mother in paris. a hurried knock came at the door, and ary answered it in person. there on the threshold stood m. thiers. "oh, scheffer! it is you, how fortunate! you are a member of the household of orleans, and i have a most important message for the duke. you must go with me and deliver it to him." "i see," said scheffer; "the convention has named the duke as king of france, and we are to notify him." "exactly so," said thiers. horses were at the door: they mounted and rode away. the streets were barricaded, so carriages were out of the question, but scheffer and thiers leaped the barricades, and after several minor mishaps found themselves safely out of paris. the call was not entirely unexpected on the part of the duke. scheffer addressed him as "le roi," and this told all. the duke hesitated, but finally decided to accept the mission, fraught with such mighty import. he started in disguise for paris that night on foot. at the back entrance of the palais royal stood ary scheffer, and saw louis philippe mingle with the crowd, unrecognized--then pass into the palace--this palace that was his birthplace. the next day louis appeared with lafayette on a balcony of the hotel de ville, and these two embraced each other in sight of the multitude. it is not for me to write a history of those troublous times, but suffice it to say that the "citizen king" ruled france probably as well as any other man could have done. his task was a most difficult one, for he had to be both king and citizen--to please royalist and populist alike. this sudden turn of the political kaleidoscope was a pivotal point in the life of ary scheffer. so long as the duke of orleans was a simple country gentleman, scheffer was the intimate friend of the family, but how could the king of france admit into his family circle a mere low-born painter? certainly not they who are descended from kings! orders were issued by the government to scheffer to paint certain pictures, and vouchers reached him from official sources, but he was made to understand that friendship with the household of a king was not for him. possibly he had been too much mixed up with the people in a political way! the favor of the populace is a thing monarchs jealously note, as mariners on a lee shore watch the wind. the father of louis philippe was descended from a brother of louis the great, while on his mother's side he was a direct descendant of the great monarch and madame de montespan. such an inbred claim to royalty was something of which to boast, but at the same time louis philippe was painfully sensitive as to the blot on the 'scutcheon. the princess marie knew the slender tenure by which her father held his place, and although her heart was wrung by the separation from her lover, she was loyal to duty as she saw it, and made no sign that might embarrass the citizen king. arnold and henri scheffer were each married, and working out careers. ary and his mother lived together, loving and devoted. and into the keeping of this mother had come a grandchild--a beautiful girl-baby. they called her name cornelie. about the mother of cornelie the grandmother was not curious. it was enough to know that the child was the child of her son, and upon the babe she lavished all the loving tenderness of her great, welling, mother heart. she had no words but those of gentleness and love for the son that had brought this charge to her. and did she guess that this child would be the sustaining prop for her son when she, herself, was gone? all this time the poor princess marie was practically a prisoner in the great palace, wearing out her heart, a slave to what she considered duty. she grew ill, and all efforts of her physicians to arouse her from her melancholy were in vain. her death was a severe shock to poor scheffer. for some months friends feared for his sanity, for he would only busy his brush with scenes from faust, or religious subjects that bordered on morbidity. again and again he painted "marguerite in prison," "marguerite waiting," "marguerite in paradise" and "mignon." into all of his work he infused that depth of tenderness which has given the critics their cue for accusing him of "sentimentality gone mad." and in fact no one can look upon any of the works of scheffer, done after eighteen hundred thirty, without being profoundly impressed with the brooding sadness that covers all as with a garment. from the time he met the princess of orleans there came a decided evolution in his art; but it was not until she had passed away that one could pick out an unsigned canvas and say positively, "this is scheffer's!" in all his work you see that look of soul, and in his best you behold a use of the blue background that rivals the blue of heaven. no other painter that i can recall has gotten such effects from colors so simple. but scheffer's life was not all sadness. for even when the little mother had passed away, ary scheffer wrote calmly to his friend august thierry: "i yet have my daughter cornelie, and were it not for her i fear my work would be a thing of the past; but with her i still feel that god exists. my life is filled with love and light." * * * * * it was a curious circumstance that ary scheffer, who conducted the citizen king to paris, was to lead him away. scheffer was a captain in the national guard, and when the stormy times of eighteen hundred forty-eight came, he put away his brushes, locked his studio, and joined his regiment. louis philippe had begun as a "citizen"--one of the people--and following the usual course had developed into a monarch with a monarch's indifference to the good of the individual. the people clamored for a republic, and agitation soon developed into revolution. on the morning of the twenty-fourth of february, eighteen hundred forty-eight, scheffer met the son of lafayette, who was also an officer in the national guard. "how curious," said lafayette, "that we should be protecting a king for whom we have so little respect!" "still, we will do our duty," answered scheffer. they made their way to the tuileries, and posted themselves on the terrace beneath the windows of the king's private apartments. as they sat on the steps in the wan light of breaking day. scheffer heard some one softly calling his name. he listened and the call was repeated. "who wants me?" answered scheffer. "'tis i, the queen!" came the answer. scheffer looked up and at the lattice of the window saw the white face of the woman he had known so well and intimately for a full score of years. the terror of the occasion did away with all courtly etiquette. "who is with you?" asked the queen. "only lafayette," was the answer. "come in at once, both of you. the king has abdicated and you must conduct us to a place of safety." scheffer and his companion ran up the steps, the queen unbolted the door with her own hands, and they entered. inside the hallway they found louis philippe dressed as for a journey, with no sign of kingly trappings. with them were their sons and several grandchildren. they filed out of the palace, through the garden, and into the place de la concorde--that spot of ghastly memories. the king looked about nervously. some of the mob recognized him. scheffer concluded that a bold way was the best, and stepping ahead of louis philippe, called in a voice of authority, "make way--make way for the king!" the crowd parted dumb with incredulity at the strange sight. by the fountain in the square stood a public carriage, and into this shabby vehicle of the night the royal passengers were packed. dumas, who had followed the procession, mounted the box. scheffer gave a quick whispered order to the driver, closed the door with a slam, lifted his hat, and the vehicle rumbled away towards the quai. when scheffer got back to the tuileries the mob had broken in the iron gates at the front of the gardens, and was surging through the palace in wild disorder. scheffer hastened home to tell cornelie the news of the night. * * * * * when the little mother died, a daughter of henri scheffer came to join the household of ary scheffer. the name of this niece was also cornelie. the fact of there being two young women in the house by one name has led to confusion among the biographers. and thus it happens that at least four encyclopedias record that ernest renan married the daughter of ary scheffer. renan married the niece, and the fact that they named their first child ary helped, possibly, to confirm the error of the biographers. scheffer's life was devoted to providing for and educating these young women. he himself gave them lessons in the languages, in music, painting and sculpture. the daughter was a handsome girl; and in point of intellect kept her artist-father very busy to keep one lesson in advance. together they painted and modeled in clay, and the happiness that came to scheffer as he saw her powers unfold was the sweetest experience he had ever known. the coldness between himself and the king had increased. but louis philippe did not forget him, for commissions came, one after another, for work to cover the walls of the palace at versailles. with the queen his relations were friendly--even intimate. several times she came to his house. her interest in cornelie was tender and strong, and when scheffer painted a "mignon" and took cornelie for a model, the queen insisted on having the picture and paying her own price--a figure quite beyond what the artist asked. this picture, which represents so vividly the profound pathos and depth of soul which ary scheffer could put upon a canvas, can now be seen in the louvre. but the best collection of scheffer's portraits and historical pictures is at versailles. in the gentle companionship of his beloved daughter, scheffer found the meed of joy that was his due. with her he lived over the days that had gone forever, and those other days that might have been. and when the inevitable came and this daughter loved a worthy and suitable young man, scheffer bowed his head, and fighting hard to keep back the tears gave the pair his blessing. the marriage of doctor marjolin and cornelie scheffer was a happy mating; and both honored the gifted father and ministered to him in every kindly way. but so susceptible was scheffer's nature that when his daughter had given her whole heart to another, the fine edge of his art was dulled and blunted. he painted through habit, and the work had merit, but only at rare intervals was there in it that undefinable something which all can recognize, but none analyze, that stamps the product as great art. * * * * * when, in the year eighteen hundred fifty, scheffer married, it was the death of his art. the artist does business on a very small margin of inspiration. do you understand me? the man of genius is not a genius all the time. usually he is only a very ordinary individual. there may be days or weeks that are fallow, and sometimes even years that are years of famine. he can not conquer the mood of depression that is holding him to earth. but some day the clouds suddenly clear away, the sun bursts out, and the soul of the man is alive with divine fervor. sublime thoughts crowd upon him, great waves of emotion sweep over his soul, and as webster said of his hayne speech, "the air was full of reasons, and all i had to do was to reach up and seize them." all great music and all deathless poems are written in a fever of ecstasy; all paintings that move men to tears are painted in tears. but it is easy to break in upon the sublime mood and drag the genius back to earth. certain country cousins who occasionally visited the family of ralph waldo emerson cut all mental work off short; the philosopher laid down his pen when the cousins came a-cousining and literally took to the woods. an uncongenial caller would instantly unhorse carlyle, and tennyson had a hatred of all lion-hunters--not merely because they were lion-hunters, but because they broke in upon his paradise and snapped the thread of inspiration. mrs. grote tells us that scheffer's wife was intelligent and devoted--in fact, she was too devoted. she would bring her sewing and watch the artist at his work. if the great man grew oblivious of her presence she gently chided him for it; she was jealous of his brothers, jealous of his daughter, even jealous of his art. she insisted not only that he should love her, but demanded that he should love nothing else. and yet all the time she was putting forth violent efforts to make him happy. as a result she put him in a mood where he loved nothing and nobody. she clipped his wings, and instead of a soaring genius we find a whimsical, commonplace man with occupation gone. wives demand the society of their husbands as their lawful right, and i suppose it is expecting too much to suppose that any woman, short of a saint, could fit into the bachelor ways of a dreamer of dreams, aged fifty-five. before he met the widow of general beaudrand, scheffer was happy, with a sweet, sad happiness in the memories of the love of his youth--the love that was lost, and being lost still lived and filled his heart. but the society of the widow was agreeable, her conversation vivacious. he decided that this being so it might be better still to have her by him all the time. and this was what the lady desired, for it was she who did the courting. oliver wendell holmes once said, "because i like an occasional pinch of salt is no reason why you should immerse me in brine," but ary scheffer, the mild, gentle and guileless, did not reason quite so far. the vivacious sophie took him captive, and he was shorn of his strength. and no doubt the ex-widow was as much disappointed as he; there really was no good reason why he should not paint better than ever, when here he wouldn't work at all! lawks-a-daisy! his spirit beat itself out against the bars, health declined, and although he occasionally made groggy efforts to shake himself back into form, his heart was not in his work. seven years went dragging by, and one morning there came word from london that the duchess of orleans, the mother of the beloved marie, was dying. scheffer was ill, but he braced himself for the effort, and hastily started away alone, leaving a note for cornelie. he arrived in england in time to attend the funeral of his lifelong friend, and then he himself was seized with a deadly illness. his daughter was sent for, and when she came the sick man's longing desire was to get back to france. if he was to die, he wanted to die at home. "to die at home at last," is the prayer of every wanderer. ary scheffer's prayer was answered. he expired in the arms of his beloved daughter on june fifteenth, eighteen hundred fifty-eight, aged sixty-three years. francois millet when i meet a laborer on the edge of a field, i stop and look at the man: born amid the grain where he will be reaped, and turning up with his plow the ground of his tomb, mixing his burning sweat with the icy rain of autumn. the furrow he has just turned is a monument that will outlive him. i have seen the pyramids of egypt, and the forgotten furrows of our heather: both alike bear witness to the work of man and the shortness of his days. --_chateaubriand_ [illustration: francois millet] jean francois millet is to art what wagner is to music, or what whitman is to poetry. these men, one a frenchman, another a german, the third an american, taught the same gospel at the same time, using different languages, and each quite unaware of the existence of the others. they were all revolutionaries; and success came so tardily to them that flattery did not taint their native genius. "great men never come singly," says emerson. richard wagner was born in the year eighteen hundred thirteen, millet in eighteen hundred fourteen, and whitman in eighteen hundred nineteen. "tannhauser" was first produced in eighteen hundred forty-five; the "sower" was exhibited in eighteen hundred fifty; and in eighteen hundred fifty-five "leaves of grass" appeared. the reception accorded to each masterpiece was about the same; and all would have fallen flat had it not been for the gibes and jeers and laughter which the work called forth. wagner was arrested for being an alleged rioter; whitman was ejected from his clerkship and his book looked after by the attorney-general of massachusetts; millet was hooted by his fellow-students and dubbed the wild-man-of-the-woods. in a letter to pelloquet, millet says, "the creations that i depict must have the air of being native to their situation, so that no one looking on them shall imagine they are anything else than what they are." in his first preface to "leaves of grass," whitman writes: "the art of arts, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. * * * to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movement of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph of art." wagner wrote in an essay on art: "the greek, proceeding from the bosom of nature, attained to art when he had made himself independent of the immediate influences of nature. "we, violently debarred from nature, and proceeding from the dull ground of a heaven-rid and juristic civilization, first reach art when we completely turn our backs on such a civilization, and once more cast ourselves, with conscious bent, into the arms of nature." men high in power, deceived by the "lack of form," the innocent naivete as of childhood, the simple homeliness of expression, the absence of effort, declared again and again that millet's work was not art, nor wagner's "recurring theme" true music, nor whitman's rhymeless lines poetry. the critics refused to recognize that which was not labored: where no violence of direction was shown they saw no art. to follow close to nature is to be considered rude by some--it indicates a lack of "culture." millet, wagner and whitman lived in the open air; with towns and cities they had small sympathy; they felt themselves no better and no wiser than common folks; they associated with working men and toiling women; they had no definite ideas as to who were "bad" and who "good." they are frank, primitive, simple. they are masculine--and in their actions you never get a trace of coyness, hesitancy, affectation or trifling coquetry. they have nothing to conceal: they look at you out of frank, open eyes. they know the pains of earth too well to dance nimbly through life and laugh the hours away. they are sober, serious, earnest, but not grim. their faces are bronzed by sun and wind; their hands are not concealed by gloves; their shirts are open to the breast, as though they wanted room to breathe deeply and full; the boots they wear are coarse and thick-soled, as if the wearer had come from afar and yet had many long miles to go. but the two things that impress you most are: they are in no haste; and they are unafraid. all can approach such men as these. possibly the smug and self-satisfied do not care to; but men in distress--those who are worn, or old, or misunderstood--children, outcasts, those far from home and who long to get back, silently slip weak hands in theirs and ask, "may we go your way?" can you read "captain, my captain," or listen to the "pilgrims' chorus," or look upon "the man with the hoe" without tears? and so we will continue our little journey. * * * * * charles warren stoddard relates that in one of the far-off islands of the south sea, he found savages so untouched by civilization that they did not know enough to tell a lie. it was somewhat such a savage as this with whom we have to deal. he was nineteen years old, six feet high, weighed one hundred sixty pounds, and as he had never shaved, had a downy beard all over his face. his great shock of brown hair tumbled to his shoulders. his face was bronzed, his hands big and bony, and his dark gray eyes looked out of their calm depths straight into yours--eyes that did not blink, eyes of love and patience, eyes like the eyes of an animal that does not know enough to fear. he was the son of a peasant, and the descendant of a long line of peasants, who lived on the coast of normandy--plain, toiling peasants whose lives were deeply rooted into the rocky soil that gave them scanty sustenance. if they ever journeyed it was as sailors--going out with the tide--and if they did not come back it was only because those who go down to the sea in ships sometimes never do. and now this first-born of the peasant flock was going to leave his native village of gruchy. he was clad in a new suit of clothes, spun, woven, cut and sewed by the hands of his grandmother. he was going away, and his belongings were all packed in a sailor's canvas bag; but he was not going to sea. great had been the preparations for this journey. the family was very poor: the father a day-laborer and farmer; the mother worked in the fields, and as the children grew up they too worked in the fields; and after a high tide the whole family hurried to the seashore to gather up the "varech," and carry it home for fertilizer, so that the rocky hillside might next summer laugh a harvest. and while the father and the mother toiled in the fields, or gathered the varech, or fished for shrimps, the old grandmother looked after the children at home. the grandmother in such homes is the real mother of the flock: the mother who bore the children has no time to manifest mother-love; it is the grandmother who nurses the stone-bruises, picks out the slivers, kisses away the sorrows, gladdens young hearts by her simple stories, and rocks in her strong, old arms the babe, as she croons and quavers a song of love and duty. and so the old grandmother had seen "her baby" grow to a man, and with her own hands she had made his clothes, and all the savings of her years had been sewed into a belt and given to the boy. and now he was going away. he was going away--going because she and she alone had urged it. she had argued and pleaded, and when she won the village priest over to her side, and father lebrisseau in his turn had won several influential men--why, it must be! the boy could draw: he could draw so well that he some day would be a great artist--langlois, the drawing-master at cherbourg, ten miles away, said so. what if they were only poor peasants and there never had been a painter in the family! there would be now. so the priest had contributed from his own purse; and the councilmen of cherbourg had promised to help; and the grandmother had some silver of her own. jean francois millet was going to paris to study to be an artist. tears rained down the wrinkled, leathery cheeks of the old grandmother; the mother stood by dazed and dumb, nursing a six-months-old babe; children of various ages hung to the skirts of mother and grandmother, tearful and mystified; the father leaned on the gate, smoking a pipe, displaying a stolidity he did not feel. the diligence swung around the corner and came rattling down the single, stony, narrow street of the little village. the driver hardly deigned to stop for such common folks as these; but the grandmother waved her apron, and then, as if jealous of a service some one else might render, she seized one end of the canvas bag and helped the brown young man pass it up to the top of the diligence. jean francois climbed up after, carrying a little prayer-book that had been thrust into his hands--a final parting gift of the grandmother. the driver cracked his whip and away they went. as the diligence passed the rectory, father lebrisseau came out and held up a crucifix; the young man took off his cap and bowed his head. the group of watchers moved out into the roadway. they strained their eyes in the direction of the receding vehicle. * * * * * after a three days' ride, jean francois was in paris. the early winter night was settling down, and the air was full of fog and sleet. the young man was sore from the long jolting. his bones ached, and the damp and cold had hunted out every part of his sturdy frame. the crowds that surged through the street hurrying for home and fireside after the day's work were impatient. "don't block the way, johnny crapaud!" called a girl with a shawl over her head; and with the combined shove and push of those behind, the sabot-shod young man was shouldered into the street. there he stood dazed and bereft, with the sailor's bag on his back. "where do you wish to go?" asked a gendarme, not unkindly. "back to gruchy," came the answer. and the young man went into the diligence office and asked when the next stage started. it did not go until the following morning. he would have to stay somewhere all night. the policeman outside the door directed him to a modest tavern. next morning things looked a little better. the sun had come out and the air was crisp. the crowds in the street did not look quite so cold and mean. after hunger had been satisfied, "johnny crapaud" concluded to stay long enough to catch a glimpse of the louvre, that marvel of marvels! the louvre had been glowingly described to him by his old drawing-master at cherbourg. visions of the louvre had been in his mind for weeks and months, and now his hopes were soon to be realized. in an hour perhaps he would stand and look upon a canvas painted by rubens, the immortal rubens! his enthusiasm grew warm. the girl who had served him with coffee stood near and was looking at him with a sort of silent admiration, such as she might bestow upon a curious animal. he looked up; their eyes met. "is it true--is it true that there are pictures by rubens in the louvre?" asked the young man. the oddity of the question from such a being and the queer normandy accent amused the girl, and she burst out laughing. she did not answer the question, but going over to a man seated at another table whispered to him. then they both looked at the queer youth and laughed. the young countryman did not know what they were laughing at--probably they did not, either--but he flushed scarlet, and soon made his way out into the street, his luggage on his back. he wanted to go to the louvre, but dare not ask the way--he did not care to be laughed at. and so he wandered forth. the shops were very marvelous, and now and again he lingered long before some window where colored prints and paintings were displayed. he wondered if the places were artists' studios; and at one place as he looked at a series of sketches the thought came to him that he himself could do better. this gave him courage, and stepping inside the door he set down his bag and told the astonished shopkeeper that the pictures in the window were very bad--he could paint better ones--would the proprietor not hire him to paint pictures? he would work cheap, and labor faithfully. he was hastily hustled out into the street--to harbor lunatics was dangerous. so he trudged on--looking for the louvre. night came and the search was without reward. seeing a sign of "apartments for single gentlemen," he applied and was shown a modest room that seemed within his means. the landlady was very kind; in fact, she knew people at gruchy and had often been to cherbourg--her uncle lived there. jean francois felt relieved to find that even in busy, bustling, frivolous paris there were friendly people; and when the kind lady suggested that pickpockets in the streets were numerous, and that he had better give his money over to her for safekeeping, he handed out his store of three hundred francs without question. he never saw his money again. the next day he still sought the louvre--not caring to reveal his ignorance by asking the way. it was several days before fate led him along the seine and he found himself on the pont neuf. the palace stretching out before him had a familiar look. he stopped and stared. there were the palaces where history had been made. he knew the tuileries and he knew the louvre--he had seen pictures of both. he walked out across the place de la concorde, and seeing others enter, made his way through the gates of the sacred precinct. he was in the palace of the louvre; he had found the way, unaided and alone. his deep religious nature was moved, and taking off his cap he crossed himself in a silent prayer of gratitude. what his sensations were he partially pictured to his friend sensier thirty years after: "it seemed as though i had at last attained, achieved. my feelings were too great for words, and i closed my eyes, lest i be dazzled by the sight and then dare not open them lest i should find it all a dream. and if i ever reach paradise i know my joy will be no greater than it was that first morning when i realized that i stood within the louvre palace." for a week millet visited the louvre every day. when the doors were unlocked each morning he was waiting on the steps; and he did not leave in the afternoon until the attendant warned him it was time to go. he lingered long before the "raffaellos" and stood in the "rubens gallery" dumb with wonder and admiration. there were various people copying pictures here and there. he watched them furtively, and after seeing one young man working at an easel in a certain place for a week, he approached and talked with him. jean francois told his history and the young man listened patiently. he advised that it would be foolish to go back to gruchy at once. the youth should go to some master and show what he could do--remain and study for a little while at least; in fact, he himself would take him to delaroche. things looked brighter; and arrangements were made to meet on the morrow and go interview the master. delaroche was found and proved kindly. he examined the two sketches that jean francois submitted, asked a few questions, and graciously led the new applicant into the atelier, where a score of young men were sketching, and set him to work. the letter written by jean to the good old grandmother that night hinted at great plans for the future, and told of love, and of hope that was dauntless. * * * * * twelve years were spent by jean francois in paris--years of biting poverty and grim endurance: the sport and prey of fate: the butt and byword of the fashionable, artistic world. jean francois did not belong in paris: how can robins build nests in omnibuses? he was at war with his environment; and the stern puritan bias of his nature refused to conform to the free and easy ways of the gay metropolis. he sighed for a sight of the sea, and longed for the fields and homely companionship that normandy held in store. so we find him renouncing paris life and going back to his own. the grandmother greeted him as one who had won, but his father and mother, and he, himself, called it failure. he started to work in the fields and fell fainting to the earth. "he has been starved," said the village doctor. but when hunger had been appeased and strength came back, ambition, too, returned. he would be an artist yet. a commission for a group of family portraits came from a rich family at cherbourg. gladly he hastened thence to do the work. while in cherbourg he found lodgings in the household of a widow who had a daughter. the widow courted the fine young painter-man--courted him for the daughter. the daughter married him. a strong, simple man, unversed in the sophistry of society, loves the first woman he meets, provided, of course, she shows toward him a bit of soft, feminine sympathy. this accounts for the ease with which very young men so often fall in love with middle-aged women. the woman does the courting; the man idealizes, and endows the woman with all the virtues his imagination can conjure forth. love is a matter of propinquity. the wife of jean francois was neutral salts. she desired, no doubt, to do what was right and best, but she had no insight into her husband's needs, and was incapable of guessing his latent genius. as for the new wife's mother and kinsmen, they regarded jean francois as simply lazy, and thought to crowd him into useful industry. he could paint houses or wagons, and, then, didn't the shipyard folks employ painters? well, i guess so. jean francois still dreamed of art. he longed to express himself--to picture on canvas the emotions that surged through his soul. disillusionment had come, and he now saw that his wife was his mate only because the church and state said so. but his sense of duty was firm, and the thought of leaving her behind never came to him. the portraits were painted--the money in his pocket; and to escape the importunities and jeers of his wife's relatives he decided to try paris once more. the wife was willing. paris was the gateway to pleasure and ambition. but the gaiety of paris was not for her. on a scanty allowance of bread one can not be so very gay--and often there was no fuel. jean francois copied pictures in the louvre and hawked them among the dealers, selling for anything that was offered. delaroche sent for him. "why do you no longer come to my atelier?" said the master. "i have no money to pay tuition," was the answer. "never mind; i'll be honored to have you work here." so jean francois worked with the students of delaroche; and a few respected his work and tried to help market his wares. but connoisseurs shook their heads, and dealers smiled at "the eccentricities of genius," and bought only conventional copies of masterpieces or studies of the nude. meantime the way did not open, and paris was far from being the place the wife supposed. she would have gone back to cherbourg, but there was no money to send her, and pride prevented her from writing the truth to her friends at home. she prayed for death, and death came. the students at delaroche's contributed to meet the expenses of her funeral. jean francois still struggled on. delaroche and others declared his work was great, but how could they make people buy it? a time of peculiar pinching hardship came, and jean francois again bade paris adieu and made his way back to gruchy. there he could work in the fields, gather varech on the seashore, and possibly paint portraits now and then--just for amusement. and thus he would live out the measure of his days. the visit of jean francois to his boyhood's home proved a repetition of the first. another woman married him. catherine lemaire was not a brilliant woman, but she had a profound belief in her husband's genius. possibly she did not understand him when he talked his best, but she made a brave show of listening, and did not cross him with any little whimsical philosophies of her own. she was sturdy and strong of heart; privation was nothing to her; she could endure all that jean francois could, and count it a joy to be with him. she was the consoler, not he; and when the mocking indifference of the world passed the work of jean francois by, she said, "who cares, so long as we know 't is good?" and measured the stocking on her nose and made merry music with the flying needles. soon the truth forced itself on jean francois and catherine that no man is thought much of by his kinsmen and boyhood acquaintances. no one at gruchy believed in the genius of jean francois--no one but the old grandmother, who daily hobbled to mass and prayed the blessed virgin not to forget her boy. jean francois and his wife studied the matter out and talked it over at length, and they decided that to stay in gruchy would be to forfeit all hope of winning fame and fortune. gruchy held nothing for them; possibly paris did. and anyway, to go down in a struggle for better things was not so ignominious an end as to allow one's powers to rust out, held back only through fear of failure. they started for paris. yes, paris remembered jean francois. how could paris forget him--he was so preposterous and his work so impossible! it was still a struggle for bread. marriages and births have a fixed relation to the price of corn, the sociologists say. perhaps they are right; but not in this case. the babies came along with the years, and all brought love with them. the devotion of jean francois to his wife and children had a deep, sober, religious quality, such as we associate with abraham and jacob and the other patriarchs of old. the heart of millet was often wrung by the thought of the privation and hardships his wife and children had to undergo. he blamed himself for their lack of creature comforts, and the salt tears rained down his beard when he had to go home and report that he had tramped the streets all day with a picture under his arm, looking for a buyer, but no buyer could be found. but all this time the old grandmother up in normandy waited and watched for news from her boy. now and again during the years she saw his name mentioned in connection with the salon; and once she heard a medal had been granted him, and at another time an "honorable mention." her heart throbbed in pride and she wrote congratulations, and thanked the good god for answering her prayers. little did she know of the times when bread was cut in tiny bits and parceled out to each hungry mouth, or the days when there was no fuel and the children kept to their beds to prevent freezing. but the few friends of jean francois who had forced the "honorable mention" and secured the medal, now got something more tangible; they induced the government director of fine arts to order from jean francois millet a picture for which the artist was to receive two thousand francs; two hundred francs were paid on account and the balance was to be paid on delivery of the picture. jean francois hurried home with the order in his trembling fingers. catherine read the order with misty eyes. she was not unduly elated--she knew that success must come some time. and husband and wife then and there decided that when the eighteen hundred francs were paid over to them they would move out of paris. they would make a home in the country. people do without things in the country, but they do not starve. you can raise vegetables, and even though the garden be small and the folks poor, god is good and the sunshine and showers come and things grow. and for fuel one can gather fagots if they are near a wood. they would go to barbizon--barbizon, that tiny village on the edge of the forest of fontainebleau. several artists who had been there in the summer sketching had told them of it. the city was gradually smothering jean francois. he prayed for a sight of the great open stretches of pasture, and green woods and winding river. and now it was all so near. he set to work feverishly to paint the great picture that was to bring deliverance. at last the picture was done and sent to the director's. days of anxious waiting followed. the picture was accepted and paid for. jean francois and catherine cried and laughed for joy, as they tumbled their belongings into bags and bundles. the grocer who had trusted them took some of their furniture for pay, and a baker and a shoemaker compromised by accepting a picture apiece. they were going to barbizon--going to the country--going to freedom! and so the father and the mother and the queer-looking, yellow children were perched on the top of the diligence with their bundles, bound for barbizon. they looked into each other's faces and their joy was too great for speech. * * * * * living at the village of barbizon, or near it, were theodore rousseau, hughes martin, louis leroy and clerge. these men were artists, and their peasant neighbors recognized them as separate and apart from themselves. they were summer boarders. but millet was a peasant in thought and feeling and sympathy, and mingled with the people on an absolute equality. he was peasant--and more than peasant; for the majesty of the woods, the broken rocks, the sublime stretches of meadow-lands with their sights, odors and colors intoxicated him with their beauty. he felt as if he had never before looked upon god's beautiful world. and yet paris was only a day's journey away! there he could find a market for his work. to be near a great city is a satisfaction to every intellectual worker, but, if he is wise, his visits to the city are far apart. all he needs is the thought that he can go if he chooses. millet was thirty-four years of age when he reached barbizon. there he was to remain for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life--to live in the one house--years of toil, and not lacking in poverty, pain and anxiety, but years of freedom, for he worked as he wished and called no man master. it is quite the custom to paint the life of millet at barbizon as one of misery and black unrest; but those who do this are the people who read pain into his pictures: they do not comprehend the simplicity and sublimity and quiet joy that were possible in this man's nature, and in the nature of the people he pictured. from the time he reached barbizon there came into his work a largeness, a majesty and an elevation that is unique in the history of art. millet's heart went out to humanity--the humanity that springs from the soil, lives out its day, and returns to earth. his pictures form an epic of country life, as he tells of its pains, its anxieties, its privations--yes, of its peace and abiding faith, and the joy and health and strength that comes to those who live near to nature's heart. walt whitman catalogues the workers and toilers, and lists their occupations in pages that will live; millet shows us wood-gatherers, charcoal-burners, shepherds, gleaners, washerwomen, diggers, quarrymen, road laborers, men at the plow, and women at the loom. then he shows the noon-hour, the moments of devotion, the joys of motherhood, the silent pride of the father, the love of brother and sister and of husband and wife. and again in the dusk of a winter night we see black-lined against the sky the bent figure of an old woman, bearing her burden of fagots; and again we are shown the plain, homely interior of a cottage where the family watches by the bedside of a dying child. and always the picture is not quite complete--the faces are never distinct--no expression of feature is there, but the soul worked up into the canvas conveys its silent message to all those who have eyes to see and hearts to feel. only a love and sympathy as wide as the world could have produced the "gleaners," the "sower" and the "angelus." millet was what he was on account of what he had endured. all art is at last autobiography. the laborer's cottage that he took at barbizon had but three small, low rooms. these served as studio, kitchen and bedchamber. when the family had increased to eleven, other rooms were added, and the studio was transferred to the barn, there at the end of the garden. millet had two occupations, and two recreations, he once said. in the mornings he worked in his garden, digging, sowing, planting, reaping. in the afternoons he painted--painted until the sun got too low to afford the necessary light; then he went for his daily solitary walk through the woods and fields, coming back at dark. after supper he helped his wife with the housework, put the children to bed, and then sat and read until the clock struck midnight. this was his simple life. very slowly, recognition came that way. theodore rousseau, himself a great artist, and a man too great for jealousy, spread his fame, and the faithful sensier in paris lost no opportunity to aid his friend by the use of a commercial shrewdness in which millet was woefully lacking. then came corot, daubigny, diaz and others of giant stature, to barbizon, and when they went back to paris they told of millet and his work. and then we find meissonier, the proud, knocking at the gate of le grand rustique. it is pleasant to recall that americans were among the first to recognize the value of millet's art. his "sower" is the chief gem of the vanderbilt collection; and the "angelus" has been thought much more of in france since america so unreservedly set her seal upon it. millet died in eighteen hundred seventy-five. it was only during the last ten years of his life that he felt financially free, and even then he was far from passing rich. after his death his fame increased, and pictures he had sold for twenty dollars, soon changed hands for as many hundred. englishmen say that america grew millet-mad, and it may be true that our admiration tipped a bit to t' other side; yet the fabulous prices were not always paid by americans--the rich men of earth vied with each other for the possession of a "millet." the "gleaners" was bought by the french government for three hundred thousand francs, and is now in the louvre "in perpetuity." this sum paid for this one picture represents a larger amount of money than passed through the hands of millet during his entire life; and yet it is not one-half what another "millet" brought. the "angelus" was sold for the sum of eight hundred thousand francs--a larger amount than was ever before paid for a single canvas. it is idle to say that no picture is worth such a sum. anything is worth what some one else will pay for it. the number of "millets," it may be explained, is limited, and with men in america who have incomes of ten million dollars or more a year, no sane man dare prophesy what price the "sower" may yet command. millet himself, were he here, would be aghast at the prices paid for his work, and he would turn, too, with disfavor from the lavish adulation bestowed upon his name. this homely, simple artist was a profound thinker; a sympathetic dreamer; a noble-hearted, generous man; so truthful and lovable that his virtues have been counted a weakness; and so they are--for the planet earth. joshua reynolds to make it people's interest to advance you, by showing that their business will be better done by you than by any other person, is the only solid foundation of success; the rest is accident. --_reynolds to his nephew_ [illustration: joshua reynolds] on the curious little river plym, five miles from plymouth, is the hamlet of plympton. it is getting on towards two hundred years since joshua reynolds was born there. the place has not changed so very much with the centuries: there still stand the quaint stone houses, built on arches over the sidewalk, and there, too, is the old norman church with its high mullioned windows. chester shows the best example of that very early architecture, and plympton is chester done in pigmy. the birthplace of reynolds is one of these houses in the "row"; a greengrocer now has the lower floor of the house for his shop, while his numerous family live upstairs. the reverend samuel reynolds also had a numerous family--there being eleven children--so the present occupation is a realistic restoration of a previous condition. the grocer has a leaning toward art, for his walls are well papered with chromos and posters; and as he sold a cabbage to a good housewife he nipped off a leaf for a pen of rabbits that stood in the doorway, and talked to me glibly of reynolds and gainsborough. the grocer considers gainsborough the greater artist, and surely his fame is wide, like unto the hat--hated by theater-goers--that his name has rendered deathless, and which certain unkind ones declare has given him immortality. joshua was the seventh child in the brood of five boys and six girls. the fond parents set him apart for the church, and to that end he was placed in the plympton grammar-school, and made to "do" fifty lines of ovid a day. the old belief that to translate latin with facility was the true test of genius has fallen somewhat into desuetude, yet there are a few who still hold to the idea that to reason, imagine and invent are not the tests of a man's powers; he must conjugate, decline and derive. but grant allen, possessor of three college degrees, avers that a man may not even be able to read and write, and yet have a very firm mental grasp on the eternal verities. anyway, joshua reynolds did not like latin. he hated the set task of fifty lines, and hated the system that imposed a fine of twenty lines for a failure to fulfil the first. the fines piled up until young joshua, aged twelve, goin' on thirteen, went into such hopeless bankruptcy that he could not pay tuppence on the pound. we have a sheet of this latin done at that time, in a cramped, schoolboy hand, starting very bold and plain, and running off into a tired blot and scrawl. on the bottom of the page is a picture, and under this is a line written by the father: "this is drawn by joshua in school out of pure idleness." the reverend samuel had no idea that his own name would live in history simply because he was the father of this idle boy. still, the clergyman showed that he was a man of good sense, for he acceded to the lad's request to let the latin slide. this conclusion no doubt was the easier arrived at after the master of the school had explained that the proper education of such a youth was quite hopeless. all the reynolds children drew pictures and most of them drew better than joshua. but joshua did not get along well at school, and so he felt the necessity of doing something. it is a great blessing to be born into a family where strict economy of time and money is necessary. the idea that nothing shall be wasted, and that each child must carve out for himself a career, is a thrice-blessed heritage. rich parents are an awful handicap to youth, and few indeed there be who have the strength to stand prosperity; especially is this true when prosperity is not achieved, but thrust upon them. joshua got hold of a copy of richardson's "theory of painting," and found therein that the author prophesied the rise of a great school of english painters. joshua thought about it, talked with his brothers and sisters about it, and surprised his mother by asking her if she knew that there was soon to be a distinct school of british art. about this time there came to the village a strolling artist by the name of warmell. this man opened up a studio on the porch of the tavern and offered to make your picture while you wait. he did a thriving business in silhouettes, and patrons who were in a hurry could have their profiles cut out of black paper with shears and pasted on a white background in a jiffy--price, sixpence. joshua struck up quite a friendship with this man and was taught all the tricks of the trade--even to the warning that in drawing the portrait of a homely man it is not good policy to make a really homely picture. the best-paying pewholder in the reverend samuel reynolds' church was a mr. craunch, whose picture had been made by the joint efforts of the strolling artist warmell and young reynolds. 't was a very beautiful picture, although it is not on record that mr. craunch was a handsome man. warmell refused to take pay for craunch's picture, claiming that he felt it was pay enough to have the honor of such a great man sitting to him. this remark proved to craunch that warmell was a discerning person and they were very soon on intimate terms of friendship. mr. craunch gave mr. warmell orders to paint pictures of the craunch family. one day warmell called the great man's attention to the fact that young reynolds, his volunteer assistant, had ambitions in an art way that could not be gratified unless some great and good man stepped in and played the part of a mæcenas. in fact, joshua wanted to go to london and study with hudson, the son-in-law and pupil of richardson, the eminent author who wrote the "theory of painting." warmell felt sure that after a few months, with his help, young reynolds could get the technique and the color-scheme, and a' that, and the firm of warmell and reynolds could open a studio in plymouth or portsmouth and secure many good orders. craunch listened with patience and advised with the boy's parents. the next week he took the lad up to london and entered him as a pupil with the great hudson, who could not paint much of a picture himself, but for a consideration was willing to show others how. rumor has it that warmell got a certain sum in english gold for all pupils he sent to hudson's studio, but i take no stock in such insinuations. warmell here disappears from mortal view, like one of those stage trapdoor vanishings of mephisto--only mephisto usually comes back, but warmell never did. reynolds was very happy at hudson's studio. he was only seventeen years old when he arrived there, fresh from the country. london was a marvel of delight to joshua; the shops, theaters, galleries and exhibitions were a never-ending source of joy. he worked with diligence, and probably got more for his money than any one of hudson's fifty pupils. hudson was well-to-do, dignified and kind. his place was full of casts and classic fragments, and when he had set his pupils to copying these he considered his day's work done. joshua wrote glowing letters home, telling of all he did. "while i am at work i am the happiest creature alive," he said. hudson set joshua to copying guercino's works, and kept the lad at it so steadily that he was really never able to draw from nature correctly thereafter. after a year, craunch came up from the country to see how his ward was getting along. joshua showed him the lions of the city; and painted his picture, making so fine a portrait that when mr. craunch got back home he threw away the one made by warmell. once at an exhibition joshua met alexander pope, whom he had seen several times at hudson's studio. pope remembered him and shook hands. joshua was so inflated by the honor that he hastened home to write a letter to his mother and tell her all about it. according to the terms of agreement with hudson, joshua was bound to stay four years; but now two years had passed, and one fine day in sudden wrath hudson told him to pack up his kit and go. the trouble was that joshua could paint better than hudson--every pupil in the school knew it. when the scholars wanted advice they went to reynolds, and some of them, being sons of rich men, paid reynolds for helping them. then reynolds had painted a few portraits on his own account and had kept the money, as he had a perfect right to do. hudson said he hadn't, for he was bound as an apprentice to him. "but only during working-hours," replied young reynolds. we can hardly blame hudson for sending him away--no master wants a pupil around who sees all over, above and beyond him, and who can do better work than he. it's confusing, and tends to rob the master of the deification that is his due. reynolds had remained long enough--it was time for him to go. he went back to devonshire, and craunch, the biggest man in plympton, took him over to lord edgecumbe, the biggest man in plymouth. craunch carried along the portrait of himself that joshua had made, and asked milord if he didn't want one just like it. edgecumbe said he surely did, and asked joshua if he painted the picture all alone by himself. joshua smiled. lord edgecumbe had a beautiful house, and to have a good picture of himself, and a few choice old ancestors on the walls, he thought would be very fine. joshua took up his abode in the edgecumbe mansion, the better to do his work. he was a handsome youth, nearly twenty years old, with bright, beaming eyes, a slight but compact form, and brown curls that came to his shoulders. his london life had given him a confidence in himself, and in his manner there was a grace and poise flavored with a becoming diffidence. a man who can do things well should assume a modesty, even if he has it not. if you can write well, do not talk--leave that to the man who can do nothing else. if you can paint, let your work speak for you. joshua reynolds was young, but he was an artist in diplomacy. his talent, his modesty, his youth, his beauty, won the hearts of the entire edgecumbe household. he painted portraits of all the family; and of course all the visitors were called upon to admire, not only the pictures, but the painter as well. a studio was opened in one of lord edgecumbe's buildings at plymouth, and he painted portraits of all the great folks thereabout. on christmas-day, seventeen hundred forty-six, the reverend samuel reynolds died, but before his death he fully realized that one of his children was well on the way to fame and fortune. the care of the broken family now devolved on joshua, but his income was several times as much as his father had ever earned, and his responsibilities were carried lightly. while at the house of lord edgecumbe, reynolds had met young commodore keppel. in seventeen hundred forty-nine, keppel was placed in command of the mediterranean fleet, with orders to clear the seas of the barbary pirates. keppel invited reynolds to join him on board the "centurion" as his guest. gladly he accepted, and they sailed away for the orient with a cabin stocked with good things, and enough brushes, paints, canvases and easels to last several painters a lifetime. * * * * * it was three years before reynolds came back to plymouth. he had visited lisbon, cadiz, gibraltar, port mahon and minorca. at the two last-named places there were british garrisons, and reynolds set to work making portraits of the officers. for this he was so well paid that he decided to visit italy instead of voyaging farther with his friend keppel. he then journeyed on to naples, rome, venice, pisa and florence, stopping in each city for several months, immersing himself in the art atmosphere of the place. returning to rome, he remained there two years, studying and copying the works of raphael, angelo, titian and other masters. occasionally, he sold his copies of masterpieces, and by practising strict economy managed to live in a fair degree of comfort. rome is the hottest place in summer and the coldest in winter of which i know. the average italian house has a damp and chill in winter which clutches the tourist and makes him long for home and native land. imagine a new england farmhouse in march with only a small dish-pan of coals to warm it, and you have rome in winter. rome, with its fever in summer and rheumatism and pneumonia in winter, has sent many an artist to limbus. joshua reynolds escaped the damp of the vatican with nothing worse than a deafness that caused him to carry an ear-trumpet for the rest of his life. but now he was back at plymouth. lord edgcumbe looked over the work he had brought and called into the ear-trumpet that a man who could paint like that was a fool to remain in a country town: he should go to london and vanquish all such alleged artists as hudson. keppel had gotten back to england, and he and edgcumbe had arranged that reynolds should pitch his tent in the heart of artistic london. so a handsome suite of apartments was secured in saint martin's lane. the first work undertaken seems to have been that full-length portrait of commodore keppel. the picture shows the commodore standing on a rocky shore, issuing orders to unseen hosts. there is an energy, dash and heroism pictured in the work that at once caught the eye of the public. "have you seen keppel's portrait?" asked edgcumbe of every one he met. invitations were sent out to call at joshua reynold's studio and see "keppel." there were a good many pictures displayed there, but "keppel" was placed in a small room, set apart, rightly focused, properly draped, and lighted only by candles, that stood in silver candle-sticks, and which were solemnly snuffed by a detailed marine, six foot three, in a red coat, with a formidable hanger at his side. only a few persons were admitted at a time and on entering the room all you saw was the valiant form of the doughty commodore, the sea-mist in his face and the wild winds blowing his locks. the big marine on guard in the shadow added the last realistic touch, and the gentlemen visitors removed their hats and the ladies talked in whispers--they all expected keppel to speak, and they wished to hear what he would say. it is a great thing to paint a beautiful picture, but 't is a more difficult feat to hypnotize the public into accepting the fact. the live keppel was pointed out on the street as the man who had had his picture taken. now, people do not have portraits painted simply because they want portraits painted: they want these portraits shown and admired. to have reynolds paint your portrait might prove a repetition of the keppel--who knows! sitters came and a secretary in livery took their names and made appointments, as is done today in the office of a prosperous dentist. joshua reynolds was young and strong, and he worked while it was called the day. he worked from sunrise until sunset. that first year in london he produced one hundred twenty portraits, besides painting various other pictures. this he could not have done without the assistance of a most loyal helper. this helper was giuseppe marchi. there are a half-dozen biographies of reynolds, and from boswell, walpole and burney, gossips-in-ordinary, we have vivid glimpses into his life and habits. then we have his own journal, and hundreds of letters; but nowhere do we get a frank statement of the assistance rendered him by giuseppe marchi. when reynolds was in rome, aged twenty-one, he fell in with a tatterdemalion, who proffered his service as guide. rome is full of such specimens, and the type is one that has not changed in five hundred years. reynolds tossed the lad a copper, and the ragged one showed his fine white teeth in a gladsome grin and proffered information. he clung to the visitor all that afternoon, and the next morning when reynolds started out with his sketching-outfit, the youngster was sitting on his doorstep. so they fared forth, giuseppe carrying the kit. reynolds knew but little italian--the boy taught him more. the boy knew every corner of rome, and was deep in the history of the eternal city--all he knew was rome. joshua taught the youngster to sketch, and after the first few days there in rome. joshua rigged giuseppe up an easel, and where went joshua there also went giuseppe. joshua got a bit ashamed of his partner's attire and bought him better raiment. when reynolds left rome on his homeward march, there, too, tagged the faithful giuseppe. after several months they reached lyons, and joshua counted his money. there was only enough to pay his fare by the diligence to paris, with a few francs over for food. he told giuseppe that he could not take him farther, and emptying his pockets of all his coppers, and giving him his best silk handkerchief and a sketching-outfit, they cried down each other's backs, kissed each other on both cheeks in the italian fashion, and parted. it took eight days to reach paris by the diligence, and joshua only got through by stopping one day and bartering a picture for sundry loaves of necessary bread. but he had friends in paris, influential friends. and when he reached the home of these influential friends, there on the curbstone sat giuseppe, awaiting his coming, with the silk handkerchief knotted loosely about his neck! giuseppe had thrown away the painting-kit and walked the three hundred miles in eight days, begging or stealing by the way the food he needed. when joshua reynolds opened his studio in saint martin's lane, his faithful helper was giuseppe marchi. giuseppe painted just as joshua did, and just as well. when sitters came, giuseppe was only a valet: he cleaned the brushes, polished the knives, ran for water and hovered near to do his master's bidding. he was the only person allowed in the model-room, and all the time he was there his keen eyes made a correct and proper estimate of the sitter. listening to no conversation, seeing nothing, he yet heard everything and nothing escaped his glance. when the sitting, which occupied an hour, was over, giuseppe took the picture into another room, and filled in the background and drapery just as he knew it should be. "marchi does not sign and date the portraits, but he does all the rest," said garrick. and "little burney," treading on thinner ice, once remarked, "if sir joshua ever embraces a fair sitter and imprints upon her forehead a chaste kiss, i am sure that giuseppe marchi will never tell." it is too late to accuse sir joshua reynolds of ingratitude towards giuseppe; he was grateful, and once referred to marchi as "an angel sent from god to help me do my work." but he paid marchi valet's wages and treated him like a servant. possibly this was the part of expedience, for had marchi ever gotten it into his head that he could paint as well as sir joshua he would have been worthless as a helper. for forty years they were never separated. cotton disposes of giuseppe marchi by saying, "he was a clever colorist, but incapable of doing independent work." cotton might, however, have told the whole simple truth, and that was that marchi was hands, feet, eyes and ears for his master--certain it is that without his help sir joshua could never have attained the fame and fortune he did. * * * * * in selecting his time for a career, joshua reynolds showed good judgment. he went into public favor on a high tide. england was prosperous, and there was in the air a taste for the polite arts. literature was becoming a fad. within a short time there had appeared gray's "elegy," smollett's "peregrine pickle," fielding's "amelia" and richardson's "clarissa harlowe." here was menu to fit most palates, and the bill-of-fare was duly discussed in all social gatherings of the upper circles. the afflicted ones fed on gray; the repentant quoted richardson; while smollett and fielding were read aloud in parlor gatherings where fair ladies threatened to leave the room--but didn't. out at strawberry hill, his country home, horace walpole was running that little printing-shop, making books that are now priceless, and writing long, gossipy letters that body forth the spirit of the time, its form and pressure. the dilettante society, composed of young noblemen devoted to high art and good-fellowship, was discussing a scheme for a national academy. garrick was at the height of his fame; hogarth was doing for art what smollett did for literature; while two young irishmen, burke and goldsmith, were getting ready to make english letters illustrious; hudson was painting portraits with a stencil; gainsborough was immortalizing a hat; doctor johnson was waiting in the entry of lord chesterfield's mansion with the prospectus of a dictionary; and pretty kitty fisher had kicked the hat off the head of the prince of wales on a wager. and so into this atmosphere of seething life came joshua reynolds, the handsome, gracious, silent, diplomatic reynolds. fresh from italy and the far-off islands of the southern seas where ulysses sailed, he came--his name and fame heralded as the raphael of england. to have your portrait painted by reynolds was considered a proper "entree" into the "bon ton." to attempt to give the names of royalty who sat to him would be to present a transcript of burke's peerage. unlike van dyck, at whose shrine reynolds worshiped, reynolds was coldly diplomatic in his relations with his sitters. he talked but little, because he could not hear, and to hold an ear-trumpet and paint with both hands is rather difficult. on the moment when the sitting was over, the patron was bowed out. the good ladies who lay in wait with love's lariat never found an opportunity to make the throw. reynolds' specialty was women and children. no man has ever pictured them better, and with him all women were kind. not only were they good, but good-looking; and when arms lacked contour, or busts departed from the ideal, kitty fisher or nelly o'brien came at the call of marchi and lent their charms to complete the canvas. reynolds gradually raised his prices until he received fifteen guineas for a head, one hundred for a half-length, and one hundred and fifty for a full-length. and so rapidly did he work that often a picture was completed in four hours. usually, success is a zigzag journey, but it was not so with reynolds. from seventeen hundred fifty-seven to seventeen hundred eighty-eight, his income was never less than thirty thousand dollars a year, and his popularity knew no eclipse. about the time the american stamp act was being pushed through parliament, reynolds' studio was the neutral stamping-ground for both parties. copley, the boston artist, gave reynolds a bias in favor of truth; and when townshend, the man who introduced the stamp act in parliament, sat to sir joshua, the artist and sitter forgot their business and wrangled over politics. soon afterward sir joshua made a bet with townshend, a thousand pounds against five, that george washington would never enter reynolds' studio. this was in response to the boast that washington would soon be brought to england a captive, and townshend would conduct him to reynolds to have his picture taken. the bet made a sensation and reynolds offered to repeat it to all comers; and a score or more of sincere men paid over five pounds into the hands of sir joshua, and took his note for one thousand pounds, payable when washington landed in england a prisoner. old ursa major had small patience with reynolds' political prophecies; he called america a land of pirates and half-breed cutthroats, and would have bet sir joshua to a standstill--only he had conscientious scruples about betting, and besides, hadn't any money. goldsmith and burke, of course, sided with reynolds in his american sympathies, and garrick referred to them as "my friends, the three irish gentlemen." a frequent visitor at the studio at this time was angelica kauffman, who deserves a volume instead of a mere mention. she came up from switzerland, unknown, and made her way to the highest artistic circles in london. she had wit and beauty, and painted so well that reynolds admitted she taught him a few tricks in the use of color. she produced several portraits of reynolds, and reynolds painted several of her; and the daughter of thackeray wrote a novel which turns on the assumption that they were lovers. there certainly was a fine comradeship existing between them; but whether reynolds was ever capable of an all-absorbing passion there is much doubt. he was married to his work. reynolds had many intimate friends among women: peg woffington, mrs. clive, mrs. thrale, hannah more, fanny burney and others. with them all there went the same high, chivalrous and generous disinterestedness. he was a friend to each in very fact. when the royal academy was formed in seventeen hundred sixty-eight, reynolds was made its president, and this office he held until the close of his life. he was not one of the chief promoters of the academy at the beginning, and the presidency was half forced upon him. he might have declined the honor then had the king not made him a knight, and showed that it was his wish that reynolds should accept. sir joshua, however, had more ballast in his character than any other painter of his time, and it was plain that without his name at the head the academy would be a thing for smiles and quiet jokes. the thirty-four charter members included the names of two americans, copley and west, and of one woman, angelica kauffman. and it is here worthy of note that although the methodist church still refuses to allow women to sit as delegates in its general conference, yet, in seventeen hundred sixty-eight, no dissent was made when joshua reynolds suggested the name of a woman as a member of the royal academy. sir joshua did not forget his friends at the time honors were given out, for he secured the king's permission to add several honorary members to the academy--men who couldn't paint, but who still expressed themselves well in other ways. doctor johnson was made professor of ancient literature; oliver goldsmith, professor of ancient history; and richard dalton, librarian. in this case the office did not seek the man: the man was duly measured, and the office manufactured to fit him. when sir joshua died, in february, seventeen hundred ninety-two, it was the close of a success so uninterrupted that it seems unequaled in the history of art. he left a fortune equal to considerably more than half a million dollars; he had contributed valuable matter to the cause of literature; he had been the earnest friend of all workers in the cause of letters, music and art; and had also been the intimate adviser and confidant of royalty. he was generous and affectionate, wise and sincere; a cheerful and tireless worker--one in whom the elements were so well mixed that all the world might say, this was a man! landseer the man behind his work was seen through it--sensitive, variously gifted, manly, genial, tender-hearted, simple and unaffected; a lover of animals, children and humanity; and if any one wishes to see at a glance nearly all we have written, let him look at landseer's portrait, painted by himself, with a canine connoisseur on either side. --_monkhouse_ [illustration: landseer] happy lives make dull biographies. young women with ambitions should be very cautious lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world. "miss pott--the beautiful miss pott," they called her. the biographers didn't take time to give her first name, nor recount her pedigree, so rapt were they with her personality. they only say, "she was tall, willowy and lissome; and sir joshua reynolds painted her picture as a peasant beauty, bearing on her well-poised head a sheaf of corn." it was at the house of macklin, the rich publisher, that john landseer, the engraver, met miss pott. she was artistic in all her instincts; and as she knew the work of the brilliant engraver and named his best pieces without hesitation he grew interested. men grow interested when you know and appreciate their work; sometimes they grow more interested, at which time they are also interesting. and so it came about that they were married, the beautiful miss pott and john landseer, and it can also be truthfully added that they were happy ever afterward. but that was the last of miss pott. her husband was so strong, so self-centered, so capable, that he protected her from every fierce wind, and gratified her every wish. she believed in him thoroughly and conformed her life to his. her personality was lost in him. the biographer scarcely refers to her, save when he is obliged to, indirectly, to record that she became the mother of three fine girls, and the same number of boys, equally fine, by name, thomas, charles and edwin. thomas and charles grew to be strong, learned and useful men, so accomplished in literature and art that their names would shine bright on history's page, were they not thrown into the shadow by the youngest brother. before edwin landseer was twenty years of age he was known throughout the united kingdom as "landseer." john landseer was known as "the father of landseer," and the others were "the brothers of landseer." and when once in piccadilly, the beautiful miss pott (that was) was pointed out as "the mother of landseer," the words warmed the heart of the good woman like wine. to be the wife of a great man, and the mother of a greater was career enough--she was very happy. queen anne street, near cavendish square, is a shabby district, with long lines of plain brick houses built for revenue only. but queen anne street is immortal to all lovers of art because it was the home of turner; and within its dark, dull and narrow confines were painted the most dazzlingly beautiful canvases that the world has ever seen. and yet again the street has another claim on our grateful remembrance, for at number eighty-three was born, on march seventh, eighteen hundred two, edwin landseer. the father of landseer was an enthusiastic lover of art. he had sprung from a long line of artistic workers in precious metals; and to use a pencil with skill he regarded as the chief end of man. long before his children knew their letters, they were taught to make pictures. indeed, all children can make pictures before they can write. for a play-spell, each day john landseer and his boys tramped across hampstead heath to where there were donkeys, sheep, goats and cows grazing; then all four would sit down on the grass before some chosen subject and sketch the patient model. edwin landseer's first loving recollections of his father went back to these little excursions across the heath. and for each boy to take back to his mother and sisters a picture of something they had seen was a great joy. "well, boys, what shall we draw today?" the father would ask at breakfast-time. and then they would all vote on it, and arguments in favor of goat or donkey were eloquently and skilfully set forth. i said that a very young child could draw pictures: standing by my chair as i write this line is a chubby little girl, just four years old, in a check dress, with two funny little braids down her back. she is begging me for this pencil that she may "make a pussy-cat for mamma to put in a frame." what boots it that the little girl's "pussy-cat" has five or six legs and three tails--these are all inferior details. the evolution of the individual mirrors the evolution of the race, and long before races began to write or reason they made pictures. art education had better begin young, for then it is a sort of play; and good artistic work, robert louis stevenson once said, is only useful play. probably edwin landseer's education began a hundred years before he was born; but his technical instruction in art began when he was three years old, when his father would take him out on the heath and placing him on the grass, put pencil and paper in his hand and let him make a picture of a goat nibbling the grass. then the boy noted for himself that a goat had a short tail, a cow a switch-tail, and horses had no horns, and that a ram's horns were unlike those of a goat. he had begun to differentiate and compare--and not yet four years old! when five years of age he could sketch a sleeping dog as it lay on the floor better than could thomas, his brother, who was seven years older. we know the deep personal interest that john landseer felt in the boy, for he preserved his work, and today in the south kensington museum we can see a series of sketches made by edwin landseer, running from his fifth year to manhood. thus do we trace the unfolding of his genius. that young landseer's drawing was a sort of play there is no doubt. people who set very young children at tasks of grubbing out cold facts from books come plainly within the province of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and should be looked after, but to do things with one's hands for fun is only a giving direction to the natural energies. before edwin landseer was eight years of age his father had taught him the process of etching, and we see that even then the lad had a vivid insight into the character of animals. he drew pictures of pointers, mastiffs, spaniels and bulldogs, and gave to each the right expression. the landseers owned several dogs, and what they did not own they borrowed; and once we know that charles and thomas "borrowed" a mastiff without the owner's consent. all children go through the scissors age, when they cut out of magazines, newspapers or books all the pictures they can find, so as to add to the "collection." often these youthful collectors have specialties: one will collect pictures of animals, another of machinery, and still another of houses. but usually it is animals that attract. scissors were forbidden in the landseer household, and if the boys wanted pictures they had to make them. and they made them. they drew horses, sheep, donkeys, cattle, dogs; and when their father took them to the zoological garden it was only that they might bring back trophies in the way of lions and tigers. then we find that there was once a curiosity exhibited in fleet street in the way of a lion-cub that had been caught in africa and mothered by a newfoundland dog. the old mother-dog thought just as much of the orphan that was placed among her brood as of her sure-enough children. the owner had never allowed the two animals to be separated, and when the lion had grown to be twice the size of his foster-mother there still existed between the two a fine affection. the stepmother exercised a stepmother's rights, and occasionally chastised, for his own good, her overgrown charge, and the big brute would whimper and whine like a lubberly boy. this curious pair of animals made a great impression on the landseers. the father and three boys sketched them in various attitudes, and engravings of edwin's sketch are still to be had. and so wherever in london animals were to be found, there, too, were the landseers with pencils and brushes, and pads and palettes. in the back yard of the house where the landseers lived were sundry pens of pet rabbits; in the attic were pigeons, and dogs of various breeds lay on the doorstep sleeping in the sun, or barked at you out of the windows. it is reported that john landseer once contemplated a change of residence; he selected the house he wanted, bargained with the landlord, agreed as to terms and handed out his card preparatory to signing a lease. the real-estate agent looked at the name, stuttered, stammered, and finally said: "you must excuse me, sir, but they say as how you are a dealer in dogs, and your boys are dog-catchers! you'll excuse me--but--i just now 'appened to think the 'ouse is already took!" * * * * * the landseers moved from queen anne street to foley street, near burlington house. this was a neighborhood of artists, and for neighbors they had west, mulready, northcote, constable, flaxman and our own picturesque allston, of cambridge, massachusetts. the elgin marbles were then kept at burlington house, and these were a great source of inspiration to the landseer boys. it gave them a true taste of the grecian, and knowing a little about greece, they wanted to know more. greece became the theme--they talked it at breakfast, dinner and supper. the father and mother told them all they knew, and guessed at a few things more, and to keep at least one lesson ahead of the children the parents "crammed for examination." edwin sketched that world-famous horse's head from the parthenon, and the figures of horses and animals in bas-relief that formed the frieze; and the boys figured out in their minds why horses and men were all the same height. gradually it dawned upon the father and the brothers that edwin was their master so far as drawing was concerned. they could sketch a newfoundland dog that would pass for anybody's newfoundland, but edwin's was a certain identical dog, and none other. edwin landseer really discovered the dog. he discovered that dogs of one breed may be very different in temper and disposition; and going further he found that dogs have character and personality. he struck an untouched lode and worked it out to his own delight and the delight of great numbers of others. his pictures were not mystical, profound or problematic--simply dogs, but dogs with feelings, affections, jealousies, prejudices. in short, he showed that dogs, after all, are very much like folks; and from this, people with a turn for psychology reasoned that the source of life in the dog was the same as the source of life in man. plain people who owned a dog beloved by the whole household, as household dogs always are, became interested in landseer's dogs. they could not buy a painting by landseer, but they could spare a few shillings for an engraving. and so john landseer began to reproduce the pictures of edwin's dogs. the demand grew, and thomas now ceased to sketch and devoted all his time to etching and engraving his brother's work. every one knew of landseer, even people who cared nothing for art: they wanted a picture of one of his dogs to hang over the chimney, because the dog looked like one they used to own. then rich people came and wanted edwin to paint a portrait of their dog, and a studio was opened where the principal sitters were dogs. from a position where close economy must be practised, the landseers found themselves with more money than they knew what to do with. edwin was barely twenty, but had exhibited at several royal academy exhibitions and his name was on every tongue. he gave no attention to marketing his wares--his father and brothers did all that--he simply sketched and had a good time. he was healthy, strong, active, and could walk thirty miles a day; but now that riches had come that way he bought a horse and rode. then other horses were presented to him, and he began to picture horses, too. that he knew horses and loved them is evidenced in many a picture. in every village or crossroads town of america can be found copies of his "shoeing," where stands the sleek bay mare, the sober, serious donkey, and the big dog. no painter who ever lived is so universally known as landseer, and this is because his father and brothers made it their life-business to reproduce his work by engraving. occasionally, rich ladies would want their own portraits painted with a favorite dog at their feet, or men wanted themselves portrayed on horseback, and so landseer found himself with more orders than he could well care for. people put their names, or the name of their dog, on his waiting-list, and some of the dogs died of old age before the name was reached. "i hear," said a lady to sydney smith at a dinner party--"i hear you are to have your portrait painted by landseer." "is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" answered the wit. the story went the rounds, and mulready once congratulated the clergyman on the repartee. "i never made the reply," said sydney smith; "but i wish i had." sydney smith was once visiting the landseer studio, and his eye chanced to light on the picture of a very peculiar-looking dog. "yes, it's a queer picture of a queer dog. the drawing is bad enough, and never pleased me!" and landseer picked up the picture and gave it a toss out of the window. "you may have it if you care to go get it," he carelessly remarked to the visitor. smith made haste to run downstairs and out of the house to secure his prize. he found it lodged in the branches of a tree. in telling the tale years afterward, smith remarked that, whereas many men had climbed trees to evade dogs, yet he alone of all men had once climbed a tree to secure one. sir walter scott saw landseer's picture of "the cat's paw," and was so charmed with it that he hunted out the young artist, and soon after invited him to abbotsford. leslie, the american artist, was at that time at scott's home painting the novelist's portrait. this portrait, by the way, became the property of the ticknor family of boston, and was exhibited a few years ago at the boston museum of fine arts. landseer, leslie and scott made a choice trio of congenial spirits. they were all "outdoor men," strong, sturdy, good-natured, and fond of boyish romp and frolic. many were the long tramps they took across mountain, heath and heather. they visited the highland district together, fished in loch lomond, paddled the entire length of loch katrine, and hunted deer on the preserve of lord gwydr. on one hunting excursion, landseer was stationed on a runway, gun in hand, with a gillie in attendance. the dogs started a fine buck, which ran close to them, but instead of leveling his gun, landseer shoved the weapon into the hands of the astonished gillie with the hurried whispered request, "here, you, hold this for me!" and seizing his pencil, made a hasty sketch of the gallant buck ere the vision could fade from memory. in fact, both landseer and leslie proved poor sportsmen--they had no heart for killing things. a beautiful live deer was a deal more pleasing to landseer than a dead one; and he might truthfully have expressed the thought of his mind by saying, "a bird in the bush is worth two on a woman's bonnet." and indeed he did anticipate thoreau by saying, "to shoot a bird is to lose it." the idea of following deer with dogs and guns, simply for the sport of killing them, was repugnant to the soul of this sensitive, tender-hearted man. in the faces of his deer he put a look of mingled grandeur and pain--a half-pathos, as if foreshadowing their fate. in picturing the dogs and donkeys, he was full of jest and merriment; but the kings of moor and forest called forth deeper and sadder sentiments. that wild animals instinctively flee in frenzied alarm at man's approach is comment enough on our treatment of them. the deer, so gentle and so graceful, so innocent and so beautiful, are never followed by man except as a destroyer; and the idea of looking down a rifle-barrel into the wide-open, soulful eyes of a deer made landseer sick at heart. * * * * * to landseer must be given the honor of first opening a friendly communication between the present royal family and the artistic and literary world. wild-eyed poets and rusty-looking, impecunious painters were firmly warned away from balmoral. the thought that all poets and painters were anarchistic and dangerous--certainly disagreeable--was firmly fixed in the heart of the young queen and her attendants. the barrier had first been raised to landseer. he was requested to visit the palace and paint a picture of one of the queen's deerhounds. it was found that the man was not hirsute, untamed or eccentric. he was a gentleman in manner and education--quite self-contained and manly. he was introduced to the queen; they shook hands and talked about dogs and horses and things, just like old acquaintances. they loved the same things, and so were friends at once. it was not long before landseer's near neighbors at saint john's wood were stricken speechless at the spectacle of queen victoria on horseback waiting at the door of landseer's house, while the artist ran in to change his coat. when he came out he mounted one of the groom's horses for a gallop across the park with the queen of england, on whose possessions the sun never sets. these rides with royalty were, however, largely a matter of professional study; for he not only painted a picture of the queen on horseback, but of albert as well. and at windsor there can now be seen many pictures of dogs and horses painted by landseer, with nobility incidentally introduced, or vice versa, if you prefer. it was in eighteen hundred thirty-five that landseer began to paint the pets of the royal family, and the friendly intimacy then begun continued up to the time of his death in eighteen hundred seventy-three. in the national academy are sixty-seven canvases by landseer; and for the queen, personally, he completed over one hundred pictures, for which he received a sum equal to a quarter of a million dollars. landseer's career was one of continuous prosperity. in his life there was neither tragedy nor disappointment. his horses and dogs filled his bachelor heart, and when tray, blanche and sweetheart bayed and barked him a welcome to that home in saint john's wood where he lived for just fifty years, he was supremely content. his fortune of three hundred thousand pounds was distributed at his death, as he requested, among various servants, friends and needy kinsmen. landseer had no enemies, and no detractors worth mentioning. that his great popularity was owing to his deference to the spirit of the age goes without saying. he never affronted popular prejudices, and was ever alert to reflect the taste of his patrons. the influence of passing events was strong upon him: the subtlety of turner, the spiritual vision of fra angelico, the sublime quality of soul (that scorned present reward and dedicated its work to time) of michelangelo were all far from him. that he at times attempted to be humorous by dressing dogs in coats and trousers with pipe in mouth is to be regretted. a dog so clothed is not funny--the artist is. the point has also been made that in landseer's work there was no progression--no evolution. his pictures of mountain scenery done in scotland before he was thirty mark high tide. to him never again came the same sweep of joyous spirit or surge of feeling. bank-accounts, safety and satisfaction are not the things that stir the emotions and sound the soul-depths. landseer never knew the blessing of a noble discontent. but he contributed to the quiet joy of a million homes; and it is not for us to say, "it is beautiful; but is it art?" neither need we ask whether the name of landseer will endure with those of raphael and leonardo. edwin landseer did a great work, and the world is better for his having lived; for his message was one of gentleness, kindness and beauty. gustave dore lacroix told dore one day, early in his life in paris, that he should illustrate a new edition of his works in four volumes, and he sent them to him. in a week lacroix said to dore, who had called, "well, have you begun to read my story?" "oh! i mastered that in no time; the blocks are all ready"; and while lacroix looked on stupefied, the boy dived into his pockets and piled many of them on the table, saying, "the others are in a basket at the door; there are three hundred in all!" --_blanche roosevelt_ [illustration: gustave dore] it was at the cafe de l'horloge in paris. mr. whistler sat leaning on his cane, looking off into space, dreamily and wearily. he roused enough to answer the question: "dore--gustave dore--an artist? why, the name sounds familiar! oh, yes, an illustrator. ah, now i understand; but there is a difference between an artist and an illustrator, you know, my boy. dore--yes, i knew him--he had bats in his belfry!" and mr. whistler dismissed the subject by calling for a match, and then smoked his cigarette in grim silence, blowing the smoke through his nose. not liking a man, it is easy to shelve him with a joke, or to waive his work with a shrug and toss of the head, but not always will the ghost down at our bidding. in the realm of art nothing is more strange than this: genius does not recognize genius. still, the word is much abused, and the man who is a genius to some is never so to others. in defining a genius it is easiest to work by the rule of elimination and show what he is not. for instance, neither reynolds, landseer nor meissonier was a genius. these men were strong, sane, well poised--filled with energy and life. they were receptive and quick to grasp a suggestion or hint that could be turned to their advantage--to further the immediate plans they had in hand. they had ambition and the ability to concentrate on a thing and do it. just what they focused their attention upon was largely a matter of accident. they had in them the capacity for success--they could have succeeded at anything they undertook, and they were too sensible to undertake a thing at which they could not succeed. they always saw light through at the other end. "i have success tied to the leg of my easel by a blue ribbon," said meissonier. they succeeded by mathematical calculation, and the fame, name and gold they won was through a conscious laying hold upon the laws that bring these things to pass. they chose to paint pictures, and the entire energy of their natures was concentrated upon this one thing. practising the art, day after day, month after month, year after year, they acquired a wonderful facility. they knew the history of art--its failures, pitfalls and successes. they knew the human heart--they knew what the people wanted and what they didn't. they set themselves to supply a demand. and all this keenness, combined with good taste and tireless energy, would have brought a like success in any one of a dozen different professions. and these are the men who give plausibility to that stern half-truth: a man can succeed in anything he undertakes--it is all a matter of will. but you can not count gustave dore in any such category. he stands alone: he had no predecessors, and he left no successors. we say that the artist has his prototype; but every rule has its exception--even this one. gustave dore drew pictures because he could do nothing else. he never had a lesson in his life, never drew from a model, could not sketch from nature; accepted no one's advice; never retouched or considered his work after it was done; never cudgeled his brains for a subject; could read a book by turning the leaves; grasped all knowledge; knew all languages; found an immediate market for his wares and often earned a thousand dollars before breakfast; lived fifty years and produced over one hundred thousand sketches--an average of six a day; made two million dollars by the labor of his own hands; was knighted, flattered, proclaimed, adored, lauded, scorned, scoffed, hooted, maligned, and died broken-hearted. surely you can not dispose of a man like this with a "bon mot"! comets may be good or ill, but wise men nevertheless make note of them, and the fact that they once flashed their blinding light upon us must live in the history of things that were. * * * * * an alsatian by birth, and a parisian by environment, dore is spoken of as of the french school, but if ever an artist belonged to no "school" it was gustave dore. his early years were spent in strassburg, within the shadow of the cathedral. his father was a civil engineer--methodical, calculating, prosperous. the lad was the second of three sons: strong, bright, intelligent boys. in his travels up and down the rhine the father often took little gustave with him, and the lad came to know each wild crag, and crowning fortress, and bend in the river where strong men with spears and bows and arrows used to lie in wait. in imagination gustave repeopled the ruins and filled the weird forests with curious, haunting shapes. the rhine reeks with history that merges off into misty song and fable; and this folklore of the storied river filled the day-dreams and night-dreams of this curious boy. but all children have a vivid imagination, and the chief problem of modern education is how to conserve and direct it. as yet no scheme or plan or method has been devised that shows results, and the men of imagination seem to be those who have succeeded in spite of school. in gustave dore we have the curious spectacle of nature keeping bright and fresh in the man all those strange conceptions of the child, and multiplying them by a man's strength. the wild imaginings of gustave only served his father and mother with food for laughter; and his erratic absurdities in making pictures supplied the neighbors' fun. but actions that are funny in a child become disturbing in a man; he's cute when little, but "sassy" when older. gustave, however, did not put away childish things. when he had reached the age of indiscretion--was fourteen, and had a frog in his throat, and was conscious of being barefoot--he still imagined things and made pictures of them. his father was distressed, and sought by bribes to get him to quit scrawling with pencil and turn his attention to logarithms and other useful things; but with only partial success. when fifteen he accompanied his father and older brother to paris, where the older boy was to be installed in the ecole polytechnique. it was the hope of the father that, once in paris, gustave would consent to remain with his brother, and thus, by a change of base, a reform in his tastes would come about and he would leave the rhine with its foolish old-woman tales and cease the detestable habit of picturing them. it was the first time gustave had ever been to paris--the first time he had ever visited a large city. he was fascinated, captivated, enthralled. paris was fairyland and paradise. he announced to his father and brother that he would not return to alsace, neither would he go to the polytechnique. they told him he must do either one or the other; and as the father was going back home in two days, gustave could have just forty-eight hours in which to decide his destiny. passing by the office of the "journal pour rire," the father and son gaping in all the windows like true rustics, they saw announced an illustrated edition of "the labors of hercules." some of the illustrations were shown in the window with the hope of tempting possible buyers. gustave looked upon these illustrations with critical eye, and his face flushed scarlet--but he said nothing. he knew the book; aye, every tale in it, with all its possible variations, had long been to him a bit of true history. to him hercules lived yesterday, and, confusing hearsay with memory, he was almost ready to swear that he was present and used a shovel when the strong man cleaned the augean stables. the next morning, when his father and brother were ready to go to visit the polytechnique, gustave pleaded illness and was allowed to lie abed. but no sooner was he alone than he seized pencil and paper and began to make pictures illustrating "the labors of hercules." in two hours he had half a dozen pictures done, and fearing the return of his father he hurried with his pictures to monsieur philipon, director of the "journal pour rire." he shouldered past the attendants, pushed his way into the office of the great man, and spreading his pictures out on the desk cried, "look here, sir! that is the way 'the labors of hercules' should be illustrated!" it was the action of one absorbed and lost in an idea. had he taken thought he would have hesitated, been abashed, self-conscious--and probably been repulsed by the flunkies--before seeing monsieur philipon. it was all the sublime effrontery and conceit--or naturalness, if you please--of a country bumpkin who did not know his place. philipon glanced at the pictures and then looked at the boy. then he looked at the pictures. he called to another man in an adjoining room and they both looked at the pictures. then they consulted in an undertone. it was suggested that the boy draw another illustration right there and then. they wished to make sure that he himself did the work, and they wanted to see how long it took. gustave sat down and drew another picture. philipon refused to let the lad leave the office, and dispatched a messenger for his father. when the father arrived, a contract was drawn up and signed, whereby it was provided that the "infant" should remain with philipon for three years, on a yearly salary of five thousand francs, with the proviso that the lad should attend the school, lycee charlemagne, for four hours every day. thus, while yet a child, without discipline or the friendly instruction that wisdom might have lent, he was launched on the tossing tide of commercial life. his "hercules" was immediately published and made a most decided hit--a palpable hit. paris wanted more, and philipon wished to supply the demand. the new artist's pictures in the "journal pour rire" boomed the circulation, and more illustrations were in demand. philipon suggested that the four hours a day at school was unnecessary--gustave knew more already than the teachers. gustave agreed with him, and his pay was doubled. more work rushed in, and gustave illustrated serial after serial with ease and surety, giving to every picture a wildness and weirdness and awful comicality. the work was unlike anything ever before seen in paris: every one was saying, "what next!" and to add to the interest, philipon, from time to time, wrote articles for various publications concerning "the child illustrator" and "the artistic prodigy of the 'journal pour rire.'" with such an entree into life, how was it possible that he should ever become a master? his advantages were his disadvantages, and all his faults sprang naturally as a result of his marvelous genius. he was the victim of facility. everything in this world happens because something else has happened before. had the thing that happened first been different, the thing that followed would not be what it is. had gustave dore entered the art world of paris in the conventional way, the master might have toned down his exuberance, taught him reserve, and gradually led him along until his tastes were formed and character developed. and then, when he had found his gait and come to know his strength, the name of paul gustave dore might have stood out alone as a bright star in the firmament--the one truly great modern. or, on the other hand, would the ossified discipline and set rules of a school have shamed him into smirking mediocrity and reduced his native genius to neutral salts? who will be presumptuous enough to say what would have occurred had not this happened and that first taken place? * * * * * before gustave dore had been in paris a year his father died. shortly after, the strassburg home was broken up, and madame dore followed her son to paris. gustave's tireless pencil was bringing him a better income than his father had ever made; and the mother and three sons lived in comfort. the mother admonished gustave to apply himself to pure art, and not be influenced by philipon and the others who were making fortunes by his genius. and this advice he intended to follow--not yet, but very soon. there were "rabelais" and balzac's "contes drolatiques" to illustrate. these done, he would then enter the atelier of one of the masters and take his time in doing the highest work. but before the books were done, others came, with retainers in advance. then a larger work was begun, to illustrate the crimean war, in five hundred battle-scenes. and so he worked--worked like a steam-engine--worked without ceasing. he illustrated shakespeare's "tempest" as only dore could; then came coleridge, moore, hood, milton, dante, hugo, gautier, and great plans were being laid to illustrate the bible. the years were slipping past. his brothers had found snug places in the army, and he and his mother lived together in affluence. between them there was an affection that was very loverlike. they were comrades in everything--all his hopes, plans and ambitions were rehearsed to her. the love that he might have bestowed on a wife was reserved for his mother, and, fortunately, she had a mind strong enough to comprehend him. in the corner of the large, sunny apartment that was set apart for his mother's room, he partitioned off a little room for himself, where he slept on an iron cot. he wished to be near her, so that each night he could tell her of what he had done during the day, and each morning rehearse his plans for the coming hours. by telling her, things shaped themselves, and as he described the pictures he would draw, others came to him. the confessional seems a crying need of every human heart--we wish to tell some one. and without this confessional, where one soul can outpour to another that fully sympathizes and understands, marriage is a hollow, whited mockery, full of dead men's bones. there is a desire of the heart that makes us long to impart our joy to another. corot once caught the sunset on his canvas as the great orb sank, a golden ball, behind the hills of barbizon. he wished to show the picture to some one--to tell some one, and looking around saw only a cottage on the edge of the wood a quarter of a mile away, and thither he ran, crying to the astonished farmer, "i've got it! i've got it!" when dore did a particularly good piece of work, in the first intoxication of joy he would run home, kiss his mother on both cheeks, and picking her up in his strong arms run with her about the rooms. at other times he would play leap-frog over the chairs, vault over the piano, and jump across the table. and this wild joy that comes after work well done he knew for many years. in the evening, after a particularly good day, he would play the violin and sing entire scenes from some opera, his mother turning the leaves. as to his skill as a musician, is this testimonial on the back of a fine photograph i once had the pleasure of handling: "as a souvenir of tender friendship, presented to gustave dore, who joins with his genius as a painter the talents of a distinguished violinist and charming tenor.--g. rossini." the illustrations for dante's "inferno" were done in dore's twenty-second year, and for this work he was decorated with the cross of the legion of honor. he never did better work, and at this time his hand and brain seemed at their best. every great writer and every great artist makes vigorous use of his childhood impressions. childhood does not know it is storing up for the days to come, but its memories sink deep into the soul, and when called upon to express, the man reaches out and prints from the plates that are bitten deep; and these are the pictures of his early youth--or else they tell of a time when he loved a woman. the first named are the more reliable, for sex and love have been made forbidden subjects, until self-consciousness, affectation and untruth creep easily into their accounting. all literature and all art are secondary sex manifestations, just as surely as the song of birds or the color and perfume of flowers are sex qualities. and so it happens that all art and all literature is a confession; and it occurs, too, that childhood does not stand out sharp and clear on memory's chart until it is past and adolescence lies between. then maturity gives back to the man the childhood that is gone forever. many of the world's best specimens of literature are built on the impressions of childhood. shakespeare, victor hugo, and i'll name you another--james whitcomb riley--have written immortal books with the autobiography of childhood for both warp and woof. gustave dore's best work is a reproduction of his childhood's thoughts, feelings and experiences--all well colored with the stuff that dreams are made of. the background of every good dore picture is a deep wood or mountain-pass or dark ravine. the wild, romantic passes of the vosges, and the sullen crags, topped with dark mazes of wilderness, were ever in his mind, just as he saw them yesterday when he clutched his father's hand and held his breath to hear the singing of the wood-nymphs 'mong the branches. his tracery of bark and branch, and drooping bough held down with weight of dew, are startlingly true. the great roots of giant trees, denuded by storm and flood, lie exposed to view; and deep vistas are given of shadowy glade and swift-running mountain torrent. all is somber, terrible, and tells of forces that tossed these mountain-tops like bowls, and of a power immense, immeasurable, incomprehensible, eternal in the heavens. dore's first exhibition in the salon was made when he was eighteen, and a few years later, when he was presented with the cross of the legion of honor, the decoration made his work exempt from jury examination. and so every year he sent some large painting to the salon. his work was the wonder of paris, and on every hand his illustrations were in demand, but his canvases were too large in size and too terrible in subject to fit private residences. patrons were cautious. to own a "dore" was proof of a high appreciation of art, or else a lack of it--buyers did not know which. they were afraid of being laughed at. his competitors began to hoot and jeer. not being able to make pictures that would compete with his, they wrote him down in the magazines. his name became a jest. various of his illustrations for the bible were enlarged into immense canvases, some of which were twenty feet long and twelve feet high. all who looked upon these pictures were amazed by the fecundity in invention and the skill shown in drawing; but the most telling criticism against them was their defect in coloring. dore could draw, but could not color, and the report was abroad that he was color-blind. the only buyers for his pictures came from england and america. paris loved art for art's sake, and the bible was not popular enough to make its illustration worth while. "what is this book you are working on?" asked a caller. it was different in london, where spurgeon preached every sunday to three thousand people. the "dores" taken to london attracted much attention--"mostly from the size of the canvases," parisians said. but the particular subject was the real attraction. instead of reading their daily "chapter," hard-working, tired people went to see a dore bible picture where it was exposed in some vacant storeroom and tuppence entrance-fee charged. it occurred to certain capitalists that if people would go to see one dore, why would not a dore gallery pay? a company was formed, agents were sent to paris and negotiations begun. finally, on payment of three hundred thousand dollars, forty large canvases were secured, with a promise of more to come. dore took the money, and, the agents being gone, ran home to tell his mother. she was at dinner with a little company of invited guests. gustave vaulted over the piano, played leap-frog among the chairs, and turning a handspring across the table, incidentally sent his heels into a thousand-dollar chandelier that came toppling down, smashing every dish upon the table, and frightening the guests into hysterics. "it's nothing," said madame dore; "it's nothing--gustave has merely done a good day's work!" the "dore gallery" in london proved a great success. spurgeon advised his flock to see it, that they might the better comprehend bible history; the reverend doctor parker spoke of the painter as "one inspired by god"; sunday-schools made excursions thither; men in hobnailed shoes knelt before the pictures, believing they were in the presence of a vision. and all these things were duly advertised, just as we have been told of the old soldier who visited the gettysburg cyclorama at chicago and looking upon the picture, he suddenly cried to his companion, "down, bill, down! by t' lord, there's a feller sightin' his gun on us!" barnum offered the owners twice what they paid for the "dore gallery," with intent to move the pictures to america, but they were too wise to accept. twenty-eight of the canvases were eventually sold, however, for a sum greater than was paid for the lot, yet enough remained to make a most representative display; and no american in london misses seeing the dore gallery, any more than we omit madame tussaud's wax-works. in eighteen hundred seventy-three, dore visited england and was welcomed as a conquering hero. the prince of wales and the nobility generally paid him every honor. he was presented to the queen, and victoria thanked him for the great work he had done, and asked him to inscribe for her a copy of the "dore bible." more than this, the queen directed that several dore pictures be purchased and placed in windsor castle. of course, all paris knew of dore's success in england. paris laughed. "what did i tell you?" said berand. and paris reasoned that what england and america gushed over must necessarily be very bad. the directors of the salon made excuses for not hanging his pictures. dore had become rich, but his own paris--the paris that had been a foster-mother to him--refused to accredit him the honor which he felt was his due. in eighteen hundred seventy-eight, smarting under the continued gibes and geers of artistic france, he modeled a statue which he entitled "glory." it represents a woman holding fast in affectionate embrace a beautiful youth, whose name we are informed is genius. the woman has in one hand a laurel-wreath; hidden in the leaves of this wreath is a dagger with which she is about to deal the victim a fatal blow. dore grew dispirited, and in vain did his mother and near friends seek to rally him out of the despondency that was settling down upon him. they said, "you are only a little over forty, and many a good man has never been recognized at all until after that--see millet!" but he shook his head. when his mother died, in eighteen hundred eighty-one, it seemed to snap his last earthly tie. of course he exaggerated the indifference there was towards him; he had many friends who loved him as a man and respected him as an artist. but after the death of his mother he had nothing to live for, and thinking thus, he soon followed her. he died in eighteen hundred eighty-three, aged fifty years. * * * * * so here endeth "little journeys to the homes of eminent painters," being volume four of the series, as written by elbert hubbard: edited and arranged by fred bann; borders and initials by roycroft artists, and produced by the roycrofters, at their shops, which are in east aurora, erie county, new york, mcmxxii [transcriber's note: inconsistencies in the original (e.g., arnola/arnold; edgcumbe/edgecumbe; geers/jeers) have been retained in this etext.] [frontispiece: red riding hood from the picture by g. f. watts, in the birmingham art gallery page ] the book of art for young people by agnes ethel conway and sir martin conway with sixteen full-page illustrations in colour a. & c. black, ltd. , & soho square, london, w. first published september as "the children's book of art" reprinted in , , and made in great britain. printed by r. & r. clark, limited, edinburgh. to my little friends agnes and rosanne note my thanks are due and are cordially rendered to the earl of yarborough, sir frederick cook, and the authorities of trinity college, cambridge, for permission to reproduce their pictures; to lady alfred douglas and mr. henry newbolt for leave to quote from their poems; to mr. everard green, somerset herald, for all that is new in the interpretation of the wilton diptych; to miss k. k. radford for the translation in chapter viii., and to all the friends who have helped me with criticism and suggestions. a. e. c. contents chap. page i introductory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii the thirteenth century in europe . . . . iii richard ii. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv the van eycks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v the renaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi raphael . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii the renaissance in venice . . . . . . . . viii the renaissance in the north . . . . . . ix rembrandt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x peter de hoogh and cuyp . . . . . . . . . xi van dyck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii velasquez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii reynolds and the eighteenth century . . . xiv turner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv the nineteenth century . . . . . . . . . index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . list of illustrations in the colours of the original paintings red ridinghood . . . . . . . . . . _g. f. watts_ _frontispiece_ richard ii. before the virgin page and child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the three maries . . . . . . . . . _h. van eyck_ . . . . . st. jerome in his study . . . . . _antonello da messina_ the nativity . . . . . . . . . . . _sandro botticelli_ . . the knight's dream . . . . . . . . _raphael_ . . . . . . . the golden age . . . . . . . . . . _giorgione_ . . . . . . st. george destroying the dragon . _tintoret_ . . . . . . edward, prince of wales, afterwards edward vi. . . . . _holbein_ . . . . . . . a man in armour . . . . . . . . . _rembrandt_ . . . . . . an interior . . . . . . . . . . . _p. de hoogh_ . . . . . landscape with cattle . . . . . . _cuyp_ . . . . . . . . william ii. of orange . . . . . . _van dyck_ . . . . . . don balthazar carlos . . . . . . . _velasquez_ . . . . . . the duke of gloucester . . . . . . _sir j. reynolds_ . . . the fighting temeraire . . . . . . _turner_ . . . . . . . the children's book of art chapter i introductory almost the pleasantest thing in the world is to be told a splendid story by a really nice person. there is not the least occasion for the story to be true; indeed i think the untrue stories are the best--those in which we meet delightful beasts and things that talk twenty times better than most human beings ever do, and where extraordinary events happen in the kind of places that are not at all like our world of every day. it is so fine to be taken into a country where it is always summer, and the birds are always singing and the flowers always blowing, and where people get what they want by just wishing for it, and are not told that this or that isn't good for them, and that they'll know better than to want it when they're grown up, and all that kind of thing which is so annoying and so often happening in this obstinate criss-cross world, where the days come and go in such an ordinary fashion. but if i might choose the person to tell me the kind of story i like to listen to, and hear told to me over and over again, it would be some one who could draw pictures for me while talking--pictures like those of tenniel in _alice in wonderland_ and _through the looking-glass_. how much better we know alice herself and the white knight and the mad hatter and all the rest of them from the pictures than even from the story itself. but my story-teller should not only draw the pictures while he talked, but he should paint them too. i want to see the sky blue and the grass green, and i want red cloaks and blue bonnets and pink cheeks and all the bright colours, and some gold and silver too, and not merely black and white--though black and white drawings would be better than nothing, so long as they showed me what the people and beasts and dragons and things were like. i could put up with even rather bad drawings if only they were vivid. don't you know how good a bad drawing sometimes seems? i have a friend who can make the loveliest folks and the funniest beasts and the quaintest houses and trees, and he really can't draw a bit; and the curious thing is, that if he could draw better i should not like his folks and beasts half as much as i do the lop-sided, crook-legged, crazy-looking people he produces. and then he has such quaint things to tell about them, and while he talks he seems to make them live, so that i can hardly believe they are not real people for all their unlikeness to any one you ever saw. now, the old pictures you see in the picture galleries are just like that, only the people that painted them didn't invent the stories but merely illustrated stories which, at the time those painters lived, every one knew. some of the stories were true and some were just a kind of fairy tale, and it didn't matter to the painters, and it doesn't matter to us, which was true and which wasn't. the only thing that matters is whether the story is a good one and whether the picture is a nice one. there is a delightful old picture painted on a wall away off at assisi, in italy, which shows st. francis preaching to a lot of birds, and the birds are all listening to him and looking pleased--the way birds do look pleased when they find a good fat worm or fresh crumbs. now, st. francis was a real man and such a dear person too, but i don't suppose half the stories told about him were really true, yet we can pretend they were and that's just what the painter helps us to do. don't you know all the games that begin with 'let's pretend'?--well, that's art. art is pretending, or most of it is. pictures take us into a world of make-believe, a world of imagination, where everything is or should be in the right place and in the right light and of the right colour, where all the people are nicely dressed to match one another, and are not standing in one another's way, and not interrupting one another or forgetting to help play the game. that's the difference between pictures and photographs. a photograph is almost always wrong somewhere. something is out of place, or something is there which ought to be away, or the light is wrong; or, if it's coloured, the colours are just not in keeping with one another. if it's a landscape the trees are where we don't want them; they hide what we want to see, or they don't hide the very thing we want hidden. then the clouds are in the wrong place, and a wind ruffles the water just where we want to see something reflected. that's the way things actually happen in the real world. but in the world of 'let's pretend,' in the world of art, they don't happen so. there everything happens right, and everybody does, not so much what they should (that might sometimes be dull), but exactly what we want them to do--which is so very much better. that is the world of your art and my art. unfortunately all the pictures in the galleries weren't painted just for you and me; but you'll find, if you look for them, plenty that were, and the rest don't matter. those were painted, no doubt, for some one else. but if you could find the some one else for whom they were painted, the some one else whose world of 'let's pretend' was just these pictures that don't belong to your world, and if they could tell you about their world of 'let's pretend,' ten to one you'd find it just as good a world as your own, and you'd soon learn to 'pretend' that way too. well, the purpose of this book is to take you into a number of worlds of 'let's pretend,' most of which i daresay will be new to you, and perhaps you will find some of them quite delightful places. i'm sure you can't help liking st. jerome's cell when you come to it. it's not a bit like any room we can find anywhere in the world to-day, but wouldn't it be joyful if we could? what a good time we could have there with the tame lion (not a bit like any lion in the zoo, but none the worse for that) and the jolly bird, and all st. jerome's little things. i should like to climb on to his platform and sit in his chair and turn over his books, though i don't believe they'd be interesting to read, but they'd certainly be pretty to look at. if you and i were there, though, we should soon be out away behind, looking round the corner, and finding all sorts of odd places that unfortunately can't all get into the picture, only we know they're there, down yonder corridor, and from what the painter shows us we can invent the rest for ourselves. one of the troubles of a painter is that he can't paint every detail of things as they are in nature. a primrose, when you first see it, is just a little yellow spot. when you hold it in your hand you find it made up of petals round a tiny centre with little things in it. if you take a magnifying glass you can see all its details multiplied. if you put a tiny bit of it under a microscope, ten thousand more little details come out, and so it might go on as long as you went on magnifying. now a picture can't be like that. it just has to show you the general look of things as you see them from an ordinary distance. but there comes in another kind of trouble. how do you see things? we don't all see the same things in the same way. your mother's face looks very different to you from its look to a mere person passing in the street. your own room has a totally different aspect to you from what it bears to a casual visitor. the things you specially love have a way of standing out and seeming prominent to you, but not, of course, to any one else. then there are other differences in the look of the same things to different people which you have perhaps noticed. some people are more sensitive to colours than others. some are much more sensitive to brightness and shadow. some will notice one kind of object in a view, or some detail in a face far more emphatically than others. girls are quicker to take note of the colour of eyes, hair, skin, clothes, and so forth than boys. a woman who merely sees another woman for a moment will be able to describe her and her dress far more accurately than a man. a man will be noticing other things. his picture, if he painted one, would make those other things prominent. so it is with everything that we see. none of us sees more than certain features in what the eye rests upon, and if we are artists it is only those features that we should paint. we can't possibly paint every detail of everything that comes into the picture. we must make a choice, and of course we choose the features and details that please us best. now, the purpose of painting anything at all is to paint the beauty of the thing. if you see something that strikes you as ugly, you don't instinctively want to paint it; but when you see an effect of beauty, you feel that it would be very nice indeed to have a picture showing that beauty. so a picture is not really the representation of a thing, but the representation of the beauty of the thing. some people can see beauty almost everywhere; they are conscious of beauty all day long. they want to surround themselves with beauty, to make all their acts beautiful, to shed beauty all about them. those are the really artistic souls. the gift of such perfect instinct for beauty comes by nature to a few. it can be cultivated by almost all. that cultivation of all sorts of beauty in life is what many people call civilization--the real art of living. to see beauty everywhere in nature is not so very difficult. it is all about us where the work of uncivilized man has not come in to destroy it. artists are people who by nature and by education have acquired the power to see beauty in what they look at, and then to set it down on paper or canvas, or in some other material, so that other people can see it too. it seems strange that at one time the beauty of natural landscape was hardly perceived by any one at all. people lived in the beautiful country and scarcely knew that it was beautiful. then came the time when the beauty of landscape began to be felt by the nicest people. they began to put it into their poetry, and to talk and write about it, and to display it in landscape pictures. it was through poems and pictures, which they read and saw, that the general run of folks first learned to look for beauty in nature. i have no doubt that turner's wonderful sunsets made plenty of people look at sunsets and rejoice in the intricacy and splendour of their glory for the first time in their lives. well, what turner and other painters of his generation did for landscape, had had to be done for men and women in earlier days by earlier generations of artists. the greeks were the first, in their sculpture, to show the wonderful beauty of the human form; till their day people had not recognised what to us now seems obvious. no doubt they had thought one person pretty and another handsome, but they had not known that the human figure was essentially a glorious thing till the greek sculptors showed them. another thing painters have taught the world is the beauty of atmosphere. formerly no one seems to have noticed how atmosphere affects every object that is seen through it. the painters had to show us that it is so. after we had seen the effect of atmosphere in pictures we began to be able to see for ourselves in nature, and thus a whole group of new pleasures in views of nature was opened up to us. away back in the middle ages, six hundred and more years ago, folks had far less educated eyes than we possess to-day. they looked at nature more simply than we do and saw less in it. so they were satisfied with pictures that omitted a great many features we cannot do without. but painting does not only concern itself with representing the world we actually see and the people that our eyes actually behold. it concerns itself quite as much with the world of fancy, of make-believe. indeed, most painters when they look at an actual scene let their fancy play about it, so that presently what they see and what they fancy get mixed up together, and their pictures are a mixture of fancy and of fact, and no one can tell where the one ends and the other begins. the fancies of people are very different at different times, and you can't understand the pictures of old days unless you can share the fancies of the old painters. to do that you must know something about the way they lived and the things they believed, and what they hoped for and what they were afraid of. here, for instance, is a very funny fact solemnly recorded in an old account book. a certain count of savoy owned the beautiful castle of chillon, which you have perhaps seen, on the shores of the lake of geneva. but he could not be happy, because he and the people about him thought that in a hole in the rock under one of the cellars a basilisk lived--a very terrible dragon--and they all went in fear of it. so the count paid a brave mason a large sum of money (and the payment is solemnly set down in his account book) to break a way into this hole and turn the basilisk out; and i have no doubt that he and his people were greatly pleased when the hole was made and no basilisk was found. folks who believed in dragons as sincerely as that, must have gone in terror in many places where we should go with no particular emotion. a picture of a dragon to them would mean much more than it would to us. so if we are really to understand old pictures, we must begin by understanding the fancies of the artists who painted them, and of the people they were painted for. you see how much study that means for any one who wants to understand all the art of all the world. we shall not pretend to lead you on any such great quest as that, but ask you to look at just a few old pictures that have been found charming by a great many people of several generations, and to try and see whether they do not charm you as well. you must never, of course, pretend to like what you don't like--that is too silly. we can't all like the same things. still there are certain pictures that most nice people like. a few of these we have selected to be reproduced in this book for you to look at. and to help you realize who painted them and the kind of people they were painted for, my daughter has written the chapters that follow. i hope you will find them entertaining, and still more that you will like the pictures, and so learn to enjoy the many others that have come down to us from the past, and are among the world's most precious possessions to-day. chapter ii the thirteenth century in europe before we give our whole attention to the first picture, of which the original was painted in england in , let us imagine ourselves in the year making a rapid tour through the chief countries of europe to see for ourselves how the people lived. the first thing that will strike us on our journey is the contrast between the grandeur of the churches and public buildings and the insignificance of most of the houses. some of the finest churches in england, built in the style of architecture called 'norman,' one or more of which you may have seen, date before the year , as for example, durham cathedral, and the naves of norwich, ely, and peterborough cathedrals. the great churches abroad were also beautiful and more elaborately decorated, in the north with sculpture and painting, in the south with marble and mosaic. the towns competed one with another in erecting them finer and larger, and in decorating them as magnificently as they could. this was done because the church was a place which the people used for many other purposes besides sunday services. in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the parish church, on week-days as well as on sundays, was a very useful and agreeable place to most of the parishioners. the 'holy' days, or saints' days, 'holidays' indeed, were times of rejoicing and festivity, and the church processions and services were pleasant events in the lives of many who had few entertainments, and who for the most part could neither read nor write. printing was not yet invented, at least not in europe, and as every book had to be written out by hand, copies of books were rare and only owned by the few who could read them, so that stories were mostly handed down by word of mouth, the same being told by mother to child for many generations. the favourites were stories of the saints and martyrs of the catholic church, for of course we are speaking now of times long before the reformation. the old testament stories and all the stories of the life of christ and his apostles were well known too, and just as we never tire of reading our favourite books over and over again, our forefathers of wanted to see on the walls of their churches representations of the stories which they could not read. their daily thoughts were more occupied with the infant christ, the saints, and the angels, than ours generally are. they thought of themselves as under the protection of some saint, who would plead with god the father for them if they asked him, for god himself seemed too high or remote to be appealed to always directly. he was approached with awe; the saints, the virgin, and the infant christ, with love. we must realise this difference before we can well understand a picture painted in the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries, nor can we look at one without feeling that the artist and the people for whom he painted, so loved the holy personages. they thought about them always, not only at stated times and on sundays, and never tired of looking at pictures of them and their doings. it is sometimes said that only catholics can understand medieval art, because they feel towards the saints as the old painters did. but it is possible for any one to realize how in those far-off days the people felt, and it is this that we must try to do. the religious fervour of the middle ages was not a sign of great virtue among all the people. some were far more cruel, savage, and unrestrained than we are to-day. very wicked men even became powerful dignitaries in the church. but it was the church that fostered the impulses of pity and charity in a fierce age, and some of the saints of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as st. francis of assisi and st. catharine of siena, are still held to be among the most beautiful characters the world has ever known. the churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in florence were lined with marble, and a great picture frequently stood above the altar. it is difficult to realize to-day that the processes which we call oil and water-colour painting were not then invented, and that no shops existed to sell canvases and paints ready for use. the artist painted upon a wooden panel, which he had himself to make, plane flat, and cut to the size he needed. in order to get a surface upon which he could paint, he covered the panel with a thin coating of plaster which it was difficult to lay on absolutely flat. upon the plaster he drew the outline of the figures he was going to paint, and filled in the background with a thin layer of gold leaf, such as is to-day used for gilding frames. after the background had been put in, it was impossible to correct the outline of the figures, and the labour of preparing the wooden panel and of laying the gold was so great that an artist would naturally not make risky attempts towards something new, lest he should spoil his work. in the jerusalem chamber of westminster abbey there is a thirteenth-century altar-piece of this kind, and you can see the strips of vellum that were used to cover the joins of the different pieces of wood forming the panel, beneath the layer of plaster, which has now to a great extent peeled off. the people liked to see their old testament stories and the stories from the life of christ painted over and over again. they had become fond of the versions of the tales which they had known and seen painted when they were young, and did not wish them changed, so that the range of subjects was not large. the same were repeated, and because of the painter's fear of making mistakes it was natural that the same figures should be repeated too. thus, whatever the subject pictured, a tradition was formed in each locality for the grouping and general arrangement of the figures, and the most authoritative tradition for such typical groupings was preserved in constantinople or byzantium, from which city the 'byzantine' school of painting takes its name. before , byzantium had been a centre of residence and the civilizing influence of trade for eighteen centuries. it had been the capital of the roman empire, and less civilized peoples from the north had never conquered the town, destroying the greek and roman traditions, as happened elsewhere in europe. you have read how the romans had to withdraw their armies from england to defend rome against the attacks of the goths from the north, and then how britain was settled by angles, saxons, jutes, and danes, who destroyed most of the roman civilization. a similar though much less complete destruction took place in italy a little later, when goths and lombards, who were remotely akin to the angles and saxons, overwhelmed roman culture. but next to constantinople, rome had the best continuous tradition of art, for the fine monuments of the great imperial days still existed in the city. in byzantium the original greek population struggled on, and continued to paint, and make mosaics, and erect fine buildings, till the turks conquered them in . the byzantines were wealthy and made exquisite objects in gold, precious stones, and ivory. while they were painting better than any other people in europe, they too reproduced the same subjects and the same figures over and over again, only the figures were more graceful than those of the local italian, english, and french artists, who in varying degrees at different times tried to paint like the byzantine or greek artists, but without quite the same success. so long as there was no need for an artist to paint anything but the old well-established subjects, and so long as people desired them to be painted in the old conventional manner, there was little reason why any painter should try to be original and paint what was not wanted. but in the thirteenth century a great change took place. let us here refresh our memories of what we may have read of that delightful saint, francis of assisi. he was born in , the son of a well-to-do nobleman, in the little town of assisi in umbria, and as a lad became inflamed with the ideal of the religious life. but instead of entering one of the existing monastic orders, where he would have been protected, he gave away every possession he had in the world and adopted 'poverty' as his watchword. clad in an old brown habit, he walked from place to place preaching charity, obedience, and renunciation of all worldly goods. he lived on what was given to him to eat from day to day; he nursed the lepers and the sick. ever described as a most lovable person, he won by his preaching the hearts of people of all classes, from the king of france to the humblest peasant. he wrote beautiful hymns in praise of the sun, the moon, and the stars, and had a great love for every living thing. the birds were said to have flocked around him because they loved him, and we read that he talked to them and called them his 'little sisters.' an old writer tells this story in good faith: when st. francis spake words to them, the birds began all of them to open their beaks and spread their wings and reverently bend their heads down to the ground, and by their acts and by their songs did show that the holy father gave them joy exceeding great. wherever he preached he made converts who 'married holy poverty,' as st. francis expressed it, gave up everything they had, and lived his preaching and roaming life. st. francis himself had no idea of forming a monastic order. he wished to live a holy life in the world and show others how to do the same, and for years he and his companions worked among the poor, earning their daily bread when they could, and when they could not, begging for it. gradually, however, ambition stirred in the hearts of some of the followers of francis, and against the will of their leader they made themselves into the order of franciscan friars, collected gifts of money, and began to build churches and monastic buildings. at first the buildings were said to belong to the pope, who allowed the franciscans to use them, since they might not own property; but after the death of st. francis, the order built churches throughout the length and breadth of italy, not of marble and mosaic but of brick, since brick was cheaper; but the brick walls were plastered, and upon the wet plaster there were painted scenes from the life of st. francis, side by side with the old christian and saintly legends. this sudden demand for painted churches with paintings of new subjects, stirred the painters of the day to alter their old style. when an artist was asked to paint a large picture of st. francis preaching to the birds, he had to look at real birds and he had to study a real man in the attitude of preaching. there was no scene that had ever been painted from the life of christ or of any saint in which a man preached to a bird, so that the artist was driven to paint from nature instead of copying former pictures. let us now read what a painter who lived in the sixteenth century, vasari by name, wrote about the rise of painting in his native city. some learned people nowadays say that vasari was wrong in many of the stories he told, but after all he lived much nearer than we do to the times he wrote about, and it is safer to believe what he tells us than what modern students surmise, except when they are able to cite other old authorities to which vasari did not have access. the endless flood of misfortunes which overwhelmed unhappy italy not only ruined everything worthy of the name of a building, but completely extinguished the race of artists, a far more serious matter. then, as it pleased god, there was born in the year , in the city of florence, giovanni, surnamed cimabue, to shed the first light on the art of painting. instead of paying attention to his lessons, cimabue spent the whole day drawing men, horses, houses, and various other fancies on his books and odd sheets, like one who felt himself compelled to do so by nature. fortune proved favourable to his natural inclination, for some greek artists were summoned to florence by the government of the city for no other purpose than the revival of painting in their midst, since the art was not so much debased as altogether lost. in this way cimabue made a beginning in the art which attracted him, for he often played the truant and spent the whole day in watching the masters work. thus it came about that his father and the artists considered him so fitted to be a painter that if he devoted himself to the profession he might look for honourable success in it, and to his great satisfaction his father procured him employment with the painters. thus by dint of continual practice and with the assistance of his natural talent he far surpassed the manner of his teachers. for they had never cared to make any progress and had executed their works, not in the good manner of ancient greece, but in the rude modern style of that time. cimabue drew from nature to the best of his powers, although it was a novelty to do so in those days, and he made the draperies, garments, and other things somewhat more life-like, natural, and soft than the greeks had done, who had taught one another a rough, awkward, and commonplace style for a great number of years, not by means of study but as a matter of custom, without ever dreaming of improving their designs by beauty of colouring or by any invention of worth. if you were to see a picture by cimabue (there is one in the national gallery which resembles his work so closely that it is sometimes said to be his), you would think less highly than vasari of the life-like quality of his art, though there is something dignified and stately in the picture of the virgin and child with angels that he painted for the church of st. francis at assisi. another story is told by vasari of a picture by cimabue, which tradition asserts to be the great madonna, still in the church of santa maria novella at florence. cimabue painted a picture of our lady for the church of santa maria novella. the figure was of a larger size than any which had been executed up to that time, and the people of that day who had never seen anything better, considered the work so marvellous that they carried it to the church from cimabue's house in a stately procession with great rejoicing and blowing of trumpets, while cimabue himself was highly rewarded and honoured. it is reported, and some records of the old painters relate, that while cimabue was painting this picture in some gardens near the gate of s. piero, the old king charles of anjou passed through florence. among the many entertainments prepared for him by the men of the city, they brought him to see the picture of cimabue. as it had not then been seen by any one, all the men and women of florence flocked thither in a crowd with the greatest rejoicings, so that those who lived in the neighbourhood called the place the 'joyful suburb' because of the rejoicing there. this name it ever afterwards retained, being in the course of time enclosed within the walls of the city. for this story we may thank vasari, because it helps us to realize the love the people of florence felt for the pictures in their churches, and the reverence in which they held an artist who could paint a more beautiful picture of the virgin and child than any they had seen before. it is difficult to think of the population of a town to-day walking in procession to honour the painter of a fine picture; but a picture of the madonna was a very precious thing indeed to a florentine of the thirteenth century, and we may try to imagine ourselves walking joyfully in that florentine procession so as the better to understand florentine art. i have repeated this legend about cimabue, because he was the master of giotto, who is called the father of modern painting. the story is that cimabue one day came upon the boy giotto, who was a shepherd, and found him drawing a sheep with a pointed piece of stone upon a smooth surface of rock. he was so much struck with the drawing that he took the boy home and taught him, and soon he in his turn far surpassed his master. in order to appreciate giotto we need to go to assisi, florence, or padua, for in each place he has painted a series of wall-paintings. in the great double church of assisi, built by the franciscans over the grave of st. francis within a few years of his death, giotto has illustrated the whole story of his life. an isolated reproduction of one scene would give you no idea of their power. in many respects he was an innovator, and by the end of his life had broken away completely from the byzantine school of painting. he composed each one of the scenes from the life of st. francis in an original and dramatic manner, and so vividly that a person unacquainted with the story would know what was going on. standing in the nave of the upper church, you are able to contrast these speaking scenes of the lives of people upon earth, with the faded glories of great-winged angels and noble madonnas with greek faces, that were painted in the byzantine style when the church was at its newest, before giotto was born. these look down upon us still from the east end of the church. giotto died in , and for the next fifty years painters in italy did little but imitate him. scenes from the life of st. francis and incidents from the legends of other saints remained in vogue, but they were not treated in original fashion by succeeding artists. the new men only tried to paint as giotto might have painted, and so far from surpassing him, he was never even equalled by his followers. we need not burden our memories with the names of these 'giottesque' artists; and now, after this glimpse of an almost vanished world, we will turn our attention to england and to the first picture of our choice. chapter iii richard ii. our first picture is a portrait of richard ii. on his coronation day in the year , when he was ten years old. it is the earliest one selected, and the eyes of those who see it for the first time will surely look surprised. the jewel-like effect of the sapphire-winged angels and coral-robed richard against the golden background is not at all what we are accustomed to see. nowadays it may take some time and a little patience before we can cast ourselves back to the year and look at the picture with the eyes of the person who painted it. let us begin with a search for his purpose and meaning at least. the picture is a diptych--that is to say, it is a painting done upon two wings or shutters hinged, so as to allow of their being closed together. you have no doubt been wondering why i called it a portrait, for the picture is far from being what to-day would commonly be described as such. richard himself is not even the most conspicuous figure; and he is kneeling and praying to the virgin. what should we think if any living sovereign, ordering a state portrait, had himself portrayed surrounded on one side by his predecessors on the throne, and on the other side by the virgin and child and angels? but, in the fourteenth century, it was nothing strange that the virgin and child, the angels, john the baptist, edward the confessor, edmund the martyr, and richard ii. should be thus depicted. when we have realized that it was usual for a royal patron to command and an artist to paint such an assemblage of personages, as though all of them were then living and in one another's presence, we have learnt something significant and impressive about a way of thinking in the middle ages. richard ii. thought of himself as the successor of a long line of kings, appointed by the divine power to rule a small portion of the divine territories, so what more natural than that he, as the newly reigning sovereign, should have his portrait painted, surrounded by his holiest predecessors upon the throne, and in the act of dedicating his kingdom to the virgin mary? in an account given of his coronation we read that, after the ceremony in westminster abbey, richard went to the shrine of our lady at pewe, near by, where he made a special offering to our lady of eleven angels, each wearing the king's badge, one for each of the eleven years of his young life. what form this offering of angels took, we know not; they may have been little wooden figures, or coins with an angel stamped upon them; but it is reasonable to connect the offering with this very picture of our lady and the angels. the king's special badges were the white hart and the collar of broom-pods which you see embroidered all over his magnificent red robe. the white hart is pinned in the form of a jewel beneath his collar, and each of the eleven angels bears the badge upon her shoulder and the collar of broom-pods round her neck. one of the king's angels gives the royal standard of england with the cross of st. george on it to the infant christ in token of richard's dedication of his kingdom to the virgin and child. edward iii. died at midsummer and richard succeeded him in his eleventh year, having been born on january , . it is necessary to note the exact day of the year when these events took place, for it can have importance in determining the saint whom a personage chiefly honoured as patron and protector. in this instance st. john the baptist, whose feast occurs on june , near to the day of richard's accession, obviously stands as patron saint of the young king. next to him is king edward the confessor, the founder of westminster abbey, who was canonized for his sanctity and who points to richard ii. as his spiritual successor upon the throne. in medieval art the saints are distinguished by their emblems, which often have an association with the grim way in which they met their death, or with some other prominent feature in their legend. here edward holds up a ring, whereof a pretty story is told. edward once took it off his finger to give it to a beggar, because he had no money with him. but the beggar was no other than john the evangelist in disguise, and two years later he sent the ring back to the king with the message that in six months edward would be in the joy of heaven with him. william caxton, the first english printer, relates in his life of king edward that when he heard the message he was full of joy and let fall tears from his eyes, giving praise and thanksgiving to almighty god. [illustration: richard ii. before the virgin and child from a picture by an unknown artist in the wilton house collection] st. edmund, who stands next to edward the confessor, is the other saintly king of england; after whom the town of bury st. edmunds takes its name. he was shot to death with arrows by the danes because he would not give up christianity. if i could show you several suitably chosen pictures at once, you would recognize in the arrangement of the three kings here (two standing, one kneeling before the virgin and child) a plain resemblance to the typical treatment of a well-known subject--the adoration of the magi. you remember how when the three wise men of the east--always thought of in the middle ages as kings--had followed the star which led them to the manger where christ was born, they brought him gold and frankincense and myrrh as offerings. this beautiful story was a favourite one in the middle ages, often represented in sculpture and painting. one king always kneels before the virgin and child, presenting his gift, whilst the other two stand behind with theirs in their hands. the standing kings and the kneeling richard in our picture, are grouped in just the same relation to the divine infant as the three magi. the imitation of the type is clear. there was a special reason for this, in that the birthday of richard fell upon january , the feast of the epiphany, when the wise men did homage to the babe. the picture, by reminding us of the three wise men, commemorated the birthday of the king as well as his coronation, the two chief dates of his life. you have some idea now of the train of thought which this fourteenth-century painter endeavoured to express in his picture commemorative of the coronation of a king. a medieval coronation was a very solemn ceremony indeed, and the picture had to be a serious expression of the great traditions of the throne of england, suggested by the figures of st. edward and st. edmund, and of hope for future good to the realm, to ensue from the blessings of the virgin and child upon the young king. religious feeling is dominant in this picture, and if from it you could turn to others of like date, you would find the same to be true. the meaning was the main thing thought of. when giotto painted his scenes from the life of st. francis, his first aim was that the stories should be well told and easily grasped by all who looked at them. their beauty was of less importance. this difference between the aim of art in the middle ages and in our own day is fundamental. if you begin by picking to pieces the pictures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries because the drawing is bad, the colouring crude, and the grouping unnatural, you might as well never look at them at all. putting faults and old fashions aside to think of the meaning of the picture, we shall often be rewarded by finding a soul within, and the work may affect us powerfully, notwithstanding its simple forms and few strong colours. nevertheless, after the painter had planned his picture so as to convey its message and meaning, he did try to make it beautiful to look upon, and he often succeeded. in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was beauty of outline and a pleasant patching together of bright colours for which the painters strove, both in pictures and in manuscripts. if you think of this picture for a moment as a coloured pattern, you will see how pretty it is. the blue wings against the gold background make a hedge for the angel faces and look extremely well. if the figure of richard ii. seems flat, if you feel as though he were cut out of cardboard and had no thickness, then turn your mind to consider only the outline of the figure. it is very graceful. artists in the thirteenth century sometimes made their figures over-long if they thought that a sweep of graceful line would look well in a certain position in their picture; the drapery was bent into impossible curves if so they fell into a pretty pattern. in the fourteenth century, beauty of outlines still prevailed, even when they contained plain masses of brilliant colour so pure and gem-like that the pictures almost came to look like stained-glass windows. in fact probably the constant sight of stained-glass windows in the churches greatly influenced the painters' way of work. the contrast of divers colours placed next one another was more startling than we find in later painting, whilst an effort was made to finish every detail as though it were to be looked at through a magnifying glass. in this picture which we are now learning how to see, the virgin was to be shown standing in a meadow of flowers. a modern artist knows how to paint the general effect of many flowers growing out of grass, but the medieval painter had not the skill to do that. he had not learnt to look at the effect of a mass of flowers as a whole, nor could he have rendered such an effect with the colours and processes he possessed. he knew what one flower looked like, and thought that many must be a continued repetition of one. but it was impossible to paint a great number of flowers close together, each finished in detail, so he chose instead to paint a few as completely as he could, and leave the rest to the imagination of the spectator. that was his way of making a selection from nature; thus he hoped to suggest the idea of a flowery meadow, since he could not hope to render the look of it. likewise, all the details of the dresses are minutely painted. the robes of richard and of edmund the martyr are beautiful examples of the careful and painstaking work characteristic of the middle ages. no medieval painter spared himself trouble. although he had not mastered the art of drawing the figure, he had learnt how to paint jewellery and stuffs beautifully, and delighted in doing it. the drawing of the figures you can see to be imperfect, yet nothing could be sweeter in feeling than the bevy of girl angels with roses in their hair surrounding the virgin. most of them are not unlike english girls of the present day, and the critics who say that this picture must have been painted by a frenchman may be asked where he is likely to have found these english models for his angels. possibly the face of richard himself may have been painted from life, for the features correspond closely enough with the large full-face portrait of him in westminster abbey, and with the sculptured figure upon his tomb. he certainly does not look like a child of ten, for his state robes and crown give him a grown-up appearance. but if you regard the face carefully you can see that it is still that of a child. the gold background in the original shines out brilliantly, for after the gold was laid on, it was polished with an agate, which gives it a burnished effect, and then the little patterns were carefully punched so as not to pierce the gold and thereby expose the white ground beneath. there is a jewel-like quality in the colour such as you can see in manuscripts of the time, and it is possible that the painter may have learned his art as an illuminator of manuscripts. artists in those days seldom confined themselves to one kind of work. we do not know this man's name, and are not even certain whether he was french or english. before, as in the time of richard, painting had been mainly a decorative art, and the object of making pictures was to adorn the pages of a book, or the walls and vaults of a building. the most vital artistic energies of western europe in the thirteenth century had gone into the building of the great cathedrals and abbeys, which are to-day the glory of that period. most medieval paintings that still exist in england are decorative wall-paintings of this kind, and only traces of a few remain. in many country places you can see poor and faded vestiges of painting which adorned church walls in the thirteenth century, and occasionally you may come upon a bit by some chance better preserved. these old wall-paintings were done upon the dry plaster. the discovery, or rather the revival, of 'fresco' painting (that is, of painting done upon the wet surface of freshly plastered walls, a more durable process) was made in italy and did not penetrate to england. richard ii. was not the only art-loving king of his time. you have read of john, king of france, who was taken prisoner at the battle of poitiers by the black prince, father of richard. during his captivity he lived in considerable state in london at the savoy palace, which occupied the site of the present savoy hotel in the strand; he brought his own painter from france with him, who painted his portrait which still exists in paris. this king john was the father of four remarkable sons, charles v., king of france, with whom edward iii. and the black prince fought the latter part of the hundred years' war; philip the bold, duke of burgundy; john, duke of berry; and louis, duke of anjou. in this list, all are names of remarkable men and great art-patrons, about whom you may some day read interesting things. numerous lovely objects still in existence were made for them, and would not have been made at all if they had not been the men they were. it was only just becoming possible in the fourteenth century for a prince to be an art-patron. that required money, and hitherto even princes had rarely been rich. the increasing wealth of england, france, and flanders at this time was based upon the wool industry and the manufacture and commerce to which it gave rise. the lord chancellor in the house of lords to this day sits on a woolsack, which is a reminder of the time when the woolsacks of england were the chief source of the wealth of english traders. after the black death, an awful plague that swept through europe in , a large part of the land of england was given up to sheep grazing, because the population had diminished, and it took fewer people to look after sheep than it did to till the soil. although this had been an evil in the beginning, it became afterwards a benefit, for english wool was sold at an excellent price to the merchants of flanders, who worked it up into cloth, and in their turn sold that all over europe with big profits. the larger merchants who regulated the wool traffic were prosperous, and so too the landowners and princes whose property thus increased in value. the four sons of king john became very wealthy men. philip the bold, duke of burgundy, by marrying the heiress of the count of flanders acquired the flemish territory and the wealth obtained from the wool trade and manufacture there. berry and anjou were great provinces in france yielding a large revenue to their two dukes. each of these princes employed several artists to illuminate books for him in the most splendid way; they built magnificent chateaux, and had tapestries and paintings made to decorate their walls. they employed many sculptors and goldsmiths, and all gave each other as presents works of art executed by their favourite artists. in the british museum there is a splendid gold and enamel cup that john, duke of berry, caused to be made for his brother king charles v.; to see it would give you a good idea of the costliness and elaboration of the finest work of that day. the courts of these four brothers were centres of artistic production in all kinds--sculpture, metal-work, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and pictures, and there was a strong spirit of rivalry among the artists to see who could make the loveliest things, and among the patrons as to which could secure the best artists in his service. these four princes gave an important impulse to the production of beautiful things in france, burgundy, and flanders, but it is needless to burden you with the artists' names. in the fourteenth century an artist was a workman who existed to do well the work that was desired of him. he was not an independent man with ideas of his own, who attempted to make a living by painting what he thought beautiful, without reference to the ideas of a buyer. of course, if people prefer and buy good things when they see them, good things will be likely to be made, but if those with money to spend have no taste and buy bad things or order ugly things to be made, then the men who had it in them to be great artists may die unnoticed, because the beautiful things they could have made are not called for. to-day many people spend something upon art and a few spend a great deal. let us hope we may not see too much of the money spent in creating a demand for what is bad rather than for what is beautiful. it was not unusual in the fourteenth century for a man to be at one and the same time painter, illuminator, sculptor, metal-worker, and designer of any object that might be called for. one of these many gifted men, andre beauneveu of valenciennes, a good sculptor and a painter of some exquisite miniatures, is sometimes supposed to have been the painter of our picture of richard ii. in the absence of any signature or any definite record it is impossible to say who painted it, but it is unnecessary to assume that it must have been painted by a french artist, since we know that at the end of the fourteenth century there were very good painters in england. it was by no means an exception not to sign a picture in those days, for the artists had not begun to think of themselves as individuals entitled to public fame. hand-workers of the fourteenth century mostly belonged to a corporation or guild composed of all the other workers at the same trade in the same town, and to this rule artists were no exception. each man received a recognized price for his work, and the officers of the guild saw to it that he obtained that price and that he worked with good and durable materials. there were certain advantages in this, but it involved some loss of freedom in the artist, since all had to conform to the rules of the guild. the system was characteristic of the middle ages, and arose from the fact that in those troublous times every isolated person needed protection and was content to merge his individuality in some society in order to obtain it. the guilds made for peace and diminished competition, so that a guildsman may have been less tempted to hurry over or scamp his task. the result was much honest, careful work such as you see in the original of this picture. we are told by those who know best that there has never been a time when the actual workmanship of the general run of craftsmen was better than in the middle ages. this picture of richard ii. has not faded or cracked or fallen off the panel, and it seems as though we may hope it never will, for it was well made and, what is even more important, it seems always to have been well cared for. if only the nice things that are produced were all well cared for, how many more of them there would be in the world! chapter iv the van eycks before passing to hubert van eyck, the painter of the original of our next picture, please compare carefully the picture of richard ii. and this of the three maries, looking first at one and then at the other. the subject of the visit of the maries to the sepulchre is, of course, well known to you, but let us read the beautiful passage from st. matthew telling of it, that we may see how faithfully in every detail it was followed by hubert van eyck. in the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came mary magdalene, and the other mary, to see the sepulchre. and, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. his countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. surely this would be thought a beautiful picture had it been painted at any time, but when you compare it with the richard ii. diptych does it not seem to you as though a long era divided the two? yet one was painted less than fifty years after the other. it is the attitude of mind of the painter that makes the difference. in the diptych, although the portrait of richard himself was a likeness, the setting was imaginary and symbolic. the artist wished to tell in his picture how all the kings who succeed one another upon the throne of england alike depend upon the protection of heaven, and how richard in his turn acknowledged that dependence, and pledged his loyalty to the blessed virgin and her holy child. that picture was intended to take the mind of the spectator away from the everyday world and suggest grave thought, and such was likewise in the main the purpose of all paintings in the middle ages. but we are now leaving the middle ages behind and approaching a new world nearer to our own. hubert van eyck, in attempting to depict the event at the sepulchre as it might actually have occurred outside the walls of the city of jerusalem, was doing something quite novel in his day. his picture might almost be called a bible illustration. it is at least painted in the same practical spirit as that of a man painting an illustration for any other book. it is not a picture meant to help one to pray, or meditate. it does not express any religious idea. it was intended to be the veracious representation of an actual event, shown as, and when, and how it happened, true to the facts so far as hubert knew them. [illustration: the three maries from the picture by hubert van eyck, in sir frederick cook's collection, richmond] he has dressed the maries in robes with wrought borders of hebrew characters, imitated from embroidered stuffs, such as at that time were imported into europe from the east. the dresses are not accurate copies of eastern dresses; hubert would scarcely have known what those were like, but was doing his best to paint costumes that should look oriental. mary magdalen wears a turban, and the keeper on the right has a strange peaked cap with hebrew letters on it. hebrew scholars have done their best to read the inscriptions on these clothes, but we must infer that hubert only copied the letters without knowing what they meant, since it has not been possible to make any sense of them. in the foreground are masses of flowers most carefully painted, and so accurately drawn that botanists have been able to identify them all; several do not grow in the north of europe. the town at the back is something like jerusalem as it looked in hubert van eyck's own day. a few of the buildings can be identified still, and a general view of jerusalem taken in , sixty years after the death of hubert, bears some resemblance to the town in this picture. the city is painted in miniature, much as it would look if you saw it from near at hand. every tower, house, and window is there. you can even count the battlements. the great building with the dome in the middle of the picture, is the mosque of omar, which occupies the supposed site of solomon's temple. some people have thought that perhaps hubert van eyck, and his brother john, actually went to the east. many men made pilgrimages in those days, and almost every year parties of christian pilgrims went to jerusalem. it was a rough and even a dangerous journey, but not at all impossible for a patient traveller. dr. hulin, who has made wonderful discoveries about the early flemish painters, found a mention, in an old sixteenth-century list, of a 'portrait of a moorish king or prince' by van eyck, painted in or perhaps . if he painted a portrait of an oriental prince, he may have visited one oriental country at least, or at any rate the south of spain. probably enough during that journey he made studies of the cypress, stone-pine, date-palm, olive, orange, and palmetto, which occur in his pictures. they grow in the south of spain and other mediterranean regions, but not in the cold north where hubert spent most of his days. it is difficult at first to realize what an innovation it was for hubert van eyck to paint such a landscape. in the richard ii. diptych there is just a suggestion of brown earth for the saints to stand upon, but the rest of the background is of gold, as was the common practice at the time. the great innovator, giotto, in some of his pictures had attempted to paint landscape backgrounds. in his fresco of st. francis preaching to the birds there is a tree for them to perch on, but it seems more like a garden vegetable than a tree. even his buildings look as though they might fall together any moment like a pack of cards. hubert not only gives landscape a larger place than it ever had in any great picture before, but he paints it with such skill and apparent confidence that we should never dream he was doing it almost for the first time. st. matthew says: 'as it began to _dawn_ towards the first day of the week, came mary magdalene, and the other mary, to see the sepulchre.' even in this point hubert wished to be accurate. the rising sun is hidden behind the rocks on the left side of the picture, for it was not until years later that any painter ventured to paint the sun in the heavens. but the rays from the hidden orb strike the castles on the hills with shafts of light. the town remains in shadow, while the sky is lit up with floods of glory. an effect such as this must have been very carefully studied from nature. hubert was evidently one who looked at the world with observant eyes and found it beautiful. when he had flowers to paint, he painted the whole plant accurately, not the blossoms individually, like the painter of richard ii. he liked fine stuffs, embroideries, jewels, and glittering armour. he was no visionary trying to free himself from the earth and live in contemplation of the angels and saints in paradise, like so many of the thirteenth and fourteenth century artists. in this new delightful interest in the world as it is, he reflected the tendency of his day. the fifty years that had elapsed between the painting of richard ii.'s portrait and the work of the van eycks, had seen a great development of trade and industry in flanders. hubert was born, perhaps about , at maas eyck, from which he takes his name. maas eyck was a little town on the banks of the river maas, near the frontier of the present holland and belgium. he may have spent most of his life in ghent, the town officials of which city paid him a visit in to see his work, and gave six groats to his apprentices in memory of their visit. where he learnt his art, where he worked before he came to ghent, we do not know for certain, but there is reason to think that he was employed for a while in holland by the count. john, his brother, concerning whom more facts have been gathered, is said to have been twenty years younger than hubert. he was a painter too, and worked in the employ of philip the good, duke of burgundy and count of flanders, the grandson of philip the bold, who was one of those four sons of king john of france mentioned in our last chapter. philip the good continued the traditions of his family and was in his time a great art-patron. his grandfather had fostered an important school of sculpture in flanders and burgundy, which culminated in the superb statues still existing at dijon. like his brother the duke of berry, he had given work to a number of miniature painters. the count of holland also employed some wonderful miniature painters to beautify a manuscript for him. this manuscript and one made for the duke of berry were among the finest ever painted so far as the pictures in them are concerned. the count of holland's book used to be in the library at turin, where it was burnt a few years ago, so we can see it no more. but the fortunate ones who did see it thought that the pictures in it were actually painted by the van eycks when they were young. the duke of berry's finest book is at chantilly and is well known. both this and the turin book contained the loveliest early landscapes, a little earlier in date than this landscape in the 'three maries' picture. so you see why it is said that the illuminators first invented beautiful landscape painting, and that landscapes were painted in books before they were painted as pictures to hang on walls. the practical spirit in which hubert van eyck worked exactly matched the sensible, matter-of-fact flemish character. the flemings, even in pictures of the madonna, wanted the virgin to wear a gown made of the richest stuff that could be woven, truthfully painted, with jewels of the finest flemish workmanship, and they liked to see a landscape behind her studied from their own native surroundings. no man could try to paint things as they looked, in the way hubert did, without making great progress in drawing. if you compare the drawing of the angel appearing to the maries with any of the angels wearing the badge of richard ii., you will see how much more life-like is the angel of hubert. the painter of richard ii. was not happy with his figures unless they were standing up or kneeling in profile, but hubert van eyck can draw them with tolerable success lying down, or sitting huddled. he can also combine a group in a natural manner. the absence of formal arrangement in the picture of the maries is quite new in medieval art. the painter of richard ii. had known very little about perspective. the science of drawing things as they look from one point of view has no doubt been taught to all of you. you know certain rules about vanishing points and can apply them in your drawing. but you would have found it very hard to invent perspective without being taught. i can remember drawing a matchbox by the light of nature, and very queer it contrived to become. medieval artists were in exactly that same case. the artists of the ancient world had discovered some of the laws of perspective, but the secret was lost, and artists in the middle ages had to discover them all over again. hubert van eyck made a great stride toward the attainment of this knowledge. when you look at the picture the perspective does not strike you as glaringly wrong, though there was still much that remained to be discovered by later men, as we shall see in our next chapter. the brothers van eyck were, first and foremost, good workmen. few other painters in the whole of the world's history have aimed at anything like the same finish of detail. in the original of this picture the oriental pot which the green mary holds in her hand is a perfect marvel of workmanship. there is no detail so small but that when you look into it you discover some fresh wonder. a story is told of how hubert van eyck painted a picture upon which he had lavished his usual painstaking care. but when he put it in the sun to dry, the panel cracked down the middle. after this disappointment hubert went to work and invented a new substance with which colours are made liquid, a 'medium' as it is called, which when mixed with colour dried hard and quickly. it was possible to paint with the new medium in finer detail than before, and the flemish artists universally adopted it. while very little was remembered about the facts of hubert van eyck's life, his name was always associated with the discovery of a new method of painting, and on that account held in great honour. the 'three maries' is in many respects the most attractive of the pictures ascribed to hubert, but his most famous work was a larger picture, or assemblage of pictures framed together, the 'adoration of the lamb,' in st. bavon's church at ghent. it is an altar-piece--a painting set up over an altar in a church or chapel to aid the devotions of those worshipping there. many of the panels of the ghent altar-piece are now in the museums of berlin and brussels. they belonged to the wings or shutters which were made to close over the central parts, and which used also to be painted outside and inside with devotional or related subjects. the four great central panels on which these shutters used to close are still at ghent. the subject of the 'adoration of the lamb' was taken from revelations, where before the lamb has opened the seals of the book, st. john says: and every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard i saying, blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the lamb for ever and ever. hubert has figured this verse by assembling, as in one time and place, representatives of christendom. they who worship are the prophets, apostles, popes, martyrs, and virgins. on each side of the central panel the just judges, the soldiers of christ, the hermits, and the pilgrims, advance to join the throng around the lamb. most beautiful of all is the crowd of virgin martyrs bearing palms, moving over the green grass carpeted with flowers, to adore the lamb of god, the redeemer of the world. above, god the father, the virgin mother, and st. john the baptist, with crowns of wonderful workmanship, are throned amid choirs of singing and playing angels on either hand. the picture does not illustrate the description of the adoration of the lamb in the fifth chapter of revelations so faithfully as the picture of the 'three maries' illustrated st. matthew. the lamb has not seven horns and seven eyes, and the four beasts and twenty-four elders are not falling down before it and adoring. the lamb is an ordinary sheep, and the picture is a symbolic expression of the catholic faith, founded upon a biblical text, but not what could be described as 'a bible illustration.' people in the middle ages liked to embody their faith in a visible form, and we are told that theologians frequently drew up schemes of doctrine which painters did their best to translate into pictures, and sculptors into sculpture. such works of art were for instruction rather than beauty, though some also served well the purpose of decoration. josse vyt, who ordered the picture, and whose portrait, with that of his wife, is painted on the shutters, no doubt explained exactly what he wanted, and hubert sought to please him.[ ] but although the design of the central panel was old-fashioned and symbolic, hubert was able to do what he liked with the landscape, and with the individual figures. they are real men and women with varieties of expression such as had not been painted before, and the landscape is even more beautiful than the one at the back of the 'three maries.' snow mountains rise in the distance, and beautiful cypresses and palms of all kinds clothe the green slopes behind the lamb. there are flowers in the grass and jewels for pebbles in the brook. behind, you can see the cathedrals of utrecht and cologne, st. john's of maestricht, and more churches and houses besides, and the walls of a town, and wide stretches of green country. [footnote : there are reasons for thinking that the picture may have been ordered by some prince who died before it was finished, and that vyt only acquired it later, in time to have his own and his wife's portraits added on the shutters.] hubert van eyck died in , and the picture was finished by his younger brother john, of whose life, though more is known than of hubert's, we need not here repeat details. many of his pictures still exist, and the most delightful of them for us are his portraits. he was not the first man to paint good portraits, but few artists have ever painted better likenesses. it seems evident that the people in his pictures are 'as like as they can stare,' with no wrinkle or scratch left out. portraits in earlier days than these were seldom painted for their own sake alone. a pious man who wanted to present an altar-piece or a stained-glass window to a church would modestly have his own image introduced in a corner. by degrees such portraits grew in size and scale, and the neighbouring saints diminished, till at last the saints were left out and the portrait stood alone. then it came about that such a picture was hung in its owner's house rather than in a church. one of the best portraits john van eyck ever painted is at bruges--the likeness of his wife. the panel was discovered about fifty years ago in the market-place of bruges, where an old woman was using the back of it to skin eels on; but so soundly had the picture been painted that even this ill-usage did not ruin it. the lady was a very plain flemish woman with no beauty of feature or expression, but john has revealed her character so vividly that to look at her likeness is to know her. it is indeed a long leap from the richard ii. of fifty years before, with its representation of the outline of a youth, to this ample realization of a mature woman's character. john lived till , and had some pupils and many imitators. one of these, roger van der weyden by name, spread his influence far and wide throughout the whole of the netherlands, france, and germany. how important this influence was in the history of art we shall see later. many of the imitators of john learnt his accuracy and thoroughness of workmanship, but none of them attained his deep insight into character. during the next fifty years many and beautiful were the pictures produced throughout flanders. all of them have a jewel-like brilliance of colour, approaching in brightness the hues of the richard ii. diptych. the landscape backgrounds are charming miniatures of towns by the side of rivers with spanning bridges. the painting of textures is exquisite. but the flemish face, placid, plump, and fair-haired, prevails throughout. in the pictures of paradise, where the saints and angels play with the infant christ, we still feel chained to the earth, because the figures and faces are the unidealized images of those one might have met in the streets of bruges and ghent. this is not a criticism on the artists. the merit of their work is unchallenged; and how could they paint physical beauty by them scarce ever seen? yet when all has been said in praise of the flemish school, the brothers van eyck, the founders of it, remain its greatest representatives, and their work is still regarded with that high and almost universal veneration which is the tribute of the greatest achievement. chapter v the renaissance who is this old gentleman in our next picture reading so quietly and steadily? does he not look absorbed in his book? certainly the peacock, the bird, and the cat do not worry him or each other, and there is still another animal in the distance--a lion! can you see him? he is walking down the cloister pavement on the right, with his foot lifted as though it were hurt. the story is that this particular lion limped into the monastery in which this old man lived, and while all the other monks fled in terror, this monk saw that the lion's fore-paw was hurt. he raised it up, found what was the matter, and pulled out the thorn; and ever afterwards the lion lived peacefully in the monastery with him. now, whenever you see a lion in a picture with an old monk, him you will know to be st. jerome. he was a learned christian father who lived some fifteen hundred years ago, yet his works are still read, spoken, and heard every day throughout the world. he it was who made the standard latin version of the scriptures. the services in roman catholic churches in all countries are held in latin to this day, and st. jerome's translation of the bible, called the vulgate, is the version still in use. here you see st. jerome depicted sitting in his own study, reading to prepare himself for his great undertaking; and what a study it is! you must go to the national gallery to enjoy all the details, for the original painting is only inches high by inches broad, and the books and writing materials are so tiny that some are inevitably lost in this beautiful photograph. the study is really a part of a monastery assigned to st. jerome himself, his books, manuscripts, and other such possessions. he has a pot of flowers and a dwarf tree, and a towel to dry his hands on, and a beautiful chair at his desk. he has taken off his dusty shoes and left them at the foot of the steps. the painter of this picture, must have had in his mind a very happy idea of st. jerome. others have sometimes painted him as they thought he looked when living in a horrible desert, as he did for four years. but at the time this picture was painted, about the year , st. jerome in his study was a more usual subject for painters than st. jerome in the desert. one reason of this was that in italy, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, st. jerome was considered the patron saint of scholars, and for the first time since the fall of the roman empire, scholars were perhaps the most influential people of the day. [illustration: st. jerome in his study from the picture by antonello da messina, in the national gallery, london] of course you all know something about the remarkable revival of learning in the fifteenth century, which started in italy, spread northward, and reached england in the reign of henry viii. before the fifteenth century, italians seem to have been indifferent to the monuments around them of ancient civilization. suddenly they were fired with a passion for antiquity. they learnt greek and began to take a keen interest in the doings of the greeks and romans, who in many ways had lived a life so far superior to their own. artists studied the old statues, which taught them the beauty of the human figure. the reacquired wisdom of the ancients by degrees broke down the medieval barriers. there was born a spirit of enterprise into the world of thought as well as into the world of fact, which revolutionized life and art. the period which witnessed this great mental change is well known as the renaissance or 'rebirth.' when you first looked at this picture you must have thought it very different from the two earlier ones. such a subject could only have been painted thus in an age when men admired the scholar's life. though the figure is called that of st. jerome, there is really nothing typically saintly about him; he is only serious. the subjects chosen by painters of the renaissance were no longer almost solely religious, but began to be selected from the world of everyday life; even when the subject was taken from christian legend, it was now generally treated as an event happening in the actual world of the painter's own day. the manner in which this picture is painted is still more suggestive of change than the subject itself. our artist knew a great deal about the new science of perspective, for instance. one might almost think that, pleased with his new knowledge, he had multiplied the number of objects on the shelves so as to show how well he could foreshorten them. medieval painters had not troubled about perspective, and were more concerned, as we have seen, to make a pretty pattern of shapes and colours for their pictures. the van eycks, as we noted, only acquired the beginnings of an understanding of it, and were very proud of their new knowledge. it was in italy that all the rules were at last brought to light. the renaissance period in italy may be considered as lasting from to . the pioneer artists who mastered perspective and worked at the human figure till they could draw it correctly in any attitude, lived in the first seventy-five years of the fifteenth century. they were the breakers of stone and hewers of wood who prepared the way for the greater artists of the end of the century, but in the process of learning, many of them painted very lovely things. the painter of our picture lived within those seventy-five years. he was, probably, a certain antonello of messina--that same town in sicily recently wrecked by earthquakes. of his life little is known. he seems to have worked chiefly in venice where there was a fine school of painting during the renaissance period; his senior giovanni bellini, one of the early great painters of venice, some of whose pictures are in the national gallery, taught him much. it is also said that antonello went to the netherlands and there learnt the method of laying paint on panel invented by the van eycks. modern students say he did not, but that he picked up his way of painting in italy. certainly he and other venetians and italians about this time improved their technical methods as the van eycks had done, and this picture is an early example of that more brilliant fashion of painting. there is here a flemish love of detail. the italian painters had been more accustomed to painting upon walls than the flemings, for the latter had soon discovered that a damp northern climate was not favourable to the preservation of wall-paintings. fresco does not admit of much detail, as each day's work has to be finished in the day, before the plaster dries. thus, a long tradition of fresco painting had accustomed the italian painters to a broad method of treatment, which they maintained to a certain extent even in their panel pictures. but in our st. jerome we see a wealth of detail unsurpassed even by john van eyck. one needs a magnifying-glass to see everything there is to be seen in the landscape through the window on the left. besides the city with its towers and walls and the mountains behind, there is a river in the foreground where two little people are sitting in a boat. observe every tiny stone in the pavement, and every open page of the books on the shelves. here, too, is breadth in the handling. hold the book far away from you, so that the detail of the picture vanishes and only the broad masses of the composition stand out. you still have what is essential. the picture is one in which italian feeling and sentiment blend with flemish technique and love of little things. there has always been something of a mystery about the picture, and you must not be surprised some day if you hear it asserted that antonello did not paint it at all. such changes in the attributions of unsigned paintings are not uncommon. one of the greatest pioneer artists of the fifteenth century was andrea mantegna of padua in the north of italy. more than any other painter of his day, he devoted himself to the study of ancient sculpture, even to the extent of sometimes painting in monochrome to imitate the actual marble. paintings by him, which look like sculptured reliefs, are in the national gallery; and at hampton court is a series of cartoons representing the triumph of julius caesar, in which the conception and the handling are throughout inspired by old roman bas-reliefs. in other pictures of his, the figures look as though cast of bronze, for he was likewise influenced by the sculptors of his own day, particularly by the florentine donatello, one of the geniuses of the early renaissance. mantegna's studies of form in sculpture made him an excellent draughtsman. strangely enough, it was this very severe artist who was, perhaps, the first to depict the charm of babyhood. often he draws his babes wrapped in swaddling clothes, with their little fingers in their mouths, or else in the act of crying, with their eyes screwed up tight, and their mouths wide open. such a combination of hard sculpturesque modelling with extreme tenderness of feeling has a charm of its own. we have now just one more picture of a sacred subject to look at, one of the last that still retains much of the old beautiful religious spirit of the middle ages. the painter of it, sandro botticelli, a florentine, in whom were blended the piety of the middle ages and the intellectual life of the renaissance, was a very interesting man, whose like we shall not find among the painters of his own or later days. he was born in , in florence, the city in italy most alive to the new ideas and the new learning. its governing family, the medici, of whom you have doubtless read, surrounded themselves with a brilliant society of accomplished men, and adorned their palaces with the finest works of art that could be produced in their time. the best artists from the surrounding country were attracted to florence in the hope of working for the family, who were ever ready to employ a man of artistic gifts. in such an atmosphere an original and alert person like botticelli could not fail to keep step with the foremost of his day. his fertile fancy was charmed by the revived stories of greek mythology, and for a time he gave himself up to the painting of pagan subjects such as the birth of venus from the sea, and the lovely allegory of spring with venus, cupid, and the three graces. he was one of the early artists to break through the old wall of religious convention, painting frankly mythological subjects, and he did them in an exquisite manner all his own. the true spirit of beauty dwelt within him, and all that he painted and designed was graceful in form and beautiful in colour. if, for instance, you look closely into the designs of the necks of dresses in his pictures, you will find them delightful to copy and far superior to the ordinary designs for such things made to-day. in his love of beauty and his keen appreciation of the new possibilities of painting he was a true child of the renaissance, though he had not the joyous nature so characteristic of the time. moreover, as i have said, he retained the old sweet religious spirit, and clothed it with new forms of beauty in his sacred paintings. there is something pathetic about many of these--the virgin, while she nurses the infant christ, seems to foresee all the sorrow in store for her, and but little of the joy. the girl angels who nestle around her in so many of his pictures, have faces of exquisite beauty, but in most of them, notwithstanding the fact that they are evidently painted from florentine girls of the time, botticelli has infused his own personal note of sadness. at the end of the fifteenth century, when botticelli was beginning to grow old, great events took place in florence. despite the revival of learning, we are told by historians that the church was becoming corrupt and the people more pleasure-loving and less interested in the religious life. then it was that savonarola, a friar in one of the convents of florence, all on fire with enthusiasm for purity and goodness, began to awaken the hearts of the people with his burning eloquence, and his denunciations of their worldliness and the deadness of the church. he prophesied a great outpouring of the wrath of god, and in particular that the church would be purified and renewed after a quick and terrible punishment. the passion, the conviction, the eloquence of savonarola for a time carried the people of florence away, and botticelli with them, so that he became one of the 'mourners' as the preacher's followers were called. at this time many persons burnt in great 'bonfires of vanities' all the pretty trinkets that they possessed. but when the prophecies did not literally come true, and the people began to be weary of savonarola's vehemence, we read that a reaction set in, which afforded a chance for his enemies within the church, whom he had lashed with his tongue from the pulpit of the cathedral. they contrived to have him tried for heresy and burnt in the market-place of florence, in the midst of the people who so shortly before had hung on every word that fell from his lips. this tragedy entirely overwhelmed botticelli, who thenceforward almost abandoned painting, and gave up his last years to the practices of the religious life. it was at this time, says mr. horne, and under the influence of these emotions, in the year , when he was sixty years of age, that he painted the picture here reproduced, as an illustration to the prophecies of savonarola, and a tribute to his memory. savonarola had been wont to use the descriptions, in the book of revelations, of the woes that were to fall upon the earth before the building of the new jerusalem, to illustrate his prophecy of the scourge that was to come upon italy, before the church became purified from the wickedness of the times. at the top of the picture is written in greek: i, sandro, painted this picture at the end of the year , during the troubles of italy, in the half year after the first year of the loosing of the devil for - / years, in accordance with the fulfilment of the th chapter of the revelations of st. john. then shall the devil be chained, according to the th chapter, and we shall see him trodden down as in the picture. the devil which was loosed for three and a half years stood for the stage of wickedness through which botticelli believed that florence was passing in . in the bottom corners of the picture you can see minute little devils running away discomfited; otherwise all is pure joy and peace, symbolic of the gladness to come upon italy when the church had been purified: when life is difficult, i dream of how the angels dance in heaven. of how the angels dance and sing in gardens of eternal spring, because their sins have been forgiven.... and never more for them shall be the terrors of mortality. when life is difficult, i dream of how the angels dance in heaven....[ ] [footnote : by lady alfred douglas.] that is what botticelli dreamed. he saw the beautiful angels in green, white, and red dancing with joy, because of the birth of their saviour, and into their hands he put scrolls, upon which were written:--'glory to god in the highest.' the rest of the verse, 'peace and goodwill towards men' is on the scrolls of the shepherds, brought by the angel to behold the babe lying in the manger. the three men, embraced with such eagerness and joy by the three angels in the foreground, are savonarola and his two chief companions, burnt with him, who, after their long suffering upon earth, have found reward and happiness in heaven. [illustration: the nativity from the picture by sandro botticelli, in the national gallery, london] such is the meaning of this beautiful little picture, as spiritual in idea as any of the paintings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. but while the earlier painters had striven with inadequate powers to express the religious feeling that was in them, botticelli's skill matched his thought. his drawing of the angels in their greek dresses is very lovely, and one scarce knows in any picture a group surpassing that of the three little ones upon the roof of the manger, nor will you soon see a lovelier virgin's face than hers. botticelli had great power of showing the expression in a face, and the movement in a figure. here the movements may seem overstrained, a fault which grew upon him in his old age; the angel, with the two shepherds on the right, has come skimming over the ground and points emphatically at the babe, and the angel in front embraces savonarola with vehemence. the artists of the early renaissance had learnt with so much trouble to draw figures in motion that their pleasure in their newly acquired skill sometimes made them err by exaggeration as their predecessors by stiffness. the way in which botticelli treated this subject of the nativity of christ, is, as you see, very different from the way in which hubert van eyck painted the three maries at the sepulchre. we saw how the latter pictured the event as actually taking place outside jerusalem. to botticelli the nativity of christ was emblematic of a new and happier life for people in florence, with the church regenerated and purified, as christ would have wished it to be. to him the nativity was a symbol of purity, so he painted the picture as a commentary on the event, not as an illustration of the biblical text. the angels rejoice in heaven as the shepherds upon earth, the devils flee away discomfited, and savonarola and his companions obtain peace after the tribulations of life. such was the message of botticelli in the picture here reproduced. chapter vi raphael the original of our next picture is very small, only seven inches square, yet i hope it will instantly appeal to you. the name of the artist, raphael, is perhaps the most familiar of all the names of the old masters, mainly, it may be, because he was the painter of the sistine madonna, the best known and best loved of madonnas. when raphael drew and painted this picture of the 'knight's dream,' about the year , he was himself like a young knight, at the outset of his short and brilliant career. as a boy he was handsome, gifted, charming. his nature is said to have been as lovely as his gifts were great, and he passed his short life in a triumphant progress from city to city and court to court, always working hard and always painting so beautifully that he won the admiration of artists, princes, and popes. his father, giovanni santi, was a painter living in the town of urbino, in central italy, but raphael when quite young went to perugia to study with the painter perugino, a native of that town. perugia stands upon a high hill, like the hill in the background of the picture of the 'knight's dream,' only higher, for from it you can overlook the wide umbrian plain as far as assisi--the home of st. francis--which lies on the slope of the next mountain. that beautiful umbrian landscape, in which all the towns look like castles perched upon the top of steep hills, with wide undulating ground between, occurs frequently in the pictures of perugino, and often in those of his pupil raphael. if you have once seen the view from perugia for yourself, you will realize how strongly it took hold of the imagination of the young painter. raphael had a most impressionable mind. it was part of his genius that, from every painter with whom he came in contact he imbibed the best, almost without knowing it. the artists of his day, michelangelo, leonardo da vinci, and the other great men, were each severally employed in working out once and for all some particular problem in connection with their art. michelangelo, a giant in intellect, painter, sculptor, architect, and poet, studied the human body as it had not been studied since the days of ancient greece. his sculptured figures on the tombs of the medici in florence rank second only to those of the greatest greek sculptors, and his ceiling in the sistine chapel is composed of a series of masterpieces of figure-painting. he devoted himself largely in his sculpture and his painting to the representation of the naked human body, and made it futile in his successors to plead ignorance as an excuse for bad drawing. as a colourist he was not pre-eminent, and his few panel pictures are for the most part unfinished. leonardo da vinci, the older contemporary of raphael, first in florence and afterwards in the north of italy, left a colossal reputation and but few pictures, for in his search after perfection he became dissatisfied with what he had done and is said to have destroyed one masterpiece after another. for him the great interest in the aspect of man and woman was not so much the form of the body as the expression of the face. what was fantastic and weird fascinated him. at windsor are designs he made for the construction of an imaginary beast with gigantic claws. he once owned a lizard, and made wings for it with quicksilver inside them, so that they quivered when the lizard crawled. he put a dragon's mask over its head, and the result was ghastly. the tale gives us a side light on this extraordinary personage. when you are led to read more about him you will feel the fascination of his strong, yet perplexing personality. the faces in his pictures are wonderful faces, with a fugitive mocking smile and a seeming burden of strange thought. by mastery of the most subtle gradations of light, his heads have an appearance of solidity new in painting, till raphael and some of his contemporaries learnt the secret from leonardo. heretofore, italian painters had been contented to bathe their pictures in a flood of diffused light, but he experimented also with effects of strong light and shade on the face. his landscape backgrounds are an almost unearthly cold grey, and include the strangest forms of rock and mountain. his investigations into several of the scientific problems connected with art led to results which affected in an important degree the work of many later artists. if raphael had less originality than michelangelo or leonardo, if leonardo was the first artist to obtain complete mastery over the expression of the face and michelangelo over the drawing of the figure, raphael was able to profit at once by whatever they accomplished. yet never was he a mere imitator, for all that he absorbed became tinged with a magical charm in his fertile brain, a charm so personal that his work can hardly be mistaken for that of any other artist. our picture of a 'knight's dream' was probably painted while raphael was under the influence of a master named timoteo viti, whose works you are not likely to know, or much care about when you see them. it was just after he had painted it that he came into perugino's hands. although the 'knight's dream' is so small, and raphael was but a boy when he painted it, the picture has the true romantic air, characteristic of the joyful years of the early renaissance. he does not seem to have felt the conflict between the old religious ideal and the new pursuit of worldly beauty as botticelli felt it. yet he chose the competition of these two ideals as the subject of this picture. the knight, clothed in bright armour and gay raiment, bearing no relation at all to the clothes worn in , rests upon his shield beneath the slight shade of a very slender tree. in his dream there appear to him two figures, both of whom claim his knightly allegiance for life: one, a young and lovely girl in a bright coloured dress with flowers in her hair, tempts him to embrace a life of mirth, of jest and youthful jollity, quips and cranks and wanton wiles, nods and becks and wreathed smiles. the other resembles the same poet's pensive nun, devout and pure, sober, steadfast, and demure. she holds sword and book, symbols of stern action and wise accomplishment. which the knight will choose we are not told, perhaps because raphael himself never had to make the choice. he was too gifted and too fond of work to be tempted from it by anything whatever. always joyous and always successful, he was able to paint any subject, sacred, profane, ancient, or modern, so long as it was a happy one. he was too busy and too gay to feel pain and sorrow, as botticelli felt them, and to paint sad subjects. to him the visible world was good and beautiful, and the invisible world lovely and happy likewise. his madonnas are placid or smiling mothers. the fat and darling babies they hold are indeed divine but not awesome. yet the extraordinary sweetness of expression, nobility of form, and beauty of colouring in the madonnas make you almost hold your breath when you look at them. in the 'knight's dream' there is a simple beauty in the pose and grouping of the figures. you can hardly fancy three figures better arranged for the purpose of the subject. there is something inevitable about them, which is the highest praise due to a mastery of design in the art of composition. raphael's surpassing gift was in fitting beautiful figures into any given space, so that it seems as though the space had been made to fit the figures, instead of the figures to fit the space. you could never put his round madonnas into a square frame. the figures would look as wrong as in a round frame they look right. if you were to cut off a bit of the foreground in any of his pictures and add the extra piece to the sky, you would make the whole look wrong, whereas perhaps you might add on a piece of sky to hubert van eyck's 'three maries' without spoiling the effect. [illustration: the knight's dream from the picture by raphael, in the national gallery, london] the colouring of the picture, too, is jewel-like and lovely, but the uncoloured drawing is itself full of charm. the grace of line, which was to distinguish all the works of his mature years, is already manifest in this effort of his boyhood. it seems to foretell the sweep of the virgin's drapery in the sistine madonna, and the delightful maze of curves flowing together and away again and returning upon themselves which outline the face, the arms, hands, and draperies of st. catherine in the national gallery. you will find it well worth a little trouble to look long and closely at one of raphael's well-known madonnas till you clearly see how the composition of all the parts of it is formed by the play of long and graceful curves. you can see from the drawing of the 'knight's dream,' which is hung quite near the painting in the national gallery, how carefully raphael thought out the detail of the picture before he began to paint. he seems even to have been afraid that he might not be able to draw it again so perfectly; therefore he placed the drawing over the panel and pricked it through. the marks of the pin are quite clear, and it brings one nearer this great artist to follow closely the process of his work. it makes the young boy genius of almost seem akin to the struggling boy and girl artists of the present time. from perugia raphael went to florence, where he painted a number of his most beautiful madonnas. then, in , he was called to rome by pope julius ii. to decorate some rooms in the vatican palace. the renaissance popes were possessed of so great wealth, and spent it to such purpose, that its spending influenced the art of their age. many of the rooms in the vatican had been decorated by botticelli and other good artists of the previous half-century, but already the new pope considered their work out of date and ordered it to be replaced by michelangelo and raphael. for nine years raphael worked at the decoration of the palace, always being pressed, hurried, and even worried by two successive popes who employed him. the wall spaces which he had to fill were often awkwardly broken up with windows and doors, but he easily overcame whatever difficulties were encountered. to succeed apparently without struggle was a peculiar gift granted to raphael above any other artist of his day. the frescoes painted by him in the vatican illustrated subjects from greek philosophy and medieval church history, as well as from the old and new testament. as an illustrator of sacred writ he never attempted that verisimilitude in eastern surroundings to which hubert van eyck leaned, neither was he satisfied with the dress of his own day in which other painters were wont to clothe their sacred characters. the historical sense, which has driven some modern artists to much antiquarian research to discover exactly what peter and paul must have worn, did not exist before the nineteenth century. raphael felt, nevertheless, that the clothes of the renaissance were hardly suitable for noah and abraham, so he invented a costume of his own, founded upon roman dress, but different from oriental or contemporary clothes. the scripture illustrations of raphael most familiar to you may probably be his cartoon designs for tapestry in the south kensington museum, which were bought by charles i. in these you can see what is meant about the clothes, but you will not be surprised at them, because the same have been adopted by the majority of bible illustrators ever since the days of raphael. his pictures became so popular that it was thought whatever he did must be right. the dress was a mere detail in his work, but it was easy to copy and has been copied persistently from that day to this. it is curious to think that the long white robes, which christ wears in the illustrations of our present-day sunday school books and other religious publications, are all due to imitation of raphael's designs. the first room he finished for julius ii. was so rich in effect and beautiful in colour that the pope could scarcely wait for more rooms as fine. raphael had to call in a large number of assistants to enable him to cover the walls fast enough to please the pope, and the quality of the work began to deteriorate. the uneven merit of his frescoes foretold the consequence of overwork despite his matchless facility and power. but in his panel pictures, when he was not hurried, his work continued to improve until he reached his crowning achievement in the sistine madonna painted three years before his death. raphael was thirty-seven when he died in , and very far from coming to the end of his powers of learning. each picture that he painted revealed to him new difficulties to conquer, and new experiments to try, in his art. we seem compelled to think that had he lived and laboured for another score of years, the history of painting in italy might have been different. in rome and florence no successor attempted to improve upon his work. his pupils and assistants were more numerous than those of any other painter, but when they had obtained some of his facility of drawing and painting they were contented. none of them had raphael's genius, yet all wished to paint like him; so that for the following fifty years rome and florence and southern italy were flooded with inferior raphaelesque paintings, which tended to become more slip-shod in execution as time went on, and more devoid of any personal note. it was just as though his imitators had learnt to write beautifully and then had had little to say. leonardo da vinci died a few months before raphael. several of his pupils were artists of ability, and lived to carry on his traditions of painting in the north of italy. leonardo himself had been so erratic, produced so little, and so few of his pictures survive, that many know him best in his pupils' work, or through copies and engravings of his great 'last supper'--a picture that became an almost total wreck upon the walls of the refectory in milan, for which it was painted. his influence upon his contemporaries at milan was very great, so that during some years hardly a picture was painted there which did not show a likeness to the work of leonardo. he had created a type of female beauty all his own. the face will impress itself upon your memory the first time you see it, whether in a picture by leonardo or in one by a pupil. you can see it in the national gallery in the great 'madonna of the rocks,' and in the magnificent drawing at burlington house. it is not a very beautiful face, but it haunts the memory, and the milanese artists of leonardo's day never threw off their recollection of it. with far less power than leonardo, one of his imitators, bernardino luini, painted pictures of such charm and simplicity that almost everyone finds them delightful. if you could see his picture of the angels bearing st. catherine, robed in red, through the air to her last resting-place upon the hill, you would feel the beauty and peace of his gentle nature revealed in his art. but the spell of leonardo vanished with the death of those who had known him in life. the last of his pupils died in , and with him the leonardo school of painting came to an end. there is one more painter belonging to the full renaissance too famous to remain entirely unmentioned. this is correggio, a painter affected also by the pictures of raphael and leonardo, but individual in his vision and his work. he passed his life in parma, in the north of italy, inheriting a north italian tradition, and hearing only echoes of the world beyond. his canvases are thronged with fair shapes, pretty women and dancing children, ethereally soft and lovely. but it is in his native town that the angels soar aloft with the virgin in the dome of the cathedral, and the children frolic on the walls of the convent. these are his masterpieces you would like best. in the impetus given to painting in italy by the renaissance was drawing to an end. the great central epoch may be said to have terminated in tuscany a few years after the deaths of leonardo and raphael in . but we have said nothing yet of venice, where, in , artists whose visions and whose record of them were to be as wonderful as those of botticelli and raphael, were as yet sleeping in their cradles. chapter vii the renaissance in venice a visit to venice is one of the joys which perhaps few of us have yet experienced. but whether we have been there or not, we all know that the very sound of her name is enchanting for those who are fresh from her magic--her sunrises and sunsets unmatched for colour, and her streets for silence. the venetians were a proud and successful people, wealthier by virtue of their great sea-trade than the citizens of florence or of any other town in italy; their foremost men lived in great high-roomed palaces, richly furnished, and decorated with pictures of a sumptuous pageantry. but the venetians were not merely a luxurious people. the poetry of the lagoons, and the glory of the sunset skies, imparted to their lives the wealth of a rare romance. even in venice to-day, now that the steamers have spoilt the peace of the canals and the old orange-winged sailing-boats no longer crowd against the quays, the dreamy atmosphere of the city retains its spell. few artists ever felt and expressed this atmosphere better than giorgione, the painter of the first of our venetian pictures. he was one of the great artists of the renaissance who died young, ten years before raphael, but their greatness is scarcely comparable. like raphael, giorgione was precocious, but unlike him he painted in a style of his own that from the very beginning owed little to any one else. he saw beauty in his own way, and was not impelled to see it differently by coming into contact with other artists, however great. unlike raphael, he was not a great master of the art of composition. in the little picture before us the grouping of the figures is not what may be called inevitable, like that in the 'knight's dream.' it seems as though one day when giorgione was musing on the beauties of the world, and the blemishes of life, even life in venice, he thought of some far-off time beyond the dawn of history when all men lived in peace. the ancient greeks called this perfect time the 'golden age' of the world. in many ways their idea of it tallies with the description of the garden of eden, and they were always contrasting with it the 'iron age' in which they thought they lived, as the hebrews contrasted the life of adam and eve in the garden with their own. as the fancy flashed across giorgione's mind, perchance he saw some just king of whom his subjects felt no fear seated upon a throne like this. a dreamy youth plays soft music to him, and another hands him flowers and fruit. books lie strewn upon the steps, and a child stands in a reverent attitude before him. wild and domestic animals live together in harmony; the ground is carpeted with flowers; all is peaceful. such a subject suited the temperament of giorgione, and he painted it in the romantic mood in which it was conceived. nothing could be further from everyday life than this little scene. it has the unlaboured look that suits such an improvised subject. of course no one knows for certain that this is a picture of the golden age, and you may make up any story you like about it for yourselves. that is one of the charms of the picture. it has been said that the throned one is celebrating his birthday, and that his little heir is reciting him a birthday ode accompanied by music. you may believe this if you like, but how do you then account for the leopard and the peacock living in such harmony together? [illustration: "the golden age" from the picture by giorgione, in the national gallery, london] giorgione painted a few sacred pictures and many mythological scenes, besides several very beautiful portraits of dreamy-looking poets and noblemen. but even when he illustrated some well-known tale, he did not care to seize upon the dramatic moment that gives the crisis of the story, as giotto would have done, and as the painter of our next picture does. violent action did not attract him. whatever the subject, if it were possible to group the figures together at a moment when they were beautifully doing nothing, he did so. but he liked still more to paint ideal scenes from his own fancy, where young people sit in easy attitudes upon the grass, conversing for an instant in the intervals of the music they make upon pipes and guitar. he was the first artist, so far as i know, to paint these half real, half imaginary scenes, of which our picture may be one. in all of them landscape bears an important part, and in some the background has become the picture and completely subordinated the figures. in this little 'golden age' the landscape is quiet in tone, tinged with melancholy, romantic, to suit the mood of the figures. its colouring, though rich, is subdued, more like the tints of autumn than the fresh hues of spring. the venetians excelled in their treatment of colour. they lived in an uncommon world of it. giorgione saw his picture in his mind's eye as a blaze of rich colour; he did not see the figures sharply outlined against a remote background, as are the three in raphael's 'knight's dream.' that does not mean that raphael, like the artist of the richard ii. diptych, failed to make his figures look solid, but that he saw beauty most in the outlines of the body and the curves of the drapery, irrespective of colour, whereas to giorgione's eye outline was nothing without colour and light and shade. the body of the king upon the throne in our picture is massed against the background, but there is no definite outline to divide it from the tree behind. in this respect giorgione was curiously modern for his date, as we shall see in pictures of a still later time. giorgione was only thirty-three years old when he died of the plague in , the same year as botticelli. his master, giovanni bellini, who was born in , outlived him by six years, and the great titian, his fellow-pupil in the studio of bellini, lived another half-century or more. titian in many ways summed up all that was greatest in venetian art. his pictures have less romance than those of giorgione, except during the short space of time when he painted under the spell of his brother artist. it is extremely difficult to distinguish then between titian's early and giorgione's late work. titian perhaps had the greater intellect. giorgione's pictures vary according to his mood, while titian's express a less changeable personality. in spite of his youth, giorgione made a profound impression upon all the artists of his time. they did not copy his designs, but the beauty of his pictures made them look at the world with his romantic eyes and paint in his dreamy mood. it was almost as though giorgione had absorbed the romance of venice into his pictures, so that for a time no venetian painter could express venetian romance except in giorgione's way. but in , eight years after giorgione's death, another great innovating master was born at venice, tintoret by name, who in his turn opened new visions of the world to the artists of his day. while painting in the rest of italy was becoming mannered and sentimental, lacking in power and originality, tintoret in venice was creating masterpieces with a very fury of invention and a corresponding swiftness of hand. he was his own chief teacher. outside his studio he wrote upon a sign to inform or attract pupils--'the design of michelangelo and the colouring of titian.' profound study of the works of these two masters is manifest in his own. like michelangelo he worked passionately rather than with the sober competence of titian. his thronging visions, his multitudinous and often vast canvases are a surpassing record. prolonged study of the human form had given to him, as to michelangelo, a wonderful power of drawing groups of figures. his mere output was marvellous, and much of it on a grandiose scale. he covered hundreds of square feet of ceilings and walls in venice with paintings of subjects that had been painted hundreds of times before; but each as he treated it was a new thing. centuries of tradition governed the arrangement of such subjects as the crucifixion and the last judgment, so that even the free painters of the renaissance had deviated but little from it. in tintoret the freedom of the renaissance reached its height. for him tradition had no fetters. when he painted a picture of paradise for the doge's palace it measured by feet, and contained literally hundreds of figures. his imagination was so prolific that he seems never to have repeated a figure. new forms, new postures, new groupings flowed from his brush in exhaustless multitude. it is necessary to go to venice to see tintoret's most famous works, still remaining upon the walls of the churches and buildings for which they were painted, or in which they have been brought together. but the national gallery is fortunate in possessing one relatively small canvas of his which shows some of his finest qualities. the subject of st. george slaying the dragon was not a new one. it had been painted by raphael and by several of the earlier venetian painters, but tintoret's treatment of it was all his own. in the earlier pictures, the princess, for whose sake st. george fights the dragon, was a little figure in the background fleeing in terror. st. george occupied the chief place, as he does upon the back of our gold sovereigns, where the princess has been left out altogether. tintoret makes her flee, but she is running towards the spectator, and so, in her flight, stands out the most conspicuous figure. one of the victims that the dragon has slain lies behind her. in the distance st. george fights with all his might against the powers of evil, whilst 'the splendour of god' blazes in the sky. there is a vividness and power about the picture that proclaims the hand of tintoret. in contrast to giorgione he liked to paint figures in motion, yet he was as typical an outcome of venetian romance as the earlier painter. nothing could be more like a fairy-tale than this picture. it was no listless dreamer that painted it, but one with a gorgeous imagination and yet a full knowledge of the world, enabling him to give substance to his visions. tintoret's stormy landscapes are as beautiful in their way as giorgione's dreamy ones, and each carries out the mood of the rest of the picture. this one is full of power, mystery, and romance. tintoret had modelled his colouring upon titian and was by nature a great colourist, but too often he used bad materials that have turned black with the lapse of years. in this picture you see his colour as it was meant to be, rich, and boldly harmonious. the vivid red and blue of the princess's clothes are a daring combination with the brilliant green of the landscape, but tintoret knew what he was doing, and the result is superb. with his death in the best of venetian painting came to an end. [illustration: st. george destroying the dragon from the picture by tintoretto, in the national gallery, london] there were as many excellent painters in the fairy city as there had been in florence; contemporaries of giovanni bellini (who, in his early years, worked in close companionship with mantegna, his brother-in-law), as well as contemporaries of titian and tintoret. the painter veronese, for instance, died a few years before tintoret. for pomp and pageantry his great canvases are eminent. standing in some room of the doge's palace, decorated entirely by his hand, we are carried back to the time when venice was queen of the seas, unrivalled for magnificence and wealth. he was the master of ceremonies, before whom other painters of pomps and vanities pale. gorgeous colouring is what all these venetian painters had in common. we see it in the early days when venetian art was struggling into existence. in her art, as in her skies and waters, we are overwhelmed by a vision of colour unsurpassed. we have now touched on a few prominent points in the history of painting in italy from its early rise in florence with giotto; through its period of widespread excellence in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, when raphael, giorgione, michelangelo, and leonardo were all painting masterpieces in florence, venice, rome, and milan at the same moment; to its final blaze of sunset grandeur in venice. it is time to return to the north of europe. in the next chapter we will try to gain a few glimpses of the progress of painting in germany, holland, flanders, and our own country. chapter viii the renaissance in the north the renaissance involved a change of outlook towards the whole world which could not long remain confined to italy. there were then, as now, roads over the passes of the alps by which merchants and scholars were continually travelling from italy through germany and flanders to england, communicating to the northern countries whatever changes of thought stirred in the south. in germany, as in italy, men speedily awoke to the new life, but the awakening took a different form. we find a different quality in the art of the north. italian spontaneity and child-like joy is absent; so, too, the sense of physical beauty, universal in italy. you remember how the successors of the van eycks in flanders painted excellent portraits and small carefully studied pictures of scriptural events in wonderful detail. they were a strictly practical people whose painting of stuffs, furs, jewellery, and architecture was marvellously minute and veracious. but they were not a handsome race, and their models for saints and virgins seem to have been the people that came handiest and by no means the best looking. thus the figures in their pictures lack personal charm, though the painting is usually full of vigour, truth, and skill. when flemings began to make tours in italy and saw the pictures of raphael, in whom grace was native, they fell in love with his work and returned to flanders to try and paint as he did. but to them grace was not god-given, and in their attempt to achieve it, their pictures became sentimental and postured, and the naive simplicity and everyday truth, so attractive in the works of the earlier school, perished. the influence of the van eycks had not been confined to flanders. artists in germany had been profoundly affected. they learnt the new technique of painting from the pupils of the van eycks in the fifteenth century. like them, too, they discarded gold backgrounds and tried to paint men and women as they really looked, instead of in the old conventional fashion of the middle ages. schools of painting grew up in several of the more important german towns, till towards the end of the fifteenth century two german artists were born, albert durer at nuremberg in , and hans holbein the younger at augsburg in , who deserve to rank with the greatest painters of the time in any country. durer is commonly regarded as the most typically german of artists, though his father was hungarian, and as a matter of fact he stands very much alone. his pictures and engravings are 'long, long thoughts.' every inch of the surface is weighted with meaning. his cast of mind, indeed, was more that of a philosopher than that of an artist. in a drawing which durer made of himself in the looking-glass at the age of thirteen, we see a thoughtful little face gazing out upon the world with questioning eyes. already the delicacy of the lines is striking, and the hair so beautifully finished that we can anticipate the later artist whose pictures are remarkable for so surprising a wealth of detail. the characteristics of the flemish school, carefulness of workmanship and indifference to the physical beauty of the model, to which the italians were so sensitive, continued in his work. for thoroughness his portraits can be compared with those of john van eyck. in the national gallery his father lives again for us in a picture of wonderful power and insight. durer was akin to leonardo in the desire for more and yet more knowledge. like him he wrote treatises on fortifications, human proportions, geometry, and perspective, and filled his sketchbooks with studies of plants, animals, and natural scenery. his eager mind employed itself with the whys and wherefores of things, not satisfied with the simple pleasure that sight bestows. in his engravings, even more than in his pictures, we ponder the hidden meanings; we are not content to look and rejoice in beauty, though there is much to charm the eye. his problems were the problems of life as well as the problems of art. the other great artist of germany, hans holbein the younger, was the son of hans holbein the elder, a much esteemed painter in augsburg. this town was on the principal trade route between northern italy and the north sea, so that venetians and milanese were constantly passing through and bringing to it much wealth and news of the luxury of their own southern life. as a result the citizens of augsburg dressed more expensively and decorated their houses more lavishly than did the citizens of any other town in germany. after a boyhood and youth spent at augsburg, holbein removed to basle. he was a designer of wood-engravings and goldsmiths work and of architectural decoration, besides being a painter. in those days of change in south germany, artists had to be willing to turn their hands to any kind of work they could get to do. north of the alps, where the reformation was upsetting old habits, an artist's life was far from being easy. reformers made bonfires of sacred pictures and sculptured wooden altar-pieces. indeed the reformation was a cruel blow to artists, for it took away church patronage and made them dependent for employment upon merchants and princes. except at courts or in great mercantile towns they fared extremely ill. altar-pieces were rarely wanted, and there were no more legends of saints to be painted upon the walls of churches. the demand for portraiture, on the other hand, was increasing, whilst the growth of printing created a new field for design in the preparation of woodcuts for the illustration of books. thus it came to pass that the printer froben, at basle, was one of the young holbein's chief patrons. we find him designing a wonderful series of illustrations of _the dance of death_, as well as drawing another set to illustrate _the praise of folly_, written by erasmus, who was then living in basle and frequenting the house of froben. erasmus was a typical scholar of the sixteenth century, belonging rather to civilized society as a whole than to any one country. he moved about europe from one centre of learning to another, alike at home in educated circles in england, flanders, and germany. he had lived for some time in england and knew that there were men there with wealth who would employ a good painter to paint their portraits if they could find one. erasmus himself sat to holbein, and sent the finished portrait as a present to his friend sir thomas more, lord chancellor of england. in england, owing to the effects of the wars of the roses, good painters no longer existed. a century of neglect had destroyed english painting. henry viii., therefore, had to look to foreign lands for his court painter, and where was he to come from? france was the nearest country, but the french king was in the same predicament as henry. he obtained his painters from italy, and at one time secured the services of leonardo da vinci; but italy was a long way off and it would suit henry better to get a painter from flanders or germany if it were possible. so erasmus advised holbein to go to england, and gave him a letter to sir thomas more. on this first visit in , he painted the portraits of more and his whole family, and of many other distinguished men; but it was not till his second visit in that he became henry viii.'s court painter. in this capacity he had to decorate the walls of the king's palaces, design the pageantry of the royal processions, and paint the portraits of the king's family. although holbein could do and did do anything that was demanded of him, what he liked best was to paint portraits. romantic subjects such as the fight of st. george and the dragon, or an idyll of the golden age, little suited the artistic leanings of a german. to a german or a fleming the world of facts meant more than the world of imagination; the painting of men and women as they looked in everyday life was more congenial to them than the painting of saints and imaginary princesses. but how unimportant seems all talk of contrasting imagination and reality when we see them fused together in this charming portrait of edward, the child prince of wales. it belongs to the end of the year , when he was just fifteen months old, and the imagination of holbein equipped him with the orb of sovereignty in the guise of a baby's rattle. it is in the coupling of distant kingship and present babyhood that the painter works his magic and reveals his charm. [illustration: edward, prince of wales, afterwards edward vi. from the picture by holbein, in the collection of the earl of yarborough, london] if you recall for a moment what you know of henry viii., his masterful pride, his magnificence, his determination to do and have exactly what he wanted, you will understand that his demands upon his court painter for a portrait of his only son and heir must have been high. no one could say enough about this wonderful child to please henry, for all that was said in praise of him redounded to the glory of his father. the following is a translation of the latin poem beneath the picture: child, of thy father's virtues be thou heir, since none on earth with him may well compare; hardly to him might heaven yield a son by whom his father's fame should be out-done. so, if thou equal such a mighty sire, no higher can the hopes of man aspire; if thou surpass him, thou shalt honoured be o'er all that ruled before, or shall rule after thee.[ ] [footnote : translated by miss k. k. radford.] in justice be it said that the little edward vi. was of an extraordinary precocity. when he was eight years old he wrote to archbishop cranmer in latin. when he was nine he knew four books of cato by heart as well as much of the bible. to show you the way in which royal infants were treated in those days,--we read that at the time this picture was painted, the little prince had a household of his own, consisting of a lady-mistress, a nurse, rockers for his cradle, a chamberlain, vice-chamberlain, steward, comptroller, almoner, and dean. it is hard to believe that the child is only fifteen months old, so erect is the attitude, so intelligent the face. the clothes are sumptuous. a piece of stuff similar in material and design to the sleeve exists to-day in a museum in brussels. in the best sense holbein was the most italian of the germans. for in him, as in the gifted italian, grace was innate. he may have paid a brief visit to italy, but he never lived there for any length of time, nor did he try to paint like an italian as some northern artists unhappily tried to do. the german merits, solidity, boldness, detailed finish, and grasp of character, he possessed in a high degree, but he combined with them a beauty of line, delicacy of modelling, and richness of colour almost southern. his pictures appeal more to the eye and less to the mind than do those of durer. where durer sought to instruct, holbein was content to please. but like a german he spared no pains. he painted the stuff and the necklace, the globe and the feather, with the finish of an artist who was before all things a good workman. observe how delicately the chubby little fingers are drawn. holbein's detailed treatment of the accessories of a portrait is only less than the care expended in depicting the face. he studied faces, and his portraits, one may almost say, are at once images of and commentaries on the people they depict. thus his gallery of pictures of henry and his contemporaries show us at once the reflexion of them as in a mirror, and the vision of them as beheld by a singularly discerning and experienced eye that not only saw but comprehended. this is the more remarkable because holbein was not always able to paint and finish his portraits in the presence of the living model, as painters insist on doing nowadays. his sitters were generally busy men who granted him but one sitting, so that his method was to make a drawing of the head in red chalk and to write upon the margin notes of anything he particularly wanted to remember. afterwards he painted the head from the drawing, but had the actual clothes and jewels sent him to work from. in the royal collection at windsor there are a number of these portrait drawings of great interest to us, since many of the portraits painted from them have been lost. as a record of remarkable people of that day they are invaluable, for in a few powerful strokes holbein could set down the likeness of any face. but when he came to paint the portrait he was not satisfied with a mere likeness. he painted too 'his habit as he lived.' erasmus is shown reading in his study, the merchant in his office surrounded by the tokens of his business, and henry viii. standing firmly with his legs wide apart as if bestriding a hemisphere. but i think that you will like this fine portrait of the infant prince best of all, and that is why i have chosen it in preference to a likeness of any of the statesmen, scholars, queens, and courtiers who played a great part in their world, but are not half so charming to look upon as little prince edward. chapter ix rembrandt after the death of holbein, artists in the north of europe passed through troublous times till the end of the sixteenth century. france and the netherlands were devastated by wars. you may remember that the netherlands had belonged in the fifteenth century to the dukes of burgundy? through the marriage of the only daughter of the last duke, these territories passed into the possession of the king of spain, who remained a catholic, whilst the northern portion of the netherlands became sturdily protestant. their struggle, under the leadership of william the silent, against the yoke of spain, is one of the stirring pages of history. by the beginning of the seventeenth century, seven of the northern states of the netherlands, of which holland was the chief, had emerged as practically independent. the southern portion of the netherlands, including the old province of flanders, remained catholic and was governed by a spanish prince who held his court at brussels. when peace came at last, there was a remarkable outburst of painting in each of the two countries. rubens was the master painter in flanders. of him and of his pupil van dyck we shall hear more in the next chapter. in holland there was a yet more wide-spread activity. indomitable perseverance had been needed for so small a country to throw off the rule of a great power like spain. the long struggle seems to have called into being a kindred spirit manifesting itself in every branch of the national life. dutch merchants, dutch fishermen, and dutch colonizers made themselves felt as a force throughout the world. the spirit by which dutchmen achieved political success was pre-eminent in the qualities which brought them to the front rank in art. there were literally hundreds of painters in holland, few of them bad. that does not mean that all dutchmen had the magical power of vision belonging to the greatest artists, the power that transforms the objects of daily view into things of rare beauty, or the imagination of a tintoret that creates and depicts scenes undreamt of before by man. many painted the things around them as they looked to a commonplace mind, with no glamour and no transforming touch. when we see their pictures, our eyes are not opened to new effects. we continue to see and to feel as we did before, but we admire the honest work, the pleasant colour, and the efficiency of the painters. in default of raphaels, giorgiones, and titians, we should be pleased to hang upon our walls works such as those. but towering above the other artists of holland, great and small, was one dutchman, rembrandt, who holds his own with the greatest of the world. he was born in , the son of a miller at leyden, who gave him the best teaching there to be had. soon he became a good painter of likenesses, and orders for portraits began to stream in upon him from the citizens of his native town. these he executed well, but his heart was not wrapped up in the portrayal of character as john van eyck's had been. neither was it in the drawing of delicate and beautiful lines that he wished to excel, as did holbein and raphael. he was the dramatist of painting, a man who would rather paint some one person ten times over in the character of somebody else, high priest, king, warrior, or buffoon, than once thoroughly in his own. but when people ordered portraits of themselves they wanted good likenesses, and rembrandt was happy to supply them. at first it was only when he was working at home to please himself that he indulged his picturesque gift. he painted his father, his mother, and himself over and over again, but in each picture he tried some experiment with expression, or a new pose, or a strange effect of lighting, transforming the general aspect of the original. his own face did as well as any other to experiment with; none could be offended with the result, and it was always to be had without paying a model's price for the sitting. thus all through his life, from twenty-two to sixty-three, we can follow the growth of his art with the transformation of his body, in the long series of pictures of his single self. more than any artist that had gone before him, rembrandt was fascinated by the problem of light. the brightest patch of white on a canvas will look black if you hold it up against the sky. how, then, can the fire of sunshine be depicted at all? experience shows that it can only be suggested by contrast with shadows almost black. but absolutely black shadows would not be beautiful. fancy a picture in which the shadows were as black as well-polished boots! rembrandt had to find out how to make his dark shadows rich, and how to make a picture, in which shadow predominated, a beautiful thing in itself, a thing that would decorate a wall as well as depict the chosen subject. that was no easy problem, and he had to solve it for himself. it was his life's work. he applied his new idea in the painting of portraits and in subject pictures, chiefly illustrative of dramatic incidents in bible history, for the same quality in him that made him love the flare of light, made him also love the dramatic in life. rembrandt's mother was a protestant, who brought up her son with a thorough knowledge of the scripture stories, and it was the bible that remained to the end of his life one of the few books he had in his house. the dramatic situations that he loved were there in plenty. over and over again he painted the nativity of christ. sometimes the baby is in a tiny dutch cradle with its face just peeping out, and the shepherds adoring it by candle-light. often he painted scenes from the old testament; such as isaac blessing esau and jacob, who are shown as two little dutch children. simeon receiving the infant christ in the temple is a favourite subject, because of the varied effects that could be produced by the gloom of the church and the light on the figure of the high priest. these, and many other beautiful pictures, were studies painted for the increase of the artist's own knowledge, not orders from citizens of leyden, or of amsterdam, to which capital he moved in . at the same time he was coming more and more into demand as a portrait-painter. these were days in which he made money fast, and spent it faster. he had a craving to surround himself with beautiful works of art and beautiful objects of all kinds that should take him away from the dunes and canals into a world of romance within his own house. he disliked the stiff dutch clothes and the great starched white ruffs worn by the women of the day. he had to paint them in his portraits; but when he painted his beautiful wife, saskia, she is decked in embroideries and soft shimmering stuffs. wonderful clasps and brooches fasten her clothes. her hair is dressed with gold chains, and great strings of pearls hang from her neck and arms. rembrandt makes the light sparkle on the diamonds and glimmer on the pearls. sometimes he adorns her with flowers and paints her as flora. again, she is fastening a jewel in her hair, and rembrandt himself stands by with a rope of pearls for her to don. all these jewels and rich materials belonged to him. he also bought antique marbles, pictures by giorgione and titian, engravings by durer, and four volumes of raphael's drawings, besides many other beautiful works of art. these were splendid years, years in which he was valued by his contemporaries for the work he did for them, and years in which every picture he painted for himself gave him fresh experience. a picture of the anatomy class of a famous physician had been among the first with which rembrandt made a great public success. every face in it--and there were eight living faces--was a masterpiece of portraiture, and all were fitly grouped and united in the rapt attention with which they followed the demonstration of their teacher. in he received an order to paint a large picture of one of the companies of the city guard of amsterdam. according to the custom of the day, each person portrayed in the picture contributed his equal share towards the cost of the whole, and in return expected his place in it to be as conspicuous as that of anybody else. such groups were common in holland in the seventeenth century. the towns were proud of their newly won liberties, and the town dignitaries liked to see themselves painted in a group to perpetuate remembrance of their tenure of office. but rembrandt knew that it was inartistic to give each and every person in a large group an equal or nearly equal prominence, although such was the custom to which even franz hals' brush had yielded full compliance. for his magnificent picture of the city guard, rembrandt chose the moment when the drums had just been sounded as an order for the men to form into line behind their chief officers' march-forth. they are coming out from a dark building into the full sunshine of the street. all in a bustle, some look at their fire-arms, some lift their lances, and some cock their guns. the sunshine falls full upon the captain and the lieutenant beside him, but the background is so dark that several of the seventeen figures are almost lost to view. a few of the heads are turned in such a way that only half the face is seen, and no doubt as likenesses some of them were deficient. rembrandt was not thinking of the seventeen men individually. he conceived the picture as a whole, with its strong light and shade, the picturesque crossing lines of the lances, and the natural array of the figures. by wiseacres, the picture was said to represent a scene at night, lit by torch-light, and was actually called the 'night watch,' though the shadow of the captain's hand is of the size of the hand itself, and not greater, being cast by the sun. later generations have valued it as one of the unsurpassed pictures in the world; but it is said that contemporary dutch feeling waxed high against rembrandt for having dealt in this supremely artistic manner with an order for seventeen portraits, and that he suffered severely in consequence. certainly he had fewer orders. the prosperous class abandoned him. his pictures remained unsold, and his revenue dwindled. rembrandt was thirty-six years of age and at the very height of his powers, at the time of the failure of this his greatest picture. his mature style of painting continued to displease his contemporaries, who preferred the work of less innovating artists who painted good likenesses smoothly. every year his treatment became rougher and bolder. he transformed portraits of stolid dutch burgomasters into pictures of fantastic beauty; but the likeness suffered, and the burgomasters were dissatisfied. their conservative taste preferred the smooth surface and minute treatment of detail which had been traditional in the low countries since the days of the van eycks. year after year more of their patronage was transferred to other painters, who pandered to their preferences and had less of the genius that forced rembrandt to work out his own ideal, whether it brought him prosperity or ruin. these painters flourished, while rembrandt sank into ever greater disrepute. it is certain, too, that he had been almost childishly reckless in expenditure on artistic and beautiful things which were unnecessary to his art and beyond his means, although those for a while had been abundant. at the time of the failure of the 'night watch,' his wife saskia died, leaving him their little son, titus, a beautiful child. through ever-darkening days, for the next fifteen years, he continued to paint with increasing power. it is to this later period that our picture of the 'man in armour' belongs. [illustration: a man in armour from the picture by rembrandt, in the corporation art gallery, glasgow] the picture is not a portrait, but rather a study of light upon armour. no man came to rembrandt and asked to be painted like that; but rembrandt saw in his mind's eye a great effect--a fine knightly face beneath a shadowing helmet and set off against a sombre background. a picture such as this is a work of the imagination in the same sense as the 'saint george and the dragon' of tintoret. it was an effect that only rembrandt could see, painted as only he could paint it. the strongest light falls upon the breastplate, the next strongest upon the helmet, and the ear-ring is there to catch another gleam. when you look at the picture closely, you can see that the lights are laid on (we might almost say 'buttered on') with thick white paint. more than once rembrandt painted armour for the sake of the effects of light. in one of the portraits of himself he wears a helmet, and he painted his brother similarly adorned. a picture of a person wearing the same armour as in the glasgow picture is in st. petersburg, but the figure is turned in a slightly different direction and reflects the light differently. it is called 'pallas athene,' and was no doubt painted at the same time as ours; but the person, whether named pallas athene or knight, was but a peg upon which to hang the armour for the sake of the light shining on it. rembrandt was a typical dutch worker all his life. besides the great number of pictures that have come down to us, we have about three thousand of his drawings, and his etchings are very numerous and fine. i wonder if you know how prints are made? there are, broadly speaking, two different processes. you can take a block of wood and cut away the substance around the lines of the design. then when you cover with ink the raised surface of wood that is left and press the paper upon it, the design prints off in black where the ink is but the paper remains white where the hollows are. this is the method called wood-cutting, which is still in use for book illustrations. in the other process, the design is ploughed into a metal plate, the lines being made deep enough to hold ink, and varying in width according to the strength desired in the print. you then fill the grooves with ink, wiping the flat surface clean, so that when the paper is pressed against the plate and into the furrows, the lines print black, out of the furrows, and the rest remains white. there are several ways of making these furrows in a metal plate, but the chief are two. the first is to plough into the metal with a sharp steel instrument called a burin. the second is to bite them out with an acid. this is the process of etching with which rembrandt did his matchless work. he varnished a copper plate with black varnish. with a needle he scratched upon it his design, which looked light where the needle had revealed the copper. then the whole plate was put into a bath of acid, which ate away the metal, and so bit into the lines, but had no effect upon the varnish. when he wanted the lines to be blacker in certain places, he had to varnish the whole rest of the plate again, and put it back into the bath of acid. the lines that had been subjected to the second biting were deeper than those that had been bitten only once. the number of plates etched by rembrandt was great, at least two hundred; some say four hundred. their subjects are very various--momentary impressions of picturesque figures, scriptural scenes, portraits, groups of common people, landscapes, and whatever happened to engage the artist's fancy, for an etching can be very quickly done, and is well suited to record a fleeting impression. thousands of the prints still exist, and even some of the original plates in a very worn-down condition. in spite of the quantity and quality of rembrandt's work, he was unable to recover his prosperity. he had moved into a fine house when he married saskia, and was never able to pay off the debts contracted at that time. things went from bad to worse, until at last, in , when rembrandt was fifty, he was declared bankrupt, and everything he possessed in the world was sold. we have an inventory of the gorgeous pictures, the armour, the sculptures, and the jewels and dresses that had belonged to saskia. his son titus retained a little of his mother's money, and set up as an art dealer in order to help his father. it is a truly dreary scene, yet rembrandt still continued to paint, because painting was to him the very breath of life. he painted titus over and over again looking like a young prince. in these later years the portraits of himself increase in number, as if because of the lack of other models. when we see him old, haggard, and poor in his worn brown painting-clothes, it hardly seems possible that he can be the same rembrandt as the gay, frolicking man in a plumed hat, holding out the pearls for saskia. in his old age he received one more large order from a group of six drapers of amsterdam for their portraits. it has been said that the lesson of the miscalled 'night watch' had been branded into his soul by misfortune. what is certain is that, while in this picture he purposely returned to the triumphs of portraiture of his youth, he did not give up the artistic ideals of his middle life. he gave his sitters an equal importance in position and lighting, and at the same time painted a picture artistically satisfying. not one of the six men could have had any fault to find with the way in which he was portrayed. each looks equally prominent in vivid life. yet they are not a row of six individual men, but an organic group held together you hardly know how. at last you realize that all but one are looking at you. _you_ are the unifying centre that brings the whole picture together, the bond without which, metaphorically speaking, it would fall to pieces. this picture of six men in plain black clothes and black hats, sitting around a table, is by some considered the culmination of rembrandt's art. it shows that, in spite of misfortune and failure, his ardour for new artistic achievement remained with him to the end. in rembrandt seems to have paid a brief and unnoticed visit to england. if charles ii. had heard of him and made him his court painter, we might have had an unrivalled series of portraits of court beauties by his hand instead of by that of sir peter lely. as it was, a hasty sketch of old st. paul's cathedral, four years before it was burnt down, is the sole trace left of his visit. the story of his old age is dreary. even titus died a few months before his father, leaving him alone in the world. in the autumn of he himself passed away, leaving behind him his painting-clothes, his paint-brushes, and nothing else, save a name destined to an immortality which his contemporaries little foresaw. all else had gone: his wife, his child, his treasures, and his early vogue among the dutchmen of his time. the last picture of all was a portrait of himself, in the same attitude as his first, but disillusioned and tragic, with furrowed lines and white hair. no one cared whether he died or not, and it is recorded that after his death pictures by him could be bought for sixpence. thus ended the life of one of the world's supremely great painters. chapter x peter de hoogh and cuyp let us now turn from the splendid gloom of rembrandt's 'knight in armour,' to delight in this beautiful little interior of a dutch house by peter de hoogh. still you see the prepossession for light, but for more tempered rays and softer shadows. the sunshine is diffused by the yellow curtains throughout the room. the old lady need not fear its revelations, to be sure, for it is holland--she knows that the whole house has been duly scrubbed with soap and water. dust and dirt are banished. it is a cloudless day and dry under foot, otherwise the little boy would have worn clogs over his shoes, and you might see them outside. mud on the polished stones of the passage would have ruffled the housewife's calm. as it is, we can see she has had no worries this morning. she has donned her fresh red dress and clean white apron, and will soon be seated to prepare the vegetables and fruit that are being brought her. perhaps they are a present from the old lady in the house over the way, who from her front door watches the child delivering the gift. [illustration: an interior from the picture by pieter de hoogh, in the wallace collection, london] it is a domestic scene that you might witness in any of the old towns of holland to this day. the insides and outsides of the houses are still scrubbed with soap and water; rows of clogs stand outside the front doors on muddy days; the women wear the same bright coloured gowns fully gathered round the waist, with the cleanest of white aprons; their faces are placid and unruffled as they pursue the even tenour of their way. this atmosphere of dutch life, peaceful, home-loving, and competent, is rendered by peter de hoogh in most of his pictures. it is not the atmosphere of rembrandt's art, yet he never could have painted thus except for rembrandt. the same love of sunlight and shadows prevailed with peter de hoogh, and it was no less the aim of his art to attain mastery over the painting of light, but light diffused and reflected. he loved to show the sunlight shining through some coloured substance, such as this yellow curtain, which scatters its brightness and lets it fall more evenly throughout the room. he never painted such extreme contrasts as make manifest rembrandt's power. rembrandt's light had been so vivid that it seemed to overwhelm colours in a dazzling brilliancy. peter de hoogh's lights are just strong enough to reveal the colours in a milder illumination. in our picture the sunshine diffused by the yellow curtains mingles with the red of the woman's dress and creates a rich orange. little does she know how well her dress looks. but it was only after incessant study of the way in which rembrandt had mastered the whole range from light to dark, that peter de hoogh became able to paint as he did within his narrower scale, abridged at both extremes. begin with the room, then the passage, then the farther hall, then the highway open to the unseen sky above, then the house-front beyond it, and the hall beyond the lady in the neighbouring doorway; there are at least four distinct distances in this picture each differently lighted, and the several effects worked out with scrupulous painstaking fidelity. it is worth your while, with your own eyes rather than with many words of mine, to search out on the original all these beautifully varied gradations. in many of his pictures one part is lighted from the sunlit street, and another from a closed court. sometimes his figures stand in an open courtyard, whilst behind is a paved passage leading into the house. all his subjects are of the domestic dutch life of the seventeenth century, but the arrangement in rooms, passages, courtyards, and enclosed gardens admitted of much variation. we never feel that the range of subjects is limited, for the light transforms each into a scene of that poetic beauty which it was peter de hoogh's great gift to discern, enjoy, and record. the painting is delicate and finished, meant to be seen from near at hand. it is always the room that interests him, as much as the people in it. the painting of the window with its little coats of arms, transparent yet diffusing the light, is exquisitely done. a chair with the cushion upon it, just like that, occurs again and again in his pictures, the cushion being used as a welcome bit of colour in the scheme. most of all, the floors, whether paved with stone as in this picture, or with brick as in the courtyards, are painted with the delightful precise care that the van eycks gave to their accessories. in peter de hoogh's vision of the world there is the same appreciation of the objects of daily use as was displayed by the fifteenth-century flemish painters whenever their sacred subjects gave them opportunity. in the seventeenth century it was more congenial to the flemish and dutch temperament to paint their own country, and domestic scenes from their own lives, than pictures of devotion. other artists besides peter de hoogh painted people in their own houses. in the pictures of terborch ladies in satin dresses play the spinet and the guitar. jan steen depicted peasants revelling on their holidays or in taverns. peter de hoogh was the painter of middle-class life, and discovered in its circumstances, likewise, abounding romance. the dutchman of the seventeenth century loved his house and his garden, and every inch of the country in which he lived, rescued as it had been from invasions by armies and the sea. many painters never left holland, and found beauty enough there to fill well-spent lives in painting its flatness beneath over-arching clear or clouded skies. although the earlier flemings had had a great love of landscape, they had not conceived it as a subject suitable for a whole picture, but only for a background. in the sixteenth century the figures gradually get smaller and less important, and towards the end of the century disappear. as the song says, 'a very different thing by far' is painting a landscape background and painting a whole landscape picture. before the end of the century rubens painted some wonderful landscapes, and he was soon followed by a great number of very fine landscape painters in holland. cuyp was one of many. in a dutch landscape we cannot expect the rich colouring of italy. the colouring of holland is low toned, and tender gradations lead away to the low and level horizon. the canals are sluggish and grey, and the clouds often heavy and dark. we saw how the brilliant skies and pearly buildings of venice made venetian painters the gayest colourists of the world. so the dutch painters took their sober scale of landscape colouring as it was dictated to them by the infinitely varied yet sombre loveliness of their own land. in the great flat expanses of field, intersected by canals and dotted with windmills, the red brick roof of a water-mill may look 'loud,' like an aggressive hat. but the shadows cast by the clouds change every moment, and in flat country where there is less to arrest the eye the changes of tone are more marked. in an etching, rembrandt could leave a piece of white paper for the spot of highest sunlight, and carry out all the gradations of tone in black and white, until he reached the spot of darkest shadow. a painted landscape he indicated in the same way by varying shades of dull brown. in all of them you seem to feel the interposition of the air between you and the distant horizon at which you are looking. what else is there? at each point in the picture the air modifies the distinctness with which you can see the objects. this consciousness of air in a picture of low horizon is a very difficult thing to describe and explain. we know when it is there and when it is not. it has to be seen, to be enjoyed, and recorded. holbein painted edward vi. standing, so to speak, in a vacuum. every line of his face is sharply defined. in real life air softens all lines, so that even the edge of a nose in profile is not actually seen as a sharp outline. the figures in richard ii.'s picture stand in the most exhausted vacuum, but hubert van eyck had already begun to render the vision or illusion of air in his 'three maries.' in this respect he had learnt more than the early painters of the italian renaissance; but raphael and the venetians, especially giorgione and titian, sometimes bathed their figures in a luminous golden atmosphere with the sun shining through it. the dutch painters carried this still further, particularly in their pictures of interiors and landscapes. it is the atmosphere in the rooms that makes peter de hoogh's portrayal of interiors so wonderful. in our little picture the light coming through the window makes the air almost golden. when this painting of air and tone is set forth by the exquisite colour of peter de hoogh, you see this kind of dutch achievement at its best. cuyp's love of sunshine is rare among dutch landscape painters. he suffuses his skies with a golden haze that bathes his kin and kine alike in evening light. in our picture you can feel the great height of the sky and the depth of the air between the foreground and the horizon. the rendering of space is excellent. but cuyp has not been content with the features of his native holland. he has put an imaginary mountain in the distance and a great hill in the foreground. it is certainly not a view that cuyp ever saw in holland with his own eyes. he thought that the mountain's upright lines were good to break the flatness; and the finished composition, if beautiful, is its own excuse for being. [illustration: landscape with cattle from the picture by cuyp, in the dulwich gallery] rembrandt is an exception to all rules, but most of the dutch painters did not allow themselves these excursions within their studios to foreign scenes. they faithfully depicted their own flat country as they saw it, and added neither hills nor mountains. but they varied the lighting to express their own moods. ruysdael's sombre tone befits the man who struggled with poverty all his life, and died in a hospital penniless. cuyp is always sunny. in his pictures, cattle browse at their ease, and shepherds lounge contented on the grass. he was a painter of portraits and of figure subjects as well as of landscapes, and his little groups of men and cattle are always beautifully drawn. ruysdael, hobbema, and many others were landscape painters only, and some had their figures put in by other artists. often they did without them, but in the landscapes of cuyp, cows generally occupy the prominent position. the black and white cow in our picture is a fine creature, and nothing could be more harmonious in colour than the brown cow and the brown jacket of the herdsman. there were some painters in holland in the seventeenth century who made animals their chief study. theretofore it had been rare to introduce them into pictures, except as symbols, like the lion of st. jerome, or where the story implied them; or in allegorical pictures, such as the 'golden age.' but at this later time animals had their share in the increased interest that was taken in the things of daily life, and they were painted for their handsome sakes, as landseer painted them in england fifty years ago. thus the seventeenth century in holland shows an enlargement in the scope of subjects for painting. devotional pictures were becoming rare, but illustrations, sacred and secular, portraits, groups, interiors, and landscapes, were produced in great numbers. dutch painters outnumbered those of flanders, but among the latter were at least two of the highest eminence, rubens and van dyck, and to these we will next direct our attention. chapter xi van dyck the great painter rubens lived at antwerp, a town about as near to amsterdam as dover is to london. yet despite the proximity of flanders and holland, their religion, politics, social life, and art were very different in the seventeenth century, as we have already seen. rubens was a painter of the prosperous and ruling classes. he was employed by his own sovereign, by the king of spain, by marie de medicis, queen of france, and by charles i. of england. his remarkable social and intellectual gifts caused him to be employed also as an ambassador, and he was sent on a diplomatic errand to spain; but even then his leisure hours were occupied in copying the fine titians in the king's palace. one day he was noticed by a spanish noble, who said to him, 'does my lord occupy his spare time in painting?' 'no,' said rubens; 'the painter sometimes amuses himself with diplomacy.' in his life as in his art he was exuberant. an absurd anecdote of the time is good enough to show that. some people, who went to visit him in his studio at antwerp, wrote afterwards that they found him hard at work at a picture, whilst at the same time he was dictating a letter, and some one else was reading aloud a latin work. when the visitors arrived he answered all their questions without leaving off any of those three occupations! we must not all hope to match rubens. rubens's great ceremonial paintings, containing numerous figures and commemorating historical scenes in honour of his royal patrons, were executed by his own hands, or by the hands he taught and guided, with great skill and speed. he painted also beautiful portraits of his wife and family, and pictures of his own medieval castle, which he restored and inhabited during the last years of his life, with views of the country stretching out in all directions. he liked a comfortable life and comfortable-looking people. he painted his own wives as often as rembrandt painted saskia; both were plump enough to make our memories recur with pleasure to the slenderer figures preferred by botticelli and the painters of his school. to accomplish the great mass of historic, symbolic, and ceremonial painting that still crowds the walls of the galleries of europe, rubens needed many assistants and pupils, but only one of them, van dyck, rose to the highest rank as a painter. he was a fleming by birth, and worked in the studio at antwerp for several years as an assistant of rubens; then he went to italy to learn from the great pictures of the italian renaissance, as so many northern artists wished to do. it has been said that the works of titian influenced his youthful mind the most. van dyck spent three years in genoa, where he was employed by those foremost in its life to paint their portraits. many of these superb canvases have been dispersed to enrich the galleries of both hemispheres, public and private; but the proud, handsome semblances of some of his sitters, dressed in rich velvet, pearls, and lace, look down upon us still from the bare walls of their once magnificent palaces, with that 'grand air' for which the eye and the brush of van dyck have long remained unrivalled. when he returned to flanders from italy, he had attained a style of painting entirely his own and very different from that of his great master, rubens. the william ii of orange picture is an excellent example of van dyck's work. the child is a prince: we know it as plainly as if van dyck had spoken the word before unveiling his canvas. his erect attitude, his dignified bearing, his perfect self-possession and ease, show that he has been trained in a high school of manners. but there is also something in the delicate oval of the face, the well-cut nose and mouth, and the graceful growth of the hair, that speak of refined breeding. distinction is the key-note of the picture. [illustration: william ii. of orange from the picture by van dyck, in the hermitage gallery, leningrad] this little prince had in his veins the blood of william the silent, and became the father of our william iii. poor human nature is too easily envious, and some deny the reality, in fact, of the distinction, the grace, of van dyck's portrayed men and women. nevertheless, van dyck's vision, guiding his brush, was as rare an endowment as envy is a common one, and has higher authority to show us what to look for, to see, and to enjoy. van dyck was the first painter who taught people how they ought to look, to befit an admirer's view of their aristocratic rank. his portraits thus express the social position of the sitter as well as the individual character. although this has been an aim of portrait-painters in modern times, when they have been painting people of rank, it was less usual in the seventeenth century. there was hardly scope enough in antwerp for two great painters such as rubens and van dyck, so in van dyck left flanders and settled permanently in england, as court painter to charles i. all his life charles had been an enthusiastic collector of works of art. born with a fine natural taste, he had improved it by study, until rubens could say of him: 'the prince of wales is the best amateur of painting of all the princes in the world. he has demanded my portrait with such insistence that he has overcome my modesty, although it does not seem to me fitting to send it to a prince of his importance.' two of our pictures, the richard ii. diptych and the edward vi. of holbein, were in his collection, besides many we have mentioned, such as holbein's 'erasmus,' raphael's cartoons, and mantegna's 'triumph of caesar.' before charles came to the throne he had gone to spain to woo the daughter of philip iii. the magnificent titians in the palace at madrid extorted such admiration from the prince that philip felt it incumbent upon him as a host and a spaniard to offer some of them to charles. charles sent his own painter to copy the rest. he kept agents all over europe to buy for him, and spent thousands of pounds in salaries and presents to the artists at his court. as in the time of henry viii., there were still no first-rate english painters. james i. had employed a fleming, and an inferior dutchman, whom charles retained in his service for a time. then he experimented with a second-rate italian artist, who painted some ceilings which still exist at hampton court. rubens was too much in demand at other courts for charles to have his exclusive service, but the courtly van dyck was a painter after his own heart. for the first time he had found an artist who satisfied his taste, and van dyck a court in which he could paint distinction to his heart's content. charles would have squandered money on him if he had then had it to squander. as it was, he paid him far less than he had paid his inferior predecessors, but van dyck continued to paint for him to the end, and by heaven's mercy died himself before the crash came, which overthrew charles and scattered his collection. between the years and , van dyck painted a great number of portraits of the king. it is from these that we obtain our vivid idea of the first charles's gentleness and refinement. he has a sad look, as though the world were too much for him and he had fallen upon evil days. we can see him year by year looking sadder, but van dyck makes the sadness only emphasize the distinction. queen henrietta maria was painted even more often than the king. she is always dressed in some bright shimmering satin; sometimes in yellow, like the sleeve of william ii.'s dress, sometimes in the purest white. she looks very lovely in the pictures, but lovelier still are the groups of her children. even james ii. was once a bewitching little creature in frocks with a skull-cap on his head. his sister mary, aged six, in a lace dress, with her hands folded in front of her, looks very good and grown-up. when she became older, though not even then really grown-up, she married the william of orange of our picture. he came from holland and stayed at the english court, as a boy of twelve, and it was then that van dyck painted this portrait of him. later on, when they were married, van dyck painted them together, but william was older and looked a little less beautiful, and mary had lost the charm of her babyhood. with all her royal dignity and solemnity, she is a perfect child in these pictures. refined people, loving art, have grown so fond of the van dyck children, that often when they wish their own to look particularly bewitching at some festivity, they dress them in the costumes of the little mary and elizabeth stuart, and revive the skull-caps and the lace dresses for a fresh enjoyment. van dyck's patrons in england, other than the king, were mostly noblemen and courtiers. they lived in the great houses, which had been built in many parts of the country during the reigns of elizabeth and her successors. the rooms were spacious, with high walls that could well hold the large canvases of van dyck. sometimes a special gallery was built to contain the family portraits, and van dyck received a commission to paint them all. often, several copies of the same picture were ordered at one time to be sent as presents to friends and relations. usually the artist painted but one himself; the rest were copies by his assistants. van dyck's portraits were designed to suit great houses. in a small room, which a portrait by holbein would have decorated nobly, a canvas by van dyck would have been overpowering. in spite of the fact that the expressions on the faces are often intimate and appealing, domesticity is not the mark of his art. in van dyck's picture of our 'heir of fame,' the white linen, the yellow satin, and the armour please us as befitting the lovely face. there is a glimmer of light on the armour, but you see how different is van dyck's treatment of it from rembrandt's. van dyck painted it as an article of dress in due subordination to the face, not as an opportunity for reflecting light and becoming the most important thing in the picture. we have seen how rembrandt, peter de hoogh, cuyp, rubens, and van dyck were all contemporaries, born within an area of ground smaller far than england. yet the range of their subjects was widely different, and each painter gave his individuality full play. the desires of the public were not stereotyped and fixed, as they had been when all alike wanted their religious aspirations expressed in art. the patrons of that epoch had various likings, as we have to-day, and the painter developed along the lines most congenial to himself. unless he could make people like what he enjoyed painting, he could not make a living. if they had no eyes to learn to see, he might remain unappreciated, like rembrandt, until long after his death. yet van dyck's portraits were popular. people could scarcely help enjoying an art that showed them off to such advantage. having found a style that suited him, he adhered to it consistently, thenceforward making but few experiments. this little picture before us is an admirable example of the gentle poetic grace and refinement always recalled to the memory by the name of van dyck. so long as men prize the aspect of distinction, which he was the first northern painter to express in paint, van dyck's reputation will endure. chapter xii velasquez during the years in which van dyck was painting his beautiful portraits of the royal family of england, another painter, velasquez, was immortalizing another royal family in the far-away country of spain. cut off by the great mountains of the pyrenees from the rest of europe, spain did not rank among the foremost powers until after the discovery of america had brought wealth to her from the gold mines of mexico and peru. in the sixteenth century the king of spain's dominions, actual or virtual, covered a great part of western europe, excepting england and france. germany, spain, italy, and the netherlands, owned the sovereignty of the holy roman emperor, charles v. his son was philip ii. of spain, the husband of our queen mary of england, and his great-grandson was king philip iv., the patron of velasquez, as charles i. was of van dyck. it is the little son of philip iv., don balthazar carlos, whose portrait is before us--as manly and sturdy looking a little fellow as ever bestrode a pony. he was but six years old when velasquez painted the picture here reproduced. certainly he was not fettered and cramped and prevented from taking exercise like his little sisters. the princesses of spain were dressed in wide skirts, spread out over hoops and hiding their feet, from the time they could walk. the tops of the dresses were as stiff as corselets, and one wonders how the little girls were able to move at all. as they grew older the hoops became wider and wider, until in one picture of a grown-up princess, the skirts are broader than the whole height of her body. stringent court etiquette forbade a princess to let her feet be seen, but so odd may such conventions be, that it was nevertheless thought correct for the queen to ride on horseback astride. it is from the canvases of velasquez that we know the spanish royal family and the aspect of the court of philip iv. as though we had lived there ourselves. the painter was born in the south of spain in the same year as van dyck, and seven years earlier than rembrandt. to paint the portrait of his sovereign was the ambition of the young artist. when his years were but twenty-four the opportunity arrived, and philip was so pleased with the picture that he took the young man into his household, and said that no one else should ever be allowed to paint his portrait. velasquez welcomed with gratified joy the prospect of that life-long proximity, although neither his earnings nor his station at all matched the service he rendered to his sovereign. as the years went on he was paid a little better, but his days and hours were more and more taken up with duties at court, and his salary was always in arrears. he could not even reserve his own private time for his art, but as he waxed higher in the estimation of the king, the supervision of court ceremonies, entrusted to him as an honour, deprived him of leisure, and at last brought his life prematurely to a close. from the time when velasquez entered the service of the king, he painted exclusively for the court. we have eight portraits by him of philip iv., and five of the little don carlos, besides many others of the queens and princesses. we can follow the growth of his art in the portraits of philip iv., as we can follow that of rembrandt in portraits of himself. but while rembrandt might make of the same person, himself, or another model, a dozen different people, so that it mattered little who the model was, velasquez was concerned with a different problem. in the seventeenth century almost any good painter could draw his models correctly, but velasquez reproduced the living aspect of a man as no one else had done. we have already spoken of the feeling of atmosphere that cuyp and peter de hoogh were able to bring into their pictures. velasquez, knowing little or nothing of the contemporary dutchmen, worked at the same art problems all his life, and at last mastered the atmosphere problem completely, whether it was the air of a closed room in the dark palace of philip, or the air of the open country, as in our picture. in this there is no bright light except upon the face of the little prince. it is dark and gloomy weather, but if on such a day you were to see the canvas in the open air it would almost seem part of the country itself, as velasquez's picture of a room seems part of the gallery in which it hangs. it was only by degrees that he attained this quality in his work. he had had the ordinary teaching of a painter in spain, but the level of art there at the time was not so high as in holland or italy. like rembrandt he was to a great extent his own master. in his early years he painted pictures of middle-class life, in which each figure is truthfully depicted, as were the early heads in rembrandt's 'anatomy.' like rembrandt in his youth, he looked at each head separately and painted it as faithfully as he could. the higher art of composing into the unity of a group all its parts, and keeping their perfections within such limits as best co-operate in the transcendent perfection of the whole--this was the labour and the crown of both their lives. velasquez's best and greatest groups are such a realized vision of life that they have remained the despair of artists to this day. velasquez came to court in the year in which charles i., as prince of wales, went to madrid to woo the sister of philip iv. he painted her portrait twice, and made an unfinished sketch of charles, which has unfortunately been lost. five years afterwards rubens was a visitor at the spanish court on a diplomatic errand. the painters took a fancy to one another, and corresponded for the remainder of their lives. they must have talked long about their art, and the elder painter, rubens, is thought to have promoted in velasquez a desire to see the great treasures of italy. at all events we find that in the next year he has obtained permission and money from philip to undertake the journey, which kept him away from spain for two years. there is an amusing page, in doggerel verse, which i remember to have read some years ago. i trust the translator will pardon the liberty i am taking in quoting it. it reports a perhaps imaginary conversation between velasquez and an italian painter in rome. 'the master' in this rhyme is velasquez. the master stiffly bowed his figure tall and said, 'for raphael, to speak the truth, --i always was plain-spoken from my youth,-- i cannot say i like his works at all.' 'well,' said the other, 'if you can run down so great a man, i really cannot see what you can find to like in italy; to him we all agree to give the crown.' velasquez answered thus: 'i saw in venice the true test of the good and beautiful; first, in my judgment, ever stands that school, and titian first of all italian men is.' velasquez in rome was already a ripening artist, whose vision of the world was quite uncoloured and unshaped by the medieval tradition. raphael's pictures with their superhumanly lovely saints, their unworldly feeling, and their supernaturally clear light, doubtless imparted pleasure, but not a sympathetic inspiration. tintoret's immense creative power and the colours of titian's painting which inspired tintoret's ambition, as we remember--these were the effective influences velasquez experienced in italy. his purchases and his own later canvases afford that inference. on his return from italy he painted a ceremonial picture as wall decoration for one of the palaces of philip, and in it we can trace the influence of the great ceremonial paintings of the venetians. the picture commemorates the surrender of breda in north brabant, when the famous general spinola received its keys for philip iv. it is far more than a series of separate figures. two armies, officers and men, are grouped in one transaction, in one near and far landscape. it is a picture in which the foreground and the distances, with the lances of the soldiers and the smoke of battle, are as indispensable to the whole as are the central figures of the dutchman in front handing the city keys to the courtly spanish general. don balthazar carlos was born while velasquez was in italy. on his return he painted his first portrait of him at the age of two. the little prince is dressed in a richly-brocaded frock with a sash tied round his shoulder. his hair has only just begun to grow, but he has the same look of determination upon his face that we see four years later in the equestrian portrait. a dwarf about his own height stands a step lower than he does, so as again to give him prominence. another picture of don balthazar a little older is in the wallace collection in london. velasquez's power with his brush lay in depicting vividly a scene that he saw; thus in portraiture he was at his best. he knew how to pose his figures to perfection, so as to make the expression of their character a true pictorial subject. in our picture it is on high ground that the hoofs of the pony of don balthazar carlos tread. so to raise the little prince above the eye of the spectator was a good stroke, suggesting an importance in the gallant young rider. the boy's erect figure, too, firmly holding his baton as a king might hold a sceptre, and the well-stirruped foot, are all perfect posing. velasquez does not give him distinction in the manner of van dyck, by delicate drawing and gentle grace, but in a sturdier fashion, with speed and pose and a fluttering sash in the wind. all the portraits of this lad are full of charm. he was heir to the throne, but died in boyhood. [illustration: don balthazar carlos from the picture by velasquez, in the prado museum, madrid] velasquez paid another visit to italy, twenty years after his first, for the purpose of buying more pictures to adorn philip's palaces. again we find him in venice, where he bought two tintorets and a veronese, and again he made a long stay in rome, this time to paint the portrait of the pope. when he returned to spain in he had still nine years of work before him. there were portraits of philip's new queen to be painted--a young girl in a most uncomfortable dress--and portraits of her child, the infanta marguerita. bewitching are the pictures of this little princess at the ages of three, of four, and of seven, with her fair hair tied in a bow at the side of her head, and voluminous skirts of pink and silver. but sweetest of all is the picture called 'the maids of honour' ('les meninas'), in which the princess, aged about six, is being posed for her portrait. she is petulant and tired, and two of her handmaidens are cajoling her to stand still. her two dwarfs and a big dog have been brought to amuse her, and the king and queen, reflected in a mirror at the end of the room, stand watching the scene. velasquez himself, with his easel and brushes, is at the side, painting. the picture perpetuates for centuries a moment of palace life. in that transitory instant, velasquez took his vivid impression of the scene, and has translated his impression into paint. everything is simple and natural as can be. the ordinary light of day falls upon the princess, but does not penetrate to the ceiling of the lofty room, which is still in shadow. all seem to have come together haphazard without being fitted into the canvas. there is little detail, and the whole effect seems produced by the simplest means; yet in reality the skill involved is so great that artists to-day spend weeks copying the picture, in the endeavour to learn something of the secret of velasquez. the best judges are among those who rank him highest, so that he is called pre-eminently 'the painter's painter.' it is impossible for any one but a painter to understand how he used paint. from near at hand it looks a smudge, but at the proper distance every stroke takes its right place. such freedom was the result of years of careful painting of detail, and is not to be attained by any royal road. velasquez seldom seems to have made preliminary drawings, but of that we cannot be sure. certainly he had learned to conceive his vision as a whole, and we may fancy at least that he drew it so upon the canvas--altering the lines as he went--working at all the parts of the picture at once, keeping the due relation of part to part; not as if he finished one bit at a time, or thought of one part of a figure as distinct from the rest. to have drawn separate studies for legs and arms would have been foreign to his method of working. the pictures painted in this his latest style are few, for the court duties heaped upon him left too little time. maria theresa, the sister of don balthazar carlos, was engaged to be married to louis xiv., king of france. the marriage took place on the border of france and spain, and velasquez was in charge of all the ceremonies. the princess travelled with a cavalcade eighteen miles long, and we can imagine what work all the arrangements involved. the marriage over, the ever loyal velasquez returned to madrid, but he returned only to die. chapter xiii reynolds and the eighteenth century hitherto we have travelled far and wide in our search for typical examples of the beautiful in painting. we went from flanders to italy, from italy to germany, back to holland, and thence to spain. it is true that we began in england with our first picture, and that we have returned twice, once with holbein, and again with van dyck, both foreign born and trained artists. we will finish with examples of truly native english art. in the eighteenth century england for the first time gained a foremost place in painting, though the people of the day scarcely realized that it was so. even the poet gray, writing in , could say: why this nation has made no advance hitherto in painting and sculpture, it is hard to say.... you are generous enough to wish, and sanguine enough to foresee, that art shall one day flourish in england. i, too, much wish, but can hardly extend my hopes so far. yet in reynolds was forty years of age and gainsborough but four years younger. hogarth was even sixty-six, and at work upon his last plate. although, hitherto, the best painting in england had been done by foreign artists such as holbein and van dyck, yet there had always been englishmen of praiseworthy talent who had painted pleasing portraits. hogarth carried this native tradition to a high point of excellence. he painted plain, good-natured-looking people in an unaffected and straightforward way. but he was a humourist in paint, and as great a student of human nature as he was of art. his insight into character and his great skill with the brush, combined with his sensitiveness to fun, make him in certain respects a unique painter. in the national gallery there is a picture of the heads of his six servants in a double row. they might all be characters from dickens, so vividly and sympathetically humorous is each. in his engravings hogarth satirised the lives of all classes of the society of his day. when we look at them we live again in eighteenth-century london, and walk in streets known to fame though now destroyed, thronged with men and women, true to life. as an artist, hogarth occupies a position between the seventeenth-century dutch painters of low life and the english painters that succeeded him, who expressed the ideals of a refined society. his portraits have something of the strength of rembrandt's. his street and tavern scenes rival jan steen's; but behind the mere representation of brutality, vice, crime, and misery we perceive not merely a skilled craftsman but a moral being, whom contact with misery deeply stirs and the sight of wickedness moves to indignation. after a succession of distinguished painters were born in england. many of them first saw the light in obscure villages in the depths of the country. reynolds came from devonshire, gainsborough from suffolk, romney from the lake country. the eighteenth century was a time when politicians and men of letters had the habit of gathering in the coffee-houses of london--forerunners of the clubs of to-day. conversation was valued as one of life's best enjoyments, and the varied society of actors, authors, and politicians, in which it flourished best, could only be obtained in the town. to the most distinguished circle of that kind in london, our painter reynolds belonged. in the eighteenth century, society had also begun to divide its time in modern fashion between town and country. many of the large country houses of to-day, and nearly all the landscape-gardened parks, belong to that date. nevertheless it was a time of great artificiality of life. the ladies had no short country skirts, and none of the freedom to which we are accustomed. in london they wore long powdered curls and rouged, and in the country too they did not escape from the artificiality of fashion. indeed, their great desire seems to have been to get away from everything natural and spontaneous. the artificial poetry of that time deals with the patch-boxes and powder-puffs of the fashionable dames of the town, and with nymphs and dresden china shepherdesses in the country. even on reynolds' canvases the desire to improve upon nature is apparent. in his young days he painted the local personages of devonshire. then he made a journey abroad and spent three years in rome and venice. on his return he settled in london, and the most distinguished men and women of the day and their children sat to him. it seems that he would have liked his lords and ladies to look as heroic or sublime as the heroes or gods of michelangelo. instead of painting them in the surroundings that belonged to them, as holbein or velasquez would have done, he dressed his ladies in what he called white 'drapery,' a voluminous material, neither silk, satin, woollen, nor cotton, and painted them sailing through the woods. the ladies themselves liked to look like nymphs, characterless and pretty, so the fashion of painting portraits in this way became common. the pictures are pleasing to look at, although so artificial, and after all it was only full-length portraits of ladies that reynolds treated in this way. they were a small part of his whole output. but he and velasquez worked in a totally different spirit. velasquez made the subject before him, however unpromising, striking because of its truth. reynolds liked to change it on occasion into something quite different, for the sake of making a picture pretty. nevertheless, his strength lay in straightforward portraiture, and in the rendering of character. his portraits of men, unlike those of women, are dignified, simple, and restrained. his art was one long development till blindness prevented him from working. every year he attained more freedom and naturalness in his pose and developed more power in his use of colour. [illustration: the duke of gloucester from the picture by sir joshua reynolds, in trinity college, cambridge] many would say that his loveliest achievements were portraits of children, yet he did not attain the same freedom in his child poses till late in life. you have all seen photographs, at any rate, of the 'age of innocence' and the 'heads of angels,' but this little picture of the duke of gloucester, nephew of george iii., will not be so familiar. i wonder whether it reminds you of anything you know? it reminds me of van dyck. the little duke stands with an air of importance upon the hillside, which is raised above the eye of the spectator as velasquez raised the ground beneath the pony of don balthazar carlos. there is no mistake about the child being a simple english boy, with a nice chubby face and ordinary straight fair hair. but he is a prince and knows it. for the sake of having his picture painted, he poses with an air of conscious dignity beyond his years. he sweeps his cloak around him like any grown-up cavalier, and holds out a plumed hat and walking stick in a lordly fashion. the child is consciously acting the part of a grown-up person, which only emphasizes his childhood. but the air of refinement and distinction in the picture comes straight from van dyck. as you look at the portraits of the duke of gloucester and william ii. of orange side by side, it may puzzle you to say which is the more attractive. van dyck has painted the clothes in more detail. a century later reynolds has learnt to paint with dash, though not with the mastery of velasquez. the effect of the cloak of the little duke, its shimmering shades of mauve and pink, is inimitable. it tones beautifully with the background, varying from dull green to brightest yellow. the background happens to be sky, but it might as well have been a curtain, as long as its bit of colour so set off the clothes of the little duke. when reynolds painted children he delighted in making them act parts. even in the 'age of innocence' the little girl is looking how very very innocent. he painted one picture of a small boy, master crewe, dressed to look like henry viii. in the style of holbein. with broad shoulders and a rich dress, he stands on his sturdy legs quite the figure of henry. but the face is one beam of boyish laughter, and on the top of the little replica of the body of the corpulent monarch the effect of the childish face is most entertaining. when reynolds puts away his ideas of the grand style of michelangelo to paint pictures such as these, he is entirely delightful. he sometimes painted holy families and classical subjects, but the more the spirit of medieval sacred art has sunk into us, the less can we admire modern versions of the old subjects. the sacred paintings of the middle ages owe some of their charm to the fact that they do not make upon us the impression of life. in reynolds' holy families, the mother and child are painted with all the skill of a modern artist and look as human as his portraits of the duchess of devonshire and her baby. it is no longer possible to think of them as anything but portraits of the models whom reynolds employed for his picture. another method that modern artists have sometimes adopted in painting sacred subjects, is to imitate the faulty drawing and incomplete representation of life which are present in the art of the old masters. but this conscious imitation of bygone ignorance beguiles no one who has once felt the charm of the painters before raphael. reynolds' great contemporary, gainsborough, has been called 'a child of nature.' he would have liked to live in the country always and paint landscapes. he did paint many of his native suffolk, but in his day landscapes were unsaleable, so he was driven to the town and to portrait painting to make a living. less than reynolds a painter of character, gainsborough reproduced the superficial expression of his sitters. but he had so natural an eye for grace and beauty, that his portraits always please. he did not attempt reynolds' wide range of subjects or the same difficulties of pose. of reynolds he said: 'how various he is,' but his admiration did not make him stray from his natural path to attempt the variety of another. reynolds, equally admiring, said of him: 'i cannot make out how he produces his effects.' perhaps gainsborough did not know either. he does seem to paint by instinct, and successive pictures became more pleasing. buoyant in his life as in his art, his last words were: 'we are all going to heaven, and van dyck is of the company.' another great contemporary painter was romney, whose portraits of ladies are delightful. figured as nymphs too, they are so buoyant with bright expressions and wayward locks, that one wishes he had depicted in their faces a soul. all over england and scotland portrait painters flourished at this time. there were so many english artists that in the royal academy was founded, with sir joshua reynolds as its first president. it was to the students of the royal academy that he delivered his discourses upon art, setting forth the principles which he judged to be sound. he was an indefatigably hard worker until within two years of his death in . all classes of men esteemed and regretted him, clouded though his intercourse with them had been by the deafness from which he suffered during the greater part of his life. goldsmith, the author of the _vicar of wakefield_, wrote this character 'epitaph' for him: here reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, he has not left a wiser or better behind. his pencil was striking, resistless and grand; his manners were gentle, complying and bland; still born to improve us in every part, his pencil our faces, his manners our heart. to coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering when they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing. when they talked of their raphaels, correggios and stuff, he shifted his trumpet and only took snuff. by flattery unspoiled ... the end is missing, for while goldsmith was versifying so feelingly about his friend, death overtook the writer, eighteen years before the subject of the epitaph. chapter xiv turner i wonder which of you, if seeing this picture for the first time, will realize that you are looking at the old familiar thames? it would seem rather to be some place unknown except in dreams, some phantasy of the human spirit that we ourselves could never hope to see. and yet, in fact, this is what turner actually did see one evening as he was sailing down the thames to greenwich with a party of friends. suddenly there loomed up before his eyes the great hull of the _temeraire_, famous in the fight against the fleet of napoleon at trafalgar, and so full of memories of glorious battle, that it was always spoken of by sailors as the _fighting temeraire_. at last, its work over as a battleship, or even as a training-ship for cadets, dragged by a doughty little steam-tug, it was headed for its last resting-place in the thames, to be broken up for old timber. as the _temeraire_ hove in sight through the mist, a fellow-painter said to turner: 'ah, what a subject for a picture!' and so indeed it proved. the veteran ship, for turner, had a pathos like the passing of a veteran warrior to his grave. [illustration: the fighting temeraire from the picture by turner, in the national gallery, london] turner loved the sea, and was very sensitive to its associations with the toils and triumphs of mankind. born beside the thames, he grew up among boats and fraternized with sailors all his life. it was impossible for him to be the beholder of such a scene as the _temeraire's_ approach to her last moorings, save as a poet-painter; and stirred to the putting forth of all his powers, this _fighting temeraire_ is his surpassing poem. it was in , while reynolds was at the height of his fame, that turner saw the light, born of obscure parents in an obscure house, but with a gift of vision that compelled him to the palette and the pencil his whole life long. yet, when he was apprenticed to an architect to learn architectural drawing, he had to be dismissed after two periods of probation because of his absolute inability to learn the theory of perspective or even the elements of geometry. but the time was not far off when he was to become in his turn professor of perspective at the royal academy. the popular distaste, or unborn taste, for landscape, which had prevented gainsborough from following his natural bent, was changing at last. the end of the eighteenth century saw the beginning of a return to nature in art as well as in poetry. some artists in the eastern counties, older than turner, were already spending their lives in the not too lucrative painting of landscape. these men took for their masters the seventeenth-century painters of holland. old crome, so called to distinguish him from his son, founded his art upon that of hobbema, and came so close to him in his early years that it is difficult to distinguish their pictures. in the works of this 'norwich school' the wide horizons of the dutch artists often occur. but there is a brighter colour, a fresher green, recalling england rather than holland. turner never felt the influence of the dutch painters so strongly as these artists did. like gainsborough, and many another artist before him and since, turner was to be dominated by the necessity of making a living. at the end of the century a demand arose for 'topographical collections,' of views of places, selected and arranged according to their neighbourhood. these were not necessarily fine works of art, but they were required to be faithful records of places. topographical paintings, drawings, and prints took the place now filled by the photograph and the postcard. turner found employment enough making water-colour sketches to be engraved for such topographical publications. but sketches that might be mere hack-work became under his fingers magically lovely. we may follow him to many a corner of england, wales, and scotland, sketching architecture, mountain, moor, mists, and lakes. his earliest sketches are rather stiff and precise. but he developed with rapidity, and soon painted them in tones of blue and grey, so soft that the stars and the horizons merge into one lovely indefiniteness. not till much later is there a touch of brighter colour in them such as fires the 'temeraire,' but in all there is the same spirit of poetry. turner longed to be a poet, although he could hardly write a correct sentence even in prose. but he was a poet in his outlook upon life; he seldom painted a scene exactly as he saw it, but transfused it by an imaginative touch into what on rare occasions, with perfect conjuncture of mist and weather, it might possibly become. he gave extra height to church spires, or made precipices steeper than they were, thus to render the impression of the place more explicit than by strict copying of the facts. yet he could be minutely accurate in his rendering of all effects of sky, cloud, and atmosphere when he chose. other landscape painters have generally succeeded best with some particular aspect of nature, and have confined themselves to that. cuyp excelled in painting the golden haze of sunshine, and constable in effects of storm and rain. but turner attempted all. sunset, sunrise, moonlight, morning, sea, storm, sunshine: the whole pageantry of the sky. he never made a repetition of the golden hazes of cuyp, who in his particular field stands alone; but it was a small field compared with that of turner, who held the mirror up to nature in her every mood. later in life, turner travelled in france, germany, and italy. in venice his eyes were gladdened by the gorgeous colours above her lagoons. henceforth he makes his pictures blaze with hues scarcely dared by painter before. but so great was his previous mastery of the paler shades, that a few touches of brilliant colour could set his whole canvas aflame. even in the 'temeraire,' the sunset occupies less than half the picture. the cold colours of night have already fallen on the ship, and there remains but a touch of red from the smoke of the tug. as venice enriched his vision of colour, rome stimulated him to paint new subjects suggested by ancient history and mythology. he knew little of roman history or classical literature, yet enough to kindle his imagination; witness his 'rise and fall of the carthaginian empire' in the national gallery. in these the figures are of no importance. the pictures still are landscapes, but freed from the necessity of being like any particular place. in work such as this, turner had but one predecessor, the french claude lorraine. while the dutchmen of the seventeenth century were painting their own country beautifully, claude was living in rome, creating imaginary landscapes. he called his pictures by the names of scriptural incidents, and placed figures in the foreground as small and unessential as those of turner. these classical landscapes, with their palaces and great flights of steps leading down to some river's edge, and the sea in the distance covered with boats carrying fantastic sails, never for a moment make the impression of reality. but they are beautiful compositions, designed to please the eye and stimulate the fancy, and are even attractive by virtue of their novel aloofness from the actual world. turner set himself to rival claude in his ideal landscapes, founded upon the stories of the ancient world. in his picture of 'dido building carthage,' he painted imaginary palaces, rivers, and stately ships, in the same cool colouring as claude, and bequeathed his picture to the national gallery, on condition that it should hang for ever between two pictures by claude to challenge their superiority. opinions are divided as to the rank of turner's 'carthage,' so when you go to the national gallery, you must look at them both and prepare to form a preference. turner was incited to this rivalry with claude by the popularity that painter enjoyed among english collectors of the day, who were less eager to buy turner's great oil-paintings than those of his predecessor. incidentally this rivalry was the origin of the great series of etchings executed by or for him, known as _the book of studies (liber studiorum)_. this book was suggested by claude's _libri di verita_, six volumes of his own drawings (of pictures he himself had painted and sold) made in order to identify his own, and detect spurious, productions. but turner's book was designed to show his power in the whole range of landscape art. the drawings were carefully finished productions, work by which he was willing to be judged, and many of them he etched with his own hands. his favourite haunts, the abbeys of scotland and yorkshire, the harbours of kent, the mountains of switzerland, the lochs of scotland, and the river wye, he chose as illustrating his best power over architecture, sea, mountain, and river. he repeated several of the same subjects later in oils, such as the pearly hazy 'norham castle' in the tate gallery. turner painted still another kind of imaginary landscape, not in rivalry with any one, but to please himself. of course you all know the story of ulysses and the one-eyed giant, polyphemus, in the _odyssey_ of homer? turner chose for his picture the moment when ulysses has escaped from the clutches of polyphemus, and sailing away in his boat, taunts the giant, who stands by the water's edge, cursing ulysses and bemoaning the loss of his sight. turner has used this mythical scene as an opportunity for creating stupendous rocks never seen by a pair of mortal eyes, and a galley worthy of heroes or gods. the picture is the purest phantasy, even more like a fairy-tale than the story it illustrates. he has made the whole scene burn in the red light of a flaming sunrise, redder by far than the sunset of the old 'temeraire.' the story is told of a gentleman who, looking at a picture of turner's, said to him, 'i never saw a sunset like that.' 'no, but don't you wish you could?' replied turner. that is what we feel about the sunrise in the picture of ulysses and polyphemus. next to it in the national gallery hangs another picture called 'rain, steam, and speed'--the great western railway. from the realm of the mythical, this takes us back to the class of scenes of which the 'fighting temeraire' is one, actually beheld by turner, but magically transfigured by his brush. a train is coming towards us over a bridge, prosaic subject enough, especially in , when railways were supposed to be ruining the aspect of the country and were hated by beauty-loving people. but turner saw romance in the swift passage of a train, and painted a picture in which smoke and rain, cloud and sunset, river and bridge, boats and trees, are all fused in a mist, pearly and golden as well as smutty and grey. when you look at it, you must stand away and look long, till gradually the vision of turner shapes itself before your eyes and the scene as he beheld it lives again for you. we saw how venice opened his eyes to flaming colour. in his pictures of venice, her magic beauty is revealed by a delicate sympathy, that re-creates the fairy city in her day of glory. never tired of painting her in all her aspects, at morning, at even, in pomp, and at peace, a sight of his pictures is still the best substitute for a visit to the city itself. other artists have interpreted scenery beautifully, and a few have painted ideal landscapes, but who besides turner has ever united such diversities of power? he continued to paint water-colour sketches to the end of his life, for these were appreciated by a public that did not understand, and neglected to buy, his oil-paintings. he sketched throughout france and switzerland for various publications as he had sketched in england. time has not damaged these drawings, as it has the pictures in oil, for to the end of his life turner sometimes used bad materials. even the sky of the 'fighting temeraire' has faded considerably since it was painted, and others of his oil-pictures are mere shadows of their former selves. it is pathetic to look upon the wreck of work not a century old and to wonder how much of it will be preserved for future generations. turner himself deemed the 'temeraire' one of his best pictures, and from the beginning intended to bequeath it to the national gallery, refusing to sell it for any price whatever. there's a far bell ringing, at the setting of the sun, and a phantom voice is singing of the great days done. there's a far bell ringing, and a phantom voice is singing of renown for ever clinging to the great days done. now the sunset breezes shiver, _temeraire! temeraire!_ and she's fading down the river, _temeraire! temeraire!_ now the sunset breezes shiver, and she's fading down the river, but in england's song for ever she's the '_fighting temeraire_.'[ ] [footnote : _the fighting temeraire_. henry newbolt.] chapter xv the nineteenth century since we began our voyagings together among the visionary worlds of the great painters, five hundred and thirty years ago, at the accession of king richard ii., we have journeyed far and wide, trudging from the rock where cimabue found the boy giotto drawing his sheep's likeness. the battleship of turner has now brought us to the mid-nineteenth century, a time within the memories of living men, and still our journey is not ended. hitherto we have been guided in our general preference for certain artists and certain pictures by the concurring opinion of the best judges of many successive generations. but while we are looking at modern paintings, we cannot say, as some one did, that in our opinion, 'which is the correct one,' such and such a picture is worthy to rank with titian. the taste of one age is not the taste of another. who can surely pronounce the consensus of opinion to-day? who can guess if it will concur with that of future decades--of future centuries? we can but hope that learning to see and enjoy the recognized masterpieces of the past will teach us what to like best among the masterpieces of the present. a great love of the old masters inspired the work of a group of young artists, who, about the year , banded themselves together into a society which they called the pre-raphaelite brotherhood. the title indicates their aim, which was to draw the inspiration of their art from the fifteenth-century painters of italy. the sweetness of feeling in a picture such as botticelli's 'nativity,' the delicacy of workmanship and beautiful painting of detail in antonello's 'st. jerome' and other pictures of that date, had an irresistible fascination for them. they fancied and felt that these artists had attained to the highest of which art was capable, so that the best could only again be produced by a faithful study of their methods. the aims of the brotherhood were not imitation of the artists but of the methods of the past. they held that every painted object, and every painted figure should be as true as it could be made to the object as it actually existed, rather than to the effect produced upon the eye, seeing it in conjunction with other objects. these men heralded a widespread medieval revival, but all the study in the world could not make them paint like born artists of the fifteenth century. yet there are those who think that much of the spirit of beauty, which had dwelt in the soul of botticelli and his contemporaries, was born again in rossetti and burne-jones. their feeling for beauty of form and purity of colour, and their aloofness from the modern world, impart to their work an atmosphere that may remind us of the fifteenth century, though the fifteenth century could never have produced it. rossetti and burne-jones, indeed, never formally joined the brotherhood, though they were influenced by its ideals and pursued the same strict fidelity to nature in all the accessories of a picture. millais and holman hunt, original members of the brotherhood, painted men and women of the mid-victorian epoch with every detail of their peaked bonnets and plaid shawls, and were comparatively indifferent to beauty of form and face. but rossetti and burne-jones created a type of ideal beauty which they employed on their canvases with persistent repetition. burne-jones founded his type upon the angels of botticelli, and his drapery is like that of the ring of dancers in the sky in our picture of the 'nativity.' you are probably familiar with some of his pictures and perhaps have felt the spell of his pure gem-like colouring and pale, haunting faces. it was the people of their minds' eye who sat beside their easels. rossetti lived and worked in the romantic mood of a giorgione, but instead of expressing the atmosphere of his fairy city of venice, he created one as far as possible removed from his own mid-victorian surroundings. his imaginary world was peopled by women with pale faces and luxuriant auburn hair, pondering upon the mysteries of the universe. like rossetti's 'blessed damozel,' they look out from the gold bar of heaven with eyes from which the wonder is not yet gone. one of the best pre-raphaelite landscapes is the 'strayed sheep' of holman hunt. the sheep are wandering over a grass hillside of the vividest green, shot with spring flowers, and every sheep is painted with the detail of the central sheep in hubert van eyck's 'adoration of the lamb.' the colouring is almost as bright and jewel-like as that of the fifteenth-century painters, for one of the theories of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood was that grass should be painted as green as the single blade--not the colour of the whole field seen immersed in light and atmosphere, which can make green grass seem gray or even blue. in brett's 'val d'aosta,' another pre-raphaelite landscape, we look from a hill upon a great expanse of valley with mountains rising behind. every field of corn and every grassy meadow is outlined as clearly as it would be upon a map. every stick can be counted in the fences between the fields and every tree in the hedge-rows. when we look at the picture we involuntarily wander over the face of the country. there is no taking in the view at a glance; we must walk through every field and along every path. after seeing these pre-raphaelite landscapes, let us imagine ourselves straightway turning to one of the numerous scenes by whistler of the thames at twilight, with its glimmering lights and ghostly shapes of bridges and hulks of steamers. nothing is outlined, nothing is clearly defined, but the mystery of london's river is caught and pictured for ever. let us look, too, at his 'valparaiso,' bathed in a brilliant south american sunshine, where all is pearly and radiant with southern light. even here the impression is not given by the power of the sun revealing every detail. there are few touches, but like velasquez, he has made every touch tell. as the pre-raphaelite brotherhood kindled their inspiration by the vision of the fifteenth-century painters of italy, so whistler and many other modern artists have turned to velasquez for guidance. till the last half of the last century his name had been almost forgotten outside spain. now, among the modern 'impressionists' so-called, he is perhaps more studied than any other painter. when we were looking at the pictures of this great man, we saw how he and rembrandt were among the earliest to learn the value of subordinating detail in the parts to the better general effect of the whole, so as to present no more than the eye could grasp in a comprehensive glance. every tree and stick in brett's 'val d'aosta' is truthfully painted, but the picture as a whole does not give the spectator the impression of truth, for the simple reason that the eye can never see at once what brett has tried to make it see. all the wonderfully veracious detail in the work of the pre-raphaelite does not give the impression of life. men like holman hunt, on the one hand, and on the other hand whistler, living and working at the same time, exhibiting their works in the same galleries, differ even more in their ideals than velasquez differed from the fifteenth-century painters of italy. facts such as these make the study of modern art difficult. before the nineteenth century, pictures of the same date in the same country were painted in approximately the same style. but during the last fifty years many styles have reigned together. at one and the same time painters have been inspired by the greek and roman sculptors, by botticelli, mantegna, titian, tintoret, velasquez, rembrandt, reynolds, and turner, and the work of each is, notwithstanding, unmistakably nineteenth century, and could never have been produced at any other date. every artist finds a problem of his own to solve, and attacks it in his own way. when whistler painted a portrait he endeavoured to express character in the general aspect of the figure, rather than in the face. the picture of his mother is a wonderful expression of the sweetness and peace of old age, given by the severe lines of her black dress and the simplicity and nobility of her pose. the great painter watts, who by the face chiefly sought to express the man, never painted a full-length figure portrait. his long life, covering nearly the whole of the century, enabled him to portray many of the foremost men of the age--statesmen, poets, musicians, and men of letters. in his portrait gallery their fine spirits still meet one another face to face. but his portraits, in and through likenesses of the men, are made to express the essence of that particular art of which the man was a spokesman. in his portrait of tennyson, the bard with his laurel wreath is less tennyson the man, if one may say so, than tennyson the poet. the picture might be called 'poetry,' as that of joachim could be called 'music,' for the violinist with his dreamy beautiful face, playing his heart out, looks the soul of music's self. watts was never a pre-raphaelite, clothing anew his dreams of medieval beauty; nor a seeker after the glories of greece and rome, like leighton and alma tadema; nor a student of the instant's impression, like whistler. to penetrate beneath the seen to the unseen was the aim of his art. he wrestled to express thoughts in paint that seem inexpressible. when we go to the tate gallery in london, to the room filled with most precious works of watts, we feel almost overawed by the loftiness of his ideas, though they may seem to strain the last resources of the painter's art. one of them is a picture of 'chaos' before the creation of the world. half-formed men and women struggle from the earth to force themselves into life, as the half-wrought statues of michelangelo from the marble that confines them. near by is a picture of the 'all-pervading,' the spirit of good that penetrates the world, symbolized as a woman gazing long into a globe held upon her knee. opposite is the 'dweller in the innermost,' with deep, unsearchable eyes. these are pictures that constrain thought rather than charm the eye. when the thought is less obscure, it is better suited to pictorial utterance, and watts sometimes painted pictures as simple as these are difficult. there is nothing obscure in our frontispiece picture of 'red ridinghood.' it sets before us a child's version and vision of a child's fable that is imperishable, and as such makes an immediate appeal to the eye. she is not acting a part or posing as a princess, but is simply a cowering little girl, frightened at the wolf and eager to protect her basket. in her freshness and simplicity, a cottage maiden with anxious blue eyes, most innocent and childish of children, she need not shun proximity to richard ii., edward vi., william of orange, don balthazar carlos, and the duke of gloucester. and thus we conclude our procession of royal children with a child of the people. beginning with richard ii., a portrait of a king rather than a child, we end with a picture in which childhood merely, without the gift of distinction or the glamour of royalty, suffices to charm a great painter's eye and inspire his thought. with the sweetness and grace of modern childhood filling our eyes, may we not well close this children's book? index 'adoration of the lamb,' - adoration of the magi, treatment of, 'age of innocence,' _alice in wonderland_, 'all-pervading,' the, animals, painting of, antonello of messina, - art, definition of, atmosphere, treatment of by dutch school, , by holbein, by velasquez, beauneveu, andre, of valenciennes, bellini, giovanni, , black death, influence of, botticelli, - , influence of, on burne-jones, brett's 'val d'aosta,' _et seq._ burne-jones, _et seq._ byzantium, influence of, turkish conquest of, 'chaos,' charles i. employs rubens, employs van dyck, painted by velasquez, charles ii., charles v., king of france, charles v., emperor, chillon, castle of, churches, medieval grandeur of, cimabue, vasari's account of, picture in national gallery, picture in santa maria novella, training of giotto, civilization, definition of, claude lorraine, - constable, correggio, crome, old, cuyp, - , 'dido building carthage,' don balthazar carlos, _et seq._, _et seq._ douglas, lady alfred, dragons, fear of, duke of gloucester, - durer, - compared with holbein, dutch expansion in the seventeenth century, 'dweller in the innermost,' edward the confessor, story of, edward prince of wales, - eighteenth century, artificiality of, erasmus, - portrait of, etching, process of, fighting _temeraire_, _et seq._ francis of assisi, life of, , franciscans, foundation of the order of, 'fresco' painting, gainsborough, _et seq._ garden of eden, giorgione, - , giotto, , , , 'golden age,' - , goldsmith, greeks, influence of, , henrietta maria, henry viii., _et seq._ employs holbein, portrait of, hobbema, , hogarth, _et seq._ holbein, - , , 'erasmus' in collection of charles i., holman hunt, , horne, herbert p., hubert van eyck, _et seq._, hulin, dr., il penseroso, impressionism, beginning of, infanta marguerita, _et seq._ james ii., jerusalem chamber, view of, taken in , joachim, portrait of, john, duke of berry, , , john, king of france, john van eyck, compared with durer, josse vyt, julius ii., pope, 'knight's dream,' , - l'allegro, landscape painting, beginning of, lely, sir peter, leonardo da vinci, - , - , compared with durer, 'les meninas,' liber studiorum, louis, duke of anjou, luini, bernardino, - 'madonna of the rocks,' 'man in armour,' - mantegna, , , 'triumphs of caesar,' maria theresa, marie de medicis, mary stuart, - medieval detail, coronation, solemnity of, guilds, michelangelo, influence on reynolds, , influence on tintoret, millais, milton, more, sir thomas, , mosque of omar, newbolt, henry, 'night watch,' rembrandt's, - 'norham castle,' 'norwich school,' 'pallas athene,' perspective, absence of, hubert's improvement in, mastery of, in renaissance, perugino, peter de hoogh, - philip iv., , philip the bold, , philip the good, photographs and pictures, the difference between them, portraiture, in the fifteenth century, growth of, pre-raphaelite brotherhood, _et seq._ 'rain, steam, and speed,' raphael, - , cartoons, in collection of charles i., comparison with giorgione, , influence on velasquez, 'red ridinghood,' reformation, effect of on art, rembrandt, - , 'anatomy,' , compared with peter de hoogh, compared with van dyck, compared with velasquez, landscapes of, syndics, revelations, , revival of learning, reynolds, - richard ii., portrait of, _et seq._ diptych, , , , diptych in collection of charles i., roger van der weyden, rome, influence on turner, rossetti, _et seq._ royal academy, rubens, , - friendship with velasquez, on charles i., ruysdael, santi, giovanni, st. catherine, raphael's, burial of, st. catherine of siena, st. edmund, st. francis of assisi, , preaching to the birds, , , st. george slaying the dragon, - st. jerome's cell, , - lion of, st. matthew, saskia, , _et seq._ savonarola, - sistine madonna, spain, greatness of, in sixteenth century, stained-glass windows, influence of in the fourteenth century, steen, jan, , 'strayed sheep,' 'surrender of breda,' tenniel, tennyson, portrait of, terborch, 'three maries,' - compared with botticelli's 'nativity,' compared with raphael's 'knight's dream,' treatment of atmosphere in, timoteo viti, tintoret, - influence on velasquez, titian, , , , turner, - sunsets of, 'ulysses deriding polyphemus,' umbrian landscape, beauty of, 'valparaiso,' van dyck, - compared with reynolds, _et seq._ comparison with velasquez, van eyck's influence in germany, vasari, , velasquez, - compared with reynolds, influence of, venice, influence on turner, , influence of on venetian artists, _et seq._ veronese, watts, - whistler, _et seq._, william the silent, , william ii. of orange, - william iii., wood-cutting, process of, wool industry, importance of, the end _printed in great britain_ by r & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. _uniform with this volume_ _each_ s. _net_ aesop's fables andersen's fairy tales arabian nights bunyan's pilgrim's progress grimm's fairy tales swiss family robinson tales from "the earthly paradise" john halifax, gentleman count of monte cristo uncle tom's cabin book of celtic stories book of edinburgh mr. midshipman easy book of london book of the railway _each_ s. _net_ tales of english castles and manors tales of the covenanters scott's tales of a grandfather (abridged) the book of scotland the book of stars with commodore anson a. & c. black, ltd., , , & soho square, london, w. _new york_ the macmillan company _melbourne_ the oxford university press _cape town_ the oxford university press _toronto_ the macmillan company of canada _bombay calcutta madras_ macmillan and company, ltd. how to enjoy pictures by j. littlejohns, r.i., r.b.a., r.c.a., r.b.c., r.w.a. with full-page illustrations in colour, one in black and white, and constructional drawings in the text. _small crown to._ /- net (_by post, / _) mr. littlejohns explains very simply and pleasantly a method of approach to pictures intended for those who have no knowledge of them and no trained sensibility.[ ] the book deals simply and briefly with many of the considerations involved in composing a picture, and gives an analysis, illustrated by diagrams, of nine well-known masterpieces. the author does his work very well, and no one who reads carefully what he says and carries out his instructions can fail to find added interest if not also keener enjoyment in the contemplation of pictures.[ ] mr. littlejohns writes, not only with the artist's intuition, but with the clearness and simplicity derived from his experiences as a teacher of children.[ ] the colour reproductions are excellent and could not be bought separately for the price of the whole book.[ ] [footnote : _the times literary supplement_.] [footnote : _scottish educational journal_.] [footnote : _the church times_.] [footnote : _monthly notes of the national society of art masters_.] black's dictionary of pictures a guide to the best work of the best painters edited by randall davies _demy vo._ / net (_by post, /-_) this book contains descriptive accounts, with full and accurate particulars, of nearly of the most important pictures in public galleries in this country and on the continent. they have been selected out of the immense number of exhibited works as being those which, in view of the opinions of the best critics, or in some cases by popular suffrage, are such as practically everybody who cares about pictures ought, or would like, to know something about. a. & c. black, ltd., , and soho square, london, w. reproductions of great masters facsimile reproductions in colour of the originals large mounted prints, series - . average size of printed surface, - / x - / ins. each /- net, mounted; in black frame, unglazed, but with picture varnished, price / net each; in narrow antique gold frame, price /- net each; or in ducat gold frame, price /- net each. . the age of innocence _reynolds_ . william ii., prince of orange-nassau _van dyck_ . lady hamilton as a bacchante _romney_ . the laughing cavalier _franz hals_ . study of grief _greuze_ . portrait of mrs. siddons _gainsborough_ . nelly o'brien _reynolds_ . portrait of the doge leonardo loredano _bellini_ . portrait of an old lady _rembrandt_ . the virgin and child _botticelli_ . the hay wain _constable_ . madame le brun and her daughter _le brun_ . the broken pitcher _greuze_ . the parson's daughter _romney_ . the milkmaid _greuze_ . portrait of miss bowles _reynolds_ . la gioconda _leonardo da vinci_ . ulysses deriding polyphemus _turner_ . chapeau de paille _rubens_ . portrait of mrs. siddons _sir t. lawrence_ . head of a girl _greuze_ . the san sisto madonna _raphael_ . the dead bird _greuze_ . princess margarita marla _velasquez_ . the tribute money _titian_ . sir walter scott _raeburn_ . robert burns _nasmyth_ . the swing _fragonard_ . inside of a stable _george morland_ . head of a girl _rembrandt_ . embarking for cythera _watteau_ . anne of cleves _holbein_ . the avenue, middleharnis, holland _hobbema_ . interior of a dutch house _peter de hoogh_ . charles i. _van dyck_ . st. john the baptist _leonardo da vinci_ . a young man _raphael_ . a party in a park _watteau_ . his majesty king george v. _h. de t. glazebrook_ . the surrender of breda _velasquez_ . prince balthasar carlos _velasquez_ . the maids of honour _velasquez_ . the tapestry weavers _velasquez_ . the topers _velasquez_ . the immaculate conception _murillo_ . the blue boy _gainsborough_ _a complete list of the large and small series will be sent post free on application to the publishers._ elementary water-colour painting by j. hullah brown second edition, containing an outline drawing and six full-page illustrations in colour, including guides for gradations of colour, colour washes, mixing of colour, etc. _demy vo._ price / net _quarter canvas_ press opinions "an attractive and well-illustrated little book, which will help to initiate members of sketching classes into methods of getting effects."--_times educational supplement_. "an accurate little brochure ... well illustrated in colour, and containing sound instructions as to the mixing and putting on of water-colours. it would really be of service to anyone _not too youthful_ who was out of the way of obtaining personal instruction in the matter."--_the educational times_. a. & c. black, ltd., , and soho square, london, w. [illustration: portrait of a slav prince . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] rembrandt by mortimer menpes with an essay on the life and work of rembrandt by c. lewis hind london adam and charles black preface although i am familiar with rembrandt's work, through photographs and black and white reproductions, i invariably experience a shock from the colour standpoint whenever i come in touch with one of his pictures. i was especially struck with that masterpiece of his at the hermitage, called the _slav prince_, which, by the way, i am convinced is a portrait of himself; any one who has had the idea suggested cannot doubt it for a moment; it is rembrandt's own face without question. the reproductions i have seen of this picture, and, in fact, of all rembrandt's works, are so poor and so unsatisfactory that i was determined, after my visit to st. petersburg, to devise a means by which facsimile reproductions in colour of rembrandt's pictures could be set before the public. the black and white reproductions and the photographs i put on one side at once, because of the impossibility of suggesting colour thereby. rembrandt has been reproduced in photograph and photogravure, and by every mechanical process imaginable, but all such reproductions are not only disappointing, but wrong. the light and shade have never been given their true value, and as for colour, it has scarcely been attempted. after many years of careful thought and consideration as to the best, or the only possible, manner of giving to those who love the master a work which should really be a genuine reproduction of his pictures, i have adapted and developed the modern process of colour printing, so as to bring it into sympathy with the subject. for the first time these masterpieces, with all the rich, deep colouring, can be in the possession of every one--in the possession of the connoisseur, who knows and loves the originals but can scarcely ever see them, and in that of the novice, who hardly knows the emotions familiar to those who have made a study of the great masters, but is desirous of learning. at the hermitage in st. petersburg i was specially privileged--i was allowed to study these priceless works with the glass off and in moments of bright sunlight--to see those sweeps of rich colour, so full, so clear, so transparent, and broken in places, allowing the undertones to show through. i myself have made copies of a hundred rembrandts in order to understand more completely his method of work. and in copying these pictures certain qualities have been revealed to me which no one could possibly have learnt except by this means. rembrandt worked more or less in two stages: first, by a carefully-painted monochrome, handled in such a way as to give texture as well as drawing, and in which the masses of light and shade are defined in a masterly manner; second, by putting on the rich, golden colour--mostly in the form of glazes, but with a full brush. this method of handling glazes over monochrome has given a gem-like quality to rembrandt's work, so much so that you might cut out any square inch from any portion of his pictures and wear it as a jewel. and in all his paintings there is the same decorative quality that i have before alluded to: any picture by rembrandt arrests you as a decorative patch--the grouping and design, and, above all, the balance of light and shade, are perfect. mortimer menpes. _july ._ contents chapter i the recoverers of rembrandt chapter ii the appeal of the paintings chapter iii the appeal of the etchings chapter iv epochs in rembrandt's life chapter v the great triumvirate list of illustrations . portrait of a slav prince _frontispiece_ . portrait of a woman of eighty-three . a rabbi seated, a stick in his hands and a high feather in his cap . the holy family with the angels . portrait of a savant . an old man with a long white beard, seated, wearing a wide cap, his hands folded . rembrandt leaning on a stone sill . reconciliation between david and absalom . an old woman in an arm chair, with a black head-cloth . minerva . titus in a red cap and a gold chain . portrait of an old lady, full face, her hands folded . portrait of an old lady in a velvet hood, her hands folded . flora with a flower-trimmed crook . the descent from the cross . a young woman in a red chair holding a pink in her right hand _the illustrations in this volume have been engraved and printed at the menpes press._ rembrandt chapter i the recoverers of rembrandt imagine a man, a citizen of london, healthy, middle-aged, successful in business, whose interest in golf is as keen, according to his lights and limitations, as the absorption of rembrandt in art. suppose this citizen, having one day a loose half-hour of time to fill in the neighbourhood of south kensington, remembers the articles he has skimmed in the papers about the constantine ionides bequest: suppose he strolls into the museum and asks his way of a patient policeman to the ionides collection. suppose he stands before the revolving frame of rembrandt etchings, idly pushing from right to left the varied creations of the master, would he be charmed? would his imagination be stirred? perhaps so: perhaps not. perhaps, being a man of importance in the city, knowing the markets, his eye-brows would unconsciously elevate themselves, and his lips shape into the position that produces the polite movement of astonishment, if some one whispered in his ear--"at the holford sale the _hundred guilder print_ fetched £ , and _ephraim bonus with the black ring_, £ ; and m. edmund de rothschild paid £ for a first state of the _dr. a. tholinx_." those figures might stimulate his curiosity, but being, as i have said, a golfer, his interest in rembrandt would certainly receive a quick impulse when he observed in the revolving frame the etching no. , - / inches wide, - / inches high, called _the sport of kolef or golf_. [illustration: portrait of a woman of eighty-three . national gallery, london.] is it fantastical to assume that his interest in rembrandt dated from that little golf etching? great events ofttimes spring from small causes. we will follow the rembrandtish adventures of this citizen of london, and golfer. suppose that on his homeward way from the museum he stopped at a book shop and bought m. auguste bréal's small, accomplished book on rembrandt. having read it, and being a man of leisure, means, and grip, he naturally invested one guinea in the monumental tome of m. Émile michel, member of the institute of france--that mine of learning about rembrandt in which all modern writers on the master delve. astonishment would be his companion while reading its packed pages, also while turning the leaves of _l'oeuvre de rembrandt_, décrit et commenté, par m. charles blanc, de l'academie française. this sumptuous folio he picked up second hand and conveyed home in a cab, because it was too heavy to carry. now he is fairly started on his journey through the rembrandt country, and as he pursues his way, what is the emotion that dominates him? amazement, i think. let me illustrate the extent and character of his amazement by describing a little incident that happened to him during a day's golfing at a seaside course on the following saturday. the approach to the sixteenth green is undeniably sporting. across the course hangs the shoulder of a hill, and from the fastnesses of the hill a brook gushes down to the sea through the boulders that bestrew its banks. obliged to wait until the preceding couple had holed out, our citizen and golfer amused himself by upturning one of the great lichen-stained boulders. he gazed into the dank pit thus disclosed to his eyes, and half drew back dismayed at the extraordinary activity of insect life that was revealed. it was so sudden, so unexpected. beneath that grey and solemn boulder that time and man accepted as a freehold tenant of the world, that our citizen had seen and passed a hundred times, a population of experts were working, their deeds unseen by the wayfarer. now what is the meaning of this little story? how did the discovery of that horde of capable experts strike the imagination of our golfer? the boulder was rembrandt. the busy insects were the learned and patient students working quietly on his behalf--his discoverers and recoverers. he had passed that boulder a hundred times, his eyes had rested cursorily upon it as often as the name of rembrandt in book or newspaper had met his indifferent gaze. now he had raised the boulder, as he had lifted the rembrandt curtain, and lo! behind the curtain, as beneath the boulder, he had discovered life miraculously active. reverence for the students of art, for the specialists, for the scientific historians, was born within him as he pursued his studies in rembrandt lore. also he was conscious of sorrow, anger, and pride: sorrow for the artist of genius who goes down to his grave neglected, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung: anger at the stupidity and blindness of his contemporaries: pride at the unselfish industry and ceaseless activity of the men who, born years after, raise the master to his throne. [illustration: a rabbi seated, a stick in his hands and a high feather in his cap . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] in the year an old dutchman called rembrandt dies in obscurity in amsterdam. so unmemorable was the death deemed that no contemporary document makes mention of it. the passing of rembrandt was simply noted, baldly and briefly, in the death-register of the wester kerk: "tuesday, october , ; rembrandt van ryn, painter on the roozegraft, opposite the doolhof. leaves two children." yet once, while he was alive, before he painted _the night watch_, he had been the most famous painter in holland. later, oblivion encompassed the old lion, and little he cared so long as he could work at his art. forty years after his death, gerard de lairesse, a popular painter, now forgotten, wrote of rembrandt--"in his efforts to attain a yellow manner, rembrandt merely achieved an effect of rottenness.... the vulgar and prosaic aspects of a subject were the only ones he was capable of noting." poor gerard de lairesse! to-day not a turn or a twist of his life, not a facet of his temperament, not an individual of his family, friends, or acquaintances, not the slightest scrap of paper bearing the mark of his hand, but has been peered into, scrutinised, tracked to its source, and written about voluminously. the bibliography of rembrandt would fill a library. several lengthy and learned catalogues of his works have been published in volumes so large that a child could not lift one of them. his pictures, his multitudinous drawings, his etchings, their authenticity, their history, their dates, the identification of his models, have been the subjects of innumerable books and essays. why, it would have taken our golfer three months just to read what has been written about one of rembrandt's pictures--that known as _the night watch_. he might have begun with bredius and meyer of holland, and m. durand-greville of france, and would then have been only at the beginning of his task. people make the long journey to st. petersburg for the sake of the pictures by rembrandt that the hermitage contains. he is hailed to-day as the greatest etcher the world has ever known, and there are some who place him at the head of that noble triumvirate who stand on the summit of the painters' parnassus, velasquez, titian, and rembrandt. having browsed and battened on rembrandt, and noted the countless cosmopolitan workers that for fifty years have been excavating the country marked on the art map rembrandt, you can perhaps understand why our golfer likened the work of his commentators to the incessant activity that his upturning of that grey, lichen-covered boulder revealed. [illustration: the holy family with the angels . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] but had our golfer, brimming with the modern passion for efficiency, learned foreign tongues, and browsed in the musty archives, he would have discovered that there was much to unlearn. the early scribes piled fancy upon invention, believing or pretending that rembrandt was a miser, a profligate, a spendthrift, and so on. "houbraken's facts," we read, "are interwoven with a mass of those suspicious anecdotes which adorn the plain tale of so many artistic biographies. campo-weyermann, dargenville, descamps, and others added further embellishments, boldly piling fable upon fable for the amusement of their readers, till legend gradually ousted truth." all this and much more he would have had to unlearn, discovering in the end the simple truth that rembrandt lived for his art; that he loved and was kind to his wife and to the servant girl who, when saskia died, filled her place; that he was neither saint nor sinner; that he was extravagant because beautiful things cost money; that being an artist he did not manage his affairs with the wisdom of a man of the world; that he was hot-headed, and played a hot-headed man's part in the family quarrels; and that he was plucky and improvident, and probably untidy to the end, and that he did his best work when the buffets of fate were heaviest. the new era in rembrandt literature began with kolloff's _rembrandt's leben und werke_, published in . this contribution to truth was followed by the works of messrs. bürger and vosmaer, by the lucubrations of other meritorious bookworms, by the studies of messrs. bode and bredius, and finally by m. Émile michel's life, which is the definitive and standard work on rembrandt. our golfer, whose french is a little rusty, was delighted to find when he gave the order for this book that it had been translated into english under the editorship of mr. frederick wedmore. it was in the third edition. he learned much from m. Émile michel--among other things the herculean labour that is necessary if one desires to write a standard and definitive book on a subject. not only did m. michel visit and revisit all the galleries where rembrandt's pictures are displayed in russia, france, england, sweden, denmark, and north germany, but he lived for several years with rembrandt, surrounded by reproductions of his pictures, drawings, and etchings, and by documents bearing on their history, his mind all the while intently fixed on the facts of rembrandt's life and the achievements of his genius. gradually the procession of dates and facts took on a new significance; the heterogeneous threads of information wove themselves into the fabric of a life. m. michel is the recoverer-in-chief of all that truly happened during the sixty-three years that rembrandt passed upon this earth. every dead painter, poet, or writer of genius, has had his recoverer. a searchlight has flashed upon all that charles lamb said, did, or wrote. every forerunner who inspired keats, from the day when he took the _faerie queene_ like a fever, and went through it "as a young horse through a spring meadow, romping," has been considered and analysed. you could bury keats and lamb in the tomes that have been written about them. with the books of his commentators you could raise a mighty monument of paper and bindings to rembrandt. all this is very right and most worthy of regard. we do not sing "for they are jolly good fellows" in their honour, but we offer them our profound respect and gratitude. and our golfer, in his amateurish way, belongs to the tribe. he has approached rembrandt through books. his temperament enjoyed exploring the library hive marked rembrandt. now he feels that he must study the works of the master, and while he is cogitating whether he shall first examine the pictures at st. petersburg, or the in the louvre, or the at cassel, or the at berlin, or the at dresden, or the in the national gallery, or the etchings and drawings in the print room of the british museum, or the frame of etchings at south kensington, so accessible, i drop him. yes: drop him in favour of another who did not care two pins about the history or the politics of art, or the rights or wrongs of rembrandt's life, but went straight to his pictures and etchings, wondered at them, and was filled with an incommunicable joy. chapter ii the appeal of the paintings suppose our citizen and golfer, deliberately dropped in the preceding chapter, had a child, a son, who by a freak of heredity was brooding and imaginative, fond, in a childish way, of pictures and books, but quite indifferent to scientific criticism and the methods of the analytic men. during his school holidays his mother would take him to the pantomime, and to the national gallery. dazed, he would scan the walls of pictures, wondering why so many of them dealt with scriptural subjects, and why some were so coloured, and others so dim. [illustration: portrait of a savant . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] but after the third or fourth visit this child began to recognise favourites among the pictures, and being somewhat melancholy and mystical by nature, liking trees, beechwood glades, cathedral aisles, and the end of day, he would drag upon his mother's arm when they passed two pictures hanging together in the dutch room. one was called _the woman taken in adultery_, the other, _the adoration of the shepherds_. these pictures by rembrandt attracted him: they were so different from anything else in the gallery. he did not trouble to understand their meaning; he did not dwell upon the beauty of the still figure of christ, or note that the illumination in _the adoration of the shepherds_ proceeded from the supernatural light that shines from the infant jesus. what captivated him was the vastness contained in these small pictures, and the eerie way in which the light was separated from the dark. he had never seen anything like it before, but these pictures made him long to be grown up and able to seek such sights. he could see the lurking shadows alone in his bed at night, and held his breath when he thought of the great darkness that stretched out to the frames of the pictures. he wondered if temples were really as mysterious and dim as the great building that loomed above the small dazzling figure of the kneeling penitent and that horrid man who, his mother told him, was one of her accusers. when she came into his bedroom to see that he was safely tucked up for the night, this child asked his mother why rembrandt's pictures were so different from the pictures of other painters. she explained that rembrandt was a great master of _chiaroscuro_, making a valiant attempt to pronounce the uncomfortable word. "what does that mean?" asked the little boy. "it--er--means--one moment, dear; i think i hear your father calling." she ran downstairs and consulted the dictionary. "a _chiaroscurist_," she told her little boy when she returned to the bedroom, "is a painter who cares for and studies light and shade rather than colour. now go to sleep. you're too young to bother about such things." this child's mother was an ardent ruskinian. observing that her husband, the citizen and golfer, was asleep in his chair when she returned from her son's bedroom, she stepped into the library, picked _modern painters_ from the shelf, and read the following passages, gravely shaking her head occasionally as she read. "... rembrandt always chooses to represent the exact force with which the light on the most illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. in order to obtain this, in most cases, not very important truth, he sacrifices the light and colour of five-sixths of his picture; and the expression of every character of objects which depends on tenderness of shape or tint. but he obtains his single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expression is dependent upon it, with magnificent skill and subtlety. "... his love of darkness led also to a loss of the spiritual element, and was itself the reflection of a sombre mind.... "... i cannot feel it an entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as rembrandt was, from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness and the dulness of his light. glorious or inglorious, the speciality itself is easily and accurately definable. it is the aim of the best painters to paint the noblest things they can see by sunlight. it was the aim of rembrandt to paint the foulest things he could see--by rushlight...." had ruskin, one wonders, ever seen _the syndics_ at amsterdam, or the _portrait of his mother_, and the _singing boy_ at vienna, or _the old woman_ at st. petersburg, or the _christ at emmaus_ at the louvre, or any of the etchings? the time came when the child was allowed to visit the national gallery unattended; but although he never lost his affectionate awe for the two dim interiors, he did not really begin to appreciate rembrandt until he had reached manhood. rembrandt is too learned in the pathos of life, too deeply versed in realities, to win the suffrages of youth. but he was attracted by another portrait in the national gallery--that called _a jewish rabbi_. this was the first likeness he had seen of a rabbi, a personality dimly familiar to him through the lessons in church and his school scripture class. remembering what his mother had told him about _chiaroscuro_, he noted how the golden-brown light is centred upon the lower part of the face; how the forehead is in shadow, and how stealthily the black hat and coat creep out from the dark background. he had never seen, and never could have imagined, such a sad face. this rabbi seemed to be crouching into the picture as he dimly understood that jews in all ages, except those who owned diamond mines in south africa, had cringed under the hand of their oppressors. he wondered how rembrandt knew what a rabbi was like. his father might have told him that rembrandt's pencil and brush were never idle, that he was for ever making pictures of himself, of his father, of his mother, of his wife, of his children and relations, of every interesting type that came within the ken of his piercing eyes; that one day, when he was prowling about the jews' quarter at amsterdam, he saw an old, tired, wistful hebrew sitting in the door of his shop, engaged him in conversation, persuaded him to sit for his portrait, and lo! the nameless amsterdam jew became immortal. [illustration: an old man with a long white beard, seated, wearing a wide cap, his hands folded . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] his father might also have told him (perhaps he did) that the artist, wherever he goes, sometimes hardly aware of his preoccupation, is always selecting subjects to paint, and brooding over the method of treatment; that one day rembrandt noted with amusement a man in the street shaking his fist at the skull-capped head of an older man bobbing angrily from a window. rembrandt chuckled, remembered the incident, painted it, and called it, for a picture must have a title, _samson threatening his father-in-law_; that one day rembrandt saw a fair-haired, chubby boy learning his lessons at his mother's knee. the composition appealed to his artist eye, he painted it, and the result is that beautiful and touching picture in the hermitage gallery at st. petersburg called _hannah teaching samuel his lessons_. to a child, the portrait of a painter by himself has a human interest apart altogether from its claim to be a work of art. rembrandt's portrait of himself at the national gallery, painted when he was thirty-two, is not one of his remarkable achievements. it is a little timid in the handling, but that it is an excellent likeness none can doubt. this bold-eyed, quietly observant, jolly-looking man was not quite the presentment of rembrandt that the child had imagined; but rembrandt at this period was something of a sumptuous dandy, proud of his brave looks and his fur-trimmed mantle. life was his province. no subject was vulgar to him so long as it presented problems of light and construction and drawing. rembrandt, like montaigne, was never didactic. he looked at life through his eyes and through his imagination, and related his adventures. one day it was a flayed ox hanging outside a butcher's shop, which he saw through his eyes; another day it was christ healing the sick, which he saw through his imagination. you can imagine the healthy, full-blooded rembrandt of this portrait painting the _carcase of a bullock_ at the louvre, or that prank called _the rape of ganymede_, or that delightful, laughing picture of his wife sitting upon his knee at dresden, which ruskin disliked. the other portrait of rembrandt by himself at the national gallery shows that he was not a vain man, and that he was just as honest with himself as with his other sitters. it was painted when he was old and ailing and time-marked, five years before his death. his hands are clasped, and he seems to be saying--"look at me! that is what i am like now, an old, much bothered man, bankrupt, without a home, but happy enough so long as i have some sort of a roof above me under which i can paint. i am he of whom it was said that he was famous when he was beardless. observe me now! what care i so that i can still see the world and the men and women about me--'when i want rest for my mind, it is not honours i crave, but liberty.'" [illustration: rembrandt leaning on a stone sill . national gallery, london.] twenty-eight seemed a great age to the child; but he thought it wonderful that the portrait of an _old lady_ at the national gallery should have been painted when rembrandt was but twenty-eight. she was too strong and determined for his liking, and he wondered why some of rembrandt's pictures, like _the woman taken in adultery_, should be so mysterious and poetical, and others like this old lady so lifelike and straightforward. he was too young to understand that the composition of the fortuitous concourse of atoms called rembrandt, included not only the power that velasquez possessed in so supreme a degree of painting just what his eyes saw, exemplified by this portrait of _an old lady_, aged , and by the portrait of _elizabeth bas_ at amsterdam, but that it also included the great gift of creative imagination, exemplified by the _christ at emmaus_, and _the good samaritan_ of the louvre, and in a way by the _portrait of a slav prince_ at the hermitage, where a man in the alembic of rembrandt's imagination has become a type. also in _the reconciliation of david and absalom_ at the hermitage, where behind the sham trappings of the figures shine the eternal motives of reconciliation and forgiveness. when the child was much older he saw the _christ at emmaus_, and _the good samaritan_ in the little room at the louvre, hanging side by side, and he never forget the hour that he spent with them. he had seen, year by year, many of the world's pictures; but at the sight of these two works, his childish predilection for rembrandt became a deep-rooted reverence and admiration, which was never to pass from him. here was rembrandt the seer, the man who had suffered. saskia was dead, his popularity gone; but the effect of these things was but to fill his heart with a world sympathy, with pity for all who sorrow. again and again he treated the _christ at emmaus_, _the good samaritan_, and _the prodigal son_ themes. "some strange presentment of his own fate," says m. michel, "seems to have haunted the artist, making him keenly susceptible to the story of _the good samaritan_. he too was destined to be stripped and wounded by life's wayside, while many passed him by unheeding." the _christ at emmaus_ is a small picture, and small the figures appear in that vast, dimly lighted chamber where the three are seated at table. the spiritual significance of christ is suggested by most simple means. light, and intensity of emotion, are the only aids. rembrandt disdains all other effects. intense feeling pervades the picture, even in the bare feet of christ, even in the astonished hand of the disciple resting upon the chair; even in the back of the other disciple who gazes, with clasped hands, transfixed with amazement and love at the face of his master, who has just broken bread and thus revealed himself. [illustration: reconciliation between david and absalom . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] of all rembrandt's pictures, this was the one that made the profoundest impression upon the child when he had become a man. other works, such as _the shipbuilder and his wife_ at buckingham palace, _the syndics of the drapers_ at amsterdam, that ripe expression of rembrandt's ripest powers, convinced him of the master's genius. he was deeply impressed by the range of portraits and subject-pictures at the hermitage gallery, many of which, by the art of mr. mortimer menpes, have been brought to the fireside of the untravelled; but the _christ at emmaus_ revealed to him the heart of rembrandt, and showed him, once and for all, to what heights a painter may attain when intense feeling is allied with superb craftsmanship. he found this intensity of emotion again in the _portrait of his mother_ at vienna. the light falls upon her battered, wrinkled face, the lips are parted as in extreme age, the hands, so magnificently painted, are folded upon her stick. when we look at rembrandt's portrait of _an old woman_ at the hermitage gallery, with that touch of red so artfully and fittingly peeping out from between the folds of her white scarf, we feel that he can say nothing more about old age, sad, quiescent, but not unhappy; when we look at the portrait of _an old lady_ in the national gallery (no. ) we feel that he can tell us no more about old age that still retains something that is petty and eager; but in the portrait of his mother at vienna, rembrandt, soaring, gives us quite another view of old age. it is the ancient face of a mother painted by a son who loved her, who had studied that face a thousand times, every line, and light, and aspect of the features, and who stated all his love and knowledge upon a canvas. rembrandt was always inspired when he painted his own family. there is a quality about his portraits of father, mother, saskia, titus, and hendrickje, yes! and of himself, that speaks to us as if we were intimates. it is a personal appeal. we find it in every presentment that rembrandt gives us of another figure which constantly inspired his brush--the figure of christ. in _the woman taken in adultery_, it is his figure that is articulate: it is the figure of christ in the emmaus picture that amazes: it is the figure of christ that haunts us in a dozen of the etchings. slowly the child, now become a man, began, as he thought, to understand rembrandt. why did _the singing boy_ at vienna, apart from the quality of the painting, and the joy depicted on that young smiling face, make a personal appeal to him? because he is rembrandt's son, titus; or if titus was not actually the model, the features and the smile of titus hovered between the father and the canvas. [illustration: an old woman in an arm chair, with a black head-cloth . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] he found an authentic portrait of titus in the wallace collection, painted in , the year after rembrandt had become bankrupt. it is one of the most charming portraits the master ever produced, a picture that even the most casual frequenter of galleries must pause before and love. a red cap crowns his curly hair, which falls to his shoulders. the face has a sweet expression; but the observant can detect traces of ill-health upon it. titus died before his father. father, mother, saskia, hendrickje, titus, had all gone when the old man passed to his rest. on the opposite wall at the wallace collection is _the parable of the unmerciful servant_, a fine example of rembrandt the _chiaroscurist_, straightforward, but touched with that mystery so rare in painting, but which, under certain conditions, was as natural to rembrandt as drawing. it is not always present in his work. none can say that there is any mystery about the sober portrait pictures called _the wife of jan pellicorne with her daughter_, and _burgomaster jan pellicorne with his son_, in the wallace collection. a scriptural subject was needed to inspire rembrandt's brush with the sense of mystery. it was the mystery of two pictures at the national gallery that first drew the child to rembrandt: it was the etchings that gave him a deeper insight into rembrandt's sense of mystery, and made of him a willing gamaliel at the master's feet. chapter iii the appeal of the etchings the citizen and golfer, whose commerce with rembrandt was narrated in the first chapter, approached the master through the writings of his recoverers, certain art historians and scholars, who frequent libraries, search archives, and peruse documents; men to whom a picture is a scientific document rather than an emotional or intellectual experience. he was well content to end his commerce with rembrandt there. history interested him: to art he was apathetic. his son, as was indicated in the second chapter, was indifferent to art history, and he would not have walked across the road to read an unedited document; but i see him tramping ten miles to seek a picture that promised to stir his emotions and stimulate his imagination. rembrandt, the maker of pictures, had become a vivid personality, a master whom he reverenced; but rembrandt the etcher was unknown to him. there are authorities who assert that in etching rembrandt's art found its amplest and most exquisite expression. none will deny that his is the greatest name in etching. if all rembrandt's pictures were destroyed, if every record of them by photograph or copy was blotted out, the etchings alone would form so ample a testimony to his genius that the name of rembrandt would still remain among the foremost artists of the world. rembrandt enjoyed a period of popularity with his pictures, followed by years of decline and neglect, when lesser and more accommodating men ousted him from popular favour. but from first to last the products of his needle were appreciated by his contemporaries, even if he himself did not set great store by them. he began to etch early in life: he ceased only when his eyesight failed. he found in etching a congenial and natural means of self-expression. his artistic fecundity threw them off in regal profusion. the mood seized him: he would take a prepared plate, and sometimes, having swiftly spent his emotion, he did not trouble to do more than indicate the secondary incidents in a composition. often he gave them away to friends and fellow-artists, or tossed them, when they had answered their purpose in his art life, so continuously experimental, into one of the sixty portfolios of leather recorded in the inventory of his property. the history of _christ healing the sick_, known as _the hundred guilder print_, now the most prized of all the etchings, shows that he did not attach much value, either artistic or monetary, to this plate. he did not even receive a hundred guilders (under £ ) for it, but gave the etching to his friend jan zoomer in exchange for _the pest_, by m. anthony. at the holford sale, as has already been noted, £ was given for the _hundred guilder print_. it is supposed that only two of the etchings were made expressly for publication--the _descent from the cross_, and the _ecce homo_; but rembrandt may have benefited from the sale of them through the partnership that was formed in between his son titus and hendrickje stoffels. [illustration: minerva . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] in the eighteenth century certain connoisseurs had already made collections of his etchings. catalogues began to be published, and in adam bartsch, keeper of the prints in the library at vienna, issued the well-known catalogue that bears his name in two octavo volumes. since bartsch's monumental work many students of the etchings have striven to sift the authentic from the false. needless to say, they disagree. here are the figures:-- bartsch authentic etchings. wilson " " claussin " " blanc " " middleton-wake " " de seidlitz " " legros - " " m. de seidlitz's list of was arrived at through consultation with several authorities, and that number is now accepted as approximately correct. our enthusiast knew nothing of the work of the labourers in rembrandt's etching vineyard. he was quite ignorant of the expert contributions of sir francis haden, p.g. hamerton, and mr. frederick wedmore, although his father, had he been a communicative man, could have discoursed learnedly on their efforts. fate so willed it that he came to rembrandt's etchings by chance, and, being sensitively alive to beauty and idealism, they merged into his life, and became as it were a personal possession. on a certain day, in the window of one of those delightful london shops where first editions, prints, pieces of pottery, and odds and ends tempting to the virtuoso, are exposed for sale, he saw a small opulent picture by monticelli. entering to inquire the price, he discovered, as he had feared, that it was far beyond his bank balance. at the invitation of the proprietor, who seemed delighted that his goods should be admired, he stayed to "look round." strewn upon a rosewood, inlaid table were a hundred and more etchings. many were quite small, heads of men and women minutely and beautifully wrought; others, larger in size, were biblical subjects; some were weird and fantastical; one, for example, showed a foreshortened figure lying before an erection, upon which a skinny bird stood with outstretched wings, flanked by ugly angel boys blowing trumpets. [illustration: titus in a red cap and a gold chain . the wallace collection, london.] "the best are sold," said the gentle proprietor. the enthusiast was about to ask the name of the artist, when he suddenly caught sight of the _christ at emmaus_. his blood stirred in him. that little shop became an altar of art, and he an initiate. it was not the same version as the louvre picture, but only one mind--the mind of rembrandt, only one heart--the heart of rembrandt, could have so felt and stated the pathos and emotion of that scene. controlling his excitement, he turned over the prints and paused, startled, before _abraham's sacrifice_. what was it that moved him? he could hardly say. but he was moved to an extraordinary degree by that angel standing, with outstretched wings, by abraham's side, hiding the kneeling boy's eyes with his hand, staying the knife at the supreme moment. he turned the prints, and paused again before _the prodigal son_. some might call the face of the kneeling prodigal hideous, might assert that the landscape was slight and unfinished, that the figure in the doorway was too sketchy. not so our enthusiast. this was the prodigal son, and as for the bending, forgiving father, all that he could imagine of forgiveness and pity was there realised in a few scratches of the needle. he turned the prints and withdrew _tobit blind_. in every line of this figure of the wandering old man, tapping his stick upon the pavement, feeling his way by the wall, was blindness, actual blindness--all the misery and loneliness and indignity of it. "are these for sale?" he asked the smiling proprietor, without the slightest hope that he could afford one. "oh yes! _tobit blind_ you can have for two shillings and sixpence. _abraham's sacrifice_, _christ at emmaus_, and _the prodigal son_ are four shillings each." the enthusiast could not conceal his astonishment. "i thought rembrandt's etchings cost hundreds of pounds," he said. "they do, but these are merely reproductions. only a millionaire could hope to possess a complete collection of first states. these are the reproductions that were issued with m. blanc's catalogue. he made them from the best proofs in his own collections, and from the public museums. you should compare them with the originals. the difference will astonish you. it's candle-light to sunlight, satinette to the finest silk." "but where can i see the originals? i don't know any millionaires." "nothing easier! go to the print room of the british museum or to the ionides collection." a day or two later the enthusiast, carrying under his arm the roll of four rembrandt's etchings that he had purchased for fourteen shillings and sixpence, ascended the stairs of the british museum, and timidly opened the door marked, "print room. students only." his reception agreeably surprised him. he, an obscure person, was treated as if he were a m. michel. an obliging boy requested him to hang his hat and coat upon a peg, and to sign his name in a book. an obliging youth waved him to a noble desk running at a right angle to a noble window, and begged him to indicate his needs upon a slip of paper. he inscribed the printed form with the words--"rembrandt's etchings and drawings." the obliging youth scanned the document and said--"which do you wish to see? there are many portfolios. i can bring you one at a time." "do so, if you please," said the enthusiast. "i should like to examine them all, even if it takes a week." the obliging youth inclined his head and departed. there is a delightful air of leisure and learning about the print room, and an entire absence of hustle. two students besides himself were the only other members of the public, one studying holbein, the other blake. [illustration: portrait of an old lady, full face, her hands folded . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] the first portfolio that was brought to him contained the _christ healing the sick_, known as _the hundred guilder print_, in several states. it was the first large etching by rembrandt that he had seen, and he gazed with astonishment, admiration, and awe at the almost miraculous characterisation of the figures, at the depth and richness of the blacks, and the nobility of the conception. he passed from that to _the three crosses_, and was even more moved by the dramatic intensity and realism of those burdened crosses against the profound gloom, and the dim, poignantly realised figures in the foreground. he saw the _christ before pilate_ and _the death of the virgin_, lingering before them, studying every detail, realising to the full, through these splendid impressions, the height and significance of rembrandt's genius. he compared the four prints he had purchased with their originals, and understood why collectors were eager to pay enormous prices for fine states, probably printed by the master himself. as soon as he had finished one portfolio, the watchful attendant carried it away, and substituted another. it was so easy, so restful, and so invigorating to study a master under these conditions, that he wondered the public did not flock to the print room as to a first night at a popular theatre. on another day he studied the drawings and landscape etchings--that dark, spacious design called _the three trees_, and a perfect little drawing of _joseph consoling the prisoners_. the large plates inspired him with reverence and profound admiration for rembrandt's genius as an etcher, but it was the smaller etchings that won his love and held it. he promised himself, when he came into certain family monies of which there was some prospect, that instead of buying an automobile, he would make himself the proud owner of _the three trees_, _the prodigal son_, _abraham's sacrifice_, and _tobit blind_--perhaps one, perhaps two, perhaps three, perhaps all four. chapter iv epochs in rembrandt's life suppose the admiration of our enthusiast for rembrandt had been noted in the select suburb where he lived: suppose his mother was one of those estimable ladies who hold monthly dorcas meetings in their drawing-rooms: suppose that while the ladies were working at useful garments for the poor, she persuaded her son to discourse on rembrandt: suppose, because the petition came from his mother that he, very much against his will, consented. it was not an easy task, as he took little or no interest in the life of rembrandt; his interests were entirely with the æsthetic appeal of his work. what, he asked himself, can one say about the life of a man when that life was wholly one with his art--mingling with it, ministering to it at every point. a boy, the fifth child of a miller living at leyden, is born into the world, takes to art as a duck to water, becomes one of the greatest painters of the world, dies in obscurity, is forgotten, and long after his death is placed among his peers. what is there to say about such a life? he made the attempt. [illustration: portrait of an old lady in a velvet hood, her hands folded . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] at the age of fourteen rembrandt entered at leyden university, but showed little inclination for books. he preferred lucas van leyden to virgil, and his parents, accepting the situation, allowed him to study painting under swanenburch, and later in the studio of lastman at amsterdam. after a few months with lastman he returned to leyden, "to practise painting alone and in his own way." so much for his schooling. at the age of twenty-one he produced a picture called _st. paul in prison_, and gerard dou became his pupil. in he left leyden and settled in amsterdam. in he married saskia van uylenborch, who bore him three children, and titus was the youngest. some years later he had two daughters by his servant, hendrickje stoffels. perhaps he married her. she was a kind, good soul, faithful and loyal to her master. his friends do not seem to have disapproved of this irregular union, but the consistory of her church summoned hendrickje before them and forbade her to communicate. at the age of fifty rembrandt was declared bankrupt. from that date until his death troubles encompassed him; but he was happy so long as he could paint undisturbed. his son titus died when he was sixty-two, and the following year rembrandt died, and was buried at a cost of thirteen florins. our enthusiast did not find it easy to manipulate these facts, and he elected to slur over the hendrickje episode; but he was able to interest the ladies of the dorcas meeting by showing them some of rembrandt's pictures. he collected a series of photographs of the portraits and paintings, including his favourite pictures, such as _the jewish rabbi_ in the national gallery, _titus_ and _the parable of the unmerciful servant_ in the wallace collection, _rembrandt's mother_ and _the singing boy_ at vienna; and he invested sixpence in a little manual recently published, called _the masterpieces of rembrandt_, containing sixty excellent reproductions of his portraits and pictures. he also displayed photographs of the remarkable series in the hermitage gallery at st. petersburg: _the descent from the cross_, with the brilliant light focussed on the body and winding sheet, and fading away into the darkness of the background; that radiant portrait of saskia painted just before her marriage to rembrandt, known as _flora with a flower-trimmed crook_, standing at the opening of a grotto, with a wreath of flowers upon her head, and the light falling upon her face and gay attire; _the holy family_, the father working at his daily task in the background, and the virgin, who has laid down her book, drawing aside the curtain from the cot to gaze upon the child. he explained that rembrandt, in placing this scene in a humble dutch cottage, knew that he could express the biblical story better that way than if he had painted an imaginary scene after the manner of the italians. "this great dutch master" (he quoted from mr. colvin) "succeeded in making as wonderful pictures out of spiritual abjectness and physical gloom as the italians out of spiritual exaltation and shadowless day." [illustration: flora with a flower-trimmed crook . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] at this point of his discourse he began to feel more confidence, and he proceeded to focus his remarks upon four periods in rembrandt's life--epochs that lend themselves to separate treatment, each epoch marked by the production of a masterpiece, and one remarkable portrait that has a particular and pathetic interest. those four pictures are _the anatomy lesson_, painted in , when he was twenty-six; the _sortie of a company of amsterdam musketeers_, known as _the night watch_, painted in , when he was thirty-six; _the syndics of the cloth hall_, painted in , when he was fifty-six; and his own portrait, painted in , two years before his death. "his _anatomy lesson_," says m. michel, "was the glorification of science itself; in his _sortie of a company of amsterdam musketeers_ he embodied that civic heroism which had lately compassed dutch independence; and in a group of five cloth merchants seated round a table, discussing the affairs of their guild, he summed up, as it were, in a few immortal types, the noble sincerity of dutch portraiture." _the anatomy lesson_ was the picture that gave rembrandt his opportunity, and proclaimed his preeminence among the painters in amsterdam. it was the custom in those days for corporations, civic bodies, and associations of various kinds, to commemorate their period of office by commissioning portrait groups which should hand down their worthy faces to posterity. the desire of the less prominent members of the associations thus painted was that each head should be a likeness, plainly recognisable,--that one burgher should not be treated with more importance than another. this desire for present and posthumous commemoration extended to medical circles. portraits and portrait groups of famous physicians and surgeons were painted and hung in the theatres where they lectured or operated. dr. tulp, an eminent surgeon of the day, commissioned rembrandt to represent him performing an operation, proposing to present the picture to the surgeons' guild in memory of his professorship. the grave, realistic picture called _the anatomy lesson_, now hanging at the hague museum, was the result. the corpse lies upon the dissecting table; before it stands dr. tulp, wearing a broad-brimmed hat; around him are grouped seven elderly students. some are absorbed by the operation, others gaze thoughtfully at the professor, or at the spectator. dr. tulp indicates with his forceps one of the tendons of the subject's left arm, and appears to be addressing the students, or practitioners, for these seven bearded men have long passed the age of studentship. this picture made rembrandt's reputation. he was but twenty-six; the world seemed to be at his feet; in the two following years he painted forty portraits. it was not easy for our enthusiast to explain to the ladies of the dorcas meeting that the dissection of a body was a suitable subject for the brush of a painter. the dutchmen of rembrandt's day were not so squeamish as we have become since. they had a passion for the literal painting of literal things, and this picture was destined not for a tate gallery, but for the wall of an operating theatre. dr. tulp desired a picture of himself performing an operation, and rembrandt gave it to him, painted in a way that pleased his contemporaries, and that has astonished the world ever since. ten years later rembrandt painted another doelen or regent picture which, under the erroneous title of _the night watch_, is to-day the chief attraction of the ryks museum at amsterdam. this time it was not a group of surgeons, but a company of amsterdam musketeers marching out under the leadership of their captain, frans banning cocq. in all these civic or military regent pictures, each member subscribed a sum towards the artist's fee, and consequently each individual wished to have his money's worth in the shape of an accurate presentation of his face and form. it is an old quarrel between artist and public. mr. abbey had to face it in his coronation picture; mr. bacon had to face it in his _return of the c.i.v.'s_; perhaps the only folk who solved the problem were the complaisant gentlemen who designed panoramas of cricket matches in the last century, where each member of the company blandly faces the spectator. much water had flowed under burgomaster six's bridge since rembrandt painted _the anatomy lesson_. then he was the obedient student. now he was an acknowledged master. he painted _the sortie of the company of frans banning cocq_ as an artist who was profoundly interested in problems of light and shade, with strong views as to the composition of a picture, not as a methodical and mediocre painter desirous of carrying out the commission in a way to please his patrons. they wanted a presentment of the face and figure of each member of the company who had subscribed a hundred florins. rembrandt gave them a work of art. no doubt the captain and his lieutenant were well enough pleased, for they stride forth in the forefront of the picture, but the rank and file were bitterly hostile. from the painting of _the night watch_ his popularity began to wane. the history of this picture, after it had been hung in the doelen or assembly hall belonging to captain cocq's company, was as troublous as the later life of rembrandt. years afterwards when, blackened with smoke and ill-usage, it was removed from the doelen to the hotel de ville, the authorities, finding that it was too large for the space it was destined to occupy, deliberately cut a piece away from each side. this is proved by a copy of the picture made by lundens before the mutilation, now in the national gallery. when m. hopman undertook the restoration of _the night watch_ he discovered, when he had removed the surface of dirt, that the sortie is taking place by daylight, and that the work contained something that rembrandt evidently intended should represent a ray of sunlight. but the popular name of the picture is still _the night watch_. the ladies of the dorcas society expressed in eyes and gestures their disapproval of the amsterdam vandals who mutilated _the night watch_. one of them remarked: "it happened a long time ago. so gross a barbarity could not be perpetrated now." twenty years later, at the age of fifty-six, rembrandt, having known what it was to be homeless and penniless, painted his masterpiece, _the syndics of the cloth hall_, merely five figures grouped round a table, with a servant, uncovered, in attendance. it is an extraordinarily real picture, the final statement of rembrandt's knowledge of painting, combined with that rare power of seeing things just as they are--the hundred subtleties that the untrained eye never sees, as well as the accents that all see. it is the perfect painter's vision--a scene grasped as a whole, character searched out but not insistent, the most delicate suggestion of equally diffused light knitting the figures together. he made no attempt to be picturesque as in _the night watch_; he was content just to paint five men dressed in black, with flat white collars and broad-brimmed hats, and a servant. with these simple materials rembrandt produced the picture that the world has agreed to regard as his masterpiece. contemporary criticism says nothing about it. the place of honour at the ryks museum at amsterdam is given to _the night watch_, but it is _the syndics of the cloth hall_--a simple presentation of five grave men seated at a table--that we remember with wonder and admiration. our enthusiast, having dwelt upon these three masterpieces, marking epochs in rembrandt's life, referred again to the magnificent array of portraits scattered in such regal profusion through the thirty years that passed between the painting of _the anatomy lesson_ and _the syndics_. then noticing, while enlarging upon the etchings, that his mother was casting anxious glances at the clock, he hurriedly referred to the last portrait that rembrandt painted of himself, two years before his death. he could not describe this portrait, which is in a private collection in berlin, as he had never seen it, so he quoted m. michel's description: "this extraordinary work, perhaps the last rembrandt painted, is modelled with prodigious vigour and freedom. with superb audacity, the master shows us once more the familiar features, on which age and sorrow have worked their will. they are distorted, disfigured, almost unrecognisable. but the free spirit is still unbroken. the eyes that meet ours are still keen and piercing; they have even the old twinkle of good-humoured irony, and the toothless mouth relaxes in frank laughter. what was the secret of this gaiety? in spite of his poverty, he had still a corner in which to paint. beside him stand an easel and an antique bust, perhaps a relic of his former wealth. he holds his maul-stick in his hand, and pauses for a moment in his work. he is happy because he can give himself up to his art." [illustration: the descent from the cross . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] it was the last of half a hundred portraits of himself, painted and etched without vanity; painted because a man's self is such an accommodating model, always ready and willing; painted because rembrandt loved to experiment with himself before a mirror, grimacing, angry, stern, "as an officer," "with a casque," "with a gorget," or, as we see him in the national gallery, on one wall with the bloom of youth and health upon his face, on the other, dulled, stained, and marked by the finger of time. this we can say: that he was always true to himself. chapter v the great triumvirate it is generally acknowledged that the greatest masters of painting that the world has known are titian, velasquez, and rembrandt, and to each of the triumvirate we apply the word genius. among the many definitions of that abused word is one which states that genius consists not in seeing more than other people, but in seeing differently. we acknowledge genius in a painter when, over and above masterly technical power, he presents to us a view of life or of nature which we may never have seen, but which we are convinced is the vision of deeper eyes than our own, and is true. the seer has seen it, and it is only because of the dimness or narrowness or worldliness of our outlook that we do not perceive it also. a great painter writes us a letter, tells us of the things he has seen or heard or felt, gives us news of the world wherein he lives. he expresses his personality to us, and personality in art is a thing incalculable. corot's _arcadia_ landscape delights us because it is the distilled essence of the vision, heart, and character of the personality called corot. personality may be expressed by a rembrandt, abundantly. it may also be expressed by a velasquez, negatively. we must be vigilant, in judging a painter, to distinguish between his own personality and the personality of those who interpret him to us. the more we give of ourselves to a painter or an author, the greater is the return of his appeal and interest. cleave the wood of your brain and you find him brimming with communications, raise the stone of your imagination and he is revealed. a certain critic, who had devoted his life to the study of reynolds, while lecturing upon the achievement of that master, threw upon the screen a certain large subject-picture, not one of reynold's happiest efforts, but a laboured and unattractive design which, we know, gave reynolds an infinity of trouble. so scientific, so interesting was this critic's analysis of the picture, so absorbing the attributes he read into it, that many of his audience were persuaded that they were looking upon a reynolds masterpiece, whereas they were but hypnotised by the subtleties of the critic's mind working upon reynolds. conversely the criticism of some writers tends towards depreciation because of their predilection for objective as opposed to subjective criticism. the late p.g. hamerton, writing upon rembrandt, says, "the chiaroscuro of rembrandt is often false and inconsistent, and in fact he relied largely on public ignorance. but though arbitrary, it is always conducive to his purpose." "conducive to his purpose!" there is much virtue in those four words. rembrandt probably knew as well as anybody that his lighting of a picture was not a facsimile of the lighting of nature, or rather not the chiaroscuro as seen by the average eye; but he had an aim, a vision before him, and he did not hesitate to interpret that vision in his own way. who dares to say that rembrandt was disloyal to nature? our concern is not what we should have done, but what rembrandt did, seeing with his own eyes. and the questions we should ask ourselves are:--is the interpretation of the world as seen through his eyes beautiful, suggestive, profound, and stimulating? does the statement of his personality in paint add to our knowledge, educate our æsthetic perceptions, and extend our horizon by showing us things that our imperfect vision does not see except through him? [illustration: a young woman in a red chair holding a pink in her right hand . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] comparisons are not only odious, but foolish. no sensible critic attempts a comparison between titian, velasquez, and rembrandt. he accepts them as they are, and is grateful. but even the most obscure of mortals may have his preferences, and a curious chapter in the lives of individuals who have concerned themselves with painting would be the bewildering way in which the pendulum of their appreciation and admiration has swung backwards and forwards from titian to velasquez, from velasquez to rembrandt, and sometimes back to titian. it is often a question of mood. there are moods when the regal abundance, the consummate craftsmanship of titian, the glow and splendour of his canvases, the range of them from _the man with the glove_ in the louvre to the _bacchus and ariadne_, force us to place him on the summit of parnassus. we are dazzled by this prince of painters, dominating venice at the height of her prosperity, inspired by her, having around him, day by day, the glorious pictures that the genius of venice had produced. we follow his triumphant career, see him courted and fêted, recognise his detachment from the sorrow and suffering of the unfortunate and unclassed, and amid the splendour of his career note his avidity for the loaves and fishes of the world. unlike rembrandt, fortune favoured titian to the end. his career was a triumphal progress. we stand in that small room at the prado museum at madrid and gaze upon his canvases, sumptuous and opulent, diffusing colour like a sunset, indifferent to their story or meaning, happy and content with the flaming feast outspread for our enjoyment. we stand before his _entombment_ at the louvre, dumb before its superlative painting, with hardly a thought for the tragedy that it represents. titian accepts the literary motive, and the artist in him straight forgets it. we walk from _the entombment_ to the little chamber where rembrandt's _christ at emmaus_ hangs, and the heart of rembrandt is beating there. to titian the glory of the world, to rembrandt all that man has felt and suffered, parting and sorrow, and the awakening of joy. we do not compare the one painter with the other; we say: "this is titian, that is rembrandt; each gives us his emotion." foolish indeed it seems in the face of these two pictures, and a thousand others, to say that art should be this or that,--that a picture should or should not have a literary or a philosophical motive. painters give us themselves. we amuse ourselves by placing them in schools, by analysing their achievement, by scientific explanations of what they did just by instinct, as lambs gambol--and behind all stands the sphinx called personality. there are moods when the appeal of velasquez is irresistible. grave and reticent, a craftsman miraculously equipped, detached, but not with the jovian detachment of titian, this spanish gentleman stalks silently across the art stage. hundreds of drawings of rembrandt's exhibit evidence of the infinite extent of his experiments after perfection. the drawings of velasquez can be counted on the fingers of one hand. he drew in paint upon the canvas. from his portraits and pictures we gather not the faintest idea of what he felt, what he thought, what he believed. one thing we know absolutely--that he saw as keenly and as searchingly as any painter who has ever lived. what he saw before him he could paint, and in the doing of it he was unrivalled. his hand followed and obeyed his eye. when the object was not before him, he falls short of his superlative standard. the figures of philip iv., of olivares, and of prince baltazar carlos in the three great equestrian portraits are as finely drawn as man could make them. velasquez saw them; he did not see the prancing horses which they ride, consequently our eyes dropping from the consummate figures are disappointed at the conventional attitudes of the steeds. velasquez, like titian, moved from success to success; both were friends of kings, both basked in royal favour, neither had the disadvantage, or perhaps the great advantage, like rembrandt, of the education of adversity. velasquez made two journeys into italy; he knew what men had accomplished in painting, and if he was not largely influenced by titian and tintoretto, their work showed him what man had done, what man could do, and indicated to him his own dormant powers. rembrandt was sufficient unto himself. there are moods when one is sure that he stands at the head of the painting hierarchy. in spite of his greatness, we feel that he is very near to our comprehension. what a picture of the old painter towards the end of his life that saying of baldinucci presents. we are told that near the close of his career, absorbed in his art, indifferent to the world, "when he was painting at his easel he had come to wipe his brushes on the hinder portions of his dress." rembrandt looms out like some amorphous boulder, stationary, lichen-stained, gathering time unto itself. he travelled so little that it can be said he was untravelled. the works of other painters affected him not at all. we are without proof that he was even interested in the work of his contemporaries or predecessors. life was his passion. one model was as good as another. he looked at life, and life fired his imaginations. he painted himself fifty times; he painted his friends, his relations, and the people he met while prowling about the streets. his pencil was never idle. imagination, which confuses the judgment of so many, aided him, for his imagination was not nourished by vanity, or the desire to produce an effect, but flowed from the greatness of his brooding heart. he stood alone during his life, an absorbed man, uninfluenced by any school; he stands alone to-day. the world about him, and his thoughts and reflections, were his only influences. he read few books, and the chief among them was the bible. mr. berenson has written an exhaustive and learned work on lorenzo lotto, analysing his pictures year by year, and exhuming the various painters who influenced lotto at the different periods of his life. mr. berenson's book extends to nearly three hundred pages. the influences of the painting fraternity upon rembrandt would not provide material for the first paragraph of the first page of such a book. his fame is assured. he is one of the great triumvirate. "he was greater, perhaps," says mr. clausen, "than any other painter in human feeling and sympathy, in dramatic sense and invention; and his imagination seemed inexhaustible." the ryks museum at amsterdam may be said to have been designed as a shrine for his _night watch_. near by it hangs _the syndics of the cloth company_, excelled, in this particular class of work, by no picture in the world; but it is by the portraits and the etchings that the sweep, profundity, and versatility of rembrandt's genius is exemplified. truly his imagination was inexhaustible. it is an education to stand before his portraits in the national gallery. observe the _old lady_, aged , the massive painting of her face, and the outline of her figure set so firmly against the background. here is realism, frank and straightforward, almost defiant in its strength. turn to the portrait of _a jewish rabbi_. here is idealism. you peer and peer, and from the brown background emerges a brown garment, relieved by the black cap, and the black cloak that falls over his left shoulder. luminous black and luminous brown! brown is the side of the face in shadow, brown is the brow in shadow. all is tributary to the glory of the golden brown on the lighted portion of the face. the portrait composes into a perfect whole. the dim blacks and browns lead up to the golden brown illuminating the old weary head, that wonderful golden brown--the secret of rembrandt. this old jew lives through the magic art of rembrandt. he crouches in the frame, wistful and waiting, the eternal type, eternally dreaming the jews' dream that is still a dream. the end _printed by_ r. & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. whistler as i knew him by mortimer menpes square imperial vo ( × - / inches), bound in cloth, with top edge gilt, containing full-page facsimile reproductions in colour and tint of whistler's oil-colours, water-colours, pastels, and etchings. (the edition de luxe contains an original whistler etching never before published.) ordinary edition, s. net. edition de luxe (limited to copies), guineas net * * * * * some press opinions haldane macfall in =the academy=.--"no one who loves the art of whistler should be without this handsome book; it contains works of art of exquisite beauty; it contains a delightful picture of the outward whistler that the man himself wished to be mistaken for the real thing--half butterfly, half wasp, wholly laughing enigma." =the observer=.--"a singularly illuminating and intimate monograph." =the week's survey=.--"mr. menpes gives us an extraordinarily vivid account of the technical methods which whistler employed. this in itself must make his book a text-book for all time." =the magazine of art=.--"it is all wonderfully true to life, obviously sincere and convincing, and vastly entertaining." =the bystander=.--"one of the most delightful biographical sketches which has appeared for a long time." =to-day=.--"a deeply interesting and an extremely entertaining volume." =the daily news=.--"a quite miraculous study that, like shallow, ought to provide the world with laughter for the wearing out of six fashions. and after that the pictures will still remain a permanent joy." a.m.b. in =the king=.--"by far the most valuable and interesting book on whistler which has been written, or, indeed, is ever likely to be written." =t.p.'s weekly=.--"an honest and clear study of the great artist." a.c.r.c. in =the outlook=.--"it bears the impress of actuality, and is probably the truest chain of living pictures of whistler's personality that any 'follower' could have made." =dundee advertiser=.--"told in a most fascinating manner." =the world=.--"an extremely interesting and valuable historical document." =truth=.--"at once a superb and an amazing book--superb in the number and excellence of its reproductions of whistler's work, amazing in its characteristic anecdotes of the master." =the connoisseur=.--"the illustrations form an invaluable record of whistler's art, and they in themselves make mr. menpes's book a desirable possession." =the studio=.--"full of deeply interesting data respecting whistler's methods, of real revelation of his remarkable personality, and of pathetic instances of the devotion of his followers." =the globe=.--"eminently amusing and very instructive to boot." =aberdeen free press=.--"as literature it is vastly entertaining; as art it is an extraordinarily brilliant and abundant collection representative of the work of a remarkable man, in himself a 'school.'" * * * * * the non-illustrated edition whistler as i knew him by mortimer menpes square demy vo bound in cloth price / net * * * * * published by adam and charles black · soho square · london · w. by the same author each with full-page illustrations in colour price s. net * * * * * venice =publishers' note=.--this book treats of venice not only at one time of the day, but at all times. there is venice at night; venice in sunshine; venice in grey; it is a colour record of venice, full of actuality. there are all sides of venice--old doorways; the riva; the rialto; st. mark's before and after the fall of the campanile; the doge's palace; the salute at dawn and the salute at sunset; market places; fishing villages, with their vividly-coloured fishing boats--rich orange sails splashed with yellows and vermilions; the piazza; churches; and the islands of the lagoon. * * * * * the durbar =morning post.=--"this splendid book will be accepted by all as the best realisation of an epoch-making ceremony that we are ever likely to get." =the academy.=--"unquestionably the best pictorial representation of the durbar which has appeared." =the globe.=--"likely to be the most brilliant and lasting record of the historical occasion." * * * * * world's children =the times.=--"of the cleverness, both of the pictures and letter-press, there can be no doubt. miss menpes's short papers on the children of different lands are full of insight, human and fresh experience; and mr. menpes's pictures ... are above all remarkable for their extraordinary variety of treatment, both in colour scheme and in the pose and surroundings of the subject." * * * * * world pictures =the scotsman.=--"mr. menpes has been a wanderer over the face of the earth armed with brush and pencil, and he has brought back with him portfolios filled with samples of the colour and sunshine, and of the life and form, quaint or beautiful, of the most famous countries of the east and of the west, and his charming book is a kind of album into which he has gathered the cream of an artist's memories and impressions of the many countries he has visited and sketched in." * * * * * japan =the times.=--"mr. menpes's pictures are here given in most perfect facsimile, and they form altogether a series of colour impressions of japan which may fairly be called unrivalled. even without the narrative they would show that mr. menpes is an enthusiast for japan, her art and her people; and very few european artists have succeeded in giving such complete expression to an admiration in which all share." * * * * * war impressions =daily telegraph.=--"one hardly knows which to admire the more--the skill of the artist or the skill with which his studies have been reproduced, for the colours of the originals are shown with marvellous fidelity, and the delicate art of the impressionist loses nothing in the process. the book, therefore, is a double triumph, and will therefore be prized by collectors." * * * * * brittany =publishers' note.=--mr. menpes is perhaps exceptionally capable of producing a true and vivid description of brittany. he has lived and painted there for many years. every aspect of the country has been faithfully depicted by him; every mood of breton life, every trait of character. whether it is a pig-market that is portrayed, or a dignified breton surrounded by his household gods of oak and blue china in the atmosphere of his own home--whether it is a fleet of fishing boats hung with cobalt-blue nets, or group of mediæval houses in some ancient town--each and every picture bears the impress of actuality. * * * * * published by a. & c. black · soho square · london · w. and obtainable from all booksellers at home or abroad [illustration] don't open your door ...unless... you know who rang the bell protection that pays an =ackerman door interviewer= (peephole) you look through a mirror and you see your caller =but he cannot see you!= for installation call: wa. - - a.m. or - p.m. authorized agent walter deutschman west th street, new york , n.y. retail price =$ . = plus $ . for installation installation takes minutes through any door, steel, wood, etc. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) transcriber's note: letters enclosed in a square bracket with tilde denote that there is an overscore or tilde above the letter; for example Ñ is denoted by [~n]. [c] denotes a reversed c. the great masters in painting and sculpture edited by g. c. williamson luca signorelli * * * * * the great masters in painting and sculpture. _the following volumes have been issued_ bernardino luini. by george c. williamson, litt.d., editor of the series. velasquez. by r. a. m. stevenson. andrea del sarto. by h. guinness. luca signorelli. by maud cruttwell. _december_ . raphael. by h. strachey. _january_ . _in preparation._ carlo crivelli. by g. m'neil rushforth, m.a., lecturer in classics, oriel college, oxford. correggio. by selwyn brinton, m.a., author of "the renaissance in italian art." fra angelico. by langton douglas, m.a. the brothers bellini. by s. arthur strong, m.a., librarian to the house of lords. michael angelo. by charles holroyd, keeper of the national gallery of british art. turner. by charles francis bell, m.a., deputy keeper of the ashmolean museum. perugino. by g. c. williamson, litt.d., editor of the series. memlinc. by w. h. james weale, late keeper of the national art library. murillo. by manuel b. cossio, litt.d., ph. d., director of the musee pedagogique, madrid. rembrandt. by malcolm bell. _others to follow._ london: george bell & sons * * * * * [illustration: _portrait of an unknown man_] luca signorelli by maud cruttwell [illustration] london george bell & sons "pianga cortona omai, vestasi oscura, che estinti son del signorello i lumi; et, tu, pittura, fa de gli occhi fuimi, che resti senza lui debile e scura." _epitaph composed at the time of his death_ "il cortonese luca d'ingegno e spirito pellegrino." rime di giovanni santi prefatory notice. the references to vasari, and crowe and cavalcaselle, are invariably to the latest editions, both in italian: "opere di giorgio vasari" (firenze, g. c. sansoni, ); "cavalcaselle e crowe" (le monnier, ). the author desires to express her gratitude to mr bernhard berensen, author of "lorenzo lotto," etc., for much help in her work. florence, _october_ . contents page list of illustrations ix bibliography xiii genealogical tree xv chapter i. his life ii. development and characteristics of his genius iii. earliest works iv. middle period v. orvieto vi. later paintings vii. last works viii. drawings ix. pupils and general influence chronological table catalogue of works index list of illustrations page portrait of a man _gallery, berlin_ _frontispiece_ portrait of signorelli _museo del duomo, orvieto_ the deposition _cathedral, cortona_ the flagellation _brera gallery, milan_ apostles _santa casa, loreto_ the incredulity of s. thomas _santa casa, loreto_ the conversion of saul _santa casa, loreto_ madonna and saints _cathedral, perugia_ the circumcision _national gallery, london_ pan _gallery, berlin_ madonna _uffizi, florence_ madonna and saints _pitti, florence_ holy family _rospigliosi gallery, rome_ holy family _uffizi, florence_ the annunciation _cathedral, volterra_ the annunciation _uffizi, florence_ the crucifixion _santo spirito, urbino_ miracle of s. benedict _monte oliveto_ miracle of s. benedict _monte oliveto_ saints _gallery, berlin_ holy family _gallery, berlin_ the crucifixion _municipio, borgo san sepolero_ portraits of signorelli and fra angelico _cathedral, orvieto_ patriarchs _cathedral, orvieto_ the preaching and fall of antichrist _cathedral, orvieto_ the crowning of the elect _cathedral, orvieto_ subjects from dante _cathedral, orvieto_ heaven _cathedral, orvieto_ hell _cathedral, orvieto_ the damnation _cathedral, orvieto_ the resurrection _cathedral, orvieto_ signs of destruction _cathedral, orvieto_ madonna and saints _brera, milan_ dead christ upheld by angels _s. niccolò, cortona_ the adoration of the magi _jarvis collection, new haven, u.s.a._ madonna and saints _mancini collection, città di castello_ the deposition _santa croce, umbertide_ madonna, saints, and prophets _gallery, arezzo_ study of nude figure _louvre, paris_ magdalen at the foot of the cross _academy, florence_ tiberius gracchus _gallery, buda-pesth_ erratum page line , _for_ "pius ii." _read_ "sixtus iv." the frontispiece and the illustrations facing pp. , , and ( ) are from photographs by hanfstaengl (munich), those facing pp. (no. ) and by anderson (rome), that facing page by a. braun & co. (dornach and paris), those facing pp. and from private photographs, and the remainder by alinari (florence). bibliography. luca signorelli. vasari, con annotazione di gaetano milanesi. (firenze, g. c. sansoni, .) vol. iii. luca signorelli und die italienische renaissance. robert vischer. (leipzig, .) luca signorelli. cavalcaselle e crowe. (le monnier, .) vol. viii. Über leben, wirken und werke der maler andrea mantegna und luca signorelli. g. f. waagen. (historisches taschenbuch von raumer.) luca signorelli. manni. (racolta milanese di vari opuscoli, .) vol. i. storia del duomo di orvieto. padre della valle, . il duomo di orvieto. ludovico luzi, . memorie ecclesiastiche e civili di cittÀ di castello. muzi, . istruzione storico. giacomo mancini, . notizie ... sopra luca signorelli. girolamo mancini, . guida dei monumenti ... nella provincia dell'umbria, guardabassi. . family tree of the signorelli family. ventura di signorelli. | luca. | egidio = a sister of lazzaro dei taldi | (great-grandfather of giorgio | vasari, the biographer). +---------------------------+ | | ventura. luca = galizia carnesecca. | | | +----------------+---+-------------+----------+---------+ | | | | | | | polidoro antonio pier tommaso gabriella = felicia = | (painter and = . nannina = margherita mariotto luca della | builder). di paolo di vagnozzi. del mazza. bioscia. | di forzore. | | | . mattea di | bernardina. | domenico di | | | simone. | +-------------+ | +-+-----------+ | | | | | lucrezia francesco rosata = giulio. filiziano. = domenico (painter). mariotto di gilio = felice di felice (banker.) carrari. passerini. luca signorelli chapter i his life (born : died ) it is a curious fact that, considering the number of documents which exist relating to signorelli, and the paintings time has spared, so little should be known beyond the merest outline of his life. the very dates of his birth and death are indirectly acquired; the documents leave his youth and early manhood an absolute blank, and there are only two of his numerous works which can with certainty be placed before his thirty-third year.[ ] we are, therefore, forced to fall back upon traditionary record, and by the aid of his biographer vasari, and the evidence of youthful studies which his paintings contain, to patch together a probable account of his life, up to the time when the documents begin. on vasari, in this case, we can depend with a certain amount of confidence, since signorelli was his kinsman, and they had been in such personal communication as was possible between an old man and a child. from vasari, then, we learn that luca was born in cortona, of egidio signorelli, and a sister of lazzaro dè taldi.[ ] this lazzaro, great grandfather of the biographer, deserves special mention, since it was through his means, and under his guardianship, that luca was placed as a child to study painting with pier dei franceschi, at arezzo.[ ] vasari tells us that lazzaro was "a famous painter of his time, not only in his own country, but throughout tuscany, with a style of painting hardly to be distinguished from that of his great friend, pietro della francesca."[ ] this, however, is an assertion that has never been supported, and was probably based on the author's pride in his own family, for in the cortona tax-receipts for the year , he is described merely as a harness-maker (_sellajo di cavalli_.)[ ] there is, besides, no record of him among the painters of arezzo, and no fragment remains of the many works enumerated by his great-grandson. but it is of little consequence whether he was a painter of pictures or a decorator of saddles; what is to our purpose is the fact, that by his means luca was placed under the tutelage of the painter most capable of developing the noblest qualities of his genius. luca was born about , as we gather from vasari, and if is the correct date of his uncle lazzaro's death, his apprenticeship to pier dei franceschi must have begun before his eleventh year. it is probable that, with his fellow-pupil melozzo da forlì, his senior by three years, signorelli assisted the master with the frescoes in s. francesco, although there is no trace of any work that might be from his hand. vasari tells us that as a youth he laboured "to imitate the style of his master," with such success, that (as he remarked of lazzaro) "their work was hardly to be distinguished apart."[ ] the nearest approach to the style of piero that remains to us is "the flagellation," of the brera, milan, which, however, already shows signs of a more deeply impressed technical influence, but it was probably under piero's training that signorelli developed his broad methods of work, and the grand manner which makes his painting so impressive. the later influence visible in the above-mentioned "flagellation," as throughout all his work, is that of antonio pollaiuolo. to him and to donatello are due the most important features in his artistic development, and in technique he follows much more readily than the umbrian, the florentine methods, with which his painting has nearly everything in common. of the influence of donatello it may justly be said that every painter and sculptor of the fifteenth century submitted to it, but few were so completely touched by his spirit as signorelli. not only, as we shall see later, did he transfer attitudes and features from donatello's statues into his earlier paintings, but he caught, and even exaggerated, the confident and somewhat arrogant spirit of his work, and exploited it with the same uncompromising realism. the influence of antonio pollaiuolo was still more important, and is so evident in the whole mass of his painting, that with no other warrant we may feel certain that he spent a considerable time either as pupil or assistant to the florentine master. the passion of pollaiuolo was to discover the science of movement in the human frame. "he understood the nude in a more modern way than the masters before him," says vasari, "and he removed the skin from many corpses to see the anatomy beneath."[ ] he was, in fact, the great anatomical student among the quattrocento artists; and, having the same tastes, it was natural that to his workshop signorelli should turn, in order to satisfy his own craving for knowledge of the structure of bones and muscles. the internal evidence of his paintings warrants this supposition, but there is no record of any residence in florence, beyond the announcement of vasari, that he went there after his visit to siena, not at all as a student, but as a fully-fledged painter, making gifts of his pictures to his friend and patron, lorenzo dei medici. his work, however, proves so incontestably the training of pollaiuolo, and shows so close an acquaintance with florentine works of art, that we may safely presume the greater part of his youth, after leaving the studio of pier dei franceschi, to have been passed in florence as pupil or assistant of antonio. it is a wide leap from these days of study to the beginning of his citizen's life in cortona, when, a man of thirty-eight, he first settled down as a burgher discharging important duties there, but it would be idle to attempt to fill the gap, and only one document exists to help in any way to bridge it over. this is a commission from the commune of città di castello, dated ,[ ] requiring signorelli to paint, over some older frescoes in their tower, a large "madonna and saints," but, unfortunately the work itself no longer exists, for what time and neglect had spared, the earthquake of completely destroyed. we may presume that before he painted the important frescoes for the church of the holy house at loreto, since in that year he was first appointed to the municipal offices in cortona, which necessitated an almost constant residence there for the next three years, as the documents of election show.[ ] these numerous papers (for the most part discovered through the efforts of signor girolamo mancini, and published in his "notizie"), are preserved in the archives of cortona, and form the chief evidence of the painter's whereabouts up to the end of his long life. they record, first, his appointment in the autumn of to the council of xviii., and to the conservatori degli ordinamente,[ ] in the following spring to the priori, and in the summer to the general council, and they continue with few interruptions up to the very day of his death. they decide for us the social status he enjoyed, for both priori and councillors were chosen from the richest and most influential families, although not necessarily noble.[ ] his official life began in a time of tumult and bloodshed. it was the year after the failure of the pazzi conspiracy, and all around cortona were pitched the camps of the rival troops of sixtus iv. and the excommunicated florentines. cortona itself, as a frontier town of the medici, was in the very centre of the fray; and besides these more important quarrels, there were the incessant internal bickerings between the nobles and the populace, which at that time divided every italian city against itself. altogether, the position of magistrate in such a town, at such a time, could have been no sinecure, and it is difficult to understand how the hard-working painter could have found time or inclination to accept the citizen's duties, which were so weighty an occupation in themselves. much time has been spent in the vain search for documents relating to signorelli's supposed visit, in , to rome, where, it is said, he was summoned to paint, with perugino, pintorricchio, botticelli, and cosimo rosselli, the walls of the sistine chapel. later criticism has perhaps accounted for the absence of such a record. of the two frescoes there, formerly attributed to him, it is now no longer doubted that one--"the journey of moses and zipporah"--is by pintorricchio, and the opinion is gradually gaining ground that the other--"the death of moses"--although much nearer to signorelli's style, is not sufficiently so as to permit us to accept it as his work.[ ] the notices of the next few years contain little of interest beyond the facts, that in signorelli painted the altar-piece in the perugia cathedral, the first dated picture remaining, and that in he received the much-coveted honour of citizenship from città di castello, for the "great ability" with which he painted a standard for the brotherhood of the blessed virgin,[ ] a work which no longer exists. soon after follows a document dated , which bears witness that luca had been invited by the authorities of santa maria dei fiori in florence to assist in judging the models and designs for the projected façade of that church.[ ] this is important as a proof of the high esteem in which he was held in florence, implying also that he must have understood something of architecture. he declined the invitation, perhaps for the same reason for which he had excused himself the month before from serving as priore in his native town, "being absent at a distance of over forty miles,"[ ] probably at volterra. he painted there in this year three pictures, all of which are still in the city; the "annunciation" and the "madonna and saints," dated , and the fresco of "s. jerome" on the walls of the municipio. the next notice of importance is of the year , when he received the commission from the monks of s. benedict to fresco the walls of their cloister at monte oliveto.[ ] here he painted eight episodes from the life of the patron saint, leaving the rest of the work to be completed by sodoma. notwithstanding this task he found time, for four months of this very year, to serve among the priori in cortona, and accepted, besides, a fresh appointment as one of the revisori degli argenti. in the following year he was in siena, where he painted the altar-piece for the bicchi family, the wings of which are now in berlin. [illustration: [_museo del duomo, orvieto_ portrait of signorelli] we have now reached the most important time in signorelli's life, the year in which he received the commission for the decoration of the cappella nuova in the cathedral of orvieto. fifty years before, the roof had been begun by fra angelico, and ever since he went away, leaving it unfinished, the authorities had been undecided to whom to give the important work. benozzo gozzoli had begged for it; perugino, it is said, had refused it; and now, in , perhaps influenced to the choice by the success of the monte oliveto frescoes, they entrusted the work to signorelli. wishing first, however, to test his powers, they limited the commission to the completion of the vaulting, and it was not till the following year that they handed over to him the rest of the chapel, to be painted with the story of the last judgment. with this dramatic subject, and in these great spaces of the walls he had for the first time a free field for the wide sweep of his brush, and the force of his vivid imagination. the conceptions of dante inspired, but did not trammel him, and he had sufficient strength to make the great drama his own, and to compel it to serve his ends in the display of the human frame in its most vigorous aspects. the portrait he has painted of himself in the first of the frescoes, as well as that in the opera del duomo, show us a man in the very prime of life, full of energy and determination. four years at least, signorelli laboured at these frescoes, although not consecutively, as we shall presently see. he had with him as assistant his son polidoro,[ ] and perhaps girolamo genga, and other pupils. he was apparently on friendly terms with the authorities, of one of whom, the treasurer niccolò francesco, he painted a portrait, side by side with his own above mentioned. it is on a brick or tile, on the back of which is a flattering inscription, evidently composed by niccolò himself, in which he speaks of signorelli as "worthy of comparison with apelles."[ ] yet, notwithstanding this friendship with the treasurer, he could not get the money due to him, and it required the intervention of no less a person than guidobaldo of urbino, in , to obtain it for him. a letter from the prince is preserved in the orvieto archives,[ ] in which he writes: "loving maestro luca di cortona as i do, in no common measure, for his ability and rare talents, i can refuse him no possible favour in all that he may require of me," and goes on to beg the authorities for their love to him, to pay their debt to the painter, "which assuredly will be to me the greatest favour." [illustration: [_cathedral, cortona_ the deposition] even in fulfilling so arduous an undertaking as these great frescoes luca did not abandon his magistrate's work in his own city, and during the time, was serving both on the general council and as one of the priori. in , moreover, he found time to paint for his cathedral at cortona the beautiful "deposition," in which is a repetition of the pietà of the capella nuova. the realism and pathos of this dead christ are so convincing as to have given rise to the legend that it was painted from the body of his son, who died, or was killed, in this year. vasari thus relates the incident: luca had a son, "beautiful in face and person, whom he loved most dearly," killed in cortona, whereupon, "overwhelmed with grief as he was, he had the body stripped, and with the greatest fortitude of soul, without tears or lamentation, he made a drawing of it, in order to have always before his eyes ... what nature had given him, and cruel fate had snatched away."[ ] this son, antonio, probably a painter also, must have been a man of mature years at the time of his death, for he was already married to a second wife. the story has taken hold of the fancy of signorelli's biographers, in the dearth of personal matter, and is the best known incident in his life, but it is more than probable that antonio was carried off by the plague which, following close on the heels of the war of , attacked cortona, in which case it becomes a mere legend. we learn from a document, dated june rd, that the painter's house was not spared, for he excused himself from serving as priore in that month, because the _peste bubbonica_ had broken out in his family. four years later, polidoro, his eldest son, and his assistant at orvieto, died also. this happened while signorelli was on a visit to siena, for it was there he bought the mourning cloth. the object of this visit was to design one of the subjects for the famous pavement of the cathedral, but whether he ever did it we do not know; certainly it was never executed in marble. in the next year we have the usual records of official appointments, and as a proof of his artistic activity, the two pictures still remaining in the little town of arcevia, dated and , one of them, the splendid _ancona_, being among his finest works. now a man of nearly seventy, signorelli's energies seemed to grow greater with increasing age, for in we find him, besides being elected to his usual offices, deputed as ambassador to florence, to demand there permission to reform the offices and ordinances of cortona, and in the same year he was at rome, together with perugino, pintorricchio, and sodoma, working at the decoration of the vatican chambers, already begun by pier dei franceschi. giambattista caporali gives a glimpse into their social life in rome, telling of a supper given in their honour by bramante[ ]--bramante, to whose introduction to the pope of the young raffaelle it is due that none of their work, with the exception of perugino's ceiling, remains to us. how much signorelli painted we do not know. vasari says, "he had successfully completed one wall,"[ ] but so enchanted was julius ii. with the facile and modern style of raffaelle, that after he had finished the "stanza della segnatura," he forced him to destroy the paintings of the older masters and delivered the entire work to him and his assistants: a caprice which points a very significant turn in the history of painting--the triumph of the late renaissance over the giants of the past. signorelli seemed destined to find nothing but disappointment in rome. five years later, an old man of seventy-two, he again went there, this time on the accession of giovanni dei medici, in , to the papal chair. knowing the luxurious nature of the new pope, and remembering the intense passion of his father lorenzo for art and letters, to rome flocked poets and painters, sculptors and architects, from every part of italy, in the hope of work or of reward, and among them came signorelli, with reasonable expectation of employment, and notice from the son of his old patron and friend.[ ] like his predecessor, however, leo x. preferred the more modern school of raffaelle and his pupils, and luca had to return disappointed to cortona. in connection with the visit exists a curious document, which has smirched too long the honour of the painter. it is the famous letter of michelangelo, preserved among the buonarotti archives, in which he makes a complaint to the capitano of cortona, that signorelli, sick with the ingratitude of the medici "for the love of whom he would have had his head cut off," had borrowed of him eighty _juli_ with which to return to cortona; that on application for the money, luca declared it to have been already repaid, so that now he--michelangelo--sees no other way of obtaining his own but by application to the capitano for justice.[ ] this is the gist of the letter; we have to use our own knowledge of the character of the two men to decipher the mystery, since no other document confirms or denies the accusation. the reasonable explanation seems to be that some delay, probably on the road, in the transmission of the money, irritated the notoriously impatient temper of michelangelo. signorelli's character, from all we know of it, seems to have been most upright and generous. "such was the goodness of his nature, that he never lent himself to things that were not just and righteous," says vasari,[ ] and that he should have been guilty of so petty a crime towards a friend, is not for a moment to be believed. moreover, his will, re-made in the following year, proves him to have been in prosperous circumstances, while the fact that he continued to hold his appointments, and to receive fresh and even more honourable ones, testifies to the respect in which he was held by his fellow-citizens. in pleasant contrast with michelangelo's accusation are the glimpses we have of his stately old age, through vasari. "and at last," he writes, "having completed works for nearly all the princes of italy, and being now old, he returned to cortona, where, in his last years, he worked more for pleasure than any other reason, as one who, accustomed to labour, knew not how to be idle."[ ] of these later paintings the "deposition" of umbertide proves that the old man of seventy-five had lost little of his power. it is one of his most beautiful and tender renderings of a scene he has so often painted. the "madonna," now in the arezzo gallery, painted three years later ( ), shows, perhaps, a slight falling off in technical power, while retaining to the full his characteristic grandeur of conception. it was this picture which, vasari tells us, was borne on the shoulders of the brothers, for whose order it was painted, from cortona to arezzo, and luca, old as he was, insisted on accompanying them, partly to place it in position, as was customary, and partly to revisit his friends and relations. the biographer gives a characteristic incident in connection with this visit, told so charmingly, that i can do no better than transcribe it:-- "and he, being lodged in the house of the vasari, where i was a little child of eight years, i remember how that good old man, who was always gracious and courteous, having learnt from the master who first taught me my letters, that i cared for nothing else at school but drawing pictures; i remember, i say, he turned to antonio, my father, and said to him: 'antonio, since giorgio takes after his family, let him by all means be taught how to draw, because, even if he cares for literature, to know how to draw cannot but be a source of honour and enjoyment, if not of utility, to him, as to every honourable man.' then he turned to me, who stood up straight before him, and said, 'learn, little kinsman.'" and vasari adds, how, hearing that he suffered much from bleeding at the nose, which sometimes left him half dead, signorelli hung a jasper charm about his neck, "with infinite tenderness. which memory of luca," he concludes, "will remain eternally fixed in my soul."[ ]--one of those delightful human touches of which the writings of vasari are so full. this visit to arezzo took place only four years before his death. he must have died in , at the age of eighty-two, but there is no special record of the event, the date being gathered only from a document, which tells of the election on the th of december of another inspector of santa margherita, to fill the place of the dead painter.[ ] on the th of october of the same year, he had made his last will, leaving, with many minor bequests, the bulk of his property to his son, pier tommaso, and his grandson, giulio, and expressing his desire to be buried in the tomb of his family in the church of s. francesco.[ ] in his first edition, vasari tells us that, after his death, his memory was honoured by many epitaphs, among which he quotes the following:-- "pianga cortona omai, vestasi oscura, che estinti son' del signorello i lumi; et tu, pittura, fa de gli occhi fiumi, chè resti senza lui debili e scura."[ ] apparently signorelli retained his health and energy up to the end of his long life, for only the year before his death he had accepted fresh appointments in cortona, and, in addition to his old offices, was filling those of priore of the fraternity of s. mark, sindaco del capitans, and several others, religious and secular. he was, moreover, still actively painting, and in the very year of his death he completed the altar-piece for the church at foiano, a work as noble and majestic in conception as it is vigorous in execution, besides accepting a commission from the priori to paint them an altar-piece for the chapel of their palace. i can do no better than conclude this scanty history with the character of the man, as it is told us by vasari: "luca was a person of excellent habits, sincere and affectionate with his friends, sweet and agreeable in his converse with everyone, specially courteous to those who had need of his help, and kindly in his instructions to his pupils. he lived most splendidly, and delighted in dressing well. for the which good qualities he was always, in his own country and elsewhere, held in the highest veneration."[ ] footnotes: [ ] the "madonna" (no. ), and "the flagellation" (no. ), brera, milan. [ ] it was the fame of lazzaro's son giorgio as an imitator of antique vases that won for the family the name vasari. [ ] vasari, ii. . [ ] vasari, ii. . [ ] vasari, ii. . editor's notes. [ ] vasari, iii. and . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] muzi, "memorie," p. ; and giacomo mancini, "istruzioni," ii. and . [ ] for the dates of these various appointments, see the chronological table, p. . [ ] i have thought it best only to translate those titles which have a corresponding meaning in our own country. [ ] vischer, p. . [ ] it is with the utmost diffidence i venture to hold a different opinion from a critic of such weight as morelli (see "italian painters," i. ), but a careful comparison has forced me to subscribe to the later judgments. crowe & cavalcaselle (see cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. ) and vischer (signorelli, p. ) have both maintained that a great part of the execution reveals the hand of bartolommeo della gatta. one of the latest critics, mr b. berensen, presumes that the whole fresco is by him. i know too little of this painter's style to be able to form an opinion, feeling certain only that it is not by signorelli. [ ] see chronological table, p. . [ ] arch. dell opera del duomo di firenze. deliberazioni dall'anno all'anno . a carte . the document merely mentions his name among those who were unable to attend. [ ] see chronological table, p. . [ ] see "guida all'arcicenobio di monte oliveto" (siena, ), p. . [ ] proved by a document in the orvieto archives, containing a list of materials handed over by the treasurer of the works to polidoro. see vischer, p. . [ ] now in the opera del duomo, orvieto. the portrait of signorelli in the frontispiece is the half of this painting. [ ] the letter is transcribed in vischer, p. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] in the reprint of cesariano's "comments on vitruvius," by g. b. caporali. (perugia, ). the passage is quoted in vermiglioli's "memorie di pintorricchio" ( ), pp. and . [ ] vasari, iv. . [ ] the biographers of signorelli, following the lead of vasari, have dwelt much on his friendship with contemporary princes--the baglioni, vitelli, etc.; till we have grown to think of him rather as a silk-clad courtier than a hard-working burgher and painter. it may well be that, like leonardo, he combined work with luxury, but the evidence is of too slight a nature to allow us to consider that side of his life, if it really existed. of his friendship with lorenzo dei medici, however, there is more proof, since he painted for him, and was evidently influenced by his classic tastes, as several of his pictures show. [ ] the letter is transcribed in vischer, p. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] mancini, "notizie," . [ ] arch. gen. di contratti di firenze. rogiti di ser baldelli. filza dal al . [ ] "let cortona weep henceforth, and clothe herself in black, for the light of signorello is extinguished; and thou, painting, make rivers of thine eyes for without him thou remainest weak and obscure." [ ] vasari, iii. . chapter ii development and characteristics of his genius the foregoing chapter contains only a bare record of certain facts in the life of luca signorelli. fortunately time has spared many of his paintings, and in the study of these we get a fuller insight into his nature and his aims. a man's work is, after all, the most satisfactory and reliable document for those who take the pains to decipher it--the autobiography which every man of genius bequeaths to posterity. we have seen how by good fortune he was placed as a child to study painting under pier dei franceschi, who was of all men most able to bring out in his pupils the finer instincts and nobler qualities of their genius. by his guidance and example, no doubt, signorelli cultivated his natural breadth of conception and of treatment, which give grandeur and impressive solemnity to all his works, besides acquiring the technical excellences of good drawing, solid modelling, and the broad massing of the shadows, which are so characteristic of piero's own painting. the spirit of master and pupil was fundamentally alike, the chief points of dissimilarity in their work arising from minor divergences of temperament. both were men of robust mind, with a message of resolute purpose to deliver. both chose to express themselves through the medium of the human form in its most vigorous aspects, and were, therefore, pre-occupied with mastering its structure. but while piero, with a serene nature, chose to represent unemotional figures like the sculptures of the ancient egyptians, the restless and impetuous spirit of signorelli preferred scenes of violent action, and energetic movement. it was, perhaps, the entire affinity of their temperament, as well as his passion for anatomical study, which led him to choose his second master in a man whose taste for realism, and interest in the action of muscle and movement of limb was as keen as his own. on antonio pollaiuolo, even more than on pier dei franceschi, had fallen the mantle of paolo uccello's investigating spirit. as the latter gave all his attention to applying the laws of perspective to landscape and figures, so the efforts of pollaiuolo were concentrated on giving freedom to the limbs. great anatomist though he was, piero was not so ardent a lover of the nude for its own sake as the florentine, and the problems of movement have little interest for him, whereas in the most characteristic work of pollaiuolo it is evident that the scenes are chosen to display the muscles in tense prominence, and the limbs in violent action or unusual posture.[ ] with precisely the same interests in the human structure and its movements, it is no wonder that signorelli caught so much of his style and mannerisms. the influence of antonio pollaiuolo was stronger than any other in the development of his actual work, and is visible in all his paintings up to the last in greater or less degree, but only less important is that of donatello, to whom antonio himself owed so much. forty years before the birth of signorelli, donatello had been able to carve the human form with absolute perfection of anatomy, and not only that, but to endow it with freedom of limb and overflowing life. it is easy to suppose the impression his statues must have made on the youth, whose spirit was so much akin to his own in exuberant energy, and who had the same uncompromising love of realism. the two artists had much in common in their confident self-reliance, and almost arrogant buoyancy of nature, which was the true renaissance expression, and the outward sign of its immense strength. signorelli caught and revived the very essence of donatello's spirit--the love of bodily life in its most hopeful and vigorous manifestations. it is significant that the swaggering posture which became such a special feature of his painting, should have originated with donatello. donatello was, before all things, a realist, and it was probably the habitual attitude of the cavalry soldier of the day, accustomed to straddle over the broad back of his war-horse, but there is little doubt that it was adopted by signorelli from the "s. george" of or san michele, and perhaps half-unconsciously signified to him--what that statue so well embodies--the confident spirit of youth and strength. in his portrait of pippo spana, now in s. apollonia, florence, andrea di castagno also imitated and emphasised it, as also did botticelli in his carved background of the "calumny," and perugino in many of his paintings. but botticelli's painted statue and perugino's "s. michael" and "warriors" of the cambio seem to spread their legs because they are too puny to bear the weight of the body in any other manner, while with signorelli, the attitude became the keynote of his resolute indomitable nature, and so much a part of his work, that one is apt to forget it did not originate with him. although the character and aims of the two men are so entirely different, yet to perugino, signorelli owed much in his methods of producing the feeling of free space, and the life and movement of the atmosphere. perugino's greatest gift to art was this power of rendering the magic of the sun-warmed air and the sense of illimitable distance. he gave to his landscapes space and depth, the gentle stir of wind, and the golden shimmer of sunshine. signorelli also learnt this power of presenting the life of hill and tree and sky, and some of his effects of distance have the space and grandeur almost of nature herself. he also, like perugino, could detach his figures from the background, and send the line of hills receding back to the horizon. signorelli owes to him, besides, certain superficial characteristics, such as the fluttering scarfs and ribbon-like draperies, and the upturned face with ecstatic eyes which belongs to the umbrian painter as much as the drooping head belongs to botticelli. from these four great artists signorelli learnt what each had best to give, and assimilated and made it his own, with unerring instinct for its virtue in aiding his own specific qualities. not that he was in any sense an eclectic, but he had the unconscious tendency of the healthy soul to seize upon the food that best ministers to its nourishment. thus the fine genius and inspiration of pier dei franceschi and the grace of perugino saved him from becoming too rigorously realistic under the influence of the scientific florentines, donatello and pollaiuolo, working upon his own uncompromising nature. the most important writers on signorelli--crowe and cavalcaselle,[ ] rumohr,[ ] and, above all, vischer,[ ] mention several other masters, who, they claim, exercised an influence upon his work, and it is obvious that to the sienese school generally he was indebted for many decorative methods, particularly in the use of gold and gilded gesso. there are also in some of his paintings reminiscences of verrocchio and fiorenzo di lorenzo; but an impression of sufficient depth to be considered, must touch the spirit, and here there appears to me to be little besides superficial resemblances. it must be remembered, moreover, in the case of verrocchio, how much he himself owed to donatello, while with respect to the asserted influence of pintorricchio, it is more probable that what likeness there is in their style should testify to the impression of the stronger upon the weaker nature. with andrea di castagno his work, both in outward form and in spirit, has something in common; and no doubt signorelli was impressed by paintings which themselves show so much the influence of donatello. as we have seen, luca's chief interest, like that of pollaiuolo, lay in the effort to render movement of limb with facility, and therefore his attention was concentrated on the muscles and their action. we do not know how long he studied anatomy from the dead and living model in the florentine workshop, nor have we any example of his gradual development, for when he first appears before us in his earliest remaining work, "the flagellation," of the brera, he is already the master who has conquered all the difficulties of muscular movement, and surpassed even antonio pollaiuolo in freedom of gesture and correct anatomy. it is not till later, however, that the most important advance he made on previous painting first begins to show itself--the power, namely, of rendering combined action, of working the limbs of a crowd into a single movement. this is signorelli's special achievement, on the merits of which he takes rank with the most important masters of the quattrocento as a pioneer and teacher. great as was pollaiuolo's command over gesture and action, it was limited to the combination of two figures only,[ ] while with signorelli the action of the single figure is held subordinate to that of the multitude. he gives the stately march of an army, as in the umbertide predella and the monte oliveto fresco; the writhings of innumerable figures, like heaps of coiled serpents, as in the "damnation" of orvieto; the rush of a violent mob stirred by a common impulse, as in the florence and cortona "betrayals." this command over united movement was new in painting, though, like all other difficulties, it had been already mastered by donatello, as we see in his romping children of the prato pulpit, and the florence cantoria, to name only two examples. botticelli, who, with so different a nature, had yet, in common with the robust signorelli, this passion for swift movement, achieved later, it is true, almost as great triumphs[ ]; but to luca belongs the merit of having endowed painting with the same freedom of combined movement which donatello had given to sculpture. unlike botticelli, he is consistently a lover of energy all through his life, and as the source of energy, of strength, and vigorous health. his grand conception of the body is one of the chief characteristics of his work. strong and stately, it is a fit receptacle for the spirit of resolution and self-confidence with which he animates it. his virgins are like goddesses, and seem to typify for him the strength of womanhood. nowhere do we see nobler beauty than in his angels and archangels. in these "divine birds"[ ] he seems to have recognised the ideal of all he strove for, and their wings are symbols to him of swift movement and superhuman strength. it was always strength that attracted him, and strength conscious of its own force, finding its expression in exuberant animation. thus he loves to paint the swaggering soldiers, whose attitudes express their audacious self-reliance. he gives the luxuriant life of nature as no one else gave it, and his trees and plants are as robust and unyielding as his firmly-planted figures. his angels' wings are not merely decorative, but have real power of muscle under the plumes to lift the body and bear it aloft without fatigue. he was a lover of beauty, but it was not for beauty he strove, or we should not so often find bits of realistic ugliness to risk the harmony of his noblest paintings. grace and charm seemed to come to him unsought, as natural adjuncts of a vigorous and healthy nature; but his deliberate choice of types of face and form, were those which, by their strength, promised satisfaction to his love of energetic action. from the first this tendency is noticeable, for example, in the above-mentioned "flagellation," and the loreto "conversion of saul," and goes on increasing until it reaches a climax in the frescoes of orvieto. once one has grasped the main motive of signorelli's work, his preoccupation with movement, and consequently with the muscles, his frequent defects and inequalities in other respects become, as faults of inattention, less incomprehensible. for example, his values of distance are often faulty, and give the unpleasant sensation that one figure is standing on the top of another,[ ] a defect of carelessness, for no one is a better master of aerial perspective when he chooses. again, his hands and feet are often incorrectly drawn and badly modelled, but it is only when they are not essential to the action; for although the drawing of hands and feet is always perhaps his weakest point, yet even in his early painting of the "flagellation" he has already mastered some of their greatest difficulties of foreshortening. the recognition of the intention in a man's work enables one to dispense with much adverse criticism in detail. it would be wearisome to reiterate the faults of drawing in each picture when we come to deal with them separately, and it is better to recognise in the outset that, in pursuit of a certain definite end, signorelli is careless of what seems to him unessential at the moment. thus in dealing with him as a colourist[ ] we have to bear in mind that it was by line and modelling chiefly that his effects of movement were obtained. to be over-critical of the shortcomings of his colour, therefore, would be as foolish as to miss the charm of bonifazio's splendid harmonies in abuse of some defect of drawing. sometimes, in fact, signorelli gains his end by the very crudeness and heaviness for which he is generally condemned, the sharp contrasts giving a rugged strength to his painting, and the copper colour of the flesh adding robustness to the figures. it would, however, be most unjust to speak as if his colour were always, or even usually, crude and harsh. on the contrary, in landscape it is invariably beautiful; and he uses certain golden and moss-greens in foliage and grass, and a limpid greenish-blue in water, which are most harmonious. sometimes it is gorgeous, and in nearly all his early paintings there is a beauty of red and soft green, and a warmth of golden glow of great depth and tenderness. he had, perhaps, a tendency to the use of too heavy colour, especially in the flesh; and he himself seems aware of it, for, in middle life, for a brief time, he changed his tone to an almost silvery lightness, with very pale flesh-tints, as in the uffizi "holy family," no. , and again, after working at orvieto, in the "dead christ supported by angels," of s. niccolò, cortona, whose general colour is almost like honey; but he relapses always into his characteristic dark tones, especially in the works of his old age, which are for the most part heavy and rather harsh, with flesh-tints of the reddish-brown of terra-cotta. it is, as i have said, by form rather than colour that signorelli obtains his best effects. he is a superb linealist, as the often-quoted "flagellation" shows, and one is inclined to wish he had oftener used outline, as here, in the manner of pier dei franceschi. his line is firm and clear, simple and structural, of unerring sweep and accuracy, as we see in his numerous _predella_ paintings; but even more remarkable is the wonderful plastic quality of his modelling. by this he makes us realise better than any one before him the tenseness of sinew, the resistance of hard muscle, and the supple elasticity of flesh, giving a solidity and weight to his forms that make them impressive as grand sculptures. as an illustrator signorelli is most unequal; brilliant and dramatic when the subject appealed to his taste, as in the orvieto frescoes, often weak, as in his treatment of sacred themes. he was essentially a religious painter, but in the widest meaning of the word, and he does not seem to have felt the dignity and significance of many of the scenes in the life of christ. when he has to paint him bound to the pillar or nailed to the cross, submissive to scourging and insult, his interest seems to wander from what should be the central figure, and fixes itself on some two or three of the minor actors, to whom he gives the importance he should have concentrated on the christ. the painter _con amore_ of arrogant strength, he seems to have little in common with meekness and humility that bows the head to scourging and martyrdom. thus in nearly all his "crucifixions" the central figure is ignoble in type and expression, and in the "flagellations" of the brera and of morra, is entirely without dignity, even ignominious. this is curious when we consider that even more than of arrogant strength signorelli was the painter of stately and noble beauty. again it seems as if he cared only to represent figures of powerful maturity, for there is a complete lack of sympathy in his painting of children. with one or two exceptions, his child christs are half-animal little beings, more like tiny satyrs than human children, although not without a certain pathos in their very ugliness. in a picture of as great beauty and tender feeling as the "holy family," of the rospigliosi collection, for example, the child is more animal than human. unlike donatello, who delights in childhood, and sees in it the bubbling source of future strength, signorelli gives his babies the overweighted, unelastic sadness of old age. in composing his holy families, therefore, his attention is centred on the virgin, the strong woman he loved to paint, but the child he seems to feel as an accessory to be executed because the church has ordered it, and so he puts it in without thought of all it meant and typified. but although he sometimes falls short as an interpreter of the church's intention, the impressive grandeur of his work is in itself intensely religious, and he makes us feel most solemnly the dignity of nature, and especially of the human form. once he was stirred into something of the pagan spirit, probably under the influence of the court of lorenzo, and he touched the real note of pantheism in the "pan," of the berlin gallery, and the noble figures in the background of the uffizi and munich "madonnas." in these the spiritual mood dominates and is sustained throughout, and there is no sign of the scientific absorption which sometimes in his treatment of the nude makes us too aware of the student and the realist. one is at times conscious that, painting straight from the life, signorelli's interest lay chiefly in a faithful reproduction of the body before him. his dead christs for example, were obviously copied exactly as the corpses lay or hung in his studio. the s. onofrio of the perugia altar-piece, stood just so, a half-starved street-beggar, with baggy skin over rheumatic joints. the angel in the same picture, chosen perhaps for its grace of face, must be reproduced exactly as the child sat, with weak legs and ungainly body. each figure is a truthful study from life, and it was that which interested the painter, and not that he was representing saints and angels whose noble beauty was supposed to elevate the mind to a state of worship. yet with all his realistic treatment, he was intensely alive to the graces of decoration, both in general lines and in detail. in the frescoes of loreto, and more particularly of orvieto, the mere scheme of decoration is superb, and adds beauty and distinction to every subtle line of the architecture. he pays attention, also, to the minor details of decorative effect, and takes pains with the ornaments and embroideries; while his use of gold, and embossing with gesso, add much to the æsthetic charm of his work, and proves that he could, when necessary, subordinate his love of realism to his sense of beauty. before summing up the chief qualities of signorelli's work, i must not omit one characteristic which points to the strength of his personality--the way he repeats his own types (and not types only, but precisely the same forms) time after time, and often after the lapse of many years. the child christs he paints over and over again, the same figure, sometimes exactly in the same attitude, as in the "madonnas," of the florence academy and of the brera. the seated burly bishop of the loreto vaulting (one of his earliest works) occurs again in the volterra "madonna," and again (painted many years later) in the "madonna," of the florence academy. line for line he reproduces the figure of echo, out of the early "pan," into the fresco of "the crowning of the elect," at orvieto. in one or two cases he boldly repeats the same figure in the same picture, feature for feature, as in the virgin and s. john of the rospigliosi "holy family," limb for limb as in the flying soldiers of the loreto "conversion of saul." he was also most faithful to his own type of limb or feature, especially those in which morelli has taught us always to look for similarity. the fleshy ear, with its slightly pointed top, is nearly invariable, as also is the broad hand with its little outlined nails and thick wrists. in glancing rapidly over the whole of signorelli's work, consistency to an absorbing interest is the note struck again and again. he has set himself from the first a task--the mastery of the human structure and its movements; and with the resolution and perseverance of a strong nature, he never swerves from his purpose. this is the conscious aim and intention of the artist. what he was able to give to the world, of nobility and dignity--a wider and healthier conception of nature and her power and beauty--was the message of his genius, of which he was himself unconscious, but which spoke all the more forcibly for the learning acquired by hard application and earnest effort. in a detailed study of his painting, it may be that the student of anatomy and the realist often assert themselves, but as grand figure after grand figure has passed before the mind, the general impression is solemn and ennobling. "to no other contemporary painter," says morelli, "was it given to endow the human frame with the like degree of passion, vehemence and strength."[ ] to this we may add that no other painter has ever conceived humanity with the same stately grandeur and in the same broad spirit. the confident strength of youth, the stern austerity of middle life, the resolute solemnity of old age--these are his themes. signorelli is, before all, the painter of the dignity of human life. footnotes: [ ] it is sufficient to cite the double picture of "hercules," of the uffizi, the "s. sebastian," of the national gallery, and the engraving called "the battle of the nudes." [ ] cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. , etc. [ ] ital. forsch. ii. . [ ] vischer, , etc. vischer considers the likeness to fiorenzo due to their mutual relation to verrocchio. [ ] even the splendid decorative engraving called "the battle of the nudes," is only a series of duels. a comparison of these figures with the two nude executioners in the brera "flagellation" will justify the assertion of signorelli's superiority as a master of anatomy and movement. [ ] specially in "the death of virginia," of the morelli collection, bergamo, and the sketched figures in the repainted "adoration of the magi," lately exposed in the uffizi. [ ] "purgatorio," ii. . [ ] for example, in the "madonna," of the mancini collection, and "the crowning of the elect," at orvieto. [ ] signorelli's pictures, when not frescoed, are invariably painted with oil. [ ] "italian painters," i. . chapter iii earliest works one of the most remarkable things in the history of signorelli's work, considering what a number of his paintings remain, is that only two of them can be placed with any degree of certainty as having been executed before his fortieth year. these two are the "madonna" (no. ), and "the flagellation" (no. ), in the brera gallery, milan. this last, however--"the flagellation"--indicates in what manner much of his earlier time had been employed, for although betraying in parts a certain youthful immaturity, yet the skilful drawing and thorough comprehension of anatomy shown in the nudes, especially in the backs of the two executioners, reveals already the practised hand of a master of his craft. [illustration: [_brera, milan_ the flagellation] the best studies of the nude remaining to us by earlier painters, are the figures in "the death of adam," by pier dei franceschi, in his frescoes at arezzo, the "hercules overcoming antæus," and "the battle of the nudes," by antonio pollaiuolo, in the uffizi gallery. it is sufficient to compare with these the freer rendering of gesture, and the greater accuracy of the anatomy in signorelli's executioners, to see what an advance he had already made upon any previous painting. (i limit, of course, this assertion to painting only, for in sculpture donatello had years before given free gesture and perfect anatomy to his statues.) it would be impossible to overrate the excellence and beauty of drawing in the splendid swing of the bodies, the flexibility of the limbs, the sinewy elasticity of the leg muscles, and above all, the subtle suggestion of muscular movement under the loose skin of the backs. there is here, even more than in his later painting, an appreciation of the relative values of the muscles, and a consequent breadth of modelling, which he lost somewhat, by over-accentuation, in his subsequent treatment of the nude. the inequalities of the picture betray wherein lay the painter's chief interest, for to this skilful mastery of the difficulties of anatomy are opposed the rather childish conception of the pilate and the stiff action of all the clothed figures. his apprenticeship to pier dei franceschi is here sufficiently proved, not so much by any likeness of colour or of composition to "the flagellations," of that master, in urbino and borgo san sepolero, as in the firm, clear outlining of the nude figures, their solid modelling, and in the broad massing of the shadows. even more apparent is the influence of antonio pollaiuolo, in the great realism with which the subject is treated, and in such superficial resemblances as the type of head of the executioner who binds the hands of christ, and the characteristic striped loin-cloths. the christ is one of signorelli's most ignoble presentations of the saviour, and yet it seems as though he had tried to give graces which should harmonise with a certain conception of the character--the hair, for example, is the beautiful rippling hair of a woman, the bent head and downcast eyes represent the gentleness of resignation, and the attitude of the legs is intended to be graceful. but the effort to curb his own natural instinct for pride and strength makes him strike a false note, and his attempt to give the beauty of meekness has resulted only in producing a mask of hypocritical inertia. the picture was painted for the church of santa maria del mercato in fabriano, and this, as well as the fact of its being precisely the same size, and with the same curved top, seems to argue that it formed originally one picture with the madonna, no. of the same gallery, whose _provenance_ is also from that church. here the virgin sits,[ ] clad in a gold garment and blue green-lined mantle, with the child on her knee, and floating round her dark-green cherubs' heads. she is the powerful type of woman, from which in his virgins signorelli never departed, but in this case with a rather cow-like expression, which gave place later to a tender or noble dignity. the face of the child has lost its original character through repainting, but the cherubs' heads surrounding the throne, have the overweighted, half-animal expression of which i have already spoken as characteristic of his children. next in order, as far as can be judged by the internal evidence of the painting, come the frescoes in the sacristy of the church of the santa casa at loreto. they were finished some time before , and bear very marked traces of florentine impressions. of these vasari writes: "in santa maria di loreto, he painted in the sacristy in fresco, the four evangelists, the four doctors, and other saints, which are very beautiful; and for this work he was liberally rewarded by pope sixtus."[ ] this is a mistake, for the patron of the church was cardinal girolamo basso della rovere, and the presence of his coat-of-arms in the centre of the cupola is evidence that the work was executed at his expense. in each of the eight compartments of this roof is painted a standing angel, playing or tuning musical instruments--most graceful and beautiful figures. below are seated the four evangelists and four fathers of the church, against a gold background, who seem, in their impressive grandeur to be prototypes of the prophets and sybils of michelangelo's sistine frescoes. i do not agree with vischer in seeing the hand of bartolommeo della gatta in the angels. they show much of the influence of pollaiuolo, and seem to me to be signorelli's unassisted work. the face and gesture of one of them especially--the angel in the flowered robe playing a lute--is almost a duplicate of the child on the _gradino_ of the throne in the perugia altar-piece. the bishop in the compartment next this angel is repeated in the volterra "madonna and saints," and in that of the florence academy. [illustration: [_santa casa, loreto_ apostles] in the divisions of the walls under the roof are painted the twelve apostles, grand and stately figures, standing two in each compartment, divided by imitation pilasters, and forming a magnificent frieze round the walls. the draperies are exceedingly broadly painted and this breadth of treatment and the boldness of the design gives importance to the figures. there being seven compartments to be filled, in two of them signorelli has introduced the figure of christ, treated this time with dignity, perhaps because here he is represented as the master, and not the "man of sorrows." in one he reproves s. peter (?), who turns away with conscience-stricken humility very nobly rendered; in the other he shows the marks of the passion to the incredulous thomas. these two are perhaps the finest of the series, and are, besides, dramatic in gesture and expression. the composition of the last is, with evident intention, borrowed from verrocchio's group on the walls of or san michele, florence, but the likeness ends with the general lines of composition. vischer makes a strong point of this, as a proof of verrocchio's influence on signorelli,[ ] but to me it seems that feeling, types of face, and especially the broad and simple treatment of the draperies are entirely different. [illustration: [_santa casa, loreto_ the incredulity of s. thomas] the most important of these frescoes, however, as best illustrating signorelli's own peculiar tendencies, is "the conversion of saul," in the compartment over the door. he has realised the scene with emotion, and rendered it with a most convincing dramatic power, giving the suddenness of the fall of the principal figure, and the excitement and panic-stricken terror of the soldiers, with wonderful truth and animation. it is interesting to note the almost exact repetition of the same figure in the two soldiers who hurry away to the left, but it is not at all mechanical, and in no way detracts from the excellence of the composition. very pollaiuolesque is the figure with raised shield in the foreground to the right, and one feels the influence of perugino in the spacious empty distance of the background, from which the figures are so well detached. [illustration: [_santa casa, loreto_ the conversion of saul] as decoration these frescoes are exceedingly fine, the grand row of figures, besides the stately strength of each separate group, being most impressive in general effect. they have been much damaged. for many years used as a sacristy, the greasy smoke of the incense had so blackened the walls that the frescoes were nearly invisible. the skilful cleaning of signor guiseppe missaghi, at the instigation of signor cavalcaselle, has restored to them much of their original beauty, although the colour still remains somewhat obscured. on the roof of the nave, in the church itself, are painted a series of frescoes in _grisaille_, twenty-six prophets and fathers of the church, somewhat over life size, seated one in each medallion. they are solemn and impressive figures like those in the sacristy, and painted on the same broad lines, and remind one strongly of the two medallions, also in _grisaille_, in the "madonna," of the uffizi corridor. all of them have severely suffered from repainting. "the adoration of the magi," formerly in the campana gallery, rome, now no. of the louvre, seems to have been painted in . crowe and cavalcaselle[ ] rightly consider its execution to be the work of assistants, by reason of the rawness of colour and general coarseness of the painting; yet in composition, and in many of the figures, there is so much of the master's impressive dignity, that i feel compelled to regard the drawing, in parts at least, as his own. the stately madonna, and the noble figure of the king on her right, whose draperies have the same sweeping breadth as those in the national gallery, "circumcision," as well as the solid, well-seated figures of the mounted attendants, seem to be signorelli's own composing. the child is also characteristic, and resembles that in the _tondo_ of the pitti gallery. the badly-drawn horses, again, seem his, for it will be noticed all through his work that he has never cared to thoroughly master their form, and paints them always with curious mannerisms of too closely-placed nostrils, and human eyebrows, which show how little attention he had given to their anatomy. the first dated picture remaining is the altar-piece of the perugia cathedral, painted in , of which vasari writes: "also in perugia he painted many works; and among others in the cathedral, for messer jacopo vannucci of cortona, bishop of the city, a picture in which is our lady, sant onofrio, sant ercolano, s. john baptist, s. stephen,[ ] and an angel, most beautiful, who tunes a lute."[ ] the inscription with the date (given in the catalogue) are unfortunately hidden by the frame. this is one of signorelli's finest altar-pieces, the colour being especially rich and harmonious, and it shows, even more than the loreto frescoes, the strength of florentine influences. for example, very close to pollaiuolo is the figure of the angel tuning the lute, with its striped scarf, and so also is the powerful head of s. ercolano. the s. stephen is almost a reproduction of the bust of s. lorenzo by donatello in the sacristy of the church of that saint in florence, the aged s. onofrio again recalls his wooden statue of s. jerome in faenza, and finally the motive of the cut flowers in glasses is borrowed from the triptych of hugo van der goes in the gallery of santa maria nuova, florence. the ornamental accessories are singularly fine and careful in finish, and it would seem as though signorelli had been inspired in this, not only by the great tryptych, but also by the followers of the paduan squarcione. in the last chapter i have pointed out the extreme realism with which the figures are treated, but this does not spoil the impressive grandeur of the painting, gained by the broad style and the stately simplicity of the composition. the virgin sits firmly, with the mantle resting in heavy folds across her knees; the s. stephen is overflowing with the vigorous life of youth; the splendidly-draped bishop is a powerful and majestic figure; and there is real tenderness and grace in the face of the angel, notwithstanding the want of symmetry in the body and legs. the painting has suffered from restoration, but on the whole is fairly well preserved, and may be seen to advantage in the quiet of this well-lighted winter-chapel. [illustration: [_cathedral, perugia_ madonna and saints] crowe and cavalcaselle place "the circumcision," of the national gallery, formerly in volterra, as about the same date as the foregoing;[ ] vischer, presuming that it was painted at the same time with the dated pictures of still remaining in volterra, groups it with them; but the similarity of colour and treatment lead me to accept the former theory. the distance from cortona to volterra is not very great, and the fact that he was painting there in does not preclude the possibility of his having painted there six or seven years before, even if it was executed on the spot, which was not by any means always the case. at all events the picture has much in common with the perugia altar-piece, both in warmth of colour, simplicity of composition and splendid breadth of execution. the painting of this "circumcision" is bold and resolute, the draperies sweep in broad folds round the figures. the attitude of the standing woman to the right is grand, and the earnest concentration of the faces on the ceremony, and the absence of any connecting link between them and us, give dramatic reality to the scene. vasari writes of it: "at volterra he painted in fresco"--(a mistake--it is his usual oil medium)--"in the church of s. francesco, above the altar of the brotherhood, the circumcision of our lord, which is considered marvellously beautiful; although the child, having suffered from the damp, was repainted by sodoma much less beautiful than it was before."[ ] this unfortunate repainting, which has also evidently included part of the virgin's face, was more probably due to the monks' dislike of signorelli's type of child than to any damage by weather, for it would be strange that a picture, otherwise so well preserved, should be injured by damp nowhere but in the part most protected by reason of its central position. to support this theory, under the painting by sodoma may be clearly seen (in the painting--not in the photograph) the original legs of the child of signorelli, in a totally different position, showing that sodoma had made no attempt to keep to the drawing. the monks, no doubt, preferred the more commonplace infant of sodoma, but we, while acknowledging that the children of signorelli are far from what they should be, may regret the loss, as did vasari, who adds this comment: "it would be better to retain the work of excellent men, even though half spoiled, than to have it repainted by one who knows less." [illustration: [_national gallery, london_ the circumcision] a very important group of paintings apparently of about this date, bear the impress of the classic tastes of the court of lorenzo dei medici, for whom they seem to have been painted. it comprises the great picture of "pan," in the berlin gallery, the "madonna," of the uffizi corridor, and the munich _tondo_. i have been tempted to give them a much earlier place, in the gap before the perugia altar-piece, because they show so much of the idealism and idyllic spirit, which seem properly to belong to youth, but a careful comparison of them with that picture and the loreto frescoes, reveals a greater maturity of technique which makes so early a placing not very probable. in all these three paintings there is an appreciation of beauty for its own sake, and a true touch of the pantheistic spirit, combined with a melancholy grandeur, which is most impressive. the finest of the three, the great canvas of "pan," now in the berlin gallery, is the picture of which vasari wrote: "he painted for lorenzo dei medici, on canvas, some nude gods, which were much praised ... and presented to the said lorenzo."[ ] sometimes called the "school of pan," it is more poetically described in the german catalogue "pan, as god of natural life, and master of music, with his attendants." it is full of poetry, and of idyllic charm with all its stately solemnity. the sad beauty of the god as he listens to the music of the pipes, the golden sunlight on the moss-green grass, the quiet peace of the scene, have an entrancing effect, and we are transported in spirit to the same "melodious plot of beechen green and shadows numberless" where pan holds his court. [illustration: [_gallery, berlin_ pan] the bronze-coloured body of the god is magnificently modelled, with a solidity unequalled even in the orvieto frescoes. the style of pollaiuolo is noticeable, in the attitude of the youth lying at his feet, particularly in the treatment of the legs. the figure of echo is repeated later in "the crowning of the elect," in orvieto, though there it has lost much of the idyllic charm of this wood-nymph. the grouping of the figures is perhaps less happy than usual, but this time the bad values of distance are no doubt due to the rough treatment the painting has undergone. it has indeed had an eventful history. about thirty years ago it was found by the late signor tricca, a noted restorer of pictures, in the attics of the palazzo corsi, florence. he hesitated at first to recognise it certainly as the work of signorelli, for all the figures were covered from head to foot with draperies of obviously eighteenth-century painting. on trial, however, he found that these were easily removed, and as the nude figures were revealed, he at once identified it as the picture of the nude gods, mentioned by vasari. it seems that it had passed into the possession of the rinuccini family as part of the dowry of one of the medici, and on the marriage of one of the ladies of the rinuccini with a marchese corsi again formed part of the bride's portion. soon after its discovery and restoration the marchese corsi died, and his brother cardinal corsi inherited the property. objecting to the picture on account of the nude figures, he desired signor tricca to sell it, and it was then bought by mr h. j. ross, who offered it to the english national gallery. on the refusal of the authorities to purchase it, it was acquired in by dr bode for the berlin gallery, of which it is one of the greatest treasures.[ ] it has naturally suffered much from the process of cleaning away the later draperies, and much of the under-painting is exposed, but enough remains of its original beauty to rank it as the best of signorelli's easel pictures. undoubtedly of the same date is the "madonna," no. of the uffizi gallery. this picture was, also, according to vasari, painted as a present for lorenzo dei medici, and was for many years in the villa of duke cosimo at castello. it has the same idyllic beauty in the background as the "pan," and is painted in the same half-pagan spirit. the virgin, it is true, sits awkwardly, and with a rather ungainly gesture of hands and arms, there are faults of drawing in the feet, and the child is ugly and insignificant. but these are faults easy to overlook in considering the grandeur of the landscape, the beauty of the colour, and, above all, the magnificent modelling of the nude figures in the background. the virgin gains in importance by the nobility of these athletes behind her, but it is clear that signorelli's interest lay less in the melancholy mother and child, than in these superb titans, in whom he seems to have personified the forces of nature. how great was the influence of this picture upon michelangelo we need only take a few steps into the tribuna to see, in his _tondo_ of the holy family, no. . the painting is set in a kind of frame in _grisaille_, surmounted by a head of s. john the baptist, and two seated prophets in medallions. [illustration: [_uffizi, florence_ madonna] somewhat inferior in execution, but painted in exactly the same spirit, is the "madonna," of the munich gallery, formerly in the palazzo ginori, florence.[ ] here, as in the last, the virgin sits, filling the foreground space, a stately figure, with fingers pressed together, as if in prayer to the child at her feet. the background is a classic landscape, through which runs a stream of the beautiful limpid green with which signorelli always paints water, and by its side sits another of the noble nude figures, untying his sandal. it may be intended for s. john the baptist, as the critics say, but i do not think that either here or in the uffizi painting, signorelli had any intention of adhering to traditional illustration. it seems rather as though the pictures were symbolic--expressive of some comparison in his mind between christianity, as he perhaps conceived it for the moment, melancholy and dejected, and the greek pantheism, vigorous and strong, and radiant with the joy of life. another picture belonging to this beautiful group is the "portrait of a man," in the berlin gallery, formerly in the torrigiani collection, florence. in the days before it was photographed it was considered to be a portrait of signorelli himself, and, as it represents a man with grey hair, was naturally reckoned among his later works; but comparison with the two portraits at orvieto show that there is no real resemblance of feature, while the technique and spirit of the painting claim a place for it among this early series. here again occur the classic figures, but this time with less of the idyllic feeling. on one side are hurrying apollo and daphne(?), on the other, one athlete has overthrown another, and stands menacingly over his prey, who tries with ineffectual gestures to beat him off--a very pollaiuolesque scene of violence. the colouring, with its clear reds of the _biretta_ and the robe, is very successful. with this powerful portrait closes this beautiful and interesting group of paintings, the _provenance_ of all four of which, it will be observed, is from florence. the two _tondos_, of the pitti and corsini galleries, florence, must have been painted at a date not far distant from those, for they have much in common in certain forms, and particularly in the rich and glowing scheme of colour. the "holy family," of the pitti gallery, has been restored, and suffers much from thick varnish and repainting, but nothing has spoilt the harmony of the colours, nor the tender beauty of the virgin, whose features and expression are a repetition of those of echo in the "pan." the saint, who writes at the dictation of the child, is painted with earnestness, and the whole scene is treated with the utmost religious feeling. the "madonna and saints," of the corsini gallery, has the same warm glow of colour, and was probably painted about the same time. the virgin sits with the child on her left knee, clad in a red robe, round the neck of which little loves are embroidered in gold. over it she wears a dark-green mantle shot with gold--a form of decoration very usual with signorelli, especially about this time. she has the beautiful, pale, honey-coloured hair which occurs so often in his works, almost the same colour which was characteristic of palma's venetian ladies later. to the left kneels s. jerome, gazing up at her, and on the right is s. bernard holding a pen and book. the painting is in a good state of preservation. [illustration: [_pitti, florence_ madonna and saints] the rather insignificant type of head of s. joseph occurs again in another "holy family," which belongs approximately to the same period,--that of the rospigliosi gallery in rome. as far as beauty and tender grace go, this is the most successful of all his madonnas. the daring repetition of the same features with darker colouring in the s. john behind her, i have already drawn attention to. the draperies are painted with great freedom, and a fine sweep of broad fold. they are shot, as in the corsini _tondo_, with gold in the high lights. insignificant as is the child in all these holy families, there is at the same time something pathetic and winning in the earnest, careworn little face. [illustration: [_rospigliosi gallery, rome_ holy family] very different is the type signorelli has adopted for the christ in the uffizi "holy family," no. , which must be placed somewhere about this time, or a very little later. here he is represented with a certain nobility of feature and gesture, although self-conscious and unchildlike. the greek profile of the virgin is almost identical with that of the above-mentioned rospigliosi picture, while the powerful head of s. joseph carries us back to the figures in the "circumcision." the virgin sits uneasily, ill-balanced, and with badly-modelled feet, but the beauty of the face makes amends for these defects. it is a picture full of noble qualities, both of feeling and technique, and it has besides a special importance by reason of the difference of colour, so much less heavy than usual. the flesh tints are very pale, and the shadows a silvery grey, and the whole tone is much lighter than in any of the preceding pictures. the composition is specially fine, the attention being concentrated without effort on the central figure of the child, to which the other two serve as a kind of frame. [illustration: [uffizi, florence holy family] i cannot leave this series of early works, which includes so many _tondos_, without drawing attention to the excellence of signorelli's composition in this difficult form. the figures fill the space naturally and without any artificial bending of the heads to fit the shape; there is a sense of space, and ease of grouping, and the large sweeping lines of the draperies follow most harmoniously the curves of the panel. with the exception of the perugia altar-piece, none of the above-mentioned paintings are dated. inferentially we arrive at the time when the loreto frescoes were completed, but there is little to help in grouping the rest beyond the internal evidence they afford. i have endeavoured to place them in the order they seem most naturally to take, with reference to colour, form, and the early influences to be observed in them, but the arrangement must necessarily be somewhat arbitrary. fortunately this difficulty grows less and less in dealing with the later works, and the most important of them are generally dated. footnotes: [ ] i shall, as far as space permits, describe those pictures of which illustrations cannot be inserted. where the illustration is given, it becomes unnecessary. [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] vischer, p. . [ ] cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. . note . [ ] i have thought it best only to translate those names that are familiar to us in english. [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] i am indebted for the above facts to mr h. j. ross of poggio gherardo, florence, the original purchaser of the picture. [ ] the photograph gives so little idea of the beauty of the original that i have not reproduced it. chapter iv middle period we have now arrived at the paintings belonging to the year , part of which signorelli spent in volterra, three works still remaining in that city to testify to the visit--"the annunciation," of the cathedral; the "madonna and saints," now in the gallery, both dated; and a much-injured fresco in _grisaille_, representing s. jerome, on the walls of the same building--the palazzo communale. the "madonna enthroned with saints" was painted for the altar of maffei chapel in san francesco, and was unfortunately removed not many years ago to the gallery of the palazzo communale, suffering the greatest damage in the transit. two large cracks run through the figures of the child and the seated father; large pieces of the paint have dropped away, and in the repainting the child has lost all characteristics of signorelli's work. in the less ruined parts, however, enough remains to testify to the original excellence of the painting, which is finely composed, and broadly and vigorously treated, especially in the draperies. the virgin sits enthroned between four saints, with a very peruginesque angel on either side, and seated below, at the foot of her throne, are two fathers of the church, in one of whom we have repeated the burly bishop with wide-spread knees and fine sweeping drapery of the loreto cupola, and which occurs later in the florence academy altar-piece. the influence of pollaiuolo can be observed in the sculptures on the _gradino_ of the throne, little nude figures in violent action. in better preservation is the "annunciation," in the cathedral, signed, and with the same date as the foregoing. the architecture, with its excellent perspective, again reminds us that signorelli was the pupil of pier dei franceschi, the painter of the wonderful _loggia_ in the "annunciation," of perugia. the virgin is painted with great feeling, and in the solemn beauty of the archangel we get the first of those splendid creatures whose sublimity signorelli felt in the same spirit as dante, who bent his knees and folded his hands at the sight of the "_uccel divino_," "_trattando l'aere con l'eterne penne_."[ ] [illustration: [_cathedral, volterra_ the annunciation] the resemblance is so great between this painting and the "annunciation," of the uffizi _predella_ (no. ) that we are justified in placing the latter somewhere about the same date. as is so often the case in _predella_ pictures, especially with signorelli's, the spontaneity and freedom of execution, and even of conception, is much greater here than in the more carefully thought-out and finished works. small as this panel is, the rush of the great archangel, the solemn beauty of the landscape, and the splendid attitudes of the young courtiers in the last division, make it one of the master's most important and characteristic paintings. the colour in the first panel of the "annunciation" is especially beautiful, and there is a noble simplicity in the composition, as well as a breadth and certainty of touch that give the picture great grandeur. the _predella_ is divided by painted pilasters into three parts. in the first the archangel hastens through a rocky pass to announce the message, to which the virgin bows with awed acceptance of its solemn meaning. in the second, the shepherds kneel to offer homage to the new-born child, who lies at the virgin's feet, while the third represents the visit of the magi. the same freedom of brushwork characterises another "annunciation," of probably the same time, and treated in much the same manner, although less stately than that of the uffizi. this is one part of a _predella_ formerly belonging to the mancini collection of città di castello.[ ] the archangel, with great wings half folded, and blown drapery, is just alighting at the feet of the virgin, who has dropped her book, and drawn back with startled gesture at the impetuous rush of the messenger. connected with these by the same qualities of breadth of treatment, and almost modern impressionism in the conception of the scene, are two compartments of a _predella_, belonging to mr benson in london, representing "the dispute by the way," and "the supper at emmaus." in the former especially, the dramatic realism with which the apostles are depicted, as they argue with animated gestures, is extraordinarily vivid. yet another _predella_ picture--"the feast in the house of simon," now in the dublin gallery--belongs approximately to this period. it is a most beautiful representation of the scene, and is treated somewhat in the gay manner of bonifazio or paolo veronese. at a long table, crowded with guests, christ sits, with his mother on his right hand, the master of the feast being conspicuous in the middle. over christ's head, the magdalen, a charming and graceful figure, pours the ointment, and on the left of the table judas, with expressive gesture, calls attention to the waste. notwithstanding the small size of the panel, and the number of the figures, the effect is exceedingly spacious and free. it is a well-composed scene, full of animation, and broad in treatment, and is fortunately in a good state of preservation. the altar-pieces to which all this series of _predelle_ belong are unknown. we will now consider the fine standard, painted in for the church of santo spirito in urbino.[ ] on one side was represented the "crucifixion," and on the other "the descent of the holy ghost at pentecost," but the canvases have now been divided. in the former, at the foot of the cross is grouped the first of those characteristic scenes of the fainting virgin which was, probably from its dramatic element, so favourite a subject with signorelli. sincerely and naturally felt, it in no way trenches on the melodramatic, as one or two of the later groups tend to do, and the solitary figure of christ, raised high above the sorrowing women, is for once, among his crucifixions, of dignity and real pathos. the solemnity of the mood given, is enhanced by the fine idea of the soldier on the left, who, impressively standing out against the sky, shades his eyes, with bewildered gesture, as though blinded by a sudden comprehension of the sacrifice. the grief of the women who tend the unconscious virgin, is sympathetically realised, and without exaggeration of outward sorrow. the composition is specially beautiful, the sides are well-balanced, while the two mounted soldiers on either side (notwithstanding their characteristically badly-drawn horses) give the scene a ceremonious stateliness, which is very impressive. [illustration: [_uffizi, florence_ the annunciation] in the "pentecost" we have another most masterly bit of perspective and fine spacious effect. at the end of a long room, between two rows of the apostles, is seated the virgin. above is god the father, attended by two angels, and below, the tongues of flame, the gift of the hovering dove, have alighted on the heads of all the company. apart from the sense of space and the well-composed grouping, the technical execution does not appear so satisfactory as in the "crucifixion," but this may be accounted for by the fact that the painting has suffered more from restoration. very closely allied to this standard in composition is the fine "s. sebastian" of città di castello, painted in for the church of s. domenico, now in the gallery, which, in spite of its bad condition is a picture of great importance and beauty. the least satisfactory part is the saint himself, who stands bound high up upon the tree, his sentimental face with upturned eyes and open mouth recalling the s. john of several of the crucifixions. above him leans god the father, and below five soldiers string their bows or shoot, with superb gestures. three of them are in the tight-fitting clothes in which signorelli loved to display the fine proportions and splendidly-developed muscles of his figures, and the other two are draped only with the pollaiuolesque striped loin-cloth. in the middle distance, burgesses and sad-faced women look on at the martyrdom, and in the background a distant street, filled with soldiers, leads steeply up to a ruined classic building, not unlike the colosseum. the great damage which the picture has suffered makes it difficult on a superficial view to give it the place it really deserves among the master's works. the colouring is somewhat crude, especially the flesh-tints, which are red and heavy, but it must nevertheless be ranked high on account of the composition, and the fine drawing and modelling of the foreground figures. [illustration: [_santo spirito, urbino_ the crucifixion] to the following year, , belong the series of eight frescoes painted by signorelli in the cloister of the benedictine monastery of monte oliveto. vasari writes: "at chiusuri, near siena, the principal habitation of the monks of monte oliveto, he painted on one side of the cloister eleven scenes of the life and work of s. benedict."[ ] vasari has mistaken the number of the paintings, for there were never more than nine, even supposing the last, of which only a slight fragment remains, to have been by him. to me it seems doubtful, but the fragments are in so ruined a state, the fresco having been almost entirely cut away in the enlarging of the doorway, that certainty one way or the other is hardly possible. the remaining eight are for the most part in a deplorable condition, both from the damage of time and neglect, and also from repainting, the lower part of the foreground in all of them being completely lost, and smeared over with a surface of thick green. the paintings are very unequal, some being comparatively poor, while the two last are exceedingly fine. the story begins in the middle of the saint's life. the first scene shows "how god punished florenzo," a wicked rival abbot, who had tried to poison s. benedict, and to lead his monks astray. in the background four grotesque devils are tearing down the walls of his convent, with extraordinary energy of action, and three others bear away the soul of the monk, whose body may be seen crushed beneath the ruins. in the foreground the saint listens to the tale, told by a kneeling brother. the scene is conceived in a spirit somewhat trivial for signorelli, and has but little of his usual stately strength. the composition is too much crowded on one side, and, as far as can be judged from the state of the fresco, the draperies of the monks are mechanically treated. the parts most worthy of praise seem to be the vivacity of the devils, and the effect of spacious distance, but it is in so damaged a condition that it would be unfair to be over-critical. the next is in an even worse condition. it illustrates "how s. benedict converted the inhabitants of monte cassino," to whom, supported by two monks, he preaches in the foreground. in the middle distance others pull down from its pillar the statue of apollo, worshipped by these people. this is a very much finer painting. the composition is again overcrowded on one side, but there is much noble dignity in the figures of the three monks, and the beautiful architecture and perspective of the temple, are admirable. the foreground has been entirely destroyed, the draperies are nearly effaced, and a little town in the background is so smeared over with green paint, that the effects of distance are lost. no. iii. is in better condition, though very much injured in the foreground. it shows "how s. benedict exorcised the devil upon the stone," who guarded the place where the statue of apollo was buried, which brought a curse on the convent. in the background is seen the disinterment of the statue, and to the right, the vengeance of the devil, who sets fire to their building. flames burst through the windows, and the monks hasten with excited gestures to quench them. these remind one in their _naiveté_ of carpaccio's scurrying friars, in s. giorgio degli schiavone, venice. there are some very fine bits in this fresco; the attitude of the monk to the left who is heaving up the stone is exceedingly good and true to nature, and the landscape is spacious and distant. no. iv. shows "how s. benedict resuscitated the monk upon whom the wall fell," the scene of the death taking place in the background, the devil having precipitated him from the scaffolding on which he was at work. in the middle distance three brothers bear the dead body, and in the foreground the saint stands and raises him again to life. this fresco is very fine both in general composition and detail. the little scene of the death is full of action and animation, the group of monks who bear the corpse is dignified, and very noble is the kneeling figure of the resuscitated friar. the paintings get gradually better, as though signorelli had warmed to his task. the next is very charming and one of the most successful in composition. it illustrates "how s. benedict reveals to two monks where and when they had eaten out of the convent." the two disobedient brothers sit in the foreground of a long room (of most excellent perspective), and are served with meats and drinks. at the end of the room, at the open doorway stands the graceful figure of a youth. the section of the wall is given, showing in the distance the penitent brothers on their knees before the saint, who has reproved their disobedience. there is something almost german in the domestic simplicity with which signorelli has conceived the scene. the woman who waits on the right is peruginesque in type and attitude, although with the robust physique that belongs to signorelli. the fresco is much repainted especially in the roof. [illustration: [_monti oliveto, maggiore_ miracle of s. benedict] the next shows "how s. benedict reproves the brother of the monk valerian for his violated fast," and reveals to him that it was the devil who had tempted him in the disguise of a traveller, the different scenes, as usual, going on in the background. in front the youth kneels before the monks, and to the right the devil, his horns showing through his cap, tempts him. in the distance they can be seen feasting under a rock. the fresco is much injured and repainted, but the figure of the devil with the bundle over his shoulder is very fine and well drawn. the two last of the series are the best. signorelli has in them given the rein to his love of martial scenes, and painted them with great animation and verve. in no. vii. we have the scene "how s. benedict discovers the deceit of totila," and unmasks the shield-bearer, who, disguised as the king of the goths, comes to prove the knowledge of the saint. in the background, a plain covered with camps and soldiers, totila sends forth his servant, and in the foreground the saint, surrounded by four monks, proclaims to him his identity. statesmen, arrogant pages, and warriors, stand behind the exposed shield-bearer. it is interesting to observe how signorelli's attention has wandered from the empty faces and mechanically executed draperies of the monks, and concentrated itself on this group. the figures, in their tight clothes, are superbly posed and modelled, especially the three who stand next to the shield-bearer. the last of the frescoes is almost as fine a study of magnificent attitude. it shows "how s. benedict recognises and welcomes totila," the real king of the goths, who kneels before him, surrounded by his army on horse and foot. in the background, troops are marching with great animation, (one of those fine effects of combined movement so characteristic of the master). some of the foreground figures are again splendidly drawn and modelled, and the mounted soldiers sit their horses exceedingly well. [illustration: [_monte oliveto, maggiore_ the miracle of s. benedict] in these two last paintings we get a hint of the great work that was to come three years later--at orvieto. signorelli has put forth all his strength in these groups of swaggering youths in every posture of conscious power and pride, and never perhaps been more successful in individual figures. some of the faces in the last fresco appear to be portraits, and if it be true, as vasari says, that he painted the vitelli and baglioni, it is here probably that we should find them rather than among the audience of antichrist. in running the eye down the whole series of frescoes, the scheme of colour, as far as can be judged in their present condition, does not strike one as pleasant. crude blues, emerald greens, brownish purples, heavy earthen browns--these are the predominating tints. the flesh tones are uniformly red and heavy. neither is the decorative effect of the compositions specially good, as at loreto, and more particularly at orvieto. perhaps even, on a superficial view, the space-filling by sodoma is happier, and has a more imposing effect. it is chiefly in detail that the great qualities of signorelli show themselves. the rest of the walls of the large cloister are painted with twenty-seven subjects by sodoma, showing the youth and hermit-life of the saint, and continuing, after the series by signorelli, with his miracles and his old age. although the subjects chosen by luca illustrate the later years, yet they were painted first, and it is probable that the place of each scene was arranged before any of the work was entered upon. the year following the execution of these frescoes signorelli was in siena, painting the two wings for the altar-piece of the bicchi family, formerly in the church of s. agostino, now in the berlin gallery, no. . a ms. of the abbate galgano bicchi, which gives the date, speaks of it as an _ancona_, the centre of which was a statue of s. christopher by jacopo della quercia, and with a _predella_, which the abbate minutely describes.[ ] nothing now remains of the altar-piece but these two beautiful wings, one of which contains figures of the magdalen, santa chiara, and s. jerome, the other, of s. augustine, s. antonio and s. catherine of siena. vasari writes of it: "at siena he painted in sant'agostino, a picture for the chapel of s. cristofano, in which are some saints surrounding a s. christopher in relief."[ ] both panels are of very rich and harmonious colour, especially the one containing the noble figure of the magdalen, in her green robe shot with gold and deep red mantle, and her ropes of honey-coloured hair. [illustration: [_gallery, berlin_ saints] perhaps about the same date, perhaps somewhat earlier, we may place the fine _tondo_ (no. b) hanging in the same gallery, formerly in the patrizi collection, rome. i have not given it its usual name of a "visitation," because that scene, conventionally treated, took place before the birth of the children who here play so important a part. signorelli has, according to his habit, conceived the subject without any reference to traditional custom. i have already spoken of the ease with which he composes in the _tondo_ form, and this is perhaps the best example of his skill. the natural grouping of the figures, the sweeping curves of the draperies, which, especially that of s. joseph accentuated with gold, carry out the lines of the circle, give a sense of rest and harmony to the eye. the scene is treated with a simplicity and noble dignity which deserve special praise. it is in some ways the most sympathetic of all his holy families, and he seems to have felt the charm of every-day simple life, and for once has given the christ the life and beauty of childhood. the tender foreboding sadness in the face of the virgin, the reverential sympathy of the aged elizabeth, and the kindly care with which the powerful zacharias holds the child, are touches full of poetry. morelli places this _tondo_ as a late work,[ ] but the soft and harmonious colour, as well as the poetic feeling, seem to belong to this period, before the painting of the orvieto frescoes, if not even earlier. [illustration: [_gallery, berlin_ holy family (called visitation)] lastly, in this group must be placed the standard of borgo san sepolcro, painted for the confraternity s. antonio abbate, now in the municipio. it is interesting to note, as its position in the gallery allows us to do, how completely signorelli has now detached himself from the influence of his first master--outwardly at least. no greater contrast could well be, than the unrestful dramatic realism of the "crucifixion" on this standard, and the inspired serenity of the "resurrection" of pier dei franceschi close by; than the coarsely-conceived figure of the crucified christ, with its heavy features and uncouth limbs, and the spiritual beauty of the risen saviour. this "crucifixion" is the least successful of all signorelli's renderings of this subject (with the exception, perhaps, of the morra fresco), both from its technical defects of extreme hardness and heavy colour, as well as from the lack of any real feeling in the painter for his subject. the unfortunate introduction of the patron saint, posing as joseph of arimathoea, disturbs the harmony of the mood, while his exaggerated gesture contrasts disagreeably with the apathetic coldness of the other figures, over-dramatic as their action is. the christ is treated deliberately as a study of muscle, and is among the most ignominious of his types, and the fantastic landscape, with its shadowy rocks and solid clouds, is badly composed and without existence. although there is no trace of the influence of piero remaining, yet there is much of antonio pollaiuolo, especially in the muscular figure and bent legs of the christ. [illustration: [_municipio, borgo san sepolcro_ the crucifixion] the two large saints on the reverse of the standard are, on the other hand, imposing and noble figures, splendidly painted in signorelli's grandest and most sweeping manner. s. antonio, in the black habit of the order for which the banner was executed, stands reading in a book, and by his side is s. eligio, the smith-saint, in red mantle and dark-green robe, holding in one hand the farrier's tool, and in the other the cut-off horse's hoof of the legend. below kneel small figures of four brothers of the confraternity. we have now come to the end of the series of works, executed, as nearly as can be judged, between and , and with the latter date have arrived at the time of the painting of the orvieto frescoes, which were to be the crowning point in the life's work of the master. footnotes: [ ] "purg." ii. and . [ ] when last heard of by the author it was for sale in england. [ ] the contract, dated june , is transcribed in pungileoni's "elogio stor. di giov. santi.," p. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] the ms. is in the possession of conte scipione bicchi-borghese, siena. [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] "die galerie zu berlin," p. . chapter v orvieto there seems to be a moment in the life of every great man in which he touches the height of his possibilities, and reaches the limits of his powers of expression. to signorelli it came late, at an age when most men begin to feel at least their physical powers on the wane. the two last frescoes of the monte oliveto series indicate that an immense force lay in reserve, waiting an opportunity for some wider and freer field of action, than had hitherto presented itself. that opportunity now came, when, at the age of fifty-nine, he was called upon to undertake the vast work of these orvieto frescoes. with the exception of the sistine chapel, no such task has been achieved at so sustained a pitch of imaginative power and technical excellence. whether the subject stirred his dramatic spirit, or whether the great spaces to be filled gave an expanded sense of liberty to his genius, or whether his powers, intellectual and physical, really were at the zenith of their strength; whatever was the cause, he succeeded in executing a work which ranks among the greatest monuments of the renaissance, perhaps should even rank as the very greatest. morelli writes: "these masterpieces appear to me unequalled in the art of the fifteenth century; for to no other contemporary painter was it given to endow the human frame with a like degree of passion, vehemence, and strength."[ ] and beside the dignity with which he has in these frescoes elevated the body to an almost superhuman grandeur, his conception of supernatural things is proportionately solemn and impressive. it is impossible to look at the scenes without emotion, and the mood evoked is due in a great measure to the earnest conviction with which they are conceived. signorelli, always a religious painter, in the wider meaning of the word, seems here to assume an almost prophetic attitude of warning, embodied, one might almost think, in the portrait of himself, stern and menacing, standing sentinel-like over the work. vasari thus speaks of the frescoes: "in the principal church of orvieto--that of the madonna--he completed with his own hand the chapel which had been begun there by fra giovane da fiesole; in which he painted all the history of the end of the world, with strange fantastic invention: angels, demons, ruins, earthquakes, fires, miracles of antichrist, and many other of the like things; besides which, nudes, foreshortened figures, and many beautiful designs; having pictured to himself the terror which will be in that latest tremendous day. by means of this he roused the spirit of all those who came after him in such a way that since, they have found the difficulty of that manner easy. wherefore it does not surprise me that the works of luca should have always been most highly praised by michelagnolo, nor that certain things of his divine judgement which he painted in the chapel were in part courteously taken from the invention of luca; as are the angels, demons, the heavenly orders, and other things in which michelagnolo imitated the style of luca, as everyone may see. luca portrayed in the above-mentioned work himself and many of his friends; niccolò, paulo and vitellozzo vitelli; giovan, paulo and orazio baglioni, and others whose names are unknown."[ ] [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ portraits of signorelli and fra angelico (detail from antichrist)] fifty-two years before, in , fra angelico had spent three months and a half in this cathedral of orvieto, painting the spandrels in the roof of the cappella nuova, as it was then called.[ ] he had time to complete only two frescoes, being either recalled to rome by nicholas v., or to the convent of s. domenico, near fiesole (of which, in , he was made prior). these two works are among the best and strongest of his paintings. in the principal space, that over the altar, he painted christ in glory, surrounded by a _mandorla_, with angels on either side; and in the spandrel on the right, a group of sixteen prophets, seated pyramidally against a blaze of gold background. it is probable that he had thought out the general scheme of the frescoes, and that signorelli only carried out his intention in working the paintings into one great whole--christ in heaven, surrounded by angels, apostles, martyrs, virgins, patriarchs and fathers of the church, witnessing from on high the execution of divine justice below. however that may be, it is certain that signorelli, in his painting of the roof, kept most scrupulously to the older master's arrangement, and in one of the spandrels actually seems to have worked over his design. after the withdrawal of fra angelico, the chapel remained untouched for more than fifty years. in his pupil, benozzo gozzoli, who had probably been his assistant in the painting, demanded permission to continue the work; but the authorities were not content to grant it, and it was only in , after some futile negotiations with perugino, who appears to have refused the commission, that they finally resolved to place the decoration in the hands of signorelli. perhaps decided to this step by the success of the monte oliveto frescoes, they were yet so cautious and so determined to have only the very best work in their chapel, that at first they only entrusted to him the painting of the vaulting, already begun. they were wise to be careful in their choice, for they were probably conscious of the extreme beauty of their cathedral, and, in particular, of the exquisite architecture of this chapel. orvieto cathedral is one of the finest and most impressive of the italian churches, and from its foundation in , the authorities had been notoriously lavish in their expenditure for its building, and fastidious in their choice of architects, sculptors, and painters.[ ] from the point of view merely of decoration, they could have given the work to no better artist than signorelli, and the first impression, on passing into the chapel from the austere and spacious nave, is of the harmonious plan, both of colour and design, with which the original beauty of the architecture has been enhanced, and its graceful characteristics accentuated. the roof is of very perfect shape, and the spaces well adapted for painting. it is divided in the middle by an arch, thus having two complete vaultings, each with four spandrels. the walls are high and spacious, also divided in two parts, in each of which, on either side, is a large fresco. signorelli has separated the lower part of the wall by a painted frieze of delicate gold and ivory, and in the lower half executed a series of portraits, each surrounded by medallions in _grisaille_, containing small subject-pictures, the rest of the space being filled with an intricate pattern of grotesques. the south wall, in which are three small windows, has been unfortunately disfigured by a _baroque_ seventeenth-century altar, whose projections hide a part of the frescoes. opposite is the entrance, a magnificently-proportioned portal, with a rounded arch, most delicately decorated in colour. every inch of the walls is covered, and for the most part by the work of signorelli himself, the above-mentioned grotesques, the merely ornamental painting, and a few of the medallions alone being by his assistants. in describing the frescoes i intend to begin with those of the vaulting, and then to work gradually round the walls from the left of the entrance, where the first of the series of larger paintings begins with "the preaching and fall of antichrist." in the spandrel opposite the christ of fra angelico, signorelli has painted eight angels holding the symbols of the passion, while two others, not unlike the great archangels of the "resurrection," blow trumpets to announce the impending judgment. left of the altar, opposite fra angelico's "prophets," and arranged in exactly the same pyramidal form, is a magnificent group, representing the "apostles," the virgin being seated on the lowest tier with s. peter and s. paul. very noble, impressive figures, powerfully and solidly painted, with broadly-draped, heavy-folded robes, they sit like rocks upon clouds as solid as hills. these, with the two frescoes of fra angelico, complete the paintings of the first vaulting. those on the other side of the arch are executed entirely by signorelli, and, with the exception of one, from his own designs. this one is the weakest of his roof-paintings in execution, and the composition and actual drawing of the central figures, are the work of fra angelico. it represents the "choir of martyrs," a group of seven figures. in the centre are seated three deacons in full canonicals, with bishops on either side, and below two saints in plain robes. these last have all signorelli's characteristics of drawing, and sit with wide-spread knees and broadly-painted draperies, a striking contrast to the weak attitudes and niggling robes of the central group. signorelli has indeed hardly altered the childish chubby features of the deacon in the middle, nor the benevolent vacuity of the two bishops, so different to his own austere types. opposite to this, over the portal, is a group of eight "virgins," broadly and vigorously treated, in signorelli's boldest manner. to the right is another of the pyramidal groups, fifteen "doctors of the church," some of whom are represented disputing and discussing points of theology. the last of the roof-paintings is a powerful group of "patriarchs," ranking, with that of the "apostles," among the most impressive of the frescoes. here appear many of his well-known types of face; the melancholy features of pan are repeated in the turbaned youth in the top row, intended perhaps to be solomon; the christ of the uffizi "holy family" is in the second tier to the left; the powerful zacharias from the berlin _tondo_ in the lowest. luzi, in his minute description of the paintings,[ ] has bestowed names on all these figures, without much advantage, since they are for the most part doubtful. few of them bear symbols, but the different groups are sufficiently described in large letters, by the painters themselves--gloriosvs apostolorvm choir--martirvm candidatvs exercitvs--etc. etc. the figures, with the exception of those by fra angelico, and the design for the "martyrs," are entirely the work of signorelli himself. the decorations between the spaces seem to be in part by the assistant of fra angelico--perhaps benozzo gozzoli. in the first border heads are painted, in lozenges, at regular intervals, a few of which are in the older master's style, while many show the manner of signorelli. the rounded projecting rib is painted with foliage of cypress-green, with here and there rich red and golden flowers gleaming out, and on either side a border of conventionalised water-lilies. it is difficult to say which of the masters designed this exceedingly beautiful decoration, but it is most effective, and well-calculated to accentuate the life of the fine curves in the vaulting. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ patriarchs] these groups of signorelli's are noble and impressive paintings, in technique strong and vigorous. the draperies are treated with simplicity and breadth of fold, and the gold background gives richness and beauty to the colour. no wonder that the authorities, jealous though they were at the beauty of their chapel, should have hesitated no longer to hand over the great spaces of the walls to the brush of the painter who had so well executed their first commission. in the april of the following year, , the new task was given. the payment for the roof was to have been ducats; for the walls they offered . besides this, the painter was to be furnished with ultramarine, a certain quantity of food and wine, and a free lodging, with two beds, as the lengthy documents of commission minutely tell.[ ] the paintings begin with "the preaching and fall of antichrist." here the foreground is filled with groups of the followers of the false prophet, who, with the features of christ, stands on a little raised dais, listening with an evil expression, as the devil behind him, unseen by the crowd, whispers into his ear what he shall say. before the dais are scattered gold vessels, bars and coins, with which he tempts the audience. farther back to the right, different groups represent the false teaching and miracles of antichrist, and in the background is his temple, with armed men going in and out of its open portico. the left of the frescoes is devoted to the fall of the false prophet, and the destruction of his followers. above we see him precipitated head-downwards from heaven by an angel surrounded by fiery rays, which strike death to the army beneath. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ the preaching and fall of antichrist] in sombre black, and standing outside the scene, signorelli has painted the portrait of himself, with fingers interlaced and firmly-planted feet, and behind, the milder, but still gloomy figure of fra angelico. there is something sinister in the saturnine melancholy on the faces of the crowd, unrelieved by any lightness, and culminating in the evil expression of antichrist himself. the peace of the gold-flecked landscape only accentuates the horror of the scene of the downfall in the background. the picture is a fit prologue to the terrible judgment to come. in composition the fresco is very fine, the values of distance are well kept, and the meaning of the scene is obvious and significant, and dramatically rendered. the foreground group is very strongly painted, natural in attitude and gesture, and the figure of a man in striped hose is magnificently modelled. i do not care to touch on so hypothetical a thing as the supposed portraiture in this group, but it is interesting to note, in the old man right of antichrist, the features familiar to us in the drawings of leonardo, possibly painted from a study of the same model. behind is a profile head, obviously intended for dante. the terrible force of the angel, with its hawk-like swoop, the unresisting heavy fall of the body through the air, are rendered with extraordinary power. the foreshortening is admirable, and so is the fine perspective of the beautiful architecture of the temple. the figures of the soldiers on the steps recall perugino in the manner of treatment--dark against light, and well detached from the background. the capitals of the pillars, the buttons on the clothes, and the rays of the angel are embossed with gilded gesso, as also are the distant hills. this form of ornamentation, so much used by signorelli in these frescoes, adds greatly to their decorative beauty. under this painting is a square-shaped portrait, half cut away by a recess, in which stands a modern altar. it is supposed by luzi to represent homer, and is the first of a series which run all round the walls, much repainted, but all of them the work of the master himself. they are surrounded by four medallions, painted in _grisaille_, also for the most part by signorelli, but in this case only two, and a fragment of the third, remain, the enlarging of the recess having almost entirely cut that and the fourth away. in the top medallion are five nude figures, a powerful female and four males, all wildly hastening as if from some impending destruction. in that on the left a man stands on a dais, surrounded by soldiers who hold a prisoner bound before him. in the lower fragment, only one figure remains. these all represent, according to luzi, scenes from homer. the groups are well composed and full of vigorous energy, the nudes are splendidly modelled in broad, bold strokes, so sharply drawn on the wet plaster that the outlines are deeply incised. where, as here, these _grisaille_ pictures are the work of signorelli himself, they are worthy of more attention than is usually given to them, being as fine as any of his best work. to realise fully their vigour and excellence, one need only compare these powerful nudes with those painted in the pilasters close by, the work of assistants. the medallions in every case are surrounded by a broadly painted coloured pattern of grotesques, also by assistants, but probably to a large extent designed by signorelli, for they are extremely characteristic of his preoccupation with the human form and with movement. arabesques have but little attraction for him, and it will be noticed that in all his ornamental work where it is possible, he paints figures. these decorations are almost entirely composed of fantastic creatures, fauns, tiny satyrs, horses, birds, etc., who blending their shapes and borrowing each other's limbs, frisk all over the walls, and by their gambols and contortions form a pattern of curves and lines, which is a maze of animated life, retaining at the same time the broad and harmonious effect of an arabesque. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ the crowning of the elect] the next large painting represents "the crowning of the elect." a crowd of men and women, many draped round the loins, some quite naked, gaze upwards ecstatically, or kneel reverently to receive the gold crowns which angels are placing on their heads. above, seated on clouds, are nine other angels, draped in many-folded robes, who play musical instruments. to the right two figures (in one of whom the echo of the "pan" is repeated) seem to walk out of the scene, thus connecting this fresco with the next, in which the elect and crowned souls prepare to ascend to heaven. the background is entirely of gold, thickly studded with bosses of gilded gesso. the figures are finely modelled and posed. the flesh-painting, as in all the frescoes, is perhaps somewhat heavy in colour, but the whole effect is rich and harmonious. the chief defects in the work are the overcrowding of the composition, and the bad values of distance, caused in a great measure by the gold background. signorelli's treatment is too realistic, his figures are too solid and too true to life, to bear the decorative background so suitable to the flat, half-symbolic painting of the sienese school. they need space and air behind them, and lacking that, one feels a disagreeable sensation of oppression and overcrowding. keeping the eye upon the ground, which is treated naturally, this feeling goes; the long shadows distinctly marked, send the figures to their different planes, and the confused composition becomes clear. underneath are the usual decorations, two square portraits surrounded each by four medallions. we do not need the help of luzi to recognise dante in the first, injured though it is, and much repainted, especially about the mouth, which gives the face a somewhat grotesque expression. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ subjects from dante] the _grisaille_ paintings represent stories from the "purgatorio," but although fine in design, are not executed by signorelli himself. they have none of the breadth and grandeur of the first series, and the effect is meagre and niggling, equal importance being given to the rocks and to the figures. the other portrait is probably intended for virgil, who, with upturned face and melodramatic expression, seems to seek for inspiration. this expression is exaggerated, but the painting is vigorous and strong. around, the medallions again represent subjects from the "purgatorio," and are apparently by the same hand as the last, with the exception of the lower one, which seems to have some of signorelli's own work in the nude figures. the south wall is pierced by three lancet windows, the central one over the altar, dividing the two principal frescoes of "heaven" and "hell." the former is, as i have said, a continuation of the last scene, and represents angels preceding the elect souls, and showing them the way to heaven. in the sky, heavily embossed with gold like the last, float angels with musical instruments, one of whom, with face downward, blowing a pipe, is not so successfully foreshortened as is usual with signorelli. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ heaven] in the thickness of the small window which cuts into this fresco, are painted two coloured medallions, one of an angel vanquishing a devil, the other of s. michael, with the balances, weighing souls--both by the master himself. below are two series of small pictures in _grisaille_, with scenes from the "purgatorio." the lowest is unfortunately hidden by the altar. all of them are by signorelli himself, exceedingly good, and worthy of careful study, one being especially beautiful--the top picture of the first series, in which dante and virgil stand before the angel, with the gold-plumed eagle in the foreground--a most nobly conceived illustration to the ninth canto of the "purgatorio." [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ hell] on the opposite side of the altar is the judgment of minos, and the driving of the lost souls to hell under the superintendence of the two archangels, who stand in the sky with drawn swords, sorrowfully watching the fulfilment of divine justice. signorelli here has followed very closely the text of the "inferno." in the foreground "minos standeth horribly and gnasheth," condemning the miserable souls before him each to his different circle, his tail wound twice about his middle. farther back, the pistoiese, vanno fucci, with blasphemous gesture, yells out his challenge to god; charon plies his boat; and in the background despairing souls follow a mocking demon who runs before them with a banner. the two medallions on the sides of the window contain, one the archangel gabriel with the lily of the annunciation, the other a very beautiful group of raphael and tobias, both by signorelli himself. below, the decorations correspond to those on the opposite side, the _grisaille_ pictures, representing, according to luzi, scenes from the "metamorphoses" of ovid, all, with the exception, perhaps, of the medallion just below the window, being also the work of the master, and very powerfully painted. leaving the window wall, we now come to the finest of all the frescoes, the magnificent scene of the "damnation." so vivid is the realisation, so life-like the movements and gestures, that the writhing mass appears really alive, and one can almost hear the horrible clamour of the devils, and the despairing yells of the victims. the general effect is of one simultaneous convulsed movement, one seething turmoil. in detail, the horror is most dramatically rendered. the malignancy of the devils, their brutal fury as they claw their prey, tear at their throats, and wrench back their heads; the utter horror and anguish of the victims, the confusion, the uproar, are given with a convincing realistic force, which makes the scene ghastly and terrible. in most representations of hell, and especially of devils, human imagination fails in conveying any sense of real horror, even the earnest dürer and botticelli treating them with a grotesqueness which shows how far they were from any conviction of their reality. signorelli is the only painter of the renaissance i can recall who has succeeded in giving a savage sternness, a formidable brutishness to his fiends, which is very far from grotesque, but is really appalling. these ferocious creatures are of all colours, slate-blue, crude purple, heavy green, livid mauve--sometimes of all these poisonous-looking colours fading one into the other. strong and malevolent, they triumph in their work of torture, with a gloomy malignancy very different from the trifling malice of the fiends he painted at monte oliveto. above stand the three archangels, in armour, with half-drawn swords, menacing those who try to fly upward instead of toward the flames of hell. two, in their hurry to escape chastisement, let fall their prey; another, with great bat-wings which cut the air like scythes, swoops down again into the chaos below. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ the damnation] i suppose a mass of convulsed limbs has never been rendered in so masterly a manner. the effect is so natural that one is inclined to forget the difficulties signorelli has so superbly overcome. but if one considers in detail the different attitudes, the violent action of the arms and legs, the contorted positions of the bodies--every muscle either on the stretch or relaxed into a flaccid limpness,--the foreshortened limbs twisted into every kind of unnatural posture, and the complicated interweaving of the whole, one realises that it is indeed his masterpiece, not only for the mood of terror and awe it induces by its imaginative power, but for its marvellous rendering of tumultuous movement, and the ease with which enormous technical difficulties have been surmounted. the portraits below are, according to luzi, of ovid and horace, the four medallions round the former seeming, in their energy and furious life, to carry out the tumult of the great fresco above. they represent scenes from "the metamorphoses," and deal chiefly with hades and the infernal deities. above stand four female figures with fluttering draperies, among whom we can distinguish diana with the bow, and pallas with the lance and shield. below, pluto stands in a chariot drawn by dragons. this painting is very much injured, as is much of this lower part of the wall, especially the grotesques. on the right pluto bears away persephone in his arms in a chariot drawn by two fantastic horses, which an attendant urges furiously forward with a caduceus. on the left ceres, with wildly-floating hair, leaps into a tearing chariot drawn by two winged serpents, which cupid goads onward with a flaming torch. these are all by signorelli himself, and, for the rendering of violent movement, worthy of their position under the great painting. round the other portrait are subjects also connected with the infernal regions. over it, Æneas stands before the cumoean sybil, a very injured painting. below, orpheus in hades plays before pluto and persephone to win back eurydice, who lies bound before them. on the right hercules rescues theseus from hades, and slays cerberus, and on the left, eurydice, following orpheus, looks back, and is re-seized by the demons. these are all exceedingly good and dramatic paintings, and are by signorelli himself. the next large space, after the fresco of "the damnation," is filled with "the resurrection." above, the two mighty archangels sound their trumpets, and the dead wake, and break through the crust of the grey earth below. they stand about embracing each other, or helping each other to rise, or gazing with rapture up at the archangels, who, with fluttering draperies and ribbons, and great spread wings of purple and peacock-green, stand, surrounded by little shadowy cherubs, in the gold-embossed sky. most of the figures are of signorelli's usual powerful build, one, however, is an emaciated youth with little on his bones but skin, many are skeletons. to these last he has given a pathetic look of ecstasy, which is wonderfully expressive, considering it is obtained only by means of eyeless sockets and grinning jaw-bones. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ the resurrection] the fresco has suffered much, particularly from the painting, in later times, of draperies round the loins, some of which have been worn or rubbed half off. almost in the centre is a large stain, outlining the shape of a window, which signorelli caused to be filled up, and which can still be seen on the outside of the cathedral. the damp, oozing through the new plaster round the framework, partly destroyed the painting, but the centre is remarkably well preserved. it is interesting to note in studying this fresco, that, student of anatomy though he was, the skeleton seems to have had little attraction for signorelli. the placing of the bones is, of course, correct, but the delicacy of their curves, their relative proportions and thicknesses, their beauty of detail, are not given at all. for example, in the skeleton in the foreground, the pelvis has scarcely the shape, and none of the variety of line, of the bone itself, but is merely a coarsely-drawn girdle. compared to the extreme delicacy with which he models flesh, and his minute appreciation of every gradation of curve in the muscles, this carelessness in the treatment of the skeleton is noteworthy. under this, the last of the larger frescoes, is a recess, in which was formerly the sarcophagus containing the bones of pietro parens, the patron saint of orvieto. in this recess, under the brackets on which the sarcophagus stood, signorelli has painted one of his most beautiful "pietàs." unfortunately, half hidden by a marble group, sculptured in by ippolito scalza, it is difficult to see, and impossible to photograph, and is therefore not so well known and appreciated as it deserves to be. the christ is an exact repetition of the figure in the "deposition," of the cortona cathedral, and was probably painted about the same time-- . the position only is reversed. the other two figures are also repeated from that altar-piece, with only very slight variations. behind is painted the tomb, on which is a relief in _grisaille_ of four naked figures bearing the dead body of the saviour. this formed the lower part of the now removed sarcophagus, the three stone supports of which still project from the wall. on the right of the "pietà," is painted the martyr pietro parens himself. the saint gazes down with tender reverence at the scene at his feet, standing in fur-trimmed robes and cap, one hand on his breast, the other holding the palm of martyrdom. over his head is the hammer, the instrument of his death. the face is of extreme beauty, with gentle expression, the robes are finely draped, the attitude most natural, and the whole figure is one of the noblest and most sympathetic of all signorelli's works, and deserves to be better known. on the other side, and also as supporter of the "pietà," stands faustinus, another patron saint of the city, also a very beautiful figure, with features which recall the type generally used by signorelli for s. john. at his feet lies the millstone with which he was drowned. on either side, in the thickness of the wall, is a medallion in _grisaille_, containing the scenes of their deaths, very powerfully painted. this recess occupies more than one half of the space below "the resurrection," allowing room for only one portrait and two medallions. the former luzi has decided to be lucan, and represents a beautiful youth, with a mass of loose curling hair crowned with oak-leaves and acorns. the scenes of the medallions are supposed to be from "the phaisalia." in that above three nude men fight with fists, one binds his prostrate foe, and another bears off a slain body. in that on the right four men fight with clubs and swords. all are powerful figures, painted by signorelli in his most characteristic manner. below the portrait of the poet is an inscription of , honouring the memory of signorelli, and of ippolito scalza, the sculptor of the marble "pietà." the frescoes round the beautifully-proportioned entrance portal, being on an inside wall, are in a state of better preservation than the rest, and the colours brighter. they represent "the signs of the destruction of the world." for imaginative power they can be compared only with the woodcuts of albrecht dürer's "apocalypse." to our right on entering, the "rain of fire" shoots in heavy lines from the hands and bodies of demons with outspread wings. the distraction of the people on whom it falls is well rendered. in the foreground armed men on horse and foot seek wildly to escape the shafts, which have already precipitated some to the ground. in the middle distance the flames pursue a flying mob of terrified women clutching their infants, and men trying to protect them; while in the foreground old men, youths, and children, are struck down in heaps, stopping their ears, and gazing up in panic at the unearthly apparition. on the opposite side the sun and moon are eclipsed, and a dark rain of blood falls from the gloomy sky. an earthquake has shaken the city, and its buildings totter and fall in fragments on the people. in the foreground is a group, perhaps intended for the prophets of the destruction, who gaze up, less terrified, but with fear and solemn awe. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ signs of destruction] next to "the damnation," these are perhaps the finest of the series, and show most imagination and dramatic feeling. the foreshortening of some of the figures is admirable, the composition in the restricted space is good, and there is superb drawing and modelling in the foreground figure among the prophets in the last fresco. in the centre, over the arch, signorelli has painted a group of winged children, who hold a tablet by a bunch of ribbons, in one of whom are repeated the features of the christ-child of the uffizi "holy family." in the space under "the rain of fire" has been painted a portrait, but not a fragment of the face remains, an obelisk-shaped monument having in later times been placed against the wall, completely destroying it. cavalcaselle, for what reason is not clear to me, supposes that it represented niccolò franceschi, the treasurer of the works. on the opposite side of the doorway is a coloured medallion, representing a man with a turban, who, leaning his back over the frame as though it were a window, seems to be gazing up at the painting above. this, cavalcaselle suggests, is a portrait of the painter himself; luzi, however, considers it to be empedocles. over it in the decorations are two small tablets bearing the master's initials, l. and s. we began by considering the general impression of the frescoes upon the mind, their great imaginative qualities, and the solemn mood they induce. we will conclude by summing up the technical excellences, which distinguish them from all his previous work by extra power and ability. the beauty of the compositions, the filling of the spaces and the effectiveness of the scheme of decoration are as much above the work of three years before--the mount oliveto series--as is the freedom and dramatic power with which the scenes are rendered. what chiefly strikes one is the homogeneousness of the whole design, each part of the work keeping its due place in the great scheme. we are never unconscious, even while carried away by the emotions of each separate scene, of the solemn presence of the judges above, who preside over the final justice. considered as subject-pictures, the intense dramatic feeling makes them extremely powerful in their different effects, so that it is impossible to look at them unmoved. finally, the facility and freedom with which his anatomical knowledge has allowed signorelli to render all the possibilities of movement and gesture, is as much in advance of his age, as is his modern and natural visualisation, and the impressionistic breadth of his brushwork. in that respect, indeed, it is impossible to go farther. later painters have erred as much in exaggerating violent action and over-developing muscles, as the earlier master fell short in dry and laborious stiffness. signorelli, while retaining the earnest sincerity and thoughtfulness of the earlier workers, has been able at the same time to render with modern facility every movement of the human frame, and the result is an achievement which no later skill has surpassed, which is perhaps the last word in the treatment of the nude in action. before closing these remarks, i must not omit to record the gratitude due to the two german painters, bothe and pfannenschmidt of würtemburg, who, in , at their own cost, cleaned and carefully restored the frescoes, a work done on the whole with great discretion. two other paintings of the master, now in the opera del duomo, are so closely connected with the chapel, that the description would be incomplete without mention of them here--the altar-piece of the magdalen, and the portraits of himself and the treasurer of the cathedral, niccolò franceschi. the former, painted originally for the cathedral, is a life-sized, very broadly painted figure, somewhat coarse in execution, but exceedingly powerful. she wears a gorgeous gold garment, elaborately embroidered, and over it a brownish-red mantle lined with green. there is a stately dignity in the picture itself which the photograph unfortunately does not reproduce. it is dated , and on the old frame is the following inscription: ceccarellevs . de . apvidvtis--et . rvfinvs . antonii . -- conservat . pa . pacis . conservatrici . ex . se . consvlto . m.d.iiii. the double portrait, painted in ,[ ] is a work of the greatest importance, both by reason of the interest attached to the portraiture, and also that it remains to us absolutely untouched, every stroke being in the original state as the master left it. the heads are full of character and life, powerfully and rapidly painted in black and red, on a brick or tile, thickly overlaid with gesso. the brush-strokes are bold and firm, and the outline slightly incised in the plaster. under each head signorelli has painted the names lvca and nicolavs, and on the back is a most interesting inscription, apparently painted by himself, although the words are most probably the composition of the treasurer. the following is a translation: "luca signorelli, an italian by race, citizen of cortona, renowned for his skill as a painter, comparable to apelles for attainment, has, under the rule and in the pay of niccolò franceschi, of the same race, but a citizen of orvieto, treasurer of the vestry of its cathedral, painted with clear meaning this chapel, dedicated to the virgin, with figures of the last judgment; and, eager for immortal fame, on the back of this inscription, has painted the effigy of both, life-like, and with wonderful art. in the reign of pope alexander vi. and of the emperor maximilian iv. in the year of grace m.ccccc. in the third kalends of january." footnotes: [ ] "italian painters," i. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] it was not till the seventeenth century that the chapel was dedicated to the madonna di san brizio, on account of a byzantine miraculous picture of the virgin, still on the altar. [ ] for an account of the cathedral, see the padre della valle's "storia del duomo di orvieto." [ ] "il duomo di orvieto." ludovico luzi. firenze. le monnier, . [ ] preserved among the archives of the cathedral. transcribed by vischer, p. , etc. [ ] the head of luca is reproduced, divided from the other, as the frontispiece. chapter vi later paintings we have seen that during the four years and a half in which signorelli was engaged on the great work of the orvieto frescoes, he yet spent some part of the time in his native city, and there, in , he painted the signed and dated "deposition" with its _predelle_ for the church of santa margherita, now removed to the cathedral. vasari thus speaks of it: "in santa margherita of cortona, his native town, belonging to the frati del zoccolo, he painted a dead christ; one of his most excellent works."[ ] this dead christ is the figure which by its realism and pathos gave rise to the legend, already quoted,[ ] that it was painted from the body of his own son. it is an exact counterpart of the "pietà" in the orvieto frescoes, except that it is here reversed. it is a work of great beauty and feeling, painted with sincere emotion, and has none of the academic dryness with which he treated the same subject in borgo san sepolcro. the fine grouping, the restraint with which the sorrow is rendered, the real pathos of the scene, give the picture dignity and solemnity, and the glow of colour, obtained by the lavish use of gold in the embroideries, add to its richness and decorative beauty. the virgin is nearly the same figure as in the orvieto fresco, and in feature recalls the san sepolcro "crucifixion," and the magdalen is almost identical with the altar-piece of the opera del duomo, just considered, although here painted with more refinement and grace. in the background is one of those vivid scenes of crowded movement, which occur so often at this period of the master's development--a group of excited soldiers pressing round the cross, with fluttering pennons and prancing steeds. the _predella_ hung just below, contains four subjects--"christ in gethsemane," "the last supper," "the betrayal," and "the flagellation." unfortunately, both pictures are so badly lighted that it is almost impossible except on a very bright day to appreciate the colour. the scenes in this _predella_ are nearly the same as in that of the florence academy, which hangs as part of the altar-piece, no. , although it does not seem really to have belonged to it. the two _predelle_ must certainly have been painted within a very short time of one another. in both the composition of "the last supper" is precisely the same, as well as "the flagellation." in the "betrayal" there is the same violent crowd with spears and pennons, surging round the christ. in the florence picture, however, there are only three divisions, "the betrayal" and "the way to calvary" forming the background to "the agony in the garden," where christ kneels before a little brook, with the apostles sleeping in rows behind him. the broad impressionistic manner in which they are painted is the same; and, coarse as is the brushwork, dark and heavy as is the colour, especially in the flesh tints, they are yet exceedingly fine examples of signorelli's bold style and quick resolute workmanship, and well illustrate his power of rendering violent combined movement, in the crowds which throng round the betrayed christ, and march tumultuously on the way to calvary. the "madonna and saints" above this last _predella_ (no. ) although according to signor milanesi, not its altar-piece,[ ] must certainly have been painted somewhere about the same time, for the broad style, tending rather to coarseness, of the work of this period is very noticeable. it was executed for the church of santa trinità in cortona, and milanesi suggests that it might be the altar-piece ordered in by the authorities of that church,[ ] but the description given by the document of commission is very different, and the picture itself seems to bear evidence of an earlier date. like so many of the works in this gallery, the painting has been so thickly daubed over by modern restorers, that it is next to impossible to form a just idea of the original colour; in its present state it is disagreeably crude and heavy, and in any case the overcrowding of the composition would prevent its being considered a successful example of the master's work, although it has his usual stately dignity and impressive qualities in the individual figures. the virgin sits with the child on her knee, clad in red robes, over which is a garment, now smeared over with black paint, but which formerly was covered with gold embroideries. over her head is a trinity, in a _mandorla_ surrounded by cherubs. on the left stands the archangel michael, in roman armour, holding the balances, in which are little nude figures representing the souls of the dead; on the right stands gabriel with the lily and scroll containing the message of the annunciation. below, seated at the foot of the throne, are saint augustine and saint anastasio, the latter the same burly bishop with wide-spread knees of the loreto cupola, and the volterra altar-piece. these two saints are fine, stately figures, painted with broad sweeping lines. the green robe of s. anastasio was originally covered with a gorgeous pattern, probably of yellow or gold, but this has been effaced by the thick smear of repaint. the gentle humility in the face of the virgin recalls the "madonna," of the brera gallery, milan (no. _bis_) with which the picture has, besides, much in common, the child, as well as the hands of the virgin, being exactly the same, although in a reversed position. we shall not probably be far wrong in placing the florence altar-piece about the same time as this "madonna," of the brera, which is dated , and was painted for the church of s. francesco in arcevia (a town famous for its possession of one of signorelli's most important works, which we shall presently consider). very much repainted, the madonna still retains great charm and beauty, but the composition is geometrical, and the figures of the saints uninteresting and empty. in these, especially the standing figure on the left, i feel the hand of an assistant. with all signorelli's mannerisms, it lacks his resolute touch and powerful presentation. it is probable that the great inequalities in many of his paintings, especially at this later time, are due to his leaving much of the execution to assistants. whatever faults are in the work of the master himself, he is never, up to the last, guilty of any feebleness or insipidity, such, for instance, as in the painting of this unsolid figure. [illustration: [_brera, milan_ madonna and saints] i have been led from one picture to another by reason of similarities of form, and have omitted to speak of a beautiful and important painting, evidently executed soon after the orvieto frescoes, with which it has much in common. this is the altar-piece in the church of s. niccolò, cortona, on one side of which is a "madonna and saints," on the other a "dead christ upheld by angels." it is as far as i know, original in idea--this dead christ supported by the archangel, while others show the symbols of the passion to the group of kneeling saints. the four angels are very noble figures, and resemble those of the "hell" and "resurrection," of orvieto. the "s. jerome" is sincerely painted, and without any of the senile sentimentality with which signorelli occasionally represents this saint. the one false note in the work is the stunted figure of the dead christ, which seems all the more insignificant by contrast with the grand archangel who supports it. this poetic figure with its great wings and its tender beauty is perhaps the greatest of all the master's renderings of the "divine birds." the colour scheme is much lighter than usual, the flesh-tints being especially fair, and the painting is another instance of those seeming efforts to adopt a less heavy palette, to which i have drawn attention in speaking of the uffizi _tondo_. [illustration: [_s. niccolò, cortona_ dead christ upheld by angels] vischer considers the "madonna and saints" on the reverse of the panel to have been painted at a different date.[ ] it is an exceedingly fine picture, with all the great qualities of majestic beauty. the virgin sits enthroned between ss. peter and paul, robed in red, and wearing a blue mantle lined with green. the child, half lying on her knee, has his hand raised in act to bless. it is well modelled, and of a more pleasing type than usual. in was painted another very important work--the altar-piece in the church of s. medardo in arcevia, a splendid _ancona_, still in its original gothic frame. the virgin is of the same tender type as in the brera and florence academy pictures, but with an added stateliness and gravity. in the centre panel she sits enthroned, with the child on her knee, clad in an embroidered robe, on the breast of which are two naked cherubs. on the left stand s. medardo and s. sebastian, on the right s. andrew and s. rock, each figure separated, as in the old polyptychs, by the pilasters of the frame. above is god the father, with two saints on either side, left s. paul and s. john the baptist, right s. peter and s. james of camerino. each of the side pilasters of the frame is divided into seven small spaces, each containing the half figure of a saint, the work of assistants. the effect of the whole painting is of great splendour, the colours are of glowing depth, and the richness enhanced by the low relief in gilded gesso of some of the brocades. but with all its state and dignity, perhaps the most important part of the altar-piece is the _predella_ with its five beautiful pictures, flanked on either side by the arms of arcevia. as colour these are remarkably fine and are treated with more care and less rapidity than signorelli usually gave to _predella_ work, while retaining the same breadth and freedom of general effect. "the annunciation," with its beautiful perspective, is one of his best compositions of this subject, in which he is always so successful. "the nativity" recalls that of the uffizi _predella_; "the adoration of the magi" is a fine rendering of the scene, but the two last are the most interesting as well as being the best in workmanship. in "the flight into egypt" the painter has evidently been influenced by the engravings of albrecht dürer, and has painted the little fortified town of the background very much in his manner. "the murder of the innocents" contains two figures in splendid action, the executioners, one with his dagger raised in act to strike, the other holding the child up by the leg--both magnificent studies of the nude, and worthy of the painter of the orvieto frescoes. [illustration: [_in possession of mr jarvis, new haven, u.s.a._ the adoration of the magi] very inferior is the altar-piece of "the baptism," in the same church of s. medardo. the existence of the contract of commission, dated june , ,[ ] shows that signorelli bound himself to paint the figures of christ, of the baptist, and of god the father, with his own hand, leaving the rest of the work to his best pupils. these figures are, however, so different from any of the master's own work, that it is difficult to believe that they are entirely by him. the picture had evidently to be finished in great haste, since the receipt for payment in luca's hand is dated the th of the same month of june, thus leaving only nineteen days between commission and completion, a very short time for so large a work. the baptist stands in a rich red mantle pouring the water on the head of the herculean christ, who wears the pollaiuolesque striped loin-cloth. the coarseness and exaggeration of the muscular development have not the characteristics of signorelli's own errors in over-realism, but bear the same relation to his style that the work of bandinelli bears to that of michelangelo. above is a feeble figure of god the father, and in the middle distance a man pulls off his shirt, reminding one, both in form and treatment, of the figures in pier dei franceschi's "baptism," of the national gallery. another sits by the river putting on a sandal, not unlike, although very inferior to, the athlete of the munich _tondo_. the composition is grand, and in the importance given by it to the two principal figures we certainly see the work of signorelli. the picture is an example of one of those mysterious conflicts of documentary and internal evidence, which the study of art occasionally furnishes. it still remains in its beautiful original frame, in the gables of which is painted an "annunciation," and below, on each side, three half figures of saints by some assistant, who was not even a pupil of signorelli, but obviously a follower of niccolò da foligno. the _predella_ contains five scenes. "the birth of the baptist," "the preaching in the desert," "the denouncing of herod and herodias" (a _tondo_), "the feast of herod," and--rather out of its due course, since the head is offered in the charger in the fourth scene--"the decapitation in prison." there is a very beautiful fragment of an unknown _predella_ in the possession of mr jarvis of new haven, u.s.a., which belongs approximately to this period. it has all the impressive dignity and breadth of treatment of signorelli's best work. the subject is conceived with special feeling for its stateliness, joseph standing by the side of the virgin to receive the gifts, as a chamberlain might stand beside the throne, while the earnest reverence of the kneeling king, who has cast his crown at the feet of the child, is most nobly rendered. the gold in the brocaded robes is here slightly in relief. the face of the kneeling king recalls that of the aged apostle in "the institution of the eucharist," cortona, a painting dated ; a beautiful picture, executed for the high altar of the gesù, but which has now been removed to the cathedral. like the other works in this choir it is very badly lighted, and the photograph is also indistinct. vasari writes of it: "in the compagnia del gesù, in the same city (cortona), he painted three pictures, of which the one over the high altar is marvellous, where christ communicates the apostles, and judas puts the wafer in his satchel."[ ] at the end of a shallow hall, in the usual good perspective, his head accentuated against the sky, as in leonardo's "last supper," christ stands, and puts the sacred wafer in the mouth of a kneeling apostle. in the foreground judas, with a crafty look, opens his satchel. the composition is exceedingly fine, the twelve apostles making a stately frame for the central figure of christ. the attitudes and gestures are natural and dramatic, and the faces have individual character. the two other pictures of which vasari speaks as having also been painted for the gesù, now the baptistery, are--"the nativity" (a coarse and badly-painted school picture, having affinities with that of the national gallery, london, no. ), and a "madonna and saints," which still remains in the baptistery. here the virgin sits, with a bishop on either side, and two monks below. dry and precise in composition, like that of the brera, and apparently painted with the assistance of pupils, the madonna herself is still very characteristic of the master, and not unlike those of the brera and the florence academy. the picture is in an exceedingly ruined state, and the gabled top in which is painted god the father, though not without merit, does not belong to the original painting, but is of a later date. lastly, we may place in this group, the broadly-painted _predella_, which hangs now, badly lighted, in the sacristy of the arezzo cathedral. it is unknown to what altar-piece it belonged, and the pictures are now divided and separately framed. the first represents "the birth of the virgin," the second "the presentation," and the last "the marriage." "the presentation" is the finest in composition and general effect, and contains very stately figures of joachim and anna, with splendidly draped robes, and behind them a fine austere landscape. all three pictures are broadly painted and swept in in the usual impressionistic manner. footnotes: [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] see p. . [ ] vasari, iii. . commentario. [ ] see chronological table, p. . [ ] vischer, p. . [ ] for these notices see anselmi's monograph, "a proposito della classificazione dei monumenti nazionali nella provincia d'ancona." (foligno, ), p. . also quoted by cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. p. . [ ] vasari, iii, . chapter vii last works we have now considered in detail most of the important works of signorelli's early manhood and maturity, and up to his seventy-fourth year have found him, both in conception and execution, still maintaining a high standard of excellence, and at an age when the life's work is supposed to be over showing but little sign of failing powers. on the contrary, he seems to have gained ground in certain things most characteristic of his technical ability--in a rugged strength of modelling, in facility of drawing and freedom of brushwork, and particularly in that mastery of united movement, which it seemed his special desire to attain. even in this last group of paintings which we have now to consider the mind works as powerfully, and the subjects are conceived with the same impressive grandeur, as before, and only in one or two instances can it be noticed that the hand does not always respond so readily to the purpose. in the "madonna and saints," of the mancini collection, città di castello, a slight technical falling off is apparent, although it is possible that this may be due to the assistance of pupils. its history would seem, however, to point to its being the unaided work of signorelli; but, as we have already seen, documentary evidence is by no means infallible. in the archives of montone, a little town near umbertide, a deed, dated september , , was discovered, which speaks of an altar-piece presented by the master as a free gift to a certain french physician, luigi de rutanis, in gratitude "for services rendered, and for those which he hoped to receive in future."[ ] [illustration: [_mancini coll., città di castello_ madonna and saints] the virgin stands heavily on the heads of cherubs, with s. sebastian on one side, and santa cristina, with a terribly realistic millstone hung round her neck, on the other. two angels hold the crown over her head, and below stand s. jerome and s. nicholas of bari, both intently reading. the background stretches away into a charming distant landscape, in which is a lake, not unlike trasimeno, and sloping hills, on which scenes of pastoral life are taking place. this landscape, taken by itself, is the best part of the painting; of the rest, the composition is too mechanically precise, the values of distance are bad, the figures being all on the same plane, and even the landscape does not keep its proper place in the picture. this last fault may, however, be due to repainting, which is so thick that it is useless to speak of the present colour. the altar-piece was discovered by signor giacomo mancini in a cellar in montone, almost destroyed by damp and neglect, and since its restoration it is perhaps hardly fair to discuss more than the general lines; yet these, in the awkwardness of arrangement, and the comparative triviality of the figures, both in attitude and gesture, betray a weakness we have not hitherto met with. another picture of the same date-- --is "the madonna and saints," in the church of san domenico, cortona, also in very bad condition. the restoration of the seventeenth century added a piece of canvas all round, in order to enlarge it. it was painted for serninio, bishop of cortona, whose portrait is to be seen in the corner, full of expression and exceedingly well modelled. the virgin, in red robe and green mantle, sits with her feet resting on the heads of cherubs, with an angel on either side, and below s. peter martyr, and s. domenico. it is an important work, and among the most successful of the later paintings, and it is curious that it should not have been photographed by either of the larger firms. the next year, , signorelli painted "the deposition," of umbertide, in which he shows all the technical power of his maturity--(or was it, perhaps, that he left less of the execution to assistants?). it was executed for the little dark church of santa croce, in this village, till recently called la fratta, and still stands over the high altar--not, however, in its original frame, which was removed in the seventeenth century. it seems that there was a lunette over the top, containing a pietà.[ ] terribly defaced by bad restoration, and the cracking of the later paint, it is still a very beautiful work, and its _predella_ has all the qualities of boldness and freedom characteristic of the master's best times. some of the figures are perhaps too obviously life-studies, especially the mary, standing in the foreground left, which he evidently painted straight from some _contadina_, whose stolid features he reproduced without reference to the subject. the body of the christ is successful, and has all the weight and helpless inertia of a corpse; the composition is admirable, and there is sincerity of emotion in the painting of much of the scene. it is, however, in the three pictures of the _predella_ that we shall find most proof of the vigour of mind and hand. it is interesting to compare signorelli's treatment of the same subject with that of pier dei franceschi in arezzo, at the painting of which he probably assisted, more than forty years before--"the march of constantine," "the discovery of the cross," and "the entry of heraclius into jerusalem." the first of the three is the best, both for the special quality of animated movement, and for the excellence of its composition and its effect of spacious movement. how much larger a tiny panel like this appears than some of the crowded altar-pieces of his later years! dashed in with a few broad touches, as a modern impressionist might paint, the scene of the camp is most natural, with its groups of soldiers and marching troops with raised lances and fluttering pennons. [illustration: [_santa croce, umbertide_ the deposition] in the second, three scenes are run into one, without much reference to any sequence of the story. on the right the queen of sheba kneels before the bridge which she has recognised as the sacred wood; on the left the empress helena finds the three crosses; and in the centre takes place the testing of the true one in the resuscitation of the dead youth. in the third--"the entry of heraclius into jerusalem"--we have again a splendid effect of a moving body of men. the emperor has descended from his horse, which is led behind him, and barefooted, in his shirt, he carries the cross within the gates. the next dated work--"the madonna and saints," of the arezzo gallery, was painted three years after this, in . "he executed," says vasari, "in his old age, a picture for the compagnia of s. girolamo, part of which was paid for by messer niccolò gamurrini, doctor of law, master of the rolls, whom he portrayed from life in that picture, on his knees before the madonna, to whom he is presented by a s. nicholas, also in the said picture; there are besides, s. donato and s. stephen, and below a nude s. jerome, and a david who sings on a psaltery; there are also two prophets, who appear, by the scrolls in their hands, to be discussing the conception."[ ] [illustration: [_gallery, arezzo_ madonna, saints, and prophets] the commission was given to luca by the compagnia of s. girolamo, on september , , and the price was to be one hundred broad gold florins, to be shared by messer gamurrini and the confraternity. in this picture it is in the intention rather than the execution that we shall find the vigour and strength which ended only with the painter's life. much still remains grand and impressive, but though it shows considerable power, the actual work is not so good. the colour is exceedingly dark, and full of harsh contrasts; the composition is overcrowded, as in many of his later paintings; and the figure of david, although nobly conceived, is awkward and ill-balanced. on the other hand, the virgin is as powerfully executed as ever, and so is the earnest, white-haired prophet at her feet. it seems to me that the master has given his own features in this upturned face, with its firmly-cut lips and square jaw, certainly much more real a person than the apathetic kneeling donor. after its removal from its original place over the altar of the confraternity, the picture was for several years in santa croce, and, after the suppression of that convent in , removed to santo spirito, and from thence to the gallery. very close to it in style, and probably painted at no distant date, is the _predella_ owned by mr ludwig mond. it has three stories--i. ahasuerus and esther, ii. and iii. (with no legendary connection of which i am aware) scenes in the life of s. augustine. the first is the finest. ahasuerus, surrounded by his councillors, bends forward, and touches with his sceptre the head of the kneeling esther. his figure is very like that of the david in the foregoing picture. on the right is a fine back view of one of the characteristic swaggering soldiers in tight striped clothes. the treatment is broad, but the drawing in parts is somewhat careless. in the other two scenes, the composition is jerky and insignificant, but the individual figures are characteristic, especially the nude _écorché_-like old saint. they represent visions which appear in the air to s. augustine, who sits below under a _loggia_. again, very close to the arezzo altar-piece is "the conception of the virgin," painted for the church of the gesù, cortona, now in the cathedral. the virgin stands, on the usual cherub heads, in red and blue robes, while god the father bends over her, and two angels scatter flowers through the air. below are six prophets, among them david, with his psaltery, and solomon, in crown and royal robe. under the virgin, apparently supporting the cherubs, is the tree of life, with two very fine nude figures of adam and eve receiving the fruit from the serpent. it is the lower part only we have to consider, the whole of the upper painting, with the weak, badly-draped virgin and the theatrical angels being certainly the work of assistants, as also, it seems to me, is the drapery of the half-kneeling prophet to the right. the david is exactly the same figure as in the arezzo altar-piece, to which, besides, there is a great resemblance in all the faces, and in the hard coarse manner in which the draperies are treated. the picture, however, lacks the rugged strength which makes the arezzo picture, with all its shortcomings, so impressive, and only in the nude figures is the old power unimpaired. these, however, are very good, the adam especially being as fine a study of the human form as any of the earlier work. at morra, a little village not far from città di castello, in the church of san crescenziano, are two very important frescoes, a "crucifixion" and a "flagellation," evidently very late work of the master. in the latter the composition is very little altered from the early picture of the brera. christ is in the centre, bound to the pillar, and on the right stands the roman soldier. the executioner near him is almost a repetition of the magnificent drawing in the louvre (see reproduction), except that the legs are wide apart. all signorelli's energies have again gone into the figures of the executioners, but, fine as they are, they are not treated with the same breadth as in the earlier picture, albeit the painting is free almost to roughness. the background, instead of the carved wall, now opens out of the court into a spacious landscape. in the "crucifixion," the group at the foot of the cross is arranged much like those of the san sepolcro, urbino, and cortona pictures, but it is half lost in the confusion of a crowd of mounted soldiers. the impressive silence and solemnity of these earlier "pietàs" is changed here to a scene of noisy turmoil, and the painter's interest is obviously centred on the movement of this hustling crowd. the horses are badly drawn and ill-balanced, as in the louvre "adoration," and the magdalen is very coarsely painted. the animation and action are well rendered, but something of the grandeur of his earlier work is sacrificed. this grandeur was, however, fully regained in the last work of the master, painted in , the very year of his death--"the coronation of the virgin," in the collegiata of foiano, a small town near sinalunga. the virgin, in red robes and greenish-blue mantle, with fair hair, kneels before christ, who places the crown on her head. on either side two angels play musical instruments, and on the right and left stand s. joseph and the archangel michael. in the foreground kneels s. martin, to whom the altar-piece was dedicated, in a magnificent gold cope, having on his left s. jerome with a grey loin-cloth. farther back are three monks, and behind s. martin stands the magdalen, while on the other side an old saint introduces the donor, angelo massarelli. the general tone of colour is not nearly so heavy as in the arezzo painting, the reds are of a pale rose-colour, and only the flesh-tints of s. jerome are very dark. this figure and the s. martin are nobly and powerfully conceived. the donor recalls the portrait of the gamurrini of arezzo. the painting does not seem to be the unassisted work of signorelli, the s. michael being too insignificant a figure, and the magdalen too weakly executed to be by his own hand. the _predella_ bears evidence that he had an assistant, for, of the four stories of s. martin, which they illustrate, only two are by the master. these two are very fine and bold, in composition and brushwork. in the first the saint, clad in armour, is seated on the characteristic white horse, with a man-at-arms behind him, and divides his cloak with the nude beggar. the background is a broadly-painted landscape. the other represents the saint kneeling before a bishop and two acolytes, clothed in a green tabard, a romantic and beautiful figure. the two remaining divisions are larger in size, and obviously the work of assistants, one illustrating s. martin exorcising a mad bull, the other his funeral and the miraculous healing of the sick by the dead body. it is satisfactory to have to conclude the list of works with one so strong, and which combines so many of the qualities which we have learnt to look for in signorelli's painting. rugged energy, dignity, decorative grace, and even romantic beauty are all to be found in this altar-piece, which is a fit ending to the life's work of the master.[ ] footnotes: [ ] transcribed in vischer, p. . [ ] cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] these detailed studies do not include all the works of signorelli, but a complete list of all that are known to the author is to be found in the catalogue at the end. chapter viii drawings the study of signorelli's drawings is unsatisfactory, both by reason of their scarcity, and the enormous difference of merit, even among those few which can be considered as genuine. morelli writes: "his drawings are found in all the most important collections of europe,"[ ] but he mentions only thirteen, and although many certainly in all the galleries bear his name, and the impress of his influence, later study appears to accept only six as by his own hand; and of these six two are so much inferior to the rest that i cannot bring myself to feel any degree of certainty as to their genuineness. this difficulty of acceptance arises from a comparison with the very high standard of excellence in the two magnificent studies of the nude in the louvre collection, which correspond, in breadth of feeling, in grandeur of pose, and in boldness and accuracy of touch, to his best brushwork. no. , formerly in the baldinucci collection, represents two nude male figures of superb proportions, one standing with his hands on his hips, the other, in the characteristic attitude with wide-spread, firmly-planted feet, having his hand on the shoulder of the first. it is in black chalk, dashed in swiftly, with bold sweeping strokes, apparently direct from the life. it is one of the finest studies of the nude in existence, both for the splendid anatomy of the figures and the freedom and energy of touch. no. , also from the baldinucci collection, which is here reproduced, is hardly inferior to it in the same qualities of boldness and freedom. it seems to be the study from which signorelli painted the executioner in _grisaille_ near the "pietà," in orvieto, and later the scourging figure of the morra "flagellation," although in both there are slight differences of position. the action is exceedingly fine, the poise of the figure on the well-drawn feet being especially good, while all the force of the strong body is thrown into the arms stretched high up over the head. in dresden is a sheet of studies, which, while less fine than these two, are yet very characteristic, and undoubtedly genuine. they are also in black chalk, but very much rubbed, and consequently rather indistinct they represent four nude figures in different postures, which morelli considers to be studies for part of the orvieto frescoes, although i have failed to discover there anything which corresponds to them. [illustration: [_louvre, paris_ study of nude figure] in the uffizi gallery, florence, is another black chalk study of two men being chained by devils, which, again, seems as though it must have been intended for some of the figures in the "damnation," but which i cannot find there. this drawing is also very characteristic, and although falling far below the merit of the louvre studies, has all signorelli's qualities of dramatic energy and strength of touch. the heavy, coarse study for a "death of lucretia," also in the uffizi, i find extremely hard, in comparison with any of the foregoing, to accept as an undoubted work of the master, although i am not prepared to absolutely deny it. there is a want of proportion in the figures, and an indecision in the strokes, hard to reconcile with all we know of his work. in the collection at windsor is another chalk drawing--"hercules overcoming antæus"--of little merit either of anatomy or of technique, but which may possibly be from his hand. there is something of the influence of antonio pollaiuolo visible in this treatment of his favourite subject, and it is just conceivable that it may be an early study by signorelli done in his workshop. the list of all the drawings which are attributed to him in different collections would take too long for the slight purpose it would serve; but for the benefit of those who desire to compare for themselves those which morelli and vischer decide to be genuine, i have added a list of their attributions, transcribed without addition or correction. drawings mentioned by morelli dresden (_gallery_).--study of four nude figures. florence (_uffizi_).--case . [no. .] london (_brit. mus._).--three drawings, in vol. . paris (_louvre_).--[nos. , , , , , , .] windsor (_library_).--a drawing, attributed to masaccio. besides these, a design for marcantonio's engraving of "mars, venus, and cupid" (bartsch, ), attributed to mantegna. drawings from vischer's list of signorelli's works berlin (_gallery_).--man's head with cap (exposed in frame). chatsworth.--four saints (waagen's attribution). dresden (_gallery_) case i. .--head of a woman. (exposed in room ii.).--battlefield (?) [this so-called battlefield is the study of four nudes, mentioned among the genuine drawings.--_author's note._] florence (_uffizi_).--figure of youth. two damned bound by devils. nude figure bearing corpse. madonna and child (doubtful). death of lucretia (?). bacchanal. paris (_louvre_) .--four nude figures; black chalk. . two saints; coloured chalk. . a saint; coloured chalk. . nude figure scourging; black chalk. . a saint; black chalk. . two nude figures. . pietà. . nude figure bearing corpse; water-colour (more finished repetition of the uffizi study). siena (_collection of mr c. fairfax murray_).--seated saints (study for _grisaille_ prophets in the nave of the church of loreto). windsor (_collection of h.m. the queen_).--devil seizing man; black chalk (study for orvieto frescoes). male figure in three positions; indian ink (attributed to raffael). [illustration: [_academy, florence_ magdalen at the foot of the cross] footnotes: [ ] "italian painters," i. . chapter ix pupils and general influence it would not be possible, in the space at my disposal, to go with any thoroughness into the work of signorelli's imitators, even of those who fell directly under his influence. the painters who stand foremost among them, don bartolommeo della gatta and girolamo genga, are both too important to be dealt with in a short notice, while it would be a thankless as well as an arduous task, to try to distinguish the different painters of what is generically classed as school-work, being, as it nearly always is, without either individuality or merit. i shall do little more, therefore, than make a brief mention of the names and principal works of the known imitators, and try instead to indicate the influence of signorelli's style upon painting in general. morelli says much of his "uncompromising guidance," and of the "degeneration" of those who fell under his "crushing influence."[ ] something of the sort has been said of michelangelo, and might be said of every strong man whose personality is powerful enough to stamp its mark on his contemporaries, but since no one who is content to be merely a copyist could produce valuable work, the world has probably lost little by the submission. it is, however, true that, as the powerful muscles of michelangelo's statues become meaningless lumps in the works of bandinelli and vasari, so the mannerisms of signorelli, which were the outward sign of his strong and energetic temperament, lost all significance, and were merely coarse exaggerations in the work of his imitators. the swaggering attitude, the freedom of gesture, and the dramatic expression, shorn of the strength and earnest emotion from which they sprang, became disagreeably incongruous in the pictures of the feeble painters who imitated them. but one, at least, of signorelli's disciples was neither slavish nor feeble. bartolommeo della gatta, otherwise piero di antonio dei, the most important of those who came under his influence, was a painter of great charm and ability. if it be true, as a recent criticism has pronounced, that the beautiful "madonna," of the christ church collection, oxford, there attributed to pier dei franceschi, is from his brush,[ ] we have to deal with a man who started work under the same ennobling influence as signorelli himself. be that as it may, and as future research will decide, the fresco of "the death of moses," in the sistine chapel, which later study has presumed to be almost entirely his work, proves him to be a painter of great beauty and importance. signor gaetano milanesi has thrown doubt upon his existence as a painter of anything except miniatures,[ ] but the happy discovery of a document, referring to his altar-piece of "s. francis receiving the stigmata," in the church of that saint in castiglione fiorentino, has placed the fact beyond dispute.[ ] the student who desires to know more of this painter is referred to the last italian edition of cavalcaselle e crowe, vol. viii., and to the "life" by vasari, whose reliability in this case the researches of the critics so well confirm. born probably in , he was already a man of mature age when signorelli himself was a child, but his simple, pliable nature fitted him to be a follower rather than a leader, and we find him now influenced by pier dei franceschi, now by signorelli, and again later by fiorenzo di lorenzo. if it be true that the really splendid painting of the sistine chapel is due to him entirely, it is, of course, his masterpiece, and reaches, indeed, a level not very inferior to that of signorelli himself. his most important undisputed works are the above-mentioned painting in the church of s. francesco, castiglione fiorentino, the altar-piece in the collegiata of the same town, a s. rock in the gallery, and a fresco of s. jerome, in the bishop's palace, arezzo, etc. another imitator of importance, girolamo genga, impressionable as his nature was, yet has much individual excellence to distinguish him from the rest of signorelli's assistants. born at urbino in , he was placed, at the age of fifteen, in the studio of signorelli, with whom, according to vasari, he remained for twenty years, becoming "one of the best pupils that he had."[ ] after assisting the master in the painting of the cappella nuova, orvieto, genga (always according to the same authority) placed himself to study perspective with perugino, at the time that raffaelle was also under the influence of that painter. this, as well as the fact that he was a native of urbino, and had probably also felt the impression of timoteo viti, would account for the enormous influence raffaelle's painting had upon his later work. he seems to have had an extraordinary facility for changing his style; for, while under the influence of signorelli, as in the petrucci palace frescoes (nos. and in the gallery of siena), his work bears so much resemblance to that of the master, that so observant a critic as morelli declared the composition of both to be most certainly by luca himself.[ ] genga seems to have caught, not the superficial forms only, but also the spirit of signorelli in these frescoes, for in one--"the flight of Æneas from troy"--there is an exaggeration of the characteristic energy and movement, which, almost hysterical though it be, is yet successful and full of real life; while in the swaggering strength of the nude figures in "the rescue of prisoners" there is something of luca's own dignity and impressiveness. in his later work, although he never departs from certain likenesses to his first master, yet he gives himself up to the influence of raffaelle unreservedly, as may be best seen in the cesena altar-piece, now in the brera, milan. morelli writes of him: "this eclectic painter, who, though working in a baroque style, is not without talent, is confounded with the most diverse masters, both in drawings and paintings";[ ] and the fact that besides the above-mentioned variations of style, his work is also pardonably attributed to girolamo del pacchia[ ] and to sodoma,[ ] fully justifies the epithet and the assertion. of the other and less important followers, tommaso bernabei, called papacello, seems to have been first assistant of giulio romano, and then of giambattista caporali, with whom he is said to have painted the frescoes in the villa passerini, near cortona. his first original work is of the year --a "conception of the virgin," in the church of santa maria del calcinaio, near cortona, in which the manner of signorelli is very apparent. in the same church are two other paintings by him, dated , an "adoration of the magi," and an "annunciation," which are sufficient to indicate the small amount of artistic ability of the painter. the date of his birth is unknown; he died in .[ ] we have, besides, four members of signorelli's own family. first, his son polidoro, whom we know to have been his assistant at orvieto; for, in a document of , he is mentioned as having received certain payments there for salary, as well as for materials for the work.[ ] his manner of painting is unknown to us, so that it is impossible to distinguish his share in the frescoes. two other sons, antonio and pier tommaso, were, it seems, also assistants of their father, the former being the painter of a dated altar-piece in the church of santa maria del calcinaio, near cortona.[ ] lastly, his nephew francesco, the most important of the assistants bearing his own name, from whose hand there are several paintings very close to the master in style. to him, at least, are attributed the standard of "the baptism," in the gallery of città di castello, and a _tondo_ of a "madonna and saints," in the palazzo pubblico, cortona. there is one signed altar-piece by him, "the conception of the virgin," in the choir of s. francesco, gubbio. turpino zaccagna is another pupil, of whom manni writes that he was a noble youth of cortona, who took to painting, and imitated signorelli's style.[ ] of his work remains an altar-piece in the church of s. agata di cantalena, near cortona, signed and dated . with him the list of known pupils closes. but more really important than either of these minor scholars is the unknown imitator who painted the beautiful "magdalen," of the florence academy. executed on linen, and evidently intended for a church standard, this is the most successful of all the works in signorelli's manner, which yet cannot be accepted as genuine. the design of the principal figures in the foreground and middle distance i believe to be by signorelli himself, and the intensity of emotion in the magdalen, who has cast herself at the foot of the cross, and the impressive grandeur of the three figures to the right, have lost none of the original spirit of the master. the colour is entirely different, and would alone preclude the acceptance of the painting as signorelli's work, but, moreover, the general effect has so little of his sweeping breadth, and the details of the shadowy landscape are so poorly composed, that it is probable even the whole of the drawing is not by him. [illustration: [_gallery, buda-pesth_ tiberius gracchus] an interesting picture in the gallery of buda-pesth, there attributed to luca himself, connects the charming and mysterious "griselda" series (nos. , , and ), of the national gallery,[ ] with some follower of signorelli, for it is sufficient to glance at the background of this "tiberius gracchus" to be convinced that its painter is the same unknown master. in the "griselda" pictures there is more evidence than here of the influence of pintorricchio, to whom they are, not unnaturally, attributed; while in the "tiberius," in the drapery of the figure, and the type of the children who support the tablet, especially, there is much of the real spirit of signorelli, as well as a good deal of his breadth and solidity of drawing. the painter must, for the present, remain as an unknown umbrian, almost equally influenced by pintorricchio and luca, and with peculiar qualities of simple grace and romance, which give his work an extremely individual character. very different is the imitation of signorelli's mannerisms in such works as "the nativity," of the national gallery, "the madonna and saints," of the gallery of città di castello, and "the abbondanza," of the uffizi. in these the imitation is mechanical, and without any comprehension of the master's spirit. it would be useless to mention more of the school-work, in which superficial excellences and defects are copied with equal zeal. on the other hand, the spiritual qualities which these mechanical imitators missed, were felt intensely by men who never adopted his mannerisms, and it is in the work of these that the real effect of signorelli's influence is to be found. the frescoes of orvieto never became, like masaccio's in the carmine, a school to which the younger painters thronged, purposely to learn the methods of the master, but their impressive grandeur and solemnity, and the breadth of brushwork and solid modelling by which these qualities were in a great measure obtained, worked, nevertheless, a very important change in the art of the time, and a wave of strong fresh blood was sent through its veins. without them, perhaps, we should never have had the same appeal to the imagination and the nobler instincts in the sistine paintings, although there is not in the whole of the work one single mannerism from signorelli's style.[ ] but what is called the "terribilità" of the older master was entirely free from the sombre melancholy which strikes so gloomy a note in the work of michelangelo. signorelli's greatest gift to us is his conception of humanity, not only of its robust strength, but of its mental vigour. his figures are solemn, but it is a solemnity untainted with sadness, conscious only of the dignity of the human race, its significance and responsibilities. by his power over his materials, won by hard study, he added much to art, and presented things, not as conventional symbols, but as they are actually reflected on the eye. his people stand on solid ground by the help of firm muscle, substantial realities that we feel could be touched and walked round. his atmosphere gives the sense of real space and air. his trees seem to have roots, and their branches to be full of sap. by this truth and power of presenting things as they are he was able to endow his paintings with his own conception of nature, grander and wider than our own, and to make us see mankind with his eyes, built on broader, stronger lines. nothing trivial or insignificant enters into his perception of life. he takes his place with mantegna, with dürer, and with cossa, the austere painters, who felt the dignity of life to lie in rugged strength, iron resolution, and unflinching self-reliance. footnotes: [ ] "italian painters," i. . [ ] an attribution of mr b. berensen. [ ] see "commentary on the life of bart. della gatta." vasari, iii. . [ ] cavalcaselle e crowe. transcript of the document, viii. . [ ] vasari, vi. . [ ] "italian painters," i. . [ ] "italian painters," ii. . [ ] madonna. siena gallery, no. . [ ] portrait of man. pitti gallery, florence, no. . [ ] see cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. . [ ] vischer, . [ ] vischer, . [ ] inserted at the end of vischer's "signorelli," . [ ] unfortunately recently hung so high that any just appreciation of their great merit and beauty is impossible. [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle maintain that raffaelle also studied carefully the works of signorelli. see cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. , and i. , etc. etc. chronological table of the life and works of luca signorelli [the following table is compiled from that of cavalcaselle e crowe. (le monnier, ) as being more complete than that in milanesi's vasari, and more condensed than that of vischer. dates, however, which are not supported by documentary evidence have been omitted.] (_circa_). luca was born of egidio, son of luca, son of ventura signorelli. . (november) completed the fresco in the tower of the commune, città di castello, with the virgin enthroned between ss. jerome and paul, first spoiled by exposure, and completely destroyed by the earthquake of . . (sep. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii., cortona. . (nov. ) elected to the conservatori degli ordinamente del comune. . elected to the priori for the months of march and april. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . painted the altar-piece in the cathedral of perugia. . is sent to gubbio, to negotiate with francesco di giorgio, sienese architect, for a design for the church of calcinaio, near cortona. . (jan. ) undertook the painting of a chapel in sant' agata, spoleto; a work which, it seems, was never executed. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . elected to the priori for the months of january and february. . (july ) for the great ability with which he painted the banner of the blessed virgin, is made citizen of città di castello, as was his great desire. . reseated in the chief magistracy of cortona for the months of september and october. . elected to the consiglio generale. . (dec. ) elected to the priori for the months of january and february. . (dec. ) his son antonio announces to the priori that luca cannot serve, being absent from the city at a distance of over forty miles. . (jan. ) is among those invited to judge the designs and models presented for the competition for the façade of santa maria del fiore, florence. did not assist. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . painted the altar-piece of the "annunciation," in the cathedral, volterra. . painted the altar-piece of san francesco, volterra. . painted the altar-piece of the "adoration of the magi," for the church of sant'agostino, città di castello. . elected to the consiglio generale. . (sept. ) sold for gold florins to domenico di tommaso della barba of cortona, some acres of ground situated in the territory of montalla, called la mucchia, and the via di montalla, and others in the territory of orsaia, called the bocca del prato and the via da loghino. . commission for the banner for the church of santo spirito, urbino. . elected to the priori for the months of november and december. . painted the altar-piece of the "nativity," for the church of san francesco, città di castello. . elected to the priori for the months of may and june. . (march ) elected one of the revisori degli argenti. . elected to the priori for the months of november and december. . painted in the cloister of monte oliveto, near chiusuri, "stories in the life of s. benedict." . painted the altar-piece for the chapel of the bicchi family in s. agostino, siena. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (april ) commission for the frescoes in the roof of the cappella nuova, in the cathedral, orvieto. . (april ) commission for the painting of the walls in the above-mentioned chapel. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (may ) becomes surety to a citizen who undertakes the office of priore of the commune. . certain payments are made to polidoro, son of maestro luca, for colours and plaster, the removing of the scaffolding of the chapel, and for a part of his salary. . (june ) sold to ventura, his brother, the half of a house, which belonged to him, together with the said ventura, situated in cortona, in the quarter of san marco, bounded by the hospital of san niccolò, by pietro, surnamed scrolla, by jacopo di francesco, and by the via del comune. . painted the "deposition," for the church of santa margherita, cortona, now in the cathedral. . payment made to maestro luca signorelli for the painting of the cappella nuova, orvieto. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (june ) elected to the priori for the months of july and august, but cannot serve because his family is attacked by the plague. . (july ) presents to paolo di forzore and to his daughter francesca two acres of ground at rio di loreto, belonging to him as heir of his son antonio, who had received it as the dowry of his first wife nannina, daughter of paolo. . elected to the priori for the months of november and december. being absent, his name was removed from the list. . (feb. ) elected to the council of xviii. . elected to the priori for the months of may and june. . painted the altar-piece of s. mary magdalen for the cathedral of orvieto. . (dec. ) payment for the paintings of the cappella nuova. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (sept. ) is surety for one of the priori. . is in siena, and receives the commission for the cartoon of the "judgment of solomon," for the marble pavement of the cathedral. . (oct. ) is surety for one of the priori. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . elected to the priori for the months of july and august. . (dec. ) elected to the council of the casa di misericordia. . painted the altar-piece in the church of s. medardo, arcevia. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii. . elected to the priori for the months of july and august. . (july ) is sent on an embassy to florence to demand permission to reform the offices and ordinances of the commune. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . is in rome, painting for julius ii., together with perugino, pintorricchio, and sodoma. . (feb. ) elected one of the inspectors of santa margherita. . (march ) becomes surety for a priest. . (march ) binds himself to paint, for gold florins, a picture for the high altar of the convent church of santuccie, cortona. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii. . elected to the priori for the months of january and february. . (aug. ) appointed one of the inspectors of relics of the cathedral. . payment for the cappella nuova, orvieto. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . elected to the priori for the months of november and december. . painted "the institution of the eucharist," in the cathedral, cortona. . (sept. ) is sent as ambassador to florence, together with messer silvio passerini, messer gilio and jacopo vagnucci, to congratulate the medici on their return to florence. departed sept. and returned oct. . . is in rome, and appears to have borrowed money from michelangelo. . (july ) elected to the riformatori e imborsatori degli uffici. . (aug. ) elected to the sindaco del capitano. . (march ) makes a will, annulling the donation made to his daughter gabriella, to his son-in-law mariotto passerini, and to his grandaughter bernardina, and pronouncing as his sole heir his son pier tommaso, and his grandson giulio, son of the above. . (feb. ) elected to the conservatori degli ordinamente. . painted the "madonna," now in the mancini collection, città di castello. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (sept. ) is commissioned by the priori of cortona to paint, for gold florins, the arms of silvio passerini, chancellor of leo x., on the walls of the atrium of the palazzo pubblico. - . painted the "deposition," in the church at la fratta (now umbertide). . (feb. ) elected to the collegi. . (feb. ) luca, from the rostrum, speaks publicly in the council on a matter in deliberation. . (may ) elected to the consiglio generale; but is absent. . elected to the priori for the months of november and december. . (feb. ) among the stimatori del danno. . (april ) among the inspectors of the property of santa margherita. . (july ) is elected as ambassador to rome to present to cardinal passerini a gift from the commune. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (nov. ) is excused from the above-mentioned embassy to rome. . elected to the collegi. . painted the altar-piece for the confraternity of san girolamo of arezzo. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii. . elected to the priori for the months of may and june. . (june ) gave the design of a wooden candelabra with copper sconces for the altar of the great hall of council, cortona. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii. . (april ) elected prior of the confraternity of sant' antonio. . (april ) commissioned to paint a picture for the hospital of the misericordia, cortona. . (may ) the priori writes to cardinal passerini, legate to perugia, that he should not send maestro pietro perugino or other painters to whom luca may have spoken, to value the picture painted by luca in the church of santa maria del piève. . (july ) commission for the picture for the convent of s. trinità in cortona. . (aug. ) elected to take part in the commission to examine the new bridge over the chiana. . (sept. ) elected to the pacieri. . (feb. ) elected to the collegi. . (april ) prior of the confraternity of san marco. . (aug. ) elected one of the conservatori degli ordinamente del comune, and the provveditori de' luoghi pii. . elected to the priori for the months of january and february. . painted the altar-piece of the collegiata, foiano. . (feb. ) elected to the sindaci del capitano. . (april ) elected one of the inspectors of the chapel of santa margherita. . (june ) received payment for the picture of foiano. . (june ) the priori commission him to paint, for the chapel of the great hall of the palazzo pubblico, a picture with "christ disputing in the temple," for the price of gold florins. . (july ) elected one of the riformatori degli uffici. . (oct. ) his last will. desires to be buried in the church of s. francesco, in the tomb of his family. . (oct. ) adds a codicil to his will with a few alterations of bequests. . died between the last days of november and the st december. the th december another citizen is nominated to the inspectorship of the chapel of santa margherita, as substitute for maestro luca, being dead. catalogue of the works of luca signorelli arranged according to the galleries in which they are contained. catalogue of works. british isles. dublin, gallery. feast in the house of simon.[ ] _this must be the panel mentioned by cavalcaselle as in the possession of capt. stirling, glentyan, scotland (?)._ liverpool, royal institution. madonna. oil. ft. in. × ft. in. [no. .] london, national gallery. the circumcision. oil. ft. in. × ft. in. [no. .] _originally in the church of s. francesco, volterra. later in the duke of hamilton's collection, near glasgow. purchased in ._ inscribed: lvcas cortonensis pinxit. london, mr benson's collection. madonna. two parts of predella: . dispute on the way to emmaus. . christ at emmaus. london, lord crawford's collection. two parts of predella: . meeting of joachim and anna. . birth of the virgin. london, mr ludwig mond's collection. predella: . ahasuerus and esther. and . scenes in the life of s. augustine. london, mr muir mackenzie's collection. madonna. tondo. on sale in london. annunciation. part of predella formerly in the mancini collection, città di castello. for sale since . richmond, collection of sir francis cook. two fragments of a baptism. profile portrait of man. scotland (collection of sir john stirling maxwell, pollock house). pietÀ. france. paris, louvre. part of predella. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. _from the collection of louis xviii._ adoration of the magi. oil. ft. in. × ft. in. drawing only. _from the collection of napoleon iii._ seven half-figures in various costumes (?). . fragment. _bought from campana collection, rome, by napoleon iii._ germany. altenburg, saxony, museum. nine fragments of polyptych. oil. _from the collection of the late herr von lindenau._ four small panels with a saint in each, and five parts of a predella: . christ on the mount of olives. . flagellation. . crucifixion. . deposition. . resurrection. berlin, gallery. two wings of altar-piece. . oil. ft. in. × ft. ½ in. [no. .] _painted for the church of s. agostino, siena, which was burnt down in . bought from the solly collection._ pan as god of natural life and master of music. oil on canvas. ft. in. × ft. ½ in. [no. a.] _probably painted for lorenzo dei medici. discovered in in the palazzo corsi, florence. bought by the berlin gallery ._ inscribed: lvca cortonen. holy family. oil. in. × in. tondo. [no. b.] _from the patrizi collection, rome. bought ._ inscribed: lvchas signorellvs de cortona. portrait of man. oil. ft. in. × ft. _from the torrigiani collection, florence._ meiningen, ducal palace. part of predella. munich, gallery. madonna and child. oil. tondo. _from the palazzo ginori, florence._ italy. arcevia, s. medardo (between fabriano and sinigalia). polyptych. madonna and saints. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. in the original gothic frame. inscribed: lvcas signorellvs pingebat. m.d.vii. predella: . the annunciation. . the nativity. . the adoration of the magi. . the flight into egypt. . the murder of the innocents. arcevia, s. medardo, cappella del sacramento. baptism. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. in the original gothic frame. partly by assistants. predella: . the birth of the baptist. . the preaching in the desert. . the denouncing of herod and herodias. . the feast of herod. . the decapitation in prison. arezzo, gallery. madonna, saints, and prophets. . oil. ft. ½ in. × ft. in. [no. .] _painted for the campagnia of san girolamo. for many years in s. croce; on the suppression of that convent in removed to s. spirito; from thence to the gallery._ arezzo, duomo, sacristy. three parts of predella. oil. . birth of the virgin. . presentation. . marriage of the virgin. bergamo, morelli collection. s. rock. oil. [no. .] madonna. oil. [no. .] s. sebastian. [no. .] borgo san sepolcro, municipio. church standard. oil on canvas. ft. in. × ft. in. on one side a crucifixion; on the other, ss. antonio and eligio. _from the confraternity of s. antonio abbate._ castiglione fiorentino collegiata, cappella del sacramento. deposition. fresco. ft. in. × ft. in. cittÀ di castello, gallery. martyrdom of s. sebastian. . oil, ft. in. × ft. ½ in. [no. .] _from the church of s. domenico._ cittÀ di castello, palazzo mancini. madonna and saints. . oil. _painted for the church of s. francesco in montone, near umbertide. discovered in a cellar in montone._ inscribed: egregivm qvod cernis opvs magister aloysius ex gallia, et tomasina ejvs vxor ex devotione svis svmptibvs poni cvravervnt. lvca signorello de cortona pictore insigni formas indvcente. anno d. mdxv. cortona, duomo. deposition. . oil. ft. in. × ft in. _from the church of santa margherita._ inscribed (under frame): lvcas aegidi signorelli. cortonensis. mdii. predella to the above: . christ in gethsemane. . the last supper. . the betrayal. . the flagellation. the institution of the eucharist. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. _from the high altar of the gesù._ inscribed: lvcas signorellivs corthoniensis pingebat. mdxii. conception of the virgin. oil. the upper part the work of assistants. cortona, s. domenico ( rd altar, r.). madonna and saints. . oil. _painted for the bishop of cortona._ inscribed: io serninivs e[~p]s cortone[~n]s iconam et ornatum p. p. facieri a.d. ci[c]i[c]xv. haeredes vero d. astrvbalis ejvs ex f[~v]e ab nepotis p. s. instavran. cvravervnt. a.d. ci[c]. i[c]. cxix. cortona, gesu. madonna and saints. cortona, s. niccolo. dead christ upheld by angels. oil. ft. ½ in. × ft. ½ in. on the reverse-- madonna enthroned between ss. peter and paul. cortona, s. niccolo (on the wall, l. of entrance). madonna and saints. fresco. ft. in. × ft. in. _discovered in by don agramante lorini._ florence, academy. crucifixion. oil, on canvas. [no. .] (part of the design only.) madonna and saints. oil. [no. .] _from the church of s. trinità, cortona._ predella. [no. .] . the last supper. . christ in gethsemane. . the flagellation. florence, corsini gallery. madonna and saints. tondo. florence, pitti. holy family. oil. ft. in. × ft in. tondo. [no. .] florence, uffizi. madonna and child ( st corridor). [no. .] _probably painted for lorenzo dei medici. later in the villa of duke cosimo at castello. removed to the gallery ._ holy family. tondo. [no. .] _originally in the "audienza dei capitani," later in the "stanza del provveditore."_ predella. [no. .] . the annunciation. . the nativity. . the adoration of the magi. _from the church of santa lucia, montepulciano._ foiano (near sinalunga), collegiata. coronation of the virgin. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. predella. (two scenes only by signorelli.) loreto, church of the santa casa. frescoes. probably finished before . (left sacristy) "della cura." (in the cupola) angels, evangelists, and fathers of the church. (walls) apostles, incredulity of s. thomas. (over door) conversion of saul. (nave) medallions in _grisaille_ of prophets and fathers of the church. milan, brera. madonna and saints. . oil. ft. in. × ft. ½ in. [no. bis.] _from the church of s. francesco, arcevia. first brought to the gallery . in removed to the church at figino, near milan. replaced in the gallery ._ inscribed: lvcas signorelli p. cortona (on the back of the throne), iacobi simonis philippinis aere deo et divÆ mariae dicatvm fr: bernardino vignato gvardiano procvrante. mdviii. the flagellation. [no. .] { probably one panel { originally. madonna and child. [no. .] { ft. ½ in. × ft. _from the church of santa maria del mercato, fabriano._ "the flagellation" inscribed: opvs lvce cortonensis. monte oliveto (near asciano), cloisters. frescoes. . eight scenes from the life of s. benedict. morra (near città di castello), s. crescenziano. crucifixion. fresco. flagellation. fresco. orvieto, cathedral, chapel of the madonna di s. brizio, formerly cappella nuova. frescoes. - . (six compartments in vaulting): . apostles; . signs of the passion; . martyrs (design of fra angelico); . virgins; . patriarchs; . fathers of the church. (four large frescoes): . antichrist; . crowning of the elect; . damnation; . resurrection. (window wall): r. hell; l. heaven. (round the portal): signs of destruction. (lower walls): pietà; portraits of poets; medallions in _grisaille_. orvieto, opera del duomo. s. maria maddalena. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. _originally painted for the cathedral._ inscribed on the upper part of the frame: ceccarellevs. de. apvidvtis--et rvfinvs antonii.-- on the lower: conservat. pa. pacis. conservatrici. ex. se consvlto. m.d.iiii. portraits of signorelli and niccolÒ franceschi. [no. .] tempera on brick. ft. × ft. ½ in. inscribed on the draperies: lvca and nicolavs. on the back, probably by signorelli at the request of niccolò franceschi, the treasurer of the works: lvcas signorellvs. natione ytalys. patria corton[~e]sis. arte pictvre eximivs. merito apelli conpar[~a]dvs. svb regimine et stipendio nicolai fr[~a]ch. eivsd[~e] nationis patrie vrbevetane. camerarii fabrice. hvivs basylice sacell[~v] hoc virgini dicat[~v] ivdicii finalis ordine figvrad[~v] pspicve pinsit cvpidvsq [~i]mortalitatis vtrivsq effigi[~e] atfrgo litterar[~v] har[~v] natvraliter mira eff[~i]sit arte. alexandro . viº . pon . max . sedente . et maximiano. iiii . inperiante a[~n]o salvtis mºcccccº. te[~r]io kalendas janvarias. perugia, duomo, winter chapel. madonna and saints. . oil. ft. in. × ft. ½ in. inscribed (hidden by the frame): jacobvs vannvtivs nobilis cortonensis olim episcopvs pervsinvs hoc deo max. et divo honophrio sacellvm dedicavit: cvi in archiepiscopvm nicaenvm assvmpto nepos dionisivs svccessit, et qvanta vides impensa ornavit aeqva pietas. m. cccc. lxxxiv. rome, rospigliosi collection. holy family. oil. ft. in. × ft. [sala ii., no. .] umbertide, santa croce. deposition. oil. ft. in. × ft. in. predella: . march of constantine. . discovery of the cross. . entry of heraclius into jerusalem. urbino, santa spirito. church standard. (now divided.) oil on canvas. ft. × ft. (on one side, crucifixion; on the other, descent of the holy ghost at pentecost.) volterra, duomo, sacristy. annunciation. . oil. inscribed: lvcas cortonen pinxit mxdi. a later inscription records its restoration in . volterra, municipio. madonna and saints. . oil. _from the church of s. francesco._ inscribed: maria. vergini. petrvs. belladomna. hvjvs. religionis professor pos. lvcas cortone[~n] pinxit. m cccc lxxxxi. volterra (first landing of stairs), municipio. s. girolamo. fresco. united states of america. new haven. collection of mr jarvis. part of predella. adoration of the magi. oil. footnotes: [ ] the paintings, except when otherwise indicated, are on wood. index _adoration of the magi, the_ (louvre), ; (arcevia), ; (new haven), _agony in the garden, the_, _ahasuerus and esther_, _annunciation, the_ (volterra), , , ; (uffizi), ; (formerly mancini collection), ; (arcevia), , arcevia, altar-piece at, , _baptism, the_ (arcevia), berensen, b., , bernabei, tommaso, _betrayal, the_ (florence), , ; (cortona), , bicchi family, altar-piece for, , _birth of the baptist, the_ (arcevia), _birth of the virgin, the_ (arezzo), bode, dr, botticelli, ; his "calumny," ; passion for swift movement, bramante, caporali, giambattista, castagno, andrea di, ; influence of on signorelli, _christ in gethsemane_, _circumcision, the_, , , città di castello, frescoes at, , , ; citizenship of presented to signorelli, _conception of the virgin, the_, _conversion of saul, the_, , , _coronation of the virgin, the_, cortona, signorelli born at, ; municipal appointments at, , , , ; the "deposition" in the cathedral of, , crowe and cavalcaselle, , , , , , , _crowning of the elect, the_, , , , _crucifixion, the_ (urbino), ; (borgo san sepolcro), , ; (morra), , _damnation, the_, , , dante, portraits of, by signorelli, at orvieto, , ; scenes from the divina commedia, , _dead christ supported by angels_, , _death of lucretia_, study for a, _death of moses, the_, , _decapitation in prison, the_, _denouncing of herod and herodias_, _deposition, the_ (cortona), , ; (umbertide), , , _descent of the holy ghost, the_, , _discovery of the cross, the_, _dispute by the way, the_, donatello, his influence on signorelli, , ; mastery of combined movement, _entry of heraclius into jerusalem, the_, _feast of herod, the_, _feast in the house of simon, the_, _flagellation, the_ (brera), , , , , , , , ; (cortona), ; (florence), ; (morra), , _flight into egypt, the_, foiano, altar-piece at, , foligno, niccolò da, forlì, melozzo da, fra angelico, frescoes at orvieto, , , , franceschi, pier dei, signorelli the pupil of, , , , , ; and signorelli compared, , ; his "death of adam," ; his "resurrection," ; his "baptism," francesco, niccolò, portrait of, by signorelli, , , gatta, bartolommeo della, , ; an imitator of signorelli, , , genga, girolamo, ; an imitator of signorelli, , gozzoli, benozzo, , , guidobaldo, of urbino, _hercules overcoming antæus_ (chalk drawing), _holy family_ (rospigliosi collection), , , ; (pitti), , ; (uffizi), , homer, scenes from, at orvieto, _institution of the eucharist, the_, _journey of moses and zipporah, the_, fresco by pintorricchio, _last judgment, the_, , , _last supper, the_ (cortona), ; (florence), lazzaro de' taldi, signorelli's uncle, lorenzo, fiorenzo di, reminiscences of, in signorelli's work, loreto, frescoes at, , , , lucan, scenes from, at orvieto, , luzi, ludovico, "il duomo di orvieto," , , , , , _madonna and saints_ (brera), , , , ; (volterra), , , , ; (arezzo), ; (uffizi), , , , ; (munich), , , ; (florence academy), , , ; (corsini gallery), ; (città di castello), , ; (s. niccolò, cortona), , ; (s. domenico, cortona), _magdalen, the_, altar-piece (orvieto), , mancini, giacomo, , mancini, girolamo, _march of constantine, the_, _marriage of the virgin, the_, medici, giovanni dei (pope leo x.), medici, lorenzo dei, ; friendship with signorelli, , , michelangelo, story of his dealings with signorelli, milanesi, signor, , missaghi, guiseppe, monte oliveto, frescoes in the benedictine cloister at, , , , morelli, on the frescoes in the sistine chapel, ; on signorelli, , , ; on his drawing, , ; on his influence, ; on girolamo genga, _murder of the innocents, the_, _nativity, the_ (arcevia), ; (cortona), nude, early treatment of the, orvieto, frescoes in the cathedral of, , , , , , _et seq._ ovid, scenes from, at orvieto, _pan_, , , parens, pietro, , perugia, altar-piece in the cathedral of, , , perugino, , , , , ; his influence on signorelli, , , _pietà_ (orvieto), pintorricchio, , ; frescoes in the sistine chapel by, ; asserted influence of, on signorelli, pollaiuolo, antonio, his influence on signorelli, , , , , , , , , , ; his "s. sebastian," ; his "battle of the nudes," , , ; "hercules," , _portrait of a man_ (berlin), _preaching and fall of antichrist, the_, _preaching in the desert, the_, _presentation, the_, quercia, jacopo della, raffaelle, , , _rain of fire, the_, _resurrection, the_, rome, frescoes in the sistine chapel, ; decoration of the vatican chambers, rosselli, cosimo, rumohr, on signorelli, _s. augustine, scenes from the life of_, _s. benedict, scenes from the life of_, _s. jerome_, , _s. martin, scenes from the life of_, _s. sebastian, the martyrdom of_, scalza, ippolito, , signorelli, antonio, , signorelli, francesco, signorelli, luca, little known of his life, ; vasari on, ; birth, ; studied painting under pier dei franceschi, ; influence of antonio pollaiuolo and donatello, , ; gap in his biography, ; early frescoes, ; municipal appointments at cortona, , , , , ; his social status, ; supposed visit to rome, ; frescoes in the sistine chapel ascribed to, ; painted the altar-piece in perugia cathedral, ; received the honour of citizenship from città di castello, ; pictures at volterra, ; frescoes in the cloister at monte oliveto, ; altar-piece at siena, ; frescoes in the cathedral of orvieto, , ; portraits of himself, , , , ; the "deposition" at cortona, ; death of his son antonio, ; and of polidoro, ; pictures at arcevia, ; decoration of the vatican chambers, ; disappointments at rome, ; alleged transaction with michelangelo, ; visit to arezzo, , ; death, ; vasari's character of, ; artists who influenced, , ; origin of the swaggering posture so characteristic of his paintings, , ; use of gold and gesso, , ; his great achievement, the rendering of combined action, ; his defects, , ; his colour, ; his line and modelling, ; an unequal illustrator, , ; his painting of children, ; realism, ; repetitions, ; chief qualities of his work, ; earliest works, ; frescoes at loreto, ; altar-piece at perugia, ; qualities of his _tondos_, ; works at volterra, ; frescoes at monte oliveto, ; the orvieto frescoes, , ; later works, ; altar-piece at arcevia, ; last works, , ; drawings, , ; his imitators and influence, , signorelli, pier tommaso, , signorelli, polidoro, , ; his death, _signs of the destruction of the world_, sodoma, , , , standards painted by signorelli, , , _supper at emmaus, the_, uccello, paolo, van der goes, hugo, vasari, on signorelli, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , verrocchio, reminiscences of, in signorelli's work, , vischer, on the frescoes in the sistine chapel, ; on signorelli, , , , , ; list of signorelli's drawings, _visitation, the_, _way to calvary, the_, zaccagna, turpino, w. h. white and co. ltd., riverside press, edinburgh notice photographs of most of the works mentioned in this volume are to be obtained in various sizes from w. a. mansell & co. art photograph publishers and dealers, , oxford street, london, w. , pall mall east, s.w. * * * * * permanent carbon points, permanent prints, photogravures, from most of the pictures in the galleries at london. national gallery. dulwich gallery. tate gallery. edinburgh. glasgow. brussels. milan. venice. munich. berlin. dresden. vienna. liechtenstein. belvedere. czernin. amsterdam. hague, haarlem. cassel. etc., etc. royal collections at buckingham palace. windsor castle. private collections of the duke of devonshire. the earl spencer. the earl of northbrook. _art books--art albums--artistic framing._ * * * * * franz hanfstÆngl , pall mall east, s.w. lists and prospectuses free. catalogues, one shilling. fine art engravers and printers. * * * * * the swan electric engraving company, , charing cross road, london, w.c. * * * * * engravers and printers of photogravure plates. of "swantype" blocks. of fine line-work. * * * * * the leading firm in great britain for all high-class reproduction work, including the orthochromatic photography of pictures and works of art. * * * * * transcriber's note: general: corrections to punctuation have not been individually noted. page xii: erratum applied to text. page xiii: guidÀ corrected to guida. rella corrected to nella. page : "by the which he roused" amended to "by means of this he roused". page : duplicate a removed from "in that on the left a a man". page : ninteen corrected to nineteen. page : campagnia standardised to compagnia. page : pietá corrected to pietà. page : pspicve without tilde as in original, probably intended as an abbreviation for perspicue. figvrad[~v] as in original, perhaps a misspelling of figurandum. atfrgo as in original perhaps intended a tergo. cvpidvsq (cupidusque?) and vtrivsq (utriusque?) as in original without overlining. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) transcriber's note: bracketted lower case letters refer to notes at the end of the text{a} at the end of this text i have provided some links to internet sites which have more information about some of the artists, some of which may have color images similar to the ones presented in this book. great pictures as seen and described by famous writers edited and translated by esther singleton author of "turrets, towers, and temples" and translator of "the music dramas of richard wagner" with numerous illustrations [illustration: fisherman presenting the ring to the doge gradenigo. _bordone._] new york dodd, mead and company copyright, by dodd, mead and company preface the cordial reception of "turrets, towers, and temples" has encouraged me to hope that a welcome may be given to a book treating the masterpieces of painting in a similar manner. great writers and literary tourists have occasionally been inspired to record the impressions of their saunterings among galleries and museums. the most interesting of these, not necessarily professional, i have tried to bring together in the following pages. my object has been not to make a selection of the greatest pictures in the world, although many that have that reputation will be found here, but rather to bring together those that have produced a powerful impression on great minds. consequently, when the reader is disturbed at the omission of some world-famous painting, i beg him to remember my plan and blame the great writers instead of me for neglecting his favourite. my task has not been a light one. a few words of rapturous admiration are constantly to be met with in the pages of art-lovers, but a sympathetic study of a single work is rarely found. general comment of a given artist's work is also plentiful, while discriminating praise of individual canvases is scanty. the literary selection has, therefore, involved a great deal of research. from time to time the relative popularity of painters shifts strangely, but no matter what inconstant fashion may dictate, or what may be the cult of the hour, certain paintings never lose their prestige, but annually attract as many pilgrims as lourdes or fusi-san. of modern painters i have only included turner and rossetti. it is interesting to compare the example i have chosen from rossetti with leonardo's "monna lisa." pater has admirably brought out, without dwelling too much upon it, the charm that is eternal in her face as well as the fantastic imagination of the great artist who created her for all time. he says: "the fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one.... certainly lady lisa might stand as the embodiment of the _old_ fancy, the symbol of the _modern_ idea." in a similar sense lilith the siren, the lorelei, the eternal enchantress, in her modern robe, is the embodiment of a _new_ fancy, the symbol of the _ancient_ idea; and just here across four centuries the thoughts of two great artists meet. the types of beauty and women in this book offer no little suggestion to the fancy. from botticelli's "la bella simonetta," and raphael's "la fornarina," through all the periods of painting the model has been a great influence upon the painter's work, and upon this point nearly every essayist and critic represented in these pages dwells. in many of the essays, such as pater's on botticelli, and swinburne's on andrea del sarto, the author strays away from the painting to talk of the painter, but in doing this he gives us so thoroughly the spirit of that painter that a fuller light is thrown upon the picture before us. i have included a few criticisms by modern french critics, mm. valabrègue, lafond, giron, guiffrey, and reymond, recognized authorities upon the artists whose works they describe; and i have selected fromentin's valuable essay on "the night watch," feeling sure that this thoughtful criticism would interest even the enthusiastic admirers of this enigmatical work. i have been careful to take no unnecessary liberties with the text. in the translations from gruyer, goethe, fromentin, and others, which were unfortunately too long to be included entire, i have not allowed myself to condense, but only to cut. this is true, also, of the english extracts. e.s. new york, _september_, . contents the fisherman presenting the ring to the doge gradenigo _bordone_ thÉophile gautier. the birth of venus _botticelli_ walter pater. the queen of sheba _veronese_ john ruskin. the last judgment _michael angelo_ alexandre dumas. magdalen in the desert _correggio_ aimÉ giron. banquet of the arquebusiers _van der helst_ william makepeace thackeray. l'embarquement pour l'Île de cythÈre _watteau_ edmond and jules de goncourt. the sistine madonna _raphael_ f.a. gruyer. the dream of st. ursula _carpaccio_ john ruskin. the descent from the cross _rubens_ eugÈne fromentin. bacchus and ariadne _titian_ i. charles lamb. ii. edward t. cook. the coronation of the virgin _fra angelico_ thÉophile gautier. judith _botticelli_ maurice hewlett. the avenue of middelharnais _hobbema_ paul lafond. the dance of the daughter of herodias _andrea del sarto_ algernon charles swinburne. adoration of the magi _fabriano_ f.a. gruyer. portrait of georg gisze _holbein_ antony valabrÈgue. paradise _tintoret_ john ruskin. aurora _guido reni_ i. charlotte a. eaton. ii. john constable. the assumption of the virgin _titian_ thÉophile gautier. the night watch _rembrandt_ eugÈne fromentin. the rape of helen _gozzoli_ cosmo monkhouse monna lisa _leonardo da vinci_ walter pater. the adoration of the lamb _van eyck_ kugler. the death of procris _piero di cosimo_ i. edward t. cook. ii. john addington symonds. the marriage in cana _tintoret_ john ruskin. madame de pompadour _de la tour_ charles-augustin sainte-beuve. the hay wain _constable_ c.l. burns. the surrender of breda _velasquez_ thÉophile gautier. the immaculate conception _murillo_ aimÉ giron. st. francis before the soldan _giotto_ john ruskin. lilith _rossetti_ algernon charles swinburne. adoration of the magi _dürer_ moriz thausing. marriage a-la-mode _hogarth_ austin dobson. the madonna of the rocks _leonardo da vinci_ thÉophile gautier beatrice cenci _guido reni_ percy bysshe shelley the transfiguration _raphael_ mrs. jameson the bull _paul potter_ eugÈne fromentin corÉsus and callirhoÉ _fragonard_ edmond and jules de goncourt the market-cart _gainsborough_ richard and samuel redgrave bacchus and ariadne _tintoret_ hippolyte adolphe taine bacchus and ariadne anonymous la cruche cassÉe _greuze_ thÉophile gautier portrait of lady cockburn and her children _reynolds_ frederic g. stephens st. cecilia _raphael_ percy bysshe shelley the last supper _leonardo da vinci_ johann wolfgang von goethe the children of charles i. _van dyck_ jules guiffrey the fighting tÉmÉraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, _turner_ john ruskin spring _botticelli_ marcel reymond illustrations bordone fisherman presenting the ring to the doge gradenigo _venice_ frontispiece facing page botticelli the birth of venus _florence_ veronese the queen of sheba _turin_ michael angelo the last judgment _rome_ correggio magdalen _dresden_ van der helst the banquet of the arquebusiers _amsterdam_ watteau l'embarquement pour l'Île de cythère _paris_ raphael the sistine madonna _dresden_ carpaccio the dream of st. ursula _venice_ rubens the descent from the cross _antwerp_ titian bacchus and ariadne _london_ fra angelico the coronation of the virgin _paris_ botticelli judith _florence_ hobbema the avenue of middelharnais _london_ andrea del sarto the dance of the daughter of herodias _florence_ fabriano the adoration of the magi _florence_ holbein portrait of georg gisze _berlin_ tintoret paradise _venice_ guido reni aurora _rome_ titian the assumption of the virgin _venice_ rembrandt the night watch _amsterdam_ gozzoli the rape of helen _london_ l. da vinci monna lisa _paris_ van eyck the adoration of the lamb _ghent_ piero di cosimo the death of procris _london_ tintoret the marriage in cana _venice_ de la tour portrait of madame de pompadour _paris_ constable the hay wain _london_ velasquez the surrender of breda _madrid_ murillo the immaculate conception _paris_ giotto st. frances before the soldan _florence_ rossetti lilith _rockford, del._ dÜrer the adoration of the magi _florence_ hogarth the marriage a-la-mode _london_ l. da vinci the madonna of the rocks _paris_ guido reni portrait of beatrice cenci _rome_ raphael the transfiguration _rome_ paul potter the bull _the hague_ fragonard corésus and callirhoé _paris_ gainsborough the market-cart _london_ tintoret bacchus and ariadne _venice_ greuze la cruche cassée _paris_ reynolds portrait of lady cockburn and her children _london_ raphael st. cecilia _naples_ l. da vinci the last supper _milan_ van dyck portrait of the children of charles i. _turin_ turner the fighting téméraire _london_ botticelli spring _florence_ great pictures described by great writers the fisherman presenting the ring to the doge gradenigo (_bordone_) thÉophile gautier this picture, which represents a gondolier returning the ring of saint mark to the doge, treats of a legend, an episode of which giorgione, as we shall see in the next hall, has also painted in a somewhat singular manner. here is the story in a few words: one night while the gondolier was sleeping in his gondola, waiting for custom along the canal of s. giorgio maggiore, three mysterious individuals jumped into his boat and bade him take them to the lido; one of the three persons, as well as he could be distinguished in the darkness, appeared to have the beard of an apostle and the figure of a high dignitary of the church; the two others, by a certain sound as of armour rubbing beneath their mantles, revealed themselves as men-at-arms. the gondolier turned his prow towards the lido and began to row; but the lagoon, so tranquil at their departure, began to chop and swell strangely: the waves gleamed with sinster{a} lights; monstrous apparitions were outlined menacingly around the barque to the great terror of the gondolier; and hideous spirits of evil and devils half man half fish seemed to be swimming from the lido towards venice, making the waves emit thousands of sparks and exciting the tempest with whistling and fiendish laughter in the storm; but the appearance of the shining swords of the two knights and the extended hand of the saintly personage made them recoil and vanish in sulphurous explosions. the battle lasted for a long time; new demons constantly succeeded the others; however, the victory remained with the personages in the boat, who had themselves taken back to the landing of the piazzetta. the gondolier scarcely knew what to think of their strange conduct; until, as they were about to separate, the oldest of the group, suddenly causing his nimbus to shine out again, said to the gondolier: "i am saint mark, the patron of venice. i learned to-night that the devils assembled in convention at the lido in the cemetery of the jews, had formed the resolution of exciting a frightful tempest and overthrowing my beloved city, under the pretext that many excesses are committed there which give the evil spirits power over her inhabitants; but as venice is a good catholic and will confess her sins in the beautiful cathedral which she has raised to me, i resolved to defend her from this peril of which she was ignorant, by the aid of these two brave companions, saint george and saint theodore, and i have borrowed thy boat; now, as all trouble merits reward, and as thou hast passed a boisterous night, here is my ring; carry it to the doge and tell him what thou hast seen. he will fill thy cap with golden sequins." so saying, the saint resumed his position on the top of the porch of saint mark's, saint theodore climbed to the top of his column, where his crocodile was grumbling with ill-humour, and saint george went to squat in the depths of his columned niche in the great window of the ducal palace. the gondolier, rather astonished, and he had reason enough, would have believed that he had been dreaming after drinking during that evening several glasses too many of the wine of samos, if the large and heavy golden ring studded with precious stones which he held in his hand had not prevented his doubting the reality of the events of the night. therefore, he went to find the doge, who was presiding over the senate in his cap of office, and, respectfully kneeling before him, he related the story of the battle between the devils and the patron saints of venice. at first this story seemed incredible; but the return of the ring, which was in very sooth that of saint mark, and the absence of which from the church treasury was established, proved the gondolier's veracity. this ring, locked up under triple keys in a carefully-guarded treasury, the bolts of which showed no trace of disturbance, could only have been removed by supernatural means. they filled the gondolier's cap with gold and celebrated a mass of thanksgiving for the peril they had escaped. this did not prevent the venetians from continuing their dissolute course of life, from spending their nights in the haunts of play, at gay suppers, and in love-making; in masking for intrigues, and in prolonging the long orgy of their carnival for six months in the year. the venetians counted upon the protection of saint mark to go to paradise and they took no other care of their salvation. that was saint mark's affair; they had built him a fine church for that, and the saint was still under obligations to them. the moment selected by paris bordone is that when the gondolier falls on his knees before the doge. the composition of the scene is very picturesque; you see in perspective a long row of the brown or grey heads of senators of the most magisterial character. curious spectators are on the steps, forming happily-contrasted groups: the beautiful venetian costume is displayed here in all its splendour. here, as in all the canvases of this school, an important place is given to architecture. the background is occupied by fine porticos in the style of palladio, animated with people coming and going. this picture possesses the merit, sufficiently rare in the italian school, which is almost exclusively occupied with the reproduction of religious or mythological subjects, of representing a popular legend, a scene of manners, in a word, a romantic subject such as delacroix or louis boulanger might have chosen and treated according to his own special talent; and this gives it a character of its own and an individual charm. _voyage en italie_ (paris, new ed., ). the birth of venus (_botticelli_) walter pater in leonardo's treatise on painting only one contemporary is mentioned by name--sandro botticelli. this pre-eminence may be due to chance only, but to some will rather appear a result of deliberate judgment; for people have begun to find out the charm of botticelli's work, and his name, little known in the last century, is quietly becoming important. in the middle of the fifteenth century he had already anticipated much of that meditative subtlety which is sometimes supposed peculiar to the great imaginative workmen of its close. leaving the simple religion which had occupied the followers of giotto for a century, and the simple naturalism which had grown out of it, a thing of birds and flowers only, he sought inspiration in what to him were works of the modern world, the writings of dante and boccaccio, and in new readings of his own of classical stories; or if he painted religious subjects, painted them with an undercurrent of original sentiment which touches you as the real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject. what is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of pleasure which his work has the property of exciting in us, and which we cannot get elsewhere? for this, especially when he has to speak of a comparatively unknown artist, is always the chief question which a critic has to answer. in an age when the lives of artists were full of adventure, his life is almost colourless. criticism indeed has cleared away much of the gossip which vasari accumulated, has touched the legend of lippo and lucrezia, and rehabilitated the character of andrea del castagno; but in botticelli's case there is no legend to dissipate. he did not even go by his true name: sandro is a nickname, and his true name is filipepi, botticelli being only the name of the goldsmith who first taught him art. only two things happened to him, two things which he shared with other artists--he was invited to rome to paint in the sistine chapel, and he fell in later life under the influence of savonarola, passing apparently almost out of men's sight in a sort of religious melancholy which lasted till his death in , according to the received date. vasari says that he plunged into the study of dante, and even wrote a comment on the _divine comedy_. but it seems strange that he should have lived on inactive so long; and one almost wishes that some document might come to light which, fixing the date of his death earlier, might relieve one, in thinking of him, of his dejected old age. [illustration: the birth of venus. _botticelli._] he is before all things a poetical painter, blending the charm of story and sentiment, the medium of the art of poetry, with the charm of line and colour, the medium of abstract painting. so he becomes the illustrator of dante. in a few rare examples of the edition of , the blank spaces left at the beginning of every canto for the hand of the illuminator have been filled as far as the nineteenth canto of the _inferno_, with impressions of engraved plates, seemingly by way of experiment, for in the copy in the bodleian library, one of the three impressions it contains has been printed upside down and much awry in the midst of the luxurious printed page. giotto, and the followers of giotto, with their almost childish religious aim, had not learned to put that weight of meaning into outward things, light, colour, every-day gesture, which the poetry of the _divine comedy_ involves, and before the fifteenth century dante could hardly have found an illustrator. botticelli's illustrations are crowded with incident, blending with a naïve carelessness of pictorial propriety three phases of the same scene into one plate. the grotesques, so often a stumbling-block to painters who forget that the words of a poet, which only feebly present an image to the mind, must be lowered in key when translated into form, make one regret that he has not rather chosen for illustration the more subdued imagery of the _purgatorio_. yet in the scene of those who go down quick into hell there is an invention about the fire taking hold on the up-turned soles of the feet, which proves that the design is no mere translation of dante's words, but a true painter's vision; while the scene of the centaurs wins one at once, for, forgetful of the actual circumstances of their appearance, botticelli has gone off with delight on the thought of the centaurs themselves, bright small creatures of the woodland, with arch baby faces and mignon forms, drawing tiny bows. botticelli lived in a generation of naturalists, and he might have been a mere naturalist among them. there are traces enough in his work of that alert sense of outward things which, in the pictures of that period, fills the lawns with delicate living creatures, and the hill-sides with pools of water, and the pools of water with flowering reeds. but this was not enough for him; he is a visionary painter, and in his visionariness he resembles dante. giotto, the tried companion of dante, masaccio, ghirlandaio even, do but transcribe with more or less refining the outward image; they are dramatic, not visionary painters; they are almost impassive spectators of the action before them. but the genius of which botticelli is the type usurps the data before it as the exponents of ideas, moods, visions of its own; with this interest it plays fast and loose with those data, rejecting some and isolating others, and always combining them anew. to him, as to dante, the scene, the colour, the outward image or gesture, comes with all its incisive and importunate reality; but awakes in him, moreover, by some subtle structure of his own, a mood which it awakes in no one else, of which it is the double or repetition, and which it clothes, that all may share it, with sensuous circumstances. but he is far enough from accepting the conventional orthodoxy of dante which, referring all human action to the easy formula of purgatory, heaven, and hell, leaves an insoluble element of prose in the depths of dante's poetry. one picture of his, with the portrait of the donor, matteo palmieri, below, had the credit or discredit of attracting some shadow of ecclesiastical censure. this matteo palmieri--two dim figures move under that name in contemporary history--was the reputed author of a poem, still unedited, _la città divina_, which represented the human race as an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of lucifer, were neither for god nor for his enemies, a fantasy of that earlier alexandrian philosophy, about which the florentine intellect in that century was so curious. botticelli's picture may have been only one of those familiar compositions in which religious reverie has recorded its impressions of the various forms of beatified existence--_glorias_, as they were called, like that in which giotto painted the portrait of dante; but somehow it was suspected of embodying in a picture the wayward dream of palmieri, and the chapel where it hung was closed. artists so entire as botticelli are usually careless about philosophical theories, even when the philosopher is a florentine of the fifteenth century, and his work a poem in _terza rima_. but botticelli, who wrote a commentary on dante and became the disciple of savonarola, may well have let such theories come and go across him. true or false, the story interprets much of the peculiar sentiment with which he infuses his profane and sacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense like angels, but with a sense of displacement or loss about them--the wistfulness of exiles conscious of a passion and energy greater than any known issue of them explains, which runs through all his varied work with a sentiment of ineffable melancholy. so just what dante scorns as unworthy alike of heaven and hell, botticelli accepts, that middle world in which men take no side in great conflicts, and decide no great causes, and make great refusals. he thus sets for himself the limits within which art, undisturbed by any moral ambition, does its most sincere and surest work. his interest is neither in the untempered goodness of angelico's saints, nor the untempered evil of orcagna's _inferno_; but with men and women in their mixed and uncertain condition, always attractive, clothed sometimes by passion with a character of loveliness and energy, but saddened perpetually by the shadow upon them of the great things from which they shrink. his morality is all sympathy; and it is this sympathy, conveying into his work somewhat more than is usual of the true complexion of humanity, which makes him, visionary as he is, so forcible a realist. it is this which gives to his madonnas their unique expression and charm. he has worked out in them a distinct and peculiar type, definite enough in his own mind, for he has painted it over and over again, sometimes one might think almost mechanically, as a pastime during that dark period when his thoughts were so heavy upon him. hardly any collection of note is without one of these circular pictures, into which the attendant angels depress their heads so naïvely. perhaps you have sometimes wondered why those peevish-looking madonnas, conformed to no acknowledged or obvious type of beauty, attract you more and more, and often come back to you when the sistine madonna and the virgins of fra angelico are forgotten. at first, contrasting them with those, you may have thought that there was even something in them mean or abject, for the abstract lines of the face have little nobleness and the colour is wan. for with botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the "desire of all nations," is one of those who are neither for god nor for his enemies; and her choice is on her face. the white light on it is cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness of the ceiling. her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet look of devotion which men have never been able altogether to love, and which still makes the born saint an object almost of suspicion to his earthly brethren. once, indeed, he guides her hand to transcribe in a book the words of her exaltation, the _ave_ and the _magnificat_, and the _gaude maria_, and the young angels, glad to rouse her for a moment from her dejection, are eager to hold the inkhorn and support the book; but the pen almost drops from her hand, and the high cold words have no meaning for her, and her true children are those others, in the midst of whom, in her rude home, the intolerable honour came to her, with that look of wistful inquiry on their irregular faces which you see in startled animals--gipsy children, such as those who, in apennine villages, still hold out their long brown arms to beg of you, but on sundays become _enfants du choeur_ with their thick black hair nicely combed and fair white linen on their sunburnt throats. what is strangest is that he carries this sentiment into classical subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the uffizi, of venus rising from the sea, in which the grotesque emblems of the middle age, and a landscape full of its peculiar feeling, and even its strange draperies powdered all over in the gothic manner with a quaint conceit of daisies, frame a figure that reminds you of the faultless nude studies of ingres. at first, perhaps, you are attracted only by a quaintness of design, which seems to recall all at once whatever you have read of florence in the fifteenth century; afterwards you may think that this quaintness must be incongruous with the subject, and that the colour is cadaverous, or at least cold. and yet the more you come to understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is no mere delightful quality of natural things, but a spirit upon them by which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you will like this peculiar quality of colour; and you will find that quaint design of botticelli's a more direct inlet into the greek temper than the works of the greeks themselves even of the finest period. of the greeks as they really were, of their difference from ourselves, of the aspects of their outward life, we know far more than botticelli, or his most learned contemporaries; but for us, long familiarity has taken off the edge of the lesson, and we are hardly conscious of what we owe to the hellenic spirit. but in pictures like this of botticelli's you have a record of the first impression made by it on minds turned back towards it in almost painful aspiration from a world in which it had been ignored so long; and in the passion, the energy, the industry of realization, with which botticelli carries out his intention, is the exact measure of the legitimate influence over the human mind of the imaginative system of which this is the central myth. the light is, indeed, cold--mere sunless dawn; but a later painter would have cloyed you with sunshine; and you can see the better for that quietness in the morning air each long promontory as it slopes down to the water's edge. men go forth to their labours until the evening; but she is awake before them, and you might think that the sorrow in her face was at the thought of the whole long day of love yet to come. an emblematical figure of the wind blows hard across the grey water, moving forward the dainty-lipped shell on which she sails, the sea "showing his teeth" as it moves in thin lines of foam, and sucking in one by one the falling roses, each severe in outline, plucked off short at the stalk, but embrowned a little, as botticelli's flowers always are. botticelli meant all that imagery to be altogether pleasurable; and it was partly an incompleteness of resources, inseparable from the art of that time, that subdued and chilled it; but his predilection for minor tones counts also; and what is unmistakable is the sadness with which he has conceived the goddess of pleasure as the depository of a great power over the lives of men. i have said that the peculiar character of botticelli is the result of a blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain condition, its attractiveness, its investiture at rarer moments in a character of loveliness and energy, with his consciousness of the shadow upon it of the great things from which it shrinks, and that this conveys into his work somewhat more than painting usually attains of the true complexion of humanity. he paints the story of the goddess of pleasure in other episodes besides that of her birth from the sea, but never without some shadow of death in the grey flesh and wan flowers. he paints madonnas, but they shrink from the pressure of the divine child, and plead in unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower humanity. the same figure--tradition connects it with simonetta, the mistress of giuliano de' medici--appears again as judith returning home across the hill country when the great deed is over, and the moment of revulsion come, and the olive branch in her hand is becoming a burthen; as justice, sitting on a throne, but with a fixed look of self-hatred which makes the sword in her hand seem that of a suicide; and again as veritas in the allegorical picture of calumnia, where one may note in passing the suggestiveness of an accident which identifies the image of truth with the person of venus. we might trace the same sentiment through his engravings; but his share in them is doubtful, and the object of this fragment has been attained if i have defined aright the temper in which he worked. but, after all, it may be asked, is a painter like botticelli, a second-rate painter, a proper subject for general criticism? there are a few great painters, like michael angelo or leonardo, whose work has become a force in general culture, partly for this very reason that they have absorbed into themselves all such workmen as sandro botticelli; and, over and above mere technical or antiquarian criticism, general criticism may be very well employed in that sort of interpretation which adjusts the position of these men to general culture, whereas smaller men can be the proper subjects only of technical or antiquarian treatment. but, besides those great men, there is a certain number of artists who have a distinct faculty of their own by which they convey to us a peculiar quality of pleasure which we cannot get elsewhere, and these, too, have their place in general culture, and have to be interpreted to it by those who have felt their charm strongly, and are often the objects of a special diligence and a consideration wholly affectionate, just because there is not about them the stress of a great name and authority. of this select number botticelli is one; he has the freshness, the uncertain and diffident promise which belongs to the earlier renaissance itself, and makes it perhaps the most interesting period in the history of the mind; in studying his work one begins to understand to how great a place in human culture the art of italy had been called. _studies in the history of the renaissance_ (london, ). the queen of sheba (_veronese_) john ruskin this picture is at turin, and is of quite inestimable value. it is hung high; and the really principal figure--the solomon, being in the shade, can hardly be seen, but is painted with veronese's utmost tenderness, in the bloom of perfect youth, his hair golden, short, crisply curled. he is seated high on his lion throne; two elders on each side beneath him, the whole group forming a tower of solemn shade. i have alluded, elsewhere, to the principle on which all the best composers act, of supporting these lofty groups by some vigorous mass of foundation. this column of noble shade is curiously sustained. a falconer leans forward from the left-hand side, bearing on his wrist a snow-white falcon, its wings spread, and brilliantly relieved against the purple robe of one of the elders. it touches with its wings one of the golden lions of the throne, on which the light also flashes strongly; thus forming, together with it, the lion and eagle symbol, which is the type of christ, throughout mediæval work. in order to show the meaning of this symbol, and that solomon is typically invested with the christian royalty, one of the elders by a bold anachronism, holds a jewel in his hand in the shape of a cross, with which he (by accident of gesture) points to solomon; his other hand is laid on an open book. [illustration: the queen of sheba. _veronese._] the group opposite, of which the queen forms the centre, is also painted with veronese's highest skill; but contains no point of interest bearing on our present subject, except its connection by a chain of descending emotion. the queen is wholly oppressed and subdued; kneeling, and nearly fainting, she looks up to solomon with tears in her eyes; he, startled by fear for her, stoops forward from the throne, opening his right hand, as if to support her, so as almost to drop the sceptre. at her side her first maid of honour is kneeling also, but does not care about solomon; and is gathering up her dress that it may not be crushed; and looking back to encourage a negro girl, who, carrying two toy-birds, made of enamel and jewels, for presentation to the king, is frightened at seeing her queen fainting, and does not know what she ought to do; while lastly, the queen's dog, another of the little fringy paws, is wholly unabashed by solomon's presence, or anybody else's; and stands with his forelegs well apart, right in front of his mistress, thinking everybody has lost their wits; and barking violently at one of the attendants, who has set down a golden vase disrespectfully near him. _modern painters_ (london, ). the last judgement (_michael angelo_) alexandre dumas while michael angelo worked upon his _moses_, clement vii., following the example of julius ii., would not leave him alone for a moment. it was a trick of all these popes to exact from the poor artist something different to what he was doing at the time. to obtain some respite, he was forced to promise the pope that he would occupy himself at the same time with the cartoon of _the last judgment_. but clement vii. was not a man to be put off with words; he supervised the work in person, and buonarroti was obliged to pass continually from the chisel to the pencil and from the pen to the mallet. _the last judgment!_ _moses!_ these are two works of little importance and easy to do off-hand! and yet he had to. his holiness would not listen to reason. one day it was announced to michael angelo that he would not receive his accustomed visit: clement vii. was dead. the artist breathed freely just during the conclave. the new pope, paul iii., had nothing more pressing to do than to present himself in buonarroti's studio, followed pompously by ten cardinals. the newly-elected pope was easily recognized there! [illustration: the last judgment. _michael angelo_.] "ah!" said the holy father, in a tone of firm decision, "i hope that henceforth the whole of your time will belong to me, maestro buonarroti." "may your holiness deign to excuse me," replied michael angelo, "but i have just signed an engagement with the duke of urbino, which forces me to finish the tomb of pope julius." "what!" exclaimed paul iii.: "for thirty years i have had a certain wish and now that i am pope i cannot realize it!" "but the contract, holy father, the contract!" "where is this contract? i will tear it up." "ah!" exclaimed in his turn the cardinal of mantua, who was one of the suite, "your holiness should see the _moses_ which maestro michael angelo has just finished: that statue alone would more than suffice to honour the memory of julius." "cursed flatterer!" muttered michael angelo in a low voice. "come, come, i will take charge of this matter myself," said the pope. "you shall only make three statues with your own hand: the rest shall be given to other sculptors, and i will answer for the duke of urbino's consent. and now, maestro, to the sistine chapel. a great empty wall is waiting for you there." what could michael angelo reply to such an emphatic wish expressed so distinctly? he finished in his best style his two statues of _active life_ and _contemplative life_--dante's symbolical rachel and leah--and not wishing to profit by this new arrangement to which he was forced to submit, he added fifteen hundred and twenty-four ducats to the four thousand he had received, to pay with his own gains for the works confided to the other artists. having thus terminated this unfortunate affair, which had caused him so much worry and fatigue, michael angelo was at last enabled to occupy himself exclusively with the execution of his _last judgment_, to which he devoted no less than eight to nine years. this immense and unique picture, in which the human figure is represented in all possible attitudes, where every sentiment, every passion, every reflection of thought, and every aspiration of the soul are rendered with inimitable perfection, has never been equalled and never will be equalled in the domain of art. this time the genius of michael angelo simply attacked the infinite. the subject of this vast composition, the manner in which it is conceived and executed, the admirable variety and the learned disposition of the groups, the inconceivable boldness and firmness of the outlines, the contrast of light and shade, the difficulties, i might almost say the impossibilities vanquished, as if it were all mere play, and with a happiness that savours of prodigy, the unity of the whole and the perfection of the details, make _the last judgment_ the most complete and the greatest picture in existence. it is broad and magnificent in effect, and yet each part of this prodigious painting gains infinitely when seen and studied quite near; and we do not know of any easel-picture worked upon with such patience and finished with such devotion. the painter could only choose one scene, several isolated groups, in this appalling drama which will be enacted on the last day in the valley of jehoshaphat, where all the generations of man shall be gathered together. and yet, admire the omnipotence of genius! with nothing but a single episode in a restricted space, and solely by the expression of the human body, the artist has succeeded in striking you with astonishment and terror, and in making you really a spectator of the supreme catastrophe. at the base of the picture, very nearly in the centre, you perceive the boat of the _inferno_, a fantastic reminiscence borrowed from pagan tradition, in accordance with which first the poet and then the painter were pleased to clothe an accursed being with the form and occupation of charon. "charon with the eyes of burning embers gathering together with a gesture all these souls, and striking with his oar those who hesitate."[ ] it is impossible to form an idea of the incredible science displayed by michael angelo in the varied contortions of the damned, heaped one upon the other in the fatal bark. all the violent contractions, all the visible tortures, all the frightful shrinkings that suffering, despair, and rage can produce upon human muscles are rendered in this group with a realism that would make the most callous shudder. to the left of this bark you see the gaping mouth of a cavern; this is the entrance to purgatory, where several demons are in despair because they have no more souls to torment. this first group, which very naturally attracts the spectator's attention, is that of the dead whom the piercing sound of the eternal trumpet has awakened in their tombs. some of them shake off their shrouds, others with great difficulty open their eyelids made heavy by their long sleep. towards the angle of the picture there is a monk who is pointing out the divine judge with his left hand; this monk is the portrait of michael angelo. the second group is formed of the resuscitated ones who ascend of themselves to the judgment. these figures, many of which are sublime in expression, rise more or less lightly into space, according to the burden of their sins, of which they must render account. the third group, also ascending to the right of christ, is that of the blessed. among all these saints, some of whom show the instrument of their execution, others the marks of their martyrdom, there is one head especially remarkable for beauty and tenderness: it is that of a mother who is protecting her daughter, turning her eyes, filled with faith and hope, towards the christ. above the host of saints, you see a fourth group of angelic spirits, some bearing the cross, others the crown of thorns,--instruments and emblems of the saviour's passion. the fifth group, parallel to the fourth which we have just pointed out, is composed of angels; such, at least, they seem to be by the splendour of their youth and the aërial lightness of their movements; and these also bear, as if in triumph, other emblems of the divine expiation--the column, the ladder, and the sponge. above these angels, on the same plane as the saints and to the left of christ, is the choir of the just; the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, and the holy personages form this sixth group. the seventh is the most horrible of all and the one in which the art of michael angelo has displayed itself in all its terrific grandeur: it is composed of the rejected ones, overwhelmed by the decree and led away to punishment by the rebel angels. the very coldest spectator could not remain unmoved by this spectacle. you believe yourself in hell; you hear the cries of anguish and the gnashing of the teeth of the wretched, who, according to the terrible dantesque expression, vainly desire a second death. the eighth, ninth, and tenth groups, occupying the base of the composition, are composed, as we have already said, of the bark of charon, the grotto of purgatory, and the angels of judgment, eight in number, blowing their brazen trumpets with all their might to convoke the dead from the four quarters of the earth. finally, in the eleventh group, in the centre, very near the upper part of the picture, between the two companies of the blessed, and seated upon the clouds, the sovereign judge with a terrible action hurls his malediction upon the condemned: _"ite maledicti in ignem aeternum."_ the virgin turns away her head and trembles. on christ's right is adam, and on his left, st. peter. they have exactly the same positions assigned to them by dante in his _paradiso_. this immense work was exhibited to the public on christmas day, . it had cost eight years of work. michael angelo was then sixty-seven years old. several anecdotes relating to this great picture have come down to us. it is related that the pope, scandalized at the nudity of certain figures, a nudity which daniele da volterra was afterwards charged to clothe, sent word to michael angelo that he must cover them. michael angelo replied with his usual brusqueness: "tell the pope that he must employ himself a little less in correcting my pictures, which is very easy, and employ himself a little more in reforming men, which is very difficult." it is said that maestro biaggio, master of ceremonies to paul iii., having accompanied the pope on a visit that his holiness made to see michael angelo's fresco when it was about half finished, allowed himself to express his own opinion upon _the last judgment_. "holy father," said the good messer biaggio, "if i dare pronounce my judgment, this picture seems more appropriate to figure in a tavern than in the chapel of a pope." unfortunately for the master of ceremonies, michael angelo was behind him and did not lose a word of messer biaggio's compliment. the pope had scarcely gone before the irritated artist, wishing to make an example as a warning for all future critics, placed this messer biaggio in his hell, well and duly, under the scarcely flattering guise of minos. that was always dante's way when he wanted to avenge himself upon an enemy. i leave you to imagine the lamentations and complaints of the poor master of ceremonies when he saw himself damned in this manner. he threw himself at the pope's feet, declaring that he would never arise unless his holiness would have him taken out of hell: that was the most important thing. as for the punishment, that the painter deserved for this dreadful sacrilege, messer biaggio would leave that entirely to the high impartiality of the holy father. "messer biaggio," replied paul iii. with as much seriousness as he could maintain, "you know that i have received from god an absolute power in heaven and upon the earth, but i can do nothing in hell; therefore you must remain there." while michael angelo was working at his picture of _the last judgment_, he fell from the scaffold and seriously injured his leg. soured by pain and seized with an attack of misanthropy, the painter shut himself up in his house and would not see any one. but he reckoned without his physician; and the physician this time was as stubborn as the invalid. this excellent disciple of Æsculapius was named baccio rontini. having learned by chance of the accident that had befallen the great artist, he presented himself before his house and knocked in vain at the door. no response. he shouted, he flew into a passion, and he called the neighbours and the servants in a loud voice. complete silence. he goes to find a ladder, places it against the front of the house, and tries to enter by the casements. the windows are hermetically sealed and the shutters are fast. what is to be done? any one else in the physician's place would have given up; but rontini was not the man to be discouraged for so little. with much difficulty he enters the cellar and with no less trouble he goes up into buonarroti's room, and, partly by acquiescence and partly by force, he triumphantly tends his friend's leg. it was quite time: exasperated by his sufferings, the artist had resolved to let himself die. _trois maîtres_ (paris, ). footnotes: [ ] dante, _inferno_ iii. magdalen in the desert (_correggio_) aimÉ giron correggio was a painter and a poet at the same time, interpreting nature, flattering her, idealizing her, and realizing her creations in their double æsthetic expression, with undulating outlines and tender tones. his drawing was modelled and supple, with a certain vigour of line and a certain solidity of relief. he had a charming imagination of conception and a voluptuous grace in its accomplishment, which are requisites in the painting of women and children. he therefore excelled in rendering _bambini_. with a note-book in his hand, he studied them everywhere. this explains why his loves and his cherubs have such rare truth of mien, of flesh, and of life. his knowledge of anatomy is great and he foreshortens on canvas and ceiling astonishingly before the advent of michael angelo. his enchanting colouring, impasted like that of giorgione, vivid as that of titian, ran through the most delicate gradations and melted into the most elusive harmonies. beneath his facile brush, soft and thick, the transparencies of the skin and the morbidezza of the flesh become ideal. he was the first to apply himself to the choice of fabrics, and one of the first in italy to attend to the scientific distribution of light. but, in the famous _chiaroscuro_ he does not get his effects by contrasts, but by analogies, superimposing shadow upon shadow and light upon light, both being disposed in large masses and graduated in progression. this process occurs at its fullest in the _christmas night_, where the moon shines, and the child glows with radiance, in a kind of symbolic struggle between the natural light of this world and the supernatural light of the other. the effect is such that the spectator is forced instinctively to blink his eyes, as does the shepherdess herself entering the stable. "when correggio excels he is a painter worthy of athens," wrote diderot, whose art criticism had in it more of sentiment than knowledge. "with correggio everything is large and graceful," said louis carrache, who gave correggio a large place in his eclecticism. but after studying and weighing everything, from his somewhat excessive qualities it follows that correggio was more of an idealist than a mystic and obeyed art more than faith, with a leaning towards the apotheosis of form. he painted _io and jupiter_ for frederick gonzaga of mantua. this picture having passed to the son of the regent, the two passionate heads so strongly troubled his prudery that he cut them out and burned them. coypel then begged the prince to spare the rest and to give it to him. he obtained it on condition that "he would make good use of it," and on the death of coypel, m. pasquier, _député du commerce de rouen_, paid , _livres_ for the mutilated remains, as i find in a very old account. [illustration: magdalen. _correggio_] all the great museums of the world possess correggios, and i will only mention the exquisite _saint catherine_ and the resplendent _antiope_ of the louvre; the _danaë_ of the borghese gallery, a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of grace and delicacy; and, finally, in the dresden gallery, our _magdalen in the desert_, that jewel so well-known and so often reproduced. this magdalen as a matter of fact holds the first place among the small correggios. there are two kinds of magdalens in art: i. the repentant, emaciated, growing ugly, disfigured by tears and penitence at the end of her life, with a skull in her hand or before her eyes, not having had even--like the one sculptured in the cathedral of rouen--"for three times ten winters any other vesture than her long hair," according to petrarch's verse; ii. the sinner, always young, always beautiful, always seductive, who has not lost any of her charms nor even of her coquetry, and with whom the book of life takes the place of the death's head. our magdalen belongs to the latter class. in a solitary spot, but attractive with its verdure and rocks, on a grassy knoll the saint is stretched out at full length, with her shoulder, her bosom, her arms, and her feet adorably bare. a blue fabric drapes the rest of her body and forms a coquettish hood for her head and neck. her flesh has a robust elegance of line. leaning on her right elbow, her hand, half hidden in her hair, supports a charming and meditative head, while her other arm is slipped under an open manuscript. her hair, long and blonde, according to legend--which she loves and still cares for because it once wiped the feet of her saviour--falls in thick curls, or strays at will with a premeditated abandon. on the ground, to her right, stands the vase of perfumes of her first adoration; to the left are the stones of her supreme expiation. what grace in her attitude! what beauty of form! she is thrown in with a rare happiness and painted with an exquisite delicacy of touch and tint. the blue drapery upon the green landscape defines her sufficiently without making her stand out too much, leaving the figure and the landscape to mingle without disturbing each other in skilful harmony. all of this is in most finished execution, a little elaborate, perhaps, and the expression of the face reflects the sweet, sad memory of the beloved, whose gospels she is reading, just as one reads again tender letters of the past. this work was executed for the dukes of este, who kept it in a silver frame studded with precious stones and used it as an ornament for their bedrooms, and when they travelled, they took it with them in a casket. when the king of poland became its possessor, he gave it a second boxing of glass with lock and key. in , this masterpiece having been stolen, , ducats were promised for its discovery, and, in consideration of that sum, the thief denounced himself. cristofano allori, the greatest florentine painter of the decadence, made a superb copy for the offices, i believe. this magdalen of correggio's, "the least converted of sinners and the most adorable of penitents," is she really, historically and liturgically the magdalen of the house of bethany, of the grotto de la sainte-baume in provence? no. she recalls rather "_cette dame de marque_" who was evoked in the seventeenth century by the carmelite father pierre de saint-louis in his sublime poem of accomplished burlesque; and does not the following verse hum in your ear: _"lèvres dont l'incarnat faisant voir à la fois un rosier sans épine, un chapelet sans croix,"_ while the sinner _" ... s'occupe à punir le forfait de son temps prétérit qui ne fut qu'imparfait"?_ this evidently is not at all the art of the middle ages, nor its saints, whose vestment was sackcloth and whose body was a mere lay figure for a soul devoted entirely to purity, to simplicity, to mysticism, and to the other world. in the sixteenth century, however, people took the sackcloth from the saints and dressed them in flesh. then was produced a kind of revival of paganism, of naturalism, of life; and religious art, in its flesh and colouring, no longer created anything but an olympus of beautiful maidens, or, at least, noble goddesses. correggio's magdalen belongs to this artistic cycle and the painter executed it in the noonday splendour of those qualities, the dawn of which glows in parma at st. paul's. correggio is not a mystic, he is a voluptuous naturalist, and from him to the realist caravaggio, "the grinder of flesh," and the exuberant rubens, who gave much study to correggio, the distance is not very great and the decline is fatal. but, in the meantime, where shall we find more grace, or seductiveness--under this conversion complicated with memories--than in correggio's magdalen? in hagiographal literature we find a work of similar tone and charm: _marie madeleine_, by p. lacordaire, an exquisite little book written with tenderness and piety, which deliciously calls up before us the magdalen of repentance and love, "the loving woman accustomed to the delights of contemplation and needing only to see in her heart him whom in other days she saw under the transparent veil of mortal flesh." it must be confessed that correggio was constantly preoccupied with _charm_ and with that skilful coquetry that sports with every grace. this is a subtlety of purely personal qualities; but let others beware of a systematic affectation! in this way correggio did not found a school, but he had imitators, among whom was parmigiano, who by dint of study and in search for grace--the most natural thing in the world--most often fell into affected and conventional ways. jouin, _chefs-d'oeuvre: peinture, sculpture, architecture_ (paris, - ). banquet of the arquebusiers _(van der helst)_ william makepeace thackeray the _night-watch_ at amsterdam is magnificent in parts, but on the side to the spectator's right, smoky and dim. the _five masters of the drapers_ is wonderful for depth, strength, brightness, massive power. what words are these to express a picture! to describe a description! i once saw a moon riding in the sky serenely, attended by her sparkling maids of honour, and a little lady said, with an air of great satisfaction, "_i must sketch it_." ah, my dear lady, if with an h.b., a bristol board, and a bit of india-rubber, you can sketch the firmament on high, and the moon in her glory, i make you my compliment! i can't sketch _the five drapers_ with any ink or pen at present at command--but can look with all my eyes, and be thankful to have seen such a masterpiece. they say he was a moody, ill-conditioned man, the old tenant of the mill. what does he think of the "van der helst" which hangs opposite his _night-watch_, and which is one of the great pictures of the world? it is not painted by so great a man as rembrandt; but there it is--to see it is an event of your life. having beheld it you have lived in the year , and celebrated the treaty of münster. you have shaken the hands of the dutch guardsmen, eaten from their platters, drunk their rhenish, heard their jokes, as they wagged their jolly beards. the amsterdam catalogue discourses thus about it:--a model catalogue: it gives you the prices paid, the signatures of the painters, a succinct description of the work. "this masterpiece represents a banquet of the civic guard, which took place on the th of june, , in the great hall of the st. joris doele, on the singel at amsterdam, to celebrate the conclusion of the peace at münster. the thirty-five figures composing the picture are all portraits. "'the captain witse' is placed at the head of the table, and attracts our attention first. he is dressed in black velvet, his breast covered with a cuirass, on his head a broad-brimmed black hat with white plumes. he is comfortably seated on a chair of black oak, with a velvet cushion, and holds in his left hand, supported on his knee, a magnificent drinking-horn, surrounded by a st. george destroying the dragon, and ornamented with olive-leaves. the captain's features express cordiality and good-humour; he is grasping the hand of 'lieutenant van wavern' seated near him in a habit of dark grey, with lace and buttons of gold, lace-collar and wrist-bands, his feet crossed, with boots of yellow leather, with large tops, and gold spurs, on his head a black hat and dark-brown plumes. behind him, at the centre of the picture, is the standard-bearer, 'jacob banning,' in an easy martial attitude, hat in hand, his right hand on his chair, his right leg on his left knee. he holds the flag of blue silk, in which the virgin is embroidered" (such a silk! such a flag! such a piece of painting!), "emblematic of the town of amsterdam. the banner covers his shoulder, and he looks towards the spectator frankly and complacently. [illustration: the banquet of the arquebusiers. _van der helst._] "the man behind him is probably one of the sergeants. his head is bare. he wears a cuirass, and yellow gloves, grey stockings, and boots with large tops, and knee-caps of cloth. he has a napkin on his knees, and in his hand a piece of ham, a slice of bread and a knife. the old man behind is probably 'william the drummer.' he has his hat in his right hand, and in his left a gold-footed wineglass, filled with white wine. he wears a red scarf, and a black satin doublet, with little slashes of yellow silk. behind the drummer, two matchlock-men are seated at the end of the table. one in a large black habit, a napkin on his knee, a _hausse-col_ of iron, and a linen scarf and collar. he is eating with his knife. the other holds a long glass of white wine. four musketeers, with different shaped hats, are behind these, one holding a glass, the three others with their guns on their shoulders. other guests are placed between the personage who is giving the toast and the standard-bearer. one with his hat off, and his hand uplifted, is talking to another. the second is carving a fowl. a third holds a silver plate; and another, in the background, a silver flagon, from which he fills a cup. the corner behind the captain is filled by two seated personages, one of whom is peeling an orange. two others are standing, armed with halberts, of whom one holds a plumed hat. behind him are other three individuals, one of them holding a pewter pot on which the name 'poock,' the landlord of the 'hotel doele,' is engraved. at the back, a maid-servant is coming in with a pasty, crowned with a turkey. most of the guests are listening to the captain. from an open window in the distance, the façades of two houses are seen, surmounted by stone figures of sheep." there, now you know all about it: now you can go home and paint just such another. if you do, do pray remember to paint the hands of the figures as they are here depicted; they are as wonderful portraits as the faces. none of your slim van dyck elegancies, which have done duty at the cuffs of so many doublets; but each man with a hand for himself, as with a face for himself. i blushed for the coarseness of one of the chiefs in this great company, that fellow behind "william the drummer," splendidly attired, sitting full in the face of the public; and holding a pork-bone in his hand. suppose the _saturday review_ critic were to come suddenly on this picture? ah! what a shock it would give that noble nature! why is that knuckle of pork not painted out? at any rate, why is not a little fringe of lace painted round it? or a cut pink paper? or couldn't a smelling-bottle be painted in instead, with a crest and a gold top, or a cambric pocket-handkerchief in lieu of the horrid pig, with a pink coronet in the corner? or suppose you covered the man's hand (which is very coarse and strong), and gave him the decency of a kid glove? but a piece of pork in a naked hand? o nerves and eau de cologne, hide it, hide it! in spite of this lamentable coarseness, my noble sergeant, give me thy hand as nature made it! a great, and famous, and noble handiwork i have seen here. not the greatest picture in the world--not a work of the highest genius--but a performance so great, various, and admirable, so shrewd of humour, so wise of observation, so honest and complete of expression, that to have seen it has been a delight, and to remember it will be a pleasure for days to come. well done, bartholomeus van der helst! brave, meritorious, victorious, happy bartholomew, to whom it has been given to produce a masterpiece! ... was it a dream? it seems like one. have we been to holland? have we heard the chimes at midnight at antwerp? were we really away for a week, or have i been sitting up in the room dozing, before this stale old desk? here's the desk; yes. but if it has been a dream, how could i have learned to hum that tune out of _dinorah?_ ah, is it that tune, or myself that i am humming? if it was a dream how comes this yellow notice des tableaux du musÉe d'amsterdam avec fascimile des monogrammes before me, and this signature of the gallant bartholomeus van der helst fecit a; . yes, indeed, it was a delightful little holiday; it lasted a whole week. _roundabout papers_ (london, ). l'embarquement pour l'Île de cythÈre (_watteau_) edmond and jules de goncourt watteau is the great poet of the eighteenth century. a creation, a whole creation of poetry and dreams, emanated from his brain and filled his work with the elegance of a supernatural life. from the fantasies of his brain, from the caprice of his art, from his perfectly original genius, not one but a thousand fairies took their flight. from the enchanted visions of his imagination, the painter has drawn an ideal world, and, superior to his own time, he has created one of those shakespearian realms, one of those countries of love and light, one of those paradises of gallantry that polyphile built upon the cloud of dreams for the delicate joy of poetic mortals. watteau revived grace. grace with watteau is not the antique grace--a rigid and solid charm, the perfection of the marble of a galatea, the entirely plastic and the material glory of a venus. grace with watteau is grace. it is that nothing that invests a woman with an attraction, a coquetry, a more than physical beauty. it is that subtile quality which seems the smile of a line, the soul of form, the spiritual physiognomy of matter. [illustration: l'embarquement pour l'Île de cythÈre. _watteau._] all the fascinations of a woman in repose: languor, idleness, abandon, leaning back, reclining at full length, nonchalance, the cadences of pose, the pretty air of profiles bending over the scales of love (_gammes d'amour_), the receding curves of the bosom, the serpentine lines and undulations, the suppleness of the female body, the play of slender fingers on the handle of a fan and the indiscretions of high heels beyond the skirts, and the happy fortune of deportment, and the coquetry of actions, and the management of the shoulders, and all that knowledge that was taught to women by the mirrors of the last century,--the mimicry of grace!--lives in watteau with its blossom and its accent, immortal and fixed in a more vital proof than the bosom of the wife of diomedes moulded by the ashes of pompeii. and if this grace is animated by watteau, if he looses it from repose and immobility, if he renders it active and moving, it seems that it works with a rhythm and that its measured pace is a dance led by some harmony. how decorative is the form of woman, and her grace! o nature, wherein the painter's poetic fancies wander! o landscape! o stage fit for a desirable life! a helpful land, gallant woods, meadows full of music, groves propitious to the sports of echo! cradling trees hung with baskets of flowers! desert places far from the jealous world, touched by the magic brush of a servandoni, refreshed with fountains, peopled with marbles and statues, and naiads, that spot the trembling shadow of the leaves! jets of water suddenly springing up in the midst of farm-yards! an amiable and radiant countryside! suns of apotheosis, beautiful lights sleeping on the lawns, penetrating and translucent verdure without one shadow where the palette of veronese, the riot of purple, and of blonde tresses may find sleep. rural delights! murmurous and gorgeous decorations! gardens thick with brier and rose! french landscapes planted with italian pines! villages gay with weddings and carriages, ceremonies, toilettes, and fêtes stunned with the noise of violins and flutes leading the bridal of nature and the opera to a jesuit fane! rustic scene on the green curtain, on the flowery slope up which the _comédie française_ climbs and the _comédie italienne_ gambols. quick! to array the spring in ball costume, watteau's heavens and earth, quick. _gelosi!_ a bergomask laugh shall be the laughter, animation, and action, and movement of the piece. look where folly, capped and belled, runs and wakes gaiety, zephyrs, and noise! ruffs and caps, belts and daggers, little vests and short mantles, go and come. the band of buffoons comes running, bringing beneath the shady boughs the carnival of human passions and its rainbow-hued garb. variegated family, clothed with sunlight and brilliant silk! that masks with the night! that patches and paints with the moon! harlequin, as graceful as a product of the pencil of parmesan! pierrot, with his arms at his side, as straight as an i, and the tartaglias, and the scapins, and the cassandras, and the doctors, and the favourite mezzetin "the big brown man with the laughing face" always in the foreground with his cap on the back of his head--striped all over like a zebra, proud as a god, and drunk as a silenus! it is the _comédie italienne_ that plays the guitar in all these landscapes.... here is the new olympus and the new mythology; the olympus of all the demi-gods forgotten by antiquity. here is the deification of the ideas of the eighteenth century, the soul of watteau's world and time led to the pantheon of human passions and fashions. these are the new humours of aging humanity--languor, gallantry, and reverie, which watteau incarnates as clothed allegories, and which he rests upon the _pulvinar_ of a divine nature; these are the moral muses of our age out of which he has created the women, or, we might say, the goddesses of these divine pictures. love is the light of this world, it penetrates and fills it. it is the youth and serenity of it; and amidst rivers and mountains, promenades and gardens, lakes and fountains, the paradise of watteau unfolds; it is cythera. under a sky painted with the colours of summer, the galley of cleopatra swings at the bank. the waves are stilled. the woods are hushed. from the grass to the firmament, beating the motionless air with their butterfly wings, a host of cupids fly, fly, play and dance, here tying careless couples with roses, and tying above a circlet of kisses that has risen from earth to the sky. here is the temple, here is the end of this world: the painter's _l'amour paisible_, love disarmed, seated in the shadows, which the poet of theos wished to engrave upon a sweet cup of spring; a smiling arcadia; a decameron of sentiment; a tender meditation; attentions with vague glances; words that lull the soul; a platonic gallantry, a leisure occupied by the heart, an idleness of youthful company; a court of amorous thoughts; the emotional and playful courtesy of the young newly married leaning upon the offered arm; eyes without fever, desire without appetite, voluptuousness without desire, audacious gestures regulated like the ballet for a spectacle, and tranquil defences disdainful of haste through their security; the romance of the body and the mind, soothed, pacified, resuscitated, happy; an idleness of passion at which the stone satyrs lurking in the green _coulisses_ laugh with their goat-laughter. adieu to the bacchanales led by gillot, that last pagan of the renaissance, born of the libations of the pleiad to the rustic gods of arcueil! adieu to the olympus of the _io pæan_, the hoarse pipe and the goat-footed gods, the laughter of the _cyclops_ of euripides and the _evohe_ of ronsard, the licentious triumphs, the ivy-crowned joys; "_et la libre cadence de leur danse._" these gods have gone, and rubens, who lives again in that palette of light and rosy flesh, wanders bewildered in these _fêtes_, where the riot of the senses is stilled,--animated caprices which seem to await the crack of a whip to dissolve and disappear in the realm of fancy like a mid-summer night's dream! it is cythera; but it is watteau's. it is love, but it is a poetic love, a love that dreams and thinks; modern love, with its aspirations and its crown of melancholy. yes, at the heart of this work of watteau's, i do not know what slow and vague harmony murmurs behind those laughing words; i do not know what musical and sweetly contagious sorrow is diffused throughout these gallant _fêtes_. like the fascination of venice, i do not know what veiled and sighing poetry in low tones holds here the charmed spirit. the man has passed across his work; and this work you come to regard as the play and distraction of a suffering thought, like the playthings of a sick child who is now dead.... but let us speak of that masterpiece of french masterpieces, that canvas which has held a distinguished place on one of the walls of the _salon carré_ for fifty years, _l'embarquement de cythère_. observe all that ground lightly coated with a transparent and golden varnish, all that ground covered with rapid strokes of the brush lightly laid on with a delicate touch. notice that green of the trees shot through with red tones, penetrated with quivering air, and the vaporous light of autumn. notice the delicate water-colour effect of thick oil, the general smoothness of the canvas, the relief of this pouch or hood; notice the full modelling of the little faces with their glances in the confused outlines of the eye and their smiles in the suggested outlines of the mouth. the beautiful and flowing sweep of the brush over those _décolletages_, the bare flesh glowing with voluptuous rose among the shadows of the wood! the pretty crossings of the brush to round a neck! the beautiful undulating folds with soft breaks like those which the modeller makes in the clay! and the spirit and the gallantry of touch of watteau's brush in the feminine trifles and headdresses and finger-tips,--and everything it approaches! and the harmony of those sunlit distances, those mountains of rosy snow, those waters of verdurous reflections; and again those rays of sunlight falling upon robes of rose and yellow, mauve petticoats, blue mantles, shot-coloured vests, and little white dogs with fiery spots. for no painter has equalled watteau in rendering beautifully coloured objects transfigured by a ray of sunlight, their soft fading and that kind of diffused blossoming of their brilliancy under the full light. let your eyes rest for a moment on that band of pilgrims of both sexes hurrying, beneath the setting sun, towards the galley of love that is about to set sail: there is the joyousness of the most adorable colours in the world surprised in a ray of the sun, and all that haze and tender silk in the radiant shower involuntarily remind you of those brilliant insects that we find dead, but with still living colours, in the golden glow of a piece of amber. this picture, the _embarquement de cythère_, is the wonder of wonders of this master. _l'art du dix-huitième siècle_ ( d ed., paris, ). the sistine madonna (_raphael_) f.a. gruyer raphael seemed to have attained perfection in the _virgin with the fish_; however, four or five years later, he was to rise infinitely higher and display something superior to art and inaccessible to science. it was in that the benedictines of the monastery of st. sixtus ordered this picture. they had required that the virgin and the infant jesus should be in the company of st. sixtus and st. barbara. this is how raphael entered into their views. deep shadows were veiling from us the majesty of the skies. suddenly light succeeds the obscurity, and the infant jesus and mary appear surrounded by a brightness so intense that the eyes can scarcely bear it. between two green curtains drawn to either side of the picture, amid an aureole of innumerable cherubin, the virgin is seen standing upon the clouds, with her son in her arms, showing him to the world as its redeemer and sovereign judge. lower down, st. sixtus and st. barbara are kneeling on the clouds on either side. nothing is visible of the earth, but it is divined by the gestures and glances of the two saints, who are pointing to the multitude for whom they are imploring the divine mercy. two angels are leaning on a kind of balustrade whose horizontal line forms a solid plane at the base of the composition. nothing could be more elementary than the idea of such a picture; the ancient symmetry and the most rigid parallelism are scrupulously observed. raphael becomes almost archaic, and, while returning to the simplicity of primitive traditions, by the force of genius he confounds the scientific exaggeration that is already so close to decadence. doubtless he had raised his eyes high every time he had taken antiquity as a model, but he raised them much higher still by becoming exclusively christian again, and by comprehending that the humblest way is not only the surest, but also the most sublime. why is such simple means so highly successful in exalting our feelings? why is it, when looking at this picture, we have moments of divine oblivion in which we fancy ourselves in heaven? that is what we must try to penetrate and comprehend. [illustration: the sistine madonna. _raphael_.] the principal figure of the picture is the infant jesus. he is no longer the graceful _bambino_ that we have so often seen in the arms of raphael's madonnas, gentle and encouraging to the eyes of mankind, or again he who, erewhile, in the _virgin with the fish_, leaned towards the young tobit; it is the god himself, it is the god of justice and of the last day. in the most humble state of our flesh, beneath the veil of infancy, we see the terrifying splendour of infinite majesty in this picture. the divine infant leaves between himself and us a place for fear, and in his presence we experience something of the fear of god that adam felt and that he transmitted to his race. for attaining such heights of impression the means employed by raphael are of an incomprehensible simplicity. the infant jesus nestles familiarly in his mother's arms. sitting on a fold of the white veil that the virgin supports with her left hand, he leans against the madonna's right arm; his legs are crossed one above the other; the whole of the left arm follows the bend of the body and the left hand rests upon the right leg; at the same time, the right shoulder being raised by mary's hand, the right arm is bent at the elbow and the hand grasps the virgin's veil. this attitude, so natural, so true, so unstudied, expresses grandeur and sovereignty. nothing can be more elementary nor more powerful. the light rests calmly upon every part of this beautiful body and all its members in such fine repose. humanity was never seen under such radiance. the son of god, in transporting to heaven the terrestrial form of his infancy, has made it divine for all eternity. raphael doubtless owed to antiquity something of the power that enabled him spontaneously to create such a masterpiece; but in this case he has far surpassed his models, and we should search vainly in antique art for a more ideal and grand figure than that of this marvellous infant. however, hitherto we have only examined the body, what shall we say about the head to give a true idea of it? in fact, that is perhaps the most extraordinary and most indescribable part of the whole picture. the infant jesus seems to recoil from the spectacle of human shame; he lovingly presses against the virgin's breast, softly rests his forehead against his mother's cheek, and darts towards the world one of those flaming and terrible glances at which, it is said, everything in heaven, on earth, and in hell trembles. his disordered hair stands upright and quivers as in the breath of the tempest, and sombre clouds pass across the widely modelled forehead; the brows are frowning, the pupils dilate and the flame is ready to dart forth; the eyes, profound and terrible, are preparing to flash with lightning; they still withhold it, but we feel that it may break forth, and we tremble. this glance is truly splendid; it fascinates you, attracts you, and, at the same time, fills you with terror. the lips are quivering, and, from the point of view of line, that is the great mystery, i think; the upper lip, visibly lifted on the left side, assumes a strange accent of anger and indignation. this deviation of a single feature is materially a small matter, and yet it suffices to stamp the whole countenance with irresistible action. the infant jesus assumes a formidable aspect; we recognize in him the sovereign judge; his power is infinite and one act of his will be sufficient to condemn or absolve. the _virgin of the chair_ had given us a presentiment of this image in ; the _virgin of st. sixtus_ shows it to us in , in its eternal grandeur and sublime reality. but the word of god would scarcely leave room for anything but fear, if the virgin did not immediately come to shed hope in the soul terrified at the idea of justice. in fact, the virgin remains calm and serene beside her enraged son, and reassures our heart also with her confidence. if she presents the son of god to the world under a terrifying aspect, at the same time she presses him so tenderly against her breast, and her features, under the splendour of the divine radiance, shine with such purity that we feel the flame that purifies all passing within ourselves. the virgin appears here like the dawning light. she advances from right to left, beautiful as the skies, light as the cloud that bears her. her gait, or rather her flight through the air, is stamped with royal nobleness and dignity. her right hand, raised as high as the shoulder, holds the body of jesus under his right arm, and the saviour lies back against his mother's right arm, while mary's left arm is placed under the infant's body to support and carry him. the virgin of st. sixtus, like every madonna, wears a red robe and a white mantle; and art has never done greater things with drapery with such simple elements. the mantle falls with a beautiful movement over the lower part of the body and floats in wide folds, which, while sharply defining the form and movement of the lower limbs, reveals the bare feet which are of admirable form and colour. the robe, ornamented only with a little gold embroidery on the sleeve, is of a purple tint in the shadows and becomes rose in the light; it is girdled below the breast like the antique statues, and reveals the neck as well as the top of the shoulders, which are surrounded by a veil of white gauze. a long scarf of the same colour as the veil but tinted with bistre, is placed on the crown of the head, and, distending like a sail above the left shoulder, returns to the left hand to serve as a support for the infant, and runs along the body of jesus, who grasps it with his right hand. the virgin's head appears in full illumination without any artifice, and glows solely with its own beauty. it is three quarters left, indeed almost full face, in a similar position but in opposition to the saviour's head, which, as we have seen, is three quarters right and almost full face also. the hair, a light chestnut, is arranged simply in smooth and flat bands lightly waved above the brow, leaving the ears, cheeks, and temples completely uncovered, and not interfering in any way with the outlines of the face. the forehead, of a medium height, presents a widely developed surface, in the centre of which glows a light that is continued down the bridge of the nose. the eyes, of irreproachable shape, are full of brilliance, and their gaze sheds over all it illumines an infinite softness mingled with an indefinable exaltation. the mouth trembles with divine emotion and seems to quiver with celestial bliss. another remarkable thing in this supreme manifestation of genius is that in the virgin and the infant, of such different, we might almost say such opposite expressions, the same features are noticeably repeated. raphael has been faithful to the last to the system he adopted in almost his earliest pictures, and to make this intentional resemblance more noticeable here he has placed the two heads close together, and shown them almost full face, so that there shall be no distracting element; and has opposed them to each other by turning them in different ways so that they may complement each other and be reflected in one another as in a mirror. therefore, as the same glory surrounds both mother and son at the same time, so the same character of beauty is found faithfully reproduced in each. the skulls of both have the same general conformation, the same intelligence shines upon the two brows, although the saviour's is dark and menacing whilst the virgin's remains radiant and clear; the eyes have also the same shape and are full of the same fire, though the glance of the one is terrible and of the other, reassuring; the mouth has the same lines, the same nobility, and the same quiver that has the power of alternately inspiring terror and tranquillity; and the cleft in the chin is identical. the colour also helps to make an almost perfect unity of these two figures--we have the same white and solid flesh tints, strong and delicate; the same warm and always luminous shadows. indeed, jesus is confounded with mary, so to speak, so that the two forms together make one and the same body, and, moreover, the saviour at need may get rid of his majestic nakedness beneath the veil and in the mantle of mary. this virgin, in which raphael has surpassed himself, was painted in a moment of veritable exaltation of genius. it was not laboriously conceived; it was born of itself, spontaneously complete, like the antique minerva, with its perfect form and beauty, and it was the recompense for an entire life consecrated without intermission to the search after nature and truth, to the study of the masters and all the traditions, to the cult of the ideal and especially of the virgin. after having produced so many rare masterpieces, his love and faith were carried to such a pitch of power and enthusiasm that he seemed to be borne up by them, and, suddenly penetrating into a sphere superior to all he had hitherto visited, he painted a virgin incomparably more beautiful than all the admirable virgins he had painted before. not a single design, nor preparatory study, puts us on the trace of any bringing forth of any of the parts of this picture. however, if the image of this virgin was traced on the canvas by a hand suddenly inspired, i think that at the same time raphael confronted his inspiration with nature, and that, whilst resolutely springing towards the infinite, he yet set himself face to face with reality. perhaps, strictly, he would have had no need of that; he had amassed so much, his memory placed such numerous, varied, and exact documents at the service of his will, that he had only to remember in order almost immediately to produce an accomplished whole. moreover, he had the model he wanted, possessing without dominating it; and without losing sight of his ideal, it was to this model that he applied himself for the embodiment of his idea. thus, in the virgin of st. sixtus, we recognize, not the image of la fornarina, but the transfiguration of her image. none of her features are left and yet it is she, but so purified that no trouble nor shadow comes to dim the radiant and virginal brightness of the picture. in every human creature there is a divine germ that cannot flourish on earth and whose blossoming is only in the skies; this is the flowering, the splendour of which is shown in the virgin of st. sixtus. we care very little about raphael's private life; we only affirm in the presence of his work that as a painter he did not love for this life only, and that from the beginning to the end of his career he had the respect and the taste for eternal love. since the day when the virgin appeared transfigured to the seer of the apocalypse, she had never revealed herself in such effulgence. before this picture, we lose every memory of earth and see nothing but the queen of heaven and of the angels, the creature elect and blessed above all creatures. in thus painting the virgin, raphael has almost reached the confines of divinity. but everything in this picture is food for admiration, even the atmosphere that envelops it and those innumerable and endless legions of cherubin that gravitate around the virgin and the word of god. the aureole that encircles the divine group shows nothing at first but dazzling and golden light; then, as it recedes from the centre, this light gradually pales and insensibly merges from the most intense gold into the purest blue, and is filled with those heads, chaste, innocent, and fervent, that spring beneath the brush of raphael like the flowers at the breath of spring. these aërial creatures throng to contemplate the virgin, and their forms recall those radiances in the shape of crowns that fill the dantesque paradise, making the name of mary resound with their praises. our eyes and mind lose themselves in the immense multitude of these happy spirits. "number if you can the sands of the sea or the stars in the sky, those that are visible and invisible, and still believe that you have not attained the number of the angels. it costs god nothing to multiply the most excellent things, and it is the most beautiful of which he is most prodigal." we cannot keep our eyes away from that sky; we gaze at it and love to dazzle and weary our eyes with it. on either side of the virgin, kneel st. sixtus and st. barbara. placed also amid the clouds, but below the madonna, they are near the sovereign mediatrix, as mediators also between the world and the sovereign judge. st. sixtus is seen on the right in profile, his head is raised towards the infant jesus, his left hand is placed devoutly on his breast while his right is foreshortened and points towards the spectator. he wears a white rochet tied by a girdle with golden tassels, a white amice around his neck, a magnificent pallium woven with gold falling to his feet, and a long chasuble embroidered with gold and lined with red enveloping his shoulders and arms, the wide folds of which are lost amid the clouds. his head is bare, and his white tiara, adorned with the triple crown, is placed on the balustrade that runs horizontally across the base of the picture. it is impossible to find a representation of pontifical sovereignty of greater fervour, grandeur, and truth. his cranium is bald and has only a crown of grey hair remaining. his emaciated face is full of ardour and power: his eyes penetrate straight into the splendour of god; and his mouth, although partially hidden by the grey beard that covers the lower part of his face, is praying with extraordinary fervour. his gesture, so resolute and respectful, is in itself an act of love and charity, and his very hands, so true in drawing and so bold in action, have their special eloquence. it seems impossible that the divine justice will not allow itself to be swayed by such intercession. st. barbara is opposite st. sixtus. her body is in left profile, towards the virgin, while her head, turned over her left shoulder towards the spectator, appears almost in full face. only her left arm and hand are visible, pressed against her breast. her left knee, directly resting upon the cloud, sustains the weight of her body; her right leg, which is raised, only touches the clouds with the foot. her head is as beautiful, youthful, and fresh as the action of her whole figure is easy, elegant, and noble. then where did raphael find this serenity if not in himself? the saint, gently bending towards the earth, seems to want to receive our hopes and vows to bear them to heaven. she is one of those virgins who are created in the image of the virgin par excellence. nevertheless, here she affects certain worldly appearances which, beside the severe simplicity of the mother of the word, establish a hierarchy between the two figures and a sort of line of demarcation that cannot be crossed. the higher we soar the more is grandeur simplified in everything. st. barbara's hair is arranged with a certain elegance; it is very abundant, of an ash blonde, and forms thick waving bands that are gathered off the temples and are crossed by two white fillets, one of which crosses the top of the forehead like a diadem. her eyes, lowered towards the earth, are perfectly beautiful; her mouth is calm and sweet; and purity shines in all her features. her shoulders are bare, only covered with a veil of white gauze which falls down her back, passes under her arm and returns to her breast where her left hand holds it. her robe of violet shading into a neutral tint, is only visible where it covers her leg; for a green mantle, thrown over it, envelops the body, only revealing the arm, the sleeve of which is blue on the upper arm, yellow, and slightly puffed at the shoulder, and yellow also on the forearm. all this is of a grand air and in exquisite taste. thus draped, the figure has a charming effect which, without detracting from the religious idea, leaves room also for a more human sentiment. raphael, doubtless, had thought that the figures of the virgin, the infant jesus, st. sixtus, and st. barbara would alone be sufficient for his picture; but the empty space remaining beneath the feet of the madonna was too considerable to be filled up simply by clouds: and therefore he added that rigid and horizontal supporting bar on which two angels lean upon their elbows, contemplating the glory of the virgin with such rapture. in fact, these angels seem to be painted as an afterthought, for, laid in with a light brush, they scarcely cover the clouds, but allow the underlying pigment to show through. little wings of vivid tint complete these aërial creatures, always living around raphael and always ready to come from his brush. although held to nature by the most intimate ties, although perhaps too familiar in attitude and manner, they are yet supernatural by the clearness of their intelligence and by the power of their admiration. we are enchanted with their candour and beauty. they are full of zeal and enthusiasm; they possess the grace of the pagan loves merged into christian innocence and chastity. their faith is as beautiful as the sky, and in loving them it is almost for god himself that we feel the love. such are the various parts of this work; their union forms the most sublime harmony, and each in particular brings a divine note to this celestial concert. by what process was this picture produced? we can scarcely say, so greatly does the inspiration predominate over the technique. raphael aimed at the sublime; and the rest was given to him as increase. the colour is just what it should be in such a subject; whilst keeping to a sweet, calm, and peaceful scale, it is resplendent with light, and we ask ourselves whether it is not the hand of an angel rather than that of a man that has been able to realize such a marvel. the _virgin of st. sixtus_ is the most beautiful picture in the world. to copy this virgin is to attempt the impossible. study it a hundred times and a hundred times it will reveal itself under a new aspect. it was before this picture, it is said, that correggio cried: "and i also, i am a painter." the _virgin of st. sixtus_ was immediately placed where it was meant to be; it was present in triumph every day for two hundred and thirty-six years at the divine sacrament; and never was a human work so worthy of that signal honour. in the degenerate monks of st. sixtus preferred a little gold to their inestimable masterpiece, and for a miserable sum of a hundred and some thousands of francs ( , to , ), they sold their virgin to augustus iii., elector of saxony and king of poland. that day the barbarians were not those the italians think.... at dresden, the madonna was received with great pomp. augustus iii. had it brought in haste into the reception hall of his palace; as the place of honour was occupied by the throne, he, himself, seized the royal chair, and relegating it to a less conspicuous station, he cried: "room for the great raphael." if this is historic, it does honour to the prince; if legendary, it is to the glory of the people whose sentiment it translates. _les vierges de raphaël_ (paris, ). the dream of st. ursula (_carpaccio_) john ruskin in the year , just before leaving venice i had been carefully looking at a picture by victor carpaccio, representing the dream of a young princess. carpaccio has taken much pains to explain to us, as far as he can, the kind of life she leads, by completely painting her little bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can see everything in it. it is lighted by two doubly-arched windows, the arches being painted crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts that bear them, gilded. they are filled at the top with small round panes of glass; but beneath, are open to the blue morning sky, with a low lattice across them; and in the one at the back of the room are set two beautiful white greek vases with a plant in each; one having rich dark and pointed green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of any species known to me, each at the end of a branch like a spray of heath. [illustration: the dream of st. ursula. _carpaccio._] these flower-pots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room, and beneath the window, at about the height of the elbow, and serves to put things on anywhere: beneath it, down to the floor, the walls are covered with green cloth; but above are bare and white. the second window is nearly opposite the bed, and in front of it is the princess's reading-table, some two feet and a half square, covered by a red cloth with a white border and dainty fringe; and beside it her seat, not at all like a reading chair in oxford, but a very small three-legged stool like a music stool, covered with crimson cloth. on the table are a book, set up at a slope fittest for reading, and an hour-glass. under the shelf near the table so as to be easily reached by the outstretched arm, is a press full of books. the door of this has been left open, and the books, i am grieved to say, are rather in disorder, having been pulled about before the princess went to bed, and one left standing on its side. opposite this window, on the white wall, is a small shrine or picture (i can't see which, for it is in sharp retiring perspective), with a lamp before it, and a silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like one for holding incense. the bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and branched, carrying a canopy of warm red. the princess's shield is at the head of it, and the feet are raised entirely above the floor of the room, on a dais which projects at the lower end so as to form a seat, on which the child has laid her crown. her little blue slippers lie at the side of the bed,--her white dog beside them, the coverlid is scarlet, the white sheet folded half way back over it; the young girl lies straight, bending neither at waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over her in a narrow unbroken wave, like the shape of the coverlid of the last sleep, when the turf scarcely rises. she is some seventeen or eighteen years old, her head is turned towards us on the pillow, the cheek resting on her hand, as if she were thinking, yet utterly calm in sleep, and almost colourless. her hair is tied with a narrow riband, and divided into two wreaths, which encircle her head like a double crown. the white nightgown hides the arm raised on the pillow, down to the wrist. at the door of the room an angel enters; (the little dog, though lying awake, vigilant, takes no notice.) he is a very small angel, his head just rises a little above the shelf round the room, and would only reach as high as the princess's chin, if she were standing up. he has soft grey wings, lustreless; and his dress, of subdued blue, has violet sleeves, open above the elbow, and showing white sleeves below. he comes in without haste, his body, like a mortal one, casting shadow from the light through the door behind, his face perfectly quiet; a palm-branch in his right hand--a scroll in his left. so dreams the princess, with blessed eyes, that need no earthly dawn. it is very pretty of carpaccio to make her dream out the angel's dress so particularly, and notice the slashed sleeves; and to dream so little an angel--very nearly a doll angel,--bringing her the branch of palm, and message. but the lovely characteristic of all is the evident delight of her continual life. royal power over herself, and happiness in her flowers, her books, her sleeping and waking, her prayers, her dreams, her earth, her heaven.... "how do i know the princess is industrious?" partly by the trim state of her room,--by the hour-glass on the table,--by the evident use of all the books she has, (well bound, every one of them, in stoutest leather or velvet, and with no dog's-ears,) but more distinctly from another picture of her, not asleep. in that one a prince of england has sent to ask her in marriage: and her father, little liking to part with her, sends for her to his room to ask her what she would do. he sits, moody and sorrowful; she, standing before him in a plain house-wifely dress, talks quietly, going on with her needlework all the time. a work-woman, friends, she, no less than a princess; and princess most in being so. in like manner, is a picture by a florentine, whose mind i would fain have you know somewhat, as well as carpaccio's--sandro botticelli--the girl who is to be the wife of moses, when he first sees her at the desert well, has fruit in her left hand, but a distaff in her right.[ ] "to do good work, whether you live or die," it is the entrance to all princedoms; and if not done, the day will come, and that infallibly, when you must labour for evil instead of good. _fors clavigera_ (sunnyside, orpington, kent, ). footnotes: [ ] more accurately a rod cloven into three at the top, and so holding the wool. the fruit is a bunch of apples; she has golden sandals, and a wreath of myrtle round her hair. the descent from the cross (_rubens_) eugÈne fromentin many people say _antwerp_; but many also say _the country of rubens_, and this mode of speech more exactly expresses all the things that constitute the magic of the place: a great city, a great personal destiny, a famous school, and ultra-celebrated pictures. all this is imposing, and our imagination becomes excited rather more than usual when, in the centre of the _place vert_, we see the statue of rubens and, farther on, the old basilica where are preserved the triptychs which, humanly speaking, have consecrated it. the statue is not a masterpiece; but it is he, in his own home. under the form of a man, who was nothing but a painter, with the sole attributes of a painter, in perfect truth it personifies the sole flemish sovereignty which has neither been contested nor menaced, and which certainly never will be. [illustration: the descent from the cross. _rubens._] at the end of the square is seen notre dame; it presents itself in profile, being outlined by one of its lateral faces, the darkest one, on account of the rains beating on that side. it is made to look blacker and bigger by being surrounded with light and low buildings. with its carved stonework, its rusty tone, its blue and lustrous roof, its colossal tower where the golden disk and the golden needles of its dial glitter in the stone discoloured by the vapours from the scheldt and by the winters, it assumes monstrous proportions. when the sky is troubled, as it is to-day, it adds all its own strange caprices to the grandeur of the lines. imagine then the invention of a gothic piranesi, exaggerated by the fancy of the north, wildly illuminated by a stormy day, and standing out in irregular blotches against the scenic background of a sky entirely black or entirely white, and full of tempest. a more original or more striking preliminary stage-setting could not be contrived. thus it is vain for you to have come from mechlin or brussels, to have seen the _magi_ and the _calvary_, to have formed an exact and measured idea of rubens, or even to have taken familiarities in examining him that have set you at your ease with him, for you cannot enter notre dame as you enter a museum. it is three o'clock; the clock high up has just struck. scarcely even a sacristan makes a sound in the tranquil, clean and clear naves, as pieter neefs has represented them, with an inimitable feeling for their solitude and grandeur. it is raining and the light is fading. shadows and gleams succeed each other upon the two triptychs in their thin framing of brown wood fastened without any pomp to the cold and smooth walls of the transepts, and this proud painting only stands out the more amid the violent lights and obscurities contending around it. german copyists have placed their easels before the _descent from the cross_; there is nobody before the _elevation to the cross_. this simple fact expresses the world's opinion as to these two works. they are greatly admired, almost unreservedly so, and the fact is rare in the case of rubens, but the admiration is divided. the chief renown has fallen upon the _descent from the cross_. the _elevation to the cross_ has the gift of touching still more the impassioned, or more deeply convinced, friends of rubens. no two works, in fact, could resemble each other less than these that were conceived at an interval of two years, that were inspired by the same effort of mind, and that, nevertheless, so plainly bear the marks of two separate tendencies. the date of the _descent from the cross_ is ; that of the _elevation to the cross_ is . i insist upon the date, for it is important. rubens was returning to antwerp, and it was on his disembarkation, so to speak, that he painted them. his education was finished. at that moment he had even an excess of studies that were somewhat heavy for him and of which he was going to make free use once for all and then get rid of almost immediately. of all the italian masters he had consulted, each one, be it understood, gave him advice of a sufficiently exclusive nature. the hot-headed masters authorized him to dare greatly; the severe masters recommended him to keep himself under strong restraint. his nature, character, and native faculties all tended to a division. the task itself exacted that he should make two parts of his beautiful gifts. he felt the expediency of this, took advantage of it, treated of the subjects in accordance with their spirit, and gave two contrary and two just ideas of himself: on the one hand the most magnificent example we possess of his wisdom, and on the other one of the most astonishing visions of his fire and ardour. to the personal inspiration of the painter add a very marked italian influence and you will still better be able to explain to yourself the extraordinary value that posterity attaches to pages which may be regarded as his diploma works and which were the first public acts of his life as the head of a school. i will tell you how this influence manifests itself and by what characteristics it may be recognized. but first it is enough for me to remark that it exists, in order that the physiognomy of the talent of rubens may not lose any of its features at the moment when we examine it. this is not that he should be positively cramped in canonical formulæ in which others would find themselves imprisoned. on the other hand, with what ease he moves among these formulæ, with what freedom he makes use of them, with what tact he disguises or confesses them, according as he takes pleasure in revealing the well-informed man or the novice. however, whatever he may do, we feel the _romanist_ who has just spent some years on classic ground, who has just arrived and has not yet changed his atmosphere. there is some unknown quality remaining with him that reveals travel, such as a foreign odour about his clothes. it is certainly to this fine italian scent that the _descent from the cross_ owes the extreme favour that it enjoys. for those indeed who would like rubens to be somewhat as he is, but very much also as they imagine him, there is here a seriousness in youth, a frank and studious flower of maturity which is about to disappear and which is unique. i need not describe the composition. you could not mention a more popular composition as a work of art or as an example of religious style. there is nobody who has not in his mind the ordering and the effect of the picture, its great central light cast against a dark background, its grandiose masses, its distinct and massive divisions. we know that rubens got the first idea of it from italy, and that he made no attempt to conceal the loan. the scene is powerful and grave. it acts on one from afar, it stands out strikingly upon a wall: it is serious and enforces seriousness. when we remember the carnage with which the work of rubens is crimsoned, the massacres, the executioners torturing, martyring, and making their victims howl, we recognize that here we have a noble _execution_. everything in it is restrained, concise, and laconic, as in a page of holy writ. there are neither gesticulations, cries, horrors, nor too many tears. the virgin hardly breaks into a single sob, and the intense suffering of the drama is expressed by scarce a gesture of inconsolable motherhood, a tearful face, or red eyes. the christ is one of the most elegant figures that rubens ever imagined for the painting of a god. it possesses some peculiar extended, pliant, and almost tapering grace, that gives it every natural delicacy and all the distinction of a beautiful academic study. it is subtly proportioned and in perfect taste: the drawing does not fall far short of the sentiment. you have not forgotten the effect of that large and slightly hip-shot body, with its small, thin, and fine head slightly fallen to one side, so livid and so perfectly limpid in its pallor, neither shrivelled nor drawn, and from which all suffering has disappeared, as it descends with so much beatitude to rest for a moment among the strange beauties of the death of the just! recollect how heavily it hangs and how precious it is to support, in what a lifeless attitude it glides along the sudarium, with what agonized affection it is received by the outstretched hands and arms of the women. is there anything more touching? one of his feet, livid and pierced, encounters at the foot of the cross the bare shoulder of magdalen. it does not rest upon it, but grazes it. the contact is scarcely noticeable, we divine it rather than see it. it would have been profane to insist upon it, it would have been cruel not to have made us believe in it. all rubens's furtive sensitiveness is in this imperceptible contact that says so many things, respects them all, and makes them affecting. the sinner is admirable. she is incontestably the best piece of work in the picture, the most delicate, the most personal, one of the best figures of women, moreover, that rubens ever executed in his career that was so fertile in feminine creations. this delicious figure has its legend; how should it not have, its very perfection having become legendary! it is probable that this beautiful maiden with the black eyes, with the firm glance, with the clear-cut profile, is a portrait, and the portrait is that of isabella brandt, whom he had married two years before, and who had also sat for him for the virgin in the wing of the _visitation_. however, while observing her ample figure, powdered hair, and plump proportions, we reflect what must some day be the splendid and individual charms of that beautiful helen fourment whom he is to marry twenty years later. from his earliest to his latest years, one tenacious type seems to have taken up its abode in rubens's heart; one fixed idea haunted his amorous and constant imagination. he delights in it, he completes it, he achieves it; to some extent he pursues it in his two marriages, just as he never ceases to repeat it throughout his works. there is always something both of isabella and of helen in the women whom rubens painted from either one of them. in the first he puts a sort of preconceived trait of the second; into the second glides a kind of ineffaceable memory of the first. at the date of which we treat, he possesses the first and is inspired by her; the other is not yet born, and still he divines her. the future already mingles with the present; the real with the ideal. as soon as the image appears it has this double form. not only is it exquisite, but not a feature is wanting. does it not seem as if in thus fixing it from the first day, rubens intended that neither he nor anyone else should forget it? as for the rest, this is the sole mundane grace with which he has embellished this austere picture, slightly monkish, and absolutely evangelical in character, if by that is meant the gravity of sentiment and style, and if we remember the rigours that such a spirit must impose upon itself. in that case, you will understand, a great part of his reserve is as much the result of his italian education as of the attention he gave to his subject. the canvas is sombre, notwithstanding its high lights and the extraordinary whiteness of the winding-sheet. in spite of its reliefs, the painting is _flat_. it is a picture of blackish grounds on which are disposed broad strong lights of no gradations. the colouring is not very rich: it is full, well-sustained, and clearly calculated to be effective from a distance. it makes the picture, frames it, expresses its weakness and its strength, and makes no attempt to beautify it. it is composed of an almost black green, an absolute black, a rather heavy red, and a white. these four tones are placed side by side as frankly as is possible with four notes of such violence. the contact is brusque and yet they do not suffer. in the great white, the corpse of christ is drawn with a delicate and supple line and modelled by its own reliefs without any effort of _nuances_, thanks to deviations of imperceptible values. no shining, no single division in the lights, and scarcely a detail in the dark parts. all that is of a singular breadth and rigidity. the outlines are narrow, the half-tints limited except in the christ, where the under layer of ultramarine has worn through and to-day forms blemishes. the pigment is smooth, compact, flowing easily and thoughtfully. at the distance from which we examine it, the work of the hand disappears, but it is easy to guess that it is excellent and directed with full confidence by a mind broken into good habits, that conforms to them, applies itself, and wishes to do well. rubens remembers, observes, restrains himself, possesses all his forces, subordinates them, and only half makes use of them. in spite of these drawbacks, this is a singularly original, attractive, and strong work. van dyck will derive his best religious inspirations from it. philippe de champagne will not imitate it, i am afraid, except in its weak points, and from it will compose his french style. otto van veen should certainly applaud it. what should van oort think of it? as for jordaens, he is waiting for his fellow student to become more distinctly and expressly rubens before following him in these new ways. _les maîtres d' autrefois_ (paris, ). bacchus and ariadne (_titian_) charles lamb hogarth excepted, can we produce any one painter within the last fifty years, or since the humour of exhibiting began, that has treated a story _imaginatively_? by this we mean, upon whom has subject so acted that it has seemed to direct _him_--not to be arranged by him? any upon whom its leading or collateral points have impressed themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation? any that has imparted to his compositions, not merely so much truth as is enough to convey a story with clearness, but that individualizing property, which should keep the subject so treated distinct in feature from every other subject, however similar, and to common apprehensions almost identical; so as that we might say this and this part could have found an appropriate place in no other picture in the world but this? is there anything in modern art--we will not demand that it should be equal--but in any way analogous to what titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two times in the _ariadne_, in the national gallery? precipitous, with his reeling satyr rout about him, repeopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the cretan. this is the time present. with this telling of the story an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly proud. guido in his harmonious version of it, saw no farther. but from the depths of the imaginative spirit titian has recalled past time, and laid it contributory with the present to one simultaneous effect. with the desert all ringing with the mad symbols of his followers, made lucid with the presence and new offers of a god,--as if unconscious of bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant--her soul undistracted from theseus--ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore, in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same local solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the athenian. here are two points miraculously co-uniting; fierce society, with the feeling of solitude still absolute; noon-day revelations, with the accidents of the dull grey dawn unquenched and lingering; the _present_ bacchus with the _past_ ariadne; two stories, with double time; separate, and harmonizing. had the artist made the woman one shade less indifferent to the god; still more, had she expressed a rapture at his advent, where would have been the story of the mighty desolation of the heart previous? merged in the insipid accident of a flattering offer met with a welcome acceptance. the broken heart for theseus was not lightly to be pieced up by a god. _lamb's complete works_, edited by r.h. shepherd (london, ). [illustration: bacchus and ariadne. _titian_.] bacchus and ariadne (_titian_) edward t. cook but though as yet half unconscious, ariadne is already under her fated star: for above is the constellation of ariadne's crown--the crown with which bacchus presented his bride. and observe in connection with the astronomical side of the allegory the figure in bacchus's train with the serpent round him: this is the serpent-bearer (milton's "ophiuchus huge") translated to the skies with bacchus and ariadne. notice too another piece of poetry: the marriage of bacchus and ariadne took place in the spring, ariadne herself being the personification of its return, and bacchus of its gladness; hence the flowers in the foreground which deck his path. the picture is as full of the painter's art as of the poet's. note first the exquisite painting of the vine leaves, and of these flowers in the foreground, as an instance of the "constant habit of the great masters to render every detail of their foreground with the most laborious botanical fidelity." "the foreground is occupied with the common blue iris, the _aquilegia_, and the wild rose (more correctly the _capparis spinosa_); _every stamen_ of which latter is given, while the blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have been studied with the most exquisite accuracy." but this detail is sought not for its own sake, but only so far as is necessary to mark the typical qualities of beauty in the object. thus "while every stamen of the rose is given because this was necessary to mark the flower, and while the curves and large characters of the leaves are rendered with exquisite fidelity, there is no vestige of particular texture, of moss, bloom, moisture, or any other accident, no dewdrops, nor flies, nor trickeries of any kind: nothing beyond the simple forms and hues of the flowers, even those hues themselves being simplified and broadly rendered. the varieties of _aquilegia_ have in reality a greyish and uncertain tone of colour, and never attain the purity of blue with which titian has gifted his flower. but the master does not aim at the particular colour of individual blossoms; he seizes the type of all, and gives it with the utmost purity and simplicity of which colour is capable." a second point to be noticed is the way in which one kind of truth has often to be sacrificed in order to gain another. thus here titian sacrifices truth of aërial effect to richness of tone--tone in the sense, that is, of that quality of colour which makes us feel that the whole picture is in one climate, under one kind of light, and in one kind of atmosphere. "it is difficult to imagine anything more magnificently impossible than the blue of the distant landscape; impossible, not from its vividness, but because it is not faint and aërial enough to account for its purity of colour; it is too dark and blue at the same time; and there is indeed so total a want of atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of form, it would be impossible to tell the mountains intended to be ten miles off, from the robe of ariadne close to the spectator. yet make this blue faint, aërial, and distant; make it in the slightest degree to resemble the tint of nature's colour; and all the tone of the picture, all the intensity and splendour will vanish on the instant."[ ] we may notice lastly what sir joshua reynolds points out (discourse viii.), that the harmony of the picture--that wonderful bringing together of two times of which lamb speaks above, is assisted by the distribution of colours. "to ariadne is given (say the critics) a red scarf to relieve the figure from the sea, which is behind her. it is not for that reason alone, but for another of much greater consequence; for the sake of the general harmony and effect of the picture. the figure of ariadne is separated from the great group, and is dressed in blue, which, added to the colour of the sea, makes that quantity of cold colour which titian thought necessary for the support and brilliancy of the great group; which group is composed, with very little exception, entirely of mellow colours. but as the picture in this case would be divided into two distinct parts, one half cold, and the other warm; it was necessary to carry some of the mellow colours of the great group into the cold part of the picture, and a part of the cold into the great group; accordingly, titian gave ariadne a red scarf, and to one of the bacchante a little blue drapery." it is interesting to know that this great picture took titian three years, off and on, to finish. it was a commission from the duke of ferrara, who supplied canvas and frame for it, and repeatedly wrote to press for its delivery; it reached him in . _a popular handbook to the national gallery_ (london and new york, ). footnotes: [ ] _modern painters_, vols. i., xxvii., xxx. (preface to second edition), pt. i. sec. ii. ch. § , pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. . § ; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. ix. § ; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § ; _arrows of the chace_, i. . the coronation of the virgin (_fra angelico_) thÉophile gautier _the coronation of the virgin_, by fra beato angelico, seems to have been painted by an angel rather than by a mortal. time has not tarnished the ideal freshness of this painting, delicate as a miniature in a missal, and whose tints are borrowed from the whiteness of the lily, the rose of the dawn, the blue of the sky, and the gold of the stars. no muddy tones of earth dull these seraphic beings composed of luminous vapours. upon a throne with marble steps, the varied colours of which are symbolic, christ is seated, holding a crown of rich workmanship which he is about to place upon the head of his divine mother, kneeling before him, with her head modestly inclined and her hands crossed upon her breast. around the throne, throng a choir of angel-musicians, playing the trumpet, the theorbo, the _angelot_, and the _viola d' amore_. a light flame flutters about their heads and their great wings palpitate with joy at this glorious coronation which will transform the humble handmaid of the lord into the lady of paradise. to the left, an angel kneels in prayer. in the lower part of the painting with faces uplifted to the sky the hosts of the blessed, distributed in two groups, adore and contemplate. on one side, are moses, saint john the baptist, the apostles, the bishops, and the founders of orders, distinguished by some emblem, and for greater certainty bearing their names inscribed around their nimbus, or upon the embroideries of their vestments. saint dominick holds a branch of lilies and a book. a sun forms the agrafe of saint thomas aquinas's mantle; charlemagne, "_l'empereur à la barbe fleurie_," is recognizable by his crown of _fleur-de-lis_. saint nicholas, bishop of myra, has by his side the three balls of gold, symbolic of the three purses which he gave to a poor gentleman to dower his three daughters whose beauty exposed them to dangers. on the other side, throng king david, apostles, martyrs, saint peter the dominican with his wounded head, saint laurence holding his gridiron, saint stephen with a palm in his hand, and saint george armed from head to foot; then, in the foreground of the picture, is the charming group of saints of perfectly celestial grace: the kneeling magdalen offers her vase of perfumes; saint cæcilia advances, crowned with roses; saint clara gleams through her veil, constellated with crosses and golden stars; saint catherine of alexandria leans upon the wheel, the instrument of her execution, as calmly and peacefully as if it were a spinning-wheel; and saint agnes holds in her arms a little white lamb, the symbol of innocent purity. [illustration: the coronation of the virgin. _fra angelico._] fra beato angelico has given to these youthful saints a celestial and ideal beauty, whose type exists not upon this earth: they are visible souls, rather than bodies, they are thoughts of human form enveloped in these chaste draperies of white, rose, and blue, sown with stars and embroidered, clothed as might be the happy spirits who rejoice in the eternal light of paradise. if there be paintings in heaven, surely they must resemble those of fra angelico. _guide de l'amateur au musée du louvre_ (paris, ). judith (_sandro botticelli_) maurice hewlett in the days when it was verging on a question whether a man could be at the same time a good christian and an artist the chosen subjects of painting were significant of the approaching crisis--those glaring moral contrasts in history which, for want of a happier term, we call dramatic. why this was so, whether art took a hint from politics, or had withdrawn her more intimate manifestations to await likelier times, is a question it were long to answer. the subjects, at any rate, were such as the greeks, with their surer instincts and saving grace of sanity in matters of this kind, either forbore to meddle with or treated as decoratively as they treated acanthus-wreaths. to-day we call them "effective" subjects; we find they produce shocks and tremors; we think it braces us to shudder, and we think that art is a kind of emotional pill; we measure it quantitatively, and say that we "know what we like." and doubtless there is something piquant in the quivering produced, for example, by the sight of white innocence fluttering helpless in a grey shadow of lust. so long as the bible remained a god that piquancy was found in a _massacre of the innocents_; in our own time we find it in a _faust and gretchen_, in the doré gallery, or in the royal academy. it was a like appreciation of the certain effect of vivid contrasts as powerful didactic agents (coupled with, or drowning, a something purer and more devout) which had inspired those most beautiful and distinctive of all the symbols of catholicism, the _adoration of the kings_, the christ-child cycle, and which raised the holy child and maid-mother to their place above the mystic tapers and the cross. naturally the old testament, that garner of grim tales, proved a sick wine: _david and golias_, _susanna and the elders_, the _sacrifice of isaac_, _jethro's daughter_. but the story of judith did not come to be painted in tuscan sanctuaries until donatello of florence had first cast her in bronze at the prayer of cosimo _pater patriæ_. her entry was dramatic enough at least: dame fortune may well have sniggered as she spun round the city on her ball. cosimo the patriot and his splendid grandson were no sooner dead and their brood sent flying, than donatello's _judith_ was set up in the piazza as a fit emblem of rescue from tyranny, with the vigorous motto, to make assurance double, "exemplvm salvtis pvblicae cives posvere." savonarola, who knew his bible, saw here a keener application of judith's pious sin. a few years later that same _judith_ saw him burn. thus, as an incarnate cynicism, she will pass; as a work of art she is admittedly one of her great creator's failures. her neighbour _perseus_ of the loggia makes this only too plain! for cellini has seized the right moment in a deed of horror, and donatello, with all his downrightness and grip of the fact, has hit upon the wrong. it is fatal to freeze a moment of time into an eternity of writing. his _judith_ will never strike: her arm is palsied where it swings. the damoclean sword is a fine incident for poetry; but holofernes was no damocles, and if he had been, it were intolerable to cast his experience in bronze. donatello has essayed that thing impossible for sculpture, to arrest a moment instead of denote a permanent attribute. art is adjectival, is it not, o donatello? her business is to qualify facts, to say what things are, not to state them, to affirm that they are. a sculptured _judith_ was done not long afterwards, carved, as we shall see, with a burin on a plate; and the man who so carved her was a painter. [illustration: judith. _botticelli._] meantime, _pari passu_, almost, a painter who was a poet was trying his hand; a man who knew his bible and his mythology and was equally at home with either. perhaps it is not extravagant to say that you cannot be an artist unless you are at home with mythology, unless mythology is the swiftest and most direct expression of your being, so that you can be measured by it as a man is known by his books, or a woman by her clothes, her way of bowing, her amusements, or her charities. for mythopoeia is just this, the incarnating the spirit of natural fact; and the generic name of that power is art. a kind of creation, a clothing of essence in matter, an hypostatizing (if you will have it) of an object of intuition within the folds of an object of sense. lessing did not dig so deep as his greek voltaire (whose "dazzling antithesis," after all, touches the root of the matter), for he did not see that rhythmic extension in time or space, as the case may be, with all that that implies--colour, value, proportion, all the convincing incidents of form--is simply the mode of all arts, the thing with which art's substance must be interpenetrated, until the two form a whole, lovely, golden, irresistible, and inevitable as nature's pieces are. this substance, as i have said, is the spirit of natural fact. and so mythology is art at its simplest and barest (where the bodily medium is neither word, nor texture of stone, nor dye), the parent art from which all the others were, so to speak, begotten by man's need. this much of explanation, i am sorry to say, is necessary, before we turn to our mytho-poet of florence, to see what he made out of the story of judith. first of all, though, what has the story of judith to do with mythology? it is a legend, one of the finest of semitic legends; and between legend and myth there is as great a gulf as between jew and greek. i believe there are no myths proper to israel--i do not see how such magnificent egoists could contract to the necessary state of awe--and i do not know that there are any legends proper to greece which are divorced from real myths. for where a myth is the incarnation of the spirit of natural fact, a legend is the embellishment of an historical event: a very different thing. a natural fact is permanent and elemental, an historical event is transient and superficial. take one instance out of a score. the rainbow links heaven and earth. iris, then, to the myth-making greek, was jove's messenger, intermediary between god and man. that is to incarnate a constant, natural fact. plato afterwards, making her a daughter of thaumas, incarnated a fact, psychological, but none the less constant, none the less natural. but, to say, as the legend-loving jew said, that noah floated his ark over a drowning world and secured for his posterity a standing covenant with god, who then and once for all set his bow in the heavens; that is to indicate, somewhere, in the dim backward and abysm of time, an historical event. the rainbow is suffered as the skirt of the robe of noah, who was an ancestor of israel. so the judith poem may be a decorated event, or it may be the barest history in a splendid epical setting: the point to remember is that it cannot be, as legend, a subject for creative art. the artist, in the language of neo-platonism, is a demiurge; he only of men can convert dead things into life. and now we will go into the uffizi. mr. ruskin, in his petulant-playful way, has touched upon the feeling of amaze most people have who look for the first time at botticelli's _judith_ tripping smoothly and lightly over the hill-country, her steadfast maid dogging with intent patient eyes every step she takes. you say it is flippant, affected, pedantic. for answer, i refer you to the sage himself, who, from his point of view--that painting may fairly deal with a chapter of history--is perfectly right. the prevailing strain of the story is the strength of weakness--_ex dulci fortitudo_, to invert the old enigma. "o god, o my god, hear me also, a widow. break down their stateliness by the hand of a woman!" it is the refrain that runs through the whole history of israel, that reasonable complacency of a little people in their god-fraught destiny. and, withal, a streak of savage spite: that the audacious oppressor shall be done scornfully to death. there is the motive of jael and sisera too. so "she smote twice upon his neck with all her might, and she took away his head from him, and tumbled his body down from the bed." ho! what a fate for the emissary of the great king. wherefore, once more, the jubilant paradox, "the lord hath smitten him by the hand of a woman!" that is it: the amazing, thrilling antithesis insisted on over and over again by the old hebrew bard. "her sandals ravished his eyes, her beauty took his mind prisoner, and the fauchion passed through his neck." that is the _leit-motif_: sandro the poet knew it perfectly well and taught it to the no small comfort of mr. ruskin and his men. giuditta, dainty, blue-eyed, a girl still and three years a widow, flits homeward through a spring landscape of grey and green and the smile of a milky sky, being herself the dominant of the chord, with her bough of slipt olive and her jagged scimitar, with her pretty blue fal-lals smocked and puffed, and her yellow curls floating over her shoulders. on her slim feet are the sandals that ravished his eyes; all her maiden bravery is dancing and fluttering like harebells in the wind. behind her plods the slave girl folded in an orange scarf, bearing that shapeless, nameless burden of hers, the head of the grim lord holofernes. oh, for that, it is the legend itself! for look at the girl's eyes. what does their dreamy solemnity mean if not, "the lord hath smitten him by the hand of a woman"? one other delicate bit of symbolizing he has allowed himself, which i may not omit. you are to see by whom this deed was done: by a woman who has unsexed herself. judith is absorbed in her awful service; her robe trails on the ground and clings about her knees; she is unconscious of the hindrance. the gates of bethulia are in sight; the chaldean horsemen are abroad, but she has no anxiety to escape. she is swift because her life just now courses swiftly; but there is no haste. the maid, you shall mark, picks up her skirts with careful hand, and steps out the more lustily for it. so far botticelli the poet, and so far also mr. ruskin, reader of pictures. what says botticelli the painter? had he no instincts to tell him that his art could have little to say to a legend? or that a legend might be the subject of an epic (here, indeed, was an epic ready made), might, under conditions, be the subject of a drama; but could not, under any conditions, be alone the subject of a picture? i don't for a moment suggest that he had, or that any artist ever goes to work in this double-entry, methodical way, but are we entitled to say that he was not influenced by his predilections, his determinations as a draughtsman, when he squared himself to illustrate the bible? we say that the subject of a picture is the spirit of natural fact. if botticelli was a painter, _that_ is what he must have looked for, and must have found, in every picture he painted. where, then, was he to get his natural facts in the story of judith? what is, in that story, the natural, essential (as opposed to the historical, fleeting) fact? it is murder. judith's deed was what the old scots law incisively calls _slauchter_. it may be glossed over as assassination or even execution--in fact, in florence, where giuliano was soon to be taken off, it did not fail to be so called: it remains, however, just murder. botticelli, not shirking the position at all, judged murder to be a natural fact, and its spirit or essence swiftness and stealth. chaucer, let us note, had been of the same mind: "the smyler with the knyf under his cloke," and so on, in lines not be matched for hasty and dreadful suggestion. swiftness and stealth, the ambush, the averted face and the sudden stab, are the standing elements of murder: pare off all the rest, you come down to that. your staring looks, your blood, your "chirking," are accidentals. they may be there (for each of us carries a carcase), but the horror of sudden death is above them: a man may strangle with his thoughts cleaner than with his pair of hands. and as "matter" is but the stuff wherewith nature works, and she is only insulted, not defied, when we flout or mangle it, so it is against the high dignity of art to insist upon the carrion she must use. she will press, here the terror, there the radiance, of essential fact; she will leave to us, seeing it in her face, to add mentally the poor stage properties we have grown to trust. no blood, if you please. therefore, in botticelli's _judith_, nothing but the essentials are insisted on; the rest we instantly imagine, but it is not there to be sensed. the panel is in a tremor. so swift and secret is judith, so furtive the maid, we need no hurrying horsemen to remind us of her oath,--"hear me, and i will do a thing which shall go throughout all generations to the children of our nation." sudden death in the air; nature has been outraged. but there is no drop of blood--the thin scarlet line along the sword-edge is a symbol if you will--the pale head in the cloth is a mere "thing:" yet we all know what has been done. _earthwork out of tuscany_ (london, ). the avenue of middelharnais (_hobbema_) paul lafond some small and slender trees, branchless almost to their tops, border the two sides of a road, which occupies the centre of the picture, and extend all the way to a village which closes the horizon with several masts and hulls of ships in profile against a sky where the sun is veiled; to the right, a nursery-garden of shrubs and rose-trees separated from the road by a wide ditch full of water; then, in the middle distance, the buildings of a farm; to the left, a clump of trees and another ditch, and further back the spire of a church; a huntsman, with a gun on his shoulder and preceded by his dog, is walking on the road, and two peasants--a man and a woman--have stopped to chat on the path that leads across to the farm; a horticulturist is grafting the shrubs in the nursery-garden; and this corner of a landscape has sufficed for hobbema to produce a masterpiece which the national gallery of london is justly proud to possess. this youngest of the great european museums is not the poorest and owns very considerable works of every school. [illustration: the avenue of middelharnais. _hobbema._] what is most admired in this picture of the dutch master? the firmness of touch, the brilliancy of the key, the ease and breadth of execution without the slightest sign of hesitation or alteration, or the extraordinary perfection with which the perspective is rendered? we do not know. despite the complexity of the subject, the one defect of which may be a slight lack of unity in the composition, the general effect of the picture is simple and powerful, and the gradation of colour harmonious and correct. it would be impossible to go any farther than this artist has done in the interpretation of this tranquil dutch landscape. the deep values of the trees, the yellowish greys of the road, and the sluggish water of the ditches, together with the blue sky flecked with little grey and white clouds produce an ensemble of absolute calm. the little figures which give life to this canvas are so fine and delicate in execution that they leave nothing to be desired. here, as very rarely happens, the multiplication of details does not spoil the effect of the whole. this is a picture absolutely without a peer, and a page by itself in hobbema's work. this is true in every sense, even in the choice of subject; for most frequently the painter borrows the motives for his pictures from a different phase of nature. ordinarily he interprets forest-clearings; the skirts of a wood with poor huts hidden by great trees; calm and fresh pools; and streams feeding humble mills. witness the one in the louvre for which he showed so great a predilection and which he reproduced under so many varied aspects. but whatever may be the subject he treats, he always remains the happy interpreter of the calm scenery of his own country of low and drowned horizons; the painter attracted by the light which with him envelops everything it approaches--trees, cottages, ground, waters, and distances bathed in delicious depths. nature, gentle and friendly to man, which he saw with a simplicity and a clearness approached by no other painter, attracted and charmed him above all else, in contrast to his contemporary and friend, j. ruysdael, who, led away by heart-breaking melancholy, would never see any side of her but the energetic and lugubrious, the sad and troubled. in his forests, on the banks of his ponds and rivers, in the neighbourhood of his huts and mills, hobbema wants to have company; so he has sown his landscapes with figures, and they are constantly animated with people and animals. are these figures always his own? it would be imprudent to affirm this, although they harmonize in most cases so marvellously with the rest of the picture, and it would therefore seem difficult for them to be by another hand. however, if we must defer to his historian, von wurzbach, they are very frequently the work of nicholaas berghem, adriaen van de velde, lingelbach, philip wouwerman, isack van ostade, pijnacker, etc., which would prove, at least, that he knew how to select his collaborators. the painter of the _avenue of middelharnais_ in the national gallery, of the _mill_ in our louvre, and of many other masterpieces was yet unknown, or rather despised, not very long ago, and it is quite recently that his name has emerged from the unjust neglect in which it was buried. this great name of hobbema had fallen into such discredit that when one of his pictures fell by chance into the hands of an amateur or merchant the signature would be effaced as quickly as possible and replaced by that of j. ruysdael, the sole painter worthy of entering into competition with him. who then is this meindert hobbema? where was he born? where did he live? what was his life? alas, we know very little concerning this impeccable master, one of the greatest glories of dutch painting. the principal historians of the netherland school are ignorant of him or pass him by in silence. houbraken, descamps, and d'argenville are dumb regarding him. those who, by chance, treat of him, commit so many errors that it is best to take no account of their words. three cities, amsterdam, koeverden, and a village, middelharnais, in the province of guelder, which he has made famous by the marvellous picture, the subject of our notice, dispute the honour of being his birthplace. but, it seems, although nothing can be affirmed with certainty, that he first saw the light in amsterdam in . he was the son of a sergeant in the netherland army and spent his early life in koeverden, where he was baptized and where his father was in garrison. at a later period he established himself in amsterdam, where he became the pupil and soon the comrade and friend of j. ruysdael, who served as witness to his marriage with eeltie vinck, celebrated in this same city, oct. , . from that time he scarcely ever left amsterdam, where he died, dec. , , five years after his wife, in the sad roosegraft, which had seen rembrandt expire thirty years before. he was sixty-seven years of age. have we any need to add that, like rembrandt, the painter of painters, he died poor? that is all we know of meindert hobbema. it is little enough, but quite sufficient. have we not the man complete in his work? what more could we wish? jouin, _chefs-d'oeuvre: peinture, sculpture, architecture_ (paris, - ). the dance of the daughter of herodias (_andrea del sarto_) algernon charles swinburne with the majestic and tragic things of art we began, at the landmarks set by leonardo and michael angelo; and are come now, not quite at random, to the lyric and elegiac loveliness of andrea del sarto. to praise him would need sweeter and purer speech than this of ours. his art is to me as the tuscan april in its temperate days, fresh and tender and clear, but lulled and kindled by such air and light as fills the life of the growing year with fire. at florence only can one trace and tell how great a painter and how various he was. there only, but surely there, can the influence and pressure of the things of time on his immortal spirit be understood; how much of him was killed or changed, how much of him could not be. there are the first-fruits of his flowering manhood, when the bright and buoyant genius in him had free play and large delight in its handiwork; when the fresh interest of invention was still his, and the dramatic sense, the pleasure in the play of life, the power of motion and variety; before the old strength of sight and of flight had passed from weary wing and clouding eye, the old pride and energy of enjoyment had gone out of hand and heart. how the change fell upon him, and how it wrought, any one may see who compares his later with his earlier works, with the series, for instance, of outlines representing the story of st. john baptist in the desolate little cloister of lo scalzo. in these mural designs there is such exultation and exuberance of young power, of fresh passion and imagination, that only by the innate grace can one recognize the hand of the master whom hitherto we know by the works of his after life, when the gift of grace had survived the gift of invention. this and all other gifts it did survive; all pleasure of life and power of mind, all the conscience of the man, his will, his character, his troubles, his triumphs, his sin and honour, heart-break and shame. all these his charm of touch, his sweetness of execution, his "elysian beauty, melancholy grace," outlived, and blossomed in their dust. turn from that cloistral series to those later pictures, painted when he was "faultless" and nothing more; and seeing all the growth and all the gain, all the change and all the loss, one to whom the second was unknown would feel and foreknow his story and his sorrow. in the cloister, what life and fullness of growing and strengthening genius, what joyous sense of its growth and the fair field before it, what dramatic delight in character and action! where st. john preaches in the wilderness and the few first listeners are gathered together at his feet, old people and poor, soul-stricken, silent--women with worn still faces, and a spirit in their tired aged eyes that feeds heartily and hungrily on his words--all the haggard funereal group filled from the fountain of his faith with gradual fire and white-heat of soul; or where salome dances before herod, an incarnate figure of music, grave and graceful, light and glad, the song of a bird made flesh, with perfect poise of her sweet slight body from the maiden face to the melodious feet; no tyrannous or treacherous goddess of deadly beauty, but a simple virgin, with the cold charm of girlhood and the mobile charm of childhood; as indifferent and innocent when she stands before herodias and when she receives the severed head of john with her slender and steady hands; a pure bright animal, knowing nothing of man, and of life nothing but instinct and motion. in her mother's mature and conscious beauty there is visible the voluptuous will of a harlot and a queen; but, for herself, she has neither malice nor pity; her beauty is a maiden force of nature, capable of bloodshed without bloodguiltiness; the king hangs upon the music of her movement, the rhythm of leaping life in her fair fleet limbs, as one who listens to a tune, subdued by the rapture of sound, absorbed in purity of passion. i know not where the subject has been touched with such fine and keen imagination as here. the time came when another than salome was to dance before the eyes of the painter; and she required of him the head of no man, but his own soul; and he paid the forfeit into her hands. with the coming of that time upon him came the change upon his heart and hand; "the work of an imperious whorish woman." those words, set by the prophet as a brand upon the fallen forehead of the chosen bride, come back to mind as one studies in her husband's pictures the full calm lineaments, the large and serene beauty of lucrezia del fede; a predominant and placid beauty, placid and implacable, not to be pleaded with or fought against. voluptuous always and slothful, subtle at times no doubt and sweet beyond measure, full of heavy beauty and warm, slow grace, her features bear no sign of possible love or conscience. seen side by side with his clear sad face, hers tells more of the story than any written record, even though two poets of our age have taken it up. in the feverish and feeble melodrama of alfred de musset there is no touch of tragedy, hardly a shadow of passionate and piteous truth; in mr. browning's noblest poem--his noblest it seems to me--the whole tragedy is distilled into the right words, the whole man raised up and reclothed with flesh. one point only is but lightly touched upon--missed it could not be by an eye so sharp and skilful--the effect upon his art of the poisonous solvent of love. how his life was corroded by it and his soul burnt into dead ashes, we are shown in full; but we are not shown in full what as a painter he was before, what as a painter he might have been without it. this is what i think the works of his youth and age, seen near together as at florence, make manifest to any loving and studious eye. in those later works, the inevitable and fatal figure of the woman recurs with little diversity or change. she has grown into his art, and made it even as herself; rich, monotonous in beauty, calm, complete, without heart or spirit. but his has not been always "the low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand" it was then. he had started on his way towards another goal than that. nothing now is left him to live for but his faultless hand and her faultless face--still and full, suggestive of no change in the steady deep-lidded eyes and heavy lovely lips without love or pudency or pity. here among his sketches we find it again and ever the same, crowned and clothed only with the glory and the joy and the majesty of the flesh. when the luxurious and subtle sense which serves the woman for a soul looks forth and speaks plainest from those eyes and lips, she is sovereign and stately still; there is in her beauty nothing common or unclean. we cannot but see her for what she is; but her majestic face makes no appeal for homage or forgiveness. _essays and studies_ (london, ). [illustration: the dance of the daughter of herodias. _andrea del sarto._] adoration of the magi (_gentile da fabriano_) f.a. gruyer at the beginning of the fifteenth century, gentile da fabriano[ ] painted an _adoration of the magi_,[ ] in which the faithful representation of contemporary scenes is again found. the virgin, completely enveloped in a large blue cloak, is seated in front of the stable, with her head piously inclined towards her son whom she is regarding with tender gaze. st. joseph is at her side and behind her are two young women who are holding and admiring the gifts offered to the saviour. the infant jesus has laid his hand on the head of the oldest of the magi, who, prostrated, kisses his feet with devotion. the two other kings are much younger than the first one. they are presenting their offerings to the son of god, and are about to lay their crowns before him. then follows the retinue of these magi; and in this throng, where may be counted at least seventy figures on foot and on horseback, of all ranks, of all ages, and of all sizes, it is easy to recognize a trace of those popular festivals instituted in the preceding century. despite some slight oriental disguises, one may easily recognize the bearing, the general features, and the costumes of the italy of the first years of the fifteenth century. gentile was also pleased to add to the "superb chargers" mentioned by lattuda, all kinds of animals, especially the apes that the milanese loved to include in their pompous processions. finally, in the background of this picture he has painted the embattled walls of a guelph city with two massive gates; the one through which the magi have entered, the other through which they will take their departure. is there anything here, either in the foreground or the background that suggests jerusalem? do you not notice rather a resemblance to the fortifications of milan, with the porta romana and the porta san-lorenzo? [illustration: adoration of the magi. _fabriano_.] after having painted the frescoes of the cathedral of orvieto, gentile lived for a long time in the north of italy, particularly in venice. it is very likely that while there, closer to the orient and more especially nearer to milan, he painted his _adoration of the magi_. we may then certainly consider this as a faithful portrayal of one of those public ceremonials, which without doubt he had witnessed, and in which he had most likely participated. only, ignoring the passions and violence of the period, he left everywhere in this painting the imprint of his own gentle and tender nature. we know that michael angelo remarked of gentile that his name was in perfect harmony with the tone of his works. none of them can more thoroughly convince us of the justice of this observation than this picture. from the virgin herself to the most humble of the servants of the magi, and indeed even to the animals, that beautiful soul which had for its servant a talent replete with delicacy and suavity may be traced.[ ] _les vierges de raphaël_ (paris, ). footnotes: [ ] one of the founders of the roman school. [ ] this painting is in the gallery of the accademia delle belle arti, florence. at its base on one side one may read: opvs: gentilis, de: fabriano; and on the other side: mcccc.x.x.iii: mensis: maii. [ ] in a predella below this picture may be seen _the adoration of the shepherds_ and _the flight into egypt_. gentile da fabriano also painted an _adoration of the magi_ at san-domenico, perugia. this second picture is of less value than the one at the accademia delle belle arti in florence. portrait of georg gisze (_holbein_) antony valabrÈgue when holbein returned to london towards the end of , leaving basle, where he had worked for nearly three years, he found himself immediately occupied with several portraits of the merchants of the hanseatic league. during his first sojourn in england, he had painted the chancellor, sir thomas more, his protector and friend, and he had traced the features of several members of the aristocracy. on his return, circumstances for his gaining access to the court were less favourable. henry viii. was obeying his own good pleasure and satisfying all his caprices, and the chancellor was holding aloof, and could not exert his influence. holbein did not now possess the title of painter to the king, consequently he had to consider himself happy in obtaining the favour of his compatriots. the german merchants had formed themselves into a powerful association; they found themselves united in a kind of city, which went by the name of stahlhof. there they had their guildhall, their bourse, the place where their affairs were managed and which contained their stores of merchandise, and their counting-houses. it was a separate quarter, where each one could also have his own dwelling. the company was opulent; the industry of the members of the hanseatic league was chiefly in iron and the precious metals; among them were armourers, watch-makers, and goldsmiths. in the stahlhof, called in english the steelyard, and which the founders themselves had designated the palace of steel, was to be noted a certain opulence and pursuit of comfort which is to be found in all ages. after having finished their business, the merchants formed a social circle of their own. they had a festival-hall of their own, and they could walk about in spacious gardens which extended along the banks of the thames. among these representatives of high finance a painter might find a choice _clientèle_ that would never care about the price of an order. we know that holbein painted the portraits of many of these rich merchants, for to-day we find these canvases, whose authenticity has been established, in museums and important collections. we may therefore suppose that the german merchants appreciated holbein at his true value; doubtless they disputed the honour of having their features reproduced by a master of such remarkable talent. the portrait of georg gisze, which is before our readers, is certainly the finest work of this series. when we saw this masterly work in the museum of berlin, to which it belongs, it left an indelible impression upon us which we still feel at this distance. it is incontestably a masterpiece from every point of view; in the gallery there is but one other picture of the same kind which may be compared to it, a painting which suggests a parallel in a single detail,--_the man with the pinks_, by van eyck. [illustration: portrait of georg gisze. _holbein._] holbein has represented georg gisze in his mercantile office, at a table, holding a letter which he is about to open, and surrounded by small objects, articles for which he has use in his business and in his every-day life. this man appears before us in a marvellous pose, among these material surroundings and in this professional scene. observe his calm attitude and his almost placid physiognomy: we notice, however, the firm and decided air of a wealthy and elegant merchant. and, at the same time, we are sure that the type represented here is not of sudden growth: everything about him reveals intelligence. georg gisze is young; the painter has told us his name and his age in an inscription on the wall: he is thirty-four. we do not lack information about him. we like him under that air of youthful seriousness; we see upon his face that dawning gravity in which the blossom of feeling already exists, but its plenitude and maturity are still to come. and in attentively examining our personage we are struck with his reflective and searching glance. we seem to have a glimpse in him of an undefined melancholy. this expression surprises us in this man, who ought to be happy at living and who lacks no pleasures that fortune can procure. this is a state of mind which is indicated to us, moreover, by a motto traced above his name on one of the walls of his office: _nulla sine mærore voluptas_. why this thought? is it purely emblematic, or does it contain an allusion to some private matter? we are led to believe that it is intended as a complementary explanation, that it was placed upon the picture because it was in sympathy with a train of ideas special to the model. perhaps it recalls some domestic sorrow, the lively grief left by an absent one, or by some eternal separation. a moral mystery, which seems to us very attractive, hovers around georg gisze. he has long fair hair confined beneath a black cap; his smooth-shaven face is rather thin. he wears a rich costume, a pourpoint of cerise silk with puffed sleeves, and, over this pourpoint, a cloak of black wool lined with fur. the table on which he is leaning is covered with a persian rug, and, beside the various objects scattered upon it, you notice a bunch of carnations in an artistically wrought venetian glass. these carnations, like the motto, awake in us an image, a poetical reminiscence. sentiment, germanic in its essence, mingled with dreams and vague ideals, is introduced into this merchant's office. the master has fully displayed with supreme power, and with all the resources of his art, the colours of the costume, the paleness of the face, and the freshness of the flesh standing out from the background of green panels. he has played with all the various tones of the accessories, book and registers, inkstand, watch, and scales for weighing the gold. every detail, with no link missing, contributes to form the perfect harmony of the whole. we cannot too greatly admire the singular clearness and extraordinary precision with which the artist has placed in relief every detail that can make a figure live and render a work essentially eloquent.[ ] people have tried to make out that georg gisze was a merchant of basle. he would then have been of the race connected most closely with the master's life. this opinion has been discussed by woltmann, holbein's historian. the superscriptions on the sufficiently numerous letters, which are reproduced in this painting, must be especially noticed; they are written in an ancient dialect which seems rather to be that of central germany.[ ] jouin, _chefs-d'oeuvre: peinture, sculpture, architecture_ (paris, - ). footnotes: [ ] in one corner of the picture is found this inscription with its latin distich: imaginem georgii gysenii ista refert vultus, quâ cernis imago georgi sic oculos vivos, sic habet ille genas. anno ætatis suæ xxxiii. anno dom. . [ ] we read on one of these letters: _dem erszamen jergen gisze to lunden in engelant, mynem broder to handen._ paradise (_tintoret_) john ruskin the chief reason why we all know the _last judgment_ of michael angelo, and not the _paradise_ of tintoret, is the same love of sensation which makes us read the _inferno_ of dante, and not his _paradise_; and the choice, believe me, is our fault, not his; some farther evil influence is due to the fact that michael angelo had invested all his figures with picturesque and palpable elements of effect, while tintoret has only made them lovely in themselves and has been content that they should deserve, not demand, your attention. you are accustomed to think the figures of michael angelo sublime--because they are dark, and colossal, and involved, and mysterious--because, in a word, they look sometimes like shadows, and sometimes like mountains, and sometimes like spectres, but never like human beings. believe me, yet once more, in what i told you long since--man can invent nothing nobler than humanity. he cannot raise his form into anything better than god made it, by giving it either the flight of birds or strength of beasts, by enveloping it in mist, or heaping it into multitude. your pilgrim must look like a pilgrim in a straw hat, or you will not make him into one with cockle and nimbus; an angel must look like an angel on the ground, as well as in the air; and the much-denounced pre-raphaelite faith that a saint cannot look saintly unless he has thin legs, is not more absurd than michael angelo's, that a sibyl cannot look sibylline unless she has thick ones. [illustration: paradise. _tintoret._] all that shadowing, storming, and coiling of his, when you look into it, is mere stage decoration, and that of a vulgar kind. light is, in reality, more awful than darkness--modesty more majestic than strength; and there is truer sublimity in the sweet joy of a child, or the sweet virtue of a maiden, than in the strength of antæus, or thunder-clouds of Ætna. now, though in nearly all his greater pictures, tintoret is entirely carried away by his sympathy with michael angelo, and conquers him in his own field;--outflies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, outwits him in fancy, and outflames him in rage,--he can be just as gentle as he is strong: and that _paradise_, though it is the largest picture in the world, without any question, is also the thoughtfullest, and most precious. the thoughtfullest!--it would be saying but little, as far as michael angelo is concerned. for consider it of yourselves. you have heard, from your youth up (and all educated persons have heard for three centuries), of this _last judgment_ of his, as the most sublime picture in existence. the subject of it is one which should certainly be interesting to you in one of two ways. if you never expect to be judged for any of your own doings, and the tradition of the coming of christ is to you as an idle tale--still, think what a wonderful tale it would be, were it well told. you are at liberty, disbelieving it, to range the fields--elysian and tartarean, of all imagination. you may play with it, since it is false; and what a play would it not be, well written? do you think the tragedy, or the miracle play, or the infinitely divina commedia of the judgment of the astonished living who were dead;--the undeceiving of the sight of every human soul, understanding in an instant all the shallow and depth of past life and future,--face to face with both,--and with god:--this apocalypse to all intellect, and completion to all passion, this minute and individual drama of the perfected history of separate spirits, and of their finally accomplished affections!--think you, i say, all this was well told by mere heaps of dark bodies curled and convulsed in space, and fall as of a crowd from a scaffolding, in writhed concretions of muscular pain? but take it the other way. suppose you believe, be it never so dimly or feebly, in some kind of judgment that is to be;--that you admit even the faint contingency of retribution, and can imagine, with vivacity enough to fear, that in this life, at all events, if not in another--there may be for you a visitation of god, and a questioning--what hast thou done? the picture, if it is a good one, should have a deeper interest, surely on _this_ postulate? thrilling enough, as a mere imagination of what is never to be--now, as a conjecture of what _is_ to be, held the best that in eighteen centuries of christianity has for men's eyes been made;--think of it so! and then, tell me, whether you yourselves, or any one you have known, did ever at any time receive from this picture any, the smallest vital thought, warning, quickening, or help? it may have appalled, or impressed you for a time, as a thunder-cloud might: but has it ever taught you anything--chastised in you anything--confirmed a purpose--fortified a resistance--purified a passion? i know that for you, it has done none of these things; and i know also that, for others, it has done very different things. in every vain and proud designer who has since lived, that dark carnality of michael angelo's has fostered insolent science, and fleshly imagination. daubers and blockheads think themselves painters, and are received by the public as such, if they know how to foreshorten bones and decipher entrails; and men with capacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) into petty felicities and innocencies of genre painting--landscapes, cattle, family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like; or else, if they have the full sensuous art-faculty that would have made true painters of them, being taught from their youth up, to look for and learn the body instead of the spirit, have learned it and taught it to such purpose, that at this hour, when i speak to you, the rooms of the royal academy of england, receiving also what of best can be sent there by the masters of france, contain _not one_ picture honourable to the arts of their age; and contain many which are shameful in their record of its manners. of that, hereafter. i will close to-day by giving you some brief account of the scheme of tintoret's _paradise_, in justification that it is the thoughtfullest as well as mightiest picture in the world. in the highest centre is christ, leaning on the globe of the earth, which is of dark crystal. christ is crowned with a glory as of the sun, and all the picture is lighted by that glory, descending through circle beneath circle of cloud, and of flying or throned spirits. the madonna, beneath christ, and at some interval from him, kneels to him. she is crowned with the seven stars, and kneels on a cloud of angels, whose wings change into ruby fire where they are near her. the three great archangels, meeting from three sides, fly towards christ. michael delivers up his scales and sword. he is followed by the thrones and principalities of the earth; so inscribed--throni--principatus. the spirits of the thrones bear scales in their hands; and of the princedoms, shining globes: beneath the wings of the last of these are the four great teachers and lawgivers, st. ambrose, st. jerome, st. gregory, st. augustine, and behind st. augustine stands his mother, watching him, her chief joy in paradise. under the thrones are set the apostles, st. paul separated a little from the rest, and put lowest, yet principal; under st. paul, is st. christopher, bearing a massive globe, with a cross upon it: but to mark him as the christ-bearer, since here in paradise he cannot have the child on his shoulders, tintoret has thrown on the globe a flashing stellar reflection of the sun round the head of christ. all this side of the picture is kept in glowing colour--the four doctors of the church have golden mitres and mantles; except the cardinal, st. jerome, who is in burning scarlet, his naked breast glowing, warm with noble life,--the darker red of his robe relieved against a white glory. opposite to michael, gabriel flies towards the madonna, having in his hand the annunciation lily, large and triple-blossomed. above him, and above michael equally, extends a cloud of white angels, inscribed "serafini;" but the group following gabriel, and corresponding to the throni following michael, is inscribed "cherubini." under these are the great prophets, and singers, and foretellers of the happiness or of the sorrow of time. david, and solomon, and isaiah, and amos of the herdsmen. david has a colossal golden psaltery laid horizontally across his knees;--two angels behind him dictate to him as he sings, looking up towards christ; but one strong angel sweeps down to solomon from among the cherubs, and opens a book, resting it on the head of solomon, who looks down earnestly, unconscious of it;--to the left of david, separate from the group of prophets, as paul from the apostles, is moses, dark-robed;--in the full light, withdrawn far behind him, abraham, embracing isaac with his left arm, and near him, pale st. agnes. in front, nearer, dark and colossal, stands the glorious figure of santa giustina of padua; then a little subordinate to her, st. catharine, and, far on the left, and high, saint barbara leaning on her tower. in front, nearer, flies raphael; and under him is the four-square group of the evangelists. beneath them, on the left, noah; on the right, adam and eve, both floating unsupported by cloud or angel; noah buoyed by the ark, which he holds above him, and it is _this_ into which solomon gazes down, so earnestly. eve's face is, perhaps, the most beautiful ever painted by tintoret--full in light, but dark-eyed. adam floats beside her, his figure fading into a winged gloom, edged in the outline of fig-leaves. far down, under these, central in the lowest part of the picture, rises the angel of the sea, praying for venice; for tintoret conceives his paradise as existing now, not as in the future. i at first mistook this soft angel of the sea for magdalene, for he is sustained by other three angels on either side, as the magdalen is, in designs of earlier time, because of the verse, "there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth." but the magdalen is on the right, behind st. monica; and on the same side, but lowest of all, rachel, among the angels of her children gathered now again to her for ever. i have no hesitation in asserting this picture to be by far the most precious work of art of any kind whatsoever, now existing in the world; and it is, i believe, on the eve of final destruction; for it is said that the angle of the great council-chamber is soon to be rebuilt; and that process will involve the destruction of the picture by removal, and, far more, by repainting. i had thought of making some effort to save it by an appeal in london to persons generally interested in the arts; but the recent desolation of paris has familiarized us with destruction, and i have no doubt the answer to me would be, that venice must take care of her own. but remember, at least, that i have borne witness to you to-day of the treasures that we forget, while we amuse ourselves with the poor toys, and the petty, or vile, arts, of our own time. the years of that time have perhaps come, when we are to be taught to look no more to the dreams of painters, either for knowledge of judgment, or of paradise. the anger of heaven will not longer, i think, be mocked for our amusement; and perhaps its love may not always be despised by our pride. believe me, all the arts, and all the treasures of men, are fulfilled and preserved to them only, so far as they have chosen first, with their hearts, not the curse of god, but his blessing. our earth is now encumbered with ruin, our heaven is clouded by death. may we not wisely judge ourselves in some things now, instead of amusing ourselves with the painting of judgments to come? _the relation between michael angelo and tintoret_ (london, ). aurora (_guido reni_) charlotte a. eaton on the roof of the summer-house of the palazzo rospigliosi, is painted the celebrated fresco of guido's _aurora_. its colouring is clear, harmonious, airy, brilliant--unfaded by time; and the enthusiastic admirer of guido's genius may be permitted to hope that this, his noblest work, will be immortal as his fame. [illustration: aurora. _guido reni_.] morghen's fine engraving may give you some idea of the design and composition of this beautiful painting; but it cannot convey the soft harmony of the tints, the living touches, the brilliant forms, the realized dream of the imagination, that bursts, with all its magic, upon your enraptured sight in the matchless original. it is embodied poetry. the hours, that hand-in-hand encircle the car of phoebus, advance with rapid pace. the paler, milder forms of those gentler sisters who rule over declining day, and the glowing glance of those who bask in the meridian blaze, resplendent in the hues of heaven,--are of no mortal grace and beauty; but they are eclipsed by aurora herself, who sails on the golden clouds before them, shedding "showers of shadowing roses" on the rejoicing earth; her celestial presence diffusing gladness, and light, and beauty around. above the heads of the heavenly coursers, hovers the morning star, in the form of a youthful cherub, bearing his flaming torch. nothing is more admirable in this beautiful composition, than the motion given to the whole. the smooth and rapid step of the circling hours as they tread on the fleecy clouds; the fiery steeds; the whirling wheels of the car; the torch of lucifer, blown back by the velocity of his advance; and the form of aurora, borne through the ambient air, till you almost fear she should float from your sight; all realize the illusion. you seem admitted into the world of fancy, and revel in its brightest creations. in the midst of such youth and loveliness, the dusky figure of phoebus appears to great disadvantage. it is not happily conceived. yet his air is noble and godlike, and his free commanding action, and conscious ease, as he carelessly guides, with one hand, the fiery steeds that are harnessed to his flaming car, may, perhaps, compensate in some degree for his want of beauty; for he certainly is not handsome; and i looked in vain for the youthful majesty of the god of day, and thought on apollo belvedere. had guido thought of it too, he never could have made this head, which is, i think, the great and only defect of this exquisite painting; and what makes it of more importance, is, that apollo, not aurora, is the principal figure--the first that catches the eye, and which, in spite of our dissatisfaction, we are to the last obliged to contemplate. the defects of his apollo are a new proof of what i have very frequently observed, that guido succeeded far better in feminine than in masculine beauty. his female forms, in their loveliness, their delicacy, their grace and sweetness are faultless; and the beauty and innocence of his infants have seldom been equalled; but he rarely gave to manly beauty and vigour a character that was noble. from the _aurora_ of guido, we must turn to the rival _aurora_ of guercino, in the villa ludovisi. in spite of guido's bad head of apollo, and in spite of guercino's magic chiaroscuro, i confess myself disposed to give the preference to guido. in the first place, there is not the same unity of composition in guercino's. it is very fine in all its parts; but still it _is_ in parts. it is not so fine a _whole_, nor is it so perfect a composition, nor has it the same charm as guido's. neither is there the same ideal beauty in the aurora. guercino's is a mortal--guido's a truly ethereal being. guercino's aurora is in her car, drawn by two heavenly steeds, and the shades of night seem to dissipate at her approach. old tithonus, whom she has left behind her seems half awake; and the morning star, under the figure of a winged genius bearing his kindled torch, follows her course. in a separate compartment, night, in the form of a woman, is sitting musing, or slumbering, over a book. she has much of the character of a sibyl. her dark cave is broken open, and the blue sky and the coming light break beautifully in upon her and her companions, the sullen owl and flapping bat, which shrink from its unwelcome ray. the hours are represented under the figure of children, fluttering about before the goddess, and extinguishing the stars of night--a beautiful idea; but one, perhaps, better adapted to poetry than painting. the hours of guercino are, however, infinitely less poetic and less beautiful than the bright female forms which encircle the car of day in guido's _aurora_. yet it is a masterpiece of painting; and but for the _aurora_ of guido, we could have conceived nothing beyond the _aurora_ of guercino. _rome in the nineteenth century_ ( th edition, london, ). aurora (_guido reni_) john constable although no distinct landscape is known by the hand of guido, yet in a history of this particular branch it may not be improper to notice its immense importance as an accessory in his picture of _aurora_. it is the finest instance i know of the beauty of natural landscape brought to aid a mythological story, and to be sensible of its value we have only to imagine a plain background in its stead. but though guido has placed us in the heavens, we are looking towards the earth, where seas and mountain-tops are receiving the first beams of the morning sun. the chariot of apollo is borne on the clouds, attended by the hours and preceded by aurora, who scatters flowers, and the landscape, instead of diminishing the illusion, is the chief means of producing it, and is indeed most essential to the story. leslie, _life and letters of john constable, r.a._ (london, new ed., ). the assumption of the virgin (_titian_) thÉophile gautier the pearl of the museum at madrid is a raphael; that of venice is a titian, a marvellous canvas, forgotten and afterwards recovered, which has its legend also. for many long years venice possessed this masterpiece without knowing it. relegated to an old and seldom frequented church it had disappeared under a slow coating of dust and behind a network of spider-webs. the subject could scarcely be made out. one day, count cicognora, a great connoisseur, noticing that these rusty figures had a certain air, and scenting the master under this livery of neglect and misery, wetted his finger and rubbed the canvas, an action which is not one of exquisite propriety, but which an expert on pictures cannot help doing when he is face to face with a dirty canvas, be he twenty times a count and a thousand times a dandy. the noble picture, preserved intact under this layer of dust, like pompeii under its mantle of ashes, appeared so young and fresh that the count never doubted but that he had discovered the canvas of a great master, an unknown _chef-d'oeuvre_. he had the strength of mind to control his excitement, and proposed to the _curé_ to exchange this great dilapidated painting for a beautiful picture, quite new, perfectly clean, very brilliant, and well framed, which would do honour to the church and give pleasure to the faithful. the _curé_ joyfully accepted it, smiling to himself at the eccentricity of the count, who gave new for old and demanded nothing in return. when relieved of its dirt and stains, titian's _assunta_ appeared radiant as the sun when it bursts through the clouds. parisian readers may form an idea of the importance of this discovery by going to see the beautiful copy, recently made by serrur and placed in the beaux arts. the _assunta_ is one of titian's greatest works, the one in which he attains his highest flight: the composition is balanced and distributed with infinite art. the upper portion, which is arched, represents paradise, glory, as the spanish say in their ascetic language: garlands of angels floating and submerged in a wave of light of uncalculable depth, stars scintillating in the flame, and brighter glints of the everlasting light form the aureole of the father, who arrives from the depths of the infinite with the action of a hovering eagle, accompanied by an archangel and a seraph whose hands support the crown and the nimbus. this jehovah, like a divine bird appearing head-foremost and with body horizontally foreshortened beneath a wave of drapery flying open like wings, astonishes us by its sublime boldness; if it is possible for the brush of a human being to give a countenance to divinity, certainly titian has succeeded. unlimited power and imperishable youth radiate from that white-bearded face that need only nod for the snows of eternity to fall: not since the olympian jove of phidias has the lord of heaven and earth been represented more worthily. [illustration: the assumption of the virgin. _titian._] the centre of the picture is occupied by the virgin mary, who is lifted up, or rather who is surrounded by a wreath of angels and souls of the blessed: for she has no need of any aid to mount to heaven; she rises by the springing upward of her robust faith, by the purity of her soul, which is lighter than the most luminous ether. truly there is in this figure an unheard-of force of ascension, and in order to obtain this effect titian has not had recourse to slender forms, diaphanous draperies, and transparent colours. his madonna is a very true, very living, and very real woman, with a beauty as solid as that of the venus de milo, or the sleeping woman in the tribune of florence. large, full drapery flows about her in numerous folds; her flanks are wide enough to have contained a god, and, if she was not on a cloud, the marquis du guast might have put his hand on her beautiful bosom, as in the picture in our museum. yet nothing is of more celestial beauty than this great and strong figure in its rose-coloured tunic and azure mantle; notwithstanding the powerful voluptuousness of the body, the radiant glance is of the purest virginity. at the base of the picture, the apostles are grouped in happily-contrasted attitudes of rapture and surprise. two or three little angels, who link them to the intermediary zone of the composition, seem to be explaining to them the miracle that is taking place. the heads of the apostles, who are of various ages and characters, are painted with a surprising force of vitality and reality. the draperies are of that fullness and abundant flow that characterize titian as the richest and at the same time the simplest of all painters. in studying this virgin and mentally comparing her with other virgins of different masters, we reflected what a marvellous and ever new thing is art. what catholic painting has embroidered with variations upon this theme of the madonna, without ever exhausting it, astonishes and confuses the imagination; but, in reflecting, we comprehend that under the conventional type each painter conveyed secretly, at the same time, his dream of love and the personification of his talent. the madonna of albrecht dürer in her sad and somewhat constrained gracefulness, with her tired features, interesting rather than beautiful, her air of a matron rather than a virgin, her german and _bourgeoise_ frankness, her tight garments and her symmetrically broken folds, almost always accompanied by a rabbit, an owl, or an ape, through some vague memory of germanic pantheism, may she not be the woman whom he would have loved and preferred to all others, and does she not also exceedingly well represent the very genius of the artist? as she is his madonna, she might easily be his muse. the same resemblance exists in raphael. the type of his madonna, in whom, mingled with old memories, the features of the fornarina are always found, sometimes suggested, sometimes copied, most frequently idealized, is she not the most perfect symbol of his talent,--elegant, graceful, and penetrated throughout with a chaste voluptuousness? the christian nourished on plato and greek art, the friend of leo x., the dilettante pope, the artist who died of love while painting the _transfiguration_, did he not live entirely in these modest venuses holding on their knees a child who is love? if we wished to symbolize the genius of every painter in an allegorical picture, would it be any other than the angel of urbino? the virgin of the _assunta_, big, strong, highly-coloured, with her robust and beautiful grace, her fine bearing, and her simple and natural beauty,--is she not titian's painting with all its qualities? we might carry our researches still further; but we have said enough as a suggestion. thanks to the dusty shroud which covered it for so long, the _assunta_ glows with a quite youthful brilliancy; the centuries have not elapsed for it, and we enjoy the supreme pleasure of seeing a picture of titian's just it came fresh from the palette. _voyage en italie_ (new ed., paris, ). the night watch (_rembrandt_) eugÈne fromentin we know how the _night watch_ is hung. it faces the _banquet of arquebusiers_ by van der helst, and, no matter what has been said, the two pictures do not hurt each other. they oppose each other like day and night, like the transfiguration of things and their literal imitation, slightly vulgar and clever. admit that they are as perfect as they are celebrated and you will have before your eyes a unique antithesis, what la bruyère calls "opposition truths that illuminate one another." i shall not astonish anyone in saying that the _night watch_ possesses no charm, and the fact is without example among the fine works of pictorial art. it is amazing, it is disconcerting, it is imposing, but it absolutely lacks that insinuating quality that convinces us, and it almost always fails to please us at first. in the first place, it shocks our logical sense and that habitual visual rectitude that loves clear forms, lucid ideas, and clearly formulated boldness; something warns us that our imagination as well as our reason will be only half satisfied and that even the mind that is most easily won over will not submit till the last and will not surrender without dispute. this is due to various causes that do not all arise from the picture,--the light is detestable; the frame of dark wood in which the painting is drowned spoils its middle values, and its bronze scale of colour, and its force, and makes it look much more smoked than it is; and, lastly and above all, the exigencies of the place prevent the picture from being hung at the proper height, and, against all the laws of the most elementary perspective, oblige you to look at it from the same level. [illustration: the night watch. _rembrandt._] you are aware that the _night watch_, rightly or wrongly, passes for an almost incomprehensible work, and that constitutes its chief prestige. perhaps it would have made far less noise in the world, if for two centuries people had not kept up the habit of trying to find out its meaning instead of examining its merits, and persisted in the mania of regarding it as a picture enigmatical above all. taking it literally, what we know of the subject seems to me sufficient. in the first place, we know the names and quality of the personages, thanks to the care with which the painter has inscribed them on a plate at the bottom of the picture; which proves that if the painter's fancy has transfigured many things, the chief idea at least deals with the customs of local life. it is true that we cannot tell for what purpose these men are going out armed, whether they are going to practise shooting, or on parade, or what; but, as there is no matter here for the deeper mysteries, i am persuaded that if rembrandt has failed to be more explicit it is because either he did not wish or he did not know how to be, and there is a whole series of hypotheses that might be very simply explained by some such matter as inability or intentional reticence. as for the time of day (the most vexed question of all and the only one, moreover, that could have been settled when first it arose), for fixing that we have no need to discover that the captain's outstretched arm casts a shadow upon the skirt of his coat. it suffices to remember that rembrandt never treated light otherwise; that nocturnal obscurity is his habit; that shadow is the ordinary form of his poetic feeling and his usual means of dramatic expression; and that in his portraits, in his interiors, in his legends, in his anecdotes, in his landscapes, and in his etchings, as in his paintings, it is generally with night that he makes day. it is agreed that the composition does not constitute the principal merit of the picture. the subject had not been selected by the painter, and the manner in which he intended to treat it did not allow of its first sketch being very spontaneous, nor very lucid. therefore the scene is indecisive, the action almost null, and, consequently, the interest is greatly divided. from the very beginning is betrayed an inherent vice in the first idea, and a kind of irresolution in the manner of conceiving, distributing, and placing it. some men marching, others standing still, one priming his musket, another loading his, another firing, a drummer who poses for the head while beating his instrument, a somewhat theatrical standard-bearer, and, finally, a crowd of figures fixed in the requisite immobility of portraits,--so far as action is concerned, these, if i am not mistaken, are the sole picturesque features of the painting. is this indeed sufficient to give it the facial, anecdotal, and local feeling that we expect from rembrandt when he paints the places, things, and men of his time? if van der helst instead of seating his arquebusiers had made them move in any manner whatever, do not doubt that he would have given us the truest if not the finest indications of their ways. and as for frans hals, you may imagine with what clearness and order, and how naturally he would have disposed the scene; how piquant, lively, ingenious, abundant, and magnificent he would have been. the idea conceived by rembrandt then is one of the most ordinary, and i would venture to say that the majority of his contemporaries considered it poor in resources; some because its abstract line is uncertain, scanty, symmetrical, meagre, and singularly incoherent; others, the colourists, because this composition, so full of gaps and ill-occupied spaces, did not lend itself to that broad and generous employment of colours which is usual with able palettes.... thus there is no truth and very little pictorial invention in the general disposition. is there more in the individual figures? what immediately strikes us is that they are unreasonably disproportioned and that many of them have shortcomings and so to speak an embarrassment of characterization that nothing can justify. the captain is too big and the lieutenant too small, not only by the side of captain kock, whose stature crushes him, but also beside accessory figures whose height or breadth gives this somewhat plain young man the air of a youth who has grown a moustache too soon. regarding the two as portraits, they are scarcely successful ones of doubtful likeness and thankless physiognomy, which is surprising in a portrait-painter who had made his mark in , and which affords some excuse for captain kock's having a little later applied to the infallible van der helst. is the guard loading his musket rendered any better? moreover, what do you think of his right-hand neighbour, and of the drummer? one might say that all these portraits lack hands, so vaguely are they sketched and so insignificant is their action. it follows that what they hold is also ill rendered: muskets, halberds, drum-sticks, canes, lances, and flag-pole; and that the gesture of an arm is impotent when the hand that ought to act does not do so clearly, quickly, or with energy, precision, or intelligence. i will not speak of the feet, which, in most cases, are lost in shadow. such in reality are the necessities of the system of envelopment adopted by rembrandt, and such is the imperious foregone conclusion of his method, that one general dark cloud invades the base of the picture and that the forms float in it to the great detriment of their points of support. must we add that the clothes are very similar to the likenesses, sometimes uncouth and unnatural, sometimes rigid and rebellious to the lines of the body? one would say that they are not worn properly. the helmets are stupidly put on, the hats are outlandish and ungracefully worn. the scarfs are in their place and yet they are awkwardly tied. here is none of that unique ease of carriage, that natural elegance, that _négligé_ dress, caught and rendered to the life in which frans hals knows how to attire every age, every stature, every stage of corpulence, and, certainly also, every rank. we are not reassured on this point more than on many others. we ask ourselves whether there is not here a laborious fantasy, like an attempt to be strange, which is not at all pleasing or striking. some of the heads are very handsome, i have mentioned those that are not. the best, the only ones in which the hand of the master and the feeling of a master are to be recognized, are those which, from the depths of the canvas, shoot their vague eyes and the fine spark of their mobile glances at you; do not severely examine their construction, nor their plan, nor their bony structure; accustom yourself to the greyish pallor of their complexion, question them from afar as they also look at you from a distance, and if you want to know how they live, look at them as rembrandt wants us to look at his human effigies, attentively and long, at their lips and eyes. there remains an episodical figure which has hitherto baffled all conjectures, because it seems by its traits, its carriage, its odd splendour, and its inappropriateness, to personify the magic, the romantic feeling, or, if you prefer, the misrepresentation of the picture; i mean that little witch-like personage, child-like and crone-like at the same time, with her hair streaming and adorned with pearls, gliding among the guards for no apparent reason, and who, a not less inexplicable detail, has a white cock, that at need might be taken for a purse, hanging from her girdle. whatever right she has to join the troop, this little figure seems to have nothing human about her. she is colourless and almost shapeless. her figure is that of a doll and her gait is automatic. she has the air of a beggar, something like diamonds covers her whole body, and an accoutrement resembling rays. you would say that she came from some jewry, or old clothes market, or bohemia, and that, awaking from a dream, she had attired herself in the most singular of all worlds. she has the light, the uncertainty, and the wavering of a pale fire. the more we examine her, the less we can grasp the subtle lineaments that serve as envelope for her uncorporeal existence. we end by seeing in her nothing but a kind of extraordinarily strange phosphorescence which is not the ordinary light of things, nor yet the ordinary brilliance of a well-regulated palette, and this adds more sorcery to the peculiarities of her countenance. notice that in the place she occupies, one of the dark corners of the canvas, rather low in the middle distance, between a man in deep red and the captain dressed in black, this eccentric light has much greater force than the most sudden contrast with a neighbouring tint, and without extreme care this explosion of accidental light would have sufficed to disorganize the whole picture. what is the meaning of this little imaginary or real being, who, however, is only a supernumerary while yet holding, so to speak, the chief rôle? i shall not attempt to tell you. abler people than i have allowed themselves to inquire what it was and what it was doing there, without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. but if to all these somewhat vain questions rembrandt replied: "this child is a caprice no less strange than and quite as plausible as many others in my engraving or painting. i have placed it as a narrow ray amid great masses of shadow because its exiguity rendered it more vibrating and it suited me to awaken with a ray one of the dark corners of my picture. it also wears the usual costume of my female figures, great or small, young or old, and in it you will find the type frequently occurring in my works. i love what glitters, and that is why i have clothed her in brilliant materials. as for those phosphorescent gleams that astonish you here, whilst elsewhere they pass unnoticed, it is only the light in its colourless splendour and supernatural quality that i habitually give to my figures when i illuminate them at all strongly."--do you not think that such a reply ought to satisfy the most difficult, and that finally, the rights of the stage-setter being reserved, he need only render account of one point: the manner in which he has treated the picture? we know what to think of the effect produced by the _night watch_ when it appeared in . this memorable attempt was neither understood nor relished. it added noise to rembrandt's glory, increased it in the eyes of his faithful admirers, and compromised it in the eyes of those who had only followed him with some effort and attended him to this decisive point. it made him a painter more peculiar and a master less sure. it heated and divided men of taste according to the heat of their blood, or the stiffness of their reason. in short, it was regarded as an absolutely new but dangerous adventure which brought him applause and some blame, and which at heart did not convince anybody. if you know the judgment expressed on this subject by rembrandt's contemporaries, his friends and his pupils, you know that opinion has not sensibly varied for two centuries, and that we repeat almost the same thing that this great daring man might have heard during his lifetime.... save one or two frank colours, two reds and a deep violet, except one or two flashes of blue, you cannot perceive anything in this colourless and violent canvas to recall the palette and ordinary method of any of the known colourists. the heads have the appearance rather than the colouring proper to life. they are red, purple, or pale, without for all that having the true paleness velasquez gives to his faces, or those sanguine, yellowish, greyish, or purplish shades that frans hals renders with such skill when he desires to specify the temperaments of his personages. in the clothes and hair and various parts of the accoutrements, the colour is no more exact nor expressive than is, as i have said, the form itself. when a red appears, it is not of a delicate nature and it indistinctly expresses silk, cloth, or satin. the guard loading his musket is clothed in red from head to foot, from his hat to his boots. do you perceive that rembrandt has occupied himself for a moment with the varied physiognomy of this red, its nature or substance, as a true colourist would not have failed to do?... i defy any one to tell me how the lieutenant is dressed and in what colour. is it white tinged with yellow? is it yellow faded to white? the truth is that this personage having to express the central light of the picture, rembrandt has clothed him with light, very ably with regard to brilliance and very negligently with regard to colour. now, and it is here that rembrandt begins to show himself, for a colourist there is no light in the abstract. light of itself is nothing: it is the result of colours diversely illumined and diversely radiating in accordance with the nature of the ray that they transmit or absorb. one very deep tint may be extraordinarily luminous; another very light one on the contrary may not be at all luminous. there is not a student in the schools who does not know that. with the colourists, then, the light depends exclusively upon the choice of the colours employed to render it and is so intimately connected with the tone that we may truthfully say that with them light and colour are one. in the _night watch_ there is nothing of the kind. tone disappears in light as it does in shade. the shade is blackish, the light whitish. everything is brilliant or dull, radiant or obscure, by an alternative effacement of the colouring principle. here we have different values rather than contrasted tones. and this is so true that a fine engraving, a good drawing, a mouilleron lithograph, or a photograph will give an exact idea of the picture in its important effects, and a copy simply in gradations from light to dark would destroy none of its arabesque. what is his execution in the picture before us? does he treat a stuff well? no. does he express it ingeniously, or with liveliness, with its seams, folds, breaks, and tissue. assuredly not. when he places a feather at the brim of a hat, does he give it the lightness and floating grace that we see in van dyck, or hals, or velasquez? does he indicate by a little gloss on a dead ground, in their form, or feeling of the body, the human physiognomy of a well adjusted coat, rubbed by a movement or worn with use? can he, with a few masterly touches and taking no more trouble than things are worth, indicate lace-work, or suggest jewellery, or rich embroidery? in the _night watch_ we have swords, muskets, partisans, polished casques, damascened cuirasses, high boots, tied shoes, a halberd with its fluttering blue silk, a drum, and lances. imagine with what ease, with what carelessness, and with what a nimble way of making us believe in things without insisting upon them, rubens, veronese, van dyck, titian himself, and lastly frans hals, that matchless workman, would have summarily indicated and superbly carried off all these accessories. do you maintain in good faith that rembrandt in the _night watch_ excels in treating them thus? i pray you, look at the halberd that the little lieutenant ruijtenberg holds at the end of his stiff arm; look at the foreshortened steel, look especially at the floating silk, and tell me if an artist of that value has ever allowed himself more pitifully to express an object that ought to spring forth beneath his brush without his being aware of it. look at the slashed sleeves that have been so highly praised, the ruffles, the gloves; examine the hands! consider well how in their affected or unaffected negligence their form is accentuated and their foreshortening is expressed. the touch is thick, embarrassed, awkward, and blundering. we might truly say that it goes astray, and that applied crosswise when it should be applied lengthwise, made flat when any other than he would have rounded it, it confuses instead of determining the form.... at length i come to the incontestable interest of the picture, to rembrandt's great effort in a new field: i am going to speak of the application on a large scale of that way of looking at things which is proper to him and which is called chiaroscuro. no mistake is possible here. what people attribute to rembrandt is really his. without any doubt chiaroscuro is the native and necessary form of his impressions and ideas. others have made use of it; but nobody has employed it so constantly and ingeniously as he. it is the supremely mysterious form, the most enveloped, the most elliptic, and the richest in hidden meanings and surprises that exists in the pictorial language of the painter. in this sense it is more than any other the form of intimate feelings or ideas. it is light, vaporous, veiled, discreet; it lends its charm to hidden things, invites curiosity, adds an attraction to moral beauties, and gives a grace to the speculations of conscience. in short, it partakes of sentiment, emotion, uncertainty, indefiniteness, and infinity; of dreams and of the ideal. and this is why it is, as it ought to be, the poetic and natural atmosphere in which rembrandt's genius never ceased to dwell. in very ordinary language and in its action common to all schools, chiaroscuro is the art of rendering the atmosphere visible, and painting an object enveloped with air. its aim is to render all the picturesque accidents of shadow, of half-tints, of light, of relief, and of distance; and to give in consequence more variety, more unity of effect, more caprice and more relative truth either to forms or to colours. the contrary is a more ingenuous and more abstract acceptation, by virtue of which objects are shown as they are, viewed close at hand, the atmosphere being suppressed, and consequently without any other than linear perspective, which results from the diminishing of objects and from their relation to the horizon. when we speak of aërial perspective, we already presuppose a little chiaroscuro. any other than rembrandt, in the dutch school, might sometimes make us forget that he was obeying the fixed laws of chiaroscuro; with him this forgetfulness is impossible: he has so to speak framed, co-ordinated and promulgated its code, and if we might believe him a _doctrinaire_ at this moment of his career, when instinct swayed him much more than reflection, the _night watch_ would have a redoubled interest, for it would assume the character and the authority of a manifesto. to envelop and immerse everything in a bath of shadow; to plunge light itself into it only to withdraw it afterwards to make it appear more distant and radiant; to make dark waves revolve around illuminated centres, grading them, sounding them, thickening them; to make the obscurity nevertheless transparent, the half gloom easy to pierce, and finally to give a kind of permeability to the strongest colours that prevents their becoming blackness,--this is the prime condition, and these also are the difficulties of this very special art. it goes without saying, that if anyone ever excelled in this, it was rembrandt. he did not invent, he perfected everything; and the method that he used oftener and better than anyone else bears his name. when explained according to this tendency of the painter to express a subject only by the brilliance and obscurity of objects, the _night watch_ has, so to speak, no more secrets for us. everything that might have made us hesitate is made clear. its qualities have their _raison d'être_; and we even come to comprehend its errors. the embarrassment of the practitioner as he executes, of the designer as he constructs, of the painter as he colours, of the costumer as he attires, the inconsistency of the tone, the amphibology of the effect, the uncertainty of the time of day, the strangeness of the figures, their flashing apparition in deep shadow,--all this results here by chance from an effect conceived contrary to probability, and pursued in spite of all logic, not at all necessary, and with the following purpose: to illuminate a real scene with unreal light, that is to say, to clothe a fact with the ideal character of a vision. do not seek for anything beyond this audacious project that mocked the painter's aims, clashed with received ideas, set up a system in opposition to customs, and boldness of spirit in opposition to manual dexterity; and the temerity of which certainly did not cease to spur him on until the day when i believe insurmountable difficulties revealed themselves, for, if rembrandt resolved some of them, there are many that he could not resolve. _maîtres d'autrefois_ (paris, ). the rape of helen (_benozzo gozzoli_) cosmo monkhouse though the patronage of art had shifted partly from the church to the great magnates, especially the great commercial princes like the medici at florence, her influence was still paramount, and though secular subjects were not uncommon, the vast majority of paintings executed for patrons, whether clerical or lay, were still religious in subject. it is not therefore, surprising that among the artists of the fifteenth century, many of whom were monks and all church painters, we find a distinct cleavage dividing artists whose aim was to break away from all traditions--realists--classicists--in a word, reformers, from artists who clung tenaciously to the old ideals, and whose main aim was still the perfection of devotional expression. [illustration: the rape of helen. _gozzoli_.] it was to the former class that benozzo gozzoli belonged, pupil though he was of fra angelico. although his special quality may be partly discerned in the altar-piece that hangs above his master's _predella_, in the strongly marked character of the saints, and perhaps more in the carefully studied goldfinches, there was little scope in such a subject for the exercise of his imagination or the display of his individuality. it is different with the little panel opposite, _the rape of helen_ (no. ), in which he has depicted with great liveliness and gusto a scene from a classical legend. possibly, to fra angelico, who regarded painting only as a means of edification, its employment on such a subject may have seemed little less than sacrilege, not unlike the use of a chancel for the stabling of horses. such views can scarcely be said to be extinct now, and this is the more remarkable as no one has the same feeling with regard to the other arts, such as sculpture or poetry. to a young man like benozzo, and many others of his day, not monks, nor specially devout in disposition, it must, nevertheless, have been a change which was welcome. to paint the _virgin enthroned with saints_ over and over again, must have been a little wearisome to men conscious of a fancy to which they could give no scope except by putting s. jerome's hat in a new place, or introducing a couple of goldfinches. one likes to think of the pleasure with which gozzoli received his commission one morning, perhaps from cosimo de' medici himself, for whom his master was adorning a cell in the convent of san marco, recently rebuilt at the great man's expense. did he know the legend of helen of troy, or had he to seek the advice of some scholar like nicolli or poggio for the right tradition? he seems, indeed, to have been rather mixed in his ideas on the subject. did he consult brunellesco in the construction of his greek temple, or donatello or ghiberti for the statue inside? whence came that wonderful landscape with its mountains and cypress trees and strange-shaped ships? from his imagination, or from some old missal or choir-book illumination? at all events, pleasure evidently went to the making of it, for his fancy had full scope. his costumes he adopted frankly from those of his day, adding some features in the way of strange headgear, much like those in fra angelico's _adoration_ (in which he possibly had a hand), to give an eastern colour to the group of boyish heroes on the left; not knowing or considering that the robes in which he was accustomed to drape his angels were much nearer to, were indeed derived from, the costume of the greeks. for his ideal of female beauty he seems to have been satisfied with his own taste. one can scarcely imagine a face or figure much less classical than that of the blonde with the _retroussé_ nose (presumably helen herself), who is riding so complacently on the neck of the long-legged italian in the centre. the figures in the temple are of a finer type, and the lady in the sweeping robe, with the long sleeves, who turns her back to us, has a simple dignity which reminds one less of gozzoli's master than of lippo lippi or masaccio, whose frescoes in the carmine he, in common with all other artists, had doubtless studied. there is nothing so classical or so natural in the picture as the beautiful little bare-legged boy that is running away in the foreground. this little bright panel--so gay, so naïve, so ignorant, and withal so charming--is of importance in the history of art as illustrated in the national gallery. it is the first in which the artist has given full play to his imagination, and entered the romantic world of classic legend, and, with one exception, the first which is purely secular in subject, and was designed for a "secular" purpose. it probably once formed part of a marriage-chest. the important share which the landscape has in the composition, and its serious attempt at perspective, are also worthy of note. as an example of the master himself, of the painter of the great panoramic procession of the notables of his day, which under the title of the _adoration of the kings_, covers the walls of the chapel in the medici palace at florence, of the designs of the history of s. agostino at san gemignano, and of the frescoes in campo santo at pisa, it is of course extremely inadequate, but it suffices to indicate many paths which the young artist was to strike out from the old track which sufficed for his saint-like master. _in the national gallery_ (london, ). monna lisa[ ] _(leonardo da vinci)_ walter pater in vasari's life of leonardo da vinci as we now read it there are some variations from the first edition. there, the painter who has fixed the outward type of christ for succeeding centuries was a bold speculator, holding lightly by other men's beliefs, setting philosophy above christianity. words of his, trenchant enough to justify this impression, are not recorded, and would have been out of keeping with a genius of which one characteristic is the tendency to lose itself in a refined and graceful mystery. the suspicion was but the time-honoured form in which the world stamps its appreciation of one who has thoughts for himself alone, his high indifferentism, his intolerance of the common forms of things; and in the second edition the image was changed into something fainter and more conventional. but it is still by a certain mystery in his work, and something enigmatical beyond the usual measure of great men, that he fascinates, or perhaps half repels. his life is one of sudden revolts, with intervals in which he works not at all, or apart from the main scope of his work. by a strange fortune the works on which his more popular fame rested disappeared early from the world, as the _battle of the standard_; or are mixed obscurely with the work of meaner hands, as the _last supper_. his type of beauty is so exotic that it fascinates a larger number than it delights, and seems more than that of any other artist to reflect ideas and views and some scheme of the world within; so that he seemed to his contemporaries to be the possessor of some unsanctified and secret wisdom; as to michelet and others to have anticipated modern ideas. he trifles with his genius, and crowds all his chief work into a few tormented years of later life; yet he is so possessed by his genius that he passes unmoved through the most tragic events, overwhelming his country and friends, like one who comes across them by chance on some secret errand.... [illustration: monna lisa. _l. da vinci_.] his art, if it was to be something in the world, must be weighted with more of the meaning of nature and purpose of humanity. nature was "the true mistress of higher intelligences." so he plunged into the study of nature. and in doing this he followed the manner of the older students; he brooded over the hidden virtues of plants and crystals, the lines traced by stars as they moved in the sky, over the correspondences which exist between the different orders of living things, through which, to eyes opened, they interpret each other; and for years he seemed to those about him as one listening to a voice silent for other men. he learned here the art of going deep, of tracking the sources of expression to their subtlest retreats, the power of an intimate presence in the things he handled. he did not at once or entirely desert his art; only he was no longer the cheerful objective painter, through whose soul, as through clear glass, the bright figures of florentine life, only made a little mellower and more pensive by the transit, passed on to the white wall. he wasted many days in curious tricks of design, seeming to lose himself in the spinning of intricate devices of lines and colours. he was smitten with a love of the impossible--the perforation of mountains, changing the course of rivers, raising great buildings, such as the church of san giovanni, in the air; all those feats for the performance of which natural magic professes to have the key. later writers, indeed, see in these efforts an anticipation of modern mechanics; in him they were rather dreams, thrown off by the over-wrought and labouring brain. two ideas were especially fixed in him, as reflexes of things that had touched his brain in childhood beyond the measure of other impressions--the smiling of women and the motion of great waters.... the science of that age was all divination, clairvoyance, unsubjected to our exact modern formulas, seeking in an instant of vision to concentrate a thousand experiences. later writers, thinking only of the well-ordered treatise on painting which a frenchman, raffaelle du fresne, a hundred years afterwards, compiled from leonardo's bewildered manuscripts, written strangely as his manner was, from right to left, have imagined a rigid order in his inquiries. but this rigid order was little in accordance with the restlessness of his character; and if we think of him as the mere reasoner who subjects design to anatomy, and composition to mathematical rules, we shall hardly have of him that impression which those about him received from him. poring over his crucibles, making experiments with colour, trying by a strange variation of the alchemist's dream to discover the secret, not of an elixir to make man's natural life immortal, but rather giving immortality to the subtlest and most delicate effects of painting, he seemed to them rather the sorcerer or the magician, possessed of curious secrets and a hidden knowledge, living in a world of which he alone possessed the key. what his philosophy seems to have been most like is that of paracelsus or cardan; and much of the spirit of the older alchemy still hangs about it, with its confidence in short cuts and odd byways to knowledge. to him philosophy was to be something giving strange swiftness and double sight, divining the sources of springs beneath the earth or of expression beneath the human countenance, clairvoyant of occult gifts in common or uncommon things, in the reed at the brook-side or the star which draws near to us but once in a century. how in this way the clear purpose was overclouded, the fine chaser's head perplexed, we but dimly see; the mystery which at no point quite lifts from leonardo's life is deepest here. but it is certain that at one period of his life he had almost ceased to be an artist. the year --the year of the birth of raffaelle and the thirty-first of leonardo's life--is fixed as the date of his visit to milan by the letter in which he recommends himself to ludovico sforza, and offers to tell him for a price strange secrets in the art of war. it was that sforza who murdered his young nephew by slow poison, yet was so susceptible to religious impressions that he turned his worst passions into a kind of religious cultus, and who took for his device the mulberry tree--symbol, in its long delay and sudden yielding of flowers and fruit together, of a wisdom which economizes all forces for an opportunity of sudden and sure effect. the fame of leonardo had gone before him, and he was to model a colossal statue of francesco, the first duke. as for leonardo himself he came not as an artist at all, or careful of the fame of one; but as a player on the harp, a strange harp of silver of his own construction, shaped in some curious likeness to a horse's skull. the capricious spirit of ludovico was susceptible to the charm of music, and leonardo's nature had a kind of spell in it. fascination is always the word descriptive of him. no portrait of his youth remains; but all tends to make us believe that up to this time some charm of voice and aspect, strong enough to balance the disadvantage of his birth, had played about him. his physical strength was great; it was said that he could bend a horseshoe like a coil of lead. the duomo, the work of artists from beyond the alps, so fantastic to a florentine used to the mellow unbroken surfaces of giotto and arnolfo, was then in all its freshness; and below, in the streets of milan, moved a people as fantastic, changeful, and dreamlike. to leonardo least of all men could there be anything poisonous in the exotic flowers of sentiment which grew there. it was a life of exquisite amusements, (leonardo became a celebrated designer of pageants,) and brilliant sins; and it suited the quality of his genius, composed in almost equal parts of curiosity and the desire of beauty, to take things as they came. curiosity and the desire of beauty--these are the two elementary forces in leonardo's genius; curiosity often in conflict with the desire of beauty, but generating, in union with it, a type of subtle and curious grace. the movement of the fifteenth century was two-fold: partly the renaissance, partly also the coming of what is called the "modern spirit," with its realism, its appeal to experience; it comprehended a return to antiquity, and a return to nature. raffaelle represents the return to antiquity, and leonardo the return to nature. in this return to nature he was seeking to satisfy a boundless curiosity by her perpetual surprises, a microscopic sense of finish by her finesse, or delicacy of operation, that _subtilitas naturæ_ which bacon notices. so we find him often in intimate relations with men of science, with fra luca paccioli the mathematician, and the anatomist marc antonio della torre. his observations and experiments fill thirteen volumes of manuscript; and those who can judge describe him as anticipating long before, by rapid intuition, the later ideas of science. he explained the obscure light of the unilluminated part of the moon, knew that the sea had once covered the mountains which contain shells, and the gatherings of the equatorial waters above the polar. he who thus penetrated into the most secret parts of nature preferred always the more to the less remote, what, seeming exceptional, was an instance of law more refined, the construction about things of a peculiar atmosphere and mixed lights. he paints flowers with such curious fidelity that different writers have attributed to him a fondness for particular flowers, as clement the cyclamen, and rio the jasmine; while at venice there is a stray leaf from his portfolio dotted all over with studies of violets and the wild rose. in him first, appears the taste for what is _bizarre_ or _recherché_ in landscape: hollow places full of the green shadow of bituminous rocks, ridged reefs of trap-rock which cut the water into quaint sheets of light--their exact antitype is in our own western seas; all solemn effects of moving water; you may follow it springing from its distant source among the rocks on the heath of the _madonna of the balances_, passing as a little fall into the treacherous calm of the _madonna of the lake_, next, as a goodly river below the cliffs of the _madonna of the rocks_, washing the white walls of its distant villages, stealing out in a network of divided streams in _la gioconda_, to the sea-shore of the _saint anne_--that delicate place, where the wind passes like the hand of some fine etcher over the surface, and the untorn shells lie thick upon the sand, and the tops of the rocks, to which the waves never rise, are green with grass grown fine as hair. it is the landscape, not of dreams or fancy, but of places far withdrawn, and hours selected from a thousand with a miracle of finesse. through his strange veil of sight things reach him so; in no ordinary night or day, but as in faint light of eclipse, or in some brief interval of falling rain at daybreak, or through deep water. and not into nature only; but he plunged also into human personality, and became above all a painter of portraits; faces of a modelling more skilful than has been seen before or since, embodied with a reality which almost amounts to illusion on dark air. to take a character as it was, and delicately sound its stops, suited one so curious in observation, curious in invention. so he painted the portraits of ludovico's mistresses, lucretia crivelli and cecilia galerani the poetess, of ludovico himself, and the duchess beatrice. the portrait of cecilia galerani is lost, but that of lucretia crivelli has been identified with _la belle ferronnière_ of the louvre, and ludovico's pale, anxious face still remains in the ambrosian. opposite is the portrait of beatrice d'este, in whom leonardo seems to have caught some presentiment of early death, painting her precise and grave, full of the refinement of the dead, in sad earth-coloured raiment, set with pale stones.... the _last supper_ was finished in ; in the french entered milan, and whether or not the gascon bowmen used it as a mark for their arrows, the model of francesco sforza certainly did not survive. ludovico became a prisoner, and the remaining years of leonardo's life are more or less years of wandering. from his brilliant life at court he had saved nothing, and he returned to florence a poor man. perhaps necessity kept his spirit excited: the next four years are one prolonged rapture or ecstasy of invention. he painted the pictures of the louvre, his most authentic works, which came there straight from the cabinet of francis the first, at fontainebleau. one picture of his, the _saint anne_--not the _saint anne_ of the louvre, but a mere cartoon now in london--revived for a moment a sort of appreciation more common in an earlier time, when good pictures had still seemed miraculous; and for two days a crowd of people of all qualities passed in naïve excitement through the chamber where it hung, and gave leonardo a taste of cimabue's triumph. but his work was less with the saints than with the living women of florence; for he lived still in the polished society that he loved, and in the houses of florence, left perhaps a little subject to light thoughts by the death of savonarola (the latest gossip is of an undraped monna lisa, found in some out-of-the-way corner of the late orleans collection), he saw ginevra di benci, and lisa, the young third wife of francesco del giocondo. as we have seen him using incidents of the sacred legend, not for their own sake, or as mere subjects for pictorial realisation, but as a symbolical language for fancies all his own, so now he found a vent for his thoughts in taking one of those languid women, and raising her, as leda or pomona, modesty or vanity, to the seventh heaven of symbolical expression. _la gioconda_ is, in the truest sense, leonardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. in suggestiveness, only the _melancholia_ of dürer is comparable to it; and no crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. we all know the face and hands of the figure, set in the marble chair, in that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.[ ] as often happens with works in which invention seems to reach its limit, there is an element in it given to, not invented by, the master. in that inestimable folio of drawings, once in the possession of vasari, were certain designs by verrocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that leonardo in his boyhood copied them many times. it is hard not to connect with these designs of the elder by-past master, as with its germinal principle, the unfathomable smile, always with a touch of something sinister in it, which plays over all leonardo's work. besides, the picture is a portrait. from childhood we see this image defining itself on the fabric of his dreams; and but for express historical testimony, we might fancy that this was but his ideal lady, embodied and beheld at last. what was the relationship of a living florentine to this creature of his thought? by what strange affinities had she and the dream grown thus apart, yet so closely together? present from the first, incorporeal in leonardo's thought, dimly traced in the designs of verrocchio, she is found present at last in il giocondo's house. that there is much of mere portraiture in the picture is attested by the legend that by artificial means, the presence of mimes and flute players, that subtle expression was protracted on the face. again, was it in four years and by renewed labour never really completed, or in four months and as by stroke of magic, that the image was projected? the presence that thus so strangely rose beside the waters is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years man had come to desire. hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. it is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. set it for a moment beside one of those white greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty into which the soul with all its maladies has passed? all the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of greece, the lust of rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the pagan world, the sins of the borgias. she is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with eastern merchants; and, as leda, was mother of helen of troy, and as saint anne, the mother of mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments and tinged the eyelids and the hands. the fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. certainly lady lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea. during these years at florence leonardo's history is the history of his art; he himself is lost in the bright cloud of it. the outward history begins again in , with a wild journey through central italy, which he makes as the chief engineer of cæsar borgia. the biographer, putting together the stray jottings of his manuscripts, may follow him through every day of it, up the strange tower of sienna, which looks towards rome, elastic like a bent bow, down to the sea-shore at piombino, each place appearing as fitfully as in a fevered dream.... we catch a glimpse of him again at rome in , surrounded by his mirrors and vials and furnaces, making strange toys that seemed alive of wax and quicksilver. the hesitation which had haunted him all through life, and made like one under a spell, was upon him now with double force. no one had ever carried political indifferentism farther; it had always been his philosophy to "fly before the storm;" he is for the sforzas or against them, as the tide of their fortune turns. yet now he was suspected by the anti-gallian society at rome of french tendencies. it paralyzed him to find himself among enemies; and he turned wholly to france, which had long courted him. france was about to become an italy more italian than italy itself. francis the first, like lewis the twelfth before him, was attracted by the finesse of leonardo's work; _la gioconda_ was already in his cabinet, and he offered leonardo the little château de clou, with its vineyards and meadows, in the soft valley of the masse, and not too far from the great outer sea. m. arsène houssaye has succeeded in giving a pensive local colour to this part of his subject, with which, as a frenchman, he could best deal. "a monsieur lyonard, peinteur du roy pour amboyse,"--so the letter of francis the first is headed. it opens a prospect, one of the most attractive in the history of art, where, under a strange mixture of lights, italian art dies away as a french exotic. _studies in the history of the renaissance_ (london, ). footnotes: [ ] the spelling commonly used is "mona lisa." the editor has thought best, however, to keep the form of spelling used by walter pater. [ ] yet for vasari there was some further magic of crimson in the lips and cheeks, lost for us. the adoration of the lamb (_van eyck_) kugler hubert van eyck was born, according to the common acceptation, in . john van eyck was his junior by some unknown number of years. chroniclers of the sixteenth century vaguely suggest that the two brothers settled at ghent in . there is every reason to believe that all these dates are incorrect; that hubert was born after , and that the date of his migration to ghent must be placed later in the century. it is credible that both the brothers were court painters to philip of charolois, heir apparent to the throne of burgundy, who lived with his wife michelle de france at ghent between and . in the service of the prince, painters were free from the constraint of their guild, but on the withdrawal of the court the privilege would cease; and this explains how the names of the van eycks were not recorded in the register of the corporation of st. luke till , when, on the death of the countess michelle, and as a tribute to her memory, they were registered as masters without a fee. john van eyck soon found employment in the court atmosphere, which seemed congenial to him, whilst hubert remained at ghent, received commissions from the municipality ( ), and became acquainted with jodocus vydts, for whom he composed the vast altar-piece known as the _adoration of the lamb_. it was not fated that he should finish the great work which he was then induced to begin. he probably sketched the subjects that were to adorn the panels, and completed some of the more important of them. at his death in he was buried in the chapel, the decoration of which had been the last occupation of his life. we may sum up the qualities which distinguished him, and the services which he rendered to the art of his country, in the following sentences:-- [illustration: the adoration of the lamb. _van eyck_.] he carried the realistic tendency, already existing in the flemish masters, to an extraordinary pitch of excellence, whilst in many essential respects he adhered to the more ideal feeling of the previous period, imparting to this, by the means of his far richer powers of representation, greater distinctness, truth of nature, and variety of expression. throughout his works he displayed an elevated and highly energetic conception of the stern import of his labours in the service of the church. the prevailing arrangement of his subject is symmetrical, holding fast the early architectonic rules which had hitherto presided over ecclesiastic art. the later mode of arrangement, in which a freer and more dramatic and picturesque feeling was introduced, is only seen in hubert van eyck's works in subjection to these rules. thus his heads exhibit the aim at beauty and dignity belonging to the earlier period, only combined with more truth of nature. his draperies unite its pure taste and softness of folds with greater breadth; the realistic principle being apparent in that greater attention to detail which a delicate indication of the material necessitates. nude figures are studied from nature with the utmost fidelity; undraped portions are also given with much truth, especially the hands; only the feet remain feeble. that, however, which is almost the principal quality of his art, is the hitherto unprecedented power, depth, transparency, and harmony of his _colouring_. to attain this he availed himself of a mode of painting in oil which he and his brother had perfected. oil painting, it is true, had long been in use, but only in a very undeveloped form, and for inferior purposes. according to the most recent and thorough investigations, the improvement introduced by the van eycks, and which they doubtless only very gradually worked out, were the following. first, they removed the chief impediment which had hitherto obstructed the application of oil-paint to pictures properly so called. for, in order to accelerate the slow drying of the oil colours, it had been necessary to add a varnish to them, which consisted of oil boiled with a resin. owing to the dark colour of this varnish, in which amber, or more frequently sandarac, was used, this plan, from its darkening effect on most colours, had hitherto proved unsuccessful. the van eycks, however, succeeded in preparing so colourless a varnish that they could apply it without disadvantage, to all colours. in painting a picture they proceeded on the following system. the outline was drawn on a _gesso_ ground, so strongly sized that no oil could penetrate the surface. the under painting was then executed in a generally warm brownish glazing colour, and so thinly that the light ground was clearly seen through it. they then laid on the local colours, thinner in the lights, and, from the quantity of vehicle used, more thickly in the shadows; in the latter availing themselves often of the under painting as a foil. in all other parts they so nicely preserved the balance between the solid and the glazing colours as to attain that union of body and transparency which is their great excellence. finally, in the use of the brush they obtained that perfect freedom which the new vehicle permitted; either leaving the touch of the brush distinct, or fusing the touches tenderly together, as the object before them required. of all the works which are now attributed to hubert, but one is genuine and historically authenticated. this noble work is certified by an inscription. it is a large altar picture, consisting of two rows of separate panels, once in the cathedral of st. bavon at ghent. it was painted, as before remarked, for jodocus vydts, seigneur of pamele, and burgomaster of ghent, and his wife elizabeth, of the then distinguished family of burlunt, for their mortuary chapel in that cathedral.[ ] when the wings were opened, which occurred only on festivals, the subject of the upper centre picture was seen, consisting of three panels, on which were the triune god--the king of heaven and earth--and at his side the holy virgin and the baptist; on the inside of the wings were angels, who with songs and sacred music celebrate the praises of the most high: at the two extremities, each inside the half-shutters which covered the figure of god the father, were adam and eve, the representatives of fallen man. the lower central picture shows the lamb of the revelation, whose blood flows into a cup; over it is the dove of the holy spirit; angels, who hold the instruments of the passion, worship the lamb, and four groups, each consisting of many persons, advance from the sides: they comprise the holy martyrs, male and female, with priests and lay-men; in the foreground is the fountain of life; in the distance the towers of the heavenly jerusalem. on the wing pictures, other groups are coming up to adore the lamb; on the left, those who have laboured for the kingdom of the lord by worldly deeds--the soldiers of christ, and the righteous judges; on the right, those who, through self-denial and renunciation of earthly good, have served him in the spirit--holy hermits and pilgrims; a picture underneath, which represented hell, finished the whole. this work is now dispersed: the centre pictures and the panels of adam and eve only being in ghent.[ ] the lower picture of hell was early injured and lost, and the others form some of the greatest ornaments of the gallery of the berlin museum.[ ] the three figures of the upper centre picture are designed with all the dignity of statue-like repose belonging to the early style; they are painted, too, on a ground of gold and tapestry, as was constantly the practice in earlier times: but united with the traditional type we already find a successful representation of life and nature in all their truth. they stand on the frontier of two different styles, and, from the excellence of both, form a wonderful and most impressive whole. in all the solemnity of antique dignity the heavenly father sits directly fronting the spectator--his right hand raised to give the benediction to the lamb, and to all the figures below; in his left is a crystal sceptre; on his head the triple crown, the emblem of the trinity. the features are such as are ascribed to christ by the traditions of the church, but noble and well-proportioned; the expression is forcible, though passionless. the tunic of this figure, ungirt, is of a deep red, as well as the mantle, which last is fastened over the breast by a rich clasp, and, falling down equally from both shoulders, is thrown in beautiful folds over the feet. behind the figure, and as high as the head, is a hanging of green tapestry adorned with a golden pelican (a well-known symbol of the redeemer); behind the head the ground is gold, and on it, in a semicircle, are three inscriptions, which again describe the trinity, as all-mighty, all-good, and all-bountiful. the two other figures of this picture display equal majesty; both are reading holy books and are turned towards the centre figure. the countenance of john expresses ascetic seriousness, but in the virgin's we find a serene grace, and a purity of form, which approach very nearly to the happier efforts of italian art. on the wing next to the virgin stand eight angels singing before a music-desk. they are represented as choristers in splendid vestments and crowns. the brilliancy of the stuffs and precious stones is given with the hand of a master, the music-desk is richly ornamented with gothic carved work and figures, and the countenances are full of expression and life; but in the effort to imitate nature with the utmost truth, so as even to enable us to distinguish with certainty the different voices of the double quartet, the spirit of a holier influence has already passed away. on the opposite wing, st. cecilia sits at an organ, the keys of which she touches with an expression of deep meditation: other angels stand behind the organ with different stringed instruments. the expression of these heads shows far more feeling, and is more gentle; the execution of the stuffs and accessories is equally masterly. the two extreme wings of the upper series, the subjects of which are adam and eve, are now in the museum at brussels. the attempt to paint the nude figure of the size of life, with the most careful attention to minute detail, is eminently successful, with the exception of a certain degree of hardness in the drawing. eve holds in her right hand the forbidden fruit. in the filling up, which the shape of the altar-piece made necessary over these panels, there are small subjects in chiaroscuro: over adam, the sacrifice of cain and abel; over eve, the death of abel--death, therefore, as the immediate consequence of original sin. the arrangement of the lower middle picture, the worship of the lamb, is strictly symmetrical, as the mystic nature of the allegorical subject demanded, but there is such beauty in the landscape, in the pure atmosphere, in the bright green of the grass, in the masses of trees and flowers, even in the single figures which stand out from the four great groups, that we no longer perceive either hardness or severity in this symmetry. the wing picture on the right, representing the holy pilgrims, is, in the figures, less striking than the others. here st. christopher, who wandered through the world seeking the most mighty lord, strides before all, a giant in stature, whilst a host of smaller pilgrims, of various ages, follow him. a fruitful valley, with many details, showing a surprising observation of nature, is seen through the slender trees. the cast of the folds in the ample red drapery of st. christopher, as in the upper picture, reminds us still of the earlier style. the whimsical and singular expression in the countenances of the pilgrims is also very remarkable. the picture next to the last described is more pleasing; it represents the troop of holy anchorites passing out of a rocky defile. in front are st. paul the hermit and st. anthony, the two who set the first example of retirement from the world; and the procession closes with the two holy women who also passed the greater part of their lives in the wilderness, mary magdalen and st. mary of egypt. the heads are full of character, with great variety of expression: on every countenance may be traced the history of its life. grave old men stand before us, each one differing from the other; one is firm and strong, another more feeble; one cheerful and single-minded, another less open. some inspired fanatics wildly raise their heads, whilst others with a simple and almost humorous expression walk by their side, and others again are still struggling with their earthly nature. it is a remarkable picture, and leads us deep into the secrets of the human heart--a picture which in all times must be ranked amongst the master-works of art, and which to be intelligible needs no previous inquiry into the relative period and circumstances of the artists who created it. the landscape background, the rocky defile, the wooded declivity, and the trees laden with fruit, are all eminently beautiful. the eye would almost lose itself in this rich sense of still life if it were not constantly led back to the interest of the foreground. the opposite wing pictures differ essentially in conception from those just described. their subject did not in itself admit such varied interest, and it is rather the common expression of a tranquil harmony of mind, and of the consciousness of a resolute will, which attracts the spectator, combined at the same time with a skilful representation of earthly splendour and magnificence. inside the wing to the right we see the soldiers of the lord on fine chargers, simple and noble figures in bright armour, with surcoats of varied form and colour. the three foremost with the waving banners appear to be st. sebastian, st. george, and st. michael, the patron saints of the old flemish guilds, which accompanied their earls to the crusades. in the head of st. george, the painter has strikingly succeeded in rendering the spirit of the chivalry of the middle ages--that true heroic feeling and sense of power which humbles itself before the higher sense of the divinity. emperors and kings follow after him. the landscape is extremely beautiful and highly finished, with rich and finely-formed mountain ridges, and the fleecy clouds of spring floating lightly across. the second picture (the last to the left) represents the righteous judges; they also are on horseback, and are fine and dignified figures. in front, on a splendidly caparisoned grey horse, rides a mild benevolent old man, in blue velvet trimmed with fur. this is the likeness of hubert, to whom his brother has thus dedicated a beautiful memorial. rather deeper in the group is john himself, clothed in black, with his shrewd, sharp countenance turned to the spectator. we are indebted to tradition for the knowledge of these portraits. both these wing pictures have the special interest of showing us, by means of armour, rich costumes, and caparisons, a true and particular representation of the court of burgundy in the time of philip the good--when it was confessedly the most superb court in europe. the upper wings, when closed, represented the annunciation, and this was so arranged that on the outer and wider ones (the backs of the two pictures of angels singing and playing) were the figures of the virgin and the angel gabriel,--on the inner narrower ones (that is, on the back of the adam and eve), a continuation of the virgin's chamber. here, as was often the case in the outside pictures of large altar-pieces, the colouring was kept down to a more uniform tone, in order that the full splendour might be reserved to adorn with greater effect the principal subject within. the angel and the holy virgin are clothed in flowing white drapery, but the wings of the angel glitter with a play of soft and brilliant colour, imitating those of the green parrot. the heads are noble and well painted; the furniture of the room is executed with great truth, as well as the view through the arcade which forms the background of the virgin's chamber, into the streets of a town, one of which we recognize as a street in ghent. in the semicircles which close these panels above, on the right and left, are the prophets micah and zechariah, whose heads have great dignity, but are somewhat stiff and unsatisfactory in their attitudes. in the centre (corresponding with the figures in chiaroscuro over adam and eve) are two kneeling female figures represented as sibyls. the exterior portion of the lower wings contains the statues of the two st. johns. these display a heavy style of drapery, and there is something peculiarly angular in the breaks of the folds, imitated perhaps from the sculpture of the day, which had also already abandoned the older northern mould. this peculiarity by degrees impressed itself more and more on the style of painting of the fifteenth century, and the drapery of the figures in the annunciation already betrays a tendency towards it. the heads exhibit a feeling for beauty of form which is rare in this school. john the baptist, who is pointing with his right hand to the lamb on his left, is appropriately represented, as the last of the prophets, as a man of earnest mien and dignified features, with much hair and beard. john the evangelist, on the other hand, appears as a tender youth with delicate features, looking very composedly at the monster with four snakes which, at his benediction, rises from the chalice in his hand. the likenesses of the donors are given with inimitable life and fidelity. they show the careful hand of jan van eyck, but already approach that limit within which the imitation of the accidental and insignificant in the human countenance should be confined. the whole, however, is in admirable keeping, and the care of the artist can hardly be considered too anxiously minute, since feeling and character are as fully expressed as the mere bodily form. the aged jodocus vydts, to whose liberality posterity is indebted for this great work of art, is dressed in a simple red garment trimmed with fur; he kneels with his hands folded, and his eyes directed upwards. his countenance, however, is not attractive; the forehead is low and narrow, and the eye without power. the mouth alone shows a certain benevolence, and the whole expression of the features denotes a character capable of managing worldly affairs. the idea of originating so great a work as this picture is to be found in the noble, intellectual, and expressive features of his wife, who kneels opposite to him in the same attitude, and in still plainer attire. at hubert van eyck's death, on the th of september, , jodocus vydts engaged jan van eyck, the younger brother and scholar of hubert, to finish the picture in the incomplete parts.[ ] a close comparison of all the panels of this altar-piece with the authentic works of jan van eyck shows that the following portions differ in drawing, colouring, cast of drapery, and treatment, from his style, and may therefore with certainty be attributed to the hand of hubert:--of the inner side of the upper series, the almighty, the virgin, st. john the baptist, st. cecilia with the angels playing on musical instruments, and adam and eve; of the inner side of the lower series, the side of the centre picture with the apostles and saints, and the wings with the hermits and pilgrims, though with the exception of the landscapes. on the other hand, of the inner side of the upper series, the wing picture with the singing angels is by jan van eyck; of the inner side of the lower series, the side of the centre picture of the adoration of the lamb, containing the patriarchs and prophets, etc., and the entire landscape; the wing with the soldiers of christ and the righteous judges, and the landscapes to the wing with the hermits and pilgrims; finally, the entire outer sides of the wings, comprising the portraits of the founders, and the annunciation. the prophet zechariah and the two sibyls alone show a feebler hand.[ ] about one hundred years after the completion of this altar-piece an excellent copy of it was made by michael coxis for philip ii. of spain. the panels of this work, like those of the original, are dispersed; some are in the berlin museum, some in the possession of the king of bavaria, and others in the remains of the king of holland's collection at the hague. a second copy, which comprises the inside pictures of this great work, from the chapel of the town-house at ghent, is in the antwerp museum. _handbook of painting: the german, flemish, and dutch schools_, based on the handbook of kugler remodelled by dr. waagen and revised by j.a. crowe (london, ). footnotes: [ ] carton, _les trois frères van eyck_, p. . [ ] marc van vaernewijck in a ms. of - , describing the ghent troubles, states that on the th of august, two days before the iconoclasts plundered st. bavon, the picture of the mystic lamb was removed from the vijdts chapel and concealed in one of the towers. see the ms., _van die beroerlicke tijden in die nederlanden_{b}, recently printed at ghent ( ), p. . on the same page in which vaernewijck relates this story he says that he refers his readers, for the lives of the van eycks to his book, _mijn leecken philosophie int xx^e bouck_. this book, which probably still exists on the shelves of some library, has not as yet been discovered. [ ] "the pictures here exhibited as the works of hemmelinck, messis, lucas of holland, a. dürer, and even holbein, are inferior to those ascribed to eyck in colour, execution, and taste. the draperies of the three on a gold ground, especially that of the middle figure, could not be improved in simplicity, or elegance, by the taste of raphael himself. the three heads of god the father, the virgin, and st. john the baptist, are not inferior in roundness, force, or sweetness to the heads of l. da vinci, and possess a more positive principle of colour."--_life of fuseli_, i. p. . this is a very remarkable opinion for the period when it was written. [ ] this appears from the following inscription of the time, on the frame of the outer wing:-- "pictor hubertus ab eyck, major quo nemo repertus incepit; pondusque johannes arte secundus frater perfecit, judoci vyd prece fretus [versv sexta mai vos collocat acta tveri]." [the last verse gives the date of may , .] the discovery of this inscription, under a coating of green paint, was made in berlin in , when the first word and a half of the third line, which were missing, were [imperfectly] supplied [with "frater perfectus"] by an old copy of this inscription, found by m. de bast, the belgian connoisseur. [ ] [dr. waagen did not always hold decided opinions as to what portions of the altar-piece of ghent are by hubert and john van eyck, respectively. there is no doubt that some of "the sublime earnestness" which schlegel notes in the eternal, the virgin, and john the baptist, and much of the stern realism which characterizes those figures, is to be found in the patriarchs and prophets, and in the hermits and pilgrims, and in the adam and eve; but it is too much to say that these wing pictures can "with certainty be assigned to hubert," and it is not to be forgotten that john van eyck worked in this picture on the lines laid down by his elder brother, and must have caught some of the spirit of his great master.] the death of procris (_piero di cosimo_) edward t. cook a very characteristic work by piero, called di cosimo, after his godfather and master, cosimo rosselli. piero's peculiarities are well known to all readers of george eliot's _romola_, where everything told us about him by vasari is carefully worked up. the first impression left by this picture--its quaintness--is precisely typical of the man. he shut himself off from the world, and stopped his ears; lived in the untidiest of rooms, and would not have his garden tended, "preferring to see all things wild and savage about him." he took his meals at times and in ways that no other man did, and romola used to coax him with sweets and hard-boiled eggs. his fondness for quaint landscape ("he would sometimes stand beside a wall," says vasari, "and image forth the most extraordinary landscapes that ever were") may be seen in this picture: so also may his love of animals, in which, says vasari, he took "indescribable pleasure." [illustration: the death of procris. _piero di cosimo._] the subjects of his pictures were generally allegorical. in _romola_ he paints tito and romola as bacchus and ariadne; here he shows the death of procris, the story in which the ancients embodied the folly of jealousy. for procris being told that cephalus was unfaithful, straight-way believed the report and secretly followed him to the woods, for he was a great hunter. and cephalus called upon "aura," the latin for breeze, for cephalus was hot after the chase: "sweet air, o come," and echo answered, "come, sweet air." but procris, thinking that he was calling after his mistress, turned to see, and as she moved she made a rustling in the leaves, which cephalus mistook for the motion of some beast of the forest, and let fly his unerring dart, which procris once had given him. but procris lay among the white wind-flowers, shot in the throat. from out the little wound the slow blood drained, as drops in autumn showers drip from the leaves upon the sodden ground. none saw her die but lelaps, the swift hound, that watched her dumbly with a wistful fear, till at the dawn, the hornèd wood-men found and bore her gently on a sylvan bier, to lie beside the sea,--with many an uncouth tear. austin dobson: _old world lyrics_. _a popular handbook to the national gallery_ (london and new york, ). the death of procris (_piero di cosimo_) john addington symonds the point that connects him with botticelli is the romantic treatment of his classical mythology, best exemplified in his pictures of the tale of perseus and andromeda.[ ] piero was by nature and employment a decorative painter; the construction of cars for pageants, and the adornment of dwelling rooms and marriage chests, affected his whole style, rendering it less independent and more quaint than that of botticelli. landscape occupies the main part of his compositions, made up by a strange amalgam of the most eccentric details--rocks toppling over blue bays, sea-caverns and fantastic mountain ranges. groups of little figures upon these spaces tell the story, and the best invention of the artist is lavished on the form of monstrous creatures like the dragon slain by perseus. there is no attempt to treat the classic subject in a classic spirit: to do that and to fail in doing it, remained for cellini....[ ] the same criticism applies to piero's picture of the murdered procris watched by a satyr of the woodland.[ ] in creating his satyr the painter has not had recourse to any antique bas-relief, but has imagined for himself a being half human, half bestial, and yet wholly real; nor has he portrayed in procris a nymph of greek form, but a girl of florence. the strange animals and gaudy flowers introduced into the landscape background further remove the subject from the sphere of classic treatment. florentine realism and quaint fancy being thus curiously blended, the artistic result may be profitably studied for the light it throws upon the so-called paganism of the earlier renaissance. fancy at that moment was more free than when superior knowledge of antiquity had created a demand for reproductive art, and when the painters thought less of the meaning of the fable for themselves than of its capability of being used as a machine for the display of erudition. _the renaissance in italy_ (london, ). footnotes: [ ] uffizi gallery. [ ] see the bas-relief upon the pedestal of his 'perseus' in the loggia de' lanzi. [ ] in the national gallery. the marriage in cana (_tintoret_) john ruskin the church of the salute is farther assisted by the beautiful flight of steps in front of it down to the canal; and its façade is rich and beautiful of its kind, and was chosen by turner for the principal object in his well known view of the grand canal. the principal faults of the building are the meagre windows in the sides of the cupola, and the ridiculous disguise of the buttresses under the form of colossal scrolls; the buttresses themselves being originally a hypocrisy, for the cupola is stated by lazari to be of timber, and therefore needs none. the sacristy contains several precious pictures: the three on its roof by titian, much vaunted, are indeed as feeble as they are monstrous; but the small titian, _st. mark with sts. cosmo and damian_, was, when i first saw it, to my judgment, by far the first work of titian's in venice. it has since been restored by the academy, and it seemed to me entirely destroyed, but i had not time to examine it carefully. [illustration: the marriage in cana. _tintoret_] at the end of the larger sacristy is the lunette which once decorated the tomb of the doge francesco dandolo, and, at the side of it, one of the most highly finished tintoret's in venice, namely: _the marriage in cana_. an immense picture, some twenty-five feet long by fifteen high, and said by lazari to be one of the few which tintoret signed with his name. i am not surprised at his having done so in this case. evidently the work has been a favourite with him, and he has taken as much pains as it was ever necessary for his colossal strength to take with anything. the subject is not one which admits of much singularity or energy in composition. it was always a favourite one with veronese, because it gave dramatic interest to figures in gay costumes and of cheerful countenances; but one is surprised to find tintoret, whose tone of mind was always grave, and who did not like to make a picture out of brocades and diadems, throwing his whole strength into the conception of a marriage feast; but so it is, and there are assuredly no female heads in any of his pictures in venice elaborated so far as those which here form the central light. neither is it often that the works of this mighty master conform themselves to any of the rules acted upon by ordinary painters; but in this instance the popular laws have been observed, and an academy student would be delighted to see with what severity the principal light is arranged in a central mass, which is divided and made more brilliant by a vigorous piece of shadow thrust into the midst of it, and which dies away in lesser fragments and sparkling towards the extremities of the picture. this mass of light is as interesting by its composition as by its intensity. the cicerone who escorts the stranger round the sacristy in the course of five minutes and allows him some forty seconds for the contemplation of a picture which the study of six months would not entirely fathom, directs his attention very carefully to the "bell' effetto di prospettivo," the whole merit of the picture being, in the eyes of the intelligent public, that there is a long table in it, one end of which looks further off than the other; but there is more in the "bell' effetto di prospettivo" than the observance of the common law of optics. the table is set in a spacious chamber, of which the windows at the end let in the light from the horizon, and those in the side wall the intense blue of an eastern sky. the spectator looks all along the table, at the farther end of which are seated christ and the madonna, the marriage guests on each side of it,--on one side men, on the other women; the men are set with their backs to the light, which passing over their heads and glancing slightly on the table-cloth, falls in full length along the line of young venetian women, who thus fill the whole centre of the picture with one broad sunbeam, made up of fair faces and golden hair. close to the spectator a woman has risen in amazement, and stretches across the table to show the wine in her cup to those opposite; her dark red dress intercepts and enhances the mass of gathered light. it is rather curious, considering the subject of the picture, that one cannot distinguish either the bride or the bride-groom; but the fourth figure from the madonna in the line of women, who wears a white head-dress of lace and rich chains of pearls in her hair, may well be accepted for the former, and i think that between her and the woman on the madonna's left hand the unity of the line of women is intercepted by a male figure: be this as it may, this fourth female face is the most beautiful, as far as i recollect, that occurs in the works of the painter, with the exception only of the madonna in the _flight into egypt_. it is an ideal which occurs indeed elsewhere in many of his works, a face at once dark and delicate, the italian cast of feature moulded with the softness and childishness of english beauty some half a century ago; but i have never seen the ideal so completely worked out by the master. the face may best be described as one of the purest and softest of stothard's conceptions, executed with all the strength of tintoret. the other women are all made inferior to this one, but there are beautiful profiles and bendings of breasts and necks along the whole line. the men are all subordinate, though there are interesting portraits among them; perhaps the only fault of the picture being that the faces are a little too conspicuous, seen like balls of light among the crowd of minor figures which fill the background of the picture. the tone of the whole is sober and majestic in the highest degree; the dresses are all broad masses of colour, and the only parts of the picture which lay claim to the expression of wealth or splendour are the head-dresses of the women. in this respect the conception of the scene differs widely from that of veronese, and approaches more nearly to the probable truth. still the marriage is not an important one; an immense crowd, filling the background, forming superbly rich mosaic of colour against the distant sky. taken as a whole the picture is perhaps the most perfect example which human art has produced of the utmost possible force and sharpness of shadow united with richness of local colour. in all the other works of tintoret, and much more of other colourists, either the light and shade or the local colour is predominant; in the one case the picture has a tendency to look as if painted by candle-light, in the other it becomes daringly conventional, and approaches the conditions of glass-painting. this picture unites colour as rich as titian's with light and shade as forcible as rembrandt's, and far more decisive. there are one or two other interesting pictures of the early venetian school in this sacristy, and several important tombs in the adjoining cloister; among which that of francesco dandolo, transported here from the church of the frari, deserves especial attention. _stones of venice_ (london, ). madame de pompadour (_de la tour_) charles-augustin sainte-beuve madame de pompadour was not exactly a _grisette_, as her enemies affected to say and as voltaire has said in a malicious moment: she was a _bourgeoise_, a blossom of finance, the most lovely woman in paris, witty, elegant, adorned with a thousand gifts and a thousand talents, but with a way of feeling that did not have the grandeur and coldness of an aristocratic ambition. she loved the king for his own sake, as the handsomest man in his realm, as the one who had seemed the most amiable to her; she loved him sincerely, sentimentally, if not with a profound passion. on her arrival at court, her ideal would have been to amuse him with a thousand entertainments borrowed from the arts, or even from matters of the intellect, to make him happy and constant in a circle of varied enchantments and pleasures. a watteau landscape, sports, comedies, pastorals in the shade, a continual embarkation for cythera, that would have been the round she would have preferred. but once transported into the slippery enclosure of the court, she could realize her ideal very imperfectly. kind and obliging by nature, she had to take up arms to defend herself against enmity and perfidy and to take the offensive to avoid being overthrown; necessity led her into politics and induced her to make herself minister of state. she loved the arts and intellectual things far above the comprehension of any of the ladies of quality. on her arrival at her eminent and dishonourable post--much more dishonourable than she thought--she at first only thought of herself as destined to aid, to call to her side, and to encourage struggling merit and men of talent of all kinds. this is her sole glory, her best title, and her best excuse. she did her best to advance voltaire and to make him agreeable to louis xv., whom the petulant poet so strongly repelled by the vivacity and even the familiarity of his praises. she thought she had found a genius in crébillon and honoured him accordingly. she showed favour to gresset; she protected marmontel; she welcomed duclos; she admired montesquieu and plainly showed it. she would have liked to serve jean-jacques rousseau. when the king of prussia ostentatiously gave d'alembert a modest pension and louis xv. was scoffing in her presence at the amount ( livres), in comparison with the term _sublime genius_, for which it was given, she advised him to forbid the philosopher to accept it and to double it himself; which louis xv. did not dare to do; his religious principles would not permit it on account of the _encyclopédie_. it was not her fault that we cannot say _the century of louis xv._, as we say _the century of louis xiv_. [illustration: portrait of madame de pompadour. _de la tour._] there are then in the career and power of madame de pompadour two distinct periods: the first, the most brilliant and most greatly favoured, was that following the peace of aix-la-chapelle ( ): in this, she completely played her rôle of a youthful favourite, fond of peace, the arts, the pleasures of the mind, and advising and protecting all things happily. there was a second period, greatly checkered, but more frequently disastrous and fatal; this was the whole period of the seven years' war, the attempted assassination by damiens, the defeat of rosbach, and the insults of the victorious frederick. these were harsh years which prematurely aged this weak and graceful woman, who was drawn into a struggle beyond her strength.... however, my impression is that things might have been worse, and that, with the aid of m. de choiseul, by means of the family compact she again covered her own mistakes and the humiliation of the french monarchy with a certain amount of prestige. it seems that the nation itself felt this and felt more especially that after this brilliant favourite there would be a greater fall; for when she died at versailles, april , , the regret of the parisian populace, which some years before would have stoned her, was universal.... the one who seemed to regret her the least was louis xv.; it is related that seeing from a window the hearse on its way from versailles to paris, the weather being dreadful, he only said: "the marquise will not have very fine weather for her journey." all the masters of the french school of her time painted a portrait of madame de pompadour: we have one by boucher, and another by drouais which grimm preferred to all others; but the most admirable of all is certainly la tour's pastel owned by the louvre. to this we go in order to see _la marquise_ before we allow ourselves to judge of her, or to form the least idea of her personality. she is represented as seated in an arm-chair, holding in one hand a book of music, and with her left arm resting on a marble table on which are placed a globe and several volumes. the largest one of these books, which is next to the globe, is volume iv. of the _encyclopédie_; next to it in a row are the volumes of _l'esprit des lois_, _la henriade_, and _pastor fido_, indicative of the tastes at once serious and sentimental of the queen of this spot. upon the table also and at the base of the globe is seen a blue book upside down, its cover is inscribed: _pierres gravées_; this is her work. underneath it and hanging down over the table is a print representing an engraver of precious stones at work with these words: _pompadour sculpsit_. on the floor, by the foot of the table, is a portfolio marked with her arms and containing engravings and drawings; we have here a complete trophy. in the background, between the feet of the consol-table, is seen a vase of japanese porcelain: why not of sèvres? behind her arm-chair and on the side of the room opposite the table is another arm-chair, or an ottoman, on which lies a guitar. but it is the person herself who is in every respect marvellous in her extreme delicacy, gracious dignity, and exquisite beauty. holding her music-book in her hand lightly and carelessly, her attention is suddenly called away from it; she seems to have heard a noise and turns her head. is it indeed the king who has arrived and is about to enter? she seems to be expecting him with certainty and to be listening with a smile. her head, thus turned aside, reveals the outline of the neck in all its grace, and her very short but deliciously-waved hair is arranged in rows of little curls, the blonde tint of which may be divined beneath the slight covering of powder. the head stands out against a light-blue background, which in general dominates the whole picture. everything satisfies and delights the eye; it is a melody, perhaps, rather than a harmony. a bluish light, sifting downwards, falls across every object. there is nothing in this enchanted boudoir which does not seem to pay court to the goddess,--nothing, not even _l'esprit des lois_ and _l'encyclopédie_. the flowered satin robe makes way along the undulations of the breast for several rows of those bows, which were called, i believe, _parfaits contentements_, and which are of a very pale lilac. her own flesh-tints and complexion are of a white lilac, delicately azured. that breast, those ribbons, and that robe--all blend together harmoniously, or rather lovingly. beauty shines in all its brilliance and in full bloom. the face is still young; the temples have preserved their youth and freshness; the lips are also still fresh and have not yet withered as they are said to have become from having been too frequently puckered or bitten in repressing anger and insults. everything in the countenance and in the attitude expresses grace, supreme taste, and affability and amenity rather than sweetness, a queenly air which she had to assume but which sits naturally upon her and is sustained without too much effort. i might continue and describe many lovely details, but i prefer to stop and send the curious to the model itself: there they will find a thousand things that i scarcely dare to touch upon. such in her best days was this ravishing, ambitious, frail, but sincere woman, who in her elevation remained good, faithful (i love to believe) in her sin, obliging, so far as she could be, but vindictive when driven to it; who was quite one of her own sex after all, and, finally, whose intimate life her lady-in-waiting has been able to show us without being too heavy or crushing a witness against her. in spite of everything, she was exactly the mistress to suit this reign, the only one who could have succeeded in turning it to account in the sense of opinion, the only one who could lessen the crying discord between the least literary of kings and the most literary of epochs. if the abbé galiani, in a curious page, loudly preferring the age of louis xv. to that of louis xiv., has been able to say of this age of the human mind so fertile in results: "such another reign will not be met with anywhere for a long time," mme. de pompadour certainly contributed to this to some extent. this graceful woman rejuvenated the court by bringing into it the vivacity of her thoroughly french tastes, tastes that were parisian. as mistress and friend of the prince, as protectress of the arts, her mind found itself entirely on a level with her rôle and her rank: as a politician, she bent, she did ill, but perhaps not worse than any other favourite in her place would have done at that period when a real statesman was wanting among us. when she found herself dying after a reign of nineteen years; when at the age of forty-two years she had to leave these palaces, these riches, these marvels of art she had amassed, this power so envied and disputed, but which she kept entirely in her own hands to her last day, she did not say with a sigh, like mazarin, "so i must leave all this!" she faced death with a firm glance, and as the _curé_ of the madeleine, who had come to visit her at versailles, was about to depart, she said: "wait a moment, _monsieur le curé_, we will go together." madame de pompadour may be considered the last in date of the kings' mistresses who were worthy of the name: after her it would be impossible to descend and enter with any decency into the history of the du barry. the kings and emperors who have succeeded in france, from that day to this, have been either too virtuous, or too despotic, or too gouty, or too repentant, or too much the paterfamilias, to allow themselves such useless luxuries: at the utmost, only a few vestiges have been observable. the race of kings' mistresses, therefore, may be said to be greatly interrupted, even if not ended, and mme. de pompadour stands before our eyes in history as the last as well as the most brilliant of all.[ ] _causeries de lundi_ (paris, - ), vol. ii. footnotes: [ ] here is an exact statement of the civil register of the state relating to mme. de pompadour: jeanne-antoinette poisson, marquise de pompadour, born in paris, dec. , (saint-eustache);--married march , , to charles-guillaume lenormant, seigneur d'Étioles (saint-eustache); died april , ; interred on the th at the capucines de la place vendôme. her parish in paris was la madeleine; her hôtel, in the faubourg saint-honoré, now l'Élysée. m. le roi, librarian of versailles, has published, after an authentic manuscript the _relevé des dépenses de mme. de pompadour depuis la première année de sa faveur jusqu'à sa mort_. this statement, which mentions the sums and their uses, presents a complete picture of the marquise's varied tastes, and does not try too much to dishonour her memory. the hay wain (_constable_) c.l. burns a little strip of country on the borders of essex and suffolk, not ten miles in length, and but two or three in breadth, presenting to the casual observer few features more striking than are to be seen in many other parts of england, but hailed with delight by painters for its simple charm, has exercised a wider influence upon modern landscape painting than all the noble scenery of switzerland or the glories of italy; for here was nurtured that last and greatest master of that school of english landscape painting, which made the eastern counties famous in the annals of art. he was so essentially english, it might be said local, in his feeling, that he never left his country, and produced his greatest works within the narrow limits of his native valley; in whom love of locality was indeed the very basis of his art. [illustration: the hay wain.] constable, for it was he, like rembrandt, was the son of a miller, and was born at a time when the winds and flowing waters were powers in the land, bearing a golden harvest on their health-giving and invisible currents, turning sails upon countless hill-tops, and wheels in every river--before the supplanter, steam, was even dreamed of. his earliest recollections were mingled with the busy clatter of wheels, and the whirr of sails, as they sped round before the wind, was the music of his boyhood. his father, good man of the world as he was, holding a high opinion of the solid comforts gained by following his own profitable calling, placed his son, at the age of seventeen, in charge of a windmill, hoping thereby to curb his rising enthusiasm for the more glorious but less substantial pursuit of art. alas! how little can we predict the effect of our actions. this one, framed to divert his purpose in life, was the very means of leading him to study more closely the ever-varying beauties of the sky, with its matchless combinations of form and colour, and all the subtle differences of atmosphere, which in after-life formed a distinctive feature in his work; and, for a landscape-painter, perhaps no early training could have been better. his daily occupation by bringing him continually face to face with nature, and necessitating a constant observance of all her changing phenomena, trained his heart and eye to discover her secrets, hidden from the careless, but revealed to all true lovers of her wisdom. the effect upon a temperament so artistic as constable's was as permanent as it was quickly apparent. in less than a year we find his father reluctantly converted to his son's views in the choice of a career, and consenting to his sojourn in london, to learn the principles and technicalities of his profession, which he soon strove to forget and subsequently set at defiance. two years of studio work was sufficient to convince him that his school was the open air; and in his own country, amid the scenes of his boyhood, he could shake off the chains of fashion, which bound the landscape-painter of that day, and go straight to nature for his inspiration. concerning this he writes: "for the last two years i have been running after pictures, and seeing truth at second-hand. i have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which i set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men; i shall return to bergholt, where i shall get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes which may employ me--there is room for a _natural_ painter;" a prediction which was hardly fulfilled in his lifetime, for, with the majority of even intelligent lovers of art, his works were rarely understood and never popular, though the appreciative sympathy of an enlightened few kept him from despair. but, appreciated or not, he had found his life's work, and henceforth his mission was to depict the scenes around his old home, and to express the love he felt so keenly for "every stile and stump, and every lane in dear bergholt." "painting," he writes, "is with me but another word for feeling, and i associate my careless boyhood with all that lies on the banks of the stour--those scenes made me a painter, and i am grateful." how lovingly he repaid this debt of gratitude to his native valley will be seen by the tender care he bestowed in depicting its beauties; indeed, the strongest impression produced after visiting constable's country and again turning to a study of his works, is the marvellous sense of locality he has embodied in them. you seem to breathe the very air of suffolk and hear again the "sound of water escaping from mill-dams," and see once more "the willows, the old rotten planks, the slimy posts, and brickwork," he delighted in. in spite of the fifty years which have elapsed since he laid aside his brush for ever, with all the accidents of time and season, the subjects he painted are still to be easily found, and clearly distinguished by anyone at all acquainted with his works. the only exception is in the original of the famous _cornfield_, now in the national gallery. here the enemy has been busy, and by the aid of his children growth and decay, has succeeded in transforming the subject out of all recognition, tearing down the trees on the left, enlarging the group on the right, shutting out the view of stratford church, and choking up the brook from which the boy is drinking. nor has time been idle with this same boy, who six years ago, was carried to his last resting-place in bergholt churchyard, aged sixty-five.... it is not, however, in bergholt village that we must seek for the scenes which made constable a painter, but down in the quiet hollow a mile and a half to the eastward on the banks of his much-loved stour, and around the paternal mill of flatford, not improved as is the one at dedham into hideousness, but remaining much as it was in the artist's day. both mills were the property of golding constable, witnessed thereto in the latter, the initials g.c., carved in irregular characters deep in the huge mill scales, still legible beneath the dust of a century, as enduring almost as the memory of his gifted son. a low uneven structure is flatford mill, with many gables and queer outbuildings; standing on an island, the millhouse backing the main stream and facing a pool formed by the mill-tail, which, flowing through the mill, rejoins the main stream a hundred yards below. to this spot came constable many a hundred times, we may be sure, fishing in the stream, or sketching with his close ally, john dunthorne, the village plumber, and a lover of nature; their performances with the brush doubtless puzzling old willy lott--whose farmhouse occupies the opposite side of the pool; but though his judgment might not have been so technically sound upon art matters as upon the merits of those hornless suffolk cattle, said to have been unconsciously introduced by constable into pictures painted in far distant countries, yet his criticisms would have been worth hearing by virtue of their originality. willy cared but little for the outer world and its mode of thinking, any curiosity he may have ever had concerning it being amply satisfied by the experiences of four nights, separated by long intervals, spent away from his ancestral roof in four-score years. that this house of his possessed a peculiar fascination for constable is evident from its forming an important feature in two of his best known works, the _hay wain_ and the _valley farm_, besides appearing in numerous sketches. every foot of ground round the old mill seems to have imparted a yearning in him to paint it. the lock in the main stream, with its tide of life passing through, busier then than in these days of railways; the bridge above, with the picturesque cottages still standing, all were lingered over, studied, and painted with an affection inspired by the recollection of those golden hours of his boyhood. here, doubtless, was the scene of those stolen interviews with his future wife, following the ecclesiastical ban placed on his suit by the lady's grandfather, dr. rhudde, the rector, whose belief in the preordination of marriage was tempered in this case by a wise discretion on the subject of settlements. to the young painter's inability to satisfy this scruple may be attributed the doctor's discouragement of any practical application of the theory. the marriage duly took place despite the old gentleman, who, although not apparently reconciled during the remainder of his life, pleasantly surprised the young couple by leaving his granddaughter four thousand pounds when he died. the mill-tail is used as a thoroughfare, up which the hay is carted, from the meadows on the opposite bank of the river, a shallow and stony bedded back-water meeting it at its junction with the main stream. down this back-water in july the heavy cart-horses drag the sweet-scented haywains knee deep and axle deep in water, leaving feathery wisps of hay hanging from the willows, and clinging to the tall rushes upon either hand, the waggoner bravely astride the leader, while haymakers and children are seated on top of the load, not a little nervous in mid-stream, and clinging tightly when the horses are struggling up the deep ascent into the stack-yard. a contrast, indeed, is the bustle of the hay-making with the splash of the teams and the merry voices of the children to the solitude which reigns supreme in this silent, currentless backwater during the rest of the year. winding between the long flat meadows away from the traffic of the river it becomes in early summer a veritable museum of aquatic plants: lilies choke its passage, and the ancient gates, giving access to the adjoining fields, lie lost in creamy meadow-sweet, their sodden and decaying posts wreathed in sweet forget-me-nots, while sword-like rushes rear their points till they part the grey-green willow leaves above. the silence would become oppressive were it not for an indistinct murmur from the working world, which forms a fitful background to the prevailing stillness; the distant roar of a train as it rushes on its journey to the palpitating heart of london, the faint sound of a mowing machine in the meadows, or the crack of a whip up the tow-path as a barge moves up to the primitive lock, add a touch of human interest without disturbing the sense of restfulness from the eager hurry of nineteenth century existence.... constable's country may be said to extend along the stour valley, anywhere within walking distance of his home, neyland, stoke, langham, stratford, and in the opposite direction, harwich, all having furnished material for his fruitful pencil. but, despite much admirable work done in each of these places, it was to the few acres of river and meadow round the old mill at flatford that he owed his first awakening to the wonders of nature around him. to these, his first and truest masters, his memory was ever turning for inspiration; and during the life-long battle he waged with all that was untrue, he was certain of finding there encouragement to victory and solace in disappointment. _magazine of art_ ( ). the surrender of breda (_velasquez_) thÉophile gautier _the surrender of breda_, better known under the name of _las lanzas_, mingles in the most exact proportion realism and grandeur. truth pushed to the point of portraiture does not diminish in the slightest degree the dignity of the historical style. a vast and spacious sky full of light and vapour, richly laid in with pure ultramarine, mingles its azure with the blue distances of an immense landscape where sheets of water gleam with silver. here and there incendiary smoke ascends from the ground in fantastic wreaths and joins the clouds of the sky. in the foreground on each side, a numerous group is massed: here the flemish troops, there the spanish troops, leaving for the interview between the vanquished and victorious generals an open space which velasquez has made a luminous opening with a glimpse of the distance where the glitter of the regiments and standards is indicated by a few masterly touches. the marquis of spinola, bareheaded with hat and staff of command in hand, in his black armour damascened with gold, welcomes with a chivalrous courtesy that is affable and almost affectionate, as is customary between enemies who are generous and worthy of mutual esteem, the governor of breda, who is bowing and offering him the keys of the city in an attitude of noble humiliation. flags quartered with white and blue, their folds agitated by the wind, break in the happiest manner the straight lines of the lances held upright by the spaniards. the horse of the marquis, represented almost foreshortened from the rear and with its head turned, is a skilful invention to tone down military symmetry, so unfavourable to painting. it would not be easy to convey in words the chivalric pride and the spanish grandeur which distinguish the heads of the officers forming the general's staff. they express the calm joy of triumph, tranquil pride of race, and familiarity with great events. these personages would have no need to bring proofs for their admittance into the orders of santiago and calatrava. their bearing would admit them, so unmistakably are they hidalgos. their long hair, their turned-up moustaches, their pointed beards, their steel gorgets, their corselets or their buff doublets render them in advance ancestral portraits to hang up, with their arms blazoned on the corner of the canvas, in the galleries of old castles. no one has known so well as velasquez how to paint the gentleman with such superb familiarity, and, so to speak, as equal to equal. he is by no means a poor, embarrassed artist who only sees his models while they are posing and has never lived with them. he follows them in the privacy of the royal apartments, on great hunting-parties, and in ceremonies of pomp. he knows their bearing, their gestures, their attitudes, and their physiognomy; he himself is one of the king's favourites (_privados del rey_). like themselves, and even more than they, he has _les grandes et les petites entrées_.[ ] the nobility of spain having velasquez for a portrait-painter could not say, like the lion of the fable: "ah! if the lions only knew how to paint." [illustration: the surrender of breda. _velasquez_.] velasquez takes his place naturally between titian and van dyck as a painter of portraits. his colour is solidly and profoundly harmonious, without any false luxury and with no need of glitter. his magnificence is that of ancient hereditary fortunes. it has tranquillity, equality, and intimacy. we find no violent reds, greens, nor blues, no upstart glitter, no brilliant gew-gaws. all is restrained and subdued, but with a warm tone like that of old gold, or with a grey tone like the dead sheen of family silver. gaudy and loud things will do for upstarts, but don diego velasquez de silva is too true a gentleman to make himself an object of remark in that manner, and, let us say, too good a painter also. although a realist, he brings to his art a lofty grandeur, a disdain of useless detail, and an intentional sacrifice that plainly reveal the sovereign master. these sacrifices were not always those that another painter would have made. velasquez chose to put in evidence what, it sometimes seems, should have been left in shadow. he extinguishes and he illuminates with apparent caprice, but the effect always justifies him. the correctness of his eye was such that while he only pretended to be copying, he brought the soul to the surface and painted the inner and the outer man at the same time. his portraits relate the secret _mémoires_ of the spanish court better than all the chroniclers. let him represent them in gala dress, riding their genets, in hunting-costume, an arquebuse in their hand, a greyhound at their feet, and we recognize in these wan figures of kings, queens, and infantas, with pale faces, red lips, and massive chins the degeneracy of charles v. and the falling away of exhausted dynasties. although a court-painter, he has not flattered his royal models. however, despite the brainlessness of the type, the quality of these high personages would never be doubted. it is not that he did not know how to paint genius; the portrait of the count-duke of olivares, so noble, so imperious, and so full of authority, unanswerably proves that, unable to lend any fire to these sad lords, he gives them a cold majesty, a wearied dignity, a gesture and pose of etiquette, and then envelops all with his magnificent colour; that was full payment for the protection of his crowned friend. m. paul de saint-victor has somewhere called victor hugo "the spanish grandee of poetry;" may we not be permitted to call velasquez "the spanish grandee of painting"? no qualification would suit him better. as we have said, velasquez was court chamberlain, and it was he who was charged with the preparation of the lodgings of the king in the trip that philip iv. made to irun to deliver the infanta doña maria-teresa to the king of france. it was he who had decorated and ornamented the pavilion where the interview of the two kings took place in the Île des faisans. velasquez was distinguished among the crowd of courtiers by his personal dignity, the elegance, the richness, and the good taste of his costumes on which he arranged with art the diamonds and jewels,--gifts of the sovereigns; but on his return to madrid, he fell ill with fatigue and died on the th of august, . his widow, doña juana pacheco, only survived him seven days and was interred near him in the parish of san juan. the funeral of velasquez was splendid; great personages, knights of the military orders, the king's household, and the artists were present sad and pensive, as if they felt that with velasquez they were interring spanish art. _guide de l'amateur au musée du louvre_ (paris, ). footnotes: [ ] private audiences of the king. the immaculate conception (_murillo_) aimÉ giron after her , battles with the moors and the conquest of granada, spain had a splendid outburst of literary and artistic glory. in painting, the four schools of valencia, toledo, madrid, and seville suddenly shone forth with that conception of the real and that care for sharp relief which they owed to the brilliancy of their sunshine, while amid the fogs of the north the outline is more wavering and the vision less clear. under the influence of this original realism, their works instinctively reproduced that two-fold character which the land of spain, smiling in her valleys and savage in her mountains, shows in sharp contrast. but the spaniards are, in truth, much more realistic in their execution than in their inspiration. the school of seville, founded by luis de vargas, counted among its illustrious masters the greatest painter of that sunlit and passionate andalusia, murillo (bartolomé-estéban), - , spain's most popular painter, "the painter of the conceptions," as she called him. [illustration: the immaculate conception. _murillo_.] his uncle, juan del castillo, a mediocre artist but a good teacher, initiated him into his dry, stiff, and hard manner,--that of the old florentine school. in his studio young estéban murillo had young pedro de moya as a fellow-student. one day the former took a fancy to go to cadiz, where, miserable enough, he painted on pieces of serge some madonnas for traffic in the west indies, while the latter went to london to work in van dyck's studio. on his return pedro de moya brought several studies of the flemish master, and murillo, suddenly revolutionized and suddenly illuminated, no longer dreamed of anything but of going to flanders or italy, passing--happily--through madrid. in madrid, the velasquez of the court of charles ii. stopped him on the way, gave him admission to the royal collections, where he copied titian, veronese, and rubens, and then opened his purse to him, and, lastly, revealed the secrets of his mighty art. thus taught and thus inspired, murillo returned to seville, where he settled once for all, immuring himself in his studio, where--modest, timid, and gentle--he lived with that single love for his art which soon enriched him, two years later adding to it the adoration of his wife, a noble lady of pilas. it was from this studio that almost all of his laborious, numerous, and superb works issued, sometimes scarcely signed. from the very beginning, murillo possessed all the qualities of a great master, and henceforth we have only to separate his own personality and originality. murillo had three periods, as he also had three styles according to the nature of the subjects he had to treat: the first period, under the influence of the florentine formulas of juan del castillo, was somewhat that of happy and masterly imitations; the second, under the memories of van dyck, brought back by pedro de moya and of the copies painted at madrid, belongs to the flemish school. but, at thirty-five, in full possession of his genius, he reveals _himself_, with his superb colouring, his consummate ease, his great science, his rich and inexhaustible imagination, his exquisite and tender sentiment, and his harmony, often produced with feminine delicacy and childish grace, with his vigour, his trivialities, and his mysticism. the genius of murillo, in fact, obeyed a double current, which carried him forward, on the one hand towards the sky, and on the other towards the earth, towards the catholic ideal or towards vulgar realities, gentle madonnas alternately with knavish beggars. very sincerely and observantly religious, with the contemplative soul of the land of great men and great mysteries, saint john of the cross and saint theresa, this chaste artist, who never painted a nude woman, has the exalted sentiment of faith of the spanish artists, a sentiment which is somewhat ennobled by their realism of nature. "why don't you finish that christ?" asked one of his friends. "i am waiting until he comes to speak to me," replied murillo. with these works he enriched the chapter-house of the seville cathedral, the hospital de la caridad, that of the hospital de los venerables, the convents of the capuchins, the augustines, etc. i have said that murillo had three styles, almost three pencils, not like the pencils of gold, of silver, and of iron that the venetians attributed to the unequal genius of tintoret, but in sympathy with the subjects he had to treat. the spaniards have distinguished and qualified these styles as follows: _frio, calido y vaporoso_, cold, warm, and vaporous. in the cold style he painted broadly, boldly, and frankly his beggars and his _muchachos_, so true to life and in strong relief, with a certain brutality almost approaching triviality. a very well-known work of this kind is the _pouilleux_ in the museum of the louvre, and a masterpiece in the pinacothek of munich, the grandmother and infant. he sought these types in some old moorish dwelling, on the deck of a ship from tunis or tripoli anchored in a spanish harbour, or in among a band of wandering _gitanos_ on the banks of the guadalquivir. in the vaporous manner, which he used in rendering the ecstasies of the saints, he painted (under indescribable transparencies of light and atmospheric shade which is really only extinguished light), _saint francis in ecstasy_, _the angel kitchen_ (miracle of san diego) running through several scales of tones in a marvellous chord and softening all the outlines "dulcemente perdidos," as céan bermudez says. in his warm style, come his _annunciations_, _conceptions_, and all those gentle and graceful madonnas, sweet and poetic young mothers rather than divine virgins "whom jews might kiss and infidels adore," as pope says, and which remind us of correggio's effeminacy, unknown to murillo, and in which he plays with ease with harmonies, contrasts, and reflections of colour. _the immaculate conception_, in the national museum of the louvre, is of this style. certainly it is not more beautiful than the _conception_ in madrid, of such extraordinary brilliance, and of such a virginal expression of innocence, piety, and melancholy; and above all not more beautiful than that of seville--_the great conception_, or the _pearl of conceptions_, making the virgin mother's face into a beautiful and intense face of an archangel. that had its day of resounding triumph. every one knows that marshal soult accepted this work in spain for the pardon of two monks condemned to be hanged as spies. on the th of may, , this canvas was sold at auction. around it the greatest nations were represented with their rival gold, and loud applause accompanied each royal bid. when, for the sum of , francs, it was knocked down--"to france, gentlemen!" cried the count de nieuwerkerke--then broke forth the delirium of a battle won. in a diaphanous atmosphere gilded with an invisible clearness as of paradise, the winged heads and bodies of little angels are moving: the former gracefully grouped, the latter boldly and skilfully disposed. the celestial infants have followed all the way to the earth the rays of celestial light in its elusive gradations of colour under its imperceptible glazing. in the centre, in the act of ascent, the virgin rises in ecstasy. one corner of a cloud, the crescent moon, and a masterly group of little angels, naked and enraptured, bear the immaculate aloft. gracefully and statuesquely posed, and broadly draped in a white robe with sober folds enriched by an ample scarf of light blue, she modestly hides her feet under the drapery and chastely crosses her hands over the breast in which she feels the conception of the son of god operating. her head under its dishevelled waves of black hair, a little turned back and bending slightly to one side, is raised to heaven with uplifted eyes and open mouth, as if to receive in every sense the flow of the spirit. the face, in the exquisite sweetness of a surrender to piety, reflects the bliss of faith, of mystical voluptuousness, and divine ecstasy. the expression is religious, but the virgin is human, and full of life in the firmness of her lines and the warmth of her flesh-tints. beneath the suppleness of the drawing and the soft touches we recognize in mary the immaculate, the woman and even the andalusian. the whole work is a most harmonious and well-balanced composition, of the greatest opulence of colour, solidly laid in, and here and there lightly glazed over in the venetian manner; a superb work this, in which murillo has found the right point where his idealism and his materialism meet and mingle. if i remember rightly, we know one hundred and thirty canvases of murillo, to any one of which our admiration hesitates to award the pre-eminence,--and if the crown of laurels which a pope laid upon the funeral couch of raphael is the consecration of the sovereignty of the painter of urbino for history, the universally popular name of murillo has also sanctified the incontestable genius of the painter of seville. jouin, _chefs-d'oeuvre: peinture, sculpture architecture_ (paris, - ). st. francis before the soldan (_giotto_) john ruskin it is a characteristic--(as far as i know, quite a universal one)--of the great masters, that they never expect you to look at them;--seem always rather surprised if you want to; and not overpleased. tell them you are going to hang their picture at the upper end of the table at the next great city dinner, and that mr. so-and-so will make a speech about it;--you produce no impression upon them whatever, or an unfavourable one. the chances are ten to one they send you the most rubbishy thing they can find in their lumber-room. but send for one of them in a hurry, and tell him the rats have gnawed a nasty hole behind the parlour door, and you want it plastered and painted over;--and he does you a masterpiece which the world will peep behind your door to look at for ever. i have no time to tell you why this is so; nor do i know why, altogether, but so it is. giotto, then, is sent for, to paint this high chapel: i am not sure if he chose his own subjects from the life of st. francis: i think so,--but of course can't reason on the guess securely. at all events, he would have much of his own way in the matter. [illustration: st. francis before the soldan. _giotto._] now you must observe that painting a gothic chapel rightly is just the same thing as painting a greek vase rightly. the chapel is merely the vase turned upside-down, and outside-in. the principles of decoration are exactly the same. your decoration is to be proportioned to the size of your vase; to be together delightful when you look at the cup, or chapel, as a whole; to be various and entertaining when you turn the cup round; (you turn _yourself_ round in the chapel;) and to bend its heads and necks of figures about, as best it can, over the hollows, and ins and outs, so that anyhow, whether too long or too short--possible or impossible--they may be living, and full of grace. you will also please take it on my word to-day--in another morning walk you shall have proof of it--that giotto was a pure etruscan-greek of the thirteenth century: converted indeed to worship st. francis instead of heracles; but as far as vase-painting goes, precisely the etruscan he was before. this is nothing else than a large, beautiful, coloured etruscan vase you have got, inverted over your heads like a diving-bell. the roof has the symbols of the three virtues of labour--poverty, chastity, obedience. a. highest on the left side, looking to the window. the life of st. francis begins in his renunciation of the world. b. highest on the right side. his new life is approved and ordained by the authority of the church. c. central on the left side. he preaches to his own disciples. d. central on the right side. he preaches to the heathen. e. lowest on the left side. his burial. f. lowest on the right side. his power after death. besides these six subjects, there are, on the sides of the window, the four great franciscan saints, st. louis of france, st. louis of toulouse, st. clare, and st. elizabeth of hungary. the soldan, with an ordinary opera-glass, you may see clearly enough; and i think it will be first well to notice some technical points in it. if the little virgin on the stairs of the temple reminded you of one composition of titian's, this soldan should, i think, remind you of all that is greatest in titian; so forcibly, indeed, that for my own part, if i had been told that a careful early fresco by titian had been recovered in santa croce, i could have believed both report and my own eyes, more quickly than i have been able to admit that this is indeed by giotto. it is so great that--had its principles been understood--there was in reality nothing more to be taught of art in italy; nothing to be invented afterwards except dutch effects of light. that there is "no effect of light" here arrived at, i beg you at once to observe as a most important lesson. the subject is st. francis challenging the soldan's magi,--fire-worshippers--to pass with him through the fire, which is blazing red at his feet. it is so hot that the two magi on the other side of the throne shield their faces. but it is represented simply as a red mass of writhing forms of flame; and casts no firelight whatever. there is no ruling colour on anybody's nose; there are no black shadows under anybody's chin; there are no rembrandtesque gradations of gloom, or glitterings of sword-hilt and armour. is this ignorance, think you, in giotto, and pure artlessness? he was now a man in middle life, having passed all his days in painting, and professedly, and almost contentiously, painting things as he saw them. do you suppose he never saw fire cast firelight?--and he the friend of dante! who of all poets is the most subtle in his sense of every kind of effect of light--though he has been thought by the public to know that of fire only. again and again, his ghosts wonder that there is no shadow cast by dante's body; and is the poet's friend _because_ a painter, likely, therefore, not to have known that mortal substance casts shadow, and terrestrial flame, light? nay, the passage in the _purgatorio_ where the shadows from the morning sunshine make the flames redder, reaches the accuracy of newtonian science, and does giotto, think you, all the while, see nothing of the sort? the fact was, he saw light so intensely that he never for an instant thought of painting it. he knew that to paint the sun was as impossible as to stop it; and he was no trickster, trying to find out ways of seeming to do what he did not. i can paint a rose,--yes; and i will. i can't paint a red-hot coal; and i won't try to, nor seem to. this was just as natural and certain a process of thinking with _him_, as the honesty of it, and true science, were impossible to the false painters of the sixteenth century. nevertheless, what his art can honestly do to make you feel as much as he wants you to feel, about this fire, he will do; and that studiously. that the fire be _luminous_ or not, is no matter just now. but that the fire is _hot_, he would have you to know. now, will you notice what colours he has used in the whole picture. first, the blue background, necessary to unite it with the other three subjects, is reduced to the smallest possible space. st. francis must be in grey, for that is his dress; also the attendant of one of the magi is in grey; but so warm, that, if you saw it by itself, you would call it brown. the shadow behind the throne, which giotto knows he _can_ paint, and therefore does, is grey also. the rest of the picture[ ] in at least six-sevenths of its area--is either crimson, gold, orange, purple, or white, all as warm as giotto could paint them; and set off by minute spaces only of intense black,--the soldan's fillet at the shoulders, his eyes, beard, and the points necessary in the golden pattern behind. and the whole picture is one glow. a single glance round at the other subjects will convince you of the special character in this; but you will recognize also that the four upper subjects in which st. francis's life and zeal are shown, are all in comparatively warm colours, while the two lower ones--of the death, and the visions after it--have been kept as definitely sad and cold. necessarily, you might think, being full of monks' dresses. not so. was there any need for giotto to have put the priest at the foot of the dead body, with the black banner stooped over it in the shape of a grave? might he not, had he chosen, in either fresco, have made the celestial visions brighter? might not st. francis have appeared in the centre of a celestial glory to the dreaming pope, or his soul been seen of the poor monk, rising through more radiant clouds? look, however, how radiant, in the small space allowed out of the blue, they are in reality. you cannot anywhere see a lovelier piece of giottesque colour, though here you have to mourn over the smallness of the piece, and its isolation. for the face of st. francis himself is repainted, and all the blue sky; but the clouds and four sustaining angels are hardly retouched at all, and their iridescent and exquisitely graceful wings are left with really very tender and delicate care by the restorer of the sky. and no one but giotto or turner could have painted them. for in all his use of opalescent and warm colour, giotto is exactly like turner, as, in his swift expressional power, he is like gainsborough. all the other italian religious painters work out their expression with toil; he only can give it with a touch. all the other great italian colourists see only the beauty of colour, but giotto also its brightness. and none of the others, except tintoret, understood to the full its symbolic power; but with those--giotto and tintoret--there is always, not only a colour harmony, but a colour secret. it is not merely to make the picture glow, but to remind you that st. francis preaches to a fire-worshipping king, that giotto covers the wall with purple and scarlet;--and above, in the dispute at assisi, the angry father is dressed in red, varying like passion; and the robe with which his protector embraces st. francis, blue, symbolizing the peace of heaven. of course certain conventional colours were traditionally employed by all painters; but only giotto and tintoret invent a symbolism of their own for every picture. thus in tintoret's picture of the fall of the manna, the figure of god the father is entirely robed in white, contrary to all received custom; in that of moses striking the rock, it is surrounded by a rainbow. of giotto's symbolism in colour at assisi i have given account elsewhere.[ ] you are not to think, therefore, the difference between the colour of the upper and lower frescos unintentional. the life of st. francis was always full of joy and triumph. his death, in great suffering, weariness, and extreme humility. the tradition of him reverses that of elijah: living, he is seen in the chariot of fire; dying, he submits to more than the common sorrow of death. there is, however, much more than a difference in colour between the upper and lower frescos. there is a difference in manner which i cannot account for; and above all, a very singular difference in skill,--indicating, it seems to me, that the two lower were done long before the others, and afterwards united and harmonized with them. it is of no interest to the general reader to pursue this question; but one point he can notice quickly, that the lower frescos depend much on a mere black or brown outline of the features, while the faces above are evenly and completely painted in the most accomplished venetian manner:--and another, respecting the management of the draperies, contains much interest for us. giotto never succeeded, to the very end of his days, in representing a figure lying down, and at ease. it is one of the most curious points in all his character. just the thing which he could study from nature without the smallest hindrance, is the thing he never can paint; while subtleties of form and gesture, which depend absolutely on their momentariness, and actions in which no model can stay for an instant he seizes with infallible accuracy. not only has the sleeping pope, in the right hand lower fresco, his head laid uncomfortably on his pillow, but all the clothes on him are in awkward angles, even giotto's instinct for lines of drapery failing him altogether when he has to lay it on a reposing figure. but look at the folds of the soldan's robe over his knees. none could be more beautiful or right; and it is to me wholly inconceivable that the two paintings should be within even twenty years of each other in date--the skill in the upper one is so supremely greater. we shall find, however, more than mere truth in its casts of drapery, if we examine them. they are so simply right, in the figure of the soldan, that we do not think of them;--we see him only, not his dress. but we see dress first, in the figures of the discomfited magi. very fully draped personages these, indeed,--with trains, it appears four yards long, and bearers of them. the one nearest the soldan has done his devoir as bravely as he could; would fain go up to the fire, but cannot; is forced to shield his face, though he has not turned back. giotto gives him full sweeping breadth of fold; what dignity he can;--a man faithful to his profession, at all events. the next one has no such courage. collapsed altogether, he has nothing more to say for himself or his creed. giotto hangs the cloak upon him in ghirlandajo's fashion, as from a peg, but with ludicrous narrowness of fold. literally, he is a "shut-up" magus--closed like a fan. he turns his head away, hopelessly. and the last magus shows nothing but his back, disappearing through the door. opposed to them, in a modern work, you would have had a st. francis standing as high as he could in his sandals, contemptuous, denunciatory; magnificently showing the magi the door. no such thing, says giotto. a somewhat mean man; disappointing even in presence--even in feature; i do not understand his gesture, pointing to his forehead--perhaps meaning, "my life, or my head, upon the truth of this." the attendant monk behind him is terror-struck; but will follow his master. the dark moorish servants of the magi show no emotion--will arrange their masters' trains as usual, and decorously sustain their retreat. lastly, for the soldan himself. in a modern work, you would assuredly have had him staring at st. francis with his eyebrows up, or frowning thunderously at the magi, with them bent as far down as they would go. neither of these aspects does he bear according to giotto. a perfect gentleman and king, he looks on his magi with quiet eyes of decision; he is much the noblest person in the room--though an infidel, the true hero of the scene, far more so than st. francis. it is evidently the soldan whom giotto wants you to think of mainly, in this picture of christian missionary work. he does not altogether take the view of the heathen which you would get in an exeter hall meeting. does not expatiate on their ignorance, their blackness, or their nakedness. does not at all think of the florentine islington and pentonville, as inhabited by persons in every respect superior to the kings of the east; nor does he imagine every other religion but his own to be log-worship. probably the people who really worship logs--whether in persia or pentonville--will be left to worship logs to their hearts' content, thinks giotto. but to those who worship _god_, and who have obeyed the laws of heaven written in their hearts, and numbered the stars of it visible to them,--to these, a nearer star may rise; and a higher god be revealed. you are to note, therefore, that giotto's soldan is the type of all noblest religion and law, in countries where the name of christ has not been preached. there was no doubt what king or people should be chosen: the country of the three magi had already been indicated by the miracle of bethlehem; and the religion and morality of zoroaster were the purest, and in spirit the oldest, in the heathen world. therefore, when dante in the nineteenth and twentieth books of the paradise, gives his final interpretation of the law of human and divine justice in relation to the gospel of christ--the lower and enslaved body of the heathen being represented by st. philip's convert ("christians like these the ethiop shall condemn")--the noblest state of heathenism is at once chosen, as by giotto: "what may the _persians_ say unto _your_ kings?" compare also milton,-- "at the soldan's chair, defied the best of paynim chivalry." _mornings in florence_ (sunnyside, orpington, kent, ). footnotes: [ ] the floor has been repainted; but though its grey is now heavy and cold, it cannot kill the splendour of the rest. [ ] _fors clavigera_ for september, . lilith (_rossetti_) algernon charles swinburne "of adam's first wife, lilith, it is told (the witch he loved before the gift of eve), that, ere the snake's her sweet tongue could deceive, and her enchanted hair was the first gold. and still she sits, young while the earth is old, and, subtly by herself contemplative, draws men to watch the bright net she can weave, till heart and body and life are in its hold. "the rose and poppy are her flowers; for where is he not found, o lilith, whom shed scent and soft-shed kisses and soft-shed sleep shall snare? lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent and round his heart one strangling golden hair." _dante gabriel rossetti._ it is well-known that the painter of whom i now propose to speak has never suffered exclusion or acceptance at the hand of any academy. to such acceptance or such rejection all other men of any note have been and may be liable. it is not less well known that his work must always hold its place as second in significance and value to no work done by any painter of his time. among the many great works of mr. d.g. rossetti, i know of none greater than his two latest. these are types of sensual beauty and spiritual, the siren and the sibyl. the one is a woman of the type of adam's first wife; she is a living lilith with ample splendour of redundant hair; "she excels all women in the magic of her locks; and when she winds them round a young man's neck she will not ever set him free again." [illustration: lilith. _rossetti_.] clothed in soft white garments, she draws out through a comb the heavy mass of hair like thick spun gold to fullest length; her head leans back half sleepily, superb and satiate with its own beauty; the eyes are languid, without love in them or hate; the sweet luxurious mouth has the patience of pleasure fulfilled and complete, the warm repose of passion sure of its delight. outside, as seen in the glimmering mirror, there is full summer; the deep and glowing leaves have drunk in the whole strength of the sun. the sleepy splendour of the picture is a fit raiment for the idea incarnate of faultless fleshly beauty and peril of pleasure unavoidable. for this serene and sublime sorceress there is no life but of the body; with spirit (if spirit there be) she can dispense. were it worth her while for any word to divide those terrible tender lips, she too might say with the hero of the most perfect and exquisite book of modern times--_mademoiselle de maupin--"je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la vertu."_ of evil desire or evil impulse she has nothing; and nothing of good. she is indifferent, equable, magnetic; she charms and draws down the souls of men by pure force of absorption, in no wise wilful or malignant; outside herself she cannot live, she cannot even see: and because of this she attracts and subdues all men at once in body and in spirit. beyond the mirror she cares not to look, and could not. _"ma mia suora rahel mai non si smaga, dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto 'l giorno."_ so, rapt in no spiritual contemplation, she will sit to all time, passive and perfect: the outer light of a sweet spring day flooding and filling the massive gold of her hair. by the reflection in a deep mirror of fervent foliage from without, the chief chord of stronger colour is touched in this picture; next in brilliance and force of relief is the heap of curling and tumbling hair on which the sunshine strikes; the face and head of the siren are withdrawn from the full stroke of the light. _essays and studies_ (london, ). adoration of the magi (_dÜrer_) moriz thausing italy, that beautiful enchantress, whose irresistible charms have caused many of germany's greatest men to forget their native land, and array themselves beneath her colours, did not fail to exercise over dürer, in the course of the year and more that he spent beyond the alps, that subtle influence which elevates the understanding and expands the mind. he thought, as did goethe after him, with a sort of shudder, of his return to cloudy skies, and of the less easy nature of the life which awaited him at home. but, though he enjoyed himself very much at venice, and gave in willingly in many external things to the prevailing taste there, the essential nature of his art remained untouched by foreign influences, and he returned to nuremberg unitalianized, and true to his original principles. the fame which his works enjoyed in italy only encouraged him to continue in the path he had already chosen. perhaps the exuberance of life displayed in venetian painting inspired him, even under the altered circumstances of his home life, with the determination to devote all his energies to large easel pictures. to the _adoration of the magi_ in , and the _feast of the rosary_ in , succeeded the _adam and eve_ in , the _martyrdom of the ten thousand saints_ in , the _assumption of the virgin_ in , and the all saints picture or _adoration of the trinity_ of . dürer was at the height of his power when he created these masterpieces, small, indeed, in number, but remarkable for their conception, composition, and entire execution by his own hand. to complete a large picture to his satisfaction, dürer required the same time as schiller did for a tragedy, viz., a whole year.... it was in the year that dürer finished the first great picture, which, from its excellent state of preservation, must have been entirely executed with the greatest care by his own hand, even to the most minute detail. this picture is the _adoration of the magi_, now in the tribune of the uffizi at florence. mary sits on the left, looking like the happiest of german mothers, with the enchantingly naïve infant on her knees; the three wise men from the east, in magnificent dresses glittering with gold, approach, deeply moved, and with various emotions depicted on their countenances, while the whole creation around seems to share their joyous greeting, even to the flowers and herbs, and to the great stag-beetle and two white butterflies, which are introduced after the manner of wolgemut. the sunny green on copse and mountain throws up the group better than the conventional nimbus could have done. the fair-haired virgin, draped entirely in blue with a white veil, recalls vividly the same figure in the paumgärtner altarpiece. aërial and linear perspective are still imperfect, but the technical treatment of the figures is as finished as in dürer's best pictures of the later period. the outlines are sharp, the colours very liquid, laid on without doubt in tempera, and covered with oil glazes; the whole tone exceedingly fresh, clear, and brilliant. if it was barbari's fine work which incited dürer to this delicate and careful method of execution, he has certainly far surpassed the venetian, not only in form and ideas, but also in the solidity of his technique. this technique is undoubtedly of northern origin, as is also the harmony of colour, which dürer here realizes, and does not soon again abandon. it must not be forgotten, however, that the difference between this technique and that practised by giovanni bellini is one of degree and not of principle; judging at least by the unfinished painting of giovanni's in the uffizi, in which the design is sketched either with the pencil or brush, and the colours then laid on in tempera, and afterwards repeatedly covered with oil glazes. dürer appears to have owed the opportunity of producing this his first masterpiece in painting to a commission from the elector frederick of saxony. christian ii. presented it to the emperor rudolph ii. in , and in the last century it was sent from the imperial gallery, in exchange for the _presentation in the temple_, by fra bartolomeo, to florence, where it now shines as a gem of german art amongst the renowned pictures in the tribune of the uffizi. [illustration: adoration of the magi. _dürer._] _the life and works of albert dürer_, translated from the german and edited by fred. a. eaton (london, ). marriage a-la-mode (_hogarth_) austin dobson nevertheless, if the main circumstances of the painter's career should still remain unaltered, there must always be a side of his work which will continue to need interpretation. in addition to painting the faults and follies of his time, he was pre-eminently the pictorial chronicler of its fashions and its furniture. the follies endure; but the fashions pass away. in our day--a day which has witnessed the demolition of northumberland house, the disappearance of temple bar, and the removal of we know not what other time-honoured and venerated landmarks--much in hogarth's plates must seem as obscure as the cartouches on cleopatra's needle. much more is speedily becoming so; and without some guidance the student will scarcely venture into that dark and doubtful rookery of tortuous streets and unnumbered houses--the london of the eighteenth century. [illustration: marriage a-la-mode. _hogarth._] were it not beyond the reasonable compass of a methodical memoir, it would be a pleasant task to loiter for a while in that vanished london of hogarth, of fielding, of garrick;--that london of rocque's famous map of , when "cits" had their country-boxes and "gazebos" at islington and hackney, and fine gentlemen their villas at _marybone_ and _chelsey_; when duels were fought in the "fields" behind the british museum, and there was a windmill at the bottom of rathbone place. we should find the thames swarming with noisy watermen, and the streets with thick-calved irish chairmen; we should see the old dusky oil-lamps lighted feebly with the oil that dribbled on the rake when he went to court; and the great creaking sign-boards that obscured the sky, and occasionally toppled on the heads of his majesty's lieges beneath. we should note the sluggish kennels and the ill-paved streets; and rejoice in the additional facilities afforded for foot-passengers at the "new buildings near _hanover_ square." we might watch king george ii. yawning in his chapel royal of st. james's, or follow queen caroline of anspach in her walk on constitution hill. or we might turn into the mall, which is filled on summer evenings with a _beau-monde_ of cinnamon-coloured coats and pink _négligés_. but the tour of covent garden (with its column and dial in the centre) would take at least a chapter, and the pilgrimage of leicester fields another. we should certainly assist at the lord mayor's show; and we might, like better folks before us, be hopelessly engulfed in that westward-faring crowd, which, after due warning from the belfry of st. sepulchre's, swept down the old tyburn road on "execution day" to see the last of laurence shirley, earl ferrers, or the highwayman james m'lean. it is well, perhaps, that our limits are definitely restricted. moreover, much that we could do imperfectly with the pen, hogarth has done imperishably with the graver. essentially metropolitan in his tastes, there is little notable in the london of his day of which he has not left us some pictorial idea. he has painted the green park, the mall, and rosamond's pond. he has shown us covent garden and st. james's street; cheapside and charing cross; tottenham-court road and hog-lane, st. giles. he has shown us bridewell, bedlam, and the fleet prison. through a window in one print we see the houses on old london bridge; in another it is temple bar, surmounted by the blackened and ghastly relics of jacobite traitors. he takes us to a cock-fight in bird cage walk, to a dissection in surgeons' hall. he gives us reception-rooms in arlington street, counting-houses in st. mary axe, sky-parlours in porridge island, and night-cellars in blood-bowl alley. he reproduces the decorations of the rose tavern or of the turk's head bagnio as scrupulously as the monsters at dr. misaubin's museum in st. martin's lane, or the cobweb over the poor-box in mary-le-bone old church. the pictures on the walls, the chinese nondescripts on the shelves, the tables and chairs, the pipes and punch-bowls, nay, the very tobacco and snuff, have all their distinctive physiognomy and prototypes. he gives us, unromanced and unidealized, "the form and pressure," the absolute details and accessories, the actual _mise-en-scène_, of the time in which he lived.[ ] but he has done much more than this. he has peopled his canvas with its _dramatis personæ_,--with vivid portraits of the more strongly-marked actors in that cynical and sensual, brave and boastful, corrupt and patriotic age. not, be it understood, with its wolfes and johnsons,--he was a humourist and a satirist, and goodness was no game for his pencil,--rather with its lovats and chartres, its sarah malcolms and its shebbeares. he was a moralist after the manner of eighteenth-century morality, not savage like swift, not ironical like fielding, not tender-hearted at times like johnson and goldsmith; but unrelenting, uncompromising, uncompassionate. he drew vice and its consequences in a thoroughly literal and business-like way, neither sparing nor extenuating its details, wholly insensible to its seductions, incapable of flattering it even for a moment, preoccupied simply with catching its precise contortion of pleasure or of pain. in all his delineations, as in that famous design of prud'hon's, we see justice and vengeance following hard upon the criminal.... a hint of the new series had already been given in the _battle of the pictures_, where the second scene, still inoffensively reposing upon the easel, is wantonly assaulted by a copy of the _aldobrandini marriage_. in april following the set of engravings was issued, the subscription ticket being the etching of heads known as _characters and caricaturas_. plates i. and vi. were engraved by scotin, plates ii. and iii. by baron, and plates iv. and v. by ravenet. exactly two years earlier, hogarth had heralded them by the following notification in the _london daily post, and general advertiser_ of april nd, : "mr. hogarth intends to publish by subscription, six prints from copper-plates, engrav'd by the best masters in paris, after his own paintings; representing a variety of _modern occurrences in high-life_, and called marriage a-la-mode. particular care will be taken, that there may not be the least objection to the decency or elegancy of the whole work, and that none of the characters represented shall be personal." then follow the terms of subscription. the last quoted lines are probably a bark at some forgotten detraction, and if not actually ironical, doubtless about as sincere as fielding's promise, in the prologue to his first comedy, not to offend the ladies. those who had found inelegancy and indecency in the previous productions of the painter, would still discover the same defects in the masterpiece he now submitted to the public. and although it may be said that the "characters" represented are not "personal" in a satirical sense, his precautions, as he himself tells us, "did not prevent a likeness being found for each head, for a general character will always bear some resemblance to a particular one." but what, no doubt, interested his critical contemporaries even more than these preliminary protestations, was the painter's promise to represent, in his new work, "a variety of modern occurrences in high-life." here, it may be admitted, was a proposition which certainly savoured of temerity. what could one whose pencil had scarcely travelled beyond the limits of st. giles's, know of the inner secrets of st. james's? a hervey or a beauclerk, or even a fielding, might have sufficed; but a hogarth of leicester fields, whose only pretence to distinction (as high life conceives it) was that he had run away with thornhill's handsome daughter,--what special title had he to depict that charmed region of cards and folly, ringed with its long-resounding knockers, and flambeau-carrying footmen! this was, however, to reckon without genius, which over-leaps loftier barriers than these. it is true that the english novel of manners, which has since stimulated so many artists, had only just made its appearance; and _pamela_ and _joseph andrews_ but falteringly foreshadowed _clarissa_ and _tom jones_. yet there is nothing in the story of _marriage a-la-mode_ which was beyond the powers of a _spectator ab extra_, always provided he were fairly acquainted with the modelys and wildairs of the stage, and the satires of johnson and pope. the plot, like that of all masterpieces, is extremely simple. an impoverished nobleman who marries his son to a rich citizen's daughter; a husband who, pursuing his own equivocal pleasures, resigns his wife to the temptations of opportunity; a foregone sequel and a tragic issue:--this material is of the oldest, and could make but slender claim to originality. submitted to colman or garrick as the _scenario_ of a play for yates and mrs. woffington, it would probably have been rejected as pitifully threadbare. yet combined and developed under the brush of hogarth, set in an atmosphere that makes it as vivid as nature itself, decorated with surprising fidelity, and enlivened by all the resources of the keenest humour, it passes out of the line of mere transcripts of life, and, retaining the merits of the specific and particular, becomes a representative and typical work, as articulate to-day, as direct and unhesitating in its teaching, as it was when it was first offered to the world. how well-preserved, even now, these wonderful pictures are! it would almost seem as if time, unreasoning in his anger, had determined to ignore in every way the audacious artist who treated him with such persistent indignity. look at them in the national gallery. look, too, at the cracks and fissures in the wilkies, the soiled rainbows of turner,--the bituminous riding-habit of lady douro in sir edwin's _story of waterloo_. but these paintings of william hogarth are well-nigh as fresh to-day as when, new from the easel, they found their fortunate purchaser in mr. lane of hillingdon. they are not worked like a denner, it is true, and the artist is often less solicitous about his method than about the result of it; yet they are soundly, straight-forwardly, and skilfully executed. lady bingley's red hair, carestini's nostril, are shown in the simplest and directest manner. everywhere the desired effect is exactly produced, and without effort. take, as an illustration, the inkstand in the first scene, with its bell and sand-caster. in these days it would be a patient _trompe-l'oeil_, probably better done than the figures using it. here it is merely indicated, not elaborated; it holds its exact place as a piece of furniture, and nothing more. and at this point it may be observed that if in the ensuing descriptions we should speak of colour, the reader will remember we are describing, not the performances of messrs. ravenet and the rest, but hogarth's original pictures at trafalgar square. it is the more necessary to bear this in mind, because, besides being reversed, the paintings frequently differ in detail from the engravings. the first of the series represents the signing of the marriage contract. the scene, as the artist is careful to signify by the ostentatious coronets on the furniture and accessories (they are to be discerned even on the crutches), is laid in the house of an earl, who, with his gouty foot swathed in flannels, seems with a superb--if somewhat stiff-jointed--dignity to be addressing certain pompous observations respecting himself and his pedigree (dating from william the conqueror) to a sober-looking personage opposite, who, horn-spectacles on nose, is peering at the endorsement of the "marriage settlem^t of the r^t hon^ble. lord vincent [squanderfield]."[ ] this second figure, which is that of a london merchant, with its turned-in toes, the point of the sword-sheath between the legs, and the awkward constraint of its attitude, forms an admirable contrast to the other. a massive gold chain denotes the wearer to be an alderman. between the two is a third person, perhaps the merchant's confidential clerk or cashier, who holds out a "mortgage" to the earl. gold and notes lie upon the table, where are also an inkstand, sealing-wax, and a lighted candle in which a "thief" is conspicuous. at the back of this trio is the betrothed couple--the earl's son and the alderman's daughter. it is, in fact, an alliance of _sacs et parchemins_, in which the young people are involved rather than interested. the lady, who looks young and pretty in her bridal-dress, wears a mingled expression of _mauvaise honte_ and distaste for her position, and trifles with the ring, which she has strung upon her handkerchief, while a brisk and well-built young lawyer, who trims a pen, bends towards her with a whispered compliment. meantime the viscount--a frail, effeminate-looking figure, holding an open snuff-box, from which he affectedly lifts a pinch--turns from his _fiancée_ with a smirk of complacent foppery towards a pier-glass at his side. his wide-cuffed coat is light blue, his vest is loaded with embroidery. he wears an enormous _solitaire_, and has high red heels to his shoes. before him, in happy parody of the ill-matched pair, are two dogs in coupling-links:--the bitch sits up, alert and curious, her companion is lying down. the only other figure is that of an old lawyer, who, with a plan in his hand, and a gesture of contempt or wonder, looks through an open window at an ill-designed and partly-erected building, in front of which several idle servants are lounging or sitting. like pope's "visto," the earl has "a taste," and his taste, interrupted for the moment by lack of funds, is the ruinous one of bricks and mortar. the pictures on the wall exemplify and satirize the fashion of the time. the largest is a portrait in the french style of one of the earl's ancestors, who traverses the canvas triumphantly. a cannon explodes below him, a comet is seen above; and in his right hand, notwithstanding his cuirass and voluminous queen-anne peruke, he brandishes the thunderbolt of jupiter. _judith and holofernes_, _st. sebastian_, _the murder of abel_, _david and goliath_, _the martyrdom of st. laurence_, are some of the rest, all of which, it is perhaps needless to note, belong to those "dismal dark subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental," against which we have already heard the painter inveigh. upon the ceiling, with a nice sense of decorative fitness, is _pharaoh in the red sea_. from a sconce at the side, a gorgon surveys the proceedings with astonishment. hogarth has used a similar idea in the _strolling actresses_, where the same mask seems horrified at the airy freedom of the lightly-clad lady who there enacts the part of diana. in the picture of the _contract_, the young people and "counsellor silvertongue," as he has been christened by the artist, are placed in close proximity. these are the real actors in the drama. building _immemor sepulcri_, the old earl had but few years to live. henceforth he is seen no more; and the alderman reappears only at the end of the story.... we have only dealt briefly with these concluding pictures, the decorations and accessories of which are to the full as minute and effective as those of the one that precede them. the furniture of the bagnio, with its portrait of moll flanders humorously continued by the sturdy legs of a jewish soldier in the tapestry _judgment of solomon_ behind, the half-burned candle flaring in the draught of the open door and window, the reflection of the lantern on the ceiling and the shadow of the tongs on the floor, the horror-stricken look on the mask of the lady and the satanic grin on that of her paramour, all deserve notice. so do the gross dutch pictures in the alderman's house, the sordid pewter plates and the sumptuous silver goblet, the stained table-cloth, the egg in rice, and the pig's head which the half-starved and ravenous dog is stealing. there is no defect of invention, no superfluity of detail, no purposeless stroke in this "owre true tale." from first to last it progresses steadily to its catastrophe by a forward march of skilfully linked and fully developed incidents. it is like a novel of fielding on canvas; and it seems inconceivable that, with this magnificent work _en évidence_, the critics of that age should have been contented to re-echo the opinion of walpole that "as a painter hogarth had but slender merit," and to cackle the foot-rule criticisms of the rev. william gilpin as to his ignorance of composition. but so it was. not until that exhibition of his works at the british institution in , was it thoroughly understood how excellent and individual both as a designer and a colourist was this native artist, whom "picture-dealers, picture-cleaners, picture-frame-makers, and other connoisseurs"--to use his own graphically ironical words--had been allowed to rank below the third-rate copyists of third-rate foreigners. beyond the remark that the "jaded morning countenance" of the viscount in scene ii. "lectures on the vanity of pleasure as audibly as anything in ecclesiastics," lamb's incomparable essay in _the reflector_ makes no material reference to _marriage a-la-mode_. his comments, besides, are confined to the engravings. but hazlitt, who saw the pictures in the above-mentioned exhibition in , devotes much of his criticism to the tragedy of the squanderfields, chiefly, it would seem, because lamb had left the subject untouched. hazlitt's own studies as an artist, his keen insight and his quick enthusiasm, made him a memorable critic of hogarth, whose general characteristics he defines with admirable exactitude. much quotation has made his description of the young lord and counsellor silvertongue sufficiently familiar. but he is equally good in his vignette of the younger woman in the episode at the quack doctor's, a creation which he rightly regards as one of hogarth's most successful efforts. "nothing," he says, "can be more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her person and the hardened indifference of her character. the vacant stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain--show the deepest insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in depravity, by which it has been good-naturedly asserted that 'vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness.'" in the death of the countess, again, he speaks thus of two of the subordinate characters:--"we would particularly refer to the captious, petulant self-sufficiency of the apothecary, whose face and figure are constructed on exact physiognomical principles, and to the fine example of passive obedience, and non-resistance in the servant, whom he is taking to task, and whose coat of green and yellow livery is as long and melancholy as his face. the disconsolate look, the haggard eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in the hair, the broken gapped teeth, which, as it were, hitch in an answer--everything about him denotes the utmost perplexity and dismay." some other of hazlitt's comments are more fanciful, as, for example, when he compares lady squanderfield's curl papers (in the "toilet scene") to a "wreath of half-blown flowers," and those of the macaroni-amateur to "a _chevaux-de-frise_ of horns, which adorn and fortify the lack-lustre expression and mild resignation of the face beneath." with his condemnation of the attitude of the husband, in the scene at the "turk's head bagnio," as "one in which it would be impossible for him to stand, or even fall," it is difficult to coincide; and it is an illustration of the contradictions of criticism that this very figure should have been selected for especial praise, with particular reference to the charges made against the painter of defective drawing, by another critic who was not only as keenly sympathetic as hazlitt, but was probably a better anatomist--the author of _rab and his friends_. to hazlitt's general estimate of hogarth we shall not now refer. but his comparison of hogarth and wilkie may fairly be summarized in this place, because it contains so much excellent discrimination of the former. wilkie, hazlitt contends, is a simple realist; hogarth is a comic painter. while one is a "serious, prosaic, literal narrator of facts," the other is a moral satirist, "exposing vice and folly in their most ludicrous points of view, and, with a profound insight into the weak sides of character and manners in all their tendencies, combinations, and contrasts.... he is carried away by a passion for the _ridiculous_. his object is not so much 'to hold the mirror up to nature' as 'to show vice her own feature, scorn her own image.' he is so far from contenting himself with still-life that he is always on the verge of caricature, though without ever falling into it. he does not represent folly or vice in its incipient, or dormant, or _grub_ state; but full-grown, with wings, pampered into all sorts of affectation, airy, ostentatious, and extravagant.... there is a perpetual collision of eccentricities--a tilt and tournament of absurdities; the prejudices and caprices of mankind are let loose, and set together by the ears, as in a bear-garden. hogarth paints nothing but comedy or tragi-comedy. wilkie paints neither one nor the other. hogarth never looks at any object but to find out a moral or a ludicrous effect. wilkie never looks at any object but to see that it is there.... in looking at hogarth, you are ready to burst your sides with laughing at the unaccountable jumble of odd things which are brought together; you look at wilkie's pictures with a mingled feeling of curiosity and admiration at the accuracy of the representation." the distinction thus drawn is, in the main, a just one. yet, at certain points, wilkie comes nearer to hogarth than any other english artist; and that elegant amateur, sir george howland beaumont, reasoned rightly when he judged the painter of _the village politicians_ to be, in his day, the only fit recipient of hogarth's mahl-stick. to return to _marriage a-la-mode_. notwithstanding that the pictures were, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, announced for sale in , it was five years before they actually found a purchaser, although, in the interval, they seem to have been freely exhibited both at the "golden head" and at cock's auction rooms. in , however, they were at last disposed of by another of those unfortunate schemes devised by hogarth for disposing of his works. the bidding, said the announcement in the _daily advertiser_, was to be by written notes; no dealers in pictures were to be admitted as bidders; and the highest bidder at noon on the th june was to be the purchaser. whether this mode of sale, coupled with the characteristic manner of its notification, "disobliged the town" or not, it is impossible to say; but it is certain that when mr. lane, "of hillingdon, near uxbridge," who was to become the lucky proprietor of the pictures, arrived on the date appointed at the "golden head," he found he was the only bidder who had put in an appearance.[ ] in fact, there was no one in the room but the painter himself and his friend dr. parsons, secretary to the royal society. the highest written offer having been declared to be £ , mr. lane, shortly before twelve, said he would "make the pounds guineas," but subsequently much to his credit, offered the artist a delay of some hours to find a better purchaser. an hour passed, and as, up to that time, no one had appeared, hogarth, much mortified, surrendered the pictures to mr. lane, who thus became the owner of the artist's best work, and the finest pictorial satire of the century, for the modest sum of £ , which included carlo marratti frames that had cost hogarth four guineas a-piece. mr. lane, who readily promised not to sell or clean the pictures without the knowledge of the painter, left them at his death to his nephew, colonel j.f. cawthorne, by whom they were put up to auction in march, , but were bought in again for guineas. in they were sold at christie's for £ , to mr. john julius angerstein, with the rest of whose collection they were acquired in for the national gallery. _william hogarth_ (new york and london, ). footnotes: [ ] "it was reserved to hogarth to write a scene of furniture. the rake's levee-room, the nobleman's dining-room, the apartments of the husband and wife in _marriage a-la-mode_, the alderman's parlour, the poet's bed-chamber, and many others, are the history of the manners of the age." so says horace walpole (_anecdotes_, etc., , p. ), and in this, at least, he was an unimpeachable authority. [ ] the name is added in the print. [ ] not the "sole bidder," as allan cunningham and others have inferred. if this were so, in "making the pounds guineas," mr. lane would be bidding against himself, a thing which occasionally occurs at auctions, but is not recommended. we have failed to find any other account of this transaction than that supplied to nichols for his second edition of , pp. - , by mr. lane himself, which is summarized above. cunningham seems to have derived his information from the same source; but he strangely transforms it. we can but surmise that he followed ireland's transcript, in which the highest bid is given as £ , instead of £ --a rather unfortunate mistake, for it appears to have misled a good many people. the madonna of the rocks (_leonardo da vinci_) thÉophile gautier the engraving has popularized the _vierge aux rochers_,[ ] that composition that exhales the strange and mysterious grace of the master. in a strange spot, a kind of grotto bristling with stalactites and sharply pointed rocks, the holy virgin presents the little saint john to the infant jesus, who blesses him with uplifted finger. an angel with a proud and charming face,--a celestial hermaphrodite having something of the young maiden and the youth but superior to either in his ideal beauty,--accompanies and supports the little jesus like a page of the great household who watches over the child of the king with mingled respect and protection. hair of a thousand crisp curls frames that face so aristocratic and distinguished. certainly this angel occupies a very high rank in the hierarchy of the sky; he should, at least, possess a throne, a dominion, or a principality. the infant jesus draws himself up in a pose that shows great knowledge of foreshortening, and is a marvel of roundness and fine modelling. the virgin is of that charming lombard type in which under chaste innocence appears that malicious playfulness which da vinci excels in rendering. the colour of this majestic picture has blackened, particularly in the shadows, but it has lost nothing of its harmony, and perhaps it is more ideally poetic than if it had kept its original freshness and the natural tones of life. doubts have been raised regarding this picture. some critics have wished to see here merely a composition by leonardo executed by a strange hand, or even simply the copy of another canvas painted for the chapel of the conception of the church of the franciscans in milan. but none other than leonardo could have drawn such firm and pure contours or carried this model through those learned grades that give to the body the roundness of sculpture with all the softness of skin, or rendered his favourite types so superbly and delicately.... [illustration: the madonna of the rocks. _l. da vinci._] _the madonna of the rocks_, the engraving of which is so well known, belongs to and may be considered the type of leonardo's second manner. the modelling is pursued with a care not found in those painters who are not familiar with the engraving chisel. the roundness of the bodies obtained by gradation of tints, the exactness of the shadows and the parsimonious reserve in the light in this unparalleled picture betray the habits of a sculptor. we know that leonardo was one, and he often said: "it is only in modelling that the painter can find the science of shadow." for a long time earthen figures which he made use of in his work were preserved. the appearance of the _madonna of the rocks_ is singular, mysterious, and charming. a kind of basaltic grotto shelters the divine group placed on the bank of a spring which shows the stones of its bed through its limpid waters. through the arched grotto we see a rocky landscape dotted with slender trees and traversed by a stream, on the banks of which is a village; the colour of all this is as indefinable as those chimerical countries that we pass through in dreams and is marvellously appropriate to set off the figures. what an adorable type is the madonna! it is quite peculiar to leonardo, and does not in the least recall the virgins of perugino nor those of raphael: the upper part of the head is spherical, the forehead well developed; the oval of the cheeks sweeps down to a delicately curved chin; the eyes with lowered lids are circled with shadow; the nose, although fine, is not in a straight line with the forehead, like those of the greek statues; the nostrils seem to quiver as if palpitating with respiration. the mouth, rather large, has that vague, enigmatical and delicious smile which da vinci gives to all the faces of his women; faint malice mingles there with the expression of purity and kindness. the hair, long, fine, and silky, falls in waving locks upon cheeks bathed in shadows and half-tints, framing them with incomparable grace. it is lombard beauty idealized with an admirable execution whose only fault is perhaps too absolute a perfection. and what hands! especially the one stretched out with the fingers foreshortened. m. ingres alone has succeeded in repeating this _tour de force_ in his figure of _la musique couronnant cherubini_. the arrangement of the draperies is of that exquisite and precious taste that characterizes da vinci. an agrafe in the form of a medallion fastens on the breast the ends of a mantle lifted up by the arms which thus produce folds full of nobility and elegance. the angel who is pointing out the infant jesus to the little saint john has the sweetest, the finest, and the proudest head that brush ever fixed upon canvas. he belongs, if we may so express it, to the highest celestial aristocracy. one might say he was a page of high birth accustomed to place his foot on the steps of a throne. hair in waves and ringlets abounds upon his head, so pure and delicate in design that it surpasses feminine beauty and gives the idea of a type superior to all that man can dream of; his eyes are not turned towards the group that he is pointing at, for he has no need to look in order to see, and even if he did not have wings on his shoulders, we should not be deceived regarding his nature. a divine indifference is depicted upon his charming face, and almost a smile lurks in the corners of his lips. he accomplishes the commission given him by the eternal with an impassible serenity. assuredly no virgin, no woman, ever had a more beautiful face; but the most manly spirit and the most dominating intelligence shine in those dark eyes, fixed vaguely upon the spectator who seeks to penetrate their mystery. we know how difficult it is to paint children. the scarcely settled forms of the earliest age lend themselves awkwardly to art expression. in the little saint john of the _madonna of the rocks_, leonardo da vinci has solved this problem with his accustomed superiority. the drawn-up position of the child, who presents several portions of his body foreshortened, is full of grace, a grace sought-for and rare, like everything else that the sublime artist ever did, but natural, nevertheless. it is impossible to find anything more finely modelled than this head with its chubby dimpled cheeks, than those plump little round arms, than the body crossed with rolls of fat, and those legs half folded in the sod. the shadow advances towards the light by gradations of infinite delicacy and gives an extraordinary relief to the figure. half enveloped in transparent gauze, the divine _bambino_ kneels, joining his hands as if he were already conscious of his mission and understood the gesture which the little saint john repeats after the angel. with regard to the colour, if in becoming smoked it has lost its proper value, it has retained a harmony preferred by delicate minds for the freshness and brilliancy of its shadows. the tones have deadened in such perfect sympathy that the result is a kind of neutral, abstract, ideal, and mysterious tint which clothes the forms like a celestial veil and sets them apart from terrestrial realities. _guide de l'amateur au musée du louvre_ (paris, ). footnotes: [ ] the national gallery and the louvre each claims that it possesses the original of this celebrated picture and that its rival is a replica. the former was purchased in milan, in by gavin hamilton, who sold it to lord suffolk, in whose collection at charlton park it was long an ornament. it was purchased from him in for £ , . the louvre picture is first mentioned as belonging to francis i. designs for it are in turin and windsor, and in these the outstretched hand of the angel appears. this does not occur in the london _madonna of the rocks_, which differs in several details; for example, there are halos above the heads of the figures and john the baptist carries a cross.--e.s. beatrice cenci (_guido reni_) percy bysshe shelley on my arrival at rome i found that the story of the cenci was a subject not to be mentioned in italian society without awakening a deep and breathless interest: and that the feelings of the company never failed to incline to a romantic pity for the wrongs, and a passionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which they urged her who has been mingled two centuries with the common dust. all ranks of people knew the outlines of this history, and participated in the overwhelming interest which it seems to have the magic of exciting in the human heart. i had a copy of guido's picture of beatrice, which is preserved in the colonna palace, and my servant instantly recognized it as the portrait of _la cenci_.... the portrait of beatrice at the colonna palace is most admirable as a work of art: it was taken by guido during her confinement in prison. but it is most interesting as a just representation of one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of nature. there is a fixed and pale composure upon the features; she seems sad and stricken-down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by the patience of gentleness. her head is bound with folds of white drapery, from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape, and fall about her neck. the moulding of her face is exquisitely delicate; the eyebrows are distinct and arched; the lips have that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suffering has not repressed, and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish. her forehead is large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping, and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. in the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity which, united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow, are inexpressibly pathetic. beatrice cenci appears to have been one of those rare persons in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another: her nature was simple and profound. the crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world. the cenci palace is of great extent; and, though in part modernized, there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture in the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this tragedy. the palace is situated in an obscure corner of rome, near the quarter of the jews; and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of mount palatine, half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of trees. there is a court in one part of the palace (perhaps that in which cenci built the chapel to st. thomas) supported by granite columns, and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship, and built up, according to the ancient italian fashion, with balcony over balcony of open work. one of the gateways of the palace, formed of immense stones, and leading through a passage dark and lofty, and opening into gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particularly.... [illustration: portrait of beatrice cenci. _guido reni._] the most wicked life which the roman nobleman, francesco cenci, led in this world not only occasioned his own ruin and death, but also that of many others and brought down the destruction of his house. concerning his religion, it is sufficient to state that he never frequented any church; and, although he caused a small chapel, dedicated to the apostle st. thomas, to be built in the court of his palace, his intention in so doing was to bury there all his children, whom he cruelly hated. he cursed [his sons] and often also struck and ill-treated his daughters. the eldest of these, being unable any longer to support the cruelty of her father, exposed her miserable condition to the pope and supplicated him either to marry her according to his choice, or shut her up in a monastery, that by any means she might be liberated from the cruel oppression of her parent. her prayer was heard, and the pope, in pity to her unhappiness, bestowed her in marriage to signore carlo gabrielli, one of the first gentlemen of the city of gubbio, and obliged francesco to give her a fitting dowry of some thousand crowns. francesco, fearing that his youngest daughter would, when she grew up, follow the example of her sister, bethought himself how to hinder this design, and for that purpose shut her up alone in an apartment of the palace, where he himself brought her food, so that no one might approach her; and imprisoned her in this manner for several months, often inflicting on her blows with a stick. in the meantime ensued the death of his two sons, rocco and cristoforo--one being assassinated by a surgeon, and the other by paolo corso, while he was attending mass. the inhuman father showed every sign of joy on hearing this news; saying that nothing would exceed his pleasure if all his children died, and that, when the grave should receive the last, he would, as a demonstration of joy, make a bonfire of all that he possessed. and on the present occasion, as a further sign of his hatred, he refused to pay the slightest sum towards the funeral expenses of his murdered sons.... beatrice, finding it impossible to continue to live in so miserable a manner, followed the example of her sister; she sent a well-written supplication to the pope, imploring him to exercise his authority in withdrawing her from the violence and cruelty of her father. but this petition, which might, if listened to, have saved the unfortunate girl from an early death, produced not the least effect. francesco, having discovered this attempt on the part of his daughter, became more enraged, and redoubled his tyranny; confining with vigour not only beatrice, but also his wife. at length, these unhappy women, finding themselves without hope of relief, driven to desperation, resolved to plan his death.... beatrice communicated the design to her eldest brother, giacomo, without whose concurrence it was impossible that they should succeed. this latter was easily drawn into consent, since he was utterly disgusted with his father, who ill-treated him, and refused to allow him a sufficient support for his wife and children.... giacomo, with the understanding of his sister and mother-in-law, held various consultations and finally resolved to commit the murder of francesco to two of his vassals, who had become his inveterate enemies; one called marzio, and the other olimpio: the latter, by means of francesco, had been deprived of his post as castellan of the rock of petrella.... he [francesco] received an honourable burial; and his family returned to rome to enjoy the fruits of their crime. they passed some time there in tranquillity. but divine justice, which would not allow so atrocious a wickedness to remain hid and unpunished, so ordered it that the court of naples, to which the account of the death of cenci was forwarded, began to entertain doubts concerning the mode by which he came by it, and sent a commissary to examine the body and to take informations.... the pope, after having seen all the examinations and the entire confessions, ordered that the delinquents should be drawn through the streets at the tails of horses and afterward decapitated. many cardinals and priests interested themselves, and entreated that at least they might be allowed to draw up their defence. the pope at first refused to comply, replying with severity, and asking these intercessors what defence had been allowed to francesco when he had been so barbarously murdered in his sleep.... the sentence was executed the morning of saturday the th of may. the messengers charged with the communication of the sentence, and the brothers of the consorteria, were sent to the several prisons at five the preceding night; and at six the sentence of death was communicated to the unhappy brothers while they were placidly sleeping. beatrice, on hearing it broke into a piercing lamentation, and into passionate gesture, exclaiming, "how is it possible, o my god, that i must so suddenly die?" lucretia, as prepared and already resigned to her fate, listened without terror to the reading of this terrible sentence, and with gentle exhortations induced her daughter-in-law to enter the chapel with her; and the latter, whatever excess she might have indulged in on the first intimation of a speedy death, so much the more now courageously supported herself, and gave every one certain proofs of a humble resignation. having requested that a notary might be allowed to come to her, and her request being granted, she made her will, in which she left , crowns to the fraternity of the sacre stimmate, and willed that all her dowry should be employed in portioning for marriage fifty maidens; and lucretia, imitating the example of her daughter-in-law, ordered that she should be buried in the church of s. gregorio at monte celio, with , crowns for charitable uses, and made other legacies; after which they passed some time in the consorteria, reciting psalms and litanies and other prayers with so much fervour that it well appeared that they were assisted by the peculiar grace of god. at eight o'clock they confessed, heard mass, and received the holy communion. beatrice, considering that it was not decorous to appear before the judges and on the scaffold with their splendid dresses, ordered two dresses, one for herself and the other for her mother-in-law, made in the manner of the nuns--gathered up, and with long sleeves of black cotton for lucretia, and of common silk for herself, with a large cord girdle. when these dresses came, beatrice rose, and, turning to lucretia--"mother," said she, "the hour of our departure is drawing near; let us dress therefore in these clothes, and let us mutually aid one another in this last office." lucretia readily complied with this invitation, and they dressed, each helping the other, showing the same indifference and pleasure as if they were dressing for a feast.... the funereal procession passed through the via dell' orso, by the apollinara, thence through the piazza navona; from the church of s. pantalio to the piazza pollarolla, through the campo di fiori, s. carlo a catinari, to the arco de' conti cenci; proceeding, it stopped under the palace cenci, and then finally rested at the corte savilla, to take the two ladies. when these arrived, lucretia remained last, dressed in black, as has been described, with a veil of the same colour, which covered her as far as her girdle. beatrice was beside her, also covered with a veil. they wore velvet slippers, with silk roses and gold fastenings; and, instead of manacles, their wrists were bound by a silk cord, which was fastened to their girdles in such a manner as to give them almost the free use of their hands. each had in her left hand the holy sign of benediction, and in the right hand a handkerchief, with which lucretia wiped her tears, and beatrice the perspiration from her forehead. being arrived at the place of punishment, bernardo was left on the scaffold, and the others were conducted to the chapel. during this dreadful separation, this unfortunate youth, reflecting that he was soon going to behold the decapitation of his nearest relatives, fell down in a dreadful swoon, from which, however, he was at last recovered, and seated opposite the block.... while the scaffold was being arranged for beatrice, and whilst the brotherhood returned to the chapel for her, the balcony of a shop filled with spectators fell, and five of those underneath were wounded, so that two died a few days after. beatrice, hearing the noise, asked the executioner if her mother had died well, and, being replied that she had, she knelt before the crucifix, and spoke thus: "be thou everlastingly thanked, o my most gracious saviour, since, by the good death of my mother, thou hast given me assurance of thy mercy towards me." then, rising, she courageously and devoutly walked towards the scaffold, repeating by the way several prayers with so much fervour of spirit that all who heard her shed tears of compassion. ascending the scaffold, while she arranged herself, she also turned her eyes to heaven, and thus prayed: "most beloved jesus, who, relinquishing thy divinity, becamest a man, and didst through love purge my sinful soul also of its original sin with thy precious blood; deign, i beseech thee, to accept that which i am about to shed, at thy most merciful tribunal, as a penalty which may cancel my many crimes, and spare me a part of that punishment justly due to me." then she placed her head under the axe, which, at one blow, was divided from her body as she was repeating the second verse of the psalm _de profundis_, at the words _fiant aures tuæ_. the blow gave a violent motion to her body, and discomposed her dress. the executioner raised the head to the view of the people; and in placing it in the coffin placed underneath, the cord by which it was suspended slipped from its hold, and the head fell to the ground, shedding a great deal of blood, which was wiped up with water and sponges.... the bodies of lucretia and beatrice were left at the end of the bridge until the evening, illuminated by two torches, and surrounded by so great a concourse of people that it was impossible to cross the bridge. an hour after dark, the body of beatrice was placed in a coffin, covered by a black velvet pall richly adorned with gold: garlands of flowers were placed, one at her head, and another at her feet; and the body was strewed with flowers. it was accompanied to the church of s. peter in montorio by the brotherhood of the order of mercy, and followed by many franciscan monks, with great pomp and innumerable torches. she was there buried before the high altar, after the customary ceremony had been performed. by reason of the distance of the church from the bridge, it was four hours after dark before the ceremony was finished. afterwards, the body of lucretia, accompanied in the same manner, was carried to the church of s. gregorio upon the celian hill; where, after the ceremony, it was honourably buried. beatrice was rather tall, of a fair complexion, and she had a dimple on each cheek, which, especially when she smiled, added a grace to her lovely countenance that transported every one who beheld her. her hair appeared like threads of gold; and, because they were extremely long, she used to tie it up, and when afterwards she loosened it, the splendid ringlets dazzled the eyes of the spectator. her eyes were of a deep blue, pleasing, and full of fire. to all these beauties she added, both in words and action, a spirit and a majestic vivacity that captivated every one. she was twenty years of age when she died. _the cenci: poetical works of percy bysshe shelley_, edited by william m. rossetti (london ). the transfiguration (_raphael_) mrs. jameson the transfiguration is an early subject in christian art, and has gone through different phases. it is given in the mosaics of s. apollinare in classe, at ravenna (sixth century), in that reticence of form and emblematical character significant of classic art. by the uninitiated the subject would not be readily deciphered. in the centre of the domed apse is a large jewelled cross, in the middle of which is the head of christ. this represents the lord. on each side are bust-lengths of moses and elijah, while below are three sheep, emblems of the three disciples. another form is seen in early miniatures--for instance, in a magnificent evangelium preserved in the cathedral at aix-la-chapelle. here christ is seen with three rays above him; at his side are the full-length figures of moses and elijah; below are the three disciples--two crouching low in terror, while peter raises himself, saying "lord, it is good for us to be here," etc. the next form is that given by early byzantine artists, of a very formal and conventional character. christ is in the mandorla, from which five rays of glory proceed. these five rays touch the prophets at his side, and the disciples, all three crouching low at his feet. we see giotto scarcely emerging from this convention in his series in the accademia. fra angelico has a more fanciful representation. the christ has his arms extended, as a type of the death he was to suffer on the cross. the disciples retain the traditional byzantine positions. at the sides are the mere heads of the prophets, while the painter's adoration of the virgin, and his homage toward st. domenic, the founder of his order, are shown by their attendant figures. it must be allowed that there could be no more daring or more difficult undertaking in art than to represent by any human medium this transcendent manifestation of the superhuman character of the redeemer. it has been attempted but seldom, and of course, however reverent and poetical the spirit in which the attempt has been made, it has proved, in regard to the height of the theme, only a miserable failure. i should observe, however, that the early artists hardly seem to have aimed at anything beyond a mere _indication_ of an incident too important to be wholly omitted. in all these examples the representation of a visible fact has been predominant, the aim in the mind of the artist being to comply with some established conventional or theological rule. only in one instance has the vision of heavenly beatitude been used to convey the sublimest lesson to humanity, and thus the inevitable failure has been redeemed nobly, or, we might rather say, converted into a glorious success. when raphael, in the last year of his life, was commissioned by the cardinal de' medici to paint an altar-piece for the cathedral of narbonne, he selected for his subject the transfiguration of our lord. [illustration: the transfiguration. _raphael._] every one knows that this picture has a world-wide fame; it has, indeed, been styled the "greatest picture in the world;" it has also been criticised as if raphael, the greatest artist who ever lived, had been here unmindful of the rules of art. but it is clear that of those who have enthusiastically praised or daringly censured, few have interpreted its real significance. some have erred in ignorantly applying the rules of art where they were in no respect applicable. others, not claiming to know anything, or care anything about rules of art, insisting on their right to judge what is or is not intelligible to _them_, have given what i must needs call very absurd opinions about what they do not understand. it has been objected by one set of critics that there is a want of unity, that the picture is divided in two, and that these two parts not only do not harmonize, but "mutually hurt each other." others say that the spiritual beatitude above, and the contortions of the afflicted boy below, present a shocking contrast. others sneer at the little hillock or platform which they suppose is to stand for mount tabor, think the group above profane, and the group below horrible. such as these, with a courage quite superior to all artistic criticism, and undazzled by the accumulated fame of five centuries, venture on a fiat which reminds one of nothing so much as voltaire's ridicule of hamlet, and his denunciation of that _barbare_, that _imbécile de shakespeare_, who would not write so as to be appreciated by a french critic. now, in looking at the transfiguration (and i hope the reader, if the original be far off, will at least have a good print before him while going over these following remarks), we must bear in mind that it is not an historical but a devotional picture--that the intention of the painter was not to represent a scene, but to excite religious feelings by expressing, so far as painting might do it, a very sublime idea, which it belongs to us to interpret. i can best accomplish this, perhaps, by putting down naturally my own impressions, when i last had the opportunity of studying this divine picture. if we remove to a certain distance from it, so that the forms shall become vague, indistinct, and only the masses of colour and the light and shade perfectly distinguishable, we shall see that the picture is indeed divided as if horizontally, the upper half being all light, and the lower half comparatively all dark. as we approach nearer, step by step, we behold above, the radiant figure of the saviour floating in mid air, with arms outspread, garments of transparent light, glorified visage upturned as in rapture, and the hair uplifted and scattered as i have seen it in persons under the influence of electricity. on the right, moses; on the left, elijah; representing, respectively, the old law and the old prophecies, which both testified of him. the three disciples lie on the ground, terror-struck, dazzled. there is a sort of eminence or platform, but no perspective, no attempt at real locality, for the scene is revealed as in a vision, and the same soft transparent light envelops the whole. this is the spiritual life, raised far above the earth, but not yet in heaven. below is seen the earthly life, poor humanity struggling helplessly with pain, infirmity, and death. the father brings his son, the possessed, or, as we should now say, the epileptic boy, who ofttimes falls into the water or into the fire, or lies grovelling on the earth, foaming and gnashing his teeth; the boy struggles in his arms--the rolling eyes, the distorted features, the spasmodic limbs are at once terrible and pitiful to look on. such is the profound, the heart-moving significance of this wonderful picture. it is, in truth, a fearful approximation of the most opposite things; the mournful helplessness, suffering, and degradation of human nature, the unavailing pity, are placed in immediate contrast with spiritual light, life, hope--nay, the very fruition of heavenly rapture. it has been asked, who are the two figures, the two saintly deacons, who stand on each side of the upper group, and what have they to do with the mystery above, or the sorrow below? their presence shows that the whole was conceived as a vision, or a poem. the two saints are st. lawrence and st. julian, placed there at the request of the cardinal de' medici, for whom the picture was painted, to be offered by him as an act of devotion as well as munificence to his new bishopric; and these two figures commemorate in a poetical way, not unusual at the time, his father, lorenzo, and his uncle, giuliano de' medici. they would be better away; but raphael, in consenting to the wish of his patron that they should be introduced, left no doubt of the significance of the whole composition--that it is placed before worshippers as a revelation of the double life of earthly suffering and spiritual faith, as an excitement to religious contemplation and religious hope. in the gospel, the transfiguration of our lord is first described, then the gathering of the people and the appeal of the father in behalf of his afflicted son. they appear to have been simultaneous; but painting only could have placed them before our eyes, at the same moment, in all their suggestive contrast. it will be said that in the brief record of the evangelist, this contrast is nowhere indicated, but the painter found it there and was right to use it--just the same as if a man should choose a text from which to preach a sermon, and, in doing so, should evolve from the inspired words many teachings, many deep reasonings, besides the one most obvious and apparent. but, after we have prepared ourselves to understand and to take into our heads all that this wonderful picture can suggest, considered as an emanation of the mind, we find that it has other interests for us, considered merely as a work of art. it was the last picture which came from raphael's hand; he was painting on it when seized with his last illness. he had completed all the upper part of the composition, all the ethereal vision, but the lower part of it was still unfinished, and in this state the picture was hung over his bier, when, after his death, he was laid out in his painting-room, and all his pupils and his friends, and the people of rome, came to look upon him for the last time; and when those who stood round raised their eyes to the _transfiguration_, and then bent them on the lifeless form extended beneath it, "every heart was like to burst with grief" (_faceva scoppiare l' anima di dolore a ognuno che quivi guardava_), as, indeed, well it might. two-thirds of the price of the picture, _duccati di camera_, had already been paid by the cardinal de' medici; and, in the following year, that part of the picture which raphael had left unfinished was completed by his pupil giulio romano, a powerful and gifted but not a refined or elevated genius. he supplied what was wanting in the colour and chiaroscuro according to raphael's design, but not certainly as raphael would himself have done it. the sum which giulio received he bestowed as a dowry on his sister, when he gave her in marriage to lorenzetto the sculptor, who had also been a pupil and friend of raphael. the cardinal did not send the picture to narbonne, but, unwilling to deprive rome of such a masterpiece, he presented it to the church of san pietro in montorio, and sent in its stead the _raising of lazarus_, by sebastian del piombo, now in our national gallery. the french carried off the _transfiguration_ to paris in , and, when restored, it was placed in the vatican, where it now is. the _communion of st. jerome_, by domenichino, is opposite to it, and it is a sort of fashion to compare them, and with some to give the preference to the admirable picture by domenichino; but the two are so different in aim and conception, the merits of each are so different in kind, that i do not see how any comparison can exist between them. _the history of our lord, as exemplified in works of art_, continued and completed by lady eastlake ( nd ed., london, ). the bull (_paul potter_) eugÈne fromentin _the lesson in anatomy, the night watch_, and paul potter's _bull_ are the most celebrated things in holland. to the latter the museum at the hague owes a great part of the interest it inspires. it is not the largest of paul potter's canvases; but it is, at least, the only one of his great pictures that merits serious attention. _the bear hunt_ in the museum of amsterdam (supposing it to be authentic), even by ridding it of the retouches which disfigure it, has never been anything else save the extravagance of a young man, the greatest mistake he committed. _the bull_ is not priced. estimating it according to the present value of paul potter's other works, nobody doubts that in a european auction it would fetch a fabulous sum. then is it a beautiful picture? by no means. does it deserve the importance attached to it? incontestably. then is paul potter a very great painter? very great. does it follow that he really does paint as well as is commonly supposed? not exactly. that is a misapprehension that it will be well to dissipate. [illustration: the bull. _paul potter._] on the day when this suppositious auction of which i speak opened, and consequently when every one had the right freely to discuss the merits of this famous work, if anyone dared to let the truth be heard, he would speak very nearly as follows: "the reputation of the picture is very much exaggerated and at the same time very legitimate; it is contradictory. it is considered as an incomparable specimen of painting, and that is a mistake. people think it is an example to be followed, a model to be copied, one in which ignorant generations may learn the technical secrets of their art. in that again they deceive themselves entirely. the work is ugly and very ill-conceived, and the painting is monotonous, thick, heavy, dull, and dry. the arrangement is of the poorest. unity is lacking in this picture, which begins one knows not where, does not end anywhere, receives light without being illuminated, and distributes it at random, escapes on every side and runs out of the frame, so exactly like flowered linen prints does it seem to be painted. the space is too crowded without being occupied. neither the lines, nor the colour, nor the distribution of the effects, give it even those first conditions of existence which are essential to any fairly well-ordered work. the animals are ridiculous in their size. the painting of the fawn cow with the white head is very hard. the ewe and the ram are modelled in plaster. as for the shepherd, no one would think of defending him. only two portions of this picture seem to be intended for our notice, the great sky and the enormous bull. the cloud is well in place: it is lighted up where it should be, and it is also properly tinted according to the demands of the principal object, its purpose being to accompany or serve as a relief to the latter. with a wise understanding of the law of contrasts, the painter has beautifully graded the strong tints and the dark shading of the animal. the darkest part is opposed to the light portion of the sky, and the most energetic and ingrained characteristic of the bull is opposite to all that is most limpid in the atmosphere. but this is hardly a merit, considering the simplicity of the problem. the rest is simply a surplus that we might cut away without regret, to the great advantage of the picture." that would be a brutal criticism, but an exact one. and yet public opinion, less punctilious or more clear-sighted, would say that the signature was well worth the price. public opinion never goes entirely astray. by uncertain roads, often by those not most happily chosen, it arrives definitely at the expression of a true sentiment. the motives that lead it to acclaim any one are not always of the best, but there are always other good reasons that justify this expression. it is deceived regarding titles, sometimes it mistakes faults for excellencies, it estimates a man for his manner, and that is the least of all his merits; it believes that a painter paints well when he paints badly and because he paints minutely. what is astonishing in paul potter is the imitation of objects carried to the point of eccentricity. people do not know, or do not notice, that in such a case the soul of the painter is of more worth than the work, and that his manner of feeling is of infinitely greater importance than the result. when he painted _the bull_ in , paul potter was not twenty-three years of age. he was a very young man; and according to the usual run of young men of twenty-three years, he was a child. to what school did he belong? to none. had he any masters? we do not know of any other teachers than his father pieter simonsz potter, an obscure painter, and jacob de wet (of haarlem), who had no force to influence a pupil either for good or evil. paul potter then found around his cradle and afterwards in the studio of his second master nothing but simple advice and no doctrines; very strange to say, the pupil did not need anything more. until paul potter divided his time between amsterdam and haarlem, that is to say, between frans hals and rembrandt in the focus of the most active, the most inspiring and the richest art of celebrated masters that the world had ever known except during the preceding century in italy. professors were not lacking, the choice was only too embarrassing. wynants was forty-six; cuyp, forty-two; terburg, thirty-nine; ostade, thirty-seven; metzu, thirty-two; wouwerman, twenty-seven; and berghem, about his own age, was twenty-three years of age. many of the youngest even were members of the guild of st. luke. finally, the greatest of all, the most illustrious, rembrandt, had already produced the _night watch_, and he was a master to tempt one. what became of paul potter? how did he isolate himself in the heart of this rich and swarming school, where practical ability was extreme, talent universal, style somewhat similar, and, nevertheless--a beautiful thing at that happy time--the methods of feeling were very individual? had he any fellow-pupils? we do not see them. his friends are unknown. he was born,--it is the utmost we can do to be sure of the exact year. he reveals himself early, signing a charming etching at fourteen; at twenty-two he is ignorant on many points, but on others his maturity is unexampled. he laboured and produced work upon work; doing some things admirably. he accumulated them in a few years in haste and abundance, as if death were at his heels, and yet with an appreciation and a patience which render this prodigious labour miraculous. he married, young, for any one else but very late for him, for it was on july , ; and on august , , four years afterwards, death seized him in the height of his glory, but before he had learned his whole ground. what could be simpler, shorter, and more fully accomplished? genius and no lessons, ardent study, an ingenuous and able product, attentive observation and reflection; add to this great natural charm, the gentleness of a meditative mind, the appreciation of a conscience filled with scruples, the sadness inseparable from solitary labour, and, perhaps, the natural melancholy belonging to sickly beings, and you very nearly have all paul potter. to this extent, if we except its charm, _the bull_ at the hague represents him wonderfully well. it is a great _study_, too great from the common-sense point of view, not too great for the research of which it was the object, nor for the instruction that the painter drew from it. reflect that paul potter, compared with his brilliant contemporaries, was ignorant of all the skill of the handicraft: i do not speak of the tricks of which his frankness can never be suspected. he especially studied forms and aspects in their absolute simplicity. the least artifice was an embarrassment which would have spoiled him, because it would have altered his clear view of things. a great bull in a vast plain, an immense sky, and no horizon, so to speak,--what better opportunity is there for a student to learn once for all a host of very difficult things, and to know them, as they say, by rule and compass. the action is very simple; he did not fail with it; the movement is true, and the head admirably full of life. the beast has his age, his type, his character, his disposition, his length, his height, his joints, his bones, his muscles, his hair rough or smooth, in flocks or curls, his hide loose or stretched,--all is perfection. the head, the eye, the neck and shoulders, the chest, from the point of view of a naïve and powerful observation, form a very rare specimen, perhaps, really without an equal. i do not say that the pigment is beautiful, nor that the colour is well chosen; pigment and colour are here subordinated too visibly to preoccupations of form for us to exact much on that head, when the designer has given all, or nearly all, under another. moreover, the work in that field accomplished with such force results in rendering nature exactly as she is, in her reliefs, her nuances, and her power, and almost in her mysteries. it is not possible to aim at a more circumscribed but more formal result and attain it with more success. people say _paul potter's bull_, and that is not enough, i assure you: they might say _the bull_, and, in my opinion, that would be the greatest eulogy that could be bestowed upon this work, so mediocre in its weak parts and yet so decisive. _les maîtres d'autrefois_ (paris, ) corÉsus and callirhoÉ (_fragonard_) edmond and jules de goncourt poets were lacking in the last century. i do not say rhymers, versifiers and mechanical arrangers of words; i say poets. poetry, taking the expression in the truth and height of its meaning; poetry, which is an elevation or an enchantment of the imagination, the contribution of an ideal of reverie or gaiety to human thought; poetry, which carries away and suspends above the world the soul of a period and the spirit of a people, was unknown to the france of the eighteenth century, and her two only poets were two painters: watteau and fragonard. watteau, the man of the north, the child of flanders, the great poet of love! the master of sweet serenity and tender paradises, whose work may be likened to the elysian field of passion! watteau, the melancholy enchanter who has made nature sigh so heavily in his autumn woods, full of regret around dreamful pleasure! watteau, the pensieroso of the regency; fragonard, the little poet of the _art of love_ of the time. have you noticed in _l'embarquement de cythère_ all those naked little forms of saucy and knavish loves half lost in the heights of the sky? where are they going? they are going to play at fragonard's and to put on his palette the hues of their butterfly wings. [illustration: corÉsus and callirhoÉ. _fragonard_.] fragonard is the bold narrator, the gallant _amoroso_, the rogue with gallic malice, nearly italian in genius but french in spirit; the man of foreshortened mythology and roguish undress, of skies made rosy by the flesh of goddesses and alcoves lighted with female nudity. upon a table beside a bunch of roses let us allow the leaves of his work to be ruffled by the wind of a lovely day: from landscapes where robes of satin are escaping in coquettish flight, our glance skips to meadows guarded by annettes of fifteen years, to granges where the somersaults of love upset the painter's easel, to pastures where the milk-maid of the milk-jug reveals her bare legs and weeps like a nymph over her broken urn, for her sheep, her flocks, and her vanished dream. upon another page a maiden in love is writing a beloved name on the bark of a tree on a lovely summer evening. the breeze is always turning them over: now a shepherd and shepherdess are embracing before a sun-dial which little cupids make into a pleasure-dial. it keeps on turning them; and now we have the beautiful dream of a pilgrim sleeping with his staff and gourd beside him, and to whom appears a host of young fays skimming a huge pot. does it not seem that your eye is upon a vision of a fête by boucher, shown by his pupil in tasso's garden? adorable magic lantern! where clorinde follows fiammette, where the gleams of an epic poem mingle with the smiles of the _novellieri_! tales of the fay urgèle, little comic jests, rays of gayety and sunshine which one might say were thrown upon the cloth upon which béroalde de verville made his cherry-gatherer walk. tasso, cervantes, boccaccio, ariosto (ariosto as he has drawn him, inspired by love and folly), it recalls all his genii of happiness. it laughs with the liberties of la fontaine. it goes from properce to grécourt, from longus to favart, from gentil-bernard to andré chénier. it has, so to speak, the heart of a lover and the hand of a charming rascal. in it the breath of a sigh passes into a kiss and it is young with immortal youth: it is the poem of desire, a divine poem! it is enough to have written it like fragonard for him to remain what he will always be: the cherubino of erotic painting.... he leaped into success and fame at one bound, with his picture of _callirhoé_, that painting of universal approbation, which caused him to be received into the _académie_ by acclamation; that painting which aroused public enthusiasm at the salon in the month of august, and which had the honour of a royal command for its reproduction upon gobelin tapestry. imagine a large picture nine feet high by twelve feet long, where the human figures are of natural size, the architecture in its proper proportion and the crowd and sky have their own space. between two columns of a shining marble with its iris-coloured reflections, above the heavy purple of a tapestry with golden fringe spread out and broken by the ridge of two steps, opens the scene of an antique drama which seems to be under the curtain of a theatre. on this tapestry, on this pagan altar-cloth, stands a copper crater near an urn of black marble half veiled with white linen. a column cuts in half a large candelabra smoking with incense and ornamented with goats' heads, a superb bronze which must have been taken from the lava of herculaneum. a young priest has thrown himself on his knees against this candelabra and embraces its pedestal; in terror he has allowed his censer to fall to the earth. standing by his side is corésus, the high priest, crowned with ivy, enveloped in draperies, and seemingly floating in the sacerdotal whiteness of his vestments; a beardless priest, of doubtful sex, of androgynous grace, an enervated adonis, the shadow of a man. with a backward turn of one hand he plunges the knife in his breast; with the other he has the appearance of casting his life into the heavens, whilst across his effeminate face pass the weakness of the agony and grief of violent death. opposite the dying high-priest is the living though fainting victim, nearly dead at the belief that she is about to die. with her head resting on her shoulder, she has glided before the smoking altar. her body has lost all rigidity on her bending legs, her arms hang down at her side; her glance is distracted; she has lost all volition in the use of her limbs; and she is there, sinking motionless, her throat scarcely distending with a breath, turning white under her crown of roses, which the painter's brush has made to pale in sympathy. between her body and the altar a young priest is leaning in horrified curiosity. another, upon one knee, perfectly terrified, with fixed gaze and parted lips, holds before the young girl the basin used to receive the blood of the victims. in the background are visible figures of old grey-bearded priests, aghast at the horrible spectacle. above them the smoke of the temple, the flames, the perfumes, and the incense of the altar mingle with the cloudy sky, a sky of a night of miracles and hell, wild and rolling, a sky of fiery and sombre whirlwind, in which a genie brandishing a torch and dagger bears love away in sombre flight enveloped in a black mantle. from that shadow, let us go to the shadow at the base of the picture: two women, writhing with fear, shrink back veiling their faces; a little boy clings about their knees and holds fast to them, and a ray of sunlight, falling across the arm of one of the women, illumines the hair and the little rosy hands of the child. such is fragonard's great composition, that striking unexpected production, for which he must have taken the idea, and, perhaps, even the effect from one of the revivals of _callirhoé_ by the poet roy;[ ] a painting of the opera, and demanding from the opera its soul and its light. but what a magnificent illusion this picture presents! it must be seen in the louvre so that the eyes may feast upon the clear and warm splendour of the canvas, the milky radiance of all those white priestly robes, the virginal light inundating the centre of the scene, palpitating and dying away on _callirhoé_, enveloping her fainting body like the fading of day, and caressing that failing throat. the rays of light and the smoke all melt into one another; the temple smokes and the mists of incense ascend everywhere. night is rolling above the day. the sun falls into the gloom and casts a reflected glare. the gleams of sulphur flames illuminate the faces and the throng. fragonard lavishly threw the lights of fairyland upon his masterpiece: it is rembrandt combined with ruggieri. and what movement, what action are in this agitated and convulsive painting! the clouds and the garments whirl, the gestures are rapid, the attitudes are despairing, horror shudders in every pose and on every lip, and a great mute cry seems to rise throughout this entire temple and throughout this entire lyrical composition. this cry of a picture, so new for the eighteenth century, is passion. fragonard introduces it into his time in this picture so full of tragic tenderness where we might fancy the entombment of iphigenia. the phantasmagoria raises his art to the level of the emotion of the _alceste_ of euripides; it reveals a future for french painting: pathos. _l'art du dix-huitième siècle_ ( d ed., paris, ). footnotes: [ ] _callirhoé_ by pierre-charles roy, was written in .--e.s. the market-cart (_gainsborough_) richard and samuel redgrave it is said that sir joshua at an academy dinner gave "the health of mr. gainsborough, the greatest landscape painter of the day," to which wilson, in his blunt, grumbling way, retorted, "ay, and the greatest portrait painter, too." in gainsborough's own time, the world of art patrons seem to have employed his talents as a portrait painter, but to have disregarded his landscape art. beechey said that "in gainsborough's house in pall mall the landscapes stood ranged in long lines from his hall to his painting-room, and that those who came to sit to him for his portraits, on which he was chiefly occupied, rarely deigned to honour them with a look as they passed them." after his death, however, and the eulogium reynolds had pronounced on his landscapes and rustic children, these came to be considered his finest works, and it is usual now to speak of him as a landscape rather than as a portrait painter. but it is more than doubtful whether wilson did not judge more truly of his talent than sir joshua; and without wishing to place him above reynolds in that painter's peculiar branch, it is certain that gainsborough, in his finest portraits, formed a style equally original, and produced works that are every way worthy to take rank with those of the great president. they contrast with the latter in being more silvery and pure, and in the absence of that impasto and richness in which reynolds indulged, but his figures are surrounded by air and light, and his portraits generally are easy and graceful without affectation.... [illustration: the market-cart. _gainsborough_] reynolds says: "it is difficult to determine whether gainsborough's portraits were most admirable for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like representation of nature,"--a strange judgment, written more with a view to a well-rounded period than to any true criticism on his rival's landscape art. it is certainly true that gainsborough put aside altogether the early foundation of dutch landscape on which he had begun to build, and took an entirely original view of nature, both as to treatment and handling. yet in the sense in which the artists of our day paint "portrait-like representations of nature," gainsborough's art was anything but portrait-like. it has been objected to the great italian landscape painters that they did not discriminate between one tree and another, but indulged in a "painter's tree." there is far more variety in those of our native artist, yet it would puzzle a critic to say what his trees really are, and to point out in his landscapes the distinctive differences between oak and beech, and elm. the weeds, too, in his foregrounds, have neither form nor species. on the margins of his brooks or pools a few sword-shaped dashes tell of reeds and rushes; on the banks of his road-side some broad-leaved forms catch the straggling sun-ray, but he cared little to go into botanical minutiæ, or to enable us to tell their kind. his rocks are certainly not truly stratified or geologically correct--how should they be?--he studied them, perhaps, in his painting-room from broken stones and bits of coal. the truth is, however, that he gave us more of nature than any merely imitative rendering could do. as the great portrait painter looks beyond the features of his sitter to give the mind and character of the man, often thereby laying himself open to complaint as to his mere _likeness_ painting; so the great landscape painter will at all times sink individual imitation in seeking to fill us with the greater truths of his art. it may be the golden sunset or the breezy noon, the solemn breadth of twilight, or the silvery freshness of morn--the something of colour, of form, of light and shade, floating rapidly away, that makes the meanest and most commonplace view at times startle us with wonder at its beauty, when treated by the true artist. and did he study such merely from broken stones and pieces of coal, from twigs and weeds in his painting-room? vain idea! these were but the _memoria technica_, that served to call up in his mind the thoughts he had fed on in many a lonely walk and leisure moment, when they of common clay plodded on and saw nothing--brooded on with a nature tuned to the harmonies of colour and of form, organized in a high degree to receive and retain impressions of beauty; and gifted with the power to place vividly before us by his art objects which had so delighted and pleased himself. does any one think otherwise--let him try what can be got out of stones and coals; let him try how his memory will aid him, with such feeble helps as broken twigs and dry mosses, and then he may be able to appreciate, in a degree, how this man had won the mastery of paint and canvas and turned their dross into the fine gold of true art. but in the history of british art, the great merit of gainsborough is, to have broken us entirely loose from old conventions. wilson had turned aside from dutch art to ennoble landscape by selecting from the higher qualities of italian art; but gainsborough early discarded all he had learned from the bygone schools, and gave himself up wholly to nature; he was capable of delicate handling and minute execution, but he resolutely cast them aside lest any idol should interfere between him and his new religion. there may be traced a lingering likeness in his landscapes to those of rubens; but this arose more from his generalization of details, his sinking the parts in the whole, than to any imitation of the great fleming. it is like the recollection of some sweet melody which the musician weaves into his theme, all unconscious that it is a memory and not a child of his own creation. the pictures of gainsborough, on the whole, stand better far than those by reynolds. "landscape with cattle," a picture belonging to the marquis of lansdowne, is lovely for colour and freshness; it has been lined and repaired, but evidently had parted widely in the lights. could any closeness of individual imitation give the truth, beauty of colour, and luminous sunlight of this picture? it somewhat reminds one of zuccarelli, but how completely has gainsborough sucked the honey and left the comb of the master! viewed near, this picture is somewhat loose in texture, and hesitating in execution; the colour obtained by semi-transparents, as yellow-ochre, terra-verte, and ultramarine; while viewed at a proper distance, it is in perfect harmony. in examining the landscapes of this painter, much must, however, be allowed for the present state of some of his works. many are covered with a dark-brown varnish, obscuring the silvery freshness of their first state. this has cracked up in the darks and quite changed them. the _market-cart_ and the _watering-place_, as well as others in the national collection, are in a very different condition to that in which they left the easel. the world, however, has become so conservative, and has such belief in the picture-vamper's "golden tones," that so they must remain. it would be most impolitic to touch them until they have become too dark to be seen at all. _a century of painters of the english school_ (london, ). bacchus and ariadne (_tintoret_) hippolyte adolphe taine it is more difficult for me to speak to you of the venetian painters than of any others. before their pictures one has no desire to analyze or reason; if one does this, it is by compulsion. the eyes enjoy, and that is all: they enjoy as the venetians enjoyed in the sixteenth century; for venice was not at all a literary or critical city like florence; there painting was nothing more than the complement of the environing pleasure, the decoration of a banqueting-hall or of an architectural alcove. in order to understand this you must place yourself at a distance, shut your eyes and wait until your sensations are dulled; then your mind performs its work.... there are certain families of plants, the species of which are so closely allied that they resemble more than they differ from each other: such are the venetian painters, not only the four celebrities, giorgione, titian, tintoret, and veronese, but others less illustrious, palma "il vecchio," bonifazio, paris bordone, pordenone, and that host enumerated by ridolfi in his _lives_, contemporaries, relatives, and successors of the great men, andrea vicentino, palma "il giovine," zelotti, bazzaco, padovinano, bassano, schiavone, moretto, and many others. what first appeals to the eye is the general and common type; the individual and personal traits remain for a time in shadow. they have worked together and by turns in the ducal palace, but by the involuntary concord of their talents their pictures make an harmonious whole. at first our eyes are astonished; with the exception of three or four halls, the apartments are low and small. the hall of council of the ten and those surrounding it[ ] are gilded habitations, insufficient for the figures that dwell therein; but after a moment one forgets the habitation and sees only the figures. power and voluptuousness blaze there, unbridled and superb. in the angles nude men, painted caryatides, jut out in such high relief that at the first glance one takes them for statues; a colossal breath swells their chests; their thighs and their shoulders writhe. on the ceiling a mercury, entirely nude, is almost a figure by rubens, but of a more gross sensuality. a gigantic neptune urges before him his sea-horses which plash through the waves; his foot presses the edge of his chariot; his enormous and ruddy body is turned backwards; he raises his conch with the joy of a bestial god; the salt wind blows through his scarf, his hair, and his beard; one could never imagine, without seeing it, such a furious _élan_, such an overflowing of animal spirit, such a joy of pagan flesh, such a triumph of free and shameless life in the open air and broad sunlight. what an injustice to limit the venetians to the painting of merely happy scenes and to the art of simply pleasing the eye! they have also painted grandeur and heroism; the mere energetic and active body has attracted them; like the flemings, they have their colossi also. their drawing, even without colour, is capable by itself of expressing all the solidity and all the vitality of the human structure. look in this same hall at the four _grisailles_ by veronese--five or six women veiled or half-nude, all so strong and of such a frame that their thighs and arms would stifle a warrior in their embrace, and, nevertheless, their physiognomy is so simple or so proud that, despite their smile, they are virgins like raphael's venuses and psyches. [illustration: bacchus and ariadne. _tintoret._] the more we consider the ideal figures of venetian art, the more we feel the breath of an heroic age behind us. those great draped old men with the bald foreheads are the patrician kings of the archipelago, barbaresque sultans who, trailing their silken simars, receive tribute and order executions. the superb women in sweeping robes, bedizened and creased, are empress-daughters of the republic, like that catherina cornaro from whom venice received cyprus. there are the muscles of fighters in the bronzed breasts of the sailors and captains; their bodies, reddened by the sun and wind, have dashed against the athletic bodies of janizaries; their turbans, their pelisses, their furs, their sword-hilts constellated with precious stones,--all the magnificence of asia is mingled on their bodies with the floating draperies of antiquity and with the nudities of pagan tradition. their straight gaze is still tranquil and savage, and the pride and the tragic grandeur of their expression announce the presence of a life in which man was concentrated in a few simple passions, having no other thought than that of being master so that he should not be a slave, and to kill so that he should not be killed. such is the spirit of a picture by veronese which, in the hall of the council of the ten, represents an old warrior and a young woman; it is an allegory, but we do not trouble ourselves about the subject. the man is seated and leans forward, his chin upon his hand, with a savage air; his colossal shoulders, his arm, and his bare leg encircled with a cnemis of lions' heads protrudes from his ample drapery; with his turban, his white beard, his thoughtful brow, and his traits of a wearied lion, he has the appearance of a pacha who is tired of everything. she, with downcast eyes, places her hands upon her soft breast; her magnificent hair is caught up with pearls; she seems a captive awaiting the will of her master, and her neck and bowed face are strongly empurpled in the shadow that encircles them. nearly all the other halls are empty; the paintings have been taken into an interior room. we go to find the curator of the museum; we tell him in bad italian that we have no letters of introduction, nor titles, nor any rights whatsoever to be admitted to see them. thereupon he has the kindness to conduct us into the reserved hall, to lift up the canvases, one after the other, and to lose two hours in showing them to us. i have never had greater pleasure in italy; these canvases are now standing before our eyes; we can look at them as near as we please, at our ease, and we are alone. there are some browned giants by tintoret, with their skin wrinkled by the play of the muscles, saint andrew and saint mark, real colossi like those of rubens. there is a saint christopher by titian, a kind of bronzed and bowed atlas with his four limbs straining to bear the weight of a world, and on his neck by an extraordinary contrast, the tiny, soft, and laughing _bambino_, whose infantine flesh has the delicacy and grace of a flower. above all, there are a dozen mythological and allegorical paintings by tintoret and veronese, of such brilliancy and such intoxicating fascination that a veil seems to fall from our eyes and we discover an unknown world, a paradise of delights situated beyond all imagination and all dreams. when the old man of the mountain transported into his harem his sleeping youths to render them capable of extreme devotion, doubtless it was such a spectacle that he furnished. upon the coast at the margin of the infinite sea, serious ariadne receives the ring of bacchus, and venus, with a crown of gold, has come through the air to celebrate their marriage. here is the sublime beauty of bare flesh, such as it appears coming out of the water, vivified by the sun and touched with shadows. the goddess is floating in liquid light and her twisted back, her flanks and her curves are palpitating, half enveloped in a white, diaphanous veil. with what words can we paint the beauty of an attitude, a tone, or an outline? who will describe the healthy and roseate flesh under the amber transparency of gauze? how shall we represent the soft plenitude of a living form and the curves of limbs which flow into the leaning body? truly she is swimming in the light like a fish in its lake, and the air, filled with vague reflections, embraces and caresses her. _voyage en italie_ (paris, ). footnotes: [ ] painted by veronese and by zelotti and bazzaco under his direction. bacchus and ariadne anonymous titian's magnificent pictures in the ducal palace were, all but one, destroyed by fire the year after his death; but his impetuous rival, tintoretto, is abundantly represented there. with regard to _him_, as usual, our admiration for frequent manifestations of extraordinary power is but too commonly checked and chilled by coarse, heavy painting, and the unexpressive wholly uninteresting character of many of his allegorical or celestial groups, which seem introduced merely as exercises or exhibitions of technical skill, rather than as appeals to our imagination or finer feelings.... on the whole you are again tempted to be somewhat out of conceit with tintoretto, till you pause in the ante collegio, or guard-room, before a picture of his so poetically conceived and admirably wrought, indeed so pleasing in all respects, that you wonder still more at the dull, uninteresting character of so many of the others. yes, here _il furioso_ tintoretto, leaving ostentatious, barren displays of technical power, has once again had the gentleness and patience to make himself thoroughly agreeable. ariadne, a beautiful and noble figure, is seated undraped on a rock, and bacchus, profusely crowned with ivy, advances from the sea, and offers her the nuptial ring; whilst above, venus, her back towards you, lying horizontally in the pale blue air, as if the blue air were her natural couch, spreads or rather kindles, a chaplet or circlet of stars round ariadne's head. here, those who luxuriate in what is typical, may tell us, and probably not without truth, that tintoretto wished to convey a graceful hint of venice crowned by beauty and blessed with joy and abundance. bacchus arising from the sea well signifies these latter gifts, and the watery path by which they come to her; and the lonely island nymph to whom he presents the wedding-ring, may be intended to refer to the situation and original forlornness of venice herself, when she sat in solitude amidst the sandy isles of the lagune, aloof from her parental shores, ravaged by the hun or the lombard. the pale yellow sunshine on these nude figures and their light transparent shadows, and the mild temperate blue of the calm sea and air, almost completing the most simple arrangement of the colouring of the picture, are still beautiful, and no doubt were far more so before its lamentable fading, occasioned, it seems, by too much exposure to light; you feel quite out of doors, all on the airy cliffs, as you look on it, and almost taste the very freshness of the sea-breeze. _the art journal_ (london, ). la cruche cassÉe (_greuze_) thÉophile gautier one might say of greuze, as of hogarth, that the moral scenes which he represents appear to have been posed for and acted by excellent actors rather than copied directly from nature. this is the truth, but seen, however, through an interpretation and under a travesty of rusticity. all is reasoned out, full of purpose, and leading to an end. there is in every stroke what the _littérateurs_ call ideas when they talk about painting. thus diderot has celebrated greuze in the most lyric strain. greuze, however, is not a mediocre artist: he invented a _genre_ unknown before his time, and he possesses veritable qualities of a painter. he has colour, he has touch, and his heads, modelled by square plans and, so to speak, by facets, have relief and life. his draperies, or rather his rumpled linen, torn and treated grossly in a systematic fashion to give full value to the delicacy of the flesh, reveal in their very negligence an easy brush. _la malédiction paternelle_ and _le fils maudit_ are homilies that are well painted and of a practical moral, but we prefer _l'accordée du village_, on account of the adorable head of the _fiancée_; it is impossible to find anything younger, fresher, more innocent and more coquettishly virginal, if these two words may be connected. greuze, and this is the cause of the renown which he enjoys now after the eclipse of his glory caused by the intervention of david and his school, has a very individual talent for painting woman in her first bloom, when the bud is about to burst into the rose and the child is about to become a maiden. as in the eighteenth century all the world was somewhat libertine, even the moralists, greuze, when he painted an innocence, always took pains to open the gauze and give a glimpse of the curve of the swelling bosom; he puts into the eyes a fiery lustre and upon the lips a dewy smile that suggests the idea that innocence might very easily become voluptuousness. [illustration: la cruche cassÉe. _greuze._] _la cruche cassée_ is the model of this _genre_. the head has still the innocence of childhood, but the fichu is disarranged, the rose at the corsage is dropping its leaves, the flowers are only half held in the fold of the gown and the jug allows the water to escape through its fissure. _guide de l'amateur au musée du louvre_ (paris, ). portrait of lady cockburn and her children (_reynolds_) frederic g. stephens the number of reynolds's portraits of ladies has never been given, probably it cannot be ascertained with precision; it is beyond all question marvellous, but not less so is the variety of the attitudes in which he placed the sitters, that of the ideas he expressed, and of the accessories with which they are surrounded; to this end, and to show how successfully he fitted things together, background and figure, compare the portrait of _elizabeth hamilton, countess of derby_ splendidly engraved by w. dickinson, with that of lady betty delmé. it is the same everywhere. we believe that reynolds, of that english school of portrait-painters of which he was the founder, was the happiest in introducing backgrounds to his works; to him we are for the most part indebted for that aptitude of one to the other which has so great an effect in putting the eye and mind of the observer into harmonious relationship with what may be called the _motive_ of the portrait, which, indeed, elevates a mere likeness to the character of a picture, and affords a charming field for the display of art in pathos, which is too often neglected, if not utterly ignored, by reynolds's successors. we think he exhibited more of this valuable characteristic than any other contemporary artist. lawrence aimed at it, but with effect only commensurate to his success in painting. of old, as before the seventeenth century in germany and italy, the art of landscape-painting _per se_ was inefficiently cultivated, at least expressed with irregularity, although occasionally with force enough to show that the pathos as well as the beauty of nature were by no means unappreciated or neglected to anything like the extent which has been commonly represented by writers on art. reynolds probably took the hint, as he did many others of the kind, from vandyck, and gave apt backgrounds to his figures: between these painters no one did much, or even well in the pathetic part of the achievement. since reynolds, none have approached him in success. it will be understood that the object of these remarks is not to suggest for the reader's consideration who painted the best landscape backgrounds as landscapes, but who most happily adapted them to his more important themes. we believe reynolds did so, and will conclude our remarks by another example. the landscape in the distance of _the age of innocence_ is as thoroughly in keeping with the subject as it can be: thus here are fields easy to traverse, a few village elms, and just seen above their tops the summits of habitations,--the hint is thus given that the child, all innocent as she is, has not gone far from home, or out of sight of the household to which she belongs.... [illustration: portrait of lady cockburn and her children. _reynolds._] it has been alleged that reynolds never, or rarely painted the landscape backgrounds to his pictures, and that they were the work of peter toms, r.a., one of his ablest assistants, or of others who were more potent with that branch of art than the president himself.... it is hard to deny to the mind which conceived the ruling idea of such pictures that honour which is assuredly due to some one, and to whom more probably than to the painter of the faces and designer of the attitudes, which are in such perfect harmony with the subordinate elements about them as to be completed only when the alliance is made. without this alliance, this harmony of parts, half the significance of many of reynolds's pictures is obscured. when we have noted this the result is at least instructive, if not convincing, that one mind designed, if one hand did not invariably execute, the whole of any important portrait by our subject. our own belief is, that whenever the landscapes or other accessories of his productions are essential to the idea expressed by the work as a whole, then undoubtedly reynolds wrought these minor parts almost wholly, if not entirely, with his own brushes. few, if any, of reynolds's family groups equals in beauty, variety, and spirit, the famous _cornelia and her children_, or rather _lady cockburn and her three infants_,--a work so charming, that we can well conceive the feelings of the royal academicians of , that long-past time, when it was brought to be hung in the exhibition, and received with clapping of hands, as men applaud a successful musical performance, or the fine reading of a poem. every royal academician then present--the scene must have been a very curious one--stepped forward, and in this manner saluted the work of the president; they did so, not because it was his, but on account of its charming qualities. conceive the painters, each in his swallow-tailed coat, his ruffles and broad cuffs, his knee-breeches, buckles, long waistcoat, and the rest of his garments of those days, thus uniting in one acclaim. the reader may judge whether or not such applause was deserved by the picture, which tells its own story. the parrot in the background was occasionally used by reynolds; see the portrait of elizabeth, countess of derby, and the engraving from it by w. dickinson.[ ] it has been said that the only example of reynolds's practice in signing pictures on the border of the robes of his sitters appears in _mrs. siddons as the tragic muse_; nevertheless, this picture of _cornelia_ shows at least one exception to that asserted rule. the border of lady cockburn's dress in the original is inscribed in a similar manner thus:--" , reynolds _pinxit_." the picture was begun in , and is now in the possession of sir james hamilton, of portman square, who married the daughter of general sir james cockburn, one of the boys in the picture. it is noteworthy that all these children successively inherited the baronetcy; one of them--the boy who looks over his mother's shoulder--was admiral sir george cockburn, bart., on board whose ship, the _northumberland_, napoleon was conveyed to st. helena. sir james, the eldest brother, was afterwards seventh baronet; sir william, the third brother, was eighth baronet of the name, was dean of york, and married a daughter of sir r. peel. the lady was augusta anne, daughter of the rev. frances ascough, d.d., dean of bristol, married in , the second wife of sir james cockburn, sixth baronet of langton, in the county of berwick, m.p. she was niece of lord lyttleton. for this picture in march, , reynolds received £ s. this was probably the whole price, and for a work of no great size, but wealthy in matter, the amount was small indeed. it includes four portraits. after comparison of the facts that the engravings, by c.w. wilkin, in stipple, and by s.w. reynolds, mezzotint, are dated, on the robe as aforesaid, " ," and its exhibition in , the year in which it was paid for, we may guess that the signature and date were added by the painter after exhibiting it, and probably while he worked on it, with the advantage of having compared the painting with others in the royal academy. the landscape recalls that glimpse of halcyon country of which we caught sight in _the infant academy_--its trees, its glowing sky, are equally adaptable to both subjects. the picture was exhibited at the british institution in , and was then the property of sir james cockburn, bart., whose portrait it contains. _english children as painted by sir joshua reynolds_ (london, ). footnotes: [ ] rather we should say, see the engraving only. the picture is one of the very few prime works by reynolds which has disappeared without records of its loss. st. cecilia (_raphael_) percy bysshe shelley i have seen a quantity of things here--churches, palaces, statues, fountains, and pictures; and my brain is at this moment like a portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or a common-place book. i will try to recollect something of what i have seen; for indeed it requires, if it will obey, an act of volition. first, we went to the cathedral, which contains nothing remarkable, except a kind of shrine, or rather a marble canopy, loaded with sculptures, and supported on four marble columns. we went then to a palace--i am sure i forget the name of it--where we saw a large gallery of pictures. of course, in a picture gallery you see three hundred pictures you forget, for one you remember. i remember, however, an interesting picture by guido, of the rape of proserpine, in which proserpine casts back her languid and half-unwilling eyes, as it were, to the flowers she had left ungathered in the fields of enna. we saw besides one picture of raphael--st. cecilia; this is in another and higher style; you forget that it is a picture as you look at it; and yet it is most unlike any of those things which we call reality. it is of the inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models of succeeding generations. there is a unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. the central figure, st. cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut hair flung back from her forehead--she holds an organ in her hands--her countenance, as it were, calmed by the depth of its passion and rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm and radiant light of life. she is listening to the music of heaven, and, as i imagine, has just ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently point, by their attitudes, towards her; particularly st. john, who, with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his countenance towards her, languid with the depth of his emotion. at her feet lie various instruments of music, broken and unstrung. of the colouring i do not speak; it eclipses nature, yet has all her truth and softness. _letters from italy. the prose works of percy bysshe shelley_, edited by harry buxton forman (london, ). [illustration: st. cecilia. _raphael._] the last supper (_leonardo da vinci_) johann wolfgang von goethe we will now turn to _the last supper_, which was painted on the wall of the refectory of st. maria delle gratie in milan. the place where this picture is painted must first be considered: for here the knowledge of this artist is focussed. could anything more appropriate, or noble, be devised for a refectory than a parting meal which the whole world will reverence for ever? several years ago when travelling we beheld this dining-room still undestroyed. opposite the entrance on the narrow end on the floor of the hall stands the prior's table with a table for the monks on either side, all three raised a step above the ground, and now when the visitor turns around he sees painted on the wall, above the not very high doors, a fourth table, at which are seated christ and his disciples, as if they also belonged to this company. it must have been an impressive sight at meal times when the tables of christ and the prior looked upon each other like two pictures, and the monks found themselves enclosed between them. and, for this very reason, the artist's judgment selected the tables of the monks for a model. also the table-cloth, with its creased folds, embroidered stripes, and tied corners, was taken from the linen-room of the monastery, while the dishes, plates, drinking-vessels, and other utensils are similarly copied from those used by the monks. here, also, no attempt was made to depict an uncertain and antiquated custom. it would have been extremely unsuitable in this place to permit the holy company to recline upon cushions. no! it should be made contemporary. christ should take his last supper with the dominicans in milan. in many other respects also the picture must have produced a great effect. about ten feet above the floor the thirteen figures, each one half larger than life-size, occupy a space twenty-eight parisian feet long. only two of these can be seen at full length at the opposite ends of the table, the others are half-figures, and here, too, the artist found great advantage in the conditions. every moral expression belongs solely to the upper part of the body, and the feet, in such cases, are always in the way; the artist has created here eleven half-figures, whose laps and knees are hidden by the table and table-cloth under which the feet in the deep shadow are scarcely visible. now, let us transport ourselves to this place and room, imagine the extreme moral repose which reigns in such a monastic dining-hall, and marvel at the strong emotion and impassioned action that the painter has put into his picture whilst he has kept his work of art close to nature, bringing it immediately in contrast with the neighbouring actual scene. the exciting means which the artist employed to agitate the tranquil and holy supper-table are the master's words: "there is one amongst you that betrays me." the words are spoken, and the entire company falls into consternation; but he inclines his head with downcast looks; the whole attitude, the motion of the arms, the hands, and everything repeat with heavenly resignation which the silence itself confirms, "verily, verily, there is one amongst you that betrays me." [illustration: the last supper. _l. da vinci._] before going any farther we must point out a great expedient, by means of which leonardo principally animated this picture: it is the motion of the hands; only an italian would have discovered this. with his nation the whole body is expressive, all the limbs take part in describing an emotion, not only passion but also thought. by various gestures he can express: "what do i care?"--"come here!"--"this is a rascal, beware of him!" "he shall not live long!" "this is a main point. take heed of this, my hearers!" to such a national trait, leonardo, who observed every characteristic with the greatest attention, must have turned his searching eye; in this the present picture is unique and one cannot observe it too much. the expression of every face and every gesture is in perfect harmony, and yet a single glance can take in the unity and the contrast of the limbs rendered so admirably. the figures on both sides of our lord may be considered in groups of three, and each group may be regarded as a unit, placed in relation and still held in connection with its neighbours. on christ's immediate right are john, judas, and peter. peter, the farthest, on hearing the words of our lord, rises suddenly, in conformity with his vehement character, behind judas, who, looking up with terrified countenance, leans over the table, tightly clutching the purse with his right hand, whilst with the left he makes an involuntary nervous motion as if to say: "what may this mean? what is to happen?" peter, meanwhile, with his left hand has seized the right shoulder of john, who is bending towards him, and points to christ, at the same time urging the beloved disciple to ask: "who is the traitor?" he accidentally touches judas's side with the handle of a knife held in his right hand, which occasions the terrified forward movement upsetting the salt-cellar, so happily brought out. this group may be considered as the one first thought of by the artist; it is the most perfect. while now on the right hand of the lord a certain degree of emotion seems to threaten immediate revenge, on the left, the liveliest horror and detestation of the treachery manifest themselves. james the elder starts back in terror, and with outspread arms gazes transfixed with bowed head, like one who imagines that he already beholds with his eyes what his ears have heard. thomas appears behind his shoulder, and approaching the saviour raises the forefinger of his right hand to his forehead. philip, the third of this group, rounds it off in the most pleasing manner; he has risen, he bends forward towards the master, lays his hands upon his breast, and says with the greatest clearness: "it is not i, lord, thou knowest it! thou knowest my pure heart, it is not i." and now the three last figures on this side give us new material for reflection. they are discussing the terrible news. matthew turns his face eagerly to his two companions on the left, hastily stretching out his hands towards the master, and thus, by an admirable contrivance of the artist, he is made to connect his own group with the preceding one. thaddæus shows the utmost surprise, doubt, and suspicion; his left hand rests upon the table, while he has raised the right as if he intended to strike his left hand with the back of his right, a very common action with simple people when some unexpected occurrence leads them to say: "did i not tell you so? did i not always suspect it?"--simon sits at the end of the table with great dignity, and we see his whole figure; he is the oldest of all and wears a garment with rich folds, his face and gesture show that he is troubled and thoughtful but not excited, indeed, scarcely moved. if we now turn our eyes to the opposite end of the table, we see bartholomew, who rests on his right foot with the left crossed over it, supporting his inclined body by firmly resting his hands upon the table. he is probably trying to hear what john will ask of the lord: this whole side appears to be inciting the favourite disciple. james the younger, standing near and behind bartholomew, lays his left hand on peter's shoulder, just as peter lays his on john's shoulder, but james mildly requests the explanation whilst peter already threatens vengeance. and as peter behind judas, so james the younger stretches out his hand behind andrew, who, as one of the most prominent figures expresses, with his half-raised arms and his hands stretched out directly in front, the fixed horror that has seized him, an attitude occurring but once in this picture, while in other works of less genius and less reflection, it is too often repeated.... it is sad to reflect that unfortunately even when the picture was painted, its ruin might have been predicted from the character and situation of the building. duke louis, out of malice or caprice, compelled the monks to renovate their decaying monastery in this unfavourable location, wherefore it was ill-built and as if by forced feudal labour. in the old galleries we see miserable meanly-wrought columns, great arches with small ill-assorted bricks, the materials from old pulled-down buildings. if then what is visible on the exterior is so bad, it is also to be feared that the inner walls, which were plastered over, were constructed still worse. this is saying nothing of weather-beaten bricks and other minerals saturated with hurtful salts which absorbed the dampness of the locality and destructively exhaled it again. farther away stood the unfortunate walls to which such a great treasure was entrusted, towards the north, and, moreover in the vicinity of the kitchen, the pantry, and the scullery; and how sad, that so careful an artist, who could not select and refine his colours and clear his glaze and varnish too carefully, was compelled by the circumstances, or rather by the place and situation in which the picture had to stand, to overlook the chief point upon which everything depended, or not to take it sufficiently to heart! however, despite all this, if the monastery had stood upon high ground, the evil would not have been so great. it lies so low, and the refectory lower than the rest of the building, that in the year , during a long rain, the water stood to a depth of three palms, which leads us also to believe that the frightful floods of also extended to this place. it is to be remembered that the monks did their best to dry out this room, but unfortunately there remained enough humidity to penetrate it through and through; and they were even sensible of this in leonardo's time. about ten years after the completion of the picture, a terrible plague overran the good city, and how could we expect that the afflicted monks, forsaken by all the world and in fear of death, should think of the picture in their dining-room? war and numerous other misfortunes which overtook lombardy in the first half of the sixteenth century were the cause of the complete neglect of such works as the one we are speaking of; the white-washed wall being especially unfavourable: perhaps, indeed, the very style of painting lent itself to speedy destruction. in the second half of the sixteenth century a traveller says that the picture is half spoiled; another sees in it only a tarnished blot; people complain that the picture is already lost, assuredly it can scarcely be seen; another calls it perfectly useless, and so speak all the later authors of this period. but the picture was still there, even if it was the shadow of its former self. now, however, from time to time fear arises lest it be lost entirely; the cracks are increasing and run into one another, and the great and precious surface is splitting into numberless small flakes and threatening to fall piece by piece. touched by this state of affairs, cardinal frederick borromeo had a copy of it made in , and we are grateful for his forethought. not only did it suffer by the lapse of time, in connection with the above-mentioned circumstances, but the owners, themselves, who should have kept and preserved it, wrought its greatest ruin and therefore have covered their memory with eternal shame. it seemed to them necessary to have doors that they might pass in and out of the refectory; so these were cut symmetrically through the wall upon which the picture stood. they desired an impressive entrance into the room which was so precious to them. a door much larger than was necessary was broken through the middle, and, without any feeling of reverence either for the painter or the holy company, they ruined the feet of several apostles, indeed, even of christ. and from this, the ruin of the picture really dates. now, in order to build an arch, a much larger opening had to be made in the wall than even for the door; and not only was a large portion of the picture lost, but the blows of hammers shook the picture in its own field, and in many places the crust was loosened and some pieces were fastened on again with nails. at a later period, by a new form of bad taste, the picture was obscured, inasmuch as a national escutcheon was fastened under the ceiling, almost touching the forehead of christ; thus by the door from below, so now from above also, the lord's presence was cramped and degraded. from this time forward the restoration was again spoken of which was undertaken at a later period. but what real artist would care to undertake such a responsibility? unfortunately, in the year , bellotti presented himself, poor in art, but at the same time, as is usual, with an abundant supply of presumption. he, like a charlatan, boasted of a secret process with which he could restore the picture to its original state. by means of a small sample of his work he deluded the ignorant monks who yielded to his discretion this treasure, which he immediately surrounded with scaffolding, and, hidden behind it, he painted over the entire picture with a hand shaming to art. the little monks wondered at the secret, which he communicated in a common varnish to delude them, and gave them to understand that with this they would be able to save it from spoiling for ever. whether, on the clouding of the picture after a short time, the monks made use of this costly remedy or not, is unknown, but it certainly was freshened up several times, and indeed with water-colours in certain parts. meanwhile the picture had become constantly more decayed, and again the question arose how far it could still be preserved, but not without much contention among artists and directors. de giorgi, a modest man of moderate talent, but intelligent and zealous and with a knowledge of true art, steadfastly refused to set his hand forward where leonardo had withheld his own. at last, in , on a well-meaning order but one void of discretion, through the indulgence of a courtly prior, the work was transferred to a certain mazza, who botched it in a masterly manner. the few old original spots remaining, although twice muddied by a foreign hand, were an impediment to his free brush; so he scraped them with iron and prepared bare places for the free play of his own impudent daubing, indeed, several heads were handled in this way. friends of art were now aroused against that in milan, and patrons and clients were openly blamed. enthusiasm fed the fire and the fermentation became general. mazza, who had begun to paint on the right of the saviour, had by this arrived at the left, and only the heads of matthew, thaddæus, and simon remained untouched. he thought to cover bellotti's work and to vie with him in the name of a hero. but fate willed otherwise, for the pliant prior having been transferred, his successor, a friend of art, did not delay to dismiss mazza forthwith; through which step three heads were so far saved that we can accordingly judge of bellotti. and, indeed, this circumstance probably gave rise to the saying: "there are still three heads of the genuine original remaining." in , the french host crossed the alps triumphantly, led by general bonaparte. young, crowned with fame and seeking fame, he was drawn by the name of leonardo to the place that has now held us so long. he immediately gave orders that no encampment should be made here lest other damage should happen, and signed the order on his knee before he mounted his horse. shortly afterwards another general disregarded these orders, had the doors broken in, and turned the hall into a stable. mazza's coating had already lost some of its freshness and the horse steam which was worse than the steam from viands on monkish sideboards lastingly impregnated the walls, and added new mould to the picture; indeed, dampness collected so heavily that it ran down leaving white streaks. later, this room was used for storing hay, and sometimes for other purposes connected with the military, by whom it was abused. finally the administration succeeded in closing the place, and even walling it in, so that for a long time those who wished to see _the last supper_ were obliged to climb a ladder leading to the pulpit from which the reader discoursed at meal times. in the year , a great flood produced still more dampness. in , on the recommendation of vossi, who took it upon himself to assume the secretaryship of the academy, a door was built and the board of governors promised more care in the future. finally, in , the viceroy of italy gave orders that the place should be renovated and duly honoured. windows were put in and scaffolding was erected in some parts to examine if there was anything more that could be done. the door was transferred to the side, and since then no considerable changes have been noticed, although to the minute observer its dullness varies according to the state of the atmosphere. although the work itself is as good as lost, may it yet leave some slight trace to the sad but pious memory of future generations! _werke_ (stuttgart and tübingen, ), vol. xxxix. the children of charles i. (_van dyck_) jules guiffrey upon his arrival [in england] anthonius was temporarily lodged at the house of edward norgate, a _protégé_ of the earl of arundel, charged by the king to provide for all the needs of his guest. another such installation could not be repeated. the sovereign himself took pains to find a suitable establishment for his painter. mr. carpenter cites a very curious note on this subject. charles i. wrote with his own hand,--"to speak with inigo jones concerning a house for vandike." this house demanded the combination of certain conditions very difficult to meet with. it was necessary that the artist should be comfortably established; and, on the other hand, the king wished him not to be too far from the palace. the architect was able to satisfy all these requirements. a winter residence was found for van dyck in blackfriars on the right bank of the thames. from his palace in whitehall, charles i., crossing the river in his barge, could conveniently reach the studio of his favourite painter. he took great pleasure in watching him at work and loved to forget himself during the long hours charmed by the wit and innate distinction of his entertainer. during the summer season, van dyck lived at eltham in the county of kent. he probably occupied an apartment or some dependency of one of the palaces of the crown. an annual pension of two hundred pounds sterling was assigned to him, first of all to enable him to support a household worthy of the title bestowed upon him,--"principal painter in ordinary." the portraits commanded by the king were paid for independently. the remuneration for his works finally provided the artist with that brilliant and gorgeous life which had been his ambition for so long and which an assiduous industry had not been able to procure for him in flanders. he had no less than six servants and several horses; at all periods, as we know, he always bestowed much care and refinement upon his toilet. frequenting an elegant and frivolous court could not but develop this natural disposition for all the quests of luxury. [illustration: portrait of the children of charles i. _van dyck._] three months after his arrival, van dyck was included in a creation of knights made on july , . charles i. added still more to this favour by the gift of a chain of gold bearing a miniature of himself enriched with diamonds. in many of his portraits the artist is represented with this mark of royal munificence. it now devolved upon him to justify the high position to which he found himself so rapidly elevated. an act of the privy seal pointed out by mr. carpenter shows us that van dyck lost no time in satisfying the impatience of his royal protector. on august , , the sum of £ was allowed him from the royal treasury for various works of painting. the enumeration of these pictures furnishes precious details for the price of the artist's works. it seems that from the very beginning, a kind of tariff was adopted with common accord, according to the size of each portrait. the price of a whole length portrait was £ ; other canvases only fetched £ ; that refers probably to personages at half length. finally, a large family picture, representing the king, the queen, and their two children attained the sum of £ . at a later period, these figures were increased and the price of a full length portrait was raised to £ . but how many of these works, in which, however, very great qualities shine, pale before a canvas of the master preserved in the museum of turin! we mean the picture in which the three young children of charles i. are grouped--the prince of wales, the princess henrietta maria who became the duchess of orleans, and the duke of york. all three are still in long dresses, therefore the eldest was about five or six years old at most; all three are standing up, and for that reason we cannot give the youngest less than eighteen months or two years. this circumstance dates the picture--it was painted in . we know the various portraits of the children of charles i. disseminated in the museums and palaces of europe; we have seen and admired the picture in dresden, those at windsor, the sketch in the louvre, and the canvas in berlin, a copy of the great composition which belongs to the queen of england. very well! there is not the slightest hesitation possible--not one of these pictures is comparable to that in turin. nowhere does there exist a work of van dyck's so delicate, so well preserved, and so perfect in all its points. with what care and worship this picture is surrounded no one can imagine. the most watchful precautions and the most respectful regard are at its service. we have been told that the directors of the museum constantly refuse to move it for the convenience of photographers. a little detail hardly worth mentioning, one would say! we do not think so. we consider that the authorities of the museum are right a thousand times, when they possess such a _chef-d'oeuvre_, not to neglect any precaution, however insignificant it may appear, to assure it a longer duration. a fine engraving of this incomparable jewel gives a very exact idea of the arrangement and dominating qualities of the picture; but how can we translate in black and white the shimmering of material, the delicacy of tone, the colouring of those robes, rose, blue, and white, of exquisite harmony and incomparable finesse. what shall we say of the physiognomy, of the grace, and also the penetrating charm of those three child figures? such a work would alone suffice for the glory of a museum, above all when it has kept its freshness like the flowering of genius. every moment of the painter was consecrated to the various members of the royal family. that was natural enough. charles i. never desisted from watching his clever _protégé_ at work, and spending his leisure in his studio,--the habitual _rendez-vous_ of the young gentlemen and the beauties of fashion. the establishment of the artist permitted him to receive such guests becomingly. hired musicians were instructed to divert his aristocratic models during the hours of work. thus he was enabled to attract and hold at his home the very best society in london. every day at his table sat numerous guests chosen from the _élite_ of the artists and _littérateurs_ mingled with the greatest personages. carried into the whirlwind of this light world so full of entertainment, van dyck hastened to enjoy all the pleasures and exhaust all the delights, without considering his strength, or hoarding his health.... the king would never let him stop painting the pictures of his children. on his side, van dyck brought to this task all his art, we might say all his heart. doubtless, he derived from rubens and also from van balen that very lively intelligence for the graces of childhood. also, when he occupied himself in rendering those delicious faces of rosy and chubby babies, in the midst of glimmering stuffs, he found colours of incomparable freshness.... every artist of high degree carries within himself the ideal type whose expression he pursues without pause. this search imprints upon each of his works the characteristic mark of genius: originality. thus we recognize at the first glance the giants that sprang from the brain of michael angelo, the enigmatical sirens of da vinci, and those superhuman figures with which raphael has peopled his immortal compositions. titian lived in a world of kings and magnificent princes. correggio's individuality is grace of form and charm of colour; his portion is not to be scorned. the exuberant nature of rubens betrays itself in his least important canvases. the personages of his innumerable pictures share in common the affinities of race and family which make them recognizable everywhere. anthonius van dyck obeys, likewise, the common law. each of his works is marked by that sign of originality, which in him consists of the incessant pursuit of elegance and distinction. distinction,--that is the gift _par excellence_, the dominating quality of this artist, that which constitutes his individuality, that which marks with an indelible imprint all his glorious works, from the first gropings of the pupil of rubens to those immortal images of charles i., his family, and his court. whether he belongs to the highest spheres of society or whether he comes from the simple _bourgeoisie_ of antwerp, the model receives from van dyck's brush the most aristocratic mien. one would insist that the painter spent his life only in a world of gentlemen and patricians. never does he surprise even the men that he knows the best, his most intimate friends, in the familiar carelessness of their daily occupations. rarely, very rarely, does it come into his mind to group them in some intimate interior scene. everybody is made to pose before posterity; each sitter has the smile to give his or her descendants the most exalted idea of his or her station and manners. not one is vulgar, not one dares to show himself in his ordinary work, or in the careless good nature of daily life. nothing alters their immutable serenity; nothing troubles the unalterable placidity of their physiognomy. let others paint the people of taverns, the world of _kermesses_ and peasants! van dyck wished to be and to live for ever the painter of aristocracy. _antoine van dyck--sa vie et sonnoeuvre._ (paris, ). the fighting tÉmÉraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, (_turner_) john ruskin "the flag which braved the battle and the breeze no longer owns her." exhibited at the academy in , with the above lines cited in the catalogue. of all turner's pictures in the national gallery this is perhaps the most notable. for, _first_ it is the last picture he ever painted with _perfect_ power--the last in which his execution is as firm and faultless as in middle life; the last in which lines requiring exquisite precision, such as those of the masts and yards of shipping, are drawn rightly at once. when he painted the _téméraire_ turner could, if he liked, have painted the _shipwreck_ or the _ulysses_ over again; but when he painted the _sun of venice_, though he was able to do different, and in some sort more beautiful things, he could not have done _those_ again. his period of central power thus begins with the _ulysses_ and closes with the _téméraire_. the one picture, it will be observed, is of sunrise, the other of sunset. the one of a ship entering on its voyage, and the other of a ship closing its course for ever. the one, in all the circumstance of the subject, unconsciously illustrative of his own life in its triumph, the other, in all the circumstances of its subject, unconsciously illustrative of his own life in its decline. accurately as the first sets forth his escape to the wild brightness of nature, to reign amidst all her happy spirits, so does the last set forth his returning to die by the shore of the thames. and besides having been painted in turner's full power, the _téméraire_ is of all his large pictures the best preserved. _secondly_, the subject of the picture is, both particularly and generally, the noblest that in an english national gallery could be. the _téméraire_ was the second ship in nelson's line at the battle of trafalgar; and this picture is the last of the group which turner painted to illustrate that central struggle in our national history. the part played by the _téméraire_ in the battle will be found detailed below. and, generally, she is a type of one of england's chief glories. it will be always said of us, with unabated reverence, "they built ships of the line." take it all in all, a ship of the line is the most honourable thing that man as a gregarious animal, has ever produced. by himself, unhelped, he can do better things than ships of the line; he can make poems and pictures, and other such concentrations of what is best in him. but as a being living in flocks, and hammering out, with alternate strokes and mutual agreement, what is necessary for him in those flocks, to get or produce, the ship of the line is his first work. and as the subject was the noblest turner could have chosen so also was his treatment of it. of all pictures of subjects not visibly involving human pain, this is, i believe, the most pathetic that was ever painted. the utmost pensiveness which can ordinarily be given to a landscape depends on adjuncts of ruin; but no ruin was ever so affecting as this gliding of the vessel to her grave. a ruin cannot be so, for whatever memories may be connected with it, and whatever witness it may have borne to the courage and glory of men, it never seems to have offered itself to their danger, and associated itself with their acts, as a ship of battle can. the mere facts of motion, and obedience to human guidance, double the interest of the vessel: nor less her organized perfectness, giving her the look, and partly the character of a living creature, that may indeed be maimed in limb or decrepit in frame, but must either live or die, and cannot be added to nor diminished from--heaped up and dragged down--as a building can. and this particular ship, crowned in the trafalgar hour of trial with chief victory--prevailing over the fatal vessel that had given nelson death--surely, if ever anything without a soul deserved honour or affection, we owed them here. those sails that strained so full bent into the battle--that broad bow that struck the surf aside, enlarging silently in steadfast haste full front to the shot--resistless and without reply--those triple ports whose choirs of flame rang forth in their courses, into the fierce revenging monotone, which, when it died away, left no answering voice to rise any more upon the sea against the strength of england--those sides that were wet with the long runlets of english life-blood, like press planks at vintage, gleaming goodly crimson down to the cast and clash of the washing foam--those pale masts that stayed themselves up against the war-ruin, shaking out their ensigns through the thunder, till sail and ensign drooped--steeped in the death-stilled pause of andalusian air, burning with its witness-clouds of human souls at rest,--surely, for these some sacred care might have been left in our thoughts, some quiet space amidst the lapse of english waters? nay, not so. we have stern keepers to trust her glory to--the fire and the worm. never more shall sunset lay golden robe on her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her gliding. perhaps, where the low gate opens to some cottage-garden, the tired traveller may ask, idly, why the moss grows so green on its rugged wood; and even the sailor's child may not answer, nor know, that the night-dew lies deep in the war-rents of the wood of the old _téméraire_. and, _lastly_, the pathos of the picture--the contrast of the old ship's past glory with her present end; and the spectacle of the "old order" of the ship of the line whose flag had braved the battle and the breeze, yielding place to the new, in the little steam-tug--these pathetic contrasts are repeated and enforced by a technical _tour de force_ in the treatment of the colours which is without a parallel in art. and the picture itself thus combines the evidences of turner's supremacy alike in imagination and in skill. the old masters, content with one simple tone, sacrificed to its unity all the exquisite gradations and varied touches of relief and change by which nature unites her hours with each other. they gave the warmth of the sinking sun, overwhelming all things in its gold, but they did not give those gray passages about the horizon, where, seen through its dying light, the cool and the gloom of night gather themselves for their victory.... but in this picture, under the blazing veil of vaulted fire, which lights the vessel on her last path, there is a blue, deep, desolate hollow of darkness out of which you can hear the voice of the night wind, and the dull boom of the disturbed sea; the cold deadly shadows of the twilight are gathering through every sunbeam, and moment by moment, as you look, you will fancy some new film and faintness of the night has risen over the vastness of the departing form. (compiled from _modern painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § _n._, sec. ii. ch i. § ; _harbours of england_, p. ; and _notes on the turner gallery_, pp. - .) [illustration: the fighting tÉmÉraire. _turner._] finally a few words about the history of the picture itself may be interesting. the subject of it was suggested to turner by clarkson stanfield (who himself, it will be remembered, had painted a _battle of trafalgar_). they were going down the river by boat, to dine, perhaps, at greenwich, when the old ship, being tugged to her last berth at deptford, came in sight. "there's a fine subject, turner," said stanfield. this was in . next year the picture was exhibited at the academy, but no price was put upon it. a would-be purchaser offered turner guineas for it. he replied that it was his " guinea size" only, and offered to take a commission at that price for any subject of the same size, but with the _téméraire_ itself he would not part. another offer was subsequently made from america, which again turner declined. he had already mentally included the picture, it would seem, amongst those to be bequeathed to the nation; and in one of the codicils to his will, in which he left each of his executors a picture to be chosen by them in turn, the _téméraire_ was specially excepted from the pictures they might choose.[ ] edward t. cook, _a popular handbook to the national gallery_. footnotes: [ ] mr. w. hale white recently drew up for mr. ruskin, from official records, the following history of the _téméraire_. to him and to mr. ruskin i am indebted for permission to insert the history here. it will be seen that turner was right in calling his picture the _fighting téméraire_ and the critic who induced him to change the title in the engraving to the _old téméraire_ wrong:-- "the _téméraire_, second-rate, ninety-eight guns, was begun at chatham, july, , and launched on the th september, . she was named after an older _téméraire_ taken by admiral boscawen from the french in , and sold in june, . the chatham _téméraire_ was fitted at plymouth for a prison ship in , and in she became a receiving ship and was sent to sheerness. she was sold on the th august, , to mr. j. beatson for £ , . the _téméraire_ was at the battle of trafalgar on the st october, . she was next to the _victory_, and followed nelson into action; commanded by captain elias harvey, with thomas kennedy as first lieutenant. her maintopmast, the head of her mizzenmast, her foreyard, her starboard, cathead and bumpkin, and her fore and main topsail yards were shot away; her fore and main masts so wounded as to render them unfit to carry sail, and her bowsprit shot through in several places. her rigging of every sort was cut to pieces; the head of her rudder was taken off by the fire of the _redoutable_; eight feet of the starboard side of the lower deck abreast of the mainmast were stove in, and the whole of her quarter-galleries on both sides carried away. forty-six men on board of her were killed, and seventy-six wounded.... the _téméraire_ was built with a beakhead, or, in other words, her upper works were cut off across the catheads; a peculiarity which can be observed in turner's picture. it was found by experience in the early part of the french war that this mode of construction exposed the men working the guns to the enemy's fire, and it was afterwards abandoned. it has been objected," adds mr. white, "that the masts and yards in the picture are too light for a ninety-eight gun ship; but the truth is that when the vessel was sold she was juryrigged as a receiving ship, and turner, therefore, was strictly accurate. he might have seemed more accurate by putting heavier masts and yards in her; but he painted her as he saw her. this is very important, as it gets rid of the difficulty which i myself have felt and expressed, that it was very improbable that she was sold all standing in sea-going trim, as i imagined turner intended us to believe she was sold, and answers also the criticism just mentioned as to the disproportion between the weight of the masts and yards and the size of the hull." part of the _téméraire_, mr. white tells me, is still in existence. messrs. castle, the shipbuilders of millbank, have the two figures of atlas which supported the sterngallery. spring (_botticelli_) marcel reymond of all the ancient italian painters, botticelli has, for several years, been the master most in fashion. why? the first reason should be sought in that reaction against the pseudo-classic style of the renaissance which has seemed to be the dominant tendency of art in the nineteenth century. but this explanation does not suffice to tell us for what reasons the favour of the public has specially fallen upon botticelli. why select botticelli rather than any other artist of the fourteenth or fifteenth century? why botticelli and not giotto, or fra angelico, or, to cite none but his contemporaries, why not signorelli, or ghirlandajo? it is because fra angelico's art is too religious for our century and giotto's art too philosophical, or, at least, it is because our century no longer thinks of demanding from its artists, as in the time of giotto and fra angelico, the expression of the moral questions with which it is occupied. and if we seem to-day somewhat indifferent to the art of ghirlandajo, or signorelli, it is because their thought is too grave and because we desire before all else that art shall bring smiles into our laborious life; we demand that it shall give repose to our tired brains by charming us with the vision of all terrestrial beauties, without exacting any labour or any effort from our minds. in this quest of beauty, our curious minds, which know so many things and which have been able to compare the works of the most diverse civilizations, are perpetually seeking novelty, eager for rare forms, and inimical to everything banal and to everything that ordinary life brings before our eyes. and in our _fin de siècle_ we have been so much the more prone to subtle pursuits because for some time our french art has seemed to take delight in the forms of a gross realism. this refinement of art, this intimate analysis of form and thought, this love of sensual beauty, had appeared at the court of the medici by the same causes that prompt us to seek them; they are the fruit of a society that has attained the highest degree of well-being, wealth and knowledge. this kind of art lasted only for a moment in florence. it is correct to say that florentine art did not seem destined to speak the charms of feminine beauty. from its beginning, this school had been stamped by giotto with the philosophic impress, and for two centuries its artists had been before everything else, thinkers, occupied more with moral ideas than with the beauty of form. the first in florence to be enthralled by the charm of beautiful eyes was the poor filippo lippi. it was he who created that new form of art which was to continue with botticelli, his pupil, and which attained its perfection under the hands of leonardo. if, to the lucrezia buti of filippo lippi, we join botticelli's simonetta and leonardo's monna lisa, we should have the poem of love sung by florentine genius under its most exquisite form. [illustration: spring. _botticelli._] what botticelli was, _spring_ will tell us; and this work is so significant, its essence expresses the thought of the master so clearly that it has preserved all its charm for us, although its particular meaning is not known to us. we call it _spring_, but if one of the figures in the picture really represents spring, it is only an accessory figure; and, moreover, this name given to the picture is entirety modern. vasari says that it represents _venus surrounded by the graces_, but if we find the three graces in the picture, it is not likely that the principal figure represents venus. in my opinion, it is that principal figure that is the key to the picture; it is for this figure that everything has been done, and this it is, above all, that we must interrogate if we wish to know botticelli's meaning. evidently it is neither venus, nor spring; and the precision of the features, and the fidelity of the smallest details of the costume make us believe that we are in the presence of a veritable portrait.... around her, nature adorns herself with flowers; spring and the graces surround her like a train of fays. here is one of the familiar poetical forms of the fifteenth century; and, doubtless, by attentively reading the florentine poets, we should discover the meaning of all the allegorical figures that botticelli has united in his work and which we do not understand.[ ] but whatever may be the particular meaning of each of these figures, it is certain that here we have to do with love and beauty, and that perhaps in no other work may we find the charm of woman described in more passionate accents. in this world of feminine fascination botticelli loved everything. he knows the attraction of the toilet and of jewels, but he knows above all that no gem and no invention of man can rival the beauty of the female form. he was the first to understand the exquisite charm of silhouettes, the first to linger in expressing the joining of the arm and body, the flexibility of the hips, the roundness of the shoulders, the elegance of the leg, the little shadow that marks the springing of the neck, and, above all, the exquisite carving of the hand. but, even more, he understood "_le prestige insolent des grands yeux_,"--large eyes, full, restless, and sad, because they are filled with love. look at these young maidens of botticelli's. what a heavenly vision! did alfred de musset know these veiled forms that seem to float over the meadow and did he think of them in the sleeplessness of his nights of may? did he think of that young girl whose arm rises supple as the stem of a flower, of that young grace so charming in the frame of her fair hair confined by strings of pearls, or, indeed, of that _primavera_, who advances so imperiously beautiful, in her long robe of brocade, scattering handfuls of flowers that she makes blossom, or of that young mother more charming still in her modest grace, with her beautiful eyes full of infinite tenderness. and around this scene, what a beautiful frame of verdure and flowers! nature has donned her richest festal robes; the inanimate things, like the human beings, all speak of love and happiness, and tell us that the master of this world is that little child with bandaged eyes, who amuses himself by shooting his arrows of fire. to say a word about the technique of this work, we should remark that botticelli always painted in fresco or distemper, and that he did not seek the supple modelling that painting in oil affords; and, on the other hand, he submitted profoundly to the influence of pollaiolo; he observed nature with the eyes of a goldsmith; and he painted his works as if, working a niello or enamel, he had to set each figure in gold-wire. finally, is it necessary to speak of the date of the _primavera_? this would occasion a long discussion if the space were accorded me. let it suffice to say that the biography written by vasari merits no credence, that it has been unfortunately accepted by the majority of historians, and that we have not yet a good chronology of botticelli's works, nor even a simple catalogue. as for the chronology, most historians, relying upon vasari, place nearly all of botticelli's works before his trip to rome in . i think, on the contrary, and i will prove it elsewhere, that the great productive period of botticelli belongs to the ten last years of the century and that the _primavera_ should be classed in this period. the _primavera_ represents, with _the birth of venus_ and _the adoration of the magi_, the culminating point of botticelli's art. jouin, _chefs-d'oeuvre; peinture, sculpture, architecture_ (paris, - ). footnotes: [ ] see notably the _stanze_ of politian, where one will find nearly all the details of botticelli's picture; the shady grove, the flowery meadow, even the attitudes and the garments of the personages. is it not a figure of botticelli's which is thus described: "she is white and white is her robe, all painted with flowers, roses, and blades of grass." transcriber's notes: {a} possible typo for sinister? {b} van die beroerlicke tijden in die nederlanden. tijden appears in text as tij den. other sources give tyden as another spelling. most of the illustrations in this book have links to colored images on other sites on the internet. if the links don't work, try the "web gallery of art" at http://www.wga.hu/ then search for the artist or painting of interest. since this is not an html file, you may wish to copy to link you are interested in, into your browser, where you can view the related image. botticelli the birth of venus _florence_ http://www.wga.hu/art/b/botticel/ allegor/ birth.jpg veronese the queen of sheba _turin_ michael angelo the last judgment _rome_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/m/michelan/ sistina/lastjudg/ lastjud.jpg correggio magdalen _dresden_ van der helst the banquet of the arquebusiers _amsterdam_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/h/helst/celebrat.jpg watteau l'embarquement pour l'Île de cythère _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/w/watteau/antoine/ / cythe .jpg raphael the sistine madonna _dresden_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/raphael/ roma/ / sisti.jpg carpaccio the dream of st. ursula _venice_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/c/carpacci/ ursula/ / dream.jpg rubens the descent from the cross _antwerp_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/rubens/ religi/ desce .jpg titian bacchus and ariadne _london_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/t/tiziano/mytholo /bacchus.jpg fra angelico the coronation of the virgin _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/a/angelico/altar/angelic .jpg botticelli judith _florence_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/b/botticel/painting/judith.jpg hobbema the avenue of middelharnais _london_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/h/hobbema/alley.jpg andrea del sarto the dance of the daughter of herodias _florence_ fabriano the adoration of the magi _florence_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/g/gentile/adormag.jpg holbein portrait of georg gisze _berlin_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/h/holbein/hans_y/ / gisze.jpg tintoret paradise _venice_ guido reni aurora _rome_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/reni/ /aurora.jpg titian the assumption of the virgin _venice_ rembrandt the night watch _amsterdam_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/rembran/painting/group/night_wa.jpg gozzoli the rape of helen _london_ l. da vinci monna lisa _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/l/leonardo/ / monali.jpg van eyck the adoration of the lamb _ghent_ http://www.wga.hu/art/e/eyck_van/jan/ ghent/ open /l adora.jpg piero di cosimo the death of procris _london_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/p/piero/cosimo/allegory/procris.jpg tintoret the marriage in cana _venice_ http://www.wga.hu/art/t/tintoret/ religio/marriage.jpg de la tour portrait of madame de pompadour _paris_ constable the hay wain _london_ http://www.wga.hu/art/c/constabl/haywain.jpg velasquez the surrender of breda _madrid_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/v/velazque/ - / breda.jpg murillo the immaculate conception _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/m/murillo/ -/immacula.jpg giotto st. frances before the soldan _florence_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/g/giotto/s_croce/ bardi/scenes_ /franci .jpg rossetti lilith _rockford, del._ http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/dgr/paintings/ .jpg dÜrer the adoration of the magi _florence_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/d/durer/ / / adorat.jpg hogarth the marriage a-la-mode _london_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/h/hogarth/marriag .jpg l. da vinci the madonna of the rocks _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/l/leonardo/ / virg_p.jpg guido reni portrait of beatrice cenci _rome_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/s/sirani/b_cenci.jpg raphael the transfiguration _rome_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/raphael/ roma/ / trans.jpg paul potter the bull _the hague_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/p/potter/y_bull.jpg fragonard corésus and callirhoé _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/f/fragonar/ / coresu.jpg gainsborough the market-cart _london_ tintoret bacchus and ariadne _venice_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/t/tintoret/ mytholo/ariadne.jpg greuze la cruche cassée _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/g/greuze/broken_j.jpg reynolds portrait of lady cockburn and her children _london_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/reynolds/cockburn.jpg raphael st. cecilia _naples_ http://www.abcgallery.com/r/raphael/raphael .jpg l. da vinci the last supper _milan_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/l/leonardo/ / lastsu .jpg van dyck portrait of the children of charles i. _turin_ http://www.abcgallery.com/v/vandyck/vandyck .jpg turner the fighting téméraire _london_ http://www.j-m-w-turner.co.uk/artist/gifetc/tameria.jpg botticelli spring _florence_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/b/botticel/allegory/primaver.jpg fragments. § . but this form is much modified by the special direction of the descending force as it escapes from confinement. for a stream coming down a ravine is kept by the steep sides of its channel in concentrated force: but it no sooner reaches the bottom, and escapes from its ravine, than it spreads in all directions, or at least tries to choose a new channel at every flood. let _a b c_, fig. , be three ridges of mountain. the two torrents coming down the ravine between them meet, at _d_ and _e_, with the heaps of ground formerly thrown down by their own agency. these heaps being more or less in the form of cones, the torrent has a tendency to divide upon their apex, like water poured on the top of a sugar-loaf, and branch into the radiating channels _e x_, _e y_, &c. the stronger it is, the more it is disposed to rush straightforward, or with little curvature, as in the line _e x_, with the impetus it has received in coming down the ravine; the weaker it is, the more readily it will lean to one side or the other, and fall away in the lines of escape, _e y_, or _e h_; but of course at times of highest flood it fills all its possible channels, and invents a few new ones, of which afterwards the straightest will be kept by the main stream, and the lateral curves occupied by smaller branches; the whole system corresponding precisely to the action of the ribs of the young leaf, as shown in plate + + of vol. iii., especially in fig. ,--the main torrent, like the main rib, making the largest fortune, i. e. raising the highest heap of gravel and dust. [illustration: fig. .] § . it may easily be imagined that when the operation takes place on a large scale, the mass of earth thus deposited in a gentle slope at the mountain's foot becomes available for agricultural purposes, and that then it is of the greatest importance to prevent the stream from branching into various channels at its will, and pouring fresh sand over the cultivated fields. accordingly, at the mouth of every large ravine in the alps, where the peasants know how to live and how to work, the stream is artificially embanked, and compelled as far as possible to follow the central line down the cone. hence, when the traveller passes along any great valley,--as that of the rhone or arve,--into which minor torrents are poured by lateral ravines, he will find himself every now and then ascending a hill of moderate slope, at the _top_ of which he will cross a torrent, or its bed, and descend by another gradual slope to the usual level of the valley. in every such case, his road has ascended a tongue of débris, and has crossed the embanked torrent carried by force along its centre. under such circumstances, the entire tongue or heap of land ceases of course to increase, until the bed of the confined torrent is partially choked by its perpetual deposit. then in some day of violent rain the waves burst their fetters, branch at their own will, cover the fields of some unfortunate farmer with stones and slime, according to the torrent's own idea of the new form which it has become time to give to the great tongue of land, carry away the road and the bridge together, and arrange everything to their own liking. but the road is again painfully traced among the newly fallen débris; the embankment and bridge again built for the stream, now satisfied with its outbreak; and the tongue of land submitted to new processes of cultivation for a certain series of years. when, however, the torrent is exceedingly savage, and generally of a republican temper, the outbreaks are too frequent and too violent to admit of any cultivation of the tongue of land. a few straggling alder or thorn bushes, their roots buried in shingle, and their lower branches fouled with slime, alone relieve with ragged spots of green the broad waste of stones and dust. the utmost that can be done is to keep the furious stream from choosing a new channel in every one of its fits of passion, and remaining in it afterwards, thus extending its devastation in entirely unforeseen directions. the land which it has brought down must be left a perpetual sacrifice to its rage; but in the moment of its lassitude it is brought back to its central course, and compelled to forego for a few weeks or months the luxury of deviation. § . on the other hand, when, owing to the nature of the valley above, the stream is gentle, and the sediment which it brings down small in quantity, it may be retained for long years in its constant path, while the sides of the bank of earth it has borne down are clothed with pasture and forest, seen in the distance of the great valley as a promontory of sweet verdure, along which the central stream passes with an influence of blessing, submitting itself to the will of the husbandman for irrigation, and of the mechanist for toil; now nourishing the pasture, and now grinding the corn, of the land which it has first formed, and now waters. § . i have etched above, plate + +, a portion of the flank of the valley of chamouni, which presents nearly every class of line under discussion, and will enable the reader to understand their relations at once. it represents, as was before stated, the crests of the montagnes de la côte and taconay, shown from base to summit, with the glacier des bossons and its moraine. the reference figure given at p. will enable the reader to distinguish its several orders of curves, as follows: _h r_. aqueous curves of fall, at the base of the tapia; very characteristic. similar curves are seen in multitude on the two crests beyond as _b c_, _c_ b. _d e_. first lines of projection. the débris falling from the glacier and the heights above. _k_, _l_, _n_.three lines of escape. a considerable torrent (one of whose falls is the well-known cascade des pélerins[ ]) descends from behind the promontory _h_: its natural or proper course would be to dash straight forward down the line _f g_, and part of it does so; but erratic branches of it slide away round the promontory, in the lines of escape, _k_, _l_, &c. each row of trees marks, therefore, an old torrent bed, for the torrent always throws heaps of stones up along its banks, on which the pines, growing higher than on the neighboring ground, indicate its course by their supremacy. when the escaped stream is feeble, it steals quietly away down the steepest part of the slope; that is to say, close under the promontory, at _i_. if it is stronger, the impetus from the hill above shoots it farther out, in the line _k_; if stronger still, at _l_; in each case it curves gradually round as it loses its onward force, and falls more and more languidly to leeward, down the slope of the débris. _r s_. a line which, perhaps, would be more properly termed of limitation than of escape, being that of the base or termination of the heap of torrent débris, which in shape corresponds exactly to the curved lip of a wave, after it has broken, as it slowly stops upon a shallow shore. within this line the ground is entirely composed of heaps of stones, cemented by granite dust and cushioned with moss, while outside of it, all is smooth pasture. the pines enjoy the stony ground particularly, and hold large meetings upon it, but the alders are shy of it; and, when it has come to an end, form a triumphal procession all round its edge, following the concave line. the correspondent curves above are caused by similar lines in which the débris has formerly stopped. [illustration: . débris curvature.] § . i found it a matter of the greatest difficulty to investigate the picturesque characters of these lines of projection and escape, because, as presented to the eye, they are always modified by perspective; and it is almost a physical impossibility to get a true profile of any of the slopes, they round and melt so constantly into one another. many of them, roughly measured, are nearly circular in tendency;[ ] but i believe they are all portions of infinite curves either modified by the concealment or destruction of the lower lips of débris, or by their junction with straight lines of slope above, throwing the longest limb of the curve upwards. fig. , in plate + + opposite, is a simple but complete example from chamouni; the various overlapping and concave lines at the bottom being the limits of the mass at various periods, more or less broken afterwards by the peasants, either by removing stones for building, or throwing them back at the edges here and there, out of the way of the plough; but even with all these breaks, their natural unity is so sweet and perfect, that, if the reader will turn the plate upside down, he will see i have no difficulty (merely adding a quill or two) in turning them into a bird's wing (fig. ), a little ruffled indeed, but still graceful, and not of such a form as one would have supposed likely to be designed and drawn, as indeed it was, by the rage of a torrent. but we saw in chap. vii. § that this very rage was, in fact, a beneficent power,--creative, not destructive; and as all its apparent cruelty is overruled by the law of love, so all its apparent disorder is overruled by the law of loveliness: the hand of god, leading the wrath of the torrent to minister to the life of mankind, guides also its grim surges by the laws of their delight; and bridles the bounding rocks, and appeases the flying foam, till they lie down in the same lines that lead forth the fibres of the down on a cygnet's breast. § . the straight slopes with which these curves unite themselves below, in plate + + (_f g_ in reference figure), are those spoken of in the outset as lines of rest. but i defer to the next chapter the examination of these, which are a separate family of lines (not curves at all), in order to reassemble the conclusions we have now obtained respecting _curvature_ in mountains, and apply them to questions of art. and, first, it is of course not to be supposed that these symmetrical laws are so manifest in their operation as to force themselves on the observance of men in general. they are interrupted, necessarily, by every fantastic accident in the original conformation of the hills, which, according to the hardness of their rocks, more or less accept or refuse the authority of general law. still, the farther we extend our observance of hills, the more we shall be struck by the continual roundness and softness which it seems the object of nature to give to every form; so that, when crags look sharp and distorted, it is not so much that they are unrounded, as that the various curves are more subtly accommodated to the angles, and that, instead of being worn into one sweeping and smooth descent, like the surface of a knoll or down, the rock is wrought into innumerable minor undulations, its own fine anatomy showing through all. [illustration: j. ruskin. j. h. le keux. . the buttresses of an alp.] § . perhaps the mountain which i have drawn on the opposite page (plate + +[ ]) is, in its original sternness of mass, and in the complexity of lines into which it has been chiselled, as characteristic an instance as could be given by way of general type. it is one of no name or popular interest, but of singular importance in the geography of switzerland, being the angle buttress of the great northern chain of the alps (the chain of the jungfrau and gemmi), and forming the promontory round which the rhone turns to the north-west, at martigny. it is composed of an intensely hard gneiss (slaty crystalline), in which the plates of mica are set for the most part against the angle, running nearly north and south, as in fig. , and giving the point, therefore, the utmost possible strength, which, however, cannot prevent it from being rent gradually by enormous curved fissures, and separated into huge vertical flakes and chasms, just at the lower promontory, as seen in plate + +, and (in plan) in fig. . the whole of the upper surface of the promontory is wrought by the old glaciers into furrows and striæ more notable than any i ever saw in the alps. § . now observe, we have here a piece of nature's work which she has assuredly been long in executing, and which is in peculiarly firm and stable material. it is in her best rock (slaty crystalline), at a point important for all her geographical purposes, and at the degree of mountain elevation especially adapted to the observation of mankind. we shall therefore probably ascertain as much of nature's mind about these things in this piece of work as she usually allows us to see all at once. [illustration: fig. .] § . if the reader will take a pencil, and, laying tracing paper over the plate, follow a few of its lines, he will (unless before accustomed to accurate mountain-drawing) be soon amazed by the complexity, endlessness, and harmony of the curvatures. he will find that there is not one line in all that rock which is not an infinite curve, and united in some intricate way with others, and suggesting others unseen; and if it were the reality, instead of my drawing, which he had to deal with, he would find the infinity, in a little while, altogether overwhelm him. but even in this imperfect sketch, as he traces the multitudinous involution of flowing line, passing from swift to slight curvature, or slight to swift, at every instant, he will, i think, find enough to convince him of the truth of what has been advanced respecting the natural appointment of curvature as the first element of all loveliness in form. § . "nay, but there are hard and straight lines mingled with those curves continually." true, as we have said so often, just as shade is mixed with light. angles and undulations may rise and flow continually, one through or over the other; but the opposition is in quantity nearly always the same, if the mass is to be pleasant to the eye. in the example previously given (plate + +), the limestone bank above villeneuve, it is managed in a different way, but is equal in degree; the lower portion of the hill is of soft rock in thin laminæ; the upper mass is a solid and firm bed, yet not so hard as to stand all weathers. the lower portion, therefore, is rounded into almost unbroken softness of bank; the upper surmounts it as a rugged wall, and the opposition of the curve and angle is just as complete as in the first example, in which one was continually mingled with the other. § . next, note the _quantity_ in these hills. it is an element on which i shall have to insist more in speaking of vegetation; but i must not pass it by, here, since, in fact, it constitutes one of the essential differences between hills of first-rate magnificence, and inferior ones. not that there is want of quantity even in the lower ranges, but it is a quantity of inferior things, and therefore more easily represented or suggested. on a highland hill side are multitudinous clusters of fern and heather; on an alpine one, multitudinous groves of chestnut and pine. the number of the things may be the same, but the sense of infinity is in the latter case far greater, because the number is of nobler things. indeed, so far as mere magnitude of space occupied on the field of the horizon is the measure of objects, a bank of earth ten feet high may, if we stoop to the foot of it, be made to occupy just as much of the sky as that bank of mountain at villeneuve; nay, in many respects its little ravines and escarpments, watched with some help of imagination, may become very sufficiently representative to us of those of the great mountain; and in classing all water-worn mountain-ground under the general and humble term of banks, i mean to imply this relationship of structure between the smallest eminences and the highest. but in this matter of superimposed _quantity_ the distinctions of rank are at once fixed. the heap of earth bears its few tufts of moss or knots of grass; the highland or cumberland mountain its honeyed heathers or scented ferns; but the mass of the bank at martigny or villeneuve has a vineyard in every cranny of its rocks, and a chestnut grove on every crest of them. § . this is no poetical exaggeration. look close into that plate (+ +). every little circular stroke in it among the rocks means, not a clump of copse nor wreath of fern, but a walnut tree, or a spanish chestnut, fifty or sixty feet high. nor are the little curves, thus significative of trees, laid on at random. they are not indeed counted, tree by tree, but they are most carefully distributed in the true proportion and quantity; or if i have erred at all, it was, from mere fatigue, on the side of sparingness. the minute mounds and furrows scattered up the side of that great promontory, when they are actually approached, after three or four hours' climbing, turn into independent hills with true _parks_ of lovely pasture land enclosed among them, and avenue after avenue of chestnuts, walnuts, and pines bending round their bases; while in the deeper dingles, unseen in the drawing, nestle populous villages, literally bound down to the rock by enormous trunks of vine, which, first trained lightly over the loose stone roofs, have in process of years cast their fruitful net over the whole village, and fastened it to the ground under their purple weight and wayward coils, as securely as ever human heart was fastened to earth by the net of the flatterer. § . and it is this very richness of incident and detail which renders switzerland so little attractive in its subjects to the ordinary artist. observe, this study of mine in plate + + does not profess to be a _picture_ at all. it is a mere sketch or catalogue of all that there is on the mountain side, faithfully written out, but no more than should be put down by any conscientious painter for mere guidance, before he begins his work, properly so called; and in finishing such a subject no trickery nor shorthand is of any avail whatsoever; there are a certain number of trees to be drawn; and drawn they must be, or the place will not bear its proper character. they are not misty wreaths of soft wood suggestible by a sweep or two of the brush; but arranged and lovely clusters of trees, clear in the mountain sunlight, each specially grouped and as little admitting any carelessness of treatment, though five miles distant, as if they were within a few yards of us; the whole meaning and power of the scene being involved in that one fact of quantity. it is not large merely by multitudes of tons of rock,--the number of tons is not measurable; it is not large by elevation of angle on the horizon,--a house-roof near us rises higher; it is not large by faintness of aerial perspective,--in a clear day it often looks as if we could touch the summit with the hand. but it is large by this one unescapable fact that, from the summit to the base of it, there are of timber trees so many countable thousands. the scene differs from subjects not swiss by including hundreds of other scenes within itself, and is mighty, not by scale, but by aggregation. § . and this is more especially and humiliatingly true of pine forest. nearly all other kinds of wood may be reduced, over large spaces, to undetailed masses; but there is nothing but patience for pines; and this has been one of the principal reasons why artists call switzerland "unpicturesque." there may perhaps be, in the space of a swiss valley which comes into a picture, from five to ten millions of well grown pines.[ ] every one of these pines must be drawn before the scene can be. and a pine cannot be represented by a round stroke, nor by an upright one, nor even by an angular one; no conventionalism will express a pine; it must be legitimately drawn, with a light side and a dark side, and a soft gradation from the top downwards, or it does not look like a pine at all. most artists think it not desirable to choose a subject which involves the drawing of ten millions of trees; because, supposing they could even do four or five in a minute, and worked for ten hours a day, their picture would still take them ten years before they had finished its pine forests. for this, and other similar reasons, it is declared usually that switzerland is ugly and unpicturesque; but that is not so; it is only that _we_ cannot paint it. if we could, it would be as interesting on the canvas as it is in reality; and a painter of fruit and flowers might just as well call a human figure unpicturesque, because it was to him unmanageable, as the ordinary landscape-effect painter speak in depreciation of the alps. § . it is not probable that any subjects such as we have just been describing, involving a necessity of ten years' labor, will be executed by the modern landscape school,--at least, until its pre-raphaelitic tendencies become much more developed than they are yet; nor was it desirable that they should have been by turner, whose fruitful invention would have been unwisely arrested for a length of time on any single subject, however beautiful. but with his usual certainty of perception, he fastened at once on this character of "quantity," as the thing to be expressed, in one way or another, in all grand mountain-drawing; and the subjects of his on which i have chiefly dwelt in the first volume (chapter on the inferior mountains, § , &c.) are distinguished from the work of other painters in nothing so much as in this redundance. beautiful as they are in color, graceful in fancy, powerful in execution,--in none of these things do they stand so much alone as in plain, calculable quantity; he having always on the average twenty trees or rocks where other people have only one, and winning his victories not more by skill of generalship than by overwhelming numerical superiority. § . i say his works are distinguished in this more than in anything else, not because this is their highest quality, but because it is peculiar to them. invention, color, grace of arrangement, we may find in tintoret and veronese in various manifestation; but the expression of the infinite redundance of natural landscape had never been attempted until turner's time; and the treatment of the masses of mountain in the daphne and leucippus, golden bough, and modern italy, is wholly without precursorship in art. nor, observe, do i insist upon this quantity _merely_ as arithmetical, or as if it were producible by repetition of similar things. it would be easy to be redundant, if multiplication of the same idea constituted fulness; and since turner first introduced these types of landscape, myriads of vulgar imitations of them have been produced, whose perpetrators have supposed themselves disciples or rivals of turner, in covering their hills with white dots for forest, and their foregrounds with yellow sparklings for herbage. but the turnerian redundance is never monotonous. of the thousands of groups of touches which, with him, are necessary to constitute a single bank of hill, not one but has some special character, and is as much a separate invention as the whole plan of the picture. perhaps this may be sufficiently understood by an attentive examination of the detail introduced by him in his st. gothard subject, as shown in plate + +. § . i do not, indeed, know if the examples i have given from natural scenes, though they are as characteristic as i could well choose, are enough to accustom the reader to the character of true mountain lines, and to enable him to recognize such lines in other instances; but if not, at all events they may serve to elucidate the main points, and guide to more complete examination of the subject, if it interests him, among the hills themselves. and if, after he has pursued the inquiry long enough to feel the certitude of the laws which i have been endeavoring to illustrate, he turns back again to art, i am well assured it will be with a strange recognition of unconceived excellence, and a newly quickened pleasure in the unforeseen fidelity, that he will trace the pencilling of turner upon his hill drawings. i do not choose to spend, in this work, the labor and time which would be necessary to analyze, as i have done the drawing of the st. gothard, any other of turner's important mountain designs; for the reader must feel the disadvantage they are under in being either reduced in scale, or divided into fragments: and therefore these chapters are always to be considered merely as memoranda for reference before the pictures which the reader may have it in his power to examine. but this one drawing of the st. gothard, as it has already elucidated for us turner's knowledge of crest structure, will be found no less wonderful in the fulness with which it illustrates his perception of the lower aqueous and other curvatures. if the reader will look back to the etching of the entire subject, plate + +, he will now discern, i believe, without the necessity of my lettering them for him, the lines of fall, rounded down from the crests until they plunge into the overhanging precipices; the lines of projection, where the fallen stones extend the long concave sweep from the couloir, pushing the torrent against the bank on the other side; in the opening of the ravine he will perceive the oblique and parallel inclination of its sides, following the cleavage of the beds in the diagonal line a b of the reference figure; and, finally, in the great slope and precipice on the right of it, he will recognize one of the grandest types of the peculiar mountain mass which turner always chose by preference to illustrate, the "slope above wall" of _d_ in fig. , p. ; compare also the last chapter, §§ , . it will be seen, by reference to my sketch of the spot, plate + +, that this conformation does actually exist there with great definiteness: turner has only enlarged and thrown it into more numerous alternations of light and shade. as these could not be shown in the etching, i have given, in the frontispiece, this passage nearly of its real size: the exquisite greys and blues by which turner has rounded and thrown it back are necessarily lost in the plate; but the grandeur of his simple cliff and soft curves of sloping bank above is in some degree rendered. we must yet dwell for a moment on the detail of the rocks on the left in plate + +, as they approach nearer the eye, turning at the same time from the light. it cost me trouble to etch this passage, and yet half its refinements are still missed; for turner has put his whole strength into it, and wrought out the curving of the gneiss beds with a subtlety which could not be at all approached in the time i had to spare for this plate. enough, however, is expressed to illustrate the points in question. § . we have first, observe, a rounded bank, broken, at its edges, into cleavages by inclined beds. i thought it would be well, lest the reader should think i dwelt too much on this particular scene, to give an instance of similar structure from another spot; and therefore i daguerreotyped the cleavages of a slope of gneiss just above the cascade des pélerins, chamouni, corresponding in position to this bank of turner's. plate + + (facing p. ), copied by mr. armytage from the daguerreotype, represents, necessarily in a quite unprejudiced and impartial way, the structure at present in question; and the reader may form a sufficient idea, from this plate, of the complexity of descending curve and foliated rent, in even a small piece of mountain foreground,[ ] where the gneiss beds are tolerably continuous. but turner had to add to such general complexity the expression of a more than ordinary undulation in the beds of the st. gothard gneiss. § . if the reader will look back to chapter ii. § , he will find it stated that this scene is approached out of the defile of dazio grande, of which the impression was still strong on turner's mind, and where only he could see, close at hand, the nature of the rocks in a good section. it most luckily happens that de saussure was interested by the rocks at the same spot, and has given the following account of them, voyages, §§ , :-- "À une lieue de faïdo, l'on passe le tésin pour le repasser bientôt après [see the old bridge in turner's view, carried away in mine], et l'on trouve sur sa rive droite des couches d'une roche feuilletée, qui montent du côté du nord. "on voit clairement que depuis que les granits veinés ont été remplacés par des pierres moins solides, tantôt les rochers se sont éboulés et ont été recouverts par la terre végétale, tantôt leur situation primitive a subi des changements irréguliers. "§ . mais bientôt après, _on monte par un chemin en corniche au dessus du tésin, qui se précipite entre des rochers avec la plus grande violence_. ces rochers sont là si serrés, qu'il n'y a de place que pour la rivière et pour le chemin, et même en quelques endroits, celui-ci est entièrement pris sur le roc. je fis à pied cette montée, pour examiner avec soin ces beaux rochers, _dignes de toute l'attention d'un amateur_. "les veinés de ce granit forment en plusieurs endroits des _zigzags redoublés_, précisément comme ces anciennes tapisseries, connues sous le nom de points d'hongrie; et là, on ne peut pas prononcer, si les veinés de la pierre, sont ou ne sont pas parallèles à ses couches. cependant ces veinés reprennent aussi dans quelques places, une direction constante, et cette direction est bien la même que celle des couches. il paroît même qu'en divers endroits, où ces veinés ont la forme d'un _sigma_ ou d'une m couchée m, ce sont les grandes jambes du _sigma_, qui ont la direction des couches. enfin, j'observai plusieurs couches, qui dans le milieu de leur épaisseur paroissoient remplies de ces veinés en zigzag, tandis qu'auprès de leurs bords, on les voyoit toutes en lignes droites." § . if the reader will now examine turner's work at the point _x_ in the reference figure, and again on the stones in the foreground, comparing it finally with the fragment of the rocks which happened fortunately to come into my foreground in plate + +, rising towards the left, and of which i have etched the structure with some care, though at the time i had quite forgotten saussure's notice of the peculiar m-shaped zigzags of the gneiss at the spot, i believe he will have enough evidence before him, taken all in all, to convince him of turner's inevitable perception, and of the entire supremacy of his mountain drawing over all that had previously existed. and if he is able to refer, even to the engravings (though i desire always that what i state should be _tested_ by the drawings only) of any others of his elaborate hill-subjects, and will examine their details with careful reference to the laws explained in this chapter, he will find that the turnerian promontories and banks are always simply _right_, and that in all respects; that their gradated curvatures, and nodding cliffs, and redundant sequence of folded glen and feathery glade, are, in all their seemingly fanciful beauty, literally the most downright plain speaking that has as yet been uttered about hills; and differ from all antecedent work, not in being ideal, but in being, so to speak, pictorial _casts_ of the ground. such a drawing as that of the yorkshire richmond, looking down the river, in the england series, is even better than a model of the ground, because it gives the aerial perspective, and is better than a photograph of the ground, because it exaggerates no shadows, while it unites the veracities both of model and photograph. § . nor let it be thought that it was an easy or creditable thing to treat mountain ground with this faithfulness in the days when turner executed those drawings. in the encyclopædia britannica (edinburgh, ), under article "drawing," the following are the directions given for the production of a landscape:-- "if he is to draw a landscape from nature, let him take his station on a rising ground, where he will have a large horizon, and mark his tablet into three divisions, downwards from top to the bottom; and divide in his own mind the landscape he is to take into three divisions also. then let him turn his face directly opposite to the midst of the horizon, keeping his body fixed, and draw what is directly before his eyes upon the middle division of the tablet: then _turn his head, but not his body_,[ ] to the left hand and delineate what he views there, joining it properly to what he had done before; and, lastly, do the same by what is to be seen upon his right hand, laying down everything exactly, both with respect to distance and proportion. one example is given in plate clxviii. "the best artists of late, in drawing their landscapes, make them shoot away, one part lower than another. those who make their landscapes mount up higher and higher, as if they stood at the bottom of a hill to take the prospect, commit a great error; the best way is to get upon a rising ground, make the nearest objects in the piece the highest, and those that are farther off to shoot away lower and lower till they come almost level with the line of the horizon, lessening everything proportionably to its distance, and observing also to make the objects fainter and less distinct the farther they are removed from the eye. he must make all his lights and shades fall one way, and let every thing have its proper motion: as trees shaken by the wind, the small boughs bending more and the large ones less; water agitated by the wind, and dashing against ships or boats, or falling from a precipice upon rocks and stones, and spirting up again into the air, and sprinkling all about; clouds also in the air now gathered with the winds; now violently condensed into hail, rain, and the like,--always remembering, that whatever motions are caused by the wind must be made all to move the same way, because the wind can blow but one way at once." such was the state of the public mind, and of public instruction, at the time when claude, poussin, and salvator were in the zenith of their reputation; such were the precepts which, even to the close of the century, it was necessary for a young painter to comply with during the best part of the years he gave to study. take up one of turner's views of our yorkshire dells, seen from about a hawk's height of pause above the sweep of its river, and with it in your hand, side by side with the old encyclopædia paragraph, consider what must have been the man's strength, who, on a sudden, passed from such precept to such practice. § . on a sudden it was; for, even yet a youth, and retaining profound respect for all older artist's ways of _work_, he followed his own will fearlessly in choice of _scene_; and already in the earliest of his coast drawings there are as daring and strange decisions touching the site of the spectator as in his latest works; lookings down and up into coves and clouds, as defiant of all former theories touching possible perspective, or graceful componence of subject, as, a few years later, his system of color was of the theory of the brown tree. nor was the step remarkable merely for its magnitude,--for the amount of progress made in a few years. it was much more notable by its direction. the discovery of the true structure of hill banks had to be made by turner, not merely in _advance_ of the men of his day, but in _contradiction_ to them. examine the works of contemporary and preceding landscapists, and it will be found that the universal practice is to make the tops of all cliffs broken and rugged, their bases smooth and soft, or concealed with wood. no one had ever observed the contrary structure, the bank rounded at the top, and broken on the flank. and yet all the hills of any importance which are met with throughout lowland europe are, properly speaking, high banks, for the most part following the courses of rivers, and forming a step from the high ground, of which the country generally consists, to the river level. thus almost the whole of france, though, on the face of it, flat, is raised from to feet above the level of the sea, and is traversed by valleys either formed by, or directing, the course of its great rivers. in these valleys lie all its principal towns, surrounded, almost without exception, by ranges of hills covered with wood or vineyard. ascending these hills, we find ourselves at once in an elevated plain, covered with corn and lines of apple trees, extending to the next river side, where we come to the brow of another hill, and descend to the city and valley beneath it. our own valleys in northumberland, yorkshire, derbyshire, and devonshire, are cut in the same manner through vast extents of elevated land; the scenery which interests the traveller chiefly, as he passes through even the most broken parts of those counties, being simply that of the high _banks_ which rise from the shores of the dart or the derwent, the wharfe or the tees. in all cases, when these banks are surmounted, the sensation is one of disappointment, as the adventurer finds himself, the moment he has left the edge of the ravine, in a waste of softly undulating moor or arable land, hardly deserving the title of hill country. as we advance into the upper districts the fact remains still the same, although the banks to be climbed are higher, the ravines grander, and the intermediate land more broken. the majesty of an isolated peak is still comparatively rare, and nearly all the most interesting pieces of scenery are glens or passes, which, if seen from a height great enough to command them in all their relations, would be found in reality little more than trenches excavated through broad masses of elevated land, and expanding at intervals into the wide basins which are occupied by the glittering lake or smiling plain. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: j. ruskin. j. h. le keux. . the quarries of carrara.] § . all these facts had been entirely ignored by artists; nay, almost by geologists, before turner's time. he saw them at once; fathomed them to the uttermost, and, partly owing to early association, partly, perhaps, to the natural pleasure of working a new mine discovered by himself, devoted his best powers to their illustration, passing by with somewhat less attention the conditions of broken-summited rock, which had previously been the only ones known. and if we now look back to his treatment of the crest of mont pilate, in the figure given at the close of the last chapter, we shall understand better the nature and strength of the instinct which compelled him to sacrifice the peaked summit, and to bring the whole mountain within a lower enclosing line. in that figure, however, the dotted peak interferes with the perception of the form finally determined upon, which therefore i repeat here (fig. ), as turner gave it in color. the eye may not at first detect the law of ascent in the peaks, but if the height of any one of them were altered, the general form would instantly be perceived to be less agreeable. fig. shows that they are disposed within an infinite curve, a _c_, from which the last crag falls a little to conceal the law, while the terminal line at the other extremity, a _b_, is a minor echo of the whole contour. [illustration: fig. .] § . i must pause to make one exception to my general statement that this structure had been entirely ignored. the reader was, perhaps, surprised by the importance i attached to the fragment of mountain background by masaccio, given in plate + + of the third volume. if he looks back to it now, his surprise will be less. it was a complete recognition of the laws of the lines of aqueous sculpture, asserted as turner's was, in the boldest opposition to the principles of rock drawing of the time. it presents even smoother and broader masses than any which i have shown as types of hill form; but it must be remembered that masaccio had seen only the softer contours of the apennine limestone. i have no memorandum by me of the hill lines near florence; but plate + + shows the development of limestone structure, at a spot which has, i think, the best right to be given as an example of the italian hills, the head of the valley of carrara. the white scar on the hill side is the principal quarry; and the peaks above deserve observation, not so much for anything in their forms, as for the singular barrenness which was noted in the fifteenth chapter of the last volume (§ ) as too often occurring in the apennines. compare this plate with the previous one. the peak drawn in plate + + rises at least feet above the sea,--yet is wooded to its top; this carrara crag not above ,[ ]--yet it is wholly barren. § . masaccio, however, as we saw, was taken away by death before he could give any one of his thoughts complete expression. turner was spared to do _his_ work, in this respect at least, completely. it might be thought that, having had such adverse influence to struggle with, he would prevail against it but in part; and, though showing the way to much that was new, retain of necessity some old prejudices, and leave his successors to pursue in purer liberty, and with happier power, the path he had pointed out. but it was not so: he did the work so completely on the ground which he chose to illustrate, that nothing is left for future artists to accomplish in that kind. some classes of scenery, as often pointed out in the preceding pages, he was unfamiliar with, or held in little affection, and out of that scenery, untouched by him, new motives may be obtained; but of such landscape as his favorite yorkshire wolds, and banks of rhenish and french hill, and rocky mountains of switzerland, like the st. gothard, already so long dwelt upon, he has expressed the power in what i believe to be for ever a central and unmatchable way. i do not say this with positiveness, because it is not demonstrable. turner may be beaten on his own ground--so may tintoret, so may shakespeare, dante, or homer: but my _belief_ is that all these first-rate men are lonely men; that the particular work they did was by them done for ever in the best way; and that this work done by turner among the hills, joining the most intense appreciation of all tenderness with delight in all magnitude, and memory for all detail, is never to be rivalled, or looked upon in similitude again. footnotes [ ] _quantity_ of curvature is as measurable as quantity of anything else; only observe that it depends on the nature of the line, not on its magnitude; thus, in simple circular curvature, _a b_, fig. , being the fourth of a large circle, and _b c_ the half of a smaller one, the quantity of the element of circular curvature in the entire line _a c_ is three fourths of that in _any_ circle,--the the same as the quantity in the line _e f_. [illustration: fig .] [ ] the catenary is not properly a curve capable of infinity, if its direction does not alter with its length; but it is capable of infinity, implying such alteration by the infinite removal of the points of suspension. it entirely corresponds in its effect on the eye and mind to the infinite curves. i do not know the exact nature of the apparent curves of suspension formed by a high and weighty waterfall; they are dependent on the gain in rapidity of descent by the central current, where its greater body is less arrested by the air; and i apprehend, are catenary in character, though not in cause. [ ] i am afraid of becoming tiresome by going too far into the intricacies of this most difficult subject; but i say "_towards_ the bottom of the hill," because, when a certain degree of verticality is reached, a counter protective influence begins to establish itself, the stones and waterfalls bounding away from the brow of the precipice into the air, and wearing it at the top only. also it is evident that when the curvature falls into a vertical cliff, as often happens, the maximum of curvature must be somewhere _above_ the brow of the cliff, as in the cliff itself it has again died into a straight line. [ ] the following extract from my private diary, giving an account of the destruction of the beauty of this waterfall in the year , which i happened to witness, may be interesting to those travellers who remember it before that period. the house spoken of as "joseph's," is that of the guide joseph coutet, in a village about a mile below the cascade, between it and the arve: that noticed as of the "old avalanche" is a hollow in the forest, cleft by a great avalanche which fell from the aiguille du midi in the spring of . it struck down about a thousand full-grown pines, and left an open track in the midst of the wood, from the cascade nearly down to the village. "evening, thursday, june th. i set out for the cascade des pélerins as usual; when we reached joseph's house, we heard a sound from the torrent like low thunder, or like that of a more distant and heavier fall. a peasant said something to joseph, who stopped to listen, then nodded, and said to me, 'la cascade vient de se déborder.' thinking there would be time enough afterwards to ask for explanations, i pushed up the hill almost without asking a question. when we reached the place of the old avalanche, joseph called to me to stop and see the torrent increase. there was at this time a dark cloud on the aiguille du midi, down to its base; the upper part of the torrent was brown, the lower white, not larger than usual. the brown part came down, i thought, with exceeding slowness, reaching the cascade gradually; as it did so, the fall rose to about once and a half its usual height, and in the five minutes' time that i paused (it could not be more) turned to the color of slate. i then pushed on as hard as i could. when i reached the last ascent i was obliged to stop for breath, but got up before the fall could sensibly have diminished in body of water. it was then nearly twice as far cast out from the rock as last night, and the water nearly black in color; and it had the appearance, as it broke and separated at the outer part of the fall, of a shower of fragments of flat slate. the reason of this appearance i could not comprehend, unless the water was so mixed with mud that it drew out flat and unctuously when it broke; but so it was: instead of spray it looked like a shower of dirty flat bits of slate--only with a lustre, as if they had been wet first. this, however, was the least of it, for the torrent carried with it nearly as much weight of stone as water; the stones varying in size, the average being, i suppose, about that of a hen's egg; but i do not suppose that at any instant the arch of water was without four or five as large as a man's fist, and often came larger ones,--all vomited forth with the explosive power of a small volcano, and falling in a continual shower as thick, constant, and, had it not been mixed with the crash of the fall, as loud as a heavy fire of infantry; they bounded and leaped in the basin of the fall like hailstones in a thunder-shower. as we watched the fall it seemed convulsively to diminish, and suddenly showed, as it shortened, the rock underneath it, which i could hardly see yesterday: as i cried out to joseph it rose again, higher than ever, and continued to rise, till it all but reached the snow on the rock opposite. it then became very fantastic and variable, increasing and diminishing in the space of two or three seconds, and partially changing its direction. after watching it for half an hour or so, i determined to try and make some memoranda. coutet brought me up a jug of water: i stooped to dip my brush, when coutet caught my arm, saying, 'tenez;' at the same instant i heard a blow, like the going off of a heavy gun, two or three miles away; i looked up, and as i did, the cascade sank before my eyes, and fell back to the rock. neither of us spoke for an instant or two; then coutet said, 'c'est une pierre, qui est logée dans le creux,' or words to that effect: in fact, he had seen the stone come down as he called to me. i thought also that nothing more had happened, and watched the destroyed fall only with interest, until, as suddenly as it had fallen, it rose again, though not to its former height; and coutet, stooping down, exclaimed, 'ce n'est pas ça, le roc est percé;' in effect, a hole was now distinctly visible in the cup which turned the stream, through which the water whizzed as from a burst pipe. the cascade, however, continued to increase, until this new channel was concealed, and i was maintaining to coutet that he must have been mistaken (and that the water only _struck_ on the outer rock, having changed its mode of fall above), when again it fell; and the two girls, who had come up from the châlet, expressed their opinion at once, that the 'cascade est finie.' this time all was plain; the water gushed in a violent jet d'eau through the new aperture, hardly any of it escaping above. it rose again gradually, as the hole was choked with stones, and again fell; but presently sprang out almost to its first elevation (the water being by this time in much less body), and retained very nearly the form it had yesterday, until i got tired of looking at it, and went down to the little châlet, and sat down before its door. i had not been there five minutes before the cascade fell, and rose no more." [ ] it might be thought at first that the line to which such curves would approximate would be the cycloid, as the line of quickest descent. but in reality the contour is modified by perpetual sliding of the débris under the influence of rain; and by the bounding of detached fragments with continually increased momentum. i was quite unable to get at anything like the expression of a constant law among the examples i studied in the alps, except only the great laws of delicacy and changefulness in all curves whatsoever. [ ] i owe mr. le keux sincere thanks, and not a little admiration, for the care and skill with which he has followed, on a much reduced scale, the detail of this drawing. [ ] allow ten feet square for average space to each pine; suppose the valley seen only for five miles of its length, and the pine district two miles broad on each side--a low estimate of breadth also: this would give five millions. [ ] the white spots on the brow of the little cliff are lichens, only four or five inches broad. [ ] what a _comfortable_, as well as intelligent, operation, sketching from nature must have been in those days! [ ] it is not one of the highest points of the carrara chain. the chief summits are much more jagged, and very noble. see chap. xx. § . chapter xviii. resulting forms:--fifthly, stones. § . it is somewhat singular that the indistinctness of treatment which has been so often noticed as characteristic of our present art shows itself always most when there is least apparent reason for it. modern artists, having some true sympathy with what is vague in nature, draw all that is uncertain and evasive without evasion, and render faithfully whatever can be discerned in faithless mist or mocking vapors; but having no sympathy with what is solid and serene, they seem to become uncertain themselves in proportion to the certainty of what they see; and while they render flakes of far-away cloud, or fringes of inextricable forest, with something like patience and fidelity, give nothing but the hastiest indication of the ground they can tread upon or touch. it is only in modern art that we find any complete representation of clouds, and only in ancient art that, generally speaking, we find any careful realization of stones. § . this is all the more strange, because, as we saw some time back, the _ruggedness_ of the stone is more pleasing to the modern than the mediæval, and he rarely completes any picture satisfactorily to himself unless large spaces of it are filled with irregular masonry, rocky banks, or shingly shores: whereas the mediæval could conceive no desirableness in the loose and unhewn masses; associated them generally in his mind with wicked men, and the martyrdom of st. stephen; and always threw them out of his road, or garden, to the best of his power. yet with all this difference in predilection, such was the honesty of the mediæval, and so firm his acknowledgment of the necessity to paint completely whatever was to be painted at all, that there is hardly a strip of earth under the feet of a saint, in any finished work of the early painters, but more, and better painted, stones are to be found upon it than in an entire exhibition full of modern mountain scenery. § . not better painted in every respect. in those interesting and popular treatises on the art of drawing, which tell the public that their colors should neither be too warm nor too cold, and that their touches should always be characteristic of the object they are intended to represent, the directions given for the manufacture of stones usually enforce "crispness of outline" and "roughness of texture." and, accordingly, in certain expressions of frangibility, irregular accumulation, and easy resting of one block upon another, together with some conditions of lichenous or mossy texture, modern stone-painting is far beyond the ancient; for these are just the characters which first strike the eye, and enable the foreground to maintain its picturesque influence, without inviting careful examination. the mediæval painter, on the other hand, not caring for this picturesque general effect, nor being in anywise familiar with mountain scenery, perceived in stones, when he was forced to paint them, eminently the characters which they had in common with figures; that is to say, their curved outlines, rounded surfaces, and varieties of delicate color, and, accordingly, was somewhat too apt to lose their angular and fragmentary character in a series of muscular lines resembling those of an anatomical preparation; for, although in large rocks the cleavable or frangible nature was the thing that necessarily struck him most, the pebbles under his feet were apt to be oval or rounded in the localities of almost all the important schools of italy. in lombardy, the mass of the ground is composed of nothing but alpine gravel, consisting of rolled oval pebbles, on the average about six inches long by four wide--awkward building materials, yet used in ingenious alternation with the bricks in all the lowland italian fortresses. besides this universal rotundity, the qualities of stones which rendered them valuable to the lapidary were forced on the painter's attention by the familiar arts of inlaying and mosaic. hence, in looking at a pebble, his mind was divided between its roundness and its veins; and leonardo covers the shelves of rock under the feet of st. anne with variegated agates; while mantegna often strews the small stones about his mountain caves in a polished profusion, as if some repentant martyr princess had been just scattering her caskets of pearls into the dust. § . some years ago, as i was talking of the curvilinear forms in a piece of rock to one of our academicians, he said to me, in a somewhat despondent accent, "if you look for curves, you will see curves; if you look for angles, you will see angles." the saying appeared to me an infinitely sad one. it was the utterance of an experienced man; and in many ways true, for one of the most singular gifts, or, if abused, most singular weaknesses, of the human mind is its power of persuading itself to see whatever it chooses;--a great gift, if directed to the discernment of the things needful and pertinent to its own work and being; a great weakness, if directed to the discovery of things profitless or discouraging. in all things throughout the world, the men who look for the crooked will see the crooked, and the men who look for the straight will see the straight. but yet the saying was a notably sad one; for it came of the conviction in the speaker's mind that there was in reality _no_ crooked and _no_ straight; that all so called discernment was fancy, and that men might, with equal rectitude of judgment, and good-deserving of their fellow-men, perceive and paint whatever was convenient to them. § . whereas things may always be seen truly by candid people, though never _completely_. no human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing; but we may see more and more of it the longer we look. every individual temper will see something different in it: but supposing the tempers honest, all the differences are there. every advance in our acuteness of perception will show us something new; but the old and first discerned thing will still be there, not falsified, only modified and enriched by the new perceptions, becoming continually more beautiful in its harmony with them and more approved as a part of the infinite truth. § . there are no natural objects out of which more can be thus learned than out of stones. they seem to have been created especially to reward a patient observer. nearly all other objects in nature can be seen, to some extent, without patience, and are pleasant even in being half seen. trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless; but the stone under his foot has for carelessness nothing in it but stumbling; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor good of any kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard heart and the unfatherly gift. and yet, do but give it some reverence and watchfulness, and there is bread of thought in it, more than in any other lowly feature of all the landscape. § . for a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. the fineness of nature's work is so great, that, into a single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and, taking moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a stone, in by far the plurality of instances, is more interesting than the surface of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form and incomparably richer in color,--the last quality being, in fact, so noble in most stones of good birth (that is to say, fallen from the crystalline mountain-ranges), that i shall be less able to illustrate this part of my subject satisfactorily by means of engraving than perhaps any other, except the color of skies. i say, _shall_ be less able, because the beauty of stone surface is in so great a degree dependent on the mosses and lichens which root themselves upon it, that i must place my richest examples in the section on vegetation. for instance, in the plate opposite, though the mass of rock is large and somewhat distant, the effect of it is as much owing to the white spots of silvery lichen in the centre and left, and to the flowing lines in which the darker mosses, growing in the cranny, have arranged themselves beyond, as to the character of the rock itself; nor could the beauty of the whole mass be explained, if we were to approach the least nearer, without more detailed drawing of this vegetation. for the present i shall only give a few examples of the drawing of stones roughly broken, or worn so as not to be materially affected by vegetation. [illustration: . bank of slaty crystallines.] § . we have already seen an example of titian's treatment of mountain crests as compared with turner's; here is a parallel instance, from titian, of stones in the bed of a torrent (fig. ), in many ways good and right, and expressing in its writhed and variously broken lines far more of real stone structure than the common water-color dash of the moderns. observe, especially, how titian has understood that the fracture of the stone more or less depends on the undulating grain of its crystalline structure, following the cavity of the largest stone in the middle of the figure, with concentric lines; and compare in plate + + the top of turner's largest stones on the left. [illustration: fig. .] § . if the reader sees nothing in this drawing (fig. ) that he can like,--although, indeed, i would have him prefer the work of turner,--let him be assured that he does not yet understand on what titian's reputation is founded. no painter's name is oftener in the mouth of the ordinary connoisseur, and no painter was ever less understood. his power of color is indeed perfect, but so is bonifazio's. titian's _supremacy_ above all the other venetians, except tintoret and veronese, consists in the firm truth of his portraiture, and more or less masterly understanding of the nature of stones, trees, men, or whatever else he took in hand to paint; so that, without some correlative understanding in the spectator, titian's work, in its highest qualities, must be utterly dead and unappealing to him. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . i give one more example from the lower part of the same print (fig. ), in which a stone, with an eddy round it, is nearly as well drawn as it can be in the simple method of the early wood-engraving. perhaps the reader will feel its truth better by contrast with a fragment or two of modern idealism. here, for instance (fig. ), is a group of stones, highly entertaining in their variety of form, out of the subject of "christian vanquishing apollyon," in the outlines to the pilgrim's progress, published by the art-union, the idealism being here wrought to a pitch of extraordinary brilliancy by the exciting nature of the subject. next (fig. ) is another poetical conception, one of flaxman's, representing the eddies and stones of the pool of envy (flaxman's dante), which may be conveniently compared with the titianesque stones and streams. and, finally, fig. represents, also on flaxman's authority, those stones of an "alpine" character, of which dante says that he "climbed with heart of proof the adverse steep." it seems at first curious that every one of the forms that flaxman has chanced upon should be an impossible one--a form which a stone never could assume: but this is the nemesis of false idealism, and the inevitable one. § . the chief incapacity in the modern work is not, however, so much in its outline, though that is wrong enough, as in the total absence of any effort to mark the surface roundings. it is not the _outline_ of a stone, however true, that will make it solid or heavy; it is the interior markings, and thoroughly understood perspectives of its sides. in the opposite plate the upper two subjects are by turner, foregrounds out of the liber studiorum (source of arveron, and ben arthur); the lower by claude, liber veritatis, no. . i think the reader cannot but feel that the blocks in the upper two subjects are massy and ponderous; in the lower, wholly without weight. if he examine their several treatment, he will find that turner has perfect imaginative conception of every recess and projection over the whole surface, and _feels_ the stone as he works over it; every touch, moreover, being full of tender gradation. but claude, as he is obliged to hold to his outline in hills, so also clings to it in the stones,--cannot round them in the least, leaves their light surfaces wholly blank, and puts a few patches of dark here and there about their edges, as chance will have it. [illustration: . truth and untruth of stones.] § . turner's way of wedging the stones of the glacier moraine together in strength of disorder, in the upper subject, and his indication of the springing of the wild stems and leafage out of the rents in the boulders of the lower one, will hardly be appreciated unless the reader is _fondly_ acquainted with the kind of scenery in question; and i cannot calculate on this being often the case, for few persons ever look at any near detail closely, and perhaps least of all at the heaps of débris which so often seem to encumber and disfigure mountain ground. but for the various reasons just stated (§ ), turner found more material for his power, and more excitement to his invention, among the fallen stones than in the highest summits of mountains; and his early designs, among their thousand excellences and singularities, as opposed to all that had preceded them, count for not one of the least the elaborate care given to the drawing of torrent beds, shaly slopes, and other conditions of stony ground which all canons of art at the period pronounced inconsistent with dignity of composition; a convenient principle, since, of all foregrounds, one of loose stones is beyond comparison the most difficult to draw with any approach to realization. the turnerian subjects, "junction of the greta and tees" (yorkshire series, and illustrations to scott); "wycliffe, near rokeby" (yorkshire); "hardraw fall" (yorkshire); "ben arthur" (liber studiorum); "ulleswater" and the magnificent drawing of the "upper fall of the tees" (england series), are sufficiently illustrative of what i mean. § . it is not, however, only, in their separate condition, as materials of foreground, that we have to examine the effect of stones; they form a curiously important element of distant landscape in their aggregation on a large scale. it will be remembered that in the course of the last chapter we wholly left out of our account of mountain lines that group which was called "lines of rest." one reason for doing so was that, as these lines are produced by débris in a state of temporary repose, their beauty, or deformity, or whatever character they may possess, is properly to be considered as belonging to stones rather than to rocks. § . whenever heaps of loose stones or sand are increased by the continual fall of fresh fragments from above, or diminished by their removal from below, yet not in such mass or with such momentum as entirely to disturb those already accumulated, the materials on the surface arrange themselves in an equable slope, producing a straight line of profile in the bank or cone. the heap formed by the sand falling in an hour-glass presents, in its straight sides, the simplest result of such a condition; and any heap of sand thrown up by the spade will show the slopes here and there, interrupted only by knotty portions, held together by moisture, or agglutinated by pressure,--interruptions which cannot occur to the same extent on a large scale, unless the soil is really hardened nearly to the nature of rock. as long as it remains incoherent, every removal of substance at the bottom of the heap, or addition of it at the top, occasions a sliding disturbance of the whole slope, which smooths it into rectitude of line; and there is hardly any great mountain mass among the alps which does not show towards its foundation perfectly regular descents of this nature, often two or three miles long without a break. several of considerable extent are seen on the left of plate + +. § . i call these lines of rest, because, though the bulk of the mass may be continually increasing or diminishing, the line of the profile does not change, being fixed at a certain angle by the nature of the earth. it is usually stated carelessly as an angle of about degrees, but it never really reaches such a slope. i measured carefully the angles of a very large number of slopes of mountain in various parts of the mont blanc district. the few examples given in the note below are enough to exhibit the general fact that loose débris lies at various angles up to about ° or °; débris protected by grass or pines may reach °, and rocky slopes ° or °, but in continuous lines of rest i never found a steeper angle.[ ] § . i speak of some rocky slopes as lines of rest, because, whenever a mountain side is composed of soft stone which splits and decomposes fast, it has a tendency to choke itself up with the ruins, and gradually to get abraded or ground down towards the débris slope; so that vast masses of the sides of alpine valleys are formed by ascents of nearly uniform inclination, partly loose, partly of jagged rocks, which break, but do not materially alter the general line of ground. in such cases the fragments usually have accumulated without disturbance at the foot of the slope, and the pine forests fasten the soil and prevent it from being carried down in large masses. but numerous instances occur in which the mountain is consumed away gradually by its own torrents, not having strength enough to form clefts or precipices, but falling on each side of the ravines into even banks, which slide down from above as they are wasted below. § . by all these various expedients, nature secures, in the midst of her mountain curvatures, vast series of perfectly straight lines opposing and relieving them; lines, however, which artists have almost universally agreed to alter or ignore, partly disliking them intrinsically, on account of their formality, and partly because the mind instantly associates them with the idea of mountain decay. turner, however, saw that this very decay having its use and nobleness, the contours which were significative of it ought no more to be omitted than, in the portrait of an aged man, the furrows on his hand or brow; besides, he liked the lines themselves, for their contrast with the mountain wildness, just as he liked the straightness of sunbeams penetrating the soft waywardness of clouds. he introduced them constantly into his noblest compositions; but in order to the full understanding of their employment in the instance i am about to give, one or two more points yet need to be noticed. § . generally speaking, the curved lines of convex, _fall_ belong to mountains of hard rock, over whose surfaces the fragments _bound_ to the valley, and which are worn by wrath of avalanches and wildness of torrents, like that of the cascade des pélerins, described in the note above. generally speaking, the straight lines of _rest_ belong to softer mountains, or softer surfaces and places of mountains, which, exposed to no violent wearing from external force, nevertheless keep slipping and mouldering down spontaneously or receiving gradual accession of material from incoherent masses above them. § . it follows, rather, that where the gigantic wearing forces are in operation, the stones or fragments of rock brought down by the torrents and avalanches are likely, however hard, to be rounded on all their edges; but where the straight shaly slopes are found, the stones which glide or totter down their surfaces frequently retain all their angles, and form jagged and flaky heaps at the bottom. and farther, it is to be supposed that the rocks which are habitually subjected to these colossal forces of destruction are in their own mass firm and secure, otherwise they would long ago have given way; but that where the gliding and crumbling surfaces are found without much external violence, it is very possible that the whole framework of the mountain may be full of flaws; and a danger exist of vast portions of its mass giving way, or slipping down in heaps, as the sand suddenly yields in an hour-glass after some moments of accumulation. § . hence, generally, in the mind of any one familiar with mountains, the conditions will be associated, on the one hand, of the curved, convex, and overhanging bank or cliff, the roaring torrent, and the rounded boulder of massive stone; and, on the other, of the straight and even slope of bank, the comparatively quiet and peaceful lapse of streams, and the sharp-edged and unworn look of the fallen stones, together with a sense of danger greater, though more occult, than in the wilder scenery. [illustration: j. m. w. turner j. cousen. . goldau.] the drawing of the st. gothard, which we have so laboriously analyzed, was designed, as before mentioned, from a sketch taken in the year . but with it was made another drawing. turner brought home in that year a series of sketches taken in the neighborhood of the pass; among others, one of the valley of goldau, covered as it is by the ruins of the rossberg. knowing his fondness for fallen stones, i chose this goldau subject as a companion to the st. gothard. the plate opposite will give some idea of the resultant drawing. § . _some_ idea only. it is a subject which, like the st. gothard, is far too full of detail to admit of reduction; and i hope, therefore, soon to engrave it properly of its real size. it is, besides, more than usually difficult to translate this drawing into black and white, because much of the light on the clouds is distinguished merely by orange or purple color from the green greys, which, though not darker than the warm hues, have the effect of shade from their coldness, but cannot be marked as shade in the engraving without too great increase of depth. enough, however, has been done to give some idea of the elements of turner's design. § . detailed accounts of the rossberg fall may be found in any ordinary swiss guide; the only points we have to notice respecting it are, that the mountain was composed of an indurated gravel, disposed in oblique beds sloping _towards_ the valley. a portion of one of these beds gave way, and half filled the valley beneath, burying five villages, together with the principal one of goldau, and partially choking up a little lake, the streamlets which supplied it now forming irregular pools among the fallen fragments. i call the rock, and accurately, indurated gravel; but the induration is so complete that the mass breaks _through_ the rolled pebbles chiefly composing it, and may be considered as a true rock, only always in its blocks rugged and formless when compared with the crystalline formations. turner has chosen his position on some of the higher heaps of ruin, looking down towards the lake of zug, which is seen under the sunset, the spire of the tower of aart on its shore just relieved against the light of the waves. the rossberg itself, never steep, and still more reduced in terror by the fall of a portion of it, was not available to him as a form _explanatory_ of the catastrophe; and even the slopes of the righi on the left are not, in reality, as uninterrupted in their slope as he has drawn them; but he felt the connection of this structure with the ruin amidst which he stood, and brought the long lines of danger clear against the sunset, and as straight as its own retiring rays. § . if the reader will now glance back to the st. gothard subject, as illustrated in the two plates + + and + +, and compare it with this of goldau, keeping in mind the general conclusions about the two great classes of mountain scenery which i have just stated, he will, i hope, at last cease to charge me with enthusiasm in anything that i have said of turner's imagination, as always instinctively possessive of those truths which lie deepest, and are most essentially linked together, in the expression of a scene. i have only taken two drawings (though these of his best period) for the illustration of all the structures of the alps which, in the course of half a volume, it has been possible for me to explain; and all my half-volume is abstracted in these two drawings, and that in the most consistent and complete way, as if they had been made on purpose to contain a perfect summary of alpine truth. § . there are one or two points connected with them of yet more touching interest. they are the last drawings which turner ever made with unabated power. the one of the st. gothard, speaking with strict accuracy, is _the_ last drawing; for that of goldau, though majestic to the utmost in conception, is less carefully finished, and shows, in the execution of parts of the sky, signs of impatience, caused by the first feeling of decline of strength. therefore i called the st. gothard (vol. iii. ch. xv. § ) the last mountain drawing he ever executed with perfect power. but the goldau is still a noble companion to it--more solemn in thought, more sublime in color, and, in certain points of poetical treatment, especially characteristic of the master's mind in earlier days. he was very definitely in the habit of indicating the association of any subject with circumstances of death, especially the death of multitudes, by placing it under one of his most deeply _crimsoned_ sunset skies. the color of blood is this plainly taken for the leading tone in the storm-clouds above the "slave-ship." it occurs with similar distinctness in the much earlier picture of ulysses and polypheme, in that of napoleon at st. helena, and, subdued by softer hues, in the old témeraire. the sky of this goldau is, in its scarlet and crimson, the deepest in tone of all that i know in turner's drawings. another feeling traceable in several of its former works, is an acute sense of the contrast between the careless interests and idle pleasures of daily life, and the state of those whose time for labor, or knowledge, or delight is passed for ever. there is evidence of this feeling in the introduction of the boys at play in the churchyard of kirkby lonsdale, and the boy climbing for his kite among the thickets above the little mountain churchyard of brignal-banks; it is in the same tone of thought that he has placed here the two figures fishing, leaning against these shattered flanks of rock,--the sepulchral stones of the great mountain field of death. § . another character of these two drawings, which gives them especial interest as connected with our inquiries into mediæval landscape, is, that they are precisely and accurately illustrative of the two principal ideas of dante about the alps. i have already explained the rise of the first drawing out of turner's early study of the "male bolge" of the splugen and st. gothard. the goldau, on the other hand, might have been drawn in purposeful illustration of the lines before referred to (vol. iii. ch. xv. § ) as descriptive of a "loco _alpestro_." i give now dante's own words: "qual' è quella ruina, che nel fianco di quà da trento l'adice percosse, o per tremuoto, o per sostegni manco, che da cima del monte, onde si mosse, al piano è sì la roccia discoscesa che alcuna via darebbe a chi su fosse; cotal di quel burrato era la scesa." "as is that landslip, ere you come to trent, that smote the flank of adige, through some stay sinking beneath it, or by earthquake rent; for from the summit, where of old it lay, plainwards the broken rock unto the feet of one above it might afford some way; such path adown this precipice we meet." cayley. § . finally, there are two lessons to be gathered from the opposite conditions of mountain decay, represented in these designs, of perhaps a wider range of meaning than any which were suggested even by the states of mountain strength. in the first, we find the unyielding rock, undergoing no sudden danger, and capable of no total fall, yet, in its hardness of heart, worn away by perpetual trampling of torrent waves, and stress of wandering storm. its fragments, fruitless and restless, are tossed into ever-changing heaps: no labor of man can subdue them to his service, nor can his utmost patience secure any dwelling-place among them. in this they are the type of all that humanity which, suffering under no sudden punishment or sorrow, remains "stony ground," afflicted, indeed, continually by minor and vexing cares, but only broken by them into fruitless ruin of fatigued life. of this ground not "corn-giving,"--this "rough valley, neither eared nor sown,"[ ] of the common world, it is said, to those who have set up their idols in the wreck of it-- "among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion. they, they are thy lot."[ ] but, as we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by earthquake and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succeeded those of destruction. the pools of calm water lie clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among their shadows; the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and its church-tower, white through the storm-twilight, proclaims a renewed appeal to his protection in whose hand "are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is his also." there is no loveliness of alpine valley that does not teach the same lesson. it is just where "the mountain falling cometh to naught, and the rock is removed out of his place," that, in process of years, the fairest meadows bloom between the fragments, the clearest rivulets murmur from their crevices among the flowers, and the clustered cottages, each sheltered beneath some strength of mossy stone, now to be removed no more, and with their pastured flocks around them, safe from the eagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have written upon their fronts, in simple words, the mountaineer's faith in the ancient promise-- "neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh; "for thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field; and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." footnotes [ ] small fragments of limestone, five or six inches across, and flattish, sharp, angular on edges, and quite loose; slope ° near fountain of maglans ½ somewhat larger stones, nearer maglans; quite loose ¾ similar débris, slightly touched with vegetation débris on southern side of maglans ½ slope of montagne de la côte, at the bottom, as seen from the village of chamouni ¾ average slope of montagne de taconay, seen from chamouni maximum slope of side of breven slope of débris from ravine of breven down to the village of chamouni slopes of débris set with pines under aiguille verte, seen from argentière general slope of tapia, from argentière slopes of la côte and taconay, from argentière ¾ profile of breven, from near the chapeau (a point commanding the valley of chamouni in its truest longitude) ½ average slope of montanvert, from same point ½ slope of la côte, same point ½ eastern slope of pain de sucre, seen from vevay western " " " ½ slope of foot of dent de morcles, seen from vevay ½ " " midi, " " [ ] deut. xxi. . so amos, vi. : "shall horses run upon the rock; will one plow here with oxen?" [ ] is. lvii. , . chapter xix. the mountain gloom. § . we have now cursorily glanced over those conditions of mountain structure which appear constant in duration, and universal in extent; and we have found them, invariably, calculated for the delight, the advantage, or the teaching of men; prepared, it seems, so as to contain, alike in fortitude or feebleness, in timeliness or in terror, some beneficence of gift, or profoundness of counsel. we have found that where at first all seemed disturbed and accidental, the most tender laws were appointed to produce forms of perpetual beauty; and that where to the careless or cold observer it seemed severe or purposeless, the well-being of man has been chiefly consulted, and his rightly directed powers, and sincerely awakened intelligence, may find wealth in every falling rock, and wisdom in every talking wave. it remains for us to consider what actual effect upon the human race has been produced by the generosity, or the instruction of the hills; how far, in past ages, they have been thanked, or listened to; how far, in coming ages, it may be well for us to accept them for tutors, or acknowledge them for friends. § . what they have already taught us may, one would think, be best discerned in the midst of them,--in some place where they have had their own way with the human soul; where no veil has been drawn between it and them, no contradicting voice has confused their ministries of sound, or broken their pathos of silence: where war has never streaked their streams with bloody foam, nor ambition sought for other throne than their cloud-courtiered pinnacles, nor avarice for other treasure than, year by year, is given to their unlaborious rocks, in budded jewels, and mossy gold. § . i do not know any district possessing more pure or uninterrupted fulness of mountain character (and that of the highest order), or which appears to have been less disturbed by foreign agencies, than that which borders the course of the trient between valorsine and martigny. the paths which lead to it out of the valley of the rhone, rising at first in steep circles among the walnut trees, like winding stairs among the pillars of a gothic tower, retire over the shoulders of the hills into a valley almost unknown, but thickly inhabited by an industrious and patient population. along the ridges of the rocks, smoothed by old glaciers into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant watches the slow coloring of the tufts of moss and roots of herb which, little by little, gather a feeble soil over the iron substance; then, supporting the narrow strip of clinging ground with a few stones, he subdues it to the spade; and in a year or two a little crest of corn is seen waving upon the rocky casque. the irregular meadows run in and out like inlets of lake among these harvested rocks, sweet with perpetual streamlets, that seem always to have chosen the steepest places to come down, for the sake of the leaps, scattering their handfuls of crystal this way and that, as the wind takes them, with all the grace, but with none of the formalism, of fountains; dividing into fanciful change of dash and spring, yet with the seal of their granite channels upon them, as the lightest play of human speech may bear the seal of past toil, and closing back out of their spray to lave the rigid angles, and brighten with silver fringes and glassy films each lower and lower step of sable stone; until at last, gathered altogether again,--except, perhaps, some chance drops caught on the apple-blossom, where it has budded a little nearer the cascade than it did last spring,--they find their way down to the turf, and lose themselves in that silently; with quiet depth of clear water furrowing among the grass blades, and looking only like their shadow, but presently emerging again in little startled gushes and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered suddenly that the day was too short for them to get down the hill. green field, and glowing rock, and glancing streamlet, all slope together in the sunshine towards the brows of the ravines, where the pines take up their own dominion of saddened shade; and with everlasting roar in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder down pale from the glaciers, filling all their chasms with enchanted cold, beating themselves to pieces against the great rocks that they have themselves cast down, and forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly poise. the mountain paths stoop to these glens in forky zigzags, leading to some grey and narrow arch, all fringed under its shuddering curve with the ferns that fear the light; a cross of rough-hewn pine, iron-bound to its parapet, standing dark against the lurid fury of the foam. far up the glen, as we pause beside the cross, the sky is seen through the openings in the pines, thin with excess of light; and, in its clear, consuming flame of white space, the summits of the rocky mountains are gathered into solemn crowns and circlets, all flushed in that strange, faint silence of possession by the sunshine which has in it so deep a melancholy; full of power, yet as frail as shadows; lifeless, like the walls of a sepulchre, yet beautiful in tender fall of crimson folds, like the veil of some sea spirit, that lives and dies as the foam flashes; fixed on a perpetual throne, stern against all strength, lifted above all sorrow, and yet effaced and melted utterly into the air by that last sunbeam that has crossed to them from between the two golden clouds. § . high above all sorrow: yes; but not unwitnessing to it. the traveller on his happy journey, as his foot springs from the deep turf and strikes the pebbles gayly over the edge of the mountain road, sees with a glance of delight the clusters of nut-brown cottages that nestle among those sloping orchards, and glow beneath the boughs of the pines. here, it may well seem to him, if there be sometimes hardship, there must be at least innocence and peace, and fellowship of the human soul with nature. it is not so. the wild goats that leap along those rocks have as much passion of joy in all that fair work of god as the men that toil among them. perhaps more. enter the street of one of those villages, and you will find it foul with that gloomy foulness that is suffered only by torpor, or by anguish of soul. here, it is torpor--not absolute suffering,--not starvation or disease, but darkness of calm enduring; the spring known only as the time of the scythe, and the autumn as the time of the sickle, and the sun only as a warmth, the wind as a chill, and the mountains as a danger. they do not understand so much as the name of beauty, or of knowledge. they understand dimly that of virtue. love, patience, hospitality, faith,--these things they know. to glean their meadows side by side, so happier; to bear the burden up the breathless mountain flank, unmurmuringly; to bid the stranger drink from their vessel of milk; to see at the foot of their low deathbeds a pale figure upon a cross, dying also, patiently;--in this they are different from the cattle and from the stones, but in all this unrewarded as far as concerns the present life. for them, there is neither hope nor passion of spirit; for them neither advance nor exultation. black bread, rude roof, dark night, laborious day, weary arm at sunset; and life ebbs away. no books, no thoughts, no attainments, no rest; except only sometimes a little sitting in the sun under the church wall, as the bell tolls thin and far in the mountain air; a pattering of a few prayers, not understood, by the altar rails of the dimly gilded chapel, and so back to the sombre home, with the cloud upon them still unbroken--that cloud of rocky gloom, born out of the wild torrents and ruinous stones, and unlightened, even in their religion, except by the vague promise of some better thing unknown, mingled with threatening, and obscured by an unspeakable horror,--a smoke, as it were, of martyrdom, coiling up with the incense, and, amidst the images of tortured bodies and lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for them, dashed more deeply than for others, with gouts of blood. § . do not let this be thought a darkened picture of the life of these mountaineers. it is literal fact. no contrast can be more painful than that between the dwelling of any well-conducted english cottager, and that of the equally honest savoyard. the one, set in the midst of its dull flat fields and uninteresting hedgerows, shows in itself the love of brightness and beauty; its daisy-studded garden beds, its smoothly swept brick path to the threshold, its freshly sanded floor and orderly shelves of household furniture, all testify to energy of heart, and happiness in the simple course and simple possessions of daily life. the other cottage, in the midst of an inconceivable, inexpressible beauty, set on some sloping bank of golden sward, with clear fountains flowing beside it, and wild flowers, and noble trees, and goodly rocks gathered round into a perfection as of paradise, is itself a dark and plague-like stain in the midst of the gentle landscape. within a certain distance of its threshold the ground is foul and cattle-trampled; its timbers are black with smoke, its garden choked with weeds and nameless refuse, its chambers empty and joyless, the light and wind gleaming and filtering through the crannies of their stones. all testifies that to its inhabitant the world is labor and vanity; that for him neither flowers bloom, nor birds sing, nor fountains glisten; and that his soul hardly differs from the grey cloud that coils and dies upon his hills; except in having no fold of it touched by the sunbeams. § . is it not strange to reflect, that hardly an evening passes in london or paris but one of those cottages is painted for the better amusement of the fair and idle, and shaded with pasteboard pines by the scene-shifter; and that good and kind people,--poetically minded,--delight themselves in imagining the happy life led by peasants who dwell by alpine fountains, and kneel to crosses upon peaks of rock? that nightly we lay down our gold to fashion forth simulacra of peasants, in gay ribands and white bodices, singing sweet songs, and bowing gracefully to the picturesque crosses; and all the while the veritable peasants are kneeling, songlessly, to veritable crosses, in another temper than the kind and fair audiences dream of, and assuredly with another kind of answer than is got out of the opera catastrophe; an answer having reference, it may be, in dim futurity, to those very audiences themselves? if all the gold that has gone to paint the simulacra of the cottages, and to put new songs in the mouths of the simulacra of the peasants, had gone to brighten the existent cottages, and to put new songs into the mouths of the existent peasants, it might in the end, perhaps, have turned out better so, not only for the peasants, but for even the audience. for that form of the false ideal has also its correspondent true ideal,--consisting not in the naked beauty of statues, nor in the gauze flowers and crackling tinsel of theatres, but in the clothed and fed beauty of living men, and in the lights and laughs of happy homes. night after night, the desire of such an ideal springs up in every idle human heart; and night after night, as far as idleness can, we work out this desire in costly lies. we paint the faded actress, build the lath landscape, feed our benevolence with fallacies of felicity, and satisfy our righteousness with poetry of justice. the time will come when, as the heavy-folded curtain falls upon our own stage of life, we shall begin to comprehend that the justice we loved was intended to have been done in fact, and not in poetry, and the felicity we sympathized in, to have been bestowed and not feigned. we talk much of money's worth, yet perhaps may one day be surprised to find that what the wise and charitable european public gave to one night's rehearsal of hypocrisy,--to one hour's pleasant warbling of linda or lucia,--would have filled a whole alpine valley with happiness, and poured the waves of harvest over the famine of many a lammermoor.[ ] § . "nay," perhaps the reader answers, "it is vain to hope that this could ever be. the perfect beauty of the ideal must always be fictitious. it is rational to amuse ourselves with the fair imagination; but it would be madness to endeavor to put it into practice, in the face of the ordinances of nature. real shepherdesses must always be rude, and real peasants miserable; suffer us to turn away our gentle eyes from their coarseness and their pain, and to seek comfort in cultivated voices and purchased smiles. we cannot hew down the rocks, nor turn the sands of the torrent into gold." § . this is no answer. be assured of the great truth--that what is impossible in reality is ridiculous in fancy. if it is not in the nature of things that peasants should be gentle and happy, then the imagination of such peasantry is ridiculous, and to delight in such imagination wrong; as delight in any kind of falsehood is always. but if in the nature of things it be possible that among the wildness of hills the human heart should be refined, and if the comfort of dress, and the gentleness of language, and the joy of progress in knowledge, and of variety in thought, are possible to the mountaineer in his true existence, let us strive to write this true poetry upon the rocks before we indulge it in our visions, and try whether, among all the fine arts, one of the finest be not that of painting cheeks with health rather than rouge. § . "but is such refinement possible? do not the conditions of the mountain peasant's life, in the plurality of instances, necessarily forbid it?" as bearing sternly on this question, it is necessary to examine one peculiarity of feeling which manifests itself among the european nations, so far as i have noticed, irregularly,--appearing sometimes to be the characteristic of a particular time, sometimes of a particular race, sometimes of a particular locality, and to involve at once much that is to be blamed and much that is praiseworthy. i mean the capability of enduring, or even delighting in, the contemplation of objects of terror--a sentiment which especially influences the temper of some groups of mountaineers, and of which it is necessary to examine the causes, before we can form any conjecture whatever as to the real effect of mountains on human character. § . for instance, the unhappy alterations which have lately taken place in the town of lucerne have still spared two of its ancient bridges; both of which, being long covered walks, appear, in past times, to have been to the population of the town what the mall was to london, or the gardens of the tuileries are to paris. for the continual contemplation of those who sauntered from pier to pier, pictures were painted on the woodwork of the roof. these pictures, in the one bridge, represent all the important swiss battles and victories; in the other they are the well-known series of which longfellow has made so beautiful a use in the golden legend, the _dance of death_. imagine the countenances with which a committee, appointed for the establishment of a new "promenade" in some flourishing modern town, would receive a proposal to adorn such promenade with pictures of the dance of death. § . now just so far as the old bridge at lucerne, with the pure, deep, and blue water of the reuss eddying down between its piers, and with the sweet darkness of green hills, and far-away gleaming of lake and alps alternating upon the eye on either side; and the gloomy lesson frowning in the shadow, as if the deep tone of a passing-bell, overhead, were mingling for ever with the plashing of the river as it glides by beneath; just so far, i say, as this differs from the straight and smooth strip of level dust, between two rows of round-topped acacia trees, wherein the inhabitants of an english watering-place or french fortified town take their delight,--so far i believe the life of the old lucernois, with all its happy waves of light, and mountain strength of will, and solemn expectation of eternity, to have differed from the generality of the lives of those who saunter for their habitual hour up and down the modern promenade. but the gloom is not always of this noble kind. as we penetrate farther among the hills we shall find it becoming very painful. we are walking, perhaps, in a summer afternoon, up the valley of zermatt (a german valley), the sun shining brightly on grassy knolls and through fringes of pines, the goats leaping happily, and the cattle bells ringing sweetly, and the snowy mountains shining like heavenly castles far above. we see, a little way off, a small white chapel, sheltered behind one of the flowery hillocks of mountain turf; and we approach its little window, thinking to look through it into some quiet home of prayer; but the window is grated with iron, and open to the winds, and when we look through it, behold--a heap of white human bones mouldering into whiter dust! so also in that same sweet valley, of which i have just been speaking, between chamouni and the valais, at every turn of the pleasant pathway, where the scent of the thyme lies richest upon its rocks, we shall see a little cross and shrine set under one of them; and go up to it, hoping to receive some happy thought of the redeemer, by whom all these lovely things were made, and still consist. but when we come near--behold, beneath the cross, a rude picture of souls tormented in red tongues of hell fire, and pierced by demons. § . as we pass towards italy the appearance of this gloom deepens; and when we descend the southern slope of the alps we shall find this bringing forward of the image of death associated with an endurance of the most painful aspects of disease, so that conditions of human suffering, which in any other country would be confined in hospitals, are permitted to be openly exhibited by the wayside; and with this exposure of the degraded human form is farther connected an insensibility to ugliness and imperfection in other things; so that the ruined wall, neglected garden, and uncleansed chamber, seem to unite in expressing a gloom of spirit possessing the inhabitants of the whole land. it does not appear to arise from poverty, nor careless contentment with little: there is here nothing of irish recklessness or humor; but there seems a settled obscurity in the soul,--a chill and plague, as if risen out of a sepulchre, which partly deadens, partly darkens, the eyes and hearts of men, and breathes a leprosy of decay through every breeze and every stone. "instead of well-set hair, baldness, and burning instead of beauty." nor are definite proofs wanting that the feeling is independent of mere poverty or indolence. in the most gorgeous and costly palace garden the statues will be found green with moss, the terraces defaced or broken; the palace itself partly coated with marble, is left in other places rough with cementless and jagged brick, its iron balconies bent and rusted, its pavements overgrown with grass. the more energetic the effort has been to recover from this state, and to shake off all appearance of poverty, the more assuredly the curse seems to fasten on the scene, and the unslaked mortar, and unfinished wall, and ghastly desolation of incompleteness entangled in decay, strike a deeper despondency into the beholder. § . the feeling would be also more easily accounted for if it appeared consistent in its regardlessness of beauty,--if what was _done_ were altogether as inefficient as what was deserted. but the balcony, though rusty and broken, is delicate in design, and supported on a nobly carved slab of marble; the window, though a mere black rent in ragged plaster, is encircled by a garland of vine and fronted by a thicket of the sharp leaves and aurora-colored flowers of the oleander; the courtyard, overgrown by mournful grass, is terminated by a bright fresco of gardens and fountains; the corpse, borne with the bare face to heaven, is strewn with flowers; beauty is continually mingled with the shadow of death. § . so also is a kind of merriment,--not true cheerfulness, neither careless nor idle jesting, but a determined effort at gaiety, a resolute laughter, mixed with much satire, grossness, and practical buffoonery, and, it always seemed to me, void of all comfort or hope,--with this eminent character in it also, that it is capable of touching with its bitterness even the most fearful subjects, so that as the love of beauty retains its tenderness in the presence of death, this love of jest also retains its boldness, and the skeleton becomes one of the standard masques of the italian comedy. when i was in venice, in , the most popular piece of the _comic_ opera was "death and the cobbler," in which the point of the plot was the success of a village cobbler as a physician, in consequence of the appearance of death to him beside the bed of every patient who was not to recover; and the most applauded scene in it was one in which the physician, insolent in success, and swollen with luxury, was himself taken down into the abode of death, and thrown into an agony of terror by being shown lives of men, under the form of wasting lamps, and his own ready to expire. § . i have also not the smallest doubt that this endurance or affronting of fearful images is partly associated with indecency, partly with general fatuity and weakness of mind. the men who applauded loudest when the actress put on, in an instant, her mask representing a skull, and when her sharp and clear "sono la morte" rang through the theatre, were just those whose disgusting habits rendered it impossible for women to pass through some of the principal streets in venice,--just those who formed the gaping audience, when a mountebank offered a new quack medicine on the riva dei schiavoni. and, as fearful imagery is associated with the weakness of fever, so it seems to me that imbecility and love of terror are connected by a mysterious link throughout the whole life of man. there is a most touching instance of this in the last days of sir walter scott, the publication of whose latter works, deeply to be regretted on many accounts, was yet, perhaps, on the whole, right, as affording a means of studying the conditions of the decay of overwrought human intellect in one of the most noble of minds. among the many signs of this decay at its uttermost, in castle dangerous, not one of the least notable was the introduction of the knight who bears on his black armor the likeness of a skeleton. § . the love of horror which is in this manner connected with feebleness of intellect, is not, however, to be confounded with that shown by the vulgar in general. the feeling which is calculated upon in the preparation of pieces full of terror and crime, at our lower theatres, and which is fed with greater art and elegance in the darker scenery of the popular french novelists, however morally unhealthy, is not _unnatural_; it is not the result of an apathy to such horror, but of a strong desire for excitement in minds coarse and dull, but not necessarily feeble. the scene of the murder of the jeweller in the "count of monte cristo," or those with the squelette in the "mystères de paris," appeal to instincts which are as common to all mankind as those of thirst and hunger, and which are only debasing in the exaggerated condition consequent upon the dulness of other instincts higher than they. and the persons who, at one period of their life, might take chief pleasure in such narrations, at another may be brought into a temper of high tone and acute sensibility. but the love of horror respecting which we are now inquiring appears to be an unnatural and feeble feeling; it is not that the person needs excitement, or has any such strong perceptions as would cause excitement, but he is dead to the horror, and a strange evil influence guides his feebleness of mind rather to fearful images than to beautiful ones,--as our disturbed dreams are sometimes filled with ghastliness which seem not to arise out of any conceivable association of our waking ideas, but to be a vapor out of the very chambers of the tomb, to which the mind, in its palsy, has approached. § . but even this imbecile revelling in terror is more comprehensible, more apparently natural, than the instinct which is found frequently connected with it, of absolute joy in _ugliness_. in some conditions of old german art we find the most singular insisting upon what is in all respects ugly and abortive, or frightful; not with any sense of sublimity in it, neither in mere foolishness, but with a resolute choice, such as i can completely account for on no acknowledged principle of human nature. for in the worst conditions of sensuality there is yet some perception of the beautiful, so that men utterly depraved in principle and habits of thought will yet admire beautiful things and fair faces. but in the temper of which i am now speaking there is no preference even of the lower forms of loveliness; no effort at painting fair limbs or passionate faces, no evidence of any human or natural sensation,--a mere feeding on decay and rolling in slime, not apparently or conceivably with any pleasure in it, but under some fearful possession of an evil spirit. § . the most wonderful instance of this feeling at its uttermost which i remember, is the missal in the british museum, harl. mss. . the drawings of the principal subjects in it appear to have been made first in black, by martin schöngauer (at all events by some copyist of his designs), and then another workman has been employed to paint these drawings over. no words can describe the intensity of the "plague of the heart" in this man; the reader should examine the manuscript carefully if he desires to see how low human nature can sink. i had written a description of one or two of the drawings in order to give some conception of them to persons not able to refer to the book; but the mere description so saddened and polluted my pages that i could not retain it. i will only, therefore, name the principal characteristics which belong to the workman's mind. § . first, perpetual tampering with death, whether there be occasion to allude to it or not,--especially insisting upon its associations with corruption. i do not pain the reader by dwelling on the details illustrative of this feeling. secondly, delight in dismemberment, dislocation, and distortion of attitude. distortion, to some extent, is a universal characteristic of the german fifteenth and sixteenth century art; that is to say, there is a general aptitude for painting legs across, or feet twisted round, or bodies awkwardly bent, rather than anything in a natural position; and martin schöngauer himself exhibits this defect in no small degree. but here the finishing workman has dislocated nearly every joint which he has exposed, besides knitting and twisting the muscles into mere knots of cordage. [illustration: fig. .] what, however, only amounts to dislocation in the limbs of the human figures, becomes actual dismemberment in the animals. fig. is a faithful copy of a tree with two _birds_, one on its bough, and one above it, seen in the background, behind a soldier's mace, in the drawing of the betrayal. in the engraving of this subject, by schöngauer himself, the mace does not occur; it has been put in by the finishing workman, in order to give greater expression of savageness to the boughs of the tree, which, joined with the spikes of the mace, form one mass of disorganized angles and thorns, while the birds look partly as if being torn to pieces, and partly like black spiders. in the painting itself the sky also is covered with little detached and bent white strokes, by way of clouds, and the hair of the figures torn into ragged locks, like wood rent by a cannon shot. [illustration: fig. .] this tendency to dismember and separate everything is one of the eminent conditions of a mind leaning to vice and ugliness; just as to connect and harmonize everything is that of a mind leaning to virtue and beauty. it is shown down to the smallest details; as, for instance, in the spotted backgrounds, which, instead of being chequered with connected patterns, as in the noble manuscripts (see vol. iii. plate ), are covered with disorderly dashes and circles executed with a blunt pen or brush, fig. . and one of the borders is composed of various detached heads cut off at the neck or shoulders without the slightest endeavor to conceal or decorate the truncation. all this, of course, is associated with choice of the most abominable features in the countenance. § . thirdly, pure ignorance. necessarily such a mind as this must be incapable of perceiving the truth of any form; and therefore together with the distortion of all studied form is associated the utter negation or imperfection of that which is less studied. fourthly, delight in blood. i cannot use the words which would be necessary to describe the second[ ] painting of the scourging, in this missal. but i may generally notice that the degree in which the peculiar feeling we are endeavoring to analyze is present in any district of roman catholic countries, may be almost accurately measured by the quantity of blood represented on the crucifixes. the person employed to repaint, in the campo santo of pisa, the portion of orcagna's pictures representing the inferno, has furnished a very notable example of the same feeling; and it must be familiar to all travellers in countries thoroughly subjected to _modern_ romanism, a thing as different from thirteenth-century romanism as a prison from a prince's chamber. lastly, utter absence of inventive power. the only ghastliness which this workman is capable of is that of distortion. in ghastly _combination_ he is impotent; he cannot even understand it or copy it when set before him, continually destroying any that exists in the drawing of schöngauer. § . such appear to be the principal component elements in the mind of the painter of this missal, and it possesses these in complete abstraction from nearly all others, showing, in deadly purity, the nature of the venom which in ordinary cases is tempered by counteracting elements. there are even certain feelings, evil enough themselves, but more _natural_ than these, of which the slightest mingling would here be a sort of redemption. vanity, for instance, would lead to a more finished execution, and more careful copying from nature, and of course subdue the ugliness by fidelity; love of pleasure would introduce occasionally a graceful or sensual form; malice would give some point and meaning to the bordering grotesques, nay, even insanity might have given them some inventive horror. but the pure mortiferousness of this mind, capable neither of patience, fidelity, grace, or wit, in any place, or from any motive,--this horrible apathy of brain, which cannot ascend so high as insanity, but is capable only of putrefaction, save us the task of all analysis, and leave us only that of examining how this black aqua tophana mingles with other conditions of mind. § . for i have led the reader over this dark ground, because it was essential to our determination of the influence of mountains that we should get what data we could as to the extent in other districts, and derivation from other causes, of the horror which at first we might have been led to connect too arbitrarily with hill scenery. and i wish that my knowledge permitted me to trace it over wider ground, for the observations hitherto stated leave the question still one of great difficulty. it might appear to a traveller crossing and recrossing the alps between switzerland and italy, that the main strength of the evil lay on the south of the chain, and was attributable to the peculiar circumstances and character of the italian nation at this period. but as he examined the matter farther he would note that in the districts of italy generally supposed to be _healthy_, the evidence of it was less, and that it seemed to gain ground in places exposed to malaria, centralizing itself in the val d'aosta. he would then, perhaps, think it inconsistent with justice to lay the blame on the mountains, and transfer his accusation to the marshes, yet would be compelled to admit that the evil manifested itself most where these marshes were surrounded by hills. he would next, probably, suppose it produced by the united effect of hardships, solitude, and unhealthy air; and be disposed to find fault with the mountains, at least so far as they required painful climbing and laborious agriculture;--but would again be thrown into doubt by remembering that one main branch of the feeling,--the love of ugliness, seemed to belong in a peculiar manner to northern germany. if at all familiar with the art of the north and south, he would perceive that the _endurance_ of ugliness, which in italy resulted from languor or depression (while the mind yet retained some apprehension of the difference between fairness and deformity, as above noted in § ), was not to be confounded with that absence of perception of the beautiful, which introduced a general hard-featuredness of figure into all german and flemish early art, even when germany and flanders were in their brightest national health and power. and as he followed out in detail the comparison of all the purest ideals north and south of the alps, and perceived the perpetual contrast existing between the angular and bony sanctities of the one latitude, and the drooping graces and pensive pieties of the other, he would no longer attribute to the ruggedness, or miasma, of the mountains the origin of a feeling which showed itself so strongly in the comfortable streets of antwerp and nuremberg, and in the unweakened and active intellects of van eyck and albert durer. conditions which produce the mountain gloom. § . as i think over these various difficulties, the following conclusions seem to me deducible from the data i at present possess. i am in no wise confident of their accuracy, but they may assist the reader in pursuing the inquiry farther. general power of intellect. i. it seems to me, first, that a fair degree of intellect and imagination is necessary before this kind of disease is possible. it does not seize on merely stupid peasantries, but on those which belong to intellectual races, and in whom the faculties of imagination and the sensibilities of heart were originally strong and tender. in flat land, with fresh air, the peasantry may be almost mindless, but not infected with this gloom. romanism. ii. in the second place, i think it is closely connected with the romanist religion, and that for several causes. a. the habitual use of bad art (ill-made dolls and bad pictures), in the services of religion, naturally blunts the delicacy of the senses, by requiring reverence to be paid to ugliness, and familiarizing the eye to it in moments of strong and pure feeling; i do not think we can overrate the probable evil results of this enforced discordance between the sight and imagination. b. the habitually dwelling on the penances, tortures, and martyrdoms of the saints, as subjects of admiration and sympathy, together with much meditation on purgatorial suffering; rendered almost impossible to protestants by the greater fearfulness of such reflections, when the punishment is supposed eternal. c. idleness, and neglect of the proper duties of daily life, during the large number of holidays in the year, together with want of proper cleanliness, induced by the idea that comfort and happy purity are less pleasing to god than discomfort and self-degradation. this insolence induces much despondency, a larger measure of real misery than is necessary under the given circumstances of life, and many forms of crime and disease besides. d. superstitious indignation. i do not know if it is as a result of the combination of these several causes, or if under a separate head, that i should class a certain strange awe which seems to attach itself to romanism like its shadow, differing from the coarser gloom which we have been examining, in that it can attach itself to minds of the highest purity and keenness, and, indeed, does so to these more than to inferior ones. it is an undefinable pensiveness, leading to great severity of precept, mercilessness in punishment, and dark or discouraging thoughts of god and man.[ ] it is connected partly with a greater belief in the daily presence and power of evil spirits than is common in protestants (except the more enthusiastic, and _also gloomy_, sects of puritans), connected also with a sternness of belief in the condemnatory power and duty of the church, leading to persecution, and to less tempered indignation at oppositions of opinion than characterizes the protestant mind ordinarily, which, though waspish and bitter enough, is not liable to the peculiar heart-burning caused in a papist by any insult to his church, or by the aspect of what he believes to be heresy. § . for all these reasons, i think romanism is very definitely connected with the gloom we are examining, so as without fail to produce some measure of it in all persons who sincerely hold that faith; and if such effect is ever not to be traced, it is because the romanism is checked by infidelity. the atheism or dissipation of a large portion of the population in crowded capitals prevents this gloom from being felt in full force; but it resumes its power, in mountain solitudes, over the minds of the comparatively ignorant and more suffering peasantry; so that it is not an evil inherent in the hills themselves, but one result of the continuance in them of that old religious voice of warning, which, encouraging sacred feeling in general, encourages also whatever evil may essentially belong to the form of doctrine preached among them. [illustration: fig. .] disease of body. § . iii. it is assuredly connected also with a diseased state of health. cheerfulness is just as natural to the heart of a man in strong health as color to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom, there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor, or erring habits of life. among mountains, all these various causes are frequently found in combination. the air is either too bleak, or it is impure; generally the peasants are exposed to alternations of both. great hardship is sustained in various ways, severe labor undergone during summer, and a sedentary and confined life led during winter. where the gloom exists in less elevated districts, as in germany, i do not doubt, though i have not historical knowledge enough to prove this, that it is partly connected with habits of sedentary life, protracted study, and general derangement of the bodily system in consequence; when it exists in the gross form exhibited in the manuscript above examined, i have no doubt it has been fostered by habits of general vice, cruelty, and dissipation. [illustration: fig. .] rudeness of life. § . iv. considered as a natural insensibility to beauty, it is, i imagine, indicative of a certain want of cultivation in the race among whom it is found, perhaps without corporal or mental weakness, but produced by rudeness of life, absence of examples of beautiful art, defects in the mould of the national features, and such other adversities, generally belonging to northern nations as opposed to southern. here, however, again my historical knowledge is at fault, and i must leave the reader to follow out the question for himself, if it interests him. a single example maybe useful to those who have not time for investigation, in order to show the kind of difference i mean. fig. is a st. peter, from a german fifteenth-century ms., of good average execution; and fig. a madonna, either of the best english, or second-rate french, work, from a service-book executed in . the reader will, i doubt not, perceive at once the general grace and tenderness of sentiment in the lines of the drapery of the last, and the comparatively delicate type of features. the hardnesses of line, gesture, and feature in the german example, though two centuries at least later, are, i think, equally notable. they are accompanied in the rest of the ms. by an excessive coarseness in choice of ornamental subject: beneath a female figure typical of the church, for instance, there is painted a carcass, just butchered, and hung up with skewers through the legs. § . v. in many high mountain districts, not only are the inhabitants likely to be hurt by hardship of life, and retarded by roughness of manners, but their eyes are familiarized with certain conditions of ugliness and disorder, produced by the violence of the elements around them. once accustomed to look upon these conditions as inevitable in nature, they may easily transfer the idea of inevitableness and fitness to the same appearances in their own houses. i said that mountains seem to have been created to show us the perfection of beauty; but we saw in the tenth chapter that they also show sometimes the extreme of ugliness: and to the inhabitants of districts of this kind it is almost necessary to their daily comfort that they should view without dislike aspects of desolation which would to others be frightful. and can we blame them, if, when the rivers are continually loading their fields with heaps of black slime, and rolling, in time of flood, over the thickets on their islets, leaving, when the flood is past, every leaf and bough dim with granite-dust,--never more to be green through all the parching of summer; when the landslip leaves a ghastly scar among the grassy mounds of the hill side;--the rocks above are torn by their glaciers into rifts and wounds that are never healed; and the ice itself blackened league after league with loose ruin cast upon it as if out of some long and foul excavation;--can we blame, i say, the peasant, if, beholding these things daily as necessary appointments in the strong nature around him, he is careless that the same disorders should appear in his household or his farm; nor feels discomforted, though his walls should be full of fissures like the rocks, his furniture covered with dust like the trees, and his garden like the glacier in unsightliness of trench and desolation of mound? § . under these five heads are embraced, as far as i am able to trace them, the causes of the temper which we are examining; and it will be seen that only the last is quite peculiar to mountain and marsh districts, although there is a somewhat greater probability that the others also may be developed among hills more than in plains. when, by untoward accident, all are associated, and the conditions described under the fifth head are very distinct, the result is even sublime in its painfulness. of places subjected to such evil influence, none are quite so characteristic as the town of sion in the valais. in the first place (see § ), the material on which it works is good; the race of peasantry being there both handsome and intelligent, as far as they escape the adverse influences around them; so that on a fête-day or a sunday, when the families come down from the hill châlets, where the air is healthier, many very pretty faces may be seen among the younger women, set off by somewhat more pains in adjustment of the singular valaisan costume than is now usual in other cantons of switzerland. § . secondly, it is a bishopric, and quite the centre of romanism in switzerland, all the most definite romanist doctrines being evidently believed sincerely, and by a majority of the population; protestantism having no hold upon them at all; and republican infidelity, though active in the councils of the commune, having as yet, so far as i could see, little influence in the hearts of households. the prominence of the valais among roman catholic states has always been considerable. the cardinal of sion was, of old, one of the personages most troublesome to the venetian ambassadors at the english court.[ ] § . thirdly, it is in the midst of a marshy valley, pregnant with various disease; the water either stagnant, or disgorged in wild torrents charged with earth; the air, in the morning, stagnant also, hot, close, and infected; in the afternoon, rushing up from the outlet at martigny in fitful and fierce whirlwind; one side of the valley in almost continual shade, the other (it running east and west) scorched by the southern sun, and sending streams of heat into the air all night long from its torrid limestones; while less traceable plagues than any of these bring on the inhabitants, at a certain time of life, violent affections of goître, and often, in infancy, cretinism. agriculture is attended with the greatest difficulties and despondencies; the land which the labor of a life has just rendered fruitful is often buried in an hour; and the carriage of materials, as well as the traversing of land on the steep hill sides, attended with extraordinary fatigue. § . owing to these various influences, sion, the capital of the district, presents one of the most remarkable scenes for the study of the particular condition of human feeling at present under consideration that i know among mountains. it consists of little more than one main street, winding round the roots of two ridges of crag, and branching, on the sides towards the rocks, into a few narrow lanes, on the other, into spaces of waste ground, of which part serve for military exercises, part are enclosed in an uncertain and vague way; a ditch half-filled up, or wall half-broken down, seeming to indicate their belonging, or having been intended to belong, to some of the unfinished houses which are springing up amidst their weeds. but it is difficult to say, in any part of the town, what is garden-ground or what is waste; still more, what is new building and what old. the houses have been for the most part built roughly of the coarse limestone of the neighboring hills, then coated with plaster, and painted, in imitation of palladian palaces, with grey architraves and pilasters, having draperies from capital to capital. with this false decoration is curiously contrasted a great deal of graceful, honest, and original ironwork, in bulging balconies, and floreted gratings of huge windows, and branching sprays, for any and every purpose of support or guard. the plaster, with its fresco, has in most instances dropped away, leaving the houses peeled and scarred; daubed into uncertain restoration with new mortar, and in the best cases thus left; but commonly fallen also, more or less, into ruin, and either roofed over at the first story when the second has fallen, or hopelessly abandoned;--not pulled down, but left in white and ghastly shells to crumble into heaps of limestone and dust, a pauper or two still inhabiting where inhabitation is possible. the lanes wind among these ruins; the blue sky and mountain grass are seen through the windows of their rooms and over their partitions, on which old gaudy papers flaunt in rags: the weeds gather, and the dogs scratch about their foundations; yet there are no luxuriant weeds, for their ragged leaves are blanched with lime, crushed under perpetually falling fragments, and worn away by listless standing of idle feet. there is always mason's work doing, always some fresh patching and whitening; a dull smell of mortar, mixed with that of stale foulness of every kind, rises with the dust, and defiles every current of air; the corners are filled with accumulations of stones, partly broken, with crusts of cement sticking to them, and blotches of nitre oozing out of their pores. the lichenous rocks and sunburnt slopes of grass stretch themselves hither and thither among the wreck, curiously traversed by stairs and walls and half-cut paths, that disappear below starkly black arches, and cannot be followed, or rise in windings round the angles, and in unfenced slopes along the fronts, of the two masses of rock which bear, one the dark castle, the other the old church and convent of sion; beneath, in a rudely inclosed square at the outskirts of the town, a still more ancient lombardic church raises its grey tower, a kind of esplanade extending between it and the episcopal palace, and laid out as a plot of grass, intersected by gravel walks; but the grass, in strange sympathy with the inhabitants, will not grow _as_ grass, but chokes itself with a network of grey weeds, quite wonderful in its various expression of thorny discontent and savageness; the blue flower of the borage, which mingles with it in quantities, hardly interrupting its character, for the violent black spots in the centre of its blue takes away the tenderness of the flower, and it seems to have grown there in some supernatural mockery of its old renown of being good against melancholy. the rest of the herbage is chiefly composed of the dwarf mallow, the wild succory, the wall-rocket, goose-foot, and milfoil;[ ] plants, nearly all of them, jagged in the leaf, broken and dimly clustered in flower, haunters of waste ground and places of outcast refuse. beyond this plot of ground the episcopal palace, a half-deserted, barrack-like building, overlooks a _neglected vineyard_, of which the clusters, black on the under side, snow-white on the other with lime-dust, gather around them a melancholy hum of flies. through the arches of its trelliswork the avenue of the great valley is seen in descending distance, enlarged with line beyond line of tufted foliage, languid and rich, degenerating at last into leagues of grey maremma, wild with the thorn and the willow; on each side of it, sustaining themselves in mighty slopes and unbroken reaches of colossal promontory, the great mountains secede into supremacy through rosy depths of burning air, and the crescents of snow gleam over their dim summits as--if there could be mourning, as once there was war, in heaven--a line of waning moons might be set for lamps along the sides of some sepulchral chamber in the infinite. § . i know not how far this universal grasp of the sorrowful spirit might be relaxed if sincere energy were directed to amend the ways of life of the valaisan. but it has always appeared to me that there was, even in more healthy mountain districts, a certain degree of inevitable melancholy; nor could i ever escape from the feeling that here, where chiefly the beauty of god's working was manifested to men, warning was also given, and that to the full, of the enduring of his indignation against sin. it seems one of the most cunning and frequent of self-deceptions to turn the heart away from this warning and refuse to acknowledge anything in the fair scenes of the natural creation but beneficence. men in general lean towards the light, so far as they contemplate such things at all, most of them passing "by on the other side," either in mere plodding pursuit of their own work, irrespective of what good or evil is around them, or else in selfish gloom, or selfish delight, resulting from their own circumstances at the moment. of those who give themselves to any true contemplation, the plurality, being humble, gentle, and kindly hearted, look only in nature for what is lovely and kind; partly, also, god gives the disposition to every healthy human mind in some degree to pass over or even harden itself against evil things, else the suffering would be too great to be borne; and humble people, with a quiet trust that everything is for the best, do not fairly represent the facts to themselves, thinking them none of their business. so, what between hard-hearted people, thoughtless people, busy people, humble people, and cheerfully minded people,--giddiness of youth, and preoccupations of age,--philosophies of faith, and cruelties of folly,--priest and levite, masquer and merchantman, all agreeing to keep their own side of the way,--the evil that god sends to warn us gets to be forgotten, and the evil that he sends to be mended by us gets left unmended. and then, because people shut their eyes to the dark indisputableness of the facts in front of them, their faith, such as it is, is shaken or uprooted by every darkness in what is revealed to them. in the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon himself to dispute the whole system of redemption, because he cannot unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. but can he unravel the mystery of the punishment of no sin? can he entirely account for all that happens to a cab-horse? has he ever looked fairly at the fate of one of those beasts as it is dying,--measured the work it has done, and the reward it has got,--put his hand upon the bloody wounds through which its bones are piercing, and so looked up to heaven with an entire understanding of heaven's ways about the horse? yet the horse is a fact--no dream--no revelation among the myrtle trees by night; and the dust it dies upon, and the dogs that eat it, are facts;--and yonder happy person, whose the horse was till its knees were broken over the hurdles, who had an immortal soul to begin with, and wealth and peace to help forward his immortality; who has also devoted the powers of his soul, and body, and wealth, and peace, to the spoiling of houses, the corruption of the innocent, and the oppression of the poor; and has, at this actual moment of his prosperous life, as many curses waiting round about him in calm shadow, with their death's eyes fixed upon him, biding their time, as ever the poor cab-horse had launched at him in meaningless blasphemies, when his failing feet stumbled at the stones,--this happy person shall have no stripes,--shall have only the horse's fate of annihilation; or, if other things are indeed reserved for him, heaven's kindness or omnipotence is to be doubted therefore. § . we cannot reason of these things. but this i know--and this may by all men be known--that no good or lovely thing exists in this world without its correspondent darkness; and that the universe presents itself continually to mankind under the stern aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and the evil set on the right hand and the left. and in this mountain gloom, which weighs so strongly upon the human heart that in all time hitherto, as we have seen, the hill defiles have been either avoided in terror or inhabited in penance, there is but the fulfilment of the universal law, that where the beauty and wisdom of the divine working are most manifested, there also are manifested most clearly the terror of god's wrath, and inevitableness of his power. nor is this gloom less wonderful so far as it bears witness to the error of human choice, even when the nature of good and evil is most definitely set before it. the trees of paradise were fair; but our first parents hid themselves from god "in medio ligni paradisi," in the midst of the trees of the garden. the hills were ordained for the help of man; but, instead of raising his eyes to the hills, from whence cometh his help, he does his idol sacrifice "upon every high hill and under every green tree." the mountain of the lord's house is established above the hills; but nadab and abihu shall see under his feet the body of heaven in his clearness, yet go down to kindle the censer against their own souls. and so to the end of time it will be; to the end, that cry will still be heard along the alpine winds, "hear, oh ye mountains, the lord's controversy!" still, their gulfs of thawless ice, and unretarded roar of tormented waves, and deathful falls of fruitless waste, and unredeemed decay, must be the image of the souls of those who have chosen the darkness, and whose cry shall be to the mountains to fall on them, and to the hills to cover them; and still, to the end of time, the clear waters of the unfailing springs, and the white pasture-lilies in their clothed multitude, and the abiding of the burning peaks in their nearness to the opened heaven, shall be the types, and the blessings, of those who have chosen light, and of whom it is written, "the mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, righteousness." footnotes [ ] as i was correcting this sheet for press, the morning paper containing the account of the burning of covent garden theatre furnished the following financial statements, bearing somewhat on the matter in hand; namely, £ that the interior fittings of the theatre, in , cost , that it was opened on the th of april, ; and } that in the loss upon it was } , in " " , ------ , ------ £ and that in one year the vocal department cost , the ballet " " , the orchestra " " , ------ , ------ mr. albano afterwards corrected this statement, substituting , for , : and perhaps the other sums may also have been exaggerated, but i leave the reader to consider what an annual expenditure of from , _l._ to , _l._ might effect in practical idealism in general, whether in swiss valleys or elsewhere. i am not one of those who regard all theatrical entertainment as wrong or harmful. i only regret to see our theatres so conducted as to involve an expense which is worse than useless, in leading our audiences to look for mere stage effect, instead of good acting, good singing, or good sense. if we really loved music, or the drama, we should be content to hear well-managed voices, and see finished acting, without paying five or six thousand pounds to dress the songsters or decorate the stage. simple but well-chosen dresses, and quiet landscape exquisitely painted, would have far more effect on the feelings of any sensible audience than the tinsel and extravagance of our common scenery; and our actors and actresses must have little respect for their own powers, if they think that dignity of gesture is dependent on the flash of jewellery, or the pathos of accents connected with the costliness of silk. perfect execution of music by a limited orchestra is far more delightful, and far less fatiguing, than the irregular roar and hum of multitudinous mediocrity; and finished instrumentation by an adequate number of performers, exquisite acting, and sweetest singing, might be secured for the public at a fourth part of the cost now spent on operatic absurdities. there is no occasion whatever for decoration of the house: it is, on the contrary, the extreme of vulgarity. no person of good taste ever goes to a theatre to look at the fronts of the boxes. comfortable and roomy seats, perfect cleanliness, decent and fitting curtains and other furniture, of good stuff, but neither costly nor tawdry, and convenient, but not dazzling, light, are the proper requirements in the furnishing of an opera-house. as for the persons who go there to look at each other--to show their dresses--to yawn away waste hours--to obtain a maximum of momentary excitement--or to say they were there, at next day's three-o'clock breakfast (and it is only for such persons that glare, cost, and noise are necessary), i commend to their consideration, or at least to such consideration as is possible to their capacities, the suggestions in the text. but to the true lovers of the drama i would submit, as another subject of inquiry, whether they ought not to separate themselves from the mob, and provide, for their own modest, quiet, and guiltless entertainment, the truth of heartfelt impersonation, and the melody of the unforced and delicate voice, without extravagance of adjunct, unhealthy lateness of hours, or appeal to degraded passions. such entertainment might be obtained at infinitely smaller cost, and yet at a price which would secure honorable and permanent remuneration to every performer; and i am mistaken in my notion of the best actors, if they would not rather play at a house where people went to hear and to feel, than weary themselves, even for four times the pay, before an audience insulting in its listlessness and ignorant in its applause. [ ] there are, unusually, two paintings of this subject, the first representing the preparations for the scourging, the second its close. [ ] this character has, i think, been traced in the various writings of mrs. sherwood better than in any others; she has a peculiar art of making it felt and of striking the deep tone of it as from a passing-bell, contrasting it with the most cheerful, lovely, and sincere conditions of protestantism. [ ] see "four years at the court of henry viii." (dispatches of the venetian ambassador giustinian, translated by mr. rawdon brown,) . [ ] malva rotundifolia, cichorium intybus, sisymbrium tenuifolium, chenopodium urbicum, achillea millefolium. chapter xx. the mountain glory. § . i have dwelt, in the foregoing chapter, on the sadness of the hills with the greater insistance that i feared my own excessive love for them might lead me into too favorable interpretation of their influences over the human heart; or, at least, that the reader might accuse me of fond prejudice, in the conclusions to which, finally, i desire to lead him concerning them. for, to myself, mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery; in them, and in the forms of inferior landscape that lead to them, my affections are wholly bound up; and though i can look with happy admiration at the lowland flowers, and woods, and open skies, the happiness is tranquil and cold, like that of examining detached flowers in a conservatory, or reading a pleasant book; and if the scenery be resolutely level, insisting upon the declaration of its own flatness in all the detail of it, as in holland, or lincolnshire, or central lombardy, it appears to me like a prison, and i cannot long endure it. but the slightest rise and fall in the road,--a mossy bank at the side of a crag of chalk, with brambles at its brow, overhanging it,--a ripple over three or four stones in the stream by the bridge,--above all, a wild bit of ferny ground under a fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one might see a hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will instantly give me intense delight, because the shadow, or the hope, of the hills is in them. § . and thus, although there are few districts of northern europe, however apparently dull or tame, in which i cannot find pleasure, though the whole of northern france (except champagne), dull as it seems to most travellers, is to me a perpetual paradise; and, putting lincolnshire, leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districts aside, there is not an english county which i should not find entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot; yet all my best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills, coloring, with their far-away memories, every lowland stone and herb. the pleasant french coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me, either by what real mountain character it has in itself (for in extent and succession of promontory the flanks of the french valleys have quite the sublimity of true mountain distances), or by its broken ground and rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above, against the blue sky, as it might rise at vevay or como. there is not a wave of the seine but is associated in my mind with the first rise of the sandstones and forest pines of fontainebleau; and with the hope of the alps, as one leaves paris with the horses' heads to the south-west, the morning sun, flashing on the bright waves at charenton. if there be _no_ hope or association of this kind, and if i cannot deceive myself into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the road there may be seen the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the horizon, the landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind of sickness and pain; and the whole view from richmond hill or windsor terrace,--nay, the gardens of alcinous, with their perpetual summer,--or of the hesperides (if they were flat, and not close to atlas), golden apples and all--i would give away in an instant, for one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady-fern.[ ] § . i know that this is in great part idiosyncrasy; and that i must not trust to my own feelings, in this respect, as representative of the modern landscape instinct; yet i know it is not idiosyncrasy, in so far as there may be proved to be indeed an increase of the absolute beauty of all scenery in exact proportion to its mountainous character, providing that character be _healthily_ mountainous. i do not mean to take the col de bon homme as representative of hills, any more than i would take romney marsh as representative of plains; but putting leicestershire or staffordshire fairly beside westmoreland, and lombardy or champagne fairly beside the pays de vaud or the canton berne, i find the increase in the calculable sum of elements of beauty to be steadily in proportion to the increase of mountainous character; and that the best image which the world can give of paradise is in the slope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a great alp, with its purple rocks and eternal snows above; this excellence not being in any wise a matter referable to feeling, or individual preferences, but demonstrable by calm enumeration of the number of lovely colors on the rocks, the varied grouping of the trees, and quantity of noble incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the eye at any given moment. § . for consider, first, the difference produced in the whole tone of landscape color by the introductions of purple, violet, and deep ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. in an ordinary lowland landscape we have the blue of the sky; the green of grass, which i will suppose (and this is an unnecessary concession to the lowlands) entirely fresh and bright; the green of trees; and certain elements of purple, far more rich and beautiful than we generally should think, in their bark and shadows (bare hedges and thickets, or tops of trees, in subdued afternoon sunshine, are nearly perfect purple, and of an exquisite tone), as well as in ploughed fields, and dark ground in general. but among mountains, in _addition_ to all this, large unbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are introduced in their distances; and even near, by films of cloud passing over the darkness of ravines or forests, blues are produced of the most subtle tenderness; these azures and purples[ ] passing into rose-color of otherwise wholly unattainable delicacy among the upper summits, the blue of the sky being at the same time purer and deeper than in the plains. nay, in some sense, a person who has never seen the rose-color of the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve or fifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what _tenderness_ in color means at all; _bright_ tenderness he may, indeed, see in the sky or in a flower, but this grave tenderness of the far-away hill-purples he cannot conceive. § . together with this great source of preeminence in _mass_ of color, we have to estimate the influence of the finished inlaying and enamel-work of the color-jewellery on every stone; and that of the continual variety in species of flower; most of the mountain flowers being, besides, separately lovelier than the lowland ones. the wood hyacinth and wild rose are, indeed, the only _supreme_ flowers that the lowlands can generally show; and the wild rose is also a mountaineer, and more fragrant in the hills, while the wood hyacinth, or grape hyacinth, at its best cannot match even the dark bell-gentian, leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncontested queenliness, and the alpine rose and highland heather wholly without similitude. the violet, lily of the valley, crocus, and wood anemone are, i suppose, claimable partly by the plains as well as the hills; but the large orange lily and narcissus i have never seen but on hill pastures, and the exquisite oxalis is preeminently a mountaineer.[ ] § . to this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add an inestimable gain in the continual presence and power of water. neither in its clearness, its color, its fantasy of motion, its calmness of space, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can water be conceived by a lowlander, out of sight of sea. a sea wave is far grander than any torrent--but of the sea and its influences we are not now speaking; and the sea itself, though it _can_ be clear, is never calm, among our shores, in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. the sea seems only to pause; the mountain lake to sleep, and to dream. out of sight of the ocean, a lowlander cannot be considered ever to have seen water at all. the mantling of the pools in the rock shadows, with the golden flakes of light sinking down through them like falling leaves, the ringing of the thin currents among the shallows, the flash and the cloud of the cascade, the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, the long lines of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery of the hills reversed in the blue of morning,--all these things belong to those hills as their undivided inheritance. § . to this supremacy in wave and stream is joined a no less manifest preeminence in the character of trees. it is possible among plains, in the species of trees which properly belong to them, the poplars of amiens, for instance, to obtain a serene simplicity of grace, which, as i said, is a better help to the study of gracefulness, as such, than any of the wilder groupings of the hills; so also, there are certain conditions of symmetrical luxuriance developed in the park and avenue, rarely rivalled in their way among mountains; and yet the mountain superiority in foliage is, on the whole, nearly as complete as it is in water; for exactly as there are some expressions in the broad reaches of a navigable lowland river, such as the loire or thames, not, in their way, to be matched among the rock rivers, and yet for all that a lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen the element of water at all; so even in his richest parks and avenues he cannot be said to have truly seen trees. for the resources of trees are not developed until they have difficulty to contend with; neither their tenderness of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced to choose their ways of various life where there is contracted room for them, talking to each other with their restrained branches. the various action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of glacier winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand among the difficult slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls, gathering into companies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in grave procession over the heavenward ridges,--nothing of this can be conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the lowland forest: while to all these direct sources of greater beauty are added, first the power of redundance,--the mere quantity of foliage visible in the folds and on the promontories of a single alp being greater than that of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view from some cathedral tower); and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer _visibility_,--tree after tree being constantly shown in successive height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and flanks of masses, as in the plains; and the forms of multitudes of them continually defined against the clear sky, near and above, or against white clouds entangled among their branches, instead of being confused in dimness of distance. § . finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the still less questionable supremacy in clouds. there is no effect of sky possible in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among the hills; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among the hills in the course of one day. the mere power of familiarity with the clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and renders clear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky; and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single wreath of early cloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the points of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill the arched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. and of the nobler cloud manifestations,--the breaking of their troublous seas against the crags, their black spray sparkling with lightning; or the going forth of the morning along their pavements of moving marble, level-laid between dome and dome of snow;--of these things there can be as little imagination or understanding in an inhabitant of the plains as of the scenery of another planet than his own. § . and, observe, all these superiorities are matters plainly measurable and calculable, not in any wise to be referred to estimate of _sensation_. of the grandeur or expression of the hills i have not spoken; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, i do not for the moment consider, because vastness, and strength, and terror, are not to all minds subjects of desired contemplation. it may make no difference to some men whether a natural object be large or small, whether it be strong or feeble. but loveliness of color, perfectness of form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure, are precious to all undiseased human minds; and the superiority of the mountains in all these things to the lowland is, i repeat, as measurable as the richness of a painted window matched with a white one, or the wealth of a museum compared with that of a simply furnished chamber. they seem to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminated manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper. and of these great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars,--of these, as we have seen, it was written, nor long ago, by one of the best of the poor human race for whom they were built, wondering in himself for whom their creator _could_ have made them, and thinking to have entirely discerned the divine intent in them--"they are inhabited by the beasts." § . was it then indeed thus with us, and so lately? had mankind offered no worship in their mountain churches? was all that granite sculpture and floral painting done by the angels in vain? not so. it will need no prolonged thought to convince us that in the hills the purposes of their maker have indeed been accomplished in such measure as, through the sin or folly of men, he ever permits them to be accomplished. it may not seem, from the general language held concerning them, or from any directly traceable results, that mountains have had serious influence on human intellect; but it will not, i think, be difficult to show that their occult influence has been both constant and essential to the progress of the race. § . consider, first, whether we can justly refuse to attribute to their mountain scenery some share in giving the greeks and italians their intellectual lead among the nations of europe. there is not a single spot of land in either of these countries from which mountains are not discernible; almost always they form the principal feature of the scenery. the mountain outlines seen from sparta, corinth, athens, rome, florence, pisa, verona, are of consummate beauty; and whatever dislike or contempt may be traceable in the mind of the greeks for mountain ruggedness, their placing the shrine of apollo under the cliffs of delphi, and his throne upon parnassus, was a testimony to all succeeding time that they themselves attributed the best part of their intellectual inspiration to the power of the hills. nor would it be difficult to show that every great writer of either of those nations, however little definite regard he might manifest for the landscape of his country, had been mentally formed and disciplined by it, so that even such enjoyment as homer's of the ploughed ground and poplar groves owes its intensity and delicacy to the excitement of the imagination produced, without his own consciousness, by other and grander features of the scenery to which he had been accustomed from a child; and differs in every respect from the tranquil, vegetative, and prosaic affection with which the same ploughed land and poplars would be regarded by a native of the netherlands. the vague expression which i have just used--"intellectual lead," may be expanded into four great heads; lead in religion, art and literature, war, and social economy. § . it will be right to examine our subject eventually under these four heads; but i shall limit myself, for the present, to some consideration of the first two, for a reason presently to be stated. st. influence of mountains on religious temperament. i. we have before had occasion to note the peculiar awe with which mountains were regarded in the middle ages, as bearing continual witness against the frivolity or luxury of the world. though the sense of this influence of theirs is perhaps more clearly expressed by the mediæval christians than by any other sect of religionists, the influence itself has been constant in all time. mountains have always possessed the power, first, of exciting religious enthusiasm; secondly, of purifying religious faith. these two operations are partly contrary to one another: for the faith of enthusiasm is apt to be _im_pure, and the mountains, by exciting morbid conditions of the imagination, have caused in great part the legendary and romantic forms of belief; on the other hand, by fostering simplicity of life and dignity of morals, they have purified by action what they falsified by imagination. but, even in their first and most dangerous influence, it is not the mountains that are to blame, but the human heart. while we mourn over the fictitious shape given to the religious visions of the anchorite, we may envy the sincerity and the depth of the emotion from which they spring: in the deep feeling, we have to acknowledge the solemn influences of the hills; but for the erring modes or forms of thought, it is human wilfulness, sin, and false teaching, that are answerable. we are not to deny the nobleness of the imagination because its direction is illegitimate, nor the pathos of the legend because its circumstances are groundless; the ardor and abstraction of the spiritual life are to be honored in themselves, though the one may be misguided and the other deceived; and the deserts of osma, assisi, and monte viso are still to be thanked for the zeal they gave, or guarded, whether we find it in st. francis and st. dominic, or in those whom god's hand hid from them in the clefts of the rocks. § . and, in fact, much of the apparently harmful influence of hills on the religion of the world is nothing else than their general gift of exciting the poetical and inventive faculties, in peculiarly solemn tones of mind. their terror leads into devotional casts of thought; their beauty and wildness prompt the invention at the same time; and where the mind is not gifted with stern reasoning powers, or protected by purity of teaching, it is sure to mingle the invention with its creed, and the vision with its prayer. strictly speaking, we ought to consider the superstitions of the hills, universally, as a form of poetry; regretting only that men have not yet learned how to distinguish poetry from well-founded faith. and if we do this, and enable ourselves thus to review, without carping or sneering, the shapes of solemn imagination which have arisen among the inhabitants of europe, we shall find, on the one hand, the mountains of greece and italy forming all the loveliest dreams, first of the pagan, then of the christian mythology; on the other, those of scandinavia to be the first sources of whatever mental (as well as military) power was brought by the normans into southern europe. normandy itself is to all intents and purposes a hill country; composed, over large extents, of granite and basalt, often rugged and covered with heather on the summits, and traversed by beautiful and singular dells, at once soft and secluded, fruitful and wild. we have thus one branch of the northern religious imagination rising among the scandinavian fiords, tempered in france by various encounters with elements of arabian, italian, provençal, or other southern poetry, and then reacting upon southern england; while other forms of the same rude religious imagination, resting like clouds upon the mountains of scotland and wales, met and mingled with the norman christianity, retaining even to the latest times some dark color of superstition, but giving all its poetical and military pathos to scottish poetry, and a peculiar sternness and wildness of tone to the reformed faith, in its manifestations among the scottish hills. § . it is on less disputable ground that i may claim the reader's gratitude to the mountains, as having been the centres not only of imaginative energy, but of purity both in doctrine and practice. the enthusiasm of the persecuted covenanter, and his variously modified claims to miraculous protection or prophetic inspiration, hold exactly the same relation to the smooth proprieties of lowland protestantism, that the demon-combats, fastings, visions, and miracles of the mountain monk or anchorite hold to the wealth and worldliness of the vatican. it might indeed happen, whether at canterbury, rheims, or rome, that a good bishop should occasionally grasp the crozier; and a vast amount of prudent, educated, and admirable piety is to be found among the ranks of the lowland clergy. but still the large aspect of the matter is always, among protestants, that formalism, respectability, orthodoxy, caution, and propriety, live by the slow stream that encircles the lowland abbey or cathedral; and that enthusiasm, poverty, vital faith, and audacity of conduct, characterize the pastor dwelling by the torrent side. in like manner, taking the large aspects of romanism, we see that its worst corruptions, its cunning, its worldliness, and its permission of crime, are traceable for the most part to lowland prelacy; but its self-denials, its obediences, humilities, sincere claims to miraculous power, and faithful discharges of pastoral duty, are traceable chiefly to its anchorites and mountain clergy. § . it is true that the "lady poverty" of st. francis may share the influence of the hills in the formation of character; and that, since the clergy who have little interest at court or conclave are those who in general will be driven to undertake the hill services, we must often attribute to enforced simplicity of life, or natural bitterness of feeling, some of the tones of thought which we might otherwise have ascribed to the influence of mountain scenery. such causes, however, affect the lowland as much as the highland religious character in all districts far from cities; but they do not produce the same effects. the curate or hermit of the field and fen, however simple his life, or painful his lodging, does not often attain the spirit of the hill pastor or recluse: we may find in him a decent virtue or a contented ignorance, rarely the prophetic vision or the martyr's passion. among the fair arable lands of england and belgium extends an orthodox protestantism or catholicism; prosperous, creditable, and drowsy; but it is among the purple moors of the highland border, the ravines of mont genèvre, and the crags of the tyrol, that we shall find the simplest evangelical faith, and the purest romanist practice. § . of course the inquiry into this branch of the hill influence is partly complicated with that into its operation on domestic habits and personal character, of which hereafter: but there is one curious witness borne to the general truth of the foregone conclusions, by an apparently slight, yet very significant circumstance in art. we have seen, in the preceding volume, how difficult it was sometimes to distinguish between honest painters, who truly chose to paint sacred subjects because they loved them, and the affected painters, who took sacred subjects for their own pride's sake, or for merely artistical delight. amongst other means of arriving at a conclusion in this matter, there is one helpful test which may be applied to their various works, almost as easily and certainly as a foot-rule could be used to measure their size; and which remains an available test down to the date of the rise of the claudesque landscape schools. nearly all the genuine religious painters use _steep mountain distances_. all the merely artistical ones, or those of intermediate temper, in proportion as they lose the religious element, use flat or simply architectural distances. of course the law is liable to many exceptions, chiefly dependent on the place of birth and early associations of painters; but its force is, i think, strongly shown in this;--that, though the flemish painters never showed any disposition to paint, _for its own sake_, other scenery than of their own land (compare vol. iii. chap. xiii. § ), the sincerely religious ones continually used alpine distances, bright with snow. in like manner giotto, perugino, angelico, the young raphael, and john bellini, always, if, with any fitness to their subject, they can introduce them, use craggy or blue mountain distances, and this with definite expression of love towards them; leonardo, conventionally, as feeling they were necessary for his sacred subjects, while yet his science and idealism had destroyed his mountain sincerity; michael angelo, wholly an artist, and raphael in later years, show no love of mountains whatever, while the relative depths of feeling in tintoret, titian, and veronese, are precisely measurable by their affection to mountains. tintoret, though born in venice, yet, because capable of the greatest reaches of feeling, is the first of the old painters who ever drew mountain detail rightly:[ ] titian, though born in cadore, and recurring to it constantly, yet being more worldly-minded, uses his hills somewhat more conventionally, though, still in his most deeply felt pictures, such as the st. jerome, in the brera, giving to the rocks and forests a consummate nobleness; and veronese, in his gay grasp of the outside aspects of the world, contentedly includes his philosophy within porticos and pillars, or at the best overshadows it with a few sprays of laurel. § . the test fails, however, utterly, when applied to the later or transitional landscape schools, mountains being there introduced in mere wanton savageness by salvator, or vague conventionalism by claude, berghem, and hundreds more. this need not, however, in the least invalidate our general conclusions: we surely know already that it is possible to misuse the best gifts, and pervert the purest feelings; nor need we doubt the real purpose, or, on honest hearts, the real effect, of mountains, because various institutions have been founded among them by the banditti of calabria, as well as by st. bruno. § . i cannot leave this part of my subject without recording a slight incident which happened to myself, singularly illustrative of the religious character of the alpine peasant when under favorable circumstances of teaching. i was coming down one evening from the rochers de naye, above montreux, having been at work among the limestone rocks, where i could get no water, and both weary and thirsty. coming to a spring at a turn of the path, conducted, as usual, by the herdsmen into a hollowed pine-trunk i stooped to it and drank deeply: as i raised my head, drawing breath heavily, some one behind me said, "celui qui boira de cette eau-ci, aura encore soif." i turned, not understanding for the moment what was meant; and saw one of the hill-peasants, probably returning to his châlet from the market-place at vevay or villeneuve. as i looked at him with an uncomprehending expression, he went on with the verse:--"mais celui qui boira de l'eau que je lui donnerai, n'aura jamais soif." i doubt if this would have been thought of, or said, by even the most intelligent lowland peasant. the thought might have occurred to him, but the frankness of address, and expectation of being at once understood without a word of preparative explanation, as if the language of the bible were familiar to all men, mark, i think, the mountaineer. nd. influence of mountain on artistical power. § . we were next to examine the influence of hills on the artistical power of the human race. which power, so far as it depends on the imagination, must evidently be fostered by the same influences which give vitality to religious vision. but, so far as artistical productiveness and skill are concerned, it is evident that the mountaineer is at a radical and insurmountable disadvantage. the strength of his character depends upon the absence of luxury; but it is eminently by luxury that art is supported. we are not, therefore, to deny the mountain influence, because we do not find finished frescoes on the timbers of châlets or delicate bas-reliefs on the bastion which protects the mountain church from the avalanche; but to consider how far the tone of mind shown by the artists laboring in the lowland is dependent for its intensity on the distant influences of the hills, whether during the childhood of those born among them, or under the casual contemplation of men advanced in life. § . glancing broadly over the strength of the mediæval--that is to say, of the peculiar and energetic--art of europe, so as to discern, through the clear flowing of its waves over france, italy, and england, the places in the pool where the fountain-heads are, and where the sand dances, i should first point to normandy and tuscany. from the cathedral of pisa, and the sculpture of the pisans, the course is straight to giotto, angelico, and raphael,--to orcagna and michael angelo;--the venetian school, in many respects mightier, being, nevertheless, subsequent and derivative. from the cathedrals of caen and coutances the course is straight to the gothic of chartres and notre dame of paris, and thence forward to all french and english noble art, whether ecclesiastical or domestic. now the mountain scenery about pisa is precisely the most beautiful that surrounds any great italian city, owing to the wonderful outlines of the peaks of carrara. milan and verona have indeed fine ranges in sight, but rising farther in the distance, and therefore not so directly affecting the popular mind. the norman imagination, as already noticed, is scandinavian in origin, and fostered by the lovely granite scenery of normandy itself. but there is, nevertheless, this great difference between french art and italian, that the french paused strangely at a certain point, as the norman hills are truncated at the summits, while the italian rose steadily to a vertex, as the carrara hills to their crests. let us observe this a little more in detail. § . the sculpture of the pisans was taken up and carried into various perfection by the lucchese, pistojans, sienese, and florentines. all these are inhabitants of truly mountain cities, florence being as completely among the hills as inspruck is, only the hills have softer outlines. those around pistoja and lucca are in a high degree majestic. giotto was born and bred among these hills. angelico lived upon their slope. the mountain towns of perugia and urbino furnish the only important branches of correlative art; for leonardo, however individually great, originated no new school; he only carried the _executive_ delicacy of landscape detail so far beyond other painters as to necessitate my naming the fifteenth-century manner of landscape after him, though he did not invent it; and although the school of milan is distinguished by several peculiarities, and definitely enough separable from the other schools of italy, all its peculiarities are mannerisms, not inventions. correggio, indeed, created a new school, though he himself is almost its only master. i have given in the preceding volume the mountain outline seen from parma. but the only entirely great group of painters after the tuscans are the venetians, and they are headed by titian and tintoret, on whom we have noticed the influence of hills already; and although we cannot trace it in paul veronese, i will not quit the mountain claim upon him; for i believe all that gay and gladdening strength of his was fed by the breezes of the hills of garda, and brightened by the swift glancing of the waves of the adige.[ ] § . observe, however, before going farther, of all the painters we have named, the one who obtains most executive perfection is leonardo, who on the whole lived at the greatest distance from the hills. the two who have most feeling are giotto and angelico, both hill-bred. and generally, i believe, we shall find that the hill country gives its inventive depths of feeling to art, as in the work of orcagna, perugino, and angelico, and the plain country executive neatness. the executive precision is joined with feeling in leonardo, who saw the alps in the distance; it is totally unaccompanied by feeling in the pure dutch schools, or schools of the dead flats. § . i do not know if any writer on art, or on the development of national mind, has given his attention to what seems to me one of the most singular phenomena in the history of europe,--the pause of the english and french in pictorial art after the fourteenth century. from the days of henry iii. to those of elizabeth, and of louis ix. to those of louis xiv., the general intellect of the two nations was steadily on the increase. but their art intellect was as steadily retrograde. the only art work that france and england have done nobly is that which is centralized by the cathedral of lincoln, and the sainte chapelle. we had at that time (_we_--french and english--but the french first) the incontestable lead among european nations; no thirteenth-century work in italy is comparable for majesty of conception, or wealth of imaginative detail, to the cathedrals of chartres, rheims, rouen, amiens, lincoln, peterborough, wells, or lichfield. but every hour of the fourteenth century saw french and english art in precipitate decline, italian in steady ascent; and by the time that painting and sculpture had developed themselves in an approximated perfection, in the work of ghirlandajo and mino of fésole, we had in france and england no workman, in any art, deserving a workman's name; nothing but skilful masons, with more or less love of the picturesque, and redundance of undisciplined imagination, flaming itself away in wild and rich traceries, and crowded bosses of grotesque figure sculpture, and expiring at last in barbarous imitation of the perfected skill and erring choice of renaissance italy. painting could not decline, for it had not reached any eminence; the exquisite arts of illumination and glass design had led to no effective results in other materials; they themselves, incapable of any higher perfection than they had reached in the thirteenth century, perished in the vain endeavor to emulate pictorial excellence, bad _drawing_ being substituted, in books, for lovely _writing_, and opaque precision, in glass, for transparent power; nor in any single department of exertion did artists arise of such calibre or class as any of the great italians; and yet all the while, in literature, _we_ were gradually and steadily advancing in power up to the time of shakespere; the italians, on the contrary, not advancing after the time of dante. § . of course i have no space here to pursue a question such as this; but i may state my belief that _one_ of the conditions involved in it was the mountain influence of italian scenery, inducing a disposition to such indolent or enthusiastic reverie, as could only express itself in the visions of art; while the comparatively flat scenery and severer climate of england and france, fostering less enthusiasm, and urging to more exertion, brought about a practical and rational temperament, progressive in policy, science, and literature, but wholly retrograde in art; that is to say (for great art may be properly so defined), in the art of _dreaming_. rd. influence of mountains on literary power. § . iii. in admitting this, we seem to involve the supposition that mountain influence is either unfavorable or inessential to literary power; but for this also the mountain influence is still necessary, only in a subordinate degree. it is true, indeed, that the avon is no mountain torrent, and that the hills round the vale of stratford are not sublime; true, moreover, that the cantons berne or uri have never yet, so far as i know, produced a great poet; but neither, on the other hand, has antwerp or amsterdam. and, i believe, the natural scenery which will be found, on the whole, productive of most literary intellect is that mingled of hill and plain, as all available light is of flame and darkness; the flame being the active element, and the darkness the tempering one. § . in noting such evidence as bears upon this subject, the reader must always remember that the mountains are at an unfair disadvantage, in being much _out of the way_ of the masses of men employed in intellectual pursuits. the position of a city is dictated by military necessity or commercial convenience; it rises, flourishes, and absorbs into its activity whatever leading intellect is in the surrounding population. the persons who are able and desirous to give their children education naturally resort to it; the best schools, the best society, and the strongest motives assist and excite those born within its walls; and youth after youth rises to distinction out of its streets, while among the blue mountains, twenty miles away, the goatherds live and die in unregarded lowliness. and yet this is no proof that the mountains have little effect upon the mind, or that the streets have a helpful one. the men who are formed by the schools, and polished by the society of the capital, may yet in many ways have their powers shortened by the absence of natural scenery; and the mountaineer, neglected, ignorant, and unambitious, may have been taught things by the clouds and streams which he could not have learned in a college, or a coterie. § . and in reasoning about the effect of mountains we are therefore under a difficulty like that which would occur to us if we had to determine the good or bad effect of light on the human constitution, in some place where all corporal exercise was necessarily in partial darkness, and only idle people lived in the light. the exercise might give an advantage to the occupants of the gloom, but we should neither be justified in therefore denying the preciousness of light in general, nor the necessity to the workers of the few rays they possessed; and thus i suppose the hills around stratford, and such glimpses as shakespere had of sandstone and pines in warwickshire, or of chalk cliffs in kent, to have been essential to the development of his genius. this supposition can only be proved false by the rising of a shakespere at rotterdam or bergen-op-zoom, which i think not probable; whereas, on the other hand, it is confirmed by myriads of collateral evidences. the matter could only be _tested_ by placing for half a century the british universities at keswick, and beddgelert, and making grenoble the capital of france; but if, throughout the history of britain and france, we contrast the general invention and pathetic power, in ballads or legends, of the inhabitants of the scottish border with those manifested in suffolk or essex; and similarly the inventive power of normandy, provence, and the bearnois with that of champagne or picardy, we shall obtain some convincing evidence respecting the operation of hills on the masses of mankind, and be disposed to admit, with less hesitation, that the apparent inconsistencies in the effect of scenery on greater minds proceed in each case from specialities of education, accident, and original temper, which it would be impossible to follow out in detail. sometimes only, when the original resemblance in character of intellect is very marked in two individuals, and they are submitted to definitely contrary circumstances of education, an approximation to evidence may be obtained. thus bacon and pascal appear to be men naturally very similar in their temper and powers of mind. one, born in york house, strand, of courtly parents, educated in court atmosphere, and replying, almost as soon as he could speak, to the queen asking how old he was--"two years younger than your majesty's happy reign!"--has the world's meanness and cunning engrafted into his intellect, and remains smooth, serene, unenthusiastic, and in some degree base, even with all his sincere devotion and universal wisdom; bearing, to the end of life, the likeness of a marble palace in the street of a great city, fairly furnished within, and bright in wall and battlement, yet noisome in places about the foundations. the other, born at clermont, in auvergne, under the shadow of the puy de dôme, though taken to paris at eight years old, retains for ever the impress of his birthplace; pursuing natural philosophy with the same zeal as bacon, he returns to his own mountains to put himself under their tutelage, and by their help first discovers the great relations of the earth and the air: struck at last with mortal disease; gloomy, enthusiastic, and superstitious, with a conscience burning like lava, and inflexible like iron, the clouds gather about the majesty of him, fold after fold; and, with his spirit buried in ashes, and rent by earthquake, yet fruitful of true thought and faithful affection, he stands like that mound of desolate scoria that crowns the hill ranges of his native land, with its sable summit far in heaven, and its foundations green with the ordered garden and the trellised vine. § . when, however, our inquiry thus branches into the successive analysis of individual characters, it is time for us to leave it; noting only one or two points respecting shakespere, whom, i doubt not, the reader was surprised to find left out of all our comparisons in the preceding volume. he seems to have been sent essentially to take universal and equal grasp of the _human_ nature; and to have been removed, therefore, from all influences which could in the least warp or bias his thoughts. it was necessary that he should lean _no_ way; that he should contemplate, with absolute equality of judgment, the life of the court, cloister, and tavern, and be able to sympathize so completely with all creatures as to deprive himself, together with his personal identity, even of his conscience, as he casts himself into their hearts. he must be able to enter into the soul of falstaff or shylock with no more sense of contempt or horror than falstaff or shylock themselves feel for or in themselves; otherwise his own conscience and indignation would make him unjust to them; he would turn aside from something, miss some good, or overlook some essential palliation. he must be utterly without anger, utterly without purpose; for if a man has any serious purpose in life, that which runs counter to it, or is foreign to it, will be looked at frowningly or carelessly by him. shakespere was forbidden of heaven to have any _plans_. to _do_ any good or _get_ any good, in the common sense of good, was not to be within his permitted range of work. not, for him, the founding of institutions, the preaching of doctrines, or the repression of abuses. neither he, nor the sun, did on any morning that they rose together, receive charge from their maker concerning such things. they were both of them to shine on the evil and good; both to behold unoffendedly all that was upon the earth, to burn unappalled upon the spears of kings, and undisdaining, upon the reeds of the river. § . therefore, so far as nature had influence over the early training of this man, it was essential to his perfectness that the nature should be quiet. no mountain passions were to be allowed in him. inflict upon him but one pang of the monastic conscience; cast upon him but one cloud of the mountain gloom; and his serenity had been gone for ever--his equity--his infinity. you would have made another dante of him; and all that he would have ever uttered about poor, soiled, and frail humanity would have been the quarrel between sinon and adam of brescia,--speedily retired from, as not worthy a man's hearing, nay, not to be heard without heavy fault. all your falstaffs, slenders, quicklys, sir tobys, lances, touchstones, and quinces would have been lost in that. shakespere could be allowed no mountains; nay, not even any supreme natural beauty. he had to be left with his kingcups and clover;--pansies--the passing clouds--the avon's flow--and the undulating hills and woods of warwick; nay, he was not to love even these in any exceeding measure, lest it might make him in the least overrate their power upon the strong, full-fledged minds of men. he makes the quarrelling fairies concerned about them; poor lost ophelia find some comfort in them; fearful, fair, wise-hearted perdita trust the speaking of her good will and good hostess-ship to them; and one of the brothers of imogen confide his sorrow to them,--rebuked instantly by his brother for "wench-like words;[ ]" but any thought of them in his mighty men i do not find: it is not usually in the nature of such men; and if he had loved the flowers the _least_ better himself, he would assuredly have been offended at this, and given a botanical turn of mind to cæsar, or othello. § . and it is even among the most curious proofs of the necessity to all high imagination that it should paint straight from the life, that he has _not_ given such a turn of mind to some of his great men;--henry the fifth, for instance. doubtless some of my readers, having been accustomed to hear it repeated thoughtlessly from mouth to mouth that shakespere conceived the spirit of all ages, were as much offended as surprised at my saying that he only painted human nature as he saw it in his own time. they will find, if they look into his work closely, as much antiquarianism as they do geography, and no more. the commonly received notions about the things that had been, shakespere took as he found them, animating them with pure human nature, of any time and all time; but inquiries into the minor detail of temporary feeling, he despised as utterly as he did maps; and wheresoever the temporary feeling was in anywise contrary to that of his own day, he errs frankly, and paints from his own time. for instance in this matter of love of flowers; we have traced already, far enough for our general purposes, the mediæval interest in them, whether to be enjoyed in the fields, or to be used for types of ornamentation in dress. if shakespere had cared to enter into the spirit even of the early fifteenth century, he would assuredly have marked this affection in some of his knights, and indicated, even then, in heroic tempers, the peculiar respect for loveliness of _dress_ which we find constantly in dante. but he could not do this; he had not seen it in real life. in his time dress had become an affectation and absurdity. only fools, or wise men in their weak moments, showed much concern about it; and the facts of human nature which appeared to him general in the matter were the soldier's disdain, and the coxcomb's care of it. hence shakespere's good soldier is almost always in plain or battered armor; even the speech of vernon in henry the fourth, which, as far as i remember, is the only one that bears fully upon the beauty of armor, leans more upon the spirit and hearts of men--"bated, like eagles having lately bathed;" and has an under-current of slight contempt running through the following line, "glittering in golden coats, _like images_;" while the beauty of the young harry is essentially the beauty of fiery and perfect youth, answering as much to the greek, or roman, or elizabethan knight as to the mediæval one; whereas the definite interest in armor and dress is opposed by shakespere in the french (meaning to depreciate them), to the english rude soldierliness: "_con._ tut, i have the best armor in the world. would it were day! _orl._ you have an excellent armor, but let my horse have his due." and again: "my lord constable, the armor that i saw in your tent to-night, are those stars, or suns, upon it?" while henry, half proud of his poorness of array, speaks of armorial splendor scornfully; the main idea being still of its being a gilded show and vanity-- "our gayness and our _gilt_ are all besmirched." this is essentially elizabethan. the quarterings on a knight's shield, or the inlaying of his armor, would never have been thought of by him as mere "gayness or gilt" in earlier days.[ ] in like manner, throughout every scale of rank or feeling, from that of the french knights down to falstaff's "i looked he should have sent me two-and-twenty yards of satin, as i am true knight, and he sends me security!" care for dress is always considered by shakespere as contemptible; and mrs. quickly distinguishes herself from a true fairy by her solicitude to scour the _chairs of order_--and "each fair instalment, coat, and several crest;" and the association in her mind of the flowers in the fairy rings with the "sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee;" while the true fairies, in field simplicity, are only anxious to "sweep the dust behind the door;" and "with this field dew consecrate, every several chamber bless through this palace with sweet peace." note the expression "field dew consecrate." shakespere loved courts and camps; but he felt that sacredness and peace were in the dew of the fields only. § . there is another respect in which he was wholly incapable of entering into the spirit of the middle ages. he had no great art of any kind around him in his own country, and was, consequently, just as powerless to conceive the general influence of former art, as a man of the most inferior calibre. therefore it was, that i did not care to quote his authority respecting the power of imitation, in the second chapter of the preceding volume. if it had been needful to add his testimony to that of dante (given in § ), i might have quoted multitudes of passages wholly concurring with that, of which the "fair portia's counterfeit," with the following lines, and the implied ideal of sculpture in the winter's tale, are wholly unanswerable instances. but shakespere's evidence in matters of art is as narrow as the range of elizabethan art in england, and resolves itself wholly into admiration of two things,--mockery of life (as in this instance of hermione as a statue), or absolute splendor, as in the close of romeo and juliet, where the notion of _gold_ as the chief source of dignity of aspect, coming down to shakespere from the times of the field of the cloth of gold, and, as i said before, strictly elizabethan, would interfere seriously with the pathos of the whole passage, but for the sense of sacrifice implied in it: "as _rich_ shall romeo by his lady lie poor sacrifices of our enmity." § . and observe, i am not giving these examples as proof of any smallness in shakespere, but of his greatness; that is to say, of his contentment, like every other great man who ever breathed, to paint nothing but _what he saw_; and therefore giving perpetual evidence that his sight was of the sixteenth, and not of the thirteenth century, beneath all the broad and eternal humanity of his imagination. how far in these modern days, emptied of splendor, it may be necessary for great men having certain sympathies for those earlier ages, to act in this differently from all their predecessors; and how far they may succeed in the resuscitation of the past by habitually dwelling in all their thoughts among vanished generations, are questions, of all practical and present ones concerning art, the most difficult to decide; for already in poetry several of our truest men have set themselves to this task, and have indeed put more vitality into the shadows of the dead than most others can give the presences of the living. thus longfellow, in the golden legend, has entered more closely into the temper of the monk, for good and for evil, than ever yet theological writer or historian, though they may have given their life's labor to the analysis: and, again, robert browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the middle ages; always vital, right, and profound; so that in the matter of art, with which we have been specially concerned, there is hardly a principle connected with the mediæval temper, that he has not struck upon in those seemingly careless and too rugged rhymes of his. there is a curious instance, by the way, in a short poem referring to this very subject of tomb and image sculpture; and illustrating just one of those phases of local human character which, though belonging to shakespere's own age, he never noticed, because it was specially italian and un-english; connected also closely with the influence of mountains on the heart, and therefore with our immediate inquiries. i mean the kind of admiration with which a southern artist regarded the _stone_ he worked in; and the pride which populace or priest took in the possession of precious mountain substance, worked into the pavements of their cathedrals, and the shafts of their tombs. § . observe, shakespere, in the midst of architecture and tombs of wood, or freestone, or brass, naturally thinks of _gold_ as the best enriching and ennobling substance for them;--in the midst also of the fever of the renaissance he writes, as every one else did, in praise of precisely the most vicious master of that school--giulio romano; but the modern poet, living much in italy, and quit of the renaissance influence, is able fully to enter into the italian feeling, and to see the evil of the renaissance tendency, not because he is greater than shakespere, but because he is in another element, and has _seen_ other things. i miss fragments here and there not needed for my purpose in the passage quoted, without putting asterisks, for i weaken the poem enough by the omissions, without spoiling it also by breaks. "_the bishop orders his tomb in st. praxed's church._ "as here i lie in this state chamber, dying by degrees, hours, and long hours, in the dead night, i ask, do i live--am i dead? peace, peace, seems all; st. praxed's ever was the church for peace. and so, about this tomb of mine. i fought with tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know; old gandolf[ ] cozened me, despite my care. shrewd was that snatch from out the corner south he graced his carrion with. yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence one sees the pulpit o' the epistle side, and somewhat of the choir, those silent seats; and up into the aery dome where live the angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk. and i shall fill my slab of basalt there, and 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, with those nine columns round me, two and two, the odd one at my feet, where anselm[ ] stands; peach-blossom marble all. swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: man goeth to the grave, and where is he? did i say basalt for my slab, sons? black-- 'twas ever antique-black[ ] i meant! how else shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? the bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, those pans and nymphs ye wot of, and perchance some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, the saviour at his sermon on the mount, st. praxed in a glory, and one pan, and moses with the tables ... but i know ye mark me not! what do they whisper thee, child of my bowels, anselm? ah, ye hope to revel down my villas while i gasp, bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine, which gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then! there's plenty jasper somewhere in the world-- and have i not st. praxed's ear to pray horses for ye, and brown greek manuscripts. that's if ye carve my epitaph aright, choice latin, picked phrase, tully's every word, no gaudy ware like gandolf's second line-- tully, my masters? ulpian serves _his_ need." § . i know no other piece of modern english, prose or poetry, in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the renaissance spirit,--its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good latin. it is nearly all that i said of the central renaissance in thirty pages of the "stones of venice" put into as many lines, browning's being also the antecedent work. the worst of it is that this kind of concentrated writing needs so much _solution_ before the reader can fairly get the good of it, that people's patience fails them, and they give the thing up as insoluble; though, truly, it ought to be to the current of common thought like saladin's talisman, dipped in clear water, not soluble altogether, but making the element medicinal. § . it is interesting, by the way, with respect to this love of stones in the italian mind, to consider the difference necessitated in the english temper merely by the general domestic use of wood instead of marble. in that old shakesperian england, men must have rendered a grateful homage to their oak forests, in the sense of all that they owed to their goodly timbers in the wainscot and furniture of the rooms they loved best, when the blue of the frosty midnight was contrasted, in the dark diamonds of the lattice, with the glowing brown of the warm, fire-lighted, crimson-tapestried walls. not less would an italian look with a grateful regard on the hill summits, to which he owed, in the scorching of his summer noonday, escape into the marble corridor or crypt palpitating only with cold and smooth variegation of the unfevered mountain veins. in some sort, as, both in our stubbornness and our comfort, we not unfitly describe ourselves typically as hearts of oak, the italians might in their strange and variegated mingling of passion, like purple color, with a cruel sternness, like white rock, truly describe themselves as hearts of stone. § . into this feeling about marble in domestic use, shakespere, having seen it even in northern luxury, could partly enter, and marks it in several passages of his italian plays. but if the reader still doubts his limitation to his own experience in all subjects of imagination, let him consider how the removal from mountain influence in his youth, so necessary for the perfection of his lower human sympathy, prevented him from ever rendering with any force the feelings of the mountain anchorite, or indicating in any of his monks the deep spirit of monasticism. worldly cardinals or nuncios he can fathom to the uttermost; but where, in all his thoughts, do we find st. francis, or abbot samson? the "friar" of shakespere's plays is almost the only stage conventionalism which he admitted; generally nothing more than a weak old man who lives in a cell, and has a rope about his waist. § . while, finally, in such slight allusions as he makes to mountain scenery itself, it is very curious to observe the accurate limitation of his sympathies to such things as he had known in his youth; and his entire preference of human interest, and of courtly and kingly dignities to the nobleness of the hills. this is most marked in cymbeline, where the term "mountaineer" is, as with dante, always one of reproach; and the noble birth of arviragus and guiderius is shown by their holding their mountain cave as "a cell of ignorance; travelling abed. a prison for a debtor;" and themselves, educated among hills, as in all things contemptible: "we are beastly; subtle as the fox, for prey; like warlike as the wolf, for what we eat: our valor is to chase what flies; our cage we make our choir, as doth the prisoned bird." a few phrases occur here and there which might justify the supposition that he had seen high mountains, but never implying awe or admiration. thus demetrius: "these things seem _small_ and _indistinguishable_, _like far-off mountains, turned into clouds_." "taurus snow," and the "frosty caucasus," are used merely as types of purity or cold; and though the avalanche is once spoken of as an image of power, it is with instantly following depreciation: "rush on his host, as doth the melted snow upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat the alps doth spit and void his rheum upon." § . there was only one thing belonging to hills that shakespere seemed to feel as noble--the pine tree, and that was because he had seen it in warwickshire, clumps of pine occasionally rising on little sandstone mounds, as at the place of execution of piers gaveston, above the lowland woods. he touches on this tree fondly again and again. "as rough, their royal blood enchafed, as the rud'st wind, that by his top doth take the mountain pine, and make him stoop to the vale." "the strong-based promontory have i made shake, and by the spurs plucked up the pine and cedar." where note his observance of the peculiar horizontal roots of the pine, spurred as it is by them like the claw of a bird, and partly propped, as the aiguilles by those rock promontories at their bases which i have always called their spurs, this observance of the pine's strength and animal-like grasp being the chief reason for his choosing it, above all other trees, for ariel's prison. again: "you may as well forbid the mountain pines to wag their high tops, and to make no noise when they are fretted with the gusts of heaven." and yet again: "but when, from under this terrestrial ball, he fires the proud tops of the eastern pines." we may judge, by the impression which this single feature of hill scenery seems to have made on shakespere's mind, because he had seen it in his youth, how his whole temper would have been changed if he had lived in a more sublime country, and how essential it was to his power of contemplation of mankind that he should be removed from the sterner influences of nature. for the rest, so far as shakespere's work has imperfections of any kind,--the trivialness of many of his adopted plots, for instance, and the comparative rarity with which he admits the ideal of an enthusiastic virtue arising out of principle; virtue being with him for the most part founded simply on the affections joined with inherent purity in his women or on mere manly pride and honor in his men;[ ]--in a word, whatever difference, involving inferiority, there exists between him and dante, in his conceptions of the relation between this world and the next, we may partly trace as we did the difference between bacon and pascal, to the less noble character of the scenes around him in his youth; and admit that, though it was necessary for his special work that he should be put, as it were, on a level with his race, on those plains of stratford, we should see in this a proof, instead of a negation, of the mountain power over human intellect. for breadth and perfectness of condescending sight, the shakesperian mind stands alone; but in _ascending_ sight it is limited. the breadth of grasp is innate; the stoop and slightness of it was given by the circumstances of scene; and the difference between those careless masques of heathen gods, or unbelieved though mightily conceived visions of fairy, witch, or risen spirit, and the earnest faith of dante's vision of paradise, is the true measure of the difference in influence between the willowy banks of avon, and the purple hills of arno. § . our third inquiry, into the influence of mountains on domestic and military character, was, we said, to be deferred; for this reason, that it is too much involved with the consideration of the influence of simple rural life in unmountainous districts, to be entered upon with advantage until we have examined the general beauty of vegetation, whether lowland or mountainous. i hope to pursue this inquiry, therefore, at the close of the next volume; only desiring, in the meantime, to bring one or two points connected with it under the consideration of our english travellers. § . for, it will be remembered, we first entered on this subject in order to obtain some data as to the possibility of a practical ideal in swiss life, correspondent, in some measure, to the poetical ideal of the same, which so largely entertains the european public. of which possibility, i do not think, after what we have even already seen of the true effect of mountains on the human mind, there is any reason to doubt, even if that ideal had not been presented to us already in some measure, in the older life of the swiss republics. but of its possibility, _under present circumstances_, there is, i grieve to say, the deepest reason to doubt; and that the more, because the question is not whether the mountaineer can be raised into a happier life by the help of the active nations of the plains; but whether he can yet be protected from the infection of the folly and vanity of those nations. i urged, in the preceding chapter, some consideration of what might be accomplished, if we chose to devote to the help what we now devote to the mockery of the swiss. but i would that the enlightened population of paris and london were content with doing nothing;--that they were satisfied with expenditure upon their idle pleasures, in their idle way; and would leave the swiss to their own mountain gloom of unadvancing independence. i believe that every franc now spent by travellers among the alps tends more or less to the undermining of whatever special greatness there is in the swiss character; and the persons i met in switzerland, whose position and modes of life rendered them best able to give me true information respecting the present state of their country, among many causes of national deterioration, spoke with chief fear of the influx of english wealth, gradually connecting all industry with the wants and ways of strangers, and inviting all idleness to depend upon their casual help; thus gradually resolving the ancient consistency and pastoral simplicity of the mountain life into the two irregular trades of innkeeper[ ] and mendicant. § . i could say much on this subject if i had any hope of doing good by saying anything. but i have none. the influx of foreigners into switzerland must necessarily be greater every year, and the greater it is, the larger, in the crowd, will be the majority of persons whose objects in travelling will be, first, to get as fast as possible from place to place, and, secondly, at every place where they arrive, to obtain the kind of accommodation and amusement to which they are accustomed in paris, london, brighton, or baden. railroads are already projected round the head of the lake of geneva, and through the town of fribourg; the head of the lake of geneva being precisely and accurately the one spot of europe whose character, and influence on human mind, are special; and unreplaceable if destroyed, no other spot resembling, or being in any wise comparable to it, in its peculiar way: while the town of fribourg is in like manner the only mediæval mountain town of importance left to us; inspruck and such others being wholly modern, while fribourg yet retains much of the aspect it had in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. the valley of chamouni, another spot also unique in its way, is rapidly being turned into a kind of cremorne gardens; and i can see, within the perspective of but few years, the town of lucerne consisting of a row of symmetrical hotels round the foot of the lake, its old bridges destroyed, an iron one built over the reuss, and an acacia promenade carried along the lake-shore, with a german band playing under a chinese temple at the end of it, and the enlightened travellers, representatives of european civilization, performing before the alps, in each afternoon summer sunlight, in their modern manner, the dance of death. § . all this is inevitable; and it has its good as well as its evil side. i can imagine the zealous modernist replying to me that when all this is happily accomplished, my melancholy peasants of the valley of trient will be turned into thriving shopkeepers, the desolate streets of sion into glittering thoroughfares, and the marshes of the valais into prosperous market-gardens. i hope so; and indeed am striving every day to conceive more accurately, and regulate all my efforts by the expectation of, the state of society, not now, i suppose, much more than twenty years in advance of us, when europe, having satisfactorily effaced all memorials of the past, and reduced itself to the likeness of america, or of any other new country (only with less room for exertion), shall begin to consider what is next to be done, and to what newness of arts and interests may best be devoted the wealth of its marts, and the strength of its multitudes. which anticipations and estimates, however, i have never been able, as yet, to carry out with any clearness, being always arrested by the confused notion of a necessity for solitude, disdain of buying and selling, and other elements of that old mediæval and mountain gloom, as in some way connected with the efforts of nearly all men who have either seen far into the destiny, or been much helpful to the souls, of their race. and the grounds of this feeling, whether right or wrong, i hope to analyze more fully in the next volume; only noting, finally, in this, one or two points for the consideration of those among us with whom it may sometimes become a question, whether they will help forward, or not, the turning of a sweet mountain valley into an abyss of factory-stench and toil, or the carrying of a line of traffic through some green place of shepherd solitude. § . for, if there be any truth in the impression which i have always felt, and just now endeavored to enforce, that the mountains of the earth are its natural cathedrals, or natural altars, overlaid with gold, and bright with broidered work of flowers, and with their clouds resting on them as the smoke of a continual sacrifice, it may surely be a question with some of us, whether the tables of the moneychanger, however fit and commendable they may be as furniture in other places, are precisely the thing which it is the whole duty of man to get well set up in the mountain temple. § . and perhaps it may help to the better determination of this question, if we endeavor, for a few patient moments, to bear with that weakness of our forefathers in feeling an awe for the hills; and, divesting ourselves, as far as may be, of our modern experimental or exploring activity, and habit of regarding mountains chiefly as places for gymnastic exercise, try to understand the temper, not indeed altogether exemplary, but yet having certain truths and dignities in it, to which we owe the founding of the benedictine and carthusian cloisters in the thin alpine air. and this monkish temper we may, i suppose, best understand by considering the aspect under which mountains are represented in the monk's book. i found that in my late lectures, at edinburgh, i gave great offence by supposing, or implying, that scriptural expressions could have any force as bearing upon modern practical questions; so that i do not now, nor shall i any more, allude to such expressions as in any wise necessarily bearing on the worldly business of the practical protestant, but only as necessary to be glanced at in order to understand the temper of those old monks, who had the awkward habit of understanding the bible literally; and to get any little good which momentary sympathy with the hearts of a large and earnest class of men may surely bring to us. § . the monkish view of mountains, then, already alluded to,[ ] was derived wholly from that latin vulgate of theirs; and, speaking as a monk, it may perhaps be permitted me to mark the significance of the earliest mention of mountains in the mosaic books; at least, of those in which some divine appointment or command is stated respecting them. they are first brought before us as refuges for god's people from the two judgments of water and fire. the ark _rests_ upon the "mountains of ararat;" and man, having passed through that great baptism unto death, kneels upon the earth first where it is nearest heaven, and mingles with the mountain clouds the smoke of his sacrifice of thanksgiving. again: from the midst of the first judgment by fire, the command of the deity to his servant is, "escape to the mountain;" and the morbid fear of the hills, which fills any human mind after long stay in places of luxury and sin, is strangely marked in lot's complaining reply: "i cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me." the third mention, in way of ordinance, is a far more solemn one: "abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off." "the place," the mountain of myrrh, or of bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all the seed of abraham, far off and near, the inner meaning of promise regarded in that vow: "i will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh mine help." and the fourth is the delivery of the law on sinai. § . it seemed, then, to the monks, that the mountains were appointed by their maker to be to man, refuges from judgment, signs of redemption, and altars of sanctification and obedience; and they saw them afterwards connected, in the manner the most touching and gracious, with the death, after his task had been accomplished, of the first anointed priest; the death, in like manner, of the first inspired lawgiver; and, lastly, with the assumption of his office by the eternal priest, lawgiver, and saviour. observe the connection of these three events. although the _time_ of the deaths of aaron and moses was hastened by god's displeasure, we have not, it seems to me, the slightest warrant for concluding that the _manner_ of their deaths was intended to be grievous or dishonorable to them. far from this: it cannot, i think, be doubted that in the denial of the permission to enter the promised land, the whole punishment of their sin was included; and that as far as regarded the manner of their deaths, it must have been appointed for them by their master in all tenderness and love; and with full purpose of ennobling the close of their service upon the earth. it might have seemed to us more honorable that both should have been permitted to die beneath the shadow of the tabernacle, the congregation of israel watching by their side; and all whom they loved gathered together to receive the last message from the lips of the meek lawgiver, and the last blessing from the prayer of the anointed priest. but it was not thus they were permitted to die. try to realize that going forth of aaron from the midst of the congregation. he who had so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth now to offer up his own spirit. he who had stood, among them, between the dead and the living, and had seen the eyes of all that great multitude turned to him, that by his intercession their breath might yet be drawn a moment more, going forth now to meet the angel of death face to face, and deliver himself into his hand. try if you cannot walk, in thought, with those two brothers, and the son, as they passed the outmost tents of israel, and turned, while yet the dew lay round about the camp, towards the slopes of mount hor; talking together for the last time, as step by step, they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour after hour, beneath the ascending sun, the horizon grew broader as they climbed, and all the folded hills of idumea, one by one subdued, showed amidst their hollows in the haze of noon, the windings of that long desert journey, now at last to close. but who shall enter into the thoughts of the high priest, as his eye followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage; and, through the silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching even to the dim peak of sinai, the whole history of those forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own ministries revealed to him; and that other holy of holies, of which the mountain peaks were the altars, and the mountain clouds the veil, the firmament of his father's dwelling, opened to him still more brightly and infinitely as he drew nearer his death; until at last, on the shadeless summit,--from him on whom sin was to be laid no more--from him, on whose heart the names of sinful nations were to press their graven fire no longer,--the brother and the son took breastplate and ephod, and left him to his rest. § . there is indeed a secretness in this calm faith and deep restraint of sorrow, into which it is difficult for us to enter; but the death of moses himself is more easily to be conceived, and had in it circumstances still more touching, as far as regards the influence of the external scene. for forty years moses had not been alone. the care and burden of all the people, the weight of their woe, and guilt, and death, had been upon him continually. the multitude had been laid upon him as if he had conceived them; their tears had been his meat, night and day, until he had felt as if god had withdrawn his favor from him, and he had prayed that he might be slain, and not see his wretchedness.[ ] and now, at last, the command came, "get thee up into this mountain." the weary hands that had been so long stayed up against the enemies of israel, might lean again upon the shepherd's staff, and fold themselves for the shepherd's prayer--for the shepherd's slumber. not strange to his feet, though forty years unknown, the roughness of the bare mountain-path, as he climbed from ledge to ledge of abarim; not strange to his aged eyes the scattered clusters of the mountain herbage, and the broken shadows of the cliffs, indented far across the silence of uninhabited ravines; scenes such as those among which, with none, as now, beside him but god, he had led his flocks so often; and which he had left, how painfully! taking upon him the appointed power, to make of the fenced city a wilderness, and to fill the desert with songs of deliverance. it was not to embitter the last hours of his life that god restored to him, for a day, the beloved solitudes he had lost; and breathed the peace of the perpetual hills around him, and cast the world in which he had labored and sinned far beneath his feet, in that mist of dying blue;--all sin, all wandering, soon to be forgotten for ever; the dead sea--a type of god's anger understood by him, of all men, most clearly, who had seen the earth open her mouth, and the sea his depth, to overwhelm the companies of those who contended with his master--laid waveless beneath him; and beyond it, the fair hills of judah, and the soft plains and banks of jordan, purple in the evening light as with the blood of redemption, and fading in their distant fulness into mysteries of promise and of love. there, with his unabated strength, his undimmed glance, lying down upon the utmost rocks, with angels waiting near to contend for the spoils of his spirit, he put off his earthly armor. we do deep reverence to his companion prophet, for whom the chariot of fire came down from heaven; but was his death less noble, whom his lord himself buried in the vales of moab, keeping, in the secrets of the eternal counsels, the knowledge of a sepulchre, from which he was to be called, in the fulness of time, to talk with that lord, upon hermon, of the death that he should accomplish at jerusalem? and lastly, let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to the cause of the resurrection of these two prophets. we are all of us too much in the habit of passing it by, as a thing mystical and inconceivable, taking place in the life of christ for some purpose not by us to be understood, or, at the best, merely as a manifestation of his divinity by brightness of heavenly light, and the ministering of the spirits of the dead, intended to strengthen the faith of his three chosen apostles. and in this, as in many other events recorded by the evangelists, we lose half the meaning and evade the practical power upon ourselves, by never accepting in its fulness the idea that our lord was "perfect man," "tempted in all things like as we are." our preachers are continually trying, in all manner of subtle ways, to explain the union of the divinity with the manhood, an explanation which certainly involves first their being able to describe the nature of deity itself, or, in plain words, to comprehend god. they never can explain, in any one particular, the union of the natures; they only succeed in weakening the faith of their hearers as to the entireness of either. the thing they have to do is precisely the contrary of this--to insist upon the _entireness_ of both. we never think of christ enough as god, never enough as man; the instinctive habit of our minds being always to miss of the divinity, and the reasoning and enforced habit to miss of the humanity. we are afraid to harbor in our own hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any thought of our lord, as hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human soul, a human will, and affected by events of human life as a finite creature is; and yet one half of the efficiency of his atonement, and the whole of the efficiency of his example, depend on his having been this to the full. § . consider, therefore, the transfiguration as it relates to the human feelings of our lord. it was the first definite preparation for his death. he had foretold it to his disciples six days before; then takes with him the three chosen ones into "an high mountain apart." from an exceeding high mountain, at the first taking on him the ministry of life, he had beheld, and rejected the kingdoms of the earth, and their glory: now, on a high mountain, he takes upon him the ministry of death. peter and they that were with him, as in gethsemane, were heavy with sleep. christ's work had to be done alone. the tradition is, that the mount of transfiguration was the summit of tabor; but tabor is neither a high mountain, nor was it in any sense a mountain "_apart_;" being in those years both inhabited and fortified. all the immediately preceding ministries of christ had been at cesarea philippi. there is no mention of travel southward in the six days that intervened between the warning given to his disciples, and the going up into the hill. what other hill could it be than the southward slope of that goodly mountain, hermon, which is indeed the centre of all the promised land, from the entering in of hamath unto the river of egypt; the mount of fruitfulness, from which the springs of jordan descended to the valleys of israel. along its mighty forest avenues, until the grass grew fair with the mountain lilies, his feet dashed in the dew of hermon, he must have gone to pray his first recorded prayer about death; and from the steep of it, before he knelt, could see to the south all the dwelling-place of the people that had sat in darkness, and seen the great light, the land of zabulon and of naphtali, galilee of the nations;--could see, even with his human sight, the gleam of that lake by capernaum and chorazin, and many a place loved by him, and vainly ministered to, whose house was now left unto them desolate; and, chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the hills above nazareth, sloping down to his old home: hills on which yet the stones lay loose, that had been taken up to cast at him, when he left them for ever. § . "and as he prayed, two men stood by him." among the many ways in which we miss the help and hold of scripture, none is more subtle than our habit of supposing that, even as man, christ was free from the fear of death. how could he then have been tempted as we are? since among all the trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible than that fear. it had to be borne by him, indeed, in a unity, which we can never comprehend, with the foreknowledge of victory,--as his sorrow for lazarus, with the consciousness of the power to restore him; but it _had_ to be borne, and that in its full earthly terror; and the presence of it is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those two at his side. when, in the desert, he was girding himself for the work of life, angels of life came and ministered unto him; now, in the fair world, when he is girding himself for the work of death, the ministrants come to him from the grave. but from the grave conquered. one, from that tomb under abarim, which his own hand had sealed so long ago; the other from the rest into which he had entered, without seeing corruption. there stood by him moses and elias, and spake of his decease. then, when the prayer is ended, the task accepted, first, since the star paused over him at bethlehem, the full glory falls upon him from heaven, and the testimony is borne to his everlasting sonship and power. "hear ye him." if, in their remembrance of these things, and in their endeavor to follow in the footsteps of their master, religious men of by-gone days, closing themselves in the hill solitudes, forgot sometimes, and sometimes feared, the duties they owed to the active world, we may perhaps pardon them more easily than we ought to pardon ourselves, if we neither seek any influence for good nor submit to it unsought, in scenes to which thus all the men whose writings we receive as inspired, together with their lord, retired whenever they had any task or trial laid upon them needing more than their usual strength of spirit. nor, perhaps, should we have unprofitably entered into the mind of the earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, as we watch the chains of the snowy mountains rise on the horizon, we should sometimes admit the memory of the hour in which their creator, among their solitudes, entered on his travail for the salvation of our race; and indulge the dream, that as the flaming and trembling mountains of the earth seem to be the monuments of the manifesting of his terror on sinai,--these pure and white hills, near to the heaven, and sources of all good to the earth, are the appointed memorials of that light of his mercy, that fell, snow-like, on the mount of transfiguration. footnotes [ ] in tracing the _whole_ of the deep enjoyment to mountain association, i of course except whatever feelings are connected with the observance of rural life, or with that of architecture. none of these feelings arise out of the landscape, properly so-called: the pleasure with which we see a peasant's garden fairly kept, or a ploughman doing his work well, or a group of children playing at a cottage door, being wholly separate from that which we find in the fields or commons around them; and the beauty of architecture, or the associations connected with it, in like manner often ennobling the most tame scenery;--yet not so but that we may always distinguish between the abstract character of the unassisted landscape, and the charm which it derives from the architecture. much of the majesty of french landscape consists in its grand and grey village churches and turreted farmhouses, not to speak of its cathedrals, castles, and beautifully placed cities. [ ] one of the principal reasons for the false supposition that switzerland is not picturesque, is the error of most sketchers and painters in representing pine forest in middle distance as dark _green_, or grey green, whereas its true color is always purple, at distances of even two or three miles. let any traveller coming down the montanvert look for an aperture, three or four inches wide, between the near pine branches, through which, standing eight or ten feet from it, he can see the opposite forests on the breven or flegère. those forests are not above two or two and a half miles from him; but he will find the aperture is filled by a tint of nearly pure azure or purple, not by green. [ ] the savoyard's name for its flower, "pain du bon dieu," is very beautiful; from, i believe, the supposed resemblance of its white and scattered blossom to the fallen manna. [ ] see reference to his painting of stones in the last note to § of the chapter on imagination penetrative, vol. ii. [ ] in saying this i do not, of course, forget the influence of the sea on the pisans and venetians; but that is a separate subject, and must be examined in the next volume. [ ] "with fairest flowers while summer lasts, and i live here, fidele, i'll sweeten thy sad grave. thou shalt not lack the flower that's like thy face--pale primrose, nor the azured harebell--like thy veins; no, nor the leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, outsweetened not thy breath. the ruddock would with charitable bill bring thee all this; yea, and furred moss besides, when flowers are none, to winter-ground thy corse. _gui._ prithee, have done, and do not play in wench-like words with that which is so serious." imogen herself, afterwards in deeper passion, will give weeds--not flowers--and something more: "and when with wildwood leaves, and weeds, i have strewed his grave, and on it said a century of prayers, such as i can, twice o'er, i'll weep, and sigh, and, leaving so his service, follow you." [ ] if the reader thinks that in henry the fifth's time the elizabethan temper might already have been manifesting itself, let him compare the english herald's speech, act , scene , of king john; and by way of specimen of shakespere's historical care, or regard of mediæval character, the large use of _artillery_ in the previous scene. [ ] the last bishop. [ ] his favorite son; nominally his nephew. [ ] "nero antico" is more familiar to our ears; but browning does right in translating it; as afterwards "cipollino" into "onion-stone." our stupid habit of using foreign words without translation is continually losing us half the force of the foreign language. how many travellers hearing the term "cipollino" recognize the intended sense of a stone splitting into concentric coats, like an onion? [ ] i mean that shakespere almost always implies a total difference in _nature_ between one human being and another; one being from the birth, pure and affectionate, another base and cruel; and he displays each, in its sphere, as having the nature of dove, wolf, or lion, never much implying the government or change of nature by any external principle. there can be no question that in the main he is right in this view of human nature; still, the other form of virtue does exist occasionally, and was never, as far as i recollect, taken much note of by him. and with this stern view of humanity, shakespere joined a sorrowful view of fate, closely resembling that of the ancients. he is distinguished from dante eminently by his always dwelling on last causes instead of first causes. dante invariably points to the moment of the soul's choice which fixed its fate, to the instant of the day when it read no farther, or determined to give bad advice about penestrino. but shakespere always leans on the force of fate, as it urges the final evil; and dwells with infinite bitterness on the power of the wicked, and the infinitude of result dependent seemingly on little things. a fool brings the last piece of news from verona, and the dearest lives of its noble houses are lost; they might have been saved if the sacristan had not stumbled as he walked. othello mislays his handkerchief, and there remains nothing for him but death. hamlet gets hold of the wrong foil, and the rest is silence. edmund's runner is a moment too late at the prison, and the feather will not move at cordelia's lips. salisbury a moment too late at the tower, and arthur lies on the stones dead. goneril and iago have on the whole, in this world, shakespere sees, much of their own way, though they come to a bad end. it is a pin that death pierces the king's fortress wall with; and carelessness and folly sit sceptred and dreadful, side by side with the pin-armed skeleton. [ ] not the old hospitable innkeeper, who honored his guests and was honored by them, than whom i do not know a more useful or worthy character; but the modern innkeeper, proprietor of a building in the shape of a factory, making up three hundred beds; who necessarily regards his guests in the light of numbers , , - , and is too often felt or apprehended by them only as a presiding influence of extortion. [ ] vol iii. chap. xiv. § . [ ] numbers, xi. , . appendix. i. modern grotesque. the reader may perhaps be somewhat confused by the different tone with which, in various passages of these volumes, i have spoken of the dignity of expression. he must remember that there are three distinct schools of expression, and that it is impossible, on every occasion when the term is used, to repeat the definition of the three, and distinguish the school spoken of. there is, first, the great expressional school, consisting of the sincerely thoughtful and affectionate painters of early times, masters of their art, as far as it was known in their days. orcagna, john bellini, perugino, and angelico, are its leading masters. all the men who compose it are, without exception, _colorists_. the modern pre-raphaelites belong to it. secondly, the pseudo-expressional school, wholly of modern development, consisting of men who have never mastered their art, and are probably incapable of mastering it, but who hope to substitute sentiment for good painting. it is eminently characterized by its contempt of color, and may be most definitely distinguished as the school of clay. thirdly, the grotesque expressional school, consisting of men who, having peculiar powers of observation for the stronger signs of character in anything, and sincerely delighting in them, lose sight of the associated refinements or beauties. this school is apt, more or less, to catch at faults or strangenesses; and, associating its powers of observation with wit or malice, produces the wild, gay, or satirical grotesque in early sculpture, and in modern times, our rich and various popular caricature. i took no note of this branch of art in the chapter on the grotesque ideal; partly because i did not wish to disturb the reader's mind in our examination of the great imaginative grotesque, and also because i did not feel able to give a distinct account of this branch, having never thoroughly considered the powers of eye and hand involved in its finer examples. but assuredly men of strong intellect and fine sense are found among the caricaturists, and it is to them that i allude in saying that the most subtle expression is often attained by "slight studies;" while it is of the pseudo-expressionalist, or "high art" school that i am speaking, when i say that expression may "sometimes be elaborated by the toil of the dull;" in neither case meaning to depreciate the work, wholly different in every way, of the great expressional schools. i regret that i have not been able, as yet, to examine with care the powers of mind involved in modern caricature. they are, however, always partial and imperfect; for the very habit of looking for the leading lines by the smallest possible number of which the expression may be attained, warps the power of _general_ attention, and blunts the perception of the delicacies of the entire form and color. not that caricature, or exaggeration of points of character, may not be occasionally indulged in by the greatest men--as constantly by leonardo; but then it will be found that the caricature consists, not in imperfect or violent _drawing_, but in delicate and perfect drawing of strange and exaggerated forms quaintly combined: and even thus, i believe, the habit of looking for such conditions will be found injurious; i strongly suspect its operation on leonardo to have been the increase of his non-natural tendencies in his higher works. a certain acknowledgment of the ludicrous element is admitted in corners of the pictures of veronese--in dwarfs or monkeys; but it is _never_ caricatured or exaggerated. tintoret and titian hardly admit the element at all. they admit the noble grotesque to the full, in all its quaintness, brilliancy, and awe; but never any form of it depending on exaggeration, partiality, or fallacy.[ ] i believe, therefore, whatever wit, delicate appreciation of ordinary character, or other intellectual power may belong to the modern masters of caricature, their method of study for ever incapacitates them from passing beyond a certain point, and either reaching any of the perfect forms of art themselves, or understanding them in others. generally speaking, their power is limited to the use of the pen or pencil--they cannot touch color without discomfiture; and even those whose work is of higher aim, and wrought habitually in color, are prevented by their pursuit of _piquant_ expression from understanding noble expression. leslie furnishes several curious examples of this defect of perception in his late work on art;--talking, for instance, of the "insipid faces of francia." on the other hand, all the real masters of caricature deserve honor in this respect, that their gift is peculiarly their own--innate and incommunicable. no teaching, no hard study, will ever enable other people to equal, in their several ways, the works of leech or cruikshank; whereas, the power of pure drawing is communicable, within certain limits, to every one who has good sight and industry. i do not, indeed, know how far, by devoting the attention to points of character, caricaturist skill may be laboriously attained; but certainly the power is, in the masters of the school, innate from their childhood. farther. it is evident that many subjects of thought may be dealt with by this kind of art which are inapproachable by any other, and that its influence over the popular mind must always be great; hence it may often happen that men of strong purpose may rather express themselves in this way (and continue to make such expression a matter of earnest study), than turn to any less influential, though more dignified, or even more intrinsically meritorious, branch of art. and when the powers of quaint fancy are associated (as is frequently the case) with stern understanding of the nature of evil, and tender human sympathy, there results a bitter, or pathetic spirit of grotesque, to which mankind at the present day owe more thorough moral teaching than to any branch of art whatsoever. in poetry, the temper is seen, in perfect manifestation, in the works of thomas hood; in art, it is found both in various works of the germans,--their finest, and their least thought of; and more or less in the works of george cruikshank,[ ] and in many of the illustrations of our popular journals. on the whole, the most impressive examples of it, in poetry and in art, which i remember, are the song of the shirt, and the woodcuts of alfred rethel, before spoken of. a correspondent, though coarser work appeared some little time back in punch, namely, the "general février turned traitor." the reception of the woodcut last named was in several respects a curious test of modern feeling. for the sake of the general reader, it may be well to state the occasion and character of it. it will be remembered by all that early in the winter of - , so fatal by its inclemency, and by our own improvidence, to our army in the crimea, the late emperor of russia said, or was reported to have said, that "his best commanders, general january and general february, were not yet come." the word, if ever spoken, was at once base, cruel, and blasphemous; base, in precisely reversing the temper of all true soldiers, so nobly instanced by the son of saladin, when he sent, at the very instant of the discomfiture of his own army, two horses to coeur de lion, whose horse had been killed under him in the mêlée; cruel, inasmuch as he ought not to have exulted in the thought of the death, by slow suffering, of brave men; blasphemous, inasmuch as it contained an appeal to heaven of which he knew the hypocrisy. he himself died in february; and the woodcut of which i speak represented a skeleton in soldier's armor, entering his chamber, the driven sleet white on its cloak and crest; laying its hand on his heart as he lay dead. there were some points to be regretted in the execution of the design, but the thought was a grand one; the memory of the word spoken, and of its answer, could hardly in any more impressive way have been recorded for the people; and i believe that to all persons accustomed to the earnest forms of art, it contained a profound and touching lesson. the notable thing was, however, that it offended all persons _not_ in earnest, and was loudly cried out against by the polite formalism of society. this fate is, i believe, the almost inevitable one of thoroughly genuine work, in these days, whether poetry or painting; but what added to the singularity in this ease was that _coarse_ heartlessness was even more offended than polite heartlessness. thus, blackwood's magazine,--which from the time that, with grace, judgment, and tenderness peculiarly its own, it bid the dying keats "back to his gallipots,"[ ] to that in which it partly arrested the last efforts, and shortened the life of turner, had with an infallible instinct for the wrong, given what pain it could, and withered what strength it could, in every great mind that was in anywise within its reach; and had made itself, to the utmost of its power, frost and disease of the heart to the most noble spirits of england,--took upon itself to be generously offended at this triumphing over the death of england's enemy, because, "by proving that he is obliged to undergo the common lot of all, his brotherhood is at once reasserted."[ ] he was not, then, a brother while he was alive? or is our brother's blood in general not to be acknowledged by us till it rushes up against us from the ground? i know that this is a common creed, whether a peculiarly wise or christian one may be doubted. it may not, indeed, be well to triumph over the dead, but perhaps it is less well that the world so often tries to triumph over the living. and as for exultation over a fallen foe (though there was _none_ in the mind of the man who drew that monarch dead), it may be remembered that there have been worthy persons, before now, guilty of this great wickedness,--nay, who have even fitted the words of their exultation to timbrels, and gone forth to sing them in dances. there have even been those--women, too,--who could make a mock at the agony of a mother weeping over her lost son, when that son had been the enemy of their country; and their mock has been preserved, as worthy to be read by human eyes. "the mother of sisera looked out at a window. 'hath he not sped?'" i do not say this was right, still less that it was wrong; but only that it would be well for us if we could quit our habit of thinking that what we say of the dead is of more weight than what we say of the living. the dead either know nothing, or know enough to despise both us and our insults, or adulation. "well, but," it is answered, "there will always be this weakness in our human nature; we shall for ever, in spite of reason, take pleasure in doing funereal honor to the corpse, and writing sacredness to memory upon marble." then, if you are to do this,--if you are to put off your kindness until death,--why not, in god's name, put off also your enmity? and if you choose to write your lingering affections upon stones, wreak also your delayed anger upon clay. this would be just, and, in the last case, little as you think it, generous. the true baseness is in the bitter reverse--the strange iniquity of our folly. is a man to be praised, honored, pleaded for? it might do harm to praise or plead for him while he lived. wait till he is dead. is he to be maligned, dishonored, and discomforted? see that you do it while he is alive. it would be too ungenerous to slander him when he could feel malice no more; too contemptible to try to hurt him when he was past anguish. make yourselves busy, ye unjust, ye lying, ye hungry for pain! death is near. this is your hour, and the power of darkness. wait, ye just, ye merciful, ye faithful in love! wait but for a little while, for this is not your rest. "well, but," it is still answered, "is it not, indeed, ungenerous to speak ill of the dead, since they cannot defend themselves?" why should they? if you speak ill of them falsely, it concerns you, not them. those lies of thine will "hurt a man as thou art," assuredly they will hurt thyself; but that clay, or the delivered soul of it, in no wise. ajacean shield, seven-folded, never stayed lance-thrust as that turf will, with daisies pied. what you say of those quiet ones is wholly and utterly the world's affair and yours. the lie will, indeed, cost its proper price and work its appointed work; you may ruin living myriads by it,--you may stop the progress of centuries by it,--you may have to pay your own soul for it,--but as for ruffling one corner of the folded shroud by it, think it not. the dead have none to defend them! nay, they have two defenders, strong enough for the need--god, and the worm. ii. rock cleavage. i am well aware how insufficient, and, in some measure, how disputable, the account given in the preceding chapters of the cleavages of the slaty crystallines must appear to geologists. but i had several reasons, good or bad as they may be, for treating the subject in such a manner. the first was, that considering the science of the artist as eminently the science of _aspects_ (see vol. iii. chap. xvii. § ), i kept myself in all my investigations of natural objects as much as possible in the state of an uninformed spectator of the outside of things, receiving simply what impressions the external phenomena first induce. for the natural tendency of accurate science is to make the possessor of it look for, and eminently see, the things connected with his special pieces of knowledge; and as all accurate science must be sternly limited, his sight of nature gets limited accordingly. i observed that all our young figure-painters were rendered, to all intents and purposes, _blind_ by their knowledge of anatomy. they saw only certain muscles and bones, of which they had learned the positions by rote, but could not, on account of the very prominence in their minds of these bits of fragmentary knowledge, see the real movement, color, rounding, or any other subtle quality of the human form. and i was quite sure that if i examined the mountain anatomy scientifically, i should go wrong, in like manner, touching the external aspects. therefore in beginning the inquiries of which the results are given in the preceding pages, i closed all geological books, and set myself, as far as i could, to see the alps in a simple, thoughtless, and untheorizing manner; but to _see_ them, if it might be, thoroughly. if i am wrong in any of the statements made after this kind of examination, the very fact of this error is an interesting one, as showing the kind of deception which the external aspects of hills are calculated to induce in an unprejudiced observer; but, whether wrong or right, i believe the results i have given are those which naturally would strike an artist, and _ought_ to strike him, just as the apparently domical form of the sky, and radiation of the sun's light, ought to be marked by him as pictorial phenomena, though the sky is not domical, and though the radiation of sunbeams is a perspective deception. there are, however, one or two points on which my opinions might seem more adverse to the usual positions of geologists than they really are, owing to my having left out many _qualifying_ statements for fear of confusing the reader. these i must here briefly touch upon. and, first, i know that i shall be questioned for not having sufficiently dwelt upon slaty cleavages running transversely across series of beds, and for generally speaking as if the slaty crystalline rocks were merely dried beds of micaceous sand, in which the flakes of mica naturally lay parallel with the beds, or only at such an angle to them as is constantly assumed by particles of drift. now the reason of this is simply that my own mountain experience has led me _always_ among rocks which induced such an impression; that, in general, artists seeking for the noblest hill scenery, will also get among such rocks, and that therefore i judged it best to explain their structure completely, merely alluding (in chap. x. § ) to the curious results of cross cleavage among the softer slates, and leaving the reader to pursue the inquiry, if he cared to do so; although, in reality, it matters very little to the artist whether the slaty cleavage be across the beds or not, for to him the cleavage itself is always the important matter, and the stratification, if contrary to it, is usually so obscure as to be naturally, and therefore properly, lost sight of. and touching the disputed question whether the micaceous arrangements of metamorphic rocks are the results of subsequent crystallization, or of aqueous deposition, i had no special call to speak: the whole subject appeared to me only more mysterious the more i examined it; but my own impressions were always strongly for the aqueous deposition; nor in such cases as that of the beds of the matterhorn (drawn in plate + +), respecting which, somewhat exceptionally, i have allowed myself to theorize a little, does the matter appear to me disputable. and i was confirmed in this feeling by de saussure; the only writer whose help i did not refuse in the course of these inquiries. _his_ i received for this reason,--all other geological writers whose works i had examined were engaged in the maintenance of some theory or other, and always gathering materials to support it. but i found saussure had gone to the alps as i desired to go myself, only to _look_ at them, and describe them as they were, loving them heartily--loving them, the positive alps, more than himself, or than science, or than any theories of science; and i found his descriptions, therefore, clear, and trustworthy; and that when i had not visited any place myself, saussure's report upon it might always be received without question. not but that saussure himself has a pet theory, like other human beings; only it is quite subordinate to his love of the alps: he is a steady advocate of the aqueous crystallization of rocks, and never loses a fair opportunity of a blow at the huttonians; but his opportunities are always _fair_, his description of what he sees is wholly impartial; it is only when he gets home and arranges his papers that he puts in the little aqueously inclined paragraphs, and never a paragraph without just cause. he may, perhaps, overlook the evidence on the opposite side; but in the alps the igneous alteration of the rocks, and the modes of their upheaval, seem to me subjects of intense difficulty and mystery, and as such saussure always treats them; the evidence for the original _deposition_ by water of the slaty crystallines appears to him, as it does to me, often perfectly distinct. now, saussure's universal principle was exactly the one on which i have founded my account of the slaty crystallines:--"fidèle à mon principle, de ne regarder comme des couches, dans les montagnes schisteuses, que les divisions parallèles aux feuillets des schistes dont elles sont composées."--_voyages_, § . i know that this is an arbitrary, and in some cases an assuredly false, principle; but the assumption of it by de saussure proves all that i want to prove,--namely, that the beds of the slaty crystallines are in the alps in so large a plurality of instances correspondent in direction to their folia, as to induce even a cautious reasoner to assume such correspondence to be universal. the next point, however, on which i shall be opposed, is one on which i speak with far less confidence, for in this saussure himself is against me,--namely, the parallelism of the beds sloping under the mont blanc. saussure states twice, §§ , , that they are arranged in the form of a fan. i can only repeat that every measurement and every drawing i made in chamouni led me to the conclusions stated in the text, and so i leave the subject to better investigators; this one fact being indisputable, and the only one on which for my purpose it is necessary to insist, that, whether in chamouni the beds be radiant or not, to an artist's eye they are usually parallel; and throughout the alps no phenomenon is more constant than the rounding of surfaces across the extremities of beds sloping outwards, as seen in my plates + +, + +, and + +, and this especially in the most majestic mountain masses. compare de saussure of the grimsel, § : "toujours il est bien remarquable que ces feuillets, verticaux au sommet, s'inclinent ensuite, comme à chamouni, contre le dehors de la montagne:" and again of the granite at guttannen, § : "ces couches ne sont pas tout-a-fait verticales; elles s'appuyent un peu contre le nord-est, ou, comme à chamouni, contre le dehors de la montagne." again, of the "quartz micacé" of zumloch, § : "ces rochers sont en couches à peu près verticales, dont les plans courent du nord-est au sud-ouest, en s'appuyant, _suivant l'usage_, contre l'extérieur de la montagne, ou contre la vallée." again, on the pass of the griés, § : "le rocher présente des couches d'un schiste micacé rayé comme une étoffe; comme de l'autre côté ils surplombent vers le dehors de la montagne." without referring to other passages i think saussure's simple words, "suivant l'usage," are enough to justify my statement in chap. xiv. § ; only the reader must of course always remember that every conceivable position of beds takes place in the alps, and all i mean to assert generally is, that where the masses are most enormous and impressive, and formed of slaty crystalline rocks, there the run of the beds up, as it were, from within the mountain to its surface, will, in all probability, become a notable feature in the scene as regarded by an artist. one somewhat unusual form assumed by horizontal beds of slaty crystallines, or of granite, is described by saussure with unusual admiration; and the passage is worth extracting, as bearing on the terraced ideal of rocks in the middle ages. the scene is in the val formazza. "indépendamment de l'intérêt que ces couches présentent au géologiste sous un nombre de rapports qu'il seroit trop long et peut-être inutile de détailler, elles présentent même pour le peintre, un superbe tableau. je n'ai jamais vu de plus beaux rochers et distribués en plus grandes masses; ici, blancs; là, noircis par les lichens; là, peints de ces belles couleurs variées, que nous admirions au grimsel, et entremêlés d'arbres, dont les uns couronnent le faîte de la montagne, et d'autres sont inégalement jetés sur les corniches qui en séparent les couches. vers le bas de la montagne l'oeil se repose sur de beaux vergers, dans des prairies dont le terrein est inégal et varié, et sur de magnifiques chàtaigniers, dont les branches étendues ombragent les rochers contre lesquels ils croissent. en général, ces granits en couches horizontals redent ce pays charmant; car, quoiqu'il y ait, comme je l'ai dit, des couches qui forment des saillies, cependant elles sont pour l'ordinaire arrangées en gradins, ou en grandes assises posées en reculement les unes derrière les autres, et les bords de ces gradins sont couverts de la plus belle verdure, et d'arbres distribués de la manière la plus pittoresque. on voit è mme des montagnes très-élevées, qui out la forme de pain de sucre, et qui sont entourées et couronnées jusqu'à leur sommet, de guirlandes d'arbres assis sur les intervalles des couches, et qui forment l'effet du monde le plus singulier."-_voyages_, § . another statement, which i made generally, referring, for those qualifications which it is so difficult to give without confusing the reader, to this appendix, was that of the usually greater hardness of the tops of mountains as compared with their flanks. my own experience among the alps has furnished me with few exceptions to this law; but there is a very interesting one, according to saussure, in the range of the furca del bosco. (voyages, § .) lastly, at page of this volume, i have alluded to the various cleavages of the aiguilles, out of which one only has been explained and illustrated. i had not intended to treat the subject so partially; and had actually prepared a long chapter, explaining the relations of five different and important systems of cleavage in the chamouni aiguilles. when it was written, however, i found it looked so repulsive to readers in general, and proved so little that was of interest even to readers in particular, that i cancelled it, leaving only the account of what i might, perhaps, not unjustifiably (from the first representation of it in the liber studiorum) call turner's cleavage. the following passage, which was the introduction to the chapter, may serve to show that i have not ignored the others, though i found, after long examination, that turner's was the principal one:-- "one of the principal distinctions between these crystalline masses and stratified rocks, with respect to their outwardly apparent structure, is the subtle complexity and number of _ranks_ in their crystalline cleavages. the stratified masses have always a simple intelligible organization; their beds lie in one direction, and certain fissures and fractures of those beds lie in other clearly ascertainable directions; seldom more than two or three _distinct_ directions of these fractures being admitted. but if the traveller will set himself deliberately to watch the shadows on the aiguilles of chamouni as the sun moves round them, he will find that nearly every quarter of an hour a new _set_ of cleavages becomes visible, not confused and orderless, but a series of lines inclining in some one definite direction, and that so positively, that if he had only seen the aiguille at that moment, he would assuredly have supposed its internal structure to be altogether regulated by the lines of bed or cleavage then in sight. let him, however, wait for another quarter of an hour, and he will see those lines fade entirely away as the sun rounds them; and another set, perhaps quite adverse to them and assuredly lying in another direction, will as gradually become visible, to die away in their turn, and be succeeded by a third scheme of structure. "these 'dissolving views' of the geology of the aiguilles have often thrown me into despair of ever being able to give any account of their formation; but just in proportion as i became aware of the infinite complexity of their framework, the one great fact rose into more prominent and wonderful relief,--that through this inextricable complexity there was always manifested _some_ authoritative principle. it mattered not at what hour of the day the aiguilles were examined, at that hour they had a system of structure belonging to the moment. no confusion nor anarchy ever appeared amidst their strength, but an ineffable order, only the more perfect because incomprehensible. they differed from lower mountains, not merely in being more compact, but in being more disciplined. "for, observe, the lines which cause these far-away effects of shadow, are not, as often in less noble rocks, caused by real cracks through the body of the mountain; for, were this so, it would follow, from what has just been stated, that these aiguilles were cracked through and through in every direction, and therefore actually weaker, instead of stronger, than other rocks. but the appearance of fracture is entirely external, and the sympathy or parallelism of the lines indicates, not an actual splitting through the rock, but a mere disposition in the rock to split harmoniously when it is compelled to do so. thus, in the shell-like fractures on the flank of the aiguille blaitière, the rock is not actually divided, as it appears to be, into successive hollow plates. go up close to the inner angle between one bed of rock and the next, and the whole mass will be found as firmly united as a piece of glass. there is absolutely no crack between the beds,--no, not so much as would allow the blade of a penknife to enter for a quarter of an inch;[ ] but such a subtle disposition to symmetry of fracture in the heart of the solid rock, that the next thunderbolt which strikes on that edge of it will rend away a shell-shaped fragment or series of fragments; and will either break it so as to continue the line of one of the existing sides, or in some other line parallel to that. and yet this resolvedness to break into shell-shaped fragments running north and south is only characteristic of the rock at this spot, and at certain other spots where similar circumstances have brought out this peculiar humor. forty yards farther on it will be equally determined to break in another direction, and nothing will persuade it to the contrary. forty yards farther it will change its mind again, and face its beds round to another quarter of the compass; and yet all these alternating caprices are each parts of one mighty continuous caprice, which is only masked for a time, as threads of one color are in a patterned stuff by threads of another; and thus from a distance, precisely the same cleavage is seen repeated again and again in different places, forming a systematic structure; while other groups of cleavages will become visible in their turn, either as we change our place of observation, or as the sunlight changes the direction of its fall." one part of these rocks, i think, no geologist interested in this subject should pass without examination; viz., the little spur of blaitière drawn in plate + +, fig. . it is seen, as there shown, from the moraine of the charmoz glacier, its summit bearing s. ° w.; and its cleavage bed leaning to the left or s.e., against the aiguille blaitière. if, however, we go down to the extremity of the rocks themselves, on the right, we shall find that all those thick beams of rock are actually _sawn into vertical timbers_ by other cleavage, sometimes so fine as to look almost slaty, directed straight s.e., against the aiguille, as if, continued, it would saw it through and through; finally, cross the spur and go down to the glacier below, between it and the aiguille du plan, and the bottom of the spur will be found presenting the most splendid mossy surfaces, through which the true gneissitic cleavage is faintly traceable, dipping _at right angles_ to the beds in fig. , or under the aiguille blaitière, thus concurring with the beds of la côte. i forgot to note that the view of this aiguille blaitière, given in plate + +, was taken from the station marked _q_ in the reference figure, p. ; and the sketch of the aiguille du plan at p. , from the station marked _r_ in the same figure, a highly interesting point of observation in many respects; while the course of transition from the protogine into gneiss presents more remarkable phenomena on the descents from that point _r_ to the tapia, t, than at any other easily accessible spot. various interesting descriptions of granite cleavage will be found in de saussure, chiefly in his accounts of the grimsel and st. gothard. the following summary of his observations on their positions of beds ( ), may serve to show the reader how long i should have detained him if i had endeavored to give a description of all the attendant phenomena:-- "il est aussi bien curieux de voir ces gneiss, et ces granits veinés, en couches verticales à guttannen; mélangées d'horizontals et de verticales au lauteraar; toutes verticales au grimsel et au griés; toutes horizontales dans le val formazza, et enfin pour la troisième fois verticales à la sortie des alpes à l'entrée du lac majeur." iii. logical education. in the preface to the third volume i alluded to the conviction, daily gaining ground upon me, of the need of a more accurately logical education of our youth. truly among the most pitiable and practically hurtful weaknesses of the modern english mind, its usual inability to grasp the connection between any two ideas which have elements of opposition in them, as well as of connection, is perhaps the chief. it is shown with singular fatality in the vague efforts made by our divines to meet the objections raised by free-thinkers, bearing on the nature and origin of evil; but there is hardly a sentence written on any matter requiring careful analysis, by writers who have not yet begun to perceive the influence of their own vanity (and there are too many such among divines), which will not involve some half-lamentable, half-ludicrous, logical flaw,--such flaws being the invariable consequence of a man's straining to say anything in a learned instead of an intelligible manner. take a sentence, for example, from j. a. james's "anxious inquirer:"--"it is a great principle that _subjective religion_, _or in other words_, religion _in us_, is produced and sustained by fixing the mind on _objective religion_, _or_ the facts and doctrines of the word of god." cut entirely out the words i have put in italics, and the sentence has a meaning (though not by any means an important one). but by its verbosities it is extended into pure nonsense; for "facts" are neither "objective" nor "subjective"[ ] religion; they are not religion at all. the belief of them, attended with certain feelings, is religion; and it must always be religion "in us," for in whom else should it be (unless in angels; which would not make it less "subjective"). it is just as rational to call doctrines "objective religion," as to call entreaties "objective compassion;" and the only real fact of any notability deducible from the sentence is, that the writer desired earnestly to say something profound, and had nothing profound to say. to this same defect of intellect must, in charity, be attributed many of the wretched cases of special pleading which we continually hear from the pulpit. in the year , i heard, in edinburgh, a sermon from a leading and excellent presbyterian clergyman, on a subject generally grateful to protestant audiences, namely the impropriety and wickedness of fasting. the preacher entirely denied that there was any authority for fasting in the new testament; declared that there were many feasts appointed, but no fasts; insisted with great energy on the words "forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats," &c., as descriptive of romanism, and _never once_, throughout a long sermon, ventured so much as a single syllable that might recall to his audience's recollection the existence of such texts as matthew iv. and vi. , or mark ix. . i have heard many sermons from roman catholic priests, but i never yet heard, in the strongest holds of romanism, any so monstrous an instance of special pleading; in fact, it never could have occurred in a sermon by any respectable roman catholic divine; for the romanists are trained to argument from their youth, and are always to some extent plausible. it is of course impossible to determine, in such cases, how far the preacher, having conscientiously made up his mind on the subject by foregoing thought, and honestly desiring to impress his conclusion on his congregation, may think his object will be best, and even justifiably attained, by insisting on all that is in favor of his position, and trusting to the weak heads of his hearers not to find out the arguments for the contrary; fearing that if he stated, in any proportionate measure, the considerations on the other side, he might not be able, in the time allotted to him, to bring out his conclusion fairly. this, though i hold it an entirely false view, is nevertheless a comprehensible and pardonable one, especially in a man familiar with the reasoning capacities of the public; though those capacities themselves owe half their shortcomings to being so unworthily treated. but, on the whole, and looking broadly at the way the speakers and teachers of the nation set about their business, there is an almost fathomless failure in the results, owing to the general admission of special pleading as an _art to be taught_ to youth. the main thing which we ought to teach our youth is to _see_ something,--all that the eyes which god has given them are capable of seeing. the sum of what we _do_ teach them is to _say_ something. as far as i have experience of instruction, no man ever dreams of teaching a boy to get to the root of a matter; to think it out; to get quit of passion and desire in the process of thinking; or to fear no face of man in plainly asserting the ascertained result. but to _say_ anything in a glib and graceful manner,--to give an epigrammatic turn to nothing,--to quench the dim perceptions of a feeble adversary, and parry cunningly the home thrusts of a strong one,--to invent blanknesses in speech for breathing time, and slipperinesses in speech for hiding time,--to polish malice to the deadliest edge, shape profession to the seemliest shadow, and mask self-interest under the fairest pretext,--all these skills we teach definitely, as the main arts of business and life. there is a strange significance in the admission of aristotle's rhetoric at our universities as a class-book. cheating at cards is a base profession enough, but truly it would be wiser to print a code of gambler's legerdemain, and give _that_ for a class-book, than to make the legerdemain of human speech, and the clever shuffling of the black spots in the human heart, the first study of our politic youth. again, the ethics of aristotle, though containing some shrewd talk, interesting for an _old_ reader, are yet so absurdly illogical and sophistical, that if a young man has once read them with any faith, it must take years before he recovers from the induced confusions of thought and false habits of argument. if there were the slightest dexterity or ingenuity in maintaining the false theory, there might be some excuse for retaining the ethics as a school-book, provided only the tutor were careful to point out, on first opening it, that the christian virtues,--namely, to love with all the heart, soul, and strength; to fight, not as one that beateth the air; and to do with _might_ whatsoever the hand findeth to do,--could not in anywise be defined as "habits of choice in moderation." but the aristotelian quibbles are so shallow, that i look upon the retention of the book as a confession by our universities that they consider practice in shallow quibbling one of the essential disciplines of youth. take, for instance, the distinction made between "envy" and "rejoicing at evil" ([greek: phthonos] and [greek: epichairekakia]), in the second book of the ethics, viz., that envy is grieved when any one meets with good-fortune; but "the rejoicer at evil so far misses of grieving, as even to rejoice" (the distinction between the _good_ and _evil_, as subjects of the emotion, being thus omitted, and merely the verbal opposition of grief and joy caught at); and conceive the result, in the minds of most youths, of being forced to take tricks of words such as this (and there are too many of them in even the best greek writers) for subjects of daily study and admiration; the theory of the ethics being, besides, so hopelessly untenable, that even quibbling will not always face it out,--nay, will not help it in exactly the first and most important example of virtue which aristotle has to give, and the very one which we might have thought his theory would have fitted most neatly; for defining "temperance" as a mean, and intemperance as one relative extreme, not being able to find an opposite extreme, he escapes with the apology that the kind of person who sins in the other extreme "has no precise name; because, on the whole, he does not exist!" i know well the common censure by which objections to such futilities of so-called education are met, by the men who have been ruined by them,--the common plea that anything does to "exercise the mind upon." it is an utterly false one. the human soul, in youth, is _not_ a machine of which you can polish the cogs with any kelp or brickdust near at hand; and, having got it into working order, and good, empty, and oiled serviceableness, start your immortal locomotive at twenty-five years old or thirty, express from the strait gate, on the narrow road. the whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction, i use the words with their weight in them; intaking of stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes and faiths. there is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies,--not a moment of which, once past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron. take your vase of venice glass out of the furnace, and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover _that_ to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from god's presence, and to bring the heavenly colors back to him--at least in this world. footnotes [ ] compare stones of venice, vol. iii. chap. iii. § . [ ] taken all in all, the works of cruikshank have the most sterling value of any belonging to this class, produced in england. [ ] "the notice in blackwood is still more scurrilous; the circumstance of keats having been brought up a surgeon is the staple of the jokes of the piece. he is told 'it is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet.'"--_milnes' life of keats_, vol. i. p. , and compare pp. , . it may perhaps be said that i attach too much importance to the evil of base criticism; but those who think so have never rightly understood its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of johnson's (idler, no. , april , ): "little does he (who assumes the character of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which they do not understand." and truly, not in this kind only, but in all things whatsoever, there is not, to my mind, a more woful or wonderful matter of thought than the power of a fool. in the world's affairs there is no design so great or good but it will take twenty wise men to help it forward a few inches, and a single fool can stop it; there is no evil so great or so terrible but that, after a multitude of counsellors have taken means to avert it, a single fool will bring it down. pestilence, famine, and the sword, are given into the fool's hand as the arrows into the hand of the giant: and if he were fairly set forth in the right motley, the web of it should be sackcloth and sable; the bells on his cap, passing balls; his badge, a bear robbed of her whelps; and his bauble, a sexton's spade. [ ] by the way, this doubt of the possibility of an emperor's death till he _proves_ it, is a curious fact in the history of scottish metaphysics in the nineteenth century. [ ] the following extract from my diary refers to the only instance in which i remember any appearance of a spring, or welling of water through inner fissures, in the aiguilles. " th august. ascended the moraine till i reached the base of blaitière; the upper part of the moraine excessively loose and edgy; covered with fresh snow: the rocks were wreathed in mist, and a light sleet, composed of small grains of kneaded snow, kept beating in my face; it was bitter cold too, though the thermometer was at °, but the wind was like that of an english december thaw. i got to the base of the aiguille, however, one of the most grand and sweeping bits of granite i have ever seen; a small gurgling streamlet, escaping from a fissure not wide enough to let in my hand, made a strange hollow ringing in the compact rock, and came welling out over its ledges with the sound, and successive wave, of water out of a narrow-necked bottle, covering the rock with ice (which must have been frozen there last night) two inches thick. i levelled the breven top, and found it a little beneath me; the charmoz glacier on the left, sank from the moraine in broken fragments of nevè, and swept back under the dark walls of the charmoz, lost in cloud." [ ] if these two unlucky words get much more hold in the language, we shall soon have our philosophers refusing to call their dinner "dinner," but speaking of it always as their "objective appetite." end of the fourth volume. * * * * * corrections made to the original text. page : 'his insistence upon this' corrected from 'insistance.' page : 'for in utter darkness the distinction is not visible' changed from 'darknes.' page : 'sharks, slugs, bones, fungi, frogs' originally 'fogs.' page : 'sitting about three yards from a bookcase' changed from 'yard.' page : 'we imagine the deity in like manner' originally 'maner.' page : 'whatever their material may be,--tilted slightly up' changed from 'tited.' page : 'action actually taking place' corrected from 'palce.' page : 'which in its beautifully curved outline)' extra ')' removed. page : 'it seems partly to rebuke, and partly to guard'corrected from 'and party.' page : 'partly of their own own gravity' removed duplicate 'own.' page : (footnote [ ]) 'ce n'est pas c'a' changed to 'ce n'est pas ça.' page : 'are distinguished from the work of other painters' from 'distingushd.' page : 'shakespere' changed to 'shakespeare.' page : chapter xix start added ' ' after the §. page : 'its direction is illegitimate' from 'illegitmate.' page : 'celui qui boira' corrected from 'doira.' page : 'all its peculiarities are mannerisms' changed from 'peculiarites.' masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare pietro perugino ( - ) [illustration: plate i.--virgin and child with adoring angels (in the national gallery, london) this is the centre panel from the great altar-piece commissioned by duke lodovico of milan, from perugino, for the certosa of pavia, and completed in . the three lower panels are replaced in the church by copies, the originals having been purchased from the certosa by the melzi family in , and sold by duke melzi to the national gallery in . a masterpiece of pietro's religious art, painted in his best method and best period.] perugino by selwyn brinton, m.a. illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. * * * * * list of illustrations plate i. virgin and child with adoring angels frontispiece in the national gallery, london page ii. st. sebastian in the musée du louvre, paris iii. the deposition from the cross in the pitti palace, florence iv. st. mary magdalen in the pitti palace, florence v. virgin with little st. john adoring the infant christ in the pitti palace, florence vi. francesco delle opere in the uffizi gallery, florence vii. the dead christ in the academy of fine arts, florence viii. virgin and child with two male saints in the national gallery, london * * * * * i [illustration] in considering the work of one of the greatest of the masters of the renaissance, we have to go further back than the disputed question as to who was the first teacher of pietro di cristofano vannucci--surnamed by his contemporaries "_il perugino_," the perugian--and to inquire into the more interesting story of his predecessors in that wonderful school of umbria, on which his art puts, in a certain sense, the seal and completion. in an earlier work on this subject i traced this school, in its first definite inception, to that grand old religious painter niccolo da foligno, whose art may be studied within his native city of foligno--in his great altar-piece of the church of s. niccolo--in perugia, paris, london, and his fine paintings in the vatican gallery at rome; and in all these works i traced in niccolo a great master, "archaic but strong in drawing and full of character, possessing just the qualities of the founder of a great school." but upon that school many influences were to stream in, and to affect its progress. the earlier art of siena, the city of mary virgin, intensely emotional and religious in its character, the dignity of duccio and the lorenzetti, the grace and delicate beauty of simone memmi were among these. close to niccolo himself, in the hill-town of montefalco, the florentine, benozzo gozzoli, pupil of fra angelico, had been busied on picture stories from st. francis' legend, which seem to find their continuation in the perugian miracle pictures of fiorenzo di lorenzo; and yet nearer to florence, in the umbrian borderland, that "king of painting," piero della francesca, was to combine the umbrian emotion with florentine intellectualism. these are the influences which were to stream upon the young pietro as an eager and industrious student--some among them of course indirectly, but others no doubt very directly and immediately. vasari's account, which is still of first value save where it is opposed by stronger evidence, is that he was sent as a poor boy to grind colours and run errands in the "bottega" of some perugian painter. the impression which is here given of his extreme poverty is probably exaggerated. the vannucci family had enjoyed the citizenship of perugia since , nor was it in perugia but in their native township of castel (later città) della pieve that his son pietro was born to cristofano vannucci. but we may take it that he left the paternal roof while yet a child (he was probably not more than nine years old), and was apprenticed, as above stated, in perugia--though to what artist vasari does not tell us. here, therefore, conjecture is rife, and buonfigli,--that delightful decorator of the perugian palazzo pubblico,--fiorenzo di lorenzo, and even niccolo da foligno himself have been assigned by various critics as his teacher. personally, i incline to fiorenzo di lorenzo, whose easel paintings in the gallery of perugia seem to foreshadow the typical perugino background; but it is yet more probable that either as a master or (as suggested by crowe and cavalcaselle) as a journeyman associate he may have come under the influence of piero della francesca, and gained from him that intimate knowledge of perspective which appears in all his later works. in any case this unknown master--if we are to believe vasari--was an inspiring influence; for not only "did he never cease to set before pietro the great advantages and honours that were to be obtained from painting ... but when the boy was wont to frequently inquire of him in what city the best artists were formed ... he constantly received the same reply, namely, that florence was the place above all others wherein men attain to perfection in all the arts, but more especially in painting." i spare to my reader the long harangue which vasari here puts into the mouth of young pietro's unknown teacher, and which the critic pretty certainly evolved out of his own inner consciousness; and come to his conclusion, which is, that our pietro, with every goodwill to improve himself, came to florence, and entered the famous bottega of andrea del verrocchio. nor do i see any sufficient ground to reject this statement, though morelli in his "italian painters" (vol. i. p. ) emphasises very properly the importance of his earlier training, "in all probability at perugia, under fiorenzo di lorenzo, and then at arezzo under piero della francesca," and will not have him described "as unconditionally the pupil of verrocchio." the point to notice here is that pietro must have been a fairly advanced artist when he went, obviously to "finish" himself, to florence, and that in his earlier work it is not so much the direct influence of verrocchio which counts as that of his countrymen, the umbrians. [illustration: plate ii.--st. sebastian (in the musée du louvre, paris) perugino painted this saint many times, there being more than six different renderings still existing. the picture reproduced here is one of the best, both in the modelling of the nude and the sentiment of the figure and the lovely umbrian landscape. it came (in ) from the sciarra colonna gallery. underneath the figure will be seen the words, _sagitte tue infixe sunt michi_.] but at florence he must certainly have been in these years, going there (as the author i have just quoted suggests) "soon after ," probably, for a time at least, within verrocchio's workshop, and drinking in all the glorious message of florentine art in the company of the younger generation of her craftsmen, among whom giovanni santi, in his rhyming chronicle of art, mentions directly another pupil of verrocchio, the young leonardo da vinci, as his friend and associate: "_due giovin par d'etate e par d'amori leonardo da vinci e'l perusino pier della pieve_...." that he must have been already advanced in his art in those days is borne out by the fact that only ten years later ( ) he was summoned by pope sixtus to rome, to decorate, in the company of the great florentine masters--ghirlandajo, cosimo rosselli, and botticelli--the walls of the "sistine" chapel in fresco. prior to this great commission, milanesi notes ( ) frescoes painted by him in the great hall of the perugian palazzo pubblico, which have entirely disappeared, and others ( ) in a chapel at cerqueto, of which only a "st. sebastian," very umbrian in character, now survives. "whence it came about," says vasari, "that the fame of pietro was so spread abroad within italy and without that, to his great glory, he was brought by pope sixtus to work at rome in his chapel, in company with other excellent craftsmen: in the which place he made the story of christ where he gives to st. peter the keys, and likewise the 'nativity' and 'baptism of christ' and the 'finding of moses' ... and on the side where is the altar the mural painting of the 'assumption of madonna,' wherein he drew pope sixtus on his knees. but these last-mentioned works were destroyed to make room for the 'last judgment' of the divine michelangelo, in the time of pope paul iii." vasari here refers to the wall paintings in fresco of the "nativity," "finding of moses," and "assumption." all these have disappeared without a trace. there remain the magnificent "delivery of the keys" and the frescoes of the "journey of moses" and the "baptism of christ." i made a careful study of these last two frescoes at rome ten years ago, when writing the life of pinturicchio, and that study led me to the conclusion that here we have pinturicchio working under perugino himself. "the moses, for instance," i wrote of the "journey of moses in egypt," "who appears here is thoroughly peruginesque (he is to be compared with the christ and the baptist in the fresco opposite), but is painted probably by pinturicchio under perugino's instructions. the zipporah, too, when she is seen advancing, or again where the child in her lap undergoes the rite of circumcision, and the female attendant in white in the corner of the fresco are creations of vannucci's very type and mould. the beautiful landscape, however, with its palm-trees and overhanging rocks, is thoroughly in pinturicchio's manner, and the fresco is full of grouped portraits--a florentine trait.... now, if we turn about, we can examine the fresco opposite (right wall next the altar) of the 'baptism of christ': here again i find the two umbrians to have been working in collaboration. in support of this attribution it is interesting to compare the 'baptism' here with the undoubted 'baptism' by perugino at foligno. i have seen both the foligno painting and that of the sistina this month, and have photographs of each before me as i correct these notes; and i find the two groups absolutely identical save for the slight variations in type and drapery of the st. john, caused, as i think, by his having been painted by pinturicchio, but under the elder master's guidance." i have here quoted from my notes, written within the sistine chapel itself, at some length, because they lead me to some extent to differ from the conclusions of senator morelli, who, insisting on the poetry of pinturicchio's landscapes, is disposed to give both these frescoes to that great master. pinturicchio was undoubtedly working in rome as perugino's assistant during this pontificate of pope sixtus. crowe and cavalcaselle say of this artist: "he was a perugian by birth and education, had followed with moderate talent the lessons of buonfigli and fiorenzo di lorenzo, and afterwards joined the atelier of perugino. he had all the qualities that should be sought in a subordinate, and might have become indispensable to one who undertook large commissions and required an orderly superintendent for his apprentices. it was natural that perugino should take him into partnership and give him a third of his profits. nor do the sixtine frescoes discountenance the belief that the two men stood in this relation to each other in ." when perugino left rome for florence in , pinturicchio remained there, obtained commissions from the great families of the della rovere and cibo, and from the borgia pope alexander vi., for whom he decorated the famous "appartamento borgia" within the vatican. he thus began to assume the position of an independent master; but if we trace his hand (especially in the children and landscape backgrounds) in the two sistine wall paintings which i have just mentioned--though working still under the elder master's supervision and assistance--it is perugino alone who comes before us, in his full strength, in the "delivery to st. peter of the keys." the subject, it has been well said, was a simple incident, but demanded "from the deep meaning attached to it as related to the history of the roman church a certain grandeur and solemnity of treatment"; and here at once we see the full influence upon pietro of his florentine training, combined, in a very interesting way, with those earlier umbrian elements which still remained with him as the strongest impulse, and which he had learnt from his earlier perugian master, or later, not improbably, from the great piero della francesca. no writer upon umbrian art can afford to neglect its wonderful landscape backgrounds, often poetic and fantastic, as in the art of pinturicchio, but always with this sense of roominess, of vastness, and spaciousness, which mr. berenson has very happily defined by the phrase of "space-composition"; and, writing of this very fresco in an earlier work, i compared within the sistina the crowded frescoes and stir of movement of botticelli or cosimo rosselli with those wide spaces of perugino's "granting of the keys," where our eyes are carried onwards from the central group far away to the distant temple with its roomy porticoes. but if the background with its bramantesque temple and the middle distance is still purely umbrian, and seems to foreshadow the "sposalizio" at caen, or at the brera, in those noble figures grouped upon the front plane of the composition--many of them obviously contemporary portraits (one of them in a skullcap being suggested as the master himself)--we may trace the dominant influence of the great florentines, of masaccio within the brancacci chapel of the carmine, and of the noble fresco art of domenico ghirlandajo. and thus pietro perugino combines within himself already the two most important currents of the art of the italian renaissance--that art of florence, with its intellectualism, its masterly drawing, its sense of form, and that lovely devotional spirit of umbrian art, developed and inherited from the earlier sienese. he is at least for us here the precursor--the "forerunner"; and what his divinely gifted pupil, the young raphael of urbino, was to complete he already foreshadows. another point which has not been brought out very fully by our master's critics is the predominance of fresco painting in his earlier work. the value of fresco painting to these italian masters as a training for eye and hand cannot be too much insisted upon. it needed both a sure eye and a quick hand, for the painting had to be done at once when the plaster was ready to receive it; and there can be no doubt that pietro's absolute mastery, at this period, of this difficult art had prepared him for the wonderful series of altar-pieces in the tempera and oil mediums which we are now about to study. [illustration: plate iii.--the deposition from the cross (in the pitti palace, florence) this is the famous painting of the dead christ for the nuns of s. chiara, of which vasari speaks with such enthusiasm, and tells us the nuns were offered (and refused) three times the contract price for the picture. it certainly is a masterpiece of italian devotional art. it is fully signed and dated--_petrus perusinus pinxit a. d. mcccclxxxxv._--and there are studies for it in the uffizi collection of drawings and at christ church, oxford.] perugino, as we have noticed, had returned to florence in the autumn of , when the frescoes of the sistine chapel were no doubt completed, and soon after this ( ) received an invitation to visit orvieto--his altar-piece for s. domenico at fiesole having been completed in the year previous. the frescoes in the capella di s. brizio within orvieto cathedral had been left unfinished through the death of fra angelico, and our perugino, as a master "whose fame had been spread throughout italy," was now requested to examine the chapel and tender for the completion of its decoration. he did so, but his price was a high one-- ducats and all materials to be found him--and we shall trace later how the negotiations, protracted for several years, came eventually to nothing. for the moment florence attracted him, for here, in january of , under the presidency of lorenzo de' medici, called the magnificent, the foremost artists of the day were gathered to consider the decoration of the façade of the florentine duomo; and here perugino was present, beside such masters as domenico ghirlandajo, cosimo rosselli, andrea della robbia, botticelli, baldovinetti, pollajuolo--a long list of names now world-famed in the story of art. from florence, in march of this same year, our master made his way to perugia, where he drew the balance of his pay for the sistine frescoes; and then, prudently avoiding orvieto, went on south to rome, where we have seen that pinturicchio had now established himself, together with the florentine filippino lippi, and had found many commissions. but perugino soon found a patron in the cardinal giuliano della rovere, later to become famous in history as pope julius ii.; and this powerful prelate protected our artist from the importunities of the orvietans, who were pressing him to fulfil his contract, and threatening, if he delayed longer, to appoint another artist in his place. cardinal giuliano, the imperious patron later of michelangelo, took the matter with a characteristically high hand. "we laboured under the impression"--thus he writes to the council of orvieto--"that you were to be compliant, as best suits the love we have ever borne to your community. and so we now again exhort and pray that you do reserve the place which is his due to maestro pietro, and refrain from molesting him...." the fact was that the great prelate wanted pietro for a time for himself, and to this time ( ) belongs the lovely altar-piece, formerly in the cardinal's palace, and now in the villa albani at rome. all our master's devotional feeling, his refinement and beauty of type, his wealth of golden colour, is found already in this wonderful altar-piece, which is divided into six compartments, the central panel being occupied by the "nativity," with above the "crucifixion" and "annunciation," and at the sides the figures of four adoring saints. the landscape background is here of extraordinary beauty, reflecting the quiet serenity of the kneeling figures, and on the pillars of the colonnade behind the "nativity" the master has signed his work-- petrus de perusia pinxit . the albani altar-piece had always ranked as one of perugino's loveliest and most typical creations, worthy to stand beside the beautiful altar-piece of the certosa of pavia, of which england is now the fortunate possessor in her national gallery; but to this busy and fertile period in the master's career belong a number of attractive and interesting works, which we must now endeavour in some measure to classify and analyse. i have already alluded to the altar-piece of s. domenico at fiesole; but pietro painted another altar-piece for the same church in , which is now in the uffizi gallery, a "virgin enthroned," between saints sebastian and john baptist, dated and signed, as usual, "petrus perusinus." the "crucifixion" of la calza (florence), showing very markedly the influence of luca signorelli, may have probably preceded this; but to the same year of belongs the beautiful "pietà" (dead christ) of the florence accademia, and the wonderful and most impressive "crucifixion" of s. maria maddalena de' pazzi (florence) was commissioned by pietro pucci in , though it was not completed till april of . unsurpassed here is the master in the solemnity, the sense of aloofness from earthly things, which he conveys to us in these six figures--the crucified, with as spectators his mother, the beloved disciple, and kneeling saints, seen against the wide stretch of such an umbrian background as we may see from perugia or cortona or assisi; and next in importance to this masterpiece of religious art is the famous "pietà" of s. chiara, of which vasari speaks with such enthusiasm. "he worked out for the ladies of santa chiara a painting of the dead christ, with colouring so lovely and so fresh that by good craftsmen it was held a thing marvellous and excellent. in this work certain very lovely heads of old men are to be seen, and likewise certain maries who, with weeping faces, regard the dead man with reverence and wondrous love; and moreover he made a landscape which was then highly esteemed. it is said that francesco del pugliese would fain have given to the aforesaid nuns three times as much money as they had paid to pietro, and in addition offered to give them a similar painting made by the artist's own hand; and they would not agree, because pietro said that he could never equal that original." this noble creation of religious art is now in the pitti palace at florence, and fully bears out vasari's appreciative criticism: in composition, in beauty of type in the mourning women and men, in the lax body of the dead saviour, in the exquisite landscape with its trees defined against the far sky, our master touches here a very high level in religious art. as usual with works of this importance he fully signed it, on the rock on which the christ is laid-- petrus perusinus pinxit a.d. mcccclxxxxv; and the very careful studies which he made for the groups in this picture may be seen among the drawings of the uffizi collection. when we consider that the magnificently virile portrait of francesco delle opere ( ), now in the tribuna of the uffizi, belongs to this same period, as well as the lovely "madonna with saints" of s. agostino at cremona ( , signed and dated), the "ascension of christ," painted for s. pietro at perugia ( , now at lyons hôtel de ville), and the grand altar-piece of the vatican ( ), which i shall describe more fully later, we shall agree with the critics (crowe and cavalcaselle), who describe the year as "remarkable in the career of vannucci. it was that in which an umbrian ... successfully applied the laws of composition and added a calm tenderness to the gravity of the florentine school; and through his influence on fra bartolommeo and raphael replaced, as far as it was possible, the pious mysticism that had perished with angelico." the master's influence on fra bartolommeo may be clearly traced in the "pietà" of s. chiara, the forerunner of the frate's own noble work; and it was not far from this very time ( ) that the young rafaelle sanzio must have entered his perugian workshop. ii we have now traced the art of pietro vannucci from its first beginnings in the workshop of some unknown teacher at perugia to the time when he was one of the accepted masters of italian art, as much at home in florence--that glowing centre of artistic impulse and creation--as in his own perugia, or in the rome of the renaissance popes. here, then, before we proceed further with the story of his art, which is practically the story of his busy life, there are some points on which we shall not waste time in lingering. we saw how perugino, like giotto himself and almost every great master of italian painting, had perfected his knowledge and trained his eye and hand in the practice of fresco-painting; and we have next to notice that he obtained fame among his contemporaries, as well as patronage, from his knowledge and use of the new oil medium. vasari on this point is most explicit: "certainly colouring was a matter which pietro thoroughly understood, and this both in fresco as well as in oil ..." and again he mentions certain pictures specially as being painted in oil. of course one cannot set up even such direct evidence from vasari as conclusive, for we know there are many slips in his invaluable chronicle; and this very point of the master's medium for his panel pictures has been questioned by modern critics. dr. g. c. williamson in his excellent monograph on perugino refers to mr. herbert horne--a critic whose opinion on italian art carries great weight--as saying that "all perugino's pictures were painted in tempera on a gesso background," and suggests at least that an entirely different technique can be traced in the albani altar-piece and that of the certosa. crowe and cavalcaselle, in their notice of perugino, have analysed very carefully his technique, and shown how his flesh tints were worked up from a warm brown undertone, through a succession of glazes, each lighter in colour and fuller in body than the last, "receiving light from without and transparency from within," till the highest light was reached. [illustration: plate iv.--st. mary magdalen (in the pitti palace, florence) a very lovely figure idealised in type, and recalling, though younger, the virgin of the great crucifixion in s. maria maddalena dei pazzi at florence. across the bosom, embroidered, runs the legend "s. maria maddalena."] in this analysis the authors have obviously and entirely the oil medium in view; but there is another view which, as it seems to me, may throw light upon the question. experiments have, as i understand, been made in late years in germany to combine the use of tempera with that of oil-painting--the object being to combine the brilliancy and richness of oil with the lasting colour of tempera, in which yolk of egg was used with the pure colours--and i believe that certain results have been attained. now this was just the position of painting in perugino's day, when upon the old tempera panels of the giottesques and their successors the oil technique of the van eycks was asserting its advantages; and i would suggest that our master in this period of transition used both mediums, and perhaps sometimes in the same picture may have passed from one to the other. here, too, his connection with the gesuati may have aided him materially, for vasari tells us expressly how these friars, for whom he worked very frequently, were practised in the art of colours as well as enamel and glass-painting, and it was perhaps from them that he had learned the secret which makes his altar-pieces still so transparent and so pure in colour. another point which we cannot fail to notice at this period of pietro's life is his immense activity, his careful business relations in contracts for his work, and his continual industry. he is so constantly on the move that we begin to wonder how he found time for his paintings: he is so continually productive that we wonder no less that he found it possible to travel. his wanderings might be normal in these days of pullman-cars and express trains, but in an age when any journey was a matter of difficulty and often personal danger they seem almost phenomenal. from orvieto ( ) he goes to florence, from florence to perugia, and thence to rome; in he is married at fiesole to chiara fancelli; in he is at venice, and probably at cremona, painting there his altar-piece at s. agostino; then back again to florence, at perugia in march of , making his contract for the famous vatican madonna, and at pavia in october of the same year, working at his no less famous altar-piece of the certosa. in all these visits he was either arranging for fresh work or leaving some lovely altar-piece as a memorial of his presence; and next we shall notice that the two real points of attraction in all this busy life are perugia, his native city, if not actually his birthplace, and florence. rome, though he spent some time there, and completed much important work, never, i think, had the same hold upon him; but between florence and perugia he often seems to hesitate. and this is really important, because the two tendencies, the umbrian and the florentine, are always present in his art. he had completed, as we saw, his training in the city of arno, had married later ( ) a beautiful florentine girl, the daughter of luca fancelli, who brought with her a dowry of golden florins, and on his return from perugia in had invested part of the money he had received for his altar-piece of the magistrates' chapel in land at florence. in fact, during the whole of these years, after his return from rome at the time of alexander borgia's accession ( ) to nearly , i take our master's real centre of activity as being florence; there he had his workshop, painted panels for distant customers, undertook frescoes for the florentine convents, and returned after his business visits to other parts of italy. the year marks a change in all this, for this was the year in which the master definitely threw over the offer of the orvietans to decorate their capella di s. brizio in orvieto duomo, and accepted his great commission from the perugian guild of bankers to adorn with fresco paintings their audience-hall--the sala del cambio. this great commission necessitated a long stay at perugia, and therefore the master broke up his florentine workshop, or "bottega." but florence had evidently a very deep hold on his affections, for we find that in he gave up his perugian establishment for the purpose of returning to florence, and on arriving there took a lodging in the pinti suburb. at florence perugino was justly esteemed as one of the great master-craftsmen of the city, and as such was invariably consulted--as in the great meeting held (january of ) to consider the new façade of s. maria del fiore; or again when (in january of ) he was invited with benozzo gozzoli, cosimo rosselli, and filippino lippi to value the frescoes of alessio baldovinetti in s. trinità of florence; or yet again when (june of ), after the destruction of the lantern of s. maria del fiore by lightning, he tendered his advice along with filippino and lorenzo di credi. [illustration: plate v.--virgin with little st. john adoring the infant christ (in the pitti palace, florence) the centre of the painting is filled by the figure of the virgin, who, on her knees with hands clasped, adores the little jesus, seen seated upon a sack, supported by an angel. he is balanced on the other side by the kneeling baby st. john. the umbrian landscape is of great beauty.] but while pietro had been busied at perugia, in those years of absence ( - ) a new spirit, of dæmonic power, had come to fascinate the florentines, and give them a new conception of the art of the human form; and, in fact, hardly had our master reached florence and secured his lodging than he was invited to give his verdict as to the best site for michelangelo's gigantic marble "david." feeling ran high in the city both as to the site and the work itself. as to the former, the loggia de' signori was suggested, but michelangelo himself preferred the left-hand side of the doorway of the palazzo vecchio, and his wish was respected. yet the feeling against this figure among some of the citizens was such that, when it was exposed, it became a mark for missiles, and the watchmen set to guard it were assaulted. we may imagine that there were frequent gatherings and many heated discussions among the artistic confraternity, who were wont to meet in the shop of baccio d'agnolo; and it may have been in one of these discussions that "michelangelo declared to perugino that his art was absurd and antiquated." "_goffo nell' arte_"--a bungler in his art--that is the precise phrase quoted by vasari, and which so rankled in the breast of the elder man that, "pietro being unable to support such an insult, they both carried their plaint before the magistracy of the eight; in the which affair pietro remained with but little credit." it would have been better, we feel, and more dignified, to have passed over the slighting word with the contempt which it deserved. the master of the sistine fresco which we have described, of the albani altar-piece and its younger sister of the certosa, of the altar-piece of the magistrates' chapel at perugia, and the superb frescoes of the cambio, stood far above such criticism in his own or any later age; and this appreciation of the perugian's work in art does not imply any depreciation of buonarroti's genius, of which, in its own sublime and individual path, the present writer is an enthusiastic admirer. but pietro was a strong-tempered and revengeful man, as is shown by the earlier records of florentine justice, when he had appeared (in july of ) before the eight--the "_otto di custodia_"--for having, with a notorious ruffian, one aulista di angelo of perugia, waylaid a private enemy more than once with the intention of beating him--"_pluries et pluries nocturno tempore accesserunt armati quibusdam bastonibus._" on that occasion he had escaped with a fine of ten florins of gold; and this later appearance does not seem, in its issue, to have been to the master's credit. there was, besides this, much of truth in buonarroti's criticism--a truth which added to the sting--that by this time pietro's art had already begun to show old motives carelessly repeated. "pietro," says our vasari, "had worked so much, and had always such abundance of work in hand, that he often put the same things into his works; and had so reduced his art to a system that he gave to all his figures the same appearance." if this tendency appears even in his work before , it becomes much more apparent later on; but to dwell on this point here would carry me too far, and for the present we are concerned with the master in his full strength at the date just mentioned. for the year dates the completion of the cambio frescoes, and may be taken roughly as the great central date in pietro's art. before describing in detail those frescoes, let us consider what other commissions had preceded that of the perugian bankers. foremost among these must come the great altar-piece of the certosa of pavia, to which i have frequently alluded. it had been commissioned by duke lodovico sforza of milan soon after the artist left venice--the great certosa monastery being always under the personal patronage of the dukes of milan. pietro seems to have been working at it already in , and it was completed, on the duke's pressing instance, by the end of . it has only remained partially in its original place--in the second chapel on the left of the great carthusian church. the upper central painting--that of the eternal father--is still by perugino, the three lower panels are copies from the originals, now in the national gallery of london, and the panels at the side are by borgognone. nothing that the master of perugia has left us exceeds in tranquil beauty these central panels of the london national gallery. orsini tells us that from the certosa painting with its six panels had passed into the possession of the ducal family of melzi at milan; but this is not quite correct, for we have seen that the panel of the eternal father is still in place. in duke melzi parted with his three panels to the london gallery. in the centre panel the sweet, pensive virgin is adoring the child jesus, who is watched over by an angel, as in leonardo's famous "madonna of the rocks," while three angels make music in the sky above; on the right of this is the archangel raphael with the young tobias; on the left the lovely figure of the archangel michael, fully armed, with legs apart set firmly on the ground, and left hand resting on his shield--a figure which the master repeated more than once, notably in the great assumption of the virgin in the florence academy. perugino was married at this time to the beautiful chiara fancelli, and there is little doubt that she appears in more than one of his pictures; in particular, she is said to have posed for the archangel raphael of this certosa altar-piece. next to the beauty of type in this and other figures, we have to notice the pure rich colouring and the extraordinary beauty, in the central panel, of the landscape background. all the umbrian sense of space is there, in this valley with its winding stream and blue distances, while in the middle distance the delicately drawn trees are mirrored against the clear sky. it is a picture one would love to live with, and, without possessing the rapt devotion, the deep inner spirit, which pervades the paintings of angelico, its atmosphere is calm, restful, and in that sense prayerful. a whole group of other paintings, attractive and interesting, though of lesser interest, belongs to this splendidly fertile period of pietro's genius. the fano altar-piece--a virgin and child with saints--dates from a visit in , and an annunciation followed in the next year, while at sinigaglia and cantiano there are very similar works. both the fano pictures, which i have not seen, have been carefully described by dr. williamson in his monograph on this artist. the madonna crowned, with the child on her knee and a group of kneeling penitents behind, now in the perugian gallery, was painted for the confraternity of san pietro martire in ; and there is in the same gallery a somewhat similar work, painted for another confraternity, with two saints (one of whom is st. bernardino) kneeling in the foreground, and in the distance perugia, with the yet untouched towers of the baglioni. to the same period have been attributed the family of st. anne, at marseilles, and the virgin in glory, of the bologna gallery, with its armed st. michael and its lovely female figure of st. apollonia; and now we come to a creation which, in its fine drawing and composition and its atmosphere of tranquil beauty, takes a place beside the certosa altar-piece or that of the perugian magistrates' chapel. i refer to the virgin appearing to st. bernard, now in the munich gallery. the theme was a favourite one at this period of italian art, for it has been treated with great beauty by filippino lippi in his painting in the badia at florence. the munich picture was destined by our master for s. spirito at florence, and was acquired (in ) by king ludwig of bavaria from the capponi family, who held the rights over the chapel where it hung. as in filippino's rendering, the monastic saint is seated in study or adoration, and looks up, with a startled gesture, to see the virgin enter with a train of lovely angels; but what filippino fails to equal--even with his delicious angels, who might be taken from florentine urchins--is the sense of tranquil beauty which comes to us in these figures of the perugian master, and is continued in that wonderful sweep of distant landscape seen through the open colonnade. a study for this fine painting is among the drawings in the uffizi gallery. [illustration: plate vi.--francesco delle opere (in the uffizi gallery, florence) an interesting portrait, once thought a self-portrait of the master, but now considered to be of francesco delle opere. a powerful face, small dark eyes, a well-cut nose, and thick bull-neck. we see that perugino was a fine portraitist of men, both in this and his genuine self-portrait (in the sala del cambio) and the two vallombrosan monks in the florence academy. on the back of this picture is inscribed: d'luglio pietro perugino pinse franco del ope (i.e. delle opere).] i have already had occasion to mention the great crucifixion of s. maria maddalena de' pazzi (completed ), and a very similar treatment of this subject appears in a later crucifixion painted for the convent of s. jerome in florence, and now in the accademia of that city. here, in the three figures introduced, the christ and the virgin mother are almost reproduced from those in the larger fresco of s. maria maddalena, but are coarser and more careless in the painting. the city here in the distance has been traced to be florence, and the date suggested is about . closer yet to this central date of the perugian master's work is the great vallombrosa "assumption" (dated ); but this very probably succeeded immediately in order of time to the sala del cambio frescoes, and therefore i leave it for the moment to speak of the earlier, but most important, commission of the altar-piece of the magistrates' chapel at perugia. a painting to decorate this chapel, and which was to include the portraits of the priori, the governing body then in office, had been commissioned from pietro as early as , and the contract actually signed; but the master had more important work on hand--notably his frescoes for the chapel of pope sixtus--and it was not till twelve years later, in , that, being again in perugia and at the summit of his fame, he was successfully captured by the magistrates of that city, and signed a fresh contract on far higher terms (one hundred golden ducats, but with a time limit of six months for the work) to paint the altar-piece of their chapel. the result was the masterpiece which now hangs in the vatican gallery, and shows us the virgin enthroned with the child standing upright on her knee, beneath such an open portico as appears in the "vision of st. bernard," and with beside her four grave attendant saints, as robed and mitred bishops. here the master varies a little his frequent signature--for _petrus de chastro plebis pinxit_ gives as his birthplace the little umbrian city of città della pieve. the great altar-piece, which possesses all the devotional beauty and repose of his best period, was this time completed within the time agreed, and took its honoured place within the magistrates' chapel at perugia, whence it was torn away by the invading french in , and found its way back, not to perugia, but to the vatican collection at rome. perugia, especially in the person of her greatest master, pietro vannucci, suffered terribly at the hands of napoleon; and here i must express my appreciation of the able description given by my friend dr. g. c. williamson of what he very aptly calls "the story of the pillage." perugia in was very rich in the works of her master, pietro perugino. "almost every church possessed pictures by the master. the altar-piece painted in for the magistrates' chapel was still _in situ_, and public buildings were full of rich decoration." but napoleon, a man whose life was steeped in battle and human bloodshed, seems by a strange contrast to have had a particular fancy for the quiet devotional art of the umbrian master. his commissioner, one tinet by name, had orders to ransack perugia, and six cartloads of her treasured paintings, drawn by oxen, left the city for paris. one altar-piece, that of the magistrates' chapel, was nearly forgotten, but remembered at the last moment, and included. but even so, the terrible conqueror who held italy beneath his feet was not contented, and a fresh decree, of , ordered more pictures to be sent for his paris collection. a certain tofanelli was now the agent for further spoliation, and by diligent search forty-eight more pictures were squeezed out of unlucky perugia, and in november of forwarded, viâ rome, to paris. napoleon had now more works of perugino than he could find place for in his gallery of the louvre, and gave many of them away to the provincial museums of france; and thus it happens that the works of our master are distributed, in fragmentary condition in panels from his famous altar-pieces, among the french provincial cities--such towns as bordeaux, marseilles, lyons, grenoble, nantes, rouen, and caen, where they are practically inaccessible to the average student--while only a small portion of the once rich collection of his works remains within the perugian pinacoteca. but fortunately his masterpiece in fresco painting within the sala del cambio could not be so easily torn from the walls. i have already alluded to the acceptance by the master in of this commission, for which he had refused the decoration of orvieto duomo. the actual space offered him to decorate by the perugian bankers in their sala del cambio was not very great, but the result was a thing of perfect beauty--"a little gem" (i called it in my notes written at perugia, and published some years ago) "of decorative renaissance art. it is a small room, panelled with the loveliest tarsia work (this too from vannucci's design), and above these panels the master's frescoes. the 'nativity' and 'transfiguration' at the end of the room are among his finest, ripest works, and on each side are the prophets and sibyls, or heroes, kings, and sages of antiquity--leonidas the spartan, trajan the wise roman emperor, fabius 'cunctator,' socrates, horatius, who kept the bridge, and the roman camillus." it is most probable that the whole scheme of decoration, and of these classic sages and heroes in particular, with their guiding virtues above, was supplied to the artist by the humanist maturanzio, secretary to the "priori" of perugia, and acting under their orders; while maturanzio himself may have drawn his inspiration from a ms. cicero in the perugian library, in whose miniatures the four cardinal virtues appear beside the heroes who displayed them in their lives. such a dictation was quite in the traditions of the best italian art. i have shown in an earlier work--"the renaissance in italian art"--how this was probably the case in the famous frescoes of the spanish chapel at florence, where ruskin had pictured the artist himself as giving his message of religious dogmatic teaching to the world; and later we shall see how the marchioness of mantua, isabella d'este, ties down our pietro most mercilessly in the allegorical painting which she commissions. but here, in the rendering at least, perugino is entirely himself, and all these figures, whether heroes of heathendom or sages or prophets--isaiah, moses, david, and daniel--or virtues or lovely sibyls, are painted in one key of tranquil, devotional beauty. "obliged," says addington symonds, "to treat in the sala del cambio the representative heroes of greek and roman story, he adopted the manner of his religious paintings. leonidas, the lion-hearted spartan, and cato, the austere roman, bend their mild heads like flowers in perugino's frescoes, and gather up their drapery in studied folds with celestial delicacy." in the ceiling, which, if not painted by himself, is undoubtedly from his design, he had perhaps a freer hand in the arrangement, and has created a very lovely piece of decoration. here the deities of the old heathen world appear as imaged in that delicious sentiment of the earlier renaissance. venus is wafted through the sky, drawn by two doves; luna, nude to the waist, sits in a chariot with her nymphs in harness; mercury holds his _caduceus_, the serpent wand; apollo drives his four-horsed chariot; and--loveliest group of all--jupiter receives the cup of nectar from young ganymede, "such a cup-bearer" (i wrote in my perugian notes) "as the tyrants of the visconti or the baglioni may have had--a slim young page with long floating curls, his limbs clad in tight red hose, and long ribbons twining around him, as on bent knee he offers the cup to his master." his fellow-citizens wished the master to include his own portrait in the frescoes of their cambio, and here it is, for us, a square, solid-looking face of middle life, whose hair escapes from the tight red cap--a face not perhaps attractive, but of intellectuality and power, and with great determination in the lines of mouth and chin. the latin lines of compliment beneath are probably due to the scholarly pen of maturanzio, and on the other side the words _anno salut. md_ give the date of the work's completion--the central date, as we may fairly take it, of perugino's genius, and his life-work in art. it is the moment when he climbs the hill-top--this fateful year that divides the century--and stands upon the highest ground; henceforth for him too, as for his country, the slow years mark the footsteps of decline. iii rafaelle sanzio of urbino had lost his mother, magia ciarla, in , and his father, giovanni santi, three years later. it was not long after this that he was placed by his relatives for instruction in perugino's famous workshop at perugia, and we may safely assume that he was there during part of the master's richly creative period which we have just traversed, and that his hand was busied, along with those of other pupils, in the paintings of the frescoes of the sala del cambio. [illustration: plate vii.--the dead christ (in the academy of fine arts, florence) vasari mentions at some length pietro's work for the convent of the gesuati, and in doing so describes this picture: "a pietà--that is to say, christ in the lap of our lady with four figures around--as good as any painted in his manner." the convent seems to have suffered much from its position without the porta a pinti in the siege of florence, and both this painting and the "christ in the garden" eventually found their way to the academy. pietro was a good friend of the gesuati monks, and was a good deal at one time at the convent. date of this work, about .] among these pupils vasari mentions, beside rafaelle, the florentines--rocco zoppo, baccio, and francesco ubertino (the latter best known by his surname of bacchiacca), giovanni di pietro (called lo spagna), andrea di luigi (called l'ingegno), eusebio di san giorgio, benedetto caporali, and others. we have already noted bernardino di betto, called pinturicchio, as his assistant, and later as a sort of partner and superintendent of these young apprentices; and there seems little doubt that, after the completion of the cambio frescoes and perugino's subsequent return to florence, pinturicchio took young rafaelle with him to siena, as an assistant in his great commission there ( ) to decorate the library of cardinal piccolomini. in perugino the brilliant but most assimilative young student found just the master he needed. he would have been crushed under the masterful force, the relentless nudities, of such a master as luca signorelli, whereas in pietro's devotional art, with its accurate training in drawing, colour, and perspective, his sunny nature found room to expand, and his first visit to florence ( ) proved as inspiring to him as it had been to his master. meanwhile that busy master, his decorative commission of the sala del cambio completed, had gone back at once to purely religious art in a great painting for the high altar at vallombrosa, which is now in the florence accademia. the subject is the assumption of mary virgin, who appears in a mandorla surrounded by angels, while god the father bends to bless from heaven, and four saints on earth beneath await in adoration. this was probably painted at the monastery, for vasari says distinctly, "at vallombrosa he painted a picture for the high altar"; and this is quite likely, as well as that his two grand profile portraits of the abbot baldasarre and of don biagio milanesi date from the same visit. we have already noticed his finely virile portrait of francesco delle opere in the uffizi collection, and this, combined with the two monastic portraits just mentioned, now in the florentine accademia, proves that, if our master had devoted himself to portrait work, he might have been one of the greatest portraitists of all time. in the two last portraits the technique is of extreme simplicity. it is simply the bare shaven head, seen in profile against a brown background. but the drawing is faultless, the man himself is there, and there is not a touch more than is needed to reveal the bones of the skull beneath an upper surface covering of flesh and skin. the vallombrosan altar-piece dates from , and in perugino was one of the priors (priori), and, being obliged to reside in the communal palace and give the most of his time to magisterial and civic duties, he probably had little time left for painting. but he took occasion to contract for future work ( )--for saints and angels to be painted around a fine crucifix in wood for the convent of s. francesco al monte, which is now in the perugian gallery; for designs for the intarsia work of s. agostino, and a double altar-piece for the same church, as well as a sposalizio (marriage of mary) for the duomo. in we have seen that pietro had returned to florence, and taken lodgings in the pinti quarter. there followed the quarrel with michelangelo which i have mentioned, and very shortly after this he left florence again for perugia. while here, he received a letter from the priors of his birthplace, città della pieve, inviting him to paint a fresco there. this was on february , , and, after some correspondence as to terms, in march following the contract was concluded, and the fresco painted in the same year. the subject of this fine fresco is the adoration of the magi. hidden away in its little township, it is not easily accessible to visitors, and escaped the plunder of the french. i have not yet been able to visit it, but my friend dr. g. c. williamson, who drove to città across the mountains from perugia, was deeply impressed by the painting and the place, and writes, "the town is strangely beautiful--like a petrified city, left high and dry by the moving waters of civilisation, untouched and unspoiled." at panicale, another township near there, is a st. sebastian by our master, signed and dated . these were works which he probably painted rapidly and for a comparatively low price--the pieve adoration having been reduced to seventy-five florins--and crowe and cavalcaselle trace the hand of his assistant, lo spagna, in the panicale st. sebastian and an assumption in that city. but perugino had by no means abandoned florence as yet, for we find him writing from there in june of to the marchioness of mantua to acknowledge the receipt of eighty ducats for his tempera painting of the "combat of love and chastity." isabella d'este da gonzaga, marchioness of mantua, an enthusiastic collector and art patron, and one of the most cultivated women of her time, was at that moment forming within her palace at mantua the famous studio della grotta, which she adorned with paintings by mantegna, costa, and perugino. these paintings, which i have described in my own work on mantua, and elsewhere, were still in the grotta in , but after the terrible sack of mantua in they were sold to cardinal richelieu, and are now in the musée du louvre. they were all of allegorical subjects, dictated by the marchesa herself, and the "parnassus" of her court painter, andrea mantegna, is a masterpiece. but that of the perugian master is far less satisfactory, and was indeed found so by that very keen critic, the marchesa isabella herself. she wrote to him on june of the year : "the picture has reached me safely, and, as it is well drawn and coloured, pleases me; but if it had been more carefully finished, it would have been more to your honour and our satisfaction." she here goes straight to the point in noting--as we shall do later--that the master was becoming careless and hasty in his execution. on the other hand, it is fair to remember that the subject was not probably congenial, that he was tied hand and foot in his treatment by the learned lady's written instructions (on hearing that he had represented venus as nude, she declared that if one single figure were altered the whole fable would be ruined), and it is only in the wide sweep of clear sky and hills and river that the artist really finds himself again. another commission of this time in florence was to complete the descent from the cross begun in by filippino lippi, and left unfinished at his death in . this picture, which was destined for the ss. annunziata at florence, was completed by perugino, and is now in the accademia. the lower portion is here by our master, and, considering the initial difficulty of working upon another man's conception, the result is to be praised. crowe, indeed, calls the virgin fainting in the arms of the three maries one of the noblest conceptions of his brush. but the same cannot be said of his joint commission of the assumption, painted also for the ss. annunziata in this summer of . dr. williamson, whose monograph i have already mentioned, and who went to the pains of visiting all these works of perugino scattered by napoleon through the small provincial museums of france, noted that the resemblance between the assumption and the ascension of lyons, which had been painted in for s. pietro at perugia, is so close as to show the artist had hardly troubled to make any change. not only this, but the coronation of the virgin, of the perugian gallery, shows groups identical with both the above paintings, and this assumption, for which, as crowe says, "he fell back on the model of the lyons ascension," is painted in a slovenly and careless manner. when we remember what florence was in this early sixteenth century--a city keenly intellectual, alive to art as perhaps no city, save athens, has ever been before or since, and highly critical and censorious--we need not be surprised that the master, thus openly convicted of plagiarism from his earlier works and of careless technique, was censured by his friends and attacked by his enemies. vasari tells us that "when the aforesaid work" (the assumption) "was uncovered, it was freely blamed by all the younger craftsmen, and, in particular, because pietro had made use of those figures which had already appeared in his other works; and his friends replied that it was not that his powers had failed, but that he had acted so either from greed of money or from haste. to whom pietro answered: 'i have put into this work the figures praised before by you, and with which you were infinitely pleased. if now they displease you and are not praised, what can i do to help it?' but these men continued to assail him with sonnets and public insults. whence he, already old, left florence, and returned to perugia." there is something pathetic in the old man's reply, and it must have cost him a heart-pang to thus turn his back on florence. he had loved the city, had gained there his first inspiration in art, his first successes, had wedded there, bought a house and property, and purchased in this noble church of the ss. annunziata a burial-place for himself and his descendants. but he never returned. his name disappears from the rolls of the painters' guild in florence, and in appears in that of perugia. umbria welcomed back her great master with reverent appreciation. that divided impulse of his life was ended, and from henceforth he was all her own. [illustration: plate viii.--virgin and child with two male saints (in the national gallery, london) this fine painting, very individual in treatment, was painted by pietro in for the executors of giovanni schiavone, a master-carpenter of perugia. in baron delle penna, by whose family it had been inherited, removed the painting to his palace at perugia, and thence it passed to the london gallery in .] always a good man of business, perugino's first step on reaching perugia was to collect the debts still due to him. from the authorities of città della pieve he demanded the balance (march of ) of florins, which was liquidated by the conveyance of a house, from panicale florins, and for his work in the cambio he drew ducats. then the commissions began to come in again, and an altar-piece of this very time ( ), representing madonna between ss. jerome and francis, has recently come to the london national gallery from the palazzo penna at perugia, and is a work of charm and great merit. it had been ordered in by the executors of giovanni schiavone, a master-carpenter of perugia, to be set over the altar of a chapel in s. maria de' servi in that city. this work completed, he left for foligno, where i found still in place his fresco of the baptism of christ in the church of la nunziatella, and from foligno ( - ) he was summoned by pope julius to rome to decorate the ceilings of his vatican palace. bazzi (sodoma) and peruzzi were already being employed on the same work, and at rome perugino met his old friends and rivals in art--signorelli, bramantino, and others--and introduced to them his own pupil caporali. when rafaelle was accepted by julius ii. as his final and only master in the vatican, and bidden by the impetuous pontiff to destroy all work of other artists, he spared--with that _gentilezza_ which was in his character--the ceiling paintings of his old master perugino, which yet remain to us in the camera dell' incendio. but, eclipsed by his brilliant young pupil, there was clearly no room for old pietro at rome, and he journeyed northward with signorelli, breaking his journey to paint a crucifixion for s. maria degli angeli at assisi, and another painting at siena of the same subject for the church of s. agostino. a fragment which is in the collection of miss hertz at rome may belong to another picture due to this siena visit; and later we find him painting at bettona, and ( - ) in his own birthplace of città della pieve. vasari has a gossiping story that pietro, "who trusted no one, and, in going and returning from castello della pieve, carried all the money he had about him always on his person," was robbed on the way, and lost his money and nearly his life. and he adds next: "pietro was a person of very little religion, and could never be made to believe in the immortality of the soul; nay, with words adapted to his evil mind, he did most obstinately refuse every good path. he placed all his hopes in the goods of fortune, and for money would have made every bad contract." there were two reasons why vasari should have been unfair to perugino--one, that he was an umbrian, even though long resident in florence, the other, that he had come, as we have seen, into collision with his admired michelangelo. even so, vasari is much too good a judge to depreciate his art, but he attacks the perugian master personally, and his remarks about religion do not count for much. vasari lived in an age--that of the counter-reformation--which combined in italy the lowest level of morals with apparent orthodoxy, and, under the shadow of the inquisition, religion became a good stone to throw at your enemy. but we cannot say there is nothing behind his charge, because, with regret, we have seen within these pages this master of the tender virgins and calm saints of god as being vindictive (that affair before the eight with aulista di angelo comes to our thought), disloyal, and shifty in his business dealings (here the orvietans and their chapel of s. brizio are an instance), and always consistently keen on getting the best side of a bargain. it does come as something of a shock--at any rate to me--to turn from this serenely devotional art to this record of the man's personality, and we feel inclined to echo the words of symonds, who asks, "how could such a man have endured to pass a long life in the fabrication of devotional pictures?" the answer perhaps lies in the fact that pietro did not create this lovely art of devotion, of which he was such a supreme interpreter. he found it all around him, in the aspirations of thousands of prayerful souls, even in the very soil of this land of his, where the etruscans had once quarried the tombs of their dead, and as an art motive it absorbed his whole feeling. when, later in life, material success came to invade his nature, its influence as a corrosive at once appears in his art creation. the touch of ideal beauty leaves his figures; drawing, colour, composition become mere hasty repetition of his earlier efforts. and yet we cannot but think of the old master with pleasure, even in these later years, as filling these little hill-towns of umbria, bettona, assisi, montefalco, spello, trevi, most of all his own birthplace, castello della pieve, with frescoes which are at least lovely shadows of his greatest works. at bettona he had painted a st. anthony, and again in the church of s. peter at città della pieve, and here, too, in the church of s. maria de' servi is the fragment--but a beautiful fragment--of a ruined crucifixion. the frescoes of s. maria maggiore at spello (signed and dated ), and the adoration of the magi in the church of s. maria delle lagrime at trevi, are important in this late period of his art, as well as perhaps a nativity in the church of s. francesco at montefalco, which is filled with work of his pupils. but a work of special interest is his completion of the frescoes of his greatest pupil, rafaelle of urbino, in the church of s. severo at perugia. sixteen years had elapsed since rafaelle in had, as a youth of brilliant promise, painted the upper fresco, anticipating therein the composition of his great disputa del sacramento within the vatican. since then he had gone on from strength to strength, and now, in his declining years, his old master was called on to complete his pupil's work. the six saints whom he painted there, beneath rafaelle's fresco, grouped on either side of terra-cotta figures of the virgin and child--ss. jerome, john, gregory, and boniface, with ss. scolastica and martha--possess, as far as can be now judged, both dignity and beauty. the fresco is signed by him, and dated with the year of , little more than a year before his death. for to the last the old man was busy, and after a long life of industry died almost with the brush within his hand. this very year of he was at trevi as well as spello. in he painted the "transfiguration" for s. maria nuova at perugia, and his frescoes for the convent of s. agnese at perugia, which are still in place--both the "transfiguration" and its three predella panels being now in the perugian gallery. his last work ( ), the fresco of the adoration of the shepherds (a fresco now transferred to canvas), is now in the london national gallery, where is also his charming virgin with the little jesus and st. john, a signed work from the late mr. beckford's collection. the child jesus stands, naked and upright, upon a stone balustrade, and plays with a lock of his mother's hair, who is herself of the pure virginal type imaged by rafaelle in his earlier creations, notably the famous "madonna del granduca"; while the "adoration," the master's last work, was removed from the church of fontignano in . the landscape in both these works--in the beckford virgin blue hills and outlined trees, in the fontignano fresco wide-sweeping uplands--is of great attraction. "as the aged artist," says crowe, "laboured at fontignano, industrious to the close, a plague broke out in the perugia district and ravaged the country. a disgraceful panic over-spread the land. it was decreed that the ceremonies of religion should be omitted in all cases where death ensued from the contagion. perugino died and was buried in a field at fontignano ... and no one knows where lie the bones of pietro perugino." later documentary evidence, which is quoted by the above authors, and at greater length by milanesi in his edition of "vasari's lives," has here overthrown the statement by vasari that "pietro, having come to the age of seventy-two years, ended the course of his life in castello della pieve, where he was honourably buried in the year ." we know now that his sons ( ) endeavoured to have their father's body brought from his hasty burial-place to be interred in s. agostino at perugia; but, in the disturbed state of central italy during this epoch of foreign invasion, the pious wish was never fulfilled. when we think with what care and expense pietro had once prepared his last resting-place in s. maria de' servi at florence, this tragedy of his unknown and hurried burial seems the more sad. he survives in his art; and that is a complete vindication, an undying memorial. in these pages we have traced his progress from his first great commission of the sistine chapel, with its dignified grouping and sense of air and space, through the tender beauty of his altar-pieces, the simplicity and breadth of his fresco work--the nativity of the villa albani, the crucifixion of s. maria maddalena de' pazzi, the pietà of the nuns of s. chiara, the altar-piece of the certosa of pavia--till, in his great decorative commission at perugia of the sala del cambio, in the year , he seemed to reach the summit of his creative power, and climb down from thence, though by no means immediately or conclusively, to these faded and yet exquisite frescoes, with which, in his own fading years, he wreathed the little hill-cities of his native umbria. and we noted him as a complete master of his art, even though he might willingly abide within a certain religious convention; we saw that the master of the delivery of the keys within the sistine, the great portrait artist, whose hand has left us those forceful heads of francesco delle opere, of the abbot baldasarre, and don biagio, the painter of the albani and certosa altar-pieces, the decorator of the cambio, had nothing to fear in his powers of art creation from the very greatest of his time. but after we have said all this, we must own that his special place within that galaxy of genius of the greatest italian art is best described by a writer to whose appreciative criticism i have always given my sincere admiration; for pietro's task it was "to create for the soul amid the pomps and passions of this world a resting-place of contemplation, tenanted by saintly and seraphic beings. no pain comes near the folk of his celestial city; no longing poisons their repose; they are not weary, and the wicked trouble them no more. their cheerfulness is no less perfect than their serenity; like the shades of hellas, they have drunk lethæan waters from the river of content, and all remembrance of things sad or harsh has vanished from their minds.... in the best work of perugino, the renaissance set the seal of absolute perfection upon pietistic art." * * * * * "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. bellini. george hay. botticelli. henry b. binns. boucher. c. haldane macfall. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. chardin. paul g. konody. constable. c. lewis hind. corot. sidney allnutt. da vinci. m. w. brockwell. delacroix. paul g. konody. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. fra angelico. james mason. fra filippo lippi. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. gainsborough. max rothschild. greuze. alys eyre macklin. hogarth. c. lewis hind. holbein. s. l. bensusan. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. ingres. a. j. finberg. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. le brun, vigÉe. c. haldane macfall. leighton. a. lys baldry. luini. james mason. mantegna. mrs. arthur bell. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. millais. a. lys baldry. millet. percy m. turner. murillo. s. l. bensusan. perugino. selwyn brinton. raeburn. james l. caw. raphael. paul g. konody. rembrandt. josef israels. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. romney. c. lewis hind. rossetti. lucien pissarro. rubens. s. l. bensusan. sargent. t. martin wood. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. titian. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. van dyck. percy m. turner. van eyck. j. cyril m. weale. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. watteau. c. lewis hind. watts. w. loftus hare. whistler. t. martin wood. _others in preparation._ * * * * * note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) transcriber's note: ) variations in the spelling of names and recording of some questionable dates have been left as printed in the original text. ) chapter ix--sala del gran consiio possibly should be sala del gran consiglio. ) likely corrections are noted in brackets within the text in the format [tn: . . .]. the venetian school of painting [illustration: _giorgione._ madonna with s. liberale and s. francis. _castelfranco._ (_photo, anderson._)] the venetian school of painting by evelyn march phillipps with illustrations books for libraries press freeport, new york first published reprinted international standard book number: - - - library of congress catalog card number: - printed in the united states of america by new world book manufacturing co., inc. hallandale, florida preface many visits to venice have brought home the fact that there exists, in english at least, no work which deals as a whole with the venetian school and its masters. biographical catalogues there are in plenty, but these, though useful for reference, say little to readers who are not already acquainted with the painters whose career and works are briefly recorded. "lives" of individual masters abound, but however excellent and essential these may be to an advanced study of the school, the volumes containing them make too large a library to be easily carried about, and a great deal of reading and assimilation is required to set each painter in his place in the long story. crowe and cavalcaselle's _history of painting in north italy_ still remains our sheet anchor; but it is lengthy, over full of detail of minor painters, and lacks the interesting criticism which of late years has collected round each master. there seems room for a portable volume, making an attempt to consider the venetian painters, in relation to one another, and to help the visitor not only to trace the evolution of the school from its dawn, through its full splendour and to its declining rays, but to realise what the venetian school was, and what was the philosophy of life which it represented. such a book does not pretend to vie with, much less to supersede, the masterly treatises on the subject which have from time to time appeared, or to take the place of exhaustive histories, such as that of professor leonello venturi on the italian primitives. it should but serve to pave the way to deeper and more detailed reading. it does not aspire to give a complete and comprehensive list of the painters; some of the minor ones may not even be mentioned. the mere inclusion of names, dates, and facts would add unduly to the size of the book, and, when without real bearing on the course of venetian art, would have little significance. what the book does aim at is to enable those who care for art, but may not have mastered its history, to rear a framework on which to found their own observations and appreciations; to supply that coherent knowledge which is beneficial even to a passing acquaintance with beautiful things, and to place the unscientific observer in a position to take greater advantage of opportunities, and to achieve a wide and interesting outlook on that cycle of artistic apprehension which the venetian school comprises, and which marks it as the outcome and the symbol of a great historic age. the works cited have been principally those with which the ordinary traveller is likely to come into contact in the chief european galleries, and, above all, in venice itself. the lists do not propose to be exhaustive, but merely indicate the principal works of the artists. those in private galleries, unless easy of access or of first-rate importance, are usually eliminated. it has not been thought necessary to use profuse illustrations, as the book is intended primarily for use when visiting the original works. contents part i chapter i page venice and her art chapter ii primitive art in venice chapter iii influences of umbria and verona chapter iv the school of murano chapter v the paduan influence chapter vi jacopo bellini chapter vii carlo crivelli chapter viii gentile bellini and antonello da messina chapter ix alvise vivarini chapter x carpaccio chapter xi giovanni bellini chapter xii giovanni bellini (_continued_) chapter xiii cima da conegliano and other followers of bellini part ii chapter xiv giorgione chapter xv giorgione (_continued_) chapter xvi the giorgionesque chapter xvii titian chapter xviii titian (_continued_) chapter xix titian (_continued_) chapter xx palma vecchio and lorenzo lotto chapter xxi sebastian del piombo chapter xxii bonifazio and paris bordone chapter xxiii painters of the venetian provinces chapter xxiv paolo veronese chapter xxv tintoretto chapter xxvi tintoretto (_continued_) chapter xxvii bassano part iii chapter xxviii the interim chapter xxix tiepolo chapter xxx pietro longhi chapter xxxi canale chapter xxxii francesco guardi bibliography index illustrations by at . madonna with s. liberale giorgione castelfranco and s. francis _frontispiece_ . adoration of the antonio da murano berlin magi . agony in garden jacopo bellini british museum . procession of the gentile bellini venice holy cross . altarpiece of alvise vivarini venice . arrival of the carpaccio venice ambassadors . pietà giovanni bellini brera . an allegory giovanni bellini uffizi . fête champêtre giorgione louvre . portrait of ariosto titian national gallery . diana and actaeon titian earl brownlow . holy family palma vecchio colonna gallery, rome . portrait of laura di lorenzo lotto brera pola . marriage in cana paolo veronese louvre . s. mary of egypt tintoretto scuola di san rocco . bacchus and ariadne tintoretto ducal palace . baptism of s. lucilla jacopo da ponte bassano . antony and cleopatra tiepolo palazzo labia, venice . visit to the pietro longhi national gallery fortune-teller . s. maria della salute francesco guardi national gallery list of painters paolo da venezia, _fl._ - . niccolo di pietro, _fl._ - . niccolo semitocolo, _fl._ . stefano di venezia, _fl._ . lorenzo veneziano, _fl._ - . chatarinus, _fl._ . jacobello del fiore, _fl._ - . gentile da fabriano, - . vittore pisano (pisanello), _circa_ - . michele giambono, _fl._ . giovanni alemanus, _fl._ - . antonio da murano, _circa_ - . bartolommeo vivarini, _fl._ - . alvise vivarini, _fl._ - . antonello da messina, _circa_ - . jacopo bellini, _fl._ - . jacopo dei barbari, _circa_ - . andrea mantegna, - . carlo crivelli, - . bartolommeo montagna, - . francesco buonsignori, - . gentile bellini, _circa_ - . giovanni bellini, - . lazzaro bastiani, _fl._ - . vittore carpaccio, _fl._ - . girolamo da santa croce. mansueti, _fl._ - . giovanni battista da conegliano (cima), - . vincenzo catena, _fl._ - . bissolo, - . marco basaiti, _circa_ - . andrea previtali, _fl._ - . bartolommeo veneto, _fl._ - . n. rondinelli, _fl._ - . girolamo savoldo, - . giorgio barbarelli (giorgione), - . giovanni busi (cariani), _circa_ - . tiziano vecellio (titian), - . palma vecchio, - . lorenzo lotto, - . martino da udine (pellegrino di san daniele). morto da feltre, _circa_ - . romanino, - . sebastian luciani (del piombo), - . giovanni antonino licinio (pordenone), - . bernardino licinio, _fl._ - . alessandro bonvicino (moretto), _circa_ - . bonifazio de pitatis (veronese), _fl._ - . paris bordone, - . jacopo da ponte (bassano), - . jacopo robusti (tintoretto), - . paolo caliari (veronese), - . domenico robusti, - . palma giovine, - . alessandro varotari (il padovanino), - . gianbattista fumiani, - . sebastiano ricci, - . gregorio lazzarini, - . rosalba carriera, - . g. b. piazetta, - . gianbattista tiepolo, - . antonio canale (canaletto), - . belotto, - . francesco guardi, - . part i chapter i venice and her art venetian painting in its prime differs altogether in character from that of every other part of italy. the venetian is the most marked and recognisable of all the schools; its singularity is such that a novice in art can easily, in a miscellaneous collection, sort out the works belonging to it, and added to this unique character is the position it occupies in the domain of art. venice alone of italian states can boast an epoch of art comparable in originality and splendour to that of her great florentine rival; an epoch which is to be classed among the great art manifestations of the world, which has exerted, and continues to exert, incalculable power over painting, and which is the inspiration as well as the despair of those who try to master its secret. the other schools of italy, with all their superficial varieties of treatment and feeling, depended for their very life upon the extent to which they were able to imbibe the florentine influence. siena rejected that strength and perished; venice bided her time and suddenly struck out on independent lines, achieving a magnificent victory. art in florence made a strictly logical progress. as civilisation awoke in the old latin race, it went back in every domain of learning to the rich subsoil which still underlay the ruin and the alien structures left by the long barbaric dominion, for the italian in his darkest hour had never been a barbarian; and as the mind was once more roused to conscious life, florence entered readily upon that great intellectual movement which she was destined to lead. her cast of thought was, from the first, realistic and scientific. its whole endeavour was to know the truth, to weigh evidences, to elaborate experiments, to see things as they really were; and when she reached the point at which art was ready to speak, we find that the governing motive of her language was this same predilection for reality, and it was with this meaning that her typical artists found a voice. no artist ever sought for truth, both physical and spiritual, more resolutely than giotto, and none ever spoke more distinctly the mind of his age and country; and as one generation follows another, art in tuscany becomes more and more closely allied to the intellectual movement. the scientific predilection for _form_, for the representation of things as they really are, characterises not florentine painting alone, but the whole of florentine art. it is an art of contributions and discoveries, marked, it is needless to say, at every step by dominating personalities, positively as well as relatively great, but with each member consciously absorbed in "going one better" than his predecessors, in solving problems and in mastering methods. florentine art is the outcome of florentine life and thought. it is part of the definite clear-cut view of thought and reason, of that exactitude of apprehension towards which the whole florentine mind was bent, and the lesser tributaries, as they flowed towards her, formed themselves on her pattern and worked upon the same lines, so that they have a certain general resemblance, and their excellence is in proportion to the thoroughness with which they have learned their lesson. the difference which separates venetian from the rest of italian painting is a fundamental one. venice attains to an equally distinguished place, but the way in which she does it and the character of her contribution are both so absolutely distinct that her art seems to be the outcome of another race, with alien temperament and standards. venice had, indeed, a history and a life of her own. her entire isolation, from her foundation, gave her an independent government and customs peculiar to herself, but at the same time her people, even in their earliest and most precarious struggles, were no barbarians who had slowly to acquire the arts of civilised life. among the refugees were persons of high birth and great traditions, and they brought with them to the first crazy settlement on the lagoons some political training and some idea of how to reconstruct their shattered social fabric. the venetian republic rose rapidly to a position of influence in europe. small and circumscribed as its area was, every feature and sentiment was concentrated and intensified. but one element above all permeates it and sets it apart from other european states. the oriental element in venice must never be lost sight of if we wish to understand her philosophy of art. there are some grounds, seriously accepted by the most recent historians, for believing that the first venetian colonists were the descendants of emigrants who in prehistoric times had established themselves in asia and who had returned from thence to northern italy. "these colonists," says hazlitt, "were called tyrrhenians, and from their settlements round the mouth of the po the venetian stock was ultimately derived." if the tradition has any truth, we think with a deeper interest of that instinct for commerce which seems to have been in the very blood of the early venetians. did it, indeed, come down to them from the merchants of tyre and carthage? from that wonderful trading race which stretched out its arms all over europe and penetrated even to our own island? from the first, venice cut herself adrift, as far as possible, from western ties, but she turned to eastern people and to intercourse with the east with a natural affinity which savours of racial instinct. all her greatness was derived from her asiatic trade, and her bazaars, heaped with eastern riches, must have assumed a deeply oriental aspect. her customs long retained many details peculiar to the east. the people observed a custom for choosing and dowering brides, which was of asia. the national treatment of women was akin to that of an oriental state; venetian women lived in a retirement which recalled the life of the harem, only appearing on great occasions to display their brocades and jewels. girls were closely veiled when they passed through the streets. the attachment of men to women had no intellectual bias, scarcely any sentiment, but "went straight to the mark: the enjoyment of physical beauty." the position of women in venice was a great contrast to that attained by the florentine lady of the renaissance, who was highly educated, deeply versed in men and in affairs, the fine flower of culture, and the queen of a brilliant society. the love for colour and gorgeous pageantry was of semitic intensity and seemed insatiable, and the gratification of the senses was a deliberate state policy. but passionate as was the spirit of patriotism, enthusiastic the love and loyalty of the people, the civic spirit was absent. the masses were contented to live under a despotic rule and to be little despots in their own houses. in the twelfth century the people saw power pass into the hands of the aristocracy, and as long as the despotism was a benevolent one, the event aroused no opposition. like orientals, the venetians had wild outbursts, and like them they quieted down and nothing came of them. as mr. hazlitt remarks, "their occasional resistance to tyranny, though marked by deeds of horrid and dark cruelty, left no deep or enduring traces behind it. it established no principle. it taught no lesson." venice was a republic only in name. the whole aspect of her government is eastern. its system of espionage, its secret tribunals, its swift and silent blows,--these are all oriental traits, and the east entering into her whole life from without found a natural home awaiting it. we should be mistaken, however, in thinking that the venetians in their great days were enervated and lapped in the sensuality which we are apt to associate with eastern ideals. sensuality did in the end drain the life out of her. "it is the disease which attacks sensuousness, but it is not the same thing." the venetians were by nature men with a deep capacity for feeling, and it is this deep feeling which has so large a share in venetian art. the painters of venice were of the people and had no wide intellectual outlook at its most splendid moment, such as was possessed by those men who in florence were drawn into the company of the medici and their court of scholars, and who all their lives were in the midst of a society of large aims and a free public spirit, in which men took their share of the responsibilities and honours of a citizen's life. the merchant-patrons of venice are quite uninterested in the solving of problems. they pay a price, and they want a good show of colour and gilding for their money. presently they buy from outside, and a half-hearted imitation of foreigners is the best ambition of venetian artists. art, it has been said, does not declare itself with true spontaneity till it feels behind it the weight and unanimity of the whole body of the people. that true outburst was long in coming, but its seeds were fructifying deep in a congenial soil. they were fostered by the warmth and colour of oriental intercourse, and at last the racial instinct speaks with no uncertain accent in the great domain of art, and speaks in a new and unexpected way; as splendid as, yet utterly unlike, the grand intellectual declaration of florence. let us bear in mind, then, that venice in all her history, in all her character, is eastern rather than western. hers is the kingdom of feeling rather than that of thought, of emotion as opposed to intellect. her whole story tells of a profoundly emotional and sensuous apprehension of the nature of things; and till the time comes when her artists are inspired to express that, their creations may be interesting enough, but they fail to reveal the true workings of her mind. when they do, they find a new medium and use it in a new way. venetian colour, when it comes into its kingdom, speaks for a whole people, sensuous and of deep feeling, able for the first time to utter itself in art. we have to divide the history of the venetian school into three parts. the first extends from the primitives to the end of giovanni bellini's life. he forms a link between the first and second periods. the second begins with giorgione and ends with tintoretto and bassano, and is the venetian school proper. thirdly, we have the eighteenth-century revival, in which tiepolo is the most conspicuous figure, and which is in an equal degree the expression of the life of its time. chapter ii primitive art in venice the school of byzantium, so widespread in its influence, was particularly strong in venice, where mosaics adorned the cathedral of torcello from the ninth century and st. mark's became a splendid storehouse of byzantine art. the earliest mosaic on the façade of st. mark's was executed about the year , those in the baptistery date during the reign of andrea dandolo, who was doge from to . yet though the life of giotto lies between these two dates, and his frescoes at padua were within a few hours' journey, there is no sign that the great revolution in painting, which was making itself felt in every principal centre of italy, had touched the richest and most peaceful of all her states. yet local art in venice was no outcome of byzantinism. it rose as that of the mosaicists fell, but its rise differs from that of florence and siena in being for long almost imperceptible. artists were looked upon merely as artisans in all the cities of italy, but in venice before any other city they had been placed among the craftsmen. the statute of the guild of siena was not formulated till ; that of venice is the earliest of which we have any record, and bears the date of . there is scarcely a word to indicate that pictures in the modern sense of the term existed. painters were employed on the adornment of arms and of household furniture. leather helmets and shields were painted, and such banners as we see in paolo uccello's battlepieces. painted chests and _cassoni_ were already in demand, dishes and plates for the table and the surface of the table itself were treated in a similar way. special regulations dealt with all these, and it is only at the end of the list that anconæ are mentioned. the ancona was a gilded framework, having a compartment containing a picture of the madonna and child, and others with single figures of the saints, and these were the only pictures proper produced at this date. the demand for anconæ was, however, large, and they were very early placed, not only in the churches, but in the houses of patricians and burghers. constant disputes arose between the painters and the gilders. pictures were habitually painted upon a gold ground, but the painters were forbidden to gild the backgrounds themselves. "gilding is the business of the gilder, painting that of the painter," says a contemporary record. "now the gilder contends that if a frame has to be gilt and then touched with colour, he is entitled to perform both operations, but the painter disputes this right, and maintains that the gilder should return it to him when the addition of painting is desired." it was, however, finally decided by law that each should exercise both professions, when one or the other played a subordinate part in the finished work. though the art of mosaic was falling into decay as painting began to emerge, yet the commercial manufactory of byzantine madonnas, which had been established as early as , went on, on the rialto, without any variation of the traditional forms. florence very early discarded the temptation to cling to material splendour, but as we pass into the hall of the primitives in the venetian academy, we see at once that venetian art, in its earlier stages, has more to do with the gilder than the painter. the holy personages are merely accessories to the gorgeous framework, the embossed ornaments, the real jewels, which were in favour with the rich and magnificent patrons. there is no sign of any feeling for painting as painting, no craving after the study of form as the outcome of intellectual activity, no zest of discovery, such as made the painter's life in florence an excitement in which the public shared. what little venice imbibes of these things is from outside influence, after due lapse of time. a prosperous, luxurious city of merchants and statesmen, she was too much bound up in the transactions and sensations of actual life to develop any abstract and thoughtful ideals. perhaps the first painting we can discover which shows any sign of independent effort is the series which paolo da venezia painted on the back of the pala d' oro, over the high altar of st. mark, when it was restored in the fourteenth century. this reveals an artist with some pictorial aptitude and one alive to the subjects that surround him. it tells the story of st. mark's corpse transported to venice. the first panel contains a group of cardinals of varying types and expressions; in another the disciple listening to st. mark's teaching, and crouching with his elbows on his knees, has a true, natural touch. the dramatic feeling here and there is considerable. the scene of the guards watching the imprisoned saint through the window and seeing the shadow of two heads, as the saviour visits him, imparts a distinct emotion; and there is force as well as feeling for decorative composition in the panel in which the saint's body lies at the feet of the sailors, while his vision appears shining upon the sails. except for the exaggerated insistence on the gilded elaborations of the early ancona, there is not much to differentiate the early art of venice from that of other centres; but we notice that it persevered longer in the material and mechanical art of the craftsman. tuscan taste made little impression, and many years elapsed before work akin to that of giotto attracted attention and was admired and imitated. a man like antonio veneziano met with the fate of the innovator in venice. he had too much of the simplicity of the tuscan and was compelled to carry his work to pisa, where his naïf and humorous narratives still delight us in the campo santo. it was in that he was employed to finish the frescoes of the life of s. ranieri, which had been left uncompleted at andrea da firenze's death, and the fondness for architecture and surroundings in the florentine taste, which secured him a welcome, may, as vasari says, be derived from agnolo gaddi, who had already visited padua and venice. in the last years of the fourteenth century tributary streams begin to feed the feeble main current. in guariento, a paduan, was employed by the state to paint a huge fresco of paradise in the hall of the gran consiglio of the ducal palace. this, which lay hid for centuries under the painting by tintoretto, was uncovered in and found to be in fairly good preservation. it can now be seen in a side room. it tells us that guariento had to some extent been influenced by giotto. the thrones have long gothic pendatives, the faces have more the giottesque than the byzantine cast and show that the old traditions were crumbling. when painting in venice first begins to live a life of its own, jacobello del fiore stands out as the most conspicuous of the indigenous venetians. his father had been president of the painters' guild. jacopo himself was president from to . he was a rich and popular member of the state and a man of high character. his works, to judge by the specimens left, hardly attained the dignity of art, though in the banner of "justice," in the academy, the space is filled in a monumental fashion and the figure of st. gabriel with the lily has something grand and graceful. we trace the same treatment of flying banners and draperies and rippling hair in the fantastic but picturesque s. grisogono in the left transept of san trovaso. jacobello's will, executed in in favour of his wife lucia and his son, ercole, with provision for a possible posthumous son, shows him to have been a man of considerable possessions. he owned a slave and had other servants, a house, money, and books. among his fellow-workers who are represented in venice are niccolo semitocolo, niccolo di pietro, and lorenzo veneziano. the important altarpiece by the last, in the academy, has evidently been reconstructed; two eternal fathers hover over the annunciation, and the saints have been restored to the framework in such wise that the backs of many of them are turned on the momentous central event. in the "marriage of st. catherine," in the same gallery, lorenzo gets more natural. the child, in a light green dress with gold buttons, has a lively expression, and looks round at his mother as if playing a game. the chapel of san tarasio in san zaccaria contains an ancona of which the central panel was only inserted in , and is identical with lorenzo's other work. one of the finest and most elaborate of all the anconæ is in san giovanni in bragora, and is also the work of lorenzo. in this, as well as in that of san tarasio, the mother offers the child the apple, signifying the fruit of the tree of jesse and symbolical of the incarnation. this incident, which is found thus early in art, was evidently felt to raise the group of the mother and child from a representation of a merely earthly relationship to a spiritual scene of the deepest meaning and the highest dignity. niccolo di pietro has several early works of the last decade of the fourteenth century, from which we gather that he began as a byzantine, but that he imitated guariento and was tentatively drawn to the giottesque movement, but not, we may remember, before giotto had been dead for some sixty years. niccolo di pietro has been confounded with niccolo semitocolo, but it is now realised that they were two distinct masters. the most important work of michele giambono which has come down to us is the signed ancona with five saints, now in the venetian academy. it is unusual to find a saint in the central panel instead of the madonna. the saint is on a larger scale than his companions, and has hitherto passed as the redeemer, but professor venturi has identified him as st. james the great. he has the gold scallop-shell and pilgrim's staff. it is clear from his size and position that the ancona has been painted for an altar specially dedicated to this apostle. the saints on the right are s. michael and s. louis of toulouse. between s. john the evangelist and s. james is a monastic figure which has evidently changed places with s. john at some moment of restoration. if the two figures are transposed, their attitudes become intelligible. s. john is inculcating a message inscribed in his open book, while the monk is displaying his humble answer on his own page. the use in it of the term _servus_ suggests that he is a servite, though the want of the nimbus precludes the idea that he is one of the founders. it is probable that he is s. filipo benizzi, who, though considered as a saint from the time of his death, was not canonised for several centuries. the mond collection includes a glowing picture by giambono; a seated figure clad in rich vestments and holding an orb, probably representing a "throne," one of the angelic orders of the celestial hierarchy.[ ] [ ] these interesting particulars are given by mr. g. m'n. rushforth in the _burlington magazine_ for october . works are still in existence which may be ascribed to one or other of these masters, or of which no attribution can be made, but we know nothing positive of any other artists of the time which preceded the influence of gentile da fabriano. nothing leads us to suppose that the venetian school in its origin had any pretension to be a school of colour, or that it could claim anything like real excellence at a time when the republic first became alive to the movement which was going on in other parts of italy, and decided to call in foreign talent. principal works _paolo da venezia._ venice. st. mark's: the pala d' oro. vicenza. death of the virgin. _lorenzo da venezia._ venice. academy: altarpiece. correr museum: saviour giving keys to st. peter. s. giovanni in bragora: ancona. berlin. two saints. _nicoletto semitocolo._ venice. academy: altarpiece. padua. biblioteca archivescovo: altarpiece. _stefano da venezia._ venice. academy: coronation of virgin, with false signature of semitocolo. _jacobello del fiore._ venice. academy: justice. s. trovaso: s. grisogono. _niccolo di pietro._ venice. s. maria dei miracoli: altarpiece. _michele giambono._ venice. academy: st. james the great and other saints. london. mond collection: a "throne." chapter iii influences of umbria and verona gentile da fabriano, the umbrian master, when he reached venice in the early years of the fifteenth century, was already a man of note. he had received his art education in florence, and he brought with him fresh and delicate devices for the enrichment of painting with gold, which, derived as it was from the sienese assimilation of byzantine methods, was very superior in fancy and refinement to anything that venice had to show. he was a man of a gentle, mystic temperament, but he was accustomed to courts, and a finished master whose technique and artistic value was far beyond anything that the local painters were capable of. he spent some years in venice, adorning the great hall with episodes from the legend of barbarossa; one of these, which is specially cited, was of the battle between the emperor and the venetians. gentile was working till about , and the walls, finished by pisanello, were covered by . after this gentile remained some time in bergamo and brescia, and settled in florence about . the year after reaching florence, he painted the famous "adoration of the magi," now in the florentine academy. even after leaving venice his fame survived; pictures went from his workshop in the popolo s. trinità, and he sent back two portraits after he had returned to his native fabriano. we have no positive record of gentile and vittore pisano, commonly called pisanello, having met in venice, but there is every evidence in their work that they did so, and that one overlapped the other in the paintings for the ducal palace. the school of verona already had an honourable record, and its guild dates from . the following are its rules, the document of which is still preserved, while that of venice has been lost: rules of the veronese guild (_abridged_) . no one to become a member who had not practised art for twelve years. . twelve artists to be elected members. . the reception of a new member depends on his being a senior. . the members are obliged in the winter season to take upon themselves the instruction of all the pupils in turn. . a member is liable to be expelled for theft. . each member is bound to extend to another fraternal assistance in necessity. . to maintain general agreement in any controversies. . to extend hospitality to strange artists. . to offer to one another reciprocal comfort. . to follow the funerals of members with torches. . the president is to exercise reference authority. . the member who has the longest membership to be president. there were also by-laws, which provided that no master should accept a pupil for less than three years, and this acceptance had to be definitely registered by the public notary, a son, brother, grandson, or nephew being the only exceptions. no master might receive an apprentice who should have left another master before his time was out, unless with that master's free consent. there were penalties for enticing away a pupil, and others to be enforced against pupils who broke the agreement. severe restrictions existed with regard to the sale of pictures, no one but a member of the guild being allowed to sell them. no one might bring a work from any foreign place for purposes of sale. it might not even be brought to the town without the special permission of the _gastaldiones_, or trustees of the guild, and those trustees were permitted to search for and destroy forged pictures. every painter, therefore, had to subordinate his interests and inclinations to the local school. it helps us to understand why the individual character of the different masters is so perceptible, and one of the primary causes of this must have been the careful training of the pupils in the master's workshop. the fresco left by altichiero, pisanello's first master, in the church of s. anastasia in verona, shows how worthily a veronese painter was at this early time following in the footsteps of giotto. three knights of the cavalli family are presented by their patron saints to the madonna. the composition has a large simplicity, a breadth of feeling which is carried into each gesture. the knights with their raised helmets, in the pattern of horses' heads, are full of reality, the madonna is sweet and dignified, and the saints are grand and stately. the picture has a delightful suavity and ease, and the colouring has evidently been lovely. the setting is in good proportion and more satisfactory than that of the giottesques. from the series of frescoes in s. antonio, verona, we gather that while venice was still limited to stiff anconæ, the veronese masters were managing crowds of figures and rendering distances successfully. altichiero puts in homely touches from everyday life with a freedom which shows he has not yet mastered the principles of selection or the dignified fitness which guided the great masters; as, for instance, in the case of the old woman, among the spectators of the crucifixion, who shows her grief by blowing her nose. he lets himself be drawn off by all manner of trivial detail and of gay costume; but again in such frescoes as s. lucia, or the "beheading of st. george," in the paduan chapel of the santo, he proves how well he understands the force of solid, simply-draped figures, direct in gesture and expression, while the decorative use he makes of lances against the background was long afterwards perhaps imitated, but hardly surpassed, by tintoretto. pisanello, who followed quickly upon altichiero and his assistant, avanzi, exhibits the same chivalresque and courtly inclinations which commended gentile da fabriano to the splendour-loving venetians. verona, under the peaceful but gallant government of the scaligeri, had long been the home of all knightly lore, and the artists had been employed to decorate chapels for the families of the great nobles. among these, pisanello had attained a high place. though very few of his paintings remain, they all show these influences, and his subtly modelled medals establish him as a master of the most finished type. a much destroyed fresco in s. anastasia, verona, portrays the history of st. george and the dragon. in the st. george we probably see the portrait of the great personage in whose honour the fresco was painted. he is mounting his horse, which, seen from behind, reminds us of the fore-shortened chargers of paolo uccello. the rescued princess, also a portrait, wears a magnificent dress and an elaborate headgear in the fashion of the day. other horses, fiery and spirited, are grouped around, and in the band of cavaliers, beyond st. george, every head is individualised; one is beautiful, another brutal, and so on through the seven. a greyhound and spaniel in the foreground are superbly painted, the background is excellent, and a realistic touch is given by the corpses which dangle unheeded from the trees outside the castle-gate. a ruined, but fortunately not restored, "annunciation" in s. fermo, has a simple, slender figure of the virgin sitting by her white bed, and the angel, with great sweeping, rushing wings and bowed, child-like head with fair hair, is a most sweet and keen figure, thrilling and convincing, in contrast to all the dead, over-worked frescoes round the church. all these paintings are too small to be the least effective at the height at which they are placed, and can only be seen with a good glass. pisanello's art is not well adapted to wide, frescoed walls, and he seems to have enjoyed painting miniature panels, such as the two we possess. in these he is full of originality, and shows his love for the knightly life, the life of courts, in the armed _cap-à-pied_ figure of st. george, whose point-device armour is crowned by a wide tuscan hat and feather. the artist's knowledge and love of animals and wild nature comes out in them, and his interest in beauty and chivalry as opposed to the outworn conventionalities of ecclesiastic demands. we shall be able to trace the influence of both the umbrian and the veronese painter on men like antonio di murano and jacopo bellini, and it is important to note the likeness of the two to one another. in gentile's "adoration" we have on the one hand the holy family and the gay pageant of the kings, of which we could find the prototype in many an umbrian panel. on the other we see those contrasting elements which were struggling in pisanello; the delight in flowers and animals, in gaily apparelled figures, in dogs and horses. the two have no lasting effect, but though they created no actual school, they gave a stimulus to venetian art, and started it on a new tack, enabling it to open its channels to fresh ideas. during the time they were in venice, jacobello del fiore shows some signs of adapting the new fashion to his early style, and the horse of s. grisogono is very like that of gentile in the "adoration," or like pisano's horses. michele giambono is actually found in collaboration, in the chapel of the madonna da mascoli in st. mark's, with such a virile painter as the florentine, andrea del castagno, who is evidently responsible for god the father and two of the apostles; but castagno must have been thoroughly antipathetic to the venetians, and though he may have taught them the way to draw, he has not left any traces of a following. facio, writing in , speaks of gentile's work in the ducal palace as already decaying, while pisanello's was painted out by alvise vivarini and bellini. principal works _gentile da fabriano._ florence. academy: adoration of the magi. milan. brera: altarpiece. _altichiero._ padua. capella s. felice, s. antonio: frescoes. capella s. giorgio, s. anastasia: the cavalli family. _pisanello._ padua. s. anastasia: st. george and the dragon. verona. s. fermo: annunciation. london. s. george and s. jerome; s. eustace and the stag. chapter iv the school of murano the important little town of murano, a satellite of venice, lies upon an island, some ten minutes' row from the mother state, distinct from which it preserved separate interests and regulations. its glass manufacture was safeguarded by the most stringent decrees, which forbade members of the guild to leave the islet under pain of death. its mosaics, stone work, and architecture speak of an early artistic existence, and we recognise the justice of the claim of muranese painters to be the first to strike out into a more emancipated type than that of the primitives. the painter giovanni of murano, called giovanni alemanus or d' alemagna, names between which venetian jealousy for a time drew an imaginary distinction, had certainly received his early education in germany, and betrays it by his heavier ornamentation and more gothic style; but he was a fellow-worker with antonio of murano, the founder of the great vivarini family, and the academy contains several large altarpieces in which they collaborated. "christ and the virgin in glory" was painted for a church in venice in , and has an inscription with both names on a banderol across the foreground. the eternal father, with his hands on the shoulders of the mother and son, makes a group of which we find the origin in gentile da fabriano's altarpiece in the brera, and it is probable that one if not both masters had been studying with the umbrian and absorbing the principles he had brought to venice. it is easy to trace the influence of giovanni d' alemagna, though not always easy to pick out which part of a picture belongs to him and which to antonio working under his influence. in s. pantaleone is a "coronation of the virgin," with gothic ornaments such as are not found in purely italian art at this period, but the example in which both masters can be most closely followed is the great picture in the academy, the "madonna enthroned," where she sits under a baldaquin surrounded by saints. here the gothic surroundings become very florid, and have a gingerbread-cake effect, which italian taste would hardly have tolerated. many features are characteristic of the german; the huge crown worn by the mother, the floriated ornament of the quadrangle, the almost baroque appearance of the throne. through it all, heavily repainted as it is, shines the dawn of the tender expression which came into venetian art with gentile. [illustration: _antonio da murano._ adoration of the magi. _berlin._ (_photo, hanfstängl._)] giovanni d' alemagna and antonio da murano were no doubt widely employed, and when the former died antonio founded and carried on a real school in venice. in he was living in the parish of s. maria formosa with his wife, who was the daughter of a fruit merchant, and the wills of both are still preserved in the parish archives. gentile da fabriano had set the example for gorgeous processions with gay dresses and strange animals; winding paths in the background and foreshortened limbs prove that attention had been drawn to paolo uccello's studies in perspective, while many figures and horses recall pisanello. a striking proof of the sojourn of gentile and pisanello in venice is found in an "adoration of magi," now ascribed to antonio da murano, in which the central group, the oldest king kissing the child's foot, is very like that in gentile's "adoration," but the foreshortened horses and the attendants argue the painter's knowledge of pisanello's work. a comparison of the architecture in the background with that in the "st. george" in s. anastasia shows the same derivation, and the dainty cavalier, who holds a flag and is in attendance on the youngest king, is reminiscent of st. george and st. eustace in pisanello's paintings in the national gallery, so that in this one picture the influences of the two artists are combined. antonio took his younger brother, bartolommeo, into partnership, and the title of da murano was presently dropped for the more modern designation of vivarini. both brothers are fine and delicate in work, but from the outset of their collaboration the younger man is more advanced and more full of the spirit of the innovator. in his altarpiece in the first hall of the academy the nativity has already a new realism; joseph leans his head upon his hand, crushing up his cheek. the saints are particularly vivid in expression, especially the old hermit holding the bell, whose face is brimming with ardent feeling. principal works _giovanni d' alemanus and antonio da murano._ venice. christ and the virgin in glory; virgin enthroned, with saints. _antonio da murano._ berlin. adoration of magi. chapter v the paduan influence and now into this dawning school, employed chiefly in the service of the church, with its tentative and languid essays to understand florentine composition, resulting in what is scarcely more than a mindless imitation, and with its rather more intelligent perception of the humanist qualities of pisanello's work, there enters a new factor; or rather a new agency makes a slightly more successful attempt than gentile and castagno had done to help the venetians to realise the supreme importance of the human figure, its power in relation to other objects to determine space, its modelling and the significance of its attitude in conveying movement. giotto had been able to present all these qualities in the human form, but he had done so by the light of genius, and had never formulated any sufficient rules for his followers' guidance. in ghiberti's school, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the fascination of the antique in art was making itself felt, but donatello had escaped from the artificial trammels it threatened to exercise, and had carried the florentine school with him in his profound researches into the human form itself. donatello had been working in padua for ten years before pisanello's death, and in an indirect way the venetians were experiencing some after-results of the systematising and formulating of the new pictorial elements. though the intellectual life had met with little encouragement among the positive, practical inhabitants of venice, in padua, which had been subject to her since , speculative thought and ideal studies were in full swing. there was no re-birth in venice, whose tradition was unbroken and where "men were too genuinely pagan to care about the echo of a paganism in the remote past." st. mark was the deity of venice, and "the other twelve apostles" were only obscurely connected with her religious life, which was strong and orthodox, but untroubled by metaphysical enthusiasms and inconvenient heresies. padua, on the other hand, was absorbed in questions of learning and religion. a university had been established here for two centuries. the abstract study of the antique was carried on with fervour, and the memory of livy threw a lustre over the city which had never quite died out. it seemed perfectly right and respectable to the venetians that the _savants_, lying safely removed from the busy stream of commercial life, should cultivate inquiries into theology and the classics, which would only have been a hindrance to their own practical business; but such, as it was well known, were of absorbing interest in the circles which gathered round the medici in florence. the school of art, which was now arising in padua, was fed from such sources as these. the love of the antique was becoming a fashion and a guiding principle, and influenced the art of painting more formally than it could succeed in doing among the independent and original florentines. francesco squarcione, though, as vasari says, he may not have been the best of painters, has left work (now at berlin) which is accepted as genuine and which shows that he was more than the mere organiser he is sometimes called. he had travelled in greece, and was apparently a dealer, supplying the demand for classic fragments, which was becoming widespread. when he founded his school in padua he evidently was its leading spirit and a powerful artistic influence. his pupils, even the greatest, were long in breaking away from his convention, and few of them threw it off entirely, even in after life. that convention was carried with undeviating thoroughness into every detail. draperies are arranged in statuesque folds, designed to display every turn of the form beneath; the figures are moulded with all the precision and limitations of statuary. the very landscape becomes sculpturesque, and rocks of a volcanic character are constructed with the regularity of masonry. the colour and technique are equally uncompromising, and the surface becomes a beautiful enamel, unyielding, definite in its lines, lacquer-like in its firmness of finish, while the gothic forms, which had hitherto been so prevalent, were replaced by more or less pedantic adaptations from roman bas-reliefs. this system of design was practised most determinedly in padua itself, but it soon spread to venice. squarcione himself was employed there after , and though antonio da murano clung to the old archaic style he saw the paduan manner invading his kingdom, and his own brother became strongly squarcionesque. the two brothers of murano come most closely together in an altarpiece in the gallery of bologna, where the framework is more simple than alemanus's german taste would have permitted, and the madonna and child have some natural ease, and the delicacy of feeling of primitive art. bartolommeo, when he breaks away and sets out to paint by himself, is crude and strong, but full of vital force. in his altarpiece of , in the academy, he gives his saints reality by taking them off their pedestals and making them stand upon the ground, and though they are still isolated from one another in the partitions of an ancona, their sparkling eyes, individual features, and curly beards give them a look of life. the draperies, thin and clinging, with little rucked folds, which display the forms, and the drawing of the bony structure, exaggerated in the arms and legs, are squarcionesque. the rocks and stones, too, show the paduan convention. in several of his other altarpieces, bartolommeo introduces rich ornaments and swags of fruit, such as donatello had first brought to padua, or which paduan artists delighted to copy from classic columns. antonio's manner to the end is the local venetian manner, infused as it was with the soft and charming influence of gentile da fabriano and pisanello, but bartolommeo adopts the new and more ambitious style. though not a very good painter, and inclined to be puffy and shapeless in his flesh forms, he was the head of a crowd of artists, and works of his school, signed _opus factum_, went all over italy, and are found as far south as bari. works of his pupils are numerous; the "st. mark enthroned" in the frari is as good if not better than the master's own work, and the triptych in the correr museum is a free imitation. round this early school gathered such painters as antonio da negroponte and quirizio da murano, who were both working in . negroponte has left an enthroned madonna in s. francesco della vigna, which is one of the most beautiful examples of colour and of the fanciful charm of the renaissance that the early art of venice has to show. the mother and child are placed in a marble shrine, adorned with antique reliefs, rich wreaths of fruit swag above her head, a little gothic loggia is full of flowers and fruit, and birds are perched on cornucopias. on either side, four badly drawn little angels, with ugly faces and awkwardly foreshortened forms, foreshadow the beautiful, music-making angels which became such a feature of north italian art. the divine mother, adoring the child lying across her knees, has an exquisite, pensive face, conceived with all the delicacy and simplicity of early art. it seems quite possible, as professor leonello venturi suggests, that we have here the early master of crivelli, in whom we find the love of fruit garlands, of chains of beads and rich brocades carried to its farthest limits, who takes keen pleasure in introducing the ugly but lively little angels, and who gives the same pensive and almost mincing expression to his madonnas. principal works _antonio da murano and bartolommeo vivarini._ bologna. altarpiece. _bartolommeo vivarini._ venice. academy: altarpiece, ; two saints. frari: madonna and four saints. s. giovanni in bragora: madonna and two saints. s. maria formosa: triptych. london. madonna and saints. vienna. s. ambrose and saints. _antonio da negroponte._ venice. s. francesco della vigna: altarpiece. chapter vi jacopo bellini while venice was assimilating the spirit of the school of squarcione, which in the next few years was to be rendered famous by mantegna, another influence was asserting itself, which was sufficient to counteract the hard formalism of paduan methods. when gentile da fabriano left venice, he carried with him, and presently established with him in florence, a young man, jacopo bellini, who had already been working with him and pisanello, and who was an ardent disciple of the new naturalistic and humanist movement. both gentile and his apprentice were subjected to annoyance from the time they arrived in florence, where the strict regulations which governed the guilds made it very difficult for any newcomer to practise his art. the records of a police case report that on the th of june some young men, among them, one, bernabo di san silvestri, the son of a notary, were observed throwing stones into the painter's room. his assistant, jacopo bellini, came out and drove the assailants away with blows, but bernabo, accusing jacopo of assault, the latter was committed to prison in default of payment. after six months' imprisonment, a compromise of the fine and a penitential declaration set him at liberty. the accounts declare that gentile took no steps to be of service to his follower; but jacopo soon after married a girl from pesaro, and his first son was christened after his old master, which does not look as though they were on unfriendly terms. jacopo travelled in the romagna, and was much esteemed by the estes of ferrara, but he was back in venice in . he has left us only three signed works, and one or two more have lately been attributed to him, but they give very little idea of what an important master he was. [illustration: _jacopo bellini._ agony in garden--drawing. _british museum._ (_photo, anderson._)] his madonna in the academy has a round, simple type of face, and in the louvre madonna, which is attributed but not signed, it is easy to recognise the same arched eyebrows and half-shut, curved eyelids. in this picture, where the madonna blesses the kneeling leonello d' este, we see how pisanello acted on jacopo and, through him, on venetian art. the connection between the two masters has been established in a very interesting way by professor antonio venturi's discovery of a sonnet, written in , which recounts how they painted rival portraits of leonello, and how bellini made so lively a likeness that he was adjudged the first place. the landscape in the louvre picture is advanced in treatment, and with its gilded mountain-tops, its stag and its town upon the hill-side, is full of reminiscences of pisanello, especially of the "st. george" in s. anastasia. we come upon such traces, too, in jacopo's drawings, and it is by his two sketch-books that we can best judge of his greatness. one of these is in the british museum; the other, in the louvre, was discovered not many years ago in the granary of a castle in guyenne. these drawings reveal jacopo as one of the greatest masters of his day. he is larger, simpler, and more natural than pisanello, and he apparently cares less for the human figure than for elaborate backgrounds and surroundings. many of his designs we shall refer to again when we come to speak of his two sons. his "supper of herod" reminds us of masolino's fresco at castiglione d' olona. he sketches designs for numbers of religious scenes, treated in an original and interesting manner. a "crucifixion" has bands of soldiers ranged on either side, an "adoration of the magi" has a string of camels coming down the hill, the executioners in a "scourging" wear eastern head-dresses. in a sketch for a "baptism of christ" tall angels hold the garments in the early traditional way; on one side two play the lute and the violin, while the two on the other side have a trumpet and an organ. he has sketches for the ascension, resurrection, circumcision, and entombment, repeated over and over again with variations, and one of s. bernardino preaching in venice (where he was in ). jacopo delights even more in fanciful and mythological than in sacred subjects. a tournament with spectators, a faun riding a lion, a "triumph of bacchus" with panthers, are among such essays. the fauns pipe, the wine-god bears a vase of fruit. his love of animals is equal to that of pisanello, and s. hubert and the stag with the crucifix between its horns is directly reminiscent of the veronese. his horses, of which there are immense numbers, sometimes look as if copied from ancient bas-reliefs. his treatment of single nude figures is often poor and weak enough, and his rocks have the flat-topped, geological formation of the paduan school, but no one who so drank in every description of lively scene about him could have been in any danger of becoming a mere archeological type, and it was from this pitfall that he rescued mantegna. to judge by his drawings, jacopo did not overlook any source of art open to him; he delights in the rich research of the paduans as much as in the varieties of wild nature and all the incidents of contemporary life first annexed by pisanello. he is often very like gentile da fabriano, he makes raids into uccello's domains of perspective, he is frankly mundane and draws a revel of satyrs and centaurs with a real interpretation of the lyrical and pagan spirit of the greeks, and he has an idealism of the soul, which found its full expression in his son, giovanni. we cannot call jacopo bellini the founder of the venetian school, for its makings existed already, but it was his influence on his sons which, above all, was accountable for the development of early excellence. his long, flowing lines have a sweep and a fanciful grace which form an absolute antidote to the definite, geometrical paduan convention. in jacopo we see the thorough assimilation of those foreign elements which were in sympathy with the venetian atmosphere, and while up to now venice had only imbibed influences, she was soon to create for herself an artistic _milieu_ and to become the leader of the movement of painting in the north of italy. principal works _jacopo bellini._ brescia. annunciation and predelle. verona. christ on cross. venice. academy: madonna. museo correr: crucifixion. london. british museum: sketch-book. paris. madonna and leonello d' este: sketch-book. chapter vii carlo crivelli we must turn aside from the main stream when we come to speak of carlo crivelli, who, important master as he was, occupies a place by himself. a pupil of the vivarini and perhaps, as we have noted, of antonio negroponte, crivelli was profoundly influenced by the paduans, from whom he learned that metallic, finished quality of paint which he carried to perfection. crivelli shows intellect, individuality, even genius, in the way in which he grapples with his medium and produces his own reading, and the circumstances of his life were such as to throw him in upon himself and to preserve his originality. his little early "madonna and child" at verona is linked with that of negroponte by the elaborate festoons, strings of beads, and large-patterned brocades used in the surroundings, and has those ugly, foreshortened little _putti_, holding the instruments of the passion, of the type elaborated by squarcione and marco zoppo, and which, in their improved state, we are accustomed to think of as mantegnesque. when crivelli was thirty-eight years old, he was condemned to six months' imprisonment and to a fine of two hundred lire for an outrage on a neighbour's wife. perhaps it was to escape from an unenviable reputation that he left venice soon after and set up painting in the marches, where he lived from to . he then went on to camerino in umbria, where his great triptych, now in the brera, was painted, and a few years later he was in ascoli, with a commission for an annunciation in the cathedral. this is the picture now in the national gallery, in which the bishop holds a model of the duomo. after he worked in little towns in the marches, and is not mentioned after . he does not seem ever to have come back to venice. shut up in the marches, where there was little strong local talent, and where he could not keep up with the progress that was taking place in venice, he was obliged himself to supply the artistic movement. he kept the squarcionesque traditions to the end, but moulded them by his own love of rich and exuberant decoration. moreover, he was of a very intense religious bias, and this finds a deeply touching and mystical expression, more especially in his pietàs. the love of gilded patterns and fanciful detail was deep-seated in all the umbrian country. his altarpieces were intended as sumptuous additions to rich churches, and were consequently arranged, with many divisions, in the old muranese manner. his great ancona, in the national gallery, is a marvel of elaborate ornament and enamel-like painting. the madonna is delicate, almost affected in her refinement. her long fingers hold the child's garment with the extreme of dainty precision, the croziers and rings of the saints and bishops are embossed with gold and real jewels. the flowers in the panel of "the immaculate conception," which hangs beside it, are twisted into heads of mythological beasts and grotesques or cherubs; but crivelli has plenty of strength, and his male saints have vigorous, bony limbs and fierce fanatical eyes. it is, however, in his colour that he charms us most, and though he does not touch the real fount, he is of all the earlier school the most remarkable for subtle tender tones and lovely harmonies of olive-greens and faded rose and cream embossed with gold. crivelli continued executing one great ancona after another, limiting his progress to perfecting his technique, and his influence was most deeply felt by such umbrian painters as lorenzo di san severino and niccola alunno. the honours paid him testify to the reputation he acquired. he was created a knight and presented with a golden laurel wreath. but though he never, that we can hear of, revisited his native state, he always adds _venetus_ to the signature on his paintings, a fact which tells us that far from venice and in provincial districts, her prestige was felt and gave his work an enhanced commercial value. he had no after-influence upon the venetian school, and in this respect is interesting as an example of the tenacity exercised by the squarcionesque methods, when, unchecked by any counter-attraction, they came to act upon a very different temperament; for in his love of grace and beauty and of rich effects, and especially in his intensity of mystic feeling, crivelli is a true venetian and has no natural affinity with the classic spirit of the paduans. principal works venice. ss. jerome and augustine. ascoli. duomo: altarpiece and pietà. berlin. madonna and six saints. london. pietà; the blessed ferretti; madonna and saints; annunciation; ancona in thirteen compartments; the immaculate conception. mr. benson: madonna. sir francis cook: madonna enthroned. mond collection: ss. peter and paul. lord northbrook: madonna; resurrection; saints; crucifixion; madonna; madonna and saints. milan. brera: ss. james, bernardino, and pellegrino; ss. anthony abbot, jerome, and andrew. poldi-pezzoli: s. francis in adoration. rome. vatican: pietà. chapter viii gentile bellini and antonello da messina what, then, is the position which art has achieved in venice a decade after the middle of the fourteenth century, and how does she compare with the florentine school? the florentines, fra angelico, andrea del castagno, and pesellino were lately dead. antonio pollaiuolo was in his prime, fra lippo was fifty-four, paolo uccello was sixty-three. but though the progress in the north had been slower, art both in padua and venice was now in vigorous progress. bartolommeo vivarini was still painting and gathering round him a numerous band of followers; mantegna was thirty, had just completed the frescoes in the eremitani chapel and the famous altarpiece in s. zeno; and gentile and giovanni bellini were two and four years his seniors. francesco negro, writing in the early years of the sixteenth century, speaks of gentile as the elder son of jacopo bellini. giovanni is thought to have been an illegitimate son, as jacopo's widow only mentions gentile and another son, niccolo, in her will. there is every reason to believe that, as was natural, the two brothers were the pupils and assistants of their father. a "madonna" in the mond collection, the earliest known of gentile's works, shows him imitating his father's style; but when his sister, niccolosia, married mantegna in , it is not surprising to find him following mantegna's methods for a time, and a fresco of st. mark in the scuola di san marco, an important commission which he received in , is taken direct from mantegna's fresco at padua. as the bellini matured, they abandoned the squarcionesque tradition and evolved a style of their own; gentile as much as his even more famous brother. gentile is the first chronicler of the men and manners of his time. in he settled in venice, and was appointed to paint the organ doors in st. mark's. these large saints, especially the st. mark, still recall the paduan period. they have festoons of grapes and apples hung from the architectural ornaments, and the cast of drapery, showing the form beneath, reminds us of mantegna's figures. but gentile soon becomes an illustrator and portrait painter. much of his work was done in the scuola of st. mark, where his father had painted, and this was destroyed by fire in . early, too, is the fine austere portrait of lorenzo giustiniani, in the academy. in an emissary from the sultan mehemet arrived in venice and requested the signoria to recommend a good painter and a man clever at portraits. gentile was chosen, and departed in september for constantinople. he painted many subjects for the private apartments of the sultan, as well as the famous portrait now in the possession of lady layard. it would be difficult for a historic portrait to show more insight into character. the face is cold, weary, and sensual, with all the over-refined look of an old race and a long civilisation, and has a melancholy note in its distant and satiated gaze. the sultan showed gentile every mark of favour, loaded him with presents, and bestowed on him the title of bey. he returned home in , bringing with him many sketches of eastern personages and the picture, now in the louvre, representing the reception of a venetian embassy by the grand vizier. some five years before gentile's commission to constantinople antonello da messina had arrived in venice, and the spread and popularisation of oil-painting had hastened the casting off of outworn ecclesiastical methods and brought the painters nearer to the truth of life. antonello did not actually introduce oils to the notice of venetian painters, for bartolommeo vivarini was already using them in , but he was well known by reputation before he arrived, and having probably come into contact with flemish painters in naples, he had had better opportunities of seizing upon the new technique, and was able to establish it both in milan and in venice. a large number of venetians were at this time resident in messina: the families of lombardo, gradenigo, contarini, bembo, morosini, and foscarini were among those who had members settled there. many of these were patrons of art, and probably paved the way to antonello's reception in venice. at first all the traits of antonello's early work are flemish: the full mantles, white linen caps and tuckers, the straight sharp folds and long wings of the angels have much of van eyck, but when he gets to venice in , its colour and life fascinate him, and a great change comes over his work. his portraits show that he grasped a new intensity of life, and let us into the character of the men he saw around him. his "condottiere," in the louvre, declares the artist's recognition of that truculent and formidable being, full of aristocratic disdain, the product of a daring, unscrupulous life. the "portrait of a humanist," in the castello in milan, is classic in its deepest sense; and in the trivulzio college at milan an older man looks at us out of sly, expressive eyes, with characteristic eyebrows and kindly, half-cynical mouth. it was not wonderful that these portraits, combined with the new medium, worked upon gentile's imagination and determined his bent. the first examples of great canvases, illustrating and celebrating their own pageants, must have mightily pleased the venetians. scenes in the style of the reception of the venetian ambassadors were called for on all hands, and when the excellence of gentile's portraits was recognised, he became the model for all venice. when his own and his father's and brother's paintings perished by fire in , he offered to replace them "quicker than was humanly possible" and at a very low price. giovanni, who had been engaged on the external decorations, was ill at the time, but the signoria was so pleased with the offer that it was decided to let no one touch the work till the two brothers were able to finish it. gentile still painted religious altarpieces with the virgin and child enthroned with saints, but most of his time was devoted to the production of his great canvases. some of these have disappeared, but the "procession" and "miracle of the cross," commissioned by the school of s. giovanni evangelista, are now in the academy, and the third canvas, executed for the same school, "st. mark preaching at alexandria," which was unfinished at the time of his death, and was completed by his brother, is in the brera. [illustration: _gentile bellini._ procession of the holy cross. _venice._ (_photo, anderson._)] these great compositions of crowds bring back for us the venice of gentile's day as no verbal description can do. there is no especial richness of colour; the light is that of broad day in the piazza and among the luminous waterways of the city. we can see the scene any day now in the wide square, making allowance for the difference of costume. the groups are set about in the ample space, with the wonderful cathedral as a background. st. mark's has been painted hundreds of times, but no one has ever given such a good idea of it as gentile--of its stateliness and beauty, of its wealth of detail; and he does so without detracting from the general effect, for st. mark's, though the keynote of the whole composition, is kept subservient, and is part of the stage on which the scene is enacted. the procession passes along, carrying the relics, attended by the waxlights and the banners. behind the reliquary kneels the merchant, jacopo salò, petitioning for the recovery of his wounded son. then come the musicians; the spectators crowd round, they strain forward to see the chief part of the cortège, as a crowd naturally does. some watch with reverence, others smile or have a negligent air. the faces of the candle-bearers are very like those we may see to-day in a great church procession: some absorbed in their task, or uplifted by inner thoughts; others looking curiously and sceptically at the crowd. gentile tries in his crowds to bring together all the types of life in venice, all the officials and the ecclesiastical world, the young and old. with a few strokes he creates the individual and also the type;--the careless rover; the responsible magistrate; the shrewd, practical man of business; the young men, full of their own plans, but pausing to look on at one of the great religious sights of their city. in the "finding of the cross" he produces the effect of the whole city _en fête_. it was a sight which often met his eyes. the doge made no fewer than thirty-six processions annually to various churches of the city, and on fourteen of these occasions he was accompanied by the whole of the nobles dressed in their state robes. every event of importance was seized on by the venetian ladies as an opportunity for arraying themselves in the richest attire, cloth of gold and velvet, plumes and jewels. gentile has massed the ladies of queen catherine cornaro's court around their queen upon the left side of the canal. the light from above streams upon the keeper of the school, who holds the sacred relic on high. all round are the old, irregular venetian houses, and in the crowd he paints the variety of men he saw around him every day in venice. yet even in this animated scene he retains his old quattrocento calm. the groups are decorously assisting: only here and there he is drawn off to some small detail of reality, such as an oarsman dexterously turning his boat, or the maid letting the negro servant pass out to take a header into the canal. the spectators look on coolly at one more of the oft-seen, miraculous events. the committee, kneeling at the side, is a row of unforgettable portraits, grave, benign, sour, and austere, with bald head or flowing hair. in this composition he triumphs over all difficulties of perspective; our eye follows the canals, and the boats pass away under the bridge in atmospheric light. all the joy of venice is in that play of light on broad brick surfaces, light which is cast up from the water and dances and shimmers on the marble façades. gentile made his will in , as well as others in and . he left word that he was to be buried in ss. giovanni e paolo, and begged his brother giovanni to finish the work in the scuola, in return for which he is to receive their father's sketch-book. the unfinished piece is the "st. mark preaching at alexandria," and it shows gentile still developing his capacity as a painter. it is pale in colour but brilliant in sunlight. the mass of white given by the head-dresses of the turkish women is cleverly subdued so as not to detract from the effect of the sunlight. the thronged effect of the great square is studied with more than his usual care, and the faces have all the old individuality. the foremost figures in the crowd have a colour and richness which we may attribute to giovanni's hand. gentile was always fully employed, and the detailed paintings of functions became very popular; but he was a far less modern painter than his brother, and, in fact, they represent two distinct artistic generations, though gentile's work was so much the most elaborate and, as the quattrocento would have thought, the most ambitious. gentile is essentially the historic painter, yet his is a grave, sincere art, and he has an unerring instinct for the right incidents to include. he cuts out all unseemly trivialities, his actors are stern, powerful men, the treatment is historic and contemporary, but not gossipy. we realise the look of the venice of his day, in all its tide of human nature, but we also feel that he never forgot that he was chronicling the doings of a city of strong men, and that he must paint them, even in their hours of relaxation and emotion, so as to convey the real dignity and power which underlay all the events of the republic. we gather from his will and that of his wife that they had no children, which perhaps makes the more natural the affectionate terms upon which he remained all through his life with his brother. their artistic sympathies must have differed widely. gentile's love for historical research, for costume and for pageants, found no echo in the deeper idealism of giovanni--indeed, his offer of the famous sketch-book, as an inducement to the latter to finish his last great work, seems to hint that it was an exercise out of his brother's line; but he knew that giovanni was a great painter, and did not trust it, as we might have expected, to his assistants, giovanni mansueti and girolamo da santacroce. principal works _gentile bellini._ london. s. peter martyr; portrait. milan. brera: preaching of st. mark. venice. doge lorenzo giustiniani; miracle of true cross; procession of true cross; healing by true cross. lady layard. portrait of sultan. _antonello da messina._ antwerp. crucifixion, . berlin. three portraits. london. the saviour, ; portrait; crucifixion, . messina. madonna and saints, . paris. condottiere. milan. portrait of a humanist. venice. academy: ecce homo. vicenza. christ at the column. chapter ix alvise vivarini contemporary with giovanni bellini were artists still firmly attached to the past, who were far from suspecting that he was to outstrip them. one of antonio de murano's sons, luigi or alvise vivarini, grew up to follow his father's profession, and was enrolled in the school of his uncle, bartolommeo. the latter being an enthusiastic follower of squarcione, alvise was at first trained in paduan principles. jacopo bellini's efforts had done something to counteract the hard, statuesque paduan manner, and had rendered mantegna's art more human and less stony, but jacopo could not prevent squarcionesque painters from importing into venice the style which he disliked so much. bartolommeo threw in his lot with the paduans, and his school, especially when reinforced by alvise, maintained its reputation as long as it only had to compete with local talent. the vivarinis had now been firmly established in venice for two generations, and were the best-known and most popular of her painters. albert dürer, on his first visit, admired them more than the bellini. when, however, gentile and his brother set up in venice, a hot rivalry arose between them and the old muranese school. the bellini had come with their father from padua, with all its new and scientific fashions. they had all the prestige of relationship with mantegna, and they shared the patronage of his powerful employers. the striking historical compositions of gentile were at once in demand by the great confraternities. bartolommeo had never been very successful in his dealing with oil-painting, though he had dabbled in it for some years before antonello da messina came his way, but the perception with which the bellini at once grasped the new technique gave them the victory. we have only to compare the formless contours of much of bartolommeo vivarini's work, the bladder-like flesh-painting of the holy child, with the clear luminous colour and firm delicate touch of gentile, to see that the one man is leagues ahead of the other. alvise vivarini had more natural affinity with his father than with his uncle. he never becomes so exaggerated in his forms as bartolommeo. the expression of his faces is much deeper and more inward, and he has something of the devotional sweetness of early art. his first known work is an ancona of at montefiorentino, in a lonely franciscan monastery on the spurs of the apennines. in the centre of the five panels the madonna sits with her hands pressed palm to palm, in adoration of the child asleep across her knees. the painter here follows the tradition of his father and uncle, especially in the bologna altarpiece, in which they collaborated in . four saints stand on either side, framed in gothic panels; it is all in the old way, and it is only by degrees that we see there is more sweetness in the expression, better modelling in the figures, and a slenderer, more graceful outline than the earlier anconæ can show. only five years after this ancona at montefiorentino, with its stiff rows of isolated saints, we have the altarpiece in the academy "of ," which was painted for a church in treviso, and here a great change is immediately apparent. the antiquated division into panels has disappeared, nothing is left of the artificial, squarcionesque decorations, the attitudes are simple, and the scene is a united one. the madonna's outstretched hand, the suggestion of "ecce agnus dei," makes an appeal which draws the attention of all the saints to one point, and it is made plain that the one idea pervades the entire assembly. the curtain, which symbolises the sanctuary, still hangs behind the throne, but the gold background is abandoned. alvise has not indeed, as yet, imagined any landscape or constructed an interior, but he lightens the effect by two arched windows which let in the sky. the forms are characteristic of his idea of drawing the human figure; they have the long thighs with the knees low down, which we are accustomed to find, and he constructs a very fine and sharply contrasted scheme of light and shade. there is no trace of the statuesque paduan draperies. the virgin's brocaded mantle is simply draped, and the robes of the saints hang in long straight folds. no doubt alvise, though nominally the rival of the bellini, has more affinity with them, particularly with giovanni, than with the paduan artists, and as time goes on it is evident that he paints with many glances at what they were doing. in the altarpiece in berlin he constructs an elaborate cupola above the virgin, such as bellini was already using. his saints are full of movement. in the end he begins to attitudinise and to display those artificial graces which were presently accentuated by lotto. [illustration: _alvise vivarini._ altarpiece of . _venice._ (_photo, anderson._)] in the two bellini had for some time been employed in the sala del gran consiglio by the council of ten. alvise, with his busy school, had hoped, but hitherto in vain, to be invited to enter into competition with them. at length he wrote the following letter:-- to the most serene the prince and the most excellent signoria--i am alvise of murano, a faithful servant of your serenity and of this most illustrious state. i have long been anxious to exercise my skill before your sublimity and prove that continued study and labour on my part have not been useless. therefore offer, as a humble subject, in honour and praise of that celebrated city, to devote myself, without return of payment or reward, to the duty of producing a canvas in the sala del gran consiio, according to the method at present in use by the two brothers bellinii, and i ask no more for the said canvas than that i should be allowed the expenses of the cloth and colours as well as the wages of the journeymen, in the manner that has been granted to the said bellinii. when i have done i shall leave to your serenity of his goodness to give me in his wisdom the price which shall be adjudged to be just, honest, and appropriate, in return for the labour, which i shall be enabled, i trust, to continue to the universal satisfaction of your serenity and of all the excellent government, to the grace of which i most heartily commend myself. the "method at present in use" was presumably the oil-painting established by antonello, which was now being made use of to replace the decorations in fresco and tempera which guariento, pisanello, and gentile da fabriano had executed, and which were constantly decaying and suffering from the sea air and the dampness of the climate. the council accepted alvise's offer with little delay, and he was told to paint a picture for a space hitherto occupied by one of pisanello's, and was given a salary of sixty ducats a year, something less than that drawn by giovanni bellini. unfortunately his work, scenes from the history of barbarossa, perished in the great fire of . venice is rich in works which show us what sort of painter was at the head of the muranese school at the time when it rivalled that of the bellini. alvise has two reading saints on either side of the altarpiece of , and of these the baptist is one of his best figures, "admirably expressive of tension and of brooding thought." it is large and free in stroke, and particularly advanced in the treatment of the foliage. close by hangs a character-study of st. clare; type of a strenuous, fanatical old woman, one which belongs not only to the period, but will be recognised by every student of human nature. formidable and even cruel is her unflinching gaze; she is such a figure as might have stood for scott's prioress, and looks as little likely to show mercy to an erring member of her order. in contrast, there is the exquisite little "madonna and child" with the two baby angels, still shown as a bellini in the sacristy of the church of the redentore. it is the most absolutely simple and direct picture of the kind painted in venice. the baby life is more perfect than anything that gian. bellini produced, and if much less intellectual than his madonnas, there is all the tender charm of the primitives, combined with a freedom of drapery and a softness of form which could not be surpassed. the two little angels are more mundane in spirit than those of the school of bellini; they have nothing of the mystical quality, though we are reminded of bellini, and the painting is an exercise in his manner. in the sacristy of san giobbe is an early annunciation, which is now definitely assigned to alvise. it has the old tender sentiment, and the carnations of its draperies are of a lovely tint. the priests of s. giovanni in bragora were great patrons of the school of the vivarini, for here, besides several works by bartolommeo and his assistants, is a little madonna in a side chapel, which may be compared with the redentore picture. the mother sits inside a room, with the child lying across her knees in the same pose. the two arched openings in the background of the altarpiece have become windows, through which we look out on a charming landscape of lake and mountain. in the same church a "resurrection" is not to be overlooked. it was executed in , and some of the grace and beauty of the sixteenth century has crept into it. against the pink flush of dawn stands the swaying figure of the risen christ, and below appear the heads of the two guards, looking up, surprised and joyful. it is perhaps the very earliest example of that soft and sensuous feeling, that rhapsody of sensation which was presently to sweep like a flood over the art of venice. "what a time must the dawn of the sixteenth century have been when a man of seventy, and not the most vigorous and advanced of his age, had the freshness and youthful courage to greet it; nay, actually to depict its magic and glamour as alvise does in the 'resurrection'! giorgione is here anticipated in the roundness and softness of the figures, and in the effect of light. titian's assunta is foreshadowed in the fervour of the guards' expressions." alvise, if he never thoroughly mastered the structure of the nude, and if his forms keep throughout some touch of the archaic, some awkwardness in the thickness of the figures, with their round heads, long thighs, and uncertain proportions, is yet extraordinarily refined and tender in sentiment, his line has a natural flow and beauty, and the heads of his madonnas and saints cannot be surpassed in loveliness. his death came when the noble altarpiece to st. ambrogio in the frari was still unfinished, and it was completed by his assistant, marco basaiti. the execution is heavy and probably of basaiti, but the venerable doctor is a grand figure, and the two young soldier saints on his right and left hand are striking examples of the beauty we claim for him. the architectural plan is very elaborate, but altogether successful. the group is set beneath an arched vault supported by columns and cornices. overhead, behind a balustrade, is placed a coronation of the virgin. the many figures are grouped so as not to interfere with each other, and the sword of st. george, the crozier of st. gregory, and the crook of st. ambrose break up the composition and give length and line. the faces of the saints are extremely beautiful, and the two angels making music below compare well with those of the bellinesque school. the portraits alvise has left add to his reputation, and remind us of those of antonello da messina, particularly in the vital expression of the eyes, though they are without antonello's intense force. the "bernardo di salla" and the "man feeding a hawk," though some critics still ascribe them to savoldo, have features which make their attribution to alvise almost certainly correct. indeed, the resemblance of bernardo to the madonna in the altarpiece cannot escape the most unscientific observer. there is the same inflated nostril, the peculiarly curved mouth, and vivacious eyes. among the followers of alvise, marco basaiti, bartolommeo montagna, and lorenzo lotto are the most distinguished. others less direct are giovanni buonconsiglio and francesco bonsignori, while cima da conegliano was for a short time his greatest pupil. we shall return to these later. principal works berlin. madonna enthroned, with six saints. london. portrait of youth. milan. bonomi-cereda collection: portrait of a man. naples. madonna with ss. francis and bernardino. paris. portrait of bernardo di salla. venice. academy: seven panels of single saints; madonna and six saints, . frari: s. ambrose enthroned. s. giovanni in bragora: madonna adoring child; resurrection and predelle. redentore: sacristy: madonna and child, with angels. vienna. madonna. windsor. man feeding a hawk. chapter x carpaccio vittore carpaccio was gentile bellini's most faithful pupil. he and his master stand apart in having, before the arrival of the venetian school proper, captured an aspect and a charm inspired by the natural beauty of the city of the sea. gentile, as we have seen, paints her historic appearance, and carpaccio gives us something of the delight we feel to-day in her translucent waters and her ample, sea-washed spaces flooded with limpid light. while others were absorbed in assimilating extraneous influences, he goes on his own way, painting, indeed, the scenes that were asked for, but painting them in his own manner and with his own enjoyment. pageant-pictures had been the demand of the venetian state from very early days. the first use of painting had been that made by the church to glorify religion, and very soon the state had followed, using it to enhance the love which venetians bore to their city, and to bring home to them the consciousness of its greatness and glory. pageants and processions were an integral part of venetian life. the people looked on at them, often as they occurred, with more pride and sense of proprietorship than a londoner does at a coronation procession or at the king going in state to open parliament. the venetian loved splendour and beauty and the story of the city's great achievements, and nothing provided so welcome a subject for the decoration of the great public halls as portrayals of the events which had made venice famous. artists had been employed to produce these as early as the end of the fourteenth century, and those of the bellini and alvise vivarini (which perished in the great fire) were a rendering on modern lines of the same subjects, satisfying the more advanced feeling for truth and beauty. besides the church and the public government, we have already seen the "schools," as they were called, becoming important employers. these schools were the great organised confraternities in the cause of charity and mutual help, which sprang up in venice in the fifteenth century. that of st. mark was naturally the foremost, but others were banded each under their patron saint. each attracted numbers of rich patrons, for it was the fashion to belong to the confraternities. riches and endowments rolled in, and halls for meeting and for transacting business were built, and were adorned with pictures setting forth the legends of their patron saints. we have already seen gentile bellini employed in the schools of san marco and san giovanni, and now the schools of st. ursula and st. george gave commissions to carpaccio, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that gentile, having become pre-eminent in this art, provided employment for his pupil and assistant, and that by degrees carpaccio became a _maestro_ on his own account. a host of second-rate painters were plying side by side, disciples first of one master, then drawn off to become followers of a second; assimilating the influence first of one workshop and then of another. carpaccio has been lately identified as a pupil of lazzaro bastiani, who had a school in venice, and the recent attribution to this painter of the "doge before the madonna," in the national gallery, gives some countenance to the contention that he was held to be of great excellence in his time. though some historians advance the suggestion that carpaccio was a native of capo d'istria, there is little proof that he was not, like his father pietro, born a venetian. he seems to have worked in venice all his life, his first work being dated and his last . in his wife, laura, declared herself a widow. the narrative art needed by the confraternities was supplied in perfection by carpaccio, and one of his earliest independent commissions was the important one of decorating the school of st. ursula. devotion to st. ursula was a monopoly of the school. no one else had a right to collect offerings in her name or to put up an image to her. the legend afforded an opportunity for painting varied and dramatic scenes, of which carpaccio takes full advantage, and the cycle is one of the freshest and most characteristic things that has come down to us from the quattrocento. problems are not conspicuous. the mediocre masters who have educated the painter have made little impression on him. he is entirely occupied in delight in his subject and in telling his story. the story of st. ursula, told briefly, is that she was the daughter of the king of brittany. the king of england sends his ambassadors to beg her hand for his son, hereo. ursula discusses the proposal with her father, and makes the conditions that hereo, who is a heathen, shall be baptized, and that the betrothed couple must before marriage visit the pope and the sacred shrines. after taking leave of their parents, the prince and princess depart on their expedition, but ursula has had a vision in her sleep in which an angel has announced her martyrdom. she is accompanied on her journey by , virgins, and they are received by pope cyriacus in rome. the pope then makes the return journey with them as far as cologne, where, however, they are assaulted and massacred by the huns, after which ursula is accorded a splendid funeral, and is canonised. the thirteen scenes in which the story is told are arranged on nine canvases, and the painter has not executed them in the chronological order, some of the latest events being the least complete in artistic skill. professor leonello venturi assigns the following dates to the list: . the ambassadors of the king of england meet those of the king of brittany to ask for the hand of ursula. probably painted from - . . (on same canvas) ursula discusses the proposal with her father. - . . the king of brittany dismisses the ambassadors. - . . the ambassadors return to the king of england. - . . an angel appears to ursula in her sleep. . , , . the betrothed couple take leave of their respective parents, and the prince meets ursula. . . the betrothed couple and the , virgins meet the pope. . . they arrive at cologne. . , . the massacre by the huns. the funeral. . . the saint appears in glory, with the palm of martyrdom, venerated by the , virgins and received in heaven by the eternal father. . no. is a small canvas, such as might naturally have been chosen for a first experiment. the heads are large with coarse features, and the proportions of the figures are poor. the face of the saint in glory (no. ), plump and without much expression, is of the type of bastiani's saints. it may be assumed that such a great scheme of decoration would not have been entrusted to any one who was not already well known as an independent master, but perhaps carpaccio, who would have been about thirty when the work was begun, was still principally engrossed with the conventional, ecclesiastical subject. the heads of the virgins pressing round the saint appear to be portraits, and were very possibly those of the wives and daughters of members of the confraternity. the improvement that takes place is so rapid that we can guess how congenial the painter found the task and how quickly he adapted his already trained talent. in no. he takes delight in the opportunity for painting a little domestic scene,--the bedroom of a young venetian girl, perhaps a sister of his own. the comfortable bed, the dainty furniture, are carefully drawn. the clear morning light streams into the room. the saint lies peacefully asleep, her hand under her head, her long eyelashes resting upon her cheek: the whole is an idyll, full of insight into girlish life. the tiny slippers made, no doubt, one of the details that caught his eye. the crown lying on the ledge of the bed is an arbitrary introduction, as naïf as the angel. in the funeral scene the luminous light is diffused over all, the young saint lies upon her bier and is followed by priest and deacon, the crowd is composed with truth to nature, the draperies and garments are brought into harmony with the sky and background, and in all those that follow we find this quality of light. the landscape behind the massacre has gained in natural character, the city is at some distance, houses and churches are half buried in woods; the setting is much more natural than are the quaint and elegant pages who occupy it, and who are drawing their crossbows and attacking the martyrs with leisurely nonchalance. the panel in which the betrothed couple meet shows a great advance, and this and the succeeding ones of the ambassadors, which were painted between and , must have crowned carpaccio's reputation. he paints venice in its most fascinating aspect; the enamelled beauty of its marbles, its sky and sea, its palaces and ships, the rich and picturesque dresses men wore in the streets, the barge glowing with rich velvets. he evinces a fairy-tale spirit which we may compare with the work of pintoricchio. his prince, kneeling in a white and gold dress, with long fair curls, is a real fairy prince; ursula, in her red dress and puffed sleeves, her rippling, flaxen hair and strings of pearls, is a princess of story. carpaccio's art is simple and garrulous in feeling, his conception is as unpassionate as the fancies of a child, but he has a true love for these gay crowds; venice going upon her gallant way--her solid, worthy citizens, men of substance, shrewd and valuable, taking their pleasure seriously with a sense of responsibility. they throng the streets and cross over the bridges, every figure is full of freedom and vitality. the arrival and dismissal of the ambassadors are the best of all the scenes. in the middle of the great stage king maurus of brittany sits upon a venetian terrace. in the colonnade to the left is gathered a group of venetian personages, members of the loredano family, which was a special patron of st. ursula's guild, and gave this panel. the types are all vividly realised and differentiated: the courtier looking critically at the arrivals; the frankly curious bourgeoisie; the man of fashion passing with his nose in the air, disdaining to stare too closely; the fop with his dogs and their dwarf keeper. far beyond stretch the lagoons; the sea and air of venice clear and fresh. what is noticeable even now in an italian crowd, the absence of women, was then most true to life, for except on special occasions they were not seen in the streets, but were kept in almost oriental seclusion. the dismissal of the ambassadors affords the opportunity for drawing an interior with the street visible through a doorway. a group at the side, of a man dictating a letter and the scribe taking down his words, writing laboriously, with his shoulders hunched and his head on one side, is excellent in its quiet reality. the same life-like vivacity is displayed in ursula's consultation with her father. the old nurse crouched upon the steps is introduced to break the line and to throw back the main group. carpaccio has already used such a figure in the funeral scene, and titian himself adopts his suggestion. [illustration: _carpaccio._ arrival of the ambassadors. _venice._ (_photo, anderson._)] carpaccio is not a very great painter, but a charming one. his treatment of light and water, of distant hills and trees, shows a sense of peace and poetry, and though he is influenced by gentile's splendid realistic heads, the type which appeals to him is gentler and more idealised. his fancy is caught by oriental details, to which gentile would naturally have directed his attention, and of which there was no lack in venice at this time. all his episodes are very clearly illustrated, and his popular brush was kept busily employed. he took a share with other assistants in the series which gentile was painting in s. giovanni evangelista. in the dalmatians inhabiting venice resolved to decorate their school, which had been founded fifty years earlier, for the relief of destitute dalmatian seamen in venice. the subjects were to be selected from the lives of the saviour and the patron saints of dalmatia and albania, st. jerome, st. george of the sclavonians, and st. tryphonius. the nine panels and an altarpiece which carpaccio delivered between and still adorn the small but dignified hall of the school. his "jerome in his study" has nothing ascetic, but shows a prosperous venetian ecclesiastic seated in his well-furnished library among his books and writings. he is less successful in his scenes from the life of christ; the gethsemane is an obvious imitation of mantegna; but when he leaves his own style he is weak and poor, and imaginary scenes are quite beyond him. in the death and interment of st. jerome he gives a delightful impression of the peace of the old convent garden, and in the scene where the lion introduced by the saint scatters the terrified monks he lets a sense of humour have free play. the monks in their long garments, escaping in all directions, are really comical, and in conjunction with the ingratiating smile of the lion, the scene passes into the region of broad farce. we divine the same sense of the comic in the scene in st. ursula's history, where the , virgins are hurrying in single file along a winding road which disappears out of the picture. in the principal scene in the life of st. george, carpaccio again achieves a masterpiece. the force and vivacity of the saint in armour charging the dragon, lingers long in the memory. the long, decorative lines of lance and war-horse and dragon throw back the whole landscape. the details show an almost childish delight in the realisation of ghoulish horrors. he rather injures his "triumph of st. george" by his anxiety to bring in the temple of solomon at jerusalem; the flying flags distract the eye, and the whole scene is one of confusion, broken up into different parts, while the dragon is reduced to very unterrifying insignificance. his series for the school of the albanians dealt with the life of the virgin, who was their special patron. its remains are at bergamo, milan, and in the academy. the single figures in the "presentation," the priest and maiden, are excellent. a child at the side of the steps, leading a unicorn, emblem of chastity, shows once more what a hold this use of a figure had taken of him. in the "visitation" the figures are too much scattered, and the fantastic buildings attract more attention than the women. he still produced altarpieces, and the presentation of the infant christ in the temple, which he was called upon to paint for san giobbe, where one of bellini's most famous altarpieces stood, challenged him to put forth all his strength. he never produced anything more simple and noble or more worthy of the cinque-cento than this altarpiece (now in the academy). it surpasses bellini's arrangement in the way in which the personages are raised upon a step, while the dome overhead and the angel musicians below give them height and dignity. the contrast between the infant and the youthful woman and the old men is purposely marked. such a contrast between youth and age is a very favourite one. bellini, in the same church, draws it between ss. sebastian and job, and alvise vivarini, in his last painting, balances a very youthful sebastian with st. jerome. this is the most grandiose, the least of a _genre_ picture of all carpaccio's creations, although he does make simeon into a pontiff with attendant cardinals bearing his train. one of his last works is the s. vitale over the high altar of the church of that name, where we forgive the wooden appearance of the horse which the saint rides for the sake of the simple dignity of the rider and the airy effect given by the balcony overhead. nor must we forget that study of the "two courtesans" in the museo civico, full of the sarcasm of a deep realism. it conveys to us the matter-of-fact monotony of the long, hot days, and the women and the animals with which they are beguiling their idle hours are painted with the greatest intelligence. it carries us back to another phase of life in carpaccio's venice, seen through his observant, humorous eyes, and if there is nothing in his colour distinctive of the impending venetian richness, it is still arresting in its brilliant limpidity; it seems drawn straight from the transparent canals and radiant lagoons. we apprehend the difference at once in bastiani and in mansueti, who essay the same sort of compositions. they studied grouping carefully, and it must have seemed easy enough to paint their careful architecture and to place citizens in costume with appropriate action in a "miracle of the cross," or the "preaching of st. mark"; but these pictures are dry and crowded, they give no illusion of truth, there is none of the careless realism of carpaccio's crowds,--of incidents taking place which are not essential to the story, and, as in life, are only half seen, but which have their share in producing a full and varied illusion. the scenes want the air and depth in which carpaccio's pictures are enveloped. we are not stimulated and charmed, taken into the outer air and refreshed by these heavy personages, standing in rows, painted in hot, dry colour, and carrying no conviction in their glance and action. principal works berlin. madonna and saints; consecration of stephen. ferrara. death of virgin. milan. presentation of virgin; marriage of virgin; st. stephen disputing. paris. st. stephen preaching. stuttgart. martyrdom of st. stephen. venice. academy: the history of st. ursula and the , virgins; presentation in the temple. museo correr: visitation; two courtesans. s. giorgio degli schiavone: history of ss. george and tryphonius; agony in the garden; christ in the house of the pharisee; history of st. jerome. s. vitale: altarpiece to s. vitale. lady layard. death of the virgin; st. ursula taking leave of her father. vienna. christ adored by angels. chapter xi giovanni bellini the difference between gian. bellini and his accomplished brother, that which makes us so conscious that the first was the greater of the two and which sets him in a later artistic generation than gentile, is a difference of mind. such pageant-pictures as we hear that giovanni was engaged upon have all been destroyed. we may suspect that their composition was not particularly congenial to him, and that the strictly religious pictures and the small allegorical studies, by which we must judge him, were more after his heart. it is his poetic and ideal feeling which adds so strongly to his claim to be a great artist; it was this which drew all men to him and enabled him so powerfully to influence the art of his day in venice. jacopo's wife, anna, in a will of , leaves everything to her two sons, gentile and niccolo. giovanni was evidently not her son, but vasari speaks of him as the elder of the two, so that it is very possible that he was an illegitimate child, brought up, after the fashion that so often obtained, in the full privileges of his father's house. documents show that jacopo bellini was living in venice in , first near the piazza, and afterwards in the parish of san lio. he was a member of s. giovanni evangelista, and probably one of the leading artists of the city. his two sons helped him in his great decorative works, and also went with him to padua, where he painted the gattamalata chapel. their relative position is suggested by a document of , which records that the father received twenty-one ducats for "three figures, done on cloth, put in the great hall of the patriarch," only two of which were to go to the son. in gian. bellini's signature first appears on a document, and at about this time we may suppose that he and his brother began to execute small commissions on their own account. on these visits to padua the intimacy must have sprung up, which led to mantegna's marriage in with jacopo's daughter. at padua, too, bellini, in company with mantegna, drank in the inspiration left there by donatello, the greatest master that either of them encountered. it was the humanistic and naturalistic side of donatello which touched giovanni bellini, more than all his classic lore. it chimed in, too, with his father's graceful and fanciful quality, and there is no doubt that the venetian painters soon exercised a marked influence on mantegna. they "fought for him with squarcione," and even in the eremitani frescoes he begins to lose his purely statuesque type and to become frankly renaissance. in the later scenes of the series a pergola with grapes, a venetian campanile and doorway replace his classic towers and arches of triumph. in the "martyrdom of st. james" the couple walking by and paying no attention whatever to the tragic event, are very like the people whom gentile introduces in his backgrounds. there are few documents more interesting in the history of art than the two pictures of the "agony in the garden," executed by the brothers-in-law, about , from a design by jacopo in the british museum sketch-book. jacopo draws the mound-like hill, christ kneeling before the vision of the chalice, the figures wrapt in slumber, and the distant town. in few pictures up to this time is the landscape conceived in such sympathy with the figures. as we look at this sketch and examine the two finished compositions, which it is so fortunate to find in juxtaposition in the national gallery, we surmise that the two artists agreed to carry out the same idea and each to give his version of jacopo's suggestion, and very curious it is to see the rendering each has produced. mantegna has made use of the most formal and squarcionesque contours in his surroundings. the rocks are of an unnatural, geological structure. the towers of jerusalem are defined in elaborate perspective, and a band of classic figures fills the middle distance. the sleeping forms of the disciples are laid about like so many draped statues taken from their pedestals. the choir of child angels is solid and leaves nothing to the imagination, and if it were not for the beautifully conceived christ, the whole composition would leave us quite unmoved. on the other hand, we can never look at bellini's version without a fresh thrill. he, like mantegna, has followed jacopo's scheme of winding roads and the city "set on a hill," and has drawn the advancing band of soldiers; but, independent of all details, he gives us the vision of a poet. the still dawn is breaking over the broadly painted landscape, the rosy shafts of light are colouring the sky and casting their magic over every common object, and, lonely and absorbed, the sacred figure kneels, wrapt into the heavenly vision, which is hardly more definite than a stronger beam of light upon the radiance. one of the disciples, at least, is a successful and natural study of a tired-out man, whose head has fallen back and whose every limb has relaxed in sleep. bellini is less assured, less accomplished than mantegna, but he is able to touch us with the pathos of both natural and spiritual feeling. even earlier than this picture, critics place the "crucifixion" and "transfiguration" of the museo correr and our own "salvator mundi." in , when giovanni was a young man of four or five and twenty, san bernardino had held a great revival at padua, and the whole of venice had thronged to hear him. it is very possible, as mr. roger fry suggests in his _life of bellini_, that giovanni's emotional temperament had been worked upon by the preacher's eloquence, and the very poignant feelings of love and pity which his early art expresses were the deliberate consequence of his sympathy with the deep religious mysteries expounded. in the two pictures in the correr, bellini is still going with the paduan current. in both we have the winding roads so characteristic of his father, but the rocks in the "transfiguration" have the jointed, arbitrary character of mantegna's and the draperies are plastered to the forms beneath; yet the figures here have a beauty and a dignity which no reproduction seems able to convey. the feeling is already more imposing than the execution. christ and the two prophets tower up against the belt of clouds, the central figure conveying a sense of pathetic isolation; while below, st. john's attitude betrays a state of tension, the feet being drawn up and contorted. this picture prepares us for the overwhelming emotion we find in the "redeemer" and the group of pietàs. the treatment of the christ was a development of the early _motif_ of angels flying forward on either side of the cross, but here the sacred blood pouring into the chalice is also sacramental and connected with the intensified religious fervour which had led to the foundation of the franciscan and dominican orders, illustrations of which are met with in the miniatures and wood-engravings of fifteenth-century books of devotion. the accessories, the antique reliefs, the low wall, the distant buildings, have an allegorical meaning underlying each one, and common to trecento and, in a less degree, to quattrocento art. paradise regained is signified by the paved court with the open door, in contradistinction to the hortus clausus, or enclosed court; the type of the old covenant. in one of the bas-reliefs mucius scaevola thrusts his hand into the fire, the ancient type of heroic readiness to suffer. the other represents a pagan sacrifice, foreshadowing the sacrifice upon the cross. figures in the background are leaving a ruined temple and making their way towards the new christian city, fortified and crowned with a church tower, and in the midst of all this symbolism, christ and the attendant angel are placed, vibrating with nervous feeling. during the next few years, bellini devoted himself to two subjects of the highest devotional order. these are the madonna and child, the great exercise in every age for painters, and the pietà, which he has made peculiarly his own. [illustration: _giovanni bellini._ pietÀ. _brera, milan._ (_photo, brogi._)] close by, at padua, giotto had left a rendering of the last subject, so full of passionate sorrow that it is hardly possible that it should not, if only half consciously, have stimulated the artistic sensibilities of the most sensitive of painters; but bellini's pathos shrinks from all exaggeration. he conceives grief with the tenderest insight. his interest in the subject was so intense that he never left the execution to others, and though not a single one bears his signature, yet each is entirely by his own hand. besides the pietà at milan, which is perhaps the best known, there is one in the correr museum, another in the doge's palace, and yet others at rimini and at berlin. the version he adopts, which places the body of christ within the sarcophagus, was a favourite in north italy. donatello uses it in a bas-relief (now in the victoria and albert museum), but whether he brought or found the suggestion in padua nothing exists to show. jacopo has left sketches in which the whole group is within the tomb, and this rendering is followed by carpaccio, crivelli, marco zoppo, and others. it is never found in trecento art, and is probably traceable to the paduan impulse to make use of classic remains. giovanni bellini's pietàs fall into two groups. in one, the christ is placed between the virgin and st. john, who are embodiments of the agony of bereavement. in the other, the dead redeemer is supported by angels, who express the amazement and grief of immortal beings who see their lord suffering an indignity from which they are immune. mary and st. john _inside_ the sarcophagus shows that they are conceived mystically; mary as the church, and st. john as the personification of christian philosophy--a significance frequently attached to these figures. such a picture was designed to hang over the altar, at which the mystical sacrifice of the mass was perpetually offered. in his treatment of the brera example bellini has shaken off the paduan tradition, and is forming his own style and giving free play to his own feeling. the winding roads and evening sky, barred with clouds, are the accessories he used in the "agony in the garden," but the figures are treated much more boldly; the drapery falls in broad masses, and scarcely a trace is left of sculpturesque treatment. careful as is the study of the nude, everything is subordinated to the emotion expressed by the three figures: the helpless, indifferent calm of the dead, the tender solicitude of the mother, the wandering, dazed look of the despairing friend. here there is nothing of beautiful or pathetic symbol; the group is intense with the common sorrow of all the world. mary presses the corpse to her as if to impart her own life, and gazes with anguished yearning on the beloved face. bellini seems to have passed to a more complex age in his analysis of suffering, yet here is none of the extravagance which the primitive masters share with the caracci: his restraint is as admirable as his intensity. in the rimini version the tender concern and questioning surprise of the attendant angels contrast with the inert weight of the beautiful dead body they support. their childish limbs and butterfly wings make a sinuous pattern against the lacquered black of the ground-work, and mr. roger fry makes the interesting suggestion that the effect, reminiscent of greek vase-painting, and the likeness of the head of christ to an old bronze, may, in a composition painted for sigismondo malatesta, be no mere accident, but a concession to the patron's enthusiasm for classic art. in bellini received his first commission in the scuola di san marco. gentile had been employed there since on the history of the israelites in the desert. bellini agreed to paint "the deluge and the ark of noah" with all its attendant circumstances, but of these, except from vasari's descriptions, we can form no idea. these great pageant-pictures had become identified with the bellini and their following, while the production of altarpieces was peculiarly the province of the vivarini. here bellini effected a change, for sacred subjects best suited the restrained and simple perfection of his style, and afforded the most sympathetic opening for his idealistic spirit. for the next twenty years or more, however, he was unavoidably absorbed in public work, for we hear of his being given the direction of that which gentile left unfinished in the ducal palace when he went to the east in . in , giovanni being ill, gentile superintended the work for him, and in that year he was appointed to paint in the hall of the grand council, at an annual salary of sixty ducats. other commissions were turned out of the _bottega_ he had set up with his brother in , and between that year and he went to pesaro to paint the important altarpiece that still holds its place there. it is in some ways the greatest and most powerful thing that bellini ever accomplished. the central figures and the attendant saints have a large gravity and carefully studied individuality. st. jerome, absorbed in his theological books, an ascetic recluse, is admirably contrasted with the sympathetic, cultured st. paul. the landscape, set in a marble frame, is a gem of beauty, and proves what an appeal nature was making to the painter. the predella, illustrating the principal scenes in the lives of the saints around the altar, is full of oriental costumes. the horses are small eastern horses, very unlike the ponderous italian war-horse, and the whole is evidently inspired by the sketches which gentile brought back on his return from constantinople in . looking from one to another of the cycle of madonna pictures which bellini produced, and of which so many hang side by side in the academy, we are able to note how his conception varied. in one of the earliest the child lies across its mother's knee, in the attitude borrowed from his father and the vivarini, from whom, too, he takes the uplifted hands, placed palm to palm. the earlier pictures are of the gentle and adoring type, but his later madonnas are stately venetian ladies. he gives us a queenly woman, with full throat and stately poise, in the madonna degli alberi, in which the two little trees are symbols of the old and new testament; or, again, he paints a lovely intellectual face with chiselled and refined features, and sad dark eyes, and contrasts it dramatically with the bluff st. george in armour; and there is another madonna between st. francis and st. catherine, a picture which has a curious effect of artificial light. chapter xii giovanni bellini (_continued_) in the maggior consiglio of the venetian republic appointed bellini superintendent of the great hall, and conferred on him the honourable title of state painter. in this capacity he was the overseer of all public works of painting, and was expected to devote a part of his time to the decoration of the hall. sansovino enumerates nine of his historical paintings, which had been painted before the state appointment, all having reference to the visit of pope alexander; but though he must have been much engrossed, he seems to have suspended the work from time to time, for between and he painted the large altarpiece in the frari, that at san pietro in murano, and the one in the academy, which was painted for san giobbe. of these three, the last shows the greatest advance and is fullest of experiment. the madonna is a grand ecclesiastical figure. it has been said with truth that it is a picture which must have afforded great support and dignity to the church. the infant has an expression of omniscience, and the mother gazes out of the picture, extending invitation and encouragement to the advancing worshippers. the religious feeling is less profound; the artist has been more absorbed in the contrast between the beautiful, youthful body of st. sebastian and that of st. giobbe, older but not emaciated, and with the exquisite surface that his now complete mastery of oil-painting enabled him to produce. this technique has evidently been a great delight, and is here carried to perfection; the skin of st. sebastian gleams with a gloss like the coat of a horse in high condition. everything that architecture, sculpture, and rich material can supply is borrowed to enhance the grandeur of the group; but the line of sight is still close to the bottom of the picture, and if it were not for the exquisite grace with which the angels are placed, the madonna would have a broad, clumsy effect. the madonna of the frari is the most splendid in colour of all his works. as he paints the rich light of a golden interior and the fused and splendid colours, he seems to pass out of his own time and gives a foretaste of the glory that is to follow. the murano altarpiece is quite a different conception; instead of the seclusion of the sanctuary, it is a smiling, _plein air_ scene: the mother benign, the child soft and playful, the old doge barbarigo and the patron saints kneeling among bright birds, and a garden and mediæval townlet filling up the background, for which, by the way, he uses the same sketch as in the pesaro picture. it says much for his versatility that he could within a short time produce three such different versions. among bellini's most fascinating achievements in the last years of the fifteenth century are his allegorical paintings, known to us by the "pélerinage de l'Âme" in the uffizi and the little series in the academy. the meaning of the first has been unravelled by dr. ludwig from a mediæval poem by guillaume de guilleville, a cistercian monk who wrote about , and it is interesting to see the hold it has taken on bellini's mystic spirit. the paved space, set within the marble rail, signifies, as in the "salvator mundi," the paradise where souls await the resurrection. the new-born souls cluster round the tree of life and shake its boughs. the poem says: there is no pilgrim who is not sometimes sad who has not those who wound his heart, and to whom it is not often necessary to play and be solaced and be soothed like a child with something comforting. know that those playing there in order to allay their sorrow have found beneath that tree an apple that great comfort gives to those that play with it.[ ] [ ] this translation is by miss cameron taylor. [illustration: _giovanni bellini._ an allegory. _florence._ (_photo, anderson._)] this may be an allusion to sacramental comfort. st. peter and st. paul guard the door, beside which the madonna and a saint sit in holy conversation. a very beautiful figure on the left, wrapped in a black shawl, requires explanation, and it has been suggested that it is the donor, a woman who may have lost husband and children, and who, still in life, is introduced, watching the happiness of the souls in paradise. ss. giobbe and sebastian, who might have stepped out of the san giobbe altarpiece, are obviously the patron saints of the family, and st. catherine, at the virgin's side, may be the donor's own saint. this picture, with its delicious landscape bathed in atmospheric light, is a forerunner of those giorgionesque compositions of "pure and unquestioning delight in the sensuous charm of rare and beautiful things" in which the artistic nature is even more engrossed than with the intellectual conception, and within its small space bellini seems to have enshrined all his artistic creed. the allegories in the academy are also full of meaning. they are decorative works, and were probably painted for some small cabinet. they seem too small for a cassone. they are ruined by over-painting, but still full of grace and fancy. the figure in the classic chariot, bearing fruit, in the encounter between luxury and industry, is drawn from jacopo's triumphant bacchus. fortune floats in her barque, holding the globe, and the souls who gather round her are some full of triumphant success, others clinging to her for comfort, while several are sinking, overwhelmed in the dark waters. "prudence," the only example of a female nude in bellini's works, holds a looking-glass. hypocrisy or calumny is torn writhing from his refuge. the summa virtus is an ugly representation of all the virtues; a waddling deformity with eyes bound holds the scales of justice; the pitcher in its hand means prudence, and the gold upon its feet symbolises charity. the landscape, both of this and of the "fortune," resembles that which he was painting in his larger works at the end of the century. soon after bellini entered into relations with isabela d'este, marchioness of gonzaga. that distinguished collector and connoisseur writes through her agent to get the promise of a picture, "a story or fable of antiquity," to be placed in position with the allegories which mantegna had contributed to her "paradiso." bellini agreed to supply this, and received twenty-five ducats on account. he seems, however, to have felt that he would be at a disadvantage in competing with mantegna on his own ground, and asks to be allowed to choose his subject. isabela was unwillingly obliged to content herself with a sacred picture, and a "nativity" was selected. she is at once full of suggestions, desiring to add a st. john baptist, whom bellini demurs at introducing except as a child, but in april the commission is still unaccomplished, and isabela angrily demands the return of her money. this brings a letter of humble apology from bellini, and presently the picture is forwarded. lorenzo of pavia writes that it is quite beautiful, and that "though giovanni has behaved as badly as possible, yet the bad must be taken with the good." the joy of its acquisition appeased isabela, who at once began to lay plans to get a further work out of bellini, and in bembo wrote to her that he would take a fresh commission always providing he might fix the subject. from the catalogue of her mantovan pictures we gather that the picture "sul asse" (on panel) represented the "b.v., il putto, s. giovanni battista, s. giovanni evangelista, s. girolamo, and santa caterina." the great altarpieces which remain strike us less by their research, their preoccupation with new problems of paint or grouping, than by their intense delight in beauty. bellini was now nearly eighty years old, and in the young giorgione had proclaimed a revolution in art with his castelfranco madonna. in composition and detail the madonna of san zaccaria is in some degree a protest against the arcadian, innovating fashion of approaching a religious scene, of which the church had long since decided on the treatment, yet bellini cannot escape the indirect suggestion of the new manner. the same leaven was at work in him which was transforming the men of a younger generation. in this altarpiece, in the baptism at vicenza, in others, perhaps, which have perished, and above all in the hermit saint in s. giovanni crisostomo he is linked in feeling and in treatment with the later venetian school. the new device, which he adopts quite naturally, of raising the line of sight, sets the figures in increased depth. for the first time he gives height and majesty to the young mother by carrying the draperies down over the steps. he realises to the full the contrast between the young, fragile heads of his girl-saints and the dark, venerable countenances of the old men. the head of s. lucy, detaching itself like a flower upon its stem, reminds us of the type which we saw in his watcher in the sacred allegory of the uffizi. the arched, dome-like niche opens on a distance bathed in golden light. bellini keeps the traditions of the old hieratic art, but he has grasped a new perfection of feeling and atmosphere. who the saints are matters little; it is the collective enjoyment of a company of congenial people that pleases us so much. the "baptism" in s. corona, at vicenza, painted sixteen years later than cima's in s. giovanni in bragora, is in frank imitation of the younger man. christ and the baptist, traditional figures, are drawn without much zest, in a weak, conventional way, but the artist's true interest comes out in the beauty of face and gesture of the group of women holding the garments, and above all in the sombre gloom of the distance, which replaces cima's charming landscape, and which keys the whole picture to the significance of a portent. in the enthronement of the old hermit, s. chrysostom himself, painted in , bellini keeps his love for the golden dome, but he lets us look through its arch, at rolling mountain solitudes, with mists rising between their folds. the geranium robe of the saint, an exquisite, vivid bit of colouring, is caught by the golden sunset rays, the fine ascetic head stands out against the evening sky, and in the faces of the two saints who stand on either side of the aged visionary bellini has gone back to all his old intensity of religious feeling, a feeling which he seemed for a time to have exchanged for a more pagan tone. in , at gentile's death, giovanni undertook, at his brother's dying request, to finish the "preaching of st. mark," receiving as a recompense that coveted sketch-book of his father's, from which he had adopted so many suggestions, and which, though he was the eldest, had been inherited by the legitimate son. in the preceding year albert dürer had visited venice for the second time, and bellini had received him with great cordiality. dürer writes, "bellini is very old, but is still the best painter in venice"; and adds, "the things i admired on my last visit, i now do not value at all." implying that he was able now to see how superior bellini was to the hitherto more highly esteemed vivarini. at the very end of bellini's life, in , the duke of ferrara paid him eighty-five ducats for a painting of "bacchanals," now at alnwick castle; which may be looked upon as an open confession by one who had always considered himself as a painter of distinctively religious works, that such a gay scene of feasting afforded opportunities which he could not resist, for beauty of attitude and colour; but the gods, sitting at their banquet in a sunny glade, are almost fully draped, and there is little of the _abandon_ which was affected by later painters. the picture was left unfinished, and was later given to titian to complete. in his capacity as state painter to the republic, it was bellini's duty to execute the official portraits of the doges. during his long life he saw eleven reigns, and during four he held the state appointment. besides the official, he painted private portraits of the doges, and that of doge loredano, in the national gallery, is one of the most perfect presentments of the quattrocento. this portrait, painted by one old man of another, shows no weakening in touch or characterisation. it is as brilliant and vigorous as it is direct and simple. the face is quiet and unexaggerated; there is no unnatural fire and feeling, but an air of accustomed dignity and thought, while the technique has all the perfection of the painter's prime. in giovanni was buried in the church of ss. giovanni and paolo, by the side of his brother gentile. to the last he was popular and famous, overwhelmed with attentions from the most distinguished personages of the city. though he had begun life when art showed such a different aspect, he was by nature so imbued with that temperament, which at the time of his death was beginning to assert itself in the younger school, that he was able to assimilate a really astonishing share of the new manner. he is guided by feeling more than by intellect. all the time he is working out problems, he is dominated by the emotion of his subject, but his emotion, his pathos, are invariably tempered and restrained by the calm moderation of the quattrocento. the golden mean still has command of bellini, and never allows his feelings, however poignant, to degenerate into sentimentality or violence. principal works bergamo. lochis: madonna (e.). morelli: two madonnas. berlin. pietà (l.); dead christ. florence. uffizi: allegory; the souls in paradise (l.). london. portrait of doge (l.); madonna (l.); agony in garden (e.); salvator mundi (e.). milan. brera: pietà (e.); madonna; madonna, . mond collection. dead christ; madonna (e.). murano. s. pietro: madonna with saints and doge barbarigo, . naples. sala grande: transfiguration. pesaro. s. francesco: altarpiece. rimini. dead christ (e.). venice. academy: three madonnas; five small allegorical paintings (l.); madonna with ss. catherine and magdalene; madonna with ss. paul and george; madonna with five saints. museo correr: crucifixion (e.); transfiguration (e.); dead christ; dead christ with angels. palazzo ducale, sala di tre: pietà (e.). frari: triptych; madonna and saints, . s. giovanni crisostomo: s. chrysostom with ss. jerome and augustine, . s. maria dell' orto: madonna (e.). s. zaccaria: madonna and saints, . vicenza. s. corona: baptism, . chapter xiii cima da conegliano and other followers of bellini the rising tide of feeling, the growing sense of the joy of life and the apprehension of pure beauty, which was strengthening in the people and leading up to the great period of venetian art, flooded round bellini and recognised its expression in him. he was more popular and had a larger following among the artists of his day than either gentile or carpaccio with their frankly mundane talent. whatever giovanni's state works may have been, his religious paintings are the ones which are copied and adapted and studied by the younger band of artists, and this because of their beauty and notwithstanding their conventional subjects. gentile's pageant-pictures have still something cold and colourless, with a touch of the archaic, while giovanni's religious altarpieces evince a new freedom of handling, a modern conception of beautiful women, a use of that colour which was soon to reign triumphant. as far as it went indeed, its triumph was already assured; as giovanni advanced towards old age, it was no longer of any use for the young masters of the day to paint in any way save the one he had made popular, and one artist after another who had begun in the school of alvise vivarini ended as the disciple of giovanni bellini. it was the habit of bellini to trust much to his assistants, and as everything that went out of his workshop was signed by his name, even if it only represented the use of one of his designs, or a few words of advice, and was "passed" by the master, it is no wonder that european collections were flooded with works, among which only lately the names of catena, previtali, pennacchi, marco belli, bissolo, basaiti, rondinelli, and others begin to be disentangled. only one of his followers stands out as a strong and original master, not quite of the first class, but developing his own individuality while he draws in much of what both alvise and bellini had to give. cima da conegliano, whose real name was giovanni battista, always signs himself _coneglianensis_: the title of cima, "the rock," by which he is now so widely known, having first been mentioned in the seventeenth century by boschini, and perhaps given him by that writer himself. he was a son of the mountains, who, though he came early to venice, and lived there most of his life, never loses something of their wild freshness, and to the end delights in bringing them into his backgrounds. he lived with his mother at conegliano, the beautiful town of the trevisan marches, until , when he was twenty-five, and then came down to vicenza, where he fell under the tuition of bartolommeo montagna, a vicentine painter, who had been studying both with alvise and bellini. cima's "madonna with saints," painted for the church of st. bartolommeo, vicenza, in , shows him still using the old method of tempera, in a careful, cold, painstaking style, yet already showing his own taste. the composition has something of alvise, yet that something has been learned through the agency of montagna, for the figures have the latter's severity and austere character and the colour is clearer and more crude than alvise's. it is no light resemblance, and he must have been long with montagna. in the type of the christ in montagna's pietà at monte berico, in the fondness for airy porticoes, in the architecture and main features of his "madonna enthroned" in the museo civico at vicenza, we see characteristics which cima followed, though he interpreted them in his own way. he turns the heavy arches and domes that alvise loved, into airy pergolas, decked with vines. he gives increasing importance to high skies and to atmospheric distances. when he got to venice in , he began to paint in oils, and undertook the panel of s. john baptist with attendant saints, still in the church of s. madonna dell' orto. the work of this is rather angular and tentative, but true and fresh, and he comes to his best soon after, in the "baptism" in s. giovanni in bragora, which bellini, sixteen years later, paid him the compliment of copying. it was quite unusual to choose such a subject for the high altar, and could only be justified by devotion to the baptist, who was cima's own name-saint as well as that of the church. cima is here at his very highest; the composition is not derived from any one else, but is all the conception of an ingenuous soul, full of intuition and insight. the christ is particularly fine and simple, unexaggerated in pose and type; the arm of the baptist is too long, but the very fault serves to give him a refined, tentative look, which makes a sympathetic appeal. the attendant angels look on with an air of sweet interest. the distant mountains, the undulating country, the little town of conegliano, identified by the castle on its great rock, or _cima_, are arcadian in their sunny beauty. the clouds, as a critic has pointed out, are full of sun, not of rain. the landscape has not the sombre mystery of titian's, but is bright with the joyous delight of a lover of outdoor life. as cima masters the new medium he becomes larger and simpler, and his forms lose much of their early angularity. a confraternity of his native town ordered the grand altarpiece which is still in the cathedral there, and in this he shows his connection with venice; the architecture is partly taken from st. mark's, the lovely madonna head recalls bellini, and a group of bellinesque angels play instruments at the foot of the throne. cima is, however, never merged in bellini. he keeps his own clearly defined, angular type; his peculiar, twisted curls are not the curls of bellini's saints, his treatment of surface is refined, enamel-like, perfectly finished, but it has nothing of the rich, broken treatment which bellini's natural feeling for colour was beginning to dictate. cima's pale golden figures have an almost metallic sharpness and precision, and though they are full of charm and refinement, they may be thought lacking in spontaneity and passion. to belongs the "incredulity of st. thomas," now in the academy, but painted for the guild of masons. it is a picture full of expression and dignity, broad in treatment if a little cold in its self-restraint. cima seems to have not quite enough intellect, and not quite enough strong feeling. however, the little altarpiece of the nativity, in the church of the carmine in venice, has a richer, fuller touch, and this foreshadows the work he did when he went to parma, where his transparent shadows grow broader and stronger, and his figures gain in ease and freedom. he never loses the delicate radiance of his lights, and his types and his architecture alike convey something of a peculiarly refined, brilliant elegance. like all these men of great energy and prolific genius, cima produced an astonishing number of panels and altarpieces, and no doubt had pupils on his own account, for a goodly list could be made of pictures in his style, but not by his own hand, which have been carried by collectors into widely-scattered places. his exquisite surface and finish and his marked originality make him a difficult master to imitate with any success. his latest work is dated , but ridolfi says he lived till , and it seems probable that he returned to his beloved conegliano and there passed his last years. if cima possessed originality, vincenzo of treviso, called catena, gained an immense reputation by his industry and his power of imitating and adopting the manner of bellini's school. in those days men did not trouble themselves much as to whether they were original or not. they worked away on traditional compositions, frankly introducing figures from their master's cartoons, modifying a type here, making some little experiment or arrangement there, and, as a french critic puts it, leaving their own personality to "hatch out" in due time, if it existed, and when it was sufficiently ripened by real mastery of their art. it is here that catena fails; beginning as a journeyman in the sala del gran consiglio, at a salary of three ducats a month, he for long failed to acquire the absolute mastery of drawing which was possessed by the better disciples of the schools. but he is painstaking, determined to get on, and eager to satisfy the continually increasing demand for work. his draperies are confused and unmeaning, his faces round, with small features, inexpressive button mouths, and weak chins, and his flesh tints have little of the glow which is later the prerogative of every second-rate painter. yet catena succeeds, like many another careful mediocre man, in securing patronage, and as the sixteenth century opened he gained the distinction from doge loredano of a commission to paint the altarpiece for the pregadi chapel of the sala di tre, in the ducal palace. he adapts his group from that of bellini in the cathedral of murano, bringing in a profile portrait of the kneeling doge, of which he afterwards made numerous copies, one of which was for long assigned to gentile and one to giovanni bellini. that catena is not without charm, we discern in such a composition as his "martyrdom of st. cristina," in s. maria mater domini, in which the saint, a solid, bellinesque figure, kneels upon the water, in which she met her death, and is surrounded by little angels, holding up the millstone tied round her neck, and laden with other instruments of her martyrdom. catena borrows right and left, and tries to follow every new indication of contemporary taste. for instance, he remarks the growing admiration for colour, and hopes by painting gay, flat tints, in bright contrast, to produce the desired effect. it is evident that he made many friends among the rich connoisseurs of the time, and that his importance was out of proportion to his real merit. marcantonio michele, writing an account of raphael's last days to a friend in venice, and touching on michelangelo's illness, begs him to see that catena takes care of himself, "as the times are unfavourable to great painters." catena had acquired and inherited considerable wealth; he came of a family of merchants, and resided in his own house in san bartolommeo del rialto. he lived in unmarried relations with dona maria fustana, the daughter of a furrier, to whom he bequeaths in his will ducats and all his personal effects. as a careful portrait-painter, with a talent for catching a likeness, he was in constant demand, and in some of his heads--that of a canon dressed in blue and red, at vienna, and especially in one of a member of the fugger family, now at dresden--he attains real distinction. and in his last phase he does at length prove the power that lies behind long industry and perseverance. suddenly the giorgionesque influence strikes him, and turning to imbibe this new element, he produces that masterpiece which throws a glamour over all his mediocre performances; his "warrior adoring the infant christ," in the national gallery, is a picture full of charm, rich and romantic in tone and spirit. the virgin and the child upon her knee are of his dull round-eyed type, the form and colours of her draperies are still unsatisfactory, but the knight in armour with his eastern turban, the romantic young page, holding his horse, are pure giorgionesque figures. beautiful in themselves, set in a beautiful landscape glowing with light and air, the whole picture exemplifies what surprising excellence could be suddenly attained by even very inferior artists, who were constantly associating with greater men, at a moment when the whole air was, as it were, vibrating with genius. catena was very much addicted to making his will, and at least five testaments or codicils exist, one of them devising a sum of money for the benefit of the school of painters in venice, and another leaving to his executor, prior ignatius, the picture of a "st. jerome in his cell," which may be the one in our national collection, which remained in venice till . it is painted in his gay tones, imitating basaiti and lotto, and brings in the partridge of which he made a sort of sign manual. cardinal bembo writes in to pietro lippomano, to announce that, at his request, he is continuing his patronage of catena: though i had done all that lay in my power for vincenzo catena before i received your lordship's warm recommendation in his favour, i did not hesitate, on receipt of your letter, to add something to the first piece i had from him, and i did so because of my love and reverence for you, and i trust that he will return appropriate thanks to you for having remembered that you could command me. marco basaiti was alternately a journeyman in different workshops and a master on his own account. for long the assistant and follower of alvise vivarini, we may judge that he was also his most trusted confidant, for to him was left the task of completing the splendid altarpiece to s. ambrogio, in the frari. his heavy hand is apparent in the execution, and the two saints, sebastian and jerome, in the foreground, have probably been added by him, for they have the air of interlopers, and do not come up to the rest of the company in form and conception. the sebastian, with his hands behind his back and his loin cloth smartly tied, is quite sufficiently reminiscent of bellini's figure of to make us believe that basaiti was at once transferring his allegiance to that reigning master. in his earlier phase he has the round heads and the dry precise manner of the muranese. in his large picture in the academy, the "calling of the sons of zebedee," he produces a large, important set piece, cold and lifeless, without one figure which arrests us, or lingers in the memory. "the christ on the mount" is more interesting as having been painted for san giobbe, where bellini's great altarpiece was already hanging, and coming into competition with bellini's early rendering of the same scene. painted some thirty years later, it is interesting to see what it has gained in "modernness." the landscape and trees are well drawn and in good colour, and the saints, standing on either side of a high portico, have dignity. in the "dead christ," in the academy, he is following bellini very closely in the flesh-tints and the _putti_. the _putti_, looking thoughtfully at the dead, is a _motif_ beloved of bellini, but basaiti cannot give them bellini's pathos and significance; they are merely childish and seem to be amused. in basaiti has entered upon a new phase. he has felt giorgione's influence, and is beginning to try what he can do, while still keeping close to bellini, to develop a fuller touch, more animated figures, and a brilliant effect of landscape. he runs a film of vaporous colour over his hard outlines and makes his figures bright and misty, and though underneath they are still empty and monotonous, it is not surprising that many of his works for a time passed as those of bellini. though he is a clever imitator, "his figures are designed with less mastery, his drawing is a little less correct, his drapery less adapted to the under form. light and shade are not so cleverly balanced, colours have the brightness, but not the true contrast required. in landscape he proceeds from a bleak aridity to extreme gaiety; he does not dwell on detail, but his masses have neither the sober tint nor the mysterious richness conspicuous in his teacher ... he is a clever instrument." both previtali and rondinelli were workers with basaiti in bellini's studio. previtali occasionally signed himself andrea cordeliaghi or cordella, and has left many unsigned pictures. he copies catena and lotto, palma and montagna; but for a time his work went forth from bellini's workshop signed with bellini's name. in , in a great altarpiece in san spirito at bergamo, he first takes the title of previtali, compiling it in the cartello with the monogram already used as cordeliaghi. there are traces of many other minor artists at this period, all essaying the same manner, copying one or other of the masters, taking hints from each other. the venetian love of splendour was turning to the collection of works of art, and the work of second-class artists was evidently much in demand and obtained its meed of admiration. bissolo was a fellow-labourer with catena in the hall of the ducal palace in ; he is soft and nerveless, but he copies bellini, and has imbibed something of his tenderness of spirit. it will be seen from this list how difficult it is to unravel the tale of the false bellinis. the master's own works speak for themselves with no uncertain voice, but away from these it is very difficult to pronounce as to whether he had given a design, or a few touches, or advice, and still more difficult to decide whether these were bestowed on basaiti in his later manner, or on previtali or bissolo, or if the teaching was handed on by them in a still more diluted form to the lesser men who clustered round, much of whose work has survived and has been masquerading for centuries under more distinguished names. it is sometimes affirmed that the loss of originality in the endeavour to paint like greater men has been a symptom of decay in every school in the past. it is interesting to notice, therefore, that in every great age of painting there has always been an undercurrent of imitation, which has helped to form a stream of tradition, and which, as far as we can see, has done no harm to the stronger spirits of the time. principal works _cima._ berlin. madonna with four saints; two madonnas. conegliano. duomo: madonna and saints, . dresden. the saviour; presentation of virgin. london. two madonnas; incredulity of s. thomas; s. jerome. milan. brera: six pictures of saints; madonna. parma. madonna with saints; another; endymion; apollo and marsyas. paris. madonna with saints. venice. academy: madonna with ss. john and paul; pietà; madonna with six saints; incredulity of s. thomas; tobias and the angel. carmine: adoration of the shepherds. s. giovanni in bragora: baptism, ; ss. helen and constantine; three predelle; finding of true cross. ss. giovanni and paolo: coronation of the virgin. s. maria dell' orto: s. john baptist and ss. paul, jerome, mark, and peter. lady layard. madonna with ss. francis and paul; madonna with ss. nicholas of bari and john baptist. vicenza. madonna with ss. jerome and john, . _vincenzo catena._ bergamo. carrara: christ at emmaus. berlin. portrait of fugger; madonna, saints, and donor (e.). dresden. holy family (l.). london. warrior adoring infant christ (l.); s. jerome in his study (l.); adoration of magi (l.). mr. benson: holy family. lord brownlow: nativity. mond collection: madonna, saints, and donors (e.). paris. venetian ambassadors at cairo. venice. ducal palace: madonna, saints, and doge loredan (e.). giovanelli palace: madonna and saints. s. maria mater domini: s. cristina. s. trovaso: madonna. vienna. portrait of a canon. _marco basaiti._ bergamo. the saviour, ; two portraits. berlin. pietà; altarpiece; s. sebastian; madonna (e.). london. s. jerome; madonna. milan. ambrosiana: risen christ. munich. madonna, saints, and donor (e.). murano. s. pietro: assumption. padua. portrait, ; madonna with ss. liberale and peter. venice. academy: saints; dead christ; christ in the garden, ; calling of children of zebedee, . museo correr: madonna and donor; christ and angels. salute: s. sebastian. vienna. calling of children of zebedee, . _andrea previtali._ bergamo. carrara: pentecost; marriage of s. catherine; altarpiece; madonna, ; madonna with saints and donors. lochis: madonna and saint. count moroni: madonna and saints; family group. s. alessandro in croce: crucifixion, . s. spirito: s. john baptist and saints, ; madonna and four female saints, . berlin. madonna and saints; marriage of s. catherine. dresden. madonna and saints. london. madonna and donor (e.). milan. brera: christ in garden, . oxford. christchurch library: madonna. venice. ducal palace: christ in limbo; crossing of the red sea. redentore: nativity; crucifixion. verona. stoning of stephen; immaculate conception. _n. rondinelli._ berlin. madonna. florence. uffizi: madonna and saints. milan. brera: madonna with four saints and three angels. paris. madonna and saints. ravenna. two madonnas with saints. s. domenico: organ shutters; madonna and saints. venice. museo correr: madonna; madonna with saints and donors. giovanelli palace: two madonnas. _bissolo._ london. mr. benson: madonna and saints. mond collection: madonna and saints. venice. academy: dead christ; madonna and saints; presentation in temple. s. giovanni in bragora: triptych. redentore: madonna and saints. s. maria mater domini: transfiguration. lady layard: madonna and saints. part ii chapter xiv giorgione when we enter a gallery of florentine paintings, we find our admiration and criticism expressing themselves naturally in certain terms; we are struck by grace of line, by strenuous study of form, by the evidence of knowledge, by the display of thought and intellectual feeling. the florentine gestures and attitudes are expressive, nervous, fervent, or, as in michelangelo and signorelli, alive with superhuman energy. but when looking at pictures of the venetian school we unconsciously use quite another sort of language; epithets like "dark" and "rich" come most freely to our lips; a golden glow, a slumberous velvety depth, seem to engulf and absorb all details. we are carried into the land of romance, and are fascinated and soothed, rather than stimulated and aroused. so it is with portraits; before the "mona lisa" our intelligence is all awake, but the men and women of venetian canvases have a grave, indolent serenity, which accords well with the slumber of thought. up to the beginning of the sixteenth century the painters of venice had not differed very materially from those of other schools; they had gradually worked out or learned the technicalities of drawing, perspective and anatomy. they had been painting in oils for twenty-five years, and they betrayed a greater fondness for pageant-pictures than was felt in other states of italy. florence appoints michelangelo and leonardo to decorate her public palace, but no great store is set by their splendid achievements; their work is not even completed. the students fall upon the cartoons, which are allowed to perish, instead of being treasured by the nation. gentile bellini and carpaccio and the band of state painters are appreciated and well rewarded. these men have reproduced something of the lucent transparency, the natural colour of venice, but it is as if unconsciously; they are not fully aiming at any special effect. year after year the venetian masters assimilate more or less languidly the influences which reach them from the mainland. they welcome guariento and gentile da fabriano, they set themselves to learn from veronese or florentine, the paduans contribute their chiselled drawing, their learned perspective, their archeological curiosity. yet even early in the day the venetians escape from that hard and learned art which is so alien to their easy, voluptuous temperament. jacopo bellini cannot conform to it, and his greatest son is ready to follow feeling and emotion, and in his old age is quick to discover the first flavour of the new wine. if venetian art had gone on upon the lines we have been tracing up to now, there would have been nothing very distinctive about it, for, however interesting and charming alvise and carpaccio, cima and the bellini may be, it is not of them we think when we speak of the venetian school and when we rank it beside that of florence, while giovanni bellini alone, in his later works, is not strong enough to bear the burden. the change which now comes over painting is not so much a technical one as a change of temper, a new tendency in human thought, and we link it with giorgione because he was the channel through which the deep impulse first burst into the light. we have tried to trace the growth of the early venetian school, but it does not develop logically like that of florence; it is not the result of long endeavour, adding one acquisition and discovery to another. venetian art was peculiarly the outcome of personalities, and it did not know its own mind till the sixteenth century. then, like a hidden spring, it bubbles irresistibly to the surface, and the spot where it does so is called by the name of a man. there are beings in most great creative epochs who, with peculiar facility, seem to embody the purpose of their age and to yield themselves as ready instruments to its design. when time is ripe they appear, and are able, with perfect ease, to carry out and give voice to the desires and tendencies which have been straining for expression. these desires may owe their origin to national life and temperament; it may have taken generations to bring them to fruition, but they become audible through the agency of an individual genius. a genius is inevitably moulded by his age. rome, in the seventeenth century, drew to her in bernini a man who could with real power illustrate her determination to be grandiose and ostentatious, and, at the height of the renaissance, venice draws into her service a man whose sensuous feeling was instilled, accentuated, and welcomed by every element around him. more conclusively than ever, at this time, venice, the world's great sea-power, was in her full glory as the centre of the world's commerce and its art and culture. vasco da gama had discovered the sea route to india in , but the stupendous effect which this was to exert on the whole current of power did not become apparent all at once. venice was still the great emporium of the east, linked to it by a thousand ties, oriental in her love of eastern richness. it would be exaggerating to say that the venetians of the sixteenth century could not draw. as there were tuscans who understood beautiful harmonies of colour, so there were venetians who knew a good deal about form; but the other italians looked upon colour as a charming adjunct, almost, one might say, as an amiable weakness: they never would have allowed that it might legitimately become the end and aim in painting, and in the same way form, though respected and considered, was never the principal object of the venetians. up to this time venice had fed her emotional instincts by pageants and gold and velvets and brocades, but with giorgione she discovered that there was a deeper emotional vehicle than these superficial glories,--glowing depths of colour enveloped in the mysterious richness of chiaroscuro which obliterated form, and hid and suggested more than it revealed. giorgione no longer described "in drawing's learned tongue"; he carried all before him by giving his direct impression in colour. he conceives in colour. the florentines cared little if their finely drawn draperies were blue or red, but giorgione images purple clouds, their dark velvet glowing towards a rose and orange horizon. he hardly knows what attitudes his characters take, but their chestnut hair, their deep-hued draperies, their amber flesh, make a moving harmony in which the importance of exact modelling is lost sight of. his scenes are not composed methodically and according to the old rules, but are the direct impress of the painter's joy in life. it was a new and audacious style in painting, and its keynote, and absolutely inevitable consequence, was to substitute for form and for gay, simple tints laid upon it, the quality of chiaroscuro. we all know how the shades of evening are able to transform the most commonplace scene; the dull road becomes a mysterious avenue, the colourless foliage develops luscious depths, the drab and arid plain glows with mellow light, purple shadows clothe and soften every harsh and ugly object, all detail dies, and our apprehension of it dies also. our mood changes; instead of observing and criticising, we become soothed, contemplative, dreamy. it is the carrying of this profound feeling into a colour-scheme by means of chiaroscuro, so that it is no longer learned and explanatory, but deeply sensuous and emotional, that is the gift to art which found full voice with giorgione, and which in one moment was recognised and welcomed to the exclusion of the older manner, because it touched the chord which vibrated through the whole venetian temperament. and the immediate result was the picture of _no subject_. giorgione creates for us idle figures with radiant flesh, or robed in rich costumes, surrounded by lovely country, and we do not ask or care why they are gathered together. we have all had dreams of elysian fields, "where falls not any rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," where all is rest and freedom, where music blends with the plash of fountains, and fruits ripen, and lovers dream away the days, and no one asks what went before or what follows after. the golden age, the haunt of fauns and nymphs: there never has been such a day, or such a land: it is a mood, a vision: it has danced before the eyes of poets, from david to keats and tennyson: it has rocked the tired hearts of men in all ages: the vision of a resting-place which makes no demands and where the dwellers are exempt from the cares and weakness of mortality. needless to say, it is an ideal born of the east; it is the eastern dream of paradise, and it speaks to that strain in the temperament which recognises that life cannot be all thought, but also needs feeling and emotion. and for the first time in all the world the painter of castelfranco sets that vague dream before men's eyes. the world, with its wistful yearnings and questionings, such as leonardo or botticelli embodied, said little to his audience. here was their natural atmosphere, though they had never known it before. these deep, solemn tones, these fused and golden lights are what giorgione grasps from the material world, and as he steeps his senses in them the subject counts but little in the deep enjoyment they communicate. we, who have seen his manner repeated and developed through thousands of pictures, find it difficult to realise that there had been nothing like it before, that it was a unique departure, that when bellini and titian looked at his first creations they must have experienced a shock of revelation. the old definite style must have seemed suddenly hard and meagre, and every time they looked on the glorious world, the deep glow of sunset, the mysterious shades of falling night, they must have felt they were endowed with a sense to which they had hitherto been strangers, but which, it was at once apparent, was their true heritage. they had found themselves, and in them venice found her real expression, and with giorgione and those who felt his impetus began the true venetian school, set apart from all other forms of art by its way of using and diffusing and intensifying colour. when giorgione, the son of a member of the house of barbarelli and a peasant girl of vedelago, came down to venice, we gather that he had nothing of the provincial. vasari, who must often have heard of him from titian, describes him as handsome, engaging, of distinguished appearance, beloved by his friends, a favourite with women, fond of dress and amusement, an admirable musician, and a welcome guest in the houses of the great. he was evidently no peasant-bred lad, but probably, though there is no record of the fact, was brought up, like many illegitimate children, in the paternal mansion. his home was not far from the lagoons, in one of the most beautiful places it is possible to imagine, on a lovely and fertile plain running up to the asolean hills and with the julian alps lying behind. we guess that he received his education in the school of bellini, for when that master sold his allegory of the "souls in paradise" to one of the medici, to adorn the summer villa of poggio imperiale, there went with it the two small canvases now in the uffizi, the "ordeal of moses" and the "judgment of solomon," delightful little paintings in giorgione's rich and distinctive style, but less accomplished than bellini's picture, and with imperfections in the drawing of drapery and figures which suggest that they are the work of a very young man. the love of the venetians for decorating the exterior of their palaces with fresco led to giorgione being largely employed on work which was unhappily a grievous waste of time and talent, as far as posterity is concerned. we have a record of façades covered with spirited compositions and heraldic devices, of friezes with bacchus and mars, venus and mercury. zanetti, in his seventeenth-century prints, has preserved a noble figure of "fortitude" grasping an axe, but beyond a few fragments nothing has survived. before he was thirty giorgione was entrusted with the important commission of decorating the fondaco dei tedeschi. this building, which we hear of so often in connection with the artists of venice, was the trading-house for german, hungarian, and polish merchants. the venetian government surrounded these merchants with the most jealous restrictions. every assistant and servant connected with them was by law a venetian, and, in fact, a spy of the republic. all transactions of buying and selling were carried out by venetian brokers, of whom some thirty were appointed. as time went on, some of these brokerships must have resolved themselves into sinecure offices, for we find bellini holding one, and certainly without discharging any of the original duties, and they seem to have become some sort of state retainerships. in the old fondaco had been burnt to the ground, and the present building was rising when giorgione and titian were boys. a decree went forth that no marble, carving, or gilding were to be used, so that painting the outside was the only alternative. the roof was on in , and from that date giorgione, titian, and morto da feltre were employed in the adornment of the façade. vasari is very much exercised over giorgione's share in these decorations. "one does not find one subject carefully arranged," he complains, "or which follows correctly the history or actions of ancients or moderns. as for me, i have never been able to understand the meaning of these compositions, or have met any one able to explain them to me. here one sees a man with a lion's head, beside a woman. close by one comes upon an angel or a love: it is all an inexplicable medley." yet he is delighted with the brilliancy of the colour and the splendid execution, and adds, "colour gives more pleasure in venice than anywhere else." among other early work was the little "adoration of the magi," in the national gallery, and the so-called "philosophers" at vienna. according to the latest reading, this last illustrates virgil's legend that when the trojan Æneas arrived in italy, evander pointed out the future site of rome to the ancient seer and his son. giorgione, in painting the scene, is absorbed in the beauty of nature. it is his first great landscape, and all accessories have been sacrificed to intensity of effect. he revels in the glory of the setting sun, the broad tranquil masses of foliage, the long evening shadows, and the effect of dark forms silhouetted against the radiant light. chapter xv giorgione (_continued_) when giorgione was twenty-six he went back to castelfranco, and painted an altarpiece for the church of san liberale. in the sixteenth century tuzio costanza, a well-known captain of free companions, who had made his fortune in the wars, where he had been attached to catherine cornaro, followed the dethroned queen from cyprus, and when she retired to asolo, settled near her at castelfranco. his son, matteo, entered the service of the venetian republic, and became a leader of fifty lances; but matteo was killed at the battle of ravenna in , and costanza had his son's body embalmed and buried in the family chapel. nothing is known of the details of this commission, but we are not straining the bounds of probability by assuming that in a little town like castelfranco, hardly more than a village, the two youths must have been well known to each other, and that this acquaintance and the familiarity of the one with the appearance of the other may have been the determining cause which led the bereaved father to give the commission to the young painter, while the tragic circumstances were such as would appeal to an ardent, enthusiastic nature. a treasure of our national gallery is a study made by giorgione for the figure of san liberale, who is represented as a young man with bare head and crisp, golden locks, dressed in silver armour, copied from the suit in which matteo costanza is dressed in the stone effigy which is still preserved in the cemetery at castelfranco. at the side of the stone figure lies a helmet, resembling that on the head of the saint in the altarpiece. in giorgione's group the mother and child are enthroned on high, with st. francis and st. liberale on either hand. the child's glance is turned upon the soldier-saint, a gallant figure with his lance at rest, his dagger on his hip, his gloves in his hand, young, high-bred, with features of almost feminine beauty. the picture is conceived in a new spirit of simplicity of design, and shows a new feeling for restraint in matters of detail. it is the work of a man who has observed that early morning, like late evening, has a marvellous power of eliminating all unessential accessories and of enveloping every object in a delicious scheme of light. repainted, cleaned, restored as the canvas is, it is still full of an atmosphere of calm serenity. it is not the ecstatic, devotional reverie of perugino's saints. the painter of castelfranco has not steeped his whole soul in religious imagination, like the painter of umbria; he is an exemplar of the lyric feeling; his work is a poem in praise of youth and beauty, and dreams in air and sunshine. he uses atmosphere to enhance the mood, but giorgione carries his unison of landscape with human feeling much further than perugino; he observes the delicate effects of light, and limpid air circulates in his distance. the sun rising over the sea throws a glamour and purity of early morning over a scene meant to glorify the memory of a young life. the painter shows his connection with his master by using the figure of the st. francis in bellini's san giobbe altarpiece. what bellini owed to giorgione is still a matter for speculation. the san zaccaria altarpiece was, as we have seen, painted in the year following that of castelfranco. something has incited the old painter to fresh efforts; out of his own evolution, or stimulated by his pupil's splendid experiments, he is drawn into the golden atmosphere of the venetian cinque-cento. the venetian painters were distinguished by their love for the kindred art of music. giorgione himself was an admirable musician, and linked with all that is akin to music in his work, is his love for painting groups of people knit together by this bond. he uses it as a pastime to bring them into company, and the rich chords of colour seem permeated with the chords of sound. not always, however, does he need even this excuse; his "conversation-pieces" are often merely composed of persons placed with indescribable grace in exquisite surroundings, governed by a mood which communicates itself to the beholder. with the florentines, the cartoon was carefully drawn upon the wall and flat tints were superimposed. they knew beforehand what the effect was to be; but the venetians from this time gradually worked up the picture, imbedding tints, intensifying effects, one touch suggesting another, till the whole rich harmony was gradually evoked. with the florentines, too, the figures supply the main interest; the background is an arbitrary addition, placed behind them at the painter's leisure, but giorgione's and titian's _fêtes champêtres_ and concerts could not _be_ at all in any other environment. the amber flesh-tints and the glowing garments are so blended with the deep tones of the landscape, that one would not instil the mood the artist desires without the other. piero di cosimo and pintoricchio can place delightful nymphs and fairy princesses in idyllic scenes, and they stir no emotion in us beyond an observant pleasure, a detached amusement; but giorgione's gloomy blues, his figures shining through the warm dusk of a summer evening, waken we hardly know what of vague yearning and brooding memory. in the "fête champêtre" of the louvre he acquires a frankly sensuous charm. he becomes riper, richer in feeling, and displays great exuberance of style. the woman filling her pitcher at the fountain is exquisite in line and curve and amber colour. she seems to listen lazily to the liquid fall of the water mingling with the half-heard music of the pipes. the beautiful idyll in the giovanelli palace is full of art of composition. it is built up with uprights; pillars are formed by the groups of trees and figures, cut boldly across by the horizontal line of the bridge, but the figures themselves are put in without any attention to subject, though an unconscious humorist has discovered in them the domestic circle of the painter. the man in venetian dress is there to assist the left-hand columnar group, placed at the edge of the picture after the manner of leonardo. the woman and child lighten the mass of foliage on the right and make a beautiful pattern. the white town of castelfranco sings against the threatening sky, the winds bluster through the space, the trees shiver with the coming storm. here and there leafy boughs are struck in with a slight, crisp touch, in which we can follow readily the painter's quick impression. the "knight of malta" is a grand magisterial figure, majestic, yet full of ardent warmth lying behind the grave, indifferent nobility. the face is bisected with shadow, in the way which michelangelo and andrea del sarto affected, and the cone-shaped head with parted hair is of the type which seems particularly to have pleased the painter. to giorgione, too, belongs the honour of having created a venus as pure as the aphrodite of cnidos and as beautiful as a courtesan of titian. [illustration: _giorgione._ fÊte champÊtre. _louvre._ (_photo, alinari._)] the death of giorgione from plague in is registered by all the oldest authorities. his body was conveyed to castelfranco by members of the barbarelli family and buried in the church of san liberale. in an epitaph was placed over his tomb by matteo and ercole barbarelli. allowing that he was hardly more than twenty when his new manner began to gain a following, he had only some twelve years in which to establish his deep and lasting influence. we divine that he was a man of strong personality, such a one as warms and stimulates his companions. even his nickname tells us something,--great george, the chief, the george of georges,--it seems to express him as a leader. and we have no lack of proof that he was admired and looked up to. his style became the only one that found favour in venice, and the painters of the day did their best to conform to it. few authentic examples are left from his own hand, but out of his conscious and devoted and more or less successful imitators, there grew up a school, "out of all those fascinating works, rightly or wrongly attributed to him; out of many copies from, or variations on him, by unknown or uncertain workmen, whose drawings and designs were, for various reasons, prized as his; out of the immediate impression he made upon his contemporaries and with which he continued in men's minds; out of many traditions of subject and treatment which really descend from him to our own time, and by retracing which we fill out the original image." summing up all these influences, he has left us the giorgionesque; the art of choosing a moment in which the subject and the elements of colour and design are so perfectly fused and blended that we have no need to ask for any more articulate story; a moment into which all the significance, the fulness of existence has condensed itself, so that we are conscious of the very essence of life. those idylls of beings wrapped into an ideal dreamland by music and the sound of water and the beauty of wood and mountain and velvet sward, need all our conscious apprehension of life if we are to drink in their full fascination. the dream of the lotos-eaters can only come with force to those who can contrast it adequately with the experience, the complication, and the thousand distractions of an over-civilised world. rest and relaxation, the power of the deeply tinted eventide, or of the fresh morning light, and the calm that drinks in the sensations they are able to afford, are among the precious things of life. the instinct upon which giorgione's work rests is the satisfying of the feeling as well as the thinking faculty, the life of the heart, as compared to the life of the intellect, the solution of life's problems by love instead of by thought. it was the eastern ideal, and its positive expression is conveyed by means of colour, deep, restful, satisfying, fused and controlled by chiaroscuro rather than by form. principal works berlin. portrait of a man. buda-pesth. portrait of a man. castelfranco. duomo: madonna with ss. francis and liberale. dresden. sleeping venus. florence. uffizi: trial of moses (e.); judgment of solomon (e.); knight of malta. hampton court. a shepherd. madrid. madonna with ss. roch and anthony of padua. paris. fête champêtre. rome. villa borghese: portrait of a lady. venice. seminario: apollo and daphne. palazzo giovanelli: gipsy and soldier. san rocco: christ bearing cross. boston. mrs. gardner: christ bearing cross. london. sketch of a knight; adoration of shepherds. viscount allendale: adoration of shepherds. vienna. evander showing Æneas the future site of rome. chapter xvi the giorgionesque giorgione had given the impulse, and all the painters round him felt his power. the venetian painters that is, for it is remarkable, at a time when the men of one city observed and studied and took hints from those of every other, how faint are the signs that this particular manner attracted any great attention in other art centres. leonardo da vinci was a master of chiaroscuro, but he used it only to express his forms, and never sacrifices to it the delicacy and fineness of his design. it is the one quality raphael never assimilates, except for a brief instant at the period when sebastian del piombo had arrived in rome from venice. it takes hold most strongly upon andrea del sarto, who seems, significantly enough, to have had no very pronounced intellectual capacity, but in venice itself it now became the only way. the old bellini finds in it his last and fullest ideal; catena, basaiti, cariani do their best to acquire it, and so successfully was it acquired, so congenial was it to venetian art, that even second- and third-rate venetian painters have usually something attractive which triumphs over superficial and doubtful drawing and grouping. it is easy to see how much to their taste was this fused and golden manner, this disregard of defined form, and this new play of chiaroscuro. the venetian room in the national gallery is full of such examples: the nymphs and _amoretti_ of no. , charming figures against melting vines and olives; "venus and adonis," in which a bewitching cupid chases a butterfly; lovers in a landscape, roaming in the summer twilight; scenes in which neither person nor scenery is a pretext for the other, but each has its full share in arousing the desired emotion. such pictures are ascribed to, or taken from giorgione by succeeding critics, but have all laid hold of his charm, and have some share in his inspiration. one of the ablest of his followers, a man whose work is still confounded with the master's, is cariani, the bergamasque, who at different times in his life also successfully imitated palma and lotto. in his giorgionesque manner cariani often creates charming figures and strong portraits, though he pushes his colour to a coarse, excessive tone. his family group in the roncalli collection at bergamo is very close to giorgione. seven persons, three women and four men, are grouped together upon a terrace, and behind them stretches a calm landscape, half concealed by a brocaded hanging. the effect of the whole is restful, though it lacks giorgione's concentration of sensation. then, again, cariani flies off to the gayer, more animated style of lotto. later on, when he tries to reproduce giorgione's pastoral reveries, his shepherds and nymphs become mere peasants, herdsmen, and country wenches, who have nothing of the idyllic distinction which giorgione never failed to infuse. "the adulteress before christ" at glasgow still bears the greater name, but its short, vulgar figures and faulty composition disclaim his authorship, while cariani is fully capable of such failings, and the exaggerated, red-brown tone is quite characteristic of him. these painters are more than merely imitative; they are also typical. giorgione's new manner had appealed to some quality inherent and hereditary in their nature, and the essential traits they single out and dwell upon are the traits which appeal equally to the instincts of both. it is this which makes their efforts more sympathetic than those of other second-rate painters. colour, or rather the peculiar way in which giorgione used colour, made a natural appeal to them, and it is a medium which does make an immediate appeal and covers a multitude of shortcomings. but giorgione was not to leave his message to the mercy of mere disciples and imitators, however apt. growing up around him were men to whom that message was an inspiration and a trumpet-call, men who were to develop and deepen it, endowing it with their own strength, recognising that the way which the young pioneer of castelfranco had pointed out was the one into which they could unhesitatingly pour their whole inclination. the instinct for colour was in their very blood. they turned to it with the heart-whole delight with which a bird seeks the air or a fish the water, and foremost among them, to create and to consolidate, was the mighty titian. principal works _cariani._ bergamo. carrara: madonna and saints. lochis: woman and shepherd; portraits; saints. morelli: madonna (l.). roncalli collection: family group. hampton court. adoration of shepherds (l.); venus (l.). london. death of s. peter martyr (l.); madonna and saints (l.). milan. brera: madonna and saints (l.); madonna (l.). ambrosiana: way to golgotha. paris. madonna, saints, and donor (e.); holy family and saints. rome. villa borghese: sleeping venus; madonna and s. peter. venice. holy family; portraits. vienna. christ bearing cross; the "bravo." _school of giorgione._ london. unknown subject; adoration of shepherds; venus and adonis; landscape, with nymphs and cupids; the garden of love. mr. benson. lovers and pilgrim. chapter xvii titian the mountains of cadore are not always visible from venice, but there they lie, behind the mists, and in the clear shining after rain, in the golden eventide of autumn, and on steel-cold winter days they stand out, lapis-lazuli blue or deep purple, or, like shelley's enchanted peaks, in sharp-cut, beautiful shapes rising above billowy slopes. cadore is a land of rich chestnut woods, of leaping streams, of gleams and glooms, sudden storms and bursts of sunshine. it is an order of scenery which enters deep into the affections of its sons, and we can form some idea of the hold its mingling of wild poetry and sensuous softness obtained over the mind of titian from the fact that in after years, while he never exerts himself to paint the city in which he lived and in which all his greatest triumphs were gained, he is uniformly constant to his mountain home, enters into its spirit and interprets its charm with warm and penetrating insight. the district formed part of the dependencies of the great republic, and relied upon venice for its safety, its distinction, and in great measure for its employment. the small craftsmen and artists from all the country round looked forward to going down to seek their fortune at her hands. they tacked the name of their native town to their own name, and were drawn into the magnificent life of the city of the sea, and came back from time to time with stories of her art, her power, and beauty. the vecelli had for generations held honourable posts in cadore. the father and grandfather of the young tiziano were influential men, and with his brother and sisters he must have been brought up in comfort. there are even traditions of noble birth, and it is evident that titian was always a gentleman, though this did not prevent his being educated as a craftsman, and when he was only ten years old he was sent down to venice to be apprenticed to a mosaicist. it was a changing venice to which titian came as a boy; changing in its life, its social and political conditions, and its art was faithfully registering its aspirations and tastes. more than at any previous time, it was calculated to impress a youth to whom it had been held up as the embodiment of splendid sovereignty, and the difference between the little hill-town set in the midst of its wild solitudes and the brilliant city of the sea must have been dazzling and bewildering. a new sense of intellectual luxury had awakened in the great commercial centre. the venetian love of splendour was displaying itself by the encouragement and collection of objects of art, and both ancient and modern works were in increasing request. on gentile bellini's and carpaccio's canvases we see the sort of people the venetians were, shrewd, quiet, splendour-loving, but business-like, the young men fashionably dressed, fastidious connoisseurs, splendid patrons of art and of religion. buyers were beginning to find out what a delightful decoration the small picture made, and that it was as much in place in their own halls as over the altar of a chapel. the portrait, too, was gaining in importance, and the idea of making it a pleasure-giving picture, even more than a faithful transcript, was gathering ground. the "procession of the relic" was still in gentile's studio, but the frari "madonna and child" was just installed in its place. carpaccio was beginning his long series of st. ursula, and the bellini and vivarini were in keen rivalship. titian is said to have passed from the _bottega_ of gentile to that of giovanni bellini, but nothing in his style reminds us of the former, and even his early work has very little that is really bellinesque, whereas from the very first he reflects the new spirit which emanated from giorgione. titian was a year the elder, and we can divine the sympathy that arose between the two when they came together in bellini's school. as soon as their apprenticeship was at an end they became partners. fond of pleasure and gaiety, loving splendour, dress, and amusement, they were naturally congenial companions, and were drawn yet more closely together by their love for their art and by the aptitude with which titian grasped giorgione's principles. and if we ask ourselves why we take for granted that of two young men so closely allied in age and circumstance we accept giorgione as the leader and the creator of the new style, we may answer that titian was a more complex character. he was intellectual, and carried his intellect into his art, but this was no new feature. the intellect had had and was having a large share in art. but in that part which was new, and which was launching art upon an untried course, giorgione is more intense, more one-idea'd than titian. what he does he does with a fervour and a spontaneity that marks him as one who pours out the language of the heart. the partnership between the two was probably arranged a few years before the end of the century, for we have seen that young painters usually started on their own account at about nineteen or twenty. for some years titian, like giorgione, was engrossed by the decorations of the fondaco dei tedeschi. the groups of figures described by zanetti in show us that while giorgione made some attempt at following classic figures, titian broke entirely with greek art and only thought of picturesque nature and contemporary costume. vasari complains that he never knew what titian's "judith" was meant to represent, "unless it was germania," but zanetti, who had the benefit of sebastiano ricci's taste, declares that from what he saw, both giorgione and titian gave proofs of remarkable skill. "while giorgione showed a fervid and original spirit and opened up a new path, over which he shed a light that was to guide posterity, titian was of a grander and more equable genius, leaning at first, indeed, upon giorgione's example, but expanding with such force and rapidity as to place him in advance of his companion, on an eminence to which no later craftsman was able to climb.... he moderated the fire of giorgione, whose strength lay in fanciful movement and a mysterious artifice in disposing shadows, contrasted darkly with warm lights, blended, strengthened, blurred, so as to produce the semblance of exuberant life." certain works remain to link the two painters; even now critics are divided as to which of the two to attribute the "concert" in the pitti. the figures are giorgionesque, but the technique establishes it as an early titian, and it is doubtful whether giorgione would be capable of the intellectual effort which produced the dreamy, passionate expression of the young monk, borne far out of himself by his own melody, and half recalled to life by the touch on his shoulder. titian, like giorgione, was a musician, and the fascination of music is felt by many masters of the italian schools. in one picture the player feels vaguely after the melody, in another we are asked to anticipate the song that is just about to begin, or the last chords of that just finished vibrate upon the ear, but nowhere else in all art has any one so seized the melody of an instant and kept its fulness and its passion sounding in our ears as this musician does. though we cannot say that titian was the pupil of any one master, the fifteen years, more or less, that he spent with giorgione left an indelible impression upon him. we have only to look at such a picture as the "madonna and child with ss. john baptist and antony abate," in the uffizi, an early work, to recollect that in giorgione at castelfranco had taken the madonna from her niche in the sanctuary and had enthroned her on high in a bright and sunny landscape with s. liberale standing sentinel at her feet, like a knight guarding his liege lady. titian in this early group casts every convention aside; a beautiful woman and lovely children are placed in surroundings whose charm is devoid of hieratic and religious significance. the same easy unfettered treatment appears in the "madonna with the cherries" at vienna, and the "madonna with st. bridget and s. ulfus" at madrid, and while it has been surmised that the example of the precise albert dürer, who paid his first visit to venice in , was not without its effect in preserving titian from falling into laxity of treatment and in inciting him to fine finish, it is interesting to find that titian was, in fact, discarding the use of the carefully traced and transferred cartoon, and was sketching his design freely on panel or canvas with a brush dipped in brown pigment, and altering and modifying it as he went on. the last years of titian's first period in venice must have been anxious ones. the emperor maximilian was attacking the venetian possessions on the mainland, in anger at a refusal to grant his troops a free passage on their way to uphold german supremacy in central italy. cadore was the first point of his invasion, and from titian's uncle and great-uncle were in the councils of the state, his father held an important command, and his brother francesco, who had already made some progress as an artist, threw down his brush and became a soldier. titian was not one of those who took up arms, but his thoughts must have been full of the attack and defence in his mountain fastnesses, and he must have anxiously awaited news of his father's troops and of the squadrons of maso of ferrara, under whose colours francesco was riding. francesco made a reputation as a distinguished soldier, and was severely wounded, and when peace was made, titian, "who loved him tenderly," persuaded him to return to the pursuit of art. the ratification of the league of cambray, in which julius ii., maximilian, and ferdinand of naples combined against the power of venice, was disastrous for a time to the city and to the artists who depended upon her prosperity. craftsmen of all kinds first fled to her for shelter, then, as profits and orders fell off, they left to look elsewhere for commissions. an outbreak of plague, in which giorgione perished, went further to make venice an undesirable home, and at this time sebastian del piombo left for rome, lotto for the romagna, and titian for padua. we may believe that titian never felt perfectly satisfied with fresco-painting as a craft, for when he was given a commission to fresco the halls of the santo, the confraternity of st. anthony, patron-saint of padua, he threw off beautifully composed and spirited drawings, but he left the execution of them chiefly to assistants, among whom the feeble domenico campagnola, a painter whom he probably picked up at padua, is conspicuous. even where the landscape is best, as in "s. anthony restoring a youth," the drawing and composition only make us feel how enchanting the scene would have been in oils on one of titian's melting canvases. in those frescoes which he executed himself while his interest was still fresh, the "miracle which grants speech to an infant" is the most giorgionesque. up to this time he had preserved the straight-cut corsage and the actual dress of his contemporaries, after the practice of giorgione; he keeps, too, to his companion's plan of design, placing the most important figures upon one plane, close to the frame and behind a low wall or ledge which forms a sort of inner frame and with a distant horizon. in the paduan frescoes he makes use of this plan, and the straight clouds, the spindly trees, and the youths in gay doublets are all reminiscent of his early comrade, but the group of women to the left in the "miracle of the child" shows that titian is beginning more decidedly to enunciate his own type. the introduction of portraits proves that he was tending to rely largely upon nature, in contradistinction to giorgione's lyrically improvised figures. he fuses the influence of giorgione and the influence of antonello da messina and the bellini in a deeper knowledge of life and nature, and he is passing beyond giorgione in grasp and completeness. when he was able to return to venice, which he did in , a temporary peace having been concluded with maximilian, he abandoned the uncongenial medium of fresco for good, and devoted himself to that which admitted of the afterthoughts, the enrichments, the gradual attainment of an exquisite surface, and at this time his works are remarkable for their brilliant gloss and finish. during the next twelve years we may group a number of paintings which, taken in conjunction with those of giorgione, show the true venetian school at its most intense, idyllic moment. they are the works of a man in the pride of youth and strength, sane and healthy, an example of the confident, sanguine, joyous temper of his age, capable of embodying its dominant tendencies, of expressing its enjoyment of life, its worldly-mindedness, its love of pleasure, as well as its noble feeling and its grave and magnificent purpose. for absolute delight in colour let us turn to a picture like the "noli me tangere" of the national gallery. the golden light, the blues and olives of the landscape, the crimson of the magdalen's raiment, combine in a feast of emotional beauty, emphasising the feeling of the woman, whose soul is breathed out in the word "master." the colour unites with the light and shadow, is embedded in it; and we can see titian's delight in the ductile medium which had such power to give material sensation. in these liquid crimsons, these deep greens and shoaling blues, the velvety fulness and plenitudes of the brush become visible; we can look into their depths and see something quite unlike the smooth, opaque washes of the florentines. in such a masterpiece as "sacred and profane love," painted during these years for the borghese, there are summed up all those artistic aims towards which the venetian painters had been tending. the picture is still giorgionesque in mood. it may represent, as dr. wickhoff suggests, venus exhorting medea to listen to the love-suit of jason; but the subject is not forced upon us, and we are more occupied with the contrast between the two beautiful personalities, so harmoniously related to each other, yet so opposed in type. the gracious, self-absorbed lady, with her softly dressed hair, her loose glove, her silvery satin dress, is a contrast in look and spirit to the goddess whose free, simple attitude and outward gaze embody the nobler ideal. the sinuous and enchanting line of venus's figure against the crimson cloak has, i think, been the outcome of admiration for giorgione's "sleeping venus," and has the same soft, unhurried curves. titian's two figures are perfectly spaced in a setting which breathes the very aroma of the early renaissance. a bas-relief on the marble fountain represents nymphs whipping a sleeping love to life, while a cupid teases the chaste unicorn. a delicious baby love splashes in the water, fallen rose-leaves strew the mellow marble rim, around and away stretches a sunny country scene, in which people are placidly pursuing a life of ease and pleasure. what a revelation to venice these pictures were which began with giorgione's conversaziones! how little occupied the women are with the story. venus does not argue, or check off reasons on her fingers, like s. ursula. medea is listening to her own thoughts, but the whole scene is bathed in the suggestion of the joy and happiness of love. the little censer burning away in the blue and breathless air might be a philtre diffusing sensuous dreams, and when the rays of the evening sun strike the picture, where it now hangs, and bring out each touch of its glowing radiance, it seems to palpitate with the joy of life and to thrill with the magic of summer in the days when the world was young. with the influence still lingering of giorgione's "knight of malta," titian produced some of his finest portraits in the decade that led to the middle of his life. the "dr. parma" at vienna, the noble "man in black" and "man with a glove" of the louvre, the "young englishman" of the pitti, with his keen blue eyes, the portrait at temple newsam, which, with some critics, still passes as a giorgione, are all examples in which he keeps the half-length, invented by bellini and followed by giorgione. after the visit to padua he shows less preference for costume, and his women are generally clothed in a loose white chemise, rather than the square-cut bodice. we do not wonder that all the leading personages of italy wished to be painted by titian. his are the portraits of a man of intellect. they show the subject at his best; grave, cultivated, stately, as he appeared and wished to appear; not taken off his guard in any way. what can be more sympathetic as a personality than the ariosto of the national gallery? we can enter into his mind and make a friend of him, and yet all the time he has himself in hand; he allows us to divine as much as he chooses, and draws a thin veil over all that he does not intend us to discover. the painter himself is impersonal and not over-sensitive; he does not paint in his own fancies about his sitter--probably he had none; he saw what he was meant to see. there was what mr. berenson calls "a certain happy insensibility" about him, which prevented him from taking fantastic flights, or from looking too deep below the surface. [illustration: _titian._ ariosto. _london._ (_photo, mansell and co._)] chapter xviii titian (_continued_) with the "assumption," finished in for the church of the frari, titian rose to the very highest among renaissance painters. the "glorious s. mary" was his theme, and he concentrated all his efforts on the realisation of that one idea. the central figure is, as it were, a collective rather than an individual type. well proportioned and elastic as it is, it has the abundance of motherhood. harmonious and serene, it combines dramatic force and profound feeling. exultant humanity, in its hour of triumph, rises with her, borne up lightly by that throbbing company of child angels and followed by full recognition and awestruck satisfaction in the adoring gaze of the throng below, yet titian has contrived to keep some touch of the loving woman hurrying to meet her son. the flood of colour, the golden vault above, the garment of glowing blues and crimsons, have a more than common share in that spirit of confident joy and poured-out life which envelops the whole canvas. in the worthy representation of a great event, the visible assumption of humanity to the throne of god, titian puts forth all his powers and steeps us in that temper of sanguine emotion, of belief in life and confidence in the capacity of man, which was so characteristic of the ripe renaissance. in looking at this splendid canvas, we must call to mind the position for which titian painted it. hung in the dusky recesses of the apse, it was tempered by and merged in its stately surroundings. the band of apostles almost formed a part of the whispering crowd below, and the glorious mother was beheld soaring upwards to the golden light and the mysterious vistas of the vaulted arches above. the patronage of courts had by this time altered the tenor of titian's life. in duke alfonso d'este had invited him to ferrara, where he had finished bellini's "bacchanals." it bears the marks of titian's hand, and he has introduced a well-known point of view at cadore into the background. in alfonso writes to propose another painting, and titian's acceptance is contained in a very courtier-like letter, in which we divine a touch of irony. "the more i thought of it," he ends, "the more i became convinced that the greatness of art among the ancients was due to the assistance they received from great princes, who were content to leave to the painter the credit and renown derived from their own ingenuity in bespeaking pictures." alfonso's requirements for his new castle were frankly pagan. mythological scenes were already popular. mantegna had adorned isabela d'este's "paradiso" with revels of the gods, botticelli had given his conception of classic myth in the medici villa, already bellini had essayed a bacchanal, and titian was to make designs for similar scenes to complete the decorations of the halls of este. the same exuberant feeling he shows in the "assumption" finds utterance in the "garden of loves" and the "bacchanals," both painted for alfonso of ferrara. the children in the former may be compared with the angels in the "assumption." their blue wings match the heavenly blue sky, and they are painted with the most delicate finish. we can imagine the beauty of the great hall at ferrara when hung with this brilliant series, which was completed in by the "bacchus and ariadne" of the national gallery. the whole company of bacchanals is given up to wanton merrymaking. above them broods the deep blue sky and great white clouds of a summer day. the deep greens of the foliage throw the creamy-white and burning colour of the draperies and the fair forms of the nymphs into glowing relief, while by a convention the satyrs are of a deep, tawny complexion. on a roll of music is stamped the rollicking device, "_chi boit et ne reboit, ne sçeais que boir soit_." the purple fruit hangs ripened from the vines, its crimson juice shines like a jewel in crystal goblets and drips in streams over rosy limbs. the influence of such pictures as these was absorbed by rubens, but though they hardly surpass him in colour, they are more idyllic and less coarse. the perfect taste of the renaissance is never shown more victoriously than here, where indulgence ceases to be repulsive, and the actors are real flesh and blood, yet more arcadian than revolting. in the "bacchus and ariadne," titian gives triumphant expression to a mood of wild rejoicing, so gay, so good-tempered, so simple, that we must smile in sympathy. the conqueror flinging himself from his golden chariot drawn by panthers, his deep red mantle fluttering on high, is so full of reckless life that our spirit bounds with him. his rioting band, marching with song and laughter, seems to people that golden country-side with fit inhabitants. the careless satyrs and little merry, goat-legged fauns shock us no more than a herd of forest ponies, tossing their manes and dashing along for love of life and movement.[ ] yet almost before this series was put in place titian was showing the diversity of his genius by the "deposition," now in the louvre, which was painted at the instance of the gonzaga, marquis of mantua and nephew of alfonso d'este. here he makes a great step in the use of chiaroscuro. while it is satisfying in balance and sweeping rhythm, and by the way in which every line follows and intensifies the helpless, slackened lines of the dead body, it escapes raphael's academic treatment of the same subject. its splendid colours are not noisy; they merge into a scene of solemn pathos and tragedy. the scene has a simplicity and unity in its passion, and what above all gives it its intense power is the way in which the flaming hues are absorbed into the twilight shadows. the dark heads stand out against the dying sunset, the pallor of the dead is half veiled by the falling night. it is a picture which has the emotional beauty of a scene in nature, and makes a profound impression by its depth and mystery. this same solemnity and gravity temper the brilliant colouring of the great altarpiece painted for the pesaro family in the frari. columns rise like great tree-trunks, light and air play through the clouds seen between them. the grouping is a new experiment, but the way in which the mother and child, though placed quite at one side of the picture, are focussed as the centre of interest, by the converging lines, diagonal on the one hand and straight on the other, crowns it with success. the scheme of colour brings the two figures into high relief, while st. francis and the family of the donor are subordinated to rich, deep tints. titian has abandoned, more completely than ever before, any attempt to invest the child with supernatural majesty. he is a delightful, spoiled baby, fully aware of his sovereignty over his mother, pretending to take no notice of the kneeling suppliants, but occupying himself in making a tent over his head out of her veil. the "madonna in glory with six saints" of the vatican is another example of the rich and "smouldering" colour in which titian was now creating his great altarpieces, kneading his pigments into a quality, a solidity, which gives reality without heaviness, and finishing with that fine-grained texture which makes his flesh look like marble endowed with life. [ ] it is this quality of unarrested movement, so conspicuous above all in the figure of bacchus, which attracts us irresistibly in the huntress, in lord brownlow's "diana and actaeon." the construction of the form of the goddess in this beautiful but little-known picture is admirable. worn as the colour is, appearing almost as a monochrome, the landscape is full of atmospheric suggestion. it is in titian's latest manner, and its ample lines and free unimpeded motion can be due to no inferior brush. [illustration: _titian._ diana and actaeon. _earl brownlow._ (_the medici society, ltd._)] venuses, altarpieces, and portraits all tell us how boldly his own style was established. his sacred persons are not different from his pagans and goddesses. yet though he has gone far, he still reminds us of giorgione. he has been constant to the earliest influences which surrounded him, and to that temperament which made him accept those influences so instantaneously--and this constancy and unity give him the untroubled ascendancy over art which is such a feature of his position. with leonardo and with titian, painters had sprung to a recognised status in the great world of the renaissance. they were no longer the patronised craftsmen. they had become the courted guests, the social equals. titian, passing from the courts of ferrara to those of mantua and urbino, attended by a band of assistants, was a magnificent personage, whose presence was looked upon as a favour, and who undertook a commission as one who conferred a coveted boon. among those who clustered closest round the popular favourite, no one did more to enhance his position than aretino, the brilliant unscrupulous debauchee, wit, bully, blackmailer, but a man who, with all his faults, had evidently his own power of fascination, and, the friend of princes, must have been himself the prince of good company. aretino, as far as he could be said to be attached to any one, was consistent in his attachment to titian from the time they first met at the court of the gonzaga. he played the part of a chorus, calling attention to the great painter's merits, jogging the memory of his employers as to payments, and never ceasing to flatter, amuse, and please him. titian, for his part, shows himself equally devoted to aretino's interests, and has left various characteristic portraits of him, handsome and showy in his prime, sensual and depraved as age overtook him. in the spring of the confraternity of st. peter martyr invited artists to send in sketches for an altarpiece to their patron-saint, in ss. giovanni and paolo, to replace an old one by jacobello del fiore. palma vecchio and pordenone also competed, but titian carried off the prize. the picture was delivered in , and during the autumn of sebastian del piombo had returned to venice from rome, and michelangelo had sought refuge there from florence and had stayed for some months. a quarrel with the monks over the price had delayed the picture, so that it may quite probably have only been begun after intercourse with the roman visitors had given a fresh turn to titian's ideas; for though he never ceases to be himself, it certainly seems as if the genius of michelangelo had had some effect. from what we know of the altarpiece, which perished by fire in , but of which a good copy by cigoli remains, titian embarked suddenly upon forms of herculean strength in violent action, but there his likeness to the florentine ended; the figures were, indeed, drawn with a deep, though not altogether successful, attention to anatomy and foreshortening, but the picture obtained its effect and derived its impressiveness from the setting in which the figures were placed--the great trees, bending and straining, the hurrying clouds, as if nature were in portentous harmony with the sinister deed, and overhead the enchanting gleam of light which shot downward and irradiated the face of the martyr and the two lovely winged boys, bathed in a flood of blue æther, who held aloft the palm of victory. many copies of it remain, and we only regret that one which rubens executed is not preserved among them. when we look at the delicious "madonna del coniglio" in the louvre and our own "marriage of s. catherine," the first of which certainly, and the second probably, was painted about this time, we cannot doubt that the charm of the idea of motherhood had particularly arrested the painter. about his first son, pomponio, was born, and was followed by another son and a daughter. in the s. catherine he paints that passion of mother-love with an intensity and reality that can only be drawn from life, and on the wheel at her feet he has inscribed his name, ticianus, f. his feeling for landscape is increasing, and the landscape in these pictures equals the figures in importance and has engrossed the painter quite as much. every year titian paid a visit to cadore, and in the rich woodlands, the distant villages, the great white villa on the hill-side, and, above all, in the far-off blue mountains and the glooms and gleams of storm and sunshine, the sudden dart of rays through the summer clouds, which he has painted here, we see how constant was his study of his native country, and how profoundly he felt its poetry and its charm. he had married cecilia, the daughter of a barber belonging to perarolo, a little town near cadore. in she died, and he mourned her deeply. he went on working and planning for his children's future, and his sister came from cadore to take charge of the motherless household; but his friends' letters speak of his being ill from melancholy, and he could not go on living in the old house at san samuele, which had been his home for sixteen years. he took a new house on the north side of the city, in the parish of san canciano. the casa grande, as it was called, was a building of importance, which the painter first hired and finally bought, letting off such apartments as he did not need. the first floor had a terrace, and was entered by a flight of steps from the garden, which overlooked the lagoons, and had a view of the cadore mountains. it has been swept away by the building of the fondamenta nuove, but the documents of the leases are preserved, and the exact site is well established. here his children grew up, and he worked for them unceasingly. pomponio, his eldest son, was idle and extravagant, a constant source of trouble, and aretino writes him reproachful letters, which he treats with much impertinence. orazio took to his father's profession, and was his constant companion, and often drew his cartoons; and his beautiful daughter, lavinia, was his greatest joy and pride. in this house titian showed constant hospitality, and there are records of the princely fashion in which he entertained his friends and distinguished foreign visitors. priscianese, a well-known humanist and _savant_ of the day, describes a bacchanalian feast on the st of august, in a pleasant garden belonging to messer tiziano vecellio. aretino, sansovino, and jacopo nardi were present. till the sun set they stayed indoors, admiring the artist's pictures. "as soon as it went down, the tables were spread, looking on the lagoons, which soon swarmed with gondolas full of beautiful women, and resounded with music of voices and instruments, which till midnight, accompanied our delightful supper. titian gave the most delicate viands and precious wines, and the supper ended gaily." in the year titian for the first time sought other than italian patronage. charles v., who was then at the height of his power, with all italy at his feet, passed through mantua, and among all the treasures that he saw was most struck by titian's portrait of federigo gonzaga. after much writing to and fro, it was arranged that titian should meet the emperor at bologna, where he had just been crowned. he made his first sketch of him, from which he afterwards produced a finished full length. it was the first of many portraits, and vasari declares that from that time forth charles would never sit to any other master. he received a knighthood, and many commissions from members of the emperor's court. it was for one of his nobles, da valos, marquis of vasto, that he painted the allegorical piece in the louvre, in which mary of arragon, the lovely wife of da valos, is parting with her husband, who is bound on one of the desperate expeditions against the terrible turks. da valos is dressed in armour, and the couple are encircled by hymen, victory, and the god of love. the composition was repeated more than once, but never with quite the same success. we again suspect the influence of michelangelo in the altarpiece painted before titian next left venice, of st. john the almsgiver, for the church of that name, of which the doge was patron. the figures are life-size, the types stern and rugged, daringly foreshortened, and the colours, though gorgeous, are softened and broken by broad effects of light and shade. it is painted in a solemn mood, a contrast to that in which about this time he produced a series of beautiful female portraits, nude or semi-nude, chiefly, it would appear, at the instance of the duke of urbino. the duke at this time was the general-in-chief of the venetian forces, a position which took him often to venice, and titian's relations with him lasted till the painter's death. at least twenty-five of his works must have adorned the castles of urbino and pesaro. among these were the venus of the uffizi, "la bella di tiziano," in her gorgeous scheme of blue and amethyst, the "girl in a fur cloak," besides portraits of the duke and duchess. it would be impossible to enumerate here the numbers of portraits which titian was now supplying. the reputation he had acquired, not only in italy, but in spain, france, and germany, was greater than had ever been attained by any painter, while his social position was established among the highest in every court. "he had rivals in venice," says vasari, "but none that he did not crush by his excellence and knowledge of the world in converse with gentlemen." there is not a writer of the day who does not acclaim his genius. titian was undoubtedly very fond of money, and had amassed a good fortune. he was constantly asking for favours, and had pensions and allowances from royal patrons. lavinia, when she married, brought her husband a dowry of ducats. he had painted the portraits of the doges with tolerable regularity, but all through his life complaints were heard of his neglect of the work of the hall of grand council. occupied as he was with the work of his foreign patrons, he had systematically neglected the conditions enjoined by his possession of a broker's patent, and the signoria suddenly called on him to refund the salary amounting to over ducats a year, for the twenty years during which he had drawn it without performing his promise, while they prepared to instal pordenone, who had lately appeared as his bitter rival, in his stead. though titian must have been making large sums of money at this time, his expenses were heavy, and he could not calmly face the obligation to repay such a sum as ducats at the same time that he lost the annual salary, nor was it pleasant to be ousted by a second-rate rival. his easy remedy was, however, in his own hands; he set to work and soon completed a great canvas of the "battle of cadore," which, though it is only known to us from a contemporary print and a drawing by rubens, evidently deserved vasari's verdict of being the finest battlepiece ever placed in the hall. the movement and stir he contrives to give with a small number of figures is astonishing. the fortress burns upon the hill-side, a regiment advancing with lances and pennons produces the illusion that it is the vanguard of a great army, the desperate conflict by the narrow bridge realises all the terrors of war. it was an atonement for his long period of neglect, but it was not till [tn: pordenone died in ] that, pordenone having suddenly died, the signoria relented and reinstated titian in his broker's patent. one of his later paintings for the state still keeps its place, "the triumph of faith," in which doge grimani, a splendid, steel-clad form with flowing mantle, kneels before the angelic apparition of faith, who holds a cross, which angels and cherubs help her to support. beneath the clouds are seen the venetian fleet, the ducal palace, and the campanile. it is an allegory of grimani's life; his defeat and captivity are symbolised by the cross and chalice, and the magnificent figure of st. mark with the lion is introduced to show that the doge believes himself to owe his freedom to the saint's intercession. the prophet and standard-bearer at the sides were added by marco vecellio. though the battlepiece perished in the fire of , another masterpiece of this time marks a climax in titian's brilliantly coloured and highly finished style. the "presentation of the virgin" was painted for the refectory of the confraternity of the carità, which was housed in the building now used as the academy, so that the picture remains in the place for which it was executed. it is one of the most vivid and life-like of all his works. the composition is the traditional one; the fifteen steps of the "gospel of mary," the high priest of the old dispensation welcoming the childish representative of the new. below is a great crowd, but it is this little figure which first attracts the eye. the contrast between the mass of architecture and the free and glowing country beyond is not without meaning, and a broken roman torso, lying neglected on the ground, symbolises the downfall of the pagan empire. the flight of steps, with the figure sitting below them, is an idea borrowed from carpaccio, and perhaps taken by him from the sketch-book of jacopo bellini. the men on the left are portraits of members and patrons of the confraternity. most titianesque are the beautiful women in rich dresses at the foot of the steps. in this stately composition we see what is often noticeable in titian's scenes; he brings in the bystanders after the manner of a greek chorus. they all, with one accord, express the same sentiment. there is a certain acceptation of the obvious in titian, a vein of simplicity flows through his nature. he has not the sensitive and subtle search after the motives of humanity which we find in tintoretto or lotto. he has great intellectual power, but not great imagination. it is a temper which helps to keep the unity, the monumental quality of his scenes undisturbed and adds to their effect. in the "ecce homo" christ is shown to the populace by pilate, who with dubious compliment is a portrait of aretino, and the contrast of the lonely, broken-down man with the crowd which, with all its lower instincts let loose, thunders back the cry of "crucify him," is the more dramatic because of the unanimous spirit which possesses the raging multitude. other artists would have given more incidental byplay, and drawn off our attention from the main issue. chapter xix titian (_continued_) while titian was executing portraits of the doges, of aretino and of isabella of portugal, and of himself and his daughter lavinia, he was also striking out a new line in the ceiling pictures for the church of san spirito, which have since been transferred to the salute. though painted before his journey to rome, it may be suspected that he had michelangelo's work in the sixtine chapel in mind, and that he was setting himself the task of bold foreshortening and technical problems. the daring of the conception is great, yet we feel sure that this is not titian's element; his figures in violent movement give a vivid idea of strength and muscular force, but fail both in grace and drawing, and though the colour and light and shade distract our attention from defects of form, he does not possess that mastery over the flowing silhouette which tintoretto attained. it was in that his relations with the farnese, whose young cardinal he had been painting, drew him at last to rome. leo x. had tried to attract him there without success, but now at sixty-eight he found himself as far on the road as urbino. his son orazio was with him, and duke guidobaldo was himself his escort, and sent him on with a band of men-at-arms from pesaro. he was received in rome by cardinal bembo; paul iii. gave him a cordial welcome and vasari was appointed his cicerone. it is interesting to inquire what impression rome, with its treasures of antique statuary and contemporary painting, made upon titian. "he is filled with wonder and glad that he came," writes bembo. in a letter to aretino he regrets that he had not come before. he stayed eight months in rome, and was made a roman citizen. he visits the stanze of raphael in company with sebastian del piombo, and michelangelo comes to see him at his lodgings, and he receives a long letter from aretino advising him to compare michelangelo with raphael, and sansovino and bramante with the sculptors and architects of antiquity. titian was well established in his own style, and was received as the creator of acknowledged masterpieces, and he never painted a more magnificent portrait-piece than that of paul iii., the peevish old pope, ailing and humorous, suspicious of the two nephews who are painted with him, and who he guessed to be conspiring against him. the characteristic attitude of the old man of eighty, bent down in his chair, his quick, irritable glance, the steady, determined gaze of the cardinal, the obsequious attitude and weak, wily face of ottavio farnese are all immortalised in a broader, more careless technique than titian has hitherto used. though he does not seem to have been directly influenced by all he saw in rome, we undoubtedly find a change coming over his work between and , which may be in part ascribed to a widening of his artistic horizon and a consciousness of what others were doing, both around him and abroad. in its whole handling and character his late is different from his early manner. it begins at this time to take on a blurred, soft, impressionist character. his delight in rich colouring seems to wane, and he aims at intensifying the power of light. he reaches that point in the venetian school of painting which we may regard as its climax, when there is little strong local colour, but the canvas seems illumined from within. there are no clear-cut lines, but the shapes are suggested by sombre enveloping shades in which the radiant brightness is embedded. his landscapes alter too; they are no longer blue and smiling, filled with loving detail, but grander, more mysterious. in the "st. jerome" in paris the old saint kneels in wild and lonely surroundings, and the moon, slowly rising behind the dark trees, sends a sharp, silver ray across the crucifix. the "supper at emmaus" has the grandiose effect that is given by avoidance of detail and simplification of method. titian painted several portraits of himself, and we know what sort of stately figure was presented by the old man of seventy who, at christmas in , set forth to ride across the alps in the depths of winter to obey charles v.'s call to augsburg. the excitement of the public was great at his departure, and aretino describes how his house was besieged for the sketches and designs he left behind him. for nearly forty years titian was employed by the house of hapsburg. he had been working for charles since , and when the emperor abdicated, his employment by philip ii. lasted till his death. the palace inventory of contained seventy-six titians, and though probably not all were genuine, yet an immense number were really by him, and the gallery, even now, is richer in his works than any other. the great hall of the pardo must have been a wonderful sight, with titian's finest portrait of himself in the midst, and the magnificent portraits and sacred and allegorical pieces which he continued from this time forward to contribute to it. in this year, which was the last before charles's abdication, and during this visit to south germany, he painted the great equestrian portrait of the emperor on the field of mühlberg, and two years later came the first of his many portraits of philip ii. the face, in the first sketch, is laid in with a sort of fury of impressionism, and in the parade portrait the sitter is realised as a man of great distinction. ugly and sensual as he is, we never tire of looking at titian's conception--a full length of distinguished mien rendered attractive by magnificent colour. everything in it lives, and the slender, aristocratic hands are, as morelli says, a whole biography in themselves. the splendid series of allegorical subjects which titian contributed to the pardo, while he was still supplying sacred pictures and altarpieces to venice and the neighbouring mainland, are among his most mature and important works. never has his gamut of tones been fuller and stronger than in the "jupiter and antiope," or the "venus of the pardo" as it is sometimes called. the venus herself has the attitude of giorgione's dreaming goddess, with her arm flung up above her head. it is, perhaps, the only time that titian succeeds in giving anything ideal to one of his venuses. the famous nudes of the uffizi and the louvre are splendid courtesans, far removed from giorgione's idyllic vision; but antiope, slumbering on her couch of skins, and her woodland lover, gazing with adoring eyes on her beautiful face, have a whole world of sweet and joyful fancy. the whole scene is full of a _joie de vivre_, which carries us back to the bacchanals painted so many years before, and in these titian gives king philip his most perfect work, every touch of which is his own. this picture, now in the louvre, was given to charles i. by the king of spain, and bought for cardinal mazarin in . "danaë," "venus and adonis," "europa and the bull," and a "last supper" followed in quick succession, but titian was now employing many assistants, and great parts of the canvases issuing from his workshop show weak, imitative hands, while replicas were made of other works. his later feeling for the religious in art is expressed in the now bedimmed paintings in san salvatore in venice. vasari describes these in . painted when titian was nearly ninety years old, the "transfiguration" is remarkable for forcible, majestic movement, while in the "annunciation" he invents quite a new treatment. mary turns round and raises her veil, while she grasps the book as if she depended on it for stay and support. the four angels are full of life and gaiety, and the whole has much grace and colour, though it is dashed in, in the painter's later style, in broad and sweeping planes without patience of detail. the old man has signed it "titianus, fecit, fecit," a contemptuous reply to some critics who complained of its want of finish. he knew well what it was in composition and execution, and that all that he had ever known or done lay within the careless strength of his last manner. a letter written to the king of spain's secretary in gives a list "in part" of fourteen pictures sent to madrid during the last twenty-five years, "with many others which i do not remember." on every hand we hear of lost pictures from the master's brush, and the number produced even during the last ten years of his life must have been enormous, for till the end he was full of great undertakings and achievements. very late in life he painted a "shepherd and nymph" (vienna), which in its idyllic feeling, its slumberous delight, its mingling of clothed and nude figures, recalls the early days with giorgione, yet the blurred and smouldering richness, the absolute negation of all sharp lines and lights is in his very latest style, and he has gone past giorgione on his own ground. then in strange contrast is the "christ crowned with thorns," at vienna, a tragic figure stupefied with suffering. his last great work was the "pietà" in the academy, which, though unfinished, is nobly designed and very impressive. he places the virgin supporting the body in a great dome-shaped niche, which gives elevation. it is flanked by two calm, antique, stone figures, whose impassive air contrasts with the wild pain and grief below. the magdalen steps out towards the spectator with the wailing cry of a greek tragedy. it perhaps hardly moves us like the concentrated feeling of bellini's madonna, or the hurried, trembling grief of tintoretto's magdalen, but it is monumental in the sweeping grace of its line, and full of nobility of feeling. it is sadly rubbed and darkened and has lost much of titian's colour, but is still beautiful in its deep greys mingled with a sombre golden glow, as of half-extinguished fires. these late paintings are of the true impressionist order; looked at closely they present a mass of scumbled touches, of incoherent dashes, but if we step farther away, to the right focus, light and dark arrange themselves, order shines through the whole, and we see what the great master meant us to see. "titian's later creations," says vasari, "are struck off rapidly, so that when close you cannot see them, but afar they look perfect, and this is the style which so many tried to imitate, to show that they were practised hands, but only produced absurdities." titian was preparing the picture for the frari, in payment for the grant of a tomb for himself, when in august the plague broke out in venice, and on the th the great painter died of it in his own house. the stringent regulations concerning infection were relaxed to do honour to one of the greatest sons of venice, and he was laid to rest in the frari, borne there in solemn procession, through a city stricken by terror and panic, and buried in the chapel of the crucified saviour, for which his last work was ordered. the "assumption" of his prime looked down upon him, and close at hand was the "madonna of casa pesaro." his son orazio caught the plague and died immediately after, and the painter's house was sacked by thieves and many precious things stolen. the great personality of titian stands out as that which of all others established and consolidated the school of venice. he is its central figure. the century of life, of which eighty years were passed in ceaseless industry of production, left its deep impression on the art of every civilised country of europe. every great man of the day who was a lover of art and culture fell under titian's spell. his influence on his contemporaries was enormous, and he had everything: genius, industry, personal distinction, character, social charm. he is, perhaps, of too intellectual a cast of mind to be quite typical of the venetian spirit, in the way that tintoretto is; it is conceivable that in another environment titian might have developed on rather different lines, but this temper gave him greater domination. he was free from the eccentricities which beset genius. he possessed the saving salt of practical common sense, so that the golden mean of sanity and healthful joy in his works commended them to all men, and they are not difficult to understand. yet while all can see the beauty of his poetic instinct for colour, his interesting and original technique, his grasp and scope, his mastery and certainty have gained for him the title of "the painter's painter." there is no one from whom men feel that they can so safely learn so much, and the grand breadth and power of elimination of his later years is justified by the way in which in his earlier work he has carried exquisite finish and rich impasto to perfection. principal works ancona. crucifixion (l.). s. domenico: madonna with saints and donor, . antwerp. pope alexander vi. presenting jacopo pesaro. berlin. infant daughter of strozzi, ; portrait of himself (l.); lavinia bearing charges. brescia. ss. nazaro e celso: altarpiece, . dresden. madonna with saints (e.); tribute money (e.); lavinia as bride, ; lavinia as matron (l.); portrait, ; lady with vase (l.); lady in red dress. florence. pitti: la bella; aretino, ; magdalen; the young englishman; the concert (e.); philip ii.; ippolito de medici, ; tomaso mosti. uffizi: eleanora gonzaga, duchess of urbino, ; francesco della rovere, duke of urbino, ; flora; venus, the head a portrait of lavinia; venus, the head a portrait of eleanora gonzaga; madonna with s. anthony abbot. london. holy family and shepherd; bacchus and ariadne (e.); noli me tangere (e.); madonna with ss. john and catherine. bridgewater house: holy family (e.); venus of the shell; three ages of man; diana and actaeon, ; callisto, . earl brownlow: diana and actaeon (l.). sir f. cook: portrait of laura de dianti. madrid. madonna with ss. ulfus and bridget (e.); bacchanal; the garden of loves; danaë, ; venus and youth playing organ (l.); salome (portrait of lavinia); trinity, ; entombment, ; prometheus; religion succoured by spain (l.); sisyphus (l.); alfonso of ferrara; charles v. at the battle of mühlberg, ; charles v. and his dog, ; philip ii., ; philip ii.; the infant; don fernando and victory; portrait; portrait of himself; duke of alva; venus and adonis; fall of man; empress isabella. medole (near brescia). christ appearing to his mother. munich. vanitas; portrait of charles v., ; madonna and saints; man with baton. naples. paul iii. and cardinals, ; danaë. padua. scuola del santo: frescoes; s. anthony granting speech to an infant; the youth who cut off his leg; the jealous husband, . paris. madonna with saints (e.); la vierge au lapin; madonna with s. agnes; christ at emmaus (l.); crowning with thorns (l.); entombment; s. jerome (l.); jupiter and antiope (l.); francis i.; allegory; marquis da valos and mary of arragon; alfonso of ferrara and laura dianti; l'homme au gant (e.); portraits. rome. villa borghese: sacred and profane love (e.); st. dominio (l.); education of cupid (l.). capitol: baptism (e.). doria: daughter of herodias. vatican: madonna in glory and six saints, . treviso. duomo: annunciation. urbino. resurrection (l.); last supper (l.). venice. academy: presentation of virgin, ; s. john in the desert; assumption, ; pietà, . palazzo ducale staircase: s. christopher, . sala di quattro porte: doge giovanni before faith, . frari: pesaro madonna, . s. giovanni elemosinario: s. john the almsgiver, . scuola di san rocco: annunciation (e.). salute sacristy: descent of the holy spirit; st. mark enthroned with saints; david and goliath; sacrifice of isaac; cain and abel. s. salvatore: annunciation (l.); transfiguration (l.). verona. duomo: assumption. vienna. gipsy madonna (e.); madonna of the cherries (e.); ecce homo, ; isabela d'este, ; the tambourine player; girl in fur cloak; dr. parma (e.); shepherd and nymph (l.); portraits; doge andrea gritti; jacopo strada; diana and callisto; madonna and saints. wallace collection. perseus and andromeda. (in collaboration with his nephew, francesco vecellio.) louvre. madonna and saints. (the same by francesco alone.) glasgow. madonna and saints. chapter xx palma vecchio and lorenzo lotto among the many who clustered round titian's long career, palma attained to a place beside him and giorgione which his talent, which was not of the highest order, scarcely warranted. but he was classed with the greatest, and influenced contemporary art because his work chimed in so well with the venetian spirit. a bergamasque by birth, he came of venetian parentage, and learnt the first elements of his art in venice. he never really mastered the inner niceties of anatomy in its finest sense, and the broad generalisation of his forms may be meant to conceal uncertain drawing, but his large-bosomed, matronly women and plump children, his round, soft contours, his clean brilliancy, and the clear golden polish in which his pictures are steeped, made a great appeal to the public. his invention is the large santa conversazione, as compared with those in half-length of the earlier masters. the virgin and saints and kneeling or bending donors are placed under the spreading trees of a rich and picturesque landscape. it is palma's version of the giorgionesque ideal, which he had his share in establishing and developing. the heavy tree-trunk and dark foliage, silhouetted almost black against the background, are characteristic of his compositions. as his life goes on, though he still clings to his full, ripe figures and to the same smooth fleshiness in his women, the features become delicate and chiselled, and the more refined type and subtler feeling of his middle stage may be due to his companionship with lotto, with whom he was in bergamo when they were both about twenty-five. he touches his highest, and at the same time keeps very near giorgione, in the splendid st. barbara, painted for the company of the _bombadieri_ or artillerists. their cannon guard the pedestal on which she stands; it was at her altar that they came to commend themselves on going forth to war, and where they knelt to offer thanksgiving for a safe return; and she is a truly noble figure, regal in conception and fine and firm in execution, attired in sumptuous robes of golden brown and green, with splendid saints on either hand. palma was often approached by his patrons who wanted mythological scenes, gods, and goddesses; but though he produced a venus, a handsome, full-blown model, he never excels in the nude, and his tendency is to seize upon the homely. his scenes have a domestic, familiar flavour. with all his golden and ivory beauty he lacks fire, and his personages have a sluggish, plethoric note. in his latest stage he hides all sharpness in a sort of scumble or haze. it would, however, be unfair to say he is not fine, and his portraits especially come very near the best. vienna is rich in examples in half-lengths of one beautiful woman after another robed in the ample and gorgeous garments in which he is always interested. among them is his handsome daughter, violante, with a violet in her bosom, and wearing the large sleeves he admires. the "tasso" of the national gallery has been taken from him and given first to giorgione and then to titian, but there now seems some inclination to return it to its first author. it has a more dreamy, intellectual countenance than we are accustomed to associate with palma; but he uses elsewhere the decorative background of olive branches, and the waxen complexion, tawny colouring, and the pronounced golden haze are palmesque in the highest degree. the colouring is in strong contrast to the pale ivory glow of the ariosto of titian, which hangs near it. [illustration: _palma vecchio._ holy family. _colonna gallery, rome._ (_photo, anderson._)] no one could be more unlike palma than his contemporary, lorenzo lotto, who has for long been classed with the bergamasques, but who is proved by recently discovered documents to have been born in venice. it was for long an accepted fact that lotto was a pupil of bellini, and his earliest altarpiece, to s. cristina at treviso, bears traces of bellini's manner. a pietà above has child angels examining the wounds with the grief and concern which bellini made so peculiarly his own, and the st. jerome and the branch of fig-leaves silhouetted against the light remind us of the altarpiece in s. crisostomo. lotto seems to have clung to quattrocento fashions. the ancona had long been rejected by most of his contemporaries, but he painted one of the last for a church in recanati, in carved and gilt compartments, and he painted predellas long after they had become generally obsolete. we ask ourselves how it was that lotto, who had so susceptible and easily swayed a nature, escaped the influence of giorgione, the most powerful of any in the venice of his youth--an influence which acted on bellini in his old age, which titian practically never shook off, and which dominated palma to the exclusion of any earlier master. it would take too long to survey the train of argument by which mr. berenson has established alvise vivarini as the master of lotto. notwithstanding that bellini's great superiority was becoming clear to the more cultured venetians, alvise, when lotto was a youth, was still the painter _par excellence_ for the mass of the public. in the s. cristina altarpiece the child standing on its mother's knee is in the same attitude as the child in alvise's altarpiece of , and the mother's hand holds it in the same way. other details which supply internal evidence are the shape of hands and feet, the round heads and the way the child is often represented lying across the mother's knees. lotto carries into old age the use of fruit and flowers and beads as decoration, a squarcionesque feature beloved of the vivarini, but which was never adopted by bellini. about lotto comes into contact with palma, and for a short time the two were in close touch. a "santa conversazione," of which a good copy exists in villa borghese, rome, and one at dresden, with the holy family grouped under spreading trees, is saturated with palma's spirit, but it soon passes away, and except for an occasional touch, disappears entirely from lotto's work. lotto may have had relations in bergamo, for when in a competition between artists was set on foot by alessandro martino, a descendant of general colleone, for an altarpiece for s. stefano, he competed and carried off the prize. this was the first of the series of the great works for bergamo, which enrich the little city, where at this period he can best be studied. the great altarpiece (now removed to san bartolommeo) is a most interesting human document, a revelation of the painter's personality. he does not break away from hieratic conventions, like the rival school; his madonna is still placed in the apse of the church with saints grouped round her, a form from which the vivarini never departed, but the whole is full of intense movement, of a lyric grace and ecstasy, a desire to express fervent and rapturous devotion. the architectural background is not in happy proportion in relation to the figures, but the effect of vista and space is more remarkable than in any north italian master. the vivid treatment of light and shade, and the gaiety and delicacy of the flying angels, who hold the canopy, and of the putti, who spread the carpet below, the shapes of throne and canopy and the decorations have led to the idea that lotto drew his inspiration from correggio, whom he certainly resembles in some ways; but at this time correggio was only twenty, and had not given any examples of the style we are accustomed to call correggiesque. we must look back to a common origin for those decorative details, which are so conspicuous in crivelli and bartolommeo vivarini, which came to lotto through the vivarini and to correggio through ferrarese painters, and of which the fountain-head for both was the school of squarcione. for the much more striking resemblances of composition and spirit, the explanation seems to be that lotto on one side of his nature was akin to correggio; he had the same lyrical feeling, the same inclination to exuberance and buoyancy. to both, painting was a vehicle for the expression of feeling, but lotto had also common sense and a goodly share of that humour that is allied to pathos. till the year lotto was much in bergamo, where the first altarpiece gained him orders for others. the reputation of a member of the school of venice was a sure passport to employment. we trace alvise's tradition very plainly in the altarpiece in san bernardino, where the gesture of the madonna's hand as she expounds to the listening saints recalls alvise's of . the little gathered roses, which lotto makes use of to the end of his life, lie scattered on the step; angels, daringly foreshortened, sweep aside the curtain of the sanctuary. the colour is in lotto's scarlet, light blues, and violet. he soon shows himself fond of genre incidents, and in "christ taking leave of his mother" gives a view into a bedroom and a cat running across the floor. the donor kneels with her hair fashionably dressed and wearing a pearl necklace. in the "marriage of s. catherine" at bergamo the saint is evidently a portrait, with hair pearl-wreathed. she kneels very simply and naturally before the child, and the exquisitely lovely and elaborately gowned young woman who represents the madonna, looks out towards the spectator with a mundane and curiously modern air. it was probably the recognition of lotto's success with portraits that led to their being so often introduced into his sacred pieces. in the one we have just noticed, the donor, niccolas bonghi, is brought in, and is on rather a larger scale than the rest, but lotto has evidently not found him interesting. the portraits of the brothers della torre, and that of the prothonotary giuliano in the national gallery, inaugurate that wonderful series of characterisations which are his greatest distinction. a series of frescoes in village churches round bergamo must also be noticed. they are remarkable for spontaneous and original decoration, and may compare with the ceremonial groups of gentile bellini and carpaccio. lotto's personages, as they chatter in the market-places, are full of natural animation and gaiety, and we realise what a step had been made in the painting of actual life. owing to the unsettled state of the rest of italy, the years from to , which lotto spent in venice, found that city the gathering-ground of many of the most distinguished scholars and deepest thinkers of the day. men of all shades of religious thought were engaged in learned discussion, and lotto's ardent and inquiring temperament must have been stimulated by such an environment. during these years, too, he became intimate with titian, and experimented in titian's style, with the result that his painting gets thicker and richer, more fused and solid, and his figures are better put together. he imitates titian's colour, too, but it makes him paint in deeper, fiercer tints, and he soon finds it does not suit him, and returns to his own scheme. his colour is still rather too dazzling, but the distances are translucent and atmospheric. he continues to introduce portraits. in his altarpiece in ss. giovanni and paolo the deacons giving alms and receiving petitions curiously resemble in type and expression the ecclesiastics we see to-day. lotto was now an accepted member of titian's set, and aretino, in a letter dated , writes that titian values his taste and judgment as that of no other; but aretino, with his usual mixture of connoisseurship and clever spite, goes on to insinuate accidentally, as it were, what he himself knew perfectly well, that lotto was not considered on a par with the masters of the first rank. "envy is not in your breast," he says, "rather do you delight to see in other artists certain qualities which you do not find in your own brush, ... holding the second place in the art of painting is nothing compared to holding the first place in the duties of religion." an interesting codex or commentary tells us that lotto never received high prices for his work, and we hear of him hawking pictures about in artistic circles, putting them up in raffles, and leaving a number with jacopo sansovino in the hope that he might hear of buyers. his work ended as it had begun, in the marches. he undertook commissions at recanati, ancona, and loreto, and in september he concluded a contract with the holy house at loreto, by which, in return for rooms and food, he made over himself and all his belongings to the care of the fraternity, "being tired of wandering, and wishing to end his days in that holy place." he spent the last four years of his life at loreto as a votary of the virgin, painting a series of pictures which are distinguished by the same sort of apparent looseness and carelessness which we noticed in titian's late style; a technique which, as in titian's case, conceals a profound knowledge of plastic modelling. though lotto executed an immense number of important and very beautiful sacred works, his portraits stand apart, and are so interesting to the modern mind that one is tempted to linger over them. other painters give us finer pictures; in none do we feel so anxious to know who the sitters were and what was their story. lotto has nothing of the pagan quality which marks giorgione and titian; he is a born psychologist, and as such he witnesses to an attitude of mind in the italy of his day which is of peculiar interest to our own. lotto's bystanders, even in his sacred scenes, have nothing in common with titian's "chorus"; they have the characterisation of distinct individuals, and when he is concerned with actual portraits he is intensely receptive and sensitive to the spirit of his sitters. he may be said to "give them away," and to take an almost unfair advantage of his perception. the sick man in the doria gallery looks like one stricken with a death sentence. he knows at least that it is touch and go, and the painter has symbolised the situation in the little winged genius balancing himself in a pair of scales. in the borghese gallery is the portrait of a young, magnificently dressed man, with a countenance marked by mental agitation, who presses one hand to his heart, while the other rests on a pile of rose-petals in which a tiny skull is half-hidden. the "old man" in the brera has the hard, narrow, but intensely sad face of one whose natural disposition has been embittered by the circumstances of his life, just as that of our prothonotary speaks of a large and gentle nature, mellowed by natural affections and happy pursuits. we smile, as lotto does, with kindly mischief at "marsilio and his bride;" the broad, placid countenance of the man is so significantly contrasted with the clever mouth and eyes of the bride that it does not need the malicious glance of the cupid, who is fitting on the yoke, to "dot the i's and cross the t's" of their future. again, the portrait of laura di pola, in the brera, introduces us to one of those women who are charming in every age, not actually beautiful, but harmonious, thoughtful, perfectly dressed, sensible, and self-possessed, and the "family group" in our own gallery holds a history of a couple of antagonistic temperaments united by life in common and the clasping hands of children. lotto does not keep the personal expression out of even such a canvas as his "triumph of chastity" in the rospigliosi gallery. his delightful venus, one of the loveliest nudes in painting, flies from the attacking termagant, whose virtue is proclaimed by the ermine on her breast, and sweeps her little cupid with her with a well-bred, surprised air, suggestive of the manners of mundane society. [illustration: _lorenzo lotto._ portrait of laura di pola. _brera._ (_photo, anderson._)] the painter who was thus able to unveil personality had evidently a mind that was aware of itself, that looked forward to a wider civilisation and a more earnest and intimate religion. his life seems to have been one of some sadness, and crowned with only moderate success. he speaks of himself as "advanced in years, without loving care of any kind, and of a troubled mind." his will shows that his worldly possessions were few and poor, and that he had no heir closer than a nephew; but he leaves some of his cartoons as a dowry to "two girls of quiet nature, healthy in mind and body, and likely to make thrifty housekeepers," on their marriage to "two well-recommended young men," about to become painters. his sensitive and introspective temperament led him to prefer the retirement and the quiet beauty of loreto to the brilliant society of which he was made free in venice. "his spirit," says mr. berenson, "is more like our own than is perhaps that of any other italian painter, and it has all the appeal and fascination of a kindred soul in another age." principal works _palma vecchio._ bergamo. lochis: madonna and saints (l.). cambridge. fitzwilliam museum: venus (l.). dresden. madonna; ss. john, catherine; three sisters; holy family; meeting of jacob and rachel (l.). london. hampton court: santa conversazione; portrait of a poet. milan. brera: ss. helen, constantine, roch, and sebastian; adoration of magi (l.), finished by cariani. naples. santa conversazione with donors. paris. adoration of shepherds. rome. villa borghese: lucrece (l.); madonna with saints and donor. capitol: christ and woman taken in adultery. palazzo colonna: madonna, s. peter, and donor. venice. academy: st. peter enthroned and six saints; assumption. giovanelli: sposalizio (l.). s. maria formosa: altarpiece. vienna. santa conversazione; violante (l.); five portraits of women. _lorenzo lotto._ ancona. assumption, ; madonna with saints (l.). asolo. madonna in glory, . bergamo. carrara: marriage of s. catherine; predelle. lochis: holy family and s. catherine; predelle; portrait. s. bartolommeo: altarpiece, . s. alessandro in colonna: pietà. s. bernardino: altarpiece. s. spirito: altarpiece. berlin. christ taking leave of his mother; portraits. brescia. nativity. cingoli. s. domenico: madonna and saints and fifteen small scenes. florence. uffizi: holy family. london. hampton court: portrait of andrea odoni, ; portrait (e.); portraits of agostino and niccolo della torre, ; family group; portrait of prothonotary giuliano. bridgewater house: madonna and saints (e.). loreto. palazzo apostolico: saints; nativity; s. michael and lucifer (l.); presentation (l.); baptism (l.); adoration of magi (l.). recanati. municipio: altarpiece, ; transfiguration (e.). s. maria sopra mercanti: annunciation. rome. villa borghese: madonna with s. onofrio and a bishop, . rospigliosi: love and chastity. venice. carmine: s. nicholas in glory, . s. giacomo dall' orio: madonna with saints, . ss. giovanni e paolo: s. antonino bestowing alms, . vienna. santa conversazione, etc. chapter xxi sebastian del piombo it was very natural that rome should wish for works of the masters of the new venetian school, but the first-rate men were fully employed at home. all the efforts made to secure titian failed till nearly the end of his career. on the other hand, venice was full of less famous masters following in giorgione's steps. when sebastian luciani was a young man, giorgione was paramount there, and no one could have foretold that his life would be of such short duration. it was to be expected, therefore, that a painter who consulted his own interests should leave the city where he was overshadowed by a great genius and go farther afield. the influence of the guilds was withdrawn in the sixteenth century, so that it was a simpler matter for painters to transfer their talents, and painting was beginning to appeal strongly to the _dilettanti_, who rivalled one another in their offers. only one work of sebastian's is known belonging to this earlier time in venice. it is the "s. chrysostom enthroned," in s. giovanni crisostomo, and its majesty and rich colouring, and more especially the splendid group of women on the left, so proud and soft in their venetian beauty, make us wonder if sebastian might not have risen to greater heights if he had remained in his natural environment. he responded to the call to rome of agostino chigi, the great painter, [tn: chigi was a banker] art collector, and patron, the friend of leo x. chigi had just completed the farnesina villa, and sebastian was employed till on its decoration, and at once came under the influence of michelangelo. the "pietà" at viterbo shows that influence very strongly; in fact, vasari says that michelangelo himself drew the cartoon for the figure of christ, which would account for its extraordinary beauty. sebastian embarked on a close intimacy with the florentine painter, and, according to vasari, the great canvas of the "raising of lazarus," in the national gallery, was executed under the orders and in part from the designs of michelangelo. this colossal work was looked on as one of the most important creations of the sixteenth century, but there is little to make us wish to change it for the altarpiece of s. crisostomo. the desire for scientific drawing and the search after composition have produced a laboured effect; the female figures are cast in a masculine mould, and it lacks both the severe beauty of the tuscan school and the emotional charm of sebastian's native style. we cannot, however, avoid conjecturing if in the figure of lazarus himself we have not a conception of the great florentine. it is so easy in pose, so splendid in its, perhaps excessive, length of limb, that our thoughts turn involuntarily to the _ignudi_ in the sixtine chapel. the picture has been dulled and injured by repainting, but the distance still has the sombre depth of the venetians. all through sebastian's career he seeks for form and composition, but, great painter as he undoubtedly is, he is great because he possesses that inborn feeling for harmony of colour. this is what we value in him, and he excels in so far as he follows his venetian instincts. the death of raphael improved sebastian's position in rome, and though leo x. never liked or employed him, he did not lack commissions. the "fornarina" in the uffizi, with the laurel-wreathed head and leopard-skin mantle, still reveals him as the venetian, and it is curious that any critic should ever have assigned its rich, voluptuous tone and its coarse type to raphael. sebastian obtained commissions for decorating s. maria del popolo in oils and s. pietro in montorio in fresco, but in the latter medium, though he is ambitious of acquiring the force of michelangelo, he lacks the tuscan ease of hand. colour, for which he possessed so true an aptitude, the deep, fused colour of giorgione, is set aside by him; his tints become strong and crude, his surfaces grow hard and polished, and he thinks, above all, of bold action, of drawing and modelling. the venetian genius for portraiture remains, and he has left such fine examples as the "andrea doria" of the vatican, or the "portrait of a man in the pitti," a masterly picture both in drawing and execution, with grand draperies, a fur pelisse, and damask doublet with crimson sleeves. in the national gallery we possess his own portrait by himself, in company with cardinal de medici. the faces are well contrasted, and we judge from sebastian's that his biographer describes him justly, as fat, indolent, and given to self-indulgence, but genial and fond of good company. after an absence of twenty years he returned to venice. there he came in contact with titian and pordenone, and struck up a friendship with aretino, who became his great ally and admirer. the sack of rome had driven him forth, but in , when the city was beginning partially to recover from that time of horror, he returned, and was cordially welcomed by clement vii., and admitted into the innermost ecclesiastical circles. the piombo, a well-paid, sinecure office of the papal court, was bestowed on him, and his remaining years were spent in rome. he was very anxious to collaborate with michelangelo, and the great painter seems to have been quite inclined to the arrangement. the "last judgment," in the sixtine chapel, was suggested, and sebastian had the melancholy task of taking down perugino's masterpieces; but he wished to reset the walls for oils, and michelangelo stipulated for fresco, saying that oils were only fit for women, so that no agreement was arrived at. sebastian's mode of work was slow, and he employed no assistants. he seems to have been inordinately lazy, fond of leisure and good living, and his character shows in his work, which, with a few exceptions, has something heavy and common about it, a want of keenness and fire, an absence of refinement and selection. principal works florence. uffizi: fornarina, ; death of adonis. pitti: martyrdom of s. agatha, ; portrait (l.). london. resurrection of lazarus, ; portraits. naples. holy family; portraits. paris. visitation, . rome. portrait of andrea doria (l.). farnesina: frescoes, . s. pietro in montorio. frescoes. treviso. s. niccolo: incredulity of s. thomas (e.). venice. academy: visitation (e.). s. giovanni chrisostomo: s. chrysostom enthroned (e.). viterbo. pietà (l.). chapter xxii bonifazio and paris bordone some uncertainty has existed as to the identity of the different members of the family of bonifazio. all the early historians agree in giving the name to one master only. boschini, however, in discovered the register of the death of a second, and a third bearing the name was working twenty years later. upon this dr. morelli came to the conclusion that we must recognise three, if not four, masters bearing the name of bonifazio, but documents recently discovered by professor ludwig have in great measure destroyed morelli's conjectures. there may have been obscure painters bearing the name, but they were mere imitators, and it is doubtful if any were related to the family of de pitatis. bonifazio veronese is really the only one who counts. as ridolfi says, he was born in verona in the most beautiful moment of painting. he came to venice at the age of eighteen, and became a pupil of palma vecchio, with whom his work has sometimes been confused. after palma's death bonifazio continued in friendly relations with his old master's family, and his niece married palma's nephew. bonifazio himself married the daughter of a basket-maker, and appears to have had no children, for he and his wife by their wills bestowed their whole fortune on their nephews. antonio palma, who married bonifazio's niece, was a painter whose pictures have sometimes been attributed to the legendary third bonifazio. bonifazio's life was passed peacefully in venice. he received many important commissions from the republic, and decorated the palace of the treasurers. his character and standing were high, and he was appointed, in company with titian and lotto, to administer a legacy which vincenzo catena had left to provide a yearly dower for five maidens. after a long life spent in steady work, bonifazio withdrew to a little farm amidst orchards--fifteen acres of land in all--at san zenone, near asolo; but he still kept his house in san marcuola, where he died. he was buried in s. alvise in venice. a son of the plains and of venetian stock, his work is always graceful and attractive, though inclined to be hot in colour. it has a very pronounced aristocratic character, and bears no trace of the rough, provincial strain of such men as cariani or pordenone. it is very fine and glowing in colour, but lacks vigour and energy in design. nowhere do we get more worldly magnificence or such frank worship of wealth as on bonifazio's joyous canvases. he represents christian saints and eastern kings alike, as gentlemen of princely rank. there is a note of purely secular art about his adorations and holy families. in the "adoration of the magi," in the academy, the madonna is a handsome, prosperous lady of bonifazio's acquaintance. the child, so far from raising his hand in benediction, holds it out for the proffered cup. he does not, as usual, distinguish the eldest king, but singles out the cup held by the second, who, in a puffed velvet dress, is an evident portrait, probably that of the donor of the picture, who is in this way paid a courtier-like compliment. the third king is such a moor as bonifazio must often have seen embarking from his eastern galley on the riva dei schiavoni. a servant in a peaked hood peers round the column to catch sight of what is going on. the groups of animals in the background are well rendered. in the "rich man's feast," where lazarus lies upon the step, we have another scene of wealthy and sumptuous venetian society, an orgy of colour. and, again, in the "finding of moses" (brera) he paints nobles playing the lute, making love and feasting, and lovely fair-haired women listening complacently. we are reminded of the way in which they lived: their one preoccupation the toilet, the delight of appearing in public in the latest and most magnificent fashions. and in these paintings bonifazio depicts the elaborate striped and brocaded gowns in which the beautiful venetians arrayed themselves, made in the very fashions of the year, and their thick, fair hair is twisted and coiled in the precise mode of the moment. the deep-red velvet he introduces into nearly all his pictures is of a hue peculiar to himself. as catena often brings in a little white lap-dog, so bonifazio constantly has as an accessory a liver-and-white spaniel. vasari speaks of paris bordone as the artist who most successfully imitated titian. he was the son of well-to-do tradespeople in treviso, and received a good education in music and letters, before being sent off to venice and placed in titian's studio. bordone does not seem to have been on very friendly terms with titian. he was dissatisfied with his teaching, and titian played him an ill turn in wresting from him a commission to paint an altarpiece which had been entrusted to him when he was only eighteen. he was, above all, in love with the manner of the dead giorgione, and it was upon this master that he aspired to form his style. his masterpiece, in the academy, was painted for the confraternity of st. mark, and made his reputation. the legend it represents may be given in a few words: in the days of doge gradenigo, one february, there arose a fearful storm in venice. during the height of the tempest, three men accosted a poor old fisherman, who was lying in his decayed old boat by the piazza, and begged that he would row them to s. niccolo del lido, where they had urgent business. after some demur they persuaded him to take the oars, and in spite of the hurricane, the voyage was accomplished. on reaching the shore they pointed out to him a great ship, the crew of which he perceived to consist of a band of demons, who were stirring up the waves and making a great hubbub. the three passengers laid their commands on them to desist, when immediately they sailed away and there was a calm. the passengers then made the oarsman row them, one to s. niccolo, one to s. giorgio, and the third was rowed back to the piazza. the fisherman timidly asked for his fare, and the third passenger desired him to go to the doge and ask for payment, telling him that by that night's work a great disaster had been averted from the city. the fisherman replied that he should not be believed, but would be imprisoned as a liar. then the passenger drew a ring from his finger. "show him this for a sign," he said, "and know that one of those you have this night rowed is s. niccolas, the other is s. george, and i am s. mark the evangelist, protector of the venetian republic." he then disappeared. the next day the fisherman presented the ring, and was assigned a provision for life from the senate. there has, perhaps, never been a richer and more beautiful subject-picture painted than this glowing canvas, or one which brings more vividly before us the magnificence of the pageants which made such a part of venetian life in the golden age of painting. it is all strength and splendour, and escapes the hectic colour and weaker type which appear in bordone's "last supper" and some of his other works. in he went to france and entered the service of francis ii., painting for him many portraits of ladies, besides works for the cardinals of guise and of lorraine. the king of poland sent to him for a "jupiter and antiope." at augsburg he was paid crowns for work done for the great fugger family. no one gives us so closely as bordone the type of woman who at this time was most admired in venice. the venetian ideal was golden haired, with full lips, fair, rosy cheeks, large limbed and ample, with "abundant flanks and snow-white breast." a type glowing with health and instinct with life, but, to say the truth, rather dull, without deep passions, and with no look that reveals profound emotions or the struggle of a soul. from what we see of bordone's female portraits and from some of the mythological compositions he has left, he might have been among the most sensually minded of men. his beautiful courtesan, in the national gallery, is an almost over-realistic presentment of a woman who has just parted from her lover. his women, with their carnation cheeks and expressionless faces, are like beautiful animals; but, as a matter of fact, their painter was sober and temperate in his life, very industrious, and devoted to his widowed mother. about he married the daughter of a venetian citizen, and had a son, who became one of the many insignificant painters of the end of the sixteenth century. most of his days were divided between his little villa of lovadina in the district of belluno, and his modest home in the corte dell' cavallo near the misericordia. "he lives comfortably in his quiet house," writes vasari, who certainly knew bordone in venice, "working only at the request of princes, or his friends, avoiding all rivalry and those vain ambitions which do but disturb the repose of man, and seeking to avert any ruffling of the serene tranquillity of his life, which he is accustomed to preserve simple and upright." many of his pictures show an intense love of country solitudes. his poetic backgrounds, lonely mountains, leafy woods, and sparkling water are in curious contrast to the sumptuous groups in the foreground. his "three heads," in the brera, is a superb piece of painting and an interesting characterisation. the woman is ripe, sensual, and calculating, feeling with her fingers for the gold chain, a mere golden-fleshed, rose-flushed hireling, solid and prosaic. the go-between is dimly seen in the background, but the face of the suitor is a strange, ironic study: past youth, worn, joyless, and bitter, taking his pleasure mechanically and with cynical detachment. the "storm calmed by s. mark" (academy) was, in mr. berenson's opinion, begun by giorgione. rich, brilliant, and essentially venetian as is the work of these two painters, it does not reach the highest level. it falls short of grandeur, and has that worldly tone that borders on vulgarity. as we study it we feel that it marks the point to which venetian art might have attained, the flood-mark it might have touched, if it had lacked the advent of the three or four great spirits, who, appearing about the same time, bore it up to sublimer heights and developed a more distinguished range of qualities. bonifazio and bordone lack the grandeur and sweetness of titian, the brilliant touch and imaginative genius of tintoretto, the matchless feeling for colour, design, and decoration of veronese, but they continue venetian painting on logical lines, and they form a superb foundation for the highest. principal works _bonifazio veronese._ dresden. finding of moses. florence. pitti: madonna; s. elizabeth and donor (e.); rest in flight into egypt; finding of moses. hampton court. santa conversazione. london. santa conversazione (e.). milan. brera: finding of moses. paris. santa conversazione. rome. villa borghese: mother of zebedee's children; return of the prodigal son. colonna: holy family with saints. venice. academy: rich man's feast; massacre of innocents; judgment of solomon, ; adoration of kings. giovanelli: santa conversazione. vienna. santa conversazione; triumph of love; triumph of chastity; salome. _paris bordone._ bergamo. lochis: vintage scenes. berlin. portrait of man in black; chess players; madonna and four saints. dresden. apollo and marsyas; diana; holy family. florence. pitti: portrait of woman. genoa. brignole sale: portraits of men; santa conversazione. hampton court. madonna and donors. london. daphnis and chloe; portrait of lady. bridgewater house: holy family. milan. brera: descent of holy spirit; baptism; s. dominio presented to the saviour by virgin; madonna and saints; venal love. s. maria pr. celso: madonna and s. jerome. munich. portrait; man counting jewels. paris. portraits. rome. colonna: holy family and saints. treviso. madonna and saints. duomo: adoration of shepherds; madonna and saints. venice. academy: fisherman and doge; paradise; storm calmed by s. mark. palazzo ducale chapel: dead christ. giovanelli: madonna and saints. s. giovanni in bragora; last supper. vienna. allegorical pictures; lady at toilet; young woman. chapter xxiii painters of the venetian provinces it has become usual to include in the venetian school those artists from the subject provinces on the mainland, who came down to try their luck at the fountain-head and to receive its hallmark on their talent. the friulan cities, udine, serravalle, and small neighbouring towns, had their own primitive schools and their scores of humble craftsmen. their art wavered for some time in its expression between the german taste, which came so close to their gates, and the italian, which was more truly their element. up to friuli was invaded seven times in thirty years by the turks. they poured in large numbers over the bosnian borders, crossed the isonzo and the tagliamenta, and massacred and carried off the inhabitants. these terrible periods are marked by the cessation of work in the provinces, but hope always revived again. the break caused by such a visitation can be distinctly traced in the church of s. antonino, at the little town of san daniele. martino da udine obtained the epithet of pellegrino da san daniele in when he returned from an early visit to venice, where he had been apprenticed to cima. he was appointed to decorate s. antonino. his early work there is hard and coarse, ill-drawn, the figures unwieldy and shapeless, and the colour dusky and uniform; but owing to the turkish raid, he had to take flight, and it was many a year before the monks gained sufficient courage and saved enough money to continue the embellishment of their church. in the meantime, pellegrino's years had been spent partly in venice and partly, perhaps, in ferrara, for the reason raphael gave for refusing to paint a "bacchus" for the duke, was that the subject had already been painted by pellegrino da san daniele. when pellegrino resumed his work, it demonstrated that he had studied the modern venetians and had come under a finer, deeper influence. a st. george in armour suggests giorgione's s. liberale at castelfranco; he specially shows an affinity with pordenone, who was his pupil and who was to become a better painter than his old master. as pellegrino goes on he improves consistently, and adopts the method, so peculiarly venetian, of sacrificing form to a scheme of chiaroscuro. he even, to some extent, succeeds in his difficult task of applying to wall painting the system which the venetians used almost exclusively for easel pictures. he was an ambitious, daring painter, and some of his church standards were for long attributed to giorgione. the church of san antonino remains his chief monument; but for all his travels pellegrino remains provincial in type, is unlucky in his selection, cares little for precision of form, and trusts to colour for effect. the same transition in art was taking place in other provinces. morto da feltre, pennacchi, and girolamo da treviso have all left work of a giorgionesque type, and some painters who went far onward, began their career under such minor masters. giovanni antonio licinio, who takes his name from his native town of pordenone, in friuli, was one of these. all the early part of his life was spent in painting frescoes in the small towns of the friulan provinces. at first they bear signs of the tuition of pellegrino, but it soon becomes evident that pordenone has learned to imitate giorgione and palma. quite early, however, one of his chief failings appears, and one which is all his own, the disparity in size between his various figures. the secondary personages, the magi in a nativity, the saints standing round an altar, are larger and more athletic in build and often more animated in action than the principal actors in the scene. what pleased pordenone's contemporaries was his daring perspective and his instinctive feeling for movement. he carried out great schemes in the hill-towns, till at length his reputation, which had long been ripe in his native province, reached venice. in he was invited to treviso to fresco the façade of a house for one of the raviguino family. the painter, as payment, asked fifty scudi, and titian was called in to adjudicate, but he admired the work so much that he hinted to raviguino that he would be wise not to press him for a valuation. as a direct consequence of this piece of business, pordenone was employed on the chapel at treviso, in conjunction with titian. at this time the assumption and the madonna of casa pesaro were just finished, and it is probable that pordenone paid his first visit to venice, hard by, and saw his great contemporary's work. with his characteristic distaste for fresco, titian undertook the altarpiece and painted the beautiful annunciation which still holds its place, and pordenone covered the dome with a foreshortened figure of the eternal father, surrounded by angels. among the remaining frescoes in the chapel, an adoration of the magi and a s. liberale are from his brush. fired by his success at treviso, pordenone offered his services to mantua and cremona, but the mantovans, accustomed to the stately and restrained grace of mantegna, would have nothing to say to what crowe and cavalcaselle call his "large and colossal fable-painting." he pursued his way to cremona, and that he studied mantegna as he passed through mantua is evident from the first figures he painted in the cathedral. in cremona every one admired him, and all the artists set to work to imitate his energetic foreshortening, vehement movement and huge proportions. pordenone, with his love for fresco, was all his life an itinerant painter. in he was back at udine and wandered from place to place, painting a vast distemper for the organ doors at s. maria at spilimbergo, the façade of the church of valeriano, an imposing series at travesio, and in , the "story of the true cross" at casara. at the last place he threw aside much of his exaggeration, and, ruined and restored as the frescoes are, they remain among his most dignified achievements. he may be studied best of all at piacenza, in the church of the madonna di campagna, where he divides his subjects between sacred and pagan, so that we turn from a "flight into egypt" or a "marriage of s. catherine," to the "rape of europa" or "venus and adonis." at piacenza he shows himself the great painter he undoubtedly is, having achieved some mastery over form, while his colour has the true venetian quality and almost equals oils in its luscious tones and vivid hues, which he lowers and enriches by such enveloping shadows as only one whose spirit was in touch with the art of giorgione would have understood how to use. very complete records remain of pordenone's life, full details of a quarrel with his brother over property left by his father in , and accounts of the painter's negotiations to obtain a knighthood, which he fancied would place him more on a par with titian when he went to live in venice. the coveted honour was secured, but from this time he seems to have been very jealous of titian and to have aimed continually at rivalling him. pordenone was a punctual and rapid decorator, and on being given the ceiling of the sala di san finio to decorate in the summer of , he finished the whole by march . we have seen how titian annoyed the signoria by his delays, how anxious they were to transfer his commission to pordenone, and what a narrow escape the venetian had of losing his broker's patent. pordenone was engaged by the nuns of murano to paint an annunciation, after they had rejected one by titian on account of its price, and though it seems hardly possible that any one could have compared the two men, yet no doubt the pleasure of getting an altarpiece quickly and punctually and for a moderate sum, often outweighed the honour of the possible painting by the great titian. no one has left so few easel-paintings as pordenone; fresco was so much better suited to his particular style. the canvas of the "madonna of mercy" in the venice academy, was painted about for a member of the house of ottobono, and introduces seven members of the family. it is very free from his colossal, exaggerated manner; the attendant saints are studied from nature, and in his journals the painter mentions that the st. roch is a portrait of himself. the "s. lorenzo enthroned," in the same gallery, shows both his virtues and failings. the saints have his enormous proportions. the baptist is twisting round, to display the foreshortening which pordenone particularly affects. the gestures are empty and inexpressive, but the colour is broad and fluid; there is a large sense of decoration in the composition, and something simple and austere about the figure of s. lorenzo. as is so often the case with pordenone, the principal actor of the scene is smaller and more sincerely imagined than the attendant personages, who are crowded into the foreground, where they are used to display the master's skill. pordenone died suddenly at ferrara, where he had been summoned by its duke to undertake one of his great schemes of decoration. he was said to have been poisoned, but though he had jealous rivals there seems no proof of the truth of the assertion, which was one very commonly made in those days. he is interesting as being the only distinguished member of the venetian school whose frescoes have come down to us in any number, and as being the only one of the later masters with whom it was the chosen medium. his kinsman, bernardino licinio, is represented in the national gallery by a half-length of a young man in black, and at hampton court by a large family group and by another of three persons gathered round a spinet. his masterpiece is a madonna and saints in the frari, which shows the influence of palma. his flesh tints, striving to be rich, have a hot, red look, but his works have been constantly confounded with those of giorgione and paris bordone. a long list might be given of minor artists who were industriously turning out work on similar lines to one or other of these masters: calderari, who imitates paris bordone as well as pordenone; pomponio amalteo, pordenone's son-in-law, a spirited painter in fresco; florigerio, who practised at udine and padua, and of whom an altarpiece remains in the academy; giovanni battista grassi, who helped vasari to compile his notices of friulan art, and many others only known by name. at the close of the fifteenth century the revulsion against paduan art extended as far as brescia, and girolamo romanino was one of the first to acquire the trick of venetian painting. he probably studied for a time under friulan painters. pellegrino is thought to have been at brescia or bergamo during the friulan disturbances of - , and about romanino emerges, a skilled artist in pellegrino's palmesque manner. his works at this time are dark and glowing, full of warm light and deep shadow; the scene is often laid under arches, after the manner of the vivarini and cima; a gorgeous scheme of accessory is framed in noble architecture. brescia was an opulent city, second only to milan among the towns of northern italy, and romanino obtained plenty of patronage; but in the city fell a prey to the horrors of war, was taken and lost by venice, and in was sacked by the french. romanino fled to padua, where he found a home among the benedictines of s. giustina. here he was soon well employed on an altarpiece with life-size figures for the high altar, and a "last supper" for the refectory. it is also surmised that he helped in the series for the scuola del santo, for several of which titian in had signed a receipt, and the "death of st. anthony" is pointed out as showing the brescian characteristics of fine colour, but poor drawing. romanino returned to brescia when the venetians recovered it in , but before doing so he went to cremona and painted four subjects, which are among his most effective, in the choir of the duomo. he is not so daring a painter as pordenone, from whom he sometimes borrows ideas, but he is quite a convert to the modern style of the day, setting his groups in large spaces and using the slashed doublets, the long hose, and plumed headgear which giorgione had found so picturesque. romanino is often very poor and empty, and fails most in selection and expression at the moments when he most needs to be great, but he is successful in the golden style he adopted after his closer contact with the venetians, and his draperies and flesh tints are extremely brilliant. he is, indeed, inclined to be gaudy and careless in execution, and even the fine "nativity" in the national gallery gives the impression that size is more regarded than thought and feeling. moretto is perhaps the only painter from the mainland who, coming within the charmed circle of venetian art and betraying the study of palma and titian and the influence of pordenone, still keeps his own gamut of colour, and as he goes on, gets consistently cooler and more silvery in his tones. he can only be fully studied in brescia itself, where literally dozens of altarpieces and wall-paintings show him in every phase. his first connection was probably with romanino, but he reminds us at one time of titian by his serious realism, and finished, careful painting, at another of raphael, by the grace and sentiment of his heads, and as time goes on he foreshadows the style of veronese. in the "feast in the house of simon" in the organ-loft of the church of the pietà in venice, the very name prepares us for the airy, colonnaded building, with vistas of blue sky and landscape, and the costly raiment and plenishing which might have been seen at any venetian or brescian banquet. in his portraits moretto sometimes rivals lotto. his personages are always dignified and expressive, with pale, high-bred faces, and exceedingly picturesque in dress and general arrangement. he loved to paint a great gentleman, like the sciarra martinengo in the national gallery, and to endow him with an air of romantic interest. one of those who entered so closely into the spirit of the venetian school that he may almost be included within it, is savoldo. his pictures are rare, and no gallery can show more than one or two examples. the louvre has a portrait by him of gaston de foix, long thought to be by giorgione. his native town can only show one altarpiece, an "adoration of shepherds," low in tone but intense in dusky shadow with fringes of light. he is grey and slaty in his shadows, and often rough and startling in effect, but at his best he produces very beautiful, rich, evening harmonies; and a letter from aretino bears witness to the estimation in which he was held. it is not easy to say if brescia or vicenza has most claim to bartolommeo montagna, the early master of cima. born of brescian parents, he settled early in vicenza, and he is by far the most distinguished of those vicentine painters who drank at the venetian fount. he must have gone early to venice and worked with the vivarini, for in his altarpiece in the brera he has the vaulted porticoes in which bartolommeo and alvise vivarini delighted. his "madonna enthroned" in the gallery at vicenza has many points of contact with that of alvise at berlin. among these are the four saints, the cupola, and the raised throne, and he is specially attracted by the groups of music-making angels; but montagna has more moral greatness than alvise, and his lines are stronger and more sinewy. he keeps faithful to the alvisian feeling for calm and sweetness, but his personages have greater weight and gravity. he essays, too, a "pietà" with saints, at monte berico, and shows both pathos and vehemence. he has evidently seen bellini's rendering, and attempts, if only with partial success, to contrast in the same way the indifference of death with the contemplation and anguish of the bereaved. hard and angular as montagna's saints often are, they show power and austerity. his colour is brilliant and enamel-like; he does not arrive at the venetian depth, yet his altarpieces are very grand, and once more we are struck by the greatness of even the secondary painters who drew their inspiration from padua and venice. among the other vicentines, giovanni speranza and giovanni buonconsiglio were imbued with characteristics of mantegna. speranza, in one of his few remaining works, almost reproduces the beautiful "assumption" by pizzolo, mantegna's young fellow-student, in the chapel of the eremitani. he employs buonconsiglio as an assistant, and they imitate montagna to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish between their works. buonconsiglio's "pietà" in the vicenza gallery, is reminiscent of montagna's at monte berico. the types are lean and bony, the features are almost as rugged as dürer's, the flesh earthy and greenish. about buonconsiglio was studying oils with antonello da messina; he begins to reside in venice, and a change comes over his manner. his colours show a brilliancy and depth acquired by studying titian; and then, again, his bright tints remind us of lotto. his name was on the register of the venetian guild as late as . after pisanello's achievement and his marked effect on early venetian art, veronese painting fell for a time to a very low ebb; but mantegna's influence was strongly felt here, and art revived in liberale da verona, falconetto, casoto, the morone and girolamo dai libri, painters delightful in themselves, but having little connection with the school of venice. francesco bonsignori, however, shook himself free from the narrow circle of veronese art, where he had for a time followed liberale, and grows more like the vicentines, montagna and buonconsiglio. he is careful about his drawing, but his figures, like those of many of these provincial painters, are short, bony and vulgar, very unlike the slender, distinguished type of the great paduan. under the name of francesco da verona, bonsignori works in the new palace of the gonzagas, and several pictures painted for mantua are now scattered in different collections. at verona he has left four fine altarpieces. he went early to venice, where he became the pupil of the vivarini. his faces grow soft and oval, and the very careful outlines suggest the influence of bellini. girolamo mocetto was journeyman to giovanni bellini; in fact, vasari says that a "dead christ" in s. francesco della vigna, signed with bellini's name, is from mocetto's hand. his short, broad figures have something of bartolommeo vivarini's character. francesco torbido went to venice to study with giorgione, and we can trace his master's manner of turning half tones into deep shades; but he does not really understand the giorgionesque treatment, in which shade was always rich and deep, but never dark, dirty and impenetrable, nor in the lights can he produce the clear glow of giorgione. another veronese, cavazzola, has left a masterpiece upon which any painter might be happy to rest his reputation; the "gattemalata with an esquire" in the uffizi, a picture noble in feeling and in execution, and one which owes a great deal to venetian portrait-painters. principal works _pordenone._ casara. old church: frescoes, . colatto. s. salvatore: frescoes (e.). cremona. duomo: frescoes; christ before pilate; way to golgotha; nailing to cross; crucifixion, ; madonna enthroned with saints and donor, . murano. s. maria d. angeli: annunciation (l.). piacenza. madonna in campagna: frescoes and altarpiece, - . pordenone. duomo: madonna of mercy, ; s. mark enthroned with saints, . municipio: ss. gothard, roch, and sebastian, . spilimbergo. duomo: assumption; conversion of s. paul. sensigana. madonna and saints. torre. madonna and saints. treviso. duomo: adoration of magi; frescoes, . venice. academy: portraits; madonna, saints, and the ottobono family; saints. s. giovanni elemosinario: saints. s. rocco: saints, . _pellegrino._ san daniele. frescoes in s. antonio. cividale. s. maria: madonna with six saints. venice. academy: annunciation. _romanino._ bergamo. s. alessandro in colonna: assumption. berlin. madonna and saints; pietà. brescia. galleria martinengo: portrait; christ bearing cross; nativity; coronation. duomo: sacristy: birth of virgin; visitation. s. francesco: madonna and saints; sposalizio. cremona. duomo: frescoes. london. polyptych; portrait. padua. last supper; madonna and saints. sato, lago di garda. duomo: saints and donor. trent. castello: frescoes. verona. st. jerome. s. giorgio in braida: organ shutters. _moretto._ bergamo. lochis: holy family; christ bearing cross; donor. brescia. galleria martinengo: nativity and saints; madonna appearing to s. francis; saints; madonna in glory with saints; christ at emmaus; annunciation. s. clemente: high altar and four other altarpieces. s. francesco: altarpiece. s. giovanni evangelista: high altar; third altar. s. maria in calchera: dead christ and saints; magdalen washing feet of christ. s. maria delle grazie: high altar. ss. nazaro and celso: two altarpieces; sacristy: nativity. seminario di s. angelo: high altar. london. portrait of count sciarra martinengo; portrait; madonna and saints; two angels. milan. brera: madonna and saints; assumption. castello: triptych; saints. rome. vatican: madonna enthroned with saints. venice. s. maria della pietà: christ in the house of levi. verona. s. giorgio in braida: madonna and saints. _bartolommeo montagna._ bergamo. lochis: madonna and saint, . berlin. madonna, saints, and donors, . milan. brera: madonna, saints, and angels. padua. scuola del santo: fresco; opening of s. antony's tomb. pavia. certosa: madonna, saints, and angels. venice. academy: madonna and saints; christ with saints. verona. ss. nazaro e celso: saints; pietà; frescoes, - . vicenza. holy family; madonna enthroned; two madonnas with saints; three madonnas. duomo: altarpiece; frescoes. s. corona: madonna and saints. monte berico: pietà, ; fresco. chapter xxiv paolo veronese paolo veronese, though perhaps he is not to be placed on the very highest pinnacle of the venetian school, must be classed among those few great painters who rose far above the level of most of his contemporaries and who brought in a special note and flavour of his own. his art is an independent art, and he borrows little from predecessors or contemporaries. his free and joyous temperament gave relief at a moment when the venetian scheme of colour threatened to become too sombre, and when sebastian del piombo, pordenone, titian himself, and above all tintoretto, were pushing chiaroscuro to extremes. veronese discards the deepest bronzes and mulberries and crimsons and oranges, and finds his range among cream and rose and grey-greens. titian concentrated his colours and intensified his lights, tintoretto sacrifices colour to vivid play of light and dark, but veronese avoids the dark; the generous light plays all through his scenes. he has no wish to secure strong effects but delights in soft, faded tints; old rose and _turquoise morte_. in his colour and his subjects he is a personification of the robust, proud, joy-loving republic, in which, as m. yriarte says, a man produced his works as a tree produces its fruit. we get very near him in those vast palaces and churches and villas, where his heroic figures expand in the azure air, against the white clouds, and yet he is one of the artists of the renaissance about whom we know least. here and there, in contemporary biography, we come across a mention of him and learn that he was sociable and lively, quick at taking offence, fond of his family and anxious to do his best by them. he was, too, very generous with his work--a great contrast in this respect to titian--and contracts with convents and confraternities show that he often only stipulated for payment for bare time. yet he was fond of personal luxury, loved rich stuffs, horses and hounds, and, says ridolfi, "always wore velvet breeches." his first masters, according to mr. berenson, were badile and brusasorci, masters of verona, but before he was twenty, he was away working on his own account. his first patron was cardinal gonzaga, who brought several painters from verona to mantua; but mantua was no longer what it had been in the days of isabela d'este, and paolo caliari soon returned to his own town. before he was twenty-three he had decorated villa porti, near vicenza, in collaboration with zelotti, a veronese, portraying feasting gods and goddesses, framed in light architectural designs in monochrome. the two painters went on to other villas, mixing mortal and mythical figures in a happy, light-hearted medley. zelotti having received a commission at vicenza, paolo decided to seek his fortune in venice. the prior of the convent of san sebastiano, on the zattere, was a veronese, and caliari wrote to him before arriving in venice in . thanks to the good prior, who played a considerable part in his destiny, he obtained a commission for a "coronation of the virgin and four other saints." he first painted the sacristy, but his success was instantaneous, and many orders followed. the ceiling of the church was devoted to the history of esther. the whole of these paintings are marvellously well preserved, and, inset in the carved and gilt framework, make a _coup d'oeil_ of surprising beauty. they had an immense effect. every one was able to appreciate these joyous pictures of venice, the loveliness of her skies, the pomp of her ceremonies, the rich eastern stuffs and the glorious architecture of her palaces. it was an auspicious moment for a painter of veronese's temper; the so-called republic, now, more than ever, an oligarchy, was at the height of its fortunes, redecorating was going forward everywhere, the merchant-nobility was rich and spending magnificently, the eastern trade was flourishing, venice was in all her glory. the patrons caliari came to work for, preferred the ceremonial to the imaginative treatment of sacred themes, and he does not choose the tragedies of the bible for illustration. he paints the history of esther, with its royal audiences, banquets, and marriage-feasts. his christs and maries and martyrs are composed, courtly personages, who maintain a dignified calm under misfortune, and have very little violent feeling to show. at the time of his arrival in venice, palma vecchio was just dead, tintoretto was absorbed by the scuola di san rocco, paris bordone was with francis i. as rivals, caliari had salviati, bonifazio, schiavone, and zelotti, all rendering homage to titian who was eighty years old, but still in full vigour. titian's opinions in matters of art were dictates, his judgment was a law. he immediately recognised veronese's genius, which was of a kind to appeal to him, and together with sansovino, who at this time was director of buildings to the signoria, he received the young painter with an approval which ensured him a good start. five years after veronese's arrival he was retained to decorate the villa barbaro at maser, which is a type of those patrician country-houses to which the venetians were becoming more attached every year. daniele barbaro, patriarch of aquileia, whose magnificent portrait by veronese is in the pitti, was himself an artist and designed the ceiling of the hall of the council of ten. palladio, alessandro vittoria, and veronese were associated to build him a dwelling worthy of a prince of the church. in style the villa is a total contrast to the gorgeous venetian palaces; it is sober and simple, and well adapted to leisure and retirement. its white stucco walls and decorations are devoid of gilding and colour, and the rooms adorned by veronese's brush show him in quite a new light. his visit to rome did not take place till four years later, but he has been influenced here by the feeling for the antique, and he thinks much of line and style. he leaves on one side the gorgeous brocades and gleaming satins, in which he usually delights, and his nymphs are only clothed in their own beauty. and here veronese shows his admirable taste and discretion; his patrons, the barbaro family, are his friends, men and women of the world, who put no restraint on his fancy, and are not prone to censure, and veronese, with the bridle on his neck, so to speak, uses his opportunities fully, yet never exceeds the limits of good taste. he is not gross and sensual like rubens, but proud, grave and sweet, seductive, but never suggestive or vulgar. after having placed single figures wherever he can find a nook, he assembles all the gods of olympia at a supper in the cupola. immortality is a beautiful young woman seated on a cloud. mercury gazes at her, caduceus in hand; diana caresses her great hound; saturn, an old man, rests his head on his hand; mars, apollo, venus, and a little cupid are scattered in the empyrean, and jupiter presides over the party. below, a balcony rail runs round the cupola, and looking over it, an old lady, dressed in the latest fashion, points out the company to a beautiful young one and to a young man in a doublet who holds a hound in a leash. they are evidently family portraits, taken from those who looked on at the artist, and on the other side he has introduced members of his own family who were helping him. these decorations have a gaiety, an absence of pedantry, a sound and sane sympathy with the spirit of the renaissance which tell of a happy moment when art was at its height and in touch with its environment. from about we may begin to date his great supper pictures. the marriage of cana (louvre), one of his most famous works, was painted for the refectory in sammichele, the old part of s. giorgio maggiore. the treaty for it is still in existence, dated june . the artist asks for a year; the prior is to furnish canvas and colours, the painter's board, and a cask of wine. the further payment of ducats illustrates the prices received by the greatest artists at the height of the renaissance: £ for work which occupied quite eight months. veronese must have delighted in painting this work. needless to say, it is not in the least religious. he has united in it all the most varied personages who struck his imagination. so we see a spanish grandee, francis i., suleiman the sultan, charles v., vittoria colonna, and eleanor of austria. in the foreground, grouped round a table, are veronese himself, playing the viol, tintoretto accompanying him, jacopo da ponte seated by them, and paolo's brother, the architect, with his hand on his hip, tossing off a full glass; and in the governor of the feast, opulent and gorgeously attired, we recognise aretino. under the marble columns of a grimani or a pesaro, he brings in all the illustrious actors of his own time and leaves us an odd and informing document. we can but accept the scene and admire the originality of its design and the freedom of its execution, its boldness and fancy, the way in which the varied incidents are brought into harmony, and the grace of the colonnade, peopled with spectators, standing out against the depth of distant sky. the celebrated suppers, of which this is the first example, are dispersed in different galleries and some have disappeared, but from this time veronese loved to paint these great displays, repeating some of them, but always introducing variety. [illustration: _paolo veronese._ marriage in cana. _louvre._ (_photo, mansell and co._)] in he accompanied girolamo grimani, procurator of st. mark's, who was appointed ambassador to the holy see, and for the first time saw the works of raphael and michelangelo and the treasures of antiquity. for a time, the sight of the antique had some effect upon his work; in his famous ceiling in the louvre, "jupiter destroying the vices," the influence of michelangelo is apparent and its large gestures are inspired by sculpture. ridolfi says that veronese brought home casts from rome, and statues of amazons and the laocoon seem to have inspired the jupiter. he did not go on long in this path; he does not really care for the nude--it is too simple for him. he prefers that his saints and divinities should appear in the gorgeous costumes of the day, and that his venus and diana and the nymphs should trail in rich brocades. but few documents are left concerning his work for the ducal palace up to ; much of it was destroyed in the great fire, but the signoria then gave him a number of fresh commissions. the most important was the immense oval of the "triumph of venice," or, as it is sometimes called, the "thanksgiving for lepanto"; the republic crowned by victory and surrounded by allegorical figures, glory, peace, happiness, ceres, juno and the rest. the composition shows the utmost freedom: the fair queen leans back, surrounded by laughing patricians, who look up from their balconies, as if they were attending a regatta on the grand canal. the horses of the free companions, the soldiers who go afar to carry out the will of the republic, prance in a crowd of personages, each of whom represents a town or colony of her domain. like all veronese's creations, this will always be pre-eminently a picture of the sixteenth century, dated by a thousand details of costume, architecture, and armour. venice, the venice of lepanto and the venier, of titian, aretino, and veronese himself, makes a deep impression upon us, and the artist reflects his age with sympathetic spontaneity. hardly a hall of the ducal palace but can show a canvas of veronese or the assistants by whom he was now surrounded. from time to time he resumed the decorations of s. sebastiano, and his incessant production betrays no trace of fatigue or languor. the martyrdom of the saint is a triumph of the beauty of the silhouette against a radiant sky. he goes back to verona and paints the "martyrdom of st. george." he pours light into it. the saints open a shining path, down which a flower-crowned love flutters with the diadem and palm of victory. the whole air and expression of st. george is full of strength and that look of goodness and serenity which is the painter's nearest approach to religious feeling. veronese was created a chevalier of st. mark; every one was asking for his services, but he was a stay-at-home by nature and fond of living with his family. philip ii. longed to get him to cover his great walls in the escurial, but he very civilly declined all his invitations and sent federigo zucchero in his stead. it was on account of the "feast in the house of levi" that in he was hauled before the tribunal of the inquisition, and the document concerning this was only discovered a few years ago. the signoria had never allowed any tribunal to chastise works of literature; on the contrary, venice, though comparatively poor herself in geniuses of the mind, was the refuge of freedom of thought, and, in fact, had made a sort of compact with niccolas v., which allowed her to set aside or suspend the decisions of the holy office, from which she could not quite emancipate herself. veronese, however, was denounced by some "aggrieved person," to whom his way of treating sacred subjects seemed an outrage on religion. the members of the tribunal demanded "who the boy was with the bleeding nose?" and "why were halberdiers admitted?" veronese replied that they were the sort of servants a rich and magnificent host would have about him. he was then asked why he had introduced the buffoon with a parrot on his hand. he replied that he really thought only christ and his apostles were present, but that when he had a little space over, he adorned it with imaginary figures. this defence of the vast and crowded canvas did not commend itself, and he was asked if he really thought that at the last supper of our saviour it was fitting to bring in dwarfs, buffoons, drunken germans, and other absurdities. did he not know that in germany and other places infested with heresy, they were in the habit of turning the things of holy church into ridicule, with intent to teach false doctrine to the ignorant? paolo for his defence cited the last judgment, where michelangelo had painted every figure in the nude, but the inquisitor replied crushingly, that these were disembodied spirits, who could not be expected to wear clothing. could veronese uphold his picture as decent? the painter was probably not very much alarmed. he was a person of great importance in venice, and the proceedings of the inquisition were always jealously watched by members of the senate, who would not have permitted any unfair interference with the liberties of those under the protection of the state. the real offence was the introduction of the german soldiers, who were peculiarly obnoxious to the venetians; but veronese did not care what the subject was as long as it gave him an excuse for a great _spectacle_. brought to bay, he gave the true answer: "my lords, i have not considered all this. i was far from wishing to picture anything disorderly. i painted the picture as it seemed best to me and as my intellect could conceive of it." it meant that veronese painted in the way that he considered most artistic, without even remembering questions of religion, and in this he summed up his whole æsthetic creed. he was set at liberty on condition that he took out one or two of the most offending figures. the "feast in the house of levi" (as he named it after the trial) is the finest of all his great scenic effects. the air circulates freely through the white architecture, we breathe more deeply as we look out into the wide blue sky, and such is the sensation of expansion, that it is hardly possible to believe we are gazing at a flat wall. titian's backgrounds are a blue horizon, a burning twilight. veronese builds marble palaces, with rosy shadows, or columns blanched in the liquid light. his personages show little violent action. he places them in noble poses in which they can best show off their magnificent clothes, and he endows his patricians, his goddesses, his sacred persons, with a uniform air of majestic indolence. after his "trial," veronese proceeded more triumphantly than ever. every prince wished to have something from his brush; the emperor rudolph, at prague, showed with pride the canvases taken later by gustavus adolphus. the duke of modena, carrying on the traditions of ferrara, added veronese's works to the treasures of the house of este. the last ten years of his life were given up to visiting churches on the mainland and on the little islands round venice, all covetous to possess something by the brilliant veronese, whose name was in every mouth. torcello, murano, treviso, castelfranco, every convent and monastery loaded him with commissions, and it is significant of the spirit of the time, that in spite of the disapproval of the holy see, his most ardent patrons, those who delighted most in his robust, uncompromising worldliness, were to be found in the religious houses. then, when he went to rest in the summer heats in some villa on the brenta, he left delightful souvenirs here and there. it was on such an occasion, for the pisani, that he painted the "family of darius," which was sold to england by a member of the house in . the royal captives, who are throwing themselves at the feet of the conqueror, are, with paolo's usual frank naïveté and disregard of anachronisms, dressed in full venetian costume--all the chief personages are portraits of the pisani family. the freedom and rapidity of execution, the completeness and finish, the charm of colour, the beauty of the figures (especially the princely ones of alexander and hephaestion), and its extraordinary energy, make this one of the finest of all his works. the critic, charles blanc, says of it, "it is absurd and dazzling." in the "rape of europa," he recurred again to one of those legends of fabled beings who have outlasted dynasties and are still fresh and living. veronese was surrounded by men like aretino and bembo, well versed in mythology, and with his usual zest he makes the tale an excuse for painting lovely, blooming women, rich toilets, and a delightful landscape. the wild flowers spring, and the little loves fly to and fro against a cloud-flecked sky of the wonderful veronese turquoise. it is the work of a man who is a true poet of colour and for whom colour represents all the emotions of joy and pleasure. veronese died comparatively young, of chill and fever, and all his family survived him. he lies buried in san sebastiano. from contemporary memoirs we know that he lived and dressed splendidly. he kept immense stores of gorgeous stuffs to paint from in his studio, and drew everything from life,--the negroes covered with jewels, the bright-eyed pages, the models who, robed in velvets, brocades and satins, became queens or courtesans or saints. the pearls which bedecked them were from his own caskets. though we know little of his private life, his work is so alive that he seems personified in it. he is saved from what might have been a prosaic or a sordid style by the delicious, ever-changing colour in which he revels; his silks and satins are less modelled by shadows than tinted by broken reflections, his embroidered and striped and arabesqued tissues are so harmoniously combined that the eye rests, wherever it falls, on something exquisite and subtle in tint. this is where his genius lies, "the decoration does not add to the interest of the drama; it replaces it"; in short, it _is_ the drama itself, for his types show little selection, and his ideal of female beauty is not a very sympathetic one. his personages are cold and devoid of expression, their gestures are rather meaningless, but by means of light and air and exquisite colour he gives the poetical touch which all great art demands. on account of their size few examples of veronese's work are to be found in private collections, but the galleries of the different european capitals are rich in them. numbers of paintings, too, which are by his assistants are dignified by his name, and directly after his death spurious works were freely manufactured and sold as genuine. principal works dresden. madonna with cuccina family; adoration of magi; marriage of cana. florence. pitti: portrait of daniele barbaro. uffizi: martyrdom of s. giustina; holy family (e.). london. consecration of s. niccolas; the family of darius before alexander; adoration of the magi. maser. villa barbaro: frescoes. padua. s. giustina: martyrdom of s. giustina. paris. christ at emmaus; marriage of cana. venice. academy: battle of lepanto; feast in the house of levi; madonna with saints. ducal palace: triumph of venice; rape of europa; venice enthroned. s. barnabà: holy family. s. francesco della vigna: holy family. s. sebastiano: madonna and saints; crucifixion; madonna in glory with s. sebastian and other saints; others in part; frescoes; saints and figure of faith; sibyls. verona. portrait of pasio guadienti, . s. giorgio: martyrdom of s. george. vicenza. monte berico: feast of st. gregory, . vienna. christ at the house of jairus. chapter xxv tintoretto it does not seem likely that many new discoveries will be made about tintoretto's life. it was an open and above-board one, and there is practically no time during its span that we are not able to account for, and to say where he was living and how he was occupied. the son of a dyer, a member of one of the powerful guilds of venice, the "little dyer," _il tentoretto_, appears as an enthusiastic boy, keen to learn his chosen art. he was apprenticed to titian and, immediately after, summarily ejected from that master's workshop, on account, it seems probable, of the independence and innovation of his style, which was of the very kind most likely to shock and puzzle titian's courtly, settled genius. after this he painted when and where he could, pursuing his artistic studies with the headlong ardour which through life characterised his attitude towards art. mr. berenson thinks he may have worked in bonifazio's studio. he formed a close friendship with andrea schiavone,[ ] he imported casts of michelangelo's statues, he studied the works of titian and palma. over his door was written "the colour of titian and the form of michelangelo." all his energies were for long devoted to the effort to master that form. colour came to him naturally, but good drawing meant more to him than it had ever done to any venetian. long afterwards, to repeated inquiries as to how excellence could be best ensured, he would give no other advice than the reiterated, "study drawing." he practised till the human form in every attitude held no difficulties for him. he suspended little models by strings, and drew every limb and torso he could get hold of over and over again. he was found in every place where painting was wanted, getting the builders to let him experiment upon the house-fronts. to master light and shade he constructed little cardboard houses, in which, by means of sliding shutters, lamplight and skylight effects could be arranged. it is particularly interesting to hear of this part of his education, as in the end the love of shine and shadow was the most victorious of all his inspirations. [ ] andrea meldola, the sclavonian, a native of dalmatia, landing in venice, had a great struggle for existence. he drew from parmegianino, and studied giorgione and titian. he was probably an assistant of titian, and helped him, as in the "venus and adonis" of the national gallery, which owes much to his hand. he fails conspicuously in form, his shadows are black, and his figures often vulgar, but he has a fine sense of colour, and a free, crisp touch. he was one of the young masters who flooded venice with light, sketchy wares. the chief events in tintoretto's life are art-events. for some years he frescoed the outside of houses at a nominal price, or merely for his expenses. he decorated household furniture and everything he could lay hands on. then came a few small commissions, an altarpiece here, organ-doors there, for unimportant churches. no one in venice talked of any one save palma, bonifazio, and, above all, titian, and it was difficult enough for an outsider, who was not one of their clique, to get employment. but by the time tintoretto was twenty-six his talent was becoming recognised; he had painted the two altarpieces for ss. ermagora and fortunato, and the offer he made to decorate the vast church of his parish brought him conspicuously into notice. in the first ardour of youth he completed the "last judgment" for the choir. from time to time, during fourteen years, he redeemed his early promises and executed the "golden calf" and the "presentation of the virgin." within two years of his offer to the prior, came his first great opportunity of achieving distinction. this was a commission from the confraternity of st. mark, and with the "miracle of the slave" he sprang at once to the highest place. the picture was universally admired, and was followed by three more dealing with the patron saint. at forty he married happily a beautiful young girl, faustina dei vescovi, or episcopi, as it is indifferently given, the daughter of a noble family of the mainland. tradition has always pointed to the girl in blue in the "golden calf" as her portrait, while it is easy to recognise tintoretto himself in the black-bearded giant, who helps to carry the idol. his house at this time was somewhere in the parrocchia dell' orto, and there, during the next fourteen years, eight children were born, of whom the two eldest, domenico and marietta, attained distinction in their father's profession. another great event, which profoundly influenced his life, was the beginning of his connection in with the scuola di san rocco, the great confraternity which was devoted to combating the ravages of the plague and to succouring the families of its victims. his work for this lasted to the end of his life and is his most distinguished memorial. the palace to which the robusti family moved in , and which was inhabited by his descendants so late as , can still be identified in the calle della sensa. it is broken up into two parts, but it is evident that it was a dwelling of some importance, a good specimen of venetian gothic. it still bears marks of considerable decoration; the walls are sheathed in marble plaques, and the first floor has rows of gothic windows in delicately carved frames and little balconies of fretted marble. zanetti, in , gives an etching of a magnificent bronze frieze cast from the master's design, which ran round the grand sala. the family must have occupied the _piano nobile_ and let off the floors they did not require. descriptions of the life led by the painter and his family are given by vasari, who knew him personally, and by ridolfi, whose book was published in , and who must have known his children, several of whom were still alive and proud of their father's fame. we hear of pleasant evenings spent in the little palace, of the enthusiastic love of music, tintoretto himself and his daughter being highly gifted. among the _habitués_ were zarlino, for twenty-five years chapel-master of st. mark's, one of the fathers of modern music; bassano; and veronese, who, in spite of his love for magnificent entertainments, was often to be found in tintoretto's pleasant home. poor andrea schiavone was always welcome, and as time went on the house became the haunt of all the cultured gentlemen and _litterati_ of venice. it is not difficult from the materials available to form a sufficiently lively idea of this venetian citizen of the sixteenth century, as father and husband, host and painter. ridolfi has collected a number of anecdotes, which space forbids me to use, but which are all very characteristic. we gather that he was a man of strong character, generous, sincere and simple, decided in his ways, caring little for the great world, but open-handed and hospitable under his own roof, observant of men and manners, and sometimes rather brusque in dealing with bores and offensive persons. full of dry quiet humour and of good-natured banter of his wife's little weaknesses. a man, too, of upright conduct and free, as far as it can be ascertained, from any of those laxities and infidelities, so freely quoted of celebrated men and so easily condoned by his age. art was tintoretto's main preoccupation; but he seems to have been a man of strong religious bias, making a close study of the bible, and turning naturally in his last days to those truths with which his art had made him familiar, truths which he had represented with that touch of mystic feeling which was the deepest part of his nature. his relations with the state commenced in , when his offer to present a superb painting of the victory of lepanto was made to and accepted by the council of ten. tintoretto was rewarded by a broker's patent, and between this and the "paradiso," the work of his old age, he executed a number of pictures for the signoria. the only record of any travels are confined to two journeys paid to mantua, where he went in the 'sixties and again in to see to the hanging of paintings done for the gonzaga, and of which the documents have been kept, though the pictures have vanished. tintoretto's last years were saddened by the death of his beloved daughter, who had always been his constant companion. he died in after a fortnight's illness and left a will, which, together with that of his son, throws a good deal of light upon the family history. it is not easy to select from the vast quantity of work left by tintoretto. he is one of those painters whose whole life was passed in his native city and who can only be adequately studied in that city. perhaps the first place in which to seek him, is the great church which was the monument of his early prime. the "last judgment" was probably inspired by that of michelangelo, of which descriptions and sketches must have reached the younger master, over whom the florentine had exercised so strong a fascination. tintoretto's version impresses one as that of a mind boiling with thoughts and visions which he pours out upon the huge space. it depicts a terrible catastrophe, a scene of rushing destruction, of forms swept into oblivion, of others struggling to the light, of many beautiful figures and of a flood of air and light behind the rushing water,--water which makes us almost giddy as we watch it. the "golden calf" is a maturer production and includes some of the loveliest women tintoretto ever painted. we see too plainly the planning, the device of concentrating interest on the idol by turning figures and pointing fingers, but nothing can be imagined more supple and queenly than the woman in blue, and the way the light falls on her head and perfectly foreshortened arm shows to what excellence tintoretto had attained. the "presentation" is a riper work. the drawing of the flight of steps and of the groups upon them could not be bettered. the little figure of the virgin, prototype of the new dispensation, as she advances to meet the representative of the old, thrills with mystic feeling, yet the painter has contrived to retain the sturdy simplicity of a child. the "st. agnes," with its contrast of light and shade, of strength made perfect in weakness, is of later date and was the commission of cardinal contarini. it is interesting to realise how tintoretto, especially in the "presentation," has contrived, while using the traditional episodes, to infuse so strong an imaginative sense. the contrast of age and youth, the joy of the gentiles, the starlike figure of the child surrounded by shadows, convey an emotional feeling, in harmony with the nature of the scene. next let us group together the miracles in the history of st. mark. one of the qualities which strikes us most in the "miracle of the slave" is its strong local colour. it tells of titian and bonifazio and is unlike tintoretto's later style. the colours are glowing and gem-like; carnations, orange-yellows, deep scarlet, and turquoise-blue. the crimson velvet of the judge's dress is finely relieved against a blue-green sky, and tintoretto has kept that instinctive fire and dash which culminates at once and without effort in perfect action, "as a bird flies, or a horse gallops." it startled the quiet members of the guild, and at the first moment they hesitated to accept it. the "rescue of the saracen" and the "transportation of the body" are more in the golden-brown manner to which he was moving, but it is in the "finding of the body" (brera) that he rises to the highest emotional pitch. the colossal form of the saint, expanding with life and power as he towers in the spirit above his own lifeless clay, draws all eyes to him and seems to fill the barrel-roofed hall with ease and energy. every part of the vault is flooded by his life-giving energy, and here tintoretto deals with light and shade with full mastery. as we follow tintoretto's career, it is borne in upon us how little positive colour it takes to make a great colourist. the whole venetian school, indeed, does not deal with what we understand as bright colour. vivid tints are much more characteristic of the flemish and the florentine, or, let us say, of the painters of to-day. strong, crude colours are to be seen on all sides in the salon or the royal academy, but they are absent from the scheme of sombre splendour which has given the venetians their title to fame. this is especially true of tintoretto, and it becomes more so as he advances. his gamut becomes more golden-brown and mellow; the greys and browns and ivories combine in a lustrous symphony more impressive than gay tints, flooded with enveloping shadow and illumined by flashes of iridescent light. another noticeable feature is the way in which he puts on his oil-colour, so that it bears the direct impression of the painter's hand. the florentines had used flat tints, opaque and with every brush-mark smoothed away; but as the later venetians covered large spaces with oil-colour, they no longer sought to dissimulate the traces of the brush, and light, distance, movement, were all conveyed by the turns and twists and swirls with which the thin oil-colour was laid on. look at the power of touch in such a picture as the "death of abel"; we see this spontaneity of execution actually forming part of the emotion with which the picture is charged. the concentrated hate of the one figure, the desperate appeal of the other, the lurid note of the landscape, gain their emotion as much from the impetuous brush-work as from the more studied design. we come closest to the painter's mind in the scuola di san rocco. he had already been employed in the church, and there remains, darkened and ruined by damp, the series illustrative of the career of s. roch, patron saint of sufferers from the plague. when the great halls of assembly were to be decorated in , the confraternity asked a conclave of painters, among whom were veronese and andrea schiavone, to prepare sketches for competition. when they assembled to display their designs, tintoretto swept aside a cartoon from the ceiling of the refectory and discovered a finished picture, the "s. roch in glory," which still holds its place there. neither the other artists nor the brethren seem to have approved of this unconventional proceeding, but he "hoped they would not be offended; it was the only way he knew." partly from the displeased withdrawal of some of the rest, but partly also from the excellence of the work, the commission fell to tintoretto, and after two years' work he was received into the order, and was assigned an annual provision of ducats (£ ) a year for life, being bound every year to furnish three pictures. chapter xxvi tintoretto (_continued_) the first portion of the vast building that was finished was the refectory, but in examining the scheme, it is perhaps more convenient to leave it to its proper place, which is the climax. before beginning, tintoretto must have had the whole thing planned, and we cannot doubt that he was influenced by the sixtine chapel and recalled its plan and significance; the old dispensation typifying the new, the old testament history vivified by the acts of christ. the main feature of the harmony which it is only reasonable to suppose governs the whole building, is its dedication to s. roch, the special patron of mercy. the principal paintings of the upper hall are therefore concerned with acts of divine mercy and deliverance, and even the monochromes bear upon the central idea. on the roof are the three most important miracles of mercy performed on behalf of the chosen people. the paintings on roof and walls are linked together. the "fall of man" at one end of the hall, the disobedient eating, corresponds with the obedient eating of the passover at the other, and is interdependent with the manna in the wilderness, the last supper, and the miracle of the loaves. the miracles of satisfied thirst are represented by "moses striking the rock," samson drinking from the jawbone and the waters of meribah. the baptism and other signs of the advent of christ and the divine preparation, balance events in the early life of moses. in the refectory which opens from the great hall, we come to the "crucifixion," the crowning act of mercy, surrounded by the events which immediately succeeded it, and typified immediately above in the central hall, by the lifting up of the brazen serpent. the miracles include six of refreshment and succour, two of miraculous restoration to health, and two of deliverance from danger. the whole scheme has been worked out in detail in my book on "tintoretto." in the working out of his great scheme, tintoretto is impatient of hackneyed and traditional forms; he must have a reading of his own, and one which appeals to his imagination. we see that passion for movement which distinguishes his early work. "moses striking the rock" is a figure instinct with purpose and energy. the water bounds forth, living, life-giving, the people strain wildly to reach it. his figures are sometimes found fault with, as extravagant in gesture, but the attitudes were intended to be seen and to arrest attention from far below, and we must not forget that the painter's models were drawn from a southern race, to whom emphasis of action is natural. tintoretto, it may be conceded, is on certain occasions, generally when dealing with accessory figures, inclined to excess of gesture; it is the defect of his temperament, but when he has a subject that carries him away he is sincere and never violent in spirit. titian is cold compared to him; his colour, however effective, is calculated, whereas tintoretto's seems to permeate every object and to soak the whole composition. to quote a recent critic: "he chose to begin, if possible, with a subject charged with emotion. he then proceeded to treat it according to its nature, that is to say, he toned down and obscured the outlines of form and mapped out the subject instead in pale or sombre masses of light and shade. under the control of this powerful scheme of chiaroscuro, the colouring of the composition was placed, but its own character, its degree of richness and sobriety, was determined by the kind of emotion belonging to the subject. to use colour in this way, not only with emotional force, but with emotional truth, is to use it to perform one of the greatest functions of art."[ ] [ ] "venice and the renaissance," _edinburgh review_, . so in the crucifixion it is not so much the aspect of the groups, the pathos of the faces or gestures, that tells, but it is the mystery and gloom in which the whole scene is muffled, the atmosphere into which we are absorbed, the sense of livid terror conveyed by the brooding light and shadow, that makes us feel how different the rendering is from any other. in the "christ before pilate" the head and figure of christ are not particularly impressive in themselves, but the brilliant light falling on the white robes and coursing down the steps supplies dignity and poetry; the slender white figure stands out like a shaft of light against the lurid and troubled background. again, in the "way to golgotha" the falling evening gleam, the wild sky, the deep shadow of the ravine, throw into relief the quiet form, detached in look and feeling, as of one upborne by the spirit far above the brutal throng. nowhere does that spiritual emotion find deeper expression than in the "visitation." the passion of thanksgiving, the poignancy of mother-love, throb through the two women, who have been travelling towards one another, with a great secret between them, and who at length reach the haven of each other's love and knowledge. here, too, the dying light, the waving tree, the obliteration of form, and the feeling of mystery make a deep appeal to the sensuous apprehension. we find it again and again; the great trees sway and whisper in the gathering darkness as the virgin rides through the falling evening shadows, clasping her babe, and in that most moving of all tintoretto's creations, the "s. mary of egypt," the emotional mood of nature's self is brought home to us. the trees that dominate the landscape are painted with a few "strokes like sabre cuts"; the landscape, given with apparent carelessness, yet conveying an indescribable sense of space and solemnity, unfolds itself under the dying day; and in solitary meditation, thrilling with ecstasy, sits that little figure, whose heart has travelled far away to commune with the spirit, "whose dwelling is the light of setting suns." it is not possible in a short space to touch, even in passing, on all the many scenes in these halls: the "annunciation," with its marvellous flight of cherubs, reminding us of the flight of pigeons in the piazza, and how often the old painter must have watched them; the "temptation," contrasting the throbbing evil, the flesh that _must_ be fed, with the calm of absolute purity; the "massacre of the innocents," for which the horrors of sacked towns could have supplied many a parallel,--we have not time to dwell on these, but we may notice how the artist has overcome the difficulty of seeing clearly in the dark halls, by choosing strong and varied effects of light for the most shadowed spaces, and we can picture what the halls must have been like when they first glowed from his hand, adorned with gilded fretwork and moulding, and hung with opulent draperies, with the rose-red and purple of bishops' and cardinals' robes reflected in the gleaming pavement. [illustration: _tintoretto._ _scuola di san rocco._ s. mary of egypt. (_photo, anderson._)] leonardo, by one supreme example, tintoretto, by many renderings, have made the "last supper" peculiarly their own in the domain of art. it shows how strongly the mystic strain entered into the man's character, that often as tintoretto treated the subject, it never lost its interest for him, and he never failed to find a fresh point of view. in that in s. polo, christ offers the sacred food with a gesture of vehement generosity. placed as the picture is, to appeal to all comers to the mass, to afford them a welcome as they pass to the high altar, it tells of the bread of life given to all mankind. tintoretto himself, painted in the character of s. paul, stands at one side, absorbed in meditation. we need not insist again on the emotional value of the deep colours, the rich creams and crimsons and the chiaroscuro. in his latest rendering, in s. giorgio maggiore, he touches his highest point in symbolical treatment. some people are only able to see a theatrical, artificial spirit in this picture, but at least, when we consider what deep meditation tintoretto had bestowed on his subjects, we may believe that he himself was sincere and that he let himself go over what commended itself as an entirely new rendering. "the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." the supernatural is entering on every side, but the feast goes on; the serving men and maids busy themselves with the dishes; the disciples are inquiring, but not agitated; none see that throng of heavenly visitants, pouring in through the blue moonlight, called to their master's side by the supreme significance of his words. the painter has taken full advantage of the opportunity of combining the light of the cresset lamp, pouring out smoky clouds, with the struggling moonlight and the unearthly radiance, in divers, yet mingling streams which fight against the surrounding gloom. in the scene in the scuola di s. rocco the betrayal is the dominating incident, and in san stefano all is peace, and the saviour is alone with the faithful disciples. [illustration: _tintoretto._ bacchus and ariadne. _ducal palace, venice._ (_photo, anderson._)] though several of the large compositions ascribed to tintoretto in the ducal palace are only partly by him, or entirely by followers and imitators, its halls are still a storehouse of his genius. there is much that is fine about the great state pieces. in the "marriage of st. catherine," the saint, in silken gown and long transparent veil, is an exquisite figure. tintoretto bathes all his pageantry in golden light and air, and yet we feel that these huge official subjects, with the prosaic old doges introduced in incongruous company, neither stimulated his imagination nor satisfied his taste. it is on the smaller canvases that he finds inspiration. he never painted anything more lovely, more perfect in design, or more gay and tender in idea, than the cycle in the ante-collegio. the glowing light and exquisitely graded shadows upon ivory limbs have a sensuous perfection and a refined, unselfconscious joy such as is felt in hardly any other work, except the painter's own "milky way" in the national gallery. in all these four pictures the feeling for design, a branch of art in which tintoretto was past master, is fully displayed. in the bacchus and ariadne all the principal lines, the eyes and gestures, converge upon the tiny ring which is the symbol of union between the goddess and her lover, between the queenly city and the adriatic sea. or take "pallas driving away mars": see how the mass into which the figures are gathered on the left adds strength to the thrust of the goddess's arm, and what steadiness is given by that short straight lance of hers, coming in among all the yielding curves. the whole four are linked together in meaning: the call to venice to reign over the seas, her triumphant peace, with wisdom guiding her council, and her warriors forging arms in case of need. in conjunction with these pictures are two small ones in the chapel, hardly less beautiful--st. george with st. margaret, and ss. andrew and jerome. it is difficult to say whether the exultant st. george, the dignified young bishop, or the two older saints are the more sympathetic creations, or the more admirable, both in drawing and colour. the sense of space in both settings is an added charm, and every scrap of detail, the leafy boughs, the cross and crozier, is important to the composition. there are many other striking examples, ranging all through tintoretto's life, of his untiring imagination. in the salute is that "marriage of cana," in which all the actors seem to swim in golden light. the sharp silhouettes bring out an effect of radiant sunshine with which the hall is flooded, and all the architectural lines lead our eyes towards the central figure, placed at a distance. on that long canvas in the academy, kneel the three treasurers, pouring out their gold and bending in homage before the madonna and child, who sit enthroned upon a broad piazza, through the marble pillars of which a blue and distant landscape shines. grave senators in mulberry velvet and ermine kneel before the child, or hold counsel on paduan affairs under the patronage of s. giustina. the "crucifixion" (in s. cassiano) is another triumph of the painter's imaginative conception. the bold lines of the crosses, the ladder, and the figures detach against a glorious sky, and the presence of the moving, murmuring throng, of which, by the placing of the line of sight, the spectator is made to form a part, is conveyed by the swaying and crossing of the lances borne by the armed men who keep the ground. there is a series, too, which deals with the magdalen. she mourns her dead in that solemn, restrained "entombment," where the enfolding shadows frame the cross against the sad dawn, which adorns the mortuary chapel of s. giorgio maggiore; and the pietà in the brera, the long lines of which add to the impression of tender repose, has its peace broken by the passionate cry of the woman who loved much. tintoretto's ideas are exhaustless; he can paint the same scene in a dozen different ways, and, in fact, the book of sketches lately acquired by the british museum shows as many as thirty trials dashed off for one subject, and after all he uses one composed for something quite different. it is this habit of throwing off red-hot essays, fresh from his brain, that has led to the common but superficial judgment that tintoretto was merely a great improvisatore, whose successes came more or less by good luck. he could, indeed, paint pictures at a pace at which many great masters could only sketch, but he had already designed and considered and rejected, doing with oil, ink, and paper what many of his contemporaries did mentally. such achievements as the ante-collegio cycle, the "house of martha and mary," the "marriage of cana," the "temptation of s. anthony," to name only a few, show a finish and perfection and a balance of design which preclude the idea of their being lightly painted pictures. when he was actually engaged, tintoretto let himself go with impetuous ardour, but we may feel assured he left nothing to chance, though he had his own way of making sure of the result. it is strange to hear people, as one does now and then, talking of the "paradiso" as "a splendid failure." it may be granted that the subject is an impossible one for human art to realise, yet when all allowance has been made for a lamentable amount of drying and blackening, it is difficult to agree that ruskin was all wrong in his admiration of that thronging multitude, ordered and disciplined by the tides of light and shadow, which roll in and out of the masses, resolving them into groups and single figures of almost matchless beauty and melting away into a sea of radiant æther, which tells us of the boundless space which surrounds the serried ranks of the blessed. tintoretto was seventy-eight when it was allotted to him, and it was the last great effort of his mind and hand. studies for it are preserved both at the louvre and at madrid, and it is evident that the painter has framed it upon the thought of dante's mystic rose. the circles and many of the figures can be traced in the poem, and the idea of the eternal light streaming through the leaves of the rose dominates the composition. it is appropriate that it should have been his last great work, as it was also the greatest attempt at composition ever made by a master of the venetian school. there is no room here to study tintoretto as a painter of battlepieces, though from the time he painted the "battle of lepanto," for the council of ten, he often returned to such subjects. his two series for the gonzaga included several, and the ducal palace still possesses examples. the impetuosity of his style stood him in good stead, and he never fails to bring in graceful and striking figures. his portraits are hardly equal to titian's intellectual grasp or fine-grained colour, but they are extraordinarily characteristic. he prefers to paint men rather than women, and he painted hundreds--all the great persons of his time who lived in and visited venice. the venetian portrait by this time was expected to be more than a likeness and more than a problem. it was to please the taste as a picture, to interest and to satisfy criticism. tintoretto, like lotto, gets behind the scenes, and we see some mood, some aspect of the sitter that he hardly expected to show. his penetration is not equal to lotto's, but he deals with his sitters with an observation which pierces below the surface. in criticising tintoretto, men seem often unable to discriminate between the turgid and melodramatic, and the spontaneous and temperamental. the first all must abhor, but the last is sincere and deserves to be respected. it is by his best that we must judge a man, and taking his best and undoubtedly authentic work, no one has left a larger amount which will stand the test of criticism. as an exponent of lofty and elevated central ideas, which unify all parts of his composition, tintoretto stands with the greatest imaginative minds. the intellectual side of life was exemplified in florentine art, but the renaissance would have been a one-sided development if there had not arisen a body of men to whom emotion and the gift of sensuous apprehension seemed of supreme value, and at the very last there arose with him one who, to their philosophy of feeling and the mastery of their chosen medium, added the crowning glory of the imaginative idea. principal works augsburg. christ in the house of martha and mary. berlin. portraits; madonna and saints; luna and the hours; procurator before s. mark. dresden. lady in black; the rescue; portraits. florence. pitti: portraits of men; luigi cornaro; vincenzo zeno. uffizi: portrait of himself; admiral venier; portrait of old man; jacopo sansovino; portrait. hampton court. esther before ahasuerus; nine muses; portrait of dominican; knight of malta. london. s. george and the dragon; christ washing feet of disciples; origin of milky way. bridgewater house: entombment; portrait. madrid. battle on land and sea; solomon and the queen of sheba; susanna and the elders; finding of moses; esther before ahasuerus; judith and holofernes. milan. brera: s. helena, saints and donors; finding of the body of s. mark (e.). paris. susanna and the elders; sketch for paradise; portrait of himself. rome. capitol: baptism; ecce homo; the flagellation. colonna: adoration of the holy spirit; old man playing spinet; portraits. turin. the trinity. venice. academy: s. giustina and three senators; madonna with saints and treasurers, ; portraits of senators; deposition; jacopo soranzo, (still attributed to titian); andrea capello (e.); death of abel; miracle of s. mark, ; adam and eve; resurrected christ blessing three senators; madonna and portraits; crucifixion; resurrection; presentation in temple. palazzo ducale: doge mocenigo commended to christ by s. mark; doge da ponte before the virgin; marriage of s. catherine; doge gritti before the virgin. ante-collegio: mercury and three graces; vulcan's forge; bacchus and ariadne; pallas resisting mars, abt. . ante-room of chapel: ss. george, margaret, and louis; ss. andrew and jerome. senato: s. mark presenting doge loredano to the virgin. sala quattro porte: ceiling. ante-room: portraits; ceiling, doge priuli with justice. passage to council of ten: portraits; nobles illumined by holy spirit. sala del gran consiglio: paradise, . sala dello scrutino: battle of zara. palazzo reale: transportation of body of s. mark; s. mark rescues a shipwrecked saracen; philosophers. giovanelli palace: battlepiece; portraits. s. cassiano: crucifixion; christ in limbo; resurrection. s. giorgio maggiore: last supper; gathering of manna; entombment (in mortuary chapel). s. maria mater domini: finding of true cross. s. maria dell' orto: last judgment (e.); golden calf (e.); presentation of virgin (e.); martyrdom of s. agnes. s. polo: last supper; assumption of virgin. s. rocco: annunciation; pool of bethesda; s. roch and the beasts; s. roch healing the sick; s. roch in campo d' armata; s. roch consoled by an angel. scuola di s. rocco: lower hall, all the paintings on wall. staircase: visitation. upper hall: all the paintings on walls and ceiling. refectory: crucifixion, ; christ before pilate; ecce homo; way to golgotha; ceiling, . salute: marriage of cana, ; martyrdom of s. stephen. s. silvestro: baptism. s. stefano: last supper; washing of feet; agony in garden. s. trovaso: temptation of s. anthony. vienna. susanna and the elders; sebastian venier; portraits of procurators, senators, and men (fifteen in all); old man and boy; portrait of lady. chapter xxvii bassano we wonder how many of those sightseers who pass through the ante-collegio in the ducal palace, and stare for a few moments at tintoretto's famous quartet and at veronese's "rape of europa," turn to give even such fleeting attention to the long, dark canvas which hangs beside them, "jacob's journey into canaan," by jacopo da ponte, called bassano. yet from the position in which it is placed the visitor might guess that it is considered to be a gem, and it gains something in interest when we learn from zanetti that it was ordered by jacopo contarini at the same time as the "rape of europa," as if the great connoisseur enjoyed contrasting veronese's light, gay style with the vigorous brush of da ponte. if attention is arrested by the beauty of the painting, and the visitor should be inspired to seek the painter in his native city, he will be well repaid. bassano once held an important position on the main road between italy and germany, but since the railroad was made across the brenner pass, few people ever see the little town which lies cradled on the spurs of the italian alps, where the gorge of valsugana opens. it is surrounded by chestnut woods, which sweep up to the blue mountains, the wide brenta flows through the town, and the houses cluster high on either side, and have gardens and balconies overhanging the water. the façades of many of the houses are covered with fading frescoes, relics of da ponte's school of fresco-painters, which, though they are fast perishing, still give a wonderful effect of warmth and colour. jacopo da ponte was the son and pupil of his father, francesco, who in his day had been a pupil of the vicentine, bartolommeo montagna. francesco da ponte's best work is to be found at bassano, in the cathedral and the church of san giovanni, and has many of the characteristics, such as the raised pedestal and vaulted cupola, which we have noticed that montagna owed to the vivarini. francesco's son went when very young to venice, and was there thrown at once among the artists of the lagoons, and attached himself in particular to bonifazio. in jacopo's earliest work, now in the museum at bassano, a "flight into egypt," bonifazio's tuition is markedly discernible in the build of the figures and, above all, in the form of the heads. a comparison of the very peculiarly shaped head of the virgin in this picture with that of the venetian lady in bonifazio's "rich man's feast," in the venetian academy, leaves us in no doubt on this score. jacopo's "adulteress before christ" and the "three in the fiery furnace" have bonifazio's manner in the architecture and the staging of the figures. only five examples are known of this early work of da ponte, and it is all in bonifazio's lighter style, not unlike his "holy family" in the national gallery. the house in which the painter lived when he returned to his native town, still stands in the little piazza monte vecchio, and its whole façade retains the frescoes, mouldy and decaying, with which he decorated it. the design is in four horizontal bands. first comes a frieze of children in every attitude of fun and frolic. then follows a long range of animals--horses, oxen, and deer. musical instruments and flowers make a border, with allegorical representations of the arts and crafts filling the spaces between the windows. the principal band is decorated with scriptural subjects, most of which are now hardly discernible, but which represent "samson slaying the philistines," "the drunkenness of noah," "cain and abel," "lot and his daughters," and "judith with the head of holofernes." between the two last there formerly appeared a drawing of a dead child, with the motto, "mors omnia aequat," which was removed to the museum in , in comparatively good preservation. jacopo da ponte lived a busy life at bassano, where, with the help of his four sons, who were all painters, he poured out an inexhaustible stream of works, which, it is said, were put up to auction at the neighbouring fairs, if no other market was forthcoming. from time to time he and his sons went down to venice, and with the help of the eldest, francesco, bassano (as he is generally known) painted the "siege of padua" and five other works in the ducal palace. his mature style was founded mainly upon that of titian, and it is to this second manner that he owes his fame. he makes use of fewer colours, and enhances his lights by deepening and consolidating his shadows, so that they come into strong contrast, and his technique gains a richer impasto. he has a marvellous faculty for keeping his colour pure, and his greens shine like a beetle's wing. a nature-lover in the highest degree, his painting of animals and plants evinces a mind which is steeped in the magic of outdoor life. a subject of which he was particularly fond, and which he seems to have undertaken for half the collectors of europe, was the "four seasons." here was found united everything that bassano most loved to paint: beasts of the farmyard and countryside, agriculturists with their implements, scenes of harvest-time and vintage, rough peasants leading the plough, cutting the grass, harvesting the grain, young girls making hay, driving home the cattle, taking dinner to the reapers. when he was obliged to paint for churches he chose such subjects as the adoration of the shepherds, the sacrifice of noah, the expulsion from the temple, into which he could introduce animals, painting them with such vigour and such forcible colour that titian himself is said to have had a copy hanging in his studio. he loved to paint his daughters engaged in household tasks, and perhaps placed his figures with rather too obvious a reference to light and shade, and to the sun striking full on sunburnt cheeks and buxom shoulders. a friend, not a rival, of veronese and tintoretto, gianbattista volpado, records that when he was one day discussing contemporary painters with the latter, tintoretto exclaimed, "ah, jacopo, if you had my drawing and i had your colour i would defy the devil himself to enable titian, raphael, and the rest to make any show beside us." bassano was invited to take up his residence at the court of the emperor rudolph, but he refused to leave his mountain city, where he died in . his funeral was attended by a crowd of the poorest inhabitants, for whom his charity had been boundless. the "journey of jacob," to which we have already alluded, is among his most beautiful works. the brilliant array of figures is subordinated to the charm of the landscape. the evening dusk draws all objects into its embrace. the long, low, deep-blue distance stands out against a gleam of sunset sky. the tree-trunks and light play of leafy branches, which break up the composition, are from da ponte's own country round bassano. the pony upon which the boy scrambles, the cows, the dog among the quiet sheep, are given with all the loving truth of the born animal-painter. it is no wonder that teniers borrowed ideas from him, and has more than once imitated his whole design. the "baptism of st. lucilla" (in the museum at bassano) is one of his most titianesque creations. the personages in it are grouped upon a flight of steps, in front of a long renaissance palace with cypresses against a sky of evening-red barred with purple clouds. the drawing and modelling of the figures are almost faultless, and the colour is dazzling. the bending figure of s. lucilla, with the light falling on her silvery satin dress, as she kneels before the young bishop, st. valentine, is one of the most graceful things in art, and titian himself need not have disowned the little angels, bearing palm branches and frolicking in the stream of radiance overhead. bassano has a "concert," which is interesting as a family piece. it was painted in the year in which his son leandro's marriage took place, and is probably a bridal painting to celebrate the event. the "magistrates in adoration" (vicenza) again gives a brilliant effect of light, and its stately ceremonial is founded on tintoretto's numerous pictures of kneeling doges and procurators in fur-trimmed velvet robes. [illustration: _jacopo da ponte._ baptism of s. lucilla. _bassano._ (_photo, alinari._)] madonnas and saints are usually built into close-packed pyramids, but in the "repose in egypt," now in the ambrosiana, milan, his arrangement comes very close to palma and lotto. the beautiful mother and child, the attendants, above all the st. joseph, resting, head on hand, at the virgin's feet and gazing in rapt adoration on the child, are examples of the true venetian manner, while the exquisite landscape behind them, and the vigorously drawn tree under which they recline, show bassano true to his passion for nature. hampton court is rich in his pictures. "the adoration of the shepherds," in which the pillars rise behind the sacred group, is an exercise in the manner of titian's frari altarpiece. his portraits are fine and sympathetic, but hardly any of them are signed or can be dated. his own is in the uffizi, and there is a splendid "old man" at buda-pesth. ariosto and tasso, sebastian venier, and many other distinguished men were among his sitters; most of them are in half-length with three-quarter heads. the national gallery possesses a singularly attractive one of a young man with a sensitive, acute countenance, robed in dignified, picturesque black, relieved by an embroidered linen collar. he stands by the sort of square window, opening on a distant landscape, of which tintoretto and lotto so often made use, in front of which a golden vase, holding a branch of olive, catches the rays of light. bassano has no great power of design, and his knowledge of the nude seems to have been small, but his brushwork is facile, and his colour leaps out with a vivid beauty which obliterates other shortcomings. principal works augsburg. madonna and saints. bassano. susanna and elders (e.); christ and adulteress (e.); the three holy children (e.); madonna, saints, and donor (e.); flight into egypt (e.); paradise; baptism of s. lucilla; adoration of shepherds; st. martin and the beggar; st. roch recommending donor to virgin; st. john the evangelist adored by a warrior; descent of holy spirit; madonna in glory, with saints (l.). duomo: s. lucia in glory; martyrdom of s. stephen (l.); nativity. s. giovanni: madonna and saints. bergamo. carrara: portrait. lochis: portraits. cittadella. duomo: christ at emmaus. dresden. israelites in desert; moses striking rock; conversion of s. paul. hampton court. portraits; jacob's journey; boaz and ruth; shepherds (e.); christ in house of pharisee; assumption of virgin; men fighting bears; tribute money. london. portrait of man; christ and the money-changers; good samaritan. milan. ambrosiana: adoration of shepherds (e.); annunciation to shepherds (l.). munich. portraits; s. jerome; deposition. padua. s. maria in vanzo: entombment. paris. christ bearing cross; vintage (l.). rome. villa borghese: last supper; the trinity. venice. academy: christ in garden; a venetian noble; s. elenterino blessing the faithful. ducal palace, ante-collegio: jacob's journey. s. giacomo dell' orio: madonna and saints. vicenza. madonna and saints; madonna; st. mark and senators. vienna. the good samaritan; thomas led to the stake; adoration of magi; rich man and lazarus; the lord shows abraham the promised land; the sower; a hunt; way to golgotha; noah entering the ark; christ and the money-changers; after the flood; saints; adoration of magi; portraits; christ bearing cross. academy: deposition; portrait. part iii chapter xxviii the interim many of the churches and palaces of venice and the adjoining mainland, and almost every public and private gallery throughout europe, contain pictures purporting to be painted by titian, tintoretto, veronese, and others of that famous company. hardly a great english house but boasts of a round dozen at least of such specimens, acquired in the days when rich englishmen made the "grand tour" and substantiated a reputation for taste and culture by collecting works of art. these pictures resemble the genuine article in a specious yet half-hearted way. their owners themselves are not very tenacious as to their authenticity, and the visit of an expert, or the ordeal of a public exhibition tears their pretensions to tatters. in the academia itself the bonifazio and tintoretto rooms are crowded with imitations. the ducal palace has ceilings and panels on which are reproduced the kind of compositions initiated by the great artists, which make an effort to capture their gamut of colour and to master their scheme of chiaroscuro, copying them, in short, in everything except in their inimitable touch and fire and spirit. it would have been impossible for any men, however industrious and prolific, to have carried out all the work which passes under their names, to say nothing of that which has perished; but our surprise and curiosity diminish when we come to inquire systematically into the methods of that host of copyists which, even before the masters' death, had begun to ply its lucrative trade. we must bear in mind that every great man was surrounded by busy and attentive satellites, helping him to finish and, indeed, often painting a large part of important commissions, witnesses of the high prices received, and alive to all the gossip as to the relative popularity of the painters and the requests and orders which reached them from all quarters. the painters' own sons were in many instances those who first traded upon their fathers' fame. from ridolfi, zanetti, or boschini we learn of the many paintings executed by carlotto caliari and the vast numbers painted by domenico robusti in the style of their respective fathers. domenico seems to have particularly affected the subject of "st. george and the dragon," and the picture at dresden, which passes under tintoretto's name, is perhaps by his hand. of bassano's four sons, francesco "imitated his father perfectly," conserving his warmth of tint, his relief and breadth. zanetti enumerates a surprising number of francesco's works, seven of them being painted for the ducal palace. leandro followed more particularly his father's first manner, was a good portrait-painter, and possessed lightness and fancy. girolamo copied and recopied the old bassano till he even deceived connoisseurs, "how much more," says zanetti, writing in , "those of the present day, who behold them harmonised and accredited by time." no school in venice was so beloved, or lent itself so well to the efforts of the imitators, as that of paolo veronese. even at an early date it was impossible not to confound the master with the disciples; the weaker of the originals were held to be of imitators, the best imitations were assigned to the master himself. "oh how easy it is," exclaims zanetti again, "to make mistakes about veronese's pictures, but i can point out sundry infallible characteristics to those who wish for light upon this doubtful path; the fineness and lightness of the brushwork, the sublime intelligence and grace, shown particularly in the form of the heads, which is never found in any of his imitators." few venetians, however, followed the style of only one man; the output was probably determined and varied by the demand. too many attractive manners existed to dazzle them, and when once they began to imitate, they were tempted on all hands. it must also be remembered that every master left behind him stacks of cartoons, sketches and suggestions, and half-finished pictures, which were eagerly seized upon, bought or stolen, and utilised to produce masterpieces masquerading under his name. as the seventeenth century advanced the character of art and manners underwent a change. men sought the beautiful in the novel and bizarre, and the complex was preferred to the simple. venetian art, in all its branches, had passed from the stately and restrained to the pompous and artificial. yet the barocco style was used by venice in a way of its own; whimsical, contorted, and overloaded with ornament as it is, it yet compels admiration by its vigorous life and movement. the art of the sei-cento in venice was extravagant, but it was alive. it escaped the most deadly of all faults, a cold and academic mannerism--and this at a time when the rest of italy was given over to the inflated followers of michelangelo and the calculated elaborations of the eclectics. many of the things we most love in venice, such as the salute, the clock-tower, the dogana, the bridge of sighs, the rezzonico and pesaro palaces, are additions of the seventeenth century. the barocco intemperance in sculpture was carried on by disciples of bernini; and as the immediate influence of the great masters declined, painting acquired the same sort of character. the carelessness and rapidity of tintoretto, which, in his case, proceeded from the lightning speed of his imagination and the unerring sureness of his brush, became a mechanical trick in the hands of superficial students. true art had migrated elsewhere--to the homes of velasquez, rubens, and rembrandt. as art grew more pompous it became less emotional. painters like palma giovine spoilt their ready, lively fancy by the vice of hurry. the nickname of "fa presto" was deserved by others besides luca giordano, and venice was overrun by a swarm of painters whose prime standard of excellence was the ability to make haste. grandeur of conception was forgotten; a grave, ample manner was no longer understood; superficial sentiment and bombastic size carried the day. yet a few painters, though their forms had become redundant and exaggerated, retained something of what had been the venetian glory--the deep and moist colour of old. it still glowed with traces of its old lustre on the canvases of giovanni contarini, or tiberio tinelli, or pietro liberi; and though there was a perfect fury of production, without order and without law, there can still be perceived the survival of that sense of the decorative which kept the thread of art. we discover it in the ceiling of the church of san pantaleone, where gianbattista fumiani paints the glorification of the martyred patron, and which, fantastic and extravagant as it is, with its stupendous, architectural setting, and its acutely, almost absurdly foreshortened throng, is not without a certain grandiose geniality, ample and picturesque, like the buildings of that date. in alessandro varotari (il padovanino), whose "nozze di cana" in the academia is a finely spaced scene, in which a charming use is made of cypresses, we seem to recognise the last ray of the titianesque. the painting of the seventeenth century passed on towards the eighteenth, and, from ceilings and panels, rosy nymphs and venuses smile at us, attitudinising and contorted upon their cloudy backgrounds. lackadaisical magdalens drop sentimental tears, and the angel of the annunciation capers above the head of an affected virgin, while violent colours, intensified chiaroscuro, and black greasy impasto betray the neighbourhood of the _tenebrosi_. when, towards the end of the seventeenth century, gregorio lazzarini set himself to shake off these influences, he went to the opposite extreme. although a beautiful designer, he becomes cold and flat in colour, with a coldness and insipidity, indeed, that take us by surprise, appearing in a country where the taste for luminous and brilliant tints was so strongly rooted. the student of venetian painting, who wishes to fill up the hiatus which lies between the golden age and the revival of the eighteenth century, cannot do better than compare fumiani's vault in san pantaleone with lazzarini's sober and earnest fresco, "the charity of san lorenzo giustiniani," in san pietro in castello, and with pietro liberi's "battle of the dardanelles" in the ducal palace. in all three we have examples of the varied and accomplished yet soulless art of this period. not many of the scenes painted for the palaces of patricians in the seventeenth century have survived. they are to be found here and there by the curious who wander into old churches and palaces with a second-hand copy of boschini in their hands; but in the reaction from the florid which took place in the empire period, many of them gave place to whitewash and stucco. in the ducal palace, side by side with the masterpieces of the renaissance, are to be found the overcrowded canvases of vicentino, giovanni contarini, pietro liberi, celesti, and others like them. some of the poor and meretricious mosaics in st. mark's are from designs by palma giovine and fumiani. carlo ridolfi, who was a painter himself, as well as the painter's chronicler, has an "adoration of the magi" in s. giovanni elemosinario, poor enough in invention and execution. two pictures by obscure artists disfigure a corner of the scuola di san rocco. the museo civico has a large canvas by vicentino, a "coronation of a dogaressa," which once adorned palazzo grimani. we hear of a school opened by antonio balestra, who was the master of rosalba carriera and pietro longhi, and the names of others have come down to us in numbers too numerous to be quoted. towards the end of the seventeenth century more light and novelty sparkles in the painting of the bellunese, battista ricci, and assures us that he was no mere copyist; and, as the eighteenth century opens, we become aware of the strong and daring brush of gianbattista piazetta. piazetta studied the works of the carracci for some time in bologna, and especially those of guercino, whose style, with its bold contrasts of light and shade, has served above all as his model. he paints very darkly, and his figures often blend with and disappear into the profound tones of his backgrounds. charles blanc calls him "a venetian caravaggio"; and he has something of the strength and even the brutality of the bolognese. a fine decorative and imaginative example of his work is the "madonna appearing to s. philip neri" in the church of s. fava. the erect form of the madonna is relieved in striking chiaroscuro against the mantle, upheld by _putti_. radiant clouds light up the background and illumine the form of the old saint, a refined and spirited figure, gazing at the vision in an ecstasy of devotion. piazetta is a bold realist, and many of his small pictures are strong and forcible. sebastiano ricci, battista's son, is described as "a fine intelligence," and attracts our notice as having forged special links with england. hampton court possesses a long array of his paintings. in the chapel of chelsea hospital the plaster semi-dome is painted by him, in oils, with very good effect. he is said to have worked in thornhill's studio, and his influence may be suspected in the blenheim frescoes, and even in touches in hogarth's work. by the eighteenth century venice had parted with her old nobility of soul, and enjoyment had become the only aim of life. yet venice, among the states of italy, alone retained her freedom. the doge reigned supreme as in the past. beneath the ceiling of veronese the dreaded three still sat in secret council. venice was still the city of subtle poisons and dangerous mysteries, but the days were gone when she had held the balance in european affairs, and she had become, in a superlative degree, the city of pleasure. nowhere was life more varied and entertaining, more full of grace and enchantment. a long period of peace had rocked the venetian people into calm security. there was, indeed, a little spasmodic fighting in corfù, dalmatia, and algiers, but no real share was retained in the struggles of europe. the whole policy of the city's life was one of self-indulgence. holiday-makers filled her streets; the whole population lived "in piazza," laughing, gossiping, seeing and being seen. the very churches had become a rendezvous for fashionable intrigues; the convents boasted their _salons_, where nuns in low dresses, with pearls in their hair, received the advances of nobles and gallant abbés. people came to venice to waste time; trivialities, the last scandal, sensational stories, were the only subjects worth discussing. in an age of parodies and practical jokes, the more absurd any one could be, the more silly or witty stories he could tell, the more assured was his success in the joyous, frivolous circle, full of fun and laughter. the carnival lasted for six months of the year, and was the occasion for masques and licence of every description. in the hot weather, the gay descendants of the contarini, the loredan, the pisani, and other grand old houses, migrated to villas along the brenta, where by day and night the same reckless, irresponsible life went gaily on. the power of such courtesans as titian and paris bordone had painted was waning. their place was adequately supplied by the easy dames of society, no longer secluded, proud and tranquil, but "stirred by the wild blood of youth and stooping to the frolic." "they are but faces and smiles, teasing and trumpery," says one of their critics, yet they are declared to be wideawake, natural and charming, making the most of their smattering of letters. love was the great game; every woman had lovers, every married woman openly flaunted her _cicisbeo_ or _cavaliere servente_. the older portion of the middle class was still moderate and temperate, contented to live in the old fashion, eschewing all interest in politics, with which it was dangerous for the ordinary individual to meddle; but the new leaven was creeping through every level of society. the sons and daughters of the _bourgeoisie_ tried to rise in the social scale by aping the pleasant vices of the aristocracy. they deserted the shop and the counting-house to play cards and strut upon the piazza. they mimicked the fine gentleman and the gentildonna, and made fashionable love and carried on intrigues. the spirit of the whole people had lost its elevation; there were no more proud patricians, full of noble ambitions and devoted zeal of public service; it was hardly possible to get a sufficient number of persons to carry on public business. it is a contemptible indictment enough; yet among all this degenerate life, we come upon something more real as we turn to the artists. they were very much alive. in music, in literature, and in painting, new and graceful forms of art were emerging. painting was not the grand art of other days; it might be small and trivial, but there grew up a real little renaissance of the eighteenth century, full of originality and fire, and showing a reaction from the pompous and banale style of the imitators. the influence of the "lady" was becoming increasingly felt by society. confidential little boudoirs, small and cosy apartments were the mode, and needed decorating as well as vast salas. the dainty luxury of gilt furniture, designed by andrea brustolon and upholstered in delicate silks, was matched by small, attractive works of art. venice had lost her eastern trade, and as the east faded out of her scheme of life, the west, to which she now turned, was bringing her a different form of art. the great reception rooms were still suited by the grandiose compositions of ricci, piazetta, and pittoni, but another genre of charming creations smiled from the brocaded alcoves and more intimate suites of rooms. it is impossible to name more than a fraction of these artists of the eighteenth century. there is amigoni, admirable as a portrait-painter; pittoni, one of the ablest figure-painters of the day; luca carlevaris, the forerunner of canale; pellegrini, whose decorations in this country are mentioned by horace walpole and of which the most important are preserved in the cupola and spandrils of the grand hall at castle howard. their work is still to be found in many a venetian church or north italian gallery. some of it is almost fine, though too often vitiated by the affected, exaggerated spirit of their day. when originality asserts itself more decidedly, rosalba carriera stands out as an artist who acquired great popularity. in , when she was a young woman of twenty-four, she was already a great favourite with the public. she began life as a lace-maker, but when trade was bad, jean stève, a frenchman, taught her to paint miniatures. she imparted a wonderfully delicate feeling to her art, and, passing on to pastel, she brought to this branch of portraiture a brilliancy and freshness which it had not known before. rosalba has perhaps preserved for us better than any one else, those women of venice who floated so lightly on the dancing waves of that sparkling stream. there they are: la cornaro; la maria labia, who was surrounded by french lovers, "very courteous and very beautiful"; la zenobio and la pisani; la foscari, with her black plumes; la mocenigo, "the lady with the pearls." she has pinned them all to the canvas; lovely, frail, light-hearted butterflies, with velvet neck-ribbons round their snowy throats and coquettish patches on their delicate skin and bouquets of flowers in their high-dressed hair and sheeny bodices. they look at us with arch eyes and smile with melting mouths, more frivolous than depraved; sweet, ephemeral, irresponsible in every relation of life. older men and women there are, too, when those artificial years have produced a succession of rather dull, sodden personages, kindly, inoffensive, but stupid, and still trifling heavily with the world. of rosalba we have another picture to compare with those of her sitters. she and the other artists of her circle lived the merry, busy life of the worker, and found in their art the antidote to the evil living and the dissipation of the gay world which provided sitters and patrons. rosalba's _milieu_ is a type of others of its class. she lives with her mother and sisters, an honest, cheerful, industrious existence. they are fond of old friends and old books, and indulge in music and simple pleasures. her sisters help rosalba by preparing the groundwork of her paintings. she pays visits, and writes rhymes, and plays on the harpsichord. she receives great men without much ceremony, and the elector palatine, the duke of mecklenburg, frederick, king of norway, and maximilian, king of bavaria, come to her to order miniatures of their reigning beauties. then she goes off to paris where she has plenty of commissions, and the frequently occurring names of english patrons in her fragmentary diaries, tell how much her work was admired by english travellers. she did more than anybody else to promote the fashion for pastels, and her delightful art may be seen at its best in the pastel room of the dresden gallery. henrietta, countess of pomfret, has left us a charming description of a party of english travellers, which included horace walpole, arriving in venice in , strolling about in mask and _bauta_, and visiting the famous pastellist in her studio. it is in such guise that rosalba has painted walpole, and has left one of the most interesting examples of her art. some examples _francesco da ponte._ venice. ducal palace: sala del maggior consiglio. four pictures on ceiling (second from the four corners of the sala). on left as you face the paradiso: . pope alexander iii. giving the stocco, or sword, to the doge as he enters a galley to command the army against ferrara; . victory against the milanese; . victory against imperial troops at cadore; . victory under carmagnola, over visconti. these four are all very rich in colour. chiesetta: circumcision; way to calvary. sala dell' scrutino: padua taken by night from the carraresi. _leandro da ponte._ venice. sala del maggior consiglio: the patriarch giving a blessed candle to the doge. sala of council of ten: meeting of alexander iii. and doge ziani. a fine decorative picture, running the whole of one side of the sala. sala of archeological museum: virgin in glory, with the avogadori family. _palma giovine._ dresden. presentation of the virgin. florence. uffizi: s. margaret. munich. deposition; nativity; ecce homo; flagellation. venice. academy: scenes from the apocalypse; s. francis. ducal palace: the last judgment. vienna. cain and abel; daughter of herodias; pietà; immaculate conception. _il padovanino._ florence. uffizi: lucretia. london. cornelia and her children. paris. venus and cupid. rome. villa borghese: toilet of minerva. venice. academy: the marriage of cana; madonna in glory; vanity, orpheus, and eurydice; rape of proserpine; virgin in glory. verona. man and woman playing chess; triumph of bacchus. vienna. woman taken in adultery; holy family. _pietro liberi._ venice. ducal palace: battle of the dardanelles. _andrea vicentino._ venice. museo civico: the marriage of a dogaressa. _g. a. fumiani._ venice. san pantaleone: ceiling. church of the carità: christ disputing with the doctors. _a. balestra._ verona. s. tomaso: annunciation. _g. lazzarini._ venice. s. pietro in castello. the charity of s. lorenzo giustiniani. _sebastiano ricci._ venice. s. rocco: the glorification of the cross. gesuati: pope pius v. and saints. london. royal hospital, chelsea: half-dome. _g. b. pittoni._ vicenza. the bath of diana. _g. b. piazetta._ venice. chiesa della fava: madonna and s. philip neri. academy: crucifixion; the fortune-teller. _rosalba carriera._ venice. academy: pastels. dresden. pastels. chapter xxix tiepolo we have already noted that to establish the significance of any period in art, it is necessary that the tendencies should unite and combine in some culminating spirits who rise triumphant over their contemporaries and soar above the age in which they live. such a genius stands out above the eighteenth century crowd, and is not only of his century, but of every time. for two hundred years tiepolo has been stigmatised as extravagant, mannered, as just equal to painting cupids, nymphs, and parroquets. in the last century he experienced the effect of the profound discredit into which the whole of eighteenth-century art had fallen. in france, david had obliterated watteau; and the reputation of pompeo battoni, a sort of italian david, effaced tiepolo and his contemporaries. when the delegates of the french republic inspected italian churches and palaces, and decided what works of art should be sent to the louvre, they singled out the bolognese, the guercinos and guidos, the carracci, even pompeo battoni and other such forgotten masters, a gatti, a nevelone, a badalocchio; but to the lasting regret of their descendants, they disdained to annex a single one of the great paintings of the venetian, gianbattista tiepolo. eastlake only vouchsafes him one line as "an artist of fantastic imagination." most of the nineteenth-century critics do not even mention him. burckhardt dismisses him with a grudging line of praise, blanc is equally disparaging, and for taine he is a mere mannerist, yet his influence has been felt far beyond his lifetime; only now is he coming into his own, and it is recognised that the _plein-air_ artist, the luminarist, the impressionist, owe no small share of their knowledge to his inspiration. the name of tiepolo brings before us a whole string of illustrious personages--doges and senators, magnificent procurators and great captains--but we have nothing to prove that the artist belonged to a decayed branch of the famous patrician house. born in castello, the people's quarter of venice, he studied in early youth with that good draughtsman, lazzarini. at twenty-three he married the sister of francesco guardi; guardi, who comes between longhi and canale and who is a better painter than either. tiepolo appeared at a fortunate moment. the demand for a facile, joyous genius was at its height. the life of the aristocracy on the lagoons was every year growing more gay, more abandoned to capricious inclination, to light loves and absurd amusements. and the art which reflected this life was called upon to give gaiety rather than thought, costume rather than character. yet if the venetian art had lost all connection with the grave magnificence of the past, it had kept aloof from the academic coldness which was in fashion beyond the lagoons, so that though theatrical, it was with a certain natural absurdity. the age had become romantic; the arcadian convention was in full force, nature herself was pressed into the service of idle, sentimental men and women. the country was pictured as a place of delight, where the sun always shone and the peasants passed their time singing madrigals and indulging in rural pleasures. the public, however, had begun to look for beauty; the traditions which had formed round the decorative schools were giving way to the appreciation of original work. tiepolo, sincere and spontaneous even when he is sacrificing truth to caprice, struck the taste of the venetians, and without emancipating himself from the tendencies of the time, contrives to introduce a fresh accent. all round him was a weak and self-indulgent world, but within himself he possessed a fund of buoyant and inexhaustible energy. he evokes a throng of personages on the ceilings of the churches and palaces confided to his fancy. his creations range from mythology to religion, from the sublime to the grotesque. all olympia appears upon his ample and luminous spaces. it is not to the cold, austere lazzarini, or to the clashing chiaroscuro of piazetta, or the imaginative spirit of battista ricci, though he was touched by each of them, that we must turn for tiepolo's derivation. long before his time, the kind of decoration of ceilings which we are apt to call tiepolesque; the foreshortened architecture, the columns and cornices, the figures peopling the edifices, or reclining upon clouds, had been used by an increasing throng of painters. the style arose, indeed, in the quattrocento; mantegna, the umbrians, and even michelangelo had used it, though in a far more sober way than later generations. correggio and the venetians had perfected the idea, which the artists of the seventeenth century seized upon and carried to the most intemperate excess. but tiepolo rose above them all; he abandoned the heavy, exaggerated, contorted designs, which by this time defied all laws of equilibrium, and we must go back further than his immediate predecessors for his origins. his claim to stand with tintoretto or veronese may be contested, but he is nearest to these, and no doubt veronese is the artist he studied with the greatest fervour. without copying, he seems to have a natural affinity of spirit with veronese and assimilates the ample arrangement of his groups, the grace of his architecture, and his decorative feeling for colour. zanetti, who was one of tiepolo's dearest friends, writes: "no painter of our time could so well recall the bright and happy creations of veronese." the difference between them is more one of period than of temperament. paolo veronese represented the opulence of a rich, strong society, full of noble life, while tiepolo's lot was cast among effeminate men and frivolous women, and full of the modern spirit himself, he adapts his genius to his time and devotes himself to satisfy the theatrical, sentimental vein of the venice of the decadence. full of enthusiasm for his work, he was ready to respond to any call. he went to and fro between venice and the villas along the mainland and to the neighbouring towns. then coveting wider fields, he travelled to milan and genoa, where his frescoes still gleam in the palaces of the dugnani, the archinto, and the clerici. at würzburg in bavaria he achieved a magnificent series of decorations for the palace of the prince-archbishop. then coming back to italy, he painted altarpieces, portraits, pictures for his friends, and a fresh multitude of allegorical and mythological frescoes in palaces and villas. his charming villa at zianigo is frescoed from top to bottom by himself and his sons, and has amusing examples of contemporary dress and manners. when the academy was instituted in , tiepolo was appointed its first director, but the sort of employment it provided was not suited to his impetuous spirit, and in he threw up the post and went off to spain with his two sons. there he received a splendid welcome and was loaded with commissions, the only dissentient voice being that of raphael mengs, who, obsessed by the taste for the classic and the antique, was fiercely opposed to the venetian's art. tiepolo died suddenly in madrid in , pencil in hand. though he was past seventy, the frescoes he has left there show that his hand was as firm and his eye as sure as ever. his frescoes have, as we have said, that frankly theatrical flavour which corresponds exactly to the taste of the time. such works as the "transportation of the holy house of loretto" in the church of the scalzi in venice, or the "triumph of faith" in that of the pietà, the "triumph of hercules" in palazzo canossa in verona, or the decorations in the magnificent villa of the pisani at strà, are extravagant and fantastic, yet have the impressive quality of genius. these last, which have for subject the glorification of the pisani, are full of portraits. the patrician sons and daughters appear, surrounded by abundance, war, and wisdom. a woman holding a sceptre symbolises europe. all round are grouped flags and dragons, "nations grappling in the airy blue," bands of red indians in their war-paint and happy couples making love. the idea of the history, the wealth, the supreme dignity of the house is paramount, and over all appears fame, bearing the noble name into immortality. in palazzo clerici at milan a rich and prodigal committee gave the painter a free hand, and on the ceiling of a vast hall the sun in a chariot, with four horses harnessed abreast, rises to the meridian, flooding the world with light. venus and saturn attend him, and his advent is heralded by mercury. a symbolical figure of the earth joys at his coming, and a concourse of naiads, nymphs, and dolphins wait upon his footsteps. in the school of the carmine in venice tiepolo has left one of his grandest displays. the haughty queen of heaven, who is his ideal of the virgin, bears the child lightly on her arm, and, standing enthroned upon the rolling clouds, hardly deigns to acknowledge the homage of the prostrate saint, on whom an attendant angel is bestowing her scapulary. the most charming _amoretti_ are disporting in all directions, flinging themselves from on high in delicious _abandon_, alternating with lovely groups of the cardinal virtues. at villa valmarana near vicenza, after revelling among the gods, he comes to earth and delights in painting lovely ladies with almond eyes and carnation cheeks, attended by their cavaliers, seated in balconies, looking on at a play, or dancing minuets, and carnival scenes with masques and dominoes and _fêtes champêtres_, which give us a picture of the fashions and manners of the day. he brings in groups of chinese in oriental dress, and then he condescends to paint country girls and their rustic swains, in the style of phyllis and corydon. sometimes he becomes graver and more solid. he abandons the airy fancies scattered in cloud-land. the story of esther in palazzo dugnano affords an opportunity for introducing magnificent architecture, warriors in armour, and stately dames in satin and brocades. he touches his highest in the decorations of palazzo labia, where antony and cleopatra, seated at their banquet, surrounded by pomp and revelry, regard one another silently, with looks of sombre passion. four exquisite panels have lately been acquired by the brera gallery, representing the loves of rinaldo and armida, and are a feast of gay, delicate colour, with fascinating backgrounds of italian gardens. the throne-room of the palace at madrid has the same order of compositions--Æneas conducted by venus from time to immortality, and other deifications of spanish royalty. [illustration: _tiepolo._ antony and cleopatra. _palazzo labia, venice._] now and then tiepolo is possessed by a tragic mood. in the church of san alvise he has left a "way to calvary," a "flagellation," and a "crowning of thorns," which are intensely dramatic, and which show strong feeling. particularly striking is the contrast between the refined and sensitive type of his christ and the realistic and even brutal study of the two despairing malefactors--one a common ruffian, the other an aged offender of a higher class. his altarpiece at este, representing s. tecla staying the plague, is painted with a real insight into disaster and agony, and s. tecla is a pathetic and beautiful figure. sometimes in his easel-pictures he paints a head of christ, a s. anthony, or a crucifixion, but he always returns before long to the ample spaces and fantastic subjects which his soul loved. tiepolo is a singular contradiction. his art suggests a strong being, held captive by butterflies. sometimes he is joyous and limpid, sometimes turbulent and strong, but he has always sincerity, force, and life. a great space serves to exhilarate him, and he asks nothing better than to cover it with angels and goddesses, white limbs among the clouds, sea-horses ridden by tritons, patrician warriors in roman armour, balustrades and columns and _amoretti_. he does not even need to pounce his design, but puts in all sorts of improvised modifications with a sure hand. the vastness of his frescoes, the daring poses of his countless figures, and the freedom of his line speak eloquently of the mastery to which his hand had attained. he revels, above all, in effects of light--"all the light of the sky, and all the light of the sea; all the light of venice ... in which he swims as in a bath. he paints not ideas, scarcely even forms, but light. his ceilings are radiant, like the sky of birds; his poems seem to be written in the clouds. light is fairer than all things, and tiepolo knows all the tricks and triumphs of light."[ ] [ ] philippe monnier, _venice in the eighteenth century_. nearly all his compositions have a serene and limpid horizon, with the figures approaching it painted in clear, silvery hues, airy and diaphanous, while the forms below are more muscular, the flesh tints are deeper, and the whole of the foreground is often enveloped in shadow. veronese had lit up the shadows, which, under his contemporaries, were growing gloomy. tiepolo carries his art further on the same lines. he makes his figures more graceful, his draperies more vaporous, and illumines his clouds with radiance. his faded blue and rose, his golden-greys, and pearly whites and pastel tints are not so much solid colours as caprices of light. we have remarked already that with veronese the accessories of gleaming satins and rich brocades serve to obscure the persons. in many of tiepolo's scenes the figures are lost in a flutter of drapery, subject and action melt away, and we are only conscious of soft harmonies of delicious colour, as ethereal as the hues of spring flowers in woodland ways and joyous meadows. with these delicious, audacious fancies, put on with a nervous hand, we forget the age of profound and ardent passion, we escape from that of pompous solemnity and studied grace, and we breathe an atmosphere of irresponsible and capricious pleasure. in this last word of her great masters venice keeps what her temperament loved--sensuous colour and emotional chiaroscuro, used to accentuate an art adapted to a city of pleasure. the excellence of the old masters' drawings is a perpetual revelation. even second-class men are almost invariably fine draughtsmen, proving that drawing was looked upon as something over which it was necessary for even the meanest to have entire mastery. tiepolo's drawings, preserved in venice and in various museums, are as beautiful as can be wished; perfect in execution and vivid in feeling. in venice are twenty or thirty sheets in red carbon, of flights of angels, and of draperies studied in every variety of fold. poor work of his school is often ascribed to his sons, but the superb "stations of the cross," in the frari, which were etched by domenico, and published as his own in his lifetime, are almost equal to the father's work. tiepolo had many immediate followers and imitators. the colossal roof-painting of fabio canal in the church of ss. apostoli, venice, may be pointed out as an example of one of these. but he is full of the tendencies of modern art. mr. berenson, writing of him, says he sometimes seems more the first than the last of a line, and notices how he influenced many french artists of recent times, though none seem quite to have caught the secret of his light intensity and his exquisite caprice. principal works aranjuez. royal palace: frescoes; altarpiece. orangery: frescoes. bergamo. cappella colleoni: scenes from the life of the baptist. berlin. martyrdom of s. agatha; s. dominia and the rosary. london. sketches; deposition. madrid. escurial; ceilings. milan. palazzi clerici, archinto, and dugnano: frescoes. brera: loves of rinaldo and armida. paris. christ at emmaus. strà. villa pisani: ceiling. venice. academy: s. joseph, the child, and saints; s. helena finding the cross. palazzo ducale: sala di quattro porte: neptune and venice. palazzo labia: frescoes; antony and cleopatra. palazzo rezzonico: two ceilings. s. alvise: flagellation; way to golgotha. ss. apostoli: communion of s. lucy. s. fava: the virgin and her parents. gesuati: ceiling; altarpiece. s. maria della pietà: triumph of faith. s. paolo: stations of the cross. scalzi: transportation of the holy house of loretto. scuola del carmine: ceiling. verona. palazzo canossa: triumph of hercules. vicenza. museo entrance hall: immaculate conception. villa valmarana: frescoes; subjects from homer, virgil, ariosto, and tasso; masks and oriental scenes. würzburg. palace of the archbishop: ceilings; fêtes galantes; assumption; fall of rebel angels. chapter xxx pietro longhi we have here a master who is peculiarly the venetian of the eighteenth century, a genre-painter whose charm it is not easy to surpass, yet one who did not at the outset find his true vocation. longhi's first undertakings, specimens of which exist in certain palaces in venice, were elaborate frescoes, showing the baneful influence of the bolognese school, in which he studied for a time under giuseppe crispi. he attempts to place the deities of olympus on his ceilings in emulation of tiepolo, but his juno is heavy and common, and the titans at her feet appear as a swarm of sprawling, ill-drawn nudities. he shows no faculty for this kind of work, but he was thirty-two before he began to paint those small easel-pictures which in his own dainty style illustrate the "vanity fair" of his period, and in which the eighteenth century lives for us again. his earliest training was in the goldsmith's art, and he has left many drawings of plate, exquisite in their sense of graceful curve and their unerring precision of line. it was a moment when such things acquired a flawless purity of outline, and longhi recognised their beauty with all the sensitive perception of the artist and the practised workman. his studies of draperies, gestures, and hands are also extraordinarily careful, and he seems besides to have an intimate acquaintance with all the elegant dissipation and languid excesses of a dying order. we feel that he has himself been at home in the masquerade, has accompanied the lady to the fortune-teller, and, leaning over her graceful shoulder, has listened to the soothsayer's murmurs. he has attended balls and routs, danced minuets, and gossiped over tiny cups of china tea. he is the last chronicler of the venetian feasts, and with him ends that long series that began with giorgione's concert and which developed and passed through suppers at cana and banquets at the houses of levi and the pharisee. we are no longer confronted with the sumptuosity of bonifazio and veronese; the immense tables covered with gold and silver plate, the long lines of guests robed in splendid brocades, the stream of servants bearing huge salvers, or the bands of musicians, nor are there any more alfresco concerts, with nymphs and bacchantes. instead there are masques, the life of the ridotto or gaming-house, routs and intrigues in dainty boudoirs, and surreptitious love-making in that city of eternal carnival where the _bauta_ was almost a national costume. longhi holds that post which in french art is filled by watteau, fragonard, and lancret, the painters of _fêtes galantes_, and though he cannot be placed on an equal footing with those masters, he is representative and significant enough. on his canvases are preserved for us the mysteries of the toilet, over which ladies and young men of fashion dawdled through the morning, the drinking of chocolate in _négligé_, the momentous instants spent in choosing headgear and fixing patches, the towers of hair built by the modish coiffeur--children trooping in, in hoops and uniforms, to kiss their mother's hand, the fine gentleman choosing a waistcoat and ogling the pretty embroideress, the pert young maidservant slipping a billet-doux into a beauty's hand under her husband's nose, the old beau toying with a fan, or the discreet abbé taking snuff over the morning gazette. the grand ladies of longhi's day pay visits in hoop and farthingale, the beaux make "a leg," and the lacqueys hand chocolate. the beautiful venetians and their gallants swim through the gavotte or gamble in the ridotto, or they hasten to assignations, disguised in wide _bauti_ and carrying preposterous muffs. the correr museum contains a number of his paintings and also his book of original sketches. one of the most entertaining of his canvases represents a visit of patricians to a nuns' parlour. the nuns and their pupils lend an attentive ear to the whispers of the world. their dresses are trimmed with _point de venise_, and a little theatre is visible in the background. this and the "sala del ridotto" which hangs near, are marked by a free, bold handling, a richness of colouring, and more animation than is usual in his genre-pictures. he has not preserved the lovely, indeterminate colour or the impressionist touch which was the natural inheritance of watteau or tiepolo. his backgrounds are dark and heavy, and he makes too free a use of body colour; but his attitude is one of close observation--he enjoys depicting the life around him, and we suspect that he sees in it the most perfect form of social intercourse imaginable. longhi is sometimes called the goldoni of painting, and he certainly more nearly resembles the genial, humorous playwright than he does hogarth, to whom he has also been compared. yet his execution and technique are a little like hogarth's, and it is possible that he was influenced by the elder and stronger master, who entered on his triumphant career as a satirical painter of society about . this was just the time when longhi abandoned his unlucky decorative style, and it is quite possible that he may have met with engravings of the "marriage à la mode," and was stimulated by them to the study of eighteenth-century manners, though his own temperament is far removed from hogarth's moral force and grim satire. his serene, painstaking observation is never distracted by grossness and violence. the venetians of his day may have been--undoubtedly were--effeminate, licentious, and decadent, but they were kind and gracious, of refined manners, well-bred, genial and intelligent, and so longhi has transcribed them. in the time which followed, ceilings were covered by boucher, pastels by latour were in demand, the scholars of david painted classical scenes, and pietro longhi was forgotten. antonio francesco correr bought five hundred of his drawings from his son, alessandro, but his works were ignored and dispersed. the classic and romantic fashions passed, but it was only in that the brothers de goncourt, writing on art, revived consideration for the painter of a bygone generation. many of his works are in private collections, especially in england, but few are in public galleries. the national gallery is fortunate in possessing several excellent examples. [illustration: _pietro longhi._ visit to the fortune-teller. _london._ (_photo, hanfstängl._)] principal works bergamo. lochis: at the gaming table; taking coffee. baglioni: the festival of the padrona. dresden. portrait of a lady. hampton court. three genre-pictures. london. visit to a circus; visit to a fortune-teller; portrait. mond collection: card party; portrait. venice. academy: six genre-paintings. correr museum: eleven paintings of venetian life; portrait of goldoni. palazzo grassi: frescoes; scenes of fashionable life. quirini-stampalia: eight paintings; portraits. chapter xxxi canale while piazetta and tiepolo were proving themselves the inheritors of the great school of decorators, venice herself was finding her chroniclers, and a school of landscape arose, of which canale was the foremost member. giovanni antonio canale was born in venice in , the same year as tiepolo. his father earned his living at the profession, lucrative enough just then, of scene-painting, and antonio learned to handle his brush, working at his side. in he went off to seek his fortune in rome, and though he was obliged to help out his resources by his early trade, he was most concerned in the study of architecture, ancient and modern. rome spoke to him through the eye, by the picturesque masses of stonework, the warm harmonious tones of classic remains and the effects of light upon them. he painted almost entirely out-of-doors, and has left many examples drawn from the ruins. his success in rome was not remarkable, and he was still a very young man when he retraced his steps. on regaining his native town, he realised for the first time the beauty of its canals and palaces, and he never again wavered in his allegiance. two rivals were already in the field, luca carlevaris, whose works were freely bought by the rich venetians, and marco ricci, the figures in whose views of venice were often touched in by his uncle, sebastiano; but canale's growing fame soon dethroned them, "i cacciati del nido," as he said, using dante's expression. in a generation full of caprice, delighting in sensational developments, canale was methodical to a fault, and worked steadily, calmly producing every detail of venetian landscape with untiring application and almost monotonous tranquillity. he lived in the midst of a band of painters who adored travel. sebastiano ricci was always on the move; tiepolo spent much of his time in other cities and countries, and passed the last years of his life in spain; pietro rotari was attached to the court of st. petersburg; belotto, canale's nephew, settled in bohemia; but canale remained at home, and, except for two short visits paid to england, contented himself with trips to padua and verona. early in life canale entered into relations with joseph smith, the british consul in venice, a connoisseur who had not only formed a fine collection of pictures, but had a gallery from which he was very ready to sell to travellers. he bought of the young venetian at a very low price, and contrived, unfairly enough, to acquire the right to all his work for a certain period of time, with the object of sending it, at a good profit, to london. for a time canale's luminous views were bought by the english under these auspices, but the artist, presently discovering that he was making a bad bargain, came over to england, where he met with an encouraging reception, especially at windsor castle and from the duke of richmond. canale spent two years in england and painted on the thames and at cambridge, but he could not stand the english climate and fled from the damp and fogs to his own lagoons. to describe his paintings is to describe venice at every hour of the day and night--venice with its long array of noble palaces, with its grand canal and its narrow, picturesque waterways. he reproduces the venice we know, and we see how little it has changed. the gondolas cluster round the landing-stages of the piazzetta, the crowds hurry in and out of the arcades of the ducal palace, or he paints the festivals that still retained their splendour: the great bucentaur leaving the riva dei schiavoni on the feast of the ascension, or san geremia and the entrance to the cannaregio decked in flags for a feast-day. from one end to another of the grand canal, that "most beautiful street in the world," as des commines called it in , we can trace every aspect of canale's time, when the city had as yet lost nothing of its splendour or its animation. at the entrance stands s. maria della salute, that sanctuary dear to venetian hearts, built as a votive offering after the visitation of the plague in . its flamboyant dome, with its volutes, its population of stone saints, its green bronze door catching the light, pleased canale, as it pleased sargent in our own day, and he painted it over and over again. the annual fête of the confraternity of the carità takes place at the scuola di san rocco, and canale paints the old renaissance building which shelters so much of tintoretto's finest work, decorated with ropes of greenery and gay with flags,[ ] while tiepolo has put in the red-robed, periwigged councillors and the gazing populace. near it in the national gallery hangs a "regatta" with its array of boats, its shouting gondoliers, and its shadows lying across the range of palaces, and telling the exact hour of the day that it was sketched in; or, again, the painter has taken peculiar pleasure in expressing quiet days, with calm green waters and wide empty piazzas, divided by sun and shadow, with a few citizens plodding about their business in the hot midday, or a quiet little abbé crossing the piazza on his way to mass. canale has made a special study of the light on wall and façade, and of the transparent waters of the canals and the azure skies in which float great snowy fleeces. [ ] it is thought that it may have been painted from his studio. his second visit to england was paid in . he was received with open arms by the great world, and invited to the houses of the nobility in town and country. the english were delighted with his taste and with the mastery with which he painted architectural scenes, and in spite of advancing years he produced a number of compositions, which commanded high prices. the garden of vauxhall, the rotunda at ranelagh, whitehall, northumberland house, eton college, were some of the subjects which attracted him, and the treatment of which was signalised by his calm and perfect balance. he made use of the camera ottica, which is in principal identical with the camera oscura. lanzi says he amended its defects and taught its proper use, but it must be confessed that in the careful perspective of some of his scenes, its traces seem to haunt us and to convey a certain cold regularity. canale was a marvellous engraver. mantegna, bellini, and titian had placed engraving on a very high level in the venetian school, and though at a later date it became too elaborate, tiepolo and his son brought it back to simplicity. canale aided them, and his _eaux-fortes_, of which he has left about thirty, are filled with light and breadth of treatment, and he is particularly happy in his brilliant, transparent water. the high prices canale obtained for his pictures in his lifetime led to the usual imitations. he was surrounded by painters whose whole ambition was limited to copying him. among these were marieschi, visentini, colombini, besides others now forgotten. more than fifty of his finest works were bought by smith for george iii. and fill a room at windsor. he was made a member of the academy at dresden, and bruhl, the prime minister of the elector, obtained from him twenty-one works which now adorn the gallery there. canale died in venice, where he had lived nearly all his life, and where his gondola-studio was a familiar object in the piazzetta, at the lido, or anchored in the long canals. his nephew, bernardo belotto, is often also called canaletto, and it seems that both uncle and nephew were equally known by the diminutive. belotto, too, went to rome early in his career, where he attached himself to panini, a painter of classic ruins, peopled with warriors and shepherds. he was, by all accounts, full of vanity and self-importance, and on a visit to germany managed to acquire the title of count, which he adhered to with great complacency. he travelled all over italy looking for patronage, and was very eager to find the road to success and fortune. about the same time as his uncle, he paid a visit to london and was patronised by horace walpole, but in the full tide of success he was summoned to dresden, where the elector, disappointed at not having secured the services of the uncle, was fain to console himself with those of the nephew. the extravagant and profligate augustus ii., whose one idea was to extract money by every possible means from his subjects, in order to adorn his palaces, was consistently devoted to belotto, who was in his element as a court painter. he paints all his uncle's subjects, and it is not always easy to distinguish between the two; but his paintings are dull and stiff as compared with those of canale, though he is sometimes fine in colour, and many of his views are admirably drawn. some works of canale it is impossible to draw up any exhaustive list, so many being in private collections. dresden. the grand canal; campo s. giacomo; piazza s. marco; church and piazza of ss. giovanni and paolo. florence. the piazzetta. hampton court. the colosseum. london. scuola di san rocco; interior of the rotunda at ranelagh; s. pietro in castello, venice. paris. louvre: church of s. maria della salute. venice. heading; courtyard of a palace. vienna. liechtenstein gallery: church and piazza of s. mark, venice; canal of the giudecca, venice; view on grand canal; the piazzetta. windsor. about fifty paintings. wallace collection. the giudecca; piazza san marco; church of san simione; s. maria della salute; a fête on the grand canal; ducal palace; dogana from the molo; palazzo corner; a water-fête; the rialto; s. maria della salute; a canal in venice. chapter xxxii francesco guardi an entry in gradenigo's diary of , preserved in the museo correr, speaks of "francesco guardi, painter of the quarter of ss. apostoli, along the fondamenta nuove, a good pupil of the famous canaletto, having by the aid of the camera ottica, most successfully painted two canvases (not small) by the order of a stranger (an englishman), with views of the piazza san marco, towards the church and the clock tower, and of the bridge of the rialto and buildings towards the cannaregio, and have to-day examined them under the colonnades of the procurazie and met with universal applause." francesco guardi was a son of the austrian tyrol, and his mountain ancestry may account, as in the case of titian, for the freshness and vigour of his art. both his father, who settled in venice, and his brother were painters. his son became one in due time, and the profession being followed by four members of the family accounts for the indifferent works often attributed to guardi. his indebtedness to canale is universally acknowledged, and perhaps it is true that he never attains to the monumental quality, the traditional dignity which marks canale out as a great master, but he differs from canale in temperament, style, and technique. canale is a much more exact and serious student of architectural detail; guardi, with greater visible vigour, obliterates detail, and has no hesitation in drawing in buildings which do not really appear. in his oval painting of the ducal palace (wallace collection) he makes it much loftier and more spacious than it really is. in his "piazzetta" he puts in a corner of the loggia where it would not actually be seen. in the "fair in piazza s. marco" the arch from under which the fair appears is gigantic, and he foreshortens the wing of the royal palace. he curtails the length of the columns in the piazza and so avoids monotony of effect, and he often alters the height of the campaniles he uses, making them tall and slender or short and broad, as his picture requires. at one time he produced some colossal pictures, in several of which mr. simonson, who has written an admirable life of the painter, believes that the hand of canale is perceptible in collaboration; but it was not his natural element, and he often became heavy in colour and handling. in he undertook a commission from pietro edwards, who was a noted connoisseur and inspector of state pictures, and had been appointed superintendent in of an official studio for the restoration of old masters. edwards had important dealings with guardi, who was directed to paint four leading incidents in the rejoicings in honour of the visit of pius iv. to venice. the venetians themselves had become indifferent patrons of art, but venice attracted great numbers of foreign visitors, and before the second half of the eighteenth century the export of old masters had already become an established trade. there is no sign, however, that joseph smith, who retained his consulship till , extended any patronage to guardi, though he enriched george iii.'s collection with works of the chief contemporary artists of venice. it is probable that guardi had been warned against him by canale and profited by the latter's experience. we can divide his work into three categories. . views of venice. . public ceremonies. . landscapes. gradenigo mentions casually that he used the camera ottica, but though we may consider it probable, we cannot trace the use of it in his works. he is not only a painter of architecture, but pays great attention to light and atmosphere, and aims at subtle effects; a transparent haze floats over the lagoons, or the sun pierces though the morning mists. his four large pendants in the wallace collection show his happiest efforts; light glances off the water and is reflected on the shadowed walls. his views round the salute bring vividly before us those delicious morning hours in venice when the green tide has just raced up the grand canal, when a fresh wind is lifting and curling all the loose sails and fluttering pennons, and when the gondoliers are straining at the oars, as their light craft is caught and blown from side to side upon the rippling water. the sky occupies much of his space, he makes searching studies of it, and his favourite effect is a flash of light shooting across a piled-up mass of clouds. the line of the horizon is low, and he exhibits great mastery in painting the wide lagoons, but he also paints rough seas, and is one of the few masters of his day--perhaps the only one--who succeeds in representing a storm at sea. often as he paints the same subjects he never becomes mechanical or photographic. we may sometimes tire of the monotony of canale's unerring perspective and accurate buildings, but guardi always finds some new rendering, some fresh point of interest. sometimes he gives us a summer day, when venice stands out in light, her white palaces reflected in the sun-illumined water; sometimes he is arrested by old churches bathed in shadow and fusing into the rich, dark tones of twilight. his boats and figures are introduced with great spirit and _brio_, and are alive with that handling which a french critic has described as his _griffe endiablée_. [illustration: _francesco guardi._ s. maria della salute. _london._ (_photo, mansell and co._)] his masterly and spirited painting of crowds enables him to reproduce for us all those public ceremonies which venice retained as long as the republic lasted: yearly pilgrimages of the doge to venetian churches, to the salute to commemorate the cessation of the plague, to san zaccaria on easter day, the solemn procession on corpus christi day, receptions of ambassadors, and, most gorgeous of all, the feast of the wedding of the adriatic. he has faithfully preserved the ancient ceremonial which accompanied state festivities. in the "fête du jeudi gras" (louvre) he illustrates the acrobatic feats which were performed before doge mocenigo. a huge temple of victory is erected on the piazzetta, and gondoliers are seen climbing on each other's shoulders and dancing upon ropes. his motley crowds show that the whole population, patricians as well as people, took part in the feasts. he has also left many striking interiors: among others, that of the sala del gran consiglio, where sometimes as many as a thousand persons were assembled, the "reception of the doge and senate by pius iv." (which formed one of the series ordered by pietro edwards), or the fine "interior of a theatre," exhibited at the burlington fine arts in , belonging to a series of which another is at munich. in his landscapes guardi does not pay very faithful attention to nature. the landscape painters of the eighteenth century, as mr. simonson points out, were not animated by any very genuine impulse to study nature minutely. it was the picturesque element which appealed to them, and they were chiefly concerned to reproduce romantic features, grouped according to fancy. guardi composes half fantastic scenes, introducing classic remains, triumphal arches, airy palladian monuments. his _capricci_ include compositions in which roman ruins, overgrown with foliage, occupy the foreground of a painting of venetian palaces, but in which the combination is carried out with so much sparkle and nervous life and such charm of style, that it is attractive and piquant rather than grotesque. england is richest in guardis, of any country, but france in one respect is better off, in possessing no less than eleven fine paintings of public ceremonials. guardi may be considered the originator of small sketches, and perhaps the precursor of those glib little views which are handed about the piazza at the present day. his drawings are fairly numerous, and are remarkably delicate and incisive in touch. a large collection which he left to his son is now in the museo correr. in his later years he was reduced to poverty and used to exhibit sketches in the piazza, parting with them for a few ducats, and in this way flooding venice with small landscapes. the exact spot occupied by his _bottega_ is said to be at the corner of the palazzo reale, opposite the clock tower. the house in which he died still exists in the campiello della madonna, no. , parrocchia s. canziano, and has a shrine dedicated to the madonna attached to it. when quite an old man, guardi paid a visit to the home of his ancestors, at mastellano in the austrian tyrol, and made a drawing of castello corvello on the route. to this day his name is remembered with pride in his tyrolean valley. some works of guardi bergamo. lochis: landscapes. berlin. grand canal; lagoon; cemetery island. london. views in venice. milan. museo civico: landscapes. poldi-pezzoli: piazzetta; dogana; landscapes. oxford. taylorian museum: views in venice. padua. views in venice. paris. procession of the doge to s. zaccaria; embarkment in bucentaur; festival at salute; "jeudi gras" in venice; corpus christi; sala di collegio; coronation of doge. turin. cottage; staircase; bridge over canal. venice. museo correr: the ridotto; parlour of convent. verona. landscapes. wallace collection. the rialto; san giorgio maggiore (two); s. maria della salute; archway in venice; vaulted arcades; the dogana. bibliography it is an advantage to the student of italian art to be able to read french, german, and italian, for though translations appear of the most important works, there are many interesting articles and monographs of minor artists which are otherwise inaccessible. vasari, not always trustworthy, either in dates, facts, or opinions, yet delightfully human in his histories, is indispensable, and new editions and translations are constantly issued. sansoni's edition (florence), with milanesi's notes, is the most authoritative; and for translations, those of mrs. foster (messrs. blashfield and hopkins), and a new edition in the temple classics (dent, vols., s. each vol.). ridolfi, the principal contemporary authority on venetian artists, who published his _maraviglie dell' arte_ nine years after domenico tintoretto's death, is only to be read in italian, though the anecdotes with which his work abounds are made use of by every writer. crowe and cavalcaselle's _painting in north italy_ (murray) is a storehouse of painstaking, minute, and, on the whole, marvellously correct information and sound opinion. it supplies a foundation, fills gaps, and supplements individual biographies as no other book does. for the early painters, down to the time of the bellini, _i origini dei pittori veneziani_, by professor leonello venturi, venice, , is a large book, written with mastery and insight, and well illustrated; _la storia della pittura veneziana_ is another careful work, which deals very minutely with the early school of mosaics. in studying the bellini, the late mr. s. a. strong has _the brothers bellini_ (bell's great masters), and the reader should not fail to read mr. roger fry's _bellini_ (artist's library), a scholarly monograph, short but reliable, and full of suggestion and appreciation, though written in a cool, critical spirit. dr. hills has dealt ably with _pisanello_ (duckworth). molmenti and ludwig in their monumental work _vittore carpaccio_, translated by mr. r. h. cust (murray, ), and paul kristeller in the equally important _mantegna_, translated by mr. s. a. strong (longmans, ), seem to have exhausted all that there is to be said for the moment concerning these two painters. it is almost superfluous to mention mr. berenson's two well-known volumes, _the venetian painters of the renaissance_, and the _north italian painters of the renaissance_ (putnam). they are brilliant essays which supplement every other work, overflowing with suggestive and critical matter, supplying original thoughts, and summing up in a few pregnant words the main features and the tendencies of the succeeding stages. in studying giorgione, we cannot dispense with pater's essay, included in _the renaissance_. the author is not always well informed as to facts--he wrote in the early days of criticism--but he is rich in idea and feeling. mr. herbert cook's _life of giorgione_ (bell's great masters) is full and interesting. some authorities question his attributions as being too numerous, but whether we regard them as authentic works of the master or as belonging to his school, the illustrations he gives add materially to our knowledge of the giorgionesque. when we come to titian we are well off. crowe and cavalcaselle's _life of titian_ (murray, out of print), in two large volumes, is well written and full of good material, from which subsequent writers have borrowed. an excellent life, full of penetrating criticism, by mr. c. ricketts, was lately brought out by methuen (classics of art), complete with illustrations, and including a minute analysis of titian's technique. sir claude phillips's monograph on titian will appeal to every thoughtful lover of the painter's genius, and dr. gronau has written a good and scholarly life (duckworth). mr. berenson's _lorenzo lotto_ must be read for its interest and learning, given with all the author's charm and lucidity. it includes an essay on alvise vivarini. my own _tintoretto_ (methuen, classics of art) gives a full account of the man and his work, and especially deals exhaustively with the scheme and details of the scuola di san rocco. professor thode has written a detailed and profusely illustrated life of tintoretto in the knackfuss series, and the paradiso has been treated at length and illustrated in great detail in a very scholarly _édition de luxe_ by mr. f. o. osmaston. it is the fashion to discard ruskin, but though we may allow that his judgments are exaggerated, that he reads more into a picture than the artist intended, and that he is too fond of preaching sermons, there are few critics who have so many ideas to give us, or who are so informed with a deep love of art, and both _modern painters_ and the _stones of venice_ should be read. m. charles yriarte has written a life of paolo veronese, which is full of charm and knowledge. it is interesting to take a copy of boschini's _della pittura veneziana_, , when visiting the galleries, the palaces, and the churches of venice. his lists of the pictures, as they were known in his day, often open our eyes to doubtful attributions. second-hand copies of boschini are not difficult to pick up. when the later-century artists are reached, a good sketch of the venice of their period is supplied by philippe monnier's delightful _venice in the eighteenth century_ (chatto and windus), which also has a good chapter on the lesser venetian masters. the best life of tiepolo is in italian, by professor pompeo molmenti. the smaller masters have to be hunted for in many scattered essays; a knowledge of goldoni adds point to longhi's pictures. canaletto and his nephew, belotto, have been treated by m. uzanne, _les deux canaletto_; and mr. simonson has written an important and charming volume on francesco guardi (methuen, ), with beautiful reproductions of his works. among other books which give special information are morelli's two volumes, _italian painters in borghese and doria pamphili_, and _in dresden and munich galleries_, translated by miss jocelyn ffoulkes (murray); and dr. j. p. richter's magnificent catalogue of the mond collection--which, though published at fifteen guineas, can be seen in the great art libraries--has some valuable chapters on the venetian masters. index academy, florence, venice, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , adoration of magi, , , , , , , adoration of shepherds, , , , , agnolo gaddi, alemagna, giovanni, - , , , altichiero, , alvise vivarini, - , , , , , , , , , , , amalteo, pomponio, amigoni, anconæ, , , , , , , , , angelico, fra, annunciation, , , , , , , antonello da messina, , , , , antonio da murano, , , , , , antonio negroponte, , antonio veneziano, aretino, , , , - , , , , , , ascension, augsburg, , , badile, balestra, baptism of christ, , , bartolommeo vivarini, , , , , , , , , , , basaiti, marco, , - bassano, , , - , bastiani, lazzaro, , , battoni, pompeo, , bellini, gentile, - , , , , , , , , , , bellini, giovanni, , , , , , , , , , , , - , , , - , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , bellini, jacopo, , , - , , - , belotto, , - bembo, cardinal, , , , benson, mr., , , , , berenson, mr., , , , , , , , , bergamo, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , berlin, , , , , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , bissolo, , , , blanc, m. charles, , , bologna, , , , , , bonifazio, - , , , , , , , bonsignori, , bordone, paris, , , - , , , borghese, villa, , , , , boschini, , , , boston, botticelli, , brera, , , , , , , , , , , , brescia, , , , , , , bridgewater house, , british museum, , broker's patent, , , brusasorci, buonconsiglio, , burckhardt, _burlington magazine_, byzantine art, , , calderari, carlevaris, luca, , caliari, carlotto, caliari, paolo. _see_ veronese campagnola, domenico, canal, fabio, canale, gian antonio, , , - , , canaletto. _see_ canale caravaggio, cariani, - , carpaccio, , , , , , , , , , , , , carracci, , , carriera. _see_ rosalba carriera castagno, andrea del, , castello, milan, catena, vincenzo, , - , , , cathedrals, ascoli, bassano, , conegliano, cremona, , , murano, spilimbergo, treviso, , , , verona, , celesti, chelsea hospital, churches-- bergamo. s. alessandro, , s. bartolommeo, s. bernardino, s. spirito, , , brescia. s. clemente, ss. nazaro e celso, castelfranco. s. liberale, s. daniele. s. antonino, , , padua. eremitani, , , il santo, , s. giustina, , s. maria in vanzo, s. zeno, pesaro. s. francesco, piacenza. madonna di campagna, ravenna. s. domenico, rome. s. maria del popolo, s. pietro in montorio, , venice. s. alvise, ss. apostoli, , s. barnabà, carmine, , , s. cassiano, ss. ermagora and fortunato, s. fava, , s. francesco della vigna, , , gesuati, s. giacomo dell' orio, , s. giobbe, , , , , s. giorgio maggiore, , , s. giovanni in bragora, , , , , , , , s. giovanni crisostomo, , s. giovanni elemosinario, , ss. giovanni and paolo, , , s. maria formosa, , , s. maria dei frari, , , , , , , , , , , , , , s. maria mater domini, , , s. maria dei miracoli, s. maria dell' orto, , , , , s. maria della salute, , , , , , s. mark's, , , , , , , s. pantaleone, , , pietà, , , s. pietro in castello, , s. pietro in murano, , s. polo, , redentore, , , , s. rocco, , s. salvatore, , scalzi, s. sebastiano, , , , s. spirito, s. stefano, , s. trovaso, , , s. vitale, , s. zaccaria, , , , , verona. s. anastasia, , , , , s. antonio, , s. fermo, , s. tomaso, vicenza. s. corona, , , monte berico, , , , , cima da conegliano, , , , - , , colombini, confraternity, carità, s. mark, , , contarini, giovanni, cook, sir f., cook, mr. herbert, correggio, , correr museum (museo civico), , , , , , , , , , crivelli, carlo, , - , crowe and cavalcaselle, , , crucifixion, , , , , , dante, david, , doges-- barbarigo, dandolo, giustiniani, gradenigo, grimani, loredano, , mocenigo, donatello, , , doria gallery, , dresden, , , , , , , , , , , dürer, albert, , , edwards, pietro, , este, este, isabela d', , , , fabriano, gentile da, , , , , , , , , , , florence, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , florentine, , , , , , , , , , , , florigerio, fondaco dei tedeschi, , , fragonard, fry, mr. roger, , , fumiani, gianbattista, , gaston de foix, giambono, michele, , , giordano, luca, giorgione, , , , , , - , , - , - , - , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , giotto, , , , , , goldoni, carlo, , goncourt, de, guardi, francesco, , - , , , guariento, , , , guercino, guido, guilds, , , , , , , , , guillaume de guilleville, hampton court, , , , , , , hazlitt, , hogarth, , jacobello del fiore, , , , jacopo bellini. _see_ bellini kristeller, m. paul, lancret, last judgment, last supper, , , layard, lady, , , , lazzarini, gregorio, , , , leonardo, , , , , , liberi, pietro, , , licinio, bernardino, licinio, g. a. _see_ pordenone lippo, fra, london (national gallery), , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , longhi, pietro, , , - lorenzo di san severino, lorenzo veneziano, , , loreto, , lotto, lorenzo, , , - , , , , , louvre, , , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , luciani. _see_ sebastian del piombo ludwig, professor, , , madrid, , , , , , , mansueti, giovanni, , mantegna, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , marieschi, martino da udine. _see_ pellegrino maser, villa, , masolino, mengs, raphael, michelangelo, , , , , , , , - , , , milan, ambrosiana, , , , brera. _see_ brera mocetto, girolamo, molmenti, professor, , mond collection, , , , , monnier, philippe, , montagna, bartolommeo, , , - , morelli, , , moretto, , morto da feltre, , munich, , murano, , , , , museo civico. _see_ correr naples, , , , , national gallery. _see_ london niccolo di pietro, , , niccolo semitocolo, , , osmaston, mr. f. o., padovanino, il, , padua, , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , palaces-- milan. archinto, , clerici, dugnani, , rome. colonna, strà. pisani, venice. ducal, , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , giovanelli, labia, , rezzonico, verona. canossa, würzburg, , palma giovine, , , palma vecchio, , - , , , , , , , paolo da venezia, paris. _see_ louvre parma, pellegrino, , , , pennacchi, , perugino, , , pesaro, , , pesellino, piacenza, , piero di cosimo, pietà, , , , , , pintoricchio, , pisanello (pisano), , , - , , , , , - , , , pordenone, , , , , - , previtali, , , quirizio da murano, raphael, , , , , , , ravenna, , rembrandt, ricci, battista, , ricci, marco, ricci, sebastiano, , , , , richter, dr. j. p., ricketts, mr. c., ridolfi, , , , , , , rimini, , , robusti, domenico, , robusti, jacopo. _see_ tintoretto robusti, marietta, romanino, - rome, , , , , , , , , , , , rondinelli, , , rosalba carriera, , - , rubens, , , , ruskin, , sansovino, , , , santa croce, girolamo da, sarto, andrea del, , savoldo, , sebastian del piombo, , , - , siena, , , signorelli, simonson, mr., , , smith, joseph, , speranza, spilimbergo, , strong, mr. s. a., , taylor, miss cameron, tiepolo, domenico, tiepolo, g. b., , - , , , , , , , tintoretto, , , , , , , , , , , - , - , - , , , , , , , , , , titian, , , , , , , - , - , , , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , - , , , , - , , , , , torbido, francesco, treviso, , , , , , , , uccello, paolo, , , urbino, , , uzanne, m. o., valmarana, villa, varotari. _see_ padovanino vasari, , , , , , , , , , , , , , vecellio. _see_ titian vecellio, marco, vecellio, orazio, , vecellio, pomponio, velasquez, venice. _see_ academy venturi, professor antonio, venturi, professor leonello, vi, , verona, , , , , , , , , , , veronese, paolo, , , - , , , , , , , vicentino, vicenza, , , , , - , , , vienna, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , visentini, viterbo, vivarini. _see_ alvise vivarini. _see_ bartolommeo wallace collection, , , walpole, horace, , , watteau, , , wickhoff, dr., windsor, , yriarte, m. charles, , zanetti, , , , , , , zelotti, zoppo, marco, zucchero, federigo, note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) frederic lord leighton late president of the royal academy of arts an illustrated record of his life and work by ernest rhys [illustration: _winding the skein._ _by permission of the fine art society._ _f. leighton. pinxt._ _swan electric engraving co. sc._] george bell & sons london: george bell & sons first published, super-royal, to, . second edition, revised, colombier vo, . third edition, revised, crown vo, . publishers' note to third edition the reception given to previous editions of this work encourages the publishers to hope that a re-issue in a smaller form may be appreciated. the present volume is reprinted with a few alterations and corrections from the second edition published in . a chapter on "lord leighton's house in ," by mr. s. pepys cockerell, has been added. the publishers take the opportunity to repeat their acknowledgments of assistance most kindly given by numerous owners and admirers of the artist's work. by the gracious consent of h.m. the queen, the _cimabue_ in the buckingham palace collection, is here reproduced. especial thanks are also due to lord davey, lord hillingdon, lord rosebery, mrs. dyson-perrins, the late mr. alfred morrison, sir bernhard samuelson, lady hallé, mr. alex. henderson, mr. francis reckitts, the late sir henry tate, the birmingham and manchester corporations, and the president and council of the royal academy, who have kindly permitted the reproduction of pictures in their possession. to the late lord leighton himself the author and publishers have to acknowledge their indebtedness for a large number of studies and sketches, hitherto unpublished, as well as for his kind co-operation in the preparation of the volume. the author wishes also to record his thanks to mr. m. h. spielmann for permission to use his admirable account of the president's method of painting. by arrangement with the holders of several important copyrights, including messrs. thos. agnew and sons, p. and d. colnaghi and co., h. graves and co., arthur tooth and sons, the society for promoting christian knowledge, the proprietors of the art journal, the berlin photographic company, and the fine art society (whose courtesies in the matter are duly credited in the list of illustrations), the publishers have been enabled to represent many of the most popular paintings by the artist, and a selection of his famous designs for dalziel's bible gallery. contents page chapter i. his early years ii. year by year-- to iii. year by year-- to iv. year by year-- to v. year by year-- to vi. his method of painting vii. mural decoration, sculpture, and illustration viii. discourses on art ix. lord leighton's home x. lord leighton's house in . by s. pepys cockerell xi. the artist and his critics xii. conclusion appendix i. chronological list of works ii. list of landscapes and studies sold at christie's (july, ) index list of illustrations i. figure subjects. page winding the skein _frontispiece_ _by permission of the fine art society._ (_photogravure plate._) cimabue's madonna _by the gracious permission of her majesty the queen._ golden hours _by the kind permission of lord davey._ helen of troy _by permission of messrs. h. graves and co._ orpheus and eurydice _by the kind permission of francis reckitts, esq._ venus disrobing for the bath _by the kind permission of alexander henderson, esq._ electra at the tomb of agamemnon dÆdalus and icarus _by the kind permission of alexander henderson, esq._ st. jerome _by the kind permission of the president and council of the royal academy of arts._ hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis _by the kind permission of sir bernhard samuelson._ summer moon _by the kind permission of the late alfred morrison, esq., from the photogravure published by messrs. p. and d. colnaghi and co._ the juggling girl _by the kind permission of lord hillingdon._ a condottiere _by permission of the corporation of birmingham._ the daphnephoria _by permission of the fine art society._ nausicaa sister's kiss _by permission of the fine art society._ phryne at eleusis _by permission of the late lord leighton._ day dreams _by permission of the fine art society._ cymon and iphigenia _by permission of the fine art society._ (_photogravure plate._) the last watch of hero _by permission of the corporation of manchester._ greek girls playing at ball _by permission of the berlin photographic company._ the bath of psyche _by permission of the berlin photographic company._ farewell _by permission of messrs. a. tooth and sons._ "and the sea gave up the dead which were in it" _by the kind permission of sir henry tate._ the frigidarium _by permission of messrs. h. graves and co._ rizpah _by permission of messrs. cassell and co._ the bracelet _by permission of messrs. t. agnew and sons._ fatidica _by permission of messrs. t. agnew and sons._ a bacchante _by permission of messrs. h. graves and co._ hit _by permission of the proprietors of the "art journal."_ egyptian slinger _by the kind permission of lord davey._ elisha and the shunamite's son _by the kind permission of mrs. dyson-perrins._ "... serenely wandering in a trance of sober thought" ii. landscapes, etc. garden at generalife, granada mimbar of the great mosque at damascus fountain in court at damascus the island of Ægina, pnyx in the foreground ruined mosque, broussa city of tombs, assiout, egypt athens, with the genoese tower, pnyx in foreground coast of asia minor seen from rhodes red mountains desert, cairo iii. portraits. portrait of the artist. (in the uffizi gallery, florence) portrait of the hon. mabel mills _by the kind permission of lady hillingdon._ portrait of captain (sir) richard burton portrait of signor costa portrait of the lady sybil primrose _by the kind permission of lord rosebery._ iv. studies and sketches. two early pencil studies scheme for a picture, "the plague in florence" study for a head--"the dead romeo" a pencil study a lemon tree. (a pencil study) byzantine well-head. (a pencil study) study for "the daphnephoria" study for "elijah in the wilderness" study for "captive andromache" (nude) study for a figure in "captive andromache" study for "andromache" study for "perseus and andromeda" study for a figure in "the bath of psyche" study for "solitude" study for a figure in "the return of persephone" study for "persephone" studies for the decoration of the ceiling of a music room cain and abel { } moses views the promised land { from dalziel's } samson and the lion { "bible gallery" } samson carrying off the gates { } _by permission of messrs. j. s. virtue and co. and the society for promoting christian knowledge._ "a contrast" a study in oils. (head of a girl, back view) head of a young girl. (a study in oils) _by the kind permission of lady hallé._ study of a head study of a head a study in oils. (head of a girl) v. frescoes, wall paintings, etc. two friezes--music, the dance decoration for the ceiling of a music room the industrial arts of war. (from the fresco at south kensington museum) the industrial arts of peace. (from the fresco at south kensington museum) cupid. (from a fresco) phoenicians bartering with britons. (panel in the royal exchange) vi. sculpture. an athlete struggling with a python. (bronze statue, from two points of view) study in clay for "cymon" study in clay for "the sluggard" study in clay for "perseus" study in clay for "andromeda" design for reverse of the jubilee medallion ( ) vii. lord leighton's house. in the inner hall. (from a photograph taken specially by mr. james hyatt) in the arab hall. (from a photograph by messrs. bedford, lemere, and co.) bookplate of lord leighton. (designed by r. anning bell) _with four exceptions all the reproductions are by the swan electric engraving company._ frederic lord leighton, p.r.a. list of dignities and honours conferred on frederic leighton. knighted, ; created a baronet, ; created baron leighton of stretton, ; elected associate of the royal academy, ; royal academician, ; president of the royal academy, ; hon. mem. royal scottish academy, and royal hibernian academy, associate of the institute of france, president of the international jury of painting, paris exhibition, ; hon. member, berlin academy, ; also member of the royal academy of vienna, , belgium, , of the academy of st. luke, rome, and the academies of florence ( ), turin, genoa, perugia, and antwerp ( ); hon. d.c.l., oxford, ; hon. ll.d., cambridge, ; hon. ll.d., edinburgh, ; hon. d.lit., dublin, ; hon. d.c.l., durham, ; hon. fellow of trinity college, london, ; lieut.-colonel of the th middlesex (artists') rifle volunteers, to (resigned); then hon. colonel and holder of the volunteer decoration; commander of the legion of honour, ; commander of the order of leopold; knight of the prussian order "pour le mérite," and of the coburg order dem verdienste. [illustration: portrait of the artist ( ) _painted for the uffizi gallery_] frederic lord leighton, p.r.a. an illustrated chronicle chapter i his early years to italy, at whose liberal well-head english art has so often renewed itself, we turn naturally for an opening to this chronicle of a great english artist's career. frederic leighton was the painter of our time who strove hardest to keep alive an italian ideal of beauty in london; therefore it is in italy, the italy of raphael and angelo and his favourite giotteschi, that we must seek the true beginnings of his art. london made its first acquaintance with him and his painting in , when the picture, _cimabue's madonna carried in procession through the streets of florence_, startled the royal academy, and proved that a 'prentice work could be in its way something of a masterpiece. this picture, the work of an unknown young artist of twenty-five, painted chiefly in rome, showed at once a new force and a new quality, and in its singular feeling for certain of the archaic italian schools, showed, too, where for the moment the sympathies of the painter really lay. how far the potentiality disclosed in it was developed during the forty years following, how far the ideals in art, which it seemed to declare, were pursued or departed from, the royal academy year by year is witness. here, before we turn to consider the history of those later years, we shall find it interesting to use this first picture as an index to that period of probation, which is so often the most interesting part of an artist's history. in accounting for it, and finding out the determining experiences of the artist's pupilage, we shall account, also, for much that came after. although frankfort and paris play their part, the formative influences of that early period, we shall find, carry us chiefly, and again and again, into italy. frederic leighton was born on the rd of december, , at scarborough, the son of a medical practitioner. his father, dr. frederic leighton, was also the son of a physician who was knighted for eminence in his profession. thus we have two generations of medicine and culture in the family; but there is no sign of art, or love for art, before the third. this generation produced three children, all devoted to the graphic arts and to music, of whom the boy, frederic was the eldest. a word or two more must be given to his forbears, on grounds of character and heredity, before we pass. sir james leighton, the grandfather, was physician to the court at st. petersburg, where he served in succession alexander the first, and nicholas, with whom he was on terms of considerable intimacy. his son, dr. frederic leighton, who promised to be a still more brilliant practioner, was educated at stonyhurst, but after taking his m.d. degree at edinburgh, just as he was rapidly acquiring the highest professional reputation, contracted a cold that led to a partial deafness. this made it impossible for him to go on practising with safety, and retiring to his study he turned from physical to metaphysical pursuits. in spite of his deafness, as severe an embargo on social reputation as can well be laid, dr. leighton is said to have been equally noted among his friends for his keen intellectual quality and his urbanity. to be the son of his father, then, counted for something in our hero's career. even in art, which dr. leighton did not care for particularly, the boy had very great opportunities. before he was ten years old, he went abroad with his mother, who was in ill health; and already he had shown such decided signs of the _furor pingendi_ during a chance visit to mr. lance's studio in paris, that it is without surprise that we hear of him in as taking drawing lessons from signor f. meli, at rome. during these early travels the boy's sketch books were full (we are told) of precociously clever things. the climacteric moment came early in his career. at florence, in , when he was fourteen, he delivered himself of a sort of boyish ultimatum to his father, who, after taking counsel of hiram powers, the american sculptor, wisely gave the boy his wish, and decided to let him be an artist. powers when asked, "shall i make him an artist?" exclaimed in no uncertain terms, "sir, you have no choice in the matter, he is one already;" and on further question, the father being anxious about the boy's possibilities, said, "he may become as eminent as he pleases." few art students of our time appear to have encountered more fortunate conditions, on the whole, than did frederic leighton in the years immediately following. the florentine school of fifty years ago, however, was not the best for a beginner. it was full of mannerisms, which a boy of that age was sure to pick up, and exaggerate on his own account. at that time bezzuoli and servolini were the great lights and directors of the academy of the fine arts, and they delighted, naturally, in so able and so apt a pupil; that he found it hard to shake off their teaching becomes evident later. those who had the good fortune at any time to have heard lord leighton describe his early wanderings in europe, must have been struck by the warmth of his tribute to johann eduard steinle, the frankfort master, who did more than any other to correct his style, and to decide the whole future bent of his art. steinle, whose name is barely known to us in england, was one of that remarkable school of painters, called familiarly "the nazarenes," because of their religious range of subjects, who were inspired originally by overbeck and pfühler. leighton in recent years described him as "an intensely fervent catholic;" a man of most striking personality, and of most courtly manners, whose influence upon younger men was fairly magnetic. in the case of this particular pupil, certainly, his intervention was of most powerful effect. religious in his methods, as well as in his sentiment of art, the florid insincerities and mannerisms of the florentine academy, as they were still to be seen in the young leighton's work, found in him an admirable chastener, but it took many years of painfully hard work, lasting until , to undo the evil wrought by decadent florence. prior to this fortunate intercourse with steinle, the student had an old acquaintance with frankfort, which, like florence, seemed destined to play a great part in his history. before going to florence, and deciding on his artistic career, in , he had been sent to school in frankfort. he returned there from florence to resume his general education, and on leaving at seventeen, went for a year to the städtelsches institut. [illustration: two early pencil studies] in he went to brussels, and worked there for a time without any master, painting the first picture that deserves to be remembered. characteristically enough, this depicted _cimabue finding giotto in the fields of florence_. the shepherd boy is engaged in drawing the figure of a lamb upon a smooth rock, using a piece of coal for pencil; an admirable and precocious piece of work. at the time it was first shown it was considered especially good in its harmonious and original colouring, nor did a sight of it in at the winter exhibition of the royal academy contradict the generous verdict of contemporary critics. at brussels he painted a portrait of himself, a notable thing of its kind, wherein we see a slight, dark youth, with a face of much charm and distinction, whose features one easily sees to be like those of later portraits. then, immediately before the return to frankfort, and the studying there, under steinle, leighton spent some months in paris, working in an atelier in the rue richer. the conditions of this most informal of life-schools were such as henri murger, who was alive and writing at the time, might have approved, but were hardly to be called educative in any higher sense. the only master that these bohemians could boast was a very invertebrate old artist, who seems to have been the soul of politeness and irresponsibility, and who accompanied every weak criticism with the deprecatory conclusion, "voilà mon opinion!" "m. voilà mon opinion!" is a type not unknown otherwhere than in that paris atelier. a fine alterative the student must have found the severe and stringent tonics that steinle prescribed immediately afterwards in frankfort. in the admirable monograph on "sir frederic leighton" by mrs. andrew lang, from which we have drawn on occasion in these pages, an interesting account is given of an exploit at darmstadt, in which the young artist took a chief part. an artists' festival was to be held there, and sir frederic and one of his fellow-students, signor gamba, took it into their heads to paint a picture for the occasion on the walls of an old ruined castle near the town. the design was speedily sketched after the most approved mediæval fashion, and no time was lost in executing the work. "the subject was a knight standing on the threshold of the castle, welcoming the guests, while in the centre of the picture was spring, receiving the representatives of the three arts, all of them caricatures of well-known figures. in one corner were the two young artists themselves, surveying the pageant. the schloss where this piece was painted is still in existence, and the grand duke has lately erected a wooden roof over the painting, to preserve it from destruction." before leaving frankfort, leighton had already interested steinle in his projected picture of _cimabue's madonna_, and the design for it was made under steinle's direction. under his direct influence, too, and inspired by boccaccio, another florentine picture--a cartoon of its great plague--was painted. in speaking of the dramatic treatment of its subject, mrs. lang describes "the contrast between the merry revellers on one side of the picture and the death-cart and its pile of corpses on the other, while in the centre is the link between the two--a terror-stricken woman attempting to escape with her baby from the pestilence-stricken city. we shall look in vain among the president's later works for any picture with a similar _motif_. in general he shared plato's opinion--that violent passions are unsuitable subjects for art; not so much because the sight of them is degrading, as because what is at once hideous and transitory in its nature should not be perpetuated." [illustration: scheme for a picture: the plague in florence] we have seen how the spirit and sentiment of italy continually remained by the artist in his german studio, and how in frankfort his artistic imagination returned again and again to florence, and to the early florentines of his particular adoration--cimabue and giotto. the recall to italy came inevitably, as steinle's teaching at last had fully worked its purpose. steinle himself counselled the move, and gave his favourite pupil an introduction to cornelius in rome. it was to rome, therefore, and not to florence, that the young artist went--to rome where sooner or later the steps of all men who work for art or for religion tend, and where so few stay. this was in , the year which was represented in the commemorative exhibition at burlington house by _a persian pedlar_, a small full-length figure of a man in oriental costume, seated cross-legged on a divan, with a long pipe in his hand. to belongs a _portrait of miss laing_ (lady nias), which was shown again at the same time. the rome of the mid-century was rome at its best, with much artistic stimulus of the present, as well as of the past. the english colony was particularly strong. thackeray was there, moving about after his wont in the studios and salons; the brownings were there, and in their prime. the young painter and his work, including the _cimabue's madonna_ in its earlier stages, made a great impression on thackeray, who turned prophet for once on the strength of it. on returning to london and meeting millais, he prophesied gaily to that ardent pre-raphaelite, then marching on from success to success: "millais! my boy, i have met in rome a versatile young dog called leighton, who will one of these days run you hard for the presidentship!" this was early days for such a rumour to reach the academy, who knew an older school, represented by landseer and eastlake, and a younger school, represented by millais and rossetti, but as yet knew not leighton. among the leading artists in rome at this time, beside cornelius, were the two french painters, bouguereau and gerome. to these, especially to bouguereau, who was a great believer in "scientific composition," leighton was, on his own testimony, largely indebted for his fine sense of form. yet another famous frenchman, robert fleury, whom he afterwards met in paris, may be mentioned here, since from him he learnt much in the way of colouring, and the technique of his art. turning from the painters to the poets, it was at rome that robert browning, who was at this time writing his "men and women," formed close acquaintance with the young artist. something of the atmosphere which permeates such poems as "bishop blougram's apology," "andrea del sarto," and others of the same series, seems to linger yet in the record of those early meetings of poets and painters, with all their associations: "the vatican, greek busts, venetian paintings, roman walls, and english books." one easily supposes browning speaking through his bishop blougram, as, it is said, he was heard to speak in those days in praise of correggio, to whose qualities, ruskin tells us, sir frederic leighton curiously approximates: "'twere pleasant could correggio's fleeting glow hang full in face of one where'er one roams, since he more than the others brings with him italy's self--the marvellous modenese!" italy's self, in truth, frederic leighton, like browning in poetry, did not fail to bring with him, and revived for us for many years, by his art and southern glow of colour, in the gray heart of london. [illustration: cimabue's madonna carried in procession through the streets of florence ( )] among other people whom leighton met in rome were george sand, mrs. kemble, george mason the painter, of _harvest moon_ fame, gibson the sculptor, and lord lyons. like robert browning, let us add, he was readily responsive to the quickening of his contemporaries, and vigorously studied the present in order that he might the better paint the past, and put live souls into the archaic raiment of cimabue and old florence. he was working hard all this while, with a devotion and concentration that impressed other friends beside thackeray, upon his picture of _cimabue's madonna_, which was exhibited in the academy of , and as the work of an unknown hand made a distinct sensation. it was discussed, angrily by some, delightedly by others. the criticism which rossetti, mr. ruskin, and other critics bestowed upon it in the press or in private correspondence[ ] will come more fitly into our later pages, when we turn to deal with contemporary opinions upon leighton's work. enough to say here that it won fame for the artist at a stroke. the queen bought it for £ , having bespoken it, i believe, before it left his studio, and hung it eventually in buckingham palace. with this encouraging first great success, the probationary stage of our artist's history may be said to close. chapter ii year by year-- to the academy of forty years ago was very different from that we know to-day. it was held in the left wing of the national gallery, and had not nearly so much space at its disposal as it has in its present quarters at burlington house. the exhibition of contained few pictures, compared with the multitudinous items of the present shows. generally speaking, the exhibition was of a heavier, more georgian aspect, in spite of certain pre-raphaelite experiments and other signs of the coming of a younger generation. sir charles eastlake was president. professor hart was delivering lectures to its students, full of academic, respectable intelligence, if little more; lectures which those who are curious may find reported in full in the "athenæum" of that time. more interesting was the appearance of mr. ruskin as commentator on the pictures of the academy in this year, the first in which he issued his characteristic "academy notes." his long, and, all things considered, remarkably appreciative criticism of the _cimabue's madonna_ we discuss elsewhere (p. ). of another picture of italy by a very different painter, which was considered a masterpiece by some critics, we find him speaking in terms of monition: "is it altogether too late to warn him that he is fast becoming nothing more than an academician?" the one picture of the year, according to mr. ruskin, was the _rescue_, by millais. "it is the only great picture exhibited this year," he writes, "but this is very great." for the rest, _a scene from as you like it_, by maclise; another shakespearean subject, the inevitable _lear and cordelia_, by herbert; and a _beatrice_ by the then president, and we have recalled everything that served to give the academy of that year its distinction in the eyes of contemporary critics. sir edwin landseer, who to the outer world was the one great fact in the art of the time, does not appear to have exhibited in . looking back now to that date, what one discerns chiefly is the emergence of the pre-raphaelites from the more conventional multitude that were taking up the artistic traditions of the first half of the century. millais, rossetti, holman hunt, and their associates, count to us, to-day, as the representatives of an earlier generation; in they still stood for all that was daring, unprecedented, and adventurous in their art. this newcomer, with his _cimabue's madonna_ in a new style, puzzled the critics considerably. they did not know quite how to allot him in their casual division of contemporary schools. "landseer and maclise we know; and millais and holman hunt; but who is leighton?" was the tenor of their commentary. meanwhile an event of great significance to english art in this year was happening--an exhibition of english pictures in paris, the first of its kind. this beginning of such international exchanges was important; it has led up to many striking modifications of both english and french schools since that date. it is curious that it should coincide with the awakening to certain other foreign influences: that of the early italian school upon the pre-raphaelites, and that of the later italian, popularly known as "the classic school," upon leighton and mr. g. f. watts. of this exhibition of english pictures, which was held in the avenue montaigne, m. ernest chesneau, a critic very sympathetic to english art, tells us, in his admirable book on the "english school of painting," that "for the french it was a revelation of a style and a school of the very existence of which they had hitherto had no idea; and whether owing to its novelty, or the surprise it occasioned, or, indeed, to its real merit, whatever may have been the true cause, most certain it is that the english, until then little thought of and almost unknown abroad, obtained in france a great success." m. chesneau, in going on to account further for the great impression made by the english painters in paris, attributes it largely to the _singularity_ which, for foreign eyes, marks their work. it is curious, indeed, that french critics, and m. chesneau among them, really admire this singularity, which they count distinctively british. they look for it in our pictures, and if they do not find it--as in the work of leighton--they feel aggrieved. british eccentricity, whether thinking its way with the aid of genius into "pre-raphaelitism," or now again, with the aid of extreme cleverness and talent, into certain cruder forms of "impressionism," is sure of its effect. but an art like leighton's, whose aim is beauty and not eccentricity, is apt to be slighted by both french and english critics, with some notable exceptions. not all its grace, its classic quality, its beauty of line and distinction of treatment, avail it, when it comes into conflict with doctrinaire theories on the one hand, and a love for mere sensationalism on the other. [illustration: the dead romeo a pencil study] the success of his picture at the academy, and the incidental lionizing of a season, did not tempt the artist to stay long in london, and he went to paris, where he settled himself in a studio and proceeded to complete his _triumph of music_, and other pictures begun in rome. by this time the painter's method might seem assured, but paris was still able to add something to his style, with the aid of such masters as fleury. english critics, who expected _the triumph of music_ to sustain the reputation won by _cimabue's madonna_, were disappointed--partly because orpheus was represented as playing a violin, in place of the traditional lyre. to those who will examine and compare them more carefully, there is no such discrepancy. _the triumph of music: orpheus by the power of his art redeems his wife from hades_, which is every whit as distinctive a performance as the _cimabue's madonna_ (as indeed it was conceived and painted largely under the same conditions), was nevertheless not a popular success. certainly, it marks, as clearly as anything can, the sense of colour, the sense of form, the draughtsmanship, the immensely cultured eye and hand, first discovered to the english critics by its predecessor. it was sold after the painter's death. of certain other works painted in , , and , some of which never found their way to the academy, little need be said. to this period belong two pictures painted in paris, the one, _pan_ under a fig-tree, with a quotation from keats's "endymion": "o thou, to whom broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom their ripened heritage," and the other, a pendant to it, _a nymph and cupid_. _salome, the daughter of herodias_, painted in , but apparently not exhibited at the academy, represents a small full-length figure in white drapery, with her arms above her head, which is crowned with flowers; behind her stands a female musician. another, shown in at the royal academy, and again in the retrospective exhibition, was first entitled _the fisherman and syren_, and afterwards _the mermaid_; it is a composition of two small full-length figures, a mermaid clasping a fisherman round the neck. the subject is taken from a ballad by goethe: "half drew she him, half sunk he in, and never more was seen." in the same year was a painting inspired by "romeo and juliet," entitled _count paris, accompanied by friar laurence, comes to the house of the capulets to claim his bride; he finds juliet stretched, apparently lifeless, on the bed_. the picture shows, in addition to the figures named in its former title, the father and mother of juliet bending over their daughter's body, and through an opening beyond numerous figures at the foot of the staircase. the latter year marked the painter's return to london, where he entered more actively into its artistic life than he had done hitherto, and made closer acquaintance with the pre-raphaelites, who were already entering upon their second and maturer stage. to take rossetti: it was in that he made those five notable designs to illustrate "poems by alfred tennyson," which moxon and co. published in the following year; an event that, for the first time, really introduced him to the public at large. to , again, belongs rossetti's _blue closet_ and _damsel of the sangrael_, both painted for mr. w. morris. and in and , the famous and hapless distemper pictures on the walls of the union debating society's room at oxford, were engaging rossetti and his associates, including burne-jones, william morris, mr. val. prinsep, mr. arthur hughes, and mr. spencer stanhope. [illustration: a pencil study] it was in the summer of , mr. f. g. stephens tells us, that the original hogarth club was founded, of which the two rossettis were prominent instigators,--one of the most notable of the many protestant societies that have sprung up at different times from a slightly anti-academic bias. it is interesting to find that leighton's famous _lemon tree_ drawing in silverpoint was exhibited here. the hogarth club held its meetings at , piccadilly, in the first instance; removed afterwards to , waterloo place, pall mall, and finally dissolved, in , after existing for four seasons. to speak of other painters more or less associated with rossetti and his school, mr. holman hunt, whose _light of the world_ had greatly struck paris in , exhibited his _scapegoat_ at the academy of , a picture which called from mr. ruskin immense praise, and a characteristic protest: "i pray him to paint a few pictures with less feeling in them, and more handling." of millais we have already spoken. in he exhibited _the child of the regiment_, _peace concluded_, and _autumn leaves_. in leighton showed three pictures at the academy. one, _a roman lady_ (then called _la nanna_), a half-length black-haired figure, facing the spectator, in italian costume; another, now called _nanna_, then entitled _pavonia_, a half-length figure of a girl in italian costume, with peacock's feathers in the background; and _sunny hours_, which seems to have escaped record so far. the same year saw another of his pictures, _samson and delilah_, exhibited at suffolk street. we must not pass by the famous _study of a lemon tree_ (now at oxford), mentioned above, without quoting the praise by mr. ruskin, which made it famous. mr. ruskin couples it with another drawing, both of which we have been fortunately able to reproduce in our pages. these "two perfect early drawings," he writes, "are of _a lemon tree_, and another of the same date, of _a byzantine well_, which determine for you without appeal, the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. of all our present masters sir frederic leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of correggio than any seen since correggio's time. but you see by what precision of terminal outline he at first restrained, and exalted, his gift of beautiful _vaghezza_." the _lemon tree_ study, let us add, was drawn at capri in the spring of . here, and elsewhere in the south of europe, whither the artist returned, escaping from london at every opportunity, many other notable studies and drawings were made during this period. some of these were employed long since for the backgrounds of pictures familiar to us all. others, faithful studies of nature, small oil and water-colour drawings, chiefly landscape, were scarce known to the general public during the painter's life, but were eagerly competed for at the sale of his pictures in july, . the little picture of _capri at sunrise_ was hung in the academy of , the painter's only contribution of that year. in the year following, we find another small picture of capri, together with five others, some of which played their part in winning for the artist his wider recognition. [illustration: a lemon tree a pencil study] [illustration: byzantine well head a pencil study] meanwhile, the artist was drawing his london ties closer. in he took up his abode at , orme square, where he continued to reside until he built his famous house in holland park road, some years later. his art did not for this reason become more like london, or more infected with that british singularity which some critics would seem to demand. on the contrary, italy and the south, the glow of colour, the perfection of form, the plastic exquisiteness, which mark for us his mature performances, and which follow after classic ideals, were more and more clearly to be discerned in the remarkable cycle of pictures associated with this part of his career. in he painted portraits of his sister, _mrs. sutherland orr_, and of _mr. john hanson walker_, the former shown at the academy, where also hung _paolo e francesca_, _a dream_, _lieder ohne worte_, _j. a.--a study_, and _capri--paganos_. rossetti, writing of this exhibition, says: "leighton might, as you say, have made a burst had not his pictures been ill-placed mostly--indeed, one of them (the only very good one, _lieder ohne worte_) is the only instance of very striking unfairness in the place."[ ] in there were no fewer than six of the artist's pictures at the may exhibition of the academy: the _odalisque_, a very popular work, shows a draped female figure, in a very leightonesque pose, with her arm above her head, leaning against a wall by the water. she holds a peacock's feather screen in her left hand, while a swan in the water at her feet cranes its head upwards towards her; _michael angelo nursing his dying servant_, a group of two three-quarter length figures; the servant reclining in an armchair with his head resting against the shoulder of michael angelo--a fairly powerful but somewhat academic version of the incident--which looks at first glance like the work of a not very important "old master;" _the star of bethlehem_, showing one of the magi on the terrace of his house looking at the strange star in the east, while below are indications of a revel he has just left. _duett_, _sisters_, _sea echoes_, and _rustic music_, also belong to this year. in he showed _eucharis_, a half-length figure of a white-robed girl, with a basket of fruit on her head; _jezebel and ahab_; _a cross-bow man_; and _a girl feeding peacocks_; with these we complete the list of his work as an outsider. [illustration: golden hours ( )] chapter iii year by year-- to in leighton was made an associate of the royal academy. to its summer exhibition he contributed three pictures, showing great and various power in their composition. _dante at verona_, _orpheus and eurydice_, and _golden hours_. the first of these, one of the most remarkable pictures of our modern english school, in which "dante" appears, is a large work, with figures something less than life-size. it illustrates the verses in the "paradiso": "thou shalt prove how salt the savour is of others' bread; how hard the passage, to descend and climb by others' stairs. but that shall gall thee most will be the worthless and vile company with whom thou must be thrown into the straits, for all ungrateful, impious all and mad shall turn against thee." "dante, in fulfilment of this prophecy, is seen descending the palace stairs of the can grande, at verona, during his exile. he is dressed in sober grey and drab clothes, and contrasts strongly in his ascetic and suffering aspect with the gay revellers about him. the people are preparing for a festival, and splendidly and fantastically robed, some bringing wreaths of flowers. bowing with mock reverence, a jester gibes at dante. an indolent sentinel is seated at the porch, and looks on unconcernedly, his spear lying across his breast. a young man, probably acquainted with the writing of dante, sympathises with him. in the centre and just before the feet of dante, is a beautiful child, brilliantly dressed and crowned with flowers, and dragging along the floor a garland of bay leaves and flowers, while looking earnestly and innocently in the poet's face. next come a pair of lovers, the lady looking at dante with attention, the man heedless. the last wears a vest embroidered with eyes like those in a peacock's tail. a priest and a noble descend the stairs behind, jeering at dante."[ ] it was the _golden hours_ which, though perhaps less memorable and imaginative than the others, won the greatest popular success of the three, a success beyond anything that the artist had so far painted. as this picture is here reproduced, description is needless, except so far as regards the colour of the background, which is literally golden. the dress of the lady who leans upon the spinet is white, embroidered with flowers. the _orpheus and eurydice_ showed that the old friendship, formed originally in rome, between the painter and robert browning, was maintained. some of the poet's lines served as a text for the picture; and as they are little known we repeat them here: "but give them me--the mouth, the eyes, the brow-- let them once more absorb me! one look now will lap me round for ever, not to pass out of its light, though darkness lie beyond. hold me but safe again within the bond of one immortal look! all woe that was, forgotten, and all terror that may be, defied,--no past is mine, no future! look at me!" [illustration: helen of troy ( ) _by permission of messrs. henry graves and co._] [illustration: orpheus and eurydice ( )] to this year, also, belongs a portrait of _the late miss lavinia i'anson_, a circular panel showing the sky for background. this was exhibited again in the winter academy of . in the artist showed once again his eclectic sympathies, by the variety of the subject-pictures that he sent to the academy, ranging from _david_ to _helen of troy_. in his tenderly conceived _david_, the psalmist is seen gazing at two doves in the sky above; he, sunk in a profound reverie, is seated upon a house-top overlooking some neighbouring hills. the whole is large in its handling and treatment, and in the simplicity of its drapery recalls several of the famous illustrations the artist contributed to dalziel's bible gallery. it was exhibited with the quotation, "oh, that i had wings like a dove! for then would i fly away and be at rest." with the delightful _helen of troy_ we are recalled to the third book of the iliad, when iris bids helen go and see the general truce made pending the duel between paris and menelaus, of which she is to be the prize. so helen, having summoned her maids and "shadowed her graces with white veils," rose and passed along the ramparts of troy. in the picture the light falls on her shoulders and her hair, while her face and the whole of the front of her form are shadowed over, with somewhat mystical effect. to the same year belongs _in st. mark's_, a picture of a lady with a child in her arms leaving the church, a lovely and finished study of colour; _the widow's prayer_; and _mother and child_, a graceful reminder of a gentler world than helen's. in the critics had at last a work which seemed to them to follow the lines of the _cimabue's madonna_. this was the radiant and lovely picture of the _syracusan bride leading wild beasts in procession to the temple of diana_. the composition of this remarkable painting deserves to be closely studied, for it is very characteristic of sir frederic leighton's theories of art, and his conviction of the necessarily decorative effect of such works. a terrace of white marble, whose line is reflected and repeated by the line of white clouds in the sky painting above, affords the figures of the procession a delightful setting. the syracusan bride leads a lioness, and these are followed by a train of maidens and wild beasts, the last reduced to a pictorial seemliness and decorative calm, very fortunate under the circumstances. the procession is seen approaching the door of the temple, and a statue of diana serves as a last note in the ideal harmonies of form and colour to which the whole is attuned. as compared with the _cimabue's madonna_, it is a more finished piece of work, and the handling throughout is more assured. it was as much an advance, technically, upon that, as the _daphnephoria_, which crowned the artist's third decade, was upon this. according to popular report, it was this picture of the _syracusan bride_ which decided his future election as a full member of the academy; but as a matter of fact, it was in that this election took place. the picture, let us add, was suggested to the painter by a passage in the second idyll of theocritus: "and for her then many other wild beasts were going in procession round about, and among them a lioness." _the painter's honeymoon_ and a _portrait of mrs. james guthrie_ were also exhibited this year; and the wall-painting of _the wise and foolish virgins_, at lyndhurst, in the new forest, was executed during the summer. [illustration: venus disrobing for the bath ( )] [illustration: electra at the tomb of agamemnon ( )] in its next exhibition, that of , the academy held five pictures by the artist, including the delightful _pastoral_, two small full-length figures standing in a landscape of a shepherd and a girl--whom he is teaching to play the pipes. this again might be considered a painter's translation from theocritus, and the _venus disrobing for the bath_, one of the most debated of all the artist's paintings of the nude. the paleness of the flesh-tint of this venus aroused a criticism which has often been urged against his pictures--that such a hue was not in nature. in imparting an ideal effect to an ideal subject, leighton always, however, followed his own conviction--that art has a law of its own, and a harmony of colour and form, derived and selected no doubt from natural loveliness, but not to be referred too closely to the natural, or to the average, in these things. to the academy leighton contributed another biblical theme, _jonathan's token to david_. with this were four others, as widely varying in subject and conception as need be desired. one was a very charming portrait of a very pretty woman, _mrs. frederick p. cockerell_. then follow three more in that cycle of classic subjects, of which the painter never tired. the full title of the first runs, _ariadne abandoned by theseus: ariadne watches for his return: artemis releases her by death_. in it the figure of ariadne, clothed in white drapery, is seen lying on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea. _acme and septimius_ is a circular picture, with two small full-length figures reclining on a marble bench. this extract from sir theodore martin's translation of catullus was appended to its title in the catalogue: "then bending gently back her head, with that sweet mouth so rosy red, upon his eyes she dropped a kiss, intoxicating him with bliss." a love song on canvas, a pictorial transcript from catullus, it was perhaps the most popular picture of the year. the last of the three was _actæa, the nymph of the shore_. it represents a small full-length nude figure lying on white drapery by the sea-shore. actæa is a lovely figure, full of that grace which leighton so well knew how to impart to his idealized figures. after this year, at any rate, there could be no longer any doubt but that the artist's power really lay in the creation of ideal forms; whether presented in monomime or combined in poetic and decorative groups, called up from the wonderful limbo of classic myth and history. with came _electra at the tomb of agamemnon_, a memorable picture, full of characteristic effects of colour and composition, and a notable exercise in the grand style. this work, considered from any side, must be seen to be the outcome of a unique faculty, so unprecedented in english art as to run every risk of misconception that native predilections could impose upon those who stopped to criticise it. the figure of electra clad in black drapery offered a problem of peculiar difficulty. another painting shown this year was _dædalus and icarus_, a strikingly conceived picture. the two figures are singularly noble conceptions of the idealized nude; the drapery at the back of icarus is typical of the painter in every fold, while the landscape seen far below the stone platform on which the figures stand, shows a bay of the blue Ægean sea in full sidelight, with a lovely glimpse of the white walls of a distant town. the same exhibition of saw, also, the vigorously painted diploma picture, _st. jerome_, which marked his election as r.a. in it the saint, nude to the waist, kneels with uplifted arms at the foot of a crucifix, his lion seen in the background. _helios and rhodos_, another painting exhibited at the same time, shows helios descending from his chariot, which is in a cloud above, to embrace the nymph rhodos, who has risen from the sea. [illustration: dÆdalus and icarus ( )] [illustration: st. jerome ( )] chapter iv year by year-- to sundry journeys into the east during this period of leighton's career, gave him new subject-matter, new tints to his palette, and added something of an oriental fantasy to the classic sentiment of his art. the sketches of damascus and other time-honoured eastern cities, mosques, gardens, and courtyards, which figured largely among sir frederic's studies, were made for the most part in the autumn of . previously, as early as , the east had cast its spell upon him. in , he went into egypt, and made a voyage up the nile with m. de lesseps, then at the flood of good-fortune. the khedive himself provided the steamer for this adventure. "it was during this voyage," we are told, "that sir frederic came across a small child with the strangest and most limited idea of full dress that probably ever occurred to mortal--a tiny coin strung on to one of her strong coarse hairs." of the studies made during the journey, one is a woman's head, draped so as to have a singularly archaic and sphinx-like effect. another is the fine profile of a young peasant; and yet another, the head of an old man, simple-minded and philosophical. [illustration: garden at generalife, granada] [illustration: mimbar of the great mosque at damascus (since destroyed by fire)] in the _helios and rhodos_, already mentioned, served as the first sign to the public of the new r.a.'s interest in things oriental. to the exhibition, his only contribution was the picture, _a nile woman_, which is now owned by the princess of wales. it is a small full-length figure of a girl, balancing an empty pitcher upon her head, at the time of moonrise. anticipating the eastern subjects which future years produced, we may note a picture of _old damascus_, showing the jews' quarter in that fabled city, in all its motley picturesqueness, and the delightful _moorish garden,--a dream of granada_, which were exhibited in . a powerful picture, shown in , of the _egyptian slinger_,[ ] is illustrated later in this volume, but no reproduction can quite suggest the striking colouring of the original, and the masterly treatment of its light and shade, in the presentment of this lonely figure posed high on its platform against the clear evening sky. the delightful _little fatima_, and the _grand mosque, damascus_, enlarged from the sketch previously alluded to, were also exhibited in . but perhaps the most picturesque memorial of the east due to the artist's wanderings of these years, is an architectural, and not a pictorial one. the fame of the arab hall in lord leighton's house has reached even further than that of _little fatima_, or his painting of the _grand mosque at damascus_. built originally to provide a setting for some exquisite blue tiles, brought by the owner from damascus itself, it remains the most perfect representation of an oriental interior to be found in london; but this again belongs to a later period, and we must return to the date whence this chronicle was interrupted. before doing so, however, it may be noted that in began the famous winter exhibitions of old masters and deceased british artists, of which leighton was one of the most active supporters. in the may exhibition of the royal academy, , was hung a notable canvas, _greek girls picking up pebbles by the sea_, described at the time as "a delightful composition, comprising figures of almost exhaustless grace, and wealth of beauty in design and colour." another painting, also shown there, _cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline_, is a charming example of its kind. the philosopher, with a scroll on his lap, sits on a cushioned bench with his young daughter by his side, his earnest action in delightful contrast with her girlish grace. but his great work in was _hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis_. the scene of this profound tragedy is on the sea-shore, where the body of alcestis, robed in white, lies under the branches of trees in the centre of the picture. on the left is a group of mourners, a seated girl and a woman prostrate in grief. on the right are the two struggling figures; hercules' superb form and tossing lion-skin contrasting finely, both in action and colouring, with the tall and coldly grey-robed spectre of death, who presses forward to the bed where alcestis lies, whence he is thrust back by the mighty hercules. the exquisite figure of alcestis with her statuesquely draped robes and their pure and delicate colouring, forms a wonderful contrast to the two strenuous figures on the right, while the figures of the mourners on the left are delightfully posed and full of grace. in july of this year, it is interesting to remember, appeared browning's "balaustion's adventure," which contained the following tribute to the above picture and its painter: "i know, too, a great kaunian painter, strong as herakles, though rosy with a robe of grace that softens down the sinewy strength: and he has made a picture of it all. there lies alkestis dead, beneath the sun, she longed to look her last upon, beside the sea, which somehow tempts the life in us to come trip over its white waste of waves, and try escape from earth, and fleet as free. behind the body i suppose there bends old pheres in his hoary impotence; and women-wailers, in a corner crouch --four, beautiful as you four,--yes, indeed! close, each to other, agonizing all, as fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy, to two contending opposite. there strains the might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match, --death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like the envenomed substance that exudes some dew, whereby the merely honest flesh and blood will fester up and run to ruin straight, ere they can close with, clasp and overcome, the poisonous impalpability that simulates a form beneath the flow of those grey garments; i pronounce that piece worthy to set up in our poikilé!" [illustration: hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis ( )] [illustration: summer moon ( ) _by permission of messrs. p. and d. colnaghi and co._] to belongs the _summer moon_, one of the loveliest things ever shown at the academy, a picture full of that rarer feeling for light and colour, which the artist achieved again and again in his treatment of sunset, twilight, and night effects. _after vespers_, exhibited the same year, is a three-quarter length figure of a girl in a green robe standing in front of a bench, holding in her right hand a string of beads. this year's academy held also _a condottiere_, the noble figure of a man in armour, now in the birmingham municipal gallery, and a portrait of the _right hon. edward ryan_. hardly less memorable was _moretta_, exhibited in the academy of , in the words of a critic of the day, "one of the most subtle and fortunate productions of the painter." _moretta_ is robed in green, with masses of loosely arranged hair, and a tender and delicate face. _weaving the wreath_, shown the same year (and again in the guildhall, ), is a very charming figure of quite a young girl seated on a carpet upon a raised step at the foot of a building. behind her is a bas-relief, against which her head, crowned by a chaplet of flowers, tells out with sculpturesque effect; the sharp, vertical line of thread strained between her hands, and thence in diagonal line to the ball at her feet, is curiously rigid, and by contrast makes the draperies across which it is silhouetted appear still more mobile. we are passing over, deliberately, the artist's decorative masterpieces of this period,--the south kensington frescoes to wit; of which the _arts of war_ belongs to the year , and its companion, _arts of peace_, to . these works will be found treated at length in a later chapter on the artist's decorative work (pp. , ). in the academy of appeared four pictures, the most important being the heroic painting,--_clytemnestra from the battlements of argos watches for the beacon-fires which are to announce the return of agamemnon_. in this picture, the figure of clytemnestra is seen standing erect, with hands folded, supporting the drapery that clothes a majestic form. for further description, we may be content to quote that given at the time in the appreciative art columns of the "athenæum:" "there is the grandeur of greek tragedy in mr. leighton's _clytemnestra_ watching for the signal of her husband's return from troy. the time is deep in the fateful night, while the city sleeps; moonlight floods the walls, the roofs, the gates, and the towers with a ghastly glare, which seems presageful, and casts shadows as dark as they are mysterious and terrible. the dense blue of the sky is dim, sad, and ominous. but the most ominous and impressive element of the picture is a grim figure, the tall woman on the palace roof before us, who looks titanic in her stateliness, and huge beyond humanity in the voluminous white drapery that wraps her limbs and bosom. her hands are clenched and her arms thrust down straight and rigidly, each finger locked as in a struggle to strangle its fellow; the muscles swell on the bulky limbs. drawn erect and with set features, which are so pale that the moonlight could not make them paler, the queen stares fixedly and yet eagerly into the distance, as if she had the will to look over the very edge of the world for the light to come." [illustration: the juggling girl ( )] [illustration: a condottiere ( ) _by permission of the corporation of birmingham_] another picture this year was the _moorish garden--a dream of granada_, a delightful little canvas, almost square. in the foreground is a young girl carrying copper vessels, and followed by two peacocks; the background is obviously taken from the study of a garden at generalife (reproduced at p. ); the _antique juggling girl_ and _old damascus: the jews' quarter_, were also in the academy of . to belongs the _egyptian slinger_, a picture which, as we shall see later, provoked severe censure from mr. ruskin. as exhibited it differed much from its present state. not only was the sky of deeper violet, but almost in silhouette against the moon, on another raised platform, stood a draped female figure, afterwards painted out entirely. other works shown this year were _little fatima_, a small half-length figure of a little girl in eastern costume, seen against a dark background; and a _portion of the interior of the grand mosque at damascus_ (reproduced at p. ). as the building it depicts has since been burnt down, the fine transcript has an added interest. we are come now to a year which, even beyond other years of activity, displayed the artist's characteristic energy: . in the academy of that year, with the _daphnephoria_, leighton once more chose a great classic theme, for a painting which, by its composition, reminded the critics and lovers of art of the artist's early triumph with the _cimabue's madonna_, and of his other great processional picture, the _syracusan bride_. of all his works in this class, there is no doubt that the _daphnephoria_ is the most technically complete. the procession is seen defiling along a terrace backed by trees through which the clear southern sky gleams. a youth carrying the symbolic olive bough, called the kopo, adorned with its curious emblems, leads the procession. he is clad in purple robes and crowned with leaves. the youthful priest, known as the daphnephoros (the laurel-bearer) follows, clothed in white raiment. he is similarly crowned, and carries a slim laurel stem. then come three boys, in scanty red and green draperies, which serve only to emphasize the beauty of their almost naked forms, the middle and tallest one bearing aloft a draped trophy of golden armour. these are seen to be pausing while the leader of the chorus, a tall, finely modelled man, whose back is turned, is giving directions to the chorus with uplifted right hand; in his left hand is a lyre, and the left arm from the elbow is characteristically draped. the first row of the chorus is composed of five children, clothed in purple, crowned with flowers; two rows of maidens, in blue and white, come next; and these in turn are succeeded by some boys with cymbals. the interest of the passing procession is very much enhanced by the effect produced on two lovely bystanders,--a girl and child in blue, beautifully designed, who are drawing water in the left foreground. in the valley below is seen the town of thebes. [illustration: the daphnephoria ( ) _by permission of the fine art society._] [illustration: study for "the daphnephoria"] with the painter's reading of the _daphnephoria_ it may be interesting to compare another account of this splendid religious function. at this festival in honour of apollo, celebrated every ninth year by the boeotians, it was usual, says pleasant lempriere, "to adorn an olive bough with garlands of laurel and other flowers, and place on the top a brazen globe, from which were suspended smaller ones. in the middle was placed a number of crowns, and a globe of inferior size, and the bottom was adorned with a saffron-coloured garment. the globe on the top represented the sun, or apollo; that in the middle was an emblem of the moon, and the others of the stars. the crowns, which were in number, represented the sun's annual revolution. this bough was carried in solemn procession by a beautiful youth of an illustrious family, whose parents were both living. he was dressed in rich garments which reached to the ground, his hair hung loose and dishevelled, his head was covered with a golden crown, and he wore on his feet shoes called _iphricatidæ_, from iphricates, an athenian who first invented them. he was called daphnêphoros, 'laurel-bearer,' and at that time he executed the office of priest of apollo. he was preceded by one of his nearest relations, bearing a rod adorned with garlands, and behind him followed a train of virgins with branches in their hands. in this order the procession advanced as far as the temple of apollo, surnamed ismenius, where supplicatory hymns were sung to the god."[ ] in the academy hung also the striking portrait, _captain richard burton, h.m.'s consul at trieste_; and two very characteristic single figures, _teresina_ and _paolo_. the portrait of captain burton has been fairly described as masterly. "there is no attempt," said one critic, "at posing or picturesqueness in the portrait. it is the head of a man who is lean and rugged and brown, but the face is full of character, and every line tells. it is painted in the same strong and bold, and yet careful, way that distinguishes the head of signor costa, painted three years later." the next year saw leighton's first appearance as a sculptor. it was at the academy of that he exhibited the well-known, vigorously designed and wrought _athlete struggling with a python_.[ ] this adventure of the r.a. into a new field proved so successful, that the _athlete_ took rank as the most striking piece of sculpture of that year. "in this work," said a friendly critic, "mr. leighton has attempted to succeed in a truly antique way. we are bound to admit that he has done wisely, bravely, and successfully." the statue was bought, we may add, for £ , , as the first purchase made by the trustees of the chantrey fund, and is now in the tate gallery at millbank. it was afterwards repeated in marble, by the artist's own hand, for the danish museum at copenhagen. still more popular was his _music lesson_, another work in the same exhibition. to realize the full charm of this picture, one must see the original; for much depends upon the beauty of its colouring. imagine a classical marble hall, marble floor, marble walls, in black and white, and red--deep red--marble pillars; and sitting there, sumptuously attired, but bare-footed, two fair-haired girls, who serve for pupil and music-mistress. the elder is showing the younger how to finger a lyre, of exquisite design and finish; and the expression on their faces is charmingly true, while the colours that they contribute to the composition,--the pale blue of the child's dress, the pale flesh tints, the pale yellow hair, and the white and gold of the elder girl's loose robe, and the rich auburn of her hair,--are most harmonious. a bit of scarlet pomegranate blossom, lying on the marble ground, gives the last high note of colour to the picture. two other pictures of must not be omitted. _study_ shows us a little girl (the present lady orkney), in eastern garb, diligently reading a sheet of music which lies before her on a little desk. there is great charm in the simple grace of the picture and in the softly brilliant colouring of the child's costume. very delightful, too, is the portrait of _miss mabel mills_ (now the hon. mrs. grenfell), habited in black velvet, and a large dark hat with coloured feathers, set against a grey background, a picture here reproduced. _a study_, _an italian girl_, and a _portrait of h. e. gordon_, were all three shown at the grosvenor gallery the same year. [illustration: portrait of the hon. mabel mills ( )] [illustration: portrait of captain richard burton ( )] another picture, in which a simple theme is treated in a classic fashion--not dissimilar to that employed for the _music lesson_--is _winding the skein_, a lovely painting exhibited at the academy in . in this we see two greek maidens as naturally employed as we often see english girls in other surroundings. this idealization of a familiar occupation--so that it is lifted out of a local and casual sphere, into the permanent sphere of classic art, is characteristic of the whole of leighton's work. he, like sir l. alma-tadema and albert moore, contrived also to preserve a certain modern contemporary feeling in the classic presentment of his themes. he was never archaic; so that the classic scenarium of his subjects, in his hands, appears as little antiquarian as a mediæval environment, shall we say, in the hands of browning. _nausicaa_, a full-length girlish figure, in green and white draperies, standing in a doorway, and _serafina_, another single figure, and _a study_, were also shown the same year. at the grosvenor gallery were a _portrait of miss ruth stewart hodgson_, a demure little damsel in outdoor attire, and a _study of a girl's head_, full face. [illustration: nausicaa ( )] [illustration: study for "elijah and the angel"] chapter v year by year-- to on november th, , frederic leighton was elected president of the royal academy, in succession to sir francis grant, and immediately received the honour of knighthood. in leighton sent eight contributions to the academy, not one of which, with the possible exception of the _elijah_, perhaps, has been counted among his masterpieces. four of them belong to that group of ideal figure paintings which almost constitute a _genre_ in themselves: _biondina_, _catarina_, _amarilla_, and _neruccia_, a girl with a red flower in her hair, in white dress, against a dark background. the finely austere _elijah in the wilderness_ was an addition to the notable group of scriptural paintings. in this picture the nude figure of the prophet is seen reclining on a rock, with head and arms thrown back, while beside him stands an angel holding bread and water. the striking and powerful _portrait of professor costa_, the _portrait of the countess brownlow_, and a portrait study, completed the list of the year's contributions, the largest number ever sent in by leighton, before his election or afterward. this year ten of his landscape-studies in oil were exhibited at the grosvenor gallery. it may be thought by the outsider that the coveted office of the president of the royal academy of arts is, in a way, an ornamental one,--some such golden sinecure as that of the old high chamberlains. nothing could be more mistaken. "not everybody," wrote the late mr. underhill, who for some time, as private secretary to sir frederic leighton, had special opportunities of knowing, "is aware of the tax upon a man's time and energy that is involved in the acceptance of the office in question. the post is a peculiar one, and requires a combination of talents not frequently to be found, inasmuch as it demands an established standing as a painter, together with great urbanity and considerable social position. the inroads which the occupancy of the office makes upon an artist's time are very considerable. there is, on the average, at least one council meeting for every three weeks throughout the whole of the year. there are from time to time general assemblies for the election of new members and for other purposes, over which the president is bound, of course, to preside. for ten days or a fortnight in every april he has to be in attendance with the council daily at burlington house, for the purpose of selecting the pictures which are to be hung in the spring exhibition. he has to preside over the banquet which yearly precedes the opening of the academy, and he has to act as host at the annual conversazione. finally, it is his duty every other year to deliver a long, elaborate, and carefully prepared 'discourse' upon matters connected with art, to the students who are for that purpose assembled. it is a post of much honour and small profit." [illustration: sister's kiss ( ) _by permission of the fine art society_] [illustration: portrait of signor costa ( )] in filling this post, and neglecting no one of its smallest offices and endless small courtesies, an artist had needs be without the characteristic artist's defects of hesitation and delay; and in fact, lord leighton mastered, as much as any statesman of our time, the indispensable secret of despatch. we quote from mr. underhill again: "to administer the affairs of the academy, to fulfil a round of social semi-public and public engagements, and to paint pictures which invariably reach a high level of excellence, would of course be impossible--even to sir frederic leighton--were it not for the fact that he makes the very most of the time at his disposal. 'that's the secret,' remarked a distinguished member of the academy to the present writer some little time before the president's death; 'sir frederic knows exactly how long it will take to do a certain thing, and he apportions his time accordingly.' this being the case, no one will be surprised to learn that he attached the greatest importance to punctuality. he himself never failed to keep an appointment at the exact moment fixed upon, and he expected, of course, similar punctuality on the part of others. the stroke of eight from the academy clock was the signal for sir frederic to enter the council room at burlington house, and to open the deliberations of the body over which he presided. 'they will never again get a man to devote so much time and energy to the business of the academy,' said sir frederic leighton's most distinguished colleague shortly before his death; 'never again.'" and since that time the same tribute has been paid ungrudgingly in public and private often enough. in , we are tempted by five canvases; of which the _sister's kiss_ and _psamathe_, are perhaps the most important. the former turns a garden wall to delightful account, in its picture of a child, who is seated upon it, and of her charmingly drawn elder sister, who gives the kiss. the composition of this picture may be seen in our reproduction, but the colour of the bronze green robe--of singular beauty--is of course not even suggested. more classic, perhaps, and not less picturesque, is the greek maiden, psamathe, who was, if we remember aright, one of the nereides. the artist has painted her sitting by the seashore, gazing over the Ægean, with her back turned to the spectator. filmy garments, which have slipped from her shoulders on to the sand; arms folded about her knees; every detail of the picture carries out the effect of dreamy loveliness that pervades psamathe and her surroundings. _iostephane_ is a three-quarter length figure, less than life size, of a girl in light yellow drapery, with violets in her fair hair, who stands facing the spectator and arranging her draperies over her right arm; there are marble columns and a fountain in the background. _the light of the harem_ is a version of one of the groups in the fresco of _the industrial arts of peace_ at south kensington. the picture now known as the _nymph of the dargle_ was also exhibited this year under the title of _crenaia_. it represents a small full-length figure facing the spectator; the river dargle flows through powerscourt, and forms the waterfall here represented in the background, hence its name. _rubinella_, a girl with red gold hair was shown at the summer exhibition and a large number of sketches and studies at the winter exhibition of the grosvenor gallery this year. in , the portrait of the painter, painted by invitation in for the collection of autograph portraits of artists in the uffizi gallery, florence, deserves particular mention. not even mr. watts' best portrait of leighton is quite so like as this, which shows the striking head of the artist to great effect, assisted by the decorative president's robe and insignia. the _idyll_, shown the same year, has been compared by some critics with the _cymon and iphigenia_, the scene and circumstance of both being to a certain degree similar, while there are similar effects in both of colour and of composition. in the _idyll_, we have a lovely female figure, lying at full length, attended by a second nymph, and by a piping man, all grouped beneath an arm of a beech tree, that extends overhead and shadows the upland ridge on which they have come to rest, while they gaze on a river winding among sunlit meads. the water reflects the blue and white of sky and clouds; the land is dashed by shadows. the nymphs' robes are red, blue, and pale yellow. [illustration: phryne at eleusis ( )] [illustration: day dreams ( ) _by permission of the fine art society_] we ought not to overlook another idyllic picture in the same exhibition, _whispers_, an illustration of horace's well-known line, "lenesque sub noctem susurri." in this charming work, amid masses of crimson flowers and green leaves, two lovers are seen seated upon a marble bench, while he whispers tenderly in her ear, and she listens with dreamy eyes and maidenly mien. the noble picture of _elisha and the shunamite's son_ (reproduced at p. ) was also shown this year, as well as _bianca_, a fair-haired girl in a white dress, standing with folded arms, _viola_, and two portraits, _mrs. augustus ralli_, exhibited at the royal academy, and _mrs. algernon sartoris_, at the grosvenor gallery. in the academy appeared two of the most popular of sir frederic's pictures, _wedded_ and _day dreams_. in the latter, a fair sybarite is pressing her cheek against her hands, as she stands near a tapestry, with eyes gazing far away, the images of love-dreams in them; her purple mantle, embroidered with silver, produces a charming effect of colour. still more famous is _wedded_,--"one of the happiest of sir frederic's designs," said a critic at the time, "and as a composition of lines, difficult, subtle, and original, may be called one of the most remarkable productions of this decade." other pictures shown this year were _antigone_ and the much-debated _phryne at eleusis_--a notable study of the famous hetaira, who is seen standing, and holding out with one hand the mass of her deep auburn hair. her skin is of a ruddy golden hue, as if seen under a glow of sunlight. red tissue, which falls from her shoulders and extended arms, and an olive-coloured mantle that has fallen at the foot of the marble columns behind her, backed by a sky, very characteristic of the painter, in which snowlike masses of cloud float in a southern azure, produce a total effect of a certain super-womanly order of beauty. a _design for a portion of a proposed decoration in st. paul's_, a picture entitled _melittion_, and a _portrait of mrs. mocatta_, were also hung at the academy in ; _zeyra_, a little eastern child in plum coloured headdress, a rich bit of colour elaborately painted, was shown at the grosvenor gallery. in , _memories_, though not one of the most typical of leighton's pictures, decidedly pleased the general public. it shows the half-length figure of a blonde, in a black and gold dress. more interesting artistically was a decorative frieze, _the dance_, for a drawing-room, the design for which we reproduce, and which may, in so far, answer for itself. other pictures of are _kittens_, a full-length figure of a fair-haired child in purple and embroidered drapery, seated on a bench covered with a leopard skin, holding a rose in hand and looking down at a kitten sitting beside her; and the _vestal_, a bust of a girl with her head and shoulders swathed with white gold-embroidered draperies. to this year also belongs a _portrait of miss nina joachim_, a child in a blue frock with crimson sash. [illustration: _cymon and iphigenia._ _by permission of the fine art society._ _f. leighton. pinxt._ _swan electric engraving co. sc._] [illustration: studies for two friezes "music" and "the dance"] the next year, , brought _letty_, that most delightful of english maidens, _a nap_, _sun gleams_, and the imaginative and admirably romantic _cymon and iphigenia_. _letty_ was one of leighton's pictures which particularly excited mr. ruskin's admiration. it shows a simply pretty child, with soft brown hair under a black hat, a saffron kerchief about her neck. the _letty_ and the _cymon and iphigenia_, with a few other notable pictures, did much to leave a pleasant recollection of the exceptional academy of . "a more original effect of light and colour, used in the broad, true, and ideal treatment of lovely forms," said a french critic, "we do not remember to have seen at the academy, than that produced by the _cymon and iphigenia_." engravings and other reproductions of the picture have made its design, at any rate, almost as familiar now as boccaccio's tale itself. there are some divergences, however, in the two versions. boccaccio's tale is a tale of spring; sir frederic, the better to carry out his conception of the drowsy desuetude of sleep, and of that sense of pleasant but absolute weariness which one associates with the season of hot days and short nights, has changed the spring into that riper summer-time which is on the verge of autumn; and that hour of late sunset which is on the verge of night. under its rich glow lies the sleeping iphigenia, draped in folds upon folds of white, and her attendants; while cymon, who is as unlike the boor of tradition as spenser's colin clout is unlike an ordinary cumbrian herdsman, stands hard-by, wondering, pensively wrapt in so exquisite a vision. altogether, a great presentment of an immortal idyll; so treated, indeed, that it becomes much more than a mere reading of boccaccio, and gives an ideal picture of sleep itself,--that sleep which so many artists and poets have tried at one time or another to render. in , among the five contributions of the president to the academy, appeared the vivacious portrait of lord rosebery's little daughter, _the lady sybil primrose_, who appears in white with a blue sash, carrying a doll. _a portrait of mrs. a. hichens_ and _phoebe_ were the only other pictures this year. a frieze, _music_, was shown, and at the grosvenor gallery _a study_ of a fair-haired girl, in green velvet dress. was chiefly notable for the statue in bronze of _the sluggard_, in which leighton again furnished us with a plastic characterization of sleep, which he designed by way of contrast to his statue of the struggling athlete. it was suggested, mr. spielmann says, by accidental circumstances. the model who had been sitting to him fell a-yawning in his interval of rest, and charmed the artist, not only with his exceptional beauty of line and play of muscle, but also with the artistic contrast of energy and languor. but that he might not lay himself open to the charge that the work was a glorification of indolence, the sculptor made concession to what after all was an artistic suggestion, and placed under the yawner's foot "the glorious wreath of laurel leaves heel trodden and despised." the graceful statuette of a little girl who is alarmed by a toad on the edge of a pool or stream of water, called _needless alarms_, appeared at the same time; and was so much admired by the president's colleague, sir john everett millais, that he wished to purchase it, whereupon sir frederic presented it to him, and received, in return, the charming picture of _shelling peas_, which sir john painted specially for this pleasant exchange. in also appeared the _decoration in painting for a music room_, destined for new york, which is illustrated[ ] by the completed work, and its preliminary studies from life for it. _gulnihal_, a single figure, is the only other painting exhibited at the academy in this year. [illustration: the last watch of hero ( ) _by permission of the manchester corporation_] [illustration: portrait of the lady sybil primrose ( )] in appeared a picture which seems scarcely to have received its due appreciation, _the jealousy of simætha the sorceress_. this is a seated figure in yellow and white drapery, with a purple mantle wrapped around her shoulders; a well-wrought, finely-rendered work. _the last watch of hero_, also first seen this year, is now in the manchester corporation gallery. it is in two compartments; in the upper, and larger, hero, clad in pink drapery, is seen drawing aside a curtain and gazing out over the sea. below, in the smaller panel, is the body of the dead leander, on a rock washed by the waves. a quotation from sir edwin arnold's translation of musæus was appended to its title: "with aching heart she scanned the sea-face dim. * * * * * lo! at the turret's foot his body lay, rolled on the stones and washed with breaking spray." a picture of a little girl with yellow hair and pale blue eyes, entitled with a verse by robert browning: "yellow and pale as ripened corn which autumn's kiss frees,--grain from sheath,-- such was her hair, while her eyes beneath showed spring's faint violets freshly born," was in the same exhibition, and also a design for the reverse of the jubilee medallion, executed for her majesty's government. in appeared another large work, which, although not absolutely a procession, has much in common with the _cimabue_, the _syracusan bride_, and _the daphnephoria_. it was entitled _captive andromache_, and accompanied by a fragment of the "iliad," translated by e. b. browning: ... "some standing by marking thy tears fall, shall say, 'this is she, the wife of that same hector that fought best of all the trojans when all fought for troy.'" this, and a _portrait of amy, lady coleridge_, were the artist's only contributions to the royal academy of . the _portraits of the misses stewart hodgson_ is also of this year, which saw four landscape studies exhibited at the royal society of painters in water colours, and five at the royal society of british artists, suffolk street. the _sibyl_, exhibited in , is a full-length figure swathed in lilac drapery, seated with her legs crossed, on a chair, her chin supported by her left hand, and gazing out of the picture. beside her are scrolls, and a sombre sky is behind the figure. _invocation_, a girl in white robes with arms raised above her head, and a _portrait of mrs. f. lucas_, were also shown; but _greek girls playing at ball_ is not only the most important, but is also a picture that shows the mannerism of lord leighton's treatment of drapery at its finest. elsewhere the undulating snaky coils may be somewhat distressing, here they float in the air and help the suggestion of movement. the landscape at the back is also both typical and beautiful. an _elegy_ was the fifth of the artist's contributions to the academy of . in _the bath of psyche_ appeared at the academy. this at once established its position as a popular favourite, and has probably been more widely reproduced than any other. it was purchased under the terms of the chantrey bequest, and is now in the tate gallery. it was suggested, so mr. m. h. spielmann tells us, by the "paper-knife" picture, as lord leighton called it, which he had painted for sir l. alma-tadema's wall screen. _solitude_ was also shown this year, and the _tragic poetess_, a full-length figure, clad in blue and purple drapery, on a terrace, with the sea beyond. the fourth picture at the academy was a very faithfully painted transcript of _the arab hall_, at no. , holland park road. [illustration: greek girls playing at ball ( ) _by permission of the berlin photographic co._] [illustration: the bath of psyche ( ) _by permission of the berlin photographic co._] in appeared _perseus and andromeda_, a very original version of a theme which it seems the destiny of every painter and sculptor of classical subjects to attempt at some time. in this andromeda is bound to a rock, the monster stands over her with outstretched wings, while from the clouds above, perseus, on his winged steed, is discharging arrows. the clay models for perseus are reproduced elsewhere (at p. ). the _return of persephone_ was another important work shown this year. it represents persephone, supported by hermes, being brought back to the upper world, where she is awaited with outstretched arms by demeter. a _portrait of a. b. mitford, esq._, and a marble version of the _athlete struggling with a python_, were also shown in the same exhibition. in a version of a panel of the proposed decoration for the dome of st. paul's appeared with the title, _and the sea gave up the dead which were in it_; this, purchased by mr. henry tate, is now among the pictures he gave to the gallery at millbank. the most important of leighton's later works, _the garden of the hesperides_, in many respects the most sumptuous piece of decoration he ever achieved, was shown this year. it is a large circular picture, the centre occupied by a tree bearing golden apples; under its branches recline the three hesperides, caressing the dragon who assists them to guard the treasure. a superbly brilliant sea is in the distance. the charm of this picture is mainly in its colour, but as an example of elaborately artificial composition it is hardly less noteworthy. unfortunately, despite every effort of lord leighton, most kindly exerted on behalf of the editor of this volume, the owners of the copyright refused under any condition to allow it to be illustrated herein. _a bacchante_, and _at the fountain_, a girl in fawn-coloured and violet draperies, with a bunch of lemons overhanging the marble wall behind her, were shown this year; and also a _clytie_, which must not be confused with another known by the same title, the last picture on which the artist was at work before his death. the version, shown in the retrospective exhibition, is thus described in its catalogue: "a small figure of clytie is seen on the right, kneeling on a stone building with arms outstretched towards the sun, which is setting behind a range of moorland hills." in _hit_, _the frigidarium_, _farewell_, _corinna of tanagra_, and _rizpah_ were exhibited at the academy. of these the most important is the last named. it illustrates the story of the two sons of rizpah, by saul, armoni and mephibosheth, who were slain by the gideonites. rizpah, robed in dark blue, is seen in the act of fetching away their bodies, which are shrouded by dull lilac and blue draperies. vultures circle above, and two leopards approach stealthily. _farewell_ is a single figure in olive green and plum-coloured peplis under a portico above the sea, where she pauses to take a last look at an outward-bound ship. _atalanta_ depicts the bust only of a dark-haired girl in purple and white drapery, with a snake-like ornament twisted round her arm, which is bare to the shoulder. _corinna of tanagra_ is a half-length figure crowned with leaves, in coloured drapery, resting her clasped hands upon her lyre. _the frigidarium_ is an upright figure in semi-transparent red drapery, which with the background of gold is reflected in the water beneath her feet. [illustration: farewell ( ) _by permission of messrs. arthur tooth and sons_] [illustration: "and the sea gave up the dead which were in it."--rev. xx. ( )] [illustration: the frigidarium ( ) _by permission of messrs. h. graves and co._] in were shown _the spirit of the summit_, a white-robed figure with upturned face, sitting on a snowy peak, with starlit sky beyond; _the bracelet_; _fatidica_, a figure in green-white robes; _at the window_, a dark-haired boy in blue, looking over the ledge of a window; and _summer slumber_. this last is a somewhat elaborate composition; a girl in salmon colour draperies is lying asleep on the broad rim of a marble fountain, masses of flowers are in the mid distance, and a vista of sunny landscape through the open window beyond. in , the last year of the artist's working life, he sent six pictures to the academy, and completed the wall decoration at the royal exchange (here illustrated), _phoenicians bartering with britons_. the paintings were entitled, _flaming june_ (a picture reproduced in colours for a christmas number of the "graphic"), in which the "broad" painting of the sea beyond was a notable exception to the artist's usual handling; _lachrymæ_, a standing figure in robes of black and blue green, resting her arm upon a doric column; _'twixt hope and fear_, a seated figure of a black-haired greek girl, robed in white and olive, with a sheep-skin thrown around her; _the maid with her yellow hair_, a girlish figure in lemon-coloured drapery, reading from a red-backed book; _listener_, a child seated with crossed legs on a fur rug; and a _study of a girl's head_, with auburn, wavy hair. in the academy _clytie_ was the only picture. in lord leighton's studio in various stages of completion were a _bacchante_, a half-length figure of a fair-haired girl crowned with leaves, and a leopard skin over her shoulder; _the fair persian_, a bust of a girl with flowing dark hair, crowned by a jewelled circlet; and _the vestal_, a half-length figure of a girl in white drapery, these were all exhibited at the winter exhibition of . to _clytie_, his last picture, a small monograph has been devoted by the fine art society. in this we read: "'thank goodness my ailment has not interfered with my capacity for work, for i have never had a better appetite for it, nor i believe done better. i was idle for five months in the summer, but since my return i have been working hard and have produced the pictures you see.' thus he spoke to the present writer [of the monograph in question] as he led the way across his studio.... turning to the _clytie_ he continued: 'this i have been at work upon all the morning. orchardson has been so good as to say i have never done anything finer than the sky. you know the story. i have shown the goddess in adoration before the setting sun, whose last rays are permeating her whole being. with upraised arms she is entreating her beloved one not to forsake her. a flood of golden light saturates the scene, and to carry out my intention, i have changed my model's hair from black to auburn. to the right is a small altar, upon which is an offering of fruit, and upon a pillar beyond i shall show the feet of a statue of apollo.' "but a few days after this occurrence the dead president lay in semi-state in his coffin, before the picture. a drawing in the 'graphic' (january th, ) shows the interior of the studio, with the figure of clytie, in her attitude of despair, stretching her arms above the body of her creator." here the record, year by year, is closed. a few pictures seem to have escaped the honours of exhibition. one,[ ] _a noble lady of venice_, in possession of lord armstrong, does not appear to have been exhibited. it is probably the picture which was sold at christie's in for guineas. a _lady with pomegranates_, which sold for guineas at the sale of baron grant's pictures in , does not appear in our list of exhibited works; nor, it may be, are all the early pictures included therein. but the official catalogues of the royal academy may exhibitions, and of the special winter exhibition devoted to the artist's works, have been freely drawn upon for description, and to the list of his life's work, as it appeared in the first edition of this work, many additions have been made. [illustration: rizpah ( )] [illustration: the bracelet ( ) _by permission of messrs. t. agnew and sons_] [illustration: fatidica ( ) _by permission of messrs. t agnew and sons_] chapter vi his method of painting for particulars of the wonderfully thorough "method," which leighton used in preparing his pictures, we cannot do better than quote the following admirable account by mr. m. h. spielmann (published during the painter's life), which he has allowed us to reprint here.[ ] "i have said that the sense of line in composition, in figure and drapery, is one of the chief qualities of the artist; and the conviction that the method in which he places them upon canvas with such unerring success--for it may be said that the president rarely, if ever, produces an ugly form in a picture--would be both interesting and instructive, prompted me to learn in what manner his effects are produced. this i have done, having special regard to one of his academy pictures, _the sibyl_, which, being a single figure, simplifies greatly the explanation of the mode of procedure. this explanation holds good in every case, be the composition great or small, elaborate or simple; the _modus operandi_ is always the same. [illustration: a bacchante ( ) _by permission of messrs. henry graves and co._] [illustration: "hit" ( ) _by permission of "the art journal"_] "having by good fortune observed in a model an extraordinarily fine and 'michelangelesque' formation of the hand and wrist--an articulation as rare to find as it is anatomically beautiful and desirable--he bethought him of a subject that would enable him to introduce his _trouvaille_. as but one attitude could display the special formation to advantage, the idea of a sibyl, sitting brooding beside her oracular tripod, was soon evolved, but not so soon was its form determined and fixed. like mr. watts, sir frederic leighton thinks out the whole picture before he puts brush to canvas, or chalk to paper; but, unlike mr. watts, once he is decided upon his scheme of colour, the arrangement of line, the disposition of the folds, down to the minutest details, he seldom, if ever, alters a single line. and the reason is evident. in sir frederic's pictures--which are, above all, decorations in the real sense of the word--the design is a pattern in which every line has its place and its proper relation to other lines, so that the disturbing of one of them, outside of certain limits, would throw the whole out of gear. having thus determined his picture in his mind's eye, he in the majority of cases makes a sketch in black and white chalk upon brown paper to fix it. in the first sketch, the care with which the folds have been broadly arranged will be evident, and, if it be compared with the finished picture, the very slight degree in which the general scheme has been departed from will convince the reader of the almost scientific precision of the artist's line of action. but there is a good reason for this determining of the draperies before the model is called in; and it is this. the nude model, no matter how practised he or she may be, never moves or stands or sits, in these degenerate days, with exactly the same freedom as when draped; action or pose is always different--not so much from a sense of mental constraint as from the unusual liberty experienced by the limbs, to which the muscular action invariably responds when the body is released from the discipline and confinement of clothing. "the picture having been thus determined, the model is called in, and is posed as nearly as possible in the attitude desired. as nearly as possible i say, for, as no two faces are exactly alike, no two models ever entirely resemble one another in body or muscular action, and cannot, therefore, pose in such a manner as exactly to correspond with either another model or another figure--no matter how correctly the latter may be drawn. from the model the artist makes the careful outline, in brown paper, a true transcript from life, which may entail some slight corrections of the original design in the direction of modifying the attitude and general appearance of the figure. this would be rendered necessary, probably by the bulk and material of the drapery. so far, of course, the artist's attention is engaged exclusively by 'form,' 'colour' being always treated more or less ideally. the figure is now placed in its surroundings, and established in exact relation to the canvas. the result is the first true sketch of the entire design, figure and background, and is built up of the two previous ones. it must be absolutely accurate in the distribution of spaces, for it has subsequently to be 'squared off' on to the canvas, which is ordered to the exact scale of the sketch. at this moment, the design being finally determined, the sketch in oil colours is made. it has been deferred till now, because the placing of the colours is, of course, of as much importance as the harmony. this done, the canvas is for the first time produced, and thereon is enlarged the design, the painter re-drawing the outline--never departing a hair's breadth from the outlines and forms already obtained--and then highly finishing the whole figure in warm monochrome from the life. every muscle, every joint, every crease is there, although all this careful painting is shortly to be hidden with the draperies; such, however, is the only method of insuring absolute correctness of drawing. the fourth stage completed, the artist returns once more to his brown paper, re-copies the outline accurately from the picture, on a larger scale than before, and resumes his studies of draperies in greater detail and with still greater precision, dealing with them in sections, as parts of a homogeneous whole. the draperies are now laid with infinite care on to the living model, and are made to approximate as closely as possible to the arrangement given in the first sketch, which, as it was not haphazard, but most carefully worked out, must of necessity be adhered to. they have often to be drawn piecemeal, as a model cannot by any means always retain the attitude sufficiently long for the design to be wholly carried out at one cast. this arrangement is effected with special reference to painting--that is to say, giving not only form and light and shade, but also the relation and 'values' of tones. the draperies are drawn over, and are made to conform exactly to the forms copied from the nudes of the underpainted picture. this is a cardinal point, because in carrying out the picture the folds are found fitting mathematically on to the nude, or nudes, first established on the canvas. the next step then is to transfer these draperies to the canvas on which the design has been squared off, and this is done with flowing colour in the same monochrome as before over the nudes, to which they are intelligently applied, and which nudes must never--mentally at least--be lost sight of. the canvas has been prepared with a grey tone, lighter or darker, according to the subject in hand, and the effect to be produced. the background and accessories being now added, the whole picture presents a more or less completed aspect--resembling that, say, of a print of any warm tone. in the case of draperies of very vigorous tone, a rich flat local colour is probably rubbed over them, the modelling underneath being, though thin, so sharp and definite as to assert itself through this wash. certain portions of the picture might probably be prepared with a wash or flat tinting of a colour the _opposite_ of that which it is eventually to receive. a blue sky, for instance, would possibly have a soft, ruddy tone spread over the canvas--the sky, which is a very definite and important part of the president's compositions, being as completely drawn in monochrome as any other portion of the design; or for rich blue mountains a strong orange wash or tint might be used as a bed. the structure of the picture being thus absolutely complete, and the effect distinctly determined by a sketch which it is the painter's aim to equal in the big work, he has nothing to think of but colour, and with that he now proceeds deliberately, but rapidly. [illustration: nude study for "captive andromache"] [illustration: study for a figure in "captive andromache"] [illustration: study for "andromache"] "such is the method by which sir frederic leighton finds it convenient to build up his pictures. the labour entailed by such a system as this is, of course, enormous, more especially when the composition to be worked out is of so complex a character as the _captive andromache_ of last year, every figure and group of which were treated with the same completeness and detail as we have seen to attend the production of so simple a picture as _the sibyl_. deliberateness of workmanship and calculation of effect, into which inspiration of the moment is never allowed to enter, are the chief characteristics of the painter's craftsmanship. the inspiration stage was practically passed when he took the crayon in his hand; and to this circumstance probably is to be assigned the absence of realism which arrests the attention of the beholder." mr. spielmann has instanced, in the above account, the tragic and lovely _captive andromache_, exhibited in ; and we may further add that exquisite painting of _greek girls playing at ball_, of ; or the still more exquisite _bath of psyche_, of the year following. all three are full of technical delicacy and finesse. for other qualities take that radiantly pictured myth, the _perseus and andromeda_, or the _return of persephone_ (both of ); or the lovely _clytie_ of , whose sunset background was painted at malinmore, on the west coast of donegal; or the _atalanta_ or the _rizpah_ of . [illustration: study for "perseus and andromeda"] [illustration: study for "the bath of psyche"] [illustration: study for "solitude"] the memorable picture, first named of these, which shows andromache at the well, is in particular a most characteristic example of the artist's larger style. in it, true to his classic predilections, he gives a new setting to the touching old story of andromache's captivity. following up the earlier scene in the "iliad," where andromache begs her husband hector not to sally forth to battle, but to stay and defend the city, and where, finding her prayers in vain, and weeping, she bids hector farewell, the picture shows the fulfilment of andromache's fears and the dire prophecy which hector had recalled to his wife. by way of contrast to this sombre canvas, take the glowing and brilliant colours of the _perseus and andromeda_, one of the three pictures shown at the academy in . the painting of the surroundings of andromeda, the deep blue water in the sea lagoon beneath, and these radiant elemental people of air and light, provides such a glow of colour, as haunts the eye for long after one has gazed one's fill upon it. something of the same feeling for the spirit that is in the forces of the earth, lurks behind many of leighton's representments of the classic myths. it is certainly to be found, with a difference, in the _return of persephone_, exhibited with the _perseus_, which becomes in the artist's hands a profound allegory of the return of spring, with all kind of symbolical meanings in the three figures of proserpine, ceres, and hermes, that are seen meeting before the mouth of hades. _the spirit of the summit_, one of the latest of these embodiments of the relation of man to nature, may be read to mean man's finer spirit of aspiration, and the mountainous imagination of art itself. it is characteristic of the artist that, in the later years of his career, at a time when most artists and men are apt to give up something of their earlier pursuit of ideals, he retained undiminished a feeling for the unaccomplished heights of the imagination. _the spirit of the summit_ may serve, then, as the symbol, not so much of things attained, and art victorious, as of things that are always to be attained, and of art striving and undeterred. in this way it may serve, too, as in some sort the emblem of leighton's own ideals, and of his whole career. his artistic temper was throughout, one of endless energy, endless determination; with a dash of that finer dissatisfaction which is always seeking out new embodiments, under all difficulties, of man's pursuit, in a difficult, and often an unbeautiful world, of truth and beauty. above all, he was a consummate draughtsman, and as francisco pacheco, the father-in-law of velasquez, wrote in his "arte de la pintura" ( ): "drawing is the life and soul of painting; drawing, especially outline, is the hardest; nay, the art has, strictly speaking, no other difficulty. without drawing painting is nothing but a vulgar craft; those who neglect it are bastards of the art, mere daubers and blotchers." [illustration: study for "the return of persephone"] [illustration: study for "persephone"] chapter vii mural decoration, sculpture, and illustration the drawings of lord leighton deserve special consideration. the famous _lemon tree_ was made at capri in the spring of ; it is work that no pre-raphaelite could have finished more minutely, yet it has nothing "niggling" in its treatment. in a conversation[ ] lord leighton is said to have referred to the many days spent upon the production of this study--dwelling specially on the difficulty he experienced in finding again and again each separate leaf in the perspective of the confused branches, as morning after morning he returned at sunrise to continue the work. the drawing of each leaf reveals the close observation which ultimately recorded its particular individuality. you feel that as a shepherd knows his sheep to call each by its name, so the artist must have become familiar with every separate leaf and twig before he had completed his task. the whole is broad and simple, and scarcely suggests the enormous patience which must have been needed to carry out the self-imposed toil. nothing is shirked, nothing is scamped; from the stem to the outermost leaf, every part in succession reveals equal interest, and yet the whole is not without that larger quality which brings it together in a harmonious whole, so that it is as much the study of a tree as the study of each separate item that composes it. the _byzantine well-head_ is another notable instance of similar labour devoted to an architectural subject; this was evidently a favourite with its author; for during his life it hung close by his bed in the simple chamber of his otherwise sumptuous home, a room devoid of luxury and almost ascetic in its appointments.[ ] the great mass of studies, on brown paper chiefly, which he had carefully preserved, were purchased by the fine art society, and some two hundred and fifty were exhibited at their gallery in december, , and a selection in facsimile has been published in sumptuous form. in a prefatory note to the catalogue of these studies mr. s. pepys cockerell says: "it is seldom that we are privileged to watch at ease the workings of another's mind, but these drawings, the intimate record of a long life-time, offer an unusually good opportunity. one might call them the confessions of an artist; and anyone who wants to know what leighton was really like, has only to use his eyes. one thing, at any rate, no one can fail to see, viz., that he had the qualities which result in industry. whatever success he achieved was only gained after desperate labour. it is curious that while he had the reputation for working with ease, he considered himself to have no facility for anything, whether for art, for writing, or for speaking. i recollect his once saying: 'thank heaven, i was never clever at anything,' for he believed with sir joshua, that everything is granted to well-deserved labour." the landscape studies in oil (of which a list almost complete will be found in appendix ii.), show equal observation and sympathetic perception of the beauty of colour, as well as of the beauty of form. the truth of these carefully recorded impressions of scenery was no less patent than the masterly "selection" which had set itself to depict all that seemed of value, and escaped at once the photographic imitation of one school, and the evasion of detail of another. they all preserve a certain classic repose, without violence to topographical accuracy, or painter-like intention. [illustration: study for the ceiling of a music-room] [illustration: study for the ceiling of a music-room] [illustration] [illustrations: decoration for the ceiling of a music-room] we have had occasion to refer frequently, in passing, to leighton's decorative works, but we have purposely deferred any description of them, preferring to treat them separately. to know how present was his feeling for decorative effect at all times, it is sufficient to glance never so casually at his own house, about which we hope presently to say something,--genuine expression as it is of his art. now we wish rather to touch on his more public performances. of these, the famous frescoes which fill large lunettes in the central court at south kensington, _the industrial arts of war_ and _the industrial arts of peace_, are the best known, as they are among the most characteristic of all the artist's productions. the fresco of _the arts of war_ is a very complex piece of work. it is crowded with figures, full of that orderly disorder which one must expect to find, on the hurried morning of a day of battle, in these delightfully decorative warriors. "in the centre"--we quote here mrs. lang's description--"is a white marble staircase, leading from the quadrangle to an archway, beyond which is another courtyard. seen through the archway, knights are riding by.... the busy scene in the courtyard suggests an immediate departure to the seat of war. in the corner to the right crossbows are being chosen and tested; a man is kneeling by a pile of swords, and descanting on their various merits to an undecided customer, while those weapons that he has already disposed of are having their blades tried and felt. a little way off, to the left of the archway, some men-at-arms are trying on the armour of a youth who has still to win his spurs.... the whole is distinguished by the extreme naturalness and simplicity of all the actions, and by soft, glowing colours, chiefly dark olive green and splendid saffrons." in _the arts of peace_, its companion, the central portion of the fresco is devised as the interior of a greek house, where within a semicircular alcove we see a number of greek maidens and older women, delightfully grouped, mainly occupied in the art of personal adornment. before this house is the waterside, with a very decorative boat, confined by a gracefully-looped chain, whose curve, as it hangs, is very subtly designed to complete the salient lines of the whole composition. on either side of this interior we have groups of men, more vigorously treated,--drawing water, bearing burdens, pushing a boat from land. the total effect of these finely posed contrasted groups, of the admirably architectured walls, piers, and pavements, and of the striking background, as of another hill-crowned athens, is most complete and satisfying. the colouring throughout, diversified with extreme art as it is, is full of that southern radiance, and clear, sunlit glamour, so often found in the artist's pictures. to realize this fully, south kensington must be visited, for word-painting at its best but poorly reproduces the art that it doubtfully imitates. [illustration: fresco: the industrial arts of war ( )] [illustration: fresco: the industrial arts of peace ( )] but these were by no means the first attempts of the artist to acclimatize the noblest form of mural decoration, which cannot even at this date be regarded as fully naturalized amongst us. in he commenced work on a fresco of _the wise and foolish virgins_, which forms the altarpiece of the beautiful modern church at lyndhurst, erected on the site of the older building commemorated in charles kingsley's ballad. this painting still remains a lasting attraction to visitors in the new forest village. in the centre, the bridegroom, clad in white, bearing lilies in his left hand, extends his right to the foremost of the five wise virgins. angels at each side of the central figure welcome the one group, and repel the other. on the extreme right is a kneeling figure, "ora;" on the left, "vigila," a figure trimming a lamp. the scale of the figures is over life-size, and the unfortunate position of the work, immediately under a large east window, so that the figures appear standing on the altar, has provoked adverse criticism; but the painting itself, as a triumphant accomplishment of a peculiarly difficult undertaking, and a superb scheme of line and colour, has won favourable comments at all times. it was painted in the medium, a mixture of copal, wax, resin, and oil, previously employed with success by mr. gambier parry in his decorations for ely cathedral. it is interesting to read the account of the execution of this work, which is said to have been carried out chiefly on saturday afternoons, the artist catching a mid-day train from town, and working on it from the moment of his arrival until dusk. experience of the london and south western railway company thirty years ago makes one doubt whether leaving town at mid-day should not be taken as arriving at lyndhurst road at that time, for otherwise it would have been a miracle to accomplish the task by daylight. it is, however, exhilarating to find that the sustained enthusiasm of the young artist was equal to the effort involved in mastering so many obstacles; for the result, despite the increased attention given to decoration in these later years, may even now be considered, so far as modern ecclesiastical painting is concerned, to be without a rival in england. the beautiful _cupid with doves_, is also said to be from a fresco; whether a genuine painting on the wall itself (after the true fresco manner) or not, it has the larger qualities peculiar to the method which distinguishes several other works that were certainly not executed in this medium,--the latest of leighton's mural decorations, for example, a painting of _phoenicians bartering with britons_, which the president of the royal academy in presented as the first of a series of panels in the royal exchange. although, as this was painted on canvas, it cannot be ranked as a legitimate successor in the direct line of the lyndhurst and south kensington frescoes, it is marked by many of the architectural qualities which distinguish a painting designed to be in true relation to the planes of its surroundings, and employs a convention which makes it appear an integral part of the wall surface, not a mere panel accidentally placed within a frame supplied by the features of the building itself. the south kensington frescoes, as we have before stated, were painted in - . some ten years later sir frederic collaborated with sir edward (then mr.) poynter in the decoration of the dome of st. paul's. his share was to have filled eight _medallions_, so called, in the compartments into which his colleague divided the dome. the design for one of these, _the sea gave up the dead which were in it_, was exhibited at the academy of , and is now among the works presented by mr. tate to the national gallery of british art. this is another treatment of a great subject, in which the problem of reconciling the dramatic with the decorative has been seriously attempted. the dome of st. paul's, had it been completed according to this scheme, might have been a worthy if a somewhat academic presentation of the tremendous visions of the apocalypse. [illustration: cupid: from a fresco] [illustration: phoenicians bartering with britons panel in the royal exchange ( )] certain others of leighton's decorative works we have already mentioned, such as the design for a ceiling, now in new york. not so well known is his frieze delineating a dance, for an english drawing-room; or the small frieze with a design of dolphins, also in england. a scheme in water-colours for a mural decoration, entitled _the departure for the war_, was never carried out; the sketch for it was sold with the remaining works at christie's, july, . the single figures in mosaic of _cimabue_ and _pisano_, at the south kensington museum, must not be forgotten. to the public--or at least that portion which limits its art to the exhibitions of the royal academy--leighton, as we have seen, made his _début_ as a sculptor with the group, _an athlete struggling with a python_ (known also as _an athlete strangling a python_), which in the bronze version is now among works purchased under the terms of the chantrey bequest in the tate gallery. but long before that date he had successfully essayed plastic art; his first effort being for the medallion of a monument to mrs. browning in the protestant cemetery at florence. two other monuments, to the memory of major sutherland orr (his sister's husband), and lady charlotte greville, must also be mentioned. we have already spoken of _the athlete_, _the sluggard_, and _needless alarms_. but it would be unfair to omit mention of many small works--small, that is to say, in scale, for they are distinguished by great breadth of handling--which were prepared as auxiliary studies for his paintings. visitors to the studio in holland park road, were always impressed by several of these models, which stood on a large chest in the bay of a great studio window. especially noteworthy was a group of three singing maidens, who figure in _the daphnephoria_, and another of the "choragus" for the same picture; for later works, the mounted perseus, and andromeda with the monster, both designed for the picture of that legend. others belonging to a slightly earlier period included--the sleeping iphigenia, a crouching figure of her attendant, and a nude figure of cymon, all, of course, for _cymon and iphigenia_. these models were made to be clad in wet drapery of exquisitely fine texture, and were prepared only for ten minutes' drawing of the first idea of the figures; all serious study being made from the draped model, or the lay figure. such help as they have rendered must all be referred to the period before the finished cartoon was ready to be traced on the canvas. since lord leighton's decease most of these have been successfully cast in bronze, and are the property of the royal academy. in the studio were also the first sketches in clay for _the sluggard_, and also for _the athlete_, which was not originally intended to be carried further. indeed, several people mistook it for a genuine antique, and admired it accordingly; dalou, the great french sculptor, was especially so struck by it, that he advised its author to work out the idea in full size. the three years' labour devoted to the task, the failures by the way, and its ultimate triumphant success, both here and in paris, are too well known to need recapitulation. a replica was commissioned for the copenhagen gallery, and probably no work of its accomplished author did more to win him the appreciation of french and german artists. [illustration: bronze statue: an athlete struggling with a python ( )] [illustration: bronze statue: an athlete struggling with a python ( )] [illustration: study in clay for "cymon"] [illustration: study in clay for "the sluggard"] [illustration: study in clay for "perseus"] [illustration: study in clay for "andromeda"] in this brief mention of lord leighton's achievements in sculpture, the medal commemorating the jubilee of queen victoria, a study for which is reproduced at p. , must not be overlooked. although to those who have not followed closely the splendid period of english illustration which may be said to have reached its zenith at the time when dalziel's "bible gallery" was published, it may be a surprise to find "frederic leighton" figuring as an illustrator, yet the nine compositions in that book are by no means his sole contribution to the art of black and white. for each instalment of "romola," as it ran through the pages of the "cornhill magazine," the artist contributed a full page drawing, and an initial letter. the twenty-four full pages were afterwards reprinted in "the cornhill gallery" (smith and elder, ). these are most notable works, even when measured by the standard of their contemporaries. the same magazine contains two other works from his pen, one illustrating a poem, "the great god pan," by mrs. browning, and another illustrating a story by mrs. sartoris, entitled "a week in a french country house." these, and the nine compositions in the "bible gallery" (the pictures from which have lately been re-issued in a popular form by the society for promoting christian knowledge) exhaust the list of those which can be traced. as four of the magnificent designs are reproduced here, it would be superfluous to describe them; the titles of the five others are: _abram and the angel_, _eliezer and rebekah_, _death of the first born_, _the spies' escape_, and _samson at the mill_. one of the original drawings on wood is now on view at the south kensington museum, and, by comparison with impressions from the engraved blocks, we see how small has been the loss in translation, so admirably has the artist mastered the limitation of the technique that was to represent his work in another medium. the reproductions here given are considerably reduced, and necessarily lose something, but they retain enough to prove that had the artist cared to rest his reputation upon such works, he might have done so with a light heart, for whenever the golden period of english illustration is recalled, these comparatively few drawings will inevitably be recalled with it. a photographic silver-print from a drawing which forms the frontispiece to a little book of fairy tales is of hardly sufficient importance--charming though its original must have been--to be included among the book illustrations. the drawing, _a contrast_, reproduced at p. , is undated; the idea it is intended to suggest, a model who once stood for some youthful god, revisiting the adolescent portrait of himself when old age has him gripped fast with rheumatism and failing vigour. to-day, when one has heard sculptors claim that lord leighton's finest work was in their own craft, one has also heard many illustrators not merely extol these drawings--notably the bible subjects--as his masterpieces, but jealously refuse to consider him entitled to serious regard as an artist in any other medium. this attitude, so curiously unlike the usual welcome from experts which awaits an artist who ventures into fresh mediums for expressing himself, should be put on record as a unique tribute; the more worthy of attention, because in each instance it was advanced not wholly as praise, but to some extent as a reproach on leighton's painting. no intended compliment could carry more genuine appreciation than this warm approval from fellow experts in the special subjects of which they are masters. [illustration: cain and abel] [illustration: moses views the promised land] [illustration: samson and the lion] [illustration: samson carrying the gates] chapter viii discourses on art we must next speak of the late president's addresses and discourses on art, and of that other art of oratory, which, we shall find, as he conceived it, had something of the same monumental quality he imparted to his painting. his presidential speeches at the annual banquet of the academy would alone be sufficient to show this; but it is of course to his addresses and discourses that we must turn if we would understand his feeling for the two unallied arts. his success in the one is to be explained, we shall find, in very much the same way as his success in the other. like most speakers of any distinction, lord leighton left nothing to chance. in his speeches and discourses, as in his pictures, the most careful and exact preparation was made for every effect, however apparently casual it may have seemed. his discourses were obviously based upon classic models; for their full periods, sonorously and deliberately arranged, have a rhythm that attends to the whole period, and not merely, as is often the way with english speakers, to each sentence in turn. in quoting from these discourses, we do so, however, with an eye to his own proper art as a painter, and to his whole theory and sentiment of that art and its functions, and its allied plastic arts, even more than to his art as a speaker. indeed, the discourses form a unique contribution to the art criticism of our time; they cover the most interesting and various periods in the history of the art of europe; and although the cycle he had mapped out was interrupted before he had completed it--first by illness which postponed the biennial discourse, and then by death--the portions already delivered touch incidentally on the theory and philosophy of all art in a highly suggestive and eloquent way. in his first discourse, delivered to the academy students on the th of december, , the new president took occasion to estimate the modern predicament and general position of art, as a prelude to the consideration of its special developments, in later discourses. "i wish in so doing," he said, "to seek the solution of certain perplexities and doubts which will often, in these days of restless self-questioning in which we live, arise in the minds and weigh on the hearts of students who think as well as work." in answering the question of questions in art for us to-day--that is, what are its chances in the present, compared with the glory and splendour of its achievement in the past?--leighton provides us with some memorable passages in his first discourse. speaking of the "evolution of painting in italy," he turned it to notable account in his argument, as in this reference to the florentine school: "it is, perhaps," he said, "in tuscany, and notably in florence, that we see the national temperament most clearly declared in its art, as indeed in all its intellectual productions; here we see that strange mixture of attic subtlety and exquisiteness of taste, with a sombre fervour and a rude pelasgic strength which marks the tuscans, sending forth a dante, a brunelleschi, and a michael angelo,--a fiesole, a boccaccio, and a botticelli, and we find that eagerness in the pursuit of the knowledge of men and things, which was so characteristic of them, summed up in a macchiavelli and a lionardi da vinci." [illustration: a contrast] how different the conditions when we turn to consider english art, as it stands to-day: "the whole current of human life setting resolutely in a direction opposed to artistic production; no love of beauty, no sense of the outward dignity and comeliness of things, calling on the part of the public for expression at the artist's hands; and, as a corollary, no dignity, no comeliness for the most part, in their outward aspect; everywhere a narrow utilitarianism which does not include the gratification of the artistic sense amongst things useful; the works of artists sought for indeed, but too often as a profitable merchandise, or a vehicle of speculation, too often on grounds wholly foreign to their intrinsic worth as productions of a distinctive form of human genius, with laws and conditions of its own." the modern student may well question, whether the great artists of the past, if they lived now under our different conditions, would achieve all that they did then. for further bewilderment, the differences to be seen in the past itself, between school and school, and one age and another, may lead him to doubt "whether art be not indeed an ephemeral thing, a mere efflorescence of the human intelligence, an isolated development, incapable of organic growth." to such doubts, comes the reassuring answer: "that art is fed by forces that lie in the depth of our nature, and which are as old as man himself; of which therefore we need not doubt the durability; and to the question whether art with all its blossoms has but one root, the answer we shall see to be: assuredly it has; for its outward modes of expression are many and various, but its underlying vital motives are the same." the new president concluded his first discourse with an eloquent plea for sincerity in art: "without sincerity of emotion no gift, however facile and specious, will avail you to win the lasting sympathies of men"--a truth which perhaps needs more repeating to-day than ever it did! in the second discourse (december th, ), we are called upon to consider that other question which has so often perplexed the artist, especially the english artist, in whom the moral sentiment is apt to take a threatening form on occasion: "what is the relation in which art stands to morals and to religion?" for his reply, leighton took in turn the two contentions: one, that the first duty of all artistic productions is the inculcation of a moral lesson, if not indeed of a christian truth; the other, that art is altogether independent of ethics. his conclusion is the only sagacious and sane one: that whilst art in itself is indeed independent of ethics, yet is there no error so deadly as to deny that "the moral complexion, the ethos, of the artist does in truth tinge every work of his hand, and fashion, in silence, but with the certainty of fate, the course and current of his whole career." the steps that lead irresistibly to this conclusion, are very clearly indicated in the course of this discourse; and the more convincingly, because the speaker is himself so sympathetic to the religious inspiration of italian art, on the one hand, and to its merely natural æsthetic growth on the other. [illustration: a study in oils] "the language of art," he said then, "is not the appointed vehicle of ethic truths;... on the other hand, there is a field in which she has no rival. we have within us the faculty for a range of emotion, of exquisite subtlety and of irresistible force, to which art, and art alone amongst human forms of expression, has a key; these then, and no others, are the chords which it is her appointed duty to strike; and form, colour, and the contrasts of light and shade are the agents through which it is given to her to set them in motion. her duty is, therefore, to awaken those sensations directly emotional and indirectly intellectual, which can be communicated only through the sense of sight, to the delight of which she has primarily to minister. and the dignity of these sensations lies in this, that they are inseparably connected by association of ideas with a range of perception and feelings of infinite variety and scope. they come fraught with dim complex memories of all the evershifting spectacle of inanimate creation and of the more deeply stirring phenomena of life; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and the darkness of the outer world; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and the darkness of the changeful and the transitory lives of men." in his third discourse, which was delivered on the th december, , the president entered on his exhaustive discussion, continued in many subsequent discourses, of "the relation of artistic production to the conditions of time and place under which it is evolved, and to the characteristics of the races to which it is due." in this discourse he briefly and suggestively reviews the art of egypt, assyria, and greece, endeavouring to account for the main characteristics of each. in egypt he shows how a nation securely established in a peace and pre-eminence lasting for ages, blessed beyond measure in a fertile and prospering climate, a nation beyond all things pious and occupied in reverential care of the dead, should give birth to an art serene, magnificent, and vast. "those whose fortune it has been," he eloquently said, "to stand by the base of the great pyramid of khoofoo, and look up at its far summit flaming in the violet sky, or to gaze on the wreck of that solemn watcher of the rising sun, the giant sphinx of gizeh, erect, still, after sixty centuries in the desert's slowly rising tide; or who have rested in the shade of the huge shafts which tell of the pomp and splendour of hundred-gated thebes; must, i think, have received impressions of majesty and of enduring strength which will not fade within their memory." after old egypt, and the account of chaldæan and assyrian art, with its warlike expression, we are led on in turn to the consideration of greek art, and the causes of its development. "nothing that i am aware of in the history of the human intelligence," he said, "is for a moment comparable to the dazzling swiftness of the ripening of greek art in the fifth century before christ." after speaking of the fortunate balance and interaction of races which resulted in the greek art of that era, he goes on to speak of the exceptionally favouring circumstances of the people: "here are no vast alluvial plains, such as those along which, in the east, whole empires surged to and fro in battle; no mighty flood of rivers, no towering mountain walls: instead, a tract of moderate size; a fretted promontory thrust out into the sea--far out, and flinging across the blue a multitude of purple isles and islets towards the ionian, kindred, shores." such a fortunate environment, joined to the extraordinarily high ideal formed by the greeks of citizenship, had much to do with the fostering of greek art, in all "its nobility and its serenity, its exquisite balance, its searching after truth, and its thirst for the ideal." [illustration: head of a young girl a study in oils] in his fourth discourse lord leighton carried on his inquiry upon the origins and conditions of art into the difficult region of the etruscans; whose plastic work, like their speech, he considers, was at best an uncouth, vigorous imitation, or re-shaping, of greek models. as examples of etruscan art, we are referred to "the two lovely bronze mirrors, preserved at perugia and berlin, representing,--one, helen between castor and pollux,--the other, bacchus, semele, and apollo.... in either case, the design is distinctly greek; nevertheless a certain ruggedness of form and handling is felt in both, betraying a temper less subtle than the hellenic; and we read without surprise on the one 'pultuke,' and 'phluphluus' on the other." lest it should be thought that something less than justice is done to etruscan art, take this fine description of the tomb of volumnus violens: "the recumbent effigy of the volumnian is, indeed, rude and of little merit; rude also in execution is the monument on which it rests, but in conception and design of a dignity almost dantesque. facing the visitor, as he enters the sepulchral chamber, this small sarcophagus--small in dimensions, but in impressiveness how great!--rivets him at once under the taper's fitful light. raised on a rude basement, the body of the monument figures the entrance to a vault; in the centre, painted in colours that have nearly faded, appears a doorway, within the threshold of which four female figures gaze wistfully upon the outer world; on either side two winged genii, their brows girt with the never-failing etruscan serpents, but wholly free from the quaintness of early etruscan treatment, sit cross-legged, watching, torch in hand, the gate from which no living man returns. roughly as they are hewn, it would be difficult to surpass the stateliness of their aspect or the art with which they are designed; roman gravity, but quickened with etruscan fire, invests them: ... and our thoughts are irresistibly carried forward to the supreme sculptor whom the tuscan land was one day to bear." from etruria, we pass naturally on to rome; for, as we are significantly reminded, "the romans lay, until the tide of greek art broke on them after the fall of syracuse, wholly under the influence of the etruscans.... etruria gave them kings, augurs, doctors, mimes, musicians, boxers, runners; the royal purple, the royal sceptre, the fasces, the curule chair, the lydian flute, the straight trumpet, and the curved trumpet. the education of a roman youth received its finishing touches in etruria: tuscan engineers had girt rome with walls; tuscan engineers had built the great conduit through which the swamp, which was one day to be the forum, was drained into the tiber. what wonder, then, that in architecture, also in painting, in sculpture, in jewellery, and in all the things of taste, etruscans gave the law to the ruder and less cultured race?" this influence lasted, until the counter-current of greece found an inlet to roman life, filtering "through campania into rome from the opposite end of the peninsula." and then, from the fall of syracuse, and the bringing of its spoils to rome, we find a perfect craze for grecian marbles, bronzes, pictures, gems, inflaming the magnates, nobles, and _nouveaux riches_ of rome. how fortunate that influence was in another field, that of literature, we know. in plastic art, by reason of the essentially inartistic spirit of the roman race, the result was practically small; save indeed in one department, that of portraiture, to which the essential impulse was, as leighton very suggestively shows, "ethic, not æsthetic." even in roman architecture, our critic finds little to weaken his view of the roman æsthetic inefficiency. "it was not," he said, "the spontaneous utterance of an æsthetic instinct, but the outcome of material needs and of patriotic pride," and hence only an incomplete expression of roman civilization. "to them, in brief, art was not vernacular: their purest taste, their brightest gifts of mind, found no utterance in it." [illustration: study of a head] "we have seen art," he concluded, "such art as it was given to rome to achieve--rise and fall with the virtues of the roman people. from the lips of the most seeing of its sons we know the solvent in which those virtues perished: that solvent was the greed, the insatiate greed, of gold--'auri sacra fames'--the rot of luxury. 'more deadly than arms,' juvenal magnificently exclaims, 'luxury has swept down upon us, and avenges the conquered world.' ...... 'sævior armis luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem.'" from rome we are taken, in the fifth discourse, delivered on the th december, , to the making and the racial re-shaping of italy, that began with the fifth century. all through these discourses the speaker laid great stress upon the ethnological history of the european races, as he turned to one after another, and essayed to trace their artistic idiosyncracy and their artistic evolution. italy is, to the ethnologist as well as to the art student, one of the most interesting countries in europe. rome almost alone, among the italian provinces, retained her racial and æsthetic peculiarities, unaffected to the end of the chapter; and even when she wielded "the sceptre of the christian world," still she produced no one flower of native genius, we are reminded, unless giulio romano, that "brawny and prolific plagiarist of raphael," as leighton well stigmatizes him, be thought a genius; which criticism forbid! it was different with tuscany, where the introduction of new racial elements had a distinct effect. this "new amalgam" produced in the field of art, we are told, an infinitely nobler and more exquisite result than had grown out of the old conditions. still, however, the old etruscan allied grace and harsh strength lingered on in the art of christian etruria. "of the subtle graces which breathe in that art, from giotto to lionardo, it is needless to speak; and surely in the rugged angularities of a verocchio, a signorelli, or a donatello, and in the shadow of sadness which broods over so much of the finest florentine work, the more sombre phase of the etruscan temper still lives on." in the end, if we try to account for the artistic power and mastery of one people in italy, and the lack of that power in another, we are driven to the conclusion that the source of the artistic gift is hidden and obscure. one may cite the opposite examples of venice and of genoa,--the one so masterfully artistic; the other so impotent. and yet the same favouring conditions, _à priori_, might have seemed to exist for both. with the intermingling of the peoples, and the rejuvenescence of the physical life, came the spiritual outburst of christianity. and the influence, again, of christianity upon italian art was immense. in place of joy in the ideals of bodily perfection, "loathing of the body and its beauty, as of the vehicle of all temptation, a yearning for a life in which the flesh should be shaken off, a spirit of awe, of pity, and of love, became the moving forces that shaped its creations." after great religious periods, we often find that great scientific periods follow. the ethical impulse that religion gives, is converted into other forms of energy, by reason of man's awakened consciousness of the meaning of things, physical and material as well as spiritual. [illustration: study of a head] in italy a reaction against the christian doctrine of the degradation of the flesh led to a new recognition of the beauty of man and of his physical environment. anatomy and perspective were studied, accordingly, with a new sense of their significance in art. the spirit of science led to "such amazing studies of leaf and flower as lionardo loved to draw. thus to tuscan artists the new movement brought the love of nature, and the light of science." we come upon dante and petrarch in this discourse, in tracing the history of italian art during the centuries of transition: "with dante we reach the threshold of the renaissance. he stands on the verge of the middle ages; in him the old order ends. with petrarch the new order begins." it is not so much as a poet, however, that petrarch counts in this process from one period to another; but rather as an intellectual pioneer, leading the way into the great pagan world. petrarch "was the first humanist," in short. we cannot stay to dwell upon the effect of the humanists and all they stood for, good and evil, in italian art and letters. we pass on, now, from petrarch and the influence the movement had on italian literature, to its effect on italian art. the renaissance did not affect art in the same way, as botticelli may serve to show. "but perhaps," said the lecturer, "the various operations in the province of art of the two main motive forces of the renaissance--the impulse towards the scientific study of nature, and the impulse to reinstate the classic spirit--may be best illustrated by reference to lionardo da vinci, raphael, and michael angelo." the passages in which leighton characterised these three masters are among the most striking of all those uttered by him within the walls of the academy. lionardo's scientific "avidity of research," raphael's "classic serenity," and angelo's "mediæval ardour," are turned to admirable effect in the pages of this discourse; and the tribute paid to them on the part of an english painter who has zealously sought to live and work in the light of their great examples, has indeed an interest that is personal, in a sense, as well as general and critical. take this concluding sentence upon raphael: "whatever was best in the classic spirit was absorbed and eagerly assimilated by him, and imparted to the work of his best day that rhythm, that gentle gravity, and that noble plenitude of form, which are its stamp, and proclaim him the brother of mozart and of sophocles." or this, again, on michael angelo, as distinguishing him from raphael: "the type of human form which he lifted to the fullest expressional force is the last development of a purely indigenous conception of human beauty, whereas the type which we know as raphaelesque is a classic ideal warmed with christian feeling. sublimely alone as buonarotti's genius stands, towering and unapproached, ... it does but mark the highest summit reached in the magnificent continuity of its evolution, by the purely native genius of tuscan art." having arrived at tuscan art, and at michael angelo, in whom it reaches its consummate development, we leave italy, and turn now to the description of art in spain, given by lord leighton in his discourse of december, . and first we have some account of the extraordinarily various racial strains which were contributed to form the significant figure of the fifteenth-century spaniard. on the ancient iberian stock was grafted celtic, greek, phoenician, and carthaginian blood; and to these infusions succeeded the great invasion of the visigoths of the fifth century. [illustration: study of a head] "the art of spain," he said, "was, at the outset, wholly borrowed, and from various sources; we shall see heterogeneous, imported elements, assimilated sometimes in a greater or less degree, frequently flung together in illogical confusion, seldom, if ever, fused into a new, harmonious whole by that inner welding fire which is genius; and we shall see in the sixteenth century a foreign influence received and borne as a yoke"--(that of the italian renaissance) "because no living generative force was there to throw it off--with results too often dreary beyond measure; and, finally, we shall meet this strange freak of nature, a soil without artistic initiative bringing forth the greatest initiator--observe, i do not say the greatest artist--the greatest initiator perhaps since lionardo in modern art--except it be his contemporary rembrandt--diego velasquez." in his discourse of december, , we have, rapidly sketched, the evolution of art in france. touching again on the question of race, the lecturer adduced the great race of gauls, submitting first to roman, and afterwards to frankish, or teutonic, domination and admixture. the main characteristics of the gaulish people he judges to be, "a love of fighting and a magnificent bravery, great impatience of control, a passion for new things, a swift, brilliant, logical intelligence, a gay and mocking spirit--for 'to laugh,' says rabelais, 'is the proper mark of man,'--an inextinguishable self-confidence." with the reign of charlemagne began the development of the architecture of france, but not until the tenth and eleventh centuries did the "movement reach its full force; and its development was due mainly to the great monastic community, which, founded by st. benedict early in the sixth century, had poured from the heights of monte cassino its beneficent influence over western europe." here we have it explained how the principle of gothic architecture, "the substitution of a balance of active forces for the principle of inert resistance," was gradually evolved. this principle once found, gothic architecture reached its most splendid period in a wonderfully short space of time; cathedrals and churches were built everywhere, and before the end of the thirteenth century, the most splendid gothic buildings were begun or completed. with the end of the thirteenth century gothic architecture began to decline, lured by the "fascination of the statical _tour de force_, the craving to bring down to an irreducible minimum the amount of material that would suffice to the stability of a building extravagantly lofty." many more extracts we would gladly make, whether from the account of the french sculpture of this period, marked as it was by "sincerity and freshness, often by great beauty and stateliness;" or from the criticism of such artists as jean cousin, who painted windows which were "limpid with hues of amethyst, sapphire, and topaz, and fair as a may morning;" or again, of watteau, of whom we are told that "in the vivacity and grace of his drawing, in the fascination of his harmonies, rich and suave at once, in the fidelity with which he reflected his times without hinting at their coarseness, this wizard of the brush remains one of the most interesting, as he is one of the most fascinating, masters of his country's art." in the discourse of the history of gothic architecture was pursued, from its native france to its adopted home in germany. at the end of last century goethe declared that not only was the gothic style native to germany, but no other nation had a peculiar style of its own; "for," he said, "the italians have none, and still less the frenchmen"! according to leighton, "the germans, as a race, were, speaking broadly, never at one in spirit with ogival architecture. the result was such as you would expect; in the use of a form of architecture which was not of spontaneous growth in their midst, and unrestrained, moreover, as they were, by a sound innate instinct of special fitness, german builders were often led into solecisms, incongruities, and excesses, from which in the practice of their native style they have been largely free." of this style, which may be called the german-romanesque, the best examples are to be found among the churches of the rhineland. in the thirteenth century this style, admirably as it expressed the genius of the teuton, succumbed to invading french influence. "i have often wondered," he continued, "at the strange contrast between the reticent and grave sobriety of the architecture of germany before the fall of the hohenstaufens, and its erratic self-indulgence in the gothic period." there is much, however, to be said in praise of the gothic churches of germany, their fine colouring, suggestiveness, and variety. take the description of the church of st. lorenz in nuremberg. "nothing could well be more delightful than the impression which you receive on entering it; the beauty of the dark brown stone, the rich hues of the stained glass, the right relation of tone value, to use a painter's term, between the structure and the lights--the sombre blazoned shields which cluster along the walls, the succession on pier beyond pier of pictures powerful in colour and enhanced by the gleaming gold of fantastic carven frames, above all the succession of picturesque objects in mid-air above you, a large chandelier, a stately rood-cross, and to crown all, veit stoss's masterpiece, the annunciation, rich with gold and colour; all these things conspire to produce a whole, delightful and poetic, in spite of much that invites criticism in the architectural forms themselves." still more interesting is the word-picture of the great cathedral of cologne, "a monument of indomitable will, of science, and of stylistic orthodoxy ... its beautiful rhythm, its noble consistency and unity, its soaring height, rivet the beholder's gaze"; and yet, the building, in spite of all, does not entirely convince: "the kindling touch of genius" seems to be wanting. take, finally, this description of albert dürer: "he was a man of a strong and upright nature, bent on pure and high ideals, a man ever seeking, if i may use his own characteristic expression, to make known through his work the mysterious treasure that was laid up in his heart; he was a thinker, a theorist, and as you know, a writer; like many of the great artists of the renaissance, he was steeped also in the love of science.... superbly inexhaustible as a designer, as a draughtsman he was powerful, thorough, and minute to a marvel, but never without a certain almost caligraphic mannerism of hand, wanting in spontaneous simplicity--never broadly serene. in his colour he was rich and vivid, not always unerring in his harmonies, not alluring in his execution--withal a giant." with this tribute to a great predecessor we must leave these discourses, which need, to be properly appreciated, to be studied as a whole; as indeed they form leighton's deliberate exposition of his whole principles of aesthetics. in working this out, discourse by discourse, he was not content to rely upon convenient literary sources, or previously acquired knowledge of his subject; but undertook special journeys, and spent long periods, abroad, to procure his own evidence at first hand. this gives his discourses all the value of original research, based on new materials, to add to their purely critical value. had they been completed, they would have formed an invaluable contribution to the history and the philosophy of art. chapter ix lord leighton's home if we seek for practical expression of leighton's sympathy for decorative art, we may find it most satisfactorily in his own home as it appeared during his life. mr. george aitchison, r.a., designed the whole house;--even the arab hall being largely built from drawings made specially by him in moorish spain. although the exterior of no. , holland park road has individuality, rather than distinction, it was within that its special charms were found. one of the first things seen on entering was a striking bronze statue, "icarus," by mr. alfred gilbert; a typical instance of leighton's generous recognition of artistic contemporaries. in earlier pages we spoke of the arab hall and its oriental enchantment. no attempt to paint the effects of such an interior in words can call it up half as clearly as the slightest actual drawing. there is a dim dome above, and a fountain falling into a great black marble basin below; there are eight little arched windows of stained glass in the dome; and there are white marble columns, whose bases are green, whose capitals are carved with rare and curious birds, supporting the arches of the alcoves. the cairo lattice-work in the lower arched recesses lets in only so much of the hot light of midsummer (for it is in summer that one should see it to appreciate its last charm), as consists with the coolness, and the quiet, and the perfect oriental repose, which give the chamber its spell. [illustration: the house: the inner hall] more in what we may call the highway of the house, from entrance hall to studios, is the large hall, out of which the arab hall leads, and from which the dark oak staircase ascends with walls tiled in blue and white. here, on every side, one saw all manner of lovely paintings and exquisite _bric-à-brac_: a drawing of _the fontana della tartarughe in rome_ by leighton's old mentor, steinle; other bronzes and paintings, and in full view a huge stuffed peacock, which seemed to have shed some of its brilliant hues upon its surroundings. in the drawing-room hung many corots and constables, with a superb daubigny, and a most tempting example of george mason,--a picture of a girl driving calves on a windy hill, amid a perfect embarrassment of such artistic riches. the famous corots, a sequence of panels, representing _morning_, _noon_, _evening_, and _night_, which cost lord leighton less than , francs each, were sold for , guineas for the four, at christie's, in july, . still another small corot, a picture of a boat afloat on a still lake, was also in this room. one of the constables that hung there is literally historic--for it is the sketch for that famous _hay wain_ which, exhibited in paris, at once upset the classical tradition, and gave impetus to the whole modern school of french landscape. near it was one of constable's many pictures of hampstead heath,--simply a bit of dark heath against a sympathetic sky; but so painted as to be a masterpiece of its kind. these pictures were but a few of the many artfully disposed things of beauty, born in older italy, or newer france, or in our new-old london. upon the staircase there were pictures at every turn to make one pause, step by step, on the way. sir joshua reynolds was represented by an unfinished canvas of lord rockingham, in which the great burke, in his minor function of secretary, also figures. then came g. f. watts's earlier portrait of leighton himself; and here a genuine tintoretto. there was the p.r.a.'s famous _portrait of captain burton_; and over a doorway his early painting of _the plague at florence_, with another early work, _romeo and juliet_, one of his very few shakespearean pictures. from the landing whence most of these things were visible, you entered at once the great studio. round the upper wall ran a cast of the parthenon frieze, and beneath this the wall on one side was riddled and windowed, as it were, with innumerable framed pictures, small studies of foreign scenes; so that one looked out in turn upon italy and the south, egypt and the east, or upon an irish sunset, or a scottish mountain-side. opposite these, below the great window, were many of the artist's miniature wax models and studies. else, the ordinary not unpicturesque lumber of an artist's studio was conspicuously absent. the secret of leighton's despatch and careful ordering of his days, was to be read, indeed, in every detail of his work-a-day surroundings. even in a dim antechamber, with a trellised niche most mysteriously overlooking the arab hall, at one end of the studio, in which the curious visitor might have expected to find dusty studies, discarded canvases, and other such æsthetic remnants,--even that was found to contain not lumber, but a sebastian del piombo, a sketch of sappho by delacroix, a landscape by costa, a madonna and child of sano di pietro del piombo. at the extreme other end of the main studio was the working studio of glass, built to combat the fogs by procuring whatever vestige of light kensington may accord in its most november moods. the last addition to the building, not long before lord leighton's death, was a gallery, known as "the music room," expressly designed to receive his pictures--mostly gifts from contemporary artists; or, to speak more accurately, works that had been exchanged for others in a wholly non-commercial spirit. these included, _shelling peas_, by sir j. e. millais, _the corner of the studio_, by sir l. alma-tadema, _the haystacks_, and _venus_, by g. f. watts, and _chaucer's dream of good women_, by sir e. burne-jones. such was the daily environment of that hard, unceasing, indefatigable labour which, natural faculty taken for granted, is always the secret of an artist's extraordinary production. and it was an environment, as one felt on leaving it for the gray london without, that well accorded with the radiant painted procession of the figures, classic and other, that file through lord leighton's pictures. chapter x lord leighton's house in in the preceding chapter a picture is drawn of the "house beautiful," as it was in lord leighton's lifetime. it was then full to overflowing with all manner of treasures; but now all that were removable have been dispersed. only the shell, the house itself, remains. yet denuded as it is, that is still well worth looking at. the architectural features to which mr. rhys, dazzled by other things, hardly did justice, are now all the more apparent. one of the rarest of all accomplishments, at any rate in england, is a cultivated taste in architecture; but it so happened that amongst his many acquirements lord leighton possessed it in a remarkable degree. in fact he received, although a painter by profession, the gold medal of the royal institute of british architects in virtue of the intimate knowledge of architecture he had displayed in some of his backgrounds--for instance, those of the frescoes at south kensington. it is a great honour, and one by no means lightly bestowed. at any rate, when there was a question of building himself a house, though he might not have been able to build it himself, he was thoroughly qualified to choose an architect. his choice fell upon professor aitchison, now r.a., and he probably hit upon the only man of his generation able to put his feeling into bricks and mortar, viz., the feeling for a beauty sedate, delicate, and dignified. we must remember the condition of things architectural in the sixties to do justice to the independence of employer and architect. it was a time when the albert memorial was possible, and when men tried to guide their steps by the light of "the seven lamps of architecture." a sentimental fancy for gothic based on irrational grounds was all but universal, and it needed courage to avow a preference for the classical. the compromise in favour of quaintness and capricious prettiness which began under the name of the "queen anne style," and has contributed so many picturesque and pleasing buildings to our modern london, had not yet budded. nor would it ever at any time of his life have thoroughly responded to leighton's taste. so long as he could detect a defect he was dissatisfied, and extreme nicety is not what the dutch style pretends to. it depends upon a picturesque combination of forms of no great refinement in themselves, but which give a varied skyline and a pretty play of light and shade. it amuses at the first glance, and as it rarely demands a second, it is well suited to turbid atmospheres, which blur outlines, and a chilly climate in which people cannot loiter out of doors. moreover, the old-world memories it evokes, although in a minor degree than was the case with the gothic, contribute to its facile popularity. but the classical taste is a love for form and delicate beauty of line _as such_, quite irrespective of any associations which may accompany them, or lamps, be they seven or seventy times seven. and to build his house in this style was the natural thing for a sculptor and fastidious seeker after the ideal in form. he found the man he wanted in professor aitchison. we must go over the outside and inside of the house, but rapidly; for to do more than just indicate the points worth attention would be waste of effort. to convey an idea of the feelings produced by architecture is perhaps possible, but it is perfectly vain to hope to picture it or reproduce in words the actual beauties of proportion or of colour. those who wish to verify them must see for themselves and examine the building carefully. the aspect of the house as seen from the street is, it must be admitted, hardly symmetrical; but it is evident also that the first design has been much altered and added to. at one end the arab hall, with its dome and "bearded" battlements, is an obvious afterthought, in great contrast with the serious simplicity of the rest. and at the other end the glass studio, which was added later still, is also clearly an excrescence. the centre part was the original house, and the studio was the chief feature of it, and very much as it is now. it is, of course, on the north side, and the street, the south side, is occupied by small rooms which, with their repeated small openings, offer no great scope for designing. still, the whole has that look of dignity which always accompanies high finish; and the entrance, far from being commonplace, because it has nothing quaint or surprising about it, has a certain ample serenity which it is rare to find. the mouldings of stonework and woodwork, few and simple as they are, are not taken out of a pattern-book, as is usually the case, but are specially designed each for its own position. all the refinement of a building consists in its mouldings, and no one has designed mouldings better than professor aitchison. a vast improvement has been made in this respect in the last twenty years or so, and it is largely due to his influence. at any rate he was one of the first and he remains the best of modern designers of mouldings. there are some fine examples of his work in the house. on the north the house looks into a fair-sized garden, skilfully planted, so that it looks much larger than it is. in the mind of the writer this aspect is intimately bound up with the recollection of delightful sunday mornings in summer, when he sat chatting on random subjects with the president, who, in slippers, a so-called "land and water hat," and a smock frock, leant back in a garden-chair and talked as no one else could. the quiet, the sun overhead, the grass under our feet, the green trees around us, and the house visible between them, form an ineffaceable picture of æsthetic contentment it is a delight to recall. it recurred every sunday whenever the weather was fine and warm. then it was that there was leisure to appreciate the admirable symmetry of the architecture; for in england it is so rare to sit out of doors where one may look at architecture that even if architects were to design exteriors with all the subtlety of a brunelleschi or a bramante, they would seldom get anyone to notice their work. the studio occupies the whole of the upper story, and the architect had a good opportunity, as there was no need to cut it up as is the case when several rooms have to be provided for, by numerous uniform lights. here, in the centre, is one great light between wide spaces of wall judiciously divided by string courses, and in the upper part on either side of the great window is a row of three small windows. at the east end is a small door leading into a pretty little venetian balcony with stone parapet. the whole makes a very beautiful building, and the details and proportions are all worth examining. this central part was what one saw through the trees as one sat in the garden. less visible were the glass studio on its iron columns, an excellent piece of work, considering its few possibilities, and the arab hall at the other end. of course the latter looks a little incongruous. it is a professed reproduction of arab architecture, but carried out, like the rest of the house, with unstinted expense, care, and finish. we will now go inside by the front door. the cornice of the ceiling of the vestibule first entered is singularly fine. like every other good artist professor aitchison improved as he went on, and this is one of his latest designs in mouldings. when the entrance was altered some years before the president's death, an opportunity occurred for putting in a new ceiling. passing on into the hall one comes upon a very picturesque arrangement of staircase. it is lit from above by a broad skylight. the stairs begin to rise against the wall of the dining-room which is recessed; while on the first floor the wall of the studio is projected and carried on columns, beyond which the stairs rise. so that figures coming through the hall in the light, begin mounting the stairs in the shadow, and re-emerge into the light, as the stairs turn, with a very varied and striking effect. by the first short flight of steps, and between the two columns, is a seat made of a persian chest or cassone, beautiful and unusual in shape, and richly inlaid. lord leighton bought it in rhodes or lindos, and was very proud of it. it could not be removed and sold with the rest of the treasures at christie's as it was a "fixture." the floor of the hall is of marble mosaic, mostly black and white. only one small piece by the dining-room door, a very agreeable design, is in pinkish marbles. [illustration: the house: the arab hall] on the left, down a short passage, is the arab hall. it is so unlike anything else in europe that its reputation has withdrawn all attention from the rest of the house. it certainly is a most sumptuous piece of work. elsewhere leighton satisfied his love of chastened form; in this room and its approach he gave full scope to his delight in rich colours. the general scheme is a peacock blue, known technically as egyptian green, and gold, with plentiful black and white. here and there tiny spots of red occur, but they are rare. the harmony begins in the staircase hall. the walls, except in the recessed part, where there are genuine oriental tiles, are lined to the level of the first floor with tiles of a fine blue, from the kilns of mr. de morgan, and the soffitt of the stairs is coloured buff, with gold spots. in the passage the tone increases in richness. the ceiling is silver and the cornice gold, while the walls, except for a fine panel of oriental tiles over the drawing-room door, are lined with the same tiles as the staircase. then between two grand columns of red caserta marble, with gilt capitals modelled by randolph caldecott, we pass into the arab hall itself, and we come upon the full magnificence of the effect. it is made up of polished marbles of many colours, gilt and sculptured capitals, alabaster, shining tiles, glistening mosaic of gold and colours, brass and copper in the hanging corona, and coloured glass in the little pierced windows, in fact, of every form of enrichment yet devised by eastern or western art. from the floor, which is black and white, the tone rises through blue to lose itself in the gloom of a golden dome, sparsely lit by jewel-like coloured lights. in the centre a jet of water springs up, to fall back into a basin of black marble. the form of the basin which deepens towards the centre in successive steps, is an adaptation of the pattern of a well-known oriental fountain. all is equally black in this pool, and the border unfortunately is barely distinguishable from the water. after a dinner party at which sir e. burne-jones, mr. whistler, mr. albert moore, and many others were present, i recollect how, when we were smoking and drinking coffee in this hall, somebody, excitedly discoursing, stepped unaware right into the fountain. two large japanese gold tench, whose somnolent existence was now for the first time made interesting, dashed about looking for an exit, and there was a general noise of splashing and laughter. the dark, apparently fathomless pool was rather a mistake. mishaps like that just mentioned occurred, i believe, more than once. there had been at first a white marble basin, but it did not give satisfaction, because, being in several pieces, it leaked, whereas the black one is all cut out of one block, at great expense, of course. but the white had the advantage of lightness where light is none too plentiful. in our winter, when days are dark and cold, black pools, with marble columns and floors, tiled walls, and dim domes about them do not fall in with english notions of cosy woollen comfort. the season to do justice to this hall is when summer comes round. when the sun breaks through the lattice work of the musharabiyehs, and the light is thrown up on the storied tiles, and up the polished columns to the glinting mosaic, to die away in the golden cupola, the effect is indeed superb, and to sit on the divan, by the splash of the fountain, and look from the glories within to the green trees without, is to live not in london but in the veritable arabian nights. the hall is square. on one side is the entrance. in the centre of each of the other sides is a lofty arched recess. those to the north and south are windows, shuttered with genuine musharabiyehs bought in cairo and having deep cushioned divans. the recess to the west has only a small pierced window high up. it has a raised step, and in it used to stand certain bronze reproductions from pompeii, with pots, vases, etc., now gone. some of the tiles were bought in damascus in . the price paid was £ for the complete tile surface of one room. what would they be worth now? others, particularly the great inscription spoken of below, were bought later in cairo, and the rest at odd times. here and there are single tiles, but most of them are in sets forming fine panels. an interesting one, in the south-east corner, represents hawks clutching their prey, cheetahs and deer, a hunter, etc., and another has herons, fish, tortoises, deer, etc. set into the woodwork in the western recess are four tiles with female figures. these are either persian or come from the neighbourhood of persia, for the anatolian or egyptian mahommedan tolerated no representations of life. the rest repeat in pleasing variety the usual motives of oriental design, viz., vines, cypresses, pinks and vases, doorways (? the entrances of mosques), with hanging lamps, and conventional floral designs. above the entrance runs the chief treasure, the grand series of tiles bearing the great inscription. it is about sixteen feet long. according to mr. harding smith it may be translated thus: "in the name of the merciful and long-suffering god. the merciful hath taught the koran. he hath created man and taught him speech. he hath set the sun and moon in a certain course. both the trees and the grass are in subjection to him." it cannot be said that there is anything very new in that. there rarely is in such inscriptions. there are three others, but so far as they have been deciphered they appear to be incomplete, and in two cases, at any rate, to much the same effect as the big one. just pious reminders. the real interest of them lies in the decorative effect of the imposing procession of letters across the wall, and the splendour of their colours. for beauty and condition this great inscription is said to be without a rival in any collection in europe. let into the woodwork panelling in the west bay there are two small lustred persian tiles of the thirteenth century. they have been mutilated as to the faces of the figures by true believers. the rest belong to the sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries, a time when artistic production was stimulated by the commercial wealth brought by the trade of venice and genoa with the east through anatolia, damascus and cairo. round three sides above the tiles runs a decorative mosaic frieze, by walter crane, of an arabesque design on a gold ground. it is a beautiful and fanciful piece of work in itself, and it serves moreover to blend the prevailing colour of the tiles with the gilding of the upper regions. but it does not continue round the fourth side, because over the entrance, above the great inscription, an oriel window of musharabiyeh work looks down into the hall from the first floor of the house. the pierced windows, or at least eight of them, were brought from cairo, and when bought had the original glass in them; but in the east the glass is stuck in with white of egg, and as they were, as usual, ill-packed, the glass all came out and was ground to fragments in the jolting of the journey. only enough could be saved to fill the window in the upper part of the west recess opposite the entrance. the remainder had to be filled with english imitations. returning now to the staircase, we find it ends on the first floor in a landing leading to the great studio. on the left it is open to the little studio; so-called because, having a skylight, lord leighton used it for painting out-of-door effects until he had the glass studio built. adjoining it, or forming an extension of it, is another room, built only a year or two before the late owner's death. after the addition of the glass studio the two were only used as an antechamber, and were hung with the pictures presented by brother artists, and with a few old masters. the mouldings round the skylights are very pretty. the latticed window before mentioned looks down from the little studio into the arab hall. the great studio is a large room about sixty feet by twenty-five and about seventeen in height. in the centre of the north side is the lofty window forming a bay and extending into a skylight in the top. high up on either side of it are the three small openings mentioned when speaking of the exterior. a curtain hangs in front of them, and in point of fact they were never used. in the west wall is an apse with a gilt semi-dome, which appears in some of lord leighton's pictures. across the east end runs a gallery at about eight feet from the floor with bookshelves under it on either side, and in the middle a broad passage leads into the glass studio, and still outside this is a wide balcony looking into the garden. casts of a portion of the panathenaic frieze of the parthenon run along the upper part of the wall of the great studio, fit emblem of the lifelong devotion of the president to classic art. such then is the workshop. even now, comparatively bare as it is at the present moment of writing, this is one of the most picturesque suites of rooms in existence; but to see it on one of the grand occasions of leighton's musical receptions was a very different sight and one not easily to be forgotten. then when walls and easels were covered with pictures, when rare carpets hung from the gallery, flowers and palms filled the bay window, beautiful women and men of every form of distinction crowded the floor to listen to joachim and piatti, nothing was wanting which could give beauty or interest to the spectacle. it will be seen that the house is still rich in artistic beauty and still has objects of value. but the most precious of its contents are after all its associations. its floors have been trodden by all that was most notable in the society of its owner's day, people whose names alone would be an epitome of our times. it was also the workshop of a great artist. but, above all, it was the centre of a great influence which profoundly modified english art. whatever judgment the future may pass upon his own productions, the fact must never be lost sight of that even without them leighton was a great man. intellectually, spiritually, and socially he was the most brilliant leader and stimulator of artists we have ever seen in england. his earnest example and lifelong persistence fanned the flame of enthusiasm among all branches of art workers. he taught englishmen to study form, and it was under his encouragement that sculpture, which was fallen so low, has now risen into so good a place. finally he did more than anyone else has done to raise the status of the artist in society. the house which he built himself was his hobby, and in the refinement and catholicity of taste it shows, there is so just a reflex of his characteristics that an account of it is indispensable to any book which claims to describe the man. s. pepys cockerell. chapter xi the artist and his critics before closing our record it will be well to quote, as we promised earlier, some of the contemporary criticism that sir frederic's work has encountered from time to time; and especially the criticism of his earlier performances, while he was still in the years of his pre-academic probation. as a provocation to criticism, most interesting of all is his picture, the _cimabue's madonna carried in procession through the streets of florence_, upon which we have already commented. as we may here remind our readers, it was painted at rome chiefly, in - , and was exhibited at the academy of . in that year, as good fortune would have it, mr. ruskin issued for the first time, "notes on some of the principal pictures exhibited in the rooms of the royal academy." some pages of this famous pronouncement are devoted to this very picture, and we cannot do better than quote freely from a criticism so remarkable. "this is a very important and very beautiful picture," says mr. ruskin. "it has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest principles of venetian art--that is to say, on the calm acceptance of the whole of nature, small and great, as, in its place, deserving of faithful rendering. the great secret of the venetians was their simplicity. they were great colourists, not because they had peculiar secrets about oil and colour, but because when they saw a thing red, they painted it red; and ... when they saw it distinctly, they painted it distinctly. in all paul veronese's pictures, the lace borders of the table cloths or fringes of the dresses are painted with just as much care as the faces of the principal figures; and the reader may rest assured that in all great art it is so. everything in it is done as well as it _can_ be done. thus in the picture before us, in the background is the church of san miniato, strictly accurate in every detail; on the top of the wall are oleanders and pinks, as carefully painted as the church; the architecture of the shrine on the wall is well studied from thirteenth-century gothic, and painted with as much care as the pinks; the dresses of the figures, very beautifully designed, are painted with as much care as the faces: that is to say, all things throughout with as much care as the painter could bestow. it necessarily follows that what is most difficult (_i.e._ the faces) should be comparatively the worst done. but if they are done as well as the painter could do them, it is all we have to ask; and modern artists are under a wonderful mistake in thinking that when they have painted faces ill, they make their pictures more valuable by painting the dresses worse. "the painting before us has been objected to because it seems broken up in bits. precisely the same objection would hold, and in very nearly the same degree, against the best works of the venetians. all faithful colourists' work, in figure-painting, has a look of sharp separation between part and part.... although, however, in common with all other works of its class, it is marked by these sharp divisions, there is no confusion in its arrangement. the principal figure is nobly principal, not by extraordinary light, but by its own pure whiteness; and both the master and the young giotto attract full regard by distinction of form and face. the features of the boy are carefully studied, and are indeed what, from the existing portraits of him, we know those of giotto must have been in his youth. the head of the young girl who wears the garland of blue flowers is also very sweetly conceived. "such are the chief merits of the picture. its defect is that the equal care given to the whole of it is not yet _care enough_. i am aware of no instance of a young painter, who was to be really great, who did not in his youth paint with intense effort and delicacy of finish. the handling here is much too broad; and the faces are, in many instances, out of drawing, and very opaque and feeble in colour. nor have they in general the dignity of the countenance of the thirteenth century. the dante especially is ill-conceived--far too haughty, and in no wise noble or thoughtful. it seems to me probable that mr. leighton has greatness in him, but there is no absolute proof of it in this picture; and if he does not, in succeeding years, paint far better, he will soon lose the power of painting so well." to mr. ruskin's account, which is sufficient to enable one to realize the picture in some detail, we may add further the criticism of the "athenæum" of may th, , which is interesting as showing how the work affected a contemporary critic of another order. it speaks of mr. leighton as "a young artist who, we believe, has studied in italy," and goes on to say: "there can be no question that the picture is one of great power, although the composition is quaint even to sectarianism; and though the touch, in parts broad and masterly, is in the lesser parts of the roughest character." the last clause of the sentence bears out, it may be perceived, a significant indictment in mr. ruskin's deliverance, which lays stress on a defect that the artist, in his maturer brush-work, does not show. rossetti, writing to his friend william allingham, may th, , says: "there is a big picture of _cimabue_, one of his works in procession, by a new man, living abroad, named leighton--a huge thing, which the queen has bought, which everyone talks of. the r.a.'s have been gasping for years for someone to back against hunt and millais, and here they have him, a fact that makes some people do the picture injustice in return. it was _very_ uninteresting to me at first sight; but on looking more at it, i think there is great richness of arrangement, a quality which, when _really_ existing, as it does in the best old masters, and perhaps hitherto in no living man--at any rate english--ranks among the great qualities. "but i am not quite sure yet either of this or of the faculty for colour, which i suspect exists very strongly, but is certainly at present under a thick veil of paint, owing, i fancy, to too much continental study. one undoubted excellence it has--facility, without much neatness or ultra-cleverness in the execution, which is greatly like that of paul veronese; and the colour may mature in future works to the same resemblance, i fancy. there is much feeling for beauty, too, in the women. as for purely intellectual qualities, expression, intention, etc., there is little as yet of them; but i think that in art richness of arrangement is so nearly allied to these, that where it exists (in an earnest man) they will probably supervene. however, the choice of subject, though interesting in a certain way, leaves one quite in the dark as to what faculty the man may have for representing incident or passionate emotion. but i believe, as far as this showing goes, that he possesses qualities which the mass of our artists aim at chiefly, and only seem to possess. whether he have those of which neither they nor he give sign, i cannot tell; but he is said to be only twenty-four years old. there is something very french in his work, at present, which is the most disagreeable thing about it; but this i dare say would leave him if he came to england."[ ] in the year following leighton's academical _début_, he exhibited a picture entitled _the triumph of music_, which the "athenæum," hereafter so sympathetic towards his work, described as "anything but a triumph of art." partly, perhaps, because of the general tone of discouragement in all the criticisms of this year, the artist did not send in anything to the academy of . in his two pictures--_the fisherman and the syren_, and _count paris_, although admirably conceived, and extremely interesting to us now, received no word of friendly criticism that is worth recording. at the academy of were exhibited two pictures by him, which served to reassure at last those critics who had been shaking their heads over his supposed inability to follow up his first success. we turn to the "athenæum" again, to study its gradual conversion from an attitude of critical distrust to one of critical sympathy: "mr. leighton," says the "athenæum," "after a temporary eclipse, struggles again to light. his heads of italian women this year are worthy of a young old master: anything more feeling, commanding, or coldly beautiful, we have not seen for many a day.... this is real painting, and we cannot but think that a painter who can paint so powerfully will soon be able to surpass that processional picture of his,..." _i.e._, the _cimabue_. in , the artist, who then entered upon his thirtieth year, exhibited a small picture, _capri, sunrise_, which won great praise for its successful treatment of italian landscape under the scirocco, whose sulphurous light is cast with evil suggestion upon the white houses and green vegetation. in paying his tribute to the quality of the picture, the critic of the "athenæum" cannot resist, however, the old cry of great expectations. for the effect of the _cimabue's madonna_ had aroused critics to regard the painter as one who would continue the legend of the great historical schools, and carry on the traditions of the so-called grand style. but the critic proposes, the creator disposes: the artist went his own way, following still his own ideals. in , some rather warm discussion raged over two of the artist's contributions to the royal academy, which appeared in its catalogue as nos. and , and which, it was said, had been deliberately slighted by the hanging committee. in later years, leighton must sometimes have smiled when he heard (as from his position he must needs have,) the annual plaint of the "skied." it is to the "art journal," whose criticisms, when they had to do with the new and rising schools, used to be always entertaining, if often provoking, in those days, that we turn for a contemporary account of these things, rather than to any other source. the critic having premised, with a delightful and convincing air of "i told you so!" that his first effort (the inevitable _cimabue's madonna_) having exhausted the poor artist, "he has been coming down the ladder of fame ever since," continues in characteristic tones: "instead of being hung too high, the _dream_, had it been properly hung, would have been displayed upon the ceiling." the picture, according to this authority, consisted only of a questionable combination of the "lower forms of mere decorative ornamentation," and was in fact, "not so much a picture as a very clever treatment for the centre of a ceiling." so much for what was really the first clear sign of the artist's delightful decorative faculty. it is clear from various evidences of the feeling of the critics about leighton at this time, that they had begun to look upon him as one whose ideals were frivolous, and not seriously minded, or weighted with the true british substantiality of the old academy tradition. in the very next year, the artist, by the chances of his own temperamental many-sided delight in life and art, did something to reassure his admonitors once more. no. at the royal academy of was his picture, _the star of bethlehem_, which, with some natural and not unfair deductions, won considerable praise from the critic last quoted. in this painting, which shows curiously the mingled academic and natural quality of the artist, the critic found profound incompatibilities of conception and technique; and next year, the same critic was stirred to exclaim,--"the pictures which of all others give most trouble and anxiety to the critic are perhaps those of mr. millais and mr. leighton,"--a very suggestive conjunction of names, let us add. it was probably the same critic, who speaking of the _dante at verona_, in , said gravely, "the promise given by the _cimabue_ here reaches fruition." writing in , mr. w. m. rossetti, a critic whom it is interesting to be able to cite, said of two of the artist's pictures of that year, the _girl feeding peacocks_ and the _girl with a basket of fruit_, they belong "to that class of art in which mr. leighton shines--the art of luxurious exquisiteness; beauty, for beauty's sake; colour, light, form, choice details, for their own sake, or for beauty's." in the same year, mr. rossetti spoke of the young artist as the one "british painter of special faculty who has come forward with the most decided novelty of aim"--since, that is, the new development of art under the little band of pre-raphaelites,--with which mr. w. m. rossetti was himself so closely associated. by way of contrast, we may cite the "art journal" of , which provides a most extraordinary criticism of _david_, of that year. "we would venture to ask," says this ingenious critic, "why the divine psalmist has so small a brain? within this skull there is not compass for the poet's thoughts to range. we state as a physiological fact, that a head so small, with a brow so receding, could not have belonged to any man who has made himself conspicuous in the world's history. again, descending to mere matter of costume, there cannot be a doubt that the purple mantle flung on the psalmist's shoulders is wholly wanting in study of detail, and constitutes a blot on the landscape. barring these oversights, the picture possesses merits." at this period we hear the first critical murmurs against the artist's very deliberately chosen method of flesh-painting. in , speaking of the _venus disrobing_, the "art journal" critic says: "according to the manner, not to say the mannerism, of the artist, it has a pale silvery hue, not as white as marble, not so life-glowing as flesh." with this we may compare, for the comparison is instructive, the "athenæum," whose notice is more sympathetic. the figure of the goddess it describes as "all rosy white, ... admirably drawn, and modelled with extreme care." again, in , the "art journal" says of sir frederic's _actæa_: "the artist has made some attempt to paint flesh in its freshness and transparency, and indeed the more he renounces the opacity of the german school, and the more he can realize the brilliance of the old venetian painters, the better." in , the "athenæum" praised the _sister's kiss_, as "a lovely group," but complained that the execution was a "little too smooth,"--a complaint not infrequently echoed from time to time by the artist's critics. some years later we find mr. w. m. rossetti making the same complaint in criticising _winding the skein_. in the picture, _portions of the interior of the grand mosque at damascus_, won great praise, as "a remarkably delicate piece of work, in which the beautiful colouring of the tiled walls and mosaic pavement are skilfully rendered." in , the quondam hostile "art journal" is completely converted by the _daphnephoria_: "to project such a scene upon canvas presupposes a man of high poetic imagination, and when it is accompanied by such delicacy and yet such precision of drawing and such sincerity of modelling, the poet is merged in the painter and we speak of such a one as a master. there is, indeed, nothing more consolatory to those who take an interest in british art than the knowledge that we have among us a man of such pure devotion and lofty aim." it was in , that mr. ruskin, resuming his _rôle_ of an academy critic, claimed leighton as "a kindred goth," and confessed, "i determined on writing this number of 'academy notes,' simply because i was so much delighted with mr. leslie's _school_, mr. leighton's _little fatima_, mr. hook's _hearts of oak_, and mr. couldery's _kittens_." in his lectures on the art of england, the same critic, speaking of leighton's children, says: "it is with extreme gratitude, and unqualified admiration, that i find sir frederic condescending from the majesties of olympus to the worship of those unappalling powers, which, heaven be thanked, are as brightly anglo-saxon as hellenic; and painting for us, with a soft charm peculiarly his own, the witchcraft and the wonderfulness of childhood." upon the _egyptian slinger_ of the same year, which mr. ruskin terms the "study of man in his oriental function of scarecrow (symmetrically antithetic to his british one of game preserver)," his criticism is interesting, but adverse. the critic who elsewhere acknowledged fully the artist's acutely observant and enthusiastic study of the organism of the human body, confesses himself unable to recognize his skill, or to feel sympathy with the subjects that admit of its display. it is, he goes on to say further of the _slinger_, "it is, i do not doubt, anatomically correct, and with the addition of the corn, the poppies, and the moon, becomes semi-artistic; so that i feel much compunction in depressing it into the natural history class; and the more, because it partly forfeits its claim even to such position, by obscuring in twilight and disturbing our minds, in the process of scientific investigation, by sensational effects of afterglow and lunar effulgence, which are disadvantageous, not to the scientific observer only, but to less learned spectators; for when simple persons like myself, greatly susceptible to the influence of the stage lamps and pink side-lights, first catch sight of this striding figure from the other side of the room, and take it, perhaps, for the angel with his right foot on the sea and the left on the earth, swearing there shall be time no longer; or for achilles alighting from one of his lance-cast-long leaps on the shore of scamander, and find on near approach that all this grand straddling and turning down of the gas mean practically only a lad shying stones at sparrows, we are only too likely to pass it petulantly without taking note of what is really interesting in this eastern custom and skill." [illustration: egyptian slinger ( )] the most recent criticism of importance on the art of leighton is contained in an admirable volume by m. de la sizeranne.[ ] we take this opportunity of quoting a few sentences from an appreciation which opens with the significant remark that sir frederic leighton is officially the representative of english painting on the continent, and, in reality, the representative of continental painting in england, and concludes by tracing the definitely english ideal that underlies the artist's work. elsewhere the critic says, "ce qui est britannique en m. leighton, quoique bien voilé par son éclectisme, transparaîtra encore." apart from leighton's distinctively native predilection for certain subjects, m. de la sizeranne finds him very english in his treatment of draperies, for instance, a treatment which he traces ingeniously to the much study given to the greek drapery of the elgin marbles by the english school, since the days of the pre-raphaelites. elsewhere, taking as his text the picture _the spirit of the summit_, he says: "des sujets qui élèvent la pensée vers les sommets de la vie ou de l'histoire, de sorte qu'on ne puisse se rappeler un nez ou une jambe sans se souvenir de quelque haute leçon évangélique, ou de moins de quelque grande nécessité sociale, voilà ce que m. leighton a traité. et un style beaucoup plus sobre que celui d'overbeck, beaucoup plus viril que celui de m. bouguereau, voilà comment il les a traités." again: "la grandeur de la communion humaine, la noblesse de la paix, tel est le thème qui a le plus souvent et le mieux inspiré m. leighton. et cela il ne l'a pas trouvé en france, ni ailleurs. c'est bien une idée anglaise." no better summing up of the chronicle of the life work of the artist could well be found. but we have pursued far enough this study of an artist's progress through the thorny, devious ways of art criticism. we have reached the point, in fact, where the comparative uncertainties of an artist's career make way for the certainties. with one quotation more, in which we have a tribute from another critic, mr. comyns carr, we may fitly close: "no painter of our time," said mr. carr, "maintains a firmer or more constant adherence to those severe principles of design which have received the sanction of great example in the past. sir frederic leighton has never lowered the standard of his work in deference to any popular demand, and for this persistent devotion to his own highest ideals he deserves well of all who share his faith in the power of beauty." [illustration: elisha and the shunamite's son ( )] chapter xii conclusion in now bringing this record to a close, we will of set purpose remain true to the chronicler's function, pure and simple; attempting no profounder or more critical summing up of our subject, than consists with the plain record of a remarkable career. after a year of indifferent health, during part of which time he was ordered abroad for rest and change, being thus unable to preside at the annual banquet in may, leighton returned to england apparently convalescent. although unable to deliver the biennial presidential address, which fell due in december, , he met the students on that occasion, and apologized for not delivering the discourse which was due, in these words: "the cloud which has hung over me hangs over me still."[ ] early in a peerage was bestowed upon him, and all the world applauded the honour conferred on art in his name. on january th, , the news of his death came as a terrible surprise. the new peer, baron leighton of stretton, was buried with much state at st. paul's cathedral, before men in general had wholly recognized that lord leighton was the popular "sir frederic," the president of the royal academy, and one of the most familiar figures at any important function--at court or elsewhere. except perhaps in the case of politicians, who live in some degree by the public recognition of their personal qualities, it is difficult to render tribute gracefully and well to a contemporary. but we cannot close these pages, now, without pausing to recall how fortunate it has been that english art, for seventeen years, had as its titular head an artist whose affluent artistic faculty was but the open sign of a crowded life, loyal throughout to the great causes, high ideals, and, let us add, the early friendships, chosen long ago in the mid century. we are now at that century's end,--an end not without its reproach, as expressed by a decadence more self-conscious than dignified, more critical than creative; but in lord leighton's art there was little diminution in his active energy, and of that finer health and spirit of life, which is behind all beauty! like his distinguished friend and colleague, mr. g. f. watts (whose tribute to him as a man and as an artist has been expressed again and again in eloquent terms), leighton remained, in his later period as in his youth, generously alive to all the things that count, devoted still to the art, the current life, and the great national traditions, of his own country. from another famous colleague, sir e. j. poynter, p.r.a., one may fitly add here the following further sentences of contemporary tribute, which were written by way of dedication to his "ten lectures on art," published some years ago:--"i came to-day from the 'varnishing day' at the royal academy exhibition with a pleasant conviction that there is on all sides a more decided tendency towards a higher standard in art, both as regards treatment of subject and execution, than i have before noticed; and i have no hesitation in attributing this sudden improvement in the main to the stimulus given to us all by the election of our new president, and to the influence of the energy, thoroughness and nobility of aim which he displays in everything he undertakes. i was probably the first, when we were both young and in rome together, to whom he had the opportunity of showing the disinterested kindness which he has invariably extended to beginners, and to him, as the friend and master who first directed my ambition, and whose precepts i never fail to recall when at work (as many another will recall them), i venture to dedicate this book with affection and respect." "as we are, so our work is!" said leighton in one of the most memorable of his discourses; "and the moral effect of what we are will control the artist's work from the first touch of the brush or chisel to the last." "believe me," he concludes, in a striking passage that may very fitly serve us, too, with a conclusion to these passages, "believe me, whatever of dignity, whatever of strength we have within us, will dignify and will make strong the labours of our hands; whatever littleness degrades our spirit will lessen them and drag them down. whatever noble fire is in our hearts will burn also in our work, whatever purity is ours will also chasten and exalt it; for as we are, so our work is, and what we sow in our lives, that, beyond a doubt, we shall reap for good or for ill in the strengthening or defacing of whatever gifts have fallen to our lot." it would be superfluous to quote from the elegiac tributes which appeared in the public press after lord leighton's death, and invidious to repeat certain unkind and unjust strictures which marred the otherwise unanimous note of appreciation. it is obvious that an artist with so strongly marked a personality must needs have been fettered by the very limits he himself had set. at one time, when a painter of eminence openly expressed his preference for lord leighton's unfinished work, and begged him to keep a certain picture as "a beautiful sketch," he replied: "no, i shall finish it, and probably, as you suggest, spoil it. to complete satisfactorily is what we painters live for. i am not a great painter, but i am always striving to finish my work up to my first conception." there are many mansions in the city of art, and if the one of lord leighton's building was not to the taste of all his contemporaries, the edifice can be left to await the final test of years. fashions in taste change rapidly, and much of his finish that finds disfavour to-day may in time charm once again. a career overburdened by official honour was destined to provoke a certain amount of envious protest; but as a man, no voice has urged a word against his ideally perfect performance, not merely of his official duties, but of others which indeed were laid upon him by his position. these he obeyed without ostentation--almost without men's knowledge. his kindly help, by commendation or by commission given to young artists; his broad and tolerant view of work conceived in direct opposition to all he valued himself, was not hidden from his friends. "it is with a sense of amazement," a critic writes in a private letter, "that one afternoon after a protest that nothing he said was to be published, i heard him discuss the prospects and the works of our ultra-modern painters. even in fields beyond his sympathy he picked out the chaff from the wheat, and was judicially accurate in his verdicts of the difference between 'tweedle-dum' and 'tweedle-dee,' both one would have said, entirely unknown to him." in lord leighton british artists lost a truer friend than many of them suspected, one who wielded his power justly to all, and was more often on the side of progress than not, a power for reform that can never be estimated at its actual value, working within a highly conservative body, full of vested interests and prejudice--as is the habit of academies of art and literature abroad no less than at home. that leighton, who controlled its destinies so long, was loyal to its true interests, and never forgot the institution with which he was associated so many years is evident from his last words: "give my love to all at the academy." [illustration: bookplate of lord leighton. designed by r. anning bell.] appendix i list of principal works _with date and place of exhibition_ (_circa_). *cimabue finding giotto in the fields of florence.[ ] ( - / × in.) steinle institute (frankfort). . the duel between romeo and tybalt. ( × in.) (_circa_). the death of brunelleschi. steinle institute. . [early portrait of leighton by himself.] . *a persian pedlar. " [buffalmacco, the painter. a humorous subject, taken from vasari, was undertaken about this date.] . portrait of miss laing (lady nias). . *cimabue's celebrated madonna is carried in procession through the streets of florence. in front of the madonna, and crowned with laurels, walks cimabue himself, with his pupil giotto; behind it, arnolfo di lapo, gaddo gaddi, andrea tafi, nicola pisano, buffalmacco and simone memmi; in the corner, dante. ( - / × in.) r.a.[ ] " the reconciliation of the montagues and capulets over the dead bodies of romeo and juliet. paris international exhibition.[ ] . the triumph of music. ( × in.) r.a. "orpheus, by the power of his art, redeems his wife from hades." . *salome, the daughter of herodias. ( - / × in.) . *the mermaid (the fisherman and the syren). (from a ballad by goethe.) ( - / × - / in.) r.a. "half drew she him, half sunk he in, and never more was seen." " "count paris, accompanied by friar lawrence and a band of musicians, comes to the house of the capulets, to claim his bride: he finds juliet stretched apparently lifeless on her bed."--_romeo and juliet_, act iv., sc. . ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " reminiscence of algiers. s.s. _these were_, [a subject from keats's hymn to pan,] _in the first book of "endymion," a figure of pan under a fig-tree, with the inscription_, "_o thou, to whom broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom their ripen'd fruitage;_" _and the other_, [a pendant to the "pan,"] _the figure of a nude nymph about to bathe, with a little cupid loosening her sandal._ . sunny hours. r.a. " *roman lady (la nanna). r.a. " *nanna (pavonia). r.a. " samson and delilah. s.s. . capri--sunrise. r.a. . *portrait of mrs. sutherland orr. [mrs. s. o., a portrait.] ( × in.) r.a. " *portrait of john hanson walker, esq. ( × in.) " paolo e francesca. r.a. "ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse quando legemmo il disiato riso esser baciato da cotanto amante, questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, la bocca mi baciò tutto tremante: galeotto fu'l libro e chi lo scrisse: quel giorno più non vi legemmo avante." " a dream. r.a. ... "not yet--not yet-- still there is trial for thee, still the lot to bear (the father wills it) strife and care; with this sweet consciousness in balance set against the world, to soothe thy suffering there thy lord rejects thee not. such tender words awoke me hopeful, shriven to life on earth again from dream of heaven." " lieder ohne worte. r.a. " j. a. a study. r.a. " capri--paganos. r.a. . odalisque. r.a. " *the star of bethlehem. ( × - / in.) r.a. one of the magi, from the terrace of his house, stands looking at the star in the east; the lower part of the picture indicates a road, which he may be supposed just to have left. " sisters. r.a. " *michael angelo nursing his dying servant. ( × in.) r.a. " duett. r.a. " sea echoes. r.a. " rustic music. . jezebel and ahab, having caused naboth to be put to death, go down to take possession of his vineyard; they are met at the entrance by elijah the tishbite: r.a. "hast thou killed, and also taken possession?" " *eucharis. (a girl with a basket of fruit.) ( - / × in.) r.a. " a girl feeding peacocks. r.a. " an italian crossbow-man. ( × - / in.) r.a. . dante at verona. r.a. " *orpheus and eurydice. ( × in.) r.a. "but give them me--the mouth, the eyes,--the brow-- let them once more absorb me! one look now will lap me round for ever, not to pass out of its light, though darkness lie beyond! hold me but safe again within the bond of one immortal look! all woe that was, forgotten, and all terror that may be, defied--no past is mine, no future! look at me!" robert browning: _a fragment_. " *golden hours. ( × in.) r.a. " *portrait of the late miss lavinia i'anson. (circular, - / in.) . *david. ( × in.) r.a. "oh that i had wings like a dove! for then would i fly away and be at rest." _psalm_ lv. " mother and child. r.a. " widow's prayer. r.a. " helen of troy. r.a. "thus as she spoke, in helen's breast arose fond recollections of her former lord, her home, and parents; o'er her head she threw a snowy veil; and shedding tender tears she issued forth not unaccompanied; for with her went fair Æthra, pittheus' child. and stag-eyed clymene, her maidens twain. they quickly at the scæan gate arrived." " in st. mark's. r.a. . painter's honeymoon. r.a. " portrait of mrs. james guthrie. r.a. " syracusan bride leading wild beasts in procession to the temple of diana. r.a. (suggested by a passage in the second idyll of theocritus.) "and for her, then, many other wild beasts were going in procession round about, and among them a lioness." " the wise and foolish virgins. (fresco in lyndhurst church.) . *pastoral. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *greek girl dancing. (spanish dancing girl: cadiz in the old times.) ( × in.) r.a. " knuckle-bone player. r.a. " *roman mother. ( × in.) r.a. " *venus disrobing for the bath. ( × - / in.) r.a. " *portrait of mrs. john hanson walker. ( × in.) . jonathan's token to david. r.a. "and it came to pass in the morning, that jonathan went out into the field at the time appointed by david, and a little lad with him." " *portrait of mrs. frederick p. cockerell. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *portrait of john martineau, esq. ( - / × - / in.) " *ariadne abandoned by theseus; ariadne watches for his return; artemis releases her by death. ( × in.) r.a. " *acme and septimius. (circular, - / in.) r.a. "then bending gently back her head with that sweet mouth, so rosy red, upon his eyes she dropped a kiss, intoxicating him with bliss." catullus (theodore martin's translation). " *actÆa, the nymph of the shore. ( × in.) r.a. . *st. jerome. (diploma work, deposited in the academy on his election as an academician.) ( × in.) r.a. " *dÆdalus and icarus. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *electra at the tomb of agamemnon. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *helios and rhodos. ( - / × in.) r.a. . a nile woman. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " study. s.s. . *hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis. ( × - / in.) r.a. " greek girls picking up pebbles by the shore of the sea. r.a. " *cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline. ( × - / in.) r.a. " view of assiout(?) (_a sketch._) s.s. " sunrise at longsor. (_a sketch._) s.s. " view of the red mountains near cairo. (_a sketch._) s.s. . *after vespers. ( × - / in.) r.a. " *summer moon. (guildhall, .) ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " portrait of the right hon. edward ryan, secretary of the dilettanti society, for which the picture was painted. (s.p.p., .) r.a. " a condottiere. r.a. " *the industrial arts of war at the international exhibition at south kensington. (monochrome, × in.) " the captive. s.s. " an arab cafÉ, algiers. s.s. . *weaving the wreath. (guildhall, .) r.a. " moretta. (guildhall, .) ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *the industrial arts of peace. (monochrome, × in.) r.a. " a roman. s.s. " vittoria. s.s. . *moorish garden: a dream of granada. ( × in.) (guildhall, .) r.a. " old damascus: jews' quarter. r.a. " *antique juggling girl. (guildhall, .) ( - / × in.) r.a. " clytemnestra from the battlements of argos watches for the beacon fires which are to announce the return of agamemnon. r.a. " annarella, ana capri. d.g. " rubinella, capri. d.g. " lemon tree, capri. d.g. " west court of palazzo, venice. d.g. . *portion of the interior of the grand mosque of damascus. ( × in.) r.a. " *portrait of mrs. h. e. gordon ( - / × in.) r.a. " *little fatima. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " venetian girl. r.a. " *egyptian slinger. (eastern slinger scaring birds in harvest-time: moonrise.) (guildhall, .) r.a. " florentine youth. s.s. " ruined mosque in damascus. s.s. . *portrait of sir richard francis burton, k.c.m.g. (portrait of capt. richard burton, h.m. consul at trieste). ( - / × - / in.) (paris, ; melbourne, ; s.p.p., .) r.a. " *the daphnephoria. ( × in.) r.a. a triumphal procession held every ninth year at thebes, in honour of apollo and to commemorate a victory of the thebans over the Æolians of arne. (see proclus, "chrestomath," p. .) " teresina. r.a. " paolo. r.a. . *music lesson. ( - / × - / in.) (paris, .) r.a. " *portrait of miss mabel mills (the hon. mrs. grenfell). ( × in.) r.a. " *an athlete strangling a python.[ ] bronze. (paris, .) r.a. " *portrait of h. e. gordon. ( - / × in.) g.g. " an italian girl. g.g. " *study. (a little girl with fair hair, in a pink robe.) ( × in.) r.a. " a study. g.g. . *nausicaa. ( - / × - / in.) (guildhall, .) r.a. " serafina. r.a. " *winding the skein. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " a study. r.a. " *portrait of miss ruth stewart hodgson. ( - / × - / in.) g.g. " study of a girl's head. g.g. " sierra: elviza in the distance, granada. s.s. " the sierra alhama, granada. s.s. . biondina. r.a. " catarina. r.a. " *elijah in the wilderness. ( × - / in.) (paris, .) r.a. " portrait of signor g. costa. r.a. " amarilla. r.a. " a study. r.a. " portrait of the countess brownlow. r.a. " *neruccia. ( × in.) r.a. " a study. s.s. " the carraca hills. s.s. " a street in lerici. s.s. " via bianca, capri. g.g. " archway in algiers. g.g. " ruins of a mosque, damascus. g.g. " study of a donkey. g.g. " on the terrace, capri. g.g. " sketch near damascus. g.g. " view in granada. g.g. " study of a donkey, egypt. g.g. " study of a head. g.g. " nicandra. g.g. . *sister's kiss. ( × - / in.) r.a. " *iostephane. ( × in.) r.a. " the light of the harem. ( × in.) r.a. " psamathe. ( × in.) r.a. " *the nymph of the dargle (crenaia). ( - / × in.) r.a. " rubinella. g.g. " the pozzo corner, venice. winter exhibition. g.g. " jack and his cider can. " " g.g. " the painter's honeymoon. " " g.g. " winding of the skein (with sketch). " " g.g. " head of urbino. " " g.g. " steps of the bargello, florence. " " g.g. " a contrast. " " g.g. " garden at capri. " " g.g. " twenty-nine studies of heads, flowers, and draperies. " " g.g. . elisha raising the son of the shunamite. ( x in.) (guildhall, .) r.a. " portrait of the painter.[ ] r.a. " *idyll. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *portrait of mrs. stephen ralli. ( × in.) r.a. " *whispers. ( × in.) r.a. " viola. r.a. " *bianca. ( × - / in.) r.a. " portrait of mrs. algernon sartoris. g.g. . *day-dreams. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " wedded. r.a. " phryne at eleusis. ( × in.) (melbourne, .) r.a. " antigone. r.a. " "and the sea gave up the dead which were in it." _rev._ xx. . (design for a portion of a decoration in st. paul's.) r.a. " melittion. r.a. " *portrait of mrs. mocatta. ( - / × - / in.) " zeyra. g.g. . the dance: decorative frieze for a drawing-room in a private house. r.a. " *vestal. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *kittens. ( × - / in.) r.a. " memories. r.a. " *portrait of miss nina joachim. ( × in.) . *letty. ( × - / in.) r.a. " *cymon and iphigenia. ( × in.) r.a. " a nap. r.a. " sun gleams. r.a. . "... serenely wandering in a trance of sober thought." ( × in.) r.a. " portrait of the lady sybil primrose. r.a. " *portrait of mrs. a. hichens. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " music: a frieze. r.a. " phoebe. (manchester, .) r.a. " a study. g.g. " tombs of muslim saints. s.s. " mountains near ronda puerta de los vientos. s.s. . painted decoration for the ceiling of a music-room.[ ] ( ft. × ft.) r.a. " gulnihal. r.a. " *the sluggard. statue, bronze. r.a. " *needless alarms. statuette. r.a. . *the jealousy of simÆtha, the sorceress. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *the last watch of hero. ( - / × - / in., with predella - / × - / in.) r.a. "with aching heart she scanned the sea-face dim. . . . . . . . . . . lo! at the turret's foot his body lay, rolled on the stones, and washed with breaking spray." _hero and leander: musæus_ (translated by edwin arnold). " [picture of a little girl with golden hair and pale blue eyes.] "yellow and pale as ripened corn which autumn's kiss frees--grain from sheath-- such was her hair, while her eyes beneath, showed spring's faint violets freshly born." robert browning. " *design for the reverse of the jubilee medallion. (_executed for her majesty's government._) r.a. _empire, enthroned in the centre, rests her right hand on the sword of justice, and holds in her left the symbol of victorious rule. at her feet, on one side, commerce proffers wealth, on the other a winged figure holds emblems of electricity and steam-power. flanking the throne to the right of the spectator are agriculture and industry--on the opposite side, science, literature, and the arts. above, interlocking wreaths, held by winged genii representing respectively the years and , inclose the initials,_ v.r.i. . *captive andromache. ( × in.) r.a. ".... some standing by, marking thy tears fall, shall say, 'this is she, the wife of that same hector that fought best of all the trojans, when all fought for troy.'" _iliad_, vi. (e. b. browning's translation.) " *portrait of amy, lady coleridge. ( × - / in.) (s.p.p., .) r.a. " *portraits of the misses stewart hodgson. ( × - / in.) " four studies. r.w.s. " five studies. s.s. . *sibyl. ( × in.) r.a. " *invocation. ( × - / in.) r.a. " elegy. r.a. " greek girls playing at ball. ( × in.) r.a. " *portrait of mrs. francis a. lucas. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. . solitude. r.a. " *the bath of psyche.[ ] ( × - / in.) r.a. " *tragic poetess. ( × in.) r.a. " *the arab hall. ( × in.) (guildhall, .) r.a. . *perseus and andromeda. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *portrait of a. b. freeman-mitford, esq., c.b. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *return of persephone. ( × - / in.) r.a. " athlete struggling with a python--group, marble. r.a. . *"and the sea gave up the dead which were in it." (circular, in.) r.a. " at the fountain. ( × in.) r.a. " *the garden of the hesperides. (circular, in.) (chicago, ; guildhall, .) r.a. " bacchante. r.a. " *clytie. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " phryne at the bath. ( × in.) s.s. " malin head, donegal. s.s. " st. mark's, venice. s.s. " interior of st. mark's, venice. s.s. " the doorway, north aisle, venice. s.s. " rizpah (the small study in oils). ( × in.) s.s. . *farewell! ( × - / in.) r.a. " *hit! ( × in.) r.a. " *atalanta. ( - / × in.) r.a. " rizpah. ( × in.) r.a. " *corinna of tanagra. ( - / × in.) r.a. " the frigidarium. r.a. . *the spirit of the summit. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *the bracelet. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *fatidica. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *summer slumber. ( - / × in.) r.a. " at the window. r.a. " wide wondering eyes. ( × - / in.) manchester. " the roman campagna, monte soracte in the distance. s.s. " the acropolis of lindos. s.s. " fiume morto, gombo, pisa. s.s. " gibraltar from san rocque. s.s. . lachrymÆ. ( × in.) r.a. " the maid with the yellow hair. r.a. " *"'twixt hope and fear." ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *flaming june. ( × in.) r.a. " listener. r.a. " a study. r.a. " phoenicians bartering with britons. royal exchange. " boy with pomegranate. grafton gallery. " miss dene. " aqua certosa, rome. s.s. " chain of hills seen from ronda. s.s. " rocks, malin head, donegal. s.s. " tlemÇen, algeria. s.s. . *clytie. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " candida. ( × - / in.) antwerp, . " *the vestal. ( × - / in.) unfinished. " *a bacchante. ( - / × in.) " *the fair persian. ( - / × - / in.) unfinished. [illustration: "... serenely wandering in a trance of sober thought" ( )] [illustration: design for the reverse of the jubilee medallion ( )] appendix ii the studies in oil, chiefly landscape, of quite small size, few of which had been exhibited, were sold, with the remaining works of the artist, by messrs. christie, manson and woods on july th, th, and th, , when the prices realized, from to guineas each for the best, were in excess of those the most sympathetic admirer of lord leighton's singular power as a landscape-painter had dared to expect. for convenience of future reference, the list of these as they appear in the sale catalogue may be worth the space it occupies; the numbers denote the "lot." . {head of a girl. {head of a boy. . a study of houses, venice. . the coast of asia minor, from rhodes. . a street scene. . houses at capri. . the coast of asia minor, from rhodes. . a garden scene. . a fortress, egypt. . tombs of muslim saints at assouan, first cataract. r.s.b.a., . . a bay, asia minor, from rhodes. . the bay of lindos. . in the campagna, italy. . a town, capri. . mountains near ronda puerta de los vientos. r.s.b.a., . . a view in the campagna. . a covered street in algiers. . a doorway, algiers. . head of a girl. . head of a man. . head of a girl. . head of a girl. . street in algiers. . st. mark's, venice. r.s.b.a., . . interior of st. mark's, venice. r.s.b.a., . . the doorway, north aisle, st. mark's, venice. r.s.b.a., . . a bay scene, isle of rhodes. . a view on the coast, lindos. . denderah. . the roman campagna, monte soracte in the distance. r.s.b.a., . . a study in the campagna. . aqua certosa, rome. . a view of the town of lindos. . the acropolis of lindos, where stood the temple of athena pallas. r.s.b.a., . . a study in the campagna, with monte soracte. . study of a man's head. . an arab's head. . a sheik. . an arab. . head of an old lady. . a turkish boatman. . fiume morto, gombo, pisa. r.s.b.a., . . the citadel, cairo. . a view in damascus. . a view in capri. . bocca d'arno. . the city of tombs, assiout, egypt. r.s.b.a. [ ?]. . buildings, siout, egypt. . a mountainous landscape, spain. . a street scene, capri. . a coast scene, isle of wight. . barren land. . a town in spain. . bosco sacro, campagna. . villa malta, rome. . the rocks of the sirens, capri. . a view in spain. . a valley, spain. . on the coast, isle of wight. . garden at generalife, granada. . the baths at caracalla. . a house, capri. . in st. mark's, venice. . the staircase of a house, capri. . the garden of a house, capri. . study of a male figure carrying a pitcher. . head of a girl. . the coast of asia minor, from rhodes. . chain of hills seen from ronda. r.s.b.a., . . the coast of asia minor. (study for the background of _perseus_.) . a pool, findhorn river, n.b. (study for the background of _solitude_.) . a lane. (study of rocks for _solitude_.) . a woman seated, in a landscape. (study for _simætha the sorceress_.) . taormina, sicily. (sketch for background of _wedded_.) . a pool on the findhorn river, forres, n.b. (study for the background of _solitude_.) . taormina, sicily. (study for the background of _wedded_.) . interior of a house at lindos. (study for the picture of _cleoboulos_.) . study of a woman's head. capri, moonlight. (study for the effect in _clytemnestra_.) . buildings, capri, moonlight. (a study for the same.) . an allegorical design for a mural decoration. . head of a lady and gentleman of the fifteenth century. ( × - / in.) (painted in .) . head of a lady. white on brown ground. . a study from velasquez. [ to _were larger works, mainly studies for completed pictures or the pictures themselves_.] {a landscape. . {study of sky at malinmore. {study. . a rocky coast, malinmore, donegal. . a mountainous landscape. . a view in scotland. . a landscape, italy. . fishing boats on the coast, capri. . a village on a hill, capri. . a scene in the desert. . the coast of greece. . head of a man. . a scotch lake. . near kynance cove. . carrara mountains. . a view in algiers. . tlemÇen, algeria. r.s.b.a., . . the damascus gate, jerusalem. . the erictheum (_sic_). . a street in lerici, near where shelley was drowned. . {study of trees. {a landscape. . {head of a gondolier. {irish peasant girl. . head of an italian peasant. . {a common. {landscape, with cottages. . a rocky coast, kynance. . granite boulders, forres, n.b. . a sunny cornfield. . a courtyard, tangiers. . a courtyard, tangiers. . a sketch of albano. . a coast scene, ireland. . a scotch scene. . a study of rocks. . the steeple rock, kynance cove. . a sandy bay, ireland. . kynance cove. . holy island. bamborough in the distance. . a coast scene, ischia. . glen columbkill, ireland. . a moorish archway, tangiers. . perugia. . a rocky coast, malinmore. . malin head, donegal. r.s.b.a., . . gibraltar, from san rocque. r.s.b.a., . . a bay scene, spain. . a sketch in bedfordshire. . a landscape, ronda. . a spanish town. . the baths of caracalla. . the street of the knights, rhodes. . the coast of asia minor, seen from rhodes. . longsor. . a mountain scene, with temple and figure, egypt. . a study on the coast of ireland. . a river scene, scotland. . mickleour, scotland. . a sea piece. . the coast of asia minor. . {on the nile. {a view in spain. . {a temple on the nile. {spanish view. . malinmore, donegal. . the bay of cadiz, moonlight, and palazzo rezzonico. . a view of athens. . {scotch mountains: sunset. {a coast scene, rhodes. . vittoria. r.s.b.a., . . {a classical head. (monochrome.) {head of a man. . a study of pine trees. . a village on a hill. . a ruined mosque at broussa. . a woody bank. . ruins of a moorish arch, spain. . a view in italy, with a cornfield. . (this number is omitted in the sale catalogue.) . mimbar of the great mosque at damascus. . {rocks, capri. {a fortress, spain. . {landscape, scotland. {landscape, scotland. . the red mountains, desert, egypt. . sketch near cairo. . a fountain in the court-yard of a jew's house, spain. . a house in tangiers. mansion house, . . a street scene, cairo. . a moorish street. . a study of rocks, scotland. . the garden of the house of the man who built the alhambra. . a spanish donkey. . a donkey and arab driver. . mena donkey. . a study of hills. . the temple of phylÆ. . damascus: night. . a mountainous landscape, with a cavern. . a wood scene. . head of an italian girl. . the dungeons of a castle. . a castle keep. . entrance to a house, capri. . a coast scene, ireland: storm effort (_sic_). . longsor. . the nile at thebes. . a view on the campagna. . a mountainous landscape, scotland. . capri by night. . a fortress on the campagna. . a landscape, with sand hills. . a wood scene. . near denderah. . a landscape. . athens, with the genoese tower, pnyx in the foreground. . a landscape, cairo. . on the nile. . pasture, egypt. . red mountains desert, egypt. . an egyptian village. . the island of Ægina. . thebes. . the coast of Ægina, pnyx in the foreground. . buildings on the coast, island of rhodes. . assouan, egypt. . a vineyard, capri. . the temple of phylÆ, looking up the nile. . the nile at esueh. . the cathedral, capri. . a square in cadiz. . on the nile. . in the nile valley. . a view across the nile. . a woody hill side. . rocks of the sirens capri. . a farm. there were also copies made by leighton himself of _peace and war_ after rubens, the _massacre of the innocents_, after bonifazio, _a martyrdom_, and the _last supper_, after veronese. the huge collection of studies, mainly in chalk upon brown paper, made by lord leighton, were nearly all preserved; two hundred and forty of these were exhibited by the fine art society, who bought the whole collection, and afterwards published a volume containing forty reproduced in facsimile. [illustration: fountain in court at damascus] [illustration: the island of Ægina: pnyx in foreground] [illustration: red mountains desert, cairo] [illustration: ruined mosque, broussa] [illustration: city of tombs, assiout, egypt] [illustration: athens with the genoese tower: pnyx in foreground] [illustration: coast of asia minor seen from rhodes] index. _titles of pictures are printed in italics._ _abram and the angel_, . _acme and septimius_, . _actæa_, , . _Ægina, the island of_, illus., . _after vespers_, . aitchison, george, r.a., . allingham, william, . alma-tadema, sir l., , , . _amarilla_, . _and the sea gave up its dead_, , ; illus., . _andromeda_ (study in clay), ; illus., . _antigone_, . _antique juggling girl_, ; illus., . arab hall, the, , , , , - ; illus., . _ariadne abandoned by theseus_, . arnold, sir edwin, translation of musæus, . art and morals, leighton on, . "art journal," criticisms of the, , _et seq._ artistic production in relation to time and place, leighton on, . _arts of peace, the_, , , , ; illus., . _arts of war, the_, , ; illus., . _asia minor, the coast of_, illus., . assyria, the art of, leighton on, . _at the fountain_, . _at the window_, . _atalanta_, , . "athenæum," criticisms of the, , , _et seq._ _athens, with the genoese tower_, illus., . _athlete struggling with a python_, , , , ; illus., , ; (marble version), . _bacchante_ ( ), , ( ) ; illus., . _bath of psyche, the_, , , ; illus., . bezzuoli, . _bianca_, . "bible gallery," dalziel's, , , . _biondina_, . black and white, leighton's work in, , . boccaccio, leighton inspired by, , . book illustration, , . bookplate, leighton's, illus., . bouguereau, leighton and, . _bracelet, the_, ; illus., . bronzes, , , , . _broussa, ruined mosque at_, illus., . _brownlow, countess of_, . browning, e. b., ; medallion of a monument to, ; illustration by leighton to her "great god pan," . browning, robert, ; subjects from, , ; on _hercules wrestling with death_, . brussels, leighton at, , . burne-jones, sir e., , . _burton, capt. richard_, , ; illus., . _byzantine well-head, a_, , ; illus., . _cain and abel_, illus., . _cairo, red mountains desert_, illus., . _capri--paganos_, . _capri at sunrise_, , . capri, leighton at, , . _captive andromache_, , ; _studies_ for, illus., . carr, mr. comyns, on leighton, . _catarina_, . ceiling, design for a, , , ; illus., . chesneau, ernest, on english art, . cimabue, influence of, . _cimabue_ (mosaic figure), . _cimabue finding giotto_, . _cimabue's madonna_, , , , , , , ; criticisms of, - , ; illus., . _city of tombs, assiout_, illus., . _cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline_, . _clytemnestra_, . _clytie_ ( ), , . _clytie_ (his last picture), , . cockerell, s. pepys, on leighton's drawings, . _cockerell, mrs. frederick p._, . _coleridge, lady_, . cologne cathedral, leighton on, . colour: leighton's mode of procedure, - . _condottiere, a_, ; illus., . _contrast, a_, ; illus., . _corinna of tanagra_, . cornelius, , . "cornhill gallery, the," . correggio, leighton and, , . _costa, signor_, ; illus., . _count paris_, , , . cousin, jean, . _crenaia_, . _cross-bow man, a_, . _cupid with doves_, ; illus., . _cymon_ (clay model), ; illus., . _cymon and iphigenia_, , , , ; photogravure, . _dædalus and icarus_, ; illus., . dalou and _the athlete_, . dalziel's "bible gallery," , , ; illus., . _damascus, grand mosque at_, , , ; illus., . damascus, sketches of, , , , ; illus., , . _dance, the_, , ; illus., . dante, leighton on, . _dante at verona_, , . _daphnephoria_, , , , , ; clay models for, ; illus., ; _study for_ (illus.), . darmstadt, leighton at, . _david_, , ; illus., . _day dreams_, ; illus., . _death of the first born_, . decorative work, leighton's, - . _departure for the war, the_, . discourses on art, leighton's, - . drapery, leighton's treatment of, , - . _dream, a_, , . _duett_, . dürer, albert, leighton on, . eastlake, sir charles, - . egypt, leighton's visit to, ; on the art of, . _egyptian slinger_, , , ; illus., . _electra at the tomb of agamemnon_, ; illus., . _elegy_, . _eliezer and rebekah_, . _elijah in the wilderness_, ; _study for_, illus., . _elisha and the shunamite's son_, illus., . english art, leighton on, . etruscan art, leighton on, , . _eucharis_, . _fair persian, the_, . _farewell_, ; illus., . _fatidica_, ; illus., . _fisherman and syren, the_, , . _flaming june_, . fleury, robert, , . _florence, the plague at_, , ; illus., . florence, leighton at, , . _fountain, at the_, . _fountain in court at damascus_, illus., . france, evolution of art in, leighton on, . frankfort, leighton at, - . frescoes, , - ; illus., - . friezes, , , ; illus., . _frigidarium, the_, ; illus., . gamba, signor, . _garden of the hesperides, the_, . generalife, study of a garden at, ; illus., . german architecture, leighton on, - . gerome, . gibson, the sculptor, . gilbert, alfred, . giotto, . girl, a little ( ), . ---- in eastern garb ( ), . _girl feeding peacocks, a_, , . _girl with a basket of fruit_, . _girls' heads, studies of_, , ; illus., , , , . goethe: subject from, ; on gothic architecture, . _golden hours_, , ; illus., . _gordon, h. e._, . gothic architecture, leighton on, . greek art, leighton on, . _greek girls picking up pebbles by the sea_, . _greek girls playing at ball_, , ; illus., . grenfell, the hon. mrs. (_miss mabel mills_), . greville, lady charlotte, monument to, . _gulnihal_, . _guthrie, portrait of mrs. james_, . hart, professor, . _helen of troy_, ; illus., . _helios and rhodos_, , . _hercules wrestling with death_, ; illus., . _hesperides, garden of the_, . _hichens, mrs. a._, . _hit_, ; illus., . _hodgson, miss ruth_, . _hodgson, misses stewart_, . hogarth club, the, . hunt, holman, , . _i'anson, the late mrs. lavinia_, . _idyll_, . _in st. mark's_, . _invocation_, . _iostephane_, . _italian girl, an_, . italy, evolution of painting in, leighton on the, . _j. a.--a study_, . _jezebel and ahab_, , . _joachim, miss nina_, . _jonathan's token to david_, , . jubilee medal, , , ; illus., . _juggling girl_, ; illus., . keats's "endymion," subject from, , . kemble, mrs., . _kittens_, . _lachrymæ_, . _lady with pomegranates, a_, . _laing, miss, portrait of_, . landscape studies, leighton's, , , , , , , ; illus., , , , . landseer, sir edwin, , . lang's, mrs. andrew, monograph on leighton, , , . _last watch of hero_, ; illus., . leighton, frederic, lord; list of dignities and titles, ; ancestors and birth, ; first picture, ; portrait ( ), ; first picture for the academy, ; a.r.a., ; r.a., ; first appearance as a sculptor, ; p.r.a., ; _portrait_, by himself, ; illus., ; portraits by watts, , ; his method of painting, - ; drawings, , ; decorative works, - ; sculpture, , ; book illustration, , ; discourses on art, - ; house, - ; criticisms on his work, , ; death, . _lemon tree, study of a_, , , ; illus., . lesseps, f. de, . _letty_, , . _lieder ohne worte_, . _light of the harem, the_, . lionardo da vinci, leighton on, , , . _listener_, . _little fatima_, , , . _lucas, mrs. f._, . lyndhurst, altarpiece at, , , . lyons, lord, . _maid with her yellow hair, the_, . martin's, sir theodore, "catullus," . mason, george, , . meli, signor f., . _melittion_, . _memories_, . _mermaid, the_, . michael angelo, leighton on, . _michael angelo nursing his dying servant_, . millais, sir j. e., , , , , . _mills, miss mabel_, ; illus., . _mitford, a. b._, . _mocatta, mrs._, . modelling and models (clay), , . _moorish garden_, , . morals, art and, leighton on, . _moretta_, . morris, william, and rossetti, . mosaics, . _moses views the promised land_, illus., . _mosque, ruined, at broussa_, illus., . _mother and child_, . murger, henri, . _music_ (a frieze), ; illus., . _music, the triumph of_, , . _music lesson_, , . _music room, decoration for a_, , , ; illus., . _nanna_, . _nap, a_, . nature in leighton's compositions, . _nausicaa_, ; illus., . _needless alarms_, , . _neruccia_, . nias, lady (_miss laing_), . nile, voyage up the, . _nile woman, a_, . _noble lady of venice, a_, . _nymph and cupid, a_, , . nymph of the dargle, the, . _odalisque_, . _old damascus_ (the jews' quarter), , . orchardson, mr., on _clytie_, . orkney, lady, . _orpheus and eurydice_, , ; illus., . orr, major sutherland, monument to, . _orr, mrs. sutherland_, . pacheco, francisco, on drawing, . _painter's honeymoon, the_, . _pan_, , . _paolo_, . _paolo e francesca_, , . _paris, count_, , , . paris, leighton at, , ; exhibition at, . parry, gambier, and ely cathedral, . _pastoral_, . _pavonia_, . _pencil drawings, two early_, illus., . _pencil study, a_, illus., . _persephone, return of_, , ; _studies for_, illus., . _perseus_ (clay model), ; illus., . _perseus and andromeda_, , , ; _study for_, illus., . _persian pedlar_, a, . petrarch, leighton on, . _phoebe_, . _phoenicians bartering with britons_, , ; illus., . _phryne at eleusis_, ; illus., . _pisano, niccolò_ (mosaic), . _plague at florence, the_, , ; illus., . powers, hiram, . poynter, sir e. j., and leighton, , . pre-raphaelites, the, , . _primrose, the lady sybil_, ; illus., . _psamathe_, . _ralli, mrs. augustus_, . raphael, leighton on, . _red mountains desert, cairo_, illus., . _return of persephone, the_, , ; _studies for_, illus., . _rizpah_, , ; illus., . roman art, leighton on, . _roman lady, a_, . romano giulio, leighton on, . rome, leighton at, , - . _romeo, the dead_, illus., . _romeo and juliet_, . "romola" illustrations, . rossetti, d. g., , ; works by, , ; on leighton, , , . rossetti, w. m., on leighton, , , . royal exchange, decoration at, , ; illus., . _rubinella_, . ruskin on leighton, , , , , , , . _rustic music_, . _ryan, edward_, . _st. jerome_, ; illus., . _st. marks, in_, . st. paul's, design for proposed decoration of, , , . _salome_, . _samson and delilah_, . _samson and the lion_, illus., . _samson at the mill_, . _samson carrying the gates_, illus., . sand, george, . sartoris, mrs. algernon, _portrait of_, ; illustration by leighton to her "week in a french country house," . sculpture, , , , ; illus., , . _sea echoes_, . _sea gave up the dead, and the_, , ; illus., . _serafina_, . "_serenely wandering_," illus., . servolini, . _sibyl_, , , . _simætha the sorceress_, . _sisters_, . _sister's kiss_, , ; illus., . sizeranne, m. de la, on leighton, . _sluggard, the_, , , ; _study for_, illus., . _solitude_, ; _study for_, illus., . south kensington, drawings on wood at, ; frescoes, , - ; mosaic, . spain, leighton on the art of, , . spielmann, mr. m. h., on leighton, , , - . _spies' escape, the_, . _spirit of the summit, the_, , , . _star of bethlehem, the_, , , . steinle, johann eduard, , , . stephens, f. g., on the hogarth club, . studies, collection of leighton's, . studies in oil, list of, - . _studies of heads_, , ; illus., , , , , , . _study_ (little girl in eastern garb), . _study a_ (grosvenor gallery, ), ; (academy, ), ; (grosvenor gallery, ), . _summer moon_, ; illus., . _summer slumber_, . _sun gleams_, . _sunny hours_, . _syracusan bride_, , , , . tate gallery, the, , , . _teresina_, . thackeray on leighton, . _tragic poetess_, . _triumph of music, the_, , . _'twixt hope and fear_, . velasquez, diego, leighton on, . _venus disrobing_, , ; illus., . _vestal_, , . _viola_, . volumnus violens, tomb of, leighton on, . _walker, john hanson_, . watteau, leighton on, . watts, g. f., ; pictures by, ; portraits of leighton, , ; method compared with leighton's, ; on leighton, . _weaving the wreath_, . _wedded_, . _whispers_, . _widow's prayer, the_, . _winding the skein_, , ; photogravure, _front_. _wise and foolish virgins, the_, , . _zeyra_, . chiswick press: printed by charles whittingham and co. tooks court, chancery lane, london. footnotes: [ ] see pages - . [ ] letter to william allingham, may th, . [ ] "athenæum," april, . [ ] the original title of this picture was _eastern slinger scaring birds in harvest-time: moonrise_. see illustration at p. . [ ] this picture was re-sold at christie's in for , guineas. [ ] sometimes entitled _an athlete strangling a python_. [ ] at page . [ ] engraved in the "magazine of art," march, . [ ] "current art" ("magazine of art," may, ). [ ] "the studio," vol. iii. [ ] reproductions of both of these drawings are given at p. . [ ] "letters of dante gabriel rossetti to william allingham," by george birkbeck hill, d.c.l., ll.d. london, t. fisher unwin, . [ ] "la peinture anglaise contemporaine" (paris, hachette, ). [ ] "magazine of art," march, , p. . [ ] the asterisk denotes works exhibited at the winter exhibition of the royal academy of arts, . [ ] r.a., royal academy; g.g., grosvenor gallery; r.w.s., royal society of painters in water-colours; s.s., royal society of british artists, suffolk street; d.g., dudley gallery; s.p.p., society of portrait painters. [ ] exhibited in the roman section, by some blunder of the committee; the picture having been painted in rome. [ ] purchased for £ , by the president and council of the royal academy, under the terms of the chantrey bequest. [ ] painted by invitation for the collection of portraits of artists painted by themselves in the uffizi gallery, florence. [ ] painted for the house of mr. murquand, new york. [ ] purchased for , guineas by the president and council of the royal academy, under the terms of the chantrey bequest. * * * * * transcriber's note: passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break or to the end of a long quote. the following misprints have been corrected: "dyson-perrin" corrected to "dyson-perrins" (page v) "frederic" corrected to "frederick" (page and index) missing word added on page (assumed "the"). additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text. the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. [illustration: cover art] masterpieces in colour edited by -- t. leman hare vigÉe le brun - ===================================================================== plate i.--marie antoinette. frontispiece (at versailles) the first portrait that vigée le brun painted, in her twenty-fourth year ( ) of marie antoinette. here is no hint of the tragedy that was to overwhelm the handsome young daughter of austria; all was as yet but gaiety and roses and sunshine and pleasant airs, and the glamour that hovers about a throne. but there are signs of the imperious temper of her house, combined with the levity and frivolity of manners which were so early to make her unpopular. [illustration: plate i.] ===================================================================== vigée le brun by haldane macfall illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page art] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents i. the beginnings ii. the wonderful child iii. marriage and motherhood iv. marie antoinette v. sweet exile vi. the end list of illustrations plate i. marie antoinette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece at versailles ii. madame vigée le brun and child in the louvre iii. madame vigée le brun and child in the louvre iv. portrait of madame vigée le brun in the national gallery, london v. the two elder children of marie antoinette at versailles vi. portrait of madame molé-raymond in the louvre vii. marie antoinette and her children at versailles viii. peace bringing back plenty in the louvre [illustration: vigée le brun] i the beginnings in paris, in the rue coquillière, louis the fifteenth being king of france--or rather the pompadour holding sway thereover--there lived a witty, amiable fellow who plied the art of painting portraits in oils and pastels after the mediocre fashion that is called "pleasing." this louis vigée and his wife, jeanne maissin, moved in the genial enthusiastic circle of the lesser artists, passing through their sober day without undue excitement; for fame and wealth and the prizes of life were not for them. boucher was lord of art; and la tour and greuze and chardin were at the height of their genius; but honest louis vigée could but plod on at his pleasing portraits, and sigh that the gods had not borne to him the immortal flame. yet he was to come near to the glory of it--nearer than he thought. 'twas a pity that he was robbed of the splendour of basking in the reflected radiance, and by a fish's bone. it was to have its beginning in that year after the indolent but obstinate king, having fallen foul of his parliaments in his game of facing-both-ways in the bitter strife 'twixt church and people, patched up a peace with the parliament men. ===================================================================== plate ii.--madame vigÉe le brun and child (in the louvre) in vigée le brun's portrait of herself and her child we see in full career the greek ideals that were come upon france--a france weary of light trifling with life, and of mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower. [illustration: plate ii.] ===================================================================== our worthy mediocre vigée could remember the banished parliament re-entering paris in triumph on that fourth day of september in amidst the exultant shouts of the people; the clergy looking on with a scowl the while. on that same day was born to the dauphin a son--the little fellow called the duke de berry--whom we shall soon see ascending the throne as the ill-starred louis the sixteenth, for the dauphin was to be taken before the old king died. honest waggish vigée, painting industriously at his pleasing portraits, would recall it well; since, early in the following year, there was that to happen under his own modest roof which was to bring fame to his name, though he should not live to bask in its full glow. on the th of april there was born to him a little girl-child, whom they christened elizabeth louise vigée, or as she herself wrote it across the title-page of her _souvenirs_, louise elizabeth vigée. into her little fingers destiny set the skill that had been denied to her father; the flame was given to her. and by the whimsy of things, there was also born in far-away vienna, in this same year of , in the palace of the emperors of austria, a little princess whom they christened marie antoinette; who was to marry the little seven-month old princeling that lay sucking his thumb in the royal palace near by, and thereby to become future queen of france. like françois boucher, the great painter to the king, elizabeth vigée came to the pretty business with the advantage of being an artist's child; like him, she received her first lessons at an early age from her father; and, like him, she moved from earliest childhood in an atmosphere of art and artists. from her father she inherited a talent and taste for art, an amiable temper, a gift of wit; from her mother, a very handsome woman, she was dowered with a beauty for which she was as remarkable, and to which her many portraits of herself bear abundant witness. from very childhood she began to display the proofs of her inheritance--that happy disposition and that charm of manner that were to make her one of the most winsome personalities of her time. at the convent to which her parents sent her in her tenth year she fell to drawing on the margins of her books, filling them with little portrait-heads--an incessant habit that set her teachers grumbling at her lack of respect towards grammar and history. but to her delighted father the grumbles were matter for laughter; in him she found an ally who was hugely proud to discover in his girl an inheritor of his gifts. it is told of the fond father that the girl having taken to him one day a drawing, vigée cried out exultantly: "you will be a painter, my girl, or there never was one!" brought up, as the child was, in the world of artists, with the aims and ambitions and enthusiasms of artists for her very breath, she could not fail to find in such a world, besides the encouragement which was prodigally bestowed upon so young and promising a talent, the teaching needful to develop her powers. amongst the artists who were on friendly terms with the girl's father, and of whom doyen was the most intimate, was davesne, a member and deputy professor of the academy of st. luke--he who afterwards claimed to have taught the little elizabeth the elements of painting. davesne's lessons were at best but few, and seem to have been limited to showing the eager child how to set a palette. the girl was in fact picking up the crumbs that fell from many tables; at any rate she showed astoundingly precocious industry and gifts, and was soon making quite a stir amongst the painter-folk, and becoming a source of pride to her father. vigée, however, was only destined to guide and encourage the child towards the path; he died on the th of may from swallowing a fish bone. little elizabeth was but thirteen years old when this first great grief fell upon her. that was a strange world in which the child stood bewildered at the baffling cruelty of human destiny--this eighteenth-century france. the pompadour had died in the child's ninth year; her dogged and persistent enemy, the dauphin, the year after her; the neglected queen now followed the pompadour to the grave in the june of this same year that left little elizabeth fatherless. under the scandals of the court, and the tyranny and corruption of the nobility and clergy, the french people were no longer concealing their distress under courtly phrases, nor groaning in secret. the ideas of the new philosophers were penetrating and colouring public opinion. they were beginning to talk of the great antique days of greece, of heroes, and of virtue, and of living and dying like romans. fickle fashion was turning her back upon the art of old boucher, and upon dresden shepherds and shepherdesses and pleasant landscapes and bosky groves, and was taking up her abode with heroes and amongst picturesque ruins. the parliament men were demanding rights, were indeed going to prison and into banishment for those rights; nay, was not choiseul the great minister of france; and choiseul's power was deep planted in the rights of the people and founded on parliaments. all france was watching for the dawn of liberty. ii the wonderful child the thirteen-year-old child suffered a grief so poignant at the loss of her father, to whom she had been passionately attached, that it threatened to have the gravest consequences on her future; had it not been for her father's old friend doyen, who, transferring to the girl the deep affection he had had for the dead man, urged the child to take up her brushes again--for she was already painting from nature. it was now that she entered the studio of gabriel briard, an historical painter and member of the royal academy; a mediocre artist (though superior to davesne, who claimed to have been her teacher), but he was a fine draughtsman. to briard's studio she went with a little friend, a year older than herself, mademoiselle bocquet, who was to become like herself a member of the academy of saint luke; a girl of a certain talent who, however, abandoned painting on her early marriage. the two girls tripped it to briard's studio like a couple of school-children, demurely escorted by a servant, who carried their dinner in a basket; and, as they went to their daily task, be sure the quick intelligent girl heard more than a little scandal of the court--indeed all paris more than whispered of it--scandal big with meaning for france, and for little elizabeth not least of all. the tears of the king's grief over the dead body of his queen were scarce dried when louis the fifteenth still further degraded the dignity of the throne of france--still more dangerously brought royalty into contempt by publicly acknowledging as his new mistress a young woman from the gutters, the beautiful, laughing, reckless spendthrift du barry, to whom one of the king's first gifts was louveciennes, where elizabeth was afterwards to meet her. before the year was out choiseul fell; and for the remaining four years that were left to the king france was governed by the milliner du barry and her precious trio, d'aiguillon, terray, and maupeou; and rushed towards the abyss. however, these things troubled our precocious elizabeth but little as yet. the girl grew rapidly in craftsmanship and in personal beauty. indeed, she developed towards womanhood as early and as swiftly as in skill of artistry, being remarkable for her prettiness, her freshness and delicacy of colouring, and her elegance of figure--early displaying the airy wit that, with these abundant gifts of her fairy godmother, were so valuable an aid to the reputation which she was achieving by her artistry at a time when most children are in the schoolroom. her advance was so astounding that every one was talking about the girl; and the moment soon arrived when her master saw the pupil passing him in skill of hand and reputation as a painter; gazing dumbfounded at the stream of the greatest celebrities and personages of the day flocking to the studio of a girl of but fifteen years of age. how strange a thing the weaving of the web of destiny! in this very same year there came out of austria a fifteen-year-old princess of its royal house, leaving the home of her forefathers in tears, and amidst the tears of a people that had grown to love the winsome child; for, marie antoinette was setting forth on her life's adventure as future queen of france, a tragic wayfaring for a butterfly! elizabeth vigée's extraordinary rise into notice brought her the friendship and counsel of joseph vernet, who gave her most precious advice which was a beacon to her career all her years: "my child," said he, "do not follow any system of schools. consult only the works of the great italian and flemish masters. but, above all things, make as many studies as you can from nature. nature is the supreme master. if you study nature with care it will prevent you from picking up any mannerisms." ===================================================================== plate iii.--madame vigÉe le brun and child (in the louvre) vigée le brun painted another portrait of herself and her little girl-child; and she painted both, fortunately for her fame, when her skill was at its increase. they stand out, with all their limitations, pure and exquisite as the madonna and child of italy's finest achievement; for they were painted by a woman of genius with the passionate love of a child that is the wondrous heritage of woman--none the less religious in that it apes no show of religion. [illustration: plate iii.] ===================================================================== doyen and greuze also helped her with suggestions; but she was from the beginning her own teacher. davesne and briard only flattered themselves by claiming her tutoring. the girl showed in no way any slightest sign of their influence. ardent and enthusiastic in her pursuit of art, she haunted the galleries and private collections, but above all she went to nature. naturalness is by consequence a marked attribute of one who painted in this artificial age--in portraiture she largely escaped the conventional style, both its limitations and, be it also confessed, something of that great beauty of style and that superb decorative splendour that mark the handsome achievement of nattier and drouais and their fellows. nor must it be forgotten that the realism claimed by the later years, and the naturalism claimed for this girl's art, were already to be seen in full career in the master-work of la tour in portraiture, and in the still-life of chardin. this girl's genius never reached to the force of la tour, nor the superb handling or colour-sense or vigour of chardin, but she painted with rare skill the eminent women of her day and, with near as remarkable a skill, more than one man; her loss would have left a serious gap in the statement of the french genius of the end of the seventeen hundreds. it has been a custom too long indulged in by literary critics to praise her at the expense of boucher's "conventionality"; but she never painted a portrait that surpassed the wallace "pompadour" or the "infant orleans," to say nothing of other rare portraits from boucher's easel. to set her up in rivalry against one of the greatest decorative artists of the years is but to give her an ugly fall. the astounding part is not that she painted better than she did, but that she achieved what she did. but free from convention? no. she was a woman, and a painter of women--a painter of women from the woman's point of view that desires the world only to think of woman in her pose as woman, reticent, careful to screen the impulsive, most of all the vexatious, the violent, and the irregular moods of femininity's temperament from the eyes of the passer-by; always eager to show woman dressed for the part, and well dressed. she was incapable of stating the deeps of character; and had she had the power, she would have looked upon it as something of an indecency--or worse, an indelicacy. she would, in fact, have preferred to deny the deeps. she sets her sitter ever in the drawing-room of fashion, draws a heavy curtain with a rattle between the drawing-room and the inner boudoir (the "sulking room"), slams the door on the bedroom, or any hint that there is a bedroom, before she cries "come in," to admit us to her studio; she prefers to show the woman in her properties as the creature of fashion, not in the intimacy of her inner living and full significance. this is as much and as absolutely convention as any tricking out of ladies as dresden shepherdesses, and the more subtle in that it is the less obvious; as much convention as any painting of large eyes or rose-bud mouths. it is as misleading as convention. but it is the basis of a woman's life; and, in that, it is true. boucher has been blamed for being conventional; is often sneered at as the arch-make-believe. but when he painted women he painted them as men really see them with their masks off, and with all their allure of femininity. this sneer of convention is a two-edged sword. in the year that they found boucher dead, seated at his easel before an unfinished canvas of venus, this girl of fifteen discovered herself celebrated; saw her studio invaded by the flower of the world of fashion; the women of the nobility at the french court visiting her; the exclusive doors of the faubourg st. germain thrown open to her; princesses, duchesses, countesses, celebrities of the day and strangers of distinction her friends. she was in close touch with the leading artists of her day--le moyne, blunt quentin de la tour, and the rest. the girl, in spite of her astounding industry, was soon wholly unable to carry out the orders for portraits which rained in upon her; her charm of manner and her increasing beauty added to the pressure of the siege of her admirers. a little while before her fifteenth birthday her mother married again a young jeweller, of the name of le sèvre, a miserly fellow, who, under the pretext of taking them into the country, hired a little house at chaillot, where they went with the girl for their sundays; the thrifty stepfather planting its garden with the gay blossoms of the useful haricot-bean and the nasturtium. he had a frugal mind. the petty tyrannies of the thrifty jeweller, his mean outlook on life, and his sordid aims, made of the habits and atmosphere of his class an even more uncongenial world for this brilliant girl to live in. happily the pursuit of her art, and the friendship of that circle into which that art and her gifts and charming personality raised her, mitigated the tyranny of this sordid relationship. and, to add to her relief, madame suzanne, wife of the sculptor, and a friend of her mother, would carry off the girl with her into the country; and it was during one of their walks at marly that she met for the first time marie antoinette. on the th of may , a month before elizabeth vigée's nineteenth birthday, king louis the fifteenth died of the small-pox--died without a friend, for he had dismissed the du barry in tears a short while before. his body was hastily thrust into a coffin, and hurried at the trot through the darkness to st. denis, for fear of attack from the sullen crowds that gathered to do it dishonour; so was he huddled away amongst the bones of the ancient kings of his race, unattended by the court, and amidst the curses of his people. louis the sixteenth, son of louis fifteenth's only son, the dead dauphin, ascended the throne of france in his twentieth year, a pure-minded, honourable young fellow, full of good intentions, and sincerely anxious for the well-being of his people; but of a diffident temper, timid, hesitating, and uncertain in decision, and under the influence of his young consort, the beautiful queen marie antoinette, who had the imperious temper of her house, wedded to light and frivolous manners; she brought to her counsels a deplorable lack of judgment and a steadfast incompetence in knowledge of men. the good qualities of this young pair had been very well in private life; but france needed greater abilities for her guidance than the simple virtues. it was a hideous part of the destiny of this young couple that they came to rule over a france that was passionately angered at the misdeeds of a king and his privileged class of nobles and clergy who had gone before them--of a class that had come unscathed through that reign, and were grown incapable of realising that they could not come unscathed through another. the du barry flown, and her precious trio of ministers with her, louis recalled the crafty old schemer maurepas to power from the banishment into which the pompadour had sent him; but he otherwise began well by making turgot his minister of finance. on the th of october in this that saw louis quinze and marie antoinette come to the throne of france, elizabeth vigée was elected to the academy of st. luke at nineteen years of age. she brought to her early successes a charming modesty and an utter absence of conceit or of pose that added greatly to her reputation, and paved the way to further honours. iii marriage and motherhood but early success was not to be without black care stepping into the triumphal car in her procession towards an early and wide fame of this charming and accomplished young woman of twenty. honours were easy. but the devil was in the machinery. her family had lived in the rue de cléry, opposite the hotel lubert; thence they had drifted to the rue st. honoré hard by the palais royal; they now returned to the rue de cléry to the hotel lubert itself. here it chanced that le brun, the expert, carried on a lucrative traffic in pictures. his gallery attracted the pretty artist, who could study there at leisure the works of the great masters that passed through. the two families soon became intimate. le brun carefully weighing the great advantages that such a union could bring to him, but entangled by his engagement to marry the daughter of a dutch dealer in pictures who lived opposite to him, and with whom he had considerable business in works of art, beat about as to how he could marry elizabeth vigée. the girl was living in the splendour of a circle to which her family could not hope to aspire; the picture-dealer belonged to the middle-class in which her own family moved. any day she might marry out of that middle-class world into the world of fashion. he saw that the girl moved in, and was happiest in, a great world to which he had not the key. he had the ambition to belong to that world, though his common-sense might have told him that he never could do more than hang about its outer courts. he was a calculating blackguard, a man of loose life, and a vulgar fellow with vulgar ambitions. he saw astutely enough that this girl was well on the high-road to considerable fortune. the dutch girl opposite necessitated wary walking. he played the romantic lover, and before six months were run out he was pressing his suit, asking elizabeth vigée to marry him secretly. ===================================================================== plate iv.--portrait of madame vigÉe le brun (in the national gallery, london) she saw at anvers the famous "chapeau de paille" by rubens. this canvas by rubens clearly inspired her to the painting of the portrait of herself in a straw hat, where she stands bathed in the sunlight, her palette in her hand. the painting of the flesh of the pretty face is exquisite, and in spite of intense finish is broadly conceived and rich and glowing in colour. the clumsy drawing of the hand that holds the palette is the only defect in this, one of her masterpieces. the picture has the added interest of revealing to us how vigée le brun set her palette. the thing is thrilling with life; and the little feminine conceit of wearing her black wrap is quaintly delightful. [illustration: plate iv.] ===================================================================== the girl seems to have had a presentiment of the misery that such a marriage would mean for her. after long and serious hesitation she gave her consent. it was perhaps due to a sense of being between the devil and the deep sea, for her sordid and miserly stepfather the jeweller must have been a sorry table-companion of her home life. if she suspected the picture-dealer to be a rogue, she thought, likely enough, that the more genial rogue would be a pleasanter fellow to live with than the other. she married him secretly on the th of january , on the edge of her twenty-first year. it was not a wholly promising beginning, this that gave her the name that she was to immortalise--vigée le brun. it was a sorry match. it began in secrecy; she was to discover that it was founded on a treachery. when the marriage was discovered it was too late to dissuade the girl from it; she had to listen to some plain home-truths as a dutchman saw them, and to grim prophecies of the evil that would come of the business. but he might have spared his breath. she was to have her ugly awakening. she early discovered that le brun was a gambler, a rake, and a thoroughly dissolute and unscrupulous rogue. it was not long before he had not only squandered his own fortune, but was playing ducks and drakes with every penny that she gained by her art and her untiring industry. she was soon to become a mother; the love that she had sedately allowed to go out to her disreputable and pretentious husband, and which she had early withdrawn in tatters, she now lavished upon this, her girl-child. meanwhile, her reputation increased by leaps and bounds. her studio was simply besieged by "the quality." the duchess of orleans had to wait her turn a whole year before she could be painted. vigée le brun's praise was in every mouth. she was sung in prose and verse; the poetasters ran to much doggerel of handsome intent, as was the fashion of the day. marquises and the rest of the scribbling folk tripped over halting feet to sing her charms and immortalise her art. "l'orgueil de france" rhymed it to "la double puissance;" and "immortal crayon" to "admiration." they spilled the rosy inks. le brun, not the picture-dealing husband, but the poetical fellow who modestly nicknamed himself the pindar of his age, plucked at the lyre with both hands in her honour. nay, have we not the written record that laharpe, uttering his rhymed discourse on the genius of women to a great gathering of the bloods and wits at the academy, and bursting into violent poesies in announcing that elizabeth, "the modern rosalba, but more brilliant than she, weds the voice of favart with the smiles of a venus"--every one rose to their feet, "not omitting the duchess of chartres and the king of sweden," and turning to the blushing elizabeth, applauded her "with transports"! so much for france within the walls of the royal academy. but france without! the great minister, turgot, baffled by the selfishness of the privileged classes, fell. but louis called to power near as good a man, worthy banker neckar. in an unfortunate hour for the royal house, and against the will of the king, be it credited, and to the bewilderment of neckar, the nation having gone mad with enthusiasm over the prospect of an alliance with britain's revolted american colonies, war was declared against england, france undertaking not to conclude peace until the colonies were free. the success of the revolted colonies made the revolution in france a certainty. the fall of neckar and the setting up of the reckless and incompetent calonne over the destinies of france brought the shout of the democracy to the gardens of the king. vigée le brun's picture of the dandified man certainly does not show him a leader of great enterprises. his reckless extravagance satisfied the nobles; it brought bankruptcy stalking to the doors of the king's palace. the distress and sufferings of the people became unbearable. the miserable scandal of the diamond necklace added to the discredit of the queen. the royal family and the court sank further in the people's respect. as for vigée le brun, she was come into her kingdom. and it is during those twenty years, from shortly after her marriage until she was forty, that her best and most brilliant portraiture belongs, before the hardness and dryness of her later style showed signs of the decay of her powers. ===================================================================== plate v.--the two elder children of marie antoinette--the first dauphin (born , died ) and the madame royale (at versailles) the little dauphin of four years, and his seven-year-old sister, the madame royale, seated on a bank, the boy's hat thrown at his feet upon the flower-strewn ground--a work in which vigée le brun's colour-sense, her fine arrangement, and her feeling for style reach to their highest flight. the handsome boy was mercifully taken at the dawn of the revolution; the girl was to know all its terrors. [illustration: plate v.] ===================================================================== to its earliest, freshest years belongs the first portrait that vigée le brun painted, in her twenty-fourth year ( ) of marie antoinette, in which the young queen is seen with a large basket, and dressed in a satin gown, holding a rose in her hand--painted the year after the birth of her eldest child, the madame royale. here is no hint of the tragedy that was to overwhelm the handsome young daughter of austria; all was as yet but gaiety and roses and sunshine and pleasant airs and the glamour that hovers about a throne. but there are signs of the imperious temper of her house, combined with the levity and frivolity of manners, which were so early to make her unpopular. vigée le brun was to paint her royal mistress close on thirty times during the next ten years, until the prison doors shut upon the royal house of france; and there grew up between the two women a subtle and charming friendship that was to make the talented woman a dogged and convinced royalist to her dying day--indeed, the temperament of women needs small incense towards the worshipping of idols. vigée le brun was rarely more happy in her art than in several of the many portraits she painted of herself about this time--more particularly the two famous pictures of herself with her little daughter. "the marie antoinette with the rose" is redolent still of the eighteenth-century france--the siècle louis quinze. in vigée le brun's portrait of herself and her child we see in full career the greek ideals that were come upon france--a france weary of light trifling with life, and of mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower; here is that crying back to the antique spirit that was leavening the middle-class of france which was about to claim dominion over the land and to step to the foot of the throne and usurp the sceptre and diadem of her ancient line of kings as the third estate; and to come to power with violent upheaval, wading to the throne through blood and terror. here we see vigée le brun, royalist, glorifying motherhood, her arms and shoulders bare in chaste nudity, her body scantily attired in the simple purity of greek robes, her child in her embrace. vigée le brun painted another portrait of herself and her little girl-child; and she painted both, fortunately for her fame, when her skill was at its increase. they stand out, with all their limitations, pure and exquisite as the madonna and child of italy's finest achievement; for they were painted by a woman of genius with the passionate love of a child that is the wondrous heritage of woman; none the less religious in that it apes no show of religion. we see the age of free thought stating the innate religion of free thought; as renaissance italy painted paganism in religious disguise with the innate irreligion of its day. in all her portraiture one is struck by the fact that vigée le brun took much pains to arrange the draperies in what she considered picturesque fashion rather than that she painted the ordinary gowns of her day as her sitters wore them on entering her studio. and we have her own word for it in her _souvenirs_ (wherein the careful record of each picture that she painted may be found) that the dress of most women of the time seemed ugly to her--as it does to so many artists, generally not the best, in all times--indeed, she used every ounce of tact that she possessed in order to "arrange" the draperies. she sternly set her face against the use of powder and paint that the fashion of her century put upon complexions even of the most delicate beauties; and she always, when she could, arranged the hair of the women sitters. she tells, not without pride, how, having persuaded the beautiful duchess of grammont-caderousse to put off paint and powder, and to allow her to arrange her jet-black hair, drawing it down over the forehead and separating it over the brow and arranging it in irregular little curls, the duchess went to the theatre as she was, and created the fashion thereby, in spite of the fact that vigée le brun could never persuade the queen to give in to her, marie antoinette replying to all her beguilings: "i shall be the last to follow the fashion; i do not wish them to say that i am trying to hide my huge forehead." marie antoinette was beginning to realise that all france did not fawn upon her with the courtier's bended shoulder or pretty speech. iv marie antoinette in her twenty-seventh year ( ) vigée le brun made a journey into flanders with her husband, who had gone thither picture-dealing. the works of the flemish masters that she there saw had a marked effect upon the increase of her art. she saw at anvers the famous "chapeau de paille" by rubens; and had revealed to her the beauties of a sun-flooded figure, with the face painted in the golden glow of reflected lights under the shadow flung down over it by a large hat. this canvas by rubens clearly inspired her to the painting of the portrait of herself in a straw hat, where she stands bathed in the sunlight, her palette in her hand. the painting of the flesh of the pretty face is exquisite, and in spite of intense finish is broadly conceived and rich and glowing in colour. the clumsy drawing of the hand that holds the palette is the only defect in this, one of her masterpieces. the picture has the added interest of revealing to us how vigée le brun set her palette. the thing is thrilling with life; and the little feminine conceit of wearing her black wrap is quaintly delightful. thenceforth her art has an added sense of style, a fuller statement of atmosphere; in her handling of paint and employment of colour she was soon to reach the very height of her achievement. it was shortly after her return from this journey into flanders that joseph vernet decided to put down her name for election to the royal academy. her portrait of herself created such a sensation that her election became assured. she had to paint the usual formal _tableau de reception_, and chose allegory, painting her "la paix ramenant l'abondance," which, though a somewhat stilted affair such as academies demand, is full of charm--and is still to be seen at the louvre. she was received into the academy on the last day of may in in her twenty-eighth year, and thenceforward had the valuable privilege of the right to show at the salon. vigée le brun had not reached to such rapid and wide success, in spite of all her charm and youth and the defence that chivalry should grant to her sex, without setting jealous tongues wagging. the "peace bringing back abundance" happened to be hung under a canvas by ménageot, "the birth of the dauphin"; and comparisons between the two pictures were aimed at creating a slander which there were only too many ready to believe; for it was supported by certain facts which fell into place, and took on a suspicious air when pointed to as supporting evidence. this ménageot, who afterwards became director of the academy at rome, lived in the same house as vigée le brun; and rumour soon got agog to the effect that he was in the habit of painting, or at any rate putting the finishing touches to, her work, pierre, at this time first painter to the king, had employed this slander in order to oppose her election to the academy; he was the leading spirit of a cabal against her, as soon became known; for he was the victim soon afterwards of a satirical jingle that went the round of the studios. she was harassed also by the petty spites of enemies who did not hesitate to try and have her studio seized under the charge that she was painting without legal title since she had never been apprenticed to a painter. and malignant tongues whispered it abroad that she never would have been elected to the academy had it not been done at the command of the court. they made her very friendship with the queen a whip with which to lash at her. she was now painting many portraits of the queen. vigée le brun spent her entire day at her easel, from the time she arose in the morning, and she rose early, until the daylight went. she gave up dining in the town, in order not to be drawn away from her work; and the temptation must have been strong for a young and charming woman so greatly in request. but at nightfall she went out to social functions, and herself received the most brilliant and distinguished members of society and art and letters at her own house, giving concerts where grétry, whose portrait she painted, and other celebrated musicians played portions of their operas before they were seen or heard upon the stage; whilst the grandees of the old noblesse and the famous wits frequented her house. again, the report of her receptions got noised abroad; and envious tongues were soon exaggerating the extravagance and luxury in which she lived, descending to such childish tittle-tattle as that she lit her fires with bank-notes, that the number of her guests was so great and so distinguished that, for lack of seats, the marshals of france had to sit upon the floor; gossip and babble that were to cost her dearer than she thought, though she laughed it all away with a shrug of her pretty shoulders at the time. it was concerning one of her six-o'clock suppers that a slander was started which was to be a serious menace to her in after years. ===================================================================== plate vi.--portrait of madame molÉ-raymond (in the louvre) this famous painting of madame molé-raymond, the pretty actress of the comédie française, is one of vigée le brun's masterpieces. her brush is now at its most dexterous use; the laughing pretty woman is caught like a live thing and fixed upon the canvas as at a stroke as she trips across the vision, with muff upraised, smiling out upon us as she passes. vigée le brun never stated character with more consummate skill than here; never set down action with more vivid brush, catching movement flying. [illustration: plate vi.] ===================================================================== it was an age of small oratory. every man who could string a neat sentence together, scribbled or harangued. it was boorish and an unfashionable thing not to be an author, a poetaster, a little orator, a critic, a dabbler in the arts. at coffee-houses or clubs, wheresoever men foregathered, some fellow would mount a table and harangue his friends. the bloods caught the vogue, little foreseeing that it made a hotbed for the airing of discontents, and for the parading of ideals which alone could blot out those discontents. all took to it like ducks to the village pond. there was much quackery; some honest noise. now it so chanced that at vigée le brun's there was a gathering at which le brun--"pindar" le brun the poet--spouting a discourse, described a greek supper. the idea at once sprang up that they should have one straightway; they got up the cook and started to set the thing going, the poet guiding the making of the sauces. amidst the general merriment vigée le brun suggested that they should dress for the fantastic affair in greek costume, and arrange the tables and seats after the antique fashion. so the jocular business went apace. it was a merry party of athenians that sat down to the feast--"pindar" le brun wearing laurels in his ridiculous hair, and a purple mantle round about him; the marquis de cubières tricked out with a guitar as a golden lyre; vigée le brun being chief costumier to the frolic, draping chaudet the sculptor and others in as near greek fashion as could be. vigée le brun, herself in white robes and tunic, and garlanded with flowers and veiled, seems to have presided over a rollicking gathering. the noise of the jollification got abroad. the banquet cost the frugal vigée le brun some fifteen francs in all; but in the mouths of the spiteful the tale of its extravagance quickly grew. a few days afterwards there was talk of it at court; and the king was solemnly assured by "one who knew," that it had cost , francs. this unfortunate greek supper dogged her steps in the wanderings over the face of europe that were to be her long exile. at rome she was to discover that it had cost her , francs; at vienna it was to rise to , ; and when she reached st. petersburg she was to find that, gathering volume on the long journey, it had increased to , francs, when she scotched the lie and killed it; but not before it had served her a very ugly turn. the truth was that she was being made to share the unpopularity that had fallen upon the queen. she was painting, and was on friendly terms with, not only the royal family, but with the unpopular ministers and servants of the crown, and with the noblesse, who in league with the queen were chiefly concerned in keeping the king from popular measures. she painted, according to the authorities, in , in her thirtieth year, the portrait of calonne though a parchment in the engraving from it bears the date . the portrait of the minister set slander going against the artist, as regards the vast sum paid for it. the portrait of the seated minister ends below the knees; and it was of this picture of the weak calonne, who clung so limpet-like to office, that sophie arnould, seeing it at the salon, made the neat remark: "it is because he sticks to office that madame le brun has cut off his legs." but whether she received much or little mattered not much to vigée le brun; her husband seized and squandered all she earned. as a matter of fact, she received francs for the portrait from calonne, sent in a handsome box worth francs--a couple of hundred pounds at the outside. it was a small price compared to the sums she was now receiving for portraits; beaujou, the financier, paid francs (say guineas); prince lubomirski , francs (£ )--not that the poor maker of these works gained thereby, for her precious picture-dealer husband had it according to his habit, and she had difficulty and a scene even to get two louis from the price when she asked the rogue for it. however, her reputation ever increased. she showed at this same salon of , in her thirtieth year, the portrait of the little dauphin of four years and his seven-year-old sister, the madame royale, seated on a bank, the boy's hat thrown at his feet upon the flower-strewn ground--a work in which her colour-sense, her fine arrangement, and her feeling for style reach to their highest flight. it is perhaps the most wholly successful and most complete and masterly canvas of her long career. it hangs in versailles, a pathetic comment, this happy moment in the children's life, when the days looked rosy and all the world was a beautiful garden. at the salon of , in her thirty-second year, is record of a picture of "marie antoinette and her children"; and of herself with her girl; and, amongst others, those of mademoiselle dugazon and of madame molé-raymond. this famous painting of madame molé-raymond, the pretty actress of the comédie française, is one of vigée le brun's masterpieces. her brush is now at its most dexterous use; the laughing pretty woman is caught like a live thing and fixed upon the canvas as at a stroke as she trips across the vision, with muff upraised, smiling out upon us as she passes. vigée le brun never stated character with more consummate skill than here; never set down action with more vivid brush, catching movement flying; she never stated life more truly nor with more exquisite tact than in this bright vision of a dainty woman of the theatre. affairs in france were now in such a huddle that the state could not pay interest on the public loans. calonne could no longer disguise the serious business from himself or the king. there was nothing for it but to call the assembly of notables. they met at versailles on the nd of february . calonne fell, to give place to his enemy the turbulent and stupid cardinal de brienne. the court was completely foul of the people when de brienne threw up office in the midst of riots in paris and throughout the country, and, in panic, fled to italy, leaving the government in dire confusion and distress. the king took a wise course; he recalled neckar. the convoking of the states-general now became a certainty. paris rang with the hoarse cry for the third estate. the wrangle as to the constitution of the states-general became every day more dangerous. the last portrait that vigée le brun painted of the doomed queen was the canvas that hangs at versailles known as "marie antoinette and her children," in which the queen is seen seated beside a cradle with the baby duke of normandy on her knee, the little madame royale at her side, and the small dauphin pointing into the cradle. when the doors of the salon of were thrown open the painting was not quite finished; and for some days the frame reserved for it remained empty. it was on the eve of what was to become the revolution, and the country was speaking now in no hushed whispers of the public deficit in the nation's treasury, and gazing bewildered at the bankruptcy that threatened the land. the empty frame drew forth the bitter jest: "voilà le déficit!" the little dauphin's pointing at the cradle was not to be without its significance--for the little fellow was to die at the outbreak of the revolution and his place was to be taken by the babe on his mother's knee--the small duke of normandy was to become dauphin in his place, and, in some few years, with his little sister, was to be made a close prisoner in the temple. the king and the queen, separated from their children and each other, were to go out to the guillotine; the girl was to live through the seething hell of the terror as by a miracle, and thereafter unhappily enough as the duchess of angoulême; but the fair boy, heir to one of the noblest heritages in all this vast world, torn from marie antoinette whilst the queen still lived, a prisoner, was to be handed to the tender mercies of the infamous simon, jailor at the temple, who was to train the frightened child to drink and swear and sing with piping treble the _camagnole_, until, hidden away in a tower of the prison, he was to die like a frightened hunted thing, his shirt not changed for months--die in darkness and squalor and in a filthy state. the guillotine did no mightier act of simple godlike vengeance than the day it sheared the skull from the foul neck of cordwainer simon. marie antoinette, in this the thirtieth portrait that vigée le brun painted of her, is no longer the mere careless, gorgeous butterfly of some ten years ago when the little more than girl-artist first limned her features in the "marie antoinette with a rose." the ten years that have passed are ending in solemn seriousness for the thirty-third birthday of the french queen. the future is a threat. the people are demanding rule by parliament--are singing for it--writing broadsheets claiming it. it was about this time of stress and strain and anxiety at court that, in , berger engraved so superbly one of vigée le brun's greatest portraits, the consummately painted character-study, and exquisitely dainty colour-harmony of the marchioness de sabran. the elections to the states-general took place amidst indescribable excitement throughout all france. the winter which went before the meeting of the states-general was terribly severe; it came on top of a bad harvest; the price of bread rose to famine pitch. neckar generously sacrificed a vast part of his private fortune to buy food for the hunger-stricken poor of paris. it was in national gloom that the states-general met at versailles on the th of may in . that day sounded the knell of the monarchy. ===================================================================== plate vii.-marie antoinette and her children (at versailles) the last portrait that vigée le brun painted of the doomed queen was the canvas that hangs at versailles known as "marie antoinette and her children," in which the queen is seen seated beside a cradle with the baby duke of normandy on her knee, the little madame royale at her side, and the small dauphin pointing into the cradle. when the doors of the salon of were thrown open the painting was not quite finished; and for some days the frame reserved for it remained empty. it was on the eve of what was to become the revolution, and the country was speaking now in no hushed whispers of the public deficit in the nation's treasury, and gazing bewildered at the bankruptcy that threatened the land. the empty frame drew forth the bitter jest: "voilà, le déficit!" [illustration: plate vii.] ===================================================================== in little over a month the states-general was become the self-constituted national assembly; a few days later, on the th of june, the deputies took the solemn oath in the tennis-court--the _jeu de paume_. at the queen's foolish urging the king fell back on force; filled paris with troops under de broglie; dismissed neckar. the people at once took to arms. the th of july saw the fall of the hated bastille. on the nd the people hanged foulon to the street-lamp at the corner of the place de grève--and thenceforth the terrible shout _à la lanterne!_ became the cry of fashion. such was the dawn of the revolution in the streets of paris, upon which vigée le brun's eyes gazed down terrified in her thirty-fourth year. quickly followed the rumblings of the dark thunder-clouds that came up in threatening blackness behind the dawn--and which were about to burst with a roar upon reckless paris. the king showed astounding courage and considerable capacity during these awful days; but his work was constantly thwarted and ruined by the court party and the queen. on the rd of october the officers of the regiment of flanders were foolishly entertained at versailles, and the whole court being present, the white cockade of the bourbons was distributed amidst rapturous approval, and the national tricolour trodden under foot. the starving rabble of paris knew it, by the next day; and headed by a band of frantic women, set out for versailles on the morning of the th of october, under the leadership of the ruffian maillard who had distinguished himself at the capture of the bastille. they overran the palace. the king again showed superb nerve; and the mob, abashed and admiring, calling "long live the king!" withdrew to the courtyards. the unfortunate brawl in the courtyard followed; and the mishap of the night. the next day the royal family had to make their humiliating journey with the rabble to paris. small hope for vigée le brun, unless she stole out of france, and at once. she stood, indeed, in perilous plight. her relations with the court, and with the nobility, made every hour that she stayed in paris a greater danger to her life. it was dangerous to go into the streets--dangerous to leave paris--but for vigée le brun more dangerous to stay. she was a marked woman. there was for her one sole way from death, and it was flight. by delaying she risked also the life of her child. her friends begged her to be gone. she took the girl; searched hurriedly for all the money she could lay hands on--her husband had taken all but eighty francs (some three guineas)--and, leaving her canvases where they stood unfinished, she passed out of the studio that had been all the world to her; the place where she had spent the happiest hours of her life. a few days before, she had had to refuse to begin a portrait of the future duchess de noailles--to save her own head, not to paint those of others, was now become her single aim. on the th of october of this year of , that fearsome day that saw the rabble marching to versailles, vigée le brun took her seat in a diligence with her little girl, seated between a thief and a jacobin; the diligence rattled along the cobbles of her beloved city, and out of the gates--in such fashion vigée le brun left paris and took the road for italy. v sweet exile as she rattled out of paris between her grim companions, vigée le brun little thought that her exile would last a dozen years; but everywhere she went she was destined to be welcomed with honour; and wheresoever she roamed--and she ranged across the face of the land wellnigh from end to end of it--she was to receive the same ovations, meet with the same success, be rewarded with the highest honours. she went amongst strangers with but eighty francs in her purse out of all the fortune she had made by her dogged industry; she was to find in exile, not only a gracious home, but at last an immunity from the shameless squandering of her earnings by the disreputable thief whom she had married. at turin, her first halting-place, she tarried but a short while. she found that her name and fame had gone before her. at bologna no french citizen was allowed to stay for more than twenty-four hours; but for vigée le brun permission was brought without her asking for it. she spent three days gazing at the masterpieces of the bologna school; and was made a member of its academy. at florence she was asked to paint her portrait for the celebrated collection of portraits of famous artists by their own hand at the uffizi gallery. at rome the same impressive welcome awaited her. here she was soon at work again, with palette and brushes, upon the portrait of herself, which she had promised to the gallery at florence, where it now hangs--one of the most exquisite heads she ever painted, sunny, smiling, happy, with youth come back to it. after eight months in rome she moved on to naples. here it was that she painted the portrait of lady hamilton, nelson's emma, reclining by the sea, holding a cup in her hand as a bacchante. vigée le brun also painted her as a sibyl--that picture which she took with her wherever she went, from town to town, and which always drew a crowd to her studio; whilst, grimly enough, nelson's emma rose to be one of the famed lovers of romance, to sink into want, and so to death in loneliness and misery at calais. it was at naples, too, that vigée le brun painted that portrait of paisiello which she sent to paris to the salon, where it was hung as pendant to a portrait by david, and led to his high tribute to her genius, when, after gazing upon it for a long while, he said to his pupils: "they will think that my canvas was painted by a woman, and the portrait of paisiello by a man." vigée le brun was now painting without cease. the queen of naples, her two elder daughters, and the prince royal, all sat to her. during the first year of her exile the news from france had not been greatly alarming, and danger seemed to have been lulled. but at naples she was to hear tidings that caused her bitter grief. first neckar, finding himself out of touch with the king and the people and the parliament, retired to switzerland. then, unfortunately for the king, mirabeau died in the april of . the king thenceforth resolved on escape. the royal family made their ill-starred flight to varennes; to be brought back to paris as prisoners. the constitutional party in the legislative assembly, at first dominant, soon became subordinate to the more violent girondists, with their extreme wing of _jacobins_ under robespierre and of _cordeliers_ under danton, marat, camille desmoulins, and fabre d'eglantine. the proscription of all emigrants quickly followed--and the name of vigée le brun was written upon the lists. the queen's enmity to lafayette baulked, and completed the ruin of, the royalist hopes. he retired into exile, and sadly left the royal cause to its fate. on the th of april france entered upon her supreme struggle with europe by declaring war. on the night of the th of august the dread tocsin sounded the note of doom to the royal cause--herald to the bloodshed of the th of august. three days afterwards the king and the royal family were prisoners in the temple. there followed the terrible september massacres. the national convention met for the first time on the st of september ; decreed the first year of the republic; abolished royalty and titles of courtesy; decreed _citoyen_ and _citoyenne_ in their place, and _tu_ and _toi_ for _vous_. it also proved the enmity of the two wings of the now all-powerful girondist party--the girondists proper as against the _jacobins_ or _montagnards_. the conflict began with the fierce quarrel as to whether the king could be tried. it was with sorrow at her heart that the exiled artist left italy and journeyed into austria. having spent three years in italy, roaming from town to town, and being received with honour wherever she went, she turned her footsteps to vienna, where she remained from to , her thirty-seventh to her fortieth years, again to be idolised, and painting hard the while. "to paint and to live are the same word to me," she was wont to say. ===================================================================== plate viii.--peace bringing back plenty (in the louvre) it was shortly after her return from this journey into flanders that joseph vernet decided to put down her name for election to the royal academy. her portrait of herself created such a sensation that her election became assured. she had to paint the usual formal _tableau de reception_, and chose allegory, painting her "la paix ramenant l'abondance," which, though a somewhat stilted affair such as academies demand, is full of charm--and is still to be seen at the louvre. [illustration: plate viii.] ===================================================================== but these years in vienna must have gnawed at vigée le brun's heart like a fearful disease. in her france her much-loved marie antoinette was going through terrible days. the king was being tried for his life, and "louis capet" knew that he was a condemned man before he faced his accusers with the rare dignity and courage that keep his memory green. he was condemned to death,--orleans, "philip egalité," voting with the majority amidst a murmur of universal horror even amongst the men who condemned the king. louis' head fell to the guillotine on the th of january . war with europe followed; and the deadly struggle between the girondists and jacobins for supreme power. the th of may saw the appointment of the terrible secret committee of public safety. by june the girondists had fallen. charlotte corday's stabbing marat in his bath left the way clear to robespierre's ambition. the jacobins in power, the year of the reign of terror set in--from july to july , with robespierre as lord of the hellish turmoil. the famous "loi des suspects" soon filled the prisons with some two hundred thousand miserable prisoners. the scaffold reeked with blood. during the year of the terror the guillotine sheared the heads from fourteen hundred victims. the unfortunate queen, marie antoinette, whose hair had gone white in a night, was tried as "the widow capet," going to the guillotine with majestic serenity on the th of october . the girondist deputies followed; also the despicable egalité orleans, who went to his doom as the dandy he was, blotting out his many sins in a final dignity. amongst the many batches came the miserable du barry, shrieking with terror, to her awful death, which she had brought upon herself by foolishly advertising a reward for a robbery from her house of louveciennes. then came strife amongst the jacobins themselves. danton and robespierre fought the bloodthirsty villain hébert for life, and overthrew him; the hébertists went to the guillotine like the curs they were. danton, with his appeals for cessation of the terror, alone now stood between robespierre and supreme power; danton, camille desmoulins, d'eglantine, and their fellows went to the guillotine. but other as able and resolute men had determined that robespierre and his terror must end; robespierre went to the guillotine. the revolution of the ninth thermidor put an end to the terror in july . it was whilst at vienna, in her thirty-ninth year, on the rd of june , during the terror, that vigée le brun took out her act of divorce. and it was in this year that "citizen le brun" published in paris his _précis historique de la vie de la citoyenne le brun, peintre_! in her fortieth year vigée le brun went from vienna to prague; and, getting roaming again, passed through dresden to berlin and on to st. petersburg, where she arrived in the july of this same year of . her welcome in st. petersburg must have been very sweet to the wandering exile. on the morrow of her arrival the empress catherine had her presented. she found at st. petersburg many of her old friends, fled from the revolution. to her all europe became a second country; but st. petersburg her second home. here, in fact, were larger numbers of those that had meant paris to her than she could now have found in paris itself. she was besides a spoiled child of the court. her life at st. petersburg was a very busy one. she settled down at once to the industrious practice of that art that was breath and life and holiday to her--working from morning until nightfall, and happy in it all. she painted something like forty-eight portraits in st. petersburg. the empress catherine, now an old woman, was to have sat to her, and had appointed the day and hour, but her "to-day at eight" was not to be; apoplexy struck down her good-will; she was found dead in her room. the six years in st. petersburg were amongst the happiest years of the artist's life, and the richest for her fortunes. her reception into the academy of st. petersburg was almost a state triumph. meanwhile, the armies of france were winning the respect of the world by their gallantry and skill in war. the rd of september saw france ruled by the directory. the th of october, the "day of the sections," led to napoleon bonaparte's employment as second in command of the army--the young general was soon commander-in-chief. and france thenceforth advanced, with all the genius of her race to that splendid and astounding recovery of her fortunes and to that greatness which became the wonder of the world. the revolution of the th and th of brumaire ( th and th november ) ended the directory and set the people's idol, napoleon bonaparte, at the helm of her mighty state as first consul. there was now little need--indeed there had not been for some time any need--for vigée le brun to remain an exile; but, as a matter of fact, exile she had found to be so sweet a thing, so magnificent and perpetual a triumph, so delightful an existence, that paris had early ceased to call her. her experience with her rascally husband scarcely beckoned her back to her old home; she was now sole mistress of her considerable earnings. besides, the paris of her delight had been the paris of marie antoinette--aristocratic paris. where was that paris to be found? the personages and the atmosphere and the palaces and homes of all that paris meant to her were gone into thin air--a sad memory. during her exile her mother had died; her last link with paris died with her. she probably rarely gave the city of her youth's delight a thought, and likely enough never would have given it another serious one, had not destiny now struck her a blow which she bitterly resented; but which she should have foreseen to be as inevitable as death. her daughter betrothed herself to, and married, a russian, m. nigris, secretary to the count czernicheff. vigée le brun had been sorely tempted to oppose the match, for she foresaw that the girl would find no happiness in the union. she had poured out upon her child all the passionate love that had been so miserably thwarted in her own marriage. it had been more than bitterness to her to note that whilst her love for her girl increased, the girl's love for her seemed to dwindle. it was the bitterest blow that vigée le brun had ever known; and she had been struck more than once. it turned the wanderer's eyes homewards to her wrecked paris. russia was no longer a delight to her. she became restless. the wander-fever came upon her; she got roaming; she went to moscow for five or six months; but she could not settle--she decided to leave russia. the people amongst whom she had lived so long showed their affection, and personally appealed to her to make her home amongst them. the grandees went to her and told her of the sorrow that the news of her going had brought to them. the emperor alexander the first, himself, begged her not to leave them. she fenced all their kindnesses by promising to return soon. but during the forty years that remained to her she never set foot again in her "second home." in her forty-sixth year vigée le brun left russia, and turned her face towards paris; she crossed the border into germany and halted a short while in berlin to paint a few portraits, and in order to go to potsdam to paint the queen of prussia. on leaving berlin she narrowly escaped losing her diamonds and gold, a servant of the inn making an attempt to force open the baggage that contained them. from berlin she roamed to dresden, where she seems to have hesitated, reluctant to bend her steps towards paris, yet torn with desire to go. as she came nearer to france her desire to return conflicted with her horror at the memories which the tragedy and wreckage of the terror raised like ghouls in her imagination--every well-loved spot would now bear witness to her of the ghastly crimes that had swept away her old friends, their once masters and mistresses. vi the end at last, the year after napoleon, with great pomp, took up his official residence as first consul at the palace of the tuileries, vigée le brun set foot on french soil after twelve years splendid exile, carrying with her a considerable fortune. the egregious le brun seems to have been reconciled, for he took a leading part in her reception. as she stepped out of the carriage she found herself in the arms of her brother and his wife, amidst tears of joy--with le brun in attendance. in her home, which was gay with flowers, everything else was exactly as she had left it, except that above her bed was a crown of golden stars set there by "citizen le brun." the long-suffering vigée le brun was deeply touched; but could not forget that the unconscious wag had made her pay dearly for the golden stars. concerts and ovations greeted the returned exile; but it was all a strange world. a few old friends--and the rest, kindly strangers. she grew restless, and in six months was setting out for london. here she found herself amongst hosts of old friends; and the doors of the great, as everywhere, thrown open to her. she painted george the fourth and byron amongst many others. the rage for portraits by her kept her in england for three years; and it was her fiftieth year ( ) before she returned by way of holland and belgium into france. but in the midst of the great sea of adventure that swept france along under napoleon she seems never to have got her bearings. she roamed to switzerland twice, and painted some two hundred pastel landscapes of its scenery. it was during her first visit thereto that she met and painted madame de staël as "corinne." the years were increasing, the fever for travel cooled, and vigée le brun, buying a house at louveciennes, thenceforth passed her days between her country-house and town-mansion. death began to make gaps amongst such old friendships as the guillotine had spared to her. le brun died in ; her daughter in ; her brother the following year. her art began to fail her. but her closing years were illumined by the affection and care of her two nieces, madame de rivière and madame trippier le franc. at five of the morning of the th of march in , she died in her apartment at no. rue st. lazare, in her eighty-seventh year; and was buried according to her wish at louveciennes, where, in the church, still hangs the picture of "ste. genevieve" painted by her. even her poor dead body could not sleep where she had willed; she was destined to gentle exile even after death. her remains were moved to the new cemetery, and the simple tomb was again set up over them, whereon one may see a palette and brushes chiselled at its summit, and the grim words: "here, at last, i rest." printed in great britain. in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. carlo dolci. george hay. luini. james mason. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. _others in preparation._ [illustration: cover art] masterpieces in colour edited by -- t. leman hare raeburn - ===================================================================== plate i.--lord newton (frontispiece). (national gallery of scotland.) this chef-d'oeuvre, which dates from about , represents one of the most celebrated characters who ever sat upon the bench of the court of session. famous in his day for "law, paunch, whist, claret, and worth," the exploits of charles hay, "the mighty," as he was called, have become traditions of the parliament house. (see p. .) [illustration: plate i.] ===================================================================== raeburn by james l. caw illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page art] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents introduction chapter i. " ii. " iii. " iv. " v. " vi. list of illustrations plate i. lord newton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece (national gallery of scotland) ii. children of mr and the hon. mrs paterson of castle huntly (in the possession of chas. j. g. paterson, esq.) iii. mrs lauzun (national gallery, london) iv. mrs campbell of balliemore (national gallery of scotland) v. professor robison (university of edinburgh) vi. john tait of harvieston and his grandson (in the possession of mrs pitman) vii. miss de vismes (in the possession of the earl of mansfield) viii. mrs scott moncrieff (national gallery of scotland) [illustration: raeburn] when in , henry raeburn, then at the height of his powers, proposed to settle in london, lawrence dissuaded him. it is unnecessary, as it would be unjust, to insinuate that the future president of the royal academy had ulterior and personal motives in urging him to rest content with his supremacy in the north. raeburn was fifty-five at the time, and, after his undisputed reign at home, even his generous nature might have taken ill with the competition inseparable from such a venture. lawrence's advice was wise in many ways, and raeburn, secure in the admiration and constant patronage of his countrymen, lived his life to the end unvexed by the petty jealousy of inferior rivals. nor was recognition confined to scotland. ultimately he was elected a member of the royal academy, an honour all the more valued because unsolicited. yet, had the courtly lawrence but known, acceptance of his advice kept a greater than himself from london, and, it may be, prevented the perpetuation and further development of that tradition of noble portraiture of which raeburn, with personal modifications, was such a master. for long also it confined the scottish painter's reputation to his own country. forty years after his death, his art was so little known in england that the redgraves, in their admirable history of english painting, relegated him to a chapter headed "the contemporaries of lawrence." time brings its revenges, however, and of late years raeburn has taken a place in the very front rank of british painters. and, if this recognition has been given tardily by english critics, the reason is to be found in want of acquaintance with his work. he had lived and painted solely in scotland, and scottish art, like foreign art, so long as it remains at home, has little interest for london, which, sure of its attractive power, sits arrogantly still till art is brought to it. but raeburn's work possesses that inherent power, which, seen by comprehending eyes, compels admiration. the raeburn exhibition held in edinburgh in was quite local in its influence, but from time to time since then, at "the old masters" and elsewhere, admirable examples have been shown in london; and recent loan collections in glasgow and edinburgh, wherein his achievement was very fully illustrated, were seen by large and cosmopolitan audiences. and the better his work has become known, the more has it been appreciated. collectors and galleries at home and abroad are now anxious to secure examples; dealers are as alert to buy as they are keen to sell; prices have risen steadily from the very modest sums of twenty years ago until fine pictures by him fetch as much as representative specimens of reynolds and gainsborough. fashion has had much to do with this greatly enhanced reputation, but another, and more commendable cause of the appreciation, not of the commercial value but of the artistic merit of his work, lies in the fact that the qualities which dominate it are those now held in highest esteem by artists and lovers of art. isolated though he was, raeburn expressed himself in a manner and achieved pictorial results which make his achievement somewhat similar in kind to that of velasquez and hals. ===================================================================== plate ii.--children of mr and the hon. mrs paterson of castle huntly. (charles j. g. paterson, esq.) painted within a year or two of raeburn's return from italy, some critics have seen, or thought they saw, in this picture the influence of michael angelo. be this as it may, the handling, lighting, and tone and disposition of the colour are eminently characteristic of much of the work done by raeburn about . [illustration: plate ii.] ===================================================================== i if, during the last century, scotland has shown exceptional activity in the arts, especially in painting, and has produced a succession of artists whose work is marked by able craftsmanship and emotional and subjective qualities, which give it a distinctive place in modern painting, the more than two hundred years which lay between the reformation and the advent of raeburn seemed to hold little promise of artistic development. during the middle ages and the renaissance the internal condition of the country was too unsettled and its resources were too meagre to make art widely possible. strong castles and beautiful churches were built here and there, but intermittent war on the borders and fear of invasion kept even the more settled central districts in a state of unrest. moreover, the fierce barons were at constant feud amongst themselves, and not infrequently the more powerful amongst them were banded against the king. of the first five jameses only the last died, and that miserably, in his bed. the innate taste of the stewarts, no doubt, created an atmosphere of culture in the court, and this tendency was further strengthened by commercial relations with the low countries and political associations with france. poetry and scholarship were encouraged, if poorly rewarded--one remembers dunbar's unavailing poetical pleas for a benefice--and relics and old records show that even in those stirring times life was not without its refinements and tasteful accessories. yet only in the church or for her service was there the quietude necessary for art work of the higher kinds. then came the reformation (during which much fine ecclesiastical furniture and decoration perished) severing the connection of art with religion and sowing distrust of art in any form. had the union of the crowns not taken place in , it is possible that the art of painting might have developed much earlier than it did. no doubt that event brought healing to the long open sore caused and inflamed by kingly ambitions and national animosities, but it removed the court to london, and with that some of the greatest nobles, while the change in the religion of the ruling house from presbyterianism to episcopacy, which followed, led to the covenants and the religious persecution, and drove the iron of ascetism into the souls of those classes from whom artists mostly spring. yet the logical rigidity of the calvinistic spirit, while taking much of the joy out of life and opposing its manifestation in art, had certain compensating advantages. disciplining the mind, quickening the reasoning powers, and cultivating that grasp of essentials which makes for success in almost any pursuit, and not least in art, it helped very largely to make the scot what he is. during the peaceful years which immediately followed the union, there was considerable activity in the building of country residences. now that the country was more settled these were less castles than mansions, and the larger and better lighted apartments possible led to a good deal of elaborate decoration. of this pinkie house ( ) with its painted gallery is perhaps the most celebrated example. it is difficult, however, to determine how much of this kind of work was done by foreign, how much by native craftsmen, and as it seems to have exerted little influence upon the one or two picture-painters who emerged during the seventeenth century, one need not discuss the probabilities. so far as has been discovered, the only link between this phase of art and the other consists of the fact that george jamesone ( ?- ), the first clearly recognisable scottish artist, was apprenticed in to one john andersone "paynter" in edinburgh, whose decoration in gordon castle is mentioned by an old chronicler. as might be expected in the circumstances the "scottish van dyck," as he is fondly called, was a portrait-painter. he was followed by a few others, such as the scougall family, aikman marshall, wait, and the two alexanders, who, although neither so accomplished nor so much appreciated as their precursor, form a never quite broken succession of portraitists between him and allan ramsay ( - ) in whose work art in scotland took a great step forward.[ ] a few of ramsay's predecessors had succeeded in supplementing the meagre instruction--if any thing that existed could be dignified by that name--to be obtained in scotland by a visit to the low countries or italy, but ramsay was the first to obtain a sound technical training. the author of "the gentle shepherd," to whom edinburgh was indebted for its first circulating library and its first play-house, encouraged his son's bent for art, and after some preliminary study in london, allan _fils_ was sent to "the seat of the beast" beyond the alps, where he became a pupil of solimena and imperiale and of the french academy. formed under these influences, his style possesses no clearly marked national trait, except it be the feeling for character which informs his finer work and makes it, in a way, a link between that of jamesone and that of raeburn. to this he added a delicate sense of tone and a tenderness of colour and lighting, a gracefulness of drawing and a refined accomplishment which were new in scottish painting. his turn for charm of pose and grace of motive was pronounced, and his portraitures mirror very happily the mannered yet elegant social airs of the mid-eighteenth century. more than that of any english painter of his day, his art possesses "french elegance." ===================================================================== plate iii.--mrs lauzun. (national gallery.) only one of the three raeburns in the national gallery is an adequate example. this is the picture reproduced. it was painted in , and, while very typical technically, possesses greater charm than most of the portraits of women executed by him at that comparatively early date. [illustration: plate iii.] ===================================================================== ramsay's activity as a painter coincided with a remarkable intellectual movement which, making itself felt in history, philosophy, science, and political economy, raised scotland within a few years to a conspicuous intellectual place in europe. a product of the reaction which followed the narrow and intense theological ideals which had dominated scotland, it was closely associated with the reign of the moderates, who, with their breadth of view, tolerance, and intellectual gifts had become the most influential party in the national church. offering an outlet for the human instincts and secular activities, it possessed special attraction for independent minds and induced boldness of speculation and original investigation of the phenomena of history and society. intimate with the leaders in this movement, ramsay, before he left edinburgh for london, was active in the formation ( ) of the "select society," which in addition to its main object--the improvement of its members in reasoning and eloquence--sought to encourage the arts and sciences and to improve the material and social condition of the people. it was in this more genial atmosphere that henry raeburn was reared. born in , raeburn was not too late to paint many of the most gifted of the older generation. david hume, who sat to ramsay more than once, was dead before the new light rose above the horizon, and the appearance of adam smith does not seem to be recorded except in a tassie medallion; but black, the father of modern chemistry, and hutton, the originator of modern geology, were amongst his early sitters; and fine works in a more mature manner have principal robertson, james watt, the engineer, adam ferguson, the historian, dugald stewart, the philosopher, and others scarcely less interesting for subject. and of his own immediate contemporaries--the cycle of walter scott--he has left an almost complete gallery. nor were his sitters less fortunate. if they brought fine heads to be painted, he painted them with wonderful insight grasp of character, and great pictorial power. [ ] j. michael wright ( ?- ?), at his best probably the finest native painter of the seventeenth century, went to england. ii. descended from a race of "bonnet-lairds," who took their name from a hill farm in the border district, robert raeburn, the artist's father, seems to have come to edinburgh as a young man in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. at that time the city had expanded but little beyond the limits marked by the flodden wall. the high grey lands along the windy ridge between the castle and holyrood were still tenanted by the upper classes, and such extension as had been was towards the meadows. the new town had not been projected even, and on the slopes, now occupied by its spacious streets and squares, copse-woods and grass and heather grew. in the hollow at the foot of these green braes, and by the side of the water of leith, a chain of little hamlets--dean, stockbridge, and canon-mills--nestled, and in the mid-most of these robert raeburn established himself as a yarn-boiler. although in the country, his home was less than a mile from st giles's kirk. his business appears to have prospered, and during the early forties he married miss ann elder. there was a difference of twelve years in the ages of their two sons, william and henry, and the younger was no more than six when both father and mother died. left to the care of his brother, who carried on the business, henry raeburn was nominated for maintenance and education at heriot's hospital by mrs sarah sandilands or durham in , and remained seven years in the school, which owed its origin to the bequest of george heriot, jeweller to james vi. and i. in edinburgh and later in london. many boys had been educated on "jingling geordie's" foundation, but raeburn was to be its most distinguished product. he does not seem to have distinguished himself specially as a scholar, however, the two prizes awarded to him having been for writing, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen he was apprenticed to a jeweller and goldsmith in parliament close. this choice of a calling was probably suggested by the lad's own inclinations, but it was a stroke of good fortune that gave him james gilliland as a master. no craft then practised in the scottish capital was so likely to have been congenial to him. in the eighteenth century a silversmith made as well as sold plate and ornaments, and in his master's shop raeburn must have learned to use his hands and may have acquired some idea of design. in addition gilliland seems to have been a man of some taste--one of his most intimate friends, david deuchar, the seal-engraver, devoted his leisure to etching, and executed many plates after holbein and the dutch masters. it was to the latter that raeburn owed his first lessons in art. surprising his friend's apprentice at work on a drawing of himself, deuchar, struck by the talent displayed, inquired if he had had any instruction. no, he had not, wished he had, but could not afford it, the youth replied; and deuchat's offer to give him a lesson once or twice a week was accepted eagerly. the story is pleasant and circumstantial enough to be credible; and the existence of an early raeburn miniature of deuchar is evidence of the existence of friendship between the two. but, as a free drawing-school had been founded in by the honourable the board of manufactures for the precise object of encouraging and improving design for manufactures, the impossibility of raeburn receiving instructions of some kind was less than seems to be implied. it is true, of course, that the teaching then given was exceedingly elementary, and that it was not until after the appointment in of john graham[ ] ( - ) as preceptor that the trustees' academy was developed and began to exercise a definite and indeed a profound influence on scottish painting. from , the year in which raeburn left heriot's, until his death, alexander runciman ( - ), the "sir brimstone" of a convivial club of the day and an artist of great ambition and some gifts, if little real accomplishment, in history painting, was master, however, and tradition has it that raeburn took the tone of his colour from that painter's work. but no record exists of raeburn having been a pupil of the school, and he does not appear to have received any more training than was involved in the relationships with his master and his master's friend which have been described. even subsequent introduction to david martin ( - ), who settled in edinburgh in , when raeburn was nineteen, meant little more. by that time, or little later, he had almost certainly come to an arrangement under which his master cancelled his indenture, and received as compensation a share in the prices received for the miniatures to which raeburn now chiefly devoted himself, and for which gilliland probably helped to secure commissions. these miniatures, of which few have survived, recognisable as his work at least, possess no very marked artistic qualities. drawn with care and not without considerable sense of construction, they are tenderly modelled but not stippled, and the colour is cool and rather negative in character. the frank way in which the sitters are regarded, and the lighting and placing of the heads are almost the only elements which hint their authorship. they are simple and straight-forward likenesses rather than works of art and bear no obvious relationship to the elegant bibelots or deeply-searched portraits in little of the contemporary english school of miniaturists. but obviously they were some preparation for the development which followed, when, soon afterwards and almost at once, he passed from water-colour miniature to life-size portraiture in oil paint. ===================================================================== plate iv.--mrs campbell of balliemore. (national gallery of scotland.) this is one of the finest of the many fine portraits by raeburn in the edinburgh gallery. its place in the artist's work is discussed on page . [illustration: plate iv.] ===================================================================== the rapid expansion of edinburgh provided new opportunities and helped to raeburn's early success. when he was eight years old the building of the north bridge, which was to connect the old city with the projected new town on the other side of the valley, was begun, and by the time he attained his majority many of the well-to-do had migrated. the new district meant bigger houses and larger rooms, and, with the increase in wealth which followed the commercial and agricultural development of the country of which the city was the capital, led to alterations in the habits and expansion of the ideals of its inhabitants. it was probably the opening for an artist offered by these altered circumstances which had brought martin to edinburgh, and certainly raeburn was fortunate in that his emergence coincided with them. an attractive and clever lad devoting himself to art in a community increasing in wealth and expanding in ideas, and with a sympathetic master coming in contact with the upper classes, raeburn could not fail to make acquaintances able and willing to help him. amongst these was john clerk, younger of eldin, later a famous advocate, through whom the young artist got into touch with the penicuik family which for several generations had been notable for its interest in the arts. and this would lead to other introductions. [ ] sir david wilkie, sir william allan, and others were pupils of graham. iii. the influences which affected raeburn and the models upon which he formed either his style or his method are difficult to trace. allan ramsay, having painted many portraits in edinburgh before he went to london in the same year as raeburn was born, would be, one would think, the most likely source of inspiration. except runciman, who occasionally varied historical subjects by portraits painted in a broad but somewhat empty manner, and seaton, an artist of whom little is known but whose rare and seldom seen portraits possess a breadth of handling and a simplicity of design which give the best of them a certain distinction--can they have been an influence with raeburn?--the scottish portrait-painters of the eighteenth century were much influenced by ramsay, and martin had been his favourite pupil. raeburn's connection with the latter was very slight, however. beyond giving the youth the entreé to his studio and lending him a few pictures to copy, martin does not seem to have been of much direct assistance, and even these little courtesies come to an end when the painter to the prince of wales for scotland unjustly accused the jeweller's apprentice of having sold one of the copies he had been allowed to make. rumour, often astray but now and then hitting the mark, said that the real reason was jealousy of the younger man's growing powers. raeburn's debt to ramsay and martin was therefore inconsiderable and indirect. it is not traceable in the technique or arrangement of his earliest known pictures, such as the full-length "george chalmers" in dunfermline town hall, which was painted in , when the artist was twenty. probably sight of martin's pictures in progress was an incentive to work rather than a formative influence on his development as a painter. he had, says allan cunningham, writing within a few years of raeburn's death, "to make experiments, and drudge to acquire what belongs to the mechanical labour, and not to the genius of his art. his first difficulty was the preparation of his colours; putting them on the palette, and applying them according to the rules of art taught in the academies. all this he had to seek out for himself." and, if probably exaggerated, the statement gives some idea of the difficulties with which he had to contend. there were at that time no exhibitions and no public collections of pictures where a youth of genuine instinct could have gleaned hints as to technical procedure, but there were at least portraits in a number of houses in the city and district, and from these and from prints after the masters, of which deuchar, an etcher himself, evidently possessed examples, raeburn no doubt derived much instruction as to design, the use of chiaroscuro and the like. it has also been suggested with considerable likelihood that mezzotints after portraits by sir joshua reynolds had a considerable effect upon him. ===================================================================== plate v.--professor robison. (university of edinburgh.) painted about , "professor robison" is one of the most notable portraits painted by raeburn before . it represents the culmination of his _premier coup_ manner. (see pp. and .) [illustration: plate v.] ===================================================================== passing from supposition, which, however interesting and plausible, throws no very definite light upon the formation of raeburn's style, to his early work itself, one finds it chiefly remarkable for frank rendering of character. obviously he believed in his own eyes, and sought simple and direct ways for the expression of his vision. certain of what he saw, and desiring to set it down as he saw it, lack of training in the traditional methods of painting by process probably led him to attempt direct realisation in paint. here is at once the simplest and the most reasonable explanation of how he became an exponent of direct painting, of how, isolated though it was, his art came to be perhaps the most emphatic statement of this particular method of handling between velasquez and hals and comparatively recent times. of course at this early stage his technical accomplishment was not at all equal to his frankness of vision. his drawing, although expressing character, was uncertain and not fully constructive; his sense of design was rather stiff and occasionally somewhat archaic in character; his handling and modelling, if broad and courageous, were insufficiently supported by knowledge; his colour was apt to be dull and monotonous, or, when breaking from that, patchy and crude in its more definite notes which do not fuse sufficiently with their surroundings. gradually these deficiencies were mastered, but in some degree they persist in most of the comparatively few portraits which can be said with certainty to have been painted before he went to italy. he had been in no hurry to go. ever since marriage with one of his sitters in , when he was only twenty-two, his future had been secure. the lady, _neé_ ann edgar of bridgelands, peebleshire, brought him a considerable fortune. the widow of james leslie--who traced his descent to sir george leslie, first baron of balquhain ( ), and who, after his purchase of deanhaugh in ,[ ] was spoken of as "count of deanhaugh"--she was twelve years the artist's senior, and had three children; but the marriage turned out most happily for all concerned. raeburn went to live at his wife's property, which lay not far from his brother's house and factory at stockbridge, and, although sitters increased with his growing reputation until he is said to have been quite independent of his wife's income, he does not appear to have had a separate studio. probably his edinburgh clients went to deanhaugh, and at times he seems to have painted portraits at the country houses of the gentry. but in desire to see and learn more than was possible at home took him to italy. while in london he made the acquaintance of reynolds, in whose studio he may have worked for a few weeks, and sir joshua's advice confirming his original intention, raeburn and his wife went to rome, where they resided about two years. when parting reynolds took him aside and whispered: "young man, i know nothing about your circumstances. young painters are seldom rich; but if money be necessary for your studies abroad, say so, and you shall not want it." money was not needed, but letters of introduction were accepted gladly; and "ever afterwards raeburn mentioned the name of sir joshua with much respect." [ ] if, as stated by cumberland hill in his _history of stockbridge_, leslie bought deanhaugh in , and if, as stated by cunningham and others, raeburn married in , the lady can have been a widow for only a few months. iv. in these days of rapid travel, the transition from north to south is exceedingly striking. leaving london one speeds past the pleasant surrey fields and lanes and woodlands, and through the soft rolling green downs, and in the afternoon and evening sees the less familiar but not strange wide planes and poplar-fringed rivers of northern france, to open one's eyes next morning upon the brown sun-baked lands, with their strange southern growths, which lie behind marseilles; and all day as the train thunders along the riviera, through olive gardens and vineyards, one has glimpses of strangely picturesque white-walled and many-coloured shuttered towns fringing the broad bays or clustering on the rocks above little harbours, and drinks a strange enchantment from great vistas of lovely coast washed by blue waters and gladdened by radiant sunshine. and on the second morning, issuing into the great square before the station, you have your first sight of rome. ===================================================================== plate vi.--john tait of harvieston and his grandson. (mrs pitman.) one of the artist's most virile and trenchant performances, it was painted in - . the child was introduced after the grandfather's death. (see p. .) [illustration: plate vi.] ===================================================================== yet impressive as these transitions are, they are nothing to the contrast which rome presented to the stranger from the north in the eighteenth century when, after slow and long and weary travelling, he reached his goal. then rome was still a town of the renaissance imposed upon a city of the ancients; and under the aegis of the papacy preserved aspects of life and character which differed little from those of three or four centuries earlier. after the grey metropolis of the north, with its softly luminous or cloudy skies, its sombreness of aspect, its calvinistic religious atmosphere, its interest in science and philosophy, and its want of interest in the arts, the clear sunshiny air of the eternal city, its picturesque and crowded life, its gorgeous ecclesiastical ceremonies and processions, its monuments of art and architecture, and its cosmopolitan coteries of eager dilettanti discussing the latest archaeological discoveries, and of artists studying the achievements of the past, must have formed an extraordinary contrast, yet raeburn, much as these novel and stirring surroundings would strike him, remained true to his own impressions of reality and was unaffected in his artistic ideals. almost alone of the foreign artists then resident in rome, he was unaffected by the pseudo-classicism which prevailed. in part a product of emasculated academic tradition, and in part the result of philosophical speculations, upon which the discoveries at pompeii and the excavations then taking place in rome had had a strong influence, it was an attitude which founded itself upon the past and opposed the direct study of nature. gavin hamilton ( - ) and jacob more ( ?- ) two of its most conspicuous pictorial exponents were scots by birth, but they had lived so long abroad that scotland had become to them little more than a memory. the work of the former was in many ways an embodiment of the current dilettante conception of art, and kindred in kind, though earlier in date, to that of jacques louis david ( - ) under whose sway, towards the close of the century, classic ideals came to dominate the art of europe outside these isles. his usefulness to raeburn was chiefly that of a cicerone. there was little of an archaeological kind with which he was unacquainted, and he was so famous a discoverer of antiquities that the superstitious romans thought that he was in league with the devil. the landscapes of more, though highly praised by goethe, would appeal to raeburn little more than did the "sublime" historical designs of hamilton. they were but dilutions, frequently flavoured with melodramatic sentiment, of the noble convention formulated by claude and the poussins. raeburn, on the other hand, had looked at man and nature inquiringly, and had evolved a manner of expressing the results of his observation for himself. moreover he was past the easily impressionable age, and turned his opportunities to direct and practical uses. he used to declare that the advice of james byres ( - ?) of tonley, who, in raeburn's own words, was "a man of great general information, a profound antiquary, and one of the best judges perhaps of everything connected with art in great britain," was the most valuable lesson he received while abroad. "never paint anything except you have it before you" was what his friend urged, and, while raeburn, to judge from his early portraits, did not stand greatly in need of the injunction, it probably strengthened him in his own beliefs. be that as it may he seems to have used his stay in italy principally to widen his technical experience, and his work after his return was richer and fuller than what he had done previously. no record of any special study he may have undertaken or of the pictures he particularly admired exists. even gossip is silent as regards his preferences, except in so far as it is said that while in rome he came near to preferring sculpture to painting. v. arrived back in edinburgh in , raeburn took a studio in the new town, and, with his enhanced powers and the added prestige due to his sojourn abroad, soon occupied a commanding place. few agreed with martin that "the lad in george street painted better before he went to italy," for if the majority were unaware of his high artistic gifts, none could be unconscious of the vital and convincing quality of his portraitures. his earlier sitters included some of the most distinguished people in scotland. lord president dundas must have been amongst the very first for he died before the end of the year. ere long his position was unassailable, and during the five-and-thirty years that followed he painted practically everybody who was anybody. burns is probably the only great scotsman of that epoch who was not immortalised by his brush, for the missing likeness, which has been discovered so often, was not painted from life but from nasmyth's portrait. from the time he returned home until , when he purchased the adjoining property off st bernard's, raeburn lived at deanhaugh.[ ] the junction of these small estates enabled him to feu the outlying parts on plans prepared by himself, architecture being one of his hobbies, and his family's connection with them is still marked by such names as raeburn place, ann street (after his wife), leslie place, st bernard's crescent, and deanhaugh street. some years earlier continuous increase in the number of his clients had rendered a change of studio desirable, and in he moved from george street to (now ) york place where he had built a specially designed and spacious studio, with a suite of rooms for the display of recently completed work or of portraits he had painted for himself. at a later date, when exhibitions were inaugurated in edinburgh (first series - ), he lent the show-rooms to the society of artists which organised them. this action was typical of raeburn's cordial relations with his fellow-artists, most of whom were poor and socially unimportant; and only a year before his death he championed the professional artists when, partly in opposition to the royal institution, they proposed to form an academy. incidentally also, the letter written on that occasion, which i have transcribed in full in _scottish painting; past and present_, gives an indication of the extent of his practice, of how fully he was engaged. until raeburn's career had been one unbroken success, but in that year, following upon the failure of his son, financial disaster overtook him. the firm of "henry raeburn and company, merchants, shore, leith," consisted of henry raeburn, junior, and james philip inglis, who had married anne leslie, the artist's step-daughter, but neither the _edinburgh gazette_ nor the local directory states the nature of their business. in the proceedings in connection with raeburn's own bankruptcy, however, he is described as "portrait-painter and underwriter." what underwriter exactly means is uncertain, but it may be that the son was a marine-insurance broker, that raeburn himself took marine-insurance risks. in any case his ruin seemed complete. not only did he lose all his savings but he had even to sell the york place studio, of which he was afterwards only tenant. he failed, paid a composition, and, two years later, proposed settling in london. by those of his biographers who have noticed it at all, this failure and the contemplated removal south have been very closely associated. but a more careful examination of the whole circumstances makes such an assumption rather doubtful. alexander cunningham, in a letter written on th february , tells a correspondent--"i had a walk of three hours on sunday with my worthy friend, raeburn. he had realised nearly £ , , which is all gone. he has offered a small composition, which he is in hopes will be accepted. he quits this to try his fate in london, which i trust in god will be successful. while i write this i feel the tear start." so far the connection is evident enough. but although the artist received his discharge in june of the same year,[ ] it was not until two years later that he took active steps towards carrying out his idea.[ ] the time was highly propitious. hoppner had just died ( rd january ), and wilkie records in his journal (march nd) that he had heard that that artist's house was to be taken for raeburn. lawrence was now without a rival in the metropolis, and raeburn's talent was of a kind which would soon have commanded attention there. the opening was obvious, but raeburn's reception by the gentlemen of the royal academy, when he visited london in may, was not very cordial, and fortunately for scotland, if not for himself, he was persuaded to remain in edinburgh. from then onward the fates were kind. to quote his own words, written in , "my business, though it may fall off, cannot admit of enlargement." wider recognition also came to him. he had exhibited at the royal academy as early as , but it was before he became a regular contributor, and in he was elected an associate, full membership following three years later. just prior to his advancement to academician rank, he wrote one of the few letters by him that have been preserved:--"i observe what you say respecting the election of an r.a.; but what am i to do here? they know that i am on their list; if they choose to elect me without solicitation, it will be the more honourable to me, and i will think the more of it; but if it can only be obtained by means of solicitation and canvassing, i must give up all hopes of it, for i would think it unfair to employ those means." no doubt election was particularly gratifying to raeburn. isolated as he was in edinburgh, where an academy did not come into existence until some years after his death, it must have been stimulating to receive such tangible assurance of that appreciation of one's fellow-workers which is the most grateful form of admiration to the artist. he reciprocated by offering as his diploma work the impressive portrait of himself, which is now one of the treasures of the national gallery of scotland. the rules of the academy, however, forbade the acceptance of a self-portrait, and in he gave the "boy with rabbit"--a portrait of his step-grandson, but one of his most genre-like pieces. other academic diplomas received later were those of the academies of florence, new york, and south carolina. a year before he died these artistic laurels were supplemented by royal favour. on the occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten event--to those who took part in it--the first visit of a king to scotland since the union of parliaments, raeburn was presented to george iv. and knighted. his fellow artists marked their appreciation of this fresh distinction by entertaining him to a public dinner, at which the chairman, alexander nasmyth, the doyen of the local painters, declared that "they loved him as a man not less than they admired him as an artist." and in the following may, the king appointed him his "limner and painter in scotland, with all fees, profits, salaries, rights, privileges, and advantages thereto belonging." raeburn did not long enjoy these new honours. in july, a day or two after returning from an archaeological excursion in fifeshire with, amongst others, sir walter scott and miss edgeworth, he became suddenly ill, took to bed, and in less than a week was dead. [ ] all raeburn's biographers follow cunningham in stating that raeburn succeeded to st bernard's on the death of his brother in or . it was not so, however. the intimation in the _edinburgh evening courant_, of th december , reads, "died on the th december mr william raeburn, manufacturer, stockbridge"; and the title deeds of st bernard's show that the artist purchased it from the trustees of the late mrs margaret ross in october . [ ] henry raeburn & co.'s affairs were not settled until march . [ ] that his own affairs were not only settled but were again highly prosperous before this is apparent from his having purchased st bernard's in . vi. while raeburn's attitude to reality was determined and his style was formed to a great extent before he went abroad, his ideas of pictorial effect were broadened and his technical resources enriched by his sojourn in italy. some of the work executed immediately after his return, such as the portraits of lord president dundas, neil gow, the famous fiddler, and the earlier of two portraits of his friend john clerk of eldin, shows, with much unity, a greater care and precision in the handling of detail, a more searched kind of modelling and a fuller sense of tone, and thicker impasto and fuller colour than that done previously. moreover the design of the first-named picture is reminiscent in certain ways of velasquez's "pope innocent x.," which he may have seen and studied in the doria palace in rome, though too much stress need not be laid on the resemblance. about this time also, he painted a few pictures in which difficult problems of lighting are subtly and skilfully solved. in things like the charming bust "william ferguson of kilrie" (before ) and the group of sir john and lady clerk of penicuik ( ) the faces are in luminous shadow, touched by soft reflected light to give expression and animation. but for obvious reasons such effects are not favoured by the clients of portrait-painters, and that raeburn should have adopted them at all is evidence of the widening of the artistic horizon induced by his stay abroad. ===================================================================== plate vii.--miss emily de vismes--lady murray. (earl of mansfield.) an admirable example of the artist's mature style, and one of his most charming portraits of women. (see p. .) [illustration: plate vii.] ===================================================================== in pictures painted but little later than these, one finds a marked tendency to revert to the more abbreviated modelling and broader execution which have been noted as characteristic of his pre-roman style. the execution, however, is now much more confident and masterly, the draughtsmanship better, the design, while exceedingly simple, less stiff and more closely knit. using pigment of very fluid consistency and never loading the lights, though following the traditional method of thick in the lights and thin in the shadows, his handling is exceedingly direct and spontaneous, his touch fearless and broad yet thoroughly under control, his drawing summary yet selective and so expressive that, even in faces where the lighting is so broad that there is little shadow to mark the features and little modelling to explain the planes, the large structure of the head and the essentials of likeness are rendered in a very satisfying and convincing way. his colour, however, if losing the inclination to the rather dull grey-greenness which had prevailed before , remained somewhat cold and wanting in quality, and the more forcible tints introduced in the draperies were frequently lacking in modulation and were not quite in harmony with the prevailing tone. something of this deficiency in fusion is also noticeable in his flesh tints, the carnations of the complexions being somewhat detached owing to defective gradation where the pinks join the whites. as experience came, raeburn advanced from the somewhat starved quality of pigment, which in his earlier pictures was accentuated by his broad manner of handling, until in many of the pictures painted during the later nineties he attained extraordinary { } power of expression by vigorous and incisive use of square brush-work and full yet fluid and unloaded impasto. this method with its sharply struck touches and simplified planes reaches its climax perhaps in the striking portrait ( circa) of professor robison in white night-cap and red-striped dressing-gown, though the more fused manner of "mrs campbell of balliemore" ( ) and the extraordinary trenchant handling of the "john tait of harvieston and his grandson" ( - ) show modifications which are as fine and perhaps less mannered. even earlier he sometimes attained a solidity and forcefulness of effect, a fullness of colour, and a resonance of tone which gave foretaste of the accomplishment of his full maturity. curiously this is most marked in two or three full-lengths. the earliest of these was the famous "dr nathaniel spens" in the possession of the royal company of archers, by which body it was commissioned in . in it close realisation of detail and restraint in handling are very happily harmonised with breadth of ensemble and effectiveness of design. some five years later this fine achievement was followed by the even more striking, if rather less dignified, "sir john sinclair," a splendid piece of virtuosity, which unites brilliant colour and admirable tone to great dash and bravura of brush-work. during this period, and indeed throughout his career, raeburn usually placed his sitters in a strong direct light, which, being thrown upon the head and upper part of the figure (from a high side-light) illumined the face broadly, and, while emphasising the features with definite though narrow shadows, made it dominate the ensemble. very often this concentration of effect was associated with a forced and arbitrary use of chiaroscuro. in many of his pictures one finds the lower portion of the figure, including the hands, low in tone through the artist having arranged a screen or blind to throw a shadow over the parts he wished subordinated. this device appears in full-lengths as well as in busts and threequarter-lengths, and while, no doubt, helping to the desired end, is now and then a disturbing influence from the fact that it is difficult to account for the result from purely normal causes. with rembrandt, the greatest master of concentrated pictorial effect, the transitions from the fully illumined passages to the surrounding transparent darks are so gradual and so subtle that one scarcely notices that the effect has been arranged--the concentration is an integral part of the imaginative apprehension of the subject. it is otherwise with raeburn, in his earlier work at least. later he attained much the same results by less arbitrary and apparent means, by swathing the hands and arms--the high tone of which he evidently found disconcerting and conflicting with the heads--in drapery, by placing them where they tell as little as possible, and by modifications in handling. his management of accessories was also determined by desire for concentration. although, as is obvious from his increasing use of it, preferring a simple background from which the figure has atmospheric detachment, he frequently used the scenic setting which reynolds and gainsborough had made the vogue. his idea, however, was that a landscape background should be exceedingly unassertive--"nothing more than the shadow of a landscape; effect is all that is wanted"--and, always executing them himself, his are invariably subordinate to the figure. but the essential quality of his vision went best with plain backgrounds. that he did not wholly abandon the decorative convention which he heired, and often employed to excellent purpose, was due in large measure to caution. "he came," says w. e. henley, "at the break between new and old--when the old was not yet discredited, and the new was still inoffensive; and with that exquisite good sense which marks the artist, he identified himself with that which was known, and not with that which, though big with many kinds of possibilities, was as yet in perfect touch with nothing actively alive." yet, had he had the full courage of his convictions, his work would have been an even more outstanding landmark in the history of painting than it is. still to ask from raeburn what one does not get from velasquez, many of whose portraits have a conventional setting, is to be more exacting than critical, and, as has been indicated, simplicity of design and aerial relief became increasingly evident in raeburn's work, and that in spite of the protests of some of his admirers. while raeburn had been working towards a fuller and more subtle statement of likeness, modelling, and arrangement, it is possible that removal to his new studio accelerated development in that direction. the painting-room had been designed by himself for his own special purposes, and no doubt suggested new possibilities. in any case, the portraits painted after reveal a definite increase in the qualities mentioned. but before considering the characteristics of his later style, it might be well to tell what is known of his habits of work and technical procedure. cunningham's summary of these applies partly to the george street and partly to the york place period, but for practical purposes they may be regarded as one, for, while raeburn's art may be divided into periods, each was but a stage in a gradual and consistent evolution. "the motions of the artist were as regular as those of a clock. he rose at seven during summer, took breakfast about eight with his wife and children, walked into george street, and was ready for a sitter by nine; and of sitters he generally had, for many years, not fewer than three or four a day. to these he gave an hour and a half each. he seldom kept a sitter more than two hours, unless the person happened--and that was often the case--to be gifted with more than common talents. he then felt himself happy, and never failed to detain the party till the arrival of a new sitter intimated that he must be gone. for a head size he generally required four or five sittings: and he preferred painting the head and hands to any other part of the body; assigning as a reason that they required less consideration. a fold of drapery, or the natural ease which the casting of a mantle over the shoulder demanded, occasioned him more perplexing study than a head full of thought and imagination. such was the intuition with which he penetrated at once to the mind, that the first sitting rarely came to a close without his having seized strongly on the character and disposition of the individual. he never drew in his heads, or indeed any part of the body, with chalk--a system pursued successfully by lawrence--but began with the brush at once. the forehead, chin, nose, and mouth, were his first touches. he always painted standing, and never used a stick for resting his hand on; for such was his accuracy of eye, and steadiness of nerve, that he could introduce the most delicate touches, or the almost mechanical regularity of line, without aid, or other contrivance than fair off-hand dexterity. he remained in his painting-room till a little after five o'clock, when he walked home, and dined at six.... from one who knew him in his youthful days, and sat to him when he rose in fame, i have this description of his way of going to work. "he spoke a few words to me in his usual brief and kindly way--evidently to put me into an agreeable mood; and then having placed me in a chair on a platform at the end of his painting-room, in the posture required, set up his easel beside me with the canvas ready to receive the colour. when he saw all was right, he took his palette and his brush, retreated back step by step, with his face towards me, till he was nigh the other end of the room; he stood and studied for a minute more, then came up to the canvas, and, without looking at me, wrought upon it with colour for some time. having done this, he retreated in the same manner, studied my looks at that distance for about another minute, then came hastily up to the canvas and painted for a few minutes more." these details may be supplemented by the list of colours used by him, which alexander fraser, r.s.a., gave in _the portfolio_. "his palette was a simple one; his colours were vermilion, raw sienna (but sometimes yellow ochre instead), prussian blue, burnt sienna, ivory black, crimson lake, white, of course, and the medium he used was 'gumption,' a composition of sugar of lead, mastic varnish, and linseed oil. the colours were ground by a servant in his own house and put into small pots ready for use." when one adds that his studio had a very high side-light, and that he painted on half-primed canvas with a definitely marked twill, all that is known of his practice has been noted. ===================================================================== plate viii.--mrs scott moncrieff. (national gallery of scotland.) none of raeburn's portraits of ladies is quite so famous as this. although in indifferent condition owing to bitumen having been used, it is singularly charming in colour, design, and sentiment, and is one of the chief treasures of the gallery, in which it has hung since , when mr r. scott moncrieff, welwood of pitliver, bequeathed it to the royal scottish academy. (see page .) [illustration: plate viii.] ===================================================================== as already suggested, raeburn's style was tending towards greater completeness of expression and more naturalness of arrangement before he removed to york place in , but, while his normal advance was in that direction, it was so gradual that it is only by looking at a number of pictures painted, say, five or ten years later, and comparing them with their { } predecessors that one notices that the advance was definite and not casual. occasionally, as in the "professor robison," there is a very emphatic restatement of a somewhat earlier method; but, as the "lord braxfield" of about is a premonition of a much later manner, this exceptional treatment seems to have been inspired by the character of the sitter having suggested its special suitability. but comparing the splendid group, "reginald macdonald of clanranald and his two younger brothers" (about ), or the "mrs cruikshank of langley park" (about ), with typical examples painted between and , one finds the later pictures marked not only by increased power of drawing and more masterly brush-work but by a finer rendering of form, by greater roundness of modelling, and by a more expressive use of colour and chiaroscuro. considerable ingenuity has been expended in trying to prove that raeburn's subsequent development was due in some way or other to the influence of hoppner and lawrence. consideration of his situation and of his work itself, however, scarcely bears this out. his ignorance of what was being done by london artists, and of how his own pictures compared with theirs, is very clearly evident from the following letter written to wilkie:-- edinburgh, _th september_ . mr dear sir,--i let you to wit that i am still here, and long much to hear from you, both as to how you are and what you are doing. i would not wish to impose any hardship upon you, but it would give me great pleasure if you would take the trouble to write me at least once a year, if not oftener, and give me a little information of what is going on among the artists, for i do assure you i have as little communication with any of them, and know almost as little about them, as if i were living at the cape of good hope. i send up generally a picture or two to the exhibition, which serve merely as an advertisement that i am still in the land of the living, but in other respects it does me no good, for i get no notice from any one, nor have i the least conception how they look beside others. i know not in what london papers any critiques of that kind are made, and our edinburgh ones (at least those that i see) take no notice of these matters. at any rate i would prefer a candid observation or two from an artist like you, conveying not only your own opinion but perhaps that of others, before any of them. are the portrait-painters as well employed as ever? sir thomas lawrence, they tell me, has refused to commence any more pictures till he gets done with those that are on hand, and that he has raised his prices to some enormous sum. is that true, and will you do me the favour to tell me what his prices really are, and what sir w. beechy, mr philips, and mr owen have for their pictures? it will be a particular favour if you will take the trouble to ascertain these for me precisely, for i am raising my prices too, and it would be a guide to me--not that i intend to raise mine so high as your famous london artists. moreover he is said to have visited london only three times: in , when he spent several weeks while on his way to italy; in , when he contemplated settling there; and in , after he was elected an academician. it is of course only with the later visits that we have to do in this connection. by that time hoppner was dead, and lawrence's claim to be painter par excellence to the fashionable world was undisputed. no doubt the scottish painter would be attracted by the technical accomplishment of lawrence's work; but he was between fifty and sixty years of age and little likely to be influenced by an art, which, for all its brilliance, was meretricious in many respects. yet it is possible that the adulation lavished by society upon his contemporary's style may have induced him to consider if something of the elegance for which it was esteemed so highly could not be added with advantage to his own. on the other hand, scottish society was gradually undergoing evolution, and, while a greater infusion of fashion amongst its members would in itself tend to stimulate the favourite painter of the day in the same direction, increase in wealth would bring a greater number of younger sitters to his studio. probably a combination of these represents the influences which affected raeburn. in any case, his later portraits, especially of women, possess qualities of charm and beauty which, while never merely pretty or meretricious, connect them in some measure with the more modish and less sincere and virile work of lawrence. but otherwise--and, unlike his southern contemporaries, he never sacrificed character to elegance or subordinated individuality to type--the evolution of his style continued on purely personal lines. the pictures painted between and his death, while still at the height of his powers, are essentially one with those of the preceding decade. there is in them a more delicate sense of beauty than before, and his portraits of ladies are marked by a quickened perception of feminine grace and charm; but these are results of the natural development of his nature and of his personal powers of expression rather than of any radical alteration in his standpoint. as regards the work of the last fifteen years and more, it is less increased grasp of character, for that had always been a leading trait, than growth in the expressive power and completeness of his technique that is the dominating factor. and here the prevailing qualities are but the issue of previous experience. his modelling ceases to be marked by the rough-hewn and over simplified planes which had distinguished his incisive square-touch at its strongest and becomes fused and suave. as sir walter armstrong put it, "he began with the facets and ended with the completest modelling ever reached by any english painter." now his colour not only loses the inclination to slatiness and monotony, which were evident before , and sometimes even later, but, the half-tones being more delicately graded, the transitions, though still lacking the subtleties of the real colourist, are blended and the general tone enriched and harmonised. and his use of chiaroscuro becomes infinitely more delicate both in its play upon the face and in the broad disposition, which now attains finer and more convincing concentration in virtue of more skillful subordination through handling, as well as through more pictorial management of his old arrangement of lighting. moreover the scenic setting, if retained in many full-lengths, is to a great extent abandoned for a simple background lighted from the same source as the sitter, and against which face and figure come in truer atmospheric envelope and relief. with these alterations, which were not perhaps invariably all gain, his later work now and then lacking the delightfully clear and incisive brushing of the preceding period, were also associated a fuller and fatter body of paint which, while never loaded, gives richness of effect, and a sonorousness of tone which his earlier pictures rarely possess. a sympathetic and human perception of character was the basis of his relationship to his sitters, each of whom is individualised in a rarely convincing way, and to me at least the { } view of life expressed in his later pictures seems more genial and comprehending than that which dominates his earlier work. comparatively this is perhaps especially evident in his rendering of pretty women. "mrs scott moncrieff," "miss de vismes," "miss janet suttie," and "mrs irvine boswell," to name no more, are all beauties; but each differs from the others, and is marked by personal traits to an extent unusual in his earlier practice. still his grasp of character is more obviously seen in his portraitures of older women and of men, and his masterpieces are to be found amongst his pictures of this kind rather than amongst his "beauty" pieces, seductive though the best of these are. when one thinks of his finest and most personal achievements, one recalls such things as "lord newton," "sir william forbes," and "james wardrop of torbanehill," or "mrs cruikshank," and "mrs james campbell." born a painter of character, raeburn was at his best where character, intellect, and shrewdness were most marked. yet axiomatic though it may sound, this implies great gifts. to seize the obvious points of likeness, and make a portrait more living than life itself is comparatively easy; but to grasp the essential elements of likeness and character, and, while vitalising these pictorially and decoratively, to preserve the normal tone of life is difficult indeed. of this, the highest triumph of the portrait-painter's art as such, raeburn was a master. printed in great britain at the press of the publishers. in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. carlo dolci. george hay. luini. james mason. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. _others in preparation._ [illustration: cover art] masterpieces in colour edited by -- t. leman hare velazquez ===================================================================== plate i.--the infante don fernando of austria (frontispiece) this picture was painted for the torre de la parada, and shows king philip's younger brother in hunting costume. velazquez seems to have repainted a part of the canvas which is to be seen in the prado, madrid. [illustration: plate i.] ===================================================================== velazquez by s. l. bensusan illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page art] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents introduction i. the method and influence of velazquez ii. the painter's early days iii. velazquez in madrid iv. a retrospect list of illustrations plate i. the infante don fernando of austria . . . . . . . frontispiece in the prado, madrid ii. las meniñas in the prado, madrid iii. the infante philip prosper in the imperial gallery, vienna iv. the infante don balthasar carlos in the prado, madrid v. antonio the englishman in the prado, madrid vi. admiral adriano pulido pareja in the national gallery, london vii. donna mariana of austria in the prado, madrid viii. the princess maria theresa of austria in the prado, madrid introduction [illustration: velazquez] it is a curious truth that spain in these days of her decline exercises almost as much control over the mind of the world as she exercised over its territories in the days of her great empire. cervantes in literature and velazquez in art seem destined to secure for their country a measure of immortality that throws into the background the memory of such people as carlos quinto, philip ii., and those other lesser lights who made the name of spain respected or detested throughout europe and south america. if science and art are destined, as some altruists hope, to unite the world in a bond that defies the arbitrary boundaries made by rulers, then the name of diego de silva velazquez will stand high in the list of those whom the world delights to honour, for people who are opposed diametrically on all questions of politics and faith find ground upon which they may meet in security and amity when they stand before the pictures of the great spanish master. and cervantes, who used words instead of colours to express the life he saw around him, would redeem spain from insignificance if she had never owned a colony, and had never sought to step beyond her own borders to develop the arts of peace or follow the paths of war. perhaps it would be hard to find more diverse opinions than those that are heard in the studio. artists see life through the medium of many temperaments, they are notoriously intemperate in their enthusiasms. there are schools of painting to suit every conviction, and the work that one man would give his all to possess would not find hanging space upon the wall controlled by another. but before velazquez even artists forget their controversies; he stands, like bach and beethoven in the world of music, respected even by those who do not understand. no controversy rages round him; he has marched unchallenged to the highest place in men's regard. ===================================================================== plate ii.--las meniÑas this picture was painted about the year , and, now in the prado, is considered one of the greatest works of the master. it presents the infanta margarita attended by her maids of honour, while velazquez himself is shown painting the portraits of philip iv. and his second wife mariana of austria, who are seen reflected in the mirror. [illustration: plate ii.] ===================================================================== it is interesting to note that a reputation unrivalled in the world of pictures is founded upon a comparatively small number of works. one of his latest critics reduces the pictures of velazquez now in existence to eighty-nine, while acknowledging that some have disappeared from the royal palaces of spain and cannot be traced. this critic, señor don aureliano de beruete--a connoisseur, a collector, and a worker in the best interests of art--is perhaps a little too severe. he will not admit to his catalogue a portrait like that of admiral adriano pulido pareja, which, despite some inferior workmanship, can show considerable claims to be regarded as genuine; but even if all the disputed ones were admitted, and such a list as the late r. a. m. stevenson published were accepted without that far-seeing critic's own reserve, we should not have as many pictures to represent the forty years of the artist's life as sir joshua reynolds was known to paint in a single year. velazquez has left very few drawings, and these are of small importance; there are but two acknowledged engravings; and to limit still further our sources of knowledge, the artist's correspondence seems to have been lost; while the memoirs which velazquez was said to have drawn up when philip iv. sent the pictures to the escorial are now admitted by the best authorities to be the work of another man. i the method and influence of velazquez in dealing with the life and work of the spanish master, even in the modest fashion of this little monograph, one must bear in mind the fact that velazquez, in the eyes of his contemporaries, was not only an artist--he was a court painter; and pictures other than portraits were of comparatively little importance to philip iv. and his circle. art borrowed most of her importance in sixteenth and seventeenth century spain from the fact that she was the handmaid of holy mother church. velazquez was a court official who chanced to be a clever portrait-painter, and his promotion tended ever to take him further away from his art. with the increase of state duties the claims upon his time grew more and more difficult to meet, and, when he rose in the closing years of his life to be grand marshal of the palace, entrusted with the ordering of state functions and missions to distinguished foreigners, his art became entirely a secondary consideration. the studio was no more than a place of refuge for the artist in the hours when he might forget that he was an official. if velazquez had not been compelled to sacrifice the best part of forty years' activity to the ridiculous formalities of court life, the world might have been richer to-day by scores of pictures worthy to rank by the side of "las meniñas" and the portrait of pope innocent x. the painter might have found outside court circles far more inspiring sitters than those whom he was compelled to paint, for it takes all that even a velazquez can give to a portrait to make a philip iv., a mariana of austria, or even an isabella of bourbon, reveal their dominant characteristics without caricature; indeed one feels that the interest belongs to the picture and not to the sitter. the success is one of tone, of harmony and of line, of sure handling directed by an inward vision. because of gifts lying beyond praise, the painter has preserved seventeenth-century spain for us as far as court circles represent it; but among the many charges laid to the account of philip iv. must be added that of limiting the range and crippling the capacity of an artist who cannot be placed second to any man. when we come to analyse his work we find that its qualities are not of a sensational kind. velazquez makes no appeal through the medium of brilliant pigment; his great contemporary rubens used colour in far more striking fashion. velazquez loved grey and silvery tints, and in the years of his maturity understood relative values perfectly. he knew, too, exactly how far he could go, and never made experiments in search of qualities that were not his. although he had a certain quality of delicate imagination, he was a realist, and could not paint without a model; he never acquired a mannerism, or applied to one sitter the treatment that some artists seem to keep for types. every figure he set upon canvas has its own individuality, and, while velazquez, like other artists, had manners and methods that belong to fixed periods of his life, it is not easy to set down in cold print an analysis of the causes that make up his effects. he had no tricks; everything that he did was clear, simple, and withal inimitable. hundreds of men have copied his pictures; none has been able to copy his method. with his death his influence upon art ceased. his genius lay buried in the grave with him, and did not suffer complete resurrection until the nineteenth century was turning towards its successor, though raphael mengs had done all he could to make his merits known a hundred years before. even to-day, we may be said to be in the first stage of our enjoyment of the master's work. there are at least fifty good books upon the subject of velazquez' life and art, written in three or four languages, and all published in the last half century; there must be many more to come, for every generation sees genius in the light of its own time. so much for literature. in art the painter has influenced very many moderns. manet, courbet, corot, millet, whistler, are among the men whose work shines in the light of the prado, and the list might be prolonged indefinitely, for all earnest art workers go to velazquez, confident that whatever their aims and ideals, he will confirm and strengthen what is best in them. they know, too, that they may return again and again, and that the rich stores of guidance and encouragement in the pursuit of ideals are as inexhaustible as the barrel of meal that did not waste, and the cruse of oil that did not fail, in the house of the widow of zarephath. ii the painter's early days in the years when velazquez first saw the light, the power of spain, despite the shock it had received from british seamen, was the dominating factor in european politics. philip ii. had come to the end of a reign of more than forty years; philip iii. had just reached the throne. the painter was not born in the atmosphere of court life, but in the very catholic city of seville, then as now a fatal place for those who cannot withstand the manifold temptations to lead a lazy life. happily for the boy his parents had not inherited the seville traditions; his father came from oporto, which, being a seaport town, has no lack of mental and physical activity. the spirit of painting settled at a very early age upon young diego de silva velazquez--the second name by which he is universally known belonged to his mother's family--almost before he was in his teens he was working in the studio of francisco de herrera, architect and painter. the temperaments of master and pupil could not fuse; there was sufficient trouble to lead don juan rodriguez to transfer his son's services to francesco pacheco, painter, poet, professor, and withal a man of action and experience. he knew much about contemporary art, encouraged a hopeful outlook upon life, and enjoyed the respect of all men. moreover his studio was the meeting-place for many of the distinguished folk of the city. in the very early years of their association pacheco understood that his young pupil was not like other lads, that he possessed an individuality that could not be repressed or directed into the usual channels, and instead of resenting this new element, he sought to direct it wisely and kindly, thereby laying velazquez under a debt of gratitude that the painter never repudiated. indeed there were stronger ties in the making, for in the spring of , when the young artist was on the threshold of his wonderful career, pacheco gave him his daughter juana for wife, "encouraged," he says, "by his virtues, his fine qualities, and the hopes which his happy nature and great talent raised in me." the kind old painter is not remembered to-day by his pictures, or even by his "book of portraits of illustrious personages," and other quaintly titled works from his pen. he lives because he helped to make velazquez a great painter, and recorded his impression of his son-in-law's earliest works, the various "bodegones," of which several may be seen in london to-day. others are in berlin and st. petersburg. from these pictures of the secular life velazquez passed to religious subjects--"christ in the house of martha" (national gallery) and the "adoration of the magi" (prado) belong to these early years. ===================================================================== plate iii.--the infante philip prosper this picture hangs in the imperial gallery of vienna. it is the work of the painter's last period, and shows us the little son of philip iv. by his second wife. the lad died some two years after the picture was painted; it has been restored, not too cleverly. [illustration: plate iii.] ===================================================================== in , velazquez, already the father of two children, made his first journey to madrid, and was allowed to visit the royal palaces. he did not stay long in castile, and his return to the capital was brought about by the divinity that shapes men's ends. philip iii. was dead; his son philip iv. had selected as friend and adviser the count olivarez, son of the governor of the alcazar in seville. olivarez had many friends in the city that wears the "modo" for its badge, in recognition of unswerving loyalty to alfonso the learned. doubtless he had heard about the work of the young painter and had seen some examples of it, and he wished to strengthen himself in the capital by bringing accomplished men from his own city to official posts in madrid. so he sent for velazquez, who journeyed a second time to the north, now in the company of pacheco, and on arrival there painted a lost portrait of a gentleman usher, fonseca by name. this picture did for velazquez what the portrait of admiral keppel did for reynolds, and before the excitement died away, the young king philip iv. had deigned to promise a sitting to the clever sevillian. the success of the first picture of philip iv. (apparently the early one now in the prado) was so complete that the king ordered all existing portraits of himself to be removed from the palace, and gave the painter an order of admission to his service with a salary of about two pounds five shillings a month! under the skilled hands of the artist we are permitted to see the tall, gloomy lad grow up a dull, reserved man, and we read in his face a part at least of the causes of spain's ultimate downfall. iii velazquez in madrid of the painter's work at court in those early days we hear a little from pacheco, but the story of the times is more or less obscure. a clever portrait-painter was not a very interesting person in the eyes of a spanish grandee. he was classed with the court buffoons and dwarfs who existed merely to amuse. indeed, portraiture was not above suspicion in the eyes of some fanatics, who held that art existed to serve the church, and should not seek secular employment. there are documents extant showing that velazquez received eight pounds for three portraits, of which one is lost and the other two (philip and the count of olivarez) are in spain. in the painter received a present of three hundred ducats, which was followed by a pension of the same value and a gift of free lodging, and, in , by the appointment to the post of gentleman usher. there is no doubt but that the king was attached to his young court painter in a certain undemonstrative fashion. pacheco tells us that philip used to visit the artist's studio constantly, reaching it by way of the secret passages of which the palace was full. the year marks an event of the first importance in the life of velazquez, for peter paul rubens came on a diplomatic mission to madrid, charged by his government to pave the way to the conclusion of peace between england and spain. rubens was then about fifty years old. he stayed nine months in the spanish capital, and, despite his diplomatic duties and the gout, found time to paint an extraordinary number of pictures, including five of philip. he also copied the king's titians. velazquez was entrusted by philip with the work of entertaining rubens, and showing him the art treasures of spain, and the friendship that grew up rapidly between the two artists was creditable to both, because rubens, then at the zenith of his fame, recognised the amazing gifts of the young spaniard, and velazquez never allowed the brilliancy of the ambassador-artist to tempt him from the paths that he had chosen to follow. there are some who think that rubens exerted a great influence upon his young friend's art, but we cannot pretend to trace it. rubens may have widened his mind; he could not influence his hand or eye. shortly after rubens left madrid, velazquez completed his picture "los borrachos," now in the prado, and one of the acknowledged masterpieces of his first style, though the tone is dark, and some of the figures do not blend with their surroundings. in the late summer of the same year velazquez left spain for italy, in the company of don ambrosio spinola, who was going to take command of the spanish forces. soldier and artist parted at milan, and the latter went to venice, where he stayed with the spanish ambassador and copied some of tintoretto's pictures. thence he went by way of ferrara to rome, the honoured guest of a relation of the count of olivarez, and he busied himself copying old pictures and painting new ones. like many of the artists who go for the first time to italy, he was influenced in some degree by guido, who was then living. he painted his own portrait, which is to be seen in the capitoline museum, and went from rome to naples, returning to madrid in the early part of . ===================================================================== plate iv.--the infante don balthasar carlos this is one of the prado pictures of king philip's eldest son by his first wife, the unfortunate little prince who died while he was yet a boy. when this picture was painted don balthasar carlos was six years old. [illustration: plate iv.] ===================================================================== it might be mentioned in this place that the painter's eldest daughter was growing up, and that he married her three years later to one of his pupils, the artist j. b. del mazo. this clever artist, who was treated by his master velazquez as velazquez had been treated by his master pacheco, is held by critics to be responsible for many pictures generally ascribed to his father-in-law. there is a picture in the wallace collection known as the "lady with the fan," which is thought by no less a critic than señor beruete to represent the young francesca velazquez, who became the señora del mazo when she was only fifteen years old. shortly after his return to madrid, velazquez came under the influence of el greco, who had died in , and left some wonderful pictures that may be seen to-day in toledo. this fact is important, not that the influence resulted in imitation, but because it was distinctly inspiring, and greco is a painter who is coming slowly before the public. it cannot be doubted that his influence on artists through velazquez has been very deep and abiding, particularly in portraiture. in the years following the return from italy, velazquez painted some of the pictures of the little prince don balthasar carlos, the king's son, who was born in , and died in , the year of his betrothal to mariana of austria. there are many pictures of this interesting lad who, had he lived, might have done so much to save his country. the earliest was painted as soon as velazquez returned from italy, and is at present in boston. the next in date would seem to be the one in the wallace collection, and following this comes the well-known picture of don balthasar in hunting dress, now in the prado, the one with the small greyhound seen on the right, just coming into the canvas. then we have the famous picture of the young prince on his spirited andalusian pony, which is perhaps the most popular of all; and succeeding that in the order of the painting comes the portrait that, in the writer's opinion, is the best of the series. it hangs in the imperial museum in vienna, and was painted when the prince was about eleven years old. doubtless there are other portraits of the ill-fated boy, whose features seem to suggest that he had inherited from his mother some of the qualities that his father lacked, and that had he been spared to succeed his father in , he would have handled affairs with vigour and intelligence. in philip's daughter maria teresa was born, and the history of the artist's life in madrid becomes uneventful or lost. probably on account of the increasing unrest abroad and the decline of the spanish fortunes, velazquez' earliest patron, the count of olivarez, was disgraced in , the year in which condé helped to break the power of spain at rocroi. although the condition of the spanish empire was very unfavourable, and philip iv. must have known long hours of anxiety and unrest, there is no reason to believe that he withdrew his company or his favour from the best beloved of his court painters. spinola had taken breda from justin of nassau, and the surrender was promptly immortalised by velazquez in the picture "las lanzas," which draws so many pilgrims to madrid to-day. it was painted for the palace of buen retiro, and curiously enough--since it records one of the few successes of spain in the low countries--the subject passed out of men's memory, and for many years nobody knew why the artist had painted it, or what it was all about. some time between the painting of this picture and the fall of olivarez, murillo came to madrid and became a pupil of velazquez, who had just received a grant of five hundred ducats to be paid annually by order of the king. in velazquez accompanied philip on a journey through aragon, and two or three years later he was appointed inspector of buildings, a post involving much tedious work, and helping to keep the painter from his studio. he seems to have bestowed a certain amount of labour on portraits painted by other men, in order to bring them into harmony with the collection that philip was making. it is difficult to deal with this matter within limited space because the details are distinctly controversial, but it is as well to remember that some of the portraits attributed to velazquez in the prado gallery are of people who were dead before velazquez was painting, so they could not have sat for him; and in the days of philip iv. it was considered no disgrace for a man to repaint another artist's canvases. moreover, a painter to the court of spain was not supposed to carry an uneasy conscience about with him. it was his duty to obey orders and to accept from his superiors as much guidance and direction as they were gracious enough to give him. in the king granted velazquez permission to return to italy in order to find pictures for a royal academy of fine art to be established in madrid. by this time philip was a widower, though he was on the point of marrying his niece, mariana of austria. she had been affianced to the infante don balthasar carlos, but he had been dead for three years, and the spanish throne was without an heir. velazquez visited genoa, venice, milan, and padua, and brought back pictures by veronese and tintoretto. rome and naples were revisited, and the famous portrait of pope innocent x., of which one copy is in st. petersburg, and the other in the doria palace in rome, was painted. the former is a bust and a study; the latter is a three-quarter length, and is painted with a wonderful blend of red and white. it was copied by sir joshua reynolds, who declared that it was the finest work he had seen in rome. what would he have thought of the later masterpieces by the same hand? the portrait was copied by other men too, and there is no doubt that the copies were in some cases sold for originals. by the time velazquez returned to madrid in , at the urgent request of his royal master, the court of spain was _en fête_. philip's wife, to whom he had been married two years, was only seventeen, and required amusement. functions of every sort, excursions, entertainments on a most sumptuous scale, were the order of the day, and because velazquez was now at the summit of his achievement, because he could paint pictures that will endure as long as men care for art, it is difficult indeed to forgive philip iv. for making him marshal of the palace. to be sure the post was well paid, the salary being about £ a year with lodging in the treasure house, but the duties were endless. the king's action was on a par with the custom that prevails in our own foreign office, of sending a man who understands china thoroughly to serve the country in peru, and one who has mastered russian politics to portugal. ===================================================================== plate v.--antonio the englishman this was one of the dwarfs in the service of the king. his is one of the last portraits painted by velazquez. the figure is life size, and hangs in the prado at madrid. [illustration: plate v.] ===================================================================== happily velazquez, for all that he was regarded in madrid as a rather lazy man, found time when he was marshal of the palace to paint the best of all his portraits. he was honoured by queen mariana of austria, the king's second wife, who sat for him on several occasions, and the results may be seen in paris, vienna, new york, and madrid. some of the portraits, painted without a suspicion of flattery, show the absurd head-dress, the false hair, and the extraordinary crinoline that were worn at the time, in all their ugliness, and force us to see how great was the distance lying between the royal house and any sense of beauty. velazquez was not perhaps very happy with this work, because nature had endowed philip's wife with a face that was almost as dull and unresponsive to emotion as that of her lord and master; but after a time children were born, and the court painter had a more sympathetic task. he has left portraits that are quite charming of the infanta margarita and the infante philip prosper; he painted both of the children while they were very young. in point of fact, neither lived to grow up; doubtless they would have been uninteresting enough if they had been spared. the infanta margarita is to be seen in vienna, in paris, and in madrid, and she of course is the centre of the famous picture, "las meniñas." prince prosper was painted by velazquez, when no more than two years old. there were two other children, prince ferdinand and prince carlos ii., but the former was no more than a year old when velazquez died, and carlos was unborn. of the four children born to philip iv. by his second wife, three died young. in the last years of his life, when the pressure of court duties and the ill-will of highly placed fools must have been hard to bear, velazquez found time to paint some of his greatest masterpieces. "the maids of honour" ("las meniñas"), "the spinners" ("las hilanderas"), "Æsop," "menippus," "the coronation of the virgin," and the "venus with the mirror," are all the ripe fruit of the painter's last decade. his art had matured; adversity had thrown him back upon his work; it was the solace of the hours that were not claimed by absurd official duties. who shall say that the scant consideration he received from parasites and courtiers was an unmixed evil? the men who despised the painter because philip favoured him may have helped to mould his character, may have enabled him to detach himself completely from his own official character when he could lay aside the garb of office and turn to his beloved canvases once again. the portraits of philip in his last years, those of his second wife and her children, those of the dwarfs too, belong to the years between and . it was a custom of the unhealthy and depressing spanish court in which the queen lived in an armour of corsets and crinoline, and might not be touched by any of her faithful subjects upon pain of death--the court in which the king was compelled to preside at the _autos da fé_--to keep dwarfs as playthings. perhaps because they were ugly and deformed they came quite naturally into the court environment. the earliest portrait of don balthasar carlos shows him in company with a dwarf, and there were about the court many other unfortunate creatures whom velazquez painted between and . there is more than a suspicion in the minds of many of his biographers that the half-concealed contempt with which velazquez was regarded in court circles left him small choice of company; that he was rated with dwarfs and outcasts because he worked with his hands; and of course no hidalgo, who was a perfect master of the art of time-wasting, could take seriously any low-blooded creature who earned his right to live by working. if velazquez had been on the same footing as rubens--had he enjoyed the same position that goya, with no greater official appointment, was to hold a little more than a century after his death--we may presume that the dwarfs would not have been painted, and that velazquez' art would have been given to the service of the blue-blooded gentlemen who were making as big a muddle of spanish interests as their country's worst enemies could desire. one hesitates to say that they would have been less interesting sitters, because we know that nobody, however dull and stupid in appearance, could fail to become interesting at the hands of the painter. it is fair to remember, too, in defence of the spanish attitude, that the years were given not to the arts of peace but to those of war; that leisure was scanty, intrigue unceasing, and the austerity of life was made greater by the strong and merciless grip of the church. formality and superstition marched hand in hand in a court whose ruler, if we may judge by his portraits, had forgotten how to smile. then again, the atmosphere of the madrid court, for all its dulness and secrecy and unhealthy ways, was not as it became under charles iii., when godoy played the part of count olivarez, and the countess benavente, the duchess of alba, and other women as frail as they were beautiful, did not hesitate to indulge in open intrigue with the king's painter. turn to the canvases of velazquez and you will not find a woman who was fascinating enough to have been worth the trouble and danger of an intrigue. the wives of philip iv. could not but have been virtuous, and would have had but small sympathy with pretty women. to be sure philip iv. had many mistresses, but he did not ask his court painter to record their beauty. before velazquez returned to madrid from his second visit to italy, he seems to have painted the portrait of the dwarf known as "el primo," now in the prado. this man, known in private life as don louis de hacedo, accompanied philip on a tour, and he seems to have been a studious person, because the artist has depicted him with book, pen, and paper, and given him a refined expression. the others have little to redeem their ugliness and deformity. the child of vallecas seems to be the dwarf who figures with don balthasar carlos in the first picture that velazquez painted of the unfortunate young prince, the one that is now in america. he has grown a little older and a little more ugly in the canvas that is devoted entirely to his portrait; he does not wear good clothes, but a coarse green coat with stockings to match. the idiot of coria is also dressed in green, though his garments are a little richer, but don antonio seems to have been a person of some importance. he is pictured in the prado standing beside a beautiful mastiff almost as big as himself, and he wears a ruddy brown dress worked with gold. he carries a large plumed hat in his hand. sebastian de morra, who sits facing the audience, has one of the most wonderful heads ever set on canvas by the artist. this dwarf too is dressed in the green costume that would seem to have been worn by the dwarfs attached to the court of spain. in addition to the little company of dwarfs there were buffoons at the court, and of these velazquez painted pablillos, who is known as "the comedian," and don juan of austria, whose portrait is a triumph of harmony in colour, the pink of mantle and stockings contrasting admirably with black doublet and cape. ===================================================================== plate vi.--admiral adriano pulido pareja this picture may be seen in the national gallery. it is signed and dated , and was purchased from the longford castle collection in . señor beruete holds a strong opinion that it was not painted by velazquez. [illustration: plate vi.] ===================================================================== in the last years the painter seems to have gone a little further down in the social scale in search of his sitters, for the "Æsop" is a beggar, and "menippus" is no better. to all these sufferers and outcasts velazquez responded with a sympathy that is not less clearly revealed than the technique that gives so much enduring delight to artists the world over. in the final decade of the painter's life philip seems to have given him no more than two sittings. perhaps the artist's "mars" and his "venus with the mirror" gave offence in madrid, where the nude was only accepted if it was painted by some artist who had won his fame outside the iberian peninsula. the whole trend of life in the court of mariana of austria was opposed to the presentation of the nude in art. the two late pictures of philip, of which the one is in the prado and the second in our national gallery, are quite the most finished of all his studies of his royal master. the face, free from even a suggestion of human interest or enthusiasm, has no emotion whatsoever save disillusionment and sadness. the spectator gets a suggestion that life has resolved itself into a long series of formal duties and formal enjoyments, and that neither suffices to make it worth living. duty to the world at large and to the vast empire slipping from his grasp seems to be all that holds philip; and when we consider that he had lost his first wife and her promising son, and of his children by his second wife one or two were dead already; that dissipation and anxiety had sapped his energies, and superstition had crabbed his intelligence; it is not strange that the face should be as it is. in philip conferred upon velazquez the knighthood of santiago, and money was deposited on his behalf by a friend who understood the painter's financial straits to pay for the inquiries relating to his genealogy. in spite of the king's wishes, the council appointed to inquire into the antecedents of the painter refused to admit him, though velazquez supplied many proofs that his blood was pure and his origin honourable. at last, philip applied to the pope alexander vii. for a dispensation in the artist's favour, realising that the vatican was a court whose jurisdiction was unlimited in its scope. the pope was complaisant: he could hardly be otherwise to philip iv.; he sent a brief that enabled velazquez, after long delays, to obtain the much coveted order. the story that philip bestowed it upon velazquez as a reward for the picture "las meniñas" is one of the pretty fables that must be disregarded, and it seems likely that philip only exerted himself on his painter's behalf because he wished him to superintend the arrangements for the festivities that were to celebrate the marriage of the infanta maria teresa with louis xiv. if we may read character in physiognomy, there is little risk that philip would have behaved generously without cause. velazquez left madrid for irun, on the franco-spanish frontier, in april . the work was harassing; he was not a _persona grata_ with his colleagues, and none sought to lighten his burdens. he returned to the capital at the end of june, when madrid is not fit to live in, and was taken ill a month later. hard and unremitting labour, the folly and bitter opposition of men who were not worthy to clean his palette, the inconveniences and delays of travel in spain, and the tender mercies of several spanish doctors of repute, seem to have combined, with a bad attack of fever, to bring a troubled life to its closing scene. the end came on the th of august , when, to quote señor beruete, "he delivered up his soul to god, who had created him to be the admiration of the world." the body was decorated with the ornaments of the knights of santiago and buried in the parish church of st. john the baptist. within a week his devoted wife, juana de pacheco velazquez, followed him to a rest that no ceremonial of the spanish court could disturb. strange as it may seem to those who know nothing of spain, the petty worries and vexations to which velazquez had been subjected did not cease with his death. it was decided by the authorities that the thousand ducats paid to the dead painter for superintending the works of the alcazar must be returned, and in order that the claim might be met, the contents of the artist's studio and some of his furniture would seem to have been seized. king philip recorded his gracious distress at this decision, but did nothing to overrule it. litigation followed, and after some years the claim to the thousand ducats was withdrawn by the authorities, the affairs of the master were wound up for all time, and the stigma of debt was removed from the memory of a man who never received a tithe of his deserts. philip iv. took juan del mazo, the painter's son-in-law, to be court painter in velazquez' place, and the appointment is worth noting, because it is to this worthy man's wonderful facility for echoing his father-in-law's style that we owe the presence of so many imitations in the world's public galleries and private collections. some of these clever copies of lost pictures have remained unchallenged until recent years, and whether this be a tribute to the capacity of del mazo or a reflection upon the capacity of critics, is a question lying beyond the scope of this little book. but it is not difficult to understand that the renown of velazquez was on the increase for a few years after his death, and that mazo, who was clever and poorly paid, and had a sincere respect for his father-in-law, should have remembered that there is no greater flattery than imitation. iv a retrospect it is in no spirit of extravagance that one ventures to say that the life of velazquez was a long and tragic struggle against surroundings detrimental to the full and natural expression of his genius, nor is it surprising that the people who had followed his career with indifference saw very little matter for comment when he died. there were a few useless and pompous ceremonies associated with his obsequies, and spain went on with the daily task, the common round, unconscious of her loss. so many material possessions were passing from hands too weak to hold or to administer them that the death of an artist could not be noticed. ===================================================================== plate vii.--donna mariana of austria this picture was brought from the escorial to the prado in . the lady was the second wife of philip iv., and would have been the wife of don balthasar carlos had he lived. [illustration: plate vii.] ===================================================================== fair-minded critics may hesitate to say with spain's enemies that civilisation ends with the pyrenees, but it is certain that the spanish attitude towards life has differed from that of other countries to an extent that has left indelible impressions upon art and literature. velazquez carried a little of the andalusian sun to castile, but the heavy cloud that settled upon the spanish court speedily obscured it. life for the painter was an affair of constant struggle against financial and social difficulties, of endless work for unresponsive masters; and the labour was not lightened by any of the associations that helped the great masters of the italian school who had some share of light and honour. the funereal pomp of the spanish court; the strange climatic conditions of madrid, where you may pass in a moment from a blaze of sun that scorches to a blast of icy wind that strikes a fatal blow at the lungs; the hard and unattractive landscape; the proud, cruel, and impassive people who cannot even feign an interest in such affairs as art or letters, all served to leave their impression upon the painter's work. we cannot imagine that any artist who worked in madrid in the seventeenth century could become a colourist after the manner of the venetians; he would not see the colour unless he went to catalonia or andalusia and entered into their stirring national life. then again spain was influenced by the moors, and eastern art is more concerned with harmony than colouring, more concerned to blend neutral tints than present rich tones. the writer has seen many pictures in the studios of modern madrid that are inspired directly by the italians, for nowadays spanish artists flock to italy, where they learn to imitate the venetian colour schemes, and to become third-rate echoes of old masters. there are a few men who paint interesting pictures in spain to-day--pradilla and carbonero are among the best; but spain does not hold a great artist. the last of all died in exile in bordeaux in the early days of the last century, and left his gifts to the french school of manet. velazquez could never have become a flamboyant colourist. a few of the pictures in the prado have some reds and pinks; for example, "las hilanderas," in which there is a red curtain, and the picture of philip on horseback, in which the king wears a pink scarf. there are high colours in "the coronation of the virgin" and a few others, but as a rule velazquez wrought with a subdued palette, and sought to weave harmonies in grey and silver. bright colours are an expression of the joy of life, and this was unknown to the spaniards of castile. murillo has colour, but then he was always an andalusian. just as velazquez borrowed very little from his sitters and gave a great deal, so he claimed next to nothing from the primary colours, and he gave a colour sense that is indescribably beautiful to silver and grey. this was his deliberate choice and judgment, but it is impossible to forget that surroundings and associations must have had a great deal to do with it. men who live lives that are complete in the fullest sense of the term have a natural craving for glowing hues, and may find velazquez dull if they come to the prado from the academy of venice; but unless their tastes have become wholly vitiated, unless their eyes are suffering from a surfeit of light, they will soon learn to find that their best beloved masters would not bear transplanting. they belong to the soil of the country they worked in, while velazquez, like rembrandt, can travel to any climate, and shine with unclouded glory in any atmosphere. it is impossible to imagine that rubens could have painted with the palette that served velazquez, but the greater of the two men has given the world an invaluable lesson in appreciation, and because nature is full of exquisite colour harmonies that are quite subdued in tone it is well that we should have been taught to appreciate them. velazquez himself declared that raphael did not please him, but titian did; he found in him the greatest of all the venetians. and yet it is hard to say that he took anything from the admired master, because with velazquez admiration and imitation are things apart. he did not even imitate el greco, the painter whose influence upon the world of art is not yet fully acknowledged or understood, and he did not copy rubens, whose splendours would have dazzled a weaker man. velazquez merely saw certain truths in greco's handling of portraiture, and accepted them. throughout his life he made a steady improvement in the quality of the work done, but the changes came through introspection rather than from any outside influence. his pictures are divided by many critics into three styles, which may be divided roughly by his visits to italy. in the early days the paint on his canvas was very thick, the shadows were heavy, the composition was not always conclusive or well devised. the one quality was that irreproachable throughout all the years was the drawing, which was always masterly. from the days of the early "bodegones" down to the "meniñas" nobody could find a picture in which his drawing is obviously at fault; although in speaking of velazquez it is of course difficult to separate drawing from painting. as he grew up the sense of composition and colour harmony became stronger and stronger, and the faults passed. at the same time, velazquez was a severe critic of his own work, and a careful examination shows that even those pictures to which no suspicion can attach were retouched and corrected in the making. in this country one secures little more than a glimpse of the master's work. the national gallery has nearly a dozen pictures, but there are certain questions about the authenticity of some of them, and the philip in the dulwich gallery is rather more than doubtful. the wallace collection has a few beautiful examples of velazquez, and after that there are about fifty private owners of pictures that cannot be readily seen. perhaps a considerable proportion of these works would, if subjected to very careful scrutiny, reveal themselves as copies by mazo or others. in france there are half-a-dozen fine pictures in the louvre. germany can show some in berlin, dresden, and munich; holland has one or two. there are less than a dozen in all italy. the hermitage gallery in st. petersburg has five or six, and vienna about twice as many; but to see velazquez one must go to madrid. the museo del prado has over sixty of the artist's pictures, and though a small proportion of these have scarcely a touch of the master's hand, all his greatest work has found a resting-place here. las lanzas, las hilanderas, las meniñas, philip iv. on horseback, don balthasar carlos on his pony, the crucifixion, the coronation of the virgin, the dwarfs, Æsop, menippus--all these are to be seen in the prado; the greater number being in the salon of isabella, an octagonal room in which one may spend long hours. the writer, on the occasion of his last visit to madrid, made a note of the number of visitors to the famous octagonal room during the four mornings he spent there. in the course of some twelve hours the room was visited by some twelve people! it is only fair to say that it was not in the tourist season; the month was june, and nobody stayed in madrid from choice. ===================================================================== plate viii.--the princess maria theresa of austria this daughter of philip iv. became queen of france. the picture was painted when she was about ten years of age, and consequently belongs to the last period of velazquez' work. it was hung in the alcazar until some time in the eighteenth century, when it was transferred to the prado. [illustration: plate viii.] ===================================================================== there are pictures by velazquez to be seen in madrid outside the prado, but for the most part they are in private houses, and are not accessible to everybody. seville boasts half-a-dozen canvases by her greatest painter, and there are a few elsewhere in spain; but it may be said that those who know the salon of isabella have seen velazquez at his best, and that those who have seen his other pictures and have not visited the prado, do not know velazquez at all. perhaps there are pleasant surprises yet in store for the art world, for many pictures are still untraced. doubtless some have been destroyed by fire and others are in half-forgotten lumber rooms of palaces and galleries from which they will be gathered in due course. velazquez owes a large part of his popularity in spain to-day to the measure of appreciation he has secured beyond the borders. every second-hand dealer in madrid or seville has a "genuine murillo" to offer the stranger. it is worth a thousand pounds; but as the dealer is an honest man, he will sell it first for two hundred, then for one, and finally for fifteen or even ten. but no second-hand dealer shows a "genuine velazquez." he knows that at best it could only appeal to artists, and he knows them for strange folk endowed with much enthusiasm, little money, and an embarrassing measure of knowledge of the methods by which genuine old masters are created to supply a long-felt want. the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. carlo dolci. george hay. luini. james mason. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. _others in preparation._ [illustration: =november beechwood.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._] the painter in oil a complete treatise on the principles and technique necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors by daniel burleigh parkhurst pupil of william sartain, of bouguereau and tony-fleury, and of aimÉe morot; member of the new york water color club; formerly lecturer on art in dickinson college; author of "sketching from nature," etc. "_la peinture à l'huile est bien difficile; mais beaucoup plus beau que la peinture à l'eau._" boston: lothrop, lee & shepard co. copyright, , by lee and shepard _all rights reserved_ the painter in oil typography by c. j. peters & son presswork by berwick & smith, norwood press norwood mass. to a. m. p. this book is affectionately inscribed. _september th, ._ preface books of instruction in the practice of painting have rarely been successful. chiefly because they have been too narrow in their point of view, and have dealt more with recipes than with principles. it is not possible to give any one manner of painting that shall be right for all men and all subjects. to say "do thus and so" will not teach any one to paint. but there are certain principles which underlie all painting, and all schools of painting; and to state clearly the most important of these will surely be helpful, and may accomplish something. it is the purpose of this book to deal practically with the problems which are the study of the painter, and to make clear, as far as may be, the principles which are involved in them. i believe that this is the only way in which written instruction on painting can be of any use. it is impossible to understand principles without some statement of theory; and a book in order to be practical must therefore be to some extent theoretical. i have been as concise and brief in the theoretical parts as clearness would permit of, and i trust they are not out of proportion to the practical parts. either to paint well, or to judge well of a painting, requires an understanding of the same things: namely, the theoretical standpoint of the painter; the technical problems of color, composition, etc.; and the practical means, processes, and materials through which and with which these are worked out. it is obvious that one cannot become a good painter without the ability to know what is good painting, and to prefer it to bad painting. therefore, i have taken space to cover, in some sort, the whole ground, as the best way to help the student towards becoming a good painter. if, also, the student of pictures should find in this book what will help him to appreciate more truly and more critically, i shall be gratified. d. b. p. _december , _ contents part i.--materials chapter page i. observations ii. canvases and panels iii. easels iv. brushes v. paints vi. vehicles and varnishes vii. palettes viii. other tools ix. studios part ii.--general principles x. mental attitude xi. tradition and individuality xii. originality xiii. the artist and the student xiv. how to study part iii.--technical principles xv. technical preliminaries xvi. drawing xvii. values xviii. perspective xix. light and shade xx. composition xxi. color part iv.--practical application xxii. representation xxiii. manipulation xxiv. copying xxv. kinds of painting xxvi. the sketch xxvii. the study xxviii. still life xxix. flowers xxx. portraits xxxi. landscape xxxii. marines xxxiii. figures xxxiv. procedure in a picture xxxv. difficulties of beginners list of illustrations page november beechwood _parkhurst_ _frontispiece_ stretchers canvas pliers double-pointed tack easel easel sketching easel sketching easel brushes.--red sable, round red sable red sable, flat round bristle flat bristle flat pointed fan brush cleaner oil colors oval palette arm palette the color box palette knife the scraper the oil-cup mahl-sticks three-legged stool sketching chair sketching umbrella drawing of hands _dürer_ eggs. white against white the canal _parkhurst_ bohemian woman _franz hals_ sewing by lamplight _millet_ descent from the cross the golden stairs the sower _millet_ return to the farm _millet_ the fisher boy _franz hals_ boar-hunt _snyders_ good bock _manet_ sketch of a hillside the river bank _parkhurst_ study of a blooming-mill _parkhurst_ still life, no. still life, no. still life, no. still life, no. still life, no. still life, no. sweet peas dÜrer _by himself_ portrait of his mother _whistler_ portrait of himself _valasquez_ portrait _parkhurst_ haystacks in sunshine _monet_ on the race track _degas_ willow road _parkhurst_ entrance to zuyder zee _clarkson stanfield_ girl spinning _millet_ sketch of a flute player _parkhurst_ milton dictating "paradise lost" _munkacsy_ buckwheat harvest _millet_ study of fortune _angelo_ Ébouch of portrait _th. robinson_ landscape photo. no. landscape photo. no. part i materials the painter in oil chapter i general observations there is a false implication in the saying that "a poor workman blames his tools." it is not true that a good workman can do good work with bad tools. on the contrary, the good workman sees to it that he has good tools, and makes it a part of his good workmanship that they are in good condition. in painting there is nothing that will cause you more trouble than bad materials. you can get along with few materials, but you cannot get along with bad ones. that is not the place to economize. to do good work is difficult at best. economize where it will not be a hindrance to you. your tools can make your work harder or easier according to your selection of them. the relative cost of good and bad materials is of slight importance compared with the relative effect on your work. the way to economize is not to get anything which you do not need. save on the non-essentials, and get as good a quality as you can of the essentials. save on the number of things you get, not on the quantity you use. you must feel free in your use of material. there is nothing which hampers you more than parsimony in the use of things needful to your painting. if it is worth your while to paint at all, it is worth your while to be generous enough with yourself to insure ordinary freedom of use of material. the essentials of painting are few, but these cannot be dispensed with. put it out of your mind that any one of these five things can be got along without:-- you must have something to paint _on_, canvas or panel. have plenty of these. you must have something to set this canvas on--something to hold it up and in position. your knees won't do, and you can't hold it in one hand. the lack of a practical easel will cost you far more in trouble and discouragement than the saving will make up for. you must have something to paint with. the brushes are most important; in kind, variety, and number. you cannot economize safely here. you must have paints. and you must have good ones. the best are none too good. get the best. pay a good price for them, use them freely, but don't waste them. and you must have something to hold them, and to mix them on; but here the quality and kind has less effect on your work than any other of your tools. but as the cost of the best of palettes is slight, you may as well get a good one. now, if you will be economical, the way to do it is to take proper care of your tools _after you have got them_. form the habit of using good tools as they should be used, and that will save you a great deal of money. chapter ii canvases and panels you should have plenty of canvas on hand, and it would be well if you had it all stretched ready for use. many a good day's work is lost because of the time wasted in getting a canvas ready. it is not necessary to have many kinds or sizes. it is better in fact to settle on one kind of surface which suits you, and to have a few practical sizes of stretchers which will pack together well, and work always on these. you will find that by getting accustomed to these sizes you work more freely on them. you can pack them better, and you can frame them more conveniently, because one frame will always do for many pictures. perhaps there is no one piece of advice which i can give you which will be of more practical use outside of the principles of painting, than this of keeping to a few well-chosen sizes of canvas, and the keeping of a number of each always on hand. it is all well enough to talk about not showing one's work too soon. but we all do, and always will like to see our work under as favorable conditions as possible. and a good frame is one of the favorable conditions. but good frames are expensive, and it is a great advantage to be able to have a frame always at hand which you can see your work in from time to time; and if you only work on four sizes of canvas, say, then four frames, one for each size, will suit all your pictures and sketches. use the same sizes for all kinds of work too, and the freedom will come, as i say, in the working on those sizes. don't have odd sizes about. you can just as well as not use the regular sizes and proportions which colormen keep in stock, and there is an advantage in being able to get a canvas at short notice, and it will be one of your own sizes, and will fit your frame. all artists have gone through the experience of eliminating odd sizes from their stock, and it is one of the practical things that we all have to come down to sooner or later, and the sooner the better,--to have the sizes which we find we like best, not too many, and stick to them. i would have you take advantage of this, and decide early in your work, and so get rid of one source of bother. =rough and smooth.=--the best canvas is of linen. cotton is used for sketching canvas. but you would do well always to use good grounds to work on. you can never tell beforehand how your work will turn out; and if you should want to keep your work, or find it worth while to go on with it, you would be glad that you had begun it on a good linen canvas. the linen is stronger and firmer, and when it has a "grain," the grain is better. =grain.=--the question of grain is not easy to speak about without the canvas, yet it is often a matter of importance. there are many kinds of surface, from the most smooth to the most rugged. some grain it is well the canvas should have; too great smoothness will tend to make the painting "slick," which is not a pleasant quality. a grain gives the canvas a "tooth," and takes the paint better. just what grain is best depends on the work. if you are going to have very fine detail in the picture use a smoothish canvas; but whenever you are going to paint heavily, roughly, or loosely, the rough canvas takes the paint better. the grain of the canvas takes up the paint, helps to hold it, and to disguise, in a way, the body of it. for large pictures, too, the canvas must necessarily be strong, and the mere weight of the fabric will give it a rough surface. =knots.=--for ordinary work do not be afraid of a canvas which has some irregularities and knots on it. if they are not too marked they will not be unpleasantly noticeable in the picture, and may even give a relief to too great evenness. =twilled canvas.=--the diagonal twill which some canvases have has always been a favorite surface with painters, particularly the portrait painters. this grain is a sympathetic one to work on, takes paint well, and is not in any way objectionable in the finished picture. =the best.=--the best way is to try several kinds, and when you find one which has a sympathetic working quality, and which has a good effect in the finished picture, note the quality and use it. you will find such a canvas among both the rough and smooth kinds, and so you can use either, as the character of your work suggests. it is well to have both rough and smooth ready at hand. =absorbent.=--some canvases are primed so as to absorb the oil during the process of painting. they are very useful for some kinds of work, and many painters choose them; but unless you have some experience with the working of them, they are apt to add another source of perplexity to the difficulties of painting, so you had better not experiment with them, but use the regular non-absorbent kinds. =old and new.=--the canvas you work on should not be too freshly primed. the painting is likely to crack if the priming is not well dried. you cannot always be sure that the canvas you get at stores is old, so you have an additional reason for getting a good stock and keeping it on hand. then, if you have had it in your own possession a long while, you know it is not fresh. canvas is all the better if it is a year old. =grounds.=--the color of the grounds should be of interest to you. canvases are prepared for the market usually in three colors,--a sort of cool gray, a warm light ochrish yellow, and a cool pinkish gray. which is best is a matter of personal liking. it would be well to consider what the effect of the ground will be on the future condition of the picture when the colors begin to effect each other, as they inevitably will sooner or later. vibert in his "_la science de la peinture_" advocates a white ground. he says that as the color will be sure to darken somewhat with time, it is well that the ground should have as little to do with it as possible. if the ground is white there is so much the less dark pigment to influence your painting. he is right in this; but white is a most unsympathetic color to work over, and if you do not want to lay in your work with _frottées_, a tint is pleasanter. for most work the light ochrish ground will be found best; but you may be helped in deciding by the general tone of your picture. if the picture is to be bright and lively, use a light canvas, and if it is to be sombre, use a dark one. remember, too, that the color of your ground will influence the appearance of every touch of paint you put on it by contrast, until the priming is covered and out of sight. =stretchers.=--the keyed stretcher, with wedges to force the corners open and so tighten the canvas when necessary, is the only proper one to use. for convenience of use many kinds have been invented, but you will find the one here illustrated the best for general purposes. the sides may be used for ends, and _vice versa_. if you arrange your sizes well, you will have the sides of one size the right length for the ends of another. then you need fewer sizes, and they are surer to pack evenly. [illustration: =stretchers.=] =stretching.=--you will often have to stretch your own canvases, so you should know how to do it. there is only one way to make the canvas lay smoothly without wrinkles: cut the canvas about two inches longer and wider than the stretcher, so that it will easily turn down over the edges. begin by putting in _one tack_ to hold the _middle_ of one end. then turn the whole thing round, and stretch tightly lengthwise, and put a tack to hold it into the _middle_ of the other end. do the same way with the two sides. only four tacks so far, which have stretched the canvas in the middle two ways. as you do this, you must see that the canvas is on square. don't drive the tacks all the way in at first till you know that this is so. then give each another blow, so that the head binds the canvas more than the body of the tack does; for the pull of the canvas against the side of the tack will tear, while the head will hold more strands. this first two ways stretching must be as tight as any after stretching will be or you will have wrinkles in the middle, while the purpose is to pull out the wrinkles towards the corners. now go back to the ends: stretch, and place one tack each side of the first one. in a large canvas you may put two each side, but not more, and you must be sure that the strain is even on both sides. don't pull too much; for next you must do the same with the other end which should bear _half_ of the whole stretch. do just the same now with the two sides. now continue stretching and tacking,--each side of the middle tacks on each end, then on each side, then to the ends again, and so gradually working towards the corners, when as you put in the last tacks the wrinkles will disappear, if you have done your work well. don't hurry and try to drive too many tacks into a side at a time, for to have to do it all over again would take more time than to have worked slowly and done it properly. you may of course stretch a small canvas with your hands, but it will make your fingers sore, and you cannot get large canvases tight without help. you will do well to have a pair of "canvas pliers" which are specially shaped to pull the canvas and hold it strongly without tearing it, as other pliers are sure to do. [illustration: =canvas pliers.=] when you take canvases out-doors to work, you will find it useful to strap two together, face inwards, with a double-pointed tack like this in each corner to keep them apart. you will not have any trouble with the fresh paint, as each canvas will then protect the other. you can pack freshly painted canvases for shipping in the same way. [illustration: =double-pointed tack.=] =panels.=--for small pictures panels are very useful, and when great detail is desirable, and fine, smooth work would make an accidental tear impossible to mend well, they are most valuable. they are made of mahogany and oak generally. panels are useful, too, for sketching, as you can easily pack them. they are light, and the sun does not shine through the backs. you can get them for about the same cost as canvas for small sizes, which are what you would be likely to use, and they are often more convenient, particularly for use in the sketch-box. chapter iii easels the important thing in an easel is that it should be steady and firm; that it should hold the canvas without trembling, and so that it will not fall as you paint out towards the edges. you often paint with a heavy hand, and you must not have to hold on to your picture with one hand and paint with the other. nothing is more annoying than a poor easel, and nothing will give you more solid satisfaction, than the result of a little generosity in paying for a good one. the ideal thing for the studio is, of course, the great "screw easel," which is heavy, safe, convenient, and expensive. we would like to have one, but we can't afford it, so we won't speak of it. the next best thing is an ordinary easel which doesn't cost a great deal, but which is firm and solid and practical. don't get one of the various three-legged folding easels which cost about seventy-five cents or a dollar. they tumble down too often and too easily. the wear and tear on the temper they cause is more than they are worth. it is true that they fold up out of the way. but they fold up when you don't expect them to; and you ought to be able to afford room enough for an easel anyway, if you paint at all. [illustration] the illustration shows one of the firmest of the inexpensive easels, and one which will fold up into as small a compass as any practical easel will. it will hold perfectly well a good-sized canvas, even with its frame, and will not tumble over on slight provocation. another good easel is shown on p. . it is more lightly made, not so well braced, but is more convenient for raising and lowering the picture, as the catch allows the whole thing to be raised and lowered at once. if you are to save money on your easel, don't save on the construction and strength of it, but on the finish. let the polish and varnish go, but get a well-made easel with solid wood. the heavier it is, the less easily it packs away, to be sure, but the more steadily it will hold your picture. [illustration] =sketching easels.=--the same things are of importance in an easel for out-of-door work that are needed in a studio easel, except that it must also be portable. so if you must have a folding easel, get a _good_ sketching easel; or if you can't have one for in-doors and one for out-doors, then pay a good price for a sketching easel, and use it in doors and out also. there are two things which are absolutely essential in a sketching easel. it _must_ have legs which may be made longer and shorter, and it _must hold_ the canvas firmly. it is not enough to lean the canvas on it. the wind blows it over just when you are putting on an interesting touch, or the touch itself upsets it, either of which is most aggravating, and does not tend to satisfactory work. you must not be obliged to sit down to work just where you don't want to, a little this side or a little that side of the chosen spot, because the ground isn't even there and the easel will not stand straight. you must be able to make a leg longer or shorter as the unevenness of the ground necessitates. it is impossible to work among rocks or on hillsides if you cannot make your easel stand as you want it. these things are not to be got round. you might as well not work as to sketch with a poor sketching easel. and you must pay a good price for it. the sketching easel that is good for anything has never been made to sell for a dollar and a half. pay three or four dollars for it, at any rate, and use it the rest of your life. i use an easel every day that i have worked on every summer for twelve years. most artists are doing much the same. the easel is not expensive _per year_ at that rate! it is such an easel as that shown on the opposite page, and is satisfactory for all sorts of work. [illustration] if you are working in a strong wind, or if you have a large canvas, such an easel as this illustration shows is the best and safest yet invented, and it is as good for other work, and particularly when you want to stand up. and either of these easels will be perfectly satisfactory to use in the house. [illustration] chapter iv brushes an old brush that has been properly cared for is generally better than a new one. it seems to have accommodated itself to your way of painting, and falls in with your peculiarities. it is astonishing how attached you get to your favorite brushes, and how loath you are to finally give them up. what if you have no others to take their places? don't look upon your brushes as something to get as few of as possible, and which you would not get at all if you could help it. there is nothing which comes nearer to yourself than the brush which carries out your idea in paint. you should be always on the lookout for a good brush; and whenever you run across one, buy it, no matter how many you have already. don't look twice at a bad brush, and don't begrudge an extra ten cents in the buying of a good one. if you are sorry to have to pay so much for your brushes, then take the more care of them. use them well and they will last a long while; then don't always use the same handful. break in new ones now and again. keep a dozen or two in use, and lay some aside before they are worn out, and use newer ones. so when at last you cannot use one any more, you have others of the same kind which will fill its place. have all kinds and sizes of brushes. have a couple of dozen in use, and a couple of dozen which you are not using, and a couple of dozen more that have never been used. what! six dozen? well, why not? every time you paint you look over your brushes and pick out those which look friendly to what you are going to do. you want all sorts of brushes. you can't paint all sorts of pictures with the same kind of brush. your brush represents your hand. you must give every kind of touch with it. you want to change sometimes, and you want a clean brush from time to time. you don't want to feel that you are limited; that whether you want to or not these four brushes you must use because they are all you have! you can't paint that way. that six dozen you will not buy all at once. when you get your first outfit, get at least a dozen brushes. as you look over the stock and pick out two or three of this kind, and two or three of that, you will be astonished to see how many you have--yet you don't know which to discard. don't discard any. buy them all. then, if you don't paint, it will not be the fault of your brushes. and from time to time get a half a dozen which have just struck you as especially good ones, and quite unconsciously you acquire your six dozen--and even more, i hope! =bristle and sable.=--the brushes suitable for oil painting are of two kinds,--bristle and sable hair. of the latter, _red_ sable are the only ones you should get. they are expensive, but they have a spring and firmness that the black sable does not have. camel's hair is out of the question. don't get any, if you can only have camel's hair. it is soft and flabby when used in oil and you can't work well with such brushes. the same is true of the black sable. but though the red sables are expensive, you do not need many of them, nor large ones, so the cost of those you will need is slight. [illustration] the only sables which are in any degree indispensable to you are the smaller sizes of _riggers_. these are thin, long brushes which are useful for outlining, and all sorts of fine, sharp touches. you use them to go over a drawing with paint in laying in a picture, and for branches, twigs, etc. as their name implies, you must have them for the rigging of vessels in marine painting also. the three sizes shown in the cut on the opposite page are those you should have, and if you get two of each, you will find them useful in all sorts of places. when you buy them, see that they are elastic and firm, that they come naturally and easily to a good point, without any scraggy hairs. test them by moistening them, and then pressing the point on the thumb-nail. they should bend evenly through the whole length of the hair. reject any which seem "weak in the back." if it lays flat toward the point and bends all in one place near the ferrule, it is a poor brush. [illustration] these three larger and thicker sizes come in very useful often and it would be well if you were to have these too. sometimes a thick, long sable brush will serve better than another for heavy lines, etc. all these brushes are round. one largish flat sable like this it would be well to have; but these are all the sables necessary. [illustration] =bristle brushes.=--the sable brush or pencil is often necessary; but oil painting is practically always done with the bristle, or "hog hair," brush. these are the ones which will make up the variety of kinds in your six dozen. a good bristle brush is not to be bought merely by taking the first which comes to hand. good brushes have very definite qualities, and you should have no trouble in picking them out. nevertheless, you will take the trouble to select them, if you care to have any satisfaction in using them. =the bristle.=--you want your brush to be made of the hair just as it grew on the hog. all hair, in its natural state, has what is called the "flag." that is the fine, smooth taper towards the natural end of it, and generally the division into two parts. this gives the bristle, no matter how thick it may be, a silky fineness towards the end; and when this part only of the bristle is used in the brush, you will have all the firmness and elasticity of the bristle, and also a delicacy and smoothness and softness quite equal to a sable. but this, in the short hair of an artist's brush, wastes all the rest of the length of the hair; for it is only by cutting off the "flag," and using that, which is only an inch or so long, that you can make the brush. yet the bristle may be several inches long, and all this is sacrificed for that little inch of "flag." naturally the "flag" is expensive, and naturally also the manufacturer uses the rest of the hair for inferior brushes. these latter you should avoid. these inferior brushes are made from the part of the bristle remaining, by sandpapering, or otherwise making the ends fine again after they are cut off. but it is impossible to make a brush which has the right quality in this way. =selection.=--never buy a brush without testing its evenness, as has been advised in the care of sables. feel carefully the end of the bristles also, and see that the "flag" is there. all brushes are kept together for packing by paste in the bristles. see that this is soaked off before you test your brush. =round or flat.=--it will make little difference whether you use round or flat brushes. the flat brush is most commonly preferred now, and most brushes are made that way. so you had better get that kind, unless you have some special reason for preferring the round ones. =handles.=--whether the handles are nicely polished, also, is of no importance. what you are to look to is the quality of the bristles and of the making; the best brushes are likely to be nicely finished all over. but if you do find a really good brush which is cheaper because of the plain handle, and you wish to save money, do it by buying the plain-handled one. =sizes and shapes.=--you will need some quite large brushes and some smaller ones, some square ones and some pointed. [illustration] here are three round brushes which, for all sorts of painting, will be of very general utility. for most of your brushes select the long and thin, rather than the short and thick ones. the stubby brush is a useless sort of thing for most work. there are men who use them and like them, but most painters prefer the more flexible and springy brush, if it is not weak. so, too, the brush should not be too thick. a thick brush takes up too much paint into itself, and does not change its tint so readily. for rubbing over large surfaces where a good deal of the same color is thickly spread on the canvas, the thick, strong brush is a very proper tool. but where there is to be any delicacy of tone, it is too clumsy; you want a more delicate instrument. the same proportions hold with large and small brushes, so these remarks apply to all. =flat brushes.=--this is particularly applicable to the flat brushes, and the more that most of your brushes will be flat. you should have both broad-ended and pointed brushes among your flat ones. for broad surfaces, such as backgrounds and skies, the broad ends come in well; and for the small ones there are many square touches where they are useful. the most practical sizes are those shown on page . but you will often need much larger brushes than the largest of these. for the smaller brushes you will have to be very careful in your selections. for only the silkiest of bristle will do good work in a very small brush, and then the temptation is to use a sable, which should be resisted. why you should avoid using the sable as a rule is that it will make the painting too "slick" and edgy. there is a looseness that is a quality to prize. all the hardness, flatness, and rigidity that are desirable you can get with the bristle brush. when you work too much with sables, the overworking brings a waxy and woodeny surface, which is against all the qualities of atmosphere and luminosity, and of freshness and freedom of touch. [illustration] some of the most useful sizes of the more pointed brushes are shown on opposite page. there are, of course, sizes between these, and many larger; but these are what you will find the best. it would be better to have more of each size than to have more sizes. you should try to work with fewer rather than more sizes, and, as a rule, work more with the larger than with the smaller brush, even for fine work. you will work with more force and tend less to pettiness, if you learn to put in small touches with the largest brush that will do it. breadth is not painting with a large brush; but the man who works always with a small brush instinctively looks for the things a small brush is adapted to, and will unconsciously drift into a little way of working. [illustration] the fan brush, such as here illustrated, is a useful brush, not to paint with, but to flick or drag across an outline or other part of a painting when it is getting too hard and liney. you may not want it once a month, but it is very useful when you do want it. [illustration] =care of brushes.=--the best of economy in brushes lies in your care of them. you should never let the paint dry on them nor go too long without careful washing. it is not necessary to wash them every day with soap and water, but they would be the better for such treatment. quite often, once a week, say, you should wash your brushes carefully with soap and water. you may use warm water, but don't have it hot, as that may melt the glue which holds the bristles together in the ferrule. use strong soap with plenty of lye in it--common bar soap, or better, the old-fashioned soft soap. hold several brushes together in one hand so that the tips are all of a length, dip them together into or rub them onto the soap, and then rub them briskly in the palm of the other hand. when the paint is well worked into the lather, do the same with the other brushes, letting the first ones soak in the soap, but not in the water. then rinse them, and carefully work them clean one by one, with the fingers. when you lay them aside to dry, see that the bristles are all straight and smooth, and they will be in perfect condition for next painting. [illustration] =cleaning.=--but from day to day you need not take quite so much trouble as this. true, the brushes will keep in better condition if washed in soap and water every day, but it is not always convenient to do this. you may then use the brush-cleaner. this is a tin box with a false bottom of perforated tin or of wire netting about half-way down, which allows the liquid to stand a half-inch or so above it; so that when you put your brush in and rub it around, the paint is rinsed from it, and settles through the perforations to the bottom, leaving the liquid clear again above it. if you use this carefully, cleaning one brush at a time, not rubbing it too hard, and pulling the hairs straight by wiping them on a clean rag, you may keep your brushes in good condition quite easily. but they will need a careful soap-and-water washing every little while, besides. the liquid best for use in this cleaner is the common kerosene or coal oil. never use turpentine to rinse your brushes. it will make them brittle and harsh; but the kerosene will remove all the paint, and will not affect the brush. chapter v paints of all your materials, it is on your paints that quality has the most vital effect. with bad paint your work is hopeless. you may get an effect that looks all right, but how long will it stand, and how much better may it not have been if your colors had been good? you can tell nothing about it. you may have luck, and your work hold; or you may not have luck, and in a month your picture is ruined. don't trust to luck. keep that element out as much as you can, always. but in the matter of paints, if you count on luck at all, remember that the chances are altogether against you. don't let yourself be persuaded to indulge in experiments with colors which you have reason to think are of doubtful quality. keep on the safe side, and use colors you are sure of, even if they do cost a little more--at first; for they are cheaper in the long-run. and even in the time of using of one tube, generally the good paint does enough more work to cover the difference of cost. =bad paints.=--suspect colors which are too cheap. good work is expensive. ability and skill and experience count in making artists' colors, and must be paid for. if you would get around the cost of first-class material you must mix it with inferior material. the first effect you will notice in using poor colors is a certain hindrance to your facility, due to the fact that the color is weak--does not have the snap and strength in it that you expect. the paint has not a full color quality, but mixes dead and flat. this you will find particularly in the finer and lighter yellows. you need not fear much adulteration in those paints which are naturally cheap, of course. it is in those higher-priced colors, on which you must largely depend for the more sparkling qualities, that you will have most trouble. unevenness of working, and lack of covering or mixing power, you will find in poor paints also. they have no strength, and you must keep adding them more and more to other colors to get them to do their work. all these things are bothersome. they make you give more attention to the pigments while working than you ought to, and when all is done, your picture is weak and negative in color. another effect to be feared from bad colors is that your work will not stand; the colors fade or change, and the paint cracks. the former effect is from bad material, or bad combinations of them in the working, and the latter mainly from bad vehicles used in grinding them. i have seen pictures go to pieces within a month of their painting--bad paint and bad combinations. of course you can use good colors so that the picture will not stand. but that will be your own fault, and it is no excuse for the use of colors which you can by no possibility do good work with. =good paints.=--the three things on which the quality of good paint depends are good pigment, good vehicles, and good preparation. the pigments used are of mineral, chemical, and vegetable origin. the term _pigment_ technically means the powdered substance which, when mixed with a vehicle, as oil, becomes _paint_. the most important pigments now used are artificial products, chiefly chemical compounds, including chemical preparations of natural mineral earths. as a rule, the colors made from earths may be classed as all permanent; those from chemicals, permanent or not, as the case may be; and those of vegetable origin fugitive, with few exceptions. some colors are good when used as water colors, and bad when used in oil. further on i will speak of the fugitiveness and permanency of colors in detail. i wish here to emphasize the fact that the origin of the material of which the pigment is made has much to do with the sort of work that that pigment will do, and with the permanency of the effect which is produced; and therefore that while a paint may look like another, its working or its lasting qualities may be quite different. =the vehicles.=--the vehicles by which the pigment is made fluent and plastic are quite as important in their effects. they not only have to do with the business of drying, owing to the substances used as dryers, but they may have to do with the chemical action of one pigment on another. =the preparation.=--finally, the preparation of the pigment demands the utmost skill and knowledge, if the colors are to be good. the paints used by the old masters were few and simple, and the fact that they prepared them themselves had much to do with the manner in which they kept their color. the paints used now are less simple. we do not prepare and grind them ourselves, and we could hardly do so if we wished to, so we are the more dependent on the integrity of the colorman who does it for us. the preparation of the paint begins with the chemical or physical preparation of each pigment, and then comes the mixing of several to produce any particular color; and finally the mechanical process of grinding with the proper vehicle to bring it to the proper fineness and smoothness. =grinding.=--the color which the artist uses must be most evenly and perfectly ground. the grinding which will do for ordinary house paints will not do for the artist's colors. neither will the chemical processes suitable for the one serve for the other. not only must the machinery, but the experience, skill and care, be much greater for artist's colors. therefore it is that the specialization of color-making is most important to good colors for the use of the artist. =reliable makers.=--if you would work to the best advantage as far as your colors are concerned, both as to getting the best effects which pure pigments skilfully and honestly prepared will give you, and as to the permanency of those effects when you have gotten them, see to it that you get paint made by a thoroughly reliable colorman. it is not my province to say whose colors you should use; doubtless there are many colormen who make artists' materials honestly and well. nevertheless, i may mention that there are no colors which have been more thoroughly tested, both by the length of time they have been in the possession of painters, and by the number of painters who have used them, than those of winsor and newton of london. no colors have been so generally sold and for so long a time, particularly in this country, as these, and none are so well known for their evenness and excellence of quality. i do not say that these manufacturers do not make any colors which should not go on the palette of the cautious artist--i believe that they do not make that claim themselves; but such colors as they do assert to be good, pure, and permanent, you may feel perfectly safe in using, and be sure that they are as well made as colors can be. this is as much as can be said of any paints, and more than can be said of most. i have used these colors for many years, and my own experience is that they have always been all that a painter need ask. the fact that winsor and newton's colors can be found in any town where colors can be had at all, makes me the more free to recommend them, as you can always command them. this fact also speaks for the general approval of them. inasmuch as certain colors are not claimed to be permanent and others are, it is for you to compose your palette of those which will combine safely. this you can do with a little care. some colors are permanent by themselves or with some colors, but not in combination with certain others. you should then take the trouble to consider these chemical relationships. it is not necessary for you to study the chemistry of paints, but you may read what has been ascertained as to the effects of combinations, and act accordingly. there are practically duplications of color-quality in pigments which are bad, and in pigments which are good; so that you can use the good color instead of the bad one to do the same work. the good color will cost more, but there is no way of making the bad color good, so you must pay the difference due to the cost of the better material, or put up with the result of using bad colors. =chemical changes.=--the causes of change of color in pigments are of four kinds, all of them chemical effects. , the action of light; , the action of the atmosphere; , the action of the medium; and , the action of the pigments themselves on each other. the action of light is to bring about or to assist in the decomposition of the pigment. it is less marked in oil than in water color, because the oil forms a sort of sheath for the color particles. the manner in which light does its deteriorating work is somewhat similar to that of heat. the action of light is very slow, but it seems to do the same thing in a long time that heat would do in a short time. some colors are unaffected or little affected by light, and of course you will use them in preference to all others. the atmosphere affects the paint because of certain chemical elements contained in it, which tend to cause new combinations with the materials which are already in combination in the pigment. the action of the oxygen in the air is the chief agent in affecting the pigment, and it is here particularly that light, and especially sunlight, assists in decomposition. the air of towns and cities generally contains sulphuric and sulphurous acids and sulphuretted hydrogen. this latter gas is most effective in changing oil paintings, because of its action in turning white lead dark; and as white lead is the basis of many qualities in painting, this gas may have a very general action. moisture in the atmosphere is also a cause of change, but there is little to be dreaded from this, as the oil protects the colors. oil absorbs oxygen in drying, and so is apt to have an effect on colors liable to change from that element, and many vehicles contain materials to hasten the drying which further aid in the deterioration of the pigment. bad oil will tend to crack the picture also. the greatest care should be used in this direction, as the most permanent colors may be ruined by bad vehicles. pigments will not have a deteriorating effect on each other as long as they are solid. but if one of them is soluble in the medium, then chemical action commences; but as most pigments are somewhat soluble, there is always some danger in mixing them. the best we can do is, as i said before, to try to have on the palette, as far as possible, only colors which are friendly to each other. as a student you should not be much occupied, however, with all this. you must expect that all color will change somewhat. but you need not use those which change immediately or markedly, and you may use them in a way which will tend to make them change as little as may be. colors have stood for years, and what is practical permanence, not perfect permanence, is all you need look for. if you think too much of the permanence of your colors, it will interfere with the directness of your study. therefore, decide on a palette which is as complete and safe as you can make it, excluding the notably bad pigments, and think no more about it. when you need to add a new color to your palette, choose it with reference to those already on it, and go ahead. this is what the whole subject resolves itself to, practically, for you as a student. =opaque and transparent colors.=--some colors, like the madders, have a jelly-like consistency when mixed with oil, others, the earths among them, are dense and opaque. we speak of them respectively as "transparent" and "solid" colors. these qualities, which divide the paints into two classes, have no relation to their permanency. as far as that is concerned you use them in the same way, as some transparent colors are safe and some fugitive; and the same with the opaque colors. the only difference is in the fact that, as a rule, the solid colors are better dryers. but you will notice that while you may mix these colors together as though this difference between them did not exist, in certain processes you use them differently. so you will see, farther on, that for a "glaze" you can use only the transparent or semi-opaque colors, for a scumble you naturally use the solid ones. you should know, however, for the sake of clearness, just what is meant when "solid" or "body" or "opaque" color is spoken of, and what is meant by "transparent" color. =safe and unsafe colors.=--beyond what has been said of the causes of change in colors it is not necessary that you should know the chemical constituents of them. if you want to look into the matter further there are books, such as "field's chromatography," which treat fully of the subject, and which you may study. but practically you should know which colors are to be depended on and which not. let us consider the principal colors in detail then, merely as to their actual stability. i will speak of them in connection with the plates of colors at the end of this book. i would like you to compare what is said of each color with the corresponding color in the plates. those colors in the plates which are not spoken of here, you may consider as useful in showing you the character of different colors which are made, but which may or may not be used, according as you may need them. i shall not attempt to mention all the pigments that are in the market. you need never use more than fifteen or twenty all told. many painters use more, it is true; but if you know how to make the best use of that number, you may safely wait till you "grow to them" before you bother with more. and i shall speak only of those which you will find essential or most generally useful, and those which should be particularly avoided. =permanency.=--it should be stated what is meant by a permanent color. there is no color which is not to be influenced in some way. the most sound of pigments will change if the conditions favor the change. when we speak of a permanent color, we mean only one which under the usual conditions will stand for an indefinite time. by which is meant ordinary diffused daylight, not direct sunlight, and the ordinary air under normal conditions. if there be direct sunlight, you may expect your picture to change sooner or later. but one does not hang his pictures where the sun's rays will fall on them. if there is any exceptional condition of moisture in the air, the picture may suffer. or if from any cause unusual gases are in the atmosphere, or if the picture be too long in a dark, close place, the picture may smother for lack of fresh air, just as any other thing, plant or animal, which depends on normal conditions of atmosphere would do. let us say, then, that what we mean by a permanent color is one which will stand unchanged for an indefinite length of time in a room which is of the usual condition of temperature and freedom from moisture, and where the light is diffused, and such that the direct rays of the sun are not on the picture often, or to any great extent. cold will not hurt a picture if the canvas is not disturbed in that condition, but to bend or roll it while it is very cold will of course crack it, and sudden and extreme changes of temperature may have the same effect. in other words, some care must be used with all pictures as a matter of course. color list =whites.=--_zinc white_ is the only permanent white, but it lacks body and is little used. the lead whites, _flake_, _silver_, _cremnitz_, will darken in time, and will turn yellow with oil, and may change with or affect change in other pigments. the zinc white is liable to crack. we have no perfect white, so practically you may consider the lead whites as permanent enough, as other painters do. =yellows.=--_cadmium_ is permanent in all three of its forms. it is a color the permanence of which is of great importance; for its brilliancy is quite essential to modern painting, and if it were not permanent, the picture would soon lose the very quality for which the color was used. _the chromes_, which are of similar color-quality, are less permanent, and are almost sure to turn to a horny sort of yellow; and a green, which by their use was bright and sparkling, will, in a few months, lose its freshness--this cadmium will not do. cadmium is also to be preferred to chrome, because it is of a much finer tonality. greens and yellows made by the admixture of chrome are apt to be crude as compared with those in which cadmium was used. _strontian yellow_ is a permanent and most useful light yellow, much to be preferred to all other citron yellows except the pale cadmium, and can be used in place of that if necessary. they are both expensive colors of about the same cost. _naples yellow_ was a very prominent pigment with the older painters. it is still very much used, but in the simplification of your palette you may as well leave it out, as you can get the same qualities with cadmium and white. it is durable and safe, but adds another tube to your palette which you can well dispense with. _the ochres_ are among the oldest and safest of pigments. you can use them with any colors which are themselves permanent. there are several of them,--_yellow ochre_, _roman ochre_, _transparent gold ochre_, and others. they are all native earths, and though they contain iron, they are sufficiently inert to be thoroughly sound colors. _the siennas_, burnt and raw, are like the ochres, native earths, very old and permanent colors, and may be used anywhere. _the umbers_ are in the same class with the siennas and ochres. they should all rank among the yellows. the browns of umber and sienna will make greens with blues. _indian yellow and yellow lake_ should both be avoided as fugitive. _aureolin_ is a rich, warm golden yellow of the greatest permanence, and should be used when indian yellow and yellow lake would be used if they were permanent. =reds.=--the _vermilions_ are permanent when well made. they are of great body and power, as well as delicacy. they are of two kinds,--_chinese_, which is bluish in tone, and _scarlet_ and _orange vermilion_, which have the yellow quality. both kinds are useful to the palette because of the practical necessities of mixing. _light red_ is a deep, warm red earth, made by calcining ochre, and has the same permanence as the other ochres. it is a fine color, of especial value in painting flesh, and mixes with everything safely. _the madders_--_rose_, _pink_, _purple_, and _madder carmine_--are the only transparent reds which are permanent. whatever the name given them, they should not be confounded with the _lakes_, which are absolutely untrustworthy. by reference to the plates you will see that the madders are practically the same as the lakes in color when first used. but the lakes fade and the madders do not. the madders cost about twice as much as the lakes; but you must pay the difference, for the lakes cannot be made to stand, and you must have the color. there is nothing for it but to pay twice as much and buy the madders. _the lakes_--_scarlet_, _geranium_, _crimson_, and _purple_--are all bad. the madders and lakes are all slow dryers; but unless carelessly used with other colors which are not yet dry they need not have a bad effect on the picture from cracking. distinguish the so-called _madder lakes_ and the _lakes_; and between _carmine_, which is a lake, and _madder carmine_, which is a madder. =blues.=--the _ultramarine_ of the old masters is practically unused to-day because of its cost. but the artificial ultramarines, while not quite of the same purity of color, are equally permanent, and are in every respect worthy to be used. of these the _brilliant ultramarine_ is the nearest in color to the real lapis lazuli. the _french ultramarine_ is less clear and vivid, but is a splendid deep blue, and most useful. the so-called _permanent blue_ is not quite so permanent as its name implies, but permanent enough for practical purposes. _cobalt blue_ and _cerulean blue_ are two pigments, one very light and clear, the other darker, which are made of the oxide of the metal cobalt. in oil they are permanent, and do not change when mixed with other colors. for delicate tints, when the tones are to be subtly gray yet full of the primary colors, the cobalts are indispensable. you should always have them on hand, and generally on your palette. cerulean blue is of less importance than the other, but in very clear, delicate blue skies it is often the only color which will get the effect. _prussian blue_ possesses a depth and power and a quality of color which make it unique. the greenish tone gives it great value in certain combinations _as far as its tinting effect is concerned_. but it is not reliable as a pigment. it changes under various conditions, and fades with the light. it is not to be depended upon. _antwerp blue_, a weaker kind of prussian blue, is even more fugitive. it is a pity that these colors will not stand, but as they will not, we must get along without them. _indigo_ has a certain grayish quality which is useful sometimes, but it cannot be placed among the even moderately permanent colors. _the blacks_ may be classed as blues, because they will make green if mixed with yellow. considered as blues, they are, of course, dense and negative, and should not be too freely used. but they are all permanent. the only ones we need speak of are _ivory black_, which has a reddish cast, and _blue black_, which is weaker, but lacks the purplish note, which is often an advantage. =greens.=--we need mention only a few greens. there are numerous greens, of various degrees of permanence, but it is not necessary to speak of all the colors on the market. you could not use them all if you had them, and we may as well confine ourselves to those we really need. _veridian_, or _emeraude green_, is the deepest and coldest of our greens, and is permanent. it is too cold, and looks even more so at night. in use it needs the addition of some yellow which holds its own at night, such as yellow ochre, or the painting will be impossible in gaslight, and even worse under electric light. _emerald green_ is the same as the french _veronese_ green, and is generally permanent. it is said to turn dark, and does lose some of its brilliancy with time and the effect of impure air. but there are places where one needs it, especially in sketching, and it is well to use it sometimes. but bear in mind that it is not absolutely permanent, and as the quality that it gives, brilliant light green, is the very one it will lose should it change, don't expect too much of it. _terre verte_ is a very weak color. but it is most tender in its quality, and is permanent to all intents and purposes. it may get slightly darker in time, but will not lose the qualities for which it will be used. it is very useful to use with ivory black or elsewhere, to slightly modify a reddish tendency, and is a fine glazing color. _the chrome greens_, by whatever name, brunswick green, or the better-known cinnabar or zinnober greens, are all bad. they are useful colors as color, but they will not stand, and you will even get better color by mixing certain yellows and blues than these will give you, so you had better lay them aside, tempting as they are. =other colors.=--you will notice that i have said nothing about the various browns and olives and purples. it is simply because it is better for you to make all these colors than to get them in the tubes. the earths and the browns of madder are all good, and the mixing of madders and good blues will make all the shades of violet and purple you can possibly want in their purity. =palettes.=--we have, then, a number of pigments which are solid and safe, of each of the primary colors, and of such variety of qualities that the whole range of possible color is practicable with them in combination. to recapitulate, let us make a list of them. the permanent colors. zinc white. (lead white enough so.) cadmium yellow. cadmium orange. cadmium yellow, pale. strontian yellow. yellow ochre. roman ochre. transparent gold ochre. raw sienna. burnt sienna. raw umber. aureolin. chinese vermilion. scarlet vermilion. orange vermilion. light red. rose madder. pink madder. purple madder. madder carmine. rubens madder. ultramarine blue brilliant. ultramarine blue french. permanent blue. cobalt. cerulean blue. ivory black. blue black. veridian. emerald green. terre verte. here is a list of colors which will work well together, and with which you can do as much as is possible with colors as far as our present materials go. most of these colors, i am aware, are among the more expensive ones. this i am sorry for, but cannot help. the good colors are at times the expensive ones, but as there are no cheaper ones which are permanent to take their places, it would be the falsest of economy to use others. =palette principles.=--in making up your palette, you must so arrange it that you can get pure color when you want it. there is never any trouble to get the color negative; to get richness and balance is another matter. if you will refer to the color plates, you will see that in each of the three primary colors there are pigments which lean towards one or the other of the other two. the scarlet red is a yellow red. the chinese vermilion and the rose madder are blue reds. the same holds with yellows and blues, as orange cadmium is a red yellow, and strontian yellow is a greenish yellow. this is, in practice, of the utmost importance in the absence of the ideal color, for when we deal with the practical side of pigment, we deal with very imperfect materials which will not follow in the lines of the scientific theory of color. if we would have the purest and richest secondary color, we must take two primaries, each of which partakes of the quality of the other. to make a pure orange, for instance, we must use a yellow red and a red yellow. if we used a bluish red and a bluish (greenish) yellow, the blue in both would give us a sort of tertiary in the form of a negative secondary instead of the pure rich orange we wanted. this latter fact is quite as useful in keeping colors gray without too much mixing when we want them so, but nevertheless we must know how to get pure color also. these characteristics have a bearing on the setting of our palette, for we must have at least two of each of the three primary colors--red, yellow, and blue--and white. there may be as many more as you want, but there must be at least that number. but the character of the work you are doing will also have an influence on the colors you use. you may not need the same palette for one sort of picture that is essential to another. you can have a palette which will do all sorts of work, but a change in the combinations may often be called for in accordance with the different color characteristics of your picture. i will suggest several palettes of different combinations which will give you an idea of how you may compose a palette to suit an occasion. i do not say that you should confine yourself to any or all of these palettes, nor that they are the best possible. but they are safe and practical, and you may use them until you can find or compose one better suited to your purposes. they will all be made up from the colors we have in our list, and will all have the arrangement i called your attention to as to the use of two of each primary. it would be well if you were to compare each of the colors with the corresponding one in the plates at the end of the book, and get acquainted with its characteristic look. [illustration: =no. .= =no. .= =no. .=] =expense.=--i have several times referred to the relative expense of colors, and stated that when the good color was of greater cost than others, there was nothing for it but to get the best. i cannot modify that statement, but it is well to say that as a rule the expensive colors are not those that you use the most of, although some are used constantly. vermilion is so strong a color that the cost hardly matters. of the deep blues the same is true. but the light yellows, and the madders and cobalt, will often make you groan at the rapidity of their disappearance. but you can get more tubes of them, and their work remains, while were you to use the cheaper paints, the flight of the color from the canvas would make you groan more, and that disappearance could never be made good except by doing the work all over. =sizes.=--the cheapest colors come in the largest tubes. in the illustration, no. represents the full size of the ordinary tube of the average cost. some of the most commonly used colors come in larger tubes at corresponding price. only professionals get these large sizes except in the case of white. you use so much of this color that it hardly pays to bother at all with the ordinary tube of it. get the quadruple tube, which is nominally four times as large, but contains nearly five times as much. no. represents the actual size of the second size of tubes in which a few regular-priced colors come; while the smallest tube is the size of no. . in this sized tube all the high-priced colors are put up; the cadmiums, the madders, vermilions, and ultramarines and cobalts. the cheap colors are the ordinary earths, such as the ochres, umbers, siennas, the blacks and whites, and all sorts of greens and blues and lakes, which you had better have nothing to do with. =arrangement.=--in the following palettes i shall give the names of the colors, as you would look down upon them on your palette. the arrangement is that of a good many painters, and is a convenient one. it is as well to arrange them with white at the right, then the yellows, then the reds, the browns, blues, blacks, and greens. but i have found this as i give it, to be the best for use, simply because it keeps the proper colors together, and the white, which you use most, where it is most easily got at, and i think you will find it a good arrangement. =a cheap palette.=--this palette i give so that you may see the range possible with absolutely sound colors which are all of the least price. you can get no high key with it. all the colors are low in tone. you could not paint the bright pitch of landscape with it, yet it is practically what they tried to paint landscape with a hundred years ago, and it accounts largely for the lack of bright greens in the landscapes of that date. but for all sorts of indoor work and for portraits you will find it possible to get most beautiful results. you will notice there is no bright yellow. that is because cadmium is expensive and chrome is not permanent. vermilion is left out for the same reason. add orange vermilion and cadmium yellow and orange cadmium, and you have a powerful palette of great range and absolute permanency. white. naples yellow. venetian red. yellow ochre. light red. roman ochre. indian red. transparent gold ochre. burnt sienna. raw umber. permanent blue. ivory black. terre verte. =an all-round palette=:-- white. strontian yellow. orange vermilion. cadmium yellow. rose madder. orange cadmium. burnt sienna. yellow ochre. raw umber. cobalt. ultramarine. ivory black. terre verte. this palette is a pretty large one, and you can do almost anything with it. but for many things it is better to have more of certain kinds of colors and less of others. this is a good palette for all sorts of in-the-house work, and if you call it a still-life palette, it will name it very well. for a student it will do anything he is apt to be capable of for a good while. =a rich low-keyed portrait and figure palette=:-- white. cadmium. chinese vermilion. orange cadmium. light red. yellow ochre. rose madder. transparent gold ochre. raw umber. cobalt. blue black. terre verte. =a landscape palette.=--landscape calls for pitch and vibration. you must have pure color and great luminosity, yet a range of color which will permit of all sorts of effects. the following will serve for everything out-of-doors, and i have seen it with practically no change in the hands of very powerful and exquisite painters. there are no browns and blacks in it because the colors which they would give are to be made by mixing the purer pigments, so as to give more life and vibration to the color. the blackest note may be gotten with ultramarine and rose madder with a little veridian if too purple; the result will be blacker than black, and have daylight in it. the ochre is needed more particularly to warm the veridian. white. strontian yellow. orange vermilion. cadmium yellow. pink madder. orange cadmium. rose madder. yellow ochre. cobalt. ultramarine. veridian. emerald green. if you paint figures out-of-doors you will need this same palette. madder carmine or purple madder, and cerulean blue may also usefully added to this list. =a flower palette.=--for painting flowers the colors should be capable of the most exquisite and delicate of tints. there should be no color on the palette which cannot be used in any part of the picture. the range need not be so great in some respects as in others, but the richness should be unlimited. in the matter of greens, it is true though hard to convince the amateur of, that if there were no green tube in your box, and you mixed all your greens from the yellows and blues, the picture would be the better. as to the browns, they will put your whole picture out of key. in this palette i am sure you will find every color which is needed. there are few greens, but those given can be used to gray a petal as well as to paint a leaf; therefore there is no likelihood of your using a color in a leaf which is not in tone with the flower. i am calculating on your using all your ability in studying the influence of color on color, and in mixing pure colors to make gray. here as elsewhere in these palettes i have in mind their use according to the principles of color and light and effect as laid down in the other parts of the book, which deal specially with those principles. if you do not understand just why i arrange these palettes as i do, turn to the chapters on color, and on the different kinds of painting, and i think you will see what i mean, and understand better what i say, about these combinations. of course you do not need all of these colors on your palette at the same time. some are necessary to certain flowers whose richness and depth you could hardly get without them. the colors you should have as a rule on your palette are these:-- white. strontian yellow. orange vermilion. cadmium yellow. pink madder. yellow ochre. rose madder. cobalt. ultramarine. veridian. emerald green. to add to these when needed, you should have in your box, pale and deep cadmium, chinese vermilion, madder carmine, and purple madder. chapter vi vehicles and varnishes a vehicle is any liquid which is mixed with the color to make it fluent. the vehicle may be ground with the pigment or mixed with it on the palette, or both. oil colors are of course ground in oil as a vehicle; but it is often necessary or convenient to add to them, in working, such a vehicle as will thin them, or make them dry better. those which thin or render more fluent the paint are oils and spirits; those which make them dry more quickly are "dryers" or "siccatives." all vehicles must of necessity have an effect on the permanency of the pigments. bad vehicles tend to deteriorate them; good ones preserve them. =oils.=--the most commonly used oils are linseed and poppy oil. they are neither of them quick dryers, and are usually mixed with sugar of lead, manganese, etc., to hasten the drying. these have a tendency to affect the colors; but if one will have recourse to none but the pure oils, he must be patient with the drying of his picture. for this reason it would be well to use vehicles with the colors on the palette as little as possible--and that is against thin and smooth painting. oil has the tendency to turn dark with time, thus turning the color dark also. the only way to reduce this tendency is to clarify the oil by long exposure to the sunlight. the early german painters used oil so clarified, and their pictures are the best preserved as to color of any that we have. but the drying is even slower with purified oil than with the ordinary oil. it would be best, then, to use oil as little as may be in painting, and if you need a dryer, use it only as you actually need it in bad drying colors, and then very little of it. the essences of turpentine and of petroleum may be used to thin the paint, and are preferable to oil, because they have less darkening tendency. they do not, however, bind the color so well, and the paint should not be put on too thinly with them. usually there is enough oil ground with the pigment as it comes in the tubes to overcome any probability of the paint scaling or rubbing when thinned with turpentine, but in the slow-drying, transparent colors there will be a liability to crack. moderation in the use of any and all vehicles is the best means of avoiding difficulty. use vehicles only when you need them, not habitually, and then only as much as there is real need of. if you use oil, use the lighter oils, and expect some darkening in time. prefer turpentine to oil, and expect your color to dry rather "dead," or without gloss, by its use. if you intend to varnish, this is all right. if you do not intend to varnish the picture, keep the color as near the pure tones as you can. the grayer the color, the more the "dead" or "flat" drying will make it look colorless. =varnishes.=--when the picture is done, after it is dry, varnishes are used to bring out the freshness of color, and to preserve the surface from outside influences of all sorts. a picture must be well dried before it is varnished, or it is likely to crack; six months is not too long to be safe. if you are in a hurry to varnish, use a temporary or retouching varnish. the best varnish is necessary for use on pictures. never use any except a varnish especially made for the purpose by a reliable colorman. those made by winsor and newton may all be depended upon. pay a good price for it, and don't use too much. mastic varnish is that which is most favorably known. be sure you get a good and pure quality. varnishes are made from various gums or resins dissolved in a solvent such as alcohol, turpentine, or oil, as the case may be. the lighter gums are the best for pictures, because they do not affect the color of the picture. much care should be used in putting on the varnish--that it is even and as thinly distributed as will serve the purpose. it should not be flowed on, but carefully worked out with a clean brush, and then kept from dirt and dust until dry. the finer varnishes in oil or turpentine are best for ordinary use. those in alcohol do not hold their freshness so well. varnishes are sometimes used as siccatives, and to mix with colors which are liable to affect other colors, or to lack consistency. usually, however, they are not needed. chapter vii palettes the most important qualities in a palette are that it should be large enough, and that it should balance well on the thumb. whether it is round or square is a slight matter. the oval palette is usually best for the studio because the corners are seldom of use, and add weight. but for sketching, the square palette fits the box best. [illustration: =oval palette.=] get a palette much larger than you think you want. when you get it on your thumb the mixing-surface is much less than there seemed to be before it was set, for all the actual surface is between the row of colors and the thumb. if the palette is polished it is not essentially better; it is easier to keep clean, as far as looks go, but of no greater real service. if the choice is between a larger unpolished and a smaller polished one, the price being the consideration, get the larger one. get a light wood in preference to a dark wood for a choice of color, but not if there is better grain or lighter weight in the darker palette. it is an assistance in painting not to have to compare the tint you are mixing with too dark a surface, for the color looks lighter than it is; so the light wood will help you to judge justly of the color while the palette is new. when it has been worked on a while it will come to have a sympathetic color anyway. this bears on the cleanliness of your palette. it is a mistake to consider that cleanliness demands that the palette should be cleaned to the wood and polished after every painting. on the contrary, if a little of the paint is rubbed out over the palette every time it is cleaned, after a few weeks there will come a fine smooth polish of paint, which will have a delicate light gray color, which is a most friendly mixing surface. =adapting.=--when you get a new palette, before you use it take a little trouble to carve out the thumb-hole to fit your thumb. make it large enough to go over the ball of the thumb, and set easily on the top of the hand. when the hole is too small the thumb gets numb after working a little while, which this will obviate. =cleanliness.=--the cleanliness of a palette consists in its being always in such a condition that you can handle it without getting dirty; that the mixing-surface will not foul the freshly mixed paint; and that the paint around the edge is always so that you can pick up a fresh, clean brushful. if you try to clean off all your color every day and polish your palette nicely, you will not only take up more time with your palette than you do with your painting, but the fact that some left-over paint may be wasted will make you a little stingy in putting on fresh paint, which is one of the worst habits a beginner can fall into. you cannot paint well unless you have paint enough on your palette to use freely when you need it. it is all well enough to put on more, but nothing is more vexing than to have to squeeze out new paint at almost every brushful. you must have paint enough when you begin, to work with, or you waste too much time with these details. [illustration: =arm palette.=] if you are painting every day, leave the good paint where it is at the end of your work, and scrape off all the muddy or half-used piles, and clean carefully all the palette except those places where the paint is still fresh and pure. then, when you have to add more to that, clean that place with the palette-knife before squeezing out the new color. in this way the palette will not look like a centre-table, but it will be practically clean, have a good clear mixing-surface, and you will neither waste paint nor be stingy with it. =the arm palette.=--for painting large canvases, where the largest-sized brushes are used and paint must be mixed in greater quantities, the arm palette is a most convenient thing if it is well balanced. it is in the way rather than otherwise for small pictures, and is useful only as it is particularly called for. chapter viii other tools it remains to speak of those tools which are not essentials, but conveniences, to painting. even as conveniences, however, they are of importance enough to have an influence on your work. you can paint without them, but you will work more easily for the having of them; and something of the sort, although not necessarily of the same kind, you must have. you may improvise something, in other words, to take the place of these, but you would be wiser to get those which are made for the purpose. =the box.=--first, the box. you must keep your things together somehow, and it would be as well that you keep them in a box which is portable and suited to the purpose. when you sketch you must have a proper box, and why not have one which is equally serviceable in the house? those most commonly sold to amateurs are of tin, and they are various in size and construction, and not too expensive. the only thing against them is the difficulty of adapting them to service different from that they were designed for; that is, if you want to put in a different sort of panel, or if you want to fix it in the cover for convenience, or anything like that, you cannot readily do it, because you cannot use tacks in them. this counts for more than would seem on a sketching trip. but the tin box is light, and is not easily broken, and while it is in shape is practical. [illustration: =the color box.=] the box to be most recommended is the wooden one. it costs more than the tin one,--about twice as much; but you can always arrange it for an emergency very readily, and if it gets broken you can fix it yourself, or get any carpenter to do it for you, while you may be a good many miles from a tinner, who would be necessary to mend your tin box. you had better not get too large a box. get one long enough for the brushes; but if you are going to use it out-of-doors much, get a narrow one with a folding palette, so as to save weight. in this way you will get a larger palette than you could get in a smaller and wider box, which is an important consideration. [illustration: =palette knife.=] =the palette-knife.=--of more immediate necessity to your painting is the palette-knife. you cannot keep the palette clean without it. now and again you may want to mix colors, or even paint with it. but you constantly get rid of the too much mixed color on your palette with it, and this is essential to good painting. take some care to select a good knife; have the blade long enough to be springy and flexible, but not too long. about five inches from the wood of the handle to the end of the blade is a good length. and see that it bends in a true curve from one end to the other, and is not stiff at the end and weak in the middle. it should have the same even elasticity that a brush should have. for painting you need a "trowel palette-knife," which has a bent shank, making the blade and the handle on different levels, so that as you press the blade to the canvas, the fingers are kept away from the painted surface. the shank should be round, and the blade very fine and flexible. the knife should balance nicely in the hand, and turn freely in the fingers, so that you can paint with either face of the blade with equal balance. it takes some care to pick out a good trowel-knife, as a poor one is worse than none. =the scraper.=--you frequently need to scrape rough paint from a canvas or a picture, and you need to scrape strongly to get a dirty palette clean. you can use an old razor for the first purpose, or a piece of broken glass, if you use it carefully, and any old knife can be used to clean your palette. but a regular tool is better than either. the scraper here shown is the best. [illustration: =the scraper.=] =the oil-cup.=--do not use oils and vehicles very much. but when you need them you must have something to keep them in, convenient to the brush when working. it should have a spring to hold it on to the palette, and of such form that the contents are not easily spilled by the movement of the hand or the body when painting. the form here illustrated is the best that has been brought out so far. [illustration: =the oil-cup.=] =the mahl-stick.=--sometimes you want to rest the hand when painting, for steadiness. the "mahl-" or rest-stick has a ball on the end, which one usually covers with a wad of rag, so that it can be placed against the canvas without injury, and the hand rested on it. it is so light that it can be held with the brushes in the palette hand, and stiff enough to support the brush-hand. [illustration: =mahl-sticks.=] =sketching adjuncts.=--out-of-doors you must have a seat, and you should have an umbrella. the best seat for a man, because it can be folded into so small a space, is the three-legged stool. this is not usually satisfactory for a woman, whose skirts tip it over. the better seat for her is shown below. the back is not very firm, but it does give support, and the whole is light and strong. [illustration] [illustration] the umbrella should be large and light, and one such as the illustration, with a valve in the top to let the wind and hot air through, will be found cooler and less easily blown over. you should have some strong rings sewed on to it, so that you can fasten it from four sides by strings, to keep it steady if the wind blows hard. the umbrella should be of light-colored material, preferably white; but if it is lined with black, the shade will be better, and give no false glow to the color. [illustration] chapter ix studios a painting-room is always a matter of serious consideration, and to the beginner one of difficulty. the arrangement of light is not easy, and a special window is almost always out of the question; yet in some way the light must be so managed that the canvas is not covered with reflected lights which prevent one from seeing what the paint is really like. =the north light.=--the first thing to be looked for is a steady light which will be always about the same, and not be sunny part of the time and in the shade the rest. a window looking to the north for this reason is generally selected. the sun does not come into it, and the light is diffused and regular. the effect of the light in the studio is cool, but colors are justly seen in it, and the light that falls on any object or model in it will be always the same. if there is to be a skylight, this should be arranged in the same way. the sash must not be flat, but must be nearly enough to the vertical to prevent the sun's direct rays from entering, and it must for that purpose face to the north. this makes the skylight practically a high north light in the roof or ceiling, and that is what it should be. whether the sash is above the ceiling or just below it, in the roof or in the wall, is of no particular importance. the thing to be seen to is that it is high enough for the light to enter above the head of the painter, and that it be so directed that only north light can come in. the size of the window is also to be carefully considered. it should not be too large. too much light will be sure to interfere with the proper control of light and shade on your model, and too little will make your painting too dark. the position of the window with reference to the shape of the room has to do with this. the most probable form of a room is long and narrow. for painting it is better that the window be in the middle of the end wall, high up, rather than in the middle of the side wall. you will find that you can more easily get distance from your model, and at the same time get the light both on him and on your canvas. but a painting-room should not be too narrow. about one-third longer than it is wide, with the window in one end, will give you a good light, and the further end of the room will not be too dark, as it would be apt to be if the room were longer. preferably, too, the window should be to the left of the centre of the wall rather than to the right, as you face it; so that when you are as near the side wall as you can get, with the light over your left shoulder (as it should be), the light will strike on the canvas well, and not too directly on the front of the model. it will give you a better lateral position to the window, in other words. if you have to accept a window in a side wall, this is even more to be looked for. if the window is to the right of the centre, you will have a strong side-light on your model; but you will either have no light on your canvas, or you will have to turn so that the light falls on your canvas from the right, which is awkward, as the paint is in the shadow of the hand and brush which puts it on. the height of the lower part of the window should be at least six feet from the floor, and for ordinary purposes the proportion of window space to floor space should be about one-tenth. it is impossible to give a rule; but if the floor is about twelve feet by sixteen, say, a window about five feet by four will be enough, or six and a half by three if it is placed horizontally. if you want intense light with strong contrast of light and shade on your model, have the window smaller and squarer, and place your easel just under it, where the light is good. the rest of the room will be dark. better have the window large enough, and have it so curtained that you can cut off as much light as you need to. all this is if you are going to make yourself a window; in which case you will think well before you commit yourself. more probably you will have to get along as best you can with the ordinary room and the ordinary window. in which case get a high room with the window running up as close to the ceiling as possible, and facing north, then you can curtain it so as to control the light. =arrangement of ordinary windows.=--for a good working light you should have only one window in your room; for the light coming in from two openings will make a crossing of rays which will not only interfere with the simplicity of the effect of light and shade on your model, but will make a glare on your canvas. you can either close the light out of the right-hand window, or, better, arrange a curtain so the light from one window will not fall on the same place as that from the other. when you are working from still life or from a model this is often an advantage, for you can have a strong side-light on the model, and a second light on the canvas. to arrange this, have a sort of crane made of iron, shaped like a carpenter's square, which will swing at right angles with the wall, the arm reaching, say, six feet into the room. swing this by means of staples well up to the ceiling, so that the light cannot get over it, and near to the right-hand window. from this arm you can hang a thick, dark curtain, which will cover and shut out the light from the right-hand window when swung back over it. if you want to pose your model in the light of that window, while you paint in that of the other, swing the curtain out into the room at right angles to the wall, and it will prevent a cross light from the two windows; so that when the model is posed back of the curtain the light from that window will not fall on the canvas, nor the light from the other fall on the model. the light will be best on your picture coming from well above you as you work. there will then be no reflections on the paint. you may find it necessary to cover entirely the lower half of the window which gives your painting-light. you will find it useful to have a shade of good solid holland, arranged with the roller at the bottom, and a string running up through a pulley at the top; so that you may pull the shade _up_ from the bottom instead of _down_ from the top, and so cut off as much of the lower part of the window as is necessary. if you need the light from the lower part of the window, you may make a thin curtain of muslin to cover the lower sash, which will let the light through, but diffuse the rays and prevent reflection. =the size of the studio.=--of course a large studio is a good thing, but it is not always at one's command. but you should try to have the room large enough to let you work freely, and have distance enough from the model. the size that i have mentioned, twelve feet by sixteen, is as small as one should have, and one that you can almost always get. if the room is smaller than that, you cannot do much in it, and fifteen by twenty will give ample space. part ii general principles chapter x mental attitude there is a theoretical and a practical side to art. the business of the student is with the practical. theories are not a part of his work. before any theoretical work is done there is the bald work of learning to see facts justly, in their proper degree of relative importance; and how to convey these facts visibly, so that they shall be recognizable to another person. the ideals of art are for the artist; not for the student. the student's ideal should be only to see quickly and justly, and to render directly and frankly. technique is a word which includes all the material and educational resources of representation. the beginner need bother himself little with what is good and what is bad technique. let him study facts and their representation only. choice of means and materials implies a knowledge by which he can choose. the beginner can have no such knowledge. choice, then, is not for him; but to work quite simply with whatever comes to hand, intent only on training the eye to see, the brain to judge, and the hand to execute. later, with the gaining of experience and of knowledge, for both will surely come, the determination of what is best suited for the individual temperament or purpose will work itself out naturally. the student should not allow the theoretical basis of art to interfere with the directness of his study of the material and the actual. nevertheless, he should know the fact that there is something back of the material and the actual, as well as in a general way what that something is. because the student's business is with the practical is no reason why he should remain ignorant of everything else. it is important that he should think as a painter as well as work as a painter. if he has no thought of what all this practical is for, he will get a false idea of his craft. he will see, and think of, and believe in, nothing but the craftsmanship: that which every good workman respects as good and necessary, but which the wise workman knows is but the perfect means for the expression of thought. some consideration, then, of the theoretical side of art is necessary in a book of this kind. a number of considerations arise at the outset, about which you must make up your mind:-- is judgment of a picture based on individual liking? can you hope to paint well by following your own liking only? is it worth your while to try to do good work? can you hope to do good work at all? you must decide these questions for yourself, but you must remember that it depends upon how you decide them whether your work will be good or bad. to take the last consideration first, you may be sure that it is worth while to try to do good work, and mainly because you may hope to do as good work as you want to do. that is, precisely as good work as you are willing to take the trouble to learn to do. talent is only another name for love of a thing. if you love a thing enough to try to find out what is good, to train your judgment; and to train your abilities up to what that judgment tells you is good, the good work is only a matter of time. you will notice that you must train your judgment as well as your ability; not all at once, of course. but how can you hope to do good work if you do not know what good work is when you see it? if you have no point of view, how can you tell what you are working for, what you are aiming at? and if you do not know what you are aiming at, are you likely to hit anything? =train your judgment.=--let us say, then, that you must train your critical judgment. how are you to set about it? in the first place, don't set up your own liking as a criterion. make up your mind that when it comes to a choice between your personal taste and that of some one who may be supposed to know, between what you think and what has been consented to by all the men who have ever had an opinion worthy of respect, you may rest assured that you are wrong. and when you have made up your mind to that, when you have reached that mental attitude, you have taken a long step towards training your judgment; for you have admitted a standard outside of mere opinion. another attitude that you should place your mind in is one of catholicity--one of openness to the possibility of there being many ways of being right. don't allow yourself to take it for granted that any one school or way of painting or looking at things is the only right one, and that all the other ways are wrong. that point of view may do for a man who has studied and thought, and finally arrived at that conclusion which suits his mind and his nature,--but it will not do for a student. such an attitude is a sure bar to progress. it results in narrowness of idea, narrowness of perception, and narrowness of appreciation. you should try all things, and hold fast to that which is good. and having found what is good, and even while holding fast to it, you should remember that what is good and true for you is not necessarily the only good and true for some one else. you must not only hold to your own liberty of choice, but recognize the same right for others. if this is not recognized, what room has originality to work in? the range of subject, of style, and of technical methods among acknowledged masters, should alone be proof of the fact that there is no one way which is the only good way; and if you would know how to judge and like a good picture, the study of really great pictures, without regard to school, is the way to learn. =how to look at pictures.=--the study of pictures means something more than merely looking at them and counting the figures in them. it implies the study of the treatment of the subject in every way. the management of light and shade; the color; the composition and drawing; and finally those technical processes of brush-work by means of which the canvas gets covered, and the idea of the artist becomes visible. all these things are important in some degree; they all go to the making of the complete work of art: and you do not understand the picture, you do not really and fully judge it, unless you know how to appreciate the bearing on the result, of all the means which were used to bring it about. all this adds to your own technical knowledge as well as to your critical judgment, both of which ends are important to your becoming a good painter. =why paint well.=--you see i am assuming that you wish to be a good painter. there is no reason why you should be a bad painter because you are not a professional one. the better you paint the better your appreciation will be of all good work, the keener your appreciation of what is beautiful in nature, and the greater your satisfaction and pleasure in your own work. there are better reasons for painting than the desire to "make a picture." painting implies making a picture, it is true; but it means also seeing and representing charming things, and working out problems of beauty in the expression of color and form: and this is something more than what is commonly meant by a picture. the picture comes, and is the result; but the making of it carries with it a pleasure and joy which are in exact proportion to the power of appreciation, perception, and expression of the painter. this is the real reason for painting, and it makes the desire and the attempt to paint well a matter of course. =craftsmanship.=--the mechanical side of painting naturally is an important part of your problem. you cannot be too catholic in your opinion with regard to it. it is vital that you be not narrowed by any prejudices as to the surface effect of paint. whether the canvas be smooth or rough, the paint thick or thin, the details few or many,--the goodness or badness of the picture does not depend on any of these. they are or should be the result, the natural outcome because the natural means of expression, of the manner in which the picture is conceived. one picture may demand one way of painting and another demand a quite different way; and each way be the best possible for the thing expressed. it all depends on the man; the make-up of his mind; the way he sees things; the results he aims to attain,--all of them controlled more or less by temperament and idiosyncrasy. what would produce a perfect work for one man would not do at all for another. the works of the great masters offer the most marked contrasts of ideal and of treatment, and painters have varied greatly in their manner of some painting at different periods of their lives. rembrandt, for instance, painted very thinly in his early years, with transparent shadows and carefully modelled, solidly loaded lights. later in life he painted most roughly; and "the syndics" was so heavily and roughly loaded that even now, after two hundred years, the paint stands out in lumps--and this is one of his masterpieces. so again, if you will compare the manipulation in the work of raphael with that of tintoretto, that of rubens with that of velasquez, or most markedly, the work of frans hals with that of gerard dou, you will see that the greatest extremes of handling are consistent with equal greatness of result. =finish.=--from this you may conclude that what is generally understood by the word "finish" is not necessarily a thing to be sought for. the tendency of great painters is rather away from excessive smoothness and detail than towards it. while a picture may be a good one and be very minute and smooth, it by no means follows that a picture is bad because it is rough. the truth is that the test of a picture does not lie in the character of the pigment surface _in itself_ at all, nor in whether it be full of detail or the reverse, but in the conception and in the harmonious relation of the technique to the manner in which the whole is conceived. the true "finish" is whatever surface the picture happens to have when the idea which is the purpose of the picture is fully expressed, with nothing lacking to make that expression more complete, nor with anything present which is not needed to that completeness. this too is the truth about "breadth," that much misunderstood word. breadth is not merely breadth of brush stroke. it is breadth of idea, breadth of perception; the power of conceiving the picture as a whole, and the power of not putting in any details which will interfere with the unity of effect. =intent.=--in this connection it would be well to bear in mind the purpose of the work on which the painter may be engaged. a man would, and should, work very differently on canvases intended for a study, a sketch, and a picture. the study would contain many things which the other two would not need. it is the work in which and by which the painter informs himself. it is his way of acquiring facts, or of assuring himself of what he wants and how he wants it. and he may put into it all sorts of things for their value as facts which he may never care to use, but which he wishes to have at command in case he should want them. the sketch, on the other hand, is a note of an effect merely, or of a general idea, and calls for only those qualities which most successfully show the central idea, which might sometime become a picture, or which suggests a scheme. a carefully worked-up sketch is a contradiction in terms, just as a careless study would be. a picture might have more or less of the character of either of these two types, and yet belong to neither. it might have the sketch as its motive, and would use as much or as little of the material of the study as should be needed to make the result express exactly the idea the painter wished to impart, and no more and no less. all these things should be borne in mind, as you study the characteristics of paintings to learn what they can mean to you beyond the surface which is obvious to any one; or as you work on your own canvas to attain such power or proficiency, such cleverness or facility, as you may conclude it is worth your while to try for. chapter xi tradition and individuality a picture is made up of many elements. certain of them are essentially abstract. they must be thought out by a sort of _mental vision without words_. this is the most subtle and intimate part of the picture. these are the means by which the ideal is brought into the picture. =line, mass, and color.=--such are the qualities of _line_, dissociated from representation; of _mass_, not as representing external forms; and _color_, considered as a _quality_, not as yet expressed visibly in pigment, nor representing the color of any _thing_. when these elements are combined they may make up such conceptions as proportion, rhythm, repetition, and balance, with all the modifications that may come from still further combination. it is because these elements are qualities in themselves beautiful that actual objects not beautiful may be made so in a painting, by being treated as _color_ or _line_ or _mass_, and so given place on the canvas, rather than as being of themselves interesting. a face, for instance, may be ugly as a _face_, yet be beautiful as color or light and shade in the picture. these qualities, i say, do not represent--they do not necessarily even exist, except in the mind to which they are the terms of its thought. nevertheless, they are the soul of the picture. for whatever the subject, or the objects chosen for representation, it is by working out combinations of these elements, through and by means of those objects, that the picture really is made. the picture, _as a work of art_, is not the representation of objects making up a subject, but a fabric woven of color, line, and mass; of form, proportion, balance, rhythm, and movement, expressed through those actual objects in the picture which give it visible form. i do not purpose to go deeply into these matters here. elsewhere, as they bear practically on the subject in hand, as in the chapters on "composition" and on "color," i shall speak of them more fully. but i wish here to call attention to this abstract side of painting in order to show the relation between the two classes of things, the one abstract and the other concrete, which together are needed to make up a picture. the concrete, or material, part of a picture includes all those things which you can look at or feel on the canvas; and by seeing which you can also see the abstract qualities, which do not _visibly_ exist until made visible through the disposition of these tangible things, on the canvas. beyond this is included all the technical qualities of expression; form, as _drawing_; all representations of objects; the pigment by means of which color is seen; and all those technical processes which produce the various kinds of surface in the putting on of paint, and bring about the different effects of light and shade and color, form or accent. in learning to paint, it is with these concrete things that you should concern yourself mainly. the science of painting consists in the knowledge of how to be the master of all the practical means of the craft. for it is with these that you must work, with these you must express yourself. these are the tools of your trade. they are the words of your art language--the language itself being the abstract elements--and the thoughts, the combinations which you may conceive in your brain by means of these abstract elements. you must have absolute command of these _materials_ of painting. no matter how ideal your thought may be, no matter how fine your feeling for line and color and composition, if you do not know how to handle the gross material which is the only medium by which this can all be made visible and recognizable to another person, you will fail of either expressing yourself, or of representing anything else. now you will see what i have been driving at all this time; why i have been talking in terms which may well be called not practical. i want to fix your attention on the fact that there are two qualities in a picture: that one will be always within you, mainly, and will control the character of your picture, because it will be the expression of your mental self; and the other the practical part, which any one may, and all painters must learn, because it is the only means of getting the first into existence. the one, the abstract part, no one can tell you how to cultivate nor how to use. if i tried to do so, it would be my idea and not yours which would result. i can only tell you that it is the _thought of art_, and you must think your own thoughts. but the other, the material, the concrete, the practical, it is the purpose of this whole book to help you to understand and to acquire the mastery of, so far as may be done by words. teaching by words is difficult, and never completely satisfactory. but much may be done. if you will use your own brains, so that what does not seem clear at first may come to have a meaning because of your thinking about it, we may accomplish a great deal. i cannot make you paint. i cannot make you understand. i can give you the principles, but you must apply them and think them out. everything i say must be in a measure general; for the needs of every one are individual, and the requirement of each technical problem is individual. i must speak for all, and not to any one. yet i shall state principles which can always be made to apply to each single need, and i will try to show how the application may be made. =technique.=--the science of painting consists of a variety of processes by means of which a canvas is covered with pigment, and various objects are represented thereon. the whole body of method and means is called technique; the several parts of technique are called by names of their own. that part which applies to the putting on of the paint may be generally called _handling_, although the word _painting_ is sometimes restricted to this sense, and _brush-work_ is often used for the same thing. the other technical means will be spoken of in their proper place. let me say now a few words as to _handling_ in general. where did all this technique come from? from experiment. ever since art began, men have been searching for means of fixing ideas upon surfaces. but it is only within the last four hundred years that the processes of oil painting have been in existence--simply because they are peculiar to the use of pigments ground in oil as a vehicle, and the oil medium was not invented until the middle of the fifteenth century. with the invention of this medium new possibilities came into the world, and a continual succession of painters have been inventing ways of putting on paint, the result being the stock of methods and processes of handling which are the groundwork of the art of painting to-day. from time to time there have been groups of artists who have used common methods, and who have developed expression through those methods which became characteristic of their epoch; and because the resulting pictures were of a high degree of perfection, their methods of handling acquired an authority which had a very determining effect on different periods of painting. in this way have come those ideas as to what kind of painting or what ways of putting paint on canvas should be accepted as "legitimate." and the methods accepted as legitimate or condemned as illegitimate have been varied from time to time--those condemned by one period being advocated by another; and the processes themselves have been almost as varied as the periods or groups of men using them. in the long run, methods and processes have received such authoritative sanction from having been each and all used by undoubted masters, that they have become the traditional property of all art, which any one is free to use as he finds need of them. they have become the stock in trade of the craft. the artist may use them as he will, provided only he will take the trouble to understand them. he must understand them, because the manipulations which make up these different processes accomplish different effects and different qualities; and as the painter aims at results, if he does not understand the result of a process when he uses it, he will get a different one from that which he intended. the painter should not be hampered by process; he should not be controlled in the expression of himself by tradition. he should feel free to use any or all means to bring about the result he aims at, and he should allow no tradition or point of view to prevent him from selecting whichever means will most surely or satisfactorily bring about his true purpose. of course there are many ways of using paint which are unsafe. some pigments are unsafe to use because they either do not hold their own color, or tend to destroy the color of others. you should always bear this in mind; and if you care for the permanence of your work, you should not use such materials or such processes as work against it. but beyond this, the whole range of the experience and experiment of the workers who have gone before you are at your command, to help you to express yourself most perfectly or completely; to represent whatever of visible beauty you may conceive or perceive. and this is the whole aim of the painter; to stand for this is the whole purpose of the picture. chapter xii originality originality is not a thing to strive for. if it comes, it is not through striving. the search for originality seldom results in anything worth having. it is a quality inherent in the man; and the best way of being original in your work is to be natural. perhaps the most useful advice which you could receive is that you be always natural. never be artificial nor insincere; never copy another person's subject, manner, or method, with the intention of doing as he does. the most original things are often the most simple, because they have come naturally from a sincere desire to express what has been seen or felt, in the most direct way. if every one were content to be himself, there would be no dearth of originality. no two people are alike, neither are any two painters alike; they could not be. they do not look alike, nor see alike, nor feel alike, nor think alike. how, then, should they paint alike? the attempt to do a thing because another has made a success of that sort of thing is the most fruitful source of the commonplace in painting. paint that which appeals to you most fully. don't try to paint what appeals to some one else. if you like it, then do it; and do it in the most direct way you can find; only do it so as to fully and completely convey just what it is that _you_ like, unaffected by anything else. and because you have seen or felt for yourself in your own way, and expressed that; and because you are not another, nor like any other that ever was, what you have done will not be like anything else that ever was--and that is originality. but never imitate yourself, either. be open. be ready to receive impressions and emotions. and if you have done one thing well, accept that in itself as a reason for not doing it again. there are always plenty of things--ideas, impressions, conceptions, appreciations--waiting to be painted; and if you try to paint one twice, you fail once of freshness, and lose a chance of doing a new thing. that is what a painter is for, not to cover a canvas with paint, hang it on a wall, and call it by a name. the painter is the eye of the people. he sees things which they have no time to look for, or looking, have not learned to see. the painter serves his purpose best when he recognizes the beautiful where it was not perceived before, and so sets it forth that it is recognized to be beautiful through his having seen it. there is the difference between the artist and the photograph, which sees only facts as facts; which while often distorting them does so mindlessly, and at best, when accurate, gives the bad with the good in unconscious impartiality. but back of the painter's eye which sees and distinguishes is the painter's brain which selects and arranges, using facts as material for the expression of beauties more important than the facts. but what is a picture? i have met some strange though positive notions as to what is and what is not a picture. some persons think that a certain (or uncertain) proportion of definite forms and objects are necessary to make canvas a picture; that it must contain some definite and tangible facts of the more obvious kind. i remember one man who asserted that a canvas in an exhibition was not a picture, but only a sketch, because it had nothing in it but an expanse of sea and sky. to make a picture of it there was needed at least a moon, and some birds, or better, a ship and some reflections. all this sort of thing is idle. a picture is not a picture because it has more of this or less of that; it is a picture because it is complete in the expression of the idea which is the cause of its existence. and that idea may be tangible or not. it may include many details or none. it is an idea which is best or only expressed by being made visible, and which is worthy of being expressed because of its beauty; and when that idea is wholly and fully visible on canvas or other surface, that surface is a picture. what the contents of a picture shall be is a matter personal to the painter of it. the manner in which it is conceived and produced is determined by his temperament and idiosyncrasy. a picture is a visible idea expressed in terms of color, form, and line. it is the product of perception plus feeling, plus intent, plus knowledge, plus temperament, plus pigment. and as all these are differently proportioned in all persons, it is only a matter of being natural on the part of the painter that his picture should be original. chapter xiii the artist and the student it is a mistake to make pictures too soon. the nearest a student is likely to get to a picture is a careful study, and he will be as successful with this, if he makes it for the study of it, as if he made it for the sake of making a picture--better probably. the making of a picture for the picture's sake is dangerous to the student. his is less likely to be sincere. he is apt to "idealize," to make up something according to some notion of how a picture should be, rather than from knowledge of how nature is. real pictures grow from study of nature. they are the outcome of maturity, not of the student stage. this implies something deeper than superficial facts, and a power of selection,--of choice and of purpose which must rest on a very broad and deep knowledge. the artist is always a student, of course; but he is not a student only. he is a student who knows what and why he wants to study; not one who is in process of finding out these things. =aims.=--it should be noted that the aim of the student and the aim of the artist are essentially different. the student's first aim is to learn to see and represent nature's facts; to distinguish justly between relations. it is the training of the eye and the judgment. imitation is not the highest art; but the highest art requires the ability to imitate as a mere power of representation. the mind must not be hampered in its expression by lack of knowledge and control of materials, and the painter who is constantly occupied with the problems he should have worked out in his student days, is just so far from being a master. he must have all his means perfectly at his command before he can freely express himself. the acquirement of this mastery of means is the student's business. everything he does which aids him in this makes him so much nearer to being a painter. but he must remember that he is still a student, and as he hopes to be a painter, must have patience with himself; must not hurry himself, must work as a student for the ends of a student. all the facts of nature art uses. but she uses them as she needs them, simplifying, emphasizing, suppressing, combining as will best meet the necessities of the case in hand. all this requires the utmost knowledge, for it must be done in accordance not only with laws of art, but with the laws of nature. there are changes which can be made, and be right--made as nature might make them. other changes which would be false to nature's ways, and so false to art also. for art works through nature always, and in accordance with her. this is the aim of the painter, to express ideas through nature, not to express notions about nature. the facts of nature are the material of art; the words of the language in which the ideas of art are to be conveyed. but there are truths more important than these facts. the underlying sentiment of which they are the external manifestation, and which is the vivifying spirit of them. this is the true fact of the picture. it is more important to give the sentiment of the thing than to give the fact of it; not merely because it is more truly represented so, but because the beauty is shown in showing the character. for the character of the fact is the beauty of the fact. to bring out the beauty which may lie in the fact is the aim of the artist; to acquire the ability to do this is the aim of the student. chapter xiv how to study there is a right and a wrong way to study, and it all centres around the fact that what you aim to learn is perception and expression. what you are to express you do not learn; you grow to that. but you must learn how to use all possible means; all the facts of visible nature, and all the characteristics of pigments. all qualities, color and form and texture, are but the means of your expression, and you must know how they may be used. your perception and appreciation must be trained, and your mind stored with facts and relativities. then you are ready to recognize and to convey the true inwardness you find in conditions commonplace to others. you are to see where others see not; for it is marvellous how little the average eye sees of the really interesting things, how little of the visual facts, and how rarely it sees the picture before it is painted. all is material to the painter. it is not that "everything that is, is beautiful," but that everything that is has qualities and possibilities of beauty; and these, when expressed, make the picture, in spite of the superficial or obvious ugliness. in one sense nothing is commonplace, for everything exists visibly by means of light and color, and light and color are of the fundamental beauties. so arrange or look upon the commonplace that light and color are the most obvious qualities, and the commonplace sinks into the background--is lost. there is nothing like painting to make life fascinating; for there is nothing which brings so many charming combinations into your perception, as the habit of looking to find the possibilities of beauty in everything that comes within your view. you must form the habit of looking always from the painter's point of view. the painter deals primarily with pigment, and what can be represented with pigment; chiefly color and light in the broadest sense, including form and composition, as things which give bodily presence and action to the possibilities of pigment. shade, or shadow, of course, is an actuality in painting, because it is the foil of light and color, and furnishes the element of relation. =methods.=--two general methods are at the command of the student from the first,--to study at once from nature, or to copy. i think i may safely claim to speak for the great body of teachers who are also professional artists, in saying that copying is a means of study rather for the advanced student than for the beginner. you cannot begin too soon to study nature with your own eyes, and to accumulate your own facts and observations and deductions. the use of copying is not to find out how to paint, but to see how many ways there are of painting. the great end of all study in painting is to train the eyes to see relations, to see them in nature. it is not to see that there are relations, but to see where they are; to recognize and to measure and to judge them. painting is the art of perception before everything, and when you copy you only see, accept, what some one else has already perceived. copying does not help you to _perceive_, it can only help to show you how something can be _expressed after_ it has been perceived, and that is not the vital thing in the study of painting. handling, composition, management of color, technique of the brush generally, may be studied by copying. these only--and for these things it is useful and wise. but the beginner is not ready for these, for they are not the alphabet, but the grammar of painting. =danger.=--the danger of too early copying is that the student learns to set too much value on surface qualities rather than those to which the surface is merely incidental. with this is the danger (a serious one, and one hard to overcome the results of) that the student becomes clever as a producer of pictures before he has trained his power to see. he becomes a student of pictures rather than a student of nature, and when in doubt will go to art rather than to nature for help and suggestion. could anything be more fatal? consider the things that student will have to unlearn before he can think a picture in terms of nature--the only healthy, the only prolific way of thinking. he sees always through other people's eyes, and thinks with other people's brains, and feels other people's emotions; that is not creation; that is the attitude for the spectator, not for the painter. these things are all useful and good, but not for the beginner. later, when you have found out something for yourself, when you have ground of your own to stand on, then you may not only without danger, but with benefit, go to the work of other men to see the range of possible point of view and expression, to see the scope of technical material and individual adaptation; and so broaden your own mental view and sympathy, possibly reform or educate your taste, and perhaps get some hints which will help you in the solving of some future problem. but rather than the undue sophistication which can result from unwise copying,--the over-knowledge of process and surface, and under-knowledge of nature,--is to be preferred a frank crudeness of work which is the result of an honest going to nature for study. you should not expect a perfect eye for color and form too soon. better a healthily youthful crudity of perception based on nature, and standing for what you have yourself studied and worked out, which represents your own attainment, than a greater show of knowledge which is insincere and superficial because it represents a mere acceptance of the facts set down by others; and not only that, but even with it an acceptance also of the actual terms used by those others. often copying is the most convenient way in which you can get help. there is really much to be learned from it, and you can make a picture serve as a criticism on your own work. particularly in the matter of color or tone, as something to recognize the achievement of for its own sake. if you can recognize good color as such, aside from what it represents, if you can appreciate tone in a picture which is the work of some one else, you are so much the more likely to notice the lack of those qualities in your own work. so, too, there are qualities of brush-work which are always good, and some which are always bad. you can study the former positively, and the latter negatively, in studying and copying other pictures. i have mentioned the training of your critical judgment as a necessity in your education. you can do it slowly in learning to paint, but you can facilitate that training by copying and studying really good pictures, if you do it in the right way. =the right way.=--so if you do copy, do it in the right way, so as to get all the real help out of it, and not so as to have to unlearn the greater part of it. don't copy "to get a picture." don't make a copy which at a distance has a resemblance to the original, but which on a more careful study shows none of the qualities which make the original what it is. not only see to it that the same subtleties of perception and representation are preserved in your copy, but that they are attained in the same way. use the same brush-work or other execution. use the same pigments in the same places, with the same vehicles; study the original with your brain as well as with your eyes and hands; try to see not only how the painter did a certain thing but why. so that as you work, you follow him in the working out of his problem, and make it your problem also. in this way you will get some real good from his picture, and not a mere canvas which has been of no use to you, nor can be of any satisfaction to any one else who knows a good picture (copy or original) when he sees it. =why copy.=--there are only two good reasons for making a copy,--to study the original as a problem, and to have something to serve as an example of the master on a work which you like. and in either case such a sincere manner of copying as i urge is the only possible way to get what you want. to "get a picture," regardless of whether it really does justice to the original, is the wrong way, and this leads always through bad copying to bad painting, and you are fortunate if you escape an entire perversion of your point of view. you may be able to make some money now and again by doing this sort of thing, but you will never learn anything from it. on the contrary, it is the surest way you could find of closing your eyes to all that is worth seeing. =get to nature.=--if you would really learn to paint, to see for yourself, to represent what you see in your own way, you cannot get to nature too soon. don't bother about what the thing is, so long as it is nature herself. by nature i mean anything, absolutely anything which exists of itself, not painted. whether it be the living figure, or a cast, or a bit of landscape, or a room interior--all things which actually exist must show themselves by the facts of light falling upon them: the relation of color, and the contrasts of light and dark. whatever you see is useful to you in this way, for these bring about all the qualities and conditions which you most need to study. but models are not always at command, interiors do not easily stay a long time at your disposal, and bits of landscape which interest you are not always easy to get at; for a student is apt to be either far advanced or unusually ardent who will find interest in the first combination which falls under his eye. therefore the most practically useful material for study, which is always "nature," is what we call "still life,"--_"morte" nature_, dead nature is the better or more descriptive name the french give to it. by this is meant any and all combinations of objects and backgrounds grouped arbitrarily for representation. bottles and jugs and fruits, books and bric-a-brac; all sorts of things lend themselves readily and interestingly to this use. the great value of still life for the student lies in the variety of combinations of color and form, of light and shade and texture, that he can always command. there is practically no problem possible to in-the-house light which may not be worked out by means of still life. the training in perception and representation, in composition and arrangement, and in technique, which it will give you is invaluable; and most important of all, while you can always make such arrangements as will interest you, because you need place only such things or colors as you like, you are really studying nature herself, you are looking at the things themselves, and the result you get is the product of your own eyes and brain. the problem is entirely your own, both in the stating and the solving, and what you learn is well learned, and represents a definite progress along the right line. you have worked for the sake of the working, and there is nothing which you have got from it that may not be applicable to any future work you may do, that does not directly lead to the great object you have in view,--to learn how to paint well. =be sincere.=--but, above all, be sincere with yourself; don't do anything to be clever, nor because it pleases some one else. painting is difficult enough at best. you need all the interest and fascination that the most charming thing can have for you to help you to do it so that it is worth the trouble. don't take away the whole life of it by insincerity. a very thoughtful painter said to me once that he believed that all really good pictures could be shown to be good by the sole criterion of conviction. can you think of any painting being good without it? can you think of any amount of cleverness and ability making a picture good without that. and it is quite as important in study as elsewhere. never do anything except seriously; take yourself and your work seriously; only by serious work can serious results come. =joy in your work.=--do it because you like to. but like good work and hate bad work; and, above all, hate half-way work. understand yourself: what you want to do and why you want to do it, and then be honest enough with yourself to work till you have honestly done what you wanted to do, and as you wanted to do it. part iii technical principles chapter xv technical preliminaries =reasons.=--painting is something more than laying on paint. it implies a certain amount of knowledge of necessary preliminaries--technical matters which are not strictly painting, but without which good painting is impossible. it is all well enough to put paint on canvas, but there must be a knowledge on which to base the where and the why of laying it on, as well as the knowledge of how to lay it on. if anything, the where and why are more important than the how. there are almost infinite methods and processes of getting the paint onto the surface. every painter may select or invent his own way, and provided it accomplishes the main purpose--the bringing about of combinations of form, relative color and pitch, the expression of an idea--it is all right. but there are laws which govern the positions of the different spots of paint, and the reasons for placing them in certain relations. these laws are back of personal idiosyncrasy. they are a part of the laws which control all material things. the painter may no more go contrary to them in painting than he may go contrary to physical laws in any of the practical matters of life. if pigments are not used in accordance with the laws governing their chemical composition, they will not stand. if the laws of proportion are not observed in composition, the picture will not balance. the laws of color harmony are as mathematically fixed as the law of gravity. so, too, the relations of size, which give the impression of nearness or distance to objects, rest on the laws of optics. you have infinite scope for individual expression inside of those laws, but you cannot go outside of them. =scientific knowledge not necessary.=--it is not necessary that you should have any special knowledge of all these laws nor even of the application of them; but you must recognize their existence, and have some practical notions about them and their effect on your work. you can of course carry the study as far as you are interested to go. the farther the better. the more you study them the more you will find them interesting, and the easier will it be for you to work freely within their limitations. but this is not the place for special study. there are books which treat particularly of these things, and you must go to them. but a superficial consideration of these subjects cannot be left out of any book which would be really helpful to the student of painting. i can go into the theory of things only so far as to give you that amount of practical knowledge which is absolutely necessary to you as a painter. what i shall give is given only because it cannot be wisely left out, and the form of it as well as the substance and quantity are determined by the same reason. as you hope to become a painter, then, do not neglect to study and think of this part of the book, not merely as a preliminary to the process of painting, but as containing matter which is continually essential to it--which is part and parcel of it. another reason for the careful reading of these chapters is that any discussion of the art of painting necessarily demands the use of words or phrases which must be understood. to speak of technical things presupposes the use of technical phrases, and without a knowledge of the words there can be no comprehension of the thought. chapter xvi drawing drawing is basic to painting. good painting cannot exist without it. i do not mean that there must be always the outline felt or seen, but that the understanding of relative position, size, and form must be felt; and that is drawing. drawing is not merely form, but implies these other things, and painting is not legible without them. they go to the completeness of expression. movement, and action, as well as composition and all that it implies or includes, depend upon drawing, and they are vital to a painting. =importance of drawing.=--much has been said and written of drawing as being the most important thing in a picture; so much so, as to excuse all sorts of shortcomings in other directions. this is a mistake. drawing is essential because you cannot lay on color to express anything without the colors taking shape, and this is drawing. but still the color itself, and other characteristics which are not strictly a part of drawing, are quite as important to painting, simply because the thing without them could not be a painting at all: it would be a drawing. all painters fall into two classes,--those who are most sensitive to the refinements of form, and those most sensitive to refinements of color and tone. but the great colorists, the painters _par excellence_, the workers in pigment before everything else, those who find their sentiment mainly there, these are the men who have made painting what it is, and who have brought out its possibilities. and looking at painting from their point of view, drawing cannot be more important than other qualities. =neglect of drawing.=--great artists have sometimes not been perfect draughtsmen. they have been careless of exactness of form. but they have always been strong in the great essentials of drawing, and they have made up for such deficiencies as they showed, by their greatness in other directions. delacroix, for instance, sometimes let his temperament run him into carelessness of form in his hurry to express his temperamental richness of color. these things are superficial to the greater ends he had in view, but we have to distinctly forgive it in accepting the picture. and a great colorist may be so forgiven; he makes up for his fault by other things. but there is no forgiveness for the student or the painter who is simply a poor draughtsman. the effect of neglect of drawing is to make a weak picture. a painter, who was also an exceptionally fine draughtsman, once spoke of work weak in drawing as resembling "boned turkey." lack of firmness, indecision, characterize the painter who cannot draw. those firm, simple, but effective touches which are evident somewhere in the work of all good painters, are impossible without draughtsmanship. they mean precision. precision means position. position means drawing. =proportions.=--all good work is from the general to the particular, from the mass to the detail. keep that in mind as a fundamental principle in good work, whatever the kind. you should never place a detail till you have placed your larger masses. the relative importance of things depends on the consideration of those most important first. let this be your first rule in drawing. proportions next. largest proportions, then exactness of relative proportions. study first in masses. see nothing at first but the large planes. as hunt said, "hang the nose on to the head, not the head on to the nose." in getting proportions of the great masses, let no small variations of line or form break into your study of the whole. therefore, see outlines first in straight lines and angles. if you cannot see them at first, study to find them; look at the long lines of movement; mass several curves into one line representing the general direction of them. train yourself to look at things in this way. there is nothing which will not fall into position so. this will not be easy at first. the training of a quick perception of these things is a part of your training in drawing--the first essential. it is not that the straight lines are to be sought for themselves, but that they simplify the first breaking up of the whole into its parts, and so makes more easy the study of proportion. the accuracy of the general masses makes possible a greater accuracy of the lesser proportions which come within them. you see form more truly also, when the perception of it is founded on a mass or a line indicating the larger character of it. it saves time for you, too. you do not have to rub out so much. the great lines and planes once established, everything else falls naturally into place. spend much time over this part of a drawing. cut the time you give to a drawing into parts, and let the part given to the laying in of larger proportions be from a third to a half of the whole time, and study and correct these until they are right. once these are right a very slight accent tells for twice what it would otherwise, and so you need much less detail to give the effect. =modelling.=--in the same way that you have laid out the proportions in mass, lay out your proportions of light and shade. model your drawing by avoiding the small until the large variations of shade are in place. avoid seeing curves in relief as you have avoided curves of outline. try to analyze the modelling into flat planes, each one large enough to give a definite mass of relief. don't be afraid of an edge in doing this. let your flat tone come frankly up to the next tone and stop. this again is not for any effect in itself, but only for facility and exactness. later you can loose it as much as you see fit in breaking up the drawing into the more delicate planes, and these again into the most subtle. study first the outline and then the planes. constantly compare them as to relation; you will find it suggestive. remember that your aim is to produce a whole, not a lot of parts, and although a whole includes the parts, the parts are incidental. =measurements.=--you will always have to use measurements for the sake of accuracy. probably you will never be able to dispense with them. the best way would be to take them as a matter of course, and get so that you make them almost mechanically, without thinking of it. you will save yourself an immense deal of time and trouble by accepting this at once; for accuracy is impossible without measurements, and the habit of accuracy is the greatest time-saver. hold your charcoal in your hand freely, so that your thumb can slip along it and mark off parts of the object when you sight at them across the coal. measure horizontal and vertical proportions into themselves and into each other. height and breadth are checks to each other. if the height is a certain proportion of the breadth, then the smaller proportions of height must have equivalent proportions to each other _as well as to breadth_. measure these and you are sure of being right. =steps.=--divide your drawing into steps or stages of work. you will find it a helpful thing in studying. you will do it quite naturally later. do it deliberately at first, as a matter of training. _first step._--measure the extreme height and breadth of the whole group or object of your drawing, with accuracy, and mark each extreme. _second step._--outline the great mass of it with the simplest lines possible. give the general shape of the whole. this blocks it in. _third step._--measure each of the objects in the group, or the parts most prominent, if it be a single object. measure its height and breadth, both in its own proportion and in proportion to the dimensions of the other parts and of the whole. enclose it in straight lines as you did with the whole mass. _fourth step._--find the more important of the lesser proportions in each object, and block them out also. this should map out your drawing exactly and with some completeness. _fifth step._--lay in simple flat tones to fill in these outlines, and keep the relations of light and dark very carefully as you do so. _sixth step._--this should leave your paper with a few large masses of dark and light, which can now be cut into again with the next smaller masses, giving more refinement to the whole. this also should so break up the edges as to get rid of any feeling of squareness or edginess. _seventh step._--put in such accents of dark, or take out such of light, as will give necessary character and force to the drawing. i do not say that this method produces the most finished drawing; but it is a most excellent way to study drawing, and, more or less modified, is practically the basis of all methods. in practised hands it allows of any amount of exactness or freedom of execution. i have seen most beautiful work done in this way. =home study.=--it is not necessary to have a teacher in order to draw well; but it is necessary to find out what are the essentials of good drawing, and to work definitely and acquire them. good drawing is a combination of exactness and freedom; and the exactness must come first. the structure of the thing must be shown without unnecessary detail. you should always look at any really good drawing you can come at, and try to see what there may be in it of helpful suggestion to you. [illustration: =drawing of hands.= _dürer._] =study the masters.=--get photographs of drawings by the masters of drawing, and study them. see how they searched their model for form and character. do not make so much of the actual stroke as the manner in which it is made to express and lend itself to the meaning. in this drawing by albrecht dürer you have a splendid example of exactness and feeling for character. you could have no better type of what to look for and how to express it. although it is not important that you should lay on the lines of shading just as this is done, it is important to notice how naturally they follow, and conform to, the character of the surface--which is one of the ways in which the point helps to search out the modelling. this drawing is made with a black and a white chalk on a gray ground; a very good way to study. a good hint is also offered in this drawing, of the modesty of the old masters, in subject. a hand or part of any object is enough to study from. there is no need to always demand a picture in everything you do. =materials.=--for all purposes which come in the range of the painter you should use charcoal. for purposes of study it is the most satisfactory of materials; it is sensitive, easily controlled, and easily corrected. for sketching or preliminary drawing on the canvas it is equally good. you should have also a plumb-line with which to test vertical positions of parts in relation to each other, and this, with the pencil held horizontally for other relative positions, gives you all you need in that direction. in drawing on the canvas it is not often necessary to do more than place the various objects and draw their outlines carefully and accurately. sometimes, however, as in faces, or in pictures which include important figures, you will need a shaded drawing, and this can be done perfectly with charcoal, and fixed with fixative afterwards. =imitation.=--perfect drawing, in the sense of exact drawing, is not the most important thing. a drawing may be exact, and yet not be the truer for it. it may be inexact, and yet be true to the greater character. so, too, the drawing may have to change an accidental fact which is not worth the trouble of expression or which will injure the whole. there is something more important than detail, and the essential characteristics can be expressed sometimes only by a drawing which is deliberately false in certain things in order to be the more true to the larger fact. then, too, there is an individuality which the artist has to express through his representation of the external; and he is justified in altering or slighting facts in order to bring about that more important self-expression. of course the self must be worth expressing. there is no excuse for mere falsification nor for mere inability. but a good workman will not be guilty of that, and the complete picture in its unity will be his justification for whatever means he has taken. =feeling.=--drawing must be a matter of feeling. a perception of essential truth of a thing, as much as of trained observation of the facts. the good draughtsman becomes so by training his observation of facts first, always searching for those most important, and emphasizing those; and with the power which will come in time to his eye and hand easily and quickly to grasp and express facts, will come also the power of mind to grasp the essential characteristics. and the trained hand and eye will permit the most perfect freedom of expression. this is the desideratum of the student; this is the end to be aimed at,--the perfect union of the trained eye and hand to see and do, and the trained mind to feel and select, and the freedom of expression which comes of that perfect union. chapter xvii values =the term.=--the word "values" is seldom understood by the average individual, yet it should not be difficult to take in. it means simply the relation between degrees of strength of light and dark, and of color considered as light and dark. translate the word into "importance," and think what it means. the relative importance, strength, force, power, value, of a touch of color to make itself felt in the whole--that is its value. a weak value is a note which does not make itself felt; a strong value is one which does. a false value is a touch of color which has not its proper relation to the other spots or masses of color in the picture, _considered_ as _light and dark_--_not as color per se_. =importance.=--as soon as you grasp this idea you see at once how important values must be to the whole picture. it is not possible to do any good work, either in black and white or color, without it. in one sense it is incidental to drawing. when you consider drawing as the expression of modelling, the relative roundness of parts, and of relief, as well as outline, values come into play to give the relations of planes of light and dark in black and white. in this it becomes part of drawing. =values and color.=--as soon, however, as color becomes a part of the picture, values become the basis of modern painting as distinguished from the painting of previous centuries. values, of course, always existed wherever good painting existed, because you cannot paint without recognizing the relations, the relative pitch and relative strength of tones. but the word is never heard in relation to old masters. it is apparently of quite modern coinage and use, and it probably was coined because of a new and greater importance of the fact which it represents. the older painters in painting a picture kept parts of a whole object--a head or a figure, say--in relation to itself; and that was values--but restricted values. the whole picture was arranged on the basis of arbitrary lighting, which entered into the scheme of composition of that picture. this is not values, but what is generally understood by the older writers when they speak of "chiaroscuro." the modern painter deals little with chiaroscuro. it is almost obsolete as a technical word. arbitrary arrangement of light and shade in a picture is not usual nowadays, and consequently the word which expressed it has dropped somewhat into disuse. =basis of modern painting.=--instead of the old composition in arbitrary light and shade, the modern painter accepts the actual arrangement of light as the basis of his picture, and spreads the values over the whole canvas. in this way the quality of "value" becomes the very foundation of the modern picture. for you cannot accept the ordinary or actual condition of light, as governing the light and shade of your picture, without extending the same scheme of relations over the whole canvas. every most insignificant spot of light and shade and color, as well as the most significant, must keep its place, must hold its true relation to every other spot and to all the rest. each value must keep its place according to the laws of fact, or it is out of touch with the whole. the whole picture must be either on a scheme of general fact, or a scheme of general arbitrary arrangement. any one piece of arbitrary arrangement in this connection must be backed up by other pieces of arbitrary arrangement, or else there must be no arbitrary arrangement at all. the modern painter accepts the former; and the importance of "values" is the result. =absolute and relative values.=--we may speak of values as absolute or relative. this relates to the key or pitch of a painting. it is the contribution to the art of painting which was made by the french painter, manet. you may paint a picture in the same pitch as nature, or you may transpose it to a higher or a lower pitch. the relations of the different values of the picture will hold the same relation to each other as the values of nature do to each other. but the actual pitch of each, the relation of each to an absolute light or an absolute dark, will be higher or lower than in nature. this would be relative values. or the pitch, relation to absolute light and dark, of each value may be the same, value for value, as in nature. this would be absolute values. the attempt at absolute values was not made at all before manet's time. a landscape was frankly painted down, or darker, from the pitch of nature, and an interior as frankly painted up, or lighter. in both cases the values had to be condensed,--telescoped, so to speak,--because pigment would not express the highest light nor the lowest dark in nature; and to have the same number of gradations between the highest and lowest notes in the picture, the amount of difference between each value had to be diminished--but _relatively_ they were the same. the degree of variation from the actual was the same all through. with absolute values the painter aims at giving the _just note_,--the exact equivalent in value that he finds in nature. he tries to paint up to out-door light or paint down to in-door light. =close values.=--this naturally calls for a fine distinction of tones--the utmost subtlety of perception of values. to paint a picture in which the highest light may not be white nor the lowest dark black, and yet give a great range and variety to the values all through the picture, the values must be _close_; must be studied so closely as to take cognizance of the slightest possible distinction, and to justly express it. this sort of thing was not thought of by the older painters. it is the distinguishing characteristic of modern painting. it is a substitution of the study of _relation_ for the study of _contrast_. =study of values.=--you see at once how important, how vital, the study of values is to painting. even if you paint with arbitrary lighting, as is still done by many painters, especially in portraits, you have to consider and study them as they apply to _parts_ of your picture. you will find no good painter of old time who did not study relations. if you look at a velasquez, you will find that he knew values, even though he did not use the word. but if you are in touch with your century, if you would paint to express the suggestion you receive from the nature you study, or if you would convey the idea of truth to the world around you, as that world exists, frankly accepting the conditions of it, you will have to make the study of values fundamental to your work. ="the fourth dimension."=--you study values with your eyes only, but you cannot _measure_ values. length, breadth, and thickness you can measure; but values constitute what might be called a "_fourth dimension_," and you must measure it by your eye, and without any mechanical aid. your eye must be trained to distinguish and judge differences of value. =helps.=--there are, however, several things which you can use to help you in training your eye to distinguish values. when you look for values you do not wish to see details nor things, you wish to see only masses and relations. you must _unfocus_ your eye. the focussed eye sees the fact, and not the relation. anything which will help you to see outlines and details less distinctly will help you to see the values more distinctly. =half-closed eyes.=--the most common way is to half close the eyes, which shuts out details, but permits you to see the values. some painters think this falsifies pitch, and prefer to keep the eyes wide open, but to focus them on some point _beyond_ the values they are studying. this is not so easy to do as to half close the eyes, but becomes less difficult with practice. =the blur glass.=--an ordinary magnifying-glass of about -inch focus, which you can get at an optician's for fifteen or twenty cents, will blur the details, and help you to see the values, because it makes everything vague except the masses. you can frame it for use by putting it between two pieces of cardboard with a hole in them, or you can do the same with two pieces of leather sewed around the edge. of course the glass itself is all you need, but it will be easily broken if unprotected. do not try to look _through_ the glass at your subject, but _at_ the glass and the image on it. =the claude loraine mirror.=--this is a curved mirror with a black reflecting surface. the object is reflected on it, _reduced_ both in size and pitch. it concentrates the masses and the color, and so helps to distinguish the relative values. you can make a mirror of this sort for yourself by painting the back of a piece of plate glass black. the real claude loraine mirror is expensive. =the common mirror= is also very helpful in distinguishing values. it reduces the size of things, and reverses the drawing so that you see your subject under different conditions, and a fresh eye is the result. place the group and your painting side by side, if you are painting still life, and look at both at the same time in the mirror. do the same with a portrait and the sitter. =diminishing glass.=--much the same effect can be had by using a double concave lens. the picture is not reversed, but it is reduced, and the details eliminated. in using any of these means you must remember that it is always the relations and not the things you are studying; and the most useful of these aids is the blur glass, because you cannot possibly see anything in it but the values and color masses, everything else being blurred. chapter xviii perspective there are two kinds of perspective, linear and aërial. the former has to do with the manner in which horizontal lines appear to converge as they recede from the foreground, and so produce the effect of distance. the latter has to do with the effect of distance, which is due to the successive gradations of gray in color noticeable in objects farther and farther away from the observer. =aërial perspective.=--to the student, aërial is _color_ perspective, because of the modifications which colors undergo when removed to a distance. modifications of tone are largely due to varying distance, and so aërial perspective is largely a matter of _values_. that they are due to the greater or less thickness of the atmosphere is only a matter of interest, not of importance, to the artist; the important thing to him is that the careful study of values is necessary to relief, perspective, and particularly, atmosphere and envelopment in a picture. to the student, aërial perspective should be only a matter of observation and of the study of relations of color and value. there are no rules. the effect depends on greater or less density of atmosphere. near objects are seen through a thin stratum of air, and farther objects through a thicker one. all you have to do to express it is to recognize the relative tones of color. paint the colors as they are, as you see them in nature, and you need have no trouble with aërial perspective. but though i say "this is all you have to do," don't imagine that i mean that it is always easy, or that it can be done without thought and study. you will have to use all your powers of perception if you wish to do good work in this direction. especially on clear days, or in those climates where the air is so rare that objects at great distances seem near, you will find that atmospheric perspective is simply another name for close values. and close values, you remember, are the most subtle of relations of light and shade and color. the only rule for aërial perspective is to use your eyes, and do nothing without a previous careful study of nature. =linear perspective.=--for most kinds of painting, a technical knowledge of linear perspective is not necessary, although every painter should understand the general principles of it. in most cases all the exactness needed can be obtained by comparing all lines carefully with the pencil or brush handle held horizontally or vertically, and studying the angle any line makes with it. apply to all objects in perspective the same observation that you do in any other kind of drawing, and you will have little trouble, as long as you are drawing from an object before you. but if you go into perspective at all, go into it thoroughly. a little perspective is a dangerous thing, and more likely to mix you up by suggesting all sorts of half-understood things than to be of any real help. there are some kinds of subjects, however, which require a complete knowledge of all the rules and processes of perspective. whenever you have to construct a picture from details stated but not seen; when you have a complicated architectural interior or exterior; when figures are to be placed at certain distances or in definite positions, and they are too numerous or the conditions are otherwise such that you cannot pose your models for this purpose; then you may have to make most elaborate perspective plans, and lay out your picture with great exactness, or the drawing which is fundamental to such a picture will not be true. such men as gérôme and alma-tadema plan their pictures most carefully, and so did paul veronese, and it requires a thorough and practical knowledge of perspective. but this is not the place to teach you perspective. it is a subject which requires special study, and whole volumes are given to the elucidation of it. in a work of this kind anything more than a mention of the bearings of perspective on painting would be out of place. if you do not care to take up seriously the study of perspective, avoid attempting to paint any subjects which call for it; or, if you do care to study it, get a special work on that subject, give plenty of time to it, and study it thoroughly. =foreshortening.=--in this connection i may speak of something which is akin to perspective, yet the very reverse of it. as its name implies, foreshortening means the way in which anything seems shortened or in modified drawing as it projects towards you; while perspective is the manner in which lines appear as they recede from you. like aërial perspective, the best way to study foreshortening is to study nature, not rules. perspective can be worked out by rule, foreshortening cannot. pose your model, or if it be a branch of a tree, or anything of that sort, place yourself in the proper position with reference to it, and then study the drawing _as it appears_, thinking nothing of _how it is_; make your measurements, and place your lines as if there were no problem of foreshortening at all, but study the relations of lines, of size, and of values, and the foreshortening will take care of itself. after all, foreshortening is only good drawing, and a good draughtsman will foreshorten well, while a bad draughtsman will not. therefore, learn to draw, and don't worry about the foreshortening. chapter xix light and shade =chiaroscuro.=--a few words about chiaroscuro will be useful. this is a term of great importance and frequent use with artists and writers up to within the last thirty or forty years. it has of late become almost unused. the reason for this was explained in the chapter on "values." nevertheless, it is well that the student should know what the word meant, and still means. although he may hear and use it less frequently than if he had lived earlier in the century, the pictures, certain qualities of which no other word expresses, still exist, and are probably as immortal as anything in this world can be. he should know what those qualities are, and he should understand their relation to the work of to-day. chiaroscuro is described by an old writer as suggesting "a theme which is the most interesting, perhaps, in the whole range of the art of painting. of vast importance, great extent, and extreme intricacy. chiaroscuro is an italian compound word whose two parts, _chiar_ and _oscuro_, signify simply _bright_ and _obscure_, or _light_ and _dark_. hence the art or branch of art that bears the name regards all the relations of light and shade, and this independently of coloring, notwithstanding that in painting, coloring and the clair-obscure are of their very nature inseparable. the art of clair-obscure, therefore, teaches the painter the disposition and arrangement in general of his lights and darks, with all their degrees, extreme and intermediate, of tint and shade, both in single objects, as the parts of a picture, and in combination as one whole, so as to produce the best representation possible in the best manner possible; that is, _so as to produce the most desirable effect upon the senses and spirit of the observers_. in a word, its end and aim are fidelity and beauty of imitation; its means, every effect of light; chromatic harmonies and contrasts; chromatic values, reflections; the degradations of atmospheric perspective, etc." the italics are mine. you see at once that this covers a pretty wide field. but it is to be again noted that the use of chiaroscuro by the old painters meant not only the expression of the light and shade of nature, but the so arranging of the objects and the way that the light was permitted to fall on them, that certain parts of the picture became shadow, while the light was concentrated in some other part or parts. in this way the arrangement of the light and shade of a picture became a distinct element of composition, and a very important one. the _quality_ of "light" was something to be emphasized by contrast. it is stated (whether truly or not) that the proportion of light to dark was according to a definite rule or principle with certain painters, some permitting more, and some less, space of canvas to be proportioned to light and to dark. the gradations of light and dark were studied of course; but the quantity of light spread over the canvas was calculated upon, so that the less space of light and the greater the space of dark, the more brilliant would be the main spot of light in the picture. they wrought with the _quality of light and shade_ as an _element_, just as they would with the quality of line or of color, considered apart from objects or facts they might represent. =arbitrary lighting.=--this is the arbitrary light and shade spoken of in the chapter on "values"; and although the older painters included what we now call values in their word chiaroscuro, it is this fact of arbitrary lighting as opposed to accepting the light as it does fall, or selecting those places or times where it does naturally fall as we would like it to, that makes the difference between modern painting generally and the older method, and has made chiaroscuro as a word and as a quality of painting so much a thing of the past. =light and shade.=--but we may use the old word with a more restricted meaning. if we use it to mean literally light and shade, the way light falls on objects and the relief due to the light side and the shadow side of them, we get a use which implies a very important and practical matter for present study. [illustration: =eggs. white against white.=] =objects visible by light and shadow.=--if you will put a white egg on a piece of white paper, with another white paper back of it, you will see that it is only because the egg obstructs the light, the side of it towards the light preventing the light rays from touching the other side, and so casting a shadow on itself and on the paper, that the egg is visible. you will also see, if you manipulate the egg, that according as the light is concentrated or diffused, or according to the sharpness of the shadow and light, is the egg more or less distinct. =contrast.=--apply these facts to other objects, and you will see how important the principle of contrast is to the representation of nature. not only contrast of light and shade, but contrast of color. and you should make a study, both by setting up groups of objects in different lights, and by studying effects of lights wherever you are, of the possibilities and combinations of light and shadow. =constant observation.=--the painter is constantly studying with his eyes. it is not necessary always to have the brush in your hand in order to be always studying. keep your brain active in making observations and considering the relations in nature around you. the amount of material you can store up in this way is immense, to say nothing of the training it gives you in the use of your eyes, and in the practice of selection of motives for work. schemes of color or composition are not usually deliberately invented within the painter's brain. they are in most cases the result of some suggestion from a chance effect noticed and remembered or jotted down, and afterwards worked out. nature is the great suggester. it is the artist's business to catch the suggestion and make it his own. for nature seldom works out her own suggestions. the effect as nature gives it is either not complete, or is so evanescent as to be uncopyable. but the habit of constant receptivity on the part of the artist makes nature an infinite mine of possibilities to him. [illustration: =the canal.= _burleigh parkhurst._ effect of diffused out-door light to be compared with effect of studio light in "bohemian woman," and artificial light in "woman sewing by lamplight."] =perception.=--only by continually observing and judging of contrasts and relations can the eye be trained to perceive subtle distinctions; yet it must be so trained, for all good work is dependent on these distinctions. =effects of light.=--it is important to study the different qualities of light. take, for instance, the difference of character on a sunny day and on a gray day. on the former, fine distinctions of color are less pronounced; they are lost in the contrasts of sunlight and shadow. on a gray day the light is diffused; contrast is less, but the finer distinctions are more marked. for the study of the subtleties of color choose a gray day. so, too, is the difference marked between the general light of out-doors and the more concentrated light of the house. the pitch is different. outside, even in a dark day, the general character of light is clearer, more full, than in-doors. there is nothing possible under the open sky like the strong contrasts you get from a single window in an otherwise unlighted room. compare, for instance, the character of the light and shade as shown in the illustrations on pages and . the one is the diffused, out-of-door light, the other that from a studio window. the character of the subject has nothing to do with this quality. the head would have less of sharpness and contrast in the open air, and more reflected light. other differences to be studied as to quality of the light in the manner of its contrast, and also for its color quality, are to be seen in moonlight or nightlight as compared with daylight. artificial light, such as lamp- and candle-light, gives marked effects also, which may be compared with daylight both as it is out-of-doors and in its more concentrated effects in the studio. compare the picture of the "woman sewing by lamplight," by millet, with the "canal" and the "bohemian woman" given above. the effects of gas and electric light also should be studied. their characteristics both of contrast and, particularly, of color are worth your attention as a student, inasmuch as the essence of some pictures lies in these qualities. another matter of great importance to the student, and one which the same three illustrations just referred to may serve to show, is the effect on objects of the position of the point of entrance of the light with reference to them and to the observer. the simplest light is the side-light from a single window. this gives broad, sharp masses of light and shade, and makes the study of drawing and painting more simple. with the observer in the same relative position to the subject, as the light swings round towards a point back of him the contrasts become less, the relations more subtle and difficult of recognition, and naturally the study of them more difficult. in this position of light the values become "close." to make the object seen at all, it is necessary that the finest distinctions shall be observed. [illustration: =bohemian woman.= _frans hals._ effect of contrast of light and shade in studio to be compared with diffused light of open air in the "canal," and artificial light in "woman sewing by lamplight."] [illustration: =sewing by lamplight.= _millet._ effect of artificial light contrast to be compared with natural light in illustrations of "canal" and "bohemian woman."] [illustration: =descent from the cross.=] portrait painters have always been fond of a top light, which gives a direct concentrated light descending on the sitter, very similar in character to the side-light, but more favorable to the expression and drawing of the face. =cross lights.=--the most confusing and difficult of study and representation are the "_cross lights_." if there are several windows or other points for the admission of light, and the sitter or object painted is between them, the light comes from all sides, so that the rays cross each other and there is no single scheme of light and shade. the rays from one side modify the shadows cast from the other side, and a perplexing and involved arrangement of values is the result. this is a favorite technical problem with painters, and its solution is splendid training; but the student who can successfully solve it is not far from the end of his "student days." chapter xx composition =importance.=--composition is of the utmost importance. it is impossible that a picture should be good without it. you may define it as that study by means of which the balance of the picture comes about. but you must understand the word balance in its broadest sense. there is nothing in the planning of the picture which has not to be considered in making the picture balance. the arrangement of the lines, of the forms, of the masses, and of the colors must all be right if the composition be right. composition is the planning of the picture; and it is more or less complicated, more or less to be carefully studied beforehand in exact accordance with the simplicity or complication of the scheme of the picture. you may not need more than the consideration of a few main facts. it may almost be done by a few moments' deliberation in some simple studies or even pictures. but even then there is possible the most subtle discrimination of selection, and a perfect gem of composition may be found in the arrangement of a picture having the simplest and fewest elements. the more complicated the materials which are to be worked into a picture, the more careful must be the previous planning; but, for all that, the genius will find scope for his utmost powers in a simple figure, just because the fewer the means, the more each single thing can interfere with the balance of the whole, and the more a fine choice will tell. =the Æsthetic.=--i have already mentioned briefly the æsthetic elements of a picture. i have called to your attention that back of the obvious facts of a subject and the objects in the picture, and the theme which the painter makes his picture represent; back of the technical processes and management of concrete material which make painting possible, is the æsthetic purpose of the work of art; without this it could not be a work of art at all: it would be merely a more or less exact representation of something, a mere prosaic description, the interest in which would lie wholly in the _fact_, and would perish whenever interest in the fact should cease. it is not the _fact_, nor even the able expression of the fact, which makes a work of art a thing of interest and delight centuries after the bearing of the fact has been forgotten. the perennial interest of a work of art lies in the way in which the artist has used his ostensible theme, and all the facts and objects appertaining to it, as a part of the material with which he expresses those ideas which are purely æsthetic; which do not rest on material things. these have to do with material things only by rendering them beautiful, giving to them an interest which they themselves could not otherwise have. =theory.=--does this sound unpractical? well, it is unpractical. does it seem mere theory? it is theory. i want to impress it on you that it is theory. for it is the theory which underlies art, and if you do not understand it, you only understand art from the outside. consciously or unconsciously every artist works to express these purely æsthetic qualities, and to a greater or less extent he expresses himself through them. =art for art's sake.=--this is the real meaning of the much-debated phrase, "art for art's sake." the mistake which leads to the misconception and most of the discussion about it, is in confounding "art for art's sake" with "technique for technique's sake," which is a very different thing. certainly every painter will work to attain the most perfect technique he is capable of. but not for the sake of the technique, but for what it will do. the better the technique the better the control of all the means to expression. if you take technique to mean only the understanding and knowledge of all the manipulations of art, technique is only a means, and it is so that i mean it to be understood here. if you broaden its meaning to include all the _mental_ conceptions and means, that is another thing, and one likely to lead to confusion of idea. so i use the word technique in its strictest sense. =the Æsthetic elements.=--what, then, are these æsthetic qualities i have spoken of? will you consider the quality of "line"? not _a_ line, but line as an element, excluding all the possible things which may be done with lines in different relations to themselves and to other elements. now will you consider also the other elements, "mass" and "color"? do you see that here are three terms which suggest possibilities of combination of infinite scope? and they are purely intellectual. what may be done with them may be done, primarily, without taking into consideration the representation of any material fact whatsoever. take as the type, conventional ornament. you can make the most exquisite combinations, in which the only interest and charm lies in the fact of those combinations in line and mass and color. take architecture. quite aside from the use of the building is the æsthetic resultant from combinations of line and mass and color. and so in the picture the question of _art_, the question of æsthetic entity, lies in the intellectual qualities of combinations of line and mass and color which permeate through and through the technical and material structure that you call the picture, and give it whatever universal and permanent value it has, and which make it immortal, if immortal it ever can be. =composition.=--the bearing of all this on composition should be obvious, for composition is the technique of combination. in the composition of a picture all the elements come into play. it is in composition that the management of the abstract results in the concrete. let us look at it from a more practical side. frankly, there are qualities, which you always look for in a picture,--good drawing, of course, and good color. but there are such things as these: harmony, balance, rhythm, grace, impressiveness, force, dignity. where do they come from? must not every good picture have them, or some of them, to some extent? how are you going to get them? if you have fifteen or twenty square feet or square yards of surface, you will not get them onto it by unaided inspiration. inspiration is, like any other intellectual quality, quite logical, only it acts more quickly and takes longer steps between conclusions perhaps. you will get these qualities onto your canvas only by so arranging all the objects which make up the body of your picture that these qualities shall be the result. it is arrangement then. =arrangement.=--but arrangement of what? how? the objects. but on some principle back of them. consider another set of qualities: proportion, i.e., relative size; arrangement, relative position; contrast; accent,--these are what you manipulate your objects with, and your objects themselves are only line and mass and color in the concrete. objects, figures, bric-a-brac, draperies, houses and trees, skies and mountains, and every and any other natural fact, you may consider as so many bits of form and color with which you may work out a scheme on canvas; and how you do it is to consider them as pawns in your game of æsthetics. with these as materials, what you really do is to combine mass and line and color by means of proportion, arrangement, contrast, and accent, that a beautiful entity of harmony, balance, rhythm, grace, dignity, and force may result. and this is composition. =no rules.=--naturally in dealing with a thing like this, which is the very essence of art, rules are of very little use. ability in composition may be acquired when it is not natural, but it calls for a continuous training of the sense of proportion and arrangement, just as the development of any other ability calls for training. the best thing that you can do is to study good examples and try to appreciate, not only their beauty, but how and why they are beautiful. cultivate your taste in that direction; and with the taste to like good and dislike bad composition will come the feeling which tells you when it is good and when it is bad, and this feeling you can apply to your own work, and by experiment you will gain knowledge and skill. rules are not possible simply because they are limitations, and the true composer will always overstep a limitation of that kind, and with a successful result. principles of composition, too, must be variously adapted, according to the kind of picture you have in hand. the principles are the same, of course; but as the materials differ in a figure painting and a landscape, for instance, you must apply them to meet that difference. =suggestions.=--the first suggestion that might be made as a help to the study of composition is to consider your picture as a whole always. no matter how many figures, no matter how many groups, they must all be considered as parts of a _whole_, which must have no effect of being too much broken up. if the figures are scattered, they must be scattered in such a way that they suggest a logical connection between them as individuals in each group, and groups in a whole. there should usually be a main mass, and the others subsidiary masses. there should be a centre of interest of some sort, whether it be a color, a mass, or a thing; and this centre should be the point to which all the other parts balance. =simplicity= is a good word to have in mind. however complicated the composition may seem superficially, you may treat it simply. you will control it by not considering any part as of any importance in itself, but only as it helps the whole; and you may strengthen or weaken that part as you need to. don't cut the thing up too much. let a half a dozen objects count as one in the whole. mass things, simplify the masses, and make the elements of the masses hold as only parts of those masses. =study placing= of things in different sizes relative to the size of the canvas. make sketches which take no note of anything but the largest masses or the most important lines, and change them about till they seem right; then break them up in the same way into their details. apply the _steps_ suggested for drawing to the study of composition, searching for balance chiefly, or for some other quality which is proper to composition. =line.=--each of the main elements of composition can be used as a problem of arrangement. you can study _composition_ in line, in mass, or in color. "the golden stairs," by burne-jones, is almost purely an arrangement in _line_, and beautifully illustrates the use of this element as the main æsthetic motive in a picture. [illustration] compare this composition in line with the "descent from the cross," in which the _line_ is equally marked, but more complicated, and used in connection with _mass_ to a much greater extent, and involved with interrelations of chiaroscuro and color. consider the effect which each picture derives as a whole from this management of these elements. the one emphasizing that of line, with the resultant of rhythm and grace; the other balancing the elements, and so gaining power and impressiveness. [illustration: =the sower.= _millet._ to show arrangement in mass and line, in which the mass gives weight and dignity without weakening the emphasis of rhythm in the line.] often the whole composition should be a balancing of the elements, as in this case. but the emphasizing of one element will always emphasize the characteristics to which those elements tend as the main characteristic of the picture. grace, rhythm, movement, come most naturally from arrangement chiefly in _line_. if _mass_ comes into the picture, the masses may be arranged to help the _line_, or to modify it. in "the sower" the management of mass is such as to give great dignity, and almost solemnity, to the picture, yet not to take away from the rhythmic swing and action of the figure which comes from line, but even to emphasize it. compare this in these respects with the lighter grace of "the golden stairs" and the less unified movement, but greater activity, of the "descent from the cross." of course masses will come into the picture; but either the masses themselves can be arranged into line, or there can be emphasis given to lines which break up or modify the masses, so that the character of the picture is governed by them. =mass.=--in the arrangement of mass, light and shade and color are effective. smaller groups may be made into a larger one, and individual objects also brought together, by grouping them in light or in shade, or by giving them a common color. [illustration: =return to the farm.= _millet._ to show the effect of mass in giving qualities of "scale" and "the statuesque."] weight, dignity, the statuesque, scale, are characteristics of _mass_. line in this connection only takes from the brusqueness that mass alone would have, or helps to break up any tendency to monotony. the "return to the farm," by millet, shows this combination, the reverse of "the sower." in this, the _line_ is used to enrich the repose and weight, the statuesque of the _mass_. in the other, the _mass_ gives dignity and impressiveness to the grace and rhythm of the _line_. the color scheme of course will have an equal effect in the emphasizing or modifying of the motive of line or mass. color will not only have an effect on it, but must be in sympathy with it, or the balance will be lost. =color.=--this is mainly where composition in color will come in. light and shade or chiaroscuro, as i explained in the last chapter, are necessarily intimately connected with composition here. and you never work in color or mass without working in light and shade also. of color itself i shall speak in the next chapter. it is only necessary to point out the fact of connection here. of course in painting, all the elements are most closely related. although it is necessary to speak of them separately in the actual working out, you keep them all in mind together, and so make them continually help and modify each other. =a principle.=--there is a well-established principle in architecture, that you must never try to emphasize two proportions in one structure. a hall may be long and narrow, but not both long and wide; in which case the proportions would neutralize each other--you would have a simple square, characterless. you may emphasize height or breadth--not both, or you get the same negative character. so you may apply this principle more or less exactly to the composition of a picture. don't try to express too many things in one picture, or if you do, let some one be the main thing, and all the rest be subordinate to it. there is perhaps no law more rigid than the one which denies success to any attempt to scatter force, effect, and purpose. one main idea in each picture, and everything subordinated to lend itself to the strengthening of that. to a certain extent this will apply to line and mass, though not absolutely. as a rule, line or mass, one or the other, must be the main element. =leverage.=--i have often thought that much insight into the principles of balance of masses, and of mass and line, could be gained by thinking of it analogously to equilibrium in leverage. a small mass, or a simple line or accent, may be made to balance a very much greater mass. the greater part of a canvas may be one mass, and be balanced by quite a small spot. but leverage must come in to help. somewhere in the picture will be the point of support, the fulcrum. and the large mass and the small one will have an obvious relation with reference to that point. or the element of apparent density will come in. the large mass will be the least dense, the small one the most dense, and the equilibrium is established. for composition is but the equilibrium of the picture, and equilibrium the picture must have. there are many rules as to placing of mass and arrangement of line, but they are all more or less arbitrary and limiting in influence. individuality must and will ignore such rules, just because composition deals chiefly with the abstract qualities rules will not help. a fine feeling or perception of what is right is the only law, and the trained eye is the only measure. as in values, so in composition you must study relations in nature, and results in the work of the masters, to train your eye to see; and you must sketch and block in all sorts of combinations with your own hand, to give you practical experience. =scale.=--one point of great importance should be noticed. that is the effect on the observer of the size of any main mass or object with reference to the size of the canvas. this is analogous to what is called _scale_ in architecture. if the mass or object is justly proportioned to the whole surface of the canvas, and is treated in accordance with it, it will impose its own scale on all other objects. you can make a figure impress the observer as being life size, although it may really be only a few inches long. a house or castle coming into the picture may be made to give its scale to the surroundings, and make them seem small instead of itself seeming merely an object in a picture. this will be due to the _placing_ of it on the canvas, largely, and more in this than in anything else. the manner of painting will also lend importantly to it; for an object to appear big must not be drawn nor painted in a little manner. the placing of objects of a known size near, to give scale, is a useless expedient in such a case. at times it may be successful, often of use; but if the scale of the main object is false, the other object of known size, instead of giving size to the main one, as it is intended to do, will be itself dwarfed by it. =placing.=--this matter of placing is one which you should constantly practise. make it a regular study when you are sketching from nature. try to concentrate in your sketches so as to help your study of composition. in making a sketch, look for one main effect, and often have that effect the importance of some object, studying to give it _scale_ by the placing and the treatment of it, and its relation to the things surrounding it in nature and on the canvas. in this way you will be studying composition in a most practical way. =still life.=--for practical study of composition, the most useful materials you can have are to be found in still life. nowhere can you have so great freedom of arrangement in the concrete. you can take as many actual objects as you please, and place them in all sorts of relations to each other, studying their effect as to grouping; and so study most tangibly the principles as well as the practice of bringing together line and mass and color as elements, through the means of actual objects. this you should constantly do, till composition is no more an abstract thing, but a practical study in which you may work out freely and visibly intellectual æsthetic ideas almost unconsciously, and train your eye to see instinctively the possibilities of all sorts of compositions, and to correct the falsities of accidental combinations. =don't attempt too much.=--don't be too ambitious. begin with simple arrangements, and add to them, studying the structure of each new combination and grouping. when you are going to paint, remember that too much of an undertaking will not give you any more beauty in the picture, and may lead to discouragement. in the chapter on "still life" i will explain more practically the means you may take, and how you may take them, to the end of making composition a practical study to you. chapter xxi color the subject of color naturally divides, for the painter, into two branches,--color as a _quality_, and color as _material_. considered in the former class, it divides into an abstract a theoretical and a scientific subject; considered in the latter, it is a material and technical one. the material and technical side has been treated of in the chapter on "pigments." in this chapter we will have to do with color considered as an æsthetic element. =the abstract.=--the quality of _color_ is the third of the great elements or qualities, through the management of which the painter works æsthetically. just as he uses all the material elements of his picture as the means of making concrete and visible those combinations of line and mass which go to the making of the æsthetic structure, so he uses these in the expression of the ideal in combinations of color. in this relation nothing stands to him for what it is, but for what it may be made to do for the color-scheme of his picture. if he wants a certain red in a certain place, he wants it because it is red, and it makes little difference to him, _thinking in color_, whether that red note is actually made by a file of red-coated soldiers, by a scarlet ribbon, or by a lobster. the scarlet spot is what he is thinking of, and what object most naturally and rightly gives it to him is a matter to be decided by the demands of the subject of the picture; and its fitness as to that is the only thing which has any influence beyond the main fact that red color is needed at that point. if he were a designer of conventional ornament, the color problem would be the same. at that point a spot of red would be needed, and a spot of paint would do it. the painter thinks in color the same way, but he expresses himself in different materials. =the ideal.=--this is the reason that a still-life painting is as interesting to a painter as a subject which to another finds its great interest in the telling of a story. to the painter the story, or the objects which tell it, are of minor importance. that the picture is beautiful in color is what moves him. as composition and color the thing is an admirable piece of æsthetic thinking and æsthetic expression, and so gives him a purely æsthetic delight; and the technical process is secondary with him, interesting only because he is a technician. the representation of the objects incidental to the subject is as incidental to his interest, as it is to the picture considered as an æsthetic thought. this is what the layman finds it so impossible to take into his mental consciousness. and it is probable that many painters do not so distinguish their artistic point of view from their human point of view. but consciously or unconsciously the painter does think in these terms of color, line, and mass when he is working out his picture; and whether he admits it to himself or not, these characteristics are the great influencing facts in his judgment of pictures, as well as in the growth and permanency of his own fame. that is why a great popular reputation dies so rapidly in many instances. the æsthetic qualities of the man's work are the only ones which can insure a permanent reputation for that work; for the art of painting is fundamentally æsthetic, and nothing external to that can give it an artistic value. without that its popularity and fame are only matters of accidental coincidence with popular taste. if a painter is really great in the power of conception and of expression of any of the great æsthetic elements, his work will be permanently great. it will be acknowledged to be so by the consensus of the world's opinion in the long run; nothing else can make it so, and nothing but obliteration can prevent it. i am explicit in stating these ideas, not because i expect that you will learn from this book to be a great master of the æsthetic, but because i am assured that you can never be a painter unless you understand a painter's true problems. you must be able to know a good picture in order to make a good picture, and however little you try for, your work will be the better for having a painter's way of looking at a painter's work. the technical problems are the control of the materials of expression. the painter must have that control. the student's business is to attain that control, and then he has the means to convey his ideas. but those ideas, if he be a true painter, are not ideas of history or of fiction, but ideas of line and mass and color, and of their combinations. =the color sense.=--therefore color is a thing to be striven for for its own sake. good color is a value in itself. you may not have the genius to be a good colorist, but you need not be a bad one; for the color sense can be definitely acquired. i will not say that color initiative can always be acquired; but the power to perceive and to judge good color can be, and it will go far towards the making of a good painter, even of a great one. i knew one painter who came near to greatness, and near to greatness as a colorist, who in twelve years trained his eye and feeling from a very inferior perception of color to the power which, as i say, came near to greatness. he was an able painter and a well-trained one before that; but in this direction he was deficient, and he deliberately set about it to educate that side of himself, with the result i have stated. how did he do it? simply by recognizing where he needed training, and working constantly from nature to perceive fine distinctions of tone; and by careful and severe self-criticism. summer after summer he went out-doors and worked with colors and canvas to study out certain problems. every year he set himself mainly one problem to solve. this year it might be luminosity; next it might be the domination of a certain color; another year the just discrimination of tones--and he became a most exquisite colorist. so, as i knew his work before and after this self-training, and as i know personally of the means he took to attain his purpose, i think i can speak positively of the fact that such development of the color sense is possible. =taste.=--it is well to remember that taste in color is not dependent on personal judgment alone; that what is good and what is bad in color does not rest on mere opinion. that a good colorist's idea of color does not agree with your own is not a matter of mere whim or liking, in which you have quite as good a right to your opinion as he has to his. the colorist, it is true, does not produce or judge of color by rule. he works from his feeling of what is right. but there is a law back of his taste and feeling. the laws of color harmony are definite, and have been definitely studied and definitely calculated. color depends for its existence on waves of vibration of rays of light, just as sound is dependent on sound waves. =color waves.=--these waves of light give sensations of color which vary with the rapidity or length of the wave, and certain combinations of wave lengths will be harmonious (beautiful), and others will not be. this is a matter of scientific fact; it is not a notion. the mathematical relations of color waves have been calculated as accurately as the relations of sound waves have been. it is possible to make combinations of mathematical figures which shall represent a series of harmonious color waves. and it is possible to measure the waves radiated from a piece of bad coloring and prove them, _mathematically_, to be bad color. it is a satisfaction to the artist to know that this is so; because although he will never compose color-schemes by the aid of mathematics, it gives him solid ground to stand on, and it diminishes the assurance of the man who claims the right to assert his opinion on color because "one man's taste is as good as another's." it is also encouraging to the student to know it, because he then knows that there is a definite knowledge, and not a personal idiosyncrasy, on which he can found his attempts to cultivate this side of his artistic life. =color composition.=--the artist's problem in color composition is analogous to that of line and mass, but is of course governed by conditions peculiar to it. the qualities which derive from line and mass are emphasized or modified by the management of color in relation to them. the painter in this direction uses the three elements together. contrast and accent are attributes of color. dignity and weight, as well as certain emotional qualities, such as vivacity and sombreness, may give the key to the picture in accordance with the arrangement of its color-scheme. the mass may be simplified and strengthened, or broken up and lightened, by the color of the forms in it. by massing groups of objects in the same color, or by introducing different colors in the different forms in the same group, the mass is emphasized or weakened. so in line, the same color in repetition will carry the line through a series of otherwise isolated forms, and effect the emphasis of line. masses can be strung into line, like beads, on a thread of color. in the great compositions of the old venetian painters this marshalling of color groups constituted a principal element. the decorative unity of these great canvases could have been possible in no other way. as i have said, the key of the color-scheme has a direct emotional effect, so adding to the power and dignity or the grace and lightsomeness of the composition. the analogy between color and imagination is marked. certain temperaments instinctively express their ideals through color. to the painter color may be an all-influencing power; it is the glory of painting. drawing appeals to the intellect, but color speaks directly to the emotions, and conveys at a glance the idea which is re-enforced through the slower intellectual perception of the meaning of forms. in some unexplained way it expresses to the observer the temperamental mood; the joyousness, the severity or agitation which was the cause of its conception. in this strange but direct manner the color note aids the expression by line and mass of the æsthetic emotion which is the meaning of the painter's thought. =key.=--the key, then, is an important part of the picture. the very terms _warm_ and _cold_ applied to colors suggest what may be done by color arrangement. the _pitch_ of the picture places it, in the emotional scale. =tone.=--tone is harmony; the perfect balance of color in all parts of the picture. fine color always means the presence, in all the color of the picture, of all the three primaries in greater or less proportion. leave one color out in some proportion, and you have just so much less of a balance. i do not mean that some touch may not be pure color. on the contrary, the whole picture may be built up of touches of pure color. but the balance of color must be made then by touches of the different colors balancing each other, not only all over the picture, but in each part of it, to avoid crudity or over-proportion of any color. generally the color scheme is dominated by some one color: which means that every touch of color on the canvas is modified to some extent by the presence of that color, keeping the whole in key. each color retains its personal quality, but the quality of the dominant color is felt in it. =false tone.=--this is not to be attained by painting the picture regardless of color relations, and then glazing or scumbling some color all over the whole. this is the false tone of some of the older historical painters, particularly of the english school of the earlier part of this century. they "painted" the picture, and then just before exhibiting it "toned" it by glazing it all over with a large brush and some transparent pigment, generally bitumen. this did, in fact, bring the picture in tone after a fashion. but it is not a colorist's method. it is the rule of thumb method of a false technique and a vicious color sense. true tone is not something put onto the picture after it is painted. it is an inherent part of its color conception, and is worked into it while the picture is being painted, and grows to perfection with the growth of the picture. it is of the very essence of the picture. it is the dominant balance of color qualities; the result of a perfect appreciation of the value of every color spot which goes to the expression of the artist's thought. in one sense it is the same as _atmosphere_ in that the tonality of the picture is the atmosphere which pervades it. it may perhaps be best described by saying that it is that combination of color which gives to the picture the effect of every object and part in it having been seen under the same conditions of atmosphere; having been seen at the same time, with the same modification, and with the same degree and quality of light vibration. tone is _color value_ as distinguished from value as degree of power as light and shade; and in this is the perfection of subtlety of color feeling. =tone painters and colorists.=--some painters have been called "tone painters," while others have been called "colorists;" not that tone painters are not colorists, but that there is a difference. it is a difference of aim, a difference of desire. those painters who are usually called colorists, like titian and rubens, are in love with the richness and power of the color gamut. they are full of the splendor of color. they paint in full key, however balanced the canvas. each note of color tells for its full power. their stop is the open diapason, and their harmony is the harmony of large intervals and full chords. the tone painter deals with close intervals. he is in love with subtle harmonies. what he loves is the essence of the color quality, and not its splendor. with the closest range he can give all possible half-tones and shades and modulations of color, yet never exceed the gray note perhaps; never once go to the full extent of his palette-power. the utmost delicacy of perception and feeling, and the most perfect command of materials and of values, are necessary to such a painter. above all, is he the "painter's painter," for the infinite subtlety and the exquisiteness of power are his. and yet this is the thing least appreciated by the lay mind, the most difficult to encompass, and requiring the most knowledge to appreciate. =scientific color.=--to the scientist color is simply the irritation of the nerves of the retina of the eye by the waves of light. different wave lengths give different color sensations. it is the generally accepted theory now that there are three primary sensations; that is, that the eye is sensitive to three kinds of color, and that all other shades and varieties of color are the results of mingling or overlapping of the waves which produce those three colors, and irritating more or less the nerves sensitive to each color simultaneously. these three primary colors are now stated to be red, blue, and _green_. the older idea was that they were red, blue, and _yellow_; and was based on experiments with pigments. pigments do give these results; for a mixture of blue and yellow _pigment_ will give green, and a mixture of red and green _pigment_ will not give yellow, while the reverse is the fact with _light_. white light is composed of all the colors. and the white light may be broken up (separated by refraction or the turning aside of light rays from their true course) into the colors of the rainbow, which is itself only this same decomposition of light by atmospheric refraction. black is the absence of light, and consequently of color. this is not the case with pigment, for pure pigment has never been produced. the pigment simply reflects light rays which fall on it; that is, pigments have the power of absorbing, and so rendering invisible, certain of the rays which, combined, make up the white light which illumines them; and of transmitting others to the eye by reflection. we see, that is, our nerves of sight are irritated by, those rays which are not absorbed, but which are reflected. all pigment is more or less absorbent of color rays, and more or less reflective of them; certain color rays being absorbed by a pigment, and certain other rays being reflected by it. the pigment is named according to those rays which it reflects. as a color-producing substance, then, the pigment is practically a mirror reflecting color rays. but a true mirror would reflect all rays unmodified. if we could paint with mirrors, each of which would reflect its own color _unsullied_, we could do what the scientist does with light; but the painter deals with an imperfect mirror which gives no color rays back unsullied by rays of another class, and so our results cannot be the same as the scientist's. so that just in accordance with the degree of purity of transmitting power of a pigment will be the purity of the color which we get by its use. but absolute purity of pigment we cannot get, so we cannot deal with it as we do with light, and we deal with a practical fact rather than a scientific fact, as painters. =primaries and secondaries.=--as all the other shades of color are produced by the combinations (over-lappings) of the waves or vibrations in the light rays from the primary colors, we have a series of colors called secondaries, because they are made up of the rays of any two of the three primaries: as purple, which is a combination of blue and red. when dealing with _light_ the secondaries are: shades of violet and purple from red and blue; shades of orange red, orange, orange yellow, yellow, and yellowish green from red and green; and bluish green and greenish blue from blue and green--the character of the color being decided by the proportions of the primaries in the mixture. these conclusions have been reached mainly through experiments in white light. the primaries so obtained do not hold good with pigment, as i have stated, but the principles do. it will avoid confusion if i speak hereafter of the combinations as they occur with pigment, it being borne in mind that it is a practical fact that we are dealing with rather than a scientific one. in dealing with _pigment_ the primaries are red, blue, and _yellow_, not _green_. of course the secondaries are also changed; and we have purple and violet shades from red and blue, orange from red and _yellow_, and green from blue and yellow--all of which vary in shade with the proportion of the mixture of the primaries, as is the case with light. =tertiaries.=--another class of shades or colors is called _tertiary_, or third; for they are mixtures of all the three primaries, or of a primary with a secondary which does not result from mixture with that primary. tertiaries are all _grays_, and grays are practically always tertiaries. if you keep this in mind as a technical fact, it will help you in management of color. grays are, to the painter, always combinations of color which include the three primaries. the usual idea is that gray is more or less of a negation of color. this is not so. gray is the balancing of all color, so that any true harmony of color, however rich it may be, is always quiet in effect as a whole; that is, grayish--good color is never garish. it is very important that the painter should understand this characteristic of color. you cannot be too familiar with the management of grays. if you try to make your grays with negative colors, you will not produce harmonious color, but negative color, and negative color is only a shirking of the true problem. grays made of mixtures of pure colors, balancings of primaries and secondaries, that is, modifications of the tertiaries, are quite as quiet in effect and quite as beautiful as any, but they are also more luminous; they are _live_ color instead of _dead_ color. grays made by mixing black with everything are the reverse, and should not be used except when you use black as a color (which it is in _pigment_), giving a certain color quality to the gray that results from it. =complementary colors.=--two colors are said to be complementary to each other when they together contain the three primaries in equal strength. green, for instance, is the complementary of red, for it contains yellow and blue; orange (yellow and red) is complementary to blue; and purple (red and blue) is complementary to yellow. the knowledge of complements of colors is very important to the painter, for all the effects of color contrast and color harmony are due to this. complementary colors, in mass, side by side, contrast. the greatest possible contrast is that of the complementaries. complementary colors mixed, or so placed that small portions of them are side by side, as in hatching or stippling, give the tertiaries or grays by the mixing of the rays. =the law of color contrast.=--"when two dissimilar colors are placed in contiguity, they are always modified in such a manner as to increase their dissimilarity." =warm and cold colors.=--red and yellow are called warm colors, and blue is called a cold color. this is not that the color is really cold or warm, of course, but that they convey the impression of warmth and coldness. it is mainly due to association probably, for those things which are warm contain a large proportion of yellow or red, and those which are cold contain more blue. there is a predominance of cold color in winter and of the warm colors in summer. from the primaries various degrees of warmth and coldness characterize the secondaries and tertiaries, as they contain more or less proportionately of the warm or cold primaries. in contrasting colors these qualities have great effect. =color juxtaposition.=--in studying the facts of color contrast and color juxtaposition you will find that two pigments, if mixed in the ordinary way, will have one effect; and the same pigments in the same proportions, mixed not by stirring them into one mass, but by laying separate spots or lines of the pigment side by side, produce quite another. the gain in brilliancy by the latter mode of mixing is great, because you have mixed the _color rays_, which are really light rays, instead of mixing the _pigment_ as in the usual way. you have really mixed the color by mixing _light_ as far as it is possible to do it with pigment. you have taken advantage of all the light reflecting power of the pigment on which the color effect depends. each pigment, being nearly pure, reflects the rays of color peculiar to it, unaffected by the neutralizing effect of another color mixed with it; while the neutralizing power of the other color being side by side with it, the waves or vibrations of the color rays blend by overlapping as they come side by side to the eye; and so the color, made up of the two waves as they blend, is so much more vibrant and full of life. ="yellow and purple."=--it is this principle which is the cause of the peculiarity in the technique of certain "impressionist" painters. the "yellow lights and purple shadows" is only placing by the side of a color that color which will be most effective in forcing its note. brilliancy is what these men are after, and they get it by the study of the law of color contrast and color juxtaposition. the effect of complementaries in color contrast is what you must study for this, for the theory of it. for the practice of it, study carefully and faithfully the actual colors in nature, and try to see what are the real notes, what the really component colors, of any color contrast or light contrast which you see. purple shadows and yellow light re-enforcing each other you will find to exist constantly in nature. refine your color perception, and you will be able to get the result without the obviousness of the means which has brought down the condemnation on it. closer study of the relations is the way to find the art of concealing art. but yellow and purple are not the only complementaries. all through the range of color, the secondaries and tertiaries as well as the primaries, this principle of complement plays a part. there is no color effect you can use in painting which does not have to do, more or less, with the placing of the complementary color in mass, to emphasize; or mixed through to neutralize, the force of it. train your eyes to see what the color is which makes the effect. analyze it, see the parts in the thing, so that you may get the thing in the same way, if you would get it of the same force as in nature. =practical color.=--all these theoretical ideas as to color have their relation to the actual handling of pigment, which is the craft of the painter. the facts of contrasting and harmonizing color relation have a practical bearing on the painter's work, both in what he is to express and how he is to do it; as to his conception of a picture and his representation of facts. in his conception he must deal with the possibilities of effect of color on color. the power of one color to strengthen the personal hue of another, or its power to modify that hue, is a fact bearing on whether the color in the picture is the true image of the color he has seen in his mind. in the same degree must this possibility affect his representation of actual objects. the greatest possibilities of luminosity in sunlight or atmospheric effects come from the power to produce vibration by cool contrasted with warm color. you will find that a red is not so rich in any position as when you place its complementary near it. at times you will find it impossible to get the snap and sparkle to a scarlet--cannot make it carry, cannot make it felt in your picture as you want it without placing a touch of purple, perhaps, just beside it; to place near by a darker note will not have the same effect. it is the contrast of color vibration, not the contrast of light and shade, which gives the life. and at the same time that you enhance the brilliancy of the several notes of color in the picture, you harmonize the whole. for the mosaic of color spots all over the canvas brings about the balance of color in the composition, and harmony is the result. =study relations.=--you must constantly study the actual relations of color in nature. you will find, if you look for it, that always, just where in art you would need a touch of the complementary for strength or for harmony, nature has put it there. she does it so subtly that only a close observer would suspect it. but the thing is there, and it is your business to be the close observer who sees it, both for your training as a colorist, and your use as an interpreter of nature's beauties. it is your business to see subtly, for nature uses colors subtly. the note sparkles in nature, but you do not notice the complementary color near it. can you not also place the complementary color so that it is not seen, but its influence on the important color is felt? it is by searching out these _finesses_ of nature that you train your eye. you must actually see these colors. at first you may only know that they must be there because the effect is there. but your eye is capable of actually recognizing them themselves, and you are no painter till it can. the theoretical knowledge is and should be a help to you, but the actual power of sight is most important. a painter may use theoretical knowledge to help his self-training, but power of eye he must have as the result of that training. the instantaneous recognition of facts and relations, the immediate and perfect union of eye and thought, are what make that intuitive perception which is the true feeling of the artist. work this out with eye and palette. study the color and its relation in nature, and study its analogy in the pigment touches on the canvas. =the palette.=--you try to attain nature's effects of light with pigment. pigment is less pure than light. you cannot have the same scale, the same range, but you must do the best you can, and the arrangement of your palette will help you. as you have not a perfect blue, a perfect red, and a perfect yellow, you must have two colors for one. your paints will always be more or less impurely primary. no one red will make a pure purple with blue, and an equally pure orange with yellow. yet pure purple and pure orange you must be able to make. have, then, both a yellowish or orange red and a bluish or purplish red on your palette. do the same with blue and yellow. in this way you can not only get approximately pure secondaries when you need them, but the primaries themselves lean somewhat towards the secondaries, so that you can make very delicate combinations with pure colors. a bluish yellow and a yellowish blue, for instance, will make a rather positive green. by using a reddish yellow and a bluish or purplish red, you practically bring in the red note, and make a grayer green while still using only two pigments. so, too, you get similar control of effects by the use of opaque or transparent pigments, the transparent ones tending to richness, the opaque to dulness of color. various processes in the manner of laying on paint bring about these different qualities, and will be spoken of in the chapter on "processes." classify your pigments in your mind in accordance with these characteristics. think of the ochres, for instance, as mainly opaque, and as yellows tending to the reddish. with any blue they make gray greens because of the latter quality, and they make gray oranges with red because of the dulness of their opacity and body. for richer greens think of the lighter chromes and cadmium yellows or citrons; and for the richer oranges, the deeper cadmiums and chromes. with reds, work the same way, scarlet or orange vermilions for one side of the scale, and the chinese or bluish vermilion on the other side. the deeper and heavier reds fall in line the same way. indian red is bluish, light red and venetian red are yellowish. part iv practical application chapter xxii representation although much has been said about the theoretical and abstract side of painting, and the importance of the æsthetic elements in art have been insisted upon, it is not to be supposed for a moment that painting does not deal with actual things. all painting which is not purely conventional must deal with and represent nature and natural facts. these are the body of the picture; the æsthetic elements are the heart of it. i believe that it is important that you should know that there is that side to painting, and should have some insight into it; that you should see that there is something else to think of than the imitation of natural objects. i would have you think more nobly of painting than to believe that "the greatest imitation is the greatest art." beneath the imitation of the obvious facts of nature are the deeper facts and truths, and in and through these may you express those qualities of intellectual creation by means of which only, painting is not a craft, but an art. but for all that, painting does, and always must, deal with those obvious facts; and however much you may give your mind to the problems of composition and color, you must base it on a foundation of ability to represent what you see. represent well the external objects, and you are in a position to interpret the spirit of them. for as nature only manifests her inner spirit through her outward forms and facts, you must be able to paint these well before you can do anything else. the intellectual action which perceives and constructs is the art, the skill which represents and reproduces is the science, of painting. painting is the art of expression in color. the fact of color rather than form is the fundamental characteristic of it. the use of pigment rather than other materials is implied in its name. therefore the science of painting deals with the materials with which to produce on canvas all manner of visible color combinations; and those processes of manipulation which make possible the representation of all the facts of color and light, of substance and texture, through which nature manifests herself. it is not enough to have the pigment, nor even that it should get itself onto the canvas. different characteristics call for different management of paint. luminosity of light and sombreness of shadow will not be expressed by the same color, put on in the same way. different forms and surfaces and objects demand different treatment. the science of painting must deal with all these. it has been said that there are as many ways of painting as there are painters. certainly there are as many ways as there are men of any originality. for however a painter has been trained, whatever the methods which he has been taught to use, he will always change them, more or less, in adapting them to his own purposes. and as the main intent of the art of an epoch or period differs from that of a previous one, so the manner of laying on paint will change to meet the needs of that difference. the manner of painting to-day is very different from that of other times. some of the old processes are looked upon by the modern man as quite beneath his recognition. yet these same methods are necessary to certain qualities, and if the modern man does not use or approve of those methods, it is because he is not especially interested in the qualities which they are necessary to. there is probably no one statement which all fair-minded painters will more willingly acquiesce in, than one which affirms that the method by which the result is attained is unimportant, provided that the result _is_ attained, and that it is one worth attaining. every man will, whether it is right or not, use those methods which most surely and completely bring about the expression of the thing he wishes to express. in the face of this fact, and of the many acknowledged masterpieces, every one of which was painted in defiance of some rule some time or other alleged to be the only right one, it is not possible to prescribe or proscribe anything in the direction of the manipulation of colors. the result _must_ be right, and if it is, it justifies the means. if it be not right, the thing is worthless, no matter how perfectly according to rule the process may be. as hunt said, "what do i care about the grammar if you've got something to say?" the important thing is to say something, and if you do really say something, and do really completely and precisely express it, as far as a painter is concerned it will be grammatical. if not to-day, the grammar will come round to it to-morrow. henry ward beecher is reported to have answered to a criticism on grammatical slips in the heat of eloquence, "young man, if the english language gets in the way of the expression of my thought, so much the worse for the english language!" in painting, at any rate, the _complete_ expression of thought _is_ grammatical, and if not, so much the worse for the grammarians. =try everything.=--know, then, all you can about all the ways of manipulating paint that have ever been used. use any or all of those ways as you find them needful or helpful. there is none which has not the authority of a master behind it, and though another master may decry it, it is because, being a master, he claims the very right he denies to you. experiment with all; but never use any method for the sake of the method, but only for what it is capable of doing for you in helping expression. =safety.=--the only real rule as to what to use and what not, applies to the effect on the permanence of your canvas. never use pigments which will fade; nor in such a way that they will cause others to fade. avoid all such using of materials as you know will make your picture crack, or in any other way bring about its deterioration. =good painting.=--but for all i have just said, there is an acknowledged basis of what is good painting. if any man or school lays on paint in a frank, direct way, getting the effect by sheer force of putting on the right color in just the right place, with no tricks nor affectations, that is good painting; and the more simple, direct, and frank the manner of handling, the better the painting. let us understand what direct painting is first, and then consider varieties of handling. for whatever may be the subsequent manipulations, the picture is generally "laid in" with the most direct possible manner of laying on paint, and the other processes are mainly to modify or to further and strengthen the effect suggested in the first painting. and generally, also, in all sketches and studies which are preliminary preparations for the picture, the most direct painting is used, and the various processes are reserved for working out more subtle effects on the final canvas. =old dutch painting.=--probably there are no better examples of frank painting than the works of the old dutchmen. you should study them whenever you have a chance. waiving all discussion as to the æsthetic qualities of their work,--as _painters_, as masters of the craft of laying on paint, they are unexcelled. and in most cases, too, they possessed the art of concealing their art. you will have to use the closest observation to discover the exact means they used to get the subtle tones and atmospheric effects. the only obvious quality is the perfect understanding and skill of their brush-work. in the smoothest as well as in the roughest of their work, you can note how perfectly the brush searches the modelling, and with the most exquisite expressiveness and perfect frankness, follows the structural lines. no doubt there were often paintings, glazings, and scumblings; but they always furthered the meaning of the first painting, and never in the least interfered with or obscured the effect of _naïveté_, of candor of workmanship. it is, however, this simple and sincere brush-work that you should strive to attain as the basis of your painting. learn to express drawing with your brush, and to place at once and without indecision or timidity the exact tone and value of the color you see in nature at that point. until you are enough of a master of your brush to get an effect in this way, do not meddle with the more complex methods of after-painting. you will never do good work by subsequent manipulation, if you have a groundwork of feebleness and indecision. direct painting is the fundamental process of all good painting. let me take the type of old dutch painting to represent to you this quality of direct painting. first of all notice a basis of perfect drawing,--a knowledge, exactness, and precision which admits of no fumbling, no vagueness, but only of a concise and direct recognition of structure. note that this drawing is as characteristic of the brush-work as of the drawing which is under it. observe that the handling of the whole school, from the least to the greatest, is founded on a similar and perfect craftsmanship,--the same use of materials; the same deliberateness; the same simple yet ample palette; the same use of solid color candidly expressing the planes of modelling, freely following the lines of structure; the absence of affectation or invention of individual means. whatever the individuality of the artist, it rests on something else than difference of technique. from the freest and most direct of painters, frans hals, to the most smooth and detailed, gerard dou, the directness and ingenuousness of means to ends is the same, and founded on the same technical basis of color manipulation. the one is more eager, terse, the other more deliberate and complete; but both use the same pigments, both use the same solid color, are simple, lucid, both occupied solely with the thing to be expressed, and the least degree in the world with the manner of it. that manner comes from the same previous technical training which each uses in the most matter-of-course way, with only such change from the type, as his temperament unconsciously imposes on him. there is nothing like it elsewhere. study it; notice the unaffectedness of brush-stroke in rembrandt. see how it is the same as hals, but less perfunctory. see how the brush piles up paint again and again along the same ridge of flesh, taking no notice of its revelation of the insistence of attempt at the right value, nor of its roughness of surface. to get that drawing and that color in the freest, frankest, most direct way: that is the aim. the absolute conviction of it: that is the essence of this technique of the old dutch masters. and whatever else it may have or may not have, you will find in it all that you can find anywhere of suggestion of direct and frank and sincere painting, and nothing i can say will give you any such clear idea of what you should strive for as the basis of all the different sorts of brush-work necessary or useful in the production of an oil painting. [illustration: =the fisher boy.= _frans hals._ to show the directness and sureness of brush-stroke, and candor and simplicity of means, always present in dutch work, though never so free as with hals.] =detail.=--the question of detail may well come in here. how far are you to carry detail in your painting? the dutch painters went to both extremes. gerard dou worked two weeks on a broom-handle, and hoped to finish it in a few days more. frans hals would paint a head in an hour. the french painter meissonier paints the high light on every button of a trooper's coat, and de neuville barely paints the button at all. what way are you to turn? which are you to choose? we have a great deal said nowadays against detail in painting. much is said of breadth and broad painting. which is right? =true breadth.=--the answer lies in the central idea of the picture. there are times when detail may be very minute, and times when the greatest freedom is essential. true breadth is compatible with much even minute detail in the same canvas. for breadth does not mean merely a large brush. it never means slap-dash. it is the just conception of the amount of detail necessary (and the amount necessary to be left out) in order that the idea of the picture may be best expressed. detail is out of place in a large canvas always, and in proportion to its size it is allowable. a decorative canvas, a picture which is to be seen from a distance, or is to fill a wall space, wants effect, much justness of composition and color. largeness of conception and execution, and only so much detail as shall be necessary to the best expression compatible with that largeness. on the other hand, a "cabinet picture," a small panel, will admit of microscopic detail if it be not so painted that the detail is all you can see. and just here is the heart of the whole matter. whether you use much or little detail, it is not for the sake of the detail, not for any interest which lies in the detail itself, but for what power of expression may lie in it. if the picture, large or small, be largely conceived, and its main idea as to subject and those qualities of æsthetic meaning i have spoken of are always kept in view, and never allowed to lose themselves in the search for minuteness, then any amount of detail will take its place in true relation to the whole picture. if it does not do this it is bad. the relations of parts to the whole are the key to the situation always. nothing is right which interferes with the true relations in the picture. this is where the working for detail is most likely to lead you astray. it takes great ability and power to keep detail where it belongs. detail is always the search for small things, and they are almost sure to obtrude themselves to the neglecting of the more important things. details which do not stay in their places had better be left out of the picture. there is such a thing as _values_ in _facts_ as well as other parts of your work. and this applies to breadth as well as to detail. [illustration: =boar-hunt.= _snyders._ to show relation of detail to the whole picture. the detail is carried far, yet does not interfere with emphasis of action and life. the picture is broad in spirit and effect if detailed in execution.] gerard dou remains a great painter, and even a broad painter, strange as it may sound, in spite of his microscopic work. but only because of his breadth of eye. the detail is not the most important thing with him. it is in the picture, and you can see it when you look for it. but as you look at the picture it is not peppered all over with pin-points of detail, until the picture itself cannot be seen. every detail stays back as it would in nature; loses itself in the part to which it belongs; modestly waits to be sought out; is not seen until it is looked for. this is broad painting, because the main things are emphasized; and if the details are painted they are seen in their true relations, and the power of the whole is not sacrificed to them. with much or little detail, this is what is to be aimed at. whether with big brushes or little ones, the expression of the main idea, of the important, the vital things,--this is broad painting, and this only. chapter xxiii manipulation =premier coup.=--something similar to what i have spoken of as "direct painting" has long been a much-advocated manner of painting in france, under the name of _premier coup_; which means, translated literally, "first stroke." it is taught that the painter should use no after or overworkings at all; but that he should carefully and deliberately select the color for his brush-stroke, and then lay it on the canvas at one stroke, each after-stroke being laid beside some previous one, until the canvas has been covered by a mosaic of color each shade representing a single "first-stroke," with no after-stroke laid over it to modify its effect. such a process tends to great deliberation of work and exactness of study. probably no better thing was ever devised for the training of the eye and hand. but it has its limits, and is not often rigidly adhered to in the painting of pictures; although the fresh, direct effect of this sort of work is preserved as far as possible in much modern french work, and that quality is held in great esteem. this manner of painting is especially useful in the making of sketches and studies, and leads to a strong control of the brush and the resources of the palette. in all painting of this character the color should have body. transparent color should not be used alone, but only to modify the tint of the more solid pigments; for the transparent colors used indiscriminately are apt to crack, which characteristic is avoided when the heavier color forms the body of the paint. =solid painting.=--in most cases solid painting is the safest,--the least likely to crack, and the most safely cleaned from varnish and dirt without injury to the paint itself. it is firmer in character too, and gives more solidity of effect to the picture. =mixing.=--in mixing colors you should be careful not to over mix. don't stir your paint. too much mixing takes the life out of the color. particles of the pure color not too much broken up by mixing are valuable to your work, giving vibration and brilliancy to it. the reverse is muddiness, which is sure to come from too much fussing and overworking of wet paint. don't use more than three pigments in one tint if you can help it, and mix them loosely. if you must use more colors, mix still more loosely. put all the colors together, one beside the other, drag them together with the brush, scoop them up loosely on the end of it, and lay the tint on freely and frankly. never muddle the color on the canvas. don't put one color over another more than you can help; you will only get a thick mass of paint of one kind mixing with a mass of another, and the result will be dirty color, which of all things in painting is most useless. keep the color clean and fresh, and have your brush-strokes firm and free. never tap, tap, tap, your paint; make up your mind what the color is, and mix it as you want it. decide just where the touch is to go, and lay it on frankly and fairly, and leave it. if it isn't right, daubing into it or pat-patting it won't help it. either leave it, or mix a new color, and lay it on after having scraped this one off. don't try to economize on your mixing. a color mixed for one place will never do for another, so don't try to paint another place with it. have the patience to proceed slowly, and mix the color specially for each brush-stroke. on the other hand, don't be niggardly with your paint. don't use less paint than you need. mix an ample brushful and put it on; then mix another, and use judgment as to how much you should use each time. the variety of tone and value which comes of mixing new color for every touch of the brush is in itself a charm in a painting, aside from the greater truth you are likely to get by it. [illustration: =good bock.= _manet._ to illustrate direct and solid painting.] =corrections.=--as far as you can, make corrections by over-painting when the paint is dry, or nearly so. when i say don't work into wet color to correct, i do not mean that you are never to do so, but that to do it too much is likely to get your work muddy and pasty. of course it is almost impossible to avoid doing so sometimes, but when you do, do it with deliberation. don't lose your head and pile wet paint on wet paint in the vain hope of getting the color by force of piling it on. you will only get it worse and worse. get it as nearly right as you can. if it is hopeless, scrape it off clean, and mix a fresh tint. if it is as near right as you can see to mix it now, go ahead; and put a better color on that place to-morrow when it is dry, if you can. =keep at it.=--but above all don't be permanently satisfied with the almost. don't be afraid to put paint over dry paint till it is right. work at it day after day. let the paint get thick if it will, if only you get the thing right. the secret of getting it right is to keep at it, and be satisfied with nothing less than the best you can do. when you can see nothing wrong you can do no better. but as long as your eye will recognize a difference between what is on the canvas and what ought to be there, you have not done your best, and you are shirking if you stop. never call a thing done as long as you can see something wrong about it. no matter what any one else says, your work must come up _at least_ to the standard of what you yourself can see. =loose painting.=--sometimes it is necessary to lay on paint very loosely in order to get vibration of warm and cool color or of pure pigment in the same brush-stroke, or to let the under paint show somewhat through the loose texture of the paint over it. too much of this sort of thing is not to be desired, but its effect in the right place is not to be obtained in any other way. the paint may be dragged over the canvas with a long brush charged with color more or less thoroughly mixed, as seems most effectual, or it may be flipped into its place, or it may be hatched on with parallel strokes. all these ways will be spoken of as they suggest themselves in other chapters. solid color, generally, is used in this manner, and the effect of body is rather strengthened by it than the reverse. =scumbling.=--another means of modifying the color and effect of a painting has perhaps always been more or less commonly in use. this is called _scumbling_, and may be considered under the head of solid painting, as it is always done with body, and never with transparent, color. the process consists of rubbing a mixture of body color, without thinning, over a surface previously painted and dried. generally this _scumble_ is of a lighter color than the under-painting, and is rubbed on with a stubby brush slightly charged with the paint. as much surface as is desired may be covered in this way, and the result is to give a hazy effect to that part, and to reduce any sharpness of color or of drawing. often the effect is very successfully obtained. distant effects may be painted solidly and rather frankly, and then brought into a general indefiniteness by scumbling. too much scumbling will make a picture vague and soft, and after a scumble it is best to paint into it with firm color to avoid this. the scumble may be used with the richer and darker colors, too, to modify towards richness the tone of parts of the picture, or to darken the value. most often, however, its value lies in its use to bring harsher and sharper parts together, and to give the hazy effect when it is needed. scumbling will not have a good effect when it is not intended to varnish the picture afterwards; for the oil in the paint is absorbed immediately, and the rubbing of color gives a dead look to the canvas which is very unpleasant, and decidedly the reverse of artistic. =glazing.=--a very valuable process, the reverse of scumbling, is glazing. it has always been in use since the invention of the oil medium. all the italian painters used it; it is an essential part of their system of coloring. the rich, deep color of titian, the warm flesh of raphael, and the jewel-like quality of the early german painters are impossible without some form of glaze. the germans perhaps made glazes with white of egg before oil was used as a vehicle. but to glaze is the only way to get the fullest effect of the quality characteristic of the transparent paints. a glaze is a thin wash of transparent color flowed over an under-painting to modify its tone or to add to its effect. it is not always transparent color, but usually it is. sometimes opaque or semi-opaque color may be used, and it is a glaze by virtue of the fact that it is thinned with a vehicle either oil or varnish, and _flowed_ on. a scumble is _rubbed_ on, and is never pure transparent color. =advantages of glazing.=--the advantages are the gain in harmony, in force, in brilliancy; you may correct a color when it is wrong, or perfect it when it is not possible to get the force or richness required without it. these are the qualities which have made it used by all schools more or less. =disadvantages.=--there are, however, quite as evident and marked disadvantages. the free use of oil as a thinning vehicle, although it makes possible a greater degree of richness of color, is very likely to turn the picture brown in time. oil will always eventually have a browning effect on all paints, even when mixed with them as little as is absolutely necessary. if you make a tinted varnish of oil (which is practically what a glaze is), you add so much, to the surely darkening action of the oil on the picture. if, again, you depend upon a glaze for the richness of color for your picture, and you use a color which is not permanent, your glaze fades, and your color is not there. a glaze is particularly liable to be injured by the cleaner if it ever gets into his hands. he works down to fresh color, and what with the browning of the glaze and the fact that the cleaner is more anxious that the picture should be cleaned than that its color should be fine, he will, in nine cases out of ten, _clean_ off the glaze which may be the final and most expensive color the painter has put on it. glazing is little used nowadays, compared with what it once was. but there are times when you cannot get what you want in any other way, and when you are sure that glazing is the only thing which will give you your result, the only law for the painter comes in,--get your result. =precautions.=--if you do glaze, however, there is a right and a wrong way. you should not use a glaze as a last resort. it is better to calculate on it beforehand; for you always glaze with a darker tint upon a lighter one, so that if you have not allowed for this, you will get your picture too low in tone before you know it. if you want to make your picture, or a part of it, brighter and lighter, bring it up in pitch with body color first, with solid painting, and then glaze it. do not glaze on color which is not well dried. the drying of the under color and the drying of the glaze are apt to be different in point of time, and the picture will crack. if the vehicle is the same as was used in the under-painting, and the drying qualities of both paintings are the same, there is no danger. but when color dries, it shrinks and flattens, and two kinds of colors shrinking differently are sure to pull apart, and that causes cracking. if the under-painting is well dry, but not hard and glossy on the surface, and is capable of still absorbing enough of the new color's vehicle to bind the coats together, your glaze will stand. but rather than have it too soft, have the under-painting too hard, and then before you glaze go over it with a little thin, quick-drying varnish, and glaze into that. the varnish will hold the two coats of paint together. glazing, as well as scumbling, implies the obligation to varnish your picture. whenever you use oil freely you will have to varnish your picture to keep it bright and fresh in color. it would be wise never to use a glaze as a final process. glaze to get the tone or to modify it, but paint into the glaze with body color, and you keep the advantage of the glaze without many of the disadvantages of it, and the picture has a more solid effect of painting. =frottée.=--closely akin to the glaze in manner, but very different in use, is the _frottée_, or "rubbing." this is generally used on the fresh surface of the canvas, to "rub in" the light and shade or the first coloring of the picture after the drawing is done. it is one of the safest and wisest ways of beginning your picture. you can either rub in the picture with a _frottée_ of one color, as sienna or umber, or you can use all the colors in their proper places, only using very little vehicle, and making something very thin in tint, somewhat between a glaze and a scumble. you can make a complete drawing in monochrome in this way, or you can lay in all the ground colors of the picture till it has much the effect of a complete painting. then, as you paint and carry the picture forward, every color you put on will be surrounded with approximately the true relations, instead of being contrasted by a glare of white canvas. a _frottée_ is a most sympathetic ground to paint over. chapter xxiv copying copying may well be spoken of here, as it is in a sense a kind of manipulation. it is a means of study to the student, and a useful, sometimes necessary process to the painter. in the transferring of the results of his sketches and studies to the final canvas, the painter must be able to copy, and to know all the conveniences of it. before the painting begins on a picture, the main figures in it must be placed and drawn on the canvas with reference to the plan of it, and their relation to that plan. this calls for some method of exact reproduction of the facts stored in the artist's studies for that purpose. the process of copying is that method. from the side of study, the copy gives the student the most practical means of understanding the intent and the expression of the painter whose work he wishes to know. there is no way of understanding the why and the how of technical expression so sure and complete as to study with the brush and paint, following the same method and processes as the master you copy, and trying to comprehend the meaning and the expression at the same time. this is not the best means of study for a beginner, as i have said before. it trains the understanding of processes rather than the eye; and the training of the power of perception rather than the understanding of methods is what the young student needs. the processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature are secondary matters to him. let him really see the thing and find his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is still the best thing for him. he may take such help as he can find, as he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can give to him, when he cannot see his own way. but the searching of nature should come first. the _seeing_ of what is must precede the _stating_ of it. but when you do undertake to make a copy, there is something more to be tried for than an approximation of the right colors in the right places. certainly to get out of copying all there is to get, one must try for something more than a recognizable picture. when a serious student makes a copy, he not only tries to get it like in color and drawing, but also in manner of treatment, peculiarities of technique, and whatever there may be that goes to make up the "manner" of the original. this is not only for the sake of the copy, for the sake of really having a picture which is more than superficially like the original; but in this way can be gained much real knowledge of technique which cannot be gotten so easily otherwise. study your original carefully before and while working on your own canvas. see how it was done if you can (and you can), and do it in the same way, touch for touch, stroke for stroke, color for color. use a large brush when he used a large brush; if the original was done with a palette-knife, use yours; and particularly never use a smaller brush than the painter used on the picture you are copying. the same thing holds as to processes. if your original was painted solidly, with full body of color, do so on your copy. never glaze nor scumble because _you_ can't get the colors without. your business is to try to get the same qualities _in the same way_. and any other manipulation is not only getting a different thing, but shirking the problem. because, if you can't get the effect in the way he did, you certainly won't get the _same one_ any other way. you are not originating, you are not painting a picture, you are copying another man's work; and common honesty to him, as well as what you are trying to learn, demands that you shall not belie him by stating on your canvas implicitly, that he did the thing one way, when as a matter of fact his canvas shows that he did it another way. this may seem commonplace, because one would think that as a matter of course any one would naturally make a copy this way. but this is precisely what the average person does not do when copying, and i have found it constantly necessary to insist upon these very points even to advanced students. so in the pigments, the vehicles, the tools, and even the canvas if you can, as well as in the handling of the paint and the processes used, follow absolutely and humbly, but intelligently, the workmanship of the picture you copy, if it is worth your while to do it at all. in making copies it is not usual to make the preliminary drawing freehand. it takes time that may better be given to something else, and often it is not exact enough. when a painter has made careful studies which he wishes to transfer to his canvas, they may have qualities of line or movement, or of emphasis or character which the model may not have had. these studies, probably, are much smaller than they will be in the picture. the same things may be true of the characteristics of the sketches. these are problems which have been worked out, and to copy them freehand makes the work to be done over again on a larger scale on the canvas of the picture. this would not only take too much time, but the same result might not follow. for this purpose a more mechanical process is commonly made use of, which combines the qualities of exactness with a certain freedom of hand, without which the work would be too rigid and hard. ="squaring up."=--this process is called "squaring-up," and consists of making a network of squares which cut up the study, and map out its lines and proportions, and make it possible to be sure that any part of the original will come in the same relative place in the copy no matter what the size may be, and at the same time leaves the actual laying out of the thing to freehand drawing. the process is a very simple one. you mark off a number of points horizontally and vertically on the study. make as many as you think best--if there are too few, you will have too much of the study in one part; if too many, it makes you more trouble. it is not necessary that there be as many points one way as the other; make the number to suit the lines of the study. draw straight lines across the study from each of the points, keeping them carefully parallel, and seeing to it that the horizontal lines cross the vertical ones exactly at right angles. these lines cut the study into right-angled parallelograms, which may be squares or not according as the vertical lines are the same distance from each other that the horizontal ones are, or not. number the spaces between the lines at the top, , , , etc., and at one side the same. now if you square off a part of your canvas with the same number of spaces at the top and the same number at the side as you have done with the study, and keep the relation of the spaces the same, you can make it as large or as small as you please, and you can draw the outlines within those squares as they fall in the study, and they will be the same in proportion without your having the trouble of working to scale. the squares furnish the scale for you, and the proportion is not of the study to the picture, but as the vertical spaces are to the horizontal, in both the study and the picture. by numbering the squares on the canvas to correspond with those on the study, and noticing in which square, and in what part of it, any line or part of a line comes, you can, by drawing that line in the same part of the corresponding square on the canvas, repeat the line in the same relation and with exactness, while still leaving the hand free to modify it, or correct it. in this way the simplest or the most complex, the largest or the smallest study sketch or drawing may be accurately transferred to any surface you please. chapter xxv kinds of painting why not recognize that conviction, intense personal attraction to a certain sort of thing is the life of all art. how else can life get into art than through the love of what you paint? a man may understand what he does not love, but he will never infuse with life that which he does not love. understand it he should, if he would express it; but love it he must, if he would have others love it. you see it is not the thing, but the manner; not the fact, but what you can find in it; not the object, but what you can express by it. "_un chef d'oeuvre vaut un chef d'oeuvre_" because perfect delight in loveliness found in a small thing is as perfect as perfect delight in loveliness found in a great thing. and still life uninteresting as a fact, may be fascinating if "seen through the medium of a temperament." don't let the idea get into your head that one thing is easier to do than another thing. perhaps it is, but it is a bad mental attitude to think so. and even then, you may find that when you have worked out all that its easiness shows you, some one with better knowledge or insight may come along and point out undreamed-of beauties and subtleties. and are they easy? to see and express the possibilities in easy things is the hardest of all. =classification.=--divide paintings into two classes,--those representing objects seen out-of-doors, and those representing objects in-doors. this is the most fundamental of all classifications, and it is one which belongs practically to this century. before this century it was hardly thought of to distinguish out-door light from in-door light. some of the dutchmen did it. but it is only in this century that the principle has made itself felt. it is this which makes the difference of pitch or key so marked between the modern and the ancient pictures. it has changed the whole color-scheme. an out-door picture may be still painted in the studio, but it must be painted from studies made out-doors. it is no longer possible to pose a model in a studio-light and paint her so into a landscape. it was right to do it when it was done frankly, when the world had not waked up to the fact that things look different in diffused and in concentrated lights. it is not right now. you cannot go back of your century. to be born too late is more fatal than to be born too soon. whatever kind of picture you take in hand, remember that what distinguishes the treatment of it from that of other pictures depends on the inherent character of it. that the difficulties as well as the facilities in the working of it are due to the fact that it demands a different application of the universal principles. don't think that landscape drawing is easier than that of the figure because smudges of green and blue and brown can be accepted as a landscape, while a smudge of pink will not do duty for the nude figure. it is only that the drawing of the figure is more obvious, and variations from the more obvious right are more easily seen. you must study the necessities, the demands of treatment of the different sorts of subjects--see what is peculiar to each, and what common to all. you must find to what æsthetic qualities each most readily lends itself, what are the subtleties to be sought for, and what are the problems they offer. chapter xxvi the sketch the sketch is the germ of the picture. it contains the idea which may later become the finished work. in your sketches you gather effects and suggestions of possibilities, of all kinds. you do not work long over a sketch, nor do you work perfunctorily. you do not make it because you ought to, but because you see something in nature which charms you; or because you have found an idea you wish to make a note of. understand thoroughly the use and meaning of sketches, and you will get more good from the making of them. for your sketching is an important matter to your painting. you do not learn how to paint by sketching; but you can learn a great many things, and some of them you can learn no other way. a sketch is not a picture; neither is it a study. each of these things has its special purpose and function, and its proper character. a sketch is always a note of an idea--an idea seen or conceived. everything is sacrificed in the sketch to the noting of that idea. one idea only, in one sketch; more ideas, more sketches. there are two kinds of sketches: those made from nature to seize an effect of some sort; and those made to work out or express tersely some composition or scheme of color which you have in your mind. both are of great use to the student as well as essential to the work of the artist. [illustration: =sketch of a hillside blocked in from nature, first suggestion of composition, etc.=] the first conception of a picture is always embodied in the form of a sketch, and the artist will make as many sketches as he thinks of changes in his original idea. it is in this form that he works out his picture problem. he is troubled here by nothing but the one thing he has in mind at this time. it may be an arrangement of line or of mass. he changes and rearranges it as he pleases, not troubling himself in the least with exactness of drawing, of modelling, of color, nor of anything but that one of composition. it may be a scheme of color, and here again the spots of pigment only vaguely resemble the things they will later represent; now they are only composition of color to the painter, and everything bends to that. when this has been decided on, has been successfully worked out, then it is time enough to think of other things. and think of other things he does, before he makes his picture; but not in this sketch; in another sketch or other sketches, each with its own problem, or in studies which will furnish more material to be used later; or in the picture itself, where the problem is the unity of the various ideas within the great whole in the completed painting. it is the sketch on which the picture rests for its singleness of purpose. no picture but begins in this way, whether it is afterwards built up on the same canvas or not. the sketch points the way. but all the preliminary sketches of a painting are not problems of composition or color; are not conceptions of the brain. there are suggestions received from nature which the painter perceives rather than conceives. possibilities show themselves in these, but it is in the sketch that they first become tangible and stable. this is the sketch from nature, always the record of an impression, the note of an idea hinted by one fact or condition seen more sharply or clearly than any or all of the thousands which surrounded it at the moment. the painter must always sketch from nature. only by so doing can he be constantly in touch with her, and receive her suggestions unaffected by multitudinous facts. the sketch preserves for him the evanescent effects of nature, which the study would not so entirely, because not so simply, grasp. the sudden storm approaches; the fleeting cloud shadow; or the last gleam of afterglow; these, as well as the more permanent, but equally charming effects of mass against mass of wood and sky, or of meadow and hill, he can only store up for future use or reference in his sketches. =main idea only.=--in the making of the sketch, then, no problem should come in but that of the expression of the main idea,--no problem of drawing or of manipulation of color. to get the idea expressed in the most direct and immediate and convenient way, anything will do to sketch on or with; that which presents the least difficulty is the best. the matter of temperament, of course, comes in largely, and technical facility. that which you can use most freely, use in your sketching, and keep for other occasions the new means or medium. use freely, if you can, black and white for whatever black and white will express, and pigment for all color effects. oil for greatest certainty and facility of correction. =quick work.=--make your sketch at one sitting, or you will have something which is not a sketch. work long enough, and it may be a study; but more than one sitting makes it neither one thing nor the other. to say nothing of the fact that the conditions are unlikely to be exactly the same again, you are almost sure on the second working to have lost the first impression,--the freshness and directness of purpose which the first impress gives; and this is the very heart of a sketch. you must never lose sight of what was the original purpose of it; never forget what it was which first made you want to paint it. no matter what else you get or do not get, if you lose this you lose all that can give it life or reality. the very fact that you have limited yourself to one working makes you concentrate on that which first caught your attention, and that is what you want to seize. overworkings and after-paintings will only interfere with the directness and force with which this is expressed. remember that nature is never at rest. you must catch her on the wing, and the more quickly you do it the more vivid will be the effect. [illustration: =the river bank.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._ half-hour sunset sketch.] "nature is economical. she puts her lights and darks only where she needs them." do the same, and use no more effort than will suffice to express that which is most important. the rest will come another time. try to keep things simple. keep the impression of unity; have the sketch one thing only. express things as they look. as they look to _you_ and at _this time_. how they seem to some one else, or seemed at some other time, is not to the point. what you know they are or may be will not help you, but only hinder you in a sketch. the more facts the worse, in sketching. remember always what a sketch is for. don't be beguiled into trying to make a picture of it, nor a study of it. above all, don't try to make a clever thing of it. make something sincere and purposeful of it, and have it as concise, as terse, as direct, and as expressive of one thing as you can. =keep looking.=--always keep your eyes open and your mind receptive; do not be always looking for reasons. accept the charm as it presents itself; note it, if you have anything handy to express it with; if not, study it, and get something into your mind and memory from it. the simplest way of expressing it, and the simplest elements which cause it, you can study without the materials to preserve it, and you so keep your receptivity and quicken your power of observation. your sketch will be more quickly done, directly and more forcefully, if you map out the thing rather deliberately first with a few very exact lines and masses in some way: then you have a free mind to concentrate on the effect. a few values and masses well placed are the things you most want; you can almost always spare time to ensure their exactness by a few measurements and two or three rubs of color first. of course if the sketch is of a passing gleam you can do nothing but get a few smudges of color. but get them true in value and in color relation; get the glow of it, or you will get nothing. =canvases of a size.=--in sketching from nature, have the habit of using always the same sized canvases or panels. they pack better, and you learn to know your spaces, and so you do quicker and better work. make them big enough to do free work on, yet small enough to cover easily, so that you lose no time in mere covering of surface. ten inches by fourteen is plenty small enough, and fifteen by twenty large enough, for most persons. suit yourself as to the size, but settle on a size, and stick to it. nothing is more awkward and inconvenient than to have stacks of canvases of all sizes and shapes. always have plenty of sketching materials on hand. you will lose many a good effect which will pass while you are getting your kit ready. in sketching, avoid details. when you want them, make a study of them. in a sketch they only interfere with frankness of expression. one or two details for the sake of accent only, may be admitted. make a frame with your hand, or, better, cut a square hole in a card, and look through it. decide what is the essence of it, what is vital to the effect, and do that; concentrate on that. put in what you need for the conveying of that, and leave out everything else. =work solidly.=--work in body color, and lay on your paint fully and freely. in getting an effect of light, don't be afraid of contrast either of value or of color. paint loosely; get the vibration which results from half-mixed color. don't flatten out the tone. load the color if you want to. in twenty years you will wonder to see how smooth it has become. freedom and breadth give life to a sketch. don't work close to your work. don't bend over it. use plenty of color, large brushes, and strike from the shoulder. chapter xxvii the study the qualities which make a good study are the reverse of those which make a good sketch. in the sketch all is sacrificed to the effect, or to the one thing which is its purpose. the study is what its name implies, and its purpose is not one thing, but many. in a study you put in everything which may be valuable. you store it with facts. you leave out nothing which you wish to put in. it is all material. you can take and leave in using it afterwards, as you could from nature. of course every study has some main intention, but you must take the trouble to give everything that goes to the making of that. a study is less of a picture than a sketch is. for unity of effect is vital to both a sketch and a picture. but this quality is of no essential value in a study--unless it be a study of unity. for you can make a _study_ of anything, from a foreground weed to a detailed interior, from a bit of pebble to a cavalry charge. but in a study of one thing you concentrate on that thing, you deliberately and carefully study everything in it, while in a sketch you work only for general effect. the study is the storehouse of facts to the painter. by it he assures himself of the literal truths he needs, collecting them as material in color or black and white, and as mental material by his mental understanding of them, only to be gained in this way. in making a study you may work as long as you please, timing yourself by the difficulty and size of the thing you are studying. a study of an interior or a landscape may occupy a week or two; one of a simple object for some detail in a picture may be a matter of only a few hours. but in any work of this kind you should be deliberate, and remember that what you are doing is neither a sketch nor a picture, but the gathering of material which is to be useful, but which can be useful only so far as it is accurate. in making studies, don't try for surface finish; get the facts, and leave all other qualities for the picture. don't glaze and scumble, but work as directly as you can. study the structure and texture of whatever you are doing. understand it thoroughly as you go on, and search out whatever is not clear to you. this is no place for effects; nor for slighting or shirking. if you do not do work of this kind thoroughly, you might as well not do it at all--better; for you are at least not training yourself to be careless. there are places where you may be careless, but the making of a study is not that place. take plenty of trouble with preliminaries. get all your foundation work true. have a good drawing, get the groundwork well laid in, and then build your superstructure of careful study. don't be afraid of over-exactness, nor of hardness and edginess here. all that is only an excess of precision, and it is just as well to have it. you can leave it out if you want to in your picture, but a groundwork of exactness is not to be despised. be exact also with your values. if your study is not sure of its values, it will weaken the results you should get from it later. make your studies in the same light as that which the picture will represent. you can paint a picture under any light you please if your studies give you the facts as to light and shade that the truth to nature requires; but studies made in one light for a picture representing another are useless to that picture. no good painting was ever made without preliminary studies. when you are to make a picture, therefore, take plenty of time to prepare yourself with all the material in the form of facts that you may require. don't trust to building up a picture from a sketch or two and your "general knowledge." that sort of thing is something which a painter of experience may do after storing his mind for years with all sorts of knowledge; but it will not do for most people--least of all for a student. and it is a dangerous way for any one to work. even the experienced painter is apt to do the worse work for it, and if he does so constantly, his reputation may suffer for it. take time to be right. [illustration: =study of a blooming-mill.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._] don't be afraid of taking measurements. every one who did anything worth looking at took measurements. leonardo laid down a complete system of proportions. you can't get your proportions right without measurements, and if your proportions are not right, nothing will be right. use a plumb-line: use it frequently, and measure horizontals and verticals. if you are in doubt about anything, stop a minute and measure. it takes less time than correcting. whatever you do, get the character first, then the details. character is not a conglomeration of details. the detail is the incident of character. see what the vital things are first, then search farther. use your intelligence as well as your eye and hand. think as you work. don't for a moment let your hand get ahead of your brain. don't work absent-mindedly, nor without purpose. if your mind is tired, if your eye won't see, stop and rest a while. tired work runs your picture down hill. chapter xxviii still life the name of still life is used in english for all sorts of pictures which represent groupings of inanimate objects except flowers. the french word for it is better than ours. they call it "_nature morte_" or dead nature. there is no kind of painting which is more universally useful--to the student as well as to the painter. it furnishes the means for constant, regular, and convenient study and practice. you need never lack for something interesting to paint, nor for a model who will sit quietly and steadily without pay, if you have some pieces of drapery, and a few articles, of whatever shape or form, which you can group in a convenient light. you can make the group as simple or as difficult as you wish, and make it include any phase of study. the advantage of its possible variety, scope, and particularly, its convenience and cheapness and manageableness, make it the fundamental work for the beginner. =materials.=--practically anything and everything is available for still life. you should be constantly on the lookout for interesting objects of all kinds. try to get a collection which has as much variety in form, size, and surface as you can. old things are generally good, but it is a mistake to suppose old and broken things the best. an object is not intrinsically better because of its being more or less damaged, although it sometimes has interesting qualities, as of color or history, because of its age. what you should avoid is bad proportion, line, and color in the things you get. the cost is not of any importance at all. you can pick up things for a few cents which will be most useful. have all sorts of things, tall slim vases, and short fat jugs. have metals and glass, and books and plaques. they all come in, and they add to the variety and interest of your compositions. =draperies.=--the study of drapery particularly is facilitated by still-life study. you can arrange your draperies so that they are an essential part of your study, and will stay as long as you care to paint from them, and need not be moved at all. this fact of "staying power" in still life is one of importance in its use, as it reduces to the minimum the movement and change which add to the difficulties in any other kinds of work. the value of the antique in drawing lies in its unvarying sameness of qualities from day to day. in still life you have the same, with color added. you can give all your attention and time unhurriedly, with the assurance that you can work day after day if you want to, and find it just the same to-morrow morning as you left it to-day. this as it applies to drapery is only the more useful. you can hardly have a lay figure of full size, because of its cost. to study drapery on a model carefully and long, is out of the question, because it is disarranged every time the model moves, and cannot be gotten into exactly the same lines again. still life steps in and gives you the power to make the drapery into any form of study, and to have it by itself or as a part of a picture. in draperies you should try to have a considerable variety just as you have of the more massive objects,--variety of surface, of color, and of texture. do not have all velvet and silk. these are very useful and beautiful, but you will not always paint a model in velvet and silk. satins and laces are also worn by women, and cloth of all kinds by men, and so you should study them. sometimes you want the drapery as a background, to give color or line; and yet to have also marked surface qualities (texture), would take from the effect of those qualities in the other objects of the group. as to color, in the same way you should have all sorts of colors; but see to it that the colors are good,--in themselves "good color," not harsh nor crude. it does you no good as a student to learn how to express bad color. neither is it good training for you, in studying how to represent what you see, to have to change bad color in your group into good color in your picture. good useful drapery does not mean either large pieces, or pieces with much variety of color in one piece; on the contrary, you should avoid spotty or prominent design in it. still, the more kinds you have, the more you can vary your work. if your drapery is a little strong in color, you can always make it more quiet by washing or fading it to any extent. there is very little material which is absolutely fast color. but when it is so, and the color is too strong, don't use it. don't scorn old and faded cloth, especially silk and velvet, or plush. the fact that it would look out of place on furniture or as a dress does not imply that it may not be beautiful as a background or as a foreground color. these old and faded materials furnish some of the most useful things you can have; a fact the reverse of what is true in general of other still-life things. =the use of still life.=--there is no way in which you can better study the principles of composition than by the use of still life. the fact that you can bring together a large number of objects of any color and form, and can arrange and rearrange them, study the effect and result before painting, and be working with actual objects and not by merely drawing them, gives a positiveness and actuality to composition that is of the greatest service to you. you can use (and should at times) the whole side or corner of a room, and so practise composition on the large scale, or you can make a small group on a table. that you are using furniture and drapery or vases, flowers, and books, instead of men and women, does not affect the seriousness and usefulness of the problem; for the principles of composition and color do not have to do with the materials which you use to bring about the effect, but the effect itself. it is practically impossible for the student and the amateur to make very advanced study of composition in line and mass with more than one or two living models; but with still life he may and should get all the practical knowledge possible. =practical composition.=--suppose you were going to work with still life, how would you begin? in the first place, get a good composition. never work from a bad one. you must learn composition some time, so you might as well study it every time you have occasion to start a still-life study. take any number of things and put them on a table, get a simple background to group them against. consider your things, and eliminate those which are not necessary, or will not tell in the composition. it is a law that whatever does not help your picture (or composition) tells against it; so get rid of anything which will not help the composition. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] for instance, here are a lot of things indiscriminately grouped on a table. you might paint them, but they are not arranged. there is no composition. they would lack one commanding characteristic of a good picture if you were to paint them so. what do they lack as they are? they have no logical connection with each other, either in arrangement or in the placing, to begin with. they do not help each other either in line or mass. they are crowded, huddled together. you could do with less of them; or, if you want them all, you can place them better. but suppose we take some of them away for simplicity, and rearrange the rest. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] here are some of the things, with others taken away. the combination is simpler, but still it is not satisfactory. there is some logical connection among the objects, but none in the grouping. they are still huddled; there is no line; it is too square; no attempt at balance; they are simply things. if you change them about a little, having regard to size, proportion, balance, and line, you can get something better out of these same objects. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] here the coffee-pot is moved toward the centre, to give height and mass, and to break up the round of the plaque; the handle turned around to give more looseness and freedom; the pitcher is placed where it will break the line of the plaque, yet not too obviously or awkwardly; the handle is placed at a good angle with that of the coffee-pot, and the relation of distance with the coffee-pot in balancing the whole is considered. the drapery is spread out so as to have some probability. it does not help much in line, but it does in mass and in color (in the original). it could be bettered, but it will do for the present. the cup also has a reasonable position, and helps to balance and to give weight to the main mass, which is the coffee-pot. there is not much light and shade in this composition, nor much distinction. but it does balance, and would make a good study, and is a very respectable piece of composition,--simple, modest, and dignified. now if you wanted to add some of those things which were eliminated, and make a more complicated composition, you would look for the same things in it when completed. we have simply the same group, with the bottle and glass added. the stout jug in the first group is left out because it is not needed, and it will not mass with the rest easily. the tall glass vase is left out because it is too transparent to count either as line, mass, or color, and does not in any way help, and therefore counts against, because it does not count for, our composition. the things we have here are enough, but they are not right as they are now. they injure rather than help the last arrangement. the bottle and glass are in the composition, but not of it; a composition must be _one thing_, no matter how many objects go to the making of it. this is two things. draw a line down between the bottle and glass and the other things, and you get two compositions, both good, instead of one, which we must have for good arrangement. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] let's change them again. this is worse, if anything. we have now got two groups and a thing. the coffee-pot and cup and saucer alone, the bottle and glass alone, and the pitcher; the drapery tries to pull them together, but can't. the plaque has no connection with anything. they are all pulled apart. in the last group at least there was some chief mass, the first complete composition. now every one is for himself; three up and down lines and a circle--that's about what it amounts to. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] let's group them,--push them together. place the bottle near the coffee-pot. because they are about the same height, one cannot dominate the other in height; then make them pull together as a mass. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] place the cup about as before, and the mass pretty well towards the centre of the plaque. put the pitcher where it will balance, and the glass where it will count unobtrusively, and help break the line of the bottoms of the objects. the drapery now helps in line also, and gives more unity, as well as mass and weight and color, to the whole. this group is about as well placed as these objects will come. there is balance, mass, proportion, dignity, unity. of course you may make a paintable and interesting composition with only two things. but you must give them some relation both as to fact and as to position. the same elements of unity and balance and line come in, no matter how many or how few are the objects which enter as elements in your group. in this way study composition with still life. move things about and see how they look; use your eye and judgment. get to see things together, and apply the principles spoken of in the chapter on "composition" to all sorts of things in nature. =scope of study.=--drawing is always drawing, whatever the objects to which it is applied, and you can study all the problems of drawing and values with still life. the drawing is not so severe as that of the antique, nor so difficult as study from the life, but you can learn to draw and then apply it to other things, and advance as far as you please; and as i said at first, you need never lack an amiable model. all sorts of effects of lighting you can study easily with still life; and of color and texture also. the study of surface and texture is most important to you. if you were to undertake to paint a sheep or a cow the first time; if you were to paint without previous experience a background which contained metal and glass, or a model with a velvet or satin dress, you would not succeed. these all involve problems of skill and facility of representation. when you paint a portrait or figure picture, or a landscape with animals, you should not have to deal with, as new, problems of this sort. you should have arrived at some understanding of this sort of thing in studies which are not complicated by other problems of greater difficulty. this is where still life comes in again to make the study of painting easier. =interest.=--but the use of this sort of painting is not only its practical _use_. you need not feel that it is all drudgery--which is something that most students do not love! you may make pictures with a much clearer conscience along this line; for the better the picture, and the more interesting and charming it is, the more successful is your work as study. you can be as interested in the beauty and the picture of it as you please, and it will only make you work the better. to see the picture in a group of bottles and books is to be the more able to see the picture in a tree and sky. an artist's eye is sensitive to beauty of color and line and form wherever he sees it. the student's should be also. no artist but has found delight in painting still life. no student should think it beneath his serious study. =procedure.=--study painting first in still-life compositions. when you set up your canvas first, and set your palette, let it be in front of a few simple objects grouped interestingly; or, better, set up a single jar or a book, with a simply arranged background for color contrast. all the problems of manipulation are there for you to study. no processes of handling, no manner of color effect, which you cannot use in this study. learn here what you will need in other lines of work. =beginning.=--the best way to make a study from still life is to begin with a careful charcoal drawing on the canvas. you may shade it more or less as you please, but be most careful about proportions and forms. the shading means the modelling and the values in black and white; and you can do this either in charcoal as you draw, or it can be put in with monochrome when you begin with paint. but you must have the drawing sure and true first; for drawing is position, locality. you must know _where_ a value is to go before you can justly place it. the value is the _how much_. you must have the _where_ before the _how much_ can mean anything in drawing. it would be well to lay in some of the planes of light and shade, because you feel proportion more naturally and truly so than with mere outline. the outline encloses the form, but with nothing but outline you are less apt to feel the reality of the form. the planes of values fill in the outline and give substance to it. they map it out so that it takes thickness and proportion; it is more real. and any fault of outline is more quickly seen, because you cannot get your masses of shade of the right form and proportion if the outline enclosing them is not right. =the frottée.=--make, then, a careful light-and-shade drawing with charcoal directly on the canvas, working in the background where it tells against the group, but without carrying it out to the edges of the canvas. be accurate with your modelling and values, and keep the planes simple and well defined. draw all characteristic details, but only the most important, nearly as if it were not to be painted, but were to remain a drawing. fix this drawing with fixative and an atomizer. in beginning with paint go over the drawing with a thin _frottée_ which shall re-enforce the drawing with color. you may do this with one color, making a monochrome painting very thin, leaving the canvas bare for the lights. many of the best painters lay in all pictures this way. what color is to be used is a matter for consideration. it should be one so sympathetic to the coloring of the whole picture that if it is left without any other paint over it in places it will still look all right. raw umber is a good color, or raw umber modified with burnt sienna and black. you can make a mixture that seems right. this establishes your larger values, and gives you something better than a bare canvas, and something with which you can have a more just idea of the effect of each touch of color you put on. if there is much variety of color in the various objects of your composition, it is better to make your _frottée_ suggest the different colors. instead of making a monochrome _frottée_, rub in each object with a thin mixture, approximating the color and value, but not solid, nor as strong as it will become when painted, of course. nevertheless, you can get in this first rubbing in, a strong effect, which at a distance has a very solid look, though the relations are not so carefully studied. when you come to put on solid color with this sort of an under-painting, it is easy to judge pretty closely of color as well as light-and-shade relations, and you can work more frankly into it. into this painting, when it is dry, you may begin to paint with body color, beginning with the true color and value of the lights, and working down through the half darks into the darks. paint the background pretty carefully as to color and value, but loosely as to handling. paint slowly, deliberately, and thoughtfully. there is no need to pile up masses of wrong color. you should try to be sure of the color before you lay it on. study the color in the group, mix on the palette, and compare them. think at least two minutes for every one minute of actually laying on paint. you save time in the end by being deliberate and by working thoughtfully. put on color firmly and with a full brush, but there is no need to load color for the sake of the body of it. =loaded lights.=--it was a principle with the older painters to paint the shadows thinly and with transparent color, and to load the lights. it gave a richness to the shadows and a solidity to the lights which was much valued. but don't think about this; don't let it influence the frankness of your painting. the theory is in itself largely obsolete now, and in fact has been disregarded by almost every able painter who ever lived, in practice, no matter what he said about it. i only speak of it because almost all books on painting have laid it down as a rule, and you had better know its true relation to painting. like all other traditional methods of painting it has been used by the greatest of painters, and has also been disregarded by the greatest of painters; and as far as you are concerned, you may use it or not as suits your purpose. the main thing is to get the right color and value in the right place, in the most direct and natural, in the least affected, manner possible. you may work into your _frottée_, then, more or less solidly as you feel will give you the best representation of the color you see. =solid painting.=--don't paint always in the same way. it is a mistake to get too accustomed to one manner of procedure. different things require different handling. let the thing suggest how you shall paint it. if you want to paint directly, paint solidly from first to last instead of rubbing in thinly first. but always have an accurate drawing underneath. in working solidly without previous laying in, begin where each brush-stroke will have the greatest effect toward establishing the appearance of reality. if the canvas is light, begin by putting in the main darks, and if the canvas is dark, do the reverse. you get the most immediate effect of reality by the _relief_; the relief you get most directly by putting in first those values which contrast with what is already there. establish your most telling values first, then work from them towards less immediately effective things. =color and values.=--study the color at the same time you do the value. put on no touch of paint as a value or a color alone. if you do, you will have to paint that spot twice,--once for the value, and again for the color. you might as well paint for the two qualities in one stroke. it takes more thought, but it gives you more command of your work. it doesn't load your canvas with useless paint, and it saves time in the long run. =relations and directness.=--study to give the true relations of things. try to get the just color quality. give it at once. don't get it half way and trust to luck and a subsequent painting to correct it. you will never learn to paint that way. paint intensely while you paint. use all the energy you have. paint with your whole strength for a half or a whole hour, and then rest. you will accomplish more so than by painting all day in a languid, half-hearted way. =directness.=--directness comes from making up your mind just what tint of color and value is needed, and just where it is to go, first, then putting it there with no coaxing. get the right color on your brush and plenty of it; then put the brush deliberately and firmly down in the right place, and take it directly away, and look at the result without touching it again till you have made up your mind that it needs something else, and what it is that it needs. then do that and stop. directness and justness of relation are the most important things in painting. they tell for most, result in most, both to the picture and to the student. whatever you do, work for that. try to have no vagueness in your mind as to what you will do or why you do it, and the effect of it will show on your canvas. chapter xxix flowers flower painting is the refinement of still life. you have the same control of combination, but you have not the same control of time. flowers will change, and change more rapidly than any other models you can have; and at the same time they are so subtle that the most exquisite truth and justness are necessary to paint them well. people seem to think that any one can paint flowers. on the contrary, almost no one can paint them well. there are not a dozen painters in the world who can really paint flowers as they ought to be painted. why? because while they are so exquisite in drawing and color, and so infinitely delicate in value, they are also even more infinitely subtle in substance and sentiment. when you have got the drawing and the color and the value, you have not got the _quality_. what is the petal of a flower? it is not paper, and it is not wax, neither is it flesh and blood, of the most exquisite kind. all these are gross as substance compared to the tender firmness of the flower petal; and the whole bunch of flowers is made up of petals. yet you cannot paint the _petals_ either, else you lose the _flower_. you must paint the _quality_ of the petal, and the _character_ of the flower. all these things make the mere perception of facts most difficult, and it must be done with full knowledge that in an hour it will be something else, and you can never get it back to its original form again. yet you cannot paint a bunch of flowers in an hour. what will you do? =mass and value.=--there is something besides the flower and the petal; there is the _mass_. the mass is _one thing_, and it is surrounded with air, and air goes through the interstices of it. you must make this visible. the difference in value in flowers is something "infinitely little," as a great flower painter said to me once. yet the difference is there. the bunch has its nearer and its farther sides, and the way the light falls on it is the most obvious expression of it. when you begin a group of flowers, get the _whole_ first. make up your mind that you cannot complete your work from the flower you have in front of you, and that you must constantly change your models. do not paint the little things, the personal things first then. paint what is common to all the flowers in the group first. paint the mass and the rotundity of it, and express most vaguely the _forms_ of the accents, and of the darks which fall between the flowers, but get their values. for you will have to change these, and you should have nothing there which will influence you to shirk. in this way only can you get the larger things without hampering your future work by what may be wrong. [illustration: =sweet peas.=] get the large values, and as little as possible of the expression of the individual flowers; then as the flowers fade and change, substitute one or two fresh ones at a time, in this or that part of the partially wilted group, using the same kind of flower as that which was in that place before; then work more closely from these new flowers, letting the whole bunch preserve for you the mass and general relation. as you work, the bunch will be gradually changing and constantly renewed from part to part, and you can work slowly from general to particular. finally, from new flowers, put in those more individual touches which give the personal flowers. this is the only way you can work a long time, and it is not easy. but it should not discourage you. nothing takes the place of the flower picture, and the only way to learn to paint flowers is to paint flowers. =general principles hold always.=--still, the principles of all painting hold here as elsewhere, and what is said of painting in general will have its application to flowers. paint flowers because you love them; and if you love them, love them enough to study patiently to express the qualities most worth painting, even if there be difficulties. =details again.=--don't make too much of unimportant things. the whole is more than the part; the flower than the petal. of course you can't paint a flower without painting the petals, but you need not paint the petals so that you can't see anything else. if the character of the flower as a whole is to be seen at a glance without the emphasis of any special petal, suggest the petals only. if the petal is important to the expression of character, then paint it; and if you do, paint it well. use your judgment; make the less expressive of the greater, or do not paint it at all. =colors.=--colors and tints in flowers are always more rather than less subtle than you think them. if you have a doubt, make it more delicate--give delicacy the benefit of the doubt. still, flowers are never weak in color. subtle as they are, it is the very subtlety of strength. black will be the most useless color of your palette. make your grays by mixing your richer colors. a gray in a flower is shadow on rich color, and it must not be painted by negation of color, but by refinement of color. =sketches.=--make sketches of flowers constantly. try to carry the painting of a single flower or of a group as far as you can in an hour. practise getting as much of the effect of detail as possible with as little actual painting of it, and then apply this to your picture. get to know your work in studies and sketches, and you will work better in more difficult combinations. when you have, as you generally will have, still-life accessories to your flowers, rub in quickly the color and values of the vase or what not first, but leave the painting of it till the flowers are done. it will be a more patient sitter than they. apply the ways of painting spoken of with reference to still life to the sketching of flowers. either rub in quickly a _frottée_ and then paint solidly into that, or work frankly and solidly but deliberately to render the characteristic qualities. when you sketch flowers don't take too many at a time; calculate to work not more than an hour and a half or two hours, and have no more flowers in your sketch than you can complete in that time. when you sketch, quite as much as when you work at more ambitious canvases, get the mass first, especially if the group is large. then put in the accents which do most to give the character or type of the flower. make studies of single flowers and sketches of groups. in the study search detail and modelling; in the sketch search relations and relief, effect and large accent. chapter xxx portraits don't look upon portraits as something any one can do. a portrait is more than a likeness, and the painting of it gives scope for all of the great qualities possible in art. only a great painter can paint a great portrait. some great painters rest their fame on work in this field, and others have added by this to the fame derived from other kinds of work. you must not think it easy to paint a portrait, or rest satisfied with having got a likeness. likeness is a very commonplace thing, which almost any one can get. if there were no other qualities to be tried for, it would hardly be worth while to paint a portrait. back of the likeness, which a few superficial lines may give, is the character, which needs not only skill and power to express but great perception to see, and judgment to make use of to the best advantage. =character.=--the first requisite in a good portrait is character,--more than likeness, more than color or grace, before everything else, it needs this; nothing can take the place of it and make a portrait in any real sense of the word. everything else may be added to this, and the picture be only so much the greater; but this is the fundamental beauty of the portrait. some of the greatest painters made pictures which were very beautiful, yet the greatest beauty lay in the perception and expression of character. holbein's wonderful work is the apotheosis of the direct, simple, sincere expression of character in the most frank and unaffected rectitude of drawing. there are masterpieces of albrecht dürer which rest on the same qualities, as you can see in the portrait of himself by dürer. likeness is incidental to character; get that, and the likeness will be there in spite of you. hubert herkomer said once that he did not try for likeness; if only he got the right values in the right places, the likeness had to be there. the same can hardly be said of character, for this depends on the selection from the phases of expression which are constantly passing on the face, those which speak most of the personality of the man; and the emphasis of these to the sacrifice of others. the painting of character is interpretation of individuality through the painting of the features, and, like all interpretation, depends more on insight and selection than on representation. try for this always. search for it in the manner, in the pose and occupation, of your sitter. get likeness if you will, of course; but remember that there is a petty likeness, which may be accident or not, which you can always get by a little care in drawing; and that there is a larger character which includes this, and does not depend on exaggeration of feature or emphasis of accidental lines, but on the large expressiveness of the individual. you may find it elsewhere than in the face. the character affects the whole movement of the man. the set of the head and the great lines of the face, the head and shoulders alone would give it to you even if the features were left out. study to see this, and to express it first, and then put in as much detail as you see fit, only taking care never to lose the main thing in getting those details. =qualities.=--there are other great qualities also which you can get in a portrait. all the qualities of color and tone, of course. but the simplicity of a single figure does not preclude the qualities of line and mass. the great things to be done with composition may as well be done in portrait as elsewhere. if you would see what may be done with a single figure, study the portrait of his mother, by whistler. you could not have a better example. it is one of the greatest portraits of the world. notice the character which is shown in every line and plane in the figure. the very pose speaks of the individuality. notice the grace and repose of line, and the relations of mass to mass and space--the proportion. see how quiet it is and simple, yet how just and true. of the color you cannot judge in a black and white, but you can see the relations of tones, the values and the drawing. it is these things which make a picture; not only a portrait, but a great work of art as well. [illustration: =dürer=, _by himself_. to be studied as an example of directness and naïveté of painting.] [illustration: =portrait of his mother.= _whistler._] =drawing.=--good work in portraiture depends on good drawing, just as other work does. don't think that because it is only a head you can make it more easily than anything else. as in other kinds of work, the drawing you should try for is the drawing of the proportions and characteristic lines. get the masses and the more important planes, and don't try for details. you can get these afterwards, or leave them out altogether, and they will not be missed if your work has been well done. don't undertake too much in your work. make up your mind how much you can do well, and don't be too ambitious; the best painters who ever lived have been content to work on a head and shoulders, and have made masterpieces of such paintings. you may be content also. see how little velasquez could make a picture of! and notice also the placing of the head, and the simplicity of mass, and of light and shade. =painting.=--of course you can help your color with glazing and scumbling, but work for simplicity first. it is not necessary to use all sorts of processes; you can get fine results and admirable training from portrait studies, and the more directly you do it, the better the training will be. study the portrait of himself, by albrecht dürer. you will find no affectation here; the most simple and direct brush-work only. you will not be able to do this sort of thing, but that is no reason why you should not try for it. it will depend on the brush-stroke. it implies a precision of eye as well as of hand. it means drawing quite as much as painting,--drawing in the painting. you will not get this great precision; nevertheless, try for it, and get as near it as you can. don't try for too much cleverness; be content with good sincere study, and the most direct expression of planes that you can give. [illustration: =portrait of himself.= _velasquez._] let your brush follow lines of structure. don't lay on paint across a cheek, for instance. notice the direction of the muscle fibre. it is the line of contraction of the muscle which gives the anatomical structure to a face. if your brush follows those, you will find that it takes the most natural course of direction. do the same with the planes of the body and of the clothing. note the lines of action, and the brush-stroke will naturally follow them. see that the whole form, and particularly the head, "constructs." the head is round, more or less; it is not flat. the planes of it cross the plane of the canvas, recede from it, cross behind, and return. this in all directions. you must make your painting express this. it is not enough that there be features, the features must be part of a whole which is surrounded, behind as well as in front, by the atmosphere. the hair is not just hair, it is the outer covering of the skull, and of necessity follows the curves of the skull; and there is a back part to the skull which you cannot see, but which you can feel--can know the presence of, because of the way it is connected with the front part by the sides. all this you must make evident in your painting, as well as the facts which are on the side of the skull turned toward you. how make it evident? by values and directness of brush-stroke. =background.=--never treat the background as something different from the head. the whole thing must go together. the slightest change in the background is equivalent to that much change of the head itself. for the change means necessarily a different contrast, either of color or light and shade, and it will have its effect on the color or relief of the head. paint the two together, then. make the head and all that goes with it or around it as equally parts of the picture, which all tend to affect each other. your background is not something which can be laid in after the head is finished. true you can paint the background immediately around the head first, and then, after painting the head, extend the background to the edge of the canvas; but the color, tone, and character of the background must be decided upon at the time the head is painted, and carried on in the same feeling. it is never good work to paint the head and then paint a background behind it. particularly is this true when there are windows or any objects whatever in the background. it is most important that the whole thing shall be seen in the same kind of light, and in the same relation of light. this is hardly to be done when the head is one painting and the background another. [illustration: =portrait.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._] this is not rigidly true, however, in cases when the whole thing is planned beforehand, and studies made for each part, as in elaborate portraits and compositions which include several figures or special surroundings. but the principle holds good here also. the relation must be kept of the head to the surroundings, and the effect of the one upon the other always kept in mind. =complex portraits.=--it is often possible to pose your model so as to bring out some characteristic occupation. this is often done in portraits of distinguished men. such a treatment gives opportunity for composition both of the figure and of the various objects which may make up the background. in such pictures you should study arrangement of line and mass, to make the thing æsthetically interesting as well as interesting as a portrait. composition in mass,--the consideration of the head and shoulders in relation to the space of the canvas,--is necessary in the simplest head; but as soon as the canvas takes in a representation of action on the part of the figure, line and movement must be considered, as was done so beautifully in whistler's portrait. in this the study of composition is your problem. you may study it all the time and in every picture you do, but it should be worked out before you begin to paint. plan your canvas carefully always. know just where everything is coming. when you leave things to chance, you are pretty sure to have trouble later. =portraits good training.=--i would not have you undertake to paint a portrait rashly. you should know what you are to expect. if you are not pretty sure of your drawing, and of the first principles of seeing color in nature, and of representing it on canvas, you are likely to get discouraged. particularly if a friend poses for you, you may expect disappointment on both sides. drawing a head from the life is a very different thing from drawing an inanimate object which will stay in one position as long as you can pay the rent. so in the painting of it, too, the color itself is alive. flesh is something very elusive to see the color of. and when you find that just as you begin to get things well under way, or are in a particularly tight place, just at that moment your model must rest, you must stop while the position is changed and gotten back to again; then you will begin to realize that "_la nature ne s'arrête pas_." i would have you know all this, i say, before you begin on your first portrait; but, nevertheless, if you can get a start at it you will find it extremely good practice. the very difficulties bring more definitely to you the real problems of painting. the fact that it is really the representation of something which has life has an interest quite of its own. the constant change of position on the part of the model will make you more observant, and less regardful of details; or if you do regard the details, and forget the other things, it will show you how inadequate those details are to real expression, unless there is something larger to place them on. don't undertake the painting of a head without considering well that you are likely to have trouble, and that the trouble you will have is most likely to be of a kind that you don't expect. but, having begun, keep your head and your grit, and do the best you can. remember that you learn by mistakes, and failures are a part of every man's work, and of every painter's experience, and not only of your own. you will save your self-esteem from considerable bruising if you make it a point never to let your sitter see your work till you are pretty well over the worst of it. the knowledge that it is to be seen will make you work less unconsciously, and you will find yourself trying for likeness, and all that sort of thing, when that is not what you should be thinking about; and if, after all, the thing is a failure, it is a great consolation to know that no one but yourself has seen it! =beginning a portrait.=--the ways of beginning portraits are innumerable. there is no one right way. some are right for one painter or subject, and some for others; but there are some methods which are more advisable for the beginner. you can begin and carry through your painting entirely with body color, or you can begin it with _frottées_, and paint solidly into that. take these two methods as types, and work in one or the other, according to what are the special qualities you want your work to have. if you have never painted a head, and have some knowledge of the use of paint and of drawing, i would suggest that you make a few studies of the head and shoulders, life size, in solid color, and on a not too large canvas, say sixteen by twenty inches. this will leave you no extra space, and you can devote your whole attention to the study of the head, with only a few inches of background around it. you will probably make the head too large. a head looks larger than it really is, especially when you are putting it on canvas. if you measure them you will find that few heads will be longer than nine inches from the top of the hair to the bottom of the chin. take this as the regular size in drawing it on your canvas, and make the other proportions according to that. make a drawing of the outlines in straight lines, which shall give only the main proportions of the head, neck, and shoulders. within this, block out the features largely. don't draw the eyes, but only the shape of the orbit; nor the nostril, but only the mass of light and shade of the nose. =construction.=--in these studies avoid trying to get anything more than what will be suggested by this simple drawing. use body color. don't think of anything but what you have to represent. never mind how the paint goes on, nor what colors you use, except that it is right in value, and as near the color as you can get. put it on with the full brush, and try to get first the large masses and planes. get it light where it is light, and dark where it is dark, and have contrast enough to give some relief. don't try for any problems. set your model in a simple, strong light and go ahead. no details, no eyes, only the great structural masses. try to feel the skull under these planes of light and dark. have the edges of them pronounced and firm. do a lot of these studies; learn structure first. you will never be able to put an eye in its place in the orbit till you can make the plane of dark which expresses the bony structure of the orbit. you will feel the edge of the brow, of the cheekbone, and where the light falls on the temple and on the side of the nose. inside of this is the dark of the cavity, broken for your purpose only by the light on the upper lid. lay these in. do the same with the other planes, and put your brush down firmly where you want the color, with no consideration but the simplest and most direct expression of value and color. now, when you can lay in a head in this way, so that you can express the likeness with nothing but these dozen or so of simple planes, you have got some idea of what are the main things which give character to a head. you will begin to understand how it should "construct." into this you can put all the detail you want, and if the detail is in value with this beginning it will keep its proper relation to the whole. always when painting a head solidly, work this way. get the action and character of the head as a whole. block in the planes of the face and the features; and then go ahead to give the details which express the lesser characteristics. but always get the character, even the first look of resemblance, with this blocking in. details and features will not give you the likeness, to say nothing of the character, if you have not gotten the character first by the representation of those proportions which mean the structure which underlies all the accidental positions of the detail of feature. =the frottée.=--if you want to be more exact with your drawing before you begin to paint, lay in your canvas with a light-and-shade drawing in charcoal. then make a _frottée_ in one color, and paint into and over that, as was described in the chapter on "still life." by careful and studious use of these two methods of work you can learn the main principles of painting portraits, and modify the handling as you have need; for all the various methods of manipulation are modifications of one or the other, or combinations of both of these fundamentally different ways of working. if you paint more than one sitting, get as good a drawing as you can the first day. put in your _frottée_ the next, or make your blocking in; then after that do your painting into the _frottée_, or the working out of such details as you decide to put in. titian painted solidly, probably with no details; then worked these in and glazed, then touched rich colors into the glaze. but you had better not bother with all these ways of painting. when you can work well in the simplest way, you will find yourself making all sorts of experiments without any suggestions from me. work first for facts of utmost importance, and technical methods are not such facts. perception and representation by any most convenient means are the first things to be thought of, and nothing else is of importance until a certain amount of advance is made along this line. learn to see and paint the wholeness of the thing at once, not the details, but the _fact_ of it. try to lay in things so that you have a solid ground to work onto and into later. look for the vital things. don't try for "finish." finish is not worked for nor painted into a picture; finish _occurs_ when you have represented all you have to express. when you have got character and values and true representation of color, you will find that the "finish" is there without your having bothered about it. the masses you are to look for and emphasize are the great spaces where the light strikes and the shadows fall. close your eyes. the lines disappear. you only see large planes of values; express these at once and simply. don't be afraid of rudeness, either of handling or of color, at first. don't try for finesse. all these delicacies will come later. but you must get the important things first. learn to be strong _first_, or you never will be. delicacy comes after strength, not before. so, too, freedom comes after knowledge--is the result of knowledge. so paint to learn. if it is rigid at first and hard, never mind. get the understanding and the representation as well as you can, and try for other things later. [illustration: =haystacks in sunshine.= _monet._ to show certain characteristics of handling in "impressionist" work.] chapter xxxi landscape from the usual rating of figures as the most important branch of painting, it would be natural to speak of that kind of work first. but work from the head must come before you attempt the figure, and there are a good many things that you can learn from landscape which will help you in figure-work. the manner of painting figures has been much modified, too, of late years, owing to certain qualities and points of view which are due to the study of landscape and the important position that it has come to occupy. in the old days landscape was only a secondary thing, not only as a branch of art in itself, but particularly as it was used by figure painters. in this century it has so broadened in its scope that it is now recognized to be as important a field of work as any. but further than this, it has become the most influential study in the whole range of painting. from the development of the study of outdoor nature, and particularly outdoor light, it has come about that certain facts of nature have been recognized which were before neglected, ignored, or unsuspected, and these facts bear quite as much on the painting of the figure as on the painting of landscape. so that it is no more possible to paint the figure, in some respects, as it was painted as a matter of course a hundred years ago, while other ways of painting the figure, which were undreamed of at that time, are the matters of course now. the whole problem of light has taken a new phase, and the treatment of color in that relation is modified in the painting of figures as well as in the other branches of work. =pitch.=--in no direction is this more marked than in the matter of _pitch_, or _key_. with the study of landscape, the range of gradation from light to dark has broadened. a picture may now be painted in a "high key;" the picture may be, from the highest to the lowest note in it, far lighter than would have been thought possible even thirty years ago. this question of "bright pictures" is one which demands consideration. one has only to go into any exhibition of pictures to-day to be struck with the fact that the key of almost every picture in it, of whatever kind, has changed from what it would have been in the last generation. this is not merely the result of the spread of the "impressionist" idea. that influence has only been strongly felt in this country within the last ten years. it is not that which i am speaking of now. i mean the fact that even the grayer pictures--those which do not in any ordinary sense of the word belong to impressionist work--are light in color, where they would once have been dark, or at least darker. the impressionists have had a definite influence, it is true; but the work of the earlier "_plein air_" men--the men who posed their models out-of-doors as a matter of principle, who studied landscape out-of-doors--was the first and most powerful influence, and that of the impressionists, coming along after it, has simply emphasized and carried it farther. =bright pictures.=--whatever may be thought of the work of those painters who are called "impressionists," it must be recognized that they have taught us how some things may be possible. and the present quality of brightness will necessarily be to a certain extent a permanent one in art. for like it or not as we may, it is true--true to a certain great, fundamental characteristic of nature. for outdoor light _is bright_, even on a gray day. the luminosity of color is too great to be represented with dark paint or lifeless color. and once this fact is recognized, it is a fact which will inevitably influence all kinds of work. what is possible and right at a certain stage of knowledge or recognition may be impossible when other points of view have once been accepted. we see only what we look for, and we look for only what we expect to see or are interested to see. you cannot go out-of-doors now and paint as you would have painted a hundred years ago. then you would have painted what you saw then; but you would not have seen nor looked for things which you cannot help seeing now. for our eyes have been opened to new qualities and new facts, and once the eyes have been opened to them they can never be closed to them again. =average observation.=--i say we see only what we look for, what we expect to find; anything out of the ordinary is hard to believe at first. in looking at nature the average observer does not even see the obvious. certain general facts he accepts in the general, but as a rule there is no real recognition of what is there; no perception of the relations of things; no analysis; no real _seeing_, only a conventional acceptance of a thing as a _thing_. men look at nature with one idea, and at a picture of nature with an entirely different idea. nature in the picture is to most people just what they have been accustomed to see in other pictures. they get their idea of how nature looks from those pictures, and if you show them a picture differently conceived they have difficulty in taking it in. for this reason the "bright picture" does not "look right." i remember being asked by a man in a modern exhibition what i thought of "these bright pictures." when i asked which pictures he had reference to, i found that he meant the work of a man whose whole aim in painting landscape was, as he once said to me, to get "the just note" in color and value. one would think that the fact that the whole force of an extremely able and sincere mind was directed to that purpose, would produce a picture with at least truth of observation. yet this was not what my passing acquaintance wanted to see. the picture he liked, which "had some nature in it," as he pointed out to me, was an extremely commonplace landscape with a black tree against a garish sky, reflected in a pool of water. the "bright picture" seemed to me exquisitely gray and quiet, though high in key, and the one with "nature in it," harsh and crude, but conventional; and that was just the point. the average observer wants to see, and does see, in nature what he is accustomed to accept in a picture as nature. but a painter cannot go on such a basis. he may paint a dark picture, but he must find a subject which is dark to do so. he may not paint daylight with false pitch and false relations, and say he sees it so. with every liberty for personal seeing, there are still certain facts so established and obvious that personality must take them and deal with them, must use them and not ignore them, in its self-expression. [illustration: =on the race track.= _degas._ to show relations of pitch and contrast out-doors.] the pitch of daylight is one of these facts. light and luminosity may not be qualities which appeal to your temperament. you may therefore not make them the main theme of your painting of landscape; but you cannot paint a daylight picture without in some way making it obvious that luminosity is a fundamental characteristic of day light. there is no other quality so universally present and pervasive. in sunlight it is the most vital quality. you might as well paint water without recognizing the fact that water is wet, as to paint daylight without recognizing the fact that diffused sunlight is brilliant. =a help.=--you will find it very useful as a help in seeing pitch as well as color to have a card with a square hole cut in it to look through at your landscape. have one side covered with black velvet and the other left white. compare darks with the black, and the lights with the white, and make the picture compose in the opening as in a frame. =key and harmony.=--but you should remember that the high key for out-of-door work does not mean crude nor unsympathetic color, neither does it mean that there is nothing but sunshine and shadow. your picture may be as high as you please in pitch, and yet be harmonious and pleasing. i have seen impressionist pictures of most pronounced type hung in the same room with old pictures and in perfect harmony with them. it means that good color is always good color, and will always be harmonious with other good color, whatever the pitch of either. one picture is simply a different note from the other, that is all. the color in nature is not crude in not being dark. the relations of spots of color are just; you have only to be as just in observing them, and your picture will be harmonious. make your notes just _all over_ your canvas. have some of them just and the rest false, and of course it will be wrong. or if you try to make crudity take the place of brilliancy, you will not get harmony. the harmony which comes from the presence in just relation of all the colors is none the less beautiful because more alive. you need not try for the most contrasting and most sparkling qualities of out-of-door color, but you should feel for the out-of-doorness of it. the space, the breadth, lack of confines, the largeness and movement, vibration and life,--these are the things which the modern painter has discovered in landscape and has emphasized; and this is what has made modern landscape a vital force in modern art. whatever you do or do not see, feel, and express in your painting, these you must see, feel, and express; for once these qualities are recognized and accepted they are as universal as the law of gravity, and can be as little ignored. =landscape drawing.=--landscape is more difficult to draw than is generally thought; not only is the character affected by the _scale_ of the main masses, but there is great probability of overdrawing. the curves that mark the modelling of the ground are very difficult to give justly. the altitude and slope of mountains are almost invariably exaggerated. the twists and windings of roadways and fences are seldom carefully drawn; yet the most exquisite movement of line is to be gained by just representation of them. to give the character of a tree, too, without making out too much of the detail of it, needs more precise observation than it generally gets. [illustration: =willow road.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._] get the character; get the sentiment of it. search for the important things here first, and be more particular about the placing of each line than about the number of lines. don't draw too many lines in a landscape; don't draw too many objects. carefully study the scene before you till you have decided what parts are most essential in giving the character that you want to express, and then draw most carefully those parts. see which are the _most expressive lines_ in it. get the swing and movement of those lines in the large; then study the more subtle movement of them. get these things on the canvas first, and put everything else in as subsidiary to them. have all this well placed before you begin to paint, and allow for little things being painted on to this. don't get too many things into one landscape. the spirit of the time and place is what will make the beauty of it, not the details nor the mere facts. this spirit you will find in a few things, not in many. having found which lines and forms, which masses and relations of color and value, express this, the more carefully you avoid putting in other things the more entirely you emphasize the quality which is the real reason of existence of your picture. in studying landscape, work for one thing at a time. what has been said of sketching and studies applies here. landscape is the most bewildering of subjects in its multiplicity of facts and objects and colors and contrasts. if you cannot find a way to simplify it you will neither know where to begin nor where to leave off. i cannot tell you just what to do or not to do, because no two landscapes are alike. recipes will do nothing in helping you to paint. but there is the general principle which you may follow, and i try to keep it before you even at the risk of over-repetition. in no kind of picture can you drag in unimportant things simply because they exist in nature. in landscape more than elsewhere, because you cannot arrange it, but must select in the actual presence of everything, you must learn to concentrate on the things which mean most, and to refuse to recognize those which will not lend themselves to the central idea. =selection.=--when you select your subject, or "_motif_," as the french call it, select it for something definite. there is always something which makes you think this particular view will make a good picture. state to yourself what it is that you see in it, not in detail, but in the general. is it the general color effect of the whole, or a contrast? is it a sense of largeness and space, or a beautiful combination of line in the track of a road, or row of trees, or a river? perhaps it is the mass and majesty of a mountain or a group of trees. something definite or definable catches you--else you had better not do it at all; and what that something is you must know quite precisely, or you will not have a well-understood picture. when you have distinctly in your mind what you want to paint it for, then see that the composition is so placed on your canvas that that characteristic is the main thing in evidence. with this done it is a very easy thing to concentrate on that characteristic, and to leave out whatever tends to break it up or distract from it. this is the only way you can simplify your subject. first by a distinct conception of _what_ you paint it for, then by so much analysis of the whole field of vision as will show you what does and what does not help in the expression of it. =detail.=--much detail in landscape is never good painting. whether big or little, your canvas must express something larger and more important than detail. give detail when it is needed to express character or to avoid slovenliness. give as much detail _where the emphasis lies_ as will insure the completeness of representation--not a touch more. =structure.=--have your foreground details well understood in drawing and value. this does not require the drawing of leaf and twig, but it does require _structure_. everything requires structure. _structure is fundamental to character._ if you will not take the trouble to study the character of any least thing you put in, don't put it in at all. nothing is important enough to put in, if it is not important enough to have its character and its purpose in the picture understood. i spoke of structure in speaking of the head. if i said nothing but "structure, structure, structure" to the end of the section, you would get the impression of what is the most important thing in drawing. if you will look for and find the line and proportion expressing the anatomy which makes the thing fulfil its particular function in the world, you will understand its character, and that is what is important, everywhere. =work in season.=--make your picture in the season which it represents. i don't say that a good summer picture may not be made in winter; but i do say that you are more likely to express the summer quality while the summer is around you. there is too much half painting of pictures, and then leaving them to be "finished up" afterwards. of course you can make all your studies and sketches, and then begin and finish the picture from them. if you are careful to have plenty of material, to accumulate all your facts with the intention of working from those facts, all right; but it would be better if you were to work your picture in the season of it, as long as you are a student at least. for until you have had a great deal of experience, you will find when you come to paint your picture that some very much needed material you have neglected to collect, and you cannot safely supply it from memory. if this occurs in the time of year represented in the picture, you can just go out and study it. =out-of-door landscapes.=--the most important movement in modern art, the most important in its effects on all kinds of work, is what i have mentioned as the _plein air_ movement. it was thought by some clear-headed men that the best way to paint an out-door picture was to take their canvases out-of-doors to paint it. instead of working from a few color sketches and many pencil studies, they painted the whole picture from first to last in the open air. working in this way, certain qualities got into the pictures unavoidably. necessarily the color was fresher and truer. necessarily there was more breadth and frankness, and less conventionality and mere picture-making. the spirit of the open got onto the canvas, and the whole type of picture was changed. for the first time out-of-door values were studied as things in themselves interesting and important. the result on landscape pictures was that pictures painted in the studio seemed unreal and insincere, and that men looked and studied less for the making of pictures, and more for what nature had to reveal. it would be a good thing for you as a student if you would do as these men did whenever you want to do any work at landscape, whether for itself, or for background. if you wish to pose any kind of figure with landscape background, pose and paint your figure out-of-doors. make sketches as much as you please, make studies as much as you please; but make them for the suggestions and knowledge they will give you, and not for material to be used in painting a picture at home. for your picture, start, and go on with, and finish it out-doors; you will get a feeling of freshness and truth in your work which you cannot get any other way. you will also acquire a power of concentration and of selection and rejection in the presence of nature which is of the utmost importance to you. =impressionism.=--it is not possible to speak of landscape and _plein air_ without mention of the "impressionists." you should understand what "impressionism" really is, and what it is not, and what the impressionist stands for. whether we like it or not, this work is not to be ignored. it has tried for certain things, and has shown that they can be much more justly represented than had before been believed to be possible, and fad or no fad, that result stands. in the first place, impressionism does not mean "purple and yellow." any one who says "purple and yellow" and throws the whole thing aside, is a very superficial critic. the purple and yellow are incidental to the impressionist, not essential. it is only one of the ways of handling color by means of which it was found possible to express certain qualities of light. before everything else the real impressionist stands for the representation of the personal conception and method as against the traditional. he believes that if a man has anything of his own to say, he must say it in his own way; and that if he cannot find that nature has anything to say to him personally, if nature cannot give him a personal message, if he can only paint by giving another man's ideas and another man's method, then he had better not paint at all; so that whatever he may see to paint, and however he finds a way to express it, the value of it and the truth of it lie in the fact that it is _his_, his way of seeing, and his way of expressing,--that it is "personal." =luminosity.=--the impressionist is imbued with the fact that all the light by means of which things are at all visible is luminous--that it vibrates. he does not think that living light can be represented by dead color. he strives to make his color live also. this is the secret of the purple and yellow. by the contrast of these two colors, by the combination and contrast and juxtaposition of the complementary colors and the use of pure pigments, he can make his colors more vibrant, and so give more of the pitch of real sunlight. he actually applies on his canvas the laws which are known to hold with light and color scientifically. he applies practically in his work those laws which the scientist furnishes him with theoretically. the result in some hands is garish, crude. but the best men have shown that it is possible to use the means so as make a subtle harmony and a luminous brilliancy that have never before been attained. the crudity is the result of the man, not of the method. =the application.=--the application of all this to your own work is that when you want pitch and sunlight you can get it through the observance of the laws of color contrast, and such a laying on of pigment as will bring this about. try to study the actual contrasts of color, not as they seem, but as they are in nature. study the facts which have been observed as to colors in their effects on each other, and then try to see these in nature and to paint the results. =the luminists.=--this is the principle of all "loose painting" carried out scientifically. it is the cause of the peculiar technique of those impressionists who paint in streaks and spots of pigment. the manner of putting on paint does interfere with the continuity of outline in the drawing necessarily, but there is a marked gain in the quality of light; and as these men are "luminists," and light is what they want primarily, the sacrifice is justifiable, or at any rate explicable. now if you understand the scientific principle, and the practical application and its result on canvas, you have in your hands one of the main instrumentalities in the rendering of one great quality of out-of-doors. how far you adopt it is a matter for you to decide for yourself. if the complete adoption of it implies too much of a sacrifice of other things of equal or greater value to you, then modify it, or take advantage of it as much as will give you the balance of qualities you most want. there is one way to get light and brilliancy and life into your color: adapt it to your purpose if you need it. this is the application of color juxtaposition to mixing. the placing of complementaries so as to increase contrast is another way of adding to the brilliancy of light. you will find this most useful when you want to give the greatest possible emphasis to the effect of sunlight and shadow. if you keep your shadows cool, your lights will be the richer and more sparkling because of that contrast. if you want more strength in a note of color, get its complement as near it as you can. look for their iridescence of edges of shadow, and of the contours of objects. you will get greater relief of light and shade by contrast of warm and cool than contrast of light and dark. do not misunderstand me. i am not advising you to be an impressionist. i wish only that you shall see what there is in this way of looking at nature and of representation of certain effects of nature, which will be of use to you in the painting of landscape. i would have you know what means are at your command, what is possible to accomplish in certain directions, and how it is possible to accomplish it; then i would have you make use of whatever will most directly and completely serve your purpose. do not use any color or colors, any method or point of view, because of any advocacy whatsoever. know first what you want to paint and why. let nature speak to you. go out and look at landscape. study and observe; see the effect which makes you want to paint it, and then use the means and method which seem most entirely adapted to it. don't ask yourself, nor let any one else ask you, is this so-and-so's method? or, does this belong to this or that school? don't bother about schools or methods at all. look frankly to see, accept frankly, and then work to render and convey as frankly as you have seen. be sincere--sincere with yourself and with your painting: then you will surely work at whatever you do from conviction, and not from fad; and whether it makes you paint as an impressionist or not is a very minor matter, because sincerity of purpose is the most important thing in painting, and method of representation one of the least. =atmosphere.=--a universal characteristic of nature will be a fundamental one in landscape. a landscape which you cannot breathe in is not a perfect one. we live and breathe in atmosphere, and the expression of atmosphere will go far to make your landscape true. but atmosphere is not haziness. neither is it vagueness nor negativeness of color. truth of color-quality, and justness of relation will do most in getting it. you had better not try for atmosphere as a thing, but as a result. anything so universal and so indefinite can be expressed by no one thing. if you try to get it by any one means you will miss it. study, then, the subtlety of color relation and justness of value. try to be sensitive to the slightest variety of tone, and be satisfied with no least falsity of rendering, and you will find that your picture will not lack atmosphere. =color of contour.=--an important thing for you to look for and to study is the color of contours. you will not find it easy; not easy even to know what it is that you are looking for. but consider it as a combination of contiguous values and color vibrations, and things will reveal themselves to you. no form is composed of unvarying color. no combination of color surrounding it lacks variety. all along the edge of forms and objects, of whatever kind, the value and color relation constantly change. the outline is not constant. here and there it becomes lost from identity of value and color with what surrounds it, and again defines itself. the edge is not sharp. the color rays vibrate across each other. the inevitable variety of tint and value, of definiteness and vagueness, gives a never-ending play of contrasts and blendings. these are qualities which go to the harmonizing of color, to the expression of light, and particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. this constant variety of contrasting edges is the constant movement and play of the visual rays, and the study of it gives life and vibration to the picture, and all the objects represented in it. outdoors, particularly when the play of diffused light and the movement of all the objects is continually felt, either through their own elasticity or because of the heat and light waves, this study is most necessary, if you would get the feeling of freedom, space, and air. =skies.=--in the painting of the sky there are several points to be kept in mind. the sky, even on the quietest day, is full of movement. cloud masses change continually. if there are no clouds there is constant vibration in the blue; constant variety in the plane of color,--a throb of color sensation which is not to be expressed by a dead, flat tint. paint the sky loosely. lay on the color as you will, with a broad, flat brush, or with a loose, smudgy handling; put it on with horizontal strokes, or with criss-cross touches, but never make it a lifeless tone. have variety in it; keep a pulsation between the warm and cool color. you can work in the separate touches of half-mixed color, warm and cool, all through the sky, so that the whole tone will be flat and even, but not dense and dead. so far as the sky is concerned, the atmosphere is essential, and is to be represented not by dense color, but by free, loose, vibrating color. =clouds.=--if you have clouds to paint, do not draw them rigidly. get the effect of the mass and movement, and the lightness of them. as they constantly change in form, any one form they may assume cannot be characteristic. the type form is what you must get, and the suggestion of the motion and lightness. you can suggest, too, the direction of the wind by the way they mass and sway and flow. the direction of the sun's rays, too, counts in the color of them. the outline of a cloud mass is never hard, never rigid. the pitch and luminosity and subtlety are what give you most of the effect of it. study the type of cloud, of course. it is a _cumulus_, _cirrus_, _stratus_, or what not. this character is important; but the character lies in the whole body of the cloud form, not in the accidental outlines or the special position of it for the moment. =sky composition.=--the massing of cloud forms is a very useful factor in the composition of the landscape. the cloud bank or cloud line is capable of giving accent or balance to the picture. as it is not constant in position any more than in form, you can place it with truth to nature pretty nearly always where it will do the most good as an element in the composition. make use of them, then, and study the forms and the possible phases of them so as to make the best use of them. =diffused light.=--much of the characteristic quality of out-door light is the result of the diffusion of light due to both the refraction and the reflection of the sky. the light which bathes the landscape comes in all directions from the sky. necessarily, then, the sky will be in most cases far higher in value than anything under it. even the blue of the sky, which looks darker than some bit of light in the landscape, you will find, if you can manage to get them to tell against each other, will be the more luminous of the two, and will look lighter. there are times when the sun glares on a white building or a piece of white sand, when the white tells light against the blue. but these are exceptions, and if we could get a blue paint which would give the intensity of color, and also the brilliancy of the light, even these cases would be most truly represented with the sky as the higher value. it is a case of whether to sacrifice value to color, or the reverse, as we cannot have both. sometimes, however, in a storm, the dense dark of the storm sky is really lower in value than some white object against it, especially if there be a bit of sun breaking through on it. but in general, nevertheless, you should consider the sky as always lighter and more luminous than anything under it. =three planes.=--it will help you in understanding the way the light falls on landscape to consider everything as in one of three planes, and these planes taking greater or less proportions of light according to the position of the sun with reference to them. the position of the sun changes from a point immediately over, to a point practically at right angles to all objects in nature. everything that can exist under the sun will come in one of these planes, and at some time in the day in each. the vertical, the horizontal, or some sort of an oblique between these two. if the sun is overhead exactly, the flat ground, the tops of trees and houses, will get the full amount of sunlight. the vertical planes, sides of houses, depths of foliage, etc., will get the least, some of them being lighted only by diffused and reflected light. the planes lying between these two extremes will get more or less, according as they are more or less at right angles to the direct rays of the sun. and as the sun declines from the zenith, the vertical planes get more and more and the horizontal planes less and less of the light, till in the late afternoon the banks of trees and sides of buildings and cloud-masses are gilded with light, and the broad horizontal plains of land and water are in shadow. however obscured the sun may be, this principle holds more or less; and it makes clear and helps you to observe and notice many facts in landscape light and shade which it is necessary to know. millet said that all the beauty of color and value, and the whole art of painting, rested on the comprehension and observance of these facts. he said that as the planes of any form turned towards or away from the light and so got more or less of it, and as one form stood more or less far back of another and the atmosphere came between, the color and value changed; and in the observance of this, and its representation as applied to any and every object or group of objects, lay the whole of painting. all the possible beauties of the art rested on it. he showed a painting of a single pear in which these things were most subtly observed, and said that that painting was as complete and perfect as any painting he could do simply because in the observance of these relations was implied the observance of everything which was vital to painting. =short sittings.=--this characteristic, and the steady change of position of the sun and its effects on all the objects which are directly lighted by it, make it necessary, whenever you are painting from nature out-of-doors, that you should not paint at one thing very long at a time. the light changes pretty rapidly; at high noon it only takes a few moments to exactly reverse the light. it is seldom that you can do any just study for more than an hour or an hour and a half at a sitting. some men do work two or three hours, but they are not studying justly all that time; for that which was light is dark three hours later, and any true study of value and color is impossible under these conditions. of course on gray days this is less marked, but you must suit your sittings to the time and facts. it would be better if you had more canvases, and worked a short time on each, and many days on all. you would have the truest work. monet works never more than a half-hour on one canvas; but when he starts out he takes a half-dozen or more different canvases, and paints on each till the light has changed. theodore robinson seldom worked more than three-quarters of an hour, or at most an hour, on one canvas; but, he worked for twenty or thirty days on each canvas, and sometimes had a single canvas under way for successive seasons. any man who would truly study for the just value and note of color must work more or less in this way when he works out-of-doors. chapter xxxii marines all that has been said on landscape painting applies to marines. you have the same open-air feeling and vibration of light and color. there is no need to say the same things over again. it is only necessary to take all these things for granted, and emphasize certain other things which are peculiar to the sea. =sea and sky.=--to begin with, the relation of the sky to what is under it is markedly different in color from any other relations in painting. the sea is always more or less of a perfect reflecting surface, and always strongly influenced in color, value, and key by the reflections of the sky on its surface. the sky color is always modifying the water--when and how depends on the condition of the weather, and the degree of quiet or movement of the water. sometimes the water is a perfect mirror; sometimes the mirror quality is almost lost, but the influence is there. this relation is the most important thing, because the sea and the sky is always the main part of your picture; and no matter what else is there, or how well painted it may be, if these things are not recognized, if they are not justly observed, your picture is bad. i cannot tell you all about these things. the variety of effects and relations is infinite. you must study them, paint them in the presence of nature, and use your eyes; only remember the general principles of air and atmosphere and light and color that i have spoken of elsewhere--all have most vital importance on marine painting. you must study these, and think of them, and in the presence of sea or sky observe their bearings, and apply them as well as you can. =movement.=--if "_la nature ne s'arrête pas_" ordinarily, the fact is even more marked in marines; for the water is the very type of ceaseless motion. somehow, you must not only study in spite of the continual motion, but you must manage to make that motion itself felt. this you will find is in the larger modelling of the whole surface--the "heave" of it as distinguished from the waves themselves. the waves are a part of that motion of course; but give the wave-drawing only, without their relation to the great swing of the whole body of water, and you get rigidity rather than movement. the wave movement is in and because of this larger motion. see that first, and make it most evident, then let the waves themselves cut it up and help to express it. [illustration: =entrance to zuyder zee.= _clarkson stanfield._] =wave drawing.=--how shall you "draw" so changeable a thing as a wave? every wave has a type of form, has a characteristic movement and shape; and as it changes it comes into a new position and shape in logical and practically identical sequence of movement. you can only study this by constant watching. you look at the wave, and then turn your eyes away to fix it on your canvas; as you look back, the wave is not there. well, you can only not try to make a portrait of each wave; it isn't possible. don't expect to. study the movement and type forms; think of it; fix it in your mind; decide on the mass and suggestive relation of it to other masses, and put that down. there is never a recurrence of the same thing either in exact form or color, but fix your eyes on one place, and over and over again you will see a succession of waves of similar kind. or look at a wave and follow it as it drives on; changes come and go, but the wave form in the main keeps itself for some time. look over a large field of the water without too sharply focussing the eyes, you will see the great lines and planes of modelled surface over and over again taking the same or similar shapes, positions, and relations. and as you look your eye will follow the movement in spite of yourself. your gaze will gradually come nearer and nearer; but meanwhile, in following the wave, it will have felt that the wave was the same in shape, but only varied in position. in this way you will come to know the wave forms. jot them down, either in color or with charcoal; but do not look for outline too much. try to study the forms and relations, mainly by the broad touch, with a characteristic direction and movement. no amount of explanation will tell you anything. you must sit and look, think, analyze, and suggest, then generalize as well as you can. =open sea and coast.=--the open sea is all movement. even a ship, the most rigid thing on it, moves with it. but you do not have to study these things from the standpoint of invariable movement. you can start from a stable base. study coast things first. you have then the relation of the movement of the water to the rock or land, and you can simplify the thing somewhat. what has been said of motion holds good still; but you can get something definite in a rock mass, and study the changes near it, and then extend your study as you feel strong enough. the study of coast scenery is quite as full of changing beauty as the open sea, and it has certain types that belong to it alone. breakers and surf, and the contrast of land and sea colors and forms, give great variety of subject and problem. in the drawing of rocks the study of character is quite as important, but not so evasive, as the study of wave forms. you must try to give the feeling of weight to them. the mass and immovability add to the charm and character of the water about them. =subject.=--don't undertake too much expanse on one canvas. of course there are times when expanse is itself the main theme; but aside from that, too much expanse will make too little of other things which you should study. whether your canvas be big or little, to get expanse everything in the way of detail and form must be relatively small, otherwise there is no room on the canvas for the expanse. so if you would paint some surf, or a rock and breakers, or a ship, place the main thing in proper proportion to the canvas, and let the expanse take care of itself, making the main thing large enough to study it adequately. if it is too small on the canvas, you cannot do this. =ships.=--the painting of the sea necessarily involves more or less the painting of vessels of different kinds. you may put the ship in so insignificant a relation to the picture that a very vague representation of it will do, but you must have a thorough knowledge of all the details of structure and type if you give any prominence to the ship in your picture. =detail.=--you do not need to put in every rope in a vessel. you do not need to follow out every line in the standing rigging even, in order to paint a ship properly. to do this would miss the spirit of it, and make the thing rigid and lifeless. but ignorance will not take the place of pedantry for all that. every kind of vessel has its own peculiar structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own peculiar arrangement of spar and rigging. whether you are complete or not in the detailing of the masts and rigging, you must know and represent the true character of the craft you are painting. you must take the trouble to know how, why, and when sails are set, and what are the kinds, number, and proportion of them, and their arrangement on any kind of vessel or boat you may paint. there is again only one way to know this. if you are not especially a painter of marines, you may find that the study of some particular vessel in its present condition and relation to surrounding things will serve your turn; but if you go in for the painting of marine pictures generally, you can only get to know vessels by being on and about them at all seasons and places. your regular marine painter fills dozens and hundreds of sketch-books with pencilled notes of details and positions and accidents and incidents of all sorts and conditions of ships. ships under full sail and under reefed canvas; ships in a squall and ships in dead calm--he can never have too many of these facts to refer to. the true marine painter is nine parts a sailor. if he does not take, or has not taken a voyage at sea, at least has passed and does pass a large part of his time among vessels and sailors. he knows them both; his details are facts that he understands. and what he puts in or leaves out of a painting is done with the full knowledge of its relative importance to his picture and to the significance of the ship. all this sounds like a good deal to undertake; but to the man who loves the water and what sails upon it, it is only following his liking, and any one who does not love all this should content himself with only the most incidental sea painting; for sea pictures are not to be painted from recipes any more than any other thing, and ships particularly cannot be represented without an understanding of them. and after all, you do not have to do all this study at once. if you will only study well each thing that you do, and never paint one vessel or boat without understanding that one; if you will study the one you are doing now, and will do the same every time,--eventually you will have piled up a vast deal of knowledge without having realized how much you were doing. =color of water.=--you must study the color of water in the large when you paint it. remember that its color depends on other things than what it is itself. the character of the bottom, whether it be rocky or sandy, and the depth of the water, will affect its color; and to one accustomed to see these things, the picture betrays its truth or falsity at a glance, especially as the character of the wave and the great movement of the whole surface are influenced by the same things. [illustration: =girl spinning.= _millet._ example of "_contre jour_" and out-of-door contrast of light and shade.] chapter xxxiii figures the broadest classification of figure pictures is to consider them as of two kinds,--those painted in an out-door or diffused light, and those painted in an in-door or concentrated light. the painting of figures out-of-doors you will find more difficult if you have had no experience in painting them in the studio. the problems of light and shade and color are more complex in the diffused light, and the knowledge of structure and modelling, as well as of special values gained by studio study, will be most helpful to you when you paint out-of-doors. i should say, then, don't attempt any serious painting of the human figure in the open air till you have had some experience with its special problems in the house. =the nude.=--no good figure-work has ever been done which was not founded on a knowledge of the nude. whether the figure is draped or not, the nude is the basis of form. the best painters have always made their studies of pose and action in the nude, and then drawn the draperies over that. this insures the truth of action and structure, which is almost sure to be lost when the drawing of the form is made through drapery or clothing. the underlying structure is as essential here as in portrait. it is the more imperative that the body be felt within the clothes from the fact that it cannot be seen. there must be no ambiguity; no doubt as to the anatomy underneath; for without this there can be no sense of actuality. i do not say paint the nude. on the contrary, if you want to go so far as that in the study of the figure, you must not attempt to do it with the aid of a book. go to a good life class. but i wish to emphasize the principle that when you undertake to paint anything involving the figure, you must know something of the structure of what is more or less hidden, and must make allowance for the disguising of form which the draping of it will inevitably cause. and when you draw your figure, you should lay in your main lines, at any rate, from the nude figure if you can. if you cannot command a professional model for this purpose, you can only be more careful about your study of the underlying lines and forms as they are suggested by the saliencies of the draperies. if this is the case, be most accurate in those measurements which place the proportions of the parts which show through the covering, and try to trace out by the modelling where the lines would run. by mapping out these proportions, and drawing the lines over the drapery masses wherever you can make them out, you can judge to a certain extent of the truth of action in your drawing. the use of a lay figure will help you somewhat if you can get one which is true in proportion. it will not help you much in the finer modelling, but it will at least insure your structural lines being in the right place, and that is as much as you can hope for without the special study of the nude. a lay figure is expensive, costing about three hundred dollars in this country. you will hardly be apt to aspire to a full-sized one, as only professional painters can afford to pay so much for accessories. but small wooden ones are within the means of most people, and will be found useful for the purpose i have mentioned, and one should be obtained. when you have assured yourself, as far as you can by its use with and without special draperies, of the right action of your drawing, you must do your painting from the draped model. =the model.=--never paint without nature before you. if you paint the figure, never paint without the model. for the sake of the study of it, it goes without saying that you can learn to paint the figure only by studying from the figure. but beyond that, for the sake of your picture, you can have no hope of doing good work without working from the actual object represented. the greatest masters have never done pictures "out of their heads." the compositions and æsthetic qualities came from their heads it is true, but they never worked these things out on canvas without the aid of nature. and the greater the master, the more humble was he in his dependence on nature for the truth of his facts. much more, then, the student needs to keep himself rigidly to the guidance of nature; and this he can only do by the constant use of the model. =one figure or many.=--whether you have one or more figures, the problem may be kept the same. the canvas must balance in mass and line and in color. when you decide to make a picture with several figures, study the composition first as if they were not _figures_, but groups of masses and line. get the whole to balance and compose, then decide your color composition. simplify rather than make complex. the more you have of number, the more you should consider them as parts of a whole. keep the idea of grouping; combine the figures, rather than divide them. have every figure in some logical relation to its group, and then the group in relation to the other parts. don't string them out or spot them about. study the spaces between as well as the spaces they occupy. and don't fill up these spaces with background objects. that will not bind the group together, but will separate it. fill the spaces with air and with values--even more important! all this arranged, paint each group and each figure as if it were one thing instead of many. as you treat the head, the body, the dress, and the chair as all parts of a whole in a single sitting figure, so treat the various heads, bodies, dresses, etc., in a group as parts of a whole, by studying always the relations of each to each. and then study to keep the different groups as parts of whole canvas in the same way. =simplicity of subject.=--but do not be too ambitious in your attempts. keep your subjects simple. don't be in a hurry to paint many figures. paint one figure well before you try several. you will find plenty of scope for your knowledge and skill in single figures. practise with sketches and compositions, if you will, in grouping several figures, and try to manage them so that the whole shall be simple in mass and effect; but do not attempt, as a student, without experience and skill in the painting of one figure, to paint pictures containing several. by the time you can really paint a single figure well, you can dispense with a manual of painting, and branch out as ambitiously as you please. in the meantime, everything that you have knowledge enough to express well, you can express with the single figure. with the model, the background, the pose and occupation, the clothing and draperies, and whatever accessories may be natural to the thing as elements, it is possible to work out all the problems of line and mass and color. if a really fine thing cannot be made with one figure, more figures will only make it worse. look again at whistler's portrait of his mother. consider it now, not as a portrait, but as a single figure. what are the qualities of it which would be helped if there were more in it? the very simplicity of it makes the handling of it more masterly. look also at the one simple figure of millet's "sower;" all the great qualities of painting that are likely to get themselves onto one canvas you will find in this. see what movement and dignity there are in it. how statuesque it is! it is monumental. it has scale; it imposes its own standard of measurement. there are air and envelopment and light and breadth. are these not qualities enough for one canvas? =nature the suggester.=--take your suggestions, your ideas, for pictures from nature. keep your eyes open. observe all poses which may hint of possible schemes of light and shade, of composition, or of color. it is marvellous how constantly groupings and poses and effects of all kinds occur in every-day life. humanity is kaleidoscopic in its succession of changes; one after another giving a phase new and different, but equally suggestive of a picture if you will take the hint. the picture which originates in a natural occurrence is always true if it is sincerely and frankly painted. truth is more various than fiction. it is easier to see than to invent. and in the arrangement of the material which nature freely and constantly furnishes to him there is scope for all the invention of man. =action and character.=--the picture comes from the action--resides in it. the action comes from the act, and is natural to it, expressive of it. any gesture or position which is the natural and unaffected result of an essential action will be true and vital, suggestive of nature, and beautiful because it will inevitably have character--be characteristic. the beauty of the picture is not something external to the costumes, occupations, and life which surround you, but is to be found, contained in it, and brought out, manifested, made visible, by the mere logical working out of the need, the custom, or the occasion. emphasis is only the salience of the most natural movement. daily life swarms with pictures. you do not need to go to other places and other times for subjects. if you are awake to what is going on around you, if you see the essential line of the occupation, or the mass and color which is incidental to every least activity, you will have more suggested to you than you have time to do justice to. and it is your business to see the beautiful in the commonplace. everything is commonplace till you see the charm in it. the artistic possibility does not lie in the unusual in any subject, but in the fact that the thing cannot get done without action and grouping and color and contrast; and these are the artist's opportunities. keep your eyes open for them; learn to recognize them when you see them; look for these rather than for the details of the accidental fact which brings them out. see the movement of it, and the relation of it to what surrounds it, and you will hardly avoid seeing the picture in it. here is a composition which is an almost literal rendering of the movement and light and shade effect of a position quite accidentally seen. the whole effect of lighting and of line, the grouping and the pose, resulted purely from the musician's desire to get a good light on his music. there was no need to add to it. it was simply necessary to recognize the charm of it, and to represent that charm through it as frankly as it could be done. [illustration: =sketch of a flute player.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._] =posing the model.=--let the character of the model suggest the pose. if you have a scheme for a picture, choose a model whose personality will lend itself naturally to the occupation or action natural to that scheme. then follow the suggestion which you find in the model. some rearrangement will always be necessary if you do not use as a model the same person who originally gave you the idea for the picture. every human being has a different manner. you cannot hope for exactly the same expression in one person that you found in another. but put the model as nearly as you can in the same situation and pose, and then when the model eases from the unnatural muscular balance into the one natural to him, you will find the idea taken from your first observation translated into the characteristics of your present model. never try to place a model in a pose which he can only hold by an unnatural strain. you will not get a satisfactory result from it. study your model; see what poses he most naturally falls into, and then take advantage of one of these, and arrange your picture with reference to it. never attempt to represent a character in your picture by using a model of a different class or type from it; you will not be successful either in painting a lady from a model who is a peasant, nor in painting a peasant from a model who is a lady. the life and occupation and thought common to your model will get into your painting of her; and if that is not in accordance to the idea in the picture, your picture will be false. the dress, no less than the pose and occupation, must be such as is natural to your model. the accessories of your picture must befit the character you wish to paint; otherwise your model becomes no more than a lay figure. take note of the characteristics which are peculiar to your model, and use them; do not change them nor idealize them. rather paint them as they are, and make them a vital part of your study of the subject. this is the best you can do with these characteristics. they may be the most expressive thing in your picture. if they are of such a nature that you cannot use them in this way, then do not use this model at all; you cannot get rid of these things. in trying to obscure or idealize them, you only lose character, or paint a character into your model which is unnatural to him; the result will not be satisfactory. =quiet sitters.=--an inexperienced painter should not use a model with too much vivacity of body or of expression. the quiet, reposeful, thoughtful model, who will change little in position or manner, will simplify the problem. a model too wide awake or too sleepy will either of them give you trouble. avoid very young children as models, and particularly babies. they are never quiet, and the problems you will have even with the best of models will be made enormously more difficult by their restlessness. for your first work choose models with well-marked faces, and pose them in a direct light which will give you the simplest and strongest effect of light and shade. see that your sitter is in as comfortable a position as you can get him into, so that the pose can be held easily. don't attempt difficult and unusual attitudes. such things require much skill and knowledge to take advantage of, and to use successfully. make your effect more in the study of composition and color than in fanciful poses. later, when you have gained experience, you may do this sort of thing. if you are painting a face, see that the eyes are in at a restful angle with the head, and that they are not facing a too strong light, nor are obliged to look at a blank space. give them room to have a restful focus, and perhaps something pleasant or interesting to look at. =length of pose.=--no sitter can hold a pose in perfect motionlessness. do not expect it. you must learn to make allowance for certain slight changes which are always occurring. you must give your model plenty of rest, too, especially if he be not a professional model. a half-hour pose to ten minutes' rest is as much as a regular model expects to do as a rule. if you have a friend posing for you, particularly if it be a woman, twenty minutes' pose and ten minutes' rest, for a couple of hours, is all you should expect; and if the pose is a standing one, this will probably be more than she can hold--make the rests longer. an inexperienced model--and sometimes even a trained one--is likely to faint while posing, particularly if the room be close. look out for this; watch your sitter, and see that she is not looking tired. the minute that you see the least sign of fatigue, if she shows pallor--rest. do not get so absorbed in your canvas that you do not notice your model's condition. if you are observing and studying your model as closely as you should, you can hardly fail to notice any change that may occur, and you should at once give her relief. =distance.=--don't work too near your model, nor too near your canvas. as regards the first, be far enough away to see the whole of the figure you are painting, or of that part which you are doing, entirely at one focus of the eye, and yet near enough to see the detail clearly. if you are too near, you see parts at a time, and do not see it as a whole. if you are too far, you see too generally for good study. you might make it a rule to be away from your subject a distance of about three or four times the extreme measurement of it. if it is a full length, say fifteen to twenty feet, if you can get so large a room. if it is a head and shoulders, about six or eight feet. never get closer than six feet. as to your canvas, work at arm's length. don't bend over--again you see parts, and you must treat your canvas as a whole. never rest your hand or arm on the canvas. train your arm to be steady. sit up straight, hold your brush well out at the end of the handle, and your arm extended; now and then, if you need closer work, lean forward, and if necessary use a rest-stick; but as a rule your work will be stronger and hang together better if you work as i have suggested. of course you will often get up, and walk away from your work. set your easel alongside the model, and go away to a distance, and compare them. too intense application to the canvas forgets that relations, effect, and wholeness of impression are of the greatest importance, and are only to be judged of when seen at some distance. =background.=--under the general title of background you may place everything which will come in as accessory to the figure, and against or alongside of which it stands. the picture must "hang together"; must have envelopment; must be a whole, not an aggregation of parts. everything that goes to the making up of this whole must have a natural and logical connection with it. from the first conception of the picture you must consider the background as an essential part of it, and as something which will have a vital effect upon the figure. the color of the background must be thought of as a part of, because affecting, the figure itself. the simplicity or variety in the background, the number of objects in it, must be considered as to the effect on the figure also. you cannot make the background a patchwork of objects and colors without interfering with the effect of the main thing in the picture. if your figure is simple and quiet, keep the background the same. make it a principle to treat the background simply always. if the character of the case demands some detail, and a variety of objects, then treat them so that their effect is as simple as possible; and the figure must be made stronger, in order that the variety in the background shall not overpower it. control it by the way the light or the color masses, or simplify the painting of them. keep the background in value as regards prominence and relief of objects as well as in the matter of color. =composition of backgrounds.=--you can make the background help the figure, not merely by the painting of objects which help to explain,--that is of course,--but in the placing and arranging of them you may emphasize the composition. whether the background be a curtain with its folds, or an interior with its furniture, you can and must make every object, every fold of the drapery, every mass of wall or object, distinctly help out in the composition as line and mass. your composition must balance; the line and movement of the figure must have its true relation. the way you use whatever goes into the picture, the objects which make up the background, the way they group, and the spaces between them, must have a helpful reference to that movement, and to the balance of the whole. =simplicity.=--lean always towards simplicity in composition as against complexity. in backgrounds particularly, avoid detail and over-variety. don't have the whole surface of the canvas spotted with _things_. if it is necessary, put it in; if it is not necessary, leave it out; and if there is the slightest doubt which it is, leave it out. the most common and the most fatal mistake is to make the picture too "interesting." the interest in a picture does not lie in the quantity of things expressed, but in the character of them, and in the quality of their representation. if you cannot treat a simple composition well, if you cannot make a picture balance well, and make it interesting with a quiet background, be sure a multitude of objects will not help it. the more you put into it the worse it will be. learn to be master of the less before you try to be master of the more. [illustration: =milton dictating "paradise lost."= _munkacsy._ to show use of background. notice also the composition.] =lighting.=--i have spoken of lighting in general in other chapters. you must apply the principles to your use of figures. study the different effects which you can get on the model by the different ways of placing in reference to the window. whatever lighting will be difficult in one kind of painting will be no less so in another. avoid cross-lights, and do not be ambitious to try unusual and exceptional effects. if one should occur to you as charming, of course do it, if it is not too difficult, but don't go around hunting for the strange and weird. there is beauty enough for all occasions in such effects as are constantly coming under your observation. what was said about simplicity of subject will apply here as well, for the light and color effect is naturally a part of the subject. the most practical lights are those which fall from one side, so as to give simple masses of light and dark; they should come from above the level of the head, so as to throw the shadow somewhat downwards. ="contre jour."=--one kind of posing with reference to lighting, gives very beautiful effect, but calls for close study of values, and is very difficult. it is called in french, _contre jour_; that is, literally, "against the day," or, against the light. it is a placing of the model so that the light comes from behind, and the figure is dark against the light. from its difficulty it should not be taken as a study by a beginner, for modelling and color are difficult enough at best. when they are to be gotten in the low key that the light behind necessitates, and with the close values which this implies, the difficulty is enormously increased. but before you attempt the human figure in the open air, you will find it very good study to work in the house _contre jour_. the effect of a figure out-doors has many of the qualities of _contre jour_. the diffusion of light and the many reflections make the problem more complex; but the contrast, the close values, and the subtle modelling which you must study in _contre jour_ will be good previous training before going out-doors with a model. look at millet's "shepherdess spinning," at the head of this chapter, as an example of _contre jour_. =figures out-of-doors.=--in painting, an object is always a part of its environment. so a figure must partake of the characteristics of its surroundings. out-of-doors it is part of the landscape, characterized by the qualities which are peculiar to landscape. the diffusion of light, the vibration and the movement of it, the brilliancy and pitch, the cross-reflections and the envelopment,--all these give to the figure a quality quite different from that which it has in the house. there is no such definiteness either of drawing, or of light and shade, or of color. the problem is a different one. you must treat your figure no more as something which you can control the effect of, but as something which, place it in what position, in what surroundings, you will, it will still be affected by conditions over which you have no control. textures and surface qualities, local or personal colors, lose their significance to the figure out-of-doors. they become lost in other things. the pose, the action, the mass, the note of color or value,--these are what are of importance. the more you search for the qualities which would be a matter of course in the house, the more you will lose the essential quality,--the quality of the fact of out-doors. when in the house, you can have things as definite as you wish; out-doors you will find a continual play of varying color and light. the shadows do not fall where you expect them to. the values are less marked. the stillness of the pose is interfered with by the constant movement of nature. the color is influenced by the diffused color of the atmosphere and the reflected color of the grass, the trees, and the sky. the light does not fall _on_ the face so much as it falls _around_ it. the modelling is less, the planes are not precise. the expression is as much due to the influence of what is around it as to the face itself. all this means that you must study and paint the figure from a new point of view. you do not make so much of what the model is as how the model looks in these surroundings. you must not look for so much decision, and you must study values closely. look more for the modelling of the mass than for the modelling of surface. look more for the vibration of light and air on the flesh and drapery colors than for these colors in themselves. look for color of contours in the model. study the subtleties of values of contours, and make your figure relieve by the contrast of value in mass rather than by the modelling within the outline. see how the figure "tells" as a whole against what is behind it first, and keep all within that first relation. [illustration: =buckwheat harvest.= _millet._] it is possible to look for and to find many of the qualities which distinguish the figure in the studio light; sometimes you may want to do so. the telling of a story, the literary side of the picture, if you want that side, sometimes needs help that way. but in this you lose larger characteristics, and the picture as a whole will not have the spirit of open air in it. what has been said of the painting of landscape applies to the painting of figures in landscapes. pose your figure out-of-doors if you would represent it out-of-doors. then paint it as if it were any other out-door object. if the figure is more important to the composition than anything else in the landscape, as it often will be, then study that mainly, and treat the rest as background, but as background which has an influence which must be constantly recognized. never finish a figure begun out-doors by painting afterwards from a model posed in the house. leave the figure as you bring it in. if it is not finished, at least it will be in keeping with itself; and this will surely be lost if you try to work it from a model in different conditions. =animals.=--animals should be considered as "figures out-of-doors." there is no essential difference in the handling one sort of a figure or another. the anatomy is different, and the light falls on different textures, but the principle is not changed. you must consider them as forms influenced by diffused light and diffused color, and paint them so. you will find that often, especially in full sunlight, the color peculiar to the thing itself is not to be seen at all. the character of the light which falls on it gives the note, and controls. in the shade the effect is less marked, but the constant flicker makes the same sort of variation, though not to the same extent. there is no secret of painting animals either in the house or out-of-doors which is not the same as the secret of painting the human figure. if you would paint an animal, get one for a model and study it. work in some sort of a house-light first, in a barn or shed, or, if it be a small animal, in your studio. study as you would any other thing, from a chair to a man. the principles of drawing do not change with the character of anatomy. the animal may be less amiable a poser, but you must make allowance for that. when you have got a knowledge of the form, and the character of color and surface, take the animal out-doors, get some one to help hold him, and apply the same principles that would govern your study of a rock or a tree in the open air. as for fur, and all that sort of thing, treat it as you would any other texture-problem in still life. chapter xxxiv procedure in a picture some pictures, particularly those begun and finished in the open air, may be frankly commenced immediately on the canvas from nature as she is before the painter, and without any special processes or methods of procedure carried on to completion. but many pictures are of a sort which renders this manner of work unwise or impossible. there may be too many figures involved. the composition, the drawing, or other arrangement may be too complicated for it, and then the painter has to have some methodical and systematic way of bringing his picture into existence. he must take preliminary measures to ensure his work coming out as he intends, and must proceed in an orderly and regular manner in accordance with the planning of the work. it is in this sort of thing that he finds sketches and studies essential to the painting of the picture as distinguished from their more common use as training for him, or accumulation of general facts. =preliminaries.=--there must be made numbers of sketches, first of the slightest and merely suggestive, and then of a more complete, kind, to develop the general idea of composition from the first and perhaps crude conception of the picture. all the great painters have left examples of work in these various stages. it is a part of the training of every student in art schools to make these composition sketches, and to develop them more or less fully in larger work. in the french schools there are monthly _concours_, when men compete for prizes with work, and their success is influenced by a previous _concour_ of these composition sketches. this preliminary sketch in its completed stage gives the number and position and movement of the figures and accessories, with the arrangement of light and shade and color. there is no attempt to give anything more than the most general kind of drawing, such details as the features, fingers, etc., being neglected. the light and shade on the single figures also is not expressed, but the light and shade effect of the whole picture is carefully shown, and the same with the color-scheme. it is this first sketch that establishes the character of the future picture in everything but the details. sometimes this work is done on a quite large canvas, but usually is not more than a foot or two long, and of corresponding width. =studies.=--after this there must be studies made for the drawing of the single figures, and for more exactness of line and action in the bringing of all together into the whole. this work is usually done in charcoal, from the life, and sometimes on a piece of drawing-paper stretched over the same canvas that the picture will be painted on, or otherwise arranged, but of the same size. often, however, this work, too, is done on a smaller scale than that of the picture, especially when the picture is to be very large. this is based on the preliminary sketch as composition, and is intended to carry that idea out more in full, and perfect the drawing of the different figures, and to harmonize the composition. the composition and relation of figures both as to size and position on the final canvas depend on this study. [illustration: =study of fortune.= _michael angelo._] =corrections.=--in making these studies and in transferring them to the canvas, corrections are of course often necessary. the correction may or may not be satisfactory. to avoid too great confusion from the number of corrections in the same place, they are not made always directly on the study or canvas, but on a curtain of tissue paper dropped over it. the figure may be completely drawn, and is to be modified in whole or in part. the tissue paper receives the new drawing, and the old drawing shows through it, and the effect of the correction can be compared with that of the first idea. the study itself need not then be changed until the alteration which is satisfactory is found, as the process may be repeated as many times as necessary on the tissue paper, and the alterations finally embodied in the completed study. =figure studies.=--the studies for the various single figures are now made in the nude from the model, generally a quarter or half life size--a careful, accurate light and shade drawing of every figure in the picture, the model being posed in the position determined on in the study just spoken of. sometimes further single studies are made with the same models draped, and generally special studies of drapery are made as well; these studies are afterwards used to place the figures in position on the canvas before the painting begins. =transferring.=--the composition study must now be transferred to the canvas, to give the general arrangement and relative position, size, and action of the figures, etc. if the drawing is the same size as the canvas it is done by tracing, if not, then it is "squared up." in this stage of the process mechanical exactness of proportion is the thing required, as well as the saving of time; all things having been planned beforehand, and freedom of execution coming in later. this establishes the proportions, the sizes, and positions of the several figures on the final canvas. the drawing is not at this stage complete. the more general relations only are the purpose of this. onto this preparation the studies drawn from the nude model are "squared up," and the drawing corrected again from the nude model. this drawing is now covered with its drapery, which is drawn from the life in charcoal, or a _frottée_ of some sort. at this stage the canvas should represent, in monochrome, very justly, what the finished picture will be in composition, drawing, and light and shade. if the _frottée_ of various colors (as suggested in the chapter on "still life") has been used, the general color scheme will show also. this completes the preliminary process of the picture, and when the painting is begun with a _frottée_, this stage includes also the _first painting_. ="the Ébouch."=--an _ébouch_ is a painting which, mainly with body color, blocks in broadly and simply the main masses of a composition. sometimes an _ébouch_ is used as one of the preliminary color studies for a picture, especially if there is some problem of drapery massing to be determined, or other motive purely of color and mass. or if there is some piece of landscape detail such as a building or what not to come in, _ébouches_ for it will be made to be used in completing the picture. but more commonly the _ébouch_ is the first blocking-in painting of the picture, by means of which the greater masses of color and value are laid onto the canvas, somewhat rudely, but strongly, so as to give a strong, firm impression of the picture, and a solid under-painting on which future work may be done. whether this _ébouch_ is rough or smooth, just how much of it will be body or solid color and how much transparent, just what degree of finish this painting will have,--these depend on the man who does it. no two men work precisely the same way. some men make what is practically a large and very complete sketch. some paint quite smoothly or frankly, with more or less of an effect of being finished as they go, working from one side of the picture gradually across the whole canvas. others work a bit here and a bit there, and fill in between as they feel inclined. another way is to patch in little spots of rather pure color, so that the _ébouch_ looks like a sort of mosaic of paint. in the matter of color, too, there is great difference of method. some men lay in the picture with stronger color than they intend the finished picture to have, and gray it and bring it together with after-painting. others go to the other extreme, and paint grayer and lighter, depending on glazings and full touches of color later on to richen and deepen the color. all the way between these two are modifications of method. the main difference between these extremes is that when stronger color is used in the first painting, the process is to paint with solid color all through; while if glazings are to be much used, the _ébouch_ must be lighter and quieter in color, to allow for the results of after-painting. for you cannot glaze _up_. you always glaze _down_. the glaze being a transparent color, used without white, will naturally make the color under it more brilliant in color, but darker in value, just as it would if you laid a piece of colored glass over it. and this result must be calculated on beforehand. [illustration: =Ébouch of portrait.= _th. robinson._ one sitting of one hour and a half.] which of all these methods is best to use depends altogether on which best suits the man and his purpose in the picture or his temperament. a rough _ébouch_ will not make a smooth picture. a mosaic gives a pure, clear basis of color to gray down and work over, and may be scraped for a good surface. it is a deliberate method, and will be successful only with a thoughtful, deliberate painter. if a man is a timid colorist, a strong, even crude, under-painting will help to strengthen his color. a good colorist will get color any way. for a student, the more directly he puts down what he sees, the less he calculates on the effect of future after-painting, the better. but whichever way a man works as to these various beginnings, the chief thing is, that he understand beforehand what are the peculiar advantages and qualities of each, and that he consider before he begins what he expects to do, and how he purposes to do it. =further painting.=--the first painting may be put in from nature with the help of the several models in succession. more probably it will be put in from the color sketch which furnishes the general scheme, and from a number of studies and _ébouches_ which will give the principal material for each part of the canvas. with the next painting comes the more exact study from models and accessories themselves. the under-painting is in, the color relations and the contrasts of masses, but all is more or less crude and undeveloped. every one thing in the picture must be gradually brought to a further stage of completion. the background is not as yet to be carried farther as a whole. if the canvas is all covered, so that the background effect is there, it is all that is needed as yet. the most important figures are to be painted, beginning with the heads and hands, and at the same time painting the parts next to them, the background and drapery close around them, so that the immediate values shall all be true as far as it has gone. no small details are painted yet. the whole canvas is carried forward by painting all over it, no one thing being entirely finished; for the same degree of progress should be kept up for the whole picture. to finish any one part long before the rest is done, would be to run the risk of over-painting that part. after the heads and other flesh parts, the draperies should be brought up, and the background and all objects in it painted, to bring the whole picture to the same degree of completion. this finishes the second painting. it is all done from nature direct, and is painted solidly as a rule. even if the first painting has been a _frottée_ this one will have been solidly painted into that _frottée_, although the transparent rubbing may have been left showing, whenever it was true in effect; most probably in the shadows and broader dark masses of the backgrounds. in this second painting no glazings or scumblings come in. the canvas is brought forward as far as possible with direct frank brush-work with body color before these other processes can be used. glazes and such manipulations require a solid under-painting, and a comparative completion of the picture for safe work. these processes are for the modifying of color mainly; you do not draw nor represent the more important and fundamental facts of the picture with them. all these things are painted first, in the most frank and direct way, and then you can do anything you want to on a sure basis of well-understood representation. there will be structure underneath your future processes. =the third painting.=--the third painting simply goes over the picture in the same manner as the second, but marking out more carefully the important details and enforcing the accuracy of features, or strengthening the accents of dark and bringing up those of the lights. the procedure will, of course, be different, according as the picture was begun with an _ébouch_ of body color or a _frottée_ of transparent color. the third painting will, in either case, carry the picture as a whole further toward being finished. =rough and smooth.=--if body color has been used pretty freely in the two first paintings, the surface of paint will be pretty rough in places by the time it is ready for the third painting. whether that roughness is a thing to be got rid of or not is something for the painter to decide for himself. among the greatest of painters there have always been men who painted smoothly and men who painted roughly. i have considered elsewhere the subject of detail, but the question of detail bears on that of the roughness of the painting; for minute detail is not possible with much roughness of surface; the fineness of the stroke which secures the detail is lost in the corrugations of the heavier brush-strokes. the effect of color, and especially luminosity, has much to do with the way the paint is put on also, and all these things are to be considered. as a rule, it might be well to look upon either extreme as something not of importance in itself. the mere quality of smoothness on the canvas is of no consequence or value, any more than the mere quality of roughness is. if these things are necessary to or consequent upon the getting of certain other qualities which are justly to be considered worth striving for, then these qualities will be seen on the canvas, and will be all right. the painter will do well to look on them as something incidental merely to the picture. if he will simply work quite frankly, intent on the expression of what is true and vital to his picture, the question of the surface quality of his canvas will not bother him beyond the effect that it has upon his attaining of that expression. =scraping.=--the second painting will be well dry before the third begins, especially if the paint be more rough and uneven than is for any reason desirable. almost every painter scrapes his pictures more or less. there is pretty sure to be some part of it in which there is roughness just where he doesn't want it. for the third painting, that is to say, after the main things in the picture are practically entirely finished, there remains to be done the strengthening and richening and modifying of the colors, values, and accents, and the bringing of the whole picture together by a general overworking. before this begins, the picture may need scraping more or less all over. if it does need it, you may use a regular tool made for that purpose; or the blade of a razor may be used, it being held firmly in such a position that there is no danger of its cutting the canvas. it is not necessary to scrape the paint smooth, but only to take off such projections and unevenness of paint as would interfere with the proper over-painting. the third painting represents any and all processes that may be used to complete the picture. there is no rule as to the number of processes or "paintings." you may have a dozen paintings if you want them, and after the first two they are all modifications and subdivisions of the third painting; for they all add to furthering the completion of the picture. they are all done more or less from nature, as the second painting was. there should be very little done to any picture without constant reference to nature. if you glaze your picture, glaze one part at a time. don't "tone" it with a general wash of some color. that is not the way pictures are "brought into tone," nor is that the purpose of the glaze. the glaze, like any other application of paint, is put on just where it is needed to modify the color of that place where the color goes. the use of a scumble is the same; and both the glaze and the scumble will be painted into and over with solid color, and that again modified as much as is called for. the thing which is to be carefully avoided is not the use of any special process, but the ceasing from the use of some process or other before the thing is as it should be,--don't stop before the picture represents the best, the completest expression of the idea of the picture. this completeness of expression may even go to the elimination of what is ordinarily looked upon as "finish." finish is not surface, but expression; and completeness of expression may demand roughness and avoidance of detail and surface at one time quite as positively as it demands more detail and consequent smoothness at another. and this final completeness comes from the last paintings which i group together as the "third." scumble and glaze and paint into them, and glaze and scumble again. use any process which will help your picture to have those qualities which are always essential to any picture being a good one. the qualities of line and mass, composition that is, you get from the first, or you never can get it at all. those qualities of character, and truth of representation, and exactness of meaning, you get in the first paintings, together with the more general qualities of color and tone. emphasis and force of accent, such detail as you want, and the final and more delicate perceptions of color and tone, you get in the third or last painting, which may be divided into several paintings. =between paintings.=--when a painting is dry and you begin to work on it again, you will probably find parts of its surface covered with a kind of bluish haze, which quite changes its color or obscures the work altogether. it is "dried in." in drying, some of the oil of the last painting is absorbed by what is beneath it, and the dead haze is the result. you cannot paint on it without in some way bringing it back to its original color. you cannot varnish it out at this stage, for this will not have a good effect on your picture. ="oiling out."=--you can oil it all over, and then rub all the oil off that you can. this will bring it out. but the oil will tend to darken the picture; too much oil should be avoided. turpentine with a little oil in it will bring it out also, but it will not stay out so long, but perhaps long enough for you to work on it. if you put a little siccative de harlem in it, or use any picture varnish thinned with turpentine, it will serve well enough. there is a retouching varnish, _vernis à retoucher_, which is made for this purpose, and is perfectly safe and good. the picture must be well dried before it is finally varnished. chapter xxxv difficulties of beginners all painters have difficulty with their pictures, but the trouble with the beginner is that he has not experience enough to know how to meet it. the solving of all difficulties is a matter of application of fundamental principles to them; but it is necessary to know these principles, and to have applied them to simple problems, before one can know how to apply them to less simple ones. i have tried to deal fully with these principles rather than to tell how to do any one thing, and to point out the application whenever it could be done. there are, however, some things that almost always bother the beginner, and it may be helpful to speak of them particularly. =selection of subject.=--one of the chief objections to copying as a method of beginning study is that while it teaches a good deal about surface-work, it gives no practical training just when it is most needed. the student who has only copied has no idea how to look for a composition, how to place it on his canvas, or how to translate into line and color the actual forms which he sees in nature. these things are all done for him in the picture he is copying, yet these are the very first things he should have practised in. the making of a picture begins before the drawing and painting begins. you see something out-doors, or you see a group of people or a single person in an interesting position. it is one thing to see it; how are you practically to grasp it so as to get it on canvas? that is quite a different thing. how much shall you take in? how much leave out? what proportion of the canvas shall the main object or figure take up? all these are questions which need some experience to answer. in dealing with figures experience comes somewhat naturally, because you will of course not undertake more than a head and shoulders, with a plain background, for your first work. the selecting of subject in this is chiefly the choice of lighting and position of head, which have been spoken of elsewhere; and the placing of them on the canvas should be reduced to the making of the head as large as it will come conveniently. the old rule was that the point of the nose should be about the middle of the canvas, and in most cases on the ordinary canvas this brings the head in the right place. as you paint more you will put in more and more of the figure, and so progress comes very naturally. but in landscape you are more than likely to be almost helpless at first. there is so much all around you, and so little saliency, that it is hard to say where to begin and where to leave off. practice in still life will help you somewhat, but still things in nature are seldom arranged with that centralization which makes a subject easy to see. even the simplicity which is sometimes obvious is, when you come to paint it, only the more difficult to handle because of its simplicity. the simplicity which you should look for to make your selection of a subject easy is not the lack of something to draw, but the definiteness of some marked object or effect. what is good as a "view" is apt to be the reverse of suitable for a picture. you want something tangible, and you do not want too much or too little of it. a long line of hill with a broad field beneath it, for instance, is simple enough, but what is there for you to take hold of? in an ordinary light it is only a few broad planes of value and color without an accent object to emphasize or centre on. it can be painted, of course, and can be made a beautiful picture, but it is a subject for a master, not for a student. but suppose there were a tree or a group of trees in the field; suppose a mass of cloud obscured the sky, and a ray of sunlight fell on and around the tree through a rift in the clouds. or suppose the opposite of this. suppose all was in broad light, and the tree was strongly lighted on one side, on the other shadowed, and that it threw a mass of shadow below and to one side of it. immediately there is something which you can take hold of and make your picture around. the field and hill alone will make a study of distance and middle distance and foreground, but it would not make an effective sketch. the two effects i have supposed give the possibility for a sketch at once, and what suggests a sketch suggests a picture. this central object or effect which i have supposed also clears up the matter of the placing of your subject on the canvas. with merely the hill and plain you might cut it off anywhere, a mile or two one side or the other would make little or no difference to your picture. but the tree and the effect of light decide the thing for you. the tree and the lighting are the central idea of the picture. very well, then, make them large enough on your canvas to be of that importance. then what is around them is only so much more as the canvas will hold, and you will place the tree where, having the proper proportionate size, it will also "compose well" and make the canvas balance, being neither in the middle exactly nor too much to one side. here are two photographs taken in the same field and of the same view, with the camera pointed in the same direction in both. one shows the lack of saliency, although the tree is there. in the other the camera was simply carried forward a hundred yards or so, until the tree became large enough to be of importance in the composition. the placing is simply a better position with reference to the tree in this case. =centralize.=--now, as you go about looking for things to sketch, look always for some central object or effect. if you find that what seems very beautiful will not give you anything definite and graspable,--some contrast of form, or light and shade, or color,--don't attempt it. the thing is beautiful, and has doubtless a picture in it, but not for you. you are learning how to look for and to find a subject, and you must begin with what is readily sketched, without too much subtlety either of form or color or value. =placing.=--having found your subject with something definite in it, you must place it on your canvas so that it "tells." it will not do to put it in haphazard, letting any part of it come anywhere as it happens. you will not be satisfied with the effect of this. the object of a picture is to make visible something which you wish to call attention to; to show something that seems to you worth looking at. then you must arrange it so that that particular something is sure to be seen whether anything else is seen or not. this is the first thing to be thought of in placing your subject. _where_ is it to come on the canvas? how much room is it to take up? if it is too large, there is not enough surrounding it to make an interesting whole. if it is to be emphasized, it must have something to be emphasized with reference to. on the other hand, if it is too small, its very size makes it insignificant. [illustration: =landscape photo. no. .=] if it is a landscape, decide first the proportions of land and sky,--where your horizon line will come. then, having drawn that line, make three or four lines which will give the mass of the main effect or object--a barn, a tree, a slope of hill, or whatever it be, get merely its simplest suggestion of outline. these two things will show you, on considering their relation to each other and to the rest of the canvas, about what its emphasis will be. if it isn't right, rub it out and do it again, a little larger or smaller, a little more to one side or the other, higher or lower, as you find needed. when you have done this to your satisfaction, you have done the first important thing. [illustration: =landscape photo. no. .=] =still life, etc.=--if your subject be still life, flowers, or an animal or other figure, go about it in the same way. look at it well. try to get an idea of its general shape, and block that out with a few lines. you will almost always find a horizontal line which by cutting across the mass will help you to decide where the mass will best come. first, the mass must be about the right size, and then it must balance well on the canvas. any of the things suggested as helping about drawing and values will of course help you here. the reducing-glass will help you to get the size and position of things. the card with a square hole in it will do the same. even a sort of little frame made with the fingers and thumbs of your two hands will cut off the surrounding objects, and help you see your group as a whole with other things out of the way. =walk about.=--a change of position of a very few feet sometimes makes a great difference in the looks of a subject. the first view of it is not always the best. walk around a little; look at it from one point and from another. take your time. better begin a little later than stop because you don't like it and feel discouraged. time taken to consider well beforehand is never lost. "well begun is half done." =relief.=--in beginning a thing you want to have the first few minutes' work to do the most possible towards giving you something to judge by. you want from the very first to get something recognizable. then every subsequent touch, having reference to that, will be so much the more sure and effective. look, then, first for what will count most. =what to look for.=--whether you lay your work out first with black-and-white or with paint, look to see where the greatest contrast is. where is there a strong light against dark and a strong dark against light? not the little accents, but that which marks the contact of two great planes. find this first, and represent it as soon as you have got the main values, in this way the whole thing will tell as an actuality. it will not yet carry much expression, but it will look like a _fact_, and it will have established certain relations from which you can work forward. =colors.=--it ought to go without saying that the colors as they come from the tube are not right for any color you see in nature however you think they look. but beginners are very apt to think that if they cannot get the color they want, they can get it in another kind of tube. this is a mistake. the tubes of color that are actually necessary for almost every possible tint or combination in nature are very few. but they must be used to advantage. now and then one finds his palette lacking, and must add to it; but after one has experimented a while he settles down to some eight or ten colors which will do almost everything, and two or three more that will do what remains. when you work out-of-doors you may find that more variety will help you and gain time for you; that several blues and some secondaries it is well to have in tubes besides the regular outfit. still even then, when you have got beyond the first frantic gropings, you will be surprised to see yourself constantly using certain colors and neglecting others. these others, then, you do not need, and you may leave them out of your box. =too many tubes.=--if you have too many colors, they are a trouble rather than a help to you. you must carry them all in your mind, and you do not so soon get to thinking of the color in nature and taking up the paint from different parts of your palette instinctively--which means that you are gaining command of it. never put a new color on your palette unless you feel the actual need of it, or have a special reason for it. better get well acquainted with the regular colors you have, and have only as many as you can handle well. =mixing.=--use some system in mixing your paint. have your palette set the same way always, so that your brush can find the color without having to hunt for it. have a reasonable way too of taking up your color before you mix it. don't always begin with the same one. is the tint light or dark? strong or delicate? what is the prevailing color in it? let these things affect the sequence of bringing the colors together for mixing. let these things have to do also with the proportionate quantity of each. suppose you have a heavy dark green to mix, what will you take first? make a dash at the white, put it in the middle of the palette, and then tone it down to the green? how much paint would you have to take before you got your color? yet i've seen this very thing done, and others equally senseless. what is the green? dark. bluish or warm? will reddish or yellowish blue do it best? how much space do you want that brushful to cover? take enough blue, add to it a yellow of the sort that will make approximately the color. don't stir them up; drag one into the other a little--very little. the color is crude? another color or two will bring it into tone. don't mix it much. don't smear it all over your palette. make a smallish dab of it, keeping it well piled up. if you get any one color too great in quantity, then you will have to take more of the others again to keep it in balance. be careful to take as nearly the right proportions of each at the first picking up, so as to mix but few times; for every time you add and mix you flatten out the tone more, and lose its vibration and life. now, if the color is too dark, what will you lighten it with? white? wait a minute. think. will white take away the richness of it? white always grays and flattens the color. don't put it into a warm, rich color unless it belongs there. then only as much as is needed. treat all your tints this way. is it a high value on a forehead in full light? white first, then a little modifying color, yellow first, then red; perhaps no red: the kind of yellow may do it. when you have a rich color to mix, get it as strong as you can first. then gray it as much as you need to, never the reverse. but when you want a delicate color, make it delicate first, and then strengthen it cautiously. these seem but common-sense. hardly necessary to take the trouble to write it down? but common-sense is not always attributed to artists, and the beginner does not seem able always to apply his common-sense to his painting at first. to say it to him opens his eyes. best be on the safe side. =crude color.=--the beginner is sure to get crude color, either from lack of perception of color qualities, or inability to mix the tints he knows he wants. in the latter case crude color either comes from too few colors in the mixture, or from inharmonious colors brought together, which is only another form of the same, for an added complementary would make it right. for instance, prussian blue and chrome yellow mixed will make a powerful green which you could hardly put anywhere--a strong, crude green. well, what is the complementary? red? and what does a complementary do to a color? neutralizes, grays. then add a very little red, enough to gray the green, not enough to kill its quality. or if you don't want the color that makes, take a little reddish yellow, ochre say, and possibly a little reddish blue, new blue or ultramarine; add these, and see how it grays it and still keeps the same kind of green. this is the principle in extreme. still, the best way would be not to try to make a green of prussian blue and chrome yellow. it is better to know the qualities of each tube color on your palette. know which two colors mix to make a crude color, and which will be gray, more or less, without a third. =muddy color.=--dirty or muddy color comes from lack of this last. you do not know how your colors are going to affect each other. you mix, and the color looks right on the palette, but on the canvas it is not right. you mix again and put it on the canvas; it mixes with the first tint and you get--mud. why? both wrong. scrape the whole thing off. with a clean spot of canvas mix a fresh color. put it on frankly and freshly and let it alone--don't dabble it. the chances are it will be at least fresh, clean color. over-mixing makes color muddy sometimes, especially when more than three colors are used. when you don't get the right tint with three colors, the chances are that you have got the wrong three. if that is not so, and you must add a fourth, do so with some thoughtfulness, or you will have to mix the tint again. =dirty brushes and palette.=--using dirty brushes causes muddy color. don't be too economical about the number of brushes you use. keep a good big rag at your hand, and wipe the paint out of your brush often. if the color is getting muddy, clean your palette and take a clean brush. your palette is sure to get covered with paint of all colors when you have painted a little while. you can't mix colors with any degree of certainty if the palette is smeared with all sorts of tints. use your palette-knife--that's what it's for. scrape the palette clean every once in a while as it gets crowded. wipe it off. take some fresh brushes. then, if your color is dirty, it is your fault, not the fault of your tools. =out-door and in-door colors.=--there is one source of discouragement and difficulty that every one has to contend against; that is, the difference in the apparent key of paint when, having been put on out-of-doors, it is seen in the house. out-of-doors the color looked bright and light, and when you get it in-doors it looks dark and gray, and perhaps muddy and dead. this is something you must expect, and must learn how to control. as everything that the out-door light falls upon looks the brighter for it, so will your paint look brighter than it really is because of the brilliancy of the light which you see it in. you must learn to make allowance for that. you must learn by experience how much the color will go down when you take it into the house. of course an umbrella is a most useful and necessary thing in working out-of-doors, and if it is lined with black so much the better for you; for there is sure to be a good deal of light coming through the cloth, and while it shades your canvas, it does to some extent give a false glow to your canvas, which a black lining counterbalances. mere experience will give you that knowledge more or less; but there are ways in which you can help yourself. when you first begin to work out-doors try to find a good solid shade in which to place your easel, and then try to paint up to the full key, even at the risk of a little crudeness of color. use colors that seem rather pure than otherwise. you may be sure that the color will "come down" a little anyhow, so keep the pitch well up. then, if the shade has been pretty even, and your canvas has had a fair light, you will get a fairly good color-key. =predetermined pitch.=--another way is to determine the pitch of the painting in some way before you take the canvas out-of-doors. there are various ways of doing this. the most practical is, perhaps, to know the relative value, in the house and out-doors, of the priming of your canvas. have a definite knowledge of how near to the highest light you will want that priming is. then, when you put on the light paint, if you keep it light with reference to the known pitch of the priming, you will keep the whole painting light. =discouragement.=--we all get discouraged sometimes, but it is something to know that the case is not hopeless because we are. that what we are trying to do does not get done easily is no reason that it may not get done eventually. often the discouragement is not even a sign that what we are doing is not going well. the discouragement may be one way that fatigue shows itself, and we may feel discouraged after a particularly successful day's work--in consequence of it very probably. make it a rule not to judge of a day's work at the end of that day. wait till next morning, when fresh and rested, and you will have a much more just notion of what you have done. when you begin to get blue about your work is the time to stop and rest. if the blues are the result of tire, working longer will only make your picture worse. a tired brain and eye never improved a piece of painting. and in the same spirit rest often while you are painting. if your model rests, it is as well that you rest also. turn away from your work, and when you get to work again you will look at it with a fresh eye. =change your work often.=--too continued and concentrated work on the same picture also will lead to discouragement. change your work, keep several things going at the same time, and when you are tired of one you may work with fresh perceptions and interest on another. stop often to walk away from your work. lay down your palette and brushes, and put the canvas at the other end of the room. straighten your back and look at the picture at a distance. you get an impression of the thing as a whole. what you have been doing will be judged of less by itself and more in relation to the rest of the picture, and so more justly. when things are going wrong, stop work for the day. take a rest. then, before you begin again on it to-morrow, take plenty of time to look the picture over--consider it, compare it with nature, and make up your mind just what it lacks, just what it needs, just what you will do first to make it as it should be. it is marvellous how it drives off the blues to know just what you are going to do next. transcriber's notes . passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. . passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. . illustration captions are indicated by =caption=. . images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break. . the word d'oeuvre uses an oe ligature in the original on page . . in the list of illustrations, page number for "descent from cross" is corrected to (original text is ). . the following misprints have been corrected: "heavvier" corrected to "heavier" (page ) "interor" corrected to "interior" (page ) "arrangemen" corrected to "arrangement" (page ) "analagous" corrected to "analogous" (page ) "freeest" corrected to "freest" (page ) "näiveté" corrected to "naïveté" (page ) . other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. fra angelico by j. b. supino translated by leader scott. florence alinari brothers, publishers. . all rights reserved printed by barbéra--alfani and venturi, proprietors florence. * * * * * [illustration: the annunciation. (convent of san marco, florence)] index. beato angelico--proem page i.--fra angelico at cortona and perugia ( - ) ii.--fra angelico at fiesole ( - ) iii.--fra angelico at florence ( - ) san marco in the gallery of ancient and modern art iv.--fra angelico at rome and orvieto ( - ) index to the illustrations [illustration] [illustration: angels of the "last judgement."] tradition shows us fra giovanni angelico absorbed in his work, and either caressing with his brush one of those graceful angelic figures which have made him immortal, or reverently outlining the sweet image of the virgin before which he himself would kneel in adoration. legend pictures him devoutly prostrate in prayer before commencing work, that his soul might be purified, and fitted to understand and render the divine subject; and again in oration after leaving his easel, to thank heaven for having given him power to make his holy visions visible to other eyes. but has tradition any foundation in fact? why not? through his numberless works we may easily divine the soul of the artist, and can well understand, how the calm and serene atmosphere of the monastic cell, the church perfumed with incense, and the cloister vibrating with psalms, would develop the mystic sentiment in such a mind. and can we disregard tradition in face of such humility of life, such beauty of work, exquisite refinement of feeling, and sweetness of expression! among all the masters who have attempted to imbue the human form with the divine spirit, he is perhaps the only one who succeeded in producing pure celestial figures, and this with such marvellous simplicity of line, that they have become the glory of his art. whether it be the virgin enthroned amidst groups of cherubim sounding heavenly trumpets, or christ blessing the just and driving away sinners; whether the martyrs supporting their torments with superhuman resignation, the apostles preaching the gospel, or angels free in the air and chanting celestial glories; the same spirit is in them all--at once intense, devout, and utterly pure, in which the fervent believer and the true artist are inseparably blended. the reason is, that fra giovanni put into his work the flame of an overpowering passion; under his touch features were beautified, and figures animated with a new mystic grace. he threw himself entirely into his art which thus became the spontaneous expression of his soul. "it was the custom of fra giovanni," says vasari, "to abstain from retouching or improving any painting once finished. he altered nothing, but left all as it was done the first time, believing, as he said, that such was the will of god. it is also affirmed that he would never take his pencil in hand until he had first offered a prayer. he is said never to have painted a crucifix without tears streaming from his eyes, and in the countenances and attitudes of his figures it is easy to perceive proof of his sincerity, his goodness, and the depth of his devotion to the religion of christ."[ ] how this devout mind, full of the figurative sacred writings then current, must have overflowed with visions, ecstasies and miracles! and what tremors of awe must he have felt, in putting these visions into colour! his madonnas, their features suffused with candour and humility, bend with maternal grace hitherto unwitnessed, in loving contemplation of the son, or--mothers in glory--they bow to receive the homage of the redeemer. his saints ecstatically gaze at luminous celestial apparitions; his golden winged angels dance lightly beneath the throne of their lord or sound merrily the most various instruments, singing: _laudate dominum..., laudate eum in sono tubæ, laudate eum in psalterio et cithara, laudate eum in timpano et choro..._; or else with their fair curly heads downcast they reverently worship the divine majesty. what a feast of light and colour is in these panels, gleaming with azure and gold like a hymn to religion and faith! "we know from him how the pious imagination of the men of his time pictured the kingdom of heaven, with the angels, saints, and blessed ones, and on this account alone his pictures would have been of extraordinary importance in the history of religion. not to love fra angelico would mean to lack the true sentiment of ancient art, for though we recognize the pious _naïveté_ of the monk, there is in the heavenly beauty of his figures, and the joy of youthful faith which animates the artist, a charm unequalled in the whole history of art!"[ ] whether fra angelico ever actually had a master, it is impossible to ascertain. there are critics who affirm that if anyone initiated him in art, imbuing him with his own sentiment and style, it might have been the camaldolese monk lorenzo monaco; but cavalcaselle justly observes that between angelico and lorenzo monaco there only exists that affinity which in coetaneous artists results from community of thought, social conditions, and religious sentiments. two monks like the camaldolese and the dominican might well show the same ideas, without implying a relation of master and scholar between them.[ ] both critics and historians, however, agree in the assertion that he began his career in art by illuminating codices and choral books. baldinucci and rosini judge that his master in painting was the florentine gherardo starnina, whom lanzi designates as "a painter of life-like style." but padre marchese refuting this opinion observes that "not to mention vasari's silence on the matter, the fact is very doubtful, because gherardo passed many years in spain, and returning to his native land died in , when little guido of mugello[ ] was only years old, an age which scarcely admits of the first steps in art."[ ] but the date of starnina's death is now corrected and proved to have been in , so, taking into account the character of our artist's works, nothing need now be opposed to the theory that fra giovanni may have profited by the teaching of that master, while living in florence after his return from spain; besides it is not proved whether that journey to spain was ever really taken. historians, it is true, tell us that starnina, being obliged to leave florence after the ciompi riots ( ), took refuge in spain, where he lived several years; but it is certain that in his name was inscribed in the guild of florentine painters.[ ] vasari does not doubt that fra angelico, like other artists from masaccio onwards, acquired his skill by studying the frescoes of the brancacci chapel;[ ] but besides the fact that the style of those pictures is diametrically opposed to fra angelico's, the latter could not possibly have been in masaccio's school, for as he was born in , he was fifteen years older than masaccio and already a proved master, when the carmine frescoes were being painted. fra angelico's style is so individual and characteristic, that it might rather be considered as springing from his own disposition, developed under the influence of his time. studying the works left in florence by his great predecessors, leading a retired life, and purifying every idea, every inspiration in the fire of religion, angelico was enabled, by meditation, to perfect the models of the best artists of the "trecento", among whom we should opine that the influence of orcagna in his frescoes in the strozzi chapel of s. m. novella, was greater even than that of giotto. indeed it is evident that what orcagna began, is carried to the highest development in fra angelico, who combined softness and refinement with severity of form, grace of expression with nobility of attitude. the figure of the virgin in the fresco of the judgment in the strozzi chapel, so grand and majestic in its simplicity, is again recognisable in the panels of fra angelico, imitated with his own especial character and spiritual feeling, full of grace and humility, the soft lines breathing beauty and lightness. the saints who appear to be actually in celestial repose, have also inspired fra giovanni; the same gentle and contemplative expression which irradiates the features of the elect is again visible in our painter's figures. in the colouring of both, vivacity is combined with softness, and vigour of chiaro-scuro goes together with transparency of tint. nevertheless it is true that in certain respects, fra angelico might be said to belong to the same school as masolino. they are, however, at the antipodes from each other in sentiment and artistic interpretation, for while the saintly giovanni endeavoured to idealize the human figure and render it divine, masolino, like most of his contemporaries, followed a style distinctly realistic; yet it may be proved that in technique, both followed the same rules, and worked on similar principles. in fact the similitude between the two painters noticeable in their composition, softness of outline, lightness of figures, and clear harmonious colouring, tends to confirm the great artistic affinity which we have indicated. both of them used rosy tints in the flesh, with greenish and yellowish shadows, both recall the older artists of the "trecento" in the perspective, which is often incorrect, and out of proportion. but how far superior is fra angelico when the work of both in its full aspect is compared! fra angelico has, it is true, conventional forms, and there is a certain sameness in his heads with their large oval countenances; the small eyes, outlined round the upper arch of the eyebrow, and with a black spot for pupils, sometimes lack expression, or have a too monotonous one, and the iris is often lost in the white of the cornea; his mouths are always drawn small with a thickening of the lips in the centre, and the corners strongly accentuated; the colour of his faces is either too pink or too yellow; the folds of the robes (often independent of the figure, especially in the lower part) fall straight, and in the representations of the seated virgin expand on the ground, as if to form the foot of a chalice. but in his frescoes these faults of conventional manner almost entirely disappear, giving place to freer drawing, more life-like expression, and a character of greater power. we will not repeat with vasari that fra giovanni perfected his art from the frescoes of the brancacci chapel; but we do not doubt that he too felt the beneficent influx of the new style, of which masaccio was the greatest champion, and that he followed it, leaving behind, up to a certain point, the primitive giottesque forms. there is in his art, the great mediæval ideal rejuvenated and reinvigorated by the spirit of newer times. being in the beginning of his career, as is generally believed, only an illuminator, he continued, with subtle delicacy and accurate, almost timid design, to illuminate in larger proportions on his panels, those figures which are often only parts of a decorative whole. but in his later works while still preserving the simplicity of handling, and the innate character of his style, he displays a new tendency, and learns to give life to his figures, not only by the expression of purity and sweet ecstasy, but in finer particularization of form and action which he reproduces in more material style. his clear diaphanous transparency of colouring is not used from lack of technical ability, but to approach more nearly to his ideal of celestial and divine visions, and succeed in a species of pictorial religious symbolism. in the midst of his calm and serene compositions fra angelico has figures in which a healthy realism is strongly accentuated; figures drawn with decision, strong chiaro-scuro and robust colouring, which show that he did not deliberately disdain the progress made in art by his contemporaries. indeed we should err in believing that fra angelico was unwilling to recognize the artistic developments going on around him, and the new tendencies followed by his eminent neighbours ghiberti, brunelleschi and donatello. it was not so; but he only profited by the movement as far as he deemed possible without losing his own sentiment and character; thus giving a rare example of self-knowledge. perhaps he divined that if he had followed the new current too closely, it would have carried him farther than he wished to go; that the new manner would have removed him for ever from his ideal; in a word, that too intense study of the real, would have diminished or entirely impeded fantasy and feeling. he instinctively saw these perils, and therefore kept himself constant to his old style, and while perfecting himself in it, he still remained what he always had been, and what he felt he should be. though constrained to repeat to excess the usual subjects, too traditionally drawn, "he often," as burckhardt writes, "understood how to avoid in the features of his saintly personages that aspect of abstract impersonality, which had hitherto marked them, and to animate them with delicate and individual life. he succeeded in giving a new character to the time-honoured types used in preceding artistic representations. to prove this it is sufficient to cite the st. john baptist--one of fra angelico's finest creations." he modifies the traditional type of christ according to his own faith and feeling. deriving it from giotto, with improvements gathered from orcagna, he excels both masters, impressing on it a divine character, and giving to the face of the man god a sweet gentleness which is truly sublime. these qualities reach the highest grade in the "coronation of the virgin" at the convent of san marco, and in the picture at pisa[ ] where the saviour is represented standing upright, in the act of blessing with his right hand, while in the uplifted left he holds a golden cup. he is represented full face, in all his majesty, his features of an exquisite sweetness and nobility,--a grand figure, which has all the seduction of a vision, such as our dominican alone could conceive and design. as he could, in a manner no one had ever done before, give to the figure of the living christ the expression of infinite goodness, ready for sacrifice; so in his crucifixions, instead of following the example of his contemporaries, who depicted christ already dead, with marks of sorrow on his features, and contorted by the spasm of a violent death; he represented him living, calm and serene, conscious of the sacrifice he completed, and full of joy in dying for man's salvation. the type of the virgin, too, though its characteristic construction of features, and short and receding chin, are derived from the sienese masters, especially from lorenzetti, in fra angelico responds to an artistic idealization chosen by him as approaching more the divinity of her person. the flowing robes of the virgin show her long and refined hands, but beneath that mantle he draws no feminine figure nor can one even guess at it. all the power of the artist is concentrated in her face umile in tanta gloria, (humble in such great glory) on which the artist has impressed such candour, and so lively an expression of ineffable grace, that one is involuntarily moved to devotion. the divine child with its golden curls, full and sunny face, wide open and sparkling eyes, is in the pictures at cortona and perugia depicted with rosy fingers in the act of blessing; in the "madonna della stella" he embraces his mother so closely that he almost hides himself in her bosom; in the great azure-surrounded tabernacle of the linen guild, he is smiling; while in the fresco of the corridor at san marco, he has an ingenuous wondering gaze as he holds forth his little hand,--an expression so natural that it shows a happy grafting of ideal representation, on a conscientious and close study of the real. full of character, too, are the heads of his old people, with flowing beards and severe aspect, and those of his saints and martyrs, which were evidently either young novices of the convent, contemporary brethren, or elder companions in the faith, portrayed with sapient and ingenuous realism. but the figures which most brilliantly display his genius, are those diaphanous angels, robed in flowing tunics, resplendent with gold, and of infinite variety. while admiring that multitude of celestial creatures, who praise, sing and dance around the radiant madonnas, how can we doubt that they have visited his cell, and that he has lived with them in a fraternal and sweet familiarity?[ ] even when he has to represent scenes of passion, fra angelico mitigates the violence of action with softness of sentiment, for anger and disdain never entered his soul; and in their place he prefers to reproduce one character alone in all his figures with their gentle expression. it is his own character, with its angelic goodness of heart, which he incarnates in the divine beauty of all these celestial beings. as in name and art, so in real life he was truly "angelic," for he spent his whole time in the service of god, and the good of his neighbour and the world. "and what more can or ought to be desired, than by thus living righteously," says vasari, "to secure the kingdom of heaven, and by labouring virtuously, to obtain everlasting fame in this world? and, of a truth, so extraordinary and sublime a gift as that possessed by fra giovanni, should scarcely be conferred on any but a man of most holy life, since it is certain that all who take upon them to meddle with sacred and ecclesiastical subjects, should be men of holy and spiritual minds.... "fra giovanni was a man of the utmost simplicity of intention, and was most holy in every act of his life.... he disregarded all earthly advantages; and, living in pure holiness, was as much the friend of the poor in life as i believe his soul now is in heaven. he laboured continually at his paintings, but would do nothing that was unconnected with things holy. he might have been rich, but for riches he took no care; on the contrary, he was accustomed to say, that the only true riches was contentment with little. he might have commanded many, but would not do so, declaring that there was less fatigue and less danger of error in obeying others, than in commanding others. it was at his option to hold places of dignity in the brotherhood of his order, and also in the world; but he regarded them not, affirming that he sought no dignity and took no care but that of escaping hell and drawing near to paradise. and, of a truth, what dignity can be compared to that which should be most coveted by all churchmen, nay, by every man living, that, namely, which is found in god alone, and in a life of virtuous labour? "fra giovanni was kindly to all, and moderate in all his habits, living temperately, and holding himself entirely apart from the snares of the world. he used frequently to say, that he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet, and should live without cares or anxious thoughts; adding, that he who would do the work of christ should perpetually remain with christ. he was never seen to display anger among the brethren of his order; a thing which appears to me most extraordinary, nay, almost incredible; if he admonished his friends, it was with gentleness and a quiet smile; and to those who sought his works, he would reply with the utmost cordiality, that they had but to obtain the assent of the prior, when he would assuredly not fail to do what they desired. in fine, this never-sufficiently-to-be-lauded father was most humble, modest, and excellent in all his words and works; in his painting he gave evidence of piety and devotion, as well as of ability, and the saints that he painted have more the air and expression of sanctity than have those of any other master."[ ] fra giovanni angelico, whose worldly name was guido or guidolino (little guy), was born in the year ; his father was named piero (surname not known) of vicchio in the mugello;--that pleasant valley which boasts of having given birth to giotto. vasari asserts that guido's brother benedetto, a miniaturist, was also very clever in a larger style of painting, but the researches of milanesi quite refute this opinion, and show that benedetto did nothing more than copy choral books, and that he continued this kind of work till his death.[ ] "the most ancient chronicles of the convent of st. mark and st. dominic at fiesole," writes milanesi when registering the death of fra benedetto brother of angelico, in the year , "remark simply that he was a very good writer, and that he wrote and annotated the choral books of st. mark and some of those of st. dominic." we have only the evidence in vasari and the "annali del convento di san marco," written after his lives of the painters to prove that he was a miniaturist.[ ] in these annals it is added, with more historical truth, that although angelico "might have conveniently lived in the world, and besides his own possessions might have gained any income he chose, with the art for which he was famous even in his youth, yet, for his own satisfaction and peace, being by nature steady and good, and chiefly also for the salvation of his soul he preferred to take the vows in the order of the preaching monks."[ ] this happened in . on the slopes of the smiling hill of fiesole the foundations of a new convent were being laid by giovanni dominici, the great preacher and reformer, who wished in this new monastery to give a model to all the cloistered orders which at the close of the preceding century had greatly fallen from their ancient observances. st. antonino was among the first to embrace this reform, and after two years guidolino and his brother followed his example, choosing the robes of st. dominic. on being received by the dominicans they were sent to cortona, where st. antonino and others already resided, there being as yet no novitiate at the fiesole convent. in they took the irrevocable vows, but it cannot be ascertained whether they still remained at cortona, or returned at once to their own convent at fiesole. if the latter, the two brothers must have been involved in the vicissitudes of the fiesolan convent, which, refusing to acknowledge pope alexander v. (who was elected by the council of pisa ), entered into a fierce contest with the archbishop of florence. the convent was abandoned by its inmates who fled to foligno to avoid the rule of fra tommaso da fermo, general of the order, who had sworn obedience to the new pope. they were received as guests at foligno by ugolino de' trinci, lord of the city, and federigo frezzi, author of the _quadriregio_. here they passed five years, being treated with great benevolence by their brethren, nor did they leave until driven away by the plague in , when they again took shelter at cortona where they remained till . when guidolino entered the convent and took the name of giovanni, he must have been already expert in art; for the vicissitudes which followed could certainly not have facilitated the study of painting. in fact his works which remain at cortona are in so youthful a style, and bear the imprint of such freshness as to remove all doubt on this generally accepted assertion. while staying at foligno, the fiesolan refugees propagated that severe form of life and strict observance which giovanni dominici had taught in his convent at fiesole, and brother giovanni again began his artistic work, for painting was to him like prayer, i. e. his usual way of raising his mind and heart to god. unfortunately few of these first works have been preserved, but from those few we are assured that he studied in florence, from which school alone he could have appropriated the noble manner impressed on all his works; and that those who perceive an umbrian influence in his art, are very far from the truth. there may be some elements common to both the umbrian art and that of angelico; this, however, does not depend so much on the teaching of the school, as on technical affinity; insomuch as umbrian painting in its lucidity, charm and accuracy of colour, is in some measure derived from the art of illumination, and most probably fra angelico took his style from the same source, as even in his most perfect works, he always preserved a remembrance of it. in fact, his patient diligence and study of detail render his pictures so many miniatures, done in larger proportions; the lucidity of tint, the grace of the ornamental motives, the almost exaggerated minuteness of execution, are decided proofs of the artistic education of fra angelico. it is pleasant to imagine him, during his sojourn at foligno and cortona, making pilgrimages to assisi, to draw inspiration from the works of the great masters in the splendid church of san francesco. there he found his old friends, and might at a glance admire together giotto, simone martini, and lorenzetto. we should say he admired simone and lorenzetto more than giotto, for the grace of their figures, refinement of execution, and greater richness of the accessories, robes and ornamentation, together with the pleasing brilliance of colouring, all approached more nearly to fra giovanni's own artistic sentiment than the style of giotto. and even less than the umbrian painters or miniaturists (if indeed there were any worthy to influence the artistic spirit of our artist) did the landscape of verdant umbria stir his soul, which even the sweet slopes of fiesole could not touch. doubtless from the heights of the convent at cortona, which dominates one of the finest views in italy, the young monk admired the beautiful horizon, and enjoyed the splendour of the verdant plain, and the blue mountains, "enwrapt in mists of purple and gold", as he had often at sunrise and sunset, enjoyed from his fiesole convent the gentle fields and dales "peopled with houses and olives"; but, after all, these beauties of nature so often displayed before him, were dumb to an artist who was wholly absorbed in visions beyond this world. the study of the verdant country never occupied his mind; in his paintings, landscape is either an insignificant accessory, or if it occupies a large space in the picture as in the "deposition from the cross" in the florentine gallery, it shows plainly that it is not the result of special study, of personal impressions, or of love of the place itself. in fact it does not attract or interest the observer at all. nor could this be otherwise; the inner life of the spirit, which he lived so intensely, and so vividly transfused in the figures of his saints, must necessarily have abstracted his mind from his surroundings, to which he therefore gave little attention. in this he was faithful to the giottesque principle of not enriching the background, except by just what was necessary to render the subject intelligible, and this without pretension, or new research. his trees rose straight on their trunks, the leaves and branches spreading in conventional style; his rocks have the usual gradations which we find in the old school; the views of distant cities are absolutely fantastic and infantile creations; only the green plain is often illumined, in an unusual manner, by tiny flowerets of many hues, while mystic roses crown the angels' locks, adorn overflowing baskets, or rise on long stalks at the foot of the virgin's throne in transparent vases. such are the characteristics, the spirit and the sentiment that appear in the works of fra angelico, who might be considered as the last representative of that school of which giotto was master; and at the same time the initiator of "quattrocento" art, whose powerful development irresistibly attracted him. he painted so many pictures for the houses of florentine citizens, that "i was often astonished," writes vasari, "how one man alone could, even in many years, do so much and so well." "and we also," justly observes milanesi, "are not less amazed than vasari, for although many works have been dispersed or are still hidden, yet a great number still remain both in italy and other countries, and, what is more remarkable, the greater part are not mentioned by vasari."[ ] we will follow our artist in his different places of abode, thus establishing the various periods of his life and artistic productions; from the fiesole hills, where the first seedlings of his fantasy were sown, to green umbria, where his early works are, works warm with enthusiasm, faith and youthful candour: from florence, which he enriched with admirable frescoes, and innumerable pictures dazzling with gold and azure, to rome, where he left his grand pictorial legacy in the oratory of pope nicholas v. [illustration: angels of the "last judgement."] i. fra angelico at cortona and perugia. [ - .] [illustration: angel of the annunciation. (pinacoteca, perugia.)] if, after a study of the pictorial works of fra angelico, any one should undertake to make a precise classification of them, he would--although his frescoes are easy enough to classify--find himself confronted by no small difficulty in regard to the panel paintings. so active and original was the artist, and so grand in his simplicity, that he always remained just what he appeared from the beginning,--the painter of ingenuous piety, mystical ecstasy, and intense religious fervour. [illustration: history of st. dominic's life.] no record is extant of his first visit to foligno, but in the church of st. dominic at cortona we may still admire a triptych with the virgin and four saints; an annunciation; and two "predelle"; one of which is said to have belonged to the picture of st. dominic, as the scenes relate to the life of that saint, and the other with some stories of the virgin, to the annunciation mentioned above. [illustration: the resurrection of cardinal de' ceccani's nephew.] to the story of st. dominic (which had already been treated in a masterly manner by fra guglielmo, in the "arca" at bologna, and by traini in his picture at pisa), fra angelico has, in some scenes, given a fuller development, but with less dramatic sentiment; exactly the good and bad points which are more clearly shown in his other works. the "predella", divided into seven parts, represents the birth of saint dominic; the dream of pope honorius iii., to whom the saint appears in act of steadying the falling church; the meeting of the saint with st. francis; the confirmation of his rule by means of the virgin; the visits of st. peter and st. paul; the dispute with heretics; the resurrection of the nephew of cardinal de' ceccani; the supper of the saint and his brethren; and lastly his death. [illustration: death of st. dominic.] the scene of the resurrection of the young napoleon, nephew of cardinal stefano de' ceccani, had been already powerfully depicted by traini; in angelico's hands it comes out restrained and cold, the acts of amazement in the devotees present at the miracle, who raise their hands in astonishment, are too conventional: and it is precisely in the intermingling of these gestures of sorrow for the death, and wonder for the revivication, that the pisan artist has brought out his best effects. as we have before pointed out, the calm spirit of fra angelico avoided realistic representation; his figures always suggest love, faith and resignation, but are never agitated; like the soul of their author, they are incapable of violent action; therefore when these should be drawn, the representation falls below reality. we shall see instances of this in other works of his. [illustration: the annunciation. (church of gesù, cortona.)] one of angelico's most familiar subjects was the annunciation, and the most interesting of the cortona pictures, is that of the angel's visit to mary. its motive is simple and clear, as it was transmitted from early christian art; the general lines are unchanged, but the expression greatly so. fra angelico did not disturb the religious solemnity of the apparition with useless accessories; faithful to his own sentiment, he has clothed mary with humility. she sits beneath the portico, the book neglected on her lap, her hands crossed, and her drooping head inclined towards the heavenly messenger. the golden-winged angel with roseate robe also bends before the virgin, the right hand pointing to her breast and the left to the dove which sheds celestial rays on mary's head. in the background adam and eve are being expelled from the terrestrial paradise, symbol of the ancient christian legend which directly connects the story of original sin with that of the redemption. this mystic subject, which does not lack grace and freshness in the cortona painting, finds its fuller development in san marco at florence. here the madonna is seated on a wooden stool, her head projected forward almost in ecstasy, with hands clasped on her breast, and in similar attitude the angel half kneels before her. the scene takes place before a little grated window in the colonnade of a cloister, utterly bare of ornament, but in this very simplicity lies all the charm and poetry of angelico. before a subject so ideal, so solemn, which reveals in such intensity of faith and feeling how his thought spontaneously turned to the prayer of the salutation which was certainly on the artist's lips as he painted, or was inspired by some sweet annunciation hymn such as this, which probably has been often repeated before this entrancing picture: alzando gli occhi vidi maria bella col libro in mano, e l' angel gli favella. dinnanzi a lei si stava inginocchiato quell' angel gabriel tanto lucente, ed umilmente a lei ebbe parlato: "vergine pura, non temer niente; messaggio son di dio onnipotente, che t' ha eletta e vuolti per sua sposa." e poi le disse: "in cielo è ordinato, che siate madre del figliuol di dio, però che gli angeli il padre han pregato, che con effetto adempia el lor disio; e da parte del sommo e buono dio, questa benedizione a voi s' appella." queste parole fur tanto infiammate e circundate di virtù d' amore, che ben parean da dio fussin mandate, e molto se n' allegra nel suo core: "da poi che piace all' alto dio signore, io son contenta d' essere sua ancella." ella si stava dentro alla sua cella, e grande meraviglia si faceva, però che a nessun uomo ella favella, e molto timorosa rispondeva. l' angelo disse allora: "ave maria, di grazia tu se' piena, o chiara stella." allor discese lo spirito santo, come un razzo di sol l' ha circundata, poi dentro a lei entrò quel frutto santo in quella sacrestia chiusa e serrata; di poi partori inviolata e si rimase vergine e donzella. o veri amanti, venite a costei, quella che di bellezza è madonna: l' aria e la terra si sostien per lei, del ciel regina e del mondo colonna, chi vuol veder la donzella gioconda vada a veder la nunziata bella.[ ] the other predella at cortona represents various episodes in the life of the virgin:--the nativity, marriage, visitation, adoration of the magi, presentation in the temple, death, burial and lastly the apparition of the virgin to the blessed dominican reginald of orleans. padre marchese believes that this last scene did not originally belong to the predella; but the doubt is unfounded, for nothing is more natural than the artist's wish to connect the history of the virgin with his order, of which she is the patroness. [illustration: the marriage of the virgin. (cortona.)] [illustration: the marriage of the virgin. (uffizi gallery.)] cavalcaselle, as well as marchese, affirms that the scene of the marriage of the virgin reproduces that of the picture in the uffizi at florence. this may be, as far as the subject and scene go, but in the disposition of the figures, the development of action, the two works have nothing in common. of course in both there must be the priest who unites the bridal couple, and around them the usual personages in various attitudes of complaisance, surprise, and rejoicing, but the grouping of the figures in the predella at cortona is more naturally conceived. the women on the right appear to come from the house where they had met to assist at the ceremony; the men stand on the left. the background with its portico, and the walls, above which the trees of a garden project, are shown with more truth and solidity. to give wider scope to the scene fra angelico has depicted the marriage in an open space. the picture in the uffizi, on the other hand, is so conventional both in architecture and landscape that it is impossible to establish a comparison between the two. [illustration: the visitation.] the visitation depicts the wife of zacharias meeting the virgin, and lovingly embracing her; a serving maid leaning against the threshold, half hidden by the door, is listening with devotion, while another woman kneels on the ground in the road raising her hands to heaven. in the adoration of the magi we find the usual qualities of composition and feeling. one of the kings has already rendered homage to the redeemer, and is talking to st. joseph, who thanks him with earnest devotion; and while the second falls prone before the divine child, and kisses his feet with profound emotion, the third prepares himself to render the required homage. all around are elegant little figures of pages and servants, in life-like and natural attitudes. [illustration: adoration of the magi.] the last story represents the assumption of the virgin, at which, according to ancient tradition, christ is present and carries in his arms the soul of his mother in the form of a little child. [illustration: adoration of the magi. (uffizi gallery.)] padre marchese wrote that both the adoration and this assumption are in every respect similar, or replicas of those in the uffizi. if anything, the pretty little panels of the uffizi might be replicas of the cortona ones; but in florence the only painting with the scene of the adoration of the magi is that in the predella of the tabernacle of the linen weavers' guild. now, while the adoration in the cortona predella is naturally and simply pourtrayed, that of florence is conventional and stiff, the vacuity of some figures and their actions is very evident--therefore this similitude also reduces itself to mere identity of subject. the assumption of the virgin also offers very notable differences. the predella at cortona is more intense and severe, more simple and hence more grand; while the little panel in the uffizi shows that the effort to embellish the scene has been too much for the artist, and the intensity of sentiment is greatly lessened, being injured by useless accessories. in that of cortona, on the contrary, the figures of the apostles who hold the sheet on which the virgin reposes are full of expression and natural in action, the steep and mountainous background has severe and grand lines, as if to emphasize the sadness of the scene. here the artist felt and created, there he merely repeated himself. [illustration: the death of the virgin. (cortona.)] [illustration: the death of the virgin. (uffizi gallery.)] the triptych, once on the great altar of the church of san domenico, now at a side altar on the right, has the virgin seated in the centre with the holy child upright on her knee, his right hand is raised in act of benediction, and with his left he holds a rose. around the throne are four angels, one of which carries a basket of flowers. in the side panels are st. matthew, st. john baptist, st. john the evangelist and mary magdalene. above in the central compartment of the triptych, is the crucifixion and the two rounds on the sides represent the annunciation. in the chapel of sant' orsola in san domenico at perugia there was formerly a panel picture now divided into many parts and much damaged. this was painted by fra giovanni for the chapel of san niccolò de' guidalotti, and may now be seen in the vannucci gallery at perugia. [illustration: virgin and child with saints. (church of st. domenico, cortona.)] the virgin is enthroned with her son on her knees, his right hand in act of benediction, his left holding a half open pomegranate. at the foot of the throne four angels are standing back, the two first lift up a basket full of white and red roses, the others peep from behind the throne of the virgin who turns lovingly to her little son, who is entirely nude, and as rosy as the angels' flowers, and those in three vases at the foot of the throne. on the right of the virgin are st. john baptist and st. catherine; on the left st. dominic and st. nicholas. on the predella, which is divided into three parts, were once various scenes from the life of st. nicholas of bari, two of these are now to be found in the vatican gallery. in a complex composition, they represent the birth of the saint; his listening to the preaching of a bishop to a congregation of women seated in a flowery field; the saint saving from dishonour the daughters of a poor gentleman; and the miracle of causing a hundred measures of wheat to rain down and relieve the famine in the city of nuri. on the upper portion the saint appears from behind a rock, having been invoked by some devotees to calm a tempest which threatened to wreck their bark. [illustration: madonna and child. (pinacoteca, perugia.)] the portion at perugia represents the miraculous salvation of three innocent youths, sons of roman princes; and the death and funeral of the saint. in the lower part of the picture he is extended on the bier surrounded by monks, women and poor people who weep his loss, while above, his soul is being led to heaven by four angels. the frame of the painting is now divided into twelve fragments, each one containing a small figure of a saint: they are st. romuald, st. gregory, st. laurence, st. bonaventure, st. catherine, st. peter martyr, st. mary magdalene, st. thomas aquinas, st. peter, st. stephen, st. paul and st. john. the last four figures have been mutilated in the lower part, and in these, as well as the others, the colouring is much injured. if it were desired to complete the altar-piece, at present, the gables of the tripartite frame would be missing, but there is no doubt that--as in the cortona picture--the two small rounds in the perugian pinacoteca, representing the angel of the annunciation and the virgin, on gold backgrounds, formed part. padre marchese places this panel among the youthful works of the artist, "because it shows more than his other works the manner and technique of giotto's school." padre timoteo bottonio wrote that it was painted in , but the dominican author adds that this is not likely, as fra giovanni angelico was at that time in florence, where the restoration of san marco was begun, and also the building of the new convent which he adorned with so many marvellous frescoes. [illustration: birth, preaching and miracles of st. nicholas. (vatican, rome.)] [illustration: the death of st. nicholas. (pinacoteca, perugia.)] this would actually signify little. as the picture which is said to have been painted for the church of sant' andrea at brescia was naturally done at fiesole, this one for perugia might well have been executed at florence. but though it recalls the most characteristic works of the artist and, for liveliness of colour and accurate study of form, may be considered one of his most remarkable works, we have no hesitation in ascribing it to his first artistic period. in both these altar-pieces the grouping of the figures is still faithful to giottesque tradition; it was only later, i. e. when fra angelico had felt the artistic influences developing around him, that he placed the figures in one picture on different levels, to make a circle round the mother of christ. the type of the virgin herself in this perugian picture is similar to that of the cortona panel; they both have the eyes wide apart, a short, receding chin, and small mouth; characteristics which are also seen in the angels behind the virgin's throne in the san domenico picture at cortona. from an architectural view the throne has here a much more antique shape than in his later designs, where renaissance forms predominate. as to the picture at perugia it has been so restored and arbitrarily put together after the panel was divided, that it affords no serious proof of authenticity. we must therefore conclude that the perugian one was painted before , for could we possibly admit (as padre bottonio wills it) that it was done in , that is only a year before the celebrated painting for the church of san marco? and seeing that when the dominicans again obtained possession of their own convent and returned to fiesole neither fra angelico nor his brother fra benedetto were among them, we may reasonably suppose that angelico was then at perugia, painting the altar-piece for the guidalotti chapel; and that he only returned to florence when he had finished that work, which we may date later than the panel still to be admired at cortona. these are the only works known to have been painted by him while he and his brethren had left their beloved fiesole hills to seek peace and tranquillity in umbria,--the only records of that period of voluntary exile. [illustration: virgin of the annunciation. (pinacoteca, perugia.)] ii. fra angelico at fiesole. [ - .] [illustration] whilst fra angelico was putting the legends of the virgin and st. dominic into colour in umbria, giovanni dominici together with leonardo dati, master-general of the order, was negotiating with the bishop of fiesole and pope gregory xii. to again obtain possession of the convent founded by dominici. it was only in that the fiesolan bishop acceded to their request, on condition that the dominicans would make him a present of some sacred vestments to the value of a hundred ducats. this sum, writes marchese, was taken from the legacy left to the convent by the father of st. antonino, who died about that time. a rich merchant having died in florence in the same year, leaving the monks of fiesole six thousand florins, it was besides decided to enlarge the building. the legal act of free and absolute concession being signed, the father-general at once sent for four of the monks from cortona, among whom, as we have said, were neither fra angelico nor fra benedetto. this does not imply that all the others who had left in , might not have returned later, and probably fra angelico among them.[ ] it was in this convent from which on the side towards the ridge of the fiesole hill, he looked on the olives spreading their silvery branches against the blue sky, that fra angelico, absorbed in work and prayer, passed the greater part of his life. it is impossible to determine at which of the many works that now adorn the florentine and foreign galleries, he worked during his stay in fiesole, where he remained till ; certainly he painted the panel pictures for his church, the tabernacle of the linen weavers, and frescoes in some parts of the convent. that convent so dear to him must have awakened in his soul many bitter and sweet memories--whether he thought of the days when he and his brother benedetto first took their vows, or of the successive vicissitudes when he and the brethren were forced to abandon it. [illustration: coronation of the virgin. (san marco, florence.)] vasari asserts that "he painted an easter candle in several small scenes, for giovanni masi, a monk of the convent of santa maria novella; and also some reliquaries which on solemn feast days were placed on the altar," and are preserved to this day in the convent of san marco. they represent the "coronation of the virgin," the "madonna della stella" and the "adoration of the magi." the coronation has been too much damaged by useless retouching to be able fully to judge of its merits. it is for this cause perhaps that some people have ventured to doubt its authenticity: "one perceives," writes cartier, "his religious conception, and desire to follow his model, but the whole composition lacks order and space, the figures are heavy, attitudes embarrassed, proportions short, outlines coarse and the whole painting is strained."[ ] [illustration: madonna della stella (of the star). (san marco, florence.)] now this is not absolutely exact. naturally if we compare this little reliquary with the great "coronation" at the louvre, we find the composition more compressed, but it is not confused. true, the types of the virgin and redeemer have not that grand simplicity which with sincere enthusiasm we admire in his later panels of the same subject. but possibly we have here the artist's first conception, an idea which he successively developed and perfected till he reached the highest grade of beauty, first in the picture at the louvre, then in the truly celestial one of the florentine gallery. in the little painting of the madonna della stella (of the star) we have qualities of grace and nobility all fra angelico's own. the six adoring angels on the slope of the frame, and the two seated at the base playing musical instruments, not only fully reveal his ability, but might be classed with those of the linen weaver's tabernacle as among the most beautiful and ethereal he ever painted. the third reliquary which is divided into two parts represents the "adoration of the magi," below, and the "annunciation" above. the virgin has a book on her lap, her arms crossed on the breast, and head extended towards the celestial messenger who kneels before her; but both figures, though showing fra angelico's characteristic sentiment, have exaggerated proportions; the neck is inordinately long, the colouring enamelled, and so brilliant as to give the picture the character of a fine and elegantly illuminated missal. in the "adoration" the virgin displays the same defects of proportion, but among the figures of the three kings and the personages accompanying them, are some of exceptional elegance and exquisite beauty. on the whole the scene may be classed among the finest and most graceful of the works which fra angelico has left to us. [illustration: the annunciation and the adoration of the magi. (san marco, florence.)] there is a kind of reliquary in the vatican gallery, which represents the virgin seated, with the child on her left arm. her raised right hand holds the rose, and at her feet kneel st. dominic and st. catherine. cavalcaselle supposes this to have been the fourth of the reliquaries once in santa maria novella, but it more probably belongs to that small painting reproduced by prof. helbig,[ ] in the _revue de l'art chrétien_, in which angelico has represented the death and assumption of the virgin. the under part of the picture, representing the death of the virgin, recalls, in the general grouping of figures, the same subject now in the uffizi gallery; but in this one, four apostles are depicted in the act of raising the bier, while the others surround the christ, who holds in his arms the soul of his mother in the form of a babe. in the upper part we see the virgin with upraised arms, being received by the saviour who extends his hands as if in welcome. the type of the virgin recalls that of the small panel representing the "adoration" and "annunciation." the christ is, in the foreshortening and character of the face, a repetition of that on the reliquary of the "madonna della stella." the figure of the virgin is incorporeal and insignificant; but the angels who in varied attitudes dance around the throne playing divers instruments, are charming and graceful. in the ancient refectory of the fiesolan convent fra angelico painted a life-size christ crucified, with st. dominic kneeling below clinging passionately to the cross. at the sides stand the virgin and st. john the evangelist; there is also a figure of the saintly founder, but it was either added later, or else has been badly restored and cannot be taken as fra angelico's work. the picture has been removed from the wall, and is now in the museum of the louvre; it is damaged in several parts; the delicacy of colouring is lost, the background spoiled, and only the figures of the saviour, the virgin, and the head of st. john remain in tolerable condition. the other fresco in the old chapter-house (this also has been removed from the wall, and is now in the hermitage at st. petersburg), represents the virgin seated, with the child on her knee, between st. dominic and st. thomas aquinas; all these figures show signs of incompetent restoration, the outlines and drapery having been repainted. less spoiled perhaps by retouching, but yet in a deplorable condition, is the other painting, a crucifixion, still existing in the sacristy of the convent. the redeemer with extended arms, has his head drooping straight on the breast, and the legs are stiffened and curve to the right. a crown of thorns encircles the head, which is surrounded by a great aureole; but the head is small; and the face, with its insignificant features, lacks the intense expression which fra angelico usually succeeds in putting into similar subjects. he also painted the altar-piece for the great altar in san domenico at fiesole, "which," writes vasari, "perhaps because it appeared to be deteriorating, has been retouched and injured by other masters. but the predella and ciborium of the sacrament are better preserved; and you may see infinite little figures which are lovely in their celestial glory, and appear indeed to come from paradise, nor can those who draw near ever look at them sufficiently."[ ] the picture is now removed into the choir. in the centre the virgin with her son, is seated on the throne; six angels stand around her in act of adoration, and two kneel in front with vases in their hands. at the sides st. thomas and st. peter are placed on the left; st. dominic and st. peter martyr on the right. the retouching of which vasari speaks, was done by lorenzo di credi in , when the picture was reduced to its present form. we learn this from a record in the ms. chronicle of the convent of fiesole, which is quoted by padre marchese in his "memorie."[ ] but the panel has suffered other and worse things than this. other figures taken from an older frame have been substituted for those in the pilasters. some coarse copies have been put in the place of the three "stories" of the predella, and the original one was sold, together with the ciborium.[ ] the predella, now in the national gallery of london, is divided into five compartments. in the centre is christ robed in white, his right hand raised in benediction, and a standard held in his left; at the sides are a crowd of angels--some blowing trumpets, others playing instruments, others again in attitudes of profound veneration--all have robes of pure and brilliant hues with azure wings lightly sprinkled with gold. the side scenes have multitudes of saints, either standing or kneeling in adoration: on the left are patriarchs, bishops, monks and martyrs, each with his own emblem; on the right, a crowd of kneeling feminine saints among whom we can recognise st. agnes, st. catherine and st. helen, and behind them a line of male saints, amongst them st. cyprian, st. clement, st. thomas, st. erasmus, and others whose names are written on their mitres. still higher king david, st. john baptist and the prophets jeremiah, zaccariah and habakkuk. the faces are painted with great delicacy and accuracy, and although they show some variety of lineament, the expression is rather mannered. the outlines of the feminine saints are full of grace and those of the other sex do not lack great dignity. although the work is of minor proportion, it shows a noteworthy progress when compared with the conceptions of orcagna. the greater part of the draperies are rendered with most refined colouring, so delicately toned and judiciously contrasted, that no part of the painting appears either crude, or of exaggerated richness; while the gold used in every part of the background contributes to give great harmony to the whole. in the pictures placed at the end of the predella, the dominicans are depicted in their white robes and black mantles. [illustration: predella. (national gallery, london.)] this delightful work, which roused the admiration of vasari, contains not less than figures and may justly be considered as one of the gems of the collection. executed with all the delicacy of an illumination, it sparkles with bright but harmonious colours, while the spirit of devotion which penetrates the whole is entirely characteristic of the painter.[ ] angelico reached greater perfection in the picture of the "annunciation" of which vasari says: "in a chapel of the same church is a picture from the same hand, representing our lady receiving the annunciation from the angel gabriel, with a countenance which is seen in profile, so devout, so delicate, and so perfectly executed, that the beholder can scarcely believe it to be by the hand of man, but would rather suppose it to have been delineated in paradise. in the landscape forming the background are seen adam and eve, whose fall made it needful that the virgin should give birth to the redeemer."[ ] this picture (purchased in by duke mario farnese) is now in the museum at madrid. the virgin is seated on the right under a graceful portico sustained by small columns. her head inclines a little towards the angel, in the same attitude as in the cortona altar-piece and the fresco at san marco. she holds the book on her knees, and crosses her hands on her breast; while the golden winged angel, in its rose coloured robe, with an arm curved in similar attitude of reverence, sheds light around, as in the painting at cortona. high up in the left corner the hand of the eternal father sends down a ray of light, in the midst of which the holy spirit is symbolized. in the background, as in the cortona picture, adam and eve are being expelled from paradise. in the predella are some beautiful "stories" representing the "marriage of the virgin," the "salutation," the "adoration of the magi," the "circumcision of christ" and the "death of the virgin."[ ] "but superior to all the other works of fra giovanni, and one in which he surpassed himself, is a picture in the same church (i. e. san domenico at fiesole), near the door on the left hand of the entrance: in this work, he proves the high quality of his powers as well as the profound intelligence he possessed of the art which he practised. the subject is the coronation of the virgin by jesus christ: the principal figures are surrounded by a choir of angels, among whom are vast numbers of saints and holy personages, male and female. these figures are so numerous, so well executed, in attitudes so varied, and the expressions of the heads so richly diversified, that one feels infinite pleasure and delight in regarding them. nay, one is convinced that those blessed spirits can look no otherwise in heaven itself, or to speak under correction, could not, if they had forms, appear otherwise; for all the saints, male and female, assembled here, have not only life and expression, most delicately and truly rendered, but the colouring also of the whole work would seem to have been given by the hand of a saint, or of an angel like themselves. it is not without sufficient reason therefore, that this excellent ecclesiastic is always called frate giovanni angelico. the stories from the life of our lady and of st. dominic which adorn the predella, moreover, are in the same divine style; and i, for myself, can affirm with truth, that i never see this work but it appears something new, nor can i ever satisfy myself with the sight of it, or have enough of beholding it."[ ] [illustration: museum of the louvre--paris. the coronation of the virgin.] the painting is now in the louvre at paris, having been taken from fiesole during the french invasion of . under a rich canopy with inlaid columns and brocade hangings the redeemer seated on the throne, places the crown on the head of his mother, who kneels before him, with hands crossed on her bosom. around them angels are making the air resound with the voice of song, and the music of many instruments. saints, male and female circle round, some standing, others kneeling, their fixed eyes and ecstatic features denoting their joy in such divine splendour. among the saints are the great personages of the religious orders, together with bishops and emperors. on the right, among the kneeling female saints are seen st. agnes tenderly pressing the lamb to her breast, st. catherine holding her wheel of torture and a palm, st. ursula clasps the arrow which united her in death to her divine spouse, st. cecilia's pretty head is garlanded with flowers, while st. mary magdalene turns her back showing the rich locks of hair flowing over her shoulder as she holds the vase of ointment in her left hand. on the opposite side are st. dominic with the lily and open book, st. augustine, st. benedict, st. anthony and st. francis. on a higher level st. louis, with his crown of _fiordalise_, talks with st. thomas; while st. nicholas supports himself with both hands on his pastoral staff. "it is a clever composition, wonderfully balanced, and the solemnity of style does not at all exclude exuberance of life or infinite variety of ideas. "the bodies are almost diaphanous, the heads ethereal, the atmosphere and light have a touch of the supernatural. up to this point the subject is subdued, but the colours lively and pure--among which blue and carmine predominate--gleam with particular splendour."[ ] the predella contains in some small compositions the chief episodes in the life of st. dominic, excepting the central compartment where christ is drawn, issuing from the sepulchre between the virgin and st. john. the compositions are all executed with that love and delicacy which are the glory of the artist, but even these little stories, like the larger panel, have been more or less injured by repeated restorations. [illustration: uffizi gallery--florence. the coronation of the virgin.] a similar subject now in the uffizi gallery at florence and which fra angelico painted for the church of santa maria novella, is still more aerial and celestial, a perfect masterpiece of sentiment and mystic expression. here also fra angelico clings to that traditional characteristic, peculiarly his own--the art of sacred vision, but with what new life he animates it, and what poetical witchery he throws into this creation of his ascetic fantasy! his predecessors reproduced with slight varieties the model of giotto, and the great florentine painter himself has given us the scene in its most simple reality. high in the central part of giotto's "coronation" christ places the crown on the virgin, who with hands crossed, bows her head to receive the homage of her son. but on her face there is no expression of ecstatic joy, modest, indeed "humble in the midst of glory", she droops her eyes, almost as if she dared not rest them on the saviour. angels and saints, symmetrically disposed at the sides, fill the whole background of the picture, with heads either raised in admiration or bowed in respect, but in attitudes so similar, that they give a sense of monotony. then come the saints, some kneeling at the foot of the throne, and others in the side wings of the triptych, reverently bowing to the mother of god. fra angelico repeats the principal motive, but develops it according to his high ideal, his intense faith, and mystic sentiment. he gives to the virgin an expression of infinite sweetness; to the angels a truly celestial charm, to the saints a serene expression of beatitude, and to the whole scene the azure divine character of a vision of paradise. high in the centre the redeemer extends his right hand to add a brilliant gem to the crown of the virgin, who sits near him, with hands crossed in loving reverence. a luminous golden ray from this group engraved on the panel, forms gleaming and resplendent waves in the background of the picture, from which groups of angels stand out, playing all sorts of music, or dancing with hand clasped in hand. two are prostrated in profound admiration at the base, and shed clouds of incense from their thuribles, while two others draw melody from heavenly harps. in the lower part of the picture are many saints, who by their charmed faces and feeling of ineffable joy, show how delighted they are with the vision and the heavenly music. [illustration: ancient and modern gallery--florence. the last judgement.] "the greatest eloquence," writes marchese, "would fail to express the impression which this painting produces. the heart has a language which does not always speak in words, and we can never contemplate this picture without feeling in love with heaven."[ ] among the works which were undoubtedly done by fra angelico during his stay at fiesole, may be ascribed several different representations of the last judgment. he derived the inspiration of the subject directly from orcagna's fresco in santa maria novella, only fra angelico has created a paradise too exclusively modelled on the monastic life. "his ideal," writes reymond, "is a young neophyte entirely absorbed in prayer--a contemplative being who has renounced earthly life, abdicating his qualities as a man to dream of nothing but the future life. orcagna, on the contrary, dreams of an ideal in which human life triumphs in all its fulness, and one might say that the beings which people his paradise are but glorified bodies."[ ] fra giovanni painted hell and paradise with small figures for the camaldolese monks of santa maria degli angeli. this is the picture now in the ancient and modern gallery at florence, of which vasari writes, "he proved the rectitude of his judgment in this work, having made the countenances of the blessed beautiful and full of a celestial gladness; but the condemned, those destined to the pains of hell, he has depicted in various attitudes of sorrow, and bearing the impress and consciousness of their misdeeds and wretchedness on their faces: the blessed are seen to enter the gate of paradise in triumphal dance, the condemned are dragged away to eternal punishment in hell by the hands of demons."[ ] the representation is faithful to artistic tradition. in the highest part the saviour calls the elect to him with his right hand, while with his left he motions away the reprobate: around him are eight winged cherubim, with whom kneeling angels below join to form a circle. some are adoring or praying, others hold scrolls in their hands. on the right sits the virgin in white robes, with hands crossed on her breast and head gently bent: on the left st. john baptist with hands clasped in prayer. at the sides patriarchs, apostles and prophets, and at the extremities st. dominic and st. francis. an angel holds the cross at the feet of christ, and two others flying, blow their trumpets towards the dead, who rise from the open sepulchres below. in the base at the left, demons drag the damned ones to hell; on the right the elect cast glances of love and faith on the saviour, and in joyous fraternity enjoy the heavenly guerdon. the elysian fields of the blessed are truly celestial, gleaming with gold, irrigated by limpid streams, glorious with beautiful flowerets that bloom amid the verdure, the exuberance of nature harmonizing marvelously with the joy of the elect. and in that midst their sportive pennons waved thousands of angels, in resplendence each distinct and quaint adornment. at their glee and carol smiled the lovely one of heaven that joy was in the eyes of all the blest.[ ] not unworthy of the divine poet is angelico's heavenly composition in which as in the dantesque paradise is shed light intellectual replete with love, love of true happiness, replete with joy, joy, that transcends all sweetness of delight.[ ] together with these verses of dante, fra angelico, while endeavouring to depict the dance of the blessed, may well have called to mind these verses of a sacred laud, which is said to be by iacopone da todi and (whether his or not) describes in popular language the celestial _caròla_[ ] of the saints: una rota si fa in cielo de tutti i santi in quel zardino, là ove sta l'amor divino che s'infiamma de l'amore. in quella rota vano i santi et li angioli tutti quanti; a quello sposo van davanti: tutti danzan per amore. in quella corte è un' alegreza d' un amor dismisuranza: tutti vanno ad una danza per amor del salvatore. son vestiti di vergato, bianco, rosso e frammezzato; le ghirlande in mezo el capo: ben mi pareno amatori. tutti quanti con ghirlandi, paren giovin' de trent' anni: quella corte se rinfranchi, ogni cosa è piena d'amore. le ghirlande son fiorite, più che l'oro son chiarite: ornate son di margarite, divisate di colore, ecc.[ ] above from the heavenly jerusalem stream rays of golden light, and two angels who are passing into the portal, are aerial and luminous, as bright and splendid spirits. [illustration: the dance of the blessed. (details from the last judgment)] less original is the representation of hell, which is copied straight from the fresco in the pisan camposanto. not only the same division of _bolge_ (hell-pits), but even the repetition of motives in the souls that fill them; the only and notable difference is the figure of lucifer which instead of being in the centre occupies the base of the picture. at the summit "eriton cruda, che richiamava l'ombre a' corpi sui," is precisely in the same attitude as in the pisan camposanto, a figure holding a banner coiled around by a serpent, and near it is a simoniac with his entrails torn out, the identical figure from the pisan hell. the back view of the figure which a demon raises to throw into the jaws of a terrible monster is also copied entire from the same fresco. the _bolge_ and the damned souls which occupy them, are, as we have said, repetitions, but with less intelligence and character than the pisan fresco. on the left the slothful and lazy are punished; beneath them in two _bolge_ are the passionate and the gluttonous souls, and below again the luxurious and avaricious ones. the poverty of conception in this "inferno" is not even compensated by the usual good qualities of refinement; one could almost believe that the artist found it so repugnant to his character to depict brutality and infernal tortures, that he hurried over this part to get rid of it the sooner. the representation of the damned is cold, their struggles with the demons, which at pisa and in other places is so full of energy, is given here with exaggerated art and becomes ineffectual; in fact this part of the picture is void of feeling, and confirms our previous remarks on the artistic character of the painter. another "last judgment" is in the corsini gallery at rome;--a triptych, the side panels of which represent the "ascension" and the "descent of the holy ghost." this scene is, however, much more simply designed, but cannot be fairly judged now, on account of the retouching and frequent varnishing which disfigure it. [illustration: the last judgment. (rome, national gallery.)] the saviour seated on the clouds, rests his left hand on a book which he holds upright on his knees, while the right is raised in malediction against the sinners, with an action which recalls the christ in the judgment of the camposanto at pisa. on the sides are groups of angels, apostles and saints; and the elect are on the right, the wicked on the left below them. "in the picture of the corsini gallery," writes venturi, "the representation was cramped by the narrow limits of the central panel of the triptych. it is evidently a reduced form of preceding compositions, for several angels which terminate the picture above, are here seen only from the waist downwards. the figures of the elect, loving, ecstatic and beautiful, clad in flame-coloured robes, with stars and flowers, as in similar compositions by fra angelico, are absolutely sublime, while those of the wicked are almost childish, especially the demons with faces of cats and jackals, with red eyes and mouths, black bodies and clawed feet. how much happier he is in the clear and joyful note of colour in some figures standing before a door on the right! and how much better we recognise his sweet spirit in the features of the blest, with their clear eyes whose pupils are fixed trance-like under lightly drawn eyebrows."[ ] [illustration: the last judgment. (berlin museum.)] another panel with a subject analogous to these is in the berlin museum, and is considered superior to that in the florentine gallery.[ ] although the figure of the saviour may be slightly wanting in character, the celestial phalanx is full of grace, especially the blessed ones who cross a flower-strewn field to be led by angels up to paradise; they hold each others hands, and dance and sing delightfully and with graceful action and attitudes raise their heads to join in the glory of _colui che tutto move e risplende_ nel ciel che più della sua luce prende. [illustration: the virgin of the linen weavers' guild. (uffizi gallery, florence.)] [illustration] another last judgment forms one of the thirty-five small pictures which adorned the doors of the presses for the silver vessels etc., in the chapel of the ss. annunziata. it is generally believed that he painted this during his stay at fiesole; but as we find it dates posterior to this, we shall speak of it later, and must first record that in fra angelico painted an "annunciation" for the church of sant' alessandro at brescia, said to be the one on an altar to the right on entering the church. so greatly is it transformed by restorations, that no one in looking at it now would dream that it was by our artist, if indeed it ever were his work. it would appear that the restorer had used other models in repainting the angel and the virgin.[ ] [illustration] on july th the contract was signed between the consuls of the arte dei linaioli (guild of linen weavers) and our artist, for the tabernacle of which they had asked lorenzo ghiberti to give a design. the contract says: "we engage fra guido, called fra giovanni of the order of st. dominic of fiesole, to paint for the said guild, a tabernacle of our lady; to be painted within and without with colours, gold, azure and silver, all of the very finest that can be found, with all his art and diligence, and for all this and his fatigue and work, he shall receive one hundred and ninety gold florins, or any less sum as shall appear to his conscience, and in consideration of the figures that are in the design." [illustration: st mark. st. john baptist.] this painting is now to be admired in the uffizi gallery where it was placed in ; it is too universally known to need a minute description. the virgin enthroned with the holy child is surrounded by twelve angels, the most lovely, graceful and celestial that fra angelico ever painted. in the interior of the side panels are st. john and st. mark, in the exterior st. peter and st. mark. the latter, as is well known, was the protector of the linen guild: "therefore," says padre marchese, "they wished that whether the tabernacle were open or closed, he should be always in their sight." in this work fra angelico shows that his style was derived from giotto and orcagna, though his figures with their large heads, are treated like miniatures and become insignificant; the result is cold and void, precisely by reason of this over conscientious execution. the face of the virgin lacks expression and sentiment, while the angels depicted on the slope of the frame in act of sounding trumpets, psalters, cymbals etc., have such a sweetness of sentiment that they seem literally rained down from heaven. [illustration] iii. fra angelico at florence. [ - .] [illustration] san marco. [illustration] the church of san giorgio--writes vasari--"had at this time been given to the monks of san domenico da fiesole, but they did not occupy it longer than from about the middle of july to the end of january, because cosimo de' medici and lorenzo his brother had obtained for them, from pope eugenius, the church and convent of san marco, which had previously been occupied by salvestrine monks, to whom san giorgio was given in exchange. moreover, they (cosimo and lorenzo de' medici), being much devoted to religion, and zealous for the divine service and worship, gave orders that the above-named convent of san marco should be entirely rebuilt according to the design and model of michelozzo, commanding that it should be constructed on the most extensive and magnificent scale, with all the conveniences that those monks could possibly desire."[ ] and in the year , the said monks made their entry with pomp and solemn fêtes, in which the three bishops of taranto, treves and parentino, took part, preceded by the mace-bearers of the signoria who were sent to give greater magnificence to the scene. fra cipriano, vicar general of the new congregation of the "osservanza," took possession of the convent in the name of that order.[ ] "the first part completed," continues the aretian biographer, "was that above the old refectory and opposite to the ducal stables, which had formerly been erected by the duke lorenzo de' medici. in this place twenty cells were made, the roof was put on, and the various articles of wood-work brought into the refectory, which was finished as we see it in our day."[ ] "the library was afterwards erected, it was vaulted above and below, and had sixty-four bookcases of cypress wood filled with the most valuable books. the dormitory which was in the form of a square, was next built, and finally the cloister was completed, with all the other truly commodious apartments of that convent, which is believed to be the most perfectly arranged, the most beautiful and most convenient building of its kind that can be found in italy, thanks to the skill and industry of michelozzo, who gave it up to its occupants entirely finished in the year .[ ] cosimo de' medici is said to have expended , ducats on this fabric; it is added that while it was in course of construction, he gave the monks ducats every year for their support."[ ] in , two years after the building was begun, the principal chapel was finished, and the work of restoring and embellishing the church was commenced. this was completed in . while the architect was engaged in restoring the church of san marco, fra giovanni was probably commissioned to paint the altar-piece for the great altar. vasari writes of it: "but exquisite and admirable above all is the picture of the high altar in that church; for besides that the madonna in this painting awakens devotional feeling in all who regard her, by the pure simplicity of her expression; and that the saints surrounding her have a similar character; the predella, in which are stories of the martyrdom of st. cosmo, st. damian, and others, is so perfectly finished, that one cannot imagine it possible for any thing to be executed with greater care, nor can figures more delicate, or more judiciously arranged, be conceived."[ ] unfortunately the picture, now in the academy of the belle arti, is in such bad condition that we are not able to confirm vasari's judgment, for the tints have faded, in some parts leaving the undercolouring exposed, in others it is corroded even down to the white of the plaster ground work. the virgin is enthroned, holding on her lap the child, whose right hand is uplifted to bless, while the left holds a globe. beside the throne are groups of angels, in front on the right st. dominic, st. francis and st. peter martyr; on the left st. laurence, st. paul and st. mark; above them kneel sts. cosmo and damian, protectors of the medici family, placed here in homage to the liberality of the medici towards the order. [illustration: madonna and child with angels and saints. (ancient and modern gallery, florence.)] in the predella, now divided, were represented various stories relative to the lives of sts. cosmo and damian, which may be recognised in two little pictures (nos. - , catalogue of ) at the belle arti, and in those now at the gallery at munich (nos. , , ). in the first of the two at florence, the saints have cut off the leg of a sick man, and placed that of a negro in its stead. in the second is represented their burial together with the brethren. in those at munich the scenes are:--the saints constrained by the judge lisia to sacrifice to idols; the saints thrown into the sea and saved by angels, while the judge is liberated from two demons by their prayers; and lastly their crucifixion, while stones and arrows are aimed against them, but rebound on the executioners.[ ] other similar subjects are represented in six "stories" divided into two panels (no. , catalogue of ) in the belle arti. in the first the saints are seen exercising the healing art without receiving payment; they cure palladia, who in her gratitude prays st. damian in the name of god to accept a gift, her brother being wrathful not knowing the cause. in the second the judge lisia obliges the saints and their three brethren to sacrifice to idols; in the third the angels save them from drowning; in the fourth they are condemned to be burnt alive, and sing psalms in the midst of the flames; in the fifth is the stoning; and lastly the decapitation. these works, however, do not always show equal execution, therefore we might judge that the artist sometimes availed himself of the hand of an assistant. from the records remaining to us, it does not appear that fra giovanni worked at any other pictures for his church, so it is probable he gave all his attention to adorning the convent, which on account of the works he has left there, may fairly be considered one of the finest monuments of italian art. it was not the first time that fra angelico had painted large mural frescoes. as he had already shown at fiesole his mastery in that more minute style, which was to find more complete expression in the roman pictures, so the convent of san marco gave him scope to prove his genius also in this freer branch of art. in the cloisters, the corridors, the cells, and the rooms in which the monks met together, we find specimens of his artistic work, and in these various pictures all his favourite personages reappear one by one in larger proportions, but without losing that original grace and sentiment with which his smaller works are imbued. indeed these show that he had studied from the life with independence and sincerity of purpose, and could render it with greater facility and decision. a very noteworthy change in the character of fra angelico's art may be observed in these mural paintings. he must have perceived, after painting the tabernacle for the linen weavers' guild, that a deeper study of the real was necessary to give life to his figures, especially when these should assume larger proportions. to give intelligent expression even to dreams, visions and ideality of thought, a material and technical part is necessary; the mind may wander free in fantasy, through indefinite space, but it needs a firm hand to render the conception evident; and the clearer the expression is, the greater ability in the creation of his works does it show in the artist. thus fra angelico, placing his figures in ideal surroundings, believed at first that refined thought was sufficient to make a perfect picture, and he illuminated his little figures with superficial delicacy, surrounding them with azure and gold, and so idealized them that they are more like diaphanous apparitions than human beings. [illustration: christ on the cross.] but he soon learned that by merely enlarging these little pictures, he could not succeed in giving them even that individuality to which he was led by natural taste and mode of life. in fact, what a difference lies between the figures of the linen weavers' tabernacle painted in , and those of the picture in the church of san marco done in ! the first: void, weak and without expression; the second: full of life and character; and note that this difference strikes the eye even now, notwithstanding the difficulty of comparison owing to the wretched condition to which the panel at san marco is reduced. in this cloister, therefore, where the pictures assume larger proportions and more importance, and the figures greater character and individuality of form, more solidity of artistic execution,--it is here we perceive that far as he still was from the world and worldly things, yet with earnest study and thought he had not failed to avail himself of the progressive development of art around him to improve his style and give more grandeur to his design. we do not know whether the cause which influenced his mind was, that in coming down to florence from the fiesole cloister he was brought into more immediate contact with other styles of art, and artists who followed a different, even opposite method. the distance of his convent from the city was not, however, so great as to have prevented his visiting the immortal works which enriched florence, or to diminish the relations of friendship or acquaintance which he surely had formed with his greater colleagues. in fact, fra angelico and ghiberti must have already consulted together about the tabernacle of the linen guild; and the works which the pious monk sent from fiesole to the churches and convents of florence could not have been unknown there, any more than the works of the other artists in the city were to him. certain changes independent of external causes sometimes take place naturally, we might say spontaneously, in strong artistic temperaments. fra angelico felt and understood as he continued his work, that something was wanting in him before he could succeed in giving reality to his thoughts and sentiment; he necessarily perfected his studies, and investigated truth more conscientiously--the result was the new style, a natural consequence of artistic individual progress. [illustration: st. peter martyr.] opposite the entrance in the pretty cloister of the florentine convent we may admire the figure of the crucified christ who turns his eyes to st. dominic kneeling below, and embracing the cross with both hands, while raising his head to meet the glance of the saviour. in the five lunettes of the doors in the cloister, fra angelico has represented st. peter martyr, st. dominic, christ issuing from the sepulchre, christ in the dress of a pilgrim, and st. thomas aquinas. the figure of the crucified saviour is nobly beautiful in its simple and intelligent outline, firm design and life-like colouring. that of st. peter martyr is full of character; it is a half figure holding with his left hand the palm of martyrdom and a book which he rests on his side; the first finger of the right hand is placed on his mouth, indicating the silence of the cloister. st. dominic has the book of his rules in one hand and the discipline, or rope for scourging in the other, as though to demonstrate that both moral and material influence should govern a religious community. the "christ of the resurrection" shows his wounds, and st. thomas aquinas holds his book of theology in both hands. [illustration: christ issuing from the sepulchre.] in the arch of the hospice the painter has represented two dominicans welcoming christ, to remind the brethren that to offer hospitality to the poor and the pilgrims, was the same as receiving christ. the redeemer with his hat hanging behind his shoulders leans on his pilgrim's staff; one of the brethren presses his left hand, and taking him by the right arm invites him to rest. the heads of the two devotees are full of character and expression, and on their faces beam the joy and love they feel for their unexpected guest. the second monk who clasps the saviour's arm with both hands as though he can scarcely believe his own eyes, is drawn with such natural feeling that nothing greater can be desired or attained. equally beautiful is the pilgrim christ with his long beard and curls flowing on his shoulders; the whole scene in fact is given with great nobility and exquisite grace. [illustration: christ in pilgrim's dress.] in the chapter-house of the convent fra angelico repeated the scene of the crucifixion. vasari writes of it thus: "fra giovanni was so greatly beloved for his admirable qualities by cosimo de' medici, that the latter had no sooner completed the church and convent of san marco, than he caused the good father to paint the whole story of the crucifixion of jesus christ on one of the walls of the chapter-house. in this work figures of all those saints who have been heads and founders of religious bodies, are mourning and bewailing at the foot of the cross on one side; and on the other, st. mark the evangelist beside the mother of the son of god, who has fainted at sight of the crucified saviour. around the virgin are the maries, who are sorrowing with and supporting her; they are accompanied by the saints cosimo and damian. "beneath this work, in a frieze above the dado the master executed a figure of st. dominic standing at the foot of a tree; on the branches of which are medallions, wherein are all the popes, cardinals, bishops, saints, and masters in theology who had belonged to fra giovanni's order of the preaching friars, down to his own day."[ ] in this masterly work fra angelico pours out with full hands the most vivid and intense feelings of his soul, and if he does not attain to grand dramatic power, he at least succeeds in depicting with rare ingenuity the varied expressions of sorrow, despair, hope and faith which animate each person, and in giving natural and life-like character and attitude to the various heads. the group of the fainting virgin may possibly seem conventional, but what sweet piety is in the feeling of the other figures! st. dominic, devoutly kneeling, inclines his head (cleverly foreshortened and marvellously expressed) and extends his arms to the redeemer; st. zenobi (or st. ambrose the archbishop) standing upright, points with his right to the saviour; st. jerome, in hermit's dress, bends forward and clasps his hands in prayer; st. augustine holds his pen in one hand, his book and pastoral staff in the other; st. francis brings his hand to his brow in an attitude of melancholy indefinable sadness. the saints benedict, bernard and romuald follow, then st. thomas aquinas with a most beautiful head full of life and character (it must certainly be a portrait, so life-like is the expression), next st. peter martyr with his hands on his breast; and lastly in the foreground an unknown monk (padre marchese thinks it is st. john gualbert) who weeps, with his left hand over his eyes.[ ] [illustration: san marco--florence the crucifixion.] on the left of the fresco, near the swooning virgin, stands st. john baptist pointing to the saviour; st. mark kneeling shows his gospel; st. laurence clasps his hands on his breast; and st. cosmo wrings his hands as he contemplates the cross; while st. damian turns, covering his eyes, and weeping the mournful loss of the lord. in the ornamentation of the simulated frame which surrounds the fresco, are hexagonal spaces containing half figures of prophets with labels, containing texts referring to the passion of christ; and below them on the right, the erythrean sibyl. in the lower part of the frieze, are ten rounds, containing portraits of the most illustrious members of the dominican order. in the centre st. dominic, on the left pope innocent v., cardinal ugone, father paulo the florentine, the archbishop st. antonino (this must surely have been added later), the blessed ones giordano of saxony, niccolò, remigius the florentine and buoninsegna the martyr. on the right are the blessed brethren john dominici, peter of the marshes, albertus magnus, st. raymond, chiaro of sesto, st. vincent ferreri and bernard the martyr. retouches and restorations are not wanting in this picture, the drapery has been repainted in several parts and the background has been smudged with that reddish colour, which, in altering the tone of the whole fresco, has injured the limpidity of colour and original refinement of harmony. the chronicles of the convent of san marco record another crucifixion by fra angelico in the refectory of the monks, "probably," writes padre marchese, "a replica of that which he had already painted in the fiesolan convent." this now no longer exists, it appears to have been destroyed to make space for sogliani's great fresco of st. dominic at table with his brethren, when they were supplied with bread by angels. but in the cells and dormitories of the florentine convent fra angelico scattered lovely proofs of his genius and sentiment, pouring out on them with rare talent the most exquisite grace of his brush, and tenderest thoughts of his soul. from the "annunciation" to the various scenes from the life of christ; from the "virgin among the saints," in the corridor, to the decoration of the room which cosimo had built for himself in his favourite convent, all breathe such sweet poesy in the grace and simplicity of the varied scenes, that one cannot look at them unmoved. facing the entrance of the upper corridor of the cloister he painted the angel bringing the glad tidings to the virgin. we have already noted in regard to this subject as created by him at cortona, how the representation finds its greater development here, where the artist succeeds better in rendering the feeling of veneration on the part of the heavenly messenger, and the submissive humility of the virgin. the same subject is repeated in a cell (no. ), but in this design, which breathes the same sentiment of sweetness and piety, st. dominic in reverent attitude is looking on. [illustration: the annunciation.] on the wall at the left of the entrance is a crucifixion, with st. dominic on his knees, embracing the cross, the figures are about half life size, the design similar to that which we have already seen in the cloister, but showing less ability. nor are these the only crucifixions which our artist painted. he has reproduced the subject in several cells, always varying either the attitude of the saviour, or the persons who adore him, but the serene attitude of the son of god is unalterable. without exaggerated contractions or violent action he remains fixed on the cross, his head bowed in mute contemplation of the figures below him. these, on the contrary, are the prey of sorrow and despair, they cover their faces, or weep distractedly at his feet. [illustration: "noli me tangere."] some of these frescoes of the crucifixion with st. dominic kneeling below, may be classed as decidedly by other hands, the execution being weak, the drawing incorrect, and the sentiment inefficiently expressed. these variants are doubtless attributable to the assistants he employed in their execution. in the fresco representing the _noli me tangere_ angelico gives us a work full of freshness and life, idealized in giottesque style. the figure of christ is majestic, as with a sign he withdraws himself from the kneeling magdalene, who supplicatingly extends her arms towards him. [illustration: the transfiguration.] most lovely are the composition and feeling of the figures in the "nativity," where the virgin and st. joseph with joined hands kneel in adoration of the babe stretched on a heap of straw on the ground. a little above, on the right stands st. dominic, and behind the virgin on the left a female saint kneels, her hands clasped in prayer. in the background beneath a humble shed are the bull and the ass, and four adoring angels above. [illustration: the risen christ.] in the "transfiguration on mount tabor" the figure of the ascending christ with outstretched arms and noble features is one of fra angelico's best works, but the attitudes of the apostles are conventional; the kneeling figure on the left with hands upraised to express confusion and surprise at the resurrection, is too mannered, and by its pose and action disturbs the serene harmony of the picture. [illustration: the institution of the holy sacrament.] [illustration: the presentation in the temple.] in the "institution of the holy sacrament," fra angelico, in true giottesque style, represented the apostles at the mystic feast, and christ giving them the consecrated wafer, while he holds the chalice in his left hand. here the figures of the disciples admirably express varied feelings of devotion and joy in receiving the divine food from the hand of the master. but the fresco which surpasses all, in nobility of line and simple grandeur of conception, is the "coronation of the virgin." christ and the virgin are seated in glory above the light clouds, the son places the celestial crown on the head of the mother who humbly bows her whole form towards him, with hands crossed on her bosom. her face is irradiated by an ineffable and heavenly smile, the supreme expression of happiness; the drapery of both is white and delicate, enveloping the limbs with well defined folds. the figures without being ineffectual, indeed they are even forcible, yet appear aerial apparitions, and veritable visions of divinity. six saints in ecstasy assist at the triumph, st. thomas aquinas, st. paul, st. dominic, st. francis, st. peter martyr and st. benedict, three on the right and three on the left, in a semicircular composition, all in attitudes of contemplative ecstasy. [illustration: coronation of the virgin.] [illustration: the prayer in the garden.] the frescoes of the maries at the sepulchre, may also be considered one of our artist's masterpieces. the risen christ emerges to half his figure from the clouds which envelop him, while the holy women contemplate the empty sepulchre, and the angel seated in it points out the miracle which has happened. other scenes worthy of notice are the "presentation in the temple," "christ in hades," and the "buffeting of the saviour," and "the prayer in the garden." [illustration: adoration of the magi.] [illustration: the crucifixion.] in one of the last cells, the "crucifixion" is reproduced in a new manner, which represents christ having ascended the ladder and offering himself to death: his mother faints at his feet in the arms of mary magdalene. marchese asserts that this composition was inspired by a legend of st. mary magdalene in the language of the th century. "and i thought that messer gesù, ascended the cross by a ladder voluntarily, offering his hands and feet. a centurion who was afterwards saved saw the deed, and like a wise man he said within himself, oh, what a marvel is here! that this prophet appears to willingly place himself on the cross, neither murmuring nor resisting! and while he stood admiring, messer gesù had ascended sufficiently high, and turning on the ladder opened his kingly arms, and extended his hands to those who were waiting to nail them."[ ] [illustration: the virgin enthroned amidst saints.] lastly in the room which cosimo de' medici had prepared for his own use in the convent and where he often talked with the prior fra antonino, fra angelico painted an "adoration of the magi." as pope eugene iv. slept in this room when he came to florence in to assist at the consecration of the church, it is probable that this adoration allusive to the epiphany, at which time the consecration took place, was painted at that epoch. the fresco, rich in figures and beauty, is executed with real mastery. the personages of the royal cortège vary in type and character, in expression and sentiment, showing the great pains our artist had taken in the painting of this important work, which now, unhappily restored and injured, only allows us to guess at the wonderful beauty with which it was once filled. we see his own hand more completely in the fresco in the corridor representing the virgin enthroned, with the child seated on her knee and several saints at the sides. on the right are st. paul, st. thomas aquinas, st. laurence, and st. peter martyr; on the left st. mark, st. cosmo and st. damian, and st. dominic, holding an open book where it is written: _caritatem habete; humilitatem servate; paupertatem voluntariam possidete. maledictionem dei et meam imprecor possessiones inducenti in meo ordine_. this painting, one of the most perfect in the convent, is one of angelico's best, and shows what a high degree of ability he had reached. the gentle head of the virgin bends down to look at her son with the golden curls, whose face with sparkling eyes breathes an infantile grace. the execution is accurate, the figures well designed, full of character, nobility and life; the delicacy of tone, just balance of composition and freshness of colouring, are mingled with the most profound sentiment and intimate knowledge of truth. rio thinks this fresco was done while fra angelico was in tuscany after ; his adieu, as it were, to his brethren; a last legacy to that devout household with whom he had shared joys and sorrows, and from which he was about to be separated. there is nothing to refute this; but it appears to us that he who had painted the great crucifixion of the chapter-house might well have done at the same time this fresco. it is a compendium of all his technical qualities and feeling, and demonstrates how little by little he succeeded, while still preserving his own spirit, in reaching the real in art, and giving it life in a manner all his own. but in comparing the pictures of the chapel of pope nicholas v. in rome, with this fresco, we cannot avoid noticing in those a greater freedom of composition and grouping of the figures, a greater majesty of design, a truth and depth of observation, not recognisable in any of his earlier works, nor even in the large crucifixion, which is justly considered one of the pious monk's best works. [illustration] in the gallery of ancient and modern art. [illustration: ancient and modern gallery--florence the descent from the cross.] [illustration] the enthusiasm aroused by fra angelico's pictures, caused a vivid desire amongst the various religious orders of the city, to possess some work of his; dominicans, vallombrosians, chartreuse monks, and the camaldolese of santa maria degli angeli, vied with each other, and all in turn obtained some of his admirable creations. among the panels painted by fra giovanni for the florentine churches and convents, the one which excels all for intensity of sentiment and sincerity of expression is the "deposition from the cross," once in the sacristy of santa trinità, and now in the ancient and modern gallery, a panel "in which," writes vasari, "he put so much care that we may class it among the best things he ever did." the disciples with loving reverence let down from the cross, which occupies the centre of the composition, the body of the saviour. his face, drooping on the left shoulder, breathes a sorrowful calm, and divine serenity which death itself could not destroy. the nude is intelligently rendered, in nobility of form, softness of line, and transparency and morbidity of colouring. on the left stands a group of women; st. mary magdalene kisses the feet of christ; the virgin contemplates him in a trance of sadness; on the right the disciples discuss the melancholy drama among themselves, while below, a kneeling saint holds his right hand to his breast and extends the left in a sorrowful wonder. in the background is a hilly landscape with the holy city on the left, and mount calvary which the artist "with poetic and devout conceit," writes marchese, "has drawn adorned with grass and flowers, as though to denote that at the touch of the feet and precious blood of jesus christ, the bare heights were reclad in rich and verdant beauty. although marred by restoration--for the eye is offended by the inharmonious contrast of tints, the effect of unskilful retouching,--we may consider this painting as one of the most beautiful works which fra angelico has left us. grandeur and simplicity are marvellously blended with freshness of colour, and correctness of design with most intense expression and pure sentiment." the landscape in the background shows the usual defects of perspective, but the mountains shade off delicately against the distant blue of the sky, the plain is illuminated with infinite flowerets, and a rich verdure clothes the summit of the sacred hill. in the pilasters of the frame are small figures of saints, some of the best and finest that fra angelico ever painted, and in the gables above the three arches lorenzo monaco has represented the "noli me tangere," the "resurrection," and the "maries at the sepulchre." here the question naturally arises: why should lorenzo monaco have limited his work solely to the three little scenes in the gables of the frame, while fra angelico has given us the beautiful little figures of the pilasters which show all his peculiar grace and refinement? why did an artist capable of producing those admirable saints, leave to fra lorenzo monaco the office (all the worse if he had been, as some say, his master) of finishing the work with only those three insignificant little scenes? and can we suppose that fra lorenzo monaco, already at the apex of his fame, should accept, and, still more strange, be content with a secondary part in fra giovanni's work? the answer is more simple than it at first appears. there is no doubt that the scenes in the gothic gables are the work of the camaldolese monk, and as we cannot logically infer that they were specially painted by him for fra angelico's picture, we must suppose, and indeed firmly believe them to have been added at a later time. in fact, the form of the foliated gothic decoration lacks character and does not harmonize with the pilasters which clearly show, too, a subsequent adaptation of the frame. the finials of the pilasters do not match the style of the gables, in fact it is clear that the gothic ornamentation, taken from some painting by lorenzo monaco, was at a more recent date adapted to fra angelico's altar-piece. fra giovanni painted a panel picture of the "dead christ" for the "compagnia del tempio" in florence; this is now in the ancient and modern gallery, having been placed there in , after the suppression of that company. [illustration: the dead christ.] rio supposes that the enthusiasm aroused by the great deposition in santa trinità, tempted the company to covet the possession of a similar one.[ ] only two figures, however, are common to the two paintings: one is the st. simeon kneeling in the left corner who, in this second picture, is represented as a younger man than in the first; the other is a figure a little behind him, which is a reproduction of that one in the large deposition with a hood on his head, who is speaking to the disciple below him, as he entrust to him the body of the saviour;--a figure which milanesi believes to be a portrait of the architect michelozzo. if this be indeed fra angelico's friend the florentine architect, we may admit cartier's assertion that this panel is a sequel of the larger descent from the cross, and may have been painted at the same time.[ ] but these are things which we dare not affirm with any certainty, as we entertain doubts regarding the greater or less authenticity of writers on the subject of michelozzo's portrait. besides many figures of saints, the painter has introduced those of st. dominic and the beata villana, because the company of the temple had ancient rights over the relics of this good woman which are preserved in the dominican church of santa maria novella. the other figures, though expressing divers feelings of sorrow and lively sympathy, have nothing in common with the famous deposition either in character or technique and the picture does not reach the usual perfection. even the type of the christ differs remarkably in the two paintings, so much so that no comparison can be instituted, or resemblance found between them; moreover, the panel of the temple company is badly spoilt by restoration, and the colouring is so altered that it is almost black in some parts. "in the chapel of the ss. annunziata at florence which piero di cosimo de' medici caused to be built, fra angelico painted the doors of the presses where the silver plate is kept, with little figures executed with great diligence."[ ] they represent the life and death of christ in small scenes, which are now in the ancient and modern gallery. padre marchese writes: "i believe it was in fiesole that he painted many of those little panels, which may now be seen in the gallery of the florentine academy of design, and perhaps also the doors of the presses for the silver vessels in the chapel of the ss. annunziata at florence. in his first edition vasari had enumerated them among his early works, which may have seemed probable, as fra angelico's first steps in art were in illuminating and painting small stories."[ ] but as it was only in that piero de' medici, to show his devotion to the virgin of the annunciation, obtained from the monks the patronage of that altar with the intention of adorning it with a splendour worthy of the dignity of her to whom it was dedicated,[ ] we cannot suppose that fra angelico painted the door of its treasure presses before that time. rio also dates at the epoch of the monk's sojourn in tuscany towards , the great unfinished painting now in the academy of the belle arti, which has been regarded as one of fra angelico's first works. we know as a fact that in he was prior of the convent at fiesole, and may believe that he stayed some time in tuscany, before returning to rome to finish the chapel of pope nicholas v.[ ] but rio adds that "besides the date of the building of the chapel, the fact that the portrait of michelozzo represents him as older in this work than in the deposition," suggests for this cyclic composition an approximative date, very far from that assigned to it previously.[ ] we must not forget, however, that several doubts arise as to the identity of the person representing michelozzo. vasari recognises him in that old nicodemus with a hood, who lowers the christ from the cross in the deposition, while milanesi, asserting that nicodemus has a saint's aureole not a cowl, holds that the portrait of michelozzo is to be seen in the figure with a black hood who speaks with the disciple beneath him as he gives the body of the lord into his hands. certainly milanesi has good reason to doubt vasari's assertion, as nicodemus has no hood: moreover vasari himself in his second edition of the lives ( ) assigns as the architect's likeness that very figure with a cowl who is speaking to the disciple. therefore we must admit that the aretian historian was mistaken either in his indication of the figure, or in the reproduction of it as a headpiece to his life of michelozzo. in any case, a similar figure to that in the "deposition," and with the same head-gear, again appears a little older in the fresco of the convent of san marco representing the "adoration of the magi"; also in another picture of the "presentation in the temple"; and in the little square with a "flight into egypt", on one of the doors of ss. annunziata. [illustration: flight into egypt.] if michelozzo be really portrayed here, we must conclude that the deposition was painted long before , and the press doors about the same time, or a little later; but the student must take into account the curious fact that in the "deposition" the disciple who talks to the man with a cowl above him, has also a certain resemblance to the supposed michelozzo, and that nicodemus reappears as st. john baptist on the left of the large altar-piece painted for the church of san marco, as well as in the picture of the dead christ, and also as the kneeling king who kisses the feet of the babe in the fresco of the "adoration of the magi." therefore, without giving great importance to the question of the true portrait of michelozzo, we find that these heads, whether of nicodemus or the hooded disciple, are represented in various pictures by our artist, modified by age, so that from them we may establish the succession of the different works, i. e. first the "dead christ" of the company of the temple, next the picture at san marco ( ), then the "deposition," and lastly the fresco in san marco, and the little "annunciation." thus all these works would certainly date during fra angelico's stay in florence. but to return to the doors of the presses in the ss. annunziata, it is true, as rio writes, that instead of being a series of subjects for future frescoes or altar-pieces, the "stories" seem a hasty resumé, often too hasty, of works already painted in the convent of san marco or other places. some of them are noticeable for firmness of design and vigour of colouring, others instead are unworthy of the master and evidently show another hand. [illustration: christ betrayed by judas.] [illustration: the resurrection of lazarus.] to give this great work its due appreciation we must take it as a whole, as the profound genius of fra angelico had conceived it. wishing to give it the unity of a dramatic poem, he placed at the beginning and at the end, like a prologue and an epilogue, two symbolic figures, in the last of which the seven branched candlestick serves as a support to the old and new testaments.[ ] we may enumerate among the best scenes the "flight into egypt," the "slaughter of the innocents," the "betrayal of judas," the "dead christ," and the "resurrection of lazarus," all composed in giottesque style: but, when we think of the progress of fra angelico in art as shown in the frescoes in san marco, and his best panel paintings, we cannot avoid noticing a certain want of vigour in these presses. [illustration: the slaughter of the innocents.] [illustration: entombment of christ.] having become accustomed to the grander methods of fresco painting, in which his talent and ability found greater scope for expression,--even though not attaining to the ease and force of some of his contemporaries and followers,--fra angelico must have now found himself at the disadvantage, natural to one who, after moving free in wider space, is suddenly cramped into narrower confines. this explains why we find in some of these small panels, greater conventionality in the representation of scenes and action, and less ease and correctness of execution. we might add also, that many of them, where these defects are especially evident, may be ascribed to other hands, less clever than his own, those of his assistants who were called in to expedite the work and assist the artist. [illustration: coronation of the virgin.] rio believes that two of angelico's paintings, one of which was once in the dominican monastery of san vincenzo d' annalena, and the other in that of the frati dell'osservanza in mugello, but now both at the belle arti, were executed later than the frescoes in the vatican, to which they offer an extraordinary resemblance, not perceivable in the artist's earlier works.[ ] [illustration: the symbolic wheel.] we cannot, however, accept the assertion of the french critic. these two pictures, though utterly different in character and type, too forcibly recall his previous works. and as according to the same author the altar-piece of the monks [ ] of the mugello resembles the other in colouring, technique, the freer style of drapery, the type of the virgin and character of the figures, we might reasonably conclude that both paintings belong to the period of his residence at fiesole or florence, i. e. previous to his departure for rome in . [illustration: the madonna and child with saints. (annalena convent.)] [illustration: the madonna and child with angels and saints. (from the convent of the osservanza.)] we are even less inclined to endorse the opinion of rio in regard to the date of the painting from the annalena convent. the internal organization of the convent was only regulated by a bull of pope nicholas v. after , so there is probably no connection between the internal establishment of the convent and the commission for the picture. the convent (it is well to remember) was founded in , but the religious intentions of anna elena malatesta met with no slight resistance, and it was not till , that pope calixtus iii. conceded her permission to "build in her house a public oratory in which mass should be celebrated and the divine offices performed." we cannot then admit that the picture was specially painted for the convent named[ ] after that saintly lady. when one reflects that anna elena malatesta, foundress of the monastery, was educated in the house of attilio di vieri de' medici, and was by cosimo pater patriæ married to baldaccio of anghiari, it is not unlikely that the picture had been a commission from cosimo, and that when annalena was left a widow, and took the vows in , it was offered by him to the convent, to which the sad widow had consecrated all her care. it is the more probable, that it was painted for the medici, because the two patron saints of their house are represented in it. ss. cosmo and damian only appear in the pictures painted by fra angelico in florence, probably in recognition of the benefits bestowed by cosimo on the monks of san marco; moreover, we do not think the work could have been done at fiesole after the first visit to rome in , because the figures, weak in chiaroscuro, are still treated as if they were enlarged miniatures, and do not show the character of his later works. on the other hand the picture of the osservanza in mugello displays the whole power of the artist, and may be compared, as rio says, to the panel at san marco both in the character of the figures and the larger style of treatment. vasari cites other works which have unfortunately been dispersed or destroyed, among which were an altar-piece in the certosa at florence, representing the "virgin and child," with some angels below, and at the sides st. laurence, st. zenobi, and st. benedict; the "coronation of the madonna," once in the lunette of the acciajoli chapel: another with the "virgin and two saints," painted "con azzurri oltramarini bellissimi," (with beautiful ultramarine blues): and the pictures in the dividing wall of santa maria novella opposite the choir. the "annunciation," which according to vasari was in the church of san francesco at san miniato, and which milanesi believes to be in the museum of madrid, is instead now in the national gallery at london. it is a diptych, in one panel the archangel gabriel, with golden wings outspread, crossing his hands on his breast bows before the virgin, who in the other panel leans forward to listen to his blessed word. the scene is in a cloister, from the arches of which a field of flowers is seen, and in the distant horizon the outlines of the apennine mountains. a great lily blossoms beside the virgin, the two capitals of the columns of the cloister have the albizzi arms carved on them. "this good father painted so many pictures for the houses of the citizens of florence, that one wonders how one man could so perfectly execute even in many years all that he has done." so writes vasari, and indeed a complete list of his paintings still existing in italy and elsewhere would be too long; those we have illustrated will, however, suffice to give a good idea of his artistic genius, and the sentiment with which this gentle artist could represent the marvellous visions of a soul in love with heaven! [illustration: the last supper.] iv. fra angelico at rome and orvieto. [ - .] [illustration: christ in judgment. (orvieto, cathedral.)] these many and various labours--writes vasari--"having rendered the name of fra giovanni illustrious throughout all italy, he was invited to rome by pope nicholas v., who caused him to adorn the chapel of the palace, where the pontiff is accustomed to hear mass, with a "deposition from the cross," and with certain events from the life of san lorenzo, which are admirable."[ ] but vasari errs in giving to nicholas v. the merit of having called fra angelico to rome; he is also mistaken in affirming that the artist was offered the archbishopric of florence, and on his modest refusal sant' antonino was proposed to the pope: "and because fra giovanni appearing to the pope to be, as he really was, a person of most holy life, gentle and modest, the archbishopric of florence having then become vacant, he judged him worthy of that preferment."[ ] it was instead pope eugene iv., who wishing to embellish the vatican with pictures, invited fra angelico to rome in , having admired his sanctity of life, and talent in art when in florence. that pope died the following year, but in his successor nicholas v., fra angelico found another sincere admirer and friend, and he remained in rome to finish the works he had begun. he painted two chapels in the vatican, the one of the sacrament for eugene iv., the other for pope nicholas v., whose name it still bears. the former was pulled down by pope paul iii. to improve the staircase. "in this work," says vasari, "which was an excellent one, fra giovanni had in his own admirable manner painted stories in fresco from the life of christ, and had introduced many portraits of eminent persons then living. these portraits would most probably have been lost to us, had not paulo jovius caused the following among them to be preserved for his museum: pope nicholas v., the emperor frederick, who had at that time arrived in italy; fra antonino, who afterwards became archbishop of florence; biondo da forlì, and ferdinand of arragon."[ ] it is probable that after having finished the chapel of the sacrament, and before the new commission was given by nicholas v., fra angelico--by means of don francesco di barone of perugia, a benedictine monk and celebrated master of glass painting--entered into negotiation with the operai and consuls of the duomo at orvieto, to paint the chapel of the madonna di san brizio. but before he accepted the commission he gave them to understand that he could only go to orvieto in the months of june, july and august, when he did not wish to remain in rome. "he demanded gold ducats a year, together with all expenses of board and lodging, colours and scaffolding; besides seven ducats a month for his assistant, and two for his boy. the contract was signed on these conditions by messer enrico monaldeschi, the principal citizen--almost the tyrant--of orvieto, who always took a personal part in the most important events of the city. fra angelico took with him benozzo di lese, giovanni di antonio da firenze, and iacomo di poli, with whose assistance he commenced the painting in the large lunettes on june th . pietro di niccola of orvieto was also employed. they painted together for three months and a half, but fra angelico did not return the following year. "as the summer of drew near, the overseers, who were left with only pietro baroni, a proved artist, endeavoured to persuade fra angelico to go back again, and join baroni, saying that if he failed them, they would prefer to postpone the work, as they looked more to the beauty than the expense, as they always had been accustomed to do. when every hope of obtaining fra angelico was lost, they gave benozzo gozzoli a trial to continue fra giovanni's frescoes,"[ ] but the effect was not happy. [illustration: the prophets. (orvieto, cathedral.)] fra angelico painted in the roof of the chapel a "christ in judgment," surrounded by a "glory" of angels. sixteen saints and prophets are seated on clouds with the motto: _prophetarum laudabilis numerus_. the saviour in a circle of light raises his right hand on high, while the left supports a globe on his knees. on both sides are groups of angels in varied attitudes of adoration. the prophets stand out in pyramidal groups on a background of gold, and are either reading or meditating with religious calm. rosini judges the christ to be the work of benozzo gozzoli, because it seems inferior to the prophets, which show a grander treatment and better execution. "i think," he writes, "that the prophets alone belong to fra angelico; the christ in glory, and the remainder to benozzo and the others. i am led to this not only by their different style, but the heads of the prophets, although they are disposed one above the other, as the space demands, show the more dignified style, and perfect execution of the florentine monk. that perfection ought to be seen also in the christ, which seems to me to be a little inferior to them."[ ] but even while admitting that the features of the saviour have in some parts the characteristics of benozzo's style, we must not forget that he derived from his master both his good and bad points, and from the latter especially originated those peculiar defects, which are greatly emphasized in benozzo's works. hence it is natural that something of the scholar's manner should appear in that face, but it is no proof that he has worked at it. on the contrary it is enough to prove the impossibility of ascribing this figure to him, to glance at the head of christ in benozzo's fresco in the church of st. francis at montefalco, representing the meeting of st. francis and st. dominic. high up on the left the saviour raises his right hand and the virgin kneels at his feet. now all the figures are absolutely wanting in dignity and character, especially the downcast head of christ, with its projecting forehead and receding chin, which is absolutely vulgar. here benozzo has not even distantly remembered any of his master's noble representations of the saviour. therefore not only had he no part in that figure at orvieto, but neither could he have done the prophets, for they are far superior to the christ. finally, it is not probable that fra angelico, with the feeling which inspired his work, should entrust to an assistant the execution of such an important figure as the christ. even though the figure of the christ is not to be compared to the finest of the prophets, yet we find in the countenance the same characteristics as the other heads display. true, it looks worse than it really is, for a crack in the roof has damaged the mouth and beard, and the fresco has besides suffered in the restorer's hands. it is a known fact, that a few months after fra angelico left, it was necessary to repair the roof of the chapel in which he had worked, on account of the rain that percolated there, to the great detriment of the paintings. however this may be, it is certain that the heads of the prophets have sweetness of expression and nobility of character, and all the figures are remarkable for their fine form, dignified attitudes, free and simple draperies, combined with bright and vivid colouring. these qualities are not so visible in the compartment of our lord and the adoring angels, which may with more certainty be attributed to benozzo. fra angelico returned to rome on the th of september in that year ( ) and never went back to orvieto, but his reasons for breaking his contract and leaving a work incomplete are not explained. perhaps he perceived the difficulties of the composition and was arrested by the terrifying dread--which his character and feeling would have magnified--of painting a last judgment in such grand proportions. or he may have had an intuition, that his work would never be worthy of that famous building, especially as he was called on to depict the punishments of hell and the various feelings of sorrow, passion and despair in the damned souls, sentiments so foreign to his own nature. or possibly the desire to finish the paintings entrusted to him in rome by the new pontiff nicholas v., induced him to break his contract. in the absence of more precise records it is difficult to establish the truth. certain it is that fra angelico left orvieto for rome and that he painted there a "studio" or chapel for nicholas v., for which the payment is entered in a register dated , but "after this year," writes müntz, "we find no more traces of the illustrious dominican, in the books of the secret treasury."[ ] on january th fra angelico is again at fiesole as prior of his convent, and in the same year the rulers of the commune of prato employed the good offices of archbishop antonino to induce fra angelico to paint the principal chapel of their church; but he refused, and the commission was given to filippo lippi. the fact that the name of the dominican artist has not been found in the registers of the vatican treasury after , need not necessarily be taken as a proof that he was not working in the chapel of nicholas v. at a later date. indeed, as he went no more to orvieto, and would not undertake to paint the choir of the prato cathedral, it seems probable that he should have gone back to rome to finish his work there. the chapel which preserves these precious frescoes by angelico may be considered one of the most famous monuments of italian art. on three of the walls, he has represented in two lines of frescoes the vocation, the apostleship, and the martyrdom of st. stephen and st. laurence. on the first side st. stephen receives the communion from st. peter, and distributes alms to the poor: on the second are his preaching and justification before the high priest: in the third his lapidation. below on the first wall is the consecration of st. laurence, and his almsgiving to the poor and maimed; second, his imprisonment and the conversion of the jailer; and lastly his martyrdom. the design is free and firm, yet keeping true to the character of the artist. the execution is more accurate and equal; although less realistic than that of masaccio, yet he succeeds in giving his figures a greater grace and softer expression, indeed, the sentiment with which he imbues his figures, was never reached by any other artist, and that sentiment is here more admirably expressed than in any other of his works. [illustration: chapel of pope nicholas v. vatican--rome. st. lawrence ordained deacon by pope sixtus ii.] [illustration: the preaching and justification of st. stephen. (vatican, rome.)] whether st. stephen be kneeling in wrapt devotion to take the chalice, or with the love of divine charity giving money to the woman, while the little child gives him its hand; whether touching his thumb he seems to explain some religious question, while some women seated there hang on his words, exchange their impressions, or ecstatically clasp their hands in sign of admiration or faith; whether he speak before the great council, or is conducted at last torture, supporting it with faith and resignation;--his noble figure always inspires a feeling of profound piety, of serene calm and personal devotion. although the representation of buildings is still too fantastic, the perspective is not neglected as in some other works. in the "ordination of st. stephen," the design of the interior of the church is in good architectural style, but the canopy above the altar is so low in proportion to the figure of st. peter, that if he were to rise to his full height he could not stand at the altar; in another the open space in which st. stephen is preaching has a fortress on the right, and a palace of very doubtful character in the background. the details of ornamentation, however, are very carefully designed, the motives of the decoration being refined and elegant. the pilasters with their pretty candelabra and capitals rich with sculpture, combine so harmoniously with the purer architectural forms, as to produce a most pleasing effect and show the result of his studies among the numberless remains of ancient rome. [illustration: chapel of pope nicholas v.--vatican--rome. pope sixtus ii consigns the treasures of the church to st. laurence.] the st. laurence series is not less beautiful. it is marvellous that fra angelico could express motives so analogous to the former set of frescoes without repeating himself. sixtus ii., drawn with the lineaments of nicholas v., consecrates to the diaconal office st. laurence, who reverently kneeling extends both hands to receive the sacramental cup. around them are some fine figures of ecclesiastics, who, robed in magnificent vestments, assist at the ceremony, together with deacons and acolytes, who hold the book and censer. there is, it is true, a great sameness in the heads, which suggests that most of them were studied from the same model. in another fresco, the pope consigns the treasures of the church to the saint, while a monk turns brusquely round at the noise made at the door by two soldiers who come to conduct st. laurence to martyrdom. but where fra angelico has best succeeded in fully rendering his sentiment, is in the painting which represents the distribution of alms. angelico evidently delights in the thought of the inner satisfaction of the saint, and the happiness of the recipients; and the sincere and serene joy transfused in the countenances of the different figures is expressed with unusual ability and extraordinary truth to nature. he has enlivened the severity of the scene by the episode of two children, who are laughingly struggling over a piece of money received. infantile grace and content breathe in their features, though slightly disturbed by the doubt which of them will remain possessor of the precious gift. the two last frescoes are very attractive and equally admirable. one represents the condemnation of st. laurence, the other his martyrdom. the study of classic art is still more manifest in these than in the others, for not only the architecture, but even the niches which contain statues are imitated from the antique. in the "condemnation" the emperor decius wears a cuirass with a toga over it fastened on the right shoulder, as in the ancient imperial busts. his sceptre is terminated by a little idol, and above his throne is the roman eagle with outspread wings, in a garland of bay leaves: in the other fresco the statues appear to be reproductions of ancient roman monuments. but unfortunately this last picture has been so injured and restored that we cannot fully appreciate its value. [illustration: chapel of pope nicholas v.--vatican--rome. st. laurence give the church money to the poor.] [illustration: st. bonaventure.] the execution of these pictures is really remarkable. fra angelico, as we have said, without losing his fundamental qualities, has acquired and here reveals new qualities; the four evangelists among the clouds on a background of blue, dotted with golden stars, are noble and full of character; the figures of the saints on the simulated pilasters, and at the corners of each side of the chapel, might be classed among fra angelico's best. who does not remember above the rest the fine and noble figure of st. bonaventure, with his flowing white beard, thoughtful eyes, and an aspect of goodness and seriousness combined that is quite enchanting? what other figure, however beautiful, can show such just proportions, solid form, and majestic design, such a strong character and expression as this? the saint's thoughtful gaze is turned to the left, his mouth lightly indicating a smile, or rather the sweet expression of innate goodness, the marvellously drawn hands support an open book which rests on his side. here fra angelico reveals his skill in all its fulness; and when we reflect on his advanced age, we can only remain in admiring surprise before the freshness of his creative power, and the force of his execution. we have documental evidence that benozzo gozzoli assisted his master in these frescoes, and doubtless we may attribute to him the fine decorations, where roses bud amidst flowers and foliage of every kind, and garlands are resting on pretty little children's heads, or are festooned on medallions bearing the tiara, and crossed keys of nicholas v.; but we cannot give him the merit of having beautified the scenes of the "preaching of st. stephen," or "st. laurence distributing alms."[ ] [illustration: chapel of pope nicholas v. vatican--rome. st. laurence condemned to martyrdom.] we admit the probability that benozzo may have executed some of the figures, but there is a difference between this and supposing that he had any conspicuous part in the compositions, especially in the st. laurence series, which we cannot believe. if the whole scene were indeed by benozzo, would not the difference of hand between master and scholar be more strikingly evident? and the more so, as the scholar had not yet reached mastery of technique, and his early frescoes show a certain crudeness, want of harmony and incorrectness of design, which far remove them from the proved technical ability of his master. nor can we believe that he timidly followed the lines traced on the walls by fra angelico, for even in that case something peculiar to himself must have been clearly perceptible in them. now this, to speak frankly, is not evident. none of the women assisting at the preaching of st. stephen recall the characteristic type of those which benozzo painted in the frescoes at montefalco. the saint's listeners have regular features, and remind one of the various female figures in the san marco frescoes ("resurrection of christ" and "prayer on the mount of olives"). benozzo's handling is less solid, his outlines are hard and sharp, colouring crude and chiaroscuro weak; in the stories of st. laurence we find instead, and in a very high degree, the solidity and correctness which we have admired in fra angelico's florentine paintings. it suffices to recall the "adoration of the magi," in san marco, one of his last works before leaving for rome, and the beautiful prophets at orvieto; in both these pictures we meet with the same types and figures as in the roman frescoes, especially in those representing "st. peter ordaining st. stephen," "st. laurence distributing alms," and "st. stephen before the high priest." without then following up doubtful suppositions, it does not seem admissible that fra angelico, old as he was, should have ceded to his pupil either the direction, or the greater part of works of such importance, which it was greatly to his interest to finish with the utmost care and perfection. cavalcaselle remarks that the severity of the orvietans who would not let benozzo finish the work which fra angelico had left incomplete, is inexplicable; but we must remember that though benozzo imitated his master's style, the inferiority of his talent was always apparent in the common types, false anatomy, and mistaken proportions of his figures. "he does not equal the master who guided him in his first years, but he follows his style as much as he can, with less talent."[ ] it was not therefore benozzo's work which enlarged the master's style, but in the vatican frescoes the master clearly [ ] shows the effort he has himself made to render the action of his figures more grand, his painting more solid, figures more characteristic and the episodes with which his admirable compositions are enriched more fundamentally truthful. these paintings prove that he had reached his greatest artistic development; although always retaining his innate character he concedes to the new requirements of art as much of his temperament and sentiment, as he can conscientiously yield. thus his works display a continuous improvement, each new stage in the long road of his artistic career, represents a fresh conquest, a new and remarkable progress. his pupils and collaborators limited themselves to aiding him, and rendering his work lighter in parts of secondary importance, but he needed no other help to be, and always remain, worthy of the high company in which he finds himself in the vatican. in the sixtine chapel, near the quiet creations of the artists of the renaissance, the power and awful force of michelangelo stand out; in the "stanze" raphael has left an everlasting wealth of artistic treasures; and in the chapel of nicholas v. fra angelico with ingenuous expression and the purest and most sincere religious feeling, painted his master-piece. but notwithstanding the great difference between the former giants of art, and our saintly artist, he is quite worthy of their glorious company. the sweet gentleness of his character was all that hindered him from a more exact and deep study of reality, but it was precisely by means of this character that he succeeded, as no one else could do, in expressing the elevated ideas of his serene and calm soul, profound inspiration and naïve freshness of faith. in after a life entirely dedicated to art, fra giovanni, at the age of years, died in rome, having well earned the grateful veneration of posterity. the austere virtues of his soul gained him the title of _beato_ (blessed) and for the lovely lines traced by his brush, he was called _angelico_. a marble monument was erected over his tomb in the church of the minerva, with his effigy and the following inscription, said to have been dictated by pope nicholas v. himself: hic jacet ven. pictor fr. jo. de flor. ord. p. m c c c c l v non mihi sit laudi, quod eram velut alter apelles, sed quod lucra tuis omnia, christe, dabam; altera nam terris opera extant, altera coelo; urbs me joannem flos tulit etruriæ. "give me not praise for being almost a second apelles, but because i gave to thy poor, o christ, all my earnings. thus part of my work remains on earth and part in heaven. my home was in that city, which is the flower of etruria." [illustration] [footnotes] [ ] vasari, sansoni's edition, ii, p. . [ ] buckhardt und boue, _cicerone_. [ ] _storia della pittura_, ii, p. . [ ] guido was fra angelico's baptismal name in the world. [ ] marchese, _memorie dei più insigni pittori, scultori e architetti domenicani_, i, p. . bologna, romagnoli . [ ] cavalcaselle, _storia della pittura_, ii, p. . [ ] vasari, _vita di masaccio_, ii, p. . [ ] museo civico. sala , n. . [ ] cartier, _vie de fra angelico_. paris, , p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. , note i. the translations from vasari are from bohn's edition. [ ] ibid., ii, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] vasari, vol. ii, p. . [ ] translation: i raise my eyes, sweet mary i behold, with book in hand; an angel form is near. it is the shining angel gabriel who kneels before her in humility, and saith: "fear not, pure virgin, i from heaven a messenger from god omnipotent come down to bring glad tidings unto thee, for he hath chosen thee for his blest spouse." he saith again: "in heaven it is decreed thou shalt be mother of the son of god, therefore the father me, his angel, sends to swift fulfil his sacred will and law. and down from him the highest lord to bring this benediction unto which thou'rt called." the angel's heaven-sent words were so inflamed with sacred love's own virtue did they burn they truly seemed to fall from god above. with holy joy her beating heart was full: "behold," she said, "the handmaid of the lord, be it to me according to his word." but as she sat within her archèd cell she wondered greatly how this thing should be: "for i know not, nor speak with any man," to gabriel she timidly responds. then quoth he: "mary hail! thou favoured art, and full of grace, the lord is with thee now." and then came down the spirit of the lord, a ray of golden light shone round about, it pierced her breast, that fruitful heaven-sent ray, and from her womb, whose virgin purity was still inviolate, was born the christ while she a mother, was pure virgin still. oh! lovers true, come hither unto her: madonna she of grace and beauty fair, the earth and air but live for her sweet sake, the queen of heaven, and pillar of the world: he who would see the lovely damosel one this annunciation he should gaze. from an anonymous "laud" reprinted by galletti, n. cclxviii, p. . [ ] op. cit., i, p. . [ ] _vie de fra angelico_, p. . [ ] year , p. . [ ] vol. ii, p. . [ ] vol. i, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. , note . [ ] _pictures in the national gallery_, with descriptive text written by c. l. eastlake. no. i, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] this valuable painting was ceded by the monks of the "scalzi" to the museum of madrid in at the suggestion of señor don federigo de madrazo.--_catalogue of the museum of prado_, don pedro de madrazo , p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. and . [ ] müntz, _histoire de l'art pendant la renaissance--les primitifs_--p. and . [ ] op. cit., i, p. . [ ] _la sculpture florentine_, alinari, , p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] _par._, canto xxxi (carey's translation). [ ] _par._, canto xxx (carey's translation). [ ] the _caròla_ was a kind of sacred dance, in which the dancers holding hands move in a circle, singing as they go. it was supposed to be the dance of paradise.--(_translator's note_.) [ ] translation: in paradise that garden lies where love divine eternal shines, and holy saints _carolas_ weave, their souls inflamed with sacred love. the saints in that bright joyous ring, with angels fair of all degrees, before the bridegroom graceful move and weave the dance of sacred love. those heavenly courts are full of grace, with love immeasurable filled, all in the dance angelic move inspired by their sweet saviour's love. their robes of linen pure are made, white, roseate, and of mingled hues; fair garlands on their heads they wear, fit crowns to crown them priests of love. no head is there ungarlanded, and youthful beams each joyous face; in that bright court refreshed they move where everything o'erflows with love. the garlands made of blossoms fair, shine brighter than the purest gold, the pearly daisies glisten there emblazoning the heavenly love. [ ] venturi, _le gallerie italiane_. _la galleria nazionale di roma_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] see _gazette de beaux arts_, . w. bode, _la renaissance au musée de berlin_; iv. _les peintres florentins du xvme siècle_, p. . [ ] cavalcaselle, _storia della pittura_, ii, p. , note . venturi thinks that the picture approaches more to the art of gentile da fabriano. see vasari, _gentile da fabriano e pisanello_. firenze, sansoni, , p. x. [ ] vasari, ii, _vita di michelozzo_, p. . [ ] richa, _le chiese fiorentine_, vii, p. . [ ] vol. ii, p. . in october the monks demanded a subsidy to rebuild the dormitory which had been destroyed by fire. gaye, i, p. . [ ] vol. ii, p. . some chroniclers attribute the design of the convent to brunelleschi, and the direction and execution of the work to michelozzi. the building was probably completed in . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] vol. ii, p. . [ ] _katalog der gemälde-sammlung der kgl. älteren pinakothek in münchen._ mit einer historischen einleitung von dr. franz von reber. [ ] vol. ii, p. . [ ] see vasari, ii, p. , and marchese, op. cit., i, p. and following. [ ] marchese, _san marco illustrato_, p. . [ ] rio, op. cit., ii. p. . [ ] cartier, _vie de fra angelico_, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] marchese, op. cit., i, p. . [ ] _il santuario della ss. annunziata di firenze_, guida storica illustrativa, compilata da un religioso dei servi di maria. firenze, ricci, , p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. , note . [ ] rio, _de l'art chrétien_, p. . "michelozzo paraît avoir, dans ce tableau, de quarante-cinq à cinquante ans. or, on suppose qu'il était né vers , ce qui placerait l'exécution de ce tableau très-peu de temps avant le départ de l'artiste pour rome, en ," p. , note i. [ ] rio, op. cit., ii, p. et seq. [ ] rio, op. cit, ii, p. . [ ] richa, _le chiese fiorentine_, x, pp. - . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] luigi fumi, _il duomo d' orvieto e i suoi restauri_. roma, tipografia cooperativa, p. . [ ] _storia della pittura italiana_, iii, p. . [ ] müntz, _les arts à la cour des papes_. première partie, p. . [ ] pératé, _les papes et les arts_. paris, didot, , p. . müntz, _histoire de l'art pendant la renaissance_, i, p. , and m. faucon, _l'oeuvre de fra angelico à rome in the newspaper l'art_, , xxxv, pp. - and - . [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, _a new history of painting in italy_. london, murray, , ii, p. . index to the illustrations. the annunciation (convent of san marco, florence) frontispiece angels of the "last judgment" page and history of st. dominic's life the resurrection of cardinal de' ceccani's nephew death of st. dominic the annunciation (church of gesù, cortona) the marriage of the virgin (cortona) the marriage of the virgin (uffizi gallery, florence) the visitation adoration of the magi adoration of the magi (uffizi gallery, florence) the death of the virgin (cortona) the death of the virgin (uffizi gallery, florence) virgin and child with saints (church of san domenico, cortona) madonna and child (pinacoteca, perugia) birth, preaching and miracles of st. nicholas (vatican, rome) the death of st. nicholas (pinacoteca, perugia) virgin of the annunciation (pinacoteca, perugia) view of the convent of san domenico near fiesole coronation of the virgin (san marco, florence) madonna della stella (of the star) (san marco, florence) the annunciation and the adoration of the magi (san marco, florence) predella (national gallery, london) the coronation of the virgin (museum of the louvre, paris) to face page the coronation of the virgin (uffizi gallery, florence) to face page the last judgment (ancient and modern gallery, florence) to face page the dance of the blessed (details from the last judgment) to face page the last judgment (rome, national gallery) the last judgment (berlin museum) the virgin of the linen weavers' guild (uffizi gallery, florence) angels with musical instruments from the tabernacle of the linen weavers' guild and st. mark st. john baptist the cloister of san marco madonna and child with angels and saints (ancient and modern gallery, florence) christ on the cross st. peter martyr christ issuing from the sepulchre christ in pilgrim's dress the crucifixion (san marco, florence) to face page the annunciation "noli me tangere" the transfiguration the risen christ the institution of the holy sacrament the presentation in the temple coronation of the virgin the prayer in the garden adoration of the magi the crucifixion the virgin enthroned amidst saints st. dominic, from the fresco of "christ at the pretorium" the descent from the cross (ancient and modern gallery) to face page view of florence the dead christ flight into egypt christ betrayed by judas the resurrection of lazarus the slaughter of the innocents entombment of christ coronation of the virgin the symbolic wheel the madonna and child with saints (annalena convent) the madonna and child with angels and saints (from the convent of the osservanza) the last supper christ in judgment (orvieto, cathedral) the prophets (orvieto, cathedral) the preaching and justification of st. stephen (vatican, rome) st. laurence ordained deacon (vatican, rome) to face page sixtus ii. consigns the church treasures to st. laurence (vatican, rome) to face page the distribution of alms (vatican, rome) to face page st. bonaventure (vatican, rome) judgment of st. laurence (vatican, rome) to face page [illustration] note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustration. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) transcriber's note: text enclosed by equal signs was in bold face in the original (example: =bold=). the venetian painters of the renaissance with an index to their works by bernhard berenson author of "florentine painters of the renaissance," "central italian painters of the renaissance." third edition [illustration: _shepherd with pipe._ _from the painting by giorgione, at hampton court._] g. p. putnam's sons new york and london the knickerbocker press copyright, by g. p. putnam's sons _entered at stationers' hall, london_ by g. p. putnam's sons [illustration] made in the united states of america note to the second edition. the indices of this second edition have been carefully revised, and a considerable number of additions have been made to the lists. the author begs once more to call attention to the fact that, with one or two exceptions, _he has mentioned no pictures that he has not seen_. the lists are the result, not of compilation, but of first-hand acquaintance with the works of art. note to third edition. in this edition changes have been made in the numbering of the venice and vienna galleries, as well as of some minor collections, to correspond to recent rehanging. many other alterations have been required by the breaking up of private collections. in several instances it has been impossible to trace pictures to their new homes, and of such the more important remain under the names of their former owners. to the lists of painters have been added beccaruzzi, caprioli, polidoro lanzani, rocco marconi, andrea schiavone, and girolamo da treviso, artists important enough to be missed, but of merit so unequal that only their more interesting works are here given. but the bulk of new additions, amounting to a third as much again as was comprised in the last edition, is of pictures in the various provincial galleries and private collections of great britain, france, and germany. the author takes great pleasure in acknowledging his indebtedness to mr. herbert f. cook for invaluable aid in visiting some of the almost numberless british collections. preface. the following essay owes its origin to the author's belief that venetian painting is the most complete expression in art of the italian renaissance. the renaissance is even more important typically than historically. historically it may be looked upon as an age of glory or of shame according to the different views entertained of european events during the past five centuries. but typically it stands for youth, and youth alone--for intellectual curiosity and energy grasping at the whole of life as material which it hopes to mould to any shape. every generation has an innate sympathy with some epoch of the past wherein it seems to find itself foreshadowed. science has of late revealed and given much, but its revelation and gifts are as nothing to the promise it holds out of constant acquisition and perpetual growth, of everlasting youth. we ourselves, because of our faith in science and the power of work, are instinctively in sympathy with the renaissance. our problems do not seem so easy to solve, our tasks are more difficult because our vision is wider, but the spirit which animates us was anticipated by the spirit of the renaissance, and more than anticipated. that spirit seems like the small rough model after which ours is being fashioned. italian painting interests many of us more than the painting of any other school not because of its essential superiority, but because it expressed the renaissance; and venetian painting is interesting above all because it was at venice alone that this expression attained perfection. elsewhere, particularly in florence, it died away before it found complete utterance. in order to keep the main idea clearly before the mind of the reader, to show him how the renaissance reveals itself in venetian painting, the introduction of anything not strictly relevant to the subject has been avoided. the salient points once perceived and connected with the more important painters, the reader will find no difficulty in seeing the proper place of any given work by a great master, or the relative importance of those second-and third-rate painters of whom no special mention has been made because they are comprised within what has been said about the greater artists. but happily art is too great and too vital a subject to be crowded into any single formula; and a formula that would, without distorting our entire view of italian art in the fifteenth century, do full justice to such a painter as carlo crivelli, does not exist. he takes rank with the most genuine artists of all times and countries, and does not weary even when "great masters" grow tedious. he expresses with the freedom and spirit of japanese design a piety as wild and tender as jacopo da todi's, a sweetness of emotion as sincere and dainty as of a virgin and child carved in ivory by a french craftsman of the fourteenth century. the mystic beauty of simone martini, the agonized compassion of the young bellini, are embodied by crivelli in forms which have the strength of line and the metallic lustre of old satsuma or lacquer, and which are no less tempting to the touch. crivelli must be treated by himself and as the product of stationary, if not reactionary, conditions. having lived most of his life far away from the main currents of culture, in a province where st. bernardino had been spending his last energies in the endeavour to call the world back to the ideals of an infantile civilisation, crivelli does not belong to a movement of constant progress, and therefore is not within the scope of this work. to make the essay useful as a handbook to venetian painting, lists have been appended of the works, in and out of italy, by the principal venetian masters. these lists do not pretend to absolute completeness. only such private collections have been mentioned as are well known and accessible to students, although in the case of very rare painters all of their known works are given, and even such as are of doubtful authenticity are alluded to. the author has seen and carefully considered all the pictures he mentions, except one or two at st. petersburg, which are, however, well known from the photographs of mm. braun & cie. the attributions are based on the results of the most recent research. even such painstaking critics of some years ago as messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle laboured under terrible disadvantages, because most of their work was done at a time when travelling was much slower than it has now become, and when photography was not sufficiently perfected to be of great service. rapid transit and isochromatic photography are beginning to enable the student to make of connoisseurship something like an exact science. to a certain extent, therefore, messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle have been superseded, and to a great degree supplemented by the various writings of morelli, richter, frizzoni, and others. the author takes pleasure in acknowledging his indebtedness to the first systematic writers on italian painting no less than to the perfectors of the new critical method, now adopted by nearly all serious students of italian art. to the founder of the new criticism, the late giovanni morelli, and to his able successor, dr. gustavo frizzoni, the author feels bound to ascribe many of his attributions, although a number are based on independent research, and for these he alone is responsible. special thanks are due to a dear friend, enrico costa, for placing his notes of a recent visit to madrid at the author's disposal. they have been used, with a confidence warranted by signor costa's unrivalled connoisseurship, to supplement the author's own notes, taken some years ago. having noted the dependence of scientific art study upon isochromatic photography, the author is happy to take this opportunity of expressing his gratitude to such able photographers as löwy of vienna, tamme of dresden, marcozzi of milan, alinari bros. of florence, and dominic anderson of rome, all of whom have devoted themselves with special zeal to the paintings of the venetian masters. the author is peculiarly indebted to signor anderson for having materially assisted his studies by photographing many pictures which at present have a scientific rather than a popular interest. the frontispiece is a reproduction of giorgione's "shepherd" at hampton court, a picture which perhaps better than any other expresses the renaissance at the most fascinating point of its course. the author is indebted to mr. sidney colvin for permission to make use of a photograph taken at his order. contents. the venetian painters of the renaissance i. value of venetian art ii. the church and painting iii. the renaissance iv. painting and the renaissance v. pageant pictures vi. painting and the confraternities vii. easel pictures and giorgione viii. the giorgionesque spirit ix. the portrait x. the young titian xi. apparent failure of the renaissance xii. lotto xiii. the late renaissance and titian xiv. humanity and the renaissance xv. sebastiano del piombo xvi. tintoretto xvii. value of minor episodes in art xviii. tintoretto's portraits xix. venetian art and the provinces xx. paul veronese xxi. bassano, genre, and landscape xxii. the venetians and velasquez xxiii. decline of venetian art xxiv. longhi xxv. canaletto and guardi xxvi. tiepolo xxvii. influence of venetian art index to the works of the principal venetian painters index of places the venetian painters of the renaissance =i. value of venetian art.=--among the italian schools of painting the venetian has, for the majority of art-loving people, the strongest and most enduring attraction. in the course of the present brief account of the life of that school we shall perhaps discover some of the causes of our peculiar delight and interest in the venetian painters, as we come to realise what tendencies of the human spirit their art embodied, and of what great consequence their example has been to the whole of european painting for the last three centuries. the venetians as a school were from the first endowed with exquisite tact in their use of colour. seldom cold and rarely too warm, their colouring never seems an afterthought, as in many of the florentine painters, nor is it always suggesting paint, as in some of the veronese masters. when the eye has grown accustomed to make allowance for the darkening caused by time, for the dirt that lies in layers on so many pictures, and for unsuccessful attempts at restoration, the better venetian paintings present such harmony of intention and execution as distinguishes the highest achievements of genuine poets. their mastery over colour is the first thing that attracts most people to the painters of venice. their colouring not only gives direct pleasure to the eye, but acts like music upon the moods, stimulating thought and memory in much the same way as a work by a great composer. =ii. the church and painting.=--the church from the first took account of the influence of colour as well as of music upon the emotions. from the earliest times it employed mosaic and painting to enforce its dogmas and relate its legends, not merely because this was the only means of reaching people who could neither read nor write, but also because it instructed them in a way which, far from leading to critical enquiry, was peculiarly capable of being used as an indirect stimulus to moods of devotion and contrition. next to the finest mosaics of the first centuries, the early works of giovanni bellini, the greatest venetian master of the fifteenth century, best fulfil this religious intention. painting had in his lifetime reached a point where the difficulties of technique no longer stood in the way of the expression of profound emotion. no one can look at bellini's pictures of the dead christ upheld by the virgin or angels without being put into a mood of deep contrition, nor at his earlier madonnas without a thrill of awe and reverence. and giovanni bellini does not stand alone. his contemporaries, gentile bellini, the vivarini, crivelli, and cima da conegliano all began by painting in the same spirit, and produced almost the same effect. the church, however, thus having educated people to understand painting as a language and to look to it for the expression of their sincerest feelings, could not hope to keep it always confined to the channel of religious emotion. people began to feel the need of painting as something that entered into their every-day lives almost as much as we nowadays feel the need of the newspaper; nor was this unnatural, considering that, until the invention of printing, painting was the only way, apart from direct speech, of conveying ideas to the masses. at about the time when bellini and his contemporaries were attaining maturity, the renaissance had ceased to be a movement carried on by scholars and poets alone. it had become sufficiently widespread to seek popular as well as literary utterance, and thus, toward the end of the fifteenth century, it naturally turned to painting, a vehicle of expression which the church, after a thousand years of use, had made familiar and beloved. to understand the renaissance at the time when its spirit began to find complete embodiment in painting, a brief survey of the movement of thought in italy during its earlier period is necessary, because only when that movement had reached a certain point did painting come to be its most natural medium of expression. =iii. the renaissance.=--the thousand years that elapsed between the triumph of christianity and the middle of the fourteenth century have been not inaptly compared to the first fifteen or sixteen years in the life of the individual. whether full of sorrows or joys, of storms or peace, these early years are chiefly characterised by tutelage and unconsciousness of personality. but toward the end of the fourteenth century something happened in europe that happens in the lives of all gifted individuals. there was an awakening to the sense of personality. although it was felt to a greater or less degree everywhere, italy felt the awakening earlier than the rest of europe, and felt it far more strongly. its first manifestation was a boundless and insatiable curiosity, urging people to find out all they could about the world and about man. they turned eagerly to the study of classic literature and ancient monuments, because these gave the key to what seemed an immense store-house of forgotten knowledge; they were in fact led to antiquity by the same impulse which, a little later, brought about the invention of the printing-press and the discovery of america. the first consequence of a return to classical literature was the worship of human greatness. roman literature, which the italians naturally mastered much earlier than greek, dealt chiefly with politics and war, seeming to give an altogether disproportionate place to the individual, because it treated only of such individuals as were concerned in great events. it is but a step from realising the greatness of an event to believing that the persons concerned in it were equally great, and this belief, fostered by the somewhat rhetorical literature of rome, met the new consciousness of personality more than half way, and led to that unlimited admiration for human genius and achievement which was so prominent a feature of the early renaissance. the two tendencies reacted upon each other. roman literature stimulated the admiration for genius, and this admiration in turn reinforced the interest in that period of the world's history when genius was supposed to be the rule rather than the exception; that is to say, it reinforced the interest in antiquity. the spirit of discovery, the never satisfied curiosity of this time, led to the study of ancient art as well as of ancient literature, and the love of antiquity led to the imitation of its buildings and statues as well as of its books and poems. until comparatively recent times scarcely any ancient paintings were found, although buildings and statues were everywhere to be seen, the moment anyone seriously thought of looking at them. the result was that while the architecture and sculpture of the renaissance were directly and strongly influenced by antiquity, painting felt its influence only in so far as the study of antiquity in the other arts had conduced to better draughtsmanship and purer taste. the spirit of discovery could thus show itself only indirectly in painting,--only in so far as it led painters to the gradual perfection of the technical means of their craft. unlimited admiration for genius and wonder that the personalities of antiquity should have survived with their great names in no way diminished, soon had two consequences. one was love of glory, and the other the patronage of those arts which were supposed to hand down a glorious name undiminished to posterity. the glory of old rome had come down through poets and historians, architects and sculptors, and the italians, feeling that the same means might be used to hand down the achievements of their own time to as distant a posterity, made a new religion of glory, with poets and artists for the priests. at first the new priesthood was confined almost entirely to writers, but in little more than a generation architects and sculptors began to have their part. the passion for building is in itself one of the most instinctive, and a man's name and armorial bearings, tastefully but prominently displayed upon a church or palace, were as likely, it was felt, to hand him down to posterity as the praise of poets or historians. it was the passion for glory, in reality, rather than any love of beauty, that gave the first impulse to the patronage of the arts in the renaissance. beauty was the concern of the artists, although no doubt their patrons were well aware that the more impressive a building was, the more beautiful a monument, the more likely was it to be admired, and the more likely were their names to reach posterity. their instincts did not mislead them, for where their real achievements would have tempted only the specialist or antiquarian into a study of their career, the buildings and monuments put up by them--by such princes as sigismondo malatesta, frederick of urbino, or alfonzo of naples,--have made the whole intelligent public believe that they were really as great as they wished posterity to believe them. as painting had done nothing whatever to transmit the glory of the great romans, the earlier generations of the renaissance expected nothing from it, and did not give it that patronage which the church, for its own purposes, continued to hold out to it. the renaissance began to make especial use of painting only when its own spirit had spread very widely, and when the love of knowledge, of power, and of glory had ceased to be the only recognised passions, and when, following the lead of the church, people began to turn to painting for the expression of deep emotion. the new religion, as i have called the love of glory, is in its very essence a thing of this world, founded as it is on human esteem. the boundless curiosity of the renaissance led back inevitably to an interest in life and to an acceptance of things for what they were,--for their intrinsic quality. the moment people stopped looking fixedly toward heaven their eyes fell upon the earth, and they began to see much on its surface that was pleasant. their own faces and figures must have struck them as surprisingly interesting, and, considering how little st. bernard and other mediæval saints and doctors had led them to expect, singularly beautiful. a new feeling arose that mere living was a big part of life, and with it came a new passion, the passion for beauty, for grace, and for comeliness. it has already been suggested that the renaissance was a period in the history of modern europe comparable to youth in the life of the individual. it had all youth's love of finery and of play. the more people were imbued with the new spirit, the more they loved pageants. the pageant was an outlet for many of the dominant passions of the time, for there a man could display all the finery he pleased, satisfy his love of antiquity by masquerading as cæsar or hannibal, his love of knowledge by finding out how the romans dressed and rode in triumph, his love of glory by the display of wealth and skill in the management of the ceremony, and, above all, his love of feeling himself alive. solemn writers have not disdained to describe to the minutest details many of the pageants which they witnessed. we have seen that the earlier elements of the renaissance, the passion for knowledge and glory, were not of the kind to give a new impulse to painting. nor was the passion for antiquity at all so direct an inspiration to that art as it was to architecture and sculpture. the love of glory had, it is true, led such as could not afford to put up monumental buildings, to decorate chapels with frescoes in which their portraits were timidly introduced. but it was only when the renaissance had attained to a full consciousness of its interest in life and enjoyment of the world that it naturally turned, and indeed was forced to turn, to painting; for it is obvious that painting is peculiarly fitted for rendering the appearances of things with a glow of light and richness of colour that correspond to and express warm human emotions. =iv. painting and the renaissance.=--when it once reached the point where its view of the world naturally sought expression in painting, as religious ideas had done before, the renaissance found in venice clearer utterance than elsewhere, and it is perhaps this fact which makes the most abiding interest of venetian painting. it is at this point that we shall take it up. the growing delight in life with the consequent love of health, beauty, and joy were felt more powerfully in venice than anywhere else in italy. the explanation of this may be found in the character of the venetian government which was such that it gave little room for the satisfaction of the passion for personal glory, and kept its citizens so busy in duties of state that they had small leisure for learning. some of the chief passions of the renaissance thus finding no outlet in venice, the other passions insisted all the more on being satisfied. venice, moreover, was the only state in italy which was enjoying, and for many generations had been enjoying, internal peace. this gave the venetians a love of comfort, of ease, and of splendour, a refinement of manner, and humaneness of feeling, which made them the first really modern people in europe. since there was little room for personal glory in venice, the perpetuators of glory, the humanists, found at first scant encouragement there, and the venetians were saved from that absorption in archæology and pure science which overwhelmed florence at an early date. this was not necessarily an advantage in itself, but it happened to suit venice, where the conditions of life had for some time been such as to build up a love of beautiful things. as it was, the feeling for beauty was not hindered in its natural development. archæology would have tried to submit it to the good taste of the past, a proceeding which rarely promotes good taste in the present. too much archæology and too much science might have ended in making venetian art academic, instead of letting it become what it did, the product of a natural ripening of interest in life and love of pleasure. in florence, it is true, painting had developed almost simultaneously with the other arts, and it may be due to this very cause that the florentine painters never quite realised what a different task from the architect's and sculptor's was theirs. at the time, therefore, when the renaissance was beginning to find its best expression in painting, the florentines were already too much attached to classical ideals of form and composition, in other words, too academic, to give embodiment to the throbbing feeling for life and pleasure. thus it came to pass that in the venetian pictures of the end of the fifteenth century we find neither the contrition nor the devotion of those earlier years when the church alone employed painting as the interpreter of emotion, nor the learning which characterised the florentines. the venetian masters of this time, although nominally continuing to paint the madonna and saints, were in reality painting handsome, healthy, sane people like themselves, people who wore their splendid robes with dignity, who found life worth the mere living and sought no metaphysical basis for it. in short, the venetian pictures of the last decade of the century seemed intended not for devotion, as they had been, nor for admiration, as they then were in florence, but for enjoyment. the church itself, as has been said, had educated its children to understand painting as a language. now that the passions men dared to avow were no longer connected with happiness in some future state only, but mainly with life in the present, painting was expected to give voice to these more human aspirations and to desert the outgrown ideals of the church. in florence, the painters seemed unable or unwilling to make their art really popular. nor was it so necessary there, for poliziano, pulci, and lorenzo dei medici supplied the need of self-expression by addressing the florentines in the language which their early enthusiasm for antiquity and their natural gifts had made them understand better than any other--the language of poetry. in venice alone painting remained what it had been all over italy in earlier times, the common tongue of the whole mass of the people. venetian artists thus had the strongest inducements to perfect the processes which painters must employ to make pictures look real to their own generation; and their generation had an altogether firmer hold on reality than any that had been known since the triumph of christianity. here again the comparison of the renaissance to youth must be borne in mind. the grasp that youth has on reality is not to be compared to that brought by age, and we must not expect to find in the renaissance a passion for an acquaintance with things as they are such as we ourselves have; but still its grasp of facts was far firmer than that of the middle ages. painting, in accommodating itself to the new ideas, found that it could not attain to satisfactory representation merely by form and colour, but that it required light and shadow and effects of space. indeed, venial faults of drawing are perhaps the least disturbing, while faults of perspective, of spacing, and of colour completely spoil a picture for people who have an every-day acquaintance with painting such as the venetians had. we find the venetian painters, therefore, more and more intent upon giving the space they paint its real depth, upon giving solid objects the full effect of the round, upon keeping the different parts of a figure within the same plane, and upon compelling things to hold their proper places one behind the other. as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century a few of the greater venetian painters had succeeded in making distant objects less and less distinct, as well as smaller and smaller, and had succeeded also in giving some appearance of reality to the atmosphere. these are a few of the special problems of painting, as distinct from sculpture for instance, and they are problems which, among the italians, only the venetians and the painters closely connected with them solved with any success. =v. pageant pictures.=--the painters of the end of the fifteenth century who met with the greatest success in solving these problems were giovanni and gentile bellini, cima da conegliano, and carpaccio, and we find each of them enjoyable to the degree that he was in touch with the life of his day. i have already spoken of pageants and of how characteristic they were of the renaissance, forming as they did a sort of safety-valve for its chief passions. venice, too, knew the love of glory, and the passion was perhaps only the more intense because it was all dedicated to the state. there was nothing the venetians would not do to add to its greatness, glory, and splendour. it was this which led them to make of the city itself that wondrous monument to the love and awe they felt for their republic, which still rouses more admiration and gives more pleasure than any other one achievement of the art-impulse in man. they were not content to make their city the most beautiful in the world; they performed ceremonies in its honour partaking of all the solemnity of religious rites. processions and pageants by land and by sea, free from that gross element of improvisation which characterised them elsewhere in italy, formed no less a part of the functions of the venetian state than the high mass in the catholic church. such a function, with doge and senators arrayed in gorgeous costumes no less prescribed than the raiments of ecclesiastics, in the midst of the fairy-like architecture of the piazza or canals, was the event most eagerly looked forward to, and the one that gave most satisfaction to the venetian's love of his state, and to his love of splendour, beauty, and gaiety. he would have had them every day if it were possible, and, to make up for their rarity, he loved to have representations of them. so most venetian pictures of the beginning of the sixteenth century tended to take the form of magnificent processions, if they did not actually represent them. they are processions in the piazza, as in gentile bellini's "corpus christi" picture, or on the water, as in carpaccio's picture where st. ursula leaves her home; or they represent what was a gorgeous but common sight in venice, the reception or dismissal of ambassadors, as in several pictures of carpaccio's st. ursula series; or they show simply a collection of splendidly costumed people in the piazza, as in gentile's "preaching of st. mark." not only the pleasure-loving carpaccio, but the austere cima, as he grew older, turned every biblical and saintly legend into an occasion for the picture of a pageant. but there was a further reason for the popularity of such pictures. the decorations which were then being executed by the most reputed masters in the hall of great council in the doge's palace, were, by the nature of the subject, required to represent pageants. the venetian state encouraged painting as did the church, in order to teach its subjects its own glory in a way that they could understand without being led on to critical enquiry. venice was not the only city, it is true, that used painting for political purposes; but the frescoes of lorenzetti at siena were admonitions to govern in accordance with the catechism, while the pictures in the great hall of the doge's palace were of a nature to remind the venetians of their glory and also of their state policy. these mural paintings represented such subjects as the doge bringing about a reconciliation between the pope and the emperor barbarossa, an event which marked the first entry of venice into the field of continental politics, and typified as well its unchanging policy, which was to gain its own ends by keeping a balance of power between the allies of the pope and the allies of his opponents. the first edition, so to speak, of these works had been executed at the end of the fourteenth century and in the beginning of the fifteenth. toward the end of that century it no longer satisfied the new feeling for reality and beauty, and thus had ceased to serve its purpose, which was to glorify the state. the bellini, alvise vivarini, and carpaccio were employed to make a second rendering of the very same subjects, and this gave the venetians ample opportunity for finding out how much they liked pageant pictures. it is curious to note here that at the same time florence also commissioned its greatest painters to execute works for its council hall, but left them practically free to choose their own subjects. michelangelo chose for his theme "the florentines while bathing surprised by the pisans," and leonardo "the battle of the standard." neither of these was intended in the first place to glorify the florentine republic, but rather to give scope to the painter's genius, michelangelo's for the treatment of the nude, leonardo's for movement and animation. each, having given scope to his peculiar talents in his cartoon, had no further interest, and neither of the undertakings was ever completed. nor do we hear that the florentine councillors enjoyed the cartoons, which were instantly snatched up by students who turned the hall containing them into an academy. =vi. painting and the confraternities.=--it does not appear that the hall of great council in venice was turned into a students' academy, and, although the paintings there doubtless gave a decided incentive to artists, their effect upon the public, for whom they were designed, was even greater. the councillors were not allowed to be the only people to enjoy fascinating pictures of gorgeous pageants and ceremonials. the mutual aid societies--the schools, as they were called--were not long in getting the masters who were employed in the doge's palace to execute for their own meeting places pictures equally splendid. the schools of san giorgio, sant' ursula, and santo stefano, employed carpaccio, the schools of san giovanni and san marco, gentile bellini, and other schools employed minor painters. the works carried out for these schools are of peculiar importance, both because they are all that remain to throw light upon the pictures in the doge's palace destroyed in the fire of , and because they form a transition to the art of a later day. just as the state chose subjects that glorified itself and taught its own history and policy, so the schools had pictures painted to glorify their patron saints, and to keep their deeds and example fresh. many of these pictures--most in fact--took the form of pageants; but even in such, intended as they were for almost domestic purposes, the style of high ceremonial was relaxed, and elements taken directly from life were introduced. in his "corpus christi," gentile bellini paints not only the solemn and dazzling procession in the piazza, but the elegant young men who strut about in all their finery, the foreign loungers, and even the unfailing beggar by the portal of st. mark's. in his "miracle of the true cross," he introduces gondoliers, taking care to bring out all the beauty of their lithe, comely figures as they stand to ply the oar, and does not reject even such an episode as a serving-maid standing in a doorway watching a negro who is about to plunge into the canal. he treats this bit of the picture with all the charm and much of that delicate feeling for simple effects of light and colour that we find in such dutch painters as vermeer van delft and peter de hoogh. episodes such as this in the works of the earliest great venetian master must have acted on the public like a spark on tinder. they certainly found a sudden and assured popularity, for they play a more and more important part in the pictures executed for the schools, many of the subjects of which were readily turned into studies of ordinary venetian life. this was particularly true of the works of carpaccio. much as he loved pageants, he loved homelier scenes as well. his "dream of st. ursula" shows us a young girl asleep in a room filled with the quiet morning light. indeed, it may be better described as the picture of a room with the light playing softly upon its walls, upon the flower-pots in the window, and upon the writing-table and the cupboards. a young girl happens to be asleep in the bed, but the picture is far from being a merely economic illustration to this episode in the life of the saint. again, let us take the work in the same series where king maure dismisses the ambassadors. carpaccio has made this a scene of a chancellery in which the most striking features are neither the king nor the ambassadors, but the effect of the light that streams through a side door on the left and a poor clerk labouring at his task. or, again, take st. jerome in his study, in the scuola di san giorgio. he is nothing but a venetian scholar seated in his comfortable, bright library, in the midst of his books, with his little shelf of bric-à-brac running along the wall. there is nothing in his look or surroundings to speak of a life of self-denial or of arduous devotion to the problems of sin and redemption. even the "presentation of the virgin," which offered such a splendid chance for a pageant, carpaccio, in one instance, turned into the picture of a simple girl going to her first communion. in other words, carpaccio's quality is the quality of a painter of _genre_, of which he was the earliest italian master. his _genre_ differs from dutch or french not in kind but in degree. dutch _genre_ is much more democratic, and, as painting, it is of a far finer quality, but it deals with its subject, as carpaccio does, for the sake of its own pictorial capacities and for the sake of the effects of colour and of light and shade. =vii. easel pictures and giorgione.=--at the beginning of the renaissance painting was almost wholly confined to the church. from the church it extended to the council hall, and thence to the schools. there it rapidly developed into an art which had no higher aim than painting the sumptuous life of the aristocracy. when it had reached this point, there was no reason whatever why it should not begin to grace the dwellings of all well-to-do people. in the sixteenth century painting was not looked upon with the estranging reverence paid to it now. it was almost as cheap as printing has become since, and almost as much employed. when the venetians had attained the point of culture where they were able to differentiate their sensations and distinguish pleasure from edification, they found that painting gave them decided pleasure. why should they always have to go to the doge's palace or to some school to enjoy this pleasure? that would have been no less a hardship than for us never to hear music outside of a concert-room. this is no merely rhetorical comparison, for in the life of the venetian of the sixteenth century painting took much the same place that music takes in ours. he no longer expected it to tell him stories or to teach him the catechism. printed books, which were beginning to grow common, amply satisfied both these needs. he had as a rule very little personal religion, and consequently did not care for pictures that moved him to contrition or devotion. he preferred to have some pleasantly coloured thing that would put him into a mood connected with the side of life he most enjoyed--with refined merrymaking, with country parties, or with the sweet dreams of youth. venetian painting alone among italian schools was ready to satisfy such a demand, and it thus became the first genuinely modern art: for the most vital difference that can be indicated between the arts in antiquity and modern times is this--that now the arts tend to address themselves more and more to the actual needs of men, while in olden times they were supposed to serve some more than human purpose. the pictures required for a house were naturally of a different kind from those suited to the council hall or the school, where large paintings, which could be filled with many figures, were in place. for the house smaller pictures were necessary, such as could easily be carried about. the mere dimensions, therefore, excluded pageants, but, in any case, the pageant was too formal a subject to suit all moods--too much like a brass band always playing in the room. the easel picture had to be without too definite a subject, and could no more permit being translated into words than a sonata. some of giovanni bellini's late works are already of this kind. they are full of that subtle, refined poetry which can be expressed in form and colour alone. but they were a little too austere in form, a little too sober in colour, for the gay, care-free youth of the time. carpaccio does not seem to have painted many easel pictures, although his brilliancy, his delightful fancy, his love of colour, and his gaiety of humour would have fitted him admirably for this kind of painting. but giorgione, the follower of both these masters, starting with the qualities of both as his inheritance, combined the refined feeling and poetry of bellini with carpaccio's gaiety and love of beauty and colour. stirred with the enthusiasms of his own generation as people who had lived through other phases of feeling could not be, giorgione painted pictures so perfectly in touch with the ripened spirit of the renaissance that they met with the success which those things only find that at the same moment wake us to the full sense of a need and satisfy it. giorgione's life was short, and very few of his works--not a score in all--have escaped destruction. but these suffice to give us a glimpse into that brief moment when the renaissance found its most genuine expression in painting. its over-boisterous passions had quieted down into a sincere appreciation of beauty and of human relations. it would be really hard to say more about giorgione than this, that his pictures are the perfect reflex of the renaissance at its height. his works, as well as those of his contemporaries and followers, still continue to be appreciated most by people whose attitude of mind and spirit has most in common with the renaissance, or by those who look upon italian art not merely as art, but as the product of this period. for that is its greatest interest. other schools have accomplished much more in mere painting than the italian. a serious student of art will scarcely think of putting many of even the highest achievements of the italians, considered purely as technique, beside the works of the great dutchmen, the great spaniard, or even the masters of to-day. our real interest in italian painting is at bottom an interest in that art which we almost instinctively feel to have been the fittest expression found by a period in the history of modern europe which has much in common with youth. the renaissance has the fascination of those years when we seemed so full of promise both to ourselves and to everybody else. =viii. the giorgionesque spirit.=--giorgione created a demand which other painters were forced to supply at the risk of finding no favour. the older painters accommodated themselves as best they could. one of them indeed, turning toward the new in a way that is full of singular charm, gave his later works all the beauty and softness of the first spring days in italy. upon hearing the title of one of catena's works in the national gallery, "a warrior adoring the infant christ," who could imagine what a treat the picture itself had in store for him? it is a fragrant summer landscape enjoyed by a few quiet people, one of whom, in armour, with the glamour of the orient about him, kneels at the virgin's feet, while a romantic young page holds his horse's bridle. i mention this picture in particular because it is so accessible, and so good an instance of the giorgionesque way of treating a subject; not for the story, nor for the display of skill, nor for the obvious feeling, but for the lovely landscape, for the effects of light and colour, and for the sweetness of human relations. giorgione's altar-piece at castelfranco is treated in precisely the same spirit, but with far more genius. the young painters had no chance at all unless they undertook at once to furnish pictures in giorgione's style. but before we can appreciate all that the younger men were called upon to do, we must turn to the consideration of that most wonderful product of the renaissance and of the painter's craft--the portrait. =ix. the portrait.=--the longing for the perpetuation of one's fame, which has already been mentioned several times as one of the chief passions of the renaissance, brought with it the more universal desire to hand down the memory of one's face and figure. the surest way to accomplish this end seemed to be the one which had proved successful in the case of the great romans, whose effigies were growing more and more familiar as new busts and medals were dug up. the earlier generations of the renaissance relied therefore on the sculptor and the medallist to hand down their features to an interested posterity. these artists were ready for their task. the mere materials gave them solidity, an effect so hard to get in painting. at the same time, nothing was expected from them except that they should mould the material into the desired shape. no setting was required and no colour. their art on this account alone would naturally have been the earliest to reach fruition. but over and above this, sculptors and medallists had the direct inspiration of antique models, and through the study of these they were at an early date brought in contact with the tendencies of the renaissance. the passion then prevailing for pronounced types, and the spirit of analysis this produced, forced them to such patient study of the face as would enable them to give the features that look of belonging to one consistent whole which we call character. thus, at a time when painters had not yet learned to distinguish between one face and another, donatello was carving busts which remain unrivalled as studies of character, and pisanello was casting bronze and silver medals which are among the greatest claims to renown of those whose effigies they bear. donatello's bust of niccolò d'uzzano shows clearly, nevertheless, that the renaissance could not long remain satisfied with the sculptured portrait. it is coloured like nature, and succeeds so well in producing for an instant the effect of actual life as to seem uncanny the next moment. donatello's contemporaries must have had the same impression, for busts of this kind are but few. yet these few prove that the element of colour had to be included before the satisfactory portrait was found: in other words, that painting and not sculpture was to be the portrait-art of the renaissance. the most creative sculptor of the earlier renaissance was not the only artist who felt the need of colour in portraiture. vittore pisano, the greatest medallist of this or any age, felt it quite as keenly, and being a painter as well, he was among the first to turn this art to portraiture. in his day, however, painting was still too undeveloped an art for the portrait not to lose in character what it gained in a more lifelike colouring, and the two of pisanello's portraits which still exist are profiles much inferior to his best medals, seeming indeed to be enlargements of them rather than original studies from life. it was only in the next generation, when the attention of painters themselves was powerfully concentrated upon the reproduction of strongly pronounced types of humanity, that they began to make portraits as full of life and energy as donatello's busts of the previous period. even then, however, the full face was rarely attempted, and it was only in the beginning of the sixteenth century that full-face portraits began to be common. the earliest striking achievement of this sort, mantegna's head of cardinal scarampo (now in berlin), was not the kind to find favour in venice. the full-face likeness of this wolf in sheep's clothing brought out the workings of the self-seeking, cynical spirit within too clearly not to have revolted the venetians, who looked upon all such qualities as impious in the individual because they were the strict monopoly of the state. in the portraits of doges which decorated the frieze of its great council hall, venice wanted the effigies of functionaries entirely devoted to the state, and not of great personalities, and the profile lent itself more readily to the omission of purely individual traits. it is significant that venice was the first state which made a business of preserving the portraits of its chief rulers. those which gentile and giovanni bellini executed for this end must have had no less influence on portraiture than their mural paintings in the same hall had on other branches of the art. but the state was not satisfied with leaving records of its glory in the ducal palace alone. the church and the saints were impressed for the same purpose--happily for us, for while the portraits in the great hall have perished, several altar-pieces still preserve to us the likenesses of some of the doges. early in the sixteenth century, when people began to want pictures in their own homes as well as in their public halls, personal and religious motives combined to dictate the choice of subjects. in the minds of many, painting, although a very familiar art, was too much connected with solemn religious rites and with state ceremonies to be used at once for ends of personal pleasure. so landscape had to slide in under the patronage of st. jerome; while romantic biblical episodes, like the "finding of moses," or the "judgment of solomon," gave an excuse for _genre_, and the portrait crept in half hidden under the mantle of a patron saint. its position once secure, however, the portrait took no time to cast off all tutelage, and to declare itself one of the most attractive subjects possible. over and above the obvious satisfaction afforded by a likeness, the portrait had to give pleasure to the eye, and to produce those agreeable moods which were expected from all other paintings in giorgione's time. portraits like that of scarampo are scarcely less hard to live with than such a person himself must have been. they tyrannize rather than soothe and please. but giorgione and his immediate followers painted men and women whose very look leads one to think of sympathetic friends, people whose features are pleasantly rounded, whose raiment seems soft to touch, whose surroundings call up the memory of sweet landscapes and refreshing breezes. in fact, in these portraits the least apparent object was the likeness, the real purpose being to please the eye and to turn the mind toward pleasant themes. this no doubt helps to account for the great popularity of portraits in venice during the sixteenth century. their number, as we shall see, only grows larger as the century advances. =x. the young titian.=--giorgione's followers had only to exploit the vein their master hit upon to find ample remuneration. each, to be sure, brought a distinct personality into play, but the demand for the giorgionesque article, if i may be allowed the phrase, was too strong to permit of much deviation. it no longer mattered what the picture was to represent or where it was going to be placed; the treatment had to be always bright, romantic, and joyous. many artists still confined themselves to painting ecclesiastical subjects chiefly, but even among these, such painters as lotto and palma, for example, are fully as giorgionesque as titian, bonifazio, or paris bordone. titian, in spite of a sturdier, less refined nature, did nothing for a generation after giorgione's death but work on his lines. a difference in quality between the two masters shows itself from the first, but the spirit that animated each is identical. the pictures titian was painting ten years after his companion's death have not only many of the qualities of giorgione's, but something more, as if done by an older giorgione, with better possession of himself, and with a larger and firmer hold on the world. at the same time, they show no diminution of spontaneous joy in life, and even an increased sense of its value and dignity. what an array of masterpieces might be brought to witness! in the "assumption," for example, the virgin soars heavenward, not helpless in the arms of angels, but borne up by the fulness of life within her, and by the feeling that the universe is naturally her own, and that nothing can check her course. the angels seem to be there only to sing the victory of a human being over his environment. they are embodied joys, acting on our nerves like the rapturous outburst of the orchestra at the end of "parsifal." or look at the "bacchanals" in madrid, or at the "bacchus and ariadne" in the national gallery. how brimful they are of exuberant joy! you see no sign of a struggle of inner and outer conditions, but life so free, so strong, so glowing, that it almost intoxicates. they are truly dionysiac, bacchanalian triumphs--the triumph of life over the ghosts that love the gloom and chill and hate the sun. the portraits titian painted in these years show no less feeling of freedom from sordid cares, and no less mastery over life. think of "the man with the glove" in the louvre, of the "concert," and "young englishman" in florence, and of the pesaro family in their altar-piece in the frari at venice--call up these portraits, and you will see that they are true children of the renaissance whom life has taught no meannesses and no fears. =xi. apparent failure of the renaissance.=--but even while such pictures were being painted, the spirit of the italian renaissance was proving inadequate to life. this was not the fault of the spirit, which was the spirit of youth. but youth cannot last more than a certain length of time. no matter how it is spent, manhood and middle age will come. life began to show a sterner and more sober face than for a brief moment it had seemed to wear. men became conscious that the passions for knowledge, for glory, and for personal advancement were not at the bottom of all the problems that life presented. florence and rome discovered this suddenly, and with a shock. in the presence of michelangelo's sculptures in san lorenzo, or of his "last judgment," we still hear the cry of anguish that went up as the inexorable truth dawned upon them. but venice, although humiliated by the league of cambrai, impoverished by the turk, and by the change in the routes of commerce, was not crushed, as was the rest of italy, under the heels of spanish infantry, nor so drained of resource as not to have some wealth still flowing into her coffers. life grew soberer and sterner, but it was still amply worth the living, although the relish of a little stoicism and of earnest thought no longer seemed out of place. the spirit of the renaissance had found its way to venice slowly; it was even more slow to depart. we therefore find that toward the middle of the sixteenth century, when elsewhere in italy painting was trying to adapt itself to the hypocrisy of a church whose chief reason for surviving as an institution was that it helped spain to subject the world to tyranny, and when portraits were already exhibiting the fascinating youths of an earlier generation turned into obsequious and elegant courtiers,--in venice painting kept true to the ripened and more reflective spirit which succeeded to the most glowing decades of the renaissance. this led men to take themselves more seriously, to act with more consideration of consequences, and to think of life with less hope and exultation. quieter joys were sought, the pleasures of friendship and of the affections. life not having proved the endless holiday it had promised to be, earnest people began to question whether under the gross masque of the official religion there was not something to console them for departed youth and for the failure of hopes. thus religion began to revive in italy, this time not ethnic nor political, but personal,--an answer to the real needs of the human soul. =xii. lotto.=--it is scarcely to be wondered at that the venetian artist in whom we first find the expression of the new feelings, should have been one who by wide travel had been brought in contact with the miseries of italy in a way not possible for those who remained sheltered in venice. lorenzo lotto, when he is most himself, does not paint the triumph of man over his environment, but in his altar-pieces, and even more in his portraits, he shows us people in want of the consolations of religion, of sober thought, of friendship and affection. they look out from his canvases as if begging for sympathy. but real expression for the new order of things was not to be found by one like lotto, sensitive of feeling and born in the heyday of the renaissance, to whom the new must have come as a disappointment. it had to come from one who had not been brought in personal contact with the woes of the rest of italy, from one less conscious of his environment, one like titian who was readier to receive the patronage of the new master than to feel an oppression which did not touch him personally; or it had to come from one like tintoretto, born to the new order of things and not having to outlive a disappointment before adapting himself to it. =xiii. the late renaissance and titian.=--it is as impossible to keep untouched by what happens to your neighbours as to have a bright sky over your own house when it is stormy everywhere else. spain did not directly dominate venice, but the new fashions of life and thought inaugurated by her nearly universal triumph could not be kept out. her victims, among whom the italian scholars must be reckoned, flocked to venice for shelter, persecuted by a rule that cherished the inquisition. now for the first time venetian painters were brought in contact with men of letters. as they were already, fortunately for themselves, too well acquainted with the business of their own art to be taken in tow by learning or even by poetry, the relation of the man of letters to the painter became on the whole a stimulating and at any rate a profitable one, as in the instance of two of the greatest, where it took the form of a partnership for mutual advantage. it is not to our purpose to speak of aretino's gain, but titian would scarcely have acquired such fame in his lifetime if that founder of modern journalism, pietro aretino, had not been at his side, eager to trumpet his praises and to advise him whom to court. the overwhelming triumph of spain entailed still another consequence. it brought home to all italians, even to the venetians, the sense of the individual's helplessness before organized power--a sense which, as we have seen, the early renaissance, with its belief in the omnipotence of the individual, totally lacked. this was not without a decided influence on art. in the last three decades of his long career, titian did not paint man as if he were as free from care and as fitted to his environment as a lark on an april morning. rather did he represent man as acting on his environment and suffering from its reactions. he made the faces and figures show clearly what life had done to them. the great "ecce homo" and the "crowning with thorns" are imbued with this feeling no less than the equestrian portrait of charles the fifth. in the "ecce homo" we see a man with a godlike personality, humbled by the imperial majesty, broken by the imperial power, and utterly unable to hold out against them. in the "crowning with thorns" we have the same godlike being almost brutalised by pain and suffering. in the portrait of the emperor we behold a man whom life has enfeebled, and who has to meet a foe who may crush him. yet titian became neither soured nor a pessimist. many of his late portraits are even more energetic than those of his early maturity. he shows himself a wise man of the world. "do not be a grovelling sycophant," some of them seem to say, "but remember that courtly manners and tempered elegance can do you no harm." titian, then, was ever ready to change with the times, and on the whole the change was toward a firmer grasp of reality, necessitating yet another advance in the painter's mastery of his craft. titian's real greatness consists in the fact that he was as able to produce an effect of greater reality as he was ready to appreciate the need of a firmer hold on life. in painting, as i have said, a greater effect of reality is chiefly a matter of light and shadow, to be obtained only by considering the canvas as an enclosed space, filled with light and air, through which the objects are seen. there is more than one way of getting this effect, but titian attains it by the almost total suppression of outlines, by the harmonising of his colours, and by the largeness and vigour of his brushwork. in fact, the old titian was, in his way of painting, remarkably like some of the best french masters of to-day. this makes him only the more attractive, particularly when with handling of this kind he combined the power of creating forms of beauty such as he has given us in the "wisdom" of the venetian royal palace, or in the "shepherd and nymph" of vienna. the difference between the old titian, author of these works, and the young titian, painter of the "assumption," and of the "bacchus and ariadne," is the difference between the shakspeare of the "midsummer-night's dream" and the shakspeare of the "tempest." titian and shakspeare begin and end so much in the same way by no mere accident. they were both products of the renaissance, they underwent similar changes, and each was the highest and completest expression of his own age. this is not the place to elaborate the comparison, but i have dwelt so long on titian, because, historically considered, he is the only painter who expressed nearly all of the renaissance that could find expression in painting. it is this which makes him even more interesting than tintoretto, an artist who in many ways was deeper, finer, and even more brilliant. =xiv. humanity and the renaissance.=--tintoretto grew to manhood when the fruit of the renaissance was ripe on every bough. the renaissance had resulted in the emancipation of the individual, in making him feel that the universe had no other purpose than his happiness. this brought an entirely new answer to the question, "why should i do this or that?" it used to be, "because self-instituted authority commands you." the answer now was, "because it is good for men." in this lies our greatest debt to the renaissance, that it instituted the welfare of man as the end of all action. the renaissance did not bring this idea to practical issue, but our debt to it is endless on account of the results the idea has produced in our own days. this alone would have made the renaissance a period of peculiar interest, even if it had had no art whatever. but when ideas are fresh and strong, they are almost sure to find artistic embodiment, as indeed this whole epoch found in painting, and this particular period in the works of tintoretto. =xv. sebastiano del piombo.=--the emancipation of the individual had a direct effect on the painter in freeing him from his guild. it now occurred to him that possibly he might become more proficient and have greater success if he deserted the influences he was under by the accident of birth and residence, and placed himself in the school that seemed best adapted to foster his talents. this led to the unfortunate experiment of eclecticism which checked the purely organic development of the separate schools. it brought about their fusion into an art which no longer appealed to the italian people, as did the art which sprang naturally from the soil, but to the small class of _dilettanti_ who considered a knowledge of art as one of the birthrights of their social position. venice, however, suffered little from eclecticism, perhaps because a strong sense of individuality was late in getting there, and by that time the painters were already well enough educated in their craft to know that they had little to learn elsewhere. the one venetian who became an eclectic, remained in spite of it a great painter. sebastiano del piombo fell under the influence of michelangelo, but while this influence was pernicious in most cases, the hand that had learned to paint under bellini, cima, and giorgione, never wholly lost its command of colour and tone. =xvi. tintoretto.=--tintoretto stayed at home, but he felt in his own person a craving for something that titian could not teach him. the venice he was born in was not the venice of titian's early youth, and his own adolescence fell in the period when spain was rapidly making herself mistress of italy. the haunting sense of powers almost irresistible gave a terrible fascination to michelangelo's works, which are swayed by that sense as by a demonic presence. tintoretto felt this fascination because he was in sympathy with the spirit which took form in colossal torsoes and limbs. to him these were not, as they were to michelangelo's enrolled followers, merely new patterns after which to model the nude. but beside this sense of overwhelming power and gigantic force, tintoretto had to an even greater degree the feeling that whatever existed was for mankind and with reference to man. in his youth people were once more turning to religion, and in venice poetry was making its way more than it had previously done, not only because venice had become the refuge of men of letters, but also because of the diffusion of printed books. tintoretto took to the new feeling for religion and poetry as to his birthright. yet whether classic fable or biblical episode were the subject of his art, tintoretto coloured it with his feeling for the human life at the heart of the story. his sense of power did not express itself in colossal nudes so much as in the immense energy, in the glowing health of the figures he painted, and more still in his effects of light, which he rendered as if he had it in his hands to brighten or darken the heavens at will and subdue them to his own moods. he could not have accomplished this, we may be sure, if he had not had even greater skill than titian in the treatment of light and shadow and of atmosphere. it was this which enabled him to give such living versions of biblical stories and saintly legends. for, granting that an effect of reality were attainable in painting without an adequate treatment of light and atmosphere, even then, the reality would look hideous, as it does in many modern painters who attempt to paint people of to-day in their every-day dress and among their usual surroundings. it is not "realism" which makes such pictures hideous, but the want of that toning down which the atmosphere gives to things in life, and of that harmonising to which the light subjects all colours. it was a great mastery of light and shadow which enabled tintoretto to put into his pictures all the poetry there was in his soul without once tempting us to think that he might have found better expression in words. the poetry which quickens most of his works in the scuola di san rocco is almost entirely a matter of light and colour. what is it but the light that changes the solitudes in which the magdalen and st. mary of egypt are sitting, into dreamlands seen by poets in their moments of happiest inspiration? what but light and colour, the gloom and chill of evening, with the white-stoled figure standing resignedly before the judge, that give the "christ before pilate" its sublime magic? what, again, but light, colour, and the star-procession of cherubs that imbue the realism of the "annunciation" with music which thrills us through and through? religion and poetry did not exist for tintoretto because the love and cultivation of the muses was a duty prescribed by the greeks and romans, and because the love of god and the saints was prescribed by the church; but rather, as was the case with the best people of his time, because both poetry and religion were useful to man. they helped him to forget what was mean and sordid in life, they braced him to his task, and consoled him for his disappointments. religion answered to an ever-living need of the human heart. the bible was no longer a mere document wherewith to justify christian dogma. it was rather a series of parables and symbols pointing at all times to the path that led to a finer and nobler life. why then continue to picture christ and the apostles, the patriarchs and prophets, as persons living under roman rule, wearing the roman toga, and walking about in the landscape of a roman bas-relief? christ and the apostles, the patriarchs and prophets, were the embodiment of living principles and of living ideals. tintoretto felt this so vividly that he could not think of them otherwise than as people of his own kind, living under conditions easily intelligible to himself and to his fellow-men. indeed, the more intelligible and the more familiar the look and garb and surroundings of biblical and saintly personages, the more would they drive home the principles and ideas they incarnated. so tintoretto did not hesitate to turn every biblical episode into a picture of what the scene would look like had it taken place under his own eyes, nor to tinge it with his own mood. his conception of the human form was, it is true, colossal, although the slender elegance that was then coming into fashion, as if in protest against physical force and organisation, influenced him considerably in his construction of the female figure; but the effect which he must always have produced upon his contemporaries, and which most of his works still produce, is one of astounding reality as well as of wide sweep and power. thus, in the "discovery of the body of st. mark," in the brera, and in the "storm rising while the corpse is being carried through the streets of alexandria," in the royal palace at venice, the figures, although colossal, are so energetic and so easy in movement, and the effects of perspective and of light and atmosphere are so on a level with the gigantic figures, that the eye at once adapts itself to the scale, and you feel as if you too partook of the strength and health of heroes. =xvii. value of minor episodes in art.=--that feeling for reality which made the great painters look upon a picture as the representation of a cubic content of atmosphere enveloping all the objects depicted, made them also consider the fact that the given quantity of atmosphere is sure to contain other objects than those the artist wants for his purpose. he is free to leave them out, of course, but in so far as he does, so far is he from producing an effect of reality. the eye does not see everything, but all the eye would naturally see along with the principal objects, must be painted, or the picture will not look true to life. this incorporation of small episodes running parallel with the subject rather than forming part of it, is one of the chief characteristics of modern as distinguished from ancient art. it is this which makes the elizabethan drama so different from the greek. it is this again which already separates the works of duccio and giotto from the plastic arts of antiquity. painting lends itself willingly to the consideration of minor episodes, and for that reason is almost as well fitted to be in touch with modern life as the novel itself. such a treatment saves a picture from looking prepared and cold, just as light and atmosphere save it from rigidity and crudeness. no better illustration of this can be found among italian masters than tintoretto's "crucifixion" in the scuola di san rocco. the scene is a vast one, and although christ is on the cross, life does not stop. to most of the people gathered there, what takes place is no more than a common execution. many of them are attending to it as to a tedious duty. others work away at some menial task more or less connected with the crucifixion, as unconcerned as cobblers humming over their last. most of the people in the huge canvas are represented, as no doubt they were in life, without much personal feeling about christ. his own friends are painted with all their grief and despair, but the others are allowed to feel as they please. the painter does not try to give them the proper emotions. if one of the great novelists of to-day, if tolstoi, for instance, were to describe the crucifixion, his account would read as if it were a description of tintoretto's picture. but tintoretto's fairness went even further than letting all the spectators feel as they pleased about what he himself believed to be the greatest event that ever took place. among this multitude he allowed the light of heaven to shine upon the wicked as well as upon the good, and the air to refresh them all equally. in other words, this enormous canvas is a great sea of air and light at the bottom of which the scene takes place. without the atmosphere and the just distribution of light, it would look as lifeless and desolate, in spite of the crowd and animation, as if it were the bottom of a dried up sea. =xviii. tintoretto's portraits.=--while all these advances were being made, the art of portraiture had not stood still. its popularity had only increased as the years went on. titian was too busy with commissions for foreign princes to supply the great demand there was in venice alone. tintoretto painted portraits not only with much of the air of good breeding of titian's likenesses, but with even greater splendour, and with an astonishing rapidity of execution. the venetian portrait, it will be remembered, was expected to be more than a likeness. it was expected to give pleasure to the eye, and to stimulate the emotions. tintoretto was ready to give ample satisfaction to all such expectations. his portraits, although they are not so individualised as lotto's, nor such close studies of character as titian's, always render the man at his best, in glowing health, full of life and determination. they give us the sensuous pleasure we get from jewels, and at the same time they make us look back with amazement to a state where the human plant was in such vigour as to produce old men of the kind represented in most of tintoretto's portraits. with tintoretto ends the universal interest the venetian school arouses; for although painting does not deteriorate in a day any more than it grows to maturity in the same brief moment, the story of the decay has none of the fascination of the growth. but several artists remain to be considered who were not of the venetian school in the strict sense of the term, but who have always been included within it. =xix. venetian art and the provinces.=--the venetian provinces were held together not merely by force of rule. in language and feeling no less than in government, they formed a distinct unit within the italian peninsula. painting being so truly a product of the soil as it was in italy during the renaissance, the art of the provinces could not help holding the same close relation to the art of venice that their language and modes of feeling held. but a difference must be made at once between towns like verona, with a school of at least as long a growth and with as independent an evolution as the school of venice itself, and towns like vicenza and brescia whose chief painters never developed quite independently of venice or verona. what makes romanino and moretto of brescia, or even the powerful montagna of vicenza, except when they are at their very best, so much less enjoyable as a rule than the venetians--that is to say the painters wholly educated in venice,--is something they have in common with the eclectics of a later day. they are ill at ease about their art, which is no longer the utterly unpremeditated outcome of a natural impulse. they saw greater painting than their own in venice and verona, and not unfrequently their own works show an uncouth attempt to adopt that greatness, which comes out in exaggeration of colour even more than of form, and speaks for that want of taste which is the indelible stamp of provincialism. but there were venetian towns without the traditions even of the schools of vicenza and brescia, where, if you wanted to learn painting, you had to apprentice yourself to somebody who had been taught by somebody who had been a pupil of one of giovanni bellini's pupils. this was particularly true of the towns in that long stretch of plain between the julian alps and the sea, known as friuli. friuli produced one painter of remarkable talents and great force, giovanni antonio pordenone, but neither his talents nor his force, nor even later study in venice, could erase from his works that stamp of provincialism which he inherited from his first provincial master. such artists as these, however, never gained great favour in the capital. those whom venice drew to herself when her own strength was waning and when, like rome in her decline, she began to absorb into herself the talent of the provinces, were rather painters such as paolo veronese whose art, although of independent growth, was sufficiently like her own to be readily understood, or painters with an entirely new vein, such as the bassani. =xx. paul veronese.=--paolo was the product of four or five generations of veronese painters, the first two or three of which had spoken the language of the whole mass of the people in a way that few other artists had ever done. consequently, in the early renaissance, there were no painters in the north of italy, and few even in florence, who were not touched by the influence of the veronese. but paolo's own immediate predecessors were no longer able to speak the language of the whole mass of the people. there was one class they left out entirely, the class to whom titian and tintoretto appealed so strongly, the class that ruled, and that thought in the new way. verona, being a dependency of venice, did no ruling, and certainly not at all so much thinking as venice, and life there continued healthful, simple, unconscious, untroubled by the approaching storm in the world's feelings. but although thought and feeling may be slow in invading a town, fashion comes there quickly. spanish fashions in dress, and spanish ceremonial in manners reached verona soon enough, and in paolo caliari we find all these fashions reflected, but health, simplicity, and unconsciousness as well. this combination of seemingly opposite qualities forms his great charm for us to-day, and it must have proved as great an attraction to many of the venetians of his own time, for they were already far enough removed from simplicity to appreciate to the full his singularly happy combination of ceremony and splendour with an almost childlike naturalness of feeling. perhaps among his strongest admirers were the very men who most appreciated titian's distinction and tintoretto's poetry. but it is curious to note that paolo's chief employers were the monasteries. his cheerfulness, and his frank and joyous worldliness, the qualities, in short, which we find in his huge pictures of feasts, seem to have been particularly welcome to those who were expected to make their meat and drink of the very opposite qualities. this is no small comment on the times, and shows how thorough had been the permeation of the spirit of the renaissance when even the religious orders gave up their pretence to asceticism and piety. =xxi. bassano, genre, and landscape.=--venetian painting would not have been the complete expression of the riper renaissance if it had entirely neglected the country. city people have a natural love of the country, but when it was a matter of doubt whether a man would ever return if he ventured out of the town-gates, as was the case in the middle ages, this love had no chance of showing itself. it had to wait until the country itself was safe for wayfarers, a state of things which came about in italy with the gradual submission of the country to the rule of the neighbouring cities and with the general advance of civilisation. during the renaissance the love of the country and its pleasures received an immense impulse from latin authors. what the great romans without exception recommended, an italian was not slow to adopt, particularly when, as in this case, it harmonised with natural inclination and with an already common practice. it was the usual thing with those who could afford to do so to retire to the villa for a large part of the year. classic poets helped such italians to appreciate the simplicity of the country and to feel a little of its beauty. many took such delight in country life that they wished to have reminders of it in town. it may have been in response to some such half formulated wish that palma began to paint his "sante conversazioni,"--groups of saintly personages gathered under pleasant trees in pretty landscapes. his pupil, bonifazio, continued the same line, gradually, however, discarding the traditional group of madonna and saints, and, under such titles as "the rich man's feast" or "the finding of moses," painting all the scenes of fashionable country life, music on the terrace of a villa, hunting parties, and picnics in the forest. bonifazio's pupil, jacopo bassano, no less fond of painting country scenes, did not however confine himself to representing city people in their parks. his pictures were for the inhabitants of the small market-town from which he takes his name, where inside the gates you still see men and women in rustic garb crouching over their many-coloured wares; and where, just outside the walls, you may see all the ordinary occupations connected with farming and grazing. inspired, although unawares, by the new idea of giving perfectly modern versions of biblical stories, bassano introduced into nearly every picture he painted episodes from the life in the streets of bassano, and in the county just outside the gates. even orpheus in his hands becomes a farmer's lad fiddling to the barnyard fowls. bassano's pictures and those of his two sons, who followed him very closely, found great favour in venice and elsewhere, because they were such unconscious renderings of simple country life, a kind of life whose charm seemed greater and greater the more fashionable and ceremonious private life in the city became. but this was far from being their only charm. just as the church had educated people to understand painting as a language, so the love of all the pleasant things that painting suggested led in time to the love of this art as its own end, serving no obvious purpose either of decoration or suggestion, but giving pleasure by the skilful management of light and shadow, and by the intrinsic beauty of the colours. the third quarter of the sixteenth century thus saw the rise of the picture-fancier, and the success of the bassani was so great because they appealed to this class in a special way. in venice there had long been a love of objects for their sensuous beauty. at an early date the venetians had perfected an art in which there is scarcely any intellectual content whatever, and in which colour, jewel-like or opaline, is almost everything. venetian glass was at the same time an outcome of the venetians' love of sensuous beauty and a continual stimulant to it. pope paul ii., for example, who was a venetian, took such a delight in the colour and glow of jewels, that he was always looking at them and always handling them. when painting, accordingly, had reached the point where it was no longer dependent upon the church, nor even expected to be decorative, but when it was used purely for pleasure, the day could not be far distant when people would expect painting to give them the same enjoyment they received from jewels and glass. in bassano's works this taste found full satisfaction. most of his pictures seem at first as dazzling, then as cooling and soothing, as the best kind of stained glass; while the colouring of details, particularly of those under high lights, is jewel-like, as clear and deep and satisfying as rubies and emeralds. it need scarcely be added after all that has been said about light and atmosphere in connection with titian and tintoretto, and their handling of real life, that bassano's treatment of both was even more masterly. if this were not so, neither picture-fanciers of his own time, nor we nowadays, should care for his works as we do. they represent life in far more humble phases than even the pictures of tintoretto, and, without recompensing effects of light and atmosphere, they would not be more enjoyable than the cheap work of the smaller dutch masters. it must be added, too, that without his jewel-like colouring, bassano would often be no more delightful than teniers. another thing bassano could not fail to do, working as he did in the country, and for country people, was to paint landscape. he had to paint the real country, and his skill in the treatment of light and atmosphere was great enough to enable him to do it well. bassano was in fact the first modern landscape painter. titian and tintoretto and giorgione, and even bellini and cima before them, had painted beautiful landscapes, but they were seldom direct studies from nature. they were decorative backgrounds, or fine harmonising accompaniments to the religious or human elements of the picture. they never failed to get grand and effective lines--a setting worthy of the subject. bassano did not need such setting for his country versions of bible stories, and he needed them even less in his studies of rural life. for pictures of this kind the country itself naturally seemed the best background and the best accompaniment possible,--indeed, the only kind desirable. without knowing it, therefore, and without intending it, bassano was the first italian who tried to paint the country as it really is, and not arranged to look like scenery. =xxii. the venetians and velasquez.=--had bassano's qualities, however, been of the kind that appealed only to the collectors of his time, he would scarcely rouse the strong interest we take in him. we care for him chiefly because he has so many of the more essential qualities of great art--truth to life, and spontaneity. he has another interest still, in that he began to beat out the path which ended at last in velasquez. indeed, one of the attractions of the venetian school of painting is that, more than all others, it went to form that great spanish master. he began as a sort of follower of bassano, but his style was not fixed before he had given years of study to veronese, to tintoretto, and to titian. =xxiii. decline of venetian art.=--bassano appealed to collectors by mere accident. he certainly did not work for them. the painters who came after him and after tintoretto no longer worked unconsciously, as veronese did, nor for the whole intelligent class, as titian and tintoretto had done, but for people who prided themselves on their connoisseurship. palma the younger and domenico tintoretto began well enough as natural followers of tintoretto, but before long they became aware of their inferiority to the masters who had preceded them, and, feeling no longer the strength to go beyond them, fell back upon painting variations of those pictures of tintoretto and titian which had proved most popular. so their works recall the great masters, but only to bring out their own weakness. padovanino, liberi, and pietro della vecchia went even lower down and shamelessly manufactured pictures which, in the distant markets for which they were intended, passed for works of titian, veronese, and giorgione. nor are these pictures altogether unenjoyable. there are airs by the great composers we so love that we enjoy them even when woven into the compositions of some third-rate master. =xxiv. longhi.=--but venetian painting was not destined to die unnoticed. in the eighteenth century, before the republic entirely disappeared, venice produced three or four painters who deserve at the least a place with the best painters of that century. the constitution of the venetian state had remained unchanged. magnificent ceremonies still took place, venice was still the most splendid and the most luxurious city in the world. if the splendour and luxury were hollow, they were not more so than elsewhere in europe. the eighteenth century had the strength which comes from great self-confidence and profound satisfaction with one's surroundings. it was so self-satisfied that it could not dream of striving to be much better than it was. everything was just right; there seemed to be no great issues, no problems arising that human intelligence untrammelled by superstition could not instantly solve. everybody was therefore in holiday mood, and the gaiety and frivolity of the century were of almost as much account as its politics and culture. there was no room for great distinctions. hair-dressers and tailors found as much consideration as philosophers and statesmen at a lady's levee. people were delighted with their own occupations, their whole lives; and whatever people delight in, that they will have represented in art. the love for pictures was by no means dead in venice, and longhi painted for the picture-loving venetians their own lives in all their ordinary domestic and fashionable phases. in the hair-dressing scenes we hear the gossip of the periwigged barber; in the dressmaking scenes, the chatter of the maid; in the dancing-school, the pleasant music of the violin. there is no tragic note anywhere. everybody dresses, dances, makes bows, takes coffee, as if there were nothing else in the world that wanted doing. a tone of high courtesy, of great refinement, coupled with an all-pervading cheerfulness, distinguishes longhi's pictures from the works of hogarth, at once so brutal and so full of presage of change. =xxv. canaletto and guardi.=--venice herself had not grown less beautiful in her decline. indeed, the building which occupies the very centre of the picture venice leaves in the mind, the salute, was not built until the seventeenth century. this was the picture that the venetian himself loved to have painted for him, and that the stranger wanted to carry away. canale painted venice with a feeling for space and atmosphere, with a mastery over the delicate effects of mist peculiar to the city, that make his views of the salute, the grand canal, and the piazzetta still seem more like venice than all the pictures of them that have been painted since. later in the century canale was followed by guardi, who executed smaller views with more of an eye for the picturesque, and for what may be called instantaneous effects, thus anticipating both the romantic and the impressionist painters of our own century. =xxvi. tiepolo.=--but delightful as longhi, canale, and guardi are, and imbued as they are with the spirit of their own century, they lack the quality of force, without which there can be no really impressive style. this quality their contemporary tiepolo possessed to the utmost. his energy, his feeling for splendour, his mastery over his craft, place him almost on a level with the great venetians of the sixteenth century, although he never allows one to forget what he owes to them, particularly to veronese. the grand scenes he paints differ from those of his predecessor not so much in mere inferiority of workmanship, as in a lack of that simplicity and candour which never failed paolo, no matter how proud the event he might be portraying. tiepolo's people are haughty, as if they felt that to keep a firm hold on their dignity they could not for a moment relax their faces and figures from a monumental look and bearing. they evidently feel themselves so superior that they are not pleasant to live with, although they carry themselves so well, and are dressed with such splendour, that once in a while it is a great pleasure to look at them. it was tiepolo's vision of the world that was at fault, and his vision of the world was at fault only because the world itself was at fault. paolo saw a world touched only by the fashions of the spanish court, while tiepolo lived among people whose very hearts had been vitiated by its measureless haughtiness. but tiepolo's feeling for strength, for movement, and for colour was great enough to give a new impulse to art. at times he seems not so much the last of the old masters as the first of the new. the works he left in spain do more than a little to explain the revival of painting in that country under goya; and goya, in his turn, had a great influence upon many of the best french artists of our own times. =xxvii. influence of venetian art.=--thus, venetian painting before it wholly died, flickered up again strong enough to light the torch that is burning so steadily now. indeed, not the least attraction of the venetian masters is their note of modernity, by which i mean the feeling they give us that they were on the high road to the art of to-day. we have seen how on two separate occasions venetian painters gave an impulse to spaniards, who in turn have had an extraordinary influence on modern painting. it would be easy, too, although it is not my purpose, to show how much other schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as the flemish, led by rubens, and the english led by reynolds, owed to the venetians. my endeavour has been to explain some of the attractions of the school, and particularly to show its close dependence upon the thought and feeling of the renaissance. this is perhaps its greatest interest, for being such a complete expression of the riper spirit of the renaissance, it helps us to a larger understanding of a period which has in itself the fascination of youth, and which is particularly attractive to us, because the spirit that animates us is singularly like the better spirit of that epoch. we, too, are possessed of boundless curiosity. we, too, have an almost intoxicating sense of human capacity. we, too, believe in a great future for humanity, and nothing has yet happened to check our delight in discovery or our faith in life. index to the works of the principal venetian painters. note. public galleries are mentioned first, then private collections, and churches last. the principal public gallery is always understood after the simple mention of a city or town. thus, paris means paris, louvre, london means london, national gallery, etc. an interrogation point after the number or title of a picture indicates that its attribution to the given painter is doubtful. distinctly early or late works are marked e. or l. it need scarcely be said that the attributions here given are not based on official catalogues, and are often at variance with them. antonello da messina. =b.= circa : d. circa . began under unknown flemish painter; influenced by the vivarini and bellini. =antwerp.= . crucifixion, . =bergamo.= lochis, . st. sebastian. =berlin.= . portrait of young man, . a. portrait of young man, . . portrait of young man in red coat. =dresden.= . st. sebastian. =london.= . the saviour, . . portrait of man. . crucifixion, . . st. jerome in his study. =messina.= madonna with ss. gregory and benedict, . =milan.= museo civico, . portrait of man wearing wreath. prince trivulzio, portrait of man, . =naples.= sala grande, . portrait of man. =paris.= . condottiere, . =rome.= villa borghese, . portrait of man. =venice.= academy, . ecce homo. giovanelli, portrait of man. =vicenza.= sala iv, . christ at column. jacopo di barbari. circa- circa. pupil of alvise vivarini; influenced by antonello da messina. =augsburg.= still life piece, . =bergamo.= gallery lochis, , . heads of young men. frizzoni-salis, head of christ. =berlin.= a. madonna and saints. =dresden.= . christ blessing. , . ss. catherine and barbara. . galatea. l. =florence.= pitti, . st. sebastian. =hamburg.= consul weber, . old man and young woman. . =london.= mr. doetsch, portrait of young man. l. =naples.= sala degli olandesi e tedeschi, . bust of a cardinal. =treviso.= s. niccolÒ, frescoes around tomb of onigo. piazza del duomo, frescoes on façade. =venice.= lady layard, a falcon. frari, d chapel l. of choir, decorative frescoes. =vienna.= . portrait of young man. =weimar.= head of christ. bartolommeo veneto. active - . pupil of gentile bellini; influenced by bergamask and milanese painters. =belluno.= . madonna. =bergamo.= carrara, . landscape. e. lochis, . madonna, . =brussels.= m. lÉon somzÉe, bust of a venetian noble. =douai.= . portrait of young man. =dresden.= . salome. =florence.= uffizi, . portrait of a man, . =frankfort.= . portrait of a courtesan. . st. catherine. =genoa.= prince giorgio doria, portrait of a lady. glasgow. . st. catherine crowned. london. . portrait of ludovico martinengo, . mr. benson, madonna and angels. e. dorchester house, portrait of man, . =milan.= ambrosiana, . madonna. portrait of man in black. borromeo, st. catherine. duke melzi, jewess breaking her wedding ring. =nancy.= portrait of young man. =paris.= . portrait of lady. =rome.= corsini, . portrait of young man. doria, . the saviour. =venice.= palazzo ducale, chapel, madonna. =verona.= madonna. e. marco basaiti. circa - . pupil of alvise vivarini; follower of bellini. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, bust of boy. =bergamo.= carrara, . the saviour, . lochis, . portrait of man. morelli, portrait of man, . frizzoni-salis, madonna with ss. monica and francis. =berlin.= . pietà. e. . altar-piece. . st. sebastian. . madonna. e. herr von beckerath, st. jerome. herr kaufmann, st. jerome. =boston, u. s. a.= . entombment. e. =buda-pesth.= . st. catherine reading. st. jerome. =london.= . st. jerome. . madonna. mr. benson, st. jerome beside a pool, . portrait of man. madonna and saints. infant bacchus. mr. c. butler, dead christ. mr. salting, madonna. e. sir michael shaw-stewart, madonna. =meiningen.= ducal palace, st. antony abbot. st. paul. l. =milan.= ambrosiana, . resurrected christ. =munich.= . madonna, saints, and donor. e. =murano.= s. pietro, assumption of virgin. =padua.= sala emo, . portrait of man . madonna with ss. liberale and peter. =paris.= m. martin le roy, st. sebastian. =rome.= doria, . st. sebastian. =strassburg.= st. jerome. =stuttgart.= . madonna. . madonna with female saint. =venice.= academy, . st. james and st. antony abbot. . dead christ. st. george and dragon, . . christ in the garden . . st. jerome. . calling of children of zebedee, . museo corker, sala ix, . madonna and donor. . christ and angels. giovanelli, st. jerome in desert. s. pietro in castello, st. peter enthroned and four other saints. salute, st. sebastian. =vienna.= . calling of children of zebedee, . harrach collection, madonna. jacopo bassano. - . pupil of bonifazio veronese. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, portrait of an admiral. portrait of youth. =augsburg.= . madonna with ss. john and roch. =bassano.= . susanna and elders. e. . christ and adulteress. e. . the three holy children. e. . madonna, ss. lucy and francis, and donor. e. . flight into egypt. e. . st. john the baptist. . paradise. . baptism of st. lucilla. . adoration of shepherds. . st. martin and the beggar. . st. roch recommending donor to virgin. . st. john the evangelist adored by a warrior. . descent of holy spirit. . madonna in glory, ss. lucy and agatha. l. . last supper. duomo, st. lucy in glory, and martyrdom of stephen. l. nativity. s. giovanni, madonna in glory, ss. giustina, barbara, and mark. s. m. delle grazie, crucifixion (fresco). =bergamo.= carrara, . male portrait. lochis, . portrait of lawyer. . portrait of a painter. frizzoni-salis, madonna. portrait of old man. signor baglioni, portrait of old man. casa suardi, st. jerome in desert. =berlin.= herr kaufmann, bust of senator. herr wesendonck, animals going into ark. =biel, n. b.= mrs. hamilton ogilvie, dives and lazarus. nativity. l. =bologna.= corridor iv, two male busts. =brussels.= . old man seated. =buda-pesth.= . head of st. jerome. =chatsworth.= duke of devonshire, portrait of niccolò cappello. =cittadella.= duomo, christ at emaus. e. =dijon.= . agony in garden. . st. sebastian. =dresden.= . israelites in desert. . moses striking rock. . conversion of paul. =edinburgh.= . portrait of man. . adoration of magi. e. =feltre.= vescovado, portrait of old man. =florence.= uffizi, . two hunting dogs. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, bust of old man. senator seated. st. john in landscape. =hampton court.= . head of old man. . male portrait. . jacob's journey. . boaz and ruth. . shepherds' offering. e. . christ in the house of the pharisee. . assumption of virgin. . men fighting bears. . tribute money. =hopetoun house, n. b.= lord hopetoun, portrait of a doge seated. =linlathen, n. b.= col. erskine, agony in garden. =london.= . portrait of man. . christ and the money changers. . the good samaritan. mr. benson, st. john in the wilderness. christ in house of levi. portrait of woman. mr. g. donaldson, portrait of man aged , . =milan.= ambrosiana, . annunciation to shepherds. l. . adoration of shepherds. e. =modena.= . st. paul and another saint. =montpellier.= . old man in armour. =munich.= . old man, son, and grandson. . st. jerome in desert. . deposition from cross. . madonna enthroned and two saints. lotzbeck collection, . portrait of lady. =padua.= s. maria in vanzo, entombment. =paris.= , vintage. l. . portrait of giovanni da bologna. . portrait of old man. =rome.= villa borghese, . last supper. . the trinity. corsini, . portrait of lady. countess santa fiora, nativity. =rossie priory, n. b.= lord kinnaird, annunciation. =tours.= . bust of old man. =venice.= academy, . christ in garden. . portrait of a venetian noble. . st. eleuterius blessing the faithful. palazzo ducale, anti-collegio. jacob's journey. palazzo reale, st. jerome, . s. giacomo dall' orio, madonna in glory and two saints. =verona.= . portrait of a senator. =vicenza.= sala v, madonna and saints. e. entrance hall, . madonna, st. mark, and two senators. palazzo loschi, night scene. =vienna.= . the good samaritan. . thamar led to the stake. . adoration of magi. . rich man and lazarus. . the lord shows abraham the promised land. . the sower. . a hunt. . way to golgotha. . noah entering the ark. . christ and the money changers. . after the flood. . ss. sebastian, florian, and roch. . adoration of magi. . portrait of procurator. . portrait of senator. . christ bearing cross. . two men. . portrait of young man. . portrait of young man. academy, . portrait of procurator. =woburn abbey.= . portrait of venetian senator. francesco beccaruzzi. active in the second and third quarter of the xvi century. pupil of pordenone; imitator of all his great venetian contemporaries; finally, imitator of paul veronese. =belluno.= . woman in white dress. =bergamo.= lochis, . portrait of young woman. =berlin.= herr kaufmann, portrait of gentleman. herr wesendonck, . santa conversazione. =boston, u. s. a.= . copy of a (lost) paris bordone: holy family and saints. =buda-pesth.= . bust of woman. . madonna. . young woman seated. =cambridge.= fitzwilliam museum, . adoration of shepherds. =conegliano.= duomo, r. wall, three saints. e. s. m. delle grazie, high altar, madonna and saints. s. rocco, organ picture, madonna and saints. l. =dresden.= . calling of matthew. =ferrara.= sala ii. christ and the adulteress. =florence.= uffizi, . portrait of man. =glasgow.= . madonna enthroned with saints and angels. =haigh hall= (near wigan). lord crawford, bust of woman. =hopetoun house, n. b.= lord hopetoun, gentleman with horse and groom. =lille.= . stoning of stephen(?) . legend of moses. =linlathen, n. b.= col. erskine, bust of man. santa conversazione. =london.= burlington house, diploma gallery, temperance. apsley house, portrait of lady. mr. c. butler, portrait of man. st. george and the dragon. sir william farrer, santa conversazione. dorchester house, portrait of doge andrea gritti. viscount powerscourt, portrait of "politian." lord northbrook, santa conversazione. mr. g. salting, portrait of man. =keir, n. b.= mr. archibald stirling, young woman playing organ. =milan.= museo civico, . portrait of man with spaniel. =narbonne.= . marriage of st. catherine. =oldenburg.= . dead christ. =padua.= . santa conversazione. . bust of monk in white. =parma.= . portrait of man. =rome.= colonna, . a cavalier. doria, . portrait of woman. . man with flower. =serravalle.= s. antonio, baptism. =strassburg.= scene taken from lotto's crucifixion at monte san giusto. =stuttgart.= . bust of man. =toulouse.= holy family and infant john presenting dove. =treviso.= monte di pietÀ, dead christ. prophets. eredi perazzolo, way to golgotha. s. lucia, sacristy, st. lucy. =venice.= academy, . st. francis receiving stigmata. . deposition. correr, portrait of "cesare borgia." manfrin gallery. santa conversazione and donor. quirini-stampalia, . santa conversazione. palazzo reale, madonna and st. catherine. =venice= (_con_.). giovanelli, . st. roch. s. m. dell' orto, ss. lawence, helen, gregory, dominic, and lorenzo giustiniani. =vienna.= . portrait of lady. . a warrior. . the baptist. . thaddeus. academy, . st. lawrence. . nativity. . deposition. . st. paul. gentile bellini. - . pupil of his father, jacopo bellini; influenced by the paduans. =buda-pesth.= . portrait of catherine cornaro. =frankfort a/m.= . bust of st. mark. e. =london.= . st. peter martyr. . portrait of mathematician. . head of a monk. mr. ludwig mond, madonna enthroned. e. =milan.= brera, . preaching of st. mark. l. (finished by giovanni bellini.) =monopoli.= duomo, st. jerome and donor (?). e. =venice.= academy, . beato lorenzo giustiniani, . . miracle of true cross, . . corpus christi procession, . . healing accomplished by fragment of true cross. l. museo correr, portrait of doge giovanni mocenigo. san marco fabbriceria, organ shutters, ss. theodore and mark, ss. jerome and francis. e. lady layard, adoration of magi. portrait of sultan mohamet, . giovanni bellini. (?)- . pupil of his father, jacopo; formed in padua under the influence of donatello. =bergamo.= lochis, . madonna. e. morelli, . madonna. . madonna. =berlin.= . pietà. l. . dead christ. =florence.= uffizi, . allegory of tree of life. l. =london.= . portrait of loredano. l. . madonna. l. . agony in garden. e. . blood of redeemer. e. mr. ludwig mond, dead christ. madonna. =milan.= brera, . pietà. e. . madonna. . madonna, . dr. gust. frizzoni, madonna. e. =murano.= s. pietro, madonna with ss. mark and augustin and doge barbarigo, . =naples.= sala grande, . transfiguration. =newport, u. s. a.= mr. t. h. davis, madonna. e. =pesaro.= . crucifixion (?). e. . god the father. s. francesco, altar-piece in many parts. =rimini.= dead christ. e. =turin.= . madonna. e. =venice.= academy, . madonna. . madonna. . five small allegories. l. . madonna with st. catherine and magdalen. . madonna with ss. paul and george. . madonna. . madonna with six saints. museo correr, sala vii, . transfiguration. e. sala ix, . dead christ. e. . crucifixion. e. . dead christ supported by three angels. e. palazzo ducale, sala di trÈ, pietà. e. frari, triptych, madonna and saints, . s. francesco della vigna, madonna and four saints, . s. giovanni crisostomo, ss. jerome, augustin, and christopher, . s. maria dell' orto, madonna. e. s. zaccaria, madonna and four saints, . =verona.= . madonna. e. =vicenza.= s. corona, baptism, . jacopo bellini. active - . pupil of the umbrian painter, gentile da fabriano, and of the veronese, pisanello. =brescia.= s. alessandro, annunciation, with five predelle. =ferrara.= sig. vendeghini, adoration of magi. =london.= british museum, sketch-book. e. =lovere.= tadini, madonna. =padua.= sala iv, christ in limbo. =paris.= sketch-book. l. =venice.= academy, . madonna. museo correr, sala ix, . crucifixion. s. trovaso, s. giovanni crisogono on horseback. (?) =verona.= . christ on cross. bissolo. - . pupil and assistant of giovanni bellini. =berlin.= . altar-piece. l. =brescia.= tosio, sala xiv, . madonna and saints. e. =chantilly.= madonna. =düsseldorf.= . madonna with infant john and his parents. =genoa.= annunziata, madonna and four saints. =hampton court.= . portrait of man. e. =london.= mr. benson, annunciation. madonna. mr. mond, madonna with ss. paul and catherine. =milan.= brera, . st. stephen. . st. antony of padua. . a bishop. =rome.= villa borghese, . madonna. e. =treviso.= duomo, three saints and donor. s. andrea, madonna and two saints. =venice.= academy, . dead christ. . presentation in the temple. . christ crowning s. catherine. . madonna with ss. james and job. museo correr, sala ix, . madonna with st. peter martyr. s. giovanni in bragora, triptych. s. maria mater domini, transfiguration. redentore, madonna with ss. john and catherine. lady layard, madonna with ss. michael and ursula and donors. =verona.= circumcision. e. =vienna.= . lady at toilet, . . baptism. bonifazio veronese. active circa - . pupil of palma vecchio; influenced by giorgione. =bergamo.= carrara, , . small mythological scenes. frizzoni-salis, parable of sower. =boston, u. s. a.= mrs. j. l. gardner, santa conversazione. e. =campo s. piero.= oratory of s. antonio, preaching of st. antony (in part). =dresden.= . finding of moses. =florence.= pitti, . madonna, st. elizabeth, and donor. e. . rest in flight. . finding of moses. . christ among the doctors (in part). =hague.= . bust of woman. =hampton court.= . santa conversazione. =lille.= . esther before ahasuerus. =london.= . santa conversazione. e. mr. benson, allegories of morning, and of night (in part). mr. butler, santa conversazione. rape of helen. subject from a romance. mr. charles t. d. crews, birth of john. dr. richter, joseph drawn out of the well. head of pompey brought to cæsar. =milan.= brera, . finding of moses. ambrosiana, . holy family with tobias and angel. e. poldi-pezzoli, pinacoteca, . doctor visiting a patient. =paris.= . santa conversazione. =rome.= villa borghese, . mother of zebedee's children. . return of the prodigal son. colonna, . holy family with ss. jerome and lucy. doria, . santa conversazione. prince chigi, finding of moses. =venice.= academy, . rich man's feast. . massacre of innocents. . judgment of solomon, (in part). palazzo reale, madonna with ss. catherine and john the almsgiver, . giovanelli, santa conversazione. lady layard, twelve very small pictures: rustic occupations. =vienna.= . santa conversazione. . triumph of love. . triumph of chastity. . salome. francesco bonsignori. (?)- . pupil of bartolommeo and alvise vivarini; influenced by giovanni bellini, and later by mantegna and his own townsman, liberale of verona. =bergamo.= lochis, . portrait of a gonzaga. morelli, . the widow's son. l. =berlin.= c. st. sebastian. =florence.= bargello, christ bearing cross. l. =fonthill (wilts).= mr. alfred morrison, portrait of man. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, madonna enthroned. =london.= . portrait of man, . =mantua.= accademia virgiliana, way to golgotha. vision of the nun osanna. =milan.= brera, . st. bernardino. . ss. bernardino and louis holding the initials of christ. poldi-pezzoli, head of a female saint. st. bernardino. profile of old man. bust of venetian noble. =paris.= prince sciarra, bust of a gonzaga. =venice.= palazzo ducale, directors' room. madonna. e. s. giovanni e paolo, d altar r. altar-piece in parts. e. =verona.= . madonna, . . madonna enthroned with four saints, . s. bernardino, madonna enthroned with ss. jerome and george, . s. nazzaro e celso, madonna and saints, finished by girolamo dai libri. s. paolo, madonna with st. antony abbot and the magdalen. e. paris bordone. - . pupil and follower of titian; influenced later by michelangelo. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, apollo and the muses. =bergamo.= lochis, , . vintage scenes. =berlin.= . chess players. . madonna and four saints. =chatsworth.= duke of devonshire, family group. =cologne.= a.a. bathsheba. =dresden.= . apollo and marsyas. . diana as huntress. . holy family and st. jerome. =edinburgh.= . lady at her toilet. =florence.= pitti, . portrait of woman. uffizi, . portrait of young man. =genoa.= brignole-sale, sala v. portrait of man. sala viii, santa conversazione. portrait of man. =glasgow.= . holy family. . holy family. e. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, a courtesan. =hampton court.= . madonna with male and female donors. =keir, n. b.= mr. archibald stirling, madonna and infant john. =london.= . daphnis and chloe. . portrait of lady. bridgewater house, holy family. lord brownlow, cavalier in armour. the misses cohen, portrait of a lady seated. mr. g. donaldson, a courtesan. dr. richter, christ among the doctors. lord rosebery, portrait of a lady. =lovere.= tadini, madonna with ss. george and christopher. =milan.= brera, . baptism. . descent of holy spirit. . s. dominic presented to saviour by virgin. . madonna and saints. bis. three heads. st. ambrose presenting a general to virgin. signor crespi, jove and a nymph. s. maria presso celso, madonna and st. jerome. =munich.= . man counting jewels. =new york, u. s. a.= historical society, . rest in flight. =padua.= sala emo, . christ taking leave of his mother. =paris.= . portrait of man. . portrait of man, . =richmond.= sir f. cook, hunting piece. =rome.= villa borghese, . jupiter and antiope. colonna, . holy family with st. jerome. . holy family, ss. sebastian, and jerome. doria, . venus and mars. vatican, ante-chamber of pope's apartments, st. george and the dragon. =siena.= sala ix, . annunciation. . madonna and donor. =strassburg.= madonna and st. jerome. =treviso.= . madonna with ss. jerome and john the baptist. duomo, adoration of shepherds. madonna with ss. sebastian and jerome. gospel scenes (on a small picture). =venice.= academy, . fisherman and doge. e. . paradise. palazzo ducale, chapel, dead christ. giovanelli, madonna and saints. lady layard, christ baptising a youth in prison. s. giovanni in bragora, last supper. s. giobbe, s. andrew and two other saints. =vienna.= . allegory. . allegory. . lady at toilet. . young woman. czernin, venetian adoring cross. antonio canale called canaletto. - . =biel, n. b.= mrs. hamilton ogilvie, view of scalzi. =buda-pesth.= . the pantheon. =dresden.= . the grand canal. . s. giovanni e paolo. . campo s. giacomo di rialto. . piazza di s. marco. =florence.= uffizi, . the piazzetta. =frankfort a/m.= . entrance to grand canal. . venetian palace and bridge. =hampton court.= the colosseum, . =hopetoun house, n. b.= lord hopetoun, venice from lagoon. =london.= . scuola della carità. . scuola di san rocco. the misses cohen, three studies. dorchester house, view of piazzetta from lagoon. hertford house, thirteen views of venice. mr. mond, two views of the piazza. dr. richter, the dogana. duke of westminster, grand canal. =milan.= casa sormani, the bucentaur. reception of an ambassador. =new battle, n. b.= marquis of lothian, st. paul's from the thames. s. giorgio maggiore. =paris.= . the salute. mme. andrÉ, two views of venice. m. maurice kann, salute. pescheria. =vienna.= lichtenstein, , , , , , , , , , , , , . views of venice. =windsor castle.= series of large views of the piazza. =woburn abbey.= twenty-four views of venice. domenico caprioli. active -circa . influenced by titian, paris bordone, pordenone, bonifazio, savoldo, and moretto. =berlin.= . portrait of man in black. . tennis player and page. l. . st. sebastian. =brighton.= mr. h. willett, madonna of mercy. =cambridge, u. s. a.= prof. c. e. norton, portrait of domenico grimani. =castle barnard.= bowes museum, . portrait of man, . =dijon.= . assumption. =london.= lord ashburnham, portrait of titian. l. mr. r. benson, madonna in profile (?). e. duke of grafton, portrait of man. . =motta di livenza.= s. m. dei miracoli, adoration of shepherds. =naples.= museo filangieri, . entombment. l. =new battle, n. b.= marquis of lothian, return of prodigal. =paris.= mme. c. de rosenberg, portrait of doge grimani. =rome.= borghese, , . caricatured heads. colonna, . portrait of sciarra colonna. =treviso.= . nativity. . =vienna.= . young hero. academy, . picnic. . country dance. =windsor.= portrait of domenico grimani. giovanni busi, called cariani. circa - . pupil of giovanni bellini and palma; influenced by giorgione and capaccio. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, bust of bart. colleoni. =basel.= . bust of young man. =bergamo.= carrara, . madonna with ss. helen, constantine, and other saints. l. . portrait of lady. . bust of man. lochis, . portrait of lady. . christ on cross, bust of donor, . . woman playing, and shepherd asleep. . st. antony of padua. e. . portrait of monk. . portrait of man. . christ bearing cross. e. . portrait of bened. caravaggio. . st. stephen. . small st. jerome. . st. catherine. morelli, madonna. l. portrait of man. duomo, back of high altar, madonna. e. baglioni, madonna and donor, . signor frizzoni-salis, madonna and saints. l. piccinelli, flight into egypt. l. roncalli, family group, . count suardi, st. jerome. portrait of senator. =berlin.= . girl in landscape. . portrait of man. =buda-pesth.= . madonna and st. francis. =chatsworth.= duke of devonshire, portrait of young man. =glasgow.= . christ and the adulteress. =hampton court.= . adoration of shepherds. l. venus. l. =london.= . death of st. peter martyr. l. . madonna and saints. l. south kensington, venus and mars (lent). mr. benson, madonna and donors. portrait of man wearing sword. mr. doetsch, nativity, dorchester house, portrait of man. marquis of lansdowne, a concert. mr. salting, portrait of senator. =marseilles.= st. sebastian with st. roch and a female saint. =milan.= brera, . madonna and saints. l. . madonna. l. museo civico, . lot and his daughters. collection dell' acqua, portrait of a lady. ambrosiana, way to golgotha. borromeo, nativity. st. jerome. poldi-pezzoli, . madonna and saints. bonomi-cereda, portrait of man. magdalen. =munich.= . portrait of man. lotzbeck collection, . portrait of man. =new york, u. s. a.= historical society, . portrait of man. =oldenburg.= . holy family and saints. . two women and a man. =paris.= . madonna, saints, and donor. e. . two men. . holy family with ss. sebastian and catherine. m. aynard, portrait of man. =rome.= villa borghese, . sleeping venus. . madonna and st. peter. . woman with three men. corsini. santa conversazione. vatican. bust of doge. =st. petersburg.= . young woman and old man. =strassburg.= . young man playing guitar. portrait of old venetian. =stuttgart.= . portrait of a lady. =venice.= academy, . portrait of man, . . holy family. . portrait of man. . bust of old woman. =vicenza.= sala. ii, . madonna and saints. =vienna.= . st. sebastian. . christ bearing cross. . the "bravo." . st. john evangelist. academy, . madonna with ss. john and catherine. =zogno.= church, adoration of shepherds. vittore carpaccio. active - . pupil and follower of gentile bellini. =berlin.= . madonna with ss. catherine and jerome. e. . consecration of stephen, . =caen.= . santa conversazione (in part). l. =ferrara.= sala viii, . death of the virgin, . =florence.= uffizi, _bis._ fragment, finding of true cross. =frankfort a/m.= . madonna and infant john. =haigh hall= (near wigan). lord crawford, portrait of lady. =london.= . madonna with ss. john and christopher, and doge giovanni mocenigo, . mr. benson, female saint reading. =milan.= brera, . stephen disputing, . . presentation of virgin (in part). l. . marriage of virgin (in part). l. =paris.= . stephen preaching. l. =stuttgart.= . glory of st. thomas, . . martyrdom of stephen, . =venice.= academy, . martyrdom of the , virgins, . . healing of madman in view of rialto, . , , , , ; , ; , , , ; , . story of st. ursula. . meeting of joachim and anna, . . presentation of infant christ, . museo correr, sala ix, . visitation. l. sala x, . two courtesans. palazzo ducale, sala di trÈ, lion of s. marco, . s. giorgio maggiore, sala del conclave, st. george and the dragon, with predelle, . s. giorgio degli schiavoni, ten pictures along walls of oratory on ground floor, and madonna over altar. st. george slaying dragon; st. george bringing dragon captive; st. george baptising the princess and her father, mdv...; story of st. tryphonius; agony in garden; christ in house of pharisee, ; st. jerome bringing his lion to monastery; burial of st. jerome, ; st. jerome in his study. s. vitale, st. vitale between ss. george and valeria, . lady layard, augustus and sibyl. l. death and assumption of virgin. l. st. ursula taking leave of her father. =vienna.= . christ adored by angels, . vincenzo catena. active - . pupil of the bellini; influenced by carpaccio and giorgione. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, nativity. =bergamo.= carrara, ii. christ at emaus. =berlin.= . portrait of fugger. l. . madonna, saints, and donor. e. . pietà. nazional galerie, raczynski collection. . madonna and saints. e. =boston, u. s. a.= mrs. j. l. gardner, christ giving keys to peter. =buda-pesth.= . madonna, saints, and donor. e. . bust of female saint. . holy family and female saint. e. =cologne.= e. madonna. =dresden.= . holy family. l. . madonna and two saints. e. =glasgow.= . madonna with st. catherine and the magdalen. =liverpool.= . madonna with four saints and donor. e. =london.= . warrior adoring infant christ. l. . st. jerome in his study. l. . bust of youth. . adoration of magi. l. . circumcision. lord ashburnham, madonna, two saints, and donor, . mr. benson, holy family. l. mr. beaumont, nativity. (?) mr. c. butler, christ at the well. l. mr. heseltine, madonna. mr. mond, madonna, saints, and donor. e. =modena.= . madonna and two saints. =nîmes.= . head of an apostle. =padua.= sala emo, . circumcision. e. =paris.= . reception of venetian ambassadors at cairo. mme. andrÉ, portrait of woman. m. lÉopold goldschmidt, bust of woman. m. salomon goldschmidt, circumcision. =rome.= doria, . circumcision. =venice.= palazzo ducale, sala di trÈ, madonna, two saints, and doge loredan. e. quirini-stampalia, sala iii, i. judith. l. giovanelli, madonna with john the baptist and female saint. e. s. maria mater domini, st. christina. s. simeon profeta, the trinity. e. s. trovaso, madonna. e. =vienna.= . portrait of a canon. giovanni battista cima. - circa. pupil of alvise vivarini; influenced by giovanni bellini. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, small holy family and saints. =bergamo.= morelli, . madonna. =berlin.= . madonna enthroned with four saints. . madonna and donor. . healing of anianus (in part). . madonna. =bologna.= . madonna. =boston, u. s. a.= mr. quincy shaw, madonna. e. =conegliano.= duomo, madonna and saints, . =dresden.= . the saviour. . presentation of virgin. =düsseldorf.= . madonna. coronation (in part). l. =frankfort a/m.= . madonna. . madonna and two saints. =london.= . madonna. . madonna. . incredulity of thomas, . . st. jerome. . ecce homo. (?) hertford house, st. catherine. mr. ludwig mond, two saints. mr. j. e. taylor, madonna with two saints (lunette). =milan.= brera, . ss. peter martyr, augustin, and nicholas of bari. . ss. jerome, nicholas of tolentino, ursula, and another female saint. . ss. luke, mary, john the baptist, and mark. . madonna. . st. peter between john the baptist and st. paul, . . st. jerome. . st. giustina and two other saints. poldi-pezzoli, head of female saint. =modena.= . pietà. =munich.= . madonna with mary magdalen and st. jerome. e. =olera.= church, polyptych. e. =parma.= . madonna with ss. cosmos and damian. . madonna with ss. michael and augustin. . endymion. . apollo and marsyas. =paris.= . madonna with john and magdalen. =richmond.= sir f. cook, madonna. =venice.= academy, . madonna with ss. john and paul. . pietà. . madonna. . christ, thomas, and magnus. . madonna with six saints. . tobias and angel, ss. james and nicholas. seminario, god, the father (small lunette). carmine, adoration of shepherds. s. giovanni in bragora, baptism, . ss. helen and constantine. three predelle with story of finding of true cross. s. giovanni e paolo, coronation of the virgin. s. maria dell' orto, st. john between ss. paul, jerome, mark, and peter. lady layard, madonna with ss. francis and paul. madonna with ss. nicholas of bari and john the baptist. =vicenza.= sala iv, . madonna with ss. jerome and john, . =vienna.= . madonna with ss. jerome and louis. carlo crivelli. b. - ; d. after . pupil of the first vivarini; influenced by the paduans. =ancona.= . madonna. e. =ascoli.= duomo, altar-piece, with pietà, . =bergamo.= lochis, . madonna. =berlin.= . the magdalen. a. madonna, st. peter and six other saints. =brussels.= . madonna. . st. francis. =buda-pesth.= madonna. =florence.= panciatichi, . pietà, . =frankfort a/m.= , . annunciation. =london.= . pietà. . the blessed ferretti in ecstasy. . madonna with ss. sebastian and jerome. . annunciation, . . altar-piece in thirteen compartments, . . madonna with ss. sebastian and francis, . . madonna in ecstasy, . . ss. catherine and magdalen. lady ashburton, st. dominic. st. george. mr. benson, madonna, . mr. r. crawshay, pietà. hertford house, st. roch. mr. mond, ss. peter and paul. lord northbrook, madonna. e. resurrection. e. ss. bernardino and catherine. mr. stuart m. samuel, st. george and the dragon. south kensington, jones collection, . madonna. =macerata.= . madonna, . =massa fermana.= municipio, altar-piece, . =milan.= brera, . crucifixion. . madonna. l. . madonna and saints, . . ss. james, bernardino, and pellegrino. . ss. antony abbot, jerome, and andrew. galleria oggiono, coronation of virgin, with john, catherine, francis, augustin, and other saints (in great part). above, a pietà, . museo civico, collection dell' acqua, st. john. st. bartholomew. poldi-pezzoli, sala dorata, . st. francis adoring christ. pinacoteca, . st. sebastian. =paris.= . st. bernardino, . =pausula.= s. agostino, madonna. =richmond.= sir f. cook, madonna. e. =rome.= lateran, madonna, . vatican, pietà. =strassburg.= adoration of shepherds. =venice.= academy, . ss. jerome and augustin. ss. peter and paul. =verona.= . madonna. e. giorgione. - . pupil of giovanni bellini; influenced by carpaccio. =berlin.= a. portrait of man. e. =buda-pesth.= . portrait of antonio brocardo. =castelfranco.= duomo, madonna with ss. francis and liberale. e. =dresden.= . sleeping venus. =florence.= uffizi, . trial of moses. e. . knight of malta. . judgment of solomon. e. =hampton court.= . shepherd with pipe. =madrid.= madonna with ss. roch and antony of padua. =paris.= . fête champêtre. =rome.= villa borghese, . portrait of a lady. =venice.= academy, . storm calmed by st. mark. l. finished, in small part, by paris bordone. seminario, apollo and daphne. giovanelli, gipsy and soldier. s. rocco, christ bearing cross. =vicenza.= casa loschi, christ bearing cross. e. =vienna.= . evander showing Æneas the site of rome. guardi. - . pupil of canaletto. =albi.= . view of salute and giudecca. =amiens.= , , . views. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, scuola di san marco. =bassano.= sala del cavallo, . the piazza. =bergamo.= lochis, - , - . landscapes and views. signor baglioni, two venetian views. count moroni, villa by the sea. =berlin.= a. grand canal. b. lagoon. ^{c & d}. cemetery island. =biel, n. b.= mrs. hamilton ogilvie, salute. redentore. =boston, u. s. a.= mrs. j. l. gardner, large view of venice. =brighton.= mr. constantine iondes, piazza in mist. =brussels.= . scene in st. mark's. =buda-pesth.= - . views of venice. =cambridge.= fitzwilliam museum, four small views. =edinburgh.= , . landscapes. =glasgow.= , . views of venice. =hamburg.= consul weber, . ruins. . rialto. =london.= , . views in venice. south kensington, jones collection, . view near venice. the misses cohen, three studies. dorchester house, view from piazzetta. sir wm. farrer, view near venice. sir a. wollaston franks, an island. sir julian goldschmid, boat race. hertford house, nine views of venice. lord houghton, view of riva. mr. mond, pius vi holding a reception. dr. richter, cannareggio. mr. salting, the rialto. view near venice. gothic ruins. classic ruins. mrs. anderson weston, grand canal. =milan.= museo civico, , - . landscapes. poldi-pezzoli, . piazetta. . dogana. , . tiny landscapes. signor bertini, view of lagoon. prince trivulzio, two small landscapes. =modena.= . piazzetta. . s. giorgio. =montpellier.= . storm on canal. =naples.= museo filangieri, court of doge's palace. =new york, u. s. a.= metropolitan museum. . salute. . rialte. =oxford.= taylorian museum, , . views in venice. =padua.= , . views in venice. . hunting scene. =paris.= . procession of doge to s. zaccaria. . embarkment in bucentaur. . festival at salute. . "jeudi gras à venise." . corpus christi. . sala di collegio. . coronation of doge. =paris= (_con_.). mme. andrÉ, two views of venice. m. lÉopold goldschmidt, dogana. piazzetta. =richmond.= sir f. cook, the piazza. =rome.= colonna, . venetian church. don marcello massarenti, doge's palace. =rouen.= . a villa. =strassburg.= . the rialto. =toulouse.= . rialto. e. . bucentaur. e. =turin.= _bis._ cottage. . staircase. . bridge over canal. =venice.= museo correr, sala x, . the ridotto. . parlour of convent of s. zaccaria. =verona.= , . landscapes. bernardino licinio. active - . pupil of pordenone; influenced by giorgione, palma, and bonifazio. =alnwick.= duke of northumberland, family group. =balcarres, n. b.= lord crawford, portrait of man. . =bergamo.= lochis, . portrait of a lady. signor piccinelli, madonna and saints. =berlin.= . portrait of young woman. =boston, u. s. a.= mr. quincy shaw, madonna and two saints. =brescia.= martinengo, sala c, . portrait of a young man, . duomo vecchio, christ bearing cross. adoration of shepherds. =brighton.= mr. h. willett, board of a harpsichord. =buda-pesth.= . portrait of lady. herr rath, portrait of lady. =cambridge, u. s. a.= prof. c. e. norton, portrait of young man. =dresden.= . portrait of a lady, . =florence.= uffizi, . madonna with st. francis. . portrait of man. =genoa.= brignole-sale, sala vii, portrait of francesco philetus. =hampton court.= . lady playing on virginals. . family group, . =london.= portrait of a young man. lady ashburton, young man with his hand on a skull. mr. c. butler, portrait of lady, . mr. doetsch, barbara kressin, . dorchester house, portrait of man. adoration of shepherds. =lucca.= sala i, . santa conversazione. =milan.= museo civico, . portrait of lady. archbishop's palace, holy family. signor crespi, santa conversazione. casa scotti, holy family with two shepherds. madonna, three saints, male and female donors. =modena.= . portrait of a lady. =munich.= . portrait of man, . =münster in w.= . bust of man, . =padua.= sala romanino, . portrait of young man. =rome.= villa borghese, . family group. . santa conversazione. miss hertz, head of ceres. =rossie priory, n. b.= lord kinnaird, portrait of lady. =rovigo.= . st. margaret between ss. catherine and lucy. . portrait of a scholar. =saletto.= church, st. silvester between s. antony of padua and giustina, . =venice.= . portrait of woman. . group of putti. . portrait of young woman. lady layard, santa conversazione. frari, madonna enthroned with saints. the predella contains five friars. =vienna.= . portrait of ottaviano grimani, . harrach collection, madonna and female donor. pietro longhi. - . follower of the bolognese painter, crespi. =bergamo.= lochis, . gambling scene. . coffee scene. morelli, . portrait of girl. sig. baglioni, country party. =cambridge, u. s. a.= prof. c. e. norton. portrait of senator. =dresden.= . portrait of lady. =florence.= mr. loeser, milliner scene. =hampton court.= , . genre pictures, . =keir, n. b.= mr. arch. stirling, lady sitting for portrait. =london.= , . genre pictures. . andrea tron. mr. f. cavendish-bentinck, visit to nuns. mr. arthur james, four genre pictures. mr. mond, card party. portrait of a lady. dr. richter, card party. lady at toilet. =milan.= signor crespi, portrait of man. =modena.= . a letter writer. =venice.= academy, - . genre pictures. museo correr, sala x, , , - . scenes of venetian life. . boys on horseback. portrait of goldoni. palazzo grassi, staircase, frescoes: seven scenes of fashionable life. quirini-stampalia, sala x, . portrait of daniele dolfino. sala xiii, - . the seven sacraments. . temptation of st. antony. . gambling scene. . a circus. . monks and canons. . study of geography. , . portraits of ladies. lorenzo lotto. - . pupil of alvise vivarini; influenced by giovanni bellini and giorgione. =alzano maggiore= (near bergamo). duomo, assassination of st. peter martyr. =ancona.= . assumption of virgin, . . madonna with four saints. l. =asolo.= madonna in glory with two saints, . =bergamo.= carrara, three predelle belonging to s. bartolommeo altar-piece. . marriage of s. catherine, with portrait of n. bonghi, . portrait of a lady. lochis, , , . sketches for predelle, containing the story of s. stephen. . holy family and s. catherine, . s. alessandro in colonna, pietà. s. alessandro in croce, trinity. s. bartolommeo, altar-piece, . s. bernardino, altar-piece, . s. maria maggiore, intarsias, - . s. michele, frescoes in chapel l. of choir. s. spirito, altar-piece, . signor piccinelli, madonna with ss. sebastian and roch. =berlin.= . portrait of an architect. , . portraits of young men. . ss. sebastian and christopher, . . christ taking leave of his mother, . =brescia.= tosio, sala xiii, . nativity. =buda-pesth.= angel with globe and sceptre (originally top of s. bartolommeo altar-piece at bergamo). =celana= (near bergamo). church, assumption of virgin, . =cingoli= (province of macerata). s. domenico, madonna with six saints, and fifteen small scenes from the lives of christ and the virgin, . =costa di mezzate= (near bergamo). marriage of st. catherine, . =dresden.= . madonna, . =florence.= uffizi, . holy family with st. jerome, . =hamburg.= consul weber, . st. jerome. =hampton court.= . portrait of young man. e. . portrait of andrea odoni, . =hermannstadt.= st. jerome. =jesi.=[ ] municipio, three predelle containing story of st. lucy. library, pietà, . annunciation. st. lucy before the judge. madonna and saints, francis receiving stigmata (lunette) . visitation, annunciation (lunette) . [note : all the lottos at jesi are presently to be transported to the palazzo della signoria.] =london.= . portraits of agostino and niccolò della torre, . . family group. . portrait of prothonotary giuliano. bridgewater house, madonna and saints. e. dorchester house, portrait of a lady. mrs. martin colnaghi, madonna with ss. jerome and antony of padua, . sir w. m. conway, danaë. e. =loreto.= palazzo apostolico, . ss. christopher, sebastian, and roch. . christ and adulteress. . nativity. , . ss. lucy and thecla. , . two prophets. l. . michael driving lucifer from heaven. l. . presentation in temple. l. . baptism. l. . adoration of magi. l. . sacrifice of melchisedec. l. =madrid.= . bridal couple, . . st. jerome. =milan.= brera, . pietà, . . portrait of lady. . portrait of old man. . portrait of man. all l. gal. oggioni, . assumption of virgin. e. . portrait of man. poldi-pezzoli, pinacoteca, . holy family. museo civico, . portrait of young man. borromeo, christ on cross with symbols of the passion. dr. frizzoni, st. catherine. =monte s. giusto= (near macerata). church, crucifixion, . =munich.= . marriage of st. catherine. e. =nancy.= head of a man. l. =naples.= sala veneta, . madonna with st. peter martyr. e. bust of man in white cap and coat (?). e. =osimo.= municipio, madonna and angels. =paris.= . christ and adulteress. . st. jerome, . . nativity. =ponteranica= (near bergamo). church, altar-piece in six panels. =recanati.= municipio, altar-piece in six parts, . transfiguration. e. s. domenico, fresco: s. vincent in glory. s. maria sopra mercanti, annunciation. =rome.= borghese, . madonna with s. onofrio and a bishop, . . portrait of man. capitol, . portrait of man. doria, . st. jerome. rospigliosi, allegory. prince doria, portrait of man. =sedrina= (near bergamo). church, madonna in glory and four saints, . =st. petersburg.= leuchtenberg collection, st. catherine, . =trescorre.= suardi chapel, frescoes, . =treviso.= sala sernagiotto, . portrait of monk, . s. cristina, altar-piece, dead christ (lunette). e. =venice.= carmine, s. nicholas in glory, . s. giacomo dall' orio, madonna and saints, . s. giovanni e paolo, s. antonino bestowing alms, . =vienna.= . santa conversazione. . portrait of man. . three views of a man. bartolommeo montagna. circa- . pupil of alvise vivarini; influenced by gentile bellini and the paduan sculptor bellano. =belluno.= . madonna. e. =bergamo.= lochis, . madonna with ss. roch and sebastian, . morelli, . st. jerome. frizzoni-salis, madonna. =berlin.= . madonna, saints, and donors, . =bremen.= kunsthalle, . head and hands of madonna from an annunciation. =certosa= (near pavia). madonna, ss. john, onofrio, and three angels. =london.= mr. c. butler, madonna. sir wm. farrer, madonna. e. two cassone tondi. l. mr. ludwig mond, madonna with st. roch. e. sir b. samuelson, madonna adoring child. =milan.= brera, . madonna, four saints, and three angels, . poldi-pezzoli, st. jerome. st. paul. two tondi (on a cassone). dr. gust. frizzoni, st. jerome. =modena.= . madonna, . =padua.= bishop's palace, hall, frieze with busts of paduan bishops. s. maria in vanzo, madonna and four saints. scuola del santo, fresco . opening of st. anthony's tomb. =panshanger.= lord cowper, madonna. =paris.= . ecce homo. . three angels. =praglia= (near padua). refectory, fresco: crucifixion. =strassburg.= . holy family. =venice.= academy, . madonna, ss. sebastian and jerome. . christ between ss. roch and sebastian. lady layard, john the baptist between two other saints. =verona.= . two saints. s. nazzaro e celso, ss. nazzaro and celso. ss. john and benedict. pietà. ss. blaise and giuliana. frescoes: legend of st. blaise. all - . =vicenza.= sala v, . holy family. . madonna enthroned, four saints, three angels. e. . madonna with ss. monica and mary magdalen. . madonna. l. . madonna. l. . presentation in temple. . s. agnes. . madonna with ss. john the baptist and onofrio. . madonna. l. duomo, fresco: nativity. altar-piece, madonna with ss. catherine and margaret. frescoes: ss. margaret and catherine. s. corona, magdalen between four other saints. s. lorenzo, fresco in chapel l. of choir. monte berico, pietà, . fresco: pietà. palma vecchio. circa- . pupil of giovanni bellini; influenced by giorgione. =alnwick.= duke of northumberland, portrait of lady, (landscape by cariani.) =bergamo.= lochis, . madonna and two saints. l. =berlin.= a. head of young woman. e. b. bust of woman. . portrait of man. =brunswick.= adam and eve. e. =buda-pesth.= . madonna with st. francis, (finished by cariani.) =cambridge.= fitzwilliam museum, venus. l (in part). =dresden.= . madonna with john the baptist and st. catherine. . three sisters. . venus. . holy family with s. catherine. . meeting of jacob and rachel. l. =florence.= uffizi, . judith. l. =genoa.= brignole-sale, madonna with magdalen and john. l. =glasgow.= . holy family, (finished by cariani.) =hamburg.= consul weber, annunciation. =hampton court.= . santa conversazione. . head of woman. l. =london.= . portrait of man. mr. benson, santa conversazione and donor, (finished by cariani.) mr. wickham flower, santa conversazione, (finished by cariani.) mr. mond, bust of woman. l. =milan.= brera, . ss. helen, constantine, roch, and sebastian. . adoration of magi, l., (finished by cariani.) =modena.= marchese lotario rangoni, madonna and saints. =munich.= . madonna, ss. roch and mary magdalen. =naples.= sala grande, . santa conversazione, with male and female donors. =paris.= . adoration of shepherds and female donor. =peghera.= church, polyptych. =rome.= borghese, . lucrece. l. . madonna, francis, jerome, and donor. capitol, . christ and adulteress. colonna, . madonna, st. peter, and donor. =serina.= church, polyptych. =venice.= academy, . christ and adulteress. . st. peter enthroned and six other saints. . assumption of virgin. l. quirini-stampalia, sala iv, unfinished portrait of young woman. l. sala xvii, portrait of man. giovanelli, sposalizio. l. s. maria formosa, st. barbara, altar-piece. lady layard, knight and lady (a fragment). =vicenza.= s. stefano, madonna and saints. =vienna.= . john the baptist. . the visitation, (finished by cariani.) . santa conversazione. . portrait of lady. l. . violante. l. , , , , busts of women. e. portrait of old man. . lucretia. lichtenstein, santa conversazione. holy family and two female saints. l. sebastiano del piombo. circa- . pupil of giovanni bellini, cima, and giorgione; later, influenced by michelangelo. =alnwick.= duke of northumberland, visitation. =berlin.= . pietà. l. a. portrait of a knight. l. b. "dorothea." =broomhall, n. b.= lord elgin, portrait of roman lady. =buda-pesth.= portrait of raphael. =cracow.= prince czartoryski, portrait of (?) raphael. =florence.= uffizi, . "fornarina," . . death of adonis. pitti, . martyrdom of st. agatha, . . portrait of man. l. =linlathen, n. b.= col. erskine, portrait of cardinal nincofort. l. =london.= . resurrection of lazarus, . . portrait of lady. l. . holy family and donor. mr. benson, portrait of man. l. duke of grafton, carondelet and his secretaries. mr. ludwig mond, portrait of pietro aretino. =naples.= sala grande, . portrait of ecclesiastic. l. sala veneta, . head of clement vii. l. sala dei correggio, . holy family. l. =paris.= . visitation, . . st. john in desert. m. alphonse de rothschild, violin player. =parma.= . clement vii. and a chamberlain. l. =rome.= prince doria, portrait of andrea doria. l. sig. del nero, portrait of a prelate. farnesina, sala di galatea, frescoes in lunettes, . s. maria del popolo, birth of virgin. l. (in part.) s. pietro in montorio, frescoes first chapel right. =st. petersburg.= portrait of cardinal pole. l. =siena.= palazzo saracini, portrait of man. l. =treviso.= s. niccolÒ, incredulity of thomas. e. =venice.= academy, . visitation. (?) e. lady layard, pietà. e. s. bartolommeo in rialto, ss. bartholomew, louis, sinibald, and sebastian, on separate panels. e. s. giovanni crisostomo, st. john chrysostom enthroned, and other saints. e. =vienna.= . portrait of (?) cardinal giulio di medici. =viterbo.= pietà. l. . polidoro lanziani. (?)-- . imitator of titian; influenced by bonifazio and pordenone; later, by paul veronese. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, christ and the adulteress. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, madonna and kneeling jerome. madonna, st. elizabeth, and children. =bergamo.= morelli, . holy family. =berlin.= - . sporting cupids. . madonna and saints. nazional galerie, raczynski coll., . st. nicholas presenting children to the virgin. l. herr wesendonck, . portrait of young woman. . madonna and saints. =boston, u. s. a.= mrs. j. l. gardner, portrait of isabella d'este. =buda-pesth.= . holy family and st. catherine. . madonna and young bishop. =cambridge.= fitzwilliam museum, , . sante conversazioni. =cologne.= k. predelle: nativity, adoration, and circumcision. =dresden.= . madonna, magdalen, and venetian noble. . marriage of st. catherine. . madonna adoring child. . portrait of man. =edinburgh.= . holy family. =florence.= pitti, . holy family with st. catherine and the magdalen. , holy family. . presentation in temple. l. =glasgow.= . holy family with st. dorothy. =hampton court.= . diana and actæon. =langton, n. b.= (near duns). mrs. baillie-hamilton, adoration of magi. =lille.= . st. peter reading. =linlathen, n. b.= col. erskine, madonna and st. catherine. =london.= lord battersea, madonna and infant john. mr. r. benson, madonna with st. catherine and the archangel michael. lord brownlow, young woman represented as faith. dorchester house, rest in flight. sir william farrer, three ages. holy family and two donors. adoration of shepherds. mr. mond, madonna with st. catherine and holy children. mr. muir mackenzie, madonna. duke of westminster, christ and the adulteress. lord yarborough, santa conversazione. christ at emaus. =modena.= . madonna and infant john. =munich.= . madonna, bishop, and donor. . portrait of man with staff (?). =naples.= scuola veneta, , . allegories (tondi). =new battle, n. b.= marquis of lothian, madonna with sleeping child. =oxford.= christ church, diana and actæon. =paris.= . head of young woman. . holy family. . holy family and saints. decapitation of baptist. mme. andrÉ, morosini family adoring virgin. l. =richmond.= sir francis cook, madonna and infant john. =rome.= borghese, . judith. . madonna, baptist, and an angel. capitol, . madonna and infant john. doria, . nativity. . madonna with st. catherine and the baptist. rospigliosi, . adoration of shepherds. don marcello massarenti, santa conversazione. =stuttgart.= . madonna with ss. catherine and jerome. =venice.= quirini-stampalia, sala ii, . marriage of st. catherine. salute, sacristy, holy family. madonna. =verona.= . madonna and infant john. =vienna.= . st. roch. . adoration of magi. . holy family. . christ and the magdalen. academy, . finding of moses. harrach collection, . two putti embracing. g. a. pordenone. - . probably pupil of alvise vivarini. developed under the influence of giorgione and titian. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, bust of franciscan cardinal. =casarsa.= old church, frescoes: story of true cross, . =colalto= (near susigana). s. salvatore, frescoes. e. =cremona.= duomo, frescoes: christ before pilate; way to golgotha; nailing to cross; crucifixion. all . altar-piece: madonna enthroned with s. dominic, paul, and donor, . fresco: deposition, . =milan.= dr. g. frizzoni, dead christ supported by two angels. e. =motta di livenza.= s. maria dei miracoli, frescoes: annunciation. =murano.= s. maria degli angeli, annunciation. l. =piacenza.= madonna di campagna, frescoes: birth of virgin; adoration of magi; disputation of st. catherine. altar-piece; marriage of st. catherine. all - . =pordenone.= duomo, madonna covering with mantle six donors, ss. joseph and christopher to r. and l., . fresco: ss. erasmus and roch, . st. mark enthroned, ss. sebastian, jerome, john, and alexander, . municipio, st. gothard between ss. roch and sebastian, . =san daniele= (near udine). duomo, trinity, . =spilimbergo.= duomo, assumption of virgin. conversion of st. paul. simon magus, . =susigana.= church, madonna and four saints. e. =torre= (near pordenone). church, madonna and four saints. =treviso.= duomo, adoration of magi, and other frescoes, . =venice.= academy, . portrait of lady. . head of man praying. . madonna of carmel, saints, and the ottobon family. . st. lorenzo giustiniani and three other saints. s. giovanni elemosinario, ss. roch, sebastian, and catherine. s. rocco, ss. martin and christopher, . s. stefano, ruined frescoes in cloister. andrea previtali. active - . pupil of giovanni bellini; influenced by lotto. =bergamo.= carrara, . pentecost. . marriage of st. catherine. . altar-piece in parts. . madonna, . . madonna, two saints, and portraits of cassoti and his wife. . madonna. lochis, . madonna. e. . madonna with ss. dominic and sebastian, . sig. baglioni, madonna and two saints. count moroni, madonna, saint, and donor. family group. s. alessandro in croce, crucifixion, . s. andrea, entombment. duomo, altar-piece, and three predelle in sacristry, . s. maria maggiore, fresco over s. door. s. spirito, st. john the baptist and four other saints, . madonna between four female saints, . =berlin.= . madonna and four saints. . marriage of st. catherine. =buda-pesth.= . madonna. =ceneda.= s. maria di meschio, annunciation. e. =dresden.= . madonna and saints, . =hamburg.= consul weber, . holy family. =keir, n.b.= mr. arch. stirling, woman playing, and two men. =london.= . madonna and donor. e. . allegorical subject. sir h. howarth, rest in flight. =milan.= brera, . christ in garden, . coronation (lunette). bonomi-cereda, madonna and two saints, . dr. gust. frizzoni, madonna and donor, . =oldenburg.= . baptist in wilderness, . =oxford.= christ church library, madonna. =padua.= gal. cavalli, . madonna and donor, . =venice.= palazzo ducale, chapel, christ in limbo. crossing of red sea. lady layard, head of christ. s. giobbe, marriage of st. catherine. redentore, nativity. crucifixion. =verona.= . stoning of stephen. . immaculate conception. =vienna.= . madonna. e. . portrait of man. rocco marconi. active in the earlier decades of the xvi century. pupil of giovanni bellini and follower of palma. =berlin.= . christ blessing(?). e. . christ and the adulteress. =buda-pesth.= . madonna, saints, and donor. =chantilly.= madonna and saints (ascribed to palma). =dresden.= . madonna and saints. =düsseldorf.= . triptych. e. =leipzig.= . madonna and four saints (?). =london.= . death of peter martyr (?). lord ashburnham, small landscape (?). mr. j. p. carrington, bust of man (?). e. mr. c. butler, christ in landscape blessing. lord northbrook, madonna. e. sir michael shaw-stewart, madonna. =munich.= . st. nicholas of bari, st. andrew, and a bishop. =münster= (in w.). . madonna and saints. =new battle, n. b.= marquis of lothian, madonna. =padua.= . madonna and saints (?). =richmond.= sir francis cook, madonna. christ and the adulteress. christ at emaus. =rome.= corsini, . christ blessing. =strassburg.= . madonna. e. =stuttgart.= . last supper. l. =tours.= . madonna and saints. =venice.= academy. . deposition. . christ between two saints. . christ and the adulteress. palazzo reale, christ and the adulteress. giovanelli, christ and the adulteress. s. cassiano, the baptist and four saints. s. giovanni e paolo, christ and saints. =vienna.= czernin gallery, . madonna. n. rondinelli. active about - . pupil of giovanni bellini, whose name he often signs; slightly influenced by palmezzano. =berlin.= . madonna. herr wesendonck, . madonna. =fermo.= carmine, madonna and saints. =florence.= uffizi, . portrait of man. . madonna and two saints. =forli.= . madonna. duomo, st. sebastian. sacristy, visitation. =frankfort a/m.= . madonna with st. anne and the baptist. =innsbruck.= . dead christ upheld by two angels. =liverpool.= . portrait of man. =london.= lady ashburton, madonna. dorchester house, bust of boy. sir b. samuelson, madonna with ss. catherine and bartholomew. =milan.= brera, . madonna, four saints, and three angels. . st. john appearing to galla placida. museo civico, . madonna, ss. francis and peter. =oldenburg.= . madonna. =padua.= sala emo, portrait of young man. =paris.= . madonna between ss. peter and sebastian. =ravenna.= . madonna and four saints. madonna between ss. catherine and john. s. domenico, four large pictures, probably organ shutters; madonna, gabriel, st. peter martyr, s. dominic. =rome.= barberini, , . two madonnas. capitol, portrait of man. doria. . madonna. e. . madonna. . madonna. =rossie priory, n. b.= lord kinnaird. old man and young man. =stuttgart.= . madonna. =venice.= museo correr, sala vii, , madonna. sala ix, . madonna, two saints, and two donors. giovanelli, two madonnas. lady layard, madonna. s. fantino, holy family. girolamo savoldo. circa - . possibly pupil of francesco bonsignori; influenced by bellini, giorgione, palma, and lotto. =berlin.= . mourning over dead christ. a. magdalen. =brescia.= martinengo, sala c, adoration of shepherds. =fermo.= casa bernetti, st. jerome in landscape. e. =florence.= uffizi, . transfiguration. mr. loeser, st. jerome. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, a shepherd. portrait of a man holding a paper with both hands. =hampton court.= . "gaston de foix." . nativity and donors, . =london.= . magdalen. mr. doetsch, bust of man. mr. mond, portrait of man. =milan.= brera, . madonna in glory and four saints. ambrosiana, . transfiguration. signor crespi, bust of an old man. =munich.= lotzbeck collection, . rest in flight. =new york, u. s. a.= metropolitan museum, marquand collection, . portrait of man. =paris.= . "gaston de foix." =rome.= villa borghese, . head of youth. capitol, . portrait of woman seated. =seven oaks.= lord amherst, flute-player. =treviso.= san niccolÒ, altar-piece, . =turin.= . nativity. . adoration of shepherds. =urbino.= casa albani, rest in flight. =venice.= . the hermits antony and paul. s. giobbe, adoration of shepherds. lady layard, st. jerome. =verona.= santa maria in organo, madonna in glory and saints, . =vienna.= . an apostle. . entombment. lichtenstein, . portrait of young warrior. dead christ. andrea meldolla called schiavone. (?)-- . pupil of titian; influenced by parmigianino. =amiens.= . calisto. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, temperance. =berlin.= a. parable of the faithless steward. b. parable of the lord's vineyard. a. mountain landscape. b. forest scene. herr kaufmann, madonna. =buda-pesth.= . head of young woman (?). =chatsworth.= duke of devonshire, preaching of baptist. marriage of cupid and psyche. =dresden.= . pietà. . holy family and infant john. =florence.= pitti, . death of abel. . adam and eve. uffizi, . adoration of shepherds. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, preparation for combat. the defence. shepherd and cattle. infant jupiter and nymphs. =hamburg.= consul weber, . triumph. =hampton court.= . tobias and the angel. . judgment of midas. . christ before pilate. =london.= lord ashburnham, a cassone. mr. r. benson, landscape with ruins. bridgewater house, christ before pilate. last supper. marriage of st. catherine. lord brownlow, st. catherine. mr. c. butler, jason slaying bulls of aetos. sir william farrer, st. jerome. sir h. howarth, dead christ. mr. james knowles, jupiter and nymph. =marseilles.= judith. =milan.= museo civico, - . story of esther. =munich.= . parnassus. =naples.= sala veneziana, . christ before pilate. =paris.= . the baptist. . ecce homo. =parma.= . deucalion and pyrrha. =venice.= academy, . christ before pilate. . circumcision. . . allegories. quirini-stampalia, sala v, . madonna and st. catherine. corridor, fancy portrait of lady. sala xiv, . conversion of st. paul. palazzo reale, three ceiling paintings. two philosophers. s. m. del carmine, parapet of organ loft, six pictures. s. giacomo dell' orio. christ at emaus. =vienna.= . christ before caiphas. . portrait of man. . curius dentatus. . madonna, infant john, and st. catherine. . birth of jupiter. . belshazzar's feast. . jupiter nursed by amalthea. . diana and actæon. . queen of sheba. . david and the ark. . cupid and psyche. . scipio. . allegory of music. . scene from apocalypse. . apollo and daphne. . death of samson. . apollo and cupid. . adoration of shepherds. . mucius scævola. g. b. tiepolo. - . influenced by g. b. piazzetta, formed on paolo veronese. =amiens.= , , , . sketches. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, small finding of moses. ceilings: bride and groom; allegory. =bergamo.= carrara, , . sketches. lochis, . sketch. signor baglioni, two legendary subjects. signor piccinelli, christ in the garden. legendary subject. duomo, martyrdom of st. john the bishop. colleoni chapel, lunettes: story of the baptist. =berlin.= . after the bath. . reception. a. st. dominic and the rosary. b. martyrdom of st. agatha. =brighton.= mr. constantine ionides, apotheosis of pope. =brussels.= m. lÉon somzÉe, sacrifice of polyxena. =buda-pesth.= . god the father. . warrior saint on horseback. . madonna and saints. =caen.= . sketch for ecce homo. =edinburgh.= . finding of moses. . antony and cleopatra. =frankfort a/m.= . court scene. =hamburg.= consul weber, . christ bearing cross. . crucifixion. =london.= , . sketches. . deposition. lord battersea, sketch of madonna, saints, and angels. the misses cohen, sketch of esther and ahasuerus. mrs. martin colnaghi, assumption. sir w. m. conway, allegory of the over-throw of paganism. dr. richter, two versions of christ and adulteress. two legendary subjects. =mayence.= . an encampment. =milan.= palazzo chierici, chariot of the sun, ceiling fresco. natural history museum, frescoes. poldi-pezzoli, pinacoteca, . a sketch. . madonna and saints. signor crespi, st. anne presenting virgin to god, . =munich.= . adoration of magi. , . historical subjects. =new york, u. s. a.= metropolitan museum, . sacrifice of isaac. . triumph of ferdinand iii. crowning with thorns. =padua.= sala romanino, . st. patrick. santo, martyrdom of st. agatha. =paris.= . christ at emaus. . standard painted on both sides. mme. andrÉ, reception of henry iii (fresco). three ceiling frescoes. m. lÉopold goldschmidt, crucifixion. =parma.= . st. antony abbot. =piove= (near padua). s. niccolò, franciscan saint in ecstacy. =richmond.= sir f. cook. esther and ahasuerus. =rossie priory, n. b.= lord kinnaird, assumption. =strassburg.= st. roch. =turin.= . st. antony abbot. =udine.= . chapter of maltese order. s. maria della pietÀ, ceiling. =venice.= . s. joseph, the child, and four saints. . finding of true cross. palazzo ducale, sala di quattro porte, neptune and venice. seminario, refectory, christ at emaus. quirini-stampalia, sala x, . portrait of procurator. palazzo labia, frescoes: antony and cleopatra. palazzo rezzonico, two ceilings. s. alvise, christ at column. way to golgotha. s. apostoli, communion of s. lucy. s. fava, the virgin and her parents. frari, stations of the cross. gesuati, ceiling. altar-piece: madonna and three female saints. s. giovanni e paolo, ceiling of r. chapel. s. maria della pietÀ, ceiling. scalzi, ceiling. scuola del carmine, ceiling paintings. =verona.= . four olivetan saints. =vicenza.= entrance hall, i. immaculate conception. villa valmarana, frescoes in villa and casino, subjects from homer, virgil, ariosto, and tasso, also costume pieces, and oriental scenes. =vienna.= academy, . sketch. =würzburg.= archbishop's palace, frescoes: grand staircase, . hall of emperors, . chapel, two altar-pieces. jacopo tintoretto. - . may have been a pupil of bonifazio veronese; influenced by titian, parmigianino, and michelangelo. =augsburg.= . christ in the house of martha. =bergamo.= carrara, . a lady dressed as a queen. =berlin.= . portrait of procurator. . the same. . madonna with ss. mark and luke. . luna, and the hours. . procurator before st. mark. herr kaufmann, bust of old man. =bologna.= . visitation. corridor iv, portrait of man. =boston, u. s. a.= mrs. j. l. gardner, portrait of senator. =brescia.= tosio, sala xiii, . an old man. s. afra, transfiguration. =buda-pesth.= . head of old man. =caen.= . deposition. =cambridge, u. s. a.= prof. c. e. norton, head of old man. portrait of senator of . l. =carder house= (near glasgow). mr. arch. stirling, portrait of senator. =cologne.= . ovid and corinna. =dresden.= . lady dressed in mourning. . the rescue. . two gentlemen. =escurial.= christ washing the feet of the disciples. =florence.= pitti, , . portraits of men. . portrait of luigi cornaro. . portrait of vincenzo zeno. uffizi, . portrait of himself. . bust of young man. . admiral venier. . portrait of old man. . portrait of jacopo sansovino. . portrait of man. =hamburg.= consul weber, . warrior. =hampton court.= . esther before ahasuerus. . nine muses. . portrait of dominican. . knight of malta. . portrait of a senator. =leipzig.= . resurrection. =lille.= . portrait of a senator. =london.= . st. george and dragon. . christ washing feet of disciples. . origin of the milky way. bridgewater house. portrait of man. lord brownlow, busts of two old men. mr. r. crawshay, adam and eve. mr. butler, moses striking rock. portrait of senator. dorchester house, portrait of man, . portrait of man by window. sir wm. farrer, the resurrection. mr. arthur james, portrait of andrea barbadigo. portrait of man. mr. mond, galleys at sea. portrait of giovanni gritti. lord rosebery, portrait of admiral venier. e. mr. salting, portrait of ottavio di strà, . =lübeck.= . raising of lazarus, . =lucca.= sala i, . portrait of man. =lyons.= . danaë (in part). =madrid.= . battle on land and sea. . joseph and potiphar's wife. . solomon and the queen of sheba. . susanna and the elders. . finding of moses. . esther before ahasuerus. . judith and holofernes =milan.= brera, . pietà. . st. helen, three other saints, and two donors. bis. finding of body of st. mark. e. museo civico, . bust of procurator. =newport, u. s. a.= mr. t. h. davis, bust of man. =panshanger.= lord cowper, portrait of man. =paris.= . susanna and the elders. . paradise. . portrait of old man. =richmond.= sir f. cook, st. john the baptist. portrait of senator. =rome.= capitol, . the baptism. . ecce homo. . the flagellation. colonna, . three women and a man adoring the holy spirit. . old man playing spinnet. , . portraits of men. doria, . portrait of man. e. =turin.= . the trinity. =venice.= academy, . s. giustina and three donors, . . madonna, three saints, and three donors . . portrait of carlo morosini. portrait of a senator. . deposition. . senator in prayer. . portrait of jacopo soranzo, . . andrea capello. e. sala iv, ceiling: prodigal son, four virtues. . death of abel. . two senators. . miracle of st. mark, . . adam and eve. . two senators. . resurrected christ blessing three senators. . madonna, and three portraits. . crucifixion. . resurrection. palazzo ducale, collegio, doge mocenigo recommended to christ by st. mark. figures in _grisaille_ around the clock. doge daponte before the virgin. marriage of st. catherine and doge donà. doge gritti before the virgin. anti-collegio, mercury and three graces. vulcan's forge. bacchus and ariadne. minerva expelling mars: all, . ante-room of chapel, ss. margaret, george, and louis. ss. andrew and jerome. senato, st. mark presenting doge loredan to the virgin in presence of two other saints. sala quattro porte, ceiling (in part). ingresso, lorenzo amelio, . alessandro bono. vincenzo morosini, . nicolo priuli. ceiling. passage to council of ten, andrea delphino, . a. cicogna. federigo contarini, . nobles illumined by the holy spirit. sala del gran consiglio, paradise, . sala dello scrutino, battle of zara. palazzo reale libreria, transportation of body of st. mark. st. mark rescues a shipwrecked saracen. diogenes, archimedes, and two other philosophers on separate canvases: all e. another room, st. roch. prince giovanelli, battle piece. portrait of senator. portrait of general. portrait of warrior. s. cassiano, crucifixion. christ in limbo. resurrection. gesuiti, assumption of virgin. circumcision. s. giorgio maggiore, last supper. gathering of manna. entombment. s. giuseppe di castello, michael overcoming lucifer. s. maria mater domini, finding of true cross. s. maria dell' orto, last judgment. e. martyrdom of paul. the tablets of the law and the golden calf. e. martyrdom of st. agnes. presentation of virgin. e. s. marziale, glory of s. marziale. s. paolo, last supper. assumption of virgin. s. rocco, annunciation. pool of bethesda. st. roch and the beasts of the field. st. roch healing the sick. st. roch in campo d'armata. st. roch consoled by an angel. st. roch before the pope. scuola di s. rocco, ground floor, nearly all the paintings on walls. staircase, visitation. upper floor, hall, all the paintings on walls and ceiling. portrait of himself, . inner room, crucifixion, . christ before pilate. ecce homo. way to golgotha. ceiling, . altogether, sixty-two paintings. salute, marriage of cana, . s. silvestro, baptism. s. stefano. last supper. washing of feet. agony in garden. s. trovaso, temptation of st. anthony. s. zaccaria, birth of virgin. =vicenza.= entrance hall. . st. augustine healing the plague-stricken. =vienna.= . st. jerome. e. . susanna and the elders. e. . sebastian venier. . an officer in armour. . old man and boy. , . portraits of men. . portrait of man, . . portrait of old man. , , . portraits of men. . portrait of lady. academy, . portrait of ales. contarini. . portrait of doge priuli. =woburn abbey.= . portrait of man. l. titian. - . pupil of the bellini; formed by giorgione. =ancona.= . crucifixion. l. s. domenico, madonna with ss. francis, blaise, and donor, . =antwerp.= . alexander vi presenting baffo to st. peter. e. =ascoli.= st. francis receiving the stigmata. l. =berlin.= a. infant daughter of roberto strozzi, . . portrait of himself. l. . his own daughter lavinia. =boston.= mrs. j. l. gardner, rape of europa, . =brescia.= s. nazaro e celso, altar-piece, . =cobham hall.= lord darnley, portrait of ariosto. e. =dresden.= . madonna with four saints. e. . tribute money. e. . lavinia as bride, . . lavinia as matron. l. . portrait of man, . . a lady with a vase. l. . madonna with a family as donors (in part only). l. . lady in red dress. =florence.= pitti, . "la bella," eleanora gonzaga, duchess of urbino. . pietro aretino, . . magdalen. . portrait of young man. . the concert. e. . philip ii. . ippolito de' medici, . . full-length portrait of man. . head of christ. . "tommaso mosti." uffizi, . eleanora gonzaga, duchess of urbino, . . fr. maria della rovere, duke of urbino, . . flora. e. . madonna with st. antony abbot. e. . venus--the head a portrait of lavinia. l. . portrait of beccadelli, . . venus--the head a portrait of eleanora gonzaga. =genoa.= balbi-senarega, madonna with ss. catherine, domenic, and a donor. e. =hampton court.= . portrait of man, . . portrait of man. e. =london.= . holy family and shepherd. . bacchus and ariadne. . . "noli me tangere." e. . madonna with ss. john and catherine, . bridgewater house, holy family. e. "the three ages." e. venus rising from the sea. diana and actæon. . calisto. . mr. mond, madonna. l. =madrid.= . madonna with ss. ulfus and bridget. e. . bacchanal. . venus worship. . alfonso of ferrara, . . charles v and his dog, . . philip ii in armour, . . the forbidden fruit. l. . charles v on horseback, . . danaë, . . venus, and youth playing organ. l. . salome (portrait of lavinia). . trinity, . . knight of malta. l. . entombment, . . sisyphus. l. . prometheus. l. . st. margaret. l. . philip ii offering infant don fernando to victory. l. . allocution of alfonso d'avalos, . . religion succoured by spain. l. . portrait of himself. . portrait of man. . the empress isabel, . =maniago.= casa maniago, portraits of irene and of emilia di spilimbergo. l. =medole= (near brescia). duomo, christ appearing to his mother. l. =milan.= brera, . st. jerome. l. . bis. antonio porcia. =munich.= . "vanitas." e. . portrait of man. e. . portrait of charles v, . . madonna. l. . christ crowned with thorns. l. =naples.= scuola veneta, ii. philip ii. . paul iii, ottaviano, and card. farnese, . =padua.= scuola del santo, frescoes: st. anthony granting speech to an infant. the youth who cut off his own leg. the jealous husband. all, . =paris.= . madonna with ss. stephen, ambrose, and maurice. e. . "la vierge au lapin." . madonna with st. agnes. . christ at emaus. l. . crowning with thorns. l. . entombment. . st. jerome. l. . "venus del prado." l. . portrait of francis i. . allegory. . "alfonso of ferrara and laura dianti." . portrait of man with hand in belt. . "the man with the glove." e. . portrait of man with black beard. =rome.= borghese, . sacred and profane love. e. . st. dominic. l. . education of cupid. l. capitol, . baptism, with zuane ram as donor. e. doria, daughter of herodias. e. vatican, madonna in glory with six saints, . prince chigi, portrait of aretino. =serravalle.= duomo, madonna in glory, with ss. peter and andrew, . =treviso.= duomo, annunciation. =urbino.= . the resurrection. l. . last supper. l. =venice.= academy, . presentation of virgin in temple, . . st. john in the desert. . assunta, . . pietà, begun in , not quite finished at titian's death. palazzo ducale, staircase to doge's private apartments, fresco: st. christopher, . sala di quattro porte, doge grimani before faith, . palazzo reale, on ceiling of ante-room to libreria, wisdom. l. giovanelli, portrait of man. l. frari, pesaro madonna, . gesuiti, martyrdom of st. lawrence. l. s. giovanni elemosinario, st. john the almsgiver, . s. lio, st. james of compostella. l. s. marcuolo, the christ child between ss. catherine and andrew. e. s. marziale, tobias and the angel, . scuola di s. rocco, annunciation. dead christ (?). e. salute, descent of holy spirit. l. ceiling of choir: eight medallions, one a portrait of titian himself, the rest heads of saints. sacristy, st. mark between ss. roch, sebastian, cosmos, and damian. e. ceiling, david and goliath. sacrifice of isaac. cain slaying abel. s. salvatore, annunciation. l. transfiguration, l. s. sebastiano, st. nicholas of bari (in part), . =verona.= . portrait of ferdinand, king of the romans. duomo, assumption of virgin. =vienna.= . "gipsy madonna." e. . "madonna with the cherries." e. . "the large ecce homo," . . "the little tambourine player." e. . isabella d'este, . . "das mädchen im pelz" (eleanora gonzaga). . "benedetto varchi." . "the physician parma." e. . john frederick of saxony, . . jacopo di strada, . . shepherd and nymph. l. czernin, portrait of doge gritti. girolamo da treviso, the younger. - . pupil of his father, p. m. pennachi; influenced by catena, giorgione, and later by dosso dossi and raphael. =bologna.= s. giovanni in monte, st altar r. noli me tangere. e. s. petronio, th chapel r. monochrome frescoes: miracles of st. antony of padua. =dresden.= . adoration of magi. =faenza.= la magione, choir, frescoes: madonna and saints, with sabba castiglione as donor, . =ferrara.= sig. santini, a female saint and five men. =london.= . madonna, saints, and donor. mr. mond, bust of young man. duke of westminster, nativity. st. luke painting the virgin. =milan.= sig. bagati-valsecchi, the forge of vulcan (fresco on chimney-piece). =modena.= s. pietro, holy family with infant john and st. catherine. =münster= (in w.). kunstverein, . the saviour (?). =rome.= colonna, . portrait of man. donna laura minghetti, judgment of paris (?). =trent.= castle, chapel, frescoes. inner room, frieze. nos. and piazza grande, and via del teatro, frescoes on façades. =venice.= salute, sacristy, st. roch between ss. sebastian and jerome. e. =verona.= . annunciation (?). =vienna.= e. . portrait of man. paolo veronese. - . pupil of antonio badile; strongly influenced by dom. brusasorci. =dresden.= . madonna with cuccina family. . adoration of magi. . marriage of cana. . finding of moses (in part only). . portrait of daniel barbaro. =florence.= pitti, . portrait of daniel barbaro. uffizi, . martyrdom of s. giustina. e. . holy family and st. catherine. =hampton court.= madonna and saints (?). =london.= . consecration of st. nicholas. . alexander and the family of darius. dr. richter, holy family. e. =madrid.= . christ and the centurion. . finding of moses (?). =maser.= villa barbaro, frescoes. =milan.= brera, . ss. antony, cornelius, and cyprian, and page. =padua.= s. giustina, martyrdom of st. giustina. =paris.= . christ at emaus. . young mother and child. e. . marriage of cana. =rome.= colonna, . portrait of man in green. villa borghese, . st. antony preaching to the fishes. =venice.= academy, . battle of lepanto. . feast in house of levi, . . madonna with ss. joseph, john, francis, jerome, and giustina. palazzo ducale, collegio, thanksgiving for lepanto. ante-collegio, rape of europa. s. barnabÀ, holy family. s. caterina, marriage of st. catherine. s. francesco della vigna, holy family with ss. catherine and antony abbot. s. sebastiano, madonna and two saints. crucifixion. madonna in glory with st. sebastian and other saints. ss. mark and marcilian led to martyrdom (in part). st. sebastian being bound (?). frescoes: ss. onofrio and paul the hermit. ss. matthew and mark. ss. roch, andrew, peter, and figure of faith. tiburtine and cumæan sibyls. =verona.= . portrait of pasio guadienti, . . deposition (?). s. giorgio, martyrdom of st. george. s. paolo, madonna and saints. e. =vicenza.= sala ii, . madonna. monte berico, feast of st. gregory, . =vienna.= . christ at the house of jairus. alvise vivarini. active - . pupil of his uncle bartolommeo. =berlin.= . madonna enthroned with six saints. . madonna enthroned with four saints. l. =florence.= mr. charles loeser, madonna. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, bust of smooth-faced man. =london.= the misses cohen, bust of a venetian noble. mr. salting, portrait of youth. =milan.= brera, dead christ adored by two angels. e. bonomi-cereda, portrait of man, . signor bagati-valsecchi, s. giustina dei borromei. l. =modena.= . portrait of man (?). =montefiorentino.= polyptych, . =naples.= scuola veneta, i. madonna with ss. francis and bernardino, . =padua.= . portrait of a man. =paris.= . portrait of a man. l. countess de bÉarn, portrait of man. l. =venice.= academy, . st. matthew. . st. john the baptist. . st. sebastian. st. antony abbot. st. john baptist. st. laurence. e. . st. clare. . head of christ. l. . madonna and six saints, . museo correr, sala ix, . st. antony of padua. frari, st. ambrose enthroned and saints. begun in , finished by basaiti. s. giovanni in bragora, madonna: head of christ, : resurrection, : predelle to last. busts of saviour, john, and mark. s. giovanni e paolo, christ bearing cross. redentore, sacristy, madonna. lady layard, portrait of man. seminario, stanza del patriarca, portrait of man. l. =vienna.= . madonna, . academy, st. clare. female saint with monstrance. =windsor castle.= portrait of man with hawk. bartolommeo vivarini. active - . pupil of giovanni and antonio da murano; influenced by paduans. =bergamo.= frizzoni-salis, madonna and two saints. =boston, u. s. a.= mr. quincy shaw, magdalen. =fermo.= count bernetti, ss. francis and james. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, polyptych. e. =london.= . madonna with ss. paul and jerome. =meiningen.= ducal palace, an apostle. =naples.= sala veneta, . madonna enthroned, . =paris.= . st. john capistrano, . =turin.= . madonna, . =venice.= academy, , . altar-piece in five parts, . . mary magdalen. . st. barbara, . frari, madonna and four saints, . s. giovanni in bragora, madonna between ss. andrew and john, . s. giovanni e paolo, st. augustine, . ss. dominic and lawrence. s. maria formosa, triptych: madonna, birth of virgin, meeting of joachim and anne, . =vienna.= . st. ambrose between ss. peter, louis, paul, and sebastian, . index of places. =albi.= guardi. =alnwick.= duke of northumberland: licinio, palma. s. del piombo. =alzano.= church: lotto. =amiens.= guardi, schiavone, tiepolo. =ancona.= gallery: crivelli, lotto, titian. s. domenico: titian. =antwerp.= gallery: antonello, titian. =ascoli.= duomo: crivelli. gallery: titian. =ashridge.= lord brownlow: bassano, bordone, cariani, polidoro. =asolo.= church: lotto. =augsburg.= gallery: barbari, bassano, tintoretto. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure: basaiti, guardi, pordenone, schiavone, tiepolo. =balcarres, n. b.= lord crawford: licinio. =basel.= cariani. =bassano.= gallery: bassano, guardi. duomo, and s. giovanni: jacopo bassano. s. m. delle grazie: j. bassano. =belluno.= bartolommeo veneto, beccaruzzi, montagna. =bergamo.= gallery, carrara collection: bartolommeo veneto, basaiti, bassano, bonifazio, cariani, gatena, lotto, previtali, tintoretto. lochis collection: antonello, barbari, bartolommeo veneto, basaiti, beccaruzzi, giovanni bellini, bonsignori, bordone, cariani, crivelli, guardi, licinio, lotto, montagna, palma vecchio, previtali. morelli collection: basaiti, giovanni bellini, cariani, cima, p. longhi, montagna, polidoro. signor baglioni: bassano, cariani, guardi, longhi, previtali, tiepolo. frizzoni-salis: barbari, basaiti, bassano, bonifazio, montagna, bartolommeo vivarini. conte moroni: guardi, previtali. signor piccinelli: cariani, licinio, lotto, tiepolo. conte roncalli: cariani. conte suardi: cariani, bassano. s. alessandro in colonna: lotto. s. alessandro in croce: lotto. s. andrea: previtali. s. bartolommeo: lotto. s. bernardino: lotto. colleoni chapel: tiepolo. duomo: cariani, previtali, tiepolo. s. maria maggiore: lotto, previtali. s. michele: lotto. s. spirito: lotto, previtali. =berlin.= antonello, barbari, basaiti, giovanni bellini, bissolo, bordone, caprioli, cariani, carpaccio, catena, cima, crivelli, giorgione, guardi, lotto, montagna, palma, sebastiano del piombo, polidoro, previtali, rocco marconi, rondinelli, savoldo, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto, titian, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. nazional galerie, racynski collection: catena, polidoro. herr beckerath: basaiti. herr kaufmann: basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, schiavone, tintoretto. herr wesendonck: bassano, beccaruzzi, polidoro, rondinelli. =biel, n. b.= mrs. hamilton ogilvie: bassano, canale, guardi. =bologna.= gallery: bassano, cima, tintoretto. s. giovanni in monte: girolamo da treviso. s. petronio: girolamo da treviso. =boston, u. s. a.= museum: basaiti, beccaruzzi. mrs. j. l. gardner: bonifazio, catena, guardi, polidoro, tintoretto, titian. mr. j. quincy shaw: cima, licinio, bartolommeo vivarini. =bremen.= kunsthalle: montagna. =brescia.= gallery tosio: bissolo, lotto, tintoretto. s. afra: tintoretto. s. alessandro: jacopo bellini. s. nazaro e celso: titian. =brighton.= mr. constantine ionides: guardi, tiepolo. mr. henry willett: caprioli, licinio. =broomhall, n. b.= lord elgin: s. del piombo =brunswick.= gallery: palma vecchio. =brussels.= bassano, crivelli, guardi. m. lÉon somzÉe: bart. veneto, tiepolo. =buda-pesth.= basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, gentile bellini, cariani, catena, crivelli, giorgione, guardi, licinio, palma, s. del piombo, polidoro, previtali, rocco marconi, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto. herr rath: licinio. =caen.= carpaccio, tiepolo, tintoretto. =cambridge.= fitzwilliam museum: beccaruzzi, guardi, palma, polidoro. =cambridge, u. s. a.= prof. c. e. norton: licinio, longhi, tintoretto. =campo s. piero.= oratory of s. antonio: bonifazio (in part). =carder house= (near glasgow). mr. archibald stirling: tintoretto. =casarsa.= parish church: pordenone. =castelfranco.= church: giorgione. =castle barnard.= bowes museum: caprioli. =celana= (near bergamo). lotto. =ceneda.= madonna di meschio: previtali. =certosa= (near pavia). montagna. =chantilly.= duc d' aumale: bissolo, rocco marconi. =chatsworth.= duke of devonshire: bassano, bordone, cariani, schiavone. =cingoli.= s. domenico: lotto. =cittadella.= duomo: bassano. =cobham hall.= lord darnley: titian. =colalto.= s. salvatore: pordenone. =cologne.= gallery: bordone, catena, polidoro, tintoretto. =conegliano.= duomo: beccaruzzi, cima. s. m. delle grazie: beccaruzzi. s. rocco: beccaruzzi. =costa di mezzate= (near gorlago). lotto. =cracow.= prince czartoryski: s. del piombo. =cremona.= duomo: pordenone. =dijon.= bassano, caprioli. =douai.= bartolommeo veneto. =dresden.= antonello, barbari, bartolommeo veneto, bassano, beccaruzzi, bonifazio, bordone, canaletto, catena, cima, giorgione, licinio, longhi, lotto, palma vecchio, polidoro, previtali, rocco marconi, tintoretto, titian, girolamo da treviso, veronese. =düsseldorf.= bissolo, cima, rocco marconi. =edinburgh.= bassano, bordone, guardi, polidoro, tiepolo. =escurial.= tintoretto. =faenza.= la magione: gir. da treviso. =feltre.= seminario: bassano. =fermo.= carmine: rondinelli. casa bernetti: savoldo, b. vivarini. =ferrara.= beccaruzzi, carpaccio. sig. vendeghini: jacopo bellini. sig. santini: girolamo da treviso. =florence.= pitti: barbari, bonifazio, bordone, s. del piombo, polidoro, schiavone, tintoretto, titian, veronese. uffizi: bartolommeo veneto, bassano, beccaruzzi, giovanni bellini, bordone, canaletto, carpaccio, giorgione, licinio, lotto, palma vecchio, s. del piombo, rondinelli, schiavone, tintoretto, titian, veronese. palazzo panciatichi: crivelli. mr. loeser: savoldo, longhi, alvise vivarini. =fonthill= (wilts). mr. alfred morrison, bonsignori. =forli.= gallery: rondinelli. duomo: rondinelli. s. mercuriale, rondinelli. =frankfort (a/m.)= gallery: bartolommeo veneto, gentile bellini, canale, carpaccio, cima, crivelli, tiepolo. =genoa.= brignole-sale: bordone, licinio, palma vecchio. prince giorgio doria: bartolommeo veneto. palazzo balbi-senarega: titian. s. annunziata: bissolo. =glasgow.= bart. veneto, beccaruzzi, bordone, cariani, catena, guardi, palma, polidoro. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys: bassano, bonsignori, bordone, savoldo, schiavone, alvise and bart. vivarini. =hague.= gallery: bonifazio. =haigh hall= (near wigan). lord crawford: beccaruzzi, carpaccio. =hamburg.= consul weber: barbari, guardi, lotto, palma, previtali, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto. =hampton court.= bassano, bissolo, bonifazio, bordone, canaletto, cariani, giorgione, licinio, longhi, lotto, palma vecchio, polidoro, savoldo, schiavone, tintoretto, titian. =hermannstadt.= lotto. =hopetoun house, n. b.= lord hopetoun: bassano, beccaruzzi, canale. =innsbruck.= rondinelli. =jesi.= library: lotto. =keir, n. b.= mr. archibald stirling: beccaruzzi, bordone, longhi, previtali. =langton, n. b.= (near duns). mrs. baillie-hamilton: polidoro. =leipzig.= rocco marconi, tintoretto. =lille.= beccaruzzi, bonifazio, polidoro, tintoretto. =linlathen, n. b.= col. erskine: bassano, beccaruzzi, s. del piombo, polidoro. =liverpool.= catena, rondinelli. =london.= national gallery: antonello, bartolommeo veneto, basaiti, bassano, gentile bellini, giovanni bellini, bonifazio, bonsignori, bordone, canaletto, cariani, capaccio, catena, cima, crivelli, guardi, licinio, pietro longhi, lotto, palma vecchio, sebastiano del piombo, previtali, rocco marconi, savoldo, tiepolo, tintoretto, titian, gir. da treviso, veronese, bartolommeo vivarini. burlington house, diploma gallery: beccaruzzi. south kensington museum. jones collection: crivelli. lord ashburnham: caprioli, catena, rocco marconi. lady ashburton: crivelli, licinio, rondinelli. apsley house: beccaruzzi. lord battersea: polidoro, tiepolo. mr. w. b. beaumont: catena (?). mr. r. h. benson: bartolommeo veneto, basaiti, bassano, bissolo, bonifazio, caprioli, cariani, carpaccio, catena, crivelli, s. del piombo, polidoro. mr. f. cavendish-bentinck: longhi. bridgewater house: bordone, lotto, tintoretto, titian. lord brownlow: bordone, polidoro, tintoretto. mr. c. butler: basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, bonifazio, catena, licinio, montagna, rocco marconi, tintoretto, bartolommeo vivarini. mr. j. p. carrington: rocco marconi. the misses cohen: bordone, canale, guardi, tiepolo, alvise vivarini. mr. martin colnaghi: lotto, tiepolo. sir w. m. conway: lotto, tiepolo. mr. r. crawshay: crivelli, tintoretto. mr. t. d. crews: bonifazio. mr. g. donaldson: bassano, bordone. dorchester house: b. veneto, beccaruzzi, canale, cariani, guardi, licinio, lotto, polidoro, rondinelli, tintoretto. sir wm. farrer: beccaruzzi, guardi, montagna, polidoro, tintoretto. mr. wickham flower: palma. sir a. wollaston franks: guardi. sir julian goldschmid: guardi. duke of grafton: caprioli, s. del piombo. hertford house: canale, cima, crivelli, guardi. mr. j. p. heseltine: catena. sir h. howarth: previtali, schiavone. lord houghton: guardi. mr. arthur james: guardi, tintoretto. mr. james knowles: schiavone. marquis of lansdowne: cariani. mr. muir mackenzie: polidoro. mr. ludwig mond: giovanni and gentile bellini, bissolo, canaletto, catena, cima, crivelli, guardi, p. longhi, palma, s. del piombo, polidoro, savoldo, tintoretto, titian, girolamo da treviso. lord northbrook: beccaruzzi, crivelli, rocco marconi. dr. j. p. richter: bonifazio, bordone, canale, guardi, tiepolo, veronese. lord rosebery: bordone, tintoretto. mr. george salting: basaiti, cariani, guardi, tintoretto, alvise vivarini. mr. stuart m. samuel: crivelli. sir b. samuelson: montagna, rondinelli. sir michael shaw-stewart: basaiti, rocco marconi. mr. j. e. taylor: cima. duke of westminster: canale, polidoro, girolamo da treviso. mrs. anderson weston: guardi. lord yarborough: polidoro. =loreto.= palazzo apostolico: lotto. =lovere.= gallery tadini: jacopo bellini, bordone. =lübeck.= tintoretto. =lucca.= gallery: tintoretto. =lyons.= tintoretto. =macerata.= gallery: crivelli. =madrid.= giorgione, lotto, s. del piombo, tintoretto, titian, veronese. =maniago.= casa maniago: titian. =mantua.= accademia virgiliana: bonsignori. =marseilles.= cariani, schiavone. =maser.= villa barbaro: veronese. =massa fermana.= municipio: crivelli. =mayence.= tiepolo. =medole= (near brescia). duomo: titian. =meiningen.= ducal palace: basaiti, bart. vivarini. =milan.= brera: gentile bellini, giovanni bellini, bissolo, bonifazio, bonsignori, bordone, cariani, carpaccio, cima, crivelli, lotto, montagna, palma vecchio, previtali, rondinelli, savoldo, tintoretto, titian, veronese, alvise vivarini. poldi-pezzoli: bonifazio, cariani, crivelli, guardi, lotto, montagna, tiepolo. museo civico: antonello, beccaruzzi, cariani, crivelli, guardi, licinio, lotto, rondinelli, schiavone. ambrosiana: bartolommeo veneto, basaiti, bassano, bonifazio, cariani, savoldo. natural history museum: tiepolo. archbishop's palace: licinio. bagati-valsecchi: gir. da treviso, alvise vivarini. borromeo: bartolommeo veneto, lotto. palazzo chierici: tiepolo. sig. bertini: guardi. sig. b. crespi: bordone, licinio, longhi, savoldo, tiepolo. dr. gust. frizzoni: giovanni bellini, cariani, lotto, montagna, pordenone, previtali. duca melzi: bartolommeo veneto. casa sormani: canaletto. prince trivulzio: antonello, guardi. s. maria presso celso: bordone. =modena.= gallery: bassano, catena, cima, licinio, longhi, montagna, polidoro, alvise vivarini. count lotario rangoni: palma. s. pietro: girolamo da treviso. =monopoli.= duomo: gentile bellini. =montefiorentino.= alvise vivarini. =monte san giusto.= s. maria: lotto. =montpellier.= bassano. =motta di livenza.= s. maria dei miracoli: caprioli, pordenone. =munich.= basaiti, bassano, bordone, cariani, cima, licinio, lotto, palma, polidoro, rocco marconi, schiavone, tiepolo, titian. lotzbeck collection: bassano, cariani, savoldo. =münster= (in w.). licinio, gir. da treviso, rocco marconi. =murano.= s. pietro: basaiti, giovanni bellini. s. maria degli angeli: pordenone. =nancy.= bartolommeo veneto, lotto. =naples.= antonello, barbari, giov. bellini, lotto, palma, s. del piombo, polidoro, titian, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. museo filangieri: caprioli, guardi. =narbonne.= beccaruzzi. =new battle, n. b.= marquis of lothian: canale, caprioli, polidoro, rocco marconi. =newport, u. s. a.= mr. t. h. davis: giov. bellini, tintoretto. =new york, u. s. a.= metropolitan museum: guardi, tiepolo. marquand col.: savoldo. historical society: bordone, cariani. =nîmes.= catena. =oldenburg.= beccaruzzi, cariani, previtali, rondinelli. =olera.= church: cima. =osimo.= municipio: lotto. =oxford.= taylorian museum: guardi. christ church library: polidoro, previtali. =padua.= gallery: basaiti, beccaruzzi, jacopo bellini, bordone, catena, guardi, licinio, previtali, rocco marconi, rondinelli, tiepolo, alvise vivarini. santo: tiepolo. scuola del santo: montagna, titian. s. giustina: veronese. s. maria in vanzo: bassano, montagna. bishop's palace: montagna. =panshanger.= lord cowper: montagna, tintoretto. =paris.= louvre: antonello, b. veneto, bassano, bonifazio, bordone, canale, cariani, carpaccio, catena, cima, crivelli, giorgione, guardi, lotto, montagna, palma, s. del piombo, polidoro, rondinelli, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto, titian, veronese, alvise vivarini, bart. vivarini. mme. andrÉ: canale, catena, guardi, polidoro, tiepolo. countess de bÉarn: alvise vivarini. mr. lÉopold goldschmidt: catena, guardi, tiepolo. m. salomon goldschmidt: catena. m. maurice kann: canale. m. martin le roy: basaiti. m. alphonse de rothschild: s. del piombo. prince sciarra: bonsignori. =parma.= gallery: beccaruzzi, cima, s. del piombo, schiavone, tiepolo. =pausula.= s. agostino: crivelli. =peghera.= church: palma. =pesaro.= gallery: giovanni bellini. s. francesco: giovanni bellini. =piacenza.= s. maria della campagna: pordenone. =piove= (near padua). s. niccolÒ: tiepolo. =ponteranica= (near bergamo). church: lotto. =pordenone.= municipio: pordenone. duomo: pordenone. =praglia= (near padua). refectory: montagna. =ravenna.= gallery: rondinelli. s. domenico: rondinelli. =recanati.= municipio: lotto. s. domenico: lotto. s. maria sopra mercanti: lotto. =richmond.= sir francis cook: bordone, cima, crivelli, guardi, polidoro, rocco marconi, tiepolo, tintoretto. =rimini.= municipio: giovanni bellini. =rome.= villa borghese: antonello, bassano, bissolo, bonifazio, caprioli, cariani, giorgione, licinio, lotto, palma, polidoro, savoldo, titian, veronese. capitol: lotto, palma, polidoro, rondinelli, savoldo, tintoretto, titian. colonna gallery: bonifazio, bordone, guardi, palma, tintoretto, gir. da treviso, veronese. corsini gallery: bart. veneto, bassano, cariani, rocco marconi. doria gallery: bart. veneto, basaiti, beccaruzzi, bonifazio, bordone, catena, lotto, s. del piombo, polidoro, rondinelli, tintoretto, titian. farnesina: s. del piombo. lateran: crivelli. rospigliosi gallery: lotto, polidoro. vatican: cariani, crivelli, titian. ante-chamber to pope's apartments: bordone. prince chigi: bonifazio, titian. countess santa fiora: bassano. miss hertz: licinio. don marcello massarenti: guardi, polidoro. donna laura minghetti: gir. da treviso. sig. del nero: s. del piombo. s. maria del popolo: s. del piombo. s. pietro in montorio: s. del piombo. =rossie priory, n. b.= lord kinnaird: bassano, licinio, tiepolo. =rouen.= gallery: guardi. =saletto.= church: licinio. =san daniele= (near udine). duomo: pordenone. =sedrina.= church: lotto. =serina.= church: palma. =serravalle.= duomo: titian. s. antonio: beccaruzzi. =seven oaks.= lord amherst: savoldo. =siena.= gallery: bordone. palazzo saracini: s. del piombo. =spilimbergo.= duomo: pordenone. =strassburg.= gallery: basaiti, beccaruzzi, bordone, cariani, crivelli, guardi, montagna, rocco marconi, tiepolo. =stuttgart.= gallery: basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, cariani, carpaccio, polidoro, rocco marconi, rondinelli. =st. petersburg.= hermitage: cariani, s. del piombo. =susigana.= parish church: pordenone. =torre= (near pordenone). church: pordenone. =toulouse.= beccaruzzi, guardi. =tours.= bassano, rocco marconi. =trent.= castle, chapel, and inner room; gir. da treviso. - piazza grande, via del teatro: gir. da treviso. =trescorre.= suardi chapel: lotto. =treviso.= gallery: bordone, caprioli, lotto. monte di pietÀ: beccaruzzi. eredi perazzolo: beccaruzzi. s. andrea: bissolo. s. cristina: lotto. duomo: bissolo, bordone, pordenone, titian. s. lucia: beccaruzzi. s. niccolÒ: barbari, s. del piombo, savoldo. piazza del duomo: barbari. =turin.= giovanni bellini, guardi, tiepolo, tintoretto, b. vivarini. =udine.= municipio: tiepolo. s. maria della pietÀ: tiepolo. =urbino.= ducal palace: titian. casa albani: savoldo. =venice.= academy: antonello, basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, gentile bellini, giovanni bellini, jacopo bellini, bissolo, bonifazio, bordone, cariani, carpaccio, catena, cima, crivelli, guardi, licinio, longhi, montagna, palma vecchio, pordenone, rocco marconi, savoldo, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto, titian, veronese, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. museo correr: basaiti, beccaruzzi, gentile bellini, giovanni bellini, jacopo bellini, bissolo, carpaccio, guardi, longhi, rondinelli, alvise vivarini. palazzo ducale: bartolommeo veneto, bassano, giovanni bellini, bonsignori, bordone, carpaccio, catena, previtali, tintoretto, titian, veronese. manfrin gallery: beccaruzzi. quirini-stampalia: beccaruzzi, catena, longhi, palma, polidoro, schiavone, tiepolo. palazzo reale: bassano, bonifazio, schiavone, tintoretto, titian. seminario: cima, giorgione, tiepolo, alvise vivarini. prince giovanelli: antonello, basaiti, bonifazio, bordone, catena, giorgione, palma, rocco marconi, rondinelli, tintoretto, titian. lady layard: barbari, gentile bellini, bissolo, bonifazio, bonsignori, bordone, carpaccio, cima, licinio, montagna, palma, s. del piombo, previtali, rondinelli, savoldo, alvise vivarini. palazzo grassi: longhi. palazzo labia: tiepolo. palazzo rezzonico: tiepolo. s. alvise: tiepolo. santi apostoli: tiepolo. s. bartolommeo in rialto: s. del piombo. s. barnabÀ: veronese. carmine: cima, lotto, schiavone. scuola del carmine: tiepolo. s. cassiano: rocco marconi, tintoretto. s. caterina: veronese. s. fantino: rondinelli. s. fava: tiepolo. s. francesco della vigna: giovanni bellini, veronese. frari: barbari, giovanni bellini, licinio, tiepolo, titian, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. gesuati: tiepolo. gesuiti: tintoretto, titian. s. giacomo dell' orio: bassano, lotto, schiavone. s. giobbe: bordone, previtali, savoldo. s. giorgio maggiore: carpaccio, tintoretto. s. giorgio degli schiavoni: carpaccio. s. giovanni in bragora: bissolo, bordone, cima, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. s. giovanni crisostomo: giovanni bellini, s. del piombo. s. giovanni elemosinario: pordenone, titian. s. giovanni e paolo: bonsignori, cima, lotto, rocco marconi, tiepolo, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. s. guiseppe in castello: tintoretto. s. lio: titian. s. marco: gentile bellini. s. marcuolo: titian. s. maria formosa: palma, bartolommeo vivarini. s. maria mater domini: bissolo, catena, tintoretto. s. maria dell' orto: beccaruzzi, giov. bellini, cima, tintoretto. s. maria della pietÀ: tiepolo. s. marziale: tintoretto, titian. s. paolo: tintoretto. s. pietro di castello: basaiti. redentore: bissolo, previtali, alvise vivarini. s. rocco: giorgione, pordenone, tintoretto. scuola di s. rocco: tintoretto, titian. salute: basaiti, polidoro, tintoretto, titian, girolamo da treviso. s. salvatore: titian. scalzi: tiepolo. s. sebastiano: titian, veronese. s. simeon profeta: catena. s. stefano: pordenone, tintoretto. s. trovaso: jacopo bellini, catena, tintoretto. s. vitale: carpaccio. s. zaccaria: giovanni bellini, tintoretto. =verona.= gallery: bart. veneto, basaiti, bassano, giovanni bellini, jacopo bellini, crivelli, guardi, montagna, polidoro, previtali, tiepolo, titian, gir. da treviso, veronese. duomo: titian. s. giorgio: veronese. s. nazaro e celso: montagna. s. paolo: veronese. =vicenza.= gallery: antonello, bassano, cariani, cima, montagna, tiepolo, tintoretto, veronese. palazzo loschi: bassano, giorgione. villa valmarana: tiepolo. s. corona: giovanni bellini, montagna. duomo: montagna. s. lorenzo: montagna. monte berico: montagna, veronese. s. stefano: palma. =vienna.= imperial museum: barbari, basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, bissolo, bonifazio, bordone, caprioli, cariani, carpaccio, catena, cima, giorgione, licinio, lotto, palma, s. del piombo, polidoro, previtali, savoldo, schiavone, tintoretto, titian, gir. da treviso, veronese, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. academy: bassano, beccaruzzi, caprioli, cariani, polidoro, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto, alvise vivarini. czernin: bordone, rocco marconi, titian. harrach collection: basaiti, licinio, polidoro. lichtenstein: canale, palma vecchio, savoldo. =viterbo.= municipio: s. del piombo. =weimar.= gallery: barbari. =windsor castle.= canale, caprioli, alvise vivarini. =woburn abbey.= bassano, canale, tintoretto. =würzburg.= archbishop's palace: tiepolo. =zogno.= church: cariani. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) rembrandt and his works: comprising a short account of his life; with a critical examination into his principles and practice of design, light, shade, and colour. illustrated by examples from the etchings of rembrandt. by john burnet, f.r.s. author of "practical hints on painting." [illustration: head of rembrandt] london: david bogue, , fleet street. mdcccxlix. to the earl of ellesmere, the enlightened patron of art and literature, this work is most respectfully inscribed, by his obliged, humble servant, john burnet. preface. the high estimation in which i have ever held the works of rembrandt has been greatly increased by my going through this examination of his various excellencies, and such will ever be the case when the emanations of genius are investigated; like the lustre of precious stones, their luminous colour shines from the centre, not from the surface. with such a mine of rich ore as the works of rembrandt contain, it is necessary to apologise for the paucity of examples offered, for in a work of this kind i have been obliged to confine myself to a certain brevity and a limited number of illustrations; still i must do my publisher the justice to say, he has not grudged any expense that would be the means of doing credit to the great artist, the enlightened patron, or my own reputation. another circumstance has been elicited in preparing this work for publication--the great interest that all have shown in this humble attempt to make rembrandt and his works more generally appreciated. his genius and productions seem to be congenial to the english taste. as a colourist he will ultimately lay the foundation of the british school of painting, and prove the justice of du fresnoy's lines-- "he who colours well must colour bright; think not that praise to gain by sickly white." had it been possible, i would have given some examples of his colour as well as of his chiaro-scuro; but i found his great charm consists more in the tone of his colouring than its arrangement. i have mentioned in the body of the work that sir joshua, certainly the greatest master of colour we have yet had in england, frequently speaks ambiguously of many of rembrandt's pictures. i am therefore bound to quote a remark that he makes to his praise. in his memoranda he says--"i considered myself as playing a great game; and instead of beginning to save money, i laid it out faster than i got it, in purchasing the best examples of art that could be procured, for i even borrowed money for this purpose. the possession of pictures by titian, vandyke, rembrandt, &c., i considered as the best kind of wealth." with these remarks i must now launch the result of my labours, having had constantly in mind that feeling which an advocate has in a good cause, not to expect, by all his exertions, to increase the reputation of his client, but an anxiety not to damage it by his weakness. before concluding i must again revert to the interest that all my friends have taken in the success of this publication; and though it may appear invidious to particularise any, i cannot omit mention of that enthusiastic admirer of rembrandt, my young friend mr. e. w. cooke; the messrs. smith, of lisle-street, the connoisseurs and extensive dealers in his etchings; mr. carpenter, the keeper of the prints in the british museum; and, lastly, my young literary friend, mr. peter cunningham, who has, from the beginning, entered heartily into the cause of "rembrandt and his works." brompton, november th, . illustrations. . head of rembrandt _facing title-page._ . interior of the mill of rembrandt's father _page_ . exterior of the same . rembrandt's house at amsterdam . fac-simile of a letter of rembrandt's . christ and his disciples at emmaus . the entombment . the return from jerusalem . the nativity . doctor faustus . burgomaster six . portrait of van tolling . six's bridge . rembrandt's mill . fac-simile of a drawing by rembrandt in british museum . portrait of rembrandt's mother . portraits of rembrandt and his wife . view of amsterdam . cottage with white palings rembrandt. in commencing an account of the life of rembrandt van rhÿn and his works, i feel both a pleasure and a certain degree of confidence, as, from my first using a pencil, his pictures have been my delight and gratification, which have continued to increase through a long life of investigation. though i cannot expect to enhance the high estimation in which rembrandt is held by all persons competent to appreciate his extraordinary powers, nevertheless, the publication of the results of my study may tend to spread a knowledge of his principles and practice, which may be advantageous to similar branches in other schools; for, notwithstanding that his style is in the greatest degree original and peculiar to himself, yet it is founded upon those effects existing in nature which are to be discovered, more or less, in the works of all the great masters of colouring and chiaro-scuro. of his early life little is known; for, unless cradled in the higher circles of society, the early lives of eminent men frequently remain shrouded in obscurity. the development of their genius alone draws attention to their history, which is generally progressive; hence a retrospective view is ambiguous. little is known either of rembrandt's birth or the place of his death; what is known has already been related, from houbraken to bryan, and from bryan to nieuwenhuys, and anecdotes have accumulated, for something new must be said. it is, however, fortunate that in searching into the source from which this extraordinary artist drew his knowledge, we have only to look into the great book of nature, which existed at the time of apelles and raffaelle; and, notwithstanding the diversity of styles adopted by all succeeding painters, beauties and peculiarities are still left sufficient to establish the highest reputation for any one who has the genius to perceive them, and the industry to make them apparent. this was the cause of rembrandt's captivating excellence; neither a combination of coreggio and titian, nor of murillo and velasquez, but as if all the great principles of chiaro-scuro and colour were steeped and harmonized in the softening shades of twilight; and this we perceive in nature, producing the most soothing and bewitching results. these digressions may, however, come more properly into notice when rembrandt's principles of colour come under review. rembrandt van rhÿn, the subject of this memoir, was born in the year , between leydendorp and koukerk, in the neighbourhood of leyden, on the rhÿn, but certainly not in a mill, as there is no habitable dwelling in the one now known as his father's. my excellent young friend, mr. e. w. cooke, whose works breathe the true spirit of the best of the dutch school, in a letter upon this subject, says-- "my dear sir, "i send you another sketch of the mill; the picture, including the doorzigte, or view out of the window, i painted on the spot, and that picture is now in the possession of the king of holland, having taken it back with me to show him. the mill was a magazine for powder during the spanish invasion; it was soon after converted into a corn mill, and was in the possession of hernan geritz van rhÿn when his son rembrandt was born; it is situated at koukerk, on the old rhÿn, near leyden. i hope you will correct the vulgar error that rembrandt was born in a mill. there are often dwelling houses attached to water-mills, such as we have in england; but in holland, not such a structure as a water-mill, with water-power; the water-mills there are only _draining mills_, such as we have in lincolnshire, norfolk, &c. surely the noise and movement of a windmill would ill accord with the confinement of any lady, especially the mother of so glorious a fellow as _rembrandt_. for the honour of such association i hope you will not omit my name in the work, for i painted three pictures of that precious relic. "yours, &c. "e. w. cooke." [illustration: interior of the mill of rembrandt's father] [illustration: exterior of the same] the mill now known as the one possessed by rembrandt's father is built of stone, with an inscription, and "_rembrandt_," in gold letters, over the door. the one etched by his eminent son is a wooden structure, which must have long since fallen into decay. as they are both interesting, from association of ideas, i have given etchings of them. the mother of rembrandt was neeltje willems van zuitbroek, whose portrait he has etched. as he was an only child, his parents were anxious to give him a good education, and therefore sent him to the latin school at leyden, in order to bring him up to the profession of the law; but, like our own inimitable shakspere, he picked up "small latin and less greek." having shown an early inclination for painting, they placed him under the tuition of jacob van zwaanenburg, a painter unmentioned by any biographer; he afterwards entered the studio of peter lastman, and finally received instruction from jacob pinas. the two last had visited rome, but, notwithstanding, could have given little instruction to rembrandt, as their works show no proof of their having studied the italian school to much purpose. after receiving a knowledge of a few rules, such as they could communicate, he returned home, and commenced painting from nature, when he laid the foundation of a style in art unapproached either before his time or since. in he is said, by houbraken, to have visited the hague, when, by the price he received for one of his pictures, he discovered his value as an artist. the neighbourhood of the rhine was now given up for the city of amsterdam, where he set up his easel in the year , under the patronage of the burgomaster six, and other wealthy admirers of the fine arts. rembrandt's first works, like all the early works of eminent artists, were carefully finished; the work that raised him to the greatest notice, in the first instance, is professor tulpius giving an anatomical lecture on a dead body,[ ] and is dated . reynolds, in his tour through flanders, speaking of this picture, says:--"the professor tulpius dissecting a corpse which lies on the table, by rembrandt. to avoid making it an object disagreeable to look at, the figure is just cut at the wrist. there are seven other portraits, coloured like nature itself; fresh, and highly finished. one of the figures behind has a paper in his hand, on which are written the names of the rest. rembrandt has also added his own name, with the date . the dead body is perfectly well drawn, (a little foreshortened,) and seems to have been just washed; nothing can be more truly the colour of dead flesh. the legs and feet, which are nearest the eye, are in shadow; the principal light, which is on the body, is by that means preserved of a compact form; all these figures are dressed in black." he further adds--"above stairs is another rembrandt, of the same kind of subject: professor nieman, standing by a dead body, which is so much foreshortened that the hands and feet almost touch each other; the dead man lies on his back, with his feet towards the spectator. there is something sublime in the character of the head, which reminds one of michael angelo; the whole is finely painted,--the colouring much like titian." simeon in the temple, in the museum of the hague, painted in , is in his first manner; as are the salutation, in the gallery of the marquis of westminster, painted in ; and the woman taken in adultery, in the national gallery, painted in , all on panel, and finished with the care and minuteness of gerhard dow. his most successful career may be taken from to . about the year he married miss saskia van uylenburg, by whom he had an only son, named titus, the inheritor of the little wealth left after his father's embarrassments, but, though bred to the arts, inheriting little of his father's genius. in what part of amsterdam he resided at this time we have no record, nor is the house now shown as rembrandt's, and which was the subject of a mortgage, sufficiently authenticated to prove its identity; he may have lived in it, but it could not at any time have been sufficiently capacious to contain all the effects given in the catalogue extracted from the register by mr. nieuwenhuys. the late sir david wilkie, in a letter to his sister, says:--"at the hague we were delayed with rain, which continued nearly the whole of our way through leyden, haarlem, and amsterdam. wherever we went, our great subject of interest was seeing the native places of the great dutch painters, and the models and materials which they have immortalized. at amsterdam we sallied forth in the evening, in search of the house of rembrandt; it is in what is now the jews' quarter, and is, in short, a jew's old china shop; it is well built, four stories high, but it greatly disappointed me. the shop is high in the ceiling, but all the other rooms are low and little, and, compared with the houses of titian at venice, of claude at rome, and of rubens at antwerp, is quite unworthy the house of the great master of the school of holland. even if stuffed, as it is now, with every description of the pottery of canton, it could not have held even a sixth part of the inventory nieuwenhuys found, as the distrained effects of rembrandt, and the only solution is, that he may have once lived there; but as his will, still extant, is dated in another street, and as several of the pictures he painted could not be contained in the rooms we were in, we must conclude that, like the shell which encloses the caterpillar, it was only a temporary abode for the winged genius to whom art owes so much of its brilliancy." as the place of his residence is veiled in obscurity, so is the place of his demise, which is supposed to have taken place in , as mr. smith, in a note to his life of rembrandt, says--"that no picture is recorded bearing a later date than , and the balance of his property was paid over to his son in ." mr. woodburn, in a catalogue of his drawings, says:--"it is uncertain what became of him after his bankruptcy, or where he died; a search has been made among the burials at amsterdam, until the year , but his name does not occur; probably baldinucci is correct in stating that he died at stockholm, in ;" others have mentioned hull, and some give a credence to his having fled to yarmouth, during his troubles, and mention two pictures, a lawyer and his wife, said to have been painted there; they are whole lengths, and certainly in his later manner, but i could not gather any authentic account to build conjecture upon, as the intercourse between amsterdam and yarmouth has been kept up from olden time, and a dutch fair held every three years on the shore. the ancestors of the family in whose possession they still are, may have visited holland; but, amongst such conflicting opinions, it is useless to attempt elucidation of the truth of this. we may rest certain that his works will be appreciated in proportion as a knowledge of their excellence is extended. [illustration: rembrandt's house at amsterdam] [sidenote: _extract from the book of sureties of real estates remaining at the secretary's office of the city of amsterdam, fol. , &c._] legal receipt and discharge, given by titus van ryn, for the balance of the estate of his father, rembrandt van ryn. good for gls. -- . the . bre--willem muilm. i the undersigned acknowledge to have received of the said commissaries the undermentioned six thousand nine hundred and fifty-two guldens nine stuivers, the th november, . received the contents, titus van ryn. before the undersigned magistrates appeared titus van ryn, the only surviving son of rembrandt van ryn and of saskia van uylenburg (having obtained his veniam ætatis), as principal,--abraham fransz, merchant, living in the angelier straat, and bartholomeus van benningen, woollen-draper, in the liesdel, as guarantees. and jointly, and each of them separately, promised to re-deliver into the hands of the commissaries of the insolvent estates, when called upon, the said six thousand nine hundred fifty-two guldens and nine stuivers, which the said titus van ryn shall receive of and from the before-mentioned commissaries, the money arising from the house and ground in the anthonis bree straat, a.º , which was sold under execution, and from the personal estate of saskia van uylenburg and rembrandt van ryn aforesaid; hereby binding all their goods, moveables, and immoveables, present and future, in order to recover the said sum and costs. therefore the before-mentioned principal promised to indemnify his said sureties under a similar obligation as above written.--actum, the th september, . a. j. j. hinlopen and arnout hooft. h. v. bronchorst. : a : : (stamp) ________ _the following catalogue is extracted from the register lª r. fol. to inclusive, of the inventory of the effects of_ rembrandt van rhyn, _deposited in the office of the administration of insolvent estates at amsterdam, anno ._ pictures, &c. in the entrance hall. a picture, representing the gingerbread baker by _brauwer_. a ditto, the gamblers _ditto_. a ditto, a woman and child _rembrandt_. a ditto, the interior of an artist's painting room _brauwer_. a ditto, the interior of a kitchen _ditto_. a statue of a woman, in plaster. two children, in plaster. a sleeping child, in plaster. a landscape by _rembrandt_. a ditto _ditto_. a woman represented standing _ditto_. a christmas night piece _jean lievensz_. st. jerome _rembrandt_. dead hares, a small picture _ditto_. a small picture of a pig _ditto_. a small landscape _hercules segers_. a landscape _jean lievensz_. a ditto _ditto_. a ditto _rembrandt_. a combat of lions _ditto_. a landscape, by moonlight _jean lievensz_. a head _rembrandt_. a ditto _ditto_. a picture of still life, objects retouched _ditto_. a soldier, clad in armour by _rembrandt_. a skull, and other objects, styled a vanitas, retouched _ditto_. a ditto, ditto, retouched _ditto_. a sea piece _hendrick antonisz_. four spanish chairs, covered with leather. two ditto, ditto in black. a plank of wood. in the front parlour. a small picture of the samaritan, retouched by _rembrandt_. the rich man _palma vecchio_. (the half of this picture belongs to _peter de la tombe_). a view of the back of a house by _rembrandt_. two sporting dogs, done after nature _ditto_. the descent from the cross, a large picture, in a gilt frame _ditto_. the raising of lazarus _ditto_. a courtesan dressing _ditto_. a woody scene _hercules segers_. tobias, &c. _lastman_. the raising of lazarus _jean lievensz_. a landscape, representing a mountainous country _rembrandt_. a small landscape by _govert jansz_. two heads _rembrandt_. a picture, _en grisaille_ _jean lievensz_. a ditto, _ditto_ _parcelles_. a head _rembrandt_. a ditto _brauwer_. a view of the dutch coast _parcelles_. a ditto of the same, smaller _ditto_. a hermit _jean lievensz_. two small heads _lucas van valkenburg_. a camp on fire _the elder rassan_. a quack doctor _after brauwer_. two heads by _jan pinas_. a perspective view _lucas van leyden_. a priest _jean lievensz_. a model _rembrandt_. a flock of sheep _ditto_. a drawing _ditto_. the flagellation of our lord _ditto_. a picture, done _en grisaille_ _parcelles_. a ditto, ditto _simon de vlieger_. a small landscape _rembrandt_. a head of a woman, after nature _ditto_. a head _rafaelle urbino_. a view of buildings, after nature _rembrandt_. a landscape, after nature _ditto_. a view of buildings _hercules segers_. the goddess juno _jacob pinas_. a looking glass, in a black ebony frame. an ebony frame. a wine cooler, in marble. a table of walnut tree, covered with a carpet. seven spanish chairs, with green velvet cushion. back parlour. a picture by _pietro testa_. a woman with a child _rembrandt_. christ on the cross, a model _ditto_. a naked woman _ditto_. a copy, after a picture _annibal caracci_. two half figures _brauwer_. a copy, after a picture _annibal caracci_. a sea view _parcelles_. the head of an old woman _van dyck_. a portrait of a deceased person _abraham vink_. the resurrection _a. van leyden_. a sketch _rembrandt_. two heads, after nature _ditto_. the consecration of solomon's temple, done _en grisaille_ _ditto_. the circumcision, a copy after _ditto_. two small landscapes by _hercules segers_. a gilt frame. a small oak table. four shades for engraving. a clothes press. four old chairs. four green chair cushions. a copper kettle. a portmanteau. the saloon. a woody scene by _an unknown master_. an old man's head _rembrandt_. a large landscape _hercules segers_. a portrait of a woman _rembrandt_. an allegory of the union of the country _ditto_. this is probably the picture now in the collection of samuel rogers, esq. a view in a village by _govert jansz_. a young ox, after nature _rembrandt_. the samaritan woman, a large picture, attributed to _giorgione_, the half of which belongs to _peter de la tombe_. three antique statues. a sketch of the entombment by _rembrandt_. the incredulity of st. peter _aertje van leyden_. the resurrection of our lord _rembrandt_. the virgin mary _rafaelle urbino_. a head of christ _rembrandt_. a winter scene _grimaer_. the crucifixion. probably intended for _novellari_ _lely of novellaene_. a head of christ _rembrandt_. a young bull or ox _lastman_. a vanitas, retouched _rembrandt_. an ecce homo, _en grisaille_ _ditto_. abraham offering up his son _jean lievensz_. a vanitas, retouched _rembrandt_. a landscape, _en grisaille_ _hercules segers_. an evening scene _rembrandt_. a large looking glass. six chairs, with blue cushions. an oak table. a table cloth. a napkin press. a wardrobe, or armoir. a bed and a bolster. two pillows. two coverlids. blue hangings of a bed. a chair. a stove. in the cabinet of arts. a pair of globes. a box, containing minerals. a small architectural column. a tin pot. the figure of an infant. two pieces of indian jadd. a japan or chinese cup. a bust of an empress. an indian powder box. a bust of the emperor augustus. an indian cup. a bust of the emperor tiberius. an indian work-box, for a lady. a bust of caius. a pair of roman leggins. two porcelain figures. a bust of heraclitus. two porcelain figures. a bust of nero. two iron helmets. an indian helmet. an ancient helmet. a bust of a roman emperor. a negro, cast from nature. a bust of socrates. a bust of homer. a ditto of aristotle. an antique head, done in brown. a faustina. a coat of armour, and a helmet. a bust of the emperor galba. a ditto of the emperor otho. a ditto of the emperor vitellius. a ditto of the emperor vespasian. a ditto of the emperor titus vespasian. a ditto of the emperor domitian. a ditto of silius brutus. forty-seven specimens of botany. twenty-three ditto of land and marine animals. a hammock, and two calabashes. eight various objects, in plaster, done from nature. on the last shelf. a quantity of shells, marine plants, and sundry curious objects, in plaster, done from nature. an antique statue of cupid. a small fuzil, and a pistol. a steel shield, richly embossed with figures, by quintin matsys, very curious and rare. an antique powder-horn. a ditto; turkish. a box, containing medals. a shield of curious workmanship. two naked figures. a cast from the face of prince maurice, taken after his death. a lion and a bull, in plaster, after nature. a number of walking sticks. a long bow. books on art. a book, containing sketches by _rembrandt_. a ditto, containing prints engraved in wood by _lucas van leyden_. a ditto ditto, by _wael and others_. a ditto, containing etchings by _baroccio and vanni_. a ditto, containing prints after _rafaelle urbino_. a gilt model of a french bed, by _verhulst_. a book full of engravings, many of which are double impressions, by _lucas van leyden_. a ditto, containing a great number of drawings by the best masters. a ditto, containing a number of fine drawings by _andrea mantegna_. a ditto, containing drawings by various masters, and some prints. a ditto, larger, full of drawings and prints. a ditto, containing a number of miniatures, wood-cuts, and copper-plate prints, of the various costumes of countries. a book, full of prints by _old breughel_. a ditto, containing prints after _rafaelle urbino_. a ditto, containing valuable prints, after the same. a ditto, full of prints by _tempesta_. a ditto, containing wood-cuts and engravings by _lucas cranach_. a ditto, containing prints after the _caracci_ and _guido_, and _spagnoletti_. a ditto, containing engravings and etchings by _tempesta_. a large folio of ditto ditto, by _ditto_. a ditto ditto, various. a book, containing prints by _goltius_ and _müller_. a ditto, containing prints after _rafaelle urbino_, very fine impressions. a book, containing drawings by _brauwer_. a folio, containing a great number of prints after _titian_. a number of curious jars and venetian glasses. an old book, containing a number of sketches by _rembrandt_. a ditto ditto. a large folio of sketches by _rembrandt_. an empty folio. a backgammon board. an antique chair. a book, containing chinese drawings in miniature. a large cluster of white coral. a book full of prints of statues. a ditto full of prints, a complete work by _heemskirk_. a ditto, full of sketches by _rubens_, _van dyck_, and other masters. a ditto, containing the works of _michael angelo buonarotti_. two small baskets. a book, containing prints of free subjects, after _rafaelle_, _roest_, _annibal caracci_, and _giulio romano_. a ditto, full of landscapes by the most distinguished masters. a book, containing views of buildings in turkey, by _melchoir lowick_, _hendrick van helst_, and others; and also the costumes of that country. an indian basket, containing various engravings by _rembrandt_, _hollar_, _cocq_, and others. a book, bound in black leather, containing a selection of etchings by _rembrandt_. a paper box, full of prints by _hupe martin_, _holbein_, _hans broemer_, and _israel mentz_. a book, containing a complete set of etchings by _rembrandt_. a folio, containing academical drawings of men and women, by _rembrandt_. a book, containing drawings of celebrated buildings in rome, and other views, by the best masters. a chinese basket, full of various ornaments. a folio. a ditto. a ditto, containing landscapes after nature by _rembrandt_. a book, containing a selection of proof prints after _rubens_ and _jacques jordaens_. a ditto, full of drawings by _miervelt_, _titian_, and others. a chinese basket. a ditto ditto, containing prints of architectural subjects. a ditto, containing drawings of various animals from nature by _rembrandt_. a ditto, full of prints after _frans floris_, _bruitwael_, _goltius_, and _abraham bloemart_. a quantity of drawings from the antique, by _rembrandt_. five books, in quarto, containing drawings by _rembrandt_. a book full of prints of architectural views. the medea, a tragedy, by _jan six_. a quantity of prints, by _jacques callot_. a book, bound in parchment, containing drawings of landscapes, after nature, by _rembrandt_. a ditto, full of sketches of figures by _rembrandt_. a ditto, various. a small box, with wood divisions. a book, containing views drawn by _rembrandt_. a ditto, containing fine sketches. a ditto, containing statues after nature by _rembrandt_. a ditto, various. a ditto, containing pen sketches by _peter lastman_. a ditto, containing drawings in red chalk by _ditto_. a ditto, containing sketches drawn with the pen by _rembrandt_. a ditto, various. a ditto, ditto. a book, various. a ditto, ditto. a ditto, ditto. a folio of large drawings of views in the tyrol, by _roeland savery_. a ditto, full of drawings by celebrated masters. a book, in quarto, containing sketches by _rembrandt_. a book of wood-cuts of the proportions of the human figure, by _albert durer_. a book, containing engravings by _jean lievensz_ and _ferdinand bol_. several parcels of sketches by _rembrandt_ and others. a quantity of paper, of a large size. a box, containing prints by _van vliet_, after pictures by _rembrandt_. a screen, covered with cloth. a steel gorget. a drawer, containing a bird of paradise, and six forms of divers patterns. a german book, containing prints of warriors. a ditto, with wood-cuts. flavius josephus, in german, illustrated with engravings by _tobias kinderman_. an ancient bible. a marble inkstand. a cast, in plaster, of prince maurice. in an anti-chamber of the room of arts. st. joseph by _aertje van leyden_. three prints, in frames. the salutation. a landscape after nature _rembrandt_. a landscape _hercules segers._ the descent from the cross _rembrandt_. a head after nature. a skull retouched by _rembrandt_. a model, in plaster, of the bath of diana by _adam van vianen_. a model from nature _rembrandt_. a picture of three puppies, after nature _titus van ryn_. a ditto of a book _ditto_. a head of the virgin _ditto_. the flagellation a copy after _rembrandt_. a landscape by moonlight retouched by _ditto_. a naked woman, a model from nature by _ditto_. an unfinished landscape from nature _ditto_. a horse painted from nature by _rembrandt_. a small picture _young hals_. a fish, after nature. a model, in plaster, of a bason, adorned with figures, by _adam van vianen_. an old chest. four chairs, with black leather seats. a table. in the small painting room. thirty-three pieces of armour and musical instruments. sixty pieces of indian armour, and several bows, arrows, and darts. thirteen bamboo pipes, and several flutes. thirteen objects, consisting of bows, arrows, shields, &c. a number of heads and hands, moulded from nature, together with a harp, and a turkish bow. seventeen hands and arms, moulded from nature. some stag horns. five ancient casques. four long bows, and cross bows. nine gourds and bottles. two modelled busts of bartholt been and his wife. a plaster cast from a grecian antique. a bust of the emperor agrippa. a ditto of the emperor aurelius. a head of christ, of the size of life. a head of a satyr. a sibil--antique. the laocoon--ditto. a large marine vegetable. a vitellius. a seneca. three or four antique heads of women. a metal cannon. a quantity of fragments of antique dresses, of divers colours. seven musical stringed instruments. two small pictures by _rembrandt_. [illustration: fac-simile of a letter of rembrandt's] in the large painting room. twenty objects, consisting of halberds and swords of various kinds. dresses of an indian man and woman. five cuirasses. a wooden trumpet. a picture of two negroes by _rembrandt_. a child by _michael angelo buonarotti_. in the shed. the skins of a lion and a lioness, and two birds. a large piece, representing diana. a bittern, done from nature, by _rembrandt_. in a small room. ten paintings, of various sizes, by _rembrandt_. a bed. in the kitchen. a pewter pot. several pots and pans. a small table. a cupboard. several old chairs. two chair cushions. in the passage. nine plates. two earthen dishes. the linen (then at the washer-woman's). three shirts. six pocket handkerchiefs. twelve napkins. three table cloths. some collars and wristbands. the preceding inventory was made on the th and th of july, . * * * * * _free translation of the autograph letter on the opposite page._ sir, it is, your honour, with reluctance, that i am about to trouble you with a letter, and that, because on applying to the receiver utenbogaert, (to whom i have entrusted the management of my money matters,) as to how the treasurer volberger acquits himself of the yearly per cent. interest, the said utenbogaert, on wednesday last, replied,--that volberger has every half year received the interest on this annuity, and has done so up to the present time; so that now, at the annuity office, more than florins being owing, and this being the exact and true statement, i beg of you, my kind-natured sir, that the exact sum of money at my disposal may be at once made clear, in order that i may at last receive the sum of florins, long since due; as i shall always strive to recompense such by reciprocal services, and with lasting friendship; so that with my most cordial greetings, and the prayer that god may long keep you in good health, and grant you bliss hereafter, i remain, your honour's obedient and devoted servant, rembrandt. i am living on the binnen aemstel, at the confectioner's. th oct. van suylyken, esq. counsellor and secretary to his highness in the hague. _per post._ we cannot reflect upon the foregoing catalogue without regretting that rembrandt, in his old age, should have, like our own milton, "fall'n on evil days, on evil days though fall'n and evil tongues." the troubles existing at that time pervaded the whole of europe, and works, both of poetry and painting, produced little emolument to the possessors; consequently the whole of this rich assemblage of works of art, the accumulation of years, fell a sacrifice to the hammer of the auctioneer, producing little more than four thousand nine hundred guilders. by its list, however, we are enabled to refute the assertion of many of his biographers, that he neglected the antique, and the works of the great masters of the italian school, the catalogue including casts from ancient sculpture, and drawings and prints after michael angelo, raffaelle, and titian, which at that time were rare and of great value. we find by a memorandum on the back of one of rembrandt's proofs, on india paper, of his etching of "christ healing the sick," which now goes by the name of "the hundred guilder print," that, "wishing to possess a print of the plague, by mark antonio, after raffaelle, valued by the dealer van zomers at a hundred florins, he gave the proof in exchange;" and further, "that such proofs were never sold, but given as presents to his friends." we may perceive by this the anxiety he had to collect works that were excellent. as we do not discover amongst the various articles enumerated, either palette or brushes, we may infer that on quitting amsterdam he carried off all his working apparatus. with this short notice of his life, and these few remarks, i must now enter into what is more properly the subject of this work, a critical examination into his principles and practice. [footnote : mr. nieuwenhuys, in a note in his life of rembrandt, mentions that the directors of the anatomical theatre resolved to sell this picture by auction, for the purpose of augmenting the funds for supporting the widows of members, and in consequence the sale was announced for monday the th of august, . since the year , until this period, it had always remained in that establishment, as a gift from professor n. tulp, who presented it as a remembrance of himself and colleagues. mr. n. had no sooner heard that the piece in question was to be sold, than he went to amsterdam, with the intention of purchasing it; but, upon arriving, was informed that his majesty, the king of the netherlands, had opposed the sale, and given orders to the minister for the home department to obtain it for the sum of , guldens, and caused it to be placed in the museum at the hague, where it remains. the picture is on canvas: height - / inches, width - / inches.] rembrandt and his works. the early pictures, in all ages, either merely indicate the character of bas-reliefs or single statues,--a cold continuity of outline, and an absence of foreshortening. the first move in advance, and that which constitutes their pictorial character, in contradistinction to sculpture, is an assemblage of figures, repeating the various forms contained in the principal ones, and thus rendering them less harsh by extension and doubling of the various shapes, as we often perceive in a first sketch of a work, where the eye of the spectator chooses, out of the multiplicity of outlines, those forms most agreeable to his taste. the next step to improvement, and giving the work a more natural appearance, is the influence of shadow, so as to make the outlines of the prominent more distinct, and those in the background less harsh and cutting, and consequently more retiring. the application of shadow, however, not only renders works of art more natural, by giving the appearance of advancing and retiring to objects represented upon a flat surface--thus keeping them in their several situations, according to the laws of aërial perspective--but enables the artist to draw attention to the principal points of the story, and likewise to preserve the whole in agreeable form, by losing and pronouncing individual parts. coreggio was the first who carried out this principle to any great extent; but it was reserved for rembrandt, by his boldness and genius, to put a limit to its further application. breadth, the constituent character of this mode of treatment, cannot be extended; indeed, it is said that rembrandt himself extended it too far; for, absorbing seven-eighths in obscurity and softness, though it renders the remaining portion more brilliant, yet costs too much. this principle, however, contains the greatest poetry of the art, in contradistinction to the severe outline and harsh colouring of the great historical style. composition. to arrive at a true knowledge of the inventions and compositions of rembrandt, it is necessary, in the first instance, to examine those of albert durer, the leonardo da vinci of germany. the inventions of this extraordinary man are replete with the finest feelings of art, notwithstanding the gothic dryness and fantastic forms of his figures. the folds of his draperies are more like creased pieces of paper than cloth, and his representation of the naked is either bloated and coarse, or dry and meagre. his backgrounds have all the extravagant characteristics of a german romance, and are totally destitute of aërial perspective; yet, with the exception of the character of the people and scenery of nuremburg, he is not more extravagant in his forms than the founder of the florentine school, and had he been educated in italy, he in all probability would have rivalled raffaelle in the purity of his design. in his journal, which he kept when he travelled into the netherlands, he mentions some prints he sent to rome, in exchange for those he expected in return, and it is mentioned that raffaelle admired his works highly. the multitude of his engravings, both on copper and wood, which were spread over germany, influenced, in a great degree, the style of composition of those artists who came after him, and accordingly we see many points of coincidence in the compositions of rembrandt. a century, however, had opened up a greater insight into the mysteries of painting than either leonardo da vinci or albert durer ever thought of; one alone,--viz. aërial perspective, seems to mark the line between the ancient and modern school; for though durer invented several instruments for perfecting lineal perspective, his works exhibit no attempt at giving the indistinctness of distant objects. to rubens, germany and holland were indebted for this essential part of the art, so necessary to a true representation of nature. this great genius, in his contemplation of the works of titian and others, both at venice and in madrid, soon emancipated the art of his country from the gothic hardness of lucas cranach, van eyck, and albert durer; but notwithstanding his taste and knowledge of what constituted the higher qualities of the italian school, the irregular combinations and multitudinous assemblage of figures found in the early german compositions remained with him to the last. his works are like a melodrama, filled with actors who have no settled action or expression allotted them, while in the works of raffaelle, and other great composers, the persons introduced are limited to the smallest number necessary to explain the story. this condensing of the interest, if i may use the expression, was borrowed originally from the greeks, of whose sculptures the romans availed themselves to a great degree. on the other hand, this looseness of arrangement, and what may be termed ornamental, not only spread through germany, but infected the schools of venice; witness the works of tintoret and paul veronese, in which the expression of the countenance absolutely goes for nothing, and the whole arrangement is drawn out in a picturesque point of view, merely to amuse and gratify the eye of the spectator. now, with all these infectious examples before him, rembrandt has done much to concentrate the action, and reduce the number drawn out on the canvas to the mere personages who figure in the history. witness his "salutation of the virgin," in the marquis of westminster's collection, which is evidently engendered from the idea contained in the design of albert durer. his strict application to nature, while it enabled him to destroy the unmeaning combinations of his predecessors, led him into many errors, by the simple fact of drawing from the people in his presence. but are not others chargeable with some incongruities? are the madonnas of murillo anything but a transcript of the women of andalusia? the women of venice figure in the historical compositions of titian and paul veronese, and the fornarina of raffaelle is present in his most sacred subjects; those, therefore, who accuse rembrandt of vulgarity of form, might with equal justice draw an invidious comparison between classic italian and high dutch. in many of his compositions he has embodied the highest feeling and sentiment, and in his study of natural simplicity approaches raffaelle nearer than any of the flemish or dutch painters. of course, as a colourist and master of light and shade, he is all powerful; but i allude, at present, to the mere conception and embodying of his subjects on this head. fuseli says,--"rembrandt was, in my opinion, a genius of the first class in whatever relates not to form. in spite of the most portentous deformity, and without considering the spell of his _chiaro-scuro_, such were his powers of nature, such the grandeur, pathos, or simplicity of his composition, from the most elevated or extensive arrangement to the meanest and most homely, that the best cultivated eye, the purest sensibility, and the most refined taste, dwell on them equally enthralled. shakspere alone excepted, no one combined with so much transcendent excellence so many, in all other men unpardonable, faults,--and reconciled us to them. he possessed the full empire of light and shade, and of all the tints that float between them; he tinged his pencil with equal success in the cool of dawn, in the noon-day ray, in the livid flash, in evanescent twilight, and rendered darkness visible. though made to bend a steadfast eye on the bolder phenomena of nature, yet he knew how to follow her into her calmest abodes, gave interest to insipidity and baldness, and plucked a flower in every desert. none ever, like rembrandt, knew how to improve an accident into a beauty, or give importance to a trifle. if ever he had a master, he had no followers; holland was not made to comprehend his power." and in another lecture, speaking of the advantage of a low horizon, he says:--"what gives sublimity to rembrandt's ecce homo more than this principle? a composition which, though complete, hides in its grandeur the limits of its scenery. its form is a pyramid, whose top is lost in the sky, as its base in tumultuous murky waves. from the fluctuating crowds who inundate the base of the tribunal, we rise to pilate, surrounded and perplexed by the varied ferocity of the sanguinary synod to whose remorseless gripe he surrenders his wand, and from him we ascend to the sublime resignation of innocence in christ, and, regardless of the roar, securely repose on his countenance. such is the grandeur of a conception, which in its blaze absorbs the abominable detail of materials too vulgar to be mentioned. had the materials been equal to the conception and composition, the ecce homo of rembrandt, even unsupported by the magic of its light and shade, or his spell of colours, would have been an assemblage of superhuman powers." reynolds, in his eighth discourse, speaking of the annoyance the mind feels at the display of too much variety and contrast, proceeds to say:--"to apply these general observations, which belong equally to all arts, to ours in particular. in a composition, where the objects are scattered and divided into many equal parts, the eye is perplexed and fatigued, from not knowing where to find the principal action, or which is the principal figure; for where all are making equal pretensions to notice, all are in equal danger of neglect. the expression which is used very often on these occasions is, the piece wants repose--a word which perfectly expresses a relief of the mind from that state of hurry and anxiety which it suffers when looking at a work of this character. on the other hand, absolute unity, that is, a large work consisting of one group or mass of light only, would be as defective as an heroic poem without episode, or any collateral incidents to recreate the mind with that variety which it requires. an instance occurs to me of two painters (rembrandt and poussin) of characters totally opposite to each other in every respect, but in nothing more than in their mode of composition and management of light and shadow. rembrandt's manner is absolute unity; he often has but one group, and exhibits little more than one spot of light in the midst of a large quantity of shadow: if he has a second mass that second bears no proportion to the principal. poussin, on the contrary, has scarcely any principle mass of light at all, and his figures are often too much dispersed, without sufficient attention to place them in groups. the conduct of these two painters is entirely the reverse of what might be expected from their general style and character, the works of poussin being as much distinguished for simplicity as those of rembrandt for combination. even this conduct of poussin might proceed from too great affection to simplicity of another kind, too great a desire to avoid the ostentation of art with regard to light and shadow, on which rembrandt so much wished to draw the attention; however, each of them ran into contrary extremes, and it is difficult to determine which is the most reprehensible, both being equally distant from the demands of nature and the purposes of art." this unity is observable in the composition of rembrandt; even where a multiplicity of figures are employed, they are so grouped that the masses of light and shade are interrupted as little as possible; and it is only in his earlier works, such as those now in the munich gallery, where this isolated light is carried to extravagance. in many of his later pictures, we have not only subordinate groups, but a repetition of the principal lights; also a greater breadth of half-tint. "composition," says reynolds, "which is the principal part of the invention of a painter, is by far the greatest difficulty he has to encounter. every man that can paint at all, can execute individual parts; but to keep these parts in due subordination as relative to a whole, requires a comprehensive view of the art, that more strongly implies genius than perhaps any other quality whatever." now rembrandt possessed this power in an eminent degree. at the revival of painting in italy, the compositions consisted entirely of subjects taken from sacred writ--subjects that imposed a purity of thought and a primitive simplicity upon the artists; these qualities were, however, in a great measure lost in passing through the venetian and german schools, where either the love for pictorial effect or the introduction of catholic ceremonies took precedence of every other arrangement. the prolific genius of rubens spread this infectious mode of treatment through flanders and holland, till at length, in the hands of the painters of smoking and drinking scenes, historical subjects, even of a sacred character, became quite ridiculous. yet, with all these examples of bad and vulgar taste around him, we find many compositions of rembrandt less degraded by mean representation than many of the best of the works of the venetian and flemish painters. take, for example, his design of christ and his disciples at emmaus, the principal figure in which is certainly more refined than the christ either in the pictures of titian or rubens of the same subject; in fact, the idea of it is taken from the last supper, by raffaelle, (the mark antonio print of which he must have had.) raffaelle is indebted for the figure to leonardo da vinci; and if we were to trace back, i have no doubt we should find that the milanese borrowed it from an earlier master; indeed, we perceive in the progress of painting much of the primitive simplicity and uniformity preserved in the best works of the italian school. it was only when composition passed through the prolific minds of such artists as paul veronese, tintoret, and rubens, that it was made subservient to the bustle, animation, and picturesque effect of their works. when we find, therefore, any remains revived in the pictures of rembrandt, who was surrounded by compositions of a vulgar and low cast, we can only ascribe it to the taste and genius of this great painter. in the design just mentioned, the idea of the disciples, as if struck with astonishment and awe at the bursting forth of the divinity of christ, is admirably conceived. as the heads are taken from the people of his country, they of necessity partake of the character of the people. this cannot be justified, though it is excusable. reynolds, on this head, speaking of the ennobling of the characters in an historical picture, says, "how much the great style exacts from its professors to conceive and represent their subjects in a poetical manner, not confined to mere matter of fact, may be seen in the cartoons of raffaelle. in all the pictures in which the painter has represented the apostles, he has drawn them with great nobleness; he has given them as much dignity as the human figure is capable of receiving. yet we are expressly told in scripture they had no such respectable appearance; and of st. paul in particular we are told by himself that his _bodily_ presence was _mean_. in conformity to custom, i call this part of the art history painting: it ought to be called poetical, as in reality it is." he further adds, "the painter has no other means of giving an idea of the mind but by that external appearance which grandeur of thought does generally, though not always, impress on the countenance, and by that correspondence of figure to sentiment and situation which all men wish, but cannot command." as i cannot defend the mean appearance of the disciples, neither shall i exculpate our great artist from blame in introducing a dog into so grand a subject; we can only excuse him on the plea of following the practice of his predecessors. titian, in his celebrated picture, has not only introduced a dog, but a cat also, which is quarrelling with the former for a bone under the table. to this love for the introduction of animals into their compositions, for the sake of picturesque variety, many of the greatest painters must plead guilty; and though the incongruity has been pointed out over and over again by the writers on art, it is still clung to as means of contrast with the human figure. in one of the sketches by the late sir d. wilkie for his picture of "finding the body of tippoo saib," he had introduced two dogs, and only obliterated them when informed that dogs were considered unclean by the people of the east, and therefore it was an impossibility for them to be in the palace of seringapatam. while i am upon this subject, it may not be amiss to refer to one of the authorities who censures this practice. fresnoy says, in his poem on the "art of painting," "nec quod inane, nihil facit ad rem sive videtur improprium miniméque urgens potiora tenebit ornamenta operis." "nor paint conspicuous on the foremost plain, whate'er is false, impertinent, or vain." mason. [illustration: christ and his disciples at emmaus] on this rule, reynolds remarks--"this precept, so obvious to common sense, appears superfluous till we recollect that some of the greatest painters have been guilty of a breach of it; for--not to mention paul veronese or rubens, whose principles as ornamental painters would allow great latitude in introducing animals, or whatever they might think necessary to contrast or make the composition more picturesque--we can no longer wonder why the poet has thought it worth setting a guard against this impropriety, when we find that such men as raffaelle and the caracci, in their greatest and most serious works, have introduced on the foreground mean and frivolous circumstances. such improprieties, to do justice to the more modern painters, are seldom found in their works. the only excuse that can be made for those great artists, is their living in an age when it was the custom to mix the ludicrous with the serious, and when poetry as well as painting gave in to this fashion." many of the compositions of rembrandt indicate not only a refined taste, but the greatest sensibility and feeling. for example, the small etchings of the "burial of christ," and the "return from jerusalem;" these, from their slightness, may lay me under the same category as the old greek, who, having a house to sell, carried in his pocket one of the bricks as a sample; yet, being his own indications, i have given them. it is worth while to compare the "entombment" with the same subject by raffaelle, in the crozat collection. the whole arrangement is treated in the finest taste of the italian school. the other design has been always a favourite with the admirers of rembrandt. the feeling character of the youthful saviour is admirably portrayed. holding his mother's hand, he is cheering her on her tiring journey, looking in her face with an expression of affection and solace; while she is represented with downcast eyes, fatigued and "pondering in her mind" the import of the words he had addressed to her, "how is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that i must be about my father's business?" and even here we can almost excuse the introduction of the little dog, who, running before the group, is looking back, giving a bark of joy at their having found the object of their solicitude. the background is conceived in the finest spirit of titian. these are the touches of nature that, like the expressions of our own immortal shakspere, however slight, and though dressed in modern garb or familiar language, reach the innermost sensibilities of the human heart. [illustration: the entombment] [illustration: the return from jerusalem] the character and costume of the people, as well as the scenery of those subjects taken from holy writ, have been a matter of investigation both by artists and writers upon art; for although the events related in the new testament are not of so ancient a date as those of the heathen writers, yet the mind seems to require that the style should be neither classic nor too strictly local. hence, though the costume represented in the venetian pictures is no doubt nearer the truth than that made use of by raffaelle and other italians, it fails to carry us back to ancient and primitive simplicity. the early pictures delineating christian subjects are modelled upon greek forms and dresses, and having been made the foundation of those works afterwards produced by the great restorers of painting, have gained a hold upon our ideas, which, if not impossible, is yet difficult to throw off. as the late sir david wilkie travelled into the east with the express purpose of painting the subjects mentioned in scripture in more strict accordance with the people and their habits, it may be of advantage to give the student his opinions. in his journal, he says--"after seeing with great attention the city of jerusalem and the district of syria that extends from jaffa to the river jordan, i am satisfied it still presents a new field for the genius of scripture painting to work upon. it is true the great italian painters have created an art, the highest of its kind, peculiar to the subjects of sacred history; and in some of their examples, whether from facility of inquiry or from imagination, have come very near all the view of syria could supply. the venetians, (perhaps from their intercourse with cyprus and the levant,) titian, paul veronese, and sebastian del piombo, have in their pictures given the nearest appearance to a syrian people. michael angelo, too, from his generalizing style, has brought some of his prophets and sybils to resemble the old jews about the streets of the holy city; but in general, though the aspect of nature will sometimes recall the finest ideas of leonardo da vinci and raffaelle, yet these masters still want much that could be supplied here, and have a great deal of matters quite contrary to what the country could furnish. these contrarieties, indeed, are so great, that in discussions with the learned here, i find a disposition to that kind of change that would soon set aside the whole system of italian and european art; but as these changes go too much upon the supposition that the manners of scripture are precisely represented by the present race in syria, it is too sweeping to be borne out by what we actually know. at the same time, there are so many objects in this country so perfectly described, so incapable of change, and that give such an air of truth to the local allusions of sacred writ, that one can scarcely imagine that these, had they been known to the painters of italy, would not have added to the impressive power of their works. without trying to take from the grand impression produced by the reading of the sacred writings, it may be said that from its nature many things must be confined to narrative, to description, to precept--and these are no doubt so strong as to supply to a pious mind everything that can be desired; but if these are to be represented, as certainly they have been, by those of an art who have not seen syria, it is clear some other country, italy, spain, or flanders, will be drawn upon to supply this, and the reader of scripture and the admirer of art will be alike deluded by the representation of a strange country in the place of that so selected and so identified as the land of promise--so well known and so graphically described from the first to the last of the inspired writers." these remarks are certainly applicable, but only in a degree. what is quoted from reynolds, in a former part, shows that a licence is indispensable; and yet, without destroying the apparent truth of the subject, many things are now established that, without their being facts, have taken such hold of our ideas that they cannot with safety be departed from. i may instance the countenances of our saviour and the virgin, as given by raffaelle and coreggio--we recognise them as if they had been painted from the persons themselves; i may also add the heads of the apostles. with regard to the scenery, many circumstances may certainly be taken advantage of, always guarding against a topographical appearance that, by its locality, may prevent the work leading the spectator back into distant periods of time. before quitting this part of the subject, which refers to rembrandt's powers of composition, i may notice one or two of his designs, which stamp him as a great genius in this department of the art--viz., his "christ healing the sick," "haman and mordecai," the "ecce homo," "christ preaching," and the "death of the virgin." chiaro-scuro. from the position we are now placed in, surrounded by the accumulated talent of many centuries, it is easy to take a retrospective view of the progress of art; and it is only by so doing that we can arrive at a just estimate of the great artists who advanced it beyond the age in which they lived, and this seems mainly to have been achieved by a close observance of nature. as in philosophy the genius of bacon, by investigating the phenomena of visible objects, put to flight and dissipated the learned dogmas of the school of aristotle, so in sculpture the purity and simplicity of the forms of phidias established a line of demarcation between his own works and those of the formal, symmetrical, and dry sculpture of his predecessors. sculpture, till then, lay fettered and bound up in the severity of egyptian hieroglyphics. likewise we perceive the genius of michael angelo and raffaelle setting aside the stiffness and profile character existing in the works of signorelli and masaccio. in venice, titian emancipated the arts from the grasp of giovanni bellini. in germany, rubens must be considered the great translator of art out of a dead language into a living one, to use a metaphor, and into one that, like music, is universal. previous to rembrandt, the pupils of rubens had thrown off every affinity not only to gothic stiffness, but even to that degree of regularity of composition which all classes of historical subjects require. independent of rubens and his pupils, we find rembrandt was aware of the great advances made in natural representations of objects by adrian brauwer, (several of whose works, by the catalogue given of his effects, were in his possession;) therefore, as far as transparency and richness, with a truthfulness of tint, are concerned, brauwer had set an example. but in the works of rembrandt we perceive a peculiarity entirely his own--that of enveloping parts in beautiful obscurity, and the light again emerging from the shadow, like the softness of moonlight partially seen through demi-transparent clouds, and leaving large masses of undefined objects in darkness. this principle he applied to compositions of even a complicated character, and their bustle and noise were swallowed up in the stillness of shadow. if breadth constitutes grandeur, rembrandt's works are exemplifications of mysterious sublimity to the fullest extent. this "darkness visible," as milton expresses it, belongs to the great founder of the school of holland, and to him alone. flinck, dietricy, de guelder, and others his pupils, give no idea of it; their works are warm, but they are without redeeming cool tints; they are yellow without pearly tones; and in place of leading the eye of the spectator into the depths of aërial perspective, the whole work appears on the surface of the panel. there are none of those shadows "hanging in mid air," which constitute so captivating a charm in the great magician of chiaro-scuro; not only are objects of solidity surrounded by softening obscurity, but the contiguous atmosphere gives indications of the influence of the light and shade. to these principles the art is indebted for breadth and fulness of effect, which constitute the distinct characteristics between the early state and its maturity--and to rembrandt we owe the perfection of this fascinating quality. we must, nevertheless, always look back with wonder at what was achieved by coreggio. even when painting flourished under the guidance of leonardo da vinci and giorgione, reynolds, speaking of this quality in contradistinction to that of relief, says, "this favourite quality of giving objects relief, and which de piles and all the critics have considered as a requisite of the greatest importance, was not one of those objects which much engaged the attention of titian. painters of an inferior rank have far exceeded him in producing this effect. this was a great object of attention when art was in its infant state, as it is at present with the vulgar and ignorant, who feel the highest satisfaction in seeing a figure which, as they say, looks as if they could walk round it. but however low i might rate this pleasure of deception, i should not oppose it, did it not oppose itself to a quality of a much higher kind, by counteracting entirely that fulness of manner which is so difficult to express in words, but which is found in perfection in the best works of coreggio, and, we may add, of rembrandt. this effect is produced by melting and losing the shadows in a ground still darker than those shadows; whereas that relief is produced by opposing and separating the ground from the figure, either by light, or shadow, or colour. this conduct of inlaying, as it may be called, figures on their ground, in order to produce relief, was the practice of the old painters, such as andrea mantegna, pietro perugino, and albert durer, and to these we may add the first manner of leonardo da vinci, giorgione, and even coreggio; but these three were among the first who began to correct themselves in dryness of style, by no longer considering relief as a principal object. as those two qualities, relief and fulness of effect, can hardly exist together, it is not very difficult to determine to which we ought to give the preference. an artist is obliged for ever to hold a balance in his hand, by which he must determine the value of different qualities, that when some fault must be committed, he may choose the least. those painters who have best understood the art of producing a good effect have adopted one principle that seems perfectly conformable to reason--that a part may be sacrificed for the good of the whole. thus, whether the masses consist of light or shadow, it is necessary that they should be compact and of a pleasing shape; to this end, some parts may be made darker and some lighter, and reflections stronger than nature would warrant. paul veronese took great liberties of this kind. it is said, that being once asked why certain figures were painted in shade, as no cause was seen in the picture itself, he turned off the inquiry by answering, 'una nuevola che passa,'--a cloud is passing, which has overshadowed them." before entering more minutely into an investigation of the principles of rembrandt with regard to chiaro-scuro, i must again revert to those of coreggio. opie, speaking of the method of this great artist, says, "to describe his practice will be in a great degree to repeat my observations on chiaro-scuro in its enlarged sense. by classing his colours, and judiciously dividing them into few and large masses of bright and obscure, gently rounding off his light, and passing, by almost imperceptible degrees, through pellucid demi-tints and warm reflections into broad, deep, and transparent shade, he artfully connected the finest extremes of light and shadow, harmonized the most intense opposition of colours, and combined the greatest possible effect with the sweetest and softest repose imaginable." further on, he remarks--"the turn of his thoughts, also, in regard to particular subjects, was often in the highest degree poetical and uncommon, of which it will be sufficient to give as an instance his celebrated _notte_, or painting of the 'nativity of christ,' in which his making all the light of the picture emanate from the child, striking upwards on the beautiful face of the mother, and in all directions on the surrounding objects, may challenge comparison with any invention in the whole circle of art, both for the splendour and sweetness of effect, which nothing can exceed, and for its happy appropriation to the person of him who was born to dispel the clouds of ignorance, and diffuse the light of truth over a darkened world!" now, this work rembrandt must have seen, or at least a copy from it, as his treatment of the same subject, in the national gallery, indicates; but the poetry is lost, for it would be impossible to imitate it without a direct plagiarism. it may, however, have given a turn to his thoughts, in representing many of his subjects under the influence of night in place of day, such as his "taking down from the cross," by torch light; his "flight into egypt," with the lantern; the "burial of christ," &c. while other men were painting daylight, he turned the day into night, which is one of the paths that sublimity travels through. the general idea most people have of rembrandt is, that he is one of the dark masters: but his shadows are not black, they are filled with transparency. the backgrounds to his portraits are less dark than many of either titian or tintoret. his landscapes are not black, they are the soft emanations of twilight; and when he leads you through the shadows of night, you see the path, even in the deepest obscurity. as colour forms a constituent part of chiaro-scuro, i must, in this division, confine myself more particularly to black and white, both in giving examples from his etchings, and explaining the various changes he made upon them in order to heighten the effect. the etching i have here given is the "nativity," in the darkest state; in the british museum there are no less than seven varieties, and the first state is the lightest. but in order to render his mode of proceeding more intelligible, i shall explain the progress of his working. his first etchings are often bit in with the aquafortis, when the shadows have but few ways crossed with the etching point: these are often strongly bit in, that, when covered over with finer lines, the first may shine through, and give transparency. in the next process he seems to have taken off the etching ground, and laid over the plate a transparent ground, (that is to say, one not darkened by the smoke of a candle;) upon this he worked up his effect by a multiplicity of fresh lines, often altering his forms, and adding new objects, as the idea seemed to rise in his mind. after which, when the plate was again subjected to the operation of the acid, the etching ground was removed, and the whole worked up with the greatest delicacy and softness by means of the dry needle, to the scratches of which the aquafortis is never applied. this process it is that gives what is termed the _burr_, and renders the etchings of rembrandt different from all others. now this _burr_ is produced, not by the ink going into the lines, but by the printer being obstructed in wiping it off by the raised edge which the dry point has forced up; for when these lines run through deep shadows, we often see that they print white, from the ink being wiped off the top of the ridge. [illustration: the nativity] this is the foundation of what is called mezzotint engraving, which i shall notice in another place. by keeping these remarks in mind, we shall easily perceive how it is that so many variations occur in impressions from his plates, depending entirely on the direction in which the printer wiped off the ink--whether across the ridges, or in the same direction as the lines. varieties have also arisen from these ridges wearing away by the friction of the hand; and as rembrandt's copper plates, judging from those i have examined, were soft, they soon wore down. we also find this dark effect given in many of his varieties by merely leaving the surface partially wiped, and touching out the high lights with his finger, or a piece of leather. these impressions must have been taken by himself, or, at least, under his superintendence. several of his plates are worked on with the graver, such as his "taking down from the cross;" but that evidently is by the hand of an engraver. we see the same in several of the etchings of vandyke, but their value decreases as the finishing extends. while we are upon the subject of his etchings, it will, perhaps, be of use to confine the conduct of his chiaro-scuro to his etchings alone, as his treatment is very different to what he adopted when he had colour to deal with; and in this respect he must have been influenced by the example of rubens and vandyke, proofs of all the engravings after whose pictures we perceive he had in his possession. in order that we may more clearly understand the reason of many of his etchings remaining unfinished in parts, while other portions are worked up with the greatest care, i shall give an extract from the journal of sir joshua reynolds, when in flanders. in describing a picture in the church of the recollets, at antwerp, he says:--"over the altar of the choir is the famous 'crucifixion of christ between two thieves,' by rubens. to give animation to this subject, he has chosen the point of time when an executioner is piercing the side of christ, whilst another, with a bar of iron, is breaking the limbs of one of the malefactors, who, in his convulsive agony, which his body admirably expresses, has torn one of his feet from the tree to which it was nailed. the expression in the action of this figure is wonderful. the attitude of the other is more composed, and he looks at the dying christ with a countenance perfectly expressive of his penitence. this figure is likewise admirable. the virgin, st. john, and mary the wife of cleophas, are standing by, with great expression of grief and resignation; whilst the magdalen, who is at the feet of christ, and may be supposed to have been kissing his feet, looks at the horseman with the spear with a countenance of great horror. as the expression carries with it no grimace or contortion of the features, the beauty is not destroyed. this is by far the most beautiful profile i ever saw of rubens, or, i think, of any other painter. the excellence of its colouring is beyond expression. to say that she may be supposed to have been kissing christ's feet, may be thought too refined a criticism; but rubens certainly intended to convey that idea, as appears by the disposition of her hands, for they are stretched out towards the executioner, and one of them is before and one behind the cross, which gives an idea of their having been round it. and it must be remembered that she is generally represented as kissing the feet of christ: it is her place and employment in those subjects. the good centurion ought not to be forgotten--who is leaning forward, one hand on the other, resting on the mane of his horse, while he looks at christ with great earnestness. the genius of rubens nowhere appears to more advantage than here; it is the most carefully finished picture of all his works. the whole is conducted with the most consummate art. the composition is bold and uncommon, with circumstances which no other painter had ever before thought of--such as the breaking of the limbs, and the expression of the magdalen; to which we may add the disposition of the three crosses, which are placed perspectively, in a very picturesque manner--the nearest bears the thief whose limbs they are breaking; the next the christ, whose figure is straighter than ordinary, as a contrast to the others; and the furthermost the penitent thief. this produces a most interesting effect, but it is what few but such a daring genius as rubens would have attempted. it is here, and in such compositions, that we properly see rubens, and not in little pictures of madonnas and bambinos. it appears that rubens made some changes in this picture after bolswert had engraved it. the horseman who is in the act of piercing the side of christ holds the spear, according to the print, in a very tame manner, with the back of the hand over the spear, grasping it with only three fingers, the forefinger lying straight over the spear; whereas, in the picture, the back of the hand comes _under_ the spear, and he grasps it with his whole force. the other defect, which is remedied in the picture, is the action of the executioner who breaks the legs of the criminal: in the print, both of his hands are over the bar of iron, which makes a false action; in the picture, the whole disposition is altered to the natural manner in which every person holds a weapon which requires both hands--the right is placed over, and the left under it. this print was undoubtedly done under the inspection of rubens himself. it may be worth observing, that the keeping of the masses of light in the print differs much from the picture; this change is not from inattention, but design; a different conduct is required in a composition with colours from what ought to be followed _when it is in black and white only_. we have here the authority of this great master of light and shadow, that a print requires more and larger masses of light than a picture. in this picture, the principal and the strongest light is the body of christ, which is of a remarkably clear and bright colour. this is strongly opposed by the very brown complexion of the thieves, (perhaps the opposition here is too violent,) who make no great effect as to light; the virgin's outer drapery is dark blue, and the inner a dark purple, and st. john is in dark strong red. no part of these two figures is light in the picture but the head and hands of the virgin, but in the print, they make the principal mass of light of the whole composition. the engraver has certainly produced a fine effect, and i suspect it is as certain that if this change had not been made, it would have appeared a black and heavy print. when rubens thought it necessary, in the print, to make a mass of light of the drapery of the virgin and st. john, it was likewise necessary that it should be of a beautiful shape, and be kept compact; it therefore became necessary to darken the whole figure of the magdalen, which in the picture is at least as light as the body of christ; her head, linen, arms, hair, and the feet of christ, make a mass as light as the body of christ. it appears, therefore, that some parts are to be darkened, as well as other parts made lighter. this, consequently, is a science which an engraver ought well to understand before he can presume to venture on any alteration from the picture he means to represent. the same thing may be remarked in many other prints by those engravers who were employed by rubens and vandyke; they always gave more light than they were warranted by the picture--a circumstance which may merit the attention of engravers." as most of these engravings were made from studies in black and white, perhaps reduced from the picture by the engraver, but certainly touched on afterwards by the painters themselves, they form a school for the study of light and shade when deprived of colour. in the etchings of rembrandt, therefore, we ought to bear in mind that splendour of effect was what he aimed at, and the means adopted by rubens and vandyke were carried still further by the fearless master of chiaro-scuro. now that the eye has been accustomed to engravings where the local colour is rendered, when we look over a folio of the works of bolswert, soutman, pontius, and others of the flemish engravers, they appear, notwithstanding their overpowering depth and brilliancy, unfinished, from the lights of the several coloured draperies and the flesh tones being left white. they also occasionally look spotty in effect, from the extreme strength of the shadows and black draperies. in rembrandt's works these defects are avoided, by finishing his darks with the greatest care and softness, while the figures in the light masses are often left in mere outline: the lights are also reduced in size as they enter the shade; while the darks in the light portions of his prints are circumscribed to a mere point, for the purpose of giving a balance and solidity. the shadows of the several objects likewise assume a greater delicacy as they enter into the masses of light. in these respects, the hundred guilder print is a striking example. as we are now considering light and shade when unaccompanied by colour, i may notice that those portions where the dark and light masses come in contact are the places where both the rounding of the objects by making out the forms, and also the patching down the half-tint with visible lines, may be followed out with the greatest success, as it prevents the work being heavy in effect, and also assists the passage of the light into the shadow. the quality of the lights and darks is flatness. the flemish engravers seem to have been very particular in the method of producing their shadow, both with regard to the direction of the lines, and also their repetition; their object seems to have been intenseness of dark with transparency of execution. in a conversation with sir thomas lawrence upon the subject of shadows, his ideas were that they ought to be as still as possible, and that all the little sparkling produced by the crossing of the lines ought to be extinguished, or softened down. in painting, his notions were that they ought to be kept cool. without presuming to differ with so excellent an artist, it is but proper to mention that all the best engravers, from the time of bolswert to our own, are of a contrary opinion; and our best colourists, from coreggio to rembrandt, and from rembrandt to wilkie, were diametrically opposite in their practice. as far as engraving is concerned, it is but fair to notice that lawrence had rembrandt on his side, of whose works he was a great admirer. [illustration: doctor faustus] i may appear to have dwelt too long upon this subject of engraving, but as the etchings of rembrandt form so large a portion of his popularity, we cannot enter too minutely into the various sources of their excellence. i shall now proceed to describe the etching of "doctor faustus," a copy of which i have given. some think that it represents fust, the partner of guttenburg, who, by his publication of bibles in paris, was looked upon by the people as a dealer in the black art. the papers hung up by the side of the window look like the sheets of his letter-press, and the diagram that attracts his attention, and rouses him from his desk, indicates by words and symbols a connexion with holy writ. but the general opinion is, that it is dr. john faustus, a german physician, in his study. this dr. faustus was supposed to have dealings with familiar spirits, one of which has raised this cabalistic vision, that enters the window with overwhelming splendour, like the bursting of a shell, communicating its radiance to the head and breast of the figure, and, descending by his variegated garment, is extended in a spread of light over the whole lower part of the composition. the light of the window being surrounded by a mass of dark, receives intense importance, and is carried as far as the art can go. it is also, i may observe, rendered less harsh and cutting by its shining through the papers at the side, and by the interruption of the rays of the diagram. the light passing behind the figure, and partially thrown upon a skull, gives an awe-striking appearance to the whole; while the flat breadth of light below is left intentionally with the objects in mere outline. this etching seems never to have been touched on from the first impressions to the last--the first state is dark with excess of burr; the last is merely the burr worn off. before quitting this subject, i wish to make a few remarks. it has been said by some of rembrandt's biographers, that he made alterations in his prints for the sake of enhancing their value; but we know by experience that every alteration he made, however it might be for the better, struck off a certain portion of its money value. i believe his desire to better the effect was the only incitement. many were improved by his working upon them after the first proofs, and many were deteriorated in effect; but every additional line at the least struck off a guilder. i have mentioned that in this etching the brilliancy of the light in the window is enhanced by its being surrounded by a mass of dark; but the same advantage would have accrued from its extension by a mass of half light, as it would then have had a greater breadth of soft light. this subject was a great favourite with the late sir david wilkie, and he introduced this window in his picture of "the school;" but this being a light composition, he treated it in the way i have mentioned above. it was a common practice with wilkie to adopt some part of a celebrated work as a point to work from, and carry out his design upon this suggestion. the spectator, by this means, was drawn into a predisposition of its excellence, without knowing whence it had arisen. thus, in his "john knox preaching," there are many points of similarity with the "st. paul preaching," by raffaelle. i may also mention here what we often perceive in the works of rembrandt--in place of having the light hemmed in by a dark boundary, it is spread out into a mass of half-light; and the same treatment is adopted with regard to his extreme darks, they communicate their properties to the surrounding ground. these qualities are the foundation of breadth and softness of effect. these observations may appear iterations of what has been mentioned before--but truths get strengthened by being placed in new positions. in dividing a work of this kind into portions, it is difficult to give a preference to any department, especially with such an artist as rembrandt, who was equally celebrated in all--and i have only given a priority to historical subjects as they hold a higher rank than portraiture. but his portraits are those productions of his pencil which are most peculiar to himself. [illustration: burgomaster six] portrait of the burgomaster six. this is the most finished and perfect of all the etchings of rembrandt; and as it was done expressly for his friend and patron, we can easily imagine that the painter exerted himself to the utmost, so as to render it worthy of the subject. i have been at some trouble to get an account of the family of jan six, but have gleaned little from those books connected with the history of holland. during the war with england, in the reign of charles the second, he was secretary of state to the city of amsterdam, and his family was afterwards connected with some of their most celebrated men. but what has rendered his name more famous than intermarrying with the families of van tromp or de ruyter, is his patronage of rembrandt--in the same way that lord southampton's name is ennobled by his patronage of shakspere. we know he was devoted to literature as well as the fine arts, having left a tragedy on the story of medea, a copy of which is mentioned in the catalogue of rembrandt's effects, and an etching by the artist was prefixed to the work--viz., the "marriage of jason and creusa;" the rare states of this print are before the quotation of the dutch verses underneath--also the statue of juno is without the diadem, which was afterwards added. i have mentioned that this portrait was a private plate; in fact, the copper is still in the possession of the family. in a sale which took place in , for a division of the property among the various branches, fourteen impressions were sold, but brought comparatively small prices, from the number to be contended for. two proofs, however, on india paper are still in the portfolio of his descendants, which in five years will, it is said, be brought to the hammer, as by that time the parties will be of age. these proofs will in all probability realize two hundred guineas each. the ease and natural attitude of the figure in this work are admirable: the intensity of the light, with the delicacy and truth of the reflected lights, are rendered with the strong stamp of genius; the diffusion of the light also, by means of the papers on the chair, and the few sparkling touches in the shadow, completely take this etching out of the catalogue of common portraiture. the only work i can at present think of that can be brought into competition with it, is the full-length portrait of charles the first, by vandyke, in the queen's collection, and which is rendered so familiar by strange's admirable engraving. in entering into an examination of the execution of this print, it is evident the whole effect is produced by means of the dry point, which must have been a work of great labour. the best impressions are on india paper; and i perceive, by referring to gersaint's catalogue, that at the sale of the burgomaster's property, they only brought about eighteen florins. the next portrait amongst his etchings that at all approaches to the burgomaster, is that of "old haring," which has always struck me as one of the foundations for the style of sir joshua reynolds in portraiture. a fine impression of this work, on india paper, is more like sir joshua than many prints after his own pictures; and with all the high veneration i have for reynolds, i cannot omit noticing how very ambiguously he frequently speaks of this great genius. we know his master, hudson, had an excellent collection of rembrandt's works, and therefore he must have been early imbued with their merits and peculiarities. this, however, we shall have a better opportunity of noticing when we come to the treatment of colour. the next etching in excellence i should mention is the "portrait of john lutma, the goldsmith," with the light background; this was afterwards softened down by the introduction of a window. and here i must observe, that though he often had light backgrounds to his prints, yet in his finished pictures they were generally the reverse. the etching of "ephraim bonus, the jewish physician," is also one of his most effective works; the introduction of the balustrade, on which he leans descending the staircase, removes it from the ordinary level of mere portraiture. on the hand that rests upon the balustrade, is a ring, which in the very rare impressions, from its being done with the dry point, prints dark from the burr. these are invaluable, as in that state the whole work has the fulness and richness of a picture. a very large sum was given for the impression of the print in this state--now in the british museum--in fact, one hundred and sixty pounds; though at the verstolke sale, where this print was purchased, the commission given amounted to two hundred and fifty pounds: but when we consider that the collection in the british museum is now the finest in existence, no extra price should be spared to complete the collection, especially as these works are foundations for the sure improvement of the fine arts in the country. the crown jewels are exhibited as a necessary appendage to the rank of the nation--but there the value stops; now the works of art in this country are not only valuable, but intrinsically beneficial. we know that charles the second pawned the crown pearls to the dutch for a few thousands; but our collection of rembrandts would realize in holland at least ten thousand pounds. this, of course, is a digression, and is merely mentioned here to show how absurd the hue and cry is, that the country is wasting money in purchasing a few specimens of fine art. the "portrait of utenbogardus" is also excellent; and i may here notice the large book, which rembrandt was so fond of introducing, as a means of a breadth of light and employment for his portraits. now, to these circumstances we are indebted for some of the finest works of both reynolds and lawrence: amongst many, i might mention the large ledger in lawrence's "portraits of the baring family," and sir joshua's picture of the "dilettante society," and others. no doubt we find these means of making up a picture both in raffaelle and titian; but it is rendered more applicable to our own purposes when it is brought nearer to our own times, especially when translated by so great a genius as rembrandt. the next fine work amongst his etchings is the "portrait of cornelius silvius," the head of which, being delicately finished with the dry needle, is seldom seen very fine. this also has a book, and the hand extended beyond the frame of the oval opening, upon which it casts its shadow. this practice of representing objects nearer the eye than the frame is certainly to be observed in some of the prints after rubens and others, and has descended to several common prints in our own time, but ought not to be adopted, as bordering too much upon that art which may be designated as a sort of _ad captandum vulgus_ display. as we shall speak more particularly of rembrandt's portraits when colour is investigated, these works are merely mentioned as excellent specimens of composition and chiaro-scuro. i must not omit, however, to notice here the great coppenol, the writing-master to the city of amsterdam: he holds a pen and a sheet of paper in his hand, and is looking at the spectator with a look of intelligent observation. the head and figure of this work were perfected, in the first instance, before the background was put in, and in this state is exceedingly rare--the one in the british museum is valued at five hundred guineas, and was left, amongst other rare works in his collection, by the rev. mr. cracherode, to the public. and here we ought to bear in mind, when individuals contribute so largely by their bequests to the country, it is our bounden duty to carry out their views by perfecting the various collections as opportunities offer in the course of time, which to them was impossible. in one of the impressions in the museum, in a finished state, is written, in a large ornamental hand, a commendation by coppenol himself, wherein he says he does so to unite his name with that of the great artist, rembrandt van ryn, as by that means he knows he shall secure immortality to himself. the portrait, however, that is the most powerful, as well as the most rare, is van tolling the advocate. the effect, both from the reflected light on the face, and the fearless masses of burr, is more like a picture than a print, and renders every other etching comparatively tame. from the chemical bottles at the side, and from the character of the gown in which he is dressed, i am of opinion that he was a physician. the excellence of this work, added to its rarity, has at all times produced large prices. there are two states of this print--the first with an irregular beard, the second with the beard cut square, also some additional work on the drapery, &c.; but, what is worthy of remark is, in both states it is exceedingly scarce; in fact, there are but seven impressions known--viz., two in the british museum, one in mr. holford's collection, one in mr. hawkins', in amsterdam one, in paris one, and one in the collection of mr. rudge. i ought here to notice that the van tolling is one of the prints bequeathed to the nation by the rev. mr. cracherode, and that at the sale of the hon. pole carew's prints, in , this valuable etching was purchased for the late baron verstolke, for two hundred and twenty pounds. [illustration: portrait of van tolling] * * * * * i shall now enter upon an investigation of the landscapes of rembrandt, which, equally with his portraits, are quite peculiar to himself, but differing from all others not from any eccentricity of manner, but from their giving the real essence and character of the scene, when denuded of any trifling and extraneous matters. whatever rembrandt touched was impressed with the peculiar characteristics of his genius; hence it is that the smallest stroke in his etchings is pregnant with truth. though painting belongs exclusively to no country, but represents the natural appearance of each, still it is reserved for genius alone to be able to perceive and place on canvas the essence, as it were, or great leading features of the subject. i am now more particularly speaking of landscape scenery. in all countries and climates there are peculiarities of effect, which, however interesting to the traveller, or a source of investigation to the philosopher or man of science, yet are necessarily excluded from the recording pencil of the artist; his appeal is to mankind at large, not to the isolated few who observe but one side of the subject. the true artist looks upon nature as the chameleon, capable of giving out any variety, and yet all equally true; hence it is that the skies, for example, of claude, salvator rosa, and gaspar poussin are universally subordinate to the general effect of the picture. these men, living in italy, were quite aware of the various prismatic effects observable in sunset, but were also convinced of the necessity of making the sky subservient, at least conducive to, the breadth and harmony of the picture. it may be said that titian and tintoret embodied the deep and intense blues of the venetian atmosphere, but we may remark that their skies are always held in check by the deep reds and browns of the draperies of their figures. let us now, however, turn our remarks more immediately to rembrandt, and the scenery and effects observable in holland. any one conversant with the pictures of the dutch school must have observed peculiar features in the skies of backhuysen, cuyp, and rembrandt, arising entirely from the localities of the scenes of their several pictures. my young friend, e. w. cooke, long a resident in holland, and a keen and observing artist, remarked that the skies in the pictures of backhuysen, though dark and inky, were precisely what we see now--the deep zuyder sea swallowing up any refraction of light which would otherwise have illuminated the clouds; while the skies of cuyp, receiving the coruscations arising from the meeting of the two rivers, the meuse and the waal, the scenes of most of his pictures, exhibit that luminous reflection and unsteady appearance peculiar to his works. i mention these matters, not to prove that these great observers of nature followed implicitly what was presented to their observation, but to show that when even copying the peculiar character of natural phenomena, it was done with a strict reference to the harmony of their works, and made subservient to one great broad principle. in a flat country like holland, especially where a low horizontal line is chosen, we perceive a peculiar feature takes precedence of everything else--that is, the quick diminution of those lines which run to the point of sight, whilst the lines running parallel with the base line of the picture retain their length in a greater degree; hence the accumulation of these lines, such as the division of fields, &c., gradually shade down the distant parts of the landscape, while the foreshortened lines assume the appearance of so many spots, or dark touches. in rembrandt we perceive this character faithfully rendered, and also, assisted by his judicious management, the lines, such as the banks of canals or roads, as they reach the foreground, are strongly pronounced, by either bringing them in contact with strong light, or giving them breadth and force by enriching them with broken ground, reeds, or dark herbage. the objects that stand up, such as trees, &c., are enlarged and darkened as they approach the eye; thus not only enabling them to keep their situation, but also to assist the perspective effect in the highest degree. his small landscape etchings illustrate these remarks, and are full of the touches of truth and nature; and where objects are wanting to give variety and interest, he introduces masses of shadow, or dark clumps of trees, leaving other parts in mere outline. the love of his art caused him to be always provided with the materials for drawing and etching, so that we have these transcripts of nature fresh from the fountain head. we know this from an anecdote mentioned by daulby. in describing the etching of "six's bridge," in his catalogue, he says, "this plate was produced by an incident which deserves to be related. rembrandt lived in great intimacy with the burgomaster six, and was frequently at his country seat. one day, when they were there together, the servant came to acquaint them that dinner was ready, but as they were sitting down to table, they perceived that mustard was wanting. the burgomaster immediately ordered his servant to go into the village to buy some. rembrandt, who knew the sluggishness of the dutch servants, and when they answer _austons_ (a-coming) they are half an hour before they appear, offered the burgomaster a wager that he would etch a plate before his man returned with the mustard. six accepted the wager, and rembrandt, who had always plates at hand ready varnished, immediately took one up, and etched upon it the landscape which appeared from the window of the parlour in which they were sitting. the plate was finished before the servant returned, and rembrandt won his wager. the etching is slight, but it is a wonderful performance, considering the circumstance that produced it." it is not wonderful on account of the rapidity with which it was done, but the genius and science that pervade every touch, not only in the general arrangement, but in the judicious management of the smallest darks; they are all in the most effective situations. when the plate was bit in, the name was left out; it was afterwards added with the dry point; also a little shading was given to the hat of one of the figures on the bridge, which in the rare state is white. i may notice here that it was also rembrandt's practice to sketch with the dry point alone, as several of his landscapes show; this has a very rich and full effect. his most finished and striking landscape is perhaps the etching of the "three trees." what i have said respecting his giving force to those parts nearest the eye, may be seen in the strong dark under the platform of the mill--which etching i have given, as it has always been considered the mill in which he was born; but i believe it is merely a mill of a picturesque character, which he consequently etched. in the rare impressions, the sky is much stained on the plate towards the house and mill, and i believe intentionally so, as it enables the subject to melt more softly into the background, by the outline being less harsh; at least, i found in my copy, when the person employed to clean the margin of the plate cleaned the stains in the sky also, that i had to restore them. as it will be necessary to go over the ground again with regard to rembrandt's landscapes, when we enter upon an investigation of his principles of colour, i shall now commence upon that department, fully conscious how high he stands as an artist in that difficult branch of the art, at the same time aware how feeble words must be to express adequately the deep-toned richness of rembrandt's colouring. [illustration: six's bridge] [illustration: rembrandt's mill] colour. perhaps, if we can comprehend a species of coloured chiaro-scuro, or the addition of colour to the broad and soft principles of light and shade, we shall be able to form a clear perception of the effects of rembrandt's colouring. indistinctness of tint, such as colours assume under the influence of twilight, is a strong characteristic of his manner--the shadows never so dark that a black or blue cannot tell firmly in the midst of them; with the total absence of all harshness, from the outlines of objects melting into their adjacent grounds, or assuming an importance after emerging from a mass of indefinite corresponding hues. as he has a mass of shadow with a mass of light, so he has an accumulation of warm colours in opposition to a congregation of cold--every combination introduced conducing to the great principles of breadth. when such is the plan upon which a work is laid down, we can easily perceive how powerfully the smallest touch of positive colour will tell--as in the midst of stillness a pin falling to the ground will be heard. cuyp has this quality in a high degree, only on another scale--a uniformity of unbroken tone, and in masses of half-tint only, like a few sparkles of light touches, dealt out with the most parsimonious pencil, producing a glitter like so many diamonds. this it is that prevents a work from being heavy, for by their fewness they require not the aid of black grounds to give them consequence, and by their being touched upon colours of the same quality, they avoid the appearance of harshness; in fact, the principles of these two great artists were the same; only from the general tone of cuyp's pictures being light, his strong darks tell with great power, and rembrandt's half tints being of a low tone, his high lights become more forcible. i may here mention not only the breadth of rembrandt's shadows, but their peculiar transparency and clearness, loose in the handling, and filled with air and space, whereas his lights are solid and firm--possessing not only the characteristics of nature in distinctiveness, but also in variety; and though we see always, on a general principle, light upon light and dark on a dark ground, yet we perceive inroads made upon each by their several antagonists; hot and cold colours darting into each other's provinces. this practice is also conducive to breadth, for tints of different hues may be interspersed both in the darks and lights, provided they are of equal strength with those adjoining them. we may observe in rembrandt--that those colours introduced into the shadows are more under the influence of indistinctness, while those in the light are brighter; this is quite a deviation from the roman school, where the colours are pronounced so harshly as to set the influence of chiaro-scuro at defiance. barry, in his sixth lecture, speaking of colours, says--"the happy effects of those sure and infallible principles of light and colour which rubens had so successfully disseminated in the netherlands, were soon found in every department of art. landscapes, portraits, drolls, and even the dullest and most uninteresting objects of still life, possess irresistible charms and fascination from the magic of those principles. rembrandt, who, it is said, was never at venice, might, notwithstanding, have seen, without going out of his country, many pictures of the venetian school. besides, he was about thirty years younger than rubens, whose works were a general object of study when rembrandt was forming himself. but, however it be, there is no doubt, for the colouring and chiaro-scuro, rembrandt is one of the most able artists that ever lived. nothing can exceed the beauty, freshness, and vigour of his tints. they have the same truth, high relish, and sapidity as those of titian. indeed, they have the closest resemblance to the hues of titian when he had giorgione most in view. there is identically the same attention to the relievo and force obtained by his strong shadows and low deep tones; and his chiaro-scuro, though sometimes too artificial, is yet often (particularly in contrasted subjects) productive of the most fascinating effects. in the tones of rembrandt, though we recognise the same richness and depth as in giorgione and titian, yet there is a suppleness and lifelike character in his flesh unlike either, both from his manner of handling, and also his hot and cold tints being less blended." the late sir david wilkie, in one of his letters, speaking of the death of sir thomas lawrence, says--"i do not wonder at the impression made among you in rome by the death of sir thomas lawrence; here, it engrossed for a time every other pursuit. one of the last remarks he made to me indicated his extreme admiration of sir joshua reynolds, who, he thought, had, with rembrandt, carried the imitation of nature, in regard to colours, further than any of the old masters." in many of the higher qualities of colour and chiaro-scuro, reynolds comes nearer to rembrandt than any other artist who has succeeded him. reynolds, in his lectures, speaking of gainsborough, observes--"we must not forget, whilst we are on this subject, to make some remarks on his custom of painting by night, which confirms what i have already mentioned--his great affection to his art, since he could not amuse himself in the evening by any other means so agreeable to himself. i am, indeed, much inclined to believe that it is a practice very advantageous and improving to an artist, for by this means he will acquire a new and higher perception of what is great and beautiful in nature. by candlelight, not only objects appear more beautiful, but from their being in a greater breadth of light and shadow, as well as having a greater breadth and uniformity of colour, nature appears in a higher style, and even the flesh seems to take a higher and richer tone of colour. judgment is to direct us in the use to be made of this method of study; but the method itself is, i am very sure, advantageous. i have often imagined that the two great colourists, titian and coreggio, though i do not know that they painted by night, formed their high ideas of colouring from the effects of objects by this artificial light. but i am more assured that whoever attentively studies the first and best manner of guercino will be convinced that he either painted by this light, or formed his manner on this conception." how far coreggio may have formed his principles upon the effects of lamplight it is impossible to decide, seeing that, though his shadows have great breadth, yet his lights have more of a phosphorescent character, tinged, as it were, with the coolness of moonlight; but titian has all the glow of this property, or, as reynolds remarks, "as if he painted with the sun shining into the room." the italian pictures of vandyke have much of this phosphorescent character--whereas many of those he painted in england have more of a daylight appearance. with regard to rembrandt, he seems to have regulated the entire scheme both of his chiaro-scuro and colour, on this foundation: his many paintings, drawings, and etchings of candlelight subjects, show how much his taste led to this class of art; and his daylight pictures, from the warmth of colour and breadth of shadow, proclaim the source from which he derived the cause of their brilliancy and force. from the light being tinged with yellow, the half-tone partakes of the same warmth, which gives a greenish tint even to his grey tones. this conduct conveys an emanation of the principal light passing over the more delicate shadows. in his daylight subjects it is not so; the light being often comparatively cool, is allowed to extend its influence to the secondary lights, and then, as it subsides into the shadow, is led in by the dark being lighted up by touches of red and brown; thus the light touches in the dark are warm, though the high light and secondary are cool. in coreggio we often find the shadows more hot than even in rembrandt, from his principal light and secondary being more cool. rembrandt never allows his lights, even though comparatively cool, to pass into the shadow without a few touches of warm colour; this was the practice of rubens, to enrich, as it were, "the debateable land." when this principle of painting candlelight subjects fell into the hands of his pupils, the harmony and colouring of the whole were lost or changed. for example, hoogstraten, his pupil, instructed schalcken, as did also gerard dow; but the candlelight pieces of schalcken are hot and foxy, without any redeeming grey tones. when he painted by candlelight, he placed his sitter in a dark room, with a light, while he painted in another apartment, having a hole cut through the door to communicate with his sitter; the consequence was, the effect gave exactly what we see in such cases--a red, dull treatment of colour. we know these facts by an anecdote told of william the third. when schalcken was over in england, the king wished to sit to him for his portrait, and hearing of his celebrity in candlelight pieces, wished it painted under that effect. the painter placed a light in his majesty's hand, and retired into the outer room; the candle guttering, kept dropping on the king's hand, but being unwilling to disturb the artist, the king held on, while the painter, intent on his work, proceeded without noticing it. many of our english artists paint by gaslight; but the tones of the flesh are not benefited, gas shedding a white cool light compared with lamplight. the practice of painting by candlelight originated neither with rembrandt nor gainsborough; in fact, we find that all academies, from the time of bacio bandinelli to our own, were always opened at night, both for the purposes of drawing and painting. but these effects generally remain where they originated, and are seldom taken advantage of without the walls, the figure alone being considered, without reference to the background. tintoret was one of the first to apply the principles to his practice. fuseli, speaking of chiaro-scuro, says--"the nocturnal studies of tintoret, from models and artificial groups, have been celebrated; those prepared in wax or clay he arranged, raised, suspended, to produce masses, foreshortening, and effect. it was thence he acquired that decision of chiaro-scuro, unknown to more expanded daylight, by which he divided his bodies, and those wings of obscurity and light by which he separated the groups of his composition; though the mellowness of his eye nearly always instructed him to connect the two extremes by something that partook of both, as the extremes themselves by the reflexes with the background or the scenery. the general rapidity of his process, by which he baffled his competitors, and often overwhelmed himself, did not, indeed, always permit him to attend deliberately to this principle, and often hurried him into an abuse of practice which in the lights turned breadth into mannered or insipid flatness; and in the shadows into a total extinction of parts. of all this he has in the schools of san rollo and marco given the most unquestionable instances--'the resurrection of christ,' and 'the massacre of the innocents,' comprehend every charm by which chiaro-scuro fascinates its votaries. in the vision, dewy dawn melts into deep but pellucid shade, itself sent or reflected by celestial splendour and angelic hues; whilst in the infant massacre of bethlehem, alternate sheets of stormy light and agitated gloom dash horror on the astonished eye." rembrandt, like tintoret, never destroyed the effective character of his chiaro-scuro by the addition of his colour, but made it a main contributor to the general character of the subject; hence that undisturbed and engulphing breadth which pervades his works. fuseli, in the same lecture, defends the venetian school from being considered as the "ornamental school." after selecting several of the pictures of titian, as proofs of his grand and solemn specimens of colour, he thus proceeds--"but perhaps it is not to titian, but to tintoret and paul cagliari, that the debaucheries of colour, and blind submission to fascinating tints, the rage of scattering flowers to no purpose, are ascribed. let us select from tintoret's most extensive work in the scuola of san rocco, the most extensive composition, and his acknowledged masterpiece--'the crucifixion,' and compare its tone with that of rubens and rembrandt of the same subject. what impression feels he who for the first time casts a glance over the immense scenery of that work? a whole whose numberless parts are connected by a lowering, mournful, minacious tone. a general fearful silence hushes all around the central figure of the saviour suspended on the cross, his fainting mother, and a group of male and female mourners at its foot--a group of colours that less imitate than rival nature, and tinged by grief itself; a scale of tones for which even titian offers me no parallel--yet all equally overcast by the lurid tone that stains the whole, and like a meteor hangs in the sickly air. whatever inequality or dereliction of feeling, whatever improprieties of commonplace, of local and antique costume, the master's rapidity admitted to fill his space, and they are great, all vanish in the power which compresses them into a single point, and we do not detect them till we recover from our terror." the picture of rubens which we oppose to tintoret was painted for the church of st. walburgha, at antwerp, after his return from italy, and has been minutely described and as exquisitely criticised by reynolds: "christ," he says, "is nailed to the cross, with a number of figures exerting themselves to raise it. the invention of throwing the cross obliquely from one corner of the picture to the other, is finely conceived, something in the manner of tintoret." so far reynolds. "in tintoret," says fuseli, "it is the cross of one of the criminals they attempt to raise, who casts his eye on christ, already raised. the body of christ is the grandest, in my opinion, that rubens ever painted; it seems to be imitated from the torso of apollonius, and that of the laocoon. how far it be characteristic of christ, or correspondent with the situation, i shall not here inquire; my object is the ruling tone of the whole--and of this the criticism quoted says not a word, though much of local colour, and grey and ochry balance. would so great a master of tone as reynolds have forgot this master-key if he had found it in the picture? the fact is, the picture has no other than the painter's usual tone. rubens came to his work with gay, technic exultation, and by the magic of his pencil changed the horrors of golgotha to an enchanted garden and clusters of flowers. rembrandt, though on a smaller scale of size and composition, concentrated the tremendous moment in one flash of pallid light. it breaks on the body of christ, shivers down his limbs, and vanishes on the armour of a crucifix--the rest is gloom." this is given with all the eloquence fuseli was so well able to utter; but it displays, also, a severe castigation on those who would class tintoret and paul veronese in the catalogue of ornamental painters. the observations which seem to have kindled his wrath are to be found in sir joshua's fourth lecture, in which he says--"tintoret, paul veronese, and others of the venetian school, seem to have painted with no other purpose than to be admired for their skill and experience in the mechanism of painting, and to make a parade of that art which, as i before observed, the higher style requires its followers to conceal." but, to understand the matter, the whole lecture must be read. with regard to the two pictures fuseli brings into comparison with the venetian, both are described in reynolds' tour to flanders and holland. sir joshua certainly criticizes the rubens correctly with regard to colouring; but sentiment it has none. the rembrandt is now in the munich gallery, and though one of his early pictures, it is very grand and striking. of it reynolds remarks--"there are likewise in this room eight rembrandts, the chief merit of which consists in his peculiarity of manner--of admitting but little light, and giving to that little a wonderful brilliancy. the colouring of christ in the elevation of the cross cannot be exceeded--it is exactly the tint of vandyke's 'susanna,' in the other room; but whether the ground of this picture has been repainted, or the white horse, which was certainly intended to make the mass of light broader, has lost its brightness, at present the christ makes a disagreeable mass of light." in bringing the opinions of these two great artists in contact, the truth is elicited, that the tone of colour has much to do in conveying the sentiment and pathos of the picture, and rembrandt possessed this quality in a very high degree. in the infancy of the arts, when practised by rude nations, we find harsh and bright colours predominate in a very strong scale--in fact, the brighter the more effective on the uneducated eye; and it is only when the arts advance towards perfection that a subdued tone of colour is demanded as most compatible with refinement. colour, both as an imitative quality, and also as an adjunct towards assisting the character of his subject, seems always to have been uppermost in rembrandt's mind. his drawing, it is true, is open to censure, but his colour will stand the most searching investigation, and will always appear more transcendent the more it is examined. reynolds, in his journey through holland, mentions a picture by rembrandt, in the collection of the prince of orange--"a study of a susanna, for the picture by rembrandt which is in my possession: it is nearly the same action, except that she is here sitting. this is the third study i have seen for this figure--i have one myself, and the third was in the possession of the late mr. blackwood. in the drawing which he made for this picture, which i have, she is likewise sitting; in the picture, she is on her legs, but leaning forward. it appears extraordinary that rembrandt should have taken so much pains, and have made at last so very ugly and ill-favoured a figure; but his attention was principally directed to the colouring and effect, in which it must be acknowledged he has attained the highest degree of excellence." the small picture in the national gallery is a study of the same figure. colour was the ruling principle with rembrandt, the alpha and omega, in the same way that richard wilson designated the three qualifications for landscape painting, as contained in one--viz., _breadth_. the tones of colour with which rembrandt clothed his subjects are always in the highest degree appropriate and conducive to the sentiment, whether within the "solemn temples," or the personification of some great supernatural event. as most of his historical subjects are from sacred writ, he never loses sight of those qualities which take them out of the page of every-day occurrences. i shall mention two, though one is sufficient for a master-key to them all. in the picture of "the adoration of the magi and kings," in the queen's collection, the solemnity is carried to the utmost extent, like the mysterious leaf of a sybil's book; the only light shed over the scene seems to descend from the lurid rays of the star that stood over the place of the nativity, and guided them to the spot. to acquire the greatest breadth, he has placed the virgin and child in the corner of the picture, and low down at the base, with the same feeling that impelled shakspere, in his constance, to utter, "here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it." the presentation of incense and precious perfumes, of diadems and jewels, by crowned heads and venerable magi, not only removes the attendants to the background, but even joseph is represented as wrapt in thought, and viewing from the shade the solemnity of the scene. the whole colouring of this work is in accordance with this feeling--subdued, except in the smallest portions of each hue, and these shine out like sparkling of jewels in a dark recess. the other work i would particularize is, "the salutation of the virgin," in the collection of the marquis of westminster. this picture, though of small dimensions, yet exemplifies the peculiarity of rembrandt's mode of treatment. being less decided in the chiaro-scuro and tone of colour than the wise men's offering, it is more difficult to describe; this also arises from the exquisite weaving in of the hot and cold colours. having had it under my eye for a couple of months, i can easily recall it on the least effort of the memory; but to bring it before the spectator who has not seen it, and by no other art than the medium of words, is as difficult as it would be to bring an harmonious arrangement of music by a different means--one must be seen and the other heard to render an explanation evident, which even then can only be understood by connoisseurs in painting and music. i must therefore avail myself of technicalities, which may seem out of place, where we are investigating the general hue of the picture. it is divided into hot and cold colours, which are brought in contact in the centre--elizabeth being clothed in red and yellow, the virgin in blue, white, and cool grey. the hot colour is carried across by the red sleeve of elizabeth, and part of her yellow shawl, and descends to the petticoat of a negress who is removing the grey mantle from the virgin, and is further extended by a few warm-coloured stones and touches in the pavement. the cool colour is carried past the warm tone of zacharias and the porch above him by means of a grey green pillar, a peacock, and a few touches of cool colour on a bush at one corner of the warm side of the picture. the general tone of the work is of a low, deep hue, so that even the cool tints are not cold or raw, but a deep-toned brightness pervades the whole. through the dark grey sky, that seems to descend to overshadow the group, a gleam of light darts upon the scene, as a connecting link between heaven and earth, and giving force and truth to the expression of elizabeth, when she pronounces the words, "blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." the light that shoots through the gloom has roused a pea-hen and chicks, who shake off their sleep as if it was the dawn of day. this is a very imperfect description, but will, nevertheless, serve to show the fine feeling and deep intent of the genius of rembrandt. to extend this investigation further would be perhaps superfluous, did we not know that, even in our own time, doubts are entertained of the proper introduction of pictorial arrangements of chiaro-scuro and colour; but the grand style, like all other modes of portraying a work, must be made subservient to affecting the feelings of the spectator. i shall only bring two pictures in contrast to elucidate this principle still further--"the burning of the books at ephesus," by sebastian bourdon; and "the martyrdom of st. lawrence," by titian. as bourdon has been considered the french raffaelle, it is but fair that he should be taken as a follower of that school, devoted to composition and correct drawing, to the absence of all inferior qualities; the consequence is, he has represented the scene in mid-day, where the flames are red without extending their influence to surrounding objects; consequently, they are not luminous, nor conveying the idea of destruction. titian, on the contrary, has chosen the darkness of night to represent the horrors of the martyrdom--the red burning light of the living coal conveys a tenfold force to the torments of the saint, and the very reality of the colour gives a corresponding truth to the scene, which takes it completely out of the regions of apocrypha, and stamps it with the character of holy writ. the descent of the cool light from heaven upon the scorching body of st. lawrence is like a rush of water to counteract his sufferings, and give him a confidence in his future reward, which the spectator fully enters into. these are the triumphs that appropriate chiaro-scuro and colour achieve for their introduction into historical works. that we may more clearly perceive the rank which rembrandt holds as a colourist, i shall endeavour to investigate the peculiar qualities that characterise the several manners of titian, rembrandt, and reynolds--the one living before, the other after our artist, and of course confining the investigation to portraiture alone. i have selected titian in preference to vandyke, not that i consider him, in this branch, superior; on the contrary, i agree with sir joshua, in mentioning vandyke as the greatest portrait painter that ever existed, all things considered--but i wish to confine myself exclusively to colour, and in this branch it is evident that these three great artists are more similar in their works than any other painters; but titian, by the concurrent testimony of his contemporaries and all succeeding judges upon the subject, is the highest authority on the great leading principles of colour. besides, his works are in many instances uninjured by the rough usage of uneducated men. with regard to the works of rembrandt, which are in comparison as of yesterday, many of them remain in the same frames and on the same walls on which they were first hung. the works of reynolds, though of a more recent date, have suffered more, not from the ruthless hand of the picture-cleaner, but from his making use of more perishable materials. still, from the variety of his vehicles, changed from an anxiety to get a nearer approach to the look and appearance of nature, many of his pictures are sufficiently perfect to build an investigation upon. previous to the appearance of giorgione and titian, this branch of the art differed but little from the treatment the several heads received in historical pictures generally; only with this exception, that when introduced as the component parts of a work where a story had to be told, they were imbued with action and expression; but when treated as simple portraiture, the higher qualities were left out, and a quiet map of the face, to use a familiar expression, was all that was desired to be transferred to the canvas. neither did the head receive that superiority over every other subordinate part of the work which science and a long line of celebrated examples seem now so imperatively to demand. in drawing a comparison between the three great portrait painters, it is necessary, in the first instance, to refer to the several characters of their models, or sitters. the nobility of venice were, at the time of titian, men of long descent, dignified, and holding high rank in a city at that time the emporium of the merchandize of the east, and distributors of rich manufactures to the whole of civilized europe; hence that "senatorial dignity" which characterises his works, and the style and richness of costume so necessary to grandeur, and the historical air in his portraits. his sitters also possessed countenance and figure well calculated to engender and support the noblest character of painting. the sitters of reynolds, notwithstanding the pomatumed pyramids of the female hair, or the stiff, formal curls of the male, which set every attempt to beautify the features at defiance, either by extension of the forms or harmonizing the several parts of the countenance, (serious obstacles to pictorial beauty,) were still in possession of that bland and fascinating look which distinguishes people of high breeding. in contrast with these we have to array the models of rembrandt's painting-room--fat burgomasters, florid in complexion and common in feature; jews and attornies; shipbuilders, and hard harsh-featured master mechanics. independent of the models themselves, there is a congenial feeling created in the artist who associates with and has to represent them; we imperceptibly imbibe the manners of those we are in contact with, either advantageously or injuriously. from these few remarks we may perceive that the dignified attitude, the broad general tone of the countenance, though deep, yet rendered bright and luminous by the jetty blackness of the hair and beard, were all conducive to the creation of the style of titian--a style that swallows up the varieties of minute tints in a general breadth. so in reynolds, the absence of everything strong in expression or harsh in colour gave a refinement to the heads of his men, and a beauty to the faces of his females; and to this treatment all his sitters were subjected--so that even those heads, however deficient in the originals, came off his easel ladies and gentlemen. a subdued delicacy of expression and colour removes them from the common look of familiar life. now, on the contrary, the very character and colour of rembrandt's heads are pronounced with the strong stamp of flesh and blood--an exact representation of nature in an unsophisticated state. his handling, his manner of leaving the various tints, and the marking of minute parts, all conspire to give his works that appearance of truth unfettered with the attempt to elevate the general character at the expense of individuality. the peculiarity of titian's portraits, independent of the high character and simple and dignified attitude of the figure, is a careful and distinct modelling of the features, with the half-shadows, though not dark, yet never slurred over--which in other hands would produce heaviness; but titian counteracts this by the intense darkness of his dresses and backgrounds, so that the features, often modelled with the firmness of sculpture, are rendered comparatively gentle by the treatment of the other parts of the picture. the portraits of sir joshua have this peculiarity, that however loaded and enriched in every part of the work, the head is kept smooth, and often thinly painted. the whole-length of "the marquis of granby," and "the portrait of mrs. siddons," two of his finest pictures, are examples of this mode of treating the head. this has given rise to an anecdote, that mrs. siddons, looking at the picture when unfinished, begged sir joshua not to touch the head any more--and having promised her, he refrained, notwithstanding the richness and depth of the fearless glazings would seem to demand a corresponding force in the head. the truth is, that reynolds seems always to have depended upon the small dark shadows to give solidity to his heads, without clogging them with colour or dark half-tints. the importance of thus refining upon the head may be perceived in the portrait of himself, painted _con amore_, and presented to the dilettante society, of which he was a member. the features, and, indeed, the whole head, depend upon the extreme darks; the judicious arrangement of these shadows not only gives a pictorial dignity to the work, from the stamp of science, but also, where the features in nature are either blunt or mean in themselves, draws off the attention of the spectator to higher qualities. shadows are never mean, but are the stamps of truth rendered beautiful by taste and feeling. independent of the advantage of dark touches giving delicacy to the features that produce them, there is a motion and life given by the vivacity and freedom of the handling, which cannot with safety be taken with the features themselves. this quality seems very early to have been sir joshua's greatest anxiety to acquire. in a remark respecting the pictures of a rival, john stephen liotard, whose only merit was a strong likeness, with great neatness of finish, reynolds says--"the high-finished manner of painting would be chosen if it were possible with it to have that spirit and expression which infallibly fly off when the artist labours; but there are transient beauties which last less than a moment, and must be painted in as little time; besides, in poring long the imagination is fatigued, and loses its vigour. you will find nature in the first manner--but it will be nature stupid, and without action. the portraits of holbein are of this high-finished manner; and for colouring and similitude what was ever beyond them? but then you see fixed countenances, and all the features seem to remain immoveable." northcote observes, "of mere likeness in portraiture reynolds thought very little, and used to say that he could instruct any boy that chance might throw in his way to paint a likeness in a portrait in half a year's time; but to give an impressive and a just expression and character to a picture, or paint it like velasquez, was another thing. what we are all," he said, "attempting to do with great labour, he does at once." barry, speaking of reynolds as a portrait painter, mentions the wretched state the art was in before his time, and how elevated it became from the manner sir joshua treated it. in continuation, he says--"in many of titian's portraits the head and hands are mere staring, lightish spots, unconnected with either the drapery or background, which are sometimes too dark, and mere obscure nothings; and in lely, and even in vandyke, we sometimes meet with the other extreme of too little solidity, too much flickering and washiness. sir joshua's object appears to have been to obtain the vigour and solidity of the one, with the bustle and spirit of the other, without the excess of either; and in by far the greatest number of his portraits he has admirably succeeded. his portrait of mrs. siddons is, both for the ideal and the executive, the finest portrait of the kind perhaps in the world; indeed, it is something more than a portrait, and may serve to give an excellent idea of what an enthusiastic mind is apt to conceive of those pictures of confined history for which apelles was so celebrated by the ancient writers. but this picture of 'mrs. siddons, or the tragic muse,' was painted not long since, when much of his attention had been turned to history; and it is highly probable that the picture of lord heathfield, the glorious defender of gibraltar, would have been of equal importance, had it been a whole length; but even as it is--only a bust--there is great animation and spirit, happily adapted to the indications of the tremendous scene around him; and to the admirable circumstance of the key of the fortress, firmly grasped in his hand, than which imagination cannot conceive anything more ingenious and heroically characteristic. it is, perhaps, owing to the academy, and to his situation in it, to the discourses which he biennially made to the pupils upon the great principles of historical art, and the generous ardour of his own mind to realize what he advised, that we are indebted for a few expansive efforts of colouring and chiaro-scuro which would do honour to the first names in the records of art." and speaking of the large historical work he painted for the empress of russia, he adds--"nothing can exceed the brilliancy of light--the force and vigorous effect of his picture of 'the infant hercules strangling the serpent;' it possesses all that we look for and are accustomed to admire in the works of rembrandt, united to beautiful forms and an elevation of mind to which rembrandt had no pretensions. the prophetical agitation of tiresias and juno, enveloped in clouds, hanging over the scene like a black pestilence, can never be too much admired, and are, indeed, truly sublime." after such commendations, and from so high an authority, we might feel a diffidence in bringing forward the great founder of the dutch school in competition with such artists as titian and reynolds, did we not know that the qualities of the chiaro-scuro and colour of reynolds are founded on the deep tones of rembrandt, who, as a colourist, takes his proper place between the two heads of the venetian and english schools. how far rembrandt was indebted for his principles of colour to the works of titian, it is impossible to say; but many of his pictures bear a greater affinity to the last style of this great colourist than to any other painter. we perceive by the catalogue of his effects, that folios containing drawings by titian, also prints after him, were in his possession. the luminous, rich tones of his flesh are more like titian than rubens or vandyke, whose works he must have been familiar with; and while his backgrounds are less black and inky than those in the portraits of titian and tintoret, they are also more broken, both in colour and execution, which prevents heaviness. his handling--which conveys from its dexterity and touch so lifelike an appearance--is not unlike that of frank hals, of whom reynolds speaks so highly:--"in the works of frank hals, the portrait painter may observe the composition of a face, the features well put together, as the painters express it, from whence proceeds that strong, marked character of individual nature, which is so remarkable in his portraits, and is not found in an equal degree in any other painter. if he had joined to this most difficult part of the art a patience in finishing what he so correctly planned, he might justly have claimed the place which vandyke, all things considered, so justly holds, as the first of portrait painters." there is, however, this difference in their works--independent of the flesh of rembrandt's being much richer in tone, it is produced by glazing and fresh touches of transparent colour, whereas the tints of hals seem to have been mixed in the first instance on his palette; hence that undisturbed dexterity of handling which gives so much the appearance of life in his best works. the distinctive characteristics between a portrait painter and a historical painter, is "that the one paints man in general, the other a particular man;" hence, to ennoble the work, it is necessary to make it conform, as much as can be done with safety to the likeness, to the great principles that guide the highest branches of the art--that is, by softening down those features that overstep the boundary of general nature, and assisting those parts that fall short, or are defective. therefore, when lawrence painted mrs. siddons, the duke of wellington, or lord brougham, he chose a front view of the face, that their peculiarities might not be too apparent. now sir joshua carried these generalizing principles to so great an extent at times that his sitters did not recognise the striking likeness that some people look for as paramount to all other considerations, which made his pupil, northcote, remark that there was a class of sitters who would not be content "unless the house-dog barked at it as a sign of recognition." rembrandt, on the contrary, did not generalize enough; therefore, many portraits were left on his hands, as it is said they were left on reynolds's. but see the result, those very pictures from the easel of both painters bring higher prices than the more favoured of their likenesses, from being intrinsically fine works of art. the number of portraits rembrandt painted of himself is a proof of the little encouragement he received in painting the portraits of others. from sir joshua's hand we have but two or three, while from rembrandt's we have nearly fifty. yet, with all the deficiencies in the art of making up a beautiful face, rembrandt frequently produced portraits of great feminine beauty: witness "the lady with the fan," in the collection of the marquis of westminster, and "the lady," in the royal collection. had he got the same models of female beauty that titian and reynolds had, he would, in all probability, have transferred them to the canvas with the same truth and intenseness of feeling that guided his pencil in other matters. rembrandt's style was that which would have suited oliver cromwell, who, when he sat for his portrait, made it a _sine qua non_ that the painter should leave out neither warts nor wrinkles. the same truth and verisimilitude that regulated his forms, guided his eye with respect to colour. in his earlier pictures, such as "the ship builder," in the royal collection, there is a greater degree of hardness and solidity of pigment than in his later works, which possess more the suppleness of flesh. this is also to be observed in the later works of titian, velasquez, and reynolds, and in the later works of our scottish velasquez--raeburn. the portraits of gainsborough possess this in a high degree. what has been said with regard to rembrandt laying on his colours with the palette-knife, is very much exaggerated. many of his heads are as smooth as reynolds's, and finished with great delicacy and precision; in fact, the versatility of his genius, and the wonderful command over his materials, from indefatigable practice, have given both his pictures and prints that character of having been done in the best style suited to accomplish his object. i have mentioned that titian keeps his backgrounds often dark, for the purpose of giving a delicacy to his strong shadows in the face; both vandyke and rembrandt do this by making the colour of the background amalgamate with the colour of the hair, or dark shades of the head. rubens, reynolds, and lawrence often used a red curtain in contact with their flesh, to produce the same result. the luminous character of the head is certainly better preserved by its giving out rays or similarity of tone to the surrounding background. it has been remarked that the luminous and transparent character of the flesh is enhanced, as in several of vandyke's portraits, by bringing it in contact with an earthy, dull tint. vandyke, indeed, when his ground would not permit him, introduced over the shoulders of his females a scarf of this colour. rembrandt often plunges from the dark shadows of his head into his ground, and thus gives both a breadth and unity. this practice, where the shadows of the face are produced by the same colour as the contiguous background, is certainly the foundation of simplicity. i think the money value of rembrandt's portraits may be taken as a criterion of their intrinsic worth as works of art; other masters' decline in producing high prices, rembrandt's increase--witness the portrait sold the other day at the duke of buckingham's, at stowe;--though the half-length of a burgomaster whom few people ever heard of, it realized seven hundred guineas and upwards. no nameless portrait by reynolds, under the same disadvantages, would produce an equivalent sum. sir joshua's portraits are either branches of our aristocracy, or celebrated public characters. as a knowledge of art advances, works fall naturally into their proper stations. when reynolds's sister asked sir joshua the reason that we never see any of the portraits by jervas now, he replied, "because, my dear, they are all up in the garret." yet this man drove his chariot and four, and received the praises of pope in verse. sir godfrey kneller would sometimes receive a sum of money and a couple of portraits by vandyke as payment; but now, a single portrait of the great founder of the dutch school would outweigh in true value a large number of kneller's collected talent: yet rembrandt died insolvent, and sir godfrey accumulated a large fortune. and such will be the fate of those who paint for posterity, "and look beyond the ignorant present." the true statement of this change, which of necessity takes place, is, that the man of genius paints according to the high impulse that has been given him, as paramount to every other consideration; the other panders to the caprice and ignorance of those who employ him. this it was that made reynolds's master, hudson, exclaim, after sir joshua's return from italy, "why, joshua, you don't paint so well as you did before you went abroad!" when men of genius and high talent fall upon favourable times, the result is the reverse, and the fine arts are esteemed, and their professors rewarded according to their excellence. the age in which titian lived was famous for literary men, who had made the republic of venice known and honoured through the whole of italy. the praises of michael angelo bestowed on the works of the great venetian, had adorned the name of titian with a halo of supernatural brightness; so much so, that whilst painting the portrait of the emperor charles the fifth, happening to drop one of his pencils, charles stooped and picked it up, observing, "that a genius like titian deserved to be waited on by emperors." of reynolds we know that all the beauty and talent of the land flocked to his painting-room, conscious of being handed down to posterity with all the advantages that pictorial science could achieve. the grace of coreggio was grafted by this great master on the strong stem of rembrandt's colouring. in opposition to those advantages, we have to remark that the people with whom rembrandt came in contact were not only of an inferior character, when measured by the standard of grace and dignity, but the troubles of the times militated in a high degree against that encouragement so necessary to the perfection of the art. in spite of these inauspicious circumstances, the genius of rembrandt has produced works fraught with the highest principles of colour and pictorial effect, and to his want of encouragement in the department of mere common portraiture, we are indebted for many of the most pictorial and splendid specimens of strong individual character in familiar life. of all the works by rembrandt, perhaps no picture has attracted so much attention and observation as his "night watch," now in the museum of amsterdam. as its dimensions are thirteen feet by fourteen, it secures attention by its size; its effect, also, is striking in a high degree, though reynolds, in his "tour to holland and flanders," says it disappointed him, having heard so much respecting it. he remarks that it had more of the appearance of ferdinand bol, from a prevalence of a yellow, sickly colour. on the other hand, wilkie says, "had it been a subject such as 'the christ before pilate,' which he has etched, it would have been his finest and grandest work." though painted in , it possesses all the force and high principles of colour to be found in his later works. nothing can exceed the firmness and truth of the two figures advancing to the spectator--especially the officer in the light dress--it is modelled with all the force of nature, and the background figures being steeped in the deepest hues of subdued colour, give a strength and richness which nothing can surpass. of course, there is a want of interest in the story, which is merely an assemblage of the militia of amsterdam, on occasion of the expected visit of the prince of orange and the daughter of charles the first, whom he had espoused. the principal pictures by other great masters receive a greater notoriety from the interest of the subject--such as "the transfiguration," by raffaelle; "the peter martyr," by titian; "the miracle of st. mark," by tintoret; "the martyrdom of st. george," by paul veronese; and "the st. jerome," by coreggio. nevertheless, "the night watch," by rembrandt, may safely be classed with the choicest productions of the great painters of italy and venice. when we consider that his pictures extend to upwards of six hundred and fifty, the reader will appreciate the difficulty i have felt in describing the peculiar merit which has so indelibly stamped most of them with the passport to posterity. landscapes. the landscapes by rembrandt, unhappily few in number, possess the strong mark of truth for which his works are so strikingly fascinating. they are chiefly small, the largest not exceeding three feet. one of his best is in the collection of the marquis of lansdowne, representing a mill seen under the influence of an uncertain twilight; the warm light of the western sky sheds its lustre on the sails of the mill, which stands on high ground; but the other portions of the picture are of dark half-tint, except a reflection of the light on the water towards the foreground. it was exhibited in the british gallery, in , and attracted great attention. another picture peculiar to the genius of rembrandt is in the collection of sir richard colt hoare, bart.; it represents a night scene on the skirts of a wood, with a group of figures seated round a fire, the red gleam of which is reflected in a stream that flows along the foreground. a few cattle are partially seen in the obscure portions of the picture, with a peasant passing with a lantern. other smaller works are in the collections of sir robert peel, samuel rogers, esq., sir abraham hume, and the marquis of hertford. his largest picture of this class was formerly in the louvre, and is now in the public gallery at hesse-cassel. in the landscapes of rembrandt we meet with the same breadth, and hues of a deep tone, without being black or heavy; they are also painted with a full pencil, and rich juicy vehicle. rembrandt, like titian, rubens, and others who were historical painters, seizes upon the great characteristics of nature without entering into the painful fidelity of topographical littleness; the same generalizing principles pervade every variety of subject. fuseli, speaking of portrait painting as mere likenesses, adds--"to portrait painting thus circumstanced, we subjoin, as the last branch of uninteresting subjects, that kind of landscape which is entirely occupied with the tame delineation of a given spot--an enumeration of hill and dale, clumps of trees, shrubs, water, meadows, cottages, and houses--what is commonly called views. these, if not assisted by nature, dictated by taste, or chosen for character, may delight the owner of the acres they enclose, the inhabitants of the spot, perhaps the antiquary or the traveller, but to any other eye, they are little more than topography. the landscape of titian, of mola, of salvator, of the poussins, claude, rubens, elsheimer, rembrandt, and wilson, spurns all relation with this kind of map-work. to them nature disclosed her bosom in the varied light of rising, meridian, and setting suns--in twilight, night, and dawn." [illustration: fac-simile of a drawing by rembrandt in british museum] drawings by rembrandt. in looking over the numerous portfolios of drawings in public and private libraries, we are struck with the accumulated mass of mediocre talent. many of them are often well composed, and even well drawn, but they are completely destitute of what constitutes true merit--they possess no distinguishing mark whereby we can discern one master from another; they are struck off with wonderful dexterity, as far as the eye or hand is concerned, but the mind is totally wanting; neither do they possess the peculiar features of natural truth, whose lines are filled with variety, sometimes sharp, sometimes round--in parts faint and delicate, and in other places strong and cutting. on the other hand, when the drawings of great painters are examined, the master mind shines forth in every touch, and we recognise the works of michael angelo, raffaelle, coreggio, and others, at a glance. the drawings of rembrandt possess this quality in a superlative degree, and the slightest indication seems sufficient to mark the character and leading features of the object represented. his drawings are generally in pen outline, with a wash of bistre, or other warm colour; sometimes he makes use of black and red chalk; they are seldom finished with colours, but have often portions rendered lighter and broader by means of a wash of white. from his great practice in using the point in etching, he not only gives the greatest precision and certainty, but his outline assumes the gentlest delicacy or overpowering boldness. everything from his hand seems to possess a largeness of form, and the greatest breadth of light and shade that can be given; this it is that gives them the stamp of truth, so that it is difficult to distinguish between those drawn immediately from nature, and such as are emanations from his imagination. on looking into the catalogue of his effects, we perceive large folios of his drawings, which, though at the sale they produced but small sums, are now marked with their true value. i may notice here a small drawing of "the death of the virgin," that brought, at the sale of the late baron verstolk, one hundred and sixty guineas. one cannot but regret that the excellent collection of the drawings by rembrandt and other masters, selected by the late sir thomas lawrence, with great taste and at large sums, should have been lost to the country, though offered in his will at comparatively a small price. nevertheless, we possess several fine specimens in the british museum print-room. the etchings of rembrandt. no painter has gained so much celebrity by his etchings as rembrandt, both on account of their number and excellence. claude, parmegiano, berghem, paul potter, adrian ostade, and others, have all been dextrous in using the etching point. rembrandt's performances have all the interest and beauty of finished works; his making use of the dry point, which was unknown before his application of it, gives his etchings that richness and softness peculiar to himself, for the process in the hands of others has never since been attended with the same triumphant success. the etchings consist of three hundred and sixty-five plates, accompanied by two hundred and thirty-seven variations. i can only here give their titles and dates: the amateur is referred to the descriptive catalogues of gersaint, daulby, bartsch, claussin, and wilson. the catalogue by the latter gentleman is the one adopted by the british museum; i have, however, numbered them according to the catalogue raisonné of rembrandt's works by smith, who made use of the arrangement of the chevalier claussin. i have also marked those that are of the greatest excellence with a star before the number. [illustration: portrait of rembrandt's mother] [illustration: portraits of rembrandt and his wife] portraits of the artist. . portrait of rembrandt when a young man, having frizzly hair. . portrait of rembrandt with moustaches, and wearing a bonnet put sideways on his head. . portrait of rembrandt, represented with a falcon on his right hand. . portrait of rembrandt, with frizzly hair, and the head uncovered; remarkable for thick lips and a large nose. very rare. . portrait of rembrandt, seen in nearly a front view, with frizzled hair, and the head uncovered. . portrait of rembrandt when a young man, wearing a fur cap and a black habit. . portrait of rembrandt when young, seen in a front view, wearing a slouched hat, and a mantle lined with fur. dated . . portrait resembling rembrandt, seen in nearly a front view, with moustaches, short curling beard, and frizzled hair. . portrait of rembrandt when young, seen in a three-quarter view, with the head uncovered and the hair frizzled. . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a front view, having an expression of grimace. . portrait of rembrandt, seen in nearly a front view, with a flat bonnet on the head. . portrait of rembrandt when young, seen in a three-quarter view, with head uncovered, and the hair frizzled. (oval.) . portrait of rembrandt when young, with the mouth a little open, the head uncovered, and the hair frizzled. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a front view, having a fur cap, and a mantle bordered with fur. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a three-quarter view, with the head uncovered, and the hair frizzled; he has on a mantle buttoned in front. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a front view, wearing a fur cap of a round form, and a mantle. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in nearly a front view, having on a bonnet of the usual shape, placed sideways on his head, and a kind of scarf round his neck. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a front view, having on a richly-ornamented cap or turban, and an embroidered robe. he holds a drawn sabre in his hand. dated . . portraits of rembrandt and his wife, on one plate. dated . . portrait of rembrandt. he has on a mezetin cap, decked with a feather, and a rich mantle. dated . * . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a three-quarter view; he has long curling hair and moustaches; a cap of the usual shape covers the head, and a rich mantle the body. the left arm leans on some stone work. dated . * . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a front view, wearing a narrow-brimmed hat, and a plain habit open in front; he is seated at a table, holding a crayon in his hand. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a three-quarter view, with long curling hair; he has on a cap with a small feather in front of it, attached by a ribbon; his mantle is fastened in front by a clasp. dated . (oval) (this is the cut plate of the celebrated sabre print.) . portrait of rembrandt, seen in nearly a front view, having on a fur cap, which covers his forehead to the eyebrows; his curling hair falls on his shoulders, and his robe is bordered with fur. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, with the left side of the face strongly shadowed; his frizzled hair falls on the shoulders, and his habit is a little open in front, and lined with fur. dated . . portrait strongly resembling rembrandt, seen in a front view, having short frizzled hair, and the mouth a little compressed; he has on a cap, and wears a mantle attached by a little ribbon. . portrait of rembrandt, closely resembling no. . the face is seen in a front view, and the body in a three-quarter position; the hair is frizzled, and a toupée is on the left side; the eyes and forehead are in shadow. . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a three-quarter view, with a small beard and mustacheos; a cap of the usual shape covers his frizzled hair, and the dress is composed of a mantle bordered with fur. this is placed by bartsch and gersaint among the fancy portraits. . portrait resembling rembrandt when young, seen in a front view, with round face, large nose, the mouth a little open, short frizzled hair, and a cap on the head; his mantle is attached by four buttons in front. dated . . portrait of rembrandt (styled by some writers, "titus, the son of the artist.") it represents a young man, with ragged frizzled hair falling on the shoulders. he is dressed in a habit with a collar. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, or very like him, when a young man; he has frizzled hair, and wears a fur cap. (octagon.) this is inserted by other writers among the fancy heads. . portrait closely resembling rembrandt, seen in a front view, with a cap on; the attitude is that of a person drawing. engraved very lightly, and almost without shadow, on a narrow plate. . portrait closely resembling rembrandt, seen in a front view, having on a cap of the usual shape, the top of which is cut off by the edge of the plate. dated . these figures are ill formed. subjects from the old testament. . adam and eve in paradise; the latter has the forbidden fruit in her hand, which she has received from the tempter, who is seen in the form of a serpent in a tree, with an apple in his mouth. dated . * . abraham entertaining the three angels at the door of his house. dated . . abraham offering up his son. dated . . abraham sending away hagar and ishmael. dated . . abraham caressing his son isaac. . abraham with his son isaac. the subject represents the moment when the son asks his father, "where is the sacrifice?" dated . . four subjects to illustrate a spanish book. these were originally engraved on one plate, which was afterwards cut into four. they represent as follows:-- jacob's dream on the plain of padan aran. four angels are ascending and descending the ladder. dated . david preparing his sling to attack goliath. dated . the image seen by nebuchadnezzar in his dream. dated . the vision of ezekiel. dated . . joseph relating his dream to his parents, in the presence of his brethren. dated . . jacob lamenting the supposed death of his son joseph. . joseph and potiphar's wife. dated . * . the triumph of mordecai. . david on his knees in prayer. dated . . blind tobit leaning on a staff, followed by his dog. dated . . the angel departing from tobit and his family. dated . new testament subjects. * . the angel appearing to the shepherds, and announcing the birth of the saviour. dated . . the nativity of the saviour. * . the adoration of the shepherds. . the circumcision. dated . . the circumcision, differently composed. . the presentation in the temple. . the presentation in the temple, differently composed. . the presentation in the temple, differing from the preceding. dated . . the flight into egypt. dated . . the flight into egypt, differently composed. no date. . the flight into egypt, differing from the preceding. . the flight into egypt, differing from the preceding. dated . . the flight into egypt, differing from the preceding. . a _reposo_ of the holy family by night. . a _reposo_ of the holy family. dated . . a _reposo_ of the holy family, supposed to be unique. * . the return from jerusalem of the holy family. dated . . the virgin, with the infant jesus in the clouds. dated . . the holy family. . the holy family, differently composed. dated . . jesus amidst the doctors. dated . . jesus disputing with the doctors. dated . . jesus amidst the doctors, differently composed. dated . * . christ preaching to the people. . the tribute money. . christ driving the money changers out of the temple. dated . . christ with the woman of samaria. the third proof is dated . . christ with the woman of samaria, differently composed. dated . * . the resurrection of lazarus; styled the little. dated . . the resurrection of lazarus; styled the great. no date. * . christ healing the sick. this beautiful print is known under the appellation of "the hundred guilder print." no date. * . christ in the garden of olives. dated . the last figure is wanting. . christ before the people. dated . . christ on the cross between the two thieves, styled "the three crosses." dated . * . the _ecce homo_. dated . * . the descent from the cross. dated . . christ on the cross between the two thieves. . christ on the cross. . the descent from the cross. dated . * . the descent from the cross; a night piece. dated . * . the entombment. . the virgin lamenting the death of the saviour. . christ in the tomb. * . christ at the table with the two disciples of emmaus. dated . . christ at the table with the two disciples of emmaus. dated . . christ in the midst of his disciples, and the incredulity of st. thomas. dated . . the good samaritan. dated . . the return of the prodigal son. dated . . the decollation of st. john. dated . . peter and john at the beautiful gate of the temple. dated . . peter and john at the gate of the temple, differently composed. . st. peter on his knees, with a key in either hand. dated . . the martyrdom of st. stephen. dated . . the baptism of the eunuch. dated . * . the death of the virgin. dated . saints. . st. jerome seated at the foot of a tree. dated . . st. jerome at his devotions. dated . . st. jerome at his devotions, with a lion behind him. dated , or . . st. jerome seated, with spectacles on, writing. dated . . st. jerome seated, reading in a large book held with both hands. . st. jerome seated at a table in a room. dated . . st. jerome on his knees, meditating before a skull. . st. francis on his knees at his devotions, with a crucifix and a book before him. dated . historical, allegorical and fancy subjects. . a youth surprised by the apparition of death. dated . . an allegorical subject, allusive to the demolition of a statue offensive to the low countries. dated . . fortune reversed, an allegorical subject, allusive to some hero upon whom fortune has turned her back. dated . * . the marriage of jason and creusa. dated . . the star of the kings, an ancient dutch custom on the feast of the kings. . a lion hunt; several huntsmen on horseback attacking a lion. dated . . a lion hunt, differently composed to the preceding. . a lion hunt, also differing from the above. . a battle. the subject represents a group of horsemen advancing, full speed, with swords, javelins, &c. . three figures in oriental dresses, accompanied by a dog. dated . . the blind bagpiper amusing some cottagers. . the spanish gipsy. . the rat killer. dated . . the rat killer, differently composed. . the goldsmith. . the pancake woman. dated . . the game of kolf. dated . . the jews' synagogue. dated . . the schoolmaster. dated . . the mountebank. dated . . the draughtsman. . a peasant with his wife and child. . a jew wearing a high cap. dated . . the onion woman. dated . . the peasant with his hands behind him. dated . . the card players. dated . . the blind fiddler. dated . . a man on horseback. . the polander, with his hands united. . the polander, with his sword and staff. . the polander, with a cane in his left hand. dated . . an old man, standing with his back to the spectator. . a peasant man and a woman walking together. . a philosopher seated, with a pen in his hand. . a man seated at a table, on which is an open book. . an old man seated, resting his arm on a book. . an old man without a beard. dated . . an old man with a short beard, leaning on a staff. . an old man with a long beard, in the dress of a persian. dated . . the blind jew, standing with his back to the spectator, leaning on a staff. . two figures in venetian dresses. . a doctor feeling the pulse of a patient. . the skater. * . the hog with his legs tied. dated . . a little dog lying asleep. . a shell, known under the appellation of "the damier." dated . beggars. . a beggar seated, with his hands united. . a beggar and his wife. . a beggar standing, resting both hands on a staff. . a beggar standing, holding a stick in his right hand. . a beggar man and a woman, standing in conversation. dated . . a beggar man and a woman by the side of a bank. . a beggar with a stick in his right hand. in the manner of callot. . a beggar in a slashed cloak. dated . . a beggar woman, with a calebash hanging behind her. . a beggar, wearing a fur cap, and resting both hands on a staff. . an old beggar woman asking charity. dated . . lazarus klap, or the dumb beggar. dated . . a beggar with a wooden leg, standing with his hands behind him. . a beggar sitting at the side of a wall. . a beggar sitting on a bank. dated . . a beggar sitting, with his dog by his side. dated . * . three beggars at the door of a house. dated . . a beggar with one hand in the breast of his jacket, in a cold day. dated . . a beggar with his hands behind him. . a beggar with a wooden leg, and a stick in his hand. . a peasant with his hands behind him, and a basket at his feet. . a peasant woman with a bottle attached to her waist. . a beggar. this is merely a sketch. . a beggar man and a woman walking side by side. . a beggar wrapped up in his mantle. . a sick beggar lying on the ground. academical subjects. . the french bed. dated . . the friar among the corn. . the flute player and the shepherdess. dated . . an old man sleeping, and a couple caressing. . a pot-bellied man, with a pack at his back, and a pouch by his side. dated . . a woman crouching under a tree. dated . . a painter drawing after a model. . a naked man, seated. dated . . academical figures of men. . the bathers. dated . . a man sitting naked for a model. dated . . a woman sitting before a dutch stove. . a woman sitting naked on a bank. . a woman at the bath. dated . . a woman sitting naked with her feet in the water. dated . . venus in the bath. she is seated at the foot of a tree, with her feet in the stream. * . a naked woman sitting on a bed, with an arrow in her hand. dated . . antiope, jupiter, and a satyr. dated . . a woman lying asleep on a couch. a satyr in the background. . a negress lying on a couch. dated . landscapes. . a landscape, in which is introduced a cow. . a landscape, distinguished by a large tree growing by the side of a house. . a landscape, with a bridge, styled "six's bridge." dated . . a view of omval, near amsterdam. dated . * . a view of amsterdam. [illustration: view of amsterdam] [illustration: cottage with white palings] . a landscape, with a huntsman on a road, followed by two dogs. * . a landscape, known under the appellation of "the three trees." dated . * . a landscape, distinguished by a man carrying a yoke of pails. . a landscape, with a canal, on the banks of which are two houses embosomed in trees. washed in bistre, or india ink. . a landscape; the scene is remarkable for a coach passing along a road in the centre of the view. . a landscape, with a terrace, and a road over it in the centre. * . a landscape, with a village situate near the high road. dated . . a view of the village of randorp, remarkable for an old tower, of a square form. dated . . a landscape, in the foreground of which may be noticed a man seated, drawing. . a landscape, with a pond, on the bank of which sits a woman with a child in her lap; a shepherd stands behind her. dated . . a view in holland. some cottages among trees are seen in the centre, and a canal flows along the front. . a landscape, representing a woody scene, with a vista on the right. dated . . a landscape, with an old tower rising above the roofs of some houses. * . a landscape distinguished by a road leading to a village, on which is a shepherd with a flock of sheep. dated . . a landscape, with a cottage and barn. dated . . a landscape, with a large tree and a cottage on the left, and divided obliquely by a canal. dated . . a landscape, remarkable for an obelisk standing on the left, and a village stretching along the distance. . a landscape, with three houses on the left, backed by trees, and near these is a woman followed by a dog; on the opposite side is a canal, with a sailing vessel on it. . a landscape, with a cluster of trees at the side of a road; a second road divides the scene in the centre. . a landscape, with a cottage on the left, and in the centre an alley of trees; close to the front is a man with a stick on his shoulder. . a landscape, with a large piece of water. the name and date are inscribed at the foot of the trunk of a tree on the right. dated . . a landscape, with a cottage near the middle, on either side of which is a tree, and in front an enclosure of paling. * . a view, supposed to be that of the house in which the artist was born, and the adjacent windmill. dated . . the gold-weigher's field. the scene is remarkable for a mansion placed near the centre, and a wood stretching along the left of it; on the right is seen the steeple of a church rising above some trees. dated . . a landscape, distinguished by a canal, on which are two swans. dated . * . a landscape, with a canal, and a boat lying alongside the shore. dated . . a landscape, with a canal in front, at which a cow is drinking. . a view of a village, remarkable for an old square tower. dated . . a landscape, with a river on the left, on which is seen the half of a boat. . a landscape, in which may be noticed a little man, and in the distance two windmills and a steeple. . a landscape of an upright form, having a large tree in the middle, and a man and a woman in front. . a landscape, with a farm-house partly concealed by trees, and surrounded by a wood fence. . a landscape, with a river, on which are two sailing boats, and on the left of the print is seen a man seated on a barge, angling. . a landscape, traversed obliquely by a canal, on the bank of which sits a man, angling. . a landscape, distinguished by a low house built on the bank of a canal, and above the roof of which rises the gable of a second house; near these are some trees and a boarded fence. . a landscape, in which may be noticed a house of two stories high, a windmill, and a river with a sailing boat on it. . a landscape, divided by a canal; in the centre rises a large tree, near which is a cottage partly concealed by trees. dated . . a landscape, with a barn filled with hay, adjacent to which is a cottage with a fence in front of it, and a clump of trees. . a landscape, with a canal in front, and a boat on it; the scene is further distinguished by a large cottage, with the upper part of the door open. . a landscape, with a large house on the right, constructed of wood, and having three chimneys; beyond this object are two hovels surrounded by trees, at the foot of which flows a river. . a landscape, on the left of which may be noticed a peasant drawing water from a well, behind which grows a lofty tree. a dray-cart is also introduced. . a landscape. this scene is distinguished by a château with eight pointed towers. this is doubted by m. de claussin. . a landscape, with several trees in the distance, in addition to which may be noticed a large trunk of a tree, and in front of it is a bull attached by a cord. . a village scene. the view represents, on the right, two houses with pointed roofs; above which rises a round tower. . this view exhibits a portion of a village, with six thatched houses, only one of which is shadowed and finished. dated . . a landscape, with a large canal extending throughout the scene, on the banks of which are two men angling. portraits of men. . portrait of a man, seen in nearly a front view, with his left hand resting on a table. dated . . portrait of a young man, seated, with his right hand placed on his thigh, and the left on his breast. dated . . portrait of an old man. he is in the act of raising the right hand to his bonnet. . portrait of an old man, seen in nearly a front view. he appears to be seated, and his attention is directed downwards. . portrait of a man, with long straight hair covered with a cap; a chain is suspended round his neck, to which is attached a cross. dated . . an old man with a long beard, having on a fur cap, and a large mantle, sitting in an arm-chair. . a man with a short beard, represented in a front view, with a fur cap on his head, and dressed in an embroidered mantle. dated . . portrait of jan antonides vander linden. he wears a handsome robe, and is represented in a garden, with a book in his hand. . an old man, with a square-shaped beard, a fur cap on his head, and the right hand placed on his belt. dated . * . portrait of janus silvius. he is represented in nearly a front view, dressed in a robe bordered with fur, a ruff, and a cap, and seated at a table, with one hand placed on the other. dated . . an old man with a long beard, seated at a table, with both hands on a book. . a young man seated at a table, on which are some books. he has on a cap, and wears a robe lined with fur. dated . . portrait of manasseh ben israel. he is distinguished by a pointed beard, and is seen in a front view, having on a broad-brimmed hat, and a large collar. dated . * . portrait of dr. faustus. this person is represented in a profile view, having on a white cap and a robe, standing, with one hand on a table, and the other on his chair. . portrait of renier hanslo. he is seen in a front view, seated at a table, on which is placed a large open book. dated . . portrait of clement de jonge, a print dealer. he is seated in nearly a front view, wearing a slouched hat, a mantle, and a small collar; he wears gloves, and the right hand is placed in front. dated . . portrait of abraham france, an amateur of prints. he is seated in an arm-chair examining a print which he holds in his right hand. * . portrait of the elder haaring. he is represented in a front view, seated, resting both arms on the elbows of his chair, and the fingers of his right appear to hold a pinch of snuff. * . portrait of young haaring, son of the preceding burgomaster. he is seen in a front view, apparently seated, with his right hand resting on the elbow of his chair. dated . * . portrait of young lutma, a celebrated goldsmith. he is seated, holding in his right hand a metal figure. upon a table near him are a silver tazza, and other objects relative to his occupation. dated . . portrait of jean asselyn, surnamed crabatje. he is represented standing in a front view, having on a slouched hat; his body is enveloped in a mantle, and his right hand rests on a table, on which are a palette and several books. * . portrait of ephraim bonus, a jew doctor. he appears to be in the act of descending some stairs, and his right hand is placed on the baluster. his dress consists of a high-crowned hat, and a pendent frill. dated . . portrait of utenbogardus, a dutch minister. he is seen in a front view, seated, holding with his right hand a book, which lies open on a table. (_oval._) dated . * . portrait of jean silvius, a learned man and a minister. this print is enclosed in an oval, around which is written, _spes mea christus_, &c. * . portrait of utenbogaerd, known under the appellation of the "gold weigher." he is seated, holding a pen in his right hand, which rests on a large book lying open on a table. his attention is directed to a youth, to whom he is giving a bag of money. dated . . portrait of coppenol, a celebrated writing master, styled "the little coppenol." he is seated at a table, holding a pen in his right hand, which he rests on some paper, and the left is also placed on the same sheet; a boy stands behind him, with his hat in his hand. * . portrait of coppenol, called "the great," to distinguish it from the preceding. he is also seated near a table, holding with both hands a sheet of paper, and between the fingers of the right is a pen. * . portrait of tolling, a lawyer. he is seen in a front view, seated at a table, on which is a large book, resting both arms on the elbows of his chair, and holding his spectacles in his hand; he has on a slouched hat. * . portrait of the burgomaster, jan six, when twenty-nine years old. he is represented full-length, standing near an open window, engaged in reading a book, which he holds with both hands. this precious work of rembrandt is dated . fancy heads of men. . a head of an asiatic, seen in a front view, having on a calotte. the dress consists of a furred robe, adorned with a gold chain and a medal. signed, rembrandt, venitiis fecit. dated . . a head of a similar person, seen in a profile view, having on a turban, and a robe bordered with fur. signed, rembrandt, venitiis fecit. . a third head, asiatic; he has a large beard, and is seen in a profile view, having on a turban, decked in front with a feather. signed, rembrandt, venitiis fecit, . . the bust of a man, with long hair, and a short frizzled beard, seen in nearly a profile view, having on the usual shaped cap peculiar to the master. . the bust of an old man, with a long beard, seen in nearly a front view. he has on a fur cap, and wears a mantle, attached in front by clasps. . the bust of an old man, with a long beard, and a bald head in front; he is seen in a front view, bending a little forward, in such a manner as to throw a shadow over the face. . an old man, seen in a profile view, having a short beard and a bald head. his dress consists of a robe bordered with fur. dated . . the bust of an old man without a beard, having a bald head, and seen in a profile view. . the bust of an old man, seen in a profile view, with a bald head, inclined a little forward. dated . . a small bust of an old man, with a bald head, which is bent considerably forward; the face is seen in a three-quarter view. . the bust of an old man, with a beard and frizzled hair, seen in a three-quarter view. dated . . the bust of an old man, with a bald head, which inclines forward, and is turned a little to the right; the mouth is considerably open. dated . . a small bust of an aged man without a beard; the face is turned towards the right, and a large fur cap covers the head. . the bust of an elderly man, with a short frizzled beard. he is seen in a three-quarter view, having on a turned-up cap; the mouth is open, and he appears to be calling to some one. . a head very similar to the preceding, but smaller in size, and extremely rare. . a small bust, the head of which partakes of the character of a turkish slave. he has on a large high cap, turned up. the body is slightly sketched out. . a very small bust of a man, similar in character to the preceding; seen in a profile view, having mustacheos. he has on a cap, the upper part of which hangs over, and a frill surrounds the neck. . the bust of a man, seen in a front view, having on a cap in the shape of a calotte, and a mantle bordered with carmine. . the bust of a man, with the head uncovered and seen in a front view; his hair is frizzled, and his mouth a little on one side. . the head of an old man, with a short beard and a bald crown; his neck is enveloped in fur. the shoulders are only slightly indicated. . the bust of a man, represented in a three-quarter view, with the head bending forward. he has on a fur cap, and a robe bordered with fur, which is open in front, and shows a vest under it. dated . . the bust of a man, seen in nearly a profile view, having a pouting mouth, resembling a negro, and a short frizzled beard. he has on a calotte, and a robe bordered with fur, attached in front with a single button. . a bust of an old man, with a grey beard and bald in front, represented in a three-quarter view, with the head inclining. he has on a hairy coat with a collar. dated . . a half-figure of a young man, represented in a profile view, having short frizzled hair. he wears a large cravat enriched with lace, and a coat with large sleeves and girt with a belt. dated -**; the last figure is omitted. . a bust of a man, seen in a three-quarter view, having mustacheos. he has on a large hat with a broad brim, a coat buttoned in front, and a pendent frill. dated . . a bust of an old man with a large beard, seen in nearly a front view, with a fur cap on. . a bust of an old man, with a large square-shaped beard, seen in a three-quarter view. he has a cap of the usual shape, and a robe bordered with fur. dated . . a bust of an old man, with a similar beard to the last. the face is represented in a three-quarter view, having on a large cap, and a robe bordered with fur. . a bust of an old man with a pointed beard, seen in a three-quarter view, with a bald front, and the eyes bent downwards; the body is enveloped in a cloak. . a bust of an old man with a straight beard, seen in a profile view. he has on a small pointed cap. dated . . a philosopher, with a large square-shaped beard, seen in a profile view, having on a large cap decked with fur; an hour-glass and a skull are faintly introduced. engraved on wood. this print is doubted by the chevalier claussins. . an elderly man, represented in a three-quarter view, apparently seated; he has mustacheos, and a tuft of beard, and wears a large high cap, and a robe bordered with white fur. dated . . a small bust of a man, seen in a front view, with the usual shaped cap on his head, and the body enveloped in a mantle. dated . . a bust of a man, seen in a profile view, having on a cap with pendent ear straps; the shoulders are covered with a mantle, relieved by a small frill. . a bust of a man with a bald head, seen in a three-quarter view; the shoulders are covered with a mantle bordered with fur. dated . . a bust of an old man, with a very large square-shaped beard, seen in nearly a front view. the head inclines forward, and the eyes are directed downwards. dated . . a very small head, of a grotesque character, seen in a profile view, having on a fur cap, surrounded by a band. . another small head, having the appearance of being that of a beggar; the mouth is open, as if he were calling to some one; he has on a pointed cap, and a coat attached by a single button. . a bust of a young man, the head only of which is finished. he has on a large slouched hat. . a bust of a young man, with a hat on, of the same form as the preceding. . a bust of a young man, with a cap on, decked with feathers, and represented at a window. m. claussins thinks this to be of a doubtful kind. . a bust of a man, with mustacheos, and frizzled hair, which falls on the right shoulder. . a bust of an old man, with mustacheos, and a tuft of beard, represented in a three-quarter view, having on a high fur cap, and a fur cloak. . a bust of an old man, with a long beard, and a bald head in front, seen in a profile view; a robe, bordered with fur, covers his shoulders. . a bust of a man, with a cap on, decked with feathers. he is seen in a front view, having a beard and mustacheos, and wearing a frill round the neck. . a bust of an old man, with a white beard, having on a turned-up cap, and a mantle bordered with fur. . a man, having the appearance of a negro, represented in nearly a profile view. he has on a turban decked with a feather, and holds a cane in the right hand. portraits of women. * . portrait of a woman, styled, "the great jewish bride." she is seated, resting her right hand on the elbow of her chair, and holding a roll of papers in the left. . a head, similar to that of the preceding print, and supposed by some amateurs to have been a study for it, but m. claussins, in his catalogue, combats that opinion. * . portrait of a woman, styled, "the little jewish bride." her face is seen in a three-quarter view, and she appears to be standing, with her hands crossed on her waist. dated . . an aged woman, seated at a table, with her hands placed one on the other; a black veil covers her head, and a mantle, bordered with fur, envelopes her shoulders. . an aged woman; she appears to be also seated, and is seen in a three-quarter view, with a kind of bonnet on her head, and a veil over it; her dress terminates in a frill. . portrait of a young woman, seen in nearly a profile view, seated near a table, on which is a book; her right hand is concealed by her robe, and the left placed on the book. dated . . an aged woman meditating over a book. she is seated, having her right hand under her robe, and the left on a book lying on a table. a half-figure, looking to the left. . portrait of a woman, seen in a profile view. her hair is tastefully arranged, and decked with pearls; two rows of the same adorn her neck, and the sleeves of her robe are open. dated . . portrait of an elderly woman, seen in a profile view. she is seated, with the left hand placed on her breast, and the right on the elbow of her chair. dated . . a bust portrait of the mother of rembrandt, represented in nearly a front view, with a veil on her head. her left hand is placed on her breast. dated . . an elderly woman sleeping. she appears to have been fatigued with reading, and having removed her spectacles from her eyes, has fallen asleep while resting her head on her hand. . an aged woman, resembling the mother of rembrandt. she is seen in a three-quarter view, with a linen covering over her head, which falls on her shoulders. dated . . a head of an elderly woman, having also the resemblance of rembrandt's mother. she is seen in a front view, with the mouth compressed. she has on a cap of the usual form. dated . . a bust of an elderly woman, having the same character as the preceding. she is seen in a three-quarter view, with a covering on the head, turned up over the right ear, and falling on the left. dated . . a bust of the mother of rembrandt. she is seen in a front view, with the usual kind of cap on the head, and a robe bordered with fur, which is only slightly sketched in. . an old woman in a black veil. this bust represents the face in a three-quarter view; the veil falls on the shoulders, and her robe is turned up with fur. dated . . a young woman, represented in nearly a profile view, with a basket on her right arm, and a pouch suspended to the left. she has on a small flat hat, and a tippet over her shoulders. . a bust of a moorish woman, seen in nearly a profile view, having on her head a scarf turned up in front, decked with a feather, and falling behind her head. . a bust of an aged woman, lightly etched. she is seen in a three-quarter view, with a bonnet on, in the form of a turban, and lappets hanging on either side, and the dress consists of a fur robe. . a bust of a woman, seen in a three-quarter view, with the head enveloped in a kerchief, the ends of which hang on either side. the body is unfinished. . a head of an elderly woman, seen in a three-quarter view, with the eyes bent downwards. . a woman seated, resting her head on her hand, and turning over the leaves of a book with the other. . an elderly woman, seen in nearly a profile view, with spectacles on, and holding with both hands a book, which she appears to be reading. studies of heads and other objects. . a head of rembrandt, together with studies of old men and women, and other objects, on the same plate. . a study of a horse, two heads, a part of a house, and other objects, on the same plate. . rembrandt's wife, and five other heads, on the same plate. dated . . five heads of men on one sheet,[ ] one of which, placed on the right, wears a square cap, and another, seen on the opposite side, has on a fur cap. . three heads of women on one sheet, one of them, occupying the centre and top, is seen in a front view, with one hand raised to her face. . three heads of women on one sheet. this print is distinguished by one of the women resting her head on her hand, asleep. dated . . two women in separate beds; several heads, and studies of an old man and woman, with sticks in their hands; on one sheet. . a head of rembrandt, and other studies, on the same sheet. dated . * . a study of a dog, the head only of which is finished. . a sketch of a tree, and other objects, on the same sheet. . two small figures, one of which, having on a high crowned cap, is seen to the knees; the form of the other is but imperfectly traced, and the other objects are still more indistinct. . three heads of old men on one sheet. they are all seen in a profile view, and placed in the same direction. . a study of a female head, very lightly etched. she has on her head a kind of mob cap, and the body is turned to the right. [footnote : this plate was afterwards cut into five, and the several heads are arranged in their proper order.] * * * * * savill & edwards, printers, , chandos street, covent garden. team books by don c. seitz whistler stories. mo. cloth........_net_ $. leather, _net_ . every-day europe. ill'd.............._net_ . elba and elsewhere. ill'd. post vo. _net_ . surface japan. ill'd. to............_net_ . the buccaneers. verses. ill'd. vo..._net_ . harper & brothers, new york [illustration: james m'neill whistler from a sketch from life by rajon. courtesy of frederick keppel.] whistler stories collected and arranged by don c. seitz author of "writings by and about james abbott mcneill whistler" harper & brothers publishers new york and london mcmxiii printed in the united states of america published october to sheridan ford, discoverer of the art of folly and of many follies of art preface following the example set by homer when he "smote his bloomin' lyre," as cited by mr. kipling, who went "an' took what he'd admire," i have gleaned the vast volume of whistler literature and helped myself in making this compilation. some few of the anecdotes are first-hand. others were garnered by mr. ford in the original version of _the gentle art of making enemies_. the rest have been published many times, perhaps. but it seemed desirable to put the tales together without the distraction of other matter. so here they are. d.c.s. cos cob, conn., _july, _. whistler stories the studios of chelsea are full of whistler anecdotes. one tells of a female model to whom he owed some fifteen shillings for sittings. she was a philistine of the philistines who knew nothing of her patron's fame and was in no way impressed with his work. one day she told another artist that she had been sitting to a little frenchman called whistler, who jumped about his studio and was always complaining that people were swindling him, and that he was making very little money. the artist suggested that if she could get any piece of painting out of whistler's studio he would give her ten pounds for it. although skeptical, the model decided to tell her "little frenchman" of this too generous offer, and selected one of the biggest and finest works in the studio. "what did he say?" asked the artist who had made the offer, when the model appeared in a state of great excitement and looking almost as if she had come second best out of a scrimmage. "he said, 'ten pounds--good heavens!--ten pounds!' and he got so mad--well, that's how i came in here like this." * * * * * mr. w.p. frith, r.a., following the custom of artists, talked to a model one day to keep her expression animated. he asked the girl to whom she had been sitting of late, and received the answer: "mr. whistler." "and did he talk to you?" "yes, sir." "what did he say?" "he asked me who i'd been sitting to, same as you do; and i told him i'd been sitting to mr. cope, sir." "well, what else?" "he asked me who i'd been sitting to before that, and i said mr. horsley." "and what next?" "he asked me who i'd been sitting to before that, and i said i'd been sitting to you, sir." "what did he say then?" "he said, 'what a d----d crew!'" * * * * * whistler once came very near painting a portrait of disraeli. he had the commission; he even went down to the country where disraeli was; but the great man did not manage to get into the mood. whistler departed disappointed, and shortly afterward took place a meeting in whitehall which was the occasion of a well-known story: disraeli put his arm in whistler's for a little way on the street, bringing from the artist the exclamation, "if only my creditors could see!" * * * * * whistler's ideas, the reverse of commercial, not infrequently placed him in want. he pawned his portrait of his mother, by many considered the best of his productions. miss marion peck, a niece of ferdinand peck, united states commissioner to the paris exposition, wanted her portrait done by whistler. she sat for him nineteen times. further, she requested, as the picture was nearing completion, that extra pains be taken with its finishing. also, she inquired if it could, without danger of injury, be shipped. "why?" asked whistler. "because i wish to send it to my home in chicago," explained miss peck. whistler threw down his brush, overturned the easel, and ran around the studio like a madman. "what!" he shrieked. "send a whistler to chicago! allow one of my paintings to enter hog town! never!" miss peck didn't get the painting. * * * * * once he met what seemed to be a crushing retort. he had scornfully called balaam's ass the first great critic, and the inference was plain until a writer in _vanity fair_ called his attention to the fact that the ass was right. whistler acknowledged the point. but the acknowledgment terminates in a way that is delicious. "i fancy you will admit that this is the only ass on record who ever did 'see the angel of the lord,' and that we are past the age of miracles." even in defeat he was triumphant. * * * * * whistler found that mortimer menpes, once his very dear friend, sketched in chelsea. "how dare you sketch in my chelsea?" he indignantly demanded. a vigorous attack on mr. menpes then followed in the press. one of the first articles began in this style, menpes, of course, being an australian: "i can only liken him to his native kangaroo--a robber by birth--born with a pocket!" "he is the claimant of lemon yellow"--a color to which mr. whistler deemed he had the sole right; and when he thought he had pulverized him in the press (it was soon after the parnell commission, when pigott, the informer, had committed suicide in spain), whistler one evening thrust this pleasant note into mr. menpes's letter-box, scrawled on a half-sheet of paper, with the well-known butterfly cipher attached: "you will blow your brains out, of course. pigott has shown you what to do under the circumstances, and you know the way to spain. good-by!" speaking at a meeting held to complete the details of a movement for the erection of a memorial to whistler, lord redesdale gave a remarkable account of the artist's methods of work. "one day when he was to begin a portrait of a lady," said lord redesdale, "the painter took up his position at one end of the room, with his sitter and canvas at the other. for a long time he stood looking at her, holding in his hand a huge brush as a man would use to whitewash a house. suddenly he ran forward and smashed the brush full of color upon the canvas. then he ran back, and forty or fifty times he repeated this. at the end of that time there stood out on the canvas a space which exactly indicated the figure and the expression of his sitter." this portrait was to have belonged to lord redesdale, but through circumstances nothing less than tragic it never came into his possession. there were bailiffs in the house when it was finished. this was no novelty to whistler. he only laughed, and, laughing, made a circuit of his studio with a palette-knife, deliberately destroying all the pictures exposed there. the portrait of the lady was among them. * * * * * moncure d. conway in his autobiography relates this: "at a dinner given to w.j. stillman, at which whistler (a confederate) related with satisfaction his fisticuffs with a yankee on shipboard, william rossetti remarked: 'i must say, whistler, that your conduct was scandalous.' stillman and myself were silent. dante gabriel rossetti promptly wrote: "'there is a young artist called whistler, who in every respect is a bristler; a tube of white lead or a punch on the head come equally handy to whistler.'" on one occasion a woman said to whistler: "i just came up from the country this morning along the thames, and there was an exquisite haze in the atmosphere which reminded me so much of some of your little things. it was really a perfect series of whistlers." "yes, madam," responded whistler, gravely. "nature is creeping up." * * * * * richard a. canfield, who sat for the portrait now called "his reverence," though canfield was something quite unclerical, recites: "after i had my first sitting on new year's day, , i saw whistler every day until the day i sailed for new york, which was on may th. he was not able to work, however, on all those days. in fact, there were days at a time when he could do nothing but lie on a couch and talk, as only whistler could talk, about those things which interested him. it was mostly of art and artists that he conversed, but now and again he would revert to his younger days at home, to the greatness to which the republic had attained, and to his years at west point. "in spite of all that has been said of him, i know that james mcneill whistler was one of the intensest americans who ever lived. he was not what you call an enthusiastic man, but when he reverted to the old days at the military academy his enthusiasm was infectious. i think he was really prouder of the years he spent there--three, i think they were--than any other years of his life. he never tired of telling of the splendid men and soldiers his classmates turned out to be, and he has often said to me that the american army officer trained at west point was the finest specimen of manhood and of honor in the world. "it was in this way that i spent every afternoon with whistler from new year's until may th, the day before i sailed. when he was able to work i would sit as i was told, and then he would paint, sometimes an hour, sometimes three. at other times he would lie on the couch and ask me to sit by and talk to him. on the morning of the day of the last sitting he sent me a note asking me to take luncheon with him, and adding that he felt quite himself and up to plenty of work. "so i went around to his studio, and he painted until well into the late afternoon. when he was done he said that with a touch or two here and there the picture might be considered finished. then he added: "'you are going home to-morrow, to my home as well as yours, and you won't be coming back till the autumn. i've just been thinking that maybe you had better take the picture along with you. his reverence will do very well as he is, and maybe there won't be any work in me when you come back. i believe i would rather like to think of you having this clerical gentleman in your collection, for i have a notion that it's the best work i have done.' "whistler had never talked that way before, and i have since thought that he was thinking that the end was not far away. i told him, more to get the notion, if he had it, out of his mind than anything else, that i would not think of taking the picture, and that if he didn't put on one of those finishing touches until i got back, so much the better, for then i could see him work. that seemed to bring him back to himself, and he said: "'so be it, your reverence. now we'll say _au revoir_ in a couple of mint-juleps.' he sent for the materials, made the cups, and, just as the sun was setting, we drank to each other and the homeland, and i was off to catch a train for liverpool and the steamer. so it was that whistler and his last subject parted." * * * * * a group of american and english artists were discussing the manifold perfections of the late lord leighton, president of the royal academy. "exquisite musician--played the violin like a professional," said one. "one of the best-dressed men in london," said another. "danced divinely," remarked the third. "ever read his essays?" asked a fourth. "in my opinion they're the best of the kind ever written." whistler, who had remained silent, tapped the last speaker on the shoulder. "painted, too, didn't he?" he said. * * * * * a patron of art asked whistler to tell him where a friend lived on a certain street in london, to which the artist replied: "i can't tell you, but i know how you can find it. just you ring up houses until you come across a caretaker who talks in b flat, and there you are." * * * * * a friend of whistler's saw him on the street in london a few years ago talking to a very ragged little newsboy. as he approached to speak to the artist he noticed that the boy was as dirty a specimen of the london "newsy" as he had ever encountered--he seemed smeared all over--literally covered with dirt. whistler had just asked him a question, and the boy answered: "yes, sir; i've been selling papers three years." "how old are you?" inquired whistler. "seven, sir." "oh, you must be more than that." "no, sir, i ain't." then, turning to his friend, who had overheard the conversation, whistler said: "i don't think he could get that dirty in seven years; do you?" * * * * * benrimo, the dramatist, who wrote "the yellow jacket," relates that when he was a young writer, fresh from the breezy atmosphere of san francisco, he visited london. coming out of the burlington gallery one day, he saw a little man mincing toward him, carrying a cane held before him as he walked, whom he recognized as whistler. with western audacity he stopped the pedestrian, introduced himself, and broke into an elaborate outburst of acclamation for the works of the master, who "ate it up," as the saying goes. waving his wand gently toward the famous gallery, whistler queried: "been in there?" "oh, yes." "see anything worth while?" "some splendid things, magnificent examples--" "i'm sorry you ever approved of me," observed the master, majestically, and on he went, leaving benrimo withered under his disdain. * * * * * whistler had a french poodle of which he was extravagantly fond. this poodle was seized with an affection of the throat, and whistler had the audacity to send for the great throat specialist, mackenzie. sir morell, when he saw that he had been called to treat a dog, didn't like it much, it was plain. but he said nothing. he prescribed, pocketed a big fee, and drove away. the next day he sent posthaste for whistler. and whistler, thinking he was summoned on some matter connected with his beloved dog, dropped his work and rushed like the wind to mackenzie's. on his arrival sir morell said, gravely: "how do you do, mr. whistler? i wanted to see you about having my front door painted." * * * * * whistler used to tell this story about dante gabriel rossetti in his later years. the great pre-raphaelite had invited the painter of nocturnes and harmonies to dine with him at his house in chelsea, and when whistler arrived he was shown into a reception-room. seating himself, he was soon disturbed by a noise which appeared to be made by a rat or a mouse in the wainscoting of the room. this surmise was wrong, as he found the noise was in the center of the apartment. stooping, to his amazement he saw rossetti lying at full length under the table. "why, what on earth are you doing there, rossetti?" exclaimed whistler. "don't speak to me! don't speak to me!" cried rossetti. "that fool morris"--meaning the famous william--"has sent to say he can't dine here to-night, and i'm so mad i'm gnawing the leg of the table." * * * * * one of the affectations of whistler was his apparent failure to recognize persons with whom he had been on the most friendly terms. an american artist once met the impressionist in venice, where they spent several months together painting, and he was invited to call on whistler if he should go to paris. the painter remembered the invitation. the door of the paris studio was opened by whistler himself. a cold stare was the only reply to the visitor's effusive greeting. "why, mr. whistler," cried the painter, "you surely haven't forgotten those days in venice when you borrowed my colors and we painted together!" "i never saw you before in all my life," replied whistler, and slammed the door. this habit of forgetting persons, or pretending to do so, for nobody ever knew when the lapses of recognition were due to intention or absent-mindedness, often tempted other artists to play pranks upon him. he was a man who resented a joke at his own expense, except on a few occasions, and this trait was often turned to good account. he was at naples soon after the incident just related had gained wide circulation. a conspiracy was entered into whereby the whistler worshipers there were to be unaware of his presence. he tried to play billiards with a company of young artists. they met his advance with a stony glare. "oh, i say," persisted he, "i think i know something of that game. i'd like to play." a consultation was held, and the artists shook their heads, inquiring of one another, "who is he?" whistler retired crestfallen, and a roar of laughter which rang through the room added to his discomfiture. "oh, well," he said, pulling nervously at his mustache, and his tone was petulant, "i don't care." * * * * * whistler had a great penchant for white hats, kept all those he had ever worn, and had a large collection. the flat-brimmed tall hat was a whim of his late years, imported from france, _via_ the head of william m. chase. * * * * * mr. chase has contributed largely to the budget of whistler anecdotes. one day when the two men were painting together in whistler's studio in london, a wealthy woman visited them with the demand, which she had made many times before, that whistler return to her a picture by himself which he had borrowed several years before to place on exhibition. the suave voice of whistler was heard in argument, and he finally induced his patron to depart without the work of art. when she had gone he returned to his work, muttering something about the absurdity of some persons who believed that because they had paid two hundred pounds for a picture they thought they thereby owned it. "besides," he said, "there is absolutely nothing else in her house to compare with it, and it would be out of place." * * * * * "chase," said whistler one day, "how-is it now in america? do you find there, as you do in london, that in houses filled with beautiful pictures and superb statuary, and other objects of artistic merit, there is invariably some damned little thing on the mantel that gives the whole thing away?" mr. chase replied, sadly: "it is even so, but you must remember, whistler, that there are such things as birthdays. people are not always responsible." * * * * * mr. chase came up for discussion once at a little party, and whistler's sister observed, "mr. chase amuses james, doesn't he, james?" james, tapping his finger-tips together lightly: "not often, not often." * * * * * "i'm going over to london," said he once to chase, "and there i shall have a hansom made. it shall have a white body, yellow wheels, and i'll have it lined with canary-colored satin. i'll petition the city to let me carry one lamp on it, and on the lamp there will be a white plume. i shall then be the only one." he gave mr. chase some pretty hard digs. he said to him one time in the heat of a discussion on some technical point: "chase, i am not arguing with you. i am telling you." * * * * * reproved by mr. chase for antagonizing his friends, whistler retorted: "it is commonplace, not to say vulgar, to quarrel with your enemies. quarrel with your friends! that's the thing to do. now be good!" * * * * * "the good lord made one serious mistake," he rasped to chase, in holland. "what?" "when he made dutchmen." * * * * * when he had finished his portrait of mr. chase he stood off and admired the work. "beautiful! beautiful!" was his comment. chase, who had irked under the queer companionship, retorted, "at least there's nothing mean or modest about you!" "nothing mean and modest," he corrected. "i like that better! nothing mean _and_ modest! what a splendid epitaph that would make for me! stop a moment! i must put that down!" * * * * * during the chase sittings, the creditors were always calling. whistler divined their several missions with much nicety by the tone of the raps on the door. a loud, business-like bang brought, out this comment: "psst! that's one and ten." later came another, not quite so vehement. "two and six," said whistler. "psst!" "what on earth do you mean?" asked chase. "one pound ten shillings; two pounds six shillings! vulgar tradesmen with their bills, colonel. they want payment. oh, well!" a gentle knock soon followed. "dear me," said whistler, "that must be all of twenty! poor fellow! i really must do something for him. so sorry i'm not in." * * * * * riding one day in a hansom with mr. chase, whistler's eye caught the fruit and vegetable display in a greengrocer's shop. making the cabby maneuver the vehicle to various viewpoints, he finally observed: "isn't it beautiful? i believe i'll have that crate of oranges moved over there--against that background of green. yes, that's better!" and he settled back contentedly! a kindly friend told him of a pleasant spot near london for an artistic sojourn. "i'm sure you'll like it," he added, enthusiastically. "my dear fellow," replied whistler, "the very fact that you like it is proof that it's nothing for me." he went, however, and liked the place, but on the way some of his canvases went astray. he made such a fuss that the station-master asked mr. chase who was his companion: "who is that quarrelsome little man? he's really most disagreeable." "whistler, the celebrated artist," mr. chase replied. at that the man approached whistler and respectfully remarked: "i'm very sorry about your canvases. are they valuable?" "not yet!" screeched whistler. "not yet!" "i only know of two painters in the world," said a newly introduced feminine enthusiast to whistler, "yourself and velasquez." "why," answered whistler, in dulcet tones, "why drag in velasquez?" mr. chase once asked him if he really said this seriously. "no, of course not," he replied. "you don't suppose i couple myself with velasquez, do you? i simply wanted to take her down." * * * * * sir john e. millais, walking through the grosvenor gallery with archibald stuart wortley, stopped longer than usual before the shadowy, graceful portrait of a lady, "an arrangement in gray, rose, and silver," and then broke out: "it's damned clever! it's a damned sight too clever!" this was his verdict on whistler's portrait of lady meux. millais contended that whistler "never learned the grammar of his art," that "his drawing is as faulty as it can be," and that "he thought nothing" of depicting "a woman all out of proportion, with impossible legs and arms!" * * * * * in there was a suggestion that whistler's portrait of carlyle should be bought for the national gallery. sir george scharf, then curator of that institution, came to mr. graves's show-rooms in pall mall to take a look at it. when mr. graves produced the painting he observed, icily: "well, and has painting come to this?" "i told mr. graves," said whistler, "that he should have said,' no, it hasn't."' it was nearly twenty years after when glasgow finally bought the masterpiece. indeed, whistler had little market for his works until . he often found, as he said, "a long face and a short account at the bank." complaining to sidney starr one day of the sums earned by a certain eminent "r.a.," while he received little or nothing, starr reminded him that r.a.'s painted to please the public and so reaped their reward. "i don't think they do," demurred whistler; "i think they paint as well as they can." of alma-tadema's work he observed, "my only objection to tadema's pictures is that they are unfinished." starr spoke approvingly of the promising work of some of the younger artists. "they are all tarred with the same brush," said whistler. "they are of the schools!" of one particular rising star whistler remarked: "he's clever, but there's something common in everything he does. so what's the use of it?" starr indicated a distinguishing difference between the work of a certain r.a. and another. "well," he replied, "it's a nasty difference." * * * * * m.h. spielmann, the art-critic, spoke of "ten o'clock " as "smart but misleading." whistler retorted, "if the lecture had not seemed misleading to him, it surely would not have been worth uttering at all!" * * * * * walter sickert, then a pupil of whistler's, praised lord leighton's "harvest moon" in an article on the manchester art treasure exhibition. whistler telegraphed him at hampstead: "the harvest moon rises at hampstead and the cocks of chelsea crow!" * * * * * apropos of his spats with sickert he remarked, "yes, we are always forgiving walter." another pupil, foreseeing the end of whistler as president of the royal society of british artists, resigned some months before the time. "the early rat," said whistler, grimly, "the first to leave the sinking ship." * * * * * in the fine art society's gallery one day he spoke to a knighted r.a. "who was that?" starr asked. "really, now, i forget," was the reply. "but whoever it was it's some one of no importance, you know, no importance whatever." * * * * * at an exhibition of doré's pictures whistler asked an attendant if a certain academician's large religious picture was not on view. "no," said the man; "it's much lower down!" "impossible!" replied whistler, gleefully. sidney starr relates that whistler was asked one year to "hang" the exhibits in the walker art gallery at liverpool. in the center of one wall he placed luke fildes's "doctor," and surrounded it with all the pictures he could find of dying people, convalescents, still-life medicine bottles, and the like. this caused comment. "but," said whistler, "i told them i wished to emphasize that particular school." "and what did you put on the opposite wall?" starr asked. "oh, leighton's--i really forget what it was." "but that is different, you know," said starr. "no," rejoined whistler; "it's really the same thing!" * * * * * having seen a picture of starr's in liverpool, which he amiably, termed "a picture among paint," he observed to him on the occasion of their first meeting: "paint things exactly as they are. i always do. young men think they should paint like this or that painter. be quite simple; no fussy foolishness, you know; and don't try to be what they call 'strong.' when a picture 'smells of paint,'" he said slowly, "it's what they call 'strong.'" * * * * * riding once with starr to dine at the café royal, whistler leaned forward in the hansom and looked at the green park in the dusk, fresh and sweet after the rain; at the long line of light reflected, shimmering, in the wet piccadilly pavement, and said: "starr, i have not dined, as you know, so you need not think i say this in anything but a cold and careful spirit: it is better to live on bread and cheese and paint beautiful things than to live like dives and paint pot-boilers. but a painter really should not have to worry about--'various,' you know. poverty may induce industry, but it does not produce the fine flower of painting. the test is not poverty; it's money. give a painter money and see what he'll do. if he does not paint, his work is well lost to the world. if i had had, say, three thousand pounds a year, what beautiful things i could have done!" * * * * * before the portrait of little miss alexander went to the grosvenor gallery, tom taylor, the art-critic of the _times_, called at the studio to see it. "ah, yes--'um," he remarked, and added that an upright line in the paneling of the wall was wrong and that the picture would be better without it, adding, "of course, it's a matter of taste." to which whistler rejoined: "i thought that perhaps for once you were going to get away without having said anything foolish; but remember, so you may not make the mistake again, it's not a matter of taste at all; it is a matter of knowledge. good-by!" * * * * * to a critic who remarked, "your picture is not up to your mark; it is not good this time," whistler replied: "you shouldn't say it is not good. you should say you do not like it, and then, you know, you're perfectly safe. now come and have something you do like--have some whiskey." * * * * * stopped at an exhibition by an attendant who wished to check his cane, whistler laughed: "oh, no, my little man; i keep this for the critics." his troubles with the royal society of british artists bred a round of biting remarks. when he and his following went out he said, consolingly: "pish! it is very simple. the artists retired. the british remained!" another shot at the same subject: "no longer can it be said that the right man is in the wrong place!" * * * * * when an adverse vote ended his leadership of the royal society, whistler said, philosophically, "now i understand the feelings of all those who, since the world began, have tried to save their fellow-men." * * * * * commenting on b.r. haydon's autobiography, whistler said: "yes; haydon, it seems, went into his studio, locked the door, and before beginning to work prayed god to enable him to paint for the glory of england. then, seizing a large brush full of bitumen, he attacked his huge canvas, and, of course--god fled." * * * * * starr once asked whistler if the southern exposure of the room in which he was working troubled him. "yes, it does," he answered. "but ruskin lives in the north, you know, and a southern exposure troubled him, rather, eh?" * * * * * much that was characteristic of the artist's wit and temper came out during the famous libel suit he brought against ruskin. the most amusing feature of it was the exhibition in court of some of the "nocturnes" and "arrangements" which were the subject of the suit. the jury of respectable citizens, whose knowledge of art was probably limited, was expected to pass judgment on these paintings. whistler's counsel held up one of the pictures. "here, gentlemen," he said, "is one of the works which have been maligned." "pardon me," interposed mr. ruskin's lawyer; "you have that picture upside down." "no such thing!" "oh, but it is so!" continued ruskin's counsel. "i remember it in the grosvenor gallery, where it was hung the other way about." the altercation ended in the correctness of view of ruskin's lawyer being sustained. this error of counsel helped to produce the celebrated farthing verdict. ever after whistler wore the farthing on his watch-chain. * * * * * the suit had its origin in ruskin's comment upon the "nocturne in black and gold," described as "a distant view of cremorne garden, with a falling rocket and other fireworks." the picture is now the property of mrs. samuel untermyer, of new york. on the opening of the grosvenor gallery, in , ruskin wrote in _fors clavigera_: "the ill-educated conceit of the artist nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. i have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to have a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." when whistler was being examined during the trial, sir john holker, the attorney-general, asked, "how long did it take you to knock off that 'nocturne'?" "i beg your pardon?" said the witness. sir john apologized for his flippancy, and whistler replied: "about a day. i may have put a few touches to it the next day." "for two days' labor you ask two hundred guineas?" "no, i ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime!" then the "nocturne in blue and silver," a moonlight view of battersea bridge, was submitted to the jury. baron huddleston, the presiding justice, asked mr. whistler to explain it. "which part of the picture is the bridge?" he queried. "do you say this is a correct representation?" "i did not intend it to be a correct portrait of the bridge." "are the figures on the top intended for people?" "they are just what you like." "is that a barge beneath?" "yes," replied the witness, sarcastically. "i am much encouraged at your perceiving that! my whole scheme was only to bring out a certain harmony of color." "what is that gold-colored mark on the side, like a cascade?" "that is a firework." "do you think now," said the attorney-general, insinuatingly, "you could make me see the beauty of that picture?" "no," said whistler, after closely scrutinizing his questioner's face. "do you know, i fear it would be as hopeless as for the musician to pour his notes into a deaf man's ear." "what is that structure in the middle?" asked the irritated attorney. "is it a telescope or a fire-escape? is it like battersea bridge? what are the figures at the top? if they are horses and carts, how in the name of fortune are they to get off?" * * * * * a friend who was in court when the farthing damages verdict was brought in relates that whistler looked puzzled for a moment; then his face cleared. "that's a verdict for me, is it not?" he asked; and when his counsel said, "yes, nominally," whistler replied, "well, i suppose a verdict is a verdict." then he said, "it's a great triumph; tell everybody it's a great triumph." when the listener dissented, he condensed all his concentrated scorn of philistine view into a sentence: "my dear s., you are just fit to serve on a british jury." * * * * * "whistler _vs._ ruskin" cost the latter so much more than the farthing verdict that his friends sent out a circular soliciting funds in these terms: "whistler _vs._ ruskin. mr. ruskin's costs. "a considerable opinion prevailing that a lifelong, honest endeavor on the part of mr. ruskin to further the cause of art should not be crowned by his being cast in costs to the amount of several hundreds of pounds, the fine art society has agreed to set on foot a subscription to defray his expenses arising out of the late action of whistler _vs._ ruskin. "persons willing to co-operate will oblige by communicating with the society, , new bond street, london." mr. whistler received scant sympathy, the tone of the comment being well noted by this excerpt from the london _standard_ of november th, : "of course, mr. whistler has costs to pay too, and the amount he is to receive from mr. ruskin (one farthing), even if economically expended, will hardly go far to satisfy the claims of his legal advisers. but he has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it, 'knock off,' three or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'--or perhaps he might try his hand at a set of quadrilles in peacock blue?--and a week's labor will set all square." arthur lumley, a new york illustrator, met whistler once at a costume ball at george h. boughton's house in london. the artist appeared as hamlet, but in anything but a melancholy mood. next morning's papers related that the sheriff had sold the effects in the white house the day of the ball to satisfy the claims of his creditors! * * * * * isaac n. ford, when correspondent of the new york _tribune_ in london, went with frederick macmonnies, the sculptor, to visit whistler, who brought out a number of portraits for show. one was that of a woman, full figure. "what do you think of her?" he asked. the sculptor gave "a side glance and looked down." "since you force me to speak,", he finally blurted out, "i must tell you that one leg is longer than the other." instead of the expected outburst, whistler scrutinized the portrait from several points, and then observed quietly: "you are quite right. i had not observed the fault, and i shall correct it in the morning." "what an eye for a line a sculptor has!" he said to ford later. * * * * * he quarreled regularly with his brother-in-law, sir f. seymour haden, the famous etcher. "a brother-in-law is not a connection calling for sentiment," he once remarked. haden came into a gallery on one occasion and, seeing whistler, who was there in company with justice day, left abruptly. "i see! dropped in for his morning bitters," observed whistler, cheerfully. * * * * * once in conversation whistler said: "yes, i have many friends, and am grateful to them; but those whom i most love are my enemies--not in a biblical sense, oh, no, but because they keep one always busy, always up to the mark, either fighting them or proving them idiots." * * * * * whistler was very particular about the spelling of his rather long and complicated group of names. careless people made the "mc" "mac," and others left the extra "l" off "mcneill." to one of the latter offenders he wrote: "mcneill, by the way, should have two l's.' i use them both, and in the midst of things cannot well do without them!" * * * * * when tom taylor, the critic, died, a friend asked whistler why he looked so glum. "me?" said whistler. "who else has such cause to mourn? tommy's dead. i'm lonesome. they are all dying. i have hardly a warm personal enemy left!" * * * * * while a draughtsman in the coast survey from november, , to february, , he boarded at the northeast corner of e and th streets, washington. he is remembered as being usually late for breakfast and always making sketches on the walls. to the remonstrating landlord he replied: "now, now, never mind! i'll not charge you anything for the decorations." * * * * * among those with whom whistler quarreled most joyously were the two moores, the illustrious george and his less famous brother, augustus. both took sir william eden's side in the celebrated "baronet _vs_. butterfly" case, where whistler was nonsuited in a french court of law. augustus edited a sprightly but none too reputable weekly in london, called the _hawk_, a series of unpalatable references in which so aroused whistler that, meeting moore in the drury lane theater on the first night of "a million of money," he struck the editor across the face with his cane. a scrimmage followed, which contemporary history closed with the artist on the floor. whistler's own account of the unseemly fracas was thuswise: "i started out to cane the fellow with as little emotion as i would prepare to kill a rat. i did cane him to the satisfaction of my many friends and his many enemies, and that was the end of it." moore wrote: "i am sorry, but i have had to slap mr. whistler. my irish blood got the better of me, and before i knew it the shriveled-up little monkey was knocked over and kicking about the floor." whistler vigorously controverted this version as a "barefaced falsehood." he added: "i am sure he never touched me. i don't know why, for he is a much bigger man than i. my idea is that he was thoroughly cowed by the moral force of my attack. i had to turn him round in order to get at him. then i cut him again and again as hard as i could, hissing out 'hawk!' with each stroke. oh, you can take my word for it, everything was done in the cleanest and most correct fashion possible. i always like to do things cleanly." * * * * * the clash with george moore came to a head with the challenge to fight a duel. in his own version of the event given in the london _chronicle_ of march th, , mr. moore laid his troubles to his efforts to aid the artist. learning that sir william eden wished his wife's portrait painted, he "undertook a journey to paris in the depth of winter, had two shocking passages across the channel, and spent twenty-five pounds on mr. whistler's business." it was arranged, he thought, that whistler was to receive one hundred pounds for a "small sketch." when the "sketch" materialized it was "small" indeed. the baronet and mr. moore expected a little more area of canvas. "the picture in question," remarked mr. moore, "is only twelve inches long by six high. the figure of lady eden is represented sitting on a sofa; the face is about half an inch in length, about the size of a sixpence, and the features are barely indicated." but to the duel: in paris, after the controversy arose, mr. moore told an interviewer he did not think the sketch was worth more than one hundred pounds. to this whistler made a furious reply in the _pall mall gazette_, alleging that moore had "acquired a spurious reputation as an art-critic" by praising his pictures. moore's reply in the journal produced this response, sent from the hotel chatham under date of march th, : "mr. whistler begs to acknowledge mr. moore's letter of march . "if, in it, the literary incarnation of the 'eccentric' person, on the curbstone, is supposed to represent mr. moore at the present moment, mr. whistler thinks the likeness exaggerated--as it is absurd to suppose that mr. moore can really imagine that any one admires him in his late role before interviewer, or in that of the expert in the council chamber. "if, however, mr. moore means in his parable to indicate mr. whistler, the latter is willing to accept mr. moore's circuitous and coarse attempt to convey a gross insult--and, upon the whole, will perhaps think the better of him for an intention to make himself at last responsible. "in such case mr. whistler will ask a friend to meet any gentleman mr. moore may appoint to represent him; and, awaiting a reply, has the honor to remain mr. moore's," etc. to which mr. moore replied: "mr. moore begs to acknowledge the receipt of mr. whistler's letter of the th inst. in mr. moore's opinion mr. whistler's conduct grows daily more absurd." "i hoped," explained mr. moore, "that mr. whistler's friends would intervene and persuade him of the strangeness of his action and the interpretation it would receive in england. but four days later i was flattered by the following communication: "paris, _le mars, ._ "monsieur: "a la réception de votre lettre (lettre d'ailleurs rendue publique dans la _pall mall gazette_), m. whistler nous a prié de vous demander soit une rétractation, soit une réparation par les armes. "nous vous prions donc de vouloir bien nous mettre en rapport avec deux de vos amis. francis vielÃ�-griffin, rue de la pompe. octave mirbeau, carrière-sous-passy, seine-et-oise." mr. moore's interlocutor asked him if there was any fear of losing his interesting personality on account of mr. whistler's challenge. to this mr. moore said: "there are three most excellent reasons why i should not fight a duel with mr. whistler, as mr. whistler well knows. first, only under the very gravest circumstances, if under any at all, would an englishman accept a challenge to a duel. the duel has been relegated to the realms of comic opera. as for inviting me to proceed to belgium for the purpose of fighting him, he might as well ask me to strip myself naked and paint my face and stick feathers in my hair--dress myself as a redskin, in fact, and walk down st. james's street flourishing a tomahawk. second, supposing i were a frenchman, mr. whistler is sixty-five years of age, and it is against the custom of dueling for any one to accept a challenge from so old a gentleman. moreover, mr. whistler is, unhappily, very short-sighted, and would be unable to see me at twenty paces. third, the grounds of the quarrel are so infinitely trivial that, were we both frenchmen, it is doubtful if any seconds would take upon themselves the responsibility of an armed encounter. "i have praised mr. whistler's pictures that he painted five-and-twenty years ago as much as it is possible to praise works of art. i hold the same opinions about them still. i only wish mr. whistler would apply himself to his art instead of wasting his time in quarreling with his friends." the outcome of the eden suit kept whistler in ill-humor for a long time, while moore continued to be a special object of aversion. the two avoided each other. but, as some philosopher has said, if you remain long in paris you will meet all your friends and all your enemies. so it fell out that the two foregathered at the same atelier one sunday afternoon. they nearly collided in entering, but moore was the first inside. the hostess heard sounds from the hall something between china-breaking and the stamping of hoofs. she went out, to find james in a mighty rage. "dear me!" said the lady, "what is the matter, dear master?" "whistler won't come in! whistler won't stay under the same roof with that wild irishman!" moore, in the inside, remarked in his sweetly modulated voice: "why drag in whistler?" this play on his best _mot_, "why drag in velasquez?" was too much, and in screaming wrath the painter fled, leaving moore in full possession. * * * * * an american millionaire, to whom wealth had come rather quickly from western mines, called at the paris studio with the idea of capturing something for his gallery. he glanced casually at the paintings on the walls, and then queried: "how much for the lot?" "four millions," said whistler. "what?" "my posthumous prices! good morning!" * * * * * dante gabriel rossetti once showed whistler a sketch and asked his opinion of its merits. "it has good points, rossetti," said whistler. "go ahead with it by all means." later he inquired how it was getting along. "all right," answered rossetti, cheerfully. "i've ordered a stunning frame for it." in due time the canvas appeared at rossetti's house in cheyne walk, beautifully framed. "you've done nothing to it since i saw it, have you?" said whistler. "no-o," replied rossetti, "but i've written a sonnet on the subject, if you'd like to hear it." he recited some lines of peculiar tenderness. "rossetti," said whistler, as the recitation ended, "take out the picture and frame the sonnet." * * * * * the scotch once raised a fund by subscription to buy the portrait of carlyle, at a price of five hundred guineas, fixed by the painter. when the sum was nearly complete, he learned that the subscription paper contained a clause disclaiming any indorsement of his theory of art. he telegraphed to the committee: "the price of 'carlyle' has advanced to one thousand guineas. dinna ye hear the bagpipes?" * * * * * a dilettante collector in london, after much angling, induced whistler to view his variegated collection. as the several objects passed in review they provoked only a sober "h'm, h'm," that might have meant anything or nothing. when there was no more to see, the host paused for an aggregate opinion and got this: "my dear sir, there's really no excuse for it, no excuse for it at all!" to a lady who complained that the frequent sittings commanded for painting her portrait compelled her to sacrifice much personal convenience, whistler replied: "but, my dear lady, that is nothing in comparison with the sacrifice i have to make on your account. just look: since i have been painting your portrait i have not had time to attend to my correspondence." there was a mountain of unopened letters on his desk. * * * * * frederick wedmore, the patient cataloguer of whistler's etchings, once appeared in print as saying that he had "no wish to understand whistler's works." he wrote "understate," but the wretched compositor undid him. whistler's response to the explanation was: "yes, the mistake is indeed inexcusable, since not only i, but even the compositor, might have known that with mr. wedmore and his like it is always a question of understating and never of understanding anything." in his _memories and impressions_ ford madox hueffer relates that madox brown, going to a tea-party at the white house at chelsea, was met in the hall by mrs. whistler, who begged him to go to the poulterer's and purchase a pound of butter. the bread was cut, but there was nothing in the house to put upon it. there was no money in the house, the poulterer had cut off his credit, and mrs. whistler said she dared not send her husband, for he would certainly punch the tradesman's head! "to think of 'arry [meaning harry quilter, the critic, with whom he fiercely quarreled] living in the temple i erected!" he said. "he has no use for it--doesn't know what to do with it. if he had any feeling for the sympathy of things he would come to me and say: 'here's your house, whistler; take it; you know its meaning, i don't. take it and live in it.' but no, he hasn't sense enough to see that. he obstinately stays there in the way, while i am living in this absurd fashion, next door to myself." * * * * * after the "secession" from the royal society, whistler strolled into the gallery one evening with some friends. a group of admirers were gushing before a leighton canvas. "quite exquisite!" "a gem--really a gem!" "yes," said whistler. "like a diamond in the sty." when elected president of the society of british artists, whistler naturally felt exultant. "carr," he said, jokingly, to conryns carr, the dramatist, "you haven't congratulated me yet." "no," was the retort. "i'm waiting till the correspondence begins!" * * * * * the society did not possess a royal charter until mr. whistler became president. with some help from the prince of wales this was procured. when the prince paid his first visit to the gallery, whistler was there to welcome him. "i'm sure," said the prince at the door, "i never heard of this place, mr. whistler, until you brought it to my notice. what is its history?" "it has none, your highness," was the neat rejoinder. "its history dates from to-day!" when whistler left the white house, at chelsea, he put this legend over the door: "'unless the lord build the house, their labor is but vain that build it.' e.w. godwin, p.s.a., built this one." * * * * * justin mccarthy, the journalist and historian of _our own times_, stayed away from the whistler dinner at the criterion because his friend mortimer menpes had been slighted. he met whistler a few evenings later at a dinner to christie murray. as they came together whistler remarked darkly: "you're a bold man and a philanthropist; but remember, _damien died_!" and he had, just before, among the lepers of molokai! rather rough on the claimant of lemon yellow! * * * * * the fine art society once billed whistler for incidentals to one of his exhibitions, and thoughtfully included a pair of stockings worn by an attendant named cox. "i shall pay for nothing of cox's," said the artist, indignantly. "neither his socks, nor his 'ose, nor anything that is his." * * * * * one of his proofs, sold by sotheby's in --that of an early etching--brought a good price, not on its merits, but for this line by the artist, written on the margin: "legs not by me, but a fatuous addition by a general practitioner." the "legs" were by dr. seymour haden, whistler's eminent brother-in-law. * * * * * the eccentric relationship between whistler and that self-destroyed genius, oscar wilde, has been much portrayed. a characteristic meeting was thus described by a correspondent of the london _literary world_: "whistler and wilde were to be the lions at a literary reception. unfortunately, the lions came too early, when the few previous arrivals were altogether too insignificant to be introduced to them. so they had to talk to each other. it was on a very warm sunday afternoon in the season, and whistler, by the by, was wearing a white 'duck' waistcoat and trousers, and a fabulously long frock-coat, made, i think, of black alpaca, and carrying a brass-tipped stick about four feet long in his right hand, and a wonderful new paint-box, of which he was proud, under his left arm. neither of the lions took any notice of what the other said. finally, wilde, who had spent the previous summer in america, began: 'jimmy, this time last year, when i was in new york, all we men were carrying fans. it should be done here.' instead of replying, whistler observed that he had just returned from paris, and that he always came by the dieppe route, because it gave you so much longer for painting sea effects. whether oscar thought he was going to have an opportunity of scoring or what, he was tempted to break through the contempt with which-he had treated whistler's other remarks. 'and how many did you paint in four hours, jimmy?' he asked, with his most magnificent air of patronage. 'i'm not sure,' said the irrepressible jimmy, quite gravely, 'but i think four or five hundred."' * * * * * a london visitor at the lambs club recounted a new version of the notable enmity which followed the friendship that had existed between whistler and wilde. the latter one day asked the artist's opinion upon a poem which he had written, presenting a copy to be read. whistler read it and was handing it back without comment. "well," queried wilde, "do you perceive any worth?" "it's worth its weight in gold," replied whistler. the poem was written on the very thinnest tissue-paper, weighing practically nothing. the coolness between the two men is said to have dated from that moment. * * * * * walking up to du maurier and wilde at the time the former was portraying the postlethwaites in _punch_, whistler asked, whimsically, "i say, which of you invented the other, eh?" * * * * * when oscar wilde was married, this whistler telegram met him at the door of st. james's church, sussex gardens: "fear i may not be able to reach you in time for ceremony--don't wait." * * * * * "heaven!" said oscar once, when the two were together at forbes-robertson's and a pert flash fell from the artist's lips. "i wish i had said that!" "never mind, dear oscar--you will," retorted whistler. * * * * * when lady archibald campbell sat for her portrait lord archibald was quite uncomfortable at the idea, and made certain that it was a condescension, not a commission. the painting was duly completed, received its due of scathing criticism, and became famous. at this the lady, meeting the artist, remarked: "i hear my portrait has been exhibited everywhere and become famous." "sh-sh-sh!" he said. "so it has, my dear lady archibald, but every discretion has been exercised that lord archibald could desire. your name is not mentioned. the portrait is known as 'the yellow buckskin.'" * * * * * carlyle told whistler he liked his portrait because the painter had given him "clean linen." watts had made his collar green in a previous portrait. * * * * * sitting wearied carlyle. one day as he left the studio he met little miss alexander tripping in for her turn, and asked her name. "i am miss alexander," she said, "and i am going to have my portrait painted." "puir lassie, puir lassie," murmured the old philosopher, pityingly. * * * * * whistler's interest was aroused when the cyclopeans were building the savoy hotel. "hurry!" he said. "where are my things? i must catch that now, for it will never again be so beautiful." * * * * * his model once asked him: "where were you born?" "i never was born, my child; i came from on high." the model retorted: "now that shows how easily we deceive ourselves in this world, for i should say you came from below!" * * * * * invited once to dine with some eminences, the dinner-hour found him busy with his brush and engrossed in his subject. a friend who was to accompany him to the feast urged that it was frightfully late. "don't you think you had better stop?" he asked. "stop?" shrieked whistler. "stop when everything is going so beautifully? go and stuff myself with food when i can paint like this? never! never! besides, they won't do anything until i get there. they never do." * * * * * whistler was in a london shop one day when a customer came in who mistook him for a clerk. "i say, this 'at doesn't fit!" "neither does your coat," observed the painter, after eying him critically. * * * * * a young woman student protested under criticism, "mr. whistler, is there any reason why i shouldn't paint things as i see them?" "well, really, there is no statute against it; but the dreadful moment will be when you see things as you painted them!" "britain's realm," by john brett, r.a., now in the national gallery at millbank, made a stir when first exhibited at the academy. it shows the sea. whistler walked into a wave of adulation one day during the exhibition, and, affecting to "knock" with his knuckles, said sardonically: "ha! ha! tin! if you threw a stone on to this it would make a rumbling noise!" * * * * * his early price for the use of one of his lithographs by a magazine was ten guineas. later he charged twenty, either sum being petty enough. to one editor who tendered ten pounds he wrote: "guineas, m. le rédacteur; guineas, not pounds!" * * * * * at a reception one evening in prince's hall he was introduced to henrietta rae, whose painting "psyche before the throne of venus" had made her notable. she had been described to him in advance as rather weighty in figure. "i don't think you're a bit too fat," was his encouraging greeting. * * * * * "why have you withered people and stung them all your life?" asked a lady. "my dear," he said, "i will tell you a secret. early in life i made the discovery that i was charming; and if one is delightful, one has to thrust the world away to keep from being bored to death." * * * * * during the boxer troubles, when pekin was under siege to rescue the legations, he remarked: "dear! dear! i hope they will save the palace. all the englishmen in the world are not worth one blue china vase." one evening at pennell's miss annulet andrews mentioned attending the royal society soirée the evening before. "poor thing!" he said. "poor, misguided child! did you come all the way to london to consort with such--well, what shall we call them? why, there isn't a fellow among them who had his h's five years ago!" * * * * * "you should be grateful to me," said whistler to leyland, after he had painted the peacock room in the latter's house. "i have made you famous. my work will live when you are forgotten. still, perchance in the dim ages to come you may be remembered as the proprietor of the peacock room." * * * * * whistler's butterfly was the moth of the silkworm borrowed from hokusai. otto h. bacher thought the addition of a sting to the signature came from this incident at venice: in he found a scorpion and impaled it on his etching needle. as the little creature writhed and struck, whistler exclaimed: "look at the beggar now! see him strike! isn't he fine? look at him! look at him now! see how hard he hits! that's right--that's the way! hit hard! and do you see the poison that comes out when he strikes? isn't he superb?" * * * * * referring long after to his retirement from west point, where he had been a cadet for three years, the artist explained his fall by saying: "if silicon had been a gas, i should have been a soldier!" * * * * * he was always proud of his west point cadetship. "west point is america," he would say. julian alden weir, son of whistler's instructor at the academy, once dining with him in london, chanced to remark that football had been introduced at the school. "good god!" cried whistler. "a west point cadet to be rolled in the mud by a harvard junior!" * * * * * when a student at the point he had the habit of combing his long hair in class with his fingers, which brought this frequent command from lieutenant caleb huse: "mr. whistler, go to your room and comb your hair!" * * * * * examined on history at west point, he failed to recall the date of the battle of buena vista. "suppose," said the exasperated instructor, "you were to go out to dinner and the company began to talk of the mexican war, and you, a west point man, were asked the date of the battle; what would you do?" "do?" was the reply. "why, i should refuse to associate with people who could talk of such things at dinner!" * * * * * he disliked the work of the riding class at west point, and one day wished to exchange his heavy horse for a lighter animal. the dragoon in charge called out: "oh, don't swap, don't you swap! yours is a war-horse!" "a war-horse!" exclaimed the little cadet. "that settles it. i certainly don't want him!" "yes, you do, sir," insisted the dragoon. "he's a war-horse, i tell you, for he'd rather die than run!" * * * * * "of course you don't know what fear is," observed mortimer menpes. "ah, yes, i do!" whistler answered. "i should hate, for example, to be standing opposite a man who was a better shot than i, far away out in the forest, in the bleak, cold, early morning. fancy me, the master, standing out in the open as a target to be shot at. pshaw! it would be foolish and inartistic. i never mind calling a man out; but i always have the sense to know he is not likely to come." * * * * * mr. howard mansfield relates that while in london in the summer of with mr. whistler, reference was one day made to west point. he broke at once into enthusiastic praise of that institution, declaring that there was no finer institution in the world, and adding that next to it came the naval academy at annapolis. then he went on to say: "what was it which really saved you in your late deplorable war with the politest nation of europe but the bearing of your naval gentlemen? after the affair in that sea--what's its name?--off the island of cuba, when dear old admiral cervera was fished up like a dollop of cotton out of an ink-pot and was received on one of your ships with all the honors due to his rank, the officers all saluting and the crew manning the yards, as it were--only they haven't any yards now--but lined up in quite the proper way--why, it was splendid, just splendid!" * * * * * dining one night at a house where there were a number of his pictures about the room, he could give attention to nothing but his own work. when he left he begged that one painting be sent to his studio to be revarnished. the unsuspecting hostess complied. once delivered, she could not get it back. finally she wrote: "i can live no longer without my beautiful picture, and i am sending to have it taken away." "isn't it appalling?" he cried to menpes. "just think of it! ten years ago this woman bought my picture for a ridiculously small sum, a mere bagatelle, a few pounds; she has had the privilege of living with this masterpiece for ten whole years, and now she has the presumption to ask for it back again. pshaw! the thing's unspeakable!" * * * * * "what a series of accidents!" was his comment on a row of turners at the national gallery. * * * * * on another occasion, when he arrived at his host's house two hours after the time set for dining, he found the meal well under way. "how extraordinary!" he exclaimed to the amazed company. "really, i should think you could have waited a bit. why, you're just like a lot of pigs with your eating!" * * * * * sir john e. millais said to whistler one day: "jimmy, why don't you paint more pictures? put out more canvases!" "i know better," was the shrewd reply. "the fool!" he muttered, as he entered his studio. "he spreads himself on canvas on every possible occasion, and, do you know, he called me jimmy! mind you, i don't know the fellow well at all." * * * * * his "nocturne in blue and gold, valparaiso," was in the hill collection at brighton. whistler made mr. hill a visit which he thus described: "i was shown into the galleries, and, of course, took a chair and sat looking at my beautiful 'nocturne'; then, as there was nothing else to do, i went to sleep." in this state mr. hill found him! this sleeping habit was common with him when the company or the goings-on failed to interest him. on one occasion his sweet snore alarmed his neighbor, who nudged him and whispered: "i say, whistler, you must not sleep here!" "leave me alone!" commanded the artist, crossly. "i've said all i wanted to. i've no interest at all in what you and your friends have to say." * * * * * he once slumbered through a dinner where edwin a. abbey was a fellow-guest. the next morning he blandly asked mr. chase: "what did abbey have to say last night? anything worth while?" when dan smith was at the beginning of his career as an illustrator he was employed by an important lithographing house. one day, while making a large picture of antony and cleopatra in the barge scene, which was to be used by kyrle bellew and mrs. james brown potter as a poster for their joint starring tour, whistler, accompanied by a friend, visited the studio: whistler examined, with evident interest and approval, the canvas upon which the youthful artist was at work, holding his glass to his eyes; then, looking quizzically over it, remarked to his friend, "what a mercantile wretch it is!" * * * * * whistler presented a copy of his edition of _the gentle art of making enemies_ to "theodore watts, the worldling." asked why he started the unlucky school in the latin quarter, he answered: "it was for carmen rossi [long his model], poor little carmen, who is a mere child and has no money, and is saddled with the usual italian burden of a large, disreputable family--banditti brothers, a trifling husband, and all the rest of it." "carmen" was then thirty years old; weight, one hundred and ninety pounds. but she once had been his child-model. * * * * * a scotch student in the class had worked out the face of an old peasant woman illuminated by a candle. "how beautifully you have painted the candle!" whistler commended. "good morning, gentlemen!" * * * * * one day, when the pupils had been sketching from life, he came upon the work of one which, if it contained all of the truth, did not contain all of the beautiful. after gazing at it for some time whistler observed to the student: "ah, well! you can hardly expect me to teach you morals." and he walked away. * * * * * a carelessly kept palette was an abhorrence to the painter. he would inspect those used by his class, and on the discovery of untidiness uttered a reproof like this: "my friends, have you noticed the way in which a musician cares for his violin? how beautiful it is? how well kept? how tenderly handled? your palette is your instrument, its colors the notes, and upon it you play your symphonies!" * * * * * the colloquies with the class were spirited, sarcastic, interesting. here is a characteristic one: _question:_ "do you know what i mean when i say tone, value, light, shade, quality, movement, construction, etc.?" _chorus:_ "oh, yes, mr. whistler!" _mr. whistler:_ "i'm glad, for it's more than i do myself!" * * * * * he objected to smoking in the atelier, partly because it obscured the light and partly because of its obfuscating qualities. in paris a big englishman clouded the class-room with a copious discharge of smoke. "my dear sir," said whistler, gently, "i know you do not smoke to show disrespect for my request that students refrain from smoking on the days i come to them, nor would you desire to infringe upon the rules of the atelier, but--er--it seems to me--er--that when you are painting--er--you might possibly become so absorbed in your work as to--er--let your cigar go out!" visiting earl stetson crawford in his studio at paris, he noted on the wall a photographic copy of the nicholson portrait of himself. "is that the best you have of me?" he asked. "not that it is not very beautiful and artistic and so on--but i say, come now, you don't think it quite does me justice, do you?" * * * * * when the class was formed, so runs the tale, whistler inquired of each pupil with whom he had studied before. "with julian," said one. "couldn't have done better, sir," whistler answered. "with chase," replied another. "couldn't have done better, sir." "with mowbray," answered a third. "couldn't have done better, sir," and so on. he approached a student slightly deaf, who stammered in reply, "i beg pardon?" "couldn't have done better, sir," responded whistler, placidly, passing on to the next. * * * * * "it suffices not, messieurs," he once observed to the class, "that a life spent among pictures makes a painter, else the policeman in the national gallery might assert himself." * * * * * a pupil told him proudly she had studied with bouguereau. "bouguereau! bouguereau! who is bouguereau?" * * * * * one young lady in the class offended him. she received a polite note, signed with a neat butterfly, requesting her not to attend further. "it was worth being expelled to get the note," she said. whistler heard of the comment. "well, they'll all have a note some day," he observed. his retirement soon followed. * * * * * h. villiers barnett, editor of the _continental weekly_, when in the employ of the _magazine of art_ visited the dowdeswell gallery at a press view of the venice pastels. he alone of the critics developed some interest, and soon found himself alone with whistler. "i beg your pardon," said the latter, "but do you represent a religious journal?" "no," barnett replied, jokingly, "mine is an out-and-out sporting paper!" "oh," said whistler, "that accounts for it." "accounts for what?" "well, you see," said whistler, with an exquisite sneer, "i have been watching you gentlemen of the press all morning. you are the only one in the whole lot who seems to find anything here worth looking at, and you have been taking such very serious interest that i was certain you must be representing some church paper." "mr. whistler," retorted barnett, "make your mind easy. there is nothing ecclesiastical about me nor the publication i have the honor to represent; but all the same, for you this is the day of judgment!" "i wish you good morning," rejoined the painter, pertly. * * * * * his "artistic" make-up of flat-brimmed hat, lemon-colored vest, curls, eyeglass, and beribboned cane sometimes upset the cockney crowd. r.a.m. stevenson, cousin of robert louis, was working in his studio one day when the bell rang violently. he ran to the door just in time to rescue the symphony into which whistler had turned himself from a growling mob. "for god's sake, stevenson," said whistler, "save me from these howling brutes!" he went home in a cab with all his trimmings. * * * * * harper pennington has revealed to us the origin of the "standing-room only" joke. it appears that there was hardly ever any furniture in whistler's house. he was peculiarly parsimonious in the matter of chairs. this led to a remark of corny grain's which became famous. "ah, jimmy! glad to see you playing to such a full house!" said dick (corny) grain when shaking hands before a sunday luncheon, while glaring around the studio with his large, protruding eyes, in search of something to sit on. "what do you mean?" asked whistler. "standing-room only," replied the actor. * * * * * henry labouchere, who first met whistler as a boy in washington in the fifties, when he himself was an attaché of the british legation, took the credit for bringing whistler and his wife together. his story was denied by mrs. whistler's relatives, but is interesting enough to be recorded. "i believe," wrote mr. labouchere in _truth_, "i was responsible for his marriage to the widow of mr. godwin, the architect. she was a remarkably pretty woman and very agreeable, and both she and he were thorough bohemians. "i was dining with them and some others one evening at earl's court. they were obviously greatly attracted to each other, and in a vague sort of way they thought of marrying, so i took the matter in hand to bring things to a practical point. "'jimmy,' i said, 'will you marry mrs. godwin?' "'certainly.' "'mrs. godwin,' i said, 'will you marry jimmy?' "'certainly,' she replied. "'when?' i asked. "'oh, some day,' said whistler. "'that won't do,' i said. 'we must have a date.' "so they both agreed that i should choose the day, tell them what church to come to for the ceremony, provide a clergyman, and give the bride away. "i fixed an early date and got them the chaplain of the house of commons to perform the ceremony. it took place a few days later. after the ceremony was over we adjourned to whistler's studio, where he had prepared a banquet. the banquet was on the table, but there were no chairs, so we sat on packing-cases. the happy pair, when i left, had not quite decided whether they would go that evening to paris or remain in the studio. "how unpractical they were was shown when i happened to meet the bride the day before the marriage in the street. "'don't forget to-morrow,' i said. "'no,' she replied; 'i am just going to buy my trousseau.' "'a little late for that, is it not?' i asked. "'no,' she answered, 'for i am only going to buy a tooth-brush and a new sponge, as one ought to have new ones when one marries.' "however, there never was a more successful marriage. they adored each other, and lived most happily together, and when she died he was broken-hearted indeed. he never recovered from the loss." * * * * * when frederick keppel, the american print expert, first called upon the artist at the tite street studio, the famous portrait of sarasate, "black on black," stood at the end of the long corridor that he used to form a vista for proper perspective of his work. laying his hand on keppel's shoulder, he said: "now, isn't it beautiful?" "it certainly is," was the reply. "no," said he; "but isn't it _beautiful_?" "it is indeed," said keppel. this was too mild a form of agreement. whistler raised his voice to a scream: "d---n it, man!" he piped. "isn't it beautiful?" adopting the emphasis and the exclamation, mr. keppel shouted: "d----n it, it is!" this was satisfactory. * * * * * the proof-sheets of _the gentle art_, whistler version, had just arrived as mr. keppel called. "read them aloud," he commanded, "so i can hear how it sounds." mr. keppel started in, but his elocution was not satisfactory. "stop!" whistler cried. "you are murdering it! let me read it to you!" he read about two hours to his own keen delight, but was finally interrupted by a servant announcing, "lady ----." "where is she?" asked the artist. "in her carriage at the door." he went on reading until mr. keppel suggested that he had forgotten the lady. "oh," he said, carelessly, "let her wait! i'm mobbed with these people." after another quarter-hour he condescended to go down and greet her shivering ladyship. * * * * * a little later during this visit a foreign artist called and was pleasantly received. admiring a small painting, the visitor said: "now, that is one of your good ones." "don't look at it, dear boy," replied whistler, airily; "it's not finished." "finished!" said the visitor. "why, it's the most carefully finished picture of yours i've seen." "don't look at it," insisted whistler. "you are doing an injustice to yourself, you are doing an injustice to the picture, and you're doing an injustice to me!" then, theatrically: "stop! i'll finish it now." with that he picked a very small brush, anointed, its delicate point with paint, and touched the picture in one spot with a speck of pigment. "now it's finished!" he exclaimed. "now you may look at it." forgetting his umbrella, the foreign gentleman called at the studio the next day to get it. whistler was out, but the visitor was much moved to find the "finishing touch" had been carefully wiped off! * * * * * mr. keppel's personal relations with whistler ended when, by an idle chance, he sent a copy of _the university of the state of new york bulletin, bibliography, no. i, a guide to the study of james abbott mcneill whistler_, compiled by walter greenwood forsyth and joseph le roy harrison, to joseph pennell, and another to ernest brown, in london. mr. keppel, arriving in london the day of mrs. whistler's funeral, sent a note of condolence, and, receiving a mourning envelope sealed with a black butterfly, opened it expecting a grateful acknowledgment. instead, it was a fierce, rasping denunciation for the distribution of the pamphlet--a mere catalogue so far as it went. "i must not let the occasion of your being in town pass," he wrote, "without acknowledging the gratuitous zeal with which you have done your best to further the circulation of one of the most malignant innuendos, in the way of scurrilous half-assertions, it has been my fate hitherto to meet. mr. brown very properly sent on to me the pamphlet you had promptly posted to him. mr. pennell, also, i find, you had carefully supplied with a copy--and i have no doubt that, with the untiring energy of the 'busy' one, you have smartly placed the pretty work in the hands of many another before this." * * * * * mr. keppel replied in kind, but whistler never wrote him directly again. some business letter of the former requiring a reply, he summoned the house-porter, who wrote under dictation, beginning his crude epistle thus: "sir:--mr. whistler, who is present, orders me to write as follows." roiled by this beyond measure, mr. keppel resorted to verse to relieve his feelings, after which whistler twice sent verbal messages through friends that if he ever saw him again he would kill him! * * * * * john m. cauldwell, the united states commissioner for the department of art at the paris exposition of , sent a circular letter to american artists in the city announcing his arrival and making appointments to discuss the hanging of their work. whistler received one, asking him to call at "precisely four-thirty" on the afternoon of the following thursday. "i congratulate you," he replied. "personally, i never have been able and never shall be able to be anywhere at precisely four-thirty." * * * * * "_parbleu!_ this is a nice get-up to come and see me in, to be sure!" was his greeting to a newspaper writer who called to tap him on art, clad in a brown jacket, blue trousers, and decked with a red necktie. "i must request you to leave this place instantly! these scribblers, rag-smudges, _incroyable_! why, it is perfectly preposterous! did you ever hear such dissonance? his tie is in g major, and i am painting this symphony in e minor. i will have to start it again. take that roaring tie of yours off, you miserable wretch! remove it instantly!" the visitor removed the "roar." "thank goodness!" said whistler. "my sight is perfectly deaf!" "i am so sorry, mr. whistler," apologized the scribe. "whistler, sir? whistler? that's not my name!" he cried, in a highly wrought voice. "i beg your pardon?" "that is not my name. i say, you don't seem to know your own language. w-h is pronounced wh-h-h--wh-h-histler. bah!" * * * * * max beerbohm, the caricaturist, was rather clumsy with the gallic tongue. whistler used to term it "max beerbohm's limburger french." the carefully cultivated and insistently displayed white lock played a part in many amusing incidents. sir coutts lindsay's butler whispered to him excitedly one evening: "there's a gent downstairs says he's come to dinner, wot's forgot his necktie and stuck a feather in his 'air." another evening, at the theater, an usher said obligingly: "beg pardon, sir, but there's a white feather in your hair, just on top." * * * * * raging characteristically once when in paris, he earned this rebuke from degas, the matchless draughtsman: "whistler, you talk as if you were a man without talent." * * * * * some one gave henry irving a whistler etching for a christmas gift. "of course i was delighted," he said, "for i was a great admirer of the artist as well as a personal friend of the man, but when i started to hang the etching i was puzzled. i couldn't for the life of me tell which was the top and which the bottom. finally, after reversing the picture half a dozen times and finding it looked equally well either way up, i decided to try an experiment. "i invited whistler to dine with me and seated him opposite his picture. during dinner he glanced at it from time to time; between the soup and the fish he put up his eyeglass and squinted at it; between the roast and the dessert he got up and walked over to take a closer view of it; finally, by the time we reached the coffee, he had discovered what the trouble was. "'why, henry,' he said, reproachfully, 'you've hung my etching upside down.' "'indeed!' i said. 'well, my friend, it's taken you an hour to discover it!'" "the man in possession" furnishes an amusing incident in the artist's career. when the creditors at last landed a bailiff in the painter's chelsea mansion, he tried to wear his hat in the drawing-room and smoke and spit all over the house. but whistler, in his own airy way, soon settled that. he went out into the hall, and, selecting a stick from his collection of canes, he daintily knocked the man's hat off. the bailiff was so surprised that he forgot to be angry, and in a day or two he had been trained to wait at table. but though he was now in possession and a favored household servant, he could not obtain his money. so he declared that if he was not paid he would have to put bills up outside the house announcing a sale. and sure enough, a few days after great posters were stuck up all over the front of the house announcing so many tables and so many chairs and so much old nankin china for sale on a given day. whistler enjoyed the joke hugely, and hastened to send out invitations to all his friends to a luncheon-party, adding as a postscript: "you will know the house by the bills of sale stuck up outside." and the bailiff proved an admirable butler and the party one of the merriest ever known. as the guests were rising from the table a lady observed to the host: "your servants seem to be extremely attentive, mr. whistler, and anxious to please you." "oh, yes," replied he; "i assure you they wouldn't leave me!" but the bailiff stayed on, and the day of sale approached; so whistler, having been educated at west point, determined to practise strategy. some one had told him that a mixture of snuff and beer had the property of sending people off to sleep. so he bought a big parcel of snuff and put the greater part of it into a gigantic tankard of beer, which he sent out to the bailiff in the garden. it was a very hot summer afternoon, and the man eagerly welcomed his refreshment. whistler was in his studio painting and soon forgot all about him. in the evening he said to his servant, "where's the man?" the servant replied: "i don't know, sir. i suppose he must have gone away." the next morning whistler got up very late and went out into the garden, where he was astonished to see the bailiff sitting in precisely the same position as the day before. the empty tankard was on the table beside him and his pipe had fallen from his hand upon the grass. "hello, my sleeping beauty!" said whistler. "have you been there all night?" but the man made no answer, and all the painter's efforts to rouse him were unavailing. late in the afternoon, however, he awoke in the most natural way in the world, exclaiming that it was dreadfully hot weather and that he must have been asleep over an hour. whistler's strategy had been even more successful than he anticipated; the bailiff had slept through the entire day appointed for the sale of the painter's household effects, and was induced to go away in a very bewildered state of mind and with a small payment on account in his pocket. * * * * * lady de grey went once to the tite street studio for luncheon and chided whistler for his extravagance in having two man servants to wait on the table, when he was always complaining of being hard up. "hush!" whispered whistler. "one of them is the man in possession, and he has consented to act as footman for the day; but he asks me to please settle up as soon as possible, because he too has a man in possession at his own place and wants to get clear of him." * * * * * once at a garden party the rapt hostess rushed up to the artist and exclaimed: "oh, mr. whistler! do help me out! i have just bought a magnificent turner, but lord----says it isn't genuine, merely a clever imitation. now i want you to look at it, and if you say it is genuine, as i know you will, i shall be perfectly satisfied." "my dear lady," replied whistler, "you expect a good deal of me. the distinction between a real turner and an imitation turner is so extremely subtle." * * * * * a flippant reply to the secretary of a london club where whistler's account was past due produced this retort--and the money was paid: "dear mr. whistler:--it is not a nocturne in purple or a symphony in blue and gray we are after, but an arrangement in gold and silver." * * * * * at an exhibition at the academy of fine arts there was a portrait in subdued colors by whistler, "the little lady of soho." before this picture secretary harrison s. morris stood one day. "it is beautiful," he observed, "and it reminds me of a story about whistler--not a very appropriate or poetical one, perhaps. but here it is, anyhow. whistler one summer day took a walk through the downs with three or four young men. they stopped at an ale-house and called for beer. tankards were set before them and they drank. then whistler said to the host: "'my man, would you like to sell a great deal more beer than you do?' "'aye, sir, i would that!' "'then don't sell so much froth!'" * * * * * when a french magazine located his birthplace in baltimore, and the error traveled far, whistler took no pains to correct it. "my dear cousin kate," he said to mrs. livermore, "if any one likes to think i was born in baltimore, why should i deny it? it is of no consequence to me." * * * * * a chance american introduced himself by saying: "you know, mr. whistler, we were born at lowell, and at very much the same time. you are sixty-seven and i am sixty-eight." "very charming," he replied. "and so you are sixty-eight and were born at lowell. most interesting, no doubt, and as you please! but i shall be born when and where i want, and i do not choose to be born in lowell and i refuse to be sixty-seven!" * * * * * "don't be afraid," said whistler to howard paul, who recoiled from the presence of a huge dog because he did not like the look in the animal's eyes. "look at his tail--how it wags. when a dog wags his tail he's in good humor." "that may be," replied paul, "but observe the wild glitter in his eye! i don't know which end to believe." * * * * * comyns carr met a foreign painter who had been known to breakfast with whistler at chelsea and asked him if he had seen him lately. "ah no, not now so much," was the reply. "he ask me a little while ago to breakfast, and i go. my cab-fare two shilling, 'arf crown. i arrive. very nice. goldfish in bowl. very pretty. but breakfast! one egg, one toast, no more! ah, no! my cab-fare back, two shilling, 'arf crown. for me no more!" * * * * * a.g. plowden, the london police magistrate, attended a private view at grosvenor gallery. the first person he met was whistler. he took plowden, very amiably, to his full-length portrait of lady archibald campbell, where, after sufficiently expressing his admiration, plowden asked if there were any other pictures he ought to see. "other pictures!" cried whistler, in a tone of horror. "other pictures! there are no other pictures! you are through!" * * * * * dining at a paris restaurant in his early days, mr. whistler noted the struggle an elderly englishman was having to make himself understood. he politely volunteered to interpret. "sir," said the person addressed, "i assure you, sir, i can give my order without assistance!" "can you indeed?" quoth whistler, airily. "i fancied the contrary just now, when i heard you desire the waiter to bring you a pair of stairs." * * * * * dining, and dining well, at george h. boughton's house in london, whistler was obliged to leave the table and go up-stairs to indite a note. in a few moments a great noise revealed the fact that he had fallen down the flight. "who is your architect?" he asked, when picked up. the host told him norman shaw. "i might have known it," said whistler. "the d----d teetotaler!" * * * * * a young artist had brought whistler to view his maiden effort. the two stood before the canvas for some moments in silence. finally the junior asked, timidly: "don't you think this painting of mine is a--er--a tolerable picture, sir?" whistler's eyes twinkled. "what is your opinion of a tolerable egg?" he asked. * * * * * "irish girls have the most beautiful hands," he once wrote, "with long, slender fingers and delightful articulations. american girls' hands come next; they are a little narrow and thin. the hands of the english girls are red and coarse. the german hand is broad and flat; the spanish hand is full of big veins. i always use irish models for the hands, and i think irish eyes are also the most beautiful." an american artist studying in paris, like many others, was too poor to have a perfect wardrobe. strolling on the boulevard, he heard a call and, turning, saw whistler hastening toward him, waving his long black cane. rather flattered, he said, "so you recognized me from behind, did you, master?" "yes," said whistler, with a wicked laugh; "i spied you through a hole in your coat." * * * * * "do you think genius is hereditary?" asked an admiring lady one day. "i can't tell you, madam," whistler replied. "heaven has granted me no offspring." * * * * * whistler once took horne, his framer, to look at one of his paintings at the exhibition. "well, horne," he asked, "what do you think of it?" "think of it?" he cried, enthusiastically. "why, sir, it's perfect--perfect. mr. ---- has got one just like it." "what!" said the puzzled whistler. "a picture like this?" "oh," said horne, "i wasn't talking about the picture; i was talking about the frame." * * * * * "well, mr. whistler, how are you getting on?" said an undesirable acquaintance in a paris restaurant. "i'm not," said whistler, emptying his glass. "i'm getting off." * * * * * miss pamela smith, a designer in black and white, while a crude draughtsman, had a fine imagination. whistler was asked to look over some of her work. after careful examination he said: "she can't draw." another look and a gruff "she can't paint" followed. a third look and a long thought wound up with, "but she doesn't need to." * * * * * a lady who rejoiced in "temperament" once said gushingly to whistler: "it is wonderful what a difference there is between people." "yes," he replied. "there is a great deal of difference between matches, too, if you will only look closely enough, but they all make about the same blaze." * * * * * a certain gentleman whose portrait whistler had painted failed to appreciate the work, and finally remarked, "after all, mr. whistler, you can't call that a great work of art." "perhaps not," replied the painter, "but then you can't call yourself a great work of nature!" * * * * * the artist and a friend strolled along the thames embankment one wonderfully starry night. whistler was in a discontented mood and found fault with everything. the houses were ugly, the river not what it might have been, the lights hard and glaring. the friend pointed out several things that appealed to him as beautiful, but the master would not give in. "no," he said, "nature is only sometimes beautiful--only sometimes--very, very seldom indeed; and to-night she is, as so often, positively ugly." "but the stars! surely they are fine to-night," urged the other. whistler looked up at the sky. "yes," he drawled, "they're not bad, perhaps, but, my dear fellow, there's too many of them." a sitter asked him how it was possible to paint in the growing dusk, as he often did. the reply was: "as the light fades and the shadows deepen, all the petty and exacting details vanish; everything trivial disappears, and i see things as they are, in great, strong masses; the buttons are lost, but the garment remains; the garment is lost, but the sitter remains; the sitter is lost, but the shadow remains; the shadow is lost, but the picture remains. and that, night cannot efface from the painter's imagination." * * * * * sir laurence alma-tadema, of the classic brush, loved yellow, a color which whistler had annexed unto himself. sir laurence in employing the color in his decorations did not consider himself a plagiarist. he had not seen whistler's. this defense led to a war of words. whistler broke out: "sly alma! his romano-dutch st. john's wooden eye has never looked upon them, and the fine jaundice of his flesh is none of the jaundice of my yellows. to-de-ma-boom-de-ay!" * * * * * seated in a stall at the west end theater one evening, he was constantly irritated by his next neighbor--a lady--who not only went out between the acts, but several times while the curtain was up. the space between the run of seats was narrow, and the annoyance as she squeezed past was considerable. "madam," he said at last, "i trust i do not incommode you by keeping my seat!" * * * * * he regarded the united states tariff on art as barbarous. "when are you coming to america?" he was asked. "when the tariff on art is removed." the copley society asked his aid in making up their exhibition in boston. he refused, saying: "god bless me! why should you hold an exhibition of pictures in america? the people do not care for art!" "how do you know? you have not been there for many years." "how do i know? why, haven't you a law to keep out pictures and statues? is it not in black and white that the works of the great masters must not enter america, that they are not wanted? a people that tolerate such a law have no love for art; their protestation is mere pretense." * * * * * asked by a lady if a certain picture in a gallery was not indecent, he replied: "no, madam. but your question is!" mark twain visited the studio and, assuming an air of hopeless stupidity, approached a nearly completed painting and said: "not at all bad, mr. whistler; not at all bad. only here in this corner," he added, reflectively, with a motion as if to rub out a cloud effect, "if i were you i'd do away with that cloud!" "gad, sir!" cried the painter. "do be careful there! don't you see the paint is not yet dry?" "oh, don't mind that," said mark, sweetly. "i am wearing gloves, you see!" they got on after that. * * * * * in paris, whistler and an english painter got into a turbulent talk over velasquez at a studio tea. in the course of the argument whistler praised himself extravagantly. "it's a good thing we can't see ourselves as others see us," sneered the briton. "isn't it, though?" rejoined whistler, gently. "i know in my case i should grow intolerably conceited." * * * * * financial necessities once caused the sale of whistler's choice furnishings. some of the family, returning to the house during his absence, found the floor covered with chalk diagrams, the largest of which was labeled: "this is the dining-table." surrounding it were a number of small squares, each marked: "this is a chair." another square: "this is the sideboard." * * * * * cope whitehouse once described a boat-load of egyptians "floating down the nile with the thermometer one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade, and no shade." "and no thermometer," interjected whistler. * * * * * a lady sitter brought a cat with her and placed it on her knee. the cat was nervous and yowled continuously. "madam," said the vexed artist, "will you have the cat in the foreground or in the back yard?" * * * * * while painting one of his famous nocturnes a critic of considerable pretensions called. "good heavens, whistler!" he cried, "what in the world are you splashing at?" "i am teaching art to posterity," whistler replied, quietly. "oh!" said the critic, visibly relieved. "i was afraid you were painting for the royal academy." "oh, no," answered whistler; "they do not want masterpieces there, but some of their picture-frames are exquisite and really worth bus-fare to look at." * * * * * walking in the champs-elysées in paris one morning, whistler heard one englishman say to another: "see that chap over there?" "what? that chap with the long hair and spindle legs?" "yes, that's the one. that's whistler, the american, who thinks he's the greatest painter on earth." walking up to the pair, whistler held out his hand and said gravely to the last speaker: "sir, i beg your acceptance of these ten centimes. go buy yourself a little hay!" * * * * * sitting for a portrait was an ordeal. many were quite upset after a siege in the studio. one man annoyed the artist by saying at each dismissal: "how-about that ear, mr. whistler? don't forget to finish that." at the last session, all being finished but this ear, whistler said, "well, i think i'm through; now i'll sign it." this he did in a very solemn and important way. "but my ear!" exclaimed the victim. "you're not going to leave it that way?" "oh," said whistler, grimly, "you can put it in after you get home." * * * * * he occasionally contemplated visiting america in his late years, but the dread of the journey was too much for him to overcome. "if i escape the atlantic," he said, "i shall be wrecked by some reporter at the pier." finally, he definitely canceled his last proposed trip, observing airily: "one cannot continuously disappoint a continent." "america," he once said, lightly, "is a country where i never can be a prophet." * * * * * sir rennell rodd recalled that at a breakfast waldo story gave at dieu-donné's in paris there was a great company, including whistler. every one there was by the way of having written a book or painted a picture, or having in some way outraged the philistine, with the exception of one young gentleman whose _raison d'être_ was not so apparent as his high collar and the glory of his attire. he nevertheless intruded boldly into the talk and laid down his opinions very flatly. he even went so far as to combat some dictum of the master's, whereat that gentleman adjusted his glasses and, looking pleasantly at the youth, queried: "and whose son are you?" when dorothy menpes was a babe in the cradle a white feather lay across her infant brow. the sight pleased whistler. "that child is going to develop into something great," he prophesied, "for see, she begins with a feather, just like me." * * * * * in the last two years of his life mr. whistler's disputes grew less frequent and his public flashes were few. the _morning post_ of london, however, provoked an admirable specimen of his best style, which it printed under date of august th, . in its "art and artists" column the paper had made the following statement: "mr. whistler is so young in spirit that his friends must have read with surprise the dutch physician's announcement that the present illness is due to 'advanced age.' in england sixty-seven is not exactly regarded as 'advanced age,' but even for the gay 'butterfly' time does not stand still, and some who are unacquainted with the details of mr. whistler's career, though they know his work well, will be surprised to learn that he was exhibiting at the academy forty-three years ago. his contributions to the exhibition of were 'two etchings from nature,' and at intervals during the following fourteen or fifteen years mr. whistler was represented at the academy by a number of works, both paintings and etchings. in his contributions numbered seven in all, and in four. among his academy pictures of was the famous 'little white girl,' the painting that attracted so much attention at the paris exhibition of . this picture--rejected at the salon of --was inspired, though the fact seems to have been forgotten of late, by the following lines of swinburne: come snow, come wind or thunder high up in air, i watch my face and wonder at my bright hair, etc." under date of august d mr. whistler sent from the hague this brisk reply: i feel it no indiscretion to speak of my "convalescence," since you have given it official existence. may i, therefore, acknowledge the tender little glow of health induced by reading, as i sat here in the morning sun, the flattering attention paid me by your gentleman of the ready wreath and quick biography? i cannot, as i look at my improving self with daily satisfaction, really believe it all--still it has helped to do me good!--and it is with almost sorrow that i must beg you, perhaps, to put back into its pigeonhole for later on this present summary and replace it with something preparatory, which, doubtless, you have also ready. this will give you time, however, for some correction--if really it be worth while--but certainly the "little white girl," which was not rejected at the salon of ' , was, i am forced to say, not "inspired by the following lines of swinburne," for the one simple reason that those lines were only written, in my studio, after the picture was painted. and the writing of them was a rare and graceful tribute from the poet to the painter--a noble recognition of work by the production of a nobler one! again, of the many tales concerning the hanging at the academy of the well-known portrait of the artist's mother, now at the luxembourg, one is true--let us trust your gentleman may have time to find it out--that i may correct it. i surely may always hereafter rely on the _morning post_ to see that no vulgar woking joke reach me? it is my marvelous privilege then to come back, as who should say, while the air is still warm with appreciation, affection, and regret, and to learn in how little i had offended. the continuing to wear my own hair and eyebrows, after distinguished confrères and eminent persons had long ceased their habit, has, i gather, clearly given pain. this, i see, is much remarked on. it is even found inconsiderate and unseemly in me, as hinting at affectation. i might beg you, sir, to find a pretty place for this, that i would make my apology, containing also promise, in years to come, to lose these outer signs of vexing presumption. protesting, with full enjoyment of its unmerited eulogy, against your premature tablet, i ask you again to contradict it, and appeal to your own sense of kind sympathy when i tell you i learn that i have lurking in london still "a friend"--though for the life of me i cannot remember his name. and i have, sir, the honor to be, j. mcneill whistler. the last dispute that found its way to print came through the new york _sun_ and will h. low, to whom mr. whistler sought to convey a piece of his mind _via_ the newspaper channel, under date of may th, , this grew out of a complication in which mr. low became involved with the hanging committee of the society of american artists over the placing in its exhibition of "rosa corder" and two marines by whistler borrowed from charles l. freer, of detroit, on the condition that they be hung "in a good position." the position selected did not suit mr. low, and he withdrew the pictures. mr. whistler sent his remonstrance to the _sun's_ london office, from which it was cabled to new york and published on may th, as follows: "i had waited for mr. low to publish my reply to a letter from himself concerning the withdrawal of my pictures from the society of american artists. "this gentle opinion of my own upon the situation is, i understand, expert. i therefore inclose it to you for publication. i have the honor to be, dear sir, your obedient servant." the remarks to mr. low read: "i have just learned with distress that my canvases have been a trouble and a cause of thought to the gentlemen of the hanging committee! "pray present to them my compliments and my deep regrets. "i fear also that this is not the first time of simple and good-natured intrusion--looking in, as who would say, with beaming fellowship and crass camaraderie upon the highly finished table and well-seated guests--to be kindly and swiftly shuffled into some further respectable place--that all be well and hospitality endure. "promise, then, for me, that i have learned and that 'this shall not occur again.' and, above all, do not allow a matter of colossal importance to ever interfere with the afternoon habit of peace and good will, and the leaf of the mint so pleasantly associated with this society. "i could not be other than much affected by your warm and immediate demonstration, but i should never forgive myself were the consequence of lasting vexation to your distinguished confrères." the end none none note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) the children's book of celebrated pictures by lorinda munson bryant author of "famous pictures of real boys and girls," "famous pictures of real animals," etc. [illustration] published by the century co. new york copyright, , by the century co. to my daughter bertha cookingham bryant list of illustrations figure page . the holy family. pintoricchio. academy, siena . the valley farm. constable. national gallery, london . madonna and st. jerome. correggio. parma gallery, italy . the wood-gatherers. corot. corcoran art gallery, washington, d.c. . the aurora. guido reni. rospigliosi palace, rome . singing boys. franz hals. cassel gallery, germany . st. barbara. palma vecchio. santa maria formosa, venice . charles i and his horse. van dyck. louvre, paris . the gale. homer. worcester art museum, massachusetts . madonna del gran' duca. raphael. pitti palace, florence . joan of arc. bastien-lepage. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . the fates. michael angelo. pitti palace, florence . madonna of the chair. raphael. pitti palace, florence . wolf and fox hunt. rubens. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . the night watch. rembrandt. ryks museum, amsterdam . the assumption. titian. academy, venice . the melon-eaters. murillo. pinakothek, munich . the muses. romano. pitti palace, florence . "come abide with us." fra angelico. san marco, florence . the supper at emmaus. rembrandt. louvre, paris . children of charles i. van dyck. dresden gallery . the buttery. de hooch. ryks museum, amsterdam . coronation of the virgin. botticelli. uffizi palace, florence . the wolf-charmer. la farge. city art museum, st. louis . the old woman cutting her nails. rembrandt. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . the spinner. maes. ryks museum, amsterdam . st. george and the dragon. carpaccio. church of san giorgio degli schiavoni, venice . the grand canal. turner. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . song of the lark. breton. art institute, chicago . the holy night. correggio. dresden gallery . the gleaners. millet. louvre, paris . st. cecilia. raphael. bologna, italy . helena fourment and her son and daughter. rubens. louvre, paris . the harp of the winds. martin. metropolitan museum of art . the tribute money. titian. dresden gallery . the maids of honor. velasquez. madrid gallery, spain . the nymphs. corot. louvre, paris . st. francis preaching to the birds. giotto. upper church, assisi, italy . the governess. chardin. liechtenstein gallery, vienna . the last supper. leonardo da vinci. santa maria delle grazie, milan . sir galahad. watts. eton college, england . the duchess of devonshire and her child. reynolds. royal gallery, windsor . st. agnes and her lamb. andrea del sarto. pisa cathedral, italy . whistler's mother. whistler. luxembourg, paris . st. christopher. titian. doges palace, venice . the blue boy. gainsborough. private gallery, henry huntington, los angeles, california . the sleeping girl. van der meer. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . st. anthony and the christ-child. murillo. museum of seville, spain . king lear. abbey. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . sunset in the woods. inness. corcoran art gallery, washington, d. c. _dear children:_ the stories i am telling about the pictures and their painters in this book are gathered from many countries. some of them belong to very early times when history was told to grown up people by story-tellers at banquets and in the homes, on the street corners and public halls. some of the stories are legends and traditions that grew up with the beginnings of the christian era. all of them are taken from authentic sources and many of them illustrate some natural law. the artists who painted these pictures knew history and the early myths, the fairy-tales, the legends and the traditions, the bible and the apocrypha. we love these pictures because they are beautiful and true, but really to understand them we must know what the artists had in mind when they painted them. if you learn to know these pictures and love them, i will make you another book soon about statues and their stories. with love and best wishes, from your friend, lorinda munson bryant the holy family bernardino pintoricchio ( - ) in looking at pictures of the old masters you will often see one called the "holy family." i want you to know who belonged to the holy family. the grown people are joseph and mary, the father and mother of jesus; they had no last names at that time. the children are jesus and his cousin, john the baptist, six months older than jesus. sometimes the little john's mother, elizabeth, is in the picture and sometimes his father, zacharias, is there also. in this picture painted by pintoricchio, jesus is about four years old and john four and a half. the bible story gives very little about the growing up of these children. of jesus it says, "and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of god was upon him." and of john it says, "and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and he was in the deserts till the day of showing unto israel." one story from a very old book, "the infancy," tells about jesus playing with the other boys. it says: "and when jesus was seven years of age, he was on a certain day with other boys, his companions about the same age. who when they were at play, made clay into several shapes, namely, asses, oxen, birds, and other figures, each boasting of his work, endeavoring to exceed the rest. "then the lord jesus said to the boys, i will command these figures which i have made to walk. and immediately they moved, and when he commanded them to return they returned. he also made figures of birds and sparrows, which, when he commanded to fly, did fly, and when he commanded to stand still, did stand still; and if he gave them meat and drink, they did eat and drink." [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the holy family. pintoricchio. academy, siena] the valley farm john constable ( - ) an old man, eighty-four years of age, lived in this house on "the valley farm," in england. he was born here and he used to say that he had never been away from this house but four days in all his life. he asked constable to come and paint a picture of his home. and what a beautiful picture it is! the old house, snuggled down so close to the little stream, could paddle its feet--if it had any--in the cool water. and see how tenderly the tall trees keep guard over it. how we wish that we could be there too! if only we could be in the punt--i am sure it is a punt-boat even if one end of it is pointed--and be rowed up and down in the delightful shade. those two in the boat have no doubt been for the cows and are driving them home to be milked. john constable liked to choose his subjects for his pictures from the familiar scenes near his home. he used to say to his friends: "i have always succeeded best with my native scenes. they have always charmed me, and i hope they always will." [illustration: fig. . the valley farm. constable. national gallery, london] the madonna and child with st. jerome antonio allegri da correggio ( ?- ) correggio loved to paint darling babies, lovely angels, beautiful women and splendid men. in this picture of "the madonna and st. jerome," i want you specially to see st. jerome and his lion. st. jerome, a very noted man who lived four centuries after christ, was the first person to translate the new testament into latin. it was called "the vulgate," because of its common use in the latin church. when st. jerome was thirty years old he went away from the city of rome and became a hermit and lived in desert places in the east. one day, so the story goes, as he sat at the gate of the monastery a lion came up limping as though he had been hurt. the other hermits ran away but st. jerome went to meet the lion. the lion lifted up his paw and st. jerome found a thorn in his foot. he took out the thorn and bound up the poor paw, so the lion stayed with st. jerome and kept guard over an ass that brought the wood from the forest. one day when the lion was asleep a caravan of merchants came along and stole the ass. the poor ashamed lion hung his head before the saint, and jerome thought he had killed and eaten the ass. to punish him st. jerome had him do the work of the ass and bring the wood from the forest. one day some time afterward the lion saw the ass coming down the road leading a caravan of camels. the arabs often have an ass lead the camels. the lion knew that it was the stolen ass, so he led the caravan into the convent grounds. the merchant found that he was caught. st. jerome was very glad to find that his lion was honest and true. whenever you see a picture of a saint with a lion you must remember that it is st. jerome, the great latin scholar. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . madonna and st. jerome. correggio. parma gallery, italy] the wood gatherers jean baptiste camille corot ( - ) the picture of "the wood gatherers" is very precious to us. it is the last picture corot signed after he was confined to the bed, a few days before he died. a curious story is told of corot's painting this picture. he had an old study of another artist's of a landscape with st. jerome at prayer: you remember i told you the story of st. jerome and his lion. corot took the study and made a number of sketches of it. somehow his landscape would not fit st. jerome, so he painted a man on horseback and a dog going off into the woods. then in the place of st. jerome praying he put a woman gathering bits of wood and another woman with a bundle of fagots under her arm. now the picture must have another name and he called it "the wood gatherers." when you go to washington, you must not fail to see this picture in the corcoran art gallery. [illustration: fig. . the wood-gatherers. corot. courtesy of the corcoran art gallery, washington, d. c.] aurora guido reni ( - ) hyperion had three wonderful children, apollo, the god of the sun, selene, the goddess of the moon, and aurora, the goddess of the dawn. when aurora appears her sister, selene (the moon), fades and night rolls back like a curtain. now let us look at this masterpiece by guido reni carefully that we may know how wonderful is the coming of day. aurora, in a filmy white robe, is dropping flowers in the path of apollo (the sun) as he drives his dun-colored horses above the sleeping earth. the horæ (the hours), a gliding, dancing group of lovely beings, accompany the brilliant god. each hour is clothed in garments of a special tint of the great light of day, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and violet. the golden-hued apollo sits supreme in his chariot of the sun. the fresco--fresco means painted on fresh plaster--is on the ceiling of the rospigliosi palace, rome. the painting is as brilliant in color to-day as it was when painted three hundred and fifty years ago. aurora, like most of the gods and goddesses, fell in love with a mortal. she asked zeus to make her husband immortal but she forgot to ask that he should never grow old. and, fickle woman that she was! when he became gray and infirm, she deserted him and, to put a stop to his groans, she turned him into a grasshopper. her son, memnon, was made king of the ethiopians, and in the war of troy he was overcome by achilles. when aurora, who was watching him from the sky, saw him fall she sent his brothers, the winds, to take his body to the banks of a river in asia minor. in the evening the mother and the hours and the pleiades came to weep over her dead son. poor aurora! even to-day her tears are seen in the dewdrops on the grass at early dawn. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the aurora. guido reni. rospigliosi palace, rome] the singing boys frans hals ( ?- ) these jolly singers are dutch boys. they are singing on the street or in some back yard just as singers do to-day, though they lived nearly three hundred years ago. hals was such a rapid painter that he could make a picture while you wait. the story is told that one time young van dyck, the flemish painter who painted "baby stuart," went to see hals in amsterdam when hals was an old man. van dyck did not tell the old artist that he was van dyck but simply asked him to paint his portrait, knowing what a rapid painter hals was. in an hour the picture was done. van dyck remarked, as he looked at the portrait: "that seems easy; i believe i could do it." hals thought he would have some fun, so he told the young stranger that he would sit for him just one hour. van dyck set his easel where hals could not see him work and began to paint. at the end of an hour he said: "your picture is finished, sir." hals, ready to laugh at the daub, looked at the portrait and the laugh went out of his face. he then looked at van dyck, and cried out: "you must be either van dyck or a wizard!" you see, hals had heard of van dyck and his rapid work, and knew that only a master painter could make the splendid portrait in an hour. [illustration: permission of franz hanfstaengl, new york city fig. . singing boys. frans hals. cassel gallery, germany] st. barbara jacopo palma il vecchio ( ?- ) st. barbara, born a. d. , was a very beautiful girl. her father, an eastern nobleman, loved her so much and was so afraid something might happen to her that he built a very wonderful tower for her home and shut her up in it. and in that tower she studied the stars. night after night she looked at the heavenly bodies until she knew more about the sun and the moon and the stars than any of the learned men. but as she studied the shining bodies she decided that worshiping idols, made of wood and stone, as her father did, was wrong. finally she learned about the savior, and to show her faith in christianity she had some workmen who were making repairs on her tower put in three windows. when her father came as usual to visit her, he asked in surprise what the three windows were for. she replied: "know, my father, that through three windows doth the soul receive light, the father, the son, and the holy ghost: and the three are one." her father was very angry when he found she had learned about the savior and had become a christian. he condemned her to death and at last took her out on a hill and killed her, but he, too, was struck dead. st. barbara is always represented with a tower that has three windows in it. palma vecchio painted this picture for some venetian soldiers nearly four hundred years ago. when the germans bombarded venice ( ) the venetians took the picture from the church to a place of safety. scarcely a week had passed before a bomb broke through the roof of the church tearing everything before it at the exact spot where the picture had hung. but "st. barbara," one of the great pictures of the world, was safe. [illustration: fig. . st. barbara. palma vecchio. santa maria formosa, venice] charles i and his horse sir anthony van dyck ( - ) the horse in this picture of charles i is probably the one rubens gave to van dyck. it is said that rubens gave it as a present after van dyck had painted a portrait of helena fourment, the master's second wife, and presented it to him. van dyck was twenty-two years younger than rubens. you will remember that he was the master painter's favorite pupil. having rubens as a teacher did not make the pupil a great painter. van dyck was never more than a prince; just an heir to the throne. rubens was a king and sat on the throne. the story is told that once rubens was away from his private studio when the students bribed the servant to open the door for them. they stole into the master's studio to see "the descent from the cross," which he was then painting. by some mishap the culprits rubbed against the wet paint and spoiled that part of the picture. of course they were terrified at the damage done. they finally decided that van dyck was the one to repair the spot. the work was so well done that they hoped rubens would not see the repairs. but the first thing that caught the eye of the master was that particular spot. he at once sent for the students and asked who had worked on his picture. van dyck stepped out from the others and frankly confessed that he was the culprit. rubens was so pleased with his frankness and also at the skill of the work that he forgave them all. king charles i invited van dyck to come to england, and then he knighted him and gave him a pension for life. the hundreds of pictures of the royal family and court people of england left by van dyck show us how rapidly he could paint, for the artist died when he was only forty-two years old. [illustration: fig. . charles i and his horse. van dyck. louvre, paris] the gale winslow homer ( - ) winslow homer lived in maine, where he heard the roar of mighty waters beating the rocks all day and all night. some days the ocean grew so angry because the winds whirled its waters about in such a cruel manner that it would fling itself upon the sands and rocks as though to tear everything to pieces. the waves would raise up like furious horses champing their bits and foaming at the mouth. somehow these angry waves could never go beyond a certain point, and the mother carrying her baby along the coast knows just the point at which the waves must stop. let us clap our hands and shout with joy that old ocean cannot hurt that mother and her baby. fill your lungs full of that glorious breeze whipping their hair and clothes. open your eyes wide like the baby and let the salt air polish them until they sparkle like diamonds as the baby's do. winslow homer loved old ocean, and so do we! let us love his pictures of old ocean for he has taught us that that mighty power is under a greater power. [illustration: fig. . the gale. homer. courtesy of worcester art museum, massachusetts] madonna del gran' duca raphael sanzio ( - ) i want you to learn everything you can about raphael. he was so kind and gentle and beautiful that everybody loved him. people said that when he walked on the streets of rome scores of young men went with him until one would think him a prince. the pope gave him a large order to decorate the vatican, the pope's home. every artist was willing to help him because he was always ready to do anything he could to help his brother artists. raphael only lived to be thirty-seven. when he died all italy mourned his death, and his funeral was one of the largest of any artist of his time. when raphael was only twenty-one he painted the "madonna del gran' duca." he had gone to florence for the first time. we do not know where the picture was for a hundred years after it was painted; then the painter carlo dolci owned it. again another hundred years went by, and we find it in possession of a poor widow. she sold it to a picture-dealer for about twenty dollars. it then went into the hands of the grand duke of tuscany, ferdinand iii, for the big sum of eight hundred dollars. no amount of money could buy the picture to-day. ferdinand loved the picture so much that he always took it with him on all his travels and the grand duchess, his wife, felt that her baby boys were purer if she had the picture near her. it got its name "madonna of the grand duke" from the title of the family. [illustration: fig. . madonna del gran duca. raphael. pitti palace, florence] joan of arc jules bastien-lepage ( - ) no young girl in history has had such a wonderful story as joan of arc. she began to hear voices and see visions when she was a little child. she was born in the tiny village of domremy, france. just like the other little peasant girls around her she helped her mother about the house and at the spinning. also she went into the fields with her brothers. one day when she was in the garden the archangel st. michael came to her in a glory of light. he said she was a good little girl and that she must go to church and that some day she was to do a great act; she was to crown the dauphin as king of france at rheims. joan was afraid and cried at what the angel told her, but st. michael said, "god will help you." these messages kept coming to her until, when she was sixteen, the voices insisted, "you must help the king, and save france." france was in a terrible state at this time, . the english held most of france. the french king, charles vi, became insane and died. the son, dauphin charles, was weak and lazy and discouraged; he had no money, no army, no energy, and like most cowards, ran from his duty and wasted his time in wickedness. joan was still urged by voices to save france. at last a peasant uncle went with her to a man in power to ask for troops. the man was angry, and said sharply: "the girl is crazy! box her ears and take her back to her father." but joan did not give up. she insisted that some one must take her to dauphin charles, that god willed it. she said: "i will go if i have to wear my legs down to my knees." she went, and she saved france by crowning the dauphin as charles vii at rheims. but the french and the english people condemned joan of arc as a witch and burned her at the stake. too late they cried: "we are lost! we have burned a saint!" [illustration: fig. . joan of arc. bastien-lepage. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] the fates michael angelo buonarroti ( - ) when a new baby comes to a home, legend says, three beautiful young girls come to take care of the baby all through its life, but no one ever sees these young girls. each one has a strange work to do. one, called clotho, carries a spindle on which is wound flax. the second, named lachesis, twists a thread from the spindle, called the thread of life. and atropos, the third, has a pair of shears ready to cut the thread of life. a funny story is told about michael angelo when he designed this picture of "the fates." an old woman annoyed the artist very much by coming every day to see him. she insisted that he should appoint her son a special place in the fighting line in the seige of florence ( ). michael angelo took revenge on the old woman by using her as a model for all of the women in his "fates." and that is why michael angelo's fates are old women instead of young girls, as legend says they are. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the fates. michael angelo. pitti palace, florence] the madonna of the chair raphael sanzio ( - ) we like to believe that raphael, in one of his daily walks in the country, really did see this mother and her two little boys sitting in a doorway. of course he must paint them, and having no paper with him he rolled up a barrel and made a sketch on the head of it. the story says that this barrel was once a part of a great oak-tree that stood by the hut of an old man, a hermit up in the mountains. and the mother of the two boys, when a little girl, used to go to see the old man. he loved these two--the little girl and the big oak-tree--and called them his daughters. he used to say that some day they would both be famous. that was more than four hundred years ago, and to-day this picture of "the madonna of the chair" is one of the most famous madonna pictures. it is found in almost every home in america and is a treasure that belongs to all of us though it hangs in a gallery at florence, italy. we know, too, that raphael did not let any of his helpers work on "the madonna of the chair"--in italian, "madonna della sedia." he painted every brush stroke himself, which makes it still more dear to us. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . madonna of the chair. raphael. pitti palace, florence] the wolf and fox hunt peter paul rubens ( - ) the stables of peter paul rubens were known the country over. no prince in the land had more magnificent horses, and no cavalier could ride with more grace and ease than rubens. when van dyck, the artist who painted "baby stuart," was ready to leave the studio of rubens to travel in italy, the master gave him a beautiful horse from his own stables. van dyck probably used this horse as a model in his picture of "charles i and his horse." now look at rubens on the splendid dappled white horse in "the fox and wolf hunt." his first wife, isabel brant, is on his right hand. she carries her falcon balanced on her wrist, his wings spread out in excitement. we feel that rubens and his horse together are directing every movement in the hunt. that horse has all the alertness of the trained dogs and is just as eager in overcoming brute force as men are. in fact we are so fascinated with his beauty and intelligence that the cruel sport is almost forgotten in our interest in him and his master. rubens painted a number of hunting scenes, and always he manages the hunt with the skill of a master. the confusion of the rough-and-tumble fight between the wild beasts and the horses, dogs, and men in rubens' pictures seems to untangle itself under his glorious color and skilful arrangement. this is a picture you must see. when you go to new york city never fail to visit the metropolitan museum of art. [illustration: fig. . wolf and fox hunt. rubens. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] the night watch rembrandt van rijn ( ?- ) one time, more than two hundred and fifty years ago, two little children living in amsterdam were playing at the edge of the city just at evening. soon they overheard some spanish soldiers near-by talking together. they began to understand that the men were making some kind of plans and, listening very sharply, they found that the spaniards intended to attack the city of amsterdam that night. the spaniards were fighting the netherlands at that time. you can imagine how frightened the children were. they knew that they must tell some one about it at once. very quietly they crept away from where the men were, then ran for their lives to the town hall. the civic guard were having a banquet there. rembrandt has painted the scene just as the little girl, in the center of the group, has finished her story. the men are making ready to meet the attack. some have on their armor, some are polishing their guns, some have their drums, and all are full of excitement. when the painting was to be put in the new ryks museum, in amsterdam, it was found that the wall was too narrow for the picture. what do you think the authorities did? the stupid men cut a piece off from each side of the picture to fit it in its new place. was ever anything so silly? even those pieces cut off would bring more money to-day than the museum itself cost. the men who had money at the time rembrandt painted the picture were angry because the artist would not make portraits as they wanted them. they ignored rembrandt, and he became very poor and died unknown. to-day those rich men are forgotten and rembrandt is known the world over. [illustration: fig. . the night watch. rembrandt. ryks museum, amsterdam] the assumption titian, or tiziano vecelli ( - ) titian lived to be ninety-nine-years old and still painted pictures. he was working on a painting when an awful plague broke out in venice, and he took it and died. titian painted such wonderful pictures that kings came to see them and rich noblemen paid big sums of money to own them. sometimes king charles v would ride with titian and would have his courtiers pay tribute to titian and wait on him. this made those haughty men very jealous and very angry, but charles v would say, "i have many nobles, but i have only one titian." titian's picture of the "virgin going to heaven" the whole world calls one of the greatest pictures ever painted. some day i hope you will go to venice, that queen city of the sea, and fasten your gondola at the museum door while you go in to see this picture. you will be so dazzled with its bright color that you will hardly see the little cherubs circling around the blessed mother. but i want you to look at them; they are darlings: then look at the men all reaching up and the father in the sky looking down. the story of the picture is about mary, the mother of jesus, going to heaven. [illustration: fig. . the assumption. titian. academy, venice] the melon eaters bartolome esteban murillo ( - ) when the spanish artist murillo was a young painter he was very poor and hardly knew where to get enough to eat. he would go to the market-place and set up his easel and rapidly paint the scenes around him. the people who came to the market to buy and sell saw these pictures and bought them for a mere pittance. often beggar boys, who were everywhere in the market snatching fruits and other eatables from the stalls, would pose for him as they hid in some corner to eat their stolen dainties. these beggar-boy pictures that murillo sold for a song to keep his soul and body together began to attract attention until finally they were looked upon as the greatest pictures murillo ever painted. people outside of spain, murillo's native country, bought them until to-day scarcely a beggar-boy picture of his is found in spain. this picture of "the melon eaters" is known far and wide as a great masterpiece, and yet the boys were little rag-a-muffins, the pests of the market people. murillo knew the joys and sorrows of those boys because he too at that time was very poor and hungry and no one was giving him a helping hand. do you suppose that when he was famous as a painter he ever saw those boys? i think so, for he was greatly beloved by his townspeople of seville. they probably came to his studio many times. murillo painted many religious pictures for the churches of seville. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the melon eaters. murillo. pinakothek, munich] the muses giulio romano ( - ) i am sure you have heard of the muses. romano, a pupil of raphael's, has left us this beautiful picture of them dancing with apollo, their cousin. the muses were the daughters of zeus (jove or jupiter), and memory. these lovely girls also come to every home to help care for the new baby. the greek names of the muses are rather hard to pronounce, but you will want to call them by name. then, too, each girl's name in greek letters is just below where she dances. now begin at the left of the circle. the first one, calliope, stands for narrative poetry; no. , clio, is history; no. , erato, is love-poetry; no. , melpomene, is tragedy; no. , terpsichore, is dance and song. now comes apollo with his quiver full of arrows. he is the god of the hunt and twin brother to diana, the goddess of hunt; also he is god of music and poetry. no. is polyhymnia, muse of hymn-music; no. , euterpe, is song poetry; no. , thalia, is comedy, and no. , urania, muse of astronomy. athene gave the muses the winged horse, pegasus. but alack and alas! one of the poets became very poor and sold pegasus to a farmer. he was fastened to the plow, but he could not plow through the hard earth. his spirit was broken and his body was weak. the angry farmer tried to make him work, but how could he when he had no courage? but just then a beautiful youth came and asked the farmer to let him try the horse. of course the man was glad to have any one help get the plowing done. the young man petted the horse and slyly unfastened the harness as he patted him. he mounted upon his back and pegasus rose in the air, and away they both went, pegasus and mercury. the farmer looked on with amazement. how could a good-for-nothing horse that could not plow do such a wonderful thing as fly? [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the muses. romano. pitti palace, florence] "come, abide with us" fra giovanni angelico ( - ) nearly two thousand years ago two men were walking together along a dusty road in palestine. they talked earnestly as they walked along of a great event that had happened. a man called jesus, the christ, had been crucified and buried, but after three days he was not found in the tomb. as the men talked, a traveler joined them and asked: "what is it ye talk about and are sad?" and the men asked if he were a stranger in jerusalem and did not know the things that had come to pass. the stranger said, "what things?" then the men told him of jesus of nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before god and all the people. and they said that they had all hoped he was the mighty one who was to save the world but that he had been killed. then the stranger, who was jesus himself, but the men did not know him, began to tell them the story of all things about himself. still they did not know him, and as they came to the village of emmaus and the stranger made as though he would have gone further, the men said, "come, abide with us." this picture, showing the men inviting the stranger, was painted by fra angelico for the dominican monastery in florence, italy. you will find it over the entrance of san marco, where it welcomes every stranger who comes. fra angelico was so kind and gentle and helpful that his companions called him "angel brother"; in italian, "fra angelico." [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . "come, abide with us." fra angelico. san marco, florence] the supper at emmaus rembrandt van rijn ( ?- ) rembrandt has taken the story of the two men and the stranger on their way to emmaus after they have gone into the house. you see the disciples still did not know that the stranger was jesus, the christ. but when he sat at meat with them, he took bread and blessed it and brake and gave to them. then they knew that it was the savior who was talking with them and sitting at the table with them. rembrandt shows the wondering men as they begin to recognize who their guest is, and he makes us feel the warmth and gladness that fill their hearts when they know that it is the risen lord. the boy, too, lingers at the savior's side as though to hear the meaning of the scene. but as they look, jesus disappears out of their sight. when he is gone they say to each other: "did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" rembrandt painted this picture after many sorrows had come to him. his beloved saskia, the mother of the "golden lad," titus, was dead; friends had deserted him and his patrons were gone. but the love of people still filled the heart of the great painter. [illustration: fig. . the supper at emmaus. rembrandt. louvre, paris] three children of charles i of england sir anthony van dyck ( - ) the little boy standing between his brother and sister in this picture is baby stuart, the same child that is in the picture of "baby stuart" that you know so well. when baby stuart grew up he was crowned james ii, king of england ( ). his brother was charles ii, king of england, and his sister was the mother of william iii, king of england. james ii, baby stuart, had a daughter, mary, who became mary, queen of england. when these cousins, william and mary, grew up they were married and crowned king and queen of england in . a funny story is told of the crowning ceremony. william was very short and mary was quite tall. it would not do to have mary taller than her husband, so a stool was brought for william to stand on. now they are the same height as they are crowned king william iii and queen mary ii of england. when william and mary ruled england the country was happy and prosperous because love reigned in the royal household. i have seen the stool that william stood on when he was crowned william iii of england. it is in westminster abbey, london. that is another interesting bit of historic setting that you will see when you go to visit england. sir anthony van dyck, the flemish artist, painted many pictures of the royal families of england, especially the family of charles i. he put little dogs into his pictures so often that the people began to call these little fellows "king charles spaniels." to-day, two hundred years after, they are still called king charles spaniels. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . children of charles i. van dyck. dresden gallery] the buttery pieter de hooch ( ?- ) pieter de hooch is a dutch artist you are going to love. usually you can tell his pictures by the checked or plaid floors. the floors in the homes in holland are mostly made of squares of black and white marble. did you ever see a cuter little girl than this one in the picture? she has come for her pitcher of milk. her mother went to the "buttery" for it: a buttery is a place for keeping casks and barrels and bottles. we can see one end of the cask or barrel under the window in the buttery. now look into the next room and see the chair on a little platform. that platform is quite common in the dutch home and is probably the place where mother or grandmother sits to read or sew by the window. what a beautiful day it must be out of doors to make the rooms so cheerful and bright! hooch loved the sunshine and used it to brighten every home he painted. the sunshine on the checked floors makes his pictures sing with joy and happiness. we can find very little about the life of the "dutch little masters," yet the pictures they have left us are among our greatest treasures: just little home scenes that you and i know about. it is said that de hooch often put in his people after he had finished painting his picture. in one picture he has added a girl near a fireplace to make the picture more balanced. we know that she was added after the picture was made, for we can see the plaid floor through her dress where the paint was too thin to cover the original floor. such little things tell us something of the method of work of the dutch painters. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the buttery. de hooch. ryks museum, amsterdam] the coronation of the virgin sandro botticelli ( - ) the children who are holding the book and ink-bottle in this picture, "the coronation of the virgin," lived four hundred years ago. their names are giovanni and giulio de' medici. botticelli, the artist, knew them well for he was born and brought up in florence and used to spend a great deal of time at the medici palace. the boys were cousins. giulio, the younger, was left an orphan when a wee child and his uncle, lorenzo the magnificent, adopted him and had him brought up with his own son giovanni. the boys were nearly the same age and grew up to be great and good men. both of them were popes of rome. the older boy, giovanni, was pope leo x and giulio pope clement vii. now look at the picture again. the madonna is reading to her little son, jesus, "the magnificat," that beautiful song from luke, chap. i, v. - , sung so often in our churches. let us repeat the song together: my soul doth magnify the lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in god my savior. for he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed. for he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. and his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation he hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. he hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. he hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. he hath holpen his servant israel, in remembrance of his mercy; as he spake to our fathers, to abraham, and to his seed for ever. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . coronation of the virgin. botticelli. uffizi palace. florence] the wolf charmer john la farge ( - ) you see these wolves were once the old women gossips of the town, the story says; and when these women were unkind in what they said about people the fates--i have told you another story about the fates--the fates to punish them turned them into wolves. the wolf charmer, who really is the old gypsy who killed the black cat of the village witch, goes out into the night. the owl calls the wolves to attack the gypsy. but the gypsy knew the old women before they were turned into wolves so he calls them by name: "kate, anne, and bee!" and soon they follow him down the narrow path between the rocks and listen to his music on the bagpipes. "a funny story!" you say. you know there are people who have a strange power over wild animals. john la farge said about this picture, "i made it to be one of a series of some hundred subjects, more or less fantastic and imaginary." he never finished the pictures nor carried out his plan of making these books for children. i am giving you "the wolf charmer" because he painted the picture for you. mr. la farge named this picture as the one he liked best of his paintings. [illustration: courtesy of john la farge fig. . the wolf charmer. la farge. courtesy of the city art museum, st. louis] the old woman cutting her nails rembrandt van rijn ( ?- ) no artist in all history had a sadder life than rembrandt. it was sad because the people of amsterdam were stupid and too blind to know that a great man was living among them. rembrandt could paint wonderful portraits, and the rich people wanted their portraits painted. at first all went well. the rich flocked to his studio and rembrandt made marvelous likenesses. then the guilds of the great commercial houses wanted pictures for their halls. they came to rembrandt for these pictures, but thinking that their money had bought the great artist body and soul, they began to tell him how he should make the pictures that each one might have equal prominence in it. naturally rembrandt would not be bought off with money. his art was bigger than gold. the picture that was really the turning point in his life was "the night watch." i wish you would look at the picture again. you see the men away back in the picture were jealous that they were not put in the front row. all they cared for was to have a fine portrait of themselves and rembrandt was only interested in making a great picture. rembrandt went on painting but no one bought his pictures. many sorrows came to him. it was when the world had forsaken him that he painted "the old woman cutting her nails." now you can understand why rembrandt could paint an old woman with human sympathy. we could love that old woman because the unkindness of the world made her more tender and true to suffering humanity. she is the old grandmother we would go to if we were in trouble. [illustration: fig. . the old woman cutting her nails. rembrandt. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] the spinner nicolaes maes ( - ) this old woman is spinning flax. have you ever seen a flax wheel? when you go to holland try to visit dordrecht, and if possible, go into a real dutch home. there you may see some one, the grandmother maybe, spinning flax; then you will know that this picture is an actual scene. nicolaes maes, who painted the picture, was born in dordrecht or dort. this city is said to be the oldest city in the netherlands; it was founded in the tenth century. an old woman spinning was a familiar scene to maes. now look at this spinner closely. she will not mind, for she is too intent on picking up a thread, possibly a broken or a knotted one. maes saw a picture in the old woman's dull red dress and bright red sleeves. he liked the brown wheel and the yellow floor and the beautiful bit of blue cloth thrown over the wheel-base. then he saw how beautifully the white kerchief and apron and wall caught the light. he saw the helpfulness of the rugged old hand, worn and scarred as it was, yet patient and firm in repairing a mistake. maes's "the spinner" and rembrandt's "the old woman cutting her nails" make the tasks of every-day life very human. we in america owe much to these old dutch women and to the artists who have made them live for us. this picture of "the spinner" is only sixteen and one fourth inches high and thirteen inches wide, yet that old woman at her spinning-wheel is as much a real person in the room where she hangs on the wall as she was when maes painted her, nearly three hundred years ago. i want you to love these little dutch pictures; they are so honest and true and tell us about real people and real things, and they make us feel that beauty is everywhere. now look at your grandmother as she mends your stockings and see how beautiful she is with the light on her dear old face and hair. [illustration: fig. . the spinner. maes. ryks museum, amsterdam] st. george and the dragon vittore carfaccio ( ?- ) st. george, a noble youth of cappadocia, was one of the oldest and most noted of the saints. the story always told of him is his killing the dragon. once upon a time st. george was going through palestine on horseback when he came to the city of beirut. there he found a beautiful young girl in royal dress weeping outside the walls of the city. when he asked her why she was crying, she told him that a terrible dragon lived in the marshes near the city. and to keep him from destroying every one in the city, each day two young girls must be fed to him. these young girls were chosen by lot, and this day she, cleodolinda, the king's daughter, must be eaten by the dragon. st. george told her not to be afraid for he would destroy the dragon. but she cried: "o noble youth, tarry not here, lest thou perish with me! but fly, i beseech thee!" st. george answered: "god forbid that i should fly! i will lift my hand against the loathly thing, and will deliver thee through the power of jesus christ!" then st. george, rushed at the dragon and thrust his spear into his mouth and conquered him. he then took the young girl's mantle and bound the beast, and she led him into the city to her father. that day twenty thousand people of the city were baptized. as time went on the name of st. george became very great. from the time that richard i--the lion-hearted--placed his army under the protection of st. george the saint became the patron saint of england. in the order of the garter, the highest order of knighthood in great britain, was founded and on its emblem is a picture of st. george and the dragon. carpaccio, a venetian artist, painted this picture of "st. george and the dragon." he painted many other stories of saints. [illustration: fig. . st. george and the dragon. carpaccio. church of san giorgio degli schiavoni, venice] the grand canal, venice joseph mallard william turner ( - ) venice is a very curious city. it is really built on stilts on top of the water. its streets are canals. instead of having street-cars and horses and taxicabs everybody goes in long boats called gondolas. the main street in the city is the grand canal, and in this canal come all sorts of people with all sorts of water-crafts. the children play in the side streets just as you do except that they swim in the water instead of running on the ground. even the babies are in the water fastened to the door-steps by a rope around their little bodies. how they do coo and gurgle as they paddle their little hands and feet like young frogs! turner shows in this picture the grand canal filled with ships from other countries with gaily colored flags fluttering in the breeze. do you see the tower at the left in the picture? that is the campanile, the bell-tower. this wonderful tower fell down flat in . i talked with a man who has a store just opposite the tower, a few weeks after it fell. he said to me: "i thought it would fall on my store and destroy everything. it began to tip; then all at once it fell flat just where it stood." the venetians soon built it up again. when napoleon, the great french emperor, took venice, he rode up the inclined plane of this tower on his horse and stood on the very top overlooking the sea. [illustration: fig. . the grand canal. turner. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] the song of the lark jules adolphe breton ( - ) up with me! up with me into the clouds! for thy song, lark, is strong; up with me, up with me into the clouds! singing, singing, with clouds and sky above thee ringing, lift me, guide me till i find that spot which seems so to thy mind! wordsworth can you not almost hear this girl singing? the sun is just coming up. the lark is rising in the sky, singing! the girl has come out to work in the fields; a peasant girl. barefooted, barehanded, she stands straight like a soldier of work with her head lifted to drink in the morning air as she sings. one morning early i was driving through the country roads in the south of england when larks began to rise from the fields where the workmen were, just like this lark from the french field, and how they did sing! i stopped and listened, watching them go up higher and higher, their song growing fainter and fainter, and then they disappeared. where did they go? let us ask this french peasant girl. do you think that she can tell us? if she cannot, who can? [illustration: fig. . song of the lark. breton. courtesy of the art institute, chicago] the holy night antonio allegra da correggio ( ?- ) it is a wonderful story, the story of the holy night. the mother and father had traveled a long way; and when they came to bethlehem every place was taken so they found a bed in a cave. in the night a baby boy came to the mother, and she "wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in an inn. and there was in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. and, lo, the angel of the lord came upon them, and the glory of the lord shone around about them; and they were sore afraid. "and the angel said unto them, fear not; for behold, i bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. for unto you is born this day in the city of david, a savior, which is christ, the lord. and this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising god, saying, glory to god in the highest, and on earth peace, good will unto men. "and it came to pass as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, let us go even to bethlehem and see this thing which has come to pass, which the lord has made known to us. and they came with great haste, and found mary and joseph; and the babe lying in a manger. at first a bright cloud overshadowed the cave but on a sudden the cloud became a great light in the cave, so that their eyes could not bear it. but the light gradually decreased until the infant appeared, and sucked the breast of his mother, mary." the picture shows us the shepherds in the cave worshiping the young child, jesus, the christ. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the holy night. correggio. dresden gallery] the gleaners jean franÇois millet ( - ) millet was a french peasant boy--very poor. he says his grandmother would come into his room early in the morning and call: "awake, my little françois; if you only knew how long a time the birds have been singing the glory of the good god!" he would insist when he was helping in the fields that there was beautiful color over the plowed ground, and when the other fellows laughed at him, he would say: "wait, some day i will paint a picture and show you the color." after he was an artist he was going by a field one day when a peasant cutting grain called to him: "i would like to see you take a sickle." "i'll take your sickle," millet answered quickly, "and reap faster than you and all your family." of course the man laughed, for how could an artist cut grain. he soon stopped laughing, for millet cut much faster and farther than he could. millet would often go into the forest just back of his house to rest after painting all day. then he would say: "i do not know what those beggars of trees say to each other, but they say something which we do not understand, because we do not understand their language." millet's work is often called "the poems of the earth." once when i was in barbizon i found the gate open into millet's door-yard. of course i walked in, but the owner insisted that i walk out again. i shall never forget the peep i had of the little garden and the doorway and the long rambling house. that millet lived there with his large family and there painted the pictures we love makes the place a joy to us. [illustration: fig. . the gleaners. millet. louvre, paris] st. cecilia raphael sanzio ( - ) did you know that st. cecilia invented the organ, that wonderful musical instrument in our churches? cecilia was born in rome sixteen hundred years ago. she was a beautiful young girl who loved music and composed many hymns. the organ she dedicated to god's service. when cecilia was married, her husband, a rich nobleman, was converted and baptized. he knelt by the side of cecilia, and an angel crowned them with crowns made from roses which bloomed in paradise. the first thing valerian asked was that his brother, who was a heathen, might be converted too. they sent for the brother, and when he came and found the room filled with the sweet fragrance of roses, though it was not the rose season, then he too became a christian. the people of rome were very unkind to cecilia and valerian and his brother because they preached the story of jesus, the christ. at last they killed them. st. cecilia is the guardian saint of music and is always shown in art with the organ, as you see in this picture by raphael. the man standing at the left of the picture with his hand up to his face is st. paul. this is the most famous picture of st. paul. raphael shows the group listening to the heavenly choir while the earthly instruments of music have fallen at cecilia's feet broken and out of tune. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . st. cecilia. raphael. bologna, italy] helena fourment rubens and her son and daughter peter paul rubens ( - ) this picture of "helena fourment rubens and her son and daughter" was really painted to honor the boy. it has always been the custom in europe to pay special attention to the boys in the home and keep the girls very much in the background. it is very easy to see how pert the little albert rubens is, and how subdued and meek is his sister. the boy has the "lord of creation" air that would not be good for him in america. we love the picture, for rubens, the father, shows us plainly the old idea that the boy rules the home. naturally the father would know the traits of his own children but not always would he allow us to know them too. rubens was so wonderful as an artist, as a man to settle quarrels, and as a beautiful gentleman that all europe did him honor. he was sent to see the ruling powers in england, in spain, in italy, and in france. each ruler entertained him as a royal guest, and rubens painted masterpieces for each in return. his paintings were the wonder of the age. it is said that his fellow-artists looked with jealous eyes at his flesh tints, and that all painters since have been in despair trying to equal him. he left hundreds of pictures and hundreds of sketches. the sketches alone are bringing many hundreds of times their weight in gold. [illustration: fig. . helena fourment and her son and daughter. rubens. louvre, paris] the harp of the winds homer martin ( - ) about a dozen years ago europe began to wonder if america had any art worth considering. she invited us to send samples of our paintings that her critics might judge of our work. among the pictures selected was homer martin's "the harp of the winds." at once europe saw that an american artist had painted a masterpiece. this scene is on the river seine, a short distance from paris. was anything ever more simple? slender willow-trees almost leafless, bare rocks with a few scrubby bushes, a tiny village sheltered in a curve of the river--what is there to suggest a picture? and yet something grips us. we seem to be at the beginnings of creation. nature is confiding in us. we are hearing the winds play on the harp to the listening river. see how lovingly the water mirrors those harp strings all sparkly with gold and green! i wonder if these willows make a harp or a lyre with their tall stalks reaching to the sky? do you remember how, when mercury found a tortoise, he took the shell and made holes on both sides and strung nine strings across it--one for each muse--and gave it to apollo? i think this harp of the winds has nine strings in memory of mercury's lyre. [illustration: fig. . the harp of the winds. martin. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] the tribute money titian, or tiziano vecelli ( - ) every child must know "the tribute money," painted by titian, for no artist understood the scene better than he did. remember that the bad men in palestine were determined to find something that jesus, the christ, had done against the roman government so they could trap him. at last they sent one in authority to question him. but jesus said, "bring me a penny, that i may see it." and they brought him a penny. and jesus said, "whose is this image and superscription?" and the man was forced to say, "cæsar's." then jesus made that famous reply that people use so often to-day: "render to cæsar the things that are cæsar's, and to god the things that are god's." titian shows the moment when the tax-gatherer must say that the penny belonged to cæsar, the roman emperor. it had cæsar's portrait on it and cæsar's demands written on it. look carefully at the two faces and the two hands, and tell me what you think of the two men as titian shows them to us. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the tribute money. titian. dresden gallery] the maids of honor diego rodriguez de silva y velasquez ( - ) if it had not been for velasquez we should know very little about the little princes and princesses of spain in the time of philip iv, about the middle of the sixteenth century. he made many portraits of these children, especially of the little princess margarita. one day when velasquez was painting a portrait of philip iv, the king's little daughter margarita came into the room attended by her maids of honor and a splendid dog. the king was so delighted with the little group that he told velasquez to make a picture of them just as they stood there before him. now look at the picture and you will see in the looking-glass at the back of the room the reflection of the king and the queen. at the easel stands velasquez, the artist, with his palette and brushes. the wee fair-haired princess is the center of the group. the strange-looking little women, her maids of honor, are dwarfs. and see what a magnificent fellow the dog is, lying so contentedly on the floor right in front of us. when the picture was finished, and the people went to see it, many of them asked, "where is the picture?" the little margarita and her maids are so alive and those people standing around seem so real that no one thought they could be painted on canvas. velasquez made such wonderfully real likenesses that some one told this story of one: one day the king came to velasquez's studio and seeing, as he supposed, one of his admirals whom he had sent to take a command a few days before, he spoke angrily: "what! still here? did i not command you to depart? why have you not obeyed?" of course the admiral did not answer, and then the king found that he had been angry at a portrait. [illustration: fig. . the maids of honor. velasquez. madrid gallery, spain] the nymphs jean baptiste camille corot ( - ) everybody loved père corot--papa corot, as he was called. his happy manner and lovely smile won for him the name of the "happy one." i want you to know what papa corot says, in a letter to a friend, about himself and his painting. he writes: "look you, it is charming, the day of a landscapist. he gets up at three in the morning, before sunrise, goes and sits under a tree, and watches and waits. not much can be seen at first. nature is behind a veil. everything smells sweet. "ping! a ray of yellow light shoots up. the veil is torn, and meadow and valley and hill are peeping through the rent. "bing, bing! the sun's first ray--another ray--and the flowers awake and drink a drop of quivering dew. the leaves feel cold and move to and fro. under the leaves unseen birds are singing softly. the flowers are saying their morning prayers. "bam! the sun has risen. bam! a peasant crosses the field with a cart and oxen. ding! ding! says the bell of the ram that leads the flock of sheep. "bam! bam! all bursts--all glitters--all is full of light, blond and caressing as yet. the flowers raise their heads. it is adorable. i paint! i paint! "boom! boom! boom! the sun aflame burns the earth. everything becomes heavy. let us go home. we see too much now. let us go home." you see now why corot could paint such a lovely picture as "the nymphs." he saw these gauzy creatures in the early morning light and painted them before the sun scattered them to the four winds. [illustration: fig. . the nymphs. corot. louvre, paris] st. francis preaching to the birds giotto di bondone ( ?- ) one time more than six hundred years ago st. francis preached the dearest sermon to "my sisters the birds" that you ever heard. he said to them as they lifted their little heads to listen to his words: "ye are beholden unto god your creator, and always and in every place it is your duty to praise him! ye are bounden to him for the element of the air which he has deputed to you forever-more. you sow not, neither do you reap. god feeds you and gives you the streams and fountains for your thirst. he gives you the mountains and the valleys for your refuge, tall trees wherein to make your nests, and inasmuch as you neither spin nor reap god clothes you and your children, hence ye should love your creator greatly, and therefore beware, my sisters, of the sins of ingratitude, and ever strive to praise god." st. francis then made the sign of the cross and sent the birds north, south, east, and west to carry the story of the cross to all mankind. when giotto, who painted this picture of "st. francis preaching to the birds," was a little boy, he took care of his father's sheep in the fields. one day a noted painter, cimabue, found giotto drawing a sheep on a flat rock with colored stones. the picture of the sheep was so lifelike that the great man asked the boy, giotto, to go with him and become an artist. he went, and one day years afterward the pope sent to giotto for a sample of his work. giotto sent him a big round o. it pleased the pope to find a man so original, and he gave giotto many orders for pictures. to-day the saying is "round as giotto's o." [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . st. francis preaching to the birds. giotto. upper church, assisi, italy] the governess jean baptiste simeon chardin ( - ) when chardin began to paint pictures he went into the french homes and painted pictures of brass pots and kettles, of fruits and vegetables. then he took common scenes of life and gave us a number of pictures showing just what was going on in the homes and back yards. the french people were not used to having an artist see beauty in the every-day things they were doing; artists had been painting the rich for the rich. everybody began to love the pictures chardin painted. this is a very simple story in "the governess." the child--is it a boy or a girl?--is now ready to go to school. he--i believe he is a boy--is hearing some advice, and i do not think he is pleased, for he has a little frown on his face. his dress is peculiar. the french children two hundred years ago did not dress as you do to-day. he is the same kind of a child that you are, i am sure, and you and he would soon be great friends. chardin's color was so wonderful that one of his artist friends cried out: "o chardin! it is not white, red, or black that you grind to powder on your palette; it is the air and the light that you take on the point of your brush and fix on canvas." chardin's pictures are as beautiful and bright to-day as they were when he painted them. [illustration: fig. . the governess. chardin. liechtenstein gallery, vienna] the last supper leonardo da vinci ( - ) i want you to know the disciples of jesus just as leonardo da vinci painted them four hundred years ago. leonardo spent months among the men of milan, italy, looking into their faces and talking with them. when he began to paint "the last supper" he had gathered men together so like these twelve disciples that we feel we can know them as jesus knew them. for three years those men of old walked with jesus and talked with him as they went up and down palestine; and at last, on that wonderful night, they met with him in the upper chamber to eat with him the last supper. those disciples did not know that it was the last meal they would eat with jesus before he was hung on the cross. we shall begin in the center of the table and name the disciples as leonardo has them in the picture. first is the savior. at his left is james with his arms spread out in distress; back of him is thomas with his finger uplifted; then philip rising with his hand on his heart; next matthew, his arms pointing to the savior while he turns toward the two near the end; next to him is thaddeus; and then simon. on the other side of jesus sits john, the beloved disciple. his hands are folded and his eyes are cast down. next to john is judas, the betrayer; he holds the bag clutched in his right hand and near him is the overturned salt cellar. leaning back of judas is peter with one hand on john's shoulder; next to peter is andrew; then james, the less, laying one hand on peter's arm. at the end of the table is bartholomew, who has risen resting his hands on the table. these men are all asking, "is it i?" for jesus had said, "he it is to whom i give a sop." [illustration: fig. . the last supper. leonardo da vinci. santa maria delle grazie, milan] sir galahad george frederick watts ( - ) of all the stories of king arthur and his knights of the round table none is so strange as that of sir galahad. its beginning is in the upper chamber at the last supper with jesus and his disciples. legend says that the cup used by our savior at the last supper was the holy grail. joseph of arimathea, who bought the cup from pontius pilate, used it to catch the blood that flowed from the pierced side of our lord. the cup, or holy grail, was kept in the convent of the holy grail by the descendants of joseph of arimathea. the cup had marvelous powers in the hands of a perfect knight. centuries passed and no perfect knight came to claim the holy grail. then king arthur founded the knights of the round table. one seat at the round table was always vacant waiting for the sinless youth. many tried to sit in the "seat perilous," as it was called, but the seat let each one down to disappear forever. at last an old man--joseph of arimathea himself--brought a boy and seated him in the vacant chair. the knights were frightened but the boy sat unharmed and above the seat appeared the words: this is the seat of galahad king arthur knighted him and sent him forth to find the holy grail. years went by and awful trials and temptations came to sir galahad. he did not yield to the bad things that came, but kept looking for the holy grail. at last he held the cross before his face to keep off his tormentors when before his eyes he saw the cup, and the power of the holy grail came to him. this picture of sir galahad in eton college, england, hangs in the chapel opposite the entrance door where each boy passes in on his way to morning and evening prayers. [illustration: fig. . sir galahad. watts. eton college, england] the duchess of devonshire and her child sir joshua reynolds ( - ) sir joshua reynolds ought to be called "the painter of little girls." no artist ever painted a larger number of little girls. and no artist ever knew better than he how to get the confidence of children, boys or girls. one time a little boy in london was to carry a flag in a procession. what do you think he did? he went to sir joshua reynolds, the artist whom no one dared to interrupt, and asked him if he would paint a flag for him. this pleased the great man. when the boy proudly displayed his flag, every one asked: "where did you get such a wonderful flag?" you can guess how proud the boy was to say, "sir joshua reynolds painted it for me!" this picture of "the duchess of devonshire and her child" is one of the greatest pictures sir joshua ever painted. the original painting is now in the magnificent country seat of the duke of devonshire at chatsworth, england. sir joshua had a way of making his pictures sparkle and glisten that was unknown to other artists. one of our own artists, gilbert stuart, when in london, was copying a very valuable portrait by sir joshua. he thought he saw one of the eyes move. he was horrified to find that it really was moving down on the cheek. he grabbed the picture and ran into a cold room and then worked the eye back in place. the secret was out! sir joshua reynolds had used wax to make his pictures glitter and, alas, the glitter would not last. [illustration: fig. . the duchess of devonshire and her child. reynolds. royal gallery, windsor] st. agnes and her lamb andrea del sarto ( - ) one of the most beautiful pictures of "st. agnes and her lamb" was painted by andrea del sarto,--"andrea the faultless," as he was called. it is in the cathedral at pisa. st. agnes was a roman girl who lived three hundred years after the birth of jesus. her father and mother were heathens, but their little daughter became a christian when a mere child. she did not tell her parents that she loved jesus, but when she refused to worship idols they knew that she had become a disciple of the master christ. this made them so angry that they handed her over to the roman rulers to be punished. these wicked men tried in every way to persuade agnes to bow down to their gods made of wood and stone. when she would not bow down to them they tried to force her to worship the idols. they gave her over to the soldiers and ordered them to take her clothes away, but immediately her hair grew and covered her, and angels came and gave her a shining white garment. she even refused to marry the son of the roman magistrate. the son thought that he could compel her to consent to the marriage after she was persecuted, but he was struck blind when he tried to see her. when st. agnes saw what great sorrow came to the home of the young nobleman because he was blind, she prayed for him and his eyesight came again. his father was so thankful that he pleaded for her life, but the people said, "she is a sorceress: she must die." then they tried to burn her, but the flames burned her tormentors and did her no harm. at last she was killed with a sword. she is always represented with a lamb. michael angelo wrote to raphael about andrea del sarto: "there is a little fellow in florence who, if he were employed as you are upon great works, would make it hot for you." [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . st. agnes and her lamb. andrea del sarto. pisa cathedral, italy] whistler's mother james abbott mcneill whistler ( - ) the story about whistler and his mother is rather a sad one. he went to europe when he was a young painter and told his mother as he started that he would come home to her when he had made a success. but he never made a success in money. he painted this picture of his mother and for twenty years tried to sell it. he offered it to his own country--the united states--for five hundred dollars. we were so stupid that we did not know that the picture was a masterpiece and that no amount of money could buy it later on. but the people of paris began to feel that whistler, the american artist, was a great master, and the city bought the picture, "whistler's mother." of course we can never own the picture now, although it is an american mother, unless the french people should give it to us. but we do not deserve it, do we? after a number of years whistler's mother went to europe to make a home for her wonderful son. she died in chelsea, and to-day the mother and son are side by side in the little churchyard of chiswick, near london. [illustration: fig. . whistler's mother. whistler. luxembourg, paris] st. christopher titian, or tiziano vecelli ( - ) christopher, or offero, was born in palestine in the third century. he was a giant in size but ignorant and poor. he felt that he could not work for any one who was afraid of any one else. he wandered over the country and at last he came to a powerful king and offered to work for him. the king thought it very fine to have a giant for a servant. one day offero stood by the king's side while a minstrel sang a song about satan. every time the name of satan was spoken the king crossed himself. offero was puzzled, for he never had heard of satan, nor of jesus. when he found that the king was afraid of satan, offero went to find the man the king was afraid of. offero found satan and became his servant. but as they went through the land offero saw that satan always went away around the little shrines. offero asked satan why he did that. satan said he did not like to come near the cross where was the crucified one. then offero knew that he was afraid of jesus. he went out to find jesus. at last an old hermit told offero to go to a river where people were often drowned and to carry every one across on his back, and that maybe he would find jesus. offero built himself a hut and spent years carrying people over the stream and no one was drowned. one stormy night offero thought he heard a child's voice calling him. he went out two or three times. at last the child appeared and asked offero to carry him over. offero started. the storm grew worse and the water rose high and the child grew very, very heavy. when offero set the child down, he said, "i feel as though i had carried the whole world!" the child answered: "offero, you have carried the maker of the world. i am jesus, whom you have sought. you shall be called christ-offero--the christ-bearer--from now on." [illustration: fig. . st. christopher. titian. doges' palace, venice] the blue boy thomas gainsborough ( - ) gainsborough began to draw and paint when he was a child. he often entertained his companions by drawing pictures for them while they read the lessons to him. one morning thomas got up with the sun and went out into the garden to sketch. there was in the garden a wonderful pear-tree full of ripe pears, and the pears had been disappearing very mysteriously. while thomas was making his drawings he saw a man's face appear suddenly above the stone wall. he quickly made a sketch of the face, and frightened the man before he could get away with the fruit. at the breakfast-table the young artist told his father what he had done and showed him the sketch. his father knew the man and sent for him. when the man was accused of stealing the pears he denied it, but when he was shown the picture thomas had made of him he confessed that he had taken the pears. artists, like all of us, want to lay down rules for every one to follow who is doing their same kind of work. sir joshua reynolds said, "the masses of light in a picture ought to be always of a warm, mellow colour--yellow, red, or yellowish white; and the blue, the grey, or green colours should be kept almost entirely out of the masses." gainsborough did not agree with him. to show sir joshua that he was wrong gainsborough painted pictures in blue and green. the famous "blue boy" alone proved that he was right. the boy has on a blue satin suit and he stands out-of-doors in green grass with green foliage and blue sky around him. when sir joshua saw gainsborough's blue-green pictures he said frankly, "i cannot think how he produces his effects." these two men were never good friends yet when gainsborough was near death sir joshua reynolds came to his bedside, and when gainsborough died reynolds was one of the pall-bearers. [illustration: fig. . the blue boy. gainsborough. private gallery, henry huntington, los angeles, california] the sleeping girl jan van der meer of delft ( - ) i want you to know and love the dutch pictures. the painters were called "little masters," simply because they painted small pictures for the homes. for the homes! the dutch wanted pictures to hang on their walls; pictures they could live with. now what do you think of the "sleeping girl"? do you know i could live with that picture and feel that i always had something to make me happy? it is so homy. see how comfortable the girl is! of course a good healthy girl has no business to be sleeping in the daytime, but we can forgive her now that van der meer has caught her asleep and let us see her. then look at that wonderful rug! was ever anything so soft and velvety? if we knew about rugs we might tell its name and maybe its age. van der meer had a way of catching people without their knowing it. he seems to have cut a piece out of the wall where he peeped in and painted what he saw. we are glad the girl left the door open into another room so that we can see the table and pictures and part of the window-frame. i think these things are reflected in a looking-glass. van der meer painted only about forty pictures, and eight of those are in the united states. they are among our greatest art treasures. [illustration: fig. . the sleeping girl. van der meer. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] st. antony and the christ-child bartholome esteban murillo ( - ) many very curious legends are told of st. antony of padua, who died in . he was a close friend of st. francis (see "st. francis and his birds," page ). one story says that one time he was preaching about the savior when the child jesus came and sat on his open bible. it is this story that murillo painted his picture to illustrate. again and again murillo has shown us st. antony with the christ-child, but never more beautifully than here. this is one of murillo's greatest religious pictures. another story is told of st. antony. one day he was preaching the funeral sermon of a rich young man when he exclaimed: "his heart is buried in his treasure-chest; go seek it there and you will find it." sure enough when the friends of the rich young man opened the treasure-chest there was the heart, and no heart was found in the young man's dead body. [illustration: fig. . st. anthony and the christ-child. murillo. museum of seville, spain.] king lear edwin austin abbey ( - ) the story of "king lear" is one of the most pitiful of shakespeare's play. it is about the thanklessness of children to a father. old _king lear_ had three daughters--_goneril_, _regan_, and _cordelia_. he loved these daughters dearly and he believed that they loved him. as he grew old in life he thought he would divide his kingdom and property among them equally; then there would be no trouble about his wealth after he was dead. of course he expected to make his home with them in turn as long as he lived. naturally he went to _goneril_, the eldest daughter, first. very soon he found that he was not wanted. she had the money--her father's money--but why should she be troubled with her old father? he then went to _regan_, his second child, but she too refused to make a home for him. the third daughter, _cordelia_, loved her father dearly and wanted him to live with her that she might care for him in his old age. by a strange mishap the old father thought that _cordelia_, his beloved child, was false to him. he wandered off on the heath in a fearful storm and at last found shelter in a hut where he thinks even his faithful dogs are against him. he cries out pitifully: the little dogs and all, tray, blanche and sweetheart, see they bark at me. abbey has painted the scene when the old king is leaving heart-broken, for he thinks _cordelia_, the child he loves best, is deserting him. _cordelia_, knowing how false her sisters are, is saying: i know you what you are; and, like a sister, am most loath to call your faults as they are named. love well our father. abbey's story of "the holy grail" in the boston library is one of america's great series of paintings for wall decoration. [illustration: fig. . king lear. abbey. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city.] sunset in the woods george inness ( - ) whenever you can, i want you to find out what the painter says about his own pictures. we feel very glad that george inness told us about "sunset in the woods." he said in : "the material for my picture was taken from a sketch made near hastings, on the hudson, new york, twenty years ago. this picture was commenced seven years ago, but until last winter i had not obtained any idea equal to the impression received on the spot. the idea is to express an effect of light in the woods at sunset." what a wonderful glow he has on those trees beyond the big rock away back in the picture. and see the light on the trunk of the big tree near us. i believe the light is gradually disappearing as we look. somehow we feel the birds are twittering as they go to bed and the flowers are nodding their heads, they are so sleepy. soon it will be dark and the owl will screech and the night insects will buzz. come, we must go home or we cannot see our way! [illustration: fig. . sunset in the woods. inness. courtesy of the corcoran art gallery, washington, d. c.] index abbey, edwin austin, , angelico, fra giovanni, , angelo, michael, , , arthur, king, , bastien-lepage, jules, , botticelli, sandro, , breton, jules adolphe, , cæsar (tiberius), carpaccio, vittore, , chardin, jean baptiste simeon, , charles i, , , charles ii, , charles v, charles vi, vii, corot, jean baptiste camille, , , , correggio, antonio, , , , constable, john, , disciples, the, , dolci, carlo, farge, john la, , ferdinand iii, fourment, helena, , gainsborough, thomas, , galahad, sir, , giotto di bondone, , gods and goddesses, apollo, , , , , aurora, , atropos, (a fate), , calliope, (a muse), , clio (a muse), , clothes, (a fate), , diana, erato (a muse), , euterpe, (a muse), , fates, the, , , horæ, , hyperion, , lachesis (a fate), , melpomene (a muse), , memnon, memory, mercury, , muses, the, , , pegasus, polyhymnia (a muse), , selene, thalia (a muse), , urania (a muse), , zeus, , hals, frans, , homer, winslow, , hooch, pieter de, , inness, george, , james ii, jesus, , , , , , , , , , , , , joan of arc, , joseph of arimathea, lear, king, , maes, nicolaes, , magnificent, the, martin, homer, , medici, giovanni de' (pope leo x), medici, giulio de (pope clement vii), medici, lorenzo de', millet, jean françois, , murillo, bartolome esteban, , , , napoleon, offero, , philip iv, pintoricchio, bernardino, , raphael sanzio, , , , , , , rembrandt, van rijn. , , , , , , reni, guido, , reynolds, sir joshua, , , romano, giulio, , rubens, peter paul, , , , , stuart, gilbert, sarto, andrea del, saints, agnes, , anthony, , barbara, , cecilia, , christopher, , elizabeth, francis, , , george, , jerome, , , john the baptist, joseph, , mary, (madonna, virgin), , , , , , , michael, paul, , titian vecelli, , , , , , turner, joseph mallard william, , van der meer, jan, , van dyck, anthony, , , , , , vecchio, palma, il jacopo, , velasquez, diego rodriguez de silva y, , venice, , vinci, leonardo da, , watts, george frederick, , whistler, james abbott mcneill, , william iii, wordsworth, zacharias, note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) watts ( - ) by w. loftus hare illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: plate i.--death crowning innocence (frontispiece) a little child lying in the lap of the winged figure of death. death, ever to watts a silent angel of pity, "takes charge of innocence, placing it beyond the reach of evil." it was first exhibited at the winter exhibition of the new gallery, , and was given to the nation in . it is now at the tate gallery.] masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s.l. bensusan. reynolds. s.l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s.l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s.l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m.w. brockwell. rubens. s.l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s.l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w.h.j. & j.c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s.l. bensusan. dÜrer. h.e.a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s.l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a.j. finberg. others in preparation. the publishers have to acknowledge the permission of mrs. watts to reproduce the series of paintings here included. [illustration: in sempiternum.] list of illustrations plate i. death crowning innocence frontispiece at the tate gallery ii. the minotaur at the tate gallery iii. hope at the tate gallery iv. thomas carlyle at the south kensington museum v. love and life at the tate gallery vi. love triumphant at the tate gallery vii. the good samaritan at the manchester art gallery viii. prayer at the manchester art gallery [illustration] i a biographical outline in july of the eighty-seven mortal years of george frederick watts came to an end. he had outlived all the contemporaries and acquaintances of his youth; few, even among the now living, knew him in his middle age; while to those of the present generation, who knew little of the man though much of his work, he appeared as members of the ionides family, thus inaugurating the series of private and public portraits for which he became so famous. the watts of our day, however, the teacher first and the painter afterwards, had not yet come on the scene. his first aspiration towards monumental painting began in the year , when in a competition for the decoration of the houses of parliament he gained a prize of £ for his cartoon of "caractacus led captive through the streets of rome." at this time, when history was claiming pictorial art as her servant and expositor, young watts carried off the prize against the whole of his competitors. this company included the well-known historical painter haydon, who, from a sense of the impossibility of battling against his financial difficulties, and from the neglect, real or fancied, of the leading politicians, destroyed himself by his own hand. the £ took the successful competitor to italy, where for four years he remained as a guest of lord holland. glimpses of the italy he gazed upon and loved are preserved for us in a landscape of the hillside town of fiesole with blue sky and clouds, another of a castellated villa and mountains near florence, and a third of the "carrara mountains near pisa"; while of his portraiture of that day, "lady holland" and "lady dorothy nevill" are relics of the italian visit. [illustration: plate ii.--the minotaur in this terrible figure, half man, half bull, gazing over the sea from the battlement of a hill tower, we see the artist's representation of the greed and lust associated with modern civilisations. the picture was exhibited at the winter exhibition of the new gallery, , and formed part of the watts gift in . it hangs in the watts room at the tate gallery.] italy, and particularly florence, was perpetual fascination and inspiration to watts. there he imbibed the influences of orcagna and titian--influences, indeed, which were clearly represented in the next monumental painting which he attempted. it came about that lord holland persuaded his guest to enter a fresh competition for the decoration of the parliament houses, and watts carried off the prize with his "alfred inciting the saxons to resist the landing of the danes." the colour and movement of the great italian masters, conspicuously absent from the "caractacus" cartoon, were to be seen in this new effort, where, as has been said, the english king stands like a raphaelesque archangel in the midst of the design. in watts had attained, one might almost say, the position of official historical painter to the state, a post coveted by the unfortunate haydon; and he received a commission to paint a fresco of "st. george overcomes the dragon," which was not completed till . in this year he contributed as an appendix to the diary of haydon--in itself an exciting document, showing how wretched the life of an official painter then might be--a note telling of the state of historical and monumental painting in the 'forties, and of his own attitude towards it; a few of his own words, written before the days of the "poster," may be usefully quoted here: on the public employment of artists patriots and statesmen alike forget that the time will come when the want of great art in england will produce a gap sadly defacing the beauty of the whole national structure.... working, for example, as an historian to record england's battles, haydon would, no doubt, have produced a series of mighty and instructive pictures.... why should not the government of a mighty country undertake the decoration of all the public buildings, such as town halls, national schools, and even railway stations.... ... or considering the walls as slates whereon the school-boy writes his figures, the great productions of other times might be reproduced, if but to be rubbed out when fine originals could be procured; for the expense would very little exceed that of whitewashing.... if, for example, on some convenient wall the whole line of british sovereigns were painted--were monumental effigies well and correctly drawn, with date, length of reign, remarkable events written underneath, these worthy objects would be attained--intellectual exercise, decoration of space, and instruction to the public. the year was a critical time for watts; his first allegorical picture, "time and oblivion," was painted, and, in the year following, "life's illusions" appeared on the walls of the famous academy which contained the first works of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood. watts was not of the party, though he might have been had he desired; he preferred independence. watts' personal life was at this time pervaded by the influence of lord and lady holland, who, having returned from florence to london, had him as a constant visitor to holland house. in he went to live at the dower house, an old building in the fields of kensington. there, as a guest of the prinsep family, he set up as a portrait painter. his host and family connections were some of the first to sit for him; and he soon gained fame in this class of work. there was a temporary interruption in , when a journey to the east, in company with sir charles newton, for the purpose of opening the buried temple of mausolus at halicarnassus, gave watts further insight into the old greek world; and, one cannot but think, stimulated his efforts, later so successful, in depicting for us so many incidents in classical lore. we have, in a view of a mountainous coast called "asia minor," and another, "the isle of cos," two charming pictorial records of this important expedition. the next six years of the artist's life were spent as a portrait painter; not, indeed, if one may say so, as a professional who would paint any one's portrait, but as a friend, who loved to devote himself to his friends. in pursuance of his principles touching monumental work, watts engaged himself over a period of five years on the greatest and the last of his civic paintings--namely, the "justice; a hemicycle of lawgivers," to which i shall later refer. watts was a man who seems to have enjoyed in a singular degree the great privilege of friendship, which while it has its side of attachment, has also its side of detachment. even in his youthful days he never "settled down," but was a visitor and guest rather than an attached scholar and student at the schools and studies. it is told of him that when just about to leave florence, after a short visit, he casually presented a letter of introduction to lord holland, which immediately led to a four years' stay there, and this friendship lasted for many years after the ambassador's return to england. other groups of friends, represented by the ionides, the prinseps, the seniors, and the russell barringtons, seemed to have possessed him as their special treasure, in whose friendship he passed a great part of his life. two great men, the titular chiefs of poetry and painting, were much impressed by him, and drew from him great admiration--tennyson and leighton; from the latter he learned much; in the sphere of music, of which watts was passionately fond, there stands out joachim the violinist. watts used to recall, as the happiest time in his life, his youthful days as a choral singer; and he always regretted that he had not become a musician. besides being fond of singing he declared that he constantly heard (or felt) mystic music--symphonies, songs, and chorales. only once did he receive a _vision_ of a picture--idea, composition and colours--that was "time, death, and judgment." music, after all, is nearer to the soul of the intuitive man than any of the arts, and watts felt this deeply. he also had considerable dramatic talent. in some friends found for watts a bride in the person of miss ellen terry. the painter and the youthful actress were married in kensington in february of that year, and watts took over little holland house. the marriage, however, was irksome, both to the middle-aged painter and the vivacious child of sixteen, whose words, taken from her autobiography, are the best comment we possess on this incident: "many inaccurate stories have been told of my brief married life, and i have never contradicted them--they were so manifestly absurd. those who can imagine the surroundings into which i, a raw girl, undeveloped in all except my training as an actress, was thrown, can imagine the situation.... i wondered at the new life and worshipped it because of its beauty. when it suddenly came to an end i was thunderstruck; and refused at first to consent to the separation which was arranged for me in much the same way as my marriage had been.... there were no vulgar accusations on either side, and the words i read in the deed of separation, 'incompatibility of temper,' more than covered the ground. truer still would have been 'incompatibility of _occupation_,' and the interference of well-meaning friends. "'the marriage was not a happy one,' they will probably say after my death, and i forestall them by saying that it was in many ways very happy indeed. what bitterness there was effaced itself in a very remarkable way." (_the story of my life_, .) in , at the age of fifty, without his application or knowledge, watts was made an associate, and in the following year a full member, of the royal academy. younger men had preceded him in this honour, but doubtless watts' modesty and independence secured for him a certain amount of official neglect. the old studio in melbury road, kensington, was pulled down in , and a new house was built suited to the painter who had chosen for himself a hermit life. the house was built in such a way as would avoid the possibility of entertaining guests, and was entirely dedicated to work. watts continued his series of official portraits, and many of the most beautiful mythical paintings followed this change. five years later, watts was found at freshwater in the isle of wight, and in he secured what he had so long needed, the sympathetic help and co-operation in his personal and artistic aims, in mr. and mrs. russell barrington, his neighbours. in watts decided, in conformity with his views on patriotic art, to give his pictures to the nation, and there followed shortly after, in and , exhibitions of his works in whitechapel and the grosvenor gallery. a leaflet entitled "what should a picture say?" issued with the approval of watts, in connection with the whitechapel exhibition, has a characteristic answer to the question put to him. "roughly speaking, a picture must be regarded in the same light as written words. it must speak to the beholder and tell him something.... if a picture is a representation only, then regard it from that point of view only. if it treats of a historical event, consider whether it fairly tells its tale. then there is another class of picture, that whose purpose is to convey suggestion and idea. you are not to look at that picture as an actual representation of facts, for it comes under the same category of dream visions, aspirations, and we have nothing very distinct except the sentiment. if the painting is bad--the writing, the language of art, it is a pity. the picture is then not so good as it should be, but the thought is there, and the thought is what the artist wanted to express, and it is or should be impressed on the spectator." in his pictures were exhibited in new york, where they created a great sensation; but incidents connected with the exhibition, and criticisms upon it, caused the artist much nervous distress. [illustration: plate iii.--hope (at the tate gallery) at the first glance it is rather strange that such a picture should bear such a title, but the imagery is perfectly true. the heavens are illuminated by a solitary star, and hope bends her ear to catch the music from the last remaining string of her almost shattered lyre. the picture was painted in and given to the nation in . a very fine duplicate is in the possession of mrs. rushton.] it was a peculiar difficulty of his nature which led him to insist, on the occasions of the london and provincial exhibitions of his pictures, that the borrowers were to make all arrangements with his frame-maker, that he should not be called upon to act in any way, and that no personal reference should be introduced. watts always considered himself a private person; he disliked public functions and fled from them if there were any attempt to draw attention to him. his habits of work were consistent with these unusual traits. at sunrise he was at his easel. during the hot months of summer he was hard at work in his london studio, leaving for the country only for a few weeks during foggy weather. at the age of sixty-nine watts married miss mary fraser-tytler, with whom he journeyed to egypt, painting there a study of the "sphinx," one of the cleverest of his landscapes. three years after his return, he settled at limnerslease, compton, in surrey, where he took great interest in the attempt to revive industrial art among the rural population. twice, in and , the artist refused, for private reasons, the baronetcy that other artists had accepted. he lived henceforth and died the untitled patriot and artist, george frederick watts. ii the man and the messenger having given in the preceding pages the briefest possible outline of the life of watts as a man amongst men, we are now able to come to closer quarters. he was essentially a messenger--a teacher, delivering to the world, in such a manner that his genius and temperament made possible, ideas which had found their place in his mind. he would have been the first to admit that without these ideas he would be less than nothing. if it were possible to bring together all the external acts of the painter's life, his journeyings to and fro, his making and his losing friends, we should have insufficient data to enable us to understand watts' message; his great ambitions, his constant failures, his intimate experiences, his reflections and determinations--known to none but himself--surely these, the internal life of watts, are the real sources of his message? true, he was in the midst of the nineteenth century, breathing its atmosphere, familiar with the ideals of its great men, doubting, questioning, and hoping with the rest. to him, as to many a contemporary stoic, the world was in a certain sense an alien ground, and mortal life was to be stoically endured and made the best of. it is impossible to believe, however, that this inspiring and prophetic painter reproduced and handed on merely that which his time and society gave him. his day and his associates truly gave him much; the past and his heredity made their contributions; but we must believe that the purest gold was fired in the crucible of his inner experience, his joys and his sufferings. in him was accomplished that great discovery which the philosophers have called pessimism; he not only saw in other men (as depicted in his memorable canvas of ), but he experienced in himself the transitory life's illusions. to watts, the serious man of fifty years, love and death, faith and hope, aspiration, suffering, and remorse, were not, as to the eighteenth-century rhymester, merely greek ladies draped in flowing raiment; to him they were realities, intensely focussed in himself. watts was giving of himself, of his knowledge and observation of what love is and does, and how death appears so variously; and who but a man who knew the melancholy of despair could paint that picture "hope"? immediately after the central crisis of his personal life appeared the canvas entitled "fata morgana," illustrative of a knight in vain pursuit of a phantom maiden; and before long there was from his brush the pictured story of a lost love, "orpheus and eurydice," one of the saddest of all myths, but, one feels, no old myth to him. by a more careful analysis of the artist's work we hope to learn the teaching watts set himself to give, and to ascertain the means that he adopted; but one point needs to be made clear at this stage, namely, that although watts was a great teacher, yet he was not a revolutionary. the ideals he held up were not new or strange, but old, well-tried, one might almost say conventional. they represent the ideals which, in the friction and turmoil of ages, have emerged as definite, clear, final. they are not disputed or dubious notions, but accepted truisms forgotten and neglected, waiting for the day when men shall live by them. furthermore, watts was not in any sense a mystic--neither personally or as an artist. "the dweller in the innermost" is not the transcendental self known to a few rare souls, but is merely conscience, known to all. the biblical paintings have no secret meaning assigned to them. the inhabitants of eden, the hero of the deluge, the hebrew patriarchs, samson and satan--all these are the familiar figures of the evangelical's bible. "eve repentant" is the woman eve, the mother of the race; "jacob and esau" are the brothers come to reconciliation; "jonah" is the prophet denouncing the nineveh of his day and the babylon of this. the teaching--and there is teaching in every one of them--is plain and ethical. so also, with the greek myths; they teach plainly--they hold no esoteric interpretations. watts is no neo-platonist weaving mystical doctrines from the ancient hero tales; he is rather a stoic, a moralist, a teacher of earthly things. but we must be careful to guard against the impression of watts as a lofty philosopher consciously issuing proclamations by means of his art. really he was not aware of being a philosopher at all; he was simply an artist, an exquisitely delicate and sensitive medium, who, when once before his canvas, suddenly filled with his idea, was compelled to say his word. if there be any synthesis about his finished work--and no one can deny this--it was not because watts gave days and nights and years to "thinking things out." his paintings are, as he used to call them, "anthems," brought forth by the intuitive man, the musician. this was the fundamental watts. whatever unity there be, is due rather to unity of inspiration than to strength or definiteness of character and accomplishment, and this was sometimes referred to by watts as a golden thread passing through his life--a thread of good intention--which he felt would guide him through the labyrinth of distractions, mistakes, irritations, ill health, and failures. one of the striking incidents in the life of watts was his offer to decorate euston railway station with frescoes entitled "the progress of cosmos." "chaos" we have in the tate gallery, full of suggestiveness and interest. we see a deep blue sky above the distant mountains, gloriously calm and everlasting; in the middle distance to the left is a nebulous haze of light, while in the foreground the rocks are bursting open and the flames rush through. figures of men, possessed by the energy and agony of creation, are seen wrestling with the elements of fire and earth. one of these figures, having done his work, floats away from the glow of the fire across the transparent water, while others of his creative family have quite passed the struggling stage of movement and are reclining permanent and gigantic to the right of the picture. the same idea is repeated in the chain of draped women who are emerging from the watery deep; at first they are swept along in isolation, then they fly in closer company, next they dance and finally walk in orderly procession. but chaos, for all this, is a unity; of all material forms it is the most ancient form; cosmos however is the long-drawn tale beginning with the day when "the spirit of god brooded on the face of the waters." cosmos might have been watts' synthetic pictorial philosophy; herbert spencer with his pen, and he with his brush, as it were, should labour side by side. but this was not to be; the directors of the north-western railway declined the artist's generous offer, and he had to get his "cosmos" painted by degrees. on the whole, perhaps, we should be thankful that the railway company liberated watts from this self-imposed task. we remember that dante in his exile set out to write "il convivio," a banquet of so many courses that one might tremble at the prospect of sitting down to it; the four treatises we have are interesting, though dry as dust; but if dante had finished his banquet, he might never have had time for his "divine comedy"; so perhaps, after all, we shall be well content to be without watts' "cosmos," remembering what we have gained thereby. besides, the continuous and spontaneous self-revelation of an artist or a poet is sometimes truer than a rigid predetermined plan. [illustration: plate iv.--thomas carlyle (at the south kensington museum) this canvas was painted in , and is the earlier of the two portraits of the famous historian painted by watts. it formed part of the foster bequest. it is interesting to compare this with the painting in the national portrait gallery.] a few words from the pen of the artist, appearing by way of preface to a book, "a plain handicraft," may here be quoted to indicate the strong views watts took on the "condition-of-england question." his interest in art was not centred in painting, or sculpture, or himself, or his fellow artists. he believed in the sacred mission of art as applied to profane things. we see how closely he adheres to the point of view made so famous by ruskin. both watts and ruskin, one feels, belong rather to the days of pericles, when everything was best in the state because the citizens gave themselves up to it and to each other. writing of the necessity and utility of reviving plain handicrafts among the mass of the people, the painter of "mammon" says: "... when the object is to vitalise and develop faculties--the especial inheritance of the human race, but strangely dormant in our time among the largest section of the community--the claim becomes one that cannot be ignored. looking at the subject from a point of view commanding a wide horizon, it seems to be nothing less than a social demand, rising into a religious duty, to make every endeavour in the direction of supplying all possible compensating consolation for the routine of daily work, become so mechanical and dreary. when home is without charm, and country without attaching bonds, the existence of a nation is rudely shaken; dull discontent leading to sullen discontent, may readily become active animosity. there will not be men interested in the maintenance of law and order, who feel that law and order bring them no perceptible formal advantage. in the race for wealth, it has been forgotten that wealth alone can offer neither dignity nor permanent safety; no dignity, if the man of the population is degraded by dull toil and disgraceful competition; no safety, if large numbers drag on a discontented existence, while the more active and intelligent leave our shores. "whether or not our material wealth is to be increased or diminished, it is certain that a more general well-being and contentment must be striven for. a happy nation will be a wealthy nation, wealthy in the best sense, in the assurance that its children can be depended upon in case of need, wealth above the fortune of war, and safety above the reach of fortune. the rush of interest in the direction of what are understood as worldly advantages, has trampled out the sense of pleasure in the beautiful, and the need of its presence as an element essential to the satisfaction of daily life, which must have been unconsciously felt in ages less absorbed in acquiring wealth for itself alone. in olden times our art congresses would have been as needless as congresses to impress on the general mind the advantages of money-making would be in these." (_plain handicraft_, .) in g.f. watts, however, we have an instance of a man who, although he sees and is attracted by abstract principles of ethics, does not perceive the manner of their final application; he is not really scientific. it might be thought that the painter of "greed and toil," "the sempstress," "mammon," "the dweller of the innermost," and "love triumphant," would be able to indicate, in that sphere of social activity called "practical politics," how these principles could find their expression and realisation. it is interesting, however, to know, and to have it authoritatively from his own pen, that watts at least could not discern either the time or the application of these ethical principles to the affairs of the great world; for in there appeared from his hand a quasi-philosophical defence of the south african war, entitled "our race as pioneers." he said: "inevitable social and political measures claim obedience, which may be at variance with the spiritual and ethical conscience; but there comes in the question of necessity, apparent laws that contest with pure right and wrong; ... and as we must live, nothing remains but commerce; and commerce cannot be carried on without competition, and pushing the limits of our interests. the result of competition can only be conflict--war, unless some other outlet can be found. commerce will not supply this; its very activity, which is its health and life, will produce the ambition, envy, and jarring interests that will be fatal to peace.... the principle, _movement_, must have its outlet, its safety valve. this has always been war.... the goddess trade, the modern pandora, has in her box all the evils that afflict mankind.... how can commerce, as understood by the principles of trade, abolish war?" "the simple principles of right and wrong are easily defined," and perhaps easily painted; "but the complexity of human affairs and legitimate interests, conducing to the activity demanded by the great law, _movement_, makes some elasticity necessary, even where there is the most honest desire to be just." thus, from his own words, we see how the painter transcends the politician; he is a stimulator, he gives hints, not instructions; he is commanding, imperative, but he does not show how, nor stay to devise ways and means. he even perceives, as he thinks, that though the commands of his pictures, "faith," "conscience," and "love triumphant," be given, yet they cannot be obeyed fully because of "evolution" and "destiny," or as he calls it "movement." to his intimate friends watts, who was so introspective, often complained of "the duality of my nature." in the midst of affairs, financial or worldly, on questions of criticism, personal conduct and the like, the great artist was variable and uncertain. though humble and self-deprecatory to an extreme degree, he made mistakes from which he could escape only with great difficulty; and he suffered much from depression and melancholy. this man, however, never appears in the pictures; when once in his studio, alone facing his canvas, watts is final, absolute, an undisturbed and undistracted unity, conscious of that overwhelming "rightness" known to a hebrew prophet. whatever time or death may have in store for him or any man, there riding swiftly above them is judgment the absolute one; whatever theories may be spun from the perplexed mind of the magazine writer about expansion and necessity, there sits the terrible "mammon" pilloried for all time. indeed, he said his pictures were "for all time"; they were from the mind and hand of the seer, who, rising from his personality, transcended it; and as the personality of dual nature gradually fades away into the forgotten past, the messenger emerges ever more and more clearly, leaving his graphic testimonies spread out upon a hundred canvases. it might be said as a final estimate that the value and sincerity of watts' work becomes intensified a hundred-fold when we remember that its grandeur and dignity, its unity and its calm, was the work of a man who seldom, if ever, attained internal peace. like some who speak wiser than they know, so watts gave himself as an instrument to inspirations of which he was not able, through adverse circumstances, to make full use. thus was the man divided from the messenger. [illustration: plate v.--love and life (at the tate gallery) love, strong in his immortal youth, leads life, a slight female figure, along the steep uphill path; with his broad wings he shelters her, that the winds of heaven may not visit her too roughly. violets spring where love has trod, and as they ascend to the mountain top the air becomes more and more golden. the implication is that, without the aid of divine love, fragile human life could not have power to ascend the steep path upward. first exhibited at the grosvenor gallery in . companion picture to "love and death," and "love triumphant."] iii a review of watts' work failing the "progress of the cosmos," we have from the mind and brush of watts a great number of paintings, which may be grouped according to their character. such divisions must not be regarded as rigid or official, for often enough a picture may belong to several groups at the same time. for the purpose of our survey, however, we divide them as follows: . monumental or historical paintings and frescoes. . humanitarian or social paintings. . portraits, private and public. . biblical paintings. . mythical paintings. . "pessimistic" paintings. . the great realities. . the love series. . the death series. . landscapes. . unclassified paintings. . paintings of warriors. "caractacus" was the first of the monumental paintings; by them watts appears as a citizen and a patriot, whose insular enthusiasm extends backward to the time when the british chief caractacus fought and was subdued by the romans. he enters also into the spirit of the resistance offered to the danes by king alfred. george and the dragon are included by him in the historical though mythical events of our race. undoubtedly the most remarkable of watts' monumental paintings is the fresco entitled "justice; a hemicycle of lawgivers," painted for the benchers' hall in lincoln's inn. it is x feet. here watts, taking the conventional and theoretical attitude, identifies law-making with justice, and in his fresco we see thirty-three figures, representing moses, zoroaster, pythagoras, confucius, lycurgus and his fellow-greeks, numa pompilius and other romans. here figures also justinian, the maker of the great code; mahomet, king alfred, and even attila the hun. the painting represents the close of this phase of watts' work; he received a gift of £ and a gold cup in memory of its achievement. in england, at least, no one has ever attempted or accomplished anything in fresco of so great dimensions. watts' monumental genius drove him to sculpture on the grand scale also. "hugh lupus" for the duke of westminster, and "physical energy," upon which he laboured at intervals during twenty-five years of his life, are his great triumphs in this direction. it is not the first time that an artist deficient in health and strength has made physical energy into a demigod. men often, perhaps always, idealise what they have not. it was the wish of the sculptor to place a cast of "physical energy" on the grave of cecil rhodes on the matoppo hills in south africa, indicating how watts found it possible (by idealising what he wished to idealise), to include within the scope and patronage of his art, the activities, aims, and interests of modern colonial enterprise. _humanitarian paintings_.--the earliest of these, "the wounded heron," asks our pity for the injured bird, and forbids us to join in the enthusiasm of the huntsman who hurries for his suffering prize. the same thought is expressed in the beautiful "shuddering angel," who is covering his face with his hands at the sight of the mangled plumage scattered on the altar of fashion. in the large canvases, "a patient life of unrequited toil," and "midday rest," we have paintings of horses, both of them designed to teach us consideration for the "friend of man." "the sempstress" sings us tom hood's "song of the shirt." "the good samaritan" (see plate vii.) properly belongs to this series. it was presented by the artist to the citizens of manchester, as an expression of his admiration of thomas wright, the prison philanthropist, whose work was at that time ( ) creating a sensation in the north of england. if we compare this painting with other biblical subjects executed at a later date, we see how much watts' work has gained since then. the almost smooth texture and the dark shadows of the manchester picture have given way to ruggedness and transparency. still, "the good samaritan" is simple and excellent in purpose and composition. a little known painting entitled "cruel vengeance," seems to be a forecast of "mammon"; a creature with human form and vulture's head presses under his hand a figure like the maiden whose head rests on mammon's knee. in "greed and labour" the seer's eye pierces through the relations between the worker and his master; labour is a fine strong figure loaded with the implements of his toil, with no feeling of subjection in his manly face; on the other hand, the miser creeping behind him, clutching the money bags, represents that greed who, as mammon, is seen sitting on his throne of death. "mammon" is, however, the greatest of the three, containing in itself the ideas and forms of the other two. it is a terrible picture of the god to whom many bow the knee--"dedicated to his worshippers." his leaden face shows a consciousness of power, but not happiness arising from power; his dull eyes see nothing, though his mind's eye sees one thing clearly--the money bags on his lap. the two frail creatures of youth and maiden, "types of humanity" as watts said, are crushed by his heavy limbs, while behind a fire burns continuously, perhaps also within his massive breast. _portraits_.--in portraiture, as in other forms of art, watts had distinct and peculiar views. he gradually came to the opinion, which he adopted as his first rule in portraiture, that it was his duty, not merely to copy the external features of the sitter, but to give what might be called an intellectual copy. he declared it to be possible and necessary for the sitter and painter to attain a unity of feeling and a sympathy, by which he (the painter) was inspired. watts' earlier portraits, while being far from characterless, are not instances of the application of this principle. there is in them a slight tendency to eighteenth-century ideal portraiture, which so often took the sitter (and the observer too) back to times and attitudes, backgrounds and thunderstorms, that never were and never will be. watts, however, was slightly influenced by the pre-raphaelite school. he might, had he wished, have been their portrait painter--and indeed, the picture of the comely mrs. hughes, a kind, motherly creature, with a background of distant fields, minutely painted, is quite on the lines of pre-raphaelite realism. [illustration: plate vi.--love triumphant (at the tate gallery) time and death having travelled together through the ages, have run their course and are at length overthrown. love alone arises on immortal wings, triumphantly, with outspread arms to the eternal skies. given to the nation in .] somewhat of the same character is the portrait of mrs. nassau senior, who, with one knee on a sofa, is shown tending flowers, her rippling golden hair falling over her shoulders. a full-length portrait of miss mary kirkpatrick brunton, dated , also belongs to the old style. watts had a passion for human loveliness, and in his day some of the great beauties sat to him. the "jersey lily" (mrs. langtry) with her simple headdress and downcast eye, appeared at the academy of . "miss rachel gurney" is a wonderful portrait of a flaming soul imprisoned in a graceful form and graceless dress. miss gurney is shown standing, turning slightly to the right with the head again turned over the right shoulder, while the whole effect of energy seems to be concentrated in the flashing eyes. watts was able to interpret equally well personalities of a very different character, and perhaps the canvas representing miss edith villiers is one of the most successful of his spiritual portraits. miss dorothy dene, whose complexion watts was one of the first to transfer to canvas, miss mary anderson, and miss dorothy maccallum, were all triumphantly depicted. he will be known, however, as the citizen portrait-painter of the nineteenth century, who preserved for us not merely the form, but the spirit of some of the greatest men of his day. lord tennyson sat three times. in the poet was shown in the prime of life, his hair and beard ruffled, his look determined. in we had another canvas--"the moonlight portrait"; the face is that of merlin, meditative, thoughtful. as you look at it the features stand out with great clearness, the distance of the laurels behind his head can be estimated almost precisely, while seen through them is the gleam of the moon upon the distant water. the portrait, in scholastic robes, with grizzled beard, and hair diminished, is tennyson the mystic, and reminds us of his "ancient sage"-- "... for more than once when i sat all alone, revolving in myself the word that is the symbol of myself, the mortal limit of the self was loosed and passed into the nameless, as a cloud melts into heaven." the portrait of john l. motley, the american minister to england in , and author of "the rise of the dutch republic," is one of the most successful paintings of handsome men; watts here depicts perfectly the "spiritual body" of strength, purity, and appeal; the eyes are deepest blue, and the hair the richest brown. in this case the artist has, as he was so prone, fallen into symbolism even in portraiture, for we can trace in the background a faint picture of an old-time fighting ship. another classic portrait, so different to that by whistler, is of thomas carlyle. the sage of chelsea sits ruffled and untidy, with his hands resting on the head of a stick, and his features full of power. he seems protesting against the few hours' idleness, and anxious to get back to the strenuous life. the sitter was good enough to say that the portrait was of "a mad labourer"--not an unfair criticism of a very good portrait. _the biblical paintings_ are, as before said, in partial fulfilment of the frustrated scheme of "cosmos." "eve repentant," in an attitude so typical of grief, is perhaps the most beautiful; it is one of a trilogy, the others being "she shall be called woman," and "eve tempted." it is singular that in these three canvases the painter avoids the attempt to draw the face of the mother of the race. in the first the face is upturned, covered in shadow; in the second it is hid from view by the leaves of the forbidden tree, while in the third eve turns her back and hides her weeping face with her arms. this habit of watts to obscure the face is observed in "the shuddering angel," judgment in "time, death, and judgment," in "love and death," "sic transit," "great possessions," and some others. often indeed a picture speaks as much of what is not seen as of what is seen. incidents from the gospels are represented by "the prodigal," where the outcast is seen crouching on the ground, his face fixed on vacuity, almost in the act of coming to himself. "for he had great possessions," is, however, the greatest and simplest of all. there the young man who went away sorrowful with bowed head, scarcely knowing what he has lost, is used by watts as one of his most powerful criticisms of modern life. although the incident is a definite isolated one, yet the costume, figure, chain of office, and jewelled fingers, clutching and releasing, are of no time or land in particular. it is not a little remarkable that watts, who had breathed so deeply the air of italy, and had almost lived in company of titian and raphael, should never have attempted the figure of christ or his apostles. this was, however, not without reason. his pictures were not only "for all time," but apart from time altogether. his only specific reference to christianity is his beautiful canvas, "the spirit of christianity," in which he rebuked the churches for their dissensions. a parental figure floats upon a cloud while four children nestle at her feet. the earth below is shrouded in darkness and gloom, despite the steeple tower raising its head above a distant village. the rebuke was immediately stimulated by the refusal of a certain church to employ watts when the officials found he was not of their faith. in this picture watts approached nearest to the italian madonnas both in form and colour. _the mythical paintings_ are, in the main, earlier than the biblical series, but even here the same note of teaching is struck, and our human sympathies are drawn out towards the figure depicted. in one, "echo" comes to find her lover transformed into a flower; in another, "psyche," through disobedience, has lost her love. she gazes regretfully at a feather fallen from cupid's wing; it is a pink feather, such as might be taken from the plumage of the little lord of love who vainly opposes death in his approach to the beloved one. in "psyche," watts has made the pale body expressive of abject loss; there is no physical effort, except in the well-expanded feet, and no other thought but lost love. the legend of "diana and endymion" was painted three times--"good, better, best." a shepherd loved the moon, who in his sleep descends from heaven to embrace him. the canvas of must be regarded as the final success--the sleeping figure is more asleep, his vision more dreamlike and diaphanous. "orpheus and eurydice" (painted three times) is perhaps the greatest of his classical pictures. it is one of the few compositions that were considered by its author as "finished." here again the lover through disobedience loses his love; the falling figure of eurydice is one of the most beautiful and realistic of all the series of watts' nudes, and the agony of loss, the energy of struggle, are magnificently drawn in the figure of orpheus. looking at the canvas, one recalls the lines of the old platonic poet-philosopher boëthius: "at length the shadowy king, his sorrows pitying, 'he hath prevailed!' cried; 'we give him back his bride! to him she shall belong, as guerdon of his song. one sole condition yet upon the boon is set; let him not turn his eyes to view his hard-won prize, till they securely pass the gates of hell.' alas! what law can lovers move? a higher law is love! for orpheus--woe is me!-- on his eurydice-- day's threshold all but won-- looked, lost, and was undone!" in "the minotaur," that terrible creature, half man, half bull, crushing with his hideous claw the body of a bird, stands ever waiting to consume by his cruel lust the convoy of beauteous forms coming unseen and unwilling over the sea to him. it is an old myth, but watts intended it for a modern message. the picture was painted by him in the heat of indignation in three hours. a small but very important group of paintings, which i call "the pessimistic series," begins with "life's illusions," painted in . "it is," says watts, "an allegorical design typifying the march of human life." fair visions of beauty, the abstract embodiments of divers forms of hope and ambition, hover high in the air above the gulf which stands as the goal of all men's lives. at their feet lie the shattered symbols of human greatness and power, and upon the narrow space of earth that overhangs the deep abyss are figured the brighter forms of illusions that endure through every changing fashion of the world. a knight in armour pricks on his horse in quick pursuit of the rainbow-tinted bubble of glory; on his right are two lovers; on his left an aged student still pores over his work by the last rays of the dying sun; while in the shadow of the group may be seen the form of a little child chasing a butterfly. this picture has the merit, along with "fata morgana," of combining the teaching element with one of the finest representations of woman's form that came from watts' brush. he was one of those who vigorously defended the painting of the nude. these are some of his words: "one of the great missions of art--the greatest indeed--is to serve the same grand and noble end as poetry by holding in check that natural and ever-increasing tendency to hypocrisy which is consequent upon and constantly nurtured by civilisation. my aim is now, and will be to the end, not so much to paint pictures which are delightful to the eye, but pictures which will go to the intelligence and the imagination, and kindle there what is good and noble, and which will appeal to the heart. and in doing this i am forced to paint the nude." "fata morgana" is a picture of fortune or opportunity pursued and lost by an ardent horseman. it was painted twice, first in the italian style, and again in what must be called watts' own style--much the finer effort. this picture shows us what, in the artist's view, man in this mortal life desires, pursues, and mostly loses. fortune has a lock of hair on her forehead by which alone she may be captured, and as she glides mockingly along, she leads her pursuers across rock, stream, dale, desert, and meadow typical of life. the pursuit of the elusive is a favourite theme with watts, and is set forth by the picture "mischief." here a fine young man is battling for his liberty against an airy spirit representing folly or mischief. humanity bends his neck beneath the enchanter's yoke--a wreath of flowers thrown round his neck--and is led an unwilling captive; as he follows the roses turn to briars about his muscular limbs, and at every step the tangle becomes denser, while one by one the arrows drop from his hand. the thought of "life's illusions" and "fata morgana" is again set forth in "sic transit gloria mundi," where we see the body of a king whose crown, and all that represents to him the glory of the world, is left at death. it is not, however, in watts' conception essential glory that passes away, but the _glory of the world_. upon the dark curtain that hangs behind the shrouded figure are words that represent his final wisdom, "what i spent, i had; what i saved, i lost; what i gave, i have." [illustration: plate vii.--the good samaritan (at the manchester art gallery) this is an early picture, painted in the year and presented to the city of manchester by the artist in honour of the prison philanthropist, a native of that city.] these i call "pessimistic paintings," because they represent the true discovery ever waiting to be made by man, that the sum total of all that can be gained in man's external life--wealth, fame, strength, and power--that these inevitably pass from him. to know this, to see it clearly, to accept it, is the happiness of the pessimist, who thenceforward fixes his hope and bends his energies to the realisation of other and higher goods. in this he becomes an optimist, for this is the pursuit, as watts never ceases to teach, in which man can and does attain his goal. thus our prophet-painter, having seen and known and felt all this, having tested it in the personal and intimate life, brings to a triumphant close his great series, where positive rather than negative teaching is given. _the great realities_.--we have seen in "chaos" primordial matter; we have now from watts' brush the origin of things on the metaphysical side. in "the all-pervading," there sits the spirit of the universe, holding in her lap the globe of the systems, the representation of the last conclusions of philosophy. this mysterious picture is very low in tone, conforming to watts' rule to make the colouring suit the subject. here there is nothing hard or defined; the spirit of the universe is merely suggested or hinted at, his great wings enclose all. the elliptical form of this composition is seen again in "death crowning innocence" and "the dweller in the innermost," and the same expressive indefiniteness and lowness of the colour tones. in the latter effort we have the figure of conscience, winged, dumb-faced and pensive, seated within a glow of light. on her forehead is the shining star, and in her lap the arrows which pierce through all disguises, and a trumpet that proclaims peace to the world. here, therefore, is the greatest reality from the psychological side. we have also cosmical paintings representing "evolution," "progress," the "slumber of the ages," and "destiny," all of them asking and answering; not indeed finally and dogmatically, but as watts desired that his pictures should do, stimulating in the observer both the asking and the answering faculty. in "faith" we have a companion to "hope." wearied and saddened by persecutions, she washes her blood-stained feet in a running stream, and recognising the influence of love in all the beauty of nature, she feels that the sword is not the best argument, and takes it off. the colouring of this picture is rich and forcible, the maroon robe of the figure being one of watts' favourite attempts. a satisfying picture of a little child emerging from the latest wave on the shore of humanity's ocean, asks the question, _whence and whither_. i reserve for "hope" the final word (see plate iii.). if, as i said, the optimism which is spiritual and ideal springs from the pessimism which is material and actual, so too does hope grow from the bosom of despair. this the picture shows. crouching on the sphere of the world sits the blindfold figure of a woman, bending her ear to catch the music of one only string preserved on her lyre. when everything has failed, there is hope; and hope looks, in watts' teaching, for that which cannot fail, but which is ever triumphant, namely, love. _the love series_.--according to watts, love steers the boat of humanity, who is seen in one of his canvases tossed about and almost shipwrecked. love does not do this easily, but he does it. love, as a winged youth, also guides life, a fragile maiden, up the rocky steep--life, that would else fail and fall. violets spring where love has trod, and as they ascend to the mountain top the air becomes more golden. this picture, "love and life" (see plate v.) was painted four times. "love and death," painted three times, represents the irresistible figure of death tenderly, yet firmly, entering a door where we know lies the beloved one. this is an eternal theme, suggested, i believe, by a temporal incident--the death of a young member of the prinsep family. love vainly pushes back the imperious figure; the protecting flowers are trodden down and the dove mourns; and with it all we feel that though love fears death, yet death respects love. just as "love and death" are companion pictures and tell complementary truths, so "time, death, and judgment" is related to "love triumphant" (see plate vi.). in the one we see time, represented by a mighty youth half clad in a red cloak, striding along with great vigour. his companion, whom he holds by the hand, is death, the sad mother with weary, downcast eye and outspread lap ready to receive her load; but with neither of them is the final word, for judgment, poised in the clouds, wields his fiery sword of eternal law and holds the balance before his hidden face. in "love triumphant" love takes the place of, and transcends judgment. time and death having travelled together through the ages, are in the end overthrown, and love alone rises on immortal wings. thus the stoical painter reaches his greatest height--tells his best truth. _the death series_.--as may be expected, death has no terrors for the fundamental watts. never once does death look with hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, or grasp with bony fingers at the living. in "death crowning innocence," as a mother she puts her halo on the infant innocence, whom she claims. death holds a court to which all must go--priest, soldier, king, cripple, beautiful woman, and young child. the lion must die, the civilisation be overthrown, wealth, fame, and pride must be let go--so watts shows in his "court of death"; all come to the end of the book marked _finis_. death is calm and majestic, with angel wings, and overhead are the figures of silence and mystery, guarding, but partially revealing what is beyond the veil--sunrise and the star of hope; while even in the lap of death nestles a new-born babe--the soul passing into new realms through the gates of death. again, death is _the messenger_ who comes, not to terrify, but as an ambassador to call the soul away from this alien land, quietly touching the waiting soul with the finger-tips. in the beautiful "paolo and francesca" the lovers are seen as dante told of them; wafted along by the infernal wind; of them he spoke: "... bard! willingly i would address these two together coming, which seem so light before the wind." francesca's reply to dante is of love and death: "love, that in gentle heart is quickly learnt, entangled him by that fair form...; love, that denial takes from none beloved, caught me with pleasing him so passing well, that as thou seest, he yet deserts me not. love brought us to one death." watts has admirably caught the sweetness and sorrow of this situation in his beautiful picture, which, again, is one of the very few he considered finally "finished." it is almost a monochrome of blues and greys. in "time and oblivion," one of the earliest of the symbolical paintings, time is again the stalwart man of imperishable youth, while oblivion, another form of death, spreads her mantle of darkness over all, claiming all. _landscapes_.--although watts will ever be remembered for his allegorical, biblical, and portrait painting, yet he was by no means deficient in landscape art. indeed, he carried into that branch of work his peculiar personality. not only do his landscapes depict beautiful scenery in a fitting manner, joining atmosphere, sunshine, and colour, but they convey in an extraordinary degree the mood of nature and of man. "the sphinx by night" has an air of mystery about it that immediately impresses the spectator, and tells him something that cannot be communicated by words. the italian and the asiatic canvases by watts, "florence," "fiesole," "correna," "cos," and "asia minor," all induce the feeling of repose and happiness, and the message that nature sends to her devotees comes sweetly and calmly in "the rainbow," where we look over an extensive valley from high ground, while heavy clouds and the rainbow adorn the upper air. in "the cumulus" we "see skyward great cloud masses rolling, silently swelling and mixing." they recall perhaps the memories of the child, to whom the mountains of the air are a perpetual wonder. when in savoy in , watts painted the alps, again with a cloudy sky and a rocky foreground. in this the quietude of the scene penetrates the beholder. english landscape, to which all true hearts return, was successfully depicted, both in form and spirit, by watts' "landscape with hayricks" (like the brighton downs), a quiet view from the summit of a hillside, on which are seen some hayricks. but perhaps the highest of them all is that very peaceful idyll named "all the air a solemn stillness holds." it was a view from the garden of little holland house. the time is sunset; a man and two horses are wending their way home. there are farm buildings on the left, and a thick wood in the background. in this one we feel how thoroughly watts uses all forms as expressions of his invisible moods. in purely imaginative landscape, however, watts struck his highest note. his "deluge" canvases are wonderful attempts; in "the dove that returned in the evening," the bird is the only creature seen flying across the dreary waste of waters, placid but for three long low waves. on the horizon the artist has dimly suggested the ark of noah. "mount ararat" is especially worthy of mention among the landscapes. [illustration: plate viii.--prayer (at the manchester art gallery) this is one of the most simple and beautiful of watts' early works. the young woman is kneeling at the table, book in hand, her mind absorbed in thoughts of reverence. painted in .] before watts entered upon his series of great imaginative paintings he had used realism for didactic purposes. in those days his work was less rugged than in later times, and had a delicateness and refinement which is seen to perfection in some of his earlier portraits. a few of these efforts may be mentioned. "study" is the bust of a girl, with long red hair, looking upwards; it represents a beautiful combination of spirituality and human affection. "the rain it raineth every day" is a picture of ennui and utter weariness, beautifully and sympathetically expressed. the colouring is very brave. in "prayer" (see plate viii.) the simplicity of the treatment may lead any one to pass it by as something slight and conventional, but it is perhaps one of the greatest of this type where simplicity and spirituality are combined. in "choosing" watts approached very near to the summit of simplicity and charm. a golden-haired girl is choosing a camellia blossom; but where all are so beautiful it is difficult for her to decide. great interest in this picture lies in the fact that it was painted in , and was drawn from watts' young bride miss ellen terry. one is almost tempted to find in this picture the germ of allegory which grew to such heights in the artist's later efforts. _the warrior series_.--watts, like ruskin and many other of the nineteenth-century philosophic artists, idealised warfare. his warriors are not clad in khaki; they do not crouch behind muddy earthworks. they are of the days before the shrapnel shell and maxim gun; they wear bright steel armour, wield the sword and lance, and by preference they ride on horseback. indeed, they are of no time or country, unless of the house of arthur and the land of camelot. we are thus able to understand the characteristic of watts' warrior pictures. the first is "caractacus," the british chief; though no christian, he is the earliest of watts' heroes. the second is the beautiful "sir galahad," whose strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure. we see a knight standing bare-headed at the side of his white horse, gazing with rapt eyes on the vision of the holy grail, which in the gloom and solitude of the forest has suddenly dawned on his sight. the features of young arthur prinsep, with his bushy hair, who later became a general in the british army, can be detected in this wonderful and simple picture. its composition is like a stained-glass window. it is of all watts' perhaps the nearest to mysticism, and at the same time it is an appeal to the young to be like sir galahad. the original is in eton college chapel. in followed "the eve of peace," in which we see a warrior of middle age, much like watts himself at that time, who has lost the passion for warfare, sheathing his sword, glad to have it all over. the peacock feather that is strewn on the floor of "the court of death," and lies by the bier in "sic transit," is fastened to the warrior's casque. "aspiration," also taken from young prinsep ( ), is a picture of a young man in the dawn of life's battle, who, wishing to be a standard-bearer, looks out across the plain. he sees into the great possibilities of human life, and the ardent spirit of life is sobered by the burden of responsibilities. "watchman, what of the night?" is another wonderful composition, representing a figure with long hair, clad in armour, looking out into the darkness of the night, with his hand grasping the hilt of the sword. the colour, low in tone, and the whole composition, indicate doubt and yet faith. ellen terry was the model for this painting. "the condottiere" represents the fighting spirit of the middle ages. this soldier is, like the others, clad in armour, and is not likely to have a vision of the holy grail. his features represent the determination and vigour which were required of him in those ferocious days. "the red cross knight accompanying una" is a charming picture, representing an incident in spenser's "faëry queen," but the palm must be given to "the happy warrior," who is depicted at the moment of death, his head falling back, and his helmet unloosed, catching a glimpse of some angelic face, who speaks to him in terms of comfort and of peace. this picture, of all the others, shows how watts has insisted on carrying to the very highest point of idealism the terrible activities of warfare: "this, the happy warrior, this is he, that every man in arms should wish to be." he sent a copy, the original of which is in the munich gallery, to lord dufferin, whose son was killed in the south african war, and he declares that many bereaved mothers have thanked him for the inspiration and comfort it has brought to them. watts' pictures are widely distributed; a roomful may be seen at the tate gallery, millbank, s.w. nearly all the portraits of public men are at the national portrait gallery, trafalgar square, london. there is a portrait of thomas carlyle in the south kensington museum, three or four pictures at the manchester corporation gallery, and one at the leicester art gallery. there are also several of watts' best pictures in a gallery attached to his country house at compton in surrey; while his fresco "justice" can be seen at the benchers' hall, lincoln's inn. watts was conscious of the benefit he had received from the great men who had preceded him, and in his best moments so essentially humble, that in his last will and testament, and the letters of gift, he rises to the great height of artistic patriotism which always appeared to him in the light of a supreme duty. the former document has the following phrases: "i bequeath all my studies and works to any provincial gallery or galleries in great britain or ireland, which my executors shall in their discretion select, and to be distributed between such galleries." this will is dated november , , and relates to such works as had not already been disposed of. his great gift to the nation was made in , accompanied by a characteristic letter in which he says: "you can have the pictures any time after next sunday. i have never regarded them as mine, but never expected they would be placed anywhere until after my death, and only see now my presumption and their defects and shrink from the consequences of my temerity! i should certainly like to have them placed together, but of course can make no conditions. one or two are away, and i am a little uncertain about the sending of some others; if you could spare a moment i should like to consult you." a few weeks later, following a letter from the keeper of the national gallery, he writes as follows: "i beg to thank you and through you the trustees and director of the national gallery for the flattering intention of placing the tablet you speak of, but while returning grateful thanks for the intention of doing me this honour i should like it to be felt that i have in no way desired anything but the recognition that my object in work, and the offering of it, has only been the hope of spending my time and exercising my experience in a worthy manner, leaving to time further judgment. most certainly i desire that my pictures should be seen to advantage, and have a good effect as an encouragement to artists of stronger fibre and greater vitality, to pursue if only occasionally a similar direction and object." at the end of a long life by no means devoid of mistakes and disappointments, it would seem as though watts attained to his desires. the man has passed away, while the witness of his aspirations remains. none this ebook was produced by charles aldarondo and the distributed proofreaders team. the notebooks of leonardo da vinci volume translated by jean paul richter preface. a singular fatality has ruled the destiny of nearly all the most famous of leonardo da vinci's works. two of the three most important were never completed, obstacles having arisen during his life-time, which obliged him to leave them unfinished; namely the sforza monument and the wall-painting of the battle of anghiari, while the third--the picture of the last supper at milan--has suffered irremediable injury from decay and the repeated restorations to which it was recklessly subjected during the xviith and xviiith centuries. nevertheless, no other picture of the renaissance has become so wellknown and popular through copies of every description. vasari says, and rightly, in his life of leonardo, "that he laboured much more by his word than in fact or by deed", and the biographer evidently had in his mind the numerous works in manuscript which have been preserved to this day. to us, now, it seems almost inexplicable that these valuable and interesting original texts should have remained so long unpublished, and indeed forgotten. it is certain that during the xvith and xviith centuries their exceptional value was highly appreciated. this is proved not merely by the prices which they commanded, but also by the exceptional interest which has been attached to the change of ownership of merely a few pages of manuscript. that, notwithstanding this eagerness to possess the manuscripts, their contents remained a mystery, can only be accounted for by the many and great difficulties attending the task of deciphering them. the handwriting is so peculiar that it requires considerable practice to read even a few detached phrases, much more to solve with any certainty the numerous difficulties of alternative readings, and to master the sense as a connected whole. vasari observes with reference to leonardos writing: "he wrote backwards, in rude characters, and with the left hand, so that any one who is not practised in reading them, cannot understand them". the aid of a mirror in reading reversed handwriting appears to me available only for a first experimental reading. speaking from my own experience, the persistent use of it is too fatiguing and inconvenient to be practically advisable, considering the enormous mass of manuscripts to be deciphered. and as, after all, leonardo's handwriting runs backwards just as all oriental character runs backwards--that is to say from right to left--the difficulty of reading direct from the writing is not insuperable. this obvious peculiarity in the writing is not, however, by any means the only obstacle in the way of mastering the text. leonardo made use of an orthography peculiar to himself; he had a fashion of amalgamating several short words into one long one, or, again, he would quite arbitrarily divide a long word into two separate halves; added to this there is no punctuation whatever to regulate the division and construction of the sentences, nor are there any accents--and the reader may imagine that such difficulties were almost sufficient to make the task seem a desperate one to a beginner. it is therefore not surprising that the good intentions of some of leonardo s most reverent admirers should have failed. leonardos literary labours in various departments both of art and of science were those essentially of an enquirer, hence the analytical method is that which he employs in arguing out his investigations and dissertations. the vast structure of his scientific theories is consequently built up of numerous separate researches, and it is much to be lamented that he should never have collated and arranged them. his love for detailed research--as it seems to me--was the reason that in almost all the manuscripts, the different paragraphs appear to us to be in utter confusion; on one and the same page, observations on the most dissimilar subjects follow each other without any connection. a page, for instance, will begin with some principles of astronomy, or the motion of the earth; then come the laws of sound, and finally some precepts as to colour. another page will begin with his investigations on the structure of the intestines, and end with philosophical remarks as to the relations of poetry to painting; and so forth. leonardo himself lamented this confusion, and for that reason i do not think that the publication of the texts in the order in which they occur in the originals would at all fulfil his intentions. no reader could find his way through such a labyrinth; leonardo himself could not have done it. added to this, more than half of the five thousand manuscript pages which now remain to us, are written on loose leaves, and at present arranged in a manner which has no justification beyond the fancy of the collector who first brought them together to make volumes of more or less extent. nay, even in the volumes, the pages of which were numbered by leonardo himself, their order, so far as the connection of the texts was concerned, was obviously a matter of indifference to him. the only point he seems to have kept in view, when first writing down his notes, was that each observation should be complete to the end on the page on which it was begun. the exceptions to this rule are extremely few, and it is certainly noteworthy that we find in such cases, in bound volumes with his numbered pages, the written observations: "turn over", "this is the continuation of the previous page", and the like. is not this sufficient to prove that it was only in quite exceptional cases that the writer intended the consecutive pages to remain connected, when he should, at last, carry out the often planned arrangement of his writings? what this final arrangement was to be, leonardo has in most cases indicated with considerable completeness. in other cases this authoritative clue is wanting, but the difficulties arising from this are not insuperable; for, as the subject of the separate paragraphs is always distinct and well defined in itself, it is quite possible to construct a well-planned whole, out of the scattered materials of his scientific system, and i may venture to state that i have devoted especial care and thought to the due execution of this responsible task. the beginning of leonardo's literary labours dates from about his thirty-seventh year, and he seems to have carried them on without any serious interruption till his death. thus the manuscripts that remain represent a period of about thirty years. within this space of time his handwriting altered so little that it is impossible to judge from it of the date of any particular text. the exact dates, indeed, can only be assigned to certain note-books in which the year is incidentally indicated, and in which the order of the leaves has not been altered since leonardo used them. the assistance these afford for a chronological arrangement of the manuscripts is generally self evident. by this clue i have assigned to the original manuscripts now scattered through england, italy and france, the order of their production, as in many matters of detail it is highly important to be able to verify the time and place at which certain observations were made and registered. for this purpose the bibliography of the manuscripts given at the end of vol. ii, may be regarded as an index, not far short of complete, of all leonardo s literary works now extant. the consecutive numbers (from to ) at the head of each passage in this work, indicate their logical sequence with reference to the subjects; while the letters and figures to the left of each paragraph refer to the original manuscript and number of the page, on which that particular passage is to be found. thus the reader, by referring to the list of manuscripts at the beginning of volume i, and to the bibliography at the end of volume ii, can, in every instance, easily ascertain, not merely the period to which the passage belongs, but also exactly where it stood in the original document. thus, too, by following the sequence of the numbers in the bibliographical index, the reader may reconstruct the original order of the manuscripts and recompose the various texts to be found on the original sheets--so much of it, that is to say, as by its subject-matter came within the scope of this work. it may, however, be here observed that leonardo s manuscripts contain, besides the passages here printed, a great number of notes and dissertations on mechanics, physics, and some other subjects, many of which could only be satisfactorily dealt with by specialists. i have given as complete a review of these writings as seemed necessary in the bibliographical notes. in , raphael trichet dufresne, of paris, published a selection from leonardo's writings on painting, and this treatise became so popular that it has since been reprinted about two-and-twenty times, and in six different languages. but none of these editions were derived from the original texts, which were supposed to have been lost, but from early copies, in which leonardo's text had been more or less mutilated, and which were all fragmentary. the oldest and on the whole the best copy of leonardo's essays and precepts on painting is in the vatican library; this has been twice printed, first by manzi, in , and secondly by ludwig, in . still, this ancient copy, and the published editions of it, contain much for which it would be rash to hold leonardo responsible, and some portions--such as the very important rules for the proportions of the human figure--are wholly wanting; on the other hand they contain passages which, if they are genuine, cannot now be verified from any original manuscript extant. these copies, at any rate neither give us the original order of the texts, as written by leonardo, nor do they afford any substitute, by connecting them on a rational scheme; indeed, in their chaotic confusion they are anything rather than satisfactory reading. the fault, no doubt, rests with the compiler of the vatican copy, which would seem to be the source whence all the published and extensively known texts were derived; for, instead of arranging the passages himself, he was satisfied with recording a suggestion for a final arrangement of them into eight distinct parts, without attempting to carry out his scheme. under the mistaken idea that this plan of distribution might be that, not of the compiler, but of leonardo himself, the various editors, down to the present day, have very injudiciously continued to adopt this order--or rather disorder. i, like other enquirers, had given up the original manuscript of the trattato della pittura for lost, till, in the beginning of , i was enabled, by the liberality of lord ashburnham, to inspect his manuscripts, and was so happy as to discover among them the original text of the best-known portion of the trattato in his magnificent library at ashburnham place. though this discovery was of a fragment only--but a considerable fragment--inciting me to further search, it gave the key to the mystery which had so long enveloped the first origin of all the known copies of the trattato. the extensive researches i was subsequently enabled to prosecute, and the results of which are combined in this work, were only rendered possible by the unrestricted permission granted me to investigate all the manuscripts by leonardo dispersed throughout europe, and to reproduce the highly important original sketches they contain, by the process of "photogravure". her majesty the queen graciously accorded me special permission to copy for publication the manuscripts at the royal library at windsor. the commission centrale administrative de l'institut de france, paris, gave me, in the most liberal manner, in answer to an application from sir frederic leighton, p. r. a., corresponding member of the institut, free permission to work for several months in their private collection at deciphering the manuscripts preserved there. the same favour which lord ashburnham had already granted me was extended to me by the earl of leicester, the marchese trivulsi, and the curators of the ambrosian library at milan, by the conte manzoni at rome and by other private owners of manuscripts of leonardo's; as also by the directors of the louvre at paris; the accademia at venice; the uffizi at florence; the royal library at turin; and the british museum, and the south kensington museum. i am also greatly indebted to the librarians of these various collections for much assistance in my labours; and more particularly to monsieur louis lalanne, of the institut de france, the abbate ceriani, of the ambrosian library, mr. maude thompson, keeper of manuscripts at the british museum, mr. holmes, the queens librarian at windsor, the revd vere bayne, librarian of christ church college at oxford, and the revd a. napier, librarian to the earl of leicester at holkham hall. in correcting the italian text for the press, i have had the advantage of valuable advice from the commendatore giov. morelli, senatore del regno, and from signor gustavo frizzoni, of milan. the translation, under many difficulties, of the italian text into english, is mainly due to mrs. r. c. bell; while the rendering of several of the most puzzling and important passages, particularly in the second half of vol. i, i owe to the indefatigable interest taken in this work by mr. e. j. poynter r. a. finally i must express my thanks to mr. alfred marks, of long ditton, who has most kindly assisted me throughout in the revision of the proof sheets. the notes and dissertations on the texts on architecture in vol. ii i owe to my friend baron henri de geymuller, of paris. i may further mention with regard to the illustrations, that the negatives for the production of the "photo-gravures" by monsieur dujardin of paris were all taken direct from the originals. it is scarcely necessary to add that most of the drawings here reproduced in facsimile have never been published before. as i am now, on the termination of a work of several years' duration, in a position to review the general tenour of leonardos writings, i may perhaps be permitted to add a word as to my own estimate of the value of their contents. i have already shown that it is due to nothing but a fortuitous succession of unfortunate circumstances, that we should not, long since, have known leonardo, not merely as a painter, but as an author, a philosopher, and a naturalist. there can be no doubt that in more than one department his principles and discoveries were infinitely more in accord with the teachings of modern science, than with the views of his contemporaries. for this reason his extraordinary gifts and merits are far more likely to be appreciated in our own time than they could have been during the preceding centuries. he has been unjustly accused of having squandered his powers, by beginning a variety of studies and then, having hardly begun, throwing them aside. the truth is that the labours of three centuries have hardly sufficed for the elucidation of some of the problems which occupied his mighty mind. alexander von humboldt has borne witness that "he was the first to start on the road towards the point where all the impressions of our senses converge in the idea of the unity of nature" nay, yet more may be said. the very words which are inscribed on the monument of alexander von humboldt himself, at berlin, are perhaps the most appropriate in which we can sum up our estimate of leonardo's genius: "majestati naturae par ingenium." london, april . f. p. r. contents of volume i. prolegomena and general introduction to the book on painting clavis sigillorum and index of manuscripts.--the author's intention to publish his mss. ( ).--the preparation of the mss. for publication ( ).--admonition to readers ( ).--the disorder in the mss. ( ).--suggestions for the arrangement of mss. treating of particular subjects ( -- ).--general introductions to the book on painting ( -- ).--the plan of the book on painting ( -- ).--the use of the book on painting ( ).--necessity of theoretical knowledge ( , ).--the function of the eye ( -- ).--variability of the eye ( ).--focus of sight ( ).--differences of perception by one eye and by both eyes ( -- ).--the comparative size of the image depends on the amount of light ( -- ). ii. linear perspective general remarks on perspective ( -- ).--the elements of perspective:--of the point ( -- ).--of the line ( -- ).--the nature of the outline ( ).--definition of perspective ( ).--the perception of the object depends on the direction of the eye ( ).--experimental proof of the existence of the pyramid of sight ( -- ).--the relations of the distance point to the vanishing point ( -- ).--how to measure the pyramid of vision ( ).--the production of the pyramid of vision ( -- ).--proof by experiment ( -- ).--general conclusions ( ).--that the contrary is impossible ( ).--a parallel case ( ).--the function of the eye, as explained by the camera obscura ( -- ).--the practice of perspective ( -- ).--refraction of the rays falling upon the eye ( -- ).--the inversion of the images ( ).--the intersection of the rays ( -- ).--demonstration of perspective by means of a vertical glass plane ( -- .)--the angle of sight varies with the distance ( -- ).--opposite pyramids in juxtaposition ( ).--on simple and complex perspective ( ).--the proper distance of objects from the eye ( -- ).--the relative size of objects with regard to their distance from the eye ( -- ).--the apparent size of objects denned by calculation ( -- ).--on natural perspective ( -- ). iii. six books on light and shade general introduction.--prolegomena ( ).--scheme of the books on light and shade ( ).--different principles and plans of treatment ( -- ).--different sorts of light ( -- ).--definition of the nature of shadows ( -- ).--of the various kinds of shadows ( -- ).--of the various kinds of light ( -- ).--general remarks ( -- ).--first book on light and shade.--on the nature of light ( -- ).--the difference between light and lustre ( -- ).--the relations of luminous to illuminated bodies ( ). --experiments on the relation of light and shadow within a room ( -- ).--light and shadow with regard to the position of the eye ( -- ).--the law of the incidence of light ( -- ).--second book on light and shade.--gradations of strength in the shadows ( -- ).--on the intensity of shadows as dependent on the distance from the light ( -- ).--on the proportion of light and shadow ( -- ).--third book on light and shade.--definition of derived shadow ( -- ).--different sorts of derived shadows ( -- ).--on the relation of derived and primary shadow ( -- ).--on the shape of derived shadows ( -- ).--on the relative intensity of derived shadows ( -- ).--shadow as produced by two lights of different size ( -- ).--the effect of light at different distances ( ).--further complications in the derived shadows ( -- ).--fourth book on light and shade.--on the shape of cast shadows ( -- ).--on the outlines of cast shadows ( -- ).--on the relative size of cast shadows ( . ).--effects on cast shadows by the tone of the back ground ( ).--a disputed proposition ( ).--on the relative depth of cast shadows ( -- ).--fifth book on light and shade.--principles of reflection ( . ).--on reverberation ( ).--reflection on water ( . ).--experiments with the mirror ( -- ).--appendix:--on shadows in movement ( -- ).--sixth book on light and shade.--the effect of rays passing through holes ( . ).--on gradation of shadows ( . ).--on relative proportion of light and shadows ( -- ). iv. perspective of disappearance definition ( . ).--an illustration by experiment ( ).--a guiding rule ( ).---an experiment ( ).--on indistinctness at short distances ( -- ).--on indistinctness at great distances ( -- ).--the importance of light and shade in the prospettiva de' perdimenti ( -- ).--the effect of light or dark backgrounds on the apparent size of objects ( -- ).--propositions on prospettiva de' perdimenti from ms. c. ( -- ). v. theory of colours the reciprocal effects of colours on objects placed opposite each other ( -- ).--combination of different colours in cast shadows ( ).--the effect of colours in the camera obscura ( . ).--on the colours of derived shadows ( . ).--on the nature of colours ( . ).--on gradations in the depth of colours ( . ).--on the reflection of colours ( -- ).--on the use of dark and light colours in painting ( -- ).--on the colours of the rainbow ( -- ). vi. perspective of colour and aerial perspective general rules ( -- ).--an exceptional case ( ).--an experiment ( ).--the practice of the prospettiva de' colori ( ).--the rules of aerial perspective ( -- ).--on the relative density of the atmosphere ( -- ).--on the colour of the atmosphere ( -- ). vii. on the proportions and on the movements of the human figure preliminary observations ( . ).--proportions of the head and face ( -- ).--proportions of the head seen in front ( -- ).--proportions of the foot ( -- ).--relative proportions of the hand and foot ( ).--relative proportions of the foot and of the face ( -- ).--proportions of the leg ( -- ).--on the central point of the whole body ( ).--the relative proportions of the torso and of the whole figure ( ).--the relative proportions of the head and of the torso ( ).--the relative proportions of the torso and of the leg ( . ).--the relative proportions of the torso and of the foot ( ).--the proportions of the whole figure ( -- ).--the torso from the front and back ( ).--vitruvius' scheme of proportions ( ).--the arm and head ( ).--proportions of the arm ( -- ).--the movement of the arm ( -- ).--the movement of the torso ( -- ).--the proportions vary at different ages ( -- ).--the movement of the human figure ( -- ).--of walking up and down ( -- ).--on the human body in action ( -- ).--on hair falling down in curls ( ).--on draperies ( -- ). viii. botany for painters, and elements of landscape painting classification of trees ( ).--the relative thickness of the branches to the trunk ( -- ).--the law of proportion in the growth of the branches ( -- ).--the direction of growth ( -- ).--the forms of trees ( -- ).--the insertion of the leaves ( -- ).--light on branches and leaves ( -- ).--the proportions of light and shade in a leaf ( -- ).--of the transparency of leaves ( -- ).--the gradations of shade and colour in leaves ( -- ).--a classification of trees according to their colours ( ).--the proportions of light and shade in trees ( -- ).--the distribution of light and shade with reference to the position of the spectator ( -- ).--the effects of morning light ( -- ).--the effects of midday light ( ).--the appearance of trees in the distance ( -- ).--the cast shadow of trees ( . ).--light and shade on groups of trees ( -- ).--on the treatment of light for landscapes ( -- ).--on the treatment of light for views of towns ( -- ).--the effect of wind on trees ( -- ).--light and shade on clouds ( -- ).--on images reflected in water ( ).--of rainbows and rain ( . ).--of flower seeds ( ). ix. the practice of painting i. moral precepts for the student of painting.--how to ascertain the dispositions for an artistic career ( ).--the course of instruction for an artist ( -- ).--the study of the antique ( . ).--the necessity of anatomical knowledge ( . ).--how to acquire practice ( ).--industry and thoroughness the first conditions ( -- .)--the artist's private life and choice of company ( . ).--the distribution of time for studying ( -- ).--on the productive power of minor artists ( -- ).--a caution against one-sided study ( ).--how to acquire universality ( -- ).--useful games and exercises ( . ).--ii. the artist's studio.--instruments and helps for the application of perspective.--on judging of a picture.--on the size of the studio ( ).--on the construction of windows ( -- ).--on the best light for painting ( -- ).--on various helps in preparing a picture ( -- ).--on the management of works ( . ).--on the limitations of painting ( -- ).--on the choice of a position ( . ).--the apparent size of figures in a picture ( . ).--the right position of the artist, when painting and of the spectator ( -- ).--iii. the practical methods of light and shade and aerial perspective.--gradations of light and shade ( ).--on the choice of light for a picture ( -- ).--the distribution of light and shade ( -- ).--the juxtaposition of light and shade ( . ).--on the lighting of the background ( -- ).--on the lighting of white objects ( ).--the methods of aerial perspective ( -- ).--iv. of portrait and figure painting.--of sketching figures and portraits ( . ).--the position of the head ( ).--of the light on the face ( -- ).--general suggestions for historical pictures ( -- ).--how to represent the differences of age and sex ( . ).--of representing the emotions ( ).--of representing imaginary animals ( ).--the selection of forms ( -- ).--how to pose figures ( ).--of appropriate gestures ( -- ).--v. suggestions for compositions.--of painting battle-pieces ( -- ).--of depicting night-scenes ( ).--of depicting a tempest ( . ).--of representing the deluge ( -- ).--of depicting natural phenomena ( . ).--vi. the artist's materials.--of chalk and paper ( -- ).--on the preparation and use of colours ( -- ).--of preparing the panel ( ).--the preparation of oils ( -- ).--on varnishes ( -- ).--on chemical _materials ( -- ).--vii. philosophy and history of the art of painting.--the relation of art and nature ( . ).--painting is superior to poetry ( . ).--painting is superior to sculpture ( . ).--aphorisms ( -- ).--on the history of painting ( . ).--the painter's scope ( ). x. studies and sketches for pictures and decorations on pictures of the madonna ( ).--bernardo di bandino's portrait ( ).--notes on the last supper ( -- ).--on the battle of anghiari ( ).--allegorical representations referring to the duke of milan ( -- ).--allegorical representations ( -- ).--arrangement of a picture ( ).--list of drawings ( ).--mottoes and emblems ( -- ). the author's intention to publish his mss. . how by a certain machine many may stay some time under water. and how and wherefore i do not describe my method of remaining under water and how long i can remain without eating. and i do not publish nor divulge these, by reason of the evil nature of men, who would use them for assassinations at the bottom of the sea by destroying ships, and sinking them, together with the men in them. nevertheless i will impart others, which are not dangerous because the mouth of the tube through which you breathe is above the water, supported on air sacks or cork. [footnote: the leaf on which this passage is written, is headed with the words _casi_ , and most of these cases begin with the word '_come_', like the two here given, which are the th and th. . _sughero_. in the codex antlanticus a; a there is a sketch, drawn with the pen, representing a man with a tube in his mouth, and at the farther end of the tube a disk. by the tube the word '_channa_' is written, and by the disk the word '_sughero_'.] the preparation of the mss. for publication. . when you put together the science of the motions of water, remember to include under each proposition its application and use, in order that this science may not be useless.-- [footnote: a comparatively small portion of leonardo's notes on water-power was published at bologna in , under the title: "_del moto e misura dell'acqua, di l. da vinci_".] admonition to readers. . let no man who is not a mathematician read the elements of my work. the disorder in the mss. . begun at florence, in the house of piero di braccio martelli, on the nd day of march . and this is to be a collection without order, taken from many papers which i have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place, according to the subjects of which they may treat. but i believe that before i am at the end of this [task] i shall have to repeat the same things several times; for which, o reader! do not blame me, for the subjects are many and memory cannot retain them [all] and say: 'i will not write this because i wrote it before.' and if i wished to avoid falling into this fault, it would be necessary in every case when i wanted to copy [a passage] that, not to repeat myself, i should read over all that had gone before; and all the more since the intervals are long between one time of writing and the next. [footnote: . in the history of florence in the early part of the xvith century _piero di braccio martelli_ is frequently mentioned as _commissario della signoria_. he was famous for his learning and at his death left four books on mathematics ready for the press; comp. litta, _famiglie celebri italiane_, _famiglia martelli di firenze_.--in the official catalogue of mss. in the brit. mus., new series vol. i., where this passage is printed, _barto_ has been wrongly given for braccio. . _addi di marzo _. the christian era was computed in florence at that time from the incarnation (lady day, march th). hence this should be by our reckoning. . _racolto tratto di molte carte le quali io ho qui copiate_. we must suppose that leonardo means that he has copied out his own mss. and not those of others. the first thirteen leaves of the ms. in the brit. mus. are a fair copy of some notes on physics.] suggestions for the arrangement of mss treating of particular subjects.( - ). . of digging a canal. put this in the book of useful inventions and in proving them bring forward the propositions already proved. and this is the proper order; since if you wished to show the usefulness of any plan you would be obliged again to devise new machines to prove its utility and thus would confuse the order of the forty books and also the order of the diagrams; that is to say you would have to mix up practice with theory, which would produce a confused and incoherent work. . i am not to blame for putting forward, in the course of my work on science, any general rule derived from a previous conclusion. . the book of the science of mechanics must precede the book of useful inventions.--have your books on anatomy bound! [footnote: . the numerous notes on anatomy written on loose leaves and now in the royal collection at windsor can best be classified in four books, corresponding to the different character and size of the paper. when leonardo speaks of '_li tua libri di notomia_', he probably means the mss. which still exist; if this hypothesis is correct the present condition of these leaves might seem to prove that he only carried out his purpose with one of the books on anatomy. a borrowed book on anatomy is mentioned in f.o.] . the order of your book must proceed on this plan: first simple beams, then (those) supported from below, then suspended in part, then wholly [suspended]. then beams as supporting other weights [footnote: . leonardo's notes on mechanics are extraordinarily numerous; but, for the reasons assigned in my introduction, they have not been included in the present work.]. general introductions to the book on painting ( - ). . introduction. seeing that i can find no subject specially useful or pleasing--since the men who have come before me have taken for their own every useful or necessary theme--i must do like one who, being poor, comes last to the fair, and can find no other way of providing himself than by taking all the things already seen by other buyers, and not taken but refused by reason of their lesser value. i, then, will load my humble pack with this despised and rejected merchandise, the refuse of so many buyers; and will go about to distribute it, not indeed in great cities, but in the poorer towns, taking such a price as the wares i offer may be worth. [footnote: it need hardly be pointed out that there is in this 'proemio' a covert irony. in the second and third prefaces, leonardo characterises his rivals and opponents more closely. his protest is directed against neo-latinism as professed by most of the humanists of his time; its futility is now no longer questioned.] . introduction. i know that many will call this useless work [footnote: . questa essere opera inutile. by opera we must here understand libro di pittura and particularly the treatise on perspective.]; and they will be those of whom demetrius [footnote: . demetrio. "with regard to the passage attributed to demetrius", dr. h. mÃ�ller strÃ�bing writes, "i know not what to make of it. it is certainly not demetrius phalereus that is meant and it can hardly be demetrius poliorcetes. who then can it be--for the name is a very common one? it may be a clerical error for demades and the maxim is quite in the spirit of his writings i have not however been able to find any corresponding passage either in the 'fragments' (c. muller, _orat. att._, ii. ) nor in the supplements collected by dietz (_rhein. mus._, vol. , p. )." the same passage occurs as a simple memorandum in the ms. tr. , apparently as a note for this '_proemio_' thus affording some data as to the time where these introductions were written.] declared that he took no more account of the wind that came out their mouth in words, than of that they expelled from their lower parts: men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and the only true riches of the mind. for so much more worthy as the soul is than the body, so much more noble are the possessions of the soul than those of the body. and often, when i see one of these men take this work in his hand, i wonder that he does not put it to his nose, like a monkey, or ask me if it is something good to eat. [footnote: in the original, the proemio dì prospettiva cioè dell'uffitio dell'occhio (see no. ) stands between this and the preceding one, no. .] introduction. i am fully concious that, not being a literary man, certain presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonably blame me; alleging that i am not a man of letters. foolish folks! do they not know that i might retort as marius did to the roman patricians [footnote : _come mario disse ai patriti romani_. "i am unable to find the words here attributed by leonardo to marius, either in plutarch's life of marius or in the apophthegmata (_moralia_, p. ). nor do they occur in the writings of valerius maximus (who frequently mentions marius) nor in velleius paterculus (ii, to ), dio cassius, aulus gellius, or macrobius. professor e. mendelson of dorpat, the editor of herodian, assures me that no such passage is the found in that author" (communication from dr. muller strubing). leonardo evidently meant to allude to some well known incident in roman history and the mention of marius is the result probably of some confusion. we may perhaps read, for marius, menenius agrippa, though in that case it is true we must alter patriti to plebei. the change is a serious one. but it would render the passage perfectly clear.] by saying: that they, who deck themselves out in the labours of others will not allow me my own. they will say that i, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which i desire to treat of [footnote : _le mie cose .... che d'altra parola_. this can hardly be reconciled with mons. ravaisson's estimate of l. da vinci's learning. "_leonard de vinci etait un admirateur et un disciple des anciens, aussi bien dans l'art que dans la science et il tenait a passer pour tel meme aux yeux de la posterite._" _gaz. des beaux arts. oct. .]; but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words [footnote : see footnote ]; and [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. and so, as mistress, i will cite her in all cases. . though i may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, i shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy:--on experience, the mistress of their masters. they go about puffed up and pompous, dressed and decorated with [the fruits], not of their own labours, but of those of others. and they will not allow me my own. they will scorn me as an inventor; but how much more might they--who are not inventors but vaunters and declaimers of the works of others--be blamed. introduction. and those men who are inventors and interpreters between nature and man, as compared with boasters and declaimers of the works of others, must be regarded and not otherwise esteemed than as the object in front of a mirror, when compared with its image seen in the mirror. for the first is something in itself, and the other nothingness.--folks little indebted to nature, since it is only by chance that they wear the human form and without it i might class them with the herds of beasts. . many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress. these rules are sufficient to enable you to know the true from the false--and this aids men to look only for things that are possible and with due moderation--and not to wrap yourself in ignorance, a thing which can have no good result, so that in despair you would give yourself up to melancholy. . among all the studies of natural causes and reasons light chiefly delights the beholder; and among the great features of mathematics the certainty of its demonstrations is what preeminently (tends to) elevate the mind of the investigator. perspective, therefore, must be preferred to all the discourses and systems of human learning. in this branch [of science] the beam of light is explained on those methods of demonstration which form the glory not so much of mathematics as of physics and are graced with the flowers of both [footnote: . such of leonardo's notes on optics or on perspective as bear exclusively on mathematics or physics could not be included in the arrangement of the _libro di pittura_ which is here presented to the reader. they are however but few.]. but its axioms being laid down at great length, i shall abridge them to a conclusive brevity, arranging them on the method both of their natural order and of mathematical demonstration; sometimes by deduction of the effects from the causes, and sometimes arguing the causes from the effects; adding also to my own conclusions some which, though not included in them, may nevertheless be inferred from them. thus, if the lord--who is the light of all things--vouchsafe to enlighten me, i will treat of light; wherefore i will divide the present work into parts [footnote: . in the middle ages--for instance, by roger bacon, by vitellone, with whose works leonardo was certainly familiar, and by all the writers of the renaissance perspective and optics were not regarded as distinct sciences. perspective, indeed, is in its widest application the science of seeing. although to leonardo the two sciences were clearly separate, it is not so as to their names; thus we find axioms in optics under the heading perspective. according to this arrangement of the materials for the theoretical portion of the _libro di pittura_ propositions in perspective and in optics stand side by side or occur alternately. although this particular chapter deals only with optics, it is not improbable that the words _partirò la presente opera in parti_ may refer to the same division into three sections which is spoken of in chapters to .]. the plan of the book on painting ( -- ). . on the three branches of perspective. there are three branches of perspective; the first deals with the reasons of the (apparent) diminution of objects as they recede from the eye, and is known as diminishing perspective.--the second contains the way in which colours vary as they recede from the eye. the third and last is concerned with the explanation of how the objects [in a picture] ought to be less finished in proportion as they are remote (and the names are as follows): linear perspective. the perspective of colour. the perspective of disappearance. [footnote: . from the character of the handwriting i infer that this passage was written before the year .]. . on painting and perspective. the divisions of perspective are , as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances. [footnote: the division is here the same as in the previous chapter no. , and this is worthy of note when we connect it with the fact that a space of about years must have intervened between the writing of the two passages.] . the discourse on painting. perspective, as bearing on drawing, is divided into three principal sections; of which the first treats of the diminution in the size of bodies at different distances. the second part is that which treats of the diminution in colour in these objects. the third [deals with] the diminished distinctness of the forms and outlines displayed by the objects at various distances. . on the sections of [the book on] painting. the first thing in painting is that the objects it represents should appear in relief, and that the grounds surrounding them at different distances shall appear within the vertical plane of the foreground of the picture by means of the branches of perspective, which are: the diminution in the distinctness of the forms of the objects, the diminution in their magnitude; and the diminution in their colour. and of these classes of perspective the first results from [the structure of] the eye, while the other two are caused by the atmosphere which intervenes between the eye and the objects seen by it. the second essential in painting is appropriate action and a due variety in the figures, so that the men may not all look like brothers, &c. [footnote: this and the two foregoing chapters must have been written in to . they undoubtedly indicate the scheme which leonardo wished to carry out in arranging his researches on perspective as applied to painting. this is important because it is an evidence against the supposition of h. ludwig and others, that leonardo had collected his principles of perspective in one book so early as before ; a book which, according to the hypothesis, must have been lost at a very early period, or destroyed possibly, by the french (!) in (see h. ludwig. l. da vinci: _das buch van der malerei_. vienna iii, and ).] the use of the book on painting. . these rules are of use only in correcting the figures; since every man makes some mistakes in his first compositions and he who knows them not, cannot amend them. but you, knowing your errors, will correct your works and where you find mistakes amend them, and remember never to fall into them again. but if you try to apply these rules in composition you will never make an end, and will produce confusion in your works. these rules will enable you to have a free and sound judgment; since good judgment is born of clear understanding, and a clear understanding comes of reasons derived from sound rules, and sound rules are the issue of sound experience--the common mother of all the sciences and arts. hence, bearing in mind the precepts of my rules, you will be able, merely by your amended judgment, to criticise and recognise every thing that is out of proportion in a work, whether in the perspective or in the figures or any thing else. necessity of theoretical knowledge ( . ). . of the mistakes made by those who practise without knowledge. those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going. practice must always be founded on sound theory, and to this perspective is the guide and the gateway; and without this nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing. . the painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence. the function of the eye ( - ). . introduction to perspective:--that is of the function of the eye. behold here o reader! a thing concerning which we cannot trust our forefathers, the ancients, who tried to define what the soul and life are--which are beyond proof, whereas those things, which can at any time be clearly known and proved by experience, remained for many ages unknown or falsely understood. the eye, whose function we so certainly know by experience, has, down to my own time, been defined by an infinite number of authors as one thing; but i find, by experience, that it is quite another. [footnote : compare the note to no. .] [footnote: in section we already find it indicated that the study of perspective and of optics is to be based on that of the functions of the eye. leonardo also refers to the science of the eye, in his astronomical researches, for instance in ms. f b '_ordine del provare la terra essere una stella: imprima difinisce l'occhio'_, &c. compare also ms. e b and f b. the principles of astronomical perspective.] . here [in the eye] forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing ... oh! marvellous, o stupendous necessity--by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. these [indeed] are miracles;... in so small a space it can be reproduced and rearranged in its whole expanse. describe in your anatomy what proportion there is between the diameters of all the images in the eye and the distance from them of the crystalline lens. . of the attributes of the eye, all concerned in painting. painting is concerned with all the attributes of sight; which are:--darkness, light, solidity and colour, form and position, distance and propinquity, motion and rest. this little work of mine will be a tissue [of the studies] of these attributes, reminding the painter of the rules and methods by which he should use his art to imitate all the works of nature which adorn the world. . on painting. variability of the eye. st. the pupil of the eye contracts, in proportion to the increase of light which is reflected in it. nd. the pupil of the eye expands in proportion to the diminution in the day light, or any other light, that is reflected in it. rd. [footnote: . the subject of this third proposition we find fully discussed in ms. g. a.]. the eye perceives and recognises the objects of its vision with greater intensity in proportion as the pupil is more widely dilated; and this can be proved by the case of nocturnal animals, such as cats, and certain birds--as the owl and others--in which the pupil varies in a high degree from large to small, &c., when in the dark or in the light. th. the eye [out of doors] in an illuminated atmosphere sees darkness behind the windows of houses which [nevertheless] are light. th. all colours when placed in the shade appear of an equal degree of darkness, among themselves. th. but all colours when placed in a full light, never vary from their true and essential hue. . of the eye. focus of sight. if the eye is required to look at an object placed too near to it, it cannot judge of it well--as happens to a man who tries to see the tip of his nose. hence, as a general rule, nature teaches us that an object can never be seen perfectly unless the space between it and the eye is equal, at least, to the length of the face. differences of perception by one eye and by both eyes ( - ). . of the eye. when both eyes direct the pyramid of sight to an object, that object becomes clearly seen and comprehended by the eyes. . objects seen by one and the same eye appear sometimes large, and sometimes small. . the motion of a spectator who sees an object at rest often makes it seem as though the object at rest had acquired the motion of the moving body, while the moving person appears to be at rest. on painting. objects in relief, when seen from a short distance with one eye, look like a perfect picture. if you look with the eye _a_, _b_ at the spot _c_, this point _c_ will appear to be at _d_, _f_, and if you look at it with the eye _g_, _h_ will appear to be at _m_. a picture can never contain in itself both aspects. . let the object in relief _t_ be seen by both eyes; if you will look at the object with the right eye _m_, keeping the left eye _n_ shut, the object will appear, or fill up the space, at _a_; and if you shut the right eye and open the left, the object (will occupy the) space _b_; and if you open both eyes, the object will no longer appear at _a_ or _b_, but at _e_, _r_, _f_. why will not a picture seen by both eyes produce the effect of relief, as [real] relief does when seen by both eyes; and why should a picture seen with one eye give the same effect of relief as real relief would under the same conditions of light and shade? [footnote: in the sketch, _m_ is the left eye and _n_ the right, while the text reverses this lettering. we must therefore suppose that the face in which the eyes _m_ and _n_ are placed is opposite to the spectator.] . the comparative size of the image depends on the amount of light ( - ). the eye will hold and retain in itself the image of a luminous body better than that of a shaded object. the reason is that the eye is in itself perfectly dark and since two things that are alike cannot be distinguished, therefore the night, and other dark objects cannot be seen or recognised by the eye. light is totally contrary and gives more distinctness, and counteracts and differs from the usual darkness of the eye, hence it leaves the impression of its image. . every object we see will appear larger at midnight than at midday, and larger in the morning than at midday. this happens because the pupil of the eye is much smaller at midday than at any other time. . the pupil which is largest will see objects the largest. this is evident when we look at luminous bodies, and particularly at those in the sky. when the eye comes out of darkness and suddenly looks up at these bodies, they at first appear larger and then diminish; and if you were to look at those bodies through a small opening, you would see them smaller still, because a smaller part of the pupil would exercise its function. [footnote: . _buso_ in the lomb. dialect is the same as _buco_.] . when the eye, coming out of darkness suddenly sees a luminous body, it will appear much larger at first sight than after long looking at it. the illuminated object will look larger and more brilliant, when seen with two eyes than with only one. a luminous object will appear smaller in size, when the eye sees it through a smaller opening. a luminous body of an oval form will appear rounder in proportion as it is farther from the eye. . why when the eye has just seen the light, does the half light look dark to it, and in the same way if it turns from the darkness the half light look very bright? . on painting. if the eye, when [out of doors] in the luminous atmosphere, sees a place in shadow, this will look very much darker than it really is. this happens only because the eye when out in the air contracts the pupil in proportion as the atmosphere reflected in it is more luminous. and the more the pupil contracts, the less luminous do the objects appear that it sees. but as soon as the eye enters into a shady place the darkness of the shadow suddenly seems to diminish. this occurs because the greater the darkness into which the pupil goes the more its size increases, and this increase makes the darkness seem less. [footnote : _la luce entrerà _. _luce_ occurs here in the sense of pupil of the eye as in no : c. a. b; a; i-- ; and in many other places.] . on perspective. the eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark. and this happens either because the pupils of the eyes which have rested on this brilliantly lighted white object have contracted so much that, given at first a certain extent of surface, they will have lost more than / of their size; and, lacking in size, they are also deficient in [seeing] power. though you might say to me: a little bird (then) coming down would see comparatively little, and from the smallness of his pupils the white might seem black! to this i should reply that here we must have regard to the proportion of the mass of that portion of the brain which is given up to the sense of sight and to nothing else. or--to return--this pupil in man dilates and contracts according to the brightness or darkness of (surrounding) objects; and since it takes some time to dilate and contract, it cannot see immediately on going out of the light and into the shade, nor, in the same way, out of the shade into the light, and this very thing has already deceived me in painting an eye, and from that i learnt it. . experiment [showing] the dilatation and contraction of the pupil, from the motion of the sun and other luminaries. in proportion as the sky is darker the stars appear of larger size, and if you were to light up the medium these stars would look smaller; and this difference arises solely from the pupil which dilates and contracts with the amount of light in the medium which is interposed between the eye and the luminous body. let the experiment be made, by placing a candle above your head at the same time that you look at a star; then gradually lower the candle till it is on a level with the ray that comes from the star to the eye, and then you will see the star diminish so much that you will almost lose sight of it. [footnote: no reference is made in the text to the letters on the accompanying diagram.] . the pupil of the eye, in the open air, changes in size with every degree of motion from the sun; and at every degree of its changes one and the same object seen by it will appear of a different size; although most frequently the relative scale of surrounding objects does not allow us to detect these variations in any single object we may look at. . the eye--which sees all objects reversed--retains the images for some time. this conclusion is proved by the results; because, the eye having gazed at light retains some impression of it. after looking (at it) there remain in the eye images of intense brightness, that make any less brilliant spot seem dark until the eye has lost the last trace of the impression of the stronger light. _ii. linear perspective. we see clearly from the concluding sentence of section , where the author directly addresses the painter, that he must certainly have intended to include the elements of mathematics in his book on the art of painting. they are therefore here placed at the beginning. in section the theory of the "pyramid of sight" is distinctly and expressly put forward as the fundamental principle of linear perspective, and sections to treat of it fully. this theory of sight can scarcely be traced to any author of antiquity. such passages as occur in euclid for instance, may, it is true, have proved suggestive to the painters of the renaissance, but it would be rash to say any thing decisive on this point. leon battista alberti treats of the "pyramid of sight" at some length in his first book of painting; but his explanation differs widely from leonardo's in the details. leonardo, like alberti, may have borrowed the broad lines of his theory from some views commonly accepted among painters at the time; but he certainly worked out its application in a perfectly original manner. the axioms as to the perception of the pyramid of rays are followed by explanations of its origin, and proofs of its universal application ( -- ). the author recurs to the subject with endless variations; it is evidently of fundamental importance in his artistic theory and practice. it is unnecessary to discuss how far this theory has any scientific value at the present day; so much as this, at any rate, seems certain: that from the artist's point of view it may still claim to be of immense practical utility. according to leonardo, on one hand, the laws of perspective are an inalienable condition of the existence of objects in space; on the other hand, by a natural law, the eye, whatever it sees and wherever it turns, is subjected to the perception of the pyramid of rays in the form of a minute target. thus it sees objects in perspective independently of the will of the spectator, since the eye receives the images by means of the pyramid of rays "just as a magnet attracts iron". in connection with this we have the function of the eye explained by the camera obscura, and this is all the more interesting and important because no writer previous to leonardo had treated of this subject_ ( -- ). _subsequent passages, of no less special interest, betray his knowledge of refraction and of the inversion of the image in the camera and in the eye_ ( -- ). _from the principle of the transmission of the image to the eye and to the camera obscura he deduces the means of producing an artificial construction of the pyramid of rays or--which is the same thing--of the image. the fundamental axioms as to the angle of sight and the vanishing point are thus presented in a manner which is as complete as it is simple and intelligible_ ( -- ). _leonardo distinguishes between simple and complex perspective_ ( , ). _the last sections treat of the apparent size of objects at various distances and of the way to estimate it_ ( -- ). general remarks on perspective ( - ). . on painting. perspective is the best guide to the art of painting. [footnote: . compare , .] . the art of perspective is of such a nature as to make what is flat appear in relief and what is in relief flat. the elements of perspective--of the point ( - ). . all the problems of perspective are made clear by the five terms of mathematicians, which are:--the point, the line, the angle, the superficies and the solid. the point is unique of its kind. and the point has neither height, breadth, length, nor depth, whence it is to be regarded as indivisible and as having no dimensions in space. the line is of three kinds, straight, curved and sinuous and it has neither breadth, height, nor depth. hence it is indivisible, excepting in its length, and its ends are two points. the angle is the junction of two lines in a point. . a point is not part of a line. . of the natural point. the smallest natural point is larger than all mathematical points, and this is proved because the natural point has continuity, and any thing that is continuous is infinitely divisible; but the mathematical point is indivisible because it has no size. [footnote: this definition was inserted by leonardo on a ms. copy on parchment of the well-known _"trattato d'architettura civile e militare"_ &c. by francesco di giorgio; opposite a passage where the author says: _'in prima he da sapere che punto è quella parie della quale he nulla--linia he luncheza senza à pieza; &c.] . , the superficies is a limitation of the body. , and the limitation of a body is no part of that body. , and the limitation of one body is that which begins another. , that which is not part of any body is nothing. nothing is that which fills no space. if one single point placed in a circle may be the starting point of an infinite number of lines, and the termination of an infinite number of lines, there must be an infinite number of points separable from this point, and these when reunited become one again; whence it follows that the part may be equal to the whole. . the point, being indivisible, occupies no space. that which occupies no space is nothing. the limiting surface of one thing is the beginning of another. . that which is no part of any body is called nothing. . that which has no limitations, has no form. the limitations of two conterminous bodies are interchangeably the surface of each. all the surfaces of a body are not parts of that body. of the line ( - ). . definition of the nature of the line. the line has in itself neither matter nor substance and may rather be called an imaginary idea than a real object; and this being its nature it occupies no space. therefore an infinite number of lines may be conceived of as intersecting each other at a point, which has no dimensions and is only of the thickness (if thickness it may be called) of one single line. how we may conclude that a superficies terminates in a point? an angular surface is reduced to a point where it terminates in an angle. or, if the sides of that angle are produced in a straight line, then--beyond that angle--another surface is generated, smaller, or equal to, or larger than the first. . of drawing outline. consider with the greatest care the form of the outlines of every object, and the character of their undulations. and these undulations must be separately studied, as to whether the curves are composed of arched convexities or angular concavities. . the nature of the outline. the boundaries of bodies are the least of all things. the proposition is proved to be true, because the boundary of a thing is a surface, which is not part of the body contained within that surface; nor is it part of the air surrounding that body, but is the medium interposted between the air and the body, as is proved in its place. but the lateral boundaries of these bodies is the line forming the boundary of the surface, which line is of invisible thickness. wherefore o painter! do not surround your bodies with lines, and above all when representing objects smaller than nature; for not only will their external outlines become indistinct, but their parts will be invisible from distance. . definition of perspective. [drawing is based upon perspective, which is nothing else than a thorough knowledge of the function of the eye. and this function simply consists in receiving in a pyramid the forms and colours of all the objects placed before it. i say in a pyramid, because there is no object so small that it will not be larger than the spot where these pyramids are received into the eye. therefore, if you extend the lines from the edges of each body as they converge you will bring them to a single point, and necessarily the said lines must form a pyramid.] [perspective is nothing more than a rational demonstration applied to the consideration of how objects in front of the eye transmit their image to it, by means of a pyramid of lines. the _pyramid_ is the name i apply to the lines which, starting from the surface and edges of each object, converge from a distance and meet in a single point.] [perspective is a rational demonstration, by which we may practically and clearly understand how objects transmit their own image, by lines forming a pyramid (centred) in the eye.] perspective is a rational demonstration by which experience confirms that every object sends its image to the eye by a pyramid of lines; and bodies of equal size will result in a pyramid of larger or smaller size, according to the difference in their distance, one from the other. by a pyramid of lines i mean those which start from the surface and edges of bodies, and, converging from a distance meet in a single point. a point is said to be that which [having no dimensions] cannot be divided, and this point placed in the eye receives all the points of the cone. [footnote: . - . compare with this the proem. no. . the paragraphs placed in brackets: lines - , - , and -- , are evidently mere sketches and, as such, were cancelled by the writer; but they serve as a commentary on the final paragraph, lines - .] . in what way the eye sees objects placed in front of it. the perception of the object depends on the direction of the eye. supposing that the ball figured above is the ball of the eye and let the small portion of the ball which is cut off by the line _s t_ be the pupil and all the objects mirrored on the centre of the face of the eye, by means of the pupil, pass on at once and enter the pupil, passing through the crystalline humour, which does not interfere in the pupil with the things seen by means of the light. and the pupil having received the objects, by means of the light, immediately refers them and transmits them to the intellect by the line _a b_. and you must know that the pupil transmits nothing perfectly to the intellect or common sense excepting when the objects presented to it by means of light, reach it by the line _a b;_ as, for instance, by the line _b c_. for although the lines _m n_ and _f g_ may be seen by the pupil they are not perfectly taken in, because they do not coincide with the line _a b_. and the proof is this: if the eye, shown above, wants to count the letters placed in front, the eye will be obliged to turn from letter to letter, because it cannot discern them unless they lie in the line _a b;_ as, for instance, in the line _a c_. all visible objects reach the eye by the lines of a pyramid, and the point of the pyramid is the apex and centre of it, in the centre of the pupil, as figured above. [footnote: . in this problem the eye is conceived of as fixed and immovable; this is plain from line .] experimental proof of the existence of the pyramid of sight ( - ). . perspective is a rational demonstration, confirmed by experience, that all objects transmit their image to the eye by a pyramid of lines. by a pyramid of lines i understand those lines which start from the edges of the surface of bodies, and converging from a distance, meet in a single point; and this point, in the present instance, i will show to be situated in the eye which is the universal judge of all objects. by a point i mean that which cannot be divided into parts; therefore this point, which is situated in the eye, being indivisible, no body is seen by the eye, that is not larger than this point. this being the case it is inevitable that the lines which come from the object to the point must form a pyramid. and if any man seeks to prove that the sense of sight does not reside in this point, but rather in the black spot which is visible in the middle of the pupil, i might reply to him that a small object could never diminish at any distance, as it might be a grain of millet or of oats or of some similar thing, and that object, if it were larger than the said [black] spot would never be seen as a whole; as may be seen in the diagram below. let _a_. be the seat of sight, _b e_ the lines which reach the eye. let _e d_ be the grains of millet within these lines. you plainly see that these will never diminish by distance, and that the body _m n_ could not be entirely covered by it. therefore you must confess that the eye contains within itself one single indivisible point _a_, to which all the points converge of the pyramid of lines starting from an object, as is shown below. let _a_. _b_. be the eye; in the centre of it is the point above mentioned. if the line _e f_ is to enter as an image into so small an opening in the eye, you must confess that the smaller object cannot enter into what is smaller than itself unless it is diminished, and by diminishing it must take the form of a pyramid. . perspective. perspective comes in where judgment fails [as to the distance] in objects which diminish. the eye can never be a true judge for determining with exactitude how near one object is to another which is equal to it [in size], if the top of that other is on the level of the eye which sees them on that side, excepting by means of the vertical plane which is the standard and guide of perspective. let _n_ be the eye, _e f_ the vertical plane above mentioned. let _a b c d_ be the three divisions, one below the other; if the lines _a n_ and _c n_ are of a given length and the eye _n_ is in the centre, then _a b_ will look as large as _b c. c d_ is lower and farther off from _n_, therefore it will look smaller. and the same effect will appear in the three divisions of a face when the eye of the painter who is drawing it is on a level with the eye of the person he is painting. . to prove how objects reach the eye. if you look at the sun or some other luminous body and then shut your eyes you will see it again inside your eye for a long time. this is evidence that images enter into the eye. the relations of the distance points to the vanishing point ( - ). . elements of perspective. all objects transmit their image to the eye in pyramids, and the nearer to the eye these pyramids are intersected the smaller will the image appear of the objects which cause them. therefore, you may intersect the pyramid with a vertical plane [footnote : _pariete_. compare the definitions in , - , - . these lines refer exclusively to the third diagram. for the better understanding of this it should be observed that _c s_ must be regarded as representing the section or profile of a square plane, placed horizontally (comp. lines , , ) for which the word _pianura_ is subsequently employed ( , ). lines - contain certain preliminary observations to guide the reader in understanding the diagram; the last three seem to have been added as a supplement. leonardo's mistake in writing _t denota_ (line ) for _f denota_ has been rectified.] which reaches the base of the pyramid as is shown in the plane _a n_. the eye _f_ and the eye _t_ are one and the same thing; but the eye _f_ marks the distance, that is to say how far you are standing from the object; and the eye _t_ shows you the direction of it; that is whether you are opposite, or on one side, or at an angle to the object you are looking at. and remember that the eye _f_ and the eye _t_ must always be kept on the same level. for example if you raise or lower the eye from the distance point _f_ you must do the same with the direction point _t_. and if the point _f_ shows how far the eye is distant from the square plane but does not show on which side it is placed--and, if in the same way, the point _t_ show _s_ the direction and not the distance, in order to ascertain both you must use both points and they will be one and the same thing. if the eye _f_ could see a perfect square of which all the sides were equal to the distance between _s_ and _c_, and if at the nearest end of the side towards the eye a pole were placed, or some other straight object, set up by a perpendicular line as shown at _r s_--then, i say, that if you were to look at the side of the square that is nearest to you it will appear at the bottom of the vertical plane _r s_, and then look at the farther side and it would appear to you at the height of the point _n_ on the vertical plane. thus, by this example, you can understand that if the eye is above a number of objects all placed on the same level, one beyond another, the more remote they are the higher they will seem, up to the level of the eye, but no higher; because objects placed upon the level on which your feet stand, so long as it is flat--even if it be extended into infinity--would never be seen above the eye; since the eye has in itself the point towards which all the cones tend and converge which convey the images of the objects to the eye. and this point always coincides with the point of diminution which is the extreme of all we can see. and from the base line of the first pyramid as far as the diminishing point [footnote: the two diagrams above the chapter are explained by the first five lines. they have, however, more letters than are referred to in the text, a circumstance we frequently find occasion to remark.] . there are only bases without pyramids which constantly diminish up to this point. and from the first base where the vertical plane is placed towards the point in the eye there will be only pyramids without bases; as shown in the example given above. now, let _a b_ be the said vertical plane and _r_ the point of the pyramid terminating in the eye, and _n_ the point of diminution which is always in a straight line opposite the eye and always moves as the eye moves--just as when a rod is moved its shadow moves, and moves with it, precisely as the shadow moves with a body. and each point is the apex of a pyramid, all having a common base with the intervening vertical plane. but although their bases are equal their angles are not equal, because the diminishing point is the termination of a smaller angle than that of the eye. if you ask me: "by what practical experience can you show me these points?" i reply--so far as concerns the diminishing point which moves with you --when you walk by a ploughed field look at the straight furrows which come down with their ends to the path where you are walking, and you will see that each pair of furrows will look as though they tried to get nearer and meet at the [farther] end. [footnote: for the easier understanding of the diagram and of its connection with the preceding i may here remark that the square plane shown above in profile by the line _c s_ is here indicated by _e d o p_. according to lines , _a b_ must be imagined as a plane of glass placed perpendicularly at _o p_.] . how to measure the pyramid of vision. as regards the point in the eye; it is made more intelligible by this: if you look into the eye of another person you will see your own image. now imagine lines starting from your ears and going to the ears of that image which you see in the other man's eye; you will understand that these lines converge in such a way that they would meet in a point a little way beyond your own image mirrored in the eye. and if you want to measure the diminution of the pyramid in the air which occupies the space between the object seen and the eye, you must do it according to the diagram figured below. let _m n_ be a tower, and _e f_ a, rod, which you must move backwards and forwards till its ends correspond with those of the tower [footnote : _i sua stremi .. della storre_ (its ends ... of the tower) this is the case at _e f_.]; then bring it nearer to the eye, at _c d_ and you will see that the image of the tower seems smaller, as at _r o_. then [again] bring it closer to the eye and you will see the rod project far beyond the image of the tower from _a_ to _b_ and from _t_ to _b_, and so you will discern that, a little farther within, the lines must converge in a point. the production of pyramid of vision ( - ). . perspective. the instant the atmosphere is illuminated it will be filled with an infinite number of images which are produced by the various bodies and colours assembled in it. and the eye is the target, a loadstone, of these images. . the whole surface of opaque bodies displays its whole image in all the illuminated atmosphere which surrounds them on all sides. . that the atmosphere attracts to itself, like a loadstone, all the images of the objects that exist in it, and not their forms merely but their nature may be clearly seen by the sun, which is a hot and luminous body. all the atmosphere, which is the all-pervading matter, absorbs light and heat, and reflects in itself the image of the source of that heat and splendour and, in each minutest portion, does the same. the northpole does the same as the loadstone shows; and the moon and the other planets, without suffering any diminution, do the same. among terrestrial things musk does the same and other perfumes. . all bodies together, and each by itself, give off to the surrounding air an infinite number of images which are all-pervading and each complete, each conveying the nature, colour and form of the body which produces it. it can clearly be shown that all bodies are, by their images, all-pervading in the surrounding atmosphere, and each complete in itself as to substance form and colour; this is seen by the images of the various bodies which are reproduced in one single perforation through which they transmit the objects by lines which intersect and cause reversed pyramids, from the objects, so that they are upside down on the dark plane where they are first reflected. the reason of this is-- [footnote: the diagram intended to illustrate the statement (pl. ii no. i) occurs in the original between lines and . the three circles must be understood to represent three luminous bodies which transmit their images through perforations in a wall into a dark chamber, according to a law which is more fully explained in ? . so far as concerns the present passage the diagram is only intended to explain that the images of the three bodies may be made to coalesce at any given spot. in the circles are written, giallo--yellow, bià cho--white, rosso--red. the text breaks off at line . the paragraph no. follows here in the original ms.] . every point is the termination of an infinite number of lines, which diverge to form a base, and immediately, from the base the same lines converge to a pyramid [imaging] both the colour and form. no sooner is a form created or compounded than suddenly infinite lines and angles are produced from it; and these lines, distributing themselves and intersecting each other in the air, give rise to an infinite number of angles opposite to each other. given a base, each opposite angle, will form a triangle having a form and proportion equal to the larger angle; and if the base goes twice into each of the lines of the pyramid the smaller triangle will do the same. . every body in light and shade fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself; and these, by infinite pyramids diffused in the air, represent this body throughout space and on every side. each pyramid that is composed of a long assemblage of rays includes within itself an infinite number of pyramids and each has the same power as all, and all as each. a circle of equidistant pyramids of vision will give to their object angles of equal size; and an eye at each point will see the object of the same size. the body of the atmosphere is full of infinite pyramids composed of radiating straight lines, which are produced from the surface of the bodies in light and shade, existing in the air; and the farther they are from the object which produces them the more acute they become and although in their distribution they intersect and cross they never mingle together, but pass through all the surrounding air, independently converging, spreading, and diffused. and they are all of equal power [and value]; all equal to each, and each equal to all. by these the images of objects are transmitted through all space and in every direction, and each pyramid, in itself, includes, in each minutest part, the whole form of the body causing it. . the body of the atmosphere is full of infinite radiating pyramids produced by the objects existing in it. these intersect and cross each other with independent convergence without interfering with each other and pass through all the surrounding atmosphere; and are of equal force and value--all being equal to each, each to all. and by means of these, images of the body are transmitted everywhere and on all sides, and each receives in itself every minutest portion of the object that produces it. proof by experiment ( - ). . perspective. the air is filled with endless images of the objects distributed in it; and all are represented in all, and all in one, and all in each, whence it happens that if two mirrors are placed in such a manner as to face each other exactly, the first will be reflected in the second and the second in the first. the first being reflected in the second takes to it the image of itself with all the images represented in it, among which is the image of the second mirror, and so, image within image, they go on to infinity in such a manner as that each mirror has within it a mirror, each smaller than the last and one inside the other. thus, by this example, it is clearly proved that every object sends its image to every spot whence the object itself can be seen; and the converse: that the same object may receive in itself all the images of the objects that are in front of it. hence the eye transmits through the atmosphere its own image to all the objects that are in front of it and receives them into itself, that is to say on its surface, whence they are taken in by the common sense, which considers them and if they are pleasing commits them to the memory. whence i am of opinion: that the invisible images in the eyes are produced towards the object, as the image of the object to the eye. that the images of the objects must be disseminated through the air. an instance may be seen in several mirrors placed in a circle, which will reflect each other endlessly. when one has reached the other it is returned to the object that produced it, and thence--being diminished--it is returned again to the object and then comes back once more, and this happens endlessly. if you put a light between two flat mirrors with a distance of braccio between them you will see in each of them an infinite number of lights, one smaller than another, to the last. if at night you put a light between the walls of a room, all the parts of that wall will be tinted with the image of that light. and they will receive the light and the light will fall on them, mutually, that is to say, when there is no obstacle to interrupt the transmission of the images. this same example is seen in a greater degree in the distribution of the solar rays which all together, and each by itself, convey to the object the image of the body which causes it. that each body by itself alone fills with its images the atmosphere around it, and that the same air is able, at the same time, to receive the images of the endless other objects which are in it, this is clearly proved by these examples. and every object is everywhere visible in the whole of the atmosphere, and the whole in every smallest part of it; and all the objects in the whole, and all in each smallest part; each in all and all in every part. . the images of objects are all diffused through the atmosphere which receives them; and all on every side in it. to prove this, let _a c e_ be objects of which the images are admitted to a dark chamber by the small holes _n p_ and thrown upon the plane _f i_ opposite to these holes. as many images will be produced in the chamber on the plane as the number of the said holes. . general conclusions. all objects project their whole image and likeness, diffused and mingled in the whole of the atmosphere, opposite to themselves. the image of every point of the bodily surface, exists in every part of the atmosphere. all the images of the objects are in every part of the atmosphere. the whole, and each part of the image of the atmosphere is [reflected] in each point of the surface of the bodies presented to it. therefore both the part and the whole of the images of the objects exist, both in the whole and in the parts of the surface of these visible bodies. whence we may evidently say that the image of each object exists, as a whole and in every part, in each part and in the whole interchangeably in every existing body. as is seen in two mirrors placed opposite to each other. . that the contrary is impossible. it is impossible that the eye should project from itself, by visual rays, the visual virtue, since, as soon as it opens, that front portion [of the eye] which would give rise to this emanation would have to go forth to the object and this it could not do without time. and this being so, it could not travel so high as the sun in a month's time when the eye wanted to see it. and if it could reach the sun it would necessarily follow that it should perpetually remain in a continuous line from the eye to the sun and should always diverge in such a way as to form between the sun and the eye the base and the apex of a pyramid. this being the case, if the eye consisted of a million worlds, it would not prevent its being consumed in the projection of its virtue; and if this virtue would have to travel through the air as perfumes do, the winds would bent it and carry it into another place. but we do [in fact] see the mass of the sun with the same rapidity as [an object] at the distance of a braccio, and the power of sight is not disturbed by the blowing of the winds nor by any other accident. [footnote: the view here refuted by leonardo was maintained among others by bramantino, leonardo's milanese contemporary. lomazzo writes as follows in his trattato dell' arte della pittura &c. (milano . libr. v cp. xxi): sovviemmi di aver già letto in certi scritti alcune cose di bramantino milanese, celebratissimo pittore, attenente alla prospettiva, le quali ho voluto riferire, e quasi intessere in questo luogo, affinchè sappiamo qual fosse l'opinione di cosi chiaro e famoso pittore intorno alla prospettiva . . scrive bramantino che la prospettiva è una cosa che contrafà il naturale, e che ciò si fa in tre modi circa il primo modo che si fa con ragione, per essere la cosa in poche parole conclusa da bramantino in maniera che giudico non potersi dir meglio, contenendovi si tutta parte del principio al fine, io riferirò per appunto le proprie parole sue (cp. xxii, prima prospettiva di bramantino). la prima prospettiva fa le cose di punto, e l'altra non mai, e la terza più appresso. adunque la prima si dimanda prospettiva, cioè ragione, la quale fa l'effetto dell' occhio, facendo crescere e calare secondo gli effetti degli occhi. questo crescere e calare non procede della cosa propria, che in se per esser lontana, ovvero vicina, per quello effetto non può crescere e sminuire, ma procede dagli effetti degli occhi, i quali sono piccioli, e perciò volendo vedere tanto gran cosa_, bisogna che mandino fuora la virtù visiva, _la quale si dilata in tanta larghezza, che piglia tutto quello che vuoi vedere, ed_ arrivando a quella cosa la vede dove è: _e da lei agli occhi per quello circuito fino all' occhio, e tutto quello termine è pieno di quella cosa_. it is worthy of note that leonardo had made his memorandum refuting this view, at milan in ] . a parallel case. just as a stone flung into the water becomes the centre and cause of many circles, and as sound diffuses itself in circles in the air: so any object, placed in the luminous atmosphere, diffuses itself in circles, and fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself. and is repeated, the whole every-where, and the whole in every smallest part. this can be proved by experiment, since if you shut a window that faces west and make a hole [footnote: . here the text breaks off.] . . [footnote: compare libri, _histoire des sciences mathématiques en italie_. tome iii, p. .] the function of the eye as explained by the camera obscura ( . ). . if the object in front of the eye sends its image to the eye, the eye, on the other hand, sends its image to the object, and no portion whatever of the object is lost in the images it throws off, for any reason either in the eye or the object. therefore we may rather believe it to be the nature and potency of our luminous atmosphere which absorbs the images of the objects existing in it, than the nature of the objects, to send their images through the air. if the object opposite to the eye were to send its image to the eye, the eye would have to do the same to the object, whence it might seem that these images were an emanation. but, if so, it would be necessary [to admit] that every object became rapidly smaller; because each object appears by its images in the surrounding atmosphere. that is: the whole object in the whole atmosphere, and in each part; and all the objects in the whole atmosphere and all of them in each part; speaking of that atmosphere which is able to contain in itself the straight and radiating lines of the images projected by the objects. from this it seems necessary to admit that it is in the nature of the atmosphere, which subsists between the objects, and which attracts the images of things to itself like a loadstone, being placed between them. prove how all objects, placed in one position, are all everywhere and all in each part. i say that if the front of a building--or any open piazza or field--which is illuminated by the sun has a dwelling opposite to it, and if, in the front which does not face the sun, you make a small round hole, all the illuminated objects will project their images through that hole and be visible inside the dwelling on the opposite wall which may be made white; and there, in fact, they will be upside down, and if you make similar openings in several places in the same wall you will have the same result from each. hence the images of the illuminated objects are all everywhere on this wall and all in each minutest part of it. the reason, as we clearly know, is that this hole must admit some light to the said dwelling, and the light admitted by it is derived from one or many luminous bodies. if these bodies are of various colours and shapes the rays forming the images are of various colours and shapes, and so will the representations be on the wall. [footnote: . -- . this section has already been published in the "_saggio delle opere di leonardo da vinci_" milan , pp. , . g. govi observes upon it, that leonardo is not to be regarded as the inventor of the camera obscura, but that he was the first to explain by it the structure of the eye. an account of the camera obscura first occurs in cesare cesarini's italian version of vitruvius, pub. , four years after leonardo's death. cesarini expressly names benedettino don papnutio as the inventor of the camera obscura. in his explanation of the function of the eye by a comparison with the camera obscura leonardo was the precursor of g. cardano, professor of medicine at bologna (died ) and it appears highly probable that this is, in fact, the very discovery which leonardo ascribes to himself in section without giving any further details.] . how the images of objects received by the eye intersect within the crystalline humour of the eye. an experiment, showing how objects transmit their images or pictures, intersecting within the eye in the crystalline humour, is seen when by some small round hole penetrate the images of illuminated objects into a very dark chamber. then, receive these images on a white paper placed within this dark room and rather near to the hole and you will see all the objects on the paper in their proper forms and colours, but much smaller; and they will be upside down by reason of that very intersection. these images being transmitted from a place illuminated by the sun will seem actually painted on this paper which must be extremely thin and looked at from behind. and let the little perforation be made in a very thin plate of iron. let _a b e d e_ be the object illuminated by the sun and _o r_ the front of the dark chamber in which is the said hole at _n m_. let _s t_ be the sheet of paper intercepting the rays of the images of these objects upside down, because the rays being straight, _a_ on the right hand becomes _k_ on the left, and _e_ on the left becomes _f_ on the right; and the same takes place inside the pupil. [footnote: this chapter is already known through a translation into french by venturi. compare his '_essai sur les ouvrages physico-mathématiques de l. da vinci avec des fragments tirés de ses manuscrits, apportés de l'italie. lu a la premiere classe de l'institut national des sciences et arts.' paris, an v_ ( ).] the practice of perspective ( . ). . in the practice of perspective the same rules apply to light and to the eye. . the object which is opposite to the pupil of the eye is seen by that pupil and that which is opposite to the eye is seen by the pupil. refraction of the rays falling upon the eye ( . ) . the lines sent forth by the image of an object to the eye do not reach the point within the eye in straight lines. . if the judgment of the eye is situated within it, the straight lines of the images are refracted on its surface because they pass through the rarer to the denser medium. if, when you are under water, you look at objects in the air you will see them out of their true place; and the same with objects under water seen from the air. the intersection of the rays ( - ). . the inversion of the images. all the images of objects which pass through a window [glass pane] from the free outer air to the air confined within walls, are seen on the opposite side; and an object which moves in the outer air from east to west will seem in its shadow, on the wall which is lighted by this confined air, to have an opposite motion. . the principle on which the images of bodies pass in between the margins of the openings by which they enter. what difference is there in the way in which images pass through narrow openings and through large openings, or in those which pass by the sides of shaded bodies? by moving the edges of the opening through which the images are admitted, the images of immovable objects are made to move. and this happens, as is shown in the th which demonstrates: [footnote : _per la a che dicie_. when leonardo refers thus to a number it serves to indicate marginal diagrams; this can in some instances be distinctly proved. the ninth sketch on the page w. l. b corresponds to the middle sketch of the three reproduced.] the images of any object are all everywhere, and all in each part of the surrounding air. it follows that if one of the edges of the hole by which the images are admitted to a dark chamber is moved it cuts off those rays of the image that were in contact with it and gets nearer to other rays which previously were remote from it &c. of the movement of the edge at the right or left, or the upper, or lower edge. if you move the right side of the opening the image on the left will move [being that] of the object which entered on the right side of the opening; and the same result will happen with all the other sides of the opening. this can be proved by the nd of this which shows: all the rays which convey the images of objects through the air are straight lines. hence, if the images of very large bodies have to pass through very small holes, and beyond these holes recover their large size, the lines must necessarily intersect. [footnote: . . in the first of the three diagrams leonardo had drawn only one of the two margins, et _m_.] . necessity has provided that all the images of objects in front of the eye shall intersect in two places. one of these intersections is in the pupil, the other in the crystalline lens; and if this were not the case the eye could not see so great a number of objects as it does. this can be proved, since all the lines which intersect do so in a point. because nothing is seen of objects excepting their surface; and their edges are lines, in contradistinction to the definition of a surface. and each minute part of a line is equal to a point; for _smallest_ is said of that than which nothing can be smaller, and this definition is equivalent to the definition of the point. hence it is possible for the whole circumference of a circle to transmit its image to the point of intersection, as is shown in the th of this which shows: all the smallest parts of the images cross each other without interfering with each other. these demonstrations are to illustrate the eye. no image, even of the smallest object, enters the eye without being turned upside down; but as it penetrates into the crystalline lens it is once more reversed and thus the image is restored to the same position within the eye as that of the object outside the eye. . of the central line of the eye. only one line of the image, of all those that reach the visual virtue, has no intersection; and this has no sensible dimensions because it is a mathematical line which originates from a mathematical point, which has no dimensions. according to my adversary, necessity requires that the central line of every image that enters by small and narrow openings into a dark chamber shall be turned upside down, together with the images of the bodies that surround it. . as to whether the central line of the image can be intersected, or not, within the opening. it is impossible that the line should intersect itself; that is, that its right should cross over to its left side, and so, its left side become its right side. because such an intersection demands two lines, one from each side; for there can be no motion from right to left or from left to right in itself without such extension and thickness as admit of such motion. and if there is extension it is no longer a line but a surface, and we are investigating the properties of a line, and not of a surface. and as the line, having no centre of thickness cannot be divided, we must conclude that the line can have no sides to intersect each other. this is proved by the movement of the line _a f_ to _a b_ and of the line _e b_ to _e f_, which are the sides of the surface _a f e b_. but if you move the line _a b_ and the line _e f_, with the frontends _a e_, to the spot _c_, you will have moved the opposite ends _f b_ towards each other at the point _d_. and from the two lines you will have drawn the straight line _c d_ which cuts the middle of the intersection of these two lines at the point _n_ without any intersection. for, you imagine these two lines as having breadth, it is evident that by this motion the first will entirely cover the other--being equal with it--without any intersection, in the position _c d_. and this is sufficient to prove our proposition. . how the innumerable rays from innumerable images can converge to a point. just as all lines can meet at a point without interfering with each other--being without breadth or thickness--in the same way all the images of surfaces can meet there; and as each given point faces the object opposite to it and each object faces an opposite point, the converging rays of the image can pass through the point and diverge again beyond it to reproduce and re-magnify the real size of that image. but their impressions will appear reversed--as is shown in the first, above; where it is said that every image intersects as it enters the narrow openings made in a very thin substance. read the marginal text on the other side. in proportion as the opening is smaller than the shaded body, so much less will the images transmitted through this opening intersect each other. the sides of images which pass through openings into a dark room intersect at a point which is nearer to the opening in proportion as the opening is narrower. to prove this let _a b_ be an object in light and shade which sends not its shadow but the image of its darkened form through the opening _d e_ which is as wide as this shaded body; and its sides _a b_, being straight lines (as has been proved) must intersect between the shaded object and the opening; but nearer to the opening in proportion as it is smaller than the object in shade. as is shown, on your right hand and your left hand, in the two diagrams _a_ _b_ _c_ _n_ _m_ _o_ where, the right opening _d_ _e_, being equal in width to the shaded object _a_ _b_, the intersection of the sides of the said shaded object occurs half way between the opening and the shaded object at the point _c_. but this cannot happen in the left hand figure, the opening _o_ being much smaller than the shaded object _n_ _m_. it is impossible that the images of objects should be seen between the objects and the openings through which the images of these bodies are admitted; and this is plain, because where the atmosphere is illuminated these images are not formed visibly. when the images are made double by mutually crossing each other they are invariably doubly as dark in tone. to prove this let _d_ _e_ _h_ be such a doubling which although it is only seen within the space between the bodies in _b_ and _i_ this will not hinder its being seen from _f_ _g_ or from _f_ _m_; being composed of the images _a_ _b_ _i_ _k_ which run together in _d_ _e_ _h_. [footnote: . on the original diagram at the beginning of this chapter leonardo has written "_azurro_" (blue) where in the facsimile i have marked _a_, and "_giallo_" (yellow) where _b_ stands.] [footnote: -- . these lines stand between the diagrams i and iii.] [footnote: -- . these lines stand between the diagrams i and ii.] [footnote: -- are written along the left side of diagram i.] . an experiment showing that though the pupil may not be moved from its position the objects seen by it may appear to move from their places. if you look at an object at some distance from you and which is below the eye, and fix both your eyes upon it and with one hand firmly hold the upper lid open while with the other you push up the under lid--still keeping your eyes fixed on the object gazed at--you will see that object double; one [image] remaining steady, and the other moving in a contrary direction to the pressure of your finger on the lower eyelid. how false the opinion is of those who say that this happens because the pupil of the eye is displaced from its position. how the above mentioned facts prove that the pupil acts upside down in seeing. [footnote: . -- . the subject indicated by these two headings is fully discussed in the two chapters that follow them in the original; but it did not seem to me appropriate to include them here.] demostration of perspective by means of a vertical glass plane ( - ). . of the plane of glass. perspective is nothing else than seeing place [or objects] behind a plane of glass, quite transparent, on the surface of which the objects behind that glass are to be drawn. these can be traced in pyramids to the point in the eye, and these pyramids are intersected on the glass plane. . pictorial perspective can never make an object at the same distance, look of the same size as it appears to the eye. you see that the apex of the pyramid _f c d_ is as far from the object _c_ _d_ as the same point _f_ is from the object _a_ _b_; and yet _c_ _d_, which is the base made by the painter's point, is smaller than _a_ _b_ which is the base of the lines from the objects converging in the eye and refracted at _s_ _t_, the surface of the eye. this may be proved by experiment, by the lines of vision and then by the lines of the painter's plumbline by cutting the real lines of vision on one and the same plane and measuring on it one and the same object. . perspective. the vertical plane is a perpendicular line, imagined as in front of the central point where the apex of the pyramids converge. and this plane bears the same relation to this point as a plane of glass would, through which you might see the various objects and draw them on it. and the objects thus drawn would be smaller than the originals, in proportion as the distance between the glass and the eye was smaller than that between the glass and the objects. perspective. the different converging pyramids produced by the objects, will show, on the plane, the various sizes and remoteness of the objects causing them. perspective. all those horizontal planes of which the extremes are met by perpendicular lines forming right angles, if they are of equal width the more they rise to the level of eye the less this is seen, and the more the eye is above them the more will their real width be seen. perspective. the farther a spherical body is from the eye the more you will see of it. the angle of sight varies with the distance ( - ) . a simple and natural method; showing how objects appear to the eye without any other medium. the object that is nearest to the eye always seems larger than another of the same size at greater distance. the eye _m_, seeing the spaces _o v x_, hardly detects the difference between them, and the. reason of this is that it is close to them [footnote : it is quite inconceivable to me why m. ravaisson, in a note to his french translation of this simple passage should have remarked: _il est clair que c'est par erreur que leonard a ècrit_ per esser visino _au lieu de_ per non esser visino. (see his printed ed. of ms. a. p. .)]; but if these spaces are marked on the vertical plane _n o_ the space _o v_ will be seen at _o r_, and in the same way the space _v x_ will appear at _r q_. and if you carry this out in any place where you can walk round, it will look out of proportion by reason of the great difference in the spaces _o r_ and _r q_. and this proceeds from the eye being so much below [near] the plane that the plane is foreshortened. hence, if you wanted to carry it out, you would have [to arrange] to see the perspective through a single hole which must be at the point _m_, or else you must go to a distance of at least times the height of the object you see. the plane _o p_ being always equally remote from the eye will reproduce the objects in a satisfactory way, so that they may be seen from place to place. . how every large mass sends forth its images, which may diminish through infinity. the images of any large mass being infinitely divisible may be infinitely diminished. . objects of equal size, situated in various places, will be seen by different pyramids which will each be smaller in proportion as the object is farther off. . perspective, in dealing with distances, makes use of two opposite pyramids, one of which has its apex in the eye and the base as distant as the horizon. the other has the base towards the eye and the apex on the horizon. now, the first includes the [visible] universe, embracing all the mass of the objects that lie in front of the eye; as it might be a vast landscape seen through a very small opening; for the more remote the objects are from the eye, the greater number can be seen through the opening, and thus the pyramid is constructed with the base on the horizon and the apex in the eye, as has been said. the second pyramid is extended to a spot which is smaller in proportion as it is farther from the eye; and this second perspective [= pyramid] results from the first. . simple perspective. simple perspective is that which is constructed by art on a vertical plane which is equally distant from the eye in every part. complex perspective is that which is constructed on a ground-plan in which none of the parts are equally distant from the eye. . perspective. no surface can be seen exactly as it is, if the eye that sees it is not equally remote from all its edges. . why when an object is placed close to the eye its edges are indistinct. when an object opposite the eye is brought too close to it, its edges must become too confused to be distinguished; as it happens with objects close to a light, which cast a large and indistinct shadow, so is it with an eye which estimates objects opposite to it; in all cases of linear perspective, the eye acts in the same way as the light. and the reason is that the eye has one leading line (of vision) which dilates with distance and embraces with true discernment large objects at a distance as well as small ones that are close. but since the eye sends out a multitude of lines which surround this chief central one and since these which are farthest from the centre in this cone of lines are less able to discern with accuracy, it follows that an object brought close to the eye is not at a due distance, but is too near for the central line to be able to discern the outlines of the object. so the edges fall within the lines of weaker discerning power, and these are to the function of the eye like dogs in the chase which can put up the game but cannot take it. thus these cannot take in the objects, but induce the central line of sight to turn upon them, when they have put them up. hence the objects which are seen with these lines of sight have confused outlines. the relative size of objects with regard to their distance from the eye ( - ). . perspective. small objects close at hand and large ones at a distance, being seen within equal angles, will appear of the same size. . perspective. there is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near. . among objects of equal size that which is most remote from the eye will look the smallest. [footnote: this axiom, sufficiently clear in itself, is in the original illustrated by a very large diagram, constructed like that here reproduced under no. . the same idea is repeated in c. a. i a; i a, stated as follows: _infra le cose d'equal grandeza quella si dimostra di minor figura che sara più distante dall' ochio_.--] . why an object is less distinct when brought near to the eye, and why with spectacles, or without the naked eye sees badly either close or far off [as the case may be]. . perspective. among objects of equal size, that which is most remote from the eye will look the smallest. . perspective. no second object can be so much lower than the first as that the eye will not see it higher than the first, if the eye is above the second. perspective. and this second object will never be so much higher than the first as that the eye, being below them, will not see the second as lower than the first. perspective. if the eye sees a second square through the centre of a smaller one, that is nearer, the second, larger square will appear to be surrounded by the smaller one. perspective--proposition. objects that are farther off can never be so large but that those in front, though smaller, will conceal or surround them. definition. this proposition can be proved by experiment. for if you look through a small hole there is nothing so large that it cannot be seen through it and the object so seen appears surrounded and enclosed by the outline of the sides of the hole. and if you stop it up, this small stopping will conceal the view of the largest object. the apparent size of objects defined by calculation ( - ) . of linear perspective. linear perspective deals with the action of the lines of sight, in proving by measurement how much smaller is a second object than the first, and how much the third is smaller than the second; and so on by degrees to the end of things visible. i find by experience that if a second object is as far beyond the first as the first is from the eye, although they are of the same size, the second will seem half the size of the first and if the third object is of the same size as the nd, and the rd is as far beyond the second as the nd from the first, it will appear of half the size of the second; and so on by degrees, at equal distances, the next farthest will be half the size of the former object. so long as the space does not exceed the length of braccia. but, beyond braccia figures of equal size will lose / and at braccia they will lose / , and / at braccia, and so on diminishing by degrees. this is if the picture plane is distant from you twice your own height. if it is only as far off as your own height, there will be a great difference between the first braccia and the second. [footnote: this chapter is included in dufresne's and manzi's editions of the treatise on painting. h. ludwig, in his commentary, calls this chapter "_eines der wichtigsten im ganzen tractat_", but at the same time he asserts that its substance has been so completely disfigured in the best ms. copies that we ought not to regard leonardo as responsible for it. however, in the case of this chapter, the old ms. copies agree with the original as it is reproduced above. from the chapters given later in this edition, which were written at a subsequent date, it would appear that leonardo corrected himself on these points.] . of the diminution of objects at various distances. a second object as far distant from the first as the first is from the eye will appear half the size of the first, though they be of the same size really. of the degrees of diminution. if you place the vertical plane at one braccio from the eye, the first object, being at a distance of braccia from your eye will diminish to / of its height at that plane; and if it is braccia from the eye, to / ; and if it is braccia off, it will diminish to / of its height and so on by degrees, as the space doubles the diminution will double. . begin from the line _m f_ with the eye below; then go up and do the same with the line _n f_, then with the eye above and close to the gauges on the ground look at _m n_; then as _c m_ is to _m n_ so will _n m_ be to _n s_. if _a n_ goes times into _f b, m p_ will do the same into _p g_. then go backwards so far as that _c d_ goes twice into _a n_ and _p g_ will be equal to _g h_. and _m p_ will go into _h p_ as often as _d c_ into _o p_. [footnote: the first three lines are unfortunately very obscure.] . i give the degrees of the objects seen by the eye as the musician does the notes heard by the ear. although the objects seen by the eye do, in fact, touch each other as they recede, i will nevertheless found my rule on spaces of braccia each; as a musician does with notes, which, though they can be carried on one into the next, he divides into degrees from note to note calling them st, nd, rd, th, th; and has affixed a name to each degree in raising or lowering the voice. . perspective. let _f_ be the level and distance of the eye; and _a_ the vertical plane, as high as a man; let _e_ be a man, then i say that on the plane this will be the distance from the plane to the nd man. . the differences in the diminution of objects of equal size in consequence of their various remoteness from the eye will bear among themselves the same proportions as those of the spaces between the eye and the different objects. find out how much a man diminishes at a certain distance and what its length is; and then at twice that distance and at times, and so make your general rule. . the eye cannot judge where an object high up ought to descend. . perspective. if two similar and equal objects are placed one beyond the other at a given distance the difference in their size will appear greater in proportion as they are nearer to the eye that sees them. and conversely there will seem to be less difference in their size in proportion as they are remote from the eve. this is proved by the proportions of their distances among themselves; for, if the first of these two objects were as far from the eye, as the nd from the first this would be called the second proportion: since, if the first is at braccia from the eye and the nd at two braccia, two being twice as much as one, the first object will look twice as large as the second. but if you place the first at a hundred braccia from you and the second at a hundred and one, you will find that the first is only so much larger than the second as is less than ; and the converse is equally true. and again, the same thing is proved by the th of this book which shows that among objects that are equal, there is the same proportion in the diminution of the size as in the increase in the distance from the eye of the spectator. on natural perspective ( -- ). . of equal objects the most remote look the smallest. the practice of perspective may be divided into ... parts [footnote : _in_ ... _parte_. the space for the number is left blank in the original.], of which the first treats of objects seen by the eye at any distance; and it shows all these objects just as the eye sees them diminished, without obliging a man to stand in one place rather than another so long as the plane does not produce a second foreshortening. but the second practice is a combination of perspective derived partly from art and partly from nature and the work done by its rules is in every portion of it, influenced by natural perspective and artificial perspective. by natural perspective i mean that the plane on which this perspective is represented is a flat surface, and this plane, although it is parallel both in length and height, is forced to diminish in its remoter parts more than in its nearer ones. and this is proved by the first of what has been said above, and its diminution is natural. but artificial perspective, that is that which is devised by art, does the contrary; for objects equal in size increase on the plane where it is foreshortened in proportion as the eye is more natural and nearer to the plane, and as the part of the plane on which it is figured is farther from the eye. and let this plane be _d e_ on which are seen equal circles which are beyond this plane _d e_, that is the circles _a b c_. now you see that the eye _h_ sees on the vertical plane the sections of the images, largest of those that are farthest and smallest of the nearest. . here follows what is wanting in the margin at the foot on the other side of this page. natural perspective acts in a contrary way; for, at greater distances the object seen appears smaller, and at a smaller distance the object appears larger. but this said invention requires the spectator to stand with his eye at a small hole and then, at that small hole, it will be very plain. but since many (men's) eyes endeavour at the same time to see one and the same picture produced by this artifice only one can see clearly the effect of this perspective and all the others will see confusion. it is well therefore to avoid such complex perspective and hold to simple perspective which does not regard planes as foreshortened, but as much as possible in their proper form. this simple perspective, in which the plane intersects the pyramids by which the images are conveyed to the eye at an equal distance from the eye is our constant experience, from the curved form of the pupil of the eye on which the pyramids are intersected at an equal distance from the visual virtue. [footnote : _la prima di sopra_ i. e. the first of the three diagrams which, in the original ms., are placed in the margin at the beginning of this chapter.] . of a mixture of natural and artificial perspective. this diagram distinguishes natural from artificial perspective. but before proceeding any farther i will define what is natural and what is artificial perspective. natural perspective says that the more remote of a series of objects of equal size will look the smaller, and conversely, the nearer will look the larger and the apparent size will diminish in proportion to the distance. but in artificial perspective when objects of unequal size are placed at various distances, the smallest is nearer to the eye than the largest and the greatest distance looks as though it were the least of all; and the cause of this is the plane on which the objects are represented; and which is at unequal distances from the eye throughout its length. and this diminution of the plane is natural, but the perspective shown upon it is artificial since it nowhere agrees with the true diminution of the said plane. whence it follows, that when the eye is somewhat removed from the [station point of the] perspective that it has been gazing at, all the objects represented look monstrous, and this does not occur in natural perspective, which has been defined above. let us say then, that the square _a b c d_ figured above is foreshortened being seen by the eye situated in the centre of the side which is in front. but a mixture of artificial and natural perspective will be seen in this tetragon called _el main_ [footnote : _el main_ is quite legibly written in the original; the meaning and derivation of the word are equally doubtful.], that is to say _e f g h_ which must appear to the eye of the spectator to be equal to _a b c d_ so long as the eye remains in its first position between _c_ and _d_. and this will be seen to have a good effect, because the natural perspective of the plane will conceal the defects which would [otherwise] seem monstrous. _iii._ _six books on light and shade._ _linear perspective cannot be immediately followed by either the_ "prospettiva de' perdimenti" _or the_ "prospettiva de' colori" _or the aerial perspective; since these branches of the subject presuppose a knowledge of the principles of light and shade. no apology, therefore, is here needed for placing these immediately after linear perspective._ _we have various plans suggested by leonardo for the arrangement of the mass of materials treating of this subject. among these i have given the preference to a scheme propounded in no._ iii, _because, in all probability, we have here a final and definite purpose expressed. several authors have expressed it as their opinion that the paris manuscript_ c _is a complete and finished treatise on light and shade. certainly, the principles of light and shade form by far the larger portion of this ms. which consists of two separate parts; still, the materials are far from being finally arranged. it is also evident that he here investigates the subject from the point of view of the physicist rather than from that of the painter._ _the plan of a scheme of arrangement suggested in no._ iii _and adopted by me has been strictly adhered to for the first four books. for the three last, however, few materials have come down to us; and it must be admitted that these three books would find a far more appropriate place in a work on physics than in a treatise on painting. for this reason i have collected in book v all the chapters on reflections, and in book vi i have put together and arranged all the sections of ms._ c _that belong to the book on painting, so far as they relate to light and shade, while the sections of the same ms. which treat of the_ "prospettiva de' perdimenti" _have, of course, been excluded from the series on light and shade._ [footnote iii: this text has already been published with some slight variations in dozio's pamphlet _degli scritti e disegni di leonardo da vinci_, milan , pp. -- . dozio did not transcribe it from the original ms. which seems to have remained unknown to him, but from an old copy (ms. h. in the ambrosian library).] general introduction. prolegomena. . you must first explain the theory and then the practice. first you must describe the shadows and lights on opaque objects, and then on transparent bodies. scheme of the books on light and shade. . introduction. [having already treated of the nature of shadows and the way in which they are cast [footnote : _avendo io tractato._--we may suppose that he here refers to some particular ms., possibly paris c.], i will now consider the places on which they fall; and their curvature, obliquity, flatness or, in short, any character i may be able to detect in them.] shadow is the obstruction of light. shadows appear to me to be of supreme importance in perspective, because, without them opaque and solid bodies will be ill defined; that which is contained within their outlines and their boundaries themselves will be ill-understood unless they are shown against a background of a different tone from themselves. and therefore in my first proposition concerning shadow i state that every opaque body is surrounded and its whole surface enveloped in shadow and light. and on this proposition i build up the first book. besides this, shadows have in themselves various degrees of darkness, because they are caused by the absence of a variable amount of the luminous rays; and these i call primary shadows because they are the first, and inseparable from the object to which they belong. and on this i will found my second book. from these primary shadows there result certain shaded rays which are diffused through the atmosphere and these vary in character according to that of the primary shadows whence they are derived. i shall therefore call these shadows derived shadows because they are produced by other shadows; and the third book will treat of these. again these derived shadows, where they are intercepted by various objects, produce effects as various as the places where they are cast and of this i will treat in the fourth book. and since all round the derived shadows, where the derived shadows are intercepted, there is always a space where the light falls and by reflected dispersion is thrown back towards its cause, it meets the original shadow and mingles with it and modifies it somewhat in its nature; and on this i will compose my fifth book. besides this, in the sixth book i will investigate the many and various diversities of reflections resulting from these rays which will modify the original [shadow] by [imparting] some of the various colours from the different objects whence these reflected rays are derived. again, the seventh book will treat of the various distances that may exist between the spot where the reflected rays fall and that where they originate, and the various shades of colour which they will acquire in falling on opaque bodies. different principles and plans of treatment ( -- ). . first i will treat of light falling through windows which i will call restricted [light] and then i will treat of light in the open country, to which i will give the name of diffused light. then i will treat of the light of luminous bodies. . of painting. the conditions of shadow and light [as seen] by the eye are . of these the first is when the eye and the light are on the same side of the object seen; the nd is when the eye is in front of the object and the light is behind it. the rd is when the eye is in front of the object and the light is on one side, in such a way as that a line drawn from the object to the eye and one from the object to the light should form a right angle where they meet. . of painting. this is another section: that is, of the nature of a reflection (from) an object placed between the eye and the light under various aspects. . of painting. as regards all visible objects things must be considered. these are the position of the eye which sees: that of the object seen [with regard] to the light, and the position of the light which illuminates the object, _b_ is the eye, _a_ the object seen, _c_ the light, _a_ is the eye, _b_ the illuminating body, _c_ is the illuminated object. . let _a_ be the light, _b_ the eye, _c_ the object seen by the eye and in the light. these show, first, the eye between the light and the body; the nd, the light between the eye and the body; the rd the body between the eye and the light, _a_ is the eye, _b_ the illuminated object, _c_ the light. . of painting. of the three kinds of light that illuminate opaque bodies. the first kind of light which may illuminate opaque bodies is called direct light--as that of the sun or any other light from a window or flame. the second is diffused [universal] light, such as we see in cloudy weather or in mist and the like. the rd is subdued light, that is when the sun is entirely below the horizon, either in the evening or morning. . of light. the lights which may illuminate opaque bodies are of kinds. these are: diffused light as that of the atmosphere, within our horizon. and direct, as that of the sun, or of a window or door or other opening. the third is reflected light; and there is a th which is that which passes through [semi] transparent bodies, as linen or paper or the like, but not transparent like glass, or crystal, or other diaphanous bodies, which produce the same effect as though nothing intervened between the shaded object and the light that falls upon it; and this we will discuss fully in our discourse. definition of the nature of shadows ( -- ). . what light and shadow are. shadow is the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body. shadow is of the nature of darkness. light [on an object] is of the nature of a luminous body; one conceals and the other reveals. they are always associated and inseparable from all objects. but shadow is a more powerful agent than light, for it can impede and entirely deprive bodies of their light, while light can never entirely expel shadow from a body, that is from an opaque body. . shadow is the diminution of light by the intervention of an opaque body. shadow is the counterpart of the luminous rays which are cut off by an opaque body. this is proved because the shadow cast is the same in shape and size as the luminous rays were which are transformed into a shadow. . shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light. a shadow may be infinitely dark, and also of infinite degrees of absence of darkness. the beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. the forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow. . of the nature of shadow. shadow partakes of the nature of universal matter. all such matters are more powerful in their beginning and grow weaker towards the end, i say at the beginning, whatever their form or condition may be and whether visible or invisible. and it is not from small beginnings that they grow to a great size in time; as it might be a great oak which has a feeble beginning from a small acorn. yet i may say that the oak is most powerful at its beginning, that is where it springs from the earth, which is where it is largest (to return:) darkness, then, is the strongest degree of shadow and light is its least. therefore, o painter, make your shadow darkest close to the object that casts it, and make the end of it fading into light, seeming to have no end. of the various kinds of shadows. ( - ). . darkness is absence of light. shadow is diminution of light. primitive shadow is that which is inseparable from a body not in the light. derived shadow is that which is disengaged from a body in shadow and pervades the air. a cast transparent shadow is that which is surrounded by an illuminated surface. a simple shadow is one which receives no light from the luminous body which causes it. a simple shadow begins within the line which starts from the edge of the luminous body _a b_. . a simple shadow is one where no light at all interferes with it. a compound shadow is one which is somewhat illuminated by one or more lights. . what is the difference between a shadow that is inseparable from a body and a cast shadow? an inseparable shadow is that which is never absent from the illuminated body. as, for instance a ball, which so long as it is in the light always has one side in shadow which never leaves it for any movement or change of position in the ball. a separate shadow may be and may not be produced by the body itself. suppose the ball to be one braccia distant from a wall with a light on the opposite side of it; this light will throw upon the wall exactly as broad a shadow as is to be seen on the side of the ball that is turned towards the wall. that portion of the cast shadow will not be visible when the light is below the ball and the shadow is thrown up towards the sky and finding no obstruction on its way is lost. . how there are kinds of light, one separable from, and the other inseparable from bodies. of the various kinds of light ( , ). separate light is that which falls upon the body. inseparable light is the side of the body that is illuminated by that light. one is called primary, the other derived. and, in the same way there are two kinds of shadow:--one primary and the other derived. the primary is that which is inseparable from the body, the derived is that which proceeds from the body conveying to the surface of the wall the form of the body causing it. . how there are different kinds of light; one being called diffused, the other restricted. the diffused is that which freely illuminates objects. the restricted is that which being admitted through an opening or window illuminates them on that side only. [footnote: at the spot marked _a_ in the first diagram leonardo wrote _lume costretto_ (restricted light). at the spot _b_ on the second diagram he wrote _lume libero_ (diffused light).] general remarks ( . ). . light is the chaser away of darkness. shade is the obstruction of light. primary light is that which falls on objects and causes light and shade. and derived lights are those portions of a body which are illuminated by the primary light. a primary shadow is that side of a body on which the light cannot fall. the general distribution of shadow and light is that sum total of the rays thrown off by a shaded or illuminated body passing through the air without any interference and the spot which intercepts and cuts off the distribution of the dark and light rays. and the eye can best distinguish the forms of objects when it is placed between the shaded and the illuminated parts. . memorandum of things i require to have granted [as axioms] in my explanation of perspective. i ask to have this much granted me--to assert that every ray passing through air of equal density throughout, travels in a straight line from its cause to the object or place it falls upon. first book on light and shade. on the nature of light ( . ). . the reason by which we know that a light radiates from a single centre is this: we plainly see that a large light is often much broader than some small object which nevertheless--and although the rays [of the large light] are much more than twice the extent [of the small body]--always has its shadow cast on the nearest surface very visibly. let _c f_ be a broad light and _n_ be the object in front of it, casting a shadow on the plane, and let _a b_ be the plane. it is clear that it is not the broad light that will cast the shadow _n_ on the plane, but that the light has within it a centre is shown by this experiment. the shadow falls on the plane as is shown at _m o t r_. [footnote : in the original ms. no explanatory text is placed after this title-line; but a space is left for it and the text beginning at line comes next.] why, to two [eyes] or in front of two eyes do objects appear as two? why, when you estimate the direction of an object with two sights the nearer appears confused. i say that the eye projects an infinite number of lines which mingle or join those reaching it which come to it from the object looked at. and it is only the central and sensible line that can discern and discriminate colours and objects; all the others are false and illusory. and if you place objects at half an arm's length apart if the nearer of the two is close to the eye its form will remain far more confused than that of the second; the reason is that the first is overcome by a greater number of false lines than the second and so is rendered vague. light acts in the same manner, for in the effects of its lines (=rays), and particularly in perspective, it much resembles the eye; and its central rays are what cast the true shadow. when the object in front of it is too quickly overcome with dim rays it will cast a broad and disproportionate shadow, ill defined; but when the object which is to cast the shadow and cuts off the rays near to the place where the shadow falls, then the shadow is distinct; and the more so in proportion as the light is far off, because at a long distance the central ray is less overcome by false rays; because the lines from the eye and the solar and other luminous rays passing through the atmosphere are obliged to travel in straight lines. unless they are deflected by a denser or rarer air, when they will be bent at some point, but so long as the air is free from grossness or moisture they will preserve their direct course, always carrying the image of the object that intercepts them back to their point of origin. and if this is the eye, the intercepting object will be seen by its colour, as well as by form and size. but if the intercepting plane has in it some small perforation opening into a darker chamber--not darker in colour, but by absence of light--you will see the rays enter through this hole and transmitting to the plane beyond all the details of the object they proceed from both as to colour and form; only every thing will be upside down. but the size [of the image] where the lines are reconstructed will be in proportion to the relative distance of the aperture from the plane on which the lines fall [on one hand] and from their origin [on the other]. there they intersect and form pyramids with their point meeting [a common apex] and their bases opposite. let _a b_ be the point of origin of the lines, _d e_ the first plane, and _c_ the aperture with the intersection of the lines; _f g_ is the inner plane. you will find that _a_ falls upon the inner plane below at _g_, and _b_ which is below will go up to the spot _f_; it will be quite evident to experimenters that every luminous body has in itself a core or centre, from which and to which all the lines radiate which are sent forth by the surface of the luminous body and reflected back to it; or which, having been thrown out and not intercepted, are dispersed in the air. . the rays whether shaded or luminous have greater strength and effect at their points than at their sides. although the points of luminous pyramids may extend into shaded places and those of pyramids of shadow into illuminated places, and though among the luminous pyramids one may start from a broader base than another; nevertheless, if by reason of their various length these luminous pyramids acquire angles of equal size their light will be equal; and the case will be the same with the pyramids of shadow; as may be seen in the intersected pyramids _a b c_ and _d e f_, which though their bases differ in size are equal as to breadth and light. [footnote: -- : this supplementary paragraph is indicated as being a continuation of line , by two small crosses.] the difference between light and lustre ( -- ). . of the difference between light and lustre; and that lustre is not included among colours, but is saturation of whiteness, and derived from the surface of wet bodies; light partakes of the colour of the object which reflects it (to the eye) as gold or silver or the like. . of the highest lights which turn and move as the eye moves which sees the object. suppose the body to be the round object figured here and let the light be at the point _a_, and let the illuminated side of the object be _b c_ and the eye at the point _d_: i say that, as lustre is every where and complete in each part, if you stand at the point _d_ the lustre will appear at _c_, and in proportion as the eye moves from _d_ to _a_, the lustre will move from _c_ to _n_. . of painting. heigh light or lustre on any object is not situated [necessarily] in the middle of an illuminated object, but moves as and where the eye moves in looking at it. . of light and lustre. what is the difference between light and the lustre which is seen on the polished surface of opaque bodies? the lights which are produced from the polished surface of opaque bodies will be stationary on stationary objects even if the eye on which they strike moves. but reflected lights will, on those same objects, appear in as many different places on the surface as different positions are taken by the eye. what bodies have light upon them without lustre? opaque bodies which have a hard and rough surface never display any lustre in any portion of the side on which the light falls. what bodies will display lustre but not look illuminated? those bodies which are opaque and hard with a hard surface reflect light [lustre] from every spot on the illuminated side which is in a position to receive light at the same angle of incidence as they occupy with regard to the eye; but, as the surface mirrors all the surrounding objects, the illuminated [body] is not recognisable in these portions of the illuminated body. . the relations of luminous to illuminated bodies. the middle of the light and shade on an object in light and shade is opposite to the middle of the primary light. all light and shadow expresses itself in pyramidal lines. the middle of the shadow on any object must necessarily be opposite the middle of its light, with a direct line passing through the centre of the body. the middle of the light will be at _a_, that of the shadow at _b_. [again, in bodies shown in light and shade the middle of each must coincide with the centre of the body, and a straight line will pass through both and through that centre.] [footnote: in the original ms., at the spot marked _a_ of the first diagram leonardo wrote _primitiuo_, and at the spot marked _c_--_primitiva_ (primary); at the spot marked _b_ he wrote _dirivatiuo_ and at _d deriuatiua_ (derived).] experiments on the relation of light and shadow within a room ( -- ). . shows how light from any side converges to one point. although the balls _a b c_ are lighted from one window, nevertheless, if you follow the lines of their shadows you will see they intersect at a point forming the angle _n_. [footnote: the diagram belonging to this passage is slightly sketched on pl. xxxii; a square with three balls below it. the first three lines of the text belonging to it are written above the sketch and the six others below it.] . every shadow cast by a body has a central line directed to a single point produced by the intersection of luminous lines in the middle of the opening and thickness of the window. the proposition stated above, is plainly seen by experiment. thus if you draw a place with a window looking northwards, and let this be _s f_, you will see a line starting from the horizon to the east, which, touching the angles of the window _o f_, reaches _d_; and from the horizon on the west another line, touching the other angles _r s_, and ending at _c_; and their intersection falls exactly in the middle of the opening and thickness of the window. again, you can still better confirm this proof by placing two sticks, as shown at _g h_; and you will see the line drawn from the centre of the shadow directed to the centre _m_ and prolonged to the horizon _n f_. [footnote: _b_ here stands for _cerchio del' orizonte tramontano_ on the original diagram (the circle of the horizon towards the north); _a_ for _levante_ (east) and _c_ for _ponete_ (west).] . every shadow with all its variations, which becomes larger as its distance from the object is greater, has its external lines intersecting in the middle, between the light and the object. this proposition is very evident and is confirmed by experience. for, if _a b_ is a window without any object interposed, the luminous atmosphere to the right hand at _a_ is seen to the left at _d_. and the atmosphere at the left illuminates on the right at _c_, and the lines intersect at the point _m_. [footnote: _a_ here stands for _levante_ (east), _b_ for _ponente_ (west).] . every body in light and shade is situated between pyramids one dark and the other luminous, one is visible the other is not. but this only happens when the light enters by a window. supposing _a b_ to be the window and _r_ the body in light and shade, the light to the right hand _z_ will pass the object to the left and go on to _p_; the light to the left at _k_ will pass to the right of the object at _i_ and go on to _m_ and the two lines will intersect at _c_ and form a pyramid. then again _a_ _b_ falls on the shaded body at _i_ _g_ and forms a pyramid _f_ _i_ _g_. _f_ will be dark because the light _a_ _b_ can never fall there; _i_ _g_ _c_ will be illuminated because the light falls upon it. light and shadow with regard to the position of the eye ( -- ). . every shaded body that is larger than the pupil and that interposes between the luminous body and the eye will be seen dark. when the eye is placed between the luminous body and the objects illuminated by it, these objects will be seen without any shadow. [footnote: the diagram which in the original stands above line is given on plate ii, no . then, after a blank space of about eight lines, the diagram plate ii no is placed in the original. there is no explanation of it beyond the one line written under it.] . why the lights one on each side of a body having two pyramidal sides of an obtuse apex leave it devoid of shadow. [footnote: the sketch illustrating this is on plate xli no .] . a body in shadow situated between the light and the eye can never display its illuminated portion unless the eye can see the whole of the primary light. [footnote: _a_ stands for _corpo_ (body), _b_ for _lume_ (light).] . the eye which looks (at a spot) half way between the shadow and the light which surrounds the body in shadow will see that the deepest shadows on that body will meet the eye at equal angles, that is at the same angle as that of sight. [footnote: in both these diagrams _a_ stands for _lume_ (light) _b_ for _ombra_ (shadow).] . of the different light and shade in various aspects and of objects placed in them. if the sun is in the east and you look towards the west you will see every thing in full light and totally without shadow because you see them from the same side as the sun: and if you look towards the south or north you will see all objects in light and shade, because you see both the side towards the sun and the side away from it; and if you look towards the coming of the sun all objects will show you their shaded side, because on that side the sun cannot fall upon them. the law of the incidence of light. . the edges of a window which are illuminated by lights of equal degrees of brightness will not reflect light of equal brightness into the chamber within. if _b_ is a candle and _a c_ our hemisphere both will illuminate the edges of the window _m_ _n_, but light _b_ will only illuminate _f g_ and the hemisphere _a_ will light all of _d e_. . of painting. that part of a body which receives the luminous rays at equal angles will be in a higher light than any other part of it. and the part which the luminous rays strike between less equal angles will be less strongly illuminated. second book on light and shade. gradations of strength in the shadows ( . ). . that portion of a body in light and shade will be least luminous which is seen under the least amount of light. that part of the object which is marked _m_ is in the highest light because it faces the window _a d_ by the line _a f_; _n_ is in the second grade because the light _b d_ strikes it by the line _b e_; _o_ is in the third grade, as the light falls on it from _c d_ by the line _c h_; _p_ is the lowest light but one as _c d_ falls on it by the line _d v_; _q_ is the deepest shadow for no light falls on it from any part of the window. in proportion as _c d_ goes into _a d_ so will _n r s_ be darker than _m_, and all the rest is space without shadow. [footnote: the diagram belonging to this chapter is no. on plate iii. the letters _a b e d_ and _r_ are not reproduced in facsimile of the original, but have been replaced by ordinary type in the margin. - . the original text of these lines is reproduced within the diagram.--compare no .] . the light which falls on a shaded body at the acutest angle receives the highest light, and the darkest portion is that which receives it at an obtuse angle and both the light and the shadow form pyramids. the angle _c_ receives the highest grade of light because it is directly in front of the window _a b_ and the whole horizon of the sky _m x_. the angle _a_ differs but little from _c_ because the angles which divide it are not so unequal as those below, and only that portion of the horizon is intercepted which lies between _y_ and _x_. although it gains as much on the other side its line is nevertheless not very strong because one angle is smaller than its fellow. the angles _e i_ will have less light because they do not see much of the light _m s_ and the light _v x_ and their angles are very unequal. yhe angle _k_ and the angle _f_ are each placed between very unequal angles and therefore have but little light, because at _k_ it has only the light _p t_, and at _f_ only _t q_; _o g_ is the lowest grade of light because this part has no light at all from the sky; and thence come the lines which will reconstruct a pyramid that is the counterpart of the pyramid _c_; and this pyramid _l_ is in the first grade of shadow; for this too is placed between equal angles directly opposite to each other on either side of a straight line which passes through the centre of the body and goes to the centre of the light. the several luminous images cast within the frame of the window at the points _a_ and _b_ make a light which surrounds the derived shadow cast by the solid body at the points and . the shaded images increase from _o g_ and end at and . [footnote: the diagram belonging to this chapter is no. on plate iii. in the original it is placed between lines and , and in the reproduction these are shown in part. the semi circle above is marked _orizonte_ (horizon). the number at the left hand side, outside the facsimile, is in the place of a figure which has become indistinct in the original.] on the intensity of shadows as dependent on the distance from the light ( - ). . the smaller the light that falls upon an object the more shadow it will display. and the light will illuminate a smaller portion of the object in proportion as it is nearer to it; and conversely, a larger extent of it in proportion as it is farther off. a light which is smaller than the object on which it falls will light up a smaller extent of it in proportion as it is nearer to it, and the converse, as it is farther from it. but when the light is larger than the object illuminated it will light a larger extent of the object in proportion as it is nearer and the converse when they are farther apart. . that portion of an illuminated object which is nearest to the source of light will be the most strongly illuminated. . that portion of the primary shadow will be least dark which is farthest from the edges. the derived shadow will be darker than the primary shadow where it is contiguous with it. on the proportion of light and shade ( - ). . that portion of an opaque body will be more in shade or more in light, which is nearer to the dark body, by which it is shaded, or to the light that illuminates it. objects seen in light and shade show in greater relief than those which are wholly in light or in shadow. . of perspective. the shaded and illuminated sides of opaque objects will display the same proportion of light and darkness as their objects [footnote : the meaning of _obbietti_ (objects) is explained in no , lines - .--between the title-line and the next there is, in the original, a small diagram representing a circle described round a square.]. . of painting. the outlines and form of any part of a body in light and shade are indistinct in the shadows and in the high lights; but in the portions between the light and the shadows they are highly conspicuous. . of painting. among objects in various degrees of shade, when the light proceeds from a single source, there will be the same proportion in their shadows as in the natural diminution of the light and the same must be understood of the degrees of light. . a single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the object than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and so illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere. third book on light and shade. definition of derived shadow ( . ). . derived shadow cannot exist without primary shadow. this is proved by the first of this which says: darkness is the total absence of light, and shadow is an alleviation of darkness and of light, and it is more or less dark or light in proportion as the darkness is modified by the light. . shadow is diminution of light. darkness is absence of light. shadow is divided into two kinds, of which the first is called primary shadow, the second is derived shadow. the primary shadow is always the basis of the derived shadow. the edges of the derived shadow are straight lines. [footnote: the theory of the _ombra_ dirivativa_--a technical expression for which there is no precise english equivalent is elaborately treated by leonardo. but both text and diagrams (as pl. iv, - and pl. v) must at once convince the student that the distinction he makes between _ombra primitiva_ and _ombra dirivativa_ is not merely justifiable but scientific. _ombra dirivativa_ is by no means a mere abstract idea. this is easily proved by repeating the experiment made by leonardo, and by filling with smoke the room in which the existence of the _ombra dirivativa_ is investigated, when the shadow becomes visible. nor is it difficult to perceive how much of leonardo's teaching depended on this theory. the recognised, but extremely complicated science of cast shadows--_percussione dell' ombre dirivative_ as leonardo calls them--is thus rendered more intelligible if not actually simpler, and we must assume this theory as our chief guide through the investigations which follow.] the darkness of the derived shadow diminishes in proportion as it is remote from the primary shadow. different sorts of derived shadows ( - ). . shadow and light. the forms of shadows are three: inasmuch as if the solid body which casts the shadow is equal (in size) to the light, the shadow resembles a column without any termination (in length). if the body is larger than the light the shadow resembles a truncated and inverted pyramid, and its length has also no defined termination. but if the body is smaller than the light, the shadow will resemble a pyramid and come to an end, as is seen in eclipses of the moon. . of simple derived shadows. the simple derived shadow is of two kinds: one kind which has its length defined, and two kinds which are undefined; and the defined shadow is pyramidal. of the two undefined, one is a column and the other spreads out; and all three have rectilinear outlines. but the converging, that is the pyramidal, shadow proceeds from a body that is smaller than the light, and the columnar from a body equal in size to the light, and the spreading shadow from a body larger than the light; &c. of compound derived shadows. compound derived shadows are of two kinds; that is columnar and spreading. . of shadow. derived shadows are of three kinds of which one is spreading, the second columnar, the third converging to the point where the two sides meet and intersect, and beyond this intersection the sides are infinitely prolonged or straight lines. and if you say, this shadow must terminate at the angle where the sides meet and extend no farther, i deny this, because above in the first on shadow i have proved: that a thing is completely terminated when no portion of it goes beyond its terminating lines. now here, in this shadow, we see the converse of this, in as much as where this derived shadow originates we obviously have the figures of two pyramids of shadow which meet at their angles. hence, if, as [my] opponent says, the first pyramid of shadow terminates the derivative shadow at the angle whence it starts, then the second pyramid of shadow--so says the adversary--must be caused by the angle and not from the body in shadow; and this is disproved with the help of the nd of this which says: shadow is a condition produced by a body casting a shadow, and interposed between this shadow and the luminous body. by this it is made clear that the shadow is not produced by the angle of the derived shadow but only by the body casting the shadow; &c. if a spherical solid body is illuminated by a light of elongated form the shadow produced by the longest portion of this light will have less defined outlines than that which is produced by the breadth of the same light. and this is proved by what was said before, which is: that a shadow will have less defined outlines in proportion as the light which causes it is larger, and conversely, the outlines are clearer in proportion as it is smaller. [footnote: the two diagrams to this chapter are on plate iv, no. .] on the relation of derived and primary shadow ( - ). . the derived shadow can never resemble the body from which it proceeds unless the light is of the same form and size as the body causing the shadow. the derived shadow cannot be of the same form as the primary shadow unless it is intercepted by a plane parallel to it. . how a cast shadow can never be of the same size as the body that casts it. if the rays of light proceed, as experience shows, from a single point and are diffused in a sphere round this point, radiating and dispersed through the air, the farther they spread the wider they must spread; and an object placed between the light and a wall is always imaged larger in its shadow, because the rays that strike it [footnote: . the following lines are wanting to complete the logical connection.] would, by the time they have reached the wall, have become larger. . any shadow cast by a body in light and shade is of the same nature and character as that which is inseparable from the body. the centre of the length of a shadow always corresponds to that of the luminous body [footnote : this second statement of the same idea as in the former sentence, but in different words, does not, in the original, come next to the foregoing; sections and are placed between them.]. it is inevitable that every shadow must have its centre in a line with the centre of the light. on the shape of derived shadows ( - ). . of the pyramidal shadow. the pyramidal shadow produced by a columnar body will be narrower than the body itself in proportion as the simple derived shadow is intersected farther from the body which casts it. [footnote : compare the first diagram to no. . if we here conceive of the outlines of the pyramid of shadow on the ground as prolonged beyond its apex this gives rise to a second pyramid; this is what is spoken of at the beginning of no. .] . the cast shadow will be longest when the light is lowest. the cast shadow will be shortest when the light is highest. . both the primary and derived shadow will be larger when caused by the light of a candle than by diffused light. the difference between the larger and smaller shadows will be in inverse proportion to the larger and smaller lights causing them. [footnote: in the diagrams _a_ stands for _celo_ (sky), _b_ for _cadela_ (candle).] . all bodies, in proportion as they are nearer to, or farther from the source of light, will produce longer or shorter derived shadows. among bodies of equal size, that one which is illuminated by the largest light will have the shortest shadow. experiment confirms this proposition. thus the body _m_ _n_ is surrounded by a larger amount of light than the body _p q_, as is shown above. let us say that _v c a b d x_ is the sky, the source of light, and that _s t_ is a window by which the luminous rays enter, and so _m n_ and _p q_ are bodies in light and shade as exposed to this light; _m n_ will have a small derived shadow, because its original shadow will be small; and the derivative light will be large, again, because the original light _c d_ will be large and _p q_ will have more derived shadow because its original shadow will be larger, and its derived light will be smaller than that of the body _m n_ because that portion of the hemisphere _a b_ which illuminates it is smaller than the hemisphere _c d_ which illuminates the body _m n_. [footnote: the diagram, given on pl. iv, no. , stands in the original between lines and , while the text of lines to is written on its left side. in the reproduction of this diagram the letter _v_ at the outer right-hand end has been omitted.] . the shadow _m_ bears the same proportion to the shadow _n_ as the line _b c_ to the line _f c_. . of painting. of different shadows of equal strength that which is nearest the eye will seem the least strong. why is the shadow _e a b_ in the first grade of strength, _b c_ in the second; _c d_ in the third? the reason is that as from _e a b_ the sky is nowhere visible, it gets no light whatever from the sky, and so has no direct [primary] light. _b c_ faces the portion of the sky _f g_ and is illuminated by it. _c d_ faces the sky at _h k_. _c d_, being exposed to a larger extent of sky than _b c_, it is reasonable that it should be more lighted. and thus, up to a certain distance, the wall _a d_ will grow lighter for the reasons here given, until the darkness of the room overpowers the light from the window. . when the light of the atmosphere is restricted [by an opening] and illuminates bodies which cast shadows, these bodies being equally distant from the centre of the window, that which is most obliquely placed will cast the largest shadow beyond it. . these bodies standing apart in a room lighted by a single window will have derivative shadows more or less short according as they are more or less opposite to the window. among the shadows cast by bodies of equal mass but at unequal distances from the opening by which they are illuminated, that shadow will be the longest of the body which is least in the light. and in proportion as one body is better illuminated than another its shadow will be shorter than another. the proportion _n m_ and _e v k_ bear to _r t_ and _v x_ corresponds with that of the shadow _x_ to and _y_. the reason why those bodies which are placed most in front of the middle of the window throw shorter shadows than those obliquely situated is:--that the window appears in its proper form and to the obliquely placed ones it appears foreshortened; to those in the middle, the window shows its full size, to the oblique ones it appears smaller; the one in the middle faces the whole hemisphere that is _e f_ and those on the side have only a strip; that is _q r_ faces _a b_; and _m n_ faces _c d_; the body in the middle having a larger quantity of light than those at the sides is lighted from a point much below its centre, and thus the shadow is shorter. and the pyramid _g_ goes into _l y_ exactly as often as _a b_ goes into _e f_. the axis of every derivative shadow passes through / [footnote : _passa per_ / (passes through / ). the meaning of these words is probably this: each of the three axes of the derived shadow intersects the centre (_mezzo_) of the primary shadow (_ombra originale_) and, by prolongation upwards crosses six lines. this is self evident only in the middle diagram; but it is equally true of the side figures if we conceive of the lines _f_, _x n v m_, _y l k v_, and _e_, as prolonged beyond the semicircle of the horizon.] and is in a straight line with the centre of the primary shadow, with the centre of the body casting it and of the derivative light and with the centre of the window and, finally, with the centre of that portion of the source of light which is the celestial hemisphere, _y h_ is the centre of the derived shade, _l h_ of the primary shadow, _l_ of the body throwing it, _l k_ of the derived light, _v_ is the centre of the window, _e_ is the final centre of the original light afforded by that portion of the hemisphere of the sky which illuminates the solid body. [footnote: compare the diagram on pl. iv, no. . in the original this drawing is placed between lines and ; the rest, from line to line , is written on the left hand margin.] . the farther the derived shadow is prolonged the lighter it becomes. you will find that the proportion of the diameter of the derived shadow to that of the primary shadow will be the same as that between the darkness of the primary shadow and that of the derived shadow. [footnote : compare no. .] let _a b_ be the diameter of the primary shadow and _c d_ that of the derived shadow, i say that _a b_ going, as you see, three times into _d c_, the shadow _d c_ will be three times as light as the shadow _a b_. [footnote : compare no. .] if the size of the illuminating body is larger than that of the illuminated body an intersection of shadow will occur, beyond which the shadows will run off in two opposite directions as if they were caused by two separate lights. on the relative intensity of derived shadows ( - ). . on painting. the derived shadow is stronger in proportion as it is nearer to its place of origin. . how shadows fade away at long distances. shadows fade and are lost at long distances because the larger quantity of illuminated air which lies between the eye and the object seen tints the shadow with its own colour. . _a b_ will be darker than _c d_ in proportion as _c d_ is broader than _a b_. [footnote: in the original ms. the word _lume_ (light) is written at the apex of the pyramid.] . it can be proved why the shadow _o p c h_ is darker in proportion as it is nearer to the line _p h_ and is lighter in proportion as it is nearer to the line _o c_. let the light _a b_, be a window, and let the dark wall in which this window is, be _b s_, that is, one of the sides of the wall. then we may say that the line _p h_ is darker than any other part of the space _o p c h_, because this line faces the whole surface in shadow of [footnote: in the original the diagram is placed between lines and .] the wall _b s_. the line _o c_ is lighter than the other part of this space _o p c h_, because this line faces the luminous space _a b_. where the shadow is larger, or smaller, or equal the body which casts it. [first of the character of divided lights. [footnote : _lumi divisi_. the text here breaks off abruptly.] of the compound shadow _f, r, c, h_ caused by a single light. the shadow _f r c h_ is under such conditions as that where it is farthest from its inner side it loses depth in proportion. to prove this: let _d a_, be the light and _f n_ the solid body, and let _a e_ be one of the side walls of the window that is _d a_. then i say--according to the nd [proposition]: that the surface of any body is affected by the tone of the objects surrounding it,--that the side _r c_, which faces the dark wall _a e_ must participate of its darkness and, in the same way that the outer surface which faces the light _d a_ participates of the light; thus we get the outlines of the extremes on each side of the centre included between them.] this is divided into four parts. the first the extremes, which include the compound shadow, secondly the compound shadow between these extremes. . the action of the light as from its centre. if it were the whole of the light that caused the shadows beyond the bodies placed in front of it, it would follow that any body much smaller than the light would cast a pyramidal shadow; but experience not showing this, it must be the centre of the light that produces this effect. [footnote: the diagram belonging to this passage is between lines and in the original. comp. the reproduction pl. iv, no. . the text and drawing of this chapter have already been published with tolerable accuracy. see m. jordan: "_das malerbuch des leonardo da vinci_". leipzig , p. .] proof. let _a b_ be the width of the light from a window, which falls on a stick set up at one foot from _a c_ [footnote : _bastone_ (stick). the diagram has a sphere in place of a stick.]. and let _a d_ be the space where all the light from the window is visible. at _c e_ that part of the window which is between _l b_ cannot be seen. in the same way _a m_ cannot be seen from _d f_ and therefore in these two portions the light begins to fail. shadow as produced by two lights of different size ( . ). . a body in light and shade placed between two equal lights side by side will cast shadows in proportion to the [amount of] light. and the shadows will be one darker than the other in proportion as one light is nearer to the said body than the other on the opposite side. a body placed at an equal distance between two lights will cast two shadows, one deeper than the other in proportion, as the light which causes it is brighter than the other. [footnote: in the ms. the larger diagram is placed above the first line; the smaller one between l. & .] . a light which is smaller than the body it illuminates produces shadows of which the outlines end within [the surface of] the body, and not much compound shadow; and falls on less than half of it. a light which is larger than the body it illuminates, falls on more than half of it, and produces much compound shadow. the effect of light at different distances. . of the shadow cast by a body placed between equal lights. a body placed between equal lights will cast shadows of itself in the direction of the lines of the lights; and if you move this body placing it nearer to one of the lights the shadow cast towards the nearer light will be less deep than that which falls towards the more distant one. further complications in the derived shadows ( - ). . the greatest depth of shadow is in the simple derived shadow because it is not lighted by either of the two lights _a b, c d_. the next less deep shadow is the derived shadow _e f n_; and in this the shadow is less by half, because it is illuminated by a single light, that is _c d_. this is uniform in natural tone because it is lighted throughout by one only of the two luminous bodies [ ]. but it varies with the conditions of shadow, inasmuch as the farther it is away from the light the less it is illuminated by it [ ]. the third degree of depth is the middle shadow [footnote : we gather from what follows that _q g r_ here means _ombra media_ (the middle shadow).]. but this is not uniform in natural tone; because the nearer it gets to the simple derived shadow the deeper it is [footnote : compare lines - ], and it is the uniformly gradual diminution by increase of distance which is what modifies it [footnote : see footnote ]: that is to say the depth of a shadow increases in proportion to the distance from the two lights. the fourth is the shadow _k r s_ and this is all the darker in natural tone in proportion as it is nearer to _k s_, because it gets less of the light _a o_, but by the accident [of distance] it is rendered less deep, because it is nearer to the light _c d_, and thus is always exposed to both lights. the fifth is less deep in shadow than either of the others because it is always entirely exposed to one of the lights and to the whole or part of the other; and it is less deep in proportion as it is nearer to the two lights, and in proportion as it is turned towards the outer side _x t_; because it is more exposed to the second light _a b_. [footnote: the diagram to this section is given on pl. v. to the left is the facsimile of the beginning of the text belonging to it.] . of simple shadows. why, at the intersections _a_, _b_ of the two compound shadows _e f_ and _m e_, is a simple shadow pfoduced as at _e h_ and _m g_, while no such simple shadow is produced at the other two intersections _c d_ made by the very same compound shadows? answer. compound shadow are a mixture of light and shade and simple shadows are simply darkness. hence, of the two lights _n_ and _o_, one falls on the compound shadow from one side, and the other on the compound shadow from the other side, but where they intersect no light falls, as at _a b_; therefore it is a simple shadow. where there is a compound shadow one light or the other falls; and here a difficulty arises for my adversary since he says that, where the compound shadows intersect, both the lights which produce the shadows must of necessity fall and therefore these shadows ought to be neutralised; inasmuch as the two lights do not fall there, we say that the shadow is a simple one and where only one of the two lights falls, we say the shadow is compound, and where both the lights fall the shadow is neutralised; for where both lights fall, no shadow of any kind is produced, but only a light background limiting the shadow. here i shall say that what my adversary said was true: but he only mentions such truths as are in his favour; and if we go on to the rest he must conclude that my proposition is true. and that is: that if both lights fell on the point of intersection, the shadows would be neutralised. this i confess to be true if [neither of] the two shadows fell in the same spot; because, where a shadow and a light fall, a compound shadow is produced, and wherever two shadows or two equal lights fall, the shadow cannot vary in any part of it, the shadows and the lights both being equal. and this is proved in the eighth [proposition] on proportion where it is said that if a given quantity has a single unit of force and resistance, a double quantity will have double force and double resistance. definition. the intersection _n_ is produced by the shadows caused by the light _b_, because this light _b_ produces the shadow _x b_, and the shadow _s b_, but the intersection _m_ is produced by the light _a_ which causes the shadow _s a_, and the shadow _x a_. but if you uncover both the lights _a b_, then you get the two shadows _n m_ both at once, and besides these, two other, simple shadows are produced at _r o_ where neither of the two lights falls at all. the grades of depth in compound shadows are fewer in proportion as the lights falling on, and crossing them are less numerous. . why the intersections at _n_ being composed of two compound derived shadows, forms a compound shadow and not a simple one, as happens with other intersections of compound shadows. this occurs, according to the nd [diagram] of this [prop.] which says:--the intersection of derived shadows when produced by the intersection of columnar shadows caused by a single light does not produce a simple shadow. and this is the corollary of the st [prop.] which says:--the intersection of simple derived shadows never results in a deeper shadow, because the deepest shadows all added together cannot be darker than one by itself. since, if many deepest shadows increased in depth by their duplication, they could not be called the _deepest_ shadows, but only part-shadows. but if such intersections are illuminated by a second light placed between the eye and the intersecting bodies, then those shadows would become compound shadows and be uniformly dark just as much at the intersection as throughout the rest. in the st and nd above, the intersections _i k_ will not be doubled in depth as it is doubled in quantity. but in this rd, at the intersections _g n_ they will be double in depth and in quantity. . how and when the surroundings in shadow mingle their derived shadow with the light derived from the luminous body. the derived shadow of the dark walls on each side of the bright light of the window are what mingle their various degrees of shade with the light derived from the window; and these various depths of shade modify every portion of the light, except where it is strongest, at _c_. to prove this let _d a_ be the primary shadow which is turned towards the point _e_, and darkens it by its derived shadow; as may be seen by the triangle _a e d_, in which the angle _e_ faces the darkened base _d a e_; the point _v_ faces the dark shadow _a s_ which is part of _a d_, and as the whole is greater than a part, _e_ which faces the whole base [of the triangle], will be in deeper shadow than _v_ which only faces part of it. in consequence of the conclusion [shown] in the above diagram, _t_ will be less darkened than _v_, because the base of the _t_ is part of the base of the _v_; and in the same way it follows that _p_ is less in shadow than _t_, because the base of the _p_ is part of the base of the _t_. and _c_ is the terminal point of the derived shadow and the chief beginning of the highest light. [footnote: the diagram on pl. iv, no. belongs to this passage; but it must be noted that the text explains only the figure on the right-hand side.] fourth book on light and shade. on the shape of the cast shadows ( - ). . the form of the shadow cast by any body of uniform density can never be the same as that of the body producing it. [footnote: comp. the drawing on pi. xxviii, no. .] . no cast shadow can produce the true image of the body which casts it on a vertical plane unless the centre of the light is equally distant from all the edges of that body. . if a window _a b_ admits the sunlight into a room, the sunlight will magnify the size of the window and diminish the shadow of a man in such a way as that when the man makes that dim shadow of himself, approach to that which defines the real size of the window, he will see the shadows where they come into contact, dim and confused from the strength of the light, shutting off and not allowing the solar rays to pass; the effect of the shadow of the man cast by this contact will be exactly that figured above. [footnote: it is scarcely possible to render the meaning of this sentence with strict accuracy; mainly because the grammatical construction is defective in the most important part--line . in the very slight original sketch the shadow touches the upper arch of the window and the correction, here given is perhaps not justified.] . a shadow is never seen as of uniform depth on the surface which intercepts it unless every portion of that surface is equidistant from the luminous body. this is proved by the th which says:--the shadow will appear lighter or stronger as it is surrounded by a darker or a lighter background. and by the th of this:--the background will be in parts darker or lighter, in proportion as it is farther from or nearer to the luminous body. and:--of various spots equally distant from the luminous body those will always be in the highest light on which the rays fall at the smallest angles: the outline of the shadow as it falls on inequalities in the surface will be seen with all the contours similar to those of the body that casts it, if the eye is placed just where the centre of the light was. the shadow will look darkest where it is farthest from the body that casts it. the shadow _c d_, cast by the body in shadow _a b_ which is equally distant in all parts, is not of equal depth because it is seen on a back ground of varying brightness. [footnote: compare the three diagrams on pl. vi, no which, in the original accompany this section.] on the outlines of cast shadows ( - ). . the edges of a derived shadow will be most distinct where it is cast nearest to the primary shadow. . as the derived shadow gets more distant from the primary shadow, the more the cast shadow differs from the primary shadow. . of shadows which never come to an end. the greater the difference between a light and the body lighted by it, the light being the larger, the more vague will be the outlines of the shadow of that object. the derived shadow will be most confused towards the edges of its interception by a plane, where it is remotest from the body casting it. . what is the cause which makes the outlines of the shadow vague and confused? whether it is possible to give clear and definite outlines to the edges of shadows. on the relative size of shadows ( . ). . the body which is nearest to the light casts the largest shadow, and why? if an object placed in front of a single light is very close to it you will see that it casts a very large shadow on the opposite wall, and the farther you remove the object from the light the smaller will the image of the shadow become. why a shadow larger than the body that produces it becomes out of proportion. the disproportion of a shadow which is larger than the body producing it, results from the light being smaller than the body, so that it cannot be at an equal distance from the edges of the body [footnote : h. ludwig in his edition of the old copies, in the vatican library--in which this chapter is included under nos. , and alters this passage as follows: _quella parte ch'e piu propinqua piu cresce che le distanti_, although the vatican copy agrees with the original ms. in having _distante_ in the former and _propinque_ in the latter place. this supposed amendment seems to me to invert the facts. supposing for instance, that on pl. xxxi no. . _f_ is the spot where the light is that illuminates the figure there represented, and that the line behind the figure represents a wall on which the shadow of the figure is thrown. it is evident, that in that case the nearest portion, in this case the under part of the thigh, is very little magnified in the shadow, and the remoter parts, for instance the head, are more magnified.]; and the portions which are most remote are made larger than the nearer portions for this reason [footnote : see footnote ]. why a shadow which is larger than the body causing it has ill-defined outlines. the atmosphere which surrounds a light is almost like light itself for brightness and colour; but the farther off it is the more it loses this resemblance. an object which casts a large shadow and is near to the light, is illuminated both by that light by the luminous atmosphere; hence this diffused light gives the shadow ill-defined edges. . a luminous body which is long and narrow in shape gives more confused outlines to the derived shadow than a spherical light, and this contradicts the proposition next following: a shadow will have its outlines more clearly defined in proportion as it is nearer to the primary shadow or, i should say, the body casting the shadow; [footnote : the lettering refers to the lower diagram, pl. xli, no. .] the cause of this is the elongated form of the luminous body _a c_, &c. [footnote : see footnote ]. effects on cast shadows by the tone of the back ground. . of modified shadows. modified shadows are those which are cast on light walls or other illuminated objects. a shadow looks darkest against a light background. the outlines of a derived shadow will be clearer as they are nearer to the primary shadow. a derived shadow will be most defined in shape where it is intercepted, where the plane intercepts it at the most equal angle. those parts of a shadow will appear darkest which have darker objects opposite to them. and they will appear less dark when they face lighter objects. and the larger the light object opposite, the more the shadow will be lightened. and the larger the surface of the dark object the more it will darken the derived shadow where it is intercepted. a disputed proposition. . of the opinion of some that a triangle casts no shadow on a plane surface. certain mathematicians have maintained that a triangle, of which the base is turned to the light, casts no shadow on a plane; and this they prove by saying [ ] that no spherical body smaller than the light can reach the middle with the shadow. the lines of radiant light are straight lines [ ]; therefore, suppose the light to be _g h_ and the triangle _l m n_, and let the plane be _i k_; they say the light _g_ falls on the side of the triangle _l n_, and the portion of the plane _i q_. thus again _h_ like _g_ falls on the side _l m_, and then on _m n_ and the plane _p k_; and if the whole plane thus faces the lights _g h_, it is evident that the triangle has no shadow; and that which has no shadow can cast none. this, in this case appears credible. but if the triangle _n p g_ were not illuminated by the two lights _g_ and _h_, but by _i p_ and _g_ and _k_ neither side is lighted by more than one single light: that is _i p_ is invisible to _h g_ and _k_ will never be lighted by _g_; hence _p q_ will be twice as light as the two visible portions that are in shadow. [footnote: -- . this passage is so obscure that it would be rash to offer an explanation. several words seem to have been omitted.] on the relative depth of cast shadows ( - ). . a spot is most in the shade when a large number of darkened rays fall upon it. the spot which receives the rays at the widest angle and by darkened rays will be most in the dark; a will be twice as dark as b, because it originates from twice as large a base at an equal distance. a spot is most illuminated when a large number of luminous rays fall upon it. d is the beginning of the shadow _d f_, and tinges _c_ but _a_ little; _d e_ is half of the shadow _d f_ and gives a deeper tone where it is cast at _b_ than at _f_. and the whole shaded space _e_ gives its tone to the spot _a_. [footnote: the diagram here referred to is on pl. xli, no. .] . _a n_ will be darker than _c r_ in proportion to the number of times that _a b_ goes into _c d_. . the shadow cast by an object on a plane will be smaller in proportion as that object is lighted by feebler rays. let _d e_ be the object and _d c_ the plane surface; the number of times that _d e_ will go into _f g_ gives the proportion of light at _f h_ to _d c_. the ray of light will be weaker in proportion to its distance from the hole through which it falls. fifth book on light and shade. principles of reflection ( . ). . of the way in which the shadows cast by objects ought to be defined. if the object is the mountain here figured, and the light is at the point _a_, i say that from _b d_ and also from _c f_ there will be no light but from reflected rays. and this results from the fact that rays of light can only act in straight lines; and the same is the case with the secondary or reflected rays. . the edges of the derived shadow are defined by the hues of the illuminated objects surrounding the luminous body which produces the shadow. on reverberation. . of reverberation. reverberation is caused by bodies of a bright nature with a flat and semi opaque surface which, when the light strikes upon them, throw it back again, like the rebound of a ball, to the former object. where there can be no reflected lights. all dense bodies have their surfaces occupied by various degrees of light and shade. the lights are of two kinds, one called original, the other borrowed. original light is that which is inherent in the flame of fire or the light of the sun or of the atmosphere. borrowed light will be reflected light; but to return to the promised definition: i say that this luminous reverberation is not produced by those portions of a body which are turned towards darkened objects, such as shaded spots, fields with grass of various height, woods whether green or bare; in which, though that side of each branch which is turned towards the original light has a share of that light, nevertheless the shadows cast by each branch separately are so numerous, as well as those cast by one branch on the others, that finally so much shadow is the result that the light counts for nothing. hence objects of this kind cannot throw any reflected light on opposite objects. reflection on water ( . ). . perspective. the shadow or object mirrored in water in motion, that is to say in small wavelets, will always be larger than the external object producing it. . it is impossible that an object mirrored on water should correspond in form to the object mirrored, since the centre of the eye is above the surface of the water. this is made plain in the figure here given, which demonstrates that the eye sees the surface _a b_, and cannot see it at _l f_, and at _r t_; it sees the surface of the image at _r t_, and does not see it in the real object _c d_. hence it is impossible to see it, as has been said above unless the eye itself is situated on the surface of the water as is shown below [ ]. [footnote: _a_ stands for _ochio_ [eye], _b_ for _aria_ [air], _c_ for _acqua_ [water], _d_ for _cateto_ [cathetus].--in the original ms. the second diagram is placed below line .] experiments with the mirror ( - ). . the mirror. if the illuminated object is of the same size as the luminous body and as that in which the light is reflected, the amount of the reflected light will bear the same proportion to the intermediate light as this second light will bear to the first, if both bodies are smooth and white. . describe how it is that no object has its limitation in the mirror but in the eye which sees it in the mirror. for if you look at your face in the mirror, the part resembles the whole in as much as the part is everywhere in the mirror, and the whole is in every part of the same mirror; and the same is true of the whole image of any object placed opposite to this mirror, &c. . no man can see the image of another man in a mirror in its proper place with regard to the objects; because every object falls on [the surface of] the mirror at equal angles. and if the one man, who sees the other in the mirror, is not in a direct line with the image he will not see it in the place where it really falls; and if he gets into the line, he covers the other man and puts himself in the place occupied by his image. let _n o_ be the mirror, _b_ the eye of your friend and _d_ your own eye. your friend's eye will appear to you at _a_, and to him it will seem that yours is at _c_, and the intersection of the visual rays will occur at _m_, so that either of you touching _m_ will touch the eye of the other man which shall be open. and if you touch the eye of the other man in the mirror it will seem to him that you are touching your own. appendix:--on shadows in movement ( . ). . of the shadow and its motion. when two bodies casting shadows, and one in front of the other, are between a window and the wall with some space between them, the shadow of the body which is nearest to the plane of the wall will move if the body nearest to the window is put in transverse motion across the window. to prove this let _a_ and _b_ be two bodies placed between the window _n m_ and the plane surface _o p_ with sufficient space between them as shown by the space _a b_. i say that if the body _a_ is moved towards _s_ the shadow of the body _b_ which is at _c_ will move towards _d_. . of the motion of shadows. the motion of a shadow is always more rapid than that of the body which produces it if the light is stationary. to prove this let _a_ be the luminous body, and _b_ the body casting the shadow, and _d_ the shadow. then i say that in the time while the solid body moves from _b_ to _c_, the shadow _d_ will move to _e_; and this proportion in the rapidity of the movements made in the same space of time, is equal to that in the length of the space moved over. thus, given the proportion of the space moved over by the body _b_ to _c_, to that moved over by the shadow _d_ to _e_, the proportion in the rapidity of their movements will be the same. but if the luminous body is also in movement with a velocity equal to that of the solid body, then the shadow and the body that casts it will move with equal speed. and if the luminous body moves more rapidly than the solid body, the motion of the shadow will be slower than that of the body casting it. but if the luminous body moves more slowly than the solid body, then the shadow will move more rapidly than that body. sixth book on light and shade. the effect of rays passing through holes ( . ). . perspective. if you transmit the rays of the sun through a hole in the shape of a star you will see a beautiful effect of perspective in the spot where the sun's rays fall. [footnote: in this and the following chapters of ms. c the order of the original paging has been adhered to, and is shown in parenthesis. leonardo himself has but rarely worked out the subject of these propositions. the space left for the purpose has occasionally been made use of for quite different matter. even the numerous diagrams, most of them very delicately sketched, lettered and numbered, which occur on these pages, are hardly ever explained, with the exception of those few which are here given.] . no small hole can so modify the convergence of rays of light as to prevent, at a long distance, the transmission of the true form of the luminous body causing them. it is impossible that rays of light passing through a parallel [slit], should not display the form of the body causing them, since all the effects produced by a luminous body are [in fact] the reflection of that body: the moon, shaped like a boat, if transmitted through a hole is figured in the surface [it falls on] as a boatshaped object. [footnote : in the ms. a blank space is left after this question.] why the eye sees bodies at a distance, larger than they measure on the vertical plane?. [footnote: this chapter, taken from another ms. may, as an exception, be placed here, as it refers to the same subject as the preceding section.] on gradation of shadows ( . ). . although the breadth and length of lights and shadow will be narrower and shorter in foreshortening, the quality and quantity of the light and shade is not increased nor diminished. [ ]the function of shade and light when diminished by foreshortening, will be to give shadow and to illuminate an object opposite, according to the quality and quantity in which they fall on the body. [ ]in proportion as a derived shadow is nearer to its penultimate extremities the deeper it will appear, _g z_ beyond the intersection faces only the part of the shadow [marked] _y z_; this by intersection takes the shadow from _m n_ but by direct line it takes the shadow _a m_ hence it is twice as deep as _g z_. _y x_, by intersection takes the shadow _n o_, but by direct line the shadow _n m a_, therefore _x y_ is three times as dark as _z g_; _x f_, by intersection faces _o b_ and by direct line _o n m a_, therefore we must say that the shadow between _f x_ will be four times as dark as the shadow _z g_, because it faces four times as much shadow. let _a b_ be the side where the primary shadow is, and _b c_ the primary light, _d_ will be the spot where it is intercepted,_f g_ the derived shadow and _f e_ the derived light. and this must be at the beginning of the explanation. [footnote: in the original ms. the text of no. precedes the one given here. in the text of no. there is a blank space of about four lines between the lines and . the diagram given on pl. vi, no. is placed between lines and . between lines and there is another space of about three lines and one line left blank between lines and . the reader will find the meaning of the whole passage much clearer if he first reads the final lines -- . compare also line of no. .] on relative proportion of light and shadows ( -- ). . that part of the surface of a body on which the images [reflection] from other bodies placed opposite fall at the largest angle will assume their hue most strongly. in the diagram below, is a larger angle than , since its base _a n_ is larger than _e n_ the base of . this diagram below should end at _a n_ . [ ]that portion of the illuminated surface on which a shadow is cast will be brightest which lies contiguous to the cast shadow. just as an object which is lighted up by a greater quantity of luminous rays becomes brighter, so one on which a greater quantity of shadow falls, will be darker. let be the side of an illuminated surface , surrounding the cast shadow _g e_ . and this spot will be lighter than , because less shadow falls on it than on . since faces only the shadow _i n_; and faces and receives the shadow _a e_ as well as _i n_ which makes it twice as dark. and the same thing happens when you put the atmosphere and the sun in the place of shade and light. [ ] the distribution of shadow, originating in, and limited by, plane surfaces placed near to each other, equal in tone and directly opposite, will be darker at the ends than at the beginning, which will be determined by the incidence of the luminous rays. you will find the same proportion in the depth of the derived shadows _a n_ as in the nearness of the luminous bodies _m b_, which cause them; and if the luminous bodies were of equal size you would still farther find the same proportion in the light cast by the luminous circles and their shadows as in the distance of the said luminous bodies. [footnote: the diagram originally placed between lines and is on pl. vi, no. . in the diagram given above line of the original, and here printed in the text, the words _corpo luminoso_ [luminous body] are written in the circle _m_, _luminoso_ in the circle _b_ and _ombroso_ [body in shadow] in the circle _o_.] . that part of the reflection will be brightest where the reflected rays are shortest. [ ] the darkness occasioned by the casting of combined shadows will be in conformity with its cause, which will originate and terminate between two plane surfaces near together, alike in tone and directly opposite each other. [ ] in proportion as the source of light is larger, the luminous and shadow rays will be more mixed together. this result is produced because wherever there is a larger quantity of luminous rays, there is most light, but where there are fewer there is least light, consequently the shadow rays come in and mingle with them. [footnote: diagrams are inserted before lines and .] . in all the proportions i lay down it must be understood that the medium between the bodies is always the same. [ ] the smaller the luminous body the more distinct will the transmission of the shadows be. [ ] when of two opposite shadows, produced by the same body, one is twice as dark as the other though similar in form, one of the two lights causing them must have twice the diameter that the other has and be at twice the distance from the opaque body. if the object is lowly moved across the luminous body, and the shadow is intercepted at some distance from the object, there will be the same relative proportion between the motion of the derived shadow and the motion of the primary shadow, as between the distance from the object to the light, and that from the object to the spot where the shadow is intercepted; so that though the object is moved slowly the shadow moves fast. [footnote: there are diagrams inserted before lines and but they are not reproduced here. the diagram above line is written upon as follows: at _a lume_ (light), at _b obbietto_ (body), at _c ombra d'obbietto_ (shadow of the object).] . a luminous body will appear less brilliant when surrounded by a bright background. [ ] i have found that the stars which are nearest to the horizon look larger than the others because light falls upon them from a larger proportion of the solar body than when they are above us; and having more light from the sun they give more light, and the bodies which are most luminous appear the largest. as may be seen by the sun through a mist, and overhead; it appears larger where there is no mist and diminished through mist. no portion of the luminous body is ever visible from any spot within the pyramid of pure derived shadow. [footnote: between lines and there is in the original a large diagram which does not refer to this text. ] . a body on which the solar rays fall between the thin branches of trees far apart will cast but a single shadow. [ ] if an opaque body and a luminous one are (both) spherical the base of the pyramid of rays will bear the same proportion to the luminous body as the base of the pyramid of shade to the opaque body. [ ] when the transmitted shadow is intercepted by a plane surface placed opposite to it and farther away from the luminous body than from the object [which casts it] it will appear proportionately darker and the edges more distinct. [footnote: the diagram which, in the original, is placed above line , is similar to the one, here given on page (section ).--the diagram here given in the margin stands, in the original, between lines and .] . a body illuminated by the solar rays passing between the thick branches of trees will produce as many shadows as there are branches between the sun and itself. where the shadow-rays from an opaque pyramidal body are intercepted they will cast a shadow of bifurcate outline and various depth at the points. a light which is broader than the apex but narrower than the base of an opaque pyramidal body placed in front of it, will cause that pyramid to cast a shadow of bifurcate form and various degrees of depth. if an opaque body, smaller than the light, casts two shadows and if it is the same size or larger, casts but one, it follows that a pyramidal body, of which part is smaller, part equal to, and part larger than, the luminous body, will cast a bifurcate shadow. [footnote: between lines and there are in the original two large diagrams.] _iv._ _perspective of disappearance._ _the theory of the_ "prospettiva de' perdimenti" _would, in many important details, be quite unintelligible if it had not been led up by the principles of light and shade on which it is based. the word_ "prospettiva" _in the language of the time included the principles of optics; what leonardo understood by_ "perdimenti" _will be clearly seen in the early chapters, nos._ -- . _it is in the very nature of the case that the farther explanations given in the subsequent chapters must be limited to general rules. the sections given as_ -- _"on indistinctness at short distances" have, it is true, only an indirect bearing on the subject; but on the other hand, the following chapters,_ -- , _"on indistinctness at great distances," go fully into the matter, and in chapters_ -- , _which treat "of the importance of light and shade in the perspective of disappearance", the practical issues are distinctly insisted on in their relation to the theory. this is naturally followed by the statements as to "the effect of light or dark backgrounds on the apparent size of bodies"_ (_nos._ -- ). _at the end i have placed, in the order of the original, those sections from the ms._ c _which treat of the "perspective of disappearance" and serve to some extent to complete the treatment of the subject_ ( -- ). definition ( . ). . of the diminished distinctness of the outlines of opaque bodies. if the real outlines of opaque bodies are indistinguishable at even a very short distance, they will be more so at long distances; and, since it is by its outlines that we are able to know the real form of any opaque body, when by its remoteness we fail to discern it as a whole, much more must we fail to discern its parts and outlines. . of the diminution in perspective of opaque objects. among opaque objects of equal size the apparent diminution of size will be in proportion to their distance from the eye of the spectator; but it is an inverse proportion, since, where the distance is greater, the opaque body will appear smaller, and the less the distance the larger will the object appear. and this is the fundamental principle of linear perspective and it follows:--[ ]every object as it becomes more remote loses first those parts which are smallest. thus of a horse, we should lose the legs before the head, because the legs are thinner than the head; and the neck before the body for the same reason. hence it follows that the last part of the horse which would be discernible by the eye would be the mass of the body in an oval form, or rather in a cylindrical form and this would lose its apparent thickness before its length--according to the nd rule given above, &c. [footnote : compare line .]. if the eye remains stationary the perspective terminates in the distance in a point. but if the eye moves in a straight [horizontal] line the perspective terminates in a line and the reason is that this line is generated by the motion of the point and our sight; therefore it follows that as we move our sight [eye], the point moves, and as we move the point, the line is generated, &c. an illustration by experiment. . every visible body, in so far as it affects the eye, includes three attributes; that is to say: mass, form and colour; and the mass is recognisable at a greater distance from the place of its actual existence than either colour or form. again, colour is discernible at a greater distance than form, but this law does not apply to luminous bodies. the above proposition is plainly shown and proved by experiment; because: if you see a man close to you, you discern the exact appearance of the mass and of the form and also of the colouring; if he goes to some distance you will not recognise who he is, because the character of the details will disappear, if he goes still farther you will not be able to distinguish his colouring, but he will appear as a dark object, and still farther he will appear as a very small dark rounded object. it appears rounded because distance so greatly diminishes the various details that nothing remains visible but the larger mass. and the reason is this: we know very well that all the images of objects reach the senses by a small aperture in the eye; hence, if the whole horizon _a d_ is admitted through such an aperture, the object _b c_ being but a very small fraction of this horizon what space can it fill in that minute image of so vast a hemisphere? and because luminous bodies have more power in darkness than any others, it is evident that, as the chamber of the eye is very dark, as is the nature of all colored cavities, the images of distant objects are confused and lost in the great light of the sky; and if they are visible at all, appear dark and black, as every small body must when seen in the diffused light of the atmosphere. [footnote: the diagram belonging to this passage is placed between lines and ; it is no. on pl. vi. ] a guiding rule. . of the atmosphere that interposes between the eye and visible objects. an object will appear more or less distinct at the same distance, in proportion as the atmosphere existing between the eye and that object is more or less clear. hence, as i know that the greater or less quantity of the air that lies between the eye and the object makes the outlines of that object more or less indistinct, you must diminish the definiteness of outline of those objects in proportion to their increasing distance from the eye of the spectator. an experiment. . when i was once in a place on the sea, at an equal distance from the shore and the mountains, the distance from the shore looked much greater than that from the mountains. on indistinctness at short distances ( - ). . if you place an opaque object in front of your eye at a distance of four fingers' breadth, if it is smaller than the space between the two eyes it will not interfere with your seeing any thing that may be beyond it. no object situated beyond another object seen by the eye can be concealed by this [nearer] object if it is smaller than the space from eye to eye. . the eye cannot take in a luminous angle which is too close to it. . that part of a surface will be better lighted on which the light falls at the greater angle. and that part, on which the shadow falls at the greatest angle, will receive from those rays least of the benefit of the light. . of the eye. the edges of an object placed in front of the pupil of the eye will be less distinct in proportion as they are closer to the eye. this is shown by the edge of the object _n_ placed in front of the pupil _d_; in looking at this edge the pupil also sees all the space _a c_ which is beyond the edge; and the images the eye receives from that space are mingled with the images of the edge, so that one image confuses the other, and this confusion hinders the pupil from distinguishing the edge. . the outlines of objects will be least clear when they are nearest to the eye, and therefore remoter outlines will be clearer. among objects which are smaller than the pupil of the eye those will be less distinct which are nearer to the eye. on indistinctness at great distances ( - ). . objects near to the eye will appear larger than those at a distance. objects seen with two eyes will appear rounder than if they are seen with only one. objects seen between light and shadow will show the most relief. . of painting. our true perception of an object diminishes in proportion as its size is diminished by distance. . perspective. why objects seen at a distance appear large to the eye and in the image on the vertical plane they appear small. perspective. i ask how far away the eye can discern a non-luminous body, as, for instance, a mountain. it will be very plainly visible if the sun is behind it; and could be seen at a greater or less distance according to the sun's place in the sky. [footnote: the clue to the solution of this problem (lines - ) is given in lines - , no. . objects seen with both eyes appear solid since they are seen from two distinct points of sight separated by the distance between the eyes, but this solidity cannot be represented in a flat drawing. compare no. .] the importance of light and shade in the perspective of disappearance ( - ). . an opaque body seen in a line in which the light falls will reveal no prominences to the eye. for instance, let _a_ be the solid body and _c_ the light; _c m_ and _c n_ will be the lines of incidence of the light, that is to say the lines which transmit the light to the object _a_. the eye being at the point _b_, i say that since the light _c_ falls on the whole part _m n_ the portions in relief on that side will all be illuminated. hence the eye placed at _c_ cannot see any light and shade and, not seeing it, every portion will appear of the same tone, therefore the relief in the prominent or rounded parts will not be visible. . of painting. when you represent in your work shadows which you can only discern with difficulty, and of which you cannot distinguish the edges so that you apprehend them confusedly, you must not make them sharp or definite lest your work should have a wooden effect. . of painting. you will observe in drawing that among the shadows some are of undistinguishable gradation and form, as is shown in the rd [proposition] which says: rounded surfaces display as many degrees of light and shade as there are varieties of brightness and darkness reflected from the surrounding objects. . of light and shade. you who draw from nature, look (carefully) at the extent, the degree, and the form of the lights and shadows on each muscle; and in their position lengthwise observe towards which muscle the axis of the central line is directed. . an object which is [so brilliantly illuminated as to be] almost as bright as light will be visible at a greater distance, and of larger apparent size than is natural to objects so remote. the effect of light or dark backgrounds on the apparent size of objects ( - ). . a shadow will appear dark in proportion to the brilliancy of the light surrounding it and conversely it will be less conspicuous where it is seen against a darker background. . of ordinary perspective. an object of equal breadth and colour throughout, seen against a background of various colours will appear unequal in breadth. and if an object of equal breadth throughout, but of various colours, is seen against a background of uniform colour, that object will appear of various breadth. and the more the colours of the background or of the object seen against the ground vary, the greater will the apparent variations in the breadth be though the objects seen against the ground be of equal breadth [throughout]. . a dark object seen against a bright background will appear smaller than it is. a light object will look larger when it is seen against a background darker than itself. . of light. a luminous body when obscured by a dense atmosphere will appear smaller; as may be seen by the moon or sun veiled by mists. of light. of several luminous bodies of equal size and brilliancy and at an equal distance, that will look the largest which is surrounded by the darkest background. of light. i find that any luminous body when seen through a dense and thick mist diminishes in proportion to its distance from the eye. thus it is with the sun by day, as well as the moon and the other eternal lights by night. and when the air is clear, these luminaries appear larger in proportion as they are farther from the eye. . that portion of a body of uniform breadth which is against a lighter background will look narrower [than the rest]. [ ] _e_ is a given object, itself dark and of uniform breadth; _a b_ and _c d_ are two backgrounds one darker than the other; _b c_ is a bright background, as it might be a spot lighted by the sun through an aperture in a dark room. then i say that the object _e g_ will appear larger at _e f_ than at _g h_; because _e f_ has a darker background than _g h_; and again at _f g_ it will look narrower from being seen by the eye _o_, on the light background _b c_. [footnote : the diagram to which the text, lines - , refers, is placed in the original between lines and , and is given on pl. xli, no. . lines to are explained by the lower of the two diagrams on pl. xli, no. . in the original these are placed after line .] that part of a luminous body, of equal breadth and brilliancy throughout, will look largest which is seen against the darkest background; and the luminous body will seem on fire. . why bodies in light and shade have their outlines altered by the colour and brightness of the objects serving as a background to them. if you look at a body of which the illuminated portion lies and ends against a dark background, that part of the light which will look brightest will be that which lies against the dark [background] at _d_. but if this brighter part lies against a light background, the edge of the object, which is itself light, will be less distinct than before, and the highest light will appear to be between the limit of the background _m f_ and the shadow. the same thing is seen with regard to the dark [side], inasmuch as that edge of the shaded portion of the object which lies against a light background, as at _l_, it looks much darker than the rest. but if this shadow lies against a dark background, the edge of the shaded part will appear lighter than before, and the deepest shade will appear between the edge and the light at the point _o_. [footnote: in the original diagram _o_ is inside the shaded surface at the level of _d_.] . an opaque body will appear smaller when it is surrounded by a highly luminous background, and a light body will appear larger when it is seen against a darker background. this may be seen in the height of buildings at night, when lightning flashes behind them; it suddenly seems, when it lightens, as though the height of the building were diminished. for the same reason such buildings look larger in a mist, or by night than when the atmosphere is clear and light. . on light between shadows when you are drawing any object, remember, in comparing the grades of light in the illuminated portions, that the eye is often deceived by seeing things lighter than they are. and the reason lies in our comparing those parts with the contiguous parts. since if two [separate] parts are in different grades of light and if the less bright is conterminous with a dark portion and the brighter is conterminous with a light background--as the sky or something equally bright--, then that which is less light, or i should say less radiant, will look the brighter and the brighter will seem the darker. . of objects equally dark in themselves and situated at a considerable and equal distance, that will look the darkest which is farthest above the earth. . to prove how it is that luminous bodies appear larger, at a distance, than they are. if you place two lighted candles side by side half a braccio apart, and go from them to a distance braccia you will see that by the increased size of each they will appear as a single luminous body with the light of the two flames, one braccio wide. to prove how you may see the real size of luminous bodies. if you wish to see the real size of these luminous bodies, take a very thin board and make in it a hole no bigger than the tag of a lace and place it as close to your eye as possible, so that when you look through this hole, at the said light, you can see a large space of air round it. then by rapidly moving this board backwards and forwards before your eye you will see the light increase [and diminish]. propositions on perspective of disappearance from ms. c. ( - ). . of several bodies of equal size and equally distant from the eye, those will look the smallest which are against the lightest background. every visible object must be surrounded by light and shade. a perfectly spherical body surrounded by light and shade will appear to have one side larger than the other in proportion as one is more highly lighted than the other. . perspective. no visible object can be well understood and comprehended by the human eye excepting from the difference of the background against which the edges of the object terminate and by which they are bounded, and no object will appear [to stand out] separate from that background so far as the outlines of its borders are concerned. the moon, though it is at a great distance from the sun, when, in an eclipse, it comes between our eyes and the sun, appears to the eyes of men to be close to the sun and affixed to it, because the sun is then the background to the moon. . a luminous body will appear more brilliant in proportion as it is surrounded by deeper shadow. [footnote: the diagram which, in the original, is placed after this text, has no connection with it.] . the straight edges of a body will appear broken when they are conterminous with a dark space streaked with rays of light. [footnote: here again the diagrams in the original have no connection with the text.] . of several bodies, all equally large and equally distant, that which is most brightly illuminated will appear to the eye nearest and largest. [footnote: here again the diagrams in the original have no connection with the text.] . if several luminous bodies are seen from a great distance although they are really separate they will appear united as one body. . if several objects in shadow, standing very close together, are seen against a bright background they will appear separated by wide intervals. . of several bodies of equal size and tone, that which is farthest will appear the lightest and smallest. . of several objects equal in size, brightness of background and length that which has the flattest surface will look the largest. a bar of iron equally thick throughout and of which half is red hot, affords an example, for the red hot part looks thicker than the rest. . of several bodies of equal size and length, and alike in form and in depth of shade, that will appear smallest which is surrounded by the most luminous background. . different portions of a wall surface will be darker or brighter in proportion as the light or shadow falls on them at a larger angle. the foregoing proposition can be clearly proved in this way. let us say that _m q_ is the luminous body, then _f g_ will be the opaque body; and let _a e_ be the above-mentioned plane on which the said angles fall, showing [plainly] the nature and character of their bases. then: _a_ will be more luminous than _b_; the base of the angle _a_ is larger than that of _b_ and it therefore makes a greater angle which will be _a m q_; and the pyramid _b p m_ will be narrower and _m o c_ will be still finer, and so on by degrees, in proportion as they are nearer to _e_, the pyramids will become narrower and darker. that portion of the wall will be the darkest where the breadth of the pyramid of shadow is greater than the breadth of the pyramid of light. at the point _a_ the pyramid of light is equal in strength to the pyramid of shadow, because the base _f g_ is equal to the base _r f_. at the point _d_ the pyramid of light is narrower than the pyramid of shadow by so much as the base _s f_ is less than the base _f g_. divide the foregoing proposition into two diagrams, one with the pyramids of light and shadow, the other with the pyramids of light [only]. . among shadows of equal depth those which are nearest to the eye will look least deep. . the more brilliant the light given by a luminous body, the deeper will the shadows be cast by the objects it illuminates. _v._ _theory of colours._ _leonardo's theory of colours is even more intimately connected with his principles of light and shade than his perspective of disappearance and is in fact merely an appendix or supplement to those principles, as we gather from the titles to sections_ , _, and _ _, while others again_ (_nos._ , _) are headed_ prospettiva. _a very few of these chapters are to be found in the oldest copies and editions of the treatise on painting, and although the material they afford is but meager and the connection between them but slight, we must still attribute to them a special theoretical value as well as practical utility--all the more so because our knowledge of the theory and use of colours at the time of the renaissance is still extremely limited._ the reciprocal effects of colours on objects placed opposite each other ( - ). . of painting. the hue of an illuminated object is affected by that of the luminous body. . of shadow. the surface of any opaque body is affected by the colour of surrounding objects. . a shadow is always affected by the colour of the surface on which it is cast. . an image produced in a mirror is affected by the colour of the mirror. . of light and shade. every portion of the surface of a body is varied [in hue] by the [reflected] colour of the object that may be opposite to it. example. if you place a spherical body between various objects that is to say with [direct] sunlight on one side of it, and on the other a wall illuminated by the sun, which wall may be green or of any other colour, while the surface on which it is placed may be red, and the two lateral sides are in shadow, you will see that the natural colour of that body will assume something of the hue reflected from those objects. the strongest will be [given by] the luminous body; the second by the illuminated wall, the third by the shadows. there will still be a portion which will take a tint from the colour of the edges. . the surface of every opaque body is affected by the colour of the objects surrounding it. but this effect will be strong or weak in proportion as those objects are more or less remote and more or less strongly [coloured]. . of painting. the surface of every opaque body assumes the hues reflected from surrounding objects. the surface of an opaque body assumes the hues of surrounding objects more strongly in proportion as the rays that form the images of those objects strike the surface at more equal angles. and the surface of an opaque body assumes a stronger hue from the surrounding objects in proportion as that surface is whiter and the colour of the object brighter or more highly illuminated. . of the rays which convey through the air the images of objects. all the minutest parts of the image intersect each other without interfering with each other. to prove this let _r_ be one of the sides of the hole, opposite to which let _s_ be the eye which sees the lower end _o_ of the line _n o_. the other extremity cannot transmit its image to the eye _s_ as it has to strike the end _r_ and it is the same with regard to _m_ at the middle of the line. the case is the same with the upper extremity _n_ and the eye _u_. and if the end _n_ is red the eye _u_ on that side of the holes will not see the green colour of _o_, but only the red of _n_ according to the th of this where it is said: every form projects images from itself by the shortest line, which necessarily is a straight line, &c. [footnote: . this probably refers to the diagram given under no. .] . of painting. the surface of a body assumes in some degree the hue of those around it. the colours of illuminated objects are reflected from the surfaces of one to the other in various spots, according to the various positions of those objects. let _o_ be a blue object in full light, facing all by itself the space _b c_ on the white sphere _a b e d e f_, and it will give it a blue tinge, _m_ is a yellow body reflected onto the space _a b_ at the same time as _o_ the blue body, and they give it a green colour (by the nd [proposition] of this which shows that blue and yellow make a beautiful green &c.) and the rest will be set forth in the book on painting. in that book it will be shown, that, by transmitting the images of objects and the colours of bodies illuminated by sunlight through a small round perforation and into a dark chamber onto a plane surface, which itself is quite white, &c. but every thing will be upside down. combination of different colours in cast shadows. . that which casts the shadow does not face it, because the shadows are produced by the light which causes and surrounds the shadows. the shadow caused by the light _e_, which is yellow, has a blue tinge, because the shadow of the body _a_ is cast upon the pavement at _b_, where the blue light falls; and the shadow produced by the light _d_, which is blue, will be yellow at _c_, because the yellow light falls there and the surrounding background to these shadows _b c_ will, besides its natural colour, assume a hue compounded of yellow and blue, because it is lighted by the yellow light and by the blue light both at once. shadows of various colours, as affected by the lights falling on them. that light which causes the shadow does not face it. [footnote: in the original diagram we find in the circle _e_ "_giallo_" (yellow) and the cirle _d_ "_azurro"_ (blue) and also under the circle of shadow to the left "_giallo_" is written and under that to the right "_azurro_". in the second diagram where four circles are placed in a row we find written, beginning at the left hand, "_giallo_" (yellow), "_azurro_" (blue), "_verde_" (green), "_rosso_" (red).] the effect of colours in the camera obscura ( - ). . the edges of a colour(ed object) transmitted through a small hole are more conspicuous than the central portions. the edges of the images, of whatever colour, which are transmitted through a small aperture into a dark chamber will always be stronger than the middle portions. . of the intersections of the images in the pupil of the eye. the intersections of the images as they enter the pupil do not mingle in confusion in the space where that intersection unites them; as is evident, since, if the rays of the sun pass through two panes of glass in close contact, of which one is blue and the other yellow, the rays, in penetrating them, do not become blue or yellow but a beautiful green. and the same thing would happen in the eye, if the images which were yellow or green should mingle where they [meet and] intersect as they enter the pupil. as this does not happen such a mingling does not exist. of the nature of the rays composed of the images of objects, and of their intersections. the directness of the rays which transmit the forms and colours of the bodies whence they proceed does not tinge the air nor can they affect each other by contact where they intersect. they affect only the spot where they vanish and cease to exist, because that spot faces and is faced by the original source of these rays, and no other object, which surrounds that original source can be seen by the eye where these rays are cut off and destroyed, leaving there the spoil they have conveyed to it. and this is proved by the th [proposition], on the colour of bodies, which says: the surface of every opaque body is affected by the colour of surrounding objects; hence we may conclude that the spot which, by means of the rays which convey the image, faces--and is faced by the cause of the image, assumes the colour of that object. on the colours of derived shadows ( . ). . any shadow cast by an opaque body smaller than the light causing the shadow will throw a derived shadow which is tinged by the colour of the light. let _n_ be the source of the shadow _e f_; it will assume its hue. let _o_ be the source of _h e_ which will in the same way be tinged by its hue and so also the colour of _v h_ will be affected by _p_ which causes it; and the shadow of the triangle _z k y_ will be affected by the colour of _q_, because it is produced by it. [ ] in proportion as _c d_ goes into _a d_, will _n r s_ be darker than _m_; and the rest of the space will be shadowless [ ]. _f g_ is the highest light, because here the whole light of the window _a d_ falls; and thus on the opaque body _m e_ is in equally high light; _z k y_ is a triangle which includes the deepest shadow, because the light _a d_ cannot reach any part of it. _x h_ is the nd grade of shadow, because it receives only / of the light from the window, that is _c d_. the third grade of shadow is _h e_, where two thirds of the light from the window is visible. the last grade of shadow is _b d e f_, because the highest grade of light from the window falls at _f_. [footnote: the diagram pl. iii, no. belongs to this chapter as well as the text given in no. . lines - (compare lines - of no. ) which are written within the diagram, evidently apply to both sections and have therefore been inserted in both.] . of the colours of simple derived shadows. the colour of derived shadows is always affected by that of the body towards which they are cast. to prove this: let an opaque body be placed between the plane _s c t d_ and the blue light _d e_ and the red light _a b_, then i say that _d e_, the blue light, will fall on the whole surface _s c t d_ excepting at _o p_ which is covered by the shadow of the body _q r_, as is shown by the straight lines _d q o e r p_. and the same occurs with the light _a b_ which falls on the whole surface _s c t d_ excepting at the spot obscured by the shadow _q r_; as is shown by the lines _d q o_, and _e r p_. hence we may conclude that the shadow _n m_ is exposed to the blue light _d e_; but, as the red light _a b_ cannot fall there, _n m_ will appear as a blue shadow on a red background tinted with blue, because on the surface _s c t d_ both lights can fall. but in the shadows only one single light falls; for this reason these shadows are of medium depth, since, if no light whatever mingled with the shadow, it would be of the first degree of darkness &c. but in the shadow at _o p_ the blue light does not fall, because the body _q r_ interposes and intercepts it there. only the red light _a b_ falls there and tinges the shadow of a red hue and so a ruddy shadow appears on the background of mingled red and blue. the shadow of _q r_ at _o p_ is red, being caused by the blue light _d e_; and the shadow of _q r_ at _o' p'_ is blue being caused by the red light _a b_. hence we say that the blue light in this instance causes a red derived shadow from the opaque body _q' r'_, while the red light causes the same body to cast a blue derived shadow; but the primary shadow [on the dark side of the body itself] is not of either of those hues, but a mixture of red and blue. the derived shadows will be equal in depth if they are produced by lights of equal strength and at an equal distance; this is proved. [footnote : the text is unfinished in the original.] [footnote: in the original diagram leonardo has written within the circle _q r corpo obroso_ (body in shadow); at the spot marked _a, luminoso azzurro_ (blue luminous body); at _b, luminoso rosso_ (red luminous body). at _e_ we read _ombra azzurra_ (blue tinted shadow) and at _d ombra rossa_ (red tinted shadow).] on the nature of colours ( . ). . no white or black is transparent. . of painting. [footnote : see footnote ] since white is not a colour but the neutral recipient of every colour [footnote : _il bianco non e colore ma e inpotentia ricettiva d'ogni colore_ (white is not a colour, but the neutral recipient of every colour). leon batt. alberti "_della pittura_" libro i, asserts on the contrary: "_il bianco e'l nero non sono veri colori, ma sono alteratione delli altri colori_" (ed. janitschek, p. ; vienna ).], when it is seen in the open air and high up, all its shadows are bluish; and this is caused, according to the th [prop.], which says: the surface of every opaque body assumes the hue of the surrounding objects. now this white [body] being deprived of the light of the sun by the interposition of some body between the sun and itself, all that portion of it which is exposed to the sun and atmosphere assumes the colour of the sun and atmosphere; the side on which the sun does not fall remains in shadow and assumes the hue of the atmosphere. and if this white object did not reflect the green of the fields all the way to the horizon nor get the brightness of the horizon itself, it would certainly appear simply of the same hue as the atmosphere. on gradations in the depth of colours ( . ). . since black, when painted next to white, looks no blacker than when next to black; and white when next to black looks no whiter than white, as is seen by the images transmitted through a small hole or by the edges of any opaque screen ... . of colours. of several colours, all equally white, that will look whitest which is against the darkest background. and black will look intensest against the whitest background. and red will look most vivid against the yellowest background; and the same is the case with all colours when surrounded by their strongest contrasts. on the reflection of colours ( - ). . perspective. every object devoid of colour in itself is more or less tinged by the colour [of the object] placed opposite. this may be seen by experience, inasmuch as any object which mirrors another assumes the colour of the object mirrored in it. and if the surface thus partially coloured is white the portion which has a red reflection will appear red, or any other colour, whether bright or dark. perspective. every opaque and colourless body assumes the hue of the colour reflected on it; as happens with a white wall. . perspective. that side of an object in light and shade which is towards the light transmits the images of its details more distinctly and immediately to the eye than the side which is in shadow. perspective. the solar rays reflected on a square mirror will be thrown back to distant objects in a circular form. perspective. any white and opaque surface will be partially coloured by reflections from surrounding objects. [footnote . : the title line of these chapters is in the original simply _"pro"_, which may be an abbreviation for either _propositione_ or _prospettiva_--taking prospettiva of course in its widest sense, as we often find it used in leonardo's writings. the title _"pro"_ has here been understood to mean _prospettiva_, in accordance with the suggestion afforded by page b of this same ms., where the first section is headed _prospettiva_ in full (see no. ), while the four following sections are headed merely _"pro"_ (see no. ).] . what portion of a coloured surface ought in reason to be the most intense. if _a_ is the light, and _b_ illuminated by it in a direct line, _c_, on which the light cannot fall, is lighted only by reflection from _b_ which, let us say, is red. hence the light reflected from it, will be affected by the hue of the surface causing it and will tinge the surface _c_ with red. and if _c_ is also red you will see it much more intense than _b_; and if it were yellow you would see there a colour between yellow and red. on the use of dark and light colours in painting ( -- ). . why beautiful colours must be in the [highest] light. since we see that the quality of colour is known [only] by means of light, it is to be supposed that where there is most light the true character of a colour in light will be best seen; and where there is most shadow the colour will be affected by the tone of that. hence, o painter! remember to show the true quality of colours in bright lights. . an object represented in white and black will display stronger relief than in any other way; hence i would remind you o painter! to dress your figures in the lightest colours you can, since, if you put them in dark colours, they will be in too slight relief and inconspicuous from a distance. and the reason is that the shadows of all objects are dark. and if you make a dress dark there is little variety in the lights and shadows, while in light colours there are many grades. . of painting. colours seen in shadow will display more or less of their natural brilliancy in proportion as they are in fainter or deeper shadow. but if these same colours are situated in a well-lighted place, they will appear brighter in proportion as the light is more brilliant. the adversary. the variety of colours in shadow must be as great as that of the colours in the objects in that shadow. the answer. colours seen in shadow will display less variety in proportion as the shadows in which they lie are deeper. and evidence of this is to be had by looking from an open space into the doorways of dark and shadowy churches, where the pictures which are painted in various colours all look of uniform darkness. hence at a considerable distance all the shadows of different colours will appear of the same darkness. it is the light side of an object in light and shade which shows the true colour. on the colours of the rainbow ( . ). . treat of the rainbow in the last book on painting, but first write the book on colours produced by the mixture of other colours, so as to be able to prove by those painters' colours how the colours of the rainbow are produced. . whether the colours of the rainbow are produced by the sun. the colours of the rainbow are not produced by the sun, for they occur in many ways without the sunshine; as may be seen by holding a glass of water up to the eye; when, in the glass--where there are those minute bubbles always seen in coarse glass--each bubble, even though the sun does not fall on it, will produce on one side all the colours of the rainbow; as you may see by placing the glass between the day light and your eye in such a way as that it is close to the eye, while on one side the glass admits the [diffused] light of the atmosphere, and on the other side the shadow of the wall on one side of the window; either left or right, it matters not which. then, by turning the glass round you will see these colours all round the bubbles in the glass &c. and the rest shall be said in its place. that the eye has no part in producing the colours of the rainbow. in the experiment just described, the eye would seem to have some share in the colours of the rainbow, since these bubbles in the glass do not display the colours except through the medium of the eye. but, if you place the glass full of water on the window sill, in such a position as that the outer side is exposed to the sun's rays, you will see the same colours produced in the spot of light thrown through the glass and upon the floor, in a dark place, below the window; and as the eye is not here concerned in it, we may evidently, and with certainty pronounce that the eye has no share in producing them. of the colours in the feathers of certain birds. there are many birds in various regions of the world on whose feathers we see the most splendid colours produced as they move, as we see in our own country in the feathers of peacocks or on the necks of ducks or pigeons, &c. again, on the surface of antique glass found underground and on the roots of turnips kept for some time at the bottom of wells or other stagnant waters [we see] that each root displays colours similar to those of the real rainbow. they may also be seen when oil has been placed on the top of water and in the solar rays reflected from the surface of a diamond or beryl; again, through the angular facet of a beryl every dark object against a background of the atmosphere or any thing else equally pale-coloured is surrounded by these rainbow colours between the atmosphere and the dark body; and in many other circumstances which i will not mention, as these suffice for my purpose. _vi._ _'prospettiva de' colri' (perspective of colour)_ _and_ _'prospettiva aerea' (aerial perspective)._ _leonardo distinctly separates these branches of his subject, as may be seen in the beginning of no._ . _attempts have been made to cast doubts on the results which leonardo arrived at by experiment on the perspective of colour, but not with justice, as may be seen from the original text of section_ . _the question as to the composition of the atmosphere, which is inseparable from a discussion on aerial perspective, forms a separate theory which is treated at considerable length. indeed the author enters into it so fully that we cannot escape the conviction that he must have dwelt with particular pleasure on this part of his subject, and that he attached great importance to giving it a character of general applicability._ general rules ( -- ). . the variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays. . as to the colours of objects: at long distances no difference is perceptible in the parts in shadow. . of the visibility of colours. which colour strikes most? an object at a distance is most conspicuous, when it is lightest, and the darkest is least visible. an exceptional case. . of the edges [outlines] of shadows. some have misty and ill defined edges, others distinct ones. no opaque body can be devoid of light and shade, except it is in a mist, on ground covered with snow, or when snow is falling on the open country which has no light on it and is surrounded with darkness. and this occurs [only] in spherical bodies, because in other bodies which have limbs and parts, those sides of limbs which face each other reflect on each other the accidental [hue and tone] of their surface. an experiment. . all colours are at a distance undistinguishable and undiscernible. all colours at a distance are undistinguishable in shadow, because an object which is not in the highest light is incapable of transmitting its image to the eye through an atmosphere more luminous than itself; since the lesser brightness must be absorbed by the greater. for instance: we, in a house, can see that all the colours on the surface of the walls are clearly and instantly visible when the windows of the house are open; but if we were to go out of the house and look in at the windows from a little distance to see the paintings on those walls, instead of the paintings we should see an uniform deep and colourless shadow. the practice of the prospettiva de colori. . how a painter should carry out the perspective of colour in practice. in order to put into practice this perspective of the variation and loss or diminution of the essential character of colours, observe at every hundred braccia some objects standing in the landscape, such as trees, houses, men and particular places. then in front of the first tree have a very steady plate of glass and keep your eye very steady, and then, on this plate of glass, draw a tree, tracing it over the form of that tree. then move it on one side so far as that the real tree is close by the side of the tree you have drawn; then colour your drawing in such a way as that in colour and form the two may be alike, and that both, if you close one eye, seem to be painted on the glass and at the same distance. then, by the same method, represent a second tree, and a third, with a distance of a hundred braccia between each. and these will serve as a standard and guide whenever you work on your own pictures, wherever they may apply, and will enable you to give due distance in those works. [ ] but i have found that as a rule the second is / of the first when it is braccia beyond it. [footnote: this chapter is one of those copied in the manuscript of the vatican library urbinas , and the original text is rendered here with no other alterations, but in the orthography. h. ludwig, in his edition of this copy translates lines and thus: "_ich finde aber als regel, dass der zweite um vier funftel des ersten abnimmt, wenn er namlich zwanzig ellen vom ersten entfernt ist (?)"_. he adds in his commentary: "_das ende der nummer ist wohl jedenfalls verstummelt_". however the translation given above shows that it admits of a different rendering.] the rules of aerial perspective ( -- ). . of aerial perspective. there is another kind of perspective which i call aerial perspective, because by the atmosphere we are able to distinguish the variations in distance of different buildings, which appear placed on a single line; as, for instance, when we see several buildings beyond a wall, all of which, as they appear above the top of the wall, look of the same size, while you wish to represent them in a picture as more remote one than another and to give the effect of a somewhat dense atmosphere. you know that in an atmosphere of equal density the remotest objects seen through it, as mountains, in consequence of the great quantity of atmosphere between your eye and them--appear blue and almost of the same hue as the atmosphere itself [footnote : _quado il sole e per leuante_ (when the sun is in the east). apparently the author refers here to morning light in general. h. ludwig however translates this passage from the vatican copy "_wenn namlich die sonne (dahinter) im osten steht_".] when the sun is in the east [footnote : see footnote ]. hence you must make the nearest building above the wall of its real colour, but the more distant ones make less defined and bluer. those you wish should look farthest away you must make proportionately bluer; thus, if one is to be five times as distant, make it five times bluer. and by this rule the buildings which above a [given] line appear of the same size, will plainly be distinguished as to which are the more remote and which larger than the others. . the medium lying between the eye and the object seen, tinges that object with its colour, as the blueness of the atmosphere makes the distant mountains appear blue and red glass makes objects seen beyond it, look red. the light shed round them by the stars is obscured by the darkness of the night which lies between the eye and the radiant light of the stars. . take care that the perspective of colour does not disagree with the size of your objects, hat is to say: that the colours diminish from their natural [vividness] in proportion as the objects at various distances dimmish from their natural size. on the relative density of the atmosphere ( -- ). . why the atmosphere must be represented as paler towards the lower portion. because the atmosphere is dense near the earth, and the higher it is the rarer it becomes. when the sun is in the east if you look towards the west and a little way to the south and north, you will see that this dense atmosphere receives more light from the sun than the rarer; because the rays meet with greater resistance. and if the sky, as you see it, ends on a low plain, that lowest portion of the sky will be seen through a denser and whiter atmosphere, which will weaken its true colour as seen through that medium, and there the sky will look whiter than it is above you, where the line of sight travels through a smaller space of air charged with heavy vapour. and if you turn to the east, the atmosphere will appear darker as you look lower down because the luminous rays pass less freely through the lower atmosphere. . of the mode of treating remote objects in painting. it is easy to perceive that the atmosphere which lies closest to the level ground is denser than the rest, and that where it is higher up, it is rarer and more transparent. the lower portions of large and lofty objects which are at a distance are not much seen, because you see them along a line which passes through a denser and thicker section of the atmosphere. the summits of such heights are seen along a line which, though it starts from your eye in a dense atmosphere, still, as it ends at the top of those lofty objects, ceases in a much rarer atmosphere than exists at their base; for this reason the farther this line extends from your eye, from point to point the atmosphere becomes more and more rare. hence, o painter! when you represent mountains, see that from hill to hill the bases are paler than the summits, and in proportion as they recede beyond each other make the bases paler than the summits; while, the higher they are the more you must show of their true form and colour. on the colour of the atmosphere ( - ). . of the colour of the atmosphere. i say that the blueness we see in the atmosphere is not intrinsic colour, but is caused by warm vapour evaporated in minute and insensible atoms on which the solar rays fall, rendering them luminous against the infinite darkness of the fiery sphere which lies beyond and includes it. and this may be seen, as i saw it by any one going up [footnote : with regard to the place spoken of as _m'oboso_ (compare no. line ) its identity will be discussed under leonardo's topographical notes in vol. ii.] monboso, a peak of the alps which divide france from italy. the base of this mountain gives birth to the four rivers which flow in four different directions through the whole of europe. and no mountain has its base at so great a height as this, which lifts itself almost above the clouds; and snow seldom falls there, but only hail in the summer, when the clouds are highest. and this hail lies [unmelted] there, so that if it were not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not happen twice in an age, an enormous mass of ice would be piled up there by the hail, and in the middle of july i found it very considerable. there i saw above me the dark sky, and the sun as it fell on the mountain was far brighter here than in the plains below, because a smaller extent of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the sun. again as an illustration of the colour of the atmosphere i will mention the smoke of old and dry wood, which, as it comes out of a chimney, appears to turn very blue, when seen between the eye and the dark distance. but as it rises, and comes between the eye and the bright atmosphere, it at once shows of an ashy grey colour; and this happens because it no longer has darkness beyond it, but this bright and luminous space. if the smoke is from young, green wood, it will not appear blue, because, not being transparent and being full of superabundant moisture, it has the effect of condensed clouds which take distinct lights and shadows like a solid body. the same occurs with the atmosphere, which, when overcharged with moisture appears white, and the small amount of heated moisture makes it dark, of a dark blue colour; and this will suffice us so far as concerns the colour of the atmosphere; though it might be added that, if this transparent blue were the natural colour of the atmosphere, it would follow that wherever a larger mass air intervened between the eye and the element of fire, the azure colour would be more intense; as we see in blue glass and in sapphires, which are darker in proportion as they are larger. but the atmosphere in such circumstances behaves in an opposite manner, inasmuch as where a greater quantity of it lies between the eye and the sphere of fire, it is seen much whiter. this occurs towards the horizon. and the less the extent of atmosphere between the eye and the sphere of fire, the deeper is the blue colour, as may be seen even on low plains. hence it follows, as i say, that the atmosphere assumes this azure hue by reason of the particles of moisture which catch the rays of the sun. again, we may note the difference in particles of dust, or particles of smoke, in the sun beams admitted through holes into a dark chamber, when the former will look ash grey and the thin smoke will appear of a most beautiful blue; and it may be seen again in in the dark shadows of distant mountains when the air between the eye and those shadows will look very blue, though the brightest parts of those mountains will not differ much from their true colour. but if any one wishes for a final proof let him paint a board with various colours, among them an intense black; and over all let him lay a very thin and transparent [coating of] white. he will then see that this transparent white will nowhere show a more beautiful blue than over the black--but it must be very thin and finely ground. [footnote : _reta_ here has the sense of _malanno_.] . experience shows us that the air must have darkness beyond it and yet it appears blue. if you produce a small quantity of smoke from dry wood and the rays of the sun fall on this smoke, and if you then place behind the smoke a piece of black velvet on which the sun does not shine, you will see that all the smoke which is between the eye and the black stuff will appear of a beautiful blue colour. and if instead of the velvet you place a white cloth smoke, that is too thick smoke, hinders, and too thin smoke does not produce, the perfection of this blue colour. hence a moderate amount of smoke produces the finest blue. water violently ejected in a fine spray and in a dark chamber where the sun beams are admitted produces these blue rays and the more vividly if it is distilled water, and thin smoke looks blue. this i mention in order to show that the blueness of the atmosphere is caused by the darkness beyond it, and these instances are given for those who cannot confirm my experience on monboso. . when the smoke from dry wood is seen between the eye of the spectator and some dark space [or object], it will look blue. thus the sky looks blue by reason of the darkness beyond it. and if you look towards the horizon of the sky, you will see the atmosphere is not blue, and this is caused by its density. and thus at each degree, as you raise your eyes above the horizon up to the sky over your head, you will see the atmosphere look darker [blue] and this is because a smaller density of air lies between your eye and the [outer] darkness. and if you go to the top of a high mountain the sky will look proportionately darker above you as the atmosphere becomes rarer between you and the [outer] darkness; and this will be more visible at each degree of increasing height till at last we should find darkness. that smoke will look bluest which rises from the driest wood and which is nearest to the fire and is seen against the darkest background, and with the sunlight upon it. . a dark object will appear bluest in proportion as it has a greater mass of luminous atmosphere between it and the eye. as may be seen in the colour of the sky. . the atmosphere is blue by reason of the darkness above it because black and white make blue. . in the morning the mist is denser above than below, because the sun draws it upwards; hence tall buildings, even if the summit is at the same distance as the base have the summit invisible. therefore, also, the sky looks darkest [in colour] overhead, and towards the horizon it is not blue but rather between smoke and dust colour. the atmosphere, when full of mist, is quite devoid of blueness, and only appears of the colour of clouds, which shine white when the weather is fine. and the more you turn to the west the darker it will be, and the brighter as you look to the east. and the verdure of the fields is bluish in a thin mist, but grows grey in a dense one. the buildings in the west will only show their illuminated side, where the sun shines, and the mist hides the rest. when the sun rises and chases away the haze, the hills on the side where it lifts begin to grow clearer, and look blue, and seem to smoke with the vanishing mists; and the buildings reveal their lights and shadows; through the thinner vapour they show only their lights and through the thicker air nothing at all. this is when the movement of the mist makes it part horizontally, and then the edges of the mist will be indistinct against the blue of the sky, and towards the earth it will look almost like dust blown up. in proportion as the atmosphere is dense the buildings of a city and the trees in a landscape will look fewer, because only the tallest and largest will be seen. darkness affects every thing with its hue, and the more an object differs from darkness, the more we see its real and natural colour. the mountains will look few, because only those will be seen which are farthest apart; since, at such a distance, the density increases to such a degree that it causes a brightness by which the darkness of the hills becomes divided and vanishes indeed towards the top. there is less [mist] between lower and nearer hills and yet little is to be distinguished, and least towards the bottom. . the surface of an object partakes of the colour of the light which illuminates it; and of the colour of the atmosphere which lies between the eye and that object, that is of the colour of the transparent medium lying between the object and the eye; and among colours of a similar character the second will be of the same tone as the first, and this is caused by the increased thickness of the colour of the medium lying between the object and the eye. . of painting. of various colours which are none of them blue that which at a great distance will look bluest is the nearest to black; and so, conversely, the colour which is least like black will at a great distance best preserve its own colour. hence the green of fields will assume a bluer hue than yellow or white will, and conversely yellow or white will change less than green, and red still less. _vii._ _on the proportions and on the movements of the human figure._ _leonardo's researches on the proportions and movements of the human figure must have been for the most part completed and written before the year_ ; _for luca paciolo writes, in the dedication to ludovico il moro, of his book_ divina proportione, _which was published in that year:_ "leonardo da venci ... hauedo gia co tutta diligetia al degno libro de pictura e movimenti humani posto fine". _the selection of leonardo's axioms contained in the vatican copy attributes these words to the author:_ "e il resto si dira nella universale misura del huomo". (_manzi, p. ; ludwig, no. _). _lomazzo, again, in his_ idea del tempio della pittura milano , cap. iv, _says:_ "lionardo vinci ... dimostro anco in figura tutte le proporzioni dei membri del corpo umano". _the vatican copy includes but very few sections of the_ "universale misura del huomo" _and until now nothing has been made known of the original mss. on the subject which have supplied the very extensive materials for this portion of the work. the collection at windsor, belonging to her majesty the queen, includes by far the most important part of leonardo's investigations on this subject, constituting about half of the whole of the materials here published; and the large number of original drawings adds greatly to the interest which the subject itself must command. luca paciolo would seem to have had these mss. (which i have distinguished by the initials w. p.) in his mind when he wrote the passage quoted above. still, certain notes of a later date--such as nos. , and , from ms. e, written in -- , sufficiently prove that leonardo did not consider his earlier studies on the proportions and movements of the human figure final and complete, as we might suppose from luca paciolo's statement. or else he took the subject up again at a subsequent period, since his former researches had been carried on at milan between and . indeed it is highly probable that the anatomical studies which he was pursuing zvith so much zeal between -- should have led him to reconsider the subject of proportion. preliminary observations ( . ). . every man, at three years old is half the full height he will grow to at last. . if a man braccia high is too small, one of four is too tall, the medium being what is admirable. between and comes ; therefore take a man of braccia in height and measure him by the rule i will give you. if you tell me that i may be mistaken, and judge a man to be well proportioned who does not conform to this division, i answer that you must look at many men of braccia, and out of the larger number who are alike in their limbs choose one of those who are most graceful and take your measurements. the length of the hand is / of a braccio [ inches] and this is found times in man. and the face [footnote : the account here given of the _braccio_ is of importance in understanding some of the succeeding chapters. _testa_ must here be understood to mean the face. the statements in this section are illustrated in part on pl. xi.] is the same, and from the pit of the throat to the shoulder, and from the shoulder to the nipple, and from one nipple to the other, and from each nipple to the pit of the throat. proportions of the head and face ( - ). . the space between the parting of the lips [the mouth] and the base of the nose is one-seventh of the face. the space from the mouth to the bottom of the chin _c d_ is the fourth part of the face and equal to the width of the mouth. the space from the chin to the base of the nose _e f_ is the third part of the face and equal to the length of the nose and to the forehead. the distance from the middle of the nose to the bottom of the chin _g h_, is half the length of the face. the distance from the top of the nose, where the eyebrows begin, to the bottom of the chin, _i k_, is two thirds of the face. the space from the parting of the lips to the top of the chin _l m_, that is where the chin ends and passes into the lower lip of the mouth, is the third of the distance from the parting of the lips to the bottom of the chin and is the twelfth part of the face. from the top to the bottom of the chin _m n_ is the sixth part of the face and is the fifty fourth part of a man's height. from the farthest projection of the chin to the throat _o p_ is equal to the space between the mouth and the bottom of the chin, and a fourth of the face. the distance from the top of the throat to the pit of the throat below _q r_ is half the length of the face and the eighteenth part of a man's height. from the chin to the back of the neck _s t_, is the same distance as between the mouth and the roots of the hair, that is three quarters of the head. from the chin to the jaw bone _v x_ is half the head and equal to the thickness of the neck in profile. the thickness of the head from the brow to the nape is once and / that of the neck. [footnote: the drawings to this text, lines - are on pl. vii, no. i. the two upper sketches of heads, pl. vii, no. , belong to lines - , and in the original are placed immediately below the sketches reproduced on pl. vii, no. .] . the distance from the attachment of one ear to the other is equal to that from the meeting of the eyebrows to the chin, and in a fine face the width of the mouth is equal to the length from the parting of the lips to the bottom of the chin. . the cut or depression below the lower lip of the mouth is half way between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin. the face forms a square in itself; that is its width is from the outer corner of one eye to the other, and its height is from the very top of the nose to the bottom of the lower lip of the mouth; then what remains above and below this square amounts to the height of such another square, _a_ _b_ is equal to the space between _c_ _d_; _d_ _n_ in the same way to _n_ _c_, and likewise _s_ _r_, _q_ _p_, _h_ _k_ are equal to each other. it is as far between _m_ and _s_ as from the bottom of the nose to the chin. the ear is exactly as long as the nose. it is as far from _x_ to _j_ as from the nose to the chin. the parting of the mouth seen in profile slopes to the angle of the jaw. the ear should be as high as from the bottom of the nose to the top of the eye-lid. the space between the eyes is equal to the width of an eye. the ear is over the middle of the neck, when seen in profile. the distance from to is equal to that from s_ to _r_. [footnote: see pl. viii, no. i, where the text of lines - is also given in facsimile.] . (_a_ _b_) is equal to (_c_ _d_). [footnote: see pl. vii, no. . reference may also be made here to two pen and ink drawings of heads in profile with figured measurements, of which there is no description in the ms. these are given on pl. xvii, no. .--a head, to the left, with part of the torso [w. p. a], no. on the same plate is from ms. a b and in the original occurs on a page with wholly irrelevant text on matters of natural history. m. ravaisson in his edition of the paris ms. a has reproduced this head and discussed it fully [note on page ]; he has however somewhat altered the original measurements. the complicated calculations which m. ravaisson has given appear to me in no way justified. the sketch, as we see it, can hardly have been intended for any thing more than an experimental attempt to ascertain relative proportions. we do not find that leonardo made use of circular lines in any other study of the proportions of the human head. at the same time we see that the proportions of this sketch are not in accordance with the rules which he usually observed (see for instance no. ).] the head _a_ _f_ / larger than _n_ _f_. . from the eyebrow to the junction of the lip with the chin, and the angle of the jaw and the upper angle where the ear joins the temple will be a perfect square. and each side by itself is half the head. the hollow of the cheek bone occurs half way between the tip of the nose and the top of the jaw bone, which is the lower angle of the setting on of the ear, in the frame here represented. from the angle of the eye-socket to the ear is as far as the length of the ear, or the third of the face. [footnote: see pl. ix. the text, in the original is written behind the head. the handwriting would seem to indicate a date earlier than . on the same leaf there is a drawing in red chalk of two horsemen of which only a portion of the upper figure is here visible. the whole leaf measures / centimetres wide by long, and is numbered in the top right-hand corner.] . from _a_ to _b_--that is to say from the roots of the hair in front to the top of the head--ought to be equal to _c_ _d_;--that is from the bottom of the nose to the meeting of the lips in the middle of the mouth. from the inner corner of the eye _m_ to the top of the head _a_ is as far as from _m_ down to the chin _s_. _s_ _c_ _f_ _b_ are all at equal distances from each other. [footnote: the drawing in silver-point on bluish tinted paper--pl. x--which belongs to this chapter has been partly drawn over in ink by leonardo himself.] . from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin is / , and from the roots of the hair to the chin is / of the distance from the roots of the hair to the ground. the greatest width of the face is equal to the space between the mouth and the roots of the hair and is / of the whole height. from the top of the ear to the top of the head is equal to the distance from the bottom of the chin to the lachrymatory duct of the eye; and also equal to the distance from the angle of the chin to that of the jaw; that is the / of the whole. the small cartilage which projects over the opening of the ear towards the nose is half-way between the nape and the eyebrow; the thickness of the neck in profile is equal to the space between the chin and the eyes, and to the space between the chin and the jaw, and it is / of the height of the man. . _a b_, _c d_, _e f_, _g h_, _i k_ are equal to each other in size excepting that _d f_ is accidental. [footnote: see pl. xi.] proportions of the head seen in front ( - ). . _a n o f_ are equal to the mouth. _a c_ and _a f_ are equal to the space between one eye and the other. _n m o f q r_ are equal to half the width of the eye lids, that is from the inner [lachrymatory] corner of the eye to its outer corner; and in like manner the division between the chin and the mouth; and in the same way the narrowest part of the nose between the eyes. and these spaces, each in itself, is the th part of the head, _n o_ is equal to the length of the eye or of the space between the eyes. _m c_ is / of _n m_ measuring from the outer corner of the eyelids to the letter _c_. _b s_ will be equal to the width of the nostril. [footnote: see pl. xii.] . the distance between the centres of the pupils of the eyes is / of the face. the space between the outer corners of the eyes, that is where the eye ends in the eye socket which contains it, thus the outer corners, is half the face. the greatest width of the face at the line of the eyes is equal to the distance from the roots of the hair in front to the parting of the lips. [footnote: there are, with this section, two sketches of eyes, not reproduced here.] . the nose will make a double square; that is the width of the nose at the nostrils goes twice into the length from the tip of the nose to the eyebrows. and, in the same way, in profile the distance from the extreme side of the nostril where it joins the cheek to the tip of the nose is equal to the width of the nose in front from one nostril to the other. if you divide the whole length of the nose--that is from the tip to the insertion of the eyebrows, into equal parts, you will find that one of these parts extends from the tip of the nostrils to the base of the nose, and the upper division lies between the inner corner of the eye and the insertion of the eyebrows; and the two middle parts [together] are equal to the length of the eye from the inner to the outer corner. [footnote: the two bottom sketches on pl. vii, no. face the six lines of this section,--with regard to the proportions of the head in profile see no. .] . the great toe is the sixth part of the foot, taking the measure in profile, on the inside of the foot, from where this toe springs from the ball of the sole of the foot to its tip _a b_; and it is equal to the distance from the mouth to the bottom of the chin. if you draw the foot in profile from the outside, make the little toe begin at three quarters of the length of the foot, and you will find the same distance from the insertion of this toe as to the farthest prominence of the great toe. . for each man respectively the distance between _a b_ is equal to _c d_. . relative proportion of the hand and foot. the foot is as much longer than the hand as the thickness of the arm at the wrist where it is thinnest seen facing. again, you will find that the foot is as much longer than the hand as the space between the inner angle of the little toe to the last projection of the big toe, if you measure along the length of the foot. the palm of the hand without the fingers goes twice into the length of the foot without the toes. if you hold your hand with the fingers straight out and close together you will find it to be of the same width as the widest part of the foot, that is where it is joined onto the toes. and if you measure from the prominence of the inner ancle to the end of the great toe you will find this measure to be as long as the whole hand. from the top angle of the foot to the insertion of the toes is equal to the hand from wrist joint to the tip of the thumb. the smallest width of the hand is equal to the smallest width of the foot between its joint into the leg and the insertion of the toes. the width of the heel at the lower part is equal to that of the arm where it joins the hand; and also to the leg where it is thinnest when viewed in front. the length of the longest toe, from its first division from the great toe to its tip is the fourth of the foot from the centre of the ancle bone to the tip, and it is equal to the width of the mouth. the distance between the mouth and the chin is equal to that of the knuckles and of the three middle fingers and to the length of their first joints if the hand is spread, and equal to the distance from the joint of the thumb to the outset of the nails, that is the fourth part of the hand and of the face. the space between the extreme poles inside and outside the foot called the ancle or ancle bone _a b_ is equal to the space between the mouth and the inner corner of the eye. . the foot, from where it is attached to the leg, to the tip of the great toe is as long as the space between the upper part of the chin and the roots of the hair _a b_; and equal to five sixths of the face. . _a d_ is a head's length, _c b_ is a head's length. the four smaller toes are all equally thick from the nail at the top to the bottom, and are / of the foot. [footnote: see pl. xiv, no. , a drawing of a foot with the text in three lines below it.] . the whole length of the foot will lie between the elbow and the wrist and between the elbow and the inner angle of the arm towards the breast when the arm is folded. the foot is as long as the whole head of a man, that is from under the chin to the topmost part of the head[footnote : _nel modo che qui i figurato_. see pl. vii, no. , the upper figure. the text breaks off at the end of line and the text given under no. follows below. it may be here remarked that the second sketch on w. p. has in the original no explanatory text.] in the way here figured. proportions of the leg ( - ). . the greatest thickness of the calf of the leg is at a third of its height _a b_, and is a twentieth part thicker than the greatest thickness of the foot. _a c_ is half of the head, and equal to _d b_ and to the insertion of the five toes _e f_. _d k_ diminishes one sixth in the leg _g h_. _g h_ is / of the head; _m n_ increases one sixth from _a e_ and is / of the head, _o p_ is / less than _d k_ and is / of the head. _a_ is at half the distance between _b q_, and is / of the man. _r_ is half way between _s_ and _b_[footnote : _b_ is here and later on measured on the right side of the foot as seen by the spectator.]. the concavity of the knee outside _r_ is higher than that inside _a_. the half of the whole height of the leg from the foot _r_, is half way between the prominence _s_ and the ground _b_. _v_ is half way between _t_ and _b_. the thickness of the thigh seen in front is equal to the greatest width of the face, that is / of the length from the chin to the top of the head; _z r_ is / of to _v_; _m n_ is equal to _v_ and is / of _r b_, _x y_ goes times into _r b_, and into _r s_. [footnote - : the sketch illustrating these lines is on pl. xiii, no. .] [footnote : a b _entra in_ c f _e_ _in_ c n. accurate measurement however obliges us to read for .] _a b_ goes six times into _c f_ and six times into _c n_ and is equal to _g h_; _i k l m_ goes times into _d f_, and times into _d n_ and is / of the foot; _p q r s_ goes times into _d f, and times into _b n_; [footnote: . _y_ is not to be found on the diagram and _x_ occurs twice; this makes the passage very obscure.] _x y_ is / of _x f_ and is equal to _n q_. is / of _n f_; is / of _n f_ [footnote: - . compare with this lines - of no. , and the sketch of a leg in profile pl. xv.]. i want to know how much a man increases in height by standing on tip-toe and how much _p g_ diminishes by stooping; and how much it increases at _n q_ likewise in bending the foot. [footnote : _e f_ _dal cazo_. by reading _i_ for _e_ the sense of this passage is made clear.] _e f_ is four times in the distance between the genitals and the sole of the foot; [footnote : is not to be found in the sketch which renders the passage obscure. the two last lines are plainly legible in the facsimile.] is six times from to and is equal to _g h_ and _i k_. [footnote: the drawing of a leg seen in front pl. xiii, no. belongs to the text from lines - . the measurements in this section should be compared with the text no. , lines - , and the sketch of a leg seen in front on pl. xv.] . the length of the foot from the end of the toes to the heel goes twice into that from the heel to the knee, that is where the leg bone [fibula] joins the thigh bone [femur]. . _a n b_ are equal; _c n d_ are equal; _n c_ makes two feet; _n d_ makes feet. [footnote: see the lower sketch, pl. xiv, no. .] . _m n o_ are equal. the narrowest width of the leg seen in front goes times from the sole of the foot to the joint of the knee, and is the same width as the arm, seen in front at the wrist, and as the longest measure of the ear, and as the three chief divisions into which we divide the face; and this measurement goes times from the wrist joint of the hand to the point of the elbow. [ ] the foot is as long as the space from the knee between _a_ and _b_; and the patella of the knee is as long as the leg between _r_ and _s_. [ ] the least thickness of the leg in profile goes times from the sole of the foot to the knee joint and is the same width as the space between the outer corner of the eye and the opening of the ear, and as the thickest part of the arm seen in profile and between the inner corner of the eye and the insertion of the hair. _a b c_ [_d_] are all relatively of equal length, _c d_ goes twice from the sole of the foot to the centre of the knee and the same from the knee to the hip. [ ]_a b c_ are equal; _a_ to _b_ is feet--that is to say measuring from the heel to the tip of the great toe. [footnote: see pl. xv. the text of lines - is to the left of the front view of the leg, to which it refers. lines - are in the middle column and refer to the leg seen in profile and turned to the left, on the right hand side of the writing. lines - are above, to the left and apply to the sketch below them. some farther remarks on the proportion of the leg will be found in no. , lines , .] on the central point of the whole body. . in kneeling down a man will lose the fourth part of his height. when a man kneels down with his hands folded on his breast the navel will mark half his height and likewise the points of the elbows. half the height of a man who sits--that is from the seat to the top of the head--will be where the arms fold below the breast, and below the shoulders. the seated portion--that is from the seat to the top of the head--will be more than half the man's [whole height] by the length of the scrotum. [footnote: see pl. viii, no. .] the relative proportions of the torso and of the whole figure. . the cubit is one fourth of the height of a man and is equal to the greatest width of the shoulders. from the joint of one shoulder to the other is two faces and is equal to the distance from the top of the breast to the navel. [footnote : _dalla detta somita_. it would seem more accurate to read here _dal detto ombilico_.] from this point to the genitals is a face's length. [footnote: compare with this the sketches on the other page of the same leaf. pl. viii, no. .] the relative proportions of the head and of the torso. . from the roots of the hair to the top of the breast _a b_ is the sixth part of the height of a man and this measure is equal. from the outside part of one shoulder to the other is the same distance as from the top of the breast to the navel and this measure goes four times from the sole of the foot to the lower end of the nose. the [thickness of] the arm where it springs from the shoulder in front goes times into the space between the two outside edges of the shoulders and times into the face, and four times into the length of the foot and three into the hand, inside or outside. [footnote: the three sketches pl. xiv, no. belong to this text.] the relative proportions of the torso and of the leg ( . ). . _a b c_ are equal to each other and to the space from the armpit of the shoulder to the genitals and to the distance from the tip of the fingers of the hand to the joint of the arm, and to the half of the breast; and you must know that _c b_ is the third part of the height of a man from the shoulders to the ground; _d e f_ are equal to each other and equal to the greatest width of the shoulders. [footnote: see pl. xvi, no. .] . --top of the chin--hip--the insertion of the middle finger. the end of the calf of the leg on the inside of the thigh.--the end of the swelling of the shin bone of the leg. [ ] the smallest thickness of the leg goes times into the thigh seen in front. [footnote: see pl. xvii, no. , middle sketch.] the relative proportions of the torso and of the foot. . the torso _a b_ in its thinnest part measures a foot; and from _a_ to _b_ is feet, which makes two squares to the seat--its thinnest part goes times into the length, thus making squares. [footnote: see pl, vii, no. , the lower sketch.] the proportions of the whole figure ( - ). . a man when he lies down is reduced to / of his height. . the opening of the ear, the joint of the shoulder, that of the hip and the ancle are in perpendicular lines; _a n_ is equal to _m o_. [footnote: see pl. xvi, no. , the upper sketch.] . from the chin to the roots of the hair is / of the whole figure. from the joint of the palm of the hand to the tip of the longest finger is / . from the chin to the top of the head / ; and from the pit of the stomach to the top of the breast is / , and from the pit below the breast bone to the top of the head / . from the chin to the nostrils / part of the face, the same from the nostrils to the brow and from the brow to the roots of the hair, and the foot is / , the elbow / , the width of the shoulders / . . the width of the shoulders is / of the whole. from the joint of the shoulder to the hand is / , from the parting of the lips to below the shoulder-blade is one foot. the greatest thickness of a man from the breast to the spine is one th of his height and is equal to the space between the bottom of the chin and the top of the head. the greatest width is at the shoulders and goes . the torso from the front and back. . the width of a man under the arms is the same as at the hips. a man's width across the hips is equal to the distance from the top of the hip to the bottom of the buttock, when a man stands equally balanced on both feet; and there is the same distance from the top of the hip to the armpit. the waist, or narrower part above the hips will be half way between the arm pits and the bottom of the buttock. [footnote: the lower sketch pl. xvi, no. , is drawn by the side of line .] vitruvius' scheme of proportions. . vitruvius, the architect, says in his work on architecture that the measurements of the human body are distributed by nature as follows: that is that fingers make palm, and palms make foot, palms make cubit; cubits make a man's height. and cubits make one pace and palms make a man; and these measures he used in his buildings. if you open your legs so much as to decrease your height / and spread and raise your arms till your middle fingers touch the level of the top of your head you must know that the centre of the outspread limbs will be in the navel and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle. the length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height. from the roots of the hair to the bottom of the chin is the tenth of a man's height; from the bottom of the chin to the top of his head is one eighth of his height; from the top of the breast to the top of his head will be one sixth of a man. from the top of the breast to the roots of the hair will be the seventh part of the whole man. from the nipples to the top of the head will be the fourth part of a man. the greatest width of the shoulders contains in itself the fourth part of the man. from the elbow to the tip of the hand will be the fifth part of a man; and from the elbow to the angle of the armpit will be the eighth part of the man. the whole hand will be the tenth part of the man; the beginning of the genitals marks the middle of the man. the foot is the seventh part of the man. from the sole of the foot to below the knee will be the fourth part of the man. from below the knee to the beginning of the genitals will be the fourth part of the man. the distance from the bottom of the chin to the nose and from the roots of the hair to the eyebrows is, in each case the same, and like the ear, a third of the face. [footnote: see pl. xviii. the original leaf is centimetres wide and / long. at the ends of the scale below the figure are written the words _diti_ (fingers) and _palmi_ (palms). the passage quoted from vitruvius is book iii, cap. , and leonardo's drawing is given in the editions of vitruvius by fra giocondo (venezia , fol., firenze , vo.) and by cesariano (como ).] the arm and head. . from _b_ to _a_ is one head, as well as from _c_ to _a_ and this happens when the elbow forms a right angle. [footnote: see pl. xli, no. .] proportions of the arm ( - ). . from the tip of the longest finger of the hand to the shoulder joint is four hands or, if you will, four faces. _a b c_ are equal and each interval is heads. [footnote: lines - are given on pl. xv below the front view of the leg; lines and are below again, on the left side. the lettering refers to the bent arm near the text.] . the hand from the longest finger to the wrist joint goes times from the tip of the longest finger to the shoulder joint. . _a b c_ are equal to each other and to the foot and to the space between the nipple and the navel _d e_ will be the third part of the whole man. _f g_ is the fourth part of a man and is equal to _g h_ and measures a cubit. [footnote: see pl. xix, no. . . _mamolino_ (=_bambino_, little child) may mean here the navel.] . _a b_ goes times into _a c_ and into _a m_. the greatest thickness of the arm between the elbow and the hand goes times into _a m_ and is equal to _r f_. the greatest thickness of the arm between the shoulder and the elbow goes times into _c m_, and is equal to _h n g_. the smallest thickness of the arm above the elbow _x y_ is not the base of a square, but is equal to half the space _h_ which is found between the inner joint of the arm and the wrist joint. [ ]the width of the wrist goes times into the whole arm; that is from the tip of the fingers to the shoulder joint; that is times into the hand and into the arm. the arm when bent is heads. the arm from the shoulder to the elbow in bending increases in length, that is in the length from the shoulder to the elbow, and this increase is equal to the thickness of the arm at the wrist when seen in profile. and the space between the bottom of the chin and the parting of the lips, is equal to the thickness of the middle fingers, and to the width of the mouth and to the space between the roots of the hair on the forehead and the top of the head [footnote: _queste cose_. this passage seems to have been written on purpose to rectify the foregoing lines. the error is explained by the accompanying sketch of the bones of the arm.]. all these distances are equal to each other, but they are not equal to the above-mentioned increase in the arm. the arm between the elbow and wrist never increases by being bent or extended. the arm, from the shoulder to the inner joint when extended. when the arm is extended, _p n_ is equal to _n a_. and when it is bent _n a_ diminishes / of its length and _p n_ does the same. the outer elbow joint increases / when bent; and thus by being bent it increases to the length of heads. and on the inner side, by bending, it is found that whereas the arm from where it joins the side to the wrist, was heads and a half, in bending it loses the half head and measures only two: one from the [shoulder] joint to the end [by the elbow], and the other to the hand. the arm when folded will measure faces up to the shoulder from the elbow and from the elbow to the insertion of the four fingers on the palm of the hand. the length from the base of the fingers to the elbow never alters in any position of the arm. if the arm is extended it decreases by / of the length between _b_ and _h_; and if--being extended--it is bent, it will increase the half of _o e_. [footnote - : the figure sketched in the margin is however drawn to different proportions.] the length from the shoulder to the elbow is the same as from the base of the thumb, inside, to the elbow _a b c_. [footnote - : the arm sketch on the margin of the ms. is identically the same as that given below on pl. xx which may therefore be referred to in this place. in line we read therefore _z c_ for _m n_.] the smallest thickness of the arm in profile _z c_ goes times between the knuckles of the hand and the dimple of the elbow when extended and times in the whole arm and in the whole man [ ]. the greatest thickness of the arm in profile is equal to the greatest thickness of the arm in front; but the first is placed at a third of the arm from the shoulder joint to the elbow and the other at a third from the elbow towards the hand. [footnote: compare pl. xvii. lines - and - are written in two columns below the extended arm, and at the tips of the fingers we find the words: _fine d'unghie_ (ends of the nails). part of the text--lines to --is visible by the side of the sketches on pl. xxxv, no. .] . from the top of the shoulder to the point of the elbow is as far as from that point to the joints of the four fingers with the palm of the hand, and each is faces. [ ]_a e_ is equal to the palm of the hand, _r f_ and _o g_ are equal to half a head and each goes times into _a b_ and _b c_. from _c_ to _m_ is / a head; _m n_ is / of a head and goes times into _c b_ and into _b a_; _a b_ loses / of its length when the arm is extended; _c b_ never alters; _o_ will always be the middle point between _a_ and _s_. _y l_ is the fleshy part of the arm and measures one head; and when the arm is bent this shrinks / of its length; _o a_ in bending loses / and so does _o r_. _a b_ is / of _r c_. _f s_ will be / of _r c_, and each of those measurements is the largest of the arm; _k h_ is the thinnest part between the shoulder and the elbow and it is / of the whole arm _r c_; _o p_ is / of _r l_; _c z_ goes times into _r c_. [footnote: see pl. xx where the text is also seen from lines - .] the movement of the arm ( - ). . in the innermost bend of the joints of every limb the reliefs are converted into a hollow, and likewise every hollow of the innermost bends becomes a convexity when the limb is straightened to the utmost. and in this very great mistakes are often made by those who have insufficient knowledge and trust to their own invention and do not have recourse to the imitation of nature; and these variations occur more in the middle of the sides than in front, and more at the back than at the sides. . when the arm is bent at an angle at the elbow, it will produce some angle; the more acute the angle is, the more will the muscles within the bend be shortened; while the muscles outside will become of greater length than before. as is shown in the example; _d c e_ will shrink considerably; and _b n_ will be much extended. [footnote: see pl. xix, no. .] . of painting. the arm, as it turns, thrusts back its shoulder towards the middle of the back. . the principal movements of the hand are ; that is forwards, backwards, to right and to left, in a circular motion, up or down, to close and to open, and to spread the fingers or to press them together. . of the motions of the fingers. the movements of the fingers principally consist in extending and bending them. this extension and bending vary in manner; that is, sometimes they bend altogether at the first joint; sometimes they bend, or extend, half way, at the nd joint; and sometimes they bend in their whole length and in all the three joints at once. if the first joints are hindered from bending, then the rd joint can be bent with greater ease than before; it can never bend of itself, if the other joints are free, unless all three joints are bent. besides all these movements there are other principal motions of which are up and down, the two others from side to side; and each of these is effected by a single tendon. from these there follow an infinite number of other movements always effected by two tendons; one tendon ceasing to act, the other takes up the movement. the tendons are made thick inside the fingers and thin outside; and the tendons inside are attached to every joint but outside they are not. [footnote : this head line has, in the original, no text to follow.] of the strength [and effect] of the tendons inside the fingers at the joints. the movement of the torso ( - ). . observe the altered position of the shoulder in all the movements of the arm, going up and down, inwards and outwards, to the back and to the front, and also in circular movements and any others. and do the same with reference to the neck, hands and feet and the breast above the lips &c. . three are the principal muscles of the shoulder, that is _b c d_, and two are the lateral muscles which move it forward and backward, that is _a o_; _a_ moves it forward, and _o_ pulls it back; and bed raises it; _a b c_ moves it upwards and forwards, and _c d o_ upwards and backwards. its own weight almost suffices to move it downwards. the muscle _d_ acts with the muscle _c_ when the arm moves forward; and in moving backward the muscle _b_ acts with the muscle _c_. [footnote: see pl. xxi. in the original the lettering has been written in ink upon the red chalk drawing and the outlines of the figures have in most places been inked over.] . of the loins, when bent. the loins or backbone being bent. the breasts are are always lower than the shoulderblades of the back. if the breast bone is arched the breasts are higher than the shoulderblades. if the loins are upright the breast will always be found at the same level as the shoulderblades. [footnote: see pl. xxii, no. .] . _a b_ the tendon and ankle in raising the heel approach each other by a finger's breadth; in lowering it they separate by a finger's breadth. [footnote: see pl. xxii, no. . compare this facsimile and text with pl. iii, no. , and p. of manzi's edition. also with no. of ludwig's edition of the vatican copy.] . just so much as the part _d a_ of the nude figure decreases in this position so much does the opposite part increase; that is: in proportion as the length of the part _d a_ diminishes the normal size so does the opposite upper part increase beyond its [normal] size. the navel does not change its position to the male organ; and this shrinking arises because when a figure stands on one foot, that foot becomes the centre [of gravity] of the superimposed weight. this being so, the middle between the shoulders is thrust above it out of it perpendicular line, and this line, which forms the central line of the external parts of the body, becomes bent at its upper extremity [so as to be] above the foot which supports the body; and the transverse lines are forced into such angles that their ends are lower on the side which is supported. as is shown at _a b c_. [footnote: see pl. xxii, no. .] . of painting. note in the motions and attitudes of figures how the limbs vary, and their feeling, for the shoulderblades in the motions of the arms and shoulders vary the [line of the] back bone very much. and you will find all the causes of this in my book of anatomy. . of [change of] attitude. the pit of the throat is over the feet, and by throwing one arm forward the pit of the throat is thrown off that foot. and if the leg is thrown forward the pit of the throat is thrown forward; and. so it varies in every attitude. . of painting. indicate which are the muscles, and which the tendons, which become prominent or retreat in the different movements of each limb; or which do neither [but are passive]. and remember that these indications of action are of the first importance and necessity in any painter or sculptor who professes to be a master &c. and indicate the same in a child, and from birth to decrepitude at every stage of its life; as infancy, childhood, boyhood, youth &c. and in each express the alterations in the limbs and joints, which swell and which grow thinner. . o anatomical painter! beware lest the too strong indication of the bones, sinews and muscles, be the cause of your becoming wooden in your painting by your wish to make your nude figures display all their feeling. therefore, in endeavouring to remedy this, look in what manner the muscles clothe or cover their bones in old or lean persons; and besides this, observe the rule as to how these same muscles fill up the spaces of the surface that extend between them, which are the muscles which never lose their prominence in any amount of fatness; and which too are the muscles of which the attachments are lost to sight in the very least plumpness. and in many cases several muscles look like one single muscle in the increase of fat; and in many cases, in growing lean or old, one single muscle divides into several muscles. and in this treatise, each in its place, all their peculiarities will be explained--and particularly as to the spaces between the joints of each limb &c. again, do not fail [to observe] the variations in the forms of the above mentioned muscles, round and about the joints of the limbs of any animal, as caused by the diversity of the motions of each limb; for on some side of those joints the prominence of these muscles is wholly lost in the increase or diminution of the flesh of which these muscles are composed, &c. [footnote: de rossi remarks on this chapter, in the roman edition of the trattato, p. : "_non in questo luogo solo, ma in altri ancora osserverà il lettore, che lionardo va fungendo quelli che fanno abuso della loro dottrina anatomica, e sicuramente con ciò ha in mira il suo rivale bonarroti, che di anatomia facea tanta pompa_." note, that leonardo wrote this passage in rome, probably under the immediate impression of michaelangelo's paintings in the sistine chapel and of raphael's isaiah in sant' agostino.] . of the different measurements of boys and men. there is a great difference in the length between the joints in men and boys for, in man, from the top of the shoulder [by the neck] to the elbow, and from the elbow to the tip of the thumb and from one shoulder to the other, is in each instance two heads, while in a boy it is but one because nature constructs in us the mass which is the home of the intellect, before forming that which contains the vital elements. . of painting. which are the muscles which subdivide in old age or in youth, when becoming lean? which are the parts of the limbs of the human frame where no amount of fat makes the flesh thicker, nor any degree of leanness ever diminishes it? the thing sought for in this question will be found in all the external joints of the bones, as the shoulder, elbow, wrists, finger-joints, hips, knees, ankle-bone and toes and the like; all of which shall be told in its place. the greatest thickness acquired by any limb is at the part of the muscles which is farthest from its attachments. flesh never increases on those portions of the limb where the bones are near to the surface. at _b r d a c e f_ the increase or diminution of the flesh never makes any considerable difference. nature has placed in front of man all those parts which feel most pain under a blow; and these are the shin of the leg, the forehead, and the nose. and this was done for the preservation of man, since, if such pain were not felt in these parts, the number of blows to which they would be exposed must be the cause of their destruction. describe why the bones of the arm and leg are double near the hand and foot [respectively]. and where the flesh is thicker or thinner in the bending of the limbs. . of painting. every part of the whole must be in proportion to the whole. thus, if a man is of a stout short figure he will be the same in all his parts: that is with short and thick arms, wide thick hands, with short fingers with their joints of the same character, and so on with the rest. i would have the same thing understood as applying to all animals and plants; in diminishing, [the various parts] do so in due proportion to the size, as also in enlarging. . of the agreement of the proportion of the limbs. and again, remember to be very careful in giving your figures limbs, that they must appear to agree with the size of the body and likewise to the age. thus a youth has limbs that are not very muscular not strongly veined, and the surface is delicate and round, and tender in colour. in man the limbs are sinewy and muscular, while in old men the surface is wrinkled, rugged and knotty, and the sinews very prominent. how young boys have their joints just the reverse of those of men, as to size. little children have all the joints slender and the portions between them are thick; and this happens because nothing but the skin covers the joints without any other flesh and has the character of sinew, connecting the bones like a ligature. and the fat fleshiness is laid on between one joint and the next, and between the skin and the bones. but, since the bones are thicker at the joints than between them, as a mass grows up the flesh ceases to have that superfluity which it had, between the skin and the bones; whence the skin clings more closely to the bone and the limbs grow more slender. but since there is nothing over the joints but the cartilaginous and sinewy skin this cannot dry up, and, not drying up, cannot shrink. thus, and for this reason, children are slender at the joints and fat between the joints; as may be seen in the joints of the fingers, arms, and shoulders, which are slender and dimpled, while in man on the contrary all the joints of the fingers, arms, and legs are thick; and wherever children have hollows men have prominences. the movement of the human figure ( - ). . of the manner of representing the actions of man. repose, movement, running, standing, supported, sitting, leaning, kneeling, lying down, suspended. carrying or being carried, thrusting, pulling, striking, being struck, pressing down and lifting up. [as to how a figure should stand with a weight in its hand [footnote : the original text ends here.] remember]. . a sitting man cannot raise himself if that part of his body which is front of his axis [centre of gravity] does not weigh more than that which is behind that axis [or centre] without using his arms. a man who is mounting any slope finds that he must involuntarily throw the most weight forward, on the higher foot, rather than behind--that is in front of the axis and not behind it. hence a man will always, involuntarily, throw the greater weight towards the point whither he desires to move than in any other direction. the faster a man runs, the more he leans forward towards the point he runs to and throws more weight in front of his axis than behind. a man who runs down hill throws the axis onto his heels, and one who runs up hill throws it into the points of his feet; and a man running on level ground throws it first on his heels and then on the points of his feet. this man cannot carry his own weight unless, by drawing his body back he balances the weight in front, in such a way as that the foot on which he stands is the centre of gravity. [footnote: see pl. xxii, no. .] . how a man proceeds to raise himself to his feet, when he is sitting on level ground. . a man when walking has his head in advance of his feet. a man when walking across a long level plain first leans [rather] backwards and then as much forwards. [footnote - : he strides forward with the air of a man going down hill; when weary, on the contrary he walks like a man going up hill.] . a man when running throws less weight on his legs than when standing still. and in the same way a horse which is running feels less the weight of the man he carries. hence many persons think it wonderful that, in running, the horse can rest on one single foot. from this it may be stated that when a weight is in progressive motion the more rapid it is the less is the perpendicular weight towards the centre. . if a man, in taking a jump from firm ground, can leap braccia, and when he was taking his leap it were to recede / of a braccio, that would be taken off his former leap; and so if it were thrust forward / of a braccio, by how much would his leap be increased? . of drawing. when a man who is running wants to neutralise the impetus that carries him on he prepares a contrary impetus which is generated by his hanging backwards. this can be proved, since, if the impetus carries a moving body with a momentum equal to and the moving body wants to turn and fall back with a momentum of , then one momentum neutralises the other contrary one, and the impetus is neutralised. of walking up and down ( - ) . when a man wants to stop running and check the impetus he is forced to hang back and take short quick steps. [footnote: lines - refer to the two upper figures, and the lower figure to the right is explained by the last part of the chapter.] the centre of gravity of a man who lifts one of his feet from the ground always rests on the centre of the sole of the foot [he stands on]. a man, in going up stairs involuntarily throws so much weight forward and on the side of the upper foot as to be a counterpoise to the lower leg, so that the labour of this lower leg is limited to moving itself. the first thing a man does in mounting steps is to relieve the leg he is about to lift of the weight of the body which was resting on that leg; and besides this, he gives to the opposite leg all the rest of the bulk of the whole man, including [the weight of] the other leg; he then raises the other leg and sets the foot upon the step to which he wishes to raise himself. having done this he restores to the upper foot all the weight of the body and of the leg itself, and places his hand on his thigh and throws his head forward and repeats the movement towards the point of the upper foot, quickly lifting the heel of the lower one; and with this impetus he lifts himself up and at the same time extends the arm which rested on his knee; and this extension of the arm carries up the body and the head, and so straightens the spine which was curved. [ ] the higher the step is which a man has to mount, the farther forward will he place his head in advance of his upper foot, so as to weigh more on _a_ than on _b_; this man will not be on the step _m_. as is shown by the line _g f_. [footnote: see pl. xxiii, no. . the lower sketch to the left belongs to the four first lines.] . i ask the weight [pressure] of this man at every degree of motion on these steps, what weight he gives to _b_ and to _c_. [footnote : these lines are, in the original, written in ink] observe the perpendicular line below the centre of gravity of the man. [footnote: see pl. xxiii, no. .] . in going up stairs if you place your hands on your knees all the labour taken by the arms is removed from the sinews at the back of the knees. [footnote: see pl. xxiii, no. .] . the sinew which guides the leg, and which is connected with the patella of the knee, feels it a greater labour to carry the man upwards, in proportion as the leg is more bent; and the muscle which acts upon the angle made by the thigh where it joins the body has less difficulty and has a less weight to lift, because it has not the [additional] weight of the thigh itself. and besides this it has stronger muscles, being those which form the buttock. . a man coming down hill takes little steps, because the weight rests upon the hinder foot, while a man mounting takes wide steps, because his weight rests on the foremost foot. [footnote: see pl. xxiii, no. .] on the human body in action ( - ). . of the human body in action. when you want to represent a man as moving some weight consider what the movements are that are to be represented by different lines; that is to say either from below upwards, with a simple movement, as a man does who stoops forward to take up a weight which he will lift as he straightens himself. or as a man does who wants to squash something backwards, or to force it forwards or to pull it downwards with ropes passed through pullies [footnote : compare the sketch on page and on (s. k. m. ii. b).]. and here remember that the weight of a man pulls in proportion as his centre of gravity is distant from his fulcrum, and to this is added the force given by his legs and bent back as he raises himself. . again, a man has even a greater store of strength in his legs than he needs for his own weight; and to see if this is true, make a man stand on the shore-sand and then put another man on his back, and you will see how much he will sink in. then take the man from off his back and make him jump straight up as high as he can, and you will find that the print of his feet will be made deeper by the jump than from having the man on his back. hence, here, by methods it is proved that a man has double the strength he requires to support his own body. . of painting. if you have to draw a man who is in motion, or lifting or pulling, or carrying a weight equal to his own, in what way must you set on his legs below his body? [footnote: in the ms. this question remains unanswered.] . of the strength of man. a man pulling a [dead] weight balanced against himself cannot pull more than his own weight. and if he has to raise it he will [be able to] raise as much more than his weight as his strength may be more than that of other men. [footnote : the stroke at the end of this line finishes in the original in a sort of loop or flourish, and a similar flourish occurs at the end of the previous passage written on the same page. m. ravaisson regards these as numbers (compare the photograph of page b in his edition of ms. a). he remarks: "_ce chiffre_ _et, a la fin de l'alinea precedent, le chiffre_ _sont, dans le manuscrit, des renvois_."] the greatest force a man can apply, with equal velocity and impetus, will be when he sets his feet on one end of the balance [or lever] and then presses his shoulders against some stable body. this will raise a weight at the other end of the balance [lever], equal to his own weight and [added to that] as much weight as he can carry on his shoulders. . no animal can simply move [by its dead weight] a greater weight than the sum of its own weight outside the centre of his fulcrum. . a man who wants to send an arrow very far from the bow must be standing entirely on one foot and raising the other so far from the foot he stands on as to afford the requisite counterpoise to his body which is thrown on the front foot. and he must not hold his arm fully extended, and in order that he may be more able to bear the strain he must hold a piece of wood which there is in all crossbows, extending from the hand to the breast, and when he wishes to shoot he suddenly leaps forward at the same instant and extends his arm with the bow and releases the string. and if he dexterously does every thing at once it will go a very long way. . when two men are at the opposite ends of a plank that is balanced, and if they are of equal weight, and if one of them wants to make a leap into the air, then his leap will be made down from his end of the plank and the man will never go up again but must remain in his place till the man at the other end dashes up the board. [footnote: see pl. xxiv, no. .] . of delivering a blow to the right or left. [footnote: four sketches on pl. xxiv, no. belong to this passage. the rest of the sketches and notes on that page are of a miscellaneous nature.] . why an impetus is not spent at once [but diminishes] gradually in some one direction? [footnote : the paper has been damaged at the end of line .] the impetus acquired in the line _a b c d_ is spent in the line _d e_ but not so completely but that some of its force remains in it and to this force is added the momentum in the line _d e_ with the force of the motive power, and it must follow than the impetus multiplied by the blow is greater that the simple impetus produced by the momentum _d e_. [footnote : the sketch no. on pl. xxiv stands, in the original, between lines and . compare also the sketches on pl. liv.] a man who has to deal a great blow with his weapon prepares himself with all his force on the opposite side to that where the spot is which he is to hit; and this is because a body as it gains in velocity gains in force against the object which impedes its motion. on hair falling down in curls. . observe the motion of the surface of the water which resembles that of hair, and has two motions, of which one goes on with the flow of the surface, the other forms the lines of the eddies; thus the water forms eddying whirlpools one part of which are due to the impetus of the principal current and the other to the incidental motion and return flow. [footnote: see pl. xxv. where also the text of this passage is given in facsimile.] on draperies ( -- ). . of the nature of the folds in drapery. that part of a fold which is farthest from the ends where it is confined will fall most nearly in its natural form. every thing by nature tends to remain at rest. drapery, being of equal density and thickness on its wrong side and on its right, has a tendency to lie flat; therefore when you give it a fold or plait forcing it out of its flatness note well the result of the constraint in the part where it is most confined; and the part which is farthest from this constraint you will see relapses most into the natural state; that is to say lies free and flowing. example. [footnote : _a c sia_. in the original text _b_ is written instead of _c_--an evident slip of the pen.] let _a b c_ be the fold of the drapery spoken of above, _a c_ will be the places where this folded drapery is held fast. i maintain that the part of the drapery which is farthest from the plaited ends will revert most to its natural form. therefore, _b_ being farthest from _a_ and _c_ in the fold _a b c_ it will be wider there than anywhere else. [footnote: see pl. xxviii, no. , and compare the drawing from windsor pl. xxx for farther illustration of what is here stated.] . of small folds in draperies. how figures dressed in a cloak should not show the shape so much as that the cloak looks as if it were next the flesh; since you surely cannot wish the cloak to be next the flesh, for you must suppose that between the flesh and the cloak there are other garments which prevent the forms of the limbs appearing distinctly through the cloak. and those limbs which you allow to be seen you must make thicker so that the other garments may appear to be under the cloak. but only give something of the true thickness of the limbs to a nymph [footnote : _una nifa_. compare the beautiful drawing of a nymph, in black chalk from the windsor collection, pl. xxvi.] or an angel, which are represented in thin draperies, pressed and clinging to the limbs of the figures by the action of the wind. . you ought not to give to drapery a great confusion of many folds, but rather only introduce them where they are held by the hands or the arms; the rest you may let fall simply where it is its nature to flow; and do not let the nude forms be broken by too many details and interrupted folds. how draperies should be drawn from nature: that is to say if youwant to represent woollen cloth draw the folds from that; and if it is to be silk, or fine cloth or coarse, or of linen or of crape, vary the folds in each and do not represent dresses, as many do, from models covered with paper or thin leather which will deceive you greatly. [footnote: the little pen and ink drawing from windsor (w. ), given on pl. xxviii, no. , clearly illustrates the statement made at the beginning of this passage; the writing of the cipher on the same page is in leonardo's hand; the cipher is certainly not.] _viii._ _botany for painters and elements of landscape painting._ _the chapters composing this portion of the work consist of observations on form, light and shade in plants, and particularly in trees summed up in certain general rules by which the author intends to guide the artist in the pictorial representation of landscape._ _with these the first principles of a_ theory of landscape painting _are laid down--a theory as profoundly thought out in its main lines as it is lucidly worked out in its details. in reading these chapters the conviction is irresistible that such a_ botany for painters _is or ought to be of similar importance in the practice of painting as the principles of the proportions and movements of the human figure_ i. e. anatomy for painters. _there can be no doubt that leonardo, in laying down these rules, did not intend to write on botany in the proper scientific sense--his own researches on that subject have no place here; it need only be observed that they are easily distinguished by their character and contents from those which are here collected and arranged under the title 'botany for painters'. in some cases where this division might appear doubtful,--as for instance in no._ --_the painter is directly addressed and enjoined to take the rule to heart as of special importance in his art._ _the original materials are principally derived from ms._ g, _in which we often find this subject treated on several pages in succession without any of that intermixture of other matters, which is so frequent in leonardo's writings. this ms., too, is one of the latest; when it was written, the great painter was already more than sixty years of age, so we can scarcely doubt that he regarded all he wrote as his final views on the subject. and the same remark applies to the chapters from mss._ e _and_ m _which were also written between_ -- . _for the sake of clearness, however, it has been desirable to sacrifice--with few exceptions--the original order of the passages as written, though it was with much reluctance and only after long hesitation that i resigned myself to this necessity. nor do i mean to impugn the logical connection of the author's ideas in his ms.; but it will be easily understood that the sequence of disconnected notes, as they occurred to leonardo and were written down from time to time, might be hardly satisfactory as a systematic arrangement of his principles. the reader will find in the appendix an exact account of the order of the chapters in the original ms. and from the data there given can restore them at will. as the materials are here arranged, the structure of the tree as regards the growth of the branches comes first_ ( - ) _and then the insertion of the leaves on the stems_ ( - ). _then follow the laws of light and shade as applied, first, to the leaves ( - ), and, secondly, to the whole tree and to groups of trees_ ( - ). _after the remarks on the light and shade in landscapes generally_ ( - ), _we find special observations on that of views of towns and buildings_ ( - ). _to the theory of landscape painting belong also the passages on the effect of wind on trees_ ( - ) _and on the light and shade of clouds_ ( - ), _since we find in these certain comparisons with the effect of light and shade on trees_ (e. g.: _in no._ , . ; _and no._ , . ). _the chapters given in the appendix nos._ _and_ _have hardly any connection with the subjects previously treated._ classification of trees. . trees. small, lofty, straggling, thick, that is as to foliage, dark, light, russet, branched at the top; some directed towards the eye, some downwards; with white stems; this transparent in the air, that not; some standing close together, some scattered. the relative thickness of the branches to the trunk ( -- ). . all the branches of a tree at every stage of its height when put together are equal in thickness to the trunk [below them]. all the branches of a water [course] at every stage of its course, if they are of equal rapidity, are equal to the body of the main stream. . every year when the boughs of a plant [or tree] have made an end of maturing their growth, they will have made, when put together, a thickness equal to that of the main stem; and at every stage of its ramification you will find the thickness of the said main stem; as: _i k_, _g h_, _e f_, _c d_, _a b_, will always be equal to each other; unless the tree is pollard--if so the rule does not hold good. all the branches have a direction which tends to the centre of the tree _m_. [footnote: the two sketches of leafless trees one above another on the left hand side of pl. xxvii, no. , belong to this passage.] . if the plant n grows to the thickness shown at m, its branches will correspond [in thickness] to the junction a b in consequence of the growth inside as well as outside. the branches of trees or plants have a twist wherever a minor branch is given off; and this giving off the branch forms a fork; this said fork occurs between two angles of which the largest will be that which is on the side of the larger branch, and in proportion, unless accident has spoilt it. [footnote: the sketches illustrating this are on the right hand side of pi. xxvii, no. i, and the text is also given there in facsimile.] . there is no boss on branches which has not been produced by some branch which has failed. the lower shoots on the branches of trees grow more than the upper ones and this occurs only because the sap that nourishes them, being heavy, tends downwards more than upwards; and again, because those [branches] which grow downwards turn away from the shade which exists towards the centre of the plant. the older the branches are, the greater is the difference between their upper and their lower shoots and in those dating from the same year or epoch. [footnote: the sketch accompanying this in the ms. is so effaced that an exact reproduction was impossible.] . of the scars on trees. the scars on trees grow to a greater thickness than is required by the sap of the limb which nourishes them. . the plant which gives out the smallest ramifications will preserve the straightest line in the course of its growth. [footnote: this passage is illustrated by two partly effaced sketches. one of these closely resembles the lower one given under no. , the other also represents short closely set boughs on an upright trunk.] . of the ramification. the beginning of the ramification [the shoot] always has the central line [axis] of its thickness directed to the central line [axis] of the plant itself. . in starting from the main stem the branches always form a base with a prominence as is shown at _a b c d_. . why, very frequently, timber has veins that are not straight. when the branches which grow the second year above the branch of the preceding year, are not of equal thickness above the antecedent branches, but are on one side, then the vigour of the lower branch is diverted to nourish the one above it, although it may be somewhat on one side. but if the ramifications are equal in their growth, the veins of the main stem will be straight [parallel] and equidistant at every degree of the height of the plant. wherefore, o painter! you, who do not know these laws! in order to escape the blame of those who understand them, it will be well that you should represent every thing from nature, and not despise such study as those do who work [only] for money. the direction of growth ( - ). . of the ramifications of plants. the plants which spread very much have the angles of the spaces which divide their branches more obtuse in proportion as their point of origin is lower down; that is nearer to the thickest and oldest portion of the tree. therefore in the youngest portions of the tree the angles of ramification are more acute. [footnote: compare the sketches on the lower portion of pl. xxvii, no. .] . the tips of the boughs of plants [and trees], unless they are borne down by the weight of their fruits, turn towards the sky as much as possible. the upper side of their leaves is turned towards the sky that it may receive the nourishment of the dew which falls at night. the sun gives spirit and life to plants and the earth nourishes them with moisture. [ ] with regard to this i made the experiment of leaving only one small root on a gourd and this i kept nourished with water, and the gourd brought to perfection all the fruits it could produce, which were about gourds of the long kind, andi set my mind diligently [to consider] this vitality and perceived that the dews of night were what supplied it abundantly with moisture through the insertion of its large leaves and gave nourishment to the plant and its offspring--or the seeds which its offspring had to produce--[ ]. the rule of the leaves produced on the last shoot of the year will be that they will grow in a contrary direction on the twin branches; that is, that the insertion of the leaves turns round each branch in such a way, as that the sixth leaf above is produced over the sixth leaf below, and the way they turn is that if one turns towards its companion to the right, the other turns to the left, the leaf serving as the nourishing breast for the shoot or fruit which grows the following year. [footnote: a french translation of lines - was given by m. ravaisson in the _gazette des beaux arts_, oct. ; his paper also contains some valuable information as to botanical science in the ancient classical writers and at the time of the renaissance.] . the lowest branches of those trees which have large leaves and heavy fruits, such as nut-trees, fig-trees and the like, always droop towards the ground. the branches always originate above [in the axis of] the leaves. . the upper shoots of the lateral branches of plants lie closer to the parent branch than the lower ones. . the lowest branches, after they have formed the angle of their separation from the parent stem, always bend downwards so as not to crowd against the other branches which follow them on the same stem and to be better able to take the air which nourishes them. as is shown by the angle _b a c_; the branch _a c_ after it has made the corner of the angle _a c_ bends downwards to _c d_ and the lesser shoot _c_ dries up, being too thin. the main branch always goes below, as is shown by the branch _f n m_, which does not go to _f n o_. the forms of trees ( -- ). . the elm always gives a greater length to the last branches of the year's growth than to the lower ones; and nature does this because the highest branches are those which have to add to the size of the tree; and those at the bottom must get dry because they grow in the shade and their growth would be an impediment to the entrance of the solar rays and the air among the main branches of the tree. the main branches of the lower part bend down more than those above, so as to be more oblique than those upper ones, and also because they are larger and older. . in general almost all the upright portions of trees curve somewhat turning the convexity towards the south; and their branches are longer and thicker and more abundant towards the south than towards the north. and this occurs because the sun draws the sap towards that surface of the tree which is nearest to it. and this may be observed if the sun is not screened off by other plants. . the cherry-tree is of the character of the fir tree as regards its ramification placed in stages round its main stem; and its branches spring, or five or [together] opposite each other; and the tips of the topmost shoots form a pyramid from the middle upwards; and the walnut and oak form a hemisphere from the middle upwards. . the bough of the walnut which is only hit and beaten when it has brought to perfection... [footnote: the end of the text and the sketch in red chalk belonging to it, are entirely effaced.] the insertion of the leaves ( -- ). . of the insertion of the branches on plants. such as the growth of the ramification of plants is on their principal branches, so is that of the leaves on the shoots of the same plant. these leaves have [footnote : _quattro modi_ (four modes). only three are described in the text, the fourth is only suggested by a sketch. this passage occurs in manzi's edition of the trattato, p. , but without the sketches and the text is mutilated in an important part. the whole passage has been commented on, from manzi's version, in part i of the _nuovo giornale botanico italiano_, by prof. g. uzielli (florence , vol. i). he remarks as to the 'four modes': "_leonardo, come si vede nelle linie sententi da solo tre esempli. questa ed altre inessattezze fanno desiderare, sia esaminato di nuovo il manoscritto vaticano_". this has since been done by d. knapp of tubingen, and his accurate copy has been published by h. ludwig, the painter. the passage in question occurs in his edition as no. ; and there also the drawings are wanting. the space for them has been left vacant, but in the vatican copy '_niente_' has been written on the margin; and in it, as well as in ludwig's and manzi's edition, the text is mutilated.] four modes of growing one above another. the first, which is the most general, is that the sixth always originates over the sixth below [footnote : _la sesta di sotto. "disposizione / o / . leonardo osservo probabilmente soltanto la prima"_ (uzielll).]; the second is that two third ones above are over the two third ones below [footnote : _terze di sotto: "intende qui senza dubbio parlare di foglie decussate, in cui il terzo verticello e nel piano del primo"_ (uzielli).]; and the third way is that the third above is over the third below [footnote : a _di sotto: "disposizione / "_ (uzielli).]. [footnote: see the four sketches on the upper portion of the page reproduced as fig. on p . xxvii.] . a description of the elm. the ramification of the elm has the largest branch at the top. the first and the last but one are smaller, when the main trunk is straight. the space between the insertion of one leaf to the rest is half the extreme length of the leaf or somewhat less, for the leaves are at an interval which is about the rd of the width of the leaf. the elm has more leaves near the top of the boughs than at the base; and the broad [surface] of the leaves varies little as to [angle and] aspect. [footnote: see pl. xxvii, no. . above the sketch and close under the number of the page is the word '_olmo_' (elm).] . in the walnut tree the leaves which are distributed on the shoots of this year are further apart from each other and more numerous in proportion as the branch from which this shoot springs is a young one. and they are inserted more closely and less in number when the shoot that bears them springs from an old branch. its fruits are borne at the ends of the shoots. and its largest boughs are the lowest on the boughs they spring from. and this arises from the weight of its sap which is more apt to descend than to rise, and consequently the branches which spring from them and rise towards the sky are small and slender [ ]; and when the shoot turns towards the sky its leaves spread out from it [at an angle] with an equal distribution of their tips; and if the shoot turns to the horizon the leaves lie flat; and this arises from the fact that leaves without exception, turn their underside to the earth [ ]. the shoots are smaller in proportion as they spring nearer to the base of the bough they spring from. [footnote: see the two sketches on pl xxvii, no. . the second refers to the passage lines - .] . of the insertion of the leaves on the branches. the thickness of a branch never diminishes within the space between one leaf and the next excepting by so much as the thickness of the bud which is above the leaf and this thickness is taken off from the branch above [the node] as far as the next leaf. nature has so placed the leaves of the latest shoots of many plants that the sixth leaf is always above the first, and so on in succession, if the rule is not [accidentally] interfered with; and this occurs for two useful ends in the plant: first that as the shoot and the fruit of the following year spring from the bud or eye which lies above and in close contact with the insertion of the leaf [in the axil], the water which falls upon the shoot can run down to nourish the bud, by the drop being caught in the hollow [axil] at the insertion of the leaf. and the second advantage is, that as these shoots develop in the following year one will not cover the next below, since the come forth on five different sides; and the sixth which is above the first is at some distance. . of the ramifications of trees and their foliage. the ramifications of any tree, such as the elm, are wide and slender after the manner of a hand with spread fingers, foreshortened. and these are seen in the distribution [thus]: the lower portions are seen from above; and those that are above are seen from below; and those in the middle, some from below and some from above. the upper part is the extreme [top] of this ramification and the middle portion is more foreshortened than any other of those which are turned with their tips towards you. and of those parts of the middle of the height of the tree, the longest will be towards the top of the tree and will produce a ramification like the foliage of the common willow, which grows on the banks of rivers. other ramifications are spherical, as those of such trees as put forth their shoots and leaves in the order of the sixth being placed above the first. others are thin and light like the willow and others. . you will see in the lower branches of the elder, which puts forth leaves two and two placed crosswise [at right angles] one above another, that if the stem rises straight up towards the sky this order never fails; and its largest leaves are on the thickest part of the stem and the smallest on the slenderest part, that is towards the top. but, to return to the lower branches, i say that the leaves on these are placed on them crosswise like [those on] the upper branches; and as, by the law of all leaves, they are compelled to turn their upper surface towards the sky to catch the dew at night, it is necessary that those so placed should twist round and no longer form a cross. [footnote: see pl. xxvii, no. .] . a leaf always turns its upper side towards the sky so that it may the better receive, on all its surface, the dew which drops gently from the atmosphere. and these leaves are so distributed on the plant as that one shall cover the other as little as possible, but shall lie alternately one above another as may be seen in the ivy which covers the walls. and this alternation serves two ends; that is, to leave intervals by which the air and sun may penetrate between them. the nd reason is that the drops which fall from the first leaf may fall onto the fourth or--in other trees--onto the sixth. . every shoot and every fruit is produced above the insertion [in the axil] of its leaf which serves it as a mother, giving it water from the rain and moisture from the dew which falls at night from above, and often it protects them against the too great heat of the rays of the sun. light on branches and leaves ( -- ). . that part of the body will be most illuminated which is hit by the luminous ray coming between right angles. [footnote: see pl. xxviii, no. .] . young plants have more transparent leaves and a more lustrous bark than old ones; and particularly the walnut is lighter coloured in may than in september. . of the accidents of colouring in trees. the accidents of colour in the foliage of trees are . that is: shadow, light, lustre [reflected light] and transparency. of the visibility of these accidents. these accidents of colour in the foliage of trees become confused at a great distance and that which has most breadth [whether light or shade, &c.] will be most conspicuous. the proportions of light and shade in a leaf ( - ). . of the shadows of a leaf. sometimes a leaf has three accidents [of light] that is: shade, lustre [reflected light] and transparency [transmitted light]. thus, if the light were at _n_ as regards the leaf _s_, and the eye at _m_, it would see _a_ in full light, _b_ in shadow and _c_ transparent. . a leaf with a concave surface seen from the under side and up-side-down will sometimes show itself as half in shade, and half transparent. thus, if _o p_ is the leaf and the light _m_ and the eye _n_, this will see _o_ in shadow because the light does not fall upon it between equal angles, neither on the upper nor the under side, and _p_ is lighted on the upper side and the light is transmitted to its under side. [footnote: see pl. xxviii, no. , the upper sketch on the page. in the original they are drawn in red chalk.] . although those leaves which have a polished surface are to a great extent of the same colour on the right side and on the reverse, it may happen that the side which is turned towards the atmosphere will have something of the colour of the atmosphere; and it will seem to have more of this colour of the atmosphere in proportion as the eye is nearer to it and sees it more foreshortened. and, without exception the shadows show as darker on the upper side than on the lower, from the contrast offered by the high lights which limit the shadows. the under side of the leaf, although its colour may be in itself the same as that of the upper side, shows a still finer colour--a colour that is green verging on yellow--and this happens when the leaf is placed between . the eye and the light which falls upon it from the opposite side. and its shadows are in the same positions as those were of the opposite side. therefore, o painter! when you do trees close at hand, remember that if the eye is almost under the tree you will see its leaves [some] on the upper and [some] on the under side, and the upper side will be bluer in proportion as they are seen more foreshortened, and the same leaf sometimes shows part of the right side and part of the under side, whence you must make it of two colours. of the transparency of leaves ( - ). . the shadows in transparent leaves seen from the under side are the same shadows as there are on the right side of this leaf, they will show through to the underside together with lights, but the lustre [reflected light] can never show through. . when one green has another [green] behind it, the lustre on the leaves and their transparent [lights] show more strongly than in those which are [seen] against the brightness of the atmosphere. and if the sun illuminates the leaves without their coming between it and the eye and without the eye facing the sun, then the reflected lights and the transparent lights are very strong. it is very effective to show some branches which are low down and dark and so set off the illuminated greens which are at some distance from the dark greens seen below. that part is darkest which is nearest to the eye or which is farthest from the luminous atmosphere. . never paint leaves transparent to the sun, because they are confused; and this is because on the transparency of one leaf will be seen the shadow of another leaf which is above it. this shadow has a distinct outline and a certain depth of shade and sometimes is [as much as] half or a third of the leaf which is shaded; and consequently such an arrangement is very confused and the imitation of it should be avoided. the light shines least through a leaf when it falls upon it at an acute angle. the gradations of shade and colour in leaves ( - ). . the shadows of plants are never black, for where the atmosphere penetrates there can never be utter darkness. . if the light comes from _m_ and the eye is at _n_ the eye will see the colour of the leaves _a b_ all affected by the colour of _m_ --that is of the atmosphere; and _b c_ will be seen from the under side as transparent, with a beautiful green colour verging on yellow. if _m_ is the luminous body lighting up the leaf _s_ all the eyes that see the under side of this leaf will see it of a beautiful light green, being transparent. in very many cases the positions of the leaves will be without shadow [or in full light], and their under side will be transparent and the right side lustrous [reflecting light]. . the willow and other similar trees, which have their boughs lopped every or years, put forth very straight branches, and their shadow is about the middle where these boughs spring; and towards the extreme ends they cast but little shade from having small leaves and few and slender branches. hence the boughs which rise towards the sky will have but little shade and little relief; and the branches which are at an angle from the horizon, downwards, spring from the dark part of the shadow and grow thinner by degrees up to their ends, and these will be in strong relief, being in gradations of light against a background of shadow. that tree will have the least shadow which has the fewest branches and few leaves. . of dark leaves in front of transparent ones. when the leaves are interposed between the light and the eye, then that which is nearest to the eye will be the darkest, and the most distant will be the lightest, not being seen against the atmosphere; and this is seen in the leaves which are away from the centre of the tree, that is towards the light. [footnote: see pl. xxviii, no. , the lower sketch.] . of the lights on dark leaves. the lights on such leaves which are darkest, will be most near to the colour of the atmosphere that is reflected in them. and the cause of this is that the light on the illuminated portion mingles with the dark hue to compose a blue colour; and this light is produced by the blueness of the atmosphere which is reflected in the smooth surface of these leaves and adds to the blue hue which this light usually produces when it falls on dark objects. of the lights on leaves of a yellowish green. but leaves of a green verging on yellow when they reflect the atmosphere do not produce a reflection verging on blue, inasmuch as every thing which appears in a mirror takes some colour from that mirror, hence the blue of the atmosphere being reflected in the yellow of the leaf appears green, because blue and yellow mixed together make a very fine green colour, therefore the lustre of light leaves verging on yellow will be greenish yellow. a classification of trees according to their colours. . the trees in a landscape are of various kinds of green, inasmuch as some verge towards blackness, as firs, pines, cypresses, laurels, box and the like. some tend to yellow such as walnuts, and pears, vines and verdure. some are both yellowish and dark as chesnuts, holm-oak. some turn red in autumn as the service-tree, pomegranate, vine, and cherry; and some are whitish as the willow, olive, reeds and the like. trees are of various forms ... the proportions of light and shade in trees ( - ). . of a generally distributed light as lighting up trees. that part of the trees will be seen to lie in the least dark shadow which is farthest from the earth. to prove it let _a p_ be the tree, _n b c_ the illuminated hemisphere [the sky], the under portion of the tree faces the earth _p c_, that is on the side _o_, and it faces a small part of the hemisphere at _c d_. but the highest part of the convexity a faces the greatest part of the hemisphere, that is _b c_. for this reason--and because it does not face the darkness of the earth--it is in fuller light. but if the tree has dense foliage, as the laurel, arbutus, box or holm oak, it will be different; because, although _a_ does not face the earth, it faces the dark [green] of the leaves cut up by many shadows, and this darkness is reflected onto the under sides of the leaves immediately above. thus these trees have their darkest shadows nearest to the middle of the tree. . of the shadows of verdure. the shadows of verdure are always somewhat blue, and so is every shadow of every object; and they assume this hue more in proportion as they are remote from the eye, and less in proportion as they are nearer. the leaves which reflect the blue of the atmosphere always present themselves to the eye edgewise. of the illuminated part of verdure and of mountains. the illuminated portion, at a great distance, will appear most nearly of its natural colour where the strongest light falls upon it. . of trees that are lighted by the sun and by the atmosphere. in trees that are illuminated [both] by the sun and the atmosphere and that have leaves of a dark colour, one side will be illuminated by the atmosphere [only] and in consequence of this light will tend to blueness, while on the other side they will be illuminated by the atmosphere and the sun; and the side which the eye sees illuminated by the sun will reflect light. . of depicting a forest scene. the trees and plants which are most thickly branched with slender branches ought to have less dark shadow than those trees and plants which, having broader leaves, will cast more shadow. . on painting. in the position of the eye which sees that portion of a tree illuminated which turns towards the light, one tree will never be seen to be illuminated equally with the other. to prove this, let the eye be _c_ which sees the two trees _b d_ which are illuminated by the sun _a_; i say that this eye _c_ will not see the light in the same proportion to the shade, in one tree as in the other. because, the tree which is nearest to the sun will display so much the stronger shadow than the more distant one, in proportion as one tree is nearer to the rays of the sun that converge to the eye than the other; &c. you see that the eye _c_ sees nothing of the tree _d_ but shadow, while the same eye _c_ sees thè tree _b_ half in light and half in shade. when a tree is seen from below, the eye sees the top of it as placed within the circle made by its boughs[ ]. remember, o painter! that the variety of depth of shade in any one particular species of tree is in proportion to the rarity or density of their branches. [footnote: the two lower sketches on the left of pl xxviii, no. , refer to lines - . the upper sketch has apparently been effaced by leonardo himself.] the distribution of light and shade with reference to the position of the spectator ( - ). . the shadows of trees placed in a landscape do not display themselves in the same position in the trees on the right hand and those on the left; still more so if the sun is to the right or left. as is proved by the th which says: opaque bodies placed between the light and the eye display themselves entirely in shadow; and by the th: the eye when placed between the opaque body and the light sees the opaque body entirely illuminated. and by the th: when the eye and the opaque body are placed between darkness and light, it will be seen half in shadow and half in light. [footnote: see the figure on the right hand side of pl. xxviii, no. . the first five lines of the text are written below the diagram and above it are the last eight lines of the text, given as no. .] . of the herbs of the field. of the plants which take a shadow from the plants which spring among them, those which are on this side [in front] of the shadow have the stems lighted up on a background of shadow, and the plants on which the shadows fall have their stems dark on a light background; that is on the background beyond the shadow. of trees which are between the eye and the light. of the trees which are between the eye and the light the part in front will be light; but this light will be broken by the ramifications of transparent leaves--being seen from the under side--and lustrous leaves--being seen from the upper side; and the background below and behind will be dark green, being in shadow from the front portion of the said tree. this occurs in trees placed above the eye. . from whence to depict a landscape landscapes should be represented so that the trees may be half in light and half in shadow; but it is better to do them when the sun is covered with clouds, for then the trees are lighted by the general light of the sky, and the general darkness of the earth. and then they are darkest in certain parts in proportion as those parts are nearest to the middle of the tree and to the earth. the effects of morning light ( - ). . of trees to the south. when the sun is in the east the trees to the south and to the north have almost as much light as shadow. but a greater share of light in proportion as they lie to the west and a greater share of shadow in proportion as they lie to the east. of meadows. if the sun is in the east the verdure of the meadows and of other small plants is of a most beautiful green from being transparent to the sun; this does not occur in the meadows to the west, and in those to the south and north the grass is of a moderately brilliant green. . of the points of the compass [in landscapes]. when the sun is in the east all the portions of plants lighted by it are of a most lively verdure, and this happens because the leaves lighted by the sun within the half of the horizon that is the eastern half, are transparent; and within the western semicircle the verdure is of a dull hue and the moist air is turbid and of the colour of grey ashes, not being transparent like that in the east, which is quite clear and all the more so in proportion as it is moister. the shadows of the trees to the east cover a large portion of them and are darker in proportion as the foliage of the trees is thicker. . of trees in the east. when the sun is in the east the trees seen towards the east will have the light which surrounds them all round their shadows, excepting on the side towards the earth; unless the tree has been pruned [below] in the past year. and the trees to the south and north will be half in shade and half in light, and more or less in shade or in light in proportion as they are more or less to the east or to the west. the [position of] the eye above or below varies the shadows and lights in trees, inasmuch as the eye placed above sees the tree with the little shadow, and the eye placed below with a great deal of shadow. the colour of the green in plants varies as much as their species. . of the shadows in trees. the sun being in the east [to the right], the trees to the west [or left] of the eye will show in small relief and almost imperceptible gradations, because the atmosphere which lies between the eye and those trees is very dense [footnote : _per la a di questo_. this possibly referred to something written on the seventh page of this note book marked _g_. unfortunately it has been cut out and lost.], see the th of this--and they have no shade; for though a shadow exists in every detail of the ramification, it results that the images of the shade and light that reach the eye are confused and mingled together and cannot be perceived on account of their minuteness. and the principal lights are in the middle of the trees, and the shadows to wards the edges; and their separation is shown by the shadows of the intervals between the trees; but when the forests are thick with trees the thin edges are but little seen. . of trees to the east. when the sun is in the east the trees are darker towards the middle while their edges are light. the effects of midday light. . objects in high light show but little, but between light and shadow they stand out well. to represent a landscape choose that the sun shall be at noon and look towards the west or east and then draw. and if you turn towards the north, every object placed on that side will have no shadow, particularly those which are nearest to the [direction of the] shadow of your head. and if you turn towards the south every object on that side will be wholly in shadow. all the trees which are towards the sun and have the atmosphere for their background are dark, and the other trees which lie against that darkness will be black [very dark] in the middle and lighter towards the edges. the appearance of trees in the distance ( . ). . of the spaces [showing the sky] in trees themselves. the spaces between the parts in the mass of trees, and the spaces between the trees in the air, are, at great distances, invisible to the eye; for, where it is an effort [even] to see the whole it is most difficult to discern the parts.--but a confused mixture is the result, partaking chiefly of the [hue] which predominates. the spaces between the leaves consist of particles of illuminated air which are very much smaller than the tree and are lost sight of sooner than the tree; but it does not therefore follow that they are not there. hence, necessarily, a compounded [effect] is produced of the sky and of the shadows of the tree in shade, which both together strike the eye which sees them. of trees which conceal these spaces in one another. that part of a tree will show the fewest spaces, behind which a large number of trees are standing between the tree and the air [sky]; thus in the tree _a_ the spaces are not concealed nor in _b_, as there is no tree behind. but in _c_ only half shows the spaces filled up by the tree _d_, and part of the tree _d_ is filled up by the tree _e_ and a little farther on all the spaces in the mass of the trees are lost, and only that at the side remains. . of trees. what outlines are seen in trees at a distance against the sky which serves as their background? the outlines of the ramification of trees, where they lie against the illuminated sky, display a form which more nearly approaches the spherical on proportion as they are remote, and the nearer they are the less they appear in this spherical form; as in the first tree _a_ which, being near to the eye, displays the true form of its ramification; but this shows less in _b_ and is altogether lost in _c_, where not merely the branches of the tree cannot be seen but the whole tree is distinguished with difficulty. every object in shadow, of whatever form it may be, at a great distance appears to be spherical. and this occurs because, if it is a square body, at a very short distance it loses its angles, and a little farther off it loses still more of its smaller sides which remain. and thus before the whole is lost [to sight] the parts are lost, being smaller than the whole; as a man, who in such a distant position loses his legs, arms and head before [the mass of] his body, then the outlines of length are lost before those of breadth, and where they have become equal it would be a square if the angles remained; but as they are lost it is round. [footnote: the sketch no. , pl. xxviii, belongs to this passage.] the cast shadow of trees ( . ). . the image of the shadow of any object of uniform breadth can never be [exactly] the same as that of the body which casts it. [footnote: see pl. xxviii, no. .] light and shade on groups of trees ( - ). . all trees seen against the sun are dark towards the middle and this shadow will be of the shape of the tree when apart from others. the shadows cast by trees on which the sun shines are as dark as those of the middle of the tree. the shadow cast by a tree is never less than the mass of the tree but becomes taller in proportion as the spot on which it falls, slopes towards the centre of the world. the shadow will be densest in the middle of the tree when the tree has the fewest branches. [footnote: the three diagrams which accompany this text are placed, in the original, before lines - . at the spots marked _b_ leonardo wrote _albero_ (tree). at _a_ is the word _sole_ (sun), at _c monte_ (mountain) at _d piano_ (plain) and at _e cima_ (summit).] every branch participates of the central shadow of every other branch and consequently [of that] of the whole tree. the form of any shadow from a branch or tree is circumscribed by the light which falls from the side whence the light comes; and this illumination gives the shape of the shadow, and this may be of the distance of a mile from the side where the sun is. if it happens that a cloud should anywhere overshadow some part of a hill the [shadow of the] trees there will change less than in the plains; for these trees on the hills have their branches thicker, because they grow less high each year than in the plains. therefore as these branches are dark by nature and being so full of shade, the shadow of the clouds cannot darken them any more; but the open spaces between the trees, which have no strong shadow change very much in tone and particularly those which vary from green; that is ploughed lands or fallen mountains or barren lands or rocks. where the trees are against the atmosphere they appear all the same colour--if indeed they are not very close together or very thickly covered with leaves like the fir and similar trees. when you see the trees from the side from which the sun lights them, you will see them almost all of the same tone, and the shadows in them will be hidden by the leaves in the light, which come between your eye and those shadows. trees at a short distance. [footnote : the heading _alberi vicini_ (trees at a short distance) is in the original manuscript written in the margin.] when the trees are situated between the sun and the eye, beyond the shadow which spreads from their centre, the green of their leaves will be seen transparent; but this transparency will be broken in many places by the leaves and boughs in shadow which will come between you and them, or, in their upper portions, they will be accompanied by many lights reflected from the leaves. . the trees of the landscape stand out but little from each other; because their illuminated portions come against the illuminated portions of those beyond and differ little from them in light and shade. . of trees seen from below and against the light, one beyond the other and near together. the topmost part of the first will be in great part transparent and light, and will stand out against the dark portion of the second tree. and thus it will be with all in succession that are placed under the same conditions. let _s_ be the light, and _r_ the eye, _c d n_ the first tree, _a b c_ the second. then i say that _r_, the eye, will see the portion _c f_ in great part transparent and lighted by the light _s_ which falls upon it from the opposite side, and it will see it, on a dark ground _b c_ because that is the dark part and shadow of the tree _a b c_. but if the eye is placed at _t_ it will see _o p_ dark on the light background _n g_. of the transparent and shadowy parts of trees, that which is nearest to you is the darkest. . that part of a tree which has shadow for background, is all of one tone, and wherever the trees or branches are thickest they will be darkest, because there are no little intervals of air. but where the boughs lie against a background of other boughs, the brighter parts are seen lightest and the leaves lustrous from the sunlight falling on them. . in the composition of leafy trees be careful not to repeat too often the same colour of one tree against the same colour of another [behind it]; but vary it with a lighter, or a darker, or a stronger green. on the treatment of light for landscapes ( - ). . the landscape has a finer azure [tone] when, in fine weather the sun is at noon than at any other time of the day, because the air is purified of moisture; and looking at it under that aspect you will see the trees of a beautiful green at the outside and the shadows dark towards the middle; and in the remoter distance the atmosphere which comes between you and them looks more beautiful when there is something dark beyond. and still the azure is most beautiful. the objects seen from the side on which the sun shines will not show you their shadows. but, if you are lower than the sun, you can see what is not seen by the sun and that will be all in shade. the leaves of the trees, which come between you and the sun are of two principal colours which are a splendid lustre of green, and the reflection of the atmosphere which lights up the objects which cannot be seen by the sun, and the shaded portions which only face the earth, and the darkest which are surrounded by something that is not dark. the trees in the landscape which are between you and the sun are far more beautiful than those you see when you are between the sun and them; and this is so because those which face the sun show their leaves as transparent towards the ends of their branches, and those that are not transparent--that is at the ends--reflect the light; and the shadows are dark because they are not concealed by any thing. the trees, when you place yourself between them and the sun, will only display to you their light and natural colour, which, in itself, is not very strong, and besides this some reflected lights which, being against a background which does not differ very much from themselves in tone, are not conspicuous; and if you are lower down than they are situated, they may also show those portions on which the light of the sun does not fall and these will be dark. in the wind. but, if you are on the side whence the wind blows, you will see the trees look very much lighter than on the other sides, and this happens because the wind turns up the under side of the leaves, which, in all trees, is much whiter than the upper sides; and, more especially, will they be very light indeed if the wind blows from the quarter where the sun is, and if you have your back turned to it. [footnote: at _s_, in the original is the word _sole_ (sun) and at _n parte di nuvolo_ (the side of the clouds).] . when the sun is covered by clouds, objects are less conspicuous, because there is little difference between the light and shade of the trees and of the buildings being illuminated by the brightness of the atmosphere which surrounds the objects in such a way that the shadows are few, and these few fade away so that their outline is lost in haze. . of trees and lights on them. the best method of practice in representing country scenes, or i should say landscapes with their trees, is to choose them so that the sun is covered with clouds so that the landscape receives an universal light and not the direct light of the sun, which makes the shadows sharp and too strongly different from the lights. . of painting. in landscapes which represent [a scene in] winter. the mountains should not be shown blue, as we see in the mountains in the summer. and this is proved [footnote . .: _per la_ _a di questo_. it is impossible to ascertain what this quotation refers to. _questo_ certainly does not mean the ms. in hand, nor any other now known to us. the same remark applies to the phrase in line : _per la_ _a di questo_.] in the th of this which says: among mountains seen from a great distance those will look of the bluest colour which are in themselves the darkest; hence, when the trees are stripped of their leaves, they will show a bluer tinge which will be in itself darker; therefore, when the trees have lost their leaves they will look of a gray colour, while, with their leaves, they are green, and in proportion as the green is darker than the grey hue the green will be of a bluer tinge than the gray. also by the nd of this: the shadows of trees covered with leaves are darker than the shadows of those trees which have lost their leaves in proportion as the trees covered with leaves are denser than those without leaves--and thus my meaning is proved. the definition of the blue colour of the atmosphere explains why the landscape is bluer in the summer than in the winter. . of painting in a landscape. if the slope of a hill comes between the eye and the horizon, sloping towards the eye, while the eye is opposite the middle of the height of this slope, then that hill will increase in darkness throughout its length. this is proved by the th of this which says that a tree looks darkest when it is seen from below; the proposition is verified, since this hill will, on its upper half show all its trees as much from the side which is lighted by the light of the sky, as from that which is in shade from the darkness of the earth; whence it must result that these trees are of a medium darkness. and from this [middle] spot towards the base of the hill, these trees will be lighter by degrees by the converse of the th and by the said th: for trees so placed, the nearer they are to the summit of the hill the darker they necessarily become. but this darkness is not in proportion to the distance, by the th of this which says: that object shows darkest which is [seen] in the clearest atmosphere; and by the th: that shows darkest which stands out against a lighter background. [footnote: the quotation in this passage again cannot be verified.] . of landscapes. the colours of the shadows in mountains at a great distance take a most lovely blue, much purer than their illuminated portions. and from this it follows that when the rock of a mountain is reddish the illuminated portions are violet (?) and the more they are lighted the more they display their proper colour. . a place is most luminous when it is most remote from mountains. on the treatment of light for views of towns ( - ). . of light and shadow in a town. when the sun is in the east and the eye is above the centre of a town, the eye will see the southern part of the town with its roofs half in shade and half in light, and the same towards the north; the eastern side will be all in shadow and the western will be all in light. . of the houses of a town, in which the divisions between the houses may be distinguished by the light which fall on the mist at the bottom. if the eye is above the houses the light seen in the space that is between one house and the next sinks by degrees into thicker mist; and yet, being less transparent, it appears whiter; and if the houses are some higher than the others, since the true [colour] is always more discernible through the thinner atmosphere, the houses will look darker in proportion as they are higher up. let _n o p q_ represent the various density of the atmosphere thick with moisture, _a_ being the eye, the house _b c_ will look lightest at the bottom, because it is in a thicker atmosphere; the lines _c d f_ will appear equally light, for although _f_ is more distant than _c_, it is raised into a thinner atmosphere, if the houses _b e_ are of the same height, because they cross a brightness which is varied by mist, but this is only because the line of the eye which starts from above ends by piercing a lower and denser atmosphere at _d_ than at _b_. thus the line a _f_ is lower at _f_ than at _c_; and the house _f_ will be seen darker at _e_ from the line _e k_ as far as _m_, than the tops of the houses standing in front of it. . of towns or other buildings seen in the evening or the morning through the mist. of buildings seen at a great distance in the evening or the morning, as in mist or dense atmosphere, only those portions are seen in brightness which are lighted up by the sun which is near the horizon; and those portions which are not lighted up by the sun remain almost of the same colour and medium tone as the mist. why objects which are high up and at a distance are darker than the lower ones, even if the mist is uniformly dense. of objects standing in a mist or other dense atmosphere, whether from vapour or smoke or distance, those will be most visible which are the highest. and among objects of equal height that will be the darkest [strongest] which has for background the deepest mist. thus the eye _h_ looking at _a b c_, towers of equal height, one with another, sees _c_ the top of the first tower at _r_, at two degrees of depth in the mist; and sees the height of the middle tower _b_ through one single degree of mist. therefore the top of the tower _c_ appears stronger than the top of the tower _b_, &c. . of the smoke of a town. smoke is seen better and more distinctly on the eastern side than on the western when the sun is in the east; and this arises from two causes; the first is that the sun, with its rays, shines through the particles of the smoke and lights them up and makes them visible. the second is that the roofs of the houses seen in the east at this time are in shadow, because their obliquity does not allow of their being illuminated by the sun. and the same thing occurs with dust; and both one and the other look the lighter in proportion as they are denser, and they are densest towards the middle. . of smoke and dust. if the sun is in the east the smoke of cities will not be visible in the west, because on that side it is not seen penetrated by the solar rays, nor on a dark background; since the roofs of the houses turn the same side to the eye as they turn towards the sun, and on this light background the smoke is not very visible. but dust, under the same aspect, will look darker than smoke being of denser material than smoke which is moist. the effect of wind on trees ( - ). . of representing wind. in representing wind, besides the bending of the boughs and the reversing of their leaves towards the quarter whence the wind comes, you should also represent them amid clouds of fine dust mingled with the troubled air. . describe landscapes with the wind, and the water, and the setting and rising of the sun. the wind. all the leaves which hung towards the earth by the bending of the shoots with their branches, are turned up side down by the gusts of wind, and here their perspective is reversed; for, if the tree is between you and the quarter of the wind, the leaves which are towards you remain in their natural aspect, while those on the opposite side which ought to have their points in a contrary direction have, by being turned over, their points turned towards you. . trees struck by the force of the wind bend to the side towards which the wind is blowing; and the wind being past they bend in the contrary direction, that is in reverse motion. . that portion of a tree which is farthest from the force which strikes it is the most injured by the blow because it bears most strain; thus nature has foreseen this case by thickening them in that part where they can be most hurt; and most in such trees as grow to great heights, as pines and the like. [footnote: compare the sketch drawn with a pen and washed with indian ink on pl. xl, no. . in the vatican copy we find, under a section entitled '_del fumo_', the following remark: _era sotto di questo capitulo un rompimento di montagna, per dentro delle quali roture scherzaua fiame di fuoco, disegnate di penna et ombrate d'acquarella, da uedere cosa mirabile et uiua (ed. manzi, p. . ed. ludwig, vol. i, ). this appears to refer to the left hand portion of the drawing here given from the windsor collection, and from this it must be inferred, that the leaf as it now exists in the library of the queen of england, was already separated from the original ms. at the time when the vatican copy was made.] light and shade on clouds ( - ). . describe how the clouds are formed and how they dissolve, and what cause raises vapour. . the shadows in clouds are lighter in proportion as they are nearer to the horizon. [footnote: the drawing belonging to this was in black chalk and is totally effaced.] . when clouds come between the sun and the eye all the upper edges of their round forms are light, and towards the middle they are dark, and this happens because towards the top these edges have the sun above them while you are below them; and the same thing happens with the position of the branches of trees; and again the clouds, like the trees, being somewhat transparent, are lighted up in part, and at the edges they show thinner. but, when the eye is between the cloud and the sun, the cloud has the contrary effect to the former, for the edges of its mass are dark and it is light towards the middle; and this happens because you see the same side as faces the sun, and because the edges have some transparency and reveal to the eye that portion which is hidden beyond them, and which, as it does not catch the sunlight like that portion turned towards it, is necessarily somewhat darker. again, it may be that you see the details of these rounded masses from the lower side, while the sun shines on the upper side and as they are not so situated as to reflect the light of the sun, as in the first instance they remain dark. the black clouds which are often seen higher up than those which are illuminated by the sun are shaded by other clouds, lying between them and the sun. again, the rounded forms of the clouds that face the sun, show their edges dark because they lie against the light background; and to see that this is true, you may look at the top of any cloud that is wholly light because it lies against the blue of the atmosphere, which is darker than the cloud. [footnote: a drawing in red chalk from the windsor collection (see pl. xxix), representing a landscape with storm-clouds, may serve to illustrate this section as well as the following one.] . of clouds, smoke and dust and the flames of a furnace or of a burning kiln. the clouds do not show their rounded forms excepting on the sides which face the sun; on the others the roundness is imperceptible because they are in the shade. [footnote: the text of this chapter is given in facsimile on pls. xxxvi and xxxvii. the two halves of the leaf form but one in the original. on the margin close to lines and is the note: _rossore d'aria inverso l'orizonte_--(of the redness of the atmosphere near the horizon). the sketches on the lower portion of the page will be spoken of in no. .] if the sun is in the east and the clouds in the west, the eye placed between the sun and the clouds sees the edges of the rounded forms composing these clouds as dark, and the portions which are surrounded by this dark [edge] are light. and this occurs because the edges of the rounded forms of these clouds are turned towards the upper or lateral sky, which is reflected in them. both the cloud and the tree display no roundness at all on their shaded side. on images reflected in water. . painters often deceive themselves, by representing water in which they make the water reflect the objects seen by the man. but the water reflects the object from one side and the man sees it from the other; and it often happens that the painter sees an object from below, and thus one and the same object is seen from hind part before and upside down, because the water shows the image of the object in one way, and the eye sees it in another. of rainbows and rain ( . ). . the colours in the middle of the rainbow mingle together. the bow in itself is not in the rain nor in the eye that sees it; though it is generated by the rain, the sun, and the eye. the rainbow is always seen by the eye that is between the rain and the body of the sun; hence if the sun is in the east and the rain is in the west it will appear on the rain in the west. . when the air is condensed into rain it would produce a vacuum if the rest of the air did not prevent this by filling its place, as it does with a violent rush; and this is the wind which rises in the summer time, accompanied by heavy rain. of flower seeds. . all the flowers which turn towards the sun perfect their seeds; but not the others; that is to say those which get only the reflection of the sun. ix. _the practice of painting._ _it is hardly necessary to offer any excuses for the division carried out in the arrangement of the text into practical suggestions and theoretical enquiries. it was evidently intended by leonardo himself as we conclude from incidental remarks in the mss. (for instance no_ _). the fact that this arrangement was never carried out either in the old ms. copies or in any edition since, is easily accounted for by the general disorder which results from the provisional distribution of the various chapters in the old copies. we have every reason to believe that the earliest copyists, in distributing the materials collected by them, did not in the least consider the order in which the original ms.lay before them._ _it is evident that almost all the chapters which refer to the calling and life of the painter--and which are here brought together in the first section (nos._ - _)--may be referred to two distinct periods in leonardo's life; most of them can be dated as belonging to the year_ _or to_ . _at about this later time leonardo may have formed the project of completing his libro della pittura, after an interval of some years, as it would seem, during which his interest in the subject had fallen somewhat into the background._ _in the second section, which treats first of the artist's studio, the construction of a suitable window forms the object of careful investigations; the special importance attached to this by leonardo is sufficiently obvious. his theory of the incidence of light which was fully discussed in a former part of this work, was to him by no means of mere abstract value, but, being deduced, as he says, from experience (or experiment) was required to prove its utility in practice. connected with this we find suggestions for the choice of a light with practical hints as to sketching a picture and some other precepts of a practical character which must come under consideration in the course of completing the painting. in all this i have followed the same principle of arrangement in the text as was carried out in the theory of painting, thus the suggestions for the perspective of a picture, (nos._ - _), are followed by the theory of light and shade for the practical method of optics (nos._ -- _) and this by the practical precepts or the treatment of aerial perspective (_ -- _)._ _in the passage on portrait and figure painting the principles of painting as applied to a bust and head are separated and placed first, since the advice to figure painters must have some connection with the principles of the treatment of composition by which they are followed._ _but this arrangement of the text made it seem advisable not to pick out the practical precepts as to the representation of trees and landscape from the close connection in which they were originally placed--unlike the rest of the practical precepts--with the theory of this branch of the subject. they must therefore be sought under the section entitled botany for painters._ _as a supplement to the_ libro di pittura _i have here added those texts which treat of the painter's materials,--as chalk, drawing paper, colours and their preparation, of the management of oils and varnishes; in the appendix are some notes on chemical substances. possibly some of these, if not all, may have stood in connection with the preparation of colours. it is in the very nature of things that leonardo's incidental indications as to colours and the like should be now-a-days extremely obscure and could only be explained by professional experts--by them even in but few instances. it might therefore have seemed advisable to reproduce exactly the original text without offering any translation. the rendering here given is merely an attempt to suggest what leonardo's meaning may have been._ _lomazzo tells us in his_ trattato dell'arte della pittura, scultura ed architettura (milano , libro ii, cap. xiv): "va discorrendo ed argomentando leonardo vinci in un suo libro letto da me (?) questi anni passati, ch'egli scrisse di mano stanca ai prieghi di ludovico sforza duca di milano, in determinazione di questa questione, se e piu nobile la pittura o la scultura; dicendo che quanto piu un'arte porta seco fatica di corpo, e sudore, tanto piu e vile, e men pregiata". _but the existence of any book specially written for lodovico il moro on the superiority of painting over sculpture is perhaps mythical. the various passages in praise of painting as compared not merely with sculpture but with poetry, are scattered among mss. of very different dates._ _besides, the way, in which the subject is discussed appears not to support the supposition, that these texts were prepared at a special request of the duke._ i. moral precepts for the student of painting. how to ascertain the dispositions for an artistic career. . a warning concerning youths wishing to be painters. many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading. the course of instruction for an artist ( - ). . the youth should first learn perspective, then the proportions of objects. then he may copy from some good master, to accustom himself to fine forms. then from nature, to confirm by practice the rules he has learnt. then see for a time the works of various masters. then get the habit of putting his art into practice and work. [footnote: the vatican copy and numerous abridgements all place this chapter at the beginning of the _trattato_, and in consequence dufresne and all subsequent editors have done the same. in the vatican copy however all the general considerations on the relation of painting to the other arts are placed first, as introductory.] . of the order of learning to draw. first draw from drawings by good masters done from works of art and from nature, and not from memory; then from plastic work, with the guidance of the drawing done from it; and then from good natural models and this you must put into practice. . precepts for drawing. the artist ought first to exercise his hand by copying drawings from the hand of a good master. and having acquired that practice, under the criticism of his master, he should next practise drawing objects in relief of a good style, following the rules which will presently be given. the study of the antique ( . ). . of drawing. which is best, to draw from nature or from the antique? and which is more difficult to do outlines or light and shade? . it is better to imitate [copy] the antique than modern work. [footnote , : these are the only two passages in which leonardo alludes to the importance of antique art in the training of an artist. the question asked in no. remains unanswered by him and it seems to me very doubtful whether the opinion stated in no. is to be regarded as a reply to it. this opinion stands in the ms. in a connection--as will be explained later on--which seems to require us to limit its application to a single special case. at any rate we may suspect that when leonardo put the question, he felt some hesitation as to the answer. among his very numerous drawings i have not been able to find a single study from the antique, though a drawing in black chalk, at windsor, of a man on horseback (pi. lxxiii) may perhaps be a reminiscence of the statue of marcus aurelius at rome. it seems to me that the drapery in a pen and ink drawing of a bust, also at windsor, has been borrowed from an antique model (pl. xxx). g. g. rossi has, i believe, correctly interpreted leonardo's feeling towards the antique in the following note on this passage in manzi's edition, p. : "sappiamo dalla storia, che i valorosi artisti toscani dell'età dell'oro dell'arte studiarono sugli antichi marmi raccolti dal magnifico lorenzo de' medici. pare che il vinci a tali monumenti non si accostasse. quest' uomo sempre riconosce per maestra la natura, e questo principio lo stringeva alla sola imitazione dì essa"--compare no. , -- footnote.] the necessity of anatomical knowledge ( . ). . of painting. it is indispensable to a painter who would be thoroughly familiar with the limbs in all the positions and actions of which they are capable, in the nude, to know the anatomy of the sinews, bones, muscles and tendons so that, in their various movements and exertions, he may know which nerve or muscle is the cause of each movement and show those only as prominent and thickened, and not the others all over [the limb], as many do who, to seem great draughtsmen, draw their nude figures looking like wood, devoid of grace; so that you would think you were looking at a sack of walnuts rather than the human form, or a bundle of radishes rather than the muscles of figures. . how it is necessary to a painter that he should know the intrinsic forms [structure] of man. the painter who is familiar with the nature of the sinews, muscles, and tendons, will know very well, in giving movement to a limb, how many and which sinews cause it; and which muscle, by swelling, causes the contraction of that sinew; and which sinews, expanded into the thinnest cartilage, surround and support the said muscle. thus he will variously and constantly demonstrate the different muscles by means of the various attitudes of his figures, and will not do, as many who, in a variety of movements, still display the very same things [modelling] in the arms, back, breast and legs. and these things are not to be regarded as minor faults. how to acquire practice. . of study and the order of study. i say that first you ought to learn the limbs and their mechanism, and having this knowledge, their actions should come next, according to the circumstances in which they occur in man. and thirdly to compose subjects, the studies for which should be taken from natural actions and made from time to time, as circumstances allow; and pay attention to them in the streets and _piazze_ and fields, and note them down with a brief indication of the forms; [footnote : lines - explained by the lower portion of the sketch no. on pl. xxxi.] thus for a head make an o, and for an arm a straight or a bent line, and the same for the legs and the body, [footnote : lines - explained by the lower portion of the sketch no. on pl. xxxi.] and when you return home work out these notes in a complete form. the adversary says that to acquire practice and do a great deal of work it is better that the first period of study should be employed in drawing various compositions done on paper or on walls by divers masters, and that in this way practice is rapidly gained, and good methods; to which i reply that the method will be good, if it is based on works of good composition and by skilled masters. but since such masters are so rare that there are but few of them to be found, it is a surer way to go to natural objects, than to those which are imitated from nature with great deterioration, and so form bad methods; for he who can go to the fountain does not go to the water-jar. [footnote: this passage has been published by dr. m. jordan, _das malerbuck des l. da vinci_, p. ; his reading however varies slightly from mine.] industry and thoroughness the first conditions ( - .) . what rules should be given to boys learning to paint. we know for certain that sight is one of the most rapid actions we can perform. in an instant we see an infinite number of forms, still we only take in thoroughly one object at a time. supposing that you, reader, were to glance rapidly at the whole of this written page, you would instantly perceive that it was covered with various letters; but you could not, in the time, recognise what the letters were, nor what they were meant to tell. hence you would need to see them word by word, line by line to be able to understand the letters. again, if you wish to go to the top of a building you must go up step by step; otherwise it will be impossible that you should reach the top. thus i say to you, whom nature prompts to pursue this art, if you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects begin with the details of them, and do not go on to the second [step] till you have the first well fixed in memory and in practice. and if you do otherwise you will throw away your time, or certainly greatly prolong your studies. and remember to acquire diligence rather than rapidity. . how that diligence [accuracy] should first be learnt rather than rapid execution. if you, who draw, desire to study well and to good purpose, always go slowly to work in your drawing; and discriminate in. the lights, which have the highest degree of brightness, and to what extent and likewise in the shadows, which are those that are darker than the others and in what way they intermingle; then their masses and the relative proportions of one to the other. and note in their outlines, which way they tend; and which part of the lines is curved to one side or the other, and where they are more or less conspicuous and consequently broad or fine; and finally, that your light and shade blend without strokes and borders [but] looking like smoke. and when you have thus schooled your hand and your judgment by such diligence, you will acquire rapidity before you are aware. the artist's private life and choice of company ( - ). . of the life of the painter in the country. a painter needs such mathematics as belong to painting. and the absence of all companions who are alienated from his studies; his brain must be easily impressed by the variety of objects, which successively come before him, and also free from other cares [footnote : leonardo here seems to be speaking of his own method of work as displayed in his mss. and this passage explains, at least in part, the peculiarities in their arrangement.]. and if, when considering and defining one subject, a second subject intervenes--as happens when an object occupies the mind, then he must decide which of these cases is the more difficult to work out, and follow that up until it becomes quite clear, and then work out the explanation of the other [footnote : leonardo here seems to be speaking of his own method of work as displayed in his mss. and this passage explains, at least in part, the peculiarities in their arrangement.]. and above all he must keep his mind as clear as the surface of a mirror, which assumes colours as various as those of the different objects. and his companions should be like him as to their studies, and if such cannot be found he should keep his speculations to himself alone, so that at last he will find no more useful company [than his own]. [footnote: in the title line leonardo had originally written _del pictore filosofo_ (the philosophical painter), but he himself struck out_filosofo_. compare in no. _pictora notomista_ (anatomical painter). the original text is partly reproduced on pl. ci.] . of the life of the painter in his studio. to the end that well-being of the body may not injure that of the mind, the painter or draughtsman must remain solitary, and particularly when intent on those studies and reflections which will constantly rise up before his eye, giving materials to be well stored in the memory. while you are alone you are entirely your own [master] and if you have one companion you are but half your own, and the less so in proportion to the indiscretion of his behaviour. and if you have many companions you will fall deeper into the same trouble. if you should say: "i will go my own way and withdraw apart, the better to study the forms of natural objects", i tell you, you will not be able to help often listening to their chatter. and so, since one cannot serve two masters, you will badly fill the part of a companion, and carry out your studies of art even worse. and if you say: "i will withdraw so far that their words cannot reach me and they cannot disturb me", i can tell you that you will be thought mad. but, you see, you will at any rate be alone. and if you must have companions ship find it in your studio. this may assist you to have the advantages which arise from various speculations. all other company may be highly mischievous. the distribution of time for studying ( - ). . of whether it is better to draw with companions or not. i say and insist that drawing in company is much better than alone, for many reasons. the first is that you would be ashamed to be seen behindhand among the students, and such shame will lead you to careful study. secondly, a wholesome emulation will stimulate you to be among those who are more praised than yourself, and this praise of others will spur you on. another is that you can learn from the drawings of others who do better than yourself; and if you are better than they, you can profit by your contempt for their defects, while the praise of others will incite you to farther merits. [footnote: the contradiction by this passage of the foregoing chapter is only apparent. it is quite clear, from the nature of the reasoning which is here used to prove that it is more improving to work with others than to work alone, that the studies of pupils only are under consideration here.] . of studying, in the dark, when you wake, or in bed before you go to sleep. i myself have proved it to be of no small use, when in bed in the dark, to recall in fancy the external details of forms previously studied, or other noteworthy things conceived by subtle speculation; and this is certainly an admirable exercise, and useful for impressing things on the memory. . of the time for studying selection of subjects. winter evenings ought to be employed by young students in looking over the things prepared during the summer; that is, all the drawings from the nude done in the summer should be brought together and a choice made of the best [studies of] limbs and bodies among them, to apply in practice and commit to memory. of positions. after this in the following summer you should select some one who is well grown and who has not been brought up in doublets, and so may not be of stiff carriage, and make him go through a number of agile and graceful actions; and if his muscles do not show plainly within the outlines of his limbs that does not matter at all. it is enough that you can see good attitudes and you can correct [the drawing of] the limbs by those you studied in the winter. [footnote: an injunction to study in the evening occurs also in no. .] on the productive power of minor artists ( - ). . he is a poor disciple who does not excel his master. . nor is the painter praiseworthy who does but one thing well, as the nude figure, heads, draperies, animals, landscapes or other such details, irrespective of other work; for there can be no mind so inept, that after devoting itself to one single thing and doing it constantly, it should fail to do it well. [footnote: in manzi's edition (p. ) the painter g. g. bossi indignantly remarks on this passage. "_parla il vince in questo luogo come se tutti gli artisti avessero quella sublimita d'ingegno capace di abbracciare tutte le cose, di cui era egli dotato"_ and he then mentions the case of claude lorrain. but he overlooks the fact that in leonardo's time landscape painting made no pretensions to independence but was reckoned among the details (_particulari_, lines , ).] . that a painter is not admirable unless he is universal. some may distinctly assert that those persons are under a delusion who call that painter a good master who can do nothing well but a head or a figure. certainly this is no great achievement; after studying one single thing for a life-time who would not have attained some perfection in it? but, since we know that painting embraces and includes in itself every object produced by nature or resulting from the fortuitous actions of men, in short, all that the eye can see, he seems to me but a poor master who can only do a figure well. for do you not perceive how many and various actions are performed by men only; how many different animals there are, as well as trees, plants, flowers, with many mountainous regions and plains, springs and rivers, cities with public and private buildings, machines, too, fit for the purposes of men, divers costumes, decorations and arts? and all these things ought to be regarded as of equal importance and value, by the man who can be termed a good painter. . of the miserable pretences made by those who falsely and unworthily acquire the name of painters. now there is a certain race of painters who, having studied but little, must need take as their standard of beauty mere gold and azure, and these, with supreme conceit, declare that they will not give good work for miserable payment, and that they could do as well as any other if they were well paid. but, ye foolish folks! cannot such artists keep some good work, and then say: this is a costly work and this more moderate and this is average work and show that they can work at all prices? a caution against one-sided study. . how, in important works, a man should not trust entirely to his memory without condescending to draw from nature. any master who should venture to boast that he could remember all the forms and effects of nature would certainly appear to me to be graced with extreme ignorance, inasmuch as these effects are infinite and our memory is not extensive enough to retain them. hence, o! painter, beware lest the lust of gain should supplant in you the dignity of art; for the acquisition of glory is a much greater thing than the glory of riches. hence, for these and other reasons which might be given, first strive in drawing to represent your intention to the eye by expressive forms, and the idea originally formed in your imagination; then go on taking out or putting in, until you have satisfied yourself. then have living men, draped or nude, as you may have purposed in your work, and take care that in dimensions and size, as determined by perspective, nothing is left in the work which is not in harmony with reason and the effects in nature. and this will be the way to win honour in your art. how to acquire universality ( - ). . of variety in the figures. the painter should aim at universality, because there is a great want of self-respect in doing one thing well and another badly, as many do who study only the [rules of] measure and proportion in the nude figure and do not seek after variety; for a man may be well proportioned, or he may be fat and short, or tall and thin, or medium. and a painter who takes no account of these varieties always makes his figures on one pattern so that they might all be taken for brothers; and this is a defect that demands stern reprehension. . how something may be learnt everywhere. nature has beneficently provided that throughout the world you may find something to imitate. . of the means of acquiring universality. it is an easy matter to men to acquire universality, for all terrestrial animals resemble each other as to their limbs, that is in their muscles, sinews and bones; and they do not vary excepting in length or in thickness, as will be shown under anatomy. but then there are aquatic animals which are of great variety; i will not try to convince the painter that there is any rule for them for they are of infinite variety, and so is the insect tribe. . painting. the mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it. therefore you must know, oh painter! that you cannot be a good one if you are not the universal master of representing by your art every kind of form produced by nature. and this you will not know how to do if you do not see them, and retain them in your mind. hence as you go through the fields, turn your attention to various objects, and, in turn look now at this thing and now at that, collecting a store of divers facts selected and chosen from those of less value. but do not do like some painters who, when they are wearied with exercising their fancy dismiss their work from their thoughts and take exercise in walking for relaxation, but still keep fatigue in their mind which, though they see various objects [around them], does not apprehend them; but, even when they meet friends or relations and are saluted by them, although they see and hear them, take no more cognisance of them than if they had met so much empty air. useful games and exercises ( . ). . of games to be played by those who draw. when, oh draughtsmen, you desire to find relaxation in games you should always practise such things as may be of use in your profession, by giving your eye good practice in judging accurately of the breadth and length of objects. thus, to accustom your mind to such things, let one of you draw a straight line at random on a wall, and each of you, taking a blade of grass or of straw in his hand, try to cut it to the length that the line drawn appears to him to be, standing at a distance of braccia; then each one may go up to the line to measure the length he has judged it to be. and he who has come nearest with his measure to the length of the pattern is the best man, and the winner, and shall receive the prize you have settled beforehand. again you should take forshortened measures: that is take a spear, or any other cane or reed, and fix on a point at a certain distance; and let each one estimate how many times he judges that its length will go into that distance. again, who will draw best a line one braccio long, which shall be tested by a thread. and such games give occasion to good practice for the eye, which is of the first importance in painting. . a way of developing and arousing the mind to various inventions. i cannot forbear to mention among these precepts a new device for study which, although it may seem but trivial and almost ludicrous, is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to various inventions. and this is, when you look at a wall spotted with stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some scene, you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes, beautified with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills in varied arrangement; or again you may see battles and figures in action; or strange faces and costumes, and an endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and well drawn forms. and these appear on such walls confusedly, like the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you choose to imagine. ii. the artist's studio.--instruments and helps for the application of perspective.--on judging of a picture. on the size of the studio. . small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it. on the construction of windows ( - ). . the larger the wall the less the light will be. . the different kinds of light afforded in cellars by various forms of windows. the least useful and the coldest is the window at _a_. the most useful, the lightest and warmest and most open to the sky is the window at _b_. the window at _c_ is of medium utility. [footnote: from a reference to the notes on the right light for painting it becomes evident that the observations made on cellar-windows have a direct bearing on the construction of the studio-window. in the diagram _b_ as well as in that under no. the window-opening is reduced to a minimum, but only, it would seem, in order to emphasize the advantage of walls constructed on the plan there shown.] . of the painter's window and its advantage. the painter who works from nature should have a window, which he can raise and lower. the reason is that sometimes you will want to finish a thing you are drawing, close to the light. let _a b c d_ be the chest on which the work may be raised or lowered, so that the work moves up and down and not the painter. and every evening you can let down the work and shut it up above so that in the evening it may be in the fashion of a chest which, when shut up, may serve the purpose of a bench. [footnote: see pl. xxxi, no. . in this plate the lines have unfortunately lost their sharpness, for the accidental loss of the negative has necessitated a reproduction from a positive. but having formerly published this sketch by another process, in von lutzow's _zeitschrift fur bildende kunst_ (vol. xvii, pg. ) i have reproduced it here in the text. the sharpness of the outline in the original sketch is here preserved but it gives it from the reversed side.] on the best light for painting ( - ). . which light is best for drawing from nature; whether high or low, or large or small, or strong and broad, or strong and small, or broad and weak or small and weak? [footnote: the question here put is unanswered in the original ms.] . of the quality of the light. a broad light high up and not too strong will render the details of objects very agreeable. . that the light for drawing from nature should be high up. the light for drawing from nature should come from the north in order that it may not vary. and if you have it from the south, keep the window screened with cloth, so that with the sun shining the whole day the light may not vary. the height of the light should be so arranged as that every object shall cast a shadow on the ground of the same length as itself. . the kind of light requisite for painting light and shade. an object will display the greatest difference of light and shade when it is seen in the strongest light, as by sunlight, or, at night, by the light of a fire. but this should not be much used in painting because the works remain crude and ungraceful. an object seen in a moderate light displays little difference in the light and shade; and this is the case towards evening or when the day is cloudy, and works then painted are tender and every kind of face becomes graceful. thus, in every thing extremes are to be avoided: too much light gives crudeness; too little prevents our seeing. the medium is best. of small lights. again, lights cast from a small window give strong differences of light and shade, all the more if the room lighted by it be large, and this is not good for painting. . painting. the luminous air which enters by passing through orifices in walls into dark rooms will render the place less dark in proportion as the opening cuts into the walls which surround and cover in the pavement. . of the quality of light. in proportion to the number of times that _a b_ goes into _c d_ will it be more luminous than _c d_. and similarly, in proportion as the point _e_ goes into _c d_ will it be more luminous than _c d;_ and this light is useful for carvers of delicate work. [footnote : for the same reason a window thus constructed would be convenient for an illuminator or a miniature painter.] [footnote: m. ravaisson in his edition of the paris ms. a remarks on this passage: _"la figure porte les lettres_ f _et_ g, _auxquelles rien ne renvoie dans l'explication; par consequent, cette explication est incomplete. la figure semblerait, d'ailleurs, se rapporter a l'effet de la reflexion par un miroir concave."_ so far as i can see the text is not imperfect, nor is the sense obscure. it is hardly necessary to observe that _c d_ here indicate the wall of the room opposite to the window _e_ and the semicircle described by _f g_ stands for the arch of the sky; this occurs in various diagrams, for example under . a similar semicircle, pl iii, no. (and compare no. ) is expressly called '_orizonte_' in writing.] . that the light should fall upon a picture from one window only. this may be seen in the case of objects in this form. if you want to represent a round ball at a certain height you must make it oval in this shape, and stand so far off as that by foreshortening it appears round. . of selecting the light which gives most grace to faces. if you should have a court yard that you can at pleasure cover with a linen awning that light will be good. or when you want to take a portrait do it in dull weather, or as evening falls, making the sitter stand with his back to one of the walls of the court yard. note in the streets, as evening falls, the faces of the men and women, and when the weather is dull, what softness and delicacy you may perceive in them. hence, oh painter! have a court arranged with the walls tinted black and a narrow roof projecting within the walls. it should be braccia wide and braccia long and braccia high and covered with a linen awning; or else paint a work towards evening or when it is cloudy or misty, and this is a perfect light. on various helps in preparing a picture ( - ). . to draw a nude figure from nature, or any thing else, hold in your hand a plumb-line to enable you to judge of the relative position of objects. . of drawing an object. when you draw take care to set up a principal line which you must observe all throughout the object you are drawing; every thing should bear relation to the direction of this principal line. . of a mode of drawing a place accurately. have a piece of glass as large as a half sheet of royal folio paper and set thus firmly in front of your eyes that is, between your eye and the thing you want to draw; then place yourself at a distance of / of a braccia from the glass fixing your head with a machine in such a way that you cannot move it at all. then shut or entirely cover one eye and with a brush or red chalk draw upon the glass that which you see beyond it; then trace it on paper from the glass, afterwards transfer it onto good paper, and paint it if you like, carefully attending to the arial perspective. how to learn to place your figures correctly. if you want to acquire a practice of good and correct attitudes for your figures, make a square frame or net, and square it out with thread; place this between your eye and the nude model you are drawing, and draw these same squares on the paper on which you mean to draw the figure, but very delicately. then place a pellet of wax on a spot of the net which will serve as a fixed point, which, whenever you look at your model, must cover the pit of the throat; or, if his back is turned, it may cover one of the vertebrae of the neck. thus these threads will guide you as to each part of the body which, in any given attitude will be found below the pit of the throat, or the angles of the shoulders, or the nipples, or hips and other parts of the body; and the transverse lines of the net will show you how much the figure is higher over the leg on which it is posed than over the other, and the same with the hips, and the knees and the feet. but always fix the net perpendicularly so that all the divisions that you see the model divided into by the net work correspond with your drawing of the model on the net work you have sketched. the squares you draw may be as much smaller than those of the net as you wish that your figure should be smaller than nature. afterwards remember when drawing figures, to use the rule of the corresponding proportions of the limbs as you have learnt it from the frame and net. this should be braccia and a half high and braccia wide; braccia distant from you and braccio from the model. [footnote: leonardo is commonly credited with the invention of the arrangement of a plate of glass commonly known as the "vertical plane." professor e. von brucke in his _"bruchstucke aus der theorie der bildenden kunste,"_ leipzig , pg. , writes on this contrivance. _"unsere glastafel ist die sogenannte glastafel des leonardo da vinci, die in gestalt einer glastafel vorgestellte bildflache."_] . a method of drawing an object in relief at night. place a sheet of not too transparent paper between the relievo and the light and you can draw thus very well. [footnote: bodies thus illuminated will show on the surface of the paper how the copyist has to distribute light and shade.] . if you want to represent a figure on a wall, the wall being foreshortened, while the figure is to appear in its proper form, and as standing free from the wall, you must proceed thus: have a thin plate of iron and make a small hole in the centre; this hole must be round. set a light close to it in such a position as that it shines through the central hole, then place any object or figure you please so close to the wall that it touches it and draw the outline of the shadow on the wall; then fill in the shade and add the lights; place the person who is to see it so that he looks through that same hole where at first the light was; and you will never be able to persuade yourself that the image is not detached from the wall. [footnote: _uno piccolo spiracelo nel mezzo_. m. ravaisson, in his edition of ms. a (paris), p. , reads _nel muro_--evidently a mistake for _nel mezzo_ which is quite plainly written; and he translates it _"fait lui une petite ouverture dans le mur,"_ adding in a note: _"les mots 'dans le mur' paraissent etre de trop. leonardo a du les ecrire par distraction"_ but _'nel mezzo'_ is clearly legible even on the photograph facsimile given by ravaisson himself, and the objection he raises disappears at once. it is not always wise or safe to try to prove our author's absence of mind or inadvertence by apparent difficulties in the sense or connection of the text.] . to draw a figure on a wall braccia high which shall look braccia high. if you wish to draw a figure or any other object to look braccia high you must do it in this way. first, on the surface _m r_ draw half the man you wish to represent; then the other half; then put on the vault _m n_ [the rest of] the figure spoken of above; first set out the vertical plane on the floor of a room of the same shape as the wall with the coved part on which you are to paint your figure. then, behind it, draw a figure set out in profile of whatever size you please, and draw lines from it to the point _f_ and, as these lines cut _m n_ on the vertical plane, so will the figure come on the wall, of which the vertical plane gives a likeness, and you will have all the [relative] heights and prominences of the figure. and the breadth or thickness which are on the upright wall _m n_ are to be drawn in their proper form, since, as the wall recedes the figure will be foreshortened by itself; but [that part of] the figure which goes into the cove you must foreshorten, as if it were standing upright; this diminution you must set out on a flat floor and there must stand the figure which is to be transferred from the vertical plane _r n_[footnote : _che leverai dalla pariete r n_. the letters refer to the larger sketch, no. on pl. xxxi.] in its real size and reduce it once more on a vertical plane; and this will be a good method [footnote : leonardo here says nothing as to how the image foreshortened by perspective and thus produced on the vertical plane is to be transferred to the wall; but from what is said in nos. and we may conclude that he was familiar with the process of casting the enlarged shadow of a squaring net on the surface of a wall to guide him in drawing the figure. _pariete di rilieuo; "sur une parai en relief"_ (ravaisson). _"auf einer schnittlinie zum aufrichten"_ (ludwig). the explanation of this puzzling expression must be sought in no. , lines - .]. [footnote: see pl. xxxi. . the second sketch, which in the plate is incomplete, is here reproduced and completed from the original to illustrate the text. in the original the larger diagram is placed between lines and . . . c. a. a; a has the similar heading: '_del cressciere della figura_', and the text begins: "_se voli fare a figura grande_ b c" but here it breaks off. the translation here given renders the meaning of the passage as i think it must be understood. the ms. is perfectly legible and the construction of the sentence is simple and clear; difficulties can only arise from the very fullness of the meaning, particularly towards the end of the passage.] . if you would to draw a cube in an angle of a wall, first draw the object in its own proper shape and raise it onto a vertical plane until it resembles the angle in which the said object is to be represented. . why are paintings seen more correctly in a mirror than out of it? . how the mirror is the master [and guide] of painters. when you want to see if your picture corresponds throughout with the objects you have drawn from nature, take a mirror and look in that at the reflection of the real things, and compare the reflected image with your picture, and consider whether the subject of the two images duly corresponds in both, particularly studying the mirror. you should take the mirror for your guide--that is to say a flat mirror--because on its surface the objects appear in many respects as in a painting. thus you see, in a painting done on a flat surface, objects which appear in relief, and in the mirror--also a flat surface--they look the same. the picture has one plane surface and the same with the mirror. the picture is intangible, in so far as that which appears round and prominent cannot be grasped in the hands; and it is the same with the mirror. and since you can see that the mirror, by means of outlines, shadows and lights, makes objects appear in relief, you, who have in your colours far stronger lights and shades than those in the mirror, can certainly, if you compose your picture well, make that also look like a natural scene reflected in a large mirror. [footnote: i understand the concluding lines of this passage as follows: if you draw the upper half a figure on a large sheet of paper laid out on the floor of a room (_sala be piana_) to the same scale (_con le sue vere grosseze_) as the lower half, already drawn upon the wall (lines , )you must then reduce them on a '_pariete di rilievo_,' a curved vertical plane which serves as a model to reproduce the form of the vault.] . of judging your own pictures. we know very well that errors are better recognised in the works of others than in our own; and that often, while reproving little faults in others, you may ignore great ones in yourself. to avoid such ignorance, in the first place make yourself a master of perspective, then acquire perfect knowledge of the proportions of men and other animals, and also, study good architecture, that is so far as concerns the forms of buildings and other objects which are on the face of the earth; these forms are infinite, and the better you know them the more admirable will your work be. and in cases where you lack experience do not shrink from drawing them from nature. but, to carry out my promise above [in the title]--i say that when you paint you should have a flat mirror and often look at your work as reflected in it, when you will see it reversed, and it will appear to you like some other painter's work, so you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way. again, it is well that you should often leave off work and take a little relaxation, because, when you come back to it you are a better judge; for sitting too close at work may greatly deceive you. again, it is good to retire to a distance because the work looks smaller and your eye takes in more of it at a glance and sees more easily the discords or disproportion in the limbs and colours of the objects. on the management of works ( . ). . of a method of learning well by heart. when you want to know a thing you have studied in your memory proceed in this way: when you have drawn the same thing so many times that you think you know it by heart, test it by drawing it without the model; but have the model traced on flat thin glass and lay this on the drawing you have made without the model, and note carefully where the tracing does not coincide with your drawing, and where you find you have gone wrong; and bear in mind not to repeat the same mistakes. then return to the model, and draw the part in which you were wrong again and again till you have it well in your mind. if you have no flat glass for tracing on, take some very thin kidts-kin parchment, well oiled and dried. and when you have used it for one drawing you can wash it clean with a sponge and make a second. . that a painter ought to be curious to hear the opinions of every one on his work. certainly while a man is painting he ought not to shrink from hearing every opinion. for we know very well that a man, though he may not be a painter, is familiar with the forms of other men and very capable of judging whether they are hump backed, or have one shoulder higher or lower than the other, or too big a mouth or nose, and other defects; and, as we know that men are competent to judge of the works of nature, how much more ought we to admit that they can judge of our errors; since you know how much a man may be deceived in his own work. and if you are not conscious of this in yourself study it in others and profit by their faults. therefore be curious to hear with patience the opinions of others, consider and weigh well whether those who find fault have ground or not for blame, and, if so amend; but, if not make as though you had not heard, or if he should be a man you esteem show him by argument the cause of his mistake. on the limitations of painting ( - ) . how in small objects errors are less evident than in large ones. in objects of minute size the extent of error is not so perceptible as in large ones; and the reason is that if this small object is a representation of a man or of some other animal, from the immense diminution the details cannot be worked out by the artist with the finish that is requisite. hence it is not actually complete; and, not being complete, its faults cannot be determined. for instance: look at a man at a distance of braccia and judge attentively whether he be handsome or ugly, or very remarkable or of ordinary appearance. you will find that with the utmost effort you cannot persuade yourself to decide. and the reason is that at such a distance the man is so much diminished that the character of the details cannot be determined. and if you wish to see how much this man is diminished [by distance] hold one of your fingers at a span's distance from your eye, and raise or lower it till the top joint touches the feet of the figure you are looking at, and you will see an incredible reduction. for this reason we often doubt as to the person of a friend at a distance. . why a painting can never appear detached as natural objects do. painters often fall into despair of imitating nature when they see their pictures fail in that relief and vividness which objects have that are seen in a mirror; while they allege that they have colours which for brightness or depth far exceed the strength of light and shade in the reflections in the mirror, thus displaying their own ignorance rather than the real cause, because they do not know it. it is impossible that painted objects should appear in such relief as to resemble those reflected in the mirror, although both are seen on a flat surface, unless they are seen with only one eye; and the reason is that two eyes see one object behind another as _a_ and _b_ see _m_ and _n_. _m_ cannot exactly occupy [the space of] _n_ because the base of the visual lines is so broad that the second body is seen beyond the first. but if you close one eye, as at _s_ the body _f_ will conceal _r_, because the line of sight proceeds from a single point and makes its base in the first body, whence the second, of the same size, can never be seen. [footnote: this passage contains the solution of the problem proposed in no. , lines - . leonardo was evidently familiar with the law of optics on which the construction of the stereoscope depends. compare e. von brucke, _bruchstucke aus der theorie der bildenden kunste_, pg. : "_schon leonardo da vinci wusste, dass ein noch so gut gemaltes bild nie den vollen eindruck der korperlichkeit geben kann, wie ihn die natur selbst giebt. er erklart dies auch in kap. liii und kap. cccxli_ (ed. du fresne) _des_ 'trattato' _in sachgemasser weise aus dem sehen mit beiden augen_." chap. of du fresne's edition corresponds to no. of this work.] . why of two objects of equal size a painted one will look larger than a solid one. the reason of this is not so easy to demonstrate as many others. still i will endeavour to accomplish it, if not wholly, at any rate in part. the perspective of diminution demonstrates by reason, that objects diminish in proportion as they are farther from the eye, and this reasoning is confirmed by experience. hence, the lines of sight that extend between the object and the eye, when they are directed to the surface of a painting are all intersected at uniform limits, while those lines which are directed towards a piece of sculpture are intersected at various limits and are of various lengths. the lines which are longest extend to a more remote limb than the others and therefore that limb looks smaller. as there are numerous lines each longer than the others--since there are numerous parts, each more remote than the others and these, being farther off, necessarily appear smaller, and by appearing smaller it follows that their diminution makes the whole mass of the object look smaller. but this does not occur in painting; since the lines of sight all end at the same distance there can be no diminution, hence the parts not being diminished the whole object is undiminished, and for this reason painting does not diminish, as a piece of sculpture does. on the choice of a position ( - ) . how high the point of sight should be placed. the point of sight must be at the level of the eye of an ordinary man, and the farthest limit of the plain where it touches the sky must be placed at the level of that line where the earth and sky meet; excepting mountains, which are independent of it. . of the way to draw figures for historical pictures. the painter must always study on the wall on which he is to picture a story the height of the position where he wishes to arrange his figures; and when drawing his studies for them from nature he must place himself with his eye as much below the object he is drawing as, in the picture, it will have to be above the eye of the spectator. otherwise the work will look wrong. the apparent size of figures in a picture ( - ) . of placing a figure in the foreground of a historical picture. you must make the foremost figure in the picture less than the size of nature in proportion to the number of braccia at which you place it from the front line, and make the others in proportion by the above rule. . perspective. you are asked, o painter, why the figures you draw on a small scale according to the laws of perspective do not appear--notwithstanding the demonstration of distance--as large as real ones--their height being the same as in those painted on the wall. and why [painted] objects seen at a small distance appear larger than the real ones? the right position of the artist, when painting, and of the spectator ( - ) . of painting. when you draw from nature stand at a distance of times the height of the object you wish to draw. . of drawing from relief. in drawing from the round the draughtsman should so place himself that the eye of the figure he is drawing is on a level with his own. this should be done with any head he may have to represent from nature because, without exception, the figures or persons you meet in the streets have their eyes on the same level as your own; and if you place them higher or lower you will see that your drawing will not be true. . why groups of figures one above another are to be avoided. the universal practice which painters adopt on the walls of chapels is greatly and reasonably to be condemned. inasmuch as they represent one historical subject on one level with a landscape and buildings, and then go up a step and paint another, varying the point [of sight], and then a third and a fourth, in such a way as that on one wall there are points of sight, which is supreme folly in such painters. we know that the point of sight is opposite the eye of the spectator of the scene; and if you would [have me] tell you how to represent the life of a saint divided into several pictures on one and the same wall, i answer that you must set out the foreground with its point of sight on a level with the eye of the spectator of the scene, and upon this plane represent the more important part of the story large and then, diminishing by degrees the figures, and the buildings on various hills and open spaces, you can represent all the events of the history. and on the remainder of the wall up to the top put trees, large as compared with the figures, or angels if they are appropriate to the story, or birds or clouds or similar objects; otherwise do not trouble yourself with it for your whole work will be wrong. . a picture of objects in perspective will look more lifelike when seen from the point from which the objects were drawn. if you want to represent an object near to you which is to have the effect of nature, it is impossible that your perspective should not look wrong, with every false relation and disagreement of proportion that can be imagined in a wretched work, unless the spectator, when he looks at it, has his eye at the very distance and height and direction where the eye or the point of sight was placed in doing this perspective. hence it would be necessary to make a window, or rather a hole, of the size of your face through which you can look at the work; and if you do this, beyond all doubt your work, if it is correct as to light and shade, will have the effect of nature; nay you will hardly persuade yourself that those objects are painted; otherwise do not trouble yourself about it, unless indeed you make your view at least times as far off as the greatest width or height of the objects represented, and this will satisfy any spectator placed anywhere opposite to the picture. if you want the proof briefly shown, take a piece of wood in the form of a little column, eight times as high as it is thick, like a column without any plinth or capital; then mark off on a flat wall equal spaces, equal to its width so that between them they make columns resembling your little column; you then must fix, opposite the centre space, and at braccia from the wall, a thin strip of iron with a small round hole in the middle about as large as a big pearl. close to this hole place a light touching it. then place your column against each mark on the wall and draw the outline of its shadow; afterwards shade it and look through the hole in the iron plate. [footnote: in the original there is a wide space between lines and in which we find two sketches not belonging to the text. it is unnecessary to give prominence to the points in which my reading differs from that of m. ravaisson or to justify myself, since they are all of secondary importance and can also be immediately verified from the photograph facsimile in his edition.] . a diminished object should be seen from the same distance, height and direction as the point of sight of your eye, or else your knowledge will produce no good effect. and if you will not, or cannot, act on this principle--because as the plane on which you paint is to be seen by several persons you would need several points of sight which would make it look discordant and wrong--place yourself at a distance of at least times the size of the objects. the lesser fault you can fall into then, will be that of representing all the objects in the foreground of their proper size, and on whichever side you are standing the objects thus seen will diminish themselves while the spaces between them will have no definite ratio. for, if you place yourself in the middle of a straight row [of objects], and look at several columns arranged in a line you will see, beyond a few columns separated by intervals, that the columns touch; and beyond where they touch they cover each other, till the last column projects but very little beyond the last but one. thus the spaces between the columns are by degrees entirely lost. so, if your method of perspective is good, it will produce the same effect; this effect results from standing near the line in which the columns are placed. this method is not satisfactory unless the objects seen are viewed from a small hole, in the middle of which is your point of sight; but if you proceed thus your work will be perfect and will deceive the beholder, who will see the columns as they are here figured. here the eye is in the middle, at the point _a_ and near to the columns. [footnote: the diagram which stands above this chapter in the original with the note belonging to it: "a b _e la ripruova_" (_a b_ is the proof) has obviously no connection with the text. the second sketch alone is reproduced and stands in the original between lines and .] . if you cannot arrange that those who look at your work should stand at one particular point, when constructing your work, stand back until your eye is at least times as far off as the greatest height and width of your work. this will make so little difference when the eye of the spectator moves, that it will be hardly appreciable, and it will look very good. if the point of sight is at _t_ you would make the figures on the circle _d b e_ all of one size, as each of them bears the same relation to the point _t_. but consider the diagram given below and you will see that this is wrong, and why i shall make _b_ smaller than _d e_ [footnote : the second diagram of this chapter stands in the original between lines and .]. it is easy to understand that if objects equal to each other are placed side by side the one at braccia distance looks smaller than that placed at braccia. this however is rather theoretical than for practice, because you stand close by [footnote : instead of '_se preso_' (=_sie presso_) m. ravaisson reads '_sempre se_' which gives rise to the unmeaning rendering: '_parceque toujours_ ...']. all the objects in the foreground, whether large or small, are to be drawn of their proper size, and if you see them from a distance they will appear just as they ought, and if you see them close they will diminish of themselves. [footnote : compare no. line .] take care that the vertical plan on which you work out the perspective of the objects seen is of the same form as the wall on which the work is to be executed. . of painting. the size of the figures represented ought to show you the distance they are seen from. if you see a figure as large as nature you know it appears to be close to the eye. . where a spectator should stand to look at a picture. supposing _a b_ to be the picture and _d_ to be the light, i say that if you place yourself between _c_ and _e_ you will not understand the picture well and particularly if it is done in oils, or still more if it is varnished, because it will be lustrous and somewhat of the nature of a mirror. and for this reason the nearer you go towards the point _c_, the less you will see, because the rays of light falling from the window on the picture are reflected to that point. but if you place yourself between _e_ and _d_ you will get a good view of it, and the more so as you approach the point _d_, because that spot is least exposed to these reflected rays of light. iii. the practical methods of light and shade and aerial perspective. gradations of light and shade. . of painting: of the darkness of the shadows, or i may say, the brightness of the lights. although practical painters attribute to all shaded objects--trees, fields, hair, beards and skin--four degrees of darkness in each colour they use: that is to say first a dark foundation, secondly a spot of colour somewhat resembling the form of the details, thirdly a somewhat brighter and more defined portion, fourthly the lights which are more conspicuous than other parts of the figure; still to me it appears that these gradations are infinite upon a continuous surface which is in itself infinitely divisible, and i prove it thus:--[footnote : see pl. xxxi, no. ; the two upper sketches.] let _a g_ be a continuous surface and let _d_ be the light which illuminates it; i say--by the th [proposition] which says that that side of an illuminated body is most highly lighted which is nearest to the source of light--that therefore _g_ must be darker than _c_ in proportion as the line _d g_ is longer than the line _d c_, and consequently that these gradations of light--or rather of shadow, are not only, but may be conceived of as infinite, because _c d_ is a continuous surface and every continuous surface is infinitely divisible; hence the varieties in the length of lines extending between the light and the illuminated object are infinite, and the proportion of the light will be the same as that of the length of the lines between them; extending from the centre of the luminous body to the surface of the illuminated object. on the choice of light for a picture ( - ). . how the painter must place himself with reference to the light, to give the effect of relief. let _a b_ be the window, _m_ the point of light. i say that on whichever side the painter places himself he will be well placed if only his eye is between the shaded and the illuminated portions of the object he is drawing; and this place you will find by putting yourself between the point _m_ and the division between the shadow and the light on the object to be drawn. . that shadows cast by a particular light should be avoided, because they are equally strong at the ends and at the beginning. the shadows cast by the sun or any other particular light have not a pleasing effect on the body to which they belong, because the parts remain confuse, being divided by distinct outlines of light and shade. and the shadows are of equal strength at the end and at the beginning. . how light should be thrown upon figures. the light must be arranged in accordance with the natural conditions under which you wish to represent your figures: that is, if you represent them in the sunshine make the shadows dark with large spaces of light, and mark their shadows and those of all the surrounding objects strongly on the ground. and if you represent them as in dull weather give little difference of light and shade, without any shadows at their feet. if you represent them as within doors, make a strong difference between the lights and shadows, with shadows on the ground. if the window is screened and the walls white, there will be little difference of light. if it is lighted by firelight make the high lights ruddy and strong, and the shadows dark, and those cast on the walls and on the floor will be clearly defined and the farther they are from the body the broader and longer will they be. if the light is partly from the fire and partly from the outer day, that of day will be the stronger and that of the fire almost as red as fire itself. above all see that the figures you paint are broadly lighted and from above, that is to say all living persons that you paint; for you will see that all the people you meet out in the street are lighted from above, and you must know that if you saw your most intimate friend with a light [on his face] from below you would find it difficult to recognise him. . of helping the apparent relief of a picture by giving it artificial light and shade. to increase relief of a picture you may place, between your figure and the solid object on which its shadow falls, a line of bright light, dividing the figure from the object in shadow. and on the same object you shall represent two light parts which will surround the shadow cast upon the wall by the figure placed opposite [ ]; and do this frequently with the limbs which you wish should stand out somewhat from the body they belong to; particularly when the arms cross the front of the breast show, between the shadow cast by the arms on the breast and the shadow on the arms themselves, a little light seeming to fall through a space between the breast and the arms; and the more you wish the arm to look detached from the breast the broader you must make the light; always contrive also to arrange the figures against the background in such a way as that the parts in shadow are against a light background and the illuminated portions against a dark background. [footnote : compare the two diagrams under no. .] . of situation. remember [to note] the situation of your figures; for the light and shade will be one thing if the object is in a dark place with a particular light, and another thing if it is in a light place with direct sunlight; one thing in a dark place with a diffused evening light or a cloudy sky, and another in the diffused light of the atmosphere lighted by the sun. . of the judgment to be made of a painter's work. first you must consider whether the figures have the relief required by their situation and the light which illuminates them; for the shadows should not be the same at the extreme ends of the composition as in the middle, because it is one thing when figures are surrounded by shadows and another when they have shadows only on one side. those which are in the middle of the picture are surrounded by shadows, because they are shaded by the figures which stand between them and the light. and those are lighted on one side only which stand between the principal group and the light, because where they do not look towards the light they face the group and the darkness of the group is thrown on them: and where they do not face the group they face the brilliant light and it is their own darkness shadowing them, which appears there. in the second place observe the distribution or arrangement of figures, and whether they are distributed appropriately to the circumstances of the story. thirdly, whether the figures are actively intent on their particular business. . of the treatment of the lights. first give a general shadow to the whole of that extended part which is away from the light. then put in the half shadows and the strong shadows, comparing them with each other and, in the same way give the extended light in half tint, afterwards adding the half lights and the high lights, likewise comparing them together. the distribution of light and shade ( - ) . of shadows on bodies. when you represent the dark shadows in bodies in light and shade, always show the cause of the shadow, and the same with reflections; because the dark shadows are produced by dark objects and the reflections by objects only moderately lighted, that is with diminished light. and there is the same proportion between the highly lighted part of a body and the part lighted by a reflection as between the origin of the lights on the body and the origin of the reflections. . of lights and shadows. i must remind you to take care that every portion of a body, and every smallest detail which is ever so little in relief, must be given its proper importance as to light and shade. . of the way to make the shadow on figures correspond to the light and to [the colour] of the body. when you draw a figure and you wish to see whether the shadow is the proper complement to the light, and neither redder nor yellower than is the nature of the colour you wish to represent in shade, proceed thus. cast a shadow with your finger on the illuminated portion, and if the accidental shadow that you have made is like the natural shadow cast by your finger on your work, well and good; and by putting your finger nearer or farther off, you can make darker or lighter shadows, which you must compare with your own. . of surrounding bodies by various forms of shadow. take care that the shadows cast upon the surface of the bodies by different objects must undulate according to the various curves of the limbs which cast the shadows, and of the objects on which they are cast. the juxtaposition of light and shade ( , ). . on painting. the comparison of the various qualities of shadows and lights not infrequently seems ambiguous and confused to the painter who desires to imitate and copy the objects he sees. the reason is this: if you see a white drapery side by side with a black one, that part of the white drapery which lies against the black one will certainly look much whiter than the part which lies against something whiter than itself. [footnote: it is evident from this that so early as in leonardo's writing in perspective was so far advanced that he could quote his own statements.--as bearing on this subject compare what is said in no. .] and the reason of this is shown in my [book on] perspective. . of shadows. where a shadow ends in the light, note carefully where it is paler or deeper and where it is more or less indistinct towards the light; and, above all, in [painting] youthful figures i remind you not to make the shadow end like a stone, because flesh has a certain transparency, as may be seen by looking at a hand held between the eye and the sun, which shines through it ruddy and bright. place the most highly coloured part between the light and shadow. and to see what shadow tint is needed on the flesh, cast a shadow on it with your finger, and according as you wish to see it lighter or darker hold your finger nearer to or farther from your picture, and copy that [shadow]. on the lighting of the background ( - ). . of the backgrounds for painted figures. the ground which surrounds the forms of any object you paint should be darker than the high lights of those figures, and lighter than their shadowed part: &c. . of the background that the painter should adopt in his works. since experience shows us that all bodies are surrounded by light and shade it is necessary that you, o painter, should so arrange that the side which is in light shall terminate against a dark body and likewise that the shadow side shall terminate against a light body. and by [following] this rule you will add greatly to the relief of your figures. . a most important part of painting consists in the backgrounds of the objects represented; against these backgrounds the outlines of those natural objects which are convex are always visible, and also the forms of these bodies against the background, even though the colours of the bodies should be the same as that of the background. this is caused by the convex edges of the objects not being illuminated in the same way as, by the same light, the background is illuminated, since these edges will often be lighter or darker than the background. but if the edge is of the same colour as the background, beyond a doubt it will in that part of the picture interfere with your perception of the outline, and such a choice in a picture ought to be rejected by the judgment of good painters, inasmuch as the purpose of the painter is to make his figures appear detached from the background; while in the case here described the contrary occurs, not only in the picture, but in the objects themselves. . that you ought, when representing objects above the eye and on one side--if you wish them to look detached from the wall--to show, between the shadow on the object and the shadow it casts a middle light, so that the body will appear to stand away from the wall. on the lighting of white objects. . how white bodies should be represented. if you are representing a white body let it be surrounded by ample space, because as white has no colour of its own, it is tinged and altered in some degree by the colour of the objects surrounding it. if you see a woman dressed in white in the midst of a landscape, that side which is towards the sun is bright in colour, so much so that in some portions it will dazzle the eyes like the sun itself; and the side which is towards the atmosphere,--luminous through being interwoven with the sun's rays and penetrated by them--since the atmosphere itself is blue, that side of the woman's figure will appear steeped in blue. if the surface of the ground about her be meadows and if she be standing between a field lighted up by the sun and the sun itself, you will see every portion of those folds which are towards the meadow tinged by the reflected rays with the colour of that meadow. thus the white is transmuted into the colours of the luminous and of the non-luminous objects near it. the methods of aerial ( -- ). . why faces [seen] at a distance look dark. we see quite plainly that all the images of visible objects that lie before us, whether large or small, reach our sense by the minute aperture of the eye; and if, through so small a passage the image can pass of the vast extent of sky and earth, the face of a man--being by comparison with such large images almost nothing by reason of the distance which diminishes it,--fills up so little of the eye that it is indistinguishable. having, also, to be transmitted from the surface to the sense through a dark medium, that is to say the crystalline lens which looks dark, this image, not being strong in colour becomes affected by this darkness on its passage, and on reaching the sense it appears dark; no other reason can in any way be assigned. if the point in the eye is black, it is because it is full of a transparent humour as clear as air and acts like a perforation in a board; on looking into it it appears dark and the objects seen through the bright air and a dark one become confused in this darkness. why a man seen at a certain distance is not recognisable. the perspective of diminution shows us that the farther away an object is the smaller it looks. if you look at a man at a distance from you of an arrow's flight, and hold the eye of a small needle close to your own eye, you can see through it several men whose images are transmitted to the eye and will all be comprised within the size of the needle's eye; hence, if the man who is at the distance of an arrow's flight can send his whole image to your eye, occupying only a small space in the needle's eye how can you [expect] in so small a figure to distinguish or see the nose or mouth or any detail of his person? and, not seeing these you cannot recognise the man, since these features, which he does not show, are what give men different aspects. . the reason why small figures should not be made finished. i say that the reason that objects appear diminished in size is because they are remote from the eye; this being the case it is evident that there must be a great extent of atmosphere between the eye and the objects, and this air interferes with the distinctness of the forms of the object. hence the minute details of these objects will be indistinguishable and unrecognisable. therefore, o painter, make your smaller figures merely indicated and not highly finished, otherwise you will produce effects the opposite to nature, your supreme guide. the object is small by reason of the great distance between it and the eye, this great distance is filled with air, that mass of air forms a dense body which intervenes and prevents the eye seeing the minute details of objects. . whenever a figure is placed at a considerable distance you lose first the distinctness of the smallest parts; while the larger parts are left to the last, losing all distinctness of detail and outline; and what remains is an oval or spherical figure with confused edges. . of painting. the density of a body of smoke looks white below the horizon while above the horizon it is dark, even if the smoke is in itself of a uniform colour, this uniformity will vary according to the variety in the ground on which it is seen. iv. of portrait and figure painting. of sketching figures and portraits ( - ). . of the way to learn to compose figures [in groups] in historical pictures. when you have well learnt perspective and have by heart the parts and forms of objects, you must go about, and constantly, as you go, observe, note and consider the circumstances and behaviour of men in talking, quarrelling or laughing or fighting together: the action of the men themselves and the actions of the bystanders, who separate them or who look on. and take a note of them with slight strokes thus, in a little book which you should always carry with you. and it should be of tinted paper, that it may not be rubbed out, but change the old [when full] for a new one; since these things should not be rubbed out but preserved with great care; for the forms, and positions of objects are so infinite that the memory is incapable of retaining them, wherefore keep these [sketches] as your guides and masters. [footnote: among leonardo's numerous note books of pocket size not one has coloured paper, so no sketches answering to this description can be pointed out. the fact that most of the notes are written in ink, militates against the supposition that they were made in the open air.] . of a method of keeping in mind the form of a face. if you want to acquire facility for bearing in mind the expression of a face, first make yourself familiar with a variety of [forms of] several heads, eyes, noses, mouths, chins and cheeks and necks and shoulders: and to put a case: noses are of types: straight, bulbous, hollow, prominent above or below the middle, aquiline, regular, flat, round or pointed. these hold good as to profile. in full face they are of types; these are equal thick in the middle, thin in the middle, with the tip thick and the root narrow, or narrow at the tip and wide at the root; with the nostrils wide or narrow, high or low, and the openings wide or hidden by the point; and you will find an equal variety in the other details; which things you must draw from nature and fix them in your mind. or else, when you have to draw a face by heart, carry with you a little book in which you have noted such features; and when you have cast a glance at the face of the person you wish to draw, you can look, in private, which nose or mouth is most like, or there make a little mark to recognise it again at home. of grotesque faces i need say nothing, because they are kept in mind without difficulty. the position of the head. . how you should set to work to draw a head of which all the parts shall agree with the position given to it. to draw a head in which the features shall agree with the turn and bend of the head, pursue this method. you know that the eyes, eyebrows, nostrils, corners of the mouth, and sides of the chin, the jaws, cheeks, ears and all the parts of a face are squarely and straightly set upon the face. [footnote: compare the drawings and the text belonging to them on pl. ix. (no. ), pl. x (no. ), pl. xl (no. ) and pl. xii. (no. ).] therefore when you have sketched the face draw lines passing from one corner of the eye to the other; and so for the placing of each feature; and after having drawn the ends of the lines beyond the two sides of the face, look if the spaces inside the same parallel lines on the right and on the left are equal [ ]. but be sure to remember to make these lines tend to the point of sight. [footnote: see pl. xxxi, no. , the slight sketch on the left hand side. the text of this passage is written by the side of it. in this sketch the lines seem intentionally incorrect and converging to the right (compare i. ) instead of parallel. compare too with this text the drawing in red chalk from windsor castle which is reproduced on pl. xl, no. .] of the light on the face ( - ). . how to know which side of an object is to be more or less luminous than the other. let _f_ be the light, the head will be the object illuminated by it and that side of the head on which the rays fall most directly will be the most highly lighted, and those parts on which the rays fall most aslant will be less lighted. the light falls as a blow might, since a blow which falls perpendicularly falls with the greatest force, and when it falls obliquely it is less forcible than the former in proportion to the width of the angle. _exempli gratia_ if you throw a ball at a wall of which the extremities are equally far from you the blow will fall straight, and if you throw the ball at the wall when standing at one end of it the ball will hit it obliquely and the blow will not tell. [footnote: see pl. xxxi. no. ; the sketch on the right hand side.] . the proof and reason why among the illuminated parts certain portions are in higher light than others. since it is proved that every definite light is, or seems to be, derived from one single point the side illuminated by it will have its highest light on the portion where the line of radiance falls perpendicularly; as is shown above in the lines _a g_, and also in _a h_ and in _l a_; and that portion of the illuminated side will be least luminous, where the line of incidence strikes it between two more dissimilar angles, as is seen at _b c d_. and by this means you may also know which parts are deprived of light as is seen at _m k_. where the angles made by the lines of incidence are most equal there will be the highest light, and where they are most unequal it will be darkest. i will make further mention of the reason of reflections. [footnote: see pl. xxxii. the text, here given complete, is on the right hand side. the small circles above the beginning of lines and as well as the circle above the text on pl. xxxi, are in a paler ink and evidently added by a later hand in order to distinguish the text as belonging to the _libro di pittura_ (see prolegomena. no. , p. ). the text on the left hand side of this page is given as nos. and .] . where the shadow should be on the face. general suggestions for historical pictures ( - ). . when you compose a historical picture take two points, one the point of sight, and the other the source of light; and make this as distant as possible. . historical pictures ought not to be crowded and confused with too many figures. . precepts in painting. let you sketches of historical pictures be swift and the working out of the limbs not be carried too far, but limited to the position of the limbs, which you can afterwards finish as you please and at your leisure. [footnote: see pl. xxxviii, no. . the pen and ink drawing given there as no. may also be compared with this passage. it is in the windsor collection where it is numbered .] . the sorest misfortune is when your views are in advance of your work. . of composing historical pictures. of not considering the limbs in the figures in historical pictures; as many do who, in the wish to represent the whole of a figure, spoil their compositions. and when you place one figure behind another take care to draw the whole of it so that the limbs which come in front of the nearer figures may stand out in their natural size and place. how to represent the differences of age and sex ( - ). . how the ages of man should be depicted: that is, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, decrepitude. [footnote: no answer is here given to this question, in the original ms.] . old men ought to be represented with slow and heavy movements, their legs bent at the knees, when they stand still, and their feet placed parallel and apart; bending low with the head leaning forward, and their arms but little extended. women must be represented in modest attitudes, their legs close together, their arms closely folded, their heads inclined and somewhat on one side. old women should be represented with eager, swift and furious gestures, like infernal furies; but the action should be more violent in their arms and head than in their legs. little children, with lively and contorted movements when sitting, and, when standing still, in shy and timid attitudes. [footnote: _bracci raccolte_. compare pl. xxxiii. this drawing, in silver point on yellowish tinted paper, the lights heightened with white, represents two female hands laid together in a lap. above is a third finished study of a right hand, apparently holding a veil from the head across the bosom. this drawing evidently dates from before and was very probably done at florence, perhaps as a preparatory study for some picture. the type of hand with its slender thin forms is more like the style of the _vierge aux rochers_ in the louvre than any later works--as the mona lisa for instance.] of representing the emotions. . that a figure is not admirable unless it expresses by its action the passion of its sentiment. that figure is most admirable which by its actions best expresses the passion that animates it. how an angry man is to be figured. you must make an angry person holding someone by the hair, wrenching his head against the ground, and with one knee on his ribs; his right arm and fist raised on high. his hair must be thrown up, his brow downcast and knit, his teeth clenched and the two corners of his mouth grimly set; his neck swelled and bent forward as he leans over his foe, and full of furrows. how to represent a man in despair. you must show a man in despair with a knife, having already torn open his garments, and with one hand tearing open the wound. and make him standing on his feet and his legs somewhat bent and his whole person leaning towards the earth; his hair flying in disorder. of representing imaginary animals. . how you should make an imaginary animal look natural. you know that you cannot invent animals without limbs, each of which, in itself, must resemble those of some other animal. hence if you wish to make an animal, imagined by you, appear natural--let us say a dragon, take for its head that of a mastiff or hound, with the eyes of a cat, the ears of a porcupine, the nose of a greyhound, the brow of a lion, the temples of an old cock, the neck of a water tortoise. [footnote: the sketch here inserted of two men on horseback fighting a dragon is the facsimile of a pen and ink drawing belonging to baron edmond de rothschild of paris.] the selection of forms. . of the delusions which arise in judging of the limbs. a painter who has clumsy hands will paint similar hands in his works, and the same will occur with any limb, unless long study has taught him to avoid it. therefore, o painter, look carefully what part is most ill-favoured in your own person and take particular pains to correct it in your studies. for if you are coarse, your figures will seem the same and devoid of charm; and it is the same with any part that may be good or poor in yourself; it will be shown in some degree in your figures. . of the selection of beautiful faces. it seems to me to be no small charm in a painter when he gives his figures a pleasing air, and this grace, if he have it not by nature, he may acquire by incidental study in this way: look about you and take the best parts of many beautiful faces, of which the beauty is confirmed rather by public fame than by your own judgment; for you might be mistaken and choose faces which have some resemblance to your own. for it would seem that such resemblances often please us; and if you should be ugly, you would select faces that were not beautiful and you would then make ugly faces, as many painters do. for often a master's work resembles himself. so select beauties as i tell you, and fix them in your mind. . of the limbs, which ought to be carefully selected, and of all the other parts with regard to painting. . when selecting figures you should choose slender ones rather than lean and wooden ones. . of the muscles of animals. the hollow spaces interposed between the muscles must not be of such a character as that the skin should seem to cover two sticks laid side by side like _c_, nor should they seem like two sticks somewhat remote from such contact so that the skin hangs in an empty loose curve as at _f_; but it should be like _i_, laid over the spongy fat that lies in the angles as the angle _n m o_; which angle is formed by the contact of the ends of the muscles and as the skin cannot fold down into such an angle, nature has filled up such angles with a small quantity of spongy and, as i may say, vesicular fat, with minute bladders [in it] full of air, which is condensed or rarefied in them according to the increase or the diminution of the substance of the muscles; in which latter case the concavity _i_ always has a larger curve than the muscle. . of undulating movements and equipoise in figures and other animals. when representing a human figure or some graceful animal, be careful to avoid a wooden stiffness; that is to say make them move with equipoise and balance so as not to look like a piece of wood; but those you want to represent as strong you must not make so, excepting in the turn of the head. how to pose figures. . of grace in the limbs. the limbs should be adapted to the body with grace and with reference to the effect that you wish the figure to produce. and if you wish to produce a figure that shall of itself look light and graceful you must make the limbs elegant and extended, and without too much display of the muscles; and those few that are needed for your purpose you must indicate softly, that is, not very prominent and without strong shadows; the limbs, and particularly the arms easy; that is, none of the limbs should be in a straight line with the adjoining parts. and if the hips, which are the pole of a man, are by reason of his position, placed so, that the right is higher than the left, make the point of the higher shoulder in a perpendicular line above the highest prominence of the hip, and let this right shoulder be lower than the left. let the pit of the throat always be over the centre of the joint of the foot on which the man is leaning. the leg which is free should have the knee lower than the other, and near the other leg. the positions of the head and arms are endless and i shall therefore not enlarge on any rules for them. still, let them be easy and pleasing, with various turns and twists, and the joints gracefully bent, that they may not look like pieces of wood. of appropriate gestures ( - ). . a picture or representation of human figures, ought to be done in such a way as that the spectator may easily recognise, by means of their attitudes, the purpose in their minds. thus, if you have to represent a man of noble character in the act of speaking, let his gestures be such as naturally accompany good words; and, in the same way, if you wish to depict a man of a brutal nature, give him fierce movements; as with his arms flung out towards the listener, and his head and breast thrust forward beyond his feet, as if following the speaker's hands. thus it is with a deaf and dumb person who, when he sees two men in conversation--although he is deprived of hearing--can nevertheless understand, from the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, the nature of their discussion. i once saw in florence a man who had become deaf who, when you spoke very loud did not understand you, but if you spoke gently and without making any sound, understood merely from the movement of the lips. now perhaps you will say that the lips of a man who speaks loudly do not move like those of one speaking softly, and that if they were to move them alike they would be alike understood. as to this argument, i leave the decision to experiment; make a man speak to you gently and note [the motion of] his lips. [footnote: the first ten lines of this text have already been published, but with a slightly different reading by dr. m. jordan: _das malerbuch leonardo da vinci's_ p. .] . of representing a man speaking to a multitude. when you wish to represent a man speaking to a number of people, consider the matter of which he has to treat and adapt his action to the subject. thus, if he speaks persuasively, let his action be appropriate to it. if the matter in hand be to set forth an argument, let the speaker, with the fingers of the right hand hold one finger of the left hand, having the two smaller ones closed; and his face alert, and turned towards the people with mouth a little open, to look as though he spoke; and if he is sitting let him appear as though about to rise, with his head forward. if you represent him standing make him leaning slightly forward with body and head towards the people. these you must represent as silent and attentive, all looking at the orator's face with gestures of admiration; and make some old men in astonishment at the things they hear, with the corners of their mouths pulled down and drawn in, their cheeks full of furrows, and their eyebrows raised, and wrinkling the forehead where they meet. again, some sitting with their fingers clasped holding their weary knees. again, some bent old man, with one knee crossed over the other; on which let him hold his hand with his other elbow resting in it and the hand supporting his bearded chin. [footnote: the sketches introduced here are a facsimile of a pen and ink drawing in the louvre which herr carl brun considers as studies for the last supper in the church of _santa maria delle grazie_ (see leonardo da vinci, lxi, pp. , and in dohme's _kunst und kunstler_, leipzig, seemann). i shall not here enter into any discussion of this suggestion; but as a justification for introducing the drawing in this place, i may point out that some of the figures illustrate this passage as perfectly as though they had been drawn for that express purpose. i have discussed the probability of a connection between this sketch and the picture of the last supper on p. . the original drawing is / centimetres wide by high.--the drawing in silver point on reddish paper given on pl. lii. no. --the original at windsor castle--may also serve to illustrate the subject of appropriate gestures, treated in nos. and .] . of the disposition of limbs. as regards the disposition of limbs in movement you will have to consider that when you wish to represent a man who, by some chance, has to turn backwards or to one side, you must not make him move his feet and all his limbs towards the side to which he turns his head. rather must you make the action proceed by degrees and through the different joints; that is, those of the foot, the knee and the hip and the neck. and if you set him on the right leg, you must make the left knee bend inwards, and let his foot be slightly raised on the outside, and the left shoulder be somewhat lower than the right, while the nape of the neck is in a line directly over the outer ancle of the left foot. and the left shoulder will be in a perpendicular line above the toes of the right foot. and always set your figures so that the side to which the head turns is not the side to which the breast faces, since nature for our convenience has made us with a neck which bends with ease in many directions, the eye wishing to turn to various points, the different joints. and if at any time you make a man sitting with his arms at work on something which is sideways to him, make the upper part of his body turn upon the hips. [footnote: compare pl. vii, no. . the original drawing at windsor castle is numbered .] . when you draw the nude always sketch the whole figure and then finish those limbs which seem to you the best, but make them act with the other limbs; otherwise you will get a habit of never putting the limbs well together on the body. never make the head turn the same way as the torso, nor the arm and leg move together on the same side. and if the face is turned to the right shoulder, make all the parts lower on the left side than on the right; and when you turn the body with the breast outwards, if the head turns to the left side make the parts on the right side higher than those on the left. [footnote: in the original ms. a much defaced sketch is to be seen by the side of the second part of this chapter; its faded condition has rendered reproduction impossible. in m. ravaisson's facsimile the outlines of the head have probably been touched up. this passage however is fitly illustrated by the drawings on pl. xxi.] . of painting. of the nature of movements in man. do not repeat the same gestures in the limbs of men unless you are compelled by the necessity of their action, as is shown in _a b_. [footnote: see pl. v, where part of the text is also reproduced. the effaced figure to the extreme left has evidently been cancelled by leonardo himself as unsatisfactory.] . the motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness. . of painting. make your work carry out your purpose and meaning. that is when you draw a figure consider well who it is and what you wish it to be doing. of painting. with regard to any action which you give in a picture to an old man or to a young one, you must make it more energetic in the young man in proportion as he is stronger than the old one; and in the same way with a young man and an infant. . of setting on the limbs. the limbs which are used for labour must be muscular and those which are not much used you must make without muscles and softly rounded. of the action of the figures. represent your figures in such action as may be fitted to express what purpose is in the mind of each; otherwise your art will not be admirable. v. suggestions for compositions. of painting battle pieces ( - ). . of the way of representing a battle. first you must represent the smoke of artillery mingling in the air with the dust and tossed up by the movement of horses and the combatants. and this mixture you must express thus: the dust, being a thing of earth, has weight; and although from its fineness it is easily tossed up and mingles with the air, it nevertheless readily falls again. it is the finest part that rises highest; hence that part will be least seen and will look almost of the same colour as the air. the higher the smoke mixed with the dust-laden air rises towards a certain level, the more it will look like a dark cloud; and it will be seen that at the top, where the smoke is more separate from the dust, the smoke will assume a bluish tinge and the dust will tend to its colour. this mixture of air, smoke and dust will look much lighter on the side whence the light comes than on the opposite side. the more the combatants are in this turmoil the less will they be seen, and the less contrast will there be in their lights and shadows. their faces and figures and their appearance, and the musketeers as well as those near them you must make of a glowing red. and this glow will diminish in proportion as it is remote from its cause. the figures which are between you and the light, if they be at a distance, will appear dark on a light background, and the lower part of their legs near the ground will be least visible, because there the dust is coarsest and densest [ ]. and if you introduce horses galloping outside the crowd, make the little clouds of dust distant from each other in proportion to the strides made by the horses; and the clouds which are furthest removed from the horses, should be least visible; make them high and spreading and thin, and the nearer ones will be more conspicuous and smaller and denser [ ]. the air must be full of arrows in every direction, some shooting upwards, some falling, some flying level. the balls from the guns must have a train of smoke following their flight. the figures in the foreground you must make with dust on the hair and eyebrows and on other flat places likely to retain it. the conquerors you will make rushing onwards with their hair and other light things flying on the wind, with their brows bent down, [footnote: -- . compare . -- .] . and with the opposite limbs thrust forward; that is where a man puts forward the right foot the left arm must be advanced. and if you make any one fallen, you must show the place where he has slipped and been dragged along the dust into blood stained mire; and in the half-liquid earth arround show the print of the tramping of men and horses who have passed that way. make also a horse dragging the dead body of his master, and leaving behind him, in the dust and mud, the track where the body was dragged along. you must make the conquered and beaten pale, their brows raised and knit, and the skin above their brows furrowed with pain, the sides of the nose with wrinkles going in an arch from the nostrils to the eyes, and make the nostrils drawn up--which is the cause of the lines of which i speak--, and the lips arched upwards and discovering the upper teeth; and the teeth apart as with crying out and lamentation. and make some one shielding his terrified eyes with one hand, the palm towards the enemy, while the other rests on the ground to support his half raised body. others represent shouting with their mouths open, and running away. you must scatter arms of all sorts among the feet of the combatants, as broken shields, lances, broken swords and other such objects. and you must make the dead partly or entirely covered with dust, which is changed into crimson mire where it has mingled with the flowing blood whose colour shows it issuing in a sinuous stream from the corpse. others must be represented in the agonies of death grinding their teeth, rolling their eyes, with their fists clenched against their bodies and their legs contorted. some might be shown disarmed and beaten down by the enemy, turning upon the foe, with teeth and nails, to take an inhuman and bitter revenge. you might see some riderless horse rushing among the enemy, with his mane flying in the wind, and doing no little mischief with his heels. some maimed warrior may be seen fallen to the earth, covering himself with his shield, while the enemy, bending over him, tries to deal him a deathstroke. there again might be seen a number of men fallen in a heap over a dead horse. you would see some of the victors leaving the fight and issuing from the crowd, rubbing their eyes and cheeks with both hands to clean them of the dirt made by their watering eyes smarting from the dust and smoke. the reserves may be seen standing, hopeful but cautious; with watchful eyes, shading them with their hands and gazing through the dense and murky confusion, attentive to the commands of their captain. the captain himself, his staff raised, hurries towards these auxiliaries, pointing to the spot where they are most needed. and there may be a river into which horses are galloping, churning up the water all round them into turbulent waves of foam and water, tossed into the air and among the legs and bodies of the horses. and there must not be a level spot that is not trampled with gore. . of lighting the lower parts of bodies close together, as of men in battle. as to men and horses represented in battle, their different parts will be dark in proportion as they are nearer to the ground on which they stand. and this is proved by the sides of wells which grow darker in proportion to their depth, the reason of which is that the deepest part of the well sees and receives a smaller amount of the luminous atmosphere than any other part. and the pavement, if it be of the same colour as the legs of these said men and horses, will always be more lighted and at a more direct angle than the said legs &c. . of the way to represent a night [scene]. that which is entirely bereft of light is all darkness; given a night under these conditions and that you want to represent a night scene,--arrange that there shall be a great fire, then the objects which are nearest to this fire will be most tinged with its colour; for those objects which are nearest to a coloured light participate most in its nature; as therefore you give the fire a red colour, you must make all the objects illuminated by it ruddy; while those which are farther from the fire are more tinted by the black hue of night. the figures which are seen against the fire look dark in the glare of the firelight because that side of the objects which you see is tinged by the darkness of the night and not by the fire; and those who stand at the side are half dark and half red; while those who are visible beyond the edges of the flame will be fully lighted by the ruddy glow against a black background. as to their gestures, make those which are near it screen themselves with their hands and cloaks as a defence against the intense heat, and with their faces turned away as if about to retire. of those farther off represent several as raising their hands to screen their eyes, hurt by the intolerable glare. of depicting a tempest ( . ). . describe a wind on land and at sea. describe a storm of rain. . how to represent a tempest. if you wish to represent a tempest consider and arrange well its effects as seen, when the wind, blowing over the face of the sea and earth, removes and carries with it such things as are not fixed to the general mass. and to represent the storm accurately you must first show the clouds scattered and torn, and flying with the wind, accompanied by clouds of sand blown up from the sea shore, and boughs and leaves swept along by the strength and fury of the blast and scattered with other light objects through the air. trees and plants must be bent to the ground, almost as if they would follow the course of the gale, with their branches twisted out of their natural growth and their leaves tossed and turned about [footnote : see pl. xl, no. .]. of the men who are there some must have fallen to the ground and be entangled in their garments, and hardly to be recognized for the dust, while those who remain standing may be behind some tree, with their arms round it that the wind may not tear them away; others with their hands over their eyes for the dust, bending to the ground with their clothes and hair streaming in the wind. [footnote : see pl. xxxiv, the right hand lower sketch.] let the sea be rough and tempestuous and full of foam whirled among the lofty waves, while the wind flings the lighter spray through the stormy air, till it resembles a dense and swathing mist. of the ships that are therein some should be shown with rent sails and the tatters fluttering through the air, with ropes broken and masts split and fallen. and the ship itself lying in the trough of the sea and wrecked by the fury of the waves with the men shrieking and clinging to the fragments of the vessel. make the clouds driven by the impetuosity of the wind and flung against the lofty mountain tops, and wreathed and torn like waves beating upon rocks; the air itself terrible from the deep darkness caused by the dust and fog and heavy clouds. of representing the deluge ( - ). . to represent the deluge. the air was darkened by the heavy rain whose oblique descent driven aslant by the rush of the winds, flew in drifts through the air not otherwise than as we see dust, varied only by the straight lines of the heavy drops of falling water. but it was tinged with the colour of the fire kindled by the thunder-bolts by which the clouds were rent and shattered; and whose flashes revealed the broad waters of the inundated valleys, above which was seen the verdure of the bending tree tops. neptune will be seen in the midst of the water with his trident, and [ ] let aeolus with his winds be shown entangling the trees floating uprooted, and whirling in the huge waves. the horizon and the whole hemisphere were obscure, but lurid from the flashes of the incessant lightning. men and birds might be seen crowded on the tall trees which remained uncovered by the swelling waters, originators of the mountains which surround the great abysses [footnote : compare vol. ii. no. .]. . of the deluge and how to represent it in a picture. let the dark and gloomy air be seen buffeted by the rush of contrary winds and dense from the continued rain mingled with hail and bearing hither and thither an infinite number of branches torn from the trees and mixed with numberless leaves. all round may be seen venerable trees, uprooted and stripped by the fury of the winds; and fragments of mountains, already scoured bare by the torrents, falling into those torrents and choking their valleys till the swollen rivers overflow and submerge the wide lowlands and their inhabitants. again, you might have seen on many of the hill-tops terrified animals of different kinds, collected together and subdued to tameness, in company with men and women who had fled there with their children. the waters which covered the fields, with their waves were in great part strewn with tables, bedsteads, boats and various other contrivances made from necessity and the fear of death, on which were men and women with their children amid sounds of lamentation and weeping, terrified by the fury of the winds which with their tempestuous violence rolled the waters under and over and about the bodies of the drowned. nor was there any object lighter than the water which was not covered with a variety of animals which, having come to a truce, stood together in a frightened crowd--among them wolves, foxes, snakes and others--fleing from death. and all the waters dashing on their shores seemed to be battling them with the blows of drowned bodies, blows which killed those in whom any life remained [ ]. you might have seen assemblages of men who, with weapons in their hands, defended the small spots that remained to them against lions, wolves and beasts of prey who sought safety there. ah! what dreadful noises were heard in the air rent by the fury of the thunder and the lightnings it flashed forth, which darted from the clouds dealing ruin and striking all that opposed its course. ah! how many you might have seen closing their ears with their hands to shut out the tremendous sounds made in the darkened air by the raging of the winds mingling with the rain, the thunders of heaven and the fury of the thunder-bolts. others were not content with shutting their eyes, but laid their hands one over the other to cover them the closer that they might not see the cruel slaughter of the human race by the wrath of god. ah! how many laments! and how many in their terror flung themselves from the rocks! huge branches of great oaks loaded with men were seen borne through the air by the impetuous fury of the winds. how many were the boats upset, some entire, and some broken in pieces, on the top of people labouring to escape with gestures and actions of grief foretelling a fearful death. others, with desperate act, took their own lives, hopeless of being able to endure such suffering; and of these, some flung themselves from lofty rocks, others strangled themselves with their own hands, other seized their own children and violently slew them at a blow; some wounded and killed themselves with their own weapons; others, falling on their knees recommended themselves to god. ah! how many mothers wept over their drowned sons, holding them upon their knees, with arms raised spread out towards heaven and with words and various threatening gestures, upbraiding the wrath of the gods. others with clasped hands and fingers clenched gnawed them and devoured them till they bled, crouching with their breast down on their knees in their intense and unbearable anguish. herds of animals were to be seen, such as horses, oxen, goats and swine already environed by the waters and left isolated on the high peaks of the mountains, huddled together, those in the middle climbing to the top and treading on the others, and fighting fiercely themselves; and many would die for lack of food. already had the birds begun to settle on men and on other animals, finding no land uncovered which was not occupied by living beings, and already had famine, the minister of death, taken the lives of the greater number of the animals, when the dead bodies, now fermented, where leaving the depth of the waters and were rising to the top. among the buffeting waves, where they were beating one against the other, and, like as balls full of air, rebounded from the point of concussion, these found a resting place on the bodies of the dead. and above these judgements, the air was seen covered with dark clouds, riven by the forked flashes of the raging bolts of heaven, lighting up on all sides the depth of the gloom. the motion of the air is seen by the motion of the dust thrown up by the horse's running and this motion is as swift in again filling up the vacuum left in the air which enclosed the horse, as he is rapid in passing away from the air. perhaps it will seem to you that you may reproach me with having represented the currents made through the air by the motion of the wind notwithstanding that the wind itself is not visible in the air. to this i must answer that it is not the motion of the wind but only the motion of the things carried along by it which is seen in the air. the divisions. [footnote : these observations, added at the bottom of the page containing the full description of the doluge seem to indicate that it was leonardo's intention to elaborate the subject still farther in a separate treatise.] darkness, wind, tempest at sea, floods of water, forests on fire, rain, bolts from heaven, earthquakes and ruins of mountains, overthrow of cities [footnote : _spianamenti di citta_ (overthrow of cities). a considerable number of drawings in black chalk, at windsor, illustrate this catastrophe. most of them are much rubbed; one of the least injured is reproduced at pl. xxxix. compare also the pen and ink sketch pl. xxxvi.]. whirlwinds which carry water [spouts] branches of trees, and men through the air. boughs stripped off by the winds, mingling by the meeting of the winds, with people upon them. broken trees loaded with people. ships broken to pieces, beaten on rocks. flocks of sheep. hail stones, thunderbolts, whirlwinds. people on trees which are unable to to support them; trees and rocks, towers and hills covered with people, boats, tables, troughs, and other means of floating. hills covered with men, women and animals; and lightning from the clouds illuminating every thing. [footnote: this chapter, which, with the next one, is written on a loose sheet, seems to be the passage to which one of the compilers of the vatican copy alluded when he wrote on the margin of fol. : "_qua mi ricordo della mirabile discritione del diluuio dello autore._" it is scarcely necessary to point out that these chapters are among those which have never before been published. the description in no. may be regarded as a preliminary sketch for this one. as the ms. g. (in which it is to be found) must be attributed to the period of about we may deduce from it the approximate date of the drawings on pl. xxxiv, xxxv, nos. and , xxxvi and xxxvii, since they obviously belong to this text. the drawings no. on pl. xxxv are, in the original, side by side with the text of no. ; lines to are shown in the facsimile. in the drawing in indian ink given on pl. xxxiv we see wind-gods in the sky, corresponding to the allusion to aeolus in no. . .-plates xxxvi and xxxvii form one sheet in the original. the texts reproduced on these plates have however no connection with the sketches, excepting the sketches of clouds on the right hand side. these texts are given as no. . the group of small figures on pl. xxxvii, to the left, seems to be intended for a '_congregatione d'uomini._' see no. , . .] . description of the deluge. let there be first represented the summit of a rugged mountain with valleys surrounding its base, and on its sides let the surface of the soil be seen to slide, together with the small roots of the bushes, denuding great portions of the surrounding rocks. and descending ruinous from these precipices in its boisterous course, let it dash along and lay bare the twisted and gnarled roots of large trees overthrowing their roots upwards; and let the mountains, as they are scoured bare, discover the profound fissures made in them by ancient earthquakes. the base of the mountains may be in great part clothed and covered with ruins of shrubs, hurled down from the sides of their lofty peaks, which will be mixed with mud, roots, boughs of trees, with all sorts of leaves thrust in with the mud and earth and stones. and into the depth of some valley may have fallen the fragments of a mountain forming a shore to the swollen waters of its river; which, having already burst its banks, will rush on in monstrous waves; and the greatest will strike upon and destroy the walls of the cities and farmhouses in the valley [ ]. then the ruins of the high buildings in these cities will throw up a great dust, rising up in shape like smoke or wreathed clouds against the falling rain; but the swollen waters will sweep round the pool which contains them striking in eddying whirlpools against the different obstacles, and leaping into the air in muddy foam; then, falling back, the beaten water will again be dashed into the air. and the whirling waves which fly from the place of concussion, and whose impetus moves them across other eddies going in a contrary direction, after their recoil will be tossed up into the air but without dashing off from the surface. where the water issues from the pool the spent waves will be seen spreading out towards the outlet; and there falling or pouring through the air and gaining weight and impetus they will strike on the water below piercing it and rushing furiously to reach its depth; from which being thrown back it returns to the surface of the lake, carrying up the air that was submerged with it; and this remains at the outlet in foam mingled with logs of wood and other matters lighter than water. round these again are formed the beginnings of waves which increase the more in circumference as they acquire more movement; and this movement rises less high in proportion as they acquire a broader base and thus they are less conspicuous as they die away. but if these waves rebound from various objects they then return in direct opposition to the others following them, observing the same law of increase in their curve as they have already acquired in the movement they started with. the rain, as it falls from the clouds is of the same colour as those clouds, that is in its shaded side; unless indeed the sun's rays should break through them; in that case the rain will appear less dark than the clouds. and if the heavy masses of ruin of large mountains or of other grand buildings fall into the vast pools of water, a great quantity will be flung into the air and its movement will be in a contrary direction to that of the object which struck the water; that is to say: the angle of reflection will be equal to the angle of incidence. of the objects carried down by the current, those which are heaviest or rather largest in mass will keep farthest from the two opposite shores. the water in the eddies revolves more swiftly in proportion as it is nearer to their centre. the crests of the waves of the sea tumble to their bases falling with friction on the bubbles of their sides; and this friction grinds the falling water into minute particles and this being converted into a dense mist, mingles with the gale in the manner of curling smoke and wreathing clouds, and at last it, rises into the air and is converted into clouds. but the rain which falls through the atmosphere being driven and tossed by the winds becomes rarer or denser according to the rarity or density of the winds that buffet it, and thus there is generated in the atmosphere a moisture formed of the transparent particles of the rain which is near to the eye of the spectator. the waves of the sea which break on the slope of the mountains which bound it, will foam from the velocity with which they fall against these hills; in rushing back they will meet the next wave as it comes and and after a loud noise return in a great flood to the sea whence they came. let great numbers of inhabitants--men and animals of all kinds--be seen driven [ ] by the rising of the deluge to the peaks of the mountains in the midst of the waters aforesaid. the wave of the sea at piombino is all foaming water. [footnote . : these two lines are written below the bottom sketch on pl. xxxv, . the ms. leic. being written about the year or later, it does not seem to me to follow that the sketches must have been made at piombino, where leonardo was in the year and possibly returned there subsequently (see vol. ii. topographical notes).] of the water which leaps up from the spot where great masses fall on its surface. of the winds of piombino at piombino. eddies of wind and rain with boughs and shrubs mixed in the air. emptying the boats of the rain water. [footnote: the sketches on pl. xxxv stand by the side of lines to .] of depicting natural phenomena ( . ). . the tremendous fury of the wind driven by the falling in of the hills on the caves within--by the falling of the hills which served as roofs to these caverns. a stone flung through the air leaves on the eye which sees it the impression of its motion, and the same effect is produced by the drops of water which fall from the clouds when it [ ] rains. [ ] a mountain falling on a town, will fling up dust in the form of clouds; but the colour of this dust will differ from that of the clouds. where the rain is thickest let the colour of the dust be less conspicuous and where the dust is thickest let the rain be less conspicuous. and where the rain is mingled with the wind and with the dust the clouds created by the rain must be more transparent than those of dust [alone]. and when flames of fire are mingled with clouds of smoke and water very opaque and dark clouds will be formed [footnote - : compare pl. xl, --the drawing in indian ink on the left hand side, which seems to be a reminiscence of his observations of an eruption (see his remarks on mount etna in vol ii).]. and the rest of this subject will be treated in detail in the book on painting. [footnote: see the sketches and text on pl. xxxviii, no. . lines - are there given on the left hand side, - on the right. the four lines at the bottom on the right are given as no. . above these texts, which are written backwards, there are in the original sixteen lines in a larger writing from left to right, but only half of this is here visible. they treat of the physical laws of motion of air and water. it does not seem to me that there is any reason for concluding that this writing from left to right is spurious. compare with it the facsimile of the rough copy of leonardo's letter to ludovico il moro in vol. ii.] . people were to be seen eagerly embarking victuals on various kinds of hastily made barks. but little of the waves were visible in those places where the dark clouds and rain were reflected. but where the flashes caused by the bolts of heaven were reflected, there were seen as many bright spots, caused by the image of the flashes, as there were waves to reflect them to the eye of the spectator. the number of the images produced by the flash of lightning on the waves of the water were multiplied in proportion to the distance of the spectator's eye. so also the number of the images was diminished in proportion as they were nearer the eye which saw them [footnote . : _com'e provato_. see vol. ii, nos. - and - ], as it has been proved in the definition of the luminosity of the moon, and of our marine horizon when the sun's rays are reflected in it and the eye which receives the reflection is remote from the sea. vi. the artist's materials. of chalk and paper ( -- ). . to make points [crayons] for colouring dry. temper with a little wax and do not dry it; which wax you must dissolve with water: so that when the white lead is thus tempered, the water being distilled, may go off in vapour and the wax may remain; you will thus make good crayons; but you must know that the colours must be ground with a hot stone. . chalk dissolves in wine and in vinegar or in aqua fortis and can be recombined with gum. . paper for drawing upon in black by the aid of your spittle. take powdered gall nuts and vitriol, powder them and spread them on paper like a varnish, then write on it with a pen wetted with spittle and it will turn as black as ink. . if you want to make foreshortened letters stretch the paper in a drawing frame and then draw your letters and cut them out, and make the sunbeams pass through the holes on to another stretched paper, and then fill up the angles that are wanting. . this paper should be painted over with candle soot tempered with thin glue, then smear the leaf thinly with white lead in oil as is done to the letters in printing, and then print in the ordinary way. thus the leaf will appear shaded in the hollows and lighted on the parts in relief; which however comes out here just the contrary. [footnote: this text, which accompanies a facsimile impression of a leaf of sage, has already been published in the _saggio delle opere di l. da vinci_, milano , p. . g. govi observes on this passage: "_forse aveva egli pensato ancora a farsi un erbario, od almeno a riprodurre facilmente su carta le forme e i particolari delle foglie di diverse piante; poiche (modificando un metodo che probabilmente gli eia stato insegnato da altri, e che piu tardi si legge ripetuto in molti ricettarii e libri di segreti), accanto a una foglia di salvia impressa in nero su carta bianca, lascio scritto: questa carta ... erano i primi tentativi di quella riproduzione immediata delle parti vegetali, che poi sotto il nome d'impressione naturale, fu condotta a tanta perfezione in questi ultimi tempi dal signor de hauer e da altri_."] . very excellent will be a stiff white paper, made of the usual mixture and filtered milk of an herb called calves foot; and when this paper is prepared and damped and folded and wrapped up it may be mixed with the mixture and thus left to dry; but if you break it before it is moistened it becomes somewhat like the thin paste called _lasagne_ and you may then damp it and wrap it up and put it in the mixture and leave it to dry; or again this paper may be covered with stiff transparent white and _sardonio_ and then damped so that it may not form angles and then covered up with strong transparent size and as soon as it is firm cut it two fingers, and leave it to dry; again you may make stiff cardboard of _sardonio_ and dry it and then place it between two sheets of papyrus and break it inside with a wooden mallet with a handle and then open it with care holding the lower sheet of paper flat and firm so that the broken pieces be not separated; then have a sheet of paper covered with hot glue and apply it on the top of all these pieces and let them stick fast; then turn it upside down and apply transparent size several times in the spaces between the pieces, each time pouring in first some black and then some stiff white and each time leaving it to dry; then smooth it and polish it. on the preparation and use of colours ( - ). . to make a fine green take green and mix it with bitumen and you will make the shadows darker. then, for lighter [shades] green with yellow ochre, and for still lighter green with yellow, and for the high lights pure yellow; then mix green and turmeric together and glaze every thing with it. to make a fine red take cinnabar or red chalk or burnt ochre for the dark shadows and for the lighter ones red chalk and vermilion and for the lights pure vermilion and then glaze with fine lake. to make good oil for painting. one part of oil, one of the first refining and one of the second. . use black in the shadow, and in the lights white, yellow, green, vermilion and lake. medium shadows; take the shadow as above and mix it with the flesh tints just alluded to, adding to it a little yellow and a little green and occasionally some lake; for the shadows take green and lake for the middle shades. [footnote and : if we may judge from the flourishes with which the writing is ornamented these passages must have been written in leonardo's youth.] . you can make a fine ochre by the same method as you use to make white. . a fine yellow. dissolve realgar with one part of orpiment, with aqua fortis. white. put the white into an earthen pot, and lay it no thicker than a string, and let it stand in the sun undisturbed for days; and in the morning when the sun has dried off the night dews. . to make reddish black for flesh tints take red rock crystals from rocca nova or garnets and mix them a little; again armenian bole is good in part. . the shadow will be burnt ,terra-verte'. . the proportions of colours. if one ounce of black mixed with one ounce of white gives a certain shade of darkness, what shade of darkness will be produced by ounces of black to ounce of white? . remix black, greenish yellow and at the end blue. . verdigris with aloes, or gall or turmeric makes a fine green and so it does with saffron or burnt orpiment; but i doubt whether in a short time they will not turn black. ultramarine blue and glass yellow mixed together make a beautiful green for fresco, that is wall-painting. lac and verdigris make a good shadow for blue in oil painting. . grind verdigris many times coloured with lemon juice and keep it away from yellow (?). of preparing the panel. . to prepare a panel for painting on. the panel should be cypress or pear or service-tree or walnut. you must coat it over with mastic and turpentine twice distilled and white or, if you like, lime, and put it in a frame so that it may expand and shrink according to its moisture and dryness. then give it [a coat] of aqua vitae in which you have dissolved arsenic or [corrosive] sublimate, or times. then apply boiled linseed oil in such a way as that it may penetrate every part, and before it is cold rub it well with a cloth to dry it. over this apply liquid varnish and white with a stick, then wash it with urine when it is dry, and dry it again. then pounce and outline your drawing finely and over it lay a priming of parts of verdigris with one of verdigris with two of yellow. [footnote: m. ravaisson's reading varies from mine in the following passages: ._opero allor [?] bo [alloro?]_ = "_ou bien de [laurier]_." . _fregalo bene con un panno_. he reads _pane_ for _panno_ and renders it. "_frotte le bien avec un pain de facon [jusqu'a ce] qu'il_" etc. . _colla stecca po laua_. he reads "_polacca_" = "_avec le couteau de bois [?] polonais [?]_."] the preparation of oils ( -- ). . oil. make some oil of mustard seed; and if you wish to make it with greater ease mix the ground seeds with linseed oil and put it all under the press. . to remove the smell of oil. take the rank oil and put ten pints into a jar and make a mark on the jar at the height of the oil; then add to it a pint of vinegar and make it boil till the oil has sunk to the level of the mark and thus you will be certain that the oil is returned to its original quantity and the vinegar will have gone off in vapour, carrying with it the evil smell; and i believe you may do the same with nut oil or any other oil that smells badly. . since walnuts are enveloped in a thin rind, which partakes of the nature of ..., if you do not remove it when you make the oil from them, this skin tinges the oil, and when you work with it this skin separates from the oil and rises to the surface of the painting, and this is what makes it change. . to restore oil colours that have become dry. if you want to restore oil colours that have become dry keep them soaking in soft soap for a night and, with your finger, mix them up with the soft soap; then pour them into a cup and wash them with water, and in this way you can restore colours that have got dry. but take care that each colour has its own vessel to itself adding the colour by degrees as you restore it and mind that they are thoroughly softened, and when you wish to use them for tempera wash them five and six times with spring water, and leave them to settle; if the soft soap should be thick with any of the colours pass it through a filter. [footnote: the same remark applies to these sections as to no. and .] . oil. mustard seed pounded with linseed oil. . ... outside the bowl fingers lower than the level of the oil, and pass it into the neck of a bottle and let it stand and thus all the oil will separate from this milky liquid; it will enter the bottle and be as clear as crystal; and grind your colours with this, and every coarse or viscid part will remain in the liquid. you must know that all the oils that have been created in seads or fruits are quite clear by nature, and the yellow colour you see in them only comes of your not knowing how to draw it out. fire or heat by its nature has the power to make them acquire colour. see for example the exudation or gums of trees which partake of the nature of rosin; in a short time they harden because there is more heat in them than in oil; and after some time they acquire a certain yellow hue tending to black. but oil, not having so much heat does not do so; although it hardens to some extent into sediment it becomes finer. the change in oil which occurs in painting proceeds from a certain fungus of the nature of a husk which exists in the skin which covers the nut, and this being crushed along with the nuts and being of a nature much resembling oil mixes with it; it is of so subtle a nature that it combines with all colours and then comes to the surface, and this it is which makes them change. and if you want the oil to be good and not to thicken, put into it a little camphor melted over a slow fire and mix it well with the oil and it will never harden. [footnote: the same remark applies to these sections as to no. and .] on varnishes [or powders] ( - ). . varnish [or powder]. take cypress [oil] and distil it and have a large pitcher, and put in the extract with so much water as may make it appear like amber, and cover it tightly so that none may evaporate. and when it is dissolved you may add in your pitcher as much of the said solution, as shall make it liquid to your taste. and you must know that amber is the gum of the cypress-tree. varnish [or powder]. and since varnish [powder] is the resin of juniper, if you distil juniper you can dissolve the said varnish [powder] in the essence, as explained above. . varnish [or powder]. notch a juniper tree and give it water at the roots, mix the liquor which exudes with nut-oil and you will have a perfect varnish [powder], made like amber varnish [powder], fine and of the best quality make it in may or april. . varnish [or powder]. mercury with jupiter and venus,--a paste made of these must be corrected by the mould (?) continuously, until mercury separates itself entirely from jupiter and venus. [footnote: here, and in no. _mercurio_ seems to mean quicksilver, _giove_ stands for iron, _venere_ for copper and _saturno_ for lead.] on chemical materials ( - ). . note how aqua vitae absorbs into itself all the colours and smells of flowers. if you want to make blue put iris flowers into it and for red solanum berries (?) . salt may be made from human excrement burnt and calcined and made into lees, and dried by a slow fire, and all dung in like manner yields salt, and these salts when distilled are very pungent. . sea water filtered through mud or clay, leaves all its saltness in it. woollen stuffs placed on board ship absorb fresh water. if sea water is distilled under a retort it becomes of the first excellence and any one who has a little stove in his kitchen can, with the same wood as he cooks with, distil a great quantity of water if the retort is a large one. . mould(?). the mould (?) may be of venus, or of jupiter and saturn and placed frequently in the fire. and it should be worked with fine emery and the mould (?) should be of venus and jupiter impasted over (?) venus. but first you will test venus and mercury mixed with jove, and take means to cause mercury to disperse; and then fold them well together so that venus or jupiter be connected as thinly as possible. [footnote: see the note to .] . nitre, vitriol, cinnabar, alum, salt ammoniac, sublimated mercury, rock salt, alcali salt, common salt, rock alum, alum schist (?), arsenic, sublimate, realgar, tartar, orpiment, verdegris. . pitch four ounces virgin wax, four ounces incense, two ounces oil of roses one ounce. . four ounces virgin wax, four ounces greek pitch, two ounces incense, one ounce oil of roses, first melt the wax and oil then the greek pitch then the other things in powder. . very thin glass may be cut with scissors and when placed over inlaid work of bone, gilt, or stained of other colours you can saw it through together with the bone and then put it together and it will retain a lustre that will not be scratched nor worn away by rubbing with the hand. . to dilute white wine and make it purple. powder gall nuts and let this stand days in the white wine; and in the same way dissolve vitriol in water, and let the water stand and settle very clear, and the wine likewise, each by itself, and strain them well; and when you dilute the white wine with the water the wine will become red. . put marcasite into aqua fortis and if it turns green, know that it has copper in it. take it out with saltpetre and soft soap. . a white horse may have the spots removed with the spanish haematite or with aqua fortis or with ... removes the black hair on a white horse with the singeing iron. force him to the ground. . fire. if you want to make a fire which will set a hall in a blaze without injury do this: first perfume the hall with a dense smoke of incense or some other odoriferous substance: it is a good trick to play. or boil ten pounds of brandy to evaporate, but see that the hall is completely closed and throw up some powdered varnish among the fumes and this powder will be supported by the smoke; then go into the room suddenly with a lighted torch and at once it will be in a blaze. . fire. take away that yellow surface which covers oranges and distill them in an alembic, until the distillation may be said to be perfect. fire. close a room tightly and have a brasier of brass or iron with fire in it and sprinkle on it two pints of aqua vitae, a little at a time, so that it may be converted into smoke. then make some one come in with a light and suddenly you will see the room in a blaze like a flash of lightning, and it will do no harm to any one. vii. philosophy and history of the art of painting. the relation of art and nature ( . ). . what is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art. . he who despises painting loves neither philosophy nor nature. if you condemn painting, which is the only imitator of all visible works of nature, you will certainly despise a subtle invention which brings philosophy and subtle speculation to the consideration of the nature of all forms--seas and plains, trees, animals, plants and flowers--which are surrounded by shade and light. and this is true knowledge and the legitimate issue of nature; for painting is born of nature--or, to speak more correctly, we will say it is the grandchild of nature; for all visible things are produced by nature, and these her children have given birth to painting. hence we may justly call it the grandchild of nature and related to god. painting is superior to poetry ( . ). . that painting surpasses all human works by the subtle considerations belonging to it. the eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the central sense can most completely and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second, which acquires dignity by hearing of the things the eye has seen. if you, historians, or poets, or mathematicians had not seen things with your eyes you could not report of them in writing. and if you, poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily, with simpler completeness and less tedious to be understood. and if you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. now which is the worse defect? to be blind or dumb? though the poet is as free as the painter in the invention of his fictions they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings; for, though poetry is able to describe forms, actions and places in words, the painter deals with the actual similitude of the forms, in order to represent them. now tell me which is the nearer to the actual man: the name of man or the image of the man. the name of man differs in different countries, but his form is never changed but by death. . and if the poet gratifies the sense by means of the ear, the painter does so by the eye--the worthier sense; but i will say no more of this but that, if a good painter represents the fury of a battle, and if a poet describes one, and they are both together put before the public, you will see where most of the spectators will stop, to which they will pay most attention, on which they will bestow most praise, and which will satisfy them best. undoubtedly painting being by a long way the more intelligible and beautiful, will please most. write up the name of god [christ] in some spot and setup his image opposite and you will see which will be most reverenced. painting comprehends in itself all the forms of nature, while you have nothing but words, which are not universal as form is, and if you have the effects of the representation, we have the representation of the effects. take a poet who describes the beauty of a lady to her lover and a painter who represents her and you will see to which nature guides the enamoured critic. certainly the proof should be allowed to rest on the verdict of experience. you have ranked painting among the mechanical arts but, in truth, if painters were as apt at praising their own works in writing as you are, it would not lie under the stigma of so base a name. if you call it mechanical because it is, in the first place, manual, and that it is the hand which produces what is to be found in the imagination, you too writers, who set down manually with the pen what is devised in your mind. and if you say it is mechanical because it is done for money, who falls into this error--if error it can be called--more than you? if you lecture in the schools do you not go to whoever pays you most? do you do any work without pay? still, i do not say this as blaming such views, for every form of labour looks for its reward. and if a poet should say: "i will invent a fiction with a great purpose," the painter can do the same, as apelles painted calumny. if you were to say that poetry is more eternal, i say the works of a coppersmith are more eternal still, for time preserves them longer than your works or ours; nevertheless they have not much imagination [ ]. and a picture, if painted on copper with enamel colours may be yet more permanent. we, by our arts may be called the grandsons of god. if poetry deals with moral philosophy, painting deals with natural philosophy. poetry describes the action of the mind, painting considers what the mind may effect by the motions [of the body]. if poetry can terrify people by hideous fictions, painting can do as much by depicting the same things in action. supposing that a poet applies himself to represent beauty, ferocity, or a base, a foul or a monstrous thing, as against a painter, he may in his ways bring forth a variety of forms; but will the painter not satisfy more? are there not pictures to be seen, so like the actual things, that they deceive men and animals? painting is superior to sculpture ( . ). . that sculpture is less intellectual than painting, and lacks many characteristics of nature. i myself, having exercised myself no less in sculpture than in painting and doing both one and the other in the same degree, it seems to me that i can, without invidiousness, pronounce an opinion as to which of the two is of the greatest merit and difficulty and perfection. in the first place sculpture requires a certain light, that is from above, a picture carries everywhere with it its own light and shade. thus sculpture owes its importance to light and shade, and the sculptor is aided in this by the nature, of the relief which is inherent in it, while the painter whose art expresses the accidental aspects of nature, places his effects in the spots where nature must necessarily produce them. the sculptor cannot diversify his work by the various natural colours of objects; painting is not defective in any particular. the sculptor when he uses perspective cannot make it in any way appear true; that of the painter can appear like a hundred miles beyond the picture itself. their works have no aerial perspective whatever, they cannot represent transparent bodies, they cannot represent luminous bodies, nor reflected lights, nor lustrous bodies--as mirrors and the like polished surfaces, nor mists, nor dark skies, nor an infinite number of things which need not be told for fear of tedium. as regards the power of resisting time, though they have this resistance [footnote : from what is here said as to painting on copper it is very evident that leonardo was not acquainted with the method of painting in oil on thin copper plates, introduced by the flemish painters of the xviith century. j. lermolieff has already pointed out that in the various collections containing pictures by the great masters of the italian renaissance, those painted on copper (for instance the famous reading magdalen in the dresden gallery) are the works of a much later date (see _zeitschrift fur bildende kunst_. vol. x pg. , and: _werke italienischer master in den galerien von munchen, dresden und berlin_. leipzig , pg. and .)--compare no. , .], a picture painted on thick copper covered with white enamel on which it is painted with enamel colours and then put into the fire again and baked, far exceeds sculpture in permanence. it may be said that if a mistake is made it is not easy to remedy it; it is but a poor argument to try to prove that a work be the nobler because oversights are irremediable; i should rather say that it will be more difficult to improve the mind of the master who makes such mistakes than to repair the work he has spoilt. . we know very well that a really experienced and good painter will not make such mistakes; on the contrary, with sound rules he will remove so little at a time that he will bring his work to a good issue. again the sculptor if working in clay or wax, can add or reduce, and when his model is finished it can easily be cast in bronze, and this is the last operation and is the most permanent form of sculpture. inasmuch as that which is merely of marble is liable to ruin, but not bronze. hence a painting done on copper which as i said of painting may be added to or altered, resembles sculpture in bronze, which, having first been made in wax could then be altered or added to; and if sculpture in bronze is durable, this work in copper and enamel is absolutely imperishable. bronze is but dark and rough after all, but this latter is covered with various and lovely colours in infinite variety, as has been said above; or if you will have me only speak of painting on panel, i am content to pronounce between it and sculpture; saying that painting is the more beautiful and the more imaginative and the more copious, while sculpture is the more durable but it has nothing else. sculpture shows with little labour what in painting appears a miraculous thing to do; to make what is impalpable appear palpable, flat objects appear in relief, distant objects seem close. in fact painting is adorned with infinite possibilities which sculpture cannot command. aphorisms ( - ). . of painting. men and words are ready made, and you, o painter, if you do not know how to make your figures move, are like an orator who knows not how to use his words. . as soon as the poet ceases to represent in words what exists in nature, he in fact ceases to resemble the painter; for if the poet, leaving such representation, proceeds to describe the flowery and flattering speech of the figure, which he wishes to make the speaker, he then is an orator and no longer a poet nor a painter. and if he speaks of the heavens he becomes an astrologer, and philosopher; and a theologian, if he discourses of nature or god. but, if he restricts himself to the description of objects, he would enter the lists against the painter, if with words he could satisfy the eye as the painter does. . though you may be able to tell or write the exact description of forms, the painter can so depict them that they will appear alive, with the shadow and light which show the expression of a face; which you cannot accomplish with the pen though it can be achieved by the brush. on the history of painting ( . ). . that painting declines and deteriorates from age to age, when painters have no other standard than painting already done. hence the painter will produce pictures of small merit if he takes for his standard the pictures of others. but if he will study from natural objects he will bear good fruit; as was seen in the painters after the romans who always imitated each other and so their art constantly declined from age to age. after these came giotto the florentine who--not content with imitating the works of cimabue his master--being born in the mountains and in a solitude inhabited only by goats and such beasts, and being guided by nature to his art, began by drawing on the rocks the movements of the goats of which he was keeper. and thus he began to draw all the animals which were to be found in the country, and in such wise that after much study he excelled not only all the masters of his time but all those of many bygone ages. afterwards this art declined again, because everyone imitated the pictures that were already done; thus it went on from century to century until tomaso, of florence, nicknamed masaccio, showed by his perfect works how those who take for their standard any one but nature--the mistress of all masters--weary themselves in vain. and, i would say about these mathematical studies that those who only study the authorities and not the works of nature are descendants but not sons of nature the mistress of all good authors. oh! how great is the folly of those who blame those who learn from nature [footnote : _lasciando stare li autori_. in this observation we may detect an indirect evidence that leonardo regarded his knowledge of natural history as derived from his own investigations, as well as his theories of perspective and optics. compare what he says in praise of experience (vol ii; _xix_).], setting aside those authorities who themselves were the disciples of nature. . that the first drawing was a simple line drawn round the shadow of a man cast by the sun on a wall. the painter's scope. . the painter strives and competes with nature. _x. studies and sketches for pictures and decorations. an artist's manuscript notes can hardly be expected to contain any thing more than incidental references to those masterpieces of his work of which the fame, sounded in the writings of his contemporaries, has left a glorious echo to posterity. we need not therefore be surprised to find that the texts here reproduced do not afford us such comprehensive information as we could wish. on the other hand, the sketches and studies prepared by leonardo for the two grandest compositions he ever executed: the fresco of the last supper in the refectory of santa maria delle grazie at milan, and the cartoon of the battle of anghiari, for the palazzo della signoria at florence--have been preserved; and, though far from complete, are so much more numerous than the manuscript notes, that we are justified in asserting that in value and interest they amply compensate for the meagerness of the written suggestions. the notes for the composition of the last supper, which are given under nos._ _and_ _occur in a ms. at south kensington, ii , written in the years_ - . _this ms. sketch was noted down not more than three or four years before the painting was executed, which justifies the inference that at the time when it was written the painter had not made up his mind definitely even as to the general scheme of the work; and from this we may also conclude that the drawings of apostles' heads at windsor, in red chalk, must be ascribed to a later date. they are studies for the head of st. matthew, the fourth figure on christ's left hand--see pl. xl vii, the sketch (in black chalk) for the head of st. philip, the third figure on the left hand--see pl. xl viii, for st. peter's right arm--see pl. xlix, and for the expressive head of judas which has unfortunately somewhat suffered by subsequent restoration of outlines,--see pl. l. according to a tradition, as unfounded as it is improbable, leonardo made use of the head of padre bandelli, the prior of the convent, as the prototype of his judas; this however has already been contradicted by amoretti "memorie storiche" cap. xiv. the study of the head of a criminal on pl. li has, it seems to me, a better claim to be regarded as one of the preparatory sketches for the head of judas. the windsor collection contains two old copies of the head of st. simon, the figure to the extreme left of christ, both of about equal merit (they are marked as nos._ _and_ _)--the second was reproduced on pl. viii of the grosvenor gallery publication in_ . _there is also at windsor a drawing in black chalk of folded hands (marked with the old no._ ; _no. lxi of the grosvenor gallery publication) which i believe to be a copy of the hands of st. john, by some unknown pupil. a reproduction of the excellent drawings of heads of apostles in the possession of h. r. h. the grand duchess of weimar would have been out of my province in this work, and, with regard to them, i must confine myself to pointing out that the difference in style does not allow of our placing the weimar drawings in the same category as those here reproduced. the mode of grouping in the weimar drawings is of itself sufficient to indicate that they were not executed before the picture was painted, but, on the contrary, afterwards, and it is, on the face of it, incredible that so great a master should thus have copied from his own work. the drawing of christ's head, in the brera palace at milan was perhaps originally the work of leonardo's hand; it has unfortunately been entirely retouched and re-drawn, so that no decisive opinion can be formed as to its genuineness. the red chalk drawing reproduced on pl. xlvi is in the accademia at venice; it was probably made before the text, nos._ _and_ , _was written. the two pen and ink sketches on pl. xlv seem to belong to an even earlier date; the more finished drawing of the two, on the right hand, represents christ with only st. john and judas and a third disciple whose action is precisely that described in no._ , _pl._ . _it is hardly necessary to observe that the other sketches on this page and the lines of text below the circle (containing the solution of a geometrical problem) have no reference to the picture of the last supper. with this figure of christ may be compared a similar pen and ink drawing reproduced on page_ _below on the left hand; the original is in the louvre. on this page again the rest of the sketches have no direct bearing on the composition of the last supper, not even, as it seems to me, the group of four men at the bottom to the right hand--who are listening to a fifth, in their midst addressing them. moreover the writing on this page (an explanation of a disk shaped instrument) is certainly not in the same style as we find constantly used by leonardo after the year_ . _it may be incidentally remarked that no sketches are known for the portrait of "mona lisa", nor do the ms. notes ever allude to it, though according to vasari the master had it in hand for fully four years. leonardo's cartoon for the picture of the battle of anghiari has shared the fate of the rival work, michaelangelo's "bathers summoned to battle". both have been lost in some wholly inexplicable manner. i cannot here enter into the remarkable history of this work; i can only give an account of what has been preserved to us of leonardo's scheme and preparations for executing it. the extent of the material in studies and drawings was till now quite unknown. their publication here may give some adequate idea of the grandeur of this famous work. the text given as no._ _contains a description of the particulars of the battle, but for the reasons given in the note to this text, i must abandon the idea of taking this passage as the basis of my attempt to reconstruct the picture as the artist conceived and executed it. i may here remind the reader that leonardo prepared the cartoon in the sala del papa of santa maria novella at florence and worked there from the end of october till february , and then was busied with the painting in the sala del consiglio in the palazzo della signoria, till the work was interrupted at the end of may . (see milanesi's note to vasari pp. -- vol. iv ed. .) vasari, as is well known, describes only one scene or episode of the cartoon--the battle for the standard in the foreground of the composition, as it would seem; and this only was ever finished as a mural decoration in the sala del consiglio. this portion of the composition is familiar to all from the disfigured copy engraved by edelinck. mariette had already very acutely observed that edelinck must surely have worked from a flemish copy of the picture. there is in the louvre a drawing by rubens (no. ) which also represents four horsemen fighting round a standard and which agrees with edelinck's engraving, but the engraving reverses the drawing. an earlier flemish drawing, such as may have served as the model for both rubens and edelinck, is in the uffizi collection (see philpots's photograph, no. ). it seems to be a work of the second half of the xvith century, a time when both the picture and the cartoon had already been destroyed. it is apparently the production of a not very skilled hand. raphael trichet du fresne, , mentions that a small picture by leonardo himself of the battle of the standard was then extant in the tuileries; by this he probably means the painting on panel which is now in the possession of madame timbal in paris, and which has lately been engraved by haussoullier as a work by leonardo. the picture, which is very carefully painted, seems to me however to be the work of some unknown florentine painter, and probably executed within the first ten years of the xvith century. at the same time, it would seem to be a copy not from leonardo's cartoon, but from his picture in the palazzo della signoria; at any rate this little picture, and the small flemish drawing in florence are the oldest finished copies of this episode in the great composition of the battle of anghiari. in his life of raphael, vasari tells us that raphael copied certain works of leonardo's during his stay in florence. raphael's first visit to florence lasted from the middle of october till july , and he revisited it in the summer of . the hasty sketch, now in the possession of the university of oxford and reproduced on page also represents the battle of the standard and seems to have been made during his first stay, and therefore not from the fresco but from the cartoon; for, on the same sheet we also find, besides an old man's head drawn in leonardo's style, some studies for the figure of st. john the martyr which raphael used in in his great fresco in the church of san severo at perugia. of leonardo's studies for the battle of anghiari i must in the first place point to five, on three of which--pl. lii , pl. liii, pl. lvi--we find studies for the episode of the standard. the standard bearer, who, in the above named copies is seen stooping, holding on to the staff across his shoulder, is immediately recognisable as the left-hand figure in raphael's sketch, and we find it in a similar attitude in leonardo's pen and ink drawing in the british museum--pl. lii, --the lower figure to the right. it is not difficult to identify the same figure in two more complicated groups in the pen and ink drawings, now in the accademia at venice--pl. liii, and pl. liv--where we also find some studies of foot soldiers fighting. on the sheet in the british museum--pl. lii, --we find, among others, one group of three horses galloping forwards: one horseman is thrown and protects himself with his buckler against the lance thrusts of two others on horseback, who try to pierce him as they ride past. the same action is repeated, with some variation, in two sketches in pen and ink on a third sheet, in the accademia at venice, pl. lv; a coincidence which suggests the probability of such an incident having actually been represented on the cartoon. we are not, it is true, in a position to declare with any certainty which of these three dissimilar sketches may have been the nearest to the group finally adopted in executing the cartoon. with regard, however, to one of the groups of horsemen it is possible to determine with perfect certainty not only which arrangement was preferred, but the position it occupied in the composition. the group of horsemen on pl. lvii is a drawing in black chalk at windsor, which is there attributed to leonardo, but which appears to me to be the work of cesare da sesto, and the commendatore giov. morelli supports me in this view. it can hardly be doubted that da sesto, as a pupil of leonardo's, made this drawing from his master's cartoon, if we compare it with the copy made by raphael--here reproduced, for just above the fighting horseman in raphael's copy it is possible to detect a horse which is seen from behind, going at a slower pace, with his tail flying out to the right and the same horse may be seen in the very same attitude carrying a dimly sketched rider, in the foreground of cesare da sesto's drawing._ _if a very much rubbed drawing in black chalk at windsor--pl. lvi--is, as it appears to be, the reversed impression of an original drawing, it is not difficult to supplement from it the portions drawn by cesare da sesto. nay, it may prove possible to reconstruct the whole of the lost cartoon from the mass of materials we now have at hand which we may regard as the nucleus of the composition. a large pen and ink drawing by raphael in the dresden collection, representing three horsemen fighting, and another, by cesare da sesto, in the uffizi, of light horsemen fighting are a further contribution which will help us to reconstruct it._ _the sketch reproduced on pl. lv gives a suggestive example of the way in which foot-soldiers may have been introduced into the cartoon as fighting among the groups of horsemen; and i may here take the opportunity of mentioning that, for reasons which it would be out of place to enlarge upon here, i believe the two genuine drawings by raphael's hand in his "venetian sketch-book" as it is called--one of a standard bearer marching towards the left, and one of two foot-soldiers armed with spears and fighting with a horseman--to be undoubtedly copies from the cartoon of the battle of anghiari._ _leonardo's two drawings, preserved in the museum at buda-pesth and reproduced on pages and are preliminary studies for the heads of fighting warriors. the two heads drawn in black chalk (pg. ) and the one seen in profile, turned to the left, drawn in red chalk (pg. ), correspond exactly with those of two horsemen in the scene of the fight round the standard as we see them in madame timbal's picture and in the other finished copies. an old copy of the last named drawing by a pupil of leonardo is in ms. c. a. b; b (see saggio, tav. xxii). leonardo used to make such finished studies of heads as those, drawn on detached sheets, before beginning his pictures from his drawings--compare the preparatory studies for the fresco of the last supper, given on pl. xlvii and pl. l. other drawings of heads, all characterised by the expression of vehement excitement that is appropriate to men fighting, are to be seen at windsor (no. ) and at the accademia at venice (iv, ); at the back of one of the drawings at buda-pesth there is the bust of a warrior carrying a spear on his left shoulder, holding up the left arm (see csatakepek a xvi--lk szazadbol osszeallitotta pvlszky karoly). these drawings may have been made for other portions of the cartoon, of which no copies exist, and thus we are unable to identify these preparatory drawings. finally i may add that a sketch of fighting horse and foot soldiers, formerly in the possession of m. thiers and published by charles blanc in his "vies des peintres" can hardly be accepted as genuine. it is not to be found, as i am informed, among the late president's property, and no one appears to know where it now is._ _an attempted reconstruction of the cartoon, which is not only unsuccessful but perfectly unfounded, is to be seen in the lithograph by bergeret, published in charles blanc's "vies des peintres" and reprinted in "the great artists. l. da vinci", p. . this misleading pasticcio may now be rejected without hesitation._ _there are yet a few original drawings by leonardo which might be mentioned here as possibly belonging to the cartoon of the battle; such as the pen and ink sketches on pl. xxi and on pl. xxxviii, no. , but we should risk too wide a departure from the domain of ascertained fact._ _with regard to the colours and other materials used by leonardo the reader may be referred to the quotations from the accounts for the picture in question given by milanesi in his edition of vasari (vol. iv, p. , note) where we find entries of a similar character to those in leonardo's note books for the year ; s. k. m. (see no. )._ _that leonardo was employed in designing decorations and other preparations for high festivals, particularly for the court of milan, we learn not only from the writings of his contemporaries but from his own incidental allusions; for instance in ms. c. l b ( ), l. . in the arrangement of the texts referring to this i have placed those first, in which historical personages are named--nos. - . among the descriptions of allegorical subjects two texts lately found at oxford have been included, nos. and . they are particularly interesting because they are accompanied by large sketches which render the meaning of the texts perfectly clear. it is very intelligible that in other cases, where there are no illustrative sketches, the notes must necessarily remain obscure or admit of various interpretations. the literature of the time affords ample evidence of the use of such allegorical representations, particularly during the carnival and in leonardo's notes we find the carnival expressly mentioned--nos. and . vasari in his life of pontormo, particularly describes that artist's various undertakings for carnival festivities. these very graphic descriptions appear to me to throw great light in more ways than one on the meaning of leonardo's various notes as to allegorical representations and also on mottoes and emblems--nos. - . in passing judgment on the allegorical sketches and emblems it must not be overlooked that even as pictures they were always accompanied by explanations in words. several finished drawings of allegorical compositions or figures have been preserved, but as they have no corresponding explanation in the mss. they had no claim to be reproduced here. the female figure on pl. xxvi may perhaps be regarded as a study for such an allegorical painting, of which the purport would have been explained by an inscription._ on madonna pictures. . [in the autumn of] i began the two madonna [pictures]. [footnote: photographs of this page have been published by braun, no. , and philpot, no. . . _incominciai_. we have no other information as to the two pictures of the madonna here spoken of. as leonardo here tells us that he had begun two madonnas at the same time, the word '_incominciai_' may be understood to mean that he had begun at the same time preparatory studies for two pictures to be painted later. if this is so, the non-existence of the pictures may be explained by supposing that they were only planned and never executed. i may here mention a few studies for pictures of the madonna which probably belong to this early time; particularly a drawing in silver-point on bluish tinted paper at windsor--see pl. xl, no. --, a drawing of which the details have almost disappeared in the original but have been rendered quite distinct in the reproduction; secondly a slight pen and ink sketch in, the codex vallardi, in the louvre, fol. , no. ; again a silver point drawing of a virgin and child drawn over again with the pen in the his de la salle collection also in the louvre, no. . (see vicomte both de tauzia, _notice des dessins de la collection his de la salle, exposes au louvre_. paris , pp. , .) this drawing is, it is true, traditionally ascribed to raphael, but the author of the catalogue very justly points out its great resemblance with the sketches for madonnas in the british museum which are indisputably leonardo's. some of these have been published by mr. henry wallis in the art journal, new ser. no. , feb. . if the non-existence of the two pictures here alluded to justifies my hypothesis that only studies for such pictures are meant by the text, it may also be supposed that the drawings were made for some comrade in verrocchio's atelier. (see vasari, sansoni's ed. florence . vol. iv, p. ): "_e perche a lerenzo piaceva fuor di modo la maniera di lionardo, la seppe cosi bene imitare, che niuno fu che nella pulitezza e nel finir l'opere con diligenza l'imitasse più di lui_." leonardo's notes give me no opportunity of discussing the pictures executed by him in florence, before he moved to milan. so the studies for the unfinished picture of the adoration of the magi--in the uffizi, florence--cannot be described here, nor would any discussion about the picture in the louvre "_la vierge aux rochers_" be appropriate in the absence of all allusion to it in the mss. therefore, when i presently add a few remarks on this painting in explanation of the master's drawings for it, it will be not merely with a view to facilitate critical researches about the picture now in the national gallery, london, which by some critics has been pronounced to be a replica of the louvre picture, but also because i take this opportunity of publishing several finished studies of the master's which, even if they were not made in florence but later in milan, must have been prior to the painting of the last supper. the original picture in paris is at present so disfigured by dust and varnish that the current reproductions in photography actually give evidence more of the injuries to which the picture has been exposed than of the original work itself. the wood-cut given on p. , is only intended to give a general notion of the composition. it must be understood that the outline and expression of the heads, which in the picture is obscured but not destroyed, is here altogether missed. the facsimiles which follow are from drawings which appear to me to be studies for "_la vierge aux rochers_." . a drawing in silver point on brown toned paper of a woman's head looking to the left. in the royal library at turin, apparently a study from nature for the angel's head (pl. xlii). . a study of drapery for the left leg of the same figure, done with the brush, indian ink on greenish paper, the lights heightened with white. the original is at windsor, no. . the reproduction pl. xliii is defective in the shadow on the upper part of the thigh, which is not so deep as in the original; it should also be observed that the folds of the drapery near the hips are somewhat altered in the finished work in the louvre, while the london copy shows a greater resemblance to this study in that particular. . a study in red chalk for the bust of the infant christ--no. in the windsor collection (pl. xliv). the well-known silver-point drawing on pale green paper, in the louvre, of a boy's head (no. in reiset, _notice des dessins, ecoles d'italie_) seems to me to be a slightly altered copy, either from the original picture or from this red chalk study. . a silver-point study on greenish paper, for the head of john the baptist, reproduced on p. . this was formerly in the codex vallardi and is now exhibited among the drawings in the louvre. the lights are, in the original, heightened with white; the outlines, particularly round the head and ear, are visibly restored. there is a study of an outstretched hand--no. in the windsor collection--which was published in the grosvenor gallery publication, , simply under the title of: "no. study of a hand, pointing" which, on the other hand, i regard as a copy by a pupil. the action occurs in the kneeling angel of the paris picture and not in the london copy. these four genuine studies form, i believe, a valuable substitute in the absence of any ms. notes referring to the celebrated paris picture.] bernardo di bandino's portrait. . a tan-coloured small cap, a doublet of black serge, a black jerkin lined a blue coat lined, with fur of foxes' breasts, and the collar of the jerkin covered with black and white stippled velvet bernardo di bandino baroncelli; black hose. [footnote: these eleven lines of text are by the side of the pen and ink drawing of a man hanged--pl. lxii, no. . this drawing was exhibited in at the _ecole des beaux-arts_ in paris and the compilers of the catalogue amused themselves by giving the victim's name as follows: "_un pendu, vetu d'une longue robe, les mains liées sur le dos ... bernardo di bendino barontigni, marchand de pantalons_" (see _catalogue descriptif des dessins de mailres anciens exposes a l'ecole des beaux arts_, paris ; no. , pp. - ). now, the criminal represented here, is none other than bernardino di bandino baroncelli the murderer of giuliano de'medici, whose name as a coadjutor in the conspiracy of the pazzi has gained a melancholy notoriety by the tragedy of the th april . bernardo was descended from an ancient family and the son of the man who, under king ferrante, was president of the high court of justice in naples. his ruined fortunes, it would seem, induced him to join the pazzi; he and francesco pazzi were entrusted with the task of murdering giuliano de'medici on the fixed day. their victim not appearing in the cathedral at the hour when they expected him, the two conspirators ran to the palace of the medici and induced him to accompany them. giuliano then took his place in the chancel of the cathedral, and as the officiating priest raised the host--the sign agreed upon--bernardo stabbed the unsuspecting giuliano in the breast with a short sword; giuliano stepped backwards and fell dead. the attempt on lorenzo's life however, by the other conspirators at the same moment, failed of success. bernardo no sooner saw that lorenzo tried to make his escape towards the sacristy, than he rushed upon him, and struck down francesco nori who endeavoured to protect lorenzo. how lorenzo then took refuge behind the brazen doors of the sacristy, and how, as soon as giuliano's death was made known, the further plans of the conspirators were defeated, while a terrible vengeance overtook all the perpetrators and accomplices, this is no place to tell. bernardo bandini alone seemed to be favoured by fortune; he hid first in the tower of the cathedral, and then escaped undiscovered from florence. poliziano, who was with lorenzo in the cathedral, says in his 'conjurationis pactianae commentarium': "_bandinus fugitans in tiphernatem incidit, a quo in aciem receptus senas pervenit_." and gino capponi in summing up the reports of the numerous contemporary narrators of the event, says: "_bernardo bandini ricoverato in costantinopoli, fu per ordine del sultano preso e consegnato a un antonio di bernardino dei medici, che lorenzo aveva mandato apposta in turchia: così era grande la potenza di quest' uomo e grande la voglia di farne mostra e che non restasse in vita chi aveagli ucciso il fratello, fu egli applicato appena giunto_" (_storia della republica di firenze ii_, , ). details about the dates may be found in the _chronichetta di belfredello strinati alfieri_: "_bernardo di bandino bandini sopradetto ne venne preso da gostantinopoti a dì . dicembre e disaminato, che fu al bargello, fu impiccato alle finestre di detto bargello allato alla doana a dì . dicembre mcccclxxix che pochi dì stette_." it may however be mentioned with reference to the mode of writing the name of the assassin that, though most of his contemporaries wrote bernardo bandini, in the _breve chronicon caroli petri de joanninis_ he is called bernardo di bandini baroncelli; and, in the _sententiae domini matthaei de toscana_, bernardus joannis bandini de baroncellis, as is written on leonardo's drawing of him when hanged. now vasari, in the life of _andrea del castagno_ (vol. ii, ; ed. milanesi ), tells us that in this painter was commissioned by order of the signoria to represent the members of the pazzi conspiracy as traitors, on the facade of the palazzo del podestà --the bargello. this statement is obviously founded on a mistake, for andrea del castagno was already dead in . he had however been commissioned to paint rinaldo degli albizzi, when declared a rebel and exiled in , and his adherents, as hanging head downwards; and in consequence he had acquired the nickname of andrea degl' impiccati. on the st july the council of eight came to the following resolution: "_item servatis etc. deliberaverunt et santiaverunt sandro botticelli pro ejus labore in pingendo proditores flor. quadraginta largos_" (see g. milanesi, _arch. star. vi_ ( ) p. note.) as has been told, giuliano de' medici was murdered on the th april , and we see by this that only three months later botticelli was paid for his painting of the "_proditores_". we can however hardly suppose that all the members of the conspiracy were depicted by him in fresco on the facade of the palace, since no fewer than eighty had been condemned to death. we have no means of knowing whether, besides botticelli, any other painters, perhaps leonardo, was commissioned, when the criminals had been hanged in person out of the windows of the palazzo del podestà to represent them there afterwards in effigy in memory of their disgrace. nor do we know whether the assassin who had escaped may at first not have been provisionally represented as hanged in effigy. now, when we try to connect the historical facts with this drawing by leonardo reproduced on pl. lxii, no. i, and the full description of the conspirator's dress and its colour on the same sheet, there seems to be no reasonable doubt that bernardo bandini is here represented as he was actually hanged on december th, , after his capture at constantinople. the dress is certainly not that in which he committed the murder. a long furred coat might very well be worn at constantinople or at florence in december, but hardly in april. the doubt remains whether leonardo described bernardo's dress so fully because it struck him as remarkable, or whether we may not rather suppose that this sketch was actually made from nature with the intention of using it as a study for a wall painting to be executed. it cannot be denied that the drawing has all the appearance of having been made for this purpose. be this as it may, the sketch under discussion proves, at any rate, that leonardo was in florence in december , and the note that accompanies it is valuable as adding one more characteristic specimen to the very small number of his mss. that can be proved to have been written between and .] notes on the last supper ( - ). . one who was drinking and has left the glass in its position and turned his head towards the speaker. another, twisting the fingers of his hands together turns with stern brows to his companion [ ]. another with his hands spread open shows the palms, and shrugs his shoulders up his ears making a mouth of astonishment [ ]. [ ] another speaks into his neighbour's ear and he, as he listens to him, turns towards him to lend an ear [ ], while he holds a knife in one hand, and in the other the loaf half cut through by the knife. [ ] another who has turned, holding a knife in his hand, upsets with his hand a glass on the table [ ]. [footnote , : in the original ms. there is no sketch to accompany these passages, and if we compare them with those drawings made by leonardo in preparation for the composition of the picture--pl. xlv, xlvi--, (compare also pl. lii, and the drawings on p. ) it is impossible to recognise in them a faithful interpretation of the whole of this text; but, if we compare these passages with the finished picture (see p. ) we shall see that in many places they coincide. for instance, compare no. , . -- , with the fourth figure on the right hand of christ. the various actions described in lines -- , -- are to be seen in the group of peter, john and judas; in the finished picture however it is not a glass but a salt cellar that judas is upsetting.] . another lays his hand on the table and is looking. another blows his mouthful. [ ] another leans forward to see the speaker shading his eyes with his hand. [ ] another draws back behind the one who leans forward, and sees the speaker between the wall and the man who is leaning [footnote: . _chinato_. i have to express my regret for having misread this word, written _cinato_ in the original, and having altered it to _"ciclo"_ when i first published this text, in 'the academy' for nov. , immediately after i had discovered it, and subsequently in the small biography of leonardo da vinci (great artists) p. .]. [footnote: in no. . line i must refer to the furthest figure on the left; , and describe actions which are given to the group of disciples on the left hand of christ.] . christ. count giovanni, the one with the cardinal of mortaro. [footnote: as this note is in the same small manuscript as the passage here immediately preceding it, i may be justified in assuming that leonardo meant to use the features of the person here named as a suitable model for the figure of christ. the celebrated drawing of the head of christ, now hanging in the brera gallery at milan, has obviously been so much restored that it is now impossible to say, whether it was ever genuine. we have only to compare it with the undoubtedly genuine drawings of heads of the disciples in pi. xlvii, xlviii and l, to admit that not a single line of the milan drawing in its present state can be by the same hand.] . philip, simon, matthew, thomas, james the greater, peter, philip, andrew, bartholomew. [footnote: see pi. xlvi. the names of the disciples are given in the order in which they are written in the original, from right to left, above each head. the original drawing is here slightly reduced in scale; it measures centimetres in length by in breadth.] . on the battle of anghiari. florentine neri di gino capponi bernardetto de' medici micheletto, niccolo da pisa conte francesco pietro gian paolo guelfo orsino, messer rinaldo degli albizzi begin with the address of niccolo piccinino to the soldiers and the banished florentines among whom are messer rinaldo degli albizzi and other florentines. then let it be shown how he first mounted on horseback in armour; and the whole army came after him-- squadrons of cavalry, and foot soldiers went with him. very early in the morning the patriarch went up a hill to reconnoitre the country, that is the hills, fields and the valley watered by a river; and from thence he beheld niccolo picinino coming from borgo san sepolcro with his people, and with a great dust; and perceiving them he returned to the camp of his own people and addressed them. having spoken he prayed to god with clasped hands, when there appeared a cloud in which saint peter appeared and spoke to the patriarch.-- cavalry were sent forward by the patriarch to hinder or check the rush of the enemy. in the foremost troop francesco the son of niccolo piccinino [ ] was the first to attack the bridge which was held by the patriarch and the florentines. beyond the bridge to his left he sent forward some infantry to engage ours, who drove them back, among whom was their captain micheletto [ ] whose lot it was to be that day at the head of the army. here, at this bridge there is a severe struggle; our men conquer and the enemy is repulsed. here guido and astorre, his brother, the lord of faenza with a great number of men, re-formed and renewed the fight, and rushed upon the florentines with such force that they recovered the bridge and pushed forward as far as the tents. but simonetto advanced with horse, and fell upon the enemy and drove them back once more from the place, and recaptured the bridge; and behind him came more men with horse soldiers. and thus for a long time they fought with varying fortune. but then the patriarch, in order to divert the enemy, sent forward niccolo da pisa [ ] and napoleone orsino, a beardless lad, followed by a great multitude of men, and then was done another great feat of arms. at the same time niccolo piccinino urged forward the remnant of his men, who once more made ours give way; and if it had not been that the patriarch set himself at their head and, by his words and deeds controlled the captains, our soldiers would have taken to flight. the patriarch had some artillery placed on the hill and with these he dispersed the enemy's infantry; and the disorder was so complete that niccolo began to call back his son and all his men, and they took to flight towards borgo. and then began a great slaughter of men; none escaped but the foremost of those who had fled or who hid themselves. the battle continued until sunset, when the patriarch gave his mind to recalling his men and burying the dead, and afterwards a trophy was erected. [footnote: . this passage does not seem to me to be in leonardo's hand, though it has hitherto been generally accepted as genuine. not only is the writing unlike his, but the spelling also is quite different. i would suggest that this passage is a description of the events of the battle drawn up for the painter by order of the signoria, perhaps by some historian commissioned by them, to serve as a scheme or programme of the work. the whole tenor of the style seems to me to argue in favour of this theory; and besides, it would be in no way surprising that such a document should have been preserved among leonardo's autographs.] allegorical representations referring to the duke of milan ( - ). . ermine with blood galeazzo, between calm weather and a representation of a tempest. [footnote: . only the beginning of this text is legible; the writing is much effaced and the sense is consequently obscure. it seems to refer like the following passage to an allegorical picture.] . il moro with spectacles, and envy depicted with false report and justice black for il moro. labour as having a branch of vine [_or_ a screw] in her hand. . il moro as representing good fortune, with hair, and robes, and his hands in front, and messer gualtieri taking him by the robes with a respectful air from below, having come in from the front [ ]. again, poverty in a hideous form running behind a youth. il moro covers him with the skirt of his robe, and with his gilt sceptre he threatens the monster. a plant with its roots in the air to represent one who is at his last;--a robe and favour. of tricks [_or_ of magpies] and of burlesque poems [_or_ of starlings]. those who trust themselves to live near him, and who will be a large crowd, these shall all die cruel deaths; and fathers and mothers together with their families will be devoured and killed by cruel creatures. [footnote: -- have already been published by _amoretti_ in _memorie storiche_ cap. xii. he adds this note with regard to gualtieri: "_a questo m. gualtieri come ad uomo generoso e benefico scrive il bellincioni un sonetto (pag, ) per chiedergli un piacere; e 'l tantio rendendo ragione a lodovico il moro, perche pubblicasse le rime del bellincioni; ciò hammi imposto, gli dice: l'humano fidele, prudente e sollicito executore delli tuoi comandamenti gualtero, che fa in tutte le cose ove tu possi far utile, ogni studio vi metti._" a somewhat mysterious and evidently allegorical composition--a pen and ink drawing--at windsor, see pl lviii, contains a group of figures in which perhaps the idea is worked out which is spoken of in the text, lines - .] . he was blacker than a hornet, his eyes were as red as a burning fire and he rode on a tall horse six spans across and more than long with six giants tied up to his saddle-bow and one in his hand which he gnawed with his teeth. and behind him came boars with tusks sticking out of their mouths, perhaps ten spans. allegorical representations ( -- ). . above the helmet place a half globe, which is to signify our hemisphere, in the form of a world; on which let there be a peacock, richly decorated, and with his tail spread over the group; and every ornament belonging to the horse should be of peacock's feathers on a gold ground, to signify the beauty which comes of the grace bestowed on him who is a good servant. on the shield a large mirror to signify that he who truly desires favour must be mirrored in his virtues. on the opposite side will be represented fortitude, in like manner in her place with her pillar in her hand, robed in white, to signify ... and all crowned; and prudence with eyes. the housing of the horse should be of plain cloth of gold closely sprinkled with peacock's eyes, and this holds good for all the housings of the horse, and the man's dress. and the man's crest and his neck-chain are of peacock's feathers on golden ground. on the left side will be a wheel, the centre of which should be attached to the centre of the horse's hinder thigh piece, and in the centre prudence is seen robed in red, charity sitting in a fiery chariot and with a branch of laurel in her hand, to signify the hope which comes of good service. [ ] messer antonio grimani of venice companion of antonio maria [ ]. [footnote: _messer antonio gri_. his name thus abbreviated is, there can be no doubt, grimani. antonio grimani was the famous doge who in commanded the venetian fleet in battle against the turks. but after the abortive conclusion of the expedition--ludovico being the ally of the turks who took possession of friuli--, grimani was driven into exile; he went to live at rome with his son cardinal domenico grimani. on being recalled to venice he filled the office of doge from to . _antonio maria_ probably means antonio maria grimani, the patriarch of aquileia.] . fame should be depicted as covered all over with tongues instead of feathers, and in the figure of a bird. . pleasure and pain represent as twins, since there never is one without the other; and as if they were united back to back, since they are contrary to each other. [ ] clay, gold. [footnote: . _oro. fango_: gold, clay. these words stand below the allegorical figure.] if you take pleasure know that he has behind him one who will deal you tribulation and repentance. [ ] this represents pleasure together with pain, and show them as twins because one is never apart from the other. they are back to back because they are opposed to each other; and they exist as contraries in the same body, because they have the same basis, inasmuch as the origin of pleasure is labour and pain, and the various forms of evil pleasure are the origin of pain. therefore it is here represented with a reed in his right hand which is useless and without strength, and the wounds it inflicts are poisoned. in tuscany they are put to support beds, to signify that it is here that vain dreams come, and here a great part of life is consumed. it is here that much precious time is wasted, that is, in the morning, when the mind is composed and rested, and the body is made fit to begin new labours; there again many vain pleasures are enjoyed; both by the mind in imagining impossible things, and by the body in taking those pleasures that are often the cause of the failing of life. and for these reasons the reed is held as their support. [footnote: . the pen and ink drawing on pi. lix belongs to this passage.] [footnote: . _tribolatione_. in the drawing caltrops may be seen lying in the old man's right hand, others are falling and others again are shewn on the ground. similar caltrops are drawn in ms. tri. p. and underneath them, as well as on page the words _triboli di ferro_ are written. from the accompanying text it appears that they were intended to be scattered on the ground at the bottom of ditches to hinder the advance of the enemy. count giulio porro who published a short account of the trivulzio ms. in the "_archivio storico lombardo_", anno viii part iv (dec. , ) has this note on the passages treating of "_triboli_": "_e qui aggiungerò che anni sono quando venne fabbricata la nuova cavallerizza presso il castello di milano, ne furono trovati due che io ho veduto ed erano precisamente quali si trovano descritti e disegnati da leonardo in questo codice_". there can therefore be no doubt that this means of defence was in general use, whether it were originally leonardo's invention or not. the play on the word "_tribolatione_", as it occurs in the drawing at oxford, must then have been quite intelligible.] [footnote: -- . these lines, in the original, are written on the left side of the page and refer to the figure shown on pi. lxi. next to it is placed the group of three figures given in pi. lx no. i. lines and , which are written under it, are the only explanation given.] evil-thinking is either envy or ingratitude. . envy must be represented with a contemptuous motion of the hand towards heaven, because if she could she would use her strength against god; make her with her face covered by a mask of fair seeming; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm branch and by an olive-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and myrtle, to signify that victory and truth are odious to her. many thunderbolts should proceed from her to signify her evil speaking. let her be lean and haggard because she is in perpetual torment. make her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent, and make her with a quiver with tongues serving as arrows, because she often offends with it. give her a leopard's skin, because this creature kills the lion out of envy and by deceit. give her too a vase in her hand full of flowers and scorpions and toads and other venomous creatures; make her ride upon death, because envy, never dying, never tires of ruling. make her bridle, and load her with divers kinds of arms because all her weapons are deadly. toleration. intolerable. no sooner is virtue born than envy comes into the world to attack it; and sooner will there be a body without a shadow than virtue without envy. [footnote: the larger of the two drawings on pi. lxi is explained by the first lines of this passage. l. and , which are written above the space between the two drawings, do not seem to have any reference to either. l. - are below the allegorical twin figure which they serve to explain.] . when pluto's paradise is opened, then there may be devils placed in twelve pots like openings into hell. here will be death, the furies, ashes, many naked children weeping; living fires made of various colours.... . john the baptist saint augustin saint peter paul elisabeth saint clara. bernardino our lady louis bonaventura anthony of padua. saint francis. francis, anthony, a lily and book; bernardino with the [monogram of] jesus, louis with fleur de lys on his breast and the crown at his feet, bonaventura with seraphim, saint clara with the tabernacle, elisabeth with a queen's crown. [footnote: . the text of the first six lines is written within a square space of the same size as the copy here given. the names are written in the margin following the order in which they are here printed. in lines -- the names of those saints are repeated of whom it seemed necessary to point out the emblems.] list of drawings. . a head, full face, of a young man with fine flowing hair, many flowers drawn from nature, a head, full face, with curly hair, certain figures of saint jerome, [ ] the measurements of a figure, drawings of furnaces. a head of the duke, [ ] many designs for knots, studies for the panel of saint angelo a small composition of girolamo da fegline, a head of christ done with the pen, [ ] saint sebastians, several compositions of angels, a chalcedony, a head in profile with fine hair, some pitchers seen in(?) perspective, some machines for ships, some machines for waterworks, a head, a portrait of atalanta raising her face; the head of geronimo da fegline, the head of gian francisco borso, several throats of old women, several heads of old men, several nude figures, complete, several arms, eyes, feet, and positions, a madonna, finished, another, nearly in profile, head of our lady ascending into heaven, a head of an old man with long chin, a head of a gypsy girl, a head with a hat on, a representation of the passion, a cast, a head of a girl with her hair gathered in a knot, a head, with the brown hair dressed. [footnote: . this has already been published by amoretti _memorie storiche_ cap. xvi. his reading varies somewhat from that here given, _e. g._ l. and . _certi sangirolami in su d'una figura_; and instead of i. . _un san bastiano_.] [footnote: . . _molti disegni di gruppi_. vasari in his life of leonardo (iv, , ed. milanesi ) says: "_oltreché perse tempo fino a disegnare_ gruppi _di corde fatti con ordine, e che da un capo seguissi tutto il resto fino all' altro, tanto che s'empiessi un tondo; che se ne vede in istampa uno difficilissimo e molto bello, e nel mezzo vi sono queste parole: leonardus vinci accademia_". _gruppi_ must here be understood as a technical expression for those twisted ornaments which are well known through wood cuts. amoretti mentions six different ones in the ambrosian library. i am indebted to m. delaborde for kindly informing me that the original blocks of these are preserved in his department in the bibliothèque nationale in paris. on the cover of these volumes is a copy from one of them. the size of the original is / centimetres by / . the centre portion of another is given on p. . g. govi remarks on these ornaments (_saggio_ p. ): "_codesti gruppi eran probabilmente destinati a servir di modello a ferri da rilegatori per adornar le cartelle degli scolari (?). fregi somigliantissimi a questi troviamo infatti impressi in oro sui cartoni di vari volumi contemporanei, e li vediam pur figurare nelle lettere iniziali di alcune edizioni del tempo._" dürer who copied them, omitting the inscription, added to the second impressions his own monogram. in his diary he designates them simply as "_die sechs knoten_" (see thausing, life of a. dürer i, , ). in leonardo's mss. we find here and there little sketches or suggestions for similar ornaments. compare too g. mongeri, _l'arte in milano_, p. where an ornament of the same character is given from the old decorations of the vaulted ceiling of the sacristy of s. maria delle grazie.] [footnote: , . the meaning in which the word _coppi_, literally pitchers, is here used i am unable to determine; but a change to _copie_ seems to me too doubtful to be risked.] . stubborn rigour. doomed rigour. [footnote: see pi. lxii, no. , the two upper pen and ink drawings. the originals, in the windsor collection are slightly washed with colour. the background is blue sky; the plough and the instrument with the compass are reddish brown, the sun is tinted yellow]. . obstacles cannot crush me every obstacle yields to stern resolve he who is fixed to a star does not change his mind. [footnote: this text is written to elucidate two sketches which were obviously the first sketches for the drawings reproduced on pl lxii, no. .] . ivy is [a type] of longevity. [footnote: in the original there is, near this text, a sketch of a coat wreathed above the waist with ivy.] . truth the sun. falsehood a mask. innocence, malignity. fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness. fire may be represented as the destroy of all sophistry, and as the image and demonstration of truth; because it is light and drives out darkness which conceals all essences [or subtle things]. [footnote: see pi. lxiii. l. - are in the middle of the page; . - to the right below; . - below in the middle column. the rest of the text is below the sketches on the left. there are some other passages on this page relating to geometry.] truth. fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold. truth at last cannot be hidden. dissimulation is of no avail. dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. falsehood puts on a mask. nothing is hidden under the sun. fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth. . movement will cease before we are weary of being useful. movement will fail sooner than usefulness. death sooner than i am never weary of weariness. being useful, in serving others i is a motto for carnval. cannot do enough. without fatigue. no labour is sufficient to tire me. hands into which ducats and precious stones fall like snow; they never become tired by serving, but this service is only for its utility and not for our i am never weary own benefit. of being useful. naturally nature has so disposed me. . this shall be placed in the hand of ingratitude. wood nourishes the fire that consumes it. . to represent ingratitude. when the sun appears which dispels darkness in general, you put out the light which dispelled it for you in particular for your need and convenience. . on this side adam and eve on the other; o misery of mankind, of how many things do you make yourself the slave for money! [footnote: see pi. lxiv. the figures of adam and eve in the clouds here alluded to would seem to symbolise their superiority to all earthly needs.] . thus are base unions sundered. [footnote: a much blurred sketch is on the page by this text. it seems to represent an unravelled plait or tissue.] . constancy does not begin, but is that which perseveres. [footnote: a drawing in red chalk, also rubbed, which stands in the original in the middle of this text, seems to me to be intended for a sword hilt, held in a fist.] . love, fear, and esteem,-- write these on three stones. of servants. . prudence strength. . fame alone raises herself to heaven, because virtuous things are in favour with god. disgrace should be represented upside down, because all her deeds are contrary to god and tend to hell. . short liberty. . nothing is so much to be feared as evil report. this evil report is born of life. . not to disobey. . a felled tree which is shooting again. i am still hopeful. a falcon, time. [footnote: i. _albero tagliato_. this emblem was displayed during the carnival at florence in . see vasari vi, , ed. milanesi . but the coincidence is probably accidental.] . truth here makes falsehood torment lying tongues. . such as harm is when it hurts me not, is good which avails me not. [footnote: see pi. lx, no. . compare this sketch with that on pi. lxii, no. . below the two lines of the text there are two more lines: _li gùchi (giunchi) che ritégò le paglucole (pagliucole) chelli (che li) anniegano_.] . he who offends others, does not secure himself. [footnote: see pi. lx, no. .] . ingratitude. [footnote: see pi. lx, no. . below the bottom sketches are the unintelligible words "_sta stilli_." for "_ingratitudo_" compare also nos. and .] . one's thoughts turn towards hope. [footnote: . by the side of this passage is a sketch of a cage with a bird sitting in it.] ornaments and decorations for feasts ( - ). . a bird, for a comedy. [footnote: the biographies say so much, and the author's notes say so little of the invention attributed to leonardo of making artificial birds fly through the air, that the text here given is of exceptional interest from being accompanied by a sketch. it is a very slight drawing of a bird with outspread wings, which appears to be sliding down a stretched string. leonardo's flying machines and his studies of the flight of birds will be referred to later.] . a dress for the carnival. to make a beautiful dress cut it in thin cloth and give it an odoriferous varnish, made of oil of turpentine and of varnish in grain, with a pierced stencil, which must be wetted, that it may not stick to the cloth; and this stencil may be made in a pattern of knots which afterwards may be filled up with black and the ground with white millet.[footnote : the grains of black and white millet would stick to the varnish and look like embroidery.] [footnote: ser giuliano, da vinci the painter's brother, had been commissioned, with some others, to order and to execute the garments of the allegorical figures for the carnival at florence in -- ; vasari however is incorrect in saying of the florentine carnival of : "_equelli che feciono ed ordinarono gli abiti delle figure furono ser piero da vinci, padre di lonardo, e bernardino di giordano, bellissimi ingegni_" (see milanesi's ed. voi. vi, pg. .)] . snow taken from the high peaks of mountains might be carried to hot places and let to fall at festivals in open places at summer time. vinci, volume *** this ebook was produced by charles aldarondo and the distributed proofreaders team. the notebooks of leonardo da vinci volume translated by jean paul richter xi. the notes on sculpture. compared with the mass of manuscript treating of painting, a very small number of passages bearing on the practice and methods of sculpture are to be found scattered through the note books; these are here given at the beginning of this section (nos. - ). there is less cause for surprise at finding that the equestrian statue of francesco sforza is only incidentally spoken of; for, although leonardo must have worked at it for a long succession of years, it is not in the nature of the case that it could have given rise to much writing. we may therefore regard it as particularly fortunate that no fewer than thirteen notes in the master's handwriting can be brought together, which seem to throw light on the mysterious history of this famous work. until now writers on leonardo were acquainted only with the passages numbered , , , and . in arranging these notes on sculpture i have given the precedence to those which treat of the casting of the monument, not merely because they are the fullest, but more especially with a view to reconstructing the monument, an achievement which really almost lies within our reach by combining and comparing the whole of the materials now brought to light, alike in notes and in sketches. a good deal of the first two passages, nos. and , which refer to this subject seems obscure and incomprehensible; still, they supplement each other and one contributes in no small degree to the comprehension of the other. a very interesting and instructive commentary on these passages may be found in the fourth chapter of vasari's introduzione della scultura under the title "come si fanno i modelli per fare di bronzo le figure grandi e picciole, e come le forme per buttarle; come si armino di ferri, e come si gettino di metallo," &c. among the drawings of models of the moulds for casting we find only one which seems to represent the horse in the act of galloping--no. . all the other designs show the horse as pacing quietly and as these studies of the horse are accompanied by copious notes as to the method of casting, the question as to the position of the horse in the model finally selected, seems to be decided by preponderating evidence. "il cavallo dello sforza"--c. boito remarks very appositely in the saggio on page , "doveva sembrare fratello al cavallo del colleoni. e si direbbe che questo fosse figlio del cavallo del gattamelata, il quale pare figlio di uno dei quattro cavalli che stavano forse sull' arco di nerone in roma" (now at venice). the publication of the saggio also contains the reproduction of a drawing in red chalk, representing a horse walking to the left and supported by a scaffolding, given here on pl. lxxvi, no. . it must remain uncertain whether this represents the model as it stood during the preparations for casting it, or whether--as seems to me highly improbable--this sketch shows the model as it was exhibited in on the piazza del castello in milan under a triumphal arch, on the occasion of the marriage of the emperor maximilian to bianca maria sforza. the only important point here is to prove that strong evidence seems to show that, of the numerous studies for the equestrian statue, only those which represent the horse pacing agree with the schemes of the final plans. the second group of preparatory sketches, representing the horse as galloping, must therefore be considered separately, a distinction which, in recapitulating the history of the origin of the monument seems justified by the note given under no. . galeazza maria sforza was assassinated in before his scheme for erecting a monument to his father francesco sforza could be carried into effect. in the following year ludovico il moro the young aspirant to the throne was exiled to pisa, and only returned to milan in when he was lord (governatore) of the state of milan, in after the minister cecco simonetta had been murdered. it may have been soon after this that ludovico il moro announced a competition for an equestrian statue, and it is tolerably certain that antonio del pollajuolo took part in it, from this passage in vasari's life of this artist: "e si trovo, dopo la morte sua, il disegno e modello che a lodovico sforza egli aveva fatto per la statua a cavallo di francesco sforza, duca di milano; il quale disegno e nel nostro libro, in due modi: in uno egli ha sotto verona; nell'altro, egli tutto armato, e sopra un basamento pieno di battaglie, fa saltare il cavallo addosso a un armato; ma la cagione perche non mettesse questi disegni in opera, non ho gia potuto sapere." one of pollajuolo's drawings, as here described, has lately been discovered by senatore giovanni morelli in the munich pinacothek. here the profile of the horseman is a portrait of francesco duke of milan, and under the horse, who is galloping to the left, we see a warrior thrown and lying on the ground; precisely the same idea as we find in some of leonardo's designs for the monument, as on pl. lxvi, lxvii, lxviii, lxix and lxxii no. ; and, as it is impossible to explain this remarkable coincidence by supposing that either artist borrowed it from the other, we can only conclude that in the terms of the competition the subject proposed was the duke on a horse in full gallop, with a fallen foe under its hoofs. leonardo may have been in the competition there and then, but the means for executing the monument do not seem to have been at once forthcoming. it was not perhaps until some years later that leonardo in a letter to the duke (no. ) reminded him of the project for the monument. then, after he had obeyed a summons to milan, the plan seems to have been so far modified, perhaps in consequence of a remonstrance on the part of the artist, that a pacing horse was substituted for one galloping, and it may have been at the same time that the colossal dimensions of the statue were first decided on. the designs given on pl. lxx, lxxi, lxxii, and , lxxiii and lxxiv and on pp. and , as well as three sketches on pl. lxix may be studied with reference to the project in its new form, though it is hardly possible to believe that in either of these we see the design as it was actually carried out. it is probable that in milan leonardo worked less on drawings, than in making small models of wax and clay as preparatory to his larger model. among the drawings enumerated above, one in black chalk, pl. lxxiii--the upper sketch on the right hand side, reminds us strongly of the antique statue of marcus aurelius. if, as it would seem, leonardo had not until then visited rome, he might easily have known this statue from drawings by his former master and friend verrocchio, for verrocchio had been in rome for a long time between and . in pope sixtus iv had this antique equestrian statue restored and placed on a new pedestal in front of the church of san giovanni in luterano. leonardo, although he was painting independently as early as in is still spoken of as working in verrocchio's studio in . two years later the venetian senate decided on erecting an equestrian statue to colleoni; and as verrocchio, to whom the work was entrusted, did not at once move from florence to venice--where he died in before the casting was completed--but on the contrary remained in florence for some years, perhaps even till , leonardo probably had the opportunity of seeing all his designs for the equestrian statue at venice and the red chalk drawing on pl. lxxiv may be a reminiscence of it. the pen and ink drawing on pl. lxxii, no. , reminds us of donatello's statue of gattamelata at padua. however it does not appear that leonardo was ever at padua before , but we may conclude that he took a special interest in this early bronze statue and the reports he could procure of it, form an incidental remark which is to be found in c. a. a; a, and which will be given in vol. ii under ricordi or memoranda. among the studies--in the widest sense of the word--made in preparation statue we may include the anatomy of the horse which lomazzo and vas mention; the most important parts of this work still exist in the queen's li windsor. it was beyond a doubt compiled by leonardo when at milan; only interesting records to be found among these designs are reproduced in nos. a but it must be pointed out that out of sheets of studies of the movements of the belonging to that treatise, a horse in full gallop occurs but once. if we may trust the account given by paulus jovius--about l -- leonardo's horse was represented as "vehementer incitatus et anhelatus". jovius had probably seen the model exhibited at milan; but, need we, in fact, infer from this description that the horse was galloping? compare vasari's description of the gattamelata monument at padua: "egli [donatello] vi ando ben volentieri, e fece il cavallo di bronzo, che e in sulla piazza di sant antonio, nel quale si dimostra lo sbuffamento ed il fremito del cavallo, ed il grande animo e la fierezza vivacissimamente espressa dall'arte nella figura che lo cavalca". these descriptions, it seems to me, would only serve to mark the difference between the work of the middle ages and that of the renaissance. we learn from a statement of sabba da castiglione that, when milan was taken by the french in , the model sustained some injury; and this informant, who, however is not invariably trustworthy, adds that leonardo had devoted fully sixteen years to this work (la forma del cavallo, intorno a cui leonardo avea sedici anni continui consumati). this often-quoted passage has given ground for an assumption, which has no other evidence to support it, that leonardo had lived in milan ever since . but i believe it is nearer the truth to suppose that this author's statement alludes to the fact that about sixteen years must have past since the competition in which leonardo had taken part. i must in these remarks confine myself strictly to the task in hand and give no more of the history of the sforza monument than is needed to explain the texts and drawings i have been able to reproduce. in the first place, with regard to the drawings, i may observe that they are all, with the following two exceptions, in the queen's library at windsor castle; the red chalk drawing on pl. lxxvi no. is in the ms. c. a. (see no. l ) and the fragmentary pen and ink drawing on page is in the ambrosian library. the drawings from windsor on pl. lxvi have undergone a trifling reduction from the size of the originals. there can no longer be the slightest doubt that the well-known engraving of several horsemen (passavant, le peintre-graveur, vol. v, p. , no. ) is only a copy after original drawings by leonardo, executed by some unknown engraver; we have only to compare the engraving with the facsimiles of drawings on pl. lxv, no. , pl. lxvii, lxviii and lxix which, it is quite evident, have served as models for the engraver. on pl. lxv no. , in the larger sketch to the right hand, only the base is distinctly visible, the figure of the horseman is effaced. leonardo evidently found it unsatisfactory and therefore rubbed it out. the base of the monument--the pedestal for the equestrian statue--is repeatedly sketched on a magnificent plan. in the sketch just mentioned it has the character of a shrine or aedicula to contain a sarcophagus. captives in chains are here represented on the entablature with their backs turned to that portion of the monument which more strictly constitutes the pedestal of the horse. the lower portion of the aedicula is surrounded by columns. in the pen and ink drawing pl. lxvi--the lower drawing on the right hand side--the sarcophagus is shown between the columns, and above the entablature is a plinth on which the horse stands. but this arrangement perhaps seemed to leonardo to lack solidity, and in the little sketch on the left hand, below, the sarcophagus is shown as lying under an arched canopy. in this the trophies and the captive warriors are detached from the angles. in the first of these two sketches the place for the trophies is merely indicated by a few strokes; in the third sketch on the left the base is altogether broader, buttresses and pinnacles having been added so as to form three niches. the black chalk drawing on pl. lxviii shows a base in which the angles are formed by niches with pilasters. in the little sketch to the extreme left on pl. lxv, no. , the equestrian statue serves to crown a circular temple somewhat resembling bramante's tempietto of san pietro in montario at rome, while the sketch above to the right displays an arrangement faintly reminding us of the tomb of the scaligers in verona. the base is thus constructed of two platforms or slabs, the upper one considerably smaller than the lower one which is supported on flying buttresses with pinnacles. on looking over the numerous studies in which the horse is not galloping but merely walking forward, we find only one drawing for the pedestal, and this, to accord with the altered character of the statue, is quieter and simpler in style (pl. lxxiv). it rises almost vertically from the ground and is exactly as long as the pacing horse. the whole base is here arranged either as an independent baldaquin or else as a projecting canopy over a recess in which the figure of the deceased duke is seen lying on his sarcophagus; in the latter case it was probably intended as a tomb inside a church. here, too, it was intended to fill the angles with trophies or captive warriors. probably only no. in the text refers to the work for the base of the monument. if we compare the last mentioned sketch with the description of a plan for an equestrian monument to gian giacomo trivulzio (no. ) it seems by no means impossible that this drawing is a preparatory study for the very monument concerning which the manuscript gives us detailed information. we have no historical record regarding this sketch nor do the archives in the trivulzio palace give us any information. the simple monument to the great general in san nazaro maggiore in milan consists merely of a sarcophagus placed in recess high on the wall of an octagonal chapel. the figure of the warrior is lying on the sarcophagus, on which his name is inscribed; a piece of sculpture which is certainly not leonardo's work. gian giacomo trivulzio died at chartres in , only five months before leonardo, and it seems to me highly improbable that this should have been the date of this sketch; under these circumstances it would have been done under the auspices of francis i, but the italian general was certainly not in favour with the french monarch at the time. gian giacomo trivulzio was a sworn foe to ludovico il moro, whom he strove for years to overthrow. on the th september he marched victorious into milan at the head of a french army. in a short time, however, he was forced to quit milan again when ludovico il moro bore down upon the city with a force of swiss troops. on the th of april following, after defeating lodovico at novara, trivulzio once more entered milan as a conqueror, but his hopes of becoming _governatore_ of the place were soon wrecked by intrigue. this victory and triumph, historians tell us, were signalised by acts of vengeance against the dethroned sforza, and it might have been particularly flattering to him that the casting and construction of the sforza monument were suspended for the time. it must have been at this moment--as it seems to me--that he commissioned the artist to prepare designs for his own monument, which he probably intended should find a place in the cathedral or in some other church. he, the husband of margherita di nicolino colleoni, would have thought that he had a claim to the same distinction and public homage as his less illustrious connection had received at the hands of the venetian republic. it was at this very time that trivulzio had a medal struck with a bust portrait of himself and the following remarkable inscription on the reverse:_ deo favente-- --dictvs-- --ia--expvlit--lvdovicv--sf-- (sfortiam) dvc-- (ducem) mli (mediolani)--noie (nomine)--regis--francorvm--eodem--ann --(anno) red't (redit)--lvs (ludovicus)--svperatvs et captvs--est--ab--eo. _in the library of the palazzo trivulzio there is a ms. of callimachus siculus written at the end of the xvth or beginning of the xvith century. at the beginning of this ms. there is an exquisite illuminated miniature of an equestrian statue with the name of the general on the base; it is however very doubtful whether this has any connection with leonardo's design. nos. - , which treat of casting bronze, have probably a very indirect bearing on the arrangements made for casting the equestrian statue of francesco sforza. some portions evidently relate to the casting of cannon. still, in our researches about leonardo's work on the monument, we may refer to them as giving us some clue to the process of bronze casting at that period. some practical hints ( - ). o . of a statue. if you wish to make a figure in marble, first make one of clay, and when you have finished it, let it dry and place it in a case which should be large enough, after the figure is taken out of it, to receive also the marble, from which you intend to reveal the figure in imitation of the one in clay. after you have put the clay figure into this said case, have little rods which will exactly slip in to the holes in it, and thrust them so far in at each hole that each white rod may touch the figure in different parts of it. and colour the portion of the rod that remains outside black, and mark each rod and each hole with a countersign so that each may fit into its place. then take the clay figure out of this case and put in your piece of marble, taking off so much of the marble that all your rods may be hidden in the holes as far as their marks; and to be the better able to do this, make the case so that it can be lifted up; but the bottom of it will always remain under the marble and in this way it can be lifted with tools with great ease. . some have erred in teaching sculptors to measure the limbs of their figures with threads as if they thought that these limbs were equally round in every part where these threads were wound about them. . measurement and division of a statue. divide the head into degrees, and each degree divide into points, and each point into minutes, and the minutes into minims and the minims into semi minims. degree--point--minute--minim. . sculptured figures which appear in motion, will, in their standing position, actually look as if they were falling forward. [footnote: _figure di rilievo_. leonardo applies this term exclusively to wholly detached figures, especially to those standing free. this note apparently refers to some particular case, though we have no knowledge of what that may have been. if we suppose it to refer to the first model of the equestrian statue of francesco sforza (see the introduction to the notes on sculpture) this observation may be regarded as one of his arguments for abandoning the first scheme of the sforza monument, in which the horse was to be galloping (see page ). it is also in favour of this theory that the note is written in a manuscript volume already completed in . leonardo's opinions as to the shortcomings of plastic works when compared with paintings are given under no. and .] notes on the casting of the sforza monument ( - ). . three braces which bind the mould. [if you want to make simple casts quickly, make them in a box of river sand wetted with vinegar.] [when you shall have made the mould upon the horse you must make the thickness of the metal in clay.] observe in alloying how many hours are wanted for each hundredweight. [in casting each one keep the furnace and its fire well stopped up.] [let the inside of all the moulds be wetted with linseed oil or oil of turpentine, and then take a handful of powdered borax and greek pitch with aqua vitae, and pitch the mould over outside so that being under ground the damp may not [damage it?] [to manage the large mould make a model of the small mould, make a small room in proportion.] [make the vents in the mould while it is on the horse.] hold the hoofs in the tongs, and cast them with fish glue. weigh the parts of the mould and the quantity of metal it will take to fill them, and give so much to the furnace that it may afford to each part its amount of metal; and this you may know by weighing the clay of each part of the mould to which the quantity in the furnace must correspond. and this is done in order that the furnace for the legs when filled may not have to furnish metal from the legs to help out the head, which would be impossible. [cast at the same casting as the horse the little door] [footnote: the importance of the notes included under this number is not diminished by the fact that they have been lightly crossed out with red chalk. possibly they were the first scheme for some fuller observations which no longer exist; or perhaps they were crossed out when leonardo found himself obliged to give up the idea of casting the equestrian statue. in the original the first two sketches are above l. , and the third below l. .] . the mould for the horse. make the horse on legs of iron, strong and well set on a good foundation; then grease it and cover it with a coating, leaving each coat to dry thoroughly layer by layer; and this will thicken it by the breadth of three fingers. now fix and bind it with iron as may be necessary. moreover take off the mould and then make the thickness. then fill the mould by degrees and make it good throughout; encircle and bind it with its irons and bake it inside where it has to touch the bronze. of making the mould in pieces. draw upon the horse, when finished, all the pieces of the mould with which you wish to cover the horse, and in laying on the clay cut it in every piece, so that when the mould is finished you can take it off, and then recompose it in its former position with its joins, by the countersigns. the square blocks _a b_ will be between the cover and the core, that is in the hollow where the melted bronze is to be; and these square blocks of bronze will support the intervals between the mould and the cover at an equal distance, and for this reason these squares are of great importance. the clay should be mixed with sand. take wax, to return [what is not used] and to pay for what is used. dry it in layers. make the outside mould of plaster, to save time in drying and the expense in wood; and with this plaster enclose the irons [props] both outside and inside to a thickness of two fingers; make terra cotta. and this mould can be made in one day; half a boat load of plaster will serve you. good. dam it up again with glue and clay, or white of egg, and bricks and rubbish. [footnote: see pl. lxxv. the figure " ," close to the sketch in the middle of the page between lines and has been added by a collector's hand. in the original, below line , a square piece of the page has been cut out about centimetres by and a blank piece has been gummed into the place. lines - are written on the margin. l. and are close to the second marginal sketch. l. is a note written above the third marginal sketch and on the back of this sheet is the text given as no. . compare also no. .] . all the heads of the large nails. [footnote: see pl. lxxvi, no. i. this drawing has already been published in the "_saggio delle opere di l. da vinci_." milano , pl. xxiv, no. i. but, for various reasons i cannot regard the editor's suggestions as satisfactory. he says: "_veggonsi le armature di legname colle quali forse venne sostenuto il modello, quando per le nozze di bianca maria sforza con massimiliano imperatore, esso fu collocato sotto un arco trionfale davanti al castello_." . these bindings go inside. . salt may be made from human excrements, burnt and calcined, made into lees and dried slowly at a fire, and all the excrements produce salt in a similar way and these salts when distilled, are very strong. [footnote: vasari repeatedly states, in the fourth chapter of his _introduzione della scultura_, that in preparing to cast bronze statues horse-dung was frequently used by sculptors. if, notwithstanding this, it remains doubtful whether i am justified in having introduced here this text of but little interest, no such doubt can be attached to the sketch which accompanies it.] . method of founding again. this may be done when the furnace is made [footnote: this note is written below the sketches.] strong and bruised. models for the horse of the sforza monument ( - ). l . messer galeazzo's big genet . messer galeazzo's sicilian horse. [footnote: these notes are by the side of a drawing of a horse with figured measurements.] . measurement of the sicilian horse the leg from behind, seen in front, lifted and extended. [footnote: there is no sketch belonging to this passage. galeazze here probably means galeazze di san severino, the famous captain who married bianca the daughter of ludovico il moro.] occasional references to the sforza monument ( - ). . again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honour of the happy memory of the prince your father, and of the illustrious house of sforza. [footnote: the letter from which this passage is here extracted will be found complete in section xxi. (see the explanation of it, on page ).] . on the rd of april i began this book, and recommenced the horse. . there is to be seen, in the mountains of parma and piacenza, a multitude of shells and corals full of holes, still sticking to the rocks, and when i was at work on the great horse for milan, a large sackful of them, which were found thereabout, was brought to me into my workshop, by certain peasants. . believe me, leonardo the florentine, who has to do the equestrian bronze statue of the duke francesco that he does not need to care about it, because he has work for all his life time, and, being so great a work, i doubt whether he can ever finish it. [footnote: this passage is quoted from a letter to a committee at piacenza for whom leonardo seems to have undertaken to execute some work. the letter is given entire in section xxl; in it leonardo remonstrates as to some unreasonable demands.] . of the horse i will say nothing because i know the times. [footnote: this passage occurs in a rough copy of a letter to ludovico il moro, without date (see below among the letters).] . during ten years the works on the marbles have been going on i will not wait for my payment beyond the time, when my works are finished. [footnote: this possibly refers to the works for the pedestal of the equestrian statue concerning which we have no farther information in the mss. see p. .] the project of the trivulzio monument. . the monument to messer giovanni jacomo da trevulzo. [ ] cost of the making and materials for the horse [ ]. [footnote: in the original, lines - , - , - , are written on the margin. this passage has been recently published by g. govi in vol. v, ser. a, of _transunti, reale accademia dei linea, sed. del giugno, ,_ with the following introductory note: _"desidero intanto che siano stampati questi pochi frammenti perche so che sono stati trascritti ultimamente, e verranno messi in luce tra poco fuori d'italia. li ripubblichi pure chi vuole, ma si sappia almeno che anche tra noi si conoscevano, e s'eran raccolti da anni per comporne, quando che fosse, una edizione ordinata degli scritti di leonardo."_ the learned editor has left out line and has written _pie_ for _piedi_ in line . there are other deviations of less importance from the original.] a courser, as large as life, with the rider requires for the cost of the metal, duc. . and for cost of the iron work which is inside the model, and charcoal, and wood, and the pit to cast it in, and for binding the mould, and including the furnace where it is to be cast ... duc. . to make the model in clay and then in wax......... duc. . to the labourers for polishing it when it is cast. ....... duc. . in all. . duc. . [ ] cost of the marble of the monument [ ]. cost of the marble according to the drawing. the piece of marble under the horse which is braccia long, braccia and inches wide and inches thick hundredweight, at lire and soldi per hundredweight.. duc. . and for braccia and inches of cornice, in. wide and in. thick, hundredweight....... duc. . and for the frieze and architrave, which is br. and in. long, br. wide and in. thick, hundredweight., duc. . and for the capitals made of metal, which are , inches in. square and in. thick, at the price of ducats each, will come to...... duc. . and for columns of br. in., / in. thick, hundredweight duc. . and for bases which are / in. square and in. high hund'.. duc. . and for the slab of the tombstone br. io in. long, br. / in. wide hundredweight....... duc. . and for pedestal feet each br. long and / in. wide and / in. thick, hundredweight come to... duc. . and for the cornice below which is br. and in. long, and br. and in. wide, and in. thick, hund'.. duc. . and for the stone of which the figure of the deceased is to be made which is br. and in. long, and br. and in. wide, and in. thick, hund'.. duc. . and for the stone on which the figure lies which is br. and in. long and br. and in., wide and / in. thick duc. . and for the squares of marble placed between the pedestals which are and are br. long and in. wide, and in. thick, hundredweight . . . duc. . in all. . duc. . [ ]cost of the work in marble[ ]. round the base on which the horse stands there are figures at ducats each ............ duc. . and on the same base there are festoons with some other ornaments, and of these there are at the price of ducats each, and at the price of ducats each ....... duc. . and for squaring the stones duc. . again, for the large cornice which goes below the base on which the horse stands, which is br. and in., at due. per br. ...... duc. . and for br. of frieze at due. per br. ........... duc. . and for br. of architrave at / duc. per br. ....... duc. . and for rosettes which will be the soffit of the monument, at ducats each .......... duc. . and for fluted columns at ducats each ......... duc. . and for bases at ducat each, duc. . and for pedestals, of which are at duc. each, which go above the angles; and at duc. each .. duc. . and for squaring and carving the moulding of the pedestals at duc. each, and there are .... duc. . and for square blocks with figures and trophies, at duc. each .. duc. . and for carving the moulding of the stone under the figure of the deceased .......... duc. . for the statue of the deceased, to do it well .......... duc. . for harpies with candelabra, at ducats each ......... duc. . for squaring the stone on which the statue lies, and carving the moulding ............ duc. . in all .. duc. . the sum total of every thing added together amount to ...... duc. . . mint at rome. it can also be made without a spring. but the screw above must always be joined to the part of the movable sheath: [margin note: the mint of rome.] [footnote: see pl. lxxvi. this passage is taken from a note book which can be proved to have been used in rome.] all coins which do not have the rim complete, are not to be accepted as good; and to secure the perfection of their rim it is requisite that, in the first place, all the coins should be a perfect circle; and to do this a coin must before all be made perfect in weight, and size, and thickness. therefore have several plates of metal made of the same size and thickness, all drawn through the same gauge so as to come out in strips. and out of [ ] these strips you will stamp the coins, quite round, as sieves are made for sorting chestnuts [ ]; and these coins can then be stamped in the way indicated above; &c. [ ] the hollow of the die must be uniformly wider than the lower, but imperceptibly [ ]. this cuts the coins perfectly round and of the exact thickness, and weight; and saves the man who cuts and weighs, and the man who makes the coins round. hence it passes only through the hands of the gauger and of the stamper, and the coins are very superior. [footnote: see pl. lxxvi no. . the text of lines - stands parallel . - . farther evidence of leonardo's occupations and engagements at rome under pope leo x. may be gathered from some rough copies of letters which will be found in this volume. hitherto nothing has been known of his work in rome beyond some doubtful, and perhaps mythical, statements in vasari.] . powder for medals. the incombustible growth of soot on wicks reduced to powder, burnt tin and all the metals, alum, isinglass, smoke from a brass forge, each ingredient to be moistened, with aqua vitae or malmsey or strong malt vinegar, white wine or distilled extract of turpentine, or oil; but there should be little moisture, and cast in moulds. [margin note: on the coining of medals ( . ).] [footnote: the meaning of _scagliuolo_ in this passage is doubtful.] . of taking casts of medals. a paste of emery mixed with aqua vitae, or iron filings with vinegar, or ashes of walnut leaves, or ashes of straw very finely powdered. [footnote: the meaning of _scagliuolo_ in this passage is doubtful.] the diameter is given in the lead enclosed; it is beaten with a hammer and several times extended; the lead is folded and kept wrapped up in parchment so that the powder may not be spilt; then melt the lead, and the powder will be on the top of the melted lead, which must then be rubbed between two plates of steel till it is thoroughly pulverised; then wash it with aqua fortis, and the blackness of the iron will be dissolved leaving the powder clean. emery in large grains may be broken by putting it on a cloth many times doubled, and hit it sideways with the hammer, when it will break up; then mix it little by little and it can be founded with ease; but if you hold it on the anvil you will never break it, when it is large. any one who grinds smalt should do it on plates of tempered steel with a cone shaped grinder; then put it in aqua fortis, which melts away the steel that may have been worked up and mixed with the smalt, and which makes it black; it then remains purified and clean; and if you grind it on porphyry the porphyry will work up and mix with the smalt and spoil it, and aqua fortis will never remove it because it cannot dissolve the porphyry. if you want a fine blue colour dissolve the smalt made with tartar, and then remove the salt. vitrified brass makes a fine red. . stucco. place stucco over the prominence of the..... which may be composed of venus and mercury, and lay it well over that prominence of the thickness of the side of a knife, made with the ruler and cover this with the bell of a still, and you will have again the moisture with which you applied the paste. the rest you may dry [margin note: on stucco ( . ).] [footnote: in this passage a few words have been written in a sort of cipher--that is to say backwards; as in l. _erenev_ for _venere_, l. _oirucrem_ for mercurio, l. _il orreve co ecarob_ for _il everro (?) co borace_. the meaning of the word before _"di giesso"_ in l. is unknown; and the sense, in which _sagoma_ is used here and in other passages is obscure.-- _venere_ and _mercurio_ may mean 'marble' and 'lime', of which stucco is composed. . the meaning of _orreve_ is unknown.] well; afterwards fire it, and beat it or burnish it with a good burnisher, and make it thick towards the side. stucco. powder ... with borax and water to a paste, and make stucco of it, and then heat it so that it may dry, and then varnish it, with fire, so that it shines well. . stucco for moulding. take of butter parts, of wax parts, and as much fine flour as when put with these things melted, will make them as firm as wax or modelling clay. glue. take mastic, distilled turpentine and white lead. on bronze casting generally ( - ). . to cast. tartar burnt and powdered with plaster and cast cause the plaster to hold together when it is mixed up again; and then it will dissolve in water. . to cast bronze in plaster. take to every cups of plaster of ox-horns burnt, mix them together and make your cast with it. . when you want to take a cast in wax, burn the scum with a candle, and the cast will come out without bubbles. . ounces of plaster to a pound of metal;-- walnut, which makes it like the curve. [footnote: the second part of this is quite obscure.] . [dried earth pounds, pounds of metal wet clay ,--of wet ,-half,- which increases ibs. of water,-- of wax, ib. of metal, a little less,-the scrapings of linen with earth, measure for measure.] [footnote: the translation is given literally, but the meaning is quite obscure.] . such as the mould is, so will the cast be. . how casts ought to be polished. make a bunch of iron wire as thick as thread, and scrub them with [this and] water; hold a bowl underneath that it may not make a mud below. how to remove the rough edges from bronze. make an iron rod, after the manner of a large chisel, and with this rub over those seams on the bronze which remain on the casts of the guns, and which are caused by the joins in the mould; but make the tool heavy enough, and let the strokes be long and broad. to facilitate melting. first alloy part of the metal in the crucible, then put it in the furnace, and this being in a molten state will assist in beginning to melt the copper. to prevent the copper cooling in the furnace. when the copper cools in the furnace, be ready, as soon as you perceive it, to cut it with a long stick while it is still in a paste; or if it is quite cold cut it as lead is cut with broad and large chisels. if you have to make a large cast. if you have to make a cast of a hundred thousand pounds do it with two furnaces and with pounds in each, or as much as pounds at most. . how to proceed to break a large mass of bronze. if you want to break up a large mass of bronze, first suspend it, and then make round it a wall on the four sides, like a trough of bricks, and make a great fire therein. when it is quite red hot give it a blow with a heavy weight raised above it, and with great force. . to combine lead with other metal. if you wish for economy in combining lead with the metal in order to lessen the amount of tin which is necessary in the metal, first alloy the lead with the tin and then add the molten copper. how to melt [metal] in a furnace. the furnace should be between four well founded pillars. of the thickness of the coating. the coating should not be more than two fingers thick, it should be laid on in four thicknesses over fine clay and then well fixed, and it should be fired only on the inside and then carefully covered with ashes and cow's dung. of the thickness of the gun. the gun being made to carry ibs. of ball and more, by this rule you will take the measure of the diameter of the ball and divide it into parts and one of these parts will be its thickness at the muzzle; but at the breech it must always be half. and if the ball is to be lbs., / th of the diameter of the ball must be its thickness in front; and if the ball is to be , the eighth of its diameter in front; and if , / th and / [ / ], and if , / th. of the length of the body of the gun. if you want it to throw a ball of stone, make the length of the gun to be , or as much as diameters of the ball; and if the ball is to be of iron make it as much as balls, and if the ball is to be of lead, make it as much as balls. i mean when the gun is to have the mouth fitted to receive lbs. of stone ball, and more. of the thickness of small guns. the thickness at the muzzle of small guns should be from a half to one third of the diameter of the ball, and the length from to balls. . of luting the furnace within. the furnace must be luted before you put the metal in it, with earth from valenza, and over that with ashes. [footnote . .: _terra di valenza_.--valenza is north of alessandria on the po.] of restoring the metal when it is becoming cool. when you see that the bronze is congealing take some willow-wood cut in small chips and make up the fire with it. the cause of its curdling. i say that the cause of this congealing often proceeds from too much fire, or from ill-dried wood. to know the condition of the fire. you may know when the fire is good and fit for your purpose by a clear flame, and if you see the tips of the flames dull and ending in much smoke do not trust it, and particularly when the flux metal is almost fluid. of alloying the metal. metal for guns must invariably be made with or even per cent, that is of tin to one hundred of copper, for the less you put in, the stronger will the gun be. when the tin should be added to the copper. the tin should be put in with the copper when the copper is reduced to a fluid. how to hasten the melting. you can hasten the melting when / ds of the copper is fluid; you can then, with a stick of chestnut-wood, repeatedly stir what of copper remains entire amidst what is melted. _introductory observations on the architectural designs (xii), and writings on architecture (xiii)._ _until now very little has been known regarding leonardo's labours in the domain of architecture. no building is known to have been planned and executed by him, though by some contemporary writers incidental allusion is made to his occupying himself with architecture, and his famous letter to lodovico il moro,--which has long been a well-known document,--in which he offers his service as an architect to that prince, tends to confirm the belief that he was something more than an amateur of the art. this hypothesis has lately been confirmed by the publication of certain documents, preserved at milan, showing that leonardo was not only employed in preparing plans but that he took an active part, with much credit, as member of a commission on public buildings; his name remains linked with the history of the building of the cathedral at pavia and that of the cathedral at milan._ _leonardo's writings on architecture are dispersed among a large number of mss., and it would be scarcely possible to master their contents without the opportunity of arranging, sorting and comparing the whole mass of materials, so as to have some comprehensive idea of the whole. the sketches, when isolated and considered by themselves, might appear to be of but little value; it is not till we understand their general purport, from comparing them with each other, that we can form any just estimate of their true worth._ _leonardo seems to have had a project for writing a complete and separate treatise on architecture, such as his predecessors and contemporaries had composed--leon battista alberti, filarete, francesco di giorgio and perhaps also bramante. but, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that possibly no such scheme was connected with the isolated notes and researches, treating on special questions, which are given in this work; that he was merely working at problems in which, for some reason or other he took a special interest._ _a great number of important buildings were constructed in lombardy during the period between and , and among them there are several by unknown architects, of so high an artistic merit, that it is certainly not improbable that either bramante or leonardo da vinci may have been, directly or indirectly, concerned in their erection._ _having been engaged, for now nearly twenty years, in a thorough study of bramante's life and labours, i have taken a particular interest in detecting the distinguishing marks of his style as compared with leonardo's. in i made researches about the architectural drawings of the latter in the codex atlanticus at milan, for the purpose of finding out, if possible the original plans and sketches of the churches of santa maria delle grazie at milan, and of the cathedral at pavia, which buildings have been supposed to be the work both of bramante and of leonardo. since i have repeatedly examined leonardo's architectural studies in the collection of his manuscripts in the institut de france, and some of these i have already given to the public in my work on_ "les projets primitifs pour la basilique de st. pierre de rome", _p . . in i had the opportunity of examining the manuscript in the palazzo trivulzio at milan, and in dr richter showed me in london the manuscripts in the possession of lord ashburnham, and those in the british museum. i have thus had opportunities of seeing most of leonardo's architectural drawings in the original, but of the manuscripts tliemselves i have deciphered only the notes which accompany the sketches. it is to dr richter's exertions that we owe the collected texts on architecture which are now published, and while he has undertaken to be responsible for the correct reading of the original texts, he has also made it his task to extract the whole of the materials from the various mss. it has been my task to arrange and elucidate the texts under the heads which have been adopted in this work. ms. b. at paris and the codex atlanticus at milan are the chief sources of our knowledge of leonardo as an architect, and i have recently subjected these to a thorough re-investigation expressly with a view to this work._ _a complete reproduction of all leonardo's architectural sketches has not, indeed, been possible, but as far as the necessarily restricted limits of the work have allowed, the utmost completeness has been aimed at, and no efforts have been spared to include every thing that can contribute to a knowledge of leonardo's style. it would have been very interesting, if it had been possible, to give some general account at least of leonardo's work and studies in engineering, fortification, canal-making and the like, and it is only on mature reflection that we have reluctantly abandoned this idea. leonardo's occupations in these departments have by no means so close a relation to literary work, in the strict sense of the word as we are fairly justified in attributing to his numerous notes on architecture._ _leonardo's architectural studies fall naturally under two heads:_ _i. those drawings and sketches, often accompanied by short remarks and explanations, which may be regarded as designs for buildings or monuments intended to be built. with these there are occasionally explanatory texts._ _ii. theoretical investigations and treatises. a special interest attaches to these because they discuss a variety of questions which are of practical importance to this day. leonardo's theory as to the origin and progress of cracks in buildings is perhaps to be considered as unique in its way in the literature of architecture._ _henry de geymuller_ _xii._ _architectural designs._ _i. plans for towns._ _a. sketches for laying out a new town with a double system of high- level and low-level road-ways._ _pl. lxxvii, no. (ms. b, b). a general view of a town, with the roads outside it sloping up to the high-level ways within._ _pl. lxxvii, no. (ms. b, b. see no. ; and ms. b. b, see no. ) gives a partial view of the town, with its streets and houses, with explanatory references._ _pl. lxxvii, no. (ms. b, b; see no. ). view of a double staircaise with two opposite flights of steps._ _pl. lxxviii, nos. and (ms. b, a). sketches illustrating the connection of the two levels of roads by means of steps. the lower galleries are lighted by openings in the upper roadway._ _b. notes on removing houses (ms. br. m., b, see no. )._ . the roads _m_ are braccia higher than the roads _p s_, and each road must be braccia wide and have / braccio slope from the sides towards the middle; and in the middle let there be at every braccio an opening, one braccio long and one finger wide, where the rain water may run off into hollows made on the same level as _p s_. and on each side at the extremity of the width of the said road let there be an arcade, braccia broad, on columns; and understand that he who would go through the whole place by the high level streets can use them for this purpose, and he who would go by the low level can do the same. by the high streets no vehicles and similar objects should circulate, but they are exclusively for the use of gentlemen. the carts and burdens for the use and convenience of the inhabitants have to go by the low ones. one house must turn its back to the other, leaving the lower streets between them. provisions, such as wood, wine and such things are carried in by the doors _n_, and privies, stables and other fetid matter must be emptied away underground. from one arch to the next . must be braccia, each street receiving its light through the openings of the upper streets, and at each arch must be a winding stair on a circular plan because the corners of square ones are always fouled; they must be wide, and at the first vault there must be a door entering into public privies and the said stairs lead from the upper to the lower streets and the high level streets begin outside the city gates and slope up till at these gates they have attained the height of braccia. let such a city be built near the sea or a large river in order that the dirt of the city may be carried off by the water. . the construction of the stairs: the stairs _c d_ go down to _f g_, and in the same way _f g_ goes down to _h k_. . on moving houses. let the houses be moved and arranged in order; and this will be done with facility because such houses are at first made in pieces on the open places, and can then be fitted together with their timbers in the site where they are to be permanent. [ ] let the men of the country [or the village] partly inhabit the new houses when the court is absent [ ]. [footnote: on the same page we find notes referring to romolontino and villafranca with a sketch-map of the course of the "sodro" and the "(lo)cra" (both are given in the text farther on). there can hardly be a doubt that the last sentence of the passage given above, refers to the court of francis i. king of france.--l. - are written inside the larger sketch, which, in the original, is on the right hand side of the page by the side of lines - . the three smaller sketches are below. j. p. r.] _ii. plans for canals and streets in a town. pl. lxxix, . and , (ms. b, b, see no. , and ms. b. a, see no. ). a plan for streets and canals inside a town, by which the cellars of the houses are made accessible in boats. the third text given under no. refers to works executed by leonardo in france._ . the front _a m_ will give light to the rooms; _a e_ will be braccia--_a b_ braccia --_b e_ braccia, in order that the rooms under the porticoes may be lighted; _c d f_ is the place where the boats come to the houses to be unloaded. in order to render this arrangement practicable, and in order that the inundation of the rivers may not penetrate into the cellars, it is necessary to chose an appropriate situation, such as a spot near a river which can be diverted into canals in which the level of the water will not vary either by inundations or drought. the construction is shown below; and make choice of a fine river, which the rains do not render muddy, such as the ticino, the adda and many others. [footnote : _tesino, adda e molti altri, i.e._ rivers coming from the mountains and flowing through lakes.] the construction to oblige the waters to keep constantly at the same level will be a sort of dock, as shown below, situated at the entrance of the town; or better still, some way within, in order that the enemy may not destroy it [ ]. [footnote: l. - are on the left hand side and within the sketch given on pl. lxxix, no. i. then follows after line , the drawing of a sluicegate--_conca_--of which the use is explained in the text below it. on the page a, which comes next in the original ms. is the sketch of an oval plan of a town over which is written "_modo di canali per la citta_" and through the longer axis of it "_canale magior_" is written with "_tesino_" on the prolongation of the canal. j. p. r.] . let the width of the streets be equal to the average height of the houses. . the main underground channel does not receive turbid water, but that water runs in the ditches outside the town with four mills at the entrance and four at the outlet; and this may be done by damming the water above romorantin. [ ]there should be fountains made in each piazza[ ]. [footnote: in the original this text comes immediately after the passage given as no. . the remainder of the writing on the same page refers to the construction of canals and is given later, in the "topographical notes". lines - are written to the right of the plan lines - underneath it. j. p. r.] [footnote : _romolontino_ is romorantin, south of orleans in france.] _iii. castles and villas. a. castles. pl. lxxx, no. (p. v. fol. b; no. d'ordre ). the fortified place here represented is said by vallardi to be the_ "castello" _at milan, but without any satisfactory reason. the high tower behind the_ "rivellino" _ravelin--seems to be intended as a watch-tower. pl. lxxx, no. (ms. b, b). a similarly constructed tower probably intended for the same use. pl. lxxx, no. (ms. b). sketches for corner towers with steps for a citadel. pl. lxxx, no. (w. xvi). a cupola crowning a corner tower; an interesting example of decorative fortification. in this reproduction of the original pen and ink drawing it appears reversed. b. projects for palaces. pl. lxxxi, no. (ms. c. a, b; a, see no. ). project for a royal residence at amboise in france. pl. lxxxii, no. (c. a a; a). a plan for a somewhat extensive residence, and various details; but there is no text to elucidate it; in courts are written the three names: sam cosi giova _(st. mark)_ _(cosmo)_ _(john)_, arch mo nino c. plans for small castles or villas. the three following sketches greatly resemble each other. pl. lxxxii, no. (ms. k b; see no. )._ _pl. lxxxii, no. (ms. b a; see no. ). pl. lxxxiii (w. xvii). the text on this sheet refers to cyprus (see topographical notes no. ), but seems to have no direct connection with the sketches inserted between. pl. lxxxviii, nos. and (ms. b, a; see no. ). a section of a circular pavilion with the plan of a similar building by the side of it. these two drawings have a special historical interest because the text written below mentions the duke and duchess of milan. the sketch of a villa on a terrace at the end of a garden occurs in c. a. ; and in c. a. b; b is another sketch of a villa somewhat resembling the_ belvedere _of pope innocent viii, at rome. in c. a. b; b there is a loggia. pl. lxxxii, no. (c. a. a; a) is a tower-shaped_ loggia _above a fountain. the machinery is very ingeniously screened from view._ . the palace of the prince must have a piazza in front of it. houses intended for dancing or any kind of jumping or any other movements with a multitude of people, must be on the ground- floor; for i have already witnessed the destruction of some, causing death to many persons, and above all let every wall, be it ever so thin, rest on the ground or on arches with a good foundation. let the mezzanines of the dwellings be divided by walls made of very thin bricks, and without wood on account of fire. let all the privies have ventilation [by shafts] in the thickness of the walls, so as to exhale by the roofs. the mezzanines should be vaulted, and the vaults will be stronger in proportion as they are of small size. the ties of oak must be enclosed in the walls in order to be protected from fire. [footnote: the remarks accompanying the plan reproduced on pl. lxxxi, no. are as follows: above, to the left: "_in_ a _angholo stia la guardia de la sstalla_" (in the angle _a_ may be the keeper of the stable). below are the words "_strada dabosa_" (road to amboise), parallel with this "_fossa br _" (the moat braccia) fixing the width of the moat. in the large court surrounded by a portico "_in terre no.--largha br. e lugha br _." to the right of the castle is a large basin for aquatic sports with the words "_giostre colle nave cioe li giostra li stieno sopra le na_" (jousting in boats that is the men are to be in boats). j. p. r.] the privies must be numerous and going one into the other in order that the stench may not penetrate into the dwellings., and all their doors must shut off themselves with counterpoises. the main division of the facade of this palace is into two portions; that is to say the width of the court-yard must be half the whole facade; the nd ... . braccia wide on each side; the lower entrance leads into a hall braccia wide and braccia long with recesses each with a chimney. [footnote: on each side of the castle, pl. lxxxii. no. there are drawings of details, to the left "_camino_" a chimney, to the right the central lantern, sketched in red "_ lati_" _i.e._ an octagon.] . the firststorey [or terrace] must be entirely solid. . the pavilion in the garden of the duchess of milan. the plan of the pavilion which is in the middle of the labyrinth of the duke of milan. [footnote: this passage was first published by amoretti in _memorie storiche_ cap. x: una sua opera da riportarsi a quest' anno fu il bagno fatto per la duchessa beatrice nel parco o giardino del castello. lionardo non solo ne disegno il piccolo edifizio a foggia di padiglione, nel cod. segnato q. , dandone anche separatamente la pianta; ma sotto vi scrisse: padiglione del giardino della duchessa; e sotto la pianta: fondamento del padiglione ch'e nel mezzo del labirinto del duca di milano; nessuna data e presso il padiglione, disegnato nella pagina , ma poco sopra fra molti circoli intrecciati vedesi = luglio = e nella pagina presso ad alcuni disegni di legumi qualcheduno ha letto settembre in vece di , come dovea scriverevi, e probabilmente scrisse lionardo. the original text however hardly bears the interpretation put upon it by amoretti. he is mistaken as to the mark on the ms. as well as in his statements as to the date, for the ms. in question has no date; the date he gives occurs, on the contrary, in another note-book. finally, it appears to me quite an open question whether leonardo was the architect who carried out the construction of the dome-like pavilion here shown in section, or of the ground plan of the pavilion drawn by the side of it. must we, in fact, suppose that "_il duca di milano_" here mentioned was, as has been generally assumed, ludovico il moro? he did not hold this title from the emperor before ; till that date he was only called _governatore_ and leonardo in speaking of him, mentions him generally as "_il moro_" even after . on january , , he married beatrice d'este the daughter of ercole i, duke of ferrara. she died on the nd january , and for the reasons i have given it seems improbable that it should be this princess who is here spoken of as the "_duchessa di milano_". from the style of the handwriting it appears to me to be beyond all doubt that the ms. b, from which this passage is taken, is older than the dated mss. of and . in that case the duke of milan here mentioned would be gian galeazzo ( - ) and the duchess would be his wife isabella of aragon, to whom he was married on the second february . j. p. r.] . the earth that is dug out from the cellars must be raised on one side so high as to make a terrace garden as high as the level of the hall; but between the earth of the terrace and the wall of the house, leave an interval in order that the damp may not spoil the principal walls. _iv. ecclesiastical architecture. a. general observations._ . a building should always be detached on all sides so that its form may be seen. [footnote: the original text is reproduced on pl. xcii, no. to the left hand at the bottom.] . here there cannot and ought not to be any _campanile_; on the contrary it must stand apart like that of the cathedral and of san giovanni at florence, and of the cathedral at pisa, where the campanile is quite detached as well as the dome. thus each can display its own perfection. if however you wish to join it to the church, make the lantern serve for the campanile as in the church at chiaravalle. [footnote: this text is written by the side of the plan given on pl. xci. no. .] [footnote : the abbey of chiaravalle, a few miles from milan, has a central tower on the intersection of the cross in the style of that of the certosa of pavia, but the style is mediaeval (a. d. ). leonardo seems here to mean, that in a building, in which the circular form is strongly conspicuous, the campanile must either be separated, or rise from the centre of the building and therefore take the form of a lantern.] . it never looks well to see the roofs of a church; they should rather be flat and the water should run off by gutters made in the frieze. [footnote: this text is to the left of the domed church reproduced on pl. lxxxvii, no. .] _b. the theory of dome architecture. this subject has been more extensively treated by leonardo in drawings than in writing. still we may fairly assume that it was his purpose, ultimately to embody the results of his investigation in a_ "trattato delle cupole." _the amount of materials is remarkably extensive. ms. b is particularly rich in plans and elevations of churches with one or more domes--from the simplest form to the most complicated that can be imagined. considering the evident connexion between a great number of these sketches, as well as the impossibility of seeing in them designs or preparatory sketches for any building intended to be erected, the conclusion is obvious that they were not designed for any particular monument, but were theoretical and ideal researches, made in order to obtain a clear understanding of the laws which must govern the construction of a great central dome, with smaller ones grouped round it; and with or without the addition of spires, so that each of these parts by itself and in its juxtaposition to the other parts should produce the grandest possible effect. in these sketches leonardo seems to have exhausted every imaginable combination. [footnote : in ms. b, b (see pl. c iii, no. ) we find eight geometrical patterns, each drawn in a square; and in ms. c.a., fol. to form a whole series of patterns done with the same intention.] the results of some of these problems are perhaps not quite satisfactory; still they cannot be considered to give evidence of a want of taste or of any other defect in leonardo s architectural capacity. they were no doubt intended exclusively for his own instruction, and, before all, as it seems, to illustrate the features or consequences resulting from a given principle._ _i have already, in another place,_ [footnote : les projets primitifs pour la basilique de st. pierre de rome, par bramante, raphael etc.,vol. i, p. .] _pointed out the law of construction for buildings crowned by a large dome: namely, that such a dome, to produce the greatest effect possible, should rise either from the centre of a greek cross, or from the centre of a structure of which the plan has some symmetrical affinity to a circle, this circle being at the same time the centre of the whole plan of the building. leonardo's sketches show that he was fully aware, as was to be expected, of this truth. few of them exhibit the form of a latin cross, and when this is met with, it generally gives evidence of the determination to assign as prominent a part as possible to the dome in the general effect of the building. while it is evident, on the one hand, that the greater number of these domes had no particular purpose, not being designed for execution, on the other hand several reasons may be found for leonardo's perseverance in his studies of the subject. besides the theoretical interest of the question for leonardo and his_ trattato _and besides the taste for domes prevailing at that time, it seems likely that the intended erection of some building of the first importance like the duomos of pavia and como, the church of sta. maria delle grazie at milan, and the construction of a dome or central tower_ (tiburio) _on the cathedral of milan, may have stimulated leonardo to undertake a general and thorough investigation of the subject; whilst leonardo's intercourse with bramante for ten years or more, can hardly have remained without influence in this matter. in fact now that some of this great architect's studies for s. peter's at rome have at last become known, he must be considered henceforth as the greatest master of dome-architecture that ever existed. his influence, direct or indirect even on a genius like leonardo seems the more likely, since leonardo's sketches reveal a style most similar to that of bramante, whose name indeed, occurs twice in leonardo's manuscript notes. it must not be forgotten that leonardo was a florentine; the characteristic form of the two principal domes of florence, sta. maria del fiore and the battisterio, constantly appear as leading features in his sketches. the church of san lorenzo at milan, was at that time still intact. the dome is to this day one of the most wonderful cupolas ever constructed, and with its two smaller domes might well attract the attention and study of a never resting genius such as leonardo. a whole class of these sketches betray in fact the direct influence of the church of s. lorenzo, and this also seems to have suggested the plan of bramante's dome of st. peter's at rome. in the following pages the various sketches for the construction of domes have been classified and discussed from a general point of view. on two sheets: pl. lxxxiv (c.a. b; a) and pl. lxxxv, nos. - (ash. ii, b) we see various dissimilar types, grouped together; thus these two sheets may be regarded as a sort of nomenclature of the different types, on which we shall now have to treat._ _ . churches formed on the plan of a greek cross. group i. domes rising from a circular base. the simplest type of central building is a circular edifice. pl. lxxxiv, no. . plan of a circular building surrounded by a colonnade. pl. lxxxiv, no. . elevation of the former, with a conical roof. pl. xc. no. . a dodecagon, as most nearly approaching the circle. pl. lxxxvi, no. , , . four round chapels are added at the extremities of the two principal axes;--compare this plan with fig. on p. and fig. on p. (w. p. b) where the outer wall is octagonal. group ii. domes rising from a square base. the plan is a square surrounded by a colonnade, and the dome seems to be octagonal. pl. lxxxiv. the square plan below the circular building no. , and its elevation to the left, above the plan: here the ground-plan is square, the upper storey octagonal. a further development of this type is shown in two sketches c. a. a (not reproduced here), and in pl. lxxxvi, no. (which possibly belongs to no. on pl. lxxxiv). pl, lxxxv, no. , and p. , fig. , a greek cross, repeated p. , fig. , is another development of the square central plan. the remainder of these studies show two different systems; in the first the dome rises from a square plan,--in the second from an octagonal base._ _group iii. domes rising from a square base and four pillars. [footnote : the ancient chapel san satiro, via del falcone, milan, is a specimen of this type.]_ a) first type. _a dome resting on four pillars in the centre of a square edifice, with an apse in the middle, of each of the four sides. we have eleven variations of this type. aa) pl. lxxxviii, no. . bb) pl. lxxx, no. . cc) pl. lxxxv, nos. , , . dd) pl. lxxxiv, no. and beneath. ee) pl. lxxxv, nos. , , , ._ b) second type. _this consists in adding aisles to the whole plan of the first type; columns are placed between the apses and the aisles; the plan thus obtained is very nearly identical with that of s. lorenzo at milan. fig. on p. . (ms. b, a) shows the result of this treatment adapted to a peculiar purpose about which we shall have to say a few words later on. pl. xcv, no. , shows the same plan but with the addition of a short nave. this plan seems to have been suggested by the general arrangement of s. sepolcro at milan. ms. b. b (see the sketch reproduced on p. ). by adding towers in the four outer angles to the last named plan, we obtain a plan which bears the general features of bramante's plans for s. peter's at rome. [footnote : see_ les projets primitifs _etc., pl. - .] (see p. fig. .) group iv. domes rising from an octagonal base. this system, developed according to two different schemes, has given rise to two classes with many varieties. in a) on each side of the octagon chapels of equal form are added. in b) the chapels are dissimilar; those which terminate the principal axes being different in form from those which are added on the diagonal sides of the octagon. a. first class. the chapel_ "degli angeli," _at florence, built only to a height of about feet by brunellesco, may be considered as the prototype of this group; and, indeed it probably suggested it. the fact that we see in ms. b. b (pl. xciv, no. ) by the side of brunellesco's plan for the basilica of sto. spirito at florence, a plan almost identical with that of the_ capella degli angeli, _confirms this supposition. only two small differences, or we may say improvements, have been introduced by leonardo. firstly the back of the chapels contains a third niche, and each angle of the octagon a folded pilaster like those in bramante's_ sagrestia di s. m. presso san satiro _at milan, instead of an interval between the two pilasters as seen in the battistero at florence and in the sacristy of sto. spirito in the same town and also in the above named chapel by brunellesco. the first set of sketches which come under consideration have at first sight the appearance of mere geometrical studies. they seem to have been suggested by the plan given on page fig. (ms. b, a) in the centre of which is written_ "santa maria in perticha da pavia", _at the place marked a on the reproduction. a) (ms. b, b, page fig. ). in the middle of each side a column is added, and in the axes of the intercolumnar spaces a second row of columns forms an aisle round the octagon. these are placed at the intersection of a system of semicircles, of which the sixteen columns on the sides of the octagon are the centres. b) the preceding diagram is completed and becomes more monumental in style in the sketch next to it (ms. b, a, see p. fig. ). an outer aisle is added by circles, having for radius the distance between the columns in the middle sides of the octagon. c) (ms. b. b, see p. fig. ). octagon with an aisle round it; the angles of both are formed by columns. the outer sides are formed by niches forming chapels. the exterior is likewise octagonal, with the angles corresponding to the centre of each of the interior chapels. pl. xcii, no. (ms. b. b). detail and modification of the preceding plan--half columns against piers--an arrangement by which the chapels of the aisle have the same width of opening as the inner arches between the half columns. underneath this sketch the following note occurs:_ questo vole - avere facce - co tabernaculi - come - _a_ - _b_. _(this will have twelve sides with twelve tabernacles as_ a b._) in the remaining sketches of this class the octagon is not formed by columns at the angles. the simplest type shows a niche in the middle of each side and is repeated on several sheets, viz: ms. b ; ms. c.a. b (see pl. lxxxiv, no. ) and ms. ash ii b; (see pl. lxxxv, no. and the elevations no. ; pl. xcii, no. ; ms. b. b [not reproduced here] and pl. lxxxiv, no. )._ _pl. xcii, (ms. b, b) corresponds to a plan like the one in ms. b a, in which the niches would be visible outside or, as in the following sketch, with the addition of a niche in the middle of each chapel. pl. xc, no. . the niches themselves are surrounded by smaller niches (see also no. on the same plate). octagon expanded on each side. a. by a square chapel: ms. b. b (not reproduced here). b. by a square with niches: ms. b. b (see pl. xciv, no. ). c. by octagonal chapels: a) ms. b, a; pl. lxxxviii, no. . b) no. on the same plate. underneath there is the remark:_ "quest'e come le cappele ano a essere facte" _(this is how the eight chapels are to be executed). c) pl. lxxxviii, no. . elevation to the plans on the same sheet, it is accompanied by the note:_ "ciasscuno de' tiburi no'uole - passare l'alteza - di - - quadri" _(neither of the domes must exceed the height of two squares). d) pl. lxxxviii, no. . inside of the same octagon. ms. b, a, and b; these are three repetitions of parts of the same plan with very slight variations. d. by a circular chapel: ms. b, a (see fig. on page ) gives the plan of this arrangement in which the exterior is square on the ground floor with only four of the chapels projecting, as is explained in the next sketch. pl. lxxxix, ms. b, b. elevation to the preceding plan sketched on the opposite side of the sheet, and also marked a. it is accompanied by the following remark, indicating the theoretical character of these studies:_ questo - edifitio - anchora - starebbe - bene affarlo dalla linja - _a_ - _b_ - _c_ - _d_ - insu. _("this edifice would also produce a good effect if only the part above the lines_ a b, c d, _were executed"). pl. lxxxiv, no. . the exterior has the form of an octagon, but the chapels project partly beyond it. on the left side of the sketch they appear larger than on the right side. pl. xc, no. , (ms. b, b); repetition of pl. lxxxiv, no. . pl. xc, no. . elevation to the plan no. , and also to no. of the same sheet._ _e. by chapels formed by four niches: pl. lxxxiv, no. (the circular plan on the left below) shows this arrangement in which the central dome has become circular inside and might therefore be classed after this group. [footnote : this plan and some others of this class remind us of the plan of the mausoleum of augustus as it is represented for instance by durand. see_ cab. des estampes, bibliotheque nationale, paris, topographie de rome, v, , ._] the sketch on the right hand side gives most likely the elevation for the last named plan. f. by chapels of still richer combinations, which necessitate an octagon of larger dimensions: pl. xci, no. (ms. ash. . b) [footnote : the note accompanying this plan is given under no. .]; on this plan the chapels themselves appear to be central buildings formed like the first type of the third group. pl. lxxxviii, no. . pl. xci, no. above; the exterior of the preceding figure, particularly interesting on account of the alternation of apses and niches, the latter containing statues of a gigantic size, in proportion to the dimension of the niches. b. second class. composite plans of this class are generally obtained by combining two types of the first class--the one worked out on the principal axes, the other on the diagonal ones. ms. b. shows an elementary combination, without any additions on the diagonal axes, but with the dimensions of the squares on the two principal axes exceeding those of the sides of the octagon. in the drawing w. p. b (see page fig. ) the exterior only of the edifice is octagonal, the interior being formed by a circular colonnade; round chapels are placed against the four sides of the principal axes. the elevation, drawn on the same sheet (see page fig. ), shows the whole arrangement which is closely related with the one on pl. lxxxvi no. , . ms. b. a shows: a) four sides with rectangular chapels crowned by pediments pl. lxxxvii no. (plan and elevation); b) four sides with square chapels crowned by octagonal domes. pl. lxxxvii no. ; the plan underneath. ms. b. a shows a variation obtained by replacing the round chapels in the principal axes of the sketch ms. b. l a by square ones, with an apse. leonardo repeated both ideas for better comparison side by side, see page . fig. . pl. lxxxix (ms. b. b). elevation for the preceding figure. the comparison of the drawing marked m with the plan on page fig. , bearing the same mark, and of the elevation on pl. lxxxix below (marked a) with the corresponding plan on page is highly instructive, as illustrating the spirit in which leonardo pursued these studies. pl. lxxxiv no. shows the design pl. lxxxvii no. combined with apses, with the addition of round chapels on the diagonal sides. pl. lxxxiv no. is a variation of the preceding sketch. pl. xc no. . ms. b. b. the round chapels of the preceding sketch are replaced by octagonal chapels, above which rise campaniles. pl. xc no. is the elevation for the preceding plan. pl. xcii no. . (ms. b. b.); the plan below. on the principal as well as on the diagonal axes are diagonal chapels, but the latter are separated from the dome by semicircular recesses. the communication between these eight chapels forms a square aisle round the central dome. above this figure is the elevation, showing four campaniles on the angles. [footnote : the note accompanying this drawing is reproduced under no. .] pl. lxxxiv no. . on the principal axes are square chapels with three niches; on the diagonals octagonal chapels with niches. cod. atl. b gives a somewhat similar arrangement. ms. b. . the principal development is thrown on the diagonal axes by square chapels with three niches; on the principal axes are inner recesses communicating with outer ones. the plan pl. xciii no. (ms. b. ) differs from this only in so far as the outer semicircles have become circular chapels, projecting from the external square as apses; one of them serves as the entrance by a semicircular portico. the elevation is drawn on the left side of the plan. ms. b. . a further development of ms. b. , by employing for the four principal chapels the type pl. lxxxviii no. , as we have already seen in pl. xci no. ; the exterior presents two varieties. a) the outer contour follows the inner. [footnote : these chapels are here sketched in two different sizes; it is the smaller type which is thus formed.] b) it is semicircular. pl. lxxxvii no. (ms. b. b) elevation to the first variation ms. b. . if we were not certain that this sketch was by leonardo, we might feel tempted to take it as a study by bramante for st. peter's at rome. [footnote : see_ les projets primitifs pl. ._]_ _ms. p. v. b. in the principal axes the chapels of ms. b. , and semicircular niches on the diagonals. the exterior of the whole edifice is also an octagon, concealing the form of the interior chapels, but with its angles on their axes. group v. suggested by san lorenzo at milan. in ms. c. a. iib, l b there is a plan almost identical with that of san lorenzo. the diagonal sides of the irregular octagon are not indicated. if it could be proved that the arches which, in the actual church, exist on these sides in the first story, were added in by martimo bassi, then this plan and the following section would be still nearer the original state of san lorenzo than at present. a reproduction of this slightly sketched plan has not been possible. it may however be understood from pl. lxxxviii no. , by suppressing the four pillars corresponding to the apses. pl. lxxxvii no. shows the section in elevation corresponding with the above-named plan. the recessed chapels are decorated with large shells in the halfdomes like the arrangement in san lorenzo, but with proportions like those of bramante's sacristy of santa maria presso s. satiro. ms. c. a. ; a sheet containing three views of exteriors of domes. on the same sheet there is a plan similar to the one above-named but with uninterrupted aisles and with the addition of round chapels in the axes (compare pl. xcvii no. and page fig. ), perhaps a reminiscence of the two chapels annexed to san lorenzo.--leonardo has here sketched the way of transforming this plan into a latin cross by means of a nave with side aisles. pl. xci no. . plan showing a type deprived of aisles and comprised in a square building which is surrounded by a portico. it is accompanied by the following text:_ . this edifice is inhabited [accessible] below and above, like san sepolcro, and it is the same above as below, except that the upper story has the dome _c d_; and the [footnote: the church of san sepolcro at milan, founded in and repeatedly rebuilt after the middle of the xvith century, still stands over the crypt of the original structure.] lower has the dome _a b_, and when you enter into the crypt, you descend steps, and when you mount into the upper you ascend steps, which, with / braccio for each, make braccia, and this is the height between one floor of the church and the other. _above the plan on the same sheet is a view of the exterior. by the aid of these two figures and the description, sections of the edifice may easily be reconstructed. but the section drawn on the left side of the building seems not to be in keeping with the same plan, notwithstanding the explanatory note written underneath it: "dentro il difitio di sopra" (interior of the edifice above)[footnote : _the small inner dome corresponds to_ a b _on the plan--it rises from the lower church into the upper-- above, and larger, rises the dome_ c d. _the aisles above and below thus correspond_ (e di sopra come di sotto, salvoche etc.). _the only difference is, that in the section leonardo has not taken the trouble to make the form octagonal, but has merely sketched circular lines in perspective._ j. p. r._]. _before leaving this group, it is well to remark that the germ of it seems already indicated by the diagonal lines in the plans pl. lxxxv no. and no. . we shall find another application of the same type to the latin cross in pl. xcvii no. . _ . churches formed on the plan of a latin cross. we find among leonardo's studies several sketches for churches on the plan of the latin cross; we shall begin by describing them, and shall add a few observations. a. studies after existing monuments. pl. xciv no. . (ms. b. b.) plan of santo spirito at florence, a basilica built after the designs of brunellesco.--leonardo has added the indication of a portico in front, either his own invention or the reproduction of a now lost design. pl. xcv no. . plan accompanied by the words: "a_ e santo sepolcro di milano di sopra"(a _is the upper church of s. sepolcro at milan); although since leonardo's time considerably spoilt, it is still the same in plan. the second plan with its note: "b_ e la sua parte socto tera" (b _is its subterranean part [the crypt]) still corresponds with the present state of this part of the church as i have ascertained by visiting the crypt with this plan. excepting the addition of a few insignificant walls, the state of this interesting part of the church still conforms to leonardo's sketch; but in the vestibolo the two columns near the entrance of the winding stairs are absent. b. designs or studies. pl. xcv no. . plan of a church evidently suggested by that of san sepolcro at milan. the central part has been added to on the principle of the second type of group iii. leonardo has placed the_ "coro" _(choir) in the centre._ _pl. xcvi no. . in the plan the dome, as regards its interior, belongs to the first class of group iv, and may be grouped with the one in ms. b. a. the nave seems to be a development of the type represented in pl. xcv no. , b. by adding towers and two lateral porticos[footnote : already published in les projets primitifs pl. xliii.]. on the left is a view of the exterior of the preceding plan. it is accompanied by the following note:_ . this building is inhabited below and above; the way up is by the campaniles, and in going up one has to use the platform, where the drums of the four domes are, and this platform has a parapet in front, and none of these domes communicate with the church, but they are quite separate. _pl. xcvi no. (ms. c. a. b; a). perspective view of a church seen from behind; this recalls the duomo at florence, but with two campaniles[footnote : already published in the saggio pl. ix.]. pl. xcvii no. (ms. b. a). the central part is a development of s. lorenzo at milan, such as was executed at the duomo of pavia. there is sufficient analogy between the building actually executed and this sketch to suggest a direct connection between them. leonardo accompanied francesco di giorgio[footnote : see malaspina, il duomo di pavia. documents.] when the latter was consulted on june st, as to this church; the fact that the only word accompanying the plan is:_ "sagrestia", _seems to confirm our supposition, for the sacristies were added only in , i. e. four years after the beginning of the cathedral, which at that time was most likely still sufficiently unfinished to be capable of receiving the form of the present sketch. pl. xcvii no. shows the exterior of this design. below is the note:_ edifitio al proposito del fodameto figurato di socto _(edifice proper for the ground plan figured below). here we may also mention the plan of a latin cross drawn in ms. c. a. fol. (see p. ). pl. xciv no. (ms. l. b). external side view of brunellesco's florentine basilica san lorenzo, seen from the north. pl. xciv no. (v. a. v, ). principal front of a nave, most likely of a church on the plan of a latin cross. we notice here not only the principal features which were employed afterwards in alberti's front of s. maria novella, but even details of a more advanced style, such as we are accustomed to meet with only after the year . in the background of leonardo's unfinished picture of st. jerome (vatican gallery) a somewhat similar church front is indicated (see the accompanying sketch). [illustration with caption: the view of the front of a temple, apparently a dome in the centre of four corinthian porticos bearing pediments (published by amoretti tav. ii. b as being by leonardo), is taken from a drawing, now at the ambrosian gallery. we cannot consider this to be by the hand of the master.]_ _c. studies for a form of a church most proper for preaching. the problem as to what form of church might answer the requirements of acoustics seems to have engaged leonardo's very particular attention. the designation of_ "teatro" _given to some of these sketches, clearly shows which plan seemed to him most favourable for hearing the preacher's voice. pl. xcvii, no. (ms. b, ). rectangular edifice divided into three naves with an apse on either side, terminated by a semicircular theatre with rising seats, as in antique buildings. the pulpit is in the centre. leonardo has written on the left side of the sketch_: "teatro da predicare" _(theatre for preaching). ms. b, a (see page , fig. ). a domed church after the type of pl. xcv, no. , shows four theatres occupying the apses and facing the square_ "coro" _(choir), which is in the centre between the four pillars of the dome.[footnote : the note_ teatro de predicar, _on the right side is, i believe, in the handwriting of pompeo leoni. j. p. r.] the rising arrangement of the seats is shown in the sketch above. at the place marked_ b _leonardo wrote_ teatri per uldire messa _(rows of seats to hear mass), at_ t teatri,_ and at_ c coro _(choir). in ms. c.a. , are slight sketches of two plans for rectangular choirs and two elevations of the altar and pulpit which seem to be in connection with these plans. in ms. ash ii, a (see p. and . fig. and )._ "locho dove si predica" _(place for preaching). a most singular plan for a building. the interior is a portion of a sphere, the centre of which is the summit of a column destined to serve as the preacher's pulpit. the inside is somewhat like a modern theatre, whilst the exterior and the galleries and stairs recall the ancient amphitheatres. [illustration with caption: page , fig. . a plan accompanying the two preceding drawings. if this gives the complete form leonardo intended for the edifice, it would have comprised only about two thirds of the circle. leonardo wrote in the centre_ "fondamento", _a word he often employed for plans, and on the left side of the view of the exterior:_ locho dove si predicha _(a place for preaching in)._] _d. design for a mausoleum. pl. xcviii (p. v., ._ no. d'ordre ). in the midst of a hilly landscape rises an artificial mountain in the form of a gigantic cone, crowned by an imposing temple. at two thirds of the height a terrace is cut out with six doorways forming entrances to galleries, each leading to three sepulchral halls, so constructed as to contain about five hundred funeral urns, disposed in the customary antique style. from two opposite sides steps ascend to the terrace in a single flight and beyond it to the temple above. a large circular opening, like that in the pantheon, is in the dome above what may be the altar, or perhaps the central monument on the level of the terrace below. the section of a gallery given in the sketch to the right below shows the roof to be constructed on the principle of superimposed horizontal layers, projecting one beyond the other, and each furnished with a sort of heel, which appears to be undercut, so as to give the appearance of a beam from within. granite alone would be adequate to the dimensions here given to the key stone, as the thickness of the layers can hardly be considered to be less than a foot. in taking this as the basis of our calculation for the dimensions of the whole construction, the width of the chamber would be about feet but, judging from the number of urns it contains--and there is no reason to suppose that these urns were larger than usual--it would seem to be no more than about or feet. the construction of the vaults resembles those in the galleries of some etruscan tumuli, for instance the regulini galeassi tomb at cervetri (lately discovered) and also that of the chamber and passages of the pyramid of cheops and of the treasury of atreus at mycenae. the upper cone displays not only analogies with the monuments mentioned in the note, but also with etruscan tumuli, such as the cocumella tomb at vulci, and the regulini galeassi tomb_[footnote : _see_ fersguson, _handbook of architecture, i,_ .]. _the whole scheme is one of the most magnificent in the history of architecture. it would be difficult to decide as to whether any monument he had seen suggested this idea to leonardo, but it is worth while to enquire, if any monument, or group of monuments of an earlier date may be supposed to have done so._[footnote : _there are, in algiers, two monuments, commonly called_ "le madracen" _and_ "le tombeau de la chretienne," _which somewhat resemble leonardo's design. they are known to have served as the mausolea of the kings of mauritania. pomponius mela, the geographer of the time of the emperor claudius, describes them as having been_ "monumentum commune regiae gentis." _see_ le madracen, rapport fait par m. le grand rabbin ab. cahen, constantine --memoire sur les fouilles executees au madras'en .. par le colonel brunon, constantine l .--deux mausolees africains, le madracen et le tombeau de la chretienne par m. j. de lauriere, tours l .--le tombeau de la chretienne, mausolee des rois mauritaniens par m. berbrugger, alger .--_i am indebted to m. le blanc, of the institut, and m. lud, lalanne, bibliothecaire of the institut for having first pointed out to me the resemblance between these monuments; while m. ant. heron de vlllefosse of the louvre was kind enough to place the abovementioned rare works at my disposal. leonardo's observations on the coast of africa are given later in this work. the herodium near bethlehem in palestine_ (jebel el fureidis, _the frank mountain) was, according to the latest researches, constructed on a very similar plan. see_ der frankenberg, von baurath c. schick in jerusalem, zeitschrift des deutschen palastina-vereins, _leipzag_ , _vol. iii, pages_ - _and plates iv and v._ j. p. r.] _e. studies for the central tower, or tiburio of milan cathedral. towards the end of the fifteenth century the fabbricceria del duomo had to settle on the choice of a model for the crowning and central part of this vast building. we learn from a notice published by g. l. calvi [footnote: g. l. calvi, notizie sulla vita e sulle opere dei principali architetti scultori e pittori che fiorirono in milano, part iii, . see also: h. de geymuller, les projets primitifs etc. i, and - .--the fabbricceria of the duomo has lately begun the publication of the archives, which may possibly tell us more about the part taken by leonardo, than has hitherto been known.] that among the artists who presented models in the year were: bramante, pietro da gorgonzola, luca paperio (fancelli), and leonardo da vinci.-- several sketches by leonardo refer to this important project: pl. xcix, no. (ms. s. k. iii, no. a) a small plan of the whole edifice.--the projecting chapels in the middle of the transept are wanting here. the nave appears to be shortened and seems to be approached by an inner "vestibolo".-- pl. c, no. (tr. ). plan of the octagon tower, giving the disposition of the buttresses; starting from the eight pillars adjoining the four principal piers and intended to support the eight angles of the tiburio. these buttresses correspond exactly with those described by bramante as existing in the model presented by omodeo. [footnote: bramante's opinion was first published by g. mongerl, arch. stor. lomb. v, fasc. and afterwards by me in the publication mentioned in the preceding note.] pl. c, (ms. tr. ). two plans showing different arrangements of the buttresses, which seem to be formed partly by the intersection of a system of pointed arches such as that seen in ** pl. c, no. (ms. b, a) destined to give a broader base to the drum. the text underneath is given under no. . ms. b, --three slight sketches of plans in connexion with the preceding ones._ _pl. xcix, no. (ms. tr. ) contains several small sketches of sections and exterior views of the dome; some of them show buttress-walls shaped as inverted arches. respecting these leonardo notes:_ . l'arco rivescio e migliore per fare spalla che l'ordinario, perche il rovescio trova sotto se muro resistete alla sua debolezza, e l'ordinario no trova nel suo debole se non aria the inverted arch is better for giving a shoulder than the ordinary one, because the former finds below it a wall resisting its weakness, whilst the latter finds in its weak part nothing but air. [footnote: _three slight sketches of sections on the same leaf--above those reproduced here--are more closely connected with the large drawing in the centre of pl. c, no. (m.s, tr. ) which shows a section of a very elevated dome, with double vaults, connected by ribs and buttresses ingeniously disposed, so as to bring the weight of the lantern to bear on the base of the dome. a sketch underneath it shows a round pillar on which is indicated which part of its summit is to bear the weight: "il pilastro sara charicho in . a . b." (the column will bear the weight at a b.) another note is above on the right side:_ larcho regiera tanto sotto asse chome di sopra se _(the arch supports as much below it [i. e. a hanging weight] as above it). pl. c, no. (c. a. a). larger sketch of half section of the dome, with a very complicated system of arches, and a double vault. each stone is shaped so as to be knit or dovetailed to its neighbours. thus the inside of the dome cannot be seen from below. ms. c. a. b. a repetition of the preceding sketch with very slight modifications._] [figs. . and fig. . two sketeches of the dome] ms. tr. (see fig. and ). section of the dome with reverted buttresses between the windows, above which iron anchors or chains seem to be intended. below is the sketch of the outside._ _pi. xcix, no. (c. a., a) four sketches of the exterior of the dome. c. a. . section, showing the points of rupture of a gothic vault, in evident connection with the sketches described above. it deserves to be noticed how easily and apparently without effort, leonardo manages to combine gothic details and structure with the more modern shape of the dome. the following notes are on the same leaf,_ oni cosa poderosa, _and_ oni cosa poderosa desidera de(scendere); _farther below, several multiplications most likely intended to calculate the weight of some parts of the dome, thus x = ; x = , next to which is written:_ peso del pilastro di teste _(weight of the pillar diameters high). below:_ x = ; _and below:_ semjlio e se ce (?) il peso del tiburio _(six millions six hundred (?) the weight of the dome). bossi hazarded the theory that leonardo might have been the architect who built the church of sta. maria delle grazie, but there is no evidence to support this, either in documents or in the materials supplied by leonardos manuscripts and drawings. the sketch given at the side shows the arrangement of the second and third socle on the apses of the choir of that church; and it is remarkable that those sketches, in ms. s. k. m. ii , a and ib, occur with the passage given in volume i as no. and referring to the composition of the last supper in the refectory of that church._] _f. the project for lifting up the battistero of florence and setting it on a basement._ _among the very few details vasari gives as to the architectural studies of leonardo, we read: "and among these models and designs there was one by way of which he showed several times to many ingenious citizens who then governed florence, his readiness to lift up without ruining it, the church of san giovanni in florence (the battistero, opposite the duomo) in order to place under it the missing basement with steps; he supported his assertions with reasons so persuasive, that while he spoke the undertaking seemed feasable, although every one of his hearers, when he had departed, could see by himself the impossibility of so vast an undertaking."_ [footnote: _this latter statement of vasari's must be considered to be exaggerated. i may refer here to some data given by_ libri, histoire des sciences mathematiques en italie (ii, , ): "on a cru dans ces derniers temps faire un miracle en mecanique en effectuant ce transport, et cependant des l'annee , gaspard nadi et aristote de fioravantio avaient transporte, a une distance considerable, la tour de la magione de bologne, avec ses fondements, qui avait presque quatre-vingts pieds de haut. le continuateur de la chronique de pugliola dit que le trajet fut de pieds et que durant le transport auquel le chroniqueur affirme avoir assiste, il arriva un accident grave qui fit pencher de trois pieds la tour pendant qu'elle etait suspendue, mais que cet accident fut promptement repare (muratori, scriptores rer. ital. tom. xviii, col. , ). alidosi a rapporte une note ou nadi rend compte de ce transport avec une rare simplicite. d'apres cette note, on voit que les operations de ce genre n'etaient pas nouvelles. celle-ci ne couta que livres (monnaie d'alors) y compris le cadeau que le legat fit aux deux mecaniciens. dans la meme annee, aristote redressa le clocher de cento, qui penchait de plus de cinq pieds (alidosi, instruttione p. -- muratori, scriptores rer. ital., tom. xxiii, col. .--bossii, chronica mediol., , in-fol. ad ann. ). on ne concoit pas comment les historiens des beaux-arts ont pu negliger de tels hommes." j. p. r.] _in the ms. c. a. fol. , there are two sketches which possibly might have a bearing on this bold enterprise. we find there a plan of a circular or polygonal edifice surrounded by semicircular arches in an oblique position. these may be taken for the foundation of the steps and of the new platform. in the perspective elevation the same edifice, forming a polygon, is shown as lifted up and resting on a circle of inverted arches which rest on an other circle of arches in the ordinary position, but so placed that the inverted arches above rest on the spandrels of the lower range._ _what seems to confirm the supposition that the lifting up of a building is here in question, is the indication of engines for winding up, such as jacks, and a rack and wheel. as the lifting apparatus represented on this sheet does not seem particularly applicable to an undertaking of such magnitude, we may consider it to be a first sketch or scheme for the engines to be used._ _g. description of an unknown temple._ . twelve flights of steps led up to the great temple, which was eight hundred braccia in circumference and built on an octagonal plan. at the eight corners were eight large plinths, one braccia and a half high, and three wide, and six long at the bottom, with an angle in the middle; on these were eight great pillars, standing on the plinths as a foundation, and twenty four braccia high. and on the top of these were eight capitals three braccia long and six wide, above which were the architrave frieze and cornice, four braccia and a half high, and this was carried on in a straight line from one pillar to the next and so, continuing for eight hundred braccia, surrounded the whole temple, from pillar to pillar. to support this entablature there were ten large columns of the same height as the pillars, three braccia thick above their bases which were one braccia and a half high. the ascent to this temple was by twelve flights of steps, and the temple was on the twelfth, of an octagonal form, and at each angle rose a large pillar; and between the pillars were placed ten columns of the same height as the pillars, rising at once from the pavement to a height of twenty eight braccia and a half; and at this height the architrave, frieze and cornice were placed which surrounded the temple having a length of eight hundred braccia. at the same height, and within the temple at the same level, and all round the centre of the temple at a distance of braccia farther in, are pillars corresponding to the eight pillars in the angles, and columns corresponding to those placed in the outer spaces. these rise to the same height as the former ones, and over these the continuous architrave returns towards the outer row of pillars and columns. [footnote: either this description is incomplete, or, as seems to me highly probable, it refers to some ruin. the enormous dimensions forbid our supposing this to be any temple in italy or greece. syria was the native land of colossal octagonal buildings, in the early centuries a. d. the temple of baalbek, and others are even larger than that here described. j. p. r.] _v. palace architecture. but a small number of leonardo's drawings refer to the architecture of palaces, and our knowledge is small as to what style leonardo might have adopted for such buildings. pl. cii no. (w. xviii). a small portion of a facade of a palace in two stories, somewhat resembling alberti's palazzo rucellai.--compare with this bramante's painted front of the casa silvestri, and a painting by montorfano in san pietro in gessate at milan, third chapel on the left hand side and also with bramante's palaces at rome. the pilasters with arabesques, the rustica between them, and the figures over the window may be painted or in sgraffito. the original is drawn in red chalk. pl. lxxxi no. (ms. tr. ). sketch of a palace with battlements and decorations, most likely graffiti; the details remind us of those in the castello at vigevano._ [footnote : _count giulio porro, in his valuable contribution to the_ archivio storico lombardo, anno viii, fasc. iv ( dec. ): leonardo da vinci, libro di annotazioni e memorie, _refers to this in the following note:_ "alla pag. vi e uno schizzo di volta ed accanto scrisse: 'il pilastro sara charicho in su ' e potrebbe darsi che si riferisse alla cupola della chiesa delle grazie tanto piu che a pag. vi e un disegno che rassomiglia assai al basamento che oggi si vede nella parte esterna del coro di quella chiesa." _this may however be doubted. the drawing, here referred to, on page of the same manuscript, is reproduced on pl. c no. and described on page as being a study for the cupola of the duomo of milan._ j. p. r.] _ms. mz. ", contains a design for a palace or house with a loggia in the middle of the first story, over which rises an attic with a pediment reproduced on page . the details drawn close by on the left seem to indicate an arrangement of coupled columns against the wall of a first story. pl. lxxxv no. (ms. s. k. m. ill a) contains a very slight sketch in red chalk, which most probably is intended to represent the facade of a palace. inside is the short note he ( and )._ _ms. j a (see pages fig. and ) contains a view of an unknown palace. its plan is indicated at the side._ _in ms. br. m. a(see fig. on page ) there is a sketch of a house, on which leonardo notes; casa con tre terrazi (house with three terraces)._ _pl. cx, no. (ms. l. b) represents the front of a fortified building drawn at cesena in (see no. )._ _here we may also mention the singular building in the allegorical composition represented on pl. lviii in vol. i. in front of it appears the head of a sphinx or of a dragon which seems to be carrying the palace away._ _the following texts refer to the construction of palaces and other buildings destined for private use:_ . in the courtyard the walls must be half the height of its width, that is if the court be braccia, the house must be high as regards the walls of the said courtyard; and this courtyard must be half as wide as the whole front. [footnote: see pl. ci, no. , and compare the dimensions here given, with no. lines - ; and the drawing belonging to it pl. lxxxi, no. .] on the dispositions of a stable. . for making a clean stable. the manner in which one must arrange a stable. you must first divide its width in parts, its depth matters not; and let these divisions be equal and braccia broad for each part and high, and the middle part shall be for the use of the stablemasters; the side ones for the horses, each of which must be braccia in width and in length, and be half a braccio higher at the head than behind. let the manger be at braccia from the ground, to the bottom of the rack, braccia, and the top of it braccia. now, in order to attain to what i promise, that is to make this place, contrary to the general custom, clean and neat: as to the upper part of the stable, i. e. where the hay is, that part must have at its outer end a window braccia high and broad, through which by simple means the hay is brought up to the loft, as is shown by the machine _e_; and let this be erected in a place braccia wide, and as long as the stable, as seen at _k p_. the other two parts, which are on either side of this, are again divided; those nearest to the hay-loft are braccia, _p s_, and only for the use and circulation of the servants belonging to the stable; the other two which reach to the outer walls are braccia, as seen at _s k_, and these are made for the purpose of giving hay to the mangers, by means of funnels, narrow at the top and wide over the manger, in order that the hay should not choke them. they must be well plastered and clean and are represented at _f s_. as to the giving the horses water, the troughs must be of stone and above them [cisterns of] water. the mangers may be opened as boxes are uncovered by raising the lids. [footnote: see pl. lxxviii, no. .] decorations for feasts. . the way to construct a frame-work for decorating buildings. the way in which the poles ought to be placed for tying bunches of juniper on to them. these poles must lie close to the framework of the vaulting and tie the bunches on with osier withes, so as to clip them even afterwards with shears. let the distance from one circle to another be half a braccia; and the juniper [sprigs] must lie top downwards, beginning from below. round this column tie four poles to which willows about as thick as a finger must be nailed and then begin from the bottom and work upwards with bunches of juniper sprigs, the tops downwards, that is upside down. [footnote: see pl. cii, no. . the words here given as the title line, lines -- , are the last in the original ms.--lines -- are written under fig. .] . the water should be allowed to fall from the whole circle _a b_. [footnote: other drawings of fountains are given on pl. ci (w. xx); the original is a pen and ink drawing on blue paper; on pl. ciii (ms. b.) and pl. lxxxii.] _vi. studies of architectural details._ _several of leonardo's drawings of architectural details prove that, like other great masters of that period, he had devoted his attention to the study of the proportion of such details. as every organic being in nature has its law of construction and growth, these masters endeavoured, each in his way, to discover and prove a law of proportion in architecture. the following notes in leonardo's manuscripts refer to this subject._ _ms. s. k. m. ill, b (see fig. ). a diagram, indicating the rules as given by vitruvius and by leon battista alberti for the proportions of the attic base of a column._ _ms. s. k. m. ill a (see fig. ). diagram showing the same rules._ . b toro superiore . . . . . toro superiore b nestroli . . . . . . astragali quadre b orbiculo . . . . . . . . troclea b nestroli . . . . . . astragali quadre b toro iferiore . . . . . . toro iferiore b latastro . . . . . . . . plintho [footnote: no explanation can be offered of the meaning of the letter b, which precedes each name. it may be meant for _basa_ (base). perhaps it refers to some author on architecture or an architect (bramante?) who employed the designations, thus marked for the mouldings. . _troclea._ philander: _trochlea sive trochalia aut rechanum._ . _laterculus_ or _latastrum_ is the latin name for _plinthus_ (pi lambda xiv) but vitruvius adopted this greek name and "latastro" seems to have been little in use. it is to be found besides the text given above, as far as i am aware, only two drawings of the uffizi collection, where in one instance, it indicates the _abacus_ of a doric capital.] . steps of urrbino. the plinth must be as broad as the thickness of the wall against which the plinth is built. [footnote: see pl. cx no. . the hasty sketch on the right hand side illustrates the unsatisfactory effect produced when the plinth is narrower than the wall.] . the ancient architects ...... beginning with the egyptians (?) who, as diodorus siculus writes, were the first to build and construct large cities and castles, public and private buildings of fine form, large and well proportioned ..... the column, which has its thickness at the third part .... the one which would be thinnest in the middle, would break ...; the one which is of equal thickness and of equal strength, is better for the edifice. the second best as to the usefulness will be the one whose greatest thickness is where it joins with the base. [footnote: see pl. ciii, no. , where the sketches belonging to lines -- are reproduced, but reversed. the sketch of columns, here reproduced by a wood cut, stands in the original close to lines -- .] the capital must be formed in this way. divide its thickness at the top into ; at the foot make it / , and let it be / high and you will have a square; afterwards divide the height into parts as you did for the column, and then take / for the echinus and another eighth for the thickness of the abacus on the top of the capital. the horns of the abacus of the capital have to project beyond the greatest width of the bell / , i. e. sevenths of the top of the bell, so / falls to the projection of each horn. the truncated part of the horns must be as broad as it is high. i leave the rest, that is the ornaments, to the taste of the sculptors. but to return to the columns and in order to prove the reason of their strength or weakness according to their shape, i say that when the lines starting from the summit of the column and ending at its base and their direction and length ..., their distance apart or width may be equal; i say that this column ... . the cylinder of a body columnar in shape and its two opposite ends are two circles enclosed between parallel lines, and through the centre of the cylinder is a straight line, ending at the centre of these circles, and called by the ancients the axis. [footnote: leonardo wrote these lines on the margin of a page of the trattato di francesco di giorgio, where there are several drawings of columns, as well as a head drawn in profile inside an outline sketch of a capital.] . _a b_ is / of _n m_; _m o_ is / of _r o_. the ovolo projects / of _r o_; _s_ / of _r o_, _a b_ is divided into / ; the abacus is / the ovolo / , the bead-moulding and the fillet / and / . [footnote: see pl. lxxxv, no. . in the original the drawing and writing are both in red chalk.] _pl. lxxxv no. (ms. ash. ii b) contains a small sketch of a capital with the following note, written in three lines:_ i chorni del capitelo deono essere la quarta parte d'uno quadro _(the horns of a capital must measure the fourth part of a square)._ _ms. s. k. m. iii b contains two sketches of ornamentations of windows._ _in ms. c. a. a; a (see pl. lxxxii no. ) there are several sketches of columns. one of the two columns on the right is similar to those employed by bramante at the canonica di s. ambrogio. the same columns appear in the sketch underneath the plan of a castle. there they appear coupled, and in two stories one above the other. the archivolls which seem to spring out of the columns, are shaped like twisted cords, meant perhaps to be twisted branches. the walls between the columns seem to be formed out of blocks of wood, the pedestals are ornamented with a reticulated pattern. from all this we may suppose that leonardo here had in mind either some festive decoration, or perhaps a pavilion for some hunting place or park. the sketch of columns marked " " gives an example of columns shaped like candelabra, a form often employed at that time, particularly in milan, and the surrounding districts for instance in the cortile di casa castiglione now silvestre, in the cathedral of como, at porta della rana &c._ . concerning architraves of one or several pieces. an architrave of several pieces is stronger than that of one single piece, if those pieces are placed with their length in the direction of the centre of the world. this is proved because stones have their grain or fibre generated in the contrary direction i. e. in the direction of the opposite horizons of the hemisphere, and this is contrary to fibres of the plants which have ... [footnote: the text is incomplete in the original.] _the proportions of the stories of a building are indicated by a sketch in ms. s. k. m. ii b (see pl. lxxxv no. ). the measures are written on the left side, as follows: br / -- / --br / -- br-- e / -- / --br --o --o [br=braccia; o=oncie]. pl. lxxxv no. (ms. b. a) and pl. xciii no. . (ms. b. a) give a few examples of arches supported on piers._ _xiii. theoretical writings on architecture. leonardo's original writings on the theory of architecture have come down to us only in a fragmentary state; still, there seems to be no doubt that he himself did not complete them. it would seem that leonardo entertained the idea of writing a large and connected book on architecture; and it is quite evident that the materials we possess, which can be proved to have been written at different periods, were noted down with a more or less definite aim and purpose. they might all be collected under the one title: "studies on the strength of materials". among them the investigations on the subject of fissures in walls are particularly thorough, and very fully reported; these passages are also especially interesting, because leonardo was certainly the first writer on architecture who ever treated the subject at all. here, as in all other cases leonardo carefully avoids all abstract argument. his data are not derived from the principles of algebra, but from the laws of mechanics, and his method throughout is strictly experimental. though the conclusions drawn from his investigations may not have that precision which we are accustomed to find in leonardo's scientific labours, their interest is not lessened. they prove at any rate his deep sagacity and wonderfully clear mind. no one perhaps, who has studied these questions since leonardo, has combined with a scientific mind anything like the artistic delicacy of perception which gives interest and lucidity to his observations. i do not assert that the arrangement here adopted for the passages in question is that originally intended by leonardo; but their distribution into five groups was suggested by the titles, or headings, which leonardo himself prefixed to most of these notes. some of the longer sections perhaps should not, to be in strict agreement with this division, have been reproduced in their entirety in the place where they occur. but the comparatively small amount of the materials we possess will render them, even so, sufficiently intelligible to the reader; it did not therefore seem necessary or desirable to subdivide the passages merely for the sake of strict classification._ _the small number of chapters given under the fifth class, treating on the centre of gravity in roof-beams, bears no proportion to the number of drawings and studies which refer to the same subject. only a small selection of these are reproduced in this work since the majority have no explanatory text._ i. on fissures in walls. . first write the treatise on the causes of the giving way of walls and then, separately, treat of the remedies. parallel fissures constantly occur in buildings which are erected on a hill side, when the hill is composed of stratified rocks with an oblique stratification, because water and other moisture often penetrates these oblique seams carrying in greasy and slippery soil; and as the strata are not continuous down to the bottom of the valley, the rocks slide in the direction of the slope, and the motion does not cease till they have reached the bottom of the valley, carrying with them, as though in a boat, that portion of the building which is separated by them from the rest. the remedy for this is always to build thick piers under the wall which is slipping, with arches from one to another, and with a good scarp and let the piers have a firm foundation in the strata so that they may not break away from them. in order to find the solid part of these strata, it is necessary to make a shaft at the foot of the wall of great depth through the strata; and in this shaft, on the side from which the hill slopes, smooth and flatten a space one palm wide from the top to the bottom; and after some time this smooth portion made on the side of the shaft, will show plainly which part of the hill is moving. [footnote: see pl. civ.] . the cracks in walls will never be parallel unless the part of the wall that separates from the remainder does not slip down. what is the law by which buildings have stability. the stability of buildings is the result of the contrary law to the two former cases. that is to say that the walls must be all built up equally, and by degrees, to equal heights all round the building, and the whole thickness at once, whatever kind of walls they may be. and although a thin wall dries more quickly than a thick one it will not necessarily give way under the added weight day by day and thus, [ ] although a thin wall dries more quickly than a thick one, it will not give way under the weight which the latter may acquire from day to day. because if double the amount of it dries in one day, one of double the thickness will dry in two days or thereabouts; thus the small addition of weight will be balanced by the smaller difference of time [ ]. the adversary says that _a_ which projects, slips down. and here the adversary says that _r_ slips and not _c_. how to prognosticate the causes of cracks in any sort of wall. the part of the wall which does not slip is that in which the obliquity projects and overhangs the portion which has parted from it and slipped down. on the situation of foundations and in what places they are a cause of ruin. when the crevice in the wall is wider at the top than at the bottom, it is a manifest sign, that the cause of the fissure in the wall is remote from the perpendicular line through the crevice. [footnote: lines - refer to pl. cv, no. . line _alle due anteciedete_, see on the same page. lines - . the translation of this is doubtful, and the meaning in any case very obscure. lines - are on the right hand margin close to the two sketches on pl. cii, no. .] . of cracks in walls, which are wide at the bottom and narrow at the top and of their causes. that wall which does not dry uniformly in an equal time, always cracks. a wall though of equal thickness will not dry with equal quickness if it is not everywhere in contact with the same medium. thus, if one side of a wall were in contact with a damp slope and the other were in contact with the air, then this latter side would remain of the same size as before; that side which dries in the air will shrink or diminish and the side which is kept damp will not dry. and the dry portion will break away readily from the damp portion because the damp part not shrinking in the same proportion does not cohere and follow the movement of the part which dries continuously. of arched cracks, wide at the top, and narrow below. arched cracks, wide at the top and narrow below are found in walled-up doors, which shrink more in their height than in their breadth, and in proportion as their height is greater than their width, and as the joints of the mortar are more numerous in the height than in the width. the crack diminishes less in _r o_ than in _m n_, in proportion as there is less material between _r_ and _o_ than between _n_ and _m_. any crack made in a concave wall is wide below and narrow at the top; and this originates, as is here shown at _b c d_, in the side figure. . that which gets wet increases in proportion to the moisture it imbibes. . and a wet object shrinks, while drying, in proportion to the amount of moisture which evaporates from it. [footnote: the text of this passage is reproduced in facsimile on pl. cvi to the left. l. - are written inside the sketch no. . l. - are partly written over the sketch no. to which they refer.] . of the causes of fissures in [the walls of] public and private buildings. the walls give way in cracks, some of which are more or less vertical and others are oblique. the cracks which are in a vertical direction are caused by the joining of new walls, with old walls, whether straight or with indentations fitting on to those of the old wall; for, as these indentations cannot bear the too great weight of the wall added on to them, it is inevitable that they should break, and give way to the settling of the new wall, which will shrink one braccia in every ten, more or less, according to the greater or smaller quantity of mortar used between the stones of the masonry, and whether this mortar is more or less liquid. and observe, that the walls should always be built first and then faced with the stones intended to face them. for, if you do not proceed thus, since the wall settles more than the stone facing, the projections left on the sides of the wall must inevitably give way; because the stones used for facing the wall being larger than those over which they are laid, they will necessarily have less mortar laid between the joints, and consequently they settle less; and this cannot happen if the facing is added after the wall is dry. _a b_ the new wall, _c_ the old wall, which has already settled; and the part _a b_ settles afterwards, although _a_, being founded on _c_, the old wall, cannot possibly break, having a stable foundation on the old wall. but only the remainder _b_ of the new wall will break away, because it is built from top to bottom of the building; and the remainder of the new wall will overhang the gap above the wall that has sunk. . a new tower founded partly on old masonry. . of stones which disjoin themselves from their mortar. stones laid in regular courses from bottom to top and built up with an equal quantity of mortar settle equally throughout, when the moisture that made the mortar soft evaporates. by what is said above it is proved that the small extent of the new wall between _a_ and _n_ will settle but little, in proportion to the extent of the same wall between _c_ and _d_. the proportion will in fact be that of the thinness of the mortar in relation to the number of courses or to the quantity of mortar laid between the stones above the different levels of the old wall. [footnote: see pl. cv, no. . the top of the tower is wanting in this reproduction, and with it the letter _n_ which, in the original, stands above the letter _a_ over the top of the tower, while _c_ stands perpendicularly over _d_.] . this wall will break under the arch _e f_, because the seven whole square bricks are not sufficient to sustain the spring of the arch placed on them. and these seven bricks will give way in their middle exactly as appears in _a b_. the reason is, that the brick _a_ has above it only the weight _a k_, whilst the last brick under the arch has above it the weight _c d x a_. _c d_ seems to press on the arch towards the abutment at the point _p_ but the weight _p o_ opposes resistence to it, whence the whole pressure is transmitted to the root of the arch. therefore the foot of the arch acts like , which is more than double of _x z_. ii. on fissures in niches. . on fissures in niches. an arch constructed on a semicircle and bearing weights on the two opposite thirds of its curve will give way at five points of the curve. to prove this let the weights be at _n m_ which will break the arch _a_, _b_, _f_. i say that, by the foregoing, as the extremities _c_ and _a_ are equally pressed upon by the thrust _n_, it follows, by the th, that the arch will give way at the point which is furthest from the two forces acting on them and that is the middle _e_. the same is to be understood of the opposite curve, _d g b_; hence the weights _n m_ must sink, but they cannot sink by the th, without coming closer together, and they cannot come together unless the extremities of the arch between them come closer, and if these draw together the crown of the arch must break; and thus the arch will give way in two places as was at first said &c. i ask, given a weight at _a_ what counteracts it in the direction _n_ _f_ and by what weight must the weight at _f_ be counteracted. . on the shrinking of damp bodies of different thickness and width. the window _a_ is the cause of the crack at _b_; and this crack is increased by the pressure of _n_ and _m_ which sink or penetrate into the soil in which foundations are built more than the lighter portion at _b_. besides, the old foundation under _b_ has already settled, and this the piers _n_ and _m_ have not yet done. hence the part _b_ does not settle down perpendicularly; on the contrary, it is thrown outwards obliquely, and it cannot on the contrary be thrown inwards, because a portion like this, separated from the main wall, is larger outside than inside and the main wall, where it is broken, is of the same shape and is also larger outside than inside; therefore, if this separate portion were to fall inwards the larger would have to pass through the smaller--which is impossible. hence it is evident that the portion of the semicircular wall when disunited from the main wall will be thrust outwards, and not inwards as the adversary says. when a dome or a half-dome is crushed from above by an excess of weight the vault will give way, forming a crack which diminishes towards the top and is wide below, narrow on the inner side and wide outside; as is the case with the outer husk of a pomegranate, divided into many parts lengthwise; for the more it is pressed in the direction of its length, that part of the joints will open most, which is most distant from the cause of the pressure; and for that reason the arches of the vaults of any apse should never be more loaded than the arches of the principal building. because that which weighs most, presses most on the parts below, and they sink into the foundations; but this cannot happen to lighter structures like the said apses. [footnote: the figure on pl. cv, no. belongs to the first paragraph of this passage, lines - ; fig. is sketched by the side of lines l --and following. the sketch below of a pomegranate refers to line . the drawing fig. is, in the original, over line and fig. over line .] which of these two cubes will shrink the more uniformly: the cube _a_ resting on the pavement, or the cube _b_ suspended in the air, when both cubes are equal in weight and bulk, and of clay mixed with equal quantities of water? the cube placed on the pavement diminishes more in height than in breadth, which the cube above, hanging in the air, cannot do. thus it is proved. the cube shown above is better shown here below. the final result of the two cylinders of damp clay that is _a_ and _b_ will be the pyramidal figures below _c_ and _d_. this is proved thus: the cylinder _a_ resting on block of stone being made of clay mixed with a great deal of water will sink by its weight, which presses on its base, and in proportion as it settles and spreads all the parts will be somewhat nearer to the base because that is charged with the whole weight. iii. on the nature of the arch. . what is an arch? the arch is nothing else than a force originated by two weaknesses, for the arch in buildings is composed of two segments of a circle, each of which being very weak in itself tends to fall; but as each opposes this tendency in the other, the two weaknesses combine to form one strength. of the kind of pressure in arches. as the arch is a composite force it remains in equilibrium because the thrust is equal from both sides; and if one of the segments weighs more than the other the stability is lost, because the greater pressure will outweigh the lesser. of distributing the pressure above an arch. next to giving the segments of the circle equal weight it is necessary to load them equally, or you will fall into the same defect as before. where an arch breaks. an arch breaks at the part which lies below half way from the centre. second rupture of the arch. if the excess of weight be placed in the middle of the arch at the point _a_, that weight tends to fall towards _b_, and the arch breaks at / of its height at _c e_; and _g e_ is as many times stronger than _e a_, as _m o_ goes into _m n_. on another cause of ruin. the arch will likewise give way under a transversal thrust, for when the charge is not thrown directly on the foot of the arch, the arch lasts but a short time. . on the strength of the arch. the way to give stability to the arch is to fill the spandrils with good masonry up to the level of its summit. on the loading of round arches. on the proper manner of loading the pointed arch. on the evil effects of loading the pointed arch directly above its crown. on the damage done to the pointed arch by throwing the pressure on the flanks. an arch of small curve is safe in itself, but if it be heavily charged, it is necessary to strengthen the flanks well. an arch of a very large curve is weak in itself, and stronger if it be charged, and will do little harm to its abutments, and its places of giving way are _o p_. [footnote: inside the large figure on the righi is the note: _da pesare la forza dell' archo_.] . on the remedy for earthquakes. the arch which throws its pressure perpendicularly on the abutments will fulfil its function whatever be its direction, upside down, sideways or upright. the arch will not break if the chord of the outer arch does not touch the inner arch. this is manifest by experience, because whenever the chord _a o n_ of the outer arch _n r a_ approaches the inner arch _x b y_ the arch will be weak, and it will be weaker in proportion as the inner arch passes beyond that chord. when an arch is loaded only on one side the thrust will press on the top of the other side and be transmitted to the spring of the arch on that side; and it will break at a point half way between its two extremes, where it is farthest from the chord. . a continuous body which has been forcibly bent into an arch, thrusts in the direction of the straight line, which it tends to recover. . in an arch judiciously weighted the thrust is oblique, so that the triangle _c n b_ has no weight upon it. . i here ask what weight will be needed to counterpoise and resist the tendency of each of these arches to give way? [footnote: the two lower sketches are taken from the ms. s. k. m. iii, a; they have there no explanatory text.] . on the strength of the arch in architecture. the stability of the arch built by an architect resides in the tie and in the flanks. on the position of the tie in the above named arch. the position of the tie is of the same importance at the beginning of the arch and at the top of the perpendicular pier on which it rests. this is proved by the nd "of supports" which says: that part of a support has least resistance which is farthest from its solid attachment; hence, as the top of the pier is farthest from the middle of its true foundation and the same being the case at the opposite extremities of the arch which are the points farthest from the middle, which is really its [upper] attachment, we have concluded that the tie _a b_ requires to be in such a position as that its opposite ends are between the four above-mentioned extremes. the adversary says that this arch must be more than half a circle, and that then it will not need a tie, because then the ends will not thrust outwards but inwards, as is seen in the excess at _a c_, _b d_. to this it must be answered that this would be a very poor device, for three reasons. the first refers to the strength of the arch, since it is proved that the circular parallel being composed of two semicircles will only break where these semicircles cross each other, as is seen in the figure _n m;_ besides this it follows that there is a wider space between the extremes of the semicircle than between the plane of the walls; the third reason is that the weight placed to counterbalance the strength of the arch diminishes in proportion as the piers of the arch are wider than the space between the piers. fourthly in proportion as the parts at _c a b d_ turn outwards, the piers are weaker to support the arch above them. the th is that all the material and weight of the arch which are in excess of the semicircle are useless and indeed mischievous; and here it is to be noted that the weight placed above the arch will be more likely to break the arch at _a b_, where the curve of the excess begins that is added to the semicircle, than if the pier were straight up to its junction with the semicircle [spring of the arch]. an arch loaded over the crown will give way at the left hand and right hand quarters. this is proved by the th of this which says: the opposite ends of the support are equally pressed upon by the weight suspended to them; hence the weight shown at _f_ is felt at _b c_, that is half at each extremity; and by the third which says: in a support of equal strength [throughout] that portion will give way soonest which is farthest from its attachment; whence it follows that _d_ being equally distant from _f, e_ ..... if the centering of the arch does not settle as the arch settles, the mortar, as it dries, will shrink and detach itself from the bricks between which it was laid to keep them together; and as it thus leaves them disjoined the vault will remain loosely built, and the rains will soon destroy it. . on the strength and nature of arches, and where they are strong or weak; and the same as to columns. that part of the arch which is nearer to the horizontal offers least resistance to the weight placed on it. when the triangle _a z n_, by settling, drives backwards the / of each / circle that is _a s_ and in the same way _z m_, the reason is that _a_ is perpendicularly over _b_ and so likewise _z_ is above _f_. either half of an arch, if overweighted, will break at / of its height, the point which corresponds to the perpendicular line above the middle of its bases, as is seen at _a b_; and this happens because the weight tends to fall past the point _r_.--and if, against its nature it should tend to fall towards the point _s_ the arch _n s_ would break precisely in its middle. if the arch _n s_ were of a single piece of timber, if the weight placed at _n_ should tend to fall in the line _n m_, the arch would break in the middle of the arch _e m_, otherwise it will break at one third from the top at the point a because from _a_ to _n_ the arch is nearer to the horizontal than from _a_ to _o_ and from _o_ to _s_, in proportion as _p t_ is greater than _t n_, _a o_ will be stronger than _a n_ and likewise in proportion as _s o_ is stronger than _o a_, _r p_ will be greater than _p t_. the arch which is doubled to four times of its thickness will bear four times the weight that the single arch could carry, and more in proportion as the diameter of its thickness goes a smaller number of times into its length. that is to say that if the thickness of the single arch goes ten times into its length, the thickness of the doubled arch will go five times into its length. hence as the thickness of the double arch goes only half as many times into its length as that of the single arch does, it is reasonable that it should carry half as much more weight as it would have to carry if it were in direct proportion to the single arch. hence as this double arch has times the thickness of the single arch, it would seem that it ought to bear times the weight; but by the above rule it is shown that it will bear exactly times as much. that pier, which is charged most unequally, will soonest give way. the column _c b_, being charged with an equal weight, [on each side] will be most durable, and the other two outward columns require on the part outside of their centre as much pressure as there is inside of their centre, that is, from the centre of the column, towards the middle of the arch. arches which depend on chains for their support will not be very durable. that arch will be of longer duration which has a good abutment opposed to its thrust. the arch itself tends to fall. if the arch be braccia and the interval between the walls which carry it be , we know that cannot pass through the unless becomes likewise . hence the arch being crushed by the excess of weight, and the walls offering insufficient resistance, part, and afford room between them, for the fall of the arch. but if you do not wish to strengthen the arch with an iron tie you must give it such abutments as can resist the thrust; and you can do this thus: fill up the spandrels _m n_ with stones, and direct the lines of the joints between them to the centre of the circle of the arch, and the reason why this makes the arch durable is this. we know very well that if the arch is loaded with an excess of weight above its quarter as _a b_, the wall _f g_ will be thrust outwards because the arch would yield in that direction; if the other quarter _b c_ were loaded, the wall _f g_ would be thrust inwards, if it were not for the line of stones _x y_ which resists this. . plan. here it is shown how the arches made in the side of the octagon thrust the piers of the angles outwards, as is shown by the line _h c_ and by the line _t d_ which thrust out the pier _m_; that is they tend to force it away from the centre of such an octagon. . an experiment to show that a weight placed on an arch does not discharge itself entirely on its columns; on the contrary the greater the weight placed on the arches, the less the arch transmits the weight to the columns. the experiment is the following. let a man be placed on a steel yard in the middle of the shaft of a well, then let him spread out his hands and feet between the walls of the well, and you will see him weigh much less on the steel yard; give him a weight on the shoulders, you will see by experiment, that the greater the weight you give him the greater effort he will make in spreading his arms and legs, and in pressing against the wall and the less weight will be thrown on the steel yard. iv. on foundations, the nature of the ground and supports. . the first and most important thing is stability. as to the foundations of the component parts of temples and other public buildings, the depths of the foundations must bear the same proportions to each other as the weight of material which is to be placed upon them. every part of the depth of earth in a given space is composed of layers, and each layer is composed of heavier or lighter materials, the lowest being the heaviest. and this can be proved, because these layers have been formed by the sediment from water carried down to the sea, by the current of rivers which flow into it. the heaviest part of this sediment was that which was first thrown down, and so on by degrees; and this is the action of water when it becomes stagnant, having first brought down the mud whence it first flowed. and such layers of soil are seen in the banks of rivers, where their constant flow has cut through them and divided one slope from the other to a great depth; where in gravelly strata the waters have run off, the materials have, in consequence, dried and been converted into hard stone, and this happened most in what was the finest mud; whence we conclude that every portion of the surface of the earth was once at the centre of the earth, and _vice_versa_ &c. . the heaviest part of the foundations of buildings settles most, and leaves the lighter part above it separated from it. and the soil which is most pressed, if it be porous yields most. you should always make the foundations project equally beyond the weight of the walls and piers, as shown at _m a b_. if you do as many do, that is to say if you make a foundation of equal width from the bottom up to the surface of the ground, and charge it above with unequal weights, as shown at _b e_ and at _e o_, at the part of the foundation at _b e_, the pier of the angle will weigh most and thrust its foundation downwards, which the wall at _e o_ will not do; since it does not cover the whole of its foundation, and therefore thrusts less heavily and settles less. hence, the pier _b e_ in settling cracks and parts from the wall _e o_. this may be seen in most buildings which are cracked round the piers. . the window _a_ is well placed under the window _c_, and the window _b_ is badly placed under the pier _d_, because this latter is without support and foundation; mind therefore never to make a break under the piers between the windows. . of the supports. a pillar of which the thickness is increased will gain more than its due strength, in direct proportion to what its loses in relative height. example. if a pillar should be nine times as high as it is broad--that is to say, if it is one braccio thick, according to rule it should be nine braccia high--then, if you place such pillars together in a mass this will be ten braccia broad and high; and if the first pillar could carry pounds the second being only about as high as it is wide, and thus lacking parts of its proper length, it, that is to say, each pillar thus united, will bear eight times more than when disconnected; that is to say, that if at first it would carry ten thousand pounds, it would now carry thousand. v. on the resistance of beams. . that angle will offer the greatest resistance which is most acute, and the most obtuse will be the weakest. [footnote: the three smaller sketches accompany the text in the original, but the larger one is not directly connected with it. it is to be found on fol. a of the same manuscript and there we read in a note, written underneath, _coverchio della perdicha del castello_ (roof of the flagstaff of the castle),--compare also pl. xciii, no. .] . if the beams and the weight _o_ are pounds, how much weight will be wanted at _ae_ to resist such a weight, that it may not fall down? . on the length of beams. that beam which is more than times as long as its greatest thickness will be of brief duration and will break in half; and remember, that the part built into the wall should be steeped in hot pitch and filleted with oak boards likewise so steeped. each beam must pass through its walls and be secured beyond the walls with sufficient chaining, because in consequence of earthquakes the beams are often seen to come out of the walls and bring down the walls and floors; whilst if they are chained they will hold the walls strongly together and the walls will hold the floors. again i remind you never to put plaster over timber. since by expansion and shrinking of the timber produced by damp and dryness such floors often crack, and once cracked their divisions gradually produce dust and an ugly effect. again remember not to lay a floor on beams supported on arches; for, in time the floor which is made on beams settles somewhat in the middle while that part of the floor which rests on the arches remains in its place; hence, floors laid over two kinds of supports look, in time, as if they were made in hills [footnote: m. ravaisson, in his edition of ms. a gives a very different rendering of this passage translating it thus: _les planchers qui sont soutenus par deux differentes natures de supports paraissent avec le temps faits en voute a cholli_.] remarks on the style of leonardo's architecture. a few remarks may here be added on the style of leonardo's architectural studies. however incomplete, however small in scale, they allow us to establish a certain number of facts and probabilities, well worthy of consideration. when leonardo began his studies the great name of brunellesco was still the inspiration of all florence, and we cannot doubt that leonardo was open to it, since we find among his sketches the plan of the church of santo spirito[footnote : see pl. xciv, no. . then only in course of erection after the designs of brunellesco, though he was already dead; finished in .] and a lateral view of san lorenzo (pl. xciv no. ), a plan almost identical with the chapel degli angeli, only begun by him (pl. xciv, no. ) while among leonardo's designs for domes several clearly betray the influence of brunellesco's cupola and the lantern of santa maria del fiore[footnote : a small sketch of the tower of the palazzo della signoria (ms. c.a. ) proves that he also studied mediaeval monuments.] the beginning of the second period of modern italian architecture falls during the first twenty years of leonardo's life. however the new impetus given by leon battista alberti either was not generally understood by his contemporaries, or those who appreciated it, had no opportunity of showing that they did so. it was only when taken up by bramante and developed by him to the highest rank of modern architecture that this new influence was generally felt. now the peculiar feature of leonardo's sketches is that, like the works of bramante, they appear to be the development and continuation of alberti's. _but a question here occurs which is difficult to answer. did leonardo, till he quitted florence, follow the direction given by the dominant school of brunellesco, which would then have given rise to his "first manner", or had he, even before he left florence, felt alberti's influence--either through his works (palazzo ruccellai, and the front of santa maria novella) or through personal intercourse? or was it not till he went to milan that alberti's work began to impress him through bramante, who probably had known alberti at mantua about and who not only carried out alberti's views and ideas, but, by his designs for st. peter's at rome, proved himself the greatest of modern architects. when leonardo went to milan bramante had already been living there for many years. one of his earliest works in milan was the church of santa maria presso san satiro, via del falcone[footnote : evidence of this i intend to give later on in a life of bramante, which i have in preparation.]. now we find among leonardos studies of cupolas on plates lxxxiv and lxxxv and in pl. lxxx several sketches which seem to me to have been suggested by bramante's dome of this church. the mss. b and ash. ii contain the plans of s. sepolcro, the pavilion in the garden of the duke of milan, and two churches, evidently inspired by the church of san lorenzo at milan. ms. b. contains besides two notes relating to pavia, one of them a design for the sacristy of the cathedral at pavia, which cannot be supposed to be dated later than , and it has probably some relation to leonardo's call to pavia june , [footnote : the sketch of the plan of brunellesco's church of santo spirito at florence, which occurs in the same manuscript, may have been done from memory.]. these and other considerations justify us in concluding, that leonardo made his studies of cupolas at milan, probably between the years and in anticipation of the erection of one of the grandest churches of italy, the cathedral of pavia. this may explain the decidedly lombardo-bramantesque tendency in the style of these studies, among which only a few remind us of the forms of the cupolas of s. maria del fiore and of the baptistery of florence. thus, although when compared with bramante's work, several of these sketches plainly reveal that master's influence, we find, among the sketches of domes, some, which show already bramante's classic style, of which the tempietto of san pietro in montorio, his first building executed at rome, is the foremost example[footnote : it may be mentioned here, that in bramante made a similar design for the lantern of the cupola of the church of santa maria delle grazie.]. on plate lxxxiv is a sketch of the plan of a similar circular building; and the mausoleum on pl. xcviii, no less than one of the pedestals for the statue of francesco sforza (pl. lxv), is of the same type. the drawings pl. lxxxiv no. , pl. lxxxvi no. and and the ground flour ("flour" sic but should be "floor" ?) of the building in the drawing pl. xci no. , with the interesting decoration by gigantic statues in large niches, are also, i believe, more in the style bramante adopted at rome, than in the lombard style. are we to conclude from this that leonardo on his part influenced bramante in the sense of simplifying his style and rendering it more congenial to antique art? the answer to this important question seems at first difficult to give, for we are here in presence of bramante, the greatest of modern architects, and with leonardo, the man comparable with no other. we have no knowledge of any buildings erected by leonardo, and unless we admit personal intercourse--which seems probable, but of which there is no proof--, it would be difficult to understand how leonardo could have affected bramante's style. the converse is more easily to be admitted, since bramante, as we have proved elsewhere, drew and built simultaneously in different manners, and though in lombardy there is no building by him in his classic style, the use of brick for building, in that part of italy, may easily account for it._ _bramante's name is incidentally mentioned in leonardo's manuscripts in two passages (nos. and ). on each occasion it is only a slight passing allusion, and the nature of the context gives us no due information as to any close connection between the two artists._ _it might be supposed, on the ground of leonardo's relations with the east given in sections xvii and xxi of this volume, that some evidence of oriental influence might be detected in his architectural drawings. i do not however think that any such traces can be pointed out with certainty unless perhaps the drawing for a mausoleum, pl. xc viii._ _among several studies for the construction of cupolas above a greek cross there are some in which the forms are decidedly monotonous. these, it is clear, were not designed as models of taste; they must be regarded as the results of certain investigations into the laws of proportion, harmony and contrast._ _the designs for churches, on the plan of a latin cross are evidently intended to depart as little as possible from the form of a greek cross; and they also show a preference for a nave surrounded with outer porticos._ _the architectural forms preferred by leonardo are pilasters coupled (pl. lxxxii no. ; or grouped (pl. lxxx no. and xciv no. ), often combined with niches. we often meet with orders superposed, one in each story, or two small orders on one story, in combination with one great order (pl. xcvi no. )._ the drum (tamburo) of these cupolas is generally octagonal, as in the cathedral of florence, and with similar round windows in its sides. in pl. lxxxvii no. it is circular like the model actually carried out by michael angelo at st. peter's. the cupola itself is either hidden under a pyramidal roof, as in the baptistery of florence, san lorenzo of milan and most of the lombard churches (pl. xci no. and pl. xcii no. ); but it more generally suggests the curve of sta maria del fiore (pl. lxxxviii no. ; pl. xc no. ; pl. lxxxix, m; pl xc no. , pl. xcvi no. ). in other cases (pl. lxxx no. ; pl. lxxxix; pl. xc no. ) it shows the sides of the octagon crowned by semicircular pediments, as in brunellesco's lantern of the cathedral and in the model for the cathedral of pavia. finally, in some sketches the cupola is either semicircular, or as in pl. lxxxvii no. , shows the beautiful line, adopted sixty years later by michael angelo for the existing dome of st. peter's. it is worth noticing that for all these domes leonardo is not satisfied to decorate the exterior merely with ascending ribs or mouldings, but employs also a system of horizontal parallels to complete the architectural system. not the least interesting are the designs for the tiburio (cupola) of the milan cathedral. they show some of the forms, just mentioned, adapted to the peculiar gothic style of that monument. the few examples of interiors of churches recall the style employed in lombardy by bramante, for instance in s. maria di canepanuova at pavia, or by dolcebuono in the monastero maggiore at milan (see pl. ci no. [c. a. b; b]; pl. lxxxiv no. ). the few indications concerning palaces seem to prove that leonardo followed alberti's example of decorating the walls with pilasters and a flat rustica, either in stone or by graffitti (pl. cii no. and pl. lxxxv no. ). by pointing out the analogies between leonardo's architecture and that of other masters we in no way pretend to depreciate his individual and original inventive power. these are at all events beyond dispute. the project for the mausoleum (pl. xcviii) would alone suffice to rank him among the greatest architects who ever lived. the peculiar shape of the tower (pl. lxxx), of the churches for preaching (pl. xcvii no. and pages and , fig. - ), his curious plan for a city with high and low level streets (pl. lxxvii and lxxviii no. and no. ), his loggia with fountains (pl. lxxxii no. ) reveal an originality, a power and facility of invention for almost any given problem, which are quite wonderful. _in addition to all these qualities he propably stood alone in his day in one department of architectural study,--his investigations, namely, as to the resistance of vaults, foundations, walls and arches._ _as an application of these studies the plan of a semicircular vault (pl. ciii no. ) may be mentioned here, disposed so as to produce no thrust on the columns on which it rests:_ volta i botte e non ispignie ifori le colone. _above the geometrical patterns on the same sheet, close to a circle inscribed in a square is the note:_ la ragio d'una volta cioe il terzo del diamitro della sua ... del tedesco in domo. _there are few data by which to judge of leonardo's style in the treatment of detail. on pl. lxxxv no. and pl. ciii no. , we find some details of pillars; on pl. ci no. slender pillars designed for a fountain and on pl. ciii no. ms. b, is a pen and ink drawing of a vase which also seems intended for a fountain. three handles seem to have been intended to connect the upper parts with the base. there can be no doubt that leonardo, like bramante, but unlike michael angelo, brought infinite delicacy of motive and execution to bear on the details of his work._ _xiv._ _anatomy, zoology and physiology._ _leonardo's eminent place in the history of medicine, as a pioneer in the sciences of anatomy and physiology, will never be appreciated till it is possible to publish the mass of manuscripts in which he largely treated of these two branches of learning. in the present work i must necessarily limit myself to giving the reader a general view of these labours, by publishing his introductory notes to the various books on anatomical subjects. i have added some extracts, and such observations as are scattered incidentally through these treatises, as serving to throw a light on leonardo's scientific attitude, besides having an interest for a wider circle than that of specialists only._ _vasari expressly mentions leonardo's anatomical studies, having had occasion to examine the manuscript books which refer to them. according to him leonardo studied anatomy in the companionship of marc antonio della torre_ "aiutato e scambievolmente aiutando."_--this learned anatomist taught the science in the universities first of padua and then of pavia, and at pavia he and leonardo may have worked and studied together. we have no clue to any exact dates, but in the year marc antonio della torre seems to have not yet left padua. he was scarcely thirty years old when he died in , and his writings on anatomy have not only never been published, but no manuscript copy of them is known to exist._ _this is not the place to enlarge on the connection between leonardo and marc antonio della torre. i may however observe that i have not been able to discover in leonardo's manuscripts on anatomy any mention of his younger contemporary. the few quotations which occur from writers on medicine--either of antiquity or of the middle ages are printed in section xxii. here and there in the manuscripts mention is made of an anonymous "adversary"_ (avversario) _whose views are opposed and refuted by leonardo, but there is no ground for supposing that marc antonio della torre should have been this "adversary"._ _only a very small selection from the mass of anatomical drawings left by leonardo have been published here in facsimile, but to form any adequate idea of their scientific merit they should be compared with the coarse and inadequate figures given in the published books of the early part of the xvi. century. william hunter, the great surgeon--a competent judge--who had an opportunity in the time of george iii. of seeing the originals in the king's library, has thus recorded his opinion: "i expected to see little more than such designs in anatomy as might be useful to a painter in his own profession. but i saw, and indeed with astonishment, that leonardo had been a general and deep student. when i consider what pains he has taken upon every part of the body, the superiority of his universal genius, his particular excellence in mechanics and hydraulics, and the attention with which such a man would examine and see objects which he has to draw, i am fully persuaded that leonardo was the best anatomist, at that time, in the world ... leonardo was certainly the first man, we know of, who introduced the practice of making anatomical drawings" (two introductory letters. london , pages and ). the illustrious german naturalist johan friedrich blumenback esteemed them no less highly; he was one of the privileged few who, after hunter, had the chance of seeing these manuscripts. he writes: _der scharfblick dieses grossen forschers und darstellers der natur hat schon auf dinge geachtet, die noch jahrhunderte nachher unbemerkt geblieben sind_" (see _blumenbach's medicinische bibliothek_, vol. , st. , . page ). these opinions were founded on the drawings alone. up to the present day hardly anything has been made known of the text, and, for the reasons i have given, it is my intention to reproduce here no more than a selection of extracts which i have made from the originals at windsor castle and elsewhere. in the bibliography of the manuscripts, at the end of this volume a short review is given of the valuable contents of these anatomical note books which are at present almost all in the possession of her majesty the queen of england. it is, i believe, possible to assign the date with approximate accuracy to almost all the fragments, and i am thus led to conclude that the greater part of leonardo's anatomical investigations were carried out after the death of della torre. merely in reading the introductory notes to his various books on anatomy which are here printed it is impossible to resist the impression that the master's anatomical studies bear to a very great extent the stamp of originality and independent thought. i. anatomy. . a general introduction i wish to work miracles;--it may be that i shall possess less than other men of more peaceful lives, or than those who want to grow rich in a day. i may live for a long time in great poverty, as always happens, and to all eternity will happen, to alchemists, the would-be creators of gold and silver, and to engineers who would have dead water stir itself into life and perpetual motion, and to those supreme fools, the necromancer and the enchanter. [footnote : the following seems to be directed against students of painting and young artists rather than against medical men and anatomists.] and you, who say that it would be better to watch an anatomist at work than to see these drawings, you would be right, if it were possible to observe all the things which are demonstrated in such drawings in a single figure, in which you, with all your cleverness, will not see nor obtain knowledge of more than some few veins, to obtain a true and perfect knowledge of which i have dissected more than ten human bodies, destroying all the other members, and removing the very minutest particles of the flesh by which these veins are surrounded, without causing them to bleed, excepting the insensible bleeding of the capillary veins; and as one single body would not last so long, since it was necessary to proceed with several bodies by degrees, until i came to an end and had a complete knowledge; this i repeated twice, to learn the differences [ ]. [footnote: lines - and - are written in two parallel columns. when we here find leonardo putting himself in the same category as the alchemists and necromancers, whom he elsewhere mocks at so bitterly, it is evidently meant ironically. in the same way leonardo, in the introduction to the books on perspective sets himself with transparent satire on a level with other writers on the subject.] and if you should have a love for such things you might be prevented by loathing, and if that did not prevent you, you might be deterred by the fear of living in the night hours in the company of those corpses, quartered and flayed and horrible to see. and if this did not prevent you, perhaps you might not be able to draw so well as is necessary for such a demonstration; or, if you had the skill in drawing, it might not be combined with knowledge of perspective; and if it were so, you might not understand the methods of geometrical demonstration and the method of the calculation of forces and of the strength of the muscles; patience also may be wanting, so that you lack perseverance. as to whether all these things were found in me or not [footnote : leonardo frequently, and perhaps habitually, wrote in note books of a very small size and only moderately thick; in most of those which have been preserved undivided, each contains less than fifty leaves. thus a considerable number of such volumes must have gone to make up a volume of the bulk of the '_codex atlanticus_' which now contains nearly detached leaves. in the passage under consideration, which was evidently written at a late period of his life, leonardo speaks of his manuscript note-books as numbering o; but we should hardly be justified in concluding from this passage that the greater part of his manuscripts were now missing (see _prolegomena_, vol. i, pp. - ).], the hundred and twenty books composed by me will give verdict yes or no. in these i have been hindered neither by avarice nor negligence, but simply by want of time. farewell [ ]. plans and suggestions for the arrangement of materials ( - ). . of the order of the book. this work must begin with the conception of man, and describe the nature of the womb and how the foetus lives in it, up to what stage it resides there, and in what way it quickens into life and feeds. also its growth and what interval there is between one stage of growth and another. what it is that forces it out from the body of the mother, and for what reasons it sometimes comes out of the mother's womb before the due time. then i will describe which are the members, which, after the boy is born, grow more than the others, and determine the proportions of a boy of one year. then describe the fully grown man and woman, with their proportions, and the nature of their complexions, colour, and physiognomy. then how they are composed of veins, tendons, muscles and bones. this i shall do at the end of the book. then, in four drawings, represent four universal conditions of men. that is, mirth, with various acts of laughter, and describe the cause of laughter. weeping in various aspects with its causes. contention, with various acts of killing; flight, fear, ferocity, boldness, murder and every thing pertaining to such cases. then represent labour, with pulling, thrusting, carrying, stopping, supporting and such like things. further i would describe attitudes and movements. then perspective, concerning the functions and effects of the eye; and of hearing--here i will speak of music--, and treat of the other senses. and then describe the nature of the senses. this mechanism of man we will demonstrate in ... figures; of which the three first will show the ramification of the bones; that is: first one to show their height and position and shape: the second will be seen in profile and will show the depth of the whole and of the parts, and their position. the third figure will be a demonstration of the bones of the backparts. then i will make three other figures from the same point of view, with the bones sawn across, in which will be shown their thickness and hollowness. three other figures of the bones complete, and of the nerves which rise from the nape of the neck, and in what limbs they ramify. and three others of the bones and veins, and where they ramify. then three figures with the muscles and three with the skin, and their proper proportions; and three of woman, to illustrate the womb and the menstrual veins which go to the breasts. [footnote: the meaning of the word _nervo_ varies in different passages, being sometimes used for _muscolo_ (muscle).] . the order of the book. this depicting of mine of the human body will be as clear to you as if you had the natural man before you; and the reason is that if you wish thoroughly to know the parts of man, anatomically, you--or your eye--require to see it from different aspects, considering it from below and from above and from its sides, turning it about and seeking the origin of each member; and in this way the natural anatomy is sufficient for your comprehension. but you must understand that this amount of knowledge will not continue to satisfy you; seeing the very great confusion that must result from the combination of tissues, with veins, arteries, nerves, sinews, muscles, bones, and blood which, of itself, tinges every part the same colour. and the veins, which discharge this blood, are not discerned by reason of their smallness. moreover integrity of the tissues, in the process of the investigating the parts within them, is inevitably destroyed, and their transparent substance being tinged with blood does not allow you to recognise the parts covered by them, from the similarity of their blood-stained hue; and you cannot know everything of the one without confusing and destroying the other. hence, some further anatomy drawings become necessary. of which you want three to give full knowledge of the veins and arteries, everything else being destroyed with the greatest care. and three others to display the tissues; and three for the sinews and muscles and ligaments; and three for the bones and cartilages; and three for the anatomy of the bones, which have to be sawn to show which are hollow and which are not, which have marrow and which are spongy, and which are thick from the outside inwards, and which are thin. and some are extremely thin in some parts and thick in others, and in some parts hollow or filled up with bone, or full of marrow, or spongy. and all these conditions are sometimes found in one and the same bone, and in some bones none of them. and three you must have for the woman, in which there is much that is mysterious by reason of the womb and the foetus. therefore by my drawings every part will be known to you, and all by means of demonstrations from three different points of view of each part; for when you have seen a limb from the front, with any muscles, sinews, or veins which take their rise from the opposite side, the same limb will be shown to you in a side view or from behind, exactly as if you had that same limb in your hand and were turning it from side to side until you had acquired a full comprehension of all you wished to know. in the same way there will be put before you three or four demonstrations of each limb, from various points of view, so that you will be left with a true and complete knowledge of all you wish to learn of the human figure[footnote : compare pl. cvii. the original drawing at windsor is / x / centimetres. the upper figures are slightly washed with indian ink. on the back of this drawing is the text no. .]. thus, in twelve entire figures, you will have set before you the cosmography of this lesser world on the same plan as, before me, was adopted by ptolemy in his cosmography; and so i will afterwards divide them into limbs as he divided the whole world into provinces; then i will speak of the function of each part in every direction, putting before your eyes a description of the whole form and substance of man, as regards his movements from place to place, by means of his different parts. and thus, if it please our great author, i may demonstrate the nature of men, and their customs in the way i describe his figure. and remember that the anatomy of the nerves will not give the position of their ramifications, nor show you which muscles they branch into, by means of bodies dissected in running water or in lime water; though indeed their origin and starting point may be seen without such water as well as with it. but their ramifications, when under running water, cling and unite--just like flat or hemp carded for spinning--all into a skein, in a way which makes it impossible to trace in which muscles or by what ramification the nerves are distributed among those muscles. . the arrangement of anatomy first draw the bones, let us say, of the arm, and put in the motor muscle from the shoulder to the elbow with all its lines. then proceed in the same way from the elbow to the wrist. then from the wrist to the hand and from the hand to the fingers. and in the arm you will put the motors of the fingers which open, and these you will show separately in their demonstration. in the second demonstration you will clothe these muscles with the secondary motors of the fingers and so proceed by degrees to avoid confusion. but first lay on the bones those muscles which lie close to the said bones, without confusion of other muscles; and with these you may put the nerves and veins which supply their nourishment, after having first drawn the tree of veins and nerves over the simple bones. . begin the anatomy at the head and finish at the sole of the foot. . men complete, with bones and nerves, with the bones only. here we have demonstrations of entire figures. . when you have finished building up the man, you will make the statue with all its superficial measurements. [footnote: _cresciere l'omo_. the meaning of this expression appears to be different here and in the passage c.a. a, a (see no. , note . ). here it can hardly mean anything else than modelling, since the sculptor forms the figure by degrees, by adding wet clay and the figure consequently increases or grows. _tu farai la statua_ would then mean, you must work out the figure in marble. if this interpretation is the correct one, this passage would have no right to find a place in the series on anatomical studies. i may say that it was originally inserted in this connection under the impression that _di cresciere_ should be read _descrivere_.] plans for the representation of muscles by drawings ( - ). . you must show all the motions of the bones with their joints to follow the demonstration of the first three figures of the bones, and this should be done in the first book. . remember that to be certain of the point of origin of any muscle, you must pull the sinew from which the muscle springs in such a way as to see that muscle move, and where it is attached to the ligaments of the bones. note. you will never get any thing but confusion in demonstrating the muscles and their positions, origin, and termination, unless you first make a demonstration of thin muscles after the manner of linen threads; and thus you can represent them, one over another as nature has placed them; and thus, too, you can name them according to the limb they serve; for instance the motor of the point of the great toe, of its middle bone, of its first bone, &c. and when you have the knowledge you will draw, by the side of this, the true form and size and position of each muscle. but remember to give the threads which explain the situation of the muscles in the position which corresponds to the central line of each muscle; and so these threads will demonstrate the form of the leg and their distance in a plain and clear manner. i have removed the skin from a man who was so shrunk by illness that the muscles were worn down and remained in a state like thin membrane, in such a way that the sinews instead of merging in muscles ended in wide membrane; and where the bones were covered by the skin they had very little over their natural size. [footnote: the photograph no. of grosvenor gallery publications: a drawing of the muscles of the foot, includes a complete facsimile of the text of this passage.] . which nerve causes the motion of the eye so that the motion of one eye moves the other? of frowning the brows, of raising the brows, of lowering the brows,--of closing the eyes, of opening the eyes,--of raising the nostrils, of opening the lips, with the teeth shut, of pouting with the lips, of smiling, of astonishment.-- describe the beginning of man when it is caused in the womb and why an eight months child does not live. what sneezing is. what yawning is. falling sickness, spasms, paralysis, shivering with cold, sweating, fatigue, hunger, sleepiness, thirst, lust. of the nerve which is the cause of movement from the shoulder to the elbow, of the movement from the elbow to the hand, from the joint of the hand to the springing of the fingers. from the springing of the fingers to the middle joints, and from the middle joints to the last. of the nerve which causes the movement of the thigh, and from the knee to the foot, and from the joint of the foot to the toes, and then to the middle of the toes and of the rotary motion of the leg. . anatomy. which nerves or sinews of the hand are those which close and part the fingers and toes latteraly? . remove by degrees all the parts of the front of a man in making your dissection, till you come to the bones. description of the parts of the bust and of their motions. . give the anatomy of the leg up to the hip, in all views and in every action and in every state; veins, arteries, nerves, sinews and muscles, skin and bones; then the bones in sections to show the thickness of the bones. [footnote: a straightened leg in profile is sketched by the side of this text.] on corpulency and leanness ( - ). . make the rule and give the measurement of each muscle, and give the reasons of all their functions, and in which way they work and what makes them work &c. [ ] first draw the spine of the back; then clothe it by degrees, one after the other, with each of its muscles and put in the nerves and arteries and veins to each muscle by itself; and besides these note the vertebrae to which they are attached; which of the intestines come in contact with them; and which bones and other organs &c. the most prominent parts of lean people are most prominent in the muscular, and equally so in fat persons. but concerning the difference in the forms of the muscles in fat persons as compared with muscular persons, it shall be described below. [footnote: the two drawings given on pl. cviii no. come between lines and . a good and very early copy of this drawing without the written text exists in the collection of drawings belonging to christ's college oxford, where it is attributed to leonardo.] . describe which muscles disappear in growing fat, and which become visible in growing lean. and observe that that part which on the surface of a fat person is most concave, when he grows lean becomes more prominent. where the muscles separate one from another you must give profiles and where they coalesce ... . of the human figure. which is the part in man, which, as he grows fatter, never gains flesh? or what part which as a man grows lean never falls away with a too perceptible diminution? and among the parts which grow fat which is that which grows fattest? among those which grow lean which is that which grows leanest? in very strong men which are the muscles which are thickest and most prominent? in your anatomy you must represent all the stages of the limbs from man's creation to his death, and then till the death of the bone; and which part of him is first decayed and which is preserved the longest. and in the same way of extreme leanness and extreme fatness. the divisions of the head ( . ). . anatomy. there are eleven elementary tissues:-- cartilage, bones, nerves, veins, arteries, fascia, ligament and sinews, skin, muscle and fat. of the head. the divisions of the head are , viz. external and internal, the external are the hair, skin, muscle, fascia and the skull; the internal are the dura mater, the pia mater, [which enclose] the brain. the pia mater and the dura mater come again underneath and enclose the brain; then the rete mirabile, and the occipital bone, which supports the brain from which the nerves spring. . _a_. hair _n_. skin _c_. muscle _m_. fascia _o_. skull _i.e._ bone _b_. dura mater _d_. pia mater _f_. brain _r_. pia mater, below _t_. dura mater _l_. rete mirablile _s_. the occipitul bone. [footnote: see pl. cviii, no. .] physiological problems ( . ). . of the cause of breathing, of the cause of the motion of the heart, of the cause of vomiting, of the cause of the descent of food from the stomach, of the cause of emptying the intestines. of the cause of the movement of the superfluous matter through the intestines. of the cause of swallowing, of the cause of coughing, of the cause of yawning, of the cause of sneezing, of the cause of limbs getting asleep. of the cause of losing sensibility in any limb. of the cause of tickling. of the cause of lust and other appetites of the body, of the cause of urine and also of all the natural excretions of the body. [footnote: by the side of this text stands the pen and ink drawing reproduced on pl. cviii, no. ; a skull with indications of the veins in the fleshy covering.] . the tears come from the heart and not from the brain. define all the parts, of which the body is composed, beginning with the skin with its outer cuticle which is often chapped by the influence of the sun. ii. zoology and comparative anatomy. the divisions of the animal kingdom ( . ). . _man_. the description of man, which includes that of such creatures as are of almost the same species, as apes, monkeys and the like, which are many, _the lion_ and its kindred, as panthers. [footnote : _leonza_--wild cat? "_secondo alcuni, lo stesso che leonessa; e secondo altri con piu certezza, lo stesso che pantera_" fanfani, _vocabolario_ page .] wildcats (?) tigers, leopards, wolfs, lynxes, spanish cats, common cats and the like. _the horse_ and its kindred, as mule, ass and the like, with incisor teeth above and below. _the bull_ and its allies with horns and without upper incisors as the buffalo, stag fallow deer, wild goat, swine, goat, wild goats muskdeers, chamois, giraffe. . describe the various forms of the intestines of the human species, of apes and such like. then, in what way the leonine species differ, and then the bovine, and finally birds; and arrange this description after the manner of a disquisition. miscellaneous notes on the study of zoology ( - ). . procure the placenta of a calf when it is born and observe the form of the cotyledons, if their cotyledons are male or female. . describe the tongue of the woodpecker and the jaw of the crocodile. . of the flight of the th kind of butterflies that consume winged ants. of the three principal positions of the wings of birds in downward flight. [footnote: a passing allusion is all i can here permit myself to leonardo's elaborate researches into the flight of birds. compare the observations on this subject in the introduction to section xviii and in the bibliography of manuscripts at the end of the work.] . of the way in which the tail of a fish acts in propelling the fish; as in the eel, snake and leech. [footnote: a sketch of a fish, swimming upwards is in the original, inserted above this text.--compare no. .] comparative study of the structure of bones and of the action of muscles ( - ). . of the palm of the hand. then i will discourse of the hands of each animal to show in what they vary; as in the bear, which has the ligatures of the sinews of the toes joined above the instep. . a second demonstration inserted between anatomy and [the treatise on] the living being. you will represent here for a comparison, the legs of a frog, which have a great resemblance to the legs of man, both in the bones and in the muscles. then, in continuation, the hind legs of the hare, which are very muscular, with strong active muscles, because they are not encumbered with fat. [footnote: this text is written by the side of a drawing in black chalk of a nude male figure, but there is no connection between the sketch and the text.] . here i make a note to demonstrate the difference there is between man and the horse and in the same way with other animals. and first i will begin with the bones, and then will go on to all the muscles which spring from the bones without tendons and end in them in the same way, and then go on to those which start with a single tendon at one end. [footnote: see pl. cviii, no. .] . note on the bendings of joints and in what way the flesh grows upon them in their flexions or extensions; and of this most important study write a separate treatise: in the description of the movements of animals with four feet; among which is man, who likewise in his infancy crawls on all fours. . of the way of walking in man. the walking of man is always after the universal manner of walking in animals with legs, inasmuch as just as they move their feet crosswise after the manner of a horse in trotting, so man moves his limbs crosswise; that is, if he puts forward his right foot in walking he puts forward, with it, his left arm and vice versa, invariably. iii. physiology. comparative study of the organs of sense in men and animals. . i have found that in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals the organs of sense are duller and coarser. thus it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense. i have seen in the lion tribe that the sense of smell is connected with part of the substance of the brain which comes down the nostrils, which form a spacious receptacle for the sense of smell, which enters by a great number of cartilaginous vesicles with several passages leading up to where the brain, as before said, comes down. the eyes in the lion tribe have a large part of the head for their sockets and the optic nerves communicate at once with the brain; but the contrary is to be seen in man, for the sockets of the eyes are but a small part of the head, and the optic nerves are very fine and long and weak, and by the weakness of their action we see by day but badly at night, while these animals can see as well at night as by day. the proof that they can see is that they prowl for prey at night and sleep by day, as nocturnal birds do also. advantages in the structure of the eye in certain animals ( - ). . every object we see will appear larger at midnight than at midday, and larger in the morning than at midday. this happens because the pupil of the eye is much smaller at midday than at any other time. in proportion as the eye or the pupil of the owl is larger in proportion to the animal than that of man, so much the more light can it see at night than man can; hence at midday it can see nothing if its pupil does not diminish; and, in the same way, at night things look larger to it than by day. . of the eyes in animals. the eyes of all animals have their pupils adapted to dilate and diminish of their own accord in proportion to the greater or less light of the sun or other luminary. but in birds the variation is much greater; and particularly in nocturnal birds, such as horned owls, and in the eyes of one species of owl; in these the pupil dilates in such away as to occupy nearly the whole eye, or diminishes to the size of a grain of millet, and always preserves the circular form. but in the lion tribe, as panthers, pards, ounces, tigers, lynxes, spanish cats and other similar animals the pupil diminishes from the perfect circle to the figure of a pointed oval such as is shown in the margin. but man having a weaker sight than any other animal is less hurt by a very strong light and his pupil increases but little in dark places; but in the eyes of these nocturnal animals, the horned owl--a bird which is the largest of all nocturnal birds--the power of vision increases so much that in the faintest nocturnal light (which we call darkness) it sees with much more distinctness than we do in the splendour of noon day, at which time these birds remain hidden in dark holes; or if indeed they are compelled to come out into the open air lighted up by the sun, they contract their pupils so much that their power of sight diminishes together with the quantity of light admitted. study the anatomy of various eyes and see which are the muscles which open and close the said pupils of the eyes of animals. [footnote: compare no. , lines and fol.] . _a b n_ is the membrane which closes the eye from below, upwards, with an opaque film, _c n b_ encloses the eye in front and behind with a transparent membrane. it closes from below, upwards, because it [the eye] comes downwards. when the eye of a bird closes with its two lids, the first to close is the nictitating membrane which closes from the lacrymal duct over to the outer corner of the eye; and the outer lid closes from below upwards, and these two intersecting motions begin first from the lacrymatory duct, because we have already seen that in front and below birds are protected and use only the upper portion of the eye from fear of birds of prey which come down from above and behind; and they uncover first the membrane from the outer corner, because if the enemy comes from behind, they have the power of escaping to the front; and again the muscle called the nictitating membrane is transparent, because, if the eye had not such a screen, they could not keep it open against the wind which strikes against the eye in the rush of their rapid flight. and the pupil of the eye dilates and contracts as it sees a less or greater light, that is to say intense brilliancy. . if at night your eye is placed between the light and the eye of a cat, it will see the eye look like fire. remarks on the organs of speech ( . ). . _a e i o u ba be bi bo bu ca ce ci co cu da de di do du fa fe fi fo fu ga ge gi go gu la le li lo lu ma me mi mo mu na ne ni no nu pa pe pi po pu qa qe qi qo qu ra re ri ro ru sa se si so su ta te ti to tu_ the tongue is found to have muscles which correspond to the six muscles which compose the portion of the tongue which moves in the mouth. and when _a o u_ are spoken with a clear and rapid pronunciation, it is necessary, in order to pronounce continuously, without any pause between, that the opening of the lips should close by degrees; that is, they are wide apart in saying _a_, closer in saying _o_, and much closer still to pronounce _u_. it may be shown how all the vowels are pronounced with the farthest portion of the false palate which is above the epiglottis. . if you draw in breath by the nose and send it out by the mouth you will hear the sound made by the division that is the membrane in [footnote : the text here breaks off.]... on the conditions of sight ( . ). . of the nature of sight. i say that sight is exercised by all animals, by the medium of light; and if any one adduces, as against this, the sight of nocturnal animals, i must say that this in the same way is subject to the very same natural laws. for it will easily be understood that the senses which receive the images of things do not project from themselves any visual virtue [footnote : compare no. .]. on the contrary the atmospheric medium which exists between the object and the sense incorporates in itself the figure of things, and by its contact with the sense transmits the object to it. if the object--whether by sound or by odour--presents its spiritual force to the ear or the nose, then light is not required and does not act. the forms of objects do not send their images into the air if they are not illuminated [ ]; and the eye being thus constituted cannot receive that from the air, which the air does not possess, although it touches its surface. if you choose to say that there are many animals that prey at night, i answer that when the little light which suffices the nature of their eyes is wanting, they direct themselves by their strong sense of hearing and of smell, which are not impeded by the darkness, and in which they are very far superior to man. if you make a cat leap, by daylight, among a quantity of jars and crocks you will see them remain unbroken, but if you do the same at night, many will be broken. night birds do not fly about unless the moon shines full or in part; rather do they feed between sun-down and the total darkness of the night. [footnote : see no. - .] no body can be apprehended without light and shade, and light and shade are caused by light. . why men advanced in age see better at a distance. sight is better from a distance than near in those men who are advancing in age, because the same object transmits a smaller impression of itself to the eye when it is distant than when it is near. the seat of the common sense. . the common sense, is that which judges of things offered to it by the other senses. the ancient speculators have concluded that that part of man which constitutes his judgment is caused by a central organ to which the other five senses refer everything by means of impressibility; and to this centre they have given the name common sense. and they say that this sense is situated in the centre of the head between sensation and memory. and this name of common sense is given to it solely because it is the common judge of all the other five senses _i.e._ seeing, hearing, touch, taste and smell. this common sense is acted upon by means of sensation which is placed as a medium between it and the senses. sensation is acted upon by means of the images of things presented to it by the external instruments, that is to say the senses which are the medium between external things and sensation. in the same way the senses are acted upon by objects. surrounding things transmit their images to the senses and the senses transfer them to the sensation. sensation sends them to the common sense, and by it they are stamped upon the memory and are there more or less retained according to the importance or force of the impression. that sense is most rapid in its function which is nearest to the sensitive medium and the eye, being the highest is the chief of the others. of this then only we will speak, and the others we will leave in order not to make our matter too long. experience tells us that the eye apprehends ten different natures of things, that is: light and darkness, one being the cause of the perception of the nine others, and the other its absence:-- colour and substance, form and place, distance and nearness, motion and stillness [footnote : compare no. .]. on the origin of the soul. . though human ingenuity may make various inventions which, by the help of various machines answering the same end, it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous, and she needs no counterpoise when she makes limbs proper for motion in the bodies of animals. but she puts into them the soul of the body, which forms them that is the soul of the mother which first constructs in the womb the form of the man and in due time awakens the soul that is to inhabit it. and this at first lies dormant and under the tutelage of the soul of the mother, who nourishes and vivifies it by the umbilical vein, with all its spiritual parts, and this happens because this umbilicus is joined to the placenta and the cotyledons, by which the child is attached to the mother. and these are the reason why a wish, a strong craving or a fright or any other mental suffering in the mother, has more influence on the child than on the mother; for there are many cases when the child loses its life from them, &c. this discourse is not in its place here, but will be wanted for the one on the composition of animated bodies--and the rest of the definition of the soul i leave to the imaginations of friars, those fathers of the people who know all secrets by inspiration. [footnote : _lettere incoronate_. by this term leonardo probably understands not the bible only, but the works of the early fathers, and all the books recognised as sacred by the roman church.] i leave alone the sacred books; for they are supreme truth. on the relations of the soul to the organs of sense. . how the five senses are the ministers of the soul. the soul seems to reside in the judgment, and the judgment would seem to be seated in that part where all the senses meet; and this is called the common sense and is not all-pervading throughout the body, as many have thought. rather is it entirely in one part. because, if it were all-pervading and the same in every part, there would have been no need to make the instruments of the senses meet in one centre and in one single spot; on the contrary it would have sufficed that the eye should fulfil the function of its sensation on its surface only, and not transmit the image of the things seen, to the sense, by means of the optic nerves, so that the soul--for the reason given above-- may perceive it in the surface of the eye. in the same way as to the sense of hearing, it would have sufficed if the voice had merely sounded in the porous cavity of the indurated portion of the temporal bone which lies within the ear, without making any farther transit from this bone to the common sense, where the voice confers with and discourses to the common judgment. the sense of smell, again, is compelled by necessity to refer itself to that same judgment. feeling passes through the perforated cords and is conveyed to this common sense. these cords diverge with infinite ramifications into the skin which encloses the members of the body and the viscera. the perforated cords convey volition and sensation to the subordinate limbs. these cords and the nerves direct the motions of the muscles and sinews, between which they are placed; these obey, and this obedience takes effect by reducing their thickness; for in swelling, their length is reduced, and the nerves shrink which are interwoven among the particles of the limbs; being extended to the tips of the fingers, they transmit to the sense the object which they touch. the nerves with their muscles obey the tendons as soldiers obey the officers, and the tendons obey the common [central] sense as the officers obey the general. [ ] thus the joint of the bones obeys the nerve, and the nerve the muscle, and the muscle the tendon and the tendon the common sense. and the common sense is the seat of the soul [ ], and memory is its ammunition, and the impressibility is its referendary since the sense waits on the soul and not the soul on the sense. and where the sense that ministers to the soul is not at the service of the soul, all the functions of that sense are also wanting in that man's life, as is seen in those born mute and blind. [footnote: the peculiar use of the words _nervo_, _muscolo_, _corda_, _senso comune_, which are here literally rendered by nerve, muscle cord or tendon and common sense may be understood from lines and .] on involuntary muscular action. . how the nerves sometimes act of themselves without any commands from the other functions of the soul. this is most plainly seen; for you will see palsied and shivering persons move, and their trembling limbs, as their head and hands, quake without leave from their soul and their soul with all its power cannot prevent their members from trembling. the same thing happens in falling sickness, or in parts that have been cut off, as in the tails of lizards. the idea or imagination is the helm and guiding-rein of the senses, because the thing conceived of moves the sense. pre-imagining, is imagining the things that are to be. post-imagining, is imagining the things that are past. miscellaneous physiological observations ( - ). . there are four powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. the two first are mental and the others sensual. the three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all. smell is connected with taste in dogs and other gluttonous animals. . i reveal to men the origin of the first, or perhaps second cause of their existence. . lust is the cause of generation. appetite is the support of life. fear or timidity is the prolongation of life and preservation of its instruments. the laws of nutrition and the support of life ( - ). . how the body of animals is constantly dying and being renewed. the body of any thing whatever that takes nourishment constantly dies and is constantly renewed; because nourishment can only enter into places where the former nourishment has expired, and if it has expired it no longer has life. and if you do not supply nourishment equal to the nourishment which is gone, life will fail in vigour, and if you take away this nourishment, the life is entirely destroyed. but if you restore as much is destroyed day by day, then as much of the life is renewed as is consumed, just as the flame of the candle is fed by the nourishment afforded by the liquid of this candle, which flame continually with a rapid supply restores to it from below as much as is consumed in dying above: and from a brilliant light is converted in dying into murky smoke; and this death is continuous, as the smoke is continuous; and the continuance of the smoke is equal to the continuance of the nourishment, and in the same instant all the flame is dead and all regenerated, simultaneously with the movement of its own nourishment. . king of the animals--as thou hast described him--i should rather say king of the beasts, thou being the greatest--because thou hast spared slaying them, in order that they may give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast attempted to make a sepulchre for all animals; and i would say still more, if it were allowed me to speak the entire truth [ ]. but we do not go outside human matters in telling of one supreme wickedness, which does not happen among the animals of the earth, inasmuch as among them are found none who eat their own kind, unless through want of sense (few indeed among them, and those being mothers, as with men, albeit they be not many in number); and this happens only among the rapacious animals, as with the leonine species, and leopards, panthers lynxes, cats and the like, who sometimes eat their children; but thou, besides thy children devourest father, mother, brothers and friends; nor is this enough for thee, but thou goest to the chase on the islands of others, taking other men and these half-naked, the ... and the ... thou fattenest, and chasest them down thy own throat[ ]; now does not nature produce enough simples, for thee to satisfy thyself? and if thou art not content with simples, canst thou not by the mixture of them make infinite compounds, as platina wrote[footnote : _come scrisse il platina_ (bartolomeo sacchi, a famous humanist). the italian edition of his treatise _de arte coquinaria_, was published under the title _de la honestra voluptate, e valetudine, venezia_ .], and other authors on feeding? [footnote: we are led to believe that leonardo himself was a vegetarian from the following interesting passage in the first of andrea corsali's letters to giuliano de'medici: _alcuni gentili chiamati guzzarati non si cibano di cosa, alcuna che tenga sangue, ne fra essi loro consentono che si noccia ad alcuna cosa animata, come il nostro leonardo da vinci_. - . amerigo vespucci, with whom leonardo was personally acquainted, writes in his second letter to pietro soderini, about the inhabitants of the canary islands after having stayed there in : "_hanno una scelerata liberta di viuere; ... si cibano di carne humana, di maniera che il padre magia il figliuolo, et all'incontro il figliuolo il padre secondo che a caso e per sorte auiene. io viddi un certo huomo sceleratissimo che si vantaua, et si teneua a non piccola gloria di hauer mangiato piu di trecento huomini. viddi anche vna certa citta, nella quale io dimorai forse ventisette giorni, doue le carni humane, hauendole salate, eran appicate alli traui, si come noi alli traui di cucina_ _appicchiamo le carni di cinghali secche al sole o al fumo, et massimamente salsiccie, et altre simil cose: anzi si marauigliauano gradem ete che noi non magiaissimo della carne de nemici, le quali dicono muouere appetito, et essere di marauiglioso sapore, et le lodano come cibi soaui et delicati (lettere due di amerigo vespucci fiorentino drizzate al magnifico pietro soderini, gonfaloniere della eccelsa republica di firenze_; various editions).] . our life is made by the death of others. in dead matter insensible life remains, which, reunited to the stomachs of living beings, resumes life, both sensual and intellectual. . here nature appears with many animals to have been rather a cruel stepmother than a mother, and with others not a stepmother, but a most tender mother. . man and animals are really the passage and the conduit of food, the sepulchre of animals and resting place of the dead, one causing the death of the other, making themselves the covering for the corruption of other dead [bodies]. on the circulation of the blood ( - ). . death in old men, when not from fever, is caused by the veins which go from the spleen to the valve of the liver, and which thicken so much in the walls that they become closed up and leave no passage for the blood that nourishes it. [ ]the incessant current of the blood through the veins makes these veins thicken and become callous, so that at last they close up and prevent the passage of the blood. . the waters return with constant motion from the lowest depths of the sea to the utmost height of the mountains, not obeying the nature of heavier bodies; and in this they resemble the blood of animated beings which always moves from the sea of the heart and flows towards the top of the head; and here it may burst a vein, as may be seen when a vein bursts in the nose; all the blood rises from below to the level of the burst vein. when the water rushes out from the burst vein in the earth, it obeys the law of other bodies that are heavier than the air since it always seeks low places. [footnote: from this passage it is quite plain that leonardo had not merely a general suspicion of the circulation of the blood but a very clear conception of it. leonardo's studies on the muscles of the heart are to be found in the ms. w. an. iii. but no information about them has hitherto been made public. the limits of my plan in this work exclude all purely anatomical writings, therefore only a very brief excerpt from this note book can be given here. william harvey (born and professor of anatomy at cambridge from ) is always considered to have been the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. he studied medicine at padua in , and in brought out his memorable and important work: _de motu cordis et sanguinis_.] . that the blood which returns when the heart opens again is not the same as that which closes the valves of the heart. some notes on medicine ( - ). . make them give you the definition and remedies for the case ... and you will see that men are selected to be doctors for diseases they do not know. . a remedy for scratches taught me by the herald to the king of france. ounces of virgin wax, ounces of colophony, ounces of incense. keep each thing separate; and melt the wax, and then put in the incense and then the colophony, make a mixture of it and put it on the sore place. . medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body. . those who are annoyed by sickness at sea should drink extract of wormwood. . to keep in health, this rule is wise: eat only when you want and relish food. chew thoroughly that it may do you good. have it well cooked, unspiced and undisguised. he who takes medicine is ill advised. [footnote: this appears to be a sketch for a poem.] . i teach you to preserve your health; and in this you will succed better in proportion as you shun physicians, because their medicines are the work of alchemists. [footnote: this passage is written on the back of the drawing pl. cviii. compare also no. .] _xv_. _astronomy_. _ever since the publication by venturi in_ _and libri in_ _of some few passages of leonardo's astronomical notes, scientific astronomers have frequently expressed the opinion, that they must have been based on very important discoveries, and that the great painter also deserved a conspicuous place in the history of this science. in the passages here printed, a connected view is given of his astronomical studies as they lie scattered through the manuscripts, which have come down to us. unlike his other purely scientific labours, leonardo devotes here a good deal of attention to the opinions of the ancients, though he does not follow the practice universal in his day of relying on them as authorities; he only quotes them, as we shall see, in order to refute their arguments. his researches throughout have the stamp of independent thought. there is nothing in these writings to lead us to suppose that they were merely an epitome of the general learning common to the astronomers of the period. as early as in the xivth century there were chairs of astronomy in the universities of padua and bologna, but so late as during the entire xvith century astronomy and astrology were still closely allied._ _it is impossible now to decide whether leonardo, when living in florence, became acquainted in his youth with the doctrines of paolo toscanelli the great astronomer and mathematician (died_ _), of whose influence and teaching but little is now known, beyond the fact that he advised and encouraged columbus to carry out his project of sailing round the world. his name is nowhere mentioned by leonardo, and from the dates of the manuscripts from which the texts on astronomy are taken, it seems highly probable that leonardo devoted his attention to astronomical studies less in his youth than in his later years. it was evidently his purpose to treat of astronomy in a connected form and in a separate work (see the beginning of nos._ _and_ _; compare also no._ _). it is quite in accordance with his general scientific thoroughness that he should propose to write a special treatise on optics as an introduction to astronomy (see nos._ _and_ _). some of the chapters belonging to this section bear the title "prospettiva" _(see nos._ _and_ _), this being the term universally applied at the time to optics as well as perspective (see vol. i, p._ , _note to no._ , _l._ _)_. _at the beginning of the xvith century the ptolemaic theory of the universe was still universally accepted as the true one, and leonardo conceives of the earth as fixed, with the moon and sun revolving round it, as they are represented in the diagram to no._ . _he does not go into any theory of the motions of the planets; with regard to these and the fixed stars he only investigates the phenomena of their luminosity. the spherical form of the earth he takes for granted as an axiom from the first, and he anticipates newton by pointing out the universality of gravitation not merely in the earth, but even in the moon. although his acute research into the nature of the moon's light and the spots on the moon did not bring to light many results of lasting importance beyond making it evident that they were a refutation of the errors of his contemporaries, they contain various explanations of facts which modern science need not modify in any essential point, and discoveries which history has hitherto assigned to a very much later date_. _the ingenious theory by which he tries to explain the nature of what is known as earth shine, the reflection of the sun's rays by the earth towards the moon, saying that it is a peculiar refraction, originating in the innumerable curved surfaces of the waves of the sea may be regarded as absurd; but it must not be forgotten that he had no means of detecting the fundamental error on which he based it, namely: the assumption that the moon was at a relatively short distance from the earth. so long as the motion of the earth round the sun remained unknown, it was of course impossible to form any estimate of the moon's distance from the earth by a calculation of its parallax_. _before the discovery of the telescope accurate astronomical observations were only possible to a very limited extent. it would appear however from certain passages in the notes here printed for the first time, that leonardo was in a position to study the spots in the moon more closely than he could have done with the unaided eye. so far as can be gathered from the mysterious language in which the description of his instrument is wrapped, he made use of magnifying glasses; these do not however seem to have been constructed like a telescope--telescopes were first made about_ . _as libri pointed out_ (histoire des sciences mathematiques iii, ) _fracastoro of verona_ ( - ) _succeeded in magnifying the moon's face by an arrangement of lenses (compare no._ , _note), and this gives probability to leonardo's invention at a not much earlier date._ i. the earth as a planet. the earth's place in the universe ( . ). . the equator, the line of the horizon, the ecliptic, the meridian: these lines are those which in all their parts are equidistant from the centre of the globe. . the earth is not in the centre of the sun's orbit nor at the centre of the universe, but in the centre of its companion elements, and united with them. and any one standing on the moon, when it and the sun are both beneath us, would see this our earth and the element of water upon it just as we see the moon, and the earth would light it as it lights us. the fundamental laws of the solar system ( - ). . force arises from dearth or abundance; it is the child of physical motion, and the grand-child of spiritual motion, and the mother and origin of gravity. gravity is limited to the elements of water and earth; but this force is unlimited, and by it infinite worlds might be moved if instruments could be made by which the force could be generated. force, with physical motion, and gravity, with resistance are the four external powers on which all actions of mortals depend. force has its origin in spiritual motion; and this motion, flowing through the limbs of sentient animals, enlarges their muscles. being enlarged by this current the muscles are shrunk in length and contract the tendons which are connected with them, and this is the cause of the force of the limbs in man. the quality and quantity of the force of a man are able to give birth to other forces, which will be proportionally greater as the motions produced by them last longer. [footnote: only part of this passage belongs, strictly speaking, to this section. the principle laid down in the second paragraph is more directly connected with the notes given in the preceding section on physiology.] . why does not the weight _o_ remain in its place? it does not remain because it has no resistance. where will it move to? it will move towards the centre [of gravity]. and why by no other line? because a weight which has no support falls by the shortest road to the lowest point which is the centre of the world. and why does the weight know how to find it by so short a line? because it is not independant and does not move about in various directions. [footnote: this text and the sketch belonging to it, are reproduced on pl. cxxi.] . let the earth turn on which side it may the surface of the waters will never move from its spherical form, but will always remain equidistant from the centre of the globe. granting that the earth might be removed from the centre of the globe, what would happen to the water? it would remain in a sphere round that centre equally thick, but the sphere would have a smaller diameter than when it enclosed the earth. [footnote: compare no. , lines - ; and no. .] . supposing the earth at our antipodes which supports the ocean were to rise and stand uncovered, far out of the sea, but remaining almost level, by what means afterwards, in the course of time, would mountains and vallies be formed? and the rocks with their various strata? . each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth. . mem.: that i must first show the distance of the sun from the earth; and, by means of a ray passing through a small hole into a dark chamber, detect its real size; and besides this, by means of the aqueous sphere calculate the size of the globe ... here it will be shown, that when the sun is in the meridian of our hemisphere [footnote : _antipodi orientali cogli occidentali_. the word _antipodes_ does not here bear its literal sense, but--as we may infer from the simultaneous reference to inhabitants of the north and south-- is used as meaning men living at a distance of degrees from the zenith of the rational horizon of each observer.], the antipodes to the east and to the west, alike, and at the same time, see the sun mirrored in their waters; and the same is equally true of the arctic and antarctic poles, if indeed they are inhabited. how to prove that the earth is a planet ( - ). . that the earth is a star. . in your discourse you must prove that the earth is a star much like the moon, and the glory of our universe; and then you must treat of the size of various stars, according to the authors. . the method of proving that the earth is a star. first describe the eye; then show how the twinkling of a star is really in the eye and why one star should twinkle more than another, and how the rays from the stars originate in the eye; and add, that if the twinkling of the stars were really in the stars --as it seems to be--that this twinkling appears to be an extension as great as the diameter of the body of the star; therefore, the star being larger than the earth, this motion effected in an instant would be a rapid doubling of the size of the star. then prove that the surface of the air where it lies contiguous to fire, and the surface of the fire where it ends are those into which the solar rays penetrate, and transmit the images of the heavenly bodies, large when they rise, and small, when they are on the meridian. let _a_ be the earth and _n d m_ the surface of the air in contact with the sphere of fire; _h f g_ is the orbit of the moon or, if you please, of the sun; then i say that when the sun appears on the horizon _g_, its rays are seen passing through the surface of the air at a slanting angle, that is _o m_; this is not the case at _d k_. and so it passes through a greater mass of air; all of _e m_ is a denser atmosphere. . beyond the sun and us there is darkness and so the air appears blue. [footnote: compare vol. i, no. .] . perspective. it is possible to find means by which the eye shall not see remote objects as much diminished as in natural perspective, which diminishes them by reason of the convexity of the eye which necessarily intersects, at its surface, the pyramid of every image conveyed to the eye at a right angle on its spherical surface. but by the method i here teach in the margin [ ] these pyramids are intersected at right angles close to the surface of the pupil. the convex pupil of the eye can take in the whole of our hemisphere, while this will show only a single star; but where many small stars transmit their images to the surface of the pupil those stars are extremely small; here only one star is seen but it will be large. and so the moon will be seen larger and its spots of a more defined form [footnote and fol.: telescopes were not in use till a century later. compare no. and page .]. you must place close to the eye a glass filled with the water of which mention is made in number of book "on natural substances" [footnote : _libro_ . this is perhaps the number of a book in some library catalogue. but it may refer, on the other hand, to one of the books mentioned in no. . l. .]; for this water makes objects which are enclosed in balls of crystalline glass appear free from the glass. of the eye. among the smaller objects presented to the pupil of the eye, that which is closest to it, will be least appreciable to the eye. and at the same time, the experiments here made with the power of sight, show that it is not reduced to speck if the &c. [ ][footnote : compare with this the passage in vol. i, no. , written about twenty years earlier.]. read in the margin. [ ]those objects are seen largest which come to the eye at the largest angles. but the images of the objects conveyed to the pupil of the eye are distributed to the pupil exactly as they are distributed in the air: and the proof of this is in what follows; that when we look at the starry sky, without gazing more fixedly at one star than another, the sky appears all strewn with stars; and their proportions to the eye are the same as in the sky and likewise the spaces between them [ ]. [footnote: . . _in margine:_ lines - are, in the original, written on the margin and above them is the diagram to which leonardo seems to refer here.] . perspective. among objects moved from the eye at equal distance, that undergoes least diminution which at first was most remote. when various objects are removed at equal distances farther from their original position, that which was at first the farthest from the eye will diminish least. and the proportion of the diminution will be in proportion to the relative distance of the objects from the eye before they were removed. that is to say in the object _t_ and the object _e_ the proportion of their distances from the eye _a_ is quintuple. i remove each from its place and set it farther from the eye by one of the parts into which the proposition is divided. hence it happens that the nearest to the eye has doubled the distance and according to the last proposition but one of this, is diminished by the half of its whole size; and the body _e_, by the same motion, is diminished / of its whole size. therefore, by that same last proposition but one, that which is said in this last proposition is true; and this i say of the motions of the celestial bodies which are more distant by miles when setting than when overhead, and yet do not increase or diminish in any sensible degree. . _a b_ is the aperture through which the sun passes, and if you could measure the size of the solar rays at _n m_, you could accurately trace the real lines of the convergence of the solar rays, the mirror being at _a b_, and then show the reflected rays at equal angles to _n m_; but, as you want to have them at _n m_, take them at the. inner side of the aperture at cd, where they maybe measured at the spot where the solar rays fall. then place your mirror at the distance _a b_, making the rays _d b_, _c a_ fall and then be reflected at equal angles towards _c d_; and this is the best method, but you must use this mirror always in the same month, and the same day, and hour and instant, and this will be better than at no fixed time because when the sun is at a certain distance it produces a certain pyramid of rays. . _a_, the side of the body in light and shade _b_, faces the whole portion of the hemisphere bed _e f_, and does not face any part of the darkness of the earth. and the same occurs at the point _o_; therefore the space a _o_ is throughout of one and the same brightness, and s faces only four degrees of the hemisphere _d e f g h_, and also the whole of the earth _s h_, which will render it darker; and how much must be demonstrated by calculation. [footnote: this passage, which has perhaps a doubtful right to its place in this connection, stands in the manuscript between those given in vol. i as no. and no. .] . the reason of the increased size of the sun in the west. some mathematicians explain that the sun looks larger as it sets, because the eye always sees it through a denser atmosphere, alleging that objects seen through mist or through water appear larger. to these i reply: no; because objects seen through a mist are similar in colour to those at a distance; but not being similarly diminished they appear larger. again, nothing increases in size in smooth water; and the proof of this may be seen by throwing a light on a board placed half under water. but the reason why the sun looks larger is that every luminous body appears larger in proportion as it is more remote. [footnote: lines and are thus rendered by m. ravaisson in his edition of ms. a. "_de meme, aucune chose ne croit dans l'eau plane, et tu en feras l'experience_ en calquant un ais sous l'eau."--compare the diagrams in vol. i, p. .] on the luminosity of the earth in the universal space ( - ). . in my book i propose to show, how the ocean and the other seas must, by means of the sun, make our world shine with the appearance of a moon, and to the remoter worlds it looks like a star; and this i shall prove. show, first that every light at a distance from the eye throws out rays which appear to increase the size of the luminous body; and from this it follows that ...[footnote : here the text breaks off; lines and fol. are written in the margin.]. [ ]the moon is cold and moist. water is cold and moist. thus our seas must appear to the moon as the moon does to us. . the waves in water magnify the image of an object reflected in it. let _a_ be the sun, and _n m_ the ruffled water, _b_ the image of the sun when the water is smooth. let _f_ be the eye which sees the image in all the waves included within the base of the triangle _c e f_. now the sun reflected in the unruffled surface occupied the space _c d_, while in the ruffled surface it covers all the watery space _c e_ (as is proved in the th of my "perspective") [footnote : _nel quarto della mia prospettiva_. if this reference is to the diagrams accompanying the text--as is usual with leonardo--and not to some particular work, the largest of the diagrams here given must be meant. it is the lowest and actually the fifth, but he would have called it the fourth, for the text here given is preceded on the same page of the manuscript by a passage on whirlpools, with the diagram belonging to it also reproduced here. the words _della mia prospettiva_ may therefore indicate that the diagram to the preceding chapter treating on a heterogeneal subject is to be excluded. it is a further difficulty that this diagram belongs properly to lines - and not to the preceding sentence. the reflection of the sun in water is also discussed in the theoretical part of the book on painting; see vol. i, no. , .] and it will cover more of the water in proportion as the reflected image is remote from the eye [ ]. [footnote: in the original sketch, inside the circle in the first diagram, is written _sole_ (sun), and to the right of it _luna_ (moon). thus either of these heavenly bodies may be supposed to fill that space. within the lower circle is written _simulacro_ (image). in the two next diagrams at the spot here marked _l_ the word _luna_ is written, and in the last _sole_ is written in the top circle at _a_.] the image of the sun will be more brightly shown in small waves than in large ones--and this is because the reflections or images of the sun are more numerous in the small waves than in large ones, and the more numerous reflections of its radiance give a larger light than the fewer. waves which intersect like the scales of a fir cone reflect the image of the sun with the greatest splendour; and this is the case because the images are as many as the ridges of the waves on which the sun shines, and the shadows between these waves are small and not very dark; and the radiance of so many reflections together becomes united in the image which is transmitted to the eye, so that these shadows are imperceptible. that reflection of the sun will cover most space on the surface of the water which is most remote from the eye which sees it. let _a_ be the sun, _p q_ the reflection of the sun; _a b_ is the surface of the water, in which the sun is mirrored, and _r_ the eye which sees this reflection on the surface of the water occupying the space _o m_. _c_ is the eye at a greater distance from the surface of the water and also from the reflection; hence this reflection covers a larger space of water, by the distance between _n_ and _o_. . it is impossible that the side of a spherical mirror, illuminated by the sun, should reflect its radiance unless this mirror were undulating or filled with bubbles. you see here the sun which lights up the moon, a spherical mirror, and all of its surface, which faces the sun is rendered radiant. whence it may be concluded that what shines in the moon is water like that of our seas, and in waves as that is; and that portion which does not shine consists of islands and terra firma. this diagram, of several spherical bodies interposed between the eye and the sun, is given to show that, just as the reflection of the sun is seen in each of these bodies, in the same way that image may be seen in each curve of the waves of the sea; and as in these many spheres many reflections of the sun are seen, so in many waves there are many images, each of which at a great distance is much magnified to the eye. and, as this happens with each wave, the spaces interposed between the waves are concealed; and, for this reason, it looks as though the many suns mirrored in the many waves were but one continuous sun; and the shadows,, mixed up with the luminous images, render this radiance less brilliant than that of the sun mirrored in these waves. [footnote: in the original, at letter _a_ in the diagram "_sole_" (the sun) is written, and at _o_ "_occhio_" (the eye).] . this will have before it the treatise on light and shade. the edges in the moon will be most strongly lighted and reflect most light, because, there, nothing will be visible but the tops of the waves of the water [footnote : i have thought it unnecessary to reproduce the detailed explanation of the theory of reflection on waves contained in the passage which follows this.]. . the sun will appear larger in moving water or on waves than in still water; an example is the light reflected on the strings of a monochord. ii. the sun. the question of the true and of the apparent size of the sun ( - ). . in praise of the sun. if you look at the stars, cutting off the rays (as may be done by looking through a very small hole made with the extreme point of a very fine needle, placed so as almost to touch the eye), you will see those stars so minute that it would seem as though nothing could be smaller; it is in fact their great distance which is the reason of their diminution, for many of them are very many times larger than the star which is the earth with water. now reflect what this our star must look like at such a distance, and then consider how many stars might be added--both in longitude and latitude--between those stars which are scattered over the darkened sky. but i cannot forbear to condemn many of the ancients, who said that the sun was no larger than it appears; among these was epicurus, and i believe that he founded his reason on the effects of a light placed in our atmosphere equidistant from the centre of the earth. any one looking at it never sees it diminished in size at whatever distance; and the rea- [footnote - : what leonardo says of epicurus-- who according to lewis, _the astronomy of the ancients_, and madler, _geschichte der himmelskunde_, did not devote much attention to the study of celestial phenomena--, he probably derived from book x of diogenes laertius, whose _vitae philosophorum_ was not printed in greek till , but the latin translation appeared in .] . sons of its size and power i shall reserve for book . but i wonder greatly that socrates [footnote : _socrates;_ i have little light to throw on this reference. plato's socrates himself declares on more than one occasion that in his youth he had turned his mind to the study of celestial phenomena (metewpa) but not in his later years (see g. c. lewis, _the astronomy of the ancients_, page ; madler, _geschichte der himmelskunde_, page ). here and there in plato's writings we find incidental notes on the sun and other heavenly bodies. leonardo may very well have known of these, since the latin version by ficinus was printed as early as ; indeed an undated edition exists which may very likely have appeared between -- . there is but one passage in plato, epinomis (p. ) where he speaks of the physical properties of the sun and says that it is larger than the earth. aristotle who goes very fully into the subject says the same. a complete edition of aristotele's works was first printed in venice - , but a latin version of the books _de coelo et mundo_ and _de physica_ had been printed in venice as early as in (h. muller-strubing).] should have depreciated that solar body, saying that it was of the nature of incandescent stone, and the one who opposed him as to that error was not far wrong. but i only wish i had words to serve me to blame those who are fain to extol the worship of men more than that of the sun; for in the whole universe there is nowhere to be seen a body of greater magnitude and power than the sun. its light gives light to all the celestial bodies which are distributed throughout the universe; and from it descends all vital force, for the heat that is in living beings comes from the soul [vital spark]; and there is no other centre of heat and light in the universe as will be shown in book ; and certainly those who have chosen to worship men as gods--as jove, saturn, mars and the like--have fallen into the gravest error, seeing that even if a man were as large as our earth, he would look no bigger than a little star which appears but as a speck in the universe; and seeing again that these men are mortal, and putrid and corrupt in their sepulchres. marcellus [footnote : i have no means of identifying _marcello_ who is named in the margin. it may be nonius marcellus, an obscure roman grammarian of uncertain date (between the iind and vth centuries a. c.) the author of the treatise _de compendiosa doctrina per litteras ad filium_ in which he treats _de rebus omnibus et quibusdam aliis_. this was much read in the middle ages. the _editto princeps_ is dated (h. muller-strubing).] and many others praise the sun. . epicurus perhaps saw the shadows cast by columns on the walls in front of them equal in diameter to the columns from which the shadows were cast; and the breadth of the shadows being parallel from beginning to end, he thought he might infer that the sun also was directly opposite to this parallel and that consequently its breadth was not greater than that of the column; not perceiving that the diminution in the shadow was insensibly slight by reason of the remoteness of the sun. if the sun were smaller than the earth, the stars on a great portion of our hemisphere would have no light, which is evidence against epicurus who says the sun is only as large as it appears. [footnote: in the original the writing is across the diagram.] . epicurus says the sun is the size it looks. hence as it looks about a foot across we must consider that to be its size; it would follow that when the moon eclipses the sun, the sun ought not to appear the larger, as it does. then, the moon being smaller than the sun, the moon must be less than a foot, and consequently when our world eclipses the moon, it must be less than a foot by a finger's breadth; inasmuch as if the sun is a foot across, and our earth casts a conical shadow on the moon, it is inevitable that the luminous cause of the cone of shadow must be larger than the opaque body which casts the cone of shadow. . to measure how many times the diameter of the sun will go into its course in hours. make a circle and place it to face the south, after the manner of a sundial, and place a rod in the middle in such a way as that its length points to the centre of this circle, and mark the shadow cast in the sunshine by this rod on the circumference of the circle, and this shadow will be--let us say-- as broad as from _a_ to _n_. now measure how many times this shadow will go into this circumference of a circle, and that will give you the number of times that the solar body will go into its orbit in hours. thus you may see whether epicurus was [right in] saying that the sun was only as large as it looked; for, as the apparent diameter of the sun is about a foot, and as that sun would go a thousand times into the length of its course in hours, it would have gone a thousand feet, that is braccia, which is the sixth of a mile. whence it would follow that the course of the sun during the day would be the sixth part of a mile and that this venerable snail, the sun will have travelled braccia an hour. . posidonius composed books on the size of the sun. [footnote: poseidonius of apamea, commonly called the rhodian, because he taught in rhodes, was a stoic philosopher, a contemporary and friend of cicero's, and the author of numerous works on natural science, among them. strabo quotes no doubt from one of his works, when he says that poseidonius explained how it was that the sun looked larger when it was rising or setting than during the rest of its course (iii, p. ). kleomedes, a later greek naturalist also mentions this observation of poseidonius' without naming the title of his work; however, as kleomedes' cyclia theorica was not printed till , leonardo must have derived his quotation from strabo. he probably wrote this note in , and as the original greek was first printed in venice in , we must suppose him to quote here from the translation by guarinus veronensis, which was printed as early as , also at venice (h. muller-strubing).] of the nature of sunlight. . of the proof that the sun is hot by nature and not by virtue. of the nature of sunlight. that the heat of the sun resides in its nature and not in its virtue [or mode of action] is abundantly proved by the radiance of the solar body on which the human eye cannot dwell and besides this no less manifestly by the rays reflected from a concave mirror, which--when they strike the eye with such splendour that the eye cannot bear them--have a brilliancy equal to the sun in its own place. and that this is true i prove by the fact that if the mirror has its concavity formed exactly as is requisite for the collecting and reflecting of these rays, no created being could endure the heat that strikes from the reflected rays of such a mirror. and if you argue that the mirror itself is cold and yet send forth hot rays, i should reply that those rays come really from the sun and that it is the ray of the concave mirror after having passed through the window. considerations as to the size of the sun ( - ). . the sun does not move. [footnote: this sentence occurs incidentally among mathematical notes, and is written in unusually large letters.] . proof that the nearer you are to the source of the solar rays, the larger will the reflection of the sun from the sea appear to you. [footnote: lines and fol. compare vol. i, nos. , .] if it is from the centre that the sun employs its radiance to intensify the power of its whole mass, it is evident that the farther its rays extend, the more widely they will be divided; and this being so, you, whose eye is near the water that mirrors the sun, see but a small portion of the rays of the sun strike the surface of the water, and reflecting the form of the sun. but if you were near to the sun--as would be the case when the sun is on the meridian and the sea to the westward--you would see the sun, mirrored in the sea, of a very great size; because, as you are nearer to the sun, your eye taking in the rays nearer to the point of radiation takes more of them in, and a great splendour is the result. and in this way it can be proved that the moon must have seas which reflect the sun, and that the parts which do not shine are land. . take the measure of the sun at the solstice in mid-june. . why the sun appears larger when setting than at noon, when it is near to us. every object seen through a curved medium seems to be of larger size than it is. [footnote: at a is written _sole_ (the sun), at b _terra_ (the earth).] . because the eye is small it can only see the image of the sun as of a small size. if the eye were as large as the sun it would see the image of the sun in water of the same size as the real body of the sun, so long as the water is smooth. . a method of seeing the sun eclipsed without pain to the eye. take a piece of paper and pierce holes in it with a needle, and look at the sun through these holes. iii. the moon. on the luminousity of the moon ( - ). . of the moon. as i propose to treat of the nature of the moon, it is necessary that first i should describe the perspective of mirrors, whether plane, concave or convex; and first what is meant by a luminous ray, and how it is refracted by various kinds of media; then, when a reflected ray is most powerful, whether when the angle of incidence is acute, right, or obtuse, or from a convex, a plane, or a concave surface; or from an opaque or a transparent body. besides this, how it is that the solar rays which fall on the waves of the sea, are seen by the eye of the same width at the angle nearest to the eye, as at the highest line of the waves on the horizon; but notwithstanding this the solar rays reflected from the waves of the sea assume the pyramidal form and consequently, at each degree of distance increase proportionally in size, although to our sight, they appear as parallel. st. nothing that has very little weight is opaque. dly. nothing that is excessively weighty can remain beneath that which is heavier. dly. as to whether the moon is situated in the centre of its elements or not. and, if it has no proper place of its own, like the earth, in the midst of its elements, why does it not fall to the centre of our elements? [footnote : the problem here propounded by leonardo was not satisfactorily answered till newton in formulated the law of universal attraction and gravitation. compare no. , lines - .] and, if the moon is not in the centre of its own elements and yet does not fall, it must then be lighter than any other element. and, if the moon is lighter than the other elements why is it opaque and not transparent? when objects of various sizes, being placed at various distances, look of equal size, there must be the same relative proportion in the distances as in the magnitudes of the objects. [footnote: in the diagram leonardo wrote _sole_ at the place marked _a_.] . of the moon and whether it is polished and spherical. the image of the sun in the moon is powerfully luminous, and is only on a small portion of its surface. and the proof may be seen by taking a ball of burnished gold and placing it in the dark with a light at some distance from it; and then, although it will illuminate about half of the ball, the eye will perceive its reflection only in a small part of its surface, and all the rest of the surface reflects the darkness which surrounds it; so that it is only in that spot that the image of the light is seen, and all the rest remains invisible, the eye being at a distance from the ball. the same thing would happen on the surface of the moon if it were polished, lustrous and opaque, like all bodies with a reflecting surface. show how, if you were standing on the moon or on a star, our earth would seem to reflect the sun as the moon does. and show that the image of the sun in the sea cannot appear one and undivided, as it appears in a perfectly plane mirror. . how shadows are lost at great distances, as is shown by the shadow side of the moon which is never seen. [footnote: compare also vol. i, nos. - .] . either the moon has intrinsic luminosity or not. if it has, why does it not shine without the aid of the sun? but if it has not any light in itself it must of necessity be a spherical mirror; and if it is a mirror, is it not proved in perspective that the image of a luminous object will never be equal to the extent of surface of the reflecting body that it illuminates? and if it be thus [footnote : at a, in the diagram, leonardo wrote "_sole_" (the sun), and at b "_luna o noi terra_" (the moon or our earth). compare also the text of no. .], as is here shown at _r s_ in the figure, whence comes so great an extent of radiance as that of the full moon as we see it, at the fifteenth day of the moon? . of the moon. the moon has no light in itself; but so much of it as faces the sun is illuminated, and of that illumined portion we see so much as faces the earth. and the moon's night receives just as much light as is lent it by our waters as they reflect the image of the sun, which is mirrored in all those waters which are on the side towards the sun. the outside or surface of the waters forming the seas of the moon and of the seas of our globe is always ruffled little or much, or more or less--and this roughness causes an extension of the numberless images of the sun which are repeated in the ridges and hollows, the sides and fronts of the innumerable waves; that is to say in as many different spots on each wave as our eyes find different positions to view them from. this could not happen, if the aqueous sphere which covers a great part of the moon were uniformly spherical, for then the images of the sun would be one to each spectator, and its reflections would be separate and independent and its radiance would always appear circular; as is plainly to be seen in the gilt balls placed on the tops of high buildings. but if those gilt balls were rugged or composed of several little balls, like mulberries, which are a black fruit composed of minute round globules, then each portion of these little balls, when seen in the sun, would display to the eye the lustre resulting from the reflection of the sun, and thus, in one and the same body many tiny suns would be seen; and these often combine at a long distance and appear as one. the lustre of the new moon is brighter and stronger, than when the moon is full; and the reason of this is that the angle of incidence is more obtuse in the new than in the full moon, in which the angles [of incidence and reflection] are highly acute. the waves of the moon therefore mirror the sun in the hollows of the waves as well as on the ridges, and the sides remain in shadow. but at the sides of the moon the hollows of the waves do not catch the sunlight, but only their crests; and thus the images are fewer and more mixed up with the shadows in the hollows; and this intermingling of the shaded and illuminated spots comes to the eye with a mitigated splendour, so that the edges will be darker, because the curves of the sides of the waves are insufficient to reflect to the eye the rays that fall upon them. now the new moon naturally reflects the solar rays more directly towards the eye from the crests of the waves than from any other part, as is shown by the form of the moon, whose rays a strike the waves _b_ and are reflected in the line _b d_, the eye being situated at _d_. this cannot happen at the full moon, when the solar rays, being in the west, fall on the extreme waters of the moon to the east from _n_ to _m_, and are not reflected to the eye in the west, but are thrown back eastwards, with but slight deflection from the straight course of the solar ray; and thus the angle of incidence is very wide indeed. the moon is an opaque and solid body and if, on the contrary, it were transparent, it would not receive the light of the sun. the yellow or yolk of an egg remains in the middle of the albumen, without moving on either side; now it is either lighter or heavier than this albumen, or equal to it; if it is lighter, it ought to rise above all the albumen and stop in contact with the shell of the egg; and if it is heavier, it ought to sink, and if it is equal, it might just as well be at one of the ends, as in the middle or below [ ]. [footnote - : compare no. .] the innumerable images of the solar rays reflected from the innumerable waves of the sea, as they fall upon those waves, are what cause us to see the very broad and continuous radiance on the surface of the sea. . that the sun could not be mirrored in the body of the moon, which is a convex mirror, in such a way as that so much of its surface as is illuminated by the sun, should reflect the sun unless the moon had a surface adapted to reflect it--in waves and ridges, like the surface of the sea when its surface is moved by the wind. [footnote: in the original diagrams _sole_ is written at the place marked _a; luna_ at _c,_ and _terra_ at the two spots marked _b_.] the waves in water multiply the image of the object reflected in it. these waves reflect light, each by its own line, as the surface of the fir cone does [footnote : see the diagram p. .] these are figures one different from the other; one with undulating water and the other with smooth water. it is impossible that at any distance the image of the sun cast on the surface of a spherical body should occupy the half of the sphere. here you must prove that the earth produces all the same effects with regard to the moon, as the moon with regard to the earth. the moon, with its reflected light, does not shine like the sun, because the light of the moon is not a continuous reflection of that of the sun on its whole surface, but only on the crests and hollows of the waves of its waters; and thus the sun being confusedly reflected, from the admixture of the shadows that lie between the lustrous waves, its light is not pure and clear as the sun is. [footnote : this refers to the small diagram placed between _b_ and _b_.--]. the earth between the moon on the fifteenth day and the sun. [footnote : see the diagram below the one referred to in the preceding note.] here the sun is in the east and the moon on the fifteenth day in the west. [footnote . : refers to the diagram below the others.] the moon on the fifteenth [day] between the earth and the sun. [ ]here it is the moon which has the sun to the west and the earth to the east. . what sort of thing the moon is. the moon is not of itself luminous, but is highly fitted to assimilate the character of light after the manner of a mirror, or of water, or of any other reflecting body; and it grows larger in the east and in the west, like the sun and the other planets. and the reason is that every luminous body looks larger in proportion as it is remote. it is easy to understand that every planet and star is farther from us when in the west than when it is overhead, by about miles, as is proved on the margin [footnote : refers to the first diagram.--a = _sole_ (the sun), b = _terra_ (the earth), c = _luna_ (the moon).], and if you see the sun or moon mirrored in the water near to you, it looks to you of the same size in the water as in the sky. but if you recede to the distance of a mile, it will look times larger; and if you see the sun reflected in the sea at sunset, its image would look to you more than miles long; because that reflected image extends over more than miles of sea. and if you could stand where the moon is, the sun would look to you, as if it were reflected from all the sea that it illuminates by day; and the land amid the water would appear just like the dark spots that are on the moon, which, when looked at from our earth, appears to men the same as our earth would appear to any men who might dwell in the moon. [footnote: this text has already been published by libri: _histoire des sciences,_ iii, pp. , .] of the nature of the moon. when the moon is entirely lighted up to our sight, we see its full daylight; and at that time, owing to the reflection of the solar rays which fall on it and are thrown off towards us, its ocean casts off less moisture towards us; and the less light it gives the more injurious it is. . of the moon. i say that as the moon has no light in itself and yet is luminous, it is inevitable but that its light is caused by some other body. . of the moon. all my opponent's arguments to say that there is no water in the moon. [footnote: the objections are very minutely noted down in the manuscript, but they hardly seem to have a place here.] . answer to maestro andrea da imola, who said that the solar rays reflected from a convex mirror are mingled and lost at a short distance; whereby it is altogether denied that the luminous side of the moon is of the nature of a mirror, and that consequently the light is not produced by the innumerable multitude of the waves of that sea, which i declared to be the portion of the moon which is illuminated by the solar rays. let _o p_ be the body of the sun, _c n s_ the moon, and _b_ the eye which, above the base _c n_ of the cathetus _c n m_, sees the body of the sun reflected at equal angles _c n_; and the same again on moving the eye from _b_ to _a_. [footnote: the large diagram on the margin of page belongs to this chapter.] explanation of the lumen cinereum in the moon. . of the moon. no solid body is less heavy than the atmosphere. [footnote: . on the margin are the words _tola romantina, tola--ferro stagnato_ (tinned iron); _romantina_ is some special kind of sheet-iron no longer known by that name.] having proved that the part of the moon that shines consists of water, which mirrors the body of the sun and reflects the radiance it receives from it; and that, if these waters were devoid of waves, it would appear small, but of a radiance almost like the sun; --[ ] it must now be shown whether the moon is a heavy or a light body: for, if it were a heavy body--admitting that at every grade of distance from the earth greater levity must prevail, so that water is lighter than the earth, and air than water, and fire than air and so on successively--it would seem that if the moon had density as it really has, it would have weight, and having weight, that it could not be sustained in the space where it is, and consequently that it would fall towards the centre of the universe and become united to the earth; or if not the moon itself, at least its waters would fall away and be lost from it, and descend towards the centre, leaving the moon without any and so devoid of lustre. but as this does not happen, as might in reason be expected, it is a manifest sign that the moon is surrounded by its own elements: that is to say water, air and fire; and thus is, of itself and by itself, suspended in that part of space, as our earth with its element is in this part of space; and that heavy bodies act in the midst of its elements just as other heavy bodies do in ours [footnote : this passage would certainly seem to establish leonardo's claim to be regarded as the original discoverer of the cause of the ashy colour of the new moon (_lumen cinereum_). his observations however, having hitherto remained unknown to astronomers, moestlin and kepler have been credited with the discoveries which they made independently a century later. some disconnected notes treat of the same subject in ms. c. a. b; b and b; "_perche la luna cinta della parte alluminata dal sole in ponente, tra maggior splendore in mezzo a tal cerchio, che quando essa eclissava il sole. questo accade perche nell' eclissare il sole ella ombrava il nostro oceano, il qual caso non accade essendo in ponente, quando il sole alluma esso oceano_." the editors of the "_saggio_" who first published this passage (page ) add another short one about the seasons in the moon which i confess not to have seen in the original manuscript: "_la luna ha ogni mese un verno e una state, e ha maggiori freddi e maggiori caldi, e i suoi equinozii son piu freddi de' nostri._"] when the eye is in the east and sees the moon in the west near to the setting sun, it sees it with its shaded portion surrounded by luminous portions; and the lateral and upper portion of this light is derived from the sun, and the lower portion from the ocean in the west, which receives the solar rays and reflects them on the lower waters of the moon, and indeed affords the part of the moon that is in shadow as much radiance as the moon gives the earth at midnight. therefore it is not totally dark, and hence some have believed that the moon must in parts have a light of its own besides that which is given it by the sun; and this light is due, as has been said, to the above- mentioned cause,--that our seas are illuminated by the sun. again, it might be said that the circle of radiance shown by the moon when it and the sun are both in the west is wholly borrowed from the sun, when it, and the sun, and the eye are situated as is shown above. [footnote . : the larger of the two diagrams reproduced above stands between these two lines, and the smaller one is sketched in the margin. at the spot marked _a_ leonardo wrote _corpo solare_ (solar body) in the larger diagram and _sole_ (sun) in the smaller one. at _c luna_ (moon) is written and at _b terra_ (the earth).] some might say that the air surrounding the moon as an element, catches the light of the sun as our atmosphere does, and that it is this which completes the luminous circle on the body of the moon. some have thought that the moon has a light of its own, but this opinion is false, because they have founded it on that dim light seen between the hornes of the new moon, which looks dark where it is close to the bright part, while against the darkness of the background it looks so light that many have taken it to be a ring of new radiance completing the circle where the tips of the horns illuminated by the sun cease to shine [footnote : see pl. cviii, no. .]. and this difference of background arises from the fact that the portion of that background which is conterminous with the bright part of the moon, by comparison with that brightness looks darker than it is; while at the upper part, where a portion of the luminous circle is to be seen of uniform width, the result is that the moon, being brighter there than the medium or background on which it is seen by comparison with that darkness it looks more luminous at that edge than it is. and that brightness at such a time itself is derived from our ocean and other inland-seas. these are, at that time, illuminated by the sun which is already setting in such a way as that the sea then fulfils the same function to the dark side of the moon as the moon at its fifteenth day does to us when the sun is set. and the small amount of light which the dark side of the moon receives bears the same proportion to the light of that side which is illuminated, as that... [footnote : here the text breaks off; lines - are written on the margin.]. if you want to see how much brighter the shaded portion of the moon is than the background on which it is seen, conceal the luminous portion of the moon with your hand or with some other more distant object. on the spots in the moon ( - ). . the spots on the moon. some have said that vapours rise from the moon, after the manner of clouds and are interposed between the moon and our eyes. but, if this were the case, these spots would never be permanent, either as to position or form; and, seeing the moon from various aspects, even if these spots did not move they would change in form, as objects do which are seen from different sides. . of the spots on the moon. others say that the moon is composed of more or less transparent parts; as though one part were something like alabaster and others like crystal or glass. it would follow from this that the sun casting its rays on the less transparent portions, the light would remain on the surface, and so the denser part would be illuminated, and the transparent portions would display the shadow of their darker depths; and this is their account of the structure and nature of the moon. and this opinion has found favour with many philosophers, and particularly with aristotle, and yet it is a false view--for, in the various phases and frequent changes of the moon and sun to our eyes, we should see these spots vary, at one time looking dark and at another light: they would be dark when the sun is in the west and the moon in the middle of the sky; for then the transparent hollows would be in shadow as far as the tops of the edges of those transparent hollows, because the sun could not then fling his rays into the mouth of the hollows, which however, at full moon, would be seen in bright light, at which time the moon is in the east and faces the sun in the west; then the sun would illuminate even the lowest depths of these transparent places and thus, as there would be no shadows cast, the moon at these times would not show us the spots in question; and so it would be, now more and now less, according to the changes in the position of the sun to the moon, and of the moon to our eyes, as i have said above. . of the spots on the moon. it has been asserted, that the spots on the moon result from the moon being of varying thinness or density; but if this were so, when there is an eclipse of the moon the solar rays would pierce through the portions which were thin as is alleged [footnote - : _eclissi_. this word, as it seems to me, here means eclipses of the sun; and the sense of the passage, as i understand it, is that by the foregoing hypothesis the moon, when it comes between the sun and the earth must appear as if pierced,--we may say like a sieve.]. but as we do not see this effect the opinion must be false. others say that the surface of the moon is smooth and polished and that, like a mirror, it reflects in itself the image of our earth. this view is also false, inasmuch as the land, where it is not covered with water, presents various aspects and forms. hence when the moon is in the east it would reflect different spots from those it would show when it is above us or in the west; now the spots on the moon, as they are seen at full moon, never vary in the course of its motion over our hemisphere. a second reason is that an object reflected in a convex body takes up but a small portion of that body, as is proved in perspective [footnote : _come e provato_. this alludes to the accompanying diagram.]. the third reason is that when the moon is full, it only faces half the hemisphere of the illuminated earth, on which only the ocean and other waters reflect bright light, while the land makes spots on that brightness; thus half of our earth would be seen girt round with the brightness of the sea lighted up by the sun, and in the moon this reflection would be the smallest part of that moon. fourthly, a radiant body cannot be reflected from another equally radiant; therefore the sea, since it borrows its brightness from the sun,--as the moon does--, could not cause the earth to be reflected in it, nor indeed could the body of the sun be seen reflected in it, nor indeed any star opposite to it. . if you keep the details of the spots of the moon under observation you will often find great variation in them, and this i myself have proved by drawing them. and this is caused by the clouds that rise from the waters in the moon, which come between the sun and those waters, and by their shadow deprive these waters of the sun's rays. thus those waters remain dark, not being able to reflect the solar body. . how the spots on the moon must have varied from what they formerly were, by reason of the course of its waters. on the moon's halo. . of halos round the moon. i have found, that the circles which at night seem to surround the moon, of various sizes, and degrees of density are caused by various gradations in the densities of the vapours which exist at different altitudes between the moon and our eyes. and of these halos the largest and least red is caused by the lowest of these vapours; the second, smaller one, is higher up, and looks redder because it is seen through two vapours. and so on, as they are higher they will appear smaller and redder, because, between the eye and them, there is thicker vapour. whence it is proved that where they are seen to be reddest, the vapours are most dense. on instruments for observing the moon ( . ). . if you want to prove why the moon appears larger than it is, when it reaches the horizon; take a lens which is highly convex on one surface and concave on the opposite, and place the concave side next the eye, and look at the object beyond the convex surface; by this means you will have produced an exact imitation of the atmosphere included beneath the sphere of fire and outside that of water; for this atmosphere is concave on the side next the earth, and convex towards the fire. . construct glasses to see the moon magnified. [footnote: see the introduction, p. , fracastoro says in his work homocentres: "_per dua specilla ocularla si quis perspiciat, alteri altero superposito, majora multo et propinquiora videbit omnia.--quin imo quaedam specilla ocularia fiunt tantae densitatis, ut si per ea quis aut lunam, aut aliud siderum spectet, adeo propinqua illa iudicet, ut ne turres ipsas excedant_" (sect. ii c. and sect. iii, c. ).] i. the stars. on the light of the stars ( - ). . the stars are visible by night and not by day, because we are eneath the dense atmosphere, which is full of innumerable articles of moisture, each of which independently, when the ays of the sun fall upon it, reflects a radiance, and so these umberless bright particles conceal the stars; and if it were not or this atmosphere the sky would always display the stars against ts darkness. [footnote: see no. , which also refers to starlight.] . whether the stars have their light from the sun or in themselves. some say that they shine of themselves, alledging that if venus nd mercury had not a light of their own, when they come between ur eye and the sun they would darken so much of the sun as they ould cover from our eye. but this is false, for it is proved that dark object against a luminous body is enveloped and entirely oncealed by the lateral rays of the rest of that luminous body nd so remains invisible. as may be seen when the sun is seen hrough the boughs of trees bare of their leaves, at some distance he branches do not conceal any portion of the sun from our eye. he same thing happens with the above mentioned planets which, hough they have no light of their own, do not--as has been said-- onceal any part of the sun from our eye [ ]. second argument. some say that the stars appear most brilliant at night in proportion as they are higher up; and that if they had no light of their own, the shadow of the earth which comes between them and the sun, would darken them, since they would not face nor be faced by the solar body. but those persons have not considered that the conical shadow of the earth cannot reach many of the stars; and even as to those it does reach, the cone is so much diminished that it covers very little of the star's mass, and all the rest is illuminated by the sun. footnote: from this and other remarks (see no. ) it is clear hat leonardo was familiar with the phenomena of irradiation.] . why the planets appear larger in the east than they do overhead, whereas the contrary should be the case, as they are miles nearer to us when in mid sky than when on the horizon. all the degrees of the elements, through which the images of the celestial bodies pass to reach the eye, are equal curves and the angles by which the central line of those images passes through them, are unequal angles [footnote : _inequali_, here and elsewhere does not mean unequal in the sense of not being equal to each other, but angles which are not right angles.]; and the distance is greater, as is shown by the excess of _a b_ beyond _a d_; and the enlargement of these celestial bodies on the horizon is shown by the th of the th. observations on the stars. . to see the real nature of the planets open the covering and note at the base [footnote : _basa_. this probably alludes to some instrument, perhaps the camera obscura.] one single planet, and the reflected movement of this base will show the nature of the said planet; but arrange that the base may face only one at the time. on history of astronomy. . cicero says in [his book] de divinatione that astrology has been practised five hundred seventy thousand years before the trojan war. . [footnote: the statement that cicero, _de divin._ ascribes the discovery of astrology to a period years before the trojan war i believe to be quite erroneous. according to ernesti, _clavis ciceroniana,_ ch. g. schulz (_lexic. cicer._) and the edition of _de divin._ by giese the word astrologia occurs only twice in cicero: _de divin. ii_, . _ad chaldaeorum monstra veniamus, de quibus eudoxus, platonis auditor, in astrologia judicio doctissimorum hominum facile princeps, sic opinatur (id quod scriptum reliquit): chaldaeis in praedictione et in notatione cujusque vitae ex natali die minime esse credendum._" he then quotes the condemnatory verdict of other philosophers as to the teaching of the chaldaeans but says nothing as to the antiquity and origin of astronomy. cicero further notes _de oratore_ i, that aratus was "_ignarus astrologiae_" but that is all. so far as i know the word occurs nowhere else in cicero; and the word _astronomia_ he does not seem to have used at all. (h. muller-strubing.)] of time and its divisions ( - ). . although time is included in the class of continuous quantities, being indivisible and immaterial, it does not come entirely under the head of geometry, which represents its divisions by means of figures and bodies of infinite variety, such as are seen to be continuous in their visible and material properties. but only with its first principles does it agree, that is with the point and the line; the point may be compared to an instant of time, and the line may be likened to the length of a certain quantity of time, and just as a line begins and terminates in a point, so such a space of time. begins and terminates in an instant. and whereas a line is infinitely divisible, the divisibility of a space of time is of the same nature; and as the divisions of the line may bear a certain proportion to each other, so may the divisions of time. [footnote: this passage is repeated word for word on page b of the same manuscript and this is accounted for by the text in vol. i, no. . compare also no. .] . describe the nature of time as distinguished from the geometrical definitions. . divide an hour into parts, and this you can do with a clock by making the pendulum lighter or heavier. _xvi. physical geography. leonardo's researches as to the structure of the earth and sea were made at a time, when the extended voyages of the spaniards and portuguese had also excited a special interest in geographical questions in italy, and particularly in tuscany. still, it need scarcely surprise us to find that in deeper questions, as to the structure of the globe, the primitive state of the earth's surface, and the like, he was far in advance of his time. the number of passages which treat of such matters is relatively considerable; like almost all leonardo's scientific notes they deal partly with theoretical and partly with practical questions. some of his theoretical views of the motion of water were collected in a copied manuscript volume by an early transcriber, but without any acknowledgment of the source whence they were derived. this copy is now in the library of the barberini palace at rome and was published under the title: "de moto e misura dell'acqua," by francesco cardinali, bologna_ . _in this work the texts are arranged under the following titles:_ libr. i. della spera dell'acqua; libr. ii. del moto dell'acqua; libr. iii. dell'onda dell'acqua; libr. iv. dei retrosi d'acqua; libr. v. dell'acqua cadente; libr. vi. delle rotture fatte dall'acqua; libr. vii delle cose portate dall'acqua; libr. viii. dell'oncia dell'acqua e delle canne; libr. ix. de molini e d'altri ordigni d'acqua. _the large number of isolated observations scattered through the manuscripts, accounts for our so frequently finding notes of new schemes for the arrangement of those relating to water and its motions, particularly in the codex atlanticus: i have printed several of these plans as an introduction to the physical geography, and i have actually arranged the texts in accordance with the clue afforded by one of them which is undoubtedly one of the latest notes referring to the subject (no._ _). the text given as no._ _which is also taken from a late note-book of leonardo's, served as a basis for the arrangement of the first of the seven books--or sections--, bearing the title: of the nature of water_ (dell'acque in se). _as i have not made it any part of this undertaking to print the passages which refer to purely physical principles, it has also been necessary to exclude those practical researches which, in accordance with indications given in_ , _ought to come in as books_ , _and_ . _i can only incidentally mention here that leonardo--as it seems to me, especially in his youth--devoted a great deal of attention to the construction of mills. this is proved by a number of drawings of very careful and minute execution, which are to be found in the codex atlanticus. nor was it possible to include his considerations on the regulation of rivers, the making of canals and so forth (no._ , _books_ , _and_ _); but those passages in which the structure of a canal is directly connected with notices of particular places will be found duly inserted under section xvii (topographical notes). in vol. i, no._ _the text refers to canal-making in general._ _on one point only can the collection of passages included under the general heading of physical geography claim to be complete. when comparing and sorting the materials for this work i took particular care not to exclude or omit any text in which a geographical name was mentioned even incidentally, since in all such researches the chief interest, as it appeared to me, attached to the question whether these acute observations on the various local characteristics of mountains, rivers or seas, had been made by leonardo himself, and on the spot. it is self-evident that the few general and somewhat superficial observations on the rhine and the danube, on england and flanders, must have been obtained from maps or from some informants, and in the case of flanders leonardo himself acknowledges this (see no._ _). but that most of the other and more exact observations were made, on the spot, by leonardo himself, may be safely assumed from their method and the style in which he writes of them; and we should bear it in mind that in all investigations, of whatever kind, experience is always spoken of as the only basis on which he relies. incidentally, as in no._ , _he thinks it necessary to allude to the total absence of all recorded observations._ i. introduction. schemes for the arrangement of the materials ( - ). . these books contain in the beginning: of the nature of water itself in its motions; the others treat of the effects of its currents, which change the world in its centre and its shape. . divisions of the book. book of water in itself. book of the sea. book of subterranean rivers. book of rivers. book of the nature of the abyss. book of the obstacles. book of gravels. book of the surface of water. book of the things placed therein. book of the repairing of rivers. book of conduits. book of canals. book of machines turned by water. book of raising water. book of matters worn away by water. . first you shall make a book treating of places occupied by fresh waters, and the second by salt waters, and the third, how by the disappearance of these, our parts of the world were made lighter and in consequence more remote from the centre of the world. . first write of all water, in each of its motions; then describe all its bottoms and their various materials, always referring to the propositions concerning the said waters; and let the order be good, for otherwise the work will be confused. describe all the forms taken by water from its greatest to its smallest wave, and their causes. . book , of accidental risings of water. . the order of the book. place at the beginning what a river can effect. . a book of driving back armies by the force of a flood made by releasing waters. a book showing how the waters safely bring down timber cut in the mountains. a book of boats driven against the impetus of rivers. a book of raising large bridges higher. simply by the swelling of the waters. a book of guarding against the impetus of rivers so that towns may not be damaged by them. . a book of the ordering of rivers so as to preserve their banks. a book of the mountains, which would stand forth and become land, if our hemisphere were to be uncovered by the water. a book of the earth carried down by the waters to fill up the great abyss of the seas. a book of the ways in which a tempest may of itself clear out filled up sea-ports. a book of the shores of rivers and of their permanency. a book of how to deal with rivers, so that they may keep their bottom scoured by their own flow near the cities they pass. a book of how to make or to repair the foundations for bridges over the rivers. a book of the repairs which ought to be made in walls and banks of rivers where the water strikes them. a book of the formation of hills of sand or gravel at great depths in water. . water gives the first impetus to its motion. a book of the levelling of waters by various means, a book of diverting rivers from places where they do mischief. a book of guiding rivers which occupy too much ground. a book of parting rivers into several branches and making them fordable. a book of the waters which with various currents pass through seas. a book of deepening the beds of rivers by means of currents of water. a book of controlling rivers so that the little beginnings of mischief, caused by them, may not increase. a book of the various movements of waters passing through channels of different forms. a book of preventing small rivers from diverting the larger one into which their waters run. a book of the lowest level which can be found in the current of the surface of rivers. a book of the origin of rivers which flow from the high tops of mountains. a book of the various motions of waters in their rivers. . [ ] of inequality in the concavity of a ship. [footnote : the first line of this passage was added subsequently, evidently as a correction of the following line.] [ ] a book of the inequality in the curve of the sides of ships. [ ] a book of the inequality in the position of the tiller. [ ] a book of the inequality in the keel of ships. [ ] a book of various forms of apertures by which water flows out. [ ] a book of water contained in vessels with air, and of its movements. [ ] a book of the motion of water through a syphon. [footnote : _cicognole_, see no. , , .] [ ] a book of the meetings and union of waters coming from different directions. [ ] a book of the various forms of the banks through which rivers pass. [ ] a book of the various forms of shoals formed under the sluices of rivers. [ ] a book of the windings and meanderings of the currents of rivers. [ ] a book of the various places whence the waters of rivers are derived. [ ] a book of the configuration of the shores of rivers and of their permanency. [ ] a book of the perpendicular fall of water on various objects. [ ] abook of the course of water when it is impeded in various places. [ ] a book of the various forms of the obstacles which impede the course of waters. [ ] a book of the concavity and globosity formed round various objects at the bottom. [ ] abook of conducting navigable canals above or beneath the rivers which intersect them. [ ] a book of the soils which absorb water in canals and of repairing them. [ ] abook of creating currents for rivers, which quit their beds, [and] for rivers choked with soil. general introduction. . the beginning of the treatise on water. by the ancients man has been called the world in miniature; and certainly this name is well bestowed, because, inasmuch as man is composed of earth, water, air and fire, his body resembles that of the earth; and as man has in him bones the supports and framework of his flesh, the world has its rocks the supports of the earth; as man has in him a pool of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean tide which likewise rises and falls every six hours, as if the world breathed; as in that pool of blood veins have their origin, which ramify all over the human body, so likewise the ocean sea fills the body of the earth with infinite springs of water. the body of the earth lacks sinews and this is, because the sinews are made expressely for movements and, the world being perpetually stable, no movement takes place, and no movement taking place, muscles are not necessary. --but in all other points they are much alike. i. of the nature of water. the arrangement of book i. . the order of the first book on water. define first what is meant by height and depth; also how the elements are situated one inside another. then, what is meant by solid weight and by liquid weight; but first what weight and lightness are in themselves. then describe why water moves, and why its motion ceases; then why it becomes slower or more rapid; besides this, how it always falls, being in contact with the air but lower than the air. and how water rises in the air by means of the heat of the sun, and then falls again in rain; again, why water springs forth from the tops of mountains; and if the water of any spring higher than the ocean can pour forth water higher than the surface of that ocean. and how all the water that returns to the ocean is higher than the sphere of waters. and how the waters of the equatorial seas are higher than the waters of the north, and higher beneath the body of the sun than in any part of the equatorial circle; for experiment shows that under the heat of a burning brand the water near the brand boils, and the water surrounding this ebullition always sinks with a circular eddy. and how the waters of the north are lower than the other seas, and more so as they become colder, until they are converted into ice. definitions ( . ). . of what is water. among the four elements water is the second both in weight and in instability. . the beginning of the book on water. sea is the name given to that water which is wide and deep, in which the waters have not much motion. [footnote: only the beginning of this passage is here given, the remainder consists of definitions which have no direct bearing on the subject.] of the surface of the water in relation to the globe ( - ). . the centres of the sphere of water are two, one universal and common to all water, the other particular. the universal one is that which is common to all waters not in motion, which exist in great quantities. as canals, ditches, ponds, fountains, wells, dead rivers, lakes, stagnant pools and seas, which, although they are at various levels, have each in itself the limits of their superficies equally distant from the centre of the earth, such as lakes placed at the tops of high mountains; as the lake near pietra pana and the lake of the sybil near norcia; and all the lakes that give rise to great rivers, as the ticino from lago maggiore, the adda from the lake of como, the mincio from the lake of garda, the rhine from the lakes of constance and of chur, and from the lake of lucerne, like the tigris which passes through asia minor carrying with it the waters of three lakes, one above the other at different heights of which the highest is munace, the middle one pallas, and the lowest triton; the nile again flows from three very high lakes in ethiopia. [footnote : _pietra pana_, a mountain near florence. if for norcia, we may read norchia, the remains of the etruscan city near viterbo, there can be no doubt that by '_lago della sibilla_'--a name not known elsewhere, so far as i can learn--leonardo meant _lago di vico_ (lacus ciminus, aen. ).] . of the centre of the ocean. the centre of the sphere of waters is the true centre of the globe of our world, which is composed of water and earth, having the shape of a sphere. but, if you want to find the centre of the element of the earth, this is placed at a point equidistant from the surface of the ocean, and not equidistant from the surface of the earth; for it is evident that this globe of earth has nowhere any perfect rotundity, excepting in places where the sea is, or marshes or other still waters. and every part of the earth that rises above the water is farther from the centre. . of the sea which changes the weight of the earth. the shells, oysters, and other similar animals, which originate in sea-mud, bear witness to the changes of the earth round the centre of our elements. this is proved thus: great rivers always run turbid, being coloured by the earth, which is stirred by the friction of their waters at the bottom and on their shores; and this wearing disturbs the face of the strata made by the layers of shells, which lie on the surface of the marine mud, and which were produced there when the salt waters covered them; and these strata were covered over again from time to time, with mud of various thickness, or carried down to the sea by the rivers and floods of more or less extent; and thus these layers of mud became raised to such a height, that they came up from the bottom to the air. at the present time these bottoms are so high that they form hills or high mountains, and the rivers, which wear away the sides of these mountains, uncover the strata of these shells, and thus the softened side of the earth continually rises and the antipodes sink closer to the centre of the earth, and the ancient bottoms of the seas have become mountain ridges. . let the earth make whatever changes it may in its weight, the surface of the sphere of waters can never vary in its equal distance from the centre of the world. of the proportion of the mass of water to that of the earth ( . ). . whether the earth is less than the water. some assert that it is true that the earth, which is not covered by water is much less than that covered by water. but considering the size of miles in diameter which is that of this earth, we may conclude the water to be of small depth. . of the earth. the great elevations of the peaks of the mountains above the sphere of the water may have resulted from this that: a very large portion of the earth which was filled with water that is to say the vast cavern inside the earth may have fallen in a vast part of its vault towards the centre of the earth, being pierced by means of the course of the springs which continually wear away the place where they pass. sinking in of countries like the dead sea in syria, that is sodom and gomorrah. it is of necessity that there should be more water than land, and the visible portion of the sea does not show this; so that there must be a great deal of water inside the earth, besides that which rises into the lower air and which flows through rivers and springs. [footnote: the small sketch below on the left, is placed in the original close to the text referring to the dead sea.] the theory of plato. . the figures of the elements. of the figures of the elements; and first as against those who deny the opinions of plato, and who say that if the elements include one another in the forms attributed to them by plato they would cause a vacuum one within the other. i say it is not true, and i here prove it, but first i desire to propound some conclusions. it is not necessary that the elements which include each other should be of corresponding magnitude in all the parts, of that which includes and of that which is included. we see that the sphere of the waters varies conspicuously in mass from the surface to the bottom, and that, far from investing the earth when that was in the form of a cube that is of angles as plato will have it, that it invests the earth which has innumerable angles of rock covered by the water and various prominences and concavities, and yet no vacuum is generated between the earth and water; again, the air invests the sphere of waters together with the mountains and valleys, which rise above that sphere, and no vacuum remains between the earth and the air, so that any one who says a vacuum is generated, speaks foolishly. but to plato i would reply that the surface of the figures which according to him the elements would have, could not exist. that the flow of rivers proves the slope of the land. . proves how the earth is not globular and not being globular cannot have a common centre. we see the nile come from southern regions and traverse various provinces, running towards the north for a distance of miles and flow into the mediterranean by the shores of egypt; and if we will give to this a fall of ten braccia a mile, as is usually allowed to the course of rivers in general, we shall find that the nile must have its mouth ten miles lower than its source. again, we see the rhine, the rhone and the danube starting from the german parts, almost the centre of europe, and having a course one to the east, the other to the north, and the last to southern seas. and if you consider all this you will see that the plains of europe in their aggregate are much higher than the high peaks of the maritime mountains; think then how much their tops must be above the sea shores. theory of the elevation of water within the mountains. . of the heat that is in the world. where there is life there is heat, and where vital heat is, there is movement of vapour. this is proved, inasmuch as we see that the element of fire by its heat always draws to itself damp vapours and thick mists as opaque clouds, which it raises from seas as well as lakes and rivers and damp valleys; and these being drawn by degrees as far as the cold region, the first portion stops, because heat and moisture cannot exist with cold and dryness; and where the first portion stops the rest settle, and thus one portion after another being added, thick and dark clouds are formed. they are often wafted about and borne by the winds from one region to another, where by their density they become so heavy that they fall in thick rain; and if the heat of the sun is added to the power of the element of fire, the clouds are drawn up higher still and find a greater degree of cold, in which they form ice and fall in storms of hail. now the same heat which holds up so great a weight of water as is seen to rain from the clouds, draws them from below upwards, from the foot of the mountains, and leads and holds them within the summits of the mountains, and these, finding some fissure, issue continuously and cause rivers. the relative height of the surface of the sea to that of the land ( - ). . of the sea, which to many fools appears to be higher than the earth which forms its shore. _b d_ is a plain through which a river flows to the sea; this plain ends at the sea, and since in fact the dry land that is uncovered is not perfectly level--for, if it were, the river would have no motion--as the river does move, this place is a slope rather than a plain; hence this plain _d b_ so ends where the sphere of water begins that if it were extended in a continuous line to _b a_ it would go down beneath the sea, whence it follows that the sea _a c b_ looks higher than the dry land. obviously no portions of dry land left uncovered by water can ever be lower than the surface of the watery sphere. . of certain persons who say the waters were higher than the dry land. certainly i wonder not a little at the common opinion which is contrary to truth, but held by the universal consent of the judgment of men. and this is that all are agreed that the surface of the sea is higher than the highest peaks of the mountains; and they allege many vain and childish reasons, against which i will allege only one simple and short reason; we see plainly that if we could remove the shores of the sea, it would invest the whole earth and make it a perfect sphere. now, consider how much earth would be carried away to enable the waves of the sea to cover the world; therefore that which would be carried away must be higher than the sea-shore. . the opinion of some persons who say that the water of some seas is higher than the highest summits of mountains; and nevertheless the water was forced up to these summits. water would not move from place to place if it were not that it seeks the lowest level and by a natural consequence it never can return to a height like that of the place where it first on issuing from the mountain came to light. and that portion of the sea which, in your vain imagining, you say was so high that it flowed over the summits of the high mountains, for so many centuries would be swallowed up and poured out again through the issue from these mountains. you can well imagine that all the time that tigris and euphrates . have flowed from the summits of the mountains of armenia, it must be believed that all the water of the ocean has passed very many times through these mouths. and do you not believe that the nile must have sent more water into the sea than at present exists of all the element of water? undoubtedly, yes. and if all this water had fallen away from this body of the earth, this terrestrial machine would long since have been without water. whence we may conclude that the water goes from the rivers to the sea, and from the sea to the rivers, thus constantly circulating and returning, and that all the sea and the rivers have passed through the mouth of the nile an infinite number of times [footnote: _moti armeni, ermini_ in the original, in m. ravaisson's transcript _"monti ernini [le loro ruine?]"_. he renders this _"le tigre et l'euphrate se sont deverses par les sommets des montagnes [avec leurs eaux destructives?] on pent cro're" &c. leonardo always writes _ermini, erminia_, for _armeni, armenia_ (arabic: _irminiah_). m. ravaisson also deviates from the original in his translation of the following passage: "_or tu ne crois pas que le nil ait mis plus d'eau dans la mer qu'il n'y en a a present dans tout l'element de l'eau. il est certain que si cette eau etait tombee_" &c.] ii. on the ocean. refutation of pliny's theory as to the saltness of the sea ( . ). . why water is salt. pliny says in his second book, chapter , that the water of the sea is salt because the heat of the sun dries up the moisture and drinks it up; and this gives to the wide stretching sea the savour of salt. but this cannot be admitted, because if the saltness of the sea were caused by the heat of the sun, there can be no doubt that lakes, pools and marshes would be so much the more salt, as their waters have less motion and are of less depth; but experience shows us, on the contrary, that these lakes have their waters quite free from salt. again it is stated by pliny in the same chapter that this saltness might originate, because all the sweet and subtle portions which the heat attracts easily being taken away, the more bitter and coarser part will remain, and thus the water on the surface is fresher than at the bottom [footnote : compare no. .]; but this is contradicted by the same reason given above, which is, that the same thing would happen in marshes and other waters, which are dried up by the heat. again, it has been said that the saltness of the sea is the sweat of the earth; to this it may be answered that all the springs of water which penetrate through the earth, would then be salt. but the conclusion is, that the saltness of the sea must proceed from the many springs of water which, as they penetrate into the earth, find mines of salt and these they dissolve in part, and carry with them to the ocean and the other seas, whence the clouds, the begetters of rivers, never carry it up. and the sea would be salter in our times than ever it was at any time; and if the adversary were to say that in infinite time the sea would dry up or congeal into salt, to this i answer that this salt is restored to the earth by the setting free of that part of the earth which rises out of the sea with the salt it has acquired, and the rivers return it to the earth under the sea. [footnote: see pliny, hist. nat. ii, ciii [c]. _itaque solis ardore siccatur liquor: et hoc esse masculum sidus accepimus, torrens cuncta sorbensque._ (cp. civ.) _sic mari late patenti saporem incoqui salis, aut quia exhausto inde dulci tenuique, quod facillime trahat vis ignea, omne asperius crassiusque linquatur: ideo summa aequorum aqua dulciorem profundam; hanc esse veriorem causam, quam quod mare terrae sudor sit aeternus: aut quia plurimum ex arido misceatur illi vapore: aut quia terrae natura sicut medicatas aquas inficiat_ ... (cp. cv): _altissimum mare xv. stadiorum fabianus tradit. alii n ponto coadverso coraxorum gentis (vocant b ponti) trecentis fere a continenti stadiis immensam altitudinem maris tradunt, vadis nunquam repertis._ (cp. cvi [ciii]) _mirabilius id faciunt aquae dulces, juxta mare, ut fistulis emicantes. nam nec aquarum natura a miraculis cessat. dulces mari invehuntur, leviores haud dubie. ideo et marinae, quarum natura gravior, magis invecta sustinent. quaedam vero et dulces inter se supermeant alias._] . for the third and last reason we will say that salt is in all created things; and this we learn from water passed over the ashes and cinders of burnt things; and the urine of every animal, and the superfluities issuing from their bodies, and the earth into which all things are converted by corruption. but,--to put it better,--given that the world is everlasting, it must be admitted that its population will also be eternal; hence the human species has eternally been and would be consumers of salt; and if all the mass of the earth were to be turned into salt, it would not suffice for all human food [footnote : that is, on the supposition that salt, once consumed, disappears for ever.]; whence we are forced to admit, either that the species of salt must be everlasting like the world, or that it dies and is born again like the men who devour it. but as experience teaches us that it does not die, as is evident by fire, which does not consume it, and by water which becomes salt in proportion to the quantity dissolved in it,--and when it is evaporated the salt always remains in the original quantity--it must pass through the bodies of men either in the urine or the sweat or other excretions where it is found again; and as much salt is thus got rid of as is carried every year into towns; therefore salt is dug in places where there is urine.-- sea hogs and sea winds are salt. we will say that the rains which penetrate the earth are what is under the foundations of cities with their inhabitants, and are what restore through the internal passages of the earth the saltness taken from the sea; and that the change in the place of the sea, which has been over all the mountains, caused it to be left there in the mines found in those mountains, &c. the characteristics of sea water ( . ). . the waters of the salt sea are fresh at the greatest depths. . that the ocean does not penetrate under the earth. the ocean does not penetrate under the earth, and this we learn from the many and various springs of fresh water which, in many parts of the ocean make their way up from the bottom to the surface. the same thing is farther proved by wells dug beyond the distance of a mile from the said ocean, which fill with fresh water; and this happens because the fresh water is lighter than salt water and consequently more penetrating. which weighs most, water when frozen or when not frozen? fresh water penetrates more against salt water than salt water against fresh water. that fresh water penetrates more against salt water, than salt water against fresh is proved by a thin cloth dry and old, hanging with the two opposite ends equally low in the two different waters, the surfaces of which are at an equal level; and it will then be seen how much higher the fresh water will rise in this piece of linen than the salt; by so much is the fresh lighter than the salt. on the formation of gulfs ( . ). . all inland seas and the gulfs of those seas, are made by rivers which flow into the sea. . here the reason is given of the effects produced by the waters in the above mentioned place. all the lakes and all the gulfs of the sea and all inland seas are due to rivers which distribute their waters into them, and from impediments in their downfall into the mediterranean --which divides africa from europe and europe from asia by means of the nile and the don which pour their waters into it. it is asked what impediment is great enough to stop the course of the waters which do not reach the ocean. on the encroachments of the sea on the land and vice versa ( - ). . of waves. a wave of the sea always breaks in front of its base, and that portion of the crest will then be lowest which before was highest. [footnote: the page of francesco di giorgio's _trattato_, on which leonardo has written this remark, contains some notes on the construction of dams, harbours &c.] . that the shores of the sea constantly acquire more soil towards the middle of the sea; that the rocks and promontories of the sea are constantly being ruined and worn away; that the mediterranean seas will in time discover their bottom to the air, and all that will be left will be the channel of the greatest river that enters it; and this will run to the ocean and pour its waters into that with those of all the rivers that are its tributaries. . how the river po, in a short time might dry up the adriatic sea in the same way as it has dried up a large part of lombardy. the ebb and flow of the tide ( - ). . where there is a larger quantity of water, there is a greater flow and ebb, but the contrary in narrow waters. look whether the sea is at its greatest flow when the moon is half way over our hemisphere [on the meridian]. . whether the flow and ebb are caused by the moon or the sun, or are the breathing of this terrestrial machine. that the flow and ebb are different in different countries and seas. [footnote: . allusion may here be made to the mythological explanation of the ebb and flow given in the edda. utgardloki says to thor (gylfaginning ): "when thou wert drinking out of the horn, and it seemed to thee that it was slow in emptying a wonder befell, which i should not have believed possible: the other end of the horn lay in the sea, which thou sawest not; but when thou shalt go to the sea, thou shalt see how much thou hast drunk out of it. and that men now call the ebb tide." several passages in various manuscripts treat of the ebb and flow. in collecting them i have been guided by the rule only to transcribe those which named some particular spot.] . book of the meeting of rivers and their flow and ebb. the cause is the same in the sea, where it is caused by the straits of gibraltar. and again it is caused by whirlpools. . of the flow and ebb. all seas have their flow and ebb in the same period, but they seem to vary because the days do not begin at the same time throughout the universe; in such wise as that when it is midday in our hemisphere, it is midnight in the opposite hemisphere; and at the eastern boundary of the two hemispheres the night begins which follows on the day, and at the western boundary of these hemispheres begins the day, which follows the night from the opposite side. hence it is to be inferred that the above mentioned swelling and diminution in the height of the seas, although they take place in one and the same space of time, are seen to vary from the above mentioned causes. the waters are then withdrawn into the fissures which start from the depths of the sea and which ramify inside the body of the earth, corresponding to the sources of rivers, which are constantly taking from the bottom of the sea the water which has flowed into it. a sea of water is incessantly being drawn off from the surface of the sea. and if you should think that the moon, rising at the eastern end of the mediterranean sea must there begin to attract to herself the waters of the sea, it would follow that we must at once see the effect of it at the eastern end of that sea. again, as the mediterranean sea is about the eighth part of the circumference of the aqueous sphere, being miles long, while the flow and ebb only occur times in hours, these results would not agree with the time of hours, unless this mediterranean sea were six thousand miles in length; because if such a superabundance of water had to pass through the straits of gibraltar in running behind the moon, the rush of the water through that strait would be so great, and would rise to such a height, that beyond the straits it would for many miles rush so violently into the ocean as to cause floods and tremendous seething, so that it would be impossible to pass through. this agitated ocean would afterwards return the waters it had received with equal fury to the place they had come from, so that no one ever could pass through those straits. now experience shows that at every hour they are passed in safety, but when the wind sets in the same direction as the current, the strong ebb increases [footnote : in attempting to get out of the mediterranean, vessels are sometimes detained for a considerable time; not merely by the causes mentioned by leonardo but by the constant current flowing eastwards through the middle of the straits of gibraltar.]. the sea does not raise the water that has issued from the straits, but it checks them and this retards the tide; then it makes up with furious haste for the time it has lost until the end of the ebb movement. . that the flow and ebb are not general; for on the shore at genoa there is none, at venice two braccia, between england and flanders braccia. that in the straits of sicily the current is very strong because all the waters from the rivers that flow into the adriatic pass there. [footnote: a few more recent data may be given here to facilitate comparison. in the adriatic the tide rises and / feet, at terracina / . in the english channel between calais and kent it rises from to feet. in the straits of messina it rises no more than / feet, and that only in stormy weather, but the current is all the stronger. when leonardo accounts for this by the southward flow of all the italian rivers along the coasts, the explanation is at least based on a correct observation; namely that a steady current flows southwards along the coast of calabria and another northwards, along the shores of sicily; he seems to infer, from the direction of the fust, that the tide in the adriatic is caused by it.] . in the west, near to flanders, the sea rises and decreases every hours about braccia, and when the moon is in its favour; but braccia is the general rule, and this rule, as it is evident, cannot have the moon for its cause. this variation in the increase and decrease of the sea every hours may arise from the damming up of the waters, which are poured into the mediterranean by the quantity of rivers from africa, asia and europe, which flow into that sea, and the waters which are given to it by those rivers; it pours them to the ocean through the straits of gibraltar, between abila and calpe [footnote : _abila_, lat. _abyla_, gr. , now sierra _ximiera_ near ceuta; _calpe_, lat. _calpe_. gr., now gibraltar. leonardo here uses the ancient names of the rocks, which were known as the pillars of hercules.]. that ocean extends to the island of england and others farther north, and it becomes dammed up and kept high in various gulfs. these, being seas of which the surface is remote from the centre of the earth, have acquired a weight, which as it is greater than the force of the incoming waters which cause it, gives this water an impetus in the contrary direction to that in which it came and it is borne back to meet the waters coming out of the straits; and this it does most against the straits of gibraltar; these, so long as this goes on, remain dammed up and all the water which is poured out meanwhile by the aforementioned rivers, is pent up [in the mediterranean]; and this might be assigned as the cause of its flow and ebb, as is shown in the st of the th of my theory. iii. subterranean water courses. theory of the circulation of the waters ( . ). . very large rivers flow under ground. . this is meant to represent the earth cut through in the middle, showing the depths of the sea and of the earth; the waters start from the bottom of the seas, and ramifying through the earth they rise to the summits of the mountains, flowing back by the rivers and returning to the sea. observations in support of the hypothesis ( - ). . the waters circulate with constant motion from the utmost depths of the sea to the highest summits of the mountains, not obeying the nature of heavy matter; and in this case it acts as does the blood of animals which is always moving from the sea of the heart and flows to the top of their heads; and here it is that veins burst--as one may see when a vein bursts in the nose, that all the blood from below rises to the level of the burst vein. when the water rushes out of a burst vein in the earth it obeys the nature of other things heavier than the air, whence it always seeks the lowest places. [ ] these waters traverse the body of the earth with infinite ramifications. [footnote: the greater part of this passage has been given as no. in the section on anatomy.] . the same cause which stirs the humours in every species of animal body and by which every injury is repaired, also moves the waters from the utmost depth of the sea to the greatest heights. . it is the property of water that it constitutes the vital human of this arid earth; and the cause which moves it through its ramified veins, against the natural course of heavy matters, is the same property which moves the humours in every species of animal body. but that which crowns our wonder in contemplating it is, that it rises from the utmost depths of the sea to the highest tops of the mountains, and flowing from the opened veins returns to the low seas; then once more, and with extreme swiftness, it mounts again and returns by the same descent, thus rising from the inside to the outside, and going round from the lowest to the highest, from whence it rushes down in a natural course. thus by these two movements combined in a constant circulation, it travels through the veins of the earth. . whether water rises from the sea to the tops of mountains. the water of the ocean cannot make its way from the bases to the tops of the mountains which bound it, but only so much rises as the dryness of the mountain attracts. and if, on the contrary, the rain, which penetrates from the summit of the mountain to the base, which is the boundary of the sea, descends and softens the slope opposite to the said mountain and constantly draws the water, like a syphon [footnote : cicognola, syphon. see vol. i, pl. xxiv, no. .] which pours through its longest side, it must be this which draws up the water of the sea; thus if _s n_ were the surface of the sea, and the rain descends from the top of the mountain _a_ to _n_ on one side, and on the other sides it descends from _a_ to _m_, without a doubt this would occur after the manner of distilling through felt, or as happens through the tubes called syphons [footnote : cicognola, syphon. see vol. i, pl. xxiv, no. .]. and at all times the water which has softened the mountain, by the great rain which runs down the two opposite sides, would constantly attract the rain _a n_, on its longest side together with the water from the sea, if that side of the mountain _a m_ were longer than the other _a n_; but this cannot be, because no part of the earth which is not submerged by the ocean can be lower than that ocean. . of springs of water on the tops of mountains. it is quite evident that the whole surface of the ocean--when there is no storm--is at an equal distance from the centre of the earth, and that the tops of the mountains are farther from this centre in proportion as they rise above the surface of that sea; therefore if the body of the earth were not like that of man, it would be impossible that the waters of the sea--being so much lower than the mountains--could by their nature rise up to the summits of these mountains. hence it is to be believed that the same cause which keeps the blood at the top of the head in man keeps the water at the summits of the mountains. [footnote: this conception of the rising of the blood, which has given rise to the comparison, was recognised as erroneous by leonardo himself at a later period. it must be remembered that the ms. a, from which these passages are taken, was written about twenty years earlier than the ms. leic. (nos. and ) and twenty-five years before the ms. w. an. iv. there is, in the original a sketch with no. which is not reproduced. it represents a hill of the same shape as that shown at no. . there are veins, or branched streams, on the side of the hill, like those on the skull pl. cviii, no. ] . in confirmation of why the water goes to the tops of mountains. i say that just as the natural heat of the blood in the veins keeps it in the head of man,--for when the man is dead the cold blood sinks to the lower parts--and when the sun is hot on the head of a man the blood increases and rises so much, with other humours, that by pressure in the veins pains in the head are often caused; in the same way veins ramify through the body of the earth, and by the natural heat which is distributed throughout the containing body, the water is raised through the veins to the tops of mountains. and this water, which passes through a closed conduit inside the body of the mountain like a dead thing, cannot come forth from its low place unless it is warmed by the vital heat of the spring time. again, the heat of the element of fire and, by day, the heat of the sun, have power to draw forth the moisture of the low parts of the mountains and to draw them up, in the same way as it draws the clouds and collects their moisture from the bed of the sea. . that many springs of salt water are found at great distances from the sea; this might happen because such springs pass through some mine of salt, like that in hungary where salt is hewn out of vast caverns, just as stone is hewn. [footnote: the great mine of wieliczka in galicia, out of which a million cwt. of rock-salt are annually dug out, extends for metres from west to east, and metres from north to south.] iv. of rivers. on the way in which the sources of rivers are fed. . of the origin of rivers. the body of the earth, like the bodies of animals, is intersected with ramifications of waters which are all in connection and are constituted to give nutriment and life to the earth and to its creatures. these come from the depth of the sea and, after many revolutions, have to return to it by the rivers created by the bursting of these springs; and if you chose to say that the rains of the winter or the melting of the snows in summer were the cause of the birth of rivers, i could mention the rivers which originate in the torrid countries of africa, where it never rains--and still less snows--because the intense heat always melts into air all the clouds which are borne thither by the winds. and if you chose to say that such rivers, as increase in july and august, come from the snows which melt in may and june from the sun's approach to the snows on the mountains of scythia [footnote : scythia means here, as in ancient geography, the whole of the northern part of asia as far as india.], and that such meltings come down into certain valleys and form lakes, into which they enter by springs and subterranean caves to issue forth again at the sources of the nile, this is false; because scythia is lower than the sources of the nile, and, besides, scythia is only miles from the black sea and the sources of the nile are miles distant from the sea of egypt into which its waters flow. the tide in estuaries. . book , of the meeting of rivers and of their ebb and flow. the cause is the same in the sea, where it is caused by the straits of gibraltar; and again it is caused by whirlpools. [ ] if two rivers meet together to form a straight line, and then below two right angles take their course together, the flow and ebb will happen now in one river and now in the other above their confluence, and principally if the outlet for their united volume is no swifter than when they were separate. here occur instances. [footnote: the first two lines of this passage have already been given as no. . in the margin, near line of this passage, the text given as no. is written.] on the alterations, caused in the courses of rivers by their confluence ( - ). . when a smaller river pours its waters into a larger one, and that larger one flows from the opposite direction, the course of the smaller river will bend up against the approach of the larger river; and this happens because, when the larger river fills up all its bed with water, it makes an eddy in front of the mouth of the other river, and so carries the water poured in by the smaller river with its own. when the smaller river pours its waters into the larger one, which runs across the current at the mouth of the smaller river, its waters will bend with the downward movement of the larger river. [footnote: in the original sketches the word _arno_ is written at the spot here marked _a_, at _r. rifredi_, and at _m. mugnone_.] . when the fulness of rivers is diminished, then the acute angles formed at the junction of their branches become shorter at the sides and wider at the point; like the current _a n_ and the current _d n_, which unite in _n_ when the river is at its greatest fulness. i say, that when it is in this condition if, before the fullest time, _d n_ was lower than _a n_, at the time of fulness _d n_ will be full of sand and mud. when the water _d n_ falls, it will carry away the mud and remain with a lower bottom, and the channel _a n_ finding itself the higher, will fling its waters into the lower, _d n_, and will wash away all the point of the sand-spit _b n c_, and thus the angle _a c d_ will remain larger than the angle _a n d_ and the sides shorter, as i said before. [footnote: above the first sketch we find, in the original, this note: "_sopra il pote rubaconte alla torricella_"; and by the second, which represents a pier of a bridge, "_sotto l'ospedal del ceppo._"] . water. of the movement of a sudden rush made by a river in its bed previously dry. in proportion as the current of the water given forth by the draining of the lake is slow or rapid in the dry river bed, so will this river be wider or narrower, or shallower or deeper in one place than another, according to this proposition: the flow and ebb of the sea which enters the mediterranean from the ocean, and of the rivers which meet and struggle with it, will raise their waters more or less in proportion as the sea is wider or narrower. [footnote: in the margin is a sketch of a river which winds so as to form islands.] whirlpools. . whirlpools, that is to say caverns; that is to say places left by precipitated waters. on the alterations in the channels of rivers. . of the vibration of the earth. the subterranean channels of waters, like those which exist between the air and the earth, are those which unceasingly wear away and deepen the beds of their currents. the origin of the sand in rivers ( . ). . a river that flows from mountains deposits a great quantity of large stones in its bed, which still have some of their angles and sides, and in the course of its flow it carries down smaller stones with the angles more worn; that is to say the large stones become smaller. and farther on it deposits coarse gravel and then smaller, and as it proceeds this becomes coarse sand and then finer, and going on thus the water, turbid with sand and gravel, joins the sea; and the sand settles on the sea-shores, being cast up by the salt waves; and there results the sand of so fine a nature as to seem almost like water, and it will not stop on the shores of the sea but returns by reason of its lightness, because it was originally formed of rotten leaves and other very light things. still, being almost--as was said--of the nature of water itself, it afterwards, when the weather is calm, settles and becomes solid at the bottom of the sea, where by its fineness it becomes compact and by its smoothness resists the waves which glide over it; and in this shells are found; and this is white earth, fit for pottery. . all the torrents of water flowing from the mountains to the sea carry with them the stones from the hills to the sea, and by the influx of the sea-water towards the mountains; these stones were thrown back towards the mountains, and as the waters rose and retired, the stones were tossed about by it and in rolling, their angles hit together; then as the parts, which least resisted the blows, were worn off, the stones ceased to be angular and became round in form, as may be seen on the banks of the elsa. and those remained larger which were less removed from their native spot; and they became smaller, the farther they were carried from that place, so that in the process they were converted into small pebbles and then into sand and at last into mud. after the sea had receded from the mountains the brine left by the sea with other humours of the earth made a concretion of these pebbles and this sand, so that the pebbles were converted into rock and the sand into tufa. and of this we see an example in the adda where it issues from the mountains of como and in the ticino, the adige and the oglio coming from the german alps, and in the arno at monte albano [footnote : at the foot of _monte albano_ lies vinci, the birth place of leonardo. opposite, on the other bank of the arno, is _monte lupo_.], near monte lupo and capraia where the rocks, which are very large, are all of conglomerated pebbles of various kinds and colours. v. on mountains. the formation of mountains ( - ). . mountains are made by the currents of rivers. mountains are destroyed by the currents of rivers. [footnote: compare .] . that the northern bases of some alps are not yet petrified. and this is plainly to be seen where the rivers, which cut through them, flow towards the north; where they cut through the strata in the living stone in the higher parts of the mountains; and, where they join the plains, these strata are all of potter's clay; as is to be seen in the valley of lamona where the river lamona, as it issues from the appenines, does these things on its banks. that the rivers have all cut and divided the mountains of the great alps one from the other. this is visible in the order of the stratified rocks, because from the summits of the banks, down to the river the correspondence of the strata in the rocks is visible on either side of the river. that the stratified stones of the mountains are all layers of clay, deposited one above the other by the various floods of the rivers. that the different size of the strata is caused by the difference in the floods--that is to say greater or lesser floods. . the summits of mountains for a long time rise constantly. the opposite sides of the mountains always approach each other below; the depths of the valleys which are above the sphere of the waters are in the course of time constantly getting nearer to the centre of the world. in an equal period, the valleys sink much more than the mountains rise. the bases of the mountains always come closer together. in proportion as the valleys become deeper, the more quickly are their sides worn away. . in every concavity at the summit of the mountains we shall always find the divisions of the strata in the rocks. . of the sea which encircles the earth. i find that of old, the state of the earth was that its plains were all covered up and hidden by salt water. [footnote: this passage has already been published by dr. m. jordan: _das malerbuch des l. da vinci, leipzig_ , p. . however, his reading of the text differs from mine.] the authorities for the study of the structure of the earth. . since things are much more ancient than letters, it is no marvel if, in our day, no records exist of these seas having covered so many countries; and if, moreover, some records had existed, war and conflagrations, the deluge of waters, the changes of languages and of laws have consumed every thing ancient. but sufficient for us is the testimony of things created in the salt waters, and found again in high mountains far from the seas. vi. geological problems. . in this work you have first to prove that the shells at a thousand braccia of elevation were not carried there by the deluge, because they are seen to be all at one level, and many mountains are seen to be above that level; and to inquire whether the deluge was caused by rain or by the swelling of the sea; and then you must show how, neither by rain nor by swelling of the rivers, nor by the overflow of this sea, could the shells--being heavy objects--be floated up the mountains by the sea, nor have carried there by the rivers against the course of their waters. doubts about the deluge. . a doubtful point. here a doubt arises, and that is: whether the deluge, which happened at the time of noah, was universal or not. and it would seem not, for the reasons now to be given: we have it in the bible that this deluge lasted days and nights of incessant and universal rain, and that this rain rose to ten cubits above the highest mountains in the world. and if it had been that the rain was universal, it would have covered our globe which is spherical in form. and this spherical surface is equally distant in every part, from the centre of its sphere; hence the sphere of the waters being under the same conditions, it is impossible that the water upon it should move, because water, in itself, does not move unless it falls; therefore how could the waters of such a deluge depart, if it is proved that it has no motion? and if it departed how could it move unless it went upwards? here, then, natural reasons are wanting; hence to remove this doubt it is necessary to call in a miracle to aid us, or else to say that all this water was evaporated by the heat of the sun. [footnote: the passages, here given from the ms. leic., have hitherto remained unknown. some preliminary notes on the subject are to be found in ms. f oa and ob; but as compared with the fuller treatment here given, they are, it seems to me, of secondary interest. they contain nothing that is not repeated here more clearly and fully. libri, _histoire des sciences mathematiques iii_, pages -- , has printed the text of f a and b, therefore it seemed desirable to give my reasons for not inserting it in this work.] that marine shells could not go up the mountains. . of the deluge and of marine shells. if you were to say that the shells which are to be seen within the confines of italy now, in our days, far from the sea and at such heights, had been brought there by the deluge which left them there, i should answer that if you believe that this deluge rose cubits above the highest mountains-- as he who measured it has written--these shells, which always live near the sea-shore, should have been left on the mountains; and not such a little way from the foot of the mountains; nor all at one level, nor in layers upon layers. and if you were to say that these shells are desirous of remaining near to the margin of the sea, and that, as it rose in height, the shells quitted their first home, and followed the increase of the waters up to their highest level; to this i answer, that the cockle is an animal of not more rapid movement than the snail is out of water, or even somewhat slower; because it does not swim, on the contrary it makes a furrow in the sand by means of its sides, and in this furrow it will travel each day from to braccia; therefore this creature, with so slow a motion, could not have travelled from the adriatic sea as far as monferrato in lombardy [footnote: _monferrato di lombardia_. the range of hills of monferrato is in piedmont, and casale di monferrato belonged, in leonardo's time, to the marchese di mantova.], which is miles distance, in days; which he has said who took account of the time. and if you say that the waves carried them there, by their gravity they could not move, excepting at the bottom. and if you will not grant me this, confess at least that they would have to stay at the summits of the highest mountains, in the lakes which are enclosed among the mountains, like the lakes of lario, or of como and il maggiore [footnote: _lago di lario._ lacus larius was the name given by the romans to the lake of como. it is evident that it is here a slip of the pen since the the words in the ms. are: _"come lago di lario o'l magare e di como,"_ in the ms. after line we come upon a digression treating of the weight of water; this has here been omitted. it is lines long.] and of fiesole, and of perugia, and others. and if you should say that the shells were carried by the waves, being empty and dead, i say that where the dead went they were not far removed from the living; for in these mountains living ones are found, which are recognisable by the shells being in pairs; and they are in a layer where there are no dead ones; and a little higher up they are found, where they were thrown by the waves, all the dead ones with their shells separated, near to where the rivers fell into the sea, to a great depth; like the arno which fell from the gonfolina near to monte lupo [footnote: _monte lupo_, compare , ; it is between empoli and florence.], where it left a deposit of gravel which may still be seen, and which has agglomerated; and of stones of various districts, natures, and colours and hardness, making one single conglomerate. and a little beyond the sandstone conglomerate a tufa has been formed, where it turned towards castel florentino; farther on, the mud was deposited in which the shells lived, and which rose in layers according to the levels at which the turbid arno flowed into that sea. and from time to time the bottom of the sea was raised, depositing these shells in layers, as may be seen in the cutting at colle gonzoli, laid open by the arno which is wearing away the base of it; in which cutting the said layers of shells are very plainly to be seen in clay of a bluish colour, and various marine objects are found there. and if the earth of our hemisphere is indeed raised by so much higher than it used to be, it must have become by so much lighter by the waters which it lost through the rift between gibraltar and ceuta; and all the more the higher it rose, because the weight of the waters which were thus lost would be added to the earth in the other hemisphere. and if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers-- as we see them now in our time. the marine shells were not produced away from the sea. . as to those who say that shells existed for a long time and were born at a distance from the sea, from the nature of the place and of the cycles, which can influence a place to produce such creatures--to them it may be answered: such an influence could not place the animals all on one line, except those of the same sort and age; and not the old with the young, nor some with an operculum and others without their operculum, nor some broken and others whole, nor some filled with sea-sand and large and small fragments of other shells inside the whole shells which remained open; nor the claws of crabs without the rest of their bodies; nor the shells of other species stuck on to them like animals which have moved about on them; since the traces of their track still remain, on the outside, after the manner of worms in the wood which they ate into. nor would there be found among them the bones and teeth of fish which some call arrows and others serpents' tongues, nor would so many [footnote: i. scilla argued against this hypothesis, which was still accepted in his days; see: _la vana speculazione, napoli_ .] portions of various animals be found all together if they had not been thrown on the sea shore. and the deluge cannot have carried them there, because things that are heavier than water do not float on the water. but these things could not be at so great a height if they had not been carried there by the water, such a thing being impossible from their weight. in places where the valleys have not been filled with salt sea water shells are never to be seen; as is plainly visible in the great valley of the arno above gonfolina; a rock formerly united to monte albano, in the form of a very high bank which kept the river pent up, in such a way that before it could flow into the sea, which was afterwards at its foot, it formed two great lakes; of which the first was where we now see the city of florence together with prato and pistoia, and monte albano. it followed the rest of its bank as far as where serravalle now stands. >from the val d'arno upwards, as far as arezzo, another lake was formed, which discharged its waters into the former lake. it was closed at about the spot where now we see girone, and occupied the whole of that valley above for a distance of miles in length. this valley received on its bottom all the soil brought down by the turbid waters. and this is still to be seen at the foot of prato magno; it there lies very high where the rivers have not worn it away. across this land are to be seen the deep cuts of the rivers that have passed there, falling from the great mountain of prato magno; in these cuts there are no vestiges of any shells or of marine soil. this lake was joined with that of perugia [footnote: see pi. cxiii.] a great quantity of shells are to be seen where the rivers flow into the sea, because on such shores the waters are not so salt owing to the admixture of the fresh water, which is poured into it. evidence of this is to be seen where, of old, the appenines poured their rivers into the adriatic sea; for there in most places great quantities of shells are to be found, among the mountains, together with bluish marine clay; and all the rocks which are torn off in such places are full of shells. the same may be observed to have been done by the arno when it fell from the rock of gonfolina into the sea, which was not so very far below; for at that time it was higher than the top of san miniato al tedesco, since at the highest summit of this the shores may be seen full of shells and oysters within its flanks. the shells did not extend towards val di nievole, because the fresh waters of the arno did not extend so far. that the shells were not carried away from the sea by the deluge, because the waters which came from the earth although they drew the sea towards the earth, were those which struck its depths; because the water which goes down from the earth, has a stronger current than that of the sea, and in consequence is more powerful, and it enters beneath the sea water and stirs the depths and carries with it all sorts of movable objects which are to be found in the earth, such as the above-mentioned shells and other similar things. and in proportion as the water which comes from the land is muddier than sea water it is stronger and heavier than this; therefore i see no way of getting the said shells so far in land, unless they had been born there. if you were to tell me that the river loire [footnote: leonardo has written era instead of loera or loira--perhaps under the mistaken idea that _lo_ was an article.],which traverses france covers when the sea rises more than eighty miles of country, because it is a district of vast plains, and the sea rises about braccia, and shells are found in this plain at the distance of miles from the sea; here i answer that the flow and ebb in our mediterranean sea does not vary so much; for at genoa it does not rise at all, and at venice but little, and very little in africa; and where it varies little it covers but little of the country. the course of the water of a river always rises higher in a place where the current is impeded; it behaves as it does where it is reduced in width to pass under the arches of a bridge. further researches ( - ). . a confutation of those who say that shells may have been carried to a distance of many days' journey from the sea by the deluge, which was so high as to be above those heights. i say that the deluge could not carry objects, native to the sea, up to the mountains, unless the sea had already increased so as to create inundations as high up as those places; and this increase could not have occurred because it would cause a vacuum; and if you were to say that the air would rush in there, we have already concluded that what is heavy cannot remain above what is light, whence of necessity we must conclude that this deluge was caused by rain water, so that all these waters ran to the sea, and the sea did not run up the mountains; and as they ran to the sea, they thrust the shells from the shore of the sea and did not draw them to wards themselves. and if you were then to say that the sea, raised by the rain water, had carried these shells to such a height, we have already said that things heavier than water cannot rise upon it, but remain at the bottom of it, and do not move unless by the impact of the waves. and if you were to say that the waves had carried them to such high spots, we have proved that the waves in a great depth move in a contrary direction at the bottom to the motion at the top, and this is shown by the turbidity of the sea from the earth washed down near its shores. anything which is lighter than the water moves with the waves, and is left on the highest level of the highest margin of the waves. anything which is heavier than the water moves, suspended in it, between the surface and the bottom; and from these two conclusions, which will be amply proved in their place, we infer that the waves of the surface cannot convey shells, since they are heavier than water. if the deluge had to carry shells three hundred and four hundred miles from the sea, it would have carried them mixed with various other natural objects heaped together; and we see at such distances oysters all together, and sea-snails, and cuttlefish, and all the other shells which congregate together, all to be found together and dead; and the solitary shells are found wide apart from each other, as we may see them on sea-shores every day. and if we find oysters of very large shells joined together and among them very many which still have the covering attached, indicating that they were left here by the sea, and still living when the strait of gibraltar was cut through; there are to be seen, in the mountains of parma and piacenza, a multitude of shells and corals, full of holes, and still sticking to the rocks there. when i was making the great horse for milan, a large sack full was brought to me in my workshop by certain peasants; these were found in that place and among them were many preserved in their first freshness. under ground, and under the foundations of buildings, timbers are found of wrought beams and already black. such were found in my time in those diggings at castel fiorentino. and these had been in that deep place before the sand carried by the arno into the sea, then covering the plain, had heen raised to such a height; and before the plains of casentino had been so much lowered, by the earth being constantly carried down from them. [footnote: these lines are written in the margin.] and if you were to say that these shells were created, and were continually being created in such places by the nature of the spot, and of the heavens which might have some influence there, such an opinion cannot exist in a brain of much reason; because here are the years of their growth, numbered on their shells, and there are large and small ones to be seen which could not have grown without food, and could not have fed without motion--and here they could not move [footnote: these lines are written in the margin.] . that in the drifts, among one and another, there are still to be found the traces of the worms which crawled upon them when they were not yet dry. and all marine clays still contain shells, and the shells are petrified together with the clay. from their firmness and unity some persons will have it that these animals were carried up to places remote from the sea by the deluge. another sect of ignorant persons declare that nature or heaven created them in these places by celestial influences, as if in these places we did not also find the bones of fishes which have taken a long time to grow; and as if, we could not count, in the shells of cockles and snails, the years and months of their life, as we do in the horns of bulls and oxen, and in the branches of plants that have never been cut in any part. besides, having proved by these signs the length of their lives, it is evident, and it must be admitted, that these animals could not live without moving to fetch their food; and we find in them no instrument for penetrating the earth or the rock where we find them enclosed. but how could we find in a large snail shell the fragments and portions of many other sorts of shells, of various sorts, if they had not been thrown there, when dead, by the waves of the sea like the other light objects which it throws on the earth? why do we find so many fragments and whole shells between layer and layer of stone, if this had not formerly been covered on the shore by a layer of earth thrown up by the sea, and which was afterwards petrified? and if the deluge before mentioned had carried them to these parts of the sea, you might find these shells at the boundary of one drift but not at the boundary between many drifts. we must also account for the winters of the years during which the sea multiplied the drifts of sand and mud brought down by the neighbouring rivers, by washing down the shores; and if you chose to say that there were several deluges to produce these rifts and the shells among them, you would also have to affirm that such a deluge took place every year. again, among the fragments of these shells, it must be presumed that in those places there were sea coasts, where all the shells were thrown up, broken, and divided, and never in pairs, since they are found alive in the sea, with two valves, each serving as a lid to the other; and in the drifts of rivers and on the shores of the sea they are found in fragments. and within the limits of the separate strata of rocks they are found, few in number and in pairs like those which were left by the sea, buried alive in the mud, which subsequently dried up and, in time, was petrified. . and if you choose to say that it was the deluge which carried these shells away from the sea for hundreds of miles, this cannot have happened, since that deluge was caused by rain; because rain naturally forces the rivers to rush towards the sea with all the things they carry with them, and not to bear the dead things of the sea shores to the mountains. and if you choose to say that the deluge afterwards rose with its waters above the mountains, the movement of the sea must have been so sluggish in its rise against the currents of the rivers, that it could not have carried, floating upon it, things heavier than itself; and even if it had supported them, in its receding it would have left them strewn about, in various spots. but how are we to account for the corals which are found every day towards monte ferrato in lombardy, with the holes of the worms in them, sticking to rocks left uncovered by the currents of rivers? these rocks are all covered with stocks and families of oysters, which as we know, never move, but always remain with one of their halves stuck to a rock, and the other they open to feed themselves on the animalcules that swim in the water, which, hoping to find good feeding ground, become the food of these shells. we do not find that the sand mixed with seaweed has been petrified, because the weed which was mingled with it has shrunk away, and this the po shows us every day in the debris of its banks. other problems ( - ). . why do we find the bones of great fishes and oysters and corals and various other shells and sea-snails on the high summits of mountains by the sea, just as we find them in low seas? . you now have to prove that the shells cannot have originated if not in salt water, almost all being of that sort; and that the shells in lombardy are at four levels, and thus it is everywhere, having been made at various times. and they all occur in valleys that open towards the seas. . >from the two lines of shells we are forced to say that the earth indignantly submerged under the sea and so the first layer was made; and then the deluge made the second. [footnote: this note is in the early writing of about -- . on the same sheet are the passages no. and . compare also no. . all the foregoing chapters are from manuscripts of about . this explains the want of connection and the contradiction between this and the foregoing texts.] vii. on the atmosphere. constituents of the atmosphere. . that the brightness of the air is occasioned by the water which has dissolved itself in it into imperceptible molecules. these, being lighted by the sun from the opposite side, reflect the brightness which is visible in the air; and the azure which is seen in it is caused by the darkness that is hidden beyond the air. [footnote: compare vol. i, no. .] on the motion of air ( -- ). . that the return eddies of wind at the mouth of certain valleys strike upon the waters and scoop them out in a great hollow, whirl the water into the air in the form of a column, and of the colour of a cloud. and i saw this thing happen on a sand bank in the arno, where the sand was hollowed out to a greater depth than the stature of a man; and with it the gravel was whirled round and flung about for a great space; it appeared in the air in the form of a great bell-tower; and the top spread like the branches of a pine tree, and then it bent at the contact of the direct wind, which passed over from the mountains. . the element of fire acts upon a wave of air in the same way as the air does on water, or as water does on a mass of sand --that is earth; and their motions are in the same proportions as those of the motors acting upon them. . of motion. i ask whether the true motion of the clouds can be known by the motion of their shadows; and in like manner of the motion of the sun. . to know better the direction of the winds. [footnote: in connection with this text i may here mention a hygrometer, drawn and probably invented by leonardo. a facsimile of this is given in vol. i, p. with the note: _'modi di pesare l'arie eddi sapere quando s'a arrompere il tepo'_ (mode of weighing the air and of knowing when the weather will change); by the sponge _"spugnea"_ is written.] the globe an organism. . nothing originates in a spot where there is no sentient, vegetable and rational life; feathers grow upon birds and are changed every year; hairs grow upon animals and are changed every year, excepting some parts, like the hairs of the beard in lions, cats and their like. the grass grows in the fields, and the leaves on the trees, and every year they are, in great part, renewed. so that we might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water. the pool of blood which lies round the heart is the ocean, and its breathing, and the increase and decrease of the blood in the pulses, is represented in the earth by the flow and ebb of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is the fire which pervades the earth, and the seat of the vegetative soul is in the fires, which in many parts of the earth find vent in baths and mines of sulphur, and in volcanoes, as at mount aetna in sicily, and in many other places. [footnote: compare no. .] _xvii._ _topographical notes._ _a large part of the texts published in this section might perhaps have found their proper place in connection with the foregoing chapters on physical geography. but these observations on physical geography, of whatever kind they may be, as soon as they are localised acquire a special interest and importance and particularly as bearing on the question whether leonardo himself made the observations recorded at the places mentioned or merely noted the statements from hearsay. in a few instances he himself tells us that he writes at second hand. in some cases again, although the style and expressions used make it seem highly probable that he has derived his information from others-- though, as it seems to me, these cases are not very numerous--we find, on the other hand, among these topographical notes a great number of observations, about which it is extremely difficult to form a decided opinion. of what the master's life and travels may have been throughout his sixty-seven years of life we know comparatively little; for a long course of time, and particularly from about to , we do not even know with certainty that he was living in italy. thus, from a biographical point of view a very great interest attaches to some of the topographical notes, and for this reason it seemed that it would add to their value to arrange them in a group by themselves. leonardo's intimate knowledge with places, some of which were certainly remote from his native home, are of importance as contributing to decide the still open question as to the extent of leonardo's travels. we shall find in these notes a confirmation of the view, that the mss. in which the topographical notes occur are in only a very few instances such diaries as may have been in use during a journey. these notes are mostly found in the mss. books of his later and quieter years, and it is certainly remarkable that leonardo is very reticent as to the authorities from whom he quotes his facts and observations: for instance, as to the straits of gibraltar, the nile, the taurus mountains and the tigris and euphrates. is it likely that he, who declared that in all scientific research, his own experience should be the foundation of his statements (see xix philosophy no. -- ,) should here have made an exception to this rule without mentioning it?_ _as for instance in the discussion as to the equilibrium of the mass of water in the mediterranean sea--a subject which, it may be observed, had at that time attracted the interest and study of hardly any other observer. the acute remarks, in nos. -- , on the presence of shells at the tops of mountains, suffice to prove--as it seems to me--that it was not in his nature to allow himself to be betrayed into wide generalisations, extending beyond the limits of his own investigations, even by such brilliant results of personal study._ _most of these topographical notes, though suggesting very careful and thorough research, do not however, as has been said, afford necessarily indisputable evidence that that research was leonardo's own. but it must be granted that in more than one instance probability is in favour of this idea._ _among the passages which treat somewhat fully of the topography of eastern places by far the most interesting is a description of the taurus mountains; but as this text is written in the style of a formal report and, in the original, is associated with certain letters which give us the history of its origin, i have thought it best not to sever it from that connection. it will be found under no. xxi (letters)._ _that florence, and its neighbourhood, where leonardo spent his early years, should be nowhere mentioned except in connection with the projects for canals, which occupied his attention for some short time during the first ten years of the xvith century, need not surprise us. the various passages relating to the construction of canals in tuscany, which are put together at the beginning, are immediately followed by those which deal with schemes for canals in lombardy; and after these come notes on the city and vicinity of milan as well as on the lakes of north italy._ _the notes on some towns of central italy which leonardo visited in , when in the service of cesare borgia, are reproduced here in the same order as in the note book used during these travels (ms. l., institut de france). these notes have but little interest in themselves excepting as suggesting his itinerary. the maps of the districts drawn by leonardo at the time are more valuable (see no. note). the names on these maps are not written from right to left, but in the usual manner, and we are permitted to infer that they were made in obedience to some command, possibly for the use of cesare borgia himself; the fact that they remained nevertheless in leonardo's hands is not surprising when we remember the sudden political changes and warlike events of the period. there can be no doubt that these maps, which are here published for the first time, are original in the strictest sense of the word, that is to say drawn from observations of the places themselves; this is proved by the fact--among others--that we find among his manuscripts not only the finished maps themselves but the rough sketches and studies for them. and it would perhaps be difficult to point out among the abundant contributions to geographical knowledge published during the xvith century, any maps at all approaching these in accuracy and finish._ _the interesting map of the world, so far as it was then known, which is among the leonardo mss. at windsor (published in the_ 'archaeologia' _vol. xi) cannot be attributed to the master, as the marchese girolamo d'adda has sufficiently proved; it has not therefore been reproduced here._ _such of leonardo's observations on places in italy as were made before or after his official travels as military engineer to cesare borgia, have been arranged in alphabetical order, under nos. - . the most interesting are those which relate to the alps and the appenines, nos. - ._ _most of the passages in which france is mentioned have hitherto remained unknown, as well as those which treat of the countries bordering on the mediterranean, which come at the end of this section. though these may be regarded as of a more questionable importance in their bearing on the biography of the master than those which mention places in france, it must be allowed that they are interesting as showing the prominent place which the countries of the east held in his geographical studies. he never once alludes to the discovery of america._ i. italy. canals in connection with the arno ( - ). . canal of florence. sluices should be made in the valley of la chiana at arezzo, so that when, in the summer, the arno lacks water, the canal may not remain dry: and let this canal be braccia wide at the bottom, and at the top , and braccia deep, or , so that two of these braccia may flow to the mills and the meadows, which will benefit the country; and prato, pistoia and pisa, as well as florence, will gain two hundred thousand ducats a year, and will lend a hand and money to this useful work; and the lucchese the same, for the lake of sesto will be navigable; i shall direct it to prato and pistoia, and cut through serravalle and make an issue into the lake; for there will be no need of locks or supports, which are not lasting and so will always be giving trouble in working at them and keeping them up. and know that in digging this canal where it is braccia deep, it will cost dinari the square braccio; for twice the depth dinari, if you are making braccia [footnote: this passage is illustrated by a slightly sketched map, on which these places are indicated from west to east: pisa, luccha, lago, seravalle, pistoja, prato, firenze.] and there are but banks; that is to say one from the bottom of the trench to the surface of the edges of it, and the other from these edges to the top of the ridge of earth which will be raised on the margin of the bank. and if this bank were of double the depth only the first bank will be increased, that is braccia increased by half the first cost; that is to say that if at first dinari were paid for banks, for it would come to , at dinari the bank, if the trench measured braccia at the bottom; again, if the trench were braccia wide and deep, coming to lire for the work, milan dinari the square braccio; a trench which was braccia at the bottom would come to dinari the square braccio. . >from the wall of the arno at [the gate of] la giustizia to the bank of the arno at sardigna where the walls are, to the mills, is braccia, that is miles and braccia and beyond the arno is braccia. [footnote: . _giustizia_. by this the porta della giustizia seems to be meant; from the xvth to the xvith centuries it was also commonly known as porta guelfa, porta san francesco del renaio, porta nuova, and porta reale. it was close to the arno opposite to the porta san niccolo, which still exists.] . by guiding the arno above and below a treasure will be found in each acre of ground by whomsoever will. . the wall of the old houses runs towards the gate of san nicolo. [footnote: by the side of this text there is an indistinct sketch, resembling that given under no. . on the bank is written the word _casace_. there then follows in the original a passage of lines in which the consequences of the windings of the river are discussed. a larger but equally hasty diagram on the same page represents the shores of the arno inside florence as in two parallel lines. four horizontal lines indicate the bridges. by the side these measures are stated in figures: i. (at the ponte alla carraja): _ --largho br. e di spoda e di pile e a pilastri;_ . (at the ponte s. trinita); _l --largho br. e di spode he di pilastri for delle spode e pilastri so ;_ . (at the ponte vecchio); _pote lung br. e largo;_ . (at the ponte alle grazie): _ ellargo e di spode e di pili._ there is, in ms. w. l. l b, a sketched plan of florence, with the following names of gates: _nicholo--saminiato--giorgo--ghanolini--porta san fredian --prato--faenza--ghallo--pinti--giustitia_.] . the ruined wall is braccia; is the wall remaining with the mill; braccia were broken in years by bisarno. . they do not know why the arno will never remain in a channel. it is because the rivers which flow into it deposit earth where they enter, and wear it away on the opposite side, bending the river in that direction. the arno flows for miles between la caprona and leghorn; and for through the marshes, which extend miles, and from la caprona up the river, which makes ; by the arno from florence beyond miles; to vico miles, and the canal is ; from florence to fucechio it is miles by the river arno. miles by the arno from florence to vico; by the pistoia canal it is miles. thus it is miles shorter by the canal than by the arno. [footnote: this passage is written by the side of a map washed in indian ink, of the course of the arno; it is evidently a sketch for a completer map. these investigations may possibly be connected with the following documents. _francesco guiducci alla balia di firenze. dal campo contro pisa_ _luglio_ (_archivio di stato, firenze, lettere alla balia_; published by j. gaye, _carteggio inedito d'artisti, firenze_ , _tom. ii_, p. ): _ex castris, franciscus ghuiduccius,_ . _jul._ . _appresso fu qui hieri con una di v. signoria alexandro degli albizi insieme con leonardo da vinci et certi altri, et veduto el disegno insieme con el ghovernatore, doppo molte discussioni et dubii conclusesi che l'opera fussi molto al proposito, o si veramente arno volgersi qui, o restarvi con un canale, che almeno vieterebbe che le colline da nemici non potrebbono essere offese; come tucto referiranno loro a bocha v. s._ and, _archivio di stato, firenze, libro d'entrata e uscita di cassa de' magnifici signori di luglio e agosto_ _a_ _t.: andata di leonardo al campo sotto pisa. spese extraordinarie dieno dare a di xxvi di luglio l. lvi sol. xii per loro a giovanni piffero; e sono per tanti, asegnia avere spexi in vetture di sei chavalli a spese di vitto per andare chon lionardo da vinci a livellare arno in quello di pisa per levallo del lilo suo._ (published by milanesi, _archivio storico italiano, serie iii, tom. xvi._} vasari asserts: _(leonardo) fu il primo ancora, che giovanetto discorresse sopra il fiume d'arno per metterlo in canale da pisa a fiorenza_ (ed. sansoni, iv, ). the passage above is in some degree illustrated by the map on pl. cxii, where the course of the arno westward from empoli is shown.] . the eddy made by the mensola, when the arno is low and the mensola full. [footnote: _mensola_ is a mountain stream which falls into the arno about a mile and a half above florence. a=arno, i=isola, m=mvgone, p=pesa, n=mesola.] . that the river which is to be turned from one place to another must be coaxed and not treated roughly or with violence; and to do this a sort of floodgate should be made in the river, and then lower down one in front of it and in like manner a third, fourth and fifth, so that the river may discharge itself into the channel given to it, or that by this means it may be diverted from the place it has damaged, as was done in flanders--as i was told by niccolo di forsore. how to protect and repair the banks washed by the water, as below the island of cocomeri. ponte rubaconte (fig. ); below [the palaces] bisticci and canigiani (fig. ). above the flood gate of la giustizia (fig. ); _a b_ is a sand bank opposite the end of the island of the cocomeri in the middle of the arno (fig. ). [footnote: the course of the river arno is also discussed in nos. and .] canals in the milanese ( - ). . the canal of san cristofano at milan made may rd . [footnote: this observation is written above a washed pen and ink drawing which has been published as tav. vi in the _,,saggio."_ the editors of that work explain the drawing as _"uno studio di bocche per estrazione d'acqua."_] . of the canal of martesana. by making the canal of martesana the water of the adda is greatly diminished by its distribution over many districts for the irrigation of the fields. a remedy for this would be to make several little channels, since the water drunk up by the earth is of no more use to any one, nor mischief neither, because it is taken from no one; and by making these channels the water which before was lost returns again and is once more serviceable and useful to men. [footnote: _"el navilio di martagano"_ is also mentioned in a note written in red chalk, ms. h a leonardo has, as it seems, little to do with lodovico il moro's scheme to render this canal navigable. the canal had been made in by bertonino da novara. il moro issued his degree in , but leonardo's notes about this canal were, with the exception of one (no. ), written about sixteen years later.] . no canal which is fed by a river can be permanent if the river whence it originates is not wholly closed up, like the canal of martesana which is fed by the ticino. . >from the beginning of the canal to the mill. >from the beginning of the canal of brivio to the mill of travaglia is trabochi, that is braccia, which is more than miles and two thirds; and here the canal is braccia higher than the surface of the water of the adda, giving a fall of two inches in every hundred trabochi; and at that spot we propose to take the opening of our canal. [footnote: the following are written on the sketches: at the place marked _n: navilio da dacquiue_ (canal of running water); at _m: molin del travaglia_ (mill of travaglia); at _r: rochetta ssanta maria_ (small rock of santa maria); at _a: adda;_ at _l: lagho di lecho ringorgato alli corni in adda,--concha perpetua_ (lake of lecco overflowing at tre corni, in adda,-- a permanent sluice). near the second sketch, referring to the sluice near _q: qui la chatena ttalie d'u peso_ (here the chain is in one piece). at _m_ in the lower sketch: _mol del travaglia, nel cavare la concha il tereno ara chotrapero co cassa d'acqua._ (mill of travaglia, in digging out the sluice the soil will have as a counterpoise a vessel of water).] . if it be not reported there that this is to be a public canal, it will be necessary to pay for the land; [footnote : _il re_. louis xii or francis i of france. it is hardly possible to doubt that the canals here spoken of were intended to be in the milanese. compare with this passage the rough copy of a letter by leonardo, to the _"presidente dell' ufficio regolatore dell' acqua"_ on no. . see also the note to no. , . .] and the king will pay it by remitting the taxes for a year. estimates and preparatory studies for canals ( . ). . canal. the canal which may be braccia wide at the bottom and at the top, we may say is on the average braccia wide, and if it is braccia deep, at dinari the square braccia; it will only cost ducats, to excavate by the mile, if the square braccio is calculated in ordinary braccia; but if the braccia are those used in measuring land, of which every are equal to / and if by the mile we understand three thousand ordinary braccia; turned into land braccia, these braccia will lack / ; there remain braccia, which at dinari the braccio will amount to ducats a mile. at dinari the square braccio, the mile will amount to / ducats so that the excavation of miles of the canal will amount to / ducats. . to make the great canal, first make the smaller one and conduct into it the waters which by a wheel will help to fill the great one. notes on buildings in milan ( - ) . indicate the centre of milan. moforte--porta resa--porta nova--strada nova--navilio--porta cumana--barco--porta giovia--porta vercellina--porta sco anbrogio--porta tesinese--torre dell' imperatore-- porta lodovica--acqua. [footnote: see pl. cix. the original sketch is here reduced to about half its size. the gates of the town are here named, beginning at the right hand and following the curved line. in the bird's eye view of milan below, the cathedral is plainly recognisable in the middle; to the right is the tower of san gottardo. the square, above the number , is the lazzaretto, which was begun in . on the left the group of buildings of the _'castello'_ will be noticed. on the sketched plan of florence (see no. note) leonardo has written on the margin the following names of gates of milan: vercellina --ticinese--ludovica--romana--orientale-- nova--beatrice--cumana--compare too no. , . , .] . the moat of milan. canal braccia wide. the castle with the moats full. the filling of the moats of the castle of milan. . the bath. to heat the water for the stove of the duchess take four parts of cold water to three parts of hot water. [footnote: _duchessa di milano_, beatrice d'este, wife of ludovico il moro to whom she was married, in . she died in june .] . in the cathedral at the pulley of the nail of the cross. item. to place the mass _v r_ in the... [footnote: on this passage amoretti remarks _(memorie storiche_ chap. ix): _nell'anno stesso lo veggiamo formare un congegno di carucole e di corde, con cui trasportare in piu venerabile e piu sicuro luogo, cioe nell'ultima arcata della nave di mezzo della metropolitana, la sacra reliquia del santo chiodo, che ivi ancor si venera. al fol. del codice segnato q. r. in , egli ci ha lasciata di tal congegno una doppia figura, cioe una di quattro carucole, e una di tre colle rispettive corde, soggiugnandovi: in domo alla carucola del chiodo della croce._ amoretti's views as to the mark on the ms, and the date when it was written are, it may be observed, wholly unfounded. the ms. l, in which it occurs, is of the year , and it is very unlikely that leonardo was in milan at that time; this however would not prevent the remark, which is somewhat obscure, from applying to the cathedral at milan.] . of the force of the vacuum formed in a moment. i saw, at milan, a thunderbolt fall on the tower della credenza on its northern side, and it descended with a slow motion down that side, and then at once parted from that tower and carried with it and tore away from that wall a space of braccia wide and two deep; and this wall was braccia thick and was built of thin and small old bricks; and this was dragged out by the vacuum which the flame of the thunderbolt had caused, &c. [footnote: with reference to buildings at milan see also nos. and , and pl. xcv, no. (explained on p. ), pl. c (explained on pages - ). see also pages , and .] remarks on natural phenomena in and near milan ( . ). . i have already been to see a great variety (of atmospheric effects). and lately over milan towards lago maggiore i saw a cloud in the form of an immense mountain full of rifts of glowing light, because the rays of the sun, which was already close to the horizon and red, tinged the cloud with its own hue. and this cloud attracted to it all the little clouds that were near while the large one did not move from its place; thus it retained on its summit the reflection of the sunlight till an hour and a half after sunset, so immensely large was it; and about two hours after sunset such a violent wind arose, that it was really tremendous and unheard of. [footnote: _di arie_ is wanting in the original but may safely be inserted in the context, as the formation of clouds is under discussion before this text.] . on the th day of december at o'clock a. m. fire was set to the place. on the l th day of december at o'clock a. m. this second fire was kindled by the swiss at milan at the place called dcxc. [footnote: with these two texts, (l. -- and l. -- are in the original side by side) there are sketches of smoke wreaths in red chalk.] note on pavia. . the chimneys of the castle of pavia have rows of openings and from each to the other is one braccio. [footnote: other notes relating to pavia occur on p. and p. (pl. xcviii, no. ). compare no. , .] notes on the sforzesca near vigevano ( - ). . on the nd day of february . at sforzesca i drew twenty five steps, / braccia to each, and braccia wide. [footnote: see pl. cx, no. . the rest of the notes on this page refer to the motion of water. on the lower sketch we read: _br._ (four braccia) and _giara_ (for _ghiaja_, sand, gravel).] . the vineyards of vigevano on the th day of march . [footnote: on one side there is an effaced sketch in red chalk.] . to lock up a butteris at vigevano. . again if the lowest part of the bank which lies across the current of the waters is made in deep and wide steps, after the manner of stairs, the waters which, in their course usually fall perpendicularly from the top of such a place to the bottom, and wear away the foundations of this bank can no longer descend with a blow of too great a force; and i find the example of this in the stairs down which the water falls in the fields at sforzesca at vigevano over which the running water falls for a height of braccia. . stair of vigevano below la sforzesca, steps, / braccio high and / braccio wide, down which the water falls, so as not to wear away anything at the end of its fall; by these steps so much soil has come down that it has dried up a pool; that is to say it has filled it up and a pool of great depth has been turned into meadows. notes on the north italian lake. ( - ) . in many places there are streams of water which swell for six hours and ebb for six hours; and i, for my part, have seen one above the lake of como called fonte pliniana, which increases and ebbs, as i have said, in such a way as to turn the stones of two mills; and when it fails it falls so low that it is like looking at water in a deep pit. [footnote: the fountain is known by this name to this day: it is near torno, on the eastern shore of como. the waters still rise and fall with the flow and ebb of the tide as pliny described it (epist. iv, ; hist. nat. ii, ).] . lake of como. valley of chiavenna. above the lake of como towards germany is the valley of chiavenna where the river mera flows into this lake. here are barren and very high mountains, with huge rocks. among these mountains are to be found the water-birds called gulls. here grow fir trees, larches and pines. deer, wildgoats, chamois, and terrible bears. it is impossible to climb them without using hands and feet. the peasants go there at the time of the snows with great snares to make the bears fall down these rocks. these mountains which very closely approach each other are parted by the river. they are to the right and left for the distance of miles throughout of the same nature. >from mile to mile there are good inns. above on the said river there are waterfalls of braccia in height, which are fine to see; and there is good living at soldi the reckoning. this river brings down a great deal of timber. val sasina. val sasina runs down towards italy; this is almost the same form and character. there grow here many _mappello_ and there are great ruins and falls of water [footnote : the meaning of _mappello_ is unknown.]. valley of introzzo. this valley produces a great quantity of firs, pines and larches; and from here ambrogio fereri has his timber brought down; at the head of the valtellina are the mountains of bormio, terrible and always covered with snow; marmots (?) are found there. bellaggio. opposite the castle bellaggio there is the river latte, which falls from a height of more than braccia from the source whence it springs, perpendicularly, into the lake with an inconceivable roar and noise. this spring flows only in august and september. valtellina. valtellina, as it is called, is a valley enclosed in high and terrible mountains; it produces much strong wine, and there is so much cattle that the natives conclude that more milk than wine grows there. this is the valley through which the adda passes, which first runs more than miles through germany; this river breeds the fish _temolo_ which live on silver, of which much is to be found in its sands. in this country every one can sell bread and wine, and the wine is worth at most one soldo the bottle and a pound of veal one soldo, and salt ten dinari and butter the same and their pound is ounces, and eggs are one soldo the lot. . at bormio. at bormio are the baths;--about eight miles above como is the pliniana, which increases and ebbs every six hours, and its swell supplies water for two mills; and its ebbing makes the spring dry up; two miles higher up there is nesso, a place where a river falls with great violence into a vast rift in the mountain. these excursions are to be made in the month of may. and the largest bare rocks that are to be found in this part of the country are the mountains of mandello near to those of lecco, and of gravidona towards bellinzona, miles from lecco, and those of the valley of chiavenna; but the greatest of all is that of mandello, which has at its base an opening towards the lake, which goes down steps, and there at all times is ice and wind. in val sasina. in val sasina, between vimognio and introbbio, to the right hand, going in by the road to lecco, is the river troggia which falls from a very high rock, and as it falls it goes underground and the river ends there. miles farther we find the buildings of the mines of copper and silver near a place called pra' santo pietro, and mines of iron and curious things. la grigna is the highest mountain there is in this part, and it is quite bare. [footnote: and . from the character of the handwriting we may conclude that these observations were made in leonardo's youth; and i should infer from their contents, that they were notes made in anticipation of a visit to the places here described, and derived from some person (unknown to us) who had given him an account of them.] . the lake of pusiano flows into the lake of segrino [footnote : the statement about the lake segrino is incorrect; it is situated in the valle assina, above the lake of pusiano.] and of annone and of sala. the lake of annone is braccia higher at the surface of its water than the surface of the water of the lake of lecco, and the lake of pusiano is braccia higher than the lake of annone, which added to the afore said braccia make braccia and this is the greatest height of the surface of the lake of pusiano above the surface of the lake of lecco. [footnote: this text has in the original a slight sketch to illustrate it.] . at santa maria in the valley of ravagnate [footnote : _ravagnate_ (leonardo writes _ravagna_) in the brianza is between oggiono and brivio, south of the lake of como. m. ravaisson avails himself of this note to prove his hypothesis that leonardo paid two visits to france. see gazette des beaux arts, pag. : _au recto du meme feuillet, on lit encore une note relative a une vallee "nemonti brigatia"; il me semble qu'il s'agit bien des monts de briancon, le brigantio des anciens. briancon est sur la route de lyon en italie. ce fut par le mont viso que passerent, en aout , les troupes francaises qui allaient remporter la victoire de marignan. leonard de vinci, ingenieur de francois ier, comme il l'avait ete de louis xii, aurait-il ete pour quelque chose dans le plan du celebre passage des alpes, qui eut lieu en aout , et a la suite duquel on le vit accompagner partout le chevaleresque vainqueur? auraitil ete appele par le jeune roi, de rome ou l'artiste etait alors, des son avenement au trone?_] in the mountains of brianza are the rods of chestnuts of braccia and one out of an average of will be braccia. at varallo di ponbia near to sesto on the ticino the quinces are white, large and hard. [footnote : varallo di ponbia, about ten miles south of arona is distinct from varallo the chief town in the val di sesia.] notes on places in central italy, visited in ( - ). . pigeon-house at urbino, the th day of july . [footnote: an indistinct sketch is introduced with this text, in the original, in which the word _scolatoro_ (conduit) is written.] . made by the sea at piombino. [footnote: below the sketch there are eleven lines of text referring to the motion of waves.] . acquapendente is near orvieto. [footnote: _acquapendente_ is about miles west of orvieto, and is to the right in the map on pl. cxiii, near the lake of bolsena.] . the rock of cesena. [footnote: see pl. xciv no. , the lower sketch. the explanation of the upper sketch is given on p. .] . siena, _a b_ braccia, _a c_ braccia. steps at [the castle of] urbino. [footnote: see pl. cx no. ; compare also no. .] . the bell of siena, that is the manner of its movement, and the place of the attachment of the clapper. [footnote: the text is accompanied by an indistinct sketch.] . on st. mary's day in the middle of august, at cesena, . [footnote: see pl. cx, no. .] . stairs of the [palace of the] count of urbino,--rough. [footnote: the text is accompanied by a slight sketch.] . at the fair of san lorenzo at cesena. . . windows at cesena. [footnote: there are four more lines of text which refer to a slightly sketched diagram.] . at porto cesenatico, on the th of september at o'clock a. m. the way in which bastions ought to project beyond the walls of the towers to defend the outer talus; so that they may not be taken by artillery. [footnote: an indistinct sketch, accompanies this passage.] . the rock of the harbour of cesena is four points towards the south west from cesena. . in romagna, the realm of all stupidity, vehicles with four wheels are used, of which o the two in front are small and two high ones are behind; an arrangement which is very unfavourable to the motion, because on the fore wheels more weight is laid than on those behind, as i showed in the first of the th on "elements". . thus grapes are carried at cesena. the number of the diggers of the ditches is [arranged] pyramidically. [footnote: a sketch, representing a hook to which two bunches of grapes are hanging, refers to these first two lines. cesena is mentioned again fol. a: _carro da cesena_ (a cart from cesena).] . there might be a harmony of the different falls of water as you saw them at the fountain of rimini on the th day of august, . . the fortress at urbino. [footnote: . in the original the text is written inside the sketch in the place here marked _n_.] . imola, as regards bologna, is five points from the west, towards the north west, at a distance of miles. castel san piero is seen from imola at four points from the west towards the north west, at a distance of miles. faenza stands with regard to imola between east and south east at a distance of ten miles. forli stands with regard to faenza between south east and east at a distance of miles from imola and ten from faenza. forlimpopoli lies in the same direction at miles from imola. bertinoro, as regards imola, is five points from the east to wards the south east, at miles. . imola as regards bologna is five points from the west towards the north west at a distance of miles. castel san pietro lies exactly north west of imola, at a distance of miles. faenza, as regards imola lies exactly half way between the east and south east at a distance of miles; and forli lies in the same direction from imola at a distance of miles; and forlimpopolo lies in the same direction from forli at a distance of miles. bertinoro is seen from imola two points from the east towards the south east at a distance of miles. [footnote: leonardo inserted this passage on the margin of the circular plan, in water colour, of imola--see pl. cxi no. .--in the original the fields surrounding the town are light green; the moat, which surrounds the fortifications and the windings of the river santerno, are light blue. the parts, which have come out blackish close to the river are yellow ochre in the original. the dark groups of houses inside the town are red. at the four points of the compass drawn in the middle of the town leonardo has written (from right to left): _mezzodi_ (south) at the top; to the left _scirocho_ (south east), _levante_ (east), _greco_ (north east), _septantrione_ (north), _maesstro_ (north west), _ponente_ (west) _libecco_ (south west). the arch in which the plan is drawn is, in the original, centimetres across. at the beginning of october cesare borgia was shut up in imola by a sudden revolt of the condottieri, and it was some weeks before he could release himself from this state of siege (see gregorovius, _geschichte der stadt rom im mittelalter_, vol. vii, book xiii, , ). besides this incident imola plays no important part in the history of the time. i therefore think myself fully justified in connecting this map, which is at windsor, with the siege of and with leonardo's engagements in the service of cesare borgia, because a comparison of these texts, nos. and , raise, i believe, the hypothesis to a certainty.] . >from bonconventi to casa nova are miles, from casa nova to chiusi miles, from chiusi to perugia, from, perugia to santa maria degli angeli, and then to fuligno. [footnote: most of the places here described lie within the district shown in the maps on pl. cxiii.] . on the first of august , the library at pesaro. . of painting. on the tops and sides of hills foreshorten the shape of the ground and its divisions, but give its proper shape to what is turned towards you. [footnote: this passage evidently refers to the making of maps, such as pl. cxii, cxiii, and cxiv. there is no mention of such works, it is true, excepting in this one passage of ms. l. but this can scarcely be taken as evidence against my view that leonardo busied himself very extensively at that time in the construction of maps; and all the less since the foregoing chapters clearly prove that at a time so full of events leonardo would only now and then commit his observations to paper, in the ms. l. by the side of this text we find, in the original, a very indistinct sketch, perhaps a plan of a position. instead of this drawing i have here inserted a much clearer sketch of a position from the same ms., l. b and a. they are the only drawings of landscape, it may be noted, which occur at all in that ms.] alessandria in piedmont ( . ). . at candia in lombardy, near alessandria della paglia, in making a well for messer gualtieri [footnote : messer gualtieri, the same probably as is mentioned in nos. and .] of candia, the skeleton of a very large boat was found about braccia underground; and as the timber was black and fine, it seemed good to the said messer gualtieri to have the mouth of the well lengthened in such a way as that the ends of the boat should be uncovered. . at alessandria della paglia in lombardy there are no stones for making lime of, but such as are mixed up with an infinite variety of things native to the sea, which is now more than miles away. the alps ( - ). . at monbracco, above saluzzo,--a mile above the certosa, at the foot of monte viso, there is a quarry of flakey stone, which is as white as carrara marble, without a spot, and as hard as porphyry or even harder; of which my worthy gossip, master benedetto the sculptor, has promised to give me a small slab, for the colours, the second day of january . [footnote: saluzzo at the foot of the alps south of turin.] [footnote . .: _maestro benedetto scultore_; probably some native of northern italy acquainted with the place here described. hardly the florentine sculptor benedetto da majano. amoretti had published this passage, and m. ravaisson who gave a french translation of it in the _gazette des beaux arts_ ( , pag. ), remarks as follows: _le maitre sculpteur que leonard appelle son "compare" ne serait-il pas benedetto da majano, un de ceux qui jugerent avec lui de la place a donner au david de michel-ange, et de qui le louvre a acquis recemment un buste d'apres philippe strozzi?_ to this it may be objected that benedetto da majano had already lain in his grave fourteen years, in the year , when he is supposed to have given the promise to leonardo. the colours may have been given to the sculptor benedetto and the stone may have been in payment for them. >from the description of the stone here given we may conclude that it is repeated from hearsay of the sculptor's account of it. i do not understand how, from this observation, it is possible to conclude that leonardo was on the spot.] . that there are springs which suddenly break forth in earthquakes or other convulsions and suddenly fail; and this happened in a mountain in savoy where certain forests sank in and left a very deep gap, and about four miles from here the earth opened itself like a gulf in the mountain, and threw out a sudden and immense flood of water which scoured the whole of a little valley of the tilled soil, vineyards and houses, and did the greatest mischief, wherever it overflowed. . the river arve, a quarter of a mile from geneva in savoy, where the fair is held on midsummerday in the village of saint gervais. [footnote: an indistinct sketch is to be seen by the text.] . and this may be seen, as i saw it, by any one going up monbroso [footnote: i have vainly enquired of every available authority for a solution of the mystery as to what mountain is intended by the name monboso (comp. vol. i nos. and ). it seems most obvious to refer it to monte rosa. rosa derived from the keltic ros which survives in breton and in gaelic, meaning, in its first sense, a mountain spur, but which also--like horn--means a very high peak; thus monte rosa would mean literally the high peak.], a peak of the alps which divide france from italy. the base of this mountain gives birth to the rivers which flow in four different directions through the whole of europe. and no mountain has its base at so great a height as this, which lifts itself above almost all the clouds; and snow seldom falls there, but only hail in the summer, when the clouds are highest. and this hail lies [unmelted] there, so that if it were not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not happen more than twice in an age, an enormous mass of ice would be piled up there by the layers of hail, and in the middle of july i found it very considerable; and i saw the sky above me quite dark, and the sun as it fell on the mountain was far brighter here than in the plains below, because a smaller extent of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the sun. [footnote : _in una eta._ this is perhaps a slip of the pen on leonardo's part and should be read _estate_ (summer).] leic. b] . in the mountains of verona the red marble is found all mixed with cockle shells turned into stone; some of them have been filled at the mouth with the cement which is the substance of the stone; and in some parts they have remained separate from the mass of the rock which enclosed them, because the outer covering of the shell had interposed and had not allowed them to unite with it; while in other places this cement had petrified those which were old and almost stripped the outer skin. . bridge of goertz-wilbach (?). [footnote: there is a slight sketch with this text, leonardo seems to have intended to suggest, with a few pen-strokes, the course of the isonzo and of the wipbach in the vicinity of gorizia (goerz). he himself says in another place that he had been in friuli (see no. . ).] the appenins ( - ). . that part of the earth which was lightest remained farthest from the centre of the world; and that part of the earth became the lightest over which the greatest quantity of water flowed. and therefore that part became lightest where the greatest number of rivers flow; like the alps which divide germany and france from italy; whence issue the rhone flowing southwards, and the rhine to the north. the danube or tanoia towards the north east, and the po to the east, with innumerable rivers which join them, and which always run turbid with the soil carried by them to the sea. the shores of the sea are constantly moving towards the middle of the sea and displace it from its original position. the lowest portion of the mediterranean will be reserved for the bed and current of the nile, the largest river that flows into that sea. and with it are grouped all its tributaries, which at first fell into the sea; as may be seen with the po and its tributaries, which first fell into that sea, which between the appenines and the german alps was united to the adriatic sea. that the gallic alps are the highest part of europe. . and of these i found some in the rocks of the high appenines and mostly at the rock of la vernia. [footnote : _sasso della vernia._ the frowning rock between the sources of the arno and the tiber, as dante describes this mountain, which is metres in height. this note is written by the side of that given as no. ; but their connection does not make it clear what leonardo's purpose was in writing it.] . at parma, at 'la campana' on the twenty-fifth of october . [footnote : _capano_, an inn.] a note on the petrifactions, or fossils near parma will be found under no. .] . a method for drying the marsh of piombino. [footnote: there is a slight sketch with this text in the original.--piombino is also mentioned in nos. , l. - (compare pl. xxxv, , below). also in no. .] . the shepherds in the romagna at the foot of the apennines make peculiar large cavities in the mountains in the form of a horn, and on one side they fasten a horn. this little horn becomes one and the same with the said cavity and thus they produce by blowing into it a very loud noise. [footnote: as to the romagna see also no. .] . a spring may be seen to rise in sicily which at certain times of the year throws out chesnut leaves in quantities; but in sicily chesnuts do not grow, hence it is evident that that spring must issue from some abyss in italy and then flow beneath the sea to break forth in sicily. [footnote: the chesnut tree is very common in sicily. in writing _cicilia_ leonardo meant perhaps cilicia.] ii. france. . germany. france. a. austria, a. picardy. b. saxony. b. normandy. c. nuremberg. c. dauphine. d. flanders. spain. a. biscay. b. castille. c. galicia. d. portugal. e. taragona. f. granada. [footnote: two slightly sketched maps, one of europe the other of spain, are at the side of these notes.] . perpignan. roanne. lyons. paris. ghent. bruges. holland. [footnote: _roana_ does not seem to mean here rouen in normandy, but is probably roanne (rodumna) on the upper loire, lyonnais (dep. du loire). this town is now unimportant, but in leonardo's time was still a place of some consequence.] . at bordeaux in gascony the sea rises about braccia before its ebb, and the river there is filled with salt water for more than a hundred and fifty miles; and the vessels which are repaired there rest high and dry on a high hill above the sea at low tide. [footnote : this is obviously an exaggeration founded on inaccurate information. half of miles would be nearer the mark.] . the rhone issues from the lake of geneva and flows first to the west and then to the south, with a course of miles and pours its waters into the mediterranean. . _c d_ is the garden at blois; _a b_ is the conduit of blois, made in france by fra giocondo, _b c_ is what is wanting in the height of that conduit, _c d_ is the height of the garden at blois, _e f_ is the siphon of the conduit, _b c_, _e f_, _f g_ is where the siphon discharges into the river. [footnote: the tenor of this note (see lines and ) seems to me to indicate that this passage was not written in france, but was written from oral information. we have no evidence as to when this note may have been written beyond the circumstance that fra giocondo the veronese architect left france not before the year . the greater part of the magnificent chateau of blois has now disappeared. whether this note was made for a special purpose is uncertain. the original form and extent of the chateau is shown in androvet, _les plus excellents bastiments de france, paris mdcvii,_ and it may be observed that there is in the middle of the garden a pavilion somewhat similar to that shown on pl. lxxxviii no. . see s. de la saussaye, _histoire du chateau de blois eme edition blois et paris_ p. : _en mariant sa fille ainee a francois, comte d'angouleme, louis xii lui avait constitue en dot les comtes de blois, d'asti, de coucy, de montfort, d'etampes et de vertus. une ordonnance de francois i. lui laissa en_ _l'administration du comte de blois. le roi fit commencer, dans la meme annee, les travaux de celle belle partie du chateau, connue sous le nom d'aile de francois i, et dont nous avons donne la description au commencement de ce livre. nous trouvons en effet, dans les archives du baron de foursanvault, une piece qui en fixe parfaitement la date. on y lit: "je, baymon philippeaux, commis par le roy a tenir le compte et fair le payement des bastiments, ediffices et reparacions que le dit seigneur fait faire en son chastu de blois, confesse avoir eu et receu ... la somme de trois mille livres tournois ... le cinquieme jour de juillet, l'an mil cinq cent et seize._ p. : _les jardins avaient ete decores avec beaucoup de luxe par les differents possesseurs du chateau. il ne reste de tous les batiments qu'ils y eleverent que ceux des officiers charges de l'ad_ministration et de la culture des jardins, et un pavilion carre en pierre et en brique flanque de terrasses a chacun de ses angles. quoique defigure par des mesures elevees sur les terrasses, cet edifice est tris-digne d'interet par l'originalite du plan, la decoration architecturale et le souvenir d'anne de bretagne qui le fit construire._ felibien describes the garden as follows: _le jardin haut etait fort bien dresse par grands compartimens de toutes sortes de figures, avec des allees de meuriers blancs et des palissades de coudriers. deux grands berceaux de charpenterie separoient toute la longueur et la largeur du jardin, et dans les quatres angles des allees, ou ces berceaux se croissent, il y auoit cabinets, de mesme charpenterie ... il y a pas longtemps qu'il y auoit dans ce mesme jardin, a l'endroit ou se croissent les allees du milieu, un edifice de figure octogone, de plus de thoises de diametre et de plus de neuf thoises de haut; avec enfoncements en forme de niches dans les angles des allies. ce bastiment.... esloit de charpente mais d'un extraordinairement bien travaille. on y voyait particulierement la cordiliere qui regnati tout autour en forme de cordon. car la reyne affectait de la mettre nonseulement a ses armes et a ses chiffres mais de la faire representer en divers manieres dans tous les ouvrages qu'on lui faisait pour elle ... le bastiment estati couvert en forme de dome qui dans son milieu avait encore un plus petit dome, ou lanterne vitree au-dessus de laquelle estait une figure doree representant saint michel. les deux domes estoient proprement couvert d'ardoise et de plomb dore par dehors; par dedans ils esloient lambrissez d'une menuiserie tres delicate. au milieu de ce salon il y avait un grand bassin octogone de marbre blanc, dont toutes les faces estoient enrichies de differentes sculptures, avec les armes et les chiffres du roy louis xii et de la reine anne, dans ce bassin il y en avait un autre pose sur un piedestal lequel auoit sept piedz de diametre. il estait de figure ronde a godrons, avec des masques et d'autres ornements tres scauamment taillez. du milieu de ce deuxiesme bassin s'y levoit un autre petit piedestal qui portait un troisiesme bassin de trois pieds de diametre, aussy parfaitement bien taille; c'estoit de ce dernier bassin que jallissoit l'eau qui se rependoit en suitte dans les deux autres bassins. les beaux ouvrages faits d'un marbre esgalement blanc et poli, furent brisez par la pesanteur de tout l'edifice, que les injures de l'air renverserent de fond en comble.] . the river loire at amboise. the river is higher within the bank _b d_ than outside that bank. the island where there is a part of amboise. this is the river that passes through amboise; it passes at _a b c d_, and when it has passed the bridge it turns back, against the original current, by the channel _d e_, _b f_ in contact with the bank which lies between the two contrary currents of the said river, _a b_, _c d_, and _d e_, _b f_. it then turns down again by the channel _f l_, _g h_, _n m_, and reunites with the river from which it was at first separated, which passes by _k n_, which makes _k m_, _r t_. but when the river is very full it flows all in one channel passing over the bank _b d_. [footnote: see pl. cxv. lines - are above, lines - in the middle of the large island and the word _isola_ is written above _d_ in the smaller island; _a_ is written on the margin on the bank of the river above . i; in the reproduction it is not visible. as may be seen from the last sentence, the observation was made after long study of the river's course, when leonardo had resided for some time at, or near, amboise.] . the water may be dammed up above the level of romorantin to such a height, that in its fall it may be used for numerous mills. . the river at villefranche may be conducted to romorantin which may be done by the inhabitants; and the timber of which their houses are built may be carried in boats to romorantin [footnote: compare no. .]. the river may be dammed up at such a height that the waters may be brought back to romorantin with a convenient fall. . as to whether it is better that the water should all be raised in a single turn or in two? the answer is that in one single turn the wheel could not support all the water that it can raise in two turns, because at the half turn of the wheel it would be raising pounds and no more; and if it had to raise the whole, pounds in one turn, it could not raise them unless the wheel were of double the diameter and if the diameter were doubled, the time of its revolution would be doubled; therefore it is better and a greater advantage in expense to make such a wheel of half the size (?) the land which it would water and would render the country fertile to supply food to the inhabitants, and would make navigable canals for mercantile purposes. the way in which the river in its flow should scour its own channel. by the ninth of the third; the more rapid it is, the more it wears away its channel; and, by the converse proposition, the slower the water the more it deposits that which renders it turbid. and let the sluice be movable like the one i arranged in friuli [footnote : this passage reveals to us the fact that leonardo had visited the country of friuli and that he had stayed there for some time. nothing whatever was known of this previously.], where when one sluice was opened the water which passed through it dug out the bottom. therefore when the rivers are flooded, the sluices of the mills ought to be opened in order that the whole course of the river may pass through falls to each mill; there should be many in order to give a greater impetus, and so all the river will be scoured. and below the site of each of the two mills there may be one of the said sluice falls; one of them may be placed below each mill. . a trabocco is four braccia, and one mile is three thousand of the said braccia. each braccio is divided into inches; and the water in the canals has a fall in every hundred trabocchi of two of these inches; therefore inches of fall are necessary in two thousand eight hundred braccia of flow in these canals; it follows that inches of fall give the required momentum to the currents of the waters in the said canals, that is one braccio and a half in the mile. and from this it may be concluded that the water taken from the river of ville-franche and lent to the river of romorantin will..... where one river by reason of its low level cannot flow into the other, it will be necessary to dam it up, so that it may acquire a fall into the other, which was previously the higher. the eve of saint antony i returned from romorantin to amboise, and the king went away two days before from romorantin. >from romorantin as far as the bridge at saudre it is called the saudre, and from that bridge as far as tours it is called the cher. i would test the level of that channel which is to lead from the loire to romorantin, with a channel one braccio wide and one braccio deep. [footnote: lines - are partly reproduced in the facsimile on p. , and the whole of lines - . the following names are written along the rivers on the larger sketch, _era f_ (the loire) _scier f_ (the cher) three times. _pote sodro_ (bridge of the soudre). _villa francha_ (villefranche) _banco_ (sandbank) _sodro_ (soudre). the circle below shows the position of romorantin. the words '_orologio del sole_' written below do not belong to the map of the rivers. the following names are written by the side of the smaller sketch-map:--_tors_ (tours), _abosa_ (amboise) _bres_--for bles (blois) _mo rica_ (montrichard). _lione_ (lyons). this map was also published in the 'saggio' (milano, ) pl. xxii, and the editors remark: _forse la linia retta che va da amboise a romorantin segna l'andamento proposto d'un canale, che poi rembra prolungarsi in giu fin dove sta scritto lione._ m. ravaisson has enlarged on this idea in the gazette des beaux arts ( p. ): _les traces de leonard permettent d'entrevoir que le canal commencant soit aupres de tours, soit aupres de blois et passant par romorantin, avec port d'embarquement a villefranche, devait, au dela de bourges, traverser l'allier au-dessous des affluents de la dore et de la sioule, aller par moulins jusqu' a digoin; enfin, sur l'autre rive de la loire, depasser les monts du charolais et rejoindre la saone aupres de macon._ it seems to me rash, however, to found so elaborate an hypothesis on these sketches of rivers. the slight stroke going to _lione_ is perhaps only an indication of the direction.--with regard to the loire compare also no. . l. .] . the road to orleans at / from the south to the south east. at / from the south to the south east. at / from the south to the south east. at / from the south to the south east. between the south west and south, to the east bearing to the south; from the south towards the east / ; thence to the west, between the south and south west; at the south. [footnote: the meaning is obscure; a more important passage referring to france is to be found under no. ] on the germans ( . ). . the way in which the germans closing up together cross and interweave their broad leather shields against the enemy, stooping down and putting one of the ends on the ground while they hold the rest in their hand. [footnote: above the text is a sketch of a few lines crossing each other and the words _de ponderibus_. the meaning of the passage is obscure.] . the germans are wont to annoy a garrison with the smoke of feathers, sulphur and realgar, and they make this smoke last or hours. likewise the husks of wheat make a great and lasting smoke; and also dry dung; but this must be mixed with olive husks, that is olives pressed for oil and from which the oil has been extracted. [footnote: there is with this passage a sketch of a round tower shrouded in smoke.] the danube. . that the valleys were formerly in great part covered by lakes the soil of which always forms the banks of rivers,--and by seas, which afterwards, by the persistent wearing of the rivers, cut through the mountains and the wandering courses of the rivers carried away the other plains enclosed by the mountains; and the cutting away of the mountains is evident from the strata in the rocks, which correspond in their sections as made by the courses of the rivers [footnote : _emus_, the balkan; _dardania_, now servia.], the haemus mountains which go along thrace and dardania and join the sardonius mountains which, going on to the westward change their name from sardus to rebi, as they come near dalmatia; then turning to the west cross illyria, now called sclavonia, changing the name of rebi to albanus, and going on still to the west, they change to mount ocra in the north; and to the south above istria they are named caruancas; and to the west above italy they join the adula, where the danube rises [ ], which stretches to the east and has a course of miles; its shortest line is about l miles, and the same or about the same is that branch of the adula mountains changed as to their name, as before mentioned. to the north are the carpathians, closing in the breadth of the valley of the danube, which, as i have said extends eastward, a length of about miles, and is sometimes and in some places miles wide; and in the midst flows the danube, the principal river of europe as to size. the said danube runs through the middle of austria and albania and northwards through bavaria, poland, hungary, wallachia and bosnia and then the danube or donau flows into the black sea, which formerly extended almost to austria and occupied the plains through which the danube now courses; and the evidence of this is in the oysters and cockle shells and scollops and bones of great fishes which are still to be found in many places on the sides of those mountains; and this sea was formed by the filling up of the spurs of the adula mountains which then extended to the east joining the spurs of the taurus which extend to the west. and near bithynia the waters of this black sea poured into the propontis [marmora] falling into the aegean sea, that is the mediterranean, where, after a long course, the spurs of the adula mountains became separated from those of the taurus. the black sea sank lower and laid bare the valley of the danube with the above named countries, and the whole of asia minor beyond the taurus range to the north, and the plains from mount caucasus to the black sea to the west, and the plains of the don this side--that is to say, at the foot of the ural mountains. and thus the black sea must have sunk about braccia to uncover such vast plains. [footnote : _danubio_, in the original _reno_; evidently a mistake as we may infer from _come dissi_ l. &c.] iii. the countries of the western end of the mediterranean. the straits of gibraltar ( - ). . why the sea makes a stronger current in the straits of spain than elsewhere. a river of equal depth runs with greater speed in a narrow space than in a wide one, in proportion to the difference between the wider and the narrower one. this proposition is clearly proved by reason confirmed by experiment. supposing that through a channel one mile wide there flows one mile in length of water; where the river is five miles wide each of the square miles will require / of itself to be equal to the square mile of water required in the sea, and where the river is miles wide each of these square miles will require the third of its volume to make up the amount of the square mile of the narrow part; as is demonstrated in _f g h_ at the mile marked _n_. [footnote: in the place marked a in the diagram _mare mediterano_ (mediterranean sea) is written in the original. and at b, _stretto di spugna_ (straits of spain, _i.e._ gibraltar). compare no. .] . why the current of gibraltar is always greater to the west than to the east. the reason is that if you put together the mouths of the rivers which discharge into the mediterranean sea, you would find the sum of water to be larger than that which this sea pours through the straits into the ocean. you see africa discharging its rivers that run northwards into this sea, and among them the nile which runs through miles of africa; there is also the bagrada river and the schelif and others. [footnote : _bagrada_ (leonardo writes bragada) in tunis, now medscherda; _mavretano_, now schelif.] likewise europe pours into it the don and the danube, the po, the rhone, the arno, and the tiber, so that evidently these rivers, with an infinite number of others of less fame, make its great breadth and depth and current; and the sea is not wider than miles at the most westerly point of land where it divides europe from africa. . the gulf of the mediterranean, as an inland sea, received the principal waters of africa, asia and europe that flowed towards it; and its waters came up to the foot of the mountains that surrounded it and made its shores. and the summits of the apennines stood up out of this sea like islands, surrounded by salt water. africa again, behind its atlas mountains did not expose uncovered to the sky the surface of its vast plains about miles in length, and memphis [footnote : _mefi._ leonardo can only mean here the citadel of cairo on the mokattam hills.] was on the shores of this sea, and above the plains of italy, where now birds fly in flocks, fish were wont to wander in large shoals. . tunis. the greatest ebb made anywhere by the mediterranean is above tunis, being about two and a half braccia and at venice it falls two braccia. in all the rest of the mediterranean sea the fall is little or none. . libya. describe the mountains of shifting deserts; that is to say the formation of waves of sand borne by the wind, and of its mountains and hills, such as occur in libya. examples may be seen on the wide sands of the po and the ticino, and other large rivers. . majorca. circumfulgore is a naval machine. it was an invention of the men of majorca. [footnote: the machine is fully described in the ms. and shown in a sketch.] . the tyrrhene sea. some at the tyrrhene sea employ this method; that is to say they fastened an anchor to one end of the yard, and to the other a cord, of which the lower end was fastened to an anchor; and in battle they flung this anchor on to the oars of the opponent's boat and by the use of a capstan drew it to the side; and threw soft soap and tow, daubed with pitch and set ablaze, on to that side where the anchor hung; so that in order to escape that fire, the defenders of that ship had to fly to the opposite side; and in doing this they aided to the attack, because the galley was more easily drawn to the side by reason of the counterpoise. [footnote: this text is illustrated in the original by a pen and ink sketch.] iv. the levant. the levantine sea. . on the shores of the mediterranean rivers flow, and , ports. and this sea is miles long. many times has the increase of its waters, heaped up by their backward flow and the blowing of the west winds, caused the overflow of the nile and of the rivers which flow out through the black sea, and have so much raised the seas that they have spread with vast floods over many countries. and these floods take place at the time when the sun melts the snows on the high mountains of ethiopia that rise up into the cold regions of the air; and in the same way the approach of the sun acts on the mountains of sarmatia in asia and on those in europe; so that the gathering together of these three things are, and always have been, the cause of tremendous floods: that is, the return flow of the sea with the west wind and the melting of the snows. so every river will overflow in syria, in samaria, in judea between sinai and the lebanon, and in the rest of syria between the lebanon and the taurus mountains, and in cilicia, in the armenian mountains, and in pamphilia and in lycia within the hills, and in egypt as far as the atlas mountains. the gulf of persia which was formerly a vast lake of the tigris and discharged into the indian sea, has now worn away the mountains which formed its banks and laid them even with the level of the indian ocean. and if the mediterranean had continued its flow through the gulf of arabia, it would have done the same, that is to say, would have reduced the level of the mediterranean to that of the indian sea. the red sea. ( . ). . for a long time the water of the mediterranean flowed out through the red sea, which is miles wide and long, and full of reefs; and it has worn away the sides of mount sinai, a fact which testifies, not to an inundation from the indian sea beating on these coasts, but to a deluge of water which carried with it all the rivers which abound round the mediterranean, and besides this there is the reflux of the sea; and then, a cutting being made to the west miles away from this place, gibraltar was separated from ceuta, which had been joined to it. and this passage was cut very low down, in the plains between gibraltar and the ocean at the foot of the mountain, in the low part, aided by the hollowing out of some valleys made by certain rivers, which might have flowed here. hercules [footnote : leonardo seems here to mention hercules half jestingly and only in order to suggest to the reader an allusion to the legend of the pillars of hercules.] came to open the sea to the westward and then the sea waters began to pour into the western ocean; and in consequence of this great fall, the red sea remained the higher; whence the water, abandoning its course here, ever after poured away through the straits of spain. . the surface of the red sea is on a level with the ocean. a mountain may have fallen and closed the mouth of the red sea and prevented the outlet of the mediterranean, and the mediterranean sea thus overfilled had for outlet the passage below the mountains of gades; for, in our own times a similar thing has been seen [footnote : compare also no. , ll. , and .-- paolo giovio, the celebrated historian (born at como in ) reports that in at the foot of the alps, above bellinzona, on the road to switzerland, a mountain fell with a very great noise, in consequence of an earthquake, and that the mass of rocks, which fell on the left (western) side blocked the river breno (t. i p. and of d. sauvage's french edition, quoted in alexis percy, _memoire des tremblements de terre de la peninsule italique; academie royale de belgique._ t. xxii).--]; a mountain fell seven miles across a valley and closed it up and made a lake. and thus most lakes have been made by mountains, as the lake of garda, the lakes of como and lugano, and the lago maggiore. the mediterranean fell but little on the confines of syria, in consequence of the gaditanean passage, but a great deal in this passage, because before this cutting was made the mediterranean sea flowed to the south east, and then the fall had to be made by its run through the straits of gades. at _a_ the water of the mediterranean fell into the ocean. all the plains which lie between the sea and mountains were formerly covered with salt water. every valley has been made by its own river; and the proportion between valleys is the same as that between river and river. the greatest river in our world is the mediterranean river, which moves from the sources of the nile to the western ocean. and its greatest height is in outer mauritania and it has a course of ten thousand miles before it reunites with its ocean, the father of the waters. that is miles for the mediterranean, for the nile, as far as discovered and for the nile which flows to the east, &c. [footnote: see pl. cxi , a sketch of the shores of the mediterranean sea, where lines to may be seen. the large figures are not in leonardo's writing. the character of the writing leads us to conclude that this text was written later than the foregoing. a slight sketch of the mediterranean is also to be found in ms. i', a.] the nile ( - ). . therefore we must conclude those mountains to be of the greatest height, above which the clouds falling in snow give rise to the nile. . the egyptians, the ethiopians, and the arabs, in crossing the nile with camels, are accustomed to attach two bags on the sides of the camel's bodies that is skins in the form shown underneath. in these four meshes of the net the camels for baggage place their feet. [footnote: unfortunately both the sketches which accompany this passage are too much effaced to be reproduced. the upper represents the two sacks joined by ropes, as here described, the other shows four camels with riders swimming through a river.] . the tigris passes through asia minor and brings with it the water of three lakes, one after the other of various elevations; the first being munace and the middle pallas and the lowest triton. and the nile again springs from three very high lakes in ethiopia, and runs northwards towards the sea of egypt with a course of miles, and by the shortest and straightest line it is miles. it is said that it issues from the mountains of the moon, and has various unknown sources. the said lakes are about braccia above the surface of the sphere of water, that is mile and / , giving to the nile a fall of braccia in every mile. [footnote : _incogniti principio._ the affluents of the lakes are probably here intended. compare, as to the nile, nos. , and .] . very many times the nile and other very large rivers have poured out their whole element of water and restored it to the sea. . why does the inundation of the nile occur in the summer, coming from torrid countries? . it is not denied that the nile is constantly muddy in entering the egyptian sea and that its turbidity is caused by soil that this river is continually bringing from the places it passes; which soil never returns in the sea which receives it, unless it throws it on its shores. you see the sandy desert beyond mount atlas where formerly it was covered with salt water. customs of asiatic nations ( . ). . the assyrians and the people of euboea accustom their horses to carry sacks which they can at pleasure fill with air, and which in case of need they carry instead of the girth of the saddle above and at the side, and they are well covered with plates of cuir bouilli, in order that they may not be perforated by flights of arrows. thus they have not on their minds their security in flight, when the victory is uncertain; a horse thus equipped enables four or five men to cross over at need. . small boats. the small boats used by the assyrians were made of thin laths of willow plaited over rods also of willow, and bent into the form of a boat. they were daubed with fine mud soaked with oil or with turpentine, and reduced to a kind of mud which resisted the water and because pine would split; and always remained fresh; and they covered this sort of boats with the skins of oxen in safely crossing the river sicuris of spain, as is reported by lucant; [footnote : see lucan's pharsalia iv, : _utque habuit ripas sicoris camposque reliquit, primum cana salix madefacto vimine parvam texitur in puppim, calsoque inducto juvenco vectoris patiens tumidum supernatat amnem. sic venetus stagnante pado, fusoque britannus navigat oceano, sic cum tenet omnia nilus, conseritur bibula memphitis cymbo papyro. his ratibus transjecta manus festinat utrimque succisam cavare nemus ] the spaniards, the scythians and the arabs, when they want to make a bridge in haste, fix hurdlework made of willows on bags of ox-hide, and so cross in safety. rhodes ( . ). . in [fourteen hundred and] eighty nine there was an earthquake in the sea of atalia near rhodes, which opened the sea--that is its bottom--and into this opening such a torrent of water poured that for more than three hours the bottom of the sea was uncovered by reason of the water which was lost in it, and then it closed to the former level. [footnote: _nello ottanto_ . it is scarcely likely that leonardo should here mean ad. dr. h. muller- strubing writes to me as follows on this subject: "with reference to rhodes ross says (_reise auf den griechischen inseln, iii_ _ff_. ), that ancient history affords instances of severe earthquakes at rhodes, among others one in the second year of the th olympiad= b. c.; a remarkably violent one under antoninus pius (a. d. - ) and again under constantine and later. but leonardo expressly speaks of an earthquake "_nel mar di atalia presso a rodi_", which is singular. the town of attalia, founded by attalus, which is what he no doubt means, was in pamphylia and more than english miles east of rhodes in a straight line. leake and most other geographers identify it with the present town of adalia. attalia is rarely mentioned by the ancients, indeed only by strabo and pliny and no earthquake is spoken of. i think therefore you are justified in assuming that leonardo means ". in the elaborate catalogue of earthquakes in the east by sciale dshelal eddin sayouthy (an unpublished arabic ms. in the possession of prof. schefer, (membre de l'institut, paris) mention is made of a terrible earthquake in the year of the mohamedan era corresponding to the year , and it is there stated that a hundred persons were killed by it in the fortress of kerak. there are three places of this name. kerak on the sea of tiberias, kerak near tahle on the libanon, which i visited in the summer of l --but neither of these is the place alluded to. possibly it may be the strongly fortified town of kerak=kir moab, to the west of the dead sea. there is no notice about this in alexis percy, _memoire sur les tremblements de terres ressentis dans la peninsule turco- hellenique et en syrie (memoires couronnes et memoires des savants etrangers, academie royale de belgique, tome xxiii)._] . rhodes has in it houses. cyprus ( . ). . site for [a temple of] venus. you must make steps on four sides, by which to mount to a meadow formed by nature at the top of a rock which may be hollowed out and supported in front by pilasters and open underneath in a large portico, [footnote: see pl. lxxxiii. compare also p. of this vol. the standing male figure at the side is evidently suggested by michael angelo's david. on the same place a slight sketch of horses seems to have been drawn first; there is no reason for assuming that the text and this sketch, which have no connection with each other, are of the same date. _sito di venere._ by this heading leonardo appears to mean cyprus, which was always considered by the ancients to be the home and birth place of aphrodite (kirpic in homer).] in which the water may fall into various vases of granite, porphyryand serpentine, within semi-circular recesses; and the water may overflow from these. and round this portico towards the north there should be a lake with a little island in the midst of which should be a thick and shady wood; the waters at the top of the pilasters should pour into vases at their base, from whence they should flow in little channels. starting from the shore of cilicia towards the south you discover the beauties of the island of cyprus. the caspian sea ( . ). . >from the shore of the southern coast of cilicia may be seen to the south the beautiful island of cyprus, which was the realm of the goddess venus, and many navigators being attracted by her beauty, had their ships and rigging broken amidst the reefs, surrounded by the whirling waters. here the beauty of delightful hills tempts wandering mariners to refresh themselves amidst their flowery verdure, where the winds are tempered and fill the island and the surrounding seas with fragrant odours. ah! how many a ship has here been sunk. ah! how many a vessel broken on these rocks. here might be seen barks without number, some wrecked and half covered by the sand; others showing the poop and another the prow, here a keel and there the ribs; and it seems like a day of judgment when there should be a resurrection of dead ships, so great is the number of them covering all the northern shore; and while the north gale makes various and fearful noises there. . write to bartolomeo the turk as to the flow and ebb of the black sea, and whether he is aware if there be such a flow and ebb in the hyrcanean or caspian sea. [footnote: the handwriting of this note points to a late date.] . why water is found at the top of mountains. >from the straits of gibraltar to the don is miles, that is one mile and / , giving a fall of one braccio in a mile to any water that moves gently. the caspian sea is a great deal higher; and none of the mountains of europe rise a mile above the surface of our seas; therefore it might be said that the water which is on the summits of our mountains might come from the height of those seas, and of the rivers which flow into them, and which are still higher. the sea of azov. . hence it follows that the sea of azov is the highest part of the mediterranean sea, being at a distance of miles from the straits of gibraltar, as is shown by the map for navigation; and it has braccia of descent, that is, one mile and / ; therefore it is higher than any mountains which exist in the west. [footnote: the passage before this, in the original, treats of the exit of the waters from lakes in general.] the dardanelles. . in the bosphorus the black sea flows always into the egean sea, and the egean sea never flows into it. and this is because the caspian, which is miles to the east, with the rivers which pour into it, always flows through subterranean caves into this sea of pontus; and the don does the same as well as the danube, so that the waters of pontus are always higher than those of the egean; for the higher always fall towards the lower, and never the lower towards the higher. constantinople. . the bridge of pera at constantinople, braccia wide, braccia high above the water, braccia long; that is over the sea and on the land, thus making its own abutments. [footnote: see pl. cx no. . in by order of sultan mohamed ii. the golden horn was crossed by a pontoon bridge laid on barrels (see joh. dukas' history of the byzantine empire xxxviii p. ). --the biographers of michelangelo, vasari as well as condivi, relate that at the time when michelangelo suddenly left rome, in , he entertained some intention of going to constantinople, there to serve the sultan, who sought to engage him, by means of certain franciscan monks, for the purpose of constructing a bridge to connect constantinople with pera. see vasari, _vite_ (ed. sansoni vii, ): _michelangelo, veduto questa furia del papa, dubitando di lui, ebbe, secondo che si dice, voglia di andarsene in gostantinopoli a servire il turco, per mezzo di certi frati di san francesco, che desiderava averlo per fare un ponte che passassi da gostantinopoli a pera._ and condivi, _vita di m. buonaroti chap._ _; michelangelo allora vedendosi condotto a questo, temendo dell'ira del papa, penso d'andarsene in levante; massimamente essendo stato dal turco ricercato con grandissime promesse per mezzo di certi frati di san francesco, per volersene servire in fare un ponte da costantinopoli a pera ed in altri affari._ leonardo's plan for this bridge was made in . we may therefore conclude that at about that time the sultan bajazet ii. had either announced a competition in this matter, or that through his agents leonardo had first been called upon to carry out the scheme.] the euphrates. . if the river will turn to the rift farther on it will never return to its bed, as the euphrates does, and this may do at bologna the one who is disappointed for his rivers. centrae asia. . mounts caucasus, comedorum, and paropemisidae are joined together between bactria and india, and give birth to the river oxus which takes its rise in these mountains and flows miles towards the north and as many towards the west, and discharges its waters into the caspian sea; and is accompanied by the oxus, dargados, arthamis, xariaspes, dargamaim, ocus and margus, all very large rivers. from the opposite side towards the south rises the great river indus which sends its waters for miles southwards and receives as tributaries in this course the rivers xaradrus, hyphasis, vadris, vandabal bislaspus to the east, suastes and coe to the west, uniting with these rivers, and with their waters it flows miles to the west; then, turning back by the arbiti mountains makes an elbow and turns southwards, where after a course of about miles it finds the indian sea, in which it pours itself by seven branches. on the side of the same mountains rises the great ganges, which river flows southwards for miles and to the southwest a thousand ... and sarabas, diarnuna, soas and scilo, condranunda are its tributaries. it flows into the indian sea by many mouths. on the natives of hot countries. . men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them; and therefore they are of the colour of night, that is black. and in cold countries it is just the contrary. [footnote: the sketch here inserted is in ms. h b.] _xviii._ _naval warfare.--mechanical appliances.--music._ _such theoretical questions, as have been laid before the reader in sections xvi and xvii, though they were the chief subjects of leonardo's studies of the sea, did not exclusively claim his attention. a few passages have been collected at the beginning of this section, which prove that he had turned his mind to the practical problems of navigation, and more especially of naval warfare. what we know for certain of his life gives us no data, it is true, as to when or where these matters came under his consideration; but the fact remains certain both from these notes in his manuscripts, and from the well known letter to ludovico il moro (no._ _), in which he expressly states that he is as capable as any man, in this very department._ _the numerous notes as to the laws and rationale of the flight of birds, are scattered through several note-books. an account of these is given in the bibliography of the manuscripts at the end of this work. it seems probable that the idea which led him to these investigations was his desire to construct a flying or aerial machine for man. at the same time it must be admitted that the notes on the two subjects are quite unconnected in the manuscripts, and that those on the flight of birds are by far the most numerous and extensive. the two most important passages that treat of the construction of a flying machine are those already published as tav. xvi, no._ _and tav. xviii in the_ "saggio delle opere di leonardo da vinci" _(milan_ _). the passages--nos._ - --_here printed for the first time and hitherto unknown--refer to the same subject and, with the exception of one already published in the saggio-- no._ --_they are, so far as i know, the only notes, among the numerous observations on the flight of birds, in which the phenomena are incidentally and expressly connected with the idea of a flying machine._ _the notes on machines of war, the construction of fortifications, and similar matters which fall within the department of the engineer, have not been included in this work, for the reasons given on page_ _of this vol. an exception has been made in favour of the passages nos._ _and_ , _because they have a more general interest, as bearing on the important question: whence the master derived his knowledge of these matters. though it would be rash to assert that leonardo was the first to introduce the science of mining into italy, it may be confidently said that he is one of the earliest writers who can be proved to have known and understood it; while, on the other hand, it is almost beyond doubt that in the east at that time, the whole science of besieging towns and mining in particular, was far more advanced than in europe. this gives a peculiar value to the expressions used in no._ . _i have been unable to find in the manuscripts any passage whatever which throws any light on leonardo's great reputation as a musician. nothing therein illustrates vasarps well-known statement:_ avvenne che morto giovan galeazze duca di milano, e creato lodovico sforza nel grado medesimo anno , fu condotto a milano con gran riputazione lionardo al duca, il quale molto si dilettava del suono della lira, perche sonasse; e lionardo porto quello strumento ch'egli aveva di sua mano fabbricato d'argento gran parte, in forma d'un teschio di cavallo, cosa bizzarra e nuova, acciocche l'armonia fosse con maggior tuba e piu sonora di voce; laonde supero tutti i musici che quivi erano concorsi a sonare. _the only notes on musical matters are those given as nos._ _and_ , _which explain certain arrangements in instruments._ the ship's logs of vitruvius, of alberti and of leonardo . on movements;--to know how much a ship advances in an hour. the ancients used various devices to ascertain the distance gone by a ship each hour, among which vitruvius [footnote : see vitruvius, _de architectura lib. x._ c. (p. in the edition of rose and muller- strubing). the german edition published at bale in has, on fol. , an illustration of the contrivance, as described by vitruvius.] gives one in his work on architecture which is just as fallacious as all the others; and this is a mill wheel which touches the waves of the sea at one end and in each complete revolution describes a straight line which represents the circumference of the wheel extended to a straightness. but this invention is of no worth excepting on the smooth and motionless surface of lakes. but if the water moves together with the ship at an equal rate, then the wheel remains motionless; and if the motion of the water is more or less rapid than that of the ship, then neither has the wheel the same motion as the ship so that this invention is of but little use. there is another method tried by experiment with a known distance between one island and another; and this is done by a board or under the pressure of wind which strikes on it with more or less swiftness. this is in battista alberti [footnote : leon battista alberti, _de architectura lib. v._, c. treats '_de le navi e parti loro_', but there is no reference to the machine, mentioned by leonardo. alberti says here: _noi abbiamo trattato lungamente in altro luogo de' modi de le navi, ma in questo luogo ne abbiamo detto quel tanto che si bisogna_. to this the following note is added in the most recent italian edition: _questo libro e tuttora inedito e porta il titolo, secondo gesnero di_ '_liber navis_'.]. battista alberti's method which is made by experiment on a known distance between one island and another. but such an invention does not succeed excepting on a ship like the one on which the experiment was made, and it must be of the same burden and have the same sails, and the sails in the same places, and the size of the waves must be the same. but my method will serve for any ship, whether with oars or sails; and whether it be small or large, broad or long, or high or low, it always serves [footnote : leonardo does not reveal the method invented by him.]. methods of staying and moving in water . how an army ought to cross rivers by swimming with air-bags ... how fishes swim [footnote : compare no. .]; of the way in which they jump out of the water, as may be seen with dolphins; and it seems a wonderful thing to make a leap from a thing which does not resist but slips away. of the swimming of animals of a long form, such as eels and the like. of the mode of swimming against currents and in the rapid falls of rivers. of the mode of swimming of fishes of a round form. how it is that animals which have not long hind quartres cannot swim. how it is that all other animals which have feet with toes, know by nature how to swim, excepting man. in what way man ought to learn to swim. of the way in which man may rest on the water. how man may protect himself against whirlpools or eddies in the water, which drag him down. how a man dragged to the bottom must seek the reflux which will throw him up from the depths. how he ought to move his arms. how to swim on his back. how he can and how he cannot stay under water unless he can hold his breath [ ]. how by means of a certain machine many people may stay some time under water. how and why i do not describe my method of remaining under water, or how long i can stay without eating; and i do not publish nor divulge these by reason of the evil nature of men who would use them as means of destruction at the bottom of the sea, by sending ships to the bottom, and sinking them together with the men in them. and although i will impart others, there is no danger in them; because the mouth of the tube, by which you breathe, is above the water supported on bags or corks [ ]. [footnote: l. - will also be found in vol. i no. .] on naval warfare ( . ). . supposing in a battle between ships and galleys that the ships are victorious by reason of the high of heir tops, you must haul the yard up almost to the top of the mast, and at the extremity of the yard, that is the end which is turned towards the enemy, have a small cage fastened, wrapped up below and all round in a great mattress full of cotton so that it may not be injured by the bombs; then, with the capstan, haul down the opposite end of this yard and the top on the opposite side will go up so high, that it will be far above the round-top of the ship, and you will easily drive out the men that are in it. but it is necessary that the men who are in the galley should go to the opposite side of it so as to afford a counterpoise to the weight of the men placed inside the cage on the yard. . if you want to build an armada for the sea employ these ships to ram in the enemy's ships. that is, make ships feet long and feet wide, but arranged so that the left hand rowers may have their oars to the right side of the ship, and the right hand ones to the left side, as is shown at m, so that the leverage of the oars may be longer. and the said ship may be one foot and a half thick, that is made with cross beams within and without, with planks in contrary directions. and this ship must have attached to it, a foot below the water, an iron-shod spike of about the weight and size of an anvil; and this, by force of oars may, after it has given the first blow, be drawn back, and driven forward again with fury give a second blow, and then a third, and so many as to destroy the other ship. the use of swimming belts. . a method of escaping in a tempest and shipwreck at sea. have a coat made of leather, which must be double across the breast, that is having a hem on each side of about a finger breadth. thus it will be double from the waist to the knee; and the leather must be quite air-tight. when you want to leap into the sea, blow out the skirt of your coat through the double hems of the breast; and jump into the sea, and allow yourself to be carried by the waves; when you see no shore near, give your attention to the sea you are in, and always keep in your mouth the air-tube which leads down into the coat; and if now and again you require to take a breath of fresh air, and the foam prevents you, you may draw a breath of the air within the coat. [footnote: amoretti, _memorie storiche_, tav. ii. b. fig. , gives the same figure, somewhat altered. . _la canna dell' aria_. compare vol. i. no. i. note] on the gravity of water. . if the weight of the sea bears on its bottom, a man, lying on that bottom and having l braccia of water on his back, would have enough to crush him. diving apparatus and skating ( - ). . of walking under water. method of walking on water. [footnote: the two sketches belonging to this passage are given by amoretti, _memorie storiche_. tav. ii, fig. and .] . just as on a frozen river a man may run without moving his feet, so a car might be made that would slide by itself. [footnote: the drawings of carts by the side of this text have no direct connection with the problem as stated in words.--compare no. , l. .] . a definition as to why a man who slides on ice does not fall. [footnote: an indistinct sketch accompanies the passage, in the original.] on flying machines ( - ). . man when flying must stand free from the waist upwards so as to be able to balance himself as he does in a boat so that the centre of gravity in himself and in the machine may counterbalance each other, and be shifted as necessity demands for the changes of its centre of resistance. . remember that your flying machine must imitate no other than the bat, because the web is what by its union gives the armour, or strength to the wings. if you imitate the wings of feathered birds, you will find a much stronger structure, because they are pervious; that is, their feathers are separate and the air passes through them. but the bat is aided by the web that connects the whole and is not pervious. . to escape the peril of destruction. destruction to such a machine may occur in two ways; of which the first is the breaking of the machine. the second would be when the machine should turn on its edge or nearly on its edge, because it ought always to descend in a highly oblique direction, and almost exactly balanced on its centre. as regards the first--the breaking of the machine--, that may be prevented by making it as strong as possible; and in whichever direction it may tend to turn over, one centre must be very far from the other; that is, in a machine braccia long the centres must be braccia one from the other. [footnote: compare no. .] . bags by which a man falling from a height of braccia may avoid hurting himself, by a fall whether into water or on the ground; and these bags, strung together like a rosary, are to be fixed on one's back. . an object offers as much resistance to the air as the air does to the object. you may see that the beating of its wings against the air supports a heavy eagle in the highest and rarest atmosphere, close to the sphere of elemental fire. again you may see the air in motion over the sea, fill the swelling sails and drive heavily laden ships. from these instances, and the reasons given, a man with wings large enough and duly connected might learn to overcome the resistance of the air, and by conquering it, succeed in subjugating it and rising above it. [footnote: a parachute is here sketched, with an explanatory remark. it is reproduced on tav. xvi in the saggio, and in: _leonardo da vinci als ingenieur etc., ein beitrag zur geschichte der technik und der induktiven wissenschaften, von dr. hermann grothe, berlin_ , p. .] of mining. . if you want to know where a mine runs, place a drum over all the places where you suspect that it is being made, and upon this drum put a couple of dice, and when you are over the spot where they are mining, the dice will jump a little on the drum at every blow which is given underground in the mining. there are persons who, having the convenience of a river or a lake in their lands, have made, close to the place where they suspect that a mine is being made, a great reservoir of water, and have countermined the enemy, and having found them, have turned the water upon them and destroyed a great number in the mine. of greek fire. . greek fire. take charcoal of willow, and saltpetre, and sulphuric acid, and sulphur, and pitch, with frankincense and camphor, and ethiopian wool, and boil them all together. this fire is so ready to burn that it clings to the timbers even under water. and add to this composition liquid varnish, and bituminous oil, and turpentine and strong vinegar, and mix all together and dry it in the sun, or in an oven when the bread is taken out; and then stick it round hempen or other tow, moulding it into a round form, and studding it all over with very sharp nails. you must leave in this ball an opening to serve as a fusee, and cover it with rosin and sulphur. again, this fire, stuck at the top of a long plank which has one braccio length of the end pointed with iron that it may not be burnt by the said fire, is good for avoiding and keeping off the ships, so as not to be overwhelmed by their onset. again throw vessels of glass full of pitch on to the enemy's ships when the men in them are intent on the battle; and then by throwing similar burning balls upon them you have it in your power to burn all their ships. [footnote: venturi has given another short text about the greek fire in a french translation (essai section xiv). he adds that the original text is to be found in ms. b. (?). libri speaks of it in a note as follows (_histoire des sciences mathematiques en italie vol. ii_ p. ): _la composition du feu gregeois est une des chases qui ont ete les plus cherchees et qui sont encore les plus douteuses. on dit qu'il fut invente au septieme siecle de l'ere chretienne par l'architecte callinique (constantini porphyrogenetae opera, lugd. batav._ ,-- _in-_ vo; p. , _de admin, imper. exp._ _), et il se trouve souvent mentionne par les historiens byzantins. tantot on le langait avec des machines, comme on lancerait une banche, tantot on le soufflait avec de longs tubes, comme on soufflerait un gaz ou un liquide enflamme (annae comnenae alexias_, p. , _lib. xi.--aeliani et leonis, imperatoris tactica, lugd.-bat._ , _in_- . part. a, p. , _leonis tact. cap._ l .--_joinville, histoire du saint louis collect. petitot tom. ii,_ p. ). _les ecrivains contemporains disent que l'eau ne pouvait pas eteindre ce feu, mais qu'avec du vinaigre et du sable on y parvenait. suivant quelques historiens le feu gregeois etait compose de soufre et de resine. marcus graecus (liber ignium, paris,_ , _in_- _) donne plusieurs manieres de le faire qui ne sont pas tres intelligibles, mais parmi lesquelles on trouve la composition de la poudre a canon. leonard de vinci (mss. de leonard de vinci, vol. b. f. ,) dit qu'on le faisait avec du charbon de saule, du salpetre, de l'eau de vie, de la resine, du soufre, de la poix et du camphre. mais il est probable que nous ne savons pas qu'elle etait sa composition, surtout a cause du secret qu'en faisaient les grecs. en effet, l'empereur constantin porphyrogenete recommende a son fils de ne jamais en donner aux barbares, et de leur repondre, s'ils en demandaient, qu'il avait ete apporti du ciel par un ange et que le secret en avait ete confie aux chretiens (constantini porphyrogennetae opera,_ p. - , _de admin. imper., cap. _ _)._] of music ( . ). . a drum with cogs working by wheels with springs [ ]. [footnote: this chapter consists of explanations of the sketches shown on pl. cxxi. lines and of the text are to be seen at the top at the left hand side of the first sketch of a drum. lines - refer to the sketch immediately below this. line is written as the side of the seventh sketch, and lines and at the side of the eighth. lines - are at the bottom in the middle. the remainder of the text is at the side of the drawing at the bottom.] a square drum of which the parchment may be drawn tight or slackened by the lever _a b_ [ ]. a drum for harmony [ ]. [ ] a clapper for harmony; that is, three clappers together. [ ] just as one and the same drum makes a deep or acute sound according as the parchments are more or less tightened, so these parchments variously tightened on one and the same drum will make various sounds [ ]. keys narrow and close together; (bicchi) far apart; these will be right for the trumpet shown above. _a_ must enter in the place of the ordinary keys which have the ... in the openings of a flute. . tymbals to be played like the monochord, or the soft flute. [ ] here there is to be a cylinder of cane